One of the key stereotypes about Republicans and Democrats is that modern Republicans put too much trust in the military and modern Democrats too little. Despite my dislike for Kerry, I am one for nuance. I think that a truer statement would be that Republicans emphasize the benefits of military action while sometimes downplaying the detriments. Democrats tend to underestimate the danger of allowing certain problems to continue unchecked, or overestimate the value of international paper in terms of ameliorating problems. A good foreign policy would attempt to utilize the key insights from both viewpoints to defeat our enemies. (I’m not going to attempt another comprehensive definition of our enemies in this post, I have two other contentious issues to raise.)
Even if we try to avoid casting the current conflict as a “Clash of Civilizations”, we should admit that this conflict has definite cultural overtones. Since we cannot engage in ‘total war’ fashion against widely distributed and (often) non-state actors, we must attempt to understand the cultural factors in the war—at least enough to try to take actions which don’t make things worse in the long run.
One cultural factor which is often ignored by Democrats in the debates about the War on Terrorism is the idea that some acts which would be interpreted as merciful in the West are interpreted as weak and invite further attacks by many in the Middle East.
A cult of personality rose around Saddam Hussein almost immediately after his invasion of Kuwait was turned back. This occurred despite the fact that his invasion was condemned by the UN, the international community, and many Arab states. He became a hero because he battled the US and survived. Objectively he survived only because the US chose not to kill him. But in the Arab world his survival was explained in terms of American weakness of resolve. In the myth that became more important than reality, he survived because a resolute Arab leader had stood up to the US and had exposed the moral weakness of the alleged superpower. According to that storyline the US wasn’t willing to risk fighting for any long period of time. Bloody the US, and it would run because it couldn’t stand the sight of American bodies in a war.
This concept was reinforced throughout the Middle East after the US took no serious response to Saddam’s attempt to assassinate Bush I. It was further reinforced by the American retreat from Mogadishu and the cruise missile only response to the embassy bombings.
What we see as proportional response looks different through the lens of many Middle Eastern cultures. Which would argue for a heavy-handed response to terrorist attacks and non-compliant regimes. On the other hand, it is also true that some military responses can cause a population to radicalize, especially if our actions are seen as hitting principally the innocent. Since we don’t want to ever be in a position where winning the war depends on genocide, we have to be attentive to the reactions of innocent Middle Eastern inhabitants.
This leads to the balancing insight: we must be seen to be ruthless to our enemies—especially their leaders. If we fail to do so, we risk radicalizing some on the borders of opinion by allowing our enemies the appearance of being able to win. We risk extending the myth that America can be bloodied without serious consequence. We must strive to rhetorically and physically separate them from other inhabitants of the Middle East so that we can avoid further radicalization.
This is one of the many reasons why removing Saddam from power was so important. In the cultural context of the War on Terrorism, he was one of the key proofs that the United States was not willing to take risks in defeating its enemies. Even though the full force of the West was never brought to bear against Saddam, his survival was interpreted just as if we had spent all of our energy trying to get rid of him. So long as he was able to maintain power, despite invading Kuwait, despite attempting to assassinate Bush, and despite all the attempts to hobble his government, he was a constant illustration of the ‘fact’ that the West in general and the US in specific were unable to deal with dogged resistance—especially if the resistance were brutal.
This is a myth that cannot survive if we are to win the war on terrorism. This is the myth that allows our enemies to wrongly believe that their terrorist tactics can help them acheive their aims.
Eloquently argued, but ultimately unconvincing because it overlooks our ultimate goal, which is NOT to behave more like the terrorists/rogue leaders, but rather to have Middle Eastern nations see the value of behaving more like us. The idea that we can act ruthless until they submit and then say, “We’re not really like that, we’re actually peaceful, see, here’s some nice democracy for you to have” and more than that the idea that we won’t indeed change our own values by doing so doesn’t add up to me. The goal, again, is to have them behave like us, valuing democracy and fairness. I don’t believe you can beat that into them.
Eloquently argued, and, frankly, quite* convincing to me.
but rather to have Middle Eastern nations see the value of behaving more like us.
I agree with you in principle, Edward, which is why I count myself among the .05% of the blogosphere to wholeheartedly endorse President Bush’s Middle East Free Trade Area. But don’t underestimate the value of also having a big stick at the ready.
Excellent post.
von
*American, not UK, meaning.
This is a pretty good piece, Sebastian.
I guess there’s a definite Goldilocks problem at work, here, and where you sort yourself out depends on your assumptions. I agree that many on the left underappreciate the ME appreciation for stength; on the other hand, I think many on the right underappreciate the continuing negative associations most of the Arab world has with imperialism.
“among the .05% of the blogosphere to wholeheartedly endorse President Bush’s Middle East Free Trade Area.”
Who doesn’t think that’s a good idea?
I agree with you that we made some serious mistakes in responding to terrorist attacks. Why we didn’t respond at all to the Beirut suicide bombings, for instance, will always be a mystery to me, as will our failure to respond to the attack of the Cole. I’m less clear about the application to Saddam, partly because I am not sure how helpful it is to try to substitute a forceful response for another one over a decade after the fact (to pick an extreme example, if we now bombed Hezbollah in response for the Beirut bombings?), partly because (see earlier posts) I think we had other priorities, and partly because I think that we could clearly demonstrate our resolve in other ways, e.g. by toppling the Taliban. — Of course, point 3 is meant not just to be true, but to be a partial response to the natural objection to point 2, namely: other priorities than demonstrating we cannot be harmed with impunity? In the context of the War on Terror? If there are several ways of demonstrating this, we get to pick among them on other grounds, I think; at least so long as we are not letting a recent harm go un-dealt-with.
On the other hand, like you, I like nuance (hey, reality is complex; why shouldn’t our thoughts about it be?) For this reason I think it would be nice to see both more detail about why you think that this is true of the Middle East. Also, there are, I think, various quite different views that might all look like the one you outline from a distance, but that would imply quite differeent courses of action.
I’ve seen many references to the idea that we were viewed as weak by many due to the events mentioned, and it certainly sounds plausible, but can someone point me to some evidence for the claim?
Praktike —
Maybe I’m being too dramatic. So far as I can tell (& remember), no one else has endorsed it; to be fair, however, very few have written against it, though. (I suspect that the anti-trade wings of the left and right will be foresquare against it, though.)
I agree with you about the Beruit bombings, but mostly because our involvement in Lebanon is completely over. Saddam’s interaction with the US had been ongoing until April 2003. The myth was that he was surviving engagement with the US again and again. He had an especially good-for-the-myth interaction with Clinton in 1998. Saddam restricted the movements of inspectors, was on the receiving end of threats from the US to let them have access, and weathered some bombs. But he survived, and the inspectors did not return after the bombs stopped. He had a plausible case that he had won again. (The spinelessness of the international community contributed greatly as usual.)
Von,
Having a big stick at the ready until when?
I don’t doubt the effectiveness of ruthlessness. It’s worked for millenia, but it’s not compatible with democracy in the ways we value it.
What many on the right mistake as leftists’ anxiety about ruthlessness because we supposedly oversympathize with our enemies is actually anxiety about ruthlessness because of how it will change who WE are. As I see it, we’ll need to be holding that big stick for a long time to come if that’s our approach. What will that do to US?
In my opinion it’s less important to think about this in terms of cultural attitudes about mercy and ruthlessness than it is to think about it in terms of attitudes about time. Middle Eastern people take an incomprehensibly (for us) long-term view on issues like revenge and honor. The idea that Iraqis will be our friends because we liberated them grossly underestimates the grudges they’ll hold against each other and us, for decades yet, if not longer, because of the dishonor of being occupied.
Eventually we’ll grow weary of wielding those big sticks. They will not grow weary of wanting revenge. We’re banking on them like democracy enough to forgive and forget. From what I understand, that would be very much unlike them.
Well, they’re dumb.
Although you should know that Jordan’s free trade whatever hasn’t really turned the country around.
The main reason for this — aside from the terrible, terrible website — is that Jordanian merchants have only limited access to the (relatively) lucrative West Bank market. That is far more important to the Jordanian economy than any special U.S. relationship.
I think praktike has put his finger on what trips me up when I consider this argument (which is, in its way, quite appealing): When does showing strength shade into that other touchstone of middle eastern rage, the specter of colonialism? Underlying Sebastian’s point is an objective – to stop people from choosing terrorism as a means of obtaining their goal, or, as SH puts it, “wrongly believ[ing] that their terrorist tactics can help them achieve their aims.”
Going into Iraq may have shown real strength, and taking out Saddam may have powerfully rebutted a primary argument in the case for American weakness. But there are only two possibilities, once we occupy a country: One, we stay forever; two, we don’t.
If the former case, regardless of how benign such an occupation might be (and the current occupation is, unavoidably, not terribly benign right now), it will create the same resentment and violent resistance that all military/colonial presences have created throughout history.
If the latter, then we need to find a way out of Iraq that does not simply reinforce the same perception of weakness and inconstancy that we went into Iraq to stamp out in the first place. There is a narrow band of potential successful outcomes in a wide spectrum of disasters. It is, of course, possible that Iraq will emerge free of U.S. troops as a democratic, secular democracy, where power is held by civil rather than religious institutions. I fervently hope for this outcome, and I feel a blossoming of that hope every time someone like Ali Sistani sides with us over the zealots and violent insurgents that are killing our troops.
But my hope is not really based on anything other than an overwhelming desire for a particular outcome. From what I can see, a host of conflicts are simply being postponed by the putative antagonists until the U.S. troops get out of the way. For example, it certainly seems possible that the Iraqi government, once the steering hand of the U.S. Army is removed, will peacefully evolve to a theocratic end-state, with little real democratic participation. More frightening, a civil war along either ethnic lines, religious lines, or both is still a very active possibility once we are gone, especially given the renewed interest Iran is taking in the situation.
I suppose that my real dispute with Sebastian here is that he hasn’t made the case that taking out Saddam was the only way to rebut the case for American weakness, or even a particularly good way, considering that we have created the possibility of seeming weaker than ever once we withdraw.
Being occupied isn’t the only thing that implicates honor. 9/11 took place before our invasion of Iraq. Saudi Arabia wasn’t occupied. They already want revenge. Since you think they won’t grow weary, how does your approach help anything?
“There is a narrow band of potential successful outcomes in a wide spectrum of disasters. It is, of course, possible that Iraq will emerge free of U.S. troops as a democratic, secular democracy, where power is held by civil rather than religious institutions.”
The problem is that there is a non-existant band of successful outcomes if we allow the myth to persist. There is an already demonstrated actuality of disasters in letting it go on.
“From what I can see, a host of conflicts are simply being postponed by the putative antagonists until the U.S. troops get out of the way.”
Thats why you don’t leave in a month or a year. You leave after a decade or so. Part of the problem is that we were not as ruthless as we needed to be initially. We did not immediately crush Sadr’s attempt at revolution, for instance. We set up precisely the problem we had with Saddam–we attempted to show proportionate response and mercy, but it was immediately interpreted by Sadr and his followers as weakness.
“Saudi Arabia wasn’t occupied.”
Well, according Osama, it was. I’m not sure how seriously we take him about this. Some say it was a real grievance on his part — he had offered to defend the Kingdom with his Afghan Arabs, and was pretty insulted when the King brought in the infidels. It may be that he would have attacked us anyway. But you could certainly make a credible case that US military bases were a major factor in 9/11.
hilzoy I agree with you that we made some serious mistakes in responding to terrorist attacks. Why we didn’t respond at all to the Beirut suicide bombings, for instance, will always be a mystery to me, as will our failure to respond to the attack of the Cole.
Being nitpicky about the term “terrorism” keeps getting me in trouble, but to be nitpicky, neither of these attacks were terrorist attacks. Terrorism, by definition, is violent action against civilians intended to provoke a political response. Both attacks you mention were against military targets and personnel.
Being occupied isn’t the only thing that implicates honor. 9/11 took place before our invasion of Iraq. Saudi Arabia wasn’t occupied. They already want revenge.
Careful…you’re standing on the edge of the “blame American first” precipice. Looking into the abyss to see why the Saudis might hate America is best left to, well, lefties.
Since you think they won’t grow weary, how does your approach help anything?
I believe in leading by example and reward. Everything rational Middle Easterners say backs up that they’re more pissed off that we reward those families and regimes that oppress them and do little to nothing to promote the regimes who fight for democracy on their own than they are pissed about anything else. They hate their governments because they are cruel, and they hate us because we welcome their leaders into the White House and say they’re our friends.
Take a page from the Reagan handbook. Tell the enemy in no uncertain terms why you don’t trust them and that you will not rest until they open up their country to democracy. Make sure you make it clear that the House of Saud is the seat of our enemies.
After 9/11 it was appropriate, as I’ve said before, to squash the Taliban and go after bin Laden. The next step in the effort should have been holding Saudi Arabia responsible for the 15 of the hijackers they supplied to the attacks on us.
We want to be tough against terror, but we’re not willing to be tough against its real source. The edges, the weak lions, those we’ll pick off, hoping the king of the jungle shakes in its boots…
I understand the conspiracy theory that says we’re surrounding Iran and that once we have it under control then we’ll be free to “pressure” Saudi Arabia. It’s a nice fairy tale. If it were true, however, would we still be so chummy with them? Is it even moral to be chummy with them under the circumstances? Imagine if 15 of the hijacker had been French?
Thats why you don’t leave in a month or a year. You leave after a decade or so. Part of the problem is that we were not as ruthless as we needed to be initially.
That’s because we expected to be greeted with flowers. Damn…just saw the time…have to go.
But I’d like to discuss how we went from expecting to dispose of Hussein and all the promises to every other Iraqi we were their friend to the need to ruthlessly crush Sadr, who was no friend of Hussein…there’s a few bits missing in there.
Imagine if 15 of the hijacker had been French?
Or some other nation Americans love to hate.
Sebastian says: “we were not as ruthless as we needed to be initially”
So we should have killed even more non-combatants in the original invasion? Are you REALLY sure that you can kill off terrorists faster than they spring up?
Like most lawyers I love arguing by analogy. For today, the analogies are (a) Chechnya and (b) the occupied palestinian territories. Let’s add a few more: Algeria, Northern Ireland, and most of Central America during the Reagan years. Oh, and Poland and Checkoslovakia.
Yep. Ruthlessness against a determined local population worked every time.
we may be able to suppress dissent for a while with the boot heel of occupation, but when the taxpayer gets tired of paying for foreign occupation and the boot comes off . . . we’ll see how we’re going to end up paying the piper.
and where, exactly, did the president tell the american people that he was committing our troops to a 10-year occupation costing hundreds of billions of dollars?
Francis
“Sebastian says: “we were not as ruthless as we needed to be initially”
So we should have killed even more non-combatants in the original invasion? Are you REALLY sure that you can kill off terrorists faster than they spring up?”
No we should have killed more combatants. See for example Sadr’s band when they were shooting at us. And we could keep killing them until they surrendered. Which I note they still have not done.
To echo one of Edward’s points: Whenever the President gets kudos for “moral clarity”, one of the statements people point to is: “you are either with us or you’re with the terrorists”. Question: does he act on this? To check, you’d presumably want to look at those countries who seem to be, possibly in different senses, both with us and with the terrorists, and see what he does. The two obvious cases are Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Now: I more or less agree with the outlines of his policy in Pakistan, but that’s because I do not entirely agree with the President’s statement. (I mean, in this particular case, in which Pakistan gave us something we badly needed in the WoT, namely the ability to use it in our invasion of Afghanistan, as well as help catching some al Qaeda people, and in which moreover we’re talking about a nuclear power which could at the moment have many worse leaders than Musharraf, trying to strengthen his hand against the rogue bits of the ISI seems to me a better response than saying, well, you’re with the terrorists, thus not with us.)
But what about Saudi Arabia? We have not, as far as I can tell, begun to get tough with them. Well, one might say, they can blackmail us using oil. But the whole point of ‘with us or with the terrorists’, I would have thought, was to say: really, no more excuses. We will no longer tolerate cooperation with terrorists for any reason. And besides, IF the reason for not getting tough on Saudi Arabia was our dependence on foreign oil, then it might have been a good idea for the Bush administration to try to do something about that dependence. Raise CAFE standards, start treating SUVs like cars for the purposes of clean air laws, and so forth. We have done none of this.
The only way I can see to make a case that Bush has actually acted on this claim is as follows: first, note that there are two possible interpretations of it: (a) anyone who is with the terrorists will now be considered to be not with us; (b) anyone who is not with us will now be considered to be with the terrorists. For the reasons given above, Ican’t see how one could argue that he actually acts on (a). But (b), if you think about it, explains why he and Cheney were so convinced that there had to be a link between Iraq and al Qaeda, despite the utter lack of evidence. Because Saddam was obviously not with us, and therefore…..
“we may be able to suppress dissent for a while with the boot heel of occupation,”
I’m not talking about supressing dissent, and pretending that I am only exposes your thought process. Sadr’s attempt at revolution doesn’t get to qualify under mere ‘dissent’.
You Palestinian analogy is silly. Israel has never killed or captured Arafat for instance–despite its clear ability to do so. Chechenya and Algeria are excellent examples of why I say that we need to separate the leaders and groups to whom we must show ruthlessness from the innocent population.
hechenya and Algeria are excellent examples of why I say that we need to separate the leaders and groups to whom we must show ruthlessness from the innocent population.
Great idea! If only the French had thought of that!
“The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.”
– Chairman Mao Zedong (Tse-tung)
Until the day we develop pinpoint laser armaments, fighting insurgents amongst a sympathetic populace will lead to civilian casualties. Lots of them. Which is why the U.S. Millitary command chose to give up on Fallujah and Al Sadr. The key is to make the civilian populace unsympathetic to the insurgents. Brutality will not accomplish.
Brutality only works if one is willing to be indiscriminate about it.
Otherwise, you’re left with the sort of half-measures and compromises that the U.S. military has been forced to make in Iraq. I don’t think the’ve made these decisions because they are stupid, spineless or prone to taking advice from effette lefties. I think they’ve simply tried to do the best they can within the bounds of morality.
Strange. Usually when someone says “we went after Saddam because we couldn’t get the real enemy, Osama bin Laden” they’re criticizing the President and suggesting that perhaps the war on Iraq was politically motivated. But to Sebastian, it seems, this is actually a correct statement of one of the legitimate reasons for Gulf War II. In order to stamp out terrorism you have to be ruthless & dogged in your pursuit of the bad guys. If you can’t get the guys who are actually orchestrating the terrorism, well then some other big-name bad guy will just have to do.
Just finished the Fallows piece in this month’s Atlantic on how the Iraq war messed with the WOT. Worth the time.
Not what I’m saying at all Blar. I’m suggesting that letting Saddam stay in power after facing us down for 10 years contributed greatly to the cultural myth which makes terrorism against the US an attractive option in the Middle East.
I just want to know when it was that Sebastian became an expert on Middle Eastern affairs with keen insight into the Muslim group mind.
Really? Where on earth is the evidence of this?
Really? A hero to whom? Sadr? How about Iranians? What about the Saudis, Egyptians or Jordanians? Maybe the people who worship him are the Malaysian or Philippine Muslims. Maybe it’s all the Lebanese or Syrians who think he’s the tops.
Really? This sounds more like Sebastian’s own private version of reality he shares with Laurie Mylroie and the other neocon jackals of war than anything that has actually been observed in reality.
After all, where are the Arab spokespersons who were saying this? Where are the secret decoder rings that Sebastian used to determine that this was the storyline? Did he read them in the numerous Middle Eastern news sources he reads daily? Or was it just a ex post facto myth of his own that he’s chosen to believe because it supports his desired conclusions so precisely?
Really now. I know this is just a blog and therefore standards of evidence and research are virtually non-existent, but I’m just stunned to see this stuff thrown out there as common knowledge and fact without a shred of evidence to back up these claims.
It seems to me that if one is going to construct an argument with such nasty conclusions that one should at least put a little bit of effort into backing up some of the extraordinary claims used to support the theory. But hey, that’s just me.
Do your own research. I suggest Memri.org unless you read Arabic.
I don’t get paid to do research for this site, I do it on my own time. As a general policy, when I make assertions that are odd or counterintuitive I try to provide cites. When I make assertions which politically aware people should have knowledge of, I typically don’t track down an internet cite.
So, before I respond further I need a response to the following question:
Are you objecting to the lack of cited evidence because you want me to spend hours wasting my time to track things down so you can get them with no effort on your own part, or because you think they are false?
Sebastian, why did Middle Eastern extremists attack us(though, not on our soil) before the First Gulf War, Vietnam? Why do they still attack Israel in spite of the fact Israel seems to be quite resolute in their reaction to terrorism?
All in all, softness seems to matter little to the sorts of extremists who want blow things up in the name of a cause.
(I love this site, BTW. Rational debate? Between leftsorts and rightsorts? And it doesn’t devolve into bitter namecalling and stale talking points? Pshaw!
Eloquently argued if, imo, wrongheaded.)
For the record, Sebastian is right about Saddam. He was somewhat lionized for standing up to the U.S. He was pretty much the most popular leader in the region.
I agree with Sebastian’s basic point, at least if qualified so that it’s only said to apply to a significant portion of the Arab world. But I think that the bare bones that I agree with — we were perceived as weak, Saddam was lionized (often by people who, in my view, also knew in some other part of their brain that he was a thug) for standing up to us. To the first bit, the solution was clear: never just fail to respond to an attack, unless we have very good reasons for doing so, like being completely ignorant of who was responsible. (“Never fail to respond” is not meant here to imply much about how one should respond. That depends on the circumstances.) It’s much less clear to me how much, if any, good would be done by retroactively responding to things we had failed to respond to in the past.
The real question is, why was Saddam lionized for standing up to us? And what can we do about that? Personally, I do not think the answer was, e.g., that he looked strong and we looked weak. (For one thing, I don’t think he was perceived as being all that strong. He got some credit for standing up to us, but often from people who also knew that he had been badly beaten, just not destroyed. Also, people who would never, ever have wanted to live under his rule.) Myself, I think it has a lot to do with a deep sense of powerlessness, humiliation, and defeat at the hands of the West, which made people lionize anyone who even seemed to be standing up to us, however unsuccessfully. I may be wrong. But note that if the problem was: we were perceived as weak, then flexing our muscle might help to solve it. If, on the other hand, it was a sense of powerlessness and humiliation, then flexing our muscles would only make it worse.
Note: I do not want to imply that any of these thoughts should somehow govern our policy. Which you believe affects your view of one subset of the likely consequences of e.g. an invasion, and is for that reason as relevant as any other thought about the likely consequences of some course of action. It’s just that Sebastian was suggesting that this was a reason to favor invading, which makes this set of consequences relevant.
Note also that I am, in particular, not suggesting that we should never do anything that might exacerbate the feeling of humiliation at our hands that I think exists in the Middle East. It’s just that I do think that it would be smart of us, when possible, to find ways of achieving our ends that do not play into it; that work in (so to speak) a way that’s orthogonal to it. Yet another reason why I said what I did about Afghanistan: it doesn’t play into this script in the same way.
Well, I checked out Memri.org in the disinfopedia, and I must say it’s a mixed bag at best – pro Israel with some moderate Arab views. Not something that immediately discounts their information in my mind, but definitely a very well established bias and world view.
More troubling, though, I searched through their site and still can’t find anything that really supports your viewpoint or claims at all.
As to your question
I think they’re patently false with just a casual inspection of the facts. Carpbasman’s question above is a perfect example of why your simplistic world view has severe problems even without digging any deeper.
And then there’s, for example, everything we know about bin Laden and his pack of terrorists. bin Laden wasn’t pushed over the edge by the attack on Saddam, nor was he inflamed with hope because he saw that Saddam defeated the infidels.
I agree somewhat with hilzoy, but only in the most basic of ways. Yes, there’s probably a bunch of terrorists that lionized Saddam. I’m pretty sure that Saddam’s bunch of Baathist thugs who ruled the country also lionized the man. But this is a trivial result which doesn’t go to support Sebastian’s theories in the slightest. It’s like saying there’s a bunch of criminals in New York who lionized John Gotti. Big deal. We already knew that and it doesn’t add any useful information about why the Mob (used) to be such a powerful organization.
Or, let’s look at it another way entirely. What about Tim McVeigh? What about our own home grown terrorists who kill lots of people and want to overthrow the US? They have completely different reasons for hating us (usually having to do with taxes) but they do have some commonalities (i.e. they are also usually fundamental religious). I really don’t think Saddam had jack shit to do with these people. And so far, they are responsible for more terrorist events on American soil than any of the middle eastern terrorists are.
What seems far more likely to my thinking is what the Anonymous CIA operative said in his book “Imperial Hubris”. The issue is that the Arab and Muslim people have severe problems with our policies and have as far back as anyone can remember. The installation of the Shah in Iran, the absolute backing of one party in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to the exclusion of the other party. The support for absolutely corrupt regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, etc. The inability to deal with – say – the Chechnya problem for almost a decade, and now that the terrorists get involved we decide we simply cannot resolve the question because terrorists are now involved.
Hey, I’m sure there are maybe 10,000 to 100,000 people in the world who lionize Saddam. But I can’t for the life of me see how this is the central focus of this war you’ve laid out. The problems existed far before Saddam (hey, what about the history of the British in Iraq? Seems that the Brits followed your advice perfectly and were sent packing because it’s not advice that actually works in the real world), and these problems will continue to exist far beyond the time when Saddam will have long been forgotten.
“Myself, I think it has a lot to do with a deep sense of powerlessness, humiliation, and defeat at the hands of the West, which made people lionize anyone who even seemed to be standing up to us, however unsuccessfully.”
The problem with this of course is that many such wounds are self-inflicted and then blamed on the West.
The problem in dealing with such things is that it requires a two step process. First, you act ruthlessly against those who attack you. Second, you try to set up a situation where the common person in the Middle East can like you. The problem is that many Democrats refuse to engage in the first step and Republicans aren’t attentive enough to the second step. Each side spends so much time fighting for the part of the solution which is ideologically easy for it and actively resisting the portion which is ideologically difficult for it that we rarely have a plan which makes sense as a whole.
If the Democrats had nominated someone who was focused on the War instead of trying to avoid it as an issue, I would have a lot harder time justifying a vote for Bush because he clearly doesn’t follow through with the second step as much as he needs to. If the Democrats had nominated someone who wasn’t already talking about pulling the troops (publically signalling that we are abandoning step one) I would be more willing to consider someone other than Bush. But in reality you nominated Kerry.
If the Democrats had nominated someone who wasn’t already talking about pulling the troops (publically signalling that we are abandoning step one)…
Your step one is to “act ruthlessly against those who attack you.” Who is it that we’ve failed to act ruthlessly against?
[I presume you mean Sadr and his ilk, but the reference there is unclear to me.]
Sadr is a fine example. Saddam from 1989-March 2003 is another good example.
Sebastian,
You didn’t explicitly say that our failure to get bin Laden provided a good reason for taking down Saddam, but that conclusion seems hard to avoid if we accept your claim that taking down Saddam helped fight terrorism by weakening the myth that America lacks resolve. I’ll try to lay it all out:
1. Letting “enemy leaders” who defiantly oppose the US remain in power feeds a cultural myth that America cannot stomach violence, which increases the incidence of terrorism, even if the “enemy leader” is not orchestrating the terrorism against us. (Your premise, I believe)
2. Though Saddam was not orchestrating anti-American terrorism and bin Laden was, both qualify as “enemy leaders” as the term is being used here. (My premise)
3. Ruthlessly & forcefully removing enemy leaders from power is an important part of the war on terror because it weakens the myth. (Your premise, I believe)
4. Having one forceful example of the US standing up to its enemies would do about as much damage to this myth as can be done. Further instances of ruthless American resolve might incrementally weaken the myth, but people who were not convinced by the first stark instance of American resolve would be unlikely to be swayed by additional examples. (My premise)
5. If we had captured bin Laden and taken down the Taliban & Al-Qaeda more forcefully in Afghanistan, that would have counted as a “stark instance of American resolve” as used in #4. (My premise)
6. Taking down Saddam was made a more valuable course of action by the fact that we did not succeed in forcefully taking down bin Laden. (From 2, 4, and 5)
7. Assuming that #6 was a motivating reason for our policy, and taking the differences in #2 to be central in deciding who is our real, principal enemy, it is not inaccurate to summarize #6 as “we went after Saddam because we couldn’t get our real enemy, Osama bin Laden.” (My premise)
Contrary to those who worry about an October surprise, I wouldn’t be at all shocked if Osama were thoroughly though unprovably dead. And that would be awful for America from the myth-busting point of view.
Today’s tape would support the idea that OBL is no longer with us. Then again, these folks play a complicated game.
Sebastian, I agree that our conduct in Lebanon and Somalia built up the myth. I don’t thnk any but truly deluded thought our conduct with respect to Iraq 92-03 was evidence of weakness. OK, sure, we demonstrated to all and sundry in the second half of 1998 that we cared a whole lot more about the President’s sex life than we did about the people who were attacking us. Not a victory for SH, particularly.
I would say, though, that there has been no better demonstration of American weakness than we are showing right now. We are not waging and are not going to wage the kind of war you want. The Admin doesn’t want to do it, our allies, such as they are don’t want to do it, and a reasonable person could conclude that our military is not really capable of it at this point. In for a dime, in for a dollar is a fine saying, but the bet has been raised to $10, and, well, it’s hard to ask service men and women to die for the credibility of a policy that is an overreach.
I think all the goals you set forth above and more would have been gained from a truly successful post-war in Afghanistan. Israel might not have gotten much benefit, but we’d be astride the world.