"A man who lives, not by what he loves but what he hates, is a sick man."
- Archibald Macleish (1892-1982), American poet
Historian/essayist, Victor Davis Hanson, has launched a website titled Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers. It's worth a visit.
Shortly after the massacres of the four civilian contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, Hanson posted this thought-provoking essay in which he discussed the aberrant behavior of Muslim extremists:
"...I fear that we have not seen anything new. Flip through the newspaper and the stories are as depressing as they are monotonous: bombs in Spain; fiery clerics promising death in England, even as explosive devices are uncovered in France. In-between accounts of bombings in Iraq, we get the normal murdering in Israel, and daily assassination in Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco, and Chechnya. Murder, dismemberment, torture--these all seem to be the acceptable tools of Islamic fundamentalism and condoned as part of justifiable Middle East rage."
Hanson gives example after example of the vicious killing which has been an integral part of Islamic fundamentalism since the Dark Ages. He asks:
"Are the citizens of Fallujah the victims of Saddam, or did folk like this find their natural identity expressed in Saddam?"
He refutes the theory popular in some quarters that colonialism and the decadent West are what wrecked the Middle East. He points out that India, South Korea, and other countries seem to have overcome these influences and became prosperous, peaceful nations, while the Arab world continues to wallow in its self-imposed victimhood.
Hanson believes the enemy of the Middle East is not the West so much as modernism itself, and that in attempting to bring some good to this part of the world, we "should have no illusions about the enormity of our task, where every positive effort will be met with violence, fury, hypocrisy, and ingratitude." Sobering indeed.
1 comment:
Generally, I worry when a commentator tries to make an immediate political point (let's retaliate against Fallujah) with grand references to sweeping historical generalities (Islam is hostile to modernity). Hanson's demonization of Islam and the Arab Middle East in general is common among conservatives. But I don't think it amounts to more than war propaganda. Orcinus has a well-reasoned, thoughtful post about how all-too-human sadism and violence can be tapped by these brutal displays of mutilated corpses. And he reminds us that the feeling and experience is by no means alien to Americans: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004_04_04_dneiwert_archive.html#108115058908254123
Can we generalize about Christianity from the Spanish Inquisition, in which sadistic tortures were directed at Jews and Muslims? Or from medieval witch-hunts? Both of which were phenomena of the *modern* era (post-1492), not the "Middle Ages". The Holocaust was very much a product of Christian civilization in many ways. But does that tell us anything about how Christians in Iraq in 2004 are reacting to the US occupation? No. These vague historical generalizations seem to distort more often than clarify. - Bruce
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