"this shoot-the-moon, Hail Mary of a foreign policy in Iraq is not just a policy to make America safer at home. It is the only thing that stands between Islam and its own destruction."
That, I think is absolutely right and I'm quite sure some of the cooler heads in the Islamic states know it.
Very nice essay, as usual.
To employ it would plunge this nation into a decades-long tunnel of political and spiritual agony, and change our destiny and character forever.
If the provocation were an Iranian WMD launched by their current nutcake leadership, I suspect our spiritual agony would last about 2 weeks--except in Berkeley, Hollywood, Austin, and Ann Arbor.
Posted by Mike Anderson at January 4, 2006 11:52 AMLook, this is matter of cultural change. Period.
One way or the other, either the West changes, or "Islam" changes. (There could of course be lots of killing along the way). But in the end, there will be change.
This exercise in changing Iraq is going to cause ripples through the "Islamic" world. Once they get a taste of western consumer goods, its all over but the shouting. Most of these places are going to end up resembling Turkey.
Posted by Eric Blair at January 4, 2006 1:06 PMActually, via television, the internet, and the global distribution system, they've been having a big "taste" for some decades. Buying an SUV doesn't cause you to change your religion, it just lets you take more people to the mosque.
Posted by Gerard Van Der Leun at January 4, 2006 1:11 PMThe barbarians are at the gate and we fiddle hoping they will go away. That statement was made, I am sure,during the fall of the Roman empire. Sadly, they did not know it was falling, the books had not been printed yet. All great societies will fail, human nature will see to that.
Posted by jeffersonranch at January 4, 2006 2:38 PMThe Islamic machine is fueled by jihad(struggle in the cause of Allah) of the sword(suicide bombers in modern terms) and the Muslim woman's fruitful womb. Muslims have the edge on demographics way beyond any European country and slightly ahead of the US. When they become 5-10% of the nation's population, they become active and assert themselves against the host country.
Why don't we believe them when they tell us over and over that they want to convert us all and rule with Islamic law, the sharia? For this is what finally happens everywhere they've become the majority.
We don't have to toy with genocide. Due to the lack of their education worldwide, many Muslims are extremely superstitious. If the Kaba at Mecca were destroyed, the superiority of their god Allah would be shown to be false. It would bring down two of the five pillars of Islam, as bowing 5 times a day and taking a pilgrimage to a hole in the ground instead of a black rock would be useless and extremely hummiliating.
Posted by Heloise at January 4, 2006 3:29 PM"Actually, via television, the internet, and the global distribution system, they've been having a big "taste" for some decades. Buying an SUV doesn't cause you to change your religion, it just lets you take more people to the mosque."
Not really. The "Elites" of the society have been having a taste for a while, not the general populace. Its sorta like China and India, just now are those countries beginning to develop that enemy of indigenous culture, the middle-class consumer. Wait till they get a taste, like the the great mass of Iraqis are, non state run TV, and all that.
All that being said, if somebody nuked Saudi Arabia off the map, I wouldn't even shrug.
Posted by Eric Blair at January 4, 2006 4:06 PMWell said. I take your point. Perhaps we can call upon Wal-Mart to start opening some stores.
Say, that's not a bad idea at all.
Posted by Gerard Van Der Leun at January 4, 2006 4:21 PMAnother very thoughtful essay.
I wrote something on this topic (from my low-brow perpective though, not as refined a piece of writing as yours) the gist of which is that the terrorists really are just a bunch of fascists, even though, like the Japanese in the 30s, they have many of their people under their spell. If we concentrate on eliminating the bad guys we will find that it wasn't a problem with 'Islam' at all, just as we did with Japan.
The Japan analogy is a good one in other ways. America went hard against the Japanese population in ways (eg fire-bombing residential areas) that it might not have done with hindsight, and US troops outraged by Japanese atrocities committed some atrocities of their own. Obviously the Militarists/Fascists were much worse, but that's not my point. The point is these actions were used very skillfully by the Militarists to induce and increase a fanaticism in the population which (despite historical myths) is not a Japanese national/ethnic characteristic at all.
It was thanks to the apparent proof offered by the out-of-character behaviour of some American soldiers on a few occasions, that Japanese and Okinawans, even those who had previously visited the US, were utterly convinced that the Militarist propaganda was true.
By 1944 and 45, with the power the Militarists had by then, the difference this made was probably marginal, but that's not the case today. Those on the Right who paint grotesque pictures of monstrous Islam and its history of cruel fanaticism are doing our cause no good at all. Endless hyperbolising about a 'Fourth World War' just makes a needless clash of civilisations all the more possible (although let's be frank, still extremely unlikely).
Sensible opinions like yours are welcome and needed.
( Sorry, LGF, they really are just Fascists and Islam really is a religion of peace. )
Posted by Kip Watson at January 4, 2006 4:48 PMPerhaps we can call upon Wal-Mart to start opening some stores.
That would be interesting:
In Egypt, you'd have to bribe the greeter to get a cart, hire a 'shopper' to put the items in your cart, give a gratuity to the cashier to get them to bag your stuff, and then a hire a porter to take it to your car (which you've 'tipped' the parking lot attendant to guard).
In 'Palestine', 80% of the stock wouldn't make it into the store; the rest would get shot up by various militia units demanding jobs as stockers and department managers. And Hamas wants to control the electronics department...
The Arab side of the Gulf might do okay. The Saudis, however, would just hire more foreign laborers; no Saudi is gonna stand there in a blue vest and say "Welcome to Wal-Mart".
Posted by P.A. Breault at January 4, 2006 4:57 PMMost of us (certainly including Gerard) are well familiar with the three conjectures of our invaluable friend Wretchard at Belmont Club, but for those who are not, I urge a close reading of his seminal essay on this precise subject. Just google 'belmont three conjectures' and you'll find it.
Personally, I think that the Islamofascists are basically "calling Allah out" to reach down in a supernatural way and instantly reverse the present humiliating position of the Islamic world in relation to the the rest of humanity. True absolute faith is a very powerful and dangerous thing. Their only hope is that when our fish let loose with their deadly delivery to Mecca, Allah will simply not allow it to explode, thus demonstrating his pleasure with their commitment of faith in Jihad, and his omnipotence over mankind.
Understand - we REALLY do not think like these people do. See it as brinksmanship with a firm grip on the Koran, facing Mecca. The answer will be delivered with the presence of the mushroom cloud. They know not what they do - truly.
Posted by mezzrow at January 4, 2006 5:05 PMThis reminds me of a comment a read a while back (can't find the reference, sorry).
Paraphrased it's "The way to solve this is for them to act like us for a generation, or for us to act like them for a day".
Posted by Rich at January 4, 2006 5:33 PMThank you for a thoughtful essay, Mr Vanderleun.
May I add one minor footnote about the "demographics"?
The Asia Times Online columnist who uses the pseudonym "Spengler" has convincingly shown, in my opinion, that the "demographics" do not actually favor the Ummah, and that the Islamist terrorist upsurge we are currently witnessing -- armed jihad on all of the borders of the Muslim world, and in many places within them, as well -- should really be seen as the last-ditch effort of a failed civilization that is disintegrating as a result of its contact with the modern, western world.
Although Muslim countries at the present time have much younger populations than European countries, the pace at which the fertility rate is declining in the Ummah is even more rapid than the pace of that decline in Europe. Thus, the Iranian population is actually aging faster than the European population.
The Belmont Club has also written about what he characterized as the sharper side of the western world's two-edged sword -- not the overt military side, but the soft side: Wal-Mart, MacDonald's, pop culture, i.e. all of the things that grow out of a society that actually works. That's the irresistable force that will finally force the Ummah to emerge from the 12th century into the 21st.
Posted by Gandalin at January 4, 2006 5:40 PMThat was another good essay.
I would add one point though, the situation as you describe it has a time limit. And probably a short one at that.
Once the Islamic world has nuclear weapons in sufficient numbers then the whole dynamic changes. Instead of being a nuke the middle east and assorted countries from over the horizon it becomes MAD all over again. This is what truly scares me, pondering the relative insanity levels of those with their fingers soon to be on the red button.
Posted by lemmy at January 4, 2006 9:28 PMFantastic work, as usual.
Posted by gabrielpicasso at January 4, 2006 9:54 PMI am not confident that an aggressive Western respose can be implemented before Western societies are pacified by religious tolerance legislation, economic intimidation, silencing of criticism by lawfare or violence and the growing power of key Muslim swing votes.
In order to preserve an ability to act the West must preserve a freedom to criticise Islam and its adherents. At stake is the French nuclear arsenal first, and much else thereafter.
This is not helped by massive recruitment of Muslims into security services. There is the assumption that the religion itself is "moderate" and that radicals can be screened.
A great essay and I agree with almost all of it. There is one thing that everyone needs to consider though. While we might agonize over the genocide of the Muslim people both here in a theoretical sense and in the possible future discussed here. I've seen nothing in my decade and a half of involvement with and study of the Middle East and Islam that suggests Islam would suffer from any such angst. In fact I have seen plenty to indicate that it wouldn't suffer any crisis of conscience at all. If the shoe were on the other foot, I have no doubt that they would annihilate the entire western world and never look back. All of our history and way of life would become a footnote in an obscure historical text written in Arabic and seldom discussed by Muslim scholars. Islam’s penchant for revising history to suit itself is well documented as is its ability to justify the most heinous of acts. They certainly don't hold a patent on either tendency. The west’s own history testifies to that, but let’s not gloss over Islam's many shortcomings by repeating platitudes about their fallacious status as a "religion of peace".
Posted by Dan at January 5, 2006 2:46 AMDespite the "Peace be upon you" greeting, Islam has never been a "religion of peace".
I know too much military history to believe that for a second.
Posted by Eric Blair at January 5, 2006 5:26 AMFor, as much as we should do everything possible to avoid a second 9/11, the blunt fact is that the United States, Europe and the entire edifice of Western Civilization, can ride out a second 9/11. It can ride out 100 9/11s and still, in an inch of time, return and thrive.I'm not sure the numbers support this. 9/11 has sucked $2 trillion out of our economy to date. Our economy is large and growing fast but it's not that large or growing that fast.
In my view the really correct solution is the equivalent of Israel's wall—a wasps in a bottle plan. You have to feel for the non-wasps trapped in the bottle, though. Unfortunately, such a plan would require worldwide cooperation at a level that I can't imagine.
A key problem is that the European approach so far is more rather than less likely to result in genocide.
I wrote something on this topic (from my low-brow perpective though, not as refined a piece of writing as yours) the gist of which is that the terrorists really are just a bunch of fascists, even though, like the Japanese in the 30s, they have many of their people under their spell. If we concentrate on eliminating the bad guys we will find that it wasn't a problem with 'Islam' at all, just as we did with Japan.
Kip W. is right, the goal of war should be to defeat the bad guys so that they can't harm your citizens - not to wipe out civilizations.
The goal of war really can't be to make the bad guys better people. You might be able to do that after the enemy is defeated, but you can't do that before. The Marshall plan worked because the fascists were no longer in power. The Arab states know that we can nuke them into oblivion - that's why they're fighting us this way. It's why they'll continue to use terrorism as a weapon in their war against us. Our soft diplomacy and our tendency to ignore the fact that these nations are at war with us encourages them to keep using this tactic.
If we're at war with terrorism, we should attack (without nukes) the fascist states that support terror, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran and Syria. We should acknowledge that anyone, no matter where they live or what their citizenship may be, who has recieved Islamist paramilitary training is an enemy combatant, to be dealt with through military means. Anyone who financially supports these paramilitary groups is also an enemy combatant.
Every Muslim on the planet is not a combatant, just as every Japanese person and every European was not a combatant during WWII. The terror supporters and the trained paramilitaries are fascists, those are combatants. You go to war, you kill the bad guys until they surrender and that's how you win. It's a concept that has survived throught the centuries because it works. I'm not sure why we're not applying it now.
Posted by mary at January 5, 2006 8:19 AMAlas, I believe that the last time we were in a state of total war in the 40s, the modus operandi was you kill the bad guys AND the populations surrounding them until they surrender.
Posted by Gerard Van Der Leun at January 5, 2006 10:18 AMAlas, I believe that the last time we were in a state of total war in the 40s, the modus operandi was you kill the bad guys AND the populations surrounding them until they surrender.
As you said, things have changed a lot since then:
The current approach to war in Afghanistan and Iraq is one which can reasonably be called a patty-cake war; one that has been successful, if in nothing else, in minimizing civilian suffering.
In WWII, we were in a state of total war against a military force that was equal to ours. Our current enemies have pitiful conventional military forces, a fact demonstrated by the Six Days War. A conventional war against these nations would not require overwhelming force.
They fight us with terrorism because horrific violence and deception are their strong points, not ours. They fight with terrorism because their conventional military forces are such a joke.
They want to avoid conventional war because they know they'd quickly lose. We should seek it because they're right.
Posted by mary at January 5, 2006 12:20 PMThere is a photo of my friend's grandfather in the Pacific in WWII.
He's on some island, in front of a Billboard that reads:
"Admiral Halsey says, "Kill Japs, Kill Japs, Kill more Japs!"
We haven't quite got to that yet. As GvDL notes, we could. Would that, successfully implemented, in the end, really be so bad?
I don't think it would bother those doing the killing all that much.
Again and again I note that those that agonize over the subject are not the ones that are going to be pulling the triggers. (Or pushing the buttons).
If anything, Iraq has shown that there are enough Muslims willing to 'do it our way' (perhaps a bad phrase) that the rest would do the same, if they got the chance to decide for themselves.
Maybe even the Saudis.
Posted by Eric Blair at January 5, 2006 12:20 PMGee, I'm sure glad George Bush is president and not some of you guys...
A few things:
- Small point, I don't think you can say killing doesn't bother those tasked with undertaking it. That varies, but if WWII is any indication a fair proportion of troops will suffer trauma from these experiences, no matter how righteous and justified the cause.
- Big point, Arab Islam has been so tied up with dictatorship for so long, fascist-type philosophies and propaganda have saturated that region since at least WWI, and the Ottoman Empire was a tyrannical state before that. Hitler-style leaders have ruled (eg. Nasser and Saddam), so definitely they have a serious fascism problem, but you can no more say Islam is responsible for any of this than that Confucianism was responsible for the Battle of Manila - it just ain't so.
In fact, unless you go so far back in history it becomes meaningless (what were your ancestors doing in the year 650? Mine were committing human sacrifice), the Muslims, and the Arabs, are an extremely passive people. Like the effect of Christianity on the barbarians of Europe, you have to see it for what it did to the people it converted. The Ottomans and Mughals were warlike, but they were only few generations removed from the Mongol horde! The effect was much like Christianity on the Danes, still militaristic but a huge improvement over the Vikings!
I think because of the ameliorating influence of Islam, their populations have been remarkably resilient to this overwhelming flood of Natinalist-Militarist (WWI and aftermath), Nazi (1930s), Commie (post war) and Islamofascist propaganda. A few decades of equivalent conditioning on a previously peaceloving population a fraction the size produced the monster that was the Japanese Empire (remember, if the Emperor hadn't surrendered America was realistically expected a million more dead troops before war's end).
No Arab leader, however charismatic, has had an army that would fight with any degree of fanaticism. When did any Arab army - or any Arab unit - die to a man in its foxholes like genuine fanatics do? "I don't think God wills it," they say, and trudge off home.
- Big point: Why oh why should we attack civilian populations? WWII was a glorious crusade for freedom, but no one feels pride swell in their breast listening to tales of the fire bombing of cities. And that tactic was a military failure. The methodical strategic bombing of German industry by the US in WWII is credited with seriously degrading their capacity of war. The British bombing of cities was a waste of a valuable military asset at the cost of many trained air crews. Whatever morale effect it had was minimal. Likewise the bombing of Japanese residential areas (not counting manufacturing an military targets) was entirely counterproductive, at a horrific moral cost, and just hardened the resolve of the civilian population.
- Ali and Alisha, the typical Muslim Mom and Pop, are not terrorists. Ali is a good family man, and a businessman at heart. They're moral in a rather strict way, and law-abiding. They're poorly educated and backward folk from a backward land (some lands more backward than others), strongly in need of friendship and guidance from their more worldy Christian neighbours. However they are far more promising citizen material than than squalid, wretched paupers and peasants who built America just a few generations ago.
For heaven's sake, man for man, the Irish are infinitely worse terrorists than the Muslims, and no one is discussing nuking the Emerald Isle!
What is war? As defined by Clauswitz, it is 'politics by other means'.
What is, then, our politcal agenda? Muddled, as Mr. Van der Luen suggests.
Is thermonuclear anihilation really a viable politcal/military option? Steven den Beste argued this on his (now defunct) weblog a few years ago, and his reasoning was similar to Mr. Van der Luen.
But for a strategy (strategic goal) to be effective, it must be widely explained and expounded. Will an American president actually expound the above, and survive politcally for more than 5 minutes?
And P.S.: I grew up knowing more than a few officers in the Strategic Air Command, who were almost all very fine men and dedicated patriots, and dropping those bombs would indeed bother them quite a bit. They had quite a deep grasp on the responsibility they wielded.
A very well written article. I believe Momar Kadafi's recent, timely, diplomatic re-engagement supports NC3's comments above, and more generally the validity of arguments this article presents.
Posted by NCP at January 5, 2006 9:47 PMOn Sept 12, 2001 the United States DID NOT : 1. Close it's borders north and south. 2. Suspend any and all Middle Eastern immigration. 3. Expunge any and all Muslims here on student visas. 4. The USA DID NOT put the Muslim world on notice by patrolling Mecca 24/7 with armed aircraft 365 days a year, indefinately. The Muslim world was NOT warned that another attack on western soil would trigger the obliteration of Mecca.
A weak administration did none of this. In it's place we chose to pretend that Islam is a true religion vice it's obvious ancient barbaric 12th Century culture. Have you heard ONE major reporting agency on planet earth refer to the '72 virgins waiting in heaven' as a silly fairy tale ? You have not.
For these terrible miscalculations the terrible deed will fall on a future administration---we will have to kill them in wholesale numbers. Teaching the muslim world democracy is akin to teaching my cat to play the piano.
southie58@msn.com
Posted by Matt Hooper at January 22, 2006 2:36 AMTime for Macauley's "Lays of Ancient Rome", from "Horatius at the Bridge" (c. BC 700):
"Then up spake brave Horatius, the Captain of the Gate,
"To all men living on this Earth, death cometh soon or late.
"And how can Man die better than by facing fearful odds,
"For the ashes of his fathers and the Temples of his Gods?"
In Peter Quince's "Owen's Alligator", Sargon the Great of Sumer, a God-king come to the Jersey Shore, enjoins Owen's father: "Two things are worth doing: Living well, and dying well. Believe."
Metrosexual neuters will depart the scene like smoke, leaving but a sticky smudge behind. Their butterflies will not even send out yellow death announcements.