- 20 Nov 2003 10:51
#46682
20 November 2003
GREG SHERIDAN
Don't fear the fanatics just fight them
November 20, 2003
You have to admire Australians' sangfroid. This week the al-Qa'ida-affiliated terrorist group that blew up two synagogues in Istanbul said it was coming after us.
It could hardly have been more explicit. Australia was told: "You will see the cars of death with your own eyes in the capital of tyranny." Yet, with the rugby on, the story was mostly treated as a big yawn.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, on the other hand, got the tone and the substance just right in his response: "We treat these people with scorn and contempt ... I think these fanatical Islamic terrorists know only too well that there are some countries with the courage and determination to take them on and defeat them ... It'll take a long time. It'll be hard work . . . (But) Australia is a tough country, we're not going to be cowed by these sorts of people."
Downer's words are valuable because they embody the central truth of our time, that this war on terrorism is going to be long, tough and bloody.
Al-Qa'ida and its offshoots have said often that Australians are a prime target. I think we can take them at their word. Our citizens are going to be killed and maimed again by these murderous fanatics. That is as certain as anything can be.
Let me tell you a story that illustrates part of what we're up against. One of the groups that earlier this year threatened explicitly to kill Australians was the Islamic Defenders Front in Indonesia.
Some time before they issued that threat, I went to see the IDF's leader in Jakarta. He welcomed me with great courtesy and personal kindness even as his message was that all infidels, most assuredly including Australians, should leave Indonesia immediately.
The two sides of his personality – courtesy in personal relations but extremist violence as policy – represented the war in his mind between his Indonesian culture, which traditionally is welcoming of strangers, and the globalised version of Islamist ideology being pumped into him from the Middle East.
And worst of all, in his Jakarta compound a kindergarten of innocent children were chanting their instructions. He was teaching them, he told me, to hate America and the West.
This is one reason why it is right to describe Iraq as the front line in the war on terror. For the war on terror will not be won until its root causes are addressed. And its root causes are the failed regimes of the Middle East, the alienation they breed in their own populations, and the hatred and madness-filled ideology they spread around the world.
Of course, al-Qa'ida-style extremism represents only a tiny minority of Muslims, most of whom are law-abiding citizens who reject violence and terrorism as strongly as anyone, and who are indeed often its most numerous victims.
But the extreme paranoia of the Middle East, the mad conspiracy theories, the desire to blame the West for the failure of the Arab world to modernise successfully, all create an environment in which the next step, to terrorist indoctrination, is easy to take.
Still, it's wrong to see al-Qa'ida and similar movements as an atavistic reversion to feudal-style Islam. Muslims in classical periods did not live like the Taliban. They welcomed foreigners and non-Muslims to their lands. Certainly in Muslim South-East Asia men and women were not segregated but worked the fields together.
Islamic fundamentalism is a modernist movement and al-Qa'ida represents its most radical and utopian version. I use the word utopia here not to suggest that al-Qa'ida believes it can create paradise on earth, but it does believe that if its program were rigidly and comprehensively implemented, mankind would be living perfectly in accord with its true nature. In other words, in al-Qa'ida's bizarre view of life, true justice would be attained.
If you want to predict how fundamentalist Islamists will behave, therefore, it is less instructive to look at the history of Islam than it is to look at the other great radical, utopian movements of the last century, namely communism and Nazism.
And here's the rub. The Communist Manifesto was written by Marx and Engels in 1848. It wasn't until nearly a century and a half later, in 1989, that, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, communism was defeated. And there are still nominally communist governments in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba.
Communism, being a wholly materialist ideology, was much easier to falsify than a religious ideology. But the communist mind operated in a closed intellectual system. For the convinced communist, outside contrary evidence made no difference. It was all explained away by communist theory.
The same is true today of the convinced fundamentalist Islamist extremist.
There is no chance of a decisive defeat of Islamic fundamentalism until the Middle East is doing much better and Middle East patronage – financial and ideological – for terrorism is finished. And the only plan anybody has for the reform of the Middle East begins with building something better in Iraq.
That is why the US and its allies must stay the course in Iraq. The greatest weakness of the Bush administration and the Howard Government is an unwillingness to demand of their populations the commitment and sacrifice this campaign is going to need. The US is spending just $1billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan this year. Australia has decided not to get involved in the nitty-gritty of peacekeeping in Iraq.
You cannot fight a war cheaply, or without sacrifice, and you cannot go home when the going gets tough. Because the enemy will surely seek you out at home.
Greg Sheridan's book, Cities of the Hot Zone, a Southeast Asian Adventure, is published by Allen & Unwin.
GREG SHERIDAN
Don't fear the fanatics just fight them
November 20, 2003
You have to admire Australians' sangfroid. This week the al-Qa'ida-affiliated terrorist group that blew up two synagogues in Istanbul said it was coming after us.
It could hardly have been more explicit. Australia was told: "You will see the cars of death with your own eyes in the capital of tyranny." Yet, with the rugby on, the story was mostly treated as a big yawn.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, on the other hand, got the tone and the substance just right in his response: "We treat these people with scorn and contempt ... I think these fanatical Islamic terrorists know only too well that there are some countries with the courage and determination to take them on and defeat them ... It'll take a long time. It'll be hard work . . . (But) Australia is a tough country, we're not going to be cowed by these sorts of people."
Downer's words are valuable because they embody the central truth of our time, that this war on terrorism is going to be long, tough and bloody.
Al-Qa'ida and its offshoots have said often that Australians are a prime target. I think we can take them at their word. Our citizens are going to be killed and maimed again by these murderous fanatics. That is as certain as anything can be.
Let me tell you a story that illustrates part of what we're up against. One of the groups that earlier this year threatened explicitly to kill Australians was the Islamic Defenders Front in Indonesia.
Some time before they issued that threat, I went to see the IDF's leader in Jakarta. He welcomed me with great courtesy and personal kindness even as his message was that all infidels, most assuredly including Australians, should leave Indonesia immediately.
The two sides of his personality – courtesy in personal relations but extremist violence as policy – represented the war in his mind between his Indonesian culture, which traditionally is welcoming of strangers, and the globalised version of Islamist ideology being pumped into him from the Middle East.
And worst of all, in his Jakarta compound a kindergarten of innocent children were chanting their instructions. He was teaching them, he told me, to hate America and the West.
This is one reason why it is right to describe Iraq as the front line in the war on terror. For the war on terror will not be won until its root causes are addressed. And its root causes are the failed regimes of the Middle East, the alienation they breed in their own populations, and the hatred and madness-filled ideology they spread around the world.
Of course, al-Qa'ida-style extremism represents only a tiny minority of Muslims, most of whom are law-abiding citizens who reject violence and terrorism as strongly as anyone, and who are indeed often its most numerous victims.
But the extreme paranoia of the Middle East, the mad conspiracy theories, the desire to blame the West for the failure of the Arab world to modernise successfully, all create an environment in which the next step, to terrorist indoctrination, is easy to take.
Still, it's wrong to see al-Qa'ida and similar movements as an atavistic reversion to feudal-style Islam. Muslims in classical periods did not live like the Taliban. They welcomed foreigners and non-Muslims to their lands. Certainly in Muslim South-East Asia men and women were not segregated but worked the fields together.
Islamic fundamentalism is a modernist movement and al-Qa'ida represents its most radical and utopian version. I use the word utopia here not to suggest that al-Qa'ida believes it can create paradise on earth, but it does believe that if its program were rigidly and comprehensively implemented, mankind would be living perfectly in accord with its true nature. In other words, in al-Qa'ida's bizarre view of life, true justice would be attained.
If you want to predict how fundamentalist Islamists will behave, therefore, it is less instructive to look at the history of Islam than it is to look at the other great radical, utopian movements of the last century, namely communism and Nazism.
And here's the rub. The Communist Manifesto was written by Marx and Engels in 1848. It wasn't until nearly a century and a half later, in 1989, that, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, communism was defeated. And there are still nominally communist governments in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba.
Communism, being a wholly materialist ideology, was much easier to falsify than a religious ideology. But the communist mind operated in a closed intellectual system. For the convinced communist, outside contrary evidence made no difference. It was all explained away by communist theory.
The same is true today of the convinced fundamentalist Islamist extremist.
There is no chance of a decisive defeat of Islamic fundamentalism until the Middle East is doing much better and Middle East patronage – financial and ideological – for terrorism is finished. And the only plan anybody has for the reform of the Middle East begins with building something better in Iraq.
That is why the US and its allies must stay the course in Iraq. The greatest weakness of the Bush administration and the Howard Government is an unwillingness to demand of their populations the commitment and sacrifice this campaign is going to need. The US is spending just $1billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan this year. Australia has decided not to get involved in the nitty-gritty of peacekeeping in Iraq.
You cannot fight a war cheaply, or without sacrifice, and you cannot go home when the going gets tough. Because the enemy will surely seek you out at home.
Greg Sheridan's book, Cities of the Hot Zone, a Southeast Asian Adventure, is published by Allen & Unwin.
- By FiveofSwords
- By litwin