[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: War of Ideology

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War of Ideology

July 24, 2004
 By DAVID BROOKS 



 

When foreign policy wonks go to bed, they dream of being X.
They dream of writing the all-encompassing, epoch-defining
essay, the way George F. Kennan did during the cold war
under the pseudonym X. 

Careers have been spent racing to be X. But in our own
time, the 9/11 commission has come closer than anybody
else. After spending 360 pages describing a widespread
intelligence failure, the commissioners step back in their
report and redefine the nature of our predicament. 

We're not in the middle of a war on terror, they note.
We're not facing an axis of evil. Instead, we are in the
midst of an ideological conflict. 

We are facing, the report notes, a loose confederation of
people who believe in a perverted stream of Islam that
stretches from Ibn Taimaya to Sayyid Qutb. Terrorism is
just the means they use to win converts to their cause. 

It seems like a small distinction - emphasizing ideology
instead of terror - but it makes all the difference,
because if you don't define your problem correctly, you
can't contemplate a strategy for victory. 

When you see that our enemies are primarily an intellectual
movement, not a terrorist army, you see why they are in no
hurry. With their extensive indoctrination infrastructure
of madrassas and mosques, they're still building strength,
laying the groundwork for decades of struggle. Their time
horizon can be totally different from our own. 

As an ideological movement rather than a national or
military one, they can play by different rules. There is no
territory they must protect. They never have to win a
battle but can instead profit in the realm of public
opinion from the glorious martyrdom entailed in their
defeats. We think the struggle is fought on the ground, but
they know the struggle is really fought on satellite TV,
and they are far more sophisticated than we are in using
it. 

The 9/11 commission report argues that we have to fight
this war on two fronts. We have to use intelligence,
military, financial and diplomatic capacities to fight Al
Qaeda. That's where most of the media attention is focused.
But the bigger fight is with a hostile belief system that
can't be reasoned with but can only be "destroyed or
utterly isolated." 

The commissioners don't say it, but the implication is
clear. We've had an investigation into our intelligence
failures; we now need a commission to analyze our
intellectual failures. Simply put, the unapologetic
defenders of America often lack the expertise they need.
And scholars who really know the Islamic world are often
blind to its pathologies. They are so obsessed with the
sins of the West, they are incapable of grappling with
threats to the West. 

We also need to mount our own ideological counteroffensive.
The commissioners recommend that the U.S. should be much
more critical of autocratic regimes, even friendly ones,
simply to demonstrate our principles. They suggest we set
up a fund to build secondary schools across Muslim states,
and admit many more students into our own. If you are a
philanthropist, here is how you can contribute: We need to
set up the sort of intellectual mobilization we had during
the cold war, with modern equivalents of the Congress for
Cultural Freedom, to give an international platform to
modernist Muslims and to introduce them to Western
intellectuals. 

Most of all, we need to see that the landscape of reality
is altered. In the past, we've fought ideological movements
that took control of states. Our foreign policy apparatus
is geared toward relations with states: negotiating with
states, confronting states. Now we are faced with a belief
system that is inimical to the state system, and aims at
theological rule and the restoration of the caliphate.
We'll need a new set of institutions to grapple with this
reality, and a new training method to understand people who
are uninterested in national self-interest, traditionally
defined. 

Last week I met with a leading military officer stationed
in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose observations dovetailed
remarkably with the 9/11 commissioners. He said the
experience of the last few years is misleading; only 10
percent of our efforts from now on will be military. The
rest will be ideological. He observed that we are in the
fight against Islamic extremism now where we were in the
fight against communism in 1880. 

We've got a long struggle ahead, but at least we're
beginning to understand it. 

E-mail: dabrooks at nytimes.com 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/opinion/24brooks.html?ex=1091688154&ei=1&en=df36ff32096bfc0a


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