… in his response to a new Pentagon report envisaging a “long war” against Islamism – but I suspect he is not. Mr. Judd wrote the following: The Cold War was ultimately won by rhetoric as much as by the Soviets’ inability to compete militarily. It should be even easier to defeat Islamicism [sic] because, unlike Communism, no one considers it feasible in the first place, not even Western intellectuals.
Unfortunately I think it may be precisely the opposite. It is the very irrationality of Islamism that makes it hard to defeat. Marxism (“scientific socialism”) was a philosophical doctrine that could be argued, modified or refuted on a theoretical/intellectual basis. Islamism (Islam itself to great extent) is a blind faith attractive to hundreds of millions, even billions of people. Invented when most of humanity thought the world was flat, it brooks no intellectual analysis. That its adherents, for the most part, live in backwards societies is beside the point, perhaps even a positive for its survival. In a sense, it is the perfect cult. As a threat, Marxism (or communism) may pale by comparison, I’m afraid to say. (via PJ)
I agree with you, Roger.
And, as David Frum said, “It is a great mistake to assume that because people act in an intemperate or extreme way that they must be irrational or delusional”.
ì…no one considers it feasible in the first place, not even Western intellectuals.î
Many Western intellectuals, however, despise their own societies more than the Islamic nihilists. The real threats to peace are supposedly George W. Bush and Tony Blair. They feel it necessary to destroy Western civilization and its capitalist underpinnings so that a utopian society can be rebuilt upon its ruins. A few eggs must be broken to make an omelet. What about the Muslim crazies? They are really not a serious problem. These thugs will become warm and cuddly human beings once the imperialist capitalists have been removed from power.
Marxism (dialectic materialism) is no less irrational than Islam. Marx’s mistake was to promise his followers an earthly paradise, while delivering nothing but misery and death. After 80 years of it, none but the most irrational U.S. college professor could deny the disaster. Islam is more dangerous because it promises a heavenly paradise: beyond reason, and beyond refutation.
It seems to me to be a political death cult with a dash of religion thrown in as a binder. What other organization/religion has classes in grade school on how to murder, the death cult of Kali is the only one that comes to mind. “Show respect or we will cut your head off,” or in the case of the artists in Denmark their hands are forfeit. “We love death as you love life,” this is another one of the things that is ingrained in their little kids, pretty sick isn’t it?
For 1400 years this organization has been on a war of conquest and pillage, “My way or the highway” they scream, with fists waving and the rolling eyes of maniacs, just look closely at some of the pictures in the newspapers for a real wake up. A real Charlie Manson type cult if you ask me. Put it to the test with “Tail Gunner Joe’s” dictum, “if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, its probably a duck. Use the test and give yourself the answer, are they maniac’s or not.
–After 80 years of it, none but the most irrational U.S. college professor could deny the disaster.–
You didn’t go to the meeting I went to on Sunday in a church.
Unions, higher minimum wage, no more “I,” yada, yada, yada under the guise of inequality.
I said “socialism” and the old bag next to me who pays too much in taxes said “Why don’t you just call it communism?”
I should have given a different response than I did, but I will next time. Because there will be a next time.
Someone posted somewhere a long time ago the new meme is “It’s not that the ideology is wrong, it’s just that the right people aren’t in place to make it work.
I also pointed out that Europe’s falling off the cliff because if it and they’re not, she knows, she lived there.
However rational or irrational Marxism was/is, the Soviet Union had some recognizable logic to its behavior. Mutually Assured Destruction was an anxiety arousing policy, but by the 1960s/70s the Soviets really didn’t want to have a few hundred million of its inhabitants killed by US nukes for the sake of taking out NYC or DC. Does the president of Iran think more like Brezhnev or more like Zarqawi?
Oh, I dunno. I am no scholar of Marxism, nor of other occult sects for that matter, but it never struck me as rational, at least if rational means cognizant of the facts. Nor did its followers strike me as rational people. Lysenkoism, on the other hand, was a completely rational application of Marxism to biology. Lysenko claimed that corn would grow better if not thinned because of “class solidarity.” The reason Lysenko’s ideas failed to increase the corn harvest is pretty much the same reason Marxist ideas failed to bring about a human utopia.
Islam has an irrational side to it that may prevent our winning a battle of ideas. The spectacle of masses of people enraged at the portrayal of a cartoon Muhammad with a bomb in his turban threatening in response to bomb newspaper offices and behead cartoonists, and actually rioting, burning and killing is down-right other worldly. These people don’t make decisions like we do in the west. Just what is the percentage of Muslims who believe in their heart of hearts that flying planes into skyscrapers, taking over elementary schools and machine gunning children, and blowing up people, buildings, planes, trains, and automobiles is justified and glorified by Islam? Just what percentage of Muslims share such a pathological hatred of Jews that the goal of wiping Israel off the face of the earth is just and righteous? This is a different kind of Cold War.
In the Cold War, time was on the side of the west, democracy and freedom. Now, time may be a terrible enemy of the west, democracy and freedom. Not only from the standpoint of demographics that portend gloom, but from the standpoint of the battle of ideas. Are there more Islamists now than before 9/11? Is the influence of the radicals increasing or decreasing? Islamists persuade not by ideas, but by a fanatical, unwavering belief in their version of Islam and by force and intimidation. As such, they are likely to only respond to force in return. The Islamists secret weapon is not a WMD, but lack of resolve in the west. And without resolve, sufficient force to stop them will not be forthcoming until the stakes are survival and by then the only remaining tool will be a terrible one.
I fear that millions will die in this clash of civilizations, and the longer it takes, the more millions it will be.
“…no one considers it feasible in the first place…”
I find this assertion ridiculous on its face. “No one”? Not even the thousands of Al Qaeda volunteers and their financiers? Not even the revolutionaries who brought about a theocracy in Iran? Not even the Taliban who brough about a theocracy in Afghanistan? Not even the near majority of Egyptians who support the Muslim Brotherhood and desire a theocracy in Egypt? Not even the Saudis who support the mutawaeen? Not even Hamas and the electorate in Palestine which brought them to power? And that’s hardly the end of it. How many millions of people are we rounding off to in order to call these people “no one”?
P.S. I would not label marxism “scientific socialism”. Rather, I would call it more “romanticist industrialization”.