January 17, 2003

FEEDING THE CROCODILE

"Each one hopes that if it feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last"
Winston Churchill in his radio broadcast, Jan. 20, 1940 describing the fate of appeasers

      Historical circumstances change but human nature remains constant. Utopian longings are eternal. After war was declared on us on 9-11 there was a brief shocking realization that there were people who actually wished to kill us, the more the better, preferrably in as barbaric and indiscriminate a fashion as possible. Time, we were told, was not on our side and realism prevailed as we quickly struck back in Afghanistan. Does anyone remember how we were warned by the hand-wringers of impending catastrophic losses in the cold mountain snows, how the Arab street would erupt, how multitudes would starve and we'd bog down for years in guerilla warfare? None of this happened. However, the utopian impulse coupled with the therapeutic stance quickly re-emerged as our media elites and chattering punditocracy assured us that it was our failure to address the complaints of the aggrieved that brought destruction upon us. Who wants to believe that hordes of people simply hate us and wish to see us dead? What was needed was talk; after all that's what our logorrheic artists, authors, and academics do best. Liberalism, once a body of muscular ideas, has devolved into a stance, a pose, an attitude of moral superiority that makes it unnecessary to do anything more than sneer at the President's mispronunciations to establish one's intellectual and moral superiority. And that seemed the primary aim of the chattering class--the self flattering assertion of moral and intellectual superiority. Any action the President proposed taking was dismissed out of hand as the dangerous cowboy belligerence of a man who lacked their deeper understanding.
      This would all constitute little more than diversionary idiotarian entertainment were it not that the utopian psychobabbling appeasers seem now to be in full cry and dangerously close to overriding the men of action. Thus our State Dept. spends months in UN debates over Saddam that are reminiscent of nothing so much as Neville Chamberlain's endless ineffectual efforts to accomodate Hitler. In fact, Hans-see no evil-Blix is a contemporary version of Chamberlain, minus the umbrella. He smiles benignly and is eager not to offend the murderous dictator Saddam, just as Chamberlain worried about the sensibilities and grievances of Hitler. He announces that his task is to avoid war and the so-called inspection process is a means to do so. Of course it can never be complete and will require numerous meetings, discussions, and many trees will be destroyed to produce the voluminous reports that will reach no conclusions. When Chamberlain returned from Munich after selling out Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938 he said in triumph: "Ever since I assumed my present office my main purpose has been to work for the pacification of Europe, for the removal of those suspicions and those animosities which have so long poisoned the air...I feel it may now be possible to make further progress along the road to sanity." Removal of 'suspicions and animosities' in order to navigate the road to sanity is the work of psychotherapists. And that is what diplomacy seems to have become. Chamberlain's statement is one Hans Blix would have happily endorsed, and in fact he has said essentially the same thing vis a vis Iraq. Mr. Blix is concerned--not about Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction but instead argues "We can all be anxious and worried" about--- the current U.S. buildup! Blix goes to the top of the list for next year's Nobel Peace Prize where he can join our very own Neville Chamberlain, the man who never met a dictator he didn't want to appease, Jimmy Carter. Chamberlain would no doubt have won a Nobel Peace Prize were it not for the fact that Hitler was not interested in being pacified or in Chamberlain's effort to engage in a form of empathic psychotherapy. While Winston Churchill was certainly an eloquent speaker and writer it was not his verbal skills that saved the West, except insofar as they mobilized people to forceful action. It was his readiness to act, to fight, if necessary to the death, that inspired millions. And his language was not the bland therapeutic language of diplomats bent on avoiding action, nor was it the banal cant of our peacenik literati. It was blood curdling and dramatic. When we face a totalitarian enemy determined to destroy the 'infidels' it is best, in the absence of a contemporary Churchill, to express our message with bombs and bullets, rather than words. Another point to remember is that our enemies are not new ones, just now created by American and Israeli misdeeds, as the anti-war utopians would have it. In fact, Churchill recognized that Arab anti-semitism was a force that quite naturally aligned itself with Hitler in the 1930's. He told the House of Commons, shortly after Munich that Arab lobbying for abandonment of the Balfour declaration, if it succeeded, would embolden Britain's enemies who would perceive it as a sign of weakness. Today the UN has become a daily forum for Arab attempts to weaken our support for Israel. Arab support for Hitler before and during WW2 was as prominent as today's support throughout the Arab world for Osama bin Laden. Hatred of Jews goes hand in hand with hatred of democracy and hatred of the West. Endless prattling about Islam meaning Peace cannot wash away the murderous hatred emanating from mosques around the world, including in the United States. Yes the Arab world hates us and hates our democratic form of governance. Yes, they are our enemies. No amount of talk fueled by utopian longings for a "We are the World", multicultural paradise will make that simple fact go away. Sheryl Crow can inform us that: "The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies" but let her try singing her songs in Saudi Arabia or Kabul under the Taliban and one suspects she would quickly learn that war has its virtues.
     The psychobabbling utopian, blame America crowd, from Mailer to Sontag to Vidal to Chomsky are beginning to have a corrosive effect on the country's support for the war. Time is on their side because they appeal to each of our yearnings for ease and comfort. It is hard to sustain the willingness to fight for our freedom, when our slow motion military buildup coupled with endless diplomatic maneuvering seems to suggest a wish to bluff our enemies into surrendering without a fight. This is highly unlikely since those enemies regard our hesitancy as a sign of weakness and it makes them more likely to attempt inflicting even greater harm. So, once again, Mr. President: hurry up, please.

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