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Michael Novak on The War
One of the clearest thinkers of our time is philosopher and theologian Michael Novak. Novak writes today on National Review Online that the President needs to appoint a spokesman whose job is to speak to the big issues surrounding the Iraq war.
The three main points would be hammered again and again:
1) Barbarism: It must be made clear the sheer barbarity of the enemies our men and women are encountering in Iraq. Michael Yon has reported the story of a couple families in Diyala Province being courted by al Qaeda. Each family, with a son about eleven years old, was invited to a lunch by al Qaeda and “sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.†We need no starker reminder.
2) Terror: The point of this barbarity is to evoke terror and compel zombie-like obedience and subservience. Terror is a psychological weapon. The point of terror is to invade the soul of opponents, and thus to compel them to cease resisting, and to lay down their arms. The point of treating women harshly is to induce terror. The point of almost everything is to evoke and to multiply terror.
3) Tools: The best instrument of terrorists is, first, the international media, which allows them to strike fear of their primitive barbarity even into the hearts of peoples far away, convincing them and convincing their governments that fighting terror is hopeless. Second is the use of the Internet, which inspires millions of young Muslim men in every part of the world to seek after invincibility, power, and the gaining of respect through fear. The Internet is also used to teach amateur groups how to make for themselves, and deploy for themselves, simple instruments of local terror.
These three characteristics of our enemy need to be elaborated with new detail every day.
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We are now engaged in a war of ideas. For this reason, we need to draw for everybody a better picture of just who and what our enemy is, because this enemy is feverishly engaged in spreading to others their conception of who we are. They grasp the essence of a war of ideas far better than we have yet grasped it. They mean to kill us.
This is not marbles. This is death.
Our soldiers are doing their part to take the battle to the enemy. We need to do our part to advance the truth in the war of ideas.
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