Victor Davis Hanson on “The Crazy Middle East”;
All that has come and gone, and we are left in the end with the verdict of the battlefield. The war will be won or lost, like it or not, fairly or unjustly, in the next six months in Baghdad. Either Gen. Petraeus quells the violence to a level that even the media cannot exaggerate, or the enterprise fails, and we withdraw. For all the acrimony and hysteria at home, that in the end is what we face—the verdict of all wars that ultimately are decided by the soldiers, and then either supported or opposed by the majority at home with no views or ideology other than its desire to conform to the narrative from the front: support our winners, oppose our losers. In the end, that is what this entire hysterical four years are about.
Win Iraq in the sense of a government stabilizing analogous to Kurdistan or Turkey, and even at this late hour, pundits and politicians will scramble around to dig up their 2002-3 quotes supporting the war, while Hollywood goes quiet and turns to more sermons on Darfur.
At his clear thinking, plain spoken best.
belisarius – ideology doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It emerges and operates within an economic and political infrastructure.
Your focus on ideology alone is a superficial view.
You don’t understand the infrastructure of tribalism – an hereditary authoritative structure that is perfect for a small to medium population in a no-growth, no-change peasant agriculture, but cannot deal with a multi-million population in an industrial economy. You totally ignore the infrastructure and focus only on the superstructure, the ideology. Again, ideology doesn’t exist ‘by itself’.
I wonder what you mean by ‘ideology’; to me, it simply means the ideas of X. I suspect it means something quite different to you (jihad is all about ideology; ideology the lynchpin of extremism)…But every society has an ideology, ie, a set of ideas about itself.
If you are defining ideology only as irrational extremism, then, you must ask why it exists. Again, ideas don’t operate in a vacuum.
No, the problem leading to fascism in Germany was based around the redefinition of the borders of nations in Europe, before the Wiemar Republic, which meant a mixture of minorities in Germany, and Germany didn’t know how to deal with them – and, Germany lacked that robust flexible civic middle class. After WWI, with the birth of the Wiemar Republic, the economy fell apart, with rampant inflation, enormous unemployment, essentially an economic collapse.
This led to fascism, an ideology based on the notion of a utopian past, that can be, if ‘we behave ourselves’, resurrected in the future. Fascism is utopianism; so is communism. The former defines a past as perfect; the latter defines a future as perfect. Both insist that there are tactics and strategies of almost mechanically, achieving that utopia.
I am not saying that Islamic fascism is ‘about oil’!!!! I am saying that it emerges (for the zillionth time) within a dysfunctional societal infrastructure. When the population size and the economy are ‘out of sync’ with the political system. The tribal sociopolitical system sets up a hereditary two-class system – and that rejects the empowerment of the majority – and in an industrial society, you must have the majority empowered as a middle class. Sigh….
So, the fact that Egypt and Pakistan don’t have oil is not relevant; their sociopolitical structures are TRIBAL. My mention of oil is that it enabled some of the ME nations to maintain a tribal political structure by funding their military. Pakistan and Egypt use other sources of funding their repressive regimes.
The externalization of Islamic fascism is due to the immigration from the ME of millions of Muslims, who were not made part of a middle class in their own countries. This rejection of them as civic members in their own countries, moves them into a utopian idealism – fascism.
And, the appearance of this violence in the West, is due to multiculturalism in Europe, which has done the same thing – set them up as ‘mini-tribes’, as isolated peoples, not part of the empowered middle class of their new nation. So, their empowerment and their loyalty is to the utopianism of Islamic fascism – which gives them power, where both their former country and their new country rejects them as middle class members. With this isolationism of multiculturalism, they move into a membership in a non-nation, the Islamic fascism.
In reply, yet again, to me no dhimmi, No, the Oslo offer was not for a state. It was for municipal government over a few towns. The governance of state-attributes, ie, resources, borders, airspace, roads, communications etc – was to be left in the hands of Israel. A comparison would be like stating that because Montreal has municipal self-governance, then that means that Quebec is a nation.
And Israel has never acknowledged a Palestinian state.
Oh, speaking of examples of tribes being propped up that would otherwise fail.
How about our own First Nations? We spend $10 billion a year on propping up that concept so that those folks don’t have to assimilate and become part of middle class Canadians. As Dr Phil says “and how’s that working for ye?”
Ah yes, Barak’s fault of course! Dumb me!
But seriously, read somewhere recently that Peres rescued Arafat! The PLO was apparently nearly bankrupt after its disastrous siding with Saddam and his Kuwait venture — which pissed off almost everyone. So Peres threw him a lifeline with the Oslo fantasy that and got him entrenched in Gaza! Lefties!
But of course, Arafat was only seeking, per ET, compensation. The jihad would have been called off with compensation; it was a financial deal the cat was looking for. Sheish!
I think the US should END all funding to ME regimes. I’d love to see the Muslim Brothers take down a big country like Egypt (that, after all was Zawahiri and co.’s initial goal). Give the vicious anti-semites anti-yanks a little taste of sharia! Then a reverse revolution. Give all those nutbars who think sharia would be peachy keen a living laboratory to frighten them into sense and sensibility. Give themselves a good lesson like the Russian peasants who thought they were going to get free land from the Bolshies. Sorry suckers!
The US is just getting in the way I feel now. END all financial aid, shut down all their bases (except maybe N Korea’s), let Europe grow up, and let the ME nutters duke it out — or nuke it out!
Sorry for the cynicism, but I’m quite fed up with it all.
ET,
I won’t repeat my problems with your principle arguments since I think we’ve already been around the buoy on them a few times! I like your definition of fascism, and agree it applies well to radical Islam (Islamic Fascism) in its search for a utopian past.
There is one exception though. You state that Muslim residents in the west have set themselves up as “mini-tribes” and are isolated. They turn to Islamism as a means to achieve acceptance.
I’ve heard this line of reasoning before, and it is completely fallacious. It is true that in France Muslim minorities have been largely ghettoized, however it is patently untrue in the Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. Each of these countries has a very large Muslim minority that generally functions peacefully and has integrated well. Despite this, a generation of jihadists has arisen, often to the distress of their wealthy middle-class parents and many of their Muslim friends.
Why? There are a variety of reasons, but the common denominator is an exposure to the preachings of radical Islam. In particular, its cry for the need to fight against perceived attacks on Muslims worldwide. Because Islam stresses the primacy of the Islamic community over national allegiance, many of these young people are convinced they must join jihad. Their own country and fellow citizens become a target.
While demolishing ET’s obviously flawed tribalism = Islamofascism theory Belisarius makes the following statement.
“You state that Muslim residents in the west have set themselves up as “mini-tribes” and are isolated. They turn to Islamism as a means to achieve acceptance.
I’ve heard this line of reasoning before, and it is completely fallacious. It is true that in France Muslim minorities have been largely ghettoized, however it is patently untrue in the Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. Each of these countries has a very large Muslim minority that generally functions peacefully and has integrated well. Despite this, a generation of jihadists has arisen, often to the distress of their wealthy middle-class parents and many of their Muslim friends.”
As is abundatly clear ET’s theory (which he appears to have discovered only last weekend after staunchly supporting a war which, if his theory is valid, is hopeless) doesn’t explain why those who are disenfranchised by tribalism, as he understands it, would choose not rebellion, but Islamofascism, which must rank as the world’s most rigidly hierarchical struture.
“Me Osama. You suicide bomber”. (Bit of a gap there between the upper and lower class).
So you have the well to do products of middle class upbringings and allegedly disenfranchised members of the tribe (no proof offered) choosing Islamofascism. The common denominator in each case is their religious extremism, not tribalism.
Oh, and another inconvenient fact which runs counter to ET’s void of facts theory. Twenty five of the thirty one Sunnis tribes in Anbar Province are fighting against al Qaeda. I can only gather they haven’t heard of ET’s theory.
If Sunni tribes are eschewing Islamofascim, exactly which Iraqis are embracing it?
terry – I’ve been analyzing Islamic fascism as due to tribalism since Day 1. Practically every post I’ve made on Islamism, for several years now, has outlined this analysis. Could you explain why you think it’s new? You seem to deliberately ignore that I’ve been discussing tribalism and fascism on this blog for years.
And I’ve repeatedly explained why Islamic fascism emerges in tribal dictatorships, rather than rebellion. It is because they are dictatorships, with dissent viciously and violently repressed by those military dictators. In such a case, change can only come from the outside – eg, the US going in to take out the dictatorship.
And, in such a case, the population will turn to a utopian tactic, which acknowledges a number of things, very typical in all utopian agendas.
First that they, themselves, cannot change the present reality ruled by the tribe in power, but that they can change their future. Note that this is a characteristic of Islam, a religion that emerged as a reaction to the expansion of settled and collaborative agriculture (Islams were migratory pastoralists not settled).
They define the ‘truth’ of their mission by a direct link. In fascism, the link is to the past, where The Good Life is defined as having actually existed. In communism, the link is to the future. Then, they define the action necessary to reach this past or future, is violence, a revolution.
This violence could not be expressed within the ME dictatorships, so, it moved outside. And SA, a key tribal dictatorship and basic source of Islamic fascism, has enabled this externalization in great measure, by separating church from state!!!…and separating their tribal rule over SA from a fascist ideology – which they export.
Please explain your conclusion that it is ‘obviously flawed’. Your Osama-suicide bomber example is childish; it has nothing to do with upper and lower class.
As for multiculturalism setting up isolate populations defined by ‘origin’ – I’ve said that repeatedly, and maintain my point. In Canada, the populations aren’t large enough and the economic dead ends strong enough to reach the threshold. Both these variables have been reached in Europe and the UK.
No, the war is not hopeless and you are totally ignoring what I’m saying. I’ve said, repeatedly, that the war was right; that the US was right to go in. To take out the infrastructure of tribalism, which is the root cause of Islamic fascism. Enabling democracy means the dev’t of a middle class. You completely ignore societal infrastructure. Why is that?
A lower class has no social or economic power. That’s hardly a new analysis. If a particular tribe is defined as without social or economic power, they are ‘lower class’ in a two-class structure. You don’t seem to understand basic class infrastructure; and you don’t understand tribalism.
Good, some of the Sunni are fighting Al Qaeda; that means that they are becoming empowered within the Iraqi gov’t. My concern has been, as outlined in several articles in the MSM, that the Iraqi govt, in this phase 2, might be substituting one tribe for another tribe – and maintaining tribalism rather than moving into a civic mode.
Again, you simply don’t understand tribalism and class infrastructure. I’ve explained – you don’t get it; and there’s little I can do about it.
You keep stating that the war is ‘just ideology’, without explaining why that ideology has emerged, what feeds it, what keeps it going. Ideas don’t exist without an infrastructure – an economic and political infrastructure.
“As with many other British-born Islamic terrorists, Khyam’s conversion from a studious though popular schoolboy to a murderer in the making began at his local mosque, in Langley Green. He was an easy prey for the preachers of hate after his parents divorced when he was 15, the absence of a father figure at home making him particularly vulnerable.
“It took three months to track down the teenager, but he was eventually located in a mosque in Kashmir.
He denied he had been to the (al-Qaeda training camps) … but it was a lie.
In England, Khyam had come under the spell of the fanatical cleric Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, then leader of the now outlawed Islamic movement al-Muhajiroun.
“I was very concerned that the government didn’t do anything … We parents were screaming for something to be done about him .. Sajjad Ahmad, Khyam’s uncle, also tried to intervene. “We went to police, to MPs. We could see this disaster of brainwashed youth unfolding in slow motion.”
The whole thing is here in today’s:
The making of a terrorist
Sunday Telegraph UK
I think it’s necessary to look at both the role of the common thread of Islam, and to look at what are the local differences in recruiting disenfranchised young males in each of:
The Middle East – 40% unemployment of male youths and a sociopolitical structure that is based too heavily on Islam , born out of tribalism , that doesn’t separate the Mosque from state and doesn’t treat women as equal.
France – where reverse-colonization of immigrants has come from North African Moslem countries and they have been ghettoized. Europe does not have a history of economic growth based on assimilating immigrants. The French think you have to be born French to be French
North America – our history of assimilating millions of immigrants has developed with some isolation from time to time, but most assimilated. That should not be taken for granted any longer because the concept of multiculturalism and political correctness has moved us from Two Solitudes to potentially many solitudes. Particularly now that our population is large enough for new solicitudes to have enough critical mass to survive as an isolated culture — unless we do what Wajid Khan is suggesting and that is:
insist on non-hyphenated Canadians.
We need to make it clear what we want new immigrants to assimilate to. We produced a home-grown in Ottawa in connection with the Telegram story above. We arrested 18 Islamic youths in Mississauga who were allegedly building a bomb. We need to figure out what’s behind this home-grown thing.
The UK – Barclays Bank has agreed to remove the piggy bank give aways from their counter because they offend. It has become Londonstan because political correctness has not made it clear what immigrants should assimilate to.
The Brits and France have a culture historically run by elitists from Eton or L’Ecole de haut Administration de blah blah. Thatcher broke that rule but the UK is back sliding into its caste system , not enough reliance on the common sense of its middle class.
We have way underestimated the value of our middle class to solve societies problems. Listen to a soccermom not the CBC.
By the way, belisarius and terry gain – if ‘it’s all about ideology’ – then, heck, who needs a war to change a political infrastructure? Just send in hordes of ideologists of a different stripe!
Oh- it can’t be done? Hussein wouldn’t have permitted dissenting views? The Saudi, the Iranians? No?
Then, it isn’t just about ideology; it’s about the deep structure of the society – and that is what has to be changed. And this will take years. There’s no ‘end to the war’, as you envision, when you have killed off all Al Qaeda. That won’t happen. You have to change the infrastructure that breeds fascism.
But despite all that fine rhetoric about fascism, tribalism, democracy and civic structures, ET favours the Islamic fascist/neo Nazi Palestinians in their quest for the destruction of Israel and a single state comprising all contemporary Palestine, after 80% of Mandatory Palestine was made into a Arab emirate (Transjordan) where Jews who had lived there were driven out, and where Jews are not now permitted to live. Repeating: where Jews are not permitted to live.
Unwittingly, to be fair!
Excessively cerebral theoretical constructs to which reality must be bent, reality-challenged, zero street smarts.
Denies that the Arabs were offered a state by the Peel Commission in 1937, in 1947 and by Barak in 2000.
Rejected, rejected, rejected.
ET: My questions above. Why did Arafat leave the negotiating table after Barak’s breath-taking offer?
We’re talking about ideology as the cause of jihadism – not how to eliminate it. Certainly a war was necessary in Afghanistan, with its terror training camps and Al Qaeda bases. As for Iraq? Removing Hussein was a positive but it had nothing to do with jihadism.
What you’re saying just doesn’t make sense, ET. To paraphrase: you are saying that in order to defeat jihadism we must invade countries with tribal governments so that democracy and a middle class can be established. If they refuse the gift of democracy, we must withdraw so that they can fight it out until democracy is established. All of this is necessary because jihadism stems from tribalism and cannot emerge in democracies with a strong middle class. Is that it?
One of the main problems with what you are saying is that it is based entirely on theory, and not borne out by real-world events. Jihadism is not limited to the disenfranchised. If anything, quite the contrary. You will recall that most of the 9/11 terrorists came from well-to-do Egyptian and Saudi families that were very much part of the tribal establishment (as pointed out in the book you spoke of, “The Looming Tower”).
Other jihadists have come from well-off western families and converted to Islam. Disenfranchised, no. Disenchanted, probably.
Spot on Belisaurius.
See my earlier comment about theory untainted by reality.
AND, ET (unwittingly to be fair) favours the destruction of the only democracy in the ME — the State of Israel. Repeating: unwittingly.
Democracy CANNOT be intalled by miliary means UNLESS you wage total war, totally subjugate and colonize the tribalists, and for a few decades at the least. But that is no longer the taste.
Afterthought: Iraq went to elections too soon. We all got excited by the “purple finger” revolution. Delusional, we were. It was meaningless: Sistani simply told them to go and vote.
What we will get now will be another islamofascist theorcacy in Iraq. Mark my words.
I’ll make one other point too about ultimately defeating the ideology. Jihadists actually consider the west (what they call they “far enemy”) secondary to their own governments and tribal leaders (the “near enemy”) who they view as impeding their radical notions of Islam and the need for a united Caliphate. As we’ve seen in Iraq, removing the existing power without providing necessary security can create a vacuum that these radicals move in to.
But there is also a very powerful movement of moderation and reform in Islam, which opposes the Jihadists.
In my opinion, it is this war of ideas which must be won. Moderates must be supported and the spread of radical ideas opposed at every turn. Certainly democracy helps with this, but not if the jihadists are able to convince people it is an alien western concept and un-Islamic. Invading Muslim countries doesn’t help either, as it plays into the hands of radicals who can call it an “attack on Islam”.
A lot of this comes back to Saudi Arabia. The power of the Saud family is very much based on an alliance with the powerful and radical Wahhabi clerics. They have been using their oil money to spread its poisonous ideas around the world.
I think that it is possible to defeat Al Qaeda militarily in Iraq, and establish conditions for security there. Ultimately though, it is the war of ideas which must be won to stop this scourge worldwide.
Correct in all respects, I feel!
Re: Wahhabi Islam, I just read Dore Gold’s essential read: Hatred’s Kingdom.
As to the war of ideas, this is exactly Wallid Phares’ thesis: just read two of his books, Future Jihad, and The War of Ideas. And he correctly charges that western academics have failed us in their apologetics for Islam.
1. Indeed, that was always the Muslim Brothers’ primnary objective: the destruction of all 22 Arab regimes and replacement with sharia.
2. Supporting countries like Egypt essentially frustrates this and contrary to ET’s thesis, actually pushes jihad outward!
3. The bullshitter Tony Blair while waxing poetic about the great struggle against jihad, allowed the UK to become the capital of western jihadism along these quid pro quo lines: we’ll allow you to promulgate your hate ideology as long as you restrict your mass-murder outside the UK. Surprise!!!
4. By giving islamofascists all the attention, they permitted moderate (?) muslims to be cowed and silecned. On Blair’s ridiculous panel he included the notorious, albeit sweet-talking, Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder Al Banna. Their very first recommendation was the banning of Holocaust memorial day on the premise that it would offend Muslims, who I don’t think actually did all the murdering, tho’ they heartily approved of it, witness the hot sales of the Protocols and Mein Kamf.
And I cannot agree more with your point about the War on Islam. The illiterate impoverished masses have been whipped up into a frenzy of paranoia that the West is actually out to destroy Islam. The US ventures, tho honourable and noble in intention, feeds into this. Manna from heaven for the dictator-thugs who run the ME. A lifeline.
All well-intended even noble, but dumb and dumber! The neo-cons (who I foolishly supported) had the right ideas but were clueless about the complex dynamic of the region.
Final point: my biggest shock in Gold’s book was to learn that Saudi Arabia was supporting Hamas — the “moderate” Abbas (the guy in the nice western suit) even complained to the Saudis about it.
Dore Gold’s book sounds interesting, No Dhimmi. Hadn’t heard of it. I’ll have to have a read.
Dore Gold: And also The Fight for Jerusalem. Great insights into the Pali-Nazi’s propaganda denying Jewish history and by implication the legitimacy of the State of Israel.
I heard him interviewed at Atlas Shrugged and was so blown away by his erudition that I ordered his book on amazon.ca immediately after. Former Israeli ambassador to the UN but a very learned man. Has a PhD from Columbia I think (or Bostom U?). Not at all strident. Calm, balanced, scholarly.
BTW, me no Jew, me white gentile.