A Sign of the Apocalypse

I'm little rusty on my Book of Revelations but Human Events and TNR agreeing on something has to be a sign that the world is in fact coming to an end. Both listened (and read) W's speech at the National Endowment for Democracy and both agree that W FINALLY got it right. TNR said:

But Bush's words to the National Endowment for Democracy proved to be major indeed--not to mention most welcome. In his speech, Bush all but admitted that the war on terrorism, a phrase he himself practically coined, is actually a misnomer. The United States is engaged in a struggle not against terrorism per se, Bush said, but against something more specific--an evil ideology that inspires terrorism. And, for the first time, Bush gave this evil a name.

"Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamofascism," Bush explained, before, for his own purposes, settling on the term Islamic radicalism--whose characteristics and goals he proceeded to elucidate. "Islamic radicalism," he said, "is more like a loose network with many branches than an army under a single command. Yet these operatives, fighting on scattered battlefields, share a similar ideology and vision for our world." That vision, Bush explained, includes "end[ing]American and Western influence in the broader Middle East"; "us[ing] the vacuum created by an American retreat to gain control of a country, a base from which to launch attacks and conduct their war against non-radical Muslim governments"; and ultimately "establish[ing] a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia." Under the banner of that empire, Bush said, Islamic radicals "would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation."

Writing for Human Events, the firebrand conservative weekly, Robert Spencer was equally thrilled:

Last Thursday, President Bush went farther than he ever had before in naming the enemy. of the United States actually named the enemy. While on most occasions previously he had generally limited himself to calling them “terrorists” and “evildoers” — names so general that they can apply to multitudes besides those who are actually warring against the United States today — this time he pointed out that the terrorists’ attacks “serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane. Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism.”

Of course both have their complaints - TNR thinks W needs to go further than a name change to the "war", he also needs to change the way he fights it:

Whatever our ideological advantages in the fight against Islamic extremism, there are actions that will further our aims and actions that will push these aims further away. In a war of ideas, strategic and tactical wisdom is more, not less, important than in a conventional conflict, because errors that give us a reputation for malevolence are more difficult to reverse than battlefield losses. Alas, while the president may have spoken about the enemy we face with greater sophistication than he has evinced in the past, it's not clear that his views on the appropriate uses of U.S. power have evolved at all. For that, apparently, we will have to wait for another speech.

Spencer thinks that we should change the way we fight it too, although I don't think it is in the same vein as TNR:

If Bush’s new forthrightness enables officials to pursue jihadists in America more openly than they have up to now, it is all to the good. But in practically the same breath Bush assured his audience that “whatever it’s called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam. This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom. These extremists distort the idea of jihad into a call for terrorist murder against Christians and Jews and Hindus -- and also against Muslims from other traditions, who they regard as heretics.”

It is good to see the President speaking openly about the totalitarian supremacist ideology of the jihadists. But in fact they hope to establish not only, as Bush put it, a “radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia,” but one that spans the entire globe. And while it is true that jihad in traditional Islam does not call for terrorist murder of Christians, Jews, and Hindus, it does call for their conversion to Islam or subjugation as inferiors under the rule of Islamic law. The third alternative is war, as delineated by the Muslim Prophet Muhammad himself (Sahih Muslim 4294).

These and other elements of traditional Islam have become for jihadists a mandate for mayhem. Bush has not confronted the deep roots that the jihad ideology has within both Islamic tradition and the contemporary Islamic world. This could lead and has led to policy misjudgments.