There are extremists in both the West and the Middle East that want a War between Civilizations, a final showdown that will settle the dominancy of Judean-Christianity or Muslim beliefs. In the West the saber rattling is lead by the Neocons, and in the Middle East its led by the Islam-o-conservative extremists. Let's examine each in more detail.

In the West, the War of Civilizations proponents are led by the Neocons, as seen at Bush's 9/12 council of war where Paul Wolfowitz advocated attacking Iraq - this long before there was the National Intelligence Briefing in Iraq, before the investigations into yellow cake uranium, before the missile tubes, before the mobile weapons lab described by an informant nicknamed Curveball, etc., etc. Without any evidence of connections with Al Queda (even those manufactured after the drum beat for war began), the Neocons were advocating war - one has to wonder why? Understanding motivations is always a dangerous game, it does appear that several influential people had multiple reasons, however Israeli influence did seem to play a large role. The most poignant and lasting example of the Neocons drive to expand the scope of the war from the tightly targeted goal of avenging the deaths of 9/11 to a much broader War of Civilization is that the administration chose to not to call the war a "War on Al-Qaeda", but rather the "War on Terror" - a clear escalation that moved it from a war against a clearly defined enemy to an war of ideology and justified the invasion of Iraq. The Neocons' Israeli influence is clearly seen in their foreign policy borrowed from Israeli foreign policy - the use of targeted assassinations by predator drones and laser guided missiles, the use of kidnapping and aggressive interrogation techniques (aka torture), and the long held (and understandable) paranoia that Muslims want to wipe Israel from the map. This brings to the fore two questions: (1) Is Israel's paranoia justified? (2) Should we be an instrument to carry out this paranoia? In the first question, Israel has successfully fought off several attacks, even when they were weak, and now their sovereignty is not only accepted but will clearly be defended by the West. This unconditional support was witnessed during the last Lebanon war where congressmen and the press were practically falling all over themselves to one-up each other on their statements of support for Israel. The idea that the defense of Israel is a war of civilizations and the accompanying "kill or be killed" mentality should have logically passed, but unfortunately, the institutional memory of Israel's recent past is still held by many and now that the concept for use of an aggressive offense to kill your enemy before they kill you has bled over into US foreign policy. Which brings us to item (2) - sure Saddam was a bad guy who denounced Israel, sure he was paying $10,000 to the families of suicide bombers in Israel, but should it fall on Americans to sacrifice $1 trillion dollars and 3,500 soldiers to implement Israeli foreign policy? I'm sure at this point of my article, there are Republican’s shaking with anger, banging their keyboard, shouting that the war was about anything or everything except Israeli influence. But keep in mind, there is plenty of evidence and accusations in former official 'tell-all' books that the decision to go to war was made prior to collecting and evaluating the evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Why was it made? According to the administration, it wasn't about oil (and if we take this at face value), the evidence for weapons of mass destruction wasn't a slam dunk and was clearly manipulated from the beginning to be an excuse for war, not a reason for going to war, talk of spreading democracy as a means to fight terror came in late in the game, and so we quickly run out of reasons that influenced the early decision to go to war. There is personal vendetta of Bush due to Saddam's failed assignation attempt against his father, Rumsfeld being outflanked by Tenet and the CIA in delivering a strategy to defeat the Taliban, Rumsfeld's desire to test his theories on Transformation of the military (aka by detractors as "war on the cheap") but one has to hope that personal vanity didn't drive our great nation to war. Occam's razor tells us all things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one. Bush was talked into war by the Neocons who saw it as a means to defeat the Muslim culture and dictate the terms of peace in the middle east - thus US official foreign policy became "pre-emptive war". Think about this, America as the aggressor. This is no trivial change in foreign policy - for the last 100 years we have seen that those that are the aggressors in military action are almost always the losers. I do recognize, but cannot accept, the argument made by the Neocons that the urgency to drive a War of Civilizations is necessary to prevent countries in the Middle East from getting atomic weapons, a position that has been adopted by the Republicans in general. Keeping atomic weapons out of the hands of the Islamo-conservatives is important goal, but can be done through other means than pre-emptive war. A goal that is better achieved by toning down the rhetoric, draining the swamps of hopelessness that exist, and allowing rational moderates to gain a foothold - not escalating the hatred as the US foreign policy seems bent on doing. We expected to force extremists into the moderate camp at the point of sword, and in fact, we only succeeded in providing ammunition to the extremists in terms of propaganda, failed states, hopelessness, and validating extremists claims that America is imperialistic, looking to steal middle east oil. And thus, rather than drive extremists into the moderate camp, we are driving moderates into the extremists camp. Since we can't force them, it's time to try to coax the majority back into a moderate camp.

So now let's look at why Islamo-conservatives (aka Islamic extremists, Islamo-fascists) wanted war. The Islamic culture was predominate in the world and was a center of scientific knowledge and learning. The Islamic empire stretched as far north as modern day Hungary and Austria. The conservative Islamists do want to recall the days of their glory, but besides nostalgia, there are two major influencing factors that drive moderates into the hands of the Islamo-conservative camp: the creeping scope of globalization and the memory of humiliation at the hands of the West. Globalization, with instant communication, integrated economies, and the internet has caused the spread of Western culture. Conservative Islamists bemoan the dominance of English as the de-facto language of business, the dominance of Western technology, the ease and spread of Western movies, TV, music, as well as alcohol, sexual freedom, and a certain arrogance that comes with the territory. Although, a Taliban self-isolation is the impulsive reaction to purify their land of what they see as corrupting influences, most moderate Islamist understand that the tide of globalization can't be turned back, a better path is a selective inclusion of those ideas that are good and selective exclusion of those that are bad. On the second point, blaming Western occupation, manipulation of corrupt governments, and manipulation of political policy for western economic policy has been a stated complaint of Bin Laden. A fatwa, entitled "What we want from America" by Bin Laden was found in November 2002 in Afghanistan following the collapse of the Taliban. It describes numerous offenses committed by the people and government of America. Under the section "what we are calling on you to do, and what we want from you", he lists seven items¹. They are:

1. Embrace Islam;
2. Stop your oppressions, lies, immorality, and debauchery;
3. Admit America is "a nation without principals or manners";
4. Stop supporting Israel in Palestine, the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and the Manila government against the Muslims in the southern Philippines;
5. "To pack your luggage and get out of our lands" offered as advice for America's own good "so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins";
6. End your support of the corrupt leaders in our countries. "Do not interfere in our politics and method of education. Leave us alone, or else expect us in New York and Washington";
7. "Deal and interact with Muslims on the basis of mutual interests and benefits, rather than the policies of subjugation, theft, and occupation".

He follows up by saying in regards to American fate: "their fate will be that of the Soviets who fled from Afghanistan to deal with their military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall, and economic bankruptcy." Obviously, the first three are a bit ludicrous, but the final three points could be summed up that we should mind our own business. If the goals of the Islamo-conservatives is to reduce the American intervention in what they see as 'their' affairs, our actions over the last six years are only going to add fuel to fire of complaints. The argument for urgency among the Islamo-conservatives in the Middle East is that now is the time to fight to regain prominence, while oil still provides leverage and relevancy to the region.

It is my assertion that Americans must remain vigilant against both those extremists in the West and those in the Middle East that want to drive us into a greater War of Civilizations, must. In America, we must watch for those that are using fear to push us further in our military adventures. We currently see those advocates that are pushing for war with Iraq, stirring the pot, fear mongering, and even in the Republican debates we see a willingness to escalate the violence once again, this time to include the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons. Think careful when you hear the fear mongers among us, who want paint the great specter of doom and gloom as a reason to expand our overseas military (mis)adventures. You'll hear those that claim a loss in Iraq would be the same as Chamberlain-like concessions to Hitler prior to World War II, however, a more apt example would be our withdraw from Vietnam, our withdraw from Somalia, or our withdraw from Lebanon. In all these cases left, we left the countries which remained basket cases for years, however, in none of the cases resulted in the fall of Western civilization. Most rational people realize that the borrowed belief that we are like a cornered animal, whose only chance of survival is to summon all its strength and to lash out as violently as possible in the hopes of intimidating our attackers, is not true. America is not only still the strongest and most powerful country in history, but we are also the most technologically advanced and smartest - we must not just use or brawn, but also our brains. We must be calculating and use our tremendous power with precision to careful extract the cancer - not swinging wildly in blind rage. We need to focus on the immediate problem - avenging those that committed 9/11. Simultaneous to this goal we should focus with laser beam focus, using all our resources (including negotiation) to prevent the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and to drain the root causes of extremism. We must be wary and watchful of the extremists, and ultimately we may need to result in periodic precision military strikes, with the goal of marginalizing those extremists who are beyond redemption and assisting the moderates in being a more attractive solution than extremism. After all, our future depends on it.

---

Sources

¹ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2455845.stm