Santorum Is Applauded for 7th Century Remark

Yesterday at a gathering of Republican presidential hopefuls, Rick Santorum got warm applause when he said about ISIS “Here’s what we need to do. If these people want to bring back a 7th Century version of Islam, my suggestion is to load our bombers up and bomb them back to the 7th Century.” See the 61-second video here.

Santorum’s remark is simple-minded nonsense, but he believes it. Our society has many badges and cloaks of respectability and intelligence, and Santorum has his share of these signs. He graduated college. He got graduate degrees (an MBA and a JD). He’s married with 7 children. He is a devout Catholic. He was elected to the House of Representatives and was twice elected Senator from Pennsylvania. He was the runner-up to Mitt Romney, winning 11 primaries and caucuses.

Nevertheless, none of the customary social filters like education, political appeal, stable family life and religious commitment guarantee or even indicate better than random chance that a man or woman knows or understands anything important about life and human beings, possesses mature judgment, or has wisdom. One may at random choose someone without any of these characteristics or even opposite ones and stand the same chance of finding a person who knows how to recognize a problem, assess it and deal with it effectively. Dressing up in a suit, speaking mainstream English and being able to make a speech do not mean a thing when it comes to signs of political knowledge and intelligence; and Santorum proves this.

The fact that the audience of presumably Republican operatives and stalwarts applauded his remark shows that nothing but an emotional reliance on bombs permeates that group. It’s an irrational belief that bombs can solve the problem of the Islamic State or jihadism.

Santorum’s full program is quoted here.

His program doesn’t come to grips with why jihadism is on the rise. He fails to mention that the U.S. policies have greatly encouraged jihadism and produced more jihadists.

He says

“The forces of radical Islam are on the move. In Syria, nearly 200,000 people are dead. Millions are on the run. In Iraq, the jihadists are slaughtering Muslims, Christians, and other minorities. In Gaza, the radicals have fired more than 4,000 rockets aimed at massacring Israeli civilians.”

But in Syria the U.S. encouraged and helped its Arab allies like Saudi Arabia to arm and train groups that later became part of ISIS. It was the U.S. attack on Iraq and subsequent policy blunders that produced a land where ISIS could take hold. It is the unwavering U.S. support of Israel and its apartheid and expansionist policies that has encouraged jihadism. Israel’s massacres in Gaza swell the jihadist ranks. It is the U.S. embrace of Saudi Arabia and its coterie of Gulf states that keeps open the religious indoctrination factories.

Santorum wants strong support of the U.S. for Israel, saying

“I was deeply impressed by the courage and resilience of the Israeli people in the face of this cruel enemy.” “Stop pressuring the Israelis to accept premature and deeply flawed ceasefire agreements. Stop halting or micromanaging the transfer of weapons to Israel that we have already promised them. Stand with the Israelis without hesitation or prevarication.”

Why take sides and side with Israel when it’s Israel that drove Palestinians from the country and continues to discriminate against them, creating massive ghettos that it invades from time to time in bloody massacres against civilians? If Israel faces a “cruel enemy” or even simply an “enemy”, why is this the case? Santorum doesn’t grapple with the basic problem. His so-called solution, which includes arms, bombs, military force, war, and strong support of Israel, doesn’t do anything different from what already has been done that has made the frictions and jihadism worse.

Santorum skirts the issue. He won’t confront the central problem which is that of Israel as a state that’s constantly misbehaving and acting unjustly toward Palestinians, a state that wants to erase Palestinians altogether if it can or by degrees. The problem stems from injustice, now and in the past. Jihadism has a recruiting foundation in perceived injustices caused by Israel, and Santorium refuses to face this fact.

On the Saudis, Santorum doesn’t recognize that they support radical jihadists and always have. He says

“Support our Arab friends. The Egyptians, Jordanians, Saudis, and some in the Gulf know first-hand the threat posed by the radicals.”

He has this backwards. There is ample evidence of Saudi support for al Qaeda and anti-Syrian radicals that became ISIS.

Santorum is also wrong on Iran, saying

“Turn up the heat on Iran. The most serious threat to America, Israel, and our Arab allies is a nuclear-armed Iran.”

This is all nonsense. Santorum is ignoring basic facts about Iran that should be well-known.

Badges of education, respectability, speech-making ability and election to office do not insulate anyone from blindness and failure to see factual realities. They are no guarantee against basic ignorance. Santorum’s positions illustrate this.

When Santorum makes a rabble-rousing remark about bombing certain people back into the 7th century as a supposed solution to increasing jihadist recruitment and the odious and brutal slayings by ISIS, it is but one part of a larger and more seriously flawed program of his. That program sidesteps, ignores, glosses over and misapprehends all the important reasons why ISIS has come about and why jihadist recruitment has risen. That program ignores the U.S. role and the central role of Israel.

Bombing may kill some current jihadists but it won’t solve the problem of jihadism. It will make it worse by encouraging new enemies of the U.S. The central problem of Israel and Palestine won’t go away. The politics of Saudi Arabia won’t go away. The U.S. blunders with respect to Libya, Syria and Iran won’t go away. Bombing is not a political program. It is a stopgap. Santorum criticizes Obama, but only for not bombing enough. The real issue here is that both of them are ducking the serious underlying issues that have to do with Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Both of them are temporizing and hiding from the real problems.

The applause for Santorum’s remark is simply an emotional relief, a feeling that all will be well if the U.S. bombs. This is superstition. It is hoping that magic will work. Bombing is akin to a magical ritual that Americans go through. It worked before in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so it should work again. The fact that it didn’t work anywhere else is erased from memory.

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