Why Does the Decline of Islam Have to Fall on Us?

New English Review:

Why does the decline of Islam have to fall on us? How can we shift the burden back where it belongs? Though the balance of military, technological, and economic power is overwhelmingly in our favor, we are constantly losing ground. The last great confrontation with a genocidal totalitarian war machine—Nazi Germany and its allies—caught us militarily off guard. Our democracies scrambled, tooled up, and fought to win. Today we have the best armies in the world. And they are hamstrung because our minds are disarmed. Unless we can mobilize our thinking in a healthy war effort that will defeat the enemy, we will be pushed down to the bottom of the ladder of civilization. Disciplined intelligence is a factor in the survival of individuals and societies at all times but I do not know of another example in history where a purely intellectual effort could make the difference between victory and defeat.

The West is not essentially suicidal. Not in decline. Not degenerate. Not rotten from within. Not languishing in the last stages of imperial flabbiness. The United States at the height of its power has not behaved with imperial arrogance. The freedoms we enjoy—won by our forefathers and defended by their descendants –can be extended wherever human beings seek liberation, without threatening our own tranquility. We in the free world have created material abundance for the greatest number, health, longevity, mobility, opportunity, and delightful technology. We have nothing to be ashamed of though everything needs improvement. That too is a function of our societies: we do not only wish for improvement, we have built-in mechanisms for constant self-criticism and amelioration.

Undue focus on the circumstantial may blind us to the wonder of flexibility that gives our culture its genius for endless improvement. If we wallow in self-criticism to the point of abandoning self-defense, our democratic nations will not be superseded by better, finer, wiser, healthier, more just societies. They will be replaced by the caliphate– a stagnant medieval culture of hatred and violence that breeds oppression, ignorance, and discord. The West is not doomed to decline. But our élan vital has been, to use a popular catch phrase, hijacked by the pull of easy living, the perversions of liberty, and the contradictions every vibrant society generates.

We have the material means to defeat our enemies and the spiritual resources to honor noble values. Confusion can be dissipated. Fertility can be restored [I promise that will be the subject of my talk at the next Symposium]. Fatality is not imposed by divine powers, it is concocted out of fear and fatigue.

We will not find our way out of this impasse unless we recognize that Judaism is the source of our civilization and Israel is its—our—homeland. The reversal of values and chronology that designates Israel as the obstacle to world harmony is deadly. Recognition of Israel’s role in ensuring the survival of civilization should rise above and beyond the realm of enlightened criticism appropriate to all human endeavors. We need to stop lecturing Israel and start learning from the Jewish state, endangered from the day of its conception, fighting courageously for its existence. Israelis face threats of brutal death from morning to night, day in day out; they are not suicidal. Israel is not in decline. It is a vibrant, upbeat, warm-hearted, joyous nation.

Americans, I thought, recognized this unbreakable bond with Israel. Then, in 2008, a majority of voters chose a viscerally anti-Zionist president. They didn’t know? Not so. They didn’t want to know. They were swept up in a vicious current that, I believe, has not yet been fully analyzed and understood. The mass-hysteria media did not simply hide this and other negative information about a visibly untrustworthy young man unqualified for high office; they half hid, half revealed it, which is worse. That teasing game, pursued to this day, actually serves to enlist willing participation in the cover up.

As the presidential campaign drew to a close, the LA Times admitted–in a pussyfooting article about Obama’s presence at a 2003 dinner in honor of his close friend Rashid Khalidi—to having a videotape of the event. Despite the suppression of crucial details, the partial revelations in that article clearly demonstrated that Obama was comfortable with heavy hitting Israel-bashers. By refusing to release the tape, The LA Times simultaneously confirmed and denied Obama’s Israel-hatred while maintaining unmitigated support for the candidate. The message was: anti-Zionism is not incompatible with presidential ambitions. Apparently a majority of American Jews fooled by Obama’s pro-Israel posture closed their eyes to evidence to the contrary.

Israel wins public opinion polls in the U.S. and loses them in Europe but the United States government, with the zeal of youth and the lingering punch of a still-powerful nation, is more effectively anti-Zionist than all of Europe put together. In the space of 18 months the nation’s alliances have been radically transformed, with total disregard for public opinion polls, Congressional opinion, history, tradition, and national self interest…

Read it all.