War of Ideas, Part 1
- Информация о материале
- Автор: Thomas L. Friedman
The New York Times
Published: January 8, 2004
Airline flights into the U.S. are canceled from France, Mexico and London.
Armed guards are put onto other flights coming to America. Westerners are
warned to avoid Saudi Arabia, and synagogues are bombed in Turkey and France.
A package left on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art forces the
evacuation of 5,000 museumgoers. (It turns out to contain a stuffed snowman.)
National Guardsmen are posted at key bridges and tunnels.
Happy New Year.
What you are witnessing is why Sept. 11 amounts to World War III —
the third great totalitarian challenge to open societies in the last 100
years. As the longtime Middle East analyst Abdullah Schleiffer once put
it to me: World War II was the Nazis, using the engine of Germany to try
to impose the reign of the perfect race, the Aryan race. The cold war was
the Marxists, using the engine of the Soviet Union to try to impose the
reign of the perfect class, the working class. And 9/11 was about religious
totalitarians, Islamists, using suicide bombing to try to impose the reign
of the perfect faith, political Islam.
O.K., you say, but how can one possibly compare the Soviet Union, which
had thousands of nukes, with Al Qaeda? Here's how: As dangerous as the
Soviet Union was, it was always deterrable with a wall of containment and
with nukes of our own. Because, at the end of the day, the Soviets loved
life more than they hated us. Despite our differences, we agreed on certain
bedrock rules of civilization.
With the Islamist militant groups, we face people who hate us more
than they love life. When you have large numbers of people ready to commit
suicide, and ready to do it by making themselves into human bombs, using
the most normal instruments of daily life — an airplane, a car, a garage
door opener, a cellphone, fertilizer, a tennis shoe — you create a weapon
that is undeterrable, undetectable and inexhaustible. This poses a much
more serious threat than the Soviet Red Army because these human bombs
attack the most essential element of an open society: trust.
Trust is built into every aspect, every building and every interaction
in our increasingly hyperconnected world. We trust that when we board a
plane, the person next to us isn't going to blow up his shoes. Without
trust, there's no open society because there aren't enough police to guard
every opening in an open society.
Which is why suicidal Islamist militants have the potential to erode
our lifestyle. Because the only way to deter a suicidal enemy ready to
use the instruments of daily life to kill us is by gradually taking away
trust. We start by stripping airline passengers, then we go to fingerprinting
all visitors, and we will end up removing cherished civil liberties.
So what to do? There are only three things we can do: (1) Improve our
intelligence to deter and capture terrorists before they act. (2) Learn
to live with more risk, while maintaining our open society. (3) Most important,
find ways to get the societies where these Islamists come from to deter
them first. Only they really know their own, and only they can really restrain
their extremists.
As my friend Dov Seidman, whose company, LRN, teaches ethics to global
corporations, put it: The cold war ended the way it did because at some
bedrock level we and the Soviets "agreed on what is shameful." And shame,
more than any laws or police, is how a village, a society or a culture
expresses approval and disapproval and applies restraints.
But today, alas, there is no bedrock agreement on what is shameful,
what is outside the boundary of a civilized world. Unlike the Soviet Union,
the Islamist terrorists are neither a state subject to conventional deterrence
or international rules, nor individuals deterred by the fear of death.
And their home societies, in too many cases, have not stigmatized their
acts as "shameful." In too many cases, their spiritual leaders have provided
them with religious cover, and their local charities have provided them
with money. That is why suicide bombing is spreading.
We cannot change other societies and cultures on our own. But we also
can't just do nothing in the face of this mounting threat. What we can
do is partner with the forces of moderation within these societies to help
them fight the war of ideas. Because ultimately this is a struggle within
the Arab-Muslim world, and we have to help our allies there, just as we
did in World Wars I and II.
This column is the first in a five-part series on how we can do that.
Russian version
An introduction to MAOF
Haim Goldman
Haim Goldman
Dear Friends,
Would you believe that the undersigned has anything in common with
-- Professor Victor Davis Hanson (Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University),
-- Dr Charles Krauthammer, (Washington Post, Time, The Weekly Standard),
-- Caroline Glick (Deputy Managing Editor of the Jerusalem Post),
-- Jonathan Tobin (Executive Editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent).
Amazingly, the editors of the MAOF website decided that the missives of the undersigned are worthy of translation and posting along the articles written by these distinguished authors.
The first letter was published without the consent of the undersigned.
However, after thorough examination of the laudable attitude of MAOF and of the excellent contents of the website, the undersigned had most graciously granted his permission for publication of his missives in both English and Russian.
“Analytical Group MAOF” [1] is an organisation founded about ten years ago by Russian-speaking Jewish intellectuals. The attitude of MAOF is definitely pro-Zionist -- unambiguously and unapologetically.
One of MAOF’s primary purposes is providing information and analysis about Middle-Eastern and world affairs as well as about Israel’s history, values and dilemmas. In addition to extensive publication activity in various media, MAOF also organises excursions and seminars. While the vast majority of the contents of the MAOF website is in Russian, texts originally written in English are provided in the original [2] as well as in Russian.
There are arguably about 250 millions of Russian-speakers worldwide and many of them do not read English. The indisputable motivation for the author’s permission was to grant those millions of disadvantaged people the grand benefit of reading the author’s ruminations. If the author is ever maliciously accused that his tacit motivation for authorising the publication was his craving to be listed along with the above-mentioned distinguished writers, his plea will definitely be “nolo contendere”.
The editors of MAOF expressed their gratitude by granting the undersigned a privilege that no other author got – the opportunity to review and correct the Russian translation before publication. The original letters of the undersigned are at [3] and their Russian version is at [4]. At of today, only two letters are posted but several other letters are pending translation.
You are kindly ENCOURAGED TO RECOMMEND the MAOF website to your friends and colleagues worldwide, particularly those who speak Russian. Those who do not enjoy the benefit of proficiency in the exquisite Russian language can find many thought-provoking and inspiring articles about Middle-Eastern and world affairs in the English section [2].
Sincerely,
Haim Goldman
28.10.2006
REFERENCES:
[1] http://maof.rjews.net
[2] section.php3? sid=37&num=25
[3] authorg.php3? id=2107&type=a
[4] authorg.php3? id=2166&type=a