My latest Examiner column is up…it opens:
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be wrong about something as badly as I do about the Middle East.
Take a look and comment here.
My latest Examiner column is up…it opens:
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be wrong about something as badly as I do about the Middle East.
Take a look and comment here.
A.L.
Excellently done. Well written and, for the most part, right on the money. It’s boring to agree so I’ll offer my only quibble.
I think your prediction of the future course of–let’s just call it Jihadism, we all know what we’re talking about, is based, like Bush’s, on what I regard as a faulty view of human nature. I think a U.S. failure in Iraq is likely to have a more beneficial effect on Jihadism than a so-called victory.
These people, loosely called, need and desire an enemy like a strong, beligerent US to inflame their cause and enlist recruits. It’s a movement. We can never defeat it militarily. And, what’s worse, the stronger our presence in the Middel East, the more incentive their will be for many otherwise ordinary people to enlist with this hateful cause. Part of the drive toward Jihadism is humiliation by and fear of the west. The more people we kill, the more sons, brothers, fathers, cousins & nephews there will be to join up and offer their own bodies in sacrafice to their “great” mission.
I’m not sure what the answer is to successfully combat jihadism, but I am convinced that military force in the ME is not the answer. It is gasoline on a fire. I think that is a predictable result and, now, 4 years later, a proven one.
This is your lucky day A.L., you are wrong.
In Iran: car bombings and a top nuke scientist is not breathing.
A little military pressure and Al Sadr is gone. With his gang leaders. All is not lost. Except as you point out in the minds of the illiberal left.
Copperheads always come our when victory is in the far distance. Lincoln had that problem.
During WW2 Republicans groused.
We have been fortunate in our choice of enemies. They will not disappoint us. However, the butchers bill will be higher. Probably much higher
AL, good article.
#1 Mark, here’s why I think you are wrong about Jihadism’s future after a perceived US defeat and subsequent withdrawal, or the other way around:
Those who maintain power in spite of unhappy populations can only escape the noose themselves by successfully blaming someone else, whether or not that is in fact the case. Classic politics the world over. If the elimination of your chosen scapegoat (wherever that choice falls on the spectrum defined by purest good intentions and calculated cynicism) does not produce the results your population expects, you need another scapegoat.
In any culture based on structural elements which sharply limit the prospects of widespread peace and prosperity (especially as relative to the neighbors, but I’m not quite ready to implicate Islam specifically), strongman leadership will be forced to come gunning for external culprits once they have purged their societies of any other group powerful enough to be blamed for the problems. To a large extent, this has already happened in the Middle East.
At that point, the next survival tactic is to induce their neighbors to sufficiently support your regime, whether through threats, realpolitick, or victimhood status, so that they can retain power parasitically, thus avoiding bloody death at the hand of your population, strengthening themselves at the expense of others, and building a sense of entitlement. But if that source is ever shut off, or fails to grow fast enough to keep up with the growing demands of the population, the only option left for the precariously perched strongman is to swap charity for armed robbery. If they can’t find an enemy, they must create one.
Ultimately the culture will decay to the point of collapse at the center unless it can restructure itself along sustainable lines, but that will be too late to prevent the devastation along its borders.
They will pick the low hanging fruit first, which is why appeasement is dangerous, and they will come for anyone they think is too weak to hold them off. For the United States or anyone else, appearing weak (as defined by that culture) is not a viable option. Military force may be an incomplete solution–ideally it would block the expansionist forces, turning them inward in search of answers–but it is an essential part of any solution that protects our own culture.
My, that was long winded.
-Piercello
“We can never defeat it militarily.”
I hope you realize that whenever I read that, I toss the writers opinion out the window as grounded in quasi-religious faith rather than any sort of logic.
My contribution to me-tooism: I disagree with you heartily Mark. You have a point that killing fathers, brothers, etc. _without also creating a sense of crushing defeat_ is dangerous. If you kill my brother, I’ll be pissed off. If you destroy my culture’s capability to fight, I’ll give up. What Churchill said about the Germans is doubly true of the Arabs; they’re either at your feet or at your throat. Osama didn’t attack us because he hated us. He attacked us because he wasn’t afraid of us. I’ll go to my grave believing that if we’d turned Tehran into a parking lot in 1979, September 11 would just be another block on the calendar. I also believe the hostage crisis itself was a direct result of our failure in Viet Nam. A rerun of that failure in Iraq (which, since Al Quaeda and the Iraqi insurgents and militias won the American election in November, is inevitable in my view) will have much worse consequences. Of course, the very anti-war voices that are now so loud will equally loudly blame Bush or whoever is in charge when the disaster hits for “not preventing it.” Such is human (or at least American) nature.
The doomsayers with vested political and media interests are of course doing their level best to ignore any signs of success or even progress.
But there’s one unavoidable issue, no matter any positive outcome of the Baghdad campaign: The Iraqis have to want to remain a nation together, and be willing to fight for it, against both external and internal enemies. One can hope that, having now opened and looked into the gates of Hell, they may be willing to sacrifice to avoid that destiny. But if they haven’t reached that judgment as a polity by now, and seize a period of order-by-force as the opportunity to come together, then the strategic judgment behind Iraq has failed.
I’ve always believed that strategic hypothesis, however hedged round, could be summarized as ‘democracy as force amplifier’. A curious melding of the Wilsonian and Jacksonian impulses, to destroy the enemy will by conversion rather than direct force. If that was supposed to mean that we could pack up and move on once having dislodged a dictator, the hypothesis is long dead.
If it more realistically aimed to engender a slow moving, but ultimately powerful revolution in the Arab and Islamic world, then it was credible enough to evoke a powerful response from our enemies. That response has been aimed squarely at a weakness of our implementation: a de facto insistence on keeping dissonant religious and ethnic groupings within historic borders. If Iraq dissolves, we must concede that we have found that insistence to have placed us on death ground, and act accordingly.
The Islamic war and Iraq in particular has placed heavy strains on comity in our society. So far, we hold, in spite of destructive posturing on both extremes. We have a 200+ year accumulation of social equity to draw upon.
Not so the Middle East, as we are finding, and a collapse of Iraq would pointedly illustrate. I have little hope that some Saudi/Egyptian alignment that Marc alludes to can retrieve the situation if we can not. Iraq will likely collapse into a smaller scale reprise of the India/Pakistan partition, with IEDs and car bombs added. And considering Shia/Sunni tensions elsewhere, at both the population and state level, the conflict is likely to metastasize.
We should let it. The first strategic hypothesis will have failed, and for those who actually believe we are in a war, another will need to be found. As bloody-minded as ‘Let them fight each other’ may sound, it is less so than than retreat followed by scorched earth, and altogether more just.
A Christianity tempered with enough tolerance to allow the Enlightment, and exist alongside the secular goulash of America, didn’t happen because of force or moralizing from outside that faith. The extremists of a former age beat each other, and the rest of the believers, so bloody that they accepted tolerance as the price of existence.
Perhaps Islam has to walk that same road. If the hypothesis of a tolerant center fails, then we have no business spending our resources and lives preventing the outcome. We need to prevent strategic threats arising from that conflict (e.g., Iranian WMD) and support what islands of tolerance and sanity emerge (e.g., Kurdistan), regardless of nominal borders.
Like Marc, I would really, really, really like to be proven wrong. I support the Baghdad campaign as the best chance to show that I’m wrong, and well worth it considering what I believe to be the alternative. But it’s really the Iraqis’ fate to choose the outcome now, and the choice can’t be delayed much longer.
During WW2 Republicans groused.
Near the end of WW2, Germans also groused. So you see, grousing is not necessarily an indicator of future success. I would have thought this was obvious, but not to some.
Piercello, you are absolutely right: it was long-winded.
I think the theory that you outlined (and Fred’s too) is more applicable to a state or to a unit that is finite and has definable boundaries (not necessarily geographic ones). But Jihadism is movement that draws from a pool of over 1 billion people spread out from Nigeria to Indonesia, encompasses many cultures and has many pockets throughtout the West. This movement cannot be crushed by military might. People go to it; it doesn’t come to them.
The likes of bin Laden, Atta, et al, are not drawn from the ranks of the disillusioned, oppressed masses who turn to radical islam as the only alternative to otherwise bleak lives dominated by an evil corrupt state. Jihadism is not communism.
Finally, and more to Fred’s point. Let us not forget, that Osama is merely the front man here. The actual attackers on 9/11 are all dead. It wasn’t their perception of our weakness that led them to attack. It wasn’t that they thought thought they could get away with it. They killed themselves. The purpose of the attack was to provoke a response.
We showed ourselves strong by marshalling forces and invading Iraq. The result was a surge in jihadist activity IN Iraq, where previously there was none. Western military force in the ME will increase the ranks of jihadists. I think that’s been well demonstrated.
Piercello, see, I too can be long-winded.
I don’t agree with the happy conclusion:
“Ultimately reality checks all our beliefs and grand plans. Reality will ultimately let us know what we need to do, and I am confident that once it is clear what it is, we will rise to do the right thing.”
Does it, and will it, and how “ultimate” are we talking here? Leaving aside the way pure fantasies (like creationism) can persist in the face of strong data, in history, politics, and strategy we are dealing with complex phenomena where no one can have all the relevant information. Analyzing causation and predicting results require lots of guesswork (we can learn, and make educated guesses, but that’s not the same as saying that reality will trumpet the unarguably right answer). And, as you note, whatever we do can be “spun” in an evil way, unless it brings impossibly fast results.
I’m not clear on why you say we are being used (or will be used) to “settle age-old scores in the Middle East” – in following the news on recent operations in Baghdad, for example, I don’t see us siding with any particular sectarian group. Could you clarify?
Marc, it very much looks as though we’ve decided to just react to external events. My guess is that this will means a “Fortress America” which the “we’re only aggravating them” view ultimately indicates.
#1 Mark may be right. If we remove our troops from Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, etc., the hornets may die down. What I believe this ignores is that the enormous military presence we have in the Middle East now wasn’t our first choice (something more like “Fortress America” was). It wasn’t even our second choice. It wasn’t until it was obvious that the regional powers wouldn’t maintain order in the region (in the 1970’s and 1980’s) that we established a real military presence there.
Like it or not we’re the guarantors of stability in the region and no one else is likely to step up to the plate however much we’d like to vacate the job.
Tim, a fractured Iraq presents many problems for us. For one thing it won’t fracture into three tidy territories (Kurds, Sunni Arabs, Shi’a Arabs). The Kurds will fragment internally and so will the Sunni and Shi’a Arabs. They’ll bicker amongst themselves if they don’t bicker with each other or have us to kick around. And a lawless territory where Iraq used to be will invite expeditions from its neighbors.
Alberich,
In siding with the current Iragi gov’t we are taking sides and being used by the faction which controls the gov’t as it gathers strength.
The sad fact is that it is not a unity gov’t; the few unity parties were crushed in the election. Only factional parties won sizable blocs of votes.
The Sunni’s are, in a word, deadmeat. Once we leave, there will be a bloodbath. Not that they don’t have it comming to them. But we are, unwittingly, taking sides.
mark, do your opinions also hold true for Afghanistan? Does the presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan “inflame their cause and enlist recruits”?
PD,
Certainly. However, Afghanistan is clearly a case of the benefits outweighing the costs–up to a point, at least. There we had a finite territory with a heavy concentration of already-commited (& trained) jihadists living reasonable apart from civilian populations, which made a military effort a reasonable endeavor.
That said, it is true, in my opinion, that the longer we stay there, the more the benefit/cost balance will shift against our interests. Obviously, there’s no one perfect solution. But I think that in the minds of about 95% of the world, Iraq is a significantly different situation than Afghanistan. And when you are talking about a jihadist movement, perception become a critical component. After all, other than preventing an attack against us, our priority must be reducing the number of Jihadists. The current strategy is to wait until they becoming Jihadists and then kill them. I am suggesting that preventing them from becoming Jihadists in the first place might be a more effective, less costly and less deadly strategy.
That doesn’t mean that there won’t be individual situations when it is more effective to kill the already existing ones…such as in Afghanistan. But Iraq, in my opinion, is not one of those situations.
_There we had a finite territory with a heavy concentration of already-commited (& trained) jihadists living reasonable apart from civilian populations, which made a military effort a reasonable endeavor._
Depending on what you mean by “apart,” you could just as easily be talking about Anbar province to which U.S. military is surging with 4,000 marines, a move apparently opposed by all major Democratic Presidential candidates.
Since winning in Afghanistan will either require widening the war to Pakistan and/or aggressive alienation of the Pashtuns, I suspect the Democratic position post-withdrawal from Iraq is the same for Afghanistan. Transnational groups freed from the U.S. presence in Iraq will move on to Afghanistan and test this proposition.
Indeed, that was one of the motivations behind the invasion of Iraq in the first place: putting a system in place that would provide an alternative to the one put forward by the Irhabists.
I don’t believe that the Irhabists need our presence to sell their product (although it helps). They’re fully capable of controlling the information space so that, however pure we are in word and deed, we’ll continue to be a cause to which they can rally support. I fail to see how ceding the territory to them and reducing our ability to influence the information space prevents that.
To my mind this discussion suffers from viewing things in too polar a way. There are plenty of alternatives other than complete victory or rout. For one, we could revise our objectives to suit the conditions apparent today rather than those apparent three years ago.
Mark —
I have hardly ever seen a set of statements that is so wrong on every particular.
1. The problem is not jihadism, but Islam and Muslims. Muslims cannot live in the modern world America drives; and so must destroy modernism and America or be destroyed by it. There can be no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his messenger co-existing with we hold these truths self-eviden, that all men are created equal.
Because Allah and his messenger say that Allah most specifically did not create them equal. The Muslims are the rulers and the infidels the slaves.
2. Islamic terror has no connection to Palestine, or Iraq, or any other issue other than the systemic societal failure of Islam. This can be seen in the UK were more than 40% of Muslims want the nation under Sharia law, and the support for mass-terror attacks on their fellow citizens is appallingly high. The aim to produce a copy of the Taliban run Afghanistan in the UK. Or France where 10% of the population is Muslim and drives the nation into an Anti-Semitic frenzy.
3. What humiliation and fear of the West exists in native born Muslims in the UK who blow up buses and subways? What humiliation and fear of the West exists in the Bosnian Jihadi who left Bosnia for America before the fighting there, and had America intervene on the PART OF THE MUSLIMS?
Muslims do not fear and hate Westerners. They want to conquer them and make them their slaves, have every reason to think they will unless Westerners kill lots of them. Saddam was merely a variant of this type of picking fights with America and the engine of modernity (no veil, no tribalism, no superstitious idiocy, toleration of other religions). As such Saddam/Jihadis/bin Laden/Ahmadinejad are all of the same impulse of tribalistic primitivism fighting modernity.
[This confrontation is merely the latest battle between Muslims and America dating back to the Barbary Pirates. If anything we have not killed and destroyed enough; a nuked Tehran, Islamabad, and Riyadh with those nations reduced the conditions of August 1945 Japan would end jihad. Kill enough of the enemy and they stop fighting.]
AL is wrong as well in his assessment of the Euston Bunch but I will address that separately.
Good news A.L., there is reason to suspect that you may indeed be at least slightly wrong about the Middle East. I’m having trouble connecting the loosely placed dots on this article.
Premise 1: Iraq is a strategic failure. “A strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal, most often “winning”” [Wickipedia – close enough for this discussion]. A ‘failure’ for sure, but to equate the Iraq invasion/follow-up with anything that meets the criteria for strategic, not so much.
Premise 2: ‘We’ meant to frighten rulers of Saudi Arabia, Iran etc…. Implying that ‘we’ failed to do that. I think the pre-emptive strike based on not much more than the ‘mystical visions’ of a god-fearing leader, has much of the world frightened; most especially the designated membership of the ever widening ‘axis of evil’ [membership therein being the functional equivalent of ‘anyone who is not with us (on this invasion thing) is against us’]
Conclusion 1: America is not ‘determined’ enough to sustain a war in the Middle East. Alternate conclusion: The majority of America is determined to sustain only those ‘wars’ which actually promote national security.
Premise 3: Bush had a concept of how to deal with Iraq [inferring that this is automatically better than the alternatives you note – none achieving ‘concept status’ because…?]. In any case, a bad concept doesn’t trump anything; having a concept does not validate it – I give you the ‘flat earth society’.
Premise 4: Now there are only three logical options. The fact that you actually present four may be the first clue that your list may not be definitive.
Logical option 1: The ‘problem’ will fade away. Your inference being – ‘Not likely’, I assume. But this seems to define the ‘problem’ as the difficulty encountered in the (incidental) democratization of Iraq. The real ‘problem’ is better defined as, ‘radical’ [read anti-western] Islamic jihadism. Not too many foresee this going away soon.
Logical option 2: Bush drives situation to a ‘conclusion’. This is a pretty general description of an outcome; and there is much to argue against the idea that Mr. Bush is capable of driving anything as complex as a solution in Iraq to completion. [So maybe this is the ‘logical outcome’ that should have been left off the list of four.]
Logical option 3: Implement the Democratic plan. Tragically flawed, you imply, as it includes negotiation with adversaries. Although I can see the appeal of a simpler ‘nuke’m and be done with it’ plan, I think, that any plan incorporating withdrawal in the absence of ‘victory’, carries with it the much more difficult burden of being the patriotically unpalatable.
Logical option 4: We ‘purely’ react to external events. The implication being that being proactive [read pre-emptive invasions] is good, and reacting to events is bad. Most would argue that either, as a function of circumstances [real rather than manufactured], would be acceptable. I don’t realistically see the adoption of either approach to the exclusion of the other.
What you are correct in doubting is that anti-western Islamic sentiment has peaked. I suspect they will continue to react for some time to their perception of an unjustified invasion of a nominally Islamic nation. The pullout of American troops may well cause a spurt of sectarian violence, but I would expect that it is the nature of sectarianism to blame their traditional sectarian enemies for all that’s wrong in their world, to the likely benefit of the now vacated westerners.
Spring may be the season of hope, but it may be insufficient to wish that Bush will find ‘a voice’, I submit a voice is already in place; what appears to be lacking is wisdom.
P.S. In the extensive research [I had to look up kleptocracy] required for this, I see some insightful if not frightening descriptions of the term vis a vis say… Halliburton et al.[italics mine]:
“Kleptocracies are often dictatorships or some other form of autocratic government, _or lapsed democracies that have transformed into oligarchies_, since democracy makes outright thievery for direct personal gain slightly more difficult to sustain in the long term and still remain in power, more subtlety is employed. Some kleptocracies are a response to jingoism, and frequent bullying in the government place itself.
Kleptocratic governance means that the economy is subordinated to the interests of the kleptocrats. Distributive states that derive their wealth from the extraction of natural resources (e.g. diamonds _and oil in a few prominent cases_) can be particularly prone to kleptocracy. “
Jim:
You’re right. Dead right. Western freedom and Islam cannot coexist, certainly not in the same country.
In the case of Britain and France, I hope that the mosque-burnings will start within the next year or two, at most five. The only alternative is dhimmitude, unless the governments of those countries decide to start getting nasty in ways that have been often discussed. They are not going to do that; bleeding-heart “liberalism” and “multiculturalism” are too strongly entrenched.
So the public will have to do it themselves. Maybe the governments will decide to look the other way. Maybe.
The only other way will involve Mecca becoming a smoking, glowing hole. That isn’t going to happen either, until and unless one of our cities goes first. No Western government has the guts.
Why is AL wrong regarding the Democratic alternative (the only real issue I have with his article)?
Because he does not understand the depth of America hatred and wish for defeat by the Democratic Party which has moved hard-left to the point of ANSWER being the driving force in Democratic politics.
Consider John Murtha, corrupt career pol. Nothing in his stature would indicate a belief in much of anything, yet he openly is conspiring with ANSWER support to defund any effort in Iraq and AFGHANISTAN so that American troops will be DEFEATED MILITARILY for lack of resources.
THAT is the strategy of the Democratic Party. Defund the military so it is defeated on the battlefield by the enemy (mostly Al Qaeda and the Taliban).
Democrats call the troops mercenaries out for bling and booty, murderers who take joy in killing and sadistic torture, and openly side with Hezbollah, Iran, and Al Qaeda as they kill our troops.
Hillary Clinton “warned” Bush that he dare not do anything to retaliate against Iran for killing our troops in Iraq.
Terror Imams with Hezbollah ties give the convocation to the DNC as Howard Dean applauds his call for the overthrow of America. Meanwhile the nearest and dearest cause of Democrats is punishing ordinary Americans by various “save the world from Global Warming” schemes to make everything more expensive, while they purchase indulgences aka carbon offsets.
The Euston group has no influence whatsoever in Democratic circles. It is an article of religious faith among Democrats that our enemies are right and must be helped to defeat America, that America “Deserves to be punished,” by killing lots of troops and ordinary Americans, and that the proper response to mass terrorism is negotiation with bin Laden, apologizing, and groveling.
NOT EVEN HILLARY can advocate keeping faith with the troops and stopping Iran from killing them. Democrats have bet everything on surrender to Al Qaeda in the hope that nuking Israel will satisfy Muslims desire for conquering. Hillary can’t even say to AIPAC in her appearance there that she will support Israel’s efforts to avoid being nuked. Instead she advocates “talking” to Iran i.e. submitting to Iran’s inevitable nuclear strike on Israel.
AL you misread Dems fundamentally. They hate GWB more than they love America. Meanwhile as Al Gore’s former advisor points out, they have bet it all on American defeat. [Unsuprising since Dems now consist of wealthy trustafarians and non-patriotic elitists who display contempt for ordinary America and American symbols as a measure of their class status. Edwards signing anti-NASCAR, anti-Catholic bigots as bloggers indicates how far that has spread.]
Very likely: an Israeli first strike against Iran with ballistic nukes since otherwise they will be nuked anyway; Iranian rebuilding of same as America flees the ME in defeat and Sunnis nuke up also; sanctions imposed on Israel and a new round of wars by Iranian proxies to wipe out Israel (to the general approval of Dems and Europe). Leading to a “deniable” nuclear strike on one or more US cities and populist uprising to expel all Muslims and retaliate on a massive strategic scale.
Essentially the third conjecture. Caused mainly be Dem weakness and appeasement if not over siding with the enemy.
Dave’s #10:
>Tim, a fractured Iraq presents many problems for us. For one thing it won’t fracture into three tidy territories (Kurds, Sunni Arabs, Shi’a Arabs). The Kurds will fragment internally and so will the Sunni and Shi’a Arabs. They’ll bicker amongst themselves if they don’t bicker with each other or have us to kick around. And a lawless territory where Iraq used to be will invite expeditions from its neighbors.
I agree that some collection of the above are likely consequences if the center cannot hold in Iraq, either as a result of Iraqis’ (in)actions or an American walkaway driven by the media and the left. I have a more hope for the Kurds, admittedly based largely on Michael Totten’s writings, but also on the stark reality of their being surrounded by real and potential enemies.
Where we differ is in the degree to which that the above are ‘problems’ to be solved by us. If our attempt to maintain some form of ‘stability’ in Iraq, including in particular its present borders, is brought to nought by its inhabitants, then shouldn’t we be questioning the notion that stablity is our friend in the region? I know it’s CW that the neocons chucked the whole stability argument, but it crept back in the rear door in the form of defending legacy borders from the Turks and Sykes-Picot. Just why is that kind of stability our friend, again?
The outcome is likely to be grim, but no worse than the denizens bring upon themselves. Nor am I suggesting disengagement, just getting a lot more pragmatic about how we reach our ends. Tolerance and civil society are good, but perhaps not something we can deliver to the ME. But they should supported when they appear, as we have supported the democratic Lebanese government. True strategic threats, such as Iranian nukes, should be knocked out, without feeling obliged to put the population on life support. And terrorist nests aiming at us should get the scorched earth treatment.
This strikes me as a lot more ‘realistic’ than the notion of maintaining existing borders, dictatorships and kleptocracies. And I would still much rather have Iraq succeed.
PD,
Democratic candidates, Clinton, Dodd & Biden all propose continuing US troop operations in Anbar vs. AQ elements. I don’t know whether or not Edwards or OBama proposals do or don’t. I assume Kucinic doesn’t.
Jim & Fletcher, how do you account for the several million muslims living quite contenedly in the USA. How do you account for the 998,999,999 muslims living peacably in and around the moder world. Jihadist, terrorists, fighters, etc. don’t number more than one million–and that’s out of a billion.
Mark – What is this one “faction” that controls the Iraqi government? Recent news suggests that they aren’t backing the Sadrists in the current operations, and I haven’t seen the beginnings of an anti-Sunni pogrom. If the government is in favor of order, and against every terrorist group or militia that threatens it, that is not the same as us taking sides in an age-old quarrel (which is what A.L. seemed to be saying in the main article, though I hope he’ll find time to explain a little more).
Jim #16,
I disagree with your view of ‘religion’ as an absolute philosophy. ‘Religions’ have always been interpretations of some far reaching philosophical treatise, which has the additional challenge of having been written in a context totally removed from modern thought and or knowledge. How adherents know whether to ‘turn the other cheek’ or go with ‘an eye for an eye’ is NOT made explicit in the Bible, check with your Christianity of choice for the ‘correct’ answer. I also suspect the brand of Christianity practiced during the Spanish Inquisition would have some problems in the modern American world. Us/Them, Black/White, Muslim/Christian… it should be so simple.
Either solved by us or problems for us. We can only bail out; we can’t elect not to be affected by the consequences.
Alberich,
You are right. I probably used the wrong term with “faction.” If we are comfortable with the term “sectarian violence” I probably should have used the term “sect” to make my point.
The gov’t is controlled by the Shiia sect as opposed to the Sunni sect, the two groups that are fighting each other. (yes, I know there is intra-sect warfare, as well).
Given the actions of the Malaki gov’t in the past, the unwillingess to move forward with promised constitutional amendments, e.g., or oil-revenue sharing, I am skeptical about what I view as their propoganda claims that you cite.
My belief is they will offer minimum necessary cooperation with US aims to continue to receive US support. But as soon as they can stand on their own, they will be a Shiia gov’t, not an Iraqi gov’t.
Perhaps I am wrong. I usually am.
_Democratic candidates, Clinton, Dodd & Biden all propose continuing US troop operations in Anbar vs. AQ elements. I don’t know whether or not Edwards or OBama proposals do or don’t. I assume Kucinic doesn’t._
Obama is telling the roaring crowds that he is bringing the troops home in a year. I think the fine print is that some will come home, some will go to Afghanistan, and some will be redeployed in surrounding countries in the event of a regional war.
My initial comment was about a surge of troops to Anbar. I assume Clinton, Dodd & Biden don’t support additional troops for Anbar, but the fact that they recognize the separate importance of Anbar is laudable IMHO.
PD, my understanding of Dodd, Clinton & Biden is that they do approve of A surge–though not THE current surge–in Anbar. Meaning that they are in favor or withdrawing troops from Bagdhad (& elsewhere) and re-deploying some of them into Anbar. This is the basic Murtha plan, I believe. There are many variants. But it has been put forward as an alternative strategy for over a year now.
I know im not the only one thinking that the only thing consistant about these high profile Dems plans are that they inevitably _arent_ whatever Bush happens to have proposed at the time- even if that means contradicting themselves from week to week.
I cant take Murtha remotely seriously after he suggested placing a ‘quick reaction force’ in Okinawa.
And redeploying our troops from Baghdad to Anbar would be a predictable disaster- think of the implications. We would be ceeding control of Baghdad to the Shiia death squads to crack down on the Sunnis. Doesnt take Lord Palmerstone to do the math on that message. We’d face a massive popular uprising from the Sunni for the first time and see the Iraqi government literally usurped by Sadr with his knife at their throats. Again, this reeks of desperation to have _any_ plan that isnt Bush’s, no matter how implausible or inane.
Mark B.,
Proposing whatever Bush isn’t proposing, given Bush’s success in Iraq up to this point, at least has the merit of being a semi-rational decision. Approving a course of action Bush is proposing, however, given Bush’s success in Iraq up to this point, is the very definition of insanity. I’ll take semi-rational over insane any day, if they are the only two choices.
> Either solved by us or problems for us. We can only bail out; we can’t elect not to be affected by the consequences.
We will certainly be affected, where we differ is in seeing that some of the consequences will be opportunities. If we are blind to that, all we can do is watch the deluge.
By googling I can find no indication that Murtha has ever supported redeploying to Anbar province. The closest that I can see is some call for the U.S. to redeploy outside the country (to either Kuwait or Okinawa) from which an over-the-horizon Marine force can then operate in the event of terrorist activities.
Unfortunately there are anti-American terrorists setting up shop in Iraq, particularly Anbar, and I can’t find any tactical advantage to engaging them from a greater distance. And unless Murtha is also planning on using the Marines to attack anti-terrorists setting up shop in the NW territories, I suspect that its all just show.
Just on these simple parameters, I think Clinton/Biden/Dodd are at a disservice by any comparison.
Mark- is it too much to ask our highest levels of government to analyze a vital national interest objectively and propose or support a plan based on their analysis of its merits… as opposed to the absurdity of following the Costanza method of foriegn policy?
Mark —
Muslims when they reach a “tipping point” around 5-6% engage in what can only be described as jihad. Muslims know they face vigilante action if they press their demands too far. But as it is whole areas of public life have been ceded to Muslims. Who in any case do NOT live peaceably in the US.
To wit: UCI is over-run with Hamas and Hezbollah which stage hate-fests against Jews and celebrate 9/11, harass Jewish groups and conservative speakers. Keith Ellison, D-Hezbollah-Michigan, openly supports Hezbollah the #2 terrorist killer of Americans. And let’s not forget all the “sudden jihad” syndromes of Muslims who for no reason anyone can find start killing Jews in synagoges, community centers, etc. From UNC to San Francisco to Seattle to Ogden Utah.
Too many Muslims leads to demands for Sharia law. Britain will have a horrible, bloody fight on it’s hands to retain the non-Sharia characteristics of it’s society. With enough Muslims emboldened by PC, the US will have that as well. I deplore vigilantism but once the Government surrenders on PC terms you will see nothing else. Already Brits refuse to board planes with suspicious acting Muslims because the reality is that guessing wrong means they die screaming as the plane plunges into a building.
“How do you account for the 998,999,999 muslims living peacably in and around the moder world. Jihadist, terrorists, fighters, etc. don’t number more than one million–and that’s out of a billion.”
They dominate all Muslim societies. ANYWHERE Muslims abut non-Muslims, Muslims use violence to conquer, suppress, and eliminate non-Muslims. Examples: Buddhist Thais being murdered by Muslims in the south of Thailand; Catholic schoolgirls beheaded by Indonesian Muslims after Clerics rule it “an act of Islamic Charity” and “Ramadan Trophy,” the anti-Catholic pogroms by Muslims in the Philippines, the anti-Christian riots in Nigeria by Muslims, the burning of Christian Churches in Pakistan.
The world-wide popular killing of Christians over the Danish Cartoons or remarks by the Pope. Including shooting a Nun in Somalia. At no time and place can Muslims tolerate non-Muslims in anything but semi-slave second class citizens due lesser rights and consideration than Muslims (Dhimmi).
Edwards and Obama are on board to “slowly bleed out” all efforts to win in Afghanistan and Iraq (Murtha Plan). Clinton, Dodd, and Biden have made comments today that suggest they are also coming on board. There is no support for “winning” in either Iraq OR Afghanistan. If we can’t hold Iraq we can’t hold Afghanistan and Dems are committed to US defeat in both areas. Note: NO DEM CANDIDATE for Pres has condemned the Murtha plan to deny troops to both Iraq and Afghan theaters of war.
The statements by Ian #23 are indicative. Unable to comprehend the actions of Muslims around the world (beheading 16 yr old Catholic Schoolgirls by their fellow Indonesian nationals). The Liberal religion of PC Multi-culti is unable to deal with the facts of the Earth moving. No matter what the PC “Pope” says, “it moves.”
What this all means is that religiously motivated Multi-culti Dems will do the usual cut-and-run out of Iraq AND Afghanistan. Followed by both regions falling into Al Qaeda and Iranian spheres of influence, followed by eventually an Iranian nuclear attack through a “deniable” cut-out. If Dems can’t even muster up the will to condemn Iran for killing our troops, how can they be relied upon to stop a nuking of America?
This will be however a strategic miscalculation, as the American people will embrace vigilantism at home in the face of manifest Dem failure, and nuke-em-all in the face of constant Muslim terror. A horrible but avoidable future.
But Dems carp about the tragic but tiny loss of US troops lives compared to say, the nuking of NYC. Wishing and hoping it will never happen just “because.”
Mark,
If an insane man tells you “I am going to eat this car,” it does not qualify as semi-rational to declare “I refuse to follow his insane example. Instead, I am going to choose the environmentally responsible option, and eat this bicycle.”
There are many ways to be wrong about the right course of action in Iraq; simply being “not Bush” does not, by any means, mean you have anything resembling the right answer; you might simply have chosen a different wrong answer. Indeed, substituting “not Bush” for serious analysis makes that highly likely.
AL, the best I can say is you appear to see liberal/progressive positions through rose-colored glasses. Coherent liberal/progressive positions? What an oxymoron. The only “coherent” aspect of their positions is that they are now clearly exposing their beliefs and intentions; before the elections, there was much obfuscation and cryptic discussion.
I have no confidence liberals will afford us any security from terroristic threats either from abroad or domestic. There will be ineffective reaction, rather than a proactive strategy to protect us.
bq. Ultimately reality checks all our beliefs and grand plans. Reality will ultimately let us know what we need to do, and I am confident that once it is clear what it is, we will rise to do the right thing.
Bringing up your conclusion again… let’s talk about reality. The Persian Gulf, and all the nations bordering it, contain the lion’s share of the remaining discovered oil (and natural gas) on the planet. It is for this reason the entire world has vested interests in what happens in this region, and for which militaries of the world prepare.
No, I am not a one note tune; there is much more to the Middle East than oil, for example Islam and radical versions of it. In my (admittedly simple) mind, the US’s actions and policy in the Gulf is like a full plate of spaghetti – it is difficult to tell the individual noodles apart when one peers down, even if one knows the entire lump can’t be just one noodle.
So the US will not leave (militarily) the Gulf region anytime soon – there are just too many vested interests.
Agree with you (AL) that opportunistic posturing by Democrats and some Republicans may steal what little victory (in changing other countries’ policies and politics) could have been wrought by the invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam. However, Islamic based terrorism around the world did not appear to be much affected by the invasion of Iraq, compared to Afghanistan and the intenational crackdown on A.Q.’s financial network. So the general W.o.T. still has made some progress; continuing work in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and controlling international money flow still are important, more so than any particular month’s condition of Iraq.
Rob,
What can I say? the man who choses to eat the bicycle instead of the car is at least taking a step in the right direction. I think any movement AWAY from trying to eat the car is better than trying to eat the car. It’s why I qualified rational with semi. I am beginning to see the faintest flickers of recognition of reality inside the gov’t.
Mark, eating that hypothetical bicycle, another unwinnable proposition, only counts as a step in the right direction if you think that Bush’s car eating policies represent the worst possible course of action, leaving literally anything as an improvement.
I appreciate your frustration with the current situation, and also your willingness to civilly engage with a room full of people who are by and large disagreeing with you, but are you really saying that you can’t concieve of any worse policy, whether measured by its results or against philosophical principles? That there is no way the situation could be made worse by following other policies?
Piercello,
No, I don’t think I’m saying that at all. Let me see if I can untangle a few threads here. In responding to Mark Buehner’s “this reeks of desperation to have any plan that isnt Bush’s” remark, I was merely pointing out that, given Bush’s success rate, such “desperation” might have some merit. This then led into the bike- vs. car-phagi metaphors.
I think I was fairly clear that this wasn’t the sole criteria for judging a plan’s merit, but that at least it was a start in the right direction. Rejecting what hasn’t been working is a good beginning.
Certainly, I can conceive of plans that would make the situation worse. To return to the transportation-consumption analogy, sure, if the suggested alternative to eating the car was eating a semi tractor-trailer, then I would agree that it was a wose plan. The merit of the bike-eating suggestion is that it seemed to acknowledge the need for a reduction of ambition.
I continue to think that Buehner’s remark was ill-conceived. But my response to it shouldn’t be taken as the sum total of my beliefs about what to do in Iraq or how to judge proposals. I don’t think you can fault the democrats for looking for a non-Bush plan. If your point gaurd is oh-for-ten from the floor, maybe it’s time to think about tossing the ball to someone else. In judging what to do next, I’d think that not giving the ball to that point-guard would be the very first criteria of any new play under consideration. Not the only, but the first. I wouldn’t, e.g., suggest giving it to the opposing team, or throwing it out of bounds.
The merit of the bike-eating suggestion is that it seemed to acknowledge the need for a reduction of ambition.
Well, no points for clarity to me. I figured eating either one would kill you, which made them equally stupid. I picked a bike so I could make the environmentally responsible crack.
The right answer seems to me to be to eat an apple. Yet if Bush suggested an apple, one gets the sense the Democrats would reject it in favor of the bicycle, and you could hardly call that a rational choice.
Rob,
Just to widen the context here: the whole point of the discussion from my end has been to point out that, given his history, the chances of Bush suggesting the apple seem to so remote as to be random. You really can’t blame the democrats for recognizing the guy is mistake-prone when it comes to Iraq and wishing to steer clear of his plans.
And for the record, I called it a semi-rational choice.
You really can’t blame the democrats for recognizing the guy is mistake-prone when it comes to Iraq and wishing to steer clear of his plans.
Perhaps, but in fairness the Democrats have an even longer history of being “mistake prone” when it comes to military interventions, and indeed have a nearly 40 year history of either preferring defeat and surrender or at least being indifferent to its consequences. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I wish to steer clear of their “plans,” too.
But in all seriousness, if the Democrats have an idea for winning, let’s hear it.
Jim… is there ever a time when you’re going to realize that your view of islam is horribely prejudiced. You make it sound like some voodoo cult that spends all of their time determining how to kill americans like wind-up wily e. coyotes.
Yes, there is a serious problem with extremist groups, especially in Islam. However, that does not paint all muslims as anti-US or even murders.
This morning I heard an interview with a half-iranian who does tours inside Iran for americans. He says that he commonly sees pro-US sentiments inside of Iran. For example: on his last trip he was at a bazaar and saw several persian rugs being sold with american themes: there were hand-woven pictures of “the Titanic”, “Mickey Mouse”, and in one stall, a picture of JFK hand-woven and placed in center view of those passing by. The fact that someone would hand weave, display and sell this picture is contrary to your view of unanimous anti-us sentiment.
One trip he always makes with tour groups is the visiting of anti-us rallies. When confronted by a group of americans after the rally, they are almost always repitant. “We’re sorry” they say repitantly “But we work for the military; we have to rally or else we aren’t fed lunch”.
Again: In pakistan, 10 NY city doctors applied medicine after the quake, unguarded. Not only were they not assasinated, but they actually made friends and gained trust with those who had never met an american before in their life.
Yes, they’re are american muslim groups that support horrible groups like Hezbollah, and if found to knowingly give financial assistance, they should be convicted for it. And yes occassionally there are “spontaneous acts of terrorism”, however a muslim doesn’t just wake up one day and say:
“Oh, today’s a nice day to kill Jews…”
No, they’re indoctrinated into that view because there is no contrasting viewpoint in many countries. However, it’s naive to think that everyone in those countries buys into the state-sponsored view.