Changing the Venue

Yesterday’s discussion covered the moral imperatives for supporting the “Free Muslims”; now I’d like to consider the practical reasons for doing so.

This discussion dovetails with the recent meme of “We’re on Our Own,” so I’ll cover that aspect first.

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The recent election has confirmed that our little corner of the blogosphere — the members of the Counterjihad — will not be affecting public policy any time soon. Elected politicians and the members of the permanent foreign policy establishment, as exemplified by James Baker, are giving clear signals that they have no interest in or stomach for a real fight against the legions of Mohammed. The politicians have to keep an eye on the masters of seditious propaganda media and the next election. The bureaucrats, out of habit, or Jew-hatred, or complacency, or ignorance, are not going to think outside the box.

For at least two years — and more likely for a decade, after two Hillary administrations — what we advocate and strategize for will remain with us, the citizens of America and the free world, and not extend to the people who actually execute public policy on our behalf.

So I don’t want to hear any more prescriptions for public policy. Saying “We need to crack down on Saudi Arabia” or “It’s time we did something about the Salafists in Somalia” is pointless. None of it is going to happen.

When we talk like that, we’re spinning palaces out of gossamer, building castles out of airy nothing. We’re wasting our time.

If our government were capable of doing such things, we wouldn’t be mired so deeply in our current slough. The legacy media have a lockjaw grip on the manly fortitude of our elected leaders, and we just have to deal with it.

But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless — far from it. It just means that the potential for action has devolved from our national political leaders to where it belongs: local government, civic organizations, and the people themselves.

Assuming our First Amendment rights aren’t eroded any further by the courts — which they may well be, under either a McCain or Hillary administration — we can act forcefully and lawfully on behalf of the majority of our people, the ordinary people, people who have not succumbed to the PC propaganda, people who want to take back the culture.

If the First Amendment falls to the anti-Liberty forces of the state, then we will have to fall back on the Second Amendment. In the meantime, it’s time to reinvigorate the Tenth.
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It’s an ongoing process, one that will move slowly. It won’t get much publicity, and will take at least a decade to bear real fruit.

The bywords are: Rebirth and Resistance.

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Which brings us back to the Free Muslims.

The Cold War wasn’t won solely by outspending the Soviets, or by superior firepower, or by better planes and submarines.

Those were crucial, but it was also won by many thousands of ordinary people in the West who acted collectively to reach out to dissidents and disaffected groups behind the Iron Curtain. There were Christian groups which equipped local churches in Poland and East Germany with computers, printers, and paper so that they could disseminate samizdat materials. Jewish groups contacted their oppressed co-religionists in the Soviet Union. Human rights groups co-ordinated with local dissident organizations in communist countries, and worked on a well-publicized campaign to force the Soviets to live up to their signature on the Helsinki Accords.

After Ronald Reagan was elected, this process gained the imprimatur of the United States government, which helped accelerate the collapse of the Soviet bloc. But it was going on before that, and it was inspired, organized, and executed by people without the help of government.

This is part of what we will be doing from now on in the Counterjihad. We didn’t write off the Lutherans in East Germany by saying, “They’re all Reds; to hell with them.” We didn’t say, “Let those Jewish refuseniks rot in the gulag. They’re part of the Soviet system.”

The same should be true of Muslims. It’s a serious strategic error to maintain the all-Muslims-are-evil meme, because you are thereby foreclosing cooperation with the Kurds or the ordinary Muslims in Bangladesh who are being overrun (and killed) by violent radicals. These people may not like us — and the Kurds have every reason not to trust Americans, thanks to the work of James Baker — but they are our natural allies.

To turn our natural allies into people that we have to kill does not make sense.

“Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.” That packs a nice emotional punch. It adds oxygen to the pure flame of righteous anger, and makes a person feel strong and dedicated to say it. But it serves no strategic purpose.

Sound strategic doctrine would argue for allying with truly dissident non-violent Muslim groups, both here and abroad.

Some of them might indeed hate Jews. Some of them might smile if America were destroyed.

But that just makes them the Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvilis of the Counterjihad. We deal with Uncle Joe now, while we need him. Later, after all the mujahideen have earned the 72 black-eyed ones, our relationship with the remaining Muslims may have to change — after all, they do revere the Koran and the Hadith — but, for now, we’re in the same fight together.

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The most important thing, however, is to realize that the fight has moved to a new venue. It’s not happening in the political arena any longer, and it can’t happen there for the foreseeable future. Our political leaders have abandoned the Counterjihad, and we have to continue it without them.

The topography of the battlefield has changed greatly since the 1970s, when we struggled against the Soviet empire. Back then mimeograph machines and reams of paper were the necessary substrate for the effort; now the internet, cell phones, instant messaging, and electronic networks define the battlefield.

This is an information war, and every single person who is connected to global communications is a combatant, whether he realizes it or not. That’s why we can enter the struggle as we are, in our pajamas. We don’t have to dump tea in the harbor or mount the barricades to fight it. We can stay within the law (at least here in the United States) and still be soldiers in the Counterjihad.

The enemy is way ahead of us in the field of 21st-century information warfare, but we are learning fast. Speed, agility, and flexibility; network security, investigation, research, and close communication: these are the weapons of choice.

It’s already happening, but you have to lift your eyes from the TV screen and the newspaper headlines to see it. You have to give up on Congress and the State Department. They’re a lost cause.

Get down to the county office building and see what’s going on. Watch the zoning hearings for the CAIR-affiliated Islamic centers. Pay attention to what’s in the curriculum at your kids’ school. Watch out for those “field trips” to the mosque!

Above all, connect with the others who are thinking the same way. There is strength in numbers, and that strength is already gathering into a non-sectarian and internationally networked movement.

For more information, see the CVF forum.

Or you can nuke the ragheads. Your choice.