Crushing crises and the culture of improvisation. Close your eyes and the troubles are gone. Intellectuals and tyrannies: Persecution is a form of coveted recognition. Present perils and the downgrading of the Soviet threat. The ostrich-test.
1. Haiti. The tragedy behind the crisis will be hijacked to prove pet peeves. This writer's perspective and experience is with war between men, and not with nature against man. From this personal perspective, the ability of the locals to improvise and to bear deserves recognition.
People who live in the kind of perfected systems in which everything works as it is supposed to, are subject to two errors. One: They underestimate the ability of some societies to cope with unanticipable cataclysms. Second: They overestimate their own skills to cope with the kind of devastation that leads to a total collapse. Closely related to this is that advanced societies are skilled in the art of circumnavigating and avoiding turbulence. Nevertheless, some crises are unavoidable and the breakdown caused is inevitable. The earthquake would have severed the sinews that bind together optimally structured societies. Overall, the Haitians, conditioned as they were by their badly functioning system, coped well with the collapse of the state, the economy, the infrastructure, social institutions and the disappearance of laws.
2. Another lesson of the Haitian quake's aftermath is that American involvement has been crucial. Once again, the USA emerged as the only power able to project its effective reach beyond her own fence while demonstrating a willingness to help massively. Even so, as could be assumed, there was carping by Monday morning quarterbacks about real and assumed errors.
Some of the charges are absurd. Such as the US' presumed desire to occupy Haiti. Or to deprive Brazil of its leadership role. In the context of a demolished infrastructure, everything had to be improvised and so, given the demands created by the full wipeout, some complaints are reflections of a lack of understanding for total chaos' imperatives — and of political opportunism.
At the same time, one wonders what sense the political tourism of the prominent made. Outstanding here is Ms. Clinton's visit. The case reminds one of the "Hair Force" affair of Bill's early Presidency. (No, the centerpiece of that affair is a haircut blocking LAX, not a female.) Hillary's dropping in put needless pressure on the airport's limited capacities and so hindered rescue efforts. Did the Secretary of State wish to negotiate about something with someone in Port-au-Prince? Or was this a fact-finding mission? Perhaps to ascertain whether there has been a quake, estimate the destruction and to seize up Bush's responsibility for this and everything else? Unlikely. We are left with the impression of a damaging way to get TV exposure.
3. The recent attack on Westergaard — the Danish creator of the Muhammad cartoons – might prove several things. One of them is that the war of cultures is on. Well, at least for one side. That party pursues the struggle relentlessly and injects its entire means into the fight. Meanwhile the target of the attack tries to ignore politely and naively that it is being beleaguered. If acknowledged, the hordes gathering around the walls continue to be depicted as an assemblage of upset fans. The hope is that non-reaction will be interpreted as proof of good will that is substantiated by unconditional tolerance. Thus, an improvement of the relationship and a lessened physical aggressiveness is expected.
While waiting, the refusal to retaliate should prove that non-violent approaches might ultimately confer upon the goal of conversion a chance. Passivity is also deemed a strategy that prevents further radicalization by making it unnecessary. Meanwhile the slogan remains: "With my eyes closed I see no trouble."
4. Eastern Europe in the post-Soviet age. Note how the accustomed term "post-Communist" has been avoided. This to suggest that, while the USSR might be gone, her operators are still around. Thereby the influence of camouflaged Communist apparatchiks remains decisive. Admittedly, the comportment of those local majorities that hinder a consistent settling of the accounts with the past is odd. The abnormality suggests that these populations might have been genial in circumventing local tyrannies and could make the best of these. However, in the context of freedom, the same people are clumsy and thus incapable of exploiting liberty's potential to improve their lives.
Many Western intellectuals, perhaps reflecting their old appreciation for Soviet "achievements," are equally at a loss to respond to the new situation. Local and Western intellectuals are inclined to claim that freedom implies that the masses do as they wish. (We should be governed by philosophers.) Nevertheless, the West's thinkers become rather parsimonious when it comes to defending the freedom of others in still existing direct and covert leftist dictatorships.
There might be a rational explanation for the lack of concern of the class that claims to embody virtue and wisdom. In genuine democracies, intellectuals are free to act. The drawback is that others, including those not anointed by the select to membership, are also free to, heaven forbid, disregard certified intellectuals. In dictatorships, the intellectuals get official esteem if they make their peace with the system and work for it for pecuniary rewards. Even in this case, as Romania's case demonstrates, they might not be held responsible for the consequences of their prostitution when the theory fails and the idol, whose glory they sang, is removed.
In the realm of liberty, everyone is allowed to criticize anybody. Furthermore, where freedom rains, the forgers of ideals may be reminded of their failed punditry. Dictatorships take their intellectuals seriously. It shows the significance attributed to the intellectuals that tyrannies support some, tolerate others and persecute the rest. Even the maltreatment of the unbending demonstrates backhanded appreciation.
Where liberty is practiced, there might be no censure and no prison for the advocacy of the politically deviant. There is there, however, something that is worse than the pattern of persecution for non-conformity and the rewards for servility. Being ignored by an uncaring majority that does not take the nattering class seriously is a form of death sentence. Indifference by a public that pursues private pleasures can hurt more than the vigilant attention of a ruling class that bothers to read you, censure you, and that acknowledges you by handing you medals or jail.
5. It is revealing how the Soviet threat is retroactively depicted. The term "threat" is deserved. Moscow exported by violent means its system into what Hitler had softened up for it by his conquest. Stalin, the killer of many more millions than Hitler, planned a war before his demise. His successors, while of lesser ability than the Leader, have most wisely shifted their tactical emphasis from Europe to its encirclement through the Third World. The Soviet Idea had an ideology claiming scientific validity. Therefore, it was proclaimed to be predestined to become the world system. This march toward destiny was headed by an "infallible" leader with access to overwhelming conventional and nuclear arms.
Added up, this hardly amounts to a scarecrow as some that used to advocate softness toward the USSR now like to insinuate. Nonetheless, if one has no independent knowledge of the strengths and intentions of Soviet Communism, an odd conclusion can emerge from its after-the-fact depiction.
Those that once advocated weakness toward an "irresistibly powerful" Kremlin, are now pandering a retouched image. The attempt to downgrade might be more than the result of bad history. The obvious purpose of this downsizing is to cover up personal records and to pursue old approaches by belittling past and current security threats. This revised version of the past alleges that the threat to freedom and free men was grossly exaggerated at the time. The proof of the thesis is that the USSR collapsed without a major war.
This retroactive dismissal of a peril is voiced by those who, at the time, did more than to underestimate the Kremlin. They regarded Moscow and Washington as equals and generally suggested that resisting the Soviets was not worth the effort and was predestined to fail. On this level, the dismissive interpretation is useful: it washes the dirty linen that is stored in the closet out of which normally skeletons pounce on you. That leaves us with distorted history. Fighting this presentation is a matter of an intellectual duty. In this case, however, ignorance is more damaging than is ignorance in general.
The implications are damaging in the light of the current struggle with Islamism. Let us backtrack. Those who once argued that there is nothing to defend that can be protected, now like to claim that there was no need to make an effort. Retroactively this endorses the "treason of the clerks." The same sources belittle and deny the threat of our present. In doing so they can insinuate that, the concern with the professed threat in the past was an exaggeration that bordered on extremism. Therefore, resisting the fanatics of our time is analogous. Nothing needs to be done, nothing should be done, and nothing can be done. Beyond that, if no provocative defense is mounted, the alleged storm will just fade away. Just ask any ostrich.
