In Which I Agree With Marc Lynch (Abu Aardvark)

There is a lot of heat on the milbogs now about the official reaction to the Ft. Hood atrocity – an official reaction which plays down, rather than playing up, the Islamist chain of causality that led to Maj. Hassan stepping up on a table and drawing his gun.

I disagree. I think it’s the right thing to do, and Lynch explains why decently well:

Since the Ft Hood atrocity, I’ve seen a meme going around that it somehow exposed a contradiction between “political correctness” and “security.” The avoidance of Nidal Hassan’s religion out of fear of offending anyone, goes the argument, created the conditions which allowed him to go undetected and unsanctioned in the months and years leading up to his rampage. American security, therefore, demands dropping the “political correctness” of avoiding a confrontation with Islamist ideas and asking the “tough questions” about Islam as a religion and the loyalty of Muslim-Americans.

This framing of the issue is almost 100% wrong.

There is a connection between what these critics are calling “political correctness” and national security, but it runs in the opposite direction. The real linkage is that there is a strong security imperative to prevent the consolidation of a narrative in which America is engaged in a clash of civilizations with Islam, and instead to nurture a narrative in which al-Qaeda and its affiliates represent a marginal fringe to be jointly combated. Fortunately, American leaders — from the Obama administration through General George Casey and top counter-terrorism officials — understand this and have been acting appropriately.

It’s worth walking through the connection once again, because how America responds to Ft. Hood really is important in the wider attempt to change the nature of its engagement with Muslim publics across the world. Get the response right, as the administration thus far has done, and they show that things really have changed. Get it wrong, as its critics demand, and the world could tumble back down into the ‘clash of civilizations’ trap which al-Qaeda so dearly wants and which the improved American approach of the last couple of years has increasingly denied it.

Note – importantly – that I flatly disagree with the notion that ‘political correctness’ had nothing to do with the reluctance of Maj. Hassan’s peers to report his increasingly bizarre behavior up the chain of command.

I do believe that we need to accept that certain kinds of behavior are unacceptable – most of all in the Armed Services – and that whether you’re white and sporting a Christian Identity t-shirt, black and wearing Rolling 60’s tattoos, or Muslim and spouting Salafi and Islamist ideology – in any of those cases you’ve stepped over a line and need to pulled out of uniform.

But I do agree that firewalling between Hassan’s Islamist craziness and his Muslim beliefs is important.

I believed in 2003 and believe today that the goal is to keep the conflict from widening into a “Muslim’ v. “Western” one. Within the Muslim world, the Islamist crazies are a small minority, and the primary goal should be to make them a smaller one. By painting all Muslims with the murderer’s beliefs, we make that harder.

I ask you; should we ban all white fundamentalist Christians from the Military because of the actions of a few extremists? All African-Americans so that no members of street gangs serve? You see where I’m going with this…no, of course not.

We need to ruthlessly seek out and stamp out Islamist believers who wear our uniform. We don’t need to – and would be worse off if we did, morally and practically – do the same to pious Muslims.

Now the question is how we can tell the difference.

33 thoughts on “In Which I Agree With Marc Lynch (Abu Aardvark)”

  1. A.L.,

    _I flatly disagree with the notion that ‘political correctness’ had nothing to do with the reluctance of Maj. Hassan’s peers to report his increasingly bizarre behavior up the chain of command._

    From the very sketchy reports that I’ve read, the problem — if it turns out there was one — was not that his peers were shy about reporting him up the command chain, but that no action was ever taken by the commanders. Although, what the rationale behind their decisions to take no action was, remains speculative.

    It’s hard enough to find the line that lets you know when you can pull someone out of uniform for his beliefs. It’s even harder to know which loonies are going to snap and turn violent. It’s also hard to lock someone up until they do snap. I mean to say, that it seems quite possible that had Hasan been tossed, he might have taken his weapon to the local high school football game.

    We’ll need to wait a while to find out what triggered all this, and we may never know for sure, but it may be more Columbine than 9/11. We don’t know yet and it seems premature to launch into accusations and charges. Let’s at least get past the memorial service and maybe wait till after Veteran’s Day to sharpen the claws.

  2. bq. We need to ruthlessly seek out and stamp out Islamist believers who wear our uniform. We don’t need to – and would be worse off if we did, morally and practically – do the same to pious Muslims. Now the question is how we can tell the difference.

    Agreed with both the premise and this conclusion.

    But there’s a bit of a problem: When both “CNN”:http://www.mudvillegazette.com/032881.html and the Commander-in-Chief try to avoid the issue, does that help to delineate that difference, or does it lead to reasonable suspicions that they’re trying to tiptoe either around the lack of such a bright line, or of any intent of enforcing one? The stifling of discussion in the interest of political correctness could be as deadly in the long run as the failure to catch Hasan before he murdered his comrades.

  3. Get it wrong, as its critics demand, and the world could tumble back down into the ‘clash of civilizations’ trap which al-Qaeda so dearly wants and which the improved American approach of the last couple of years has increasingly denied it.

    Yeah, we must be very careful to distinguish between al-Qaeda and other Muslims … except that doesn’t tell us anything about Hasan, who was not a member of al-Qaeda, was he?

    And once again, Barack Obama’s stump-like inertia must be praised as incredibly, stupendously brilliant. Otherwise the terrorists win – the terrorists being the insurance companies and little old ladies from Des Moines who disrupt town hall meetings.

    I’ve heard this song before. It’s called Taps, and they’ll be playing it over all our graves. Someday we’ll be playing it over the ruins of a radioactive city.

  4. Spot on, A.L..

    The other problem which is getting brushed over, again and again in discussions of anti-terrorist policing, is the problem of distinguishing between actual competent would-be terrorists, (deadly dangerous) and, bat-shit crazies who fancy themselves to be would-be terrorists (less likely to be competent terrorists, but almost equally dangerous, because they’re DUMB).

    The latter tend to be easier to catch, or entrap, because (as a number of domestic investigations since 9/11 have shown) if law enforcement puts someone out there, undercover, who lets it be known that he can put folks in touch with Alqaeda, and sign them up to be jihadists, the bat-shit crazies are going to be quicker on the uptake, and will come running forward, asking if they can get the cool boots and flashlights (I remember this specific detail from one investigation), and when they can go to terrorist camp, while the really dangerous folks are going to be a LOT more careful.

    While it’s clear the government has info which most of us yet have not seen, I’m guessing that if Hasan had not only attempted to contact A.Q., but had gotten back something in the nature of an “expression of interest”, some more vigorous action would have been taken, and we might have heard about it earlier.

  5. _I ask you; should we ban all white fundamentalist Christians from the Military because of the actions of a few extremists? All African-Americans so that no members of street gangs serve?_

    Yes, I do see where you’re going with that, and of course the answer is “of course not.” However, I don’t think you would find many people who would support banning all Christians, African Americans, or what-have-you for the actions of a few crazies. That is a red herring. I think most sensible people _would_ support investigating those crazies, and making sure not only that the crazies are kicked out but that their particular form of craziness is known and known as unacceptable. Not to do so for fear of offending the sane Christians, African-Americans, or what-have-you and for fear of bad publicity (mainstream media screaming RACIST! RACIAL PROFILING!) would be a big problem. If that is, in fact, what happened here (and the details coming out seem to indicate that it is) then I have to disagree with AL. We do have a political correctness problem, and it is deadly.

  6. This is a strategy of denial – not in the sense that you are trying to deny the enemy resources or position, but in the sense of denying that you are at war with an enemy, who however is in a chronic state of low-level war against you.

    The real problem with this is that it assumes that we are the ones who define legitimacy within Islam: what the example of the ideal man, Muhammed, teaches; what the Koran says, and so on.

    If we had the authority to define for Muslims what is Islamic and un-Islamic, then a policy that’s all about suppressing our immune responses to chronic Islamic aggression (including demands for deference and special consideration, demographic pressure, dawa, “lawfare” and probes of all kinds, as well as jihad plots) might have some success in forcing Muslims to accept that by their laws they must abandon their war aims.

    I’d bet against it. History doesn’t support this kind of strategy working. We are on the wrong end of a “persistent raiding” strategy, and “denial” has a very bad record against that. But it wouldn’t be wholly irrational.

    In fact we do not determine the content of Islam. If Islam teaches that the essence of the Islamic world’s relationship with the house of unbelief is that Muslims should do unto non-Muslims whether non-Muslims were doing unto Muslims or not, we can’t change that. If Islam teaches that grievances (such as the loss of Spain or the fact of Israel) are perpetual, we can’t change that either. We can’t call off Islamic aggression.

    So we have to defend ourselves against it. If we want to live in freedom, or maybe at all.

  7. Not to nitpick but Wahhabiism is a Sunni movement (they consider the Shiia every bit the infidels we are). Something often overlooked in the geopolitics of militant Islam is the cold war taking place between the Sunni and Shiia, which explains a great deal of why Iraq was and will be such a flashpoint. Much of the escalating international terrorism is an arms race between the Saudi block and the Iran block for influence in places like Gaza and Lebanon. The coin of the realm is dead infidels.

    Our job here in America is (as it always has been) to seduce our immigrants away from those petty squabbles and bring them into our way of life. In many ways, we do that, but we do everyone involved a disservice by turning our eyes when radicalism sprouts up here. Allowing it to plant root is a terrible idea, and the politically correct mindset is like miracle grow.

    Shame is a powerful thing. Being ashamed of the extremists in your society keeps down the extremists. If you allow the culture of denial to flourish instead, you eliminate the shame and ignore the underlying rot. Instead of papering over these movements we should be shining a bright spotlight. Where are the 20/20 reports on extremist mosques and imams, such as Hassan was associated with? I doubt you will find them.

  8. _Shame is a powerful thing. Being ashamed of the extremists in your society keeps down the extremists._

    To a point. At some point, pressure actually insulates the group (making them more extreme) than if they were allowed to freely associate in public.

    _Where are the 20/20 reports on extremist mosques and imams, such as Hassan was associated with? I doubt you will find them._

    The reports I read said the Imam he reached was in Yemen. Hence, unlikely to be covered by 20/20. Is there any evidence to implicate an American mosque in his radicalization?

  9. He’s in Yemen _now._ “Until”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki 2006 he was preaching in Colorado and DC… 5 years after being the imam of 3 of the 911 hijackers.

    The “Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Centre”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dar_al-Hijrah is where he preached, along with being the _Muslim Chaplain at George Washington University._ There are two golden stories for some news show to look into.

    I’m telling you people- this radicalization has been allowed to mainstream because we’ve purposely ignored it.

  10. My general rule of thumb is:

    What Marc Lynch says/claims/states/argues/analyzes/nuances (is “nuance” a verb?)/enumerates…

    is usually entirely, consistently wrong.

    Wrong and wrong-headed.

    Of course, he’s an expert who’s respected by a great many who are on the same wavelength (and who thus, like him, have essentially no idea what’s really going on in the area of his expertise).

  11. David Blue:_I don’t find plausible the view that the claws and teeth of the tiger are hostile but those are the only parts that draw blood_

    Again you make the missassumption that Islam is, by definition, a single moving entity. I find that claim laughable about any human organization (expert the borg).

    For example: my parents neighbor (an engineer who fled Iran after the revolution) Is muslim, and has more American flags outside his house than anyone I know. He has big barbeques on the 4th of July. He IS NOT waging some “secret war”, he is becoming American, as his children already have become.

    In some cases it’s difficult to tell the friend from the enemy. And certainly, there are fringe groups out there lying in wait. As Lynch says, there goal is to confuse us, to make us find rash decisions that lead to further conflict.

    Let’s try a flipside game. What if I said that Christianity was permanently stained because of Scott Roeder, pedophile priests (etc) and that we have to treat all of it like a “single tiger” rounded up completely to prevent worst-case scenarios. How well do you think that would go over? (I’m guessing that strategy would lead to more violence, even among non-violent groups).

  12. Lynch’s belief that we have denied propaganda to al-Qaeda with some “improved approach” over the last three years is nonsense.

    Just as we get no credit for coming to the aid of Bosnian Muslims, not to mention the largess we have showered on Muslim nations over the years, we get no credit for NOT oppressing Muslims. Not with people who simply lie and say that we do, or with the captive audiences who believe their lies.

    Or does Lynch believe that al-Qaeda is somehow compelled to tell the truth about US policies?

  13. Alchemist:

    Now, I’m not going to argue that this makes Christianity an immoral religion (especially since some of these things are avoided in the new testament)

    I guess you refer to the part where Christ “avoided” stoning a woman to death. As in, “Let you who is without sin cast the first stone,” etc.

    Compare this to the shari’a law subscribed to by people like Hasan, which endorses stoning based on Hadiths like Malik 493:1524 – The Prophet was told: “My son was employed with this man; he committed adultery with his wife. I gave 100 sheep and a slave girl in compensation.” The Prophet said: “Take back your sheep and your slave girl. Your son will receive 100 lashes and a year in exile. As the adulteress has confessed; she will be stoned.

    When playing the game of Moral Equivalence, it’s better not to be overly specific.

  14. Again, Glen, let’s go back to my muslim neighbor.

    He does not believe in Sharia law. His two daughters have become a lawyer and a doctor. One of them married a Jewish man. And yet, nobody is dead or stoned. How does this happen in the “tiger” analogy? How can he be muslim and not seek to destroy ‘the great satan’?

    And that’s my point. When we try and say “Well, the Koran says this, so therefore they all think that way.” It’s BS. People can be faithful to their religion and choose what they want to believe.

    Just as every christian denomination has different feelings about what is and isn’t important in the bible, so do different muslim denominations. You can either realize that’s true, (and realize the ramifications of that) or you can see a vast borg-like muslim army hiding in wait.

    _Just as we get no credit for coming to the aid of Bosnian Muslim_
    Did you read the Totten bit? We get a lot of credit from the Bosnians themselves.

  15. Alchemist:

    When we try and say “Well, the Koran says this, so therefore they all think that way.” It’s BS. People can be faithful to their religion and choose what they want to believe.

    Actually the Koran does not advocate killing women with rocks, but the various Hadiths (describing purported acts of Mohammed) repeatedly do so. Under shari’a, these Hadiths have the literal force of law, supplanting all other law. (Secular liberals should definitely educate themselves about Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, BTW, it would save huge amounts of trouble.)

    Now Muslims like your neighbor who reject these Hadiths and reject shari’a are not the problem. Those who embrace it are the problem, and Major Hasan shows how serious the problem is.

    The people who, above all, are confounding these two things are the political correctniks who constantly accuse other people of confounding them.

    Likewise, I do not believe in collective guilt, because collective guilt is a morally repugnant doctrine. The left revels in it, so long as it’s selectively applied to western civilization.

  16. Let me stack up some responses –

    David Blue (#11) – Tigers are single organisms; they thrive or die together. Islam is (as are many other human communities) a collection of lesser communities who in the case of Islam have harmed each other far more than any outsiders.

    David Blue (#12) – That’s just untrue. Muslims have lived in the US for hundreds of years. Where’s the ongoing trail of murder and violence aimed at the infidels? Hasn’t happened…and for your model to be true (Islam and the west are inherently incompatible) it would have had to.

    And while the Wahab are Sunni, the reality is that the current strain of fundamentalism in Islam is shared by Shiite and Sunni I believe it comes from common intellectual and cultural roots. Just as anarchism become so popular in so many cultures at the turn of the 20th century, Islamism became a powerful movement in the late 60’s and 70’s across the Muslim world.

    Barry Meislin (#13) I do think Mark suffers from a bit of the ‘Arabist’ mindset that seems to hit State Department officials and academics. I’d love to understand it better…but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong in everything he writes, any more than the fact that Isupported the invasion of Iraq (and still do) means I’m wrong in everything I write. They all have to stand on their own.

    David Blue (#21) – David what facts are on your side? If there’s a case to make for Islam as a unitary entity (sort of like the case that Capitalism is a unitary entity), let’s debate it.

    enough for now….

    Marc

  17. _Major Hasan shows how serious the problem is._

    Over the last 30 years, there have been about 95 public shooting sprees. Of those, maybe 5 belong to muslims (I only know of 2). The rest are referred to as “going postal” where no relgion, class or creed is blamed for the incident. In fact, this small number (comparatively) is about what you would expect statistically from 2% of the US population.

    Do you have any evidence to suggest that muslims are more apt to violence than regular americans? I’ve looked for data and can’t find any for or against.

  18. _”Over the last 30 years, there have been about 95 public shooting sprees. Of those, maybe 5 belong to muslims (I only know of 2).”_

    When did we confine the discussion to shootings?

    You’ve also laid yourself a bit of a trap- people that ‘go postal’ have a fairly common mentality. They aren’t making a political statement, they are going to kill some people in a personal way, eyeball to eyeball, and go out in a blaze of glory.

    That _hasnt_ been the modis operendi for Islamicists, by and large, on that you are quite right. Islamicists have been FAR more imaginative, probably because they DO have a political cause bigger than seeing somebody bleed out in front of them. They bomb planes, or fly them into buildings. They strap explosives to their bodies or put them in crowded subways. They aren’t just out to kill people, they are out to _terrorize them._

    So to change your question around, how many multi-fatality incidents have been executed and how many have been done so by Islamists? How many plans have been foiled? I can think of perhaps a dozen in the Western World since 2001 (exclusive of Israel of course) and they are all Islamists aside from the anthrax (although i’m sure i’m missing something).

  19. Marc Lynch has made a name for himself by promoting the idea that the United States should make an effort to reach out to the so-called ‘nonviolent’ Wahhabist/fascist Muslim Brotherhood as a way of defeating al Qaeda.

    This ‘expert’ idea ignores the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood manages al Qaeda’s ideology and finances (as well as the finances of most Wahhabi-allied terrorist groups). The Muslim Brotherhood is al Qaeda – so reaching out to them probably isn’t such a good ideal

    However, Lynch’s idea can be called ‘expert’ because it has already been tried by the British government for years, and it has failed in a fairly spectacular manner. Some experts. The British government has empowered the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda, while alienating most non-extremist British citizens (Muslims included). The policy of pandering to Britian-based Muslim Brotherhood groups has resulted in an increase in Nationalist/skinhead type attacks against Muslims, and it’s also increased the popularity of the fascist BNP party.

    This is what one British MP, Louise Ellman, has to say about Hassan’s Muslim Brotherhood/extremist buddy Anwar al-Awlaki and Britain (and Lynch’s) idea of kissing up to extremists:

    “It is time that the spotlight fell on the Muslim Association of Britain, particularly the key figures, such as Azzam Tamimi, Kemal el Helbawy, Anas Al-Tikriti and Mohammed Sawalha. All of them are connected to the terrorist organisation Hamas. The Muslim Association of Britain itself is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—an extremist fundamentalist organisation founded in Egypt in 1928, and the spiritual ideologue of all Islamic terror organisations. It is militantly anti-Semitic and always has been. In June 2003, the Muslim Association of Britain organized a series of meetings with an American imam, Anwar Al Awlaki, as guest speaker. That gentleman is reportedly wanted for questioning by the FBI in connection with the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.”

    However, Britain protects Al Awlaki, as they protect MB members.

    If we follow Marc Lynch’s advice, we’ll wind up like Britain, helping all varieties of fascists lead cozy lives of power and influence. So, I can’t really agree with him, no matter how carefully he frames his arguments.

  20. Mark: _This hasnt been the modis operendi for Islamicists, by and large, on that you are quite right._

    Which is one of the reasons why I don’t think this is an “al-queda” attack. Whether or not he had connections to a racial cleric, this guy clearly had problems, and there were a number of warning signs about those problems. Some of them were related to islam, some of them were not. If the mental health of all soldiers had been better monitored, these signs should have been clear.

    Unfortunately, the military has been overloaded with mental health cases. This “salon”:http://www.salon.com/news/fort_hood_shooting/index.html?story=/news/feature/2009/11/15/camp_lejeune article has been continuing a 2-year series looking at the poor shape of facilities and treatment of officers. and those that speak out against it are routinely fired. AS the problem gets worse, it seems likely that a rise in PTSD-related events will show up as well. Very few are likely to get the publicity of Ft. HOod, but they are equal damaging to the men and women of the armed forces.

    Even if we discharge every muslim officer from the armed forces, these events are going to happen again.

  21. Doth parties and the armed forces and committed to the strategy of denial and disbelief, with popular support (link). That means more base killings are inevitable.

    We can resume this conversation after the next jihad slaughter. (Or if one prefers, after the next random killing spree by someone who coincidentally cries out “Allah hu Akhbar!”) Or the one after that. Or the one after that.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.