Stomach and Motivation
Den Beste regularly tells us that wars are won by men and not machines, and I'm afraid he's right. On our side we have "a few good men" supported by lots of training and machines. On the other side we have a large pool of highly motivated opponents with opportunistic tactics trying to fight asymmetrical war.
I'll accept as given the claim that our soldiers are able and motivated; certainly those I've known are. Osama said we had no stomach for serious fighting, and Afghanistan did not prove him wrong. We didn't have to find out how deep our support for war was. I honestly don't know what fraction of our young men are willing to go fight, or how far the rest of us are willing to tighten our belts to pay for our expensive machines of war. How many high school boys do you know who'd sign up? I seem to run into a lot of Goths and fake anarchists, but that's due to sampling bias.
We know when can bring our advantages in technology and supply to bear we can win any given battle against Taliban-like enemies, and most of them against Iraq-like enemies. But we can't defend everywhere at once, especially against men eager to get at those 72 virgins. Most of these enemies are going to be too jumpy to fit into sleeper cells here, but with Americans and American interests around the world they'll have no trouble finding targets.
These Wahabite foot soldiers aren't going to be discouraged by a few years of setbacks. Their masters may get discouraged, especially if we can get at those masters now and then. But the ordinary fighters are going to be dedicated, and become extra-ordinary the way dedicated men can be.
What motivations do we bring forward to match the dedication of the Wahabites? They may supply it for us in the form of revenge for repeated massacres. Revenge is a dangerous motive, though, and it tends not to be precisely targeted. That's important.
Our war is currently with the volunteers of the Wahabite sect, and not with the rest of Islam. One of the rest of the Moslems in the world is most likely to think that remote battles are no skin off his nose, but if he has to get involved he'll support his fellow Muslim unless there's a pressing reason not to. Untargeted revenge reprisals will bring more of these semi-neutrals into covert opposition. Most of their support will be providing money and cover for the Wahabites, but a few will join.
We can try to fight under the banner of multi-culturalism, but that's a rather attenuated ideal. A man will fight for his life, his family, friends, tribe, or faith; but I don't recall any but mercenaries fighting for somebody else's faith.
How about secularism, in the sense of "the American Way" of being left alone in matters of religion? That motive has some traction. However, there's an implicit contradiction between "staying out of religion" and confronting a religion. If history is any guide, just as we regarded Germans and Japanese as suspect during WWII, we will regard all Wahabites and almost certainly all Moslems as suspects with allegiances incompatible with citizenship. I do not say this result is inappropriate. Insofar as classical Shari'a is integral to the faith, to that extent Islam is incompatible with citizenship in the Western sense. Notice that we have given up on complete secularism; it is now secularism for everybody except...
How about materialism, which seems to be the ideology we have on tap for export? "Go and die so you can get stuff" is a pretty stinking way to motivate a soldier...
How about Christianity? I strongly object to the government trying to manipulate Christianity--it guarantees the corruption of both church and state. A grass-roots Crusade is not impossible, but it seems a bit unlikely. Most denominations have been on the peaceful and pietist side anyway, and if we can't get a firm consensus on a simple life and death issue like the morality of abortion, I doubt we'll get a firm consensus on waging a crusade. In any case, the original Crusades had rather restricted aims, and conversion of the enemy wasn't high on the list. Forced conversions of Wahabites would be futile, and we all know it.
Goal
Our main objective is pretty simple: We want them to stop attacking us.
If we can smash the masters of the Wahabite soldiers and cut off their supplies and funding, we can slow down the attacks, and maybe stop them for a while.
Unfortunately the Wahabite ideology serves as a weapon perpetually aimed at us. We have a range of ways of dealing with this, some immoral and some impossible.
We can try to exterminate Wahabism the way the Assassins were exterminated. This requires a world-wide war with intervention in many countries, and lots of executions. I think we have to rank this one as both impossible and immoral.
We can try to corrupt/seduce the Wahabites with Western ideas and commercialism, or at least a lot of Islam, drying up the pool of converts to Wahabism. This is part of Den Beste's approach. I don't believe it can work. Our offering can only tantalize. Some people will have the means to enjoy our goods or our freedoms, but most won't, and, angrier because of what they can't have, will be more vehement in rejecting them. In addition, our civil ideas and materialism cannot provide the personal integration that a religion can. Our highly individual-based philosophies are deficient in understanding corporate (tribal) relationships and responsibilities, and this hasn't gone unnoticed in the MidEast.
We can try to change the nature of Islamic practice. No, I haven't gone nuts; it is possible, if not always desirable.
For example, we could capture Mecca and Medina, open up the Great Mosque and expose and destroy and disperse the Kaaba. In theory this shouldn't matter, since God is everywhere, and this is merely a special shrine, but the rituals around Mecca have been an integral part of the religion, and the direction of prayer and the pilgrimage are pillars of Islam. Moslems would be in somewhat the same situation as the Jews were after the Romans destroyed their temple. The Jews had to revise the practice of their religion to fit the new situation--and so would the Moslems.
Unfortunately, they would also never forgive us and we'd be looking at perpetual war--not quite our aim.
Islam is very concerned with the forms of religion and obedience: with law. One rather odd way this plays out is that although Moslems are deeply offended to be called Mohammedans, if you insult God they'll sneer at you, but if you insult Mohammed they'll kill you. So which do they hold more sacred?
The foundations of Islamic law were fixed from three sources: the Koran, the Hadith, and the traditions. As I understand it (I am not a historian), the Koran is the most important whenever it speaks to a subject, with later pronouncements taking precedence over earlier ones if they contradict each other. Since the Koran doesn't address all the issues of society, collections of largely bogus quotations of Mohammed and descriptions of his actions were searched for guidance. (The business of trying to sift out the "unreliable" {bogus} from the true {fairly reliable} quotations consumed a lot of effort. Unfortunately even a lot of the sayings known to be "unreliable" seem to have been hallowed by their antiquity and are quoted approvingly.) The third source of clues the scholars used was the traditions of the tribes of Arabia, on the grounds that if God didn't think them good Mohammed would have objected.
With these three sources to draw on the scholars created the Shari'a body of laws on how to live. The Sunni scholars declared the job finished, and only interpretations have been allowed since. The Shiites are more willing to innovate. Notice the lack of any reference to the sayings of other recognized prophets, including David, Moses, Jesus, etc. The official line is that the Jews and Christians deliberately rewrote their scriptures to avoid reference to Mohammed; but it is hard to see how this makes them less reliable than the Hadith.
This suggests an approach to reshaping Islam--broadcast the scriptures of the Jews and Christians, and the Koran, but leaving out the Hadith, as part of regular VOA or other outreach programs. We cannot ourselves reopen the debate on Shari'a, but after some years there will be some Moslems dis-satisfied with Shari'a and educated about the full range of scriptures who would be willing to try. Whether there'd be enough support isn't predictable, but if we can manage to keep the option quietly open there is a chance.
Our hope would be for a shift in the center of gravity of Shari'a, and of Islam, from the rigid and punitive system with an emphasis on rules and war towards one with more personal piety and aid. This would not change the Wahabites, but would reduce their appeal and the number of Moslems feeding into it would decline. Such a change might spark inter-Muslim wars, but at least they wouldn't be fighting us, until the conservative backlash if that faction won.
We can also encourage American Moslems to develop a rigorous school of thought that separates the demand for Shari'a from the fundamentals of Islam. If this is successful, then adherents to this fifth school of Islam could live peacefully in DarAlHarb using the pillars of Islam and a "personal" rather than universal obedience to Shari'a.
We can try to keep the lid on the Wahabites until they begin to fight each other. This is risky. Some groups have splintered during a struggle, but others only while quarreling for the spoils of victory. Other groups (the Assassins, for instance) stayed together.
Strategies
Clearly we have to cut off the money supply for the Wahabite missionaries. This is tricky, since directly invading Saudi Arabia is almost certainly going to rouse violent opposition around the world. We need proxies, and we can't rely on native Saudis.
We have to isolate or eliminate Wahabite outposts in this country. The most urgent place to clean up is the prisons, as Charles Colson pointed out, where they can and have easily recruited foot soldiers for sabotage and terrorism. To be continued later
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