Winning the War on Terror

Bill Roggio places the Iraq conflict in its proper perspective and makes a case for considering Dubya's strategy of invading Iraq brilliant.

He starts with an observation that, counter to the conventional wisdom on the matter, the world is becoming a much more peaceful place.

January 1, 2007: You'd never know it from the headlines, but, overall, things quieted down in the past year. Fighting has died down considerably, or disappeared completely, in places like Nepal, Chechnya. Congo, Indonesia and Burundi. This continues a trend that began when the Cold War ended, and the Soviet Union no longer subsidized terrorist and rebel groups everywhere.

I have previously noted this in several posts. Here, here, here, and here. See also here. Roggio, however, extends the analysis to include the upsurge in recent years of Islamic radicalsm.

The War on Terror has become the War Against Islamic Radicalism. This movement has always been around, for Islam was born as an aggressive movement, that used violence and terror to expand. Past periods of conquest are regarded fondly by Moslems, and still called upon to inspire the faithful. The current enthusiasm for violence in the name of God has been building for over half a century. Historically, periods of Islamic radicalism flared up periodically in response to corrupt governments, as a vain attempt to impose a religious solution on some social or political problem. The current violence is international because of the availability of planet wide mass media (which needed a constant supply of headlines), and the fact that the Islamic world is awash in tyranny and economic backwardness. Islamic radicalism itself is incapable of mustering much military power, and the movement largely relies on terrorism to gain attention. Most of the victims are fellow Moslems, which is why the radicals eventually become so unpopular among their own people that they run out of new recruits and fade away. This is what is happening now. The American invasion of Iraq was a clever exploitation of this, forcing the Islamic radicals to fight in Iraq, where they killed many Moslems, especially women and children, thus causing the Islamic radicals to lose their popularity among Moslems.

He goes around the world's zones of conflict, country by country, noting the state of affairs in each and concludes:

International terrorism has created a international backlash and a war unlike any other. The only terrorist victories are in the media. On the ground, the terrorists are losing ground everywhere. Their last refuges are places like Somalia, a few of the Philippine islands, and tribal regions of Pakistan. They are being chased out of Somalia and the Philippines, while Pakistan is under constant pressure to do the same.

[Emphasis mine]

Read it here.

All the trends are pointing in the right direction. If Bush can successfully resist attempts to force American withdrawal from Iraq the results can be not just beneficial, but spectacularly so.