10 Reasons We Won't Win the War on Terror

Great but depressing piece by David Selbourne at The London Times.

Read the whole thing, but pay close attention to this part:

2) The second reason why, as things stand, Islam will not be defeated is that the strengths of the world community of Muslims are being underestimated, and the nature of Islam misunderstood. It is neither a “religion of peace” nor a “religion hijacked” or “perverted” by “the few”. Instead, its moral intransigence and revived ardours, its jihadist ethic and the refusal of most diaspora Muslims to “share a common set of values” with non-Muslims are all one, and justified by the Koran itself.

Islam is not even a religion in the conventional sense of the term. It is a transnational political and ethical movement that believes that it holds the solution to mankind’s problems. It therefore holds that it is in mankind’s own interests to be subdued under Islam’s rule. Such belief therefore makes an absurdity of the project to “democratise” Muslim nations in the West’s interests, an inversion that Islam cannot accept and, in its own terms, rightly so. It renders naive, too, the distinction between the military and political wings of Islamic movements; and makes Donald Rumsfeld’s assertion in June 2005 that the insurgents in Iraq “don’t have vision, they’re losers” merely foolish. In this war, if there is a war, the boot is on the other foot.

A bit of reductio for the time impaired.

1. Division within the non-Muslim world.

2. Unification within the Muslim world that Islam is a transnational, sociopolitical ideology that, jeepers, is so great, everyone should be a slave of Allah too!

3. Postmodern reluctance to "lead the world," particularly by America.

4. Fractions within Western policy-making, e.g., Powell/Armitage vs. Bush/Rumsfeld

5. The Left's reflexive anti-Americanism and pro-underdog stance being coopted by the Islamists, who play their bleeding hearts like squishy bongo drums.

6. Joy at seeing America suffer by the usual playground losers in international politcs, who all hate the big, strong kid.

7. The moral poverty of market-capitalism and the coldness of reason vs. the marketable warm feeling from religion and the thrill of the kill.

8. Islam bamboozling the media to carry the water for their propaganda games.

9. Middle eastern oil.

10. Hubris that Western technology will triumph over a backward religion. The West, for example, has an Achilles heel -- integrated circuits, that are quite effectively sliced with one high-altitude EMP bomb. Welcome to 1881, kiddies.