Reagan was often attacked as a dangerous ideologue who needed to reconcile himself to the facts of the world, but he never succumbed to Beltway realpolitick.
“Here’s my strategy on the Cold War,” Reagan declared. “We win, they lose.”
This is also George W. Bush’s approach to Islamist fanaticism. And a generation from now his resolve concerning the War on Terror will be as esteemed as Reagan’s resolve to triumph in the Cold War.
Sorry Hugh but President Reagan was attacking the core philosophy of the enemy. President Bush is attacking a tactic of the enemy.
Had Reagan been trying the same thing he would have been decrying the Soviet Military while applauding or ignoring the communist philosophy. He attacked the entire beast. President Bush wants to have the Muslim voters by trying to peel them away from their soldiers.
President Bush goes so far as to visit the temples of the enemy not to, as Reagan did, demand that they tear down the walls, but to seek a middle ground. There is no middle ground in “We win, they lose”.
From an earlier essay of mine.
President Bush has repeatedly emphasized the fact that Islam is a peaceful religion. He goes on to say that it has been hijacked by radicals that are perverting the tenets of Islam to suit their evil purposes. Nowhere does he explain how that idea of Islam as a peaceful religion compares to Islam’s record of conquest starting with Mohammed?s record of making war to win slaves and treasure
. Never once does he explain how his idea of a peaceful Islam matches up to the startling record of armed conquest that Islam displayed from Mohammed?s raids of Meccan caravans to the Gates of Vienna where in 1683 the attempted Islamic conquest of Europe was finally put down. Never once does President Bush or his advisor?s explain that Mohammed himself would have been far more likely to associate with Bin Laden than to associate with the small but brave bands of Muslims calling for a reformation. Mohammed was likely a Islamist by our own definition. Townhall.com::Blog
Farther down I make this point that I have never stated more succinctly than this.
Some say that we needed allies to win this war and on that point there can be little argument. But can we afford to hold our noses and bear the stink of tyranny in the quest of questionable allies? What do we lose in the process of turning the other way while supposedly close allies continue to act in ways towards their people that if we faced such acts would cause us to go to war? Put simply if we are fighting Al Qaeda to prevent them from forcing their way of life upon us how do we stand allies who already accomplish either all or much of that crime against their own people? Are we merely fighting a method or an end state? Is it only the fact that Al Qaeda engages in wholesale murder that causes us to reject their demands or do we reject their view of the world? Could we accept their view of the world if they did not engage in murder to achieve it?
We are at war with those in Islam who believe it is their duty to convert by sword or word the entire world. We are at war with the idea that any religion can take the place of a government by the people where the rights of the individual are guaranteed by law and that is understood to be inviolable by any religion. Perhaps Islam can stand beside Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism in our world but can it accept that all of them stand to the side of any government which guards against the depredations of any single religion declaring it has the right to guide in every detail?.
Candidate Bush was right, our armies are not meant for building nations. Especially for people who simply have no desire for the sort of nations we understand and can show them how to build. The people of the Middle East are not children nor are they stupid, they have merely chosen another way to live. They have seen our world and apparently rejected it.
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