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.
Your post read exactly the way I thought it would read. Every bullet point and talking point included.
Yes, you are right. But Lewis himself said that Bush listens to him. And even though the President is trying to walk the fine line of diplomacy, sometimes his true feelings slip out and you know that he know exactly what we are up against.
I'd feel better if I were sure of that.
Ideologies are easier to fight than religions and that is what makes Islam so insidious. How do you proscribe (good word by the way) a religious belief in a society that prides itself on its freedoms.
However, they are the carriers of a deadly danger, and must be treated like the carriers of an infectious disease -- cured or quarantined.
With concentration camps...with re-education camps.
Total war (and you don't have to tell me about Sherman, look at my Freeper name) against a religion means total war against the whole umma, does it not?
Now, these are honest questions...
Whereas we can identify the enemy (that's the easy part) the hard part is how to fight a religion that is practiced by over 2 billion people. How do you fight it?
Sorry it gets lonely on Olympus. You do get cable, right?
It is Palestinian Reductionism and it is dangerous for Israel and Lebanon.
"How do you proscribe (good word by the way) a religious belief in a society that prides itself on its freedoms."
Waal, thet's a head-scratcher. A good first step would be to establish that it's not actually a religion. One could then educate the public regarding its myriad depradations.
Certainly, the Mormons encountered a great deal of opposition when they arose in the 19th century, so there's nothing in human nature that mandates against it. The major stumbling block would be that the left would fight any such effort fang and claw.
"With concentration camps...with re-education camps."
I would say rather through deportation to the Middle East. If we put them in concentration camps we'd have to make sure that their standard of living was better than the American middle class's.
"Total war against a religion means total war against the whole umma, does it not? "
Meaning what? Indiscriminate killing of women and children? I would oppose that.
"How do you fight it?"
The first step is to render it innocuous, which means to deny it political power. Once that is accomplished, you can take your time. Over generations, marginalizing Islam would result in a decline in their numbers. Give them the option of staying in the 7th century as Muslims, or converting and coming into the 21st...or 22nd.
Of course, the jailing of Muslim men with Jihadist sympathies would bring a huge reduction in the birth rate. The Palestinians would cease to exist in a generation, as their women found it impossible to conceive a new generation of terrorists.
"Sorry it gets lonely on Olympus. You do get cable, right?"
Yes, but there's nothing to watch except re-runs of Frasier.
I am only asking these questions because I struggle them too and what seemed so cut and dry on 9/11 becomes harder to answer the more I study.
How do you tell a person who has been spoon fed the Qu'ran and the supremacy of the Muslim that their religion isn't real? It's the religious aspect that makes it so hard to combat, especially when it teaches that they are to dominate and not be dominated. (And since the coming of the West to the Middle East, the Muslims have asked themselves how can we return to the glory of the Caliphate)
I don't think the left is going to be your major problem. I think it is going to be the Muslim community itself. It is just not going to let you attack it, nor will it give up its political power (and as long as it controls the oil spicket, it doesn't have to).
When I say total war, I am not thinking Sherman, so I am not saying the killing of innocents. Total war means the destruction of the ideology/religion you are fighting with all your forces brought to bear against it.
So, how do you make total war against a political religious system that believes it is god-ordained? How do you force it into the 21th century when it believes that it needs to return to the doctrines and practices of the 7th century to reclaim the position it once held?
You can deny it active participation in the state power structure, but you cannot strip it of its political power. Its inherent in the Qu'ran.
The problem does not just rest with Islam. How about us? We have preached cultural relativism for far too long and are being held hostage by political correctness. You are fighting a religion and a society that is gaining in numbers and as Steyn says going to take over Europe without firing a shot. You have a fifth column in our own society and a generation being brainwashed in our universities that believes the West is responsible for all the evil in the world.
I believe it is a clash of civilizations and the very first thing the West is going to have to do if we are going to win is find the backbone and the stomach to fight Islam no matter the cost.
Wow, what a post. Permit me to point out a few things you are missing, perhaps due to youthful enthusiam and lack of experiential based pragmatism.
1. Iraq was the easy country. Absolutely correct and so correctly invaded. Iraq could be a staging area should "total" war break out. Establishing such a base was forsightful at the time. Now that events have played out differently people complain in hindsight. This is a common problem. Bush made a strategically correct decision and paid the political price. Google Blackfive exit strategy.
2. Only congress can officially declare war. Democrats and Rino's make this impossible.
3. WOT can include Korea, which is not Islamic. It can also inclue South American drug cartels and any number of other non muslim criminal enterprises that use violence.
4. Fun stuff, but impossible without congressional approval. And the voters supported the demonrats, not Bush. You imbue the office of the President with powers and capabilities he doesn't have.
5. No argument there, but again, how does Bush accomplish their destruction without the consent of congress and of Israel? Where is Israel's responsibility to defend itself unilaterally (which Bush continually supports)? What more can he really do? And by really I mean really, as in factual reality, not the fictional reality of the media.
Your points are typical leftist talking points, btw. They are more about smearing Bush than actually resolving the problem of terrorism in any factual, reality based way.
+
If you want on (or off) this Catholic and Pro-Life ping list, let me know!
Always secure your flanks before going into battle.
Not much other than what they pickup in their little elite own echo chamber.
This is nothing new. Guess who won the test of wills back then? And the damn moron who lost the test is still a hero inside the echo chamber while the guy who won created a movement that shakes the world.
The DU talking point that we should have invaded Iran instead of Iraq "because it's more dangerous" always makes me a little crazy because it so obviously ignores the obvious.
I try hard to remember that most people haven't looked at a map and when you show them one, they usually get quiet (unless they're moonbats).
That is the perfect strawman, because if you say to a leftist: then, okay, let's invade Iran, they will reply what about North Korea.
Don't who I'm supposed to have learned my "talking points" from. I couldn't name you a single "elder" who agrees with me. Savage might, but I've never actually read or listened to him. Anyway, thanks for your good wishes.
"How do you tell a person who has been spoon fed the Qu'ran and the supremacy of the Muslim that their religion isn't real?"
In most cases, you don't. That's why I mentioned quarantine.
"I don't think the left is going to be your major problem. I think it is going to be the Muslim community itself."
If we weren't contaminated with leftism, we would have "the backbone and the stomach to fight Islam no matter the cost."
"It is just not going to let you attack it"
If we attacked now, with everything we have, it would be like George Foreman stepping on a ladybug.
"nor will it give up its political power (and as long as it controls the oil spicket, it doesn't have to)."
No, that would require military force.
"Total war means the destruction of the ideology/religion you are fighting with all your forces brought to bear against it."
I can support that.
"So, how do you make total war against a political religious system that believes it is god-ordained?"
You start killing combatants, and don't stop until you are in possession of the field.
"How do you force it into the 21th century when it believes that it needs to return to the doctrines and practices of the 7th century to reclaim the position it once held?"
I am not really interested with forcing them into the 21st century. I am content to quarantine them, and let the medical science of the 7th century lead them into extinction. Of course, if their children were all taken away from them as infants to be raised Christian, that would hasten the process.
"You can deny it active participation in the state power structure, but you cannot strip it of its political power. Its inherent in the Qu'ran."
You can reduce the number of people among whom it has political power to a few thousand, simply by jailing jihadists so they can't procreate, and by allowing them to run their own medical system. Further, you can make sure those few thousand don't have anything more dangerous than swords and horses to fight with.
"The problem does not just rest with Islam. How about us? We have preached cultural relativism for far too long and are being held hostage by political correctness."
Thus my earlier remarks about the left.
"I believe it is a clash of civilizations and the very first thing the West is going to have to do if we are going to win is find the backbone and the stomach to fight Islam no matter the cost."
I could hope that we would first find the backbone and the stomach to drive leftism completely out of our systems...political, legal, educational, and media.
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