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October 12, 2004
Revisiting the analogy -- don't ignore the ideology
As I said yesterday John Kerry's analogy of terrorism to prostitution was wrong primarily because it demonstrated a refusal to deal with the ideology motivating the terrorists.
Eugene Volokh, Glenn Reynolds, even Power Line while making excellent points criticizing Kerry's use of the analogy from the seriousness of behaviorial comparison(prostitution vs murder), they, too, are not addressing the issue of ideology.
Here Eugene Volokh says:
I see Kerry's point: Terrorists, unlike Nazi Germany or the USSR, can't be entirely defeated, because there'll always be the possibility that some more springing up. We can end the war on some particular terrorists by killing them all or getting them to stop, but we can't end the war on terrorism generally that way. The best we can hope for is that there'll be a lot fewer terrorist attacks. That's certainly an important point, and it's worth keeping in mind.
I respectfully disagree. While it is true we defeated Nazi Germany through WWII, the ideology of the Nazis is still with us, albeit in fringe groups. It was through the occupation and the determination to beat down the ideology to almost irrelevant status that we live in a world where small groups like Aryan Brotherhood, Nazi Lowriders, and "Christian" Identity movement are both monitored by state and federal law enforcement and rejected by the majority culture. In many places in Europe, Nazi paraphernalia and collectables are banned.
While GW hasn't baldly stated that this is a war on ideology, he still addresses it far clearer than Kerry. Indeed, Kerry's criminal nuisance analogy is one that deliberately ignores the ideological component of Islamist terrorism. And if our goal is merely "fewer terrorist acts" that is exactly what we'll have ... terrorists acts.
I don't think that is a legitimate goal. Our priorities should be to defeat the terrorists, both in acts and in ideology. Move militarily against terrorists and their state sponsors. Move ideologically against them by undermining and/or toppling jihadist regimes and move those countries toward democracy. And keeping the pressure on "moderate" Islam to reject the jihadists and reform. That doesn't include Kerry's call to engage "more directly and more respectfully with Islam, with the state of Islam, with religious leaders, mullahs, imams, clerics, in a way that proves this is not a clash with the British and the Americans." Neville Chamberlain tried to "respectfully" engage with Hitler and we saw what that got the Western World.
Posted by Darleen at October 12, 2004 06:59 AM