Alice Bachini analyses the nature of the threat from Islamic cultures.
I caught a strange TV programme about USSR state secrets coming to light last night on ITV, narrated by the fruity-voiced Roger Moore. After showing us shocking films of agents being forced to have sex with gorgeous women in hotel rooms, Mr Moore started telling us about the unknown numbers of nuclear bombs, some of which are apparently dinky enough to fit into your Louis Vuitton luggage, which are floating around the world’s second-hand weaponry markets looking for Dr Evil-style homes. Apparently again, they are difficult to use without the instructions, but there are very likely one or two ex-Soviet scientists who can’t get jobs at McDonalds and who may well offer helpful how-to guidance in return for a reasonable fee.
Now, I dont know how reliable Mr Moore is on these matters, but it seems to me that if NYC gets nuked, everyone will probably be as surprised as they were by 9/11, even though, in retrospect, it was only a matter of when and how those bastards did it. I hope the next set of bastards aren’t at Yale University right now on a Nuclear weapons and how to use them course module, but it wouldn’t surprise me very much if they were.
The other thing that struck me was that Bin Laden (whom Mr Moore reliably informs us is still alive – perhaps he has some tracking gadgetry left over from his salad days of saving the world, I dont know) and people like him are absolutely right that vicious jihad attacks were and are inevitable.
Of course the Muslim world feels persecuted; it is, and should be treated ‘unfairly’ by the West, because its values are evil and if we don’t stop them they will destroy our better ones. We don’t have to bomb the hell out of them for them to feel persecuted; we only have to treat them like the dodgy, unreliable and dangerous societies that they are.
Does making an agreement with the West about not having nuclear weapons make it any more likely that Saddam will stop causing trouble? Of course not. It just makes it more likely that he will hide them better and hate us all the more. And terrorist groups are forces of potentially worse evil than bad governments, precisely because they are underground and festering. We ignore the sub-governmental level of evil at our peril. Freedom isn’t just about getting rid of governments; it’s about getting rid of the evil that threatens freedom. This is why countries get the governments they deserve, why X per cent of Afghan women are still walking round in burqas, why we shouldn’t trust the Saudis, and why we are still so complacent that we will be shocked if NYC is nuked.
At least the cold war was cold. The next set of conflicts is about the nastiness that comes up from the bad memes of repressive cultures. Until we understand that, we are never going to understand the nature of the evil we are facing. And until we understand our enemy, we are never going to be able to defend ourselves adequately from it.
(See Sarah Lawrence’s “Is that a burqa on the bedroom floor?” and “War, Free Trade and Liberty – Strange Bedfellows?” at www.sarahlawrence.org)
Alice Bachini
