Posted on 09/30/2001 9:31:07 AM PDT by annalex
Two characteristics of the militant Arab threat to our country need to be kept in mind: it is cosmopolitan inside the world of Islam, and it has deep roots everywhere in that world. In this paper we will examine those characteristic and draw conclusions that will allow us to define the proper strategic and political goals of the war. Defense of Liberty: The Contours of Victory
By Annalex
The diverse character of what is collectively known as militant Islam is remarkable. It ranges from deep religious convictions of Muslim scholars such as the late Ayatollah Khomeini, and from atavistic social practices of the Taliban, to the ragtag guerilla armies of Chechnya and the PLO, the elite Iraqi regulars, and to the respectable doctor's offices in Cairo. Its apparent leader Osama bin Laden is a Yemeni who grew up in privilege and wealth in Saudi Arabia and moved with ease from there to Sudan and then to Afghanistan. Bin Laden assumes the role of a religious leader alongside his undisputable credentials as a terrorist mastermind, and indeed seems to be a devout man leading an ascetic lifestyle. Yassir Arafat, on the other hand, apparently enjoys his secular status of a de-facto head of state, conferred onto him by the Western appeasers. Saddam Hussein, of course is a head of state -- the most secularized one in the Arab world. Osama's illiterate foot soldiers are recruited from the least accessible barren plateaus of Afghanistan, while his suicidal strike force had followed a seemingly assimilated American immigrant middle class track through engineering colleges and flight schools.
At the same time, a parallel Arab universe exists both in the Middle East and in American immigration circles. They are laborers and peasants, shopkeepers and doctors, who maintain a rational economic life, obey the law of the land, pray to Mecca as required, and have no intention of bombing anything. To borrow the American demographic term from the Clinton era, they are soccer Muslims: middle class for their locale, driven by petty economic concerns, philistine (some even Philistine), non-ideological. While the recruits of the militant factions come entirely from this benign Muslim milieu, it would be a gross mistake to identify the entire world of Islam as militant. In fact, great tension exists between the militants and the merchants in the Muslim world, as exemplified by the multiple terrorist acts against the Egyptian tourist industry.
What are the roots of the Arab militancy?
It is tempting to accuse the Muslim religion of fostering violence against the infidels. The Koran does contain examples of Prophet Mohammed condoning violence against and deceit of infidels, that don't find a direct parallel in either the Torah or the New Testament. Nevertheless, an overwhelming number of the world's Muslims has a heightened religious awareness and do not seem to be particularly violent, and moreover, militant Islam is a new phenomenon in the modern history. In any religion, the job of the clergy is to put the messages of its scripture in proper historical context; at most, with respect to Islam, we can say that the Islamic clergy contains militant elements alongside peace-loving ones. Clearly, Islam alone cannot explain Muslim, let alone Arab, militancy. Similarly, the social factors, such as the lack of indigenous technological progress, low social mobility and political repression, although all relevant, do not provide a complete explanation, since a fertile ground for terrorism exists across many social orders in the Middle East, from medieval monarchies to semi-democratic secular governments. We have to conclude that the root of the Arab militancy is to be found at the intersection of social, cultural, and religious Arab experience. The convenient operative word here is: civilization.
Let us take a short theoretical digression. Many cultures, ideologies and traditions typically coexist in a society, either as distinct cultures carried by its individual members, or as foreign cultures that are understood by the given society, sufficiently for cultural interaction. A civilization is a conglomerate of interconnected and inter-accessible cultures, ideologies and traditions. Thus we speak of the Western Civilization, as a loosely connected system of human experiences: the cultures of Europe and the Americas, religious tolerance, secular humanism, rule of law, government by consensus, individualism and materialism. A German engineer may have little in common with a Mexican farmer, yet both cultures easily mix, for example, in California. Thus a civilization gives an individual his cultural universe; outside of that universe an individual is lost: his life has no meaning. An individual facing a foreign but civilizationally compatible culture adapts, learns the ways and the language, and lives on. An individual facing a foreign civilization feels as if he were facing invaders from the outer space. While most cherish their culture, few are prepared to die for it, but many would willingly die in what they see as an eschatological struggle between good and evil.
The diversity of cultures that produce Arab militancy, its complete intellectual impenetrability (imagine trying to reason with Osama bin Laden), its lack of concrete policy goals, the extreme, self-denying devotion of its followers all point to a hostile civilization alien to the West. Historically, we could trace the Arab militancy to the warrior culture of the Arab Caliphate. The conjecture, although not provable or falsifiable directly, can explain the militancy's virulence: we are dealing with an ancient, once great civilization in its death spasms, not almost completely supplanted by secularized and benign forms of Islam.
The worst enemy of an Islamic militant is then not the Western man, a Jew or an American; not his corrupt and dictatorial national ruler, -- it is his neighbor running a coffee shop, a car dealer, a tourist guide: a modest economic man, nominally his fellow Muslim, crossing over to the global economic network and ultimately -- to the ascending Western Civilization.
It is true that Arab militants and soccer Muslims share their local national cultures and concrete policy goals such as territorial disputes with Israel or overthrow of national government. To the extent that those goals do not take on the cosmic overtones of a civilizational struggle, -- for example, do not call for destruction of Israel or The Great Satan, -- those goals, whether we sympathize with them or not, should not be confused with the enemy as it presented itself to us on September 11. Without a doubt, Israel will be a natural benefactor of the defeat of Arab terrorism; however, the nature of the emerging war is different from any territorial dispute.
The emerging war has many historical predecessors. In its youth, the West battled the Arab Caliphate in its civilizational prime. Not that long ago a low-level ongoing conflict with an alien civilization (or civilizations) was known as colonialism. Recently, the West emerged bruised but victorious from two global battles, the World War II and the Cold War. The battle with Communism is particularly instructive in the present context, because Communism was another international in character civilization, based on a coherent and hostile to the West ethos and permeating diverse cultures. It is notable that it took a combination of military strength and efforts of our ideological allies inside the Iron Curtain to defeat world Communism. Both colonialist and the Cold War experiences will have to be revisited today in our search for the proper strategy.
Several conclusions follow from this. The enemy needs to be understood in civilizational, not merely cultural terms. Every Muslim nation has our friends and our enemies; our potentially solid allies are westernized Muslim immigrants, who are refugees from the same militant environment we are combating, as well as Muslim clerics who honestly denounce violence. That does not preclude converting the war on terrorism into a war on nations harboring terrorists, but it precludes a total war against any civilian population.
It is not possible to localize the war to any particular country or set of countries, since any Muslim country contains indigenous militant elements, and the enemy can move from country to country with ease. President Bush's formula: any nation that abets terrorism is our enemy as a nation, -- is the only logical one. Particular care needs to be taken therefore to prevent unnecessary mission creep and limit the goals of this war to elimination of terrorism across rogue nations, as opposed to merely a war on nations with which we (or Israel) may have had frictions in the past. Nor is it possible to conduct this war as a law enforcement operation aimed at the current perpetrators of violence, since new terrorists, even new terrorist networks, can emerge as soon as the old ones are apprehended. It is not possible to retaliate against a martyr, but it is possible to reduce the scope of operation of aspiring martyrs.
For the same reasons it will not be possible to limit our engagement to military means: "strike hard and get out". Any military campaign needs to be followed up by either an occupation regime, or establishment of a friendly government committed to a meaningful, from terrorism-fighting standpoint system of law enforcement. It is in our vital interest to leave the area not sooner than when a Muslim culture rooted in property rights and genuine political pluralism has a chance to withstand future recurrence of Arab militancy.
The policy advocated here has a discredited name: imperialism. At its best, imperialism means a careful management of foreign relations with multiple weaker countries, based on unabashed projection of military strength combined with its minimalist application, and on asymmetrical parent-child diplomacy. The Twentieth Century saw a hasty dismantlement of the old imperialist system and its replacement with an illusion of a one-nation-one-vote world parliament and a cabal of international corporate management organically incapable of cultural or historical insights. Now it is time for the West, in particular, for the United States, to assume leadership once more.
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Those fanatics want to get killed. Why would "declaring war on those responsible" stop future attacks?
That is a matter of semantics. I am not agruing for conquest, but precisely for an activist, rather aggressive, rooted in sel-interest foreign policy that is not shy of showing force, but does not treat entire populations as homogeneous enemy.
Ture, and we need to learn from these mistakes. We need local national governments that are solely concerned with basic safety: a minimalist, (do we dare say, libertarian) governments. We never tried that. Please see #40.
Check and mate or Freudian transposition? Really, read carefully what you wrote.
Do you propose war with any country with an obvious lack of respect for unalienable rights? Why not then the Chinese? Is the reason you don't their armament and population; i.e., military power? Oh, you moral fellow you!
Look, I am just as big a proponent as you of civic respect for unalienable rights. Hell, I quit my job and worked for three years without pay to write a book about property rights and environmental law. I simply think it an oxymoron to go about imposing civic respect for unalienaboe rights by force. Were there a substantial movement within Afganistan to defy the Taleban and revolt, I would obviously support that, but would you refuse if they executed adulterers? There are European governments that think our death penalty barbaric, as do I. Nor am I any liberal, but I do think we are being suckered into a war that we couldn't win. Thankfully, so far Mr. Bush has shown the proclivity not to waste our (thanks to Bubba) depleted armaments on this minor enemy, who could well be operating to sucker us into a strategically defenseless position against our far more formidable foes.
I think the correct moves, in this case, are to take off the head in Afganistan, help the Arab community in the US purge the traitors in this country, and set our theological community on the road of dealing with a major religion set on a course to implode. If you are not familiar with the fact that Islam has been exposed as a fraud by credible academics then you should take the time to read this.
So, IMHO, we must rely upon the Afgani people to find that leader. Not to do so is in my judgement immoral and therefore likely to backfire.
If you would read my earlier post to you, you would see that that is exactly the reason. I said that the Taliban is a reasonable objective. We can take it out with limited involvement, due to the fevered hate for the Taliban by many native Afghan citizens. I said we should interfere when we can. We obviously can here, without sparking a world war.
This has been our policy for number of years already. Bounties were offered. Now Massoud is assassinated. We can't ignore the Afghan resistance, but our reliance must be with the certain knowledge that more invasive measures are required.
I agree. A vacuum in that region would create much more trouble than the cost of maintaining a puppet government.
Kill the leaders, and eventually the movements will die, imo.
Let us be clear about one thing. This is not a war, and it is not very helpful to keep calling it that. Not only does it stoke the predictable panic that followed the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon but it also dignifies the miserable fanatics against whom the struggle has to be waged.
The British have rightly never called the conflict in Northern Ireland a "war", much to the irritation of the so-called Irish Republican "army". If you fight "wars" against terrorists, you appear to justify their cause.
Fortunately that realisation seems to have percolated through in Washington quite quickly, thanks to the heroic performance of people such as General Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, and the military people in the Pentagon. They have cautioned from the start against any exaggerated ideas about what modern soldiers can do against primitive terrorism.
It is not a war, but it is going to be a long and bitter struggle. And the sheer enormity of the crime has triggered a seismic shift in international relations.
On the one hand, it calls into question the trend in Washington towards unilateralism. That was the inevitable result of the US's being the solitary superpower after the cold war ended. The realisation that America is no longer invulnerable in its own backyard, however, has prompted a rethink about the need for allies.
But more of that later. This quantum leap in terrorist violence is also shaking up a host of international relationships and producing some unlikely winners and losers.
Take Russia. President Vladimir Putin is an obvious winner. Although he faced resistance from old thinkers in his security services, it cannot have taken him long to realise that he had everything to gain from throwing in his lot with President George W. Bush.
For a start, it means that his own struggle against terrorism will be seen in Washington as more justified, even if his brutal tactics in Chechnya are still thought counter-productive.
More important in the long run, it will greatly strengthen the argument that Russia must be brought more fully into the security framework of the west.
Mr Putin is a man who monitors public opinion with the intensity of his western counterparts. He knew that the terrorist attacks had produced a new wave of pro-American sympathy in the Russian population, for the first time since the early 1990s. With his popularity waning because of the Chechen stalemate, he needed a new cause.
As for the threat of US intrusion in former Soviet central Asia, his calculation seems to be that, by offering Russian logistical support, he may be better able politely to ask the Americans to leave at the other end.
Mind, several of those central Asian republics will undoubtedly see themselves as winners precisely because they can counterbalance Russia's dominance with greater US involvement. They do not want to remain Russian vassals indefinitely. They also feel threatened by Islamist extremists.
Yet all the central Asian republics have precarious political stability and authoritarian leaders. If they get sucked into a wider regional conflict, triggered by action in Afghanistan, they could be destabilised.
China will not be bothered by such doubts: it looks an obvious winner. Those Republican conservatives in Washington who see Beijing as the real enemy of the 21st century are falling silent. China will not be criticised so publicly for seeking to suppress Islamic unrest in Xinjiang. It has little to lose.
One country that should have been an obvious winner may yet end up a loser because of its own internal divisions. That is Iran. As probably the most ferocious opponent of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Tehran has much to offer an anti-Taliban coalition. Although it can scarcely become a wholehearted supporter of the US campaign without losing all credibility, its benevolent neutrality would be helpful. But the deep division between conservatives and reformers in Iran seems set to prevent it exploiting its advantage.
Israel, on the other hand, could easily be a loser if it does not take care. It has no choice other than to support the US-led coalition, but that leaves it with less influence. The fact that Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, misread the situation so badly in the first days after September 11, and used the terrorist attacks as an opportunity to step up his military actions has weakened his position in Washington even more. It certainly did not help build moderate Arab support for the campaign.
"Mr Sharon does not have a lot of friends in this city at the moment," says Wayne Merry, senior associate at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington. "My impression is that (the Israelis) are under a lot of pressure, but there are efforts to keep that pressure under wraps."
The other traditional US ally in the Middle East that could be badly affected is Saudi Arabia. Its hesitant support for Washington has been obvious. If it is too enthusiastic, it risks a domestic backlash from sympathisers of Osama bin Laden. If it is too hesitant, the US may simply insist, with a similar effect.
The other two key players whose advantage is in the balance are India and Pakistan. India should be the obvious winner. It can point to many links between Islamic militants in the disputed territory of Kashmir and Mr bin Laden's network. Delhi instantly offered the US full access to its air and naval facilities. But it may have overplayed its hand.
As long as Mr bin Laden is the primary focus, Pakistan is critical to the US campaign. Precisely because Washington knows Gen Pervez Musharraf's position is so precarious, the US is determined to be generous in both economic and political support. It does not help for India to be stepping up its demands for a crackdown on Pakistan-based Kashmiri militants.
All of this means a very difficult balancing act for Washington. The complexities may well play into the hands of those who would have America go it alone. Fortunately, Gen Powell seems to be winning the argument so far. The United Nations is being bound into the process, ensuring that the coalition is as broad as possible. That is a very positive sign.
But the tussle between the unilateralists and the multilateralists is certainly not over. If, or rather when, the struggle against terrorism spreads beyond Afghanistan, it will be far more difficult to keep the coalition together and prove that it is the best way of winning the non-war.
quentin.peel@ft.com
Copyright: The Financial Times Limited
Ah, but there is the rub, eh? So far, our nation's governments have failed to show that they are able to learn from history.
The right course means establishing either an occupation regime or a puppet government that sees as its central function enforcement of basic rights...
I agree. A vacuum in that region would create much more trouble than the cost of maintaining a puppet government.
To me what the two of you have articulated is a contradiction in terms: a policy that can only be called paradoxical. There is a distinction between finding a) a leader of the Afgan people who will inculcate the rule of law and pursue Afgani national interests with the support of his people while refusing to foment international terrorism and b) a puppet government with policies dictated remotely having more to do with our interests than the local cultural, physical, and economic realities. Really, what you are proposing is fascism. The policy will surely backfire for its transparency as such will be apparent to every Afgani citizen for which they would happily fight. That "low maintenance" government would therefore be hardly that and instead produce more of the same.
It is also a policy that is subject to the vageries of partisan whim here in the US. I seriously doubt that your apparent enthusiasm for puppet governments would be so were Bubba still the pres. That moment of circumspection you noticed is exactly why yours is a disastrous policy. We must learn to adhere to principle and respect sovereignty or we will find ourselves where there is none and our own votes are meaningless.
There is no contradiction in the proposal outlined. Support of the resistance is necessary for the removal of Bin Laden. But, they are not sufficient for stabilization in the region. Your (a) is not possible without first (b).
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