Winning a war is easy.
Nevermind having an unlimited military budget or the latest technology; the real deciding factor in the outcome of a war is the people. Any political leader worth their salt has known this fact for hundreds of years, if not since wars began. And central to garnering the people’s support is rhetoric.
Arab leaders (and more specifically, Muslim leaders) effectively employ the art of persuasive speaking through the now ubiquitous word jihad – holy war. Osama bin Laden, Yassir Arafat, Saddam Hussein, and Iranian president Ahmadinejad, among others, have all invoked this concept of a holy war to rally their collective peoples against the United States or its allies. And, for the most part, this seems to have worked, with terrorism now being one of the primary concerns for the U.S.
What is it about the notion of jihad that compels the Arab populace to overlook the repression of their rights and to continually support their leaders? Does God’s holy word in the Quran really have so much sway that Muslims are willing to die for it?
For the answer to this I think we should look toward America – except in this nation the rallying cry is not “jihad,” but “freedom.” Nothing pricks the American sensibility more than the thought that someone, somewhere, is being denied their freedom. As historian Stephen Ambrose notes, “…Americans expect their wars to be grand heroic crusades on a worldwide scale, a struggle between light and darkness with the fate of the world hanging on the outcome.” And United States leaders from Truman up to our current president have not failed to capitalize upon these sentiments.
Think back to just the last few years. There has been an “Operation Enduring Freedom” and “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Furthermore, how many speeches has President Bush given which have failed to mention freedom? The point is this: without the perceived loss of freedom continually being held at the forefront of our concerns, Americans would quickly lose interest.
So what do you tell an entire nation when you need them to foot the multi-billion dollar bill for a war? Tell them freedom is at stake. Or that God wants a jihad. The rhetoric may be different, but the meaning is the same. It doesn’t matter what you say, as long as the people are behind it.
