t does not take much to see that the United States is losing the war in Iraq.  But I suspect that few are really honest about why this is actually the case.  Indeed, the sheer venom in opposition to the war that seems to be making its way across the plains would appear to be a formidable impediment to getting clear about why this is so.  Why, to hear the critics talk about things, one would think the war in Iraq was more or less arbitrarily chosen.  I could go on about the evils of Saddam Hussein but that would be of no avail.  I want to take a rather different approach.  Suppose that all the world were committed to performing Jihad.   

A recent article in the New York Times ("In Jihad Haven, a Goal: To Kill and Die in Iraq") sheds considerable light on why the United States is losing the war in Iraq.  The answer, quite simply, is frightening and raises deep, deep questions about what kind of enemy either America or the European Union can really take on.  What I am about to say is already known.  Yet, it is worth making explicit.   

There is a fundamental difference between (a) dying in order to do X and (b) valuing death over life in order to do X.  Martyrdom as it has been traditionally understood in terms of (a).  Jumping on a hand grenade in order to save a fellow soldier’s life, thereby ending one’s own life, is paradigm example of (a).  Joan of Arc’s death is another example of (a).  In these cases, the aim is not to die.  Rather, the aim is to do something else; and death is, at best, a consequence of that aim, presumably an unintended consequence. 

However, Islam’s Jihad conception of martyrdom adds a fundamental twist to things: one in fact ceases to value this life.  Thus, the point of attaching an explosive belt to one’s person is not just to kill others, but to insure that one’s own person is killed in the process. 

With the traditional conception of martyrdom one is undoubtedly surprised, in many cases, if one does not die, but one is hardly disappointed.  Joan of Arc, along with everyone else, would not doubt have been stunned had she survived the flames.  Just so, it is most unlikely that she would have turned around and screamed: “Kill me, damn it”. 

With the Jihad conception of martyrdom, “Kill me, damn it” is precisely what seems to be warranted if an intended suicide bomber should fail to perish.  The problem is not that he did not kill those who were his intended target; for he may very well have done that.  The problem is that he did not die.  And that, alas, is a very different kind of outlook on things.

Needless to say, (i) being willing to die for a cause and (ii) having one’s death as one’s aim in bringing about the cause mark two fundamentally different ways of aiming to realize a cause, with the second making it considerably easier to vanquish those who are considered to be one’s enemy.  In case (i), person X hurts himself while aiming to hurt Y.  In case (ii), the tactic is for person X to hurt himself (nay, to kill himself) in order to hurt Y. 

Now, it is in fact much easier to inflict damage upon others if inflicting damage upon one’s self is the means to that end.  What is more, if one’s own death is a good in this way, then why would not the death of other members of one’s group?  Indeed, those committing Jihad often think nothing of destroying the lives of Muslim children if by doing so the adults committing Jihad can destroy the enemy. 

One could raise any number of questions about the plausibility of a religion that allows for its members to so interpret it.  I want, rather, to draw attention to a different matter.  Whether one conception of war is right and the other is wrong, the point I now wish to make remains true all the same. 

For any two groups waging war, where one group embrace the traditional conception of martyrdom and the other group embraces the Jihad conception of martyrdom, it will follow that those who embrace the Jihad conception are favored to win the war (other things equal).  It needs to be the case that one can in some very reliable way distinguish between the two groups; and that is easy enough to do in the case of the war in Iraq.  The U.S. and the Jihad groups have two fundamentally different conceptions of waging war; and it is the Jihad conception that yields the tactical advantage.

But what if all the world embraced the Jihad conception of martyrdom?  Then we would all wage war in the same way.  In particular, we would all be equally willing to kill ourselves in order to kill the other.  

The central point, though, is that unless we are willing to explicitly acknowledge that we have two fundamentally different conceptions of war in operation, then we are not being fair to the U.S. troops in Iraq.  This is so whether we are conservatives or liberals.  The second point is this: When those who embrace the traditional conception of martyrdom fight a war with those who embrace the Jihad conception of martyrdom what strategy can the traditionalists employ in order to surmount the tactical advantage of the Jihad conception martyrdom?

For all that I know, liberals may be right about what we should do regarding the war in Iraq.  But they need to attend to the question with which I ended the preceding paragraph.  For in the absence of a satisfactory answer to that question, we have all done something rather disturbing, namely conceded a victory to the enemy.  Not today, perhaps.  Not tomorrow.  But eventually. 

It may very well be that President Bush made the mistake of not attending to the reality that between the U.S. and the European Union, on the one hand, and the Jihad folks, on the other, we have two radically different conceptions of martyrdom, and so of war.  Alas, it must be said that his critics have made precisely the same mistake.  The bickering between the two sides is of little or no consequence if we do not correct for the mistake of not recognizing the two different conceptions of martyrdom, and so of war, that are in operation.