A CLEAN-UP JOB

Sometimes, you never know how dirty a thing is until you try to clean it up.

Like most bloggers, I tend to stay up late trolling for stories, working on posts, digging for links and seeing what others are saying. I'd done that Sunday night, so Monday morning I really needed a strong cup of coffee. Once I'd cleared away the cobwebs from a night that had been far too short, I immediately set about for a cup of joe, getting the grounds ready, filling the pot and getting our coffee maker going on the job. Then I turned to my mug. It's a little ceramic mug, nothing special. I use it daily for coffee, tea, whatever gets me through the day. On Friday afternoon I'd finished the day with a cup of chai (yup, a conservative who's hooked on chai). By Monday the remnants of the chai had formed a thin little film on the bottom, so thin that in my need for a caffeine fix I almost just let it go. I was tired, and it didn't look that bad. But I decided to give it a rinse, figuring it would take two seconds, no more. I got it to the sink, turned on the water, and to my horror that thin little film from the weekend was a bit thicker and a lot tougher than I'd thought. I ended up having to rip down a couple of sturdy paper towels to get it all out, scrubbing until the chai went swirling down the drain. I was glad I'd decided to wash the thing properly. Chai is good, coffee is great, but three-day-old chai mixed with fresh coffee probably isn't worth drinking. I ended up spending nearly ten minutes cleaning a mug that I expected to take two seconds.

In my yard, I have three big maples that drop leaves and other detritus pretty much year round. To deal with it, I have a big gas-powered leaf shred-n-vac. I've had it for more than four years now without giving it a proper cleaning, and though its plastic shell still *looks* white, I know that as soon as I take a rag to it I'll be spending an entire Saturday cleaning more nooks and crannies than I ever thought it had. That's just how clean-up jobs are. They start out appearing to be quickies, but turn into monsters before you know it.

Yes, there is a point to this.

Since 9-11 the United States has been engaged in a clean-up job overseas. Of our allies in Europe and elsewhere we have asked for support in capturing terrorists and disrupting their networks. Of our rivals such as China, we have asked only that they stay out of the way while we tend to business. Of terror-sponsoring states, we have asked that they stop such sponsorship or face the might of the US military. So far, two such regimes have declined our request, and have met violent American justice. They had their chances, and squandered them. Now they've been driven from power.

But what we're now learning is that the clean-up job in the Islamic world may prove more stubborn than we expected. No, I'm not talking quagmire here. I'm lamenting the sad state of affairs throughout the Muslim world, because it's worse than I thought it was.

Since 9-11 we non-Muslims have been led to believe, both by our own secular government as well as Muslims who call themselves moderate, that the Islamists who perpetrated the hijackings and subsequent mass murder are the minority. They don't represent most Muslims, or even true Islam. It's a line I've bought, because objectively the evidence seems to back it up. After all, there are a billion Muslims in the world. If they all were jihadists, we'd have a 9-11 three or four times a week, somewhere. Further, it is true that moderate Muslims are out there. This site has attracted Muslim readership, a small portion of which has been hostile but the vast majority has been cordial, even friendly. Though I haven't heard from him in a while, one of my favorite correspondents is a Muslim. This person's views on liberty and freedom, on morality and justice, are virtually indistinguishable from my own. And looking outward a bit, where would we be in this war without Mansour Ijaz, a moderate Muslim who over the years tried to get the US government to take Osama bin Laden seriously, even take him into custody? Ijaz has doggedly stayed on the case chasing loose ends wherever he can, at great risk to himself.

But recent events have me jolted. Not in Iraq or Afghanistan per se--anyone who expected an immediate conversion from tyranny to democracy was naive in the extreme. The US even had to have a second try, scrapping the useless Articles of Confederation before adopting the brilliant, majestic Constitution, a process that took most of a decade. And that was with men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson leading the way. If Iraq has such leaders, they've yet to emerge. Our founders had been committed to some kind of liberty-based government for years before the Revolution.

No, the reason I think the clean-up job we're forced to do may be much more difficult than I'd previously thought is because I'm wondering just how many "moderate" Muslims there really are, and whether or not they have what it takes to build a just society. When a moderate Muslim engages in anti-Jewish blood libel and then defends it, it's a seismic event, at least to me. How can a liberal democracy such as ours, and such as we are trying to build in two Islamic societies, function if the "moderates" believe the worst Islamist propaganda and absolutely refuse to see reason? How can such thinking coexist with freedom of religion, one of the bedrock freedoms in any civilized nation?

It can't.

So I'm now looking at the Islam-based societies as though I'm seeing them for the first time. Before I saw a few patches of dirt, a little mud here, some grease there, nothing that would take more than a little while to clean up good as new. Now I see filth, grime and blood. Stains that go deep into the fabric of those societies, that seem to permeate their very souls.

Our clean-up job is going to take longer, and be much more difficult, than we expected. But we have no choice. We must clean up the Islamic mess, as well as we can, or we'll see events that make 9-11 seem trivial.

Ironically, what this means is that the "moderate" Muslims now face a very stark choice: Join us or die. Let me explain. Islamists, the radicals of 9-11 and countless other atrocities large and small, are murderously intolerant. They hate Christians, they hate Jews, they hate animists and Hindus and Buddhists, and even other Muslims who aren't as "pure" as they are. In societies where the Islamists rule, they kill wantonly. They kill non-believers, and believers who don't tow the radical line. For moderate Muslims, there is no hope in such a society. The Islamists will eventually kill or imprison them, once they've exterminated the Jews and the Christians and everyone else.

So if the moderate Muslims don't join us, their own kin will kill them. It's just a matter of time. If they do join us, and help us take down the Islamists, there's a chance they'll get to live. Yes, wars are dangerous and unpredictable, and some moderates will get killed as we take down Islamist regimes and networks. Crossfire is a terrible thing. But when we go in, we go in to win, and we plan to leave at least fledgling democracies in our wake. In such democracies the moderates, who claim to be the majority of Muslims, will have more than just a voice--they'll have the reins. They can take care of the Islamic Nazis in their midst, preventing us from having to return to mete out more justice.

But this can only happen if two things are true. Moderate Muslims must be the majority of Muslims as they claim to be, and moderate Muslims must be reasonable. They must give up the Jew-hate, and they must give up the blind intolerance of other faiths. Moderate Muslims spreading blood libel bodes ill for the future. It has me worried that in spite of our best efforts and intentions, the post 9-11 clean-up job may turn into an scouring. No one on our side wants that. Moderate Muslims can prevent it. If they don't, a measure of the blood from the wars that will inevitably result will be on their hands.

UPDATE: There are signs of hope. The most popular news channel in free Iraq is Fox--because it was most supportive of the war.

YET ANOTHER: Speaking of Mansour Ijaz, his column today is a must-read.

(Thanks to Hanks for the Ijaz link)