Mark Steyn: The last youth standing -

Western Standard - Canada ^ | November 20, 2006 | Mark Steyn

[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.

[TeenagedConservative]

Obviously Republicans are better than Democrats. All I said was that Rice's statement that Palestinians want to live in peace is further evidence that the current administration is blind to the reality of the region.

I will never support Democrats, but there are Republicans to whom I can't give my support. Rice is one of them.

[TeenagedConservative]

You obviously missed the Carter Administration.

The fact that there have been incompetent administrations in the past does not preclude this one's incompetence in the present.

[dsc]

"Yes, they do. You aren't the only "smart" one in the world."

OOOOhhh, I love it when you talk down to me.

Yes, I know I'm not the only smart one in the world. Statistically speaking, a substantial fraction of one percent of the population is smarter than I am.

Be that as it may, the apt response to your "Yes, they do," is "No, they don't."

[GoLightly]

You got me started...

World : 0-14 years: 28.2%


Afghanistan : 17.5 years

Egypt : 23.4 years

Indonesia : 26.1 years

Iran : 24.8 years

Iraq : 19 years

Kuwait : 25.9 years

Lebanon : 26.9 years

Pakistan : 19.4 years

Syria : 20 years

Qatar : 31.4 years

Saudi Arabia : 21.2 years

Turkey : 27.3 years

United Arab Emirates : 27.7 years

Yemen : 16.5 years


Israel : 29.2 years

Australia : 36.3 years

Canada : 38.2 years

France : 38.6 years

Germany : 41.7 years

Italy : 41.4 years

Spain : 39.1 years

United Kingdom : 38.7 years

United States : 36 years



China : 31.8 years

El Salvador : 21.4 years

Honduras : 19 years

India : 24.4 years

Japan : 42.3 years

Korea, North : 31.4 years

Korea, South : 33.7 years

Mexico : 24.6 years

http://geography.about.com/library/cia/blcindex.htm

[James Ewell Brown Stuart]

Aha! Thank you very much. That is the error I've been trying to identify.

Ah, I love the smell of sarcasm in the afternoon.

The rest of your post can be filed under things I already know.

Islam itself is the enemy, regardless of the numbers of innocuous Muslims.

So, how do you fight Islam? Do you make total war on the Muslims who are fighting with us in this war? Does your statement that Islam is the enemy mean that all Muslims by default become our enemy whether they agree with the Bin Ladins of the world or not?

[proud American in Canada]

The liberals are right about one thing: This administration is completely and utterly incompetent.

I'm thinking the same thing.

[James Ewell Brown Stuart]

If you feel I was talking down to you, then accept my apologies...for I was not.

But, you seem to think that this Administration does not understand the enemy. I disagree. They do and are waging war against them.

Well, since only a substantial fraction of one percent of the population is smarter than you...I doubt that I am intelligent enough to engage you further in conversation. But I want to thank you for taking the time out to speak to someone who is not in that small stratosphere of intellect. This is a day that I will not soon forget.

[TeenagedConservative]

That's quite a word bomb you dropped. I would love to hear all your explanations of why you believe that. Could it come from your indepth studies or do you find it easier just to parrot what you read?

Sure thing.

1. Bush invaded the easy country after Afghanistan: Iraq. Iraq was not the main source of terrorism, and while the liberals who claim that its soil is unsullied by the feet of Islamofascists are delusional, so too are the conservatives who claim that in 2003, Iraq was the biggest threat to world peace. That's completely false. Iran was and still is a much more deadly source of chaos than Iraq ever was. Palestine is a blight on the globe, and many other "countries" in the region don't deserve to exist.

2. Bush refused to declare war. If Iraq truly was a threat (and don't mistake me, it was), we should be at war right now.

3. Bush intentionally misnamed the war. War on Terror makes no sense. Terror is merely the result of war. It is absurd to fight a war against a tactic of the enemy, no matter how perverse. The correct name for the war we SHOULD be fighting is the "War on Violent Islam." Not radical Islam, because the Koran itself and by extension are Muslims are radical.

4. Bush is fighting the war completely wrong. He's trying to use police tactics to defeat a global war machine. By definition, we can never have a victory in this war. We can kill terrorists, but that is not a victory because victory would be defined as the deaths of a certain number of the enemy. This has never been the historical definition. You must incapacitate the enemy in some way, or take some of his land. We can do neither while we play defense. If Bush wants to continue fighting the war like this, he must start setting up "safe zones" so heavily controlled by the military that terrorism is impossible within them. Then, the military can harbor friendly civilians, and run offensive missions against terrorist strongholds. However, that will be long and bloody. Violent Islam must be fought by attacking its foundations. MAKE DEMANDS OF THE TERRORISTS, like we did in World War II. Demand that terrorism cease, and set up punishments. Destroy holy sites. Carpet bomb cities friendly to Violent Islam. This barbarity cannot be treated as valid war tactics.

5. I could list a bunch more, but the last reason I said the adiministration is incompetent is that they acknowledge Palestine a valid political state and encourage Israel to make treaties with them. Palestine is not a nation. It is a nest of murderers. There is no public condemnation of violent Islam in Palestine because the Palestinian people are, as a whole, evil.

[toddlintown]

Rice is an idiot. Where she goes, nothing ever happens for the good.

[proud American in Canada]

Our leaders haven't learned a damned thing from 9-11 in spite of all the studies, Commissions, recriminations, and 'new ways of thinking'. Nothing.

Outstanding posts, Lurker.

[dsc]

"Ah, I love the smell of sarcasm in the afternoon."

There was no sarcasm. I have been trying for a long time to identify the specific error that motivates a class of objections to regarding Islam as the enemy of mankind. You put it right out there.

"So, how do you fight Islam?"

Firstly, were it not impossible, through education. If enough people were aware of the threat, they would use their creativity to devise effective measures.

Certainly, Islam should be proscribed throughout the West.

"Do you make total war on the Muslims who are fighting with us in this war?"

You mean like Tecumseh Sherman did in his march across Georgia during the Civil War?

The term "total war" is a prejudicial term in the first place. I would advocate sparing non-combatants and those who wish to surrender, as far as is practicable on the battlefield.

"Does your statement that Islam is the enemy mean that all Muslims by default become our enemy whether they agree with the Bin Ladins of the world or not?"

If you are asking whether I mean that their lives should be forfeit, then no, many if not most should be spared. However, they are the carriers of a deadly danger, and must be treated like the carriers of an infectious disease -- cured or quarantined.

[James Ewell Brown Stuart]

Thank you for posting to me. After I quit laughing, I have to admit that you parrot your elders well. But, I do want to encourage you to keep up with your studies and when you get to college (if you are not there already) stand up to your classmates for what you believe in. Your political beliefs as they become more refined and deepen due to study will be the saving grace of this nation. We need you!

[HitmanLV]

STEYNAHOL PING!

[dsc]

"But I want to thank you for taking the time out to speak to someone who is not in that small stratosphere of intellect."

That's quite all right. I have to, or talk to myself.

"But, you seem to think that this Administration does not understand the enemy. I disagree. They do and are waging war against them."

I do not think they understand that Islam itself is the enemy. Their public pronouncements support this concern.

[James Ewell Brown Stuart]

Let's go back.

First and foremost, I totally agree with you that Islam is the enemy. It is nothing more than a plan for world domination couched in religious terminology. Islam will only be content and satisfied when it is ruling the world.

Let's be straight on the definition of the word: total war. Yes, it comes from the Civil War, but it was also the strategy in World War II as well. That was total war. So, I do not mean it in a prejudicial sense at all. Ronald Reagan described total war when he was asked how he would fight the Vietnam War: "I would go in at breakfast, pave it over at lunch, and be home for dinner." Stonewall Jackson described at "drawing the sword and throwing away the scabbard." So, whereas Sherman did march through Georgia...that is not the sole and lone definition of total war.

[James Ewell Brown Stuart]

When I listen to the crap that comes out of the State Department, I know that they don't believe that Islam is our enemy. I have posted on this thread why I believe that is.

The President's "religion of peace" is just diplomatic speak designed to appease (and I hate appeasement) Europe and our allies in the Middle East.

But the reason I know that the President understands...is that his main advisor is Bernard Lewis. One cannot read or listen to Lewis and not come away with a true understand of Islam.

That's quite all right. I have to, or talk to myself.

Thanks again for coming off Mt. Olympus (does it get lonely or just cold up there) and talking to this mere mortal.

[TeenagedConservative]

What elders? My parents are pacifists, my college teachers are all socialists, pastor's an isolationist...etc. You make too many assumptions.

Anyway, thanks for the compliments couched within mild condescension.

[dsc]

Well, then, I guess total war -- with the maximum practical effort to spare non-combatants -- is called for.

Sherman, as you probably know, deliberately targeted non-combatants in the effort to break the spirit of the Southern army. This is similar to our firebombing of Japanese cities in WW II. I would like to know that such tactics would not be employed unless the alternative was defeat.

[dsc]

Lonely and cold. Sometimes I just feel so sorry for myself...

[dsc]

"But the reason I know that the President understands...is that his main advisor is Bernard Lewis. One cannot read or listen to Lewis and not come away with a true understand of Islam."

I hope you're right. However, presidents do not always subscribe to all the opinions of their advisors. Look at Truman and McArthur.