Centerfield

But adopting bin Laden's Manichean view of the world, as Bush seems to have done, is no solution.

I'm not sure what Manichean means. Probably something bad. But if one wishs to criticize Bush's policy as good for Bin Laden, shouldn't one account for the notion that his Iraq plan is to eventually largely depart Iraq, leaving behind a modern democracy with muslims living in peace with others. IOW, don't Bush's plans deserved to be evaluated on the basis of their alleged long-term eficacy too, and not just on the basis of the rhetorical advantage they may immediately supply to Bin Laden?

If we do this, and withdraw most forces from Iraq within say 5 or 01 years, and Iraq becomes a decent model for how a semi-tolerant domocracy provides freedom of religious practice and tangible individual opportunity far better than theocracies, what does Bin Laden say then? Isn't that the point?

But if one wishs to criticize Bush's policy as good for Bin Laden, shouldn't one account for the notion that his Iraq plan is to eventually largely depart Iraq, leaving behind a modern democracy with muslims living in peace with others.

That may be his plan, but it should be evaulated on his ability to deliver. Given GW's ineptitude, I would say we are going to leave Iraq in worse shape than when we got there, it didn't need to be this way. If his planing was a little more than God telling him to go there, we might have had a chance.

I think the problem really stems from an early and consistent dismissal of the extremists as a threat.
Even after 9/11 and Afghanistan it was “bring it on”. To many in this country just couldn't conceive of David bringing down Goliath. Only now is it starting to occur to people that we are in another 50 year cold war, and that we may not be currently winning.

I work with a lot of military, and you can finally see the macho being switched off and a light bulb starting to flicker on. They are starting to worry.

IMHO if we don't stop the hemorrhaging of cash flow into Iraq we are going to have a real problem. Their strategy is to bankrupt us, and drive oil prices up to collapse the economy. That strategy has to be countered.

BTW: Bobby has an interesting post on his web site. It shows the kind of thinking going on inside the heads of the pentagon brass. Personally I think they are ignoring the elephant in the room about the cost of the war and whether we are falling into a monetary trap, but it's interesting none the less.

Bob, thanks for linking to Bobby's stuff. It looks interesting and I hope to dig into it some more later. I'd go so far as to say it looks like it deserves thread-level consideration. Too tired tonight.

I'm curious about the notion that the extremists were not viewed as a threat. I mean, presumedly, they were enough of a general threat that we invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq as well. That's taking them pretty seriously. If your point is that some neocons were dreaming that Iraq would welcome us with candy and flowers, maybe so. Personally, I doubt that many but the most zealous held this view seriously.

I regarded them at the time to be ivory tower idiots who'd fallen in love with their fantasy, and I know that I was not alone in thinking that. I wonder whether we'll ever find out how much credence GWB himself gave to such democratic wet dreams. We know what those who despise him and those who adore him think.

If indeed he took the terrorists lightly and spent American lives blithely, then he is an evil fool just as his critics charge. But I'll not credit such ugly ugly charges without the direct testimony of those truly in the know and without axes to grind. Not holding my breath waiting for those people to come forward any time soon.

From the get-go onto Iraqi soil, my view was always that he deserved to be judged on the outcome. I stand by that.

So Rob, I couldn't agree more that Bush deserves to be evaluated on his ability to deliver. I'm not sure if you are implying that he hasn't been or isn't going to be...

IMO Bush will take the credit or blame for the eventual outcome, and there's no way he sidesteps that. This is very much Bush's war, it was clearly a gamble from the get go, and it'll be on him.

Are we winning or losing in Iraq? The variety of answers one gets when asking this reveal the question to be a mirror showing where you stand. Max Boot's LA Times column Up close, Iraq gets blurry does a good job of sketching this out. As he points out, successes and setbacks co-exist side by side.

To get back on topic, I'd like to say a little more about Bin Laden. I think we give him far too much credit if our strategy is dictated by the need to beat him in the rhetorical battle. OBL has no accountability. He can say whatever, spin whatever. He sets no government policies and is accountable to no electorate. He can explain anything we do and any outcome that occurs as a victory for islam, cause for hope and further proof we are evil. So I think we are on the right track when we don't let the battle against islamic terrorism be subsumed by the OBL cult of personality. As time passes, OBL's audience will grow or dwindle based on actions and outcomes, not forked-tongue pieties announced on videotape outside the cave du jour..

I think they were viewed as a threat with a little “t”.
Something easily dealt with once the full might of the country was brought to bear.
I don't think anyone considered them as being capable of destroying us the way the soviet union could.
We have vulnerabilities (oil, financial...), if they are properly exploited the damage can be just as significant as an incident with WMD.

My impression is that the government generally (and I include the Clinton Administration too) did not see this as a mortal danger, just more of a nuisance and a potential threat. The odd thing is that the first Trade Center attack didn't seem to really wake anyone up. On the other hand, what could have been done realistically?

I don't see Iraq being a "modern" democracy. It might end up with some sort of "illiberal democracy" which is where it seems to be headed and continued sectarian strife. Maybe that is better for the Iraqis than Saddam, but it's not likely to be good for the US.

What I meant about the Manichean comment--and it was certainly not well expressed--is that we (and I don't mean just Bush) need to start looking at the problem not in our own terms but in terms of how the Muslims see it. Clearly, much of the Muslim world has grievances with the West--particularly the US. We can argue about how legitimate they are, but it's pointless to pretend they don't exist by just ascribing bin Ladenism to simple evil. The neocons want to argue that the ONLY problem is that these countries are not democratic and that all we have to do is make them democratic and everything will be fine. I think that ignores the complexity of the situation--moreover, it's pretty clear that installing democracy isn't so easy. At the same time, it makes no sense to say that bin Ladenism is JUST a result of American policy. It's a complex issue that, IMO, is not amenable to the simple answers that both the right and the left would like. It's not simply a matter of our side being good and their side being bad. I know this view is not popular here, but I don't think the war has helped our cause one iota--I think it has probably hurt it overall. That doesn't mean, however, that all we have to do is change our policy, drop Israel, etc., and the problem will go away. But it also doesn't mean that our policy is not an issue.

Yes, I realize this is "on the one hand this, on the other hand that" comment. I don't really have any answers.

leaving behind a modern democracy with muslims living in peace with others.

There already is one, ever hear of a country called Turkey? They are as close to a seculer democracy as you will ever find in the Middle East and they have had zero impact on the political landscap of those coutries around them.

Why is it that we all think that Iraq becoming a modern democracy will have more of an impact?

Marc, the Arabs who sympathize with Bin Laden generally hate America because of our "liberal" ways, letting women parade around in nothing, not worshiping the right God, exporting our McDonalds and Nikes and capitalistic model to their country. Isreal and Palestine play into it a little, but that's used more as kindling to get the rest of it going than anything else. And the reason we export McDonalds and Nikes and capitalism to those areas is because the young people want it. Most of the young Arab Muslims want to be part of modern Western society. They wear our clothes and watch our TV.

But the old guard, the ones with power, the religious leaders who want to tell everybody how to live, want desparately to cling to their power and to force their young to grow up like them. That's somewhat a part of universal human nature. It's an extremist version of 50's parents loathing rock 'n roll. And like Pat Boone, there are plenty of young people in their society who agree with the elders and want to resist change. Those young people are the ones who become suicide bombers and followers of Bin Laden (unlike Pat Boone).

That's why many of them hate us. But far from all of them, which is why it's so crucial for our policies to recognize the difference between those governments and individuals seeking to moderate and modernize their societies (like Dubai) and those who seek to impose the old ways (like Syria).

They [Turkey] are as close to a secular democracy as you will ever find in the Middle East and they have had zero impact on the political landscapw of those countries around them.

Rick, what's your objective criteria for judging that Turkey has had "zero" impact on the nations around them?

Why is it that we all think that Iraq becoming a modern democracy will have more of an impact?

I can speak only for myself, and I don't see the merits of comparing the alleged impact of Turkey and a possibly democratic Iraq. I simply think that both Iraq and the world will be better off if democracy succeeds there.

And I think you're being disingenuous in suggesting that you are unfamiliar with the hypothesis. The notion, which you had to have heard many many times by now, is that people in theocratic/autocratic regimes that remain poor, backward, oppressed, and without hope of tangible improvement in their real-world lives will look at the improvements that civil democracy brings, and want such changes for themselves.

If you DON'T think that is possible or likely, explain why. But don't waste our time asking rhetorical questions that you already know the answer to...

Now if we wanted to get some proxy for the impact of democratic ideals upon the thinking of muslims, we could look at immigration patterns. Let's see what the people who are voting with their feet have to say. Are immigrants moving towards democracies, or away from them? Are muslims rushing to the pious sanctuary of Iran, or are Iranians heading for the door? How's Turkey doing? Are they have more trouble keeping muslims from going to Palestine or to France, or are they having trouble keeping muslims OUT?

And what about all those muslims that have immigrated to the EU? Suppose we grant that such movements are driven primarily by economic opportunity, not some abiding love of capitalism and democracy. Are you going to tell us, with a straight face, that no muslim immigrants are going to make a connection between economic opportunity and the sorts of political systems that seem able to produce it? Or are you going to maintain that the economic opportunities that democracy with capitalism provides are simply coincidences? Bear in mind that I am talking about opportunity from the point of view of the average citzen, not the economic success of a nation as measured by a total or an average.

Even if only 5 out of every 100 muslims is able to buy their own home by qualifying for a mortgage, that's a 5% increase in the number of muslims who understands that Sh'aria laws forbidding money-lending can function as tools of oppression.

"Marc, the Arabs who sympathize with Bin Laden generally hate America because of our "liberal" ways, letting women parade around in nothing, not worshiping the right God, exporting our McDonalds and Nikes and capitalistic model to their country"

Pat,

I think you are making a simplistic assumption about Islamic societies. It's a very comforting idea to think that it's not about what we do but simply about what we are. It's not that black or white. Yes, a lot of young Muslims like American culture, but at the same time, a lot also hate the US, not because of the culture but because of what they perceive American policy to be. I don't think you should dismiss the idea that people can be conflicted about bin Laden, ie, that they sympathize in general with the idea (correct or not)that American policy has oppressed Muslims without sympathizing with his movement or his tactics. I think that's true in Iraq as well--a lot of Iraqis sympathize with resistence toward the American invasion even though they don't necessarily sympathize with the tactics of (especially) Al Quaeda.

The point is not that they are necessarily correct about US policy--I think they are wrong about a lot of stuff. But the point is that al ot of Muslims, even those that don't explicitly support bin Laden and his tactics, even those that would not want to live in a bin Laden world,
have some sympathy for bin Laden because they think Muslims are oppressed. And I think it's naive to think that the Israeli-Palestinean situation isn't a factor--whatever the substantive merits are.

Brian,

I agree that if Iraq became a "modern" democracy, it would be a positive. But that's sort of a circular argument. If it was a "modern" democracy, it most likely would have embraced the whole concept of modernity, which includes a lot more than just democratic political institutions. What you are essentially saying is that if Iraq (or other places in the ME) were like the US or Europe, things would be a lot better. That's certainly true, but they are a long way from that and just calling them a democracy does not make them modern.

And, there is also this. No matter what ultimately happens in Iraq, democracy will always be identified with the American invasion. IMO, that is going to be a formidable obstacle to developing the kind of modern democracy that it needs. Democracy can take a lot of forms and I think what we think of as democracy--ie, not really democracy so much as constitutionalism and limited government--is going going to have a hard time taking hold there, in part because it's been tainted by the US presence.

One thing to keep in mind about Turkey. It may be a democracy, it may be a Muslim democracy but it is most definately not an ARAB democracy. Not all Muslims are the same....and just because they all pray to the same God doesn't mean that they all get along and take queues from one another.

Remember, Turkey was the heir to the Ottomon Empire....which was itself a colonial power in the region every bit as much (or more so) then Britain and France. For a time it was considered as much a part of Europe as it was of the Middle East....and was definately NOT on freindly terms with all of it's Arab and other muslim subject peoples. Heck, what do you think Lawrence of Arabia was all about?

We have to be carefull about lumping everyone from that region in the same boat....and treating them all as if they were indistinguishable from one another....because they most definately are not.

Marc, I certainly don't mean to suggest that the reason I gave is the only, sole reason for anti-Americanism, though I do think it is a major part of it.

Look at the leaders of the anti-Americanism. What rhetoric do they use? Sure, they talk about Palestine. But they are also religious fundamentalist extremists. The anti-Americanism is not being promoted by anti-materialist communists, but by the same people who issue death edicts for the likes of Salman Rushdie and the same people who support or condone the stoning of adulterers and homosexuals.

P.S. If you already believe you know the answer of why they hate us, next time just say so rather than exhort us to work harder to understand them... Is it all one factor or another? Of course not. It's a complicated region in a complicated world. But let's accept that at least part of why they hate us has nothing to do with the materialism and politics of this country which leftists love to loathe and a lot to do with the virtues of tolerance and freedom which are fundamental components of our nation.

No matter what ultimately happens in Iraq, democracy will always be identified with the American invasion. IMO, that is going to be a formidable obstacle to developing the kind of modern democracy that it needs. Democracy can take a lot of forms and I think what we think of as democracy--ie, not really democracy so much as constitutionalism and limited government--is going going to have a hard time taking hold there, in part because it's been tainted by the US presence.

Iraqi democracy, if it manages to survive and flourish, will be exactly that: Iraqi democracy. It will and indeed itshould look different from American democracy.

But I think your "taint" hypothesis borders on silly. People will act out of self-interest, not ideological pieties. Ultimately I expect Iraqi democracy to be judged by what it provides to its participants, not by who brought it. Now of course would-be theocrats will oppose democracy as a western pollution. But the credence of the Mullahs messages will ultimately rest on whether people get violent chaos or a chance for a better future than elsewhere. My experience is that the audience for "have very little and like it" is pretty limited unless attendance is mandatory.

I would really love to see some semi-reliable numbers on middle eastern immigration. Even more basic to democracy than the right to speak your mind is the right to vote, and that includes voting with your feet. Immigration tales always include a strand about how many immigrants don't assimilate and how the natives fear and hate them and their culture.

Now perhaps all or many of those muslims that have moved to Europe in the past decade or two may have genuinely brought with them a devotion to islam and a determination to be true soldiers for islam. But what will their kids think, the ones with full bellies, a safe home, a TV to watch, a playstation to play, an internet to surf freely? To some of them, Allah may well sound like a drag, like the turd in the punchbowl. If this happens, it will NOT be the first time.

My point? If muslims are leaving the middle east for the west, that's a vote for the west. And if the west keeps moving east, that's muslim theocracy losing market share too. Not to mention your garden-variety despots camoflagued in islam.

IMO, it's a challenge for the west to notice this, and then to try to be just a little bit less afraid of them than they are of us. There is NOTHING wrong with vigilance, it's much better than blind fear.

Why do people hate?

a) They hurt us, so we hate them.
b) They are not like us, so we hate them.
c) They will not shut up and be like us, so we hate them
d) They have something we want, and since we are going to steal it, we need to mentally justify our actions

Anybody got another one?

I would say the Muslim extremists are using a, b and c.

Pat,

I don't disagree with you that part of the reason they don't like us is they just don't like us. I did not mean to say that it was ONLY our policy. Hopefully, I made it clear that it was too complicated for simple answerers either from the right or the left.

I think you have to distinguish between the fundamentalists themselves and the population in general. Clearly, the bin Ladens and that ilk hate the US in general (although I don't think that generalized hatred is what drove 9/11). But I think a lot of the Muslim populations don't so much hate liberalism as they hate what they perceive to be policies that "oppress" Muslims. Now, certainly, their values influence the way they perceive our values. To the extent that they see liberalism as a system that permits insults to religion (at least to Islam), that probably colors how they view liberalism in general. For example, the idea that governments do not control the press and are neutral about what the press writes is alien and contributed to the perception of the West with respect to the cartoons.

Still, I suspect that much of the population (again, excepting the true fundamentalists)do not oppose at least the idea of democratic representation, fair trials, etc. Yet, a lot of these people believe that the West has treated Islam badly. So, that while they don't necessarily want to live under a bin Laden-style government, they see bin Laden as at least a way of making their grievances heard.

I'm certainly not suggesting that we truckle to bin Laden. I'm only saying that it's a mistake to see bin Laden as NOTHING MORE than a disease in the Muslim body politic that can be simply excised.

And why do Arab Muslims have so many misperceptions about the U.S. and our policies? Largely because their media (such as it is) and their political and religious leaders purposefully foment discontent and the big bad evil U.S. in order to preserve their own power.

And to the extent that our differences are truly due to a clash in values (over, say freedom of religion and freedom of speech), I for one am in favor of keeping and promoting our values, not their repressive values.

You are correct that there's much more to the problem than Bin Laden. But most of those root problems are fixable only by those countries themselves having more openness and more responsive governmental officials. In short, more democracy.

Democracy?
Like the Palestinians?
If anything breeds a "modern" tolerant population it would be economic prosperity, not democracy. The Russians tried political reform before economic and it has not gone well. The Chinese on the other hand seem ripe for democracy.
Fill the bellies of the masses first, and then worry about their minds.

PatHMV and Bob J Young make excellent points in these last two posts.

However Pat, I disagree about the cure to Arab problems. Bob's assessment is a bit more in the right direction in terms of starting point.

Democracy needs to be a choice made by stable people. Real viable democracy or republicanism can not be imposed or done as a violent reaction to corruption or malfeasance; otherwise you will simply get a unstable reactionary movement that may leave the people no better if not worse than when they started.

Besides the Russian example, I offer the French Revolution as a recent example. The terror and instability that ensuede eventually lead to Napolean. It took time before the people were ready and stable enough to start the path toward toward a true and stable representive democracy.

China (hypothetically), as Bob points out, demographically would be much more successful at attempting some sort of democracy since there is more economic stability.

I certainly agree that economic prosperity is a big determinant of stability, and perhaps more important than democracy itself (though why quibble, both are good things). China is indeed an excellent case in point, though they have achieved their relative stability in part through extremely draconian measures (their one-birth policy which led to massive numbers of abortion and infanticide).

So perhaps the Middle East needs more free-market economies than they do more democracies right now. Certainly, China is an excellent example also that economic prosperity does not come from a controlled economy. Their current prosperity really began only after Mao passed away and Deng Xiaoping won the resulting power struggle with the moderate faction who brought about much more market-oriented policies.

Very important to bringing about economic stability and a market economy is the rule of law. Again, note that China did not begin to make significant strides in advancement until it began creating an actual, sophisticated, legitimate legal system is 1979.

P.S. Supporting market-oriented economies is an excellent reason to approve of the Dubai ports deal!

PatHMV,

I do support the Dubai deal or rather, I'm not opposed to it.

On the other points, there's a subtle point here the separates some of these ideas like "free-market economies" and democracy. I said that you need economic "stability", which may or may not involve high degrees of prosperity. I say this because I believe that economic stability brings about social stability which in turns allows a real democracy of some sort to function properly as a will of the people. ON THE OTHER HAND, I do not think that you can have social stability WITHOUT economic stability. Flawed or not, I generally believe things must happen in this order. Once you have this stability, people will have the ability to govern themselves. Without, there is only chaos and corruption.

BTW, social stability is not just the absence of war. So I would not say that if Iraqis all started getting along tomorrow for the most and the insurgents we're all eradicated we would have social stability. That would be just the rudimentary calm and infrastructure stability needed to get anything done. Our time to do that was right after Saddam was ousted and we blew it because the basic sense of order was ruined.

How we

I definitely agree that we should have done more to preserve "law and order" in the immediate aftermath of the war, and it was an historical failing of the Army to prepare for that kind of "peacekeeping" duty. I believe that our resident expert in all things military, Bobby, has made similar or related points. Beginning at least in the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the leadership of the Army should have been preparing for just this type of war, training more and more military police and Arabic language translators. Instead, the military learned the wrong lesson from the Powell doctrine which worked so well in Gulf War I. Because the military resisted and disapproved of all moves by the civilian leadership to use it in humanitarian and peace-keeping roles, it was unprepared for the aftermath of the initial battles.

But as Secretary Rumsfeld says, you go to war with the Army you have. The institutional change needed for the Army to truly prepare for this type of mission is one which takes place only over decades.

But the guys in the field have, I think, been learning pretty quickly on their feet. We've done a lot more infrastructure and economic development over there than the media is willing to report.

Pat,

And I think you're right-- that after a long delay, the Army's planners and commanders (especially at the lower level where the small unit action is taking place) have finally gotten around to adapting to a counterinsurgency (COIN). There's a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting this change-- the National Training Center now prepares deploying brigades to fight in a low-intensity conflict instead of against the Soviet horse pouring through the Fulda Gap (this was not the case in 2004); a Counterinsurgency Academy has been established in Iraq itself where our junior leaders are brought in for a two week period to share "lessons learned" and gain exposure to successful COIN techniques; the professional development charges (such as the Combined Arms Center's Combat Studies Institute and the Command and General Staff College) have focused professional articles and competitions on COIN and unconventional warfare areas (such as security assistance), etc.

Critics will claim that this is much like the Tet Offensive and Vietnam-- that the guerrillas were defeated and the Army had finally learned COIN when it no longer mattered, i.e., when the America people no longer supported the war and our victory had therefore been precluded. I don't think that's true, but I recognize that it is the critique.

What I find more fascinating is what this generation of Army officers will do when we emerge from the War in Iraq and the Global War on Terror. The previous generation emerged from Vietnam, buried COIN and unconventional warfare theories and lessons learned, and then advanced foreign policy doctrine (such as the Powell Corollary) that sought to influence political decisions to never again intervene in small wars (rather than to develop and refine the capability to win such conflicts). Whether we follow down the irresponsible path and bury what we don't want or internalize these lessons learned for what we need remains to be seen-- and is by no means decided.