Tuesday, April 23, 2002

Word Play "For leftists, economics determines international relations; for realists, power does." "Russia's, India's, and Israel's "war on terrorism" is not like our own. And in order to craft wise and decent policy, the Bush administration needs to explain why. The critical difference is that the wars in Kashmir, Palestine, and Chechnya are wars of national liberation. The terrorists seek to end a foreign occupation and create an independent state on a defined piece of land." "Because Al Qaeda is international, it doesn't have a clearly defined set of territorial demands. To the degree it has any demands at all, they are to rid the Muslim lands of infidels and of their culture--to establish a vast Islamist caliphate across much of the globe. And as with Nazism and international communism, movements that seek world domination don't make very good negotiating partners." "In Kashmir, Chechnya, and Palestine those conditions don't exist. If the vast majority of Palestinians support terrorism, then terrorists can easily take refuge among the civilian population, which dramatically increases the risk of civilian casualties, which in turn shifts popular support further in the terrorists' favor." "Does Israel have the same right to defend itself against suicide bombers in Tel Aviv as the United States has to defend itself against suicide hijackers in New York? Is an attack on the Indian parliament as evil as an attack on Congress? Absolutely. But the question isn't moral; it's strategic. And strategically, Israel's and India's wars against terrorism differ radically from America's because Israel and India aren't merely fighting a terrorist network; they're fighting a people. And a people can be militarily occupied, but they can't be militarily crushed. The moral right to respond to terror with single- minded, overwhelming force doesn't make such a response successful. And in the end, if a government's response to terror doesn't stop future terror, the moral clarity it provides is cold comfort indeed." 4:06:48 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Saudi Breakpoint A time for choosing. " . . . Saudi rule is being pushed to breakpoint by its internal inconsistencies. . . . [Saudi Arabia] has been, and still is, the source of much of the Islamic radicalism now destabilizing the world far and wide. That remains to be dealt with." "One of the reasons the Saudis may not be able to sustain this model much longer is that money at the moment is scarce; the economy is shrinking and unemployment is reported to be 30 percent. Elections and opinion polls are unthinkable in this society, but if there were such things they would reveal that Osama bin Laden is a national hero, far more popular than the monarchy." "In the aftermath of the Afghan campaign it is no longer possible for the Saudis to continue double-dealing, offering the Americans a disdainful lip-service loyalty while also tolerating, or worse encouraging, anti-American extremism. A choice has to be made, and it will determine the future of the region." "The withdrawal of American bases consequently would expose Saudi Arabia once more to that existential threat. And just over the horizon is Iran, acquiring weapons of mass destruction as busily as Iraq. The Saudi rulers may well prefer to have America with them when the time comes to confront these dangers. They are in the process of weighing up whether they are most afraid of bin Laden's shadow, and so need to propitiate their people by removing the American presence; or whether they are most afraid of Saddam Hussein and Iran and so must keep the American protective shield." 4:02:48 PM  Google It!  comment  []

An Arab Moment of Truth Which way the Islamist fantasy? " . . . the Muslim world has never known exactly how to respond to the West, whether to adopt its values or to reject them. A logic arises: The West is powerful; power is arrogant; we are proud people; therefore we must overpower and humble the West. False as the logic is, it locks in high emotion. It also raises for Muslims an existential question of identity: What sort of people do we think we are?" "For the past half century and more, the Muslim world has been free and independent, with every opportunity to organize as it wishes. And this is the heart of the issue: The Muslim world is a political and social disaster for all to see. With the arguable exception of Turkey, it consists of a series of despotisms, each with an absolute ruler whose ultimate justification is his strength and will. A family or a clique gathers around the ruler under the protection of the state apparatus of secret police and military repression. To the powerful, the spoils; to the weak, submission. No rights, no freedom of expression, no loyal opposition, no rule of law, no redress except through violence, conspiracy, a coup, and ultimate civil war." " . . . 'The Arab and Muslim world is completely naked. [None of us] can claim any more that he is independent. We have proved we are not modern. We have proved that we are not religious in the real sense of the word. We have proved that we cannot afford democracy.'" "Like Soviet dissidents, they are only saying what almost everyone knows to be the truth. For most Muslims have answered the existential question for themselves the way the populations under Soviet rule did: They want what those in the Free World have." "Ayatollah Khomeini . . . gave a quite different answer to the existential question of Muslim identity. Muslim society was a failure, he concurred with secular critics like Haikal, and one cause of this was the people's abandonment of their faith. Islam had made its believers great and powerful in centuries past, and it would do so again." "A fantasy is loose in the world, the fantasy of an Islamic supremacy destined deservedly to triumph everywhere. Like Communism before it, this Islamic fantasy aims to impose its vision on others — and call it peace. In an unexpected form, here is another totalitarian movement with the usual murderous belief that the ends justify the means." "In the event of liberation from the general Islamist fantasy and the suicide bombers in particular, most of the Muslim world will feel a grateful relief that can only surprise and shock the Left as much as the joy of those liberated from Communism did. Should America fail to rescue them for whatever reason, though, Muslims will know that the Islamist fantasy is coming true, and they will have to endure it for a very long time to come." 3:58:35 PM  Google It!  comment  []

We are waging a just war "The purpose behind the attack was to separate America and its allies from everyone else, and the Muslim world in particular. For the past decade or so, Muslim extremists have been on the march, fighting neighbors of other religions wherever they find them: Hindus in Kashmir, Jews in Israel, Orthodox Russians in Chechnya, animists and Christians in Africa. In the perspective of the suicide bombers, Americans are Westerners but also Christians, therefore the principal legitimate objects of holy war. These Muslim extremists have been trying to open their version of an ideological and armed struggle with global implications: Muslims and as much of the Third World as possible versus democracy. This ambition is now out in the open." "The Muslim world does not present a unified bloc. On the contrary, it is split by sectarian and ethnic disputes as well as by internal power struggles. The extremists represent a small— though no doubt growing—minority. Destroying everything before them, they have already provoked civil war in Algeria, Sudan, and Afghanistan, and they have destabilized Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the Palestine Authority, and not least Pakistan. The response of these countries’ respective leaders is critical to American success." "A wise America will hold a heavy stick behind its back and in its hand as enticing a bunch of carrots as possible, including remission of debt, trade advantages, and political support against extremists. This is, essentially, a hearts and minds operation." "A fantasy is loose in the world, the fantasy of an Islamic supremacy that is destined to triumph everywhere. Some of its advocates claim that eventually Christian countries will become Muslim, in what would amount to a reverse colonialism. Like Communism before it, this Islamic extremism aims to impose its vision on others and call it universal peace. Here, in an unexpected form, is another totalitarian movement." "Needless to say, this Islamic fantasy has nothing to do with Islam proper, a religion like all other great religions, with a genuine vision of justice and equality at its core. Indeed, the damage that the Islamic triumphalist fantasy does to Islam as well as Muslim countries and peoples is at least as severe and dangerous as the damage it does to democracy. The same was true about other totalitarianisms: Nazism utterly ruined Germany, Communism utterly ruined Russia." "Each man kills the thing he loves, in the famous words of Oscar Wilde. Premeditated killing of unknown people in an act that simultaneously kills oneself requires a life-denying hate so exceptional that it is in a realm of fanaticism all its own. Such hate signifies a total human failure. This corresponds to the turmoil of the Muslim world today. Each and every Muslim country faces intractable problems of demography, lack of resources and skills, ethnic and religious strife, and selfish government; each and every Muslim suffers from this jumble of assorted ills." "The causes of today’s turmoil go deep into the roots of history. The major intellectual developments of the West—the Renaissance with its concept of humanism and the Age of Enlightenment during which scientific principles by and large replaced religious dogma—passed the Muslim world by. Muslims everywhere were in the grip of the absolute system of one-man despotism that they had inherited from their forebears and that they believed protected their religion and identity. Western energy and creativity of which they were unaware duly overwhelmed them, and they could do nothing about it." " . . . imprinting throughout the Muslim world a sense of inferiority to the West. The Muslim masses, otherwise proud people, came to see the West as an entity deliberately out to shame and humiliate them. Today’s Islamic fantasy springs from this mindset in which self-pity and revenge go hand in hand. . . . in order for Muslims to recover their pride, a test of strength with the Europeans was built into the future. . . . the end of colonialism seemed to absolve Muslims, and in particular Arabs, from the sense of shame tormenting them." "They have imported modernity as though it were a commodity like any other. But once again, in an incomplete and misleading analysis of the position, they did not recognize that the true source of Western strength lay in a democratic political system that liberated people’s energies and had nothing to do with nationalism.  . . . The result has been a present- day mimicry of the historic despotisms of the past. Nothing like democracy exists in the Muslim world . . . Parliaments exist to rubberstamp the ruler’s decrees. There is no freedom of speech or of assembly, no civil rights, but only the dreaded secret police, prisons, torture, and execution. The injustice is flagrant. Corruption is everywhere. Excluded from any say, the masses still have no control over their destiny, but they are able to protest only through a riot. Power changes hands by assassination or coup. In the absence of mechanisms for power-sharing and mediation, every national and international conflict of interest degenerates into a test of strength.  Muslims and Arabs have nobody to blame but themselves for so disastrous a social and political failure. There are intellectuals who point this out, but they are few. It is far more comforting to displace the blame on to others." "The suicide bombers have at last engaged the United States in a test of strength according to their standards. Muslim—and especially Arab—one-man rulers will be watching for signs that the United States understands the stakes and has the resolve to act as it should. If they detect weakness in Washington, they will have no choice but to pay lip-service to the Islamic fantasy and at least pretend to join the ideological war against the West. Anything less leaves them at the mercy of assassination or a coup undertaken by extremists. American strength and determination to see this through, however, will encourage them to join the coalition of Western allies." "This is a just war if ever there was one, in defence of life and liberty against an ideological enemy. If the United States and its allies were to retreat from the test of strength imposed on them, or botch it somehow through inadequate preparation or loss of will, then the extremists will conclude that they have the West on the run. They will strive on for victory. Who can guess how far hate and killing will then spread, or how destructive it will prove for mankind. " 3:52:25 PM  Google It!  comment  []

No Mere Terrorist "Sept. 11 was about a very new kind of threat. And it wasn't mere terrorism. Real terrorists don't want to kill a lot of people. Rather, they use limited, but indiscriminate, violence or hijacking to create noise or fear that draws attention to their cause and ultimately builds political or diplomatic pressure for a specific objective." "That's why Osama bin Laden is not a mere terrorist. He has much larger aspirations. He is a super-empowered angry man who has all the geopolitical objectives and instincts of a nation-state. He has employed violence not to grab headlines but to kill as many Americans as possible to drive them out of the Islamic world and weaken their society. That's why the Sept. 11 hijackers never left a list of demands, as terrorists usually do. Their act was their demand. Their demand is total victory." "It will take us a long time, and much diplomatic therapy, to cure such intentions. But what we can do now is limit the capabilities of such people. We are not the only ones with an interest in this. If suicidal warfare becomes 'normal,' the Arab regimes won't be spared. Because once people feel empowered by this sort of thing, they won't stop with just the infidels — they will turn it on their own autocrats. And if it becomes 'normal,' it will be awful for Palestinians, because how their state is born matters, and a state brought about by suicide bombers will forever be deformed." "And if it becomes 'normal' in this integrated world, it will touch your kids and mine in a way that will make Iraq look like a day at the beach." 3:43:10 PM  Google It!  comment  []

The 1930s, Again A hard rain is going to fall. " . . . a much larger dilemma — how to corral a very powerful dictatorship and its axis that  wished dominance not coexistence, and whose fuel was brutal force and autocracy, not democracy and freedom. . . . We are in a similar dilemma — in our hesitation about Iraq, our pressure on Israel, and our worries about mission creep in pursuing the killers." "All the while, no American statesman has the guts to tell the Arab leadership that statism, tribalism, fundamentalism, gender apartheid, and autocracy — not America, not Israel — make their people poor, angry, and dangerous." "After 30 years of listening to nauseating chanting from Teheran to Islamabad to Nablus, hearing the childish rants about 'The Mother of All Battles' and 'The Great Satan,' and witnessing presidents from Carter to Bush burned in effigy, the ritual torching of the American flag, the misspelled banners of hatred, the thousands of paint-by-the-numbers posters of psychopaths from Khomeini to bin Laden, televised threats that sound as hideous as they are empty, Nazi-inspired anti-Semitism, embassy takeovers, oil- boycotts, hijacked planes, cars, and ships, lectures from unelected obese sheiks with long names and gold chains, peacekeepers incinerated in their sleep, murders at the Olympics, bodies dumped on the tarmac of airports, shredded diplomats, madmen in sunglasses in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, demented mullahs and whip-bearing imams in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, continual televised murders of Americans abroad, our towers toppled, our citizens butchered, our planes blown up, hooded Klansmen in Hamas and Hezbollah, killers of al-this and Islamic-that, suicide bombers, shrill turbaned nuts spouting hatred on C-SPAN broadcasts, one day the salvation of Kuwait, the next sanctions against the swallower of Kuwait, the third day fury against the sanctions against the swallower of Kuwait, the fourth day some grievance from 1953, the fifth another from A.D. 752; and all the time sanctimonious fingerpointing from Middle Eastern academics and journalists who are as bold abroad in insulting us as they are timid and obsequious under dictators at home in keeping silent, I've about had it. No mas. The problem is you, not us — you, you, you…." "I don't listen any more to the apologies and prevarications of our whiney university Arabists, our equivocators in the state department, and the really tawdry assortment of oil men, D.C. insiders, bought and paid for PR suits, and weapons hucksters. The truth is that a large minority of the Middle Eastern world wishes a war with America that it cannot win — and much of the rest is apparently either indifferent or amused." "The truth is that there is a great storm on the horizon, one that will pass — or bring upon us a hard rain the likes of which we have not seen in 60 years. Either we shall say "no more," deal with Iraq, and prepare for a long and hard war against murderers and terrorists — or we will have more and more of what happened on 9/11. History teaches us that certain nations, certain peoples, and certain religions at peculiar periods in their history take a momentary, but deadly leave of their senses — Napoleon's France for most of a decade, the southern states in 1861, Japan in 1931, Germany in 1939, and Russia after World War II. And when they do, they cannot be bribed, apologized to, or sweet-talked — only defeated." "In that context, we see much of a whipped-up Arab world entering this similar period of dangerous unreality. The problem is them and their unelected and unfree regimes, not us — just as it was Hitler, not us; Tojo, not us; Mussolini, not us; and Stalin, not us — just as it always is when unelected maniacs take control and hijack an entire country and culture. We can either step up and stop Islamic fundamentalism, Arab terrorists, and Middle Eastern dictators or we can step back and watch it all continue to grow. If 9/11 was the beginning of a war, then we should remember that wars usually end when one, not both sides, win." 3:36:33 PM  Google It!  comment  []