Part 2 of article

One only needs to look at the helplessness of the United States and Western Europe, or at their reckless actions in the Middle East in 2011, in order to understand that the future and the rest of the world won’t be kind to this civilization.

“We’re tired of fighting, we’re tired of winning, we’re tired of defeating our enemies,” declared Ehud Olmert a few months before he won the 2006 elections. Despite his fatigue, during his term in office he was forced to embark on two wars – maybe to again make it clear that the sheep’s decisive view in favor of vegetarianism and against violence has no real weight as long as the wolf thinks otherwise.

Part 1 West’s decline underway Shaul Rosenfeld Op-ed: Western civilization seems to have lost desire to stand up to external, domestic enemies West’s decline underway

Strategist Edward Luttwak referred to the mood within Israeli society in the last few years as a “post-heroic” phase. In the West, as opposed to the near and far East, this mood is much stronger to the point where for many Westerners even a war of no choice is out of question and is perceived as part of the discourse of a fascistic, militaristic Right. It’s easy to imagine what would have happened to the European continent had it been required to fight for its survival against an enemy like the Nazis, when some battles at that time exacted thousands of victims in one day.

As part of the mosaic that makes up the new citizen of the West, this civilization managed to produce a hypocrisy mechanism that is among the most sophisticated in human history. This apparatus strictly monitors the violation of human rights, including the most minor ones, in a state like Israel, while forgiving almost any case of trampled rights, absence of democracy, cutting off of limbs, oppression of minorities and women and the stoning of homosexuals – as long as these are undertaken in the Third world and their perpetrators are not suspected, heaven forbid, of collaboration with “Western imperialism.”

Obama’s role in decline

And so, this mechanism allows the finest Western intellectuals and leaders to find fault with almost any Israeli action, while the adherence to precious principles such as human rights, civil rights, women’s rights and freedom of the press in all Arab states combined does comprise even a hint of the care Israel shows for these principles. And so, for example, while at this time Arab dictators are fighting to preserve their regimes (sometimes through bloodshed,) and while the West up until recently barely had any negative things to say about them, European Union leaders made time for the most pressing mission: Reprimanding Israel over the initiative to probe the funding of leftist groups, over the socioeconomic situation of Israel’s Arabs, and over unrecognized Bedouin villages.

Many members of the European and American leaderships cannot claim that they have nothing to do with Western decline; the current American president more than anyone else cannot make this claim, as he strongly refuses to undertake the effort required of America’s destiny as a superpower.

This includes, for example, not allowing crazed thugs such as Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-il to do whatever they wish; refraining from shunning important allies such as Mubarak, thereby reflecting the attitude to other US partners in the Middle East (even if the finest New York Times columnists are urging him to shun away); or preventing Gaddafi from massacring his own citizens.

However, as a man whose character had been shaped in radical liberal nurseries such as Columbia and Harvard Universities, a man whose political doctrine was molded in the leftist camp of the Democratic Party, and who learned his “axioms” about the West and its despicable conduct in the Levant from thinkers such as Edward Said, the president is merely realizing his finest beliefs these days. Maybe the West’s decline is one of these convictions