OpinionJournal - Democracy and the Enemies of Freedom - Even after Saddam's capture, the forces of tyranny remain strong
Bernard Lewis writes about the War on Terror in today's Opinion Journal.
One thing jumped out at me in the beginning. Lewis describes the two types of terrorist we face in Iraq - one, the terrorist fighting for and often supported by a local government for regional goals, and the other, the more internationalist jihadi. The former may be expected to be appeased should we withdraw from the region, while the latter would be emboldened.
Lewis:
...The sponsors and organizers of terrorism are of two kinds, with very different purposes, even though they can and frequently do cooperate. One of the two is local or regional, and consists of survivors of the former Iraqi regime, encouraged and supported by the governments of other countries in the region that feel endangered by what might happen in Iraq. The aim of these groups is to protect--or, in the case of Iraq, restore--the tyrannies under which these countries have lived so long. If, as many urge, the Americans decide to abandon this costly and troublesome operation and simply go home, this might just possibly be enough to satisfy the local sponsors of terror. Some of them might even offer the resumption of what passes for friendly relations.
But there are others who would see the eviction of the Americans from Afghanistan and Iraq not as the end but as the beginning--as a victory not in a war but in a battle, one step in a longer and wider war that must be pursued until the final and global victory...
This is a useful distinction, obvious, but seemingly too often overlooked by those debating the nature of the enemy we face, as our domestic political forces argue past each other.
The rest of the piece is the usual Lewis mantra of hope for the compatability of Islam and a Free Society and amounts to another reminder in the vein of "what we're fighting for..." Worth reading as Lewis always is.
Even after the arrest of Saddam Hussein this week, the forces of tyranny and terror remain very strong and the outcome is still far from certain. But as the struggle rages and intensifies, certain things that were previously obscure are becoming clear. The war against terror and the quest for freedom are inextricably linked, and neither can succeed without the other. The struggle is no longer limited to one or two countries, as some Westerners still manage to believe. It has acquired first a regional and then a global dimension, with profound consequences for all of us.
If freedom fails and terror triumphs, the peoples of Islam will be the first and greatest victims. They will not be alone, and many others will suffer with them.
