Giuliani's Ideas On Foreign Policy

Re Mideast Hawks Help to Develop Giuliani Policy by Michael Cooper and Marc Santora in today's NY Times:

Rudolph W. Giuliani is only half-right in his ideas on foreign policy. He is correct in recognizing the scope of the problem, but wrong in his prescriptions.

(William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, makes a logic error when he says that none of the leading Republican candidates "buy any of these fundamental criticisms that Bush took us on a radically wrong path, and we have to go to a pre-9/11 foreign policy." It was never either/or. Bush did take us on a radically wrong path, but so did Clinton "pre-9/11".)

Giuliani is correct when he speaks about the "Islamic terrorists’ war against the United States". But his prescription for an endless hot war is wrong.

We ought not play by the terrorists' rules. ("Never get into a pissing contest with a pig.") We should play where and how we are dominant. We have strategic bombers and ballistic missiles; the terrorists don't. We have overwhelming "soft" power; the terrorists don't.

We can hurt the terrorists badly wherever and whenever they build training camps, by carpet bombing them from X0,000 feet in the air.

The rest of the time, we can out-publish them on the Internet, on TV, in the movies, music, worlds of art and media. We can out-propagandize them. We can play tricks on them.

There is absolutely no need to do any nation-building.

How to Defeat Al Qaeda

I have felt for a long time that the best way to defeat Al Qaeda (AQ) is by America using its most powerful weapon: the amalgamation of all its soft power. This means, but is not limited to, "Hollywood" movies, network TV shows, all forms of music (rock, rap, folk, etc.), art, philosophy, print journalism, books, satellite broadcasting, cable TV shows, and old-fashioned propaganda.

The messages we send should also run the gamut, and include, but not be limited to, images of Americans defeating jihadists, wholesome American life, freedom, liberty, and anti-AQ ideas and propaganda.

I am not a religious person, but I favor governments which respect the religious or atheistic beliefs of its citizens, since these are deeply personal matters. However, when someone's religious ideology threatens me or my family or my nation, then it is time to fight that ideology. We can begin by pointing out the absurdity of AQ's core beliefs, the insanity of its founder(s), the lack of morals in its adherents. Jihadists want to terrorize us, so their ideology is "fair game" in the War on Terror. After all, it is their ideology which inspires them. Defeating their ideology is analogous to cutting off the head of the snake.

The great irony today is that, whereas "soft power" is our greatest weapon, the jihadists are using it with seemingly more effect than we are. (See today's NY Times article An Internet Jihad Sells Extremism to Viewers in the U.S. By MICHAEL MOSS and SOUAD MEKHENNET.)

It is past time that we get out of Iraq and start fighting the War on Terror the smart way, using our most powerful weapons (soft power) and enlisting as many nations as we can to join us in this new quest.