the red pages

i am not a multiculturalist.

I don't believe that all cultures are equal: some are better than others, and I'm not ashamed to say I think so. Some cultures are backwards, murderous, or self-destructive. It happens. I know it, and I think anyone who refuses, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the fact is naïve, ignorant, stupid, or some combination of the three.

I look at many forms of radical Islam, I see religious extremists of a very familiar sort. I see the KKK and Elijah Mohammed's Nation of Islam. I see very dangerous people who want to kill me for a narrow spectrum of perfectly absurd reasons. Multiculturalism doesn't excuse it. These people are a problem that must be dealt with.

And yet: I disagree with those who are saying that George W. Bush is the best choice for the United States presidency. I disagree with those who supported the invasion of Iraq. I disagree with those who see Israel as the helpless victim of Arab xenophobia, and I disagree with people who think the best solution to the problems the United States faces in the Middle East is a military solution.

The difference, I daresay, between myself and many others who hold similar views is twofold.

One, the notion that people who have never met me would want to kill me because of the color of my skin, or the dominant religion of my country or what have you, is not a novel one to me. I was raised to hate Black people and Asians; to see them as competitors for jobs and housing. I was raised to believe they were inferior, and that their anger toward European Americans was the jealousy of an inferior race, directed at their betters.

As a teenager I abandoned those prejudices and exchanged them for one that seemed more relevant to my personal experience; a powerful class hatred, aimed at the rich. I read books written by various class warriors and political revolutionaries, to see what had been tried-- what worked and what didn't and why. After a couple of years of that kind of thing, I was constantly aware of the antagonism that hums just under the surface of most human interaction, and just how easy it would be to set the whole thing off.

Given all this, the events of September 11, 2001, didn't surprise me a bit. And this is not to say that I was one of those, "American had it coming," people. I did think America had it coming, but not in the way most people mean that. I didn't think America had it coming for being racially or economically insensitive. I didn't think American had it coming because the United States is a "bad" country, or any such similar drekh. I thought America had it coming for having a foolish, short-sighted foreign policy that relied on military superiority to protect its borders. I thought America had it coming for pissing off all the wrong people, and assuming that our big guns and our nuclear arsenal would keep us safe. I thought America had it coming for tempting fate. For walking around with a big hammer and treating every foreign-policy problem like a nail.

Because it wasn't the FBI that eliminated the threat of the Nation of Islam; it was the Civil Rights Act. Likewise foreign threats to America's national security; the most effective way to circumvent those threats is to co-opt them. That's just simple pragmatism, and the United States has been trading pragmatism for elitism and expediency for far too long.

Two, I am not an essentialist. Arabs invented zero. The Chinese invented gunpowder. The Egyptians had brain surgery and surgical techniques for pinning broken bones back together. There was a Roman Empire and there were Dark Ages, and which parts of the Bible people choose to live by has changed from one century to the next. The moral of the story of human history is, "this too shall pass," and the constant is change. History can turn on a dime, and a hundred million people can change their minds in the time it takes to say "the Creel Commission."

The adherents of radical Islam can be turned from their course. There is no doubt in my mind that it is possible. I am absolutely convinced that it is necessary. But it's my considered opinion that the tactics currently being employed by the United States are the wrong tactics for achieving that goal. The tactics currently being used are, in point of fact, exactly the wrong tools for this job. They exacerbate the conditions that created "radical" Islam.

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I just read a very good essay by a guy named Bill Whittle, which I arrived at via a link from A Small Victory. And the thing that's interesting to me is that Mr. Whittle and I seem to be looking at the same historical evidence, drawing many of the same conclusions-- and choosing opposite sides on the matter of the war in Iraq and the decisions of the Bush administration.

Mr. Whittle talks about the Civil War, and the surrender at Appomattox; the lessons learned there, and the lessons of the Civil War. And he comes to the conclusion that the United States is doing right in the Middle East. I look at the same events and I recall, over and over again, Lincoln's advice to a Union general in regard to the conquered people of Richmond: "If I were in your place, I'd let 'em up easy, let 'em up easy." I recall that Grant let the Confederate soldiers keep their horses and weapons. I recall that Lincoln understood --better than almost anyone in the Union-- that when the war was over, North and South would have to form one country again and that taking too punitive or oppositional an attitude toward the South and her leaders would spoil the chances of a long-term Union victory.

Mr. Whittle looks at George W. Bush, and sees a kind of Lincoln. I look at George W. Bush and I remember Lincoln's appeal to the South before the war:

"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

I compare that to "bring 'em on," and I find myself feeling very grim about George W. Bush's potential as a leader for peace.

George W. Bush is the wrong guy for this job. This is not to say that John Kerry is the right guy. But he is a better guy.

And one of the many unfortunate things about the way this war is discussed in this country is how many crazy and misguided people there are on the side of "the left". When John Kerry is supported by people who compare George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler, or who claim that the Mossad staged 9/11, it's easy to take sides against him. And there's an equivalency argument there: Bush is supported by people who don't believe in evolution. But to some extent, that's irrelevant.

Bill Whittle raises an interesting point about how many people have reacted to certain obstacles in Iraq:

Only it turns out that the United States military may have produced a few life-long professionals who actually hold victory more precious than crowing loud. Many of us value reason over emotion, and reality over wishful thinking. Well, we did not level Fallujah, and we did not do it because those bodies on that bridge were bait, pure and simple. We didn’t take the bait. Or, I should say, our military didn’t take the bait; I took it, hook line and sinker. I wanted to level the goddam city and then walk away and let them kill each other.

Now, that speaks well of our military. But the fact is, I think George W. Bush is a guy who takes the bait every fucking time. And I think John Kerry is a guy who knows better.

Don't get me wrong. I think John Kerry is a douche bag. But I'm voting for him anyway, because I think he's got a better understanding of what needs to happen in Iraq than George W. Bush does. John Kerry is certainly no Abraham Lincoln. But he's a hell of a lot closer than George W. Bush.

Anyway. I need to go home now and do laundry, so I can't really go as far with this as I'd like. The point I want to make here is a comment to Mr. Whittle and, to some extent, a comment to Michele, over at ASV: not everyone who disagrees with you about George W. Bush and the war in Iraq (and Afghanistan, for that matter), is a "multi-culturalist" or a "moral relativist". We aren't being snowed by John Kerry, and we're not drinking Kool-Aid. Some of us think Michael Moore's an idiot and John Kerry's a douche bag. And yet-- some of us will still vote for Kerry because we think he's the better man for the job. Some of us still think Iraq is being mishandled. And not for any of the reasons you think are stupid (U.S. out of Iraq now!), but because on the merit of subtler points of logic (Awarding of defense contracts to Hailliburton hampers the war effort because it's terrible PR, and this is a war for hearts and minds).

It may behoove you, as intelligent people, to consider some of these points.