How America can win the intelligence war

From Asia Times

Western polemicists felt at home on the moral high ground against communism, along with president Reagan. But they are tongue-tied before radical Islam, fearing to offend a religion with more than a billion adherents. Inadvertently they give credibility to the radicals. It is difficult to assess what proportion of today's Muslims are "radicals", because neither the world's Muslims nor the West has a clear definition of what is radical and what is not. Vitriolic sermonizing is so commonplace under the eyes of "moderate" regimes, for example Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, that the label of "radical Islam" has worn thin.

In reality, the West sooner or later will have to draw a bright line between "radicals" and "moderates". Under the circumstances there can be nothing in between. Islam's encounter with the West leaves room for nothing but radical jihadists on the one hand, or radical reformers. Islam is expansionist by construction and political by its original design. It is a fact of history that jihad, by which I mean specifically the propagation of the faith by violence, is a mainstream tradition. Even communal prayer in Islam has at its center the alignment of the individual believer to jihad (Does Islam have a prayer?, May 18).

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The problem actually is quite simple. To advocate jihad today is the hallmark of the radical Islamist, and it is there that the West must draw a line in the sand. But to repudiate jihad in turn implies radical revision of the religion's mainstream, and that is the hallmark of the radical reformer.

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Western leaders must not attack Islam; to take sides against any religion runs counter to the traditions of religious tolerance upon which the United States was founded. But they must denounce the use of force to propagate religion, and make it clear that they will match force with force. The enemy is not "terrorism", but any form of violence, including conventional warfare, in the service of religious expansionism.

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If Washington were to make repudiation of jihad a condition for friendship with the United States, the demand would have unpredictable and destabilizing consequences for the Islamic world. Just as the race of Sovietologists viewed Reagan's determination to destabilize the Soviet Empire with horror, the whole profession of Mideast studies would rear up in horror against such a stance. But wars are won by ignoring the fat and complacent commanders of garrison troops, and forcing the burden of uncertainty on to the other side (Ronald Reagan's creative destruction, June 8). Decisive intelligence stems from destabilization of the opposing side, through defections and similar events.

Outstanding article!
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