Confronting Islam . . . . or Not, Part II

Playing Pop Music to Break Down the Walls

In Part I of "Confronting Islam . . . . or Not" we had recourse to a series of essays [Fighting the Ideological War: Winning Strategies From Communism to Islamism, edited by Katharine Cornell Gorka and Patrick Sookhdeo (McLean, Va: The Westminster Institute/Isaac Publishing, 2012.)] The point was made that the Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union gained traction when Western leaders began to "tell the truth" about communist dictatorships.  Prior to that time the received wisdom was that it was dangerous to tell the truth because it risked provoking the Soviet Union into belligerent reactions. 

The general theme of the essays in the above collection is that one must fight and win the ideological war.  It is equally, if not more important, than winning the military or intelligence or economic conflicts.  Yet it is the war front which the US in particular and the West in general are remarkably unwilling to acknowledge.  Today the West has retreated to a quietism and pacificism when it comes to Islam worse than its early conduct of the Cold War. 

The lengths to which the US government has gone to cover over the influence of Islamic doctrine, beliefs, traditions and practices upon Islamic terrorism is literally incredible.

Confronting Islam, or Not . . . Part I

The Evil Empire

We have recently been reading a series of essays, entitled Fighting the Ideological War.  The overarching focus is upon the West's need to fight Islam ideologically.  Several of the essays argue that the West has failed miserably to this point, firstly to see Islam as an ideology, and, secondly, to combat it at the ideological level.  One essay draws parallels with the Cold War.  It reads like a comic opera.  [John H. Moore, "Ideology and Central Planning: Lessons from the Cold War", Fighting the Ideological War: Winning Strategies From Communism to Islamism, edited by Katharine Cornell Gorka and Patrick Sookhdeo (McLean, Va: The Westminster Institute/Isaac Publishing, 2012.] 

Moore points out that in the 1950's and 1960's the overwhelming consensus amongst credentialed academics was that the Soviet Union had a superior economic model and philosophy to the West.  Socialism was succeeding in making the Soviet Union economically wealthy, whilst the West was being overtaken in almost every sphere.  The Soviets were inevitably going to dominate the world.  The Commentariat believed that this would be the outcome because socialism was an inherently better system than capitalism.  In other words, as the Cold War progressed the establishment in the US, both in and out of government, in the media, and in academia had already capitulated. 

It all turned out to be untrue.