THE FRAGILITY OF TERRORISM

A prediction we hear often regarding the War on Moslem Terrorism is that it is going to last a long, long time — for so many years into the future that no one can see the end of it.

Maybe it will. Maybe it will be a war our grandchildren will be fighting when they’re our age. But no analysis of the war shows that it must be this way. It’s just a prediction, one which could turn out to be dramatically wrong. It’s entirely possible that the War on Moslem Terrorism could be won quickly.

When I began giving speeches in 1984 entitled “The Coming Collapse of the Soviet Union,” most people couldn’t even imagine a world in which the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Yet I went on to predict something even more unimaginable — that the Soviet collapse wasn’t far off in the distant future, but that it was coming fast.

This was because, I argued, that the structure of the Soviet Empire, including the Soviet Union itself, was brittle. A brittle physical structure, like a glass, can be unchanging and unyielding — but if the right stress is placed upon it, it doesn’t slowly give or crumble, it shatters. One minute it looks like it always has, the next moment it’s in pieces. Social structures can be brittle in the same way — which is why the result of the stress placed upon it by the Reagan Doctrine was that the Soviet Union shattered virtually overnight.

The phenomenon of Moslem Terrorism is not a social structure — it is a psychological structure; it is not located in any physical or geographical space, but in certain people’s minds. It is thus not a political or social or economic event, it is a mental event. If we want to get rid of it, we must understand and dissect it as such.

Moslem Terrorism is something which the 19th century British scholar Charles Mackay would have recognized as a “moral epidemic.” In 1841, he wrote a history of such epidemics entitled Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. What all such mass delusions have in common is an incredibly intense psychological energy that is impervious to reason, reality, and morality.

That is the strength of these mass frenzies. Their weakness is that the energy, however intense, is inherently unstable — in fact, the more intense, the more unstable. There is thus a fragility to them. They spring into a roaring existence, wreak their havoc, then vanish. They are ephemeral.

What feeds their energy is irrational hope, hope oblivious to danger and fact, hope that drives the absolute conviction that prices of tulips and South Sea islands and dotcom stocks will forever rise, that driving a plane into a building will cause the disintegration of the richest economy the world has ever known, that blowing yourself up to kill a few soldiers will defeat the most powerful military force in history.

Warnings of danger, appeals to reason or morality, attempts to negotiate — all are useless in dealing with a delusionary frenzy. There is only one way to reach the frenzy’s tipping point, where its unstable energy tips over and rapidly dissipates and dissolves. That way is:

The denial of hope.

“Abandon all hope ye who enter here” is the traditional greeting to those at the gates of Hell. It must also be the greeting to all Moslems who challenge America with terror. Achieving such abandonment requires:

· Never showing weakness. Weakness feeds hope. No concessions, no negotiations, ever.

· Overwhelming relentlessness. Constant relentless pressure on their money sources, contacts, communications, physical safety.

· Inducing panic and fear. Terrorists have got to be terrified of us. One example: when captured, shoot one of them and bury his body smeared with pig grease (which prevents a Moslem from entering heaven), tell the others this will be their and their colleagues’ fate, see that they spread the word.

· No sanctuaries. No safe havens, no place to run and hide anywhere in the world.

· A basic six-word anti-terrorist policy: Hunt them down and kill them. Every Moslem terrorist anywhere in the world should go to bed sweating in fear that this night will be his last.

· Prevent, minimize, or ruthlessly counterattack their victories. This is the hardest. Victories like the Madrid bombing are enormous boosters of hope. Yet there is no way to ensure their prevention. Thus the need for immediate response, tracking down the perpetrators and eliminating them with the pig grease method.

The pig grease method is vital for denying hope — because a key component of Islamist hope is that a martyr’s death is his ticket to Whorehouse Heaven. A terrorist who is made to believe that his actions won’t accomplish his goals in either earth or heaven is one in whom you have induced comprehensive hopelessness.

Fighting to win the War on Moslem Terrorism requires us to learn the lessons of Humane Ruthlessness used by the most successful generals like Sherman, Pershing, and Patton. They knew that winning quickly, however ruthlessly, brought an end to casualties on both sides.

In 1909, General John “Black Jack” Pershing became governor of Moro province on Mindanao in the southern Philippines. By 1913, he had completely defeated the “Mohammedan” terrorist rebellion among the Moslem Moros. According to some accounts — and particularly to cost as few lives as possible among the Moros — Pershing ordered that a group of captured Moro terrorists be executed, their bodies dumped into a grave, pigs slaughtered with the pig guts poured on top of the bodies, then buried. Two of the Moros were set aside to witness this and then set free to tell their comrades to give up before this was their fate.

In 1939, Gary Cooper starred in the movie “The Real Glory,” set in the Philippines in 1906, in which he played an American Army doctor, Dr. Bill Carnavan, who wraps a captured Moslem rebel in a pigskin, and ends the rebellion by telling him all killed rebels will now be buried in pigskins.

Will this work with all Islamic terrorists? Perhaps not. But it will work with some and that’s what counts.

It should be clear that all of this applies to the entire phenomenon of Moslem terrorism in general and to Moslem terrorists — Sunni, Shia, Baathist, whatever — in Iraq.

The faster and more effectively we deny hope to the terrorists, the faster we win the War in Iraq and the War on Moslem Terrorism as a whole.

We must learn to focus on the fragility of terrorism. The energy of fanatical radical Islam is unstable and fragile. It is the crux vulnerability. When the cost of tulip bulbs in 17th century Holland reached a point where there was no hope of finding more people willing to pay it, the tulip craze evaporated. When the cost of committing terrorism in Iraq and against America reaches a point where there is no or little hope of any gain thereby, the terrorist craze among Moslems will evaporate.

The concluding question: If denial of hope is the key to defeating terrorism, what is the single greatest hope fueling terrorists right now? What gives more hope of victory against America to the terrorists in Iraq and their sponsors in Iran, the terrorists of Al Qaeda and their sponsors in Saudi Arabia, to any and all Moslem terrorists around the world, more than anything else?

The defeat of George W. Bush this November.

John Kerry is now the Great White Hope of Moslem Terrorists.

When this hope is dashed upon the re-election of President Bush, the entire edifice of Islamic Terrorism will suddenly become far more fragile. The very day his re-election is confirmed, within hours of Kerry’s concession speech (November 3, possibly late evening November 2) is the time to strike, to initiate Operation Denial of Hope, putting into action the message:

We are coming after you, we will hunt you down and not stop until we kill you, you have no safe hiding-place, you have no hope.

The fragility of terrorism makes it possible for the War on Terrorism and the War in Iraq to be won quickly. Today, the hope of Bush’s defeat greatly reduces that possibility. On November 3, a re-elected George W. Bush has the opportunity to win this thing and fast.