Why does the ailing west aid its Islamist enemies?
Published in: The Australian
Was there ever a more perverse and self-destructive
society than the contemporary West? In its attitude to the Middle East and the
Islamic world, it appears to suffer from the political equivalent of
auto-immune disease: turning on its allies while embracing its enemies.
One year ago, the US and Britain helped street protesters to overthrow
president Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Hailing the revolutionary tumult of the
"Arab Spring" as the equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the
West went on to help armed Libyan rebels remove president Muammar Gaddafi by
military force.
This regional strategy was promoted even though it was obvious from the start
that the people who were best organised to take advantage of any elections in
the Arab world were Islamists of one stripe or another - religious extremists
all, united by their hostility to the West.
And so it has proved. The Islamists are coming to power in Egypt, Libya, Yemen
and Tunisia, and in turn are being increasingly empowered elsewhere. In Libya,
sickening atrocities, including the torture and killing of Gaddafi himself by a
lynch mob, have been carried out by those brought to power with the assistance
of British and US bombing raids.
Yet Western politicians are even now hymning the brave new dawn of democracy
throughout the Muslim world. British Foreign Secretary William Hague conceded
earlier this month that the regional violence and votes for Islamism were a
"setback", but he insisted: "Greater freedom and democracy in
the Middle East is an idea whose time has come."
And the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organisation now in the ascendancy,
which uses violence and political manipulation to advance its aim of world
domination for Islam, is suddenly being hailed by Western leaders as the acme
of moderation.
Yet in helping to get rid of Mubarak and Gaddafi, Britain and the US have
managed the signal feat of ousting oppressive regimes that were at least
helpful to the West, and replacing them with oppressive regimes that are
acutely hostile to the West.
One immediate result is that the Sinai desert, neutralised as a trouble spot
ever since Israel made peace with Egypt in 1979, has now become an acute threat
to Israel's southern border. Hamas is now building arms-manufacturing facilities
in Sinai, including those for building rockets, and other Islamic extremists
are piling in.
Arms are being smuggled from Egypt into Gaza without interruption. Oh, and
Libyan weapons, including Russian-made anti-plane rockets, are now making their
way into the Gaza Strip. Well done, Britain and America!
And then there's Iran. Ever since the Islamic revolution in 1979, when the
ayatollahs declared war on the West, Iran has been involved in many acts of
terrorism against the US and Western interests. Tehran regularly threatens to
wipe Israel off the map, and is now racing to develop nuclear weapons to
realise its infernal goals.
Yet despite all this, the West has refused to fight back or even to acknowledge
the Iranian war against the West, with President Barack Obama advertising US
weakness by extending his hand in friendship to the regime.
Obama's catastrophic strategy has given Iran the one thing it needed above all
else: time to bring its nuclear weapons program to fruition.
Only now, with the hands on the doomsday clock pointing to midnight, have
Britain, the US and Europe finally imposed tough sanctions against Iran. But
what use are these when they will almost certainly be busted by Russia and
China?
Sanctions are supposed to force Iran to ‘come to its senses’ and stop its
nuclear energy program from producing weapons. But the Tehran regime is
dominated by fanatics who believe the Shia messiah, the Mahdi, will return to
earth either as result of or to bring about the apocalyptic end of days.
That is why the argument that "They wouldn't dare launch a nuclear attack
because they know half of Iran would be obliterated as a result" is
fatuous. They would be happy if this were to occur.
But despite all this, Western leaders still behave as if the conflict between
Israel and the Palestinians is the dominant issue in the Arab world, and that
the expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land is the dominant issue in
the Arab-Israel conflict.
Barely a week goes by without Western politicians or the media blaming
"Israeli intransigence" in general, and Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu in particular, for blocking the Israel-Palestinian peace
process.
British Prime Minister David Cameron says time is running out for the two-state
solution to the conflict because of "facts on the ground" - code for
the Israeli settlements.
His deputy, Nick Clegg, went further, claiming the "illegal"
settlement-building amounted to "an act of deliberate vandalism" that
jeopardised a peaceful two-state solution.
Yet this was to ignore the fact it is the Palestinians, not Israel, who refuse
to negotiate without preconditions. It ignores the fact that Israel has twice
offered the Palestinians a state on most of the West Bank, to which the Palestinians
have merely responded by terrorist campaigns.
And it ignores the absolutely fundamental fact that Palestinian Authority
president Mahmoud Abbas has said the Palestinians will never accept Israel's
right to exist as a Jewish state.
So why does the West fail to see what is under its
nose? There are several reasons, including prejudice, ideology, strategic
short-sightedness and simple funk.
But the deeper reason is surely the Western belief that the world is basically
governed by rationality. So all conflicts arise from grievances, and all
parties can be persuaded to settle a quarrel in their own interests.
Refracting everything in the world through the prism of its unshakeable faith
in universal reason, the West is incapable of recognising or understanding
religious fanaticism, and insists instead on treating the fanatic as a rational
actor.
The ghastly irony is that in making a fetish of reason, the West is behaving
irrationally by refusing to acknowledge the mortal threat posed to its own existence
by the Islamic world.
In other words, this could be the point in history at which the West simply
disappears up its own arrogant backside.
