Will Radical Islam be defeated?

Pt 2

‘Psychology of defeat’

Somehow, the West has lost its courage and has been intimidated by radical Islam into trying to appease it. It’s easy for this to happen – even in a battle-hardened nation like Israel.

Once the Jewish state set the standard for the entire world in how to deal with terrorism. But in recent years Israel’s leadership, along with a considerable segment of public opinion, have been seduced into pursuing appeasement as the road to peace.

Understandably, Israelis are tired and worn down after more than 50 years of fighting and dying just to defend their right to exist. But the problem is, the more Israel tries to display good will and make concessions for peace with the surrounding Arab states, the more terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians increase. Shouldn’t the opposite occur? Wouldn’t you think the more land giveaways and other concessions the Israelis make, the closer they would get to peace? No, the result is more terror and more pressure for more concessions.

Look at this simple and familiar syndrome on a personal level: If you cower before a bully in an attempt to placate him, all you accomplish is to make him more confident, more demanding, more contemptuous of you – in other words, your weakness literally transforms him into an even bigger and more dangerous bully.

Israel has made a string of major concessions – the most recent being the unprecedented, unilateral gift of Gaza to the Palestinians. Are the Palestinians happy as a result? Are they grateful to Israel? No, Gaza is becoming a Mecca for terrorists, a prime Middle East staging area for ever more terror attacks. Hamas and other terror groups believe they are seeing the fruits of their murderous attacks on Israelis – and are encouraged now to engage in more terrorism until they have “liberated” all of Israel, which they call “Palestine.”

Appeasement always encourages violence. If more violence is not immediately forthcoming in response to appeasement, it’s only a strategic delay. Israel should have learned this lesson from hard experience, such as when it made its disastrous, unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon, which resulted in widespread death among Lebanese Christians and the emboldening of the Hezbollah terror army.

The simple fact is, just as with Communists and Nazis, Islam-fascists regard goodwill gestures and concessions as nothing more than contemptible weakness and an irresistible invitation to take advantage. Hitler, shortly after the appeasing Chamberlain arrived home proudly displaying his worthless peace treaty, turned around and attacked Britain. In the same way, Islamic militants consider it just good strategy to lie and break treaties.

It seems somewhere along the line Ariel Sharon forgot what he wrote in his autobiography, “Warrior.” Reflecting on his years as a daring soldier fighting for his nation’s survival, Sharon wrote that, in dealing with Israel’s Arab attackers, he “came to view the objective not simply as retaliation, or even deterrence in the usual sense. It was to create in the Arabs a psychology of defeat, to beat them every time and to beat them so decisively that they would develop the conviction they could never win.”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Terrorism is intimidation. The terrorists’ end-game is to so frighten us that we not only cower in fear, but are converted – that is, our fear actually causes a change in our attitudes and beliefs regarding the terrorists and their cause.

The antidote to this intimidation factor is self-evident: Terrorists (intimidators) must be super-intimidated into submission. Sorry, but it’s the only language they speak. Anything else besides overwhelming, paralyzing, courage-destroying strength is perceived by them as weakness.

For example: In 1986, after America had suffered many casualties from a long string of terror activities fomented by Libyan leader Muammar al-Gadhafi, President Reagan bombed Libya. Called Operation El Dorado Canyon, the U.S. raids targeted specific sites, including Gadhafi’s house, and killed 60 people, including Gadhafi’s adopted four-year-old daughter.

As a result, most historians agree, Libya basically abandoned terrorism, with the notable exception of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, for which Libya formally accepted responsibility in 2003, paying each victim’s family $8 million.

OK, you might well say, we can agree you have to crush terrorism so badly it can’t get up. But what about efforts to influence the hearts and minds of the larger Muslim world – to nudge them toward moderation and away from radicalism and violence? Of course, such efforts are essential to prevailing long-term in the current clash of civilizations, a war that rages not just between Islam and the West, but between radical Islam and that religion’s more moderate, modern elements. The great majority of Muslims worldwide, even those somewhat sympathetic to militant Islam, might well be susceptible to moving toward a more moderate worldview.

But whatever educational outreach the West might employ to the Muslim world to champion the joys of freedom and self-determination, of tolerance and women’s rights and so on – and for that matter, whatever outreach moderate Muslims make to their Islamic brothers and sisters – they’re all useless without the accompanying demoralization and destruction of the violent jihad movement.

Let’s learn a lesson from America’s “Greatest Generation.”

One of the most controversial actions in U.S. military history was dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to break the will of the maniacal Japanese war effort. Now, I know there are persuasive arguments both for and against America having used the atomic bomb in this way. But whether or not you agree, in retrospect, with the bombings of those two Japanese cities, what is undeniable is that doing so accomplished more than end the war with Japan. It broke Japan. It confronted the “evil spirit” that had possessed that nation – with its crazed kamikaze suicide pilots and its emperor who was regarded as a god – and it violently exorcized it. Having neutralized the evil that had captivated Japan, America became that nation’s friend and helped massively reconstruct it, ultimately turning Japan into the civilized, successful, First World economic power it is today.

For that matter, after the Allies annihilated Hitler’s war machine and along with it the German will and capacity to attack its neighbors, the U.S. also helped a newly sober Germany to become a great Western power. Our enemies, Japan and Germany, became our friends.

Once again, I am not saying “Nuke Mecca” or anything of the sort. I am saying what Arial Sharon said years ago: We must create in the enemy “a psychology of defeat, to beat them every time and to beat them so decisively that they would develop the conviction they could never win.”

To be continued

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