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Dan Simmons: Enemies of Civilization
Lee Harris does not focus on Islam as the "enemy of civilization"hes wise enough to know that the enemies of civilization take many forms over the centuriesbut he shows us that these enemies of civilization share one overriding commonality: they are transformational faiths and ideologies which must, invariably, see other human beings as means to their ends rather than as ends in themselves. Not enough commentaries have been written about the absolute stupidity and uselessness of the 9/11 attacksspecifically about them being absolutely stupid and useless even from a sane global jihadists point of view. While an attack on the Pentagon might be rationalized in military or Clausewitzean terms, the more successful attack on the World Trade Center was totally devoid of real military or strategic value. There were no follow-up attacks. The attacks were part of no greater plan. The slaughter of 3,000 American civilians did absolutely nothing to further any jihadist "goals"whether it be the removal of American troops from "sacred Muslim soil" or the weakening of the Arab regimes that were the jihadists real enemies. Since humans are always in need of a metaphor or historical correlative in which to frame surprising new events, many Americans compared 9/11 to Pearl Harbor, but even those attempting that comparison must have known it was unhelpful in guiding our thinking. The sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 did follow Clausewitzean logicwherein warfare becomes an "extension of diplomacy by other means"and in the Japanese militarys attempt to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet at harbor and thus neutralize our warmaking ability in the entire Pacific region for just long enough to allow the Japanese Imperial forces to occupy their objectives, expand their hegemony, and then sue for a separate peace with a weakened United Statesthe Japanese plan, although a long shot, had both military and strategic national policy merit. The central miscalculationon the effect such an attack would have on the previously torpid American will to engage in warfare overseaswas profound (and fatal to the future of Imperial Japan and the Southeast Asian Coprosperity Sphere), but at least the military goals and execution were consistent with Clausewitzean realities. And the Japanese military follow-ups to the neutralization of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harborcoordinated attacks from Southeast Asia through the Phillippines to Wake Island to Midway and beyondwere perfectly timed and, for a while, very successful. (And might have been completely successful had the American aircraft carriers been in port at Pearl Harbor during the attacka mistiming amounting to less than 24 hours. Upon such near misses hinge the geopolitical fate of the world.) The viciousness and senselessness and sheer "one-offness" of the 9/11 attacks against civilians in the World Trade Center and on the hijacked aircraft themselves guaranteed only that the United States would be roused again from its torpor and would be certain to use its militarythe most powerful military in the history of the planetagainst something and someone. From all rational perspectives, the 9/11 attacks were stupid and useless. Except from the truly nonrational and mystical point of view of a transformational belief totally removed from reality. In Civilization and Its Enemies, Lee Harris looks at the rise of Italian fascism in the 1930s and explains why Mussolinis destruction of any belief in the efficacy of the League of Nations and of the "international community" (that oft-cited but never truly sighted phantom) all but guaranteed another World War. This failure of all rational international efforts to prevent Italy from enacting its fascist fantasy ideology through the invasion of Ethiopia, which, like the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11, had no rational Clausewitzean, foreign-policy, or military goals, but which rose instead from a collective fantasy Mussolini was sharing with the Italian people, cannot be understood through the Clausewitzean or other modes of reason in personal or international conduct, but only through acknowledging the power of transformative beliefs "The concept of belief , as it is used in this context, must be carefully understood, in order to avoid ambiguity. For most of us, belief is a purely passive response to evidence presented to us: I form my beliefs about the world for the purpose of understanding the world as it is. This belief is radically different from what might be called transformative beliefthe secret of fantasy ideology. Here the belief is not passive but intensely active, and its purpose is not to describe the world but to change it. It is, in a sense, a deliberate form of make-believe, in which the make-believe becomes real. In this sense it is akin to such innocently jejune phenomena as "the power of positive thinking," or even the little train that thought it could. To say that Mussolini, for example, believed that fascist Italy would revive the Roman Empire does not mean that he made a careful examination of the evidence and then arrived at his conclusion. Rather it means that Mussolini had the will to believe that fascist Italy would revive the Roman Empire. Posted by: lotp 2006-09-11 |
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