Dutch writer Leon de Winter – who occasionally appears in the NYT - gave an interview to the daily newspaper De Telegraaf a week ago (no link, sorry). He made a number of statements that are so applicable to the war against jihadis in almost every country that I decided to translate a number of them for your pleasure, although you may lose your optimism once you have digested them. The excerpts focus on three key areas of the war on terror and illustrate how difficult this struggle is and that victory is unfortunately far from assured, although it´s safe to assume that American and European outcomes may vary somewhat.

De Winter´s wake-up call was 9/11 and while Van Gogh often ridiculed him, he seems to have assumed some of the missionary role of the dead filmmaker by addressing the threats we face. First, let’s look at the inevitability of adopting a “Guantanamo Bay” scenario for captured terrorists or suspects:

It’s not possible to reject that categorically. We have created a society based on laws in which our freedoms are anchored. The downside is that terrorists take advantage of these laws to organize themselves. If our existence is at stake, and that is the way I see it, than you shouldn’t be paralyzed by your attachment to your legal system, because that is precisely what the radicals are counting on. I do think that you should draw a line when it comes to applying physical violence to prisoners, but there are other techniques that have better results than violating someone’s physical integrity. I would lie if I said that we should reject them all. The allies flattened a number of German cities during World War II, including residential suburbs. If people that threaten you force you to use their methods, than there are few options than to accept these options.

These are potent solutions that are not for everyone’s appetite, but De Winter is right in arguing that we’ve been here before. We should continue to adhere to the basic values of our legal system, but we need to create room within that framework to deal with terrorism pro-actively whether we like it or not. But we should also count on the Muslim community to co-operate and De Winter knows how:

Muslims first have to acknowledge that it is their problem. You can’t honestly argue that Bouyeri´s development as a radical results from the war in Iraq, that’s nonsense. We have to demand that the Muslim community will start to be open and honest. I really can’t imagine that you somehow fail to see that certain youths in your environment all of a sudden become fundamentalist. As a Muslim, you shouldn’t praise that, you should be afraid of that. Muslims will have to start co-operating with our police organizations, with people that do not believe in their God and who live in a very different world. And even if you do feel loyalty and solidarity with children from your group, if they radicalize, you will have to report it to the police. Even if that feels like betraying your own group.

The most difficult part and the one where failure is most likely. Not because we’re not able to address it but because Muslims will side with their own group, which by the way is a totally natural process. If you’re an immigrant in China and there’s tension between your small group of countrymen and an overarching Chinese police apparatus, whom would you instinctively turn to? To the other side? To the side that is diametrically opposed to your values? Knowing that your group is armed and growing?

De Winter is convinced that a dirty bomb is only a matter of time in which case he argues it will be pretty much over for The Netherlands. Like me, he is irked by the passivity of the Dutch citizenry and the lethal outcome of that particular attitude:

I am afraid that most people are not able to conceive of the magnitude of such a blow. It is too vague, too abstract. I do have the ability to imagine such a blow. As a writer I can create an imaginary world. In addition, I did grow up with the knowledge that the world can change all of a sudden. My childhood was characterized by evil: my parent’s war (De Winter is Jewish). They too could not imagine the war that was coming. On the other hand, there were a lot of people that did warn about what was coming but they were either not believed or were ridiculed. Qualified as warmongers. I have been branded as one too.

So here are the risks: an inability to alter the methods we use to fight terror, the unlikelihood of Muslims co-operating and the deep doubts about pro-activeness that many in western societies have. It’s not unlikely that any of these three scenarios will prevail, with lethal results. So think about it, what if all three materialized? How likely would that be? And how many casualties would that yield?