International Affairs: September 2007 Archives
The primary difference between enemies and opponents is that the latter need to be given a fair hearing, reasoned with, and respected, whereas the former simply need to be defeated. Failing to treat Iranian President Ahmadinejad as their enemy demonstrates that Columbia University is either delusional, misguided, or itself an enemy of America rather than just an opponent.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accepted an offer to speak next week at Columbia’s World Leaders Forum, the University announced Wednesday.The appearance of Ahmadinejad—widely criticized for espousing anti-Semitic views and condemned for apparent human rights abuses—will mark the head of state’s first-ever public engagement at a U.S. university and seems certain to fuel heated protest on and beyond Columbia’s campus.
University President Lee Bollinger announced the decision to invite the leader in a statement Wednesday evening.
“It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas, or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas,†Bollinger said. “It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible.â€
There's no doubt that Columbia doesn't "endorse" Ahmadinejad's views, but by giving him a forum they elevate him from enemy to mere opponent, which is either a grave mistake or an inadvertent revelation of Columbia's own relationship with America.
It's a serious thing to label someone or some group an enemy rather than just an opponent. I'm very much against active or passive efforts to stifle free speech by one's opponents, be they political, ideological, religious, or economic, but enemies are a different matter entirely.
Update:
Indian Chris points out that Columbia University welcomes Ahmadinejad to its campus but only begrudgingly allows American military recruiters access because of the "punitive financial coercion" of the Solomon Amendment.
Seems you can hardly turn around without reading more good news from Iraq. I love seeing the pictures.
Alan Greenspan must read Master of None because he echoes my explanation of why it's reasonable to fight over oil, specifically in Iraq. This stuff is pretty basic... countries have been fighting for access to important natural resources for as long as civilization has existed. President Bush et al. might have been wise to explain this to America rather than relying so heavily on the WMD that Saddam Hussein was very likely to have been building (but that haven't been found).
I don't see why some people -- including many conservatives and the Bush Administration -- are so reluctant to admit that the war in Iraq was partly about oil. It's a strange twist of history that the majority of the world's cheap oil sits under tyrannical, Islamofascist countries... but that's how it is.
We need oil to live, therefore we need these tyrants to be cooperative. Being a generally peace-loving people who would rather make deals than wars, we tend to do what we can to buy the oil we need. Unfortunately, the people who sell the oil are somewhat insane, unpredictable, and tend to overestimate their importance.
If there weren't oil under the Middle Eastern deserts, we wouldn't be fighting a War on Terror because the terrorists wouldn't have the resources to threaten us. They'd be living in tents in the desert, tending their camels and sheep. If we had stolen/conquered the oil fields instead of buying the oil, we'd be similarly safe. For better or for worse we didn't, so here we are.
A war for "oil" is really a war for modern life. Modern life requires energy, and right now energy requires oil. (Maybe it won't in the future, which will be great.) Oil means cars, trucks, trains, planes, electricity, plastic, rubber, lubricants, and countless other products that our civilization requires. Some might argue that our society would be better without these things, but they'd have a hard time convincing a majority of Americans.
So the war in Iraq, and the War on Terror more broadly, isn't just about oil, but it's partly about oil, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It might sound selfish, but civilizations are supposed to be selfish -- you can bet the Islamofascists are selfishly working to destroy us, and if we aren't willing to stand up for ourselves then who will?
Update:
Eric at Classical Values beat me to it. Alas, I'd echo his final thought...
I try to be patient, but reading these things makes me tend to lose all patience, because it's such a steady barrage. Writing blog posts does not make it stop. The best I can do is attempt to find humor in it.
Never forget.
A drawing by an Iraqi child illustrating the evisceration of the Al Qaeda hydra by an Iraqi sword and American muscle.
I'm astounded that American troops are just now building a military base in Iraq near the Iran border! Holy crap, shouldn't this have been done like five years ago?
BARDA, Iraq -- The Pentagon is preparing to build its first base for U.S. forces near the Iraqi-Iranian border, in a major new effort to curb the flow of advanced Iranian weaponry to Shiite militants across Iraq.The push also includes construction of fortified checkpoints on the major highways leading from the Iranian border to Baghdad and the installation of X-ray machines and explosives-detecting sensors at the only formal border crossing between Iran and Iraq.
Sounds like it's easier for the Iranians to carry weapons into Iraq than it is for me to get on a plane! Why don't we "redeploy" the bazillions of lounging TSA employees from our airports to the Iraq-Iran border?
What frustrates me most about Islam's creeping subjugation of the (classically) liberal West is our failure to recognize and confront the ongoing demographic war. We're used to winning demographic wars by default, and the shooting wars have pretty much followed suit. The West's falling birthrate and apathy towards cultural evangelism has ceded momentum to Islam, which is now in ascension despite desperate poverty, rampant nihilism, and general depravity.
Unlike shooting wars, demographic wars don't depend on maneuvering armies, vast wealth, or superior technology, which are America's strengths. After 9/11 we realized that our declared enemies were serious about destroying us, but it's taken a while to fully appreciate how crippled our culture is due to our malignant Left. We're basically incapable of waging a demographic war: we don't have many children, we aren't interested in changing other cultures to conform to ours, and we're very reluctant to even defend ourselves in the face of Islam's cultural onslaught.
For example, Saudi Arabia has built and is funding hundreds of mosques and madrasahs across America, but owning a Bible in Saudi Arabia is punishable by death. The Left preaches tolerance, but tolerance can only work when it's reciprocated -- otherwise it's a suicide pact. Our government certainly doesn't need to pay to build churches in Saudi Arabia, but it should be working furiously to get our citizens the same freedoms there that their imams have here.
America had to fight shooting battles in Afghanistan and Iraq, but that's only half the war. The other half will be fought demographically, and no matter how many shots we fire we won't win the war unless we have children and are willing to proudly spread our civilization. This is an important discussion to have, because I really want our culture to win and I feel like our leaders and elite won't even admit that we're in a fight.
