C'est pas possible! Les terroristes Islamistes sont nos amis! Nous ne sommes pas des juives!
Better find some more crocodile food.
- Moishe Potemkin
So here's another columnist (surely not top-drawer, but fairly prominent in B-level papers like the Baltimore Sun) making the argument that the hornets' nest we've stirred up in Iraq shows that the Cowboy Doctrine does not, in fact, make us any safer.
I view that argument as analogous to recommending against cancer surgery because it takes people who are already ill, and cruelly makes them contend with incisions, drugs, and the like, making things even worse.
I don't know how long it will take before military action against Islamic societies infected with terrorism succeeds in giving them the freedom (the Bernard Lewis model) or the sociological tools (the Karen Armstrong model) to contend with modernity. Years for sure, and probably decades. The other alternative (enthusiastically supported by Chirac, Shroeder, and Zapatero) is appeasement, although I question the logistics of that approach. See Regimes, Vichy, for details.
Here's the deal, in short-ish sentences. Much of Arabia is a societal mess. We waited too long to address it, and as a result, we are now not safe, and actual safety will simply not materialize-other than in small, incremental movements-for the next X years. The question is, are we moving the world such that security is reasonable in five years, or ten, or twenty, or fifty?
Doing nothing would probably not have antagonized Zarqawi et al, and it would have probably preserved the illusion of safety until the Persians had created and dispersed enough nuclear materials to significantly (and unpleasantly) reshape the Western world. So we're doing something, and more importantly, we're rejecting the assumption that we have to always play the game the way it's been played, which suggests that if we need to do something else differently (say nudge Riyadh slightly harder, once we have a secure supply of economy-sustaining oil from our friends the Babylonians), we are likely to.
So I would have liked Badnarik to win, although he never ever would have in any event. And in addition to uncontrolled spending, Bush is proving to be remarkably inept when it comes to the important task of rallying otherwise unconvinced people to his arguments, which would enhance support from humane Islam. But Kerry seems to be insistent on adhering to the infinitely contorted position produced by his rather (let's say) fluid positions, and that carries the risk of continuing to ignore the symptoms. One might then feel better, but, as any oncolgist would tell you, it's unwise.
- Moishe Potemkin
If'n I was halfway computer-literate, I would track down the Thomas Friedman column in which he observes that notwithstanding the characterization of every target of a successful Israeli assassination maneuver as a "senior" Hamas "leader," the rate of terror recruitment had not slowed down.
Then I would post a link to this piece.
Then I would yet again mourn the fact that Andrew Sullivan's emotional response to Bush's calculated support of enshrining heterosexuality in the constitution has left him unable to evaluate the appropriate timeframe for reorienting an entire society that has gone off track.
- Moishe Potemkin
At the risk of sounding like a Bush-supporter two posts in a row, I wanted to spend a couple of minutes dissecting the nonsensical argument that contends that the war in Iraq is necessarily being conducted poorly, as evidenced by the fact that the insurgency continues.
This battle involves walking a fine line between restricting the ability of the "insurgents" to do their thing while limiting the restrictions on freedom applied to the general populace. Adding a sense of hurry to these already difficult constraints may cost more than the benefits it provides.
The beauty of the Western world, of course, is that it provides an opportunity for mankind's innate aggression to be expressed in a non-violent forum, through building better mousetraps and the like. Throughout most of history and currently most of geography, the violent model has held sway, suggesting that it represents a more obvious, although clearly less pleasant, outlet for this indispensable component of humanity. Developing a Muslim-influenced culture receptive to the benevolent permutation of aggressiveness known as the free market will take time, and short-changing this investment will in all likelihood fail.
- Moishe Potemkin
There's certainly a better pun somewhere, but I have real work to do.
Anyhow, frequent readers of Andrew Sullivan's blog (cited as a top-10 website by The Jewish Press, of all sources), have seen him evolve from a strong supporter of George Bush's go-it-alone-ism (In one memorable post that's not memorable enough for me to locate, he succintly described France as "not an ally." And that's before Claudia Rosett really got started.) to a consistently harsh critic of the Babylonian morass, based, as best as I can tell, on the sniffings of people whose opposition to downtreading the masses never quite made it over the fence into Do-Something Land.
I don't know Sullivan, of course, other than in the way modern technology fosters unidirectional relationships. I do know that he has been an unrelenting critic of the hypocrisy evinced by the UN and others in their benign acceptance of anti-semitism. In general, he seems like an honest and clear thinker. The consistency of his criticisms following the presidude's watery support for the FMA, however, resembles those of the best Bush-bashers this side of the New York Times.
I'm enough of a libertarian-wannabe to prefer the restriction of anti-homosexual activism to churches and the like where the state can't exercise its rather blunt tool kit (which, when you boil it down, consists only of force) in defense of a somewhat arbitrarily selected morality. (With apologies to Dennis Prager, most people adhere to the religious beliefs of their culture, rather than engaging in some sort of comprehensive theological analysis. The culture assigned to any particular infant is, to my mind, fairly arbitrary.)
However, at the current time, the presidential contest has been waylaid by presumably well-meaning souls who oppose the use of violence in the suppression of the Islamists that want nothing less than the horrific suppression of every child ever met by every person reading this blog. Unfortunately, it seems as though the sustained use of the American military (which I consider to be indispensible) will, to some extent, depend on the outcome of the election.
If I'm in Bush's snakeskin boots, and I think I need to win because my cause is right (reasonably assuming that ego-related issues play no more or less a role than on the other side), and one of the costs is getting my hands dirty in the swamp of high-school-level bigotry, then that's what I do.
Do I like it? No, but if I'm willing to allow an unknown number of Iraqi children to die in the interests of salvaging the future of their society (which is an inevitable component of supporting the war, like it or not), then I'm willing to (even dishonestly) adopt the rhetoric of the Jerry Fallwells of the world, even if it makes the Log Cabin folks unhappy. The end (no pun intended) justifies the means.
- Moishe Potemkin
...there will be no trolley-car accidents.
I suppose one analog to this statement is the position that in a world with an effective United Nations, there will be no human-rights violations (with the presumed exception of allowing Ben Affleck to continue appearing in feature films).
The point of this initial post (Hi, Mom!), aside from quenching the vast worldwide thirst for yet another underinformed know-it-all's haphazard attempt at marshalling political argument, is to point out one of the subtle costs of retaining the cluster-boof (expletive modified just in case Mom actually is reading) at Turtle Bay. Obviously, there is no comparable organization that could serve to defend the oppressed, and to the extent that the UN is used instead as an exercise in tyranny masquerading as democracy, the oppressed go undefended. Or bayoneted in gymnasia, depending on the individual whims of the asymmetrically aggrieved.
Ergo, in the post-9/11, post-Bali, post-Madrid, post-Beslan world, when the simplisme of the Cowboy Doctrine is maligned in ivory towers the world over, I respectfully submit that the dot of the discredited UN should be connected with the dot underlying the nascent perception (see Podhoretz, Norman, and not just for his fantastic hair) that force is the only current option in the war on terror.
- Moishe Potemkin