An Absurd Argument

Over and over, I see and hear the statement that America cannot do something or other because that will make us no different from our enemy. Absurd.

We will always be different from our enemy, even if we betray our best standards, even if we stoop to conduct the enemy uses routinely. Our history is full of examples—detention of Japanese-American citizens springs to mind.

We will always be different from our enemies because when we stop doing something repugnant and illegal by our own standards, we revert to who we have always been. Our history says who we are, not an instance of bad judgment or criminal behavior in the present. Our identity is not fragile and subject to rapid change under stress.

In other words, no country is perfect. Missing the mark of perfection does not change your identity, and it does not mean that you have adopted an “anything goes” attitude. I am absolutely certain that not one of the people who make the absurd argument would apply it to themselves. Mistakes do not define a person, but how the person corrects the mistakes does. Instances of illegal behavior do not define a state, a consistent history of illegality does.

Voltaire had a lot to say about the mistake of making the best the enemy of the good. That is what Americans who dine out on condemning American mistakes in its war with traditional Islam are doing. They would certainly refocus their efforts if they were convinced we were losing.

Why wait until the last ditch? Why not leave the overpopulated ranks of critics and join us infidels against jihad before it becomes necessary for us to win at all cost?

Alan Caruba recently said on this site that it is time to use nuclear weapons against Iran and North Korea because we have no options. Exercising that option would not make us the same as Iran and North Korea any more than removing Saddam Hussein from power made us the same as Saddam’s Iraq.

But we do have options. We have not begun to fight the ideology of traditional Islam that supports the goal of supremacy through jihad.

Because we are unwilling to declare the ideology of our enemy to be illegal in our country, we correctly hesitate at placing Guantanamo prisoners in American prisons. For the same reason, we are unwilling to close American mosques where imams spread the ideology of Islamic supremacy.

The clash between Islam and the West has only gotten worse since the Iranian revolution of 1979. Given the incompatibility of the respective ideologies, only one will survive in its present form. If it comes to a nuclear exchange, we will win. The question is on how many will die in the process.

The best option, from the critics’ point of view, is for us to stop shooting. That will not stop them from killing us. The next best option is to fight back in the ideological war.

Originally posted on 5/28/09