Fundamentalism at the US's
corps By Brian M Downing
The United States faces another
embarrassment amid its difficult wars in the
Islamic world. Following close on the heels of
atrocities and miscues in Afghanistan, it has come
to light that Colonel Matthew Dooley, an
instructor at a military graduate school, taught
his officers that the US is engaged in a global
war, not with al-Qaeda, but with Islam itself.
Furthermore, the contest may have to be
resolved by using nuclear weapons on sites such as
Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia - an event that
would surely trigger a cataclysmic war.
Dooley has been relieved of teaching
duties at the Joint Forces Staff College in
Norfolk, Virginia. His views are not official army
doctrine by any means, and he has likely reached
the end of his service career. However, Dooley's
views are based on neo-conservative ideology and
co-mingle with fundamentalist ire and
apocalyptic yearning.
This is troubling not only for the conduct of an
already vexing war but also for political and
constitutional reasons.
Neo-conservatism
has a long connection to the US military. This may
be initially puzzling, as most neo-conservatives
skillfully avoided military service during the
Vietnam War and their newer followers have only a
somewhat closer connection to actual service.
Yet the neo-conservatives were important
in revitalizing the military after Vietnam. They
instilled philosophical grounding and charged the
military with vital missions around the world,
including ones that continue to this day. Many
neo-conservatives today hold posts in military
schools and impart their strategic and
philosophical vision to the officer corps,
especially the more promising young officers
chosen for the fast track to upper ranks.
Neo-conservatism saw the antiwar movement
of the Vietnam era as bringing the twin evils of
social decay and flagging resolve in the global
contest with the Soviet Union. The post-war
military was rent by disciplinary problems,
abysmal morale, and a sense of purposelessness.
Experienced officers and non-commissioned officers
were heading for the exits in large numbers. Their
outlooks shaped by the rise of Nazism,
neo-conservatives saw the free world in danger and
saw their mission: rebuilding the military as a
beacon of morality at home and a raised sword
abroad.
Neo-conservatism and
fundamentalism were partners in rebuilding the
military after Vietnam. The former provided the
ideology and political support; the latter
provided a good deal of the new officer corps and
public support. Traditional values were extolled
over the reigning permissiveness; global activism
was advocated after Vietnam had damaged
internationalism; and with the election of
president Ronald Reagan in 1980, defense budgets
were boosted. The military was restored to an
honored place in American life, and officer corps
knew well the intellectual voices that had helped
with that. [1]
The fall of the Soviet
Union in 1991 seemed to validate neoconservatism
and military might, but it also raised the
troubling matter of what to do now the Evil Empire
was gone. The mission that lay immediately ahead
was to maintain US global dominance, but in time
the intellectual groundwork of another mission
came into being: spreading democracy throughout
the world.
The Middle East would be the
region of chief concern. The 9/11 attacks brought
ideas into practice. Some of them were think-tank
dreams that would have been thought absurd
ventures a year or two earlier, but 9/11 changed
that.
Neo-conservatives conceptualized the
new conflict in epochal terms. It was not simply a
matter of fighting al-Qaeda in various parts of
the world. The small terrorist group that had
struck New York and Washington was depicted as a
global threat determined to restore the Islamic
caliphate and dominate the globe - a part of
al-Qaeda's ideology to be sure, though a ludicrous
one.
From the days when Mohammed's bands
spread across the Arabian Peninsula and his
successors launched into the Maghreb and
Mesopotamia, Islam has sought conquest and empire.
It is inherent in the culture and especially in
the minds of leaders. The war today is only the
most recent effort at global mastery. [2]
The message is put forth in scholarly
articles, on talk radio, and even from the pulpit
- the latter two being closely tied in the US -
sharia law was said to be on the rise, even
in rural America. (Several US states, mostly with
large fundamentalist populations, are mulling
over, or have passed, laws prohibiting the use of
sharia.) The West must defend
Judeo-Christian civilization and the US must
provide the vanguard, main force, and finance, all
at once. The template of good and evil had been
formed in the public mind during World War II, if
not earlier, and an updated enemy simply had to be
entered.
The US could not shrink from this
new epochal conflict, nor could it refrain from
using its most potent weapons. Since the days of
mutually assured destruction, nuclear war has been
tied to the prospect of the end of the world - a
concept fraught with religious significance.
Dooley was likely drawing from this apocalyptic
tradition, which brings energy and passion to
neo-conservatist thought. Total war, rebuilding
Solomon's Temple, and the end of the world all run
together in this tradition.
One can live a
devout Christian life without encountering much of
this millenarian strand, but it is there,
especially in militant fundamentalism, which sees
the world entering a new stage - a final one. An
impending war will bring the End Times. This
cataclysm is something that the faithful can and
must encourage because it is part of the divine
plan as revealed in scripture, though imaginative
interpretations are needed to see it.
War
with Islam fits into this plan along with
restoring ancient Israel's boundaries and
rebuilding the Temple, which of course entails
destroying the present structure there - the
al-Aqsa mosque. This in turn will lead to total
war between Islam and Christianity. [3]
Neo-conservatism has substantial influence
in US foreign policy as recent and mostly
regrettable events have shown. Apocalyptic
thinking, the neo-cons' junior and heretofore
relatively silent partner, is not as uncommon as
may be thought. It is heard often enough on
religious broadcasts, radio and television in many
parts of the US, and its tracts have their own
sections in major bookstores.
It is not
clear how extensive apocalyptic thinking is in the
officer corps, which is charged to act for no
higher authority than the American people and for
no greater end than their security.
Notes 1. Andrew
Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How
Americans are Seduced by War (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005), pp. 69-107. 2. See for
example Efraim Karsh, Islamic Imperialism: A
History (New Haven, Conn: Yale University
Press, 2006). 3. Gershom Gorenberg, The End
of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the
Temple Mount (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000), pp 105-10.
Brian M
Downing is a political/military analyst and
author of The Military Revolution and
Political Change and The Paths of Glory:
War and Social Change in America from the Great
War to Vietnam. He can be reached at
brianmdowning@gmail.com.
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