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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| The Usual Suspects |
| 2006-08-19 |
| What's remarkable about Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Laureate Tom Schelling, Hassan Nasrallah is that they probably agree with Keyser Soze, the legendary fictional villain of The Usual Suspects on one subject. Part boogeyman and part urban legend, Soze was a near-metaphysical example of implacable retribution. "Hezbollah’s barbarism is legendary. Gen. Effe Eytam, an Israeli veteran of that first Lebanon war, tells of how--after Israel had helped bring "Doctors without Borders" into a village in the 1980s to treat children--local villagers lined up 50 kids the next day to show Eytam the price they pay for cooperating with the West. Each of the children had had their pinky finger cut off." None of the weapons in the IDF arsenal could level this disparity in will. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in a speech before the Harvard class of 1978 explained how weapons simply became "burdens" to those who lacked a belief worth fighting for. Today even better weapons are there yet the American force in Iraq is regarded as having become totally impotent, not because it has become militarily weaker; through fixed airbases, experience, new weapons it has become immeasurably stronger than it was in 2003. But it's impotence is due entirely to the perception that it's will has drained away -- that it cannot use its power. That leaves American power weaker than had it never been used. As Tom Schelling taught commitments that are repudiated -- such as by those politicians who now say they were against OIF even before they voted for it -- destroy not only the current commitments but the possibility of future commitments. The cost of escaping one commitment “is the discrediting of other commitments that one would still like to be credited”. Alexander Solzhenitsyn asked his audience whether man could live without faith and received no answer. Tom Schelling answered, without hearing the question, that man cannot not survive without at least the counterfeit of faith: something called commitment. In game theoretic at least. And as for Keyser Soze, of whom, "to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for", faith and fear run together until finally God is indistinguishable from the Devil. "Well, I believe in God -- and the only thing that scares me is Keyser Soze." |
| Posted by:SR-71 |
| #2 I have said before that the Muslims will not stop until they feel beaten. The insurgency and now sectarian strife might have taken a different trajectory if we had gone Roman on some part of the Sunni Triangle. As long as the (probably mythological) moderate Muslims refuse to clean their own house, the 10% that commit atrocities make the rest irrelevant. Tired of all the excuses. The West will not be able to sort them out. They must be forced to do it themselves. |
| Posted by: SR-71 2006-08-19 21:27 |
| #1 Good article. Here's some of the money quotes: Deterrence was not simply a matter of possessing advanced weapons. That was only half the equation. The other half was to establish that you were absolutely ready to use those weapons to your purpose. And given a choice between superiority in weapons and ascendance in will, weapons always came in second. No weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time and betrayal. The matchless power of inherited Cold War weapons was more than overcome by withering of the very mental attitudes which made them effective. Mark Steyn argued that as a result the West's power shrank in direct proportion to the effectiveness of weaponry because the laws of political correctness always diminished the will to use them faster than their increase in destructiveness. "We live in an age of inversely proportional deterrence: The more militarily powerful a civilized nation is, the less its enemies have to fear the full force of that power ever being unleashed. They know America and other Western powers fight under the most stringent self-imposed etiquette. Overwhelming force is one thing; overwhelming force behaving underwhelmingly as a matter of policy is quite another. ... The U.S. military is the best-equipped and best-trained in the world. But it's not enough, it never has been, and it never will be." Time to drop the "stringent self-imposed etiquette." As I've mentioned before. How is it that the non-Muslim world is suddenly responsible for eliminating a tiny but pathologically violent portion of a putative religion? All we are obliged to do is rid this world of any and all who are even remotely connected with the hideous problem of terrorism. No daintiness or extrordinary discrimination is required as we perform this task. If we indulge in such delicacy, it should only be because there has been a concerted and legitimate effort upon the part of Islam to rid itself of jihadist factions. To date, Islam has done less than nothing to substantially combat terrorism. If Islam continues to disregard its obligation to purge itself of those who would commit endless atrocities, then they must not be too surprised if the baby is thrown out with the bathwater. Highly radioactive bathwater, most likely. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-08-19 20:17 |