A Lovecraftian Folly

Bill Spears has picked a good time -- a day in which I managed to injure myself and need to rest -- to make my life easy. He emailed me today to tell me to be sure to read this article, which I did.

The article in question is a Ralph Peters piece called "Moment of Truth", in which he assesses the state of the war (in the Middle East) between the West and the Islamofascists. I recommend reading all of it, but I'll note a few highlights and some of my reactions to it below.

Peters starts off by analyzing what is going badly for the West and, in the process notes that there has been a change in the center of gravity among the malign forces of Islam.

Within the forces of terror, the balance of power has shifted. Sunni fanatics, such as al Qaeda's supporters, have suffered severe losses in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world. Still capable of doing serious damage, they're nonetheless being eclipsed in importance by state-backed Shia terrorists, with Hezbollah in the lead and Iran providing arms, money, training and strategic depth.

Peters's remarks on Iraq are particularly interesting. In his "bad news" section, he notes that Iraq could fail:

Iraq could fail - if the Iraqis fail themselves. It's still too early to pack up and leave, but if the people of Iraq will not seize the opportunity we gave them to build the region's first Arab-majority rule-of-law democracy, it won't be an American defeat, but another self-inflicted Arab disaster. Iraq is the Arab world's last chance - and the odds are now 50-50 they'll throw it away. [bold added]

I think the odds are far better than even that the Arabs -- saddled by a primitive, tribalist culture and the suicide cult that is their religion -- will fail in Iraq. Fortunately, a failed Iraq would not be bad news in and of itself. On the "good" side of the ledger", Peters gives us:

Iraq still could muddle through - but even if it doesn't, our stock in the region is headed up, not down. The paradox is that a future civil war between Iraq's Sunnis and Shias makes our military protection more essential than ever to the effete Gulf emirates and the cowardly Saudis. Avoid linear analysis and reflexive predictions of doom for American interests: The Middle East will always do more harm to its natives than it does to foreign powers. Human beings may hate a distant enemy in theory, but they generally prefer to kill their neighbors. [bold added]

This last would fall into the Tracinskiesque category of, "The enemy has problems of his own." Peters's judgement that the "allies" we prop up in the region will see that they need us more than ever is probably correct. Given that we are nowhere near having a rational-enough foreign policy to simply seize the oil fields and let the Arab world take care of (i.e., decimate) itself, this is somewhat reassuring.

Indeed, one major part of the general theme of Peters's good news is basically that: That our enemy is so small. The other major part is that the West can learn from its mistakes. For example, he seems convinced that Israel has just gotten a cheap lesson in Lebanon and will emerge with better political and military leadership. Similarly, he sees this for the West as a whole, ending his essay with:

Bit by bit, the Western mood is turning from disbelief regarding the "terrorist threat" to hard-knuckled realism about extremist Islam. 9/11 taught the terrorists little of use and many wrong lessons. It may be hard for some of us to discern what's really happening, but the Islamists are resurrecting a militant, ruthless West.

The florid American master of horror fiction, H. P. Lovecraft, warned his characters, "Do not raise up what ye cannot put down." Islamist terrorists are reviving the West's thirst for blood. And this time it won't be slaked in Flanders.

Things are going to get uglier east of Suez. And we're going to win. [bold added]

Missing from this analysis are several things that could render a victory in the Middle East by a more bloodthirsty West moot: (1) Europe, with its declining native birthrate and its burgeoning, unassimilated Moslem population, is in danger of civilizational collapse. (And the emergence of a Europe that would exterminate its Moslem population would be no better a development than a Moslem Europe.) (2) How the conflict is ultimately viewed in the West is crucial. Is this a war against civilization (i.e., the secular values of the West) or is it merely a religious war between Christians and Moslems? I have blogged several times before about attempts by the religious right to turn this into an inter-religious conflict. It is not, and we will be just as benighted in the end if we permit the Christian strand of Western Civilization to emerge dominant over the Greco-Roman strand as a side-effect of this conflict. Finally, (3) Our chances of victory decline the longer we permit this conflict to continue, as I noted recently.

I may sound pessimistic here, but while Peters is not unwarranted in his optimism within the scope of his article, it would be foolish not to consider these other variables. It is important to understand that the West is suffering from its own problems, too. Many commentators have made much of Islam's own "civil war" between its more retrograde (i.e., religious) and forward-looking (i.e., secular) forces. But the West has a similar, if more civilized version, of a civil war. Just because the West becomes more willing to fight for its survival does not mean that it will survive. The West can still forget what makes it great. If it does, its newfound ferocity will have no more survival value than the aggression of a rabid dog.

There may be light ahead of us, but we remain in the tunnel. Again, the military aspects of this war are relatively easy. It is the intellectual aspects that are difficult.

-- CAV