There's Just One Little Problem--History

The Obama Administration is conducting a major peace offensive directed at Islamic countries. The UN Ambassador Susan Rice promised "direct" diplomacy with the Mullahocracy in Tehran. SecState Clinton magnified and focused the Rice position averring that it was up to Iran to choose whether or not to "unclench" its fist.

The President took to Arab TV seeking to reassure Muslims that "Americans are not your enemy." Obama also invoked the presumably good relations based on "mutual respect" which he alleged constituted the basis of US-Muslim relations "twenty or thirty years ago."

While the Geek is somewhat of a charm offensive mavin, having enjoyed the recurrent waves of Give-Peace-A-Chance rolling out of the Kremlin during the Cold War, he has to blow the historical whistle on the current Obama and Company effort.

You see, it just isn't enough to invoke the good-ole-days of peace, love and flower power as the President tried to do. The necessity is asking what has changed over the past generation which served to end the presumed Golden Years of US-Muslim relations.

Really only one slight factor has changed between then and now. That small matter is--ta! da!--religion.

Perhaps the simplest way to unpack this change is to ask a question: What event(s) transpiring in the transformative year 1979 powered the transmogrification of relations between the US and Muslim countries?

(Sound of patiently drumming fingers.)

That's right, kids. The Iranian Revolution.

The overthrow of the Shah and the installation of a rigorously Islamist regime was an event of world-historical importance. The impact of the revolution was potentiated by the intentional and prolonged humiliation of the United States during the hostage crisis. The overall effect of the Revolution was to thrust Islam of the most militant and uncompromising sort onto the global stage.

Prior to the success of the Ayatollah and his comrades, the mutterings of Islamic Revivalists such as those who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt were confined to radical screeds and plots of little consequence. The assorted proponents of what we now know as Islamism/jihadism were like the Arab armies--failures with an attitude.

The Iranian Revolution changed all that. The Iranian Revolution proved that True Believers in the True Faith of Islam could triumph over apostates such as the Shah and infidels including the Great Satan, the United States.

Prior to the miracle year of 1979, the US could practice diplomacy with Muslim states in a manner akin to the way in which it engaged in diplomacy with all other countries. The rules and mechanisms of the game of nations were both well understood and adhered to by all players. Even the Soviets and the Communist Chinese played the game fairly (if ruthlessly.) All hands understood that the goal of diplomacy was the protection and advancement of defined national and strategic interests at the lowest risk and the greatest benefit.

Even the most ideologically besotted regimes recognised that compromise was necessary if inordinate risks were to be avoided. Nations behaved like sailboats heading upwind--tacking right and left in order to make incremental progress toward the goal. With very few and quite unimportant exceptions, countries during the period between 1945 and 1979 eschewed the "hey diddle-diddle, right up the middle" approach to international relations.

The victory of the mullahs in Iran changed that. At least with respect to the emerging Islamist entities. In the Islamist view of the world, there is no room for compromise. There is no room for incremental achievement of goals except in the most narrowly defined tactical way. In the eyes of Islamists, there is no making deals with the devil. In their playbook, there is no tolerance for any achievement less than total victory.

Apostates--perverting backsliders from the rigid demands of Islam--may make deals. These unworthy leaders may compromise. These blots upon the purity of Islam may look to the narrowly defined requirements of national and strategic interest.

True Muslims, the Islamists contend, do not stoop to dishonor their beliefs, their deity, the Prophet. True Muslims, the Islamists hold, go for the gold of complete and total victory over the infidel and the apostate regardless of risks and costs. It is what their warrior faith demands, their militant deity demands. It is the Message. It is the Will of the Prophet and the deity who speaks through the Prophet.

Unless and until the Obama Administration from the President on down the line get a firm grip on these realities, hopes for "direct" diplomacy and calls for the Iranians to "unclench" their fists will be bootless. Appeals for Muslims to change their view of Americans-as-enemies will have no useful result.

While Osama bin Ladin and other jihadists make recurrent reference to the success of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, the war against the occupier in that country was of far less importance in rise of Islamism than was the Iranian Revolution. This does not imply that the efforts of the jihadists were unimportant.

To the contrary the legends which have emerged in the Arab street regarding the efficacy of the Muslim fighters in Afghanistan have been an important reinforcement to the Iranian paradigm. The presumed success of the jihadists against the Red Army has been an important agent in developing a theory of war based on a unique concept.

Consider the oft-repeated assertion that Islamist jihadist "love death more than infidels love life." This conclusion is based in large measure on the Islamist/jihadist interpretation of how the Soviets lost in Afghanistan. True, this explanation simplifies to the point of absurdity the multiple factors which forced the eventual Soviet retreat.

However the we-love-death-they-love-life hypothesis was powerfully underscored by the US reaction to eighteen deaths in Somalia and the quite unrobust American responses to attacks on the Marine barracks in Lebanon, US embassies in Africa and even on a US warship. The reaction of the US to these events contrasted sharply and unfavorably with the evident willingness of Iranians to die in defense of the Revolution and Iranian soil during the long, bloody Iran-Iraq War.

The final conclusion of the Islamists and jihadists was simple, brutal and not easily countered. It is a conclusion well founded in the Quran, the Hadith and the history of expansionist Islam of centuries past.

The conclusion?

The True Muslim, the authentic follower of the Faith and the Prophet eagerly embraces death. By so doing he will defeat both the infidel and the apostate.

There is a necessary corollary. The True Muslim, the authentic follower of the Faith and the Prophet rejects compromise. Indeed, the idea of compromise is not to be found in the Islamic scripture. There can only be victory or death. There is no middle ground possible except for narrow, purely tactical reasons.

Apostates may bargain like merchants in the bazaar. Infidels may wheel and deal with compromise as the goal.

But, not the True Muslim. Not the authentic follower of the One True Faith and the Final Prophet. By loving death and rejecting accommodation, by seeking martyrdom and eschewing coexistence, by keeping the eyes on Paradise and overlooking the world, Islam not only can triumph. It will triumph.

The Obama Administration can and will engage in diplomacy with rulers of various Muslim states. It will play the game of nations with such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the other so-called "conservative" Muslim countries.

We will deal and bargain with the men seen by Islamists as apostates. But, these men are not the problem, they are probably not even part of the solution. Still, we will wine, dine, wheedle and cozen them. We will search for--and find--coinciding interests.

And, it won't matter. Neither will attempts to convince Muslims generally that "Americans are not your enemies."

Islamism and its armed, deadly twin, jihadism, are not to be countered by diplomacy or honeyed words. As the Iranian Revolution and its thirty year aftermath have shown the world, True Belief is not easily defeated. It is not subject to the rules of the game of nation.

Unpleasant reality to say the least. It is, however, the reality on which we and the new administration had best get a grip.