Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Previously Gunsite Gossip
Vol. 11, No. 7 June 2003
On another line of conviction it seems impossible to make it known on this side of the barricades that what we have here is indeed a Holy War. Islam constitutes a faith, rather than a nation. Endeavoring to analyze national confrontations in this struggle is futile. The Chechens and the Pakistanis and the Palestinians who streamed down to Iraq to fight "The Great Satan" were Moslems, not nationals. We wiped out a minor nation-state in Iraq with relatively little difficulty, but that does not serve to impress the faithful. We can hardly set forth to subdue Islam in a military or geographical sense, but what we can do is to identify Islam as the enemy and to convince them that the East can no more defeat the West than the West can defeat the East. We have here the greatest standoff in history. It is up to us to convince the raghead on the camel that simply killing kafirs, as the prophet (may peace be upon him) exhorts him to do, will not raise his standard of living, even if it may assure his passport to paradise.
We wish President Bush all success in his delineation of a "road map to peace," but it must be clear that until the enemy understands the problem, he is unlikely to stop fighting. The outcome of the struggle in Mesopotamia ought to serve as a convincing object lesson. I guess it is pretty hard to put that point across in Arabic.
Offering democracy to an Arab is like bringing a horse to a steakhouse
I think Col Cooper just nails it
