You can find an excellent discussion of the roots of the current war on terror here.
The comment thread that follows is equally compelling.
The broad point is made below:
“…an essentially post-Christian West comes to the battle with Islamism, Islamofascism, caliphascism, or whatever you want to call the demon that animates al Qaeda and apparently millions of Muslims across the globe to hate the West and work toward our destruction, ill-equipped to understand and confront the foe. This inability to get into the enemy’s head and heart makes it harder for us to win. Yes, for all our weapons and the superiority of our forces versus theirs, we are ill-equipped to fight because we’re increasingly incapable of understanding what motivates them and therefore are less likely to find the means of removing that animator. Those who say the Islamists can’t defeat us militarily miss the point entirely, and those who throw out a quote from Leviticus to counter quotes from the Koran miss the point even more. And the point is this: If a holy writ holds sway in the life of an enemy, then that writ and its authority need to be understood on their own terms by us or we won’t formulate an adequate response to it.”
Since 9/11 occurred, this is an area of discussion I’ve had quite a lot with my acquaintances. Most of the paradigms fall into these categories:
- This is a war for oil – a power grab by Big-Oil and the politicians in their pocket
- This is a war we cannot win unless we help the impoverished people over there that are in their predicament due to the actions of the Christian west.
- The terrorists are doing what they are doing because we continue to support Israel. When we stop supporting Israel, the terrorist threat will go away.
Not one single time outside of the church have I ever heard anyone in general conversation mention the possibility that this war has to do with deeply held religious beliefs. Bryan’s post brings that subject into pretty clear focus.
Until we understand that those we fight against are bent toward our destruction, we likely will continue to see a quagmire both in the Middle East and here at home in our collective support for resisting this destruction.
Until we learn to call evil for what it is, we’ll continue to wrestle with the ramifications created by misunderstanding it. I see no effective way to fight against evil until we recognize that there is a such thing. I could go into a long post about how our own culture of political correctness has helped foster this aimlessness, but that’s for another time. All in all, an excellent, highly-recommended read.
