As Hamas’ rockets continue
to fly into Israel’s cities (and thankfully, to usually face interception), and
Israel continues to pound Gaza, I’m seeing two different reactions on two
different continents. In Europe, an unholy alliance of traditional anti-Semites
and resident Muslims are marching in great numbers and with violent boldness.
In America, most are either supporting Israel or sitting on the sidelines,
waiting to see how things further develop. I think I know why this is
occurring, at least on the American side.
The United States was
attacked by Jihadis on September 11, 2001 and the
carnage was, of course, well
documented. But what many forget is that Americans took it personally. At that moment many of us, either on the
pro-or-anti-Israel side, realized that we could no longer view the Mideast with
some sort of detached attitude of Wilsonian supremacy, and that Global Jihadism
was real, and that it could kill from afar. And that, under the right set of
circumstances, it had the ability to do this very well.
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| U.S. President Wilson's detached, academic version of Globalism never anticipated how Americans might react to domestic attacks |
When Al Qaida attacked
U.S. embassies and assets overseas before 9/11, Americans debated the form, and
the limitations of response and retaliation. How would a large exercise of
American military power affect the “Arab Street”? How would our Allies respond?
How would we cope with large-scale anti-American demonstrations in foreign
capitals? After 9/11, with much of Lower Manhattan smoldering in ruin and smoke
hanging over Washington, D.C. the American attitude was completely transformed.
The consensus, in my opinion, mirrored that of Americans in mid-December of
1941. It was straightforward. We must stop them, we must go after them, we must
not hold back. Some Americans (and we forget this now) argued that a
series of atomic strikes on Kabul and Al Qaida’s military sites in Afghanistan
would be wholly justified. Looking back, I believe we took the more ‘merciful’
approach by simply deciding to invade Afghanistan and fight Al Qaida and the
Taliban on the streets of the deserts, towns and cities of that distant land. We
lost a lot of good men and women over there, and the losses continue.
After 9/11 the Jihadi
enemy was not some foreign “factor” or distant voice. Osama Bin Laden and his
allies composed mocking diatribes against us to be published in the New York
Times. Al Qaida’s leaders were releasing videos celebrating our losses and
mocking our dead, much like Hamas is doing to Israel now. The time for debate
was over; we had an enemy to contend with that had its own agenda and plans,
and it wouldn’t stop until we stopped it. To do this, people were going to have
to die. Things were going to have to break. War is Hell, but we didn’t ask for
it, but we were in it now.
We’re still fighting Al
Qaida, but the war has cost it dearly. Bin Laden is dead, rotting on a seabed. Its original top
leadership is dead or in American custody. The Taliban was toppled and it is
again fighting for its life in the wastelands of Afghanistan. And now its
remnants are the ones who share in our fear, and know that at any given moment
destruction can rain down upon them in the form of a drone attack, a raid by
U.S. Marines, or in some other horrific way. If this were not true they would
not be operating in the shadows.
But the American attitude toward Gaza not just about
the attacks of September 11th. The American response now is more
concerned with what many of us feel is the inevitable, next domestic Jihadi
attack, perhaps to take some other ghastly form. The Jihadi movement has been
trying hard, really, really hard, for another massacre on American soil. Some attacks
have been thwarted due to our own diligence, some due to plain luck. The
attempted Shoe Bombing to take down an airliner. The Boston Marathon attack.
They’re working perisently…and diligently so.
Here’s the heart of my
argument. Americans know that when it happens again, when we have to go after
the organized source of a Jihadi terror attack, American troops will have to
face real combat in some densely-populated foreign city. Perhaps it will be on
the streets of Tripoli in Libya. Perhaps it will be in the back alleys of Karachi
in a fragmenting Pakistan. Perhaps it will be on the ruined avenues of Mosul in
ISIS-controlled Northern Iraq. And on that day the enemy will be there, hiding
behind their human shields and hospitals and schools. This war against
Jihadism isn’t done, and so many of us know we cannot wish it away. What is
motivating our enemy is not bad American P.R. or American arrogance. Their
motivations are their own, based on centuries of their twisted interpretation of
Islamic history. We will have to face them again. We will have to make some serious choices that day on how
we want to engage this very real enemy. I seriously doubt we’ll want to hold
back at that moment, and that “moment” is what many Americans are fixated on
now.
This enemy is the same
enemy that Israel faces in Gaza. It’s the same people, the same fighters motivated
by the same cause with the identical goal of waging Global Jihad. Yes, the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a complex one and there have been mistakes on
both sides. But Americans know that Jihadis have long since hijacked the cause
of Palestinian nationalism, and Palestinians
have allowed them to do that. This
same process is currently operating elsewhere, and on a much larger scale, as
the worldwide Jihadist movement devours other conflicts, from sectarianism in
Iraq to the conflict between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. But Americans are
not fooled. We know that once Jihadis engulf some local cause, whatever the
factors, it is immediately pushed aside in favor of the priority of
offensive-minded, Global Jihad.
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| Al Qaida Flags, displayed earlier this week by Pro-Jihadi marchers in Northern India |
Look, I hope I’m wrong. I
hope there isn’t another huge attack, or series of simultaneous attacks, on the
level of 9/11. But it’s been more than a decade since that apocalyptic morning
in September and most Americans know that the Jihadi cauldron is boiling again.
This is why so many of us support the Israelis, because we know that the
furious gaze of Jihadism is staring us down too. The decimation of Israel’s
cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa are their short term goals, but don’t take my word
for it. As the leader of ISIS said a few years ago upon his release by U.S.
soldiers in Iraq, “See you in New York.”
