Causes And Symptoms

Operation Chaos, XIX.

I can find more to agree with in this paragraph from Steve Matuchek:

"Neither Ginny nor I had swallowed the propaganda guff about how peace and happiness would prevail forevermore once the wicked Caliphate had been defeated. We knew what a legacy of wretchedness all wars must leave. Besides, we knew this conflict was more a symptom than a cause of the world's illness. The enemy wouldn't have been able to overrun most of the Eastern Hemisphere and a chunk of the United States if Christendom hadn't been divided against itself. For that matter, the Caliphate was nothing but the secular arm of a Moslem heresy; we had plenty of good Allah allies." (p. 128)

One over-simplistic world-view runs as follows:

the society that you and I (whoever we are) grew up in and are familiar with is the norm;

the only problems in the world are our external enemies and internal critics.

I suggest that a more realistic view is:

we live in a single interconnected world system;

that system has internal conflicts and generates its own problems;

in particular, if internal critics grow in numbers and impact, then this is a symptom of the internal problems even if we disagree with the programs proposed by some of the critics (most obviously, proposed racist solutions to unemployment and housing problems show that unemployment and housing problems need to be addressed).

In Poul Anderson's Technic History, David Falkayn, a prominent figure in the Polesotechnic League, recognizes that the League has its internal problems and, more importantly, addresses some of them.

Continuing his exposition, Matuchek informs us that:

Johannines had led resistance movements in occupied countries;

however, it was they that had divided Christendom and had even stimulated Caliphism.

I do not buy that last statement. Western countries are primarily divided by conflicts of material interests between sections of society, not by ideological disagreements. In fact, the latter reflect the former. The conflict in Northern Ireland was about social discrimination, not about doctrinal disagreements between Ian Paisley and the Catholic clergy.