also in this section Thirty-nine predators against freedom of the press In-Depth Report Documents Milosevic Crimes Another affront to Panamanians of African descent

The stakes in this war

by Eric Jackson

Wesley Clark, who after his time in Panama became the first American general to lead troops into combat in defense of a majority-Muslim population against non-Muslim oppressors (in Kosovo), has characterized the current war in Afghanistan and elsewhere as a 'battle for Islam.' To Clark, the war will decide whether the Muslim world will rally around those, like Osama bin Laden, who consider Muhammad's teachings hostile to all other religions and civilizations; or around those who espouse an Islam in which believers to live in peace with their non-Muslim neighbors and leave the penalties for religious errors to God.

It's a point well taken, but when we think about it, it's not only applicable to Islam. There are a number of religious fanaticisms out there threatening world peace and the security of the United States, this war is feeding them all, and a bin Laden victory would also be a big win for other dangerous actors who profess opposition to the Al Qaeda network.

Should catastrophic terrorism by people espousing heretical strains of Islam be so difficult for people in the mostly Christian United States to understand? It shouldn't be. After all, the September 11 attacks surpassed all precedents for such violence only a few months after the execution of the principal perpetrator of the previous most deadly act, the Oklahoma City bombing.

Didn't Timothy McVeigh advocate a weird heretical version of Christianity, one that advocates a "racial holy war" against the "Zionist Occupation Government" supposedly in charge of the United States? McVeigh was but a somewhat less organized western mirror image of Osama bin Laden, and, rather than an isolated case, the heir to a tradition that has long been with us. The Ku Klux Klan, the Christian Identity movement and most of the "patriotic" militia groups are of the same ideological species as McVeigh, and the same genus as bin Laden.

Those Americans who are brutalizing or threatening their Arab or Muslim neighbors, who are calling for government action against all foreigners, and who are taking the present crisis as an opportunity to mark all those who disagree with them as traitors, really want to remake the United States into a mirror image of Taliban society. They share Al Qaeda's preference for totalitarianism. The only difference is that they would impose it in the name of a different nation and race, by perverting a different set of holy scriptures.

America's home grown fanatics present the government with a tactical problem that's similar to the one faced on the international scene. If the circles in which McVeigh ran threaten the personal freedoms of many Americans and the security of the US government, at this time those threats are minor compared to the one presented by Al Qaeda. The FBI needs to be concentrating its resources on behalf of the current war effort. Similarly, in foreign policy the Bush administration must of necessity concentrate its focus on that of the Al Qaeda network and its Taliban hosts. To do otherwise would be a political and diplomatic blunder, and would dissipate resources at a time when we are confronted by hardened enemies who will not be easily vanquished.

But still, we should understand, for example, that you will find the Hindu analogues of bin Laden and McVeigh in fanatics who are part of the nationalist coalition that rules India. We don't need to be picking a fight with India, but we should recognize that its government includes those responsible for the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya, the spiritual heirs of Gandhi's assassin.

For another example, we should recognize Israel's hard-liners for what they are: another set of totalitarian thugs who hide behind specious religious claims, just like Osama bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh. It should never be presumed that, just because anti-Semites and allegedly Islamic fanatics also want to destroy them, that the forces behind the massacres at Deir Yassin, Sabra and Shatila and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin are somehow civilization's friends.

A victory for bin Laden's forces would strengthen the hands of every wannabe war criminal who would massacre Muslims in the name of Christianity, Hinduism or Judaism. So in that sense, which probably isn't the way that the general meant, the war against Al Qaeda really is a war for Islam.