[whataretheysaying] Mary Madigan: Hope vs. the Post West

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Posted by Mary Madigan:
Hope vs. the Post West
http://whataretheysaying.powerblogs.com/posts/1176740196.shtml


   Noah Pollak of Azure, who visited Lebanon last December, describes a
   vision of a Western world that will defend democracy, a civilization
   that's willing to fight for what it believes in. From [1]Hope over
   Hate

     Before departing for Lebanon, the traveler who has been in Israel
     should purge himself of any evidence of having stepped foot in the
     Jewish state, from bus tickets and loose change to the notepad with
     Hebrew writing on the spine. The voyage from Jerusalem to Beirut
     could take, under different circumstances, four hours by car or
     forty-five minutes by air -- the two cities are less than 250
     kilometers apart -- but today it involves a daylong travail of
     buses, taxies, aircraft, the duplicitous use of two passports, and
     the making of false statements to Lebanese customs officials.

     Lebanon, like all but two nations in the Middle East, permits entry
     only to persons with passports free of any indication that Israel
     has been visited. But this sign of extremism should not be a
     diversion from the real Lebanon: While other nations indulge in
     this kind of practice with great satisfaction, many Lebanese find
     it ridiculous, one of the many reminders of Syriaâs nefarious
     influence...

     ...Before visiting Lebanon, I never quite understood the phenomenon
     in which so many people I know and like visited the country and
     quickly formed intense bonds of affection for it. But when it came
     time to return to its southern neighbor, I found myself in sympathy
     with this infatuation; for me, it involved an admiration for the
     patriotism, determination, and physical bravery of the Lebanese who
     obdurately refuse to be ruled by foreign powers and Islamists. I
     met many Lebanese whose talent and ambition could have brought them
     to the United States or any number of other safe and prosperous
     countries. But in Lebanon, they are members of a remnant that
     prefers to stay and fight -- and they deserve recognition and
     support from every country that identifies with the cause of the
     West.

     When I left the Beirut throng to set out for Rafik Al-Hariri
     International Airport, the taxi driver took me through the
     Hezbollah-saturated southern suburbs, and along the main
     north-south highway. Beirut was still simmering with protesters,
     and their downtown ranks were being enlarged with freshly imported
     agitators. The northbound side of the highway was congested with
     buses and pickup trucks overflowing with Hezbollah sympathizers,
     most of them the ignorant, paid-off dupes of cynical men who act as
     local marionettes and cash distributors for Iran. It will be a
     wonderful day when this menace is gone and an Israeli passport is
     no barrier to Lebanonâs sunny shores.

   He also notes that..

     In the 1980s, a Lebanese Christian leader declared that "the
     Western world should either defend us, or change its name." Israel
     is a member in high standing of the Western world, and should not
     exempt itself from sympathizing with such pleas...

   According to [2]Victor Davis Hanson, parts of the Western world will
   always try to exempt themselves from these pleas because the Western
   world has indeed changed its name. It's now the "Post West", a place
   populated by leaders who relentlessly choose the path of least
   resistance.

   According to VDH, [3]the civilization that would defend democracy in
   Lebaon lives only in dreams:

     I recently had a dream that British marines fought back, like their
     forefathers of old, against criminals and pirates. When taken
     captive, they proved defiant in their silence. When released, they
     talked to the tabloids with restraint and dignity, and accepted no
     recompense...

     In this apparition of mine, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in
     Syria at the time, would lecture the Assad regime that there would
     be consequences to its serial murdering of democratic reformers in
     Lebanon, to fomenting war with Israel by means of its surrogates,
     and to sending terrorists to destroy the nascent constitutional
     government in Iraq.

     She would add that the United States could never be friends with an
     illegitimate dictatorship that does its best to destroy the only
     three democracies in the region. And then our speaker would explain
     to Iran that a U.S. Congresswoman would never detour to Tehran to
     dialogue with a renegade government that had utterly ignored U.N.
     non-proliferation mandates and daily had the blood of Americans on
     its hands.

   The behavior that Pollak and Hanson describe wouldn't, in a rational,
   civilized world, be the stuff of dreams. The fact that their imaginary
   principled West constrasts so starkly with the reality makes one
   wonder what kind of civilization we're living in lately.

   A few weeks ago, I was watching an original series Star Trek episode,
   [4]"Space Seed", which origianlly aired in 1967. The vision of the
   future in "Space Seed" assumed that by the 1990âs we would:
    1. Have a reasonable space program
    2. Have lived through a eugenics war
    3. Have lived through a nuclear holocaust
    4. ...and an attempt by Ricardo Montalban to take over the world.

   From what I've seen of science fiction from â60âs, (and I've seen a
   fair amount) I'd guess that most people assumed that weâd be living in
   some sort of nuclear-wasted mutant-populated dystopia by now.

   It's kind of funny to see how they got it wrong, but it's not funny to
   see that they may have gotten some things right. In 1967, would we
   have called an attempt to dialogue with fascists 'realism'? Back then,
   would Pollak and Hanson's dreams stand in such contrast to a reality
   where [5]reporters demand the right to be biased, where [6]soldiers
   are not allowed to fight, where politicians will court fascists as a
   way of proving their 'courage' [7]to the folks back home? Who would
   have imagined that we would respond to the unprovoked act of war that
   was 9/11 with a whine of [8]'why do they hate us'? What kind of West
   is this, anyway?

   As dystopias go, the Post-West is more subtle than the ones envisioned
   back in the '60's, but let's face it - things have changed, and in
   many ways not for the better.

References

   1. http://www.azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=373
   2. http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson041307.html
   3. http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson041307.html
   4. http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/episode/68708.html
   5. http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2007/04/no-dial-tone.html
   6. http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2007/04/why-we-flight.html
   7. http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/2007/04/pelosi_in_syria/
   8. http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0927/p1s1-wogi.html