Here’s a great piece by David Gutman, exploring the shame-driven cultures of the Middle East, and explaining why Only U.S. Strength Can Defeat Islamism. (Hat tip: ploome.)

Military commanders from Julius Caesar to Norman Schwarzkopf have paid as much attention to the group psychology of their opponents as to the quality and quantity of their arms. National character and shared temperament, after all, bear directly on a population’s fighting spirit.

Such moral and psychological judgments of our Islamist enemies are currently off limits to our strategists and commentators, however; whether accurate or not, they are considered to smack of ethnic profiling, a contemporary sin. But in wartime, hard-won street smarts about national character are a military resource that should not be ignored, and at present we keenly need intimate knowledge of Islamist radicalism.

Human societies can be loosely divided into two groups: those governed by shame and those governed by guilt. Though often conflicting, guilt and shame are both normal functions of the human psyche. In different individuals and societies, how-ever, one or the other may predominate.

Guilt-dominant individuals tend to mistrust their own native aggression, and they will act to protect others from it.

When they are in the majority, they tend to maintain societies that will go to war only after they have been attacked. Tolerance, moderation, and charity are the official virtues of “guilt” societies, and play a part in shaping their educational practice, legislation, and foreign policy.

By contrast, shame-vulnerable individuals are constantly vigilant toward aggressions of others against their sense of honor. If insulted, they feel humiliation and rage. The shame-prone willingly submit only when the external power appears so invincible that there is no alternative but surrender. Beneath their outward defiance, the shame-prone often hold unconscious yearnings to be submissive; the seemingly omnipotent conqueror allows them to be passive without shame.

The cultivation of victim-hood is common in shame societies. Shame-prone men will look for malign external agents to rationalize any humiliation, for the victim is, by definition, not responsible for his own troubles. And the claims of victimhood eliminate any guilty inhibitions against aggression, and unlock the fury that drives the terrorist legions of shame-based societies.