I wonder if history will look at 9/11 or 3/11 as the more momentous occasion.
I want the War on Terror to be fought and to be won now, because the potential outcome if we do not do this is beyond terrible. I think there are two possibilities if we do not take the war as seriously as we should right now, and fight to win. The first is that eventually a massive terrorist strike will destroy a major Western or American city, and that in retalliation a nuclear exchange will wipe out much of the Muslim world in order to prevent such an attack from ever happening again. While technically a “victory” for the West, needless to say this will be the most horrific event in history. I have no desire to see billions of innocent people die in a completely avoidable man-made armageddon, and I have no desire to see the free world commit mass murder, as whatever freedom we preserve will be irrevocably tainted. The second possibility is that eventually a massive terrorist strike will destroy a major Western or American city, but self-preservation will be trumped by self-abnegation, and we will not respond with overwhelming force. Thus, as the barbarians once destroyed Roman civilization by slowly chipping away, civilization as we know it will slowly be chipped away, as we cower and appease our new fundamentalist masters to avoid incurring their wrath again. The caliphate will rise again, as pluralist democracy will slowly disappear.
That’s how I see this conflict playing out: two nightmare scenarios, avoidable if and only if we take the conflict seriously in the here and now and battle on all possible fronts against fundamentalist Islam, its bankers and armament suppliers, and its murderous, fascist practitioners.
Even more than 9/11, 3/11 was an attempt by the enemy to directly challenge the West. Three days before an election in a major Western democracy, they slaughtered 200 innocents for the crime of getting up in the morning and going to work in a country whose leadership was taking the War on Terror seriously. In their alleged claims of responsibility, al Qaeda has made it quite clear that the bombings are a direct response to Spain’s participation in the antifascist coalition in Iraq.
How will the Spanish people respond? The conventional wisdom instantly promulgated by the world news media–and, not coincidentally, the opposition Socialist party–is that they will angrily vote the government out of office for having the temerity to defy the wishes of the murderous vanguard of Islam. Oddly, this same “conventional wisdom” has it that if, as initially thought, the Basque separatist group ETA was responsible, this would actually work in the government’s favor, since they’d taken a hard line against the group. In other words, taking a hard line against al Qaeda and Islamic fascism would cost the government the election if those groups were behind the blasts, but taking a hard line against the ultraleft Basque separatists would win them the election if that group was responsible. Odd, isn’t it, that this contradictory CW dictates a government loss given the facts as we now know them. Why, it’s almost as if certain parties have an interest in seeing a certain outcome.
The point is, though, that the people of Spain may well be on the verge of sending the following message: “we’re sorry, nice Islamic terrorists, we should never have gotten involved in fighting against you and in toppling tyrants, we’re going to vote the leaders who got us in this mess out of office, we want to pull out, we want peace, peace now, peace unilaterally, please leave us alone, we’re sorry, we know it’s our fault for doing something you don’t want us to have done, you’re not such bad guys, we’re sure you’ll understand, please please don’t hurt us any more, we deserved it but we won’t deserve it anymore, we’re sorry, you win.” They’ll send the terrorists the message that they have the power, through the murder of innocents (although they’ll show they agree with the killers that, though innocent, they probably deserved it in some sense), the forces of fundamentalism have the power to bring down a government.
Where will it end after that? Where will the newly emboldened terrorists lead us? As I said, there are two possibilities. And I’m so, so afraid of both.