The other day I was grumbling about a column by Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution. Here's another one: They hate us for who we are, not what we do by Victor Davis Hanson San Jose Mercury News 01/13/05.
I think I get the magic combination for Hanson's columns: take a favorite Republican meme (like "The Terrorists hate us for our freedoms", mix in a few bad historical analogies, toss in a little-name-calling for The Terrorists, and blend it all together with a healthy supply of logical leaps.
The real message of this column is: Muslims bad. Americans good. Muslims always hate Americans. Americans must always make war on Muslims. And The Terrorists are pooh-pooh heads.
Let's translate a few of his paragraphs:
As the third recent Middle East election nears in Iraq, Americans are still puzzled over why well-off Islamic fundamentalists crashed planes into skyscrapers and now send mercenaries to the Sunni triangle to slaughter us as we sponsor democracy. Yet since Sept. 11, 2001, we have grasped that Muslim fascists understood that the course of American-led world history -- democracy and globalized capitalism -- was leaving them behind. Thus they strike the United States before they are made irrelevant.
The 9/11 attackers were "well-off." Heck, I bet they windsurfed like John Kerry. And they're "fascists," and later "Islamofascists." That means they're something like the Evil Ones in the Second World War. And that Our Side is good like it was in that war. And always is, naturally. And, look, they send mercenaries to Iraq to fight. Cowards! Wimps! Our Side doesn't use "mercenaries," but "security consultants." Much more respectable. Oh, and torture. And maybe the "Salvador" option of death squads to terrorize the local populations.
Why, look, we're just over there to help those nice Iraqis have elections, "we sponsor democracy," that is. (Well, except for the torture and the indefinite detentions and the upcoming death squads.) And The Terrorists/Muslims/fascists/Islamofascist evil people hate us because "American-led world history" is bringing democracy and globalized capitalism and they're desperate. (What does "American-led world history"even mean?)
It's Good vs. Evil for Hanson and his friends
Hanson's article is mainly replying to the arguments of terrorism experts like Michael Scheuer or Richard Clarke who insist that American policy has to look at some substantial policy issues that affect the attitudes of Muslim populations and that are effectively exploited by the jihadists - the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the long-running India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir, US military interventions in the Middle East. Hanson and the Bush true believers, including the very influential Christian fundamentalist Republican activist groups, prefer to keep the conflict framed in the much more vague but passionate terms of Good vs. Evil, Us vs. Them, Democracy vs. The Terrorists.
As I quoted Richard Hofstadter in a recent post on the far right:
People who share this outlook have a disposition to interpret issues of secular politics as though they were solely moral and spiritual struggles. ... The cold war [today we could insert the War on Terror] serves as a constant source of recriminations about our moral and material failure, but as an objective struggle in the arena of world politics it is less challenging to them than it is as a kind of spiritual wrestling match with the minions of absolute evil.
Eccentric language
In these days when the delusional has become mainstream, I've found myself thinking about a phenomenon that happens in cult groups, where everyday words become redefined with a special meaning for cult members. Now, bad as today's Republican Party is, it doesn't qualify as a cult. But this is an extreme case of something that can happen in other kinds of closed environments, e.g., where someone gets their news from Fox News, Oxycontin radio, and WorldNutDaily. Margaret Singer described the cult version in her 1995 book Cults in Our Midst; she called it "loading the language":
As members continue to formulate their ideas in the groups' jargon, this language serves the purpose of constricting member' thinking and shutting down critical thinking abilities. At first, translating from their native tongue into "groupspeak" forces members to censor, edit, and slow down spontaneous bursts of criticism or oppositional ideas. That helps them to cut off and contain negative or resistive feelings. Eventually, speaking in cult jargon is second nature, and talking with outsiders becomes energy-conmsuming and awkward. Soon enough, member find it most comforable to talk only among themselves in the new vocabulary.
That's why it's useful to stop and look at columns like this occasionally and think about what's actually being said and assumed. The language he uses is that of country-club Republicans sneering at everything other than the simplistic solution they're pushing at the moment. See my "translation" of that first paragraph above.
For instance, the word "fascism" there has been transmuted into meaning "bad." Although fascism is something political scientists and historians still struggle to define precisely, the the distinctive features of the movements and regimes associated with Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain don't seem to have any particularly strong similarities to Muslim fundamentalism or even Al Qaeda type jihadism. Although Franco's movement enjoyed particular support by the Catholic Church hierarchy, the other two were not especially religious movements, and the religious element is decisive in Islamic fundamentalism. All those movements were strongly nationalistic, and the jihadist ideology is internationalist. Calling those movements "fascism" or "Islamofascism" clouds up more than it reveals.
Let's plug our ears and not think of anything but war
And the point of this column is that the War on Terror is an existential struggle, that is, that no policies but war, killing and regime change can deal with the problem. But it's essentially a "faith-based" argument. And we actually do know a lot about the origins of today's jihadists, the issues they use to recruit participants and the motivations that can lead people to be receptive to their ideas. And while we're at it, there are forms of "Islamic fundamentalism" that are very different from the jihadists, which muddies that nice Good vs. Evil picture.
After stringing out more buzzwords to encourage people to dismiss those who differentiate a bit more carefully, Hanson gives five reasons why we shouldn't listen to anyone who tries to present a more complex picture of the problem than the idea that jihadists aremotivated by a mindless hatred and greed. You know, like unions and minority-advocacy groups and people like that, in RepublicanSpeak.
First, the Islamofascists of the Middle East, like all autocrats, cannot be believed since they neither allow criticism nor tolerate self-reflection.
What does this mean? That we shouldn't even try to analyze the jihadists' ideology? They have to communicate something to potential recruits, after all, to entice them to join up for the jihad.
Second, alleged sins against Islam transform monthly.
Well, actually not. A number of themes have been around for a while. It's on this point where he uses familiar Republican language to essentially dismiss any effort to understand policy issues that affect the context in which the jihadists operate. He says, in effect, that they're just like those whining liberals at home, sneering at their indulging in "tired victimization": "Do not forget hurt over the expulsion of the Moors from Spain or the Crusades -- as if the Islamicists alone can nurse centuries-old wounds."
Actually Spain is one area where jihadist groups differ from other fundamentalist parties. Bin Ladin's goal is a new caliphate, which would include all former Muslim-controlled areas, including al-Andalus (Spain). So Spain is a particularly tempting target for that reason. But to look at the kooky religious ideology involved might detract from the Bush fans' interpretation of Spain's withdrawal from Iraq, which is that The Terrorists intimidated the cowardly Spaniards into leaving the war. The notion that the jihadists' view toward Spain might be affected by something other than American concerns is a novel idea for them.
Third, bin Laden and various mujahedeen distort history. American beneficence -- saving Kuwaitis, protecting Bosnians, feeding Somalis, or billions in aid for Egyptians -- means nothing, while Islamic internecine murder is excused.
This is stock war propaganda - the Other Side are hypocrites - but it's not very meaningful. In fact, Islamic fundamentalists see the current regimes throughout the Middle East as being not nearly Islamic enough, if not downright enemies of the faith. Their hatred of the United States has more to do with America's perceived support for Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia in particular. Bin Ladin and thejihadists are striking at "the far enemy" (the US) rather than the "near enemy" (Middle Easter regimes) in order to build support. So far, it seems to be working for them, unfortunately.
Fourth, terrorists still imperil liberal Europe, which subsidized Hamas, armed Saddam and chastised America for its pro-Israel policy. After Spain fled from Iraq, it was rewarded with further terrorist threats.
This is a pretty weak way of saying once again that the Other Side is hypocritical. Notice the logical leap here: conservatives assume that Spain left Iraq because of the "11-M" attack last year; they assume that means Spain made a cowardly appeasement deal with The Terrorists; and now The Terrorist are reneging on the deal. But the Spanish government is certainly not assuming that they will be safe from jihadist terrorist attacks. Maybe they pay a little more attention to the jihadist ideology about al-Andalus.
Fifth, Al-Qaida's hatred is opportunistically selective. The United States is slurred with allegations of petrol imperialism. But why no charges against a cutthroat nuclear China that is hungrier for Arab oil than is America and digested Tibet?
This is kind of on the level of, "The bad guys are hypocrites. Nyaa, nyaa, nyaa-na." Is China sending massive support to Israel? (Actually, there's a tussle going on right now between the Pentagon and Israel over Israeli high-tech weapons sales to China, which is not getting much coverage in the American press.) Did China invade Iraq? Do they have 150,000 troops, plus thousands of "security consultants" there? Is China bombing cities in Iraq?
Gee, maybe policies actually do have something to do with the jihadists attitudes toward America. But, in fact, the China is fighting armed Muslim separatists within its own borders, terrorists who have gotten some support from the jihadist network. And why would Muslim fundamentalists give China's long-time occupation of Tibet any great emphasis? Hanson packages his slogans in upscale language, but his arguments are prety crude, really.
His prescription?
The United States has adopted a rational strategy against Islamic fascism: Kill the terrorists, remove illegitimate regimes that aid the extremists, foster democracies in their places and alter American policy from tolerance of the corrupt status quo to calls for reform.
Will democracies really promote American interests in countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt if Islamic fundamentalists are voted into power? Would an elected government in Iran be less likely to seek nuclear weapons? I'm all for promoting democracy in the Middle East, though not with Bush-style wars of liberation. But the notion that democracies in that region would magically make our major problems there go away is not a very sensible way of looking at the situation, as far as I can see.
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