...We are fighting fundamentalist Islam of both Sunni and Shia varieties. The Shia "brand" arguably started this conflict against us decades ago, but with the rise of al Qaeda and affiliated groups during the 1990s, Sunni extremists are what we are more familiar with, even as Shia terrorism is undeniably the growing, larger and more dangerous threat facing the world today.

This war, which we cannot win without an explicit recognition of what it is, is a war against all variations of fundamentalist Islam.

Presently, there are two many branches of this fundamentalist Islam, Shia and Sunni, and each has their own terror groups and their own state sponsors (though sponsors can and do cross sectarian lines). The "marquee players" are presently al Qaeda, the Taliban, Baathist insurgents, various Palestinian groups, Chechens, and the janjaweed for "Team Sunni," backed to varying degrees by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, and other Arab, African, and Asian players. The Shiite "marquee players" in this drama are the various Shiite militias in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon, backed by Lebanese Shiite civilians, Syria, and Iran.

There are of course non-government actors supporting terror groups around the world, but the vast majority of terrorism on a scale that we should be dealing with as a foreign policy/military issue is state-sponsored or state-tolerated.

Who we need to beat to win is deceptively simple; we knock off the governments that sponsor terrorism, and make it quite clear that to support terrorism is suicide. Terrorists don't care about dying, but the cynical old men than send them out to die generally do.

If we are going to give an honest effort towards winning this war on fundamentalist Islam, we first have to find a way to depose governments in Iran and Syria, while simultaneously undercutting the terrorist group Hezbollah and the Iranian-backed Shia militias in Iraq.

This may not be easy, but it is easier than it appears, due in no small part to rapidly developing situations on the ground today.

Iran's real powerbroker, Ayatollah ali Khamenei (President Ahmadinejad is a mouthpiece) is dying, at a time when Iranian students are clamoring for freedom from an oppressive regime. Can you say, "unstable?" I think any student of the current Middle East conflict will agree that as Iran's mullacracy goes, so goes Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

I've written in the recent past of how U.S military air strikes can cripple Iran's ability to threaten Persian Gulf shipping, and how other air strikes can cripple Iran's very limited capability to refine their oil reserves into usable fuel. Combine those strikes with blockade of oil inbound to Iran via a U.S Naval blockade in the Gulf of Oman would literally bring Iran to a grinding halt within weeks. At the same time, Saudi Arabia (Iran's greatest regional enemy, a nominal U.S. ally, and the single nation most threatened by Iran’s involvement in Iraq) could increase production, so that the price of oil (and Iran's income) drops.

Concurrent to these destabilizing military air strikes, the blockade and the forced collapse of the Iranian economy, U.S. forces in Iraq could be concentrated on telegraphed head-on assaults on Mahdi Army and Badr Brigades to crush the Shia militias. I just recently completed We Were One, a book chronicling the U.S. assault on Fallujah, and think the lessons learned would enable us to win what would be a very bloody, but very necessary campaign. The Baker Commission and the in-coming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes, thinks we need an additional 20,000-30,000 troops deployed to Iraq. Make them combat troops tasked with the singular goal of crushing the Shiite militias. I'd also make sure that our friends the Saudis were making strong, under-the-table diplomatic overtures to the Sunni insurgency during this time, letting them know this is their last, best chance to emerge from this war without a genocide coming down on their heads. Considering the movement towards that direction from many Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders right now (self-preservation is a wonderful motivator), and together with success in pounding out the Shiite militias that will then no longer be able to rely on a waning Iran for support, and Iraq might just have a chance of making it.

Of course, with Iran's mullacracy faltering of failing, Syria also easily folds. Through a combination of economic sanctions and perhaps a short air assault along the lines of Operation El Dorado Canyon, we can "remind" Assad that he can be easily toppled through military force if he continues to provide a conduit of men and material to Hezbollah. Frankly, the weak-jawed dentist strikes me as someone who would prefer to remain alive and in power rather than die a martyr’s death. Roll Iran and Syria, and Hezbollah's influence in Lebanon starts to crumble, and when they inevitably clash with Israel again, they will be unable to rearm with heavy weapons. They will have no ability or replenish lost supplies or make payments (bribes, really) to the Shia that suffer in Lebanon because of their militancy.

Iran's mullahs will be stripped of their greatest threats and assets, and will likely fall in an internal revolt that could only bring forth a more moderate regime, whatever it would be. These new leaders (or even the current ones, if they survive), would know a simple bomb and blockade campaign could once again shut their nation down. Iran's leaders quit terrorism, because they could no longer afford to support it.

Syria, without the backing of Iran and against the threat of direct military and/or economic regime change, would also stop supporting terrorism, which would weaken their grip in Lebanon, and given democracy a chance to re-establish itself over a weakened Hezbollah. Iraq, no longer beholden to militias, would have a chance to forge nationalist ties, or form regional partitions, but at least it would have a chance, with U.S forces on hand to help train and stamp out terrorist brush fires as needed.

Other, smaller terror supporting nations such as Sudan, Yemen, etc, would likely change their ways as a result of the deposition of much more powerful regimes Syria and Iran. Incentives could be provided to promote more secularized, moderate forms of governments in all of these nations, and those that will not moderate, will die by force of arms.

This is all just speculation of course. You asked what victory might look like, and this is one vision of how it might be won. The simple fact of the matter is that we are in a cultural war between liberal western civilizations and those fundamentalist Muslims that would reestablish a bloody, oppressive caliphate and destroy our way of life. Which would you prefer?

I sincerely hope that this war can be confined to fundamentalist Islam. If not, I fear that we will have a conflict that will see their cultural ultimately eradicated. I'd much rather that Islam morph into a less violent, more enlightened and moderate religion through an Islamic Reformation, but the choice is ultimately in their hands.

I strongly suspect, however, that defeating those nations that sponsor terrorism, undercutting the terrorist groups themselves, and hoping to reform Islam by purging its radical elements, isn’t "reasonable" in your eyes, Doc.

I somehow suspect that any kind of victory isn't.


Posted by Confederate Yankee at December 7, 2006 01:04 PM

Do you think his approach might work?

Labels: GWOT, Iran, Iraq

posted by CoRev at 6:42 PM

An Islamofascists is an Islamic supremacist who believes that the political ideological interests of furthering his/her interpretation of Islam subordinates all other interests. Such people seek to forge pan-national Islamic unity based on their interpretation of Islam as mutually exclusive with and superior to any other worldview, particularly non-Islamic worldviews, and especially secular, liberal democratic, or humanistic worldviews. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to Islamofascism, but the following elements are common integral parts:  advocacy of Islamic theocracy and (often) clerical oligarchism as the only legitimate form of government and society; moral absolutism; xenophobic legitimation of terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and/or other human rights abuses; advocacy of such political violence as a necessary means to achieve the desired ends of Islamic supremacy; militarism; totalitarianism; anti-Westernism, and opposition to political and economic liberalism.

The term Islamofascists is applied to a variety of sectarian Islamic worldviews which are otherwise, de facto at odds with one another and often engage in ruthless conflict with one another (e.g.,  Sunni vs Shia sects). While such sectarian conflict might seem to belie the application of the common term to such rivalrous sects, in fact this sectarianism demonstrates the generality of the Islamofascist agenda to a variety of discrete worldviews which each claim to be the one-true version of Islam. The basis for such Islamic sectarianisms depends on perceived conflict between specific interpretations of Islam by two or more such sects which nonetheless share the structural and thematic characteristics described above. It is the common sharing of the characteristics defining Islamofascism (e.g., supemacism, moral absolutism, xenophobia, ethnic hatred) which transforms the relatively insignificant sectarian differences into the basis for sectarian conflict.