[Rhodes22-list] More Politics

[Brad Haslett]

Cora's sleep pattern is still screwed up and I've nothing better to do than
solve the world's problems while she sleeps.  Once again, Dr. Hanson gets it
right with those of us who love studying early 20th century history.

Brad

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August 04, 2006, 5:27 a.m.

The Brink of Madness
A familiar place.

By Victor Davis Hanson

When I used to read about the 1930s — the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the
rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the appeasement in France and
Britain, the murderous duplicity of the Soviet Union, and the racist
Japanese murdering in China — I never could quite figure out why, during
those bleak years, Western Europeans and those in the United States did not
speak out and condemn the growing madness, if only to defend the
millennia-long promise of Western liberalism.

Of course, the trauma of the Great War was all too fresh, and the utopian
hopes for the League of Nations were not yet dashed. The Great Depression
made the thought of rearmament seem absurd. The connivances of Stalin with
Hitler — both satanic, yet sometimes in alliance, sometimes not — could
confuse political judgments.

But nevertheless it is still surreal to reread the fantasies of Chamberlain,
Daladier, and Pope Pius, or the stump speeches by Charles Lindbergh ("Their
[the Jews'] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership
and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our
government") or Father Coughlin ("Many people are beginning to wonder whom
they should fear most — the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the
Hitler-Mussolini combination.") — and baffling to consider that such men
ever had any influence.

Not any longer.

Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never
been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven
utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to
strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to
kill civilians.

It is now nearly five years since jihadists from the Arab world left a
crater in Manhattan and ignited the Pentagon. Apart from the frontline in
Iraq, the United States and NATO have troops battling the Islamic fascists
in Afghanistan. European police scramble daily to avoid another London or
Madrid train bombing. The French, Dutch, and Danish governments are worried
that a sizable number of Muslim immigrants inside their countries are not
assimilating, and, more worrisome, are starting to demand that their hosts
alter their liberal values to accommodate radical Islam. It is apparently
not safe for Australians in Bali, and a Jew alone in any Arab nation would
have to be discreet — and perhaps now in France or Sweden as well.
Canadians' past opposition to the Iraq war, and their empathy for the
Palestinians, earned no reprieve, if we can believe that Islamists were
caught plotting to behead their prime minister. Russians have been blown up
by Muslim Chechnyans from Moscow to Beslan. India is routinely attacked by
Islamic terrorists. An elected Lebanese minister must keep in mind that a
Hezbollah or Syrian terrorist — not an Israeli bomb — might kill him if he
utters a wrong word. The only mystery here in the United States is which
target the jihadists want to destroy first: the Holland Tunnel in New York
or the Sears Tower in Chicago.

In nearly all these cases there is a certain sameness: The Koran is quoted
as the moral authority of the perpetrators; terrorism is the preferred
method of violence; Jews are usually blamed; dozens of rambling complaints
are aired, and killers are often considered stateless, at least in the sense
that the countries in which they seek shelter or conduct business or find
support do not accept culpability for their actions.

Yet the present Western apology to all this is often to deal piecemeal with
these perceived Muslim grievances: India, after all, is in Kashmir; Russia
is in Chechnya; America is in Iraq, Canada is in Afghanistan; Spain was in
Iraq (or rather, still is in Al Andalus); or Israel was in Gaza and Lebanon.
Therefore we are to believe that "freedom fighters" commit terror for
political purposes of "liberation." At the most extreme, some think there is
absolutely no pattern to global terrorism, and the mere suggestion that
there is constitutes "Islamaphobia."

Here at home, yet another Islamic fanatic conducts an act of al Qaedism in
Seattle, and the police worry immediately about the safety of the mosques
from which such hatred has in the past often emanated — as if the problem of
a Jew being murdered at the Los Angeles airport or a Seattle civic center
arises from not protecting mosques, rather than protecting us from what
sometimes goes on in mosques.

But then the world is awash with a vicious hatred that we have not seen in
our generation: the most lavish film in Turkish history, *"Valley of the
Wolves*," depicts a Jewish-American harvesting organs at Abu Ghraib in order
to sell them; the Palestinian state press regularly denigrates the race and
appearance of the American Secretary of State; the U.N. secretary general
calls a mistaken Israeli strike on a U.N. post "deliberate," without a word
that his own Blue Helmets have for years watched Hezbollah arm rockets in
violation of U.N. resolutions, and Hezbollah's terrorists routinely hide
behind U.N. peacekeepers to ensure impunity while launching missiles.

If you think I exaggerate the bankruptcy of the West or only refer to the
serial ravings on the Middle East of Pat Buchanan or Jimmy Carter, consider
some of the most recent comments from Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah about
Israel: "When the people of this temporary country lose their confidence in
their legendary army, the *end of this entity* will begin [emphasis added]."
Then compare Nasrallah's remarks about the U.S: "To President Bush, Prime
Minister Olmert and every other tyrannical aggressor. I want to invite you
to do what you want, practice your hostilities. By God, you will not succeed
in erasing our memory, our presence or eradicating our strong belief.
Your *masses
will soon waste away, and your days are numbered* [emphasis added]."

And finally examine here at home reaction to Hezbollah — which has butchered
Americans in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia — from a prominent Democratic
Congressman, John Dingell: "I don't take sides for or against Hezbollah."
And isn't that the point, after all: the amoral Westerner cannot exercise
moral judgment because he no longer has any?

An Arab rights group, between denunciations of Israel and America, is suing
its alma mater the United States for not evacuating Arab-Americans quickly
enough from Lebanon, despite government warnings of the dangers of going
there, and the explicit tactics of Hezbollah, in the manner of Saddam
Hussein, of using civilians as human shields in the war it started against
Israel.

Demonstrators on behalf of Hezbollah inside the United States — does anyone
remember our 241 Marines slaughtered by these cowardly terrorists? —
routinely carry placards with the Star of David juxtaposed with Swastikas,
as voices praise terrorist killers. Few Arab-American groups these past few
days have publicly explained that the sort of violence, tyranny, and
lawlessness of the Middle East that drove them to the shores of a
compassionate and successful America is best epitomized by the primordial
creed of Hezbollah.

There is no need to mention Europe, an entire continent now returning to the
cowardice of the 1930s. Its cartoonists are terrified of offending Muslim
sensibilities, so they now portray the Jews as Nazis, secure that no
offended Israeli terrorist might chop off their heads. The French foreign
minister meets with the Iranians to show solidarity with the terrorists who
promise to wipe Israel off the map ("In the region there is of course a
country such as Iran — a great country, a great people and a great
civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the
region") — and manages to outdo Chamberlain at Munich. One wonders only
whether the prime catalyst for such French debasement is worry over oil,
terrorists, nukes, unassimilated Arab minorities at home, or the old Gallic
Jew-hatred.

It is now a cliché to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural
relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and
leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of
such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities,
and government — and never more so than in the general public's nonchalance
since Hezbollah attacked Israel.

These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both here and
in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial
hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the
"quarter-ton" Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who
live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and
suburbs.

Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground;
yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms
and more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times:
a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself
against terrorists from the 7th century, while under the scrutiny of a
corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of
Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western
societies under duress.

In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look
around.

— *Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is
the author, most recently, of *A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and
Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian
War<http://www.nationalreview.com/redirect/amazon.p?j=1400060958>
.


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