Disobey Every Day

Reflecting on today’s New York Times story about how Hezbollah’s youth corps are part of a planned holistic "society of resistence" built by the Shiite Lebanese militant group, Andrew "Abu Muqawama" Exum has a really profound insight:

My worry is that the greatest danger in creating a society of resistance is that you might actually succeed. [Boston University professor Andrew] Bacevich may talk about American militarism, but I worry more about these non-state actors who build up armed conflict as their raison d’être. If peace in suddenly in your best interest a year or so down the road, for example, how are you going to tell these kids to stand down? Are they going to be happy working in a cell phone kiosk in Tyre?

That’s exactly right. The cynic will want to say that organizations like Hezbollah have no intention of standing down, and the society-of-resistance crap represents a fairly thorough strategy. My guess is kind of a modified view of that: they’re building the equivalent of an ideological perpetual-motion-machine, where their raison d’etre might be the realization of specific, not metaphysical, goals like gaining control of Lebanon or the reconquest of Israel or what-have-you, but their ethic or espirit d’corps is based around being implacable. Call it a condition of permanent hysteria. Maybe it’s the case that in Year X their best interests are to make peace. But they’re creating a mindset where they’ll never perceive peace as being in their interests in any long-term sense.

And, to paraphrase Chris Hedges, a culture of resistence is a force that gives us meaning. To return to a bourgeoise life, or to choose one — selling cellphones in Tyre, for instance — is meant, I’d submit, to be a foreclosed option. The building of the society of resistence, says the recruiter to the youth-scout-in-training — now that is the honorable profession. There’s time enough to sell cell phones in paradise. It’s almost as if these guys are bad people or something.

Crossposted to The Streak.