One of the persistent problems with the manner in which the war on Islamist-based terror is presented in the media is the lack of historical context.  The general public is rarely presented with other historical situations that are at least somewhat analogous to this conflict, so as to better understand its nature.  While volumes may be written on this, here I intend to provide a brief overview of how aspects of another recent long-term struggle, the Cold War, can be related to events of the present day centered on the Middle East and beyond, and to touch on other larger factors at play in the war on terror that are seldom mentioned in the media. 

One thing I would like to make clear before I go any further:  When I talk about "Islamism" or "radical Islam", I am not referring to adherents of the Islamic faith as a whole.  I am referring to a specific religious/political movement that has roots in figures and events of the early 20th century, and which combines a very particular interpretation of Islam with totalitarian ideas associated with European fascism and communism that were imported into the region at that time.  Through fear, intimidation, and petrodollars, Islamists have, unfortunately, co-opted large swaths of the Islamic world, but it would be unfair to say that they represent all Moslems.  That having been said, I will continue. 

During the Cold War, from the Soviet point of view, the world was destined to become communist due to their interpretation of "historical inevitability", as represented by the five stages all societies must pass through:  primitive communism, feudalism, capitalism, state socialism, and true communism.  According to their leaders, that nations would ultimately pass through these stages of development was in accordance with historical "laws", if you will, that were as ironclad as the laws of physics.   

For this reason, they maintained that once a nation became part of the "socialist camp", it could never revert to a more "primitive" state.  This, as part of the "Brezhnev Doctrine", was how they justified invading Czechoslovakia in 1968.  When we invaded Grenada in 1983, this was the first time that communism was successfully "rolled back"; this flew in the face of Soviet theory.  As materially insignificant as the Granada invasion was, it did, along with other events, arguably mark the beginning of the end of the Cold War. 

Similarly, radical Islamist doctrine, as interpreted today by clerics ranging from Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Iran, also holds that once a given nation or region falls under Moslem control, it can never go back.  To them, Islam can be seen as "Abrahamic faith 3.0", whereas Christianity is "Abrahamic faith 2.0" and Judaism is "Abrahamic faith 1.0".  As purveyors of the most "advanced" Abrahamic faith, Islamists believe it is their duty to spread their religion as far and as wide as they can, and certainly, once established in a given area, it cannot be overturned in favor of an "inferior" religion.   

This is really their fundamental objection to Israel.  Unless this basic idea can be "reformed" out of Islam as it is interpreted by literally hundreds of millions of Moslems in the world today, they will never accept a Jewish state in what they see as formerly established Moslem lands in "Palestine".  The fact that there was a Jewish state in Biblical times does not matter to them at all.  Once these lands had come under Moslem control, they could not "revert" to the dominance of a "lesser" faith.  This is why radical Islamic leaders like Iran's Ahmedinijad say they wouldn't care if Israel had been established in Alaska or Bavaria, etc., because these were never Moslem lands. 

Many in the West draw some comfort from the fact that the Islamist movement does not sit at the helm of an advanced industrial society, such as the Nazis did with respect to Germany in their day, or the communists had with the Cold War-era Soviet Union.  Thus, many in the West have adopted a complacent attitude towards Islamist terrorism, such that surely, with as much military and economic power as we have compared with them, we will easily defeat them.  Such a view does not take into account a very powerful advantage enjoyed by the Islamist movement. 

It should be remembered that the competing camps of the Cold War adhered to ideologies that were similar in terms of their broadly stated goals.  Both capitalism and communism promised a better life in this world.  Communism failed in large measure because the promises endlessly laid out by communist leaders could be tested by easily observable results and comparisons with the competing side.  As it became clear over several generations that communism was not going to deliver a life remotely comparable to what was promised - or what the West seemed to deliver to its own people - the populations became discouraged and the legitimacy of their governments floundered.  

By contrast, the Islamist movement does not promise a better life in this world for its adherents, but rather, holds out the prospect of a better life in the next world as a reward to the faithful.  Indeed, it portrays the pursuit of a better material life in this world as shameful, decadent, and even blasphemous.  Instead, it promises "72 virgins", for example, in the afterlife to suicide bombers.  This motivating tactic is an incredibly effective "con", if you will.  How will the radical clerics ever be held accountable to their subjects for their "lack of results"?  How can a suicide bomber come back to question the imam who exhorted him to blow himself up if the promised virgins did not materialize upon his demise?  Islamism is unique as a mass movement in this way: it never has to even promise, much less produce, any positive, concrete results that can be measured or experienced, for which leaders can be held accountable.  It preys on the hopeless and the fearful, those who cannot imagine that the world as they experience it in this life will have anything positive to offer them, or to look forward to.  The Spartan existence, the extreme demonstrations of "belief", "faith", etc., that radical Islamism demands from its followers is thus something of an end in itself.  This feature of Islamism goes a long way in explaining why they believe they can defeat the West in spite of their great material disadvantages.  They believe they can win on the strength of their faith, in contrast to our society, which appears to believe in little besides being comfortable.   

What role do the Palestinians play in this struggle?  The Palestinians are the "tip of the spear" of the region's efforts to return "Palestine" to Islamic control once more.  The fact that they "lost" in 1948, the fact that they - alone among the Moslem peoples of the region - live under Jewish rule, is the underlying cause of the "humiliation" they are always talking about.  In order to "reclaim" their "honor" in the eyes of their fellow Moslem Arabs and the rest of the Moslem world, they have to defeat and destroy Israel.  The fact that they have failed to do so as of yet, or at least are seen as having failed to do so (it is really a collective failure, but the Palestinians make a handy scapegoat), is why they are held in such disdain by the rest of the Arab world. 

While their objections to Israel are in fact based on an almost medieval religious intolerance of the most backward and reactionary variety, the Palestinians in particular and the Arab/Moslem world of NE Africa and SW Asia have successfully and quite deliberately cast themselves in the role of noble, oppressed third-world underdogs in the mold of the Viet Cong.  This is no coincidence; Yasser Arafat traveled to Hanoi during the Vietnam War to glean tactics for defeating a more materially powerful foe.  In this way, they have co-opted the "progressive left" in much of the West.  Large segments of the Western academic and journalistic communities buy this nonsense hook, line, and sinker, which explains a lot of the anti-Israel bias we see in the media and on college campuses today. 

Many Islamists and their lackeys in the West like to repeat over and over again that the fundamental cause of their ire against the U.S. is our support for Israel.  This is disingenuous to say the least.  Three examples that refute this claim come readily to mind: 

-In 1993, an Air France jetliner was hijacked by terrorists related to Al-Queda.  The hijackers tried to force the pilot to fly into the Eiffel Tower.  He refused; the plane landed, and was later stormed by French commandos, who killed all the hijackers and a few of the passengers.  After this event, Al-Queda determined that they needed to train their own pilots.  The rest is history. 

-In 2006, Canadian police broke up a terrorist ring that had been developing plans to attack a wide variety of targets throughout Ontario.   

What is most noteworthy about the first example, the 1993 Air France hijacking, is that the hijackers were carrying out an attack against a country that had a long established record of official sympathy with the Palestinian cause.  Ever since the 1967 war, up until the election of their recently defeated President, Nicolas Sarkozy, France had a decidedly pro-Arab tilt, so much so that Yasser Arafat kept his wife, Suha, very well put up in Paris, and one may recall that when Arafat was dying, he sought medical care in France.  Obviously, the hijackers could not have been "mad" at France over her "support of Israel".   

In the second case, the Canadian government, under the successive leadership of Liberal Party Prime Ministers Jean Chretien and Paul Martin for thirteen years, had followed a scrupulously "even-handed" policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  While the arrests in this case occurred shortly after the electoral victory of a pro-Israel Conservative, Stephen Harper, this plot had been in the making for quite some time, with much of the groundwork no doubt laid during the administration of Paul Martin.  Obviously, these "even-handed" Middle East policies had bought Canada nothing in terms of immunity from Islamist attacks.  Fortunately, the Canadian security establishment was on top of their game in this instance. 

Yet, there could not be a more striking refutation of the ‘dump Israel, appease Islamists’ model than the case of Russia. 

Though there has been some warming between Russia and Israel in very recent times, historically, it can fairly be said that Russia and the former Soviet Union could be counted as the single most anti-Israel non-Moslem country in the world.  After providing Israel some early assistance with arms during her 1948 war of independence, in the hopes of turning them into a pro-Soviet satellite, Israel’s refusal to play the role of a regional Soviet pawn resulted in unparalleled hostility from Russian leaders for decades thereafter.  The USSR had been the chief arms supplier of Israel’s enemies during the Cold War, played a crucial role in supporting the PLO, and even today provides arms and diplomatic cover to Israel’s major enemies, such as Syria and Iran.  

Now, consider for a moment the logic of those who claim that the U.S. must distance herself from Israel in order to garner the help of “moderate” Moslem states in combating Islamist terrorism.  Given Russia’s record with respect to Israel, shouldn’t the so-called ‘moderate’ Moslem regimes be positively lining up to restrain Islamist terrorists from harming the hair on a single Russian’s head? 

This is hardly the case.  In absolute terms, Russia has probably lost more civilians to Islamist terrorist attacks than any other non-Moslem country outside of the U.S.; if one leaves out the 9-11 attacks, Russia would likely top the list.  Islamist terrorists - chiefly operating out of Chechnya - have been responsible for hundreds of Russian civilians killed in subway bombings, airport bombings, and a particularly gruesome attack on a Russian school in the town of Beslan that resulted in the deaths of at least 334 hostages, including 186 children, that took place in September of 2004. 

Casual observers may believe that these attacks are related to the Chechen struggle for an independent state.  However, what is not widely known is that Russia had in fact granted Chechnya independence in 1997.  That wasn’t enough for them.  Within a couple of years, Islamic law was established; terrorism against targets inside of Russia, and even incursions into neighboring territory followed.  Russia wound up invading again in order to restore order, and simply put, to protect themselves.  It is widely believed that the fundamentalist Islamist movement in Chechnya, which serves as the wellspring of deadly hostility against Russia, is heavily funded and organized by Saudi Arabia. 

These instances I have just described indicate that where Islamist terrorists are concerned, Israel is, contrary to the claims of many of their apologists here, a relatively minor concern.   There is a much larger issue at stake for Islamic SW Asia here that is motivating so many of them towards sympathy with the radical Islamist cause.   

It must be understood above all else that in this region of the world, there has never been separation of church and state.  In most of these countries, the church either is the state - as in Iran - or the secular regimes that ostensibly represent these countries, whether dictatorships or monarchies, are in fact beholden to the clerical class for their legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary people.  If these leaders lose the support of the clerics, they know very well that they stand to be driven out of power, likely in a violent fashion.  This makes the clerical class the de facto ruling class for these societies.   

We see this fact often demonstrated in press coverage of the region.  We frequently hear about how this cleric in Egypt said this, or that cleric in Saudi Arabia said that, etc.  One never hears about the pronouncements of say, German or Japanese or Dutch or Mexican clerics, because all of these latter countries, of course, separate church and state.   

We have also seen, for example, during our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that U.S. leaders on the ground had to pay very careful attention to local clerics such as Al Sistani, and how another cleric, one Muqtada Al-Sadr, had his own "Mahdi Army".  This latter figure, Al-Sadr, is the sort of person who could easily come to power in Iraq in the wake of the recent drawdown of U.S. forces in that country.  Muqtada Al-Sadr – or someone like him - could easily achieve legitimacy; he had thousands of devoted followers who were willing to kill and die for him.  For a time, where he was established, his word was law.  Remember, this was only a cleric.  He had no modern legal training, no schooling in political science, public policy, etc., and probably had no more than the most rudimentary military training.  Yet, in the very recent past, he was a local political and military force to be reckoned with.  There is no phenomenon remotely comparable to this anywhere in the world of today outside of Arab/Moslem SW Asia and North Africa. 

The real issue for Islamists – quite apart from Israel - is their fear that Western notions of democracy, religious pluralism, human rights, women's rights, etc., will permeate their societies, and following from this, the power and prestige of the clerical "ruling class" will be destroyed.  While they can't compete with us in conventional military or economic terms, they will nonetheless – like any threatened ruling class at any time or place in history – fight tooth and nail to hang onto their positions of power and privilege within their own societies.  In order to preserve their legitimacy, they intend to minimize our influence by taking the discontent, insecurity, and fear that runs rampant in their societies, and focusing these on us; hence, terrorism.  Again, the corrupt, oppressive, ostensibly secular regimes that characterize the region ultimately must placate the clerics who foment this violence, for if they do not, the clerics will turn on them, and they will be thrown out of power.   

From the point of view of the dictators and monarchs who must appease these clerics, this is not an altogether disagreeable arrangement, in a day-to-day sense.  With only this one constituency – the clerics -  to satisfy, these leaders are spared the hard work of responsible governance.  The fact remains, however, that if these regimes cannot confront and correct the hopelessness that their own ineffectual rule engenders among their people, along with the fear instilled in them by their radical clerics, then we are in for a long and bloody war indeed if we mean to decisively defeat radical Islamist terrorism.  

In short, what we are witnessing in Moslem SW Asia is a dying civilization, lashing out at a world in which they are falling farther and farther behind.  They might have passed quietly into history or made constructive adaptations – as other failed/failing civilizations have done – were it not for the “free money” they have at their disposal in the form of petrodollars, supplied via a commodity of vital interest to the rest of the world.  This money, combined with the zeal and determination of the Islamists, combined further with the ideological shallowness and greed of their lackeys in the West, is what sustains the war they fight against us today.  This dynamic would be in play with or without Israel. 

For a time, many believed that the best hope for positive change in the Moslem world of today was represented by a "template", if you will, in the form of modern Turkey, where there had been a clear separation of church and state, a fact which, among other things, allowed Turkey to officially accept Israel.  Unfortunately, the ascendancy of the Islamist-leaning AKP party in Turkey has dashed these hopes for the foreseeable future.   

Even worse, the example of appeasement being set by the current leader of the free world, Barack Obama, is doing little to encourage reform in the Moslem world of the sort that would reduce the threat of Islamist-inspired terrorism.  From his Cairo speech in 2009 that equated Palestinian suffering with the Holocaust, to his reluctance to support true reform in Iran during the upheavals related to their rigged elections of that same year, to his open support of an Islamist revolution in Egypt that now sees the Arab world’s most populous country under the boot of the Moslem Brotherhood, there has been a clear pattern of playing to an Islamist gallery in order to win favor from them for the U.S.  Such policies have only emboldened this movement, ensuring that real constructive reform will be that much more difficult to achieve for the long suffering people of these societies. Thus, all of the elements that produce Islamist-inspired terrorism have not only remained in place, but have been strengthened during Obama’s watch. 

But of course, no one in a position of responsibility would refer to U.S. policy as being based on “appeasement”.  Instead, the philosophy that informs the current administration’s policies is referred to by its adherents as the “realist” school.  This philosophy has the following basic tenets:

First, the ideology of nation states in the international system should not be a major consideration in U.S. foreign policy decisions.  What matters is not ideology, but rather, an appreciation of American security and economic interests on the one hand – in essence, interests of a purely immediate and material nature - versus the interests of other states on the world stage.  Where these come into conflict, diplomacy should be used where differences may be resolved peacefully, while military power should only be threatened or applied as a last resort when competing states refuse to negotiate in good faith, or engage in actions that directly threaten the interests of the United States.

Following from this, the internal affairs of other states is not the business of America.  No matter how odious or oppressive foreign regimes may be, if they do not present a threat to immediate U.S. interests, we should refrain from any actions that such states may see as provocative.  Embarrassing such states on the world stage by chiding them over human rights abuses, or taking sides in regional conflicts, are actions to be avoided so as not to exacerbate tensions.  

It is no coincidence that many of the most vocal proponents of the “realist” school in the U.S. have also been the most hostile to Israel.  University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer – a co-author of the recent notoriously slanderous “expose” on the so-called “Israel lobby” – is a major proponent, as are Pat Buchanan and Zbigniew Brzezinski.  Such observers claim that American policymakers have too often been willing to sacrifice American interests for the sake of Israel.  The mindset that informs such views is not a new phenomenon, and it has some interesting historical roots.

America, for most of her history, had traditionally been an isolationist country.  Though Americans entered the First World War with resolve and indignation over German atrocities and U-boat warfare on the high seas that killed Americans, the enormous casualties we suffered over a very short time – over 100,000 dead, nearly twice what we suffered in Vietnam – in just year and a half of combat, reinforced American isolationist sentiments.

Such sentiments set the stage for America’s initial reluctance to get involved in WW2.  The “America First” movement of the 1930s lobbied strongly against U.S. support for Britain in the face of Nazi Germany.  Many prominent American figures - to include Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford – thought that it would be foolhardy and unnecessary to challenge Nazi domination of Europe.  Indeed, Britain was viewed with great suspicion by the ‘America Firsters’; she was seen as disingenuously trying to manipulate America into fighting Germany on her behalf.  And, after all, Hitler said he only wanted those lands that were predominantly German so as to unify the German people.  In short, peace could be had if others would merely cede lands that Germany said she had a right to – “land for peace” - and who really could say who was right and who was wrong? 

Sound familiar? 

We can add to this another ominous feature of the America First movement, and that is anti-Semitism.  Charles Lindbergh himself publicly admonished Jewish Americans to “shut up” over Nazi anti-Jewish policies.  Hitler’s internal policies were his business, and how dare Jewish Americans suggest that we should risk war by confronting Germany for their sake?!  As to Hitler’s threats to annihilate Jews in the event of what most saw as an increasingly inevitable war – threats widely and openly reported in the media – this was all just political posturing.  He couldn’t be serious, could he?

Sound familiar?

Thus, we can see important parallels between the foreign policy “realists” of today, and the isolationists of the immediate pre-WW2 era.  What the isolationists of the 1930s proposed was fully consistent with the tenets of realist theory, though it wasn’t given this name at the time.  Nazi ideology was unimportant.  Who were we to tell them how to live?  As long as Nazi Germany did not directly threaten the U.S., we had no reason to confront them.  If we took sides against them by supporting Britain, then – to use the terminology of today – we would lose our status as an “honest broker”, we would not be sufficiently “even-handed”, and in the end, we would risk a bloody and unnecessary war that did not serve American interests.

Fortunately for all concerned, President Roosevelt knew better.  Though he initially also favored the “appeasement track” towards Germany, he would later conclude that Germany under Hitler was not going to be dissuaded from aggression.  He knew that having to share the world with expansionist, belligerent, totalitarian powers of the sort represented by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan would be dangerous for America, particularly given the yawning gulf between their demonstrated values and our own.  That we were willing to make the sacrifices we did in order to defeat some of the most evil regimes in history is now unanimously perceived as America’s finest hour (well, almost unanimously; credit can be given to Pat Buchanan for intellectual consistency, as he still claims that we should not have got involved in that war).

Fast forward to the present. 

Israel, like Britain of the 1930s, a fellow liberal democracy, faces adversaries who are either authoritarian or even totalitarian.  Her adversaries loudly complain to Western audiences how “unjust” Israel is.  They say that if only Israel gave up certain lands, then there would be “peace”.  In their own societies, they trample on democratic principles, free speech, women’s rights, and religious freedom.  Some, such as Saudi Arabia, claim to be our “allies”.  On what basis are they our allies?  Shared values and institutions?  Hardly.  They are our presumed allies because we buy their oil – if they have any - and we have kept their leaders in power.  That is it. They use the money they get from us for a sophisticated lobbying campaign to convince us that we need them in order to fight the “extremists”, even as they fund many of the institutions that produce these very same extremists, even as many of their young men had turned up as “foreign fighters” in Iraq or Afghanistan, killing our troops.  With friends like these….

But, according to the “realists” who inform American policy towards the Middle East, none of this should matter.  We have to defeat the Islamic extremists.  We need the help of those who say they are our “friends” among the Moslems, the so-called “moderates”, to fight the extremists.  And these “friends” of ours tell us that before they can convince their people to like us and to stop supporting the terrorists, we have to prove that we care about their concerns.  Amid the poverty, illiteracy, oppression, outrageous corruption, and general backwardness that characterize the whole of their civilization, what is their chief concern?  Israel, of course!  During President Obama’s much publicized state visit to Saudi Arabia early in 2009, King Abdullah admonished him to “impose a settlement” on the Israelis, that his country needed to concentrate an learning and development, as if the only thing stopping the Saudis from making any progress were those pesky Jews who refused to leave the West Bank! 

The moral bankruptcy reflected in allowing the likes of Saudi Arabia or Turkey dictate our policies towards our ally, Israel, should be painfully obvious.  But we must remember that the “realist” foreign policy school of thought provides a very handy rationale for ignoring moral considerations altogether.  This is the perfect philosophy for those who believe in nothing, except for being comfortable; that is to say, our ‘immediate material interests’.  And it is through appeals to this base and cynical logic that we have allowed ourselves – or more accurately, our leaders have allowed themselves – to be manipulated into disastrous and counterproductive policies in the face of an adversary that is driven far more by ideology than by any material concerns. 

Once we recover our moral bearings and in so doing, clearly see what we stand for as a country, and what we are up against on the world stage in terms of the threat of Islamist terrorism, Israel’s role in this larger war can be seen in an entirely different light.  Israel's position is actually very analogous to the role played by West Berlin vis-a-vis the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War.  Israel is a high-profile, psychologically important, symbolic irritant to our foes. However, Israel is not the cause of the conflict, and "giving in" to the enemy's demands where she is concerned to any degree would not lessen tensions, but would instead probably further embolden our adversaries.  Can anyone imagine that the Cold War would have ended a day sooner if we had handed West Berlin over to the Soviets?  Yet, such is the perverse logic employed by those who would make concessions to the Moslem world at Israel's expense.  As such, a clear barometer for Western resolve in this war can be gauged by support for Israel.  If we were willing to risk incinerating the whole of the northern hemisphere for the sake of West Berlin in the face of Soviet might - a policy few questioned at the time - surely we can stand up to the Islamist movement over Israel.