The Fight is Here

The Colossus provides some context and longer-term thinking to the riots that we are seeing in Paris:

Certainly Western societies have encouraged radicalism where they have not resisted it. But Islamic countries on their own are not open and tolerant societies. Walk down the street in Riyadh as a woman wearing a modest sundress and cross on a chain around your neck, and you'll be hauled in front of a religious court in seconds flat. The problem is not either/or -- we're great, and they're screwed up (or, "they're ok and we're screwed up"). It's both/and -- we're sick, and they're screwed up. I see the sickness of the West every day when I read the appeasement and defeatism emanating from the left-hand side of the blogosphere, or read articles like Dalrymple's about the sad state of Paris. But the bigger problem is still the Middle East itself. While rioters can burn Paris tenements and unemployed Muslim men are ripe for carrying a bomb onto a tube, these are, at some level, small problems. Tehran having an atom bomb and a means of delivery that can hit Jerusalem is a direct, immediate and large-scale problem. Certianly the defeatism, apathy, and decadence of the West must be fixed. But we can live with that provided there aren't atom bombs raining down. We must ask ourselves -- do we have the courage to solve that problem? If we don't, then reform of the West probably won't save us.

If one thing is constant in history it is that nothing is constant. The purpose of my post is not to enter into a debate about the specific nature of man, but ask you to look back on the thousands of years of documented human history and see man with a mixed past: he is very noble--capable of demonstrating great character through great courage, forgiveness, and generosity, while also creativeness, innovation, intellegence and resourcefulness. But man also has another dark side, not in a Manichean dualistic sense, but as a creature who although capable of such nobility, has also shown immeasurable cruelty and a hunger for power and control that societies and cultures throughout the ages have tried to either solve or breed.

Now that I've adequately painted with as broad a brush as possible, let's talk about terrorism. Some societies and cultures have been overrun by those that breed and feast on the "dark-side" man--they seek power and subjugation over free people, and usually employ violent suppression along with heavy doses of propaganda to maintain control. The list is long and shameful, but Stalin, Tojo, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein have done their best to stand out from the rest. Sadly, only one of these monsters was ever chased down like the dog he was, and another met a dire fate, but he was able to pull his own trigger. Being a mass murder is good business.

In today's world, right smack dab in the middle of the world where history began, there is a loosely connected society where a violent and severely oppressive ideology dominates. And the scary part of this maniacal ideology is not just it's penchant for violence, but also the cleverness with which that have been been able to accurately identify and tenaciously attack the West's soft underbelly.

The West, in general, embodies a rival ideology to the Islamists. The West stood up to Hitler, Stalin and Tojo and the world is better off without their legacies continuing. The West, regardless of it's faults and inevitable mishaps, is to varying degrees mostly free, and has fought hard to protect it.

But the West has been tearing at itself from within for years. In Europe, Marxism, a (E)utopian ideal, sought the justice and equality so desired by a humane people, but in practice only brought oppression, pain, and decay. Still clinging to varying forms of this ideology, some Westerners routinely point to each injustice and scheme as proof positive that things need to reform. Not able to take the failed examples of communism to heart (e.g. "They just didn't execute it properly"), they feed their delusions and desire another crack at "progessing" society forward to a "more just" future.

The Islamists have now seized on this. Often, the way to reform, is to tear down. As the Left and some ultra nationalists on the far right seek to tear down Western Society for its own gains, the Islamists have inserted themselves into the equation to help make sure that when the West is torn down, it stays down.

The Islamists have taken advantage of the widespread multiculturalism that seeks not to "judge" them. They have been able to live off extensive welfare systems, and while not exactly getting rich, they have plenty of food on the table and a lot of time to sit around, seethe and plot their move to overthrow their more well-off neighbors. Men like Osama Bin Laden believed that the West was soft and that Allah would deliver this paper tiger to them.

Al-Qaeda is the most organized and blood-thirsty of the Islamists. They were also intellegent, and clearly not lacking in boldness. Even though al-Qaeda was correctly identifying a weakness in Western society, the results of their strategy didn't work to their advantage. The attacks of September 11th, while bold and intelligently planned, were a disaster of epic proportions. The United States, although it has it's own elements of self-loathing, wasn't quite a decadent as they anticipated. The United States counter-attacked, removed al-Qaeda's grip from Afghanistan, and is now being decimated after applying their full-court press in Iraq. Many problems still exist for the United States in Iraq, mostly with regards to its self-loathing population, but it looks more grim for al-Qaeda than the United States at this point.

But Europe is a different story. The Islamists have turned and organized in Europe, hoping that they can get the Europeans to cave in on themselves. The bombings in Spain were enough to get them to pull troops out of Iraq. The British responded with more resolve in the aftermath of the London bombings, but has still shown signs of cracking, when a few weeks after, a debate raged over a shoot to kill policy that unfortunately ended in the misunderstanding and death of a young Brazilian.

Now France. Paris burns, and guys like Sarkozy have clearly identified the problem, but the Islamists have hit them exactly where they are weak. If the French are to return fire and put down the rioting, they will be forced to contradict their earlier position that, if left alone, these people will desire to live in peace. In the view of the Left, their violence is a result of having been disenfranchised, and the way to get them to stop isn't through a violent confrontation, but through urging calm and peace.

The French government has been utterly paralzyed by this confrontation. My argument sides with guys like Sarkozy. He sees the situation not as a spontaneous riot birthed out of disenfranchisement, but of a well-organized and intentional strike right to the heart of French society. The Islamists have to be encouraged that it only took a few days of burning things and shooting at police to watch the Left handcuff and restrain any kind of effective response to put this down.

A broader picture is emerging: the West is now in for a fight whether it wants it or not. Violence is going to be the inevitable clash between yet another civilization that has embraced and fed oppression and murder, and a society that is imperfectly, but freely trying to live in the world. At this point, the West can stand up and fight for itself, or it can continue it's paralysis and take some more hits on the chin.

Right now we are seeing the Islamists rioting, bombing subways and flying planes into buildings. These have all been horrific occurances, but they are nothing compared to what is in store if we stand here paralyzed. Iran is trying to get nukes, and we keep capturing al-Qaeda volunteers who are trying to develop chemical and biological weapons. As time progresses, the stakes are only going to get higher.

How many more shots are we willing to absorb before we decided to take the gloves off and fight these guys?

Posted by 10 fingers 6 strings at November 3, 2005 05:00 PM | TrackBack