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Jewish World Review May 1, 2009 / 7 Iyar 5769 One civilization clashing By Caroline B. Glick
Hizbullah's projected victory in these elections is of course not an
isolated event. It is part of an Islamist electoral sweep in democratic
elections throughout the region. Indeed, Islamists have won every free or
partially free election in the region for the past six years.
Beginning with Turkey's Islamist AKP party's first electoral victory in 2003
— followed by its even more decisive reelection in last year's race; moving
to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election in the relatively free,
(although not open), presidential elections in his country in 2005, to the
Muslim Brotherhood candidates' sweep of nearly all electoral races they were
permitted to contest in Egypt's 2005 parliamentary elections, to Hamas's
electoral victory in the Palestinian Authority's legislative elections in
2006, the Islamist candidates and parties have been victorious in state
after state.
The only outlier in this pattern is Iraq. But then, Iraq is the only country
in the region where the West overthrew an enemy regime and retained an
empowered military force in the country in the years that followed. What
will happen in Iraq once US forces are withdrawn is an open question.
Generally speaking, Western analysts have attributed the Islamists'
victories to their well-run welfare programs for the poor, and to the fact
that unlike their secular opponents, Islamist parties and politicians are
perceived an honest. No doubt, economic interests have played a role in
their election. But the fact is that people who voted for the likes of
Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Ahmadinejad, and those who are poised to
vote for Hizbullah are not blind and they are not disengaged from the
ideological currents of their societies. They know full-well what these
parties and their leaders represent and seek.
Turkish voters, for instance know that Prime Minister Recep Erdogan wishes
for Turkey to be an Islamic state and a leader in the Islamic world.
Palestinian voters did not vote for Hamas just because it runs the best soup
kitchens. They supported Hamas because they support its goal of destroying
Israel. Iranian voters chose Ahmadinejad over former president Akhbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani not merely because Rafsanjani was corrupt, but because of
Ahmadinejad's outspoken extremism. Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Egypt
know that the jihadist movement calls for the overthrow of the government
and its replacement with a caliphate and that the group spawned both al
Qaida and Hamas. And in Lebanon, voters know that a vote for Hizbullah is a
vote for war against Israel and the West and a vote for placing Lebanon
under effective Iranian control.
They know all this, and still they vote for these parties and leaders. And
once in office, these leaders do not disappoint them. In addition to
expanding welfare benefits for their supporters, they have worked steadily
and aggressively to Islamify their societies internally and to strengthen
their alliances with likeminded governments against the West in foreign
affairs. At home, through patronage, repression of political opponents,
introduction of Islamic laws, and incitement against the West, these
democratically elected regimes have been moving their people further and
further away from secularism.
As for the burgeoning alliances between and among these likeminded jihadist
states, events of the past week alone make clear that backed by popular
support at home, these governments are steadily expanding their military and
commercial ties in a naked bid to challenge and defeat the West.
Buffeted by US President Barack Obama's warm embrace of Turkey earlier in
the month, Erdogan has moves swiftly to consolidate his place as a central
pillar in the new regional jihadist axis spearheaded by Iran, which includes
Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Over the past week, his
government signed a military pact with Lebanon committing Turkey to
providing arms and training for the Lebanese army — a force which is already
largely subservient to Hizbullah and will likely come under its complete
control on June 7.
It signed a defense agreement with Syria's Ministry of Defense, and even
more provocatively conducted a three-day joint land forces exercise with the
Syrian military. This was the first joint exercise between Syria and a NATO
member.
As for Iran, Turkey signed a trade agreement with the mullocracy that is
slated to double bilateral trade between the two countries within five
years. Even more significantly, Ankara gave a green light to Iranian gas
exports to Europe through the Nabucco gas pipeline which runs from Turkey to
Austria. The Nabucco pipeline was supposed to bypass both Iran and Russia
and increase instead gas exports from the former Soviet republics to Europe.
Iran's access to the pipeline will earn it billions of dollars in annual
income and increase its political power as Europe increases it dependence on
Iranian gas.
Both the popularity of Islamist parties and their behavior after being
popularly elected have confounded conventional Western reasoning —
particularly in the US. Quite simply, successive administrations in
Washington have been unable to provide an accurate explanation of what
drives the populations of these countries, and increasingly of the Islamic
world in general to support Islamist parties and movements.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration came to
the conclusion that it isn't that these parties and movements are popular.
It is just that people are intimidated into supporting them. Were the people
given the freedom to choose, they would choose to be led by liberal
political forces interested in living at peace with the West. For former
president George W. Bush and his advisors, the root of Islamic extremism was
authoritarianism and the solution was Westernization through open elections.
When time after time the citizens of these countries or societies
voluntarily elected jihadists, the Bush administration was confounded.
Rather than seek an alternative explanation to understand what was
happening, the administration alternatively denied reality — as in the case
of Turkey where it pretended that the AKP was a moderate, pro-Western
Islamist party in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. Or
they claimed that the people were simply voting against corruption and
showered them with money — as has been the case with the Hamas-supporting
Palestinians. Or, as in the case of Egypt and Iran, they have simply ignored
the fact that elections took place. The same of course occurred after
Hizbullah's violent coup last May. Rather than cut off ties with the
Saniora government — which had been compelled to accept Hizbullah control
over its affairs — the Bush administration continued to support Saniora and
increased US military assistance to the Lebanese army — hoping that it could
pretend away the problem.
Since his first moments in office, President Barack Obama has embarked on a
policy course which rejects Bush's belief that the quest for freedom is
universal as so much American chauvinism. For Obama, Islamic hostility
towards the West is caused by American arrogance, not the absence of
freedom. And because American arrogance is the root of the problem, the
solution must be American contrition. It is this view that propels Obama
from one international apology tour to the next and causes him to air the
CIA's laundry in public. As far as he is concerned, the more apologetic he
is, the more contrition he expresses for the actions of his predecessors,
the greater the pay-off will be.
And yet, as we see from the behavior of Lebanon, Turkey, Syria and Iran over
the past week alone, Obama's apologetics are not winning them over, but
emboldening them to take more aggressive positions against the West. How can
this be explained?
There is an alternative explanation for the behavior of the peoples of the
Islamic world that actually can explain events, and has successfully
forecast them. It has even engendered policy recommendations that might have
mitigated both the popularity of Islamist parties and deterred these
parties, once elected from taking provocative steps against Western states
and interests. Unfortunately, every time this explanation is raised, Western
policy makers head for the hills.
This explanation is really nothing more than an observation. It observes
that the populations of Islamic countries and societies support Islamist
parties like the AKP and Hizbullah and Hamas because they support what they
stand for. This explanation notes that tens and hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians, Turks, Egyptians and others voluntarily
congregate in public venues and swoon when Islamist leaders tell them that
Islam will defeat the West and promise the death of America and the death of
Israel.
The jihadist message resonates with them. Their hearts and minds have
already been won over. Contrary to what Western leaders as distinct as Bush
and Obama believe, the hearts and minds of the Islamic world are not
presently in play. From Beirut to the Taliban-controlled Northwest Frontier
Province in Pakistan, jihadists enjoy public support because the public
supports their aim of defeating the West with bullets, with bombs, and with
ballots.
It is too early to know how Obama will react when he like Bush is no longer
able to deny that his strategy for winning over the hearts and minds of the
Islamic world has failed. We don't know if like Bush before him, he will
simply ignore reality and pretend that nothing has happened; if he will
blame his political opponents or Israel for not joining him in his
contrition; or if he will cast about for another central organizing
principle that will explain hostile Islamic behavior.
What is clear is that in the absence of Western — and specifically American
— willingness to consider the possibility that what is happening in the
Islamic world has next to nothing to do with either what the West embodies
or what it has done, and everything to do with the resonance of the Islamist
message within the Islamic world, events like the expected loss of Lebanon
in June will continue to be met with incoherent prattling and confusion.
Like it or not, it appears that the rising forces in the Islamic world
perceive themselves as at war with Western civilization. They cannot be
convinced to believe otherwise by either elections or apologies. And the
current situation, in which only one side is willing to recognize that there
is a war going on between two mutually exclusive ways of organizing human
societies, will only lead us to more violent and devastating clashes in the
future.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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