Why They Fight

I assume that even the astronauts at the international space station are now aware of the terrorist attacks today in London. There is a lot of TV and newspaper reporting and the bloggers are covering the events.

Great Britain has been our staunchest ally in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It is easy then to conclude that any attack on Great Britain is designed to force the Brits to follow Spain's path and abandon or minimize their support for us in those countries. Apparently, jihadists have posted to that effect on various websites. But I wonder if that is not simply playing to OUR expectations and that these terrorists' goals have nothing whatever to do with Iraq or Afghanistan, at least not in the context that we define our involvement in those countries.

It is likely that the perpetrators of today's attacks were neither Iraqi nor Afghan nor were they ever citizens of those countries. It is possible that they are residents even citizens of Great Britain itself. What then is the stake a British resident or citizen believes he has in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that he is motivated to kill other British citizens indiscriminately?

Perhaps the terrorists state their goals in terms of British support for the USA in Iraq and Afghanistan not because it is, in fact, their causus belli but because they know that there are many people in the USA, Europe and elsewhere who will find it credible. Why? Because we have a tendency to view events everywhere as triggered by our policies, actions and intentions. We think that every ripple in the global pond necessarily emanates from whatever pebble we've dropped in its middle. Is that simply ego or arrogance? Or is it just a truncated view of history, i.e., that we view the past as having begun only when we are able to remember it?

Islam was founded in the 7th century. Its history includes both golden periods of success and growing influence as well as long stretches of failure and internal strife. There are significant differences today amongst the world's Muslims. Those differences did not mature in the last ten years but have been ripening for centuries.

Muslims do not all think alike nor do they all interpret or practice their religion in the same way. They never have. And there is tremendous pressure within the Muslim world itself because of those differences. While I am oversimplifying things, I think there are fundamentally two kinds of Muslims involved in this contest, the ljithadists who are progessive or liberal in their view of Islam, and the lkhwan, who follow the School of Hanbali (Wahhabis). They favor a more radical, extremist view and encourage violence and repression in an effort to broaden their influence. But influence over whom? The infidels and non-believers? I don't think so.

To the extent that a terrorist attack is meant to send a message, I believe it is a message meant for and best understood by other Muslims and that message is: we are strong and we are to be followed and we will show you this by defeating the infidels. And then you will live as we dictate.

The war in Iraq or Afghanistan is not their causus belli. The rejection of radical Islam by other Muslims is the nexus. The terrorists say otherwise because it is an effective tactic in their efforts to defeat us because we might believe it and we might give them what they want. But when they say they attack us because we stationed troops in Saudi Arabia or because we went to war in Iraq or Afghanistan, these protestations are merely a tactic.

When they say they want us out of Iraq or Afghanistan, that goal is not an end in itself. It would merely be the proof --if they get it -- to offer to the Muslim world as the incontrovertible vindication of their strength and power, as the shining evidence that theirs is the one true Islam.

In short, it is not about us. It is about them.