VDH Watch 5: London calling Vic

Of course our man Vic had to share his strategic wisdom and his ueberhack historical analogies with us about the London bombings. First up: The Same Old, Same Old ...: An anatomy of the London bombing by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online 07/08/05. Also at VDH's home page.

Vic is sounding a bit war-on-terror weary in this one. He starts of with, "The British may react very differently than the Spanish did after Madrid - by doing nothing rather than by retreating from Iraq."

Then he mourns about the decadent West, Arab hordes of various kinds, whiny Muslims who blame all us Good People for their problems, and yadda, yadda. Vic kind of thinks that if us Good People could just all agree to hate somebody - Evil Muslims, preferably - that everything would be okay. Like in the good old days:

In WWII we didn't care much whether in fighting Bushido some thought we were in a war against Buddhists. We weren't, and that was enough. [Does anyone know what this sentence means? - Bruce]

We knew the enemy were Nazis, not simply Germans, and didn't froth and whine to prove that distinction.

But not now.

To criticize Islamic fascism is supposedly to be unfair to Islam, so we allow on our own shores mullahs and madrassas to spread hatred and intolerance, as part of our illiberal acceptance of "not offending Islam."

Actually, Vic, strictly speaking, most of those German soldiers were not Nazis, or at least not Nazi Party members. But we'll just glide over that for now. Vic's Second World War analogies are such a feast of hackery we don't need to bother with the crumbs.

Not to get all political-sciency here or anything. But it was actually only the German enemies who were Nazis (short for National Socialist German Workers Party, or NSDAP). Italy was ruled by Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party. The concept of "fascism" has been as a generic term to include the NSDAP, Francisco Franco's Spanish Falangists, and others. The Blue Voice's own Dave (BuddhaGem) ventured where angels, historians and political scientists often fear to tread and took a stab at defining fascism just recently.

Actually, there is a serious discussion about whether German Nazism should be considered fascism, or a distinct form of dictatorship.

Then there were the Japanese militarists. I can't say that Vic is the first I've seen call them fascists. But I really can't recall the last time I heard that classification, if ever.

But what the heck? That was the Good War, the enemy was Nazis or something Evil like that, and we all united against them and felt good about. So let's just label the Evil Muslims "fascists", or Nazis, or Redcoats, who cares, as long we make war on them to the end of time. Or until the arms manufacturers and various and sundry other war profiteers can make bigger bucks with China as the Great Yellow Peril. Or Red peril. Whatever.

You just gotta love Vic's Second World War analogies. Prime hackery every time.

The rest is a little nightmare to entertain the faithful: Taliban in Lodi, Saudi villains, Pakistani generals (wait- aren't they part of the Good People this month?), imams in London, terrorists, Madrid, London, pacifists, Western apologists for Evil Muslims (or is that apologists for pacifists?), Syrians, spaced-out Arab teenagers, bleeding-heart Westerners, they're after our oil, and watch out for appeasers.

By the end of the column, we're on the verge of the Dark Ages again.

And as a bonus, Vic shares this article with us at his Web site: Jihad Is Knocking: Another Episode in the War between Christendom and Islam by Bruce Thornton 07/09/05

Thorton tells us we did have to worry about thinking what particular actions and issues motivate the jihadists. It's real simple, according to him: they're Muslims and that's just what Muslims do:

Believing this delusion requires that one ignores fourteen centuries of Islamic jihad against the West, a war of conquest and colonization ratified by centuries of Islamic theology and jurisprudence. Indeed, what we call Islamic radicals are in fact Islamic traditionalists; it is the so-called "moderates" - those wanting to compromise Islam so it can coexist with Western ideas such as secular government, separation of church and state, and human rights - who are the radicals and innovators. The terrorists are simply fulfilling the traditional and orthodox command of their religion to battle the infidels who resist the revelation of Mohammed and the global socio-political order mandated by Islam.

Actually, I believe that was the Christians that took that position. But, psah, they're Islamofascists and stuff and they hate our freedoms so they must want to take over the world like Hitler did.

Although Thorton isn't necessarily addressing Christian Right fans more than secular rightwingers here, this is the sort of pseudohistorical nonsense that the Christian Right is often all too eager to swallow.

And what would a conservative polemic against those Evil Muslims be without a dig at the cowardly Europeans:

The next few weeks will show whether the British have advanced as far down the road of dhimmitude as have the Spaniards, who responded to the murder of their citizens not with the force and resistance their ancestors showed for seven centuries, but with fear and appeasement.

I should stop now, I know. We've got to save something for future VDH Watches. But I'm sure our man Vic will come through. Besides, I'm a bit behind, and that column was over a week ago. I'm dying to know: have we entered the Dark Ages yet? Have the British become a new generations of gutless Chamberlain-like European wimps yet? Let's look at one more.

A couple of days later Vic was explaining How to Lose a War 07/11/05. And it looks like quite a war. In just the first two paragraphs, we're being menanced by Evil Muslims (of course!) - millions and millions of Evil Muslims, I'm telling you!! - Pakistanis, Syria, Algeria, Muslim dictators of all shapes and sizes, the Taliban, Iran, Saddam (didn't we capture him already?), Saudi princes, and Egyptians. Wow! Oh, and Morocco.

Something tells me Vic may have been staying up late watching 50s science fiction movies on late-night marathons:

Islamicist ganglia go deep into the central nervous system of the Pakistani intelligence service, not to mention the House of Saud.

Yeah, I remember that one! There were invisible brains flying around and attaching themselves to the backs of people's heads and stuff.

So, how do we lose the war? Well, there are several ways that all seem to be variations on not recognizing that there are millions and millions of Evil Muslims out to get us. Not because of anything the US might be involved in or doing in its foreign policy (e.g., Iraq). No, certainly not. It's because they're Evil Muslims and they hate our freedoms. Or maybe they're just evil.

Oh, but those aren't our only war-losing risks:

Fourth, and most important, the terrorists and their supporters understand that in a strange way the West is not only split, but also increasingly illiberal as well. It has lost confidence in its old commitment to rationalism, free speech and empiricism, and now embraces the deductive near-religious doctrines of moral equivalence and utopian pacifism. Al Qaeda's supporters will say that Thursday's victims were killed because of Afghanistan or Iraq. Westerners will duly repeat the dull refrain that "Bush lied, thousands died" in their guilt-ridden search for something we did to cause this.

And so, rather than focus our attention on the madrassas and the mosques that preach hatred, we will strive to learn more about Islamic culture, as if our own insensitivity were the true culprit. Our grandfathers could despise Bushido - Japan's warrior cult - without worrying whether they were being unfair to Buddhists; we of less conviction and even less courage, cannot do likewise.

The West has embraced "utopian pacifism". You know, that explains a lot. Everywhere I've travelled the last few years, I keep running into charolers walking the streets at all hours singing, "All we are saying/Is give peace a chance." Now, I like the song, but ten or twelve times a day every day is a bit much! That contagion of utopian pacifism explains it, though.

I don't know what it is with Vic and the Bushido thing lately. But it does have some intersting possibilities. Bushido ... warrior cult ... it has kind of a ring about it, doesn't it?

Vic says:

In short, we now know what to expect from the London bombings and the others to follow. There will be no effort to punish the states that subsidize al Qaeda. Critics will cling to the myth that the British got what they had coming. The primary obsession of many Westerners will be to extend sensitivity to Islam, not the victims of those who kill in its name. And all will be consoled that just a few dozen were harvested this time.

I'm beginning to see Vic's point here. A terrorist group composed of radical Islamic British Pakistanis set off bombs in London. So if go bomb Mecca or somewhere like that, that would be getting to the source of things, now wouldn't it? And only wusses would worry about repercussions. The Evil Muslims are going to keep bombing anyway. So if we start wars with another Muslim country or two or three. Hmmm, maybe I'm not quite getting this yet.

Now that I think about it, is there supposed to be a point? Or is it just endless reminders from Vic that Muslims and Arabs and various other exotic types from former Asian colonies of Britain are all our enemies forever and ever and ever?

I can't wait to see what our man Vic and people by Bruce Thornton say if Warlord Bush actually does pull out a substantial number of troops from Iraq. Heck, I could almost write the columns myself. There are two ways to go: (1) it's a brilliant success and a sign of what wonderful progress we've made; (2) it's dangerous appeasement but the Democrats and the Liberal Press! Liberal Press! Liberal Press! are to blame. Mix in a few lame historical analogies and you've got six months of VDH columns there.

Maybe Vic will hire me to ghost-write for him. But for that kind of high-intensity hackery, he'll have to pay me big bucks.

Tags: london bombing 2005, vdh watch, victor davis hanson

The London bombings

Sudden explosions. People left dead, wounded and traumatized. Innnocent people killed and injured for no good reason. It's a terrible, terrible thing.

When I read about the London attacks this morning, the words from the Jackson Browne song "For a Dancer" came to mind.

Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
Just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found

For the survivors of those killed, there will be a long period of mourning and arranging of the lost one's affairs. For many of the survivors, the physically wounded, the psychologically injured, there will be months or years of recovery. For many, their lives will be permanently affected by the attacks.

I wish it were possible to draw a line under the events or to put a period at this point. But, being human, we try to find meaning in things like this, even when there is none to be found.

And having watched the reaction to the 11-M (March 11) attacks of 2004 in Madrid, it's all too predictable that the Foxists and the OxyContin radio blatherers will turn this into another justification for the Iraq War and whatever other Bush policies they are promoting at the moment. Oh, and use it to call Democrats traitors, of course. That's what our national political discourse has come to at this point.

My initial thoughts on the policy issues run like this. We know terrorist groups are trying to get nuclear weapons and radioactive material, so nuclear nonproliferation should be in reality (and not just in rhetoric) a top priority of American policy.

There should also be a serious push to upgrade security in American ports, a major point of vulnerability. And we need to have a public health system that has the emergency capacity to deal with a nuclear attacks or an epidemic induced by biological weapons.

And the government at all levels in the US should be prepared to deal with terrorist networks - and not just jihadists. Cults and violent political extremist groups that are not Islamic in orientation can commit deadly attacks on their own or in a cynical/pragmatic alliance with jihadist groups. As I mentioned in a recent post, such alliances are not only possible but likely.

The more time that goes by, the more mindless it seems to me to approach this problem as a so-called "global war on terrorism" (GWOT). The threat to the US and other Western democracies is not the group of techniques of warfare known collectively as "terrorism." It's the specific groups and political environments that promote violent attacks on democratic countries. The Islamic jihadists are the most urgent of those threats. But by no means the only ones. While the Bush administration uses The Terrorists as an abstract threat to justify anything and everything it wants to do, there are real terrorists that are real threats to the US and to American citizens.

So we should be asking again, why did this administration allow Bin Laden and many of the senior Al Qaeda operatives of the moment to escape during the Battle of Tora Bora? When is our Justice Department, now headed by a man (Alberto Gonzales) who facilitated a criminal torture policy, going to solve the anthrax case from 2001, a case in which the number of likely suspects is limited to a well-defined and known circle of experts?

Is the government ever going to prosecute and convict any terrorists on anything more substantial than being low-level "sleepers", or on immigration status violations (which are counted as "terrorist"-related to create phony statistics)?

And do we have an actual long-term policy to address issues with the Muslim world? Or is it all based on threatening preventive war against Muslim countries and making pretty noises about promoting democray while "rendering" suspects to authoritarian Muslim governments like Egypt's and Syria's to be tortured?

[Cross-posted at Old Hickory's Weblog]

Tags: london bombing 2005