Islamist Fantasists
Reader comment on item: [Lee Harris on Why the U.S. is] Discarding War's Rules

Submitted by Peter J. Herz (Taiwan), Jul 23, 2003 at 01:30

The idea that the power of Islamist radicals and their allies is unearned probably has merit. The Bush administration is also probably right to employ a double standard of rough behavior with the Taliban and Saddam Hussein and civilized behavior with just about everyone else. The rise of both 20th century totalitarianism and post-modern Islamist radicalism have pretty well shown the limits of Kant's vision expressed in _Perpetual Peace_--a book which has pretty well become Holy Scripture to most modern statesmen.

However, I would feel just a hair more comfortable if the Bush administration used a little more restraint in its responses to crisis in the Islamic world. While its Afghanistan and Iraqi adventures have gone a lot more smoothly than anyone had any right to expect, the lingering resistance in those countries suggests that the US must remain for the long haul, engaged in the costly and risky business of nation building, the dangers of which candidate Bush recognized very clearly. Further, a long-standing US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot help but add grist to the mills of those propagandists who see the US as engaged in an anti-Islam campaign.

A big part of the problem is that the Islamic world of today, like the Far East of the middle half of the 20th century, is not clay or putty in the hands of America, or even America plus the rest of the West. Just as the intelligentsia of 1920's China decided that, by golly, they'd have Communism regardless of the cost, even if it took them two generations to get it, it is clear that a very large proportion of the Islamic world's thinking people are impressed with the bankruptcy of the various "modernization" schemes their countries have tried, and are ripe for Islamic radicalism or something like it. It's the Talibans and al-Qaidas of the Islamic world who have the fires in the bellies, not the so-called "moderates" (as if US policy really needs to bind itself to the leftover Nasserites and bush-league Qaddafis--the same folks who, back in the 1970's, used the Communist-Arab-Third World coalition in the UN to elect Arafat "leader" of the Falastin Arabs). Victor Hugo was right when he said that there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come--to which we may add that this goes for bad ideas as well as good.

Frankly, while the 9/11 attacks were reprehensible, and the US is completely justified in the rage it continues to feel over them, it might be better if the attacks were treated as big crimes rather than acts of war. Law enforcement cooperation with various countries can and has netted some of the people we want, and a less militarized response might have made even more of the world--including Muslims--willing to help apprehend others.

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