The New Criterion

Marxists used to say that the worse things got, the better it was. Like most of what Marxists said, that wasn’t true. And yet there was something to it. You can see the grain of truth shining out of the mountain of error in way the world is reacting to the Cartoon Riots. The Belmont Club lays out the issue with its characteristic aplomb:

It’s possible to regard the cartoon crisis as either a strategic disaster or boon for the War on Terror. The argument for it being a disaster is the assertion that in the war against extremists it is necessary to win over the moderates. And even if winning them over is impossible one may still be capable of keeping them neutral or indifferent; but at all events to avoid raising the Muslim masses in an emotional war against the West. The Danish cartoon crisis has managed to ignite what the Bush administration hoped to avoid from the beginning: turning the War on Terror into a War with Islam. Now an incident arising from a relatively obscure newspaper in Denmark has forced a choice between the most deeply held of all Western values, freedom of speech, with the cherished strategic goal of keeping the Muslim "street" aboard in the War on Terror.

The argument for regarding the Danish cartoons as a boon is premised on the belief that President Bush’s attempt to separate the War on Terror from Islam was doomed to fail anyway; that it was better to face that question now than later. According to this point of view, a view reinforced by the election of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, cultural and religious issues were at the root of international conflict.

The Belmont Club goes on to quote Ralph Peters, Samuel Huntington, and The New Criterion’s inimitable Mark Steyn on the real nature of the "clash of civilizations" we are seeing play out on the streets of London, Cairo, and elsewhere. Huntington grapsed the essential issue with uncanny prescience more than a decade ago, long before most of us had even heard of Osama bin Laden:

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.

That was 1993. The "future" that Huntington spoke of was already unfolding then; it may be said to have assumed definitive shape on the morning of September 11, 2001. And this, as the Belmont Club concludes, is where we are now:

No one can foresee where the Danish cartoon controversy will lead. At best both sides will return to their lines of departure after having made their points, each with a renewed respect for the other. The West should understand, if it didn’t realize it before, that Muslims are willing to fight for their religion. And Muslims should understand, from the cartoon controversy, that whatever they had heard to the contrary it goes double ditto for the West. And in the long run that grudging respect may make the the process of winning over the Muslim moderates easier than feigning the cheap and superficial attitude of multiculturalism. For who in Islam would believe in us if we did not believe in ourselves? Who in Islam could trust that we would fight at their side if we could not defend all that we were, all that we believed?

Who indeed?