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Chuck DeVore- Contributor

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore represents 450,000 residents of Orange County California’s 70th Assembly District.. He served as a Reagan White House appointee in the Pentagon from 1986 to 1988 and was Senior Assistant to Cong. Chris Cox. He is a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard. Chuck’s novel, CHINA ATTACKS, sells internationally and has been translated into Chinese for sales in Taiwan. [go to DeVore index]

The Past as Prologue
Liberal appeasement will sell out Western civilization...
[Chuck DeVore] 4/8/04

Scenario One: The Mahdi’s Army threatened to capture the desert capital and kill all Westerners who stood in the way of establishing an Islamic state. On the home front, liberals wanted to evacuate the military, arguing for peace and understanding. Conservatives reasoned that giving in to fanaticism would only encourage more terror.

Scenario Two: The Mahdi’s Army threatened to capture the desert capital and kill all Westerners who stood in the way of establishing an Islamic state. On the home front, liberals wanted to evacuate the military, arguing for peace and understanding. Conservatives reasoned that giving in to fanaticism would only encourage more terror.

Are these two scenarios really the same as they appear? No.

Scenario One happened in 1885 in the Sudan. It led to the death of famed British General Charles “Chinese” Gordon in Khartoum at the hands of the self-proclaimed Sudanese Mahdi, Mohammed Ahmed.

Scenario Two is playing out today with radical Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr leading a new “Mahdi’s” Army (purposefully named for the late-19th century force that killed General Gordon and almost killed a young officer by the name of Winston Churchill 13 years later).

The significant policy difference between the two scenarios is that a liberal, British Prime Minister William Gladstone, was in charge in 1885, while a conservative, President George W. Bush, is in power today.

Gladstone’s weakness in the face of challenge encouraged resistance – in the Sudan and elsewhere. Due largely to his policy of appeasement, he was defeated by Lord Salisbury, whose words of warning delivered on July 20, 1885 as he spoke to censure the Gladstone government hold strong relevance today.

“But we have to face a danger of another kind. We have forces of fanatical barbarians let loose upon the south of Egypt, and owing to the blunders that have been committed this danger has reached a terrible height. Unless we intend to give over Egypt to barbarism and anarchy we must contrive to check this inroad of barbarian fanaticism, which is personified in the character and action of the Mahdi. General Gordon never said a truer thing than that you do this by simply drawing a military line. If the insurgent Mohammedans reach the north of Egypt it will not be so much by their military force, as by the moral power of their example. We have therefore to check this advance of the Mahdi’s power.

“All this will involve great sacrifices and the expenditure not only of much money, but of more of the English blood of which the noblest has already been poured forth. And we are not so strong as we were. At first all nations sympathized with us, but now they look on us coldly and even with hostility. Those who were our friends have become indifferent, those who were indifferent have become our adversaries; and if our misfortunes and disasters go on much longer we shall have Europe saying that they can not trust us, that we are too weak, that our prestige is too low to justify us in undertaking this task.”

Today we have the words of future Democrat Presidential nominee Senator John Kerry calling radical leader Muqtada al-Sadr a "legitimate voice” for Iraq during an April 7 radio interview at the very instant that thousands of al-Sadr’s followers are trying to kill American soldiers. Kerry’s reasoned moderation in the face of radical bloodlust will only encourage more carnage, just as Spain’s capitulation to violence in March by effectively voting to pull their troops out of Iraq only emboldened the terrorists to demand Spain to pull out of Afghanistan too – or else. The West has seen Kerry’s sort of policies before – it always ends badly.

Rather than give in to media and Democrat Party hyperventilation over the tragic but militarily insignificant losses over the past few days in Iraq, we should instead focus on the strategic equation. Iraq has come a long way in a year. A formal hand-over to civilian Iraqi control is imminent. This is a large step towards a self-governing and more open pluralistic society.

This development is a tremendous threat to neighboring Iran. This is why the politico-religious leaders there are so desperate to derail the Iraqi march to freedom. Iraqi freedom, if successful, will hasten the demise of the repressive regime in Iran (as well as elsewhere in the Middle East).

Al-Sadr wants to recreate an Iranian-style theocracy in Iraq and he is getting funding, weapons, and advisors from Iran to do it. His historically named “army of al-Mahdi” is a direct challenge to the West. Sadly, with our own self-absorption and deplorable lack of historical perspective, we were apparently blind to al-Sadr’s ambition to become Iraq’s new Mahdi, the 12th Imam of the Shiites who lived about 1,200 years ago, who is to reappear to save the world from corruption and oppression.

The death or arrest of al-Sadr is not likely to result in a cataclysmic uprising as some fear. The cleric has a small powerbase and is distrusted by most Iraqis, even most members of his sect, the Shia, who look dimly on his plans for an Islamic state. His lack of a seat on the governing council reflected his small power base.

Instead of mollycoddling Al-Sadr as Sen. Kerry suggests, the fiery cleric and his armed followers must be crushed. Holding firm will establish Iraq as an anti-terrorist beachhead in the war on terror. Running the other way will embolden terror. As Lord Salisbury said 119 years ago, “Unless we intend to give over Egypt to barbarism and anarchy we must contrive to check this inroad of barbarian fanaticism, which is personified in the character and action of the Mahdi.” CRO

copyright 2004 Chuck DeVore