Lt. Gen. William Odom, ret'd., was head of Army intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, and served on the National Security Council staff under Jimmy Carter. He is a West Point graduate with a PhD from Columbia, and is a fellow at the Hudson Institute. He somehow has managed to remain outwardly respectable: why, he even teaches impressionable students at Yale, who are no doubt impressed with his having been on the National Security Agency. But Odom is an appeaser, and of a particularly appalling kind, the kind that pretends to "tough minded realism." You know – remember Zbigniew Brzezinski, who pretended to be different from Jimmy Carter, but in the end turned out to be more or less the same?
Look at Odom’s appalling remarks on Iran. His reasons for not invading Iraq are essentially the same as those of MoveOn.org, and Markos Kos Zuniga, and Jimmy Carter and Brzezinski. About Iran he insists, falsely, that there is "nothing to be done" (nothing? nothing at all?) and that the only way to un-nuclearize Iran is to have the Israelis give up their nuclear weapons. A clearer statement of sweetly sinisterly calling for the suicide of Israel cannot be imagined. He's transparent, is Lt. Gen. William Odom, ret'd.
His "Victory is Not an Option" article misses the point. It misses all kinds of points, because this former big shot in the National Security Agency and in the CIA has not learned about, and chooses not to know about, Islam -- either its doctrine or the history of its practice. He chooses carefully not to find out about the division of the world between Believer and Infidel. He chooses like the Bush Administration to pretend that the Jihad is a matter of "terrorism" or of military combat alone. There is not a word from Lt. Gen. William Odom, ret'd., about Da'wa or demographic conquest in the nations of NATO.
Odom accepts the Bush Administration's definition of "victory" in Iraq, and then proceeds to tell us it's not possible. But what he misses is that there is another definition of victory that does make sense: to weaken the Camp of Islam. And in Iraq, the invasion and removal of Saddam Hussein had its main justification in what we were told was evidence either of possession of, or projects designed to produce, weapons of mass destruction. A second justification was that the removal of Saddam Hussein would, inevitably, lead to the transfer of power of the Land of the Two Rivers, and Baghdad itself, which is so important in Sunni Arab mythologizing about the glorious past, into the hands of the Shi'a, by removing the Ba'athist boot. Then, whatever else happened, the Shi'a would never relinquish that new power willingly, and the Sunnis, in and out of Iraq, would never acquiesce in the Shi'a dominance of Iraq.
"Victory" is not what the Bush Administration defines it as. There was to be Iraq the Model, a stable, peaceful, prosperous place, somehow to be emulated by Sunni Arab states that would apparently not notice the loss of Sunni power and the dominance of the Shi'a. But who in the Administration gave much thought to Sunnis and Shi'a? And just how much thought, when he was still in the government, did Lt. Gen. William Odom, ret'd., now "teaching at Yale," ever give to the sectarian, ethnic, and economic divisions that might be usefully exploited within the Camp of Islam in order to weaken the onslaught of the Jihad?
Odom does not re-define "victory" intelligently -- for a "victory" will be achieved, though now at far greater cost than had the Americans left three years ago, just as soon as the Bush Administration stops its sacrifice of men, and stops inflicting such harm on the army, both the regular and the civilian army. What is happening to the Reserves, and to the National Guard, and to the morale of people who are not quite as willing to endure what the regular army and the Marines are enduring, and the building cold fury at the Administration and its more compliant generals at this nonsensical policy, is a story that needs to be told.
But it is not being told by Lt. Gen. William Odom, ret'd.
"what he [Odom] misses is that there is another definition of victory that does make sense: to weaken the Camp of Islam."
He and the rest -- whether Republicans or Democrats -- miss Hugh's definition of victory because, according to the PC Template, the Camp of Islam is a good neighbor in the world, not an enemy. Why in the world would we want to weaken our good neighbor in the world?
We can't get these bozos to see things right, until their skewed spectacles have been refit with a new prescription. But Hugh insists that all he has to do is keep pointing out the eye chart while ignoring the Politically Corrective lenses most everybody is wearing. No amount of pointing out will do much good until that prescription, that Template, is changed. Sometimes I wonder who has the worse vision -- the ones with the skewed lenses, or the ones who stubbornly refuse to see those skewed lenses?
One would assume there is an active suppression of alternative viewpoints in the military and political institutions. It's not really a surprise. After all, the premier military schools now have 'Islamic scholars', i.e. Muslims directing education on 'understanding Islam.' They are working hard and successfully to blunt any idea that Islam is the problem. Would anyone, at any of these meetings to discuss 'the enemy' have the nerve, in front of their Muslim colleagues to speak the truth about Islam and Muslims. Would any of them say 'the most cost effective and easiest defense for America is to ban Muslim immigration to America?' No way. That is why America and Western Civilization will be destroyed. When you invite your enemy to the strategy table, the 'fifth column' will always win. The Muslims must surely be pleased by the infidels and their foolishness. I would be...if I were a Muslim.
Pepper ("Remote Control"):
Don't you think your hobbyhorse is tired?
Anyway, you seem to think we are not doing enough to illustrate to the general public that the "Camp of Islam" might not be such a good neighbor.
In that case I invite you, as I have done before, to cease the tiresome drumbeating you do whenever possible here, and instead start your own site or some other endeavor where you can make up for our errors and omissions and fight the fight the way you believe it should be fought.
But here, your point has been made. And made. And made. And made. Enough now.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
Robert:
Amen on that. While there may be some psychological value in using a post to vent, I hoep that in the end, most of us are solution oriented.
The key needs to be how to start chipping away at PC thinking. Bemoaning our collective fate will do no good. This site chips away at PC by getting people to look at the Koran. There are other ways, but this site is the most effective I have found to date.
In my approaches to people, I have tried a variety of different first steps, and tried to evaluate what works and what doesn't. So far the only reliable success I have had is with Christians, and when I have slyly focused on what Islam says about Jesus. Starting there, they start looking around, and notice the violence of the Koran on their own without any direct presuasion. This typically gets the ball rolling without having people think I am some sort of freek.
Anyway, just my 5 cents.
Its like we need to develop different plans of persuasion depening on the type of person.
"Victory" is not what the Bush Administration defines it as. There was to be Iraq the Model, a stable, peaceful, prosperous place, somehow to be emulated by Sunni Arab states that would apparently not notice the loss of Sunni power and the dominance of the Shi'a."
General Odom has said something very sensible here. Unfortunately, he's speaking from very unhappy experience; for nobody in Jimmeh Cahduh's administration gave much thought to the role of traditional theology (as opposed to the liberal superstition that we're all somewhere between Unitarian and Quaker under the surface, either.
We were blindsided in 1979, worrying about the revival of the Tudeh in Iran, and got blindsided by a Khomeini.
Still, Joseph Lierberman said something sensible, too: the United States cannot pretend that Islamicist radicalism hasn't declared war on it. Add to this the problem of determining who or what is a Bin Ladenist, and you have a problem of enormous proportions.
'Scuse me.
The general also said that not a single Arabic or Muslim culture has successfully adopted democracy. He is wrong about the Arabic peoples. Lebanon and Israel are both cultures shaped by Arabic culture (the bare majority of Israelis are, after all, Mizrahi, with the Maghrebi Jews being the largest single subgroup in the Jewish population) that, in the case of Lebanon, enjoyed democracy for more than a generation, and in the Israeli case, still enjoys it. However, significantly, the democracies of the Eastern Mediterranean were also the ones where Islam was not dominant.
"'Victory' is not what the Bush Administration defines it as. There was to be Iraq the Model, a stable, peaceful, prosperous place, somehow to be emulated by Sunni Arab states that would apparently not notice the loss of Sunni power and the dominance of the Shi'a."
General Odom has said something very sensible here.[comment by poster on the previous remark]"
General Odom didn't write that. I wrote that. I am the sensible one.
General Odom only seems to be sensible. It is sensible to get out of Iraq, and would have made sense in February 2004. But General Odom, if you read his article, hethinks that we must get out of Iraq in order to better "stabilize" the Middle East. That is, his goal is not mine but the opposite of mine. I want the Americans out of Iraq because I know that that will inevitably lead to those sectarian and ethnic fissures widening, and I don't want an Administration first snookered by Shi'a exaggerated hopes ("America to be greeted with permanent affection as the great liberator"), is now to allow itself to be snookered by Sunni exaggerated fears ("the Shi'a of Iran are taking over, so sell us every wweapon we want, and pressure Israel, otherwise somehow, magically, all the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Jordan are going to stop being Sunnis and become Shi'a and then support the incorporation of the whole Middle East into a frightening Shi'a Crescent of Power that will wax into a Full and Menacing Iranian Moon").
Odom is one of those pseudo-realists who is not a realist at all because he begins from the same assumption as the Bush Administration he so detests: that we want stability in the Middle East, that we don't want the Camp of Islam riven by sectarian and ethnic disputes (he doesn't say a word --I have written a hundred thousand, on the subject of how an independnet Kurdistan would weaken not only Iran and Syria, but also inspire non-Arab Muslims outside the Middle East, such as Berbers in the Kabyle, and Malaysians sick of the arabization of their own societies).
He's a "realist" of the appease-Islam school -- Brzezinski Division.
Look behind the immmediate sweet-reasonableness, to the assumptions he makes, the end result he envisions, and his complete inability to view the menace of Islam outside the Middle East, his utter indifference to the islamization of Western Europe through Da'wa and demographic conquest.
Yesterday's Man, but still holding on. He won't take the time or trouble to learn about Islam. Bet on it.
"you seem to think we are not doing enough to illustrate to the general public that the "Camp of Islam" might not be such a good neighbor."
That misses the point of my so-called "hobbyhorse".
I think Jihad Watch is doing an excellent job of illustrating to the general public that the "Camp of Islam" might not be such a good neighbor.
If I'm to be publically reprimanded, it would be nice to be reprimanded for the actual thing I'm supposedly doing wrong, rather than some other thing I have not been doing at all.
Irkedly,
remote_control