“There has been much talk about conspiracies by hostile powers to divide Iraq into separate statelets, and most of it is probably unfounded. This partition conspiracy, however, is real and since it mostly goes undiagnosed it represents arguably far most dangerous aspect of the Iraq War: Brilliant Western academics [...]]]> Reidar Visser has something critical to say:

“There has been much talk about conspiracies by hostile powers to divide Iraq into separate statelets, and most of it is probably unfounded. This partition conspiracy, however, is real and since it mostly goes undiagnosed it represents arguably far most dangerous aspect of the Iraq War: Brilliant Western academics who may have the best possible intentions towards Iraq and its people but who in an attempt at sounding sophisticated perpetuate the toxic paradigm of a tripartite Iraq – be it territorially or sociologically – simply because they have failed to study the country’s history properly through primary sources. The suggestion is not that sectarian and ethnic issues are non-existent in Iraqi history. But if Western academics had stopped reproducing what are outright lies about the origins of the modern Iraqi state, the whole climate of the discourse on Iraq would have looked vastly different. Rewrite that Feldman op-ed, delete everything that is empirically incorrect about Iraq’s history, and check to see how much is left of the original argument.

“Operation Iraqi Freedom may be over, but Operation Iraqi Partition lives on, regardless of Security Council resolutions or status of forces agreements. Unfortunately, there is no anti-war movement against it in the Western world because most of the academics there are in fact its loyal soldiers.”

I suspect a lot of reason for the “tripartite Iraq” model of thinking stems from the superficial similarities between Yugoslavia after communism and Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Tellingly, however, only the Kurds have a heritage of seeking independence. Among Arabs, the idea has always been that a single Arab nation was deliberately divided by foreign powers to keep them weak, and what we’ve seen in Iraqi politics the last seven years hasn’t involved anyone’s quest for independence, but rather control of the resources of the united state.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Related posts:

1. Engaging the Muslim World: The Struggle for Islamic Oil
2. Syria-Iraq Dispute Could Be Ending
3. No SOFA Referendum?

In a pastel-colored room at the Baghdad morgue known simply as the Missing, where faces of the thousands of unidentified dead of this war are projected onto four screens, Hamid Jassem came on a Sunday searching for answers.

In a blue plastic chair, he [...]]]> A reminder to those that advocate for war with Iran of what war entails:

In a pastel-colored room at the Baghdad morgue known simply as the Missing, where faces of the thousands of unidentified dead of this war are projected onto four screens, Hamid Jassem came on a Sunday searching for answers.

In a blue plastic chair, he sat under harsh fluorescent lights and a clock that read 8:58 and 44 seconds, no longer keeping time. With deference and patience, he stared at the screen, each corpse bearing four digits and the word “majhoul,” or unknown:

No. 5060 passed, with a bullet to the right temple; 5061, with a bruised and bloated face; 5062 bore a tattoo that read, “Mother, where is happiness?” The eyes of 5071 were open, as if remembering what had happened to him.

“Go back,” Hamid asked the projectionist. No. 5061 returned to the screen. “That’s him,” he said, nodding grimly.

His mother followed him into the room, her weathered face framed in a black veil. “Show me my son!” she cried.

Behind her, Hamid pleaded silently. He waved his hands at the projectionist, begging him to spare her. In vain, he shook his head and mouthed the word “no.”

“Don’t tell me he’s dead,” she shouted at the room. “It’s not him! It’s not him!”

No. 5061 returned to the screen.

She lurched forward, shaking her head in denial. Her eyes stared hard. And in seconds, her son’s 33 years of life seemed to pass before her eyes.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she finally sobbed, falling back in her chair.

Reflexively, her hands slapped her face. They clawed, until her nails drew blood. “If I had only known from the first day!” she cried.

The horror of this war is its numbers, frozen in the portraits at the morgue: an infant’s eyes sealed shut and a woman’s hair combed in blood and ash. “Files tossed on the shelves,” a policeman called the dead, and that very anonymity lends itself to the war’s name here — al-ahdath, or the events.

On the charts that the American military provides, those numbers are seen as success, from nearly 4,000 dead in one month in 2006 to the few hundred today. The Interior Ministry offers its own toll of war — 72,124 since 2003, a number too precise to be true. At the morgue, more than 20,000 of the dead, which even sober estimates suggest total 100,000 or more, are still unidentified.

This number had a name, though.

No. 5061 was Muhammad Jassem Bouhan al-Izzawi, father, son and brother. At 9 a.m., on that Sunday, Aug. 15, his family left the morgue in a white Nissan and set out to find his body in a city torn between remembering and forgetting, where death haunts a country neither at war nor peace.

Read the rest.  It is Shadid at his poignant best.

The stories recounted in that article should also give pause to those rushing to declare the Iraq war a victory, and to give Bush the credit for it.  Generally speaking wars have few winners.  This one in particular.

Related posts:

1. I’d Rather be Famous than Righteous or Holy
2. Palin’s Symbolism
3. Blair Doubles Down: Even Preventive War is for Suckas, Part II

It is instructive that both Pakistan and India acquired their [...]]]> There is a serious discussion to be had about the wisdom of arms control efforts.  Alan Caruba, in the Washington Times, fails to take part in it.  The piece is a hodgepodge of unsupported attacks on arms control efforts, which I will address one by one.

It is instructive that both Pakistan and India acquired their nuclear weapons without anyone being aware of it until after the fact. At CIA headquarters, when India announced its successful test, it came as a very big surprise. These days, the United States is busy reassuring Israel that Iran is “at least a year away” from nuclear status, and you can imagine how relieved they are to hear that.

This is completely misleading.  Caruba is alluding to the fact that the United States did not detect the 1998 Indian nuclear tests before they happened.  The United States was well aware of both the Indian and the Pakistani nuclear weapons programs for a long time, especially since India tested a nuclear device in 1974.  Caruba then moves on to attack the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization designated last Sunday as the International Day Against Nuclear Tests. Given the total lack of success in thwarting any nation that wants a nuke, my confidence in the United Nations’ treaty is zero.

Nobody is suggesting that CTBT will single-handled thwart the nuclear ambitions of any country.  Rather, it is one more tool to detect and discourage nuclear testing.  Moreover, the CTBT has not been ratified by the U.S., nor has it gone into effect.  Is Caruba actually blaming a dormant treaty for failing to solve the problem of nuclear proliferation?

Robert R. Monroe, a retired vice admiral in the U.S. Navy and former director of the Defense Nuclear Agency from 1977 to 1980, expressed the opinion, “The treaty has many problems from being unverifiable to giving Russia virtual veto power over U.S. missile defense, and more.” That’s bad enough, but it’s worse than that.

New START does not limit U.S. missile defense no matter how many times New START critics insist that it does. As the Arms Control Association’s Tom Collina says:

“[T]he treaty will not constrain the United States from deploying the most effective missile defenses possible,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said May 18.  The treaty’s preamble acknowledges the interrelationship between offense and defense, and Russia has made a unilateral statement that if U.S. missile defense activities jeopardize Moscow’s supreme interests, it may withdraw from the treaty.  Both sides have the right to say what they want in a unilateral statement, which has no legal impact on the treaty.  Both sides have the right to withdraw from the treaty, just as the United States withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty during the Bush administration.  U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty did not lead to Russia’s withdrawal from START I.

Caruba throws in some questions about his opponent’s patriotism for good measure.

There are those who love test-ban treaties. They love the idea of unilaterally disarming the United States in a world where there are nations that may not love us.

Sigh.

Not surprisingly, the nations with nukes have not signed onto anything that would take away their deterrent factor, and, of course, Iran is hellbent on getting nukes for itself.

Again, totally misleading.  The nations with nuclear weapons (including the United States!) have signed a variety of bilateral and multilateral agreements to limit their nuclear weapons programs.  Whether these limits “take away their deterrent factor” is another issue.  Would the CTBT limit our ability to use our hundreds of highly-tested, well-maintained nuclear weapons?  Of course not.

There are much better versions of all these arguments, so it is unclear why the Washington Times gave Caruba this opportunity.  Putting U.S. foreign policy on a sensible footing requires that nonsense like this be rebutted.

Related posts:

1. Guest Post: We Have a New START
2. Guest Post: The Long Game of Nuclear Disarmament
3. Guest Post: Nuclear Scorecard

I erroneously believed that I could interpret the actions of Saddam Hussein.  He seemed to be acting like I’d act if [...]]]> Megan McCardle, to her credit, makes a go at an updated mea culpa for her position on the Iraq war.  One of the reasons cited for her, admittedly, flawed decision to support the war seems a bit odd, however:

I erroneously believed that I could interpret the actions of Saddam Hussein.  He seemed to be acting like I’d act if I had WMD.  Whoops!  I wasn’t an Iraqi dictator, which left huge gaps in my mental model of Hussein.

First of all, since McCardle is not a lot of things (well, she isn’t anything other than what she is, to state a tautology), this is a dubious standard to employ for someone who is in the business of providing analysis from the august pages of The Atlantic.  To put it another way, her mental model presumably has huge gaps about most things using the criteria of “actually being like what is being observed,” and, thus, this is either a poor excuse or a fair warning about the quality of analysis forthcoming on most issues.  Let’s assume the former.That general comment aside, there is also the issue of “interpreting” the actions of Saddam, which was a wholly unnecessary exercise considering the fact that we had actual UN weapons inspectors in Iraq for months preceding the invasion, and those inspectors were following leads from the best intelligence that the US and Britain could provide (the countries whose leaders assured us repeatedly that Saddam had WMD and that “we know where they are“).

Thus, interpreting Saddam’s actions should have been low on the list of evidence for WMD, or the lack thereof, with “what are the inspectors who are there following our best intel finding” placing much, much higher.  To excerpt an article that was recently discussed on this site in a similar context: 

Hans Blix told the BBC that his teams followed up US and British leads at suspected sites across Iraq, but found nothing when they got there. [...] 

In a BBC interview…Mr Blix said he had been disappointed with the tip-offs provided by British and US intelligence.

“Only in three of those cases did we find anything at all, and in none of these cases were there any weapons of mass destruction, and that shook me a bit, I must say.”

He said UN inspectors had been promised the best information available.

“I thought – my God, if this is the best intelligence they have and we find nothing, what about the rest?”   

This, of course, leaves aside the fact that WMD is a nebulous term that obscures more than it illuminates, especially when used the way it was in the run-up to the Iraq war.  While nuclear weapons are extremely destructive (much, much moreso than chem and bio weapons in almost all contexts), the consensus was that Saddam did not have an active nuclear program, let alone a weapon, let alone a weapon capable of being delivered to the United States, let alone a desire to use such weapon should he develop the delivery system, let alone a willingness to hand such a deliverable weapon off to al-Qaeda - a group whose raison d’etre is toppling insufficiently pious regimes such as Saddam’s Baath regime in Iraq.

The chem and bio weapons that Saddam allegedly had were old, decaying and incapable of proving more destructive than conventional weapons in just about any setting outside of a battlefield (and he still had not displayed an inclination to use same against Western targets, or an affinity for his enemies, al-Qaeda).  In other words, his “WMD” were really only suitable for use - or likely to be used on - a battlefield had we chosen to invade.

Which makes a terrible casus belli, regardless of whether or not the particular advocate of going to war is herself a 20th century Iraqi dictator. 

Related posts:

1. Always a Day Away…
2. Always a Day Away…
3. In Case of Looming Invasion, Break Glass

In Islam, sharia (“the Way” to God) theoretically governs every human act. But Muslims do not agree on what sharia [...]]]> Edward E. Curtis IV has a useful summary of facts/myths surrounding mosques in the United States (via).  In one portion, he comments on Sharia law (a topic of some concern on this site in recent weeks):

In Islam, sharia (“the Way” to God) theoretically governs every human act. But Muslims do not agree on what sharia says; there is no one sharia book of laws. Most mosques in America do not teach Islamic law for a simple reason: It’s too complicated for the average believer and even for some imams.

Islamic law includes not only the Koran and the Sunna (the traditions of the prophet Muhammad) but also great bodies of arcane legal rulings and pedantic scholarly interpretations. If mosques forced Islamic law upon their congregants, most Muslims would probably leave — just as most Christians might walk out of the pews if preachers gave sermons exclusively on Saint Augustine, canon law and Greek grammar. Instead, mosques study the Koran and the Sunna and how the principles and stories in those sacred texts apply to their everyday lives.

Curtis on the history of mosques in America:

Mosques have been here since the colonial era. A mosque, or masjid, is literally any place where Muslims make salat, the prayer performed in the direction of Mecca; it needn’t be a building. One of the first mosques in North American history was on Kent Island, Md.: Between 1731 and 1733, African American Muslim slave and Islamic scholar Job Ben Solomon, a cattle driver, would regularly steal away to the woods there for his prayers — in spite of a white boy who threw dirt on him as he made his prostrations.

The Midwest was home to the greatest number of permanent U.S. mosques in the first half of the 20th century. In 1921, Sunni, Shiite and Ahmadi Muslims in Detroit celebrated the opening of perhaps the first purpose-built mosque in the nation. Funded by real estate developer Muhammad Karoub, it was just blocks away from Henry Ford’s Highland Park automobile factory, which employed hundreds of Arab American men.

In fact, there is a mosque in the Pentagon itself – though few, if any, are complaining that its presence is “insensitive” to the 9/11 victims that perished at that site (insensitive, presumably, because having Muslims praying near such a site reminds the victims of terrorists because all Muslims are terrorists?). 

Meanwhile, it is worth pointing out that the recent spate of anti-Muslim violence, vandalism of mosques and terrorizing of mosque-attendees risks to upturn the traditional advantage that the US has had over Europe in terms of limiting the number of home grown terrorists. 

As previously discussed on this site, individuals that end up being radicalized and joining terrorist causes tend to share some common traits and experience. 

For one, they tend to straddle worlds (second or third generation Muslims living in the West), and become increasingly alienated from their adopted homeland – this, usually due to the host country’s lack of assimilative tendencies, as well as overt hostility to, and rejection of, foreign cultures. 

In this regard, it is widely assumed in counterterrorist circles that the United States (with its immigrant history and melting pot dynamic) has enjoyed some insulation where European nations (that tend to emphasize a historical, nationalist identity) have been exposed. 

However, the Republican Party’s demagoguery in recent years has taken the form of an indiscriminate hostility toward all Muslims and Islam in general – thus helping to alienate young Muslim Americans that would otherwise feel a part of American culture and society.

In addition, many of those that are eventually radicalized experience some traumatic, violent incident of hatred, either directly or to loved ones. Those would be the same type of incidents as are beginning to pop up across the country - a logical, and inevitable, result of the dangerous anti-Muslim animus being whipped up by key Republican pundits, politicians and journalists.

To repeat, this anti-Muslim hatred being stoked for short term political gain is as reprehensible morally as it is risky in terms of national security.

Related posts:

1. En Focus
2. Fadlallah Dies
3. If You Kill My Dog, I’ma Slay Your Cat

“Motalefeh also has effective control of the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, the largest charity in [...]]]> IWPR has an article uncovering some of the political sinews moving events in Iran away from the Green Movement. It highlights the opposition between the Ahmadinejad administration and a traditional conservative political party called Motalefeh. Here’s the economic component:

“Motalefeh also has effective control of the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation, the largest charity in the Middle East and also the Islamic Economic Organisation, which comprises 1,200 trusts and quasi-banks that issue loans to the public. Together with the Revolutionary Guards Corps, Motalefeh members hold controlling shares in several companies including the Rezvan industrial corporation, a gas pipeline project in South Pars, and even a software company called Ada-Afzar.

“Nor should one forget the enduring influence of the bazaar traders in every major Iranian city. In addition to actual trading, they handle much of the financing for trade, and have been the dominant force in Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Mines for the past 30 years.”

After reading Keshavarzian’s book, I wonder if the author isn’t slightly over-stating the bazaar’s economic importance, which has declined during the past 30 years, though a word like “much” is fairly vague. The article does tie Motalefeh to the bazaar and the July bazaar strike by saying that the Society of Islamic Guild and Bazaar Associations, which provided the impetus for the strike, is close to Motalefeh, which makes sense given organizational attention the state gave the bazaar during the 1980′s and 1990′s. On the point about companies, since the IRGC’s economic influence is fairly new and an important development under Ahmadinejad, it stands to reason that when the article talks about party members sharing influence with the IRGC, the background is that they used to have a lot more of the influence, but have lost it in part due to a lack of political influence under Ahmadinejad.

There’s also this note about what has happened in the bazaar since the strike:

“But the government was not about to give up so easily. Shortly before the month of Ramadan in early August, there was an upsurge in official inspections of the traditional guilds that run the bazaars as well as of individual merchants. In July, 39,000 cases of breaches of trading regulations were brought against them, and hefty fines were imposed for alleged profiteering.

“The government campaign drew a fierce riposte from the guild association’s head, Ahmad Karimi Isfahani, who said these actions were illegal and politically-motivated.”

(Crossposted to my blog)

Related posts:

1. Conflicting Religious Legitimacies
2. Whither Rafsanjani?
3. The Fog of Warmongering

The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.

Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of [...]]]> The New York Times has a piece highlighting one aspect of the pointlessness of our ongoing slog in Afghanistan:

The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.

Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. It is unclear exactly what Mr. Salehi does in exchange for his money, whether providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both.

Mr. Salehi’s relationship with the C.I.A. underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration’s policy in Afghanistan, with American officials simultaneously demanding that Mr. Karzai root out the corruption that pervades his government while sometimes subsidizing the very people suspected of perpetrating it.

While this is, indeed, damning in a general sense, it should also be noted (as it is here and here), that being on the CIA payroll is itself corruption!  Although the article does not seem to acknowledge this reality, note the language: “It is unclear exactly what Mr. Salehi does in exchange for his money [from the CIA], whether providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both.”

All of which fit, neatly, under the rubric of corruption – or worse, espionage on behalf of a foreign power.  Along these lines, it is remarkable how our foreign policy establishment and establishment media seem incapable of conceptualizing the fact that America is, itself, a foreign power when occupying both Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Whether it be, in the present example, ignoring the fact that having our spy agency keep top Karzai adminsitration officials on the payroll is itself a blatant and corrosive form of corruption (and worse), or General Odierno claiming that we must stay in Iraq to prevent interference from foreign powers, the obvious is missed. 

The myopia of exceptionalism strikes again.

Related posts:

1. In Tatters, Shattered
2. Engaging the Muslim World: Pakistan and Afghanistan
3. Of Mercs and Spooks

The U.S. cannot remain a superpower [...]]]> A few weeks back, Bret Stephens took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to issue the latest iteration of what is a recurring hawkish argument in favor of continuing the war du jour (in the present example, Stephens is arguing for prolonging the longest war in US history - the war in Afghanistan):

The U.S. cannot remain a superpower if the suspicion takes root that we are a feckless nation that can be stampeded into surrender by a domestic caucus of defeatists.

To which I am tempted to merely quote George Kennan and leave it at that:

[T]here is more respect to be won in the opinion of the world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant and unpromising objectives.

The fact that Kennan felt the need to respond to a version of the same argument that Stephens repeats today is a testament to its longevity, if not persuasiveness.  Stephens’ nostrum is fundamentally flawed in that it puts too much stock in the power of perceptions, and not enough into the actual state of affairs in a given country as a determinant of its strength.  As if our status as a superpower were determined by the fickle whims of the viewing public, and not actual tangible factors such as military, economic and cultural strength.

After all, the Soviet Union did not crumble because it withdrew from Afghanistan, thus losing face on the world stage, but rather because it was a corrupt, unsustainable, inefficient system that was decaying systemically and was attracting few, if any, admirers and imitators.  Put another way, if the Soviets had stayed in Afghanistan for three decades past their actual date of departure, would the world still perceive the Soviets as a superpower?  Obviously not. 

If anything, the fact that the Soviets dug in and stayed for as long as they did served to hasten their demise by further bleeding a tattered empire of dwindling resources that were already spread thin. 

Not that I would put the US in Soviet shoes in terms of relative strength, but certain warning signs should sound somewhat familiar.  At present, America has severe infrastructural needs due to decades of neglect and deterioration. Estimates put the price tag in the trillions, and that’s just for upkeep, which does nothing to address the fact that we are not pushing ahead with new innovative technologies and infrastructural advancements that will ensure a position of dominance for our commercial sector for decades to come. On the contrary, other nations and regions are spearheading developments in green technology, faster information systems/connectivity and transportation efficiency.

At least part of this neglect is due to the fact that, while our tax base is relatively low when compared to other Western industrial nations, our defense budget is comparatively enormous. Despite this imbalance in favor of militarization, Stephens worries that we might stop spending hundreds of billions pursuing the unrealistic goal of remaking Afghan society through military means.  That money, and other resources dedicated to the Pentagon vortex, could do more to improve our prospects for remaining a superpower if put to actual productive use, rather than as part of a grandiose enterprise comprised of “pounding sand” in the name of something or other. 

But Stephens and his ilk act as if the actual decline brought on by such expensive adventurism and hyper-militarization was a minor trifle, secondary to “what will the neighbors think” writ large if we abandon one or more wars (or forgo the commencement of yet another).  However, the real question is what will become of our global reputation if key facets of our society are in obvious states of decline – and what of our ability to compete without first rate education, health care, transportation, connectivity and other vital expedients?

Paul Krugman recently documented the many startling ways in which we are regressing in the face of economic hardship, and the realities of an atrophied tax revenue stream.  We are, depending on the region, shortening the school year, unpaving roads, turning out street lights, passing on trash collection, cutting back on the number of teachers, etc.  A recent New York Times piece has more (via):

When Emily Cooper headed off to first grade in Moody, Ala., last week, she was prepared with all the stuff on her elementary school’s must-bring list: two double rolls of paper towels, three packages of Clorox wipes, three boxes of baby wipes, two boxes of garbage bags, liquid soap, Kleenex and Ziplocs.

“The first time I saw it, my mouth hit the floor,” Emily’s mother, Kristin Cooper, said of the list, which also included perennials like glue sticks, scissors and crayons.

Schools across the country are beginning the new school year with shrinking budgets and outsize demands for basic supplies. And while many parents are wincing at picking up the bill, retailers are rushing to cash in by expanding the back-to-school category like never before.

Now some back-to-school aisles are almost becoming janitorial-supply destinations as multipacks of paper towels, cleaning spray and hand sanitizer are crammed alongside pens, notepads and backpacks.

Which prompted Natasha Chart to add: “Because nothing says ‘superpower’ like when your public schools can’t afford toilet paper.” 

And yet two wars drone on (or one war, and, in the other venue, an end to major combat operations that still requires 50,000+ troops in-country for some time) to the tune of billions of dollars each month, and Bret Stephens frets about what other countries might think of us if we eventually end one (which, presumably, we might do on unfavorable grounds even if we muddle through for another decade).

Not to mention the fact that, as Matt Duss notes, goading us into a stubborn campaign where pyrrhic victories are the only ones that can be hoped for, eventually, with a lot of luck, might be a victory in and of itself in the eyes of our adversaries: 

I’ve always found it interesting how, for pro-war types like Stephens, these sorts of “reputation” arguments always only go one way: Toward more war. The only way we can show enemies and allies what we’re made of is to continue fighting, continue expending vast resources, even as the strategy is failing, even as our own economy is in crisis. It just never seems to occur to them that ensnaring the U.S. in hugely expensive, open-ended military interventions could also be a goal of our enemies, or that persisting in an intervention that has begun to prove counterproductive is itself a form of fecklessness.

It’s true that in his 1996 fatwa, Osama bin Laden mocked the U.S. for withdrawing from Somalia. But more recently, in November 2004, he also mocked the U.S. for how easy it was for Al Qaeda “to provoke and bait” the U.S. into military action…

Despite the fact that, according to Stephens’ law of “global reputation preservation,” once engaged in an armed conflict, we cannot disengage short of clear and decisive victory lest we imperil our status as a superpower (no matter how much that war drains us of the vital resources normally used to burnish superpower credentials), he nevertheless would counsel that we start yet another war, this time with Iran. 

Maybe for that one, we can have our GIs bring their own toilet paper, bandages, bullets and rucksacks. 

Related posts:

1. Start Another Fire and Watch It Slowly Die
2. Ingrates Abound
3. Engaging the Muslim World: Iraq and Islam Anxiety

“Government officials warned Israeli teachers last week not to cooperate with a civic group that seeks to educate Israelis about how the Palestinians view the loss of their homeland and the establishment of the [...]]]> Israel’s Ministry of Education is ordering teachers not to attend a workshop that promotes including the facts of Palestinian dispossession in classes:

“Government officials warned Israeli teachers last week not to cooperate with a civic group that seeks to educate Israelis about how the Palestinians view the loss of their homeland and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

“Israel’s education ministry issued the advisory after Zochrot – a Jewish group that seeks to raise awareness among Israeli Jews of the events of 1948, referred to as the ‘nakba’ by Palestinians – organised a workshop for primary school teachers…

“The warning is the latest move by the education ministry, headed by Gideon Saar, a member of the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, to use school curricula to advance a more strident Zionist agenda.

“In March, for instance, the ministry banned Israeli schools from distributing a booklet for children about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Critics had objected to parts of the declaration that refer to freedom of religion and protection of asylum-seekers.”

As you can gather from this short excerpt, the Israeli government has a great amount of power over Israeli society, power which is used to promote the educational agenda favored by the current government. Under Netanyahu, that means attempting to indoctrinate students with right-wing Israeli nationalism.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Related posts:

1. Aluf Benn and Reality
2. Sheikh Jarrah
3. Obama’s Gotta Squeeze Box?

Gingrich…recognizes [...]]]> Earlier this month, the Lexington wrote a column in the Economist attacking critics of Cordoba House.  On his blog, he has posts a flailing response from Rick Tyler, a Gingrich spokesman.  While I believe that the extent of anti-muslim fervor in this country is exaggerated by many on the left, Tyler’s rhetoric really is despicable.

Gingrich…recognizes that the radical Islamism that drove the 9/11 attacks is more than simply a religious belief. It is a comprehensive political movement that seeks to impose sharia—Islamic law—upon all aspects of global society. Moreover, while some radical Islamists use terrorism as a tactic to impose sharia, Gingrich and many Americans are well aware – even if the Economist’s columnist charged with reporting on American society has not yet figured this out — that other radical Islamists also use non-violent methods to wage a cultural, economic, political, and legal jihad that seeks the same totalitarian goal of sharia supremacy even while claiming to repudiate violence.

I understand that sharia law is an effective bogeyman.  It’s difficult to see, however, what sharia law has to do with international terrorism.  As Reza Aslan argued in his book “How to Win a Cosmic War,” the perpetrators of 9/11 don’t actually have much of a political agenda.  How, then, are they a part of a “comprehensive political movement” to propagate sharia?  Does he really think that al-Qaeda, Hamas, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Sufi Imams are part of a coherent political movement?  Also, what exactly is “global society”?  Most conservatives would deny the existence of such a thing.

Ground Zero is not like any other place in America to build a mosque. It is a battlefield where radical Islamists who trade in terror murdered almost 3,000 Americans in an act of war.

No, it’s really not.  It’s the site of a national tragedy.

Lexington calls Imam Faisal Abd ar-Rauf, the ground zero mosque leader, a “well-meaning” cleric. Apparently, the British Economist magazine thinks you qualify as “well-meaning” if you believe that “United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened [on 9/11]”, which is what Rauf said in a [2001] interview on CBS 60 Minutes.  Americans don’t find anything well-meaning about that statement.

Besides the bogus invocation of “Americans,” Tyler is wrong to extrapolate how “well-meaning” a man is from one arguably offensive statement.

Rauf told CBN last May that “by being in this location we get the attention and are able to leverage the voice of the vast majority of Muslims who condemn terrorism.”  But given the opportunity to do just that in a subsequent interview, he demurred. Asked if he thought Hamas, responsible for murdering civilians, is a terrorist organization could only say “I try to avoid the issues. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question.”

Rauf clearly seek the Ground Zero location for a propaganda platform but it is also clear that it will not be for the purpose of condemning terrorism.

Again, one ambiguous quote followed by a sweeping characterization of the man’s intentions.

There is much more in Imam Rauf’s background to make Americans believe that Imam Rauf wants to build a GZM as an arrogant political act of Islamist triumphalism rather than as a genuine effort at building inter-faith understanding.  If the latter were indeed Rauf’s goal, then why doesn’t Rauf propose building an inter-faith community center at ground zero with a church, synagogue, and a mosque, governed by a board of Christians, Jews, and Muslims?

Tyler may be right that an inter-faith community center would a better bridge-building exercise, but who cares?  The debate is not over the best use of the building, people are discussing this particular project.  Gingrich can (and should!) buy his own building and create his own community center.

If Rauf is so intent on “improving Muslim-West relations”, then why doesn’t he lead an effort to build the first church and synagogue in the heart of the Muslim world in Saudi Arabia?  Which do Economist readers really believe will improve Muslim-West relations more: one more mosque in America — but this time at Ground Zero — or the first church in Saudi Arabia?

Why doesn’t Gingrich campaign in favor of Saudi Arabian churches rather than against this mosque?  Is it because he is an American politician, rather than a Saudi prince?

Short of that, Rauf’s pleas for religious liberty in the United States (a freedom Saudi Arabia and other Muslim counrties forbid) is rank hypocrisy.  Western editorial and political elites may remain blissfully blind to Rauf’s hypocrisy at the expense of 9/11 victims and their families, but most Americans recognize the hypocrisy and are insulted.

If Gingrich’s people could find an instance where Rauf defended or excused the lack of religious liberty in a place like Saudi Arabia, then a charge of hypocrisy might be appropriate.

Ideally, we wouldn’t have to waste time responding to people who use the phrase “at the expense of the 9/11 victims and their families” to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment.  Gingrich has created an opportunity to reaffirm the principles of a free society, and we would be remiss not to seize it.

Related posts:

1. Engaging the Muslim World: The Wahhabi Myth
2. Grand Old Party at Ground Zero
3. Jaundiced Eye of Newt

…With President Obama agonizing over what [...]]]> Andrew Bacevich has an interesting piece on the the ways in which the military has asserted itself in recent decades, and become somewhat independent of civilian leadership, despite the illusion of civilian control maintained for popular consumption.  Along the way, he makes a good point about the selective outrage concerning leaks:

…With President Obama agonizing over what to do about Afghanistan, The Washington Post offered for general consumption the military’s preferred approach, the so-called McChrystal Plan. Devised by General Stanley McChrystal, who had been appointed by Obama to command allied forces in Afghanistan, the plan called for a surge of U.S. troops and the full-fledged application of counterinsurgency doctrine—an approach that necessarily implied a much longer and more costly war.

The effect of this leak, almost surely engineered by some still unidentified military officer, was to hijack the entire policy review process, circumscribing the choices available to the commander-in-chief. Rushing to the nearest available microphone, members of Congress (mostly Republicans) announced that it was Obama’s duty to give the field commander whatever he wanted. McChrystal himself made the point explicitly. During a speech in London, he categorically rejected the notion that any alternative to his strategy even existed: It was do it his way or lose the war. The role left to the president was not to decide, but simply to affirm.

The leaking of the McChrystal Plan constituted a direct assault on civilian control. At the time, however, that fact passed all but unnoticed. Few of those today raising a hue-and-cry about PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeak-er, bothered to protest. The documents that Manning allegedly made public are said to endanger the lives of American troops and their Afghan comrades. Yet, a year ago, no one complained about the McChrystal leaker providing Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leadership with a detailed blueprint of exactly how the United States and its allies were going to prosecute their war.

The absence of any serious complaint reflected the fact that, in Washington—especially in the press corps—military leaks aimed at subverting or circumscribing civilian authority are accepted as standard fare. It’s part of the way Washington works.

True enough.  Although Petraeus has replaced McChrystal, plus ca change:

Within the past week, complaints dribbling out of Petraeus’s headquarters in Kabul—duly reported by an accommodating press—indicate growing military unhappiness with the July 2011 pullout date. Now, Petraeus himself has begun to weigh in directly. This past weekend, he launched his own media campaign, offering his “narrative” of ongoing events. Unlike the ham-handed McChrystal, who chose a foreign capital as his soapbox, Petraeus sat for a carefully orchestrated series of interviews with The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NBC’s “Meet the Press,” each of which gratefully passed along the general’s view of things.

In the course of sitting for these interviews, Petraeus placed down a marker, one best captured by the headline in the Times dispatch: “Petraeus Opposes a Rapid Pullout in Afghanistan.” Or, as The Daily Beast put it, adding a twist of hyperbole, Petraeus told “David Gregory that he has the right to delay Obama’s 2011 pull-out target for troops in Afghanistan.” A bit over the top, but you get the drift. [...]

At the center of [the Afghan policy] battle will be a very political general, skilled at using the press and with friends aplenty on Capitol Hill, especially among Republicans. To have a chance of winning reelection in 2012, Obama needs to demonstrate progress in shutting down the war. Yet it is now becoming increasingly apparent the general Obama has placed in charge of that war entertains a different view.

One, but not both, will have his way. Between now and July 2011, when it comes to civilian control, even the folks in Peoria will have a chance to learn what the civics books leave out.

This is going to get ugly, unless either Obama is in full agreement with Petraeus, or he knuckles under without much of a fight.

Related posts:

1. I’m Creepin’ and I’m Creepin’
2. Start Another Fire and Watch It Slowly Die
3. This One’s Optimistic

My question is, why not use our information to help the UN disarm Iraq without war? 

Secretary Powell’s recent presentation at the UN showed the extent [...]]]> Matt Yglesias, merciful soul that he is, looks past Howard Dean’s disappointing statements on the Park51 project and, instead, praises Dean’s courage and prescience during the run-up to the war in Iraq.  Quoting Dean: 

My question is, why not use our information to help the UN disarm Iraq without war? 

Secretary Powell’s recent presentation at the UN showed the extent to which we have Iraq under an audio and visual microscope. Given that, I was impressed not by the vastness of evidence presented by the Secretary, but rather by its sketchiness. He said there would be no smoking gun, and there was none. 

At the same time, it seems to me we are in possession of information that would be very helpful to UN inspectors. For example, if we know Iraqi scientists are being detained at an Iraqi guesthouse, why not surround the building and knock on the door? 

If we think a facility is being used for biological weapons, why not send the inspectors to check it out? 

And if we believe terrorists – especially if they are terrorists linked to al Qaeda – have set up a poison and explosives training center in Northern Iraq, outside Saddam Hussein’s control, why haven’t we verified that information and destroyed that camp?

Yglesias adds: 

Faced with the threat of invasion, Saddam Hussein was largely knuckling under to demands for inspections. The UN weapons inspectors were saying they found instances of Iraqi non-compliance with UN resolutions, but could not find evidence of active weapons programs. The US government insisted that it had such evidence. But instead of sharing everything we allegedly had with UNMOVIC and the IAEA so they could check it out, the governments of the US, UK, Spain, Australia, and a few others (Poland!) insisted on leaping ahead into a war.

One quibble with Matt’s statement: we actually did share our intelligence with UNMOVIC and the IAEA – it’s just that those groups couldn’t find anything based on our tips.  From way back in 2003: 

Hans Blix told the BBC that his teams followed up US and British leads at suspected sites across Iraq, but found nothing when they got there. [...] 

In a BBC interview…Mr Blix said he had been disappointed with the tip-offs provided by British and US intelligence.

“Only in three of those cases did we find anything at all, and in none of these cases were there any weapons of mass destruction, and that shook me a bit, I must say.”

He said UN inspectors had been promised the best information available.

“I thought – my God, if this is the best intelligence they have and we find nothing, what about the rest?” 

This of course should have set off multiple alarms, and in a sense it did.  Bush promptly yanked the inspectors and proceeded with the invasion.  

And Bush’s gambit was successful in a sense: Many years later, it is “conventional wisdom” that “everybody” thought Saddam had WMD.  That would be “everybody” except the actual inspectors on the ground in Iraq hunting down the hottest leads provided by US and British intel.  Just those folks – but what did they know! 

But I suppose that revisionist history is better than another resilient meme: that we went to war because Saddam didn’t let inspectors back in.  Mitt Romney echoes this misinformation in a response during one of the GOP Presidential Debates in 2007 to a question asking: knowing what he knows now, was it a mistake to invade Iraq?: 

Well, the question is, kind of, a non sequitur, if you will. What I mean by that — or a null set — that is that if you’re saying let’s turn back the clock and Saddam Hussein had open[ed] up his country to IAEA inspectors and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein therefore not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn’t be in the conflict we’re in. But he didn’t do those things, and we knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in.

If only!

Related posts:

1. Of Mercs and Spooks
2. Blair Doubles Down: Even Preventive War is for Suckas, Part I
3. I’m Surprised She Didn’t Get a Promotion

The New York Times, in June, detailed that proposed mosques in multiple locales in New York City — far away from the Sacred, Hallowed Space of Ground Zero — are provoking similar backlashes.  Two weeks ago, Yahoo News reported on similar incidents from around the country.  These are the real sentiments at the heart [...]]]> Glenn Greenwald makes an interesting observation:

The New York Times, in June, detailed that proposed mosques in multiple locales in New York City — far away from the Sacred, Hallowed Space of Ground Zero — are provoking similar backlashes.  Two weeks ago, Yahoo News reported on similar incidents from around the country.  These are the real sentiments at the heart of this controversy.

That certainly calls into question the notion that opposition to the Park51 community center is rooted in sentimentalities surrounding the 9/11 attacks (as irrational and ill-supported as those sentimentalities may be).

There is something bigger than that.  Something very ugly spreading in this country – an anti-Muslim bias that is likely gaining succor from the anxiety that arises in tough economic times.  But that is not all.  

The Republican Party (with commendable exceptions such as Grover Norquist and Ted Olson – whose wife was killed on 9/11), aided by its major media apparatus, is actively and deliberately whipping up bigotry, hate and anger – pitting Americans against Americans – for little more than electoral gain.

This suggests two conclusions about the Republican Party, and much (though not all) of the larger conservative movement:

First, using bigotry for electoral gain is an acceptable practice. See, also, The Southern Strategy and Gay Marriage.

Second, there is far less concern for crafting effective counterterrorism policy and preserving national security than advertised.  While the GOP, and conservative pundits, might talk more bombastically about national security issues than others, and might display a greater willingness to start wars than their peers, in truth, they are willing to greatly compromise our domestic(and also foreign) defenses against terrorist attacks in order to pursue a strategy of demonizing a subset of American citizens for the short term of more votes in the next handful of election cycles.

Ali Soufan is more right than I’d like him to be:

The furor over the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero makes me think back to one of the most important lessons I learned from al Qaeda terrorists I interrogated–that they have a warped view of America. To them–and this they get from Osama Bin Laden’s rhetoric–the U.S. is a country at war with Islam and Muslims, and so they had a duty to fight us.

While I was serving on the frontlines I found that this distorted view of America was common among ordinary Muslims too, and it was only by correcting this image did we encourage locals to help our investigations and turn against al Qaeda. Our efforts were helped by public statements, like from President Bush in the days after 9/11, declaring that America was at war with al Qaeda and not with Islam. I was in Sana, Yemen, on that day, and I remember our military and law enforcement group feeling encouraged that our leadership understood how to frame our battle.

But while we started off on the right note in dealing with the Muslim world, our leadership soon demonstrated that they failed to understand that our war against al Qaeda was not just a military fight, but an asymmetrical battle for the proverbial hearts and minds of Muslims across the world too. We should have been highlighting that al Qaeda has killed thousands of Muslims and blown up dozens of mosques around the world. But instead we failed to appreciate the importance of rebutting al Qaeda’s propaganda and of turning ordinary Muslims against the terror network.

When we eventually did this, we had great successes. As commander in Iraq Gen. Petraeus reached out to local Sunni groups and convinced them that al Qaeda was their enemy and America their friend. That led to a remarkable turnaround in our fortunes in Iraq. He is now trying to do the same in Afghanistan. Just this weekend Meet the Pressreported that when Gen. Petraeus learned that the Taliban attacked a mosque near the border with Pakistan, he ordered it to be publicized among the local population.

There are many reasons for supporting the Muslim community’s right to build a cultural center and mosque on private property, not least of all the First Amendment of the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of religion. But from a national security perspective, our leaders need to understand that no one is likely to be happier with the opposition to building a mosque than Osama Bin Laden. His next video script has just written itself.

The potential damage to our national security is not only to our work abroad, but at home too. Today in America we are facing an increased threat of homegrown terrorism. While Bin Laden couldn’t find a single American-Muslim to be part of the 9/11 plot, today, thanks to mixture of poor (and even harmful) leadership within the American-Muslim community and failed strategies from our government in dealing with the threat, some young Muslims are finding themselves increasingly isolated and marginalized–and are becoming easy prey for radicals.

When demagogues appear to be equating Islam with terrorism, it’s making young Muslims unsure about their place in the country. It bolsters the message that radicalizers are selling: That the war is against Islam, and Muslims are not welcome in America. As a Muslim-American, I know that isn’t true. Whatever some rabble-raising politicians say about one mosque doesn’t trump what America really stands for–the values enshrined by our constitution that guarantee equality and freedom for all, whatever your race, religion or creed.

Young American-Muslims need to focus on comments by leaders like Mayor Bloomberg, whose stand on the issue exemplifies the very best in American leadership: educating people and standing up for the values of our Constitution, rather than playing on fear and ignorance.

It is because of the principles enshrined in our constitution that thousands of American-Muslims, like Americans from all races and religions, volunteer to serve our country in the military, intelligence and law enforcement communities. The Pledge of Allegiance, ending “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” is a constant reminder that America is worth fighting for.

Do read the rest.

Standing up for the Park51 is not only the right thing to do in terms of defending the Constitution, expressing solidarity with our fellow citizens that are being unfairly targeted and garnering greater inclusiveness in general, but it is an absolute imperative in the fight against extremism.

And the Republican Party is almost uniformly against it. And its opposition is manifesting in ways that are as vile as they are counterproductive in terms of keeping us safe. 

That’s really quite remarkable.  The GOP is willing to risk American lives in order to sow hatred and bigotry for a short term boost to electoral prospects.  Wow.

Related posts:

1. Engaging the Muslim World: Overview
2. En Focus
3. Grand Old Party at Ground Zero