1. Know the Enemy: Getting the Terminology Right
Let’s get real: There’s a global conspiracy against us, and they mean to enslave, even kill us. And they are doing it, albeit in slow motion. Let’s call the threat what it is: Islamocommunism.
As many have said, you can’t defeat an enemy until you can name it, and so it’s worth making the effort to get the terms right. The enemy isn’t “hate,” or “intolerance,” or some other abstraction; the enemy is Jihadi radicals. The enemy is the sort of Wahabi Salafism that is preached, as a matter of state policy, in Saudi Arabia.
Jihadi Islam has been dubbed “Islamofascism,” and that’s not wrong, but it is imprecise. The fascists were irrational romantic totalitarians with a strange taste for snappy flags and snazzy uniforms. Yet the fascists had no Holy Book, such as Das Kapital or the Koran. Hence, let’s call it Islamocommunism, because the Jihadists have read their book, the Koran, and then, based on their understanding of its teachings, have decided to murder us.
It’s happened before, during the communist era, as observers have long seen the connection between aggressive communism and aggressive Islamism. As early as 1920, the philosopher Bertrand Russell expressed the similarity in stark terms:
Bolshevism combines the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam… Among religions, Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of this world.
In the 1950s, the British political scientist Martin Wright made the same point, offering a kind of “unified field” theory of radicalism:
The Jacobins of the French Revolution, and the Communists (on a parallel with Islam), divided the world into Dar-al-Islam and Dar-al-Harb”–that is, the “House of Peace” and the “House of War.”
And of course, the West has been, and still is, the House of War—and so we’re all fair game to them.
In his memoir, Present at the Creation (1969), Dean Acheson, Harry Truman’s secretary of state, reflected on the situation in the late 1940s and early 1950s, observing:
The threat to Western Europe seemed to me singularly like that which Islam had posed several centuries before, with its combination of ideological zeal and fighting power.
Indeed, in 2015, writing for The Blaze, Benjamin Weingarten laid it out anew: “Five prominent authors on the parallels between Islam and Communism.” Also in 2015, Terence Jeffrey, writing for CNSNews, made a similar point in his piece, “What Do the Islamic State and Communists Have in Common?” Answer: A lot!
Indeed, it’s worth noting that the term “Cold War” (guerra fría) was first used in the thirteenth century to describe the centuries-long, low-intensity border war in Spain between the Latin Christian defenders and the Islamic invaders. In other words, we’ve been down this road before, and we prevailed. And that should be a comfort to us.
Finally, let’s state it clearly: Islam, per se, is not the enemy. Around the world, hundreds of millions of Muslims practice their religion in peace. Yet at the same time, let’s not kid ourselves: There is such a thing as Jihad, and it is unique to Islam. Just about every religion has committed violent atrocities in its past, but today, Jihadi Islam stands alone in making violence its expressed policy.
2. Action Items in Defense of America
Okay, now that we have a handle on who, and what, the enemy is, we can start to think about working against it—about rallying our side.
Some obvious suggestions leap to mind:
First, as Donald Trump says, we shouldn’t let more Muslims into the US until we have a real understanding of who they are and whether or not they pose a threat. That’s just common sense. When we were in a hot war with Nazi Germany, or a cold war with Soviet Russia, we didn’t let in Germans or Russians, at least not on a routine basis.
Amazingly, President Obama seems to think that the intake of Muslims is a goal, even a duty or a necessity. And, frankly, let’s admit it: The US government in decades past was a lot smarter about identifying friends and foes than it is today.
Yes, it’s a bit discouraging to think that we have actually regressed over the decades, but it’s better to be temporarily discouraged than permanently dead. So let’s resolve: Until we can reconnect to the old J. Edgar Hoover-era wisdom about who’s an anti-American, let’s call a halt to any more immigrants from Jihadi lands. And as for other prudent homeland security steps, recently here at Breitbart, I outlined some useful measures that we could take in our own defense.
Second, James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation has a great idea: We need another 9-11 commission. Yes, we need a thorough airing of the questions of what we’re doing right (if anything) and what we’re doing wrong (a lot, obviously). We can observe: The common refrain of all bureaucrats—including our incumbent homeland security bureaucracy—is, “Things are going fine, we’re taking care of it, but we do need more money.” Yet it’s clear: Things aren’t going fine; as a nation, we need a new look at our policies and practices, to be followed, of course, by new leadership.
Third, we need a new strategic architecture for our long twilight struggle against Islamocommunism. Since that’s a longer point, we’ll deal with that in the next section.
3. Needed: The World Anti-Theocracy Organization
In the Cold War, thanks to the vision of Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, we had the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the anti-Soviet military alliance known as NATO. NATO was, and is, a great success—although, of course, even NATO can’t protect its member states from the termites of a welcomed immigrant invasion.
So we can see that NATO was the right idea, but that idea needs an update for these times, and maybe a new start. Yes, the Russians are still a threat, but not nearly as great a threat as Jihad.
Today, we need a new organization: Let’s call it the World Anti-Theocracy Organization, or WATO.
We can note, once again, that our purpose here is not to be anti-Muslim. Instead, we are anti-theocratic, which is also to say, anti-totalitarian. We believe in freedom, including the freedom, if one wishes, to go to a gay nightclub in Orlando without being murdered.
It’s possible to have Islam without a murderous Islamic State—or murderous ISIS wannabes—just as, over time, Christians proved that it’s possible to have Christianity with the Inquisition. Back in 1765, John Adams described the ancient Christian theocracy of feudal and canon law as a “wicked confederacy,” and that was then a correct assessment of the most benighted parts of Europe.
Since then, we’ve come a long way in the West, and that’s good, and if Muslims need help in joining us on the sunlit uplands of peace and tolerance, well, perhaps we can help. But at a minimum, we must create an entity such as WATO to keep them on their side of the line.
Once again, we are against murder in the name of God—any god. We are against Jihad. We are against Sharia violence, religious apartheid, and clerical totalitarianism of any kind.
Indeed, once we here in America come to see clearly what it is that we oppose, then new creative alliances become possible. For example, as we know, Russia has a serious problem with the Muslim Chechens, and China has a problem with the Muslim Uighurs; both groups are engaged in campaigns of sporadic violence against their central government. So as we consider these violent splinter groups, we can see the beginning of a new possible strategy of cooperation with Moscow and Beijing. To be sure, we will always have our differences with Russia and China, but at least we can engage in mutual-confidence-building measures, such as counter-terrorism. And that could—could—be the beginning of a beautiful future friendship.
As a model, we can think back to 1991, to the great success of George H.W. Bush’s international coalition, including Muslims, that ejected Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Since Bush 41, as opposed to Bush 43, wisely chose to limit the objective to restoring Kuwait, as opposed to regime-changing Iraq, the mission worked brilliantly.
So in our own time, absent foreign wars, what, exactly, would WATO do?
First and foremost, of course, would be collective defense, starting at the border. And yet even if we closed our borders, sadly, we’d probably discover that WATO police forces would be busy for a long time to come, chasing down and apprehending Jihadis already in our midst. Yes, that’s a sad prospect, but not starting the process would be even sadder.
Second, we need to develop a new vocabulary, based on familiar concepts to facilitate our political assessments. Here’s a sample: Jihadists = Communists. Muslim apologists for Jihadists = Fellow Travelers. Lobbyists and others who take money from Jihadists = Dupes or Spies or Traitors.
Third, WATO would take an honest, and hard, look at such Jihadi states as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Pakistan. After we close our borders to them, should we boycott them and divest from them, the way we did with South Africa in the ’80s? That’s a future question for WATO to consider.
Some will say, of course, that there’s the special question of Arab oil. Happily, that’s no longer much of an issue, because, thanks to fracking here at home, we no longer need Arab oil. Of course, the American Greens despise fracking, and so we Americans need to have it out on the issue of “climate change.” Which is more important, the survival of America today, or the survival of a polar bear, maybe, in a hundred years? I, for one, am confident that the American people will see the need to address real threats today before they worry about 100-years-from-now threats. And, long term, we can explore innovative ideas on carbon sequestration, as pioneered by companies such as Calera and Novomer, so that we can have our hydrocarbons and burn them, too.
4. A Special Note on the Anglosphere
It seems increasingly likely that the United Kingdom will vote to leave the European Union on June 23rd—the so-called “Brexit.” This outcome is to be applauded for many reasons, including the reality that the EU hierarchs seem determined to see Europe drowned in Muslim and Third World immigration. That’s their choice, albeit a tragic choice, but at least Britain can be saved.
And if Britain leaves, we need a place for it to go. Here’s an idea, which reaches way back into our common history: The Anglosphere. That is, an alliance, formal or informal, of the English-speaking countries.
Since the 1940s, we’ve already had an Anglosphere, of sorts, in the form of Five Eyes, the consortium of intelligence sharing among likeminded and culturally close, countries—the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Over time, Five Eyes could be expanded into a full-blown Anglosphere, as a subset, perhaps, of WATO.
Of course, there’s more that could be done: Back in 2007, I wrote about a possible “Council of the West,” as a way of organizing to counter the slow-motion Muslim invasion. That’s still a good idea, and the Council, ultimately, could include not only Israel and continental Europe (unless, of course, it’s been Islamized), but also Russia, China, India, and Christian Africa. That is, the Council could be open to countries that truly want to defend the West, or at least, the Western values of secularism and separation of church and state. We needn’t agree with all other countries about all political matters, but we can nonetheless agree that the skylines of our respective capitals ought to remain intact, without any more buildings being knocked down.
The West has been an identifiable place, and civilization, for some 3000 years—and China and India, even longer. We’ve all built up a moral capital that ought to be preserved.
Yes, all of our countries are worth defending. So let’s do it.
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