February 22, 2006

Islam vs. Islamists and ALLIANCES

Bill from INDC has a great post on strategy in winning the war against terror. He's right. Yes, you heard me, he's 100% right. It doesn't mean that my earlier post on Islam as the root ideology which we are fighting is wrong, but only that as a matter of strategy, it is irrelevant.

Muslims are not children. They are adults. As such, they understand that, as I stated in my previous post:

Alliances are relationsips based on mutual interests.

To think of an ally as a friend is to misunderstand the basis of a relationship. Indeed, much political theory has been devoted to arguing that nations cannot have friends, only allies. This is the core of most modern international relations theory, as I understand it, which is rooted in one branch or another of realism.

Neocons, in my view, are just another branch of realism which see the long term interests of the United States being tied to the state of freedom in other countries. So the term "ally" should be a term familiar to them.

Thus, when I proclaimed that Islam is the root cause of oppression in the Muslim world, I did so with the understanding that Muslims are fully capable of forming alliances with those that diametrically oppose many of their notions of how societies ought to be governed.

The Soviets accepted our aid in WWII with the understanding that our two systems of government were incompatable, why not Muslims?

So, when Bill argues that Muslim help will be necessary to win the war on terror, I agree. Wholeheartedly. They will. But how is criticizing Islam a problem to that? Unless we assume that Muslims are children, unable to distinguish between friends and allies?

I have not ever called for a "subjegation strategy", nor would I. We need the help of Muslims to conquer our jihadi enemies. But they help us because they need our help in conquering their jihadi enemies.

Mutual enemies, mutual interests, mutual alliances.

As a strategy, Bill is 100% right. In fact, it seems to be the strategy endorsed by the Bush Pentagon, and I support it. What I can't endorse is the notion that criticizing Islam will cause alliances to fail. If the sticks and stones wielded by terrorists are aimed at both the U.S. and at Muslim governments, then why should words hurt an alliance?

If they do, then the entire realist paradigm--and the neo-com foreign policy-- is wrong. In which case the effort was not worth undertaking in the first place.

I'd also suggest reading this from Jeff Goldstein who also basically agrees with Bill, but has some rather insightful criticisms as well.