I don’t agree with you in 100%, but you covered some good points regarding this topic…

There are liberal voices calling for a muscular foreign policy and direct military confrontation with the jihadists, people like Nick Cohen, Peter Beinart, Paul Berman, Oliver Kamm, etc.:

http://www.newamericanliberalism.org
http://www.eustonmanifesto.org/joomla/
http://www.democratiya.com

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10945

In Nick Cohen’s “What’s Left? How Liberals Lost their Way,” Cohen tells the story of how parts of the Liberal-Left of the 20th Century ended up supporting the far Right of the 21st in the shape of Islamic extremism.

Snowonpine and mal, you might be interested in this review of Efraim Karsh’s “Islamic Imperialism: A History” at Democratiya:
http://www.democratiya.com/review.asp?reviews_id=32

“Beyond its historical merits, this latest work is a solid and studious refutation of the commonly held notion that the rise of Islamism is an historical reaction to European imperialism or that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East led to the terrorist attacks in New York City on September 11, 2001. As Karsh writes, ‘Arab and Muslim anti-Americanism, have little to do with U.S. international behaviour or its Middle Eastern policy. America’s position as the pre-eminent world power blocks Arab and Islamic imperialist aspirations. As such, it is a natural target for aggression. Osama bin Laden’s … war is not against America per se, but is rather the most recent manifestation of the millenarian jihad for a universal Islamic empire (or umma)’ (p. 234).”

http://www.nysun.com/article/54794?page_no=1

“During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward.” Thus wrote the eminent historian Bernard Lewis in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal. According to Mr. Lewis, these different responses evoked very different attitudes toward the two superpowers among Muslims and Arabs, which eventually culminated in the September 11 attacks:

While American policies, institutions, and individuals were subject to unremitting criticism and sometimes deadly attack, the Soviets were immune. Their retention of the vast, largely Muslim, colonial empire accumulated by the tsars in Asia passed unnoticed, as did their propaganda and sometimes action against Muslim beliefs and institutions.

Of course Muslims have never acquiesced in the loss of these territories, as evidenced by the numerous Russo-Ottoman and Russo-Persian wars during the last few centuries. Even the disastrous Ottoman decision to join World War I on the losing side, which led to the destruction of this empire and the creation of the modern Middle East on its ruins, was largely motivated by the desire to reverse the Russian imperial expansion.

Superpower behavior in the Middle East during the Cold war years did not correspond to the picture painted by Mr. Lewis of endemic American timidity and aggressive Soviet determination.

In reality, the two superpowers were heavily constrained by their global confrontation and the nuclear balance of terror. Time and again, both found themselves powerless to contain undesirable regional developments and were often forced to give a retrospective blessing to actions with which they were in total disagreement.

If anything, it was America that showed the greater inclination to resort to military force whenever it deemed its interests to be seriously threatened. This ranged from the toppling of the Musaddaq regime in Iran in 1953, to the 1958 landing in Beirut to shore up the Lebanese government in the face of Egyptian subversion, to the announcement of a nuclear alert during the 1973 October War, to the 1986 bombing of Libya, to the 1980s support for the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, to the 1991 Gulf war that reversed Iraq’s brutal occupation of Kuwait.

In this respect, President Bush’s interventionism has been far more congruent with U.S. post-World War II power projection policies than both his admirers and detractors seem to realize.

By contrast, and despite its immediate adjacency to the Middle East, Moscow proved a rather cautious bear. It supplied weapons and military equipment to its Arab clients, but rarely took direct action on their behalf. The first large-scale intervention occurred during the Egyptian-Israel war of attrition between 1969 and 1970, when the Soviets sent an air defense division to neutralize Israel’s overwhelming aerial superiority. But this was a reluctant move taken under intense Egyptian pressure.

Likewise, the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was not an imperialist drive for the Persian Gulf oil, as was widely believed at the time, but a desperate bid to stem the mounting the tide of Islamic militancy, fuelled by the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran earlier that year.

But the story doesn’t end here. Far from looking up to Moscow in fear and awe, let alone “submit[ting] to Soviet authority,” the Arab states repeatedly annoyed and humiliated their Soviet patron with impunity.

For decades Moscow was forced to acquiesce in the brutal repression, and the occasional slaughter, of its communist followers in the Arab and Muslim states for fear of antagonizing the local regimes. The Soviets similarly failed to persuade their Arab protégés to disavow their total rejection of Israel and time and again were forced to acquiesce in Arab wars and invasions they deemed detrimental to their interest, from the Egyptian war of attrition to the Iraqi invasions of Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990.

Nor have the Soviet misadventure in Afghanistan and the ongoing bloodletting in Chechnya done much to endear Moscow to Muslims and Arabs throughout the world or to enhance its prestige as a first class military power.

The most caustic humiliation was perhaps the expulsion of thousands of Soviet military personnel from Egypt in July 1972 in retaliation for Moscow’s refusal to arm Egypt for its planned war against Israel. And how did the Soviets respond? By exacting a “swift and dire” punishment? Hardly. They dutifully resumed arms shipments to Egypt, only to see President Sadat wage the war they were desperate to prevent, then make an astounding u-turn by moving Egypt to the American orbit, abrogating the 1971 Egyptian-Soviet friendship and cooperation treaty, and terminating Soviet naval services in Egyptian ports.

If American institutions and individuals in the Middle East were subject to more deadly attacks than their Soviet counterparts, as they may have well been, this had far less to do with the fear of Soviet retribution, or dismissal of American deterrence, than with the fundamental asymmetry in the nature of the superpowers’ regional allies.

While America’s Middle Eastern allies were essentially conservative regimes, respectful of the international rules of the game and anxious to maintain the regional status quo, the Soviet Union supported a string of revisionist powers, ranging from pan-Arab regimes such as Nasser’s Egypt, Baathist Syria, and Iraq, that were bent on destroying the Middle East’s contemporary state system, to terrorist organizations to rogue regimes such as Mu’ammar Qaddafi’s Libya.

This is not to deny that American failures to respond to rogue actions and terrorist attacks have been harmful to its deterrent image, or that Osama bin Laden has misconstrued certain American setbacks for an indication of its diminishing resolve.

Yet it was not America’s perceived weakness that brought about the September 11 attacks, as Mr. Lewis argues, but rather its undeniable prowess. This is because Mr. bin Laden and other Islamists’ war is not against America per se but is rather the most recent manifestation of the millenarian jihad for a universal Islamic empire, the umma.

As the preeminent world power for quite some time, and the only remaining superpower after the collapse of the Soviet empire, America blocks the final realization of this goal and hence is a natural target for aggression. In this sense, the House of Islam’s war for world mastery is a traditional, indeed venerable, quest that is far from over.

Professor Karsh is head of Mediterranean studies at King’s College, University of London. A revised paperback edition of his “Islamic Imperialism: A History” was published this month by Yale University Press.

Godwin’s Rules are only for crack addicts and servants of entropy. Not those wishing to construct a better argument.
http://www.allthingsbeautiful.com/all_things_beautiful/2007/05/the_black_pleas.html
I’m not sure weakness or strength really enters the picture.

It does enter the picture, Brian, but you’re right in the sense that it won’t affect the hardcore jihadists. But those guys are going to be dead, locked up, or shot by a missile anyhows. The important folks are the fish in the sea, those around the jihadis, who either give them soft support or verbal support or just moral support. Those, you can convince by a show of strength, honor, and consistency.

Nobody is going to have you as an ally if you’re as finicky as a trophy wife and about as loyal.

No offense to trophy wives, of course. Trust is an issue that comes from strength. If you are weak and you fall to every temptation, seemingly like the US does all the time, then how can anyone trust you to be by their side when they need you? So why should they back you against the Jihadis who they know will kill their family?

Godwin wins again

I think the west is perpetually scared of being seen as the aggressor, and as such waits as long as possible before we engage an enemy in full out conflict. Once we are united, we are playing a game of catch up, but I have confidence in our society. When we band together amazing obstacles can be overcome.

So long as people feel themselves called to jihad, we’ll have to face this, no matter how ruthless or kind we appear to be.

Thanks again for the blog, Neo. As always, you’re a joy to read, and inspire thought and reflection.

- Brian

That said, essentially I’m in agreement with the Turkish journalist quoted above by Martin Bebow (thewhitepath.com). Turkey is a crucial real-life example of the way in which Islamism, moderate Islam, moderate secularism and extreme secularism and all the shades in between interact. It is unrealistic to pursue your own extreme secularist agenda and hope that your cultural enemies will vanish or be won over – they won’t. Instead you have to carefully and patiently construct a forum where all these elements can interact – and yes, influence each other – without violence. That is now at the heart of the European project, whether it eventually admits Turkey or not.

For what it’s worth, this is also the view of the Economist, who usually have their heads screwed on. For example, they invariably describe Turkey’s ruling party as ‘mildly Islamist’, and although that may provoke snorts of derision across the pond, it is consistent with the position laid out above.

No culture and no religion can withstand the great forces of modernity indefinitely. The great solvent is women x education: as generations of Muslim women encounter western education for the first time (and yes, I know some of them are currently shut away in faith schools, but even they can’t insulate themselves completely), so they will gradually change, and so too will the values they pass down to both their daughters and their sons.

All this is not to deny the importance of military measures where and when appropriate. But there are a lot more tools in the box.

(For more on women, education and worldwide value change, check out worldvaluessurvey.com.)