WE Must Write the History
Reader comment on item: [Samuel Huntington and] American Purposes In Iraq

Submitted by Charles Gilinsky (United States), May 4, 2004 at 16:52

WE Must Write the History

By Charles Gilinsky


Our failure in the West to sufficiently discuss the history of the Radical Islamist Movement too often leads us astray in a myriad of dead end policy searches for a way to peace. In it's historically rather brief 200+ years of prominence, Radical Islam, as fostered and promoted by the Saudi sponsored Wahhabi movement, has thrown the greater Islamic world in a downward spiraling plunge into social and economic darkness. Wahhabism asserts at the peril of death, that Islam, which has evolved and been interpreted over the millennium, must now revert to strict adherence of the original Sharia, tenants of Islam, as preached by Mohammed in the seventh century. The most strident tenant of this Radical Islamic movement is that every one on the planet must accept their teachings or be eliminated. There can be no compromise or negotiation with this ideology. It is their Jihad, a philosophical, theological and military war to the death, and they believe Allah will see them through to victory.

It is said that the victors of wars write history. If so, we might ask ourselves how we would have history eventually record the outcome of this War/Jihad. Let me suggest that history should record that…there was an Islamic religious and cultural conflict beginning in the 17th century that ended when the West finally put down Radical Islam by force and enabled Moderate and Modern Islam to reclaim its evolved traditions of tolerance for other traditions and to rejoin the family of nations in furthering civilization and its development through trade in goods and ideas with the pursuit of human liberty and civil rights.

Since 9-11, our Government has gotten it right in our present unforgiving pursuit of terrorism by Radical Islam; a pursuit that must be intensified toward the ultimate victory over its intransigent Jihad. Since it is the foremost responsibility of our Government to protect us, its citizens, this responsibility should come before tax breaks for the rich.

The FBI, denuded, since the death of J. Edgar Hoover, for his abuses of its power, must be authorized, under judicial oversight, to seek out terrorist and other criminal activities without politically correct constraints. The FBI, CIA and all Law enforcement agencies must be required to co-ordinate the sharing of data bases in compatible systems and to work together, with serious disincentives for failing to do so. Other public entities must be protected from lawsuits in observing standards set by the Department of Homeland Security.

Sadly, the Iraq war has deferred the priority and funding needed to affect these changes. Tragically, that war has unleashed a Radical Islamic civil war in Iraq, with our troops caught in the middle. Pathetically, we cannot now cut and run, but must redouble our unprecedented effort to a showdown with the forces that would bring Iraq under the rule of the Radical Islamists, and instead, establish a civil society; a model for moderate and modern nations in the Islamic world. In this, we must unabashedly learn to treat those threatening our mission as the Israelis treat Hamas, Hezbollah and the terrorists they face. It is the same Jihad and we must all pursue the same victory.

We have the power and the principles; we need to maintain our courage and will to write the history.

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