Kill for Peace

Warning: The following essay contains intelligent argument that may discomfit liberals.

Part I. Analysis

The best analysis I have read of America’s foreign policy failings since the unfinished Persian Gulf War of 1991 will be found in the writings of Ralph Peters, a retired American army intelligence officer who worked and studied in dozens of countries as well as in the U.S. Executive office.

If there is a single power the U.S. underestimates it is the power of collective hatred, meaning the hatred that animates the Arab-Islamic world. This failing applies to Israel as well.

Like their American counterparts, Israel’s ruling elites do not “understand the delicious appeal of hatred.” They will not face the fact that man is a killer.  They have learned nothing from the genocidal wars and wholesale massacres of the twentieth century, not merely in Nazi Germany, but also in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Bangladesh, Iraq, Sudan—to name only a few.

There are human beings who enjoy killing. Even if it be said that they are a minority, it does not take many enthusiastic killers, says Peters, to trigger a genocidal war. The Arab “Palestinian Authority” directs many of these killers and deliberately educates Arab children to emulate them.

If there is a single power the U.S. underestimates it is the power of collective hatred, meaning the hatred that animates the Arab-Islamic world. This failing applies to Israel as well.

Like the United States, Israel plays by rules, some encoded in her own laws, others in international laws, and still others in a humane heritage which is an integral part of the West’s collective consciousness. But Israel’s enemies don’t give a damn, in fact they despise, Western civilization.

Again and again we find that treaties or agreements mean nothing to our enemies. While we are or talk-oriented, our enemies are action-oriented. We mirror-image and think that our enemies are like us, that they want peace, even though they have repeatedly said, “peace means the destruction of Israel.” Israel’s leaders live in a state of denial—or should we say fear and dissembling?

Even the terms we use to describe the enemy—whether we name them “terrorists” or “Islamic fundamentalists” or even “Palestinians”—are misleading. Such terms hinder Israel’s and America’s political and military echelons from developing an appropriate strategy against this implacable and arguably psychotic foe. Ralph Peters calls these terrorists “warriors” because he wants Americans to take terrorists seriously. He clears away the euphemisms by speaking of five different types of warriors—because if we do not understand the enemy, we will lose the war against them.

• One pool of warriors comes from the underclass, a male who has no stake in peace, a loser with little education and little legal earning power. It’s easy to recruit such warriors against the “Great” or against the “Little” Satan. These warriors are bloody savages.
• A second pool of warriors consists of young men who join and fight for the Arab cause. Their savagery increases with the duration and intensity of the conflict.
• A third pool of warriors consists of opportunists, entrepreneurs who profit from the conflict. They traffic in arms and drugs. Their great strength is their cynicism. The Palestinian kleptocracy, led by Mahmoud Abbas, belongs to this pool. This type of warrior is the most likely to be underestimated by wishful-thinking liberals, especially Jews.
• A fourth pool of warriors consists of true believers like Osama bin Laden, or like Abdullah Badran, the 21 year-old university student who blew himself up in a Tel Aviv nightclub. These warriors fight out of religious conviction and are infected with blood lust. They have been spawned by a failed civilization that would rather blame “Americans” or “Zionists” for that civilization’s own shortcomings, its inability to adapt to modernity and compete with the West. They burn with resentment and desire revenge. Perhaps they dimly realize the decadence of their Islamic heritage and this inflames their fanatical hatred of the culturally superior West.
• The fifth pool consists of dispossessed or otherwise failed military men. Peters considers them the immediate and most dangerous pool of warriors. They become even more dangerous when working together with the true believer.

Unfortunately, Israelis, like Americans, believe that all men want peace, that all conflict can be resolved through compromise and “understanding.”

All of these warriors are habituated to violence; they have no stake in civil order. Unlike soldiers, they do not play by the rules of the Geneva convention; they do not respect human life; treaties mean nothing to them; and they regard compromise as equivalent to prostitution. Negotiation with warriors is sheer folly. We should not negotiate with them until they surrender. Until then, we must overcome sentimentalism. Until then, they must be killed.

If I-ARI’s posts get you thinking, share them with your friends on Twitter. And, if you are not already a member of I-ARI, follow the Israel-America Renaissance Institute (+ all the extras) on Twitter.

Unfortunately, Israelis, like Americans, believe that all men want peace, that all conflict can be resolved through compromise and “understanding.” But these killers have no stake in peace. Many would be bored by peace, and would lose honor or be out of a job. You find such men in the Palestinian Authority—in Fatah, Tanzim, Hamas, Hezbollah, and whatever appellations they use to adorn their Jihadic egos.

• American and Israeli opinion-makers refuse to believe that many human beings thrive and profit on disorder and on killing other human beings.
• Americans profit from peace; warriors profit from war, and Israelis suffer the inevitably lethal consequences.
• Both American and Israeli politicians talk facetiously about a war against “terrorism,” which has become a dodge for what should be called a “clash of civilizations” as recognized by candid and courageous scholars like Professor Samuel Huntington and Syrian-born psychiatrist, Dr. Wafa Sultan, who does not even regard Islam as a civilization because it denigrates and tolerance of others.

If I-ARI’s posts get you thinking, share them with your friends on Facebook. And, if you are not already a member of I-ARI, join us with a “LIKE” at the the Israel-America Renaissance Institute Facebook Page.

Also, and as Ralph Peters points out, we refuse to understand that certain human beings cannot accept that their culture is failing. These people don’t realize that they are failing as individuals because of the mode of thought and behavior to which their culture has conditioned them. They want someone to blame, and they want revenge on that someone.

But our academics and intellectual elites—the educators of our politicians, judges, and journalists—are so conditioned by the moral relativism that permeates all levels of education in the democratic world, that they cannot think of Islam as a failed culture. This failure of Islam is acknowledged by the eminent Lebanese-born political scientist, Fouad Ajami, author of The Dream Palace of the Arabs. Of course, the naive would accuse this writer of “racism”—but surely one need not be a racist to recognize that Israel’s enemies have some very nasty characteristics:

• They regard Israeli peace overtures as a sign of weakness.
• They have nothing but contempt for Jews who advocate “land for peace.”
• They will not honor any form of agreement a moment longer than it suits their interests.
• Their contempt for human life inevitably leads them to commit atrocities.

We face warriors whose contempt for peace and human life requires those who truly cherish peace and human life to kill them before they kill us.

Read Part II. What Must Be Done to Win an “Unwinable” War

Enola Gay B-29 Superfortress Bomber

Pages: 1 2