Iraq and Terrorism

The events in Beslan have haunted me (as I’m sure they have most of us). As typical for me, though, I can’t seem to get enough information about how, in this day and age, it got to this…how humans (or what must at one time have been humans) could sink into the monsterous mentality that leads them to this sort of horror. David Brooks offers a customarily ill-considered take on this—it can be summarized as “It’s time to get serious about hating them back folks,” but that doesn’t strike me as a task worthy of our best minds, so I’ll leave it to him.

Here’s some of what I’ve been able to learn in my quest for useful information. It’s anything but black-and-white:

Shamil Bassajev is widely suspected of masterminding this attack:

The one-legged, black-bearded Bassajev, by now referred to as “Terrorist Number One” in the language of the Russian intelligence service, serves as an example of the mistakes and confusion that characterize the relationship between the Russian state and Chechen rebels.

Bassajev, trained by Russian military intelligence, of all things, disappeared, allegedly after having lost eleven relatives during the war with Moscow, and developed into the most-feared “Bojevik,” or rebel leader, in Chechnya.

Bassajev has a list of similar attacks credited to him, including “a bloody hostage crisis in which 1100 people were taken hostage at the district hospital in Budjonovsk in 1995” that looks very much like this most recent attack.

My partner, who grew up in the Soviet Union, tells me Chechnyans* hold a place in the Russian consciousness similar to that the Sicilians used to in ours. They are considered the most ruthless of organized criminals, the worst of the worst, scaring even other Russian mafia bosses into submission. About 10 years ago, he believes, this was the muscle behind the separatist movement in Chechnya…a turf battle by criminals to wrestle the region’s resources away from Moscow. (The separatists claim Russia wants to control the Caucasus oilfields and pipeline routes, seemingly unaware that this rationale answers the same question to at least some degree of why they were spurred to fight so desperately and unpreparedly for independence.)

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UPDATE: In light of Ms. Malkin’s updates (here and here) of today, two questions. Both have been asked before, and both go to the heart of Ms. Malkin’s claims; yet, to my knowledge, Ms. Malkin has failed to squarely address either.

1. If the Japanese posed only a threat of “hit-and-run raids … in the first months of” World War II, and, as Ms. Malkin must concede, Germany posed an equal (and likely greater) risk of hit-and-run raids not merely in the first months but rather throughout the first years of World War II, why were Japanese-Americans* interned on the West Coast but German-Americans not interned on the East Coast?

2. If the answer to Question #1 is, as Ms. Malkin writes,

The disparate treatment of ethnic Japanese versus ethnic Germans and ethnic Italians is often assumed to be based on anti-Japanese racism rather than military necessity. Japan, however, was the only Axis country with a proven capability of launching a major attack on the United States.

“In Defense of Internment,” p. 84 (emphasis mine), what distinguishes the threat posed by Japanese-Americans of 1941 from the threat posed by Arab-Americans of 2001? What distinguishes the case for Japanese internment from a present day case for Arab internment? Merely saying that you do not advocate Arab internment is not enough; tell us why.

A direct response on both points, from Ms. Malkin or her defenders, would be appreciated.

Finally, please take note that one can favor some form of profiling against present-day terrors, without favoring or defending the internment of the Japanese during World War II. (Further to this point, the Weisenthal Center’s Op-Ed is actually a major slam of Ms. Malkins’ work (“But [Malkin] is wrong in justifying the World War II internment of Japanese Americans as a model for how we should deal today with an alleged “fifth column” among Arabs and Muslim Americans.”); I have no idea why Ms. Malkin cites it as though it supports her.)

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*I use the term “Japanese-Americans” to indicate those persons of Japanese descent who had been born in the United States and who had not spent significant time in Japan.

UPDATE TWO: In a subsequent post, Malkin asks “What are they so afraid of?” (referring to teachers and principals who have refused to change their lesson plans to account for Malkin’s revisions). Fear has nothing to do with it; as I understand their decision, they believe that Malkin’s work does not meet their minimum academic standards. Schools are not required to teach crap.

Geez, this used to be a lesson that the Left had trouble with — all views are equal, every perspective deserves equal respect, yada yada yada. Now I find the same silliness on the uber-Right. If Malkin wants to be taken seriously by serious people, she’s got to defend her thesis against attack over the course of years, and convince the experts in the field that her thesis is the best one. Only then can we start talking about changing lesson plans.

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Because it’s really not emphasized enough in the blogosphere, here are two pieces from the New York Times opinion pages demonstrating why the case for Islamophobia is often overstated. First, in France: Despite disagreeing with the French government’s ban on head scarves in schools, Fouad Alami, secretary general of the Union of French Islamic Organizations, recommended that students observe the ban in response to the kidnappings of French journalists in Iraq:

Major French Islamic groups and the political opposition have rallied behind the government’s defiance of Iraqi kidnappers who seized two French journalists last month and demanded that France revoke its ban on the wearing of Islamic head scarves in state schools. The display of unity was encouraging. The head-scarf ban may be ill conceived and discriminatory, but French education policy should not be set by terrorists. Islamic leaders in France are forcefully making that point, too.

This response undercuts the Iraqi militants’ attempt to divide French society and the continent’s reactionary fears about its immigrant populations. We hope it awakens French society to just how baseless the widespread anti-Muslim prejudices really are.

And here in the US, in one of the most eloquent arguments I’ve read on any topic in a long, long time, Tariq Ramadan answers his critics and explains why the State Department’s sudden, unexplained revoking of his visa to teach at Notre Dame is unfounded. Here’s a powerful passage:

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So, at the start, Pericles strides forward; and why? To endorse Nicias, of course. (You on the right: you think Nicias a misnomer, a slur. See Iraq and the Peace of Nicias that is being wrought there — yes, even now.)

History repeats itself, despite its lessons.

It’s a good speech, but, at the beginning, the delivery is a bit off-kilter. McCain’s uncertain, not quite ready for the moment. And, then, ….

(A personal reaction to McCain’s speech follows — viewed from FoxNews.)

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This is an example of why we have to fight Sadr, he want to make Iraq into another Iran. This is why we have to fight Islamism, its adherents will hate us so long as we believe that killing an underage girl for engaging in sex is reprehensible. It is especially bad (if it can get any worse) because there are hints that she was killed for being raped: “She told the religious judge, Haji Rezaii, that he should punish the main perpetrators of moral corruption not the victims.” or because she pissed off the judge with her suggestion, “The judge personally pursued Ateqeh’s death sentence, beyond all normal procedures and finally gained the approval of the Supreme Court. After her execution Rezai said her punishment was not execution but he had her executed for her ‘sharp tongue’.”

This took place in the normal legal channels of Islamic fundamentalist Iran. This is what Islamist groups want us to look like. This is how Osama bin Laden wants us to treat our women if we are to avoid his condemnation for tempting Muslims away from their faith. We aren’t fighting against people who are angry at us because of captialist excesses. We are fighting against people who detest the things at the very core of Western society. What we are fighting is unfortunately much bigger than Al Qaeda. We are fighting a group of societies that spawn groups like Al Qaeda with their revolutionary Islamist ideology. To defeat the enemy we must not shy away from identifying it.

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UPDATED 1:42 AM: For a few typos and clarifications.

It’s a bit like closing the barn door once the horse has gone, but finally, in even clearer terms than The New York Times did in May, a major US newspaper is admitting they dropped the ball in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. From The Washington Post:

An examination of the paper’s coverage, and interviews with more than a dozen of the editors and reporters involved, shows that The Post published a number of pieces challenging the White House, but rarely on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration’s evidence complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were unenthusiastic about such pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times.

[…]

In retrospect, said Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., “we were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn’t be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration’s rationale. Not enough of those stories were put on the front page. That was a mistake on my part.”

Across the country, “the voices raising questions about the war were lonely ones,” Downie said. “We didn’t pay enough attention to the minority.”

That excuse (we were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing) doesn’t paint the whole picture though. Why the paper that toppled Nixon was hesitant about questioning the current White House can be explained in one word: intimidation.

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Kristof shares some encouraging news on the Reformation of Islam in his column today:

But now the same tools that historians, linguists and archaeologists have applied to the Bible for about 150 years are beginning to be applied to the Koran. The results are explosive.

The Koran is beautifully written, but often obscure. One reason is that the Arabic language was born as a written language with the Koran, and there’s growing evidence that many of the words were Syriac or Aramaic.

For example, the Koran says martyrs going to heaven will get “hur,” and the word was taken by early commentators to mean “virgins,” hence those 72 consorts. But in Aramaic, hur meant “white” and was commonly used to mean “white grapes.”

Not so sure about his timeframe. I believe the Bible has been undergoing quite a thorough deconstruction (off and on) since the early 16th Century or before, but he’s right to point to this new trend in re-examining the Koran as encouraging.

And none too soon either.

Consider the growing sentiment in Egypt, as reported by David Remnick recently in the New Yorker*:

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UPDATE: I am, of course, happy to be apparently wrong about de la Cruz (Thanks to ObWi Constant Reader JKC for the head’s up). I am still concerned about the ramifications of this deal, particularly the domestic ones. While it is of course nonsensical to seriously believe that any likely American Presidential administration would allow its policies to be seriously dictated by kidnappers and murderers – and let us drink no Kool-Aid, here; any administration that tried would be swiftly slapped down by its own base – it is unlikely that the organizations that have already misunderstood us so profoundly are going to realize their error. Again, my sympathies towards President Arroyo, but in my opinion her actions have made it slightly more likely that a domestic terrorist attack will be launched that is designed to influence our upcoming election. It almost certainly would have happened, anyway, but every little bit hurts.

(Crossposted to Redstate)

There is still no word on the fate of the Filipino and Bulgarian captives being held hostage by terrorists, but Alsayeid Mohammed Alsayeid Algarabawi has been freed:

Alsayeid Mohammed Alsayeid Algarabawi, whose capture was first reported July 6 in a video showing him surrounded by masked gunmen, was brought to the Egyptian Embassy in Baghdad on Monday evening. He appeared healthy.

Algarabawi said he was fed well, allowed to pray and treated in “an Islamic manner, 100 percent.” He also apologized to his family for worrying them.

I’m glad that Mr. Algarabawi made it home to his family; I can only imagine how harrowing an experience it must have been for him, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

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