February 12, 2004
Remembrance of Future Past
by CaraListening to the President's speech about black market networks selling nuclear info, materials, equipment, etc...I'm reminded of my 10th grade social studies class discussions about the then current hostage situation in Iran. I remember my teacher, Mr. Conlee, an obvious liberal no less, talking about the terrorists and saying that it was only a matter of time before terrorist groups "got the bomb". He said that this would be worse than our situation with the Soviets; the delicate balance of power of mutually assured destruction simply wouldn't exist with terrorists as they would have no qualms about nuking us first and asking questions later. This eerily mirrored almost exactly what the president said yesterday in his speech, "In the Cold War, Americans lived under the threat of weapons of mass destruction, but believed that deterrents made those weapons a last resort. What has changed in the 21st century is that, in the hands of terrorists, weapons of mass destruction would be a first resort". I remember the rhetorical question Mr. Conlee posed, 'How will we deal with this?', clinging to the air in tense silence, everyone looking around, fear and worry on our 10th grade faces. Mr. Conlee, realizing how much he'd just spooked us all, ended the painful silence by assuring us it would probably be "decades before that happened" and by then, we'd hopefully have some kind of experts or technology around to help us solve the problem.
Let's face it; we all grew up on a steady diet of sci-fi mad-man/terrorist doomsday tales as well as real life news stories of hi-jackings and hostage takings. We all knew Mr. Conlee was right, that it really was only a matter of time before real life terrorists got their hands on the concrete means to blackmail the world and we all knew that we didn't want to have to think about it either. That was for the experts in the future to do.
Well, my classmates, that future is now and, like it or not, we elected those 'experts' who now fill the hot seats of the Bush administration -- that village of the damned-if-they-do and much-more-damned-if-they-don't.
It would be so comforting to think this problem is still far away in the future. But 9/11 showed us that it is not.
And I think it would actually be reassuring to think of 9/11 as a fluke, the one time price of our 'bad behavior' and to solve it all we need do is behave nicer in the world, and the world will love us back. This would mean that it really is completely within our control, that we really aren't at the mercy of fanatics with nukes after all, that we can ultimately control the fanatics by changing our own behavior, by walking on the arbitrary eggshell landmines of mad tyrants' whims. (Why did the Taliban, allied with Al Quaeda, demolish the ancient Bhuddha statues, and film it for the world to see, if it's only about our own bad behavior?) No, this is pure post-modern naivete, delusion and denial.
There are certain realities in life that we cannot just "re-frame" away.
And, to my friends on the 'left', our tye dye security blankets, peace buttons and sixties slogans will not help us here. We just can't solve this one by flashing a peace sign, no matter how warm and fuzzy it makes us feel. And we can't solve it either by only blaming our own country's sins while turning a blind eye to the terrorists themselves.
We will not solve this by pouring all our anger onto Bush. And we cannot solve this by 'killing them (the terrorists) with kindness' because you can never kill, or even stop, a psycho-path with kindness; kindness only eggs them on. People without conscience are psycho-paths, and it's people without conscience who specifically target and murder innocent people. Good people do not stand by and let this happen if they can help it. And good people don't divert attention away from the victims of mass murder by showing us all the ways the terrorists are the bigger victims. No one in their right mind would ever obsess over and appease poor victimized Charles Manson and his gang's fascistically religious targeted slayings of innocent people and ignore those murdered. Besides the organizational funding and massive scale, tell me, what the hell is the difference? Why is it so hard to see evil for what it is when it involves non-western psycho-paths? The hysterical insistence of holding different moral standards for different cultures has disintegrated from cultural diversity to moral racism, plain and simple. That line of thinking goes something like this: 'We could never hold (those) diverse people to our (pure) standards, now could we, for that would be intolerant of us'. And this is, besides being blatantly dishonest, simply the newest sanctioned and most insidious form of elitism and racism going. And those on the far right and left have both been guilty here.
When the west does bad things it's bad, and when everyone else does bad things it's also just as bad. Same standards folks, or you're practicing hypocrisy and moral racism. It's time to realize that it's not just the 'experts' sitting in those hot seats. A dirty bomb will not discriminate between a pro-war vs. anti-war American, and neither will an Islamist terrorist.
So, what do you think, where does all this leave liberal Mr. Conlee? Remember, he gave us an insight back in 1979 that echoes Bush's present words exactly. Was Mr. Conlee duped too?
- Cara
A wonderful, yet terribly disturbing, post today. I've been lugging this quote around that I really like:
"Almost all modern liberal thought begins with the bedrock assumption that humans are basically good. Within this moral horizon something such as terrorism cannot really exist, except as a manifestation of injustice, or unfairness, or lack of decent social services...The utopian Left believes that the wolf can be made to dwell with the lamb.".
- Adam Wilson, National Review Online, 12/01/03
The word "liberal" is lower case which, to me at least, refers to a western way of thinking rather than to the Liberals in the West exclusively.
I believe GWB and his administration, along with Tony Blair in England and our other partners in Spain, Italy, Australia, etc., understand how the world is and will act accordingly. I don't know if it will be enough but I hope we are allowed to find out.
Posted by: steve at February 13, 2004 06:20 AM
There must be great comfort in believing your country to be the most wicked. It takes a lot more work to assume neither absolute wickedness nor absolute virtue, and to work reasonably to prevent the inane follies of either extreme. I think a lot of people are too lazy to maintain a centrist position. Thank you for making the effort.
Posted by: Patrick Lasswell at February 13, 2004 09:08 AM
It angered me at first when, in the fresh and still-smoking aftermath of 9/11, the liberal left decided to turn the blame away from the perpetrators of the act and direct it instead towards America. "Why do they hate us?" they asked, all innocent and earnest. Well, I'll tell you why. It's because we exist. And for that element of the world that would rather destroy us than deal with us, it doesn't matter how we act or what we do there will always be a pretext to attack. Even if--even when--Iraq becomes a thriving democracy in which its Muslim population enjoys a standard of living and freedom previously unimagined, our enemies will still see this as proof of our perfidy.
Now when I hear that stupid question "Why do they hate us?" I laugh. I laugh because even though it still angers me, it amuses me that some people still haven't and will never, ever, 'get it'. Well, thankfully, some people DO get it. And luckily for us, they're the ones who matter.
Posted by: Bernard at February 13, 2004 09:12 AM
excellent thoughts -- as always (although that spelling of 'buddha' seems a little unauthorized. :)
Posted by: dan truly at February 13, 2004 10:59 AM
I'm amazed that people think the U.S. is the power in the world that needs to be restrained. It's as if these people have no concept of uncertainty, and the possibility of truly bad outcomes. It's like they all secretly believe in a well-ordered universe, and a God who counts every hair on your head.
Posted by: Anne C. at February 13, 2004 11:19 AM
Patrick: I think a lot of people are too lazy to maintain a centrist position.
It is hard maintaining a centrist position. It requires more thinking. That's not something I ever realized when I was exclusively left.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at February 13, 2004 12:04 PM
Being a centrist means placing your faith (and mistrust) in the words of no one. It means listening to what both sides say, with a grain of salt.
Posted by: Glenn at February 14, 2004 10:47 AM
What does it mean? Try lowered standards of living, more ethnic loyalty (you can trust your own kind), people leaving NYC, LA and other high-likelihood targets; less globalist foolishness; reduced value placed on human life (at least for a while).
I am reminded of the American Jewish reaction to the 1967 war--almost visceral in their new-found loyalty and commitment to Klal Yisroel. Jews who were stone pacifists going off to Israel to fight for their people, their nation.
Now, picture the same visceral reaction ten-fold in the US (or France, or Germany, or England) when (not "if") the bomb goes off here at home. I would not want to be singing from the multi-ethnic "It's a Small World After All" Walt Disney hymnbook when that happens. Read you WWI and WWII histories. Everything changes. I would not want to be a part of ANY diaspora when that happens.
Posted by: Mike P. at February 17, 2004 02:45 PM
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