Perspectives

The Growing Power & Threat of Islamism

A while back, I created a map overlay demonstrating the worldwide threats, with a focus on Islamism but also including secular and Communist regimes that ideologically or violently oppose us.  The world has changed since then.  Reluctant allies have distanced themselves in the last 3 years.  Lasting allies have fallen.  Old enemies have fallen to new enemies.  And my current picture editor isn't as good as the one I had then.

There is one small speck of good change in the world.  The Sudan split into two nations, helping to decrease the mass genocide of Islamists killing Christians and Animists in the newest Nation of South Sudan.  The South Sudanese have an uphill battle to establish their new government and this success began its path years ago.  North Sudan remains Islamist, in greater concentration.

Unfortunately, Islamism has spread dramatically in the last year, both in its violent attacks and in its takeovers of governments.  Tunisia was the first to fall, followed by Egypt, while the Islamist party of Turkey retained its power.  Some have hailed these as successes for democracy, but it is a failure of US Foreign Policy and a blow to Freedom.

The Obama Administration's response to seeing mass protests against an old ally was precisely as was the Carter Administration's.  Both in Tehran 1978 and Cairo 2011, the Administration urged a Military Coup against an allied leader.  The difference is that the Egyptian Generals were actually able to hold the reins of power for a short period of time, while the Iranian Generals had never really taken the concept as reasonable.  In both cases, the protestors were a mix of those supporting Freedom and Democracy and those supporting Islamism.  Forces for Democracy outnumbered forces for Islamism, but the Islamists were better organized.

Uglier Than War

"...War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. " John Stuart Mill

Our Nation, or rather Our Military, has been at war for nearly a decade.  In reality, we have been fighting for nearly a decade, though we have been at war for far longer.  For decades, we ignored the attacks of the enemy, we ignored the declarations of war of the enemy.  They were far off and easily forgotten, by all but the families of the affected.  We ignored the senseless murder of far off civilians oppressed by the same enemy.

Those that desire to oppress, to expand their own power and ideology, are not of the same mind, but often their greed brings them to ally themselves of fellow oppressors, even of diabolically opposing ideologies.  The ideologies of similarity often finds itself in opposition to would be allies, as did the national Socialism of the Nazi Empire to the Communistic Socialism of the Soviet Empire.  Democratically elected politicians find value in distorting the realities of "allies" and "enemies" to rally the people to a cause or away from an action.

"When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice--is often the means of their regeneration." John Stuart Mill