Jewish World Review March 30, 2004/ 8 Nissan, 5764
Wesley Pruden
Now we can lay us down to sleep
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Nothing is as powerful as an idea
whose time has come, unless it's the
current that washes an idea past its
prime out into a sea of forgetfulness
big enough and deep enough to
swallow a lot of ideas past their sell-by
date.
Only yesterday no more than a
fortnight ago John Kerry and the
Democratic acolytes in the dominant
media were having a high old time
making sport of the notion that
terrorism is a grim threat to life as we
have known it. Terrorists, if there really
were any, could be dealt with as "a
law-enforcement problem." Pretty soon
the cops would relegate al Qaeda and
the Ba'athists in Iraq, the train
bombers in Madrid and Islamists
everywhere else as merely fodder for
another episode of "Law & Order."
Carey Lowell, the dishiest of the
succession of "L&O" prosecutor babes,
could have put Saddam Hussein in the
jug all by herself. George W. was
advised to please shut up about his
terror-fighting credentials.
But then along came Richard Clarke,
who would have saved Western civ with
very little muss and almost no fuss if
only someone at the Bush White House
had directed him to a telephone booth
to change into his Superman duds.
Overnight, with Mr. Clarke's smack on
the president, the pundits and the
correspondents discovered that those
really were bad guys, and there were a
lot of them and they were trying
mightily to destroy us. That was
George W. asleep at the wheel.
A talent for recollection is not a
characteristic of our present age, when
the world is created anew with every
fresh front page, so almost nobody
remembers that on September 10 (in
the way of a certain December 6), a
president couldn't have led the nation
into a war if evil men had sent an
invitation engraved in American blood.
"What administration could, before
9/11, have sent American boys to fight
a regime in Afghanistan because it was
implementing the ideas of an old man
with a long white beard sitting cross-legged in the mountains
talking about Satan America?" asks Barbara Amiel in London's
Daily Telegraph. " ... Eardrums would have exploded all over
Capitol Hill from outcries of racism and imperialism if there had
been serious efforts, pre-9/11, to round up suspected Muslim
militants in the United States and tighten security on Muslims
entering the country. As it is, the post-9/11 sensitivity to
racial profiling makes travel hazardous for white-haired
grannies who dislike body searches."
In fact, more than two years after September 11, we still
can't have an honest discussion about the actual size of our
dilemma. Dr. George Carey, who as the archbishop of
Canterbury was until 2002 the head of the worldwide Anglican
Church, set off a storm of recriminations in London the other
day, when he remarked, mildly, that "moderate" Muslims
throughout the Islamic world have not done all they could do,
and should do, to condemn unequivocally the evil of Islamic
suicide bombing. The good doctor has worked hard in the
past to bring faithful Muslims into the religious life of Britain,
and last week, he reminded Christians and Jews that most
Muslims are peaceful and that it is a sin to demonize the
Islamic faith for the perversions of the radicals amongst them.
Nevertheless, he said, we're foolish to underestimate the
implications of the differences between Western democracies
and Islamic societies. "Throughout the Middle East and North
Africa we find authoritarian regimes with deeply entrenched
leadership, some of which rose to power at the point of a gun
and are retained in power by massive investment in security
forces. Whether they are military dictatorships or traditional
sovereignties, each ruler seems committed to retaining power
and privilege."
The difficulties in pacifying Iraq suggests to some of the
weary in the West that Islam and democracy are inherently
incompatible, but Turkey is an example that in Dr. Carey's
view suggests otherwise.
"Although we owe much to Islam handing on to the West
many of the treasures of Greek thought, the beginnings of
calculus, Aristotelian thought during the period known to the
West as the dark ages, it is sad to relate that no great
invention has come for many hundred years from Muslim
countries. This is a puzzle, because Muslim peoples are not
bereft of brilliant minds."
The history of Christianity and Judaism is marked by
vigorous and often painful argument and self-reflection, and
Islam must be challenged to similar examination.
But facing challenges is too painful for our malingerers to
bear. Better to find someone George W. is handy and it's
an election year to blame for not having prevented the
inevitable. Once we mark a villain, the rest of us can retire
from the war and not have to think about evil until the next
time. But it's later than we think.
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JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
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