June 18, 2006
NEITHER THEIR NIHILISTS NOR OURS CAN WIN:
WAITING FOR THE APOCALYPSE: Ten years after Samuel Huntingdon predicted a `clash of civilizations,' there's much debate about whether his prophecy is coming true. Olivia Ward writes there is scant reason for reassurance. (OLIVIA WARD, 6/18/06, Toronto Star)
Gerges and others who study the progress of jihadism and the war on terror say that building a basement bunker is premature for worried people on both sides of the cultural divide.The real clash, they insist, is not between Muslims and the West, but within Islam itself. There is also a fierce battle between Western liberals and conservatives struggling for the souls of their countries.
"We're talking about a clash of fundamentalisms in both camps," says Gerges. "In the Muslim world, a thin layer of culture and tradition is being imposed on the wider community. Even though the people who are doing it belong to a tiny minority, they are very effective at campaigning and they have set powerful forces in motion."
America, says former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, follows the same dangerous pattern: "It is sometimes convenient for purposes of rhetorical effect for national leaders to talk of a globe neatly divided into good and bad," she warned in a recent essay in the Los Angeles Times.
"It is quite another, however, to base the policies of the world's most powerful nation upon that fiction. The (George W. Bush) administration's penchant for painting the perceived adversaries with the same sweeping brush has led to a series of unintended consequences."
In America, analysts say, such apocalyptic thinking fits neatly into the culture of fundamentalist Christianity, and a substantial number of Americans believe the end of the world is inevitable. Launching wars against "evildoers" and unbelievers is a way of provoking a "final battle" of all against all. Bush's religiously tinged rhetoric convinces some of his critics that a clash of civilizations is his goal.
"One suspects that the right is full of apocalyptic excuses for not facing the huge challenges looming in the future," says Deepak Chopra, author of numerous books on spiritual healing. "There is a whiff of apocalypse hanging over the Iraq war, whose rationale may have a lot to do with the Book of Revelations, the rise of the Anti-Christ, a climactic battle in the Holy Land and so on.
"These scenarios are not divinely manifested, though — we make them happen out of our own will, expectations, and perverse love of crisis," he said in the Huffington Post.
Extremists in the Muslim world are also courting the Armageddon that a clash of civilizations would create. And, analysts say, the invasion of Iraq has intensified and speeded up the violent evolution of jihad.
"There is a sense of apocalypse now," says Reuven Paz, director of the Project for the Research of Islamist Movements at the Israel-based GLORIA Center. "Not just youngsters, but people with families, in their 30s, are willing to go to Iraq and blow themselves up. That is something new. About 700 people a year are killing themselves there. They feel that they are living on the eve of the end of history, and the great victory of Islam is coming."
New, too, is the attraction to terrorism of middle-class and wealthy young Muslims in Arab countries and the West, who are backing and planning attacks against "infidels" and "occupiers."
And, Paz says, their nihilism is reflected in an American policy of endless war against terrorism that was exemplified by the invasion of Iraq.
"When the Americans started the Iraq war, they waked all kinds of sleeping demons, both Sunni and Shia. They aroused many social and cultural ones, not just in Iraq, but throughout the Arab world. That has fuelled the jihad. If you look at the reaction to the killing of Zarqawi, you see that hundreds are thanking the Americans, because now there will be an even bigger wave of jihad."
Loretta Napoleoni, London-based author of Insurgent Iraq: Al Zarqawi and the New Generation, agrees: "It's turned into an anti-imperialist movement without end," she says.
"Many of the jihad recruits aren't interested in classic motivations like recreating the Islamic Caliphate. The ones who were arrested in (the recent bomb plot in) Ontario may not even have a final objective. As long as they attack, it's sufficient. It's purely nihilistic, like some of the old anarchist movements in Europe. And because the people who attack are gone afterwards, it's much more difficult to find out who (the cells) are and how they operate."
The problem with the theory is that it is the final battle for the few jihadists but barely a dust-up for the West. The comnparison to the anarchists is apt--they too were annoying and even murderous for awhile before dwindling away to naught. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 18, 2006 9:19 AM
"When the Americans started the Iraq war, they waked all kinds of sleeping demons, both Sunni and Shia. They aroused many social and cultural ones, not just in Iraq, but throughout the Arab world. That has fuelled the jihad. If you look at the reaction to the killing of Zarqawi, you see that hundreds are thanking the Americans, because now there will be an even bigger wave of jihad."
So, we are responsible for 9/11!
Posted by: morry at June 18, 2006 9:44 AMBut didn't they (the anarchists) give Gavrilo Princip the ideas for the course of action he took, setting off a chain of events whose repercusions we are still dealing with today?
(And how can any articke that approvingly quotes Deepak Chopra as an expert on anything be taken seriously?)
Think there would have been no WWI but for that marginal event?
Posted by: oj at June 18, 2006 11:34 AM[S]ays former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright [...]: "It is sometimes convenient for purposes of rhetorical effect for national leaders to talk of a globe neatly divided into good and bad. [...] It is quite another, however, to base the policies of the world's most powerful nation upon that fiction."
But we can pretty neatly divide the world into nations that are with the U.S., (good), and nations that oppose the U.S., (bad).
What else would we base American foreign policy on ?
Further, if "good" and "bad" are international fictions, then whyever was the Clinton admin., featuring SecState Albright, bombing Serbia into submission ?
Maybe Serbia was just misunderstood, and really needed hugs.
Bush's religiously tinged rhetoric convinces some of his critics that a clash of civilizations is his goal.
It's irrelevant whether that's a goal of Bush's or not; he might be able to speed such a clash along, but he can't do anything to stop it.
Cultures and civilizations are clashing now not due to jostling for territory and resources, as in WW II, but as the last frenzied gasp from moribund cultures and societies in a particular region of the world.
If "Global Test" Kerry were President right now, the clash of civilizations would still be on-going. It's not about who's leading America, it's bigger than that.
"If you look at the reaction to the killing of Zarqawi, you see that hundreds are thanking the Americans, because now there will be an even bigger wave of jihad."
That may be true, but what are the odds that these neophyte jihadists will be as effective as Zarqawi, or even effective at all ?
Most likely, there'll just be a large wave of new crazed fanatics running into our machine gun fire.
Noam's on the right track on this.
This pretty much ties in with our discussion of the Harrison book. The spiritual jailhouse is coming down like the Hindenburg, the victim of communications technology. It is a clash of civilizations, but only in the sense of a inevitable evolutionary proces.
Very few on our side are willing the conflict. Most of us intend to just sort of lie back and wait for that atavistic barbarism to complete its downfall.
The catch is that parts of the jailhouse are not ready to go quiet into the good night.
Here we see the brilliace of Gulf War II. Setting up a client state in Iraq has caused the enemy to focus his attentions there. We have drawn the line deep, deep in the enemy's territory, and we are chewing him up on ground of our choosing.
We are headed for successful empire. If more people knew and understood Roman history this brilliance would be more generally acknoledged.
Posted by: Lou Gots at June 18, 2006 2:48 PM
Lou, you had me nodding until you got to the "empire" part. I don't think Iraq will be part of our "empire" any more than Germany, Japan, Italy, etc. are now.
Posted by: PapayaSF at June 18, 2006 3:33 PMPapayaSF, Who is Carthage to our Rome? The American Empire rules the world with a soft hand, but for the visable future, we make and enforce the rules of the game. You live in America. You are too close to see how rich, powerful, healthy, and safe we are here. The world sees. They want to be us.
Posted by: Robert Mitchell Jr. at June 18, 2006 4:15 PMCarthage is the Enlightenment.
Posted by: oj at June 18, 2006 4:21 PMPapaya:
In year gone by, my feet have trod the soil of American castra in each of the countries you have named. Those bases are still there. Empire is not about what the media and the local politicians among the socii prate, it is about the Eagles.
Ponder the reach of American air, sea and space power and think of the Legions.
Posted by: Lou Gots at June 18, 2006 5:18 PMAmerica has a hegemony, not an empire. A hegemony is the dominance of a single cultural or ideological framework. An empire is dominance by military force.
Ancient Rome was an empire (with some aspects of a hegemony). The Soviet Union was an empire pretending to be a hegemony.
Posted by: Gideon at June 18, 2006 6:17 PMGideon: that's what I was trying to say. Being top dog doesn't make you an emperor, except in the most metaphorical way.
Posted by: PapayaSF at June 18, 2006 7:42 PMWhere's the evidence that WWI was inevitable?
The Germans.
Posted by: oj at June 18, 2006 9:04 PMoj,
The Germanswith honorable [sic] mention to the Austrians.As far as Princip goes, try Stolypin as a far more significant figure related tp the anarchists. One doesn't have to adopt Solzhenitsyn's enthusiastic view of him to realize his murder was a big loss to Russia.
Posted by: Kirk Parker at June 18, 2006 9:35 PMRussia didn't matter except to the extent it had joined with France and England to try and contain Germany. The Germans were never going to tolerate it.
Posted by: oj at June 18, 2006 9:39 PMRbt. You are so right. We just returned from a cruise. On board ship, among the just under 3,000 almost entirely American passengers, I'd guess about one third were Black (African) Americans, the other two thirds were a mixture of White (Caucasian), Yellow (Asian) and Red (Indian) Americans. All appeared affluent and well dressed,. Many family groups of all hues. Kids had trendy clothes and outrageously expensive sneakers, laden with cameras and other electronic gadgets.
All was congeniality. We Americans can really do ourselves proud! No wonder the rest of the world hates us, we said Out Of Many One, and we proved it could been done by doing it.
As a sidebar, we were in Nassau, Bahamas where business is booming. A far cry from the last time we were there during the Carter years. Chatting with a young taxi dispatcher, he said things are going great, everybody's working and getting rich. Proof = all the taxis were newish SUV's with the A/C on high and the taxi drivers smiling.