I've been having disturbing conversations with a number of my friends lately. Stuff that stays with me afterward, and really bothers me. It's one thing to hear idiotarian non-logic from the likes of Fisk et. al., quite another to hear it coming from people you've known and liked for many years.
What follows is sort of the aftermath of one of those conversations, which took a decided turn for the worse after admiration was expressed for Jimmy Carter's foreign policy advice (isn't that like getting accounting advice from Enron's Ken Lay? but I digress). Since I wrote it all up anyway, no harm in putting it here on the blog. . .
The electronic follow-up began when I emailed the "Was It Worth It?" Guardian piece by Polly Toynbee, asking from an Afghani perspective if deposing the Taliban by force had been worth the cost. Something must have registered, because I got this response:
"Don't know if you know much about Tom Friedman of the NY Times. A fine editorial columnist who I like..."It then linked to Friedman's latest article, "Defusing the Holy Bomb," an open letter to the world's Muslims that ends as follows:
"Friends, unless you have a war within your civilization, there is going to be a war between our civilizations. We're just one more 9/11 away from that. So let's dedicate this next year to fighting intolerance within so we can preserve our relations between."To which, I wrote:
This makes complete sense to me, and it goes without saying that if this happens Arab-Islamist "civilization" is going to lose. Big. Just how big will depend almost entirely on how hard they push a brutal hand against a vastly superior enemy.Alas, the precedents for honour/shame cultures are not promising. It takes just one side to create a war. . . and I see very little willingness within Islam at present to follow Friedman's advice. Worse, any openness I do see is usually under fire. See:
-- Moral Hazard
-- The American Muslim CouncilHussein, though not an Islamist, does participate strongly in the "Arabs as master race" ideology that infuses much of the Islamist worldview. He's also someone with a long history of disastrous miscalculation, in a critical region. The questions for me are threefold:
[1] Will destroying Saddam's regime before he embarks on another one of his famous miscalculations with weapons of mass destruction in hand remove a potential threat?
The American people have decided the answer is yes, and have remained very steady in that judgment. If he gets those weapons, ask yourself what could be done with them - and what we'd then have to do about it, under what conditions.
[2] Will destroying Saddam's regime and associating that destruction with his WMD programs suggest to other regimes in the Arab/Islamist world that these toys might be too dangerous to play with given the consequences?
That answer also comes through as a very clear yes. It won't stop the efforts entirely, but it will slow them down a lot. And time is exactly what we need if we're going to create a better future... because a WMD-based 9/11 scenario means everyone is out of time, most especially our enemies. Would waiting to have our hand forced that way be an act of morality, or a massively costly act of cowardice and willful ignorance?
[3] Will a visible defeat of a very prominent and dangerous regime cause others in the Muslim world to associate the Arab-Islamist cause with failure and humiliation (remember, honour/shame culture), begin to see it as a losing hand, and so oppose it?
Again, yes. Osama's line about people preferring the strong horse matters... he understands his culture well. The USSR, in the middle of its adventures in Afghanistan, was popular and highly respected in the Arab world. Why? Because they looked like they were the stronger party vs. the USA.
Of course, one can always escape the debate entirely by pretending there's no war going on. Problem is, it's pretend.
Despite 9/11, Bali, guys in Britain arrested before a chemical attack in the London Underground, a leader of a French mosque being arrested yesterday for involvement with Richard "show bomber" Reid, and a daily serving of Nazi-class hatred across the Arab media and from prominent mosques throughout the Arab world... All that, and it doesn't seem to sink in with some folks that hey, these people really mean us harm and aren't just a radical fringe.
Osama's recent letter didn't ask for charity, but the conversion of America to sharia law. Islamists in Britain publicly declare the same goal for the UK. And on it goes. Clue: It's a religious war. The stuff they say so consistently, all the time? They mean it. Just like that Austrian corporal who wrote his book a while back. Ever wonder how could get away with that, despite putting it all down on public record beforehand? Just look around you for your answer. (P.S. that book is currently a best seller in the Arab world, and also in Muslim areas of Britain)
Newsflash, Mr. Friedman: it IS a civilizational war. The question isn't whether it will start, but whether the folks who started the war will be defeated before they can escalate it. As he notes, the bloodshed will be much lower overall if that defeat happens within Arab-Islamist civilization. He's right. The alternative involves continuing a war with 3 other civilizations (Western, Russian, Hindu... not to mention an emerging war with Africa's many Christians).
That would be suicidal, of course. Surely our enemies would never do anything suicidal. Best not to think of that, and just hope it all works out. . .
Me, I think the only humanitarian option is to look that possibility right in the eye, formulate a plan, and deal with the problem. The problem is Islamo-fascists who believe that anyone not of their ilk deserves to either die or live as a slave. Once they're gone and the corrupt detrius that are today's Arab polities are also gone, we can be materially generous and know that our generosity might build real prosperity. We can also participate in a real dialogue that may actually get us somewhere.
Until then, every step backward, every equivocation, every act of shying away from necessary confrontation simply emboldens our enemies, and disheartens our few true friends within Arab-Islamic culture. A culture for whom the word "compromise" has overtones of surrender and shame.
That, to me, is a recipe for suicide… theirs, and many of ours too.
