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By Sajjad Khan
Editor: New Civilisation
sajjad.khan@newcivilisation.com | |
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After 9/11 George Bush declared a ‘war on terrorism’ (WOT) and invited the nations of the world to take part. After 3 years, the WOT continues unabated and most commentators believe this will carry on for at least the next decade. Lone voices, like Sir Michael Howard the eminent British historian, have questioned the description of a ‘war’ since the beginning, but it is only recently that there has been sufficient interrogation surrounding the objectives of this war.
One can argue against the prevailing wisdom that the WOT is on track. The WOT remains the central tenet of current US foreign policy but, fundamentally, WOT is a misnomer; at best a half-truth. There is certainly a ‘war’ but it is neither solely aimed at eliminating terrorists and ending terror, nor is it exclusively aimed at Muslims who engage in violence to achieve their political goals. The WOT (though not in a military sense) is also aimed at another larger category of Muslims who don’t support the use of violence to create political change but who may have similar political goals to those who do advocate violence. The objective with this section of Muslims is to win the battle for hearts and minds—a battle which is currently being lost, largely as a result of the harsh manner in which American and British policies have been carried out. Though there have been some specific political gains and military victories, these have been more than offset by large strategic and political losses. The American plans for reform in the Muslim world, an integral component to winning its WOT, will only be partly successful, as the US itself currently lacks credibility, a key precursor to gaining change in the Islamic world.
The WOT as stated is a fundamental misnomer and as such leads to confusion and misunderstandings within the wider populace. We cannot accurately declare a war on terror, as it is an operational tactic which inherently seeks to terrorise civilian populations for political or religious ends; it is not itself an enemy that is clearly personified. Declaring a WOT after 9/11, as one US politician earlier in the year put it, would have been like declaring war on fighter aircraft, rather than Japan, after Pearl Harbour in 1941. Furthermore if this is really a war on terrorism why have we not seen any real focus by the Bush administration on fighting Spain’s ETA, the Provisional IRA or the Columbian FARC. The tactic of terrorising populations is not simply the preserve of small entities that seek asymmetrical methods to challenge larger states. Rather, it has been used by most nations in the past with varying degrees of success—the air bombing of London, Dresden and Hiroshima in WW2 are all specific examples of terror where civilian populations were deliberately targeted for political reasons. So far, the attempt to subsume the current war under the general rubric of a ‘war on terrorism’ should be rejected as being far too vague and simplistic.
A multitude of commentators have said they believe this is more than just a WOT: Newt Gingrich on the political right to Will Hutton on the progressive left, academics and commentators like Professor Geoff Porter (NYU) and Andrew Winner (Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis), and also influential journalists like Lou Dobbs (CNN) and Christopher Hitchens (Vanity Fair).
Will Hutton says: “Radical Islam represents the biggest challenge to Western Civilisation since the demise of fascism and communism”. Christopher Hitchens says: “We’re fighting theocratic fascism.” Newt Gingrich: “This is not in the end about bin Laden, its not even about Al Qaeda, its about a reactionary form of Islam with a worldwide network.” Professor Porter in response to Lou Dobbs’ statement that the war should be renamed a “War against Islamists” says: “It would be better to say War against Radical Islamists.” Andrew Winner argues in a similar vein when he says the war should be called a “War on Islamist Terrorists”. Indeed the latter is close to what the 9/11 commission concluded and recommended, that the WOT should be renamed as a “War against Islamist terrorism.” Therefore many western commentators now see this war as a continuation of the wars that were fought first against fascism, then against communism and now against what they believe to be ‘Islamist terrorism’. There are many reasons why western politicians show a continued reluctance to state that Islam or an offshoot should be declared the enemy. Firstly, there are large Muslim communities living in the West; secondly there are 1.2 billion other Muslims distributed throughout the world. Pseudonyms such as fundamentalist, Islamic terrorist, religious fanatic and militant have increasingly become everyday terms in the post 9/11 political lexicon. However, the 9/11 commission gave very good reasons why the war should be accurately renamed by the Bush administration. First and foremost, to accurately define the enemy and so avoid ambiguity in measuring progress, and secondly, to target specific strategies that deal with the roots of ‘Islamist terrorism’.
In reaction to events since 9/11, some Muslims have labelled the WOT as a ‘war against Islam’ and a ‘war against Muslims’. However it would be incorrect to state that this is a war against all Muslims per se or even Islam in the understood sense of the latter being a mere spiritual faith. However as most aware observers can testify, Islam is much more than a mere spiritual creed and the Prophet Muhammad and his successors were both political and spiritual leaders. The tenet of “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's” is fundamental to the Christian doctrine but is alien to the Islamic heritage which believes that the Islamic creed shapes both the spiritual aspects as well as societal ones. Though it is beyond this article to delve into that media obsessed subject of whether Islam itself is fundamentalist or moderate, the author believes these terms to be unhelpful, as we should try to have an objective debate on what the key concepts of Islam are. Too many people, many of them sincere, unfortunately still look at Islam through their secular liberal prism and judge according to predefined values and standards which would be no different than refuting secular values using Islamic texts. But even if we accept that there are similarities between secular liberalism and Islam in terms of the goals of achieving a better society, there are significant philosophical differences about the role of God and the state, the prioritisation given to different values, the role of the market vs. the individual as well as how the rule of law should be implemented. Needless to say, there is more than a hint of evidence to indicate why secular liberal nations would not welcome a new Islamic state, not just for political or security reasons but because of deep philosophical ones. Professor Chris Brown of the LSE cites these when he says the following “What we have is a war between two different conceptions of how life ought to be lived. The West for all its faults imperfectly instantiates a number of Enlightenment goals that are an anathema to the Islamo-fascists and it is precisely for this reason that the West is worth defending and must be defended.”
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