One of the great divides in our country, and in the West in general, is between those people who believe that as bad as Islamic terrorism can be on a local scale, there is no way it can threaten our civilization, versus those who believe that our civilization is actually more fragile than people realize and that it could indeed be changed in irreversible and unfortunate ways; in other words, we could in fact lose this Long War.
For those who believe that Islamic fascism is more nuisance than peril, it follows that the Iraq War was and is a disaster that can only damage our country and our military. For those people, getting out as quickly as possible is the only option that makes any sense. The cost to the Iraqis and to our future position in the world is minor compared to the ongoing drip of casualties, a kind of Chinese water torture for the country.
[I purposely omit consideration of those, especially on the left, who see our country as basically evil and in need of another Vietnam-like "corrective" experience so that we will be more hesitant to use force in the future. They are effectively anti-American and I doubt they can convince most people of their good will.]
Tom Barnett, whose Blog is a useful tonic for despair, writes brilliantly about what he sees as our poorly considered post-war efforts. He sees Islamic fascism as a mere blip on the radar screen, with the larger story being the increasing tendency of formerly failed and marginalized parts of the globe (the Gap) joining the modern world (the Core.)
In his post Argument by anecdote, fueled by extrapolations without context Tom specifically targets Mark Steyn for his pessimistic view of Eurabia's future:
2) If the amazing did come true in Europe, making it unique in human history, then what would be the difference to global history? Answer is, not much. Either Europe gins up its demographic vitality through the effective integration of Muslims or "Eurabia" simply becomes an extension of the loser Middle East. Meanwhile, the rest of the world simply wouldn't hang around. It would move on. To some, the "end of the world," but to others who "know" more of the world than just Europe, no big deal. Not big for America, whose allies will lie in the East and South, not in Europe. Not big for the East or the South either.
....
Steyn's futurism betrays the usual myopic problem of the pessimists going all the way back to Malthus and Marx: they simply refuse to acknowledge the enduring ingenuity of mankind to change and adapt, plus they ignore the obvious power of markets to take advantage of both good and bad, treating all churn as simply an opportunity for new sales of new goods and services to new customers. In short, the "bad" that Steyn describes for Europe will not occur in some vacuum. Wherever Europe fails in this respect, others will exploit, and I'm not just talking about his invasive Muslims. I'm talking about the rest of this flat world.
In this essay he suggests that even if, as seems likely to many of us, Europe devolves into a Muslim continent, the worst case scenario involves the Modern World essentially walling itself off from the failed states of Islam.
(For the sake of clarity, nowhere on his Blog does Tom Barnett suggest we should precipitiously withdraw from Iraq. He does make some cogent criticism of our post-war efforts, as in this post, War-within-the-context-of-bureaucratic/academic-inertia where he points out the need to change our approach:
What's going on in Iraq now is better captured by terms like counterinsurgency and postwar reconstruction and stability operations. In those paradigms, there is no easily defined ending, and victories tend to come in the 50-60% range--as in, you reach the critical mass. But it's never an obvious or abrupt conclusion, and it takes years--as in, upwards of a decade or more.
When Bush says, "trust me on this war," he's using the wrong word, but he's the one who made that choice, because it gave him the freedom to blow off potential allies (America really doesn't need allies for wars, but it does for postwars) and to get just enough of a mandate from the American people to conduct a war.
I suspect after November 7 there will be a significant change in tone and emphasis in our discussions of Iraq; right now, it suits both sides to act as if this is still a War, rather than a post-war. Read it all, as they say.)
Paul Belien believes that Europe has already surrendered psychologically and it is only a matter of time before their submission becomes complete:
Broder is convinced that the Europeans are not willing to oppose islamization. “The dominant ethos,” he told De Volkskrant, “is perfectly voiced by the stupid blonde woman author with whom I recently debated. She said that it is sometimes better to let yourself be raped than to risk serious injuries while resisting. She said it is sometimes better to avoid fighting than run the risk of death.”
In a recent op-ed piece in the Brussels newspaper De Standaard (23 October) the Dutch (gay and self-declared “humanist”) author Oscar Van den Boogaard refers to Broder’s interview. Van den Boogaard says that to him coping with the islamization of Europe is like “a process of mourning.” He is overwhelmed by a “feeling of sadness.” “I am not a warrior,” he says, “but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”
As Tom Bethell wrote in this month’s American Spectator: “Just at the most basic level of demography the secular-humanist option is not working.” But there is more to it than the fact that non-religious people tend not to have as many children as religious people, because many of them prefer to “enjoy” freedom rather than renounce it for the sake of children. Secularists, it seems to me, are also less keen on fighting. Since they do not believe in an afterlife, this life is the only thing they have to lose. Hence they will rather accept submission than fight. Like the German feminist Broder referred to, they prefer to be raped than to resist.
“If faith collapses, civilization goes with it,” says Bethell. That is the real cause of the closing of civilization in Europe. Islamization is simply the consequence. The very word Islam means “submission” and the secularists have submitted already. Many Europeans have already become Muslims, though they do not realize it or do not want to admit it.
James Hudnall points to the French government's response to the recent episodes of "Bus Toasting" and makes clear why the future is so grim:
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the events “should lead to an immediate response.”
Should lead? Should? How about WILL?
That’s what they need in France. Willpower to deal with this lunacy.
But the problem is they invited people to come there, then marginalized them and put them in ghettos instead of assimilating them. Multi-culturalism doesn’t work. Either you make people constructive members of society or they become destructive ones.
My preference is to go with Tom Barnett's view; Europe may well be lost in the next 5-10-20 years, but ultimately, if the Islamic world refuses to join the Core and insists on maintaining their failed culture, we can just wall them off, develop new modes of energy production and basically ignore them. I suspect most Americans would be just fine with such a prescription. However, there is a catch. Actually there are two catches. One would be the failure of the West to stand up for itself and for America to go the way of Europe and submit. This failure from within is addressed by Dr. Sanity in ALICE IN WONDERLAND or DEMOCRATS IN DENIAL (the references are to Victor Davis Hanson, whose grasp of history can be challenged only by those too ignorant to know what they don't know, and Jonah Goldberg):
As Hanson and Goldberg both clearly state, the all-encompassing hatred of the West that lies at the core of the Islamic totalitarian ideology is what we are fighting against; and one of the crucial fronts in this war is in Iraq.
But, Iraq is also a key front on a philosophical war with today's postmodern political left, who seem to share with the Islamists that same all-encompassing hatred of the West and its values. Indeed, they share it with anyone who hates freedom and democracy (check out their attitudes toward Hugo, Fidel or Kim for validation of this, if you like).
For both of those reasons, we must develop a strategy that will "finish the job and not leave a mess"--in other words, to defeat both the barbarians from without who violently threaten Western Civilization and seek a physical return to the Dark Ages; as well as the barbarians from within who seek to undermine and destroy Western Civilization with their smarmy politically correct ideology, whose words and dogmatically righteous platitudes effectively enable and encourage the evil that threatens us.
My position is unequivocally that both ideologies must be defeated by the forces of good in Iraq and everywhere they have taken root.
The second caveat is, if anything, more difficult to quantify and, at the same time, more troubling. Raymond S. Kraft offers a chilling "future history" of DECEMBER 7, 2008 in which our enemies are able to detonate a relatively small number of nuclear weapons over a small number of crucial nodes and essentially destroy America as we know it. [HT: Lt Col P at OpFor] His final comment:
The failure of many Americans, including many of the leading Democrats in Congress, and some Republicans, to fully appreciate the persistent, long-term threat posed to America's liberties and survival, and to the future of Liberal Democracies everywhere, by an Islamic Resistance Movement that envisions a world dominated and defined by an Islamic Caliphate of religious totalitarianism, and which will fight any war, make any sacrifice, suffer any hardship, and pay any price to achieve it, may prove to be the kind of blunder upon which the fate of America turns, and falls.
The chilling point is that in all the discussions of the danger to America from Islamic fascism, the arguments always concern the terrorists' capabilities, never their intentions. Whether it be nuclear tipped cruise missiles as Kraft suggests, or treatment resistant Smallpox, the fact is that as we move further into our technological future, the ability of smaller and smaller groups to wield WMD becomes greater with every passing day.
Tom Barnett may well be correct, and I fervently hope he is , that once Europe becomes Islamicized, it will inevitably become more moderate, but the idea of those who profess to desire a new Caliphate controlling the science and technology of Europe is disconcerting.
So as befits a Psychoanalyst, I am conflicted. I have always thought of human progress as being a competition between the life affirming forces (libido) and the death instinct (thanatos) which, whether it exists or not, seems to be at work throughout human history. I suspect if we allow Iraq to fall to the forces of thanatos, and stand idly by while Europe devolves, the damage to our morale will be such as to make the worst outcomes exponentially more likely down the road.
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