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April 21, 2003SAUDI VALUESDelusional thinking is not limited to hospitalized psychotic individuals. It can infect whole societies and cultures. Paranoid delusions are useful ways of explaining failings of the individual: ("It's not that I'm inept, my boss is persecuting me") or of societies ("it's not our fault, it's those duplicitous Jews") For months Sheiks around the Arab world promised blood curdling blows to the "Western infidels". Now that the "crusaders" have decisively defeated Saddam's forces what is the reaction in the Arab world? So far, as when one challenges a psychotic's delusional system, new delusions form. How to explain what happened? It couldn't possibly be that Arab armies and societies are dysfunctional, cowardly, inept and barbaric. No, it must be that secret plots were at work. It was the CIA in league with Saddam, or it was the Mossad. The official Saudi English Language newspaper Arab News articulates the most common explanation--a variation on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They proudly link their mainstream "analysis" to that detestable forgery, calling it "Protocols of the Elders of Neocons" in which a feverish anti-Jewish conspiracy theory is elaborated. Hussein Shobokshi begins his article as follows: "In this weekly telephone report Paul Wolfowitz expressed his anxiety to Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister about the situation in the Middle East. “How are you doing?” asked Wolfowitz. “OK, OK,” answered Sharon, “but you must go to Syria.” Wolfowitz pondered, “this will be tougher to get the president’s okay on.” Sharon could not help but scream, ”He does not know Damascus from Des Moines, Iowa. Move it Paul. You can always tell him that this man of peace thinks it’s kosher,” concluded Sharon with a hysterical laugh...." This vile piece of Jew hatred is well within the mainstream of Arab thought. It appears in an online, official Saudi newspaper. It should help clarify our approach to the Arab world; just as one shouldn't placate and appease the delusional demands of psychotic patients, one should not search for ways to appease the Arab world. Instead, forceful sedation is the first step towards bringing the psychotic patient into congruence with reality. We have now administered two strong doses of tranquillization--Afghanistan and Iraq. The next required dose may be the Syrian Baathist regime. Posted at 09:53 PM by
 
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Dear Dr. Rittenberg,
Most of my life, I've tried to believe the best of people. I've strained to do so even for those who were nominally the adversaries of my politics, my religion, my race or my country. I've also tried to believe that the religious impulse would resist being turned to evil purposes.
How wrong I was.
The use of the term "religion" to camouflage every kind of evil, from the ravishing of the vulnerable young to villainous programs aimed at the totalitarian domination of the world, has flipped a goodly part of the world over to the belief that the religious man should be regarded as untrustworthy until he proves himself otherwise. This is a sore blow to those of us who regard the spiritual / mystical impulse, the desire to know the unity of all things, as among the highest and best attributes of Man. Yet I cannot argue against it; the flood of religion-based hatred that threatens the world is beyond dispute.
Likewise, and even sadder, it is no longer possible to give certain "adversaries" the benefit of a benevolent doubt. They've proved all too conclusively that it's massively unwise to trust them. That covers the Middle East (excepting Israel), the Islamic world, and the political Left in the West.
What can one counterpoise to articles such as the one you cited from the Arab News? To the decrees of imams and mullahs that Black Tuesday, September 11, 2001 was only what America deserved, that it should have been worse? To the celebrations in the West bank at the fall of the Twin Towers? To the public prayers in innumerable mosques around the world for the subjugation and destruction of Christians and Jews? To betrayals by our European "allies" and open rooting for bloody, humiliating American defeat by our domestic Left? Little to nothing.
Are these people insane, delusional? I'm just an engineer, not qualified to judge. Have they consciously aligned with evil for personal gain or aggrandizement, or to satisfy a lust for power? Some, perhaps. But whatever their motives, the evidence of their behavior is clear: we can no longer afford the benevolent assumption. We must retreat from the automatic extension of trust to the wariness of the man who knows he has enemies and fears that he doesn't yet know them all by name or face.
It sounds like paranoia, doesn't it? But had the Jews of Europe been more paranoid in the Thirties, they might have avoided a horrible fate.
In the words of a commenter on another Weblog: "In God We Trust. Everyone else, keep your hands where I can see them."
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