We've shown spot examples of the islamist terrorist agenda in Africa, Europe, Asia, and ignored the fact that they're also at work in Australia. It stretches Northward to Russia and the former states of the Soviet Union, where Chechen "Rebels" fought ardently against Russian Troops for years. It is in Uzbekistan, China, Tajikistan, Azerbijan, and many other former parts of the Soviet Union to various degrees of success or failure, to various degrees of US assistance of those fighting against our enemies and various degrees of activity and appeasement to the enemy.
And Hezbollah maintains strongholds in South America and the Caribbean as waypoints for infiltrating operatives into the United States & Canada, where again, it is fought as a Law Enforcement battle. In the US, we see two different ideologies of islamism. One proclaims terrorism and violence as the means to take over America while the other uses Our Rights, birth rates and immigration as a "peaceful" means to achieve islamic domination.
We see the later in specious lawsuits designed to set precedence through our system of "common law." Some have demonstrated that just to maintain positive US economic standings, Americans must maintain a birth rate of 2.11 children per couple. But we also see Muslim birth rates soar as the norm is closer to 6 to 8 per couple, even as immigration into the US increases.
It should be noted that we aren't at war with Islam, but Islamism. There is no problem with those that practice their right to the religion of their choice, but with those that propose to deny that right and other human and civil rights to others. We are a long way from seeing an attempt by islamists to change Our Constitution, but have no doubt that it is part of their long term goals.
The current efforts of the enemy inside the US focus on recruitment, emplacement, conversion, and financial support, rather than active warfare. It allows Americans to become complacent about the true threat. The recruitment efforts focus on those Muslims already here, to create Islamists ready to use all means including violence, as is the case with al-Ameriki of Alabama. The emplacement efforts are focused on getting AQ and Hezbollah operatives inside the US to commit to the other efforts. The conversion efforts are focused, primarily, in converting those already prone to violence and dislike for US Governance, ie. those in the jails and prisons, but also looks for idealistic members of all sects of our culture as targets of opportunity.
And the financial efforts use both organized crime tactics as well as false "charities" to fund their worldwide struggles. The Holy Land Foundation is an example of the latter, while a high level Hezbollah operative used cigarette smuggling to fund acquisitions of military technology to ship to Lebanon, recruiting criminally minded, greedy co-conspirators from inside Our Own Citizenry.
Yes, this is truly a Global War, though not in the same type of warfare as WWI or WWII when our enemies fought conventionally, with mass formations of well armed forces. Terrorism is a hybrid of many aspects and type of warfare. Islamist terrorism is akin to organized crime on steroids and uses that style of atrocity and criminality to achieve it's political goals of establishing Nations, Political Parties, Shadow Governments, but ultimately a worldwide empire, ie. Caliphate.
The difference between Al-Qaeda (Salifist/Sunni based) and Hezbollah (Iranian-Shi'a based) is not religious, but whom they hope will dominate and rule the eventual empire. It is akin to the differences between Stalinism and Maoism of the Cold War. Just as the Axis of WWII did not always see eye to eye, just as the Allies of WWII were not of the same ideology, so today we see opposites allied against Freedom and Democracy. We see the resurgent rise of communists allied with islamists, though their ideologies are opposite religiously.
We see Kim il Jong, Hugo Chavez, Ahdiminijad and other strongman dictators allied and quietly cheering OBL and any other opponent of the United States, Britain, and Australia. We see the children of flower children and far left radicals inside the US arguing against actions against islamists. We see the ACLU fighting for terrorists. We see partisan politicians inside our government espousing "misguided" policies that weaken the fight, not because they wish to see islamism overtake the US or because they want to see another terrorist attack, but because they view these events as leading to their own political power and agendas.
Our current "Axis" of enemies are not rallied around a religious sect, nor a religion, nor even an ideology. They're allied behind tyranny, behind power mongering, and financial gain. They receive tacit support from some that otherwise oppose them, not because these actors believe in their ideologies, but because the self-serving actors on our own side of events believe the enemy too weak to achieve their goals, because they see the risk of getting burned worth the fire they're playing with.
It is the international version of the RNC funding a Green Party candidate or the DNC funding a Bob Barr candidacy. They see the threat as greater to their opponent than to their own agenda. They see it as a means to divide their primary opponent's base of support, rather than hoping to see that candidate win elected office.
And, as with any revolutionary movement to establish tyranny, these atrocious enemies do not sell it as such. The power mongers at the top have and know their tyrannical goals, but they recruit from idealists and the criminally violent to support their efforts on mulitple fronts: economical, propagandic, and violent. The average "peace" protestor truly believes in the idealism they're sold.
Far removed from the battlefield, it is easy for them to believe the one-sided reports of the rare, errant "collateral damage" as the norm, as they are unexposed to the great lengths the US Military (and its allies) take to avoid civilian casaulties. They are unexposed to the daily, routine atrocities of the enemy, of the acid thrown in the face of school girls, of the chopping off of limbs, of the firebombs and explosives placed in schools. They are unexposed to the frustrations of seeing local leaders and villagers murdered by the enemy and of common citizens cooperating out of fear of the enemy rather than hope of self-governance.
It becomes much easier for those so far removed from the battle, particularly when it is so under reported, to believe that all involved in war are dishonorable. It is less apparent to those thousands of miles away, living in the comforts of modern life, and devoid of balanced reporting to realize that US, Brit, Aussie, Canadian, and other allied Troops risk their lives to prevent civilian deaths while the enemy purposely takes those lives.
This war is being fought on all fronts: information, propaganda, economic, battlefield, diplomatic, legal, cyberspace and political, by the enemy, even if the United States and her allies are less effective or less active in many of these fronts. Until the forces of freedom realize the unity of effort of our enemies, we are unlikely to achieve victory. Until Our Nations realize the true threat, the true nature, the complete nature of this war, until we realize the long term nature of this struggle, it is unlikely that we will witness the resolve to overcome our enemies.
Until the West wakes up to the fact that divisiveness amongst allies for individual political goals is counterproductive, we will still be prone to allowing that disunity to be a weakness exploited by either Our Enemy or Our reluctant allies, just as Stalin drove a wedge between Churchill & FDR to acquire The Balkans and East Germany as colonies of the Soviet Union and just as Hitler used Stalin's fear of Churchill to fool Stalin into thinking he had another year of peace before the Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union.
So long as some politicians are deluded into thinking this is a fire they can play with for their own agendas and their own gains in power, we will continue to see setbacks. So long as the media continues to present only one side of the war, idealists will continue to be used to undermine the efforts of freedom. So long as some attempt to change cultures alien to them, rather than embrace the norms of those cultures, to afford peaceful change of government, efforts will be less effective.
Just as The Crusades (though currently misreported and misportrayed) were the unified result of many Nations against an invading, unified force of an empire, so too must the many Nations and political parties set aside the divisiveness and unite for the common defense against an enemy bent on destruction of non-adherents to their radical oppression. No, I am not calling for the popular perception of a crusade against Islam, but for a unified response of humanity against the atrocities of islamists, to include Muslim Allies against the islamist terrorists murdering them, against the would be tyrants and oppressors.
As demonstrated in the example of the ease of breaking many twigs individually rather than a bundle of many twigs united with string, so too can individual Nations be brought down individually more readily than in a united coalition of allies.
War on Terror News©2009, ARM, all rights reserved.
Tuesday: Part 1: Africa
Wednesday: Part 2: Europe & Asia
Today: Part 3: The Americas
Friday: Part 4: Nationalism & Culture
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