President Bush, in his State of the Union
address said, ”This is not the fight we entered
in Iraq, but it is the fight we're in. Every one
of us wishes this war was over and won. Yet it
would not be like us to leave our promises
unkept”. The plan to increase the troops in Iraq
has generated a great debate. I support
President Bush’s plan to send more troops to
Iraq because I believe that the Iraq crisis is a
morale issue and a necessity for our security. I
also believe that we should support moderate
democratically elected governments in the region
such as Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas if we wish to see peace
in our lifetime.
I moved to New York in 1993 after spending 15
years of my youth during the civil war in
Lebanon were I was born and raised as a Maronite
Catholic. I was struck by how every
ethnical/religious background work together and
accept each other in what has come to be known
to me as the melting pot. The US in the 90’s was
living an economical boom and the rest of the
world was benefiting. This euphoria was
shattered by the event of September 11. Our
lives in America changed. I joined the US Army
reserves and have endured with my family the
strain of going through multiple mobilizations.
But my family and I endure those hardships
because we believe that this battle is our moral
obligation and that the stakes are high.
We are facing a threat called Islamism. How do
we deal with this problem? Should we isolate
ourselves and ignore it hoping that it will go
away, or should we readjust the course and be
involved and become the so-called Police of the
world. Understanding the political and
social “Islamism” is paramount and I hope, as
somebody who was born in the region where it
emanated, I can share with you my ideas on the
debate of the proposed plan by the President. I
personally believe that Islam and Islamism are
completely different. Islamists have hijacked
the religion and are threatening their fellow
believers and the rest of the civilized world.
Iraq is the latest battleground in the Islamic
fundamentalism war. The Islamism surge is at its
highest peak and a division has emerged in the
lead effort of dominating the movement: Shiite
fundamentalism a la Khomeini or Sufism Sunni
fundamentalism a la Bin Laden. The world is
experiencing a new version of “the cold war”, a
more dangerous one, and a war without
boundaries. For years, the Arabic regimes like
in Egypt, have played the Islamic fundamentalism
card to justify their dictatorships as a
necessity for regional stability. In Syria,
under marshal laws all freedoms have been
suppressed in the name of the “Holy fight”
against Israel. By doing so, moderate voices in
the Arab world have been violently suppressed to
the advantage of Islamic radicalism festering in
the mosques.
The Islamists couldn’t limit themselves to
mosques only; their goal is to establish a new
world run under the Shariaa. From Algeria to
Somalia, the Salafi fundamentalism has shown a
brutal way of conducting insurgent warfare. In
Afghanistan, the Sunni fundamentalists, under
the Taliban, succeeded in ruling an Islamic
state. Afghanistan became a training
ground for terrorists with a global reach to
support Islamists movements in other countries.
In tandem, they have executed an amateurish
attack on American soil, in what has come to be
known as the first World Trade Center bombing.
This was followed by the savage bombings of the
two US embassies in Africa. The US retaliation
was very weak and had no deterring effects on
the perpetrators.
On the Shiite Khomeini front, Hezbollah was
gaining more strength in Lebanon under the
Syrian hegemony. After a serious clash between
Hezbollah and Israel that took place in the
spring of 1996, a miscalculated solution was
hurried by the desires of the Clinton
administration not to detract the then in course
peace process. This quick fix, known as the
“April understanding” handed Hezbollah a moral
victory while giving the Syrians even more
control over the Lebanese scene. By
forming a joint security committee between the
Syrians, Hezbollah, the UNIFIL and the Israelis,
the sovereignty of Lebanon was ignored and the
role of the Lebanese government was disregarded
in favor of the acknowledgment of Hezbollah as
the sole peace broker in the South of Lebanon.
That was another emboldening win for Shiite
fundamentalism against the so-called
Israeli-American axis. In the rush to leave a
legacy, President Clinton pushed Ehud Barak to
pull out from Southern Lebanon, in 2000, and to
implement the UN resolution 425. Under normal
circumstances, the unilateral Israeli withdrawal
might have ushered the end of the cross border
hostilities leading to a permanent truce between
Lebanon and Israel. The impossibility of
coordination with the paralyzed Lebanese
authorities provided Hezbollah with another
golden opportunity. The Lebanese army was not
allowed to deploy in the vacated areas thus
leaving them under the full control of the
Iranian Hezbollah. The consequences again were
very dire, Hezbollah established a mini state
where it freely developed its well fortified
military position while creating a
socio-economic network thus perpetrating the
dependency of the local population on
Hezbollah’s welfare. This presented a major
victory for Shiite fundamentalism. Later on,
Ariel Sharon, then Prime minister of Israel,
negotiated directly with Hezbollah,
circumventing the Lebanese government. The
prisoners exchange that ensued helped
consolidate Hezbollah’s image as a reckonable
power in a Arab world marred by an inferiority
complex against Israel’s might. Shiite
Fundamentalism stood to benefit of the false
halo of superiority that Hezbollah enjoyed in
Lebanon and across the Muslim world.
The indifferent reactions of the self-entrenched
Western world to Alqaeda’s aggressions and to
Hezbollah’s rise were an emboldening factor for
the fundamentalists. The morning of
September 11, 2001 was a rude awakening to this
fact. A virulent enemy was gaining ground,
recruiting terrorists and enjoying financial and
logistical supports from extremists across the
globe. The consequences of the reactions to 911,
whether we agree or disagree on the way they
were conducted, have created a situation in Iraq
that needs to be dealt with. In Iraq now,
those two fundamentalist movements are for the
first time confronting each other. Each one
wants to win over the other, but yet, in the
same time they converge on confronting the
Western World and in particular the United
States of America. If the Shiite
fundamentalism wins, we will have a gradual
domination of Iran over the entire Muslim Arabic
world, that means controlling the biggest
resources of oil energy, thus influencing
the global economy. Even more, a nuclear Iran
means achieving a complete elimination of the
“enemy of Islam” Israel.
If Al qaeda wins, that means our allies in the
Sunni Muslim countries will succumb to them, and
the “caliphate” will be reestablished in
Baghdad.
Regardless of who prevails among the two, we
will have to deal with a bloody effusion on a
scale we haven’t seen since World War II. Even
in the heart of Europe, we will see blood shed
because the radical Muslims embedded in this
continent follow the Salafist sect of Islam.
We can argue forever about the intervention in
Iraq, but let’s face the reality now and leave
history to judge if going to Iraq was justified
or not. In the Middle East right now, the future
of the civilized world is at stake. The only way
to win that “new Cold War”, is to support
moderate elected governments and leaders like PM
Maliki of Iraq, PM Saniora of Lebanon and the
Palestinian President Abbas. In Iraq, the
democratically elected government of Maliki has
to be pressed and helped to win the war. If the
price is to increase the US troops level, so be
it. President Abbas in Palestine has to succeed;
Israel and the West have to support him
financially. The Settlements have to be stopped
and a well-established Palestine with
well-defined borders has to be created and
respected. Lebanon is a shining example, when
the world works together the possibilities are
endless. The conflict with Israel this past
summer led to an unprecedented resolution from
the UN, resolution 1701. A buffer zone on the
northern borders of Israel was established,
depriving Hezbollah of its own state. The second
step taken is the world financial meeting that
took place in Paris to financially support the
moderate Lebanese government. One more task is
still needed, the disputed shebaa farms. These
farms form a triangle on the border of
Syria-Lebanon and Israel and currently occupied
by Israel. They should be handed to the UN until
their belonging to Syria or Lebanon has been
established. If PM Saniora doesn’t succeed, then
Mr. Nasrallah the leader of Hezbollah will bring
down the democratically elected government of
Lebanon. By doing so, he can eject the UNIFIL
out of the south of Lebanon and regain control
of this area and de novo threaten the North of
Israel.
Peace has a price, economic prosperity has a
price, but believe me it’s a lot less costly,
in the long run, then the loss of one innocent
human life falling under terrorist attack
in New York, Paris or the streets of Baghdad.
