Do You Not Get It

Is it not a fact that in the past, people viewed the world differently? If not we should. Most of us get that. In the present, not everyone sees the world the same way. Many of us don’t get that. And so within the foreign policy establishment it is widely assumed that those who send suicide-bombers to kill us must harbor “legitimate grievances,” and that they, like us, would prefer peace to war, and are eager, as we are, to resolve conflicts diplomatically, with both sides accepting compromises.

I contend, as others probably do, these are dangerous illusions. Throughout most of history, war has been the norm, peace the exception. Pursuing victory and conquest, founding empires were seen as noble pursuits. Abu Bakr (Big Daddy) al-Baghdadi is self-evidently among those who hold such views today. He has declared himself caliph of the Islamic State: spiritual, political and military ruler of the world’s Muslims, heir to Mohammad who founded the first Islamic empire. al-Qaeda, from which the Islamic State splintered, has similar goals, though other Islamic terrorists, believe the first order of business is to collapse America’s infidel empire. That achieved, the restoration of Islamic power and glory surely will follow.

More important: People like “Big Daddy” spread the ideas that what the Non-Muslim West wants undermines what today’s jihadist want. The West wants to usher in the modern world. The West encourages meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances as well as rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, and the abolition of feudalism. Contemporary jihadists, by contrast, are building nothing, teaching only religious dogma, slaughtering, enslaving and oppressing those they conquer, while imposing medieval readings of sharia, Islamic law. Any questions as to which world is best for civilization or its civilized inhabitants?