THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 151, June 19, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE ENEMY HAS A NAME
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
THE FOURTH WORLD WAR: THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCURATELY IDENTIFYING THE ENEMY WE CONFRONT, NAMELY,
ISLAMISM -- NAMING THE ENEMY AS ESSENTIAL TO DEFINING WAR GOALS, DEFEATING THE ENEMY, & WINNING THE WAR
--ISLAMISM AS A RADICAL UTOPIAN VERSION OF ISLAM, A WELL-FUNDED, WIDESPREAD TOTALITARIAN IDEOLOGY, & A
MOVEMENT THAT IS ENDEAVORING TO DESTROY WESTERN CIVILIZATION & IMPOSE A GLOBAL ISLAMIC ORDER WHICH
FULLY APPLIES ISLAMIC LAW -- THE APPROPRIATE U.S. & WESTERN RESPONSE TO THE ISLAMIST THREAT:
VANQUISH ISLAMISM & HELP MUSLIMS DEVELOP AN ALTERNATIVE FORM OF ISLAM
FULL STORY:
If you cannot name your enemy, how can you defeat it? Just as a physician must identify a disease before curing a
patient, so a strategist must identify the foe before winning a war. Yet, Westerners have proven reluctant to identify the
opponent in the conflict the U.S. government variously (and euphemistically) calls the "global war on terror," the "long
war," the "global struggle against violent extremism," or even the "global struggle for security and progress."
This timidity translates into an inability to define war goals. Two high-level U.S. statements from late 2001 typify the
vague and ineffective declarations issued by Western governments. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld defined
victory as establishing "an environment where we can, in fact, fulfill and live [our] freedoms." In contrast, George W.
Bush announced a narrower goal, "the defeat of the global terror network" – whatever that undefined network might be.
"Defeating terrorism" has, indeed, remained the basic war goal. By implication, terrorists are the enemy and
counterterrorism is the main response.
But observers have increasingly concluded that terrorism is just a tactic, not an enemy. Bush effectively admitted this
much in mid-2004, acknowledging that "We actually misnamed the war on terror." Instead, he called the war a "struggle
against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to
shake the conscience of the free world."
A year later, in the aftermath of the 7-7 London transport bombings, British Prime Minister Tony Blair advanced the
discussion by speaking of the enemy as "a religious ideology, a strain within the world-wide religion of Islam." Soon
after, Bush himself used the terms "Islamic radicalism," "militant Jihadism," and "Islamo-fascism." But these words
prompted much criticism and he backtracked.
By mid-2007, Bush had reverted to speaking about "the great struggle against extremism that is now playing out across
the broader Middle East." That is where things now stand, with U.S. government agencies being advised to refer to the
enemy with such nebulous terms as "death cult," "cult-like," "sectarian cult," and "violent cultists."
In fact, that enemy has a precise and concise name: Islamism, a radical utopian version of Islam. Islamists, adherents of
this well funded, widespread, totalitarian ideology, are attempting to create a global Islamic order that fully applies the
Islamic law (Shari‘a).
Thus defined, the needed response becomes clear. It is two-fold: vanquish Islamism and help Muslims develop an
alternative form of Islam. Not coincidentally, this approach roughly parallels what the allied powers accomplished
vis-à-vis the two prior radical utopian movements, Fascism and Communism.
First comes the burden of defeating an ideological enemy. As in 1945 and 1991, the goal must be to marginalize and
weaken a coherent and aggressive ideological movement, so that it no longer attracts followers nor poses a
world-shaking threat. World War II, won through blood, steel and atomic bombs, offers one model for victory, the Cold
War, with its deterrence, its complexity and the nearly-peaceful collapse Communism, offers quite another.
Victory against Islamism, presumably, will draw on both these legacies and mix them into a novel brew of conventional
war, counterterrorism, counterpropaganda, and many other strategies. At one end, the war effort led to the overthrow
of the Taliban government in Afghanistan; at the other, it requires repelling the lawful Islamists who work legitimately
within the educational, religious, media, legal, and political arenas.
The second goal involves helping Muslims who oppose Islamist goals and wish to offer an alternative to Islamism's
depravities by reconciling Islam with the best of modern ways. But such Muslims are weak, being but fractured
individuals who have only just begun the hard work of researching, communicating, organizing, funding, and
mobilizing.
To do all this more quickly and effectively, these moderates need non-Muslim encouragement and sponsorship.
However unimpressive they may be at present, moderates, with Western support, alone hold the potential to modernize
Islam, and thereby to terminate the threat of Islamism.
In the final analysis, Islamism presents two main challenges to Westerners: To speak frankly and to aim for victory.
Neither comes naturally to the modern person, who tends to prefer political correctness and conflict resolution, or even
appeasement. But, once these hurdles are overcome, the Islamist enemy's objective weakness, in terms of arsenal,
economy and resources, means it can readily be defeated.
© Daniel Pipes 2008
Originally Published in the Jerusalem Post, June 19, 2008
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, June 19, 2008
Article URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5629
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Terrorism & American Homeland Security
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is the Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
the Founder of Campus Watch, a signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S.
Institute of Peace, a former adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the
U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and
Technology, and a former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the
University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for Front Page Magazine, the New York
Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and developments in the Middle East
have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times,
and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network television, as well as at universities and
think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on
BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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