NEW LESSONS FROM SOMALIA

This news out of Somalia should act as a wake-up call to the Administration about the ineffectiveness of our lackluster response to terrorism. "Lackluster response" you ask? Didn't we invade Afghanistan and Iraq? Don't we have troops in those countries and special ops guys and CIA guys all over the world? Yes, yes and yes. But the Somalia example, in which a group of warlords backed by the CIA were routed by a bunch of warlords who formed a loose, Islamist alliance, perfectly illustrates our problem in dealing with the Islamist threat. Clearly, we have the conventional military power to knock down a government like Saddam's, and even one as chaotic and diffuse as the Taliban's. What we have not shown any success at doing is knocking down the underlying power of our enemies, which is their faith and the appeal of that faith to millions of their co-religionists. We can call it a "perversion" of Islam all we want, yet it is still being taught in thousands of madrassas across the Islamic world, oftentimes funded by one of our supposed "allies", Saudi Arabia. This ideology has such power because it offers hope to the hopeless. That is why different, but related, versions of this ideology triumphed against the Shah in Iran in 1979 and against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s through violent means. It is also why it has won elections in the Palestinian Territories and threatens to win elections in Egypt were they ever to be held in a fair and open manner. As long as so many millions of Muslims are mired in poverty and powerlessness, they will provide fertile ground for fanatics like Osama bin laden, President Ahmadinejad, and the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah. Just as Adolph Hitler promised downtrodden Germans a path to restored power and glory, so too do these modern fanatics promise Muslims a return to their glory days. It is pretty heady stuff, and our response so far, of limited war and a promise that democracy will cure all, is not cutting it.

Unfortunately, the only thing that will sate the thirst for a restoration of power that inflames so many young Muslims is for them to achieve that power. When people talk about Islam as a religion of tolerance and peace, they refer to those periods when the Islamic empire was controlling vast swathes of territory and its rulers governed millions of people almost unchallenged from within and without. They could afford to be magnanimous to Christians and Jews who lived under their control. As long as the Muslim world is divided and outpaced by the rest of the world, the resentment will fester and strengthen. In the end, unless Muslims themselves learn to live as separate peoples in separate states and give up their dream of unity and suzerainty over the rest of the world, we will continue to face a growing threat. This threat will not be defeated by a bunch of CIA guys buying up warlords with suitcases full of money.