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January 4, 2006
The Darkness, Whispering
If you are going to read this post, there is prerequisite reading to do.
It's the Demography, Stupid by Mark Steyn
Dark Gods by Francis Porretto
Toying with Genocide by Gerard van der Leun
The way of the end of the world is an open question. Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice... The only answer that is worthwhile is to hope never to know, or to see it from your distant home somewhere off Earth. But I have lived my whole life perched on the lip of the Abyss, and for almost my whole life I've known it. I am a child of the Cold War.
My father was an Air Force NCO. We lived near military bases. When I was a kid, I used to look for maps of the base to see if we would die quickly when the inevitable nuclear strike came, or if we would die slowly. Usually, the answer was quickly, if the enemy's weapons were at all accurate and reliable. In fact, my house in Oklahoma was exactly on the "total destruction" ring. I was not comforted by the thought that our back yard was in the "massive destruction" ring in which everyone still died, but a few brick walls might stay standing. From the time I first started thinking about military history and the world situation (about the time I was 10 or 11), to now, with the exception of a few years in the 1990s when I, too, was lulled into a false sense of security — for all that time, I have been very, very aware of the silently whispering darkness.
And since 9/11, I have been particularly aware that if the darkness has a servant to push billions into its maw, that servant will almost certainly be my servant, also, at least nominally. For the most likely cause of genocide today is frustration: if we cannot move the Arab/Muslim societies towards tolerance faster than the most intolerant among them can obtain nuclear weapons, we will have to destroy the Arab world, utterly, because the simple fact is that once Iran or the jihadis or similarly fanatical and nihilistic parts of the Muslim world obtain the power to destroy the Jews, or the Americans, they will do so. And just before that point, if we are fortunate, or just after the loss of a few millions in the US or Europe or the destruction of Israel, if we are unfortunate, we will be compelled to abolish the threat in the only way possible: at that point, invasion is not an option; there is no time.
The most likely way that the terror wars will end, should Iran succeed in its present quest, is with the simultaneous destruction of Israel and Iran, and possibly Damascus and Cairo and a few other places into the bargain.
There is, of course, the possibility that we will succeed in spreading democracy and tolerance in the Arab world. The Catholics today certainly aren't what they were in the Middle Ages in Europe. If we can keep nuclear weapons away from the fanatics long enough, we may be able to moot the problem by internal reform. Given examples and time, it's possible that the Arab world will politically reform to embrace representative governance, and with it will go down the materialistic road that keeps most of the world too busy with its toys to think of killing someone else over minor differences about the nature of their god and their god's will. That this will almost certainly take an invasion or at least large-scale bombing of Iran is a problem, but not an insoluble one: we have a military conveniently armed and organized for such a purpose.
And should we succeed at reforming the Arab/Muslim world, Mark Steyn's doomsday scenario will never come to pass: the "they" that replace "us" in Europe — and Steyn is almost certainly correct that this will happen, barring Europe reverting to totalitarianism as van der Leun notes — will not be all that different from the "us" that's in Europe now. The end of the world would be, as it were, put on hold until further notice.
Down the alternate road, of course, the darkness still waits, whispering, for the moment of our frustration turning to panic.
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Comments
The fact that so many are openly discussing nuclear war is an indication of how close to the brink we are. Brilliant essay, thanks.
Posted by: Michael Hoyt at January 5, 2006 9:35 AM
With no disrespect to Mr. Hoyt, I am more distressed that more people, serious people, aren't discussing the situation. Too many still disparage the reality of what is going on in the rather smallish world around us. And they do so not just to their own jeopardy, but to that of the rest of us as well.
A brilliant essay, Jeff. Ominous and brilliant.
Posted by: Bat One at January 5, 2006 9:39 PM
Jeff
I think it was you that once put me on to the '45 aims of communism' when Melanie Phillips still had a comments section going (I acquired Skousen's collected work on DVD as a result - thank you). Given the Gramscian doctrine and its insidious success in the Anglosphere, how do you think this all jigs with the Islamofascist demographic and demonic attack on the West. It would appear that there is an unholy alliance at the moment in the UK of Gramscian moles, Marxist demagogues, the left-liberal media and the Muslim Imams. Supposedly each are colluding in the downfall of the West in the hope that they will dominate after the resultant anarchy, but my money's on the nose of the Muslim hordes at the moment. Even Mark Steyn has never fully explained the alliance of disparate objectives, though his alarum is undoubtedly the loudest both on the Internet and in pulp.
Posted by: Frank Pulley at January 6, 2006 8:18 PM