Commentary by Ulrich Jacov Becker: The West will loose the war - if it not stops its self-doubt!

How moral and value Relativism in the West leaves the military victory to the enemies of Democracy

The recent hard battles in Afghanistan, the ongoing retreat from Iraq, the unimpressed Iranian nuclear developments, the North Korean open threats, Al-Qaida's spread in North Africa and Pakistan, growing numbers and strength of Islamists in Western heartland like Europe, and the advancing Islamist fighters in Somalia and other regions - all these developments paint a menacing picture: The west is loosing the war and the rest of its deterrence. A collapse - although still far - seems more and more thinkable.
Even high ranking American militaries are talking about the real possibility of a defeat in Afghanistan: The enemy is enjoying the support and hide out of Afghani civilians, which the Western soldiers don't detain, and it is not clear how long the West could support an ongoing expensive and far away fight.
Also the good-will or thoroughly calculated retreat from Iraq awakes the enemies of democracy there to live again. In the era of G. W. Bush called "rogue states" like Syria and Iran are seeing themselves now as emerging victors after the rain. Their influence and image in the Islamic world is growing. America's and the West's influence is shrinking and not just in Lebanon.
Obama's constant rollback of offering "dialogue" to an Iran that does not want to talk to him and in his empty threats of "isolation" to the probably most isolated country on earth - North Korea - are showing the anti-Western forces that they have nothing to fear and are even slowly winning.
Soon front-allies of the West as Ethiopia, South Korea, Israel or Lebanon will be in danger to be lost or gravely weakened for the West's failure to show strength and determination and for the concessions made to anti-Western forces in the respective region.
But why is this happening? Is the West not far more superior in economic, technology and military strength? Could it really be that primitive backwaters and tyrannical regimes and groups can threaten the predominance of the Western civilization? I say: Yes! If the West won't change it's attitude, that's the way we are going. The West may have the best weapons, but it is mentally not ready to use them.
And this current attitude is called "Relativism": A denial of good and bad in the world, a denial of the existence of truth, a denial of worse and better.
Since decades the West has holed itself from the inside with the rejection of these basic positivistic concepts and has instead propagated a thinking of "the enemy is not worse than you – you are not more valued than him", and actually there is no real enemy at all.
This lack of conviction in your own position, this "understanding of the enemy" leads to a lack of determination and bad moral, to a state where one is afraid to hurt the enemy, where one identifies with him and ultimately this leads to an inability to win. In this time the West sends soldiers to wars while its leading politicians not really believe in their justification, and in the end – since fighting is no more an option and appeasement is celebrated more and more as the right way to deal with problems – the West becomes willing to sacrifice allied strongholds in exchange for an illusive temporarily quite.
In Exodus 17:11-12 the people of Israel are fighting a mighty enemy. The text tells us:
"When Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. And the hands of Moses became heavy…"
The Jewish teachers and commentators in the Talmud explain the meaning of this passage in the way, that Moses' hands themselves had no power to decide over victory and defeat, but when he lifted them, the people of Israel would look up - towards heaven - and remember their mission, generate new faith in god and the truth of their believe, derive new moral and thus ultimately prevail.
The faith and believe in your mission and justification is missed in the Western world today and without the courage to claim Western values and defend them even with force, it will vanish as the Roman Empire vanished. When the anti-tolerant forces will be met with Western tolerance, than the West and tolerance will die out together.
The West's enemies claim without the slightest doubt their superiority over the World, although their morals are down in the cellar.
What the West needs is not a romantic love of its attackers and not the hope of appeasement, but a believe in the existence of values as truth and good and evil. Only when the West again sees its values not just as good, but as better, as the tyrannical values around it and jumps over its justly bad conscious of grave historical failures, it can defeat its enemies, prevail as the global civilization that spends all peoples a better world. Otherwise a great era of humanity, wisdom, freedom and democracy will find its end.

"The one who is kind to the cruel, will in the end be cruel to the kind" (Talmud, Qohelet Raba, 7:16)