Islam needs [a] civil war. It has a violent minority that believes bad things: that it is O.K. to not only murder non-Muslims — “infidels,” who do not submit to Muslim authority — but to murder Muslims as well who will not accept the most rigid Muslim lifestyle and submit to rule by a Muslim caliphate.
What is really scary is that this violent, jihadist minority seems to enjoy the most “legitimacy” in the Muslim world today. Few political and religious leaders dare to speak out against them in public. Secular Arab leaders wink at these groups, telling them: “We’ll arrest if you do it to us, but if you leave us alone and do it elsewhere, no problem.” ...
A corrosive mind-set has taken hold since 9/11. It says that Arabs and Muslims are only objects, never responsible for anything in their world, and we are the only subjects, responsible for everything that happens in their world. We infantilize them.
Arab and Muslims are not just objects. They are subjects. They aspire to, are able to and must be challenged to take responsibility for their world. If we want a peaceful, tolerant region more than they do, they will hold our coats while we fight, and they will hold their tongues against their worst extremists.
He says two important things along with some blather about the Internet which detracts from the point but lets him be all cutting edge, I guess (hey, give me a break, I'm still basically praising his point here). One, too many people think that every foreign action is a reaction to what we do or don't do--everything is our fault. This has been a common left way of thinking that pre-dates 9/11. It's just that 9/11 gave these thinkers another actor to excuse.We need to understand that it usually isn't our fault when foreigners don't like us.
And second, we need to support moderate Moslems who will wipe out the jihadis and their way of thinking that spawns jihadis. Funny enough, that was a big success in the Iraq War as Marine General Conway put it:
The reason that we think it's so critically important that we do so is that it's the first battle of this extended war against extremism. Our philosophy has worked.
The idea from the very beginning that we needed to insert a wedge between the extremists and the moderates in the country showed itself, in 2006, when the Sunnis out in Anbar with us rose up and said, we've seen these guys; we know what they do; we're tired of the murder and intimidation and we're going to turn on them; with your help, we will slaughter them.
Their term, and that's what -- that's what started to turn that thing. And we should all find encouragement through that, because that has I think spread itself across other portions of that region. And in a less overt way, other nations are using their security forces to go after some of these same people.
I don't think that Friedman is either willing to credit the Iraq War for sparking the forced entry of more moderate Moslems into that civil war. Nor do I think he'd be comfortable with talking about "slaughtering" the jihadis. But those are the logical details of his position.
But he has a point. Yet even what we've achieved thus far in mobilizing many Moslems against the jihadis, it isn't enough. While the people are angry at jihadi bombings of Moslems and the rulers of Moslem states are willing to fight the jihadis who draw strength from Islamist ideology, neither is willing to take on that ideology directly. Ordinary Moslems have not been willing or able to confront the Islamist ideology when it could mean their own deaths. So we have a long way to go in helping Moslems win that civil war. But Friedman at least recognizes what we are trying to do.
Welcome to the Neocon Conspiracy, Mr. Friedman. Just shave the mustache. We have our standards.
Now excuse me. I have to go take a long, hot shower.
