by Daniel Mallock
The first presidential debate, September 26, 2008 was instructive for many reasons. Most importantly however is one comment made by the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, that is far more revealing of his character and mind-set than Mr. Obama had intended. (Debate transcript available here.)
During the discussion about Iraq and Afghanistan Senator McCain mentioned that he was wearing a bracelet given to him by the parents of an American soldier killed in action in Baghad, and that he wore the bracelet with honor. The mother of this soldier, according to McCain’s telling of the event, implored him to “do everything in your power to make sure that my son’s death was not in vain.”
Not to be undone in such an emotionally charged moment, Senator Obama spoke of the bracelet that he wears for an American soldier killed in action. According to Mr. Obama, the mother of Sergeant Jopeck implored him to make “sure another mother is not going through what I’m going through” which is taken to mean the loss of a son in war.
Both mothers are right and all Americans share in their grief. But the next sentence spoken by Mr. Obama shattered the good feeling and opened the closet of Mr. Obama’s innermost thoughts for all to see.
“No U.S. soldier ever dies in vain because they’re carrying out the missions of their commander in chief. And we honor all the service that they’ve provided.”
This is not a slip of the tongue, in the classic Freudian sense. It is a statement of purpose and belief, clear as day. It is loaded with meaning that is as unpleasant yet as instructive an any of the other disturbing and self-serving statements made by the Democratic candidate throughout the campaign.
Freud in his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (given 1915-1917 at the University of Vienna, available here) describes a “slip of the tongue” as instructive to the nature and subconscious truth of the person uttering it. The slip of the tongue, uttering something not consciously meant to be spoken demonstrates a clash of “two mutually interfering purposes”.
“One of the two, the purpose that is disturbed, is of course unmistakable: the person who makes the slip of the tongue knows it and admits to it. It is only the other, the disturbing purpose, that can give rise to doubt and hesitation. Now, we have already seen, and in no doubt you have not forgotten, that in a number of cases this other purpose is equally evident. It is indicated by the outcome (italics in original) of the slip, if only we have the courage to grant that outcome a validity of its own.” (p.57)
…
“Do you not feel inclined to object that the information given by the person of whom the question was asked - the person who made the slip of the tongue - is not completely conclusive? He was naturally anxious, you think, to fulfill the request to explain the slip, so he said the first thing that came into his head which seemed capable of providing such an explanation. But that is no proof that the slip did in fact take place in that way. It may (emphasis in original) have been so, but it may just as well have happened otherwise. And something else might have occurred to him that would have fitted in as well or perhaps even better.” (p.58-59)
The two mutually interfering purposes according to Freud and other psychoanalysts is the obfuscation of the person’s truthful feelings by answering with another response that might be more palatable to the listener or less damaging in the telling. This is a common human activity brilliantly identified by Freud. All of us occasionally have a tongue slip or Freudian slip in which we say things we hadn’t meant to say that are closer to our true feeling than we had meant to communicate.
Mr. Obama’s recent slip of the tongue in which he mentioned to George Stephanopoulous that “You’re absolutely right that John McCain has not ahh, talked about my Muslim faith…” (see the film clip of this instructive comment and stunning “slip of the tongue” here.) A responsible and professional journalist would have questioned Mr. Obama with something like “Mr. Obama what did you mean by just saying ‘your Muslim faith’?” Instead Stephanopoulus “corrected” the candidate saying, “you meant your Christian faith”. This was a miserable moment for both men.
This Freudian slip of Obama is potentially very important as it illustrates what is going on in his private unconscious mind, and it shows the ethical bankruptcy of the interviewer. In contrast to the secrets that Freudian slips often divulge quite unintentionally, Mr. Obama’s statement at the first presidential debate that
“No U.S. soldier ever dies in vain because they’re carrying out the missions of their commander in chief. And we honor all the service that they’ve provided.”
is more important in that there is no psychoanalytical confusion involved with it. This is a clear statement of belief on Mr. Obama’s part. There is no debating whether he meant what he said or not (as in a Freudian “slip of the tongue”). It is obvious and clear as steel and as easily understood as any definitive statement made so far in the campaign.
All good and patriotic Americans appreciate the service of our men and women in uniform. All good and patriotic Americans mourn whenever our soldiers, airmen, sailors, marines, or national or coast guard personnel are killed our wounded. Our service men and woman serve with the understanding that they may be called to make sacrifices for their country, and in the service of their country.
American soldiers swear an oath when they enlist (available here and here).
I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
National Guard (Army or Air) personnel also swear to be obey the orders of their respective state governor.
Mr. Obama’s statement that American soldiers killed in war have not died in vain because they have obeyed the orders of their Commander in Chief (the President) is a fundamental misunderstanding and mischaracterization of the relationship between America’s armed forces and its government and its leadership (in the person of the President, most specifically).
American soldiers serve and sacrifice in the defense of the nation itself and in defense of the Constitution upon which the nation is built and the freedoms which are derived from it. While soldiers in combat often make extreme sacrifices and show extreme bravery and courage and selflessness for one another, their overall sacrifices even to the sacrifice of their lives are not validated nor given value because, as Mr. Obama believes, they have carried out the “missions of their commander in chief”. Duty to country, to the Constitution, and to American freedom are the motivators of those who serve in the American military. The sacrifices of our soldiers are not validated due to obedience to orders of one person, the commander in chief.
Lincoln said, in the Gettysburg address (available here):
“We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.”
A recent article (available here) about the history of African-Americans in the United States military summarized the motivations of American soldiers as follows:
“Since the birth of America, African-Americans have been fighting and dying alongside their countrymen as the United States has struggled for freedom and peace at home and abroad. “
American soldiers fight and die to uphold the Constitution, secure the country, and for freedom and peace at home and abroad. American soldiers do not fight for their “commander in chief”.
The President is the “commander in chief” of the Armed Forces of the United States. As the United States is not a dictatorship, nor a tyranny, but a democracy and a representative republic our military fights for the country and the ideals of democracy and freedom upon which it was founded. In the military sense, the commander in chief’s orders are to be obeyed but such orders and obedience to same do not in themselves legitimize or explain the sacrifices of our soldiers, as Mr. Obama believes. The foundational ideas of freedom and democracy are what brings us to war and brings our men and women to take up weapons in our country’s defense.
Mr. Obama’s misunderstanding and mischaracterization of why American’s fight and for what reasons Americans die in war is disturbing. The President is the commander-in-chief of the military, but he/she is not the embodiment of the state or nation itself. The oath that our soldiers take upon enlistment is clear on this point. The oath of enlistment is not an oath to the person of the President, but rather acknowledges the position of the President as leader of the nation, and leader of the military forces protecting and defending the nation.
The President of the United States is not the state nor an embodied symbol of it. However, there have been recent examples of countries in which the leader was considered the embodiment of the state and, in such cases, the state itself. The most telling and instructive example in recent history is Germany during WW2.
All German soldiers were required to take an oath of obedience to Hitler (available here) personally-not to the German state or nation but to Hitler himself. The Fuhrer was the state. So, when German soldiers died in battle it is accurate to say that they “did not die in vain because they had carried out the mission of their commander in chief” (to paraphrase Mr. Obama).
The Wehrmacht Oath of Loyalty to Adolf Hitler, 2 August 1934
“I swear by God this sacred oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that I shall at all times be prepared, as a brave soldier, to give my life for this oath.”
Americans do not take oaths to their commander in chief. Americans serve their country and their fellow Americans. The commander in chief has a four year mandate (renewable for another four, if re-elected), given to him/her through elections by the people of the country. There is nothing divine about them, nothing in our democratic representative form of democracy that would suggest that anyone give a personal oath to the President.
Mr. Obama’s goal is to become the Commander-in-Chief. His recent comment that demonstrates his misunderstanding of the relationship between the President and those who wear the uniform of the United States is deeply troubling. Mr. Obama’s belief is out of context with American history; it clearly demonstrates a profound lack of understanding about how the American political system functions and most importantly about the relationship between the Executive and the military.
But for Mr. Obama himself, he is perfectly in context. This disturbing megalomania precludes Mr. Obama from high office.
Addendum: The mother of Sgt. Jopek mentioned above had asked Barack Obama to not wear Sgt. Jopek’s bracelet at any public forum after the bracelet was given to him in Green Bay, Wisconsin recently, and Sgt. Joepek was mentioned in Obama’s speech there. According to the Sgt.’s father (now divorced) in a story posted on ABC News “Political Punch”:
“She had told me that in an email that she had asked, actually asked Mr. Obama to not wear the bracelet anymore at any of his public appearances.”
It is not mentioned in the story how Mrs. Jopek made her request to Mr. Obama or if he acknowledged it. Needless to say, Mr. Obama’s mentioning this brave heroes death, the wearing of his bracelet, and the subsequent statement upon which this blog post is based has opened a new line of national discussion and soul searching that Mr. Obama would likely have preferred remained closed. (See story here.)
by Daniel Mallock, September 24, 2008
The Presidential campaign of 2008 ended this afternoon with the suspension of John McCain and Sarah Palin’s campaign. Their stunning announcement is the sea-change moment of this election cycle. Now the truth and a leader emerges. The leadership we need in this time of war and crisis in our financial markets has arrived. The election of 2008 will signal not only the presidency of John McCain but the demise of the Democratic party in its current form.
The suspension today of John McCain’s presidential campaign is the turning point in the election. Of the two key moments thus far in this election season, the first at Saddleback forum and now this stunning announcement by McCain and Obama’s inability to understand and respond appropriately to it - today’s events are by far the most important.
McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign and ask for a delay for the upcoming Mississippi debate is high risk and shows excellent leadership qualities. It is a demonstration of leadership to recognize a crisis, make a decision based entirely upon that crisis, understand and accept one’s duty and take action. McCain is a leader. Mr. Obama is not.
Mr. Obama says that the debate will go on - he simply cannot see that he has a duty as a US Senator, just as McCain does to return to Washington and help resolve this worst financial crisis since 1929. McCain’s slogan is “Country First” and he lives it. Suspending his campaign to get a growing crisis that could have disastrous consequences for the entire world under control is the mark of a leader. McCain can see, where Obama cannot, that this crisis could derail the economy of the world not just that of the United States. As a US Senator McCain saw his duty and acted. He is not a professional candidate. His job remains as a US Senator until the election is over and he takes his place in the Oval Office. Mr. Obama’s inability to understand the gravity of the situation and take his place in Washington where duty calls him is stunning and instructive. The contrast between these two men cannot be more stark than it is today.
The American people are waking up to the fraud that is Mr. Obama. Without any significant experience, with no accomplishments of moment, and with few intimates speaking his praises Mr. Obama is a fraud with only Lyndon Johnson perhaps on the same level. We are understood by our accomplishments and our associations. Mr. Obama has few accomplishments in comparison to McCain or Governor Palin. His associations are with radicals and extremists.
This campaign for Mr. Obama is clearly about Mr. Obama while for McCain it is about his country. The country desparately needs leadership now as the corrupt fools in Washington and Wall Street who broke the economy and walked away with millions in perks, profits, and “golden parachutes” even as the house of cards they had built collapsed around them quickly try to make a repair. But the damage is immense, almost beyond reckoning - it is time for strong and decisive leadership to get us through this astounding mess.
This disgusting scandal of corporate and government greed and incompetence has the potential to swallow the entire country and the rest of the world up in its darkness. We need leadership and solutions now. McCain saw his duty and acted. Suspending his campaign was the right thing to do. Even pulling his adds from television McCain is a serious man. His approach is bi-partisan, unlike Obama’s. Our economy is on a razor’s edge and now is the time for leadership. We need a solution that will not break the economy and ruin citizens and we need to see the criminals behind this debacle do their obligatory “perp walks” to court, then on to jail where they belong.
Today we saw McCain step up and take decisive action based upon his responsibilities as a US Senator and as an American patriot. In comparison we have seen Mr. Obama continue on with the campaign insisting that the debate scheduled for several days hence “will go on”. Mr. Obama is out of context. His followers and the entire Democratic Party are out of context. He is out of context because for him and his acolytes this race is clearly now about him and little else. He does not consider his duty to country the overriding issue in the campaign nor for himself personally. This atttitude precludes him from the presidency.
The Democratic party will never be the same after this election. The American left, self-hating and self-destructive, arrogant and aggressive and hateful must be re-tooled; its moral and ethical corruption and confusion rooted out. As demonstrated by its leaders particularly Mr. Obama the Democratic party is a self-motivated monstrosity. It is a failed political party. It must be reorganized and restructured. Only with a thorough re-assessment by the few rational voices left in the party will it ever be relevant again. Today’s events have brought clarity through the haze of the lies and manipulations from the Left. The American people can now see the truth so clearly displayed before them.
During times of war and crisis our country needs leadership built on character, decisiveness and recognition of duty to others and to country. McCain has demonstrated these things. Motivated by duty and principle McCain has put his campaign on the line and suspended it choosing his duty at the Capitol over the hustings.
This risky decision will pay off in a big way as the American people can now see who is ready to lead and which candidate puts country and duty over self, over ambition, over partisanship. Mr. Obama is the lesser candidate. Refusing to recognize the financial crisis for the critical problem that it is, Obama insists that the debates must continue without a break in the schedule. This is lunacy. During the campaign up to this turning point of today McCain had repeatedly requested that Obama debate him at TownHall style forums again and again. Every time Obama refused. This is much bigger than debates. McCain “gets it”, Obama clearly does not.
This election is not about change. It is not about Mr. Obama, regardless of his own high opinion of himself. It is rather about the very future of our country. Now is the time for leadership, and strong decisions to pull us out of this absurd fiscal corruption spiral that the greedy and the foolish have brought upon us. Now is the time for leadership in war and in peace. Now is the time to unite the country and build bridges that lead to the future and not to nowhere. We have found the bridge builder, the man driven by duty and responsibility. It is John McCain.
The people can see the truth. It is clear. The leader has emerged and that is the purpose of election cycles. In the midst of crisis and war we have found the man and the woman to lead us for the next 4 years.
The election is over - it ended this day, September 24, 2008 when John McCain suspended his campaign and headed back to Washington. It ended today when Barack Obama refused to return to Washington. It is clear now to all - Barack Obama’s campaign is about Barack Obama. John McCain’s campaign is about the future of the United States. The campaign is over, and so is the Democratic party in its current form.
by Daniel Mallock
“The core assumptions of the post-cold war years collapsed almost as soon as they were formulated,” writes Robert Kagan in the Return of History and the End of Dreams (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2008). This is accurate, but not entirely. Some assumptions that have been consistent for over ten centuries have never collapsed and are now, post 9/11 resurgent. The minimization and mischaracterization of the threat of expansionist political Islam is the central error in an otherwise excellent analysis and word portrait of likely things to come.
Kagan’s book is important not only because its author is one of John McCain’s leading foreign policy advisors but for its keen yet flawed understanding of geopolitics. So incisive in some areas, but so mistaken in others, Return of History and End of Dreams is a mixed success.
Most importantly Kagan’s confidence in the inevitable failure of Islamist goals is dangerously mistaken. At the core of Kagan’s book is the growing conflict between democracies and autocracies. The United States and Russia/China are at the center of these two opposing blocks, but this conflict is only half the battle that the United States faces.
The other battle is with Islamist terrorism and demographic expansion of non-assimilating Muslim immigrants, jihad does not necessarily require bombs. No less a definitive conflict than that with autocratic regimes the fight against the political ideology of Islam is as dire and important. It is critically important that the United States and our allies balance our attentions and resources between these two conflicts.
Recent unpleasant events in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, Russian threats against Poland in response to the latter’s acceptance of American missile defense systems, and Russian support of Iran, among many other similar events in the same vein have all but vindicated Kagan’s central thesis; that the end of the cold war did not bring a new, unprecedented, shining peaceful world order. It was, rather, a pause in the never-ending game of politics, conflict, and self-interest that nations play on the world stage.
The relief felt in the west at the implosion of the “Evil Empire” was short-lived; 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall) and 1991 (disillusion of the Soviet Union) now seem like events of the distant past. Kagan argues a strong case that a resurgent Russia with its autocratic, pseudo-democratic, totalitarian-style capitalism will be at the core of a great new international conflict, not necessarily leading to open war, that will pit democracies against autocracies. Flush with oil capital and apparently still smarting from the loss of its former regional supremacy and international super-power status Russia is belligerent and bellicose and not afraid to both rattle its saber and also occasionally pull it from its sheath. Kagan suggests that we are entering a new Cold War-type era but just like the first Cold War we live in dangerous times.
Europe’s response to WWII and the Cold War was a greater reliance of American power and a concomitant diminishment of their own military capabilities. There seemed a heady long moment after 1989 in which the European Union’s foundational concepts of the unity of formerly antagonistic European nations would extent to eastern Europe and enfold the former Soviet Republics on Russia’s western frontier if not Russia herself in its cooperative, supranational embrace. After the Cold War Russia seemed to be lurching towards a kind of democracy that would be understandable, workable, and most importantly, non-expansionist. There was hope in the West and in western Europe that Russia would be brought into the fold of the EU concept where formerly military conflicts would be adjudicated at The Hague and battlefields would run red with capital gains and losses rather than blood. The invasion of Georgia blasts these conceptions to dust.
Now that Russia is openly belligerent, bellicose, and expansionist what response can Europe have? Insufficient in military capabilities to deal with the threat and entirely (and understandably) adverse to conflicts that might involve continental powers, and under severe domestic immigration pressures of their own making, Europe is now almost powerless against an expansionist Russia.
The eradication of national borders, national currencies, and state-based military power has now backfired. Proponents of the EU have created a European multicultural bubble of apparent economic unity, opportunity, and most importantly an absence of warfare between member states but stricken with devastating societal pressures from non-assimilating (and often violent) Muslim immigrants. The price of peace is quite high.
Kagan writes that, “the post-modern, ‘post-national’ spirit of the European Union was Europe’s response to the horrific conflicts of the twentieth century, when nationalism and power politics twice destroyed the continent.” What then can the response be of a block of countries who are understandably averse to war when faced by a nation such as Russia or Iran having no such qualms?
Since WWII, Europe has relied upon the United States for its security while criticizing and castigating it for it’s ‘militarism’. Can there have been the funds to create an EU with its programs and expensive universal benefits if the member states were still required to support significant standing armies for their own defense? As Russia continues to flex its not-inconsiderable economic and military muscles thus challenging the post-Cold War post-modern concepts of European peace, the EU will certainly move closer to the United States.
Kagan writes that, “the great fallacy of our era has been the belief that a liberal international order rests on the triumph of ideas and on the natural unfolding of human progress.”
Kagan’s insight is accurate as there are clearly forces at work in the world that do not have the same concepts of “progress” as those held by western democratic societies. The international stage upon which nation states have always come together and apart in alliances, conflicts and warfare has not been reworked since the fall of the Soviet Union. Kagan is clear on this point and his analysis of the near and far future has a decided ring of truth about it. But it is not the “one ring” - the British understand this as do the French and the Americans. The reawakened “Russian Bear” has announced in no uncertain terms, most clearly in its recent invasion of Georgia and threats against Poland, that it has once again made a quite loud entrance on the world stage and will likely not make a gracious exit any time in the near future. Wealthy, with money and weaponry to spare (and sell), and anxious to reestablish its lost respect and honor, Russia is once again a serious open opponent of the West. Kagan’s analysis of the current and likely near future international situation is impressive but for one no at all minor consideration- the minimization of the very real threat of expansionist Islamism.
The threat of the political Islamist movement is discussed in only six pages of Return of History. The issue is essentially dismissed rather than analyzed in any depth. Kagan describes the goals of the Islamists as a “hopeless dream”. His dismissal of this threat is a serious error in analysis. Even after 9/11, London, Paris, Madrid, Beslan, Bali, Istanbul, constant attacks in Israel, and so many other terror attacks perpetrated by Islamists so few analysts demonstrate a deep understanding of this existential threat. It is a serious mistake to suggest that these events of terror are only the actions of isolated extremists. While the United States focuses its national energies on propping up and defending the EU and facing off against Russia - and perhaps China and other autocracies - we will lose the war here at home precisely as it is being lost in Britain and France through demographic jihad. Democracy vs. autocracy is not necessarily an existential conflict The war declared upon us by Islamists is existential. As assailed as is Israel, the West seems unable to believe it.
Mr. Kagan’s insights into international geopolitics are, in the main, so insightful it is discomforting and bizarre that he should minimize and so mischaracterize the conflict between freedom and Islamist expansionism so completely.
It is a lonely and ultimately desperate fight, however, for in the struggle between traditionalism and modernity, tradition cannot win - even though traditional forces armed with modern weapons, technologies, and ideologies can do horrendous damage.
He is not altogether mistaken, but he has missed the point entirely.
The conflict between the West and expansionist and political Islam is not a conflict between tradition vs. modernity. Islam represents an all-encompassing belief system that, in its totality, is antithetical to the foundations of modern democratic societies such as those in Western Europe and the United States. Islamic states do not reject the benefits of modernity - Riyadh, Dubai, and Kuwait City are certainly illustrative - they embrace them; but they do not share the concepts of modern thought regarding religious tolerance, women’s equality, peaceful coexistence, freedom of speech, and liberal republican forms of government driven by the voice of the citizens through their representatives. The forces of political Islam do not ascribe to modern ideologies as Kagan’s suggest, theirs is an ideology from the 7th century. The age of their philosophy ought not to confuse analysts, they are more than happy to employ modern tools in their jihad against the West.
The vast majority of the people of the Middle East have no desire to go back 1400 years, proclaims Kagan.
This may be so but it cannot be proven, and in it’s delivery is a misleading assertion. There appears to be little of the luddite in the Islamist’s goals, only the dominance of their religious, political, and societal concepts to the exclusion of all others. However, if there is such a “vast majority” as suggested by Kagan who do wish for peace and democracy and freedom of speech and religious tolerance but are silent while an “extremist” minority runs their countries and controls every aspect of their spiritual, political, and intellectual lives, what does it matter what Kagan’s silent, compliant “peace-loving” and progressive “majority” believes?
Kagan suggests that the autocrats of China and Russia are behind the change in political positioning and approach that will likely separate the world into two opposing democratic and autocratic camps. But, he does not discuss the “vast majority” of Russians or Chinese. Why aren’t the “majorities” of China and Russia as salient to Kagan as the “majorities” in the Islamic world, “the vast majority of the people of the Middle East”? And what of these supposed silent “majorities” who, much like those of the Islamic world, would prefer freedom to tyranny and representation in government to dictats from some central committee of autocrats and theocrats?
If the “majority” is in silent conflict with their governments they are of no moment in this ugly calculous of geopolitics for as goes the government, so goes the population until such time as the government abjures totalitarianism and cares for the will of the people, or these governments are overturned and new ones put in their place. If such a population of silent dissent exists in the Muslim world, what options for dissent and reform do they have?
Where was the outcry from moderate peaceful Islam after 9/11, Bali, London, Madrid, etc.? The silence has been deafening. Thousands did however came out in the streets across the world to protest satirical cartoons of Mohammed but less than a pittance spoke out in public about the violence perpetrated by fellow religionists. In some Muslim countries people were seen dancing in the streets as the Twin Towers burned and fell on 9/11.
In societies where questioning the holy books is punishable by death; where non Muslims are not afforded equal rights; where women are less than second-class citizens; where conversion is forbidden and punishable by death; where homosexuals and adulterers are stoned, hung, and beheaded; where children are considered legitimate carriers of explosives and sent on suicide/murder missions; where expansion, conquest, anti-Semitism and a deeply troubling duality of falsehood and truth (the Koranic concept of taqiyya; Koran, 16:106; Ishaq 224; Ishaq 771) how can the “silent majority” who certainly must exist according to Kagan even begin to start a discussion that could lead to reform? Kagan’s calculous falls on the swords of the religion of peace.
The “cartoon controversy” of 2005 is ample illustration of the deep challenges faced by non- Muslim societies in Europe and North America. The worldwide extreme response across the Islamic world against the Danish cartoons is as illustrative as 9/11 and all the other terror attacks that have occurred in the West, Israel, or Iraq. “Islam” means submission. The message of the violent Jihadists and cultural warriors of Islam is that adherents and non-adherents alike must submit to their ideas of society, government, and jurisprudence. After Germany was defeated, there was a de-nazified Germany; after the communist countries fell, there were post-communist societies. Where Islamism and sharia have prevailed, there have rarely been post-Islamic societies. Once a society is Islamized it rarely takes a different path or returns to a previous political or social system. This is certainly an existential struggle. 9/11 and the “cartoon” reaction are two sides of one coin - global jihad. Muslims are specifically commanded by Koran to participate in jihad, not doing so is apostasy. Muslims are not allowed to question the Koran or Islamic law. A fundamental purpose of global jihad is to make non-Muslims obey the laws of Islam or face the consequences.
And what of Kagan and his autocracies vs. democracies world view? Kagan negates this greatest of struggles and minimizes what is at stake - nothing less than national and cultural survival. The West is faced with violent jihad and long-term-horizon cultural jihad through non-assimilation and demographic conquest - the very challenges faced by France and Britain today. Expansionist political Islam and its supporters strike terror on the one hand and gain legitimacy on the other while the West sleeps and is preoccupied with autocrats in Beijing, Tehran, and Moscow. The uses of multiculturalism are myriad most notably to those forces whose goal is the destruction of those societies having multiculturalism at their core.
Winston Churchill spoke against appeasement prior to WWII. Churchill said of Islamism that
no stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedism is a militant and proselytizing faith.
In our politically correct world of carbon footprint obsessions, multiculturalism, empty chants of “change”, in our world of hot wars, an apparent new Cold War, and this ongoing jihad against us, it is astounding that the people of Europe and the United States who embrace inclusiveness and tolerance, will not speak out and give a name to the forces of intolerance, exclusion and violence among us.
One would have thought on 9/10 that the events of 9/11 and beyond would suffice to hearken the populations of the West to this grave existential threat. Following attacks in London, Paris, Bali, and Madrid, there continues to be appeasement for political Islam and sharia but a hardline against Russian hegemony in Georgia. The clear hegemonic behavior of aggressor states is much easier for the western mind to comprehend than terrorism and demographic conquest. We fail to learn the dangers at our peril.
This confusion of conflicts pulls us in several directions - now, thanks to Return to History and End of Dreams we are told that the critical threat is but a “hopeless dream” of the jihadists and that we ought to give our attentions more to the democracy-aristocracy conflict.
There is a glaring fault line in Kagan’s minimization of political Islam and its growing internal and external threat to the United States. The experience of England and France in particular is illustrative of the dangers of demographic jihad against the West. After decades of almost unfettered immigration - in large part from Muslim countries - Britain and France now have the painful challenge of integrating millions of immigrants who are opposed to the culture and political system of their host countries and demonstrate little interest in assimilation. Inspired by hate speech from mosque pulpits, the Islamic minorities of Europe support by their silence and deeds the extremist agenda of their jihadist coreligionists. The United States now faces the same problems, but not on such an extreme level, yet, as that faced by many European nations. Lack of immigration controls and multiculturalist ideas that limit a society’s ability to defend itself against non-assimilating cultures are at the root of this problem.
“One of the problems with making the struggle against Islamic terrorism the sole focus of American foreign policy,” Kagan writes, “is that it produces illusions about alliance and cooperation with other great powers with whom genuine alliance is becoming impossible.”
Alliances based on mutual aid against common threats (the enemy of my enemy is my friend) is as common an approach to statecraft for as long as there have been nation states and long before. Such alliances are not “illusion” in the past they have often been necessities (the Russo-German pact then the Soviet/Allied pact come to mind). In the midst of conflicts some take more precedence than others, and these ought to be the foundations for new and unexpected alliances in the future. For Kagan to suggest that nontraditional alliances between states in conflict is illusory is an error of analysis and suggestion. Could one have foreseen a U.S.- Soviet alliance after the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1940? And, even more importantly, the Lend-Lease program kept the Soviets fighting on the Eastern front when, without it, they may have fallen to Nazi conquest. Mutual challenges and mutual enemies make strange bedfellows. It has always been so. Such alliances of mutual need and temporary convenience and necessity should not be dismissed so cavalierly. And upon such temporary agreements, new more permanent relationships can be born.
After 9/11 and numerous terror attacks across Europe, the Far and Middle East since with Islamist goals of dominance at their core, expansionist Islam is the fundamental challenge facing every non-Islamic state in the world - autocracies included. Mutual challenges can bridge the gap between antagonists otherwise engaged with each other. The challenges of today that pit absolutism and intolerance against democracies can be, and ought to be, the unifying issue that unites otherwise antagonistic nations. Global Islamist terrorism is a clear signal to the United States, China, Russia, and even those secular Arab states that are seen by the Islamists as insufficiently orthodox. The fight against Islamist terror and the political and religious zealots who use such cruel tactics is, essentially, part of a global conflict and world war already underway.
In the last world war unexpected alliances were made brought about by the recognition of mutual threats and common interests. The profound lack of respect that Islamism has for the cultures of the west and our lives is not difficult to understand. The innocent dead of 9/11, Beslan and London, Madrid, Bali, Paris, etc., are the binding forces of a new international contract of cooperation - or, at least, ought to be.
Islamism is the common threat faced by China, Russia, and the United States. Recent Islamist violence in China during the Olympics is evidence that even highly controlled societies like China’s are not immune to the threat of global jihad. No country, and no political system is immune.
Kagan has missed the point. The United States, its allies and rivals are all under threat of terror and worse by the jihadists of a global expansionist, violent, political philosophy. If Mr. Kagan does indeed have the ear of the next president, I hope that he will say to him, “Let us form surprising new alliances. Let us acknowledge this mutual existential threat and fight it together with our friends and rivals. Let us be the guide for our former rivals - now friends - to the City on the Hill and hope and pray that they follow.”
