The Restoration of American Awe

The Weekly Standard ^ | 3 May 2003 | Reuel Marc Gerecht

[Stultis]

The Restoration of American Awe
From the May 12, 2003 issue: And the opening of the Arab mind.
by Reuel Marc Gerecht
05/12/2003, Volume 008, Issue 34

THROUGHOUT THE MUSLIM MIDDLE EAST, the Battle of Baghdad was an enormously depressing non-event. The Arab media had expected the end of Saddam Hussein's regime to be "Basra-plus"--a valiant resistance blending Mogadishu with a hint of Stalingrad. Whether in Egypt's official journal of record, Al-Ahram, on the Arabic satellite-television station Al Jazeera, or on BBC radio and television, anti-American tacticians sounded similar themes. If the regime's paramilitary fedayeen could so surprise and frustrate the Americans and the British in the anti-Saddam Shia south, imagine what they and the Republican Guards Corps were going to do in the capital and towns of Iraq's Sunni heartland.

Arab and Muslim honor were at stake. In the officially certified pantheon of the Middle East's sacred things, pride of blood and faith rests above individual liberty and democracy. The Arab world's Sunni population, which never, truth be told, wept over Saddam's merciless onslaught against the rebellious Shia in 1991, wanted to believe that they and the Shia were one against the United States. Saddam Hussein was not a beloved man in the Arab Middle East--the Saudi holy warrior Osama bin Laden has enjoyed vastly more affection--but he had for more than a decade kept the United States and the West off-balance and divided. Saddam's storm troopers' last stand was meant to salve wounded pride and be condign punishment for American hubris. (Odds are good that most Arab, European, Russian, and Chinese penseurs, not to mention senior French and German officials, were thinking here quite similarly.) The historically inclined among the anti-American Arab political elite also knew that a killing field in Baghdad just might forestall the gut-wrenching reflection that has followed every major Muslim military disaster since Napoleon made mincemeat of Turkish Mamluks in Egypt in 1798.

These hopes collapsed as soon as American soldiers easily captured Baghdad's international airport and began sending armored columns into the center of the capital. CNN's reporting on the "Arab street" relayed quite matter-of-factly the coffeehouse glumness throughout the region. Al Jazeera delivered the same depressing "say-it-ain't-so" message, giving hope to its viewers only through prognostications about the growing anti-Americanism of liberated Iraq. Everywhere anti-American demonstrations evaporated. (It should be said that Al Jazeera, CNN, and the BBC, which have all given prominence to Iraqi sentiments critical of the United States, may in the end be right about the developing power of anti-Americanism in Iraq, but the alacrity of this reporting in such a large country even before Saddam's fall was, to say the least, forward-leaning.)

The virtually nonexistent Battle of Baghdad decisively accomplished what the first several days of the war--the "shock-and-awe" portion--had not, or at least had not in the eyes of many beholders (postwar commentary from surviving Iraqi soldiers will provide the last word on whether the Pentagon misnamed its battle tactics). America's armed forces had taken from Saddam Hussein his hayba--the awe that belongs to indomitable authority. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was only a republic of fear, as Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi dissident writer, has been saying for years, and not a nationalist enterprise. Once the dread vanished, nationalism did not fill the void, as some academic experts on the country had predicted. Rank-and-file Iraqi soldiers, let alone civilians, did not interpret their love of land and faith against the United States. They did not in numbers join Saddam's irregulars.

Awe of American power is, of course, a perishable commodity, both inside Iraq and, perhaps more important, elsewhere in the Middle East. Washington can certainly diminish the respect and acquiescence its military victory has gained by using its power unwisely or, more likely, failing to use its power when it should. Middle Eastern regimes, especially clerical Iran's, will no doubt challenge America's place in Iraq, especially if American efforts to establish liberal democracy are seen to be serious. Under the Bush administration, the restoration of American awe in the Middle East is now inextricably linked to the expansion of liberal values. This point may be lost on European intellectuals, who more often than not see the root causes for the war in some "imperialist" grab for oil or in an Israel-first, Jewish-American conspiracy. It may be lost in certain American quarters, who likewise are distinctly uncomfortable juxtaposing the words "liberal" and "Bush."

Odds are, however, that the rulers of the Middle East will be able to see through the maze of third-world conspiracies and prejudices that define so much of their thought to the motive forces behind President Bush's War on Terrorism and his Axis of Evil doctrine. For them, would that American preferences were so mundane as oil, Israel, or the sphere-of-influence issues about which so many Europeans still care. Consummate realpoliticians, the Arab world's rulers could handle those. American power truly married to the right of Muslims to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, however, is unsettling, if not terrifying. A United States willing to commend and protect, within "allied" Muslim countries, America-averse political parties that agree to play by liberal democratic rules would be even worse. President Bush has not yet crossed that red line, but he is close. He has already taken America and American idealism into the Muslim world like no president before. He has given American power a moral edge that it has not had since Reagan; and he has demonstrated more political courage and tenacity in the Middle East than any of his predecessors.

THE MIDDLE EAST'S rulers will, of course, decry this new American power as "imperialist" in their officially controlled presses. They will strenuously try to maintain their old, pre-World War II, anti-colonial understanding of "freedom." But they will worry, probably more than they have ever done before, that the Western ideas of democracy and individual liberty have sufficiently penetrated into the body politic over the last 200 years that a successful democratic example in Iraq, combined with the dismal performance of their own political systems, could now overwhelm them. Islamic militants advocating the omnipotence of the Koran have been a serious, though manageable threat to the dictatorships and kingdoms of the Middle East. A new stew of political discord, where Western ideas cohere with Islamic ones, and where a serious democratic ethic takes hold of both religiously defined and more Westernized nationalist associations and political parties, may now be inevitable because of America's triumph in Iraq and the failure of other ideas to successfully manage Middle Eastern nation-states.

Politically and philosophically, the Arab Sunni world is unquestionably lagging behind the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran, which has gone through many of the intellectual vicissitudes of the Renaissance and the Reformation since 1979. It hasn't been a pretty voyage. But it is quite possible that the Sunni Arab world is nevertheless close to a democratic takeoff. Though Arabs usually try to diminish or ignore what takes place in Iran, they have probably paid attention to the travails of the Islamic revolution. They may want to avoid some of the same mistakes. In any case, the Battle of Baghdad could likely be one of the great pivot points in Islamic history. Though one may doubt the sincerity of the rulers of the Middle East who now mimic President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell about the need for political and economic reforms, the promptness of their response to the American call after 9/11 is probably more than just fear of an angry United States. There is a widespread awareness in the Muslim Middle East that something is seriously wrong with their societies. There is an awareness that something has to give.

Many left-wing and right-wing intellectuals believe that you cannot impose ideas and political systems on foreign lands. Morality aside (it is, of course, never aside), such "imposition" doesn't work, they say, especially not in the Muslim Middle East, which has been so sensitive to foreign intrusion. But the region has been one of the most intellectually absorptive places on earth. That notable absorptive capacity has always been most extreme when Muslims were either conquering or being conquered. One can indeed make an argument, and thoughtful traditionalists often do, that a hallmark of the modern Islamic world is that it has absorbed too much too quickly. The most compelling critique of the notion of a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam is that we are not talking about two distinct civilizations clashing with one another. Rather we are talking about one borderless civilization split between two hostile clans. (Students at the Shia religious schools in Najaf in Iraq or Qom in Iran are familiar with the tenets and methodology of Plato and Aristotle; they may well have a better understanding of Western philosophy than many undergraduates at Harvard.) The greatest fear that Iran's revolutionary clerics have is that Iranians are vastly too open to Western ideas (they endlessly talk about the "imposition" of these ideas on the young). They should know: It's impossible to describe the Iranian clergy, especially the revolutionary contingent, without making reference to its Western ideas, sentiments, and reflexes.

The Muslim Middle East has been intellectually plugged into the Western world in the most intimate ways for over 200 years. Baathist Iraq, like Baathist Syria, owed its very existence to the successful transfer of fascist principles from Western Europe. Such states as Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt also have been enormously shaped by the importation of Western political ideas. Indeed, it is impossible to describe the regimes, let alone the borders, of any of these countries as homegrown. The authoritarian nature of the traditional Islamic world undoubtedly aided the successful transfer of dictatorial ideologies like fascism, nazism, and communism to the Middle East. But this was by no means a smooth transfer. As Princeton professor Bernard Lewis tirelessly points out, much of the "old" Islamic world, which underscored the duties and responsibilities of the ruler and allowed for enormous personal eccentricity and what we in the West would now call "privacy rights" was razed during the last 100 years. From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, there was nonetheless a more "liberal age" in the Middle East. This period tracked with what some scholars have dismissively described as "Britain's moment in the Middle East." It was a time when you could read the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram and happily expect to learn something. Progressive liberal ideas among the Middle East's elites then held the high ground or were at least competitive with fascist ideas germinating first with the Young Turk movement of the Ottoman Empire, and later more effectively through Baathist admirers of Vichy France and the Third Reich. The ebb and flow of Western powers has been in great part mirrored politically and intellectually in the Middle East. Islamic militancy, too, was fed, far more than the fathers of modern Islamic fundamentalism would care to admit, by ideas originating in the West.

The triumph of America in Iraq will surely provide the next chapter in the Middle East's political thought. And contrary to what is incessantly described in Europe as a likely anti-Western, fundamentalist blowback from the invasion of Iraq, the ramifications of the war will probably be much more in the other direction. America's unrivaled power will perforce encourage observation and debate. England, France, and the Soviet Union at the apex of their power and their appeal all inspired among the Middle East's Muslims enormous discussions, as the peoples of the region hunted for the secrets of the foreigners' success. Many in the Middle East, especially among Islamic militants, have had for years an ongoing, serious discussion about the United States and its enormous seductive power. When Iran's "reformist" clerical president Mohammad Khatami called for a "dialogue of civilizations" in 1998, he was referring specifically to a debate between believing Muslims and the United States. He was not talking about an exchange between the Muslim world and Europe, which as an intellectual force, in his eyes, is no longer driving Western civilization.

The aftershocks of America's victory in Iraq will surely be felt most powerfully in Iran. The Islamic Republic has become, in large part thanks to the failure of the Islamic revolution, the most secularized country in the Muslim Middle East. Your average Iranian has a much clearer understanding of how and where to separate church and state than does his Egyptian counterpart. An enormous, disruptive imbalance now exists in Iran: While street-level and elite political thought in the country views the undemocratic clerical government as morally and politically dysfunctional, the inflexible governing political class knows full well that it no longer rules with popular assent. This tension cannot indefinitely last, as Iran's dissident and not-so dissident mullahs constantly remind their clerical brethren. Iran's ruling mullahs, who have devoted much of their lives to books, understand and fear the power of ideas and the ramifications of successful political examples probably more than any other rulers in the Middle East. A functioning Iraqi democracy, blessed by Iraq's rival, more politically quietist, Shia clergy, is not something that Iran's clergy can live with. For its own survival, Iran's clergy must challenge the United States in Iraq. Whether it will do so aggressively and violently before it obtains nuclear weapons, which will likely happen in under two years, remains unclear. But America's awesome victory next-door has certainly reminded Iran's mullahs of why nuclear arms are indispensable to their rule at home.

ISLAMIC MILITANTS and fundamentalists, who are perhaps the Middle East's most percipient critics of the allure of the United States, know very well the magnetic power generated by America's military, economic, and scientific preeminence. Bin Laden's attacks on the United States were essential for demonstrating that American power could be successfully challenged. Without such terrorism, as bin Laden's life and writings make clear, the call to holy war cannot be sustained. Many left-wing European and American intellectuals may believe that flexing American power is a catalyst for Islamic terrorism. Islamic radicals who grew to manhood during the Clinton years, when the United States ignored or limply responded to lethal assaults against American citizens, diplomats, and sailors, know better. The United States has now put to flight bin Laden and al Qaeda, destroyed the Taliban, put paid to the fundamentalist propaganda that America would suffer the same fate in Afghanistan as had the Soviet Union, easily annihilated Saddam Hussein's armies, and toppled the most feared dictator in the Middle East.

Even the hard-core Islamic radical set must deal with facts on the ground. Death-wish believers, too, need to have hope. In 1895, it was good to be a recruiter for the Mahdi, a Sunni messiah who promised to drive the infidel English and their Muslim lackeys from Sudan and Egypt. After the Mahdi's forces took Khartoum and killed General Gordon, tens of thousands of die-hard believers swarmed to the cause. The Mahdist movement effectively fell apart, however, when General Kitchener seized Omdurman in 1898, annihilating the armies of the Mahdi's successor with cannon and Gatling gun. Though Islamic militancy is an enormously resilient force--the internal problems of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the Muslim community in France are sufficient to keep Islamic extremism alive--we are now dealing with what we might call a "post-Omdurman" situation. The psychological bulwark against Islamic terrorism emanating from the Middle East has been greatly reinforced by America's victory in Iraq. The effect of that victory is probably only slightly less than that of America's direct assault against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Provided the Bush administration does not prematurely withdraw from Iraq--no single action would diminish the United States more in the eyes of our friends and foes in the Middle East--and provided the administration steadfastly plods onward in a democratic direction in that country, the debate about Iraq in the rest of the Middle East will be fierce. We should stay calm and realize that the fiercer this debate, the more profound its repercussions. We shouldn't be talked into accommodations we will certainly regret.

THOUGH NO ACTION could diminish us as much as a premature departure from Iraq, the "road map" for an Israeli-Palestinian peace has all the earmarks of a mess. Even the understandable and commendable desire to help British prime minister Tony Blair should not override common sense. An imposed settlement, which is essentially what the road map devised by the "quartet" is, will not work. If peace is to come to the Israelis and the Palestinians, it will be because the Palestinians collectively, unilaterally, and unqualifiedly have renounced terrorism as a political tool. Given the four primary authors of this road map--the United Nations, the European Union, Russia, and the Near East Bureau in the Department of State (all opponents of the Axis of Evil doctrine and the War on Terrorism applied comprehensively to the Middle East)--it is certain that outside pressure is primarily meant for the "stubborn" Israelis, whom all four have always seen as the principal impediment to "peace."

We could conceivably be back where we were under the Clinton administration: The terrorists on the Palestinian side, and the holy warriors elsewhere in the Middle East, will read American pressure on Israel, and subsequent Israeli concessions, as American weakness before Muslim-Palestinian resistance. If Washington presses on with the road map in the face of further Palestinian suicide bombings--and Secretary of State Colin Powell has already hinted such is his intention--then the Bush administration will fuel the perception of American and Israeli vacillation, thus further fueling holy-warrior attacks on Israel. Fortunately, it appears doubtful that President Bush understands the road map in the way the quartet do. The concessional free-fall that occurred under President Clinton and Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, which significantly helped limn the image of America in retreat in the Middle East, just isn't likely to recur.

Nor is it likely that the "Atlanticist temptation"--a fairly strong tendency in the foreign-policy establishment to view American foreign policy through a Eurocentric lens--will trip up the Bush administration in Iraq. There are certainly forces within the administration, and voices on both the left and right outside government, who ideally would want to transfer as much postwar responsibility as possible to the Europeans and the United Nations, which would be, of course, an efficient way of wrecking Iraq and America's prestige throughout the Middle East. The penny-wise, pound-foolish principle is always present in American democracy.

But French and German behavior before and during the Iraq war was so abrasive and tactically bizarre (the frenetic intensity of French and German diplomatic efforts to undermine the United States in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East was pointless) that even the most Francophilic diplomat at the State Department has little stomach for kissing and making up. In any case, the French, Germans, and Russians simply don't have the wherewithal to diminish America's hayba in the Middle East, even if they collectively really try. For the peoples of the region, who are, after all, the folks who count, the "dialogue of civilizations" is, for better or worse, between them and the United States.

Only a few years ago, it was inconceivable for most people to imagine an American liberation of Iraq. September 11 and President Bush's force of will have forever altered the intellectual map of the Muslim Middle East. A second "liberal age" may now be coming to the region. It was perhaps coming in any case, but the events since 9/11 have surely accelerated the process. It is important to remember that the first "liberal age" wasn't pretty. But it was a vastly more appealing time than what came after. With the imminent arrival of nuclear arms to clerical Iran, it's hard to imagine the second "liberal age" coming too soon. A race is on. It's in America's interest wisely and forcefully to speed its arrival.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a contributing editor, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

[Yardstick]

*Bump* for later

[BushCountry]

Long winded but has some valid points, methinks.

[Stultis]

Long winded...

Fair enough. Here are some meatier articles just posted from the current Weekly Standard:

Bad Reporting in Baghdad

Mr. Hariri Goes to Washington (Money Laundering & Plundering by Lebanon Prime Minister)

[Mr. Jeeves]

And contrary to what is incessantly described in Europe as a likely anti-Western, fundamentalist blowback from the invasion of Iraq, the ramifications of the war will probably be much more in the other direction.

And I think the Bush Administration was certain of that before they ever suggested the invasion. If the situation truly unfolds this way, the French and German governments are going to look like the biggest fools in history.

[Savage Beast]

"Arab and Muslim honor were at stake...pride of blood and faith rests above individual liberty and democracy."

Their perverse sense of "honor" and "pride" aside, the only way to deal with these people and the only way to live in peace with them is through strength and confrontation.

President Bush proved this. He also showed the world what fools appeasers are.

[Savage Beast]

The same is true of America's treacherous French, German, and Russian "allies" who entered into a covert conspiricy with the Saddam Hussein regime to defeat the United States!

Americans may forgive the treachery of these "allies", but we will never forget, and we will deal with them through strength and distrust in the future.

[Licensed-To-Carry]

It's a good thing I'm not in charge of anything in the Middle East because the simple answer to the Palestinian and Israel conflict would be decreed thusly.

1. Make the Palestinians, Jordanian citizens and the West Bank part of Jordan.

2. Move all Palestinians from Gaza into the West Bank and make Gaza part of Israel.

3. Keep the border between Jordan and Israel a no-mans land to keep the Palestinians and Israels apart.

4. Make the oil rich countries of the middle east (Saudis, Iraqis, etc) give a portion of their receipts to Jordan to pay for their increased population.

So Let It Be Written, So Let It Be Done.

[born yesterday]

Your ideas quite good. Although I believe another land redistribution scheme would work better.
Cut off the East of Jordan and the West of Iraq for the Palestinians. Isolate them from the Jews.
Israel conquered the West Bank. Let them have it.
Maybe we could induce Arabia to add some of their most Northern land to the mix.

[denydenydeny]

Excellent article.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

There by starting the biggest bloodbath in recent Middle East history and that is saying something.

You can't make a country accept territory against their will and Jordan does not WANT the West Bank back.

It was nothing but trouble when they had it and would be nothing but more trouble now.

That is the elephant in the room that everyone persistently ignores. There is not one government that wants or even grudgingly accepts the so-called Palestinians. And unless you want a massacre you can’t make them accept them. In Lebanon if you are of Palestinian decent you may not buy land and if you already own it you may not leave it to your heirs. They aren't wanted.

[Licensed-To-Carry]

Well I was just thinking about the moving expense but I can modifiy my decree to create an east Jordan, west Iraq country for Palestinians. We could call it Iraqdanastine.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for posting this. Bush and Team had it figured right!

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