Western civilization lied and people died.
It lied that is to itself.
I am referring to Iraq but not to the hapless George W. Bush and the claim of WMDs existence which wasnt a lie at all. What is at issue here is more fundamental. Its a lie that imbues Bushes Clintons and Obamas both the left and the right and most everyone in-between. It is the enlightened position of the modern man a tenet of our times.
Its the idea that all peoples are basically the same.
I wrote about this seven years ago in The Folly of Deifying Democracy in Iraq" in which I predicted that our nation-building" would ultimately be fruitless:
While we often view democracy as the terminus of governmental evolution the stable end of political pursuits the truth is that civilizations have tended to transition not from tyranny to democracy but democracy to tyranny (e.g. the ancient Romans). …Benjamin Franklin understood this gravitation toward tyranny well for when asked what kind of government had been created when he emerged from the constitutional convention he said A republic madam if you can keep it.
This brings us to the crux of the matter: Even if we can successfully install democratic republics in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan what makes us think they can keep them?
…To average westerners all groups are essentially the same despite profound religious and cultural differences. If a civilization be it Moslem or Christian Occidental or Oriental suffers under the yoke of tyranny it is only due to a twist of fate that has bestowed the wrong system of government upon it. Change that system and voila!" all live happily ever after. What eludes these Pollyannas is that politics doesnt emerge in a vacuum but is a reflection of a far deeper realm the spiritual/moral. Alluding to this Ben Franklin observed
Only a moral and virtuous people are capable of freedom; the more corrupt and vicious a society becomes the more it has need of masters.
…Spiritual and moral health must precede the political variety….
A good way to illustrate this point is with Lord of the Flies William Goldings story about a large group of young British schoolboys who are shipwrecked on an island and who after an initial effort at democratic governance quickly descend into brutal autocracy. Being children they are raw pieces of humanity perfectly illustrative of the wild man." After all one thing distinguishing children is that they arent yet morally and spiritually developed enough to govern themselves. This is why a young child must be watched and controlled with his life micromanaged by his (usually benign) nanny state the parents. As he grows and matures however the parents can gradually allow an increasing degree of self-governance until it is hoped a day comes when hes capable of complete autonomy.
But as our bursting prisons prove this process isnt always successfully effected; more to the point as greatly varying levels of criminality among groups evidence not all of our nations sub-cultures effect this process with equal success.
If this is true of some sub-cultures in our nation however why would it surprise anyone that it would be true of some cultures outside our nation?
In fact Ive long described moral and spiritual growth as movement toward authentic adulthood" which at its pinnacle yields that ethereal combination of innocence (meaning absence of sin) and wisdom and the former is actually a prerequisite for the latter. Yet some cultural norms can produce just the opposite: a loss of innocence and lack of wisdom.
However you describe this growth the fact is that peoples mature very differently. George W. Bush was famous for saying that everybody wanted freedom but this is an imprecise statement. No nation has complete freedom (to kill steal etc.) so what freedoms do the people in question supposedly want? But even if a given people does want freedom in the sense of democratic self-determination wanting isnt enough. Virtually everyone wants money but not everyone has the discipline and wherewithal to acquire it; everybody wants health but some people still cant resist smoking eating or drinking themselves to death. Ours is a world full of people too wanting to get what they want which is one reason why unfulfilled desire is mans constant companion.
Ironically the very modernists who stress how foreign Muslims are just like us" can easily comprehend culture/system incompatibility when our own culture war is at issue. No small number of liberals have concluded that the last opposition to their agenda wont evaporate until we traditionalists who ironically liberals sometimes liken to the Taliban die off. Oprah Winfrey said that the old racists" were just going to have to die; Judge Judy Sheindlin said that those who oppose faux marriage were just going to have to die. What theyre really saying is that the culture on the other side of the culture war has to die (and believe me I consider their cultures" demise no less necessary). And they figure that it wont be perpetuated because theyre forging a new culture via the media academia and entertainment.
So why is it so hard to understand that the same principle applies to foreign intransigents?
If certain moderns can resign themselves to this with respect to Western Christian culture why cant they realize that its no different with Islamic culture? They dont think for a moment that they can talk us traditionalists out of our deeply held principles so why do they think they can talk Muslims out of theirs? And they have only succeeded in shaping the younger generations because they have seized control of the aforementioned culture shapers. So why would they think that Muslim civilization could be reshaped without the same Gramscian march through the madrassahs and other Islamic institutions? They act as if their own domestic political opponents are more foreign than foreigners. But I will explain the reason why.
Just as absence makes the heart grow fonder distance makes dreams grow fanciful.
As with an irritating neighbor who owing to continual petty annoyances you despise more than a tyrant an ocean away liberals are close enough to us for our behavior to have affected them viscerally so that they feel on an emotional level what theyre incapable of apprehending intellectually. But Muslims are far enough away and I dont just mean physically but more importantly psychologically so that its easy to ascribe to them whatever qualities ones fantasies may prescribe. Its as with the starry-eyed nave young lady who is smitten with an exotic but flawed man and who is just sure (as women so often are) that shell be able to change him: after 15 years she can be a cynical old jade who will bitterly lament Hell never change!" The man you see made that transition from theoretical foreign naughty boy to up-close domestic nightmare.
So do you really want to know what it would truly take to transform the stan du jour? Alright but most of you either wont like it or wont believe it:
- Go in with massive force and brutality Roman style.
- Execute anyone who offers resistance after dousing him in pigs blood.
- Forcibly convert the population to Christianity and thoroughly infuse their institutions with the faith.
- Garrison troops there for several generations repeating steps one and two as necessary to complete the transformation.