Go Read Melanie Phillips
Here’s the link.
But the moral crisis in Britain extends far wider and deeper than the wretched BBC and other media. The surreally distorted response by so many to Israel’s attempt to destroy the would-be purveyors of genocide raises the question of whether Britain will ever again support a just war — because it no longer knows what a just war is, and no longer has the intellectual capacity to know. This is in large measure because moral agency has disappeared altogether from the analysis. Intention, the essence of moral actions, is now tossed aside as of no significance. All that matters are the consequences of an action. This is in accordance with the prevailing amoral consensus which has negated moral agency altogether in order to remove the burden of personal responsibility. What someone intends to do is therefore held to be of no account. All that matters is the consequences of their action.
melanie phillips
I have been spending a fair bit of time over at the Zerb’s reading “the other side” and commenting. Phillips is writing about England but much the same point can be made about a certain segment of Canadian society.
In a sense the oversimplifications of on the spot media mean that the mass audience does not hear much about the realities of war. For example, it is unlikely that General Lew McKenzie’s revelation that he was in email communication with the poor chap killed at the UN outpost and that that soldier had told him the Hezbollah positions were within three meters of the outpost will get a lot of play. You can hear the whole interview from the CBC over at LGF here.
We received emails from him a few days ago, and he was describing the fact that he was taking fire within, in one case, three meters of his position for tactical necessity, not being targeted. Now that’s veiled speech in the military. What he was telling us was Hezbollah soldiers were all over his position and the IDF were targeting them. And that’s a favorite trick by people who don’t have representation in the UN. They use the UN as shields knowing that they can’t be punished for it.
General Lew McKenzie, cbc
Of course, if you have been paying attention you will know this already. And you will be wondering why the UN did not immediately pull out.
Phillips’ point is, however, more about the inability of England, and by extension the rest of the West, to be clear about the moral imperatives which underlie the Israelis’ self defence or, for that matter, our own capacity to defend ourselves.
A good deal has been written about asymmetrical warfare: the weak using unconventional tactics to defeat the strong. The asymmetry is more profound than this.
One side, fortunately the weaker one at present, has a clear vision of what victory would look like. We might think the re-establishment of the Caliphate and the eventual conversion - voluntary or by the sword - of the world to Islam is a truly wacky vision; but it is a vision which can motivate men to stand with small arms while tanks advance on their positions.
Our side has no such vision and, indeed, takes it as part of the ethical commitment of modernity that the creation of such a vision is immoral in itself. State and Church working together for the conversion of the heathen is a quaintly racialist ideal best left to the 19th century imperialists.
What we have not done is developed any sort of alternative vision. The catastrophe of WWI, the horror of WWII, the end of left idealism as the Soviet Union was found to have rested on a policy of mass slaughter and delusion, the Depression’s echos in the free market world, the effective end of European Christian certainty, the enuii of so many of our best and brightest have left the West, particularily Europe, without much to fight for.
At the moment, Israel sees herself as fighting for her survival. What are the rest of us fighting for?
We know what wwe are fighting against: we don’t want planes hitting buildings in the name of Allah or anyone else. We don’t want homicide bombers blasting our subways. But those are purely negative values. They do not begin to address what it might be that we are fighting for.
The Hezbollah terrorist is, albeit in a largely delusional way, fighting for something. Unless and until we are able to make our own case and articulate a vision, ours will be a purely defensive fight. We will be constrained by consequentialism and bizarre notions of proportionality. We will adhere to the idea that it is only legitimate to use minimum force in our own defence.
Which will mean that, across the decades, we will lose.
For Israel losing is not an option because if she loses her enemies will push her people into the sea without a second thought. There is an immediate and fatal consequence to losing and it is a consequence that no Israeli is prepared to accept.
For the West at large the consequences of losing are more remote, more abstract. Israel’s citizenry would be slaughtered or forced to take ship the instant Hezbollah or Hamas claimed victory. For the West in general, defeat at the hands of Islam would be far more gradual. Shira courts here, a reduction in rights there, a rule against images of Mohammad over there: the slow priviledging of Islam under the guise of multi-cultural sensitivity.
Without a firm position as to the core values of the West and a commitment to their defence we are at grave risk of sinking, imperceptibly, into a cringe before the certainties of an Islam rampant.
Written by jay on July 27th, 2006 with
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