The terrible truth, a book to borrow, a Backstreet Boy, &c.

September 19, 2001 3:20 p.m.

’ve always loved the expression in vino veritas — so true. For many years, I have heard, “Oh, don’t hold me accountable for what I said [or did] last night [or whenever] — I was drunk.” I say, “Thank God for your drunkenness.” If you want to know how someone really feels about you, wait till he’s good and oiled up. The blessing of liquor is that it acts almost as a truth serum.

I thought of this following that awful Tuesday: So much of what is true, deep-seated, important to know, came out. Those who celebrated . . . really meant it. Those who recoiled and wept and ached . . . really meant it. People who were keen patriots, and really didn’t know it, discovered this about themselves. People who really, in their hearts, believe there is such a thing as civilization, and such a thing as barbarism — against all the relativists and amoralists of the age — discovered it.

And people like Susan Sontag and Michael Moore — who have always hated America and the West and freedom and democratic goodness — are clearer than ever. That’s not a bad thing.

We have glimpsed the true natures of the people around us, both at home and abroad. We have arrived at another of those “times for choosing.”

Have you heard about the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen? Well, I have always disliked his music — somewhat guiltily — but now I feel freer to do so, with much less guilt. Here is what he said after the attacks on the U.S.: “What happened there is — they all have to rearrange their brains now — the greatest work of art ever. The fact that characters can bring about in one act what we in music cannot dream of; that people practice madly for ten years, completely fanatically, for a concert and then die — that is the greatest work of the whole cosmos. I could not do that. Against that, we composers are nothing.”

Yes, you are nothing, Stockhausen — but perhaps not for the reason you believe.

What a pleasure it is to have an extra reason not to listen to Stockhausen! His friend, the pianist Maurizio Pollini, is always foisting him on us. Sorry, caro Maurizio: You look awfully impressive when you play Stockhausen with your forearms and fists, the sounds aside: but, at the moment, I am not feeling especially indulgent.

Some will, of course, throw Wagner in my face. I must say that I’ve wrestled with Wagner all of my life. I’ve often described him, in my criticism, as “that devil-angel.” Every now and then — oh, about every two months, on average — someone will ask me to give my position in the Wagner debate. I usually say, “I can give you a three-hour answer, or a 30-second one. I imagine you want the 30-second one. So here it is: Theodor Herzl, according to our friend Paul Johnson, would begin his major Zionist conferences in Europe with the playing of Wagner by a hired orchestra. Why? Well, it’s obvious, to anyone with ears and a soul: This music is transcendent, universal, divine” (selectively).

Okay, some more in vino veritas: I have written — particularly in the last few days — about my upbringing in Ann Arbor and the painful course of my political development. This brought a stream of mail from that city, all of it containing repulsive and unsurprising news.

One correspondent brought to my attention a column from The Michigan Daily, the college newspaper (of which Tom Hayden was once editor — people in Ann Arbor love to say that; they say it with pride, of course). It is a column by one of the paper’s regulars, some kid. Normally, it’s not fair to quote a kid — they don’t know anything, and they may well grow up to be embarrassed by what they once thought and did. But then, this fellow must be 20, 21 years old.

Anyway, I’ve decided not to name him, not merely to protect him, but because, really, he is Everyman at the University of Michigan, or rather, Everyidiot. There are thousands and thousands like him — and worse — among both students and faculty.

I provide this in part because it is a taste of the mental and moral atmosphere in which I grew up — and against which I kicked. As you read this, note, in particular, the words “the action taken by the terrorists on Tuesday was not completely unwarranted”:

“Even now I understand that the devastation of Tuesday marks the loss of a security and piece [sic] of mind that we — America, Americans — never deserved to have. Part of me is keeping myself from becoming too rattled, maybe too outraged, by acknowledging that the action taken by the terrorists on Tuesday was not completely unwarranted. We don’t deserve something as severe as what happened in New York and Washington. No nation, no people, does. But there was an important lesson that our nation’s leadership, and our nation’s general consciousness, needed to learn. It is that we are not immune from international scrutiny. I am not bothered by that statement’s obviousness. But it is one that everyone in this country — from President Bush to you and me — need to realize. We try to forget about the way this country behaves internationally — that we too often behave as terrorists. We are encouraged to ignore that behavior by the national media, by government propaganda, by schoolbooks and by each other. This world is not safe, and this country is certainly no exception. It wasn’t Tuesday, it isn’t today, and it won’t be in 50 years — unless things change. The laundry list of American misdoings is for another time in another column…

“If the leadership of our country has its way, a dangerous cycle will be allowed to continue. It is one in which America makes enemies abroad, via broken treaties, unattended summits and tyrannical international policing. Terrorism follows, allowing leaders to call for appropriations to “fix” our national defense. The cycle needs to end, and it ends at the beginning. Funding the military at this point is a band-aid solution to a more complex problem. The problem can be traced back to our cockiness and arrogance in international matters, and it needs to end.”

I beg you to bear in mind that — although I’ve labeled this thinking typical — this could pass for moderation, temperance, in that community. There are those who are far more hateful, whose moral idiocy is far more pronounced. I sometimes despair of telling people who are sheltered from all this what my experience at the University of Michigan was — how deep the anti-Americanism was, how burning the hatred of all things Western, liberal, and democratic. People simply have a hard time believing me, and I can hardly blame them. If I said that many, many of the students and faculty around me were rooting openly for the Communists in the Cold War — would you think that I was exaggerating, or had been exposed to the wrong crowd, a minority among good ADA liberals? If so, you’d be wrong.

Of course, all the right-thinking people say much the same thing about cheering Arabs at the moment: They are but a trifling faction, hardly representative of the population at large. Everyone, suddenly, is George Gallup. Let’s hope they are right.

The press has held back — I know this for a fact — on reporting Arab and Muslim pleasure in the United States. Stories are being spiked in the name of unity. The press — major elements of it — are afraid of stirring backlash, of being accused of fomenting “hate crimes.”

Some bits, however, are making it through. Steve Dunleavy, for example, had this to report in his paper, the New York Post: “[In Brooklyn] cops have been chasing away young men having their pictures taken while hugging each other and smiling with the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center in the background. ‘It makes you angry, but you know it’s a few crazy young guys who are not representative of the Arab-Americans . . . who are good people,’ said a cop who is a close friend of mine.” That last sentence is probably what allowed the item to appear in the first place. The cop had said, “a few crazy young guys.” The question is — and it is unanswerable, worldwide — “Define ‘few.’”

And it bears repeating that Chairman Arafat is up to his usual double game: He tells the Western press one thing, and his own people another — and the latter, of course, is far more important, the veritas of the matter. Arafat organized a little ceremony in honor of the fallen Americans — after the initial Palestinian celebrations — and he made that great, phony show of donating blood. Here, however, is what his official publication said immediately after the attacks:

“The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of their noble predecessors . . . the Lebanese suicide bombers who taught the U.S. Marines a tough lesson [in Lebanon] . . . and then with no preconditions threw the last of the remaining enemy [Israeli] soldiers out of the [security] zone. These suicide bombers are the salt of the earth, the engines of history . . . they are the most honorable among us.”

There is the veritas of Arafat and his regime. The above words were published by Martin Peretz in the magazine he runs, The New Republic (and that magazine has done a predictably magnificent job). One problem we’ve long had in this country is that no one reads the Arabic press, and the Palestinians, in particular, are masters at spinning the Western media. That’s why I despair when Americans, in their innocence, tell me such things as, “Most Palestinians, you know, just want an end to the Jewish settlements in the territories.” The Vladimir Posners of the Middle East have done their job.

How to cut through the fog of lies and get to something real? One invaluable way is through Daniel Pipes and his Middle East Forum. He actually troubles himself to be acquainted with the Arabic press. Much of what is said by Palestinian spokesmen in English, for a Western audience, is useless. Did you want to know what Arafat really thought about the Oslo “peace process,” and the use he would make of it? You should have listened to what he said to his flock in that Johannesburg mosque, not to CBS News.

Here is an additional note from Ann Arbor: The mayor organized a little hug-in or peace session or whatever, and one woman — so typical of my hometown — got up and said, “Americans need to understand that our country has been bombing innocent people for years, and in that context, what happened on Tuesday is no surprise.” The mayor went over and hugged her.

My correspondent, who was present, says, “I was disgusted and embarrassed that I did not speak up. The lesson is now crystal clear: We need to start speaking up, acting like Americans, not sheep. We need to act and speak with the moral authority that we know is correct, and it needs to start on an interpersonal level.” Yes.

By now, you may have heard of my colleague David Pryce-Jones’s book, The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs, published in the late 1980s. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the best thing written on the subject. I read it when it came out, and it hit me like a Niagara of cold water. I have not been asleep on the subject since.

The book tells searing, uncomfortable truths about the Middle East, and the author has obvious and tremendous affection for the Arab peoples, though not for those, including their intellectuals, who misrule and mislead them. The critical establishment, in the United States and Britain, did its best to kill the book. But the book was too true, too fair, too powerful, to be killed altogether. It has many, many Arab fans — though “fans” is not the right word, for what these readers are, mainly, is filled with gratitude for such a rare, unflinching work.

The book was banned in the Middle East, of course, but Arab journalists, bless them, found a way to get portions of the book out. They did so through their reviews. They would say, “These are despicable lies, meant to defame Arabs and Islam, told by a Zionist imperialist spy. For instance, the spy says . . .” — and there would follow a 500-word excerpt. The reviewer would then say, “As if that weren’t bad enough, the Zionist imperialist spy continues with his defamations, claiming . . .” — and there would follow another lengthy excerpt.

These writers, of course, were getting around the censors. And these were among the very best, most gratifying reviews Pryce-Jones ever had.

I’m afraid The Closed Circle is now out of print: but that should only send us to the libraries and used-book shops.

I was disturbed to have a very fast commute to work this morning: Cabs were plentiful, the traffic was sparse, and I think I made it in record time.

What does my commute have to do with anything? There must be a dearth of tourists in New York, given the conditions we are under, and the fear that has taken hold. And that is a lousy reason to have a fast commute. All things considered, I would rather be stuck in traffic, as usual.

I know of one local writer and his wife who had a serious conversation about what to do if a nuclear bomb hit: “Now, we could get out if only it hit there, and we made our way to . . .” That such a discussion could take place, between serious people, is a sign of these times.

Even in war — perhaps especially so — we have to hear from our celebrities. Here is Kevin Richardson, of the Backstreet Boys: “[The recent terrorism] raises questions in my mind: What has our government done to provoke this action that we don’t know about?” You can’t really fault the boy (or Boy?): This is the culture in which he has been raised.

Get a load of the following, from Gar Smith, editor of the journal of the Earth Island Institute: “We need to correct the rightist spin of the Bush administration and media. This was not an ‘act of war.’ This was an act of anger, desperation, and indignation. This was not an ‘attack on freedom.’ It was a politically targeted attack on the core structures of the U.S. military and the U.S.-dominated global financial structure. This is not an attack . . . on U.S. citizens, but an assault on U.S. foreign policy. The administration is trying to tell Americans that we are all targets. This is being done to draw attention away from the real targets: World Trade and U.S. militarism.”

It is vitally important to be reminded that such people are in our midst. Already, it is forgotten what the divisions were in the Cold War: Americans were united against a common menace, yes? Oh, no. You don’t have to be a McCarthyite to recognize so; you only have to be awake.

Joschka Fischer, Germany’s foreign minister and a former Red thug, says, “We need to react with a cool head.” I have so many comments to make about this, my fingers are sputtering: and I can make none, leaving readers to supply their own.

In the week following the attacks, I have come to dread one word above all: “but.” For example, people say, “These attacks are terrible and all, and I guess we need to respond in some way, but . . .” That “but” is the killer at the moment: It is commonly followed by some sort of silliness about Israeli or American culpability. Men and women had barely leapt to their deaths before that damnable word “but” became prominent.

Among the most valuable people in the country is Fouad Ajami, the Lebanese-American scholar and commentator who has long spoken hard and important truths about the Middle East — and has done so, one must presume, at no little personal risk. The courage, decency, and integrity of such a man is comforting amid the madness. I would also direct readers’ attention to a piece that deserves to be famous: Tarek Masoud’s missive, directed at his fellow Arab-American Muslims, in the Wall Street Journal. That is another brave man, one who should be thanked for years to come.

Conservatives used to joke about Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams — black free-market economists and conservatives — that they shouldn’t be allowed to fly on the same airplane. I couldn’t help thinking of this.

Finally, a taste of mail: Here is a reader on the decision of the Ryder Cuppers not to play: “The only way I could excuse what they are doing is in fact if it was driven by an inability to get over there [to England]. I don’t think that was the main thing that drove their decision. They were going to fly on a charter.

“What makes me so ill is that they are always blathering on about how great the Ryder Cup is because it allows them to play for their country. The one time the country needs them, they back away. I don’t ever want to hear them say they love playing for their country.

“Courage: Jackie Robinson used to get death threats quite often when he broke the color barrier in baseball. He exhibited courage, he made a difference. These guys hitting the ball with a stick don’t seem to get it.

“I wish at least one player would come out and say it is wrong to not play. It would be refreshing to see.”

Yeah, it would.