This post stems from a response I was concocting to the Interested-Participant's comment in regards to my post on the death of Fabrizio Quattrocchi. I asked, "Good God, when does it end?" The IP wrote: "I'll answer your question. It will end when all of the enemy are dead or pacified. But, you knew that already."

Reading about scenes like this, and the thing in Fallujah, sorely tests one's civilized character, I think. There are times when you simply want to lay the mantle of civilization down, and wreak havoc on your opponents.

The illustration that occurred to me was that of Benjamin Martin in Mel Gibson's "The Patriot". I would like to think of "the West" in general as Mr. Martin, elegant coat, stockings, refinement, and all that. He doesn't want to wage terrible, awful war because he's seen the elephant. Western civilization has seen the elephant, especially in the twentieth century. We are tired of war, and many long for respite. The Europeans, having suffered two terrible wars on their continent inside a quarter-century, have largely lost their appetite for conflict. Given their losses, I can almost understand it.¹ When people from Europe made war, we didn't mess around.

Benjamin Martin had done awful things in war, and he wanted to put it behind him. In fact, he tried very hard to do so. He argued against the notion of fighting the British, because he so hated war. At this time, the West as a whole is Mr. Martin, arguing with Colonel Burwell in polite company over the proper course of action. There are some (be they the United States and the United Kingdom in the present day or men such as John Adams or Colonel Burwell in the film) who have chosen to fight, and there are some who have not made up their minds (Mr. Martin at that point in the film and much of Europe itself today) about what to do.

Let me pause the metaphor at this point, and look at things from the position of the Islamist. Let us assume for a second that Western Civilization is the very devil and that the Islamist is pursuing said devil with all his might. Let me offer a warning from history:

ROPER: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!

MORE: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

ROPER: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

MORE: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast - man's laws, not God's - and if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

Yes, he may get the West to change. That change may come with us on our knees, or it may come with fear, terror, and anger.

Back to Benjamin Martin: War came to his front door, despite his best efforts. One of his sons was shot before his very eyes, and it led him to cast down his dress coat and undo his stiff collar. Benjamin Martin laid down the mantle of civilization and took off the coat of maturity. He went to a trunk and drew out tomahawks, the better to kill his enemy with. He brutally slaughtered British Army soldiers, literally coming back with a bloody shirt. He fought with the fear of losing his family and with anger for the circumstances forced upon him.

Consider our collective history, that of the nations of Western Europe and their progeny:

We have done great things with our technology. We have put men in space and on the moon. We have sent space probes outside of our system and peer back into the earliest days of the galaxy's existence. Our science has conquered diseases that once threatened to erase without mercy infected populations. We live longer, healthier lives. Our intellectual tradition has produced representative government that functions on the consent of the governed. The Enlightenment and the Renaissance arose from Western European nations, producing magnificent works of art, literature, science, sculpture, and advancement in numerous other areas. People live free lives, largely without the fear of violent death, enjoying the plentitude that can only come from our way of doing things.

Yet, these thousand points of light do not come without some cost: Collectively, we are the most lethal civilization to yet walk the Earth. Western Europeans have repeatedly throughout this past century led their fellow men into genocide, culminating in the Holocaust and in the blood-soaked ideology of Communism. Our internecine wars of the 20th century erased generations, cities, and empires, producing tens of millions of dead, and we even now strive to make our weapons faster, better, and stronger. Imperial conquest lies in our recent history: Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte, two of the greater military conquerors of history, both hailed from European stock.

We are the peoples who developed, deployed, and dropped atomic bombs not once, but twice on a civilization that we thought was bestial and savage, who "fought dirty". For half a century, our armies stood ready to usher in a war that would probably deal a mortal blow to life as we know it on earth. We never took that final step because the Soviet Union, ruthless as it was, knew what would come if it chose to strike. The phrase "mutual assured destruction", while bad grammar and inelegant, spelled out an essential truth, that there would be no survival of a NATO-Warsaw Pact nuclear war.

The Islamists, on the other hand, do not benefit from the protective might that shielded the Soviet Union. Yet, the Islamists operate as if they are immune to retaliation and proclaim their eager willingness to die. With their bestial displays of uncivilized warfighting, they take steps that the Soviets were unwilling to take.

They strike with all their might, and yes, they inflict horror. Yet, they punch above their weight. With every additional execution, with every additional bombing, with every additional mutilation, they tug at our civilizational coat. Some laws remain, and Benjamin Martin's son Thomas still lives. We do not fight with both hands because we consider our enemies to be human. This will not necessarily be forever, though. Each charred corpse that the Islamists dance around, each plane they hijack, each city they cowardly bomb moves us closer to civilizational retaliation. Benjamin Martin resorted to tomahawks and flintlock muskets. We, on the other hand, have great gleaming engines of evil that live in giant subterranean silos, aboard missile submarines, and in the bays of jet bombers. We have weapons that were spawned in corroded tanks and which are marked by skulls-and-crossbones, and we have weapons that were conceived in laboratories and stored in locked refrigeration, designed to kill millions without ever firing a shot. We are not the devil, but we are proficient in the use of his playthings.

The West hasn't had a all-out fight-to-the-finish for the future of its civilization in half a century. When we finally doff Martin's coat and lay down the mantle, we will probably do so in a state of rage and fear. We shall make war with all our fearsome technological might and with the force of a blood-soaked history. The figure of the "grim reaper" is a European invention, and we may unleash him on a helpless Islamist target. We have the ability to turn night into day in a single horrifying second, and reduce millions into carbonized ashes, leaving mortally wounded survivors to stumble about sightlessly as their cellular structures disintegrate from radiation poisoning. If the Islamists escalate the war too far, then they risk the foregoing scenario at best, or a fate such as occurs to the victims of the A Prime Flu in Stephen King's The Stand or that suffered by the victims of Saddam Hussein's chemical attacks.

If indeed the Islamists convince the West as a whole that we are in an all-out fight-to-the-finish for survival, then, to paraphrase Admiral W.F. Halsey, we may see a future where Islam is referred to only in the past tense. Osama bin Laden probably wishes to be remembered down through the ages as a great man of Islam. If he continues on this course, then he may be remembered as the man who ushers in the annihilation of the Islamic faith. He may go down in history as the man whose actions led to the making of Mecca and the Muslim community into nothing but an unpleasant memory.

Al-Qaeda is fond of issuing warnings to various target populations through its mouthpiece, al-Jazeera. Allow me to thusly reciprocate: "Do not idly call the name of the devil, for you might get a response." Right now, al-Qaeda and the Islamists call the name of the West, and they have yet to get our full attention. For your sake, pray that we do not decide to answer. Do not force us to carry out the example of Benjamin Martin.²

¹ This stems from a European who responded to Kim du Toit's infamous essay on the state of the Western male. It may be that overt European martial aggressiveness simply has "gone out of the universe", to borrow from Grand Moff Wilhuf Tarkin.

² This primarily is an expression of frustration and anger. In some ways, it may be cathartic. I grow tired of these savages and their conduct, and bristle at hearing that we must understand the root causes of the conflict, accept this, tolerate that, and so on. Part of me longs to retaliate with the might that I know America and other states possess. It is a conscious effort to remind myself that That wouldn't be right. It is solely the Christian component of my being that reins in the urge to retaliate. Thus far, it has been successful, and I haven't yielded to the urge to advocate annihilation for the Islamic community. However, the danger is there. It probably resides within all of us, a product of our human natures.

I do not wish to speak of Islam in the past tense. I do not wish death upon a billion people, and I wish we didn't have to fight this war. I would suppose that I wrote this as some sort of warning, in the hopes that somehow, the broader Islamic community might call bin Laden and his henchmen to heel. This may be wishful thinking, but to carry out the alternative would be an awful act that could constitute the unforgivable sin, the thing that would make Christ and the Father turn their eyes from us. I do not want to be driven to this end, so I write thusly. It is all probably in vain.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 05:14 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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