XPost: alt.politics.radical-left, alt.drugs.heroin, alt.journalism.criticism   
   XPost: alt.arguments   
   From: stick-that-up-your-ass@barackobama.com   
      
   By WALTER RUSSELL MEAD   
   Sept. 11, 2015 2:16 p.m. ET   
   614 COMMENTS   
   The migration crisis enveloping Europe and much of the Middle   
   East today is one of the worst humanitarian disasters since the   
   1940s. Millions of desperate people are on the march: Sunni   
   refugees driven out by the barbarity of the Assad regime in   
   Syria, Christians and Yazidis fleeing the pornographic violence   
   of Islamic State, millions more of all faiths and no faith   
   fleeing poverty and oppression without end. Parents are   
   entrusting their lives and the lives of their young children to   
   rickety boats and unscrupulous criminal syndicates along the   
   Mediterranean coast, professionals and business people are   
   giving up their livelihoods and investments, farmers are   
   abandoning their land, and from North Africa to Syria, the sick   
   and the old are on the road, carrying a few treasured belongings   
   on a new trail of tears.   
      
   It is the first migration crisis of the 21st century, but it is   
   unlikely to be the last. The rise of identity politics across   
   the Middle East and much of sub-Saharan Africa is setting off   
   waves of violence like those that tore apart the Balkans and the   
   Ottoman Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. The hatreds and   
   rivalries driving endangered communities to exile and   
   destruction have a long history. They probably have a long   
   future as well.   
      
   What we are witnessing today is a crisis of two civilizations:   
   The Middle East and Europe are both facing deep cultural and   
   political problems that they cannot solve. The intersection of   
   their failures and shortcomings has made this crisis much more   
   destructive and dangerous than it needed to be—and carries with   
   it the risk of more instability and more war in a widening   
   spiral.   
      
   The crisis in the Middle East has to do with much more than the   
   breakdown of order in Syria and Libya. It runs deeper than the   
   poisonous sectarian and ethnic hatreds behind the series of wars   
   stretching from Pakistan to North Africa. At bottom, we are   
   witnessing the consequences of a civilization’s failure either   
   to overcome or to accommodate the forces of modernity. One   
   hundred years after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and 50 years   
   after the French left Algeria, the Middle East has failed to   
   build economies that allow ordinary people to live with dignity,   
   has failed to build modern political institutions and has failed   
   to carve out the place of honor and respect in world affairs   
   that its peoples seek.   
      
   There is no point in rehearsing the multiple failures since   
   Britain’s defeat of the Ottoman Empire liberated the Arabs from   
   hundreds of years of Turkish rule. But it is worth noting that   
   the Arab world has tried a succession of ideologies and forms of   
   government, and that none of them has worked. The liberal   
   nationalism of the early 20th century failed, and so did the   
   socialist nationalism of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and his   
   contemporaries. Authoritarianism failed the Arabs too: Compare   
   what Lee Kwan Yew created in resource-free Singapore with the   
   legacy of the Assads in Syria or of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.   
      
   Today we are watching the failure of Islamism. From the Muslim   
   Brotherhood to Islamic State, Islamist movements have had no   
   more success in curing the ills of Arab civilization than any of   
   the secular movements of the past. Worse, the brutal fanaticism   
   and nihilistic violence of groups like Islamic State undercuts   
   respect for more moderate versions of Islamic spirituality and   
   thought.   
      
   The Turks and the Iranians have had more economic and   
   institutional success than the Arabs, but in both Turkey and   
   Iran today, the outlook is bleak. Iran is ruled by a   
   revolutionary alliance of reactionary clerics and hungry thugs,   
   and it is committed to a regional policy of confrontation and   
   sectarian war. Like the Soviet Union, Iran is an uneasy   
   conglomeration of national and cultural groups held together by   
   a radical but increasingly stale ideology. Turkey, too, is   
   cursed by blind Islamist enthusiasm and unresolved ethnic and   
   ideological chasms. Neither country is immune to the violence   
   sweeping the region, and neither country has been able to   
   develop policies that would calm rather than roil their   
   turbulent surroundings.   
      
   At the same time, foreign values are challenging traditional   
   beliefs and practices across the region. Women throughout the   
   Islamic world are seeking to shape theological and social ideas   
   to better reflect their own experience. Modern science and   
   historical and textual criticism pose many of the questions for   
   traditional Islamic piety that 19th-century science and biblical   
   criticism posed for Christianity. Young people continue to be   
   exposed to information, narratives and images that are difficult   
   to reconcile with traditions they were raised to take for   
   granted.   
      
   As hundreds of thousands of refugees stumble from the chaos of   
   an imploding Arab world toward Europe, and as millions more seek   
   refuge closer to home, we see a crisis of confidence in the very   
   structures of Middle Eastern civilization, including religion.   
   Reports that hundreds of Iranian and other refugees from the   
   Islamic world are seeking Christian baptism in Europe can be   
   seen as one aspect of this crisis. If people feel that the   
   religion they were raised in and the civilization of which they   
   are a part cannot master the problems of daily life, they will   
   seek alternatives.   
      
   For other Muslims, this means the embrace of radical   
   fundamentalism. Such fanaticism is a sign of crisis and not of   
   health in religious life, and the very violence of radical Islam   
   today points to the depth of the failure of traditional   
   religious ideas and institutions across the Middle East.   
      
   In Europe and the West, the crisis is quieter but no less   
   profound. Europe today often doesn’t seem to know where it is   
   going, what Western civilization is for, or even whether or how   
   it can or should be defended. Increasingly, the contemporary   
   version of Enlightenment liberalism sees itself as fundamentally   
   opposed to the religious, political and economic foundations of   
   Western society. Liberal values such as free expression,   
   individual self-determination and a broad array of human rights   
   have become detached in the minds of many from the institutional   
   and civilizational context that shaped them.   
      
   Capitalism, the social engine without which neither Europe nor   
   the U.S. would have the wealth or strength to embrace liberal   
   values with any hope of success, is often seen as a cruel, anti-   
   human system that is leading the world to a Malthusian climate   
   catastrophe. Military strength, without which the liberal states   
   would be overwhelmed, is regarded with suspicion in the U.S. and   
   with abhorrence in much of Europe. Too many people in the West   
   interpret pluralism and tolerance in ways that forbid or   
   unrealistically constrain the active defense of these values   
   against illiberal states like Russia or illiberal movements like   
   radical Islam.   
      
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)