The Illusion Of Safety

17 thoughts on “The Illusion Of Safety”

1. Oh well ranted! Well said! Wonderful! You’ve completely ignored any sanity in the world, and adopted, via selective quotes and your own radical right views, that “They will kill us unless we kill them first.”

   Therefore, you must wholly support the destruction of the Christian religion (remember the crusades? They were attacking everyone who did not share their beliefs. There is a direct parallel between the Crusades of the first millenium, sanctified by the Pope, and what BinLaden and other leaders are saying now. Convert them to our views, or destroy them.

   But the Crusades stopped.

   Did they stop because they conquered the world? No. Did they stop because someone utterly destroyed them? No. They stopped when the leaders realized what a ridiculous concept it was to force the entire world to their way of thinking, and how it was basically impossible to accomplish. They stopped because they realized the policy was self-destructive, and would expand the level of strife and pain in the world, not alleviate it. The middle east WAS beginning to understand this, before Bush saw a political opportunity after Afghanistan, and proceeded on an idiotic war against a country that was no threat to us.

   The same approach should be applied here. You cannot destroy a concept. You will not wipe out islamic militants with bombs or guns. You will not stop terrorism with war.

   THAT concept, my friend, is the one that you do not seem to understand. This conflict is completely, 100% unwinnable, at least by the definition Bush keeps putting forth. We will not triumph over terrorism by destroying islamic countries. Oh, pardon me, ‘liberating’. Bush realizes this now (Note that the policy of pre-emption is now completely gone from Bush’s rhetoric).

   Reply

2. Oh well ranted! Well said! Wonderful! You’ve completely ignored any sanity in the world, and adopted, via selective quotes and your own radical right views, that “They will kill us unless we kill them first.”

   So, you’re arguing that that isn’t what Qutb believed and al-Qaeda believes now?

   Therefore, you must wholly support the destruction of the Christian religion (remember the crusades? They were attacking everyone who did not share their beliefs. There is a direct parallel between the Crusades of the first millenium, sanctified by the Pope, and what BinLaden and other leaders are saying now. Convert them to our views, or destroy them.

   Actually, the motivation for the Crusades was a mixture of “secure the Holy Land” and “get filthy stinking rich in the process.” The Crusaders didn’t particularly care about converting all Muslims to Christianity. Incidentally, the whole thing started with the Seljuk Turks invaded the Byzantine Empire and Emperor Alexius I called for the aid of Pope Urban II.

   But the Crusades stopped.

   Officially, yes. Historically, they didn’t for centuries. Tensions between the Turkish Muslims and the West didn’t really subside until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Ataturk’s pro-Western rule in 1921. That’s close to a millennium of warfare – much of it due to the militant expansion of Islam. One of Bin Laden’s desires is to restore a single caliphate similar to the Ottoman Empire.

   Did they stop because they conquered the world? No. Did they stop because someone utterly destroyed them? No. They stopped when the leaders realized what a ridiculous concept it was to force the entire world to their way of thinking, and how it was basically impossible to accomplish. They stopped because they realized the policy was self-destructive, and would expand the level of strife and pain in the world, not alleviate it.

   Which is all nice and good, except for the part where it’s totally untrue. The Crusades ended when Saladin utterly defeated the Third Crusade – subsequent Crusades were much smaller and failed to retake any significant territory from the Muslims. Which is why there’s a province in Iraq called Salah-al-din, and why Saddam Hussein kept trying to compare himself to Saladin.

   Your point and history don’t meet. In fact, they don’t live in the same ZIP code…

   The middle east WAS beginning to understand this, before Bush saw a political opportunity after Afghanistan, and proceeded on an idiotic war against a country that was no threat to us.

   Which again, goes against history. Strange that only after the fall of Hussein did the Cedar Revolution kick out the Syrians from Lebanon. The fact that there were 150,000 US troops next door certainly made the Syrians less likely to do what they did to Hama and simply kill all the opposition.

   And how strange it is that after the fall of Hussein all of a sudden the democratic opposition in Egypt starts getting concessions (limited as they were) from the Mubarak regime, and all of sudden Kuwaiti women are granted the right to vote and hold public office. Such a coincidence, isn’t it? Even Walid Jumblatt admitted that the elections in Iraq were equivalent to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

   The same approach should be applied here. You cannot destroy a concept. You will not wipe out islamic militants with bombs or guns. You will not stop terrorism with war.

   You can’t destroy a concept? Oh really? Like communism? Or Naziism? Or Imperial Japanese aggression?

   The idea that Islamism is somehow some new and more pernicious threat than any other expansionist ideology is to give it greater credence than it deserves.

   Even if the ideology cannot be defeated, it can be defanged. There are still communists, Nazis, and Japanese militarists out there, but they’re no longer threatening the entire world with war. In the same way, there will always been Islamic terrorists, but if they have no willing governments to supply them with money, training, and a steady stream of ideological indoctrination, the threat would be greatly diminished.

   THAT concept, my friend, is the one that you do not seem to understand. This conflict is completely, 100% unwinnable, at least by the definition Bush keeps putting forth.

   So, I guess let’s start making veils and start saving rocks for the stonings, because those are the non-negotiable demands of the enemy. If we can’t win this war, then all of society is truly and totally screwed.

   We will not triumph over terrorism by destroying islamic countries.

   We will triumph by draining the swamps of the Middle East, eliminating states that sponsor and foster terrorism, and introducing the concepts of democratic governance and civil society in the Middle East.

   If all we wanted to do is “destroy” Islamic countries, we’d be done with this war by now. At a single order, the President could have wiped out every capital city and major population center in the Middle East before noon on September 11, 2001. Yet instead we’re spending money, time, resources, and blood on making Iraq a reasonably democratic state. If all we cared about is “destroying Islamic countries” we would have levelled Fallujah over a year ago pour encourager les autres.

   Oh, pardon me, ‘liberating’.

   Ah, the old lefty scare quotes. So, you would argue that the people of Iraq were better off under Saddam Hussein?

   Bush realizes this now

   Bush hasn’t budged on Iraq one bit. We’re there to establish a stable democratic government, and we will not leave until that objective is achieved.

   (Note that the policy of pre-emption is now completely gone from Bush’s rhetoric).

   He doesn’t use those words, but the concept is still there.

   Reply

3. While we’re talking history here, one quick comment (btw, your reply is impossible to follow – you don’t mark included text at all – you re-quote my stuff with no delineation).

   You say:
   You can’t destroy a concept? Oh really? Like communism? Or Naziism? Or Imperial Japanese aggression?

   We’re dangerously close to invoking Godwins Law here, but lets look at your 3 primary examples of why a concept cannot be destroyed by military action.

   Communism Note that the soviet union did not fall due to military action. It fell due to internal economic collapse. We did not drop one bomb or fire one gun against Russia that resulted in it’s downfall. It collapsed due to economic, trade, and political pressure.

   Naziism Germany, as a fully functional financial and industrial nation, built it’s army, and successfully invaded neighboring countries, one by one. They additionally made it clear that Europe, and finally, the entire world was their goal, and could have succeeded unless stopped. This stoppage happened due to the combined forces of the Allies – first neighboring countries, and later the US. The war was in full swing by the time the US joined, and the target of this war, Germany, had already mobilized a huge army. There was no question about their capability, their plans, and their goals. Germany fielded MILLIONS of soldiers – the entire country geared for war. In comparison, Iraq attacked one country (Kuwait) and was pushed out. Then they stopped.

   Imperial Japanese Aggression. Again, this is an entire nation who attacked us first. Or did you forget about Pearl Harbor? There was no question about who attacked whom first there. Japan stood up, made their intentions clear, attacked over and over again, were met, defeated, and destroyed. We were at war with a country that was attacking us. The Japanese were intelligent enough to understand when to stop fighting. They stopped because they did not want their home country destroyed – as evidenced by the levelling of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They admitted defeat, and surrendered. Radical Islamists will never accept that, because they have no home, and nothing to defend. Their goal is destruction. Given a target, they will attack it. The US has provided them with a huge target.

   One last thing:
   Ah, the old lefty scare quotes. So, you would argue that the people of Iraq were better off under Saddam Hussein?

   This phrase has been used so many times, over and over again, it’s become a joke. This is the best defense that the right can come up with?

   This was not the reason we went to war in Iraq. At least not the reason Bush gave. Remember WMD’s? Remember imminent threats? Remember weapons inspections?

   There are hundreds of places in the world where things would be better off with a change. The question isn’t ‘Are the iraqi people better off now’ – IMHO, they’re not. The change has happened, there’s no going back. Bush has adopted the scorched earth policy. He acts, then justifies. The question is “Was the action Bush took the right one?” – I know of no one who has any sense who will answer that with “Absolutely, yes!” My biggest problem is that this administration has led the country down a path of destruction, hate, and war, with no thought of the consequences of it’s actions.

   Reply
4. Pingback: Planet Geek!

5. While we’re talking history here, one quick comment (btw, your reply is impossible to follow – you don’t mark included text at all – you re-quote my stuff with no delineation).

   Yeah, the cite tag was broken when I upgraded WordPress. Should be fixed now – hit refresh if it’s still not showing.

   We’re dangerously close to invoking Godwins Law here, but lets look at your 3 primary examples of why a concept cannot be destroyed by military action.

   Godwin’s Law only applies to gratuitous references to Naziism. Bring it up in this context is perfectly apropos.

   To the examples:

   Communism: Communism fell largely because of two reasons: the determination of Western leaders in exposing it and its own internal contradictions. Islamism is facing many of the same pressures – there’s a significant and growing pro-democracy movement across the Middle East, and Islamism is an utter failure and providing a decent standard of living and security.

   Naziism: Defeated through the force of arms of the West. Now a discredited and largely toothless ideology.

   Imperial Japan: See above.

   Iraq is part of a nexus of terrorism that has its heart in the Middle East. The only way to defeat terrorism in the Middle East is to end the systems that support and foster it. That means introducing the concepts of democratic consentual government, the non-arbitary rule of law, and religious tolerance.

   [Imperial Japan] admitted defeat, and surrendered. Radical Islamists will never accept that, because they have no home, and nothing to defend. Their goal is destruction. Given a target, they will attack it. The US has provided them with a huge target.

   So, radical Islamists are ghosts? They don’t occupy finite amounts of space?

   Of course Islamists have a home – the dysfunctional Arab cultures that foster their growth. The vast majority of Islamic terrorists are either from or closely connected to the Arab Levant. Terrorists need funding, they need resources, and they need a steady stream of ideological indoctrination to keep up their supply of willing recruits. The Middle East is the heart of Arab terrorism. Remove those support structures and suddenly the funding, space, and ideological backing for terrorism dries up.

   And if your argument is correct, and radical Islamists will never, never, never, ever admit defeat, then it is encumbant upon the West to destroy every single one of them. There is absolutely no room for cohabitation with an ideology that demands absolute submission to what they see as the will of Allah through shari’a.

   The argument that we can’t win this war, so we should just surrender now is hopelessly naive. Again, read what Qutb has said. Read the fatwa placed against the West by the radical Islamists. That is what they want the world to look like. There is absolutely no room for compromise with such an ideology.

   This phrase has been used so many times, over and over again, it’s become a joke. This is the best defense that the right can come up with?

   It’s a very simple question. Either Saddam should have remained in power or removing him was the right choice.

   There are hundreds of places in the world where things would be better off with a change. The question isn’t ‘Are the iraqi people better off now’ – IMHO, they’re not.

   Yes, that is. Yes, they are.

   Allowing a tyrant like Saddam Hussein to remain in power would have been a horrific mistake. First of all, at the time of the invasion, the US had every reason to believe that Hussein possessed significant amounts of WMD materials and the capability to manufacture them. He was given months to fully and completely document his capabilities and stockpiles. He did not do this.

   The Hussein regime had ties to terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda. More and more evidence has come to light confirming that the Iraqi regime did cooperate with al-Qaeda on several occasions, and there’s evidence which suggests an Iraqi agent was involved in a 2000 meeting in which the September 11 attacks were planned. Evidence has come forth from an al-Qaeda agent capture in Afghanistan that he and a member of the former IIS cooperated in an attempted attack in Pakistan using chemical weapons. The al-Qaeda agent himself was a former member of the Iraqi military.

   The Iraqi regime sheltered Abu Abbas, Abu Musa’ab al-Zarqawi, and the man responsible for creating the bomb used at the World Trade Center in 1993.

   The change has happened, there’s no going back. Bush has adopted the scorched earth policy. He acts, then justifies. The question is “Was the action Bush took the right one?” – I know of no one who has any sense who will answer that with “Absolutely, yes!”

   Well, then call me senseless. You’re damn right the removal of the Hussein regime was the right choice. It should have been done years ago. The only way we’re going to defang the threat of Islamic terrorism is by taking it on where it lives. Any other option is unacceptable.

   My biggest problem is that this administration has led the country down a path of destruction, hate, and war, with no thought of the consequences of it’s actions.

   Please. I’ve read enough mindless boilerplate as it is.

   The left has absolutely no clue about this war. They can’t even acknowledge the reality of the conflict. Again, read the passage from Qutb. That is what the Islamists believe. That is the ideology they espouse. If we can’t defeat such an ideology, then what are our options? Do you honestly believe that cohabitation with such a belief is an option?

   Moreover, the alternate solutions posed by the left are equally naive. We can’t expect to play defense without eventually suffering an attack that could very easily dwarf 9/11 — and in order to have an effective national security infrastructure to protect us from attack we’d have to institute massive restrictions on basic civil liberties. That is not an acceptable option.

   If we can’t ignore the problem and we can’t deal with it defensively, our only option is to stop it before it has a chance to strike. The Bush Doctrine is the only sensible policy to protect this country from terrorism. The left has never been able to articulate a reasonable alternative, because they continue to fail to understand the nature of the threat itself.

   Reply
6. Pingback: Down deep in Texas: The View from Waco

7. And if your argument is correct, and radical Islamists will never, never, never, ever admit defeat, then it is encumbant upon the West to destroy every single one of them. There is absolutely no room for cohabitation with an ideology that demands absolute submission to what they see as the will of Allah through shari’a.

   Well, then call me senseless. You’re damn right the removal of the Hussein regime was the right choice. It should have been done years ago. The only way we’re going to defang the threat of Islamic terrorism is by taking it on where it lives. Any other option is unacceptable.

   In which you manage to capture the Right’s ability to take a legitimate concept, and turn it inside out in the search of stunning failure.

   Historically, there have always been some number of militant Islamists – and militant Christians, and militant Hindus, and militant who-knows-what-else. Islam, no less than any other religion, regularly attracts a radical fringe, composed of people who are ideologically committed to the ascendancy of that religion, by any means. (Either because they are true beleivers, or because they are ruthless opportunits. Osama bin Laden probably falls into the former category, Randall Terry the latter, given his personal life.) That radical fringe won’t compromise, and it will resort to routine violence.

   That said, the way to destroy the radical religious fringe is not to attack a secular Arab nationalist state. (Please, don’t tell me Saddam’s willingness to put himself up as a latter day Saladin meant he was a radical Islamist. You know better – Saddam was purely about Arab nationalism, and any pretention he had to religious legitimacy was in the service of his secular hunger for power. Bin Laden himself denounced Saddam for this.)

   Elevating the conflict against radical Islam to the rhetorical heights of “a war for our cultural survival” is, frankly, self-defeating. It gives this small handful of radicals credit and influence far beyond their acutal merit – and, having done so, all you’re doing is making that ideology all the more attractive to a whole new generation of people who, otherwise, might have grown up dissafected – but hardly radical or homicidal.

   Elevating the conflict against radical Islam to a land war against an Arab state (one which did not, you’ll recall, provide any of the 19 September 11th hijackers) is just as self-defeating. By making it clear, both by action and rhetoric, that the United States doesn’t really make a clear distinction between, say, Al-Queda and Saddam’s army, the US can even further increase the number of Muslims who become radicalized. Because, frankly, if the US isn’t going to be particularly selective in who dies over the “War on Terror”, it’s going to encourage that many people to at least commit the crimes they’re being treated like they’re guilty of anyway.

   If we can’t ignore the problem and we can’t deal with it defensively, our only option is to stop it before it has a chance to strike. The Bush Doctrine is the only sensible policy to protect this country from terrorism. The left has never been able to articulate a reasonable alternative, because they continue to fail to understand the nature of the threat itself.

   Here’s your instructive parallel – Timothy McVeigh killed a buildingful of Federal employees. The Federal government did not declare a “war on militias” or a “war on Christians” – it applied legitimate law enforcement measures, tracked him, caught him, arrested him, tried him, and executed him. Done. End of story. The choice to apply legitimate, and measured police power to the situation, instead of declaring a “war for our cultural survival” helped make sure McVeigh came off as the sick, sad example he was, and not a martyr, and helped make sure another dozen just like him didn’t rise up. There are still militias, and still nutjobs who are sure the black helicopters are coming, and the FBI still watches them. But part of keeping them from becoming a genuine menace is by not treating them as more of a threat than they legitimately are.

   The Bush Doctrine’s plan of “kill anyone who might become a threat to us” frankly only breeds more people who hate and fear – and thus become threats. A beautiful example of a solution whose whole design simply exacerbates the problem. But I suppose it *looks* like we’re responding vigorously, and that’s what counts.

   Reply

8. Before I tear your argument to shreds, I do want to complement you on keeping on topic and arguing well. You may be wrong, but at least you’re presenting a reasonable case with some well-formed arguments.

   Islam, no less than any other religion, regularly attracts a radical fringe, composed of people who are ideologically committed to the ascendancy of that religion, by any means. (Either because they are true beleivers, or because they are ruthless opportunits. Osama bin Laden probably falls into the former category, Randall Terry the latter, given his personal life.) That radical fringe won’t compromise, and it will resort to routine violence.

   The history of Islam speaks otherwise. Name the last time an explicitly militant Christian organization launched a concerted campaign of terrorism on the order of al-Qaeda has done. Every religion has its fanatics – Islam happens to have more of them than the others, and very few moderate Muslims have been willing to substantively disavow terrorism. The Middle East remains a hotbed of Islamic fanaticism.

   The only way to combat this radicalism is to discredit it. Radical Islamism doesn’t work. It doesn’t produce a good life for its people, and the internal contradictions of such an ideology mean that it will inevitably collapse. Our goal is to accelerate that process before it has the chance to take thousands or even millions more lives.

   That said, the way to destroy the radical religious fringe is not to attack a secular Arab nationalist state. (Please, don’t tell me Saddam’s willingness to put himself up as a latter day Saladin meant he was a radical Islamist. You know better – Saddam was purely about Arab nationalism, and any pretention he had to religious legitimacy was in the service of his secular hunger for power. Bin Laden himself denounced Saddam for this.)

   Which is true, but misses the larger point. Saddam had no compunction against using radical Islamists as a means to an endElevating the conflict against radical Islam to the rhetorical heights of “a war for our cultural survival” is, frankly, self-defeating. It gives this small handful of radicals credit and influence far beyond their acutal merit – and, having done so, all you’re doing is making that ideology all the more attractive to a whole new generation of people who, otherwise, might have grown up dissafected – but hardly radical or homicidal.

   However, it is true. The Islamic radicalist movement can’t defeat us directly, but they can defeat us in a war of attrition, which is precisely what they’re trying to do right now.

   Furthermore, and ideology that has been utterly defeated and exposed to be a sham is hardly an attractive one – but more on that later.

   Here’s your instructive parallel – Timothy McVeigh killed a buildingful of Federal employees. The Federal government did not declare a “war on militias” or a “war on Christians” – it applied legitimate law enforcement measures, tracked him, caught him, arrested him, tried him, and executed him. Done. End of story.

   This comparison misses the point entirely. Did millions of Christians support what McVeigh did? Was McVeigh part of a massive network of hundreds of cells worldwide dedicated to destroying all “heathens”? Was McVeign supported by numerous foreign governments? The answer to all these is no.

   The choice to apply legitimate, and measured police power to the situation, instead of declaring a “war for our cultural survival” helped make sure McVeigh came off as the sick, sad example he was, and not a martyr, and helped make sure another dozen just like him didn’t rise up. There are still militias, and still nutjobs who are sure the black helicopters are coming, and the FBI still watches them. But part of keeping them from becoming a genuine menace is by not treating them as more of a threat than they legitimately are.

   Which begs the argument that radical Islam is not a threat. The nutjobs who watch for black helicopters aren’t a political movement. Radical Islam is. Comparing the two isn’t even remotely apropos.

   One attack with a nuclear weapon in a city like New York and millions are dead and the world economy takes a nosedive. One infected suicide terrorist can spread weaponized smallpox and kill 30 million Americans in weeks. Those kind of threats are simply too grave to ignore, and the fact that the use of such weapons is one of the goals of radical Islam should be a warning sign.

   The argument that radical Islam is no more of a threat than a couple of Christian fundamentalist nutjobs proves exactly my point – the left isn’t sufficiently serious about the current threat. They don’t understand it, and they’re far too prone to dismiss its very serious nature out of hand.

   The Bush Doctrine’s plan of “kill anyone who might become a threat to us” frankly only breeds more people who hate and fear – and thus become threats. A beautiful example of a solution whose whole design simply exacerbates the problem. But I suppose it looks like we’re responding vigorously, and that’s what counts.

   Except that’s a straw-man version of the Bush Doctrine. There’s much more complexity to it. Again, if the goal was to kill every potential threat, we wouldn’t be talking about Iraq. There wouldn’t be an Iraq.

   What has happened in Iraq is the turning point in this war. We’ve exposed al-Qaeda for what it is. If you’re a Muslim and you keep hearing how al-Qaeda is a brave group fighting for all Muslims, what are you going to think when you hear that al-Qaeda terrorists just killed another 20 Iraqi Muslims for the “crime” of wanting a free society?

   What are you going to think when you realize that your neighbors in Iraq have the ability to control the destiny of their government? What are you going to think when you see that Iraq is free and prosperous. The Iraqis speak your language. They’re fellow Muslims. Yet they have freedoms and prosperity you’ve never though possible for an Arab society. Aren’t you going to want that for yourself?

   That’s why the left doesn’t get the long-term strategy for this war. It’s because they don’t understand human nature. They’re viewing the world through a quasi-Marxist axis that sees the world in terms of historical determinism rather than understanding the simple power of human aspiration. There’s a kind of thermodynamics of freedom – freedom invariably flows from states that are more free to those that are less.

   That is why al-Qaeda is working so dilligently to sabotage Iraq. They know that once democracy spring up in the Arab world, they’ve lost. And indeed, that’s already happening.

   It’s basic human nature – people tend not to like being oppressed, and radical Islam is one of the most oppressive ideologies in human history. Radical Islamists don’t give a damn about fellow Muslims, and their barbarity is on display daily in Iraq. They’ve exposed their true face, and that’s why the Arab world is gradually but perceptibly beginning to shift from authoritarianism to democracy and civil society.

   Reply

9. I agree with a lot of what Jay says, especially how there is a failure of many to see the evil of Islamic Radicalism in realistic terms as to the scale and scope of its threat.

   However I would argue with Jay’s interpretation history. Jay says that this strain of Islam has been evident throughout history, but you cannot accuse the Ottoman Empire of wanting to make the whole world Muslim. If so, why did they take in and treat Jews decently when Europeans were butchering them. Also please note the Ottoman Millet system allowed Christians and Jews in the Empire to keep their religion and their own religious legal authority on internal matters. Not something Osama would do if he had been sitting in Istanbul in Topkapi Palace calling the shots.

   One could argue the Russian Empire was more guilty of such atrocities. The cultural rape of the Crimean Tatars means that today Crimea (now in the Ukraine) is very un-Turkic and mostly Christian. Nikolai Illminsky also brought on a system of forced Christianization to the Kazan Tatars (otherwise known as “the Jews of the Turks” since they were the only 19th century turkic group to form a european style bourgeoisie). The Muslims of the both the North Caucauses and Trans-Caucasia suffered severe religious persecution. If you converted from Christianity to Islam in the Russian Empire the penalty was your life. Muslim missionary activity was banned and punishable by death. This sort of butchery cannot get a free pass in any historical analysis of the history of religious fanatacism in Eurasia.

   A century ago in the muslim lands lands conquered by Russia (crimea, caucauses, volga ural basin,eastern and western turkestan, and siberia) were led by moderate reformers such as the magnificent Ismail Gaspirili of Crimea who championed pan-Muslim unity through use of Kipchak Turkish, religious freedom in Russia, education in the mother tongues, and promoted loyality to a mulicultural Russian State if these pluralist reforms were carried out.

   A century later so much as changed especially in the north caucauses with Chechen, Avar, and Inguish populations radicalized and not looking for western style reforms and democracy. These areas are now fertile ground for Bin Laden’s backwardness.

   Bin Laden’s style of thought is growing and more dangerous than many Americans will accept. But its roots lie entirely in the 20th century I will not accept any arguments that it is a continuation of Ottoman Empire attitudes or trains of thought. That simply amounts to logical fallacy and needless ottoman bashing.

   Reply

10. The history of Islam speaks otherwise. Name the last time an explicitly militant Christian organization launched a concerted campaign of terrorism on the order of al-Qaeda has done.

    Locally, Operation Rescue’s support for clinic bombings and the assassination of abortionists certainly qualifies it as a Christian terrorist organization, (supported by thousands of Americans, if not more.) albeit they’ve never managed to acheive a death toll on the order of Al Quaeda.

    In Lebanon, it would be the Phalange, or Kataeb Party, culminating with the Sabra and Shatila Massacre. In the Balkans, it would be the genocial “ethnic cleansing” of Bosnian Muslims by Christian Serbs, culminating in the Srebrenica Massacre, which involved over 7,000 Muslim dead. Rwanda, site of one of the most ghastly genocides of the late 20th century, is something like 90% Christian.

    Obviously, some of those groups have a nationalist, or racist, component that’s tied into the religious one. But a similar arguement can be made for radical Islam, since its religious triumphalism is hand-in-hand with an agenda of political ascendancy in the restoration of the old Caliphate.

    Every religion has its fanatics – Islam happens to have more of them than the others, and very few moderate Muslims have been willing to substantively disavow terrorism. The Middle East remains a hotbed of Islamic fanaticism.

    What, in your canon, does “substantively disavow” mean? By way of example, Prevez Musharraf speaks disavowals of terrorism, but Osama bin Laden is still (at best guess) hiding out in Waziristan – a place nominally under Pakistani supervision.

    The only way to combat this radicalism is to discredit it. Radical Islamism doesn’t work. It doesn’t produce a good life for its people, and the internal contradictions of such an ideology mean that it will inevitably collapse. Our goal is to accelerate that process before it has the chance to take thousands or even millions more lives.

    And claiming radical Islam has the capacity to destroy the West, and that we are engaged in a stuggle against it for our very souls discredits it how? Seems to me that telling the whole world that Al Quaeda is a real threat to the west is giving them more credit, rather than less. Al Quaeda is a very real threat to westerners, and will doubtless continue to be, until it’s rooted out. But the ability to kill 10 or 100, or even 1000 Westerners does not truly equate to the ability to bring down the western system of values and government.

    However, it is true. The Islamic radicalist movement can’t defeat us directly, but they can defeat us in a war of attrition, which is precisely what they’re trying to do right now.

    And, frankly, our foreign policy has played right into their hands. By treating the Middle East as an epochal battleground, we’ve supported their recruiting efforts, and by failing to adequately plan and support the wars – and the subsequent nation-building efforts – in Afghanistan and Iraq we’ve left ourselves in a position where “victory” is elusive or impossible.

    Which begs the argument that radical Islam is not a threat. The nutjobs who watch for black helicopters aren’t a political movement. Radical Islam is. Comparing the two isn’t even remotely apropos.

    I wish. But the point is that the black helicopter crew has been kept from rising to the level of a “movement” precisely because its opponents – from the Federal Government on down – have measured their response in such a way as to avoid seeming to legitimize those people’s paranoid fantasies. Radical Islam is farhter along for precisely that reason. Partly, that’s a fault of international politics – it’s obviously harder to measure your response to people outside your national borders, and it’s likewise harder to propagandize people. It’s also a fault of old Western choices made primarily out of political expediency. (Both active and passive. By way of the former, you have the CIA arming the mujahadeen and teaching them to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. By way of the latter, you have decades of the US deliberately ignoring the Saudi government’s Wahhabbist fire and brimstone in the name of a steady flow of oil.

    Those things can’t be undone now, but adding folly on top of folly isn’t acheiving the goal of discrediting radical Islam.

    One attack with a nuclear weapon in a city like New York and millions are dead and the world economy takes a nosedive. One infected suicide terrorist can spread weaponized smallpox and kill 30 million Americans in weeks. Those kind of threats are simply too grave to ignore, and the fact that the use of such weapons is one of the goals of radical Islam should be a warning sign.

    The search for weapons of mass destruction is a common theme for every small terrorist group or nation that wants a seat at the big table. That certain groups (Al Queda surely included) want these weapons is indeed a warning. But in this matter, you’re attacking the wrong place. The place to break this chain is in taking all possible steps to prevent proliferation. Frankly, as the London bombings attest, Al Quaeda wants to kill people. WMD or not, they’ll keep trying. But the point of controlling the proliferation of NBC materials is that those materials appeal to every small group with a grudge. (North Korea comes immediately to mind.)

    The argument that radical Islam is no more of a threat than a couple of Christian fundamentalist nutjobs proves exactly my point – the left isn’t sufficiently serious about the current threat. They don’t understand it, and they’re far too prone to dismiss its very serious nature out of hand.

    Please don’t conflate me with your imaginary “the left”.

    It’s also very tempting to argue the reverse – that the right is far too prone to treat any possible threat as an impending spectre of apocalypse – to digress slightly, it would seem that this siege mentality also explains why the far right feels compelled to claim that gay people getting married will bring about the utter destruction of marrigae, and why it feels compelled to calim that christians are utterly persecuted in this country, in spite of the christian right’s control of the executive and legislative branches, and the fact that most of the judiciary in place was appointed by Republican presidents with conservative leanings.

    Unfortunately, the habit of immeidately leaping for the shotgun when you find a rat in your house only blows more holes in the wall – and lets more rats in.

    If you’re a Muslim and you keep hearing how al-Qaeda is a brave group fighting for all Muslims, what are you going to think when you hear that al-Qaeda terrorists just killed another 20 Iraqi Muslims for the “crime” of wanting a free society?

    This is the sort of charming oversimplifcation that is not helping the US in Iraq.

    Frankly, the current missteps by Al Quaeda in Iraq have little to do with Ameircan cleverness, and everything to do with the fact that our principal enemy is capable of even greater thoughlessness than we have displayed. Remember that Al Quaeda is principally aligned with Sunni / Wahhabi teaching. The notion of a Shi’ite-dominated Iraq is just as anathema to al-Zarqawi as the notion of a Western-aligned Iraq, and consequently, al-Zarqawi’s forces are just as happy to kill Shi’ites as coalition troops. That fact is helping split the insurgency, but don’t mistake someone else screwing up for the US getting it right. And don’t mistake all the events in Iraq as part of only the particular struggle you care about. That kind of reductionist thinking also makes it that much harder to come up with legitimate strategy.

    What are you going to think when you realize that your neighbors in Iraq have the ability to control the destiny of their government? What are you going to think when you see that Iraq is free and prosperous. The Iraqis speak your language. They’re fellow Muslims. Yet they have freedoms and prosperity you’ve never though possible for an Arab society. Aren’t you going to want that for yourself?

    Again, a dangerously reductionist vision of history. For an obvious instance, Turkey (despite various uphevals and coups) continues to stand as an example of a democratic, poticially secular but religiously Islamic state, and enjoys a high standard of living, albeit not one as high as the oil states. If all Muslims need as an example is a neighboring democracy, they already have one.

    Frankly, this notion that what’s really needed is Americans to show these poor misguided people the right way to democracy mostly smacks of foreign policy as designed by Rudyard Kipling.

    More to the point, Iraq is neither free nor prosperous at the moment. Besides the ill-contained insurgency, two years of American occupation haven’t managed to restore basic services to even the level they existed at during the Saddam regime. (And even that level was a fiercely reduced one, thanks to the sanctions after Gulf War I) And nothing in the Bush plan seems to actually be aiming us in the direction of real prosperity. Billions of dollars are earmarked for reconstruction – but they’re largely going to American companies, who in turn are largely hiring a non-Iraqi work force, because its easier to bring 10 people in from Bangladesh or India than it is to go through the steps necessary to clear 10 Iraqi nationals.

    That’s why the left doesn’t get the long-term strategy for this war. It’s because they don’t understand human nature. They’re viewing the world through a quasi-Marxist axis that sees the world in terms of historical determinism rather than understanding the simple power of human aspiration. There’s a kind of thermodynamics of freedom – freedom invariably flows from states that are more free to those that are less.

    I love how you can accuse the left of historical determinism, and then turn around and invoke the thermodynamics of freedom. Rarely have I seen such naked self-contradiction. Your counter-example is democratic Weimar Germany. It was a free, democratic state that first fell into fascism, and then exported that fascism to previously free places like France. The “thermodynaics of freedom” are, frankly, just as much junk as Marxist notions of “historical inevitability”

    The left, I suspect, understands human aspiration no more or less than the right. The followers of the Bush Doctrine seem to continually imagine that the aspiration to “freedom” and “democracy”, however expressed, will axiomatically trump religious aspiration, cultural demands, and even the desire for food, personal security, and shelter. This is an obvious and beautiful echo of Thomas Paine, but not often found in the real world. Consider the fact that the Saudi monarchy has long maintained power by simply buying it – petrodollars keep the citizenry happy and equipped with new toys, the Wahabi clerics deflect any anger outside the Saudi state, and the monarchy remains secure, in spite of the influence of Saudi Arabia’s democratic mentors in the US.

    Reply

11. (It occurs to me I’ve let you off without challenging the central fallacy of your arguement. Can’t have that happening. 🙂

    That is why al-Qaeda is working so dilligently to sabotage Iraq. They know that once democracy spring up in the Arab world, they’ve lost. And indeed, that’s already happening.

    If it is, indeed, all about “democracy in the Arab world”, all that does is point out that Iraq is an unnecessary sideshow, brought on by George W. Bush’s strange fetish over Saddam.

    The US had clear and legitimate reason to invade Afghanistan, and the assault on the Taliban (by far the most radical of Islamic regimes) enjoyed widespread support, not only in the west, but in more secular Islamic states as well. Given the Taliban’s drastic mishandling of the Afghan economy, their brutal oppression of women and anyone who did not bow to Taliban religious orthodoxy, and their failure to resolve the simmering civil war with the Northern Alliance, almost any change in Afghan governance couldn’t help but be for the better. Given the Taliban’s position as a clearly Islamist regime, their replacement with a happier deomocracy would have been as clear an object example as Richard Pearle and Paul Wolfowitz could hope for.

    Had the US brought its full military weight to bear in subduing the Afghan warlords, hunting down the Taliban (and Mr. bin Laden) and establishing order, Afghanistan could have been that example. Had the US brought its full economic weight to bear on the problem of reconstruction, the Afghan economy could be a regional example.

    Instead, we went to Iraq.

    Poorly managing your commitments isn’t the way to win a war, either.

    Reply

12. I’m short on time, so I’ll hit your last point for the moment and leave the rest for later:

    If it is, indeed, all about “democracy in the Arab world”, all that does is point out that Iraq is an unnecessary sideshow, brought on by George W. Bush’s strange fetish over Saddam.

    Quite the contrary.

    The US had clear and legitimate reason to invade Afghanistan, and the assault on the Taliban (by far the most radical of Islamic regimes) enjoyed widespread support, not only in the west, but in more secular Islamic states as well. Given the Taliban’s drastic mishandling of the Afghan economy, their brutal oppression of women and anyone who did not bow to Taliban religious orthodoxy, and their failure to resolve the simmering civil war with the Northern Alliance, almost any change in Afghan governance couldn’t help but be for the better. Given the Taliban’s position as a clearly Islamist regime, their replacement with a happier deomocracy would have been as clear an object example as Richard Pearle and Paul Wolfowitz could hope for.

    This statement makes me wonder if you’ve followed the news at all for the last two years. Afghanistan is a democracy. They held elections in October of last year – the first democratic elections in their history. The elections went incredibly well, and turnout was excellent. Afghanistan already has a “happier democracy” and even former warlords like Ismail Khan have put down their weapons and helped out with reconstruction.

    Furthermore, we have about as many troops in Afghanistan as we did at the start of the war. Most of the war was fought by the Northern Alliance with the US providing Special Forces and air cover. Between the US forces and the IFOR troops, there are more troops in Afghanistan now than there were during the Battle of Tora Bora in 2001.

    Had the US brought its full military weight to bear in subduing the Afghan warlords, hunting down the Taliban (and Mr. bin Laden) and establishing order, Afghanistan could have been that example. Had the US brought its full economic weight to bear on the problem of reconstruction, the Afghan economy could be a regional example.

    Afghanistan is not an Arab country. Afghans aren’t ethnically Arab. Almost none of them speak Arabic other than memorized prayers and bits of the Qur’an. The problems with terrorism are in the Arab world. Ethically, culturally, linguistically, and geographically, Afghanistan is miles away from the Arab world. The only reason that bin Laden was there was because the Taliban was willing to give him what he wanted and provided a convenient movement for him to hijack.

    Your argument here is utterly wrong for two big reasons – what you propose is already done, and Afghanistan is not an Arab country – both of which critically wound the argument being advanced.

    Reply

13. Here’s a quote from your last comment:

    Afghanistan is not an Arab country. Afghans aren’t ethnically Arab. Almost none of them speak Arabic other than memorized prayers and bits of the Qur’an. The problems with terrorism are in the Arab world.

    And here’s a quote from the article, at the top:

    The goal of Islam for the radical Islamist is the destruction of all the forces of jahiliyyah and the imposition of a single Islamic state. The article references this critical passage from Sayyid Qutb:

    I was quoting from you, here, too:

    That is why al-Qaeda is working so dilligently to sabotage Iraq. They know that once democracy spring up in the Arab world, they’ve lost. And indeed, that’s already happening.

    I shouldn’t have quoted your words without getting you to clarify them, sine they are contradictory.

    So, in the interests of clarity, who are the actual enemies here, Jay? Radical Islamists, like Mullah Omar, or bin Laden? Or Arabs in general? And if the problem, in your view, is Arabs, then how do you explain the inconvenient fact that (while the majority of the September 11th hijackers were Saudi) the epicenter of Al Quaeda power, and the most radical Islamist of regimes were found in Afghanistan, not an Arab state? Al Quaeda certainly didn’t “hijack” an otherwise lily-pure Taliban government for its own purposes. The stated goals of the two entities have always been similar, and they grew out of the same mujahadeen.

    Frankly, this just brings us back full circle to the right’s “kill ’em all, let god sort ’em out” response. And at this point, as the BBC is reporting that it appears all 4 of the London attackers were natural born British citizens, the neocon position that remaking the Arab world will “drain the swamp” and prevent the rise of further radical Islamists is revealed as hollow.

    This statement makes me wonder if you’ve followed the news at all for the last two years. Afghanistan is a democracy. They held elections in October of last year – the first democratic elections in their history. The elections went incredibly well, and turnout was excellent. Afghanistan already has a “happier democracy” and even former warlords like Ismail Khan have put down their weapons and helped out with reconstruction.

    Afghanistan has held elections – holding elections alone doesn’t make a nation democratic. The process of an election has been used by any one of a number of dictatorial regimes to put themselves under a veneer of legitimacy, and the experience of post colonial Africa suggests that elections can mark the end of democratic freedoms just as often as the beginning of them. The Bush administration likes to point at elections as evidence of democracy, and that’s understandable, in that an election is democracy’s clearest symbol. But a system that includes elections, without including the other pillars of a free democratic society – notably, separation of powers, separation of church and state, respect of individual civil liberties, and an indpendent and fair judiciary – is either not a democratic system, or not going to be a democratic system for long.

    Meantime, the Karzai government’s security only reaches a few miles outside of Kabul, (and the US, while conducting search-and-destroy missions against suspected Taliban, is not in a position to actually police the countryside.) there is renewed fighting in the north of the country among local warlords, the Taliban is on the offensive again, and attacks on aid workers are on the rise. And the poppy crops are booming, which means a whole new set of narcoterrorism problems to go with everything else. The fact that the country has been freed fro mthe Taliban is an improvement, but it’s an improvement in danger of being lost. Frankly, a lot hinges on the ability of the Karzai government, the US, and the UN peacekeeprs to ensure enough order that first, the legislative elections in September are fairly run, fairly campaigned, and the votes fairly counted, and second, that legislature has the opportunity to actually meet in security, and continue the process of actually moving the country. Needless to say, the Taliban would like that not to happen.

    Furthermore, we have about as many troops in Afghanistan as we did at the start of the war. Most of the war was fought by the Northern Alliance with the US providing Special Forces and air cover. Between the US forces and the IFOR troops, there are more troops in Afghanistan now than there were during the Battle of Tora Bora in 2001.

    Correct – and it’s still not enough. Particularly, the choice to fight the Taliban in a proxy war, using the Northern Alliance as the ground troops, while it saved US casualties in the offensive, leaves the US in a position of rather compromised-looking neutrality, with respect to the future of the Afghan government. And the current levels of US troops are still not enough to support order in the country.

    Both Afghanistan and Iraq reveal the other key flaw in the Bush Doctrine. War winning, at least in the sense of moving into a territory and evicting a leader or government, is not the issue – there is, frankly, no force on the planet that can stand up to the US military in the field. But defeating radical Islam requires a great deal more than the ability to overthrow a government, and so far, the Bush administration has failed to make those next steps. Particularly because providing enough troops to secure Afghanistan and Iraq until legitimate national armies and police were grown would require such unpalatable measures as a draft.

    Reply

14. So, in the interests of clarity, who are the actual enemies here, Jay? Radical Islamists, like Mullah Omar, or bin Laden?

    Yes.

    Certainly not.

    And if the problem, in your view, is Arabs, then how do you explain the inconvenient fact that (while the majority of the September 11th hijackers were Saudi) the epicenter of Al Quaeda power, and the most radical Islamist of regimes were found in Afghanistan, not an Arab state?

    This is a really, phenomenally illogical argument. Al-Qaeda is an organization based in the Arab world. Afghanistan was a convenient base because of the Taliban – it was a place to train and plot, nothing more. Afghanistan wasn’t central to al-Qaeda except in logistical terms.

    Al Quaeda certainly didn’t “hijack” an otherwise lily-pure Taliban government for its own purposes. The stated goals of the two entities have always been similar, and they grew out of the same mujahadeen.

    Al-Qaeda hijacked another radical group for its own purposes. The Taliban were evil, to be sure, but they weren’t a global threat in the same way that al-Qaeda was and is.

    Frankly, this just brings us back full circle to the right’s “kill ‘em all, let god sort ‘em out” response. And at this point, as the BBC is reporting that it appears all 4 of the London attackers were natural born British citizens, the neocon position that remaking the Arab world will “drain the swamp” and prevent the rise of further radical Islamists is revealed as hollow.

    Except the British bombers were trained by clerics steeped in the hatred of Arab clerics, were trained in Pakistan by Arab Islamist militants, and very likely recieved funding from Middle Eastern terrorist groups. Draining the swamp in the Middle East will help, but it’s the largest part of a very complex war that involves both military action and police action to round up militant groups that have spread to other countries.

    Afghanistan has held elections – holding elections alone doesn’t make a nation democratic. The process of an election has been used by any one of a number of dictatorial regimes to put themselves under a veneer of legitimacy, and the experience of post colonial Africa suggests that elections can mark the end of democratic freedoms just as often as the beginning of them.

    Which is all well and good, except that it doesn’t apply in the case of Afghanistan – the elections there were both legitimate and democratic.

    The Bush administration likes to point at elections as evidence of democracy, and that’s understandable, in that an election is democracy’s clearest symbol. But a system that includes elections, without including the other pillars of a free democratic society – notably, separation of powers, separation of church and state, respect of individual civil liberties, and an indpendent and fair judiciary – is either not a democratic system, or not going to be a democratic system for long.

    And arguing that a society will develop them in a matter of a few years is hopelessly naive. This is a long-term project, in which there will be gains and setbacks. Expecting Afghanistan or Iraq to become fully democratic overnight is not a reasonable expectation. That’s why this war requires patience and determination, neither of which seem to be hallmarks of the left these days.

    Correct – and it’s still not enough. Particularly, the choice to fight the Taliban in a proxy war, using the Northern Alliance as the ground troops, while it saved US casualties in the offensive, leaves the US in a position of rather compromised-looking neutrality, with respect to the future of the Afghan government. And the current levels of US troops are still not enough to support order in the country.

    First of all, the goal is not to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into hopelessly failed UN protectorates like Kosovo sadly is now. The goal is to get those states able to defend and govern themselves, which is antithetical to us providing all security for them. The Afghan Army is quite effective in dealing with the Taliban, and the combination of close air support from US warplanes ensure that the Taliban are not able to mount major offensives.

    The Northern Alliance knew the territory, spoke the language, and had the ability to win the war. Invading Afghanistan with tens of thousands of troops would have taken months to organize in which time al-Qaeda would have had time to bunker down even more than they did.

    Both Afghanistan and Iraq reveal the other key flaw in the Bush Doctrine. War winning, at least in the sense of moving into a territory and evicting a leader or government, is not the issue – there is, frankly, no force on the planet that can stand up to the US military in the field. But defeating radical Islam requires a great deal more than the ability to overthrow a government, and so far, the Bush administration has failed to make those next steps. Particularly because providing enough troops to secure Afghanistan and Iraq until legitimate national armies and police were grown would require such unpalatable measures as a draft.

    Which is a semi-legitimate argument. Except for the part that the goal of nation building is to get these countries self-sufiicient. More troops harms that goal. If we were to have used more troops, it would have been a year ago. Now the goal is to get the Iraqis able to defend themselves. They can’t be dependent on us to provide security forever.

    The problem with your entire framework of argumentation is that you don’t understand that this war is about more than just overthrowing dictators. While that is important, the whole point of removing Saddam Hussein is to create the sort of climate that will ensure that we no longer need to engage in total war against the state supporters of terrorism in the Arab world – because if Iraq fails, we may have little choice to do elsewise.

    Reply

15. This is a really, phenomenally illogical argument. Al-Qaeda is an organization based in the Arab world. Afghanistan was a convenient base because of the Taliban – it was a place to train and plot, nothing more. Afghanistan wasn’t central to al-Qaeda except in logistical terms.

    Please, don’t call an arguement illogical, and then fall into logical fallacy yourself. If our goal is to end the possibility of state support for terrorism, as you allege, by remaking the middle east, the argument that “Afghanistan wasn’t central to al-Qaeda except in logistical terms” is an argument in favor of treating Afghanistan, not Iraq, as the epicenter of the problem. The Taliban, far more so than Saddam, were direct, state sponsors of terrorists, thanks to precisely those cozy logistical relationships with Al Quaeda. And Iraq couldn’t be second or third on the list either – those honors would probably fall to Saudi Arabia, for its clerical backing and its contributions to Islamic charities that have acted as money launderers for Al Quaeda, and Pakistan, whose madrasas turned out a large percentage of the first generation of Al Quaeda foot soldiers.

    Your continued conflation of radical Islamist movements with “the Arab world” – in spite of obvious examples like the Taliban, the know Al Quaeda cells in Europe, and in spite of Jemaah Islamiah’s killing of over 200 people in Bali – pays lip service to the fact that a majority of senior Al Quaeda operatives are Arab nationals, while utterly missing the point that radical Islam doesn’t have a convenient street address we can drop a daisy-cutter on. Is it just that assuming radical Islam and the Arab world are the same is necessary to justify the otherwise counterproductive Iraq invasion in the context of the greater war on terror?

    Except the British bombers were trained by clerics steeped in the hatred of Arab clerics, were trained in Pakistan by Arab Islamist militants, and very likely recieved funding from Middle Eastern terrorist groups.

    What is your source for this? BBC reports have stated one of the four apparently spent 2 months in Pakistan, but have made no such claim about all of them, and have implied the probable existence of a bombmaker, but not named names.

    Which is all well and good, except that it doesn’t apply in the case of Afghanistan – the elections there were both legitimate and democratic.

    So was the first election of Robert Mugabe. My point is that the Bush administration’s flogging of elections and the mythical CPA “transfer of power” (Held three days early in fear of an insurgent bombing campaign.) doesn’t actually bespeak the real work needed to establish and maintain a free society.

    And arguing that a society will develop them in a matter of a few years is hopelessly naive. Expecting Afghanistan or Iraq to become fully democratic overnight is not a reasonable expectation. That’s why this war requires patience and determination, neither of which seem to be hallmarks of the left these days.

    Frankly, the left has been the voice of reason on this matter, much as the right would like to think otherwise.

    Donald Rumsfeld, 3/7/03:
    It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.

    Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/16/03:
    I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months

    New York Times, 2/2/03:
    The administration’s top budget official [Mitch Daniels] estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion.

    The administration, not the left, has continued to underestimate, undersell, and outright lie about the kind of commitment required to produce a stable democracy out of post-invasion chaos. In refusing to commit adequate numbers of peackeeping troops, it has gone even lower, in fundamentally crippling any chance of actually completing this work. Lying to the Ameircan people might be an impeachable offense, but causing the deaths of thousands of Iraquis, and doing such a poor job of actually helping establish democracy, is an outright sin.

    Not to mention the realpolitic fact that, in the dishonesty and folly of both the war’s ostensible goals, and its conduct, this plan has so far seemed to breed more enemies of the west than its destroyed.

    The goal is to get those states able to defend and govern themselves, which is antithetical to us providing all security for them.

    Quite untrue. Those states had defences and governments themselves before we got there, that isn’t the issue. The issue is that if we are to establish a deomcratic state, and a civil society – having just invaded and destroyed the pre-existing national police, government, and army – we need to start from a basis of providing enough security that those democratic institutions can take hold. Frankly, at the outset, that probably means not just troops, but martial law. Permitting Iraq, after the capital fell, to dissolve into an orgy of looting was perhaps the poorest way we could have gotten going. Even the White House has had to scramble to put a better face on that fiasco, labelling it “catastrophic success.”

    The Afghan Army is quite effective in dealing with the Taliban, and the combination of close air support from US warplanes ensure that the Taliban are not able to mount major offensives.

    Your thesis here is not compatible with the steady rise in violence that has marked this spring, or the new offensives the US forces have had to mount (resulting most recently, in the saga of that missing 4 man seal team, and the 16 soldiers who died looking for them) against the Taliban.

    Except for the part that the goal of nation building is to get these countries self-sufiicient. More troops harms that goal. If we were to have used more troops, it would have been a year ago. Now the goal is to get the Iraqis able to defend themselves. They can’t be dependent on us to provide security forever.

    No they can’t, but, absent US forces providing initial security, the odds of acheiving national stability hover right around zero. (Well, democratic stability. Likely, people will rally around whatever strongman seems able to stop the fighting. The Taliban held power on a very similar basis.)

    The time to have used more troops in Iraq wasn’t even a year ago – it was on the day of the invasion, since what should have happened in a well-planned and well supported war, is that a massive wave of peacekeepers and security troops should have been steadily fanning out behind the armored columns heading for Baghdad. This is, essentially, the Powell Doctrine version of the invasion. Instead, we got the Rumsfeld Doctrine version of the invasion – light, fast, and still capable of destroying any opposition in a set-piece battle, but too utterly thin to hold the territory once taken.

    The problem with your entire framework of argumentation is that you don’t understand that this war is about more than just overthrowing dictators. While that is important, the whole point of removing Saddam Hussein is to create the sort of climate that will ensure that we no longer need to engage in total war against the state supporters of terrorism in the Arab world – because if Iraq fails, we may have little choice to do elsewise.

    I’ll happily grant that Gulf War II is the centerpiece of a neocon plan that extends far past removing dictators, and into reshaping the Middle East states into liberal democracies, by a combination of force, threat of force, and hopefully, shining example. Nor would I disagree with the idea that democracy is a condition to be preferred to and encouraged over dictatorship.

    What I disagree with is first, that this plan has a reasonable chance of success in the real world, second, that the Bush administration’s execution of this plan is improving rather than weakening this chance, and third that this plan is the most cost-effective (or most effective period) means of ending the threat of radical Islamist movements like Al Quaeda.

    As you yourself have pointed out, people generally do not like to be oppressed. The neocon plan therefore assumes that all one does is topple the dictators and democracy will naturally take root, as an expression of that. I should think the bloody mess in Iraq would encourage a more nuanced understanding. Partly, this grand vision has neglected the fact that, some people, freed from oppression won’t try and share power – they’ll try and become oppressors. Partly, it’s neglected the fact that after 50 years of post-colonial bungling and heavy-handedness, many Muslims, and many Arabs, view the West with sufficent suspicion that they are unlikely to take the US at its word when it claims to be championing democracy. We certainly don’t champion democracy in our cozy relationship with the House of Saud.

    But for the moment, let’s pretend that, by using the post-war reconstruction of Germany and Japan as examples, you can convince the majority of Americans that it is possible to give a nation democracy at the end of a gun barrel. (Obviously, Bush didn’t think he could, thus the lies about WMD, and the intelligence facts being fixed around the policy, as the Downing Street memo goes.) Going even from that presumption, the execution of this neocon plan has been a disaster. Failure to secure the country allowed Iraq to dissolve into looting and chaos from moment 1. Relying on less-well equipped Northern Alliance troops at Tora Bora almost certainly cost us our best chance to capture Osama bin Laden. (you know, fellow responsbile for killing more Americans than the IJN killed at Pearl Harbor? Still at large, no less.) Officially dissolving the Iraqi national army by the CPA turned loose 400,000 suddenly disaffected, suddenly unemployed men onth Iraq’s streets – and each with an AK-47. Abu Grahib yielded no real actionable intelligence, but the best propaganda coup radical Islam could ask for. Shall we go on with the litany of high-level screw ups?

    I would be far more inclined to beleive the right wing rhetoric about the war being about establishing freedom and democracy if a) that rationale had ever been used to sell the war in the first place and b) the Bush administration actually acted like it gave a damn about establishing a real Iraqui democracy, instead of waving around a lot of purple fingers and going, “Look! An election!”

    And while I am sympathetic to the Iraqi people, and would be happy for them to acheive a more democratic state, Mr. Bush is the president of the United States, and I expect his first concern would be the protectuion of American citizens. So far, Mr. Bush’s war has left 1,800 Americans dead in Iraq, and the London bombings suggest it has done nothing to reverse the ciontinuing metastasis of the Al Quaeda organization across the world. We’ve paid 1,800 lives, and gotten no closer to security of any sort. And worse, having turned Iraq into a quagmire, we’ve little choice but to establish stability, and as close to a real democracy as real conditions allow. If we just pack up and go home Al Quaeda will be able to convincingly claim victory, and we’ll have cemented their status at the world table. Staying, and seeing the job right is going to cost countless billions of dollars, thousands more American lives, and assuredly mean the return of the draft, just to get an andequate number of soldiers in Iraq to assume real peacekeeping. Of course, what appalls me most is that Mr. Bush seems intent on the middle course – he’s not leaving Iraq, and he’s not prepared to commit what it takes to finish the war he started.

    Reply

16. I’m actually somewhat sympathetic to the argument that we needed more troops initially, so I’ll leave that be (at least for now).

    I’ll happily grant that Gulf War II is the centerpiece of a neocon plan that extends far past removing dictators, and into reshaping the Middle East states into liberal democracies, by a combination of force, threat of force, and hopefully, shining example. Nor would I disagree with the idea that democracy is a condition to be preferred to and encouraged over dictatorship.

    OK, sounds like a good start.

    What I disagree with is first, that this plan has a reasonable chance of success in the real world, second, that the Bush administration’s execution of this plan is improving rather than weakening this chance, and third that this plan is the most cost-effective (or most effective period) means of ending the threat of radical Islamist movements like Al Quaeda.

    As you yourself have pointed out, people generally do not like to be oppressed. The neocon plan therefore assumes that all one does is topple the dictators and democracy will naturally take root, as an expression of that. I should think the bloody mess in Iraq would encourage a more nuanced understanding. Partly, this grand vision has neglected the fact that, some people, freed from oppression won’t try and share power – they’ll try and become oppressors. Partly, it’s neglected the fact that after 50 years of post-colonial bungling and heavy-handedness, many Muslims, and many Arabs, view the West with sufficent suspicion that they are unlikely to take the US at its word when it claims to be championing democracy. We certainly don’t champion democracy in our cozy relationship with the House of Saud.

    Again, that argument is all well and good, except the Iraqis are embracing real democracy. The past seven months have seen all the hallmarks of a new Iraqi democracy, and most important Iraqi civil society.

    Instead of fighting it out, the Shi’a, Kurds, and the other minor ethnic groups in Iraq have settled their differences at the negotiating table. More importantly, the Sunnis are beginning to reject terrorism and embrace the political process. The Sunnis are waking up to the fact that they can’t win on their own, and al-Qaeda doesn’t care a whit about them except as a means to their end. The “insurgency” is beginning to fly apart, as the “red-on-red” violence along the Syrian border continues as al-Qaeda terrorists and Sunni tribal militias fight each other.

    But for the moment, let’s pretend that, by using the post-war reconstruction of Germany and Japan as examples, you can convince the majority of Americans that it is possible to give a nation democracy at the end of a gun barrel. (Obviously, Bush didn’t think he could, thus the lies about WMD, and the intelligence facts being fixed around the policy, as the Downing Street memo goes.)

    UGH! Please, not another round of this Known Facts™ crap. First of all, the argument that Bush “lied” about WMDs is preposterous on its face. If Bush had magical God-like powers and could peer into Iraq and know for certain that Iraq didn’t have WMDs, then you’d have an argument. But given that he didn’t, and all our available intelligence pointed inorexibly to the conclusion that Saddam had WMDs, the “Bush LIED!1!!1!!” meme is a crock of shit.

    And the Downing Street Memos say nothing we didn’t already know. The phrase “fixed around the policy” doesn’t mean what you think it does. It could be rephrased as “building a case to support their policy”, not “they’re just making stuff up.” If the Downing Street analyst thought that Iraqi WMDs were a hoax, why in the world were they talking about their fears that Saddam would use his weapons if provoked? The DSM is another lefty shibboleth, and when people make arguments like the two you just advanced it’s a sure sign that they’re just spouting the same tired old talking points.

    Going even from that presumption, the execution of this neocon plan has been a disaster. Failure to secure the country allowed Iraq to dissolve into looting and chaos from moment 1.

    Which is a potentially valid argument, although we’re limited by the number of troops we can field at any one given time, the logistics of supporting those troops, and the fact that we weren’t sure just how bad off Saddam had left Iraq. It’s not as simple as just saying we’d need to “add more troops.” That would require bringing up more supplies in a situation where the enemy was attacking our supply lines from the rear, and it would mean that we would have even worse problems with being able to sustain operations elsewhere. If we’re having problems with the military being overstretched now, how in the world could we do so if we had double the number of troops?

    Relying on less-well equipped Northern Alliance troops at Tora Bora almost certainly cost us our best chance to capture Osama bin Laden. (you know, fellow responsbile for killing more Americans than the IJN killed at Pearl Harbor? Still at large, no less.)

    Actually, the Northern Alliance were very well equipped, knew the territory, spoke the language, and had years of experience fighting in the frigid mountains of Afghanistan. Our mistake was using the 10th Mountain Division at Tora Bora – they were not used to fighting in the cold at altitude and weren’t nearly as effective as a Marine Corps division would have been.

    Besides, the geography of Afghanistan and the nature of Tora Bora is such that there was never much chance of bagging bin Laden. We could have had 200,000 troops in the region, and they could have walked right on top of bin Laden and never seen him. Once bin Laden was in Pakistan, we couldn’t cross the border to nab him.

    Again, actually examining the circumstances at the time rather than playing armchair general makes things a lot less simplistic.

    Officially dissolving the Iraqi national army by the CPA turned loose 400,000 suddenly disaffected, suddenly unemployed men onth Iraq’s streets – and each with an AK-47. Abu Grahib yielded no real actionable intelligence, but the best propaganda coup radical Islam could ask for. Shall we go on with the litany of high-level screw ups?

    Keeping the Iraqi Army would have been a disaster. They were untrained, they were corrupt, and they were dominated by Sunnis who would have alienated Iraq’s majority Shi’a population and probably pushed Iraqi into civil war. De-Baathification was as necessary as de-Nazification – and when we tried reinstating an old Iraqi Army unit as the Fallujah Brigades, they not only failed to secure anything, but made the situation worse.

    And Abu Ghraib was not a “high-level” screw up. It was the shoddy discipline of Gen. Karpinski and the idiocy of the guards in that one wing of the prison that are responsible for that crap. Trying to tie Abu Ghraib to some element of national policy is just another conspiracy theory.

    I would be far more inclined to beleive the right wing rhetoric about the war being about establishing freedom and democracy if a) that rationale had ever been used to sell the war in the first place and b) the Bush administration actually acted like it gave a damn about establishing a real Iraqui democracy, instead of waving around a lot of purple fingers and going, “Look! An election!”

    And here we go again. As for your first point, that’s already been thoroughly demolished. Democratization was one of the main points of this whole enterprise, from the beginning, and there’s plenty of references to it peppered throughout Bush’s speeches.

    As for your second point, the fact is that we’re still in Iraq, we’re not going to leave until the job is finished, and we’re working with the Iraqis on developing a resilient political process that safeguards the rights of the Iraqi people. And last I checked it was the Iraqis that were waving around purple fingers.

    Your arguments show the cognitive dissonance of the left. The only consistancy is that everything is Bush’s fault – Iraq is a destraction, Bush “lied” about WMDs, it’s a quagmire, but we have to stay. No matter what, it’s somehow all the fault of President Bush.

    In the past four years we’ve smashed the Taliban and Afghanistan has had free elections. We’ve removed the Hussein regime and Iraq has had free elections. Libya has disarmed. The A.Q. Khan network is gone. Lebanon is no longer occupied by Syria.

    President Bush, thankfully, is smart enough not to listen to the chattering classes who want to play armchair general and second-guess every single decision. We’re in Iraq. Iraq is now the single most crucial battlefield in this war. The only way in which Iraq can be stable over the long term is to get the Iraqi military up to speed.

    All this armchair generally doesn’t help in the slightest, and most of it are the same old talking points we’ve all heard before. The reality of the situation is much more complex, and much less dire than the antiwar side cares to understand.

    Reply

17. Instead of fighting it out, the Shi’a, Kurds, and the other minor ethnic groups in Iraq have settled their differences at the negotiating table. More importantly, the Sunnis are beginning to reject terrorism and embrace the political process. The Sunnis are waking up to the fact that they can’t win on their own, and al-Qaeda doesn’t care a whit about them except as a means to their end. The “insurgency” is beginning to fly apart,

    How settled those differences are remains to be seen. Right now the national government doesn’t have the ability to challenge the Kurds’ near-total autonomy in the north. One of the biggest tests of the Iraqi system will be what happens when that’s no longer true. (Purely on demographics, the Sunni-v-everyone conflict is a spolier to this larger issue)

    The internal divisions in the insurgency are entirely predictable, given the uneasy mix of pure nationalists, foreign jihadists, and al-Zaqawri, who seems to be just as content to ignite a Sunni-Shi’ite holy war as to bother going after Americans. It’s naieve to pretend those divisions themselves presage the end of the insurgency. That still depends on a lot of peacekeepign and law and order operations.

    UGH! Please, not another round of this Known Facts™ crap. First of all, the argument that Bush “lied” about WMDs is preposterous on its face. If Bush had magical God-like powers and could peer into Iraq and know for certain that Iraq didn’t have WMDs, then you’d have an argument. But given that he didn’t, and all our available intelligence pointed inorexibly to the conclusion that Saddam had WMDs, the “Bush LIED!1!!1!!” meme is a crock of shit.

    Please face reality here. Administartion figures created the Office of Special Plans specifically to stovepipe intelligence up to the top level precisely because the CIA wasn’t playing along with the “Iraq is an imminent threat” game, and refused to let reports go up to the top without analysis or comment. Cheney’s leaning on the CIA over this is also well documented.

    This isn’t “all our available intelligence” this is “all the intelligence the administration chose to look at”. Particularly made even more problematic because a big chunk of this intelligence came from exiles like Ahmed Chalabi, who had not merely an axe to grind, but obvious incentive to lie in particular ways. (Frankly, Chalabi’s goal of playing the US against Saddam for Chalabi’s personal gain was obvious even before it also turned out he was playing footsie with the Iranians.)

    Bush lied. It’s not like it matters, though, since the Republican Congress won’t complain about it, and it’s not like knowing he lied helps resolve matters in Iraq.

    The DSM is another lefty shibboleth, and when people make arguments like the two you just advanced it’s a sure sign that they’re just spouting the same tired old talking points.

    I also note that trying to handwave away inconvenient facts as a “lefty shibboleth” is a habit of folks on the right who wish to avoid actually dealing with those facts.

    Which is a potentially valid argument, although we’re limited by the number of troops we can field at any one given time, the logistics of supporting those troops,

    You go to war, or not, with the army you have – and realistic war planning ought to include recognizing that if you can deploy 125,000 people for a task that realistically will require 250,000, you need to come up with a way to make up the difference, either by waiting and recruiting more troops, or gaining more allies. Given the purely optional nature of the Iraq war, its unconsionalbe that the administration did neither – and even more damning is the part where its way of making up that gap lately has been by artifically inflating claims as to the number of trained, useful Iraqi troops on hand.

    and the fact that we weren’t sure just how bad off Saddam had left Iraq.

    In what respect were we “not sure” of this? The state of the national physical infrastructure should have been pretty evident from simple ariel reconaissance. (Not to mention that it’s pretty damn obvious that 10 years of crippling sanctions will, well, cripple a country.) The nation’s ethnical and cultural tensions were pretty clear to students of the region, too, although most of them had the misfortune of being at State, not the Pentagon.

    It’s not as simple as just saying we’d need to “add more troops.” That would require bringing up more supplies in a situation where the enemy was attacking our supply lines from the rear,

    We didn’t need more troops on the spearhead. Given the disparity of force as the war unfolded, it’s pretty clear the force we invaded with was more than a match for the defenses – frankly, adding more troops to the battle area would probably have produced more friendly fire losses than additional combat effectiveness. What we needed to do, and didn’t was immediately follow up the spearheads with a follwing echelon of peacekeeping troops – not only for the military value of protecting our supply lines, but for the political and social good of quickly re-establishing order, preventing insurgencies from growing, and preventing further destruction of property and loss of civilian life.

    and it would mean that we would have even worse problems with being able to sustain operations elsewhere.

    That’s obviously a problem, when you choose to engage in more wars than you have personnel to adequately support operations. Why then, hasn’t the administration gotten serious about expanding the army to match our commtments? If this is the epochal struggle Bush and the right paint it as, why the hell aren;t they actually treating it that way?

    If we’re having problems with the military being overstretched now, how in the world could we do so if we had double the number of troops?

    If we had double the number of troops in the military in the first place, increasing the number of troops deployed would be a lot easier, frankly. Normally, one would expect a pro-military, pro-war president like Mr. Bush to support such a move, but it doesn’t really seem to be much a priority. (Obviously, you can blame the fact that he’s emptied the treasury, but that’s still simplistic – cancelling programs like the DDX and the Virginia class, which are both weapons in search of an enemy, would free up billions to expend on more infantrymen without affecting the bottom line at all. If I were a suspicious lefty, I might suspect Mr. Bush’s allegiance is more in the direction of Northrop Grumman and Raytheon than in the direction of the actual fighting man.)

    Again, actually examining the circumstances at the time rather than playing armchair general makes things a lot less simplistic.

    Presumably you missed the quotes from ’03, where the administration told us it’d be all over in six months. Given that performance, I suspect my armchair generalship is no worse than what’s coming out of Washington. Or is “playing armchair general” only a problem when the armchair general in question draws a different conclusion from those circumstances than Washington does?

    Keeping the Iraqi Army would have been a disaster. They were untrained, they were corrupt, and they were dominated by Sunnis who would have alienated Iraq’s majority Shi’a population and probably pushed Iraqi into civil war. De-Baathification was as necessary as de-Nazification

    Again, with the habit of oversimplification. Between keeping the Iraqi army, and the CPA’s decision to send 400,000 armed men home, there’s actually a lot of space. Particularly, it would have been wiser to put those 400,000 “untrained, corrupt” armed men someplace reasonably safe, and keep ’em from running riot, until a) the potentially salvagable ones could be weeded out for the new national army, b) the worst criminals could be tried and punished, and c) there existed something for them to do when re-integrated into the national economy. Hell, put ’em to work rebuilding the physical infrastructure, for all of that. The CPA’s decision to just send them home seems to have primarily been short-sighted politics, in fear of beign accused of “supporting” Saddam’s thugs.

    And Abu Ghraib was not a “high-level” screw up. It was the shoddy discipline of Gen. Karpinski and the idiocy of the guards in that one wing of the prison that are responsible for that crap. Trying to tie Abu Ghraib to some element of national policy is just another conspiracy theory.

    One of the key gentlemen who suggested a legal rationale for torture and dumping the Geneva convention has been awarded with a promotion ot Attorney General. The US has maintaned not only a variety of detention facilities that are completely isolated from any sense of due process, but also maintains a progam of extrodinary rendition to allow us to export our torturees while seeming to keep our hands clean. This is merely observed fact, and a not-surprising (given the administration’s general extremism, and general contempt for due process or civil liberties) extension of a single theoretical “ticking time bomb” case to a general policy. Rummy himself has weighed in on what kinds of “special” interrogation measures are allowed.

    Democratization was one of the main points of this whole enterprise, from the beginning, and there’s plenty of references to it peppered throughout Bush’s speeches.

    Bush has always like to wave the words “democracy” and “freedom” around. Having spoken of them and havign actually acted like he has a commitment to them are two different stories. (Though I would grant that the neocon position has always started from the presumption that turning these states into democracies is a key goal, and Bush himself seems to be a firm believer in that position. Unfortunately, what Bush believes, and how the war was sold by the White house, remain at odds with each other. Particularly all that evocative imagery about how the smoking gun mustn’t be a mushroom cloud.

    Your arguments show the cognitive dissonance of the left. The only consistancy is that everything is Bush’s fault – Iraq is a destraction, Bush “lied” about WMDs, it’s a quagmire, but we have to stay. No matter what, it’s somehow all the fault of President Bush.

    Hardly everything is Bush’s fault – Al Quaeda would surely have attacked us regardless of who was president. And regardless of the execution, going into Afghanistan was the correct choice, particularly given the Taliban government’s official refusal to surrender Osama bin Laden to us.” What is Bush’s fault is that his ill-planned, ill-executed responses since then have fallen entirely off the track. (Frankly, even if we were doing everything just right in Iraq, I doubt the democratization of that country would actually measurably decrease the power of radical Islam from pre-Sept 11th levels. And the fact that the administration has insisted on doing so manythings wrong has clearly increased that power.)

    It is also fair to say that, had prior administrations – Clinton or Bush Sr. – been more responsive to the growing threat of Al Quaeda it would have set radical Islamism back on its heels at a time when such a rebuke could have been more effective. Of course, Clinton’s response to Osama, feeble as it was, still generated a firestom from the far right, complaining that it was all a Wag-the-dog ploy to distract us from the important national business of who was sucking the man’s dick.

    The reality of the situation is much more complex, and much less dire than the antiwar side cares to understand.

    Funny how the situation goes from a life-or-death struggle to “much less dire” depending on what the requirments of the right are at any given time. Lefties whine about the possiblity of another couple thousand American soldiers dying in Iraq, thanks to our administration attempting to get things done on the cheap? “Things are much less dire than that.” Lefties whine about the administration having created its own little gulag in Cuba? “This is a life-or-death struggle against terror!”

    Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.