Dear
Spengler, Re: In praise of premature war: Should
the West not then be grateful to Osama bin Laden, and
should you not be acclaiming the attack on the World
Trade Center as the glorious, decisive act that started
the war and saved the world from a "tragic and
unnecessary" war of attrition? Osama shot first, not
Bush.
And, you argue that "keeping the peace
requires prospective combatants to maintain the balance
of power", but also that a balance of power leads to
devastating wars of attrition. This is oxymoronic,
though perhaps tragically true, in that there can be no
peace without devastating wars from time to time.
Finally, the logical conclusion of your argument
is that the powerful must always be attacking potential
rivals so as to prevent a balance of power. The result
is either perpetual small wars or a cowed world living
under the iron rod of the global dictator, ie peace of a
dismal sort. Why is such an outcome worthy of the
gratitude of non-Americans? And for Americans, one
guaranteed outcome is more Osamas and World Trade
Centers, for which they should be grateful because it
tells them that they are still on top (just as the
existence of the mosquito lets the human know that he is
the dominant species).
Seems to me you're
arguing in favor of global dictatorship by the US, but
are trying to say so politely. Why not call a spade a
spade, and add, "Thanks, George AND
Osama". AQ
Dear AQ and
others, Sir John Keegan's characterization of the
First World War as "tragic and unnecessary" is a
contradiction in terms, for tragedy implies necessity.
Both the strength and the weakness of the West incited
the Muslim world against it; strength, because the
American model threatens to dissolve traditional
society, and weakness, because the demographic collapse
of Western Europe re-opens the prospect of Islamic
expansion for the first time since the 17th century. If
the Islamic world adapts to the American way of life, as
the White House seems to propose, it will end as an
unhappy caricature. Westernized Muslims, who well know
the West, provide the toughest cadres of the terrorist
resistance. In that respect the Muslim world takes the
position of the Slavs of 1914, who took up the bomb and
pistol to avoid absorption into the German cultural
sphere.
I no more favor an American dictatorship
today than I would have favored Wilhelmine hegemony in
1905. But German dominance following a quick defeat of
France and Russia would have been infinitely preferable
to the Great War that ruined Western civilization. By
that measure, Kaiser Wilhelm II was the great tragic
figure of the 20th century, whose Hamlet-like indecision
led to the terrible outcome of 1918 and indirectly to
1939. A repellent personality, Wilhelm II devoured the
racial theories of Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
Nonetheless I regret that he did not put paid to France
in 1905. Never mind that Germany and France fought for
reasons I consider repugnant, namely a nasty brand of
nationalism (Siegfried rather than Christ). They were
going to fight, one way or the other, and better to have
done with it quickly.
By the same token,
American hegemony today would be infinitely preferable
to a contending mob of nuclear-armed states. Premature
hostilities and a general mopping-up of the nuclear
pretenders is the least horrible alternative.
Abraham Lincoln, whose bloodthirstiness I have
extolled in this space, qualified the American Civil War
as a divine judgment upon both North and South in his
Second Inaugural Address. Days after delivering this
speech he wrote to Thurlow Reed, "I expect the [Second
Inaugural] to wear as well as - perhaps better than -
any thing I have produced; but I believe it is not
immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being
shown that there has been a difference of purpose
between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in
this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the
world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told."
Personally, I do not think the Almighty has
anything at all to do with the war now in gestation. Nor
do I believe in Fate and Nemesis. The fault lies not in
our stars, but in us. Given who we are, war will come
whether we wish it to or not.
Bruno-Ken
Shiozawa asks about my criteria for ethnic and
tribal continuity. All the factors he cites (language,
historical traditions, memory, genetic continuity)
contribute, which helps explain the often-observed
similarities between the Indians, Chinese, and Jews. The
overseas Chinese often are called "the Jews of Asia" due
to their success in trading, emphasis on education, and
family cohesion. No people fuses all of these qualities
as effectively as the Jews, who maintain not only
genetic continuity, memory and language, but also a
canon of revealed literature as well as a
widely-accepted tradition of scriptural interpretation.
"Revealed" is the key concept, for the Jewish god
uniquely combines omnipotence and pathos: the creator of
Heaven and Earth suffers along with his human creations.
This Jewish concept underlies Christianity, the most
successful movement of religious conversion in the
history of the world.
A MacDonald asks
whether atheism saps the fighting will of soldiers, but
then characterizes Soviet communism as religious. It
seems a bit more complicated to me, but the simple
version is that humankind’s sense of the future derives
from some form of belief in life beyond the grave. We do
not breed children by instinct, but in the hope that
something of us will remain on the earth after the worms
have had their way with us. Why should a man whose
vision of life ends with his own demise be willing to
lay down his life for future generations? I have tried
to respond to his question about Canada, but my mind
goes blank.
G Traven confounds what I
diagnose and what I prescribe. What I prescribe, to coin
a phrase, is that every man should sit under his own
vine and fig tree and that there should be no one to
make him afraid. Sadly, the revenge of tribal identity
will delay this outcome for some time to come.
To DH, who is wrestling with religious
faith in a country of secular humanists, I recommend the
first and last pages of Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of
Redemption. All religion begins with the certainty
of death, Rosenzweig states at the outset. But where
does all his thought lead? "It leads - to life!" Life is
what conquers death; we do not know what is beyond the
grave, and that makes us fearful. We require courage to
live: courage, after all, is doing what we ought despite
our fears. One wants to scream at the French, Germans
and Russians of 1914, "Get a life!" Faith is a wager,
said Pascal; more precisely, it is a wager on life. Live
well, DH, and thank you for the kind words about my
writing.
Spengler
Oct 26, 2004
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