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AreWeReady?
(written on 22 August 2004)
John (Jia Liang) Han
During the congressional hearing on the 9/11 commission report, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said “The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not at war with them.” Almost 3 years have passed, I am not sure even now the general public is mentally ready for the War on Terror. More specifically, many in the US have questions such as: Is Iraq War justified? What should the US policies toward Iraq, Middle East, and Muslim states be? Who are the friends and allies on the War on Terror? From reports and comments from Europe, many Europeans are even less informed or ill prepared for the War on Terror.
In my opinion, the War on Terror is really World War 4 and the Cold War was the World War 3. Just as the Cold War was different from previous world wars, the War on Terror is quite different from all previous wars. If anything, the Vietnam War taught us that military victories in the field guarantee neither strategic advantages nor the final victory. Likewise, we must win the War on Terror on the moral ground and in the home front. Every citizen should understand the meanings and implications of the War on Terror. Every one should also know clearly his/her duty in this war. We should be aware that this war can be long, messy, and sometimes we have to face very difficult decisions. Below I will discuss some important topics of this war. They often demand extensive research and detailed analysis. I only outline them briefly here and plan to address them in details later.
Since this war involves religious issues, it is important to understand the spiritual aspects of this war. First, we need to understand Islam from the biblical viewpoint. In Mathew 13:24-29, Jesus told us the parable of weeds. The good seed is the Word of God. To Jews, the Word of God is the Old Testament while to Christians the Word of God is the Old Testament and New Testament combined. Since Muslims use a book other than the Bible, to a Christian or Jew, Islam is not a religion from God. Period. I remember that several months ago while during a leisure hiking, I met a leader from an Anglican Church. He seemed religious but had serious misunderstanding of some basic Christian doctrines. For example, he thought that churches should be open to homosexuals. Finally, he said something about Muhammad being a prophet. I immediately told him that this is heretic. In fact, anyone who claims that Muhammad is a prophet from God contradicts the Bible. (1) Deuteronomy 14, especially 1-5. Although God reveals Himself several different names in the Bible, Allah is not one of them. (2) Muhammad is not a Jew. (3) Deuteronomy 18:20-22. There is a web site with good information on biblical prophets http://www.truthnet.org/. Every Christian should be clear that the Trinity, that is God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is the central doctrine of Christian faith. The Muslim faith claims that Jesus is merely a prophet and furthermore Muhammad is greater than Jesus. It is no wonder that the central theme of many Muslim web sites strongly attack the divinity of Jesus. There are many complicated religious issues related to the War on Terror. I plan to discuss them in lengths later.
One important point Jesus taught us in the parable of weeds is that we cannot and should not eradicate the weeds. Think about it. Many religions, including some self-claimed Christians such as Mormons, use sacred book(s) other than the Bible. The US constitution guarantees the freedom of religion. The condition of this freedom is that they obey the US laws. To understand more the War on Terror, I would like to refer to two books by Bernard Lewis “What Went Wrong?” and “The Crisis of Islam”. Professor Emeritus Lewis is the Dean on the history of the Middle East and Islam. In “Crisis of Islam”, Lewis explained that terrorists like al Qaida represented only a small fraction of radical Islamists and they serious distorted Koran. Unfortunately, I have not heard well-known Muslims who articulated these points publicly before. Another important point in the same book is that Islamic fundamentalism is a misnomer. This word is borrowed from fundamental Christianity, which means back to the basics of the Bible. In a sense, Reformation is a form of fundamentalism. A correct name for fundamental Islamism should be radical Islamism or militant Islamism. The War on Terror is not against Islam. The majority of Muslims are peace-loving people. Even for radical Muslims, as long as they obey the laws and do not resort to violence, their peaceful coexistence with peoples of other faiths is possible. Like during the Cold War, the Communist Party of the US was legal in the US.
Now we turn to the moral and geopolitical aspects of this war. It is not that we want this war or we started this war. The war was forced upon us. Al Qaida declared war on us as early as early 1990s. Indeed, the first bombing of the World Trade Center occurred in 1993. There have been numerous terrorist attacks against the US since then. The previous Clinton administration and the Bush administration prior to 9/11 did not regard this threat as high as they should. After 9/11, we are officially in the war whether we want it or not. Since now we are in the war, let us review the situation now.
The global War on Terror did not started in the US. One of the good books on militant Islamism is “God Has Ninety-Nine Names" by Judith Miller, 1997. It provided a snapshot of militant Islamists in 10 countries in the Middle East. Modern Militant Islam is related to the Muslim Brotherhood started in Egypt in 1928. In fact, not all Muslims in Muslim Brotherhood were radical militants. The true ideological father of modern Islamic militancy is Sayyid Qutb. His call for arms was published in 1964 while he was in prison. Many people in the Middle East have lived under terrorism for decades. The US became the war front since early 1990s.
One may wonder why the War on Terror had not involved the US earlier. Some pointed out the US policy toward Palestine and Israel. This is what some Islamists and liberals who regard political correctness as their basic principle would like you to believe. The matter of fact is the US Middle East policy has long, complicated history, some good and some bad. Anyone familiar with the ideology of militant Islamism such as Qutb knows that the first thing they wanted to do is toward rulers of Muslim countries. Although they despised the US and other predominately Christian countries, the US was not their main target, initially anyway. The turning point was the Gulf War, i.e., the First Iraq War. It is not that Al Qaida had any alliance or sympathy toward Saddam Hussein. In their eye, Saddam is not a good Muslim and was ruthless toward their militant Muslim brothers. What incensed Bin Ladin and other Al Qaida leaders was that the Saudi Kingdom allowed the US to attack Iraq and further allowed US troupes in Saudi soil. To them, this desecrates the holy land of Islam. But anyone with a clear mind knows that the Gulf War was due to Iraq’s aggression to Kuwait. Given the opportunity, Saddam will take Saudi as well. (He never hides his desire to be the modern ruler to unite the Arab world by force if necessary). The US had troupes in Saudi because of the threat by Saddam Hussein. These extremists like Al Qaida are not rational. Al Qaida did not regard the US its top enemy until it merged around 1995 with a large group from Egypt Muslim Brotherhood, who fled from Egypt because some success of the Egyptian Government in rooting out militant Islamists.
In view of this, does anyone still question whether or not the Iraq War is justified? The War on Terror actually started a lot earlier in the Middle East countries (at least from 1950s). The US started getting involved through the first Iraq War in 1990-1. In the June 28 issue of Time, there is an interview with Bill Clinton. His assessment on the Iraq War and terrorism is largely objective. In his view, the Iraq War was inevitable. The only disagreement he has with President Bush’s policy was the timing and broadness of the alliance. We know that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons and used them toward his own people and in the Iran-Iraq War. His quest of nuclear weapons is also well known. If anything, a direct cause of the Iraq War was our intelligence failure. Our intelligence had failed to discover that Iraq WMD programs were in shambles and the CIA trusted Iraq dissidents too much. However, these are institution failures not by any US administration alone.
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