Huntington Was Right

Three weeks ago, terrorists bombed the mass transit system in London. Last week, they tried it again. While some may think the most recent attacks were merely incompetent copy-cat attempts, there is a clear possibility that the second wave of bombers, who chose to closely mimic the July 7th attacks, were also intended to send a calculated warning: We did this once. We can do it again. We are among you. Your very culture will be the tool we use to defeat you.

After the first bombings in London, I expressed the opinion that the democratic governments in the West were unlikely to get a handle on this sort of deadly nihilist behavior until they disabused themselves of the notion that the attacks actually had something to do with themselves. I opined that radical Jihadism is a form of identity war, a Huntington-esque clash of cultures wherein the radicals attempt to assert their own culture in the face of what they perceive to be its erosion.

In this formulation, it is worth noting that the terrorists ignore the egregious behavior of a variety of Muslim leaders – Assads, Mubaraks, Sauds, and Husseins – in order to pin the blame for their discontent on the seductive properties of Western democracy, capitalism, and humanist philosophies. To people who are continually under the economic, political, and religious thumbs of their own leadership, lashing out at the West is a strange, but entirely consistent reaction for people who are also long-accustomed to blaming their misery on others.

Young Muslims, caught between the open ways of the West and the more confining traditions of their cultures, face a monumental mismatch, and are particularly vulnerable to the ravings of radical imams. Unhappy, confused, feeling like outsiders on all fronts, the seeming purity of radical Jihadist theology has a deadly attraction.

Is this the Shibboleth of the Left, rationalizing terrorism as an economic response by an oppressed people? Hardly -- although the London terrorists did come from a part of Britain that is well-known to be an immigrant ghetto, with unemployment rates almost as high as France, and rampant gang/drug activity – not exactly the portrait of well-adjusted Britons, or well-assimilated immigrants that the media has tried to sell us. But the fact remains: these acts of terror have less to do with who we are in the West than the identity struggle within Islam.

In this context, it should not be too surprising that the offspring of immigrants behave like outsiders. Some law enforcement officials in London have speculated that the second and third immigrant generations have actually de-assimilated to become defacto Fifth Columns. But that logic contains one glaring flaw: who says they were ever assimilated at all?

Does playing cricket and eating fish-and-chips make a person British, any more than baseball and McDonalds makes a person American? The outer trappings of a culture are mere decoration. Otherwise, everyone slinging green beer on Saint Patrick’s Day would be authentically Irish. Cultures are not about food and sports.

Cultures are about values. Most Western cultures value human individuality and initiative, the “divine spark” that fuels Western laws, religions, customs, and traditions. We believe this to be an enlightened and superior philosophy to cultures that value conformity, might, or suppression of free will. But in many countries around the world, governments are coercive, and human life is cheap compared to the value of “face”, “honor”, or other corrupted notions of pride. It is a painful contrast that so often in those cultures which do not value individual life that individual pride and vanity can still be used to justify brutality.

It is an even more painful contrast that in embracing individuality, we in the West have gone beyond logic to embrace forms of multiculturalism that essentially erode that very premise of the individual will. Over the past three decades, or so, we have leaned so far over to accommodate illogical manifestations of multiculturalism that we have allowed the very elements which can destroy our culture to be cultivated at our own expense.

The London bombers and their families were not assimilated in any substantive way, but were members of a sub-culture whose lives had more in common with Karachi than Kent. These young men, sent back to their ancestral lands for ethical and religious training, returned hating the country which raised and nourished them. Sadly, though, they hardly had to go back to the old sod to learn that. Pervez Musharrif primly denies that Pakistan had anything to do with the bombings in London, but who can blame him? The venom-spewing Jihadist madrassas in Islamabad (which he comically denies exist) are not any worse than the venom-spewing mosques in London, which the English allow to flourish out of some warped sense of tolerance and enlightenment.

We like to think we hold the high ground by tolerating destructive speech against our own governments, but we are actually being naïve. This struggle is, as author Lee Harris has put it, a blood feud, in which the radical fringe of a global religious culture is allowed to fester within the body politic of nations that should reject rather than accept them. And the feud is not about the West. It is a blood feud within Islam, and like most feuds, it is not logical, rational, or likely to end any time soon.

Blood feuds have their own rationale, and central amongst them is the idea that everything your opponent does (whether to you or not) justifies everything you do to your opponent in return. There is no room for reconciliation. And any friend of your enemy is an enemy. Therefore, as the radical elements within Islam battle for dominance, anyone who is not a radical is a target, be they in New York, Baghdad, London, Madrid, or Sharm-al-Sheik.

There is plenty of time to argue whether or not Islam itself is uniquely susceptible to this kind of feuding -- there are certainly historic precedents for it. But whenever there is one culture encysted within another, unassimilated and at counter-purposes with the host, deadly friction will arise. When that friction is fueled by religious fanaticism and a militant sense of entitlement, the friction will be an open flame. As in biology, when the host fails to assimilate the parasite, death often follows.

Yet the West shies away from drawing the line. Those who clamor for the Muslim community to make good on promises that Islam is a “religion of peace” are shouted down as bigots, and the toxic elements are allowed to go unchecked. This kind of multicultural madness has brought the democracies of the West to the brink of disaster. By waving wands of equivalency at stark and often incompatible cultural differences, we have ignored the symptoms and let the disease spread within. By allowing large minority populations to retain, almost unchanged, their cultural habits of origin, we have essentially expressed no faith in our own cultural values. By allowing miniature nations to grow within the borders of our own nations, we set the stage for the turf war, and then the feud.

A nation defines it’s values in the way it codifies it’s laws. The laws in most Western nations uphold free will, individual choice, and value the individual life. Many parasitic cultures that have been growing within the West do not share those views. Honor killings are committed in Germany by immigrants who ignore German law, and act in in adherence to religious laws. Ranting jihadist imams in London actually collect the dole (welfare) payments, but refuse to become citizens of their host nation.

Does any of this sound painfully familiar? It should. In the vast and open society here in the United States, we have been conditioned to respond to terrorism in solely economic and political terms, and flinch away from confronting the cultural aspects. We have become so accustomed to automatically assuming that all cultures are equivalent, that we can no longer see a threat when it stands directly in front of us, hand on the detonator.

It is dangerous to harbor subcultures within a society that are inherently inimical to the prevailing values of that society. It is more dangerous to assume that the subculture has somehow assimilated, especially in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is madness to assume these unassimilated subcultures nonetheless share our perceived social accord of non-interference in matters of faith, gender, or race. It is suicide when we compound all the above with an unwillingness to change any of those conditions.

There are no easy answers, and most of the hard answers may appear to contradict many of those truths that we hold self-evident. Are we to drastically limit immigration for only those whose cultures differ? Should we apply some sort of ethical litmus test to all new citizens? Do we silence the voices that do not conform? Do we search more, profile more, and otherwise abridge the menu of civil liberties that makes this country one of the most desirable destinations on earth?

Distasteful as these may be, what choices do we have? It is plain that the many forms of cultural outreach and toleration provide no deterrent whatsoever to a determined adver-sary. Assimilation doesn’t work when it is voluntary, and we have been too successful in wiping out the traces of all the social pressures that once made assimilation more or less compulsory.

In order for the social compact to survive, some aspects of it need to be mandatory, and betraying that compact should have penalties. As hard as it may sound, in order to preserve our traditions of tolerance, we will have to be intolerant of those who will not share them. This really is a fight for survival. Let’s make sure we understand the message, and act on it. We don’t have to nurture our own executioners.

David J. Aland is a retired Naval Officer with a graduate degree in National Security Affairs from the U. S. Naval War College.

Good find, but I suspect that if we have another 9/11, this kind of "dare we be intolerant" discussion will disappear. We will swiftly adopt a more traditional approach to the war on terror: kill as many of the enemy as possible, including bombing their homelands so as to smash their base of support. Bluntly put, the American public will want our losses to be avenged. Since the terrorists have demonstrated in Iraq that they little value Muslim civilians, we will be inclined to the same assessment when it comes to targeting.

Aland has his references right, but, like so many War College Graduates (I am a Naval War College Graduate, with a similar Masters, Class of '66) he takes forever and a day in his efforts to spell out a simple truth:

Islam is collectively re-engaged in a global war with Western Civilization. And, it is unconscionable to view the Islamist as capable of moderation in his views of Jihad.

The Quran and follow-on Hadiths set forth very definitively the two Jihadist evolutions that define the true Muslim. And, only in execution of the latter (external) Jihad, will the true Muslim fulfill his commitment to Allah.

Europe is lost. Only by clearly recognizing the mortal threat facing the United States, will this nation survive -- and sustain itself as a cultural entity.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.