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September 19, 2006
Who Are We Fighting? It Seems Romney Knows.
Mitt Romney continues to impress me. I'm probably a perfect test case because three months ago I knew next to nothing about him (Republican governor of Massachusetts, a Mormon, a strong ideological conservative), and for him to win the White House in 2008 he must educate and persuade people like me that he's a better choice than, say, Rudy Giuliani.
He's been doing a pretty good job of that lately. First he took a strong stand against former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami's visit to Harvard University.
And now it appears that he has a clear view of exactly who it is that we're fighting in the "global war on terror". That's a terrible description of what we're involved in, by the way, and Romney seems to know why. From ABC News via Romney's own site:
Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., has sought to confront the religious element of terrorism.Exactly. It has been pointed out that calling this a "war on terror" is analogous to calling our WWII struggle against Japanese imperialism a "war on kamikazes". Terror is a tactic, not an ideology."They are terrorists, yes, but more directly they are Jihadists," the White House hopeful told ABC News. "That has broad implications."
Romney's determination to avoid referring to America's enemies solely by the tactics that they use is earning praise from some foreign policy specialists.
"I think it could change the entire center of the conversation," said Mary Habeck, a professor of strategic studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. [...]
In her new book, "Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror," Habeck argues that Jihadists are not merely angry about U.S. policies. In Habeck's view, Jihadists are at war with the United States because they view America as the biggest obstacle to the global rule of an Islamic superstate.
She told ABC News that if you refer to them as terrorists, "you have no idea what holds them together as a group or what gets them to join up as a group."
Romney's determination to go beyond the "terrorist" label has also met with approval by a Democratic member of the 9/11 Commission.
"The governor is on the right track," former Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., told ABC News. "I continue to believe very strongly that a war against a military tactic is not likely to be very satisfying in the end."
I've also abandoned my brief use of the term "Islamo-fascist". Mary Habeck has persuaded me that while it's possible to draw some similarities between the jihadis and the original fascist ideologies, the term "fascism" is incompatible with the jihadis' goals.
One of the critical points of Habeck's book is that the jihadis' view of the Islamic declaration of faith, or tawhid ("there is but one God, and he has no partners...), leads directly to their conclusion that the pure Koranic shari'a law is the only legitimate law for the world, because it comes from God. Any law or government created by humans (whether it be capitalist, socialist or whatever) is forbidden and must be fought. Even if a democratic congress were to voluntarily pass a law to make shari'a the rule of the land, it would still be illegitimate because it would be decreed by human will, not God's.
Romney's words tell me that he is getting the right knowledge, analyzing it correctly and speaking plainly about his conclusions. I'm definitely staying tuned.
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