Romney Is Right--About Something

Mitt Romney is not the Geek's favorite presidential wannabe. Intellectual honesty requires the Geek to give credit when the man from Massachusetts gets something right.

The other day Romney released a new ad in which he characterises jihadism along with its political counterpart Islamism as the major threat confronting the US and by implication, the West, if not the entire world. For the temerity of being correct, Romney has been excoriated by the mainstream media, the blogosphere and the chattering classes generally.

Two days earlier (10 Oct for those of you who like precise dating), the Department of Heimatsicherheit (Homeland Security for those of you who can stomach this abominable term) released yet another National Strategy for Homeland Security. Once more the deep thinkers at the Heimatsicherheitamt didn't even stoop to use the word "jihad" or bother to adumbrate a strategy for confronting Islamism.

That piece of intellectual vapidity is akin to fighting World War II without mentioning just who the enemy might be. Or, waging the Cold War with the Soviet Union without mentioning the nature of Marxism-Leninism, its appeals or how to counter them.

We have to get a firm grip on some fundamental realities about the world today--and into the future.

Jihadism is nothing new. It is not the creation of Osama bin Laden. It is not the result of the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It is not the result of the emergence of the state of Israel.

The concept of jihad defined as armed aggression against either non-Muslims or apostates from Islam dates back to the origins of the religion itself. Arabic, unlike a vocabulary-rich language such as English, lacks a plethora of denotative words allowing for the conveyance of precise nuance of meaning. (This is not a blast against Arabic, there are numerous other languages which share the same limitation.) Arabic words admit of numerous translations into English. Thus, it is quite possible for a straight-faced propagandist to aver that jihad means something such as "personal struggle" (as with evil within) or "peaceful struggle" as in discourse meant to convince.

As recent events have made clear, "jihad" means only one thing to those who practice, support, or direct it--violence. Maiming, killing and dying.

Jihadism is a force with powerful appeal for those who practice it. Much of its power springs from the larger political ideology of which it is the armed expression.

That ideology is Islamism. The goal of Islamism is global. Literally. A global caliphate under which the human race would live according to the strictest interpretation of Islamic law gives Islamism its teleology.

As the Geek has noted in earlier posts, much of Islamism is akin to European fascism of the Twenties, Thirties, and beyond. Like fascism, it purports to address both existential anxieties and the great historical question: Why were we once so great and now so small, inconsequential, ground down?

Islamism and Jihadism have declared war on the US, on the West, on the shared centuries of values and customs that have distinguished the West from other areas of the world and which provide the cultural appeal as well as the economic potency of the West. From the perspective of the Islamist and the Jihadist, it is and must be a war to the death.

That is a bitter reality to accept. The Geek doesn't like it. He didn't like it more than a decade ago when he warned military and policy audiences to both keep our powder dry and our political will high. We were already in a war which could be more prolonged and more difficult to win than was the First Cold War.

Coming hard on the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ending of the First Cold War, the Geek's warning was as welcome as E coli at a meatpacking plant. (Thus his commiseration with Romney. It ain't easy to be right about unpleasant things.)

Considering the newest version of National Strategy for Homeland Security, it is obvious that the current administration is in a state of denial. Given the incredible blunder of invading Iraq, this is scarcely surprising.

The wallahs in congress are in the same state. The action of Nancy Pelosi, Sten Hoyer, and their ilk in seeking the passage of a meaningless feel-good resolution on Armenian "genocide" regardless of negative effects on our efforts to finally clean up the rubble of the Iraqi disaster show that. It might even be fair to say that these individuals are so focused on ending the war in Iraq prematurely that they are seeking to so complicate the Iraq war that failure is virtually guaranteed.

Nothing would please or embolden the Islamists more than an American failure in Iraq. Nothing could give the Jihadists more reason for joyous firing of AKs in the street (or get them more recruits eager to die while blowing Americans to small fragments of bloody protoplasm) than a US cut-and-run in Iraq.

Those (like some totally gripless members of the current British government) who urge negotiation with "moderate" members of Taliban in Afghanistan are also in denial. The fundamental premise of Islamism is as the New Left used to put it in the Sixties: Non-negotiable.

Since he has been shot at more than enough times for one life, the Geek greatly prefers talking to shooting. He's all in favor of negotiations.

But, wait one! There are problems with negotiations. Both sides must want it. Both sides must see something substantial to be gained by the effort. This means the two sides must share some overarching interest that makes negotiation worthwhile.

The Islamists might see only one reason to negotiate--to buy time. Time is a great commodity. With time one might rest, refit, recruit, train, equip, plan, move forces into favorable positions, avoid loss.

In short, negotiation with an adversary that is totalist in its goals, motivated by endless faith, and possessed of individuals quite willing to die in the process of killing, is, at best, a ploy. In the eyes of an Islamist, as made abundantly clear by recent statements by Sheik Omar, the Taliban Leader-in-Hiding, concerning the offer by the Afghan National Government to negotiate, an offer is a sign of collapsing will to continue fighting.

All those who counsel negotiation with Islamists would be well advised to remember the Korean War. While the talking droned on seemingly without any end in sight, the hardest, bloodiest, most pointless combat did as well. The nature of the enemy and his belief in talking shows loss of political will to fight required lives be lost capturing and holding militarily meaningless moon-barren hills with names like Porkchop.

Negotiating with an Islamist across the table will, if you want even the slightest possibility of a less-than-totally unfavorable outcome, will require that more lives be expended in a demonstration of political will.

The same must be said about the Second Cold War. It won't be like the First. Yes, there will be a Battle of Ideas, a Conflict of Values, a War of World Views, as in the First Cold War. This time there will be more hot wars, nasty little operations without fronts, without heroes, without glory, without phase lines, without victory parades or banners draped across the flight decks of aircraft carriers.

The Second Cold War which has been forced upon us will be tougher, more demanding of political will and resilience, more difficult to understand, and much less susceptible to compromise and agreement on minor issues than the First. It promises to be a war in which quarter is not likely to be offered or received--at least by the Islamist/Jihadist side.

Before we can fight it, we and those in our government must realise that we are at war. We have been at war for nearly two decades now. Isn't it time that more of us realise it?

Mitt Romney may never get the Geek's vote. But, for having spoken an unpleasant truth, he has the Geek's respect.