Don’t Mess With Sam
by John Thompson
December 11, 2001
Jim Croce’s song "You don’t mess around with Jim" offers unparalleled advice to people who would like to live peaceful and uncomplicated lives. As the lyrics go: Don’t tug on Superman’s cape, don’t spit into the wind. Don’t pull the mask off the Lone Ranger and don’t mess with Jim." Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban’s dislike for Western music may have caused them to overlook this very important lesson.
Humans easily make a lot of very simple mistakes. For example, if you really hate someone or something, it is easy to convince yourself that the objects of your dislike are contemptible. This is a form of self-deception that most of us in engage in anyway. It is also common that, once you repeat your opinions often enough to yourself and your friends, to believe that your opinions are true.
The totalitarian leaders of the Axis nations held the Western democracies in a great deal of contempt. The democracies were supposed to be too weak-willed to fight a prolonged war, and their citizens were supposed to be too soft and decadent to be good soldiers. Hitler and Co. were spitting into the wind.
The most recent book of the acclaimed military historian Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture, is an exploration of the effects of Western cultural dynamism in warfare. Essentially, ever since the Greeks decided that wars should be fought as violently as possible, Western peoples have excelled at killing in wartime. Hanson argues that this is the result of the traditional institutions and ideals of Western Civilization — consensual government, individual enterprise and rationalism, matched with social organization and technological innovation.
Our fear and dislike of warfare and killing is rooted in our talent for it. The 20th Century wars between Western states were extraordinarily destructive and bloody… but it was also disturbing to realize just how little effort it took to turn ordinary civilians into effective fighting men (and fighting women nowadays), and then back into civilians again.
The modern Western democracies are slow to rouse themselves — and will often passively accept considerable provocation before reacting. Terrorists can tug on our capes for some time before we get really angry. It is possible to mistake this for weakness — as Osama Bin Laden has evidently done. Moreover, as a puritanical religious fanatic, it was also possible for him to develop a wide streak of contempt for Western society.
Bin Laden’s second mistake was to believe that spitting into the wind and tugging on Superman’s cape was a workable plan. However, he does hope to initiate a war between the Western world and the Islamic one, use that war to let Fundamentalists win control of Islam, and then lead it to a final society that dominates the entire world. Of course, he doesn’t personally expect to be in the driver’s seat when the inevitable victory arrives, but trusts his cohorts will be there in the future. Those who find it difficult to accept the reality of this strategy are invited to consult Yossef Bodansky’s 1999 examination Bin Laden: The Man who Declared War on America.
In the modern world, those who start wars are usually defeated. Hitler hoped to create a 1000 Year Reich; Kim Il Sung hoped to unify Korea; the Argentine Junta hoped to distract a restless population with the occupation of the ‘Malvinas’ and Saddam Hussein wanted to build a greater Iraq.
On September 11th, Osama Bin Laden hoped to dismay the American and Western publics, terrorize our citizenry, provoke a hasty Western reaction that would unite the Islamic world as one; and — if the Americans were so foolhardy as to tamper with his Afghan strongholds — bog them down in an extended conflict that would cost them dear. The World Trade Centre operation would get his grand strategy rolling… so how is he doing so far?
Bin Laden has unified America to a degree that probably didn’t even see in December 1941, behind a leader who hadn’t been all that popular or highly regarded before September 11th. America’s Coalition has come to Afghanistan and is shredding his dreams with the efficient lethality that Western societies bring to warfare. Western aircraft and Special Forces troops are killing his best men by the hundreds with next to no loss to themselves. Best of all, much of the frontline effort against Bin Laden consists of Muslims who want nothing to do him.
Don’t tug on Superman’s cape, don’t spit in the eye of the Western world and don’t mess around with Uncle Sam.
John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca
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