A Word from London

Herbert London

      Herbert London is John M. Olin Professor of Humanities at N.Y.U., President of the Hudson Institute, and author of the recently published book Decade of Denial, published by Lexington Books. He can be reached at: <www.herblondon.org>. 

America Faces the Twenty-First Century Challenges

      A nation mourned the loss of the Columbia shuttle and crew. Heroes have been taken from us and a wary public asks if this is far too great a price to pay for space exploration.

      Editorial writers offered grim scenarios for the prospective war in Iraq. Understandably, many warned of body bags, civilian casualties, and terrorist retaliations. Hand wringing and its corresponding behavior, risk aversion, are omnipresent in American life.

      Very few people, however, consider the alternatives. Can this nation hide ostrich-like from the issues of the day? Can Americans renounce their responsibility to history and sit on the sidelines watching the passing parade of events?

      This is the first nation to visit the future. Whether it is space travel, the internet, satellite communication or the cell phone, the United States has been in the vanguard.

      Surely we can turn our backs on history arguing—as many already do—that the risks are too great, life is too precious and the road ahead too precarious. In my opinion, this judgment would be disastrous.

      There are moments in history that are transformative, that shift momentum from one direction to another. This is one such moment.

      Space travel is not merely a cavalier exercise in adventure, it is the full efflorescence of the human spirit. It is a way to test our character and to ultimately answer questions about who we are and what is our mission in life. Should we turn away from the heavens at the very time such answers are unfolding?

      Similarly, the war in Iraq holds out the promise of giving democracy a chance in an area that has only known tyranny. If a constitutional architecture can be constructed in Iraq, can Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, be far behind? There is a domino affect in the Arab world that most analysts overlook. Before the war in Iraq Middle Eastern leaders thought of the United States contemptuously—as a paper tiger, a nation unwilling to react to terrorist attacks.

      Once President George W. Bush unleashed America’s military might geopolitical events were set in motion that could change the course of history for a hundred years. When detractors mention the risk associated with war, I wonder if they consider the risk associated with doing nothing.

      It isn’t easy being the point man in history; yet that is the role we have. There isn’t any other nation at the moment capable of being the great equalizer or the place that embodies the human spirit of endeavor and exploration. America, with all its defects and its debased culture, is the best hope for humanity.

      So many Americans look in the mirror and ask, Do I want to pay the price history demands of me? They are fearful for their sons and daughters; they yearn for simple innocent times. Who can blame them? The new century offers complexities and challenges never seen before. Running away doesn’t mean those conditions will disappear.

      We are engaged in a clash of civilizations. We are also at a propitious moment in space travel in which new frontiers await us. At every step in our response to events lurks danger. It is unavoidable; risk is built into life and big risk is built into big events.

      At this time it is useful to remember that the distinctive American spirit can be recalled. A spirit that said; “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead”; “The difficult we do right away, the impossible takes a little longer”; “‘We can’t’ are not words in the American vocabulary.”

      Yes, of course, we should shed tears for our astronauts and we should honor those Americans who died in battle, but we must not lose sight of our purpose and the part providence has given this nation in the world drama. If we are the handmaiden of history, we should do it our way—with courage, determination, and defiance.

      Our enemies should know we will tolerate any risk to achieve the goals Americans consider appropriate. Our detractors should realize we have not gone soft and complacent. The will President Bush expressed in the State of the Union address is a reflection of national will.

      When the heavens beckon or the challenge to restore global order calls, Americans will be there as they were throughout the twentieth century. A new century has new risks, but I believe we are ready for the challenge even when our face is wet with the pain of lost heroes.

The Mind of the Anti-War Demonstrator

      When the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled from its pedestal on the streets of Baghdad, all the negative predictions of the U.S. caught in a Middle East quagmire, with thousands of body bags and Iraqi resistance tumbled from the imagination of the war’s detractors. Yet there remains a nagging question: How could so many pundits be so wrong? A corollary query is why should the average person have a better grasp of historical forces than the well-educated editorial writers at the New York Times. 

      It isn’t easy answering these questions, but it would be a mistake—in my estimation—not to try.

      One condition is transparently evident: worlds are made by metaphor as much as truth. For a considerable period intellectuals and soi disant intellectuals have argued wittingly and unwittingly that “truth” is only what you believe. “I think it is true, therefore it is true,” has become the calling card of the chattering classes from Berkeley to Greenwich Village. 

      The children of a narcissistic era are persuaded that subjectivity, which often takes the form of a self-described utopianism, is what ultimately counts. The consequence is that arguments about weapons of mass destruction, tyranny, torture are relegated to “opinions” that may or may not be authentic. The argument always seems to return to “what ought to be.”

      Second, the elites in this society, privileged beyond compare, assume—based on their educational experience—that the United States is invariably wrong. They respond instinctively to every presidential statement as if it is former President Nixon lying about Watergate. Moreover, many in this group are still fighting the Vietnam War. They are the self-appointed bold resisters saving the country from itself. Try, as one might, to persuade this group of true believers that Iraq is not Vietnam won’t work. Intellectual blinders won’t permit the sunshine of true debate. 

      It is instructive that the heroes for these detractors are invariably those who resisted government entreaties whether it be Martin Luther King, Daniel Ellsberg or Woodward and Bernstein. Hence, those who support government action are ipso facto objects of suspicion. It is not surprising that Edward Said, Columbia University professor and activist in behalf of Palestinians, defined an intellectual as “a dissenter.”

      On the moral front elites have been fed a pabulum of American venality.  Right and wrong have been put in the cauldron of semiotics. For the hardcore leftist, President Bush, not Saddam Hussein, is the tyrant. Here is Orwellianism American style. No matter how good the news, those immersed in this mindset will find a justification to hate the nation.

      When American troops entered Baghdad and Iraqi people were parading through the streets carrying American flags and kissing portraits of President Bush, an American leftist was asked about the scene. He said,

Don’t be deceived; these people are happy to see Hussein defeated, but they aren’t happy about the Americans in their country.

Who—it might well be asked—is really deceived? Even when Iraqis thank Americans for their liberation, it will not satisfy those blinded by antipathy to the Bush administration.

      Here are the products of the revolution in thinking launched by Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Communist, who argued that dominance over cultural institutions will have dramatic political effects. Gramsci realized that if you can alter political concerns from individual rights to a categorical imperative, institutions would reform in a direction he considered desirable. And to a surprising degree he was right. Witness, for example, the widespread shift from individual merit—the hallmark of the early Civil Rights movement—to affirmative action or group privilege.

      The same condition prevails on the international front where we see that many demonstrators are willing to sacrifice America’s national sovereignty for United Nations’ authority as if this international body possesses a legitimacy unavailable to the United States. Curiously, for some a constituent body composed of tyrants and fiends as well as constitutional governments has more standing than the most successful republic the world has ever known. Then again, they are made myopic by the metaphorical world their imagination and ideology has fashioned.

      The issue at hand is how to convince a portion of the population about anything when they are resistant to logic or reason. In my opinion, there is nothing you can do but rely on the dominant forces in history. Whenever people have the ability to choose for themselves they display a preference for free markets, constitutional authority, the rule of law and individual rights. Maybe one day even the hardcore radicals will imbibe that lesson. But I’m not holding my breath.

Teaching Hate in Saudi Arabia

      Across the world one hears the yearning for peace, or at least stability, in the Middle East. Acolytes of moral equivalence contend that Israelis and Arabs are equally culpable in advancing their interests. Hence a standoff exists, unless some compromise is achieved.

      Yet compromise is achievable only when both sides in a negotiation give in. Here is the rub. The Arab position is nonnegotiable. Hate is a constant theme in the schools; self-righteousness is the hallmark of belief and recognition of an Israeli state is impossible so long as it is believed Jews are intruders in Arab land.

      Recently the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace translated portions of textbooks used in Saudi Arabian schools. The books are replete with anti-Jewish and anti-Christian bigotry along with violent interpretations of Islamic scriptures. This isn’t different from the past, but the quotations serve as a graphic reminder of Arab intransigence and the encouragement of youthful hate even as Arab leaders maintain they are ready to negotiate a settlement in the West Bank and Gaza.

      In a September 2002 60 Minutes program, Prince Saud categorically denied that hate is propagated in Saudi schools. He noted,

Ten percent of what we found was questionable. Five percent was actually abhorrent to us. So, we took a decision to change that, and we have changed.

  The evidence, however, offers a different story, one consistent with the widely understood condition that control of the schools was ceded to hard-line Islamists many years ago.

      In one 10th grade class under the title of Judgment Day students are told to read “The hour will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews and Muslims will kill all the Jews.”

      In a 9th grade class students are told “Jihad against the enemies is a religious duty.”

      In an Arabic literature class students are taught “There are two happy endings for Jihad fighters in God’s cause: victory or martyrdom.”

      In a 10th grade Literary Study class students are told to read the following passage:

Muslims will never get Palestine, or other regions, back without holy Jihad by which faithful throngs will march and fight, so that God’s word shall be the highest. And I do not think there will be among us one who will refrain from answering such a faithful call.

      In a 10th grade History of the Muslim State students read “There sometimes appears a racist nationalism like Nazism and Zionism.”

      Quoting from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—the flagrantly anti-Semitic text—a student handbook entitled The Danger of World Jewry contends that Jews are

. . . upsetting the foundation of world’s present society and its systems, in order to enable Zionism to have a monopoly on world government.

      In a 6th grade Geography textbook students read:

Palestine has remained Muslim since it was conquered by the Muslims. But imperialism has created within the Arab nation’s body an alien element—the Jews, who managed to occupy Palestine with the help of the enemies of Islam—so that element would be a source of harassment and worry, (a cause) of the elimination of the Muslim world’s economics, as well as (a cause) of the fragmentation of its unity.

      In a 9th grade class on the Quran students are taught that

The Jews’. . . deception, shyness and crookedness (was shown) when they used to greet the Prophet by saying “poison be upon you”. . . as if they were saying “peace be upon you”. . .

      In a 10th grade class on Prophet Mohammed the following quotation can be found in the text:

In the present era there is no aggression against our nation more serious and more wicked than the aggression of Imperialism and its protégé—Zionism.

       The reader for grade 7 notes “The Jews . . .  there is no bond that binds them, except for a corrupted religion.”

      In the worldview promoted in Saudi schools, Jews comprise a wicked people whose disappearance is desired. Israel is not a sovereign state and Zionism is an “evil movement” posing the gravest danger to Islam. Rather than a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict, Jihad and martyrdom are advocated. Christians and Jews are mortal enemies of Muslims and, as a consequence, no love or friendship can prevail among them.

      Within this context, how can peace or even a modus vivendi exist? How is it possible to negotiate? And in what sense is understanding realizable? 

      I only wish the misguided moral guides who insist peace can easily be attained would read what is promoted in Saudi Arabian schools and madrassas in much of the Islamic world. Perhaps utopian schemes would be harnessed. As long as Arabs are taught that Jews are wicked and out to endanger Muslims, equilibrium will be a distant dream in the Middle East, a dream that occasionally rises like soap bubbles only to be punctured by the bright light of day.     Ω