Hi all,
Sometimes its difficult to know where to begin in responding to posts that view every worldview as equally valid and coherent, so that an 80s Hollywood fantasy about American Partisans fighting against a Soviet takeover of the USA or a raunchy post-modern cartoon series designed to offend every imaginable group (other than College Students) are cited as justification for a cartoon designed to encourage Muslim children to become suicide bombers.
This program is just one of many broadcast every week on Iranian TV specifically intended to recruit young Muslim men and women, boys and girls for the Jihad. Most of these programs are aimed at Israel specifically, but many target America and Europe. They are produced with the ok not only of Iran's government, but the seal of approval of her Mullahs.
If the American government produced a cartoon series ok'd by religious leaders encouraging American teens to join terrorist organizations and participate in suicide attacks based on faith, the entire world would go balistic and the US Government would topple in a matter of days. However, when the Iranians (and other ME governments) broadcast them on a daily basis, we all shrug our shoulders and yawn. "It's all relative" we say, or worse "Well, [insert America or Israel here] deserves it for what they've done/are doing/will do."
It reminds me of an article in the late Steve Vincent's Redzone blog (the author, a journalist, was shot by Shi'ites in Basra) about how one Iraqi female translator for the US military became disgusted that Americans could no longer appreciate that some
worldviews were actually better than others, here is part of the interaction the translator "Layla" had with an Air Force Captain:
"Collecting himself, "But should we really get involved in choosing one political group over another?" the Captain countered. "I mean, I've always believed that we shouldn't project American values onto other cultures--that we should let them be. Who is to say we are right and they are wrong?"
And there it was, the familiar Cultural-Values-Are-Relative argument, surprising though it was to hear it from a military man. But that, too, I realized, was part of American Naiveté: the belief, evidently filtering down from ivy-league academia to Main Street, U.S.A., that our values are no better (and usually worse) than those of foreign nations; that we have no right to judge "the Other;" and that imposing our way of life on the world is the sure path to the bleak morality of Empire (cue the Darth Vader theme).
But Layla would have none of it. "No, believe me!" she exclaimed, sitting forward on her stool. "These religious parties are wrong! Look at them, their corruption, their incompetence, their stupidity! Look at the way they treat women! How can you say you cannot judge them? Why shouldn't your apply your own cultural values?"
It was a moment I wish every muddle-headed college kid and Western-civilization-hating leftist could have witnessed: an Air Force Captain quoting chapter and verse from the new American Gospel of Multiculturalism, only to have a flesh and blood representative of "the Other" declare that he was incorrect, that discriminations and judgment between cultures are possible--necessary--especially when it comes to the absolutely unacceptable way Middle Eastern Arabs treat women. And though Layla would not have pushed the point this far, I couldn't resist. "You know, Captain," I said, "sometimes American values are just--better."
Steve Vincent and his translator got it, but apparently the idea that teaching young children to blow up Jews and Christians is simply
evil is too much for the jaded palates of self-loathing westerners.
- SEAGOON
