The Case for War, Part II

Nearly seven decades later, former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is still derided for his triumphal “peace in our time” declaration upon his return from negotiations that handed much of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in exchange for a promise of good behavior. His standard for naive irresponsibility might well be eclipsed if future history books record that the United States fled Iraq before completing the mission.

The World Trade Center dust had not yet settled before the left predicted that killing Osama bin Laden would not end terrorism. We had to address “root causes.” But since George Bush starting dealing with those root causes, the left has criticized him relentlessly for failing to end terrorism by killing Osama bin Laden. History has provided us with an opportunity to address those root causes. And one of those root causes is nearly 15 centuries of Islamic holy war against infidels.

Compare these two declarations for their intolerance and embrace of violence.

Mohammed: "I was ordered to fight all men until they say, 'There is no god but Allah.' "

Osama bin Laden: "Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us."

History has followed a straight-line between these two statements.

Saddam Hussein’s egomaniacal and despotic regime prepared the ground for us to change the course of history. His cruel tyranny made his people eager for a liberator and hungry for democracy. His totalitarianism permitted no rival. Not even Allah was allowed to compete with Saddam’s self-deification. And so, Iraq is unique among Middle Eastern Islamic countries in that it possesses a thoroughly secular public school system.

One of the relatively few intervals of peace in Islam’s history reached its peak in the 11th century when the Islamic Middle East was the most advanced and enlightened civilization on Earth. Socratic philosophy is considered the foundation of Western Civilization. Herodotus is called the father of history. But we owe most of what we know about Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and Herodotus to Islam. The originals were lost during Europe’s Dark Ages, but Mesopotamians had translated the Greek texts into Arabic. The Arabic translations were re-translated into European languages. Without Islam, our universities would not have enough material to offer majors in Classics. Eleventh century Islamic medical texts translated into European languages were the foundation of European medicine for centuries.

Sadly, contemporary mullahs viewed this enlightenment as a threat and began to re-exert their control beginning in the late 11th century and decreed that all that Allah wanted his people to know, he put into the Koran. If He had wanted Muslims to know about mathematics, philosophy and astronomy, then he would have included that in the Koran in the first place. And so books were burned and libraries were sacked throughout the Middle East. And the Middle East descended into its own Dark Ages.

As such, the news that the Taliban in Afghanistan had issued a death sentence on all teachers should have come as no surprise to Islamic historians. Since last autumn, Taliban terrorists have been entering the homes of Afghan teachers and killing everyone they find. This is simply a re-emergence of that millennium-old attitude that considered education a threat to Islam. Light threatens all fundamentalists.

Unfortunately for the 21st century Western World, modern Islamists have decided that Allah’s people need to know a few things that were omitted from the Koran. After all, the Koran contains no plans for nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
Osama bin Laden and I agree on one thing: Fundamentalist Islam and democracy are incompatible. Malaysia and Thailand manage to live peacefully with their neighbors. Arab Americans prosper in the US quite well, exceeding the national average in education and family income.

There is no reason to believe that a prosperous and democratic Iraq would not blossom as well. Neighboring despots consider that prospect so threatening that they have made Iraq the central battlefield of the war on terror.

I have not yet heard any profound or memorable rhetoric from the surrender crowd that will gain them Neville Chamberlain’s immortality. And so I will predict today that if surrender advocates achieve their goal, history books will record George W. Bush’s warning that, “If we leave, they will follow us home,” as the most memorable quote of the national debate. If those words prove prescient, history will not treat the defeatists kindly.