Winds of War: The Coming War for Democracy

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Joshua Muravchik wrote about the Winds of War. I’m flattered that he’s been reading my blog . Be that what it may, he sees the gathering storm of the coming war and made some important remarks concerning the reasons why. His reasons ties in nicely to how history is repeating itself.

The apparent meaning of all of this pointless provocation and bullying is that the axis of radicals--Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah--is feeling its oats. In part its aim is to intimidate the rest of us, in part it is merely enjoying flexing its muscles. It believes that its side has defeated America in Iraq, and Israel in Gaza and Lebanon. Mr. Ahmadinejad recently claimed that the West has already begun to "surrender," and he gloated that “final victory . . . is near." It is this bravado that bodes war.

A large portion of modern wars erupted because aggressive tyrannies believed that their democratic opponents were soft and weak. Often democracies have fed such beliefs by their own flaccid behavior. Hitler's contempt for America, stoked by the policy of appeasement, is a familiar story. But there are many others. North Korea invaded South Korea after Secretary of State Dean Acheson declared that Korea lay beyond our "defense perimeter." Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait after our ambassador assured him that America does not intervene in quarrels among Arabs. Imperial Germany launched World War I, encouraged by Great Britain's open reluctance to get involved. Nasser brought on the 1967 Six Day War, thinking that he could extort some concessions from Israel by rattling his sword.

Democracies, it is now well established, do not go to war with each other. But they often get into wars with non-democracies. Overwhelmingly the non-democracy starts the war; nonetheless, in the vast majority of cases, it is the democratic side that wins. In other words, dictators consistently underestimate the strength of democracies, and democracies provoke war through their love of peace, which the dictators mistake for weakness.

In a very concise way, Muravchik has given the reason why this declared war on democracy by those who champion Islamism will begin sooner rather than later. This war might be a traditional shooting war that the Islamists will most certainly loose. But there is another possibility. Why risk loosing to technological superior enemy when the much more covert tactics of media, demographic, litigation, institutional, financial, economic and thuggery jihads are proving quite successful.

That is to say in the words of Admiral Yamamoto, why ‘awaken a sleeping giant”. The political and demographic jihads of intimidation, infiltration and disinformation have succeeded quite well in muddying the democracies responses at self-defense – with the gleeful help of the Islamists’ useful idiots.

Read the rest at The Gathering Storm.

Get a FREE TRIAL COPY of the The Gathering Storm eBook which includes the Forward by Walid Shoebat, Introduction, and first 50 pages of The Gathering Storm eBook. And sign up for my free WEEKLY STORM REPORT and receive a synopsis of the most important weekly news revealing the intimidation, infiltration and disinformation tactics used to soften-up the non-Muslim world for domination.