Articles

Nearly five years after September 11, it is fair to say that the U.S. government remains challenged by how to combat the ideology of radical Islamists. In some ways, this is not surprising. The West now faces a challenge in an area - religious controversy - which the modern state prefers to leave to individual discretion, and in which it is not accustomed to contend. Moreover, the struggle is taking place within a largely unfamiliar religion, in an area in which the West is, at best, tone-deaf. Nevertheless, this new “war of ideas” must be joined and won if the United States is to address what have become grave threats to its security.

This spring, practically unnoticed by the mainstream media, the battle lines were formally drawn in the “war of ideas.” President George W. Bush used his January 2005 inaugural address to deliver an unapologetic tribute to freedom and the premises that undergird Western liberalism: liberty, the individual, and self-government.In response, Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Osama Bin Laden’s chief lieutenant in Iraq, released an audiotape of his own. In it, he denounced the very principles President Bush has pledged to promote.This frank exchange should serve as a useful primer for all of those who believe that the War on Terror is at its core a struggle against global privation, or a cross-cultural misunderstanding that can be settled by a search for common ground. Quite the opposite is true. We are engaged in an ideological conflict that resists compromise.