THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE to developing an adequate defense against Islamic terrorism is that the institutions of American liberty are not organized to wage war on an enemy identified solely by religion. We can make war on hostile states, and we can even (as we did in the Cold War) make war on hostile ideologies -- though there too we were severely restrained by our own legal prohibitions against the suppression of speech and ideas. But the Constitutional taboo against making war on a given religion is nearly absolute, and in the case of Islam -- which even in its most liberal forms is implacably hostile to Occidental notions of democracy and community -- this not only imposes a gag on forthright discussion of the Islamic threat, it also provides Islamic terrorists with a vast loophole through which to attack civilization and further their infinitely oppressive quest for a global caliphate. Here, by an Irish journalist, is an unusually forthright discussion of the problem.
There is no Constitutional prohibition on making war on a religion. There is a Constitutional prohibition against Congress making law that prohibits the exercise of religion, but that doesn't prevent the United States from declaring war on a religion.
Any restriction on candidly discussing the role of the threat of Islam is self-imposed by those concerned with political correctness at the expense of the truth.
Posted by: aelfheld at March 22, 2004 03:57 AM