Recent polls have revealed a majority of the public weary and skeptical of war and, in particular, the conflict in Afghanistan. Try a new mentality on this.
Radical Islam, and it's associated weekly terrorism and body count around the world, is not a temporary phenomena. Radical Islam is forever, like our occasional forest fires. We need firefighters in the forest to contain the fires, (which we know will continue to occur forever) from getting out of hand and buring down the entire forest and surrounding neighborhoods. Would we close the fire stations knowing that such fires might, and would, happen? Of course not. Are you weary of your firefighters?
View radical Islam in this light here with me for a few minutes. View it as a long term management problem with no ultimate solution, only a problem to be contained to small flare ups - in the same light as forest fires, drought, disease, economic downturns, crime , etc. You wouldn't remove the firewall between yourself and those problems, why would you remove the firewalls between yourself and the problem of radical Islam?
~ It is not a 'war' with a win or solution.
~ It is not economically driven or caused by perceived 'oppressive U.S. policy'. If it was, then similarly oppressed Hindus, Buddhists, and Baptists, around the world - and Canadians - would also be attempting to harm us every day.
~ It is not about repression in countries dominated by radical Islamic clerics. There have been dozens of U.S citizens convicted of Islamically motivated conspiracies right here in the U.S.
~ It is not about education or poverty. Many of the the perpetrators have been surgeons, medical students, professors, and millionaires (some of whom would be taxed as the top 1% in the U.S.). Many have educations in the U.S., including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the so called 9/11 mastermind.
It is ultimately about the book they read - The Koran. It's the book!
As long as a billion and a half people read it, and as long as even one half of one percent of the readers interpret their reading in a manner advocating violence, there will be no end to the violence. Such people are not radicals or "misguided" (a popular U.S reality denial). They are fervent religious people who believe their God advocates different types of violence and hostility towards non believers - and against other Muslims who do not believe similarly.
Do we seriously believe we can change such attitudes in well educated, very intelligent, well read, very cerebral, men and women who believe their God commands them to do such things? No is the answer. We cannot do so, any more than we can change the attitude or beliefs of a North American pro-life Christian evangelical. Think such a Christian could be talked out of what they believe their God told them?
There-in lies the problem. Yes, the occasional solitary Christian goes off the reservation every few years in an act of violence inspired by reading a passage in the New Testament, and does so with no promise of reward from his or her God for doing so. There are only two or three passages in the New Testament of the Bible which might act as a trigger for such a fervent literalist, hence so few such acts of violence.
The Koran, on the other hand, contains hundreds of such potential triggers for it's readers, not just two or three. This book, with so many triggers, is followed by close to a billion and a half readers, who - man for man and woman for woman - tend to be much more devout in their beliefs than other members of other religious beliefs, and who have tens of millions of fervent literalists within their ranks.
An added feature for the literalists inspired to violence by the Koran, unlike occasional inspirations from the New Testament, is that Koranic inspirations often promise a reward for the violence or the martyr, including possible rewards and benefits for the perpetrator's family left behind on earth. Hence added encouragement for the almost most daily acts of violence around the world in the name of the religion.
It does no good for the rest of us to say that enlightened Muslims must take responsibility and enlighten the unenlightened, as 95% of all people killed by Muslims in the last ten years ... were other Muslims! They were killed either as Koranically justified 'collateral damage' who would be given a reward in paradise for being such, or they were killed as apostates who did not believe in the pure Islam of their killers.
Bottom line, there is no solution in the manner we are accustomed to. It is forever, we need to live with it, and treat it as an ongoing forest fire management issue. The sparks from these fires can jump the fire lines, even ones that have 3000 miles of ocean as the line.
The Afghanistan fire station, and many stations around the world designed to contain the fires of radical Islam, must be kept open. We are not there to engage in the fruitless, feel good, exercise of enhancing their culture We are there to keep fires from spreading from there to other areas. That is the reason we opened the fire station there in the first place. The Afghans have no suitable fire fighting force. If we leave, the fires will spread. It is a fire station we must keep open for years, if not our lifetime. This particular station happens to need several thousand firefighters as the forest is big.
Is closing the station as a reelection bid more important than the risk of the fire?
