Enter the Interpreters
Michael Young | July 7, 2005, 1:47pm
Following on from Chuck's post below, the warning to Italy and Denmark is interesting, if indeed the statement is authentic: Evidently, even if societies opposed the Iraq war, as did those in Spain and the U.K., not to mention Italy, it's pretty irrelevant because their governments happened to support it.
That message is worth remembering by those who argue that American and British actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have provoked a "clash of civilizations." In the case of Madrid and now London, no such distinction was made by the attackers. One expects no better from them, but it will be interesting to watch what the public reaction among the wars' critics will be. Who will be blamed for this latest punishment of societies objectively supporting the goal the terrorists' attacks allegedly promote--namely an end to the Western military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Isn't this proof enough that the only agenda of the perpetrators was to kill many people--as it was on 9/11--and that those trying to read some sense into the murders are making a mistake? By the way, notice how the Al-Qaeda statement--again if it is authentic--failed to mention Palestine. No worries, there will be plenty of self-styled interpreters who will throw that into their own assessments of who was to blame, and why.
Addendum: No sooner had I posted the above than I opened Juan Cole's Web site. Here's what he wrote:
Scheuer believes that al-Qaeda is an insurgent ideology focused on destroying the United States and its allies, because its members believe that the US is trying to destroy them. Al-Qaeda members see the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, backed by the US; US support for military regimes like those of Pakistan and Egypt; and US military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq as evidence of a US onslaught on Islam and Muslims aimed at reducing them to neo-colonial slavery. That is, specific Western policies are the focus of al-Qaeda response, not a generalized "hatred" of "values." [...]
All of this seemed sensible to me, and more sensible than most other analysts I heard.
What did I tell you?
R C Dean | July 7, 2005, 4:15pm | #
Jennifer commits the fallacy of believing that we were "sidetracked" from achieving success in Afghanistan by the war in Iraq. I have seen no indication that we have not done anything that needed doing in Afghanistan because of the Iraq war. Afhganistan has been primarily a political problem and not a military problem from day one, so claims of military overstretch simply don't apply to that theater.
I think it is simply a fundamental gap in people's worldviews as to whether they think we are being targeted by Mohammedan fanatics because they hate our society and the way our society exports its values in a way that is corrosive to their beliefs, or because of our strategic/security activities in the Middle East.
I think the balance tips pretty clearly toward the former, and I think anyone who believes that if we were to unilaterally withdraw from the Middle East we would be left alone is terminally naive.
As to where the Mideast would be if we hadn't invaded Iraq.
Afghanistan would be about where it is now, maybe a little worse off since it would be the sole destination for peripatetic terrorists. Iraq would be under the boot of Saddam with no hope for progress. The Iraqis would be, in my view and in theirs according to recent polling, worse off if Saddam had not been thrown down.
By now, the sanctions would have been lifted (there was a strong movement to do this before 9/11), and Saddam would have reconstituted his WMD programs.
Syria would have no threats on its borders and no reason to behave itself, so there would be no nascent reform movement there and no liberated Lebanon.
We would still be in Saudi Arabia, to protect it from Saddam, and so the fundies would still be pissed at us for that.
Libya would have seen no reason to come clean. Egypt would have no reason to make whatever moves it is making toward democratization.
kevrob | July 7, 2005, 4:16pm | #
Hakluyt's comment about civilians being targetted in war is true in part. However, one of the marks of civilization is leaving wars of extermination and enslavement behind, in favor of military-on-military conflict. If the Qaedists had attempted to blow up the the British Ministry of Defense, that would be one thing, even if they overshot it and hit a train station. But they don't have the goods to attack military targets in the UK, so they target civilians.
One of the benefits of modern military technology is that we can drop the ugly mathematics of "Bomber" Harris and use our ordnance to actually hit military targets.
The result of the latest UK election didn't accurately depict the British public's views on the Iraq war. Critics of New Labour claimed that Parliamentary redistricting was needed to keep Blair's crew from receiving an overinflated majority in the Commons.
Labour's percentage of votes - at 36% (down by 5% from 2001) - is the lowest any winning party has ever achieved. ... More people voted for the Conservatives in England than for Labour - but the Conservatives won 92 seats less than Labour within England (285 to 193). The Conservatives received 60,000 more votes than Labour in England. ... The Liberal Democrats got 10% of the seats but 22% of the votes cast - Source One could argue that a majority of votes were cast for anti-war candidates, but the first-past-the-post single-member districts, combined with the dated constituency boundaries, distorted the result. Stateside we are all familiar with similar arguments leveled against our Electoral College and Senate, and against gerrymandered House districts. But we are explicitly a republic, and our political culture does not demand as much obeisance to majoritarianism as does the UK's.
If Blair could enforce party discipline, the Labour majority could pass legislation on the order of our constitutional amendments backed by a 36% "mandate." His "reforms" of the Lords have made it much less able to block these sorts of acts, too. It'd be quite scary, except that he's got enough anti-war backbenchers to worry about that if he tries anything too bold he'll lose the leadership.
That the mad mullahs may have misjudged the British public, who may rally around their PM, rather than follow the Spanish example, isn't anything I can predict. Someone in Britain might want to report how likely Blair's political support will be to wax or wane.
Kevin
tarran | July 7, 2005, 4:40pm | #
We didn't conquer Afghanistan so much as pay off enough warlords that the Taliban were ousted.
While Al-Queda's core operatives have official ideological aims of instituting a vaguely defined Islamic superstate, their actual goals, and the goals of their supporters are very diverse.
Some hate western liberalism.
Some hate infidels being in holy lands.
Some hate the corrupt arab governments that oppress them, and those who provide said governments with assistance.
Some are merely swept up by the need to be part of a cause, and by chance ended up supporting Al-Queda.
Every society has members with wacky, violent ideas. The question is how much traction these ideas get when lots of people are exposed to them. For example, in the '80's my Turkish grandmother, a cousin of a Turkish General herself, was advocating that Turkey should militarily conquer and unite all Turkic peoples under one rule. She got nowhere; nobody was interested in her cause.
To me, the problem is not so much that murderous bastards like the leadership of Al-Queda exists. Rather it is that they can convince thousands of followers that their cause is just.
Government officials' strategy of killing/apprehending Al-Queda rather than marginalizing them, and these officials' willingness to accept the deaths of innocents to accomplish this is quite counterproductive.
George Bush was quite correct in realizing that the U.S. military had to be removed from Saudi Arabia. His decision to defend the Saudi Monarchy by knocking out the one state that posed a credible invasion threat to it was quite unfortunate.
The right course of action, long-term, is to give up our tendency to intervene, our willigness to provide aid to local warlords in return for their favor, and to open up our borfers to trade/tourism, while killing/arresting these guys quietly, without fanfare, when the opportunity presents itself.
This strategy would cost Al-Queda the support of intelligent, competent people (the sort motivated by oppression) and bias the type of operatives they fielded to towards the incompetent/emotional types, who are much more prone to make mistakes and tend to be less effective at killing people.
This is not being soft, it is thinking strategically.
Unfortunately, we are driving people to fight us, and thus allowing our enemies to pick from a pool of more capable, intelligent recruits, and making ourselves a bigger target to boot. Our war in Iraq may feel good, and provides some minor benefits, but it, in the long-term, is making things worse.
Will Allen | July 7, 2005, 4:46pm | #
The center of gravity of this conflict is not, and never was, in Afghanistan. It lies in the Persian Gulf, for the simple reason that the well- being of billions of people is tied to a natural resource, and the largest deposits of that natural resource are in the Persian Gulf. If the United States military did not exist, China, Japan, India, South America, and much of Europe would have to invent it, for make no mistake, and all fantasies of near to medium term economic independence on Persian Gulf oil aside, the populations of those areas will demand every bit as vociferously as the population of the U.S. that the oil be extracted. Period. The only open question is how many people get slaughtered in the process.
If we put aside dreams of not having to engage with the population of the Persian Gulf, the question becomes simply in what way do we wish to engage with this population?
The model which has been employed for the past eighty years or so, in which we offer tribute and protection to despots which tyrannize the population, in return for access to oil, began to fail in the 1970s, and finally failed catastrophically 34 months ago. The model which has been employed through most of human history, when natural resources were highly desired by more powerful groups, that of mass annihilation and direct enslavement, has been ignored so far, but I fear one mass attack which is substantially larger that that of 9/11 would be all that is needed to cause that older model to seriously considered once again. Unforutanately, the increasing ubiquity of destructive technology, as evidenced by utter poverty cases like North Korea gaining access, means that one cannot write-off as scaremongering the prospect of a non-state actor gaining access in the medium term future. History indicates that attempts to deny access to technology to highly motivated groups of people tend to ultimately fail. It is unlikely we have four or five decades to allow things to slowly evolve.
If the population of the Persian Gulf can no longer be enslaved by proxy, in order to gain access to oil, and mass annihilation is not an option (yet), and if one desperately desires that it never be seriously considered as an option, and one drops all fantasies of ending the vital importance of Persian Gulf oil in the near to medium term future, then what options are there left? It seems that all that is left is to devise some way in which the population of the Persian Gulf achieves self-government, including self government of their mineral resources. They can then decide whether they would like to trade profitably with more powerful popualtions, or to wage war against more powerful populations.
That this is exceedingly difficult task, with no guarantee of success, does not obviate that this is, indeed, the hand that has been dealt, and it is the hand that will be played. Lamenting on how playing differently three, five, or eight decades ago would have made things easier today, even if it were true, won't change anything about the current conumdrum.
