A voice of realism contra the “Realists”

Thank God for Andrew McCarthy. He is one writer in the mainstream conservative media who understands the Islam problem, who sees through the insane illusions of the Bush democratization policy, and who now applies the same realism to the Neville Chamberlain-like “Realism” of James Baker, Brent Snowcroft et al. The “Realist” position is that, Bush-style democratization having failed, we should “talk” with our implacable enemies. In a rare leap of understanding, McCarthy sees that the “Realists,” whom most people think of as the opposite of the democratic universalists, in fact share the same underlying false belief about Islam as the democratic universalists: that Muslims are essentially the same as we, and that we can therefore co-exist and co-operate with them as equals in a single global system. The democratic-universalist and the “Realist” approaches may differ in their particulars, but not in their shared—and fatal—assumption that the Muslim world and the Western world can get along with each other on the basis of mutuality and trust.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 29, 2006 08:46 AM | Send