"Worse than evil is invisibility"

 

"Worse than evil is invisibility," writes Shelby Steele, putting his finger on what makes Islamofascist leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tick. Above at a press conference in Tehran last spring with a mural of his totemic animals --  "peace doves" -- projecting that "aura" he would later experience at the UN, the Iraqi President calls for the destruction of Israel as a "fake regime." (Kheirkhah photo)

"The dark achievement of bin Laden, Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad, names we know only because of their association to menace, is that they have used menace to make their people visible in the world, to bring them back into the scheme of history," writes Shelby Steele in an Opinion Journal essay, arguing that "America has gone to war not against Islam but against menace as a formula for power":

And yet the end of the Cold War has made these wars between the West and the Third World inevitable. When the world was clearly divided between the free West and the communist East, Third World countries could play the ingénue by offering their alignment to the most generous suitor. At the center of a market in alignment, they could extract financial support and enjoy a sense of importance.

But after the Cold War, these countries suddenly became crones without appeal or leverage in the West. And it was out of this sense of invisibility, this feeling of having fallen out of history, that certain Middle Eastern countries found a way to play the ingénue once again. They would not compete with or seduce the West; they would menace it.

Exactly the point we've been making here for years, with reference to Dr. Peter F. Rowbotham's 1992 essay "The importance of being noticed" [Full article available here -- scroll down]. As Rowbotham wrote:

We search for honor in favored venues and in chosen social institutions. We avoid those places and those social groupings which inhibit our search, which do not advance, and may even set back, our moral careers. As Harre (1980) has pointed out:

"Recent studies of adolescence have shown many young people to have an almost obsessive interest and preoccupation with the maintenance of dignity and the careful scanning of the social environment for occasions and acts of possible humiliation."

And as we commented in one of many posts on the subject:

In this context, the unorthodox bonding rituals of, for example, Hell's Angels and British soccer fans -- and now the deadly rituals of adolescent jihadi recruits -- may be seen as examples of a "system of honor that is an alternative to mainstream moral orders."

"And they are greatly loved for this," writes Steele of the princes of darkness who call us the Great Satan. "If their achievements follow from evil rather than from good, this is a small thing. Worse than evil is invisibility." As for the Great Satan himself, he asks rhetorically:

Could it be that our enemies are really paper tigers made formidable by our unceasing ambivalence? And could it be that the greater good is in both the idea and the reality of American victory?

Yes. And that is why, as Jedd Babbin wrote at Real Clear Politics yesterday, "Rumsfeld will be smiling when he takes his leave."

Vote daily now through December 15 for sisu in the 2006 Weblog Awards HERE!

Update: At the invitation of Jay of Stop the ACLU, we're linking and trackbacking to his Weekend Free For All. Jay's a top competitor for the same award we're campaigning for, "Best of the Top 250 Blogs" in the TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem. Jay is a "Higher Being" at #7, while we are a "Large Mammal," #232 at the moment. But what the hey? We shamelessly headlined one of our recent posts "What Britney's Crotch Did To My Stats," after all, and the site meter is still soaring.  Ann Althouse linked to said post this morning, and now we're enjoying a pleasant Annalanche on top of the Crotchalanche. Be sure to check out Ann's fascinating discussion -- with graphic links -- of the vagina dentata.

Update II: The estimable Professor Bainbridge puts in a good word:

Sissy Willis' post of that title manages to be both thoughtful and funny, as well as offering links to some must read news and blog items.

Technorati tags: weblog awards, althouse, britney, spears, crotch

Comments

[Ruth Anne]

Sissy: No "e" on that "Ann". I'm sure it's a typo on the very last one of the update.

[Sissy Willis]

Ruth Anne [WITH an e]: Thanks! Correction made. :-)

[goomp]

You are so right. Look at that farce Al Gore and his efforts to be noticed. Having missed the importance of curbing Islamic extremism, he tries to create an end of the world scenario from the natural variation of the earth's temperature.

[Laura Lee Donoho]

I finally was able to vote, Sissy, for you of course. But I couldn't get on until 12:05 which means I lost the chance to vote yesterday which was five minutes ago. Will be voting for you everyday.

[Sissy Willis]

Laura Lee: Thanks so very much for your support. It means the world to me.

I saw Rummy's farewell speech to Pentagon employees, a wonderful press conference with one of the commanders in the field and an interesting presser with Joey Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins in the wee hours on C-Span. So much interesting food for thought out there. I'm hoping to blog about it soon.

We must continue to hold the press's feet to the fire. Meanwhile, we'll do our best to fill in the gaps.

[Trochilus]

But there is a relationship, perhaps an inexorable relationship, between what they have each long embraced, and what they are now projecting to the world. Not every candidate for being passed by without a hand right on the wheel of history adopts and threatens such measures. They are not, each of them, a tabula rasa on which has suddenly and miraculously been writ a message of menace -- that has magically morphed out of some longing merely to escape invisibility. No.

They have threaded back, and made an historical connection, based on long ago tribal beliefs, and concluded that they will surely triumph over us on a clash of civilizations level.

They are insane, in other words. But before they are rudely passed by, they will each grasp at the ring based on their belief that they are right. And what could reinforce that belief more than a ratification of it's validity at the highest levels of the American government, by a so-called Council of Elders?

The suggestion should not be that they are, like some terrible twos, merely playing us for attention, and that, therefore, our appropriate long term response is to find a way to give them their propers -- i.e., to negotiate our way out of this present unpleasantness, merely because they have found a tactic or two for disrupting our stirring of their cauldron, right in their midst. The appropriate response is to find a work-around by turning that tactic on them.

I don't think we honestly realize what a position of strength we are in, what potential we have for proceeding. But they do, and that is one reason they are so, shall we say, "vigorous" in their response to us.

The overall point is that they must continue to be taken at their word, and we must continue to insist that they take us at ours.

Little Mr. Ahmadinejad has not only threatened and menaced us, and the hard-earned United Nations statements of condemnation related to his nuclear ambitions. He has declared his intentions, and taken concrete steps to undertake the annihilation of another nation, and all of its people. That is not an appropriate precurser to any movement forward, let alone to making an offer to negotiate with him with one hand tied behind our back.

Sure, a bigger part in the drama of history unfolding is precisely what little Mr. A salivates for. Ditto Assad. But "gifting" to them that enhanced role, by offering to negotiate with either, and at the same time agreeing to do so without our ally at the table, is plainly preposterous.

[Sissy Willis]

I totally agree with you, Trochilus. You don't reward "terrible twos" by giving them what they demand.