Posted on 12/06/2001 9:06:57 PM PST by ouroboros
With the ouster of the Taliban and eradication of the al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Islamic extremism has sustained a crushing defeat. But what continues to unsettle Americans is that film of Arab and Islamic people, wildly cheering the barbaric atrocities of Sept. 11.
Is a war of civilizations coming?
Clearly, not a few in the Islamic world and the West so believe, and ardently desire. And, with the War Party cawing for an attack on Iraq, with Sharon unleashed after the atrocities in Jerusalem and Haifa, with the U.S. press calling for a reappraisal of our ties to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, a clash of civilizations has moved from the possible to the probable.
President Bush, however, seems instinctively aware such a war would be a disaster. For no matter how many deaths or defeats we inflict, we cannot kill Islam as we did Nazism, fascism, Japanese militarism and Soviet Bolshevism. Islam has survived for nearly 1,600 years; it is the predominant faith in 57 countries; it is indestructible.
Astonishingly, 63 years ago, when Islam lay dormant under the heel of Western empires, a famous Catholic writer predicted Islam would rise again. Wrote Hillaire Belloc: "It has always seemed to me ... probable, that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent."
Islam was a Christian heresy, Belloc believed, whose strength lay in its "insistence on personal immortality, the Unity and Infinite Majesty of God, on his Justice and Mercy [and] ... its insistence on the equality of human souls in the sight of their Creator."
While The Prophet "gave to our Lord the highest reverence, and the Mother of God was ever for him the first of womankind," he rejected the Incarnation. Mohammed "taught that our Lord was the greatest of all Prophets, but still only a prophet, a man like other men." Belloc believed Islam to be a "Reformation" movement with parallels to "the Protestant Reformers – on Images, the Mass and Celibacy."
When Christians were illiterate, Islam spread "for 700 years, until it had mastered the Balkans and the Hungarian plain, and all but occupied Western Europe itself," almost destroying Christendom "through its early material and intellectual superiority."
Three heroes saved the West. In 732, at Poitiers, Charles Martel, the Hammer of the Franks, stopped Islam's invasion in France. In 1571, the Christian fleets of Don Juan of Austria, an illegitimate son of Charles V, destroyed the Mohammedan armada in an epic battle immortalized in Chesterton's "The Ballad of Lepanto." And Polish Catholic King John Sobieski stopped the Turks at Vienna "on a date that ought to be famous in history, September 11, 1683."
One of history's great questions is why the Islamic world collapsed. A century before Yorktown, Constantinople was superior in arms. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Islamic world was not only superseded by the West, it fell backward – in technology, industry, communications, arms and governance. The Ottoman Empire became "the sick man of Europe."
Colonization by the West followed. In the 20th century, only at Gallipoli – the 1915 battle that cost its architect, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, his post – can one recall an Islamic victory over a Western army.
But if a clash of civilizations is coming, how stands the balance of power? In wealth and might, the West is supreme – though wealth did not prevent the collapse of the Western empires and did not prevent the collapse of the Soviet empire. Rome was mighty, and early Christianity pathetically weak. Yet, Christianity triumphed.
If belief is decisive, Islam is militant, Christianity milquetoast. In population, Islam is exploding, the West dying. Islamic warriors are willing to suffer defeat and death, the West recoils at casualties. They are full of grievance; we, full of guilt. Where Islam prevails, it asserts a right to impose its dogma, while the West preaches equality. Islam is assertive, the West apologetic – about its crusaders, conquerors and empires.
Don't count Islam out. It is the fastest growing faith in Europe and has surpassed Catholicism worldwide. And as Christianity expires in the West and the churches empty out, the mosques are going up.
To defeat a faith, you need a faith. What is ours? Individualism, democracy, pluralism, la dolce vita? Can they overcome a fighting faith, 16 centuries old, and rising again?
Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. Now a commentator and columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national televison shows, and is the author of six books. His current position is chairman of The American Cause. His newest book, "Death of the West," will be published in January.
You know, the man has a point. What do Americans, British, Australians,
and Europeans in general believe in these days?
Diversity and multi-culturalism?
Belloc and / or Pat are still claiming athat ALL Protestants are " heritics " I see , and lumpin ISLAM i with the Reformation is particularly offensive and NOT at all accurate.
Belloc and / or Pat are still claiming that ALL Protestants are " heritics " I see , and lumping ISLAM in with the Reformation is particularly offensive and NOT at all accurate.
Pat's question is rhetorical, of course, but I'd make a slightly different point: the war of civilizations is not coming, it has already been in progress throughout human history. That's part of what human beings do--they take care of their own and display group egoism...which entails conflict and competition with alien groups.
Now, about Pat's comparison of the fighting spirit of Islam v. Christianity, he is right on the money. We can see it in George W. Bush's cautious refrains that we can't discriminate against our fellow "American" Muslims at home, Islam is a religion of peace, etc. You see, the funny thing is this: Western man has been the most compassionate in history, and that wonderful trait is exactly what will kill him in this world. The West is just too PC to do what it takes to hold the line, while the Muslims don't just hold the line--they want to expand it. Although if we took the right measures, they would be unlikely to expand their caliphate into America, given their innate limitations regarding the ability to adapt and maintain Western technology.
Of course, there are those out there who will say it's "racist" to do what it really takes to eliminate the Muslim problem, but that accusation should tell us something...those who fail to be adequately illiberal end up being the suckers that get beaten by those who refused to beat their swords into plowshares.
So does this line of argument erase or invalidate Pat's non-interventionist foreign policy stance? Nope. I see it as part of the solution. Americans need to stop pretending to be the British Empire and come home, and think about the issues I raise above. I feel that only such an "ingathering," in which Americans clean up their own country and live in a sense of solidarity exclusively among themselves, will the appreciation of the truths discussed above help--it will create a "critical mass" of the right kind of group egoism needed to counter that of the Muslims. And like I said, once we deport the ones on our soil, seal our borders, and deploy the proper intelligence networkm we won't be seeing Muslims this side of the ocean for a very long time, so we have the time to reconnect with our true identities. America needs to recenter herself, recharge her batteries, and remember just what it means to be an American versus a Muslim.
So the issue is not a simple us vs. them. Islam is up against a lot of perils that have nothing to do with us. Islamic states cannot govern themselves, cannot live amongst their own Islamic neighbors, and cannot in general get their cultural & economic act together. They are dangerous because of their reality negating ways and fanatism, but they are often impotent for similar reasons. I agree with Pat that we have to have the will to act - but once we do the advantage becomes ours overwhelmingly.
When has an Islamic nation had success in any war against a Western foe in the last 50 years or more? Arab countries especially have a humiliating track record in this regard.
As is often the case, Pat has some very interesting insights but I can't agree with his major point.
So the issue is not a simple us vs. them. Islam is up against a lot of perils that have nothing to do with us. Islamic states cannot govern themselves, cannot live amongst their own Islamic neighbors, and cannot in general get their cultural & economic act together. They are dangerous because of their reality negating ways and fanatism, but they are often impotent for similar reasons. I agree with Pat that we have to have the will to act - but once we do the advantage becomes ours overwhelmingly.
When has an Islamic nation had success in any war against a Western foe in the last 50 years or more? Arab countries especially have a humiliating track record in this regard.
As is often the case, Pat has some very interesting insights but I can't agree with his major point about the underlying strength of Islam.
Muslims will mainly be fighting among themselves, or surrendering; sadly a few will persist with terrorism. Those are characteristics of this diabolical grouping of human flesh. I therefore reckon civilized nations will battle with them, until the Muslims adopt secular, democratic governance.
They are like angry juvenile delinquents, incapable of grasping a mainly adult world. Even when educated in English language, engineering, they do not become civilized.
Pat forgot to add protectionism to his list.
He must be on drugs, all of these ideologies are still festering. defeated but not out. Every now and then a nail sticks out and it is nailed down.
Yes it is a war of civilization and Islam flourishes because of ignorance and illiteracy, plus the fact that they live in controlled societies where the state controls the press and information.
Our mistake has been to back all the petty tyrants in the area to the point there is not one democracy in ANY Islamic country with the possible exception of Turkey (and they are not an exemplary model).
Islam like Communism can be defeated the same way we defeated communism, back the dissidents and let their societies reform from within. Embargoe their economies to force them to straighten out. Back the Islamic reformers. Islam has never had a reformation, it is unchanged since the time of Mohamed, no separation of church and state and no secularist philosophical movements. That needs to change.
As long as our only criteria for dealing with these countries is oil profits or acccess to minerals and we support backward 12th century regimes the problem will continue unabated.
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