From a Past Issue of the Lode

Evidently this article was published, though it is not yet up on the website. It here follows:

It has been said that it would be desirable for Iraq to form a democratic union, Sunni, Shiite and Kurd alike. And yet the unification of Muslim factions has never proved beneficient to the West; indeed time and again factionalism within stems the tide of Islamic expansion. Notes the prominent historian Edward Gibbon:

Mohammed, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, erected his throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome...Forty-six years after the flight of Mohammed from Mecca, his disciples appeared in arms under the walls of Constantinople [A.D. 668-675].

Islam then, has been militant since its inception. It must be remembered that at this time Constantinople was the the bulwark of what remained of the empire of Rome, and the fact that Islam now made war upon its gates speaks volumes of the power emanating from the marriage of the sword and the Koran. Fortunately for the west, some years later, the seamless garment that had been woven by their founder began to show signs of wear. Again from Gibbon:

From the Indus to the Euphrates, the East was convulsed by the quarrel of the white and the black factions: the Abbasides were most frequently victorious...By the event of the civil war, the dynasty of the Abbasides was firmly established [A.D. 750]; but the Christians only could triumph in the mutual hatred and common loss of the disciples of Mohammed.

It is hardly simplistic to say that these brief examples serves as an archetype for Islamic history. A Muslim leader emerges who will unite his fellow adherents; the masses are then enthused and begin expanding at an alarming rate, giving the conquered a choice between “The Koran, the tribute or the sword,” to paraphrase a later Muslim leader. He invariably dies, whereupon a new leader steps in to fulfill this role. He is often challenged; if the dispute is quelled quickly, expansion will continue, but if the challenger has substantial backing the squabble may last long enough to cause it to cease until, yet again, another leader emerges to attempt another round of expansion.

But those who profess to lead us do not, as a general rule, read much history, and certainly very little ancient history. For until recently, Islam has not been a force to be reckoned with. This has nothing to do with a wane in the influence of that religion, and everything to do with the technological superiority of the west. Hilaire Belloc explains:

[B]y the end of the nineteenth century, more than nine-tenths of the Mohammedan population of the world... had fallen under the government of nominally Christian nations... our generation came to think of Islam as something naturally subject to ourselves... That was almost certainly a mistake. We shall almost certainly have to reckon with Islam in the near future.

Those prophetic words were written almost eighty years ago. And though the invasion of Iraq has exposed none of the promised weapons of mass destruction, Iran is rattling the modern day saber of nuclear weapons. Moreover, the use of American instruments of technology, namely planes, as weapons of terror indicates a clever means of rendering this gap inconsequential. In other words, the technological divide is rapidly shrinking.

The question of the day remains: what then is to be done with Iraq? Quite simply, we must pack up our troops and come home, and do so immediately.

It is absurd to express regreat at failing to achieve that which is diametrically opposed to our best interests. The longer we remain in the Middle East, the greater the impetus for Islamic re-unification, and the greater the chance that the disciples will again appear in arms near western walls. Something which, I have been told, we went to war so as to avoid.