Islamic totalitarianism — VOICES for REASON

Dispelling misconceptions about the Arab/Israeli conflict is a focus of Efraim Karsh’s writings, and in his oped in today’s NYT, he brings to a wider audience key facts about the character of self-professed Arab champions of the Palestinian cause. He lays out a historical case that Arab states — who routinely jockey to be seen as advancing Palestinian goals — have in reality exploited that cause for their own power-seeking ends.

Agreeing with the thrust of Karsh’s article, I’d add this point: even if these backers had been genuine in their motivations and truly sought to serve the cause, that too would be deplorable. From my reading of the issue, the Palestinian movement has at its root an antipathy to Western political values, such individual freedom, and it has pioneered in the vile tactic of terrorism. Regimes that back that movement, for whatever reason, are complicit in its aggression.

(I explore the Palestinian movement and its goals in a course on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In chapter seven of Winning the Unwinnable War, I touch on a prevailing dynamic in Mideast politics that sheds light on what motivates contemporary backers of the Palestinians (e.g., Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia).)

Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Rolling Stone interview has created a scandal–but the real scandal we should be talking about is his Afghanistan strategy and how it needlessly imperils American lives.

Under his widely acclaimed counterinsurgency strategy, McChrystal “shifted the risks from Afghan civilians to Western combatants,” reports the NYT.  Translation: the rules place the lives and welfare of Afghans —  emphatically including the Islamist warriors we’re supposed to be fighting — ahead of American lives. Consider:

Before the rules were tightened, one Army major who had commanded an infantry company said, “firefights in Afghanistan had a half-life.” By this he meant that skirmishes often were brief, lasting roughly a half-hour. The Taliban would ambush patrols and typically break contact and slip away as patrol leaders organized and escalated Western firepower in response.

Now, with fire support often restricted, or even idled, Taliban fighters seem noticeably less worried about an American response, many soldiers and Marines say. Firefights often drag on, sometimes lasting hours, and costing lives. The United States’ material advantages are not robustly applied; troops are engaged in rifle-on-rifle fights on their enemy’s turf. [emphasis added]

I’ve argued in Winning the Unwinnable War and in talks around the country that this policy is self-crippling and morally perverse. And the policy is still in full-effect, as the experiences of soldiers on the ground can attest to.

Several infantrymen have also said that the rules are so restrictive that pilots are often not allowed to attack fixed targets — say, a building or tree line from which troops are taking fire — unless they can personally see the insurgents doing the firing.

This has lead to situations many soldiers describe as absurd, including decisions by patrol leaders to have fellow soldiers move briefly out into the open to draw fire once aircraft arrive, so the pilots might be cleared to participate in the fight. [emphasis added]

All of which confers an inestimable tactical advantage on Taliban fighters — “making it easier for them to hide to fight, to meet and to store their weapons or assemble their makeshift bombs.” Meanwhile, U.S. troops — with justified indignation — speak of “‘being handcuffed,’ of not being trusted by their bosses and of being asked to battle a canny and vicious insurgency ‘in a fair fight.’” How many more must return home in coffins, because they were purposely hamstrung in combat?

By all means, question McChrystal’s judgment in making derisive comments about his boss, the Commander in Chief. But isn’t it past time to question the propriety of an Afghan strategy that both endorse?

image: wiki commons

Since Israel forcibly intercepted ships heading to Gaza with “humanitarian” aid, the choir of condemnation has shrieked in unison — from the UK, and most of the European continent, across the Atlantic to the bowels of the U.N. But putting aside questions on the laws governing international waters, was Israel morally right to prevent the ships from reaching Gaza? Yes–I’d argue it was fully within its rights to enforce the naval blockade on Gaza.

To judge Israel’s actions, it is crucial to recognize the broader context: the Gaza strip is under the control of Hamas, a totalitarian Islamist group, that is at war with Israel. Allowing arms, money, and other forms of aid to enter Hamas-controlled Gaza means allowing a sworn enemy to be sustained and strengthened to fight on. And a state facing that situation is entitled to thwart attempts to aid its enemy.

P.S. A word on the blockade itself. My view is that Israel is entitled to seal Gaza off from the world. Is that the most efficient means of thwarting, let alone minimizing, the threat from Hamas? I doubt it — in part because exceptions are often made for so-called humanitarian supplies. Should Israel act assertively to remove the Islamist group from power and dismantle its infrastructure in the Palestinian territories? That’s a point I’ve argued in other places.

In his New York Times column, Ross Douthat recounts the backstory behind the death threat—posted on a Muslim website—against the producers of “South Park” and discerns a broader issue. He argues plausibly that Comedy Central’s decision to bleep out references to “Mohammad” and remove the supposedly offending episode is part of a larger pattern of self-censorship in our culture.

What concerns him is the apparent lopsidedness of the self-censorship: practically every value and idea today is subject to criticism in popular culture, whereas the “South Park” incident is “a reminder that Islam is just about the only place where we draw any lines at all.” There’s something to that observation (though I don’t subscribe to Douthat’s explanation of it); but I want to put that aside for the moment to isolate a widely ignored, and broader, point. What he and others who echo this line overlook (or evade?) is that self-censorship in North America and (to a far greater degree in) Europe is in significant part a function of governments’ failure to uphold the freedom of speech.

The guardian of that right is the government — and it’s AWOL. To put it mildly.

The pattern we’ve witnessed in previous crises—from the death decree against author Salman Rushdie in 1989 to the Danish cartoons crisis, and similar cases—is the refusal of our political leaders to defend us against threats to our freedom of speech. Worse: we’ve seen them genuflecting before and seeking to appease aggressive Muslim activists and their backers. (I touch on this in Winning the Unwinnable War.) Yes, there have been publishers and TV networks and bookstores that exhibited fear, and perhaps cowardice, in the face of such threats. But when our government issues limp, apologetic statements mollifying the aggressors—and effectively leaves writers, publishers, filmmakers and everyone else unprotected from the threat of reprisals by would-be Islamist enforcers—is it surprising that self-censorship grows?

Later this week world leaders and diplomats will meet in London to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. In my earlier post I talked about the U.S.-Afghan drive to appease the Taliban; now, in the lead-up to the international conference, the NYT reports:

The leader of the United Nations mission here [Kabul] called on Afghan officials to seek the removal of at least some senior Taliban leaders from the United Nations’ list of terrorists, as a first step toward opening direct negotiations with the insurgent group.

What’s next, a plea-bargain for Osama bin Laden? That’s crazy talk, yes. But on 9/12/01, erasing Taliban fighters from terrorist watch lists would have sounded outlandish, too. Here we are, though, eight-plus years later, currying favor with enemies we have failed to defeat in the hopes they’ll deign to talk to us.

Last week President Obama claimed that “our intelligence community failed to connect those dots” signaling a plot to blow up Flight 253. But ritual flogging of the intelligence community has diverted attention from a larger failure — this one belonging squarely on Obama’s shoulders.

Zoom out from the plentiful red flags outlining what we already know about the Christmas Day attack. Now observe the connection between it and two (of many) other “dots”: the suicide bombing by a double agent at a U.S. base in Afghanistan; and the (latest) failed assassination attempt on Kurt Westergaard, who drew the Mohammad-with-a-bomb-in-his-turban cartoon.

On the face of it, these have little if anything in common. Unlike the Nigerian bomber on Flight 253, the bomber in Afghanistan used an explosive-packed vest; the assassin in Denmark wielded an ax. The Nigerian was a recent college graduate, scion of a wealthy family; the killer in Afghanistan was a doctor of Jordanian descent; the Danish assassin, an immigrant from Somalia. Not their origin, not their specific targets, not their choice of weapon, not their age or income-level — none of these are the same. Nor is there any evidence that they ever met.

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In the wake of the national security debacle of the Christmas Day attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253, the Obama administration is being justifiably pummeled — and the Republicans are piling on with zeal.

GOP opinion leaders such as former Vice President Dick Cheney have seized on the attack to question President Barack Obama’s grasp of foreign affairs. Republican Party officials have sent fund-raising appeals that take aim at Mr. Obama’s response to the episode.

The Republicans’ goal, the WSJ reports,  is to “regain [their] traditional advantages on security issues.”

Regain it? When have Republicans deserved that reputation? Definitely not during the eight years of George W. Bush.

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One of the worst foreign policy developments of 2009 was also one of the most underreported—the Obama administration’s decision to do away with the official use of the term “global war on terror” in favor of “Overseas Contingency Operation.” The term “global war on terror” was awful, to be sure—it named our enemy vaguely and evasively. But instead of correcting that mistake by a clear identification of the enemy that threatens us with terrorism and nuclear attacks, President Obama’s new designation denies the existence of any enemy. We went from worse to worser.

Correctly defining the enemy is indispensable in any war. In Chapter 4 of Winning the Unwinnable War, Alex Epstein and Yaron Brook write:

To fulfill the promise to defeat the terrorist enemy that struck on 9/11, our leaders would first have to identify who exactly that enemy is and then be willing to do whatever is necessary to defeat him.

Who is the enemy that attacked on 9/11? It is not “terrorism”—just as our enemy in World War II was not kamikaze strikes or U-boat attacks. Terrorism is a tactic employed by a certain group for a certain cause. That group and, above all, the cause they fight for are our enemy.

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Bret Stephens at the WSJ skewers Obama’s team for failing to recognize — time after time — that so-called diplomatic overtures will not induce Iran to end its nuclear program. Reflecting on the last six years of attempted negotiations, he observes:

Yet even as Tehran’s rejections piled up, a view developed that all would be well if only the U.S. would drop the harsh rhetoric and meet with the Iranians face-to-face. So President Obama began making one overture after another to Iran, including a videotaped message praising its “great civilization.” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei replied that Mr. Obama had “insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day.”

But there’s far more to this story. If we expand the timeframe from six to 30 years, it is not just Obama’s administration that ought to be rebuked.

Thirty years ago tomorrow, November 4, 1979, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was invaded and its personnel taken captive. That turned out to be the first act of war against us by what became the Islamic totalitarian regime in Iran. Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama is weighing how to deal with the seemingly unwinnable war in Afghanistan, but have the right questions been asked about how we got to this point? In a post that I contributed to the blog of Rowman & Littlefield (the publisher of my book), I suggest that our policymakers (and all Americans) should re-think their assumptions about what went wrong in Afghanistan.