Jihad and the Law of the Jungle

One of America’s most intelligent writers, Lee Harris, has written an important and thought provoking book that will probably be completely ignored by the media.
In The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West (New York, Basic Books 2007), Harris makes the disturbing observation that the world is returning to the “law of jungle.” That is a state of affairs in which brute force and violence determine the shape of civilization. Harris also notes that such a situation favors those who practice traditional Islam especially those prepared to wage Jihad (holy warfare) on Islam’s enemies. Most disturbing of all Harris notes that a great many people in the West are deliberately ignoring this threat.
This state of affairs is occurring because most inhabitants of Western countries (Europe, Australia, USA, Canada, Japan perhaps developed would be a better term here) live in a rational society where law and civility have eliminated violence or at least reduced it to a manageable level, Harris concludes. He goes on to postulate that citizens of such society are rational actors who can’t imagine a world in which reasonable, normal people would result to violence to solve problems. This is because they are individuals who are free to make choices.
Harris then points out that most Muslims live in societies without reason where violence is the norm. Under such conditions most people are tribal actors members of the group with a duty to do whatever it takes to defend the gang. Harris’ thesis is that traditional Muslims are more like members of a military unit or gang than citizens that their major purpose is to protect and promote the interests of the group as a whole (Islam or their particular version of it). Under such circumstances, Jihad becomes a highly effective tool for defending and spreading Islam.
According to Harris this is why efforts to build modern secular nation states in Islamic countries like Iraq, Lebanon and Pakistan have failed so miserably. The majority of people practice a traditional Islam which sees modern secular society and those who embrace it as the enemy. These traditional Moslems are prepared to fight modernity with everything they have and sacrifice their lives to stop it. Meanwhile the secularists are not prepared to go to such lengths and will fail.
So what does this mean for the future? Well first nation building efforts in the Islamic world such as President Bush’s project to create a secular Iraq are probably doomed to failure. The best possible outcome will probably be a limited warfare where a secularist elite uses military force and terror to keep the traditionalist majority under control.
This is the status quo in a number of Islamic countries including Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and Algeria. Only in Turkey has this created something like a modern secular democracy, that effort has taken eighty years and Turkish democracy is still wobbly.
Such an outcome is not likely because of the nature of modern warfare. Modern technology the Internet, electronics, cell phones etc. gives the fanatics the ability to quickly organize terror cells and launch effective attacks. Interconnectivity gives fanatical leaders the ability to direct their followers from the safety of foreign country. The result is liable to be a state of constant warfare that will undoubtedly drag the West in.
The establishment of Islamic republics is also possible but not likely. A more credible outcome is that having destroyed the secular state, the Islamists will fight among themselves and the regions they control will descend into anarchy (see Somalia). Unless of course some extremely ruthless military leader (think Oliver Cromwell) succeeds in organizing an effective army and imposing a dictatorship.
This ugly reality threatens the West because Western leaders and intellectuals have refused to think rationally or intelligently about it, Harris points out. They have taken refuge in fantasies that only make the situation worse. Neoconservatives believe they can civilize the Islamic world through military might while leftists believe that nonintervention and attempts at dialogue will restore peace. This has led to the quagmire in Iraq and the catastrophe of Lebanon where the best efforts of Western administrators, soldiers, peacekeepers and diplomats have been thwarted. The civilized people who tried to play by the rules, lost and lost badly. The natural human reaction to such a loss is to throw out the rule book and start fighting dirty.
For the world at large this means that the law of the jungle is returning as it has at various times in human history. The speed at which the law of the jungle can return is demonstrated by the story of Guernica, on April 26, 1937, German and Italian planes supporting Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War destroyed the town of Guernica killing 1,664 people in the process. The world was outraged by the attack, politicians, intellectuals, artists and average people from all walks of life were quick to condemn it. Political leaders like US President Franklin D. Roosevelt pledged not to engage in bombing.
The rest of the story is disturbing, the Nationalists went on to win the Spanish Civil War by using such ruthless tactics and the rest of the world got the lesson. A few years after Guernica during World War II, Allied air forces were carrying out raids that killed tens of thousands of people and leveled whole cities. The politicians and intellectuals who had condemned Guernica were celebrating the bomber crews who carried such raids as heroes. Indeed many of the citizens who had recoiled at horror at Guernica in 1937 were probably serving on those bombers in 1943 and carrying out far worse attacks.
Harris is probably right the law of the jungle has returned and reason maybe dead or placed on the shelf for a few years. If Guernica is anything to go on, the liberal politicians who are today condemning the US government for engaging in torture will probably be signing off on far worse brutalities directed against Islamic populations in a few years. Worse, many of the smug intellectuals and media commentators who are horrified by Gitmo and Abu Ghraib will probably deliberately ignore far more worse crimes. Hopefully, Mr. Harris is wrong and reason hasn’t committed suicide, unfortunately history seems to agree with him.

What are the Republicrats Afraid Of?

Democrats and Republicans do seem to agree on one thing these days; they don't want voters to have any alternatives to the empty suits they fill the ballots with. Case in point, the way both parties went out of their way to keep satirist Stephen Colbert from registering as a presidential candidate on each party's ballot in South Carolina.
The Comedy Central show host's presidential run was little more than a gag but party bosses took it seriously. They went out of their way to run Colbert out of the race and went after him with state election laws and the Federal Electoral Commission. Why are politicos so afraid of what amounts to a practical joke and not exactly an original one at that?
They are scared that voters are so disgusted with the kind of candidates the parties run these days they'll vote for any alternative even a joke. And why not many of the candidates including John McCain, Hillary and Barack Obama are little more than bad jokes themselves?
So what Colbert was doing intentionally or unintentionally was giving voters a non of the above choice on the ballot. For years libertarians and others have demanded that none of the above be placed on ballots. Professional politicians have long resisted the idea knowing that many of their candidates would loose to none of the above.
Colbert's joke run was attempting to give voters a real choice or rather a chance to say we don't like these candidates offer us somebody else. Our political hate that idea of choice so they have to quash it.
The whole Colbert affair shows something else about our political parties they have absolutely no sense of humor. Instead of laughing along with Colbert's little joke they attacked him. American politics it seems have been become a deadly serious business where there is no room for humor or imagination. Our politicians can't laugh at themselves and now launch search and destroy missions directed against those who dare mock them.
Our country and our national political life have become a much poorer place because our politicians just don't get the joke. Perhaps the real story is that the politicians themselves are the joke.