June 14, 2007
Suicide of the Arabs
Rod Dreher, one of the editors at the Dallas Morning News blog, has a provocatively-titled post, The suicides of the Arabs.
Gaza is in civil war now, and contrary to what you might have heard, it's not the fault of the Israelis.
The Palestinians had a chance to build a decent government, and look what they've done. Meanwhile in Iraq ... same deal.
I am reminded of what an American scholar based in Damascus told me a year and a half ago: that Syrians may not like their dictatorial government, but when they look at Iraq and see what democracy has unleashed, they want no part of it.
It's now painfully clear that the Arabs of that region have no capacity at this time for democratic self-government.
Where is this going? What can we Americans possibly to about it? We are looking at the abyss now.
I didn't even mention Lebanon's agony, or the Kurdish provocations against Turkey that portend a possible Turkish invasion of northern Iraq, which would be catastrophic, and could lead to a regional war.
Fouad Ajami just said on CNN, of the Middle East: "Order hangs by a very slender thread." Ajami further said that the US is in an impossible position: if we leave the Middle East, the place goes completely to hell, but if we remain, we become a target for all the crazies.
It's been pretty clear for a while now to you all that I favor US withdrawal, on the same grounds that the great 18th-century British historian and Tory member of Parliament Edward Gibbon gave for changing his position on the Crown's fighting the rebellious American colonists:
I shall scarcely give my consent to exhaust still farther the finest country in the World in the prosecution of a War, from whence no reasonable man entertains any hope of success. It is better to be humbled than ruined.
I've disagreed with Dreher's get-out-of-Iraq stand -- a road-to-Damascus conversion for him, after his earlier support for the war -- but given today's events in Gaza and the recent history of the region, it is becoming harder to find reasons to disagree with his analysis.
Posted by Mike Lief at June 14, 2007 10:52 AM
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Comments
For once, Mike doesn't go ballistic on someone who is against the Iraq war on strategic grounds.
Posted by: John Vanarelli at June 14, 2007 11:29 AM
My mother once taught me that hatred would consume me. That it is a bitter seed that grows malignant from within and consumes its host.
Should we be surprised that the followers of an angry, hateful religion should be so inclined to turn upon themselves? Once victorious against a united enemy, the jackals of Islam are alone with themselves. Their nature is to receive the free exchange of ideas as insult, to harbor hatred in their hearts and to kill for the slightest insult.
A culture of savagery can never know true victory. or true freedom. Without a strongman practicing the systematic art of decimation on the populace, the Muslim horde will turn on itself as the various Mullahs and Sheikhs rival and joust like Medieval combatants. I say leave them unto themselves for theirs will be a hell of their own making.
Posted by: Corpsman Charlie at June 16, 2007 06:57 AM
It seems that the piety of a Muslim in the Middle East is measured in direct proportion to his willingness to do violence.
Posted by: Ed at June 16, 2007 11:52 PM