Putting a Jihad on You
What the West still needs to learn about fighting Islamic terrorism
M. Harrison

For obvious reasons, the current terrorist threat is like no other the West has ever faced. Yet too often, commentators and politicians propose strategies applicable only to 20th century warfare. The recent conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah and for the US in Iraq have exposed underreported realities of fighting Islamic terrorism that must be fully recognized if the West is to achieve any long-term success in the war on terrorism.

1. Irrationality is their god (and Allah is not much of a ceasefire negotiator, Frenchy)

Scholarly opinion is divided on the subject of whether terrorism is a rational or irrational phenomenon. There are certainly rational aspects of the behavior, such as the Afghans who are currently joining the Taliban for better pay than what they can conceivably garner otherwise. However, the successful prosecution of the war on terrorism requires the recognition of terrorism's irrationality. This irrationality stems from the warped Islamo-fascist worldview which holds a denial of reason as its cornerstone. It is not surprising that their military philosophy is similarly bereft of reason.

In the irrational pursuit of whatever jihad is the Islamo-fascist flavor of the month, terrorists generally view their long-term goal as the obliteration and/or forced religious conversion of various large Western populations.

And this is the enemy with whom France and other pacifists admonish us to negotiate. Au contraire. Negotiation, the enlightened tool of rational dispute resolution, is an artifact of peaceful and intelligent nations. But these are terrorists. We'd like to always be negotiating with post-enlightenment scholars, but sadly, Islamo-fascism throws a wrench into the gears. How can we expect to gain success by negotiating with irrationality?

Even if we could stir the latent interest and/or intelligence of terrorist leaders, we would expect little tangible results. The mindless individual jihadists have proven themselves plenty happy to continue their holy reign of terror in the face of deceased leaders and the general hopelessness of victory. Most analogous to the behavior of terrorists, it seems, are those of cockroaches and lemmings.

It is for these reasons that proportionality in terrorism, the equation of attack to response and threat to deterrence, is not everything idealistic westerners would like it to be. The common sense rationality that inspires western military states to cut their losses in the face of a bloody military quagmire is not present in the minds of ignorant terrorists, either collectively or individually. They will strike at any time, without the regard for consequences. Hezbollah has recently proven this to be alarmingly accurate.

As such, all is not equal. The existence of any one hostile terrorist is a much greater threat to any nation than is the existence of any one traditional soldier from a hostile state. No nation knows this better than Israel.

2. They won't lay it down until they've died for their cause and taken us with them. Not with the virgins awaiting them, anyway

Because of the aforementioned irrational proclivity for terrorists to behave like roaches instead of men, the West is often left with an inaccurate expectation and interpretation of military results. The terrorists produce a seemingly endless stream of human fodder who continuously kill soldiers/and or civilians, while they still die in greater numbers. Yet they keep splattering themselves apace. Over the long-term, it looks as if we are losing the war. We lose solders while our enemy shows no signs of letting up.

We must not fall into that mind trap. The West must realize that disproportionality of casualties and long engagement is and will always be the nature of the terrorist conflict. Terrorists willingly sacrifice their own masses and they seek the extinction of ours; we value life.

An extension of this piece of common sense proves hostage negotiation with terrorists fruitless and foolish. Hostage negotiations require the assumption that the hostage-taker really does not want to kill the hostage, or at least that he would prefer to have certain demands met instead. In the case of terrorism, this assumption is worthless. Not only do terrorists want to kill, but very often killing is their main goal and demand.

It would make things easier for us if they recognized the foolishness of their position and/or the hopelessness of their cause. But they never will, and their irrationality is what makes the battle so difficult.

Yet the coup de grâce killing all ability for the strategies of traditional warfare to be applied to terrorism is the terrorists' deification of suicide as divine sacrifice. This is central to the danger they pose to us, and it fuels their irrationally insatiable appetite for conflict. They keep churning out fighters willing to kill and be killed.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair both have it correct; it will be a very long war.

3. Kill the terrorists, and then blame them for the collateral damage

Another commonly-noticed feature of terrorists is their fanatical disregard for human life. What makes them especially unique is both the broad strokes with which they paint nearly all Westerners as their enemy, and the religious/moral value they derive from their executions.

But the disrespect for life exists far before enemy lines. Innocent citizens are willingly and consciously sacrificed by these fanatical jihadists. Terrorists, in their urban warfare, hide weapons caches, meeting locations, and general aggressive activity deeply within civilian communities. This is no mistake or unintentional occurrence. They hope to use the West's aversion to innocent death to their advantage, deterring attack to further assist their own pursuit of innocent death.

The West should not allow the disgusting use of civilians as pawns in a jihadist scheme. Any collateral damage resulting in civilian death due to the proximity of terrorists to civilian interests is the moral fault of the terrorists. They are the ones who deliberately endanger the civilian population. They are aware that their militant posturing will evoke a military strike from the West, and they seek to hide amongst civilians.

This cowardice is in stark moral contrast to the western armies who take every precaution to avoid innocent death while intending only to kill the terrorists themselves. Every law student knows that intent determines the degree of immorality in killing. It's time everyone else realized it, too.

4. When in the Middle East, do as Americans do

In eradicating this unorthodox human disease called Islamic terrorism, we should not allow it to poison our own behavior. Rather than abandoning reason as they do, we should flaunt our enlightenment by contrast. We should convict them publicly and fairly, because we can, and because it is the American way. We should out-think them on the battlefield, because the best training and equipment in the world should always triumph over mindless suicide. We should export our culture and win the battle for hearts and minds.

But first, we must fight them, never forgetting what it will require or how much our lives depend on doing it.

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