The current battle between the West and Islam -- especially between America and radical Islam -- is essentially the timeless and permanent battle of Good vs. Evil. But as the 21st century dawns, this war has become considerably more grave.
Historically, the new "green menace" of the post-1964 "Civil Rights" era has now largely displaced the old "red menace" of the 1917-1991 Soviet Union era. The great exception to this, of course, is the appalling 1/5th of humankind currently enslaved in atomic bomb-protected China. But this communist-style tyranny, after the 1989 liberation of Eastern Europe, is weaker ideologically and seems to be slowly but surely evolving away from its current nefarious, failed, and anachronistic socio-economic system.
Because of our highly inconsistent and compromised liberal ideology, the West and America barely muddled thru to victory in the Cold War against Russia and its Eastern European allies. We showed great ineptitude during this protracted indirect fight and faced multitudinous serious threats -- including nuclear ones. We're poised to repeat this with Islam.
And yet, at the turn of the millennium, the West and U.S. are somewhat more powerful ideologically than we were during the final stages of the previous large-scale confrontation. And we're ever-so-slowly ascending. The cardinal Western liberal values of reason in philosophy, individualism in morality, and freedom in politics, are all generally growing somewhat stronger. So there's real hope for the future.
Unfortunately, at the current juncture the West and its American leader are far from being ideologically perfect, self-consistent, or solidly liberal. Thus the current battle isn't truly between pure good and pure evil, but rather between mostly good and mostly evil. The West and U.S. may be roundly superior, but we're still plenty contradictory, unreliable, hypocritical, corrupt, and even depraved in our philosophy and culture. And the whole world knows it.
This last is true even tho' the West and America usually foolishly fancy that the rest of the planet is largely unaware of our failures and deep-seated fundamental inconsistencies. We naively imagine that the rest of the peoples of the world only have, at best, basically false and illegitimate notions of our limitations and weaknesses. But none of these suppositions is correct.
The principle error and grand moral failing of the West and the U.S. in the postwar era is the routine propping-up of, and support for, Islamic dictatorships around the world. If they're even quasi-"friendly" to us, we essentially shower them with rewards like diplomatic recognition, cultural exchanges, free trade, technology transfers, and even military assistance. We also grant these totalitarian regimes an all-important over-all moral sanction. And if the Islamic dictatorships are "unfriendly" to us instead, we then embargo the nation, which only increases the agony of the people while leaving the responsible dictators almost entirely unaffected. This is all profoundly evil. And the world notices.
The Western states justify this destructionism and depravity largely by the bland, vapid, amoral pseudo-ideals of "stability" and "peace." We almost entirely neglect to uphold the proper ideals of "liberty and justice for all." Perhaps the reason for this is we secretly and falsely regard these uncivilized third-worlders as semi-animals and thus unworthy.
Fundamentally, our present philosophy and doctrine regarding all dictators is still that of the Cold War. We think: "He may be a son of a bitch -- but he's our son of a bitch." And yet the correct ideology and approach is: "He may be our son of a bitch -- but he's still a son of a bitch." So we reject him utterly. Regrettably, the present day behavior and policy of the West and America is far from this desideratum. Thus our amoral, unprincipled, ill-thought-out foreign policy earns us a plethora of enemies -- and on many levels.
The Islamics of today genuinely hate out guts -- much more than practically anyone in our part of the world is seriously aware of. And they do so in large part because of the errors, corruption, and hypocrisy outlined above.
But mostly they despise us because their values are so different from, and inferior to, our own. As busy, self-involved, indifferent, ignorant Westerners with our relatively rich full lives, we seldom realize just how evil, illiberal, false, and failed their Islamic ideology really is.
So it's fair to say that in spite of our many important failings, the Moslem peoples fundamentally loathe us because we're good and great. They revile, oppose, and fight us due to our virtues, not our vices. And they're also secretly jealous and ashamed. Their honor, pride, and dignity is hurt. Especially when they remember their glorious past, which they often do. From about 750 to 1250 A.D. the Islamic nation was itself good and great. At that time, they constituted the biggest, strongest, richest, finest empire on earth.
To fully win the current mostly low-level war, the West and America must first withdraw all support for and sanction of the various Islamic dictatorships around the world. We then need to profoundly apologize to all the Moslem peoples of the world for the terrible sin of propping up and supporting all their evil slave-master governments for upwards of half a century. We should make clear that we're sincerely sorry for having been so ignorant of, and indifferent to, the plight of the deeply suffering Islamic nation.
Next, we need to get great revenge upon the many Islamic tyrannies for all the evil they've done both to us and to their own people. The Western states need to carefully but viciously bomb the hell out of all of their government, military, police, party, and religious institutions. All the evil tyrannical Islamic leaders thereof should be taken down and out. This is so, even if it regrettably but necessarily involves a somewhat large amount of "collateral damage" and a fairly substantial number of "innocent bystander" deaths.
It's well worth it. It will be a problem solved -- or a hundred of them. And it's important to note that most true "innocent bystanders" -- as opposed to tacit implicit supporters of totalitarianism and barbarism -- will naturally tend to greatly distance themselves from the targeted evil institutions and leaders, and thus largely go unhurt.
After the onslaught, the West and America should then give serious consideration to fully liberating and uplifting the Islamic peoples -- for a price. We might charge them, say, 50% of oil revenues for the next 50 years for their freedom, plus the benefit of granting them protectorate or colonial status. Then the West and America could engage in circumspect "nation-building" -- but intelligently and virtuously, for once.
This last is important because primitive nations, like young children, need to grow up slowly, and should not be given full freedom and independence immediately. They can't handle either and, if left alone, would almost certainly redescend into tyranny forthwith. This societal nurturing and development may well take generations. But helping the neglected backward Moslem peoples in the above fashion is genuinely noble and properly "the white man's burden." It will also vastly help the West thru greatly increasing worldwide wealth as well as greatly decreasing the possiblity of wars.
The key to understanding and winning the war between the West and Islam is to recognize that it's almost entirely philosophical and cultural. So after we've conquered and occupied them, we still need to massively attack them ideologically. The West and America still need to convince the Islamic peoples of the clear and immense superiority of our values and lifestyle -- and thus "win their hearts and minds." Then they'll be Western too and quite likely our long-term close friends. We did all this to the evil fascist tyrannies of Germany and Japan in W.W.II -- and we can do it again.
Of course, it might not be as easy this time around, because Islamic values and lifestyles are so notoriously strange and primitive. But if we work hard on needed self-improvement too, and add to our own cultural strength -- if we significantly clarify and purify out liberal ideology -- then in this fierce and all-important battle the West and America can gloriously triumph once again.
