Former squadron mate and occasional correspondent Zane – who is back again doing the Lord’s work in a dark and frightful place – sends along this link from the UK’s Daily Telegraph, purporting to demonstrate 10 reasons why the war against the Islamist threat cannot be won. It’s a good read, but I don’t entirely buy into it. I happen to think that the veil of civilization is rather thin and gauzy, and quick to fall away given a truly existential threat. If we ever do come around to thinking that this May Well Be It, then I will attempt to feel sorry for those who made us feel that way, after all is said and done.
And after that, I’ll put the gauzy veil back on again, and pretend that nothing happened.
Along the same lines, Martin Amis has been doing a bit of thinking and a very great deal of writing in the weekend’s Guardian. You haven’t got to agree with everything he says to know that most of it has the ring of truth.
Be prepared to spend some time though. The man’s a novelist, after all. They get paid by the word.
In some respects the Brits are rather fortunate: They get to write the Economist, and serve up long and thoughtful articles by people like Martin Amis and David Selbourne.
Us? We get Shep Smith, and Katie Couric.
The good news is that we also get the NFL, instead of all that dreary running around for 90 televised minutes hoping someone scores a goal. Which that pretty much wipes the slate clean.
Hey, it’s only 97.5 degrees in the workspace right now, but it is dark.
Selbourne’s piece is good for discussion, though not gospel, in that it challenges a lot of assumptions we make of ourselves. Per the venerable Sun Tzu, one needs to know his own strengths and weaknesses as well as his enemy’s.
As for the guazy veil of civilization, I’m reminded of some old Hollywood movie about the Crusades, where the knights make parley with their Mohammedan counterparts. They make a great to-do about their armor. Then the Sultan tosses a veil in the air, and SLASH! slices it in two with his scimitar.
Never forget today, brothers and sisters. Never forget this day.
A little proportionality re US-UK media.
The Brit tabloids and their “Royal coverage” make Smith and Couric look like professional journalists!
Of course we have that mean little man who used to do the sports on ESPN…..
B2
Now you’ve done it. I had to go back and review the first chapter of Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way wherein she introduces the Greeks transcendent leap out of the ancient Oriental death-cult model and now I’ll have to finish the book again. Thank you, sir.
I have observed, as I infer from your linked selections that you have, the slow evolution of popular published thought with regard to the definition of the enemy: the vanguard of a yet-to-be broad acceptance that it is not just Islamism, but Islam itself.
The fearful question is, will we be good enough to winnow the chaff from a billion grains before event(s) impel us to genocide?
To be more precise, the uncertainty of the depth of Western will would of itself inhibit the non-hostile Muslim from staking a clear position against the hostile. We make our tasks more difficult than any enemy could; at least some of us do.