Augean Stables

Friedman has a good column to cuts to the heart of the matter. Strangely, B12 Solipsism doesn’t get why Friedman wasted precious column space on this and the attached “rant.” De gustibus non diputandum… I guess some people don’t like red pills.

The New York Times
March 2, 2007 Friday
The Silence That Kills

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

On Feb. 20, The A.P. reported from Afghanistan that a suicide attacker disguised as a health worker blew himself up near ”a crowd of about 150 people who had gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open an emergency ward at the main government hospital in the city of Khost.” A few days later, at a Baghdad college, a female Sunni suicide bomber blew herself up amid students who were ready to sit for exams, killing 40 people.

Stop and think for a moment how sick this is. Then stop for another moment and listen to the silence. The Bush team is mute. It says nothing, because it has no moral authority. No one would listen. Mr. Bush is losing a P.R. war to people who blow up emergency wards. Europeans are mute, lost in their delusion that this is all George Bush’s and Tony Blair’s fault.

But worst of all, Muslims, the very people whose future is being killed, are also mute. No surge can work in Iraq unless we have a ”moral surge,” a counternihilism strategy that delegitimizes suicide bombers. The most important restraints are cultural, societal and religious. It takes a village — but the Arab-Muslim village today is largely silent. The best are indifferent or intimidated; the worst quietly applaud the Sunnis who kill Shiites.

Nobody in the Arab world ”has the guts to say that what is happening in Iraq is wrong — that killing schoolkids is wrong,” said Mamoun Fandy, director of the Middle East program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. ”People somehow think that killing Iraqis is good because it will stick it to the Americans, so Arabs are undermining the American project in Iraq by killing themselves.”

And in this silence we go to the core of what’s wrong. Muslims are caught in the pathological honor-shame condition of humiliation that has them cheering the very forces that would devour them (their own Jihadi fanatics) because they give black eyes to the humiliatingly superior West. The West either doesn’t have the courage/moral vision to object (are we that pathetic?), or is so caught up in anti-Americanism/anti-Zionism that we don’t want to object. And the victims are the Muslims, who are now, by far, the favored target of suicide attacks.

The world worries about highly enriched uranium, but ”the real danger is highly enriched Islam,” Mr. Fandy added. That is, ”highly enriched Sunnism” and ”highly enriched Shiism” that eats away at the Muslim state, the way Hezbollah is trying to do in Lebanon or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Al Qaeda everywhere.

I love the expression “highly enriched Islam.” It’s a perfect descriptor for the apocalyptic millennial variety we face today.

One result: there’s no legitimate, decent, accepted source of Arab-Muslim authority today, no center of gravity ”for people to anchor their souls in,” Mr. Fandy said. In this welter of confusion, the suicide bombers go uncondemned or subtly extolled.

Arab nationalist media like Al Jazeera ”practically tell bin Laden and his followers, ‘Bravo,’ ” Mr. Fandy said. ”The message sent to bin Laden is that ‘You are doing to the West what we want done, but we can’t do it.’ This is the hidden message that the West is not privy to. Unless extreme pressure is applied on Muslims all over the world to come up with counter-fatwas and pronounce these men as pariahs, very little will happen in fighting terrorism.”

First, we are privy to this, but not via our MSM who systematically filter out the bad news. But just go to PMW and MEMRI and read what they’ve translated, and you’ll have a taste of what’s currency in the Arab and Muslim world. Second, much of this is happening because Bin Laden has “restored Arab and Muslim pride.” These “moderates,” often businessmen who depend on “peaceful” conditions to make their fortune, are nonetheless caught up in the gravitational pull of an honor-shame system whereby the USA — merely by its dominance — constitutes an offense to Arab honor. As one Egyptian said after 9-11: “Now for the first time in a very long time, I can breathe.” [citation needed] And we in the West do neither ourselves, nor the “vast moderate majority” in the Arab and Muslim world, any favors by pretending, as our chattering classes would have us do, that none of this is really happening.

”The battleground in the Arab world today is not in Palestine or Lebanon, but in the classrooms and newsrooms,” Mr. Fandy concluded. That’s where ”the software programmers” reside who create symbolic images and language glorifying suicide bombers and make their depraved acts look legitimate. Only other Arab-Muslim programmers can defeat them.

Precisely. This is the realm where Pallywood and Muhammad al Durah reign supreme, where justification for genocidal hatreds invokes icons of “reality” shaped by the grotesque combination paranoid hatreds, imperial ambitions, and modern communications technology. It continues to astonish me that peace plans, road maps, and any other discussions of where to go from here do not include as the central theme, the necessary transformation of a system of teaching and informing the Arab and Muslim public that is nothing short of toxic. There will be nothing remotely resembling peace until this hate-mongering ceases to hold the Muslim world in its grip. (And of course, the well-intentioned whitewash of this teaching of contempt and hatred, does nothing for peace.)

Occasionally an honest voice rises, giving you a glimmer of hope that others will stand up. The MEMRI translation Web site (memri.org) just posted a poem called ”When,” from a Saudi author, Wajeha al-Huwaider, that was posted on Arab reform sites like www.aafaq.org.

When you cannot find a single garden in your city, but there is a mosque on every corner — you know that you are in an Arab country.

When you see people living in the past with all the trappings of modernity — do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country.

When religion has control over science — you can be sure that you are in an Arab country.

When clerics are referred to as “scholars” — don’t be astonished, you are in an Arab country.

When you see the ruler transformed into a demigod who never dies or relinquishes his power, and nobody is permitted to criticize — do not be too upset, you are in an Arab country.

When you find that the large majority of people oppose freedom and find joy in slavery — do not be too distressed, you are in an Arab country.

When you hear the clerics saying that democracy is heresy, but seizing every opportunity provided by democracy to grab high positions — do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country. …

When you discover that a woman is worth half of what a man is worth, or less — do not be surprised, you are in an Arab country. …

When land is more important than human beings — you are in an Arab country. …

When fear constantly lives in the eyes of the people — you can be certain you are in an Arab country.”

B12 Solipsism, who found this editorial of no value whatsoever, adds an interesting final meditation to his post.

unfortunately, one could say the same about America, with a few changes. Like

When religion has control over science - you can be sure you are in Bush’s America.

When clerics are referred to as ’scholars’ and appear on CNN - don’t be astonished, you are in Bush’s America.

When you cannot find a single park in your city, but there is a Starbucks on every corner, you know that your ass is in Bush’s America.

When you discover that a woman is worth about 3/4 of what a man is worth, or less, do not be surprised, you are in Bush’s America.

When you see the President transformed into a tin-horn dictator who ignores Constitutional law and tradition, and nobody is permitted to criticize - do not be too upset, you are in Bush’s America.

etc, etc. You can do the rest. I’m not sure why Friedman used his valuable op-ed space for this diatribe, maybe he knew the author and was trying to get a little nookie?

Right, like the thought police are knocking at your door for criticizing Bush, who is possibly the “most criticized” president in American history. The jails of full of people being tortured for “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” This magnificent piece of moral equivalence, silly in its details, but striking in its self-confidence, illustrates quite nicely the kind of “mantle of victimization” that the pseudo-radical like to wrap themselves in. So my guess is that SNA thinks he eats red pills for breakfast. It’s just that they’re painted red so he can strike heroic poses and continue to sip his morning coffee at a Starbucks across from the park and blog away about what a totalitarian and repressive culture he lives in.

Meantime, as his fellow blogger in Egypt can tell him, there’s a difference between reality and your radical chic. But that would mean listening…