COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Friday, September 15, 2006

Victor Davis Hanson Says "Not So Fast"

Over at National Review Online, Victor Davis Hanson thinks it's a bad idea to admit 15,000 Saudi students to American universities. As Sayyid Qutb was repelled by a decadent America, VDH says that he has personally seen the same reaction:
For some 20 years I taught a number of foreign students from the Middle East in the United States, and sometimes noticed a disturbing tendency. Over their four- or five-year tenure, many exhibited a predictable evolution in their thoughts about their newfound freedoms — especially as the time for graduation and for reckoning with a return home approached. Initial exuberance at America’s openness often was followed with deep uncertainty whether our rejection of traditional repression was healthy — especially in the permissive campus landscape of risqué female fashion, open homosexuality, easy mixing of the races and religions, atheism, sexual promiscuity, and drug use. We are not usually talking about the transition from a cosmopolitan Beirut to a somewhat comparable Salt Lake City, but from the most repressive conditions in the Arab world to the most liberal in the West — from the eighth-century code of behavior of Saudi Arabia to the 22nd or 23rd century postmodern world at a Berkeley or a Madison.Often coupled with such abhorrence at our license is awe at America’s wealth and technology. From that volatile mixture a predictable confusion often emerges: Why is America so much richer and stronger than the Arab world, when it is clearly more decadent and godless? This questioning is often answered by a variety of conspiratorial exegeses, laced with pop history and mythology that are the products of the media, mosques, and madrassas back home. Surely colonialism, or Israel, or the CIA, or American-backed dictators, or secret agreements, or oil companies best explain the current mess in Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, or Amman, those cities that were once the proud towers of the ancient caliphate.
He also thinks it sends the wrong signal. A signal that it is okay to hate America, we love you anyway.
But there is also a second reason to be concerned about these incoming students, one that likewise involves innate human nature, and especially the American sense of self. During the Cold War, we were not at war with the people of Eastern Europe, but we still did not readily admit into the United States very many students from Albania, Bulgaria, or Poland. It wasn’t just that we worried whether some were informants or worse, but also that, in such an ideological struggle, it was important to remind the masses in those countries of the wages of their repressive governments. In the current war, such thinking would translate into something like the following: The popularity of bin Laden in the Arab Street, the continual hatred expressed for America and Jews in the state-controlled Middle East media, and the constant bombings and killings of Westerners by Muslims that are as often rationalized as condemned by Arab voices — all this surely must have consequences, if only to show that Americans sometimes are as unpredictably emotional as we are usually coldly rational. Thus for now it is perhaps better that travel from the Arab Middle East is made problematic — if only to remind everyone concerned of the consequences of their hatred that still emanates from the Middle East. Many Americans are not convinced that our magnanimity with the Islamic world wins praise as liberality, rather than earning contempt for our perceived weakness. And if we must let in thousands of students from the Middle East, why not the children of those kindred brave souls fighting for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan?

15 comments:

  1. VDH is Wrong. Our "best" chance is to try to educate these ignorant bastards.

    NOTE: I "Did Not" say it was a "Good" Chance; just, our "Best" Chance.

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  2. Better to do it "over there",
    rather than "here".

    It was exposure to US, in Greeley, CO. that radicalized Sayyid Qutb.
    "... What he saw prompted him to condemn America as a soulless, materialistic place that no Muslim should aspire to live in.

    Qutb's writings would later become the theoretical basis for many radical Islamic groups of today -- including al Qaeda. ..."


    He visited in 1949 and found that:
    "... When it came to culture, Qutb denounced the primitive jazz music and loud clothing, the obsession with body image and perfection, and the bald sexuality. The American female was naturally a temptress, acting her part in a sexual system Qutb described as "biological":

    "The American girl is well acquainted with her body's seductive capacity. She knows it lies in the face, and in expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs -- and she shows all this and does not hide it."

    Even an innocent dance in a church basement is proof of animalistic American sexuality:

    "They danced to the tunes of the gramophone, and the dance floor was replete with tapping feet, enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests. The atmosphere was full of desire..."

    ...Qutb became a leader of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood on his return to Egypt. ..."


    American Universities, abroad are a better answer.

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  3. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  4. Ed Koch believes we should educate our own people to the realities of the World, because we are Losing Our Fighting Spirit and he is right.

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  5. rufus said:

    VDH is Wrong. Our "best" chance is to try to educate these ignorant bastards.

    So who's gonna be their professor, Ward "Little Eichmanns" Churchhill? Or Al "Digital Brownshirts" Gore?

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  6. There's been a "bright spot" in the ME that goes unremarked upon; The "American-Educated" Saudis have down a tremendous job managing the world's economy by managing the largest (by far) oil fields in the world.

    It was the "American-Educated" Saudis that consistently fought against letting the price of oil get so high as to cause "World-wide Recessions."

    It was done in "Enlightened Self-Interest." Jordan is another example of a "Western-Educated" Leader being a moderating influence.

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  7. I'm not sure about Kuwait, and Dubai, but I think it's a similar story. Oman?

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  8. Well, Doc Assad was educated in England, I do believe. While there are benefits to reeducating the spawn of the enemy, it is a "post war" proposition. When the Mohammedans are defeated and surrender, unconditionally, let their children enter the US, not before.

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  10. Better to send Starling to Arabia, than Arabians to Starling

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  11. "Starling of Arabia"
    the Sequel

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  12. "This questioning is often answered by a variety of conspiratorial exegeses, laced with pop history and mythology that are the products of the media, mosques, and madrassas back home. Surely colonialism, or Israel, or the CIA, or American-backed dictators, or secret agreements, or oil companies best explain the current mess in Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, or Amman, those cities that were once the proud towers of the ancient caliphate."

    Forget about back home, the rhetoric in our own colleges is enough. If you think 1,000,000 Iraqi babies were killed by American sanctions, then 3,000 Americans is small game.

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  13. US outraged as Pakistan frees Taliban fighters
    The Daily Telegraph tracked down and interviewed several former fighters who were part of a batch of eight foreign prisoners released last month.
    Burhan Ahmad, a 32-year-old Bangladeshi who has an American degree in engineering, admitted helping the Taliban against US-led forces in Afghanistan five years ago.
    ---
    But we let a record number in now to our Anti-American Universities.
    My guess is GWB is not even aware of how Anti-American they are.
    But he has kissed Geronimo's Skull, so all is well.
    ---
    Only Tufus sees a Silver Lining in every TRAIN WRECK!
    -
    Free Training for Taliban Fighters: Good thing.
    -
    Sky High Felon rate in Mexican Illegals: Good thing.
    -
    Wage Decimation in trades by illegals: Good thing.
    -
    Gangs, Drugs, Crime, Healthcare Bankruptcy, All Good Things.
    etc
    Tra la la...

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  14. geoffgo said...
    Speaking of interrogation techniques,

    Just had a long chat with my sister-in-law (40 years married to my late bro, LtC. USAF, ret.) Real conservative gal.

    Her son, my neph, lives near some family of Johnny "Mike" Spann in AL. He's the CIA guy killed early in OEF in some god-forsaken hole of a prison in NE Afganistan. Mazar-i-Sharif.

    Back then, I always wondered how the prisoners were able to disarm and overpower him...
    Well,
    a) he was unarmed and
    b) they ganged up and BIT him to to death.


    Sis relates this was the primary reason for the family's outrage at Arligton. The details of his death were not-revealed for operational security reasons.

    So, we the public are not allowed to know our enemy, even when they're indentified and in jail. They are Vampires!

    Which means at that point, the decision was not to pulverize the prison after recovering Johnny's body, but instead to evaluate the intel value these captives might represent, given we can't torture them to get them to talk.

    Knowing or not knowing the enemy; both paths seemingly lead to Trish's conclusion. We no longer take prisoners! Which is "targeted assasination by group." So, let's get on with it.

    Taking NO prisoners makes most all that endless discussion in DC moot.

    Or, extreme torture works; just like everyone suspects. One of Rummy's unknown-knowns.

    Skip the compassion, thank you. Don't volunteer that emotion, til after the war. The enemy should always, always, always be scared sh*tless, whether captive or not.

    Remember, back in 1991 many of these same guys surrendered to news crews, hoping not to be executed on the spot. They gave up expecting and prepared for an Iranian-style incarceration experience.

    Thank Powell and his ilk for the sin of not destroying the entirety of Iraq's war-machine. After which, Iran wasn't sending forth empirish signals, as I recall.

    9/16/2006 11:35:06 AM

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