Month: December 2004

How Wahhabism Gets Spread

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You wouldn’t think that a guy with a name like Stephen Schwartz would be a Sufi Muslim, but he is, having converted to the faith during his time in Bosnia. In his latest piece at techcentralstation, Schwartz examined the anticipated spread of a harsher brand of Islam in Athens, all centering around the "proposed construction of the first state-recognized mosque in the vicinity of Athens in modern times."

The Islamic Center in the Athenian suburb of Peania, more than 15 miles northeast of Athens near the new international airport, will be financed directly by the King Fahd Foundation of Saudi Arabia. According to the Arab News, an English-language Saudi daily, some 8.5 acres were donated by the Greek government for the structure. Foreign assistance for the radicalization of Islam in Greece will inevitably be a central element of the activities at the mosque, which will be very large, intended, it is said, to accommodate all of the estimated 120,000 Muslim faithful in the capital city. The total number of Muslims in Greece is estimated at more than 500,000.

This new mosque will introduce Wahhabism to Greek society, the very ideology that western civilization is at war with. The name "King Fahd" rang a bell with me because he also funds madrassas in Britain, Germany and untold other places, offering dis-assimilation and the oppression of females in its coursework. Are we really at war with Wahhabism? I believe we are, and that we should be outspoken in saying that this form of Islam is heretical. As I wrote here, the sect is too closely entwined with the House of Saud, and its precepts are disturbingly similar to those preached by al Qaeda. There is also quite a bit of overlap with Qutbism, which is highly influential in the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda. The butchers of Beslan were also Wahhabi influenced.

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And Now For Something Completely Different

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Well, not really.  The nub of it is this.  Von and Edward asked me to contribute some writings to Obsidian Wings and I said "yes", and I extend a heartfelt thanks.  At Tacitus, I was under the moniker of "Bird Dog" and, since a new era is being ushered in over there, I thought I’d usher in some small changes as well, such as using my real name.  So what’s the point of this post?  To introduce myself, something I’ve never really done before on a weblog, so here goes.

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Anatomy of a PR Disaster

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I know, I know, this will strike some as "let’s just agree Bush is a bad man and move on" sort of post, but really, could they get out ahead of this Asia disaster relief press, please?

UPDATE: I haven’t clarified very well the main point here, so I’ll insert this:

I’m certainly not trying to build the argument that the US government is not working hard on this, just that they can’t seem to get out ahead of the story PRwise.

Consider the lastest headline regarding our relatively much smaller ally:

Britain triples tsunami aid pledge to 96 million dollars

Meanwhile, in the land where $2 billion is spent on lobbying our government is still struggling to get this right:

The United States, faulted by critics for a slow and miserly response to the Asian tsunami, is preparing an aid package to be introduced in Congress early next year, lawmakers said on Thursday. 

An amount of money has not yet been agreed upon but it would be in addition to the $35 million pledged by President Bush on Wednesday, congressional aides said.

In a statement, Rep. Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican said he is drafting legislation to assist victims that he plans to introduce after the new Congress starts work on Jan. 4.

"The challenges of coping with suffering on this magnitude are almost unfathomable, and we will act" said Hyde, who chairs the House International Relations Committee.

He said a congressional delegation will visit Thailand and Sri Lanka next week.

Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, speaking on CNN said he had prepared a resolution for the return of the new Congress that will set the stage for "very generous appropriations."

We will act? Can we change the tense of that statement to the present continuous please? The New York Times Editioral page rang in today with:

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In Praise Of New Year’s Resolutions

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About ten years ago, my sister and I were sitting in a restaurant at about this time of year, contemplating the fact that while each of us was basically very happy with our life, both of us felt that there was room for improvement. We decided to make New Year’s resolutions together, resolutions that would … Read more

Old Men and Their Epiphanies

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Read biographies of the world’s "warrior-kings" who live into old age and you’ll notice a weariness set in for many of them. A desire to give up the fight and spend the rest of their days appreciating the finer things in life. Often they turn to the arts or focus on spending time with their family. Often they discover that what seemed like "truth" to them earlier in life was an illusion. That war, for example, is a horror worth working to prevent when possible. One of my favorite examples of this is this quote by Eisenhower:

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

Another warrior-king of sorts has stirred up controversy by offering his version of the late-life awakening. USA Today founder Al Neuharth, offered the following in his 12/22/04 column:

Despite unhappy holidays, nearly all of us who served in WWII were proud, determined and properly armed and equipped to help defeat would-be world conquerors Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Hirohito in Japan.

At age 80, I’d gladly volunteer for such highly moral duty again. But if I were eligible for service in Iraq, I would do all I could to avoid it. I would have done the same during the Vietnam War, as many of the politically connected did.

"Support Our Troops" is a wonderful patriotic slogan. But the best way to support troops thrust by unwise commanders in chief into ill-advised adventures like Vietnam and Iraq is to bring them home. Sooner rather than later. That should be our New Year’s resolution.

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A Sontag in Full.

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I’ll join Judith Weiss of Kesher Talk:  "Josh Trevino [nee’ Tacitus] has written the blogosphere’s only graceful and sensible reflections on Susan Sontag."  Give it a read.

Strange Bedfellows.

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Kim du Toit has a point (or, to complete the rhyme, perhaps it’s a "poit"): Longtime Readers of this website will be familiar with the queasiness with which I greeted passage of the various anti-terrorist laws, and most especially the Patriot Act. My reasoning then, as now, was that laws meant to squash Islamist assholes … Read more

The Future and Its Enemies

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While in vacation mode, I’m still reading.  Today’s entry is about my airplane book, The Future and Its Enemies:  The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress by Virginia Postrel.  I know I’m about two years late to this book.  I’ve been meaning to read it for some time, and ran across it in a bargain bin near my sister’s house in Colorado. 

Virginia has a key idea which clarifies some of the difficulties we have in analyzing  polticial cleavages along a left-right split.  She speaks of dynamists and stasists.  In her description, dynamists are willing to embrace the messy nature of unguided social and technological change, while stasists do not.  In her terminology stasists come in two major varieties–reactionaries and technocrats.  Reactionaries wish to control change by reversing it and returning to a previous (and quite possibly mythical) golden age.  Patrick Buchanan is used throughout the book to give examples of reactionary thinking.  I think the choice of ‘stasist’ is revealed to be a bit poor when Virginia goes on to describe technocrats.  Technocrats attempt to tightly control change, often with the idea that an elite number of top-down experts can efficiently control and direct the important changes in society. 

Our new awareness of how dynamic the world really is has united two types of stasists who would have once been bitter enemies:  reactionaries, whose central value is stability, and technocrats, whose central value is control.  Reactionaries seek to reverse change, restoring the literal or imagined past and holding it in place.  A few decades ago, they aimed their criticism at Galbraithean technocracy.  Today they attack dynamism, often in alliance with their formier adversaries.  Technocrats, for their part, promise to manage change, centrally directing "progress" according to a predictable plan.  (That plan may be informed by reactionary values, making the categories soewhat blurry;  although they are more technocrats than true reactionaries, (William) Bennett and Galston inhabit the border regions).

I think this concept is useful to think about, but I suspect it is more distracting to describe both concepts as adhering to stasis than it would be if she called it something else.  The choice is made somewhat more understandable because many technocrats are utopian–they desire a beautiful endpoint.  Both technocrats and reactionaries believe that they know or can find the one best way to do things.  They then attempt to use the government to enforce that way of doing things.  Thinking about this helps me to clarify some of the strange twists that modern American politics takes.  The bulk of conservatives are dynamist with respect to economic thinking.  They have a split with respect to social issues.  Some of them are dynamist, a few are technocratic, and many are reactionary.  Some of those who are reactionary are also reactionary with respect to economic issues (e.g. Buchanan).  Liberals tend to by dynamist with respect to social organization.  They have a split in the economic sphere.  Many are technocratic, many are reactionary, and a few are dynamist in orientation. 

This post is about to get rather long because I intend to use extensive quotes.  So I am hiding it below the extended body.

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Strategy and Tactics

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Reuel Gerecht, writing in the Weekly Standard, is a puzzle.  First, he offers sound advice in Iraq: [W]e are losing the "war of the roads" in Iraq. If the Sunni insurgency controls the principal arteries in and out of Baghdad and can kill with ease on major thoroughfares elsewhere, there is no way the United … Read more

Stan LS Memorial Top 10 Lists for 2004: Open Thread

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Yes, it’s that time of year again, when everyone gets to pretend they write for David Letterman and offer their Top Ten lists on their favorite topics. Rather than limit it to movies or events, however, I’m opening up the concept to anything that strikes your fancy. What were your favorite "things" about the past year? Here’s mine (things that made me happy this year):

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