Standing on Guard: Really?
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Sad words. True words. We never, ever learn from our experiences. Is it because we are too complacent? To unwilling to believe the inherent predeliction to serious mischief, evil-doing in human nature? Functional incapacity to look behind, look ahead, connect the dots? Yet here we are, once again facing a situation which has the potential to divide the world and draw that divided world into a conflict which has the unfortunate promise of demolishing all that civil society has wrought over the years. Impossible to contemplate.That, of course, was how Chamberlain reacted when he proclaimed an agreement with the Third Reich and celebrated "Peace in our time." We all know what kind of peace erupted, how it involved opposing armies, the incredible sacrifice of defenceless civilian lives, let alone those of valiant soldiers on both the Allied and the Axis sides. A man-made disaster of incomprehensible proportions, far greater than any that Nature, in her infinitely varied abilities has ever visited upon humankind.
What did we learn? To appreciate peace. To make more of an effort to be fair, to accommodate ourselves to others' differences, to accept what we cannot and should not attempt to alter. Bigotry, racism, elitism, territorial ambition, would go the way of the Do-Do. We are, after all, rational, practical human beings. We can and should alter our worst impulses, our emotional proclivity to let matters get out of hand. To survive, we need to accept one another.
But not at any price. Not when we are faced with ravening fundamentalist fanatics geared to a fixed idea that religion has commanded them in the name of their almighty god to claim lives and territories for the greater good of that same religion. It's an idea, a fixation, a deadly ambition that died in medieval times. We have come so far since then, in our ability to reason, to rationalize, to commit ourselves intelligently and sanely to the greater good.
Yet here we are on the brink of a disaster so far-reaching, so fundamentally harmful to the world at large and its various societies that we cannot envision the outcome. We seek to appease. We casually brush off direct indications of intent, of deliberately egregiously harmful acts, of vocal promises of more, far more to come. Take this seriously? Not likely. Are we confounded by an idealogy, a fanatical interpretation of a hitherto-believed-to-be peaceful and considerate religion to be interpreted as first it was outlined to tribal chieftains bent on enlarging their territories and influence, on subjugating diverse other populations within its embrace? Yes, we most certainly are.
It is useful and instructive to read the words of Victor Davis Hanson, senior follow at the Hoover Institution, for they are a warning, a heads-up we seem to have somehow missed in our mad scramble to attempt never-ending "understanding" and appeasement, when condemnation and refusal to accept what is being offered and foisted upon us in the most deadly manner. We heed, to understand, to believe, is to be forewarned. If we do not stand on guard for humanity, what will be our ultimate reality?
"It is now nearly five years since jihadists from the Arab world left a crater in Manhattan and ignited the Pentagon. Apart from the front line 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 sizeable 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.
"Russians have been blown up by Muslim Chechyans 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.
"In the United States, 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 emanated - as if the problem of a Jew being murdered at the Los Angeles airport or a Seattle civic centre arises from not protecting mosques, rather than protecting us from what sometimes goes on in mosques.
"It is now a cliche 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."
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, August 09, 2006
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