If she worked for Reuters we would have a story about a speech actually made by President Bush. I mean if you can have fauxtography why not just have fauxography to go along.
However, Diane West obviously has higher standards and does state that her article is what she thinks President Bush should say. Ms. West's presidential alter ego proposes that President Bush admit that democracy has failed in the middle east - Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and even Afghanistan - not because of a lack of trying but because there is a fundamental difference in the way the western world views the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the way the Muslim world views these same values. I think she makes an interesting point.
Ms. West argues that the Muslim world has a lack of respect or desire for these values and that such views are inherent in Sharia law. She states,
"Indeed, Sharia law endows Muslims, and Muslim men in particular,
with
a superior position in society. It also outlaws words and
deeds that
oppose this, frankly, repressive power structure for
being
"un-Islamic." From this same Islamic legal tradition comes
the mandate
for jihad (holy war, usually against non-Muslims)
and dhimmitude, the
official state of inferiority of non-Muslims
under Islam."
Her suggested solution is that the United States take a more defensive approach and that we make it our goal to stop the spread of Sharia law to the western world. Her presidential alter ego argues,
"The shift I am describing-from a pro-democracy offensive to an
anti-Sharia defensive -- means a national course correction.
Rather
than continuing to emphasize the democratization of the
Muslim Middle
East as our key tool in the war on terror, I will
henceforth emphasize
the prevention of Shariah from reaching the
West as our key tool in the
war on terror."
Is she right? Well if you look at history she has a point. The European nations have battled with Islam for centuries. First, to stop its spread into their nations and then to take the fight to the Islamic nations and then again taking a more defensive stance to just keep Islam out of Europe. If my memory of the history books serves me, this battle raged until the 18th and 19th centuries where more or less a stalemate occurred while the remnants of the Ottoman Empire crumbled.
One can look at history and say that such a Cold War stance is the way to handle the situation. It places the Islamic world in isolation, where it wants to be, and it protects the Western world from Jihad. But does this solve a problem or merely postpone it.
Ms. West is correct is her assertion that Sharia law, as it exist today, appears to be fundamentally incompatible with the Western values of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I am not so sure that she is correct in her suggestion that this war be converted to a Cold War type action. During the Cold War the communist countries did not have anything that we needed to survive - some may assert with the exception of Vodka. However, our economic fate, at this point, is intertwined with that of the Muslim world due to our dependence on oil.
Since there really does not seem to be any imminent alternative or a desire to use available alternatives to the combustion engine, we are stuck playing ball. We have to remain interactive with this part of the world. Find a substitution for oil and we can Cold War this part of the world to freedom. It may take centuries but at some point the oppression will cause the soul of people to fester and the revolution for freedom will rise from the wounds of oppression. However, such an isolationistic stance is not feasible at this time.
The solution? Assuming that the Western world wants to maintain its way of life and standards of living and absence an alternative to oil, one of two things has to occur for the Western World and the Muslim world to peacefully coexist. First, the will of the Islamic Fascist to fight has to be destroyed. This can only be done by brute force. The Western world has to have the stomach to draw the battle lines and undertake offensive military campaigns similar to those used against Germany and Japan during World War II. The enemies' ability and will to fight has to be utterly destroyed and the populace has to be so tired of dying and suffering that it capitulates to the Western world. The national policy has to be "You are either with us or against us."
The second alternative is a Reformation of the Muslim world. If the Muslim world actually has a silent majority that wants the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness then it will have to stand up and force an attitude of tolerance upon the Muslim religion. This means true tolerance and an acceptance of equality even if the other person is of a different religion. By the way, Dhimmitude is not tolerance - it is subjugation.
Until there is an acceptance by the Muslim religion, whether due to acquiescence brought about by absolute defeat by force or by an internal reformation, that each person has a right to his own views and that the holding of such views does not disqualify the person from life, there will be no peaceful coexistence with the Western World. There may be eras of stalemates and nonaggression but there will be no peace. If the Western World does not have the stomach for the first and the Muslim world does not have the desire for the second, we may have no choice but to button up our jackets, shut our doors, and let the future generations deal with an inevitable problem.
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