Very interesting editorial piece. I rarely agree with the man but Dave
Brooks despite the neocon baggage he carries he is a conservative
intellectual who can engage in dispassionate discourse something
totally lacking both from the GOP base and their leadership.
I think he has made a sort of a turn recently vis a vis the Iraq war,
nevertheless this piece is interesting in that it shows how badly the
administration has mishandled the war on terror by completely ignoring
the root causes of terrorism and by failing to recognize that
terrorist acts are the symptoms and not the desease.
His, just like the 911 commission's, omission of Israel from the
equation is glaring but as I said above "despite the neocon..."
War of Ideology
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: July 24, 2004
When foreign policy wonks go to bed, they dream of being X. They dream
of writing the all-encompassing, epoch-defining essay, the way George
F. Kennan did during the cold war under the pseudonym X.
Careers have been spent racing to be X. But in our own time, the 9/11
commission has come closer than anybody else. After spending 360 pages
describing a widespread intelligence failure, the commissioners step
back in their report and redefine the nature of our predicament.
We're not in the middle of a war on terror, they note. We're not
facing an axis of evil. Instead, we are in the midst of an ideological
conflict.
We are facing, the report notes, a loose confederation of people who
believe in a perverted stream of Islam that stretches from Ibn Taimaya
to Sayyid Qutb. Terrorism is just the means they use to win converts
to their cause.
It seems like a small distinction - emphasizing ideology instead of
terror - but it makes all the difference, because if you don't define
your problem correctly, you can't contemplate a strategy for victory.
When you see that our enemies are primarily an intellectual movement,
not a terrorist army, you see why they are in no hurry. With their
extensive indoctrination infrastructure of madrassas and mosques,
they're still building strength, laying the groundwork for decades of
struggle. Their time horizon can be totally different from our own.
As an ideological movement rather than a national or military one,
they can play by different rules. There is no territory they must
protect. They never have to win a battle but can instead profit in the
realm of public opinion from the glorious martyrdom entailed in their
defeats. We think the struggle is fought on the ground, but they know
the struggle is really fought on satellite TV, and they are far more
sophisticated than we are in using it.
The 9/11 commission report argues that we have to fight this war on
two fronts. We have to use intelligence, military, financial and
diplomatic capacities to fight Al Qaeda. That's where most of the
media attention is focused. But the bigger fight is with a hostile
belief system that can't be reasoned with but can only be "destroyed
or utterly isolated."
The commissioners don't say it, but the implication is clear. We've
had an investigation into our intelligence failures; we now need a
commission to analyze our intellectual failures. Simply put, the
unapologetic defenders of America often lack the expertise they need.
And scholars who really know the Islamic world are often blind to its
pathologies. They are so obsessed with the sins of the West, they are
incapable of grappling with threats to the West[... ]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/opinion/24brooks.html
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