Falling
Victor Davis Hanson writes on the West and the chances it will stumble. Unfortunately, indications are that it just might. Not so much with a bang as with a sickening whimper.
What a stupid question. By any benchmark of economic prosperity, military power, and political stability, Western civilization–in the United States, Europe, and the former British Commonwealth–has never been stronger. Globalization has become a euphemism for Westernization, an apparent unstoppable juggernaut.
So how could the lingua franca of English, uniform international travel, or worldwide commerce ever falter–given that American-style material bounty is spreading among billions the world over?
But the global sale of PlayStation 3 or a world in Levis is only the glitzy veneer of civilization. That shared taste almost unnoticeably hinges on a powerful and liberal United States that keeps the peace and remains the spiritual and intellectual fountainhead of an entire global system–one ultimately dependent on American core ideas like freedom and tolerance. What pressures China to liberalize, protects the creativity of Japan, assures Europeans they can be postmodernists in safety, and guarantees that the world commerce is protected from both old and new piracy is a confident and strong United States.
In contrast, grant a jihadist his 7th-century dream world, and within months even he wouldn't have a cell phone signal to call in an IED explosion.
So just as the central nervous system controls an animal's most powerful muscles, so too capital, politics, and armed forces are all governed by subtle, unseen public opinion, or the people's will to define and defend their civilization. For America soldiers to fight jihadists in Afghanistan or Iraq, Americans back home must grasp whom they are fighting and why. And that's the core problem when we consider the recent news and the West's response to it.
I have made much the same point in the past: we send men to the moon, Islamists invent ways to kill and destroy. Hanson notes that a retreat from Iraq would not only be perceived as a defeat, it would be a defeat, pure and simple. A stumble is not only possible, it grows more likely as the "realists" and the left fall back on old, failed methods.
We now are arguing over the significance of schisms between Shiite and Sunni. Or is the real story the regional grievances of Hamas versus Hezbollah versus Al Qaeda, or again the difference between the autocracies of an Assad, Saddam Hussein, or Iranian mullacracy? Like tiny wildfires can they be put out with buckets here and there, or are they simply embers of a global conflagration? After all, these strains of hatred, or so we are told, are so intricate as to defy generalization–and so leave us so smart Westerners clueless, like Byzantine scholastics bickering over a smudged erasure in an ancient palimpsest.
Next, examine the Western political response to all this Middle Eastern madness. The recent November election made it clear that the American public is tired of Iraq, tired of the televised bombings, tired of the Middle East and just wants to be left alone, to go home or to "redeploy." But if America withdraws before Iraqi reformers can establish a stable society, what illegitimate Arab strongman would wish to host a defeated infidel army with Islam on the rise in his backyard.
A once stalwart Tony Blair now praises Iran and welcomes back terrorist-sponsoring Teheran and Damascus for negotiations. To receive wisdom about Iran, we in America now look to the position papers of those who presided over the 1979 hostage fiasco and the Iran-Contra tragic-comedy. The University of Edinburgh gives the Iranian President emeritus Khatami an honorary degree, after his return from a triumphant American tour. It is understandable to want to talk with the Iranians and avoid unnecessary confrontation, but only on the understanding that the theocracy there is trying to destroy Israel and kill Americans working to protect democracy in Iraq. Thinking Syria or Iran could tolerate a constitutional republic in Iraq on its borders is like imagining that Hitler could have lived with a democratic Poland or Czechoslovakia next door or the old Soviet Union would have tolerated a free Ukraine.
Read the whole thing. But it will depress you.
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Wake up America — November 20, 2006 @ 7:51 pm
By TC@LeatherPenguin, November 20, 2006 @ 1:26 pm
VDH’s view is, as you said, kind of depressing. But…
“…assures Europeans they can be postmodernists in safety,…”
THAT was pure comedy gold.