by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n The Premodern Middle East and Postmodern West Don\u2019t Mix, Mr. President<\/strong><\/p>\n Globalization certainly did not bring the premodern world of the Middle East closer together with the postmodern West \u2014 despite Barack Obama\u2019s 2007 narcissistic vows that his own intellect and background\u00a0could bridge such a gap<\/a>. If anything, the more we know about each other, the more we sense we are back to Lepanto and the siege of Vienna. Since the 9\/11 anniversary attacks, the Obama administration has seemed\u00a0bewildered, petulant, and more or less shocked<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Casablanca<\/em>-style fashion about the hatred shown the United States \u2014 whether overt among the Arab Street, or implicit among Arab governments\u2019 wink-and-nod inability to protect US embassies. It apparently forgot some basic rules about how to deal with radical Islam, and instead regressed back to the old familiar appeasement that led to 9\/11\/2001.<\/p>\n 1. Pretexts<\/strong><\/p>\n Mr. President, do not obsess over the pretext of the day. Terry Jones is only as crude as Andres Serrano and his Piss Christ, which I don\u2019t recall warranted a personal call from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs\u00a0to the artist to cool it<\/a>, much less a federal effort\u00a0to detain a Coptic filmmaker<\/a>. Sometimes Muslims will rage at a Rushdie novel, sometimes at a papal reference to a Byzantine letter, and at other times at a supposedly flushed or torched Koran. Or maybe a grainy amateurish video will set them off to kill a nun, blow up a priest, burn down an embassy, or assassinate a Western ambassador. \u00a0There are three-hundred-million-plus free-thinking Americans, and thus at least that many possible \u201cslights\u201d \u2014 if you choose to go down that road of blaming free expression rather than the primeval mind that objects to it.<\/p>\n The opportunities for Muslims in the Middle East to be outraged at the West in general and the US in particular are legion. You, Mr. Obama, the most powerful of all Americans, must remember that these totems are mere tools of an al Qaeda, a Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic Jihad \u2014 or whatever the particular aggrieved party calls itself this week. They are no more than crude pretexts to direct fury among their ignorant and impoverished masses at opportune times against the United States, and thereby gain power.<\/p>\n In that regard, each time we castigate a Rushdie, a Danish cartoonist, a US soldier, or a nut like Terry Jones, we simply play into the hands of the Islamists. The latter are thrilled when American grandees look weak, desperate, and only too eager to fall over themselves in undermining their own singular Constitution and distancing themselves from their own values. Far better it would be to say, one time \u2014 and only one time: \u201cWe cherish and protect freedom of expression and abhor censorship and violence; if that bothers you, it bothers you.\u201d End of story.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0The Sources of Islamic Anger<\/strong><\/p>\n Remember the source of premodern Islamic anger. Why did the Zawahiri brothers, or the late bin Laden, or the Islamist of the week hate the West, and in particular the United States?<\/p>\n It surely is not, as their apologists plead, because of our \u201cforeign policy.\u201d We are enlightened compared to what Putin did in Chechnya or how the Chinese treated their Muslim minorities. You, readers, know the American record better than do I: we graciously accepted Muslim refugees, even ingrates like\u00a0Mohamed Morsi<\/a>\u00a0or the 9\/11 mass murderers. We fed Somalis; helped to remove Gaddafi; freed Kuwaitis; liberated Afghans (twice); birthed Iraqi democracy; bombed Christians to save Muslim Kosovars and Bosnians; fund Jordanians, Egyptians, and Palestinians; and so on.<\/p>\n Instead, the wrath of the Muslim Street is elemental and existential (read\u00a0The Al Qaeda Reader<\/em><\/a>\u00a0to fathom all the twenty or so excuses given by bin Laden for his hatred of the US). It can be explained in terms something like this: Islamists have convinced the Arab masses that their present mess (so easily fathomed in a globalized world in second-by-second, instantaneous comparisons with other cultures \u2014 via cell phones, the Internet, DVDs, and cable television) is not their own fault.<\/p>\n Discussions of the pernicious effects of endemic tribalism, misogyny, statism, anti-Semitism, fundamentalism, religious intolerance, xenophobia, and anti-modernism are taboo. So there is never serious reflection about self-induced pathologies that keep fostering a Saddam Hussein, Muslim Brotherhood, and Ba\u2019ath Party, or the preconditions that throughout much of the 20th\u00a0century made the Arab world so susceptible\u00a0to Hitlerism<\/a>, then Soviet communism, then Baathism, then Western authoritarianism, then authoritarianism, and, then, or rather always back to, Islamic radicalism. The Middle East is not fascist, communist, Baathist, pan-Arabist, or Islamist, so much as it is screwed-up-ist and blame-them-ist.<\/p>\n If all these -isms did not exist, we would have to invent them and others as well to find scapegoats for self-induced misery. The Islamist explains to the illiterate masses that they are poor and angry because, despite their renewed zealotry and supposed ancient majesty, the evil Westerners have, quite unfairly, all the power, wealth, and influence \u2014 and yet don\u2019t deserve it, given their godlessness, decadence, and corruption. Westerners obtained their preeminence through \u201ccrimes\u201d like Zionism, colonialism, imperialism, etc., at a stage of Islamic vulnerability, when Muslim sellouts betrayed the Prophet and joined the enemy. And thus true believers, by sheer force of religious fervor, can slap down these Westerners, as was true in the ancient past. Presto \u2014 go torch an embassy and empower me as you leader!<\/p>\n That exegesis for millions in Cairo is far more comforting advice than something a bit more mundane like \u201ctreat women equally\u201d or \u201clook at the world empirically\u201d or \u201ctake apart your cell phone and see how it works.\u201d<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0Blaming Us, Not Them<\/strong><\/p>\n The worst response to radical Islam has unfortunately become the present administration\u2019s postmodern, so-cool policy. The Cairo fable, the\u00a0al Arabiya<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>\u201cBush did it\u201d interview<\/a>, the euphemisms (e.g., \u201cman-caused disasters\u201d), the insanity that Maj. Hasan\u2019s murdering threatens our diversity programs, trying KSM in New York, reading Mutallab his Miranda rights, serial trashing of Guantanamo, James Clapper\u2019s laughable assurance that the Muslim Brotherhood\u00a0is \u201csecular,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0NASA\u2019s\u00a0all-important Muslim outreach<\/a>, etc., at best remind the Islamists that Westerners would hardly be so self-abasing if there were not something to be ashamed about.<\/p>\n Our hesitancy confirms their accusations and, at worst, suggests that we are also weak and without a sense of self \u2014 and so will do very little if a true believer were to kill a diplomat, storm an embassy, or shoot Marines. And when you add in fiscal insolvency, looming defense cuts, and presidential boasting about killing bin Laden and Predator assassinating, this administration had done just enough high-fiving and spiking the ball to incite the anger of an Islamist, but not nearly enough concrete action to remind him of the dangerous consequences of such primitive anger.<\/p>\n Worse, in some ways, are Obama\u2019s feeble attempts to separate himself from the history and values of the United States \u2014 almost as if to say, \u201cThey did it, don\u2019t blame me!\u201d Remember, Obama objected that he was but a near-infant and so blameless when Daniel Ortega to his face enumerated all his fabricated hurts against America. (If the president of the United States\u00a0will not defend America in front of a communist dictator<\/a>, who will?)<\/p>\n The entire subtext of Obama\u2019s outreach narratives (made explicitly in his\u00a0al Arabiya\u00a0interview) is that his own unique pedigree and worldview have exempted him from American pathologies and thus culpability for them. In the alternate brain chemistry of the Obamites, there is\u00a0no\u00a0contradiction between worldwide Islamist vows to kill our diplomats or burn embassies and Obama\u2019s much-vaunted boasts of restoring American popularity abroad. The derangement goes like this: those who hate America are mistakenly still mad at the old Bush America and have not yet evolved to duly appreciate the new Obama America. In other words, the vestiges of right-wing extremism still confuses those abroad, who have not yet caught on that America is on their side.<\/p>\n In the present case, bewildered press secretary Jay Carney essentially said just that: that when protestors burn flags, kill Americans, and destroy icons of American power,\u00a0they aren\u2019t really mad at us<\/a>, Obama, the White House, or American foreign policy. Instead, they are just confused over disgusting Terry Jones and a reprehensible handful of Copts:<\/p>\n We also need to understand that this is a fairly volatile situation and it is in response not to United States policy, and not to, obviously, the administration, or the American people,\u00a0but it is in response to a video, a film that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting. That in no way justifies any violent reaction to it,\u00a0but\u00a0this is not a case of protests directed at the United States writ large or at US policy, this is in response to a video that is offensive to Muslims.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cNot\u2026directed at the United States\u201d \u2014 perhaps tell that to Ambassador Stevens as he suffocated to death.<\/p>\n 4. What Must Muslims Do?<\/strong><\/p>\n It is not brain surgery to enter the modern world. Follow some South Koreans or Chileans around for a week with a video camera. Grow up and stop blaming those on whom you depend for everything from drilling bits to laptops. Adopt the now seemingly impossible: consensual government, a bill of rights, secular tolerance for religious diversity, gender equality, meritocracy, respect for science and empiricism, a free market, and a free press. In other words, join the 21st\u00a0century.<\/p>\n Otherwise, Westerners must make themselves as immune from Middle East passions as is possible. In that context, not tapping vast new domestic finds of gas and oil on public lands is suicidal, given that such potential income and independence would soon make the Gulf irrelevant to our survival.\u00a0Let the Kuwaitis or the Iranians deal with the Chinese. Of course, elites warn us not to \u201coverreact.\u201d But overreacting, compared to the present radical appeasement, is the moderate, rational course.<\/p>\n A good start, then, would be very quietly to start trimming aid at about $100 million every month, and quite coolly rejecting visas from the Middle East (putting thousands of future Mr. Morsis on hold). We can put travel restrictions on the Middle East, and ask the Egyptian ambassador to go home for a month or so to think things over and see whether he really wishes to protect our embassy. Elites shriek, \u201cOh, but you\u2019ll only isolate Morsi and alienate the moderates.\u201d Perhaps, but we might also remind them that American friendship is based on reciprocity and must be earned rather than assumed. How odd that the only good thing that either Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton has said throughout this depressing spectacle was Obama\u2019s flub that he didn\u2019t quite know whether Egypt, the recipient of over $1 billion in annual US cash,\u00a0was an ally or enemy<\/a>. So only by accident does he make the Muslim Brotherhood government a tiny bit unsure of exactly how we feel or what we might do.<\/p>\n 5. Whom to Fear?<\/strong><\/p>\n Finally we must examine the ubiquitous Westernized Middle Easterner who appears as pundit, talking head, and the authentic voice of the Arab Street. Quite dangerous are the Mohamed Morsis of the world \u2014 men like a\u00a0Sayyid Qutb<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Mohammed Atta<\/a>, who had spent time in the West, fled here for its protection, enjoyed its affluence, indulged in its sins, and blossomed amid its hot-house universities. These men can often be quite dangerous.<\/p>\n Most are intelligent and understand the self-loathing that is endemic among their postmodern Western hosts. For the Westernized anti-Americanist, being educated, working, and living in California or New York reminds him of the contrast with his own Egypt or the West Bank. That disconnect evokes all sorts of contradictory emotions: why am I so blessed in the land of the infidels and so wretched at home? Or how much penance must I undertake for satisfying over here what would be seen as illicit appetites at home? Or how can these affluent atheists have so much more than my pious brothers in the Middle East?<\/p>\n The Westernized Middle Easterner, energized by Western self-loathing, steeped in post-colonial theory, nursed on deconstruction, and attuned to multicultural victimology, learns quickly. Whether a Khomeini returning from a generous France, a Mohammed Atta leaving Germany, or a Mohamed Morsi arriving in Cairo, they soon hate their prior Western benefactors for reminding them how their own self-induced pathologies have led to the miasma of the Middle East \u2014 but now with no longer a nodding professor to egg them on, but rather only a mute embassy, a flag, and a diplomat to incite their passions. Poor Hillary Clinton wonders out loud how can it be that the Libyans are unappreciative of our efforts, as if such ingratitude is new and surprising, rather than old and predictable.<\/p>\n A Footnote<\/strong><\/p>\n With the implosion of the Middle East\u00a0comes the end<\/a>\u00a0of the mythic foreign policy of Barack Obama. Just as Russia was not reset and our enemies did not become friends, so, too, the fantasy that Barack Obama\u2019s\u00a0name, race, and lineage<\/a>, when coupled with leftist politics, would win over our Middle East never arrived. All that failed \u2014 failed not just for America, but for the Nobel laureate himself. In that regard, Obama\u2019s entire four-year project has failed: $5 trillion of borrowed stimulus did not jump-start the economy; only more federal debt and bankruptcy followed \u201csolar and wind and millions of green jobs,\u201d as vast new finds of oil and gas on public lands were ignored, while gas hit $4 a gallon. The problem for supporters of Obamacare is not to implement, but how to junk, this boondoggle without loss of face. Government Motors and the Volt went nowhere, and appointees like Eric Holder, Kathleen Sebelius, Timothy Geithner, and Janet Napolitano proved embarrassments. Now we are left with the Federal Reserve\u00a0desperately printing money<\/a>\u00a0before the election.<\/p>\n There was human frenzy in 2008 that entranced millions, and now we will be paying for the wages of that madness for quite some time.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Premodern Middle East and Postmodern West Don\u2019t Mix, Mr. President Globalization certainly did not bring the premodern world of the Middle East closer together with the postmodern West \u2014 despite Barack Obama\u2019s 2007 narcissistic vows that his own intellect and background\u00a0could bridge such a gap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[28,150],"tags":[1051,161,12,188,177,1055,234,141,1061,139,1043,1016],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-7c","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":440,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/middle-east-madness\/","url_meta":{"origin":446,"position":0},"title":"Middle East Madness","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Last week, Muslim mobs took to the streets to murder the American ambassador in Libya and three of his staffers. American embassies were attacked from Egypt to Yemen. Embarrassed White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7143,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/of-pre-and-postmodern-poseurs\/","url_meta":{"origin":446,"position":1},"title":"Of Pre- and Postmodern Poseurs","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 24, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama's postmodernism has met its match in premodern Putin. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 Vladimir Putin thinks he has a winning formula to restore the global clout of the old Soviet Union. Contemporary Russia is a chaotic, shrinking, and petrodollar-fed kleptocracy. It certainly lacks the population, the vast resources,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Russia"","block_context":{"text":"Russia","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/russia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":384,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-bright-and-shining-libyan-lie\/","url_meta":{"origin":446,"position":2},"title":"A Bright and Shining Libyan Lie","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Almost everything we have been told about\u00a0Libya\u00a0over the last two years is untrue. A free\u00a0Libya\u00a0was supposed to be proof of President Obama's enlightened reset\u00a0Middle East\u00a0policy. When insurgency broke out there,\u00a0the United States\u00a0joined\u00a0France\u00a0and\u00a0Great Britain\u00a0in bombing\u00a0Muammar Gadhafi\u00a0out of power \u2014 and supposedly empowering a democratic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6709,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-double-dealing-middle-east-is-double-dealt\/","url_meta":{"origin":446,"position":3},"title":"The Double-Dealing Middle East Is Double-Dealt","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 Boo-hoo, Middle East About every day or so, a throat-clearing Middle East pundit weighs in to warn us of the Obama\u2019s administration\u2019s dereliction of traditional American engagement. They rightly lament \u201clead from behind\u201d in Libya. After Benghazi, Libya has turned into something like Somalia.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/100925206_bf609a8dcf-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7627,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-obama-lost-the-middle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":446,"position":4},"title":"How Obama Lost the Middle East","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 3, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The president put politics and ideology ahead of preserving hard-won gains in the region.\u00a0 by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online In his first term, Barack Obama all but declared victory in America\u2019s Middle East struggles. As he precipitously pulled out all U.S. peacekeepers from Iraq, the president had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4139,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bad-taste-and-freedom\/","url_meta":{"origin":446,"position":5},"title":"Bad Taste and Freedom","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Sparks sure fly when the premodern world of religious piety and the postmodern world of Monty Python collide. Middle Eastern Muslims have demonstrated, threatened, boycotted and burned in their fury over European newspapers republishing months-old distasteful cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Stunned, European\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2006"","block_context":{"text":"February 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/february-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":447,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions\/447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}