Juan Cole is pretty much a worthless twit. He’s a Middle East scholar, but he’s so dishonest that his scholarly insights don’t amount to anything. But he occasionally screws up and says something worthwhile in the course of delivering his anti-American and anti-Bush rants. He lapses into good sense for a few paragraphs in the top entry on his blog today, when he explores the common thread uniting the UK terror-bombers:
What then do they have in common? They got the software installed in their minds. Why? Because they met the installer, and were susceptible to his worldview. That’s all they have in common…
The software is of course a hugely distorted view of the universe. It lets the young man see Israeli atrocities, but not those of Hamas or the Aqsa Brigades. It lets him see American atrocities but not those of Saddam Hussein, Izzedin al-Duri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The software is fatally one-sided. It also exaggerates. The Muslim world is not in danger of being destroyed, least of all by the United States, a warm friend of most Muslim countries. But the software configures a dire crisis, almost apocalyptic, which can only be averted by an ethical hero who is willing to sacrifice himself. The software hides from the convert that he is to become a monster and kill innocents. It tells him he is a noble soldier, and his victims are wicked enemy soldiers, that there are no innocent civilians.
So how do you fight this form of terror? You disrupt the installation of the software in more and more minds. You adopt policies that make the story the software tells implausible. And you reach out to make sure people hear the implausibility.
Of course, his solution is only part of the story: you also have to be prepared to kill them before they can kill you, because you’re never going to completely prevent the software from being installed anywhere at all. Some people are just plain crazy.
The thing I find interesting about this post is the fact that at least some of this distorted software is produced by the elitist, anti-American and anti-Western elements of the mainstream media, from people like, well, Cole, who insist on spinning Western policies in a devious light. I don’t think he meant to ‘fess up to his role.
Cole’s analysis suggests that those of us who do intellectual battle with the propagandists of terror are helping, in our small way, to win this war. That shouldn’t be overlooked.
“Cole’s analysis suggests that those of us who do intellectual battle with the propagandists of terror are helping, in our small way, to win this war. That shouldn’t be overlooked.”
The lefties can be shrill about the “101st Keyboarders” all they want. War always involves a battle over ideas. Thanks for your contribution.