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1985, Sting came out with his debut solo album. The first single
was a tendentious bit of peacenikery called "Russians."
It made a splash among people who wanted to be clever by asking
the question: "Do the Russians love their children too?"
Of course,
the answer was "yes," for Sting. And, therefore, the nuclear-arms
race made no sense. If you don't remember this insipid prattle designed
to make nervous schoolgirls wear serious frowns in social-studies
class, here's one stanza almost at random:
How can I
save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy
There is no monopoly of common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too
Anyway, there's
little point to dwelling on this song and its message for too long,
since they really aren't the point of this column. But, this song
was widely praised as a profound and deep insight into the futility
of the Cold War. So it's worth noting that the phrase, "We
share the same biology / Regardless of ideology" artfully crams
more bad arguments and moral obscenities into a single sentence
than many people have been able to stuff into whole books. Though,
in its defense, it does rhyme.
Noting that
we're all human beings can be worthwhile, but it can also be a verbal
white flag for abject moral surrender. Put another way: All the
great political and moral conflicts have been between human beings.
To date, civilization's greatest battles — rhetorical or otherwise
— have not been with Styrofoam, dog hair, gerbils, or toe jam.
Nazis are human beings. Murderers and pedophiles are human beings.
To say that humanity somehow exonerates rather than confers accountability
is to say that humanity is in fact meaningless. Joe Blow killed
a child? Well, he's just a human being — cut him some slack.
Sure, Jack the Ripper was a rough chap, but he was a carbon-based
life form…
The reason
ideology is more relevant than biology is that it is ideology which
separates us — and for good reason. The average Russian parent
may well have loved his or her children too. But the Soviet state
did not consider parents to be a particularly significant social
or political institution.
Consider, for
example, "Hero-Pioneer of the Soviet Union Number 001."
That was the
official honorific conferred on the Soviet Union's most famous martyr,
Pavlik
Morozov. When Young Pavlik discovered that his dad was taking
bribes to allow "kulaks" to flee inevitable execution,
he informed the secret police and his father was predictably arrested
and "disappeared." According to the legend — though
not necessarily the facts — Pavlik was later killed by angry
(and, no doubt, greedy capitalist) relatives. He became the Soviet
state's greatest "martyr to the revolution." Statues of the boy-informant were built throughout the Soviet Union. Schools and libraries proudly carried his name. He was the most famous and most officially
revered role model in the evil empire. Ideology matters.
Do
the Muslims Love their Children Too?
I confess,
I do not want to write anything even remotely derogatory —
or anything that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as derogatory
— about Muslims right now. I'm still receiving death threats,
hate mail, and generalized criticism almost entirely from very angry
Muslims who believe that NRO recently advocated "nuking Mecca."
We didn't. Rich Lowry didn't. The whole thing was a sad — and,
in some cases, very deliberate — misunderstanding. I'm sorry
it happened, but I won't apologize in response to a false accusation.
All of the notwithstanding, I think it's a question worth asking: Do the Muslims love their children too?
I read over
the weekend a
story about a fire in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi religious, or
"mutaween," police (known officially as the Commission
for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) prevented firemen
from rescuing schoolgirls from a burning building. The mutaween
didn't want the girls to be seen in public without their robes and
scarves. Rather than have that happen, they kept the school's gates
locked so the girls could not escape. They beat children who were
running for their lives. Fifteen girls died in the fire.
But that's
just a small thread in the tapestry. Throughout the Middle East,
the recruitment of children for the purpose of having them commit
suicide — often specifically to kill other children —
is wildly popular. It's not just the 70 percent of Palestinians
who tell pollsters they approve of suicide bombings. This practice
is supported throughout the region. In Beirut, banners bearing the
images of child suicides are hung from lampposts. The parents of
the "martyred" are treated as heroes and minor celebrities.
They tell the state-run newscasters how proud and happy they are
when their kids blow themselves up at restaurants, discos, bar mitzvahs,
or on buses, killing women and children. And it is not just Israel
— though that should be enough. The Sept. 11 hijackers were
suicide bombers. Osama bin Laden used suicide bombers to kill enemies
inside Afghanistan.
Indeed, Saudi
Arabia has been supporting this fanaticism in much the same way
the Soviets supported its own zealots. Afghanistan under the Taliban
was no less a Saudi satellite than Cuba was a Soviet one. Around
the world, thanks largely to the Saudis, young men are being taught
that they will find paradise by exploding in close proximity to
Christians and Jews.
So rare is
such fanaticism in the story of humanity that the United States
needed to junk centuries worth of military doctrine that had been
based upon the basic assumption that most soldiers want to survive
their missions, and that most civilizations do not idealize the
self-destruction of their own children — especially for the
sake of killing other children.
This is not
purely religious fanaticism anymore. Women are now becoming suicide
bombers (which makes sense, if you think it's better to let them
burn in a fire than have men see their kneecaps or foreheads). Relatively
secular Palestinian terrorist cadres are getting into the act. Martyrs
in the cult of death are glorified in murals on almost every street
— more than even Pavlik Morozov was under Stalin.
Where does
this all come from? Obviously there are many — and often contradictory
— answers. Sexual frustration married to economic hopelessness
has made men of all religions do crazy things since the dawn of
mankind (David Gelernter has just written a
brilliant essay on this point). The humiliation, anger, and
shame that follow when a once glorious civilization is hobbled by
corruption and brutality are obviously part of the mix too.
And, no doubt,
the existence of Israel at least exacerbates all of these problems.
It is no less true for being a cliché that Arab states have
used Israel — and Israel's success — as a scapegoat for
their own failures. Indeed, I now see Israel as akin to being the
Confederate flag of the Middle East. Attempts by civil-rights groups
to get rid of the Confederate flag may or may not have merit, depending
on the context. That's a different argument.
But there's
no disputing that such fights are a colossal waste of black folks'
energy and resources on a purely symbolic issue. No black single
mother will be in a better position to take care of her kids or
keep them out of trouble because the Confederate flag has been interred
forever. Similarly, no stagnant and repressive Middle Eastern regime
would be any better off if Israel were to be eliminated tomorrow.
In fact, Israel
could be an economic lifeline for the region. According to the World
Bank, if you subtract oil, the total exports of the Arab world —
i.e., all of North Africa and the Middle East, minus Israel —
amount to less than those of Finland: a country of five million
inhabitants, or less than one 50th of the Arab world's population.
But none of
this matters. Of course Muslims, as a generic category, love
their children too. Of course "We share the same biology
/ Regardless of ideology." But that gets us nowhere. We are
not threatened by anyone's biology. We are, however, threatened
by an ideology which is running rampant in the Arab world and which,
like that of the Soviets, radically differs from our own. It glorifies
death and rewards the taking of innocent life. If you don't feel
strongly enough about your own value system to "judge"
this opposing view, that's fine. But you are either a coward or
a fool.
It is that
ideology we must confront. I take Muslims at their word that this
ideology — radical Islam, extreme Wahhabism, whatever the best
term for it is — is held by only a small minority of the Islamic
community, especially here in the States. But that, too, gets us
nowhere if the majority of Muslims aren't willing to do what needs
to be done to fight the minority.
The central
moral lesson of human history is that merely having goodwill is
meaningless if you won't act on it. Who cares if it's only a minority
of Muslims who are pushing this death cult — if that minority
is the one wielding the power, bullying those of goodwill, and locking
the gates on burning schoolgirls?
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