The War Against Islam

Another brilliant piece by Sultan Knish. He explains that just fighting militarily against terrorism is a fruitless effort without also fighting the islamic ideology which motivates it. Unfortunately in the multicultural suicidal atmosphere of the west, I do not expect this strategy to be utilized. Our emasculated politicians won't even acknowledge we are at war with islam. They will not utter the word "terrorist", let alone "islamic terrorism".

The Future of the War on Terror, is the War on Islam
George Will's column calling on the US to withdraw forces from Afghanistan and rely on smart strikes using drones, cruise missiles and special forces insertions, reopens a now old debate about the tactics we should be using in the War on Terror. Will's approach would revert the US back to before the days of the Bush Administration when smart strikes were used for a series of attacks that accomplished absolutely nothing. It might be possible to use "offshore" bombing to end the Taliban, but it would not involve smart and limited attacks, but dumb and massive ones that would kill a sizable portion of Afghanistan's non-urban tribal population. That is something not even the Soviet Union was fully prepared to commit to. It is not likely that any US administration would.


While drone strikes can be quite useful within the context of a larger military operation, without that context they're nothing more than a game of "Whack a Mole", while the mole works to execute a large terrorist operation against you. You might take out a few terrorists, if you're lucky and manage to get good intel out of enemy territory, but sooner or later the terrorists will execute a 9/11 or a 7/7 on your own soil. The terrorists lose 3 or 4 people, you lose hundreds or thousands of people.

Drones and precision strikes have not fundamentally altered the nature of war. They allow the US to extend its reach, but that godlike illusion cannot actually accomplish anything useful without being able to know the location of your targets. And having eyes in the sky is nowhere near as good as having boots on the ground. Having flying sniper rifles in the sky will not end or even seriously damage the terrorist threat. The Clinton Administration, which was roughly three times as energized about fighting terrorism as the current administration is, demonstrated that.

Smart strikes are a military variation on smart power. What they have in common is the smug illusion that people sitting in D.C. office buildings can control events thousands of miles away without putting anyone or anything at risk. And neither of them substitute for the blunt ugly reality of an occupation force on the ground.

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