Just to be clear, I do not believe that America "deserved" 9/11, nor do I believe that our presence in the Mideast is the only, or even the most important, reason the Islamists attacked us. And my support for Israel is non-negotiable. I do support Israel in part because of religious reasons (no, I'm not an Evangelical rapture believer), but mostly because they are a Western democracy besieged by cutthroats and suicide bombers. If Israel were to disappear tomorrow, I don't think it would be us a moment's reprieve from the Islamists. They would still exist in a miserable state of affairs, wherever they were, but they'd simply be deprived of one more bad excuse for their own misery -- and therefore they'd redouble their hatred of the West.
That said, why Paul's remarks were so important was that they challenged the shibboleth that the United States is a benign hegemon (culturally and militarily), and that we are eternal innocents tramping about the world only seeking to do good for ingrates. Read Roger Scruton's "The West and the Rest." The conservative British philosopher talks about how traumatic globalization (which means the universal export of Western culture) has been for traditional peoples, including the Muslims. Scruton doesn't defend Arab Islamic practices and beliefs, but he tries to get his readers to understand that we simply can't expect there not to be blowback from cultures whose mores and structures are upended by the advance of Western market culture. Within living memory, Saudi Arabia has gone from being a giant patch of sand whose people lived in tents, into being a fantastically rich country. Ideas have consequences. Sayyid Qutb was a totalitarian lunatic, but he was no fool: he correctly saw the threat of the West to traditional Islam, and he came up with his own idea for resistance: jihad.
Again, none of this justifies 9/11. But if we insist on seeing ourselves as unsullied and misunderstood innocents, and on seeing our enemies as merely jihad-crazed nutters who attack us without the remotest cause, we're going to misread reality and wind up in situations from which we cannot easily extricate ourselves.
More on Paul
Wednesday May 16, 2007
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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But if we insist on seeing ourselves as unsullied and misunderstood innocents, and on seeing our enemies as merely jihad-crazed nutters who attack us without the remotest cause, we're going to misread reality and wind up in situations from which we cannot easily extricate ourselves. The jihadists do have a cause: they are commanded to fight the infidel by their holy book. Indeed this crucial fact is misread by most Americans, and I m sorry to see Rod also misinterpret the source for the animus against us and instead to retail such neo-Marxist notions as Western cultural imperialism.
Scott, I don't think it's as simple as either they are commanded by their faith to fight us, or we have provoked them by our imperialism, cultural or otherwise. I am not persuaded in the least that normative Islam is benign and congenial to other cultures. In this I agree with you. But I think it's also pretty clear that not every Muslim is a jihadi waiting to wage war on the West. I believe we can and should seek to reach a modus vivendi with the vast majority of Muslims who might reject Western culture and feel hostile toward it, but who also don't feel compelled to wage holy war, or to support those who do. I find the Spencerian view that Islamic reformers have a tough go of it because the overwhelming weight of Islamic scripture and tradition are against a modernizing spirit to be persuasive. But at the same time, you'd have to be blind to think that the entire Muslim world is ready to line up behind Sayyid Qutb's version of Islam. In short, I believe there are far fewer Muslims in the world who are prepared to get along with the West than liberals think, but more Muslims who are prepared to do this than many conservatives like us fear. If it's true that the great majority of the world's Muslims wish to take the world by force, then we really are in a terrible situation. I find it hard to believe that this is the case. On the other hand, it is by no means evident that Islamism is restricted to only a small minority within the Muslim world, so I believe it would be prudent to strictly limit our involvement with the Islamic world -- including stopping or severely limiting immigration, as well as staying out of their internal politics -- until such time as the crisis of Islam with modernity has been solved, or at least ameliorated, by the Muslims themselves.
Rod - Slightly off topic, but I m curious as to what your religious reasons for your support of the state of Israel are. I can certainly understand supporting Israel because it s a western democracy. But if you re not a dispensationalist, what sort of reasons are there to support Israel that are religious per se? Don t get me wrong, there are good reasons to support Israel, but Israel is a secular state, and I don t believe the Jews as a nation referred to in the Bible is a literal nation.
Sir I read your comments to get a different view than my own. I read the following article (see the link) and would value your comments on the last three paragraphs. They are telling to me by remembering who was president at the time of the American response these paragraphs speak about. Overall my opinion is that we should fight the jihadist over there and not here. Thanks for any consideration you give this post. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010080
'globalization (which means the universal export of Western culture)' Really? Says who? Isn't asking Hollywood not to sell our films overseas rather like asking Sony not to sell Handycams in the US? How does one extricate Sony (not to pick on them)from the US marketplace anyway without a huge loss in jobs, benefits, capital etc. to the economy? I don't like materialism any more than you, but I also fail to understand how to reverse it without causing catastrophic damage to the WORLD economy. Also: you don't hear much about the effects of 9/11 on anyone other than the US. But go check some statistics in the middle east, Thailand, Sri Lanka, etc. and you'll find a lot of hardship for families came out of those attacks in the form of tourist monies dried up, failure to refill manufacturing and factory orders, reduced air and cargo traffic, etc.
These Islamic nutjobs do not care about anyone other than themselves. Period. Other people be damned. They really don't even care too much about their own people, considering the way they treat each other.
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