Well, I tip my toe back into blogging (and reading blogs), and I find that Matt Yglesias has once again written the thing that makes me go “Huh?” today.
I imagine that after another attack people will still feel, on a gut level, like we ought to retaliate, but there really won’t be anything to be done. Just as Australia and Indonesia didn’t respond after Bali, and Spain didn’t respond after the Madrid attacks, if someone blows up Grand Central Station there’s not really going to be much of anything we can do in response. A lot of people, myself included, would find that pretty unsatisfying on an emotional level, but it’s hard to see any reasonable policy options.
There are so many things wrong with this…Let’s start. Factually, things certainly were done after Bali and the Spanish railroad bombings – as I assume Matt knows. Some good police work went into arresting Abderrameb Hammadi Afandi, and pursuing Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet until he committed suicide. In Bali, Imam Samudra is awaiting execution for his leadership of the attack.
So he’s obviously talking about a military – as opposed to legal – ‘something’. And the problem is, on what planet do we imagine that we can arrest these guys and try them faster than they are recruited? Recruited – in large part, I’ll bet, by watching videos of the successful operations carried out by their predecessors. Note that more successful attacks in Israel seem to lead to more attackers; the successful attacks themselves are the advertisement.
When my kitchen sink is full of ants, killing the ants I see is primally satisfying, but doesn’t do much to stop the colony from sending more.
At some point, you have to disrupt the system that makes people like this, and the systems that recruit, train, and organize them. That’s difficult to do in general, and effectively impossible to do when they have states that are willing to shelter and succor them.
That’s the core difference, I think, between Matt’s philosophy on these things, and mine.
There’s another difference, and simply put, it’s that I see Matt’s success as driven in large part because he articulates – very well – the beliefs and thoughts of a certain group within the Democratic Party and the left. And when I read the quote above, as a Democrat, I cringe. It’s the geopolitical equivalent of Michael Dukakis’ response to Bernard Shaw. And I don’t think that’s going to play any better this time than it did then.
Since I don’t disagree with anything you wrote, I’m not quite sure how this articulates the core philosophical difference between us. What I wrote was that in the aftermath of an attack, it would be emotionally satisfying to have a military response, but there won’t be one available. I also agree with you entirely that:
But what I’m wondering is, if there’s another attack, what steps could we take to accomplish this? I don’t see any. Worse, I don’t see any states “that are willing to shelter and succor” the terrorists who might conceivably attack us (though there are a couple of states busy succoring anti-Israeli terrorists) so the question is: what is to be done?
Can you give us a policy or are you just gonna play your “I’m a Democrat who likes to pick on Democrats” card?
Afganistan was AQ’s home base. They’ve been largely destroyed there and now are operating in small cells all over the planet. Can you name a state which president Bush would attack if Grand Central was blown up? No. He’ll continue to kiss Saudi ass and persue policies like the Iraq war which make terror recruitment easier.
1. Am I showing my age by admitting that when you wrote “Bernard Shaw”, you meant the Irish playwright?
2. Countries which could be attacked: Iran, Syria, Pakistan, North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia. The trouble with all of them is that innocent near-by countries could suffer as well. “Global Guerillas” suggests the following depressing metaphor: Bush is a doctor who has a patient (the US) who presents with a long-standing immune deficiency problem (the Left) who is also suffering from a bad case of toxoplasmosis which has probably become systemic. The prognosis is grave: heroic measures (highly toxic antibiotic therapies) are required, and the patient might still die.
Actually, Armed Liberal, if you would, make yourself clearer.
I’m assuming you mean if we are attacked, we would – invade Iran? Pakistan? North Korea?
What would you see the “appropriate’ military response to be?
When my kitchen sink is full of ants, killing the ants I see is primally satisfying, but doesn’t do much to stop the colony from sending more.
**************************************************
Best policy for ants is to set out bait, let them take it back and when the poison gets to the queen the colony dies off.
A.L.,
I think Matt’s right in a narrow sense, and you are right in a broader sense, but the two of you aren’t _exactly_ engaging the same question.
Let’s say that al Qaeda blows up Grand Central Station, as Matt suggests hypothetically. Since he uses Bali and Madrid as comparative examples, let’s say moreover that the attack uses conventional explosives, and the death toll is on the same order.
I think Matt is correct to this extent: unless there is a pretty heavy substantive link to a specific foreign regime (and this could plausibly go either way) AND that regime could be trivially dispensed with (WAY unlikely, IMO), I don’t think there would be an immediate response by the U.S. military _for the purpose of direct retaliation_. So, yes, militarily speaking, “there’s not really going to be much of anything we can do in response,” as Matt says in the quoted passage.
However, that doesn’t mean the U.S. military is out of the regime-changing business. As I know you realize, Afghanistan was Round 1 for us, and Iraq was Round 2. (As an aside, the flipping of Libya might well be considered Round 3, as a further example of operational diversity.) The destruction of Grand Central Station would be further evidence–unnecessary in my opinion–that we aren’t done yet. So, sure, there will be a place for the U.S. military after another hypothetical hit on NYC (may this not come to pass, please God), but I doubt I would directly describe it as “in response.”
Matt may disagree with some or all of the above paragraph, and I think that may be the point of contention at hand. Mr. Yglesias, your thoughts?
Matt is pretty hawkish, as I know from personal communication. When Kerry was courting McCain (as he apparently really was), it was a sign that he’s not a dove either, because McCain is more hawkish than Bush. Perhaps Kerry couldn’t sell McCain on that, or maybe there were other reasons (the whole idea was very improbable from the beginning). But if Kerry was planning a dove strategy he wouldn’t even have tried. (Kerry is cagy in Iraq but seems to have explicitly endorsed strong support for Israel’s present policies).
I’m about 50% a dove and I’m supporting Kerry for other reasons. I like him infinitely better than Bush on every single domestic issue, and I think that Bush is too lightweight, dishonest, and adventurist to do any job of any kind well. A lot of Kerry doves will be disappointed in 2005, I fear.
Matt’s dream was for Kerry-McCain to crush the Republicans even at the cost of driving the Green vote up to 20%. Sort of a Tony Blair Labor outcome.
Part of the sense of Matt’s post was that he believes that dealing with non-state enemies (armed, secret NGO’s) the options are different and in some respects, fewer.
I very much look forward to Mr. Barnes naming the regime he would change and to Mr. Liberal naming the state he would invade to disrupt the terrorists’ system.
I also look forward to their account of just how the invasion of Iraq has served to disrupt the recruitment, training, and organization of terrorists.
MY is so full of it as are all bleeding heart liberals. If the US of A gets attacked again, we need to get nukular on somebody’s ass.
Matthew doesn’t understand, from what I wrote, why I’m expressing so much disagreement with him.
Well, that’s definitely the $64K question, and he deserves an answer.
I’ll do one thing first, which is to re-raise my second point, which is that at some point, you’re judged both by your rhetoric (which contains many unspoken pointers to one’s views, and which I do not use in a dismissive way) and by one’s policies. The rhetoric of the post is…hopeless. We may be attacked. Not much we can do. We may respond – but it will be out of ‘feelings’ – as a kind of Marine-succored psychotherapy rather than out of any genuine hope or intent or plan to solve the problem. Whatever. I reject that attitude, and language, and viewpoint explicitly. I’m frustrated because much of what I see as Democratic antiterrorism policy is about hunkering down and taking the hit, without any plan that makes sense to me to stop the hits from coming. And I think that rhetoric is what may well keep GWB as president.
So let me suggest some alternate rhetoric that objectively means the same things as what Matthew said, but conveys a far different attitude about it.
Note a difference?
And as someone who cares about Democratic policy – about stem cell research, teaching evolution in our schools, and marriage for all who want it – that rhetoric (and worldview) which Matthew uses (and which, to be honest, I see when I read Kerry’s foreign policy speeches) not only risks defeat for the Democrats in November, but sets out a foreign policy mindset worthy of defeat.
Now, as to what to do. I’m not Wretchard, or Den Beste. I’ve talked in the past about a good Democratic national-security platform, and haven’t seen much to change my mind. We have to ask what the next ‘centers of mass’ are, and obviously, there are three: Pakistan (has nukes); Iran (about to get nukes); and Saudi Arabia (who pays for everyone’s nukes – *rimshot*).
I need to think hard about this and acknowledge that I owe everyone a more serious answer.
But for one thing, it’s far from clear to me that and of the Arab ME countries (obviously excepting Jordan) are doing everything they could to deal with the Islamist movement – in no small part because to do so would be to risk massive unrest.
But given a choice between unrest in the Middle East – which could possibly lead to more open, just societies there – and a series of exploding train terminals here in the U.S. (which I believe would ultimately lead to a number of small suns rising on cities in the Middle east), I’ll take unrest in the Middle East for $500, Alex.
A.L.
hammity,
My guess is you’re a lefty troll looking for attention. Look elsewhere.
Can’t Wait,
Gee, where to begin? In alphabetical order, China, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria all make my list. Any more you would like to add? Also, by “regime change” I mean change the form of government, not just the current leadership, so if you respond with “the U.S.,” I’d take that as an attack on the Constitution, not GWB.
Now, military intervention would be impractical or seriously counterproductive in most of the cases I listed. However, note my paranthetical inclusion of Libya in my post above–that was a significantly successful operation that did not (directly) involve military force. Similar operations that seek to “flip” certain states might work out–which is to be hoped, since it is the cleanest option in the most obvious ways.
If we are talking candidates for military operations, the very short list is Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.
–Iran is deeply time-sensitive–the longer we wait, the worse it will get, unless the Iranian students manage Revolution 2.0: This Time, The *Right* Way in the very near future, i.e. by the end of 2004, MAYBE early 2005.
–Syria might flip with judicious pressure, but it is also the lowest-hanging fruit, so if another example needs to be made, Bashar Assad may be running for his spider-hole.
–Saudi Arabia is its own special case, presenting the most thorny problems of the non-nuclear states. If Saudi Arabia destabilizes, by revolution or invasion, Saudi oil production collapses for the short term. By now, between the U.S. Strategic Reserve and Iraqi production, I think we can cushion the world oil market for a little while, but the shockwaves will hit every major economy in the world. It’s not just us; it’s *everybody*, since everybody buys from the same marketplace. Remove a major point of production, and scarcity drives up the prices. I’d guess one of the worst hit would be Japan–amusingly enough, France might be one of the less vulnerable countries, given their reliance on nuclear power. C’est la vie.
Nice to see you blogging, A.L.!!
Could you be more obtuse? Christ.
AQ *has* a new home base. You think this popped up out of nowhere?
OK, let’s get serious. There are pretty strong indications that a bun h of AQ honchos are chillin’ out, maxin’, and relaxin’ in various Iranian cities. Asia Times seems to think that’s where OBL is. Now they may be there as bargaining chips, invited guests of the Revolutionary Guards, hated anti-Shi’ite enemies, or useful proxy warriors against the Great Satan. Who knows?
Let’s say there’s a big attack. If it can be clearly laid at Iran’s doorstep, I think we have a number of options, including proportional (or deliberately disproportionate) response, complete isolation, sponsorship of Baluch and Kurdish guerilla attacks, targeted assassination of key regime figures, cross-border incursions from Iraq, a strike on nuclear facilities, sponsorship of a coup, freezing of assets, and so on.
Of course, we could be reading the Iranians completely wrong, or the evidence for Iranian complicity may be shaky. Or maybe some of our key assumptions about the regime are mistaken. For instance, what if Hizb’allah is actually more independent than we think it is, or is only responsive to certain factions? Or Iran sort of half-cooperates by handing over some AQ-ers but not others? Or they threaten to arouse worldwide Shi’ite unrest against the US and its interests in Saudi, Bahrain, and Pakistan? Or they threaten to send oil prices to $75 a barrel? Or they send mixed signals?
It gets trickier, doesn’t it?
Hypothetically, let’s say Kerry does get elected, and nine months into his term Grand Central Terminal is blown up. What is the reaction of the American public if Kerry basically takes a “there’n no target to attack” line? Reluctant acceptance or extreme hostility toward the new adminitrations passivity? I would guess the latter by a wide margin, and blaming the previous administration for intellegence flaws wouldn’t begin to cover the PR damage of returning to the “pitiful, helpless giant” image of the Carter era in the late 1970s (an image that remained to some extent during the Reagan Administration as well — we got tough with the Soviets, but the current group of terrorists saw the U.S. do nothing after the Beruit barracks bombing).
Teresa said a couple of days ago that Europe has learned to live with terrorist attacks and indicated the U.S. should follow their example. That may just be her own point of view (she has many) or it may indicate a similar mindset by her husband, though I wouldn’t expect him to say so any time soon.
I don’t doubt should an attack occur between now and Nov. 2 Democrats would be extremely wary of following Bush into a retaliatory attack on Iran, Syria or someother nation considered a terror sponsor by the current administration, based on all that’s been said and done about the Iraq war. But if the Democrats do regain power in the fall and then simply threw up their hands and offered up no retaliatory policy except for a shrug and a trip to the United Nations, I think their political fortunes in 2006 would rival the Republican’s mid-term debacle during the 1934 or ’74 elections.
Well, some obvious, if less glamorus measures, sure seem to have been overlooked. For one, STOP with immediate effect, all moslem immigration into the US. Roundup, in an opn of massive scale, all illegal aliens of arab ethnicity and deport them unabashedly.
Initiate complete monitoring of all places of worship (read mosques) and ban islamic charities, even some ‘good’ ones maybe caught, from operating in the US. Deny permission to establish any new mosques in the US.
Draw up contingency plans for defanging Pakistan and Iran of their nuke capability (India and Israel will be more than willing to help in these cases).
Get tough with China on their consistent propping up of their North korean proxy by threatening doubling of tariffs on all Chinese imports if necessary.
Unleash massive ‘independence’ movements for ethnic moslem tribes in troublesome countries – kurds in Iran, pashtuns and balochs in pak etc
And what more? well, am sure, once any admin, dem orrepub, decides to dump misplaced political correctness and take urgent measures, there will be enough to do and enough public support to muster!
I am certain AL is right that Democratic politicans would fare better adopting rhetoric closer in spirit to his than MY’s. Content-free macho posturing isn’t going to lose Kerry many votes.
The problem with AL’s proposed rhetoric is that it is lousy, muddled writing. Its language–“on a gut level,” “realities we face today,” “low-hanging fruit,” “rational and effective response,” and (especially cringe-worthy) “formulating a theory to derive that response is the central question”–obscures rather than clarifies the issues. By contrast, MY pretty clearly says what he means: if terrorists strike, we’re probably not going to have anyone we can bomb the crap out of. Do I need to explicitly cite Orwell?
I hope AL is not suggesting that bloggers and journalists debase their language to the level of politicans.
praktike,
With particular regard to Iran, I think our current approach should be rhetorical fist-shaking on the international diplomatic side coupled with as much covert support for the students as is humanly possible. This is short-term, and amounts to a holding action with the fervent hope that Revolution 2.0 comes off successfully and SOON–Plan A.
A big conventional explosion at Grand Central Station wouldn’t change the short-term, in my view, *unless* Iran was hugely sloppy and left fingerprints everywhere. Given Iranian intelligence agents captured in Baghdad with explosives, Iranian embassy personnel expelled from the U.S. for taking pictures of NYC bridges and tunnels, and Iranian military incursions across the Iraqi border, I’m not sure they currently hold plausible deniability as a high priority, though, so Iranian involvement might well be patently obvious in the hypothetical scenario.
If Plan A doesn’t work out, either because our best estimates say that time has run out on the nuclear clock and Revolution 2.0 hasn’t happened yet, or because Iran has backed us into a corner with a too-blatant-to-ignore _casus belli_, then we go for Plan B. Hopefully, we can get past the November election before then.
“…proportional (or deliberately disproportionate) response, complete isolation, sponsorship of Baluch and Kurdish guerilla attacks, targeted assassination of key regime figures, cross-border incursions from Iraq, a strike on nuclear facilities, sponsorship of a coup, freezing of assets, and so on.”
My Plan B pretty much looks like all of the above, plus the kitchen sink, but specifically excluding nukes. We go military, we go hard, and we crush the totalitarian mullahs of Iran. (I note that your suggestions are all surgical in effect, and I agree–the Iranian people are not our enemies.)
(Plan C comes up if the hypothetical terrorist attack involves WMD and links to Iran. Plan C is very, very bad.)
The point I want to make most strongly is that half-measures in this case are wholly bad. If we are going to seek regime change by non-U.S.-military means, we should do so–covertly. If we are going to go to war, we can’t afford to telegraph our punch by six months. Rumsfeld has managed his way through some jaw-dropping military successes; I just hope he has a couple more miracles left in his back pocket. We may need them.
“Just as Australia and Indonesia didn’t respond after Bali, and Spain didn’t respond after the Madrid attacks …”
Australia is a nation of (roughly) 20 million next to a Muslim Javanese empire of (roughly) 200 million, which induces a certain caution, or as our pro-Indonesian former Prime Minister Paul Keating put it, not without pleasure, a “squirm” of fear regarding any confrontation.
But the main point was that our dance card was full, because our main ally had been attacked on 11 September, 2001. Anything useful that was going to happen regarding Indonesia was only going to happen due to American pressure, and the best way to assure that was to just keep doing what we were doing in support of the Americans, though with an additional motivation.
Spain on the other hand, crawled to the polls, as USS Clueless said, and elected a government to bail out of the war.
I find the quote above, conflating the responses of keeping up the fight as best we can, even if only quietly, or bailing out to be completely unreasonable.
It may be that after an attack on America, if it comes soon, the Americans would not be able immediately to make a useful military response, because they are already fighting hard and their dance card is full. Nevertheless, there is all the difference in the world between the attitude that says then: take a number and wait, because we _will_ get back to you as soon as we can, and on the other hand pillowing. The former attitude may unfortunately be necessary, the latter is fatal.
One thing you might do immediately is pass laws against the regime(s) you held most responsible for the attack(s). This would be a joke, except that George W. Bush already enforced one such law against the regime of Saddam Hussein.
First, I believe that any attack on the United States with nuclear weapons will be met with a nuclear response. The most likely targets are Tehran and Pyong-Yang with Islamabad a less likely competitor.
Second, any attack on the U. S. regardless of its nature or source with mass casualties is likely to be met with a military response. And, contrary to some opinion, an overreaction is more likely under a Kerry administration than under a Bush administration. Does anyone seriously contend that GWB is unwilling to use force if America is attacked? He could survive a small response or no response politically. Not so John Kerry. Unless he wants President Edwards to finish out his term Mr. Kerry must respond with force. He’s already a self-professed war criminal and there’s no statute of limitations on war crimes so pretexts for removal are already present.
This is one of the reasons I have misgivings about voting for Kerry in the fall. He’s a lame duck from Day 1. He obviously inspires no real passion from his own base. And there’s no way his supporters could make the argument that “politics stops at the water’s edge” without being ridiculous.
Under the current doctrine of military engagement, it is not necessary to factually prove any direct involvement by a nation/state we attack to a belligerant act. Obviously, it would be possible for an administration to attack a target that presents the best possible opportunities for quick success and worry about the justification later–if at all.
North Korea doesn’t want to attack the US. They just want food and security guarantees.
There are credible reports coming out every day that more and more of al-Qaeda’s surviving leadership (whether or not bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are there) has more or less relocated to Iran under the protection of the IRGC and VEVAK. They’re staying at lavish Caspian villas or heavily-fortified military bases near Tehran and are driven around in limos. Too bad the students don’t get that kind of treatment when they get arrested by the baseeji. The polite diplomatic fiction that these folks have all been arrested is more or less the same as the Taliban position that bin Laden was merely their “guest” pre-9/11.
Hezbollah is paid subsidiary of the IRGC and in all honesty they may as well just call it IRGC Lebanon. Iran owns its leadership, pays for its weapons, directs its attacks, ect.
So if Grand Central blows up, who do we bomb? I will be quite honest and say that it’s going to be Iran and I don’t see that fact changing as long as the current Iranian foreign policy remains intact regardless of who’s president. If one wants to remove Iran from the equation, I can still come up with at least a half dozen other targets the US could potentially attack in retaliation for a major al-Qaeda attack.
“Praktike”:http://windsofchange.net/archives/005211.php#24587
North Korea also wants money, and doesn’t particularly seem to care what it sells (or to whom) in order to get it. This was made abundantly clear in the recent investigations re: Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation games.
If all they did was blackmail South Korea, the USA would have shrugged its shoulders a long time ago, let South Korea choose whether or not to develop a nuclear deterrent, and redeployed its Korean forces elsewhere. It isn’t that simple, or that limited, a problem.
Given that North Korea has proven without a doubt that any agreement with them is worthless, money and security guarantees would simply give them more security and scope to make nuclear deals on the side.
Sam Barnes – Plans A thru C need to be made well known to everyone (at least in outline) to be effective. The best way to never need C is to say: these countries will be destroyed totally as a result of plan C, so the people in these countries and all their neighbors will then know what they are playing for. The problem with this is that the Ostrich Party would throw a fit if Bush laid out A, B and C.
praktike – NK may not want to attack the US. Pakistan may not either, likewise Russia. But they all need to know that giving a loaded gun to a maniac is a VERY BAD MOVE. We need a policy that with small provocation, the perpetrator gets it; with major provocation, the accessories before and after the fact get it as well. It all comes down to one of the best arguments for the second amendment: the more dangerous the potential victims are, the safer.
Sam,
I wasn’t trolling, I was summarizing the oooh scary armed liberal’s post.
Remember, on teh intarweb, it’s way to easy to call people trolls.
I’m trying to remember who said this (Kissinger?), but there’s a maxim in diplomacy that says that if you’re getting conflicting signals from different channels, you should pick the one you want and proceed from there. I’m not sure I know enough about how diplomacy really works to agree or disagree with it, but if it’s true, it does present some options for dealing with Iran and North Korea. One thing that strikes me as odd in both cases is that we have been publicly threatening and privately conciliatory, which strikes me as backwards.
Regarding Dave Schuler, one thing: How long will people keep misrepresenting what happened in Spain?
The spanish people were so outraged, by the government that got voted out MISREPRESENTING, and claiming that Basque separatists were responsible for the Madrid bombing, rather than Al Queda. It was obvious, and THIS is what caused Spanish citizens to vote out their lying government.
It seems as many times as this is corrected, people still will repeat the false history, and repeat the false history. As if repetition will make it true.
JC:
I think you’re misplacing who the authors of the comments are. The authors names appear above the comments. I didn’t mention Spain in mine but the comment above mine—which was written by David Blue—did.
JC:
It was initially believed by the Popular Party that the ETA was behind the bombing due to the initial reporting regarding the composition of the bombs used in the attack. The first claim concerning al-Qaeda was believed by intelligence agencies to be from a dubious source (and still is, unfortunately) and the van that was found with Koranic tapes were introductory stuff for kids, which led investigators to initially postulate that the ETA had planted them there to throw the scent off the attacks.
Then there was a videotaped claim of responsibility that clarified the matter, at least in the eyes of the general public. All the same, it is worth noting that it was a subject of open debate among Spanish voters as to who was behind the attack on the date of the election.
Oops, sorry Dave.
Mr. Darling, I would have to check a lot of past cites for the backup, but I clearly remember the spanish government at that time, pushing the idea of idea of ETA being responsible, when it was clear by that time that it was Al-Queda. “Subject of the debate”, while an eloquent phrase, doesn’t capture the reality of the situation.
I imagine that after another attack people will still feel, on a gut level, like we ought to retaliate, but there really won’t be anything to be done. Just as Australia and Indonesia didn’t respond after Bali, and Spain didn’t respond after the Madrid attacks, if someone blows up Grand Central Station there’s not really going to be much of anything we can do in response. A lot of people, myself included, would find that pretty unsatisfying on an emotional level, but it’s hard to see any reasonable policy options.
Not to pile on, but…
For cosmetic purposes, a short-term retaliation is desirable. But the aim must be wider than that: shutting the madrassas down, “draining the swamp”, etc. A truck bomb in D.C. doesn’t change that – it just reminds us of what needs to be done. The days of waiting to be hit and replying with cruise missiles at empty buildings must be over.
Speaking of Spain, here’s the result of their tolerant’ attitudes:
MADRID, Spain – Authorities did nothing to monitor the mosque because Saudi Arabia provides Spain with oil, Nunez said.
“Until now the West in general — and Spain as part of it — closed its eyes to what Wahabism means as a rigorous doctrine that violates human rights,” said Nunez, who runs a Madrid think tank called the Institute of Studies on Conflicts and Humanitarian Action.
..For years, Spanish authorities have known that Islamic extremists used Spain as a safe haven but did not crack down on them as long as they kept a low profile, Nunez said.
There was a certain degree of permissiveness,” he said.
In related news, more than 80% of all of the mosques in America are Saudi financed. The number of Saudi financed mosques, universities and politicians continues to grow in the US.
It’s funny that Nunez says “Until now the West in general — and Spain as part of it — closed its eyes to what Wahabism means as a rigorous doctrine that violates human rights”
What does he mean by ‘until now’ Nothing about our attitudes has changed. Have any laws been passed in Europe and the US forbidding the acceptance of Wahhabi ‘donations’ Has Bush frozen Saudi assets in the US?
Is there a any international agreement to cut off diplomatic relations with the Kingdom’s terror supporting dictatorship?
Everyone knows that Iran shelters terrorists and Saudi Arabia sponsors them. How many politicians are willing to do something about it? None, even after the attacks in New York, Washington, Bali and Spain.
They’re not willing to do anything about it even while al Qaeda-sponsored Islamists are slaughtering people in the Sudan. It seems that, while Michael Dukakis lost the election, his attitudes won.
mary, the House just passed something taking away $25,000 in support for Saudi police.
I’m not sure why this is good, but it is something.
This is one of the more interesting threads I’ve read about this topic and it further reinforces in my mind that we’re all talking about one level up in the war on terror from where we need to be thinking.
Most of the discussion on this thread presumes the war on terror to be a mechanistic one: Who to attack and how to attack them. It is my contention that this approach does not fully address the causes of our current problems with Islamic terrorism but rather only embraces dealing with the symptoms of it.
For all the talk of draining the swamp in the Middle East, we’re not draining anything except our national treasure and the blood of American men and women serving in Iraq. “Draining the swamp” should mean engaging the social, economic, and cultural causes of terrorism in addition to dealing with the symptoms of terrorism through more mechanistic means.
So, that’s easy to talk about, but how to do it? Here are some suggestions:
1) Fully fund and expand operations for BOTH Voice of America’s Arab, Persian, Farsi, Pashtu, and Urdu services in addition to the operations of Radio Sawa. They address two important demographics in the Islamic world: Those already in positions of power (VOA) and the immense demographic bulge of youth (Radio Sawa). Right now the administration is cutting VOA services in all these areas, in some cases completely discontinuing them, while funding Radio Sawa. It’s not an “either/or” proposition…it’s a “both;”
2) We need a Marshall Plan for the Islamic world to counter the Wahhabi funding of jingoistic, violent, intolerant mullahs and the madrassas from where they indoctrinate scores of kids into militant organizations. We need to build thousands, possibly even hundred of thousands of schools, seed secular teacher training programs, seed vocational programs, and basically set up an infrastructure that offers an alternative to madrassa education;
3) Take on the Islamic scholars, both dead and alive, who set the stage for this militant and intolerant interpretation of Islam. Are we really so far up the creek in America that we cannot defend our freedoms, civil liberties, and system of government on a philosophical level? I’m thinking of something like Thomas Jefferson vs. Sayyid Qutb. Jefferson’s ideas informed so much of our foundation; Qutb’s ideas informed much of the Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood’s radical foundation, most importantly Ayman al-Zawahiri. Have we done one damned thing to counter these ideas since September 11 2001? Nope. We’ve only hugged the tar baby they set up tighter and tighter.
Would #s 2 and 3 be easy? Not on your life. #2 in particular would be very, very hard because it would threaten autocratic regimes, both nominally friendly and unfriendly to the U.S., throughout the region. It would involve some not-too-subtle strongarming on the part of the U.S. administration, it would be as much or more expensive than our Iraqi boondoggle, and it would be immensely unpopular here at home. Why? Because no one gives a shit about a new school being opened in Cairo or a new graduating class of secularly-grounded teachers going to staff it when their tax dollars are paying for it. There’s nothing violent or sexy about it. In other words, it’s just not “good” news in the contemporary sense.
But if you really want to “drain the swamp” and fight the WHOLE war on terror, that’s precisely where we have to start.
Patrick – The Marshall plan succeeded because the fascist elements in European society had been thoroughly dismantled and defeated. It would not have worked any other way.
If we had tried to fight Hitler’s National Socialism and Mussolini’s fascism with schools and vocational programs, do you think we would have succeeded?
Or maybe we should have sent over a team of philosophers to have long debates about Thomas Jefferson vs. Hitler’s Mein Kampf. What stirring conversations they could have had as the dust from Auschwitz’s ovens settled around them.
mary,
You missed my point…I’m not advocating shifting our whole strategy from one of mechanics (invasions, bombardments, etc.) to one of philosophic and educational engagement.
I’m making the argument that we need BOTH, not just a mechanic strategy which is what we have now.
Our current mechanistic strategy deals with the symptoms of terrorism (state failure, dissatisfied youth, no hope of meaningful education outside the madrassas, rampant ignorance of the West) without dealing with the causes of terrorism (social, economic, cultural).
We can continue to blow the hell out of cities and towns in Iraq and not do one thing to actually move toward our goal of “winning” the war on terrorism. Why? Because we’re dealing with symptoms without doing anything to deal with causes.
The parallels to fascism are only partially appropriate. They sound nice for the President to use because everyone as some visceral image of Hitler no matter how ignorant they are of the problems in the Islamic world. They are not wholly appropriate here because fascism was a political creature; Islamic terrorism is a religious creature. Neither are pure of root, but National Socialism was peculiar to Germany and Mussolini’s fascism was peculiar to Italy. Wahhabi-financed intolerance is not just an Arab issue. It always has been, is, and always will be bigger than a single nation (Iraq). Using national-level paradigms to address a multinational, multicultural problem is just not logically appropriate.
My ideas are geared to address causes, not symptoms. We need both. We’re only getting one.
Earlier in this thread, JC asked, “How long will people keep misrepresenting what happened in Spain?” Because the correct version, JC says, is that “the spanish people were so outraged, by the government that got voted out MISREPRESENTING, and claiming that Basque separatists were responsible for the Madrid bombing, rather than Al Queda.”
Soon after 3/11, Dan Darling posted a thoughtful Special Analysis at WoC that addressed this point, among others. In that post’s Comments, Darling wrote:
bq. “As far as Aznar’s decision to initially blame the ETA for the attacks, up until the point where Jamal Zougam was arrested and identified as one of the men who planted the train bombs, there was no firm proof that this was an al-Qaeda attack given the apparent lack of suicide bombers and the chemical composition of the bombs. The Socialists were accusing Aznar of lying about the investigation and for bringing bin Laden’s wrath down on Madrid long before there was any actual evidence to support their conclusions.”
As a caretaker PM, Aznar wrote a WSJ Op-Ed,“The Truth About 3/11,” in which he does a good job of presenting his version of events.
I’m not aware that the facts cited by Darling or Aznar have been challenged, though, per JC, their interpretations certainly have been. It is hard for me to avoid the conclusion that an appreciable portion of the Spanish electorate–enough to “swing” the election–did indeed vote to “appease” al Qaeda in this instance.
Since that is the (fairly important) point over which the 3/11 Madrid attacks were brought into this discussion, it seemed worth the trouble to cite these links.
Patrick –
They are not wholly appropriate here because fascism was a political creature; Islamic terrorism is a religious creature.
Islamic terrorism is both a political and religious. I’m sure you know that Islam doesn’t make a distinction between church and state. It has always been a political force. Qutb’s philosophy and Saudi Wahhabism are very political.
Sayyed Qutb’s goal was for every muslim to be ruled by Shariah (Islamic) law. This goal was part of the inspiration for the current genocidal jihad.
These pre-medieval, fundamentalist laws allow slavery. Slavery is currently being practiced by Arab Islamists in the Sudan. In fact, slavery, justified by Shariah laws, has encouraged Arabs to oppress African blacks for centuries.
At least, that’s according to All Africa
Although each form of these violent penetrations of Africa remains the central basis of its historical instability, but a close study shows, that the Eastern — that is Arab – penetration of Africa in the last one thousand years remains the most violent.
..The Arabs have come to dominate the Sudan, and have consigned the indigenous Negroid population to the lowliest status, treating them as slaves, from a tradition which began as the Arabs moved into this stretch of Africa..
..While the rest of the world was mealy-mouthing about whether genocide was taking place or not in Biafra, and the Gowon government was covering up a vast scale of atrocities, over three million people were dying, many of them children and women, denied even the comfort of a morsel in death. The same silence pervaded the genocide in Rwanda. Luckily, international attention has been directed to the Dafur situation with the recent visit by US secretary of state, Colin Powell, and United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. The UN has described what is going on in Dafur as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
Slavery and oppression is their tradition. That’s what the current jihad is all about.
Islam, the religion is comparable to Christianity, Buddhism, etc.
Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic law are not. They are literally the legalization of crimes against humanity. They are comparable to fascism and to Stalin’s Communist regime.
But it is true – Wahhabi financed intolerance is not just an Arab issue. They’re killing people by the thousands around the world. It’s everyone’s issue. Unfortunately, philosophic and educational engagement have never, historically, had a big effect on a people inspired by fascism.
patrick –
I couldn’t agree more.
A.L.
I don’t entirely disagree, but sometimes you have to set priorities.
One symptom of the Islamist jihad is the genocide in the Sudan. Should we give first priority to winning the hearts and minds of the supporters of terrorism or should we give first priority to saving the victims?
Dan Darling, Amac,
Doing some googling, I found this article by Reason (NOT known – at all, as a left magazine), that gives an alternate view. The link will be below.
One quick thing – there are two points that are being conflated into one –
1. Whether Aznar DID attempt to manipulate the bombings for political gain.
2. Whether Spanish voters THOUGHT that Aznar attempted to manipulate the Madrid bombings for political gain.
The second point is what is pertinent – because this speaks to the appeasement. And again, there were many, many polls, that spoke of anger at Aznar, because he (spanish voters believed) had not told the truth regarding the bombings.
Here is the link that describes a lot of the political situation at the time..
Good facts are cited, such as turnout, percentage voting, the immediate request by Spain to the UN to condemn ETA, etc.
So, again, it looks as if the “Spanish appeasement” is a myth.
mary:
Should we give first priority to winning the hearts and minds of the supporters of terrorism or should we give first priority to saving the victims?
Why not do both? America has both hard power and soft power. Hard power is military power and economic power. Soft power is making people want what you want and setting the agenda.
Things like Voice of America, Radio Sawa, and al Hurra are critical in getting the message out. We’ve got to make ourselves heard in the Arab world.
I don’t agree with Patrick’s immiseration suggestion, however. Many Arab countries have plenty of money—it’s just concentrated in a few hands. Throwing piles of money at the Arab world is unlikely to change this.
But why travel on just one leg? Exploit both America’s hard and soft power in this campaign.
Interesting discussion. Only post 9/11, we should be operating under the assumption that an attack such as Mr. Yglesias describes is already in the works. Our government should be focused like a heat-seeking missle on doing everything humanly possible to eliminate the threat. Terrorists do not need state sponsorship per se but they do need money and operational support. It isn’t easy but we should be tracking down and targeting the individuals that provide that support, be they Saudi diplomats, Syrian intelligence agents, or U.S. citizens, the people that provide the funds and the safe houses and the access to sophisticated training continue to operate in the shadows. Those networks are much harder to replace than the street thugs that actually carry out the attacks. Disrupt that shadow network and major terrorist events become infinitely harder to carry out. It’s a long hard slog and it is not without risk but it absolutely must be done. Every day we allow these people to operate in the shadows brings us closer to the unthinkable. A day when we seriously consider using our nuclear arsenal. Doing so will change the course of this country and possibly the course of mankind itself forever. It is unthinkable even
now, even after the events of 9/11, but a day is coming when it will no longer be so unthinkable. Measured against that scenario, it is worth any hardship to avoid that day. We should be hunting down and killing the financiers and intelligence professionals now before it’s too late. Killing a couple of Saudi princes or a senior Syrian or Iranian intelligence operative may piss a lot of people off in the muslim world but it is a far better solution than the alternative.
Nick Foresta
JC, Thanks for the link to Reason’s article on 3-11 in your comment. Despite a snarky tone, it gives a good sense of Spanish electoral politics at the time, consistent with the citations in this Wikipedia entry.
You are also right to distinguish the Aznar government’s actions from the voters’ perceptions of those actions.
What seems clear is that:
–AQ undertook this terror attack as part of a plan to disrupt Western elections.
–AQ threatened in advance that such attacks would be used to punish Coalition countries for their participation.
–Pre-election polls showed Aznar’s party winning a narrow victory on 3-14.
–The Socialists jockeyed to use possible AQ responsibility for advantage at the polls.
–A sufficient number of voters (potential voters) directed their anger at Aznar to swing the election.
–AQ should view this as a policy “win,” and as a model for future interventions.
That said, on reflection, “appeasement” describes the state of mind of the victim. I recall some NYT man-on-the-street interviews of Madrilenos that would qualify (no link; in archives now). I might suggest that voters’ “transference” of guilt from AQ to Aznar qualifies as well. But I’m no psychologist, and your explanation that voters blamed Aznar for manipulating the investigation is just as plausible.
So I’ll withdraw the finding of “appeasement,” while noting, sadly, that the effects of 3-11 were as beneficial to AQ’s political program as if appeasement was the sentiment behind the changed electoral result.
I think this is “on topic” for this discussion, because we are likely to see many of the 3-11/3-14 elements repeated if AQ is able to pull off a similar pre-election atrocity in another Western country with an evenly-split and highly-polarized electorate, such as Britain, Italy, Poland, or the United States.
In the case of the US, I am not confident that a shared sense of national interest would trump short-term partisan interests in guiding the government in crafting a military response (or lack therof). Perhaps discussions before-the-fact would help.
Patrick,
Your idea of a two-pronged approach is a good one only up to a point. The is no reason to believe that all Islamist terrorists are really about religion, some are just typical leftist nihilists using Islam as an excuse. The problem is that Islam is a GOOD excuse because its early history indicates that it started out as a sociopathic religion. People often say “religions are fine, but people have screwed them up.” Now if on this list I were to say “Communism is fine, but people have screwed them up.”, people would say I was an idiotarian. Why does Islam get a free ride? The real situation is just the opposite: communism and Islam are BAD ideas, but some people of good will have created a lot of good using them as a foundation.
This is a really good comments thread we’ve got going here!
If you will pardon me, I’m going to bundle snippets of several posts into one…
One symptom of the Islamist jihad is the genocide in the Sudan. Should we give first priority to winning the hearts and minds of the supporters of terrorism or should we give first priority to saving the victims?
We should give first priority to saving the victims, and we should give second priority to building up an alternative to the system in Sudan that nurtures and sustains Khartoum’s militancy, but there is no reason why we cannot do both (except thanks to our continued presence in Iraq, we don’t have sufficient military forces ready at this moment to consider intervention in Darfur) Sudan, like Iran, like Syria, is still for all purposes a pariah state. Why not use the same diplomatic and economic tools we used during the Reagan administration with South Africa and the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton administrations with China, constructive engagement? Before anyone tears me a new one, yes, I realize the countries here are in three very distinct groups. The point I’m trying to make is that it worked with two very different countries (apartheid Euro-African South Africa and communist-socialist-soft capitalist China) in the past and could easily be tailored for a new fitting with countries like Sudan, Iran, and Syria.
I don’t agree with Patrick’s immiseration suggestion, however. Many Arab countries have plenty of money—it’s just concentrated in a few hands. Throwing piles of money at the Arab world is unlikely to change this.
But why travel on just one leg? Exploit both America’s hard and soft power in this campaign.
This is an area where constructive engagement could possibly offer a better initial solution than a massive slate of social and economic programs funded strictly by the United States. It’s very true that there are billions of dollars concentrated in elite hands throughout the Islamic world that could be employed for the same tasks I’d like to see implemented along with guaranteeing American security through military action.
But how to free this money up? Targeted sanctions might be one way. Guarantees of power sharing in a more open political regime might be another, though I’d argue it’s far less optimal. There are ways to play tit-for-tat, even a more flexible version like contrite tit-for-tat, that can offer us solutions to these problems. My main problem with the current administration is that they simply don’t care about any of this because they do not see it as important. To them and to most conservatives, the exercise of power is “hard” power, more bluntly military power and its projection.
This mindset dismisses ideas like political, economic, cultural, and social engagement in favor of intimidation via making a few examples out of countries, in a sense like we’ve done with Iraq.
Your closing remarks about using both our hard and soft power are precisely what I’m advocating we do; in my mind, in only using our hard power, we are ignoring the roots of the problem and allowing it to perpetuate. The President is oddly correct when he makes the claim that bin Laden isn’t that important any longer; the reason he isn’t is because al-Qaeda ideology has become even more of a mantra in fundamentalist madrassas than it was before 2001. For even bin Laden, Zawahiri, and Zarqawi we capture, imprison, or kill, we are doing nothing at all to address the ideology and institutions that create them.
The problem is that Islam is a GOOD excuse because its early history indicates that it started out as a sociopathic religion. People often say “religions are fine, but people have screwed them up.”
When any religion or system of belief is taken to fundamentalist interpretations, it becomes a convenient excuse to do all manner of horrible things to unbelievers in the name of righteousness. Every major religion in the world has fundamentalists who claim to do the work of its central figure and/or prophet(s) who contribute to the continued destabilization of the world.
Fundamentalists are the problem, not religion in general or specific religions.
You are correct in saying that not all “Islamic” terrorists are truly motivated by Islam; some are reformed Marxists who having lost their Soviet sponsor back in the early 1990s had to find a new reason for organization. And I really don’t have an answer for those folks except that they will only be dealt with through the application of military force. I’m more concerned with the larger social, cultural, political, and economic roots of terrorism in the true Islamic sense, though.
We simply need to do a better job of addressing both causes and consequences. Neither soft power (in Nye’s sense) or military power can address both causes and consequences alone. Until we have people in positions of responsibility here in the United States who understand this, we will continue to only deal with the products of failing and failed states while ignoring the assembly line that produces these products.
Patrick:
Before anyone tears me a new one, yes, I realize the countries here are in three very distinct groups. The point I’m trying to make is that it worked with two very different countries (apartheid Euro-African South Africa and communist-socialist-soft capitalist China) in the past and could easily be tailored for a new fitting with countries like Sudan, Iran, and Syria.
All three of those regimes will happily lie through their teeth. The Prophet Mohammed said “war is deception”, and they’ll happily follow his example.
The only way to change the policies of those countries is to physically force them to. The whole basis of constructive engagement is that, whatever a country is doing, the reward for that action is greater than the benefits it will recieve if they halt that action. With Iran and Sudan, at least, the benefit of that action is Paradise, having done Allah’s work. What does the West have that trumps that?
Every major religion in the world has fundamentalists who claim to do the work of its central figure and/or prophet(s) who contribute to the continued destabilization of the world.
If the Prophet were alive today, he’d be on the run for crimes against humanity.
Here is how I would handle the next attack
1. Before the attack – attack Iran
2. During the attack – attack Iran
3. After the attack – attack Iran
The world will be a much safer place once the Persian people are in charge of Persia.
Then perhaps Syria could use a nudge.
Sorry to come to this late, but this is a terrific thread–
Matt sez: “What I wrote was that in the aftermath of an attack, it would be emotionally satisfying to have a military response, but there won’t be one available.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong– the dems never have a clue–there are teams ands squadrons of wargamers simulating and modelling every possible scenario. And every possible response.
Patrick: This is choice!
“Fundamentalists are the problem, not religion in general or specific religions.” This is true.
Or, from Boyer’s The Evolutionary Theory of Religion– “…the legitimization of violence in the service of a religious restoration…” And the fundamentalists have the controls.
Oscar sez: “The problem is that Islam is a GOOD excuse because its early history indicates that it started out as a sociopathic religion.” No, actually Islam started out as a memetic engineering of the Beduoin tribal culture. Mohammed kept only the memesets that served his goals. It is more like a shark than a sociopath. The design is exquistely simple. It is designed for self replication and conquest.
AMac,
In this we agree – I’m sure Al-Queda viewed the act as successful intimidation. That doesn’t stop a person from picking the best government, regardless of al-queda threats, but it is a definite problem.