Our Current "Troubles"

I got to thinking about the war on terror the other day, and this is where my head went.

We're fighting for our lives here - most reasonable people understand that. We're in that position because our enemies feel that death and destruction is a good thing. And yet, where might we be if the Osamas out there believed in something different? What if Mohammed had promoted Islam as requiring Muslim control over the world's finances? Or if interpretations of the Koran led the Wahabbists to choose to dominate the world in baseball rather than homicide bombers? We in the west would probably have looked on it as reasonably healthy competition. Cutthroat, perhaps, but not in a literal sense.

That led to a train of thought on Japan. The West faced a militarized, martial culture prior to and during WWII. I don't claim to know much about Japan or its history, but clearly the military was ascendant for some time. It was a militarism we in the West could understand (as opposed to the Wahabbi nutjobs we face now) , but still an alien culture. So we fought them, and had to defeat a hardy, difficult enemy. Even with the Kamikazes, however, I don't think the Japanese were suicidal for its own sake. Yes they might sacrifice themselves for the fatherland, and maybe death before dishonor, but they weren't in a hurry to die (again, near as I understand it).
So we beat them. Took a lot of hard fighting, a lot of death, and two nukes, but we did defeat the Japanese. So what did they do? With our help, they reset their cultural norms. Still the same intensity, but they focused on success in non-military areas. Technology and capitalism are the two most obvious examples. And they certainly did overtake us significantly, though not permanently. The Japanese remain highly innovative technologically, and in the '80s at least it appeared they were kicking the daylights out of us in capitalism. We're still ahead in baseball, though there are some very strong Japanese players coming over to MLB.

What I think I'm getting at here is that we've seen this before. Sure, life would have been easier if Islam had wanted its adherents to learn to turn a double play. But that's not how it turned out. Nobody thought the Japanese or the Germans could be turned away from their violent, expansionist ways, and yet we did. I know this looks like a long haul with no end now, but we have done this before. Yes, it was against sovereign nations and not loose agglomerations (good word!) of wackos. But cultures can be turned, for their good and ours.

Few people would say the Japanese were better off as they were (certainly Manchuria could speak to the benefits, though being part of China now they probably just want to keep their heads down), and I think the same is true for the Islamic world. It will take some time, but I believe we will eventually compete against the Mullahs on the diamond or in the boardroom rather than with automatic weapons fire.