Newsletter: October, 02

Table of Contents:

[The Will to Defence] [A Chorus of Squeaking Eunuchs] [Israel: A Reality Check] [IAnother Remembrance of War] [Voices of Freedom]

Editor’s Remarks

Once again, as it does every time conflict looms up in our future, the old debate begins anew. We are confronted with Islamic Fundamentalism, and those who have studied the phenomenon closely are united in providing clear and lucid warnings as to the severity of this threat. Also, an American-led Coalition will soon be at war with Iraq, quite probably before the close of 2002.

Islamic Fundamentalism is an ideological foe lodged within the confines of an entire faith and a civilization; and is extremely difficult to come to address under any circumstances. The Iraqi threat, while less of a direct challenge (for now), involves a brutal and ugly dictatorship that makes no secret of its intentions.

What is predictable is how our public debate has shaken out. On the one side, our liberals — believing as they always do in the perfectibility of man; on the other, our conservatives — trusting as they always have in experience, instinct and history. One side preaches engagement, hoping to reach out and reason with evil and change its nature; the other side knows that evil must be confronted and beaten down.

The liberals are responsible for much of Western progress and the creative tension between the two positions is responsible for even more. But at some times it is imperative to listen to our conservative instincts — and such a time has come again.

Civilizations and the cultures that shape and define them are fragile. They must be safely transmitted to every new generation. Their institutions and habits must remain robust, flexible and attractive enough to secure both survival and continuing adherence. If this fails, then everything that a civilization or culture has done is at risk.

There have been dozens of civilizations in history. Some have been able to reinvent and retransmit themselves and some have collapsed utterly with little to show but some picturesque ruins and the odd documentary on the Discovery Channel. Cultures are even less survivable and many have vanished altogether — often because they simply were not viable.

There has been no more robust or exuberant civilization that that of the Western World. From its roots in Classical Greece and Rome, through its tenuous transmission to the successor kingdoms of erstwhile barbarians, then the growing confidence of the Medieval Ages and on into its expansion over much of the globe, the Western World has a set of characteristics that have allowed the more dynamic cultures within it to thrive.

These characteristics include concepts of individual freedom, the rule of law, civic responsibility, rationalism, free inquiry, a tradition of pluralism, property rights, technological innovation and an acute dislike of absolute authority. These have lead to formidable accomplishments: Diseases have been beaten, slavery driven back into the darkness; women have become emancipated; and even our poor live better lives than almost every human being who ever came before them. We have walked on the moon, gazed at the edge of the Universe and are examining the very building blocks of life and all matter itself.

All of these magnificent deeds and discoveries shall be nothing if the Western world lacks the will to defend itself. There are disturbing signs that the will to defence, even the will to survive, is weak or absent. The reluctance of many citizens for defence (let alone for stability abroad) has been most evident with the widespread disapproval for action against Saddam Hussein.

Sundry critics keep droning on about the need for the United States (whose government seems almost alone in being willing to take up arms for the common good) to make a better "case" against the Desert Despot of Baghdad — which means that none of these critics has been listening at all for the last 20 years. Since 1979, Saddam Hussein has been largely responsible for the deaths of a million people through government terror, two wars of aggression against neighboring states, depraved indifference towards the needs of his own people and the savage suppression of restless communities within Iraq.

A century ago, such behaviors would have prompted an invasion by Western troops — one of the main impulses behind 19^th Century Imperialism was a humanitarian desire to see most people freed from such bestiality. Nowadays, we pay little heed to massacre unless — heaven forbid — Western troops use violence to prevent worse bloodshed. Our contemporary inverted ethics somehow mean more excited commentary results from the accidental death of ten civilians by a Western missile, than from the murder of tens of thousands of civilians by their own government.

In the 20^th Century we have unfortunately learned to tolerate mass murder elsewhere so long as it doesn’t represent a direct threat to our own societies. Today’s problem is apathy towards our own protection — as attitudes about Iraq (which is a danger to the peace of the world and even to our own lives) clearly demonstrate.

The evidence about Saddam Hussein’s interest in weapons of mass destruction is clear and unequivocal. He has made them and used them — Iranian soldiers were sprayed with mustard gas and nerve agents in the 1980-88 Gulf War and unruly Kurdish communities were gassed. The attack on the Iraqi-Kurdish town of Halabja was particularly ghastly — the town was first sprayed with mustard gas and nerve gas to kill anyone in the open and to drive the citizens into cellars and shelters; where they were subsequently inundated with other gases designed to seep into sheltered areas below ground level. The photographs taken in the stricken town a couple of days later show the corpses of women and children wrenched by the convulsions of their dying agonies with their clothing splattered by the vomit and feces induced by the nausea of terminal nerve gas poisoning. Must we wait to see women and children on our own streets so stricken?

UN weapons inspectors found ample evidence that Saddam’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities were far advanced. They did manage to find and destroy much of his material abilities to produce these weapons — but materials can be readily replaced once the basic scientific and technological knowledge behind such weapons is established. Hussein’s scientists are more than capable, they have rapidly passed from the simple nerve gases like Sarin and Tabun to producing VX, and there is no doubt that similar progress has been made in the production of biological agents. Moreover, the UN Inspectors made it clear that considerable quantities of stocks had been kept hidden from them. Iraq has made weapons of mass destruction, can make more in the future, and is probably making them now.

Those who refuse their support for military action against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq tend to press for the primacy of the United Nations in settling international disputes — a noble idea to be sure. However, Saddam Hussein has repeatedly flouted the UN Resolutions that demanded he change his behavior. He has long since called the UN’s bluff. Moreover, it has long been clearly evident that he only reacts to the use of force — his standard reaction to a threat of force is to push back hard enough to see if the threat has resolve behind it. For those who hope (despite what must be so much bitter disappointment) that the UN can operate efficiently against threats to the World’s peace must surely see that, if the UN is to amount to anything, it must be ready to resort to immediate, firm and effective force against the Tyrant from Tikrit.

Critics of the American President’s intentions declare that there is no clear proof that Saddam Hussein supports terrorism. Truly there are none so blind as those who cannot see. Saddam Hussein was a terrorist in his own youth — once being injured while attempting an assassination -- and served his apprenticeship in the Baath Party he now controls by using torture and murder against its own dissenting members. He has sent his agents abroad to murder exiles in different countries. At times, Baghdad has hosted the Abu Nidal Organization, and Abu Abbas’ Palestine Liberation Front. It still provides shelter and training for the Mujahedin-e-Khalq.

In more recent days, there have been reports from the Kurds (underscored by footage from a BBC camera man) that Al-Qaeda operatives cooperate with Iraqi paramilitaries. Saddam Hussein also provides substantial financial rewards (about $15,000 US) to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers — as opposed to the more paltry awards of a thousand dollars or so provided by the PLO. Finally, the American National Security Advisor has confirmed that the Iraqis helped provide chemical and biological weapons training to Al-Qaeda in their Afghan sanctuaries.

When it comes to dealing with Saddam Hussein, casus belli has been established, and it will be a Just War in the long-standing traditions of the Western World. A refusal to operate against him is to imply that the people of Iraq deserve the tyranny he has imposed on them, and to hope that passivity and good luck will somehow limit the growing risk of terrorism with chemical and biological weapons.

The refusal to act is also tantamount to that most fatal of sins a culture or civilization can commit — the refusal to defend itself and protect its members. Failing to do so endangers every legacy of that society and makes them meaningless. Let us avoid making it.

You can’t keep a good man down; nor a bad one either. In a season of impending war during a time when it is obvious that evil must be confronted, it was inevitable that Western pacifist sentiments would lurch back into public view.

As a showdown with the tyrant of Iraq looms near; it was only a matter of time before the usual ill-informed luminaries came out to tell us that war is immoral, our cause is unjust, and our purposes are ill-conceived. Pierre Burton, June Callwood, Margaret Atwood, Svend Robinson and a galaxy of other "progressives" are behind this latest effort in Canada. A similar chorus has appeared elsewhere.

It is difficult to think of any intellectual movement that has been more muddled and more wrong than Western pacifism. Look at the record.

During the American Civil War, "Peace Democrats" denounced the war, declared the South was unbeatable and urged the United States to accept the existence of an Independent Confederacy. Fortunately for America (and all of humanity), Abraham Lincoln was a man of rare vision, strong principles and a better sense of what was possible than his critics.

In the 1930s, Pacifists urged policies of appeasement with Hitler and passed declarations that it was immoral to fight in self-defence. Their views held wide currency in Britain and France; whose subsequent infirmity in confronting the Nazi leader’s bullying let Hitler get away with murder and only increased his contempt for the Western democracies. After the war it became clear that — had he been resolutely opposed when re-occupying the Rhineland, when moving into Austria, or when menacing Czechoslovakia, Hitler would have backed down.

Once the Second World War began, it also says much that Western Communist Parties continued to denounce the Allied war effort… right up until the Germans invaded the USSR.

That strange linkage between Pacifism and the Soviets would pop up after World War Two; when Moscow’s truculence initiated the Cold War. A dual standard rapidly emerged as Western actions (like creating defensive Alliances or deploying new weapons) were judged far more harshly than Soviet actions — when such were considered at all.

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, many details have emerged about Soviet use of front groups like the World Peace Council -- whose leader, Romesh Chandra, always denied Soviet influence and funding until 1989, when it turned out as much as 90% of its funding came from Moscow. The WPC and other fronts were coupled with KGB support for many national "Peace Movements". Naturally, various national Communist Parties also ensured there were many voices in the Movement to promote nothing but one-sided perspectives. The majority of Pacifists, naïve to the last, followed along obligingly. With a 50-year record of playing patsy for a murderous foreign power, it would be a mistake to ever trust their impartiality.

The Peace Movement also insisted "the violence would end" in Vietnam as soon as the Americans left. Actually, the pace of killing accelerated to nightmarish levels after the US pullout — when the ideologues of North Vietnam and Cambodia could finally impose their unchallenged will on the peoples of the region. The Americans were only responsible for a fraction of the 5 million deaths in the region; and the murderous impulses of the local ideologues appeared long before the first US troops showed up.

Not undaunted by their uncontested series of errors, the Peace Movement insisted that the Western Arms buildup of the 1980s would lead to a Nuclear Arms Race (forgetting that this had already peaked in the early 60s and that stockpiles were dwindling since the Cuban Missile Crisis). They also insisted that the West was wrong to "provoke" the Soviets by meeting the latter’s massive conventional arms build-up that had begun in the 1970s. What actually happened was that the Soviets were deterred from acting aggressively as their Empire crashed, and the Western powers developed a military -- armed with weaponry that supposedly wouldn’t work anyway -- that crushed an Iraqi military trained and armed on Soviet lines.

Oh, and Western Pacifists also opposed the 1991 Gulf War. They said that the Gulf War was immoral (remember the slogan "No Blood for Oil"); bound to cause tens of thousands of Allied casualties; and that it would be best to use sanctions and diplomacy with Saddam Hussein. Lest we forget, many of the same voices urged restraint with the Taliban in Afghanistan last year, and with Milosevic before that.

The one time a strong Western Pacifist movement would have been useful in opposing a war, they were too busy backing it. A vast majority of the socialists and chattering classes who usually back the movement were patriotically cheering the troops onwards to immolation in the trenches in 1914. Only a tiny handful — like Bertrand Russell — actively opposed the war in its earliest days.

As Western Pacifists resurface in 2002 to oppose the war with Iraq; they do so with all their usual characteristics intact. They see self-defence as immoral; hold double standards of right and wrong; and refuse to let the facts interfere with their own notions of morality. But, with such a glorious record of error, at least they can take comfort that their Olympian ideals mean they never have to say they were wrong — or sorry.

Israel has come in for severe and largely unwarranted criticism in recent months — and as ever, American Liberals have sought to use the investment portfolios of their nation’s most prestigious universities as a forum for both criticism and to injure states that have aroused their highly selective wrath through the tactic of disinvestment. The attempt to disinvest Harvard’s holdings in Israel brought this response from the prominent American legalist, Alan Dershowitz. It is reprinted here in full.

A Challenge to Professor Hanson

By Alan M. Dershowitz

The Harvard Crimson September 25, 2002

In my 38 years of teaching at Harvard Law School, I don't recall ever writing in praise of any action by a Harvard president, but this time I must congratulate President Lawrence H. Summers for his willingness to say out loud what many of us in the Harvard community have long believed: namely, that singling out Israel, among all the countries in the world, for divestment, is an action which is anti-Semitic in effect, if not in intent.

A recent open letter by one of the signatories made it clear that he regards Israel as the "pariah" state, a word historically used by anti-Semites to characterize the Jewish people.

As an advocate and practitioner of human rights throughout the world, I can confidently assert that Israel's record on human rights is among the best, especially among nations that have confronted comparable threats. Though far from perfect, Israel has shown extraordinary concern for avoiding civilian casualties in its half-century effort to protect its civilians from terrorism. Jordan killed more Palestinians in a single month than Israel has between 1948 and the present.

Israel has the only independent judiciary in the entire Middle East. Its Supreme Court, one of the most highly regarded in the world, is the only court in the Middle East from which an Arab or a Muslim can expect justice, as many have found in winning dozens of victories against the Israeli government, the Israeli military and individual Israeli citizens. There is no more important component in the protection of human rights and civil liberties than an independent judiciary willing to stand up to its own government. I challenge the proponents of divestment to name a court in any Arab or Muslim country that is comparable to the Israeli Supreme Court.

Israel is the only country in the region that has virtually unlimited freedom of speech. Any person in Israel, whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian can criticize the Israeli government and its leaders. No citizen of any other Middle Eastern or Muslim state can do that without fear of imprisonment or death.

Israel is the only country that has openly confronted the difficult issue of protecting the civil liberties of the ticking bomb terrorist. The Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled that despite the potential benefits of employing non-lethal torture to extract information, the tactic is illegal. Brutal torture, including lethal torture, is commonplace in nearly every other Middle Eastern and Muslim country. Indeed, American authorities sometimes send suspects to Egypt, Jordan and the Philippines precisely because they know that they will be tortured in those countries.

Nor is Israel the only country that is occupying lands claimed by others. China, Russia, Turkey, Iraq, Spain, France and numerous other countries control not only land, but people who seek independence. Indeed, among these countries Israel is the only one that has offered statehood, first in 1948 when the Palestinians rejected the UN partition which would have given them a large, independent state and chose instead to invade Israel. Again in the year 2000 Palestinians were offered a state, rejected it and employed terrorism.

There are, of course, difficult issues to be resolved in the Middle East. These include the future of the settlements, the establishment of Palestinian self-governance and the prevention of terrorism. These issues will require compromise on all sides. Members of the Harvard community must be free to criticize Israel when they disagree with its policies or actions, as they criticize any other country in the world whose record is not perfect. But to single out the Jewish state of Israel, as if it were the worst human rights offender, is bigotry pure and simple. It would be comparable to singling out a black nation for de-legitimation without mentioning worse abuses by white nations. Those who sign the divestment petition should be ashamed of themselves. If they are not, it is up to others to shame them.

Among those who signed this immoral petition was Winthrop House Master Paul Hanson.

I wrote to Prof. Hanson challenging him to debate me in the Common Room of Winthrop House about his decision to sign the petition. He refused, citing "other priorities." I can imagine few priorities more pressing than to justify to his students why he is willing to single out Israel for special criticism. Accordingly, I hereby request an invitation from the students of Winthrop House to conduct such a debate, either with Hanson present or with an empty chair on which the petition which he signed would be featured.

Universities should encourage widespread debate and discussion about divisive and controversial issues. A House master who peremptorily signs a petition and then hides behind "other priorities" does not serve the interests of dialogue and education. I hope that Hanson will accept my challenge, and that if he does not, that I will be invited by his students to help fill the educational gap left by the cowardice of those who have signed this petition and refuse to defend their actions in public debate.

Let me propose an alternative to singling out Israel for divestment: let Harvard choose nations for investment in the order of the human rights records. If that were done, investment in Israel would increase dramatically, while investments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Philippines, Indonesia, the Palestinian Authority and most other countries of the world would decrease markedly.

Nobody needs the Peace Movement to tell them that war can be a foul business. It is something most of us suspect and some people know full well. The departure point between reality and the peace movements is the recognition that the scourge of war will come sometimes, and when it does it must be fought. Those who go to hazard their own bodies to protect the rest of us against the desolation of war might not return, or else return changed.

In 1939, the author’s father had two older brothers. Chuck was already in the Royal Canadian Air Force, flying on maritime reconnaissance aircraft out of Halifax. He spent the next six years alternating between active operational tours looking for U-Boats over the Atlantic and helping to train wireless air-gunners in Canada. Pat joined the Canadian Army in 1942 and was an infantryman in the 3^rd Canadian Division. (My father also volunteered, but was too young to be sent overseas until May of 1945).

Pat beat the harsh actuarial tables for Canadian infantrymen who fought in Italy and Northwest Europe. While we tend to remember the slaughter of the First World War, the long-term survival rates for Second World War infantry were worse. My uncle beat the odds by living through the 11 months from D-Day to VE-Day. He should have been killed or badly wounded but somehow came though it all without even a scratch from months in combat.

However, the war did change him and only his brothers learned the details of some of his experiences. Some things couldn’t be hidden. A summer storm could catapult Pat out of bed in a screaming fit — the thunder and lighting having brought him back to some place that his mind probably wouldn’t return to on a voluntary basis. Raised in teetotal family, he was known to sometimes hit the bottle hard for much of the rest of his life.

There was only one detailed story that he told his brothers about his experiences.

After living through some weeks after D-Day as a rifleman in Normandy, he had been brought back to slightly safer existence as a Jeep driver with his Battalion Headquarters. It was in this role that he went through the rest of the war.

During the Rhineland Campaign of February and March 1945, the Third Division became known as the "Water Rats" for slogging through the flooded fields on the banks of the Rhine itself during the offensive against Hitler’s last intact defensive belt in the West. There was deep cold mud everywhere and most of the buildings and trees had been shattered by the incredible amount of shells pumped out during the battle. The few roads and tracks among the farms and villages had been mined or heavily cratered, so many improvised routes were being used.

The Germans were fighting as hard as they usually did; and their morale had yet to crack. Moreover, their holdings in the Rhineland had to be defended to keep the Allies from crossing the Rhine and flowing across Germany itself; so they only gave ground with considerable reluctance and their defences were constructed with all the deadly cunning they could muster. As a result, Allied casualty rates were soaring.

Pat was coming back from a rifle company, making a run for the Battalion Aid Station. He had three wounded Canadians in the back of his jeep and the passenger seat. During such runs, a stretcher might be strapped across the hood of the vehicle; there was this time. The occupant was a young badly wounded German Fallschirmjaeger (a Paratrooper — usually used as elite assault troops at this stage of the war and frequently inserted in whatever sector the Canadians were on).

The German had been shot in the pelvis. This is an excruciating place to be wounded and the one shot of morphine given to most wounded men is not have enough to still the pain in such cases. (Giving more than one dose of morphine before treatment is dangerous, regardless of the nature of the wound). As the jeep swayed, bumped and lurched its way to the rear, every violent movement of the vehicle caused him to scream aloud in agony. It was a rough route but there was no other way back.

The jeep came to a halt, and the wounded German could hear Pat releasing the American carbine he kept clipped above the dash; then he heard the sound of a round being chambered.

As the memoirs of so many soldiers from almost all armies indicate, the survival of prisoners can be an iffy proposition in the immediate aftermath of their capture — assuming the surrender offer had been accepted in the first place. Generally, the further removed he is from the moment of captivity the safer a prisoner is, but a host of minor considerations may see a prisoner get shot out of hand until he is well to the rear.

All soldiers know that this happens, and the wounded German guessed that his screaming and moaning had made him an ‘inconvenience’, and that he would be shot and dumped out of the stretcher. He closed his eyes and bit his lip in concentration and fear, trying to avoid making any further noise.

The shots must have come as a surprise, and the German looked over to see that Pat had come across a trio of cattle that had been wandering loose across the battlefield, but had been mutilated by an artillery shell beside the jeep track. They were dying anyway, but it would probably take a hellish long time. My uncle put them out of their misery.

Anybody who has ever had to do such a thing will come back with a look that matches the complex of different emotions that accompany such an act — self-disgust, fury at the world for being so cruel and pity all in one. The German had opened his eyes when the shots fired, had looked over and saw it all.

As my uncle climbed back into his jeep, the badly wounded German paratrooper caught his eyes and gave him a look of clear sympathy. He then said "Das is gut, das war gut, Kanadier" [Roughly: That is good, that was good, Canadian.] Then the nightmare journey to the Aid Station resumed.

My uncle Pat is dead now, after a long episode of Alzheimer’s. I don’t know if he talked much about the war with his own children, but they could probably piece together the effects of his wartime experiences on their own. One of them served in the military in his time too, and might have been told more details by his father. My father also told me the story after I had elected to enroll in the Canadian Forces.

As for the German, he made it back to the Battalion Aid Station alive, and once inserted into the casualty stream it is extremely likely that he survived and eventually returned home. If still alive, he would be in his mid-70s, probably with nightmares that he still has to suppress and an ache in his hips on cold damp days.

The German might have also told the same story about a shared moment of sympathy and understanding in the middle of an ugly arena of pain and misery. Herein lies the very essence of war, and those who have been there don’t need to be told that it is terrible. Would that it was not sometimes necessary.

"There is the moral of all human tales:
‘Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,
First Freedom, and then Glory — and when that fails,
Wealth–Vice–Corruption–Barbarism at last."

-- Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

"The true test of civilization is … the kind of man the country turns out."

"The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is that they are wholly without reverence toward the present. They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and wreck both: hence their recklessness and their will to chaos and anarchy. They also crave to dissolve their spoiled, meaningless lives in some soul-stirring spectacular communal undertaking — hence their proclivity for united action.

-- Eric Hoffer; The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: institute@mackenzieinstitute.com

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