While reading the op-ed pages in today’s WaPo, I came across a piece by David Ignatius who gives us some insight into a new book about the war on terror.
Looking at the gruesome images of beheadings and suicide bombings in Iraq, it’s easy to think that the Islamic holy warriors are winning. But a new book by a distinguished French Arabist named Gilles Kepel argues the opposite case. For all the mayhem the jihadists have caused, he contends, their movement is failing.
He goes on to make a number of specific points to back up this assertion.
“The principal goal of terrorism — to seize power in Muslim countries through mobilization of populations galvanized by jihad’s sheer audacity — has not been realized,” Kepel writes. In fact, bin Laden’s followers are losing ground: The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has been toppled; the fence-sitting semi-Islamist regime in Saudi Arabia has taken sides more strongly with the West; Islamists in Sudan and Libya are in retreat; and the plight of the Palestinians has never been more dire. And Baghdad, the traditional seat of the Muslim caliphs, is under foreign occupation. Not what you would call a successful jihad.
I agree.
A perfect example of how the jihadists’ efforts have backfired, argues Kepel, was last month’s kidnapping of two French journalists in Iraq. The kidnappers announced that they would release their hostages only if the French government reversed its new policy banning Muslim women from wearing headscarves in French public schools. “They imagined that they would mobilize Muslims with this demand, but French Muslims were aghast and denounced the kidnappers,” Kepel explained to a Washington audience. He noted that French Muslims took to the streets to protest against the kidnappers and to proclaim their French citizenship.
That is very true. I usually don’t have much nice to say about the French, but I applaud their resolve on that issue.
Perhaps it takes an outsider — a Frenchman, even — to help Americans see the war on terrorism in perspective. Saturated in terrorism alerts and images of violence from Iraq, Americans may miss the essential fact that the terrorists are losing. And because we see this as a war against America, rather than one within Islam, we may miss the real dynamics.
Of course, if you listen to John Kerry, he will tell you the exact opposite. Kerry even knows more about what’s happening on the ground in Iraq than Allawi. You do know he’s just a Bush “puppet” don’t you?
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