DEFINING THE ENEMY IN THE WAR ON TERROR

Nine months after the "War on Terror" began, we are still in the midst of a fierce debate as to its content. Is it a war against the tactic of terrorism, or the ideology of Islamism (advocating the establishment of a polity based on Islamic fundamentalism). Recently, Lou Dobbs' re-started the debate by dissenting from the media party line and identifying our enemies as Islamists.

As Matthew Yglesias' correctly points out, this is not just a matter of semantics or political correctness, but an issue that determines the scope of the war. No one takes seriously the idea that we intend to eradicate the tactic of terrorism - that would be a warped form of neo-Kellogg-Briandism. Instead, this is a debate over the breadth of the current war. Iis our enemy solely Al Qaeda and similar global Islamist organizations enaged in terrorism, or the wider world of Islamism that bred them - with its roots in Iranian and Saudi theocracy and its allies in the Middle East and South Asia.

This divide has led to odd splits between the standard designations of left/right. Yglesias, responding to InstaPundit's quip that Bush was now officially to the left of TAP on the war, rightly points out the odd assortment of liberals (TAP), libertarians (Sullivan, InstaPundit), and neocons that support a broad definition, and the leftists, realists, and theocons who support a narrow definition.

The war has created a whole new alignment on foreign policy, divided along lines I'll roughly classify Wilsonian and anti-Wilsonian.

The Wilsonians see the current battle as one more struggle in the battle between liberal democracy and tyranny, and that victory will be achieved not merely by the defeat of al Qaeda, but with the defeat of Islamism and the expansion American values of liberty and democracy into the Islamic World. The Wilsonian unite on two key principles: (1) the superiority of American values and democracy to those of our enemies; and (2) the exportability and universality of these values. Thus, we have neolibs, neocons and libertarians, who while disagreeing on the fine-tuning needed in America's balance of rights agree that flaws and all, our system of liberties is vastly superior to that the rest of the world enjoys.

The anti-Wilsonians, on the other hand, have qualms about one or both the Wilsonian propositions. The core of the anti-Wilsonians are the Realists, who doubt the desirability and efficacy of exporting American democracy. Far more important for the Realists is the neutralization of threats to American interests. Thus, there is a tactical advantage to not waging war against Islamism. First, it allows us the flexibility in our relations with states such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who have cut deals with their own Islamists to maintain power. From the perspective of Wilsonians, the Saudis and the Pakistani military regime are hostile elements to be removed in order to bring liberty and democracy to Arabia and Pakistan. For the Realists, such regimes can be tolerated to the extent they cooperate and/or support American economic interests (read: oil). The Realists are joined by a strand of the Theocons that have embraced ecumenism in their ongoing culture war with cultural left. These theocons are sympathetic to much of the Islamist agenda - its desire to resist the egalitarian, libertarian forces of sinful, secular, Western culture. Politically-active fundamentalism isn't bad - just radical, violent, anti-American politcal fundamentalism. The last thing they want the United States to be doing is going off on a crusade for the right of women to wear a miniskirt in peace. Finally, those cultural liberals who angstfully support the war have questions over the superiority of American values. For them, tolerance is better than intolerance, but the notion of imposing tolerance on the intolerant makes them squeamish. As a result, its better to limit the scope of the conflict.

There remains outside of these two groups the small anti-war minority, which for the most part is the hard-core Left, those that disdain American consumerism and power to such a degree that they believe the expansion of American influence in the world is a bad thing. It is highly doubtful that these people will ever form a majority outside of Berkely and Union Square.

The standard conclusion is that the Wilsonians are right on principle, but the Realists should be trusted in practiced. This is an argument of false symmetry. Our current mess is a direct result of the failure of Realist policy. Alliances with "lesser evil" corrupt regimes has neither promoted stability nor improved American security. Realism only works when other actors are themselves acting as rational power-maximizers. It utterly fails to account for ideology and human individuality. This is not a war on terror - but a war on theocratic tyranny. The choice between liberating the Islamic world from Islamism and preserving America's safety is not merely false, but wholly misleading. There is no other way to a safe America but through expanding freedom into the Islamic world.