I have my doubts. One hopes there are things unseen that tilt in our favor. Most long-term wars are won or lost by accident and good or bad luck. That dynamic looms pretty large now, because it's the slim hope that the near complete vacuum of information, interpretation, energy and control from the Bush Administration is a cover for something else.
It seems more likely to me that the weight of the complexities in this confrontation will be our undoing. We've introduced so many ourselves, that Islamists can hide in the moral and cultural maze we've planted and trimmed for the last forty years. We don't know how find the exit.
The goals and claims of radical Islam are the polar opposite of those of The West. Since we're largely post-Christian; the signposts are pointing to an easy substitution of fantasy for reality, and a comfortable willingness to surrender inch by inch to threats large and small. Certainly Islamists know this, and they think time and simple pressures favor them.
The news from the front on my end is also not encouraging. Combat everywhere, especially in Afghanistan. I'm tempted nowadays
to the irrational conclusion that we should leave these Islamic brutes to kill as many of each other as possible,and bring all our youngsters home. How do you make a moral human being out of an ape? The answer to that is that we created the ape with years and years of excuses, funding, and equivocation. The Islamist monsters are ours.
If a large part of the world is a slum inhabited by religious gangsters, dictators, petro-monsters and psychopaths, do we wish to spare a single dime throwing a lifeline to them into the pools of blood they've created.
I know the question is rhetorical. Again, we can ignore them, but they won't ignore us. Sooner, rather than later, they'll bring the war to us in a serious way, and the game will be on.
Rhod,
Your questions are many of ours ... a moral man out of an ape? Hmmm. I know you don't mean it literally, but I understand the point.
I would quibble only slightly with the assertion that we created the "ape". We don't have the power. Certainly, our responses to them haven't been good, or even consistent, throughout the last 30 years or so. Yet, difficult people make for difficult remedies. And they would drown those who would wage into the treacherous waters.
The whole scenario reminds me of the sociopath who demands that every one react perfectly to his repeated moral outrages. "What's wrong with you people?!", he demands. "You make it so hard for me to do what is right!"
We can no more create a moral man out of an ape than we can do the reverse.
I know you know this. We'll see where this all goes.
The complexities of it all do make my head hurt.
Plus, Ahmadinejad is trying to rename pizza, to something like "rolled dough" or "a bunch of bread with sauce and meat on it" ... If Goomba were around he would surely have declared this WW3 by now.
The simian comparison wasn't accurate because it slanders the ape.
When I consider the mentality of men and women who strap explosives on children, who maim, multilate, decapitate, lie, torture, murder...who hide weapons in civilian areas, who resist the slightest intrusion of modernity, who wish to eliminate the cultural presence of half the world's population because it offends their religious sensibilities, then yes, the ape has been slandered.
I'm through with the Hamlet-like indecision of how to evaluate our enemies, how to understand their intentions, and how to proportion blame among the world's Islamic population in order to protect the innocent among them. Islamists have learned that the last weakness is the first means to victory. We can reduce this argument to one formula. Them or us. Most of them appear to support Hezb'allah and the dozens of others like Hezb'allah, so the distinctions are clear.
Once we've decided that this is a battle for our survival, and that decision will emanate from a mountain of Western bodies...well, you know what I mean.
I'll leave the subject at that.
Rhod,
A classic post. I am sure that there are a number of apes who are relieved. I was sure it was only a matter of time before the Simian Organization of American Primates (SOAP) started sending me heated emails.
You're right re: the need to put this all in stark contrast. I don't think that the West remembers or realizes the conflict we are in ...
Or maybe they're snapping photos in Quam.
I assume you've seen the photo staging at Quam. It's despicable, but the incredible thing is that the MSM is complicit in it.
DC,
One could have been very pessimistic about the West's chances of winning the Cold War in the mid-1980s. In fact, a French conservative named Jean-Francios Revel, in his book "Why Democracies Perish," considered the possibility that "democracy may, after all, turn out to have been a historical accident, a brief parenthesis that is closing before our eyes."
But this was in the pre-1989, fall of the Berlin Wall time period. This was before the Soviet Union, one of the world's most powerful empires in the history of mankind, collapsed without its opponent firing a shot.
Thus, I think it is worthwhile to consider the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democracies (the US, Great Britain, Israel, Japan...) on the one hand and the strengths and weaknesses of the Islamo-facists on the other. Clearly, the fact that approximately half of the voting population in liberal democracies either sides with the enemy or puts its head in the sand is a huge disadvantage to liberal democracies in this fight. But our analysis shouldn't stop there.
Mark,
I agree with you, and am generally pretty optimistic about the West's -- particularly America's -- advantages over totalitarian regimes.
I think we can and should defeat them.
But it's not a given. The forces that work against us are legion.
We have to be diligent.
I truly believe we are in a fight for our lives, livlihoods, and our country's survival--at least in the sense that the founders intended it.
So--on another topic--when are you going to get an RSS feed? I need to include you in my daily news aggregator!
Carry on, sir:
DT
DT,
Thanks for dropping in. Great to hear from you, as always. You make a great point. I am still technologically challenged, and I guess I need to do what you suggest ... I think what you suggest would alert folks when I have a scintillating post up, no?
I'll get to it, one of these days.
Take care and hold down the fort up there in N. Texas.
DC, thanks for this blog (started to say column) and this post. Just want to interject a couple of thoughts you prompted with this:
"...I am seeing signs from the Israeli government that they are not ready and willing to do what is necessary to protect their own lives and security."
I’ve been very heartened these last couple of difficult days to see Israel persevere in its prosecution of this war. Yeah, there was the declared 48-hour hold-up in air operations, but what a relief they didn’t cave-in with a ceasefire.
I’m hoping – and I’m believing – they’re proving you wrong about their will to fight. How could they not have and use what it takes? To falter is to die – for all of us on the smart-money side of this inevitable war, ultimately, but for them, right now. There at ground zero, it’s not about liberalism or modern sensibilities or humanitarian concern. It’s about survival, and that’s something that the people who constitute the Nation of Israel have done superbly for millenia under the most daunting of conditions. I don’t believe some dude named Olmert could do them in even if he wanted to.
They’re no end of inspiration to me and I believe we can scrape together what it takes to follow suit.
With that, I’m off to read Buchanan’s new piece, “The Moral Culpability for Qana.” No doubt he’ll give Hezbollah and Iran and Syria the drubbing they deserve, eh?
Respecting that foregoing comment of mine that I fired off without reading closely enough:
I did not mean to imply that (classic) liberalism, modern sensibilities, and humanitarian concerns aren’t integral to Israeli culture and deportment. Just that they must serve the larger requirement of survival in the face of unavoidable menace. Sometimes you gotta kill to survive, however nice and civilized you may be at heart.
Sorry to fuss.
Linda,
I hope you're right. I would be glad to see the Israelis completely wipe out Hezbollah.
I am heartened by what I see out of Olmert, too.
No fussing at all. Good commentary.
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