Fanatics With Guns....

As I was reading this excellent (as always) piece by Ralph Peters, this passage made me stop and think:

At the height of last week's fighting in Gaza, one Palestinian in 300 carried a weapon in support of Hamas - a third of one percent of the population. Now Hamas rules 1.5 million people.

Numbers still matter, of course. But strength of will can overcome hollow numbers. And nothing - nothing - gives men a greater strength of will than religious fanaticism.

That's exactly the aspect of the radical fundamentalist Islamic movement that scares me the most -- they have that powerful underlying motivation that animates their every action, whereas we look a lot like sheep ambling towards the slaughterhouse. Only something like 9/11 seems to wake us up, and even then only briefly. We lack that motivation, and they have it. And it gives them power that frightens me.

The entire piece is an excellent, sober analysis of the recent events in Palestine and the Gaza Strip. As they say, read the whole thing. Here's his (very slightly) hopeful conclusion:

The true believer always beats the feckless attendee. The best you can hope for is that the extremist will eventually defeat himself.

And that does leave us some hope: Fanatics inevitably over-reach, as al Qaeda's Islamo-fascists have done in Iraq, alienating those who once saw them as allies. But the road to self-destruction can be a long one: The people of Iran want change, but the fanatics have the guns. And sorry, folks: Fanatics with guns beat liberals with ideas.

Faith is the nuclear weapon of the fanatic. And there's not going to be a religious "nuclear freeze." It doesn't matter how many hearts and minds you win, if you don't defeat the zealots with the muscles.

Catch Ralph's commentary every chance you get, and don't miss his books.