The Global War on US — What Should We Do About It? | Ricochet.com | 08.20.13

Egypt, Syria, Iran, Pakistan and all the rest: Since the Obama Administration disclaimed the “Global War on Terror,” every crisis has been addressed ad hoc. That may be one reason our foreign policy seems to stagger around blindly, knocking over tables, breaking plate and pots, ever more dumbly desperate. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracy’s brilliant strategist Michael Ledeen assembled the puzzle pieces and found they made a target, with America in the bullseye:

It’s hard to get our minds around the dimensions of the slaughter underway in the Middle East and Africa, and harder still to see that the battlefields of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria and Mali are pieces in a global war in which we are targeted.  For the most part, the deep thinkers zero in on the single battlefields.  What if anything should we do about the big fight in Egypt?  Should we assist the Syrian opposition?  What to do in Lebanon or Jordan? Should we respond positively to the Iraqi government’s request for security assistance?  Is anyone thinking hard about Tunisia, likely to be the scene of the next explosions?…

[T]here’s hardly a professor in America who is talking about the fundamental change in the nature of global affairs in which we are enmeshed, the paradigm shift from the post-World War II world dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union, to…we know not what.

So there’s a global war, we’re the main target of the aggressors, and our leaders don’t see it and therefore have no idea how to win it….

Right now, the driving forces are those aimed at destroying the old order, and their targets (the old regimes, very much including the United States) have until recently showed little taste to engage as if their survival depended on it.  But things are changing, as always.

The war is easily described:  there is a global alliance of radical leftists and radical Islamists, supported by a group of countries that includes Russia, at least some Chinese leaders, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua.  The radicals include the Sunni and Shi’ite terrorist organizations and leftist groups, and they all work seamlessly with the narcotics mafias.  Their objective is the destruction of the West, above all, of the United States.

What if they win?  Some of them want to create a  (Sunni or Shi’ite) caliphate, others want Castro- or Kim-style communist dictatorships.  Like the five Mafia families in The Godfather, they have made their war plan, but, as with the Corleones and the Barzinis, they are riven by disagreements, some of which are fundamental.

In other words, our enemies are working together far more closely than our president or the foreign policy establishment show any sign of grasping.  These enemies may not agree on what they are for.  But they have all agreed on and are conspiring to destroy what they are against — us.

I have long shared Ledeen’s view.  We face an sprawling alliance that is no less lethal in its potential for being an alliance of convenience.  Do you agree?  If so, what should we do about it?