Walid Phares - The Confrontation: Winning the War Against Future Jihad

THE CONFRONTATION

ALSO BY WALID PHARES AND AVAILABLE
FROM PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

The War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracy

Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against the West

WINNING THE WAR AGAINST FUTURE JIHAD

WALID PHARES

THE CONFRONTATION
Copyright Walid Phares, 2008.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
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First published in 2008 by
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ISBN-13: 978-0-2306-1092-7
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To my mother, Hind, who left this world on December 17, 2007, seventeen years after we were separated by the frontier between freedom and oppression. She was the spiritual force that propelled my learning and teaching. Her sacrifices have allowed me to work for a better future for all parents and children. This book is dedicated to her memory.

I WOULD LIKE TO THANK AGAIN THOSE PERSONS IN MY LIFE WHO deserve my full attention but have given me the time I owe them to write these pages. In particular I thank the "scholar" and the "commander" for their support. I thank them above all for understanding the important reasons behind this work, and for sacrificing our time together to all those who would eventually read this book.

I wish to acknowledge my literary agent, Lynne Rabinoff, for her faithful dedication to my work and her presence at all stages of the making of this book. Also I thank my publisher, Aire Stuart at Palgrave Macmillan, who encouraged me to write this book and patiently oversaw the complex process of its production. Her patience, advice, and suggestions have impacted its final shape. I also thank the entire team at Palgrave Macmillan with whom I worked diligently for many months to ensure the book's quality. In particular, Alan Bradshaw's input was essential.

I am grateful for the work of my host institution, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, which is now influencing many minds and hearts both in America and on other continents. I'd like to thank FDD's President Cliff May for making my fellowship possible, as well as Mark Dubowitz, my colleagues, and the staff for their support. In addition, I thank the European Foundation for Democracy and its President Roberta Bonazzi for assisting me in my research in Europe. A particular recognition goes to Adela Zacharides, the tireless manager of our Future Terrorism Project.

Acknowledgment is due also to the legislators and current and former officials in the United States, Europe, and worldwide who have understood the importance of my previous books Future Jihad and The War of Ideas, and have acted upon the recommendations in their own fields. Also, I thank the various foundations, NGOs, government entities, and military and defense institutions who have interacted favorably with my work and who have expressed their anticipation for this book, The Confrontation.

My gratitude goes also to my colleagues in the media, past and present, who have been my route companions in discussing and sharing these ideas and writings with the public. Particularly I thank the leadership and producers at Fox News who entrusted me to become their expert beginning in 2007. I also thank my friends and colleagues at other national and international networks, on radio shows and Web sites, and in printed media worldwide with whom I have and I am still working to broaden the debate and better inform and educate the public.

I wish to acknowledge and thank my readers, those faithful ones who have followed my work for years and those new readers who are now turning this page. The measure of success of this book may be measured in the number of its readers, but more important are their satisfaction and their actions after finishing the book. Messages I have received from readers of my previous publications have impacted The Confrontation.

My last acknowledgment goes to my family. To my brother, Sami, whose early ideas impacted me; to my loving sister, Liliane; and to my father, Halim, who taught me justice, and mother, Hind, who taught me faith, now united in the other world. Thank you for what I became and for what I gave and will give to others.

Walid Phares
Washington D.C., January 12, 2008

IN NOVEMBER 2005 I PUBLISHED MY FIRST POST-9/11 BOOK, FUTURE JIHAD: Terrorist Strategies against America. Its purpose was to present an explanation of the War on Terror that differed from what had been offered after September 11, 2001, when the American and international publics sought answers to the "they" in the primitive but much publicized question of the moment: "Why do they hate us?"

I felt I had to write about "them"the Jihadistsbecause of the failure of those participating in the public debate to identify and call them what they call themselves. Scholars, experts, and politicians were wandering around in various directions, talking about who the West and the Free World were facing in the new age of terror. Apologists for the attackers advanced the shady argument that the attackers are people frustrated with Western policies; Western responses were weak and incoherent. It was said that the new war was a War on Terror, meaning a war against a form of violence and not a war against an enemy that was using violence. In fact, this enemy has an agenda that it pursues with the many weapons at its disposal, terrorism being only one of them. Now, seven years after 9/11 and three years after the Iraq campaign began, the American-led coalition has dispatched troops from China's borders to the Persian Gulf and spent billions of dollars on a conflict with a problematic name and few effective arguments in favor of it.

Worse, those democracies not engaged broke the international solidarity against terror, claiming that the war in Iraq had no legitimacy and the War on Terror, aside from "retaliation for 9/11," had no basis. But the failure in understanding wasn't only about the identity of the terrorists; it was also about hate. Too quickly, the Western debate over the perpetrators of terrorin New York, Washington, Madrid, London, and beyondshifted from the haters themselves to the so-called root causes of this hatred. The Jihadi propaganda machine, from al Jazeera to websites and critics within the West, claimed that the roots of rage were legitimate and bound up with the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict, neocolonial policies, and the rest of a familiar litany. Years after the first conflict of the twenty-first century, liberal democracies did In 2005, from an intellectual standpoint, it looked bad for the West and for the embattled civil societies in the Greater Middle East. This major party to the conflictthe Westlacked a clear vision and had nothing resembling an operative and effective assessment of the confrontation.