The negotiation fallacy depends on the assumption that every player in the game would rather talk than fight, would rather settle for 33 percent of the pie, than 100 percent of the pie. Human history alone testifies to the fact that such players not only exist, but that they tend to walk away with the whole pie, which is not surprising as history tends to be written by those who play to win, rather than by those who play to draw even. An inconvenient truth for the apostles of soft power who think that empires of paper tigers are all it takes to usher in a new world order.
Unfortunately for them, wars so often come down to who wants victory more. In WW2, Nazi Germany swept the field because its soldiers wanted it more, while the Allies and even the Russians initially wanted to split the difference, to keep Fritz at bay, until everyone had a chance to talk it over, and pick up as much as they could from the new state of affairs. Only when England and Russia looked into the abyss, did they actually begin to want it more. Only then did they begin making the sacrifices, putting forth the desperate effort and endurance that allowed them to survive long enough to exhaust Germany's warfighting capabilities and bring the United States into the war.
Today we aren't the ones who want victory more. Our enemies do. And they make a point of it every time a suicide bomber walks into a crowd. His death is their way of communicating to us their ruthlessness and their determination to stay in the fight until the last infidel is dead or in chains. Suicide bombing is not strategy, it's propaganda by those who make up for their lack of strategic and military acumen, with their contempt for the "soft and decadent enemy" whom they see as wanting nothing more than a comfortable life surrounded by consumer goods. An assessment of the modern world that Islamists shared with Khrushchev and Hitler, not to mention your average progressive critic of American consumerism.
Islamic terrorists cannot militarily defeat a people who walked on the moon. But they don't have to. Their strategy does not depend on playing to our strengths, but to our weaknesses. Their bullseye is painted square on our sense of fair play, our eagerness to reach out to the Other and see his point of view, our desire to be at peace, and our willingness to forget the past in order to embrace the future. They know that while we may have B2 bombers and nuclear warheads, that we will not do to them, as they would do to us. That we are not willing to kill them, as they would kill us.
And so their strategy is very painfully simple. They will keep killing us. Day by day. Week by week and year by year. We will catch them, break up their cells, give them fair trials with ACLU lawyers, and they will laugh at us and curse us. And those cells that we do not catch will succeed. If not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then next week. As long as Muslims continue to immigrate to America and solicit new converts, they will never have a shortage of potential terrorists. And they know that. What's more, they know we aren't about to do anything about it.
They don't have to succeed with every car or plane bombing. With every shooting rampage or sniper attack. They just have to succeed now and then. Enough to keep the engine of terror running, greased with our blood. Enough to convince us that we can't defeat them, and that we need to sit down at that negotiating table, and discuss how much more of the pie they're going to get, in exchange for a temporary truce. And when that expires, they'll want more of the pie of course. And we'll give it to them. Because appeasement is a learned behavior. And once you've given up your dignity and your patriotism, and your refusal to bow to evil-- then there is no depth to which you will not sink to. If you doubt that, look Eastward to Europe or Southeastward to Israel. And then tell me it can't happen here.No, Islamic terrorism doesn't go away when you ignore it. It plots and schemes. It runs off at the mouth and eventually it kills again. Because it may be up against the children of the men who walked on the moon, but it has time and numbers on its side. And the sentimentality of an enemy who will not behead them, or shove them into pits and throw a grenade in. Who will look on in horror if one of his bombs falls on a school, where the occupants of that same school would have been jumping for joy if one of their bombs had fallen on a school filled with infidels. Who will try to negotiate. Always try to see their point of view. Who will ignore the hard truths that the cold and barren desert teaches the bandit and the trader at night. That those who prosper must learn to be pitiless in the defense of their own lives and that of their house.
Islam was born out of that same school of the desert. Its classroom was the broad sands, hot in the day and cold at night. Its ledger was the Koran. Its pencil was the scimitar. And its graduation exam was survival. And while the West has changed, Islam has not. The fall of the Ottoman Empire and the departure of the British Empire has reverted the Middle East to the old ways, the tribe and the family, the fanatical creed and the low crunning with which to advance it. Mercy is murder. Death is a blessing. And all ideas fall before the sword.
And so out of that terrible classroom only one idea has survived. No, not the borrowed algebra of India or the stolen scrolls of the Greeks. That of the supremacy of power. The power of Allah as embodied by the victorious armies of Islam. For the triumph of ruthless power is the only true message of the Koran. The men and women of the West may sit at negotiating tables, but in the East they still understand that tables are good mainly for hiding knives under. And that men who wish to sit at a table with you, are either hiding a knife of their own, or are too soft and addled to know what is about to happen to them.
Where the West is full of words, the East is full of deeds. Not great deeds. Not high deeds. Not even noble or virtuous deeds. Just deeds. And that you see is the point. It is better to do something, than to do nothing. And in a war between the fighters and the talkers, the fighters will surely win. Because the freedom of the pen must be defended by the sword, or it will surely fall to the sword. The East understands that. Mohammed understood that. But the West has forgotten it. And it is paying a terrible price for that already.
These two towers now overshadow the world. The Tower of Socialism and the Tower of the Dead. Every time the second tower grows, the first tower trembles. And unless a third tower rises soon, the Tower of Determination, there will be only one tower hanging above the world. The Tower of the Dead. The Tower of Islam.
Terrorism doesn't go away when you ignore it. The people of the free world do. One by one. Into the dark night.
From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield Covers the Stories Behind the News Named one of the Jewish Press' Most Worthwhile Blogs, 2006, 2007 , 2008 and 2009
