[How is it that only the Israelis know that World War III started on September 11, 2001?]

"The Congress shall have Power...

"To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

"To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

"To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

"To provide and maintain a Navy;

"To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;" (United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8)

The testimony went unnoticed by the American press. It seems that just last week, Lt. General Peter Pace, the deputy chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressed the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. According to Lt. General Pace, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has now joined Hizbullah and Al-Qaeda in the Triple Frontier Zone in Latin America, where the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay converge. There, they train recruits, gather intelligence on targets for attacks, launder money and sell drugs. It's just another day at the office for these terrorists.

Lt. General Pace's testimony made me think about the presuppositions that inform the philosophy of war. It's not the first time I've thought about this subject. In fact, our very first Islam Commentary addressed the subject so forcefully that today's column quotes that piece extensively.

But it doesn't hurt to review the essentials, now does it?

When the war powers that would be included as part of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the nascent United States of America were being crafted, the Framers assumed that America's future wars would be conducted between nation states whose boundaries were geopolitically determined. After all, that's how war was waged back in the late 1700s. Nations fought nations, even when the fight was about religious ideologies, such as the Catholics versus the Protestants.

It would do us all well to remember that at the time the Constitution was being written, eighteenth century western Europe was fighting Napoleon Bonaparte's attempt to declare himself emperor of Europe and set up his own "New World Order".

The Changing Presupposition of Warfare

Twenty-first century Muslim conservatives, who take seriously the tenets of Islam as taught in the Qur'an and the Hadith, have declared war on the United States and the West without considering geopolitical boundaries.

To the conservative Muslim mind, there are only two groups of people in the world: Those who belong to Dar Al-Islam (those who are submissive to Islam) and those who belong to Dar Al-Harb (those with whom Islam is at war until Judgment Day). Therefore, the battlefield for jihad (Muslim holy war) is international in scope. There are no civilian non-combatants.

Today's conservative Muslims have declared a jihad against the United States, Israel and any other nation or people that does not wish to convert ? I employ the word deliberately ? its culture, politics, religious values and cultural mores to those of seventh century Arabia. Geopolitical considerations such as the boundaries of nation states are irrelevant to the Muslim jihad.

Accordingly, we must continually ask ourselves the following strategically significant question as we do battle in the Middle East: What must the United States do to migrate from the 18th century to the 21st century with respect to its war powers, so that the forces of militant Islam that declared war on the United States on September 11, 2001 can be combated effectively?

We suggest that the following strategic factors should be kept in mind at all times by the war planners of the United States.

The Enemy is Not Terrorism

America's strategy to deal with global "terrorism" must begin with the understanding that America is not at war with that vague, ephemeral problem of "terrorism". It is at war with radical, conservative, "fundamentalist" ? if you insist on using that overworked, meaningless term ? Islam. Like it or not, we are fighting a false religious system, not a specific geopolitical nation-state. Conservative Islam cares nothing for geopolitical boundaries, nor for nation state identities.

Conservative Islam is the real culprit behind international terrorism, not that blend of Western materialism and liberal Muslim ideology so often seen here in the United States. Thankfully for us non-Muslims, much of modern, US-based Islam has forsaken its Middle Eastern roots and has been diluted of much of its hatred of the Christian West. But then again, all that means is that conservative Islam now hates many American Muslims, also. They have branded them as heretics from their "pure" Islam. The sad fact of international life today is that, while nobody has ever installed an airport security system in order to detect an Israeli terrorist threat, they are installed to detect Muslim terrorist threats, and Muslim terrorist threats only.

Conservative Islam teaches from the Qur'an and its secondary writings, the Hadith, that all non-Muslims are to be converted to Islam at the point of the sword, if necessary, or are to be executed. The only exception to this tenet are Christians and Jews, who may be enslaved or taxed heavily. Call us insensitive and intolerant if you will, but the truth is the truth, and it is the conservative Muslims who are intolerant and insensitive - to Western ways of life and to the Christian world-view.

Like it or Not, the Enemy is Ideological

Because conservative Islam has spread itself throughout the world, the United States should not focus on a specific nation-state, but must ignore geopolitical boundaries as it fights the forces of "international terrorism" (read that as "conservative Islam"). To blame the events of 11 September 2001 on Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda (one of many terrorist groups that operate according to the tenets of conservative Islam), the Afghanistan Taliban (the Islamic military/political party that ruled Afghanistan in 2001), and the government of Saudi Arabia, which backed them financially, without considering the theological infrastructure that informs the motives of these groups, is to miss the larger picture of what motivates international terrorism today.

The United States must understand that attacking Iraq or Afghanistan will only result in attacks against the localized groups that have taken hold within those geopolitical areas. Other strongholds of conservative Islam remain that cannot be ignored with impunity. Once the war has begun, it must be fought to the finish, no matter where the trail of responsibility leads.

Meanwhile, Israel is America's staunchest ally in the global war against Muslim "terrorism". And yet, the US has expended great efforts to ensure that Israel brings no solution to bear openly in the US war against Muslim terror. This policy is suicidal. Complicating the matter is a decision ? announced late last week ? that OPEC announced that it was cutting back oil production by one million barrels a day starting in April and would immediately eliminate the 1.6 million barrels a day of excess production over its standing quotas

As Caroline Glick observed on Friday, 13 February 2004, in the Jerusalem Post:

"Were the US to acknowledge that the Palestinian war against Israel is in fact an integral part of the global jihad against the West, it would find itself in open hostilities with Saudi Arabia, which, with a quarter of the world's proven oil reserves, has the power to seriously damage the global economic recovery. And yet, the Saudis, who are the largest backers of Sunni terrorists like Al-Qaeda and Hamas, are in fact the enemy of the US."

Am I the only observer to conclude from Ms. Glick's cogent observation that the United States needs to destroy Islam's hold on Saudi Arabia? But the only way to do that effectively would be to oust the House of Saud from power, to destroy the Ka'abah, its host city Mecca, and Medina, and to take over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia.

World War III Began on September 11, 2001

Because the fight against conservative Islam is a global fight that transcends international geopolitical boundaries, America must wake up to the harsh fact that World War III began on September 11, 2001. Al-Qaeda hadn't yet come out of the closet to declare war on the United States, but Al-Qaeda's Pearl Harbor declaration of war against the United States of America clearly occurred with the attacks on the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and the attempted attack on the White House on the morning of September 11, 2001.

The Barbary Coast is Our Precedent for Action

During the early, formative years of the United States, our forefathers fought an international group of conservative Muslim terrorists who, like today's conservative Muslim terrorists, made no distinction between geopolitical nation-states. Like their 21st century counterparts, the Barbary Coast pirates were equal opportunity terrorists. America built and sent to the infamous "shores of Tripoli" its first commissioned warship, the USS Constitution. Its crew ? including elements of the newly formed United States Marine Corps ? won overwhelming victories and cleared the Mediterranean Sea of Muslim-sponsored piracy.

It is time the United States led the way to clearing the world of Muslim terrorism again. America's actions in Afghanistan and Iraq need to be followed up with incursions into Syria and, if necessary, into Saudi Arabia.

Three months after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by Al-Qaeda operatives, Dr. Rand Fishbein, President of Fishbein Associates, Inc., a public-policy consulting firm based in Potomac, Maryland, published an article about this issue. His thoughts on this subject bear careful reading ("Echoes from the Barbary Coast").

Concluding Thoughts
May the living God bless those who bless Abraham and the rightful heirs to Ha-Aretz. We are Dar Al-Harb* ? and proud of it.

* Dar al-Harb: The Domain at War: Territory under the hegemony of unbelievers, which is on terms of active or potential belligerency with the Domain of Islam.... (Glossary of Islamic Terms by Muhammad Ishaq Zahid; Copyright © 1998-1999 by The Sabr Foundation.)