Balkanize Islamia
By Bruce Walker (05/13/07)
It seems unlikely that the sort of pluralistic, free, tolerant democracy that we in the civilized West have wanted can exist in Islamia. It was not an unrealistic expectation that it could. Japan has long been a functioning democracy, and both South Korea and Taiwan have been as well. India is the largest democracy in the world. Although Latin American states have had their share of juntas and strong men, Latin America also has a strong tradition of democracy in nations like Costa Rico and free elections have been the norm, not the exception, for decades now south of the Rio Grande.
On the other hand, those lands that have a strong Moslem majority seem always to descend into something other than free tolerant democracies. Lebanon was long the flower of the Middle East, but whether after the long exodus of Lebanese Christians it can flower again appears very unlikely. Iran was friendly, relatively free and peaceful, but that was not under democracy but rather under the pro-American Shah. Turkey has been the single flicker of hope, but Turkey is really ruled by the army and overtly Muslim parties are inching toward control of the once very secular Turkish nation.
We are in a battle for survival and the risk of a general jihad is real, particularly if Moslems can focus their hatred on America and on Israel. Perhaps we should stop playing this game by our rules and instead play the game by the rules of our enemies. What maxim would govern that game? “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Islamia is full of hatreds that are centuries old. There are two perfect models of how this could work: Afghanistan and Desert Storm. We seem to forget history as quickly as it happens.
Islamia is cannibalistic. A modern map will show that until recently those “nations” on the shores of the Arabian peninsula were called the “Trucial States,” because there was no peace there but only a “truce” coordinated by British Imperial power. The violence in Iraq today is not new but ancient. In defining the interests of modern civilization, it is essential that the those who live to maim and to murder be divided and that our influence should be used to help those who incline toward peacefulness without trying to transform the society.
This requires first ending the artificial boundaries of those “nations” of Islamia. There is no “nation” of Iraq or of Syria or of Turkey or of Pakistan. Each of this, and nearly every other nation in the region, is simply an empire of captive peoples, many of whom speak different languages, practice different varieties of Islam or, as among the Kurds, other religions besides Islam, and who have been cobbled together by force.
What we should do is sponsor national liberation movements throughout these many oppressive empires. This will create an archipelago of genuine diversity within the where now there is a glob of hate which is easily directed at the “other” – America, Israel, Christians, and Jews. Rather than trying to preserve Iraq, we should allow it to break into its three natural parts. At the same time, we should insist that the empire of Iran grant freedom to all the captive peoples, only some of whom are Persians. Even Turkey, our ally, should be pressed to allow the secession of the Kurdish minority which so desperately wants to be allowed to join their kinsmen in a Kurdish nation.
Perhaps Lebanon should be divided as well into a Christian and a Moslem Lebanon, now that the consensus of decades ago on power sharing has fallen apart. Should we press Egypt to allow its large Coptic Christian minority to have their own state? Why not? Certainly the artificial political of Sudan should be divided into a Moslem north and a Christian south.
What is the downside to this approach? Are we afraid that those who call us the “Great Satan” will hate us more? Are we afraid that those who describe Jews as monkeys and pigs and deny the Holocaust will become more vile? We should be afraid only that the model of the civilized, Judeo-Christian West will fail. That will not happen if we promote actively and aggressively the fragmentation of Islamia into discrete and separate parts, each allowed to take its own path and each protected in that separate path by our support (Kuwait was hardly worthy of protection, except that it was taking its own path and Iraq wanted to incorporate it into part of the Iraqi empire.)
The benefits are that in a polyglot of minor nations, Jews and Christians can find a happy place to accept them, that those nations which do not tolerate the education of a generation in lies about America and Israel will receive our protection and our largesse, that those who do not hate us will prosper in safety while those who insist in hating us can dwell in inferiority and in misery. What we should want is that the miracle of Israel and the miracle that was Lebanon, both very small nations, should be demonstrated to all Islamia as evidence of what works – in every sense of the word – and what does not.
The Judeo-Christian values which so many Moslems in America, Britain and other nations immersed that those values cherish, is contingent upon a rejection of the imperialism and militancy and intolerance of whatever incarnation of Islam that radical Moslems propound as the lie de jour. Proof that this is wrong will come only when as many separate experimental laboratories – small nation states – are created as possible. Jewish Israels and Christian Lebanons are happy lands. Provinces of Turkey filled with oppressed Kurds are miserable lands. Let us be liberators of peoples, let us be supporters of that favorite Leftist word “diversity,” and we will win our war against hate with permanence and peace.
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