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SPENGLER
Civil war: A do-it-yourself guide
Prime Minister Mahmoud
Abbas, the Palestinian Authority's scapegoat-in-chief,
so deeply abhors the prospect of a Palestinian civil war
that he cannot bring himself to attack Hamas and the
Islamic Jihad. Chin up, Mr Abbas: civil war is the
sine qua non of nationhood. Permit me to try to
sell you on the merits of having a civil war of your
very own. Think of a civil war not as a luxury, but as
an investment.
It is unpopular these days to
draw attention to the merits of violence, particularly
the sort that inevitably entails "collateral damage",
that is, the slaughter of innocents. Progress supposedly
brings us non-violent conflict resolution. Au contraire.
The faster the world changes, the more people find
themselves left behind, and the more people are left
behind, the more diehards are willing to fight to the
death.
Real nations, as opposed to romantic
visions of nations, have no room for irredentists and
other rejectionists. They need the sort of people who
show up on time, pay dues to a respectable political
party and get along (if grudgingly) with the neighbors.
Having a civil war is de rigeur. All the right people do
it. It shows that the prospective nation has the grit to
sort out its own problems.
The truth, Mr Abbas,
is that no one will take you seriously until you have
your own civil war. Most of your neighbors have had one,
some quite recently. Egypt killed about 2,000 members of
the Muslim Brotherhood in 1999-2000. Turkey has had two
recent civil wars, counting the war with left-wing
extremists of 1975-1980 (2,800 dead) as well as the
campaign against the Kurds.
The former
Yugoslavia is a poster-child for civil wars. Greece had
an especially nasty one in 1947, and Cyprus racked up
5,000 casualties during 1975-1980. Another 4,000 died in
the 1989 Romanian uprising against Nicolae Ceaucescu,
and 1,000 have died in the past decade of civil war in
tiny Moldova.
Let's not begin to talk of Africa.
One even might think of criminal behavior by North
African immigrants in France, or African-Americans in
the United States, as a kind of civil (more on this
below).
Your neighbors the Israelis had their
own civil war in 1948, although it lasted only 10
minutes. Then prime minister David Ben-Gurion's
artillery sank the arms ship Altalena with future
premier Menachem Begin on board. The Altalena belonged
to the opposition Irgun, which responded by placing its
armed forces under Ben Gurion's command. The Israelis
then proceeded to win their war of independence, at your
expense.
How expensive is a civil war? There
are wars for every budget. Potential buyers could think
of Mexico's civil war of 1911-1917 (commonly misnamed
the revolution) that claimed a million lives, or
America's of 1861-1865, with more than 600,000. It all
depends on how many pests you have. The American civil
war hero W T Sherman (as I mentioned on June 12 in
More killing, please! ) spoke
of 300,000 Southern diehards who had to be killed.
An inexpensive little model that might suit your
needs is the Irish civil war of 1922-23. The victorious
Free Staters finished the job with just 3,000 deaths
(barely 1,000 Irishman had died in the rebellion against
England of 1916-1922). The Irish UN types you run into
don't like to talk about it, but the winning side cut a
deal with the former colonial power (Britain) to wipe
out the diehards.
The Free State commander
Michael Collins could have shown you a few tricks. After
Ireland's parliament approved Britain's offer of
sovereignty (except in foreign policy) for all but the
six counties of Northern Ireland, the romantic
nationalists of the Irish Republican Army (IRA)
rebelled. Collins had fewer military forces at his
disposal, but he quickly assembled a regular army. He
accepted British offers of artillery pieces and
ammunition, as well as intelligence. The artillery made
short work of formal IRA resistance. Collins' men hunted
down and liquidated their former comrades-in-arms, using
summary executions of prisoners, torture, and reprisals
against civilians.
Remember that when the next
Mary Robinson turns up to commiserate with you. Real
statesmen shoot rebel prisoners in the back of the head
so that their children may have the luxury of becoming a
UN high commissioner for human rights.
How
expensive will your civil war be? It's only a good-faith
estimate, but I would guess that 20,000 would do the
trick for Palestine, provided that you act quickly. It
seems like a lot, but remember that Jordan's late King
Hussein killed more than that number of Palestinians (at
least according to your own Palestine Liberation
Organization estimates) during "Black September" of
1970. Wait, and the bill could be much bigger.
Remember that it costs much, much more if an
outside contractor arranges your civil war. It's always
cheaper to do it yourself. During the Thirty Years' War
of 1618-1648, the German princes let the French Cardinal
Richelieu take charge. The bill came to more than half
the population of Central Europe. (But of German
peasants). Then you can pay with a Czech!
Both
parties to the Spanish civil war of 1936-1939 invited in
their own contractors. Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin
fought it out to the last drop of Spanish blood. In all
do-it-yourself projects, it helps if your neighbor has
done similar work and can give you some pointers. I am
not promising you an overnight repair job, of course,
but the point is that the sooner you tackle the problem,
the sooner you will be done. If you neglect the problem,
though, there's no way of telling how long the job will
last.
If you let your lawn go to seed or let
your dog bark all night, your neighbors will become
impatient and compel you to take action. The same
applies to civil wars. If you don't do it yourself, the
neighbors may do it for you, and end up damaging your
property.
It's no use to say, "They can't get
all of us!" They don't need to get all of you. Consider
that the American criminal justice system has
incarcerated or otherwise controlled one out of every
three black Americans between the ages of 20 and 30.
That is nothing less than the ruin of a generation, but
it correlates to a big decline in the rate of commission
of violent crimes.
If America is willing to
exterminate large numbers of its own discontented
population, don't expect any compunction when it comes
to you. In a war of attrition, the side with more
resources and more killing capacity always wins. If you
make yourself sufficiently obnoxious, the Americans will
take the leash of the Israelis and let them sort you
out, however long it takes.
In the long run, of
course, your martyrdom well might benefit Osama bin
Laden, or whoever might be leading the jihad in the
future. That's small comfort to you. Even worse, you
might end up with the Richelieu variety of civil war in
which mercenaries on both sides draw support from
external powers.
Like the German and Spanish
examples, these affairs are the costliest of all. If the
hired help is working for outside contractors rather
than for you, their interest is to prolong the business
as long as possible in order to keep themselves
employed. They will make quite a mess, and your home
will be unlivable until you get rid of them.
Oh,
and one last reminder: Michael Collins died in a
firefight during the final days of the Irish civil war.
Keep your head down.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
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