What President Bush Should be Saying

Diane West has a great two-part article about what President Bush should be saying about Islam. View the originals here, and here.

What President Bush should say to us:
By Diana West

If this were a sane world, this is what we would hear during the president's next address to the nation:

My fellow Americans.

President Bush pauses before the start of a meeting with the Homeland Security Team at the National Counterterrorism Center on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2006 in McLean, Va. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

I come to you now, gravely aware that what I am about to say will radically change the course of what we have, for nearly five long years now, called the war on terror.

For almost as long as I have held this office, I have been leading this war. On my watch, the United States sent troops into Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and drive Al Qaeda from the safe haven it used to plan attacks on our country. On my watch, we sent troops into Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein and break this link in the terrorism food chain. On my watch, the United States spearheaded an ambitious drive to bring democracy to regions of the Middle and Near East as part of an effort to touch brutalized peoples with the salve of freedom and see them recover their free will, forever strengthened by what we in America prize as God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I made this democratization process the centerpiece of my second term, the core of my political strategy against global terrorism, because history has taught us that democracies don't make war, or support terrorist attacks, on one another. I didn't, as one predecessor of mine famously put it, simply want "to make the world safe for democracy." I wanted to make the world -- that part of the world from which terrorism mainly springs -- democratic, and therefore, safe.

Over the past few years, then, the United States has supported fledgling democracies in Afghanistan Iraq and the Palestinian Authority. We have proudly assisted in making free and fair elections possible in these places, and with excellent results -- at least with regard to the freeness and the fairness of the elections. But the fact is, when these peoples have spoken, what we have heard, or should have been hearing, in the expression of their collective will is that the mechanics of democracy alone (one citizen, one vote) do not automatically manufacture democrats -- if by democrats we mean citizens who believe first and foremost in the kind of liberty that guarantees freedom of conscience and equality before the law.

On the contrary, each of these new democracies has produced constitutions that enshrine Islamic law. Because Islamic law, known as "sharia," does not permit equality between the sexes or among religions, it is anything but what we in American consider "democratic." Indeed, sharia law endows Muslims, and Muslim men in particular, with a superior position in society. It also outlaws words and deeds that oppose this inequitable power structure for being "un-Islamic." From this same Islamic legal tradition comes the mandate for jihad (holy war, usually against non-Muslims) and dhimmitude, the official state of inferiority of non-Muslims under Islam.

With their devotion to Islamic tradition, then, these new democracies have, in effect, peacefully voted themselves into the same doctrinal camp as the many terror groups that violently strike at the non-Muslim world in the name of jihad for the sake of a caliphate -- a Muslim world government ruled according to sharia.

So be it. What I mean by that is, it is neither in the national interest nor in the national will for the United States of America to attempt to reshape such a culture to conform to our notions of liberty and justice for all. It is neither in the national interest nor in the national will to attempt to reform a belief system that animates this culture to conform to our notions of freedom of worship. It is, however, in our national interest, and must become a part of our national will, to ensure that Islamic law does not come to our own shores, whether by means of violent jihad terrorism as practiced by the likes of Al Qaeda or Hezbollah, or through peaceful patterns of migration, such as those that have already Islamized large parts of Europe.

The shift I am describing -- from a pro-democracy offensive to an anti-sharia defensive -- means a national course correction. Rather than continuing to emphasize the democratization of the Muslim Middle East as our key tool in the war on terror, I will henceforth emphasize the prevention of sharia from reaching the West as our key tool in the war on terror.

This will entail the immediate adoption of the following steps.

At home, the line of defense is clear. It is our border. My new strategy calls on us to think of our border as more than just a line on a map. We need to see the border as a cultural line also, a defining line of freedom against proponents of Shariah, which, I cannot emphasize enough, poses a direct threat to our founding principles of liberty and equality. It is that simple. There is a crucial military component to the anti-Shariah defensive, which I will outline momentarily. But without taking civil precautions at the border, even a decisive military victory abroad could be nullified by non-violent means at home.

How? Through largely unregulated immigration of peoples from "Shariah states" — those regions whose governing traditions derive, wholly or in some important part, from the edicts of Islam. If such an influx continues, Islamic law will be accommodated, adopted and even legislated, at least in some jurisdictions, according to majority will. We know this to be true because such a "Shariah shift" is already transforming what sociologists call post-Christian Europe into an increasingly Islamic sphere. If we do not want to see such changes here, we must act. Accordingly, I am asking Congress to amend our laws to bar further Islamic immigration, beginning with immigration from Shariah states.

This, the most crucial domestic component of my anti-Shariah program, will undoubtedly be regarded as the most controversial because it necessitates making a definitive judgment against the laws promulgated by Islam, a religion. This may appear to go against our cherished tradition of religious tolerance, not to mention good manners. But if the laws promulgated by Islam directly threaten freedom of conscience, freedom of expression and religion, women's rights, and key concepts of equality — and they do — it is a sign of intellectual rigor mortis not to say so. And I do say so, but, again, not to launch a transformative military or cultural offensive against Islam, but to initiate the mobilization of a defensive movement to prevent the Islamization of American law and liberty.

And what about Iraq? Thanks to American-led coalition troops, a Ba'athist dictatorship has been dismantled, and Iraq is a parliamentary democracy under a new constitution. It is a matter of increasing significance, however, that this new constitution, ratified by the people of Iraq, enshrines Islamic law above all. This means that when the new Iraq joined the ranks of democratic nations, it simultaneously joined the ranks of Shariah states. This may help explain widespread Iraqi sympathy for Hezbollah, for example, the Iranian-supported Shi'ite terrorist group that not only attacks American and Israeli interests, but also seeks the expansion of Shariah. It also begs the question about long-term American support: How, in the war on terrorism, can we uphold a partner that feels solidarity with terrorists?

We cannot — certainly not as a realistic war strategy to safeguard the liberty of the Free World. Once, I saw the war that began on September 11 as dividing the world between those countries that were with us, and those that were against us. I have now come to define the crisis, both cultural and military, as occurring between the Free World and the Shariah World. The centrality of Shariah in Islam is not something Americans can or should try to change. But it is not something we can ignore, either.

With this centrality in mind, our goals in the Middle East should change from, in effect, promoting Shariah-democracy to preventing the export of Shariah and terrorism to advance Shariah. Accordingly, I have directed our military to formulate a plan to redeploy American troops from Iraq's cities, where they have been operating at great risk to attain stability for the Iraqi government, to bases in the north. From there, they may assist as needed in our mission to neutralize the terrorism — and Shariah — exporting capabilities of freedom's enemies in the region. These would include nuke-seeking Iran and Syria, without whose support Hezbollah would not exist, and Saudi Arabia, from whose coffers comes global jihad.

What we call the war on terror now moves into a more focused phase, which better defines our mission and makes it more attainable. The road ahead is long and difficult, but our next steps are clear.

God bless the United States.