The Unavoidable War

Quite by accident, I have found a lengthy, but very good column by Robert Tracinski that is on the RealClear Politics site (which I visit at least once a day), but which I could not find linked from the main page. The column is substantially the same as the edition of TIA Daily I alluded to in a recent post.

Tracinski begins by noting the recent surge of analogies to World War II by pro-war commentators on the right, and then does two things.

First, he shows just how closely the current situation resembles that faced by the West before World War II.

We can't avoid this war, because Iran won't let us avoid it. That is the real analogy to the 1930s. Hitler came to power espousing the goal of German world domination, openly promising to conquer neighboring nations through military force and to persecute and murder Europe's Jews. He predicted that the free nations of the world would be too weak--too morally weak--to stand up to him, and European and American leaders spent the 1930s reinforcing that impression. So Hitler kept advancing--the militarization of the Rhineland in 1936, the Spanish bombing campaign in 1937, the annexation of Austria and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, the invasion of Poland in 1939--until the West finally, belated decided there was no alternative but war.

That is what is playing out today. Iran's theocracy has chosen, as the nation's new president, a religious fanatic who believes in the impending, apocalyptic triumph of Islam over the infidels. He openly proclaims his desire to create an Iranian-led Axis that will unite the Middle East in the battle against America, and he proclaims his desire to "wipe Israel off the map," telling an audience of Muslim leaders that "the main solution" to the conflict in Lebanon is "the elimination of the Zionist regime." (Perhaps this would be better translated as Ahmadinejad's "final solution" to the problem of Israel.)

Like Hitler, Ahmadinejad regards the free nations of the world as fading "sunset" powers, too morally weak to resist his legions of Muslim fanatics. And when we hesitate to kill Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, when we pressure Israel to rein in its attacks on Hezbollah, when we pander to the anti-Jewish bigotry of the "Muslim street"--we reinforce his impression of our weakness.

The result has been and will be the same: Iran will press its advantage and continue to attack our interests in the Middle East and beyond. The only question is when we will finally decide that Iran's aggression has gone too far and its theocratic regime needs to be destroyed.

Second, he identifies the cause of the current Western paralysis in the face of a threat many correctly regard as obvious. (On the way, he considers a recent column by Nicholas Kristof discussed last week on the Harry Binswanger List.)

Observing the events of today--the hesitation and uncertainty, the stubborn clinging to the fantasy that the enemy can be appeased if we just keep talking and find the right diplomatic solution--I now feel that, for the first time, I really understand the leaders of the 1930s. Their illusion that Hitler could be appeased has always seemed, in historical hindsight, to be such a willful evasion of the facts that I have never grasped how it was possible for those men to deceive themselves. But I can now see how they clung to their evasions because they could not imagine anything worse than a return to the mass slaughter of the First World War. They wanted to believe that something, anything could prevent a return to war. What they refused to imagine is that, in trying to avoid the horrors of the previous war, they were allowing Hitler to unleash the much greater horrors of a new war.

Today's leaders and commentators have less excuse. The "horror" they are afraid of repeating is the insurgency we're fighting in Iraq--a war whose cost in lives, dollars, and resolve is among the smallest America has ever had to pay. And it takes no great feat of imagination to project how much more horrible the coming conflict will be if we wait on events long enough for Iran to arm itself with nuclear technology. Among the horrific consequences is the specter of a new Holocaust, courtesy of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

Tracinski does note that despite the inevitability of this war, it will be fought against an enemy not quite in Nazi Germany's league.

From a military standpoint, this is a good thing. From a cultural one, it is a mixed bag.

Here's what I mean. We face an inferior opponent who does not have the cultural wherewithal to become more formidable militarily. This means we can fight a halfhearted war (as we have) and not get trounced. In the short term, this is good news. It can be bad news in the long term. So long as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other states that sponsor terrorism are permitted to exist, so will terrorism. And so long as this war drags on uncompleted, the West will, as a whole, become accustomed to terrorism or the kinds of restrictions on freedom we are seeing to combat terrorism (but which properly belong only to times of war).

We become less free. Worse, we slowly become used to not being free. At the risk of sounding deterministic, many (including Tracinski himself) have noted a sort of positive feedback of freedom:

The real phenomenon that the phrase "cultural imperialism" refers to is the voluntary adoption of ideas, art and entertainment produced in civilized countries. It refers to the most benevolent kind of "empire" that could be imagined: an empire of common ideals and attitudes; an empire spread purely by voluntary persuasion; an empire whose "conquest" consists of bringing the benefits of civilization to backward regions. Western "cultural imperialism" is the march of progress across the globe. [all bold added]

And a while back, I noted an example of the obverse: a retrogression of culture in France precipitated by a statist attempt to "protect" the French language. In short, because the French government mandates that a certain percentage of French radio programming be in French, nihilistic rappers from its banlieues dominate the French music scene. Thus rather than more benign influences being felt (via radio, anyway) in the slums, their baleful spirit is spread outward.

This kind of "negative feedback" can occur in other areas as well. Consider the humble beginnings of the income tax during the Civil War, when the top bracket was only 5%. No one would have thought at the time that we would eventually amend the Constitution to permit such a tax nor that our top rate would now be over 33% -- or that it had once been 94%! Americans accepted the premise that it was OK for the government to take a "little bit" of their incomes. And then they gradually got used to more and more being taken away.

It is the slow kind of negative feedback -- often illustrated through the parable of the boiled frog -- that is the biggest weapon of our enemy in this war. And this serves to remind us of why this war's main front is in the intellectual arena. At best, commentators like Tracinski might succeed in causing a more vigorous prosecution (and quicker end) to the war. Even with that kind of success, intellectuals will have a role to play: Helping the West rediscover its intellectual roots. Or: Why the West is free in the first place. For without an understanding of what freedom is and why it is good, men will not fight for it.

And that last will be especially true if men grow used to not possessing freedom. Call the worst danger of this war "creeping dhimmitude". If men become used to not being free, and remain ignorant of the danger that religion poses to the intellectual foundations of freedom, they will slowly become brutes again, whether or not they become Moslem.

Fortunately, there is time for a second Renaissance in the West. But the longer we wait to bring it about, the harder it will be to do so. In this respect, the military and intellectual battles are identical.

-- CAV