The Best Hope

There’s a scene in the movie Crocodile Dundee in which a New York City mugger pulls a knife on the Australian outback character played by Paul Hogan. Crocodile Dundee produces a much larger weapon and says, “That’s a knife? THIS is a knife.” The mugger gapes, then flees, and the audience always laughs.

The brutal beheading of an American civilian by Islamic terrorists is no laughing matter, but the principle is relevant. The U.S. military has weapons vastly more powerful than knives, and one wonders if the terrorists have as much sense as the mugger in the movie.

President Bush’s strategy to create a democracy in Iraq, for all its missteps and misjudgments, represents one of the world’s last chances to avoid a catastrophe. The majority of Moslems may well be peaceful, but if just 1% of Islam’s 1 billion adherents are as fanatical as those who gladly kill themselves in order to kill us, no amount of talking, self-humiliation, or material concessions will satisfy them. Even killing us is not sufficient for some whose hatred leads them, contrary to the dictates of their religion, to burn and rend the bodies of our dead. The knife that killed Nick Berg was up close and personal.

With thousands, if not millions, besotted by white-hot fury and many more being created each day by the poisonous teachings promulgated in the madrassas, we are in a desperate race to show that there is another way. A peaceful and prosperous society in the heart of Islam’s territory, a society respectful of the rights of women and non-believers, may be the catalyst that transforms the region. Observation and first-hand experience of the new Iraq will contradict extreme religious teachings, resulting, it is hoped, in their widespread questioning and rejection (cognitive dissonance). We won’t know for a generation whether the strategy was successful, but at least it’s a plan that has a possibility of working.

(One theory that has worked so far is the “flypaper” strategy. U.S. forces in Iraq are such an affront to radical Islam that jihadists will focus their efforts on driving them out. Tactically, it may be easier to strike in other locales, including the American homeland, but the bull, enraged, can only see the red cape. Awful though the attrition be, it is better that the battles are fought over there than over here.)

Others have written persuasively that moderate Moslems should see that it is in their own best interest to leash their radical brethren. The rage that Americans felt after 9/11, when so many innocents were murdered, has been echoed in recent days when everyman Nick Berg was slaughtered. That 9/11 anger will be multiplied a thousand-fold if a weapon of mass destruction is detonated in an American city. No American President, whose sworn duty is to preserve, protect, and defend, will be able to withstand the pressure to go nuclear. Failure in Iraq is not an option.

Cure for Depression

One way to stop thinking about the all the people who want to see us dead is to attend a college graduation. Last Friday I watched over 3,000 students receive their diplomas (actually, pieces of paper that promised that diplomas will be mailed to them over the summer) at the University of Utah’s Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City.

One girl had “No War” in bold letters on her cap—bravo. Navy cadets, resplendent in their whites, ushered us to our seats—bravo to them, too.

Thousands of students, energized and eager, naïve and knowledgeable, hopeful and hesitant, streamed out to the sunlight. The world is their oyster. © 2004 Stephen Yuen