Thinking the Unthinkable

In a recent column I confessed to having been wrong about Israel over a period of many years.  

I have criticized U.S. support for Israel based on the absence of any strategic U.S. national interest, and I’ve mocked those who’ve referred to Israel as “the only functioning democracy” in the Middle East.  

I’ve written that Israel is a democracy in the same sense that South Africa was a democracy during the apartheid era. In support of that proposition I’ve cited a CBS documentary of the 1970’s which seemed to prove that a black man living in South Africa, under apartheid, had far more freedoms and far more economic opportunities than a Palestinian living in Israel.

But true or not, all of these things now pale into insignificance because they are trumped by our mutual need to survive a worldwide Islamic Jihad, backed not only by hijackers, suicide bombers, and terrorist sleeper cells, but by the threat of that greatest nightmare of all…nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists and terrorist states.

But what are our alternatives? Let’s assume that the Iranian madman, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is able to acquire theatre-level missiles and nuclear warheads – weapons capable of reaching Western Europe and Israel – and that he expresses a willingness, even a desire, to use them against Israel. Israel will not sit idly by and hope that his threats are mere bluster. They will, if necessary, stage a preemptive nuclear strike against Tehran.  

If and when that happens, what then? We can be relatively certain that Muslims throughout the world will react swiftly and violently. No public place, anywhere in the world, will be safe from suicide bombers. Times Square, Disney World, movie theaters, malls, and sporting events…all will be prime targets for suicide bombers. Our police forces will be powerless to stem the tide of violence and frustrated and enraged citizens will begin to take the law into their own hands. Around the world, Muslims will do the same.

But will Americans and Europeans accept that level of violence with equanimity, as just another reality of 21st century living, or will they demand a worldwide quarantine of Muslims? I believe that, rather than live every day with the fear that their children may not come home from school because of a terrorist bomb placed on a school bus, the American people will demand that all Muslims be quarantined, in a country of their choice, anywhere in the Islamic world. They will not be allowed to live in Europe or in North America.

So what happens when an entire region of the world becomes a no-travel zone for people of the western world? What happens to our oil supplies? The American economy cannot survive a month without adequate supplies of oil. How will we force the Arab nations to sell us their oil? What weapon will we use to insure their cooperation?

The first thing that comes to mind is food. It has always been the national policy of the United States that we would never use food as a weapon. Will we find the courage to reverse that policy? To be sure, in a choice between a worldwide food embargo and national suicide, American liberals can be expected to choose national suicide, but that’s a debate they would lose.

In the Christian world, men and women of different faiths have coexisted side by side, living in the same neighborhoods, and working side by side in factories and offices for many centuries. The religious beliefs of others have rarely been a major concern. However, this is not true of Muslims, who believe that their religious faith is not separate and apart from the rest of their lives…it is everything. It governs not only their spiritual lives, it governs their business or profession, and it governs their political lives.

Most Muslims, I’m convinced, are like the rest of us. They want to live their lives in peace. But what of the growing radical element that wishes to impose Islam over all the populations of the Earth through violence and intimidation? How can we tell one from the other? And if we can’t, how do we avoid a totally draconian response to the violent acts of the minority?   

As George F. Will tells us so poignantly in his column (Civic Duty: Go See United 93 – May 7), “The message of the movie is: We are all potential soldiers. And we all may be, at any moment, at the war’s front, because in this war the front can be anywhere.”

If we can’t find some way to avoid the ultimate conflict, then what we consider to be unthinkable today, will become commonplace tomorrow.