Slouching towards Armageddon
This is just a notion at the moment, but we feel that something is in the air. Maybe when we develop it fully, we can begin with a portentious phrase (“Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa — das Gespenst des Kommunismus”), but for now, we simply note that there is a lot of ennui in the blogosphere and, it seems to us, abroad in the land. A recent post by the Anchoress seems a pretty good example of the phenomenon. A lot of people have the blahs. What do you suppose is going on?
Here’s our working hypothesis. Our enemies include lunatics like the millenarian Ahmadinejad, a guy spoiling for a war and talking like he is not going to stop until he gets a really big conflagration. His allies are lowlifes like al Qaeda, the intractable Hamas and its zombie-kamikazes, and a cheering section throughout the capitals of Europe. Even if Iraq were to become (once again?) the Garden of Eden, these enemies show no signs that they will stop until an awful lot of confrontation and perhaps killing takes place on our small planet. The Cartoon Riots, as important in their way as 9-11, have made that absolutely clear. A lot of enemies are probably going to have to be killed, or so it seems, before a final peace is won. All of this is made ever so much more tiresome by the MSM and certain politicians who want to pretend that all will be well if only that evil and/or incompetent Bush is neutralized and neutered.
Meanwhile, it turns out that that our so-called friends are not such great shakes (or Sheiks) either. The ports controversy showed that a case could be made for Dubai as either ally or enemy; the same continues to be true about Saudi Arabia. Moreover, beyond politics itself, many of these allies are people who are trapped in an alien value system, which often seems irreconcilable with our own. Grand Ayatollah Sistani is apparently an ally in Iraq, for example, but if you read his views on Islamic laws or on interaction with Westerners (HT: Andrew Sullivan), you get a strong sense that we may be living in the same place, but we are living a millenium apart in time. Further, there seems to be little question that, left to their own devices, the Afghanis would have executed the apostate Abdul Rahman as a bit of business-as-usual. (What they view as one of their normal laws we deem a crime against humanity.) We are left with the view that even if things go well in Afghanistan and Iraq, these countries, and similar religious governments, will provide more than their fair share of friction and heartache to the US for decades to come.
The ennui increases as more and more people begin to feel we are in chapter two of a ten chapter book. They fear that it is today as it has been so many times before: the darkness drops again.
March 24th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Dear Jack,
All you say is true, but I offer a very simple alternative
reason for our current “slouch”.
We have made it thru Winter, Spring arrived on Monday and all that instinctive fight to survive has gone out of us. The days lengthen, we notice green shoots and we can let down a bit before we begin to actually implement all those plans for Spring that we have dreamed while chipping ice.
And that is part of the problem, for now we must put those dreams to the bright light of reality. I mean are we really prepared to take down that stacked stone wall that sags in places and rebuild it; Where will we park the car?
What a mess will we make if it rains and mud washes down the from the exposed hillside.
What about all the nasty critters that must inhabit those nooks and crannies?
See what I mean?
I don’t worry that I also feel this way and have for a few days.
I have gone through this every year for a long time. I read somewhere that suicides actually go up in the Spring. The Anchoress will be back and we find new dragons to slay.
I agree some problems may be not be solved, but we will reason them out and at worst we will realize that there are some things that must be accepted. And that dear Jack is exactly when our faith in that “higher power” or as Robert Godwin at OneCosmos would put it “our acknowledgment of the vertical”.
“Don’t let the turkeys get you down!”
March 25th, 2006 at 8:51 am
Very good post. Your perspective and insights continually impress me. I confess, however, that, unlike Anchoress and most others, I DO believe that the blame for the current “malaise” rests squarely on the shoulders of President Bush and the Republican leadership.
Not for the idiotic reasons that Democrats claim — but because President Bush has failed to lead us in an ideological war against our sworn Islamic enemies. After 9/11, a clear majority of Americans were prepared to take up arms and resolve this 30+ year conflict on the field of battle. President Bush failed us in this respect. His war aims from the beginning were limited (even if his rhetoric was bracing), and he capitulated from the start to “Muslim sensibilities” — something that demoralized, and continues to demoralize, the majority of Americans who want to fight for their culture and way of life.
Islam as it is currently taught and practiced across the globe is the enemy. It is a backward, barbaric creed that is fundamentally incompatible with our way of life. The sooner we acknowledge this, the better. We can’t ignore it. Islamists have attacked us, killed us, and openly threaten to do it again and again, until we submit to their way of life. They declared war on us. We must fight back.
Yes, there are “good” Muslims, both here and abroad. But they have been awfully quiet the last 4+ years, and there are precious few of them who are willing to speak out openly against their terroristic brethren. Fair or not, the burden is on Muslims to demonstrate their good intentions, to demonstrate their loyalty to our society (if they live here) or to demonstrate their commitment to peaceful international coexistence (if they live in foreign countries). If they are not willing to do this, then too bad for them. Besides, I’m sure there were “good” Germans and Japanese during World War Two, and “good” Russians during the Cold War. Unfortuantely, they suffered because of the horrible people around them. But we did not then, and cannot now, let their existence deter us from doing what we have to do to defeat the enemy and protect our way of life.
I agree, there is a creeping “malaise.” I feel it. It is the sense that, for all our efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, we haven’t accomplished anything significant or lasting in the clash of civilizations that 9/11 brought to a head. Witness the French Muslim riots and the Cartoon Jihad. Westerners feel they have lost control of their own countries. (Even though these events took place in Europe, Americans are affected by them too.) The institutions that are supposed to protect us — the police, the military, the intelligence services — are not taking the fight to the enemy, are not striking at them before they strike — again — at us.
It’s worse in Europe, where the Western governments and populations are so cowed and demoralized that Islamic militants openly proclaim their intention to inflict “a real holocaust” and “another 9/11″ on their host countries. And what happens? Nothing. No mass arrests. No mass deportations. No closing down of Islamic mosques, schools, media, and organizations that spread the radical, terroristic message. So the ordinary European can only sit there and wait to see what horror happens next.
We Americans view these events with disbelief, but we also notice that the dynamics in Europe are not so different from how our government treats Islamists here (with kid gloves), and we wonder: How would our government and people react to similar scenes of Muslim violence and threats taking place in this country? President Bush’s constant references to Islam as a “religion of peace” do not inspire confidence.
I certainly have little faith in the willingness of our governmental institutions to take strong action to prevent here what is happening in Europe. I have more faith in the American people. But, contrary to popular image, we are not a country of vigilantes. We rely on our governmental institutions (police, military, intelligence services) to protect us and to ensure that “justice” is done when our rights are violated. Where would the masses of ordinary people come from needed to oppose Muslim threats and riots? If our leaders will not use our police and military to protect us — as Europe’s leaders have failed to do there — then, as we see in Europe, the Islamists will be emboldened to shout their threats in the hearts of our cities, to plan their acts of terror in their schools and mosques, and to carry out their terror against the very countries in which they live. Is that the future here in America? Where are the leaders who will prevent this? It is certainly not any Democrat, and it is not President Bush either.
Today, even many “conservative Republicans” have been infected by liberal ideas of multiculturalism and “sensitive” wars. The very notion of fighting Islamic radicalism by trying to “win the hearts and minds” of Muslims is an oxymoron, and clear evidence that the West (or at least its leadership — except, perhaps, in Australia) lacks the will for an existential conflict.
We probably couldn’t even fight and win World War Two today, given how much handwringing we still do over the decision to firebomb German and Japanese cities and drop the A-bomb. War is ugly. Human existence is not always a pretty thing. But it’s no coincidence that we won World War Two, totally and unconditionally. Our enemies’ countries were utterly destroyed. And, significantly, millions of their young people were killed. That’s what allowed us to impose our will on Germany and Japan after the war, and re-build their societies into something better than they were before. But first there had to be a lot of killing. We will never “reform” the Muslim world until huge numbers of the present generation of young Islamists who believe in the terroristic ideology and the older men who treach them this ideology are killed. It’s as plain and ugly as that.
But this isn’t what the “War on Terror” is about. Under President Bush, we are trying to fight against Islamic militancy, at the same time that we accommodate ourselves to the most barbaric Islamic realities (e.g., the imposition of sharia law — see the Afghani man who was threatened with death for converting to Christianity). The American people, including many who strongly support President Bush (I still would vote for him over any Democrat), are starting to realize that this approach to the War on Terror is intellectually incoherent, strategically inept, and emotionally unacceptable. But there’s nothing we can do about it. Our “conservative,” “warmongering” President firmly believes he is pursuing the right strategy.
He’s wrong.