Facing up to evil

Perhaps the massive bomb blast on the Indonesian island of Bali will cause some second thoughts -- or perhaps first thoughts -- by those who blamed the United States for having provoked the September 11th attacks by its actions and policies in the Middle East. Very few of those killed in Bali were Americans. What had all the Australians, Swedes, etc., done in the Middle East to provoke such terrorism against innocent tourists?

Recently Pakistani Christians were killed in a terrorist attack in Pakistan. What did Pakistani Christians have the power to do, even in Pakistan, much less in the Middle East?

In this era of non-judgmental mush, too many Americans have become incapable of facing the brutal reality of unprovoked hatred, based on envy, resentment and ultimately on a vicious urge to lash out against others for the pain of one's own insignificance. That has been a common thread in things as disparate as ghetto riots, two world wars, and now Islamic terrorism.

There are always rationalizations, ranging from a need for "living space" (Nazi Germany), natural resources (imperial Japan) to other reasonable-sounding excuses for age-old human evils. Today there are more Germans living -- prosperously -- in less space than in Hitler's time, and Japan has been able to buy natural resources far more cheaply than financing wars of conquest.

Langston Hughes, writing about a riot in his beloved Harlem back in the 1940s, was honest enough to have one of the characters in his story explain his resentment at a white-owned store when he had to "look at that window and say, 'It ain't mine! Bam-mmmm-mm-m!' and kick it out."

Langston Hughes did not blame this on any grievances or sufferings, though there were plenty of both, but on the mindless lashing out against others for one's own lack of fulfillment.

Someone has pointed out that most of the wars going on in the world today involve Islamic countries. Anyone familiar with history, or who has seen such things as the great mosque at Cordoba, knows that Islam was once one of the world's great civilizations -- as pre-eminent in science and scholarship as in military power and political hegemony over others.

But that time is now long gone. When do you hear about the Middle East these days, except when people are talking about oil or violence? What great scientific, medical, or other breakthroughs have come out of Islamic countries anywhere in recent times?

Meanwhile, Christians and Jews -- people to whom Moslems are supposed to feel superior -- have left the Islamic world completely in the shadows when it comes to achievements. Violence has become the only way of moving out of those shadows.

The question is not whether Islam is a religion of war or peace or -- more likely -- has doctrines that can be quoted either way, as Christian doctrines have been adapted to both. Islam is more than a religion, it is a civilization -- a civilization once brightly shining with achievements but now in eclipse.

Few peoples anywhere have taken such historic reversals of fortunes graciously. To be ruled by people you once conquered and disdained has not set well with Poles or Central Asians. Why would Moslems be expected to be the first to accept such reversals quietly?

Perhaps the reason the Islamic states in the Middle East have such a hard time living at peace with Israel is that they would have a hard time living at peace with themselves, when there is a very different, and far more advanced, country in their midst as a constant reproach to their backwardness by its very existence and a constant mockery to their pretensions of superiority.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, there are people so preoccupied with being one-up on other Americans that they are quick to seize opportunities to blame their own country for the ages-old ills of the human race. During the Vietnam War, some of these people even cheered for the Communists in Southeast Asia, who killed more people after the war was over than had been killed in years of military conflict.

Maybe we cannot do much about how other people think -- except not let their confusion become ours. We can also let them know that we plan to retaliate big time if their thoughts turn into bloody actions against Americans.

"The question is not whether Islam is a religion of war or peace or -- more likely -- has doctrines that can be quoted either way, as Christian doctrines have been adapted to both. Islam is more than a religion, it is a civilization"

I do notice that he is one of the few people saying this sort of thing. I notice all the folks who react to the Orwellian "religion of peace" line with enourmous venom. I rarely see people admit that pacifism is not something they themselves agree with, so calling something non pacifist is not much of a criticism.

It seems the Orwellians on both sides mostly have the field to themselves. One side pretends farcically that Islam is a religion of peace, and the other side pretends that since it isn't (and ours supposedly is?), JDAM attack runs are required before the month is out. Bomb non pacifists out of existence, seems to be the platform.

Of course there are perfectly sound reasons for the war against Islamic terrorists. And there are perfectly real moral distinctions between what Islamic terrorists have been doing and are trying to do to us, and what our governments have been doing and are about to do to them. But "peace" is not one of these points of difference.

The only ones in favor of "peace" are the useful idiots on our side, who don't want the non-pacifists on our side to do anything about getting blown up by the non-pacifists on their side. Which is not a point in favor of those useful idiots, I hastily add, because the hypocrasy and Orwellian tendency to flat ignore the meaning of words (like "peace") in favor of their mere "warm fuzzy" or "cold prickly" tone, has reached such extremes that many might think I was speaking in favor of the useful idiot pacifists simply because I acknowledge that they are the "peace" party.

We are not supposed to be allowed to come out and say we are talking about war and being in favor of war. We aren't supposed to acknowledge that our enemies being in favor of war is perfectly unexceptional and just like us, not one of the points of difference. I supposed because of a Wilsonian hangover and placards on the UN building and gross levels of official hypocrasy, we are supposed to pretend we wage war for peace because war is peace.

To Sowell's credit, he does not simply let that pass. His throw away line here makes clear that he notices this, and sees how irrational and distorting it is. But he does not choose to tackle it head on, either. He certainly introduces no real clarity with his mere acknowledgement that Islam, being a whole civilization, is big, and so is ours, and therefore contradicts itself as a matter of course. "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes" said Walt Whitman, speaking of America.

The begining of clarity would be to lay out some of the actual positions people and states take on war and peace, and distinguish those they act upon from the pious blather they emit for PR and spin purposes.

There is pacifism - the idea that war is an avoidable evil, a moral failing, bad in all circumstances. No state on earth actually believes this or acts this way. Some citizens do, minorities everywhere. It is given lip service by hypocrites of every stripe. But in practice, almost everybody regards those who sincerely believe this position as fools. Some tenderly, with a sense that it would be nice if the world were such that such foolishness made sense; many without any such molly coddling, as a present danger of irresolution and cowardice, not to be encouraged.

Yet such Orwellian spin lines as "Islam is a religion of peace" try to imply this sort of thing. Which is absurd. Islam regards war in the right cause as not only just but virtuous, and peace when the right cause is present as cowardly and weak. And so do I. So does the US constitution. So, though differing from each of the former undoubtedly in which cases are "the right cause", does the Catholic church, and just about every other traditional western religious authority except the Quakers.

The next position, as we descend from blather to realism, is the just war position taken by a few theologians and rights activists. In contrast to pacifists, they regard war as justifiable and sometimes necessary. But they stress that the dignity of innocent individuals is an object of greater importance than the goals for which states contend in war, and moral evil much graver than the issue of victory or defeat. Fundamentally this position stems from awarding transcendent status to ends not reached by the state or by politics - salvation or damnation of souls, humanity, there are different formulations of the position. This leads to the consequence that a state should avoid moral evils in war even at the cost of its defeat or the destruction of the ends it seeks to serve.

Among the powers of the earth, only the Vatican (if it is one) takes this position. Others pay it lip service at the level of human rights commissions and learned conferences. Most states refuse to admit that there is anything truly higher than the goals for which they contend in political conflict. Those that admit the existence of such ends at all, typically argue that securing them depends, sine qua non, on prior political conditions that in practice are indistinguishable from the survival or victory of those states, themselves. Many regard the belief in higher ends than politics as just a useful bit of propaganda, "functionally" contained entirely within the realm of political struggle.

The dominant position of states on the war and peace question is "consequentialism". They justify war, and justify means taken in war, by the ends they strive for, the consequences. Whatever is necessary to consequences they say are good or necessary, they do. Whatever is not required for that, they are willing to "pull punches" about or forbear, in deference to the previous arguments or more broadly to political considerations of popularity. If defeating an enemy means projecting liquid fire onto human bodies, then states project liquid fire onto human bodies. If it means "area bombing" of civilians, then they raze whole cities to the ground, with hardly a qualm.

If they can accomplish the same ends with more refined technical means without the same cruelty, they have no objection and refrain from the unnecessarily cruel. This is the actual position of nearly every government on earth. Victory is non-negotiable and they will boil their enemies in oil before they will lose. But once they are assured victory, they will forbear.

The next position in our descent is that typically occupied by guerillas. They are essentially in the same position as states in the previous, but in addition they lack any reasonable prospect of victory by "chivalrous" means. They will do anything to win, and are weak enough that they wind up in practice doing absolutely anything. Precisely because they are not state actors, lack their power and responsibility, and cannot expect victory in "fair fights", they fight as dirty as possible.

There is a certain superstitious aspect to this position. Moral evil is felt to somehow confer power on its practioners, irrespective of their actual objective prospects or its actual track record (which is quite the reverse - atrocity generates enemies and destroys both political cohension and physical means. The strongest states on earth are not the least moral ones). There is a psychology of the frantic involved, of the frustrated and sometimes frankly diseased mind. The worst states on earth (a handful of places) fall into this camp, and scads of opposition movements.

Beyond it come the totalitarian ideologies, which try to institutionalize the attitudes that generate the previous version, and thus to enable ordinary men to act that way with a subjectively clear conscience. They employ one simple means for this above all - that all who disagree with the ideology are guilty, not innocent, of a capital crime merely by such disagreement and regardless of anything they do. The "objective enemy" belongs here as a category of thought. God or history or the infallible doctrine proclaim that all in categories A, B, and C must die, or that they are as good as dead already, and the disciple merely executes the transcendent verdict upon them.

The last is almost as old as written records - certainly not any recent invention. No civilization on earth has been completely free of movements of that kind. And there is precious little question that the Islamicists fighting us today want to lead all of historical Islamic civilization to such a totalitarian, ideological version of Islam, the better to wage war on us despite their "objective impotence". They seek help from states and semi-state movements in the previous category while doing so - which is to them just tactics.

When we speak of the problem of terrorism, we are in effect lumping the last two positions together and distinguishing them from the consequentialist state position, as well as the earlier ones. We are *not* distinguishing pacifism from the rest.

This is to say the least not obvious to Muslims listening to us rave about Islam as the "religion of peace". They read our praise of pacifism as rank hypocrasy by the most powerful military empire in history, coupled with weakness of will, or poor support for that empire by domestic opinion and resolve. They think our governments are cynical, that our populations actually are weak-kneed pacifists, and that our governments delude the people into supporting their warlike policies by systematic lying and manipulation.

Actually our governments and most of our people - in the US anyway, rather the Europe - believe in war, and in the consequentialist sense. And we hardly demand that the whole Islamic world suddenly convert to a pacifism we do not remotely believe in ourselves, as a condition of decent relations. If they were consequentialists, we would simply "negotiate" with them via consequences, aka "don't try that, you will lose". Some of their governments are, and some of the citizens of Muslim countries are, who have not bought into the Islamicist hard line.

But the Islamicists themselves are in the last camp. They have made a political ideology out of an intolerant and literalist heresy within Islam, essentially for cynical political motives having precious little to do with religion. (This, alas, is hardly a novelty in the history of religions - plenty have been used that way, or even founded that way). And to oppose that, we are driven to a parallel counterposition on behalf of liberalism or tolerance.

To wit, with us it is war to the knife against any sect or power that does not leave its citizen's conscience's free. We do recognize one doctrine, in other words, that is to us anathema, and pronounce our fatwas against any who proclaim it, and will wage jihad against any who embrace that doctrine. The Islamic world would hear us much more clearly if we said so directly in clearly comprehensible terms, instead of Orwellian double-talk about "religions of peace".

What doctrine? Coercion of conscience by force, or condemning whole peoples and creeds on the basis of their identity or belief, rather than actions. When some say "peace" they mean this, but the term is an unfortunate one. But it is not pacifism they are talking about, it is tolerance of multiplicity of beliefs. Those who pretend a right to murder us for our beliefs, we assert a right to resist by force.

For what it is worth...

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