Springtime for Diplomacy

In case you’re wondering, no, this is not a belated April’s Fools Day post. I haven’t all of a sudden “seen the error of my ways”, become convinced of the Leftist/“Palestinian” narrative that this is all a nationalistic land dispute and started calling for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. The title isn’t prescriptive but descriptive: following Iran’s unexpected release of the 15 British sailors, I now attempt to sketch the map anew, with fresh expectations on account of this turn of events.

On the cusp of world war between Islamic imperialism and the non-Muslim world, any event like this has the onlookers saying, “This is it. Now it begins”. Here was no exception. As Pastorius said:

I just want the [expletive] war to start at this point. [Edit mine. —ZY]

We've been treading water for far too long. Tje [sic] entire human race is imperiled.

Every war starts with people getting killed. I'm sorry to be an asshole, but this war is long, long overdue, and its future gets worse by the day.

I admit I too thought this was going to be it, just as last summer I had thought, along with many others, that the outbreak of war between Israel and Hizbullah in Lebanon was the opening shot of a worldwide conflagration. But there are people’s thoughts, and there is the timetable decreed by higher (not necessarily human) authorities.

In hindsight, I think it’s good it ended this way instead of erupting into war. The non-Muslim world is in no better shape than it was last year: Israel is still unready for a full-scale war, the leaders of nearly all the non-Muslim world are still unwilling to acknowledge the enemy (or worse: both the EU-UN-uchs, with their motion to ban all talk of “jihad” and defamation of Islam, and the American Democrats, with their censoring of even the erroneous name, “War On Terror”, are poised to perform the Ostrich Maneuver), and, of course, the Leftists, such as the fine specimens posting on Daily Kos, are as clueless as ever. Ma nishtanah, “What has changed?”, goes the refrain on Passover, and the answer is, regarding this global conflict: nothing. So I conclude it’s a good thing that this demanding war is still on hold, hopefully waiting for the non-Muslim world to replace its current dhimmi leaders with stronger and more clueful ones.

But back to the immediate outcome of the recent hostage crisis. Again in hindsight, it now seems to me Ahmadinejad never planned to keep the hostages in the first place. The entire affair, it seems, was conceived as nothing but a test: take combatants of a prominent Western state hostage, on whatever pathetic pretext, and see how deep the lack of resolution, the lack of will to defend one’s interests to the teeth, goes in the West. Britain was chosen for the test, and after two weeks, Ahmadinejad could truly, rightfully (in the sense of honor and international standing, not of law and justice) say he was releasing the 15 sailors as “a gift”. A gift—something done out of magnanimity, by a superior toward an undeserving weakling. The mullahs leading Iran now know for sure: the West won’t do a damn thing to help, as evidenced by the European Union’s unwillingness to pitch in to Britain’s aid. Only the United States of America, under President Bush, remains a threat, but that too could be cured by biding the time until a more, shall we say, Carterian administration rises to power, as well as by supporting the Carterians, the American Democrats, right now. Ahmadinejad stands tall, the same way as Hitler did in 1936, following the lack of any serious reaction toward his blatant breaking of the Versailles Treaty by occupying the Rheinland.

And now the paper-worshipers are all up in the arms, praising the superiority of diplomacy over firepower. Here is just a sampling from The Guardian from the last two days (April 4 and 5):

1. Doves 1, Hawks 0, by Matthew Yglesias
2. Getting engaged, by David Hearst
3. Iranian snakes and ladders, by Oliver Miles
4. Nancy Pelosi’s Syrian adventure, by Conor Clarke
5. The US can learn from this example of mutual respect, by Abbas Edalat in Tehran

A triumph of diplomacy… It is not lost on many on the commenters on The Guardian that it was all a farce: Iran abducts the British Royal Marines on some trumped-up excuse, lets them go of its own choosing and convenience instead of opting to go to war, and that is “a triumph of diplomacy”! But there are just as many comments there praising the choice of the way of diplomacy and negotiations rather than a military effort. Leftism is only partially behind that sentiment; I am sadly obliged to give credit to the US stay in Iraq for it also. It dovetails with my realization that going to full-scale war now would be premature: the armies of the Western world, foremostly of the US, are perfectly capable of conquering countries, but they are not build to withstand guerrilla warfare, also known as insurgency. This for the same reason that the Iranian coastguards were able to capture the British sailors at all: insane rules of engagement. With such rules as to value the lives of enemy civilians over our own soldiers, even if the enemy civilians willingly put themselves in the line of fire to shield the enemy fighters, the truism, “Guerrilla wars cannot be won” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This demonstration photo, from zombie, dates from the Lebanon War of Summer 2006. It is a graphic illustration of why Political Correctness, unless banished soon, will cause us heavily losses to Islam.

The non-Muslim world (at least its leaders) still thinks it has gotten lightly off the Islamic threat. On left-wing sites, periodical posts telling how much more people die of heart attacks, cancer, motoring accidents etc. (far be from us all those) than from terrorism can be found. As for clear fruits of terrorism, these can always be explained away some how: 9/11 was the result of “unjust US policy in the Middle East”, the Thais are getting it for “having annexed Malay lands” (gosh, how familiar that sounds…), yada yada. Along the river of Denial people swim, preferring it to acknowledgment of an existential enemy.

Some on our side expect this Springtime for Diplomacy to end with something atrocious, G-d forbid, such as an atomic attack. I cannot withhold my skepticism toward this view: Was 9/11 not atrocious? Was the massacre of children at Beslan not atrocious? Why should I expect even an unconventional attack to wake people up on a mass scale?

Or let’s imagine a scenario that is actually a rough replay of what happened in the wake of 9/11: following an atrocious terrorist attack, masses of people exclaim, “We’re at war!” But with whom? Or with what? For all the utility of World War II comparisons, they suffer from a great weakness that hinders the solution of this current conflict: the current enemy does not require states at its disposal in order to threaten. In fact, the current enemy is much more efficient defeating us from the inside out: colonizing our states, overwhelming the non-Muslim hosts demographically, then taking over.

This, then, is the single question that remains for me, regarding the prospect of waking up en masse: will the fall of a Western state (such as Sweden, for instance) to shariah law finally wake people up? Will the sight of blond hair… Let me rephrase that: Will the lack of sight of blond hair, because of its being covered under a garment, convince appeasers of Islam worldwide (or at least in the West) that this, Islam, is the enemy? Or will they go on, staying their course like the slowly-boiled frog? How long will this Pharaoh-like hardness of the heart continue, and what could be the equivalent of the Striking of the Firstborn that puts an end to it?

I have only one conclusion: we are walking into the unknown, into a future that can be spoken of only in generalities, while the particulars are an absolute mystery. I have a reasonable idea that the world, having been lulled into sleep by this unexpected turn of the hostage crisis, will now set on a course of pursuing diplomacy, negotiations, concessions and appeasement. I can also make the banal prediction that there will be something that will put an end to this trust in the power of talks and treaties. But beyond that, I can’t say anything. And although it is tempting to pit the slogan, “Peace Through Superior Firepower” against the blind, irrational faith in negotiated agreements, I know only too well that the former is not enough either. As I said: the West is still of superior military capability, but that is of no use if the driving will, the belief in oneself, is lacking. Israel could have defeated Hizbullah, but failed because of its abandonment of sane, self-confident rules of warfare in favor of rules of engagement that are fair only when both sides have some moral scruples and are willing to make the distinction between civilians and combatants. The non-Muslim world does not know of, and often does not want to consider, the reality of an enemy so immoral, so depraved that it is willing to use even its own children as weaponry. There is but one key to victory, and that is what G-d said through His prophet Zechariah (4:6):

Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.

“Hosts”, or armies, or military might—even the strongest of them needs spiritual backing from the home front and from the leadership in order to achieve victory. Diplomacy will not bring peace in the long run, only more of the same; I await the springtime of righteousness, which will then spell the end of all terror. Speedily in our days, amen!