Bush is a Terrorist

According to Osama Bin Laden's son, his father is no more a terrorist than President Bush. As he points out, his father does not feel that he is killing innocent civilians. This is not because his father is a bloodthirsty madman, but rather stems from his reasoned position regarding the culpability of all Americans. After all, if they pay taxes to the American government they forfeit the right to consider themselves either innocent or civilians.

Worse, as Omar Bin-Laden notes, the American people voted for Bush twice, so what do they expect? That this ignores the minor fact that the team which carried out 9/11 attacks were already preparing in the summer of 2000 - prior to the US presidential elections - is completely inconsequential. Who can argue with retroactive guilt? (Actually I kind of want to agree with him on this one - "Down with the Tyranny of the Time-space Continuum!")

I also really liked the part where he compares Osama to Gerry Adams and the way the "hard-hitting" reporter nods in agreement with him about not only Adams, but about Bush being a terrorist. Check out the video).

You should compare this video with the one he gave a few weeks ago for CNN. In that one, he was interviewed with his well spoken and attractive British wife. They speak about their desire to promote peace by sponsoring a race across North Africa. There is nothing offensive in that video. Unless, of course you find it offensive that Osama Bin Laden's son seems to be living in the lap of luxury and not languishing in Guantanamo.

It's All Your Fault!

The Danish Police uncovered a plot to kill the cartoonist who displayed the above image of the Prophet Mohammed with a turban bomb. There is nothing terribly surprising in this development. In fact, even the local Islamic community is not at all surprised by this. As their spokesman noted:

``We have warned that the situation could get out of control,'' Kasem Said Ahmad, a spokesman for a Muslim organization, the Islamic Community in Denmark, told TV2. ``We want a decent tone between Muslims and Danes. But we maintain our view that the cartoons were provocative.'' (Quoted in Bloomberg)

Nowhere in this statement is there even one iota of self-reflection or (heaven forfend) condemnation of this plot. Rather, Mr. Ahmad clearly believes that the Danes brought all of this upon themselves. Even worse, there is self-righteousness, victimhood, and a not so veiled threat. I am definitely not hearing an appeal to cultural relativism or a spirited defense of Danish national traditions (such as Freedom of Speech).

Of course, this will all be a moot point once Sharia is imposed.

(Hats off to the Danes who have chosen to print the cartoons today in their newspapers to protest this very real provocation.)

Please be Considerate

I could not help but think of this cartoon when I read in the Telegraph that the Iranian envoy to Spain appealed to Human Rights organizations to show some cultural sensitivity. Specifically:

"Our laws allow for the amputation of the hand that steals. This is not accepted by the West, but the field of human rights should take into account the customs, traditions, religion and economic development," he said in comments reported by the newspaper El Mundo.

"Some laws are needed to preserve the health of society, if not, it would be in danger."

No doubt there will be many cultural and moral relativist that will heed his call.

For those who feel that Sharia is "unavodable", they may want to ponder the fact mentioned in the article that:

Iran has the second highest number of recorded executions in the world after China, according to Amnesty International.

In fact, as Amnesty reported just last month:

As nine women and two men in Iran wait to be stoned to death, Amnesty International today called on the Iranian authorities to abolish death by stoning and impose an immediate moratorium on this horrific practice, specifically designed to increase the suffering of the victims.

Academia Amok

Once again, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is right on target. Check out his recent Jerusalem Post article on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's upcoming visit to Columbia University (click here). Here are some of his important points:

In reference to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger's assertion that the invitation was in keeping with, "Columbia's long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum of robust debate."

Shmuley notes:

Of course, that is nonsense. Does anyone seriously believe that Columbia would invite a politician or scholar who denied that American slavery took place, or alleged that its effects on African-Americans was benign or exaggerated? Would Columbia host a Grand Wizard of the KKK who called for African nations to be wiped off the map?

And yet, Ahmadinejad is far worse. Not only has he denied the Holocaust and called repeatedly for Israel's destruction, he has gone beyond words and worked hard to put his plan into action.

As for double standards, he recalls that:

TWO YEARS ago, Harvard President Lawrence Summers lost his job for insinuating that women were not as intellectually competent in math and science as men. Yet Ahmadinejad presides over a government that brutally suppresses women, inflicting corporal punishment if they so much as go out in the street without a head covering. But none of this has prevented him from being feted by American academia.

Most interestingly, he clearly shows that the world (and sadly, in this particular case, academics) are directly complicit in providing cover for this nutcase and his dangerous viewpoints.

When I read about the Holocaust, I often ask myself how the world allowed Hitler to rise to prominence. After all, humanity bore continuous witness to the hatred and venom that spewed from his evil tongue against Jews. Did the nations of the world not isolate him as soon as he began frothing at the mouth?

But in light of Ahmadinejad being invited, on his last visit, to address the Council on Foreign Relations, and to speak at Columbia University on this trip, I now get it. Whatever Hitler said, nobody took him seriously. They treated his rantings as a tasteless form of benign entertainment. They found him darkly amusing. It took the incineration of six million Jews and the destruction of much of Europe to discover that, ultimately, the joke was on us.

I guess I should no longer be surprised that Abu El-Haj was recommended by Barnard (Columbia's sister institution) for tenure.

Biladi, Biladi!

Clearly the exodus of reporters following Alan Johnston's kidnapping in Gaza has benefitted those who prefer to sow mischief away from the limelight. Here is an article from Haaretz that demonstrates that if it is not being reported for all intents and purposes it is not happening. In general, the fact that the media does not feel it necessary to relate this story conveys the casual racism that I have referred to previously - that Palestinians (or people of color) killing Palestinians is no more interesting than "dog bites man".

What is even more disturbing however, is that for some reason not even the human rights organizations seem particularly bothered by it. Could this be because it is bad for business?

Reporting this widely makes the Palestinians look violent and this means that they lose the mantle of victimhood and the cherished position of underdog. What bleeding heart will shell out money for a group that they see as aggressors?

Besides, shining a light on the tribal warfare that is going on at present risks being banned from the area. Since organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and UNRWA are already heavily invested and plan campaigns around the terrible suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israelis, this is a non-starter. It effectively becomes an internal matter.

Of course, if one were to borrow the relativist logic that is so often yet selectively used by the Left, then one might ask what difference it makes if a Palestinian child is killed by a bullet fired from an M-16 or one fired from an Ak-47? Apparently it matters to some.

Here are some examples:

Several weeks now the Gaza Strip has been burning. This is not a matter of fighting between Hamas and Fatah activists or actions by the Israel Defense Forces, but battles between armed groups that for the most part are identified with large clans. Nearly every day for the past two weeks ,men, women and children have been killed in Gaza. Every day civilians are being wounded by deliberate or stray gunfire, the result of the unrestrained use of weapons. The number of armed men in the Gaza Strip, according to various estimates, is greater than 100,000. These men belong to security mechanisms, political organizations and above all to clans, and are trying to ensure the economic interests of their kinfolk. There is a tremendous amount of weaponry in the inhabitants' homes, the entire purpose of which is a potential quarrel with a neighbor, an acquaintance or a driver on the road.

In recent weeks attacks on Western and Christian targets in the West Bank have also become common. Members of terror cells identified with Al-Qaida-type organizations - compared to whom Hamas people look like boy scouts - are blowing up and destroying institutions linked to Western culture such as the American School, a church library and dozens of Internet cafes.

But the world is ignoring this. The media in Israel and the West, which reported on every person killed or wounded in the conflicts between Fatah and Hamas or because of "the Israeli occupation," are not taking any interest in Gaza. Even before the release of the Winograd report, the television news broadcasts and the major newspapers focused on trivial matters and chose not to deal with the danger to the lives of every Palestinian living in Gaza.

(For those who are unfamiliar with Haaretz or think that this is just self-serving Israeli propoganda, I would point out that this is the most left-wing of the mainstream Israeli newspapers and has a long track record of favorable reporting of the Palestinian cause.)

Hostage Aftermath

Between preparing for Passover and celebrating the holiday, the last few weeks have been hectic and I have not had the time to sit down and blog. I have been meaning to write about the Iran standoff and the hostages, but the truth is that there was not much to actually write about. Clearly the "press conferences" and "heartfelt" letters from Seaman Turney fooled absolutely no one in the West and for that reason I did not feel like perpetuating the farce by writing about it. And then, in what many took as a complete surprise, Ahmadinejad released the hapless Brits from their captivity with a well-timed, "Open Sesame!"

I have already spoken about the background to this entire episode in my last post, so I thought I would provide a summation in five parts in this one:

I. Iranian Actions

Personally, I found it interesting that from the first televised clip that was aired by Iran on their Arabic language TV station Al Alam, they focused in on the only female among the 15 hostages, seaman Faye Turney. Clearly, this was a bid for sympathy and an attempt at leverage in the negotiations with the British. No doubt the Iranians thought that spotlighting the lone female would pressure the British government to make concessions and apologize. No doubt they calculated that the British public would not be able to withstand either the humiliation that was being meted out to her nor would they have the stomach to stand tough when a woman was involved.

Basically, Turney became an Iranian weapon that was supposed to soften up the Brits. I think that this was a miscalculation on their part, because it only angered the Brits more and provided the sailors with more sympathy than they would have had otherwise. In effect, she became the poster child for this incident. That she was the centerpiece of the Iranian propaganda effort is evidenced by the fact that she was paraded in a headscarf and wearing baggy Iranian clothing. If ever there was proof needed that the wearing of the veil is a coercive act, then this was certainly it. The fact that she was presented with a chador was clearly the Iranian way of showing that she had been truly captured and was under their control ("domesticated").

It demonstrated that, like a bird being banded by biologists, she was the object of Iranian control fantasies and being used to send the message that the Iranians were calling the shots. This was further reinforced when she appeared the following day donning a Palestinian style headscarf - a potent symbol of the political theater that was being played out and representative of the degree to which the Iranians felt she was their most central propaganda tool.

Unfortunately for the Iranians their desire to show that they were in control backfired and came across as both heavy-handed and creepy. As an aside, I think that the fact that she was always shown with a lit cigarette in hand belies a desire to repulse the Iranian (and Middle East) people and to prevent them from overly identifying or sympathizing with her. One can only imagine how a male, let alone a female viewer in a place like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan digested those images. Perhaps as a morality tale of what happens to women when they occupy traditionally male roles?

II. British Reaction

It was as a Jew that I was particularly interested in what the British public's reaction to this entire episode would be. I say this because I believe that the British, perhaps more than any other group in Europe, have so completely turned their backs on their colonialist era and its legacy and embraced the notions of multiculturalism and the political correctness that goes hand in hand with it that they have became the epicenter - if not the source of - anti-Israel sentiment among the Left in Europe.

While Blair may have maintained the "special relationship" between Britain and the US, the British public has abandoned this path and are more likely to count Israel and the US as the source of all the world's evils than Iran. Unfortunately, the British public did not fail to disappoint. In editorial after editorial, the public and the media's ire was directed squarely at the Blair government and its "overly cozy" relationship with the Bush administration. As more than one British paper noted, none of this would have ever happened if the British had not gotten themselves involved in the "illegal" Iraq war and that no matter what the British hostages were going through it would most certainly never be half as bad as either Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.

Clearly it was too much to expect that the reader’s comments to these articles would espouse British pride and patriotism while addressing the manifold inaccuracies of moral equivalency and false comparisons. After all, those serving time in Guantanamo were not carrying out a UN mandated mission, nor were they even in uniforms, for the most part (and thus not covered by the Geneva conventions). Based on the many anti-British comments written by ordinary Brits, it did not even seem to matter that the British soldiers were forcibly abducted from Iraqi waters. This simple fact is far less surprising if you believe that all "truth" is relative or that all governments lie and therefore the actual facts of the matter are irrelevant.

In the end the British proved no better than the Spanish, who allowed a terrorist act to affect the outcome of their national elections or the Italians, who have proven that they will unreservedly negotiate with terrorists and pay handsome ransoms to release their captured citizens. Actually, in some ways the British were far worse, because they could not even muster a wee bit of indignation.

As an aside: None of this bodes well for Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter who now has the dubious distinction of being the journalist who has been held hostage for longer than any other foreigner in Gaza. That he lived in Gaza and supplied the West with unabashedly favorable reports about the Palestinians does not seem to have inured him from this sort of treatment. The fact the British public could care less about their kidnapped soldiers, would seem to imply that journalists should go at their own peril. Apparently the message has been assimilated by the press corps and they are no longer venturing into Gaza.

Latest reports state that Johnston may already be dead – a fact that would fly in the face of countless news reports and op ed pieces that attempted to downplay this incident as an attempt to obtain government jobs or loot. While one might think that such a kidnapping would turn British public opinion against the Palestinians, I will certainly not be surprised if in the end it will all be either Israel's or America's fault. Almost on cue, the British National Union of Journalists voted today to boycott Israel!

III. Diplomacy

More than anything else, the Bush administration is routinely accused of being incapable of conducting diplomacy. I think that this is a gross overstatement and over-simplification of how diplomacy works. Certainly, this administration does not engage in the kind of “feel good” diplomacy that was common of the Clinton era, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that there is no give and take in all of these crises. I also would point out that although the Clinton diplomatic style was more camera friendly and photogenic, it was no more effective at achieving its goals than the Bush method. Besides, Clinton was also not averse to committing ground troops or lobbing missiles across the world when deemed necessary.

In the case of the British hostages, there are clear signs that the Bush administration played the cards that it was dealt with a relative degree of aplomb. For starters, the US administration provided its British ally strong verbal support, yet the President said absolutely nothing until a week had gone by. If nothing else, this shows some discipline and an understanding that words could escalate matters precipitously. When the President did speak, it was at the point where the British had decided to ratchet up the pressure a bit. Perhaps for this reason it is unsurprising that he call the British soldiers by the politically charged term “hostages”.

Lest you think that I am giving Bush way too much credit for NOT saying something or for using the word that everyone was thinking, I think we should look at what was happening on the ground at the same time. First off, the Iraqi government suddenly chose to release the sole Iranian in its possession. While the Iraqis claimed that this had nothing to do with the ongoing crisis, this seems more than a little disingenuous. The timing was more than a little suspect and there was no reason that this person could not have been released at a later time. That the Iraqis were the ones to announce this provided the British and the Americans with the cover (plausible deniability) they needed to maintain that they were not negotiating with the Iranians on this matter. Together with an unwritten promise that the Iranians in American custody would receive consular visitation rights, this was the carrot.

At the same time, the US ordered the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf from the Eastern Mediterranean. For those unfamiliar with the Nimitz, it is the flagship of a class of supercarriers that are the largest warships ever built in history. Moreover, these ships do not just travel along alone with their airplanes, but are accompanied by a large armada of ships called a “strike group”. The announcement that the Nimitz would join two other supercarrier fleets in the Persian Gulf should clearly be seen as a message to the Iranian establishment that there was a time limit to their shenanigans. Clearly, this was the stick.

I would like to point out that this is not the first time that this type of dynamic has played out. One of Al Qaeda’s most consistent demands in the run up to 9-11 was that the United States needed to remove its troops from the Arabian Peninsula. For years the Saudis and Americans said that they would do this and that the US troops were only there to protect the Saudis from the Iraqis. Yet, on the cusp of the Second Iraq War the US moved its Central Command to Qatar – farther from the fighting. The only reason that I can think of is that this was meant to be a concession to Al Qaeda meant to undercut the argument that they were only acting out of defense of Mecca and Medina.

Incidentally, the British were also willing to play a bit of hard ball with the Iranians as was evidenced by the firefight that took place in the shadow of the Iranian consulate in Basra. The subsequent Iranian use of firecrackers in front of the British embassy in Tehran should also be seen as part of this same tango.

IV. Aftermath

Now that some time has passed between the benevolent “gifting” of the British hostages by Ahmadinejad, two things have become clear – this episode was meant to send a chill down the spine of the Western powers and that the stakes in any future confrontation are much higher.

Only days after the release, the Iranians cemented their position by stating that they had initiated large-scale uranium enrichment in defiance of the international community. Clearly the purpose of the hostage-taking was meant to serve as a reminder that if the West wants to confront Iran on the nuclear issue through international bodies such as the UN, that there will be a price to pay. I find it hard to believe that the Iranians were unaware that the British would undertake the revolving presidency over the Security Council that began on April 1 and that this will be immediately followed by the US presidency starting in May.

In terms of future confrontations, the death of several British soldiers in Basra on the day that the hostages were released was doubtlessly meant primarily to reinforce this point to those in decision-making posts while further undermining British resolve. Since then, it seems that both sides are happy to continue this covert war and both the actions and allegations streaming across both sides seem to indicate that we are closer to the beginning than to the end. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I think that events as disparate as the continued unraveling of Gaza, Hizbollah bravado, Syrian preparations for a summer war, protests in Basra and Moqtada al Sadr’s pressure on the Iraqi government all have many causes but primarily one root.

V. Philosophizing

I think that the Iranian willingness to once again take hostages can only be understood as representative of a worldview that is based on philosophical perspectives that Westerners find completely foreign. This is not meant to imply that Westerners or Western powers have not or would not be able to take hostages, but it does imply that hostage-taking has become the signature Iranian tactic and together with suicide bombing has become identified with the Middle East.

If anything underlines the difference between Western philosophic thought and non-Western philosophies, it has to do with ideas of liberty and the notion of individualism. Whereas in the West personal freedom is a value that needs to be cultivated and protected, in non-Western countries like Iran and much of the rest of the World, the individual’s desires are subsumed by the needs of the group. In fact, Mohammad Khatami, the former President of Iran has identified this distinction in his writings on political philosophy and criticized what he identified as the Western “unbridled individualism” and the, “belief that humans and their needs and desires are of central importance at all times.” From Khatami’s perspective, the very real threat of this philosophy lies in, turning “human beings into a new religion”.

Yet the danger inherent in the loss of individuality can most clearly be seen in the case of suicide bombers, who literally negate the individual for the sake of their societies in the way that certain species of ants and bees sacrifice themselves to protect the hill or hive. The taking of hostages actually accomplishes two interrelated goals – effacing the individual while using the individual as a weapon.

The former is the result of the hostage taking and effectively denies each individual their identity as they become subsumed to the group and are reconfigured as “hostages”, or the “the Americans”, or whatever tag their captors decide to pin on them. The latter results when the hostages are paraded before the "neutral gaze" of the cameras. Westerners watching on TV intrinsically identify with the hostages, imagine in their minds what they must be going through and feel empathy. For non-Western people who think in essentialist terms, the differences are chasms that far outweigh the similarities. Basically, tribalism trumps humanism.

From a strictly tactical point of view, the Western preoccupation with the well-being of individuals is a liability in a time of war. From a strategic perspective, it is the Western focus on each and every individual that is the source of its strength and innovation. After all, it is individuals unfettered by custom and tradition who will not only fight but also innovate to preserve their freedom.

Cultural Relativism and Liberal Universalism

Phyllis Chesler, an Emeritus Professor in Psychology and Women's Studies from City University New York has written a critical piece in the Times Online that questions the cherished Anthropological notions surrounding imperialism (e.g. "Dependency Theory" and Orientalism) as well as cultural and moral relativism. She writes this article from the personal experience of having lived in purdah during her marriage to an Afghan in the early 1960s. In the article she uses very un-PC words such as "barbarism", "evil" and "feudal" to make her point. For example:

Individual Afghans were enchantingly courteous — but the Afghanistan I knew was a bastion of illiteracy, poverty, treachery and preventable diseases. It was also a police state, a feudal monarchy and a theocracy, rank with fear and paranoia. Afghanistan had never been colonised. My relatives said: “Not even the British could occupy us.” Thus I was forced to conclude that Afghan barbarism was of their own making and could not be attributed to Western imperialism.

Long before the rise of the Taleban, I learnt not to romanticise Third World countries or to confuse their hideous tyrants with liberators. I also learnt that sexual and religious apartheid in Muslim countries is indigenous and not the result of Western crimes — and that such “colourful tribal customs” are absolutely, not relatively, evil.

Although Anthropology emerged as an Imperial endeavor - as an attempt by the conquering powers to better understand and rule their new subjects - the field has long ago turned its back on Empire and any ideological encumbrances it may have once had in this regard. If anything, the Anthropology of the post-WWII era has been the font of some of the most scathing critiques of the colonial imperative and a champion of national rights for those who were once colonized. Based on anti-essentialist notions that undermined the worldview of those who believed in the "White Man's Burden", anthropology (as a field) was supportive of and deeply invested in the liberation movements of the 1950s and 60s.

Unfortunately, as self-rule spread from country to country throughout the developing world, these new states miserably failed at bettering the lives of their citizens and often descended into civil war and anarchy. To account for this unanticipated turn of events, anthropologists and other social scientists put forward explanations such as "Dependency Theory" and Orientalism. The former blamed the recently departed colonizers for economic and political emasculation of these societies and the latter argued that this behavior stemmed from, "old-fashioned and prejudiced outsider interpretations of Eastern cultures and peoples."1

According to Dependency Theory, the colonizers may have left, but what they left behind were nation-states that were either not viable states (because their borders did not take into account underlying ethnic rivalries) or so economically dependent on the departing imperial power that independence was effectively a ruse designed to benefit only a tiny comprador group serving external interests. This viewpoint, which stemmed primarily from communist and structuralist analyses became the accepted wisdom in the the 1970s, especially among liberals and academics. That these ideas are still quite potent is clearly exemplified by the anti-globalization movement, the modern-day inheritor of the anti-neocolonialist mantle.

That most of these colonies were pre-modern societies that suffered from long-standing social and economic issues prior to the advent of the first European is apparently irrelevant and does not fit the model of a "lost Eden". At the same time, it is apparently irrelevant that some of these former colonies have now been independent states for longer than they were subjugated to foreign rule. Even in places like India, where Empire stretched to almost 400 years, the fact that well over one billion people have been born since British Raj is discounted as irrelevant. As Chesler rightly points out, these theories do not account for failed states such as Afghanistan which were never colonized, yet have been unable to provide their citizens with basic necessities or a modicum of human rights. However, the notion that there may be something indigenous to these cultures that is disadvantageous or detrimental to development has been repeatedly rejected as racist.

I suspect that this actually stems from the wide-ranging philosophical impact of Anthropology's most cherished notion, "cultural relativism". This posits that the differences between people are just a question of custom à la "You say to-may-toe and I say toe-mah-toe." No doubt Franz Boas, who spent his life combating essentialist notions of race and hierarchical notions of superiority would be both pleased and chagrined at his legacy. The smug certainty of Western civilization or White superiority has been vanquished, yet Boas - who was well-known for his scientific temperament and an unwavering moral compass - would undoubtedly balk at the populist interpretation that everything is relative.

Boas clearly recognized the existence of evil and regularly spoke out against both racism and Nazism. Indeed, "When the Nazi Party in Germany denounced "Jewish science" (which included not only Boasian Anthropology but Freudian psychoanalysis and Einsteinian physics), Boas responded with a public statement signed by over 8,000 other scientists, declaring that there is only one science, to which race and religion are irrelevant."2 Scientists are supposed to base their conclusions on facts and not on ideology. Unfortunately , what started as a healthy corrective against prejudice and racism has morphed into an ideological albatross that effectively blinds us to the essentializing of our adversaries.

Unfortunately, many anthropologists confuse their role as ethnographers and become anthro-apologists. While it is certainly the role of an anthropologist to understand and explain other cultures, it has become the custom among anthropologists to explain away the excesses of all cultures but their own. Rare is the anthropologist who can explain without condoning. While anthropology emerged as the science which embraced the "exotic" and rightly called into question the civilized nature of the industrial or "developed" world, it has too often taken sides while suffering from a bad case of the Stockholm syndrome.

Moreover, an unforeseen outcome of these critiques and "deconstruction" is that they have intellectually undermined the foundational notions of Western civilization. Frankly, if this were aimed against other cultures it would be considered "politically incorrect" and run the risk of being seen as bordering ethnocide. This begs the question of why the same person who will travel half way around the world to experience a "colorful tribal custom" has only scorn for the long-standing traditions of their own culture? Why is it that the same person will eloquently defend the "right" of cannibalism, wearing of the burqa or female genital mutilation but bristle at Western hegemony when equality, human rights and democracy are suggested? This is because cultural relativism is often confused with moral relativism. If every culture is "adaptive" in its own way, then who are we to judge which one is better?

Chesler rejects this view and instead proposes:

Now is the time for Western intellectuals who claim to be antiracists and committed to human rights to stand with these dissidents. To do so requires that we adopt a universal standard of human rights and abandon our loyalty to multicultural relativism, which justifies, even romanticises, indigenous Islamist barbarism, totalitarian terrorism and the persecution of women, religious minorities, homosexuals and intellectuals. Our abject refusal to judge between civilisation and barbarism, and between enlightened rationalism and theocratic fundamentalism, endangers and condemns the victims of Islamic tyranny.

I share Chesler's wish that those Western intellectuals who support tyrants and murderers would no longer be so blinded by ideology that they embrace anyone professing anti-Western or anti-capitalists rhetoric as a "progressive". I am old enough to remember that at one time Pol Pot was the cause célèbre of the Left and I will not be terribly surprised in the future if people start disappearing and concentration camps are uncovered in Chavez's Venezuela. No doubt, twenty years from now legions of university professors will make their careers arguing that the Bush administration really should have invaded Venezuela instead of searching for WMDs in Iraq. Somehow the fact that the same people would be the most vocal opponents of any such action today does not seem to be a contradiction. After all, if all truth is relative, then one can certainly advocate one thing today and something else tomorrow.

The problem with Chesler's neat "solution" of a "universal standard of human rights" stems from the same totalizing place that it opposes. Chesler is basically proposing a liberal universalism that is the opposite pole of ethnocentrism and xenophobia. In my opinion, it is a morbid fear of liberal universalism, more than the existence of American bases in Saudi Arabia, that causes Bin Laden to wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. As globalization continues to extend it's inexorable grip on the planet, more and more cultures and customs will bump up against each other with all the potential for conflict that this entails. It is precisely for this reason that "minimum" if not "universal" standards of human rights should be adopted.