Imagine You Were Them

Many people in the West persist in making the “imagine you were them” argument as a justification for brutality. According to this posture, Radical Muslims are “justified” transpositionally: if you were them, you would also do “x”.

There are too many assumptions and implications that adhere to this argument to go over exhaustively, but let me attempt a few.

1. Let’s say we are talking about a true transposition, a Freaky Friday like exchange of minds, where my self-consciousness, what Bakhtin would call my “apperceptive background”, actually entered the body of a 20-something Muslim living in Adhamiya, Iraq. What would “I” do? Well, since I would have taken my apperceptive background with me, with all of my beliefs and assumptions and biases, I would most definitely not strap a bomb to my waist and blow myself up. Likewise, I would not grab an AK-47 and try to kill Americans, since my mind would still entertain an affinity for them. I would probably lay low, and try to get out of the country. Eventually, I would find a place with law and order; I would seek out a place that offered me personal safety, equality under the law, and economic opportunity so I could fashion a fulfilling and virtuous private life. For some reason, I don’t think this is quite the point the argument wants to make.

2. Let’s say that, instead of a transposition of minds, we are talking about empathy, a walk-a-mile-in-their-shoes appeal to our common humanity, where I try to get inside the head of a 20-something kid from Adhamiya to find out what makes him tick–a Giambattista Vico type of endeavor that seeks to understand a culture from the inside. Okay, let’s do that. What makes this kid from Iraq tick? Well, to start with, we must go all the way back to his formative years, to discover and–to the extent possible–understand his experiences and the lessons he’s derived from them. Concomitantly, we need to document and–again, to the extent possible–understand the organic history of his beliefs and desires. After all, human behavior is informed by beliefs about the world, along with conscious and subconscious motives and motivators. For instance, if I believe this rock is edible–or even better, if I truly believe it will be delicious–were I to become hungry I would most likely try to eat it. In this instance “hunger” is my motivator, “rock is edible and delicious” is my belief. Take note: in this scenario, me trying to eat the rock is a Logical Consequence of these two premises.

So, once we know the make up of the Iraqi, his beliefs about the world, his motivations, and the present situation he finds himself in, we can make reasonable statements about the logic of his behavior. If he is a true believer in his religion, and he believes it is his duty to defend Islamic territory, then yes, his violent reaction to an American invasion of Iraq is logical. If he has been told by someone he trusts that America is trying to occupy and dominate his territory, then yes, his persistence in an insurgency is a logical response to such a violation. If he truly believes that dying for his religion will purchase paradise for him and his family, if he believes that Muslims are on this earth to prove themselves worthy of Allah, then yes, his strapping a bomb to his chest and walking into a market is a logical response to the aggressive humiliation of an infidel occupier. If he truly believes that the only way to accomplish his deepest, most desired objective is to do “x”, then yes, his attempt to do “x” is logical.

But what have we gained by stipulating this? As I stated above, trying to eat what one believes is an “edible” rock is logical, too. But is it not also wrong? In other words, is there not some standard, some absolute standard, that we can use to judge not only Joe Jihadi, but also Joe America? Or are we left impotent in the face of competing values, of competing logics? Is there not some truth we can appeal to?

Why, yes there is. For instance, we can ask whether Joe Jihadis’ belief about American intent is “true”. We can also ask whether Joe Jihadis’ belief about his religion are “true”. But nobody wants to ask these questions.

Look, it is a relatively recent development in human intellectual history that ‘idealism’ is valued separately from the truth of the idea espoused. Nowadays, a man would earn the same moral credit by martyring himself for the sake of a falsehood as he would by martyring himself for the sake of truth. It is the willing, the striving–the authenticity within instead of the truth without–that earns great praise today. A man who, through mistaken belief, sees his liberators as enslavers, martyring himself while trying to smite them, receives praise and understanding, instead of anger and indignation. Great weight is put on the carrying of his beliefs to their logical conclusion, instead of the fact that his beliefs are wrong to begin with. But let me ask this question. Why should we give any weight to an error of belief? Why should we take counsel from a falsehood?

So, lost in the “imagine you were them” argument is the fact–The Fact–that the beliefs of those we fight are not worth fighting for. For the Muslim true believer, who seeks to spread Islam and defeat secularism, his beliefs are repugnant to civilization, and they should be destroyed and supplanted. For the Iraqi who fights America because he believes America is there to dominate and enslave, his beliefs are wrong–False. Fighting for a falsehood does not deserve any respect whatsoever. It should be shunned, and if at all possible, stopped. (Note: I can make these judgments without having to defend my own values as absolute. I can retain uncertainty about “x” and still know that “y” is false–or, alternatively, that “y” is wrong.)

If any here persist in making the “imagine you were them” argument, you have to do one of two things: 1) you have to believe yourself that America is in Iraq to dominate them–an interesting assertion in light of how hard it has been to convince Americans to stay there and finish the job; or 2) you must
defend the proposition that fighting and dying for a falsehood–the falsehood that America wants Iraq–is a worthy human pursuit.

Another interesting note: many assume that it is always contradictory to pursue peace by making war. This too is a false belief. But I tire.

On the question of Iran

Reuel Gerecht goes over the options. In essence, it looks like it's once more into the breach.

South Park and the Cartoon Wars

I posted this last night at Belmont Club after watching the latest episode of South Park, in which Comedy Central censored a showing of Mohammed:

You know, I was thinking. If we are truly involved in an ideological war, what we need are ideological tools. (If, which I think is correct, memes have power, the course of human history could be understood as an arms-race of ideas in addition to an arms-race of weaponry.)

Now, a tool is something built for a purpose. With memes, it would be a message. An incredibly useful tool would be usable on a wide variety of heteroglossia. It's message would be eminently communicable. It's effect would be distributed broadly.

Well, I think--and here I am being awfully presumptive--that the most recent South Park is precisely the tool we've been looking for. The message, the medium, the outcome--all are absolutely aligned to accomplish our goal: the goal, obviously, of steeling our people against the memetic onslaught of multicultural suicide.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker have given us a gift, and we should use it.

The conduit of communication in 21st Century America flows from the people. Here, a niche market like Comedy Central can produce something that, if absorbed by a vast amount of people, can change the way we think--and therefore change the way we live.

The blogosphere is an entry key into this flow of communication. We can find something overlooked, force it into the national conversation, and change the way people think about a certain issue. Our power comes from discovery and persistence, our refusal to accept partial answers to partial questions. We can agitate what's important onto the national radar screen. Once sufficiently agitated, the MSM will pick up on it, and the message will be broadcast.

Well, here we have our chance. We can make the South Park episode the topic du jour, the catalyst, the entry vehicle into the issue of cultural certitude. If we talk about it enough, if we make an issue about it in the blogosphere, sooner or later the nation, and then the world, will be talking about it. And then the world will change (I'm not joking, this is not a pollyannish assertion; if the world were divided into those who condemn South Park's message and those who defend, the world would change). Now's our chance.

Of course, we could just sit back and wait until others make a big deal about it. I think it's inevitable.

UPDATE: It looks like it was inevitable. It is currently the number one search term at Technorati, which tracks these things. And yes, Comedy Central confirmed they censored Mohammed--for safety.

Crisis in Europe

Excellent read, here.

Words of Tears

Via American Future, this is Richard Cohn in today's Washington Post:

President Bush is starting to look beyond his presidency. His focus is on his legacy, which he is sure will vindicate his decision to go to war in Iraq. But his most fitting memorial is likely to be where I was Sunday: the immense gash in Lower Manhattan known as Ground Zero. More than 4 1/2 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the hole has yet to be filled.

Tourists come and look. The selling of souvenirs is prohibited at the site itself, but around the corner, on Vesey Street, peddlers hug the shadows. The proper souvenir to take away from this place, though, is the memory of its immense emptiness. It's a hole filled with broken promises and silly rhetoric, an inverted monument to the Bush administration's unfathomable failure even to capture Osama bin Laden.

Where is this killer? Still in Afghanistan or nearby Pakistan, is the unofficial answer. Certainly not caught, is the official answer. This terrorist, this madman, this mass murderer of clerks and stockbrokers, of deliverymen and cooks, of IT guys and shoeshine men, is still on the loose. Bin Laden was the guy Bush was going to get, dead or alive, or something like that, but he is still at large, mocking us with his occasional tapes and his insufferable freedom. Even Afghanistan, liberated from the Taliban, is receding into chaos. The Taliban, it turns out, never left.

The failure to capture or kill bin Laden is the failure of Bush and his Pentagon team of incompetents—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the former commander of the Afghan and Iraq wars, Tommy Franks. One is still in office, the other is getting rich on the lecture circuit, and neither offers much of an explanation for why the mass killer of Americans still has not been caught. "Wherever he is, if he is, you can be certain he is having one dickens of a time operating his apparatus," Rumsfeld once said. Yes, this is comforting. And tell me also that bin Laden's mail is often late.

More Sept. 11 tapes surfaced last week. These were recordings of 130 calls to New York's 911 emergency operators. Mostly you could hear only one side of the conversation, the operators', but at least one family released a tape of their son making his last call from the World Trade Center. The awful helplessness of the operators as the immensity of the tragedy dawned on them, the impeccably calm voice of a man about to die—all this parted the memory curtain many an American had draped around the event, and the pain returned. The other shoe has not dropped. Bin Laden giggles in his mountain lair.

Little wonder Bush focuses on posterity. The present has to be painful. His embrace of incompetents, not to mention his own incompetence, is impossible to exaggerate. Rummy still runs the Pentagon. The only generals who have been penalized are those who spoke the truth. (They should get some sort of medal.) Victory in Iraq is now three years or so overdue and a bit over budget. Lives have been lost for no good reason—never mind the money—and now Bush suggests that his successor may still have to keep troops in Iraq. Those of us who once advocated this war are humbled. It's not just that we grossly underestimated the enemy. We vastly overestimated the Bush administration.

This hallowed ground, this pitiless pit, has become Exhibit A on the inability of government to function. Plans get announced, news conferences held, breathtaking models shown of buildings reaching for the sky—and nothing happens. George Pataki, the governor of New York, supposedly fashions himself a presidential candidate, yet he cannot even get this development underway. He is at loggerheads with the site's developer, and so nothing happens. In a city where developers are king—this is Donald Trump's home town, after all—you can still go to Ground Zero and see zero. This is 16 acres of Katrina and all it taught us about feeble political leaders.

Maybe we should leave Ground Zero as it is. The imagination can provide a fitting memorial to those who died. "We dig a grave in the breezes," Paul Celan wrote in his Holocaust poem "Death Fugue." We can dig ours as deep as the World Trade Center once was tall. The ugly emptiness will remind us always to be wary of the grand schemes of politicians. They can't build a building. They cannot capture a mass murderer. They cannot wage war in Iraq. This is their hole. It is, by dint of failure, George Bush's presidential library. His proper legacy is a void.