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Miscellaneous thoughts and ramblings
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
 
War on Militant Islam
Andrew C. McCarthy on War & Election 2004 on National Review Online

Since the point was raised in an earlier post, about the war against Islamic terrorists, I thought I'd dig up this piece from several months ago in the National Review.

Excerpt:
""War on terror," as previously argued here, is an ill-conceived and vaporous term. "Terrorism" surely is not our enemy. It cannot be an enemy because it is not an entity, it is a method. But even if one entertained the possibility that we could be at war with "terrorism" — loosely construing it as shorthand for "terrorists" — the phrase still fails. We are not even pretending to be fighting all terrorists. The Basques, the Tamil Tigers, and the many other regional groups that practice terrorism but do not target the United States are objects of our disdain, but they are certainly not our adversaries in this war. Indeed, if they are, we should stop now because it is then true, as the critics bray, that this war can never be ended or won.


THE WAR ON MILITANT ISLAM
No, we are fighting a very particular enemy: militant Islam. It is a global network of identifiable militias, as well as their state and non-state sponsors, who espouse and support an interpretation of Islam that calls for violent jihad against the United States and our allies. In the short term, that enemy seeks to alter American policy; in the long term, it would supplant our constitutional order with a caliphate that accords with Wahhabist principles. That is the enemy.

The forces who adhere to the enemy's creed and its imperatives, moreover, have demonstrated themselves incorrigibly dedicated to our destruction. They are thus not to be cultivated, co-opted, or otherwise negotiated with. They must be eliminated, as the Nazis and other totalitarian regimes have had to be defeated utterly — until they were no longer a dire threat."
- served up by Nomad @ 12:14 PM
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