Some More Thoughts About The War
Patrick Harvey, April 7, 2003
On our best days, most of us try
to do "the right thing". The Japanese do "the respectable thing".
Different cultures, different ideas. But when you get right down to it, maybe
it is something we call "class".
When the Japanese airliner crashed several years ago, the owner of the airline
resigned. He felt that he had failed in his most important mission of keeping
his customers safe. That was a classy thing to do. He acted honorably.
More often than not, we see American CEOs taking more money than we think
they should, to the detriment of the company they run; or cooking the books
to make things look better. Several years ago, a local company sent out demo
products – trials – to a number of customers, Then, although it
was a 90 day trial and the company expected to convert these trials to sales,
they booked them all as sales. Things looked really good until the trial period
was up but hey – by then it was another quarter.
Many years before that, I was having a few cocktails with some friends at
a local resort. One of my friends had brought her younger sister who was 23.
It happened that there was a meeting of CEOs of a large number of companies
meeting at the resort, and those CEOs were also having cocktails. These corporate
icons (some of whom you would all know) included one or two quite married
members who worked really hard to pick up this relatively innocent 23 year
old woman, and had succeeded in getting her quite drunk. One of them was leading
her off to his room when we intervened.
I’m not saying that all CEOs are like that. In fact, I have met a large
number for whom I have the greatest respect. Warren Buffett seems to be able
to pick really good ones to run his companies. Mr. Buffett acts honorably,
in a classy manner, in his business dealings.
And, for the most part, most Americans will endeavor to "do the right
thing" given the chance (gang bangers and delinquents not withstanding).
So it was with great surprise that I read "My Jihad" by Aukai Collins.
Either all these Moslems he describes in his book are basically stupid, or
they are playing from a totally different mindset. Collins is without honor.
He enlists in a Jihad and goes to the Middle East to fight, becomes disillusioned
and returns to the USA to spy for the CIA, then returns to the Middle East
to fight for them again, then returns to the USA and tries to spy for the
CIA again! His descriptions of the fighting are remarkable in that the Mujahid
"warriors" are without honor even in how they treat each other.
His descriptions of the "training camps" are more in line with unmonitored
grade schoolers with guns and knives.
Just as the Japanese do the honorable thing, which may not be what we expect,
Moslems seem to be driven by something unfathomable to me. Where the Japanese
and most other cultures try to act in some manner which can be labeled as
"classy", these people seem to act in ways quite foreign to reasonable
expectations.
Judeo-Christian teachings are geared towards instilling behaviors in us which
can be considered as selfless and humble. These are the things which we have
come to consider as honorable and classy. So regardless of your personal religious
choice, the society in which we live today has its fundamental basis of acceptable
behavior rooted in Judeo-Christian teachings.
If Islam is an offshoot of Christianity, where do these people get the idea
that they have to kill anyone not part of their religion? How can suicide
bombings, the use of women and children as shields, and other terrorist tactics
be explained – in any context? These people with whom we are at war,
and Islamic terrorists, are without honor, and have been taught their behavior
by their religious leaders.
I used to work in technology with a Palestinian engineer. He was a very smart,
decent, hard-working man. And he was often the peacekeeper in meetings when
there were major disagreements. But mention Israel (or a number of other areas
in the Middle East) and his answer was simply "You must kill them all."
And there was no room for any other option, period. And he really believed
that.
Moslems and others in the Middle East are not stupid. The nations in that
area of the world (with a few exceptions) are impoverished (the "people"
do not benefit greatly from the oil wealth held by the ruling class) and so,
for the most part, they do not have the benefit of a good education or pleasant
living conditions.
One of the things people do when they are living in difficult times is turn
to the church. They look for strong or charismatic leadership, which will
give them hope for a better life. What we see in their behavior can be explained
in this manner. These are good people who have been "turned to the dark
side" by hard times and powerful but evil religious leaders. And they
continue to teach their children in this manner, so the cycle has not yet
been broken. Islam is so large that only a small percentage "turned to
the dark side" presents a substantial danger to the rest of the world.
The answer, then, is not just a regime change in Iraq (although that is a
good start). Since the religious and political leaders in many of the Middle
Eastern countries are the same, it may be that several regime changes will
be required to drive out all the "Darth Vaders" turning followers
to the dark side.
This war is just the latest battle between Islam and Christendom. Class and
Honor will ultimately prevail over terrorism. But the key to ultimate victory
is going to be education (undoubtedly punctuated by the occasional Daisy Cutter).
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