George Rebane

New SecDef Leon Panetta claims that we are close to “strategically defeating” Al Qaeda, and thereby close to winning the war on terror.  This gives the appropriate backing to the administration’s just launched policy of bringing home the troops from the Mideast, else no one would give a big yawn about whether or not we “defeat” Al Qaeda.

I believe this is all part and parcel of the BS we have been told about the “war on terror” for the last ten years.  As these pages have long declared, we are in a war with Islam, and Islam is using terror as the only weapon available to it today to resume its scripturally commissioned battle against the west.  It is a war between starkly different civilizations, and, as always, its name will be determined by the victors.  If we win, these will be known as the Islamic Wars; if they do, then history will record them as something like ‘The Final Jihad’.

To the extent that the western countries believe they are only waging a war ON terror, we are doomed to lose; just as if in 1941 the Allies would have characterized WW2 only as a war ON the mechanized division.  Bigger things were/are at stake than the means by which our enemy chooses to attack us.

In the current phase of the Islamic War, its militant factions can and are achieving their objectives by simply causing us to abandon our way of life in as many ways as possible – freedom of speech, freedom of movement, ideological polarization, state managed markets, restriction of capital flows, trade protectionism, enforced global redistribution of wealth, environmental restrictions, … .

Islam knows that it could never achieve its goal of Khilafa (the global Caliphate) were the west to remain dynamic, strong, and free.  So its phase one objective is to first hobble us, or more correctly, have us hobble ourselves.  And promoting our recent tendency to trade our liberties for the misguided pro quo of safety and security, is part of the plan that has worked exceedingly well given that the secular progressives of the west were already committed to realizing that bargain.

In planning and evaluating our strategy to counter Islam (of which there is no evidence),  I would ask ‘how can we tell if we are winning?’ – more formally, what is the measure of victory?

In fact, many of us who take a long view of the world through different lenses asked that question before the sun set on 11 September 2001.  In the days that followed, leaders in America and Europe assured their citizens that now the war on terror was real, and we would all need to make sacrifices to bring the war to a successful conclusion as quickly as possible.  Everyone felt that the terrorists could be defeated if we all worked selflessly together.  Well, almost everyone.

According to my lights, resumption of the 1683 Battle of Vienna had already started before the towers fell.  So I thought about how we could communicate the real danger to the uncritical hedonistic folks in Europe and the US.  It occurred to me that an overreaching government would take this ‘perfect storm’ to also over react by making us a compliant citizenry by imposing all kinds of mandates, restrictions, prohibitions, and regulations intended to constrain us from every direction and at every level, all in the name of ‘fighting terrorism’.

Moreover, since this was really a war between civilizations, it would go on forever as far as our government was concerned (think Orwell’s ‘1984’).  But its mis-characterization as a time-limited war on terror could be made plain to even the simplest mind if only s/he would be presented with a clear ‘thermometer’ that could be easily read by everyone.

So twelve days later, while smoke was still rising from the destruction at Ground Zero, Jo Ann and I wrote a letter to Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal.  Mr Gigot had recently been promoted to Editor of the newspaper’s editorial pages, a position that gave him an international voice in current affairs.  The 23sep01 letter contained our proposal for a ‘war on terror metric’ that we still believe is an effective tool for measuring our progress in that war, while exposing it to be quite something else of much greater scope and longer duration.  In part, that letter read –

 “… The main thrust of this letter is to recommend your undertaking a task of public trust that befits your new job.  One of the many costs of the declared war on terrorism is the planned escrowing of certain rights and privileges we Americans enjoyed before 11 September.  This has already begun under the banner that such necessary removal of freedoms will only be ‘for the duration’ and all will be restored when it’s over.

Twentieth century American political and social history indicates that the erosion of freedoms is more or less a ratcheting process – once the government takes, it has a hard time giving back.  While we all understand why our lives should and will be more restricted during this war on terrorism, looking forward to the day when, perhaps, a new normalcy is restored will help us all to bear the burdens in the interval.

The Journal is the ideal medium for tracking and documenting this progress of restrictions and its promised eventual conclusion.  The list (name, date, law/regulation, enforcement agency, …) of such new restrictions should be given a name  – e.g. ‘The Liberties Escrow Account’ – so that it can be understood and referenced in the public debate.  From time to time the Journal would then publish the current ‘Liberties Escrow’ highlighting additions and (hopefully) eventual deletions.  In the same vein the most recent government estimate of the ‘Restoration Day’ should be published along with its source (named politician or bureaucrat and announced date).  Keeping the Escrow and Restoration as issues in the public view and consciousness over the coming years will perhaps be the best measure of the real progress we will be making in the war and will stand in contrast to any politically motivated polemics.”

Receipt of this letter was never acknowledged by either Mr Gigot or the WSJ.  Nevertheless, the worldscape did turn out to be as we anticipated way back when, only worse.  The election of a Keynesian socialist federal government in the last years has accelerated the decline of freedom and personal liberties.  No one in the lamestream wants to touch the notion of Islamic Wars, nor support any concrete measure of which way our nation is slipping in its ‘war on terror’.  Leon Panetta’s happy dance about Al Qaeda is just the latest a mini-meal for minor minds.

In the meantime we Americans are ever more measured and monitored with technologies most people have never heard of.  It may be sooner than we think when Pogo’s “We have met the enemy …” will become the law of the land, and then protests will be attributed only to the disloyal and unpatriotic.  Desperate times will call for desperate measures.

Footnote:  The Mercatus Center of George Mason University (which we support) has released its state ratings of personal freedoms in the United States.  It is no surprise that progressive California rates 48 out of 50 (see also CABPRO Report).

Mapping the 2010 Census.  Check out the Hispanic avalanche.  As I mumbled somewhere before, maybe our Latino neighbors will be our only allies against the Islamic settlement of North America – ‘Who loves ya baby?’

Exit Question: Does anyone see any light at the end of this long tunnel, one that is not a train headed our way?

[update]  As a further indication of how our being monitored is increasing, the government increased its wiretaps of Americans by 34% in 2010.  Bush2 continues to be railed, Obama is ignored.  More here.  H/T to RR reader.

[16jul2011 update]  A letter from Norway (here) that reports on the state of its Muslim settlements is both revealing and corroborating.  Time for America’s progressives to apply another thick layer to their ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ blindfolds.  H/T to RR reader.