Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

From his secure undisclosed location somewhere within the borders of Pakistan or Afghanistan Osama bin Laden again outlines to the world his vision of the Apocalypse through the magic of audiotape. He calls for a ‘Long War’ against the Western world and delivers a long list of litanies against the West in an attempt to rally Muslims to his cause. Osama bin Laden is in the Clash of Civilizations business and he sounds almost desperate in his zeal to bring one about. In this endeavor he has many in the West on his side.

Osama bin Laden attempts, in his latest audio rendition, to associate himself with any and all sources of possible grievances that he imagines Muslims may have. His mantra is, "Hate the West at all costs". He wants very much to be part of the global rise in Islamist extremism. He wants to channel local grievances in Muslim countries against Government oppression into an unified global movement against the West. He wants to combine the disparate acts of desperate men into a coordinated attack on the West and Western values. He wants his long war between Islam and the West where the ultimate casualty is reason. However, his murderous lunacy is laid bare when he suggests that Muslims in Sudan should oppose international peacekeepers who may be deployed in an attempt to end the genocide in Darfur. Muslims of the world take heed: Osama bin Laden would rather that hundreds of thousands of Muslims were slaughtered than support peacekeepers from the West.

We, and I mean the larger we, should deny Osama bin Laden his long war. We who are the American Government and people, the Muslim Governments and their people and the rest of the Western World have been culpable indirectly and in some instances directly in the rise of global Islamist extremism in general and the rise of Osama bin Laden in particular. Bin Laden is the evil stepchild of Pakistan’s seriously misguided Inter-services Intelligence Agency (ISI). With American Government support through the CIA, the ISI nurtured, armed and trained bin Laden and the rest of the Arab forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s to fend off the Soviet Union. We should also thank the ISI for their generous support of the Taliban and any and all extremist Islamist factions it could find around the world. The United States participated in the support of bin Laden and the rise of al Qaeda with full knowledge and understanding that this support of these radicals would lead to trouble for the United States in the future. When asked in 1998 after the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Africa if he had any regrets in sanctioning U.S. support for bin Laden and the Taliban, the ever confused and factually challenged Senator from Utah, the inimitable Orrin Hatch, replied that "It was worth it". I wonder if the Senator still feels that way now.

Osama bin Laden wants a long war with the West and in this wish he gets ample support from this Administration. This is a war of attrition that the United States cannot win. It is a war that will only lead to continued growth of extremism in both the East and the West. The logic of this long war is easily exploited by bin Laden on one side and by the ideologues on this side. The "us" and "them" rhetoric that it encourages is simplistic yet powerful in its ability to bring about the triumph of hate. Now is the time for men and women of reason to stand up and speak out against this slide into madness. We are caught in a twisted version of Hegel’s Master/Slave dialectic and we must break out if we are to triumph over it.

It seems to me that there is an alternative to this "us" and "them" logic and the dream that if we bomb Iraq, Iran and Syria somehow reason and Democracy will flower in place of extremism. Our current path, far from fostering Democracy and peace with the United States, is creating anger and resentment in the Middle East and the rest of the Muslim world. We are planting the seeds of future extremism by our actions today. We have neither the bombs nor the will enough to kill the new extremists faster than they are being created. So, I propose a different approach. I propose an approach that recognizes that the vast majority of the grievances in the Muslim world is not against the West but against the corrupt Governments that rule there. The United States is a target because of the support it provides these Governments and not because "they hate us for our freedom". Save the extremists and corrupt Governments that unwittingly fuel each other, all peoples of the world want freedom and security, so the notion that somehow the United States is hated because we are "free" is utter nonsense.

We can shorten bin Laden’s "Long War" and defeat him and his ideology by engaging in the new "war on terror" which should have the following components in equal measure:

• We should end active support of regimes in the Muslim world that oppress their peoples, deny them fundamental freedoms, and officially sanction extremist teachings. Examples of such regimes include, first and foremost, Saudi Arabia (the head of the snake, if you will), Egypt and Pakistan. We give billions of dollars each year to these Governments to prop them up. In return, these Governments engage in the systematic abuse of their citizenry. Like any addict, they thrive on economic and military aid from the United States. Their elite line their pocketbooks on the backs of their people. Is anyone surprised why their peoples are attracted to violent ideologies that target these Governments and what they see as their far away master? It is time for the United States to cut these addicts off and demand better treatment of the masses. If anyone thinks that my suggestion is naive, I assure you that the withholding of a few billion dollars of aid to Egypt will have the effect of focusing the mind of Hosni Mubarak in a hurry. The benefit of shifting policy is tremendous. It has the effect of liberalizing these countries and the more important effect of cutting the legs of the oppression that breeds hate toward the United States.
• We should support massive educational and economic development projects in Muslim countries. We should really drain the swamp instead of paying lip service to draining the swamp. There is no extremist ideology that can survive if the masses do not suffer from ignorance. Alleviating poverty and illiteracy are the two most important factors in combating extremism and the terrorism that so often follows.
• We should take the fight to bin Laden and al Qaeda. No amount of education, economic assistance or other acts of compassion will rescue the few who will continue to stoke hatred wherever and whenever they can. We should deal with these individuals with impunity. We will be vastly aided in our effort to hunt down and destroy the remnants of al Qaeda by our other efforts at improving the lot of the masses. Bin Laden and al Qaeda will find themselves increasingly isolated and without support as our efforts to drain the swamp start to take effect.
• Lastly the people of the Muslim world must join the struggle. They must join not in an "us" versus "them" sense. They must respond to actions by the United States to try to open up their Governments by not joining the ranks of the extremists but by putting internal pressure on their Governments. They must choose not between Islam and the West, but between Extremism and common sense.

The policy I have outlined above is obvious and has been suggested many times before - there is nothing new here. We do not need radical new ideas though, we simply need ideas that make sense. But I doubt that the current Administration in the United States has the will or the desire to change course to this new policy. They believe in bombs and not books. This is the "stay the course" Administration so any course correction is unlikely to occur. They have already set their course on the attack on Iran and I doubt anything as important as the dismantling of al Qaeda and Islamist Extremism will deter them from their chosen course. In any case, the efforts I outlined above require that the U.S. Administration have credibility with the Islamic world. This Administration has none. The change in policy may come when a new Administration comes to power in a thousand days. But as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. points out in his appeal today in The Washington Post, it promises to be a long Thousand Days.

Daniel Pipes gave an interview yesterday to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review entitled "Pipes calls war a success". In it Pipes calls Iraq a success:

Q: How will we know when the occupation or the invasion of Iraq was a success or a failure?

A: Oh, it was a success. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. Beyond that is icing.

According to Pipes, the real lesson in Iraq is not the failure of American policy, but the ingratitude of the Iraqi people:

Q: What is the biggest lesson you have learned from the Iraq war?

A: The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them — to release them from the bondage of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. They have rapidly interpreted it as something they did and that we were incidental to it. They’ve more or less written us out of the picture.

I am really sorry the Iraqi people have hurt Mr. Pipes’s feelings. Clearly, the Iraqis failed to throw the requisite amount of roses at our feet for the favor we did them.

Mr. Pipes thinks that we should lower our expectations in Iraq. According to Mr. Pipes, we should only concern ourselves with destroying societies not rebuilding them. We’ve got smart bombs we should use them. The blue collar work of rebuilding a society that we bomb to oblivion should be left to the lowly Europeans or some other bleeding heart types:

Q: Does that mean a significant change in what we are doing now, in terms of policy. Should we announce withdrawals?

A: The number of troops is not my issue. It’s the placement and role of the troops. For three years now I have been protesting the use of American troops to mediate between tribes, help rebuild electricity grids, oversee school construction, which seems to me to be a wrong use of our forces, of our money. The Iraqis should be in charge of that. We should keep the troops there, in the desert, looking after the international boundaries, making sure there are no atrocities, making sure oil and gas goes out, otherwise leaving Iraq to the Iraqis.

…

Q: Is there anything major that the Bush administration should do now to make things go smoother?

A: We did something good in getting rid of the Taliban and getting rid of Saddam Hussein. That is really the extent of our role, to get rid of the hideous totalitarian regimes.

In any event, the theory is good. It’s the implementation that has gone wrong. Mr. Pipes’s theory has withstood the test of reality:

Q: Do you generally agree with President Bush’s Middle East policy — its goals and its methods?

A: I agree with the goals much more than the methods. I just gave an example of Iraq, where I believe the goal of getting rid of Saddam Hussein and trying to have a free and prosperous Iraq are worthy goals. I criticize the implementation. The same goes with democracy. I think democracy is a great goal for the region. I criticize the implementation; I think it’s too fast, too American, too get-it-done yesterday.

Lest you start thinking that Mr. Pipes is unhappy that the implementation of his theory might have led to unintended consequences, think again. He, like Charles Krauthammer, loves a good civil war. Mr. Pipes enumerates all the good things a bloody civil war can do:

Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition’s responsibility nor its burden. The damage done by Saddam will take many years to repair. Americans, Britons, and others cannot be tasked with resolving Sunni-Shiite differences, an abiding Iraqi problem that only Iraqis themselves can address.

The eruption of civil war in Iraq would have many implications for the West. It would likely:

• Invite Syrian and Iranian participation, hastening the possibility of an American confrontation with those two states, with which tensions are already high.

• Terminate the dream of Iraq serving as a model for other Middle Eastern countries, thus delaying the push toward elections. This will have the effect of keeping Islamists from being legitimated by the popular vote, as Hamas was just a month ago.

• Reduce coalition casualties in Iraq. As noted by the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Rather than killing American soldiers, the insurgents and foreign fighters are more focused on creating civil strife that could destabilize Iraq’s political process and possibly lead to outright ethnic and religious war."

• Reduce Western casualties outside Iraq. A professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Vali Nasr, notes: "Just when it looked as if Muslims across the region were putting aside their differences to unite in protest against the Danish cartoons, the attack showed that Islamic sectarianism remains the greatest challenge to peace." Put differently, when Sunni terrorists target Shiites and vice-versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt.

Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one.

It all makes sense to me now. We misunderstood Mr. Pipes when he said Iraq was going to be a cakewalk. When he said "cakewalk", he meant that defeating Saddam would be a cakewalk. The resulting chaos was not part of his thinking. In fact, the resulting chaos is not even our problem. It is all making sense to me now.

Before you dismiss Mr. Pipes as some right wing chicken hawk on the lunatic fringe, you might want to consider that he does have the ear of the President of the United States. The notion that America should rampage through the world without a care for the devastation this rampage may cause the societies which face our wrath is not a fringe notion - it has significant support within the Administration. In fact, it is the primary driving force behind Mr. Bush’s stay the course policy in Iraq. If you genuinely do not care about the consequences of your actions, it is much easier to label your misadventures as successes. This, I think, in large part explains the strange and often disconnected versions of reality that come from the President and the Vice President. After all, according to Mr. Pipes:

We are engaged in a war, a profound war and long-term war, in which Afghanistan and Iraq are sideshows. The real issue is the war that radical Islam, a global phenomenon, has declared on us and that has already been underway for many years, and we’re still at the beginning of it. That’s the really major issue.

Now, if only the Iraqis understood their rightful role in this war of civilizations; if only they understood that they are cannon fodder in the cause of the greater good; if only they understood that Mr. Pipes, from his perch in front of a television screen, thinks the slaughter of innocents is good theater; then and only then, would they be more grateful to the United States for this great favor we have done them. Instead, they continue this nonsense of caring more for their own lives than the greater glory of Daniel Pipes’s small but influential little mind.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had initially decided not to get too deeply involved in Charles Krauthammer’s tantrum (it is probably best to stay out of the way when you see a man foaming at the mouth). But, I have since changed my mind for two reasons:

• Francis Fukuyama was online today at The Washington Post website answering questions about his book and the Krauthammer column
• Krauthammer’s column has generated substantial debate in the blogosphere

So, I thought I would address the substance of Krauthammer’s charge in his juvenile column more directly. Krauthammer’s column, it seems to me, is basically arguing the following:

1. Francis Fukuyama lied in the Preface of his latest book about a speech Krauthammer made (nana-nana-boo-boo!)
2. Francis Fukuyama in "America At The Crossroads", by making unconvincing arguments,  proves Krauthammer correct that there was no alternative but to attack Iraq (nana-nana-boo-boo!)
3. Francis Fukuyama is a sheep who changed his mind on Iraq after public opinion turned against the war. And everyone knows no self-respecting neo-con can doubt the rightness of one’s cause even against overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (nana-nana-boo-boo!)

There, I think I have captured the essence of Mr. Krauthammer’s bile. Sheesh, these guys don’t like it when they think they are misrepresented. All that venom, and its not even about the book, its about the Preface to the book. Now, that is petty.

I will address each point in turn and, to confuse the reader, I will address them in reverse order. But first, it is well worth pointing out that long before Prof. Fukuyama published his book, he wrote an essay in June 2004 entitled "The Neo-Conservative Moment" for the National Interest critiquing Krauthammer’s speech. In this essay, Fukuyama offers a convincing and compelling critique of Krauthammer’s vision of American dominance in a unipolar world. It is a long essay and I will not attempt to summarize it here. Please read the essay as you may find it remarkably prescient and well informed about our entanglement in Iraq.

In one part of the essay, Fukuyama knocks down one of Krauthammer’s (and Mr. Bush’s) favorite talking points: "Where is it written that Arabs are incapable of democracy?". The implication is that we have a lack of respect for the Arabs when we say this. Fukuyama responds sharply:

It is, of course, nowhere written that Arabs are incapable of democracy, and it is certainly foolish for cynical Europeans to assert with great confidence that democracy is impossible in the Middle East. We have, indeed, been fooled before, not just in Japan but in Eastern Europe prior to the collapse of communism.

But possibility is not likelihood, and good policy is not made by staking everything on a throw of the dice. Culture is not destiny, but culture plays an important role in making possible certain kinds of institutions–something that is usually taken to be a conservative insight. Though I, more than most people, am associated with the idea that history’s arrow points to democracy, I have never believed that democracies can be created anywhere and everywhere through sheer political will. Prior to the Iraq War, there were many reasons for thinking that building a democratic Iraq was a task of a complexity that would be nearly unmanageable. Some reasons had to do with the nature of Iraqi society: the fact that it would be decompressing rapidly from totalitarianism, its ethnic divisions, the role of politicized religion, the society’s propensity for violence, its tribal structure and the dominance of extended kin and patronage networks, and its susceptibility to influence from other parts of the Middle East that were passionately anti-American.

 There, in two short paragraphs, is a concise and coherent reason for not invading Iraq. But, Fukuyama is not breaking new ground here. This is an obvious line of reasoning that the Administration should have seriously contemplated before embarking on our disastrous misadventure in Iraq. Instead, they were drinking Krauthammer’s blood red Kool-Aid.

 Now, to get back to those charges in Krauthammer’s column.

As to the third charge, Fukuyama was against the Iraq invasion publicly from the summer of 2002. Krauthammer is simply misinformed.

As to the second charge, we don’t even have to look at Fukuyama’s book. Fukuyama’s essay outlines many reasons to not invade Iraq (one I mentioned above), not the least of which is that Iraq was not an existential threat to the United States and it therefore did not justify a pre-emptive strike. There were many options on the table for the United States. The argument made after one bad option was exercised to suggest that there were no other plausible alternatives is nonsensical. It is more appropriate to say that Krauthammer saw no other alternative in his own mind because his analysis was clouded by his belief in the certainty of the Iraq mission’s legitimacy. Krauthammer fooled himself, and still fools himself, into believing that his course of action was the only course of action. This is not really about policy, but more about his psyche and best left to the likes of Wittgenstein.

As to the first and obviously the most irksome charge, Fukuyama did not contend that Krauthammer’s speech was about Iraq. Fukuyama’s point was that Krauthammer, in 2004, did not recognize that the failures in Iraq had undermined Krauthammer’s "democratic globalism". Here are the relevant paragraphs from Fukuyama’s critique of the speech:

The 2004 speech is strangely disconnected from reality. Reading Krauthammer, one gets the impression that the Iraq War–the archetypical application of American unipolarity–had been an unqualified success, with all of the assumptions and expectations on which the war had been based fully vindicated. There is not the slightest nod towards the new empirical facts that have emerged in the last year or so: the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the virulent and steadily mounting anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East, the growing insurgency in Iraq, the fact that no strong democratic leadership had emerged there, the enormous financial and growing human cost of the war, the failure to leverage the war to make progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front, and the fact that America’s fellow democratic allies had by and large failed to fall in line and legitimate American actions ex post.

The failure to step up to these facts is dangerous precisely to the neo-neoconservative position that Krauthammer has been seeking to define and justify. As the war in Iraq turns from triumphant liberation to grinding insurgency, other voices–either traditional realists like Brent Scowcroft, nationalist-isolationists like Patrick Buchanan, or liberal internationalists like John Kerry–will step forward as authoritative voices and will have far more influence in defining American post-Iraq War foreign policy. The poorly executed nation-building strategy in Iraq will poison the well for future such exercises, undercutting domestic political support for a generous and visionary internationalism, just as Vietnam did. [Emphasis added by me]

 Fukuyama is quite clear here that Krauthammer does not mention Iraq in his discussion of "democratic globalism" nor does Krauthammer realize that his thesis is not supported by the facts on the ground (does that sound familiar?).

So, it appears to me that Krauthammer has gotten bent out of shape about nothing. He is focusing on the minutia of a Preface of a book to somehow gain the upper hand on an already lost argument. It is truly frightening that the last holdouts of a debunked application of a flawed theory believe so much in the rightness of their cause, that they go to great lengths to deny the reality all around them. Again, it may be time to trot out Wittgenstein.

In the battle of Fukuyama versus Krauthammer, it is safe to say that Krauthammer was knocked out at the opening bell. Compared to Fukuyama’s reasoning, Krauthammer’s thesis sounds downright childish and naive. That is not to say, of course, that Fukuyama is correct in his arguments. But, at least, he is making well thought out arguments that are open for debate amongst reasonable people. And, most importantly, his vision is informed by some connection to reality. As for Krauthammer, it is time to cut back on the Kool-Aid.

Fresh from his "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Civil War" column, Charles Krauthammer points his wrath at Francis Fukuyama in his latest column. Krauthammer is mad as hell and he isn’t going to take it anymore. Apparently, Fukuyama used an anecdote that prominently featured Mr. Krauthammer, but he changed the actual events to protect the guilty. Or something along those lines. It is all very confusing, you see, and I really don’t feel comfortable commenting on the he said-he said. Seems like a private matter between two adults to me.

I am sure Krauthammer, when he calms down, will rethink this column and rewrite it about something entirely different. Until then, I will amuse myself by rereading this very mean-spirited column. I’m guessing that the news from Iraq has got Krauthammer seeing red. He is fighting the enemy (Fukuyama) here so that he doesn’t have to fight the enemy there.

There is one interesting nugget in an otherwise personal letter from Krauthammer to Fukuyama. Defending himself, Krauthammer points out that he believed the Iraq war was necessary but perhaps not winnable. Lest I get accused of misrepresenting him, here are his exact words from the column:

My argument then, as now, was the necessity of this undertaking, never its ensured success. And it was necessary because, as I said, there is not a single, remotely plausible, alternative strategy for attacking the root causes of Sept. 11: "The cauldron of political oppression, religious intolerance, and social ruin in the Arab-Islamic world — oppression transmuted and deflected by regimes with no legitimacy into virulent, murderous anti-Americanism."

Krauthammer takes a leap of faith even Kierkegaard would be proud of here. I am not sure attacking the most secular country in the Arab world was the best way to fight the root causes of the Islamic radicalism that led to the attacks of September 11. In fact, to borrow his phrase, I don’t think that even a remotely plausible argument can be made for the attack on Iraq and its connection to September 11. That is why, the WMD argument was trotted out, and that is why the much-touted phantom link between Saddam Hussein and September 11 was dangled in front of us.

This column from Charles Krauthammer, if it has any larger meaning, may be a shot across the bow of all wavering neo-cons and chicken hawks. Abandon ship at your own peril. Your former shipmates will be pointing the ship’s cannons at you before your feet even hit the water below.