Ken Abramowitz is the President and Founder of SaveTheWest. Jon Sutz is SaveTheWest’s consulting editor and videographer.
Also see the Additional Reading section for additional resources, cited in this article.
People and organizations within and beyond the Washington, DC public policy circles, including President Trump, have expressed grave concern that the U.S. is engaged in “endless wars,” and posed the question, “When do they end?”
Practically since the birth of the United States of America, in 1789, numerous ideologies have waged war against us. For the Islamists (Muslim supremacists), this was the continuation of their (at that time) uninterrupted, 1,200 year violent war against (a) non-Muslims, everywhere, and (b) Muslims whom they contend do not practice the faith correctly. As described in an earlier editorial, Ken’s Thought of the Week: Defending ourselves from Islamists is a marathon, it wasn’t until President Thomas Jefferson decided to stand up to the endless, unprovoked, savage assaults by the Barbary Pirates against U.S. trade vessels, did violent jihadist acts against us stop — for a while.
Most recently, since the 9/11 attacks, numerous influential Islamists have articulated a new strategy in their war against us: to draw us into military conflicts on their home turf that will bog us down in perpetuity, cost us a fortune in blood and treasure, from which we will find it difficult to extricate ourselves – ever. Here are a few examples:
On October 29, 2004, 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Ladensaid: the following, as described by CNN (highlights added):
“We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah,” bin Laden said in the transcript. He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, “using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers.”
“We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat,” bin Laden said. He also said al Qaeda has found it “easy for us to provoke and bait this [the Bush] administration.”
“All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations,” bin Laden said.
On September 14, 2007, Anis Al-Naqqash, a convicted Islamist terrorist in Lebanon, said the following, according to MEMRI:
“The American Empire must die. The strategy that serves our interests is to get the U.S. embroiled in endless wars, which it cannot win.”
The “West and Islam have been mortal enemies since the latter’s birth some fourteen centuries ago,”
In a Middle East Forumreview of Ibrahim’s book, his premises are described as follows (highlights added):
An illustration of the Barbary Pirates attacking U.S. merchant vessels, without provocation, in the late 1700s, because they believed it was their religious duty. More here.
His [Ibrahim’s] extensive analysis bears out the apt title of this volume. The documented history is equally ill-remembered and vital for modern Westerners. […] Ibrahim “records a variety of Muslims across time and space behaving exactly like the Islamic State and for the same reasons” – namely, Islam’s promotion of warfare against non-Muslims. Islam’s deity “incites his followers to war on the promise of booty, both animate and inanimate – so much so that an entire sura (chapter) of the Koran, ‘al-Anfal,’ is named after and dedicated to the spoils of war.” Jihadists following Islamic canons thus “‘use’ or ‘loan’ their lives as part of a ‘bargain’ or ‘transaction’ – whereby Allah forgives all sins and showers them with celestial delights.”
Ibrahim examines how Islamic afterlife doctrines beckon the faith’s battlefield martyrs. Islam’s celestial pleasures include houris or “supernatural, celestial women … created by Allah for the express purpose of gratifying his favorites in perpetuity.” “That Islamic scriptures portray paradise in decidedly carnal terms” reflects the “primitivism of Muhammad’s society.”
President Trump has said on numerous occasions that he has no interest in the U.S. fighting endless wars, knowing full well that democracies are not capable of maintaining the public will to fight forever. Here is part of his 2019 State Of The Union speech:
Thus, the obvious question is: Can we just stop fighting endless wars, because we don’t like them, and are not good at fighting them, and don’t want to incur the cost, in blood and money?
Unfortunately, the answer is, “No.”
Whether we like it or not, the U.S. and all democracies (50% of the world’s population) are fighting an endless war against dictatorships (the other 50% of the world’s population).
We are under endless attack by two distinct enemies:
(1) The “Greens”: Islamists, including those who perpetrate and fund physical terrorism, such as Iran, ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other violent groups, as well as those who are waging the “cultural jihad,” to advance Islamist (Muslim supremacism) through non-violent means (most notably, funded and supported by Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan)
For background on the war Islamists have been perpetrating against us, here are a few good starter articles:
(2) The “Reds”: Communists and socialists (externally, China and Russia, and also, internally, by subversive domestic groups, including ANTIFA, and other far-left organizations)
So how should we protect ourselves from these two endless, global and domestic threats, without bankrupting our government, or sacrificing our brave soldiers?
As I noted in an earlier editorial, the best model to use is the Cold War model, which treated war as a marathon, rather than a sprint.
For more than 40 years, from 1946-89, we focused on containing the communist Soviet Union and all its satellite nations and regimes. Sometimes, we fought physically in Korea and Vietnam, to help stop communist regimes from violently overthrowing, and enslaving other nations. But primarily, we fought through other means, such as cultural, economic, diplomatic and legal battles.
We also grew our economy exponentially, and became stronger, in multiple ways, every year — while the Soviets grew weaker, every year.
For those who are unfamiliar with our four-decade, non-violent conflict with the Soviet Union, here is the first installment of an excellent, 24-part documentary, entitled “Cold War,” produced by CNN:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH2kk4x5Dog
Finally, after 43 years, the Soviet Union gave up, but the failed socialist ideology survived, both in Russia, and in China, which – thanks to its economic reforms, which we helped enable – now poses a rising, existential military threat to the U.S. Further, we have allowed our schools and other major cultural institutions to be gradually infiltrated and influenced by proponents of socialist doctrines, to the point where, as documented in a detailed report by SaveTheWest’s editor and videographer, Jon Sutz,“America At The Precipice”:
“The Communist Manifesto” is the most-assigned economics textbook in U.S. colleges, assigned more than twice as frequently as any other economics book.
64% of Americans overall (across political parties) now agree with Karl Marx’s core socialist doctrine, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
58% of American Millennials say they’d rather live under either communism, socialism or fascism, than under capitalism.
Similarly, nearly 1,400 years after the death of Muhammad, we are still fighting to protect ourselves from Islamist physical warfare (and cultural subversion). For deep background on this multi-faceted threat, see this excellent documentary, “The Third Jihad,” hosted by American Muslim reformer, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, and produced by the Clarion Project:
If possible, these two fronts should be fought as Cold Wars, not violent wars. We should focus on containing both the Reds and Greens by confronting them culturally, economically, legally and diplomatically. We should use also our superior cyberspace abilities, and only when absolutely necessary, employ our military assets.
We must maintain this marathon until the economic failures of the Reds and Greens force their leaders to focus internally, on their own territories and citizens, and adopt more democratic systems to deal with 50% of the world’s population that resides in democracies.
We must be patient, as difficult as that is for democracies.
It certainly beats the military-oriented World War 2 model of mutual death and destruction.
“We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah,” bin Laden said in the transcript. He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, “using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers.”
