The mythical “moderate” Muslim — the Muslim who embraces traditional Islam but wants a peaceful coexistence with the West — is effectively non-existent because to the extent he exists, he has no voice.
Any serious student of Islam – of historical, traditional, and authoritative Islam – understands that Islam is as much a political ideology with hegemonic designs as it is a monotheistic religion. All major legal schools of Islam take the same view of the non-Muslim world: it must be converted through peaceful means, and if that is not possible, subdued through coercion, and if that is not successful, conquered militarily through war and the death (i.e., murder) of the infidels. Strategies and emphasis on active Jihad (i.e., offensive vs. defensive Jihad) differ, but the goal of all major Islamic sects — of their legal rulings and of their faithful followers — is quite focused and directed.
And, it is also true that Islam’s war against the Christian West, which began soon after Mohammed’s death by his successors, has continued unabated to this day although it remained dormant as long as Christian Europe was prepared to fight back and the ruling Caliphate was weak. Such was the case during the decline and ultimate breakup of the Ottoman Empire, but the political and theological teachings, exhortations, and jurisprudence demanding Jihad against the infidel nations of the West have remained a central aspect of Islam.
In the West, and in America specifically, we have found the way to PC-spin our approach to Islam’s long-standing war against the West. One PC response suggests that Islam is a “noble religion of peace” on par with Judaism and Christianity “as one of the three great monotheistic faiths” which has been hijacked by a small group of militant extremists. The group which takes this view is now notoriously associated with the “democracy-builders” – men who preach their own ideology that all people, everywhere, and at all times desire nothing more than freedom and democracy and if we but “liberate” the Muslim world from oppression, the Muslim masses will embrace liberal democracy with the same passion as the Christian world has. This group spends their time running around looking for that rather invisible (or quite “silent majority”) of “moderate Muslims.”
Another group responds to Islam by suggesting that Islam’s complaint against the West is our one-sided and imperialistic behavior in the Islamic world, notably the Middle East. They argue that if we but abandon the Middle East and our senseless support of the Jews in Israel (typically referred to as “Zionists” or “Jewish Settlers” to avoid the deadly charge of anti-Semitism), we can separate ourselves from the Muslim world and live, if not live in peace, at least in a state of peaceful divorce.
There are of course many other “interpretations” but these represent the two extremes of the West’s response to Islam’s long-standing war against the Christian world.
The Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), an organization I founded but which now boasts the active participation of military men with more than half a century of military, intelligence and counter-terrorism experience in the Middle East, approaches the threat we face from Islam quite differently. At SANE, we approach Islam and the Muslims on their own terms. We take what they preach and what they teach and what they do seriously. We also understand that while only a small percentage of any “people” will actively enlist for war as combatants, the overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world, as documented in survey after survey, embrace Islamic law or Shari’a as divine and authoritative. This law mandates a worldwide Islamic Caliphate as a reality in the here and now and not as some future eschatological event, such as in the coming of the Messiah as taught (albeit with material differences) in both Judaism and Christianity.
We assess Muslims by what they do and what they themselves say. But mostly by what they do. In this context, we witness Muslims actively pursuing and supporting the worldwide Jihad, Muslims passively supporting the worldwide Jihad, and the largest group moving between these two poles but wholly committed to traditional Islam and Islamic law.
You also have a handful of brave and courageous Muslims and “former Muslims” who reject Islam as it is and demand it be radically reformed to make it more Western, and in a very real sense, to make it Christian-like. But these men and women, as few as they may be, are not “moderate Muslims” because “moderation” is not a viable alternative in Islam. These men and women are the Reformers, like Dr. Tawfik Hamid and the Rejectionists, like Ms. Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The former calls for a wholesale reformation of traditional Shari’a and Quranic interpretation while the latter rejects Islam outright and indeed any religious expression in the public square, including Christianity. Our view is Dr. Hamid has it right; Ms. Hirsi Ali is just a former Muslim turned radical secularist. (Don’t get us wrong; we respect her courage for standing up against Islam but it takes far more courage and fortitude to confront Islam as a Reformer.)
The mythical “moderate” Muslim, however, the Muslim who embraces traditional Islam but wants a peaceful coexistence with the West, is effectively non-existent because to the extent he exists, he has no voice. And he is voiceless precisely because he chooses to remain within traditional Shari’a-based Islam, where the Ulamā or Islamic legal scholars, and the Muftoon (singular: Mufti) who issue fatawa (singular: fatwa) or legal edicts, reign supreme together with the lesser mullahs, imams, and maulvis. A “moderate” among these men will simply be shouted down, coerced into silence, or murdered.
In contrast, the Muslim Reformer takes the proper position that Islam as it was created, as it has existed for 1,300 years, and as it exists now, is an evil political ideology the goal of which is a worldwide Islamic Caliphate. These brave men and women risk death to reform Islam radically into that which it is not today.
To talk of moderating Islam is a blurring of this most important distinction. And, it is not a matter of semantics. “Moderators” will fail because there simply is no institutional or social base from which to operate. And, precisely because Islam (like Judaism) is a juridical religion based upon laws, legal decisions, precedent, legal schools of jurisprudence dating back hundreds of years, the effect of a policy to hunt out “moderate” Muslims to “moderate” this massive jurisprudence is beyond silly – it is dangerous because it is a search based upon a false hope when time and effort is in short supply.
As a result, SANE has staked out an approach which is to Know the Enemy by declaring the enemy historical, traditional, and authoritative Islam or Shari’a and those men and women who support Shari’a or Islamic law. We also actively support the Reformers and we ignore the call by mostly non-Muslims (and typically those of the so-called “neo-con” variety) who are in search of the “moderate” Muslim to “reclaim” his “noble religion of peace” from the “extremists.”
But the question remains, what to do as a practical matter since our government and most of the political Elite are fixated on the futile and ultimately dangerous search for a “moderate” Muslim and Islam. SANE has developed the answer. The answer is now before you in our Mapping Shari’a in America! This project is directed by Dave Gaubatz, SANE’s Director of Intelligence and Counter-terrorism Studies, a 25-year veteran federal special agent who knows Arabic and Islam from his years working counter-terrorism in the Middle East. The plan is straightforward but requires a substantial effort by a team of dedicated professionals.
Dave is now selecting and training a team of intel and CT professionals to visit, map, and index every mosque and Islamic day school in the country where they teach and preach Islamic law or Shari’a and Jihad. This team will then collect and analyze the data with the goal being to map each location on a digital interactive map, to identify, index, and grade each group as to the particular sect, its school of Islamic jurisprudence, what that means relative to the threat potential, the Jihad threat level, and other pertinent information about the key leadership, the associated businesses, and proximity to schools, infrastructure and national security installations.
For those of you still unclear Why this is all necessary and why SANE should undertake this critically important task, I might suggest you read an essay written by the Director, Dave Gaubatz, entitled "Mapping Shari'a in America." This essay responds quite specifically to the double edged query: Why do we need to map out all of the mosques and Islamic day schools in America? And, even if you can show that the threat from Islam proper is real and imminent, is this not a job for federal law enforcement agencies?
We urge you to read this answer with care.
Liberius:
You cannot separate the issue of nuclear proliferation from a nuclear attack, particularly in today’s world where proliferation via Pakistan has allowed Iran to develop its own nuclear program. Without Pakistan, a nuclear Iran would not be an issue, and we wouldn’t be having any discussion at all about the possibility of an Iranian nuclear attack.
As for reducing the threat of a nuclear attack, if you look at the history of the last 50+ years, it wasn’t “motives” that mattered, but deterrence. Beginning with MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) and moving to a space-based missile defense system, with a fleet of nuclear missile subs in between, is what kept the USSR from launching on the US. It didn’t matter whether we liked each other or not; clearly we were enemies. What kept the Cuban Missile crisis from going nuclear wasn’t a reduction in the motive for a war. It was the fear by Russia that launching missiles against the US would result in its (Russia’s) annihilation. And unlike Iran, the commies had no Imam waiting in the wings to make Armageddon attractive, so annihilation mattered. Again, I strongly recommend “Essence of Decision” which thoroughly addresses this entire subject from a policy standpoint, bureaucratic inertia standpoint, and from a personality perspective (the styles and decisions of Kennedy and Khruschev).
Deterrence is what stops the possibility of nuclear war, and for deterrence to be credible, it must be strong and believable. If the US withdraws from the Middle East, no longer supports Israel, and follows the other prescriptions you suggest, it will show weakness, not strength. You can’t interdict nuclear materials without a strong physical presence in the area — and for that matter, the policy shouldn’t be designed to find and board ships, planes or overland vehicles carrying nuclear contraband, but to convince the other guy not to do this in the first place!
I point to Libya, again, as a tangible example of success in this regard. Mohamar didn’t want to end up swinging from the gallows like Saddam, so he capitulated. His “mistake”, if you can call it that, was to believe that the Liberals and Democrats in the US cared more about the country than themselves. Had he waited a few years he would have seen their efforts to systematically undercut everything Bush does just because Bush does it, which in turn has weakened our Middle East position. Today, the perception of the US in the Middle East is that we have no stamina to win the war in Iraq, regardless of the facts on the ground. By lending credence to this perception via the actions of self-serving US politicians and the US media, Iran is not intimidated by the US at all. Thus, it pursues its nuclear program.
Motives, I reiterate again, have nothing to do with this calculation. The presence or absence of power does (combined with the political will to use it). Regardless of its motives, Iran will continue or halt its nuclear program only if it is forced to do so.
Sanctions do not “force” anything unless there is unanimity in the rest of the world. Russia continues to aid Iran, only pulling back when Iran fails to make timely payments for their services. Once the money flows from Iran, the support continues. Your sanctions strategy may make it more difficult for Iran to secure the bomb, but it won’t stop Iran.
Once Iran possesses a nuclear bomb, it doesn’t have to use it to influence policy. It can intimidate its neighbors, and/or give or sell the technology to a 3rd party (i.e. what rogue elements in Pakistan did, and what NK has threatened to do). All it takes is one bomb going off to start a chain reaction of events. Look at Chapter 12 of my Looney Liberal Chronicles where I talk about this in more detail.
Your solutions are not solutions. At best they delay things somewhat, but they do not stop Iran from acquiring the bomb. Most of your solutions are aimed at catching someone doing something (i.e interdicting) rather than making them think twice about doing it in the first place. You relay on international cooperation where it does not exist (again, Russia is still supplying Iran with materials and technology). You try to defuse the desire for a nuclear bomb by removing alleged sources of contention. I don’t entirely fault you for doing this, but I do insist that it is not a large part of any answer.
Even if we did everything you suggested regarding Israel and Iraq, Iran would still develop the bomb for other reasons. It makes them the lone superpower in that region, bestows unimaginable prestige at their “accomplishment”, and if they so choose, gives them an actual weapon to use (directly or indirectly) at some future point to help usher in the return of the 12th, 13th or 14th Imam (I van never remember which guy fell in the well). And while rich Jews may keep Israel from starving, if the US military won’t resupply Israel then the chances for a nuclear war just increased dramatically BECAUSE of your policy. If threatened with their survival, Israel will go nuclear.
But even more than this, you’ll quickly find that once the US gives into the demand to formally desert Israel, the next demand will be to stop allowing “rich Jews” to send money to Israel. Your solution will no more produce a non-threatening/peaceful outcome than Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza did. The disaffected will simply demand more. In this sense I am a firm believer in the “Limbaugh Doctrine”. One side has to win.
Winning doesn’t mean slaughtering the enemy or “taking over the WHOLE country” in perpetuity. It means projecting enough actual and potential strength to win the necessary battles. You and I may differ about whether it’s a good or bad thing to be in Iraq, but we are there. If we leave unilaterally, it will have tremendous implications for everything you argue about regarding nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
The second world war went very badly for the US for the first few years, so it’s wrong to judge success by some artificial notion that there should be no more IEDs or US soldier’s deaths, as the Democrats insist. You asked what I’d do about Iraq. As I’ve written extensively on this matter, I’d give the US military the conventional resources they need for the next couple of years to dramatically reduce the threat posed by Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Iran-sponsored foreign fighters, and at home try to defeat politically the appeasement Liberals and isolationist Conservatives who work against this policy. Then, like in Germany, Japan and other places in the world, I’d keep a strong US military presence in the area, because I also recognize that Iraq is a skirmish in a much longer war that will last possibly for a generation. Unlike past wars (hot or cold), it is not based on a secular ideology, but on a perverted, messianic religious notion of Jihad. We ignore this reality at our own risk. Invoking Washington’s ideas about European, land-based, semi-feudal, purely materialistic foreign entanglements does not speak to the nature of the threats we face in the 21st century.
Liberius, I know I’ve been rather direct in some of my language about your positions, but I mean you no offense personally. You’ve engaged in a good, honest debate about the issues … even though I think you’re completely wrong about some very key issues.
Take care, Phil
Phil:
Thank you for the complement. Of course, nothing is personal here.
“You cannot separate the issue of nuclear proliferation from a nuclear attack, particularly in today’s world where proliferation via Pakistan has allowed Iran to develop its own nuclear program.”
Of course, fighting nuclear proliferation is important but I just stress that the purpose of it is to prevent a nuclear attack, so logically that is the overriding issue.
“As for reducing the threat of a nuclear attack, if you look at the history of the last 50+ years, it wasn’t “motives” that mattered, but deterrence.”
I don’t see how you can discount the motivation factor. The USSR was motivated in large part because their brand of communism was hostile to ours. They are presently less a threat to us because they changed their form of government and they lost much of their motivation.
“Deterrence is what stops the possibility of nuclear war, and for deterrence to be credible, it must be strong and believable.”
I believe we should have the best military on the planet, and we do. But to be credible we don’t have to have troops in the Middle East just like we didn’t have to have troops in Vietnam to be credible with the Soviets. In the end, Vietnam was counter-productive for that purpose and Iraq is proving to be the same.
I concede that Libya helps your argument but I think you put too much stock in that example. We bombed Libya in the 80s and tried to kill Qaddafi. He proceeded with nukes after that. His concessions at least had something to do with economic sanctions. Regardless, he could change course again tomorrow. We just cannot stay in the ME forever and we cannot afford to invade every country that does not comply with our demands.
Cutting off Israel with strengthen us. We weaken ourselves by spending our money and wasting the lives of our troops for the defense of Israel. We have very serious conflicts of interests with that foreign nation. They hate us and use us. That is why their spies in America jumped for joy at the site of the twin towers burning. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1102-07.htm
“Today, the perception of the US in the Middle East is that we have no stamina to win the war in Iraq…”
A big problem with Iraq is that no one seems to be able to define “win”.
We were told that the mission was to eliminate the threat of Saddam Hussein. Gee, I thought we accomplished that! Then the mission stupidly evolved to establish democracy. They’ve had three elections I believe. We’ve given them democracy; it’s up to them to keep it. Then it was insisted that we needed to stay and train their security forces. Well, we’ve trained and and fought and trained for four years. It’s past time to declare victory and leave. Iraq will probably deteriorate more before another strong leader emerges. But that is part of their nature. They are barbarians. We are accomplishing nothing positive at this point by staying in the quagmire. It is immoral to keep sending our young men into that mess.
You cannot compare Iraq to WWII. We will not have a similar “victory” for many reasons; most notably we are not willing to escalate the level of violence to the point to bring the enemy into submission. In WWII we fire-bombed and nuked entire civilian populations, including cities that had virtually no military value. Only if we go to that degree might we POSSIBLY have a similar result. We are not willing to go there. It’s not going to happen.
George Washington’s general principles very much apply today. Without question, the presence of nukes requires us to be more involved in foreign politics than otherwise. But, if we had followed his advice we would not have gotten involved in WWI which resulted in the creation of Iraq in the first place. (As well as the USSR). If we had followed GW’s advice we would have not gotten involved in the Iraq-Kuwait dispute, had not had our troops in Saudi Arabia and would not have suffered 9/11. We would have not wasted so many lives fighting in Korea, Vietnam, and many other places. We would have not gotten stuck as the world’s police and we would not be trillions of dollars in debt. I can go on.
I too, appreciate your good, honest debate.
Phil:
“…once the US gives into the demand to formally desert Israel, the next demand will be to stop allowing “rich Jews” to send money to Israel. … The disaffected will simply demand more.”
Right on!! This is called “upping the price for peace” and is part of the appeasement process. Many have claimed you cannot compare the current situation with the 1930s because they are somehow “different.” One can always find differences, but there are enough similarities that a pattern in human nature starts to emerge. To wit:
“Madness, once unleashed, knows no bounds.” – Winston Churchill
No sense in preparing for war over a quarrel in a country (Czechoslovakia) so far away and of which we know so little. – Neville Chamberlain
“Our enemies are worms; I saw them at Munich.” – Adolf Hitler
“Everything would have worked fine if only Hitler had kept his promises.” – Neville Chamberlain
“Lord, if only I could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” – Sen. William Borah, upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland
“Negotiate? We don’t want something from you; we want to KILL you.” – Hammas
Winston Churchill once said, “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.” So it is, the Western democracies, considering themselves to be the to-date epitome of civilized world diplomacy, are willing to invest so much capital in negotiation to settle disagreements between nations. To the Western mind, negotiation has become so in-grained that it has essentially, but unintentionally, become second nature and all too often an end in itself. To the non-Western mind in many cases, negotiation is merely war by other means, or just an extension of the battlefield. That negotiation could be something other than a way to resolve disputes peacefully is completely alien to the Western mind. Such over-reliance on negotiation by Westerners in the past has almost always had extremely disastrous consequences because of the mistakes on both sides: the Westerner who convinces himself of the basic good will of his adversary across the table, and the adversary Despot who overestimates the price the democracies are willing to pay to maintain peace.
The first mistake made by Westerners setting out to negotiate with a Despot is their assumption that he is a rational individual like everyone else who wants to resolve a dispute. Nothing could be further from the truth, and one need look only at how he gained power in his own country to see this to be a grossly invalid assumption. (Note 1)
In order to negotiate successfully, one must be willing to give up something the other wants, an oft-neglected or forgotten requirement by those who favor a “negotiated settlement;” and important to note here is that what the Despot brings to the table to give up is not really his at all! He has already taken something from the world (peace); and, operating from a position of weakness, seeks something in exchange for the return of what he stole; and here is where the “Anointed” (Note 2) make their first big mistake: by agreeing to negotiate under such (perhaps subconscious) assumptions, they have granted to him what he has stolen, and validated his position. (Note 3) Having the position of strength of “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable” thrust upon him, the Despot then is only too willing to accept it. Then it is only a matter of bargaining as to what the Despot is willing to accept and what the Anointed are willing to concede. From there, the Anointed are usually reduced to such a subordinate position that they can only sheepishly ask questions like, “Do the peasants get to keep their cows?” and hope that the current demands are the last the Despot will make, so the world can resume business as usual. Once again the powerful will have surrendered their position of strength, their only advantage. This process is what is known as “appeasement.”
Those experienced in bargaining know that if a buyer offers X, he is usually willing to pay X plus Y. The only question is, what is Y? Once concession X has been paid by the victims of this extortion and blackmail, it is a simple matter for the Despot to lie low for a while until things quiet down before proceeding with his plan for more power and repeating the above process of “crisis” / negotiation in order to extract Y (upping the price for peace); and once the process is renewed, the previous X plus Y become the new X in his search of a new Y.
At this point, the Anointed, all considering themselves seasoned statesmen and apparently convinced they can solve all mankind’s problems, have so much invested in this process that their own human pride prevents them from admitting they’ve been had (by an uneducated, upstart son-of-a-peasant at that!). And so it continues, a desperate attempt to make negotiation work even at a cost agreed to far beyond that originally imagined, with the Anointed ceding concession after concession, and with each one a little more power, to the Despot until there is no more Y for the Anointed to give without exhausting whatever political capital they might have remaining in the eyes of their constituents and thus endangering their own careers.
Once the Despot has extracted the last Y willingly conceded, his madness having been unleashed by the spineless Anointed and being convinced of his own position of power, he is still not through and has one option left: taking it by military force. The result is all-out war, a war that could have easily been avoided in the beginning at relatively low cost to both sides in both dollars and human lives by not ceding anything nor by hoping that the Despot will go away (he won’t), but rather letting the Despot know in no uncertain terms that military force willbe used if compliance to the letter is not accomplished immediately and that there will be no further concessions since the current agreement (usually the point of contention) contains them all. Constituents who are tempted to give in to more demands should be made aware that that amounts to paying blackmail and that they are endangering a whole younger generation that will bear the greatest hardships of an all-out war, not the Anointed who never seem to pay a price in blood whatsoever.
In the case of Iranian President: Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad, he is a Hitler wannabe, one bent on doing evil. “…An evildoer is not motivated by a wish to change the way other people act: His objectives are not to persuade or cajole or threaten others into doing as he wishes them to do. Instead, other people exist in his eyes only as an opportunity to do evil: He doesn’t want to manipulate them for his selfish purpose; rather, his one and only purpose is to inflict evil on them – evil, and nothing more . . . combat with evildoers is not Clausewitzian war. You do not make treaties with evildoers nor try to adjust your conduct to make them like you. You do not try to see the world from the evildoers’ point of view. You do not try to appease them, nor persuade them, nor reason with them. You try, on the contrary, to outwit them, to vanquish them, to kill them. You behave with them in the same manner that you would deal with a fatal epidemic – you try to wipe it out.” (Note 4) The question with regard to Ahmadi-Nejad’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon is, have we let him “re-occupy his Rhineland,” i.e., passed the point of no return?
Notes:
(Note 1) Although beyond the scope of this discussion and as I posted before, the question of “national sovereignty at all cost” should be the topic of serious reconsideration.
(Note 2) Thomas Sowell, Visions of the Anointed
(Note 3) To George H. W. (Bush I) Bush’s credit, he did not “allow to stand” Kuwait’s invasion by Iraq, thus not conceding what Saddam Hussein had stolen, and effectively breaking the process up before it had a chance to progress to further advantage for Hussein. This also could be why negotiating with the North Vietnamese was so difficult: they refused to grant what the US had, in their eyes, stolen: they initially demanded the removal of US troops before agreeing to negotiate. It is also how Bush II broke up this process by halting a quickly degrading situation by holding Saddam Hussein to his Gulf War agreement and UN resolutions to come clean on his weapons of mass destruction.
(Note 4) Lee Harris, “Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology” http://www.policyreview.org/AUG02/harris.html, emphasis added.
Liberius:
Let me go one more round on your issues, then I’ll bow out and let you have the last word if you want. This column isn’t my forum, so I don’t want to monopolize the debate.
Regarding “motives”, my point is, if you do everything to reduce an enemy’s motive to attack you, you are pursuing the wrong approach. Sure, there are things each side can do to reduce tensions, but there are also fundamental issues that neither side will compromise on. When these issues are in play, you either capitulate or resist. There’s no middle ground.
The US has a fundamental national security interest in the Middle East, and Israel is part of that calculation on many levels (militarily as a counterbalance to certain Arab countries, and politically and/or personally through ties to US supporters — not all of whom are Jews). A reduction in US support for Israel (even if this was a realistic policy) would not ultimately satisfy those who hate us. Even completely abandoning Israel to its own fate (something even less likely to happen) wouldn’t assure an Islamic bomb would never be used against us, as my Gaza withdrawal example alluded to. There would always be “something else” we’d need to do.
The only way to assure that the US and its overseas interests will not be attacked by an Islamic bomb is to (a) keep Iran from ever developing one in the first place, and (b) if they do get one, intimidate them sufficiently into never using it. In this calculation, it doesn’t make any difference whether their “motives” involve liking or hating us, religion or practical politics, Israel or Iraq. You can’t detonate a bomb you don’t have, and as a fall back, if you’re really convinced you’ll be held responsible for disseminating the technology and/or completely annihilated before you can use your bomb yourself, you won’t use it or give it away.
Today, because of the partisan press and Liberal/Democrat pandering, our threat to use nukes against Iran is about zero. This is why we need a strong conventional force in Iraq, because it’s the only realistic weapon we have — and even that is seen as a weak threat thanks to the Dems/Press. [By the way, I don’t condemn the paleos for holding an isolationist view. I think their stand is principled, but misguided, unlike the Dems/Press which is purely opportunistic. Besides, there aren’t too many Paleos in number, or taken seriously enough, to really matter in the debate :)]
So, if the goal is to stop a nuclear war in the ME before it starts, the only way to assure this is to have a strong enough conventional force ready and positioned and willing politically to make Iran change its policies ala Libya, or failing that, take out their ability to finalize the bomb as Israel did with Iraq. My guess, because of domestic US politics as I referenced above, is if that day ever comes it will be a US-Israeli combined action with next generation bunker busters to go after the technology, coupled with a companion strike on Iran’s economic infrastructure. This will, of course, produce additional problems as well (as well as additional benefits — Arabs respect power, even when they complain about its use). But that’s another subject.
The point of this discussion is, in preventing the proliferation or use of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, the calculation involves deterrence/power/fear, not changing or assuaging anyone’s “motives”. And yes, it isn’t “fair” that the US gets to dictate this to Iran. But life isn’t fair, and neither are the politics that arise from it. Politics is about power, and Iran simply cannot be trusted to act responsibly enough to possess the bomb and not fundamentally threaten US interests.
To your other point: Winning the war in Iraq will consist of three elements.
(1) Removing Saddam, which we did.
(2) Stabilizing Iraq by defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq and other foreign-backed insurgents — a long process that will have some visible goals, like holding elections and getting the economy going, and longer term ones, like killing as many bad guys as we can. This is a long, long process, and Iraq is just one battle in a larger war against Islamic fascism. As more Iraqis are trained to fight, the Iraq battle will begin to be theirs, not ours. But we will always have a stake in that fight, because it is just one front in the larger war. This is a battle for the soul of Western Civilization, and treating it like a multicultural dispute where everyone is ‘the same’ and we just have disagreements “to be managed” is insane, and will invite more attacks because of our perceived weakness. My next door neighbor when I went to graduate school is now a senior member in the Islamo-fascist movement. I know how he thinks, and I’ve seen this coming for thirty years. It’s here now, and we need to address it realistically, not pretend it is something other than it is.
(3) And finally, we win by defeating the press and Liberal democrat opportunists in the US (politically, and through countering their lies), so the country can look at the situation realistically and strategically, and not just oppose something because Bush favors it.
I won’t belabor your points about Washington and foreign entanglements (including WWI and WWII), other than to say we need to look at a world in which a US commercial airliner can be used to kill 3000 people on US soil, and recognize that the oceans do not afford us any protection from attack. Even assuming we let the Germans win in WWI and/or WWII by staying out of the fight, never blocked Japan’s imperial ambitions in Asia so we wouldn’t ‘provoke’ their attack on Pearl Harbor, and never supported the state of Israel, we still wouldn’t be free today from serious overseas threats. In fact, we’d probably be even more at risk from a 21st century Imperial Japan, the 21st century Third Reich, as well as 21st century Islamic fanaticism.
The fact is, we are presently engaged in the Middle East. Policy is not made by wishing we did things differently 100 years ago. It’s a response to what’s happening now. The question on the table is how do we defeat Islamo fascism and prevent an Islamic bomb today, in the world of today. Not whether we should have stayed out of WWI so Iraq was never created by the British.
Phil
How many lives were sacrificed over Poland? Was it worth it? No. I care about the Polish people but in the end we did not liberate them; we allowed Stalin to conquer them. Hitler was evil but Stalin was even worse. This example only shows the stupidity of such foreign policy.
Israel is our enemy. They spy against us, they use us politically, financially, and militarily, there was the Levon Affair, the USS Liberty attack, and their joyous reaction to 9/11. The top members of the Israeli lobby within the U.S. Government (Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby etc.) are thieves, liars, crooks, and/or otherwise very harmful to our interests.
The Jews who established Israel 60 years ago created a perpetual hell for themselves and those around them. This was evident from the beginning. As the Harvard paper, “The Israeli Lobby” pointed out, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first and longest serving prime minister, told Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress:
“If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?” http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
The Arabs will never accept Israel. In no way do I favor the Palestinians or other Arabs. We should be neutral as we have no vested interests there. We can be free of dependence on ME oil but we don’t even really try. Anyway, they need our cash more than we need their oil. The only time they embargoed us was in response to our support to Israel in the 1973 war, which again proves my point about Israel being only a burden to us. If anything causes WWIII, it will be our involvement with Israel.
It is a shame that we define winning in Iraq as stabilizing it. That is not a clear or reasonably attainable objective for a conventional military force. A conventional military force is only good to defeat another conventional military force.
Defeat the press? I wish. They are subversives.
As I’ve repeatedly said before, I’m all for working against nuclear proliferation but the Iraqi operation has proven to be a waste of people and money. There may indeed be an occasion that merits invasion but we blew it in Iraq. Our efforts there have proven counter-productive. Let’s cut our losses. It won’t be the first time. The sky will not fall.
Phil,
I know you don’t like links because you have something against actually presenting evidence instead of just asserting things, but you have got to read this. An article on how Kirk, the “founder of modern conservatism,” grew to hate the growing militarism that he saw on the “right.” (I have a few issues with Kirk and there could never be a real “founder” of conservatism, but he does speak authoritatively on modern conservatism.)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods69.html
And this. The position that we are the victims of terrorism primarily or entirely because of “who we are” instead of “what we do” is so intellectually vacuous and devoid of real evidence other than GOP talking points that you have set yourself up for blatant ridicule.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/eddlem/eddlem16.html
BTW, over the course of this debate you have gone from saying our policies didn’t contribute, to they are part of the mix but not decisive, to their motives really don’t matter. I’ll take that as a bit of a concession.
There is a debate going on at the flat earth forum, that you might be interested in. All these wacky scientists are presenting evidence that the earth is spherical. What a bunch of ignoramuses. Obviously they haven’t been reading the Flat Earth Society’s talking points, or they would know better.
Liberius:
“They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country.”
An Islamic society based on 7th century concepts cannot compete in the modern world. Something or someone is to blame for this failure, and it’s human nature to blame others. Castro blames capitalist America for his socialism’s failure. Conclusion (to paraphrase): If Israel didn’t exist, the Arabs would have to invent it. A few in the Arab world have actually looked inward and concluded that the fault lies in their not practicing a sufficiently pure Islam, and Allah is punishing them. Their approach at practicing a “pure” Islam is a return to waging terrorist jihad against the successful West.
It’s just not realistic to disengage and ignore an evil this great – eventually, it will come knocking on your door.
Dan: to my earlier point about our respective professions.
I’ve been reading a lot of medical books lately (all at least 200 years old), and through them I’ve come to understand the meaning of True Medicine.
Take two aspirin, bleed yourself with a half-dozen leaches, and call me in the morning.
It’s just becoming too difficult to take anything you say seriously. I know you really believe the stuff you write. I just don’t have the patience any more to deal with it as supposedly-legitimate analysis.
“I just don’t have the patience any more to deal with it as supposedly-legitimate analysis.”
I’ll accept that as the admission of defeat that it surely is.
But I can’t resist a parting shot.
Just a little taste of the evidence. There is plenty more where this came from if you are interested.
“Michael Scheuer, the former Central Intelligence Agency specialist on bin Laden and al-Qaeda, has objected to simplistic suggestions by President Bush and others that terrorists are motivated by an ill-defined irrational hatred of the United States. “The politicians really are at great fault for not squaring with the American people,” Scheuer said in a CNN interview. “We’re being attacked for what we do in the Islamic world, not for who we are or what we believe in or how we live. And there’s a huge burden of guilt to be laid at Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton, both parties for simply lying to the American people.”"
But he is just a CIA expert. What does he know? He should just listen to Rush and Sean and they will bring him up to speed.
Just out of curiosity, did you read the Rockwell articles?
sedonaman:
Do you realize you are arguing against the words of Ben-Gurion?
Our founding fathers wisely said we should not go looking around the world for monsters to kill and we should avoid foreign entanglements. If the evil ones mess with us we should kill them but if they don’t we should mind are own business. This is common sense but we lived so long in the cold war world that we just mentally have not yet been able to adjust. Too bad, because it is costing us greatly.
Liberius:
“Thou shalt not engage in foreign entanglements” is not the Eleventh Commandment. If it is, it was broken only a few years after it was handed down. If any administration (and I include the congress) would follow George Washington’s advice to “avoid foreign entanglements,” it would have been the ones immediately after his. And the young country was doing just that: engaging in trade, diplomacy, tourism, etc., when it was faced with the Barbary pirates who preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers. When Jefferson and Adams inquired of Tripoli’s ambassador to London what the US had done to justify their hostilities, they were informed that “it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their (Moslems’) authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Moslem should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” (Sound familiar?) Of course, there was a way out: paying protection money, which Adams favored and the US did for some years. But like all extortionists, the pirates upped their price for peace.
May I point out that we were “neutral as we have no vested interests there” (unless you consider a trading partner a “vested interest”)? But the Moslems didn’t return the compliment because it is “their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners.” Since the Koran has not changed, their rhetoric has not changed, and they are now everywhere, the inescapable conclusion is there is no corner on the face of the earth any non-Moslem can retreat to in order to escape their evil and/or avoid “foreign entanglements.”
Sedonaman I am not sure I am reading you right. Are you suggesting that “engaging in trade, diplomacy, tourism, etc.” somehow violates the no foreign entanglements suggestion? That is not what Washington was saying. In fact he spoke of foreign trade as a good thing that promotes peace. It surely is. What he was getting at was something like a mutual defense pact with France for example. So that we would go to France’s aid if they were attacked. That sort of thing. He also spoke of factions with special affinities for certain countries and special dislike for others. In the context he was speaking he likely was referring to certain Anglophile and Francophile elements that existed back then. He meant we were to have no special relationship with any country and no special animosity with any country.
Dan Phillips:
The point I didn’t do very well at making is that the US was minding its own business as it engaged in trade, diplomacy, tourism, etc., but was forced into a “foreign entanglement” by the Barbary nations. If by foreign entanglements, Washington meant to avoid getting into European wars, then perhaps he should have said, “avoid foreign alliances.” If he meant “we were to have no special relationship with any country and no special animosity with any country,” I would say that too is impossible in today’s world of extensive international trade.
This is an evil world, and since evil cannot exist without good, it is impossible to avoid such “foreign entanglements.”
The Barbary wars were the most legitimate wars we ever fought. We tried to avoid foreign entanglements with them until they made it impossible for us to ignore. The Barbary pirates example does not in any way contradict GW’s policy.