Bill Maher vs. Islam

A couple of weeks ago, Bill Maher closed his show with a monologue that was primarily a critique of those on the political left who don't join him in an unequivocal condemnation of Islam.

The concept that appears to be at the root of Maher's rant is cultural relativism, not in the sense of trying to interpret actions and behaviors in light of a person's culture, but in the sense that you should not view one culture as better or superior to another, and that there is no objective measure of right and wrong that can be applied between cultures. It's a belief that few hold in theory and that is unworkable in practice, but it is associated with parts of the political left. If in fact somebody is arguing that it's awful that Mel Gibson made a sexist statement, but that Saudi Arabia's treatment of women is acceptable because we should not judge their culture, it's reasonable for Maher to argue that they're objectively wrong and that Saudi Arabia's misogynistic systems are a far greater problem than something Mel Gibson says while drunk. He could also point out that in condemning Mel Gibson they're not giving fair weight to his cultural background, and by their own unworkable standard they should refrain from judging him.

Maher also makes a valid point when he suggests that celebrities can become the victims of what amounts to a feeding frenzy, with a poorly thought-out comment, an unfortunate resort to a childish insult, or even the expression of reprehensible beliefs, resulting in opprobrium and consequence that may be disproportionate to the offense. Maher no doubt takes that type of reaction personally, given how quickly he lost his job after he made an impolitic comment on the relative courage of the U.S. in bombing foreign nations to the 9/11 bombers. However, such is the price of celebrity -- if you want to make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars as a celebrity, at least if your target demographic is not the same as Duck Dynasty's, you had best learn to guard your tongue or be prepared to apologize when you make a racist, sexist or homophobic comment.

From that foundation, Maher goes wrong: He attributes a fringe belief to liberals in general. He denies the obvious fact that it is possible to simultaneously oppose wrongs that occur both at home and abroad. He ignores that it is reasonable for people to focus on domestic issues and issues that they've actually heard about as opposed to foreign issues or problems that occur at the periphery of, or outside of, their awareness. And, in relation to his targeting of Islam, he paints with far too broad a brush, conflating offensive minority practices that have their origins in tribal society and pre-Islamic culture with Islam.

Maher opened his monologue with a criticism (and joke) about the President:

President Obama keeps insisting that's ISIS is not Islamic. Well, maybe they don't practice the Muslim faith the same way he does. But if vast numbers of Muslims across the world believe, and they do, that humans deserve to die for merely holding a different idea or drawing a cartoon or writing a book or eloping with the wrong person, not only does the Muslim world have something in common with ISIS, it has too much in common with ISIS.

Maher is going for a laugh, and his is a comedy show, so even if it weren't Maher it would be too much to expect that the Obama Administration's position would be framed in a fair context. The Administration is going through great pains to avoid any suggestion that its attacks on ISIS are based upon its religious beliefs, and to disclaim the notion that it is waging a war on Islam or intends to defeat the Islamic faith as opposed to an extremist group that it believes distorts the faith for its own ends. The comment about Obama's practice of Islam is a decent laugh line, and Maher's intended audience understands that Maher doesn't buy into the conspiracy theories that suggest that the President is secretly Muslim, but it is important to note in a non-comedic context that the Obama Administration's positions on ISIS have a basis in global politics that has nothing to do with being politically correct.

Maher's comparison of the Muslim world at large to ISIS is an example of the spotlight fallacy crossed with the hasty generalization. The principal actions of ISIS, along with the groups history of violence against Muslims, is ignored in favor of spotlighting some positions associated more generally with radical Islam, in order to conflate the general practice of Islam with the beliefs and actions of an organization that was once deemed too extreme for al Qaeda. That type of generalization is consistent with Maher's historic commentary on Islam, and his history of (at best) indifference to the rights of even secular Arab groups in relation to non-Arab actors.

There are vast numbers of Muslims in the world, many of whom live in despotic nations with extremist religious leadership, so it's no surprise that Maher can recite that there are "vast numbers" of Muslims who hold views that are offensive to a progressive western democracy. Maher is critical of religion across-the-board, and would no doubt acknowledge that people believe odious things in the names of other religions. To the extent that he is arguing that, due to the extraordinary levels of extremist belief within parts of the Muslim world, Maher is correct that a danger exists as a result of that extremism that does not presently exist in relation to extremism in other religions. It's not that you can't find people of any faith that hold odious views or commit hideous acts in the name of their faith, or that you cannot find pockets of extremism in which most members of the community hold those odious views, it's that the ratio of extremists to non-extremists is vastly lower.

With Maher, it seems that the analysis ends right there. He may acknowledge that extremism was higher in the past, and that much of what we see in the Muslim world is not dissimilar to medieval Christianity, but he shows little interest in examining why religious extremism has faded in the other major religions, even as it has expanded in parts of the Muslim world. That is, he refuses to address the historic, military, sociological and economic factors that contribute to extremism. Is there a problem inherent to Islam, or would similar levels and forms of extremism arise in others of the world's major religions in similar contexts -- such as occurred with the Tamil Tigers, a faction that grew out of a population that is largely Hindu.

Maher's next statement is simply an endorsement of progressive democracy,

There's so much talk -- you can applaud -- there's so much talk about wiping out ISIS. You can't, not with bombs. You can only expose that something is a bad idea like extended warranties. Cultures are different. It's okay to judge that rule of law isn't just different than theocracy, it's better. If you don't see that, you're either a religious fanatic or a masochist, but one thing you certainly are not is a liberal.

There seems to be some hollow manning going on in that argument -- the fabrication of a rhetorical opponent who does not actually exist, then swatting down an argument that nobody is actually making. I think it's more than fair to say that liberals should not be endorsing theocracy -- I'm simply not aware of any liberals who are endorsing theocracy. If in fact such a liberal exists, they deserve the rap across the knuckles that Maher delivers to them. But I'm not sure that any exist, and to the extent that they do they are so insignificant in number that they're unworthy of mention.

Maher is correct that ISIS won't be defeated with bombs. I've personally analogized ISIS to the liquid metal terminator from Terminator 2, and the scene in which the terminator is frozen with liquid nitrogen and shattered into millions of pieces. As soon as the pieces start to melt, they aggregate back into the terminator. The people who aggregate to form groups like ISIS are no different -- bomb them and degrade them, and you may well make ISIS less significant, but its adherents will immediately start aggregating into new groups that may turn out to be as bad or worse. That said, telling them that they're backward misogynists who have no place in a modern world, although correct, is going to be completely ineffectual.

Maher continued,

To count yourself as a liberal, you have to stand up for liberal principles. Free speech, separation of church and state, freedom to practice any religion or no religion without the threat of violence. Respect for minorities including homosexuals, equality for women. It amazes me how here in America we go nuts over the tiniest violations of these values while gross atrocities are ignored across the world.

The first response to that statement seems obvious: When you live in the United States, when you can participate in the U.S. political process, when it's your friends, neighbors and countrymen who are the targets of a wrong, when voicing your concerns could actually make a difference, you will likely be more inclined to act or speak out. Moreover, you have a greater duty to speak out when a wrong is occurring in your name. The second response to that is, seriously? This is Bill Maher, the guy whose weekly "New Rules" ridicule issues that are often among the most trivial facing society? This is Bill Maher, whose choice of a Congressman to target for defeat is based upon issues that are largely domestic, and was largely due to the Congressman's support for private colleges:

The comedian recited a litany of items that he said [Congressman John] Kline was wrong about, including voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, his vote during the partial government shutdown, denying funding for climate change research, and failing to adequately address the rising student debt. Maher charged that Kline, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, is ”the champion of for-profit colleges”

I'm not accusing Maher of hypocrisy, just of a bit of myopia, in that as a matter of routine he personally takes very strong stances on trivial issues. If you were to rank Maher's criticisms of Kline against his specified criticisms of Islam, it would be more than fair to ask, "Why are you obsessing about student debt when people are getting killed in other parts of the world for holding the wrong ideas?" Similarly, why does Maher spend so much time talking about how ridiculous U.S. marijuana laws are, when people are facing long prison terms and even being executed for possession of drugs in other nations, including decidedly non-Muslim nations like Singapore and Thailand? The quite obvious answer is that it is possible to oppose a domestic law or political agenda while also opposing worse practices overseas.

Why does Maher's show focus primarily on U.S. news and culture? Because he's speaking to his audience. Why did he make his $1 million dollar donation to the Democratic Party? Because he hopes to effect domestic political change. Nothing is wrong with any of that. It's okay for Maher to make jokes about Taylor Swift and Sarah Palin, to advocate marijuana legalization, and to close his show with a rant that in the greater scheme of things is trivial, while at the same time deploring the absence of democracy and human rights in parts of the Muslim world. It's okay for him to focus his time, attention, and political contributions on things he may be able to influence or change, rather than focusing on more serious issues upon which he can have no impact.

Maher complained,

Jonah Hill yells "suck my dick faggot" at the paparazzi and an entire nation goes into Twitter outrage until he is forced to perform that most debasing of acts -- the talk show apology tour. Meanwhile, in 10 countries actually sucking a dick can get you stoned, and not a good way.

This statement reflects one of the prices of celebrity -- if you say or do something stupid, you are apt to attract a lot of negative attention and you may have to apologize in order to protect your career. The reaction may well be disproportionate, but such is the life of a celebrity. Given the option of apologizing or retiring from an extraordinarily lucrative public life, celebrites tend to apologize. Further, as the Duck Dynasty clan has established, if you want to make anti-gay statements there is an audience that will be receptive both to your beliefs and that will applaud your refusal to apologize. Is that the audience that Maher prefers? Is that an audience he believes would be more apt to stand up for the values he hopes become established across the world?

And that brings us to something Maher fails to mention: The nation that has received the most attention in recent years for its anti-gay laws and policies is Uganda. Uganda is not a Muslim country. Uganda's ugly anti-gay laws are driven by a Christian movement that in turn is driven by U.S.-based anti-gay ministries. Russian hostility to homosexuality has also worsened in recent years. I suspect that Maher's list of "ten countries" is the same list offered here, which includes nations that make no distinction between forms of extramarital sex (all qualifying the participants for the death penalty) and nations that could theoretically execute somebody for engaging in homosexual acts even if they aren't in fact doing so. Should a U.S. citizen be more concerned about the U.S. activists who are agitating anti-homosexual sentiments in Africa, to the point that for a time homosexuality was a capital offense in Uganda and remains punishable by life in prison, or by puzzling over whether the UAE imposes the death penalty only for homosexual rape as opposed to all homosexual acts in the absence of any actual executions?

All of that is to point out the obvious: anti-gay bigotry exists across the world, is anything but unique to Islam, and some of the worst anti-gay actions are occurring in non-Islamic nations at the behest of U.S. Christians. There is absolutely nothing wrong with condemning anti-homosexual bigotry among any particular religious or cultural group, and there is also absolutely no reason you need to rank the acts from least to most offensive, or sort them by religion, before you condemn a bigoted law, act or statement. It may not seem fair to Maher that some who grew up in an era where "gay" was a common schoolyard taunt to learn, the hard way, that it's no longer an acceptable epithet, but that's the way our nation has evolved -- and surely Maher would concede that evolution toward full acceptance of gay Americans into society is a good thing.

Maher continued his complaint,

We hear a lot about the Republican war on women. It's not cool. Rush Limbaugh called somebody a slut. Okay. But Saudi women can't vote or drive or hold a job or leave the house without a man. Overwhelming majorities in every Muslim country say a wife is always obliged to obey her husband. That all seems like a bigger issue than an evangelical Christian bakery refusing to make gay wedding cakes.

That, of course, is more of the same. Contrary to what Maher suggests, it is possible to hold that Republican efforts to roll back reproductive rights and freedoms is "not cool", and that a prominent radio host should not be calling a woman a "slut" merely because she argues that health insurance should cover prescription contraceptives, while also believing that Saudi Arabia's treatment of women is abhorrent. On a global scale, certainly the oppression of women in many other societies around the world is a "bigger issue" than whether a local business discriminates against gay people, women, ethnic minorities, Jews, or any other citizen. But as I've already pointed out, that doesn't mean it's wrong to speak out against a small or local injustice -- and in fact, that's often the place where your voice is most likely to have an impact. Frankly, the entire issue is a red herring -- Maher offers no reason to believe that those who believe that businesses should not discriminate against their customers are accepting of Saudi Arabia's oppressive laws, let alone that, if asked, they would say that discrimination by a small business against a wedding cake customer is worse.

Maher next inadvertently highlighted one of the weaknesses of his criticisms of Islam:

Ninety-one percent of Egyptian women have had their clitorises removed; 98% of Somalian women have.

That's horrible, and it shouldn't happen, but here's the thing: Female genital mutilation is a practice that exists principally in parts of Africa, and is not a mainstream Islamic teaching. It is not surprising that the practice continued with the introduction of Islam or that some proponents of FGM believe it is a religious teaching, and we do need to address the reality that the practice has even spread to the west for the most part within Muslim communities. It is certainly no surprise that FGM, a fundamentally misogynist practice, exists largely within nations that hold misogynist views. But a billion Muslims live in South and Southeast Asia, where FGM is not part of the culture or religion.

Experts say the practice stems from social pressure to conform to traditions passed down for centuries -- one that predates not just Islam but also Judaism and Christianity. (The origins of the practice are subject to some dispute, but some scholars say it may correspond to areas of ancient civilizations, in which the cutting of females "signalled controlled fidelity and the certainty of paternity," the UNICEF report states.)

In areas of high prevalence today, "this is perceived to be the normal and correct way of bringing up a girl," Moneti said. "If a girl is not cut, she may be considered impure and not marriageable, and she and her entire family may be ostracized."

While it stems from neither Christianity nor Islam, some women in Chad, Guinea and Mauritania report a "religious requirement" as a benefit of cutting. Some communities consider a clitoridectomy -- one type of female genital mutilation -- as "sunna," which is Arabic for "tradition" or "duty," according to the UNICEF report. However, it is not a requirement of the Koran and has been specifically rejected by some Muslim leaders in Egypt.

We can certainly criticize FGM, and should do so, but we can do that without insulting the majority of the world's Muslims for whom FGM plays no role in their lives or religion.

Maher continued,

Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Somalia and was one of them. She was scheduled to speak at Yale last week but the school's atheist organization, my people, complained that she "did no represent a totality of the ex-Muslim experience." Meaning what? That women like mutilation? You're atheists. You should be attacking religion, not siding with people who hold women down and violate them which apparently you will defend in the name of multiculturalism and then lose your shit when someone refers to Chaz Bono by the wrong pronoun.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali lost a considerable amount of support when she switched her target from FGM to Islam at large. While I can appreciate her anger, given her life story, her message was more effective when it was focused on actions that virtually all Americans agree are outrageous. The Atheists at Yale clearly don't agree with Maher's position that the role of an Atheist is to attack religion -- they appear to view religion as something that people should be free to exercise, or not exercise, consistent with their own beliefs. The Yale group penned a relatively innocuous statement,

As a diverse group of undergraduates with a membership that includes ex-Muslims and atheists from Islamic cultures, we do not believe Ayaan Hirsi Ali represents the totality of the ex-Muslim experience. Although we acknowledge the value of her story, we do not endorse her blanket statements on all Muslims and Islam. We believe Ayaan Hirsi Ali represents a sadly common voice in the atheist community that attacks and provokes, rather than contributes to constructive criticism or dialogue. We remind our fellow atheists, Humanists, and agnostics of the rich history of dissent within our community, and do not believe belonging to this community necessitates an endorsement of all community members and their beliefs.

Maher may prefer the type of atheist who "attacks and provokes", but there's room in this world for atheist who are tolerant of religious belief. Maher's appeal to ridicule being duly noted, nothing in the organization's statement suggests tolerance of FGM, or that they would not have welcomed Ali to speak to her personal experiences including her strong condemnation of FGM if she had not shifted her focus to condemning Islam in general.

Donald Sterling isn't allowed to own a team because he told his mistress not to post pictures with black guys. Okay.

With that statement, Maher took us back to the world of entertainment. The problem that caused Sterling to have to sell his team was not that he was a racist, a philanderer, or a crass individual. The problem was that with his personality and beliefs having come to light, he threatened the income stream of a multi-billion dollar sports entertainment enterprise. While it's fun to play rhetorical games about whether we should be more tolerant of intolerance, in that type of situation it comes down to money. It's not really any different that losing an endorsement deal or movie contract because your all-American image becomes tarnished by the discovery of a series of affairs, because it turns out you run dog fighting rings in your spare time, because you go on a drunken anti-Semitic rant, or anything else you should know better than to do if you want to maintain your public image and popularity.

But if we're giving no quarter to intolerance, shouldn't we be starting the mutilators and the honor killers or will that divert us from the real problem that when Mel Gibson drinks he calls women sugar tits?

It's not a question of where we start, nor is it the false dichotomy that Maher presents -- as I previously pointed out, it is possible to condemn somebody in this nation for making a racist, sexist or anti-gay comment while opposing and condemning greater evils in other nations. And here, again, Maher confuses culture and religion. Honor killings should be deplored wherever they occur, and they do occur in some Muslim nations and communities, but they're also a huge problem in India. Again we are speaking of a cultural practice that arose independently of Islam, and is not in fact part of Islamic (or Hindu) faith, even if its adherents believe there is a religious mandate. Would it not make more sense to argue that a practice should be ended not only because it is not required by religious belief, but is in fact an act that contravenes the actual teachings of a religion, than to attribute that act to a religion in defiance of the fact that most adherents to the faith already reject the practice?

As I've previously suggested, I support the condemnation of oppression, bigotry and misogyny -- but I have no illusion that my statements on one issue or another are going to change the world. My criticism of Saudi Arabia would be read by a handful of people, none of whom have any influence on the Saudi government. Even Maher's criticism, which reach millions, have no impact on Saudi Arabia. As a nation, we prioritize a cooperative relationship with the Saudi regime, one that allows us to have military bases in Saudi Arabia, one that helps to keep the world's oil flowing, over pressuring that nation to improve its treatment of women, step back from Wahhabism and the export of radical Islam, or even to step back from its support of groups that act against U.S. interests. When it comes to slowing the expansion of radical Islam, or rolling it back, I see the importance of addressing cultural, political and economic issues that provide a fertile breeding and recruitment ground for radicalism. The thirty-year transition through which Iran went from being at the extreme of Islamic radicalism to being the nation now viewed as a potential reasonable partner for the stabilization of Iraq and Syria is not a reflection of how much Iran has changed -- it's a reflection of how much worse things have become throughout much of the Middle East -- and that's certainly not a result of the recent arrival of Islam. A better approach than Maher's is to take a look at Islamic nations that are more politically inclusive and democratic, or periods of time in which the nations presently falling into civil war and increased radicalism were more secular and inclusive, and ask, "What is different? What has changed?"

When you look at the region in that light, you can see how oil wealth, the echoes of colonialism and the Cold War, the historic tolerance of oppressive dictatorship, and the ill-conceived plan to try to replace Iraq's oppressive government with a progressive democracy through the application of force, have all contributed to the present mess. Maher himself occasionally pulls out archival pictures of bin Laden's family, dressed in western garb. The question is not so much whether Islamic nations can become more western in nature, or more accepting of democracy and western values. The question is not whether Islamic nations can reject honor killing or the mistreatment of women. The question is, having seen considerable progress toward that goal, why we have since seen such profound backsliding toward fundamentalism.

Fred Hiatt's Gang Misses the Point

In a rather churlish, unsigned editorial, immediately after suggesting that President Obama did not intervene in Syria due to political concerns,¹, the Washington Post Editorial Board complains,

Mr. Obama’s reasons for quashing the Syria plan were surely not purely political. But the president’s only public explanation for his resistance, in a recent interview with the New Republic, amounted to excuse-making. He wondered why he should concern himself with Syria and not the civil war in the Congo, as if the United States cannot intervene in any war unless it does in all; he asked whether providing weapons to rebels would “trigger even worse violence,” ignoring the testimony of his own aides that, under his present policy, the carnage “every day . . . it gets worse,” as new Secretary of State John F. Kerry put it.

What the President actually said was,

Every morning, I have what's called the PDB—presidential daily briefing—and our intelligence and national security teams come in here and they essentially brief me on the events of the previous day. And very rarely is there good news. And a big chunk of my day is occupied by news of war, terrorism, ethnic clashes, violence done to innocents. And what I have to constantly wrestle with is where and when can the United States intervene or act in ways that advance our national interest, advance our security, and speak to our highest ideals and sense of common humanity.

And as I wrestle with those decisions, I am more mindful probably than most of not only our incredible strengths and capabilities, but also our limitations. In a situation like Syria, I have to ask, can we make a difference in that situation? Would a military intervention have an impact? How would it affect our ability to support troops who are still in Afghanistan? What would be the aftermath of our involvement on the ground? Could it trigger even worse violence or the use of chemical weapons? What offers the best prospect of a stable post-Assad regime? And how do I weigh tens of thousands who've been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?

Those are not simple questions. And you process them as best you can. You make the decisions you think balance all these equities, and you hope that, at the end of your presidency, you can look back and say, I made more right calls than not and that I saved lives where I could, and that America, as best it could in a difficult, dangerous world, was, net, a force for good.

Hiatt's editorial board plucks out the one statement, the comparison to the Congo war, and ignores the rest. Why? Because it's easier to misunderstand or misrepresent that last statement, and thereby to advance the editorial position of the Washington Post, as opposed to responding to any other point the President made... or giving that statement an accurate reading.

The President was responding to the argument often made, and explicitly made in the editorial board's argument, that "we have to do something because people are dying." It may be an unpleasant reality to face, but the President was pointing out the fact that people are dying in nations other than Syria and the U.S. cannot intervene everywhere. The implied invitation to Hiatt's crew is not to snivel, "that's excuse-making", but to explain why Syria is different. Why do they favor intervening in Syria to "save lives" when they are content to let the Congo region bleed?

Also, concern that arming factions in Syria could make the conflict worse is not overcome by the argument that things are getting worse without intervention. The Post makes no attempt to counter the President's position, or even to argue that intervention would be more likely to stabilize the region or in a worst-case scenario be a wash. If you're headed toward a brick wall at 60 MPH, stepping on the accelerator will worsen the situation. That doesn't change at 70 MPH or 80 MPH - the situation still gets worse.

It's reasonable to infer from its past editorial positions that the Post is not particularly concerned about the post-war, because if the "moderate" groups that are armed to topple Assad turn out to be... not so moderate when they take control of the country, or are ultimately defeated by more radical forces, they would be content to have the U.S. invade and occupy Syria. For those of us who aren't as eager to have the U.S. invade nations in the Middle East, though, it makes sense to avoid taking steps that can further destabilize the region or necessitate another unnecessary $trillon military adventure.
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1. The editorial claims, "So why was the Petraeus plan rejected? According to the Times, Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Clinton were rebuffed when they presented the plan to the White House. At the time, Mr. Obama was in the midst of an reelection campaign in which he frequently assured voters that “the tide of war is receding."

Romney on the Middle East

Mitt Romney penned an editorial for he Wall Street Journal, criticizing the President's Middle East policy and pretending to offer an alternative.

OK, so what do we have here? America needs to support our partners. We need to restore our credibility with Iran, by making them believe that we really, really don't want them to have nuclear weapons. We need to place no daylight between ourselves and Israel. And we need to encourage liberty and opportunity. That line about "the dignity of work" is a little odd—maybe the problem they have in the Middle East is too many 47 percenters? So where's the new policy again?

But in the next paragraph, he says he's going to give us "a very different set of policies." So here it comes, right? The answer is ... "American strength in all its dimensions." Ah yes. Strength. Resolve. If you ask "How, precisely, will you achieve these goals?" then you're obviously a weakling who can't grasp the full majesty of Mitt Romney's chin, which when jutted in the direction of our adversaries will make them quake before us and submit to our demands.

Ed Kilgore provides a more detailed analysis.

Put aside for a moment the arguments about Iran’s ultimate intentions and its alleged historically unique indifference to nuclear deterrence, or about the actual balance of military power in the Middle East. Forget if you can the calamitous consequences, not only to regional peace and stability, but to the U.S. and global economies, of war with Iran.

Think about this: Mitt Romney is running for president on a platform of indistinguishable and conjoined exceptionalism for the U.S. and Israel. And because Israel faces a vastly greater military threat, this means America would abandon its own independence of action and consign its fate to Bibi Netanyahu, a man whose views on peace and security are highly controversial in Israel itself.

The problem is not so much that Romney wants to eliminate daylight between the U.S. and Israel - it's that he cannot actually articulate a policy reason to do so, and if he knows anything of the region (and I suspect he knows very little) he has to understand that a U.S. embrace of Netanyahu's policies and of its stance on Iran is not going to help us work with the region's nascent democracies or endear us to the man on the street.

Good gravy, does Romney believe this in relation to the Middle East?

The first step is to understand how we got here. Since World War II, America has been the leader of the Free World. We're unique in having earned that role not through conquest but through promoting human rights, free markets and the rule of law. We ally ourselves with like-minded countries, expand prosperity through trade and keep the peace by maintaining a military second to none.

Which of our close relationships in the Middle East does Romney believe demonstrates our promotion of human rights, free markets and the rule of law? With the exception of Israel, where our lack of support for Palestinian rights has done anything but endear us to the rest of the Middle East, the best we can point to is Egypt, with the successive dictatorships of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak and a mediocre human rights record, and the monarchy in Jordan. We used to have the Shah of Iran, for what that's worth - was he one of the "like-minded" leaders Romney has in mind. We have the monarchs of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. We really don't want to spend much time talking about Iran, Syria, Lebanon.... So, no, we don't have a good track record in the Middle East, we're not viewed by the Arab and Persian populations of the Middle East as champions of human rights, and our notions of governance and the rule of law remain alien to the day-to-day lives of most of the region's populations.

Given that Romney feigns umbrage (from Rush Limgaugh's mouth to Romney's ear) about the President's off-the-cuff statement that Israel is "one of our closest allies" in the region, I would be interested to hear Romney explain our alliances with key nations in the region, most specifically how our alliance with Israel compares to our treaty-based alliance with Turkey. I would also like to hear him explain how he would have avoided the mistakes of the Bush era and created a government in Iraq that he would comfortably include as "one of our best allies in the region", or how he would have kept a post-dictatorship Egypt within that category.

If Romney truly believes that the path to good relations with the nations of the Middle East lies in more than bellicosity toward Iran, involves supporting "governments and individuals who share our values" and requires asserting influence through "our economic strength, our military strength and the strength of our values", I would be interested to hear him explain in concrete terms how his proposed actions won't constitute a setback for our Middle East efforts, what governments other than Israel's he believes to share our values, and the concrete steps he plans to take to improve our standing and increase our influence with the people and governments of the region.

Obviously I won't be holding my breath.

Iraq, Iran, Sunni, Shiite, Arab, Persian... What's the Difference?

Daniel Larison does a yeoman's job holding political candidates accountable for their foreign policy blunders, in the past commenting on notable gaffes by such notables as Mitt Romney, even as the mainstream media displays a lack of interest or pretends that the remarks are insightful. He recently commented on Tim Pawlenty's confusion of Iraq and Iran:

The reporter corrects him at this point, and Pawlenty gamely tries to recover. The most that can be said for Pawlenty in this episode is that he is giving better foreign policy answers than Herman Cain. It’s also fair to say that he’s already doing worse than then-Gov. Bush was doing at this point in 1999. It’s pretty clear that he was rehearsing a bad answer on the U.S. troop presence in Iraq, which had almost nothing to do with the question he was asked. He was asked a question about contradictions in U.S. regional policy related to the expansion of Iranian influence, and he wasn’t even attempting to answer that question. He went through his answer substituting the words Iran and Iranians without missing a beat, and that is probably because his grasp of these subjects remains very superficial. If it had just been the name of the country, everyone might be able to shrug it off as a slip of the tongue, but it was more than that.

I'm with Larison on this one - well, no, I'm not quite as sympathetic to the "slip of the tongue" argument. While, particularly in retrospect, the import of Bush's ignorance of South Asia, and the treatment of Gore's knowledge of the region and its leaders as a pedantic irrelevancy, seems wholly irresponsible on the part of the media, there is a huge difference between not knowing the name of the President of Pakistan and confusing Iran with Iraq (even if we overlook the fact that Pawlenty did not display even a glimmer of understanding of the question asked).

Pawlenty was born in 1960, meaning that if he followed international events at all he should have overcome any ability to confuse Iran and Iraq by the time he reached his early 20's. It's not a grave sin to not care about or follow international affairs, even to shrug off conflicts in the Middle East, in favor of domestic concerns - or even to switch off the world news to catch sports updates on ESPN. It's possible to govern a state without knowing or caring much about international affairs. There are also degrees of ignorance, some of which suggest a basic interest or knowleged that a charitable person might argue could be overcome - confusing Shiite and Sunni, for example, as McCain at times did. But if you were a young adult during the Iran-Iraq War, subsequently lived through the first Gulf War, and are claiming to be competent to be President during this period of massive military intervention in the Middle East, that level of ignorance and confusion demonstrates a lack of interest that suggests that your place is, at best, in state and local politics.

An adult who can't differentiate a scapula from a patella? Probably not the best candidate for medical school. An adult who confuses Mississippi with Massachusetts? Probably not the best candidate for governor. They may be very competent within the sphere of their jobs and informed within their ares of interest, and they may be capable of learning the facts if given enough time and tutoring, but their inherent lack of interest in the subject matter does translate into a high probability that the best we can expect from them is basic competence. We should expect a lot more from somebody who claims he's qualified to be the President.

Paging Nelson Mandela... As Played by Morgan Freeman

Although on rare occasion assuring us that he doesn't see the solution to the world's problems as lying in the hands of "magic men", Thomas Friedman sure does like his magic men.

The final thing Iraq teaches us is that while external arbiters may be necessary, they are not sufficient. We’re leaving Iraq at the end of the year. Only Iraqis can sustain their democracy after we depart. The same will be true for all the other Arab peoples hoping to make this transition to self-rule. They need to grow their own arbiters — their own Arab Nelson Mandelas. That is, Shiite, Sunni and tribal leaders who stand up and say to each other what Mandela’s character said about South African whites in the movie “Invictus”: “We have to surprise them with restraint and generosity.”

So we don't need this Mandala - we need this Mandela? No, I don't want to overstate Mandela's ties to leaders like Castro and Qaddafi, nor to underestimate his important contribution to post-apartheid South Africa. But I do want to emphasize that he is a man, flawed like any other man, and that if you confuse the real man with a film depiction and his real words with those penned by a screenwriter you are likely to end up revealing yourself as having a superficial, celebrity-driven understanding of some of the key issues Friedman repeatedly pretends to be analyzing - issues on which, in some circles and despite what often seems like a concerted effort to establish the opposite, he's regarded as an expert.

Let's take a look at the lessons Friedman claims we learned in Iraq:

First, we learned that when you removed the authoritarian lid the tensions between Iraqi Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis erupted as each faction tested the other’s power in a low-grade civil war. But we also learned that alongside that war many Iraqis expressed an equally powerful yearning to live together as citizens.

Right. Because prior to Iraq the world had never seen anything like that before in a multi-ethnic society under authoritarian rule. Remove the "authoritarian lid" from a nation like Czechoslovakia and the idea that the nation might split on an ethnic basis is unthinkable. Remove the "authoritarian lid" from a nation like Yugoslavia and it's all peace, love and understanding. Remove the "authoritarian lid" from a nation like colonial India, and it's unthinkable that it would be ethnically partitioned. (And I'm only scratching the surface with these examples.) This was completely new.

For all of the murderous efforts by Al Qaeda to trigger a full-scale civil war in Iraq, it never happened.

But for the massive occupying force and the efforts it made to separate ethnic groups from each other, and to protect the Kurdish population and effectively turn it into a state within a state, there would be no ambiguity for Friedman to spin into his denial of history, or his attempt to suggest that the only reason for a "full scale" civil war would be meddling by al-Qaeda.

What was crucial in keeping the low-grade civil war in Iraq from exploding, what was crucial in their writing of their own Constitution for how to live together, and what was crucial in helping Iraqis manage multiple fair elections was that they had a credible neutral arbiter throughout this transition: the U.S.

Neutral in what sense? The sense of a Model T Ford - "We're neutral about the color of car you choose, be it black, black or black." Contrary to Friedman's suggestion, U.S. forces will not be quitting Iraq by the end of the year, and it's a safe bet that a sufficient force will remain in place for the indefinite future to attempt to preempt a return to civil war, any attempts at succession, or any efforts to violently overthrow the government. Even coming almost eight years after Bush's similar proclamation, Friedman's suggestion of "Mission Accomplished" remains premature.

Friedman suggests that a neutral arbiter is necessary to ensure a transition from authoritarianism to a more democratic regime, suggesting that the U.S. served that role in Iraq and that the Egyptian military is serving that role in Egypt. He rhetorically asks, "Who will play that role in Libya? In Syria? In Yemen?" Friedman doesn't want that role to be filled by the U.S., at least outside of Iraq, so he suggests, that the nations of the Middle East "need to grow their own arbiters — their own Arab Nelson Mandelas." (As played by Morgan Freeman.) This raises an interesting question, what would have happened had Mandela been imprisoned in a nation that had no history of democracy (flawed, though it was), and no democratic institutions?¹ Can Friedman come up with a magic man who has come out of a quarter-century of imprisonment as a "terrorist" and "enemy of the state", and peacefully assumed power not to expand a society's existing democracy but to totally reinvent a kingdom or dictatorship into a progressive democracy? Because that would take some real magic.
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1. Or, resorting to another oft-referenced archetype, if Gandhi had not been British-educated, and had not come to power in a British colony in which the institutions of government were not destroyed by the colonial power on its way out the door?

Scheming Over Settlements

If this report is true, one can only wonder if Binyamin Netanyahu is sane.

The details of the letter were revealed by researcher David Makovsky on the website of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

According to the report, the letter included incentives crucial to Israel's security that Netanyahu has been demanding for years. For example, the United States pledged to support Israel's position on stationing Israeli troops in the Jordan valley after the establishment of a Palestinian state, in order to prevent weapons smuggling.

The United States also would not ask Israel to further extend the building moratorium and would pledge that the issue of settlements would be dealt with only as part of final-status talks with the Palestinians, the letter reportedly said.

The United States also reportedly would veto any UN Security Council resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this year, would upgrade Israel's defense capabilities after the peace agreement, and would increase security assistance.

This reportedly would include providing Israel with advanced fighter jets and early warning systems, including satellites. The U.S. also would start talks with Arab countries toward a regional agreement vis-a-vis Iran.

Obama adviser Dennis Ross, who is the moving force behind the letter, is believed to have encouraged Obama to change his policy toward Netanyahu in order to come off as friendlier. Ross reportedly worked with Barak and Molho on the letter during the UN General Assembly in New York.

The White House denied that Obama sent a letter to Netanyahu, but did not deny that the United States and Israel had worked on a letter.

It's like a five-year-old being told that he can have everything on his extensive Christmas wish list, then having him stomp his feet and demand that Christmas be moved up by two months.

Another Ha'aretz article shows the behind-the-scenes thinking that led to the initial settlement freeze. According to Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin,

"We made an attempt to show goodwill, build relations, but I warned Netanyahu after the decision was made that it would end badly. He sat in my office and I said to him: Bibi, no one in the world, no one, will accept us stopping construction to draw the Palestinians into negotiations, and then starting again during negotiations. It is completely illogical. Who would accept this? I also said this to [army Chief of Staff Gabi] Ashkenazi, and to minister [without portfolio] Benny Begin, who supported the decision."

What did Begin say?

"His logic was that the moratorium decision was useful because it did not differentiate between settlement blocs and isolated settlements, as Olmert's government did, and when building was renewed, it would be renewed everywhere."

What did Netanyahu say?

"He said to me: Don't repeat this outside so you won't give people ideas."

That is, it appears that Netanyaho chose to offer a freeze that applied to all settlements, knowing that during its ten months the freeze would amount to nothing, and anticipating that at the end of that time he could accelerate construction in all Israeli settlements. Had he negotiated a more limited freeze he would likely have been pressured to give up the blanket concession that allowed continued construction of existing building projects and would have a much weaker argument against extension.

At the end of 2009, the number of housing units that were actively being built on all the settlements together amounted to 2,955. Three months later, at the end of March 2010, the number stood at 2,517. We are therefore talking about a drop of a little more than 400 housing units - some 16 percent of Israeli construction in the West Bank over that period....

For their part, the Palestinians did not really ask for a total freeze on construction. They demanded, and justifiably so, to once and for all get recognition of the principle that negotiations on the future of the settlements not take place while they are continuing to be built up. Accordingly, the Palestinians agreed to turn a blind eye to the construction so long as the official freeze policy of the Israeli government continued.

That ongoing construction is consistent with the history of settlement freezes. The most remarkable example of the expansion of settlements in the face of peace talks came during the post-Oslo period, a period of relative calm and protracted negotiations during which Israel doubled its population of West Bank settlers.

In 1991, when the first Bush administration was coaxing Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table, 90,300 Israelis lived in settlements across the West Bank. Today there are 300,000 — and their population is growing by 5 percent a year, more than 2 1/2 times the growth rate inside Israel.

A settler puts it like this:

"The Americans said, 'you're torpedoing our efforts,'" said Goldis, 73. "We say, 'we're coming to live in Israel, why can't we live wherever we want?'"

To which a fair response is, "If you're going to annex the West Bank to Israel, grant its occupants and refugees Israeli citizenship and equal rights, and implement the so-called 'one state solution', fine -- it's your country. But if you want a two-state solution, you can't simultaneously insist that the occupied territories are Israeli territory."

Turning back to Netanyahu, he's presently feigning incredulity,

"For 17 years the Palestinians conducted direct talks with Israeli governments while building went on in Judea and Samaria," Netanyahu said in response to the Palestinian statement, referring to the West Bank by its biblical names. "I hope that now, as well, they will not turn their backs on peace and continue the negotiations in order to reach a framework agreement within a year."

For a possible Palestinian response... what was that saying attributed to Einstein?

Thomas Friedman's Search for Magic Men...

Continues unabated. It seems that there's no problem in the world of business or politics that cannot be cured by finding a new Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs... has he evoked MLK?

Why think hard and work hard to solve problems, when it's so much easier to lament that if only the other side had a "magic man" who had the "courage" to act "against the popular will of his country or party" - with courage, of course, defined as the unstoppable will to do exactly what Thomas Friedman wants - the problems would go away all by themselves?

While Friedman hopes that his "suck on this" war will inspire a host of Nelson Mandelas who can lead their nations to happiness and unity, perhaps he should stop to think about the implications of his suggestion. This would be the Nelson Mandela who was imprisoned as a terrorist, and held for decades during which he adamantly refused to renounce violent resistance. It may well be that there is somebody who is roughly equivalent to Nelson Mandela in Iraq or the occupied territories, but perhaps he is presently preaching violent resistance against occupation and perhaps he's also presently in prison.

But perhaps it would also make sense for him to consider that the circumstances that give rise to a "magic man" are sui generis, which is why to date there is only one Gandhi, only one MLK, only one Nelson Mandela.... Even if you cloned them, you wouldn't duplicate them or their success. And perhaps he should consider that it was Gandhi's education in England that enabled him to become what he became, not so much the fact that his country was colonized. Does Friedman truly believe that bombing and occupying a country is the best way to produce the type of leader who only comes along once in a generation - in unprecedented numbers?

(Sadly, he probably does.)

Perhaps his column should be retitled from "Surprise, Surprise, Surprise" to "No Suprise, and condensed to, "I just saw a movie presenting fictionalized versions of real events and now I know how to solve the world's problems." Funny how when you fictionalize things, they become so much simpler and neater.

Spinning On An Axis

Michael Tomasky is concerned about developments in the Middle East, and not without cause:

The news broke two days ago across the region about Syria supplying Hezbollah with Scud missiles. Syria denies but it seems to be true, and if true it raises the stakes there considerably, because Scuds have a longer range than anything Hezbollah is now assumed to have. What that statement really means, boiled down to its essence, is that they can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The issue thus becoming, will Israel attack Lebanon to try to eliminate the Scuds, effectively proving that Hezbollah with Scuds is no more capable of deterring an attack than was Hezbollah without Scuds? In which case, what's the point of the Scuds?

With regard to Syria, the administration's attempted engagement with Assad has so far been one of its genuine failures. If US overtures to the country are met with responses like this, they're pretty clearly not working. And it gives Syria more influence in Lebanon, which breaks explicit promises Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton made in early visits to Beirut. The poor Lebanese are used to this, alas, and their country typically bears the brunt of these failures -- a war will likely scar its landscape more than Israel's or Syria's.

In fairness to the President, the well was poisoned before he got there. We can imagine alternative histories in which one of Israel's past Prime Ministers sprouted a backbone, stood up to the settlers and negotiated a resolution of the conflict with Syria. We can similarly imagine worlds in which the U.S. embraced the death of Hafez al-Assad as an opportunity to inspire his son, Bashar, to turn away from Iran and embrace modernity. Unfortunately instead we got Bush's foreign policy ineptitude, quickly followed by "Axis of Evil" rhetoric that contributed to Bashar's rejection of sensible measure would have been Syria's best option, using 9/11 as an opportunity to break with its past, negotiate the resolution of its conflict with Israel, and inviting western aid and development.

Tomasky points to Simon Tisdall's theories about why Syria might be interested in giving Scuds to Hezbollah... insurance against another Israeli attack, disappointment that President Obama hasn't "rebooted" the peace process (especially in relation to the Golan Heights), closer collaboration with Hezbollah as part of an effort to re-establish Syrian influence in Lebanon, and highlighting the double standard that Israel can have a huge nuclear arsenal, and for that matter a gargantuan arsenal of conventional arms, rockets and missiles, while most its neighbors are expected to have no appreciable offensive or defensive capacity. But I think he's focusing on the wrong country.

I can't imagine Syria exporting Scuds to Lebanon without the blessing of Iran. This suggests that Iran wants to increase the deterrent effect of attacks from Lebanon that might follow an Israeli attack on Iran, something Israel's been threatening for years. And while it makes little sense for Syria to draw itself into another war in Lebanon, Iran may look at the Israeli invasion and occupation of that nation as "the good old days" - with the U.S. bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel again occupying Lebanon, Iran's need to worry about any concerted military action against its territory will plummet. No doubt other people lose, but from the perspective of Iran the consequences for Lebanon do not appear to be a concern - whether the Scuds increase deterrence or lure Israel into a costly war and occupation, it seems like a win for the mullahs.

Tomasky also links to Blake Hounshell's aptly named article, The dumbest country in the Middle East. With all due respect to Tisdall's speculation on how Syria might benefit from Scuds in Lebanon, Hounshell's perspective seems more accurate to me. The best outcome for Syria in an armed conflict with Israel is that it only gets its nose bloodied. Hounshell speculates that the pressure for the deal is coming from Iran, "to show the West that any strike on its nuclear facilities would be extremely costly for the United States and its allies." Yeah, but what a way to treat those allies.

Does Anne Applebaum Own a Map?

Seriously, Anne Applebaum posits the following:

The defining moment of [Barack Obama's] presidency may well come at 2 a.m. some day when he picks up the phone and is told that the Israeli prime minister is on the line: Israel has just carried out a raid on Iranian nuclear sites. What then?

Well, if his next move isn't to fire a whole lot of people who didn't wake him up sooner, I'm not sure what it would be. Seriously, is Applebaum picturing a Middle East with a vastly different geographic layout than the one she might find if she looked at a map, and also imagining an alternative history where the U.S. has no military presence in the Middle East or Persian Gulf?

Does Applebaum imagine that the Israeli bombers would get permission from Turkey to fly through its airspace for the bombing run, without the U.S. learning of the plan? Does she imagine fighter jets trying to fly to the north of Turkey, over the Black Sea, without the Russians noticing and with the permission of... say, Greece, Bulgaria, Russia, Georgia and Azerbaijan... again securing the consent of those nations and without the U.S. finding out? Does she imagine that they'll fly over Jordan or Saudi Arabia, without the consent of those nations, then through Iraq, without the massive U.S. military force in Iraq looking up in the sky and saying, "Hey, those aren't our jets!" I can almost picture the pillow talk at the Applebaum mansion.

"Radoslaw, honey, is it realistic that Israel could bomb multiple targets in Iran, with the President not being able to do anything about it and not finding out until after the fact?"

"Anne, sweetie, that would be impossible - a neocon fantasy."

"I'm going to run with it anyway. Good thing that I write for the Washington Post editorial page."

Also, while I acknowledge that it's fun to imagine that every crisis in the world happens at 2:00 AM, Eastern Standard Time, you would think that by now Applebaum would be cognizant of the fact that the world has more than one time zone. Operation Opera, Israel's 1981 attack on Iraq's nuclear facility, was launched at 8:55 AM EST, allowing President Reagan ample time to finish his breakfast and coffee before getting "the call".

No, the tough decision for the President would be to determine what U.S. fighter jets, scrambled to intercept Israel's bombers, should do.

It's fair to note that Applebaum isn't entirely ignorant of the 1981 raid, noting that Israel "had no qualms about sending eight jets to take out Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981". That, for what amounted to an unobstructed raid on a single, highly visible facility. How many fighter jets does she imagine Israel will deploy to strike only the most significant Iranian targets (that we know about) to bring about a significant setback in Iran's nuclear ambitions?

Good grief, if it were as simple as taking out a single, effectively undefended site in pre-war Iraq or Syria, with the worst consequence being a public lecture, it would be done already. Instead, again, take a look at that map. To Iran's immediate east, one country in which we're at war. To Iran's immediate west, another country with which we're at war. Applebaum is not so clueless that she doesn't hint at the consequence to the U.S. of an Israeli attack.

If that ever happened, then the 2 a.m. phone call would be followed by retaliation, some of which would be directed at us, our troops in Iraq, our ships at sea. I don't want this to happen - but I do want us to be prepared if it does.

So... she wants the U.S. fighter jets, scrambled in response to Israel's massive bombing run - probably half or more of Israel's air force overflying a NATO country or U.S.-controlled airspace without permission - to shoot down Israel's bombers? Or is she calling for a resigned acceptance - "If Israel sends 80 or more fighters and bombers across U.S.-controlled airspace, we have to let them through, even though it will severely undermine all of our diplomatic and military actions in the region, so let's plan for the post-attack world in which Iran is arming insurgent groups in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, is turning a blind eye to cross-border raids that severely strain or break the supply lines we use to support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the possibility of other retaliation against U.S. targets around the world and the likelihood of having to invade Iran." No, what Applebaum appears to want is for the U.S. to first permit the attack and then to follow up by invading Iran.

But I do hope that this administration is ready, militarily and psychologically, not for a war of choice but for an unwanted war of necessity.

It's fair to ask, if Applebaum imagines that the invasion of Iran, which would be ruinous for our current war efforts and for the U.S. economy, is an inevitable consequence of what she admits will be a hit-or-miss Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear sites, what world does she live in where Israel's attack could be regarded as sane?

Meanwhile, a few column inches to the left, Richard Cohen ponders his navel lint and asks, "Is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad crazy like Adolf Hitler, or is he crazy like, of all people, Richard Nixon?" Typical of people who are either ignorant of Iran or who are dishonest about Iran, Cohen implies that Ahmadinejad somehow has his finger on a nuclear trigger - never mind that Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons or that Ahmadinejad has no control over the military. Since we're talking about Richard Cohen, I'm going to assume ignorance.

Let's skip right past the fact that the U.S. routinely attempts to paint as "crazy" the leaders of foreign nations that it wants to depose, or would otherwise prefer to be deposed. Which is not to say that we don't occasionally encounter world leaders who exhibit signs of mental illness or megalomania. Heck - over the centuries we've elected a few. Let's ignore the fact that there are politicians in this country, right now, who attempt to make political hay out of threats to attack Iran, and that Iranians could reasonably ask, "Was that old man, standing on a stage and signing 'bomb bomb bomb Iran' crazy, or merely pretending to be crazy?" What's his conclusion to his ramble on "Iran and the crazy factor"?

I have no idea whether Ahmadinejad merely acts crazy or is crazy.

Then why the [bleep] are you writing a column on the issue, rather than leaving the subject to somebody who actually knows something about Iran?

I do know, though, that Iran seems intent on getting nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. I also know that nothing the United States and its allies have done has dissuaded Ahmadinejad (or the mullahs or the Revolutionary Guard Corps) from his goal.

If you bypass Cohen's confusion about the power structure in Iran, his keen gift for stating the obvious shines through, once again. Yes, Iran is intent upon getting a nuclear weapon. Their investment in their nuclear program, and the manner in which they've spread the program out among numerous hardened sites, should clue pretty much anybody in to that fact. The most we can accomplish without going to war is to convince Iran not to have an overt nuclear weapons program - but they will continue their "nuclear energy" program and even a lawful, peaceful program will lead to a point where they're able to produce weapons grade uranium pretty much at will.

It's also obvious that two successive U.S. administrations have looked at the costs and benefits and have decided that the cost of a military intervention sufficient to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program vastly outweighs the benefit of such an attack. Cohen and Applebaum ask us to see the situation through Israeli eyes. Fair enough. But the U.S. and Israel are different countries with different goals for the region. It's easy for Cohen to sneer out an insult at those who recognize that fact:

Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski even suggested that if Israel tried such a thing, the United States might have to back it down with force. The Brzezinski Doctrine is refreshing in its perverse boldness: We shoot our friends to defend our enemies.

Good grief, Richard, talk to your colleague. Is Cohen so stupid that he believes the U.S. is better served by potentially being drawn into a third war in the Middle East, against a much stronger enemy than we face in either Iraq or Afghanistan, with the likely consequence being that a decade of military and diplomatic efforts in the Middle East are wasted, than by making it clear to Israel that it won't permit an attack that could bring about that consequence? Because the only significant distinction between what Brzezinski suggests and what Applebaum concludes is that Brzezinski recognizes that the U.S. could prevent the Israeli attack, whereas Applebaum prefers to pretend that it could not while recognizing the parade of horribles that could easily follow the attack. Of the three, only Brzezinski addresses the reality of the situation. No, Richard, you moron: It's not about "shoot[ing] our friends to defend our enemies" - it's about forcing a friend to stand down when the consequence of its actions would be devastating to our military and diplomatic goals for the region, and potentially crippling to our economy if Applebaum is correct about the inevitability of expanding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars into Iran.
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Update: Brzezinski responds to Cohen:

I hope that Richard Cohen's characterization of my opposition to Israel's use of U.S.-controlled airspace over Iraq as a policy of "we shoot our friends to defend our enemies" is a case of unintentional or exuberant distortion. What I have said repeatedly is that an Israeli attack on Iran through U.S.-controlled airspace would make the United States complicit, and the United States would then become the target of Iranian retaliation.

That is why the United States should make it clear that its airspace is not available for a unilateral Israeli attack, and that a violation of it could lead to an incident reminiscent of the attack on the USS Liberty, about which I added "it is nothing to be wished for."

Exuberance would be an odd explanation. But unintentional? If there's an error, it would be in Cohen's reading of Brzezinski as suggesting that the U.S. might have a military alternative to allowing an Israeli attack to proceed, unimpeded, leading to his taking great offense at the U.S.S. Liberty reference.

The reference to the U.S.S. Liberty is unambiguously about a possible U.S.-Israel military confrontation - given the history of that incident, I don't see that any other interpretation is possible. It's possible that Brzezinski was worrying about what the U.S. might do if Israeli fighters lock radar on U.S. jets sent to intercept their bombers - does the U.S. stand down or do things potentially escalate into shooting. But the possibility of shooting appears to be what inspires his conclusion "it is nothing to be wished for."

This part could also be applied to Applebaum:

One should not lose sight of the larger issue involved in loose advocacy of an Israeli attack on Iran that would implicate the United States in an act of war. Those advocating such an attack not only overlook the fact that such an incident might be designed to draw the United States into war with Iran but, even worse, the fact that U.S. acquiescence would mean nothing less than abdicating to Israel the decision on whether to go to war. Such an abdication is hardly in America's interest, and it is not the way that decisions involving American lives should be made.

"And All We Have To Do Is... Nothing!"

Shahed Amanulla has an editorial in The Guardian complaining that the Obama Administration, specifically Hillary Clinton, has disappointed the Muslim world.

In his April 2009 speech in Cairo, President Obama pledged to create a new relationship between America and the Muslim world through shared values, cooperation, and a renewed effort to alleviate specific policy concerns commonly felt among Muslims.

Nearly a year later, however, Secretary Clinton faced a tough crowd at the sixth annual US-Islamic World Forum, where she pleaded for patience in the face of unrealised goals. "I understand why people might be impatient," explained Clinton. "But building a stronger relationship cannot happen overnight or even in a year." That may be so, but it was little solace for many Muslim observers who momentarily put aside their skepticism in the hope that the US would use its newly-found moral high ground to press for change.

Now, no doubt, there are many things that the U.S. could do on its own that could benefit the Middle East, and it can act unilaterally on any number of issues. But... why should it? There are entrenched political interests that favor the status quo, and many citizens of the U.S. are very disappointed in how difficult it is to achieve change, domestic or international, even to the point of questioning if the Obama Administration wants change. Even when there aren't entrenched interests that favor a particular policy, the government is slow - if it only takes months to change a policy position, by any comparative measure that's government moving at the speed of light.

There are entrenched interests in the U.S. that want to continue the status quo in the Middle East. There are entrenched interests that believe the U.S. is not sufficiently confrontational with the Middle East. There are factions that would like the U.S. to invade Yemen, and would love it if the U.S. invaded Iran. There are huge numbers of U.S. voters who are terrified of the Muslim world, and are easily stirred up over trivialities arising in the so-called "war on terror".

In that context, what has the Muslim world offered to Obama, that he can hold up as evidence that a softened approach will bring about results beneficial to the United States?

It is disappointing to have hopes dashed, but maybe a bit of cold water is a good thing. While it has been great to see a real shift of attitude in Washington towards the Muslim world – and, unrealised goals aside, there is no reason to believe this has changed – perhaps it is more realistic for those involved in conflicts in the region to not depend on others to lead the charge in solving their problems.

Or perhaps it's more realistic to recognize that if the nations of the Arab world don't change their approach to their internal problems, to regional problems, and to extremism, they make it difficult for any U.S. administration, no matter how sympathetic to the need for change, to effect change. "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

The author's focus is in no small part on the situation in Israel, the occupied territories and the situation in Gaza. Understandable. But for decades the Arab states of the Middle East have shamelessly exploited the Israel-Palestine conflict in order to divert the public's attention from internal problems, and some states have actively perpetuated or worsened the plight of Palestinian refugees who live outside of Israel and the occupied territories. When can we expect the Muslim world to insist upon relief and equality under the law for the Palestinian refugees who live, for example, in Lebanon? Or to pressure Hamas to reform its charter - a big psychological hurdle, certainly, but one that could have tremendous symbolic importance? Arab states need no help from the United States to resolve problems that are entirely under their own control, and they have no room to blame Israel for what happens outside of its borders. For their own policies.

Having a U.S. Administration that wants to change its approach to the Muslim world is in no way a justification for failure to work for change from within. If you think about it, it's a time when reformists should be working harder than ever.

Nuclear Pandering

Our government has a tendency to inflate petty despots into insane megalomaniacs who pose an immediate threat to the United States. This phenomenon isn't unique to the U.S.. When the facts are finally known, the "dangerous madmen" depicted in Congressional hearings and the media usually turn out to be far less fearsome.

One of our current "madmen" is Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom we pretend is in full control of the country and itching to attack Israel. We're supposedly not sure that the Iranians are rational or deterrable¹ - never mind that the nation has no contemporary history of aggressive war against its neighbors. Their actual contribution to regional instability? They fund terrorist organizations and seek to expand Shia Islam in the Arab world.

But they have a nuclear weapons program, and they desire nuclear weapons. Is that, of itself, "insane"? Hardly. It's entirely rational to want nuclear weapons when your global and regional adversaries have nuclear weapons. It's entirely rational to want nuclear weapons when you are being threatened with attack or invasion. It's entirely rational to want nuclear weapons when they will elevate your status as a regional power. From our standpoint, to put it mildly, the outcome is undesirable, but can you truly pretend that you don't understand why Iran would view a nuclear arsenal as a very good thing to possess?²

What benefits would nuclear weapons offer to Iran in an aggressive war? Let's look at Iran's neighbors. Turkey? Even if we were to dream up some sort of benefit in their trying, they're not going to invade a NATO member state. Iraq? Right now, "that's us" - they're not going to attack U.S. occupied Iraq, and it appears that by the time we leave (assuming we ever do) they will by all appearances enjoy a friendly, Shiite government in Baghdad. Pakistan? Again, to what end. And Pakistan's already a nuclear power, so getting nukes doesn't give Iran any special advantage. Afghanistan? As with Iraq, "that's us." Well, gee... I guess that leaves the oh-so-desirable targets of Turkmenistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan? Or will anti-Iranian hawks soon be dreaming up "the Iranian Armada", comprised of thousands of ships ready to set sail for Saudi Arabia?

But we live in an age of pandering, and that's not advanced by defeating the idea that Iranians are not wholly irrational beings, bent on self-destruction, and intending to launch a nuclear attack on Israel the moment they have their first low-yield nuclear bomb. That image of Iran also provides candidates with the opportunity for a bit of chest-thumping, "I'm so ready to 'push the button'" machismo. Case in point? Hillary Clinton.

Clinton’s remarks, made in an interview on MSNBC’s “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” clarified a statement she made last week in a Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia. In that debate, Clinton, D-N.Y., said an Iranian attack on Israel would bring “massive retaliation,” without defining what the phrase meant.

In the interview Monday, Clinton affirmed that she would warn Iran’s leaders that “their use of nuclear weapons against Israel would provoke a nuclear response from the United States.”

I recognize that there are people who lap this sort of stuff up, and I apologize in advance to you if you're one of them. This is reckless, shameful pandering. First, its idiotic to presuppose that Israel needs the U.S. to provide nuclear deterrence. Israel has been a nuclear power for decades, and is generally regarded as having about two hundred high yield nuclear weapons. There aren't even two hundred viable nuclear targets in Iran. While nuclear nutters like to giggle about "turning the desert to glass", once you hit Iran's thirty or so population centers (and that includes some cities barely above 100,000 people) that's pretty much all that's left to do.

So, following the fanciful, suicidal attack by Iran we have two scenarios - Israel demonstrates nuclear restraint in response to an attack, perhaps focusing on military targets and infrastructure while avoiding civilian centers, and Clinton nonetheless cries, "Let loose the missiles!" Or Israel destroys every population center in Iran and Clinton cries, "Everybody's dead, but some of that desert isn't glass yet! Let the missiles fly!" Which of those images does Clinton believe makes her look good?

Oh, I know, we're not actually supposed to think it through.

The funny part? (And I mean "funny sad" not "funny ha ha".) She didn't even stop there. Now we're also threatening Iran with attack if it attacks another nation in the region. Now she may correct me, but I'm not aware of an actual Iranian armada, so as discussed above it's a bit hard to imagine what nation Iran might suddenly decide to invade. Or is it nuke? "It's been such a boring week - let's nuke somebody... Hey, what about Jordan?"

Clinton said it was vital that the United States create a new “security umbrella” to reassure Israel and its other allies in the region that they would not be threatened by Iran. She said she would tell them that “if you were the subject of an unprovoked nuclear attack by Iran, the United States, and hopefully our NATO allies, would respond to that.”

That's a more sensible policy than Clinton gave for an attack on Israel. If Iran were to attack one of our allies, Iran could expect a broad military response with "all options" implicitly on the table. Yet it further highlights the absurdity of her position in relation to Israel - we'll threaten Iran with nuclear annihilation if it attacks a country that has at least a generational lead on Iran's military, and that can presently turn Iran into a smear? But we're going to be more circumspect if Iran launches a nuclear attack against one of our other regional allies? Without asking if Iran might do that, exploring why Iran might do that, or whether getting involved in the conflict would serve our strategic interests?

With due respect to Clinton's nominal goal of assuring other states in the region that they don't need their own nuclear weapons programs, we can persuade our allies in the region of that by continuing arms sales and threatening to stop those sales or cut back on aid money if they initiate nuclear weapons programs. The other nations in the Middle East probably won't be listening to us.
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1. On the question, Hillary Clinton notes that some believe Iran is "not deterrable, that they somehow have a different mindset and a worldview that might very well lead the leadership to be willing to become martyrs. I don't buy that, but I think we have to test it." I'll give her credit for her qualified rejection of that belief, although it makes you wonder why she finds it necessary to articulate her "nuke 'em 'till they glow" policy.

2. I am giving due consideration to the NIE assessment suggesting that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program. But they nonetheless have an expanding nuclear program and by all appearances aspire to possess nuclear weapons.

The Beginning Of The End in Iraq?

Back before the U.S. invaded Iraq, a number of worst case scenarios were advanced by anti-war activists, with the effects of the invasion depicted as rippling through the region, toppling friendly regimes and resulting in general chaos. These of course were largely dismissed or ridiculed by proponents of the war. But now David Brooks has apparently reconsidered. In After The Fall he envisions just that occurring through the course of a "thirty year war" which follows a U.S. withdrawal:

In fall 2007, the United States began to withdraw troops from Iraq, and so began the Second Thirty Years’ War. This war was a bewildering array of small and vast conflicts, which flared and receded and flared again across the entire Middle East, but which were joined by a common theme.

The essence of all this disorder was that the Arab nation-states lost control. Subnational groups — like Hezbollah and the Mahdi Army — and supranational groups — like loosely connected terror networks, the new Sunni and Shiite Leagues and the satellite television networks — went from strength to strength while central national governments toppled and fell. The collapse of national governments led to a power vacuum that the more authentic and deeply rooted social groups sought to fill.

Meanwhile, Spencer Ackerman reminds us that before the war we were often hearing quite the opposite from the pro-war side.

These scenarios have their value, of course, and at times they may even prove to be what occurs. But for the most part they have to be recognized for what they are - a doctrinaire trip down the slipperly slope. The proponents of all of these scenarios have one thing in common - they underestimate the ability of tyrants and dictators to control their populations and hold on to power.

Brooks on Middle East Democracy

Today's column by David Brooks is worth reading, if you are able to peek behind the firewall. The bulk of the column is an unfortunately brief synopsis of the debate of two experts on the Middle East, Reuel Gerecht and Jeffrey Goldberg. Gerecht argued that democracy will in the short-term result in extremist governments with a profoundly anti-Israel bias, but that this pain is a necessary part of developing the institutions integral to democracy:

The only way to reform the Middle East, Gerecht concluded, is by changing political institutions and enduring as the spirit of democratic self-government slowly changes society. There will be a period of fever, but the fever will break the disease.

Goldberg argued that even if the roots of democracy were to survive such an initial period, such a period could easily stretch on for more than a century of jihadism against Israel and, internally, tolerance of such acts as "honor killings".

In Goldberg's view, cultural reform has to precede political reform. The West should continue to champion the Arab world's liberal modernizers, who believe in pluralism and human rights and who may have deeper roots in society than we think.

Gerecht notes that democractic movements have made some real advances; Goldberg notes that even with their participation in democracy key regional players such as Hamas and Hezbollah will always embrace Jihad.

Brooks himself sees the Bush Administration as taking Gerecht's position that institutions shape behavior, and "hanging tough" on the issue of democratic reform. And he argues that neither model is "winning" but that a worse outcome would be to return to the stablility of autocratic regimes such as those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia which spawed 9/11. (Brooks doesn't mention the sad state of democratic reform in those nations.)

Rather than asking "who is right", perhaps the better approach is to ask how the two models can complement each other. That is, accept Goldberg's position that we need to change hearts and minds now to move people away from jihadism, but also to accept Gerecht's position that we need to build the institutions of democracy in order for it to be sustainable over the long term. Even if we assume the best of intentions, the Bush Administration's policies appear to be paving the way to jihadism. I'm not sure that Brooks would disagree; I think to the degree he treats the models as incompatible it is so that he can praise the Bush Administration for its embrace of the institutional approach without confronting its present failings.

Everything Old Is New... to Thomas Friedman

Behind the Firewall, the New York Times' ostensible expert on the Middle East writes,

When you watch the violence unfolding in the Middle East today it is easy to feel that you’ve been to this movie before and that you know how it ends - badly. But we actually have not seen this movie before. Something new is unfolding, and we’d better understand it.

What we are seeing in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon is an effort by Islamist parties to use elections to pursue their long-term aim of Islamizing the Arab-Muslim world.

This is new? Are we using geological measures of time? (Ten thousand years ago there were no elections at all, and now, suddenly....)

While Friedman suggests that this phenomenon is mostly a concern in nations like Iraq or Lebanon, or in the Palestinian Territories, where political factions may also contol their own militias. Is it truly a secret to Thomas Friedman that there have long been significant concerns over the possibility that democratic elections in the Middle East that anti-Western and Islamist groups may gain power or even control of the government if free elections were truly permitted in Saudi Arabia or Egypt?

The world needs to understand what is going on here: the little flowers of democracy that were planted in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories are being crushed by the boots of Syrian-backed Islamist militias who are desperate to keep real democracy from taking hold in this region and Iranian-backed Islamist militias desperate to keep modernism from taking hold.

Is the problem, then, that there are Islamist parties, that there are parties which control militias, or just that there are Islamist parties that control militias? And in which of those regions are the Islamist parties actually complaining about democracy, or fearing that it might spread? When you're winning elections you generally want democracy to spread (even if you aren't particularly to maintaining it in the longer-term).

To Friedman, democracy seems to mean "You should hold free and fair elections, and vote for whomever you want... as long as you elect the right person and party." Am I wrong, or are the shifts in mindset required for democracy and progressive government to take hold largely generational in nature - if you grow up with them, they seem like second-nature, but they're hard to impose upon a population which is used to something else. (And, unfortunately, they seem easier to tear down than to build up.) To state the obvious, even in the absence of private militias holding an election, even if it is free or fair, is no guarantee that a nation will be transformed into a democracy, nor is it a guarantee that the elected leader will be the person Thomas Friedman would prefer.

Remember, folks, he's an 'expert'

In 1983, the Iranian backed Hezbollah committed a suicide truck bombing in Lebanon, which devastated a U.S. Marine Barracks and precipitated Ronald Reagan's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from that country. Suicide bombings continued to be at the forefront of Hezbollah's subsequent guerrilla war against Israel, until it withdrew its forces from Lebanon in 1985. It is that model that may believe has been followed by Palestinian terrorist groups in their suicide attacks on Israeli military and civilian targets. At around the same time, in Afghanistan, Russia was confronting tactics which included the kidnapping and videotaped beheadings of hostages by guerrillas who opposed their occupation. Saudi and Egyptian terrorists were responsible for the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center. And today, Thomas Friedman tells us that the reason for our difficulties in Iraq is that, in the midst of a sea of terrorist factions which use similar tactics, we simply didn't imagine that Iraqis might use them in opposing a U.S. occupation:

Let me explain: America's greatest intelligence failure in Iraq was not the W.M.D. we thought were there, but weren't. It was the P.M.D. we thought weren't there, but were. P.M.D., in my lexicon, stands for "people of mass destruction." And there were far more of them in Iraq than anyone realized.

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You know all those masked Iraqi youth you see in the Al Jazeera videos, brandishing weapons and standing over some foreigner whose head they are about saw off? They are the product of the last decade of Saddamism and sanctions. Those youth were 10 years old when the U.N. sanctions began. They are the mushrooms that Saddam and the sanctions were growing in the dark. The Bush team had no clue they were there.

Take note of the accusation implicit in that statement - that the Bush Administration was lying when it said that part of the justification for invading Iraq was its support for terrorism, and that we were "fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them over here". After all, if either assertion is true, Friedman's thesis falls apart.

Now, granted, Friedman suggests that this inclination toward long-used terrorist tactics and suicide bombings was imported to Iraq as a result of Saddam Hussein's policies under a decade of sanctions. Was the Bush Administration really as oblivious to the realities on the ground as Friedman suggests? Or is Friedman describing his own incredulity, his having endorsed the war in Iraq as a "war of liberation" long before the Bush Administration grasped onto that particular excuse for invasion. I do think that the Bush Administration significantly overestimated the gratitude and reception the U.S. could expect for deposing Hussein, as did Friedman, but I don't think that the Bush Administration shared Friedman's expectation that Iraq's insurgents would not embrace the techniques which much of the Arab world credits with driving both the U.S. Marines and Israel out of Lebanon, nor the horrific tactics used against the Russians during their clumsy and brutal occupation of Afghanistan.