A Brutal Fight to the Death Against Rabid Ideologues

Gordon Cucullu of Democracy Project writes about the recent London bombing, making these comments:

...Recite the dismal laundry list of terrorist attacks that have taken place globally since the late 1990s. We have read the names so many times that we have almost become jaded to them but we can’t let that happen. We need to remind ourselves of Lebanon, the Achille Lauro, Munich, Israel, the World Trade Center, Iraq, Oklahoma City, East Africa, Somalia, Sudan, Bali, Madrid, Holland, the USS Cole, Lockerbie, Philippines, Egypt, Libya, Teheran, Pakistan, India, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan. Now we can add London to that sad list. We must recognize a stark fact that too many of the self-styled intelligentsia seem not to comprehend: regardless of what we do the terrorists are coming after us. They are coming not to negotiate, not to seek accommodation or understanding, not to learn how to work together: they are coming to kill and destroy.

Unless we grasp the enormity of that fact, accept it, and hold it close we will lose this war. For war it is. Not crime, not misunderstanding, not something than can be resolved on a psychiatrist’s couch or with an anti-depressant medication. From time to time we drift away from our purpose, forget what started this war in the first place...

Worst of all, we pretend that this war is somehow a war against “terror” rather than a brutal war to the death against rabid ideologues who have declared the war against us and intend to destroy us and our way of life. This is not a war against Islam per se, but as Paul Marshall notes “the root of this wave of terrorism is extremist religion.” These terror leaders have said that they intend to impose their twisted version of Islam upon us. We need to listen to what these people say and be candid in our own thoughts and speech. No longer can we go to ridiculous lengths to avoid offense, or to deceive ourselves that we are dealing with a “religion of peace.” Ayatollah Khomeini said, back when all this began in earnest, “we did not create a revolution to lower the price of melon.” More recently Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, made terrorist intentions clear: “We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.”

The wave of attacks in London ought to have been a wake up call – again! How many of these will we require before we act against the root cause?...

...But how many wake up calls do we need to galvanize our will? Will it require a nuclear, poison gas, or biological attack before we at last have the moral courage to recognize our enemy for who and what he is? If the London attack can produce that result then the lives will not have been spent in vain.

Marc quotes Lee Harris in an earlier posting, with this additional perspective:

After the London bombing, I feel more than ever that the war model is deeply flawed, and that a truer picture of the present conflict may be gained by studying another, culturally distinct form of violent conflict, namely the blood feud.

In the blood feud, the orientation is not to the future, as in war, but to the past...

In the blood feud, unlike war, you have no interest in bringing your enemy to his knees. You are not looking for your enemy to surrender to you; you are simply interested in killing some of his people in revenge for past injuries, real or imaginary -- nor does it matter in the least whether the people you kill today were the ones guilty of the past injuries that you claim to be avenging. In a blood feud, every member of the enemy tribe is a perfectly valid target for revenge. What is important is that some of their guys must be killed -- not necessarily anyone of any standing in their community. Just kill someone on the other side, and you have done what the logic of the blood feud commands you to do.

In the blood feud there is no concept of decisive victory because there is no desire to end the blood feud. Rather the blood feud functions as a permanent "ethical" institution -- it is the way of life for those who participate in it; it is how they keep score and how they maintain their own rights and privileges. You don't feud to win, you feud to keep your enemy from winning -- and that is why the anthropologist of the Bedouin feud, Emrys Peters, has written the disturbing words: The feud is eternal...

Contemporary Islamic terrorism has permitted the ancient practitioners of the blood feud to introduce its brutal and primeval logic into a world of modern technology and parliamentary politics. The sooner we grasp this fact, the sooner we will be in a position to know our enemy for who he really is. Until then we will be as dazed and confused as those who, while peacefully riding a commuter train, suddenly find themselves bloodied and blackened, in the midst of maimed corpses and twisted steel, whispering to themselves over and over, "Why? Why?"