The bogus threat of "radical Islam"

I love this columnist. Sometimes he talks about economics and gets it all wrong, and then he discusses foreign policy and gets it all right. (he did this back in May, as well).

Today's lesson: keep the "Islamic threat" in perspective. This is not your daddy's Cold War:

The collapse of the Soviet empire deprived us of what had been a central part of our political identity...That opposition helped define us, and its disappearance left a void.

Most of us soon got over the feelings of drift. But some people have dealt with the loss in another way -- by casting themselves in a grand revival of Armageddon. In this case, it's a titanic war against radical Islam, which often sounds like a war between Islam and the West.

This enemy, we are told, is the heir of communism and Nazism, which President Bush often invokes to justify staying in Iraq.

How far off the mark are these fomentors of wars? Let's look at some of the comparisons wrought between our modern enemies and those totalitarians we've previously cast down:

Start with Saddam Hussein, who was often compared to Hitler -- though his army, quite unlike the Wehrmacht, dissolved on contact with the U.S. military. His Iraq was secular, not Islamist, and if he posed a danger, it was to his neighbors, not to Western civilization.

But what about Osama, he's bad...

Osama bin Laden must rejoice to be depicted as endangering our entire culture and way of life. His movement has failed to gain power in a single country even in the Islamic world, and he hasn't been able to carry out an attack on American soil in over six years.

Almost every sentence in this piece is worth quoting, so I'll finish with Chapman's conclusion:

Radical Islamic elements pose a danger to our security that will demand vigilance, resources and, in some instances, military action. But let's not make it more than it is.

Mr. Chapman for Secretary of State (and as far from Treasury as we can keep him...)

History is offensive

There's an article in the UK's Daily Mail, saying that a UK government study has shown that "Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils." As it turns out, this sexy headline from one of the UK's most conservative newspapers is only partly true. From Snopes.com, we find that the study references a single school that was worried about teaching the Holocaust to Muslim students whose local mosque had indoctrinated them with a different perspective on the Holocaust. The BBC also debunked the Daily Mail's flamebait.

So, having had my righteous anger extinguished by cold fact, I do wish to say this:

• Sometimes history is offensive (e.g. European treatment of Native Americans, slavery, etc). Knowing the folly of our ancestors is how we learn.
• Sometimes fact is in conflict with belief. Making fact-based decisions in life avoids major mistakes.

As the spouse of a teacher, I'm happy to hear when students have their parent/faith-based/adolescent assumptions shattered by the brick of reality. These students will learn to question and to think.

It's dishonest that the Daily Mail tried to blow this out of proportion, but it's a tragedy that even one cohort of Muslim and non-Muslim students might fail to learn their history.

Godwin's Law: the Nazis are coming!

During a discussion course my freshman year of college, called "Great Conversation," there would almost inevitably be a reference to Nazis at some point during the discussions or random debates. There was also general consensus that the use of such an analogy was almost always out of context or used hyperbole, rendering the original topic pretty well moot.

Today I learned (from the Wall Street Journal, of all places) that this phenomenon has been codified into a law, Godwin's Law, which states:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. (strikethrough mine)

I'm pleased to note that in a quick search of this blog, the terms "Nazi" and "Hitler" give zero hits, though admittedly this is often a "discussion" of one...