Henry Kissinger’s accent has deepened ever since his Sammy-Glick days working for Nelson Rockefeller and training those Future Leaders of the World at Harvard Summer School (making his contacts, filling his Rolodex, spreading his fame, making his moves). He did all this no doubt to the chagrin of those who, purely in intellect but not in sammy-glickdom, were his clear superiors, such as Stanley Hoffmann (who alas came a cropper over Israel, and now over Islam –some who had taken his course “On War” thought he was Raymond Aron, and he turned out…not to be).
Kissinger never gave any sign of understanding Islam during his active career, before he began trading on government “service” to open Kissinger Associates and pocket a half-million a year from Bear Stearns. He is the kind of fellow whose “insights” and “understanding” are breathlessly reported by Barbara Walters (“well, Henry says this” and “Henry says that” to those on the other end of the telephone).
He also offers a kind of upscale version for the select few at some blend of Harmonie Club-Lazard Freres-Park Avenue Synagogue do, with a touch of busy, hectically busy, investment bankers and men of the world who don’t have time to read or think for themselves, so they’ll let the honorable Henry Kissinger of Kissinger Associates do it for them, tell them what it all means, tell them what makes sense. Not quite as bad as the groups of businessmen at conventions whose steering committee has rented, for an hour lecture of perfect simpleton-simpleminded simplicissimus simliplicity, Mr. Tom Friedman who ‘splains it all to you. But close.
If Henry Kissinger says it, must it be true? The recycling of a by-now banality, “the clash of civilizations,” is telling. He can’t phrase things on his own, he can’t see what’s wrong with the prefabricated phrase, he thinks he has to run with it. Easy on his own mind, and easy on the minds of others. The kind of celebrity only Charlie Rose could love.
It is not a “clash of civilizations” — the Indic, the Sinic, the Orthodox, the Catholic, and so on. If China is in a rivalry with the United States, it is not because of any natural “clash” between the “Sinic” and the advanced Western civilizations, but is merely a case of Great Power rivalry, of the kind that Great Britain and Germany in 1914, or England and France in 1860, exhibited.
Were China and the United States to become rivals, it would not be because of the “Sinic” clash with the “Western,” and if China and India were to become rivals in Asia, it would not be because of some necessary clash of the “Sinic” with the “Hindu.” In effect, all the non-Muslim powers are part of the same world. But Islam is different. Islam teaches its adherents to divide the universe between Believer and Infidel, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. Henry Kissinger fails to recognize this. The phrase “clash of ciivilizations” is not only prefabricated, a phrase on tap — it is also a telltale sign of mental laziness, as are other fixed phrases and received ideas which do not correspond to the truth.
The truth is not that there is a “clash of civilizations,” nor that there is a clash of Islam and the West. Islam is as hostile to the Hindus, of India, of Kashmir, of Bali, of Malaysia, and to those still living in Bangladesh and Pakistan, as it is to Westerners. It is just as hostile also to the helpless black Africans, non-Muslim or non-Arab and therefore distinctly inferior Muslims, of the southern Sudan and Darfur and southern Nigeria and everywhere that the forces of Islam, of Arab Islam in this case, meet with any opposition or obstacles.
The war was declared 1350 years ago. It goes on, when and wherever it can, wherever the instruments of Jihad exist. It required the OPEC oil bonanza, and then the millions of Muslims were so foolishly allowed into the countries of the West, and then the technology of that same West was used to disseminate the full message of Islam and aid campaigns of Da”wa, in order to take the doctrine of Jihad and put it into effect. “Terror” is only one of its weapons — the only one that the timid Bush Administration seems inclined, at this point, to talk about. But Da”wa and demographic conquest, especially in Western Europe, are at present the main instruments of Jihad. They won’t be, if the Muslim states acquire better weapons, or manage to seize control of the armories of Western countries, through the very effect of that demographic conquest that might allow them to take over, without military conquest, some or many or all of the Infidel states of Western Europe.
Kissinger is getting there, perhaps. But his solemn misstatements, and his record, are clear. Compared to Scowcroft and Baker and Brzezinski he may impress, but that is setting the bar right on the ground, and it is hardly much of an achievement if someone manages to step over it.
A little more is demanded. Kissinger was weighed and found wanting long ago. He hasn’t gained weight, metaphorically speaking, since.