If you listened to this week's Sanity Squad Podcast, you had the opportunity to learn about what Dr. Kenneth Levin has termed The Oslo Syndrome. His take-off on the Stockholm Syndrome referred to the leaders of the state of Israel convincing themselves that Yasser Arafat, by mouthing peaceful words for Western approval, was a worthy "partner for peace" even as he continued to spew hateful and genocidal rhetoric for the delectation of his Arab audiences. Since Oslo's degeneration into the murderous intifada and the ongoing Palestinian infatuation with suicide/murder, the vast majority of Israelis have become convinced that their only option for even a modicum of peace is to fully separate from the bulk of the Arabs who surround them.
Considering the skewed press coverage by the international media, as documented by sites such as MEMRI, Camera, and the Augean Stables, it takes a great deal of desperation and courage for the Israelis to accept that they have few friends and no choices but to do whatever necessary to protect themselves. Learning that there is nothing you can do to satisfy, or appease, your enemies is a hard lesson to learn.
Many Americans are having profound difficulty grasping the lesson. Today, the MSM is filled with reports of the confessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I spent quite a bit of time today listening to commentary on NPR, much of it pertaining to KSM. It was enlightening and disturbing.
As an aside, I would mention that I spend a lot of time listening to NPR. Their coverage of events is conventionally quite left of center.
Further, the ratio of liberal and left wing guests to conservative/right wing guests is probably on the order of 4 or 5 to 1; the hosts' political biases, though overtly denied (like so many on the left, they consider themselves in the center) is reliably left of center as well. Nonetheless, I find the shows valuable for their exploration of points of view I usually disagree with and the occasional nuggets of wisdom from surprising places. My frequent annoyance is usually adequately off-set by the Conservative voices that are included. On the occasion the segments are completely one-sided, I merely turn the station and listen to music.
I listened to two segments of the Brian Lehrer Show. The first was Tribunal Knowledge:
David B. Rivkin, Jr., a partner at Baker & Hostetler, LLP in Washington, DC and a former Reagan and G.H.W. Bush Justice Department official and Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, debate some of the legal and ethical issues raised by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s confession.
Kenneth Roth took the position that we should bring KSM to trial as a common criminal; this would send the message to the Islamic world that there is no glory in terrorism. Rivkin made the somewhat obvious point that there is nothing we can do to embarrass or humiliate mass murderers who believe that they have a mandate to murder innocent men, women, and children, and that beheading a helpless victim is the height of virtue. Roth's positions should be well known to anyone who has spent any time perusing the positions of the far left. Generally, such positions are a combination of anti (American) government demands for perfection in any government execution of policies, a narcissistic over-valuation of legal ideals above the needs of our society, cynical efforts to weaken American ability to execute its policies against those who the left considers oppressed, and a limited ability to identify or empathize with less strident and less liberal Americans.
The discussion was difficult to listen to but Rivkin more than held his own with both Roth and Brian Lehrer.
The second segment was KSM Confessions:
Ron Suskind, journalist and the author of The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11 (Simon & Schuster, 2006), puts Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s confession in context of the wider Global War on Terror.
This was a more painful segment to listen to. Apparently, the context into which Suskind was eager to place KSM's confession was one in which the West, more specifically America, had committed various acts through the years which had "oppressed" the Muslim people. Suskind was quick to point out that this oppression could not excuse KSM's mass murder (I suppose we should be grateful for small favors) but suggested we need to understand and address their grievances as part of our information warfare against the radical Islamists. He very usefully pointed out that our greatest failing in this war has been our lack of a significant information component but that was the extent of his wisdom. Further, he attempted to make the argument that KSM was out of the mainstream of Islamic thought, that somehow KSM would be seen as not being terribly knowledgeable about the Koran, yet this has been shown time and again to be demonstrably untrue. It is far easier for a Muslim to receive a death Fatwa by criticizing Islam than by using Islam to justify murdering innocents.
Toward the end of the segment, Rachel in Brooklyn called:
RinB: Hi, I'm concerned about this issue of engagement with terrorist and terrorists' concerns. Its something there's been incredibly little note of since 9/11 and its something I think is incredibly important. Who's doing that; is anyone other than your commentator?
BL: You mean, regardless of whether they use violent, horrible violent terrorist tactics against us to look at the underlying grievances are and take them seriously if they are serious?
RinB: Yeah, that's right, I think there are a lot of people who think that war regularly uses horrible violent tactics. You know, Terrorism is horrible but war is horrible, yeah.
BL: Is that being done at any level of government, Ron?
RS: Its not being done in any dramatic way.
Neither Suskind nor Lehrer (and there were no further callers) addressed the fantasy component of this woman's complaint. There is no question that the West has done things which have hurt people in the Islamic world, and in many other places. Believe it or not, I do not see the West as perfect or incapable of terrible injustice. Yet, on balance the West has done much more that is good in the world than is bad. Remove the United States from the world and the results would be catastrophic. (For example, a lot of people would die of starvation and the number of wars would increase on an accelerating basis.)
Further, the Islamic world has a very long history of oppressing people, to a much greater degree than the West, and KSM and al Qaeda place themselves firmly within that historical world view.
The idea that you could ever negotiate with committed terrorists (beyond short term tactical negotiations) short of actually acceding to their goals in full, is a contemporary example of the Oslo Syndrome. Unfortunately, those who adhere to their fantasy of a world in which all disagreements can be negotiated in good faith, even with the likes of Arafat, KSM, et al, will only ever wake up to the real world when the sword is at their throat.
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