https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/aug/1/islamic-triumphalism-or-jihad-can-be-finished-if-p/
Psychiatrists tell their patients they have to “name their fears.” A fear that cannot be named cannot be understood or faced. An unnamed threat cannot be defeated. This is particularly true of what is called the threat of “terrorism.”
A recent Washington Post commentary, “Terrorism won’t just go away,” exemplified the problem. By Joshua A. Geltzer and Nicholas J. Rasmussen, two well-placed former Obama administration officials, the column mentioned “terrorism” and “terrorist” 14 times. But “terrorism” is simply a tactic used by “terrorists” in pursuit of political, ideological, economic, religious or nationalist aims.
Something called the “global war on terrorism” might never end. But the struggle against the threat posed by what can be termed Islamic triumphalism or jihad might be finished if properly fought.
Not only must the threat be named, but also the ideology. And so must the practitioners — including the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, which The Post Op-Ed specified — and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Republic, Hezbollah, Hamas and other movements inspired by anti-Western, anti-Christian and anti-Jewish political Islam.
After Japan struck Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, killing 2,400 Americans, the United States did not declare war on surprise attacks, a technique. It went to war against Imperial Japan, which embodied military expansionism.
But following al-Qaeda’s destruction of New York City’s World Trade Center and devastation of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001, which killed more than 3,000 non-combatants, the United States insisted on fighting terrorism, not the aggressive ideology behind the technique.
As a result, although United States and allied forces have killed tens of thousands of ISIS, al-Qaeda and other terrorists in the greater Middle East and elsewhere, the end is not in sight. After expenses potentially totaling several trillion dollars, more than 7,000 American troops killed and tens of thousands wounded, the fight exhibits whack-a-mole characteristics.