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Dr. Walid Phares
Obama's Withdrawal from the War with the Jihadists,
Is Dangerous
August 14, 2009
This commentary is in response and conjunction
to a report by Anthony Kimery titled, "Rejection
of ‘Jihadist,’ ‘War on Terrorism’ Terms Draws Fire, Debate,"
as published in HSToday, Homeland Security Insight & Analysis.
Commenting on the Administration's report on dropping the use of words
such as War on Terror and Jihad, the director of the Future of Terrorism
Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the author of,
Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against the West, and The
War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracy, told HS Today: "as we read
[Brennan’s speech], we realize that the administration is going backward
in understanding the threat and explaining it to the public.
Going Backward
"They say the doctrine is ‘to safeguard the American people from the
transnational challenge that poses one of the greatest threats to our
national security -- the scourge of violent extremists who would use
terrorism to slaughter Americans abroad and at home.’ What does that
mean?
Nothing. It is as if they speak in abstract. Which ‘transnational
challenge is posing the greatest threat to US national security?’ It is
the global jihadist threat, with its two networks, the Salafists and the
Khomeinists, not the Nazis, the Soviet Communists or militaristic
regimes. Why is the Obama administration regressing into a level way
below what most educated Americans understand?”
Wishful Thinking Can't Change Ideologies
Phares said "the administration criticizes the narrative of its
predecessor and we do as well, but instead they propose something weaker
and in some aspects dangerous to US national security. After eight years
of confrontation with a world web of jihadists, both Salafists and
Khomeinists, on two major battlefields in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and
in various regions of the world such as Pakistan, Somalia, Indonesia,
the Levant, the Maghreb, and as the threat penetrates the West with
homegrown cells, the administration's doctrine on the threat
understanding is entirely disconnected from reality.
"In short, " Phares said, "the new doctrine asserts that the US is no
longer engaged in a ‘war on terrorism.’ They disengage from the conflict
as if is in a wishful, thinking that they can redesign world realities
in different colors and names. As if one party in a conflict can decide
on the ideology and the strategies of the foe.”
We Are at War, Words Won't Change It
Phares stated that "this is a unilateral withdrawal from this conflict
and its war of ideas but this policy decision is not going to change the
fact that terrorism is going to continue to strike us and our allies.
Actually, terrorism is escalating and expanding, not regressing from the
moment the administration began its retreat from the confrontation. This
policy is not going to change the fact that there is a ‘war.’ A war
means mobilizing your national defense, intelligence and economic
resources to defeat a foe of a size that can jeopardize your national
security. As long as the administration and Congress are spending
billions of dollars on several battlefields, deploying task forces
around the world, funding the homeland security department and other
agencies and talking about strategic communications across the defense
institutions, they are still waging war. Such a policy is dangerous for
the United States, as it puts it against international law, bypasses the
will of its own people, and strengthens the enemy's ability to expand
and to legitimize itself.”
Speaking to HSToday.us more specifically about the
"administration's apparent intent to abandon the term, 'war on
terrorism,' Phares said "the administration can quit using words it
doesn't like, but that would not pull the other side away from conflict,
won't deter it, won't sway hearts and minds against the terrorists,
won't create a change in the terminology used by the jihadists.”
Fighting the SS But Not Nazism?
"The President does not describe this as a 'war on terrorism,' yet
[Brennan] said also Obama outlined a ‘new way of seeing’ the fight
against ‘terrorism.’ So, it is about terrorism, it is about a fight, but
they don't want to recognize it as such,” Phares said. "It would be to
say that during WWII, the US was fighting the Wehrmacht, the SS, the
Luftwaffe, but not at war with the global threat of Nazism.
"The only terminology the administration wants to use is that the US is
‘at war with Al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies who seek to carry
on Al Qaeda's murderous agenda.’ This slogan raises many questions: How
can you be at war with Al Qaeda and not state what Al Qaeda's ideology
is? What does ‘extremists’ mean? How can the US be at ‘war’ with a
non-state actor if the administration has decided to abandon the concept
of ‘war’ to begin with? It sounds like the architects of the new
narrative have created a doctrine that doesn't add up.”
Turning his attention to the administration’s position that that
fighting ‘jihadists’ is wrongheaded because it is using "a legitimate
term, 'jihad,' meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for
a moral goal” which "risks giving these murderers the religious
legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve,” is "wrong,”
Phares cautioned.
Jihadism Is an Ideology Not a Religion
"Jihad is not a simple legitimate term as described. Jihad doesn't mean
to purify oneself because there are other terms to mean that. It is an
effort 'fi sabeel allah' (on the path of Allah) on the
theological level. And a secular government like the United States has
no business to issue theological explanations of what theological jihad
means,” Phares said.
"Historically, jihad was an injunction by the caliphs to mobilize for
war. But today, we're talking about a jihadist movement; ideology in
this century meeting us in battlefields and also attacking Muslim
societies. The jihadist movement and the jihadists are one thing, which
we can and have to deal with in national security matters, and jihad as
a theoretical concept, which is a matter the US government must refrain
from meddling in either positively or negatively.”
The Administration's Doctrine Is Dangerous to the US
Phares continued: "The secular government of the United States has no
business declaring what term is legitimate and what term is not in
religious affairs. The jihadists are a movement, with an ideology and
strategies. The Nazis and the fascists were a movement and an ideology.
You can't say that because nationalism and socialism are legitimate that
national-socialism was as well.
"The
declared doctrine of the Obama administration that this 'risks
reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam
itself' [is] absolutely wrong," Phares said. "By being precise that it
is in conflict with the jihadists not with Muslims, the US will show
that it is countering the actions of a radical terror network. There are
Muslims fighting the jihadists in several countries: Iran, Algeria,
Iraq, Sudan, and Lebanon, let alone in other places such as Nigeria. If
the US will call off the confrontation with the jihadists, the Muslim
moderates will loose the confrontation with extremism. The Obama
administration is using a lexicon that goes against the national
interest of the United States.” |
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