Obama losing battle vs Islamic fantaticism www.rabbijonathanginsburg.com

Advantage: Islamism

Abe Greenwald | @abegreenwald 10.26.2011 - 11:24 AM

Fewer than six months after Osama Bin Laden’s death, the United States is closer than ever to losing a fundamental battle in the war on terror. Winning that war is not ultimately about killing this mastermind, that cleric, or a whole parade of al-Qaeda No. 3s. It is not synonymous with drone strikes, Navy Seal operations, or airport pat-downs—although those all help. In the end, victory means thwarting the dream harbored by the terrorists who committed 9/11. Their dream was to overthrow the Middle East’s autocracies and replace them with Islamist regimes. After a decade of American gains, that dream is suddenly nearing partial realization.
Libyan transitional government leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil has announced that “Islamic shariah law” would be “the basis of legislation” in post-Qaddafi Libya. In Egypt, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is all but destined to sweep into power via parliamentary elections scheduled for late November. And regarding Tunisia’s celebrated “free and fair” elections, democrats can only hope that the Islamists of the winning Ennahda party will rule as moderately as they now profess. Elections can be hijacked as easily as airplanes, and the martyr-minded bin Laden would have died a thousand times for this kind of progress.
Rounding out this landscape are some non-ballot-related developments. A week after releasing the details of an alleged Iranian plot to kill ambassadors and bystanders in Washington, the Obama administration announced the complete withdrawal of American forces from Iraq by the end of 2011. For Tehran’s theocrats this is an invitation to further meddle in their neighbor’s political affairs and chip away at a fragile Iraqi democracy. For al-Qaeda and affiliates it’s a signal to step up the violence. In Afghanistan, the American-installed Hamid Karzai​ has announced his prophylactic alliance with terrorist-infested Islamabad in the event of an America-Pakistan conflict. A year from now, the United States will pull 30,000 troops out of Afghanistan, leaving Karzai to develop the “on” part of his off-and-on friendship with the Taliban.
What brought us to this pass? Critics of the war on terror often ask, “How can you wage war on an idea?” But they tend not to stay around for the answer. Here it is: You deploy a superior idea, disseminate it more broadly and forcefully than your enemy can handle, and defend your gains with everything you have—including the physical materials of actual warfare. That is how the United States advanced the cause of freedom in the Middle East for 10 years after 9/11. It was done imperfectly, for sure, but that period saw a significant drop in worldwide Muslim support for jihad and a corresponding uptick in democratic sentiment.
When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. pulled back on the defense of freedom abroad and re-invested energies in the notion of indigenous authenticity. This posited that the only political change that is both valid and virtuous must come wholly from within a given country. That stance has the appearance of nobleness except for this: history. Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade-long authoritarian rule was an authentic and indigenous Egyptian development, the presidential coup of Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was a genuinely Tunisian affair, and the preposterous 42-year reign of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi sprang up from within Libya. To make homegrown change the gold standard is to annul the case for removing today’s homegrown tyrants (to say nothing of the nationalist monsters of the past). Much worse, doing so has intentionally tied America’s hands as Islamists have sought to exploit power vacuums left by departing dictators.
Today’s popular uprisings in the Middle East were not motivated by radical Islam. They are manifestations of a widespread desire for freedom. But even glorious ideas need defending, especially in the Middle East. And democrats needed American protection and support at the very moment that the United States got out of the democracy-defense game. Instead of making early allies of the democratic trailblazers who rose up in Iran in June 2009, President Obama continued his diplomatic courtship with the oppressive theocratic regime—a mistake he would cut-and-paste all over the region. When Egypt ignited, the White House and State Department spent weeks mulling continued support for Mubarak. As Syrians were killed in confronting the regime of Bashar Assad​, Hillary Clinton took to Sunday morning television to describe him as a “reformer.” Instead of making aid to the countries of the so-called Arab Spring contingent upon democratic reform, Washington stood on the sidelines. And instead of using overt and covert means to put roadblocks in Islamists’ way, the administration released bland statements describing the future of this or that country as being decided by its people.
The war on terror is an actual, not metaphorical, war. And to shrink from defending our ideas is to cede ground to the enemy. Our leaving Iraq (and then Afghanistan) is a continuation of the retreat that began with the thinking of the Obama administration. As proponents of the 2007 troop surge often noted, that change in strategy marked a surge in necessary troops and innovative ideas. Both are now leaving the region.
The perpetrators of 9/11 wanted an Islamist political order in the Middle East not only for its own sake, but also as a means of advancing their interests globally. The celebrants of American retreat would do well to recall that those men, too, were authentic and indigenous manifestations of their region. As were the attacks they carried out.