Tuesday 2 August 2011

Back to the Past


Writing in the Sunday Telegraph General Richard Dannatt, former Chief of the General Staff at the time of the premiership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, says, in the light of the murder of General Abdel Fattah Younes by Islamists in Libya, that “it should be a clear lesson that compromise will lead to Libya’s destruction as a unified nation and produce a situation that no one in the international community envisaged.”

I’m not a member of any community, certainly not one that would have the likes of this Gilbert and Sullivan officer in its ranks, but I envisaged alright, for all the good it did. I envisaged at the outset of this adventure, writing several articles. I take these words from Cassandra’s Lament, a piece I published in early March;

Consider what Cameron, Obama and Sarkozy have done, look at the possible outcomes. The Colonel’s offensive may be halted, frozen exactly where it is, leaving him in control of Tripoli and the west with the rebels holding on to Benghazi and the east. This may be a permanent state, with Libya hereafter a divided nation, a political fracture caused by tomahawks. I would hazard that the whole region will be destabilised as a result…

But it’s the ignorance of our great world leaders that perplexes me most, their complete incomprehension when it comes to the Arab world, the tribal nature of the Arab world, the tribal nature of places like Libya. The Colonel for all his lunacy at least gave the place unity, a sense of national identity. David Cameron says he does not want a failed pariah state on Europe’s southern flank, “potentially threatening our security, pushing people across the Mediterranean and creating a more dangerous and uncertain world for Britain and for our allies, as well as for the people of Libya.” But…a failed state is exactly what Libya is almost certain to become, one of constant civil war between competing tribes, Somalia on the Med.


Here we are, months later, no nearer to a solution. Cameron’s government has withdrawn the final traces of diplomatic legitimacy from the regime of Colonel Gaddafi, instead recognising the Transitional National Council in Benghazi as the rightful government of Libya, just at the point we have discovered that this body is backed by powerful and shadowy Islamist forces.

What solution does the former Leader of the Queen’s Army offer? Why, that we should start arming the rebels, the bombing not being enough. I now know for certainty why our military forces were handled with such stunning incompetence during the Iraq fiasco, why our army suffered one of the worst humiliations in its long and noble history. It had a man like Dannatt as its operational chief, a man who probably is not up even to polishing door handles.

So, as I predicted, NATO intervention in Libya has just led to a protracted war of attrition. It did not require any great skill or foresight on my part, just a little common sense, mixed with an understanding of history and politics, an understanding that our benighted leaders – and generals – so obviously lack.

I’ve been following the recent series in the Times on the so-called Arab Spring and the signs are all bad. Into the vacuum caused by the collapse of the old order the Islamists have been moving in slow but relentless degrees, from Tunisia to Egypt. Ancient Christian communities are under attack, threatened now even in Syria, where so many took refuge from the sectarian hell of Iraq. The rights enjoyed by women in the secular societies of the old regimes are threatened by the advance of reactionary obscurantism. It is not a happy picture.

The Arabs want freedom, yes, we all want freedom, that most precious commodity, the birthright of humanity, the birthright of the Facebook and Twitter generation. But I’m going to say this and say it without equivocation: the Arabs can die for freedom but they are not mature enough to live for freedom; they have no understanding of what freedom is, no tradition of freedom. Their idea of freedom is simply to replace one tyranny with another, the tyranny of a nepotistic minority with an intolerant majority, secular law with Sharia law.

That’s the idea of democracy one individual I debated with had, that it means the minority have to obey the majority. No, no, no and again no. That’s the antithesis of true democracy, which depends on respect for minorities, which depends on equality under the law, human law not God's law. Look always beneath the surface. The unrest across the Arab world is not the spring time of peoples; it's not 1989; it's not even 1848. At a deeper level it’s a kind of cultural counter-revolution, a march not into the future but back to the past.

14 comments:

  1. The Arabs theocratical ideology and lack of organizational skill will prevent them from having accomplished much of anything in the middle East and now they are going to make a mess of western Europe.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It appears there are no shortcuts. Democracy is only viable when a majority of individuals demand it. It must be seized, not gifted, because only then do we understand its value.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Things seem to be heading according to your prediction. I can even hear the war drums beating for Syria...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ah yes - the Rule of Law. Our law is based on a 1200-year old Anglo-Saxon structure, evolved and modified under Christianity. The Arabs have a Rule of Law based on a 1300-year old structure that has not evolved at all. Either Islam is modified or we will have to forcibly convert them all to Christianity. Or kill them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anthony, the sad thing is that they were at the forefront of civilization for so many centuries, then they went in to a kind of deep hibernation.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Calvin, I would only add that democracy is not the brutality of majorities.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Michael, a somewhat drastic solution, Kulturkampf on a global scale!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Unfortunately, that is how it often ends. America's founders tried their best to delay the descent from a representative, democratically-elected but limited, government to mob tyranny . . . but that dream has been eroded over the years. Every advance in state power is a loss for individual liberty.

    ReplyDelete
  9. "These Brittanic savages will never be able to..." - Roman official, 20 BCE.

    ReplyDelete
  10. As I am new here, I don't know to which legal system MJM refers, but some in my family were members of the Virginia House of Burgesses. OUR legal system has its basis in Mosaic law (which is 3000+ years old). A copy of the 10 Commandments hangs in a prominant place in our Supreme Court. I recently saw a very interesting BBC documentary ("History of England") that demonstrated through archeological study that the area of Yibworth, Leicestershire (sp?) has been continuously occupied for the past 2000 years, so I dare say the English legal system has roots that go farther back than 1200 years. In comparison to these, Shariah Law is a newcomer to the legal scene. BTW, Arabs do NOT need to be forced to leave Islam, many do it on their own. I am associated w/the Crescent Project, which helps many come to Christianity - they just have to be allowed to live. Whenever we meet in person, it is under the tightest security, as the converts are all under death threats. Islam (esp Wahhabi) is not a faith tolerant of dissent.

    AFB, actually, the "Arab" culture has never been at the forefront of civilization, but at the forefront of USING products raided from civilized cultures. "Arabic Numerals" were actually developed by the ancient Indians, but got this name as Westerners learned of them through Arab trade routes. Advanced mathematics (except Calculus) were developed by the Greeks, but as barbarians sacked the Western Roman Empire, the only copies of the texts to survive were in the possesion of Arabs who raided the Eastern Empire. Calculus was developed by your own Sir Isaac Newton. The most magnificent mosques (such as those in Cordoba, Spain and Istanbul, Turkey) were originally cathedrals designed and built by Christians. The Arab raiders just stripped them of their Catholic statuary and iconography, and inserted their own artwork.

    Their culture's kleptocratic/raider nature continues today. To plan or communicate their attacks, they use the Internet (originally the US DOD's ARPAnet). To pay for them, they use oil revenues produced/provided by Western Oil companies. To carry them out, they use American-built airplanes, North-Am or European made explosives and/or small arms.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Retarius, the Anglo-Saxons civilized the place. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  12. CB, thanks for your tremendous insight. The Arabs certainly acted as custodians of civilization, if you prefer, preserving the legacy of the Classical past that might otherwise have been lost.

    ReplyDelete