Charles Krauthammer: Angels and Intelligence Estimates [the surest way back to safety is victory]

Lost between the Foley tsunami and the Woodward hurricane is the storm that began the great Republican collapse of 2006. It was only a few weeks ago that the Republicans were clawing their way back to contention for the November election, their prospects revived by the president's strong speeches on terrorism around the 9/11 anniversary, the landmark legislation on treating and trying captured terrorists, and a serendipitous fall in gas prices.

Then came the momentum stopper, the leaked National Intelligence Estimate that was trumpeted as definitive evidence that the war in Iraq had made terrorism worse. Foley's folly and Woodward's history have now overwhelmed that story, but it will remain an unrebutted charge long after Foley is forgotten and Woodward is remaindered. It demands debunking.

The question posed -- does the Iraq War increase or decrease the world supply of jihadists? -- is itself an exercise in counting angels on the head of a pin. Any answer would require a complex calculation involving dozens of unmeasurable factors, as well as constructing a complete alternate history of the world had the U.S. invasion of 2003 not happened.

Ah, but those seers in the U.S. "intelligence community,'' speaking through a leaked National Intelligence Estimate -- the most famous previous NIE, mind you, concluded that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, slam dunk -- have peered deep into the hypothetical past and found the answer. As spun by Iraq War critics, the conclusion is that Iraq has made us less safe because it has become a "cause celebre'' and rallying cry for jihad.

Become? Everyone seems to have forgotten that Iraq was already an Islamist cause celebre and rallying cry long before 2003. When Osama bin Laden issued his 1998 declaration of war against America, his two principal casus belli for the jihad that exploded upon us on 9/11 centered on Iraq: America's alleged killing of more than 1 million Iraqis through the post-Gulf War sanctions, and, even worse, the desecration of Islam's holiest cities of Mecca and Medina by the garrisoning of infidel U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia (as post-Gulf War protection from the continuing threat of invasion by Saddam).

The irony is that the overthrow of Saddam eliminated these two rallying cries: Iraqi sanctions were lifted and U.S. troops were withdrawn from the no-longer threatened Saudi Arabia. But grievances cured are easily replaced. The jihadists wasted no time in finding new justifications for fury, and reviving old ones. The supply is endless: Danish cartoons, papal pronouncements, the liberation of women, the existence of Israel, the licentiousness of Western culture, the war in Afghanistan. And of course, Iraq -- again.

How important is Iraq in this calculus? The vaunted National Intelligence Estimate -- unspun -- offers a completely commonplace weighing of the relationship between terrorism and Iraq. On the one hand, the American presence does inspire some to join the worldwide jihad. On the other hand, success in the Iraq project would blunt the most fundamental enlistment tool for terrorism -- the political oppression in Arab lands that is deflected by cynical dictators and radical imams into murderous hatred of the West. Which is why the Bush democracy project embodies the greatest hope for a reduction of terrorism and why the NIE itself concludes that were the jihadists to fail in Iraq, their numbers would diminish.

It is an issue of time frame. The bombing of the Japanese home islands may have increased short-term recruiting for the kamikazes. But success in the Pacific War put a definitive end to the whole affair.

Moreover, does anyone imagine that had the jihadists in Iraq remained home they would now be tending petunias rather than plotting terror attacks? Omar Farouq, leader of al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia, escaped from a U.S. prison in Afghanistan a year ago and was apparently drawn to the "cause celebre'' in Iraq. Last month, he was killed by British troops in a firefight in Basra. In an audiotape released on Sept. 28, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq said that 4,000 of its recruits have been killed there since the American invasion. Like Omar Farouq and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, they went to Iraq to die in Iraq.

It is clear that one of the reasons we have gone an astonishing five years without a second attack on the American homeland is that the most dedicated and virulent jihadists have gone to Iraq to fight us, as was said during World War I, "over there.''

Does the war in Iraq make us more or less safe today? And what about tomorrow? The fact is that no definitive answer is possible. Except for the following truism: During all wars we are by definition less safe -- and the surest way back to safety is victory.

re: sounds like he's totally given up on the elections

Wonder if this is a ploy. Let's think it through for a minute. If the conventional wisdom is that the Republicans aren't going to to well on election day what effect does that have on turnout? In the past it seems to have lowered the Democratic turnout since liberals have a difficult time converting dreams to reality. They never evaluate a situation based on outcome, only intent. Once they have planned and put a plan into place it's on to the next one-size-fits-all project. When they hear they are going to do well in the pre-election polls, maybe even take both houses!, they get busy celebrating. Republicans, on the other hand, evaluate a project on outcome. It doesn't matter what your intent is going into a project, it's how it turns out that counts. And that means knowing you have to follow through which includes actually making the effort to go vote. Any pre-election MSM hype about losing Congress just tends to further invigorate conservatives.

I really don't have any idea if this is how it will work, but it seems to be reasonable on the surface.

Oh, and another thing conservatives do while working their butts off to "git 'er done" is that we back up our actions with prayer. I think one reason prayer is effective is that to pray for something you've got to think it through just a bit, and thinking something through is not one of a liberal's strong suits. Thinking it through helps your mental attitude and gives you a subconscious plan to work with. God no doubt expects us to do our share too!

"Which is why the Bush democracy project embodies the greatest hope for a reduction of terrorism and why the NIE itself concludes that were the jihadists to fail in Iraq, their numbers would diminish."

Unfortunately this is where Krauthammers argument falls apart, because the "Bush democracy project" offers no hope for a reduction of terrorism, because Muslims are fundamentally incapable of practicing democracy. Democracy depends on freedom in order to operate and Islams basic tenant is submission, the opposite of freedom.

Islam does not allow freedom of speech, of religion, self determination. Hell, women are slaves and the Koran requires Muslims to convert or enslave or kill all non Muslims. Islam is the most intolerant ideology on the planet, the exact opposite of tolerance and freedom.

Most Islamic countries ban Islamic political parties because any Muslim knows that once an Islamic government comes to power, democracy ends, because Islam will not tolerate competing ideologies. The countries that do not ban Islamic political parties are Islamic theocracies.

This is what Iraq will become once the US leaves. The only question is what faction of Islam will be in power. They are waging a low scale civil war in Iraq right now to determine just that fact. US presence in Iraq is practically incidental. It keeps all out war from breaking out but it is not "winning" the war against terrorism any more than it is "losing" the war on terrorism. It is babysitting murderous Muslims, thats all.

Unfortunately this is where Krauthammers argument falls apart, because the "Bush democracy project" offers no hope for a reduction of terrorism, because Muslims are fundamentally incapable of practicing democracy. Democracy depends on freedom in order to operate and Islams basic tenant is submission, the opposite of freedom.

It would appear that Dr. Benard Lewis disagrees with you.

Bring Them Freedom, Or They Destroy Us
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1715287/posts

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered by Bernard Lewis on July 16, 2006, on board the Crystal Serenity, during a Hillsdale College cruise in the British Isles.

By common consent among historians, the modern history of the Middle East begins in the year 1798, when the French Revolution arrived in Egypt in the form of a small expeditionary force led by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte--who conquered and then ruled it for a while with appalling ease. General Bonaparte--he wasn't yet Emperor--proclaimed to the Egyptians that he had come to them on behalf of a French Republic built on the principles of liberty and equality. We know something about the reactions to this proclamation from the extensive literature of the Middle Eastern Arab world. The idea of equality posed no great problem. Equality is very basic in Islamic belief: All true believers are equal. Of course, that still leaves three "inferior" categories of people--slaves, unbelievers and women. But in general, the concept of equality was understood. Islam never developed anything like the caste system of India to the east or the privileged aristocracies of Christian Europe to the west. Equality was something they knew, respected, and in large measure practiced. But liberty was something else.

As used in Arabic at that time, liberty was not a political but a legal term: You were free if you were not a slave. The word liberty was not used as we use it in the Western world, as a metaphor for good government. So the idea of a republic founded on principles of freedom caused some puzzlement. Some years later an Egyptian sheikh--Sheikh Rifa'a Rafi' al-Tahtawi, who went to Paris as chaplain to the first group of Egyptian students sent to Europe--wrote a book about his adventures and explained his discovery of the meaning of freedom. He wrote that when the French talk about freedom they mean what Muslims mean when they talk about justice. By equating freedom with justice, he opened a whole new phase in the political and public discourse of the Arab world, and then, more broadly, the Islamic world.

Is Western-Style Freedom Transferable?

What is the possibility of freedom in the Islamic world, in the Western sense of the word? If you look at the current literature, you will find two views common in the United States and Europe. One of them holds that Islamic peoples are incapable of decent, civilized government. Whatever the West does, Muslims will be ruled by corrupt tyrants. Therefore the aim of our foreign policy should be to insure that they are our tyrants rather than someone else's--friendly rather than hostile tyrants. This point of view is very much favored in departments of state and foreign offices and is generally known, rather surprisingly, as the "pro-Arab" view. It is, of course, in no sense pro-Arab. It shows ignorance of the Arab past, contempt for the Arab present, and unconcern for the Arab future. The second common view is that Arab ways are different from our ways. They must be allowed to develop in accordance with their cultural principles, but it is possible for them--as for anyone else, anywhere in the world, with discreet help from outside and most specifically from the United States--to develop democratic institutions of a kind. This view is known as the "imperialist" view and has been vigorously denounced and condemned as such.

In thinking about these two views, it is helpful to step back and consider what Arab and Islamic society was like once and how it has been transformed in the modern age. The idea that how that society is now is how it has always been is totally false. The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or the Assad family in Syria or the more friendly dictatorship of Mubarak in Egypt--all of these have no roots whatsoever in the Arab or in the Islamic past. Let me quote to you from a letter written in 1786--three years before the French Revolution--by Mssr. Count de Choiseul-Gouffier, the French ambassador in Istanbul, in which he is trying to explain why he is making rather slow progress with the tasks entrusted to him by his government in dealing with the Ottoman government. "Here," he says, "things are not as in France where the king is sole master and does as he pleases." "Here," he says, "the sultan has to consult." He has to consult with the former holders of high offices, with the leaders of various groups and so on. And this is a slow process. This scenario is something radically different than the common image of Middle Eastern government today. And it is a description that ceased to be true because of a number of changes that occurred.
(snip)

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