** UPDATE: See Andy McCarthy's admonishment at the end of this post.
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After describing atrocities (incredibly bloodcurdling, see below), Victor Davis Hanson (the classicist and all-round-knowledge machine) is astonished at the West's yawn.
What is striking about all this savagery—whether with the filmed beheadings of Westerners in Iraq to the recent flaming Johnny Storm human torch at Glasgow, screaming epithets as he sought to engulf bystanders and ignite his canisters — is the absolute silence of the West, either distracted by Paris and i-Phones or suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome and obsessed with Guantanamo.
It is hard to recall an enemy so savage and yet one so largely ignored by rich affluent and distracted elites as the radical jihadists, as we have to evoke everything from mythology to comic books to find analogies to their extra-human viciousness.
Victor Davis Hanson's complete post:
Greek mythology often encapsulated an entire culture's worst fears and depravities-and over centuries of story-telling became ever more complex and layered and bizarre.
But what is strange about reading Michael Yon's graphic descriptions from Iraq is that al Qaeda (or its kindred) seems almost in a single generation to be outdoing a millennium of savagery present in Greek history and myth. You have to go to Thucydides's Mycalessus to find a parallel of wiping out even the animals of a small village.
On Friday, Yon reported that al Qaeda served up a son for dinner to his own family— a barbarism reminiscent of Atreus (hence the "curse" on the House of Atreus) cooking (sans feet and hands) and then serving his twin brother's sons to their unsuspecting father Thyestes. So Yon reports a revolting modern-day Thysestean feast:The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11-years-old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man's words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, "What did he say?" Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.
What is striking about all this savagery—whether with the filmed beheadings of Westerners in Iraq to the recent flaming Johnny Storm human torch at Glasgow, screaming epithets as he sought to engulf bystanders and ignite his canisters — is the absolute silence of the West, either distracted by Paris and i-Phones or suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome and obsessed with Guantanamo.
It is hard to recall an enemy so savage and yet one so largely ignored by rich affluent and distracted elites as the radical jihadists, as we have to evoke everything from mythology to comic books to find analogies to their extra-human viciousness.
For a self-congratulatory culture issuing moral lectures on everything from global warming to the dangers of smoking, the silence of the West toward the primordial horror from Gaza to Anbar is, well, horrific in its own way as well...---
UPDATE: Andy McCarthy's admonishment (regarding a proposed alternative to the Democrats 'plan):
Lemme make sure I have this straight:
It is to be the sense of Congress that as long as we maintain a dialogue with the people whose imperative is "Death to America," who have been actively killing Americans since we got to Iraq (to say nothing of the previous quarter-century), and whose most devout wish — other than wiping Israel off the map — is the destruction of America, we can draw down our troop commitment — which at current levels has been unable to defeat the enemy — to a skeleton rapid-reaction force ... which, of course, will be ineffective to stop al Qaeda from setting up a beach-head in Iraq, which will be a sitting duck for terrorists whose ne plus ultra is to kill Americans, but which will enable the NYTimes to say Democrats did not call for a complete withdrawal?
And that's the superior alternative to the Democrats' plan?
Planet Earth to President Bush and the Republicans: Al Qaeda — having killed nearly 3000 Americans on 9/11 and promising to do it again — is baking 11-year-old Iraqis and serving them as cannibal fare to their own parents!!! The impediment between these barbarians setting up shop and civilization is OUR TROOPS. Do you think, maybe, there might kinda, sorta be something here we could work with — y'know, assuming, just for argument's sake, of course, that we might possibly want to, um, take on the Left and rebut their insanity before we go along with all this?
Do you think maybe if you — repeatedly and convincingly — made clear to Americans what is going on over there, they might think, like, maybe we really do have to kill these savages — whose biggest target is us and who will get bigger and stronger if we leave? Do you think the American people, no matter how unhappy they are with you and how low your approval numbers are, will be content to lose a war to al Qaeda?
Is it possible that, instead of filling the media with stories about how your administration is trying to find a way out, we might possibly have you get on TV with some of the pictures Michael Yon has been publishing — and, y'know, like, friggin' P-E-R-S-U-A-D-E the American people that our troops are over there for a reason that makes a difference for AMERICAN lives.
I can't believe we're losing to these guys — in Iraq or Washington. Can't anybody here play this game?