War, Art, and Iraq

Thursday, August 30th, 2007 10:42 pm by Neal

(Big high-five: HR)

“The Art of (the Long) War” by David J. Rusin, is a articulate presentation of the War on Islamic Fascism — the best we’ve read in a while. HR notes “this article reads like a Victor Davis Hanson essay.”

It’s that good.

Here’s a teaser. Read the whole thing here.

The West has been hampered by a festering and self-inflicted wound: a reluctance to identify its foe as the totalitarian, Islamic-based ideology that it is. Instead, our elites call forth a politically correct haze to shroud the jihadist elephant in the room. Media outlets invoke euphemisms about rocket-launching “militants” and car-torching “youths.” Middle East studies departments run interference for supremacist creeds. Politicians assure us that Islam has absolutely no relation to terror, despite the legions of terrorists proclaiming themselves to be soldiers of Allah. Even well-intentioned leaders add to this confusion by frequently labeling the struggle in terms of a tactic rather than the worldview it promotes.

What gives rise to this spectrum of denial? For those on the political extremes, it is a smoldering aversion to the Western system and a concomitant blindness to any evil that cannot be reflexively attributed to it. Other factions, particularly those to the left of center, exhibit a milder strain of this ailment in the guise of multiculturalism, a mindset that prohibits its subscribers — and seeks to prohibit anyone else — from criticizing non-Western faiths and traditions. Finally, all political persuasions are susceptible to wishful thinking: that people everywhere want basically the same things, that no enemy is irreconcilable, and that war is obsolete.

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