Centerfield

Well, ideological fragentation is hard to measure. :-)

Part of the effort to defeat islamic fundamentalist terror must be to promote modern, pragmatic, self-interest oriented islam. Fundamentalist islam's strength AND its weakness is its uncompromising nature. Over time, unwillingness to compromise is viewed as a flaw if no progress is made. The masses of people will view progress from a pragmatic and utilitarian view informed by self-interest. Food for the mouth, a roof overhead, roads to take, water to drink, opportunities here on earth. We are at least trying to provide such things, and I hope that the masses are going to slowly see terrorists as opposed to this on any terms but their own. Promises of paradise in the afterlife grow stale in the face of unrelenting misery, especially when the promisers are consistently fighting against the delivery of succor in this world.

The lightbulb may well go on. Every time terrorists quack once again like unscrupulous murderous opportunists willing to foster hell on earth for paradise next tuesday, more people see the duck.

That's why I'm not especially troubled by the idea that some areas will get elections and others won't. What will the masses in Fallujah think when other Muslim areas get elected reps and rebuilt infrastructure? Will it re-affirm the conspiracy theory or will it make them wish they had elected reps and rebuilt infrastructure.

Our struggle is to keep alive enough of a flicker of hope in the possibilities for this present life, to foster continuing pragmatic tolerance for our presence. My sense is that this is a light that can't be re-lit in a within a generation of people, and that if it goes out, the game is up.

Kepel has made this point before, that militant Islam is not winning. (In fact, in a previous book, he argues that political Islam is not winning either.) I think he is a little too sanguine about the future of militant Islam, but he does seem to be correct that the violence seems to be alienating the Muslim masses. After all, Osama bin Laden is alive but he's living in a cave.

I agree largely with BK's comment that the key in Iraq is to reconstruct the society. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this has been hampered by the Bush Administration's unwillingness to turn over the reconstruction to professionals and to try to keep it in the hands of political reliables with the correct ideology. And not to reopen another door from a previous post, but I think we would have been better off focusing on Afghanistan where we were clearly welcomed. IMO, invading Iraq, regardless of Saddam's evilness, was morally ambiguous and created a lot of problems. But now that we are there, let's do it right.

One of the problems is that we have generated this myth of American invincibility so that every delay on delivering on our promises seems willful to the Iraqis who believe that we can do anything overnight if we want.

One of the problems is that we have generated this myth of American invincibility so that every delay on delivering on our promises seems willful to the Iraqis who believe that we can do anything overnight if we want.

Marc, that's a really interesting point. I wonder if the American public suffers a little bit from that myth as well? Maybe the "myth of American invincibility" made us feel like this war should have been a cakewalk (perhaps this accounts, in part, for the infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner?), and we've been surprised by how much of a slog it's turned out to be. If we hadn't elevated the United States to such mythic porportions, would we have been more clear-eyed about what we might face in Iraq before we went in, and would we be feeling less anxiety about the length of this war now?

Very interesting thought, Marc.

America IS mythic in what Americans can do. And not even all Americans (Tom Leherer joked about how much was spent to put some clown on the moon, when there were so many poor Americans, back in early 70s).

But "Americans doing" is not the point, it must be what can the Iraqi people do. Yeah, America could firebomb Fallujah, like it did with Dresden in WW II.

Nobody knows the "best" way to help freedom loving Iraqis convince Iraqi terrorists and terrorist supporters to stop terrorism; not even those Iraqis.

Americans can be short sighted and impatient when their expectations are high. Enough of us realize tho that nothing ever goes as planned, and you have to work hard through the bad times, as well as the good to achieve success.

"Mission Accomplished" banner.... Sheeeeesh, get off of it already. Every returning carrier has a mission accomplished party, and this one was no different, you just saw the pictures of this one. That banner was not put up by the president, or his staff, it was done by the captain of the boat indicating that their tour/assignment/mission had been completed and they were returning home.

Yeah, my Mission Accomplished banner remark *was* pretty lame, huh, John? I was more thinking out loud than actually, you know, *thinking.* ;-)

Americans do and have done a lot of amazing things. My only point is that the Iraqis have come to think that we can snap our fingers and turn lead into gold overnight. This has created disillusionment when it didn't happen.

On your second point Amy, I think you make a good point. Americans swing from feelings of inferiority to feelings of invincibility quite regularly. For most of the Cold War, we were terrified by the idea that Russians would overwhelm us militarily, even though in retrospect, we were almost always much stronger. On the other hand, look at Viet Nam as an example of where our "can do" attitude got us in trouble. Both of these extreme types of attitudes work against clear-eyed analysis.

Useful link

Useful Link

Referring to the comment about the Dresden "fire bombing" look in the books, it wasn't intentional. Mother Nature, winds and bad luck caused the fires. We didn't intend to destroy Dresden.