Richard Perle was on PBS Tuesday night. An intelligent man, but in the matter of Islam and Iraq, not intelligent enough. Innocent of history, or at least of Islamic history, convinced that the American government can transplant "democracy" to Iraq. In response to the interviewer's doubts about this, he responds that there have been "three elections" in Iraq. He is still unaware that those "three elections" were, as Ali Allawi says in his just-published book, not about "democracy" in the Western sense at all, but about the assertion of group identity and solidarity, especially by the Shi'a. How many votes went to Mithal al-Alusi in the end? Or to others like him?
Perle apparently is not quite aware of Islam as the problem and the menace. He is certainly inattentive, judging by his public performances, to the instruments of Jihad other than mere terrorism, such as Da'wa and demographic conquest, and the money weapon. But we still don't know, from Richard Perle, what it is that can now happen in Iraq that will help the Camp of Infidels, that was not achieved by the beginning of 2004. For by then the American government knew there were no major weapons in Iraq, and by then it had thoroughly disrupted any projects that might soon be developed. Yet Perle continues to cling, wanly, to the belief that this Iraq venture, the one to bring "freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East, as Bush likes to say, is worth the candle.
And he invokes repeatedly Kennedy's inaugural speech. Indeed, there is a shot of him watching with evident pleasure and great interest a tape of that inaugural speech. The one about "pay any price, bear any burden."
And he seems to think that is an admirable sentiment, one that makes sense, one that should be more than mere inaugural-speech rhetoric. In January 1961, when Kennedy gave that speech, a certain colossal calamity was just beginning in Vietnam. We were, you see, prepared to "pay any price, bear any burden." But not to think things through.
"Pay any price"? "Bear any burden"? Even if the price is gigantic -- $880 billion in past, present and committed future costs, more than all the wars America has fought, save World War II, put together? Even if it hinders, rather than helps, this country and other Infidel lands in our ability to pay attention to the money weapon, and to Da'wa, and to demographic conquest?
The polypragmonic impulse can be seen in Perle's belief that we should go about the world righting wrongs, and bringing "freedom" to those who in the American view may long for it, but are prevented merely by a local despot who can be undone. But the belief that "either we bring them freedom or they will destroy us" -- Bernard Lewis's unhelpful formulation -- does not make sense. What makes sense in Iraq was only to find, seize, and destroy major weaponry, and then, by removing the Sunni despotism (disguised as Ba'athism), to allow the situation itself to naturally work to weaken the Camp of Islam -- with the release of those sectarian and ethnic hostilities which the Americans had done nothing to encourage.
But Perle was a child of, and heroic participant in, the Cold War. Islam is not the Soviet Union. And Perle never studied Islam. He never permitted himself the unhurried and quiet study that meant not only reading, but having the time to thoroughly assimilate what it was he read, and to make sense of things. And he, like Wolfowitz with his pillow-talk, was mightily impressed with all those "good Muslims" he has met. Yesterday it was Ahmad Chalabi and Kanan Makiya ("candy and flowers will greet the American liberators," according to Makiya, who forgot, or perhaps refuses to understand, what Islam, what minds on Islam, Sunni and Shi'a, are capable of) and Shaha Ali Riza. Right now, it appears from the PBS documentary, it is a young Iranian in exile, Amir Abbas Fakhravar. This young man's tale, admittedly moving, leaves Perle, still enthralled by the idea of changing the world, eager for fresh fields and pastures new in which to have the United States "bear every burden" and "pay any price." Not China, not Japan, not Western Europe, not any of the other nations that need oil, or that might be menaced by the worldwide Jihad, but just little old us, transplanting our democracy here and there, with splendid results -- now whittled down from Iraq the Light Unto the Muslim Nations to Iraq the Night-Light Unto the Muslim Nations.
Henry Jackson and Dorothy Fosdick would have been less susceptible. They would have been less quick to endorse the universal application of Sharanskian idealism. They would not have been pleased with Richard Perle, who is so careful and insistent to tell the interviewer that he was and is a "liberal Democrat" and that he wants only the best for everyone.
It's true. He does want only the best for everyone. And that is his problem. He cannot see that resources are finite, that the menace of Islamic Jihad is large and growing, and that the best way to deal with it is not to help Muslim countries, but to exploit the fissures, sectarian, ethnic, and economic, within the Camp of Islam.
Perhaps he will rethink things. He has the leisure to read, and not merely to talk to others similarly situated in Washington, who are unused to study, and have reached the empyreal heights where such study no longer takes place. Instead, there are those position papers that reduce whole countries to a 50-page report. Still worse, for the biggest of shots and busy decision-makers, are those bullet-ridden executive summaries, and all the hectic vacancy of meetings hither and yon with the Great of This Earth. There are the consultancies, and the world leaders to be met, and the dinner parties, and all the rest of it that teaches one so very little about what is likely to happen, and why, in Baghdad or Basra or Baquba.
Perle is seen on camera in a staged three-minute debate with Buchanan, who manages, horribile dictu, to sound more reasonable than Perle, and with Richard Holbrooke, who not so horribly manages to sound more reasonable than Perle -- though Holbrooke himself misunderstands what he did in Dayton, or why the bombing of the Serbs was not a triumph but excessive and unwise. And he even talks to Sharansky, and dreams of a day when Amir Abbas Fakhravar, the Iranian, can stand in Tehran as free as Sharansky...well, where? Did Russia work out? Has Russia become a "democracy" in any Western sense, or is it reverting to type? And will not Muslim states such as Iraq and Iran also revert to type, unless the conditions are created that will force Muslims, or the most intelligent of them, to make the connection between the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of their societies and states, and Islam itself?
Perle does not look as though he has yet engaged in the necessary study, or that he has any sense of the enormity of the mistake of American troops remaining in Iraq beyond the first year. He appears really to believe that "democracy" was brought to Iraq, just like Bush and Rice -- but Perle is much more intelligent than either Bush or Rice, and one has a right to expect more.
What does he make of the condition of Christians in Iraq? What does he make of the Sunnis who are united in their refusal to acquiesce in the new order? Does he now have an understanding that all those accomplished, eloquent, westernized Shi'a exiles had been out of Iraq for decades and had forgotten what Iraq was like, and still have trouble locating the problem of the refusal of its sects and groups to compromise in Islam? For it is the spirit, in Qur'an and Hadith and Sira, of aggression and non-compromise that Islam, with its inculcated worldview with but two categories -- Victor and Vanquished -- that explains the Sunni refusal to acquiesce, and the Shi'a refusal to give up some of their new power (for the Shi'a are now "kto" and the Sunnis "kogo").
Bush does not understand this, and the generals are busy with their counter-insurgency "lessons" (the Lessons of Algeria, the Lessons of Malaysia, the Lessons of Vietnam, the Lessons of Greece) that fail to take into account Islam, or the fact that there is not one insurgency but many, and that while they may be at cross-purposes with each other, not one of those insurgent groups, nor the government itself, can be considered an unfeigned friend of the Infidel Americans.
Tuesday night's program I thought would reveal someone who had recognized his folly and that of others. But it did not. It was, more or less, and unrepentantly, the mixture as before.
Pearle's program had the noblility of a fool but there was nowhere the reasonable counterpoint as presented by Hugh here. Indeed, I had to slap myself upon hearing Buchanan with as much better perception of trying to make America the Johnny Appleseed of democracy in lands where the people are least likely to appreciate due to to their consumption of Islamic dogma and hatred of the west and the ideals it stands for.
Given the above, it is amusing (in a black, bitter way) to learn that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is on his way to Iraq to try to spark "a reconcilliation" between rival factions: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041900520.html
I did not get to see the entire program as I have a 3 week old daughter who needed attention but from what I did see, I was disappointed. You are correct, Hugh, Perle is uninformed in essential areas. When I first tuned in I thought, "Wow, a voice of reason on PBS." The more I listened, the more frustrated I grew.
I am afraid all those people who got us into Iraq have not learned a thing and probably will not. They are not interested. They will adhere to their preconceived ideas no matter what. Even in the face of failure, they will not admit their errors. If my memory serves me, I heard Kanan Makiya being asked a question on the radio the other day about his pre-war assertion that US troops would be greeted as liberators with flowers, cheers and kisses and why this did not happen. It was so disappointing to hear him absolve himself from the whole farce. Paraphrasing, according to him, the Iraqis did not welcome the troops as he predicted because of the looting and lawlessness that followed the invasion. In other words, Americans were not welcomed because of what the Americans did or did not do. Liberating the Iraqis from Saddam was not enough for them. The instigators of the war will find an answer to fit their theories for their failure. When all is said and done, and the Americans have left Iraq, none of those that got us into this mess will feel any responsibility for the whole affair. They will just wash their hands and walk away to a quiet life as if the whole affair never happened. No regrets, no guilt, no conscience. Everyone else will have to pick up the pieces and deal with the aftermath.
"It's true. He does want only the best for everyone. And that is his problem. He cannot see that resources are finite, that the menace of Islamic Jihad is large and growing, and that the best way to deal with it is not to help Muslim countries, but to exploit the fissures, sectarian, ethnic, and economic, within the Camp of Islam."
That sums it up well.
I saw the program. It may have been an attempt at "balance" on the part of PBS. Unfortunately it will only serve to re-enforce the myth that eveyone who is willing to recognize and oppose Islamic supremacy is in favor of the democracy misadventure in Iraq.
The Cult of Democracy has become the official religion of the West and neo-Cons like Richard Perle spread it with the zeal of missionaries. Interestingly, just like the Muslims, both neo-Cons and their neo-Liberal clones are more than willing to spread their "faith" at the point of the sword. However, as Hugh points out so eloquently, thier idol of democracy has feet of clay.
Other than Israel, the most democratic country in the Middle East is Iran. The PA also had a very democratic free election and we see who won. The only time Algeria tried democracy, Islamists were elected by a landslide. Fortunately, the Algerian military stepped in and voided the results. In Pakistan, if Musharraf were to allow a real democracy, a Taliban type government would be elected by a clear majority. No, Democracy is not the answer!
Iran, under the Shah's "dictatorship" was the most progressive country in the Muslim world, but only because the Shah did everything he could to destroy the influence of Islam. It was when neo-Lib Jimmy Carter began pushing democracy for Iran that the floodgates were opened and the Muslim backlash democratically took the country back to the dark ages. Perhaps, Richard Perle should remember that Hitler came to power when the Nazis democratically won a plurality in the Reichstag.
In Iraq, as bad a tyrant that Saddam was, at least he didn't oppress the Christians any different than he oppressed everybody else. Now the new democratic Iraq is pulling crosses off of churches, raping Christian girls, murdering the faithful, and has forced the majority of Christians into refugee camps in Syria and Jordan. Naturally, democratic Turkey won't take any of these Christians.
As for Russia, it tried democracy twice. First under Kerensky then under Yeltsin. Both times Russia was left weak, decadent, and open to terrorism. For all his shortcomings, and they are many, it is a good thing that Putin is not repeating these mistakes of his predecessor.
PBS loves having Richard Perle on. This guy is an idiot. He wears nice clothes, has a nice hair cut, but he's a raving idiot. When prepped for being on PBS, the instructions probably were: "Oh, Richard, just say what's in your heart." Hugh, you describe him as 'an intelligent man.' Based on what? The right think tank, the right friends?
It was one thing to buy into 'Iraq, the light onto the nations model' before the invasion. But to defend the spearding of democracy today is beyond belief.
The biggest tragedy is not just this belief that democracy cures all ills, but that our government is inflexible to the extreme, without any ability to stop on a dime, smell the change in the wind. Only: "full speed ahead, surge and be dammed, as they stand up, we will stand down."
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
Pearle should listen carefully to the rest of it. At least JFK and his brother could distinguish friend from foe.
It was more like the "Hi I'm Richard Perle and Aren't I Congenial, Worldly and Insightful Show."
What the hell does Perle's high school alma mater have to do with the price of beans... and I was SOOOO impressed with all his influential "good friends" as well. What a buffoon.
Today, four years after the invasion, you might think someone, somewhere, might have taking Pearle aside and suggested to him of possible reasons why his democracy project idea was failing ( a mere 30 minute stopover and perusal at JihadWatch might have tipped him off too-). His interview with Fakhravar (Iranian in exile) says to me not only does he think his plan was/is wonderful, we might want to start planning the same democracy project strategy for Iran!
While extremely disappointing, but much more revealing was the Tuesday night show providing the very evidence of why his project is a failure and cannot succeed. That segment exposed the military's obssession with making sure the numbers of new Iraqi and military recruits were meeting DOD expectations so we could show the world how so many brave native Iraqi voluteers were joining the cause. But when it came time for the new recruits to exhbit some conviction for the cause in Falusha they REFUSED saying that they didn't realize they were expected to fight other Iraqi muslims!!!! The battle plan was scrapped and all (US troops and Iraqi "military) went home.
When US Troops found a weapons and expolosives cache the Iraqi police captain on the scene, whose very job it was to find and destroy these things, was caught by an unsuspecting camaraman muttering to his underlings about how close "they" (US troops) were to finding the real motherlode, which was close by, and thank Allah that they didn't locate this cache yet!
And the American "consultant", a proven motivational speaker no doubt , in a classroom full of recruits pointing to the flag of Iraq and
telling this room full of Allah worshipers that from now on their allegiance MUST be to their flag and their country. You could see, as if a camera was implanted into the minds of all his "students", right through the TV, what these recruits were thinking as he was leading the in the team cheer. Was it....." OK, Professor Consultant, I will disregard and erase from my memory the all remnants of the Koran , all the teachings that have been implanted in my head since I couldwalk and talk about Islam Supremacism. Infidels are really cool people and I will now give my life for the cause". The consultant surely had motivational pamphlets, books and tapes for the reuits to take home and share with family members, for a modest price of course.
btw- My sign in was once Al E Baba, it's now Leave Iraq Now, here and at other sites/blogs where others venture to inquire and discuss the great Jihad. I hope to provoke (not necessarily here). I will be skewered initially of course, as part of the "cut and run" crowd, and I will try to answer them as best I can and probably direct them to this site and to essays like today's. Provoke, incite, engage. Who will join me?
I think that the whole "let's democratize Iraq" or "Let's have Iraq become the light unto the Muslim nations" -- this impulse is a subset of a larger and more pervasive problem. I suspect that the impulse for "democratizing" Muslim tyrannies is straight out of the Cold War playbook. Thus, the bigger problem is the desire to slap the overlay of the Cold War onto the War against Jihadist Islam.
I've read numerous articles on this "Cold War" analogy grafted onto the current wars -- it's repeatedly done. But these analysts are using old tropes which do not fit the new reality. They need to see how the Cold War no longer fits (the linkage to the Cold War is alluring -- the Siren Song -- there are elements which, on the surface, appear similar -- despotic, tyrannical regimes -- but the differences negate the surface similarities.)
The New War needs to be fought in a New Way.
JS:
I agree. In my view, the only useful analogy between the Cold War and Jihad War is that useful idiots in the West make the war so damn difficult to fight.
Provoslavni,
I don't know if I follow what you are saying here:
"Interestingly, just like the Muslims, both neo-Cons and their neo-Liberal clones are more than willing to spread their "faith" at the point of the sword. However, as Hugh points out so eloquently, thier idol of democracy has feet of clay."
Are you saying that democracy in general is doomed, or that it just doesn't work in Islamic societies and Russia?
Also wondering, what is a neo-Liberal?
"While extremely disappointing, but much more revealing was the Tuesday night show providing the very evidence of why his project is a failure and cannot succeed. That segment exposed the military's obssession with making sure the numbers of new Iraqi and military recruits were meeting DOD expectations so we could show the world how so many brave native Iraqi voluteers were joining the cause. But when it came time for the new recruits to exhbit some conviction for the cause in Falusha they REFUSED saying that they didn't realize they were expected to fight other Iraqi muslims!!!! The battle plan was scrapped and all (US troops and Iraqi "military) went home.
When US Troops found a weapons and expolosives cache the Iraqi police captain on the scene, whose very job it was to find and destroy these things, was caught by an unsuspecting camaraman muttering to his underlings about how close "they" (US troops) were to finding the real motherlode, which was close by, and thank Allah that they didn't locate this cache yet!
And the American "consultant", a proven motivational speaker no doubt , in a classroom full of recruits pointing to the flag of Iraq and
telling this room full of Allah worshipers that from now on their allegiance MUST be to their flag and their country. You could see, as if a camera was implanted into the minds of all his "students", right through the TV, what these recruits were thinking as he was leading the in the team cheer."
-- from a posting above
Yes, that part of the night's revelations was something. The Iraqi soldiers who refused to fight "other Muslims" in Fallujah. Who did they think the Americans would be training them and arming to fight -- the Americans? And then the cuaght-on-microphone remarks of the Iraqi police captain, supposedly uncovering bomb-making material with his American colleagues, but behind the backs of those Americans telling his fellow Iraqis that the "big stuff" was with his mullah.
And finally one more of those dismal efforts by some cheerleading American, asking the "Iraqis" present to give me a boom, give me a sis, give me a sis-boom-bah, for "Iraq, Iraq, Iraq." Or cheers and idiocy to that effect.
And that is how things proceed, when no one wishes to sit down, study Islam, study Iraq, and begin to admit, not that here and there "mistakes were made"but that the entire effort tto remake Iraq, to give it a democracy (defined simply as the holding of purple-thumbed "elections" which have been so completely misunderstood by the Bush Administration and its loyalists outside -- for god's sake, they've been holding "elections" in Egypt, and Algeria, and Syria for years now, but
But let us not be uncharitable. Something a bit better than that might, just might, be brought to Iraq. It would take a million Ameridan soldiers prepared to stay there for forty years. It would take trillions of dollars. It would take an enormous effort by the Infidels of America, whose Project it would become to remake Iraq. It would require constraining Islam in Iraq, as it was constrained in Turkey over 80 years, but the constraints would have to be far more constraining than what was systematically put in place by Ataturk in Turkey.
Oh, it could be done. And meanwhile, Da'wa (which proceeds like a military campaign, with handbooks, and targetted groups, and written scripts as to how to gain recruits for the Army of Islam, by artfully omitting a great deal and emphasizing the anodyne or the false) will continue. And demographic conquest in Western Europe will continue. And the money, some ten trillion dollars since 1973, that has gone to the Arab states and Iran, will become twenty, forty, eighty trillion dollars.
Oh, we could "do something" in Iraq, and thereby destroy ourselves and leave to its own devices the rest of the Western world.
Or we could do something else. We could learn a lesson, and get out at once, starting now, and leave the "Iraqis" to make peace or make war with one another. Sensible Infidels must hope it is the latter, and that their co-religionists on both sides enter the fray, with volunteers, and tens of billions of dollars, and war materiel. I hope it becomes, within Iraq and through its spillover effects as distant as Yemen and Pakistan and Muslim communities in the West, something akin to that eight-year war between Iran adn Iraq.
We want to weaken the Camp of Islam. We want, if possible, to divide and demoralize it. Iraq presents that possibility on a platter, or rather on two platters: the Sectarian (Shi'a and Sunni), in the one place in the world where those two tectonic plates meet, and the Shi'a are locally, if not in the greater world of Islam, as strong as the Sunnis, and quite capable of staving them off, in the south and in Baghdad (or inflicting such counter-terror, with their militias, on the Sunnis, once the Americans are gone, the kind of attacks that in fact are the only thing that might stop the attacks by Sunnis of Al Qaeda, or other Sunnis, on Shi'a civliians. That is what the Shi'a know, and the Americans do not, and do not want to know, but eventually that is what will happen, whenver the Americans leave. They should leave now. They should have left yesterday, or the day before yesterday. And if American interests were properly defined, instead of defined merely as preventing any admission of a mistake -- a mistake in the definition of the war (not a "war on terror") and a mistake in the aims declared for Iraq that not only do not make sense, but are the exact opposite of what one should wish to achieve in Iraq -- not "unity" but continued division -- that would have been understood, instead of being still, a proposition that very few wish to embrace.
For many of those who dislike the Administration couch their opposition to the war not in sensible hard-headed terms, in terms of fighting more cleverly all the instruments of Jihad, and in seeing the weakening of the Camp of Islam, and diminishing, by the spectacle of internecine strife in Iraq and outside, of Islam's appeal to the naive or the willing fellow-travellers (as so many of those suffering from the twin pathologies of anti-Americanism and antisemitism have become).
And finally, the ethnic quarrel between the rightly resentful Kurds is of long duration. The KUrds who suffered not only from Saddam Hussein's mass murder, are keenly aware that their treatment, the persecution and forced exile and murdering of them, by Arabs, controlled by an Arab government, elicited not a syllable of sympathy or concern from any Arab government or Arab intellectual or Arab institution or the Arab League, save for Kanan Makiya. Why, after all, when Islam is a vehicle for Arab supremacism, should one expect Arabs to care, for they are believers in that supremacism. Do any Arabs ever protest when Arabs persecute or kill non-Arab Muslims? Not in Iraq. And who protested when the Arabs of Algeria suppressed violently the Berbers, whenever they demanded an end to cultural and linguistic imperialism, and then were beaten or shot dead in Tizi-Ouzou and elsewhere in Algeria? And what Arabs have protested the Sudanese government's mass killings of 400,000 black African Muslims in Darfur? Not only have none of them protested or tried to stop it, but Egypt and other Arab governments have run diplomatic interference, trying in every way to protect the Sudan from outside condemnation and humanitarian intervention? These are merely three cases that illustrate the general rule: within Islam, Arabs believe that Arabs rule, and Arab interests always must dominate, and non-Arabs may accept Islam, but they must also yield, when they yield to islamization, to a forced arabization as well. A free Kurdistan would or could inspire, if properly exploited, others, and not only the Kurds in Iran and Syria, but also the Berbers and other non-Arab Muslims, to take a look again at Islam, and to see it, properly, as that vehicle for Arab supremacism that it has been since the first century of Islam.
And that might make possible, among the 80% of the world's Muslims who are not Arab, a weakening of fervor, perhaps a falling off in faith, possibly an increase in apostasy. From our viewpoint, the viewpoint of Infidels, that could only be seen as a good thing.
Someone above writes that "Richard Perle is an idiot." Of course he isn't. He is very very intelligent. But he may have thought that being right about so many things, and listening to those charming westenized secularized Muslims one can meet in official Washington (think Shaha Ali Riza, or Ahmad Chalabi, or Ms. Nafisi, or for that matter think of Fouad Ajami), and accepting, without more, their misreading of their own cultures, thjeir own unwilligness to get to the heart of what explains the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of states and societies suffused with Islam (it is Islam itself), whether it be out of some residual filial piety, or embarrassment, or a fear, hardly admitted to, that if Islam is indeed the problem than what, oh what, can be done to save Iraq or Iran or Syria (Mr. Ghadry) or Egypt (Mr. Ibrahim).
They are the unrepresentative tip of the worlds from which they come. They are not concerned, as we must be, with weakening the Camp of Islam. That idea offends them. They are not concerned, as we must be, with checking Muslim immigration to the West, and halting as well campaigns of Da'wa. That would offend them (and the real test, perhaps, to see if someone is a "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslim is to find out if he, too, thinks Da'wa is dangerous and he too, thinks that Muslim migration to the Western world must be stopped for the sake of that Western world, but merely continues to call himself a Muslim out of that residual filial -- not religious -- piety, or because it makes him better able (as with Magdi Allam), to state more convincingly the case against Islam.
Too many "nice, good, secular, westernized" Muslims at Georgetown and McLean dinner parties are able to present their hopes and dreams to those insufficiently secure in their knowledge of Islam and of the 1350-year history of Islamic conquest. One did not make policy for the Soviet Union, and shut down Radio Liberty and the SAC bases, because there were many Soviet dissidents, or even those in the Party who were fed up with the Party line. One has to be as wary of the good Muslims, the ones who helped to convince, or perhaps inveigle, American policymakers into attacking Iraq (and then giving that country an Instant Makeover)as of the obvious and sinister propagandists who are stationed in, or running around, the capitals of the West, in such numbers, from the Arab and Muslim world.
Speaking of Muslim immigration into the West (namely, into the United States) -- there's an article in today's National Post (April 19, 2007 "U.S., Australia to swap refugees: Bizarre plan intended to deter asylum seekers") by Nick Squires. Australia has a policy of "dispatching Asian and Middle Eastern boat people to other countries". The U.S. has agreed to accept 400 of these "boat people." Critics of the plan claim that it will only encourage people to get to Australia so as to get to the United States (it will "reward them with a new life in the United States"). In return Australia has agreed to accept Cubans smuggled into the U.S. (this is all about Bush rewarding Australia for its support of the Iraq war -- yet another unintended consequence of the War in Iraq -- more Middle Easterners from the Land of Oz...who'd have thought...)
"Are you saying that democracy in general is doomed, or that it just doesn't work in Islamic societies and Russia?
Also wondering, what is a neo-Liberal?"
Asked by: Jan Sobieski
No, I don't believe democracy is doomed, only that it is not neccesarily the best form of government for all societies, especially Muslim ones. A democracy is only effective in a mature, educated, and economically open society. Countries like Taiwan, South Korea, and Chile had dictatorships that built a free economy and educated middle class. With these in place, they transformed into the vibrant democracies we see today. Russia is clearly not there yet.
When Russia has a firm system of law and order, suppresses the current state of endemic corruption, and restores the work ethic destroyed by communism, then maybe it will be ready for democracy. As for Muslim countries, I believe this process will take generations to overcome the totalitarian grip of Islam. That's why it is better to support enlightened un-Islamic despots like the late Shah.
As for your second question, a neo-Liberal is the leftist counterpart to a neo-Conservative. Both have a somewhat Trotskyite or Gramscist view of the world. Both also believe with almost blind faith that their own version of democratic globalism is the cure for all the world's ills. Typical neo-Liberals are people like Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and George Soros.
Are you saying that democracy in general is doomed, or that it just doesn't work in Islamic societies and Russia?
Also wondering, what is a neo-Liberal?
Posted by: Jan Sobieski
I'll take a stab at that. Yes, in the long run, democracy in general is doomed. There will always be more people who can be swayed by promises of getting "a larger share" at the expense of the small percentage of those who are genuinely productive.
Politicians are unproductive members of the "productive classes" who always pander to the less productive - the "stimmvieh" ie. Vote Cattle.
Bringing in unproductive people from the outside produces more manipulable "stimmvieh" at the same time as it drains resources.
At some point the productive members of any society tend to look elsewhere for greener pastures. The time when lack of resources makes the promises that politicians make impossible to keep will be the time that democracy takes a hit.
Ps. a Neo-liberal is the same as an old Liberal.
"Innocent of history"
Don't be so pc, don't be so compassionate.
Call him IGNORANT! Perle is dangerous to us in his outright ignorance!
Once it was discovered that a key part of the series was dropped at the last minute, due to "troubling political views of the producers" and "failing to provide an adequately balanced opinion", you knew what you were getting.
The sad thing about the administration's failure to see the right strategy in Iraq is that Bin Laden drew the lesson so clearly for us: the notion that using relatively small charges to unleash much larger forces, one can marshal natural forces in ways that cannot easily be countered.
We now call this asymmetric warfare. Twenty men in four aircraft bring American air traffic, financial markets, and its largest city to a screeching halt. The episode itself was not even the result to the aircraft, but of the kinetic forces unleashed by the aircraft. An explosion causes a structural failure which causes a much larger explosion (the collapse), which causes a much larger explosion (the economic and security fallout). And there is virtually no army to attack in retribution or in trying to restore security.
By sending an army to occupy and secure a muslim nation, we walked right into the teeth of that equation: our lives and materiel destroyed by forces we can not ably strike back at. Even the Iranians learned the lesson, but we did not.
But we could have played their own strategy back at them. We could have used a small explosion (a bomb or two or a hundred in a presidential palace) to unleash a larger explosion (sectarian strife) to unleash an even larger explosion (regional strife as extra-national partisans are brought into the sectarian battles).
Just as 9-11 was for Bin Laden, we would have paid little to accomplish our mission, and there would have been no American helicopter to shoot down, humvee to blow up, or soldier to snipe. There would be no abu ghraib, no falluja, no murder trials, and no immediate Iranian threat.
Asymmetric warfare is today what guerrilla warfare was in Vietnam. You either get with it, or you keep bleeding.
To put it more succinctly: sectarian and tribal division, when mixed with the Islam's throat-cutting moral certitude, forms the gravity of the Islamic world. Simply undermine the structures, dictators and hegemons that hold the current order together, and the whole islamic world comes crashing down in a tangle of blood and mayhem.
Caliphate, indeed.
The corpulent "motivational speaker" was beyond parody, oblivious even to the laughter coming from those 'recruits' as they parrotted those inane cheers. Unfortunately, he perfectly encapsulates the entire Bush administration's attitude and approach toward Iraq.
Perle is badly miseducated, but both intelligent and sincere. I wouldn't think it beyond possibility that he might become enlightened oneday, like Alan Dershowitz, and do a great deal more good than harm.
You think Alan Dershowitz has become "enlightened" about Islam or about the Lesser Jihad against Israel? He shows no signs of being so. His series of "stout defenses" of Israel are vitiated by his uncomprehension of why the Arabs and other Muslims are opposed to Israel, for if he did, he would not prate on about the "Palestinians deserve a state" and all the rest of it, but realize that there is no solution, or rather, the only solution is for Israel not to give up any more territory that it must continue to possess to meet the aboslute minimal security demands of its own citizens, including control of the aquifers as well as of invasion routes and the vulnerability of its handful of airports. Furthermore, under the Mandate Israel has legal title to the "West Bank" and to Gaza. If it chooses for practical reasons to give up Gaza, that does not mean it has lost its claim, not as military occupier, but as the intended beneficiary of the terms of the Mandate created by the League of Nations and entrusted to Great Britain, for the sole purpose (there was no other in Mandatory Palestine, though in the Mandates elsewhere, it was the Arabs who were the sole beneficiares) of establishing the Jewish National Home.
Dershowitz is a poor advocate -- though he thinks of himself as a splendid one -- because he doesn't understand Islam, and won't take the time at this point to study it thoroughly, or to rethink what is more than merely rhetorical support, on his part, for the "Palestinians" who in his view "deserve a state." Oh no they don't. And setting one up would merely be creating a situtation of intolerable difficulty for Israel, endangering its existence. No ifs, no ands, no buts about it. If you want Israel to survive (and of course many don't care, or even look with pleasure on the prospect of it disappearing) then you cannnot ask Israel to give up more than it already has. Might as well as the Americans to "make peace" back in in 1951 with the Russians by "assuaging their fears" in several ways: disbanding NATO, bringing home all American troops from bases everywhere outside the 48 states and also permitting the Russians to have bases up and down the Mississippi, just to relieve their worries. What some are asking of Israel is like that, only a hundred times worse.
We can win these wars, we just need to be hard.
It would help if the military and politicians, especially the American Military and American Politicians, stopped trying to use soothing semantics to hide the truth of what is going on. They caused the Second World War to last a year longer than necessary, made a mess of Korea, got a complete pasting in Vietnam, and now are back again another national humiliation.
What's needed is a new military doctrine of how to win these wars. So far, just the usual application of overwhelming force in the wrong direction is used. The parralels with the "Bright Shining Lie", of Vietnam are massive. Same problem, a tough determined enemy, prepared to die for his cause, who can constantly reinforce from across porus borders. His death is counted as nothing, not even reported, while every American, British death is a tragedy for the country. What do our esteemed leaders do, well apply more of the same, until everyone's sick of it. How long before the American troops start "fragging" their officers again?
We need to get real, armies aren't built for police actions, get the job done, or get the hell out.
We can win, if the will's there to do it, but we have to be cruel. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, other times you have to be cruel, to be cruel.
But the men needed would be enormous, it would be back to a conscription army. You know how that works, rich kids from America's political classes end up in the Coastguard, or the National Guard in Virginia, so they can run for office with a clear conscience. Shame about the poor kids, but then again, it's always tough luck on the bods.
Time to wake up now.
"We can win these wars..."
-- from a posting above, in which the poster then goes on to describe the need for conscription, and a million men in Iraq, and all the rest of the boots-on-the-ground stuff
How would a half-million or a million men help us "win" in Iraq? What constitutes "winning"? The definition, as best we can make out, by the Bush administration is that "winning" would mean an end to sectarian and ethnic strife, sweet reason and compromise over an oil law, and over the amount of autonomy to be exercised by the three main regions in the country: Kurdish north, Sunni west, Shi'a south, with Baghdad (now becoming less Sunni and more Shi'a every day) under tripartite rule, something like Vienna under the Four-Power Occupation in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
It is the definition of "winning" that is wrong. The definition of "winning" should be: does this outcome divide and demoralize Islam? Does it cause problems for Muslims? Does it point out, to both Muslims and non-Muslims, something about the nature of Islam -- for example, the inability to compromise, the reliance on force or guile, the belief that every party is either victor or vanquished, that are consistent with, and encouraged by, what Qur'an and Hadith and Sira inculcate. Does the outcome in Iraq make it more or less likely that non-Arab Muslims will be intrigued by the ability of the Kurds to throw off the non-Arab yoke, and might that inspire other non-Arab Muslims to rebel against their Arab overlords and intermittent tormentors (as with the Berbers in Algeria, or black Africans in Darfur)?
The answer to those questions suggests that the war in Iraq can only be "won" by an American withdrawal, not by an American military presence. Furthermore, the emphasis on war as a military matter is wrong. This war is much more one of arming the populace with a good knowledge of Islam, of helping to immunize as many as possible to the inveiglements and seductions of Da'wa. The Muslim Brotherhood has a book giving pointers on how to conduct Da'wa, and the parts about the version, simplified and specially "concocted" (that is the word used) for "Afro-Americans" is remarkable for its open condescension.
How could a million men in Iraq work to check Da'wa in America, or demographic conquest by Muslims in Western Europe? How could a million men in Iraq help to diminish the OPEC oil revenues that Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates, and Kuwait and Qatar, and Libya and Algeria, and Iran, all use to further the aggressive march around the world of the adherents and missionaries of Islam?
How?
This question is never answered by supporters of the war in Iraq, because they don't have an answer. Many of them have no idea about the world-wide manifestations of Jihad. Many of them do not understand how insidious these carefully-targetted well-financed campaigns of Da'wa can be, or why the mosques and madrasas that go up in your city or hometown are far more dangerous to your wellbeing than what happens between Sunni and Shi'a in parts of Baghdad. Whether Saudi Arabia and its OPEC fellows take in another ten trillion dollars over the next one-third century, or twenty or forty trillion, matters far more than who gets what in Baghdad or the rest of Iraq.
That needs to be grasped. If not by the hallucinating Bush and his closest associates, at least by those outside that immediate circle. That will help to end this mess, to get us all unstuck from Tarbaby Iraq so that sensible and much cheaper and much more effective measures can be undertaken.
Have to agree with mountainecho- you don't fight these kind of wars with regular soldiers when you are not facing regular soldiers.
Undermine the enemy through Psyops propaganda (since they are prone to superstitious hysteria) and disorienting fits-their-irrational-prejudices rumors, -through unexpected and outlandish forms of assault, -by having no "off-limits" targets (mosques, religious figures, funerals, etc.), and with no journalists embedded at all, ever. (They slow down the troops and undermine the effort.)
This administration's (and its opposition's) lack of historical insight, failure to study Islam, puny tactical imagination, and their failure to impose a strongman on a land that only understands such a partriachal, homegrown tyrant made this whole enterprise a "shoot yourself in the foot over and over and call it intentional" folly once the statue of Saddam fell.
You either conquer and crush the enemy with every means at your disposal, or don't even bother doing any more than destroying the Saddamist regime, checking for WMD's, and instantly installing one of his more tractable henchmen to control the unleashed menagerie. Then bailing as you call it "victory".
The "civilized" mode of warfare is doomed against any enemy who is not.
As every day in Iraq demonstrates.
We absolutely should not continue to engage in a ground war in Iraq. We most certainly should withdraw and witness, from afar, the continued ground war in Iraq, after the US withdraws. It should be a long movie, so plenty of popcorn, is highly recommended.
Observing how Muslims deal with other Muslims, without soft-hearted Infidels, with their Geneva Conventions and all the rest of it, could do much as a Demonstration Project, for that large number of Infidels who just do not, as yet, quite get Islam. And the unending refusal of either side to compromise -- the Shi'a to share their new-found power in any serious way (and why, after all they have endured, should they?) with the Sunnis, and the Sunni Arabs to acquiesce in the loss of control of Baghdad, which (after the Abbasid rulers moved from Samarra) became the center of the Abbasid Caliphate and of the Islamic world during the centuries of its greatest glory. Even though in Arab mythology that glory has been much exaggerated, and too much credit claimed for the Arabs and Muslims (for the translators were Jews and Christians, and of the dozen or two dozen famous names in Islamic cultural history who were Muslim, some were dangerously free-thinking, as the scientist Al-Raza, and others, only a generation or two away from being Christians, or Jews or Zoroastrians, had been mentally formed in a milieu that still retained its non-Islamic mental freedoms, still possessed -- until the gates of ijtihaad were shut, the mental freedom necessary for the enterprise of science.
Losing Baghdad, the first city of Islam for 500 years (or a little less, if one subtracts for the early decades in the late 8th and early 8th century, when Samarra, with its mediagenic rose-red mewliya, is taken into account), cannot be possible for Sunni Arabs to accept. They will fight on. They are more aggressive and so far, much more vicious than the Shi'a. But they are also only 19% of the population, and Baghdad is being emptied out of Sunnis (they are down to about 15%), and they will not return. The madinat al-salaam, Baghdad, is about to become Shi'a. And all the old tales -- about how the Shi'a supposedly helped betray the city to the Mongols under Hulego, and how they are meretricious (see Mubarak's denunciation of the Shi'a about six months ago), or "Rafidite dogs" (in Al-Zarqawi's formulation), are always close to the surface.
The Sunni Arabs, with their hysteria, real and feigned, over a "Shi'a crescent" (see Mubarak, see Abdullah of Jordan, see the Saudis), have been trying to keep the Americans bogged down in Iraq, protecting the Sunnis by holding the Shi'a accountable and at bay. But it won't continue forever, and not the least of the hostilities -- which may not be large-scale, but will be constant, and will tempt the Shi'a to respond to with the militias that have been temporarily quiet, and escalation is natural, and the "volunteers" and money and weaopnry that will flow in on the Sunni side will, in turn, have to be matched by co-religionists of the Shi'a, and the spectacle will help to focus Infidel minds, and buy time for their necessary focussing, on Islam in Iraq, Islam in the world, Islam - and millions of Muslims -- in their very midst.
It's highly desirable. It's the way to pluck a "victory" from what, otherwise, would be a fiasco.
Winning is the goal you set yourself, on a strategic and tactical level. I'm not necessarily saying we should have gone into Iraq, it was always a nonsense, we should have flattened Iran, the country that's been exporting terrorism for decades.
But, say your goal is to allow the moderates, and there are moderates, and people who just don't give a toss, the power, to end the secetarian, muslim strife once and for all. This has been done before, it's just harsh. The British in the Boer War, the French in Algeria(which they were winning on the ground, just the people back home wanted out), you open the concentration camps, and sweep anyone who's even remotely connected with the enemy into them. You partition the country, you insist on identity cards, and you make sure no-one moves without your say so. You seal the borders tight, and kill anyone who crosses them without permission. You assasinate, murder and destroy, Mosques, or whatever it takes. You bury the dead with a pig.(I think a British general did this once.)
As your radical enemy dies away, the moderates will come out of the woodwork. When there's no one left to kill them, they'll appear. If you can't take the price, don't start a war.
War, all that matters is you win.
Ian-
I think it was General "Black" Jack Pershing, in the Muslim uprising in the Phillipines (during the 1898-1900 Spanish-American War), who made pork-prevents-Paradise connection, when it came to burying the terrorists. Although a Brit, fighting the same superstition, may have drawn the same conclusion. Great minds think alike.
Fitzgerald unfairly debates the lowest common denominators on this issue, using the common phrases, "candy and flowers will greet the American liberators", "no WMD" and all the rest.
First, toppling Saddam was a geopolitical goal. A long-term one at that. As I write in June 2004:
http://www.americandaily.com/article/1448
It was not solely WMD. In fact, it was the 2 percent solution. Meaning that even a two percent chance that he would turn over WMD to islamist nuts was unacceptable following 911.
And it WAS 911 that attracted many paleos like me and Bush to the neocon arguments that an alternative ideology must supplant an existing (obnoxious) one. Political Islam will not go away by itself, any more than Christianity had reformed by itself, free of external and internal pressures.
Fitzgerald says that Islam is the problem, and the reason there's no democracy and pluralism. Duhh. At least as far as the middle east is concerned, he's correct. The question then becomes: can we do anything about it?
We were able dismantle other ideologies. We toppled fascism and communist totalitarianism. We planted or assisted over 100 successful democracies in in South American, Eastern Europe, and Asia. With the revolution in communications and the internet, we could have been ready to influence the masses of arabs. It worked in the Soviet block. And imagine if Bush wasn't incompetent, and the liberals and Euros weren't backstabbing us?
What is Fitzgerald's solution for the middle east? He writes:
QUOTE
What makes sense in Iraq was only to find, seize, and destroy major weaponry, and then, by removing the Sunni despotism (disguised as Ba'athism), to allow the situation itself to naturally work to weaken the Camp of Islam -- with the release of those sectarian and ethnic hostilities which the Americans had done nothing to encourage.
UNQUOTE
I don't see a solutions there. 911 showed us that extremism "there" can reach out to us "here". Was toppling Saddam a solution? In the aforementioned article, I argue it was part of the solution. But it had to be done correctly. Using what Perle described as the French model. The government in exile taking power, with an iron fist at first. Control was necessary. The fatal flaw was that we placed an American face on the occupation, and a weak one at that.
The other option could have been designating three self-governing provinces as many had suggested. In both cases (gov in exhile taking power and the possible splitting up of Iraq), there was the possibility of buying time for a phasing in of some form of consentual government. Not a Jeffersonian model---but something. How else can one start it, but in a crude form?
The theory behind the democratization policy was not to convert arabs into zionists, but rather to empower them with the instruments of self government, which would redirect their attention towards, and channel their energies into local politics---improving services and infrastructure in their own communities. Autocratic governments tend to do the opposite: Infantalization of the public to make them believe what the dictator wants them to believe. That was one of the idealistic components in toppling Saddam Hussein in the first place. That, plus ending the genocide of Marsh Arabs, and oppression of the Shi'a and Khurds.
The flaw by Bush was that he thought he could get a model of democracy---without a firm hand in power; without a long phasing in period; without an Iraqi at the helm from the gitgo; and without allowing for the option of breaking iraq into self governing sectarian regions.
No wonder Fitzgerald is disappointed. But the fault is in Bush---not the plan.
Gary Kasner
Just an observation.
Unfortunatly, as a regular observer, sometimes poster, at JihadWatch, I suspect Hugh may not get to reply to your post, as much as I would like him to As much as I would like to respond as well, this article, although days old, may be a little stale. If I were to respond, it may end up as a 2 way dialogue between you and I, when others should benefit from a good debate.
There is an amazing amount of articles and essays posted on a daily basis on this site so it is difficult to continue threads ad infinitum. I find the discussions are offered by some very sincere, intelligent, learned persons, like yourself.
I think you should do two things:
1. Do revisit this site. Fitzgerald writes on the topic of Iraq withdrawal at least 2-3 times a week.
2. Do come prepared. I will let Fitzgerald speak for himself, but I believe a major premise of his argument is that Islam and democracy are inconsistent and cannot work together. To undertand that premsie you must know about democracy (which of course you do) and about Islam ( which I don't know if you do, but I presume you do not know enough about). Islam 101 on this site is a good start. Books by Spencer, Hirsi-Ali, Y'eor and others in the Books section are even better. You can also google " Iraq democracy fitzgerald " and see an entire list of essays articles that expands on the argument.
Sorry to sound patronizing but do come back in any event.
Dear 'Leave Iraq now',
Thanks for your feedback. I consider arguments a learning tool. And I hope to test mine against others, in order to learn.
This website and Robert Spencer has had a great influence on me over the last several months since I discovered it. I'm convinced that islam is a uniquely beligerent and intollerent religion, based upon it's core scriptures and teachings. And consistently and uniformly so, unlike any other current religion I'm aware of.
It explained to me why Muslims are at war with so many other groups, and why arab nations have resisted political and religious reform towards modernization. So for that reason, I'm grateful to Spencer, Fitz, et.al. And I try to keep up with the daily email news bulletin, when I'm able to. I will take your suggestion and look for more posting by Fitz on Iraq.
But I have read a great deal about Islam on this site. I had a lot of debates with friends about it, so I had to read the basic islam 101 type postings. I particularly appreciated the open forums here and on Front Page, where I can see a debate of sorts between pro Spencer advocates respond to the pro muslim side.
I support Spencer's contention that the pathologies consistent with muslim teachings makes it inconsistent with liberty and pluralism, let alone democracy. (I'm an atheist, by the way.) But there's theory, and there's practice. Let me explain:
POINT ONE: Spencer says that moderate muslims must resist the jihadist propaganda, by being armed with the knowledge of the true abhorent teachings of islam. Fine, I have no problem with stating the truth. But then there's strategy: To what end are you doing that? Do you expect moderate muslims to give up islam and embrace another religion which is not so intollerant?! How successful do you think that will be? Now hold that thought.
POINT TWO: In following the debates against that jerk Dinesh deSouza, Spencer convinced me that there is nothing we're doing politically around the world that is justifying muslim attacks on us. The attacks are not because we defend Israel, or impose our culture in the mideast, etc etc. Instead, we are at war because of what is intrinsic in muslim literalism, among which is exclusivity, of domination---not coexistence.
Neither Spencer nor Fitz seem to have a game plan for dealing with the above. Correct me if I'm wrong. So let me offer mine:
Points 1 and 2, plus the attack on 911 and all the attacks prior, tells me that fortress america is no longer an option for us. We will not remain safe from a nuke attack by leaving the rest of the world alone. That requires a plan like the one I described in "The Soil is Everything". That didn't mean occupying a muslim nation for 4 yrs! It meant a lot of things besides military force. None of which we did well, if at all.
The rebuttal I would expect is that islam cannot be reformed. This will involve a longer discussion than we can have here. But just this: You don't reform the religion. You reform the people who adhere to the religion. You seduce them with enlightenment, prosperity, and a good example---like a democratic arab-muslim state. Muslims participate in democracy in India, the US, and Malasia. We need one in the mideast. All I will say is that it has been done with Christianity. Christians didn't become atheists. They became protestants. The old testiment is quaint---it is not heresy.
So give me a strategic plan. Do not tell me we should just let the Sunni and Shi'a kill each other. They will unit at the drop of a hat to kill us first.