I was just reading some reviews on Amazon for my book THE RELIGION WAR. Most people loved it, but one reader had a big problem because the premise was “impossible.” I’ll let you be the judges.
Without giving the story away, I can tell you the predictions that form the jumping off point for the book. It’s set in the not-too-distant future.
I started the book by imagining what would happen under the following assumptions that seem likely to me:
Assumptions:
1. Radical Islamic terrorism continues and even grows.
2. The weaponry for terrorism gets better (GPS guided drones).
Am I being reasonable so far?
Based on those two assumptions, the book makes these predictions:
1. Radical elements of Islam take over all the Muslim countries in the Middle East and form a great Caliphate under Islamic rule. (That’s the goal of the Radical Islamist terrorists.)
2. The leader of the Caliphate wisely stops attacking Israel and bides his time for a generation, waiting for a timely final offensive. In the meantime he orders all Muslims living in Israel to breed like crazy.
3. Israel fears losing its Jewish identity because so many Muslim children are being born in Israel and the country is a democracy.
4. Israel takes drastic measures to limit the voting rights of non-Jews. This makes Israel lose support from otherwise friendly nations as they become more like the old South Africa under Apartheid.
5. Eventually, outnumbered both inside and out, Israel is overrun in one amazingly bloody battle of annihilation. Israel’s superior army can’t help because the fighting is everywhere at once, neighbor on neighbor. There are simply too many Muslims willing to die.
6. Now without a great unifying enemy, the leader of the Caliphate needs to keep up terror attacks on Western infidels. It’s how he holds his empire together. But he is careful to make the attacks seem like terror cells that he does not control. The West knows better.
7. As a result of this non-stop terror, the Western countries turn to the strongest military leader available. Unfortunately, he’s so strong that he’s more like Hitler than Eisenhower. He plans to end the terror in the one and only way that he thinks will work – by annihilating every Muslim on earth.
Now it seems to me that most of my predictions depend on the first one – all the Muslim countries banding together under one Caliphate. That is Osama’s goal, so obviously he doesn’t think it’s impossible. And if you look at the news lately, there are some developments pointing in that direction.
We might be in the process of learning in Iraq that once you destroy the government of a Muslim country, you don’t get democracy in the deal. I can imagine the U.S. eventually slinking away from a weak democratic government in Iraq in a few years, only to have every person in the government killed in a week. Result: Caliphate Phase I.
Now suppose that all the noise about Syria and Iran turns into major military action. If both of those governments get knocked off by Israel, they won’t be replaced by democracies, and no one is crazy enough to occupy them. The power vacuum could fill with more violent extremists. That would be phase II and III of the Caliphate.
Then you have your relatively pro-Western countries like Jordan and Egypt. They’d be the top targets for the rising Caliphate. Those leaders would get knocked off soon. Saudi Arabia would be tougher, but not impossible if the uprising came from within its own borders. Once the Caliphate starts picking up steam, all the crazies will think it is God’s will and start strapping explosives to themselves to make it happen.
The West will be somewhat powerless to stop it because there will be no standing army to fight. These will all be civil wars. And in civil wars, the craziest people have an advantage. And I predicted that the head of the Caliphate wisely guaranteed the flow of oil, thus removing the West’s biggest reason for caring what happens over there.
Anyway, those are the predictions that form the start of my book. It’s not what I WANT to happen. It just seems most likely to me.
I could see why you might not think that path is likely. But is it impossible?
Here’s a link to THE RELIGION WAR:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0740747886/103-6251657-2941453?n=283155