Logic Times

Buy the Mean Dog

Commentary by Aslan, 12/17/05, 3:46pm. Comments (4)

On November 4, 1979, the new Iranian revolutionary government seized 66 citizens of the United States and fascist Islam embarked on a crash course in Western weakness. On Ronald Reagan’s inauguration day in 1981, this fledgling Islamic movement sensed the paradoxical depth of American strength under different leadership, and the remaining 52 hostages soon returned home. But fascist Islam aced the lesson of their 444 day first semester in How to Defeat the West 101, in which a 12th century culture with no regard for human life might triumph over the modern Western world. What began as revolutionary defiance ended with a revelation about how the sanctity of life unnerves Western civilization.

Islamic fundamentalists hold no advantage over the wealthy and powerful West except a willingness to kill and to die. In 1983, the second semester began with a science experiment in death in Beirut, Lebanon, where even a strong President swallowed the lie that our actions – not our existence – were the cause of Islamic hatred. Another A+ and our primitive band of fascist students broke up into study groups to work on projects over the next several years, including one very significant war (the Muhajadeen in Afghanistan) along with fourteen attacks around the world taking 273 lives. Final exams in 1993 included stops in New York for the first attempt at the World Trade Center and in Somalia, where the curriculum on Western weakness came together like a symphony in the words of Professor bin Laden:

"As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press after the Gulf War in which it destroyed the infrastructure and the milk and dairy industry that was vital for the infants and the children and the civilians and blew up dams which were necessary for the crops people grew to feed their families. Proud of this destruction, America assumed the titles of world leader and master of the new world order. After a few blows, it forgot all about those titles and rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace, dragging the bodies of its soldiers. America stopped calling itself world leader and master of the new world order, and its politicians realized that those titles were too big for them and that they were unworthy of them. I was in Sudan when this happened. I was very happy to learn of that great defeat that America suffered, so was every Muslim." – Osama bin Laden

Khobar Towers, the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the U.S.S. Cole – nothing that followed the lesson of Somalia persuaded Islamofascists the world over that bin Laden’s assessment was wrong.

September 11, 2001 happened for one reason: America was perceived to lack resolve. At a deeper level, a lack of resolve born of an unwillingness to endure hardship and sacrifice life in defense of closely held beliefs. The determined ideal of Patrick Henry ("Give me liberty or give me death") and Nathan Hale ("I regret that I have but one life to give for my country") was, in the mind of bin Laden and other terror leaders, dead in America and the West, while in the Islamic world the idea of sacrifice flourished, codified in religious doctrine.

But bin Laden made a giant mistake, confusing the weakness and complacency of American culture with weakness of the American military. In an impossible situation with unworkable rules of engagement and limited support, a mere 160 Army Rangers and Delta Force killed 1,000 heavily armed Somali guerrillas and wounded another 3,000 to 4,000 while enduring 19 dead and 73 wounded (data here and here).

Every move that our military made in Somalia that bin Laden perceived as weakness had nothing to do with the military and everything to do with civilian leadership averse to complicated geopolitical issues of life and death.

September 11th was not an isolated event, but one in a series of challenges to Western and American power attacking on the only vulnerable front: the unwillingness of Westerners to fight a determined enemy capable of killing lots of people. The genesis was Vietnam; the awakening was in Iran; the definitive tests were Afghanistan and Somalia; and the proof was in Madrid, Spain and rest of anti-war Europe - and in the Democratic Party of Howard Dean and Jack Murtha.

"The idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong." - Howard Dean

"Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course." - Jack Murtha

If 9/11 happened because America lacked resolve, the most important thing after 9/11 was to demonstrate that America was determined and resolute. The most important action after 9/11 was not to catch who did it, but to refute why they did it.

A criminal breaks into a home, steals something and gets away. The first thing that goes through the mind of the homeowner is not to catch who did the crime, but to prevent that crime from happening again. Catching the criminal is important, but this does not dispel the feeling of vulnerability; changing how criminals perceive the home is more important. You buy a mean dog, illuminate the property, install an alarm system.

Similarly, catching the terrorists who pulled off 9/11 is important, but changing how terrorists perceive America is more important. You buy a mean dog called the Bush Doctrine.

The Bush Doctrine says that the problem is not that America was attacked, but that such people think that they can attack with impunity. The Bush Doctrine more simply says something else: "America no longer lacks resolve." Iraq is the Bush Doctrine*; to have pursued only al Qaeda after 9/11 would have confirmed bin Laden’s assessment and invited the culture of death to splinter into many groups, attack and hide, safe in the certainty that the United States would only ever pursue those directly responsible in a game of international hide and seek.

We would have gone after the criminal, but forgot to buy the dog.

* This does not mean that Iraq was a random target selected out of a hat. It meant that the U.S. was going to be resolute in the next contest of wills with the Islamic world.

Comments

1: Cast099

December 17, 2005 9:00am EST

So we attacked Iraq to show "resolve"? What a great country we are. We need a little image makeover and we attack a country and ruin their lives, kill their people.

{Aslan: My patience is sometimes stretched when I receive these types of e-mails. If the U.S. attacked a country just to show resolve, of course that would be unethical and unacceptable. The point is that there was a conflict with Iraq and two potential courses of action; a passive one that would have fed into the deadly perception of the U.S. as a weak-willed nation, and a resolute one that would help dispel this notion at the same time it put Islamofascists on the run. And, if Iraq was not the right conflict, why is the most powerful remnant of al Qaeda there battling us today (read Abandoning the Myth)?}

2: Paul

December 17, 2005 9:29am EST

Well, Aslan, that was a very good article!

I have long been concerned with anarchy, but I believe I can deal with that situation with "mean dogs" and ample ballistic devices. The US military would be entirely different to deal with, should they become foe instead of friend!

{Aslan: Thanks, Paul. The U.S. military is anyone’s worst nightmare as a foe, but it is a thinking, ethical foe. There will never be a need for a Nuremburg Defense in our military.}

3: Larry Horacek

December 18, 2005 1:54am EST

Wonderful article. In making the case for buying a mean dog, you have again advanced the notion that the debate about going to war in Iraq was actually done for a variety of reasons, some of which are never discussed in the media. This media simplicity springs from their general lack of understanding about things military and the consequences of large-scale warfare.

I would posit that as the US entered WWII, our president Roosevelt was considering countless issues which were far beyond the battlefields of Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific theater. To focus only on the battles and warfare of WWII would risk losing sight of what the battles were really about - wars to defeat fascism. In Iraq our war aim is to defeat Islamo-fascism, yet the media does not understand how Iraq could possibly fit within that rubric. The media talks about Iraq only within the context of battles and skirmishes, and quantified by the number of US soldiers dead or wounded. They have lost sight of the war aim. That the media fails to even address this as part of the real war on terror underscores why we are so poorly served by our media today. If we successfully help birth a new democracy in Iraq, we will witness the beginning of a major sea change in Middle East politics that will be favorable to the US and, concomitantly, to the withering of Islamo-fascism. Today, I call that "The Greatest Story Never Told."

Grand strategies of the US Government are classified so it isn't possible for me to state with certainty that my thoughts are true. But if you look at the results over the past four years, and how we have proceeded in the Middle East, we were smart owners to buy that mean dog.

{Aslan: Larry, you and I share this sense that the greatest danger to our culture and our future is the Fourth Estate. How many Founding Fathers prefaced the viability of a constitutional democracy on a well-informed voting public? How can one be well-informed if you consume traditional media? Eight percent of the people of Tikrit voted at precincts protected by "insurgents," and this did not make the lead story in some papers and on some newscasts. The very objective this country has spent the blood of its children to achieve, and they cannot even report the event. These people are so hate-filled, they no longer function. But people think that they do.}

4: Kruelhunter

December 18, 2005 5:46am EST

Bin Laden et al also made the error of assuming that "men" like Clinton and Kennedy represented the majority of the American public. As a matter of fact it seems likely that the whole idea of majority rule escapes the Bin Ladens of the world, which is foolish since it seems that even the heathen Chinese are beginning to realize that the wishes of the people are of at least some import.

{Aslan: Here again, what information can bin Laden and his ilk draw from? Media. The media is a loathsome reflection of Kennedy and Clinton, and that is why he is dead today and his band are hiding in caves, because Kennedy and Clinton are the minority.}

5: Howard Nelson

December 24, 2005 6:31pm EST

Having a well-trained mean dog, countering our quisling MSM, and expressing our resolve to maintain and promote our ideals (2nd paragraph of our Declaration of Independence and Preamble to our Constitution, especially) are necessary but not sufficient to defeat the jihadist/Islamist enemy.

To the Islamic fundamentalists' "willingness to kill and to die" must be added their drive to convert the world, by force, to their form of Islam. No longer is life of the dissenter permitted as a 3rd class resident dhimmi; 'convert or die' is the jihadists' demand. There are no innocents other than jihadist Muslims.

I don't agree that America's perceived lack of resolve to resist jihadist terrorism was the sole reason of the 9-11-01 massacre. The fundamental reason is that success of the West -- the USA being most emblematic of the western culture -- is an insult to the jihadists' view of the supremacy of Islam in worldly and otherworldly domains. The Islamist true believer feels reproached by his god, and ashamed that the West (and Israel) live such lives of comfort despite the fact that they are not Muslims of the 'true' sort.

The jihadist has not much concern for our resolve. The jihadist's victory and personal sacrifice against a more powerful enemy, us, will result in his being accepted into Paradise with greater glory and rewards.

The jihadist lives to die as a shaheed, a martyr.

Thus, the our strategies and actions must be to change the content of the education that Muslim children are now receiving and have received in their religious schools and more secular schools -- as well as what they are being taught by their MSM, parents and peers. No small job for us and the decent Muslims who live in fear of assassination if they speak out for a humane and tolerant Islam.

To paraphrase something I read a while back, "It's not a matter of how difficult the effort is; it's a matter of how necessary the effort is."

{Aslan: You make some excellent points, Howard. The point of the Buy the Mean Dog essay, however, was to answer a more fundamental question. We know they want to destroy the West, and we know that the foot soldier embraces jihad and martyrdom. But do not be fooled. In the sense that Christianity never was, fascist Islam is the opiate of the fundamental Muslim masses, and the leadership does not partake of that drug. The leadership has learned that throwing explosive shaheeds – throwing death – at the West works because…the West lacks the resolve to counter such a relentless and visceral exploitation of life.}