The clash of civilizations / America under attack

The great temples and totems of Western civilization, exemplified by America, went down Tuesday and suddenly, horrifyingly, you knew the world had changed. The relative peace and calm humanity had enjoyed now gathered into menacing shadows. There was no war or declaration of war, no invading armies, no rain of missiles, no foreign armada at harbor laying siege on America – the most powerful nation history had ever contrived or conceived. Just four commercial aircraft stabbing across the skies. In several twinkles of the eye, the Twin Towers of New York and the Pentagon in Washington disappeared from the face of the earth.

As everybody watched with horror, very few people knew or surmised this thing would happen. And even they were gape-mouthed with terror.

My first impulse was snatch a magazine and a book from my library shelf, a 1993 copy of Foreign Affairs and a book titled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Harvard Prof. Samuel P. Huntington. The article in Foreign Affairs, similarly titled, generated even more discussion than George Kennan’s X article on containment of the Soviet Union in the 40s. Huntington, noted historian and sociologist, expanded his article into a book in 1996 which remains a runaway best-seller until today, Clash of Civilizations.

In preface, let me summarize. Huntington staggered the world of political academe by declaring or positing that world war through the use of arms on the battlefield had disappeared. He said that ideology had vanished as a prime cause of international conflict, that the nation-state still remained the core of civilizations, that henceforth, the hot spots in world politics would be "the fault lines between civilizations," that the two "great missionary religions, Christianity and Islam, would presumably come into collision, that of all the elements which define civilization, "the most important usually is religion."

To partly understand what happened in New York and Washington, one must understand that Islam – at its most militant and fanatical – is a warrior religion.

Huntington said the expansion of the West, yes America, was facilitated by the "superiority of its organization, discipline, the training of its troops, and subsequently by the superior weapons, transport, logistics, and medical services resulting from the leadership in the Industrial Revolution." A key, stirring, wrenching paragraph states: "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, to which few members of other civilizations were converted but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. (That was the era of imperial colonization – TCB.) Westerners often forget this fact. Non-Westerners never do."

Was that what happened September 11, 2001 when terrorists, suspected to be Islam extremists, rammed four hijacked commercial aircraft into the Twin Towers and Pentagon in what is now viewed as the most abject and supreme humiliation America has ever suffered at the hands of the enemy – an unseen enemy at that? America the Invulnerable, America the Impregnable was brought to its knees in broad daylight with the whole world watching via television. It was worse than Pearl Harbor.

So now the dogs of war will be set loose. The biblical "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

I am almost sure that the time will not be long when the ruling Taleban in Afghanistan, which shelters Osama bin Laden, will be overthrown. Bin Laden will be hounded everywhere until he is brought down like a dog, Saddam Hussein of Iraq will be targeted and killed, his regime brought down. Islamic terrorist organizations in the Middle East like Hezbollah and Hamas will be sought out like vipers and exterminated, and the Abu Sayyaf (who really knows?) in Mindanao, will be spotted by satellite and this time obliterated by US Seventh Fleet rockets and missiles.

There is the danger. An outraged America – and it has all the right to be outraged – will seek revenge for the many thousands who died in New York and Washington – and to hell with human rights. This time, there will be heavy loss of life and destruction as US troops engage in all-out military actions, to carry out President George Bush’s exhortation that no distinction would be made "between the terrorists who committed the attacks and those who harbor them." If there was a My Lai in Vietnam, slaughter of the innocents by rampaging GIs, there will be more of the same in many parts of the world as America’s "quiet anger" today explodes and reverberates against perceived enemies everywhere. And yet, terrorists can strike again and again at America.

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Then our world will never be the same again. All the more so because the Philippines is perceived not only as Christian but "Westernized" in a universe now being divided – civilization-wise – into Western and non-Western.

Let’s listen to Huntington again: "The balance of power among civilizations is shifting. The West is declining in relative influence. Asian civilizations are expanding their economic, military and political strength. Islam is exploding demographically with destabilizing consequences for Muslim countries and their neighbors, and non-Western civilizations generally are reaffirming the value of their own cultures."

This paragraph is frightening: "Law and order is the first requisite of Civilization. In much of the world – Africa, Latin America, the former Soviet Union, South Asia, the Middle East – it appears to be evaporating, while under a serious assault in China, Japan and the West. On a worldwide basis, Civilization seems in many respects to be yielding to barbarism, generating the image of an unprecedented phenomenon, a global Dark Ages, possibly descending on humanity."

Yes, indeed, it looked like the Dark Ages had descended on New York and Washington – emptying in just one day the whole of Manhattan, converting it into a ghost town.

A succeeding paragraph is no less frightening either: "In the clash of civilizations, Europe and America will hang together or hang separately. In the greater clash, the global real clash, between Civilization and barbarism, the world’s great civilizations with their rich accomplishments in religion, art, and literature, philosophy, science, technology, morality and compassion will also hang together or hang separately. In the emerging era, clashes of civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace. An international order based on civilizations is the surest safeguard against world war."

In this clash, extremists have the upper hand today, as witness the rubble of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Their main weapon is terrorism which historically is the weapon of the weak "who do not possess conventional military power." Saddam Hussein has the world’s largest arsenal of bacteriological weapons. And terrorists to boot. In 1988, Iranian president Rafsanjani declared Iranians "must fully equip themselves in the offensive and defensive use of chemical, bacteriological and radiological weapons."

Extremist Islam considers America "the ultimate evil" – sex, pornography, drugs – which must be destroyed at all costs. Osama bin Laden rustles in the darkest of caves, there to electronically alert his terrorist agents spread almost everywhere to perfect new means of terrorist war and carnage on America. China plays the central role, says Huntington, "in the transfer of both conventional and non-conventional weapons to many Moslem states." China too has never forgotten the Unequal Treaties which cut up the once Celestial Empire into spheres of Western influence and greed.

On TV today, you see a clutch of Arab countries profess their friendliness to America and express condemnation of the New York and Washington atrocities. And yet, in contrast, there was Islamic jubilation in Palestine. But harken again to Huntington:

"The Saudi, Libyan and other governments used their oil riches to stimulate and finance the Muslim revival, and Muslim wealth led Muslims to swing from fascination with Western culture to deep involvement in their own and willingness to assert the place and importance of Islam in non-Islamic societies. Just as Western wealth had previously been seen as evidence of the superiority of Western culture, oil wealth was seen as evidence of the superiority of Islam."

The Moslems want to modernize, but not Westernize. Thus the Islamic resurgence.

We shall proceed no further, except for one last quote from Huntington: "Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multi-civilizational world." I have often quoted Huntington in this space to cast illumination on Philippine culture.

So wide-ranging is his intellect, so pervasive his vision, that even Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brezezinski recognize his genius.