KNOW THINE ENEMY

I found this article at onthewing, by exile, an excellent thinker. His article is food for thought.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Know Thine Enemy. He is Called "Islam".
I stumbled upon an article from Greg Lewis, at www.newmediajournal.us, today. His ruminations on the present world wide upheaval caused by Islamic militancy and terrorism started me thinking.
I am, like most others of my fellow western people, used to thinking in terms of countries and nations. We communicate through diplomats and politicians with our neighbouring lands and come to a cohesive style of living together, or making war upon each other, land for land. We can single out one nation, or a collection of nations as being either friend or foe. We think in terms of people and government on a national basis. Each country has, to some greater or lesser degree, its own military to guarantee its survival and protect what others have invested in terms of money and industry within its borders. At times these armed echelons are needed to protect the interests of these individual lands. Not all the people, within each individual nation, belong to the armed segment of the population. This vast majority are what we call "the civilians". The few that are charged with keeping the land secure are called "the armed forces". At present the armed forces of several lands are deployed into what are, for them, foreign countries, to stabilise the situation within those lands and assist a faltering or fledgeling government, or governments, in building a stable and lawfully ruled society. Strangely, these lands are predominantly Islamic by tradition. We are in these lands because, at some point, citizens of these lands have attacked us in some way and our retaliation has brought about the collapse of their original government. I say citizens and not armed forces because these lands have never declared war on us as a land or state, but simply allowed their people, their citizens, to arm themselves and bring destruction to our lands. That many lands are involved in this undeclared war between "us" and "them" leads me to conclude that there is some collusion between the lands that allow their citizens to attack our way of life and our property. There is therefore, a higher level of authority than simple government and politics. A higher purpose is at work. Greg Lewis sums it up like this:

The time has come to consider, not whether it is Islamo-fascists who are waging war against the United States and Israel, but rather whether it is Islam itself that is waging war against us. Indeed, while Islamist terrorists are numerically a relatively small segment of Islam, there are so few Muslim voices being raised even against the most heinous atrocities the Islamists commit that it is not inaccurate to say that Muslims in general desire the fall of the west at the hands of their terrorist forces.

I would take Mr. Lewis to task on his idea of who it is that Islam is attacking. It is not merely the US and Israel. It is everything western. Everything and anything other than Islam. However, I agree with him on the broader aspects of his article.
The "numerically small segment" that he refers to, represents the equivalent of the numerically small segment of our individual countries which we each call our "armed forces".
The vast majority, are merely civilians. So it is with Islam. We have to broaden the picture here. When state makes war on state the civilians tend to polarise and support their own forces. They do not speak out against their troops who are, after all is said and done, protecting their interests, way of life and property. Or so they believe. Even if their land is the aggressor. This is also true of Islam. No single country has declared war on us. The whole of Islam has.
Islam is not a state. It is not a country. It is made up of a coalition of peoples. They are not united by the terms of government or borders or states. Their politics are dictated by religious beliefs and a handful of religious leaders. But they do regard themselves as one people. One Ummah. It is that one people that is allowing their armed forces to attack us and they collectively wish for our destruction. And the hugely overwhelming majority of their civilains are behind them. There are few dissenters.
They see us as one people too. Westerners. The infidels. The enemy.

Islam has found our weakness. We see ourselves as a collection of individual lands, each with its own people. Not as one common enemy of Islam. They can attack one land and claim not to be attacking the rest of us. We agree. What happened in London, happened in England. What happened in Madrid, happened in Spain. Not in "The West". Meanwhile, our political leaders cannot even agree amongst themselves as to whom our enemy really is, or what we should call him. They do not collectively acknowledge that we are at war.

That internal division in "The West" may yet prove to be our downfall.