Verbosities

Leave the Muslim world alone | Salon.com

After we leave Iraq, as we inevitably will, we need to do three things to fight the "war on terror" effectively. First, we need to ratchet down our apocalyptic and moralistic rhetoric and recognize the jihadist enemy's true, relatively modest dimensions. This ain't no Soviet Union we're fighting here -- it's a bunch of guys in caves. Second, we need to use military force as a last resort. As Iraq has shown, occupation and war create more jihadis than they capture or kill. Instead, we need to use intelligence and police forces to break up jihadist terror networks. Finally, we need to address both the Arab/Muslim world's self-created pathologies and its legitimate grievances, both of which contribute to jihadism. War supporters make much of the pathologies, but have almost nothing to say about the grievances -- chief among them the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the greatest source of Arab/Muslim rage against America.

Wait, I thought they hated us because of Victoria's Secret catalogs and Three's Company reruns? Now I'm all confused.

Kamiya's premise in this article is that leaving Iraq allows the majority Iraqi Shiites to "deal with" the minority Sunni jihadists (i.e., our supposed real enemy), lets the "brutal logic of numbers" handle this conflict more efficiently. I'm not smart enough to say with confidence (and neither is anyone else reading this post) whether or not allowing this attrition - which isn't exactly "ethnic cleansing," but it's not exactly unlike it either - is a more or less sound strategy than what we're pursuing now, but I generally believe that the legitimate grievances of the Muslim world against America can be eased significantly through a combination of full withdrawal and diplomacy.

So long as we can get past the idea, that is, that "diplomacy" is some Neville Chamberlain non-starter that's tantamount to "appeasement," whatever that's supposed to mean. I believe it's a nearly indisputable fact that if the US were to withdraw all troops from Muslim lands and drop all support and aid to Israel, that the problem with jihadists would disappear overnight*. This isn't to say that this idea is sensible or that I'm advocating this as a solution, but it's a helpful thought exercise to understand what extremes would eliminate the problem, and what we might be able to do in a proactive fashion to go at least part of the way down that road.

*Well, and give due process to those in Guantanamo, and quit meddling in "regime change" through back channels, and knock it off with the inflammatory rhetoric against Middle Eastern nations through the press and at the UN. You know, just your garden variety laissez-faire North American approach to allowing Middle Eastern self-determination.

The release of portions of the latest NIE states that al-Qaeda remains a "persistent and evolving" terrorist threat, despite our administration's assertions just eight months ago that al-Qaeda "is on the run."

What could possibly explain how al-Qaeda has surged back to nearly full strength, despite our administration's militaristic efforts to fight someone... anyone... with a camel and a grudge? The longer we meddle in Middle Eastern affairs, and the more amplified our rhetoric (and inevitably, our actions) becomes against other nations in that region, the easier it's going to be to cultivate the next generation of jihadists.

Is there an easy answer here? Hell no. But diplomacy and an assessment of legitimate Islamic issues regarding America's foreign policy is clearly not the same thing as "capitulation," or whatever the neocons want to call it. More than ever, Americans are becoming aware that the actions of our nation are not gilded with pure righteousness, and more than ever we realize that having an administration who refuses to recognize the reality of our turbulent present now is going to leave the next generation and the one beyond with a serious problem that just might prove insoluble for America's future.

Is leaving them alone worth a shot? Is "sectarian civil war" in Iraq capable of bringing us closer to solving our problem with terrorism?

I'm not smart enough to answer those questions. Wish to god I were.

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