I have written elsewhere about Peter Bergen’s essay in the New Republic, “War of Error: How Osama Bin Laden Beat George W. Bush.” Here I want to address one particular charge made by Bergen:

If, as the president explained in a speech last year, the United States is today engaged “in the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century,” right now we are on the losing side of the battle of ideas. Garrett [Brad Garrett, a former FBI agent], for one, understands why. “Interrogation techniques that violate human decency…can weaken others supporting us in fighting terrorism and can actually create more enemies,” he says. In other words, Bush’s legal strategy in the war on terrorism has been counterproductive. And the consequences for our safety are real.

Having stated that the Bush policies are weakening others supporting us in fighting terrorism, Mr. Bergen, two paragraphs later, writes about the impressive level of cooperation we are witnessing:

[C]ooperation between U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies has generally been strong since September 11. For instance, al Qaeda’s plot to bring down ten U.S. airliners was disrupted last year by the joint work of U.S., British, and Pakistani intelligence services.

We are in fact seeing unprecedented international cooperation in law enforcement, intelligence, military action, and diplomacy. Nations may oppose our policies on interrogation, but there’s little evidence this opposition is undermining day-to-day efforts to combat jihadists. The reason should be obvious: other nations have a profound self-interest in defeating bin Ladenism. And so despite our differences, we have achieved unprecedented levels of integrated planning across scores of countries.

More fundamentally, though, I dissent from Bergen’s assertion that “right now we are on the losing side of the battle of ideas.” In fact, the most important ideological development in the last year is that the Sunni population in Iraq has turned against al Qaeda’s ideology and concomitant brutality. The “Anbar Awakening,” which is spreading to other regions in Iraq, is a sign of Muslims’ rejecting radical Islamist ideology. And just last week in the New York Times we read about Shia in Baghdad turning against Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army:

“Everything is changing,” said Ali, a businessman in the heavily Shiite neighborhood of Ur, in eastern Baghdad…. “Now in our area for the first time everyone say, ‘To hell with Mahdi Army.’ Not loudly on the street, but between friends, between families. Every man, every woman, say that.”

This doesn’t mean we have decisively won the “war of ideas” in the Islamic world; that clash is still unfolding and will for some time to come. But Bergen’s claim that we are losing is belied by the most significant and encouraging ideological development we have seen in a great long while. (In his almost 6,000 word essay, Bergen devotes only a paragraph, and a qualified one at that, to the “Anbar Awakening.”) Those who believe winning the (figurative) war of ideas is paramount might consider doing all they can to help us to win the (literal) war in Iraq. After all, the best way to discredit militant Islam as an ideology is to defeat those who are taking up the sword in its name.

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