| Submit your comments on this article |
| International |
| Michael Ledeen: Defeating Islamofascism |
| 2003-10-17 |
| National Review Online; exerpted from a longer piece. . . .we know enough about fascism’s first wave [in Italy and Germany in the ’20s and ’30s] to recognize it today among the terrorists we are currently fighting. Two of the most important terrorist leaders are classic examples of the genre: Osama bin Laden and the Ayatollah Khomeini. Osama’s speeches and sermons are (were?) remarkably short, melodramatic, and invariably couched in the language of war (jihad). Just as fascist heroes were often men who had fallen in battle, for Osama and his ilk the greatest act for a Muslim warrior is sacrifice, and Khomeini too extolled martyrs over all others, even creating a fountain in central Tehran from which red waters bubbled. Khomeini’s speeches were typically dramatic, and the exchanges between him — the Supreme Leader, a typically fascist construct — and the faithful were as carefully programmed as any between Mussolini and the Roman in Piazza Venezia. In one important respect, the current jihad is more like the German variation: The notion that all believers are part of a greater whole, transcending national boundaries. Hitler had his Reich, Osama wants his Caliphate, and Khomeini foresaw a global Islamic state in which all believers would be brought together in an irresistible unity. I think I was the first to call Khomeini a clerical fascist, back in the days when one could still use "fascism" with a certain degree of specificity rather than as a pure epithet. That analysis has stood up for a quarter century, and I think also helps define the magnitude of our task. Fascism was not driven from power by internal discontent, or by freedom fighters within the fascist domain. There was precious little in the way of internal resistance, whether in Germany or Italy. That’s because the fantasy ideology had taken hold of the population. Resistance in both of fascism’s core states only emerged once the regimes were seen to be losing in war. Ditto for the global appeal of fascism: So long as Mussolini’s trains ran on time, and both the Third Reich and the Italian fascist empire were expanding, their popularity increased. But once the regimes were revealed to be vulnerable, once the leaders were seen to be as corrupt and as fallible as any others, the tide began to turn. In Iran, resistance ironically grew out of war, the long and bloody conflict with Iraq. With so many dead young men, and the visible presence of enormous numbers of handicapped and mutilated veterans, the appeal of Khomeini’s fascism began to wane. A similar phenomenon is under way following the humiliating defeat of Saddam, and it cannot be accidental that within months of the liberation of Iraq, there are pro-freedom demonstrations in the heartland of the Wahhabi fanatics, Saudi Arabia. In like manner, the unforeseen divisions within the Palestinian ranks flow directly from the stunning American victory. Remember that, in good fascist style, the jihadists proclaimed that only they were capable of the real military virtues. The West could only bomb from a distance, not triumph in hand-to-hand combat. But in Iraq, tens of thousands of Iraqis and foreign terrorists were cut down man to man. American fighters were superior, and that reality undermined the entire jihadist vision. The clerical fascists of the Middle East are now vulnerable, terribly vulnerable, and they know it. That is why they are seeking at all costs to distract us from the war against terror, which surely means above all the liberation of Iran. Whether you call it a roadmap or Saudi peace plan, it is a snare, a distraction from the main order of business, the defeat of the latest version of fascism and the spread of freedom to the region. Amazingly, our unschooled president has intuitively understood this, while many of his supposedly smarter colleagues have not. He knows, as any good student of fascism learned half a century ago, that fascism has to be defeated on the battlefield from which it emerged. We have shown our ability to do it militarily. We need now press our advantage and drive the stake of freedom through the hearts of the fascist tyrants. Faster, please. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #1 To quote the famous orator Foghorn Leghorn: "Hold on to your lugnuts, it's tiiiiiiime for an overhaul!" Amen, Michael. |
| Posted by: .com 2003-10-17 1:50:08 PM |