Posted on 11/23/2006 8:26:38 PM PST by UnklGene
The Last Youth Standing -
What the West and Islam share are elites detached from their own demographic realities
Mark Steyn - November 20, 2006
I was watching Mansbridge One on One the other day. Don't ask me why. May have been an "encore presentation." Or more likely an encore presentation of an encore presentation. For a 24/7 news network, there's an eerie timelessness about CBC Newsworld: one would be only mildly surprised to switch on and find Mansbridge One on One with Lester B. Pearson or Sir Charles Tupper. Anyway, this week, the one he was on was the Aga Khan. And he wasn't exactly on him with anything other than a big slurpy puppy-dog tongue. In that soft breathy voice of his, His Highness was doing a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger routine on what had happened to Iraq--by which he meant not decades of Saddamite dictatorship but the American liberation therefrom.
"Can Iraq be put back together again?" asked the great Mansbridge sympathetically.
"'Put back together'?" I roared. "You **@*%**# ! 'Put back together' to a smoothly functioning genocidal dictatorship? Are you out of your mind even by CBC standards?" And I picked up the TV set and hurled it through the window where it killed two elderly spinsters taking their morning constitutional.
Okay, I didn't.
I merely rolled my eyes in mild exasperation, which was just as well, as the next bit was even better. The Aga Khan was asked who was providing real leadership in these troubled times, and he answered--wait for it--"Kofi Annan." This would presumably be the same Kofi Annan who preceded his secretary-generalship with the Rwandan genocide and ended it with the Darfur genocide. But don't waste your time quibbling about a million dead here and there. His Highness thought Kofi Annan had a "very good team" around him. This would presumably be the same very good team mired from top to toe in the oil-for-fraud scandal, from Benon Sevan, the program's head honcho (since resigned and back in the Cyprus apartment building in whose elevator shaft his aunt mysteriously plunged to her death before she could be questioned by investigators), to Alexander Yakovlev, the senior procurement officer (for UN peacekeeping, I mean, not the child sex rings that invariably accompany it). And let's not forget Kofi's Executive Co-ordinator for United Nations Reform, our own Maurice Strong, who unfortunately was obliged to resign before he could complete his "reforms."
Yet this is what the Aga Khan thinks is great global leadership, and, if Mansbridge felt tempted to raise a quizzical eyebrow, he either kept it under control or it was digitally re-lowered in post-production.
I hesitate to plug my own book, but, if the CBC carries commercials, I don't see why this column can't. The volume in question, America Alone: The End Of The World As We Know It (recently excerpted in this magazine), was born in part from this kind of Great Man Syndrome: Mansbridge One On One with some other bigshot about what a splendid fellow yet another bigshot is. A year or two back, I was at a dinner party and mentioned that I was heading to Jordan a couple of days later. The very grande dame on my right--a celebrity journalist--asked if I was flying in to see King Abdullah. I said no, I wasn't. She found it hard to see the point of going to Jordan without seeing His Majesty and offered to use her good offices to get me some face time at the palace. I demurred politely. And here's why. I like swanking about with the international A-list as much as the next chap, but I became convinced a few months after 9/11 that great men jetting around and shooting the breeze with other great men is inadequate to the situation these days. I think you learn more about Jordan from going to Zarqa, the bleak industrial city that produced the late Mr. Zarqawi, or to the isolated towns in the eastern desert, whose tribal representatives refuse to vote against "honour killing" whenever it comes up in parliament. In other words, it's too easy to get the wrong impression about a place from the urbane bespoke Sandhurst-trained monarch who sounds so reasonable on CNN and the CBC but who doesn't always speak for the fellows jumping up and down in the street shouting "Death to the Great Satan!" And insofar as I have a universal theory these days it's that a lot of the problems in the world lie in the widening chasm between elites and the masses.
If you want an example of what I mean, consider an interview Condi Rice gave to Cal Thomas recently. "The great majority of Palestinian people," said the secretary of state, "they just want a better life. This is an educated population. I mean, they have a kind of culture of education and a culture of civil society. I just don't believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that's what people are going to do."
Cal Thomas asked a shrewd followup: "Do you think this or do you know this?"
"Well, I think I know it," said Dr. Rice.
"You think you know it?"
"I think I know it."
So many of our present woes are due to thinking we know things. In the case of Palestine, however, it requires an almost absurd suspension of disbelief. When Condi Rice speaks of an "educated population" with a "culture of civil society," I'm sure we've all met Palestinians like that, in Montreal and Los Angeles and London--everywhere except Palestine. In Gaza, as I note in my book, the median age of the population is 15.8 years. Count back 15.8 years and you come to early 1991. In other words, a huge swathe of the population have spent their entire life in the depraved death cult of the post-Oslo Arafatist-Hamas squat. Not much of a "culture of civil society" there. Not much evidence that many of them "just want a better life." Au contraire, given the choice between "a better life" and blowing up Jews, quite a big chunk of the teenage and twentysomething males in Gaza would regard the latter as a lot more fun.
How could a smart woman like Dr. Rice be so misled on this point? No doubt she's seen all those Palestinian spokespersons--Saeb Erekat, Hanan Ashrawi--who've filled up the CNN and BBC airwaves decade in, decade out. No doubt she's met many soft-spoken "Palestinian intellectuals"--the territories' principal export, one might easily believe, given from the number who've turned up in CBC interview chairs over the years. But they don't speak for their people.
A few months after 9/11, I visited the Muslim slums of France. They're ugly dehumanizing places, and obviously I would rather have been hosting Steyn One on One with Jacques Chirac at the Elysée Palace. But in the last four-and-a-half years those alienated anonymous "youths" (as the papers refer to them) have been a central fact of French life--whether lobbing Molotov cocktails into police stations or torching buses and leaving passengers with third-degree burns. That's the reality. And everything Chirac and de Villepin and even Sarkozy have proposed has been a delusion: like Condi Rice, they thought that they knew. But the rioting youths knew better.
The Aga Khan is even more disconnected from the reality on the ground. His father was for many years the personification of a glamorous jet-set Islam, not least due to his marriage to Rita Hayworth. Nowadays I imagine a sense of self-preservation would caution even the most confident Muslim bigshot from marrying an infidel screen siren famed for revealing rather more than the average Ayatollah approves on. Today, His Highness embodies an Islam in eclipse.
The future will be determined by those youths in the European suburbs, by legions of teenagers in Gaza, by the angry platoons of the Pakistani madrassahs.
And in each case, General Musharraf, Mahmoud Abbas, Jacques Chirac and even Tony Blair will do their best to stay on the right side. The problem is not a lack of leadership, but the leadership's lack of followers.
I agree.
The same way we fought Bushido. By destroying every last one of it's adherents.
L
"..we would have coerced our ally (Israel) into feeling like she had no choice but to make her own peace with the Palestinians (Oslo Accords).."
How does a beagle make peace with a Pit Bull?
"They just want a good education and a good life for their children.' It is the biggest poop-load.
They may weant these things, but they are not willing or able to stand up against the gunmen to achieve them.
What?
If I need someone to correct me manners, I will call my mother. Thank you very much.
I am so sorry to disagree with you, but you've attacked Stuart only because he's a newbie. I think you have taken great offense that he refused to rise to your rather insulting post and simply said that he would not post any more to you. Bravo to Stuart! I wish I would have learned that in my first month.
As for your assault on his manner of posting. There is no self-righteousness or condensencion in what he said. This tactic among FReepers gets old. You get disagreed with and instead of just accepting the fact that someone might not agree with you, your argument becomes a personal attack.
Furthermore, the exchange between dsc and Stuart was a very intersting one. I would have loved to have heard more, but the anger (displayed in Stuart's last post) probably means that the conversation is over. Pity... Too bad that you chose to be rude and insulting instead of contributing to the conversation.
As for Teenaged Conservative, if you don't think his five points are nothing more than liberal talking points, then I don't know what to say.
Furthermore, I am not a newbie, but I know enough not to argue with you because the attacks on my person will shortly be forthcoming.
When your level of debate rises above the personal attack and insulting new FReepers, ping me. Until then do not bother.
carton253
He lives in Israel, is finishing his dissertation in Middle East History, speaks fluent Arabic and Hebrew.
When Bin Ladin speaks on the tape, he does not have to wait for the English translation.
Furthermore, his grasp of Middle East History is vast.
He is a firm supporter of Israel's right to exist and believes the War on Terror is one that we must win. Furthermore, he understands that the conflict is not black and white and the history of the conflict dating back to 632 as produced 256 shades of gray.
So before you discount him because he dared to challenge your rather shallow understanding (especially yours Teenaged Conservative), perhaps it would have behooved you to engaged him further.
As for me, if you find me self-righteous, condenscending, or any other insult you can muster, I'll just take it as a compliment.
"I Feel like I'm living thru a Simpsons episode.."
I know what you mean, I sometimes feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone.
You're a really snide soul, when faced with those who disagree with you, aren't you?
TeenagedConservative takes the time to generate a very detailed post on where he stands, and you respond with that?
I'm completely underwhelmed.
Excuse me while I'm underwhelmed.
I realize that Teenaged Conservative generated a detailed post on where he stood and I thought his positions were childish, under developed, and simply showed his youth and inexperience.
Maybe I should have answered his post, but I don't have the time to rebut leftist talking points. Nor do I have the inclination to do so.
As for you being completely underwhelmed, have you seen a doctor about it? (and yes that was snide).
Now, if you still want to call me names, feel free to do so until you run out of them. I don't care.
Now, you are probably going to take some abuse on my account, I'm sorry about that.
But I would like to see you top self-righteous, snide, silly, vague, unclear, and condenscending!
I don't know...that is a pretty high bar.
But I have every confidence in the FReepers on this thread to give it their best shot though.
This is probably closest to the truth of the matter.
I have no doubt but that Ms. Rice knows that her quote is balderdash but I also have no doubt but that the alternatives are not pleasant or currently acceptable.
Diplomatically asking the elites of Islamic nations to help us out (please ask your suicide bombers to stop aiming at us - sir) only allowed the situation to mutate into 9/11. An all out war on islamism would be just that - an all out war covering most of the globe. Given the split in the UN, the globe would surely & uniformly pin the entire blame on USA (and its 'lackeys'). Fifty percent of that world would secretly be thanking us for the act, but they'd all stand at the podium to denounce it.
I also believe it is true that not all muslims want our death - but like illegal immigrants from the south, most want the benefits that are products of our culture without the bother of supporting or working for it. The vast majority would dearly love finding a way to have the goodies without having the underlying culture present at all.
We are in a pretend world today, one that is acceptable to the sensitive ("Palestinian mothers do not want their children blown up") while trying to lay some force on the jihadis and their host governments in the hope that it will convince them to back off.
It probably won't work but unless and until we are literally blown out of the straitjacket that the entire western (non-muslim) world occupies, it's what we'll get.
Islamic Militancy can be as much as a threat to the Muslim as it is to us. Bin Ladin's wahabbism has caused him to define Islam into a "we're it" mentality and if he does not think your Islams measures up, you are apostate and worthy of death.
So in the sea of Muslims not all of them are our enemies. But, its easy to deceive ourselves, to thinking that automatically makes them on our side. It does not.
Muslims are taught that Islam says that we are to dominate and not be dominated and since we are dominated something horrible has gone wrong. What could it be? Well, the fault does not lie with Islam because it is perfect, therefore, the world has been turned upside down and works to keep us pinned down. So, whereas not all Muslims are putting on suicide vests, they do think that we are responsible for their decline, so when Israel is attacked or the US, they think it is justified.
As Mark Steyn points out in his book, Europe is about to taken over without firing a shot, and they can't seem to find the will to rouse themselves and prevent that from happening. You are absolutely right when you say we are strait jacketed. It is our own invention but now we seem to think it is now our identity. That cultural relativism is the foundation of our civilization, and it would be a horrible if we set it aside.
Now, we play the diplomatic speak game that you suggest but all it does is weaken us in the militants eyes. This culture understands only strength. So be strong.
We have been. Iraq for all its problems is a winning proposition for the West. We should not ignore the hope in democracy that the Iraqis have and should continue to nuture this budding democracy in the hopes that it will be a light in the dark places and bring about bloodless coups and a cleaning of their own mosques (so to speak) because the alternative is too horrendous to think about.
As to the goodness or not goodness of our role in Iraq; the main thing is that we took/are taking action in Iraq. The main problem is that, on their home turf, not even relatively sophisticated muslims are into team playing. They will turn out to vote for something better but no one in that region is going to learn (non violent) bi-partisanship in a couple of years.
(We learned of it long ago in the USA and still manage to regress all too frequently)
One of GWB's greatest failures was in allowing it to appear that 'democracy' in Iraq would look like 'democracy' in the US. It just might be that they will be able to generate a government that includes all parties in a more or less peaceful forum while the various cults, tribes, and street gangs go about their brutalities at some level below critical mass.
No, I hope I did not suggest that Iraq would learn bi-partisanship in a couple of years. That is why I said that the US must continue to nuture the Iraqi democracy.
I am going to disagree with you on the GWB failing. I don't think that he insisted it look like American democracy. I think he has said on several occasions that it will look like Iraqi democracy.
If democracy is going to work in the ME it has to include, Sunni, Shi'a and Kurd and somehow these three groups are going to learn how to work our their differences besides with bloodshed. If they won't, then the whole place will dissolve into Civil War. The fear that the sectarian violence is the prelude to that is very real.
I know that you are aware of it, but this war is being fought Islam to West, Sunni to Sunni, Sunni to Shi'a, Conservative to Apostate (depending on who is doing the defining) Fear to Fear, Jihad against Political Correctness.
Now, I have read posts that suggest that the Muslims are too stupid to be democracized, too violent, too unwilling to change, too this and too that.
They do not believe that about themselves. They believe they can govern themselves in peace if the Coalition will help them get on their feet.
That is not a bad hope or a bad goal. And even though mistakes have been made (in war this happens) it is a goal that the West must fight to achieve.
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