Perhaps most alarming is how the Islamists currently dominate the Muslim political scene in every Western society, without exception. They control the mosques, publish the weeklies, host the Internet sites, run the schools, write the op-eds, appear on talk shows, engage in ecumenical activities, and enjoy access to politicians.

Resisting Lawful Islamism

The fight against invidious Islamism has two components. The first is to widen the "war on terror" from violent enemies to political enemies. The war needs to be understood to involve scholarship, think tank research, textbooks, campus activities, the media, press relations, philanthropy, corporate decisions, political lobbying, lawsuits, feature movies, toys, computer games, and much else.

The second is to identify and encourage the work of truly moderate Muslims who, working with non-Muslims, can help reduce the power of the Islamists. Moderate Muslims have several key roles: fighting the application of Islamic law (as in Ontario), engaging in undercover work (for example, the work of journalist Mazher Mahmood), gathering materials (such as those used in the Freedom House report on mosque literature), exposing Islamist writings (such as the work of Zuhdi Jasser), strengthening anti-Islamist efforts (for example, Ahmed Subhy Mansour's criticisms of the Islamic Society of Boston). Ultimately, anti-Islamist Muslims have the burden of coming up with a modern, moderate, and good-neighbourly vision of Islam.

Islamist Watch

The creative thinking in this more subtle war must be initiated outside the government. Due to the demands of political correctness, state authorities find it difficult to do and say what is needed. Governments have a record of bad judgments and of welcoming Islamists. The FBI, in particular, has a dismal record and law enforcement has not been immune to infiltration by Islamists. Even when it does the right thing, such as funding moderate Islamic institutions, government's hands are often tied.

Islamist Watch (IW) exists to educate the government, media, religious institutions, the academy, and the business world about lawful Islamism. It focuses on the political, educational, cultural, and legal activities of Islamists in the United States and (to a lesser degree) in other historically non-Muslim countries, especially Western Europe, Canada, and Australia.

IW is not about counterterrorism; and it touches only glancingly on Islamism in traditional Muslim countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

Islamist Watch Activities

Islamist Watch engages in a three-fold effort of research, advocacy, and activism.

1. Solid research is the basis for all we do. This entails monitoring lawful Islamists via the Internet and periodicals, cultivating a range of sources, pursuing investigations, and perhaps engaging in undercover work.
2. IW alerts the public of our results in various formats--articles in newspapers, Internet sites (including Islamist Watch's own), Congressional testimony, and perhaps books and documentary movies. Particularly dramatic findings will be conveyed via radio and television.
3. The IW staff meets privately with government officials, editors, producers, academics, and others to explain the real nature of such Islamist organizations as the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America in an effort to prevent any steps that enhance the standing of Islamists. In addition, IW staff identifies genuinely moderate Muslims and explains the need to work with them.

Conclusion: The Need for Islamist Watch

There is much speculation about why no major terrorist attack has taken place in the United States since 9/11. In part, this may be due to improved police work, better immigration controls, and other preventative measures. But there may be another factor: the realization by Islamists that violence is counterproductive. The devastation of 9/11 (as well as that in Bali, Madrid, Beslan, and London) led to a heightened public awareness of Islamism and slowed down the hitherto easy penetration by lawful Islamists into Western countries. To the extent that Islamists recognize the value of lawful methods, they will rely increasingly on legal and political means rather than on violent and terrorist ones. This implies that the work of Islamist Watch will likely become increasingly central to the preservation of Western values.

For more information, see: www.islamistwatch.org

There are works without number on myth and history; and a good myth should have a little bit of history behind it to put things in context, while a good history might need some myths to be palatable.

A national identity needs some myths to shape itself and give people examples and inspiration. Americans prefer, for example, the myth of the Alamo--selfless defenders of freedom who died willingly for their cause. This is mostly true but a few inconvenient facts such as the slave-owning nature of some of the Texan rebels in an abolitionist minded Mexico have been glossed over. Britain has its myths too, particularly on fending off the Spanish Armada in 1588 and the Luftwaffe in 1940. In both cases, the threat seemed dire at the time and yes--in terms of counting ships or planes and manpower, the British were outnumbered in both cases. However, the quality--as opposed to the quantity--of British arms and their defensive circumstances gave them a clear superiority, though it sounds better to ignore this point to keep the myth bright and untarnished.

New myths are forever being tested to see if they can stick, but these can have a sinister purpose.

Take, for instance, the myths that propelled Adolph Hitler to power. First, on August 8th 1918--the Battle of Amiens (which Canadians would do well to remember, for our Army fought magnificently that day), proved that the German Army had become far inferior to those of the British and the Dominions. Over the next three months, the German front opposite the British basically caved in and the Kaiser's army took a solid beating. What happened then? The Kaiser absconded and the generals relinquished the government of Germany to civilians in the days before the Armistice was signed. This cleared the way for the "stabbed-in-the-back" myth that sustained the bruised pride of Germany during the Weimar Republic and helped pave the path for the Nazis: In this myth the Army wasn't defeated,: Oh no--it was the civilians -- particularly a clutch of liberal democrats, socialists and Jews -- who bear the blame. The rest is insidious history.

Some of the other invented myths that helped shape the more fantastic elements of the Nazis concern a more blatant manipulation (or disregard) for facts. But they illustrate a style of mythmaking that the Nazis would share with many contemporary terrorists and insurgent movements. Ever wonder where Hitler's whole ‘Aryan' shtick came from?

In the modern age, we require evil to be explainable and there are many explanations for Hitler's beliefs and actions. However, one area of study that is frequently glossed over is the fascination with the occult shared by Hitler, Himmler and other top Nazis. Like today's New Agers, Hitler yearned for some new transformation that would shatter the hold that Judeo-Christian ethics and beliefs had on Western Civilization. In his loose years in Vienna he dabbled in all manner of things, and picked up elements from Theosophist occultists, Gnostics, and the mystic German nationalists of the Thule Society.¹

In the first couple of decades of the 20^th Century, a lot of ‘proto-New Agers' also loved to dabble in their impressions of Indian and Tibetan mysticism; but given European attitudes about non-Europeans in those days, having Hindu Brahmins hanging around wasn't quite respectable. To solve the problem, it was remembered that many of the languages of Northern India are Indo-European tongues and so therefore many people there could sort of become honorary Europeans, especially when considering the ‘Aryan' common origin behind these languages.

The actual Aryans of Pre-history arose somewhere out on the Russian steppes and pushed out east, south and west in several waves during the Bronze Age. The Indo-European language group, that vast collection of languages from Pashto to Portuguese, from Urdu to English, descends from them. Of the vast numbers of people who speak these languages, the Iranians have a claim to being the closest to the ancient Aryans--having referred to themselves as ‘Aryans' in their oldest histories from 2,600 years ago.

Hitler, in the mishmash of ideas that formed his early beliefs, latched on strongly to the concept of the early Aryans and--given that we still know very little about them--let his imagination substitute for the absence of fact. Of course, given his fascination with purported ancient German roots, nothing would do but the total appropriation of the ‘real' Aryans and imagining them to be the prototype of his blond Nordic superman.

But the Nazis were neither the first nor the last set of ideologues to start inventing history or distorting prehistory to suite themselves. Part of the phenomenon is simple enough--the ideologue needs to pretend that he and his cause are a part of something dramatic, mysterious or ancient: That, somehow, he and his movement are righting old wrongs or are the heirs of destiny and thus their acts are pardonable or even honorable. Also, if the cause is a nationalist or racial one, the ideologue is often someone who feels inadequate about themselves. Inventing a glorious past is a compensation for an inferiority complex--true for Hitler, and true for many other troublemakers today.

It might be that the old radical Left (for once) seems purer as they tended to be fixed on the future and paid little attention to history -- save to gather more ammunition about the immorality of contemporary society. However, it was the doctrinaire Marxist Left in the 1960s (particularly under the influence of Jacques Derrida and his ilk) who developed mechanisms like ‘deconstructionism' to sabotage the teaching of conventional history--leaving everyone more exposed to the fabrications of conspiracy theorists, ideologues, ultranationalists, et al.

Before Aryan axe-waving charioteers bounced into Northern India around 1400 BC, the inhabitants of the Indus Valley and sundry other points were Dravidians--a shorter dark skinned people whose ancestors spread throughout much of southern Asia and even into Australia as long as 40,000 years ago.² In the Indus valley, around 2500 BC, Dravidian peoples built several cities--the Harappa civilization. Their cities were strikingly well laid out and suggest that a sophisticated administration was in place. However, sometime around 1700 BC the Indus shifted course and the cities faded as hunger led to disease, and eventually the Aryans came to pillage the remains.

The Dravidian people of India were absorbed by the new arrivals--though there are some signs in traditional Indian culture of a remaining bias against those who are too dark in complexion. Other Dravidian societies fled north (where one people lasted in a remote corner of Afghanistan until the start of the 20^th Century). However, in southern India, the Sinhalese and the Tamils (among others) are very clearly descended from the Dravidians of old and both peoples have a very long history.

When the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam began their war in Sri Lanka, it was natural that the insurgents would play strongly on their ancient heritage to the point of clear exaggeration. On some pro-Tamil Tiger websites and in pamphlets they distributed in cultural events in Toronto, they make the claim to be more ancient than other people on Earth and appropriate the legacy of the Harappa civilization entirely to themselves -- which would be on par with Hitler claiming ‘his' Aryans built Stonehenge. It also perhaps reflects some basic insecurities of identity among their leadership when these pamphlets insist that the Ancient Tamils (and not ancient Dravidians) had an advanced civilization while alleging – quite erroneously--that the peoples of Europe at the time were still living as cavemen.

Similar ridiculous claims of ancient primacy could be found closer to home. In the old Mohawk Warrior enclave at Ganiengeh in upstate New York, a sign greeted visitors which stated that this area had been Mohawk land since 50,000 BC. That would have been a neat trick considering that Homo Sapiens Sapiens wouldn't establish a presence in Siberia for another 15-20,000 years – let alone cross over the Bering land bridge. Moreover, the Wisconsin glacial period (this being the last major ice sheet to cover much of North America) had begun around 60,000 BC and it is very hard to take up residence underneath a glacier…

Then there is the Nation of Islam and some of the offshoots of Afrocentricism from inside the US. The Nation of Islam's roots lie with the enigmatic W.D. Fard and Elijah Muhammed in the 1930s and ‘40s. Combining a version of Black Freemasonry, a homegrown variation of Islam (whose legitimacy still puzzles many Muslims) and Black nationalism, Muhammed introduced a concept that Black Africans invented almost all the arts and sciences of civilization, but then Whites (also referred to as ‘Ice People) stole the whole package and kept Black Africans ignorant of their role in history ever since. The attraction of a myth like this to a bitter alienated and undereducated African American before the Civil Rights movement took off would seem obvious. While Louis Farrakhan, the current head of the Nation of Islam, has been quoted many times on stranger subjects than this over the last twenty years, the whole Ice People myth still occasionally surfaces within the organization.

The Jihadist movement, given 1400 years of chronicled Arab/Islamic history, has had little need to resort to complete fiction. Still, among the myths that underlie the Jihadist movement is the notion that the Afghan guerrillas defeated the Soviet Union--they didn't. The Soviet military killed civilians and guerrillas alike at a rate of about 100:1 for every fatal casualty they received and were largely able to go anywhere in the country that they wanted. However, the strains and expenses of their entire Cold War economy brought the USSR down in ruins, even while the Red Army fought its last war.

The other aspects of Jihadist mythology largely lie within traditional constructs of Islam: That territory once governed by Islamic rulers (like Spain, much of the Balkans, tracts of Russia, etc.) properly belongs within the House of Islam and needs to be regained; or that events like the Crusades in which Muslim territory was conquered remain outrages while their own historic conquests were a part of the natural order of history. This lets Al Qaeda & Co. believe that their actions are always reactive and justified, whereas any action taken against them is an unfair provocation.

For example, the author has talked to Algerian Jihad supporters who had a detailed knowledge of the French occupation in the 1830s, and of every slight or outrage up until Independence in 1964. But, they also believed the Irish potato famine of the 1840s caused the French invasion, as Paris was after Algeria's grain crop--In actual fact, the French were upset with the continuation of Algerian piracy. However, the existence of the Sallee Rovers, Khair ad-Din Barbarossa, the Bey of Algiers and a host of other historic Algerian nautical pests of the Western Mediterranean were a complete mystery to these young Algerians.

Nor should one neglect the Palestinians -- perennial insurgents since 1948 -- whose leaders often have had no problems with living in a state of unreality. It says much about the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat that they were unable to even attempt providing basic social services but could manage to create a first class propaganda machine--particularly to prepare children and young adults for service as suicide attackers.

The Palestinian leadership have decades of experience in myth-making and propagandizing, so it should be no surprise that they finally started to make some headway in recent years. They were even able to survive the embarrassment of a "walking corpse" in the aftermath of the supposed Jenin Massacre of April 2002. The PA alleged that Israeli troops had murdered hundreds of Palestinians while suppressing a guerrilla sanctuary in the middle of Jenin. When unable to provide proof, Palestinians started to stage funerals of purported victims for the world's cameras; at least one of whom climbed back onto his stretcher when it toppled during a funeral procession. Sufficient to say, there was no general massacre attendant on a tough street fight in which Palestinian guerrillas actually did perform well for a change, losing only 56 dead of their own against 23 from the IDF.

However, one of the latest products from the PA propaganda mills is an interesting example of the distortion of history by modern ideologues; and it will be intriguing to see how well it resonates both with their friendly and with neutral audiences.

Israelis have always argued that the ancient lands of Israel and Judea are still the true homeland for the Jewish people. The Diasporas following the Jewish Wars with the Romans in the First Century AD dispersed them away from this homeland (There was, of course, a small and often beleaguered population of Jews inside Israel down through the centuries). Their old lands were never forgotten--even among the Khazars of the Russian steppes who converted to Judaism only to soon after lose their own original lands to nomadic conquerors as well.

In the decades of tumult and conflict that have followed the re-establishment of Israel, few neutral parties and no sympathizers have seriously questioned the ancient connection between the Jews and this tiny sliver of very inconveniently placed territory--until now.

The latest products of the Palestine propaganda mills are insisting that, sure, the Old Testament documents the Jewish capture of what is now Israel from the Canaanites. Except that the Canaanites are now being described as "Arab Canaanites" and, therefore, the Arabs have a prior claim to Israel which trumps the connection to the ancient Jews. The scholarship behind this one is questionable indeed--as there seems to be no sign of any kind of an Arab identity anywhere at all much before Roman times (and Arabs themselves usually tend to ignore their pre-Islamic history).

Also, the claim that these 'Arab Canaanites' are the original founders of such cities as Caesarea and Tel Aviv reeks of very bad scholarship. The Israeli littoral is dotted with ancient city sites (and some locations have been continually inhabited for thousands of years), but the Canaanites had vanished long before Caesarea was built by Herod, and Tel Aviv's oldest foundations rest on sand dunes alone since it was founded by Jewish settlers in 1909.

As propagandists seldom need to be accurate in their history, the whole Arab Canaanite myth will never withstand serious scrutiny, but a great many people will take it at face value anyway. For an ideologue with a desire to distort history, that's always a successful result.

"A lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on."

-- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

Experience often reveals that truth can be stranger than fiction, which is one reason why so many people lie--it's easier. In Western militaries, especially the more effective ones, junior leaders are encouraged to never offer excuses or explanations for mistakes; generally because the simple answers are rarely true and the truthful answers can be far too complicated. There is much wisdom in this practice. In courts, unraveling the truth is time-consuming and frustrating, which is perhaps why lawyers sometimes find prevarication and distortion so convenient.

For the unscrupulous, lies and distortion are wonderful tactics. For the agent of an ideology or cause, they are necessary –not least because one might have to ignore some simple truths to embrace a cause in the first place. For those who are confronted by such an activist, trying to repair the damage can be extremely difficult.

Howard Rotberg is a Jewish Canadian, but here is his story about dealing with the aftermath of an encounter with lies in April 2004.

***

I am a Canadian writer, former lawyer, and former race relations activist, who ironically is the latest casualty of the waiver of freedom of expression that occurs when an untruthful charge of anti-Arab comments is allowed to morph into a charge of "racism" and then spins out of control to effective censorship and implicit threats against the author.

I am the author of The Second Catastrophe--A Novel about a book and its author (Mantua Books). My novel, which received good reviews, is a story about a Canadian Jewish Professor, who is writing a book about the situation in the Middle East, and who, after his daughter is injured in a terrorist attack in Israel, rushes off to be with her. There, the Professor, a religious Jew and a widower, finds himself falling in love with the beautiful Israeli divorced doctor (a non-religious Jew) who is treating the daughter.

The book's theme is the problems of modern Israel, between the religious and the secular, and as an outpost of "western" values in a sea of ever radicalizing totalitarian Islamic nations. The book alternates between the book the professor is writing, and his fictional life, thoughts, and relationships. The Professor's book within a book is in no way racist, and I have him supporting a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

Nevertheless, at a lecture/book reading about the book at a Chapters' store in Waterloo Ontario, I was verbally attacked by two men who identified themselves as a Palestinian and an Iraqi, and who first heckled me, and then shouted me down so that I was unable to speak.

One alleged that I "had no right to speak if I was pro-Israel" and that I thought that "all Muslims are terrorists". He had walked in after the lecture had started, and may have misconstrued some comments about that radical minority we call "Islamists" -- and may have thought I was talking about all Muslims. Anyway, I denied that I thought such a thing, in as strong terms as possible. Then he alleged that is what my novel said. I noticed that he had only just picked up a copy off the table where they were for sale, and when I asked him if even had read it; he said, "part", and I decided to ignore him. After he and his buddy, took turns screaming at me, the audience grew impatient and asked them to allow the guest speaker to continue. One then screamed, "He is a f---ing Jew." When I told him that no one has the right to come to a lecture and call me a "f---ing Jew", the manager (who had introduced me, but then left the lecture), came back at that moment. He then told everyone that the lecture was cancelled. No Chapters' employee was in attendance for more than a minute or two, except a young woman wearing a hijab, who later identified herself as a Palestinian.

To make a long story short, the Palestinian woman, who was no more than 20 years old, lied to both the police and her superiors at Chapters, telling them that I had said that all Muslims are terrorists. She seemed to know the hecklers, and I believe the confrontation was a set-up.

The thing spun wildly out of control at that point, with Chapters' putting out a horrible press release, with specious Canadian moral equivalency, apologizing to the attendees that they had to hear racist comments from both the hecklers and the guest author. This press release was published in several newspapers.

As a result of my attempts to get Chapters to retract the allegation that I had made racist comments, and to ask the book store to specify what comments I was alleged to have made, I ended up getting on the wrong side of Heather Reisman.³ I kept offering them copies of sworn affidavits from two reputable professors who were in the second row throughout the whole lecture. These stated that I had said nothing racist - and that the heckler was the one who alleged my thoughts were that all Muslims are terrorists, whereas I had said no such thing.

Finally, I told Miss Reisman that if they didn't retract the statement, I would be forced to take legal action.

I said that to her, reluctantly, knowing that she controls a huge proportion of the Canadian retail book industry. Her response was clear. Within one week she had her VP of Supply Management write to my publisher that they were removing all 300 copies of my book from their stores across Canada, allegedly because of "poor sales". This is notwithstanding that it was selling well in the larger cities, and some stores had sold out their allotment of 7 books per store. They refused to even stock one copy in the stores where it was selling well, and they even for good measure removed its availability from their website.

Since this defacto suspension of my book spelled success for Islamist lies and intimidation, others were encouraged to go farther. On a public forum page of the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (one of the few Canadian organizations willing to make a public statement in my support), they received a posting, from a person, identifying herself as Jewish, saying she was at the lecture, and that I had made her ashamed to be a Jew, and what I really said was that "All Arabs and Muslims must die."

The posting was in broken English and was signed with the name "Sela Vomberg". I had lived in Waterloo, and was familiar with the Vomberg family who were shocked by the contents of the posting, and confirmed that there was no such person as "Sela" in their family. As the Vomberg's parents are Holocaust survivors and most of their family was killed during the Holocaust, they had always made it their business to search for other "Vombergs far and wide" and so they were certain there was no such person.

With the help of Al Gordon from the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and some pro bono legal work from Weir Foulds law firm in Toronto, we got the computer IP address from which the email was sent, and then got a court order disclosing the name and address of the people who sent the email. Naturally, it hadn't come from ‘Sela Vomberg', but had come from a Palestinian family who lived a few doors down from the Vombergs. Essentially, they decided to appropriate the Vomberg name, to spread the lie that I was advocating the death of all Muslims.

Ironically, in my novel, I had my fictional professor get in trouble for some slightly inappropriate wording -- which in our current climate, becomes a huge problem. In speaking about the suicide bombings at his fictional lecture in 2002, He speculated that the Israelis might have to erect security fences. I had my character say the fences might be a good idea, "essentially to keep the animals in the zoo." In the novel, on the next day, a student newspaper has banner headlines stating "Zionist professor calls Palestinians ‘animals in a zoo". He is then brought up on charges that he contravened the university's Human Rights Code, by giving a reasonable impression that he is biased against certain students.

So you can imagine--given my character's fictional experience in the novel -- the irony of what's happened to me, in light of my life imitating art, and in light of the fact that as a former practicing lawyer, I am extremely careful how I word things. But it didn't help me in real life, because it really didn't matter what I said, only what the young woman alleged.

You can imagine the chilling effect all this had on me. But, I could have carried on with speaking engagements, if I just had had some support amongst Jewish organizations, the press, or other writers' organizations, but no one wanted to get involved. Barbara Kay from the National Post said she would do something, and I spent weeks providing her with copies of all relevant documents, emails, court documents, etc. Then her son Johathan, the Comment editor at the Post inadvertently sent me an email with an email from his mother attached below, where she confided that she was not going to publish the story after all, because her sister is a friend of Heather Reisman and her sister asked her not to do anything to embarrass Heather.

Anyway, if you are still reading this, I hope you find my story an important example of how moral relativism, political correctness, and fear of offending the powerful, have come together to make me defenseless. Even Jewish groups starting withdrawing their invitations to speak, and my elderly father, a survivor of Auschwitz, pleaded with me to stay out of the public eye. As well, I have two children at University, and I didn't want them attacked. But I really feel that the story is just so bizarre, that it should see the light of day, so that this kind of intimidation can be recognized by the majority of Canadians, who I still feel are good people.

If you want to read an account of the Chapters lecture, it was printed in the Jewish Tribune at www.bnaibrith.ca/article.php?id=612 . However, B'nai Brith, the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre all declined to make statements, and the last named said that if I was wronged I should hire a lawyer and sue. (The lawyer I called about a libel suit wanted a $20,000 retainer.)

To this day, Chapters refuses to put in writing what I am alleged to have said to justify their charge of "racism". I have even started a Small Claims Court action, and Chapters is now in breach of a Court Order that they were supposed to disclose this information by last November 23rd.

Anyway, I hope you have read this, and that it has enlightened you further on how big a problem we have with our fundamental liberties in this country when even the civil liberties organizations won't do anything for you if you are perceived to be Politically Incorrect, even if in fact you are not.

I continue to write a lot, but the only area that I currently publish in concerns the development of affordable rental housing for the working poor -- in which field I have worked for many years.

Howard Rotberg

Vancouver

One reason why we ran Mr. Rotberg's account of his ordeal is the fact that the Jihadist fronts have made a practice of singling out those who talk candidly about Islamic extremism and harassing them. Someday soon, it will probably be the Institute's turn--and if we don't help people like Mr. Rotberg, who would help us when we need it? As Edmund Burke put it over two centuries ago, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Cutting and running in a fit of inane moral equivalence to distance yourself from the appearance of trouble is one way of doing nothing.

-- JT

Stabbed by Socrates: Why the West Prevails

-- John Robson

As the furor over a dozen Danish cartoons kindles righteous anger in the Muslim world, Westerner bloggers compose satirical ditties. It's scary. But not for us.

If you haven't read Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (NY: Anchor Books, 2002), now is a good time -- especially as the international situation heads in a discouraging direction for the umpteenth time since 480 BC, because the West is exhibiting the same hidden strength it consistently has in the last 2500 years. As Hanson explains, it's hidden in the same place too: not behind lies about peaceful nuclear energy or a vast rusty iron curtain, but in plain view. Our strength is our freedom, which our enemies mistake for weakness until after it's too late. Long after. The persuasive way he advances this thesis makes Carnage and Culture one of the very few public policy books I've ever found both persuasive and encouraging.

He begins with the mighty Persian tyrant Xerxes invading Greece. Right up to the crucial battle of Salamis in 480 B.C. "free Greeks continued to bicker, vote, and threaten each other, all the while unfree Persians annexed even more of their native soil. This freedom to explore different strategies, debate tactics, and listen to complaints of the sailors was raucous and not pretty, but when the battle itself got under way, the Greeks, not the Persians, had at last discovered the best way to fight in the strait of Salamis." The Athenians might have looked like a bunch of drunken longhairs questioning the gods, their elders and their government. But as Hanson notes in another book, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks, "Nearly every major Greek author, philosopher or statesman" including Socrates, Thucydides and Xenophon "at some time wore a breastplate and killed another human – something historians and literary critics should always keep in mind when they assess the character and ideology of Greek politics, art, philosophy and literature."

Their enemies could usefully have kept it in mind too. It might have helped them understand the lethal Western combination of freedom with order. Instead they don't even recognize it. Which is why, despite dozens of such battles from Salamis to Lepanto and Midway, it remains unsurprising that the victors of the first Gulf War revolutionized their battle tactics in the following 12 years while the loser did not.

In the "war on terror", media reports of relentless attacks by countless terrorist "masterminds" notwithstanding, it is the initially unprepared democracies who are improvising successfully. There was no follow up to 9/11. And while nation-building in Iraq may be impossible, Hanson's topic is military prowess not social engineering. So is it not noteworthy that the newspapers have lately reported far fewer American deaths there? A reasonable observer might attribute terrorist atrocities against children and mosques to desperation not invincible genius. Hanson also says regarding Vietnam that the sheer unreasonableness of the antiwar movement tarnished the notion of democratic dissent, something thoughtful leftists might consider regarding Iraq.

I don't recommend complacency about the glaring weaknesses the West also exhibits. Useful idiots -- official and private alike --exert far too much influence on high diplomacy and on the everyday operations of the justice and immigration systems. But it is encouraging to recognize how even these weaknesses contribute to a vitality that is far more resilient than it seems in the face of tyrannies that are far more brittle than they seem.

Consider U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld openly telling the Council on Foreign Relations "Our enemies have skilfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but... our country has not," so the American government risked a "dangerous deficiency" in the global public relations struggle. Xerxes would find such an admission pitifully weak. But self-criticism is actually a great asset, whereas pride and complacency are dangerous weaknesses. Of course this struggle over public opinion is by no means exclusively a government responsibility; American dynamism like the Athenian kind comes mostly from citizens not the state -- including bloggers and journalists hammering away at the cartoon issue from every imaginable angle.

Some of the on-line parodies of radical Islam are tasteless and others just unfunny. But a tireless exploration of what gets a laugh about their actions or arguments exposes weaknesses we can exploit, while finding what gets a laugh about our own exposes weaknesses we should fix. Jihadis who don't find anything funny accomplish neither.

While they're out there burning down embassies they're getting weaker, and while we're in our rooms doing java animations we're getting stronger. They won't figure out why even after it's too late. Read Victor Davis Hanson and you will.

Transports of History

"Amateur" historians are often no such thing, but are faithful chroniclers who work for the love of something particular. In recent years, a host of such have arisen to dissect unit diaries, log books, order sheets and the minutiae of dozens of militaries in the 20^th Century. Their work is vital and praiseworthy.

One such book, Thunderbirds for Peace (Larmont Associates, Ottawa, 2004) concerns the achievements of an RCAF transport squadron; and is the work of a veteran of that squadron and a long-time friend of the Institute, Larry Motiuk. The daily doings of 426 Squadron RCAF--in the days after they landed their last Lancaster bomber from a mission over Hitler's Germany to their 1962 disbandment would seem to be of little interest except for two impressions beyond the author's exacting details.

First, it has become easy to forget just how busy our military was in the early Cold War Era of 1945-1962, but the record of a transport squadron ferrying troops and equipment throughout the world shows just how "globalized" our Armed Forces were--flying from Alaska to what is now Zaire and dozens of destinations in between. Secondly, the role of the military in nation building is often overlooked, especially in Canada. But the development of the Canadian Arctic was a major achievement, and the RCAF was the major contributor to this effort. Of military pilots it is said that "fighter pilots make movies, bomber pilots make history." It might be said that transport pilots make all things possible.

Who was Mohammed?

Reading the Quran and the Hadith which influence interpretations of Islam can be a difficult exercise--and not enough Westerners have attempted this. If they did, lines like ‘Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance' might be repeated far less often. Likewise, too many of us believe that the Crusades of the Middle Ages were a one-sided assault on a peaceful civilization which was superior to that of Europe at the time. Many Muslims claim that the Crusades are a justification for today's Jihadis.

Robert Spencer's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) is a slender work, it is cheeky, skimpy in the details, and very useful all the same. For a start, Mohammed wasn't really into peace and tolerance--instead, he ordered assassinations, violated treaties, mocked the mutilated bodies of dead opponents, commanded his followers to stage massacres, loot caravans and bring him a share. Spencer quotes Mohammed himself in the Quran and the Hadith on these points.

Islam is a religion of war and those who compare it to Christianity and Judaism need to read Spencer's book. Christianity has been accompanied by violence--in direct contradiction to Christ's example and teachings. Islam doesn't have the same restraints. In the Old Testament, the Jews did engage in wars, but Spencer points out their opponents are precisely identified by specific tribes, whereas Islam has an impulse within it towards world domination.

Spenser also points out that the Golden Age of Islam (the 8-11^th Centuries) was not so much a product of Islam itself as it reflects the civilizing of Arab conquerors by those they had conquered in the name of Islam. Moreover, the reassertion of Islamic values in subsequent centuries brought this era to an end even as the first Crusaders showed up. In the chronicles of the Crusades, there is manifold atrocity and betrayal--by all sides. Moreover, Spenser reminds readers that the Crusades were one chapter in 14 Centuries of warfare between Islam and the West; a war that has entered a new stage in its ongoing history.

Those of us who don't understand what are meant by words like "Dhimmi","jizya", "kitman" and "taqiyya" would be highly advised to find out--sooner rather than later. Spenser's book would be a good place to start before embarking on more detailed reading elsewhere.

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