In direct contravention of my wife's explicit instructions, herewith I inaugurate my first blog. Long may it prosper.

For some reason, I think I have something to say to you. You think you have something to say to me? Email me at: gideonsblogger -at- yahoo -dot- com

 
In London on business, so haven't had a chance to blog much. I've been thinking about the Santorum flap and trying to figure out how to avoid blogging about it. My reactions remain unsettled. I've found almost everyone's responses, both defenders and detractors, fairly unconvincing.

But the more I think about the whole affair, the more I am reminded of a bit from Mathew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy. Apparently, around the time that Arnold was writing, there was a Liberal initiative to repeal an English law that forbid the marriage by a man to his deceased wife's sister. Now, readers of the bible will recognize this law as being of biblical origin, and students of history will of course recognize that this law was the question around which Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church and established the Church of England. On the other hand, it was not something that people in mid-19th century Britain cared a fig about. You would have found precious few defenders of the proposition that marrying one's dead wife's sister was somehow self-evidently immoral, and you would have found precious few defenders of the proposition that the Pentateuch should be adopted as the supreme law of England. And I suspect that, faced with an actual man and woman, she his deceased wife's sister, who were truly in love and wished to marry, most Englishmen of the time would have found the law's decisive prohibition of the match, well, cruel. Nonetheless, Arnold found something distasteful about the Liberal enthusiasm for abolishing this law, and repeatedly returns to it in Culture and Anarchy as a kind of paradigm case of what he disliked so about the Liberal termperament, what he referred to (ironically in this context), as its Hebraism.

One doesn't get the sense, reading the book, that Arnold had even thought about a defense of the justice of the law. Rather, he felt that the injustice of the law was slight, and this in itself made him suspicious of those who wished to abolish it - suspicious that their efforts were grounded in something other than a passion for justice. He suspected, rather, that they were passionate about a rule (in this case, a rule about what was and was not properly the state's business, with whom one married being out of bounds) and its universal and absolutely consistent application. And this kind of passion he distrusted, even feared.

It does seem to me that the desire to retain sodomy laws strikes most of us as about as loopy and irrational today as the prohibition on marrying one's dead wife's sister did then. And, indeed, they have common roots: the reason we have sodomy laws at all is that, after Henry VIII's revolution, various laws that had been part of the law of the Catholic Church were incorporated into the law of the state, the Catholic Church having ceased to be a semi-independent source of law in England following the Reformation. A reasoned defense of the laws, such as Senator Santorum tried to provide, descends very quickly into ugliness. But there's something missing from the argument for repeal as well, even if one can't quite put one's finger on it.
posted by Noah at 2:22 PM

 
Readers of this space may recall an argument I made last month about homosexuality from a Jewish perspective. There was an interesting piece by Rabbi Daniel Landes and his wife, Sheryl Robbin in the most recent issue of the Jerusalem Report which touches on some of the same matters. Unfortunately, it's not on-line. Landes and Robbin don't come to a conclusion, but they do point out that halacha allows for certain kinds of violations of the law as an accommodation of human need and weakness in the face of internal compulsion, and that halacha is, in this way, quite compassionate. The specifically touch on homosexuality in this light, although, as I say, they don't come to a conclusion. They suggest, though, that there is room for some kind of halachic accommodation of homosexuality - not a carte blanche saying that all sexual behavior is OK, but room for people who can only live a certain way to live that way in peace and be secure in knowing that they are following God's commandments to the best of their ability. That's pretty much what my argument was. Indeed, I went a bit further, and I argued that Judaism has to come to such an accommodation because, if it doesn't, then the entirety of its sexual ethics comes into question. If the law cannot be compassionate in a case of clear need, then one of two very bad things can happen: people can learn that compassion is not a primary religious value, or they can come to question the validity of God's law. I would argue that both results are serious problems in the Jewish world today. In any event, the article is very short, so I wish I could link to it, but I can't, so you'll just have to buy the magazine.
posted by Noah at 3:48 PM

 
Wow; I take a couple of days off for Passover and all kinds of news happens.

* Arafat and Abu Mazen have made some kind of deal, obviously. It's inconceivable that the Chairman would allow himself to be shunted aside. What, precisely, are the dimensions of the deal we don't yet know, but we can rest assured that the deal will keep Arafat firmly in control. But Abu Mazen's installation gives Tony Blair the figleaf he needs to pursue the road map. It also ends any possibility of Martin Indyk's latest brainstorm - an American protectorate in the territories - being enacted, since (whether Indyk understands this or not), such a course would be predicated on the end of the P.A. and of negotiations with Israel. It's a variation on the idea of an imposed settlement which actually looked like not so terrible an idea back before Israel's invasion of the territories, but which now is highly unrealistic. This is a period of great diplomatic danger for Israel: the stars are lining up for a major push for uncompensated Israeli concessions. But I'm actually pretty optimistic about this government's ability to navigate these treacherous waters.

* The capture of Tariq Aziz is a very good omen for our ability to clean up the rest of the leadership, and for being able to make sense of what last minute deals were struck between the Iraqi leadership and the Syrian government. Speaking of which: I have to disagree with Stanley Kurtz on this one, something I don't like to do. The momentum building for some kind of action against Syria - whether diplomatic or military - is enormously positive. Hezbollah is a real threat to Americans (though obviously far more so to Israelis) and Syria is a major terror sponsor. It's also the only practical way for Iran to wreak global havoc with plausible deniability. It's also a totally bankrupt country with no real friends left on earth. We should be able to pressure a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon without military action. Where military action will be needed is in eliminating Hezbollah. The best way to do it would be to have the Lebanese do it themselves. America owes a debt of honor to Lebanon; our two countries have a long history together, and America basically abandoned the country to be devoured by the Syrians after the attack on the Marine barracks. A credible threat of American force really could push the Syrians out without a shot being fired. And it would very much be in an independent Lebanon's interest to eliminate the Hezbollah, which is the biggest obstacle to their full reconnection to the community of nations. Of course, the second-biggest obstacle is the continued presence of the descendants of Palestinian refugees in Lebanese camps. Unfortunately, there is no way to finally stabilize Lebanon without a solution to their plight, and that solution is a bit elusive. In any event, it is absolutely true that Syria is the keystone to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, but only in the sense that longstanding Syrian obstructionism and war-mongering has made peace impossible. Bibi Netanyahu leaned all the way out of the window to get a deal with Assad the elder (so far out that his own former Defense Minister, Yitzchak Mordechai, running as the Center Party's candidate for PM in 1999, dared Netanyahu in a televised debate to say that he didn't promise essentially the entire Golan to Assad in exchange for peace). Hafez al-Assad wouldn't take it. Bashar is, if anything, worse, because he shows signs of being under the spell of Hezbollah. If you really believe that peace between Israel and the Arabs is the key to ending the terrorist threat from the region, then you should favor strong action against Syria and Hezbollah.

* And there's another, even more pressing reason for taking out Hezbollah: Iran. The most recent issue of The Jerusalem Report - which everyone interested in the region should read - spent most of the issue on the threat from Iran. I wrote something earlier in the week about how imperative it is to control the transfer of nuclear technology. Well, it seems that Iran is now far enough along in its nuclear ambitions that Russian help, while nice, is no longer necessary. They can do it on their own: they have designed their own centrefuges, they have their own uranium sources, and the design of the actual bomb itself is not terribly complicated. They are also developing intercontinental ballistic missiles of their own. So that makes three nations too far along the nuclear road to stop which are potential serious threats to America: Pakistan, North Korea and Iran. So what does this have to do with taking out Hezbollah? Iran for the past couple of years has been boiling over with discontent; the population is overwhelmingly sick of the regime and ready to rejoin the world community. I don't know if they would abandon their nuclear program even after a revolution. But I think the odds are very good that a new regime would be more friendly to the West, which would either make their nuclear ambitions less problematic or potentially raise the real prospect of bribing them to give those ambitions up. There are huge demonstrations planned for July 9. I don't know how much America can do to support internal efforts to overthrow the regime. But the key factor we can affect is the perception of the Iranian military of the risk of sticking with this regime. And that's where Hezbollah comes in. America, in its war on terror to-date, has taken out Iran's enemies but done nothing to touch Iranian assets. We have attacked the Sunni al-Qaeda but not the Shiite Hezbollah, though both have killed hundreds of Americans and have declared themselves at war with America. We have overthrown Taleban Afghanistan and Baathist Iraq, leaving both countries potentially ripe for Iranian influence. We have no interest in direct conflict with Iran. But Iran also has no interest in direct conflict with us, at least not yet. An American campaign to wipe out Hezbollah would potentially cause a crisis for the regime. It would make it clear to everyone that America is going to take out Iranian-backed terror groups as well as Sunni groups. It would force Iran's leadership to decide whether it will defend its friends or abandon them at the first sign of trouble. Doing nothing would raise real credibility problems for the regime; to use a popular phrase, they would look like a "weak horse" - a "paper tiger" even. But doing anything overt in support of Hezbollah would be extremely dangerous. Action against Hezbollah will also clear up in the Iranian people's minds that a choice is to be made: stick with the current regime, and ultimately face the real prospect of direct conflict with America, or get rid of it and open up the prospect of not only friendship with the West but a position of extraordinary security and influence throughout its near neighborhood. Right now, a lot of Iranians seem to think that it's at least possible that America is afraid of confronting the regime, and many more think that the regime's foreign policy is not really something the West has a problem with. The most important audience for this message is the Iranian military, because if the people rise up against the regime then the only thing that can save the regime is if it is willing the massacre the people (as the Chinese did in 1989). And to do that, they have to have the military in their corner, at least passively. If the regular army sides with the people, the security services will fold, because they will not believe they could win an actual civil war, and would prefer to save their skins. That, anyway, is my suspicion. So it is very important that the military get the message that, if they side with the regime against the people, they are putting themselves on a likely course for war with America. They do not want that.

* I don't agree with Stanley Kurtz that, given our manpower constraints, we need to consolidate our gains before taking on new challenges. The best defense is a good offense. We should not forget that both the Baath leadership and the Taleban largely melted away. We have not captured most of the leadership. Both groups are out there, presumably plotting their return to power. Moreover, in their absence, Iran is moving in to fill the power vacuum. Every move we've made so far in the 9-11 war has been to Iran's geostrategic benefit. We can't consolidate here, because that would only mean handing the initiative to the Iranians, who will be convinced that we are afraid of confronting them, and to the remnants of the Taleban and the Iraqi Baathists. Both groups can be confronted in Syria, Iran's primary client state and the probable hideout of various members of the Iraqi leadership.

* How do we accomplish both? How do we consolidate our position in Iraq and Afghanistan while preparing for possible conflict in Syria and Korea? We clearly need more manpower - from home, and from our allies - to do the job. Kurtz has promised a piece on how to grow the military at home. I think we also have to become more creative about growing it abroad. If we don't want to actually create an American version of the Foreign Legion - something Jonah Goldberg has advocated in the past, and which I touched on with my suggestion a few weeks ago that we consider actively recruiting for the American military in Mexico, Central America and the Philippines specifically - then we need to start working on building alliances with foreign militaries to operate on a global scale. The Poles seem ready for action. The Canadians used to be fabulous allies for this sort of thing; I think it would be worth just about any concession on trade or water rights or what have you to woo them back. We can't rely on UN peacekeeping forces for the kinds of jobs we will have to do in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. And we can't rely on local powers like Turkey. And we obviously can't rely on NATO. And we can't stretch the Brits too thin any more than we can stretch ourselves. In any event, we need to be working on this problem right now, 'cause there's no time to waste.

* In the meantime, a brief word of praise for this fellow Garner we've sent to Iraq. In the words of an originally skeptical Iraqi: he's the genuine article. He looks to be a wonderful choice for the job. And if his work in Iraqi Kurdistan is any precedent, the country will be mostly self-governing in a matter of months, which would be very good. I do think an American presence will be necessary for much longer than that because the central government will not be strong enough for while to confront real threats, whether internal (Kurdish separatism, Shiite revolutionaries, Baathist thugs) or external (Iran, Turkey), and because we will need to shepherd the country through de-Baathification. But we don't need permanent military bases in the country (one thing this war proved is just how militarily capable we are when *denied* prime military launching pads, in this case in Saudi Arabia and Turkey), and we don't need a long period of American administration. I'm still very wary of the long-term future of Iraq. I think the best-case outcome is that it becomes a weak state dependent on American protection, which is why I think the stakes for regime change in Iran have gotten even higher post-war. But I'm more optimistic than in the past about how we're going to handle the transition to self-rule in Iraq. The country is not going to become a democracy so quickly. But I'm more optimistic than I used to be that it could evolve into something like what Lebanon was back before the civil war. And that would be a big improvement.
posted by Noah at 12:39 PM

 
You know, it's starting to look really possible that the "road map" is never going to get released. If Abu Mazen really refuses to become PM because of Arafat's interference - and specifically Arafat's refusal to approve the disarmament of the Fatah-affiliated terrorist groups like the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - how can anyone credibly assert that "reform" has taken place in the P.A.? And absent any real reform, how can the Quartet promulgate their "road map" for a settlement?

Of course, if the Quartet were determined to hand the P.A. a victory regardless of the circumstances, as no doubt Jacques Chirac would prefer, then yes, they certainly could promulgate whatever they like under whatever circumstances they like. But Bush has no intention of participating in a scheme to rehabilitate Arafat. I have no doubt that, along with all other American Presidents since Truman, Bush favors a peaceful settlement of the conflict based on territorial compromise in the Land of Israel. He's gone on record as supporting the creation of a Palestinian State, following the lead of the last Israeli Labor government and alongside the current Likud government, whose PM has similarly voiced support for such a state. But Bush has been no less - rather, more - unequivocal in his rejection of Arafat for his duplicity and his involvement in terrorism since 1999. Blair, meanwhile, more forcefully supports a settlement that he would consider just in view of Palestinian claims, but he also has no intention of being played for a fool. Even Joschka Fischer is not a heartfelt enemy of Israel, nor a confirmed cynic like his boss. I find it very hard to believe that these fellows really intend to reward Arafat for spitting in their faces. I still think that kind of self-abasement is reserved for the Swedes.

Anyhow, we'll see soon enough.
posted by Noah at 4:09 PM

 
It being Passover, let us now praise famous Egyptians.

There is a reason that I consistently take a more optimistic line on Egypt than pretty much anyone else who is as pessimistic as I am about the Middle East. The reason: Egypt produced the Arab world's only patriot.

I'm not sure that's an overstatement. Anwar al-Sadat is the only Arab leader I can think of who chose to take real personal risks not for personal survival (plenty have done that) or for personal glory (a few have done that, too), but for the national interest - in his case, the interest of Egypt. People should remember that once upon a time, Egypt mattered in the world. It was the vanguard Third World nation, led by the charismatic and genuinely popular Gemal Abdel Nasser. When Nasser threw his lot in with the Soviet Union, it was a huge coup for the Soviets, and the Soviets pretty much gave Nasser's regime anything it wanted. Egypt has the largest population in the Arab world, contains the oldest and most prestigious Islamic university, had its largest military, etc., etc.

Nasser squandered all this potential and nobody noticed. He devoted his energies to grandstanding and to a disastrous war with Israel. No Arab country suffered as much from the 1967 war as Egypt, and no country had less reason to start the war. Egypt lost a large and somewhat valuable swathe of territory, lost effective independent control of the Suez Canal, lost its entire air force, much of its army, huge numbers of lives - and for what? Apparently, because they thought Israel was going to attack Syria and didn't want the dishonor of not helping out a fellow Arab state. Jordan, meanwhile, lost a big headache (also known as the Palestinians) and Syria lost the ability to rain shells down on Israel.

Sadat, when he assumed power, rebuilt the Egyptian military, and led it to its only battlefield victory in the country's modern history: the crossing of the Suez Canal at the outset of the 1973 war. It was a limited achievement, but nonetheless a success, and it had a profound psychological effect in both Egypt and Israel. From the beginning, the October War was conceived as much in political as military terms - the objective was not to overrun the Sinai but to force a negotiated solution to Israel's occupation thereof on terms favorable to the Egyptians. Given subsequent events, one can only conclude that Egypt won the 1973 war.

Sadat won that war, ultimately, by waging peace. He threw out the Soviets and invited in the Americans, making an early and extremely prescient call on who was to be the likely victor in the Cold War. Sadat surely knew that switching sides in the Cold War meant ending the hot war with Israel. But he went further, and dramatically announced his willingness to go to Jerusalem to meet with the Israelis. No Arab leader has ever been so bold in rejecting the ideology of anti-Zionism that has poisoned Arab politics and culture for three generations. It is not that Sadat had any predisposition to be friendly to Jews or Israel. Sadat had professed his admiration for Hitler both during and after the Second World War, and had devoted himself to a political movement organized around rejection of Zionism and the unification of the Arab "nation." He turned his back on all that, for the sake of Egypt. He chose his country over his ideology, which took a surprisingly clear view of reality for a dictator. But he also turned his back on his own personal glory for the sake of his country. He was villified to the end of his life for betraying the Arab cause - not only elsewhere in the Arab world but in Egypt as well. Had he persisted in war, he would have been praised for his constancy. Had he simply toned down the hostility but refused to make peace, he would have gotten some of what he ultimately got, but he would have escaped villification. Instead, he behaved like a real patriot, and reaped assassination for it.

Now, I don't mean to make Sadat out to be some kind of saint. He was corrupt, among other things. But that's not my point. My point is not that he was a holy man; he wasn't. My point was that he was a patriot. Contra M. Villepin, idolator of Napoleon Bonaparte those who love their country are not those who bleed her for the sake of their own glory, not even if the glory is, in some sense shared with the nation. That was Nasser's way, and the Egyptians loved him for it. No, one who loves his country is one of subordinates his own interest to that of the nation, who renounces personal glory and even personal safety for the good of his people. That's what Sadat did, in a very fundamental way. It doesn't make him a saintly man. But it makes him very exceptional in an Arab world dominated by thugs and demagogues.

There are other Arab leaders who have been "good guys" - who have promoted some degree of liberalization, who have been friendly to the West or to Israel, who have been slow to wage war and resisted demagoguery, and so forth. I can say nice things about Abdullah of Jordan and his father, about Hassan of Morocco; I can muster up praise for some Qataris and Bahrainis and certainly for the Tunisians. But Egypt is the only country to have produced a patriot. And that is why I continue to be optimistic about the country. Because if it produced one, why not two? Why not a generation, a generation of leaders dedicated not to national glory and imperial war, nor to corruption and the looting of their people, but to their people's welfare. They have a native example to emulate.
posted by Noah at 7:36 PM

 
Want proof America isn't an imperial power? We're not doing stuff like this: chopping up Iraq to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

No, seriously, this is a fantasy that I've indulged in myself in the past, but it will never happen and it's time to stop fantasizing. America is in a position to obliterate any army on earth, but we are in no position to carve up the world the way Britain did 75 years ago. Any effort to do so would have absolutely no legitimacy. Putting a Hashemite in charge of Iraq and the West Bank would just guarantee the fall of the Hashemite family. I would love to find a Jordanian solution to the Palestinian problem. Indeed, I think there is no other possible solution; even a nominally independent Palestinian state will be a practical dependency of its neighbors, and therefore could only come into being with the active involvement of the Jordanians. Yosef Goell claims to be looking for nothing more than a "cold peace" with the Palestinians, and not a permanent solution. But a "cold peace" was possible with Egypt because Egypt was led by a patriot, Anwar Sadat, who chose his nation's interest over his own glory, and was killed for it. The Palestinian people do not want such a leader. Benny Morris, famous for his revisionist (not Revisionist) accounts of the 1948 war, wrote a devastating piece in a recent New Republic (available for subscribers only here) about just how committed the Palestinian people are to the elimination of Israel, and just how willing they are to sacrifice their own and their children's and their children's children's lives for the sake of that cause. So long as that remains the case, even a cold peace is impossible, and the Hashemites would be fools to bloody their hands by getting involved.

Speaking of the Palestinians and their leaders: the struggle between Abu Mazen and Yasser Arafat is really quite interesting, and somewhat unexpected. That is to say: I never expected such a struggle to be so open. Abu Mazen has been a kind of "pocket moderate" - agreeing with Arafat on all things but keeping his hands sufficiently clean that the Israelis still feel they can deal with him (unlike, say, Arafat).

The main source of the dispute between Arafat and Abu Mazen is Abu Mazen's determination to install Mohammed Dahlan in his cabinet. Dahlan has a reputation for being both credible on "the street" and credible with the Israelis (the latter meaning that he has taken concrete action to thwart terrorist attacks originating from Gaza). I have always been skeptical of this profile. I think it's mostly an artifact of Dahlan's presence in Gaza rather than in, say, the West Bank. Jibril Rajoub was similarly considered credible until Israel invaded the West Bank territories of the P.A. His utter inability to resist the Israeli invasion devastated his credibility. Well, Israel has not imposed itself so strongly on Gaza because, for simple geographic reasons, Gaza is more easily contained. So Dahlan has never had to choose, and consequently he remains credible. In any event, the very best that may be said about him is that he may be - may be - an "our thug" type. I am very skeptical that he could survive any serious effort to crush Hamas, or even the terrorist groups under the Fatah umbrella. So what is the point of him? Well, right now the point of him is that he is not Arafat, and humiliating and weakening Arafat is an absolute precondition to any kind of progress. It's a necessary, but far from sufficient condition.

(I say humiliating, by the way, because that is the only way to decisively remove Arafat from power. If he goes down fighting, he doesn't go down.)

It will be interesting to see what the Europeans do if Arafat and Abu Mazen break publicly and Arafat tries to pick another, more plible Prime Minister. Will they actually admit that the rais is something of a problem? I doubt it. I'm still a seller of the proposition that the Iraq war will do anything to improve the situation in Israel and the territories. *Nothing* will improve that situation - not for another generation.
posted by Noah at 6:59 PM

 
Backlog of things I've been thinking about #517: controlling nuclear power.

A primary justification for the war in Iraq was the need to prevent that country from developing nuclear weapons. We can all wring our hands about chemical weapons, but they are not terribly useful on the battlefield. They are really terror weapons, useful primarily against unarmed civilians. Devoting a lot of energy to them is prima facie evidence of the terroristic nature of a regime, but otherwise it doesn't tell us much. After all, you can terrorize people with other weapons a lot easier than with chemicals (for example, by flying airplanes into office buildings, or by driving a truck with a fertiziler bomb up to a somewhat smaller office building). But nuclear weapons are the one class of weapons that really do level the playing field. Even a puny military power can cause enormous damage to the enemy with such weapons, and thereby both deter attack and extort money and other concessions by threat - and, in the worst case, with terrorist delivery such weapons could kill millions of people while leaving the attacked country little in the way of a plausible response.

But the reason Iraq came close to developing nuclear weapons twice before (and we feared they would come close again) is because countries like France readily and willingly sold them the necessary technology and materials, even when doing so meant winking at or violating international law.

Now, nuclear energy is not going to go away. Rather, it is inevitably going to expand to become the primary source of energy for the planet. Fossil fuels will not last forever, and besides, much of the world's oil lies under, shall we say, politically unreliable regions of the world. France already gets 60% of its electricity from nuclear power; the U.S. gets 20%. (We get over 50% of our electricity from coal, and most of the rest from natural gas or hydropower; we get a negligible percentage from oil.) New fuel cell technologies are going to make it possible to store that power in a portable form and use it to power transportation, now the world's primary use of oil. The only way we're going to power continued economic growth for ourselves, plus the emergence of powers like China and India to developed status, is by dramatic expansion of nuclear energy. If you worry about the greenhouse effect, that increases the need to go nuclear. If you worry about the political consequences of dependency on Persian Gulf oil, that further increases the need to go nuclear. Bottom line: our future is nuclear.

But the ability to get watts out of uranium brings with it the ability to get bombs out of it. Yeah, there are better and worse technologies, and yes, you can build a bomb without having a nuclear power plant. But North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Lybia and the rest of the crew don't want reactors for electricity. They want them so they can build atomic bombs.

If we really don't want them to get the bomb, it seems to me we have three ways of preventing it:

* The carrot: bribe them not to cross the nuclear threshold. This works better for friends and neutrals than for enemies, and even then only for some friends. Taiwan, South Korea, Germany and Japan all prefer the American promise of protection to reliance on their own nuclear deterrent. Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Kazakhstan all preferred improving relations with the outside world to pursuing their nuclear ambitions. North Korea we know will deposit their bribe and immediately resume work on their bomb-making. But even non-axis members will sometimes be hard to convince to denuclearize, if they have a good reason to want the bomb. Try convincing Israel - or Pakistan, or Russia - to give up their nuclear deterrent. For that matter, try convincing even a friendly and democratic Iran of the future that they don't need one. They live in a rough neighborhood, after all.

* The stick: as everyone has noted, the Iraq war has had a salutary effect on the situation in Korea, convincing both South Korea and North Korea that we mean business. I continue to believe that the former is more important than the latter (we can't trust North Korea ever, but if South Korea is afraid that the U.S. might go it alone in North Korea, then they will be much more inclined to get behind us rather than play spoiler - which, in turn, should make it easier for us to bring any pressure we can think of to bear). But even so, it is not inconceivable that military action against actual and potential proliferators could ultimately make even enemy countries think twice about acquiring nuclear weapons. If they attract attack rather than deterring it, then there really isn't much point in acquisition, after all. But it's probably not credible to threaten to invade *anyone* who looks likely to get the bomb. And if that's the case, then eventually enough borderline states (e.g. Pakistan) will have nuclear capabilities that it will be practically impossbile to keep these weapons out of the hands of the undeterrable loonies. So what does that leave?

* The fence: this is the strategy that conservatives are least likely to prefer, but it seems to me that it has an essential role if we are going to have any hope of controlling the spread of nuclear weapons. No one - I mean no one - should be exporting nuclear technology. Nuclear power should be a monopoly of the nuclear club. The rest of the world can just buy fuel cells from us. Yeah, that means restraining trade, and economic growth, and it means cooperating with annoying powers like France and empowering supra-national organizations and all the things that give the CATO Institute hives. But Ronald Reagan was devoted to the cause of restricting technology transfer to the Soviets, and it seems to me the case against transfer of nuclear technology to any non-nuclear state is even more clear-cut.

We're now engaged in what amounts to a global war to ensure that a terrorist doesn't blow up an American city. If all we accomplish is to help deter would-be nuclear countries from taking the fateful leap, that'll be worth a lot. But we shouldn't neglect the other aspects of the fight because of ideological blinders. After all, democratizing Iraq merits plenty of skepticism, but a whole lot of conservatives have convinced themselves it's worth it to engage in nation-building in this instance. So let's take a look at technology controls again, too.
posted by Noah at 3:05 PM

 
I've been pretty sceptical of the whole Abu Mazen PM-ship, but things look like they might just actually be getting interesting. I think I need to read up on the situation a bit more. Here's a start in Ha'aretz.
posted by Noah at 10:52 PM

 
An excellent piece in The Spectator about why Britain should withdraw from the EU. Some other countries to invite in to an expanded customs union that (in the author's view) would include the EU plus Britain, Russia and Turkey: Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Egypt. Why should France get to posture as leader of the Arab and African worlds? They're the ones keeping the Turks out of the EU and their former colonies (e.g. the Ivory Coast) under their thumb militarily.

And I wonder if the Poles would even want to join the EU if they had a realistic alternative? Are agricultural subsidies really worth subservience to Franco-Germany? That's the question that should be at the forefront of every Central European state now that the plans for the EU Constitution have been unveiled. Here's hoping the answer is "no."
posted by Noah at 9:45 PM

 
I know, I've been a fountain of excuses lately. Why am I not posting about the impact of our victory in Iraq on North Korea's behavior (or, more important in my view, South Korea's)? Why am I not posting about the paradox of nuclear power in an age of petroleum-financed terrorism? Why am I not responding to the cascade of posts by Stanley Kurtz in The Corner? Why haven't I written that bit I've been working on in my head about Franklin Graham's mission to Iraq, the neo-cons' idealistic imperialism, and transactional altruism versus the international welfare state? (Sounds intriguing, no?) Why haven't I responded to Benny Morris's piece in The New Republic about the Palestinians? Or the piece by Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal about British imperialism and its lessons for us?

Why? Because Passover is just around the corner, I'm hosting 2 seders this year, and here's the menu:

Date/Almond/Pistachio Haroset
Tarragon eggs
Chicken soup with matzoh balls
Composed roast asparagus and bitter green salad with mushroom ragu
Fried fish cakes with parsley and preserved lemon sauce
Chicken, meatballs and cardoons stewed in wine, garnished with fried artichokes and served in an egg-lemon sauce
Roast stuffed breast of veal
Matzoh farfel stuffing with apricots and Moroccan sausage
Roasted sweet potato and squash dice
Hot and sweet stewed parsnips
Pan fried cucumber, tomato and mint salad
Chocolate nut cake
Fruit salad
Cookies

Okay, so my sister is bringing the cake, my mother's bringing the matzoh balls, and we bought the cookies. But otherwise I'm cooking all of the above. So stop making me feel guilty. I'll be back on chol ha-moed. (Promises, promises . . .)
posted by Noah at 10:51 PM

 
Question for the demographically knowledgeable: when did Iran undergo the demographic transition? And why?

I think this is an important question. According to the CIA World Factbook, Iran's fertility rate is right at replacement: 2.01 children per woman. This is, to say the least, not typical of the region. Here are some comparisons to neighboring countries:

Iraq: 4.63
Saudi Arabia: 6.21
Kuwait: 3.14
Jordan: 3.15
Turkey: 2.07
Pakistan: 4.25
Afghanistan: 5.72
Turkmenistan: 3.54
Armenia: 1.53
Azerbaijan: 2.29

The only country in the vicinity with a lower fertility rate is Christian and post-Soviet Armenia. Iran, a fundamentalist Muslim theocracy, has roughly the same fertility rate as secular Turkey (or, for that matter, the USA).

When did this transition to lower fertility happen? It can't have happened that long ago, because 31% of the population is under 14 (versus 21% in the US and 24% in China). Could we just be dealing with the after-effects of economic development under the Shah?

This seems to me significant, because the demographic transition is a very good shorthand, I think, for a whole host of cultural developments that can be simply described as "good." I've harped in the past on how Iran is a good candidate for democracy because of (a) its strong national identity, and (b) its miserable experience with theocratic dictatorship. But this is another positive factor: it already has the demography of a country that has made or is making the transition. But it's still an interesting puzzle how this cultural "readiness" came about in a country *under* theocratic dictatorship. Could Iran ultimately turn out to be more analogous to, say, Spain than to any Middle Eastern state?
posted by Noah at 5:15 PM

 
BTW: apropos of my earlier complaints about the quality of conservative commentary on the democracy-in-Iraq question, I think the series of pieces by Hussain Hindawi and John R. Thomson that NRO is publishing are a good start. Maybe we'll see more and better material on this question now that the war is mostly won. But if what came before was cheerleading rather than analysis, well, caveat emptor for the future to all us readers. My view: that's not a journalist's job.

My newest and growing worry is: who is going to defend the Iraqis from Turkey, Iran, etc.? We really don't want this job. It doesn't look like the Iraqis will be very good at doing it themselves. It's a problem.
posted by Noah at 2:02 PM

 
Well, this is a good day. Saddam is either dead or in the Russian embassy or hiding somewhere in Tikrit, soon to be the largest parking lot in free Iraq. Baghdadis are rejoicing over the fallen statues of their former tyrant. In spite of the individual tragedies of war that anti-war friends and family have assiduously sent me emails about, this was, essentially, a cake-walk. The Turks didn't invade. The Iranians didn't invade. The Iraqis are increasingly demonstrative in their joy at liberation. Allied casualties were much lower than feared, and Iraqi civilian casualties appear to have been astonishingly low (though not, of course, zero).

Of course, the war isn't over yet. Tikrit has not yet been made into a parking lot. There are various cities in the north of the country to be liberated. There will be pockets of terrorist resistance, Iraqi and non-Iraqi, pretty much indefinitely, I expect. And there may yet be some kind of spectacular reaction - unrest in Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan; terrorism in the U.S. or U.K., a Franco-Iranian nuclear alliance; who knows. Nonetheless, we're due a moment of rejoicing. And then we'd best get back to work. What are the lessons of this war? What are the big challenges ahead?

There are three big lessons of the war, it seems to me.

First: Everywhere is now America's backyard, and everyone knows it. In retrospect, the war this conflict resembles most closely is not Operation Desert Storm (Gulf War I) but Operation Just Cause, the invasion of Panama to remove Noreiga. No one much protested that war because it was in America's "Sphere of Influence" - our backyard. (Defending Noriega was also a pretty ludicrous proposition, but that never stopped people from defending Saddam.) Similarly, no one is protesting French intervention in the Ivory Coast (except the Ivoireans). What we have just demonstrated to the world is that everywhere is now our own backyard. With only one significant ally (Britain), without much regional support (we prepared for war without Saudi support, and we executed without Turkish support, and how much do tiny sheikdoms like Kuwait and Qatar really count?), without the blessing of the "international community" we came in, did the job, and did so much more quickly and cleanly than anyone had any right to expect (even if some of the more enthusiastic hawks did indeed lead them to expect that). We have just made the whole world our "Sphere of Influence." The world is going to note that. We'll see what they are going to do about it - and what they can.

Second: there was no Iraqi army. This should not have been a surprise, really, but people keep expecting Arab armies to perform well, and they never do. Ken Pollack's book, Arabs at War, is quite instructive. Arab armies have performed horribly in virtually every war, against every kind of enemy - not only against Israel, the U.S. or a European opponent, but against other less-developed countries and against each other. Iraq barely prevailed over Iran in thoroughly lopsided contests in their war; Lybia was defeated by poorly armed Chadeans; even against other Arab armies, Arab armies perform poorly, as the example of Egypt's Yemen adventure proves. Why this is so is a good question, and certainly many factors are relevant: the poor quality of their conscripts, the politicization of the military, the over-centralization of control and inability of junior officers to improvise on the battlefield, the reliance on technology and theoretical warfighting models without regard to the army's actual capabilities, and the pronounced tendency of officers in the field to lie grossly about battlefield performance to avoid passing negative information and assessments up the command chain - all these are unquestionably important factors in the incredibly poor performance of well-equipped and numerically impressive Arab armies in virtually all conflicts in which they have been engaged. In Iraq, add the additional element that the putative leader of the armed forces himself had virtually no military experience, that Iraq is not a nation and there is no national support for Saddam, and it becomes truly unsurprising that it turns out there was no Iraqi army. The Iraqi army, and particularly the Republican Guard and the fedayeen irregulars, were a purely terroristic force: capable of inflicting harm almost exclusively on the unarmed, whether Iraqi civilians, enemy civilians, or enemy support, and completely incapable of defending civilians or inflicting harm on enemy armies.

Third: the WMDog did not bark. I find this quite significant, the most significant of the three lessons because the most surprising. We knew how strong we were, and we knew how weak they were. But I fully expected Saddam Hussein to use chemical weapons against American troops and/or Israel, to use his terrorist army for the one thing it was good for: terror. I couldn't imagine why he *had* these weapons if not for just such an eventuality. But he didn't use them. Why not? It seems to me there are a finite number of possible answers. One answer - and quite a plausible one - is that chemical weapons are lousy battlefield weapons, something Gregg Easterbrook argued very effectively in a New Republic article some months ago about how nuclear weapons really are the only weapons of mass destruction. Chemical weapons are terror weapons; they are best used against defenseless civilians. They are not terribly useful weapons against an enemy army. So why would Saddam use them? They couldn't defend him, and they would only make his villainy absolutely clear if he did. This does raise the question of why he would bother to stockpile these weapons at all. I think the answer is twofold: first, terror weapons are useful to a regime that lives by terror. They made no meaningful contribution to the Iran-Iraq war, but they did effectively terrorize Kurdish villagers. Second, I suspect that these weapons have an inherent fascination for a sadist like Saddam. Though they are unlikely to be very useful, their very gruesomeness makes them irresistable. But there are other potential reasons why the weapons were not used. Perhaps they were in place but Iraqi troops refused to obey orders, mindful of allied propaganda that any officers who did use chemical arms would be tried as war criminals. Perhaps Saddam was actually surprised by the pace of the allied advance, and so was unprepared to unleash his arsenal; he did, after all, mine the oil fields, but never got a chance to set them ablaze. Or perhaps Saddam was incapacitated by our first-day strike, and never had the chance to give any orders to the field. In any event, the fact that chemical arms were not used has implications for our behavior in future conflicts, and those implications depend on the reason why they were not used. If they were not used because they were useless, the lesson is that we should not be deterred by their presence in the enemy's arsenal. If they were not used because we successfully cut the chain of command, then this strategy becomes a more important part of our warfighting when we approach potential conflicts elsewhere in the world. But we must be careful: North Korea's field officers may not be as incapable as the Iraqis, and may be more willing to act on their own initiative to cause destruction.

The conduct of the war has implications for the future of Iraq. The UN, France and Russia have no basis for claiming a role in the post-war reconstruction and political tutelage of Iraq. The UN should be brought in somehow as a figleaf, and we absolutely need to be cognizant of the interests of other countries in the region, but France should be completely frozen out of any political process. That's the way they apparently want to play the game, and they should see what it feels like to lose, decisively.

By the same token, no Iraqi group is in a position to demand concessions of the occupying forces, because they contributed very little to the liberation of their country. In Afghanistan, we fought a war with a small number of highly-trained troops and the help of an indigenous rebel force. The big upside was our ability to prosecute the war quickly. The downsides were twofold: we failed to achieve some of our objectives because the locals did not share those objectives (e.g. the capture or death of bin Laden), and we are now, in the post-war situation, highly dependent on the good will of those locals, whose parochial interests may not dovetail (and may in fact run counter to) our interests and the interests of Afghanistan. In Iraq, we fought a war with a large number of troops, and had by and large no help from the locals. We certainly could have made more use of the Kurds; we didn't because we didn't want to be dependent on them. We sought help from the Turks, and it's probably a good thing we didn't get it because now we don't owe them much either. We can therefore mediate between Kurdish demands and the needs of a unitary Iraq relatively free of encumbring commitments. By the same token, we neither fought under the banner of an Iraqi government in exile nor did we cut a deal with a Baathist defector. We allowed Poland to make more of a contribution to the coalition than Ahmad Chalabi. As a result, *no Iraqi group can claim, with any plausibility, to have liberated Iraq.* This is significant. A founding myth of post-war France revolves around de Gaul's declaration upon the liberation of Paris that the city was liberated by her own citizens. That was only the case because the Americans and British let his Free French do so as a gesture of goodwill and a sop to French pride. One wonders whether that sop hasn't ultimately proved expensive. No such sop has been given to the peoples of Iraq.

This doesn't mean we should ignore or sideline the Iraqi exiles or other opposition groups. On the contrary: we need to do everything possible to lend legitimacy to whatever government emerges. But we can assess these various groups' cooperativeness with a cold eye, and that's a very good thing. Their legitimacy needs to stem in part from their visible commitment to serve the interests of Iraq, rather than a parochial or personal interest, and that's something we are in a better position to be arbiter of given how the war went than we were in Afghanistan given how that war went.

Some things to think about, pursuant to the lessons above:

* If everywhere on earth is now America's back-yard, how do leverage our position rather than being leveraged by other powers? Other powers will seek to free-ride on our position as Top Dog by taking pot-shots at us from the sidelines while we deal with problems that affect them as much as us. I'm not thinking of France here; France is worse. I'm thinking of countries like Germany and South Korea. How do we turn that dynamic around? I think we do it in two ways. First, we will still need actual allies, not just the fig leaf of international support. Some of these will be dictated by particular situations, but others could be global partners. These need not only be significant second-tier powers like Britain. They could be smaller countries (like Poland) or less-developed countries (like the Philippines). Incremental additions to manpower available, and particularly to technically skilled manpower like special forces or hazmat teams, are going to be very welcome. Second, our ability to "do it alone" should have a real impact on, for example, South Korea's willingness to double-game in their own theater. Perhaps we don't need South Korea as a staging area for war against the North. Perhaps we are not so afraid of escalation of a regional conflict into war with China. If to date, as I have argued, both American belligerence and American appeasement towards North Korea push South Korea away from the U.S. and towards China, perhaps now the dynamic has changed, and the South Koreans will say to themselves: gee, if America is threatened, they will go to war whether we give approval or no. Don't we want to be sure that their war plan takes our interests maximally into account?

* If Saddam's Iraq really had no armed forces, what should the armed forces of post-Saddam Iraq look like? If there are deep cultural reasons why Arab armies perform poorly, is it likely that a post-Saddam Iraqi military will become professional, politically inactive, and effective and providing Iraq with security against its neighbors (many of whom have territorial claims against the country)? In the past, the military has chiefly been used to keep the country together by force (the first Kurdish wars were fought not long after formal independence from Britain). If we don't want them used for that in the future, how will we prevent it? And if we manage to construct a post-Saddam Iraq with a small military, unthreatening to its own people or to the democratic character of the state, who will guarantee the country's security against its neighbors? For a time, of course, we will, but this situation cannot last, for military reasons (we can't afford to keep a huge force there indefinitely) and political ones (if you think the South Koreans resent our troops' presence in their country, you can imagine how the Iraqis will feel in fairly short order). So we need to start thinking about this.

* If WMD was not a factor in this war, should we discount it in the future? The U.S. is proving harder to deter than previously expected. This is, on the whole, a good thing, and will pay what John Derbyshire refers to today as a "victory dividend." But we've also undoubtedly set off a furious search for an effective deterrent on the part of those who wish still to deter us. Iran is surely stepping up efforts to obtain a working nuclear weapon; since we have still not taken military action against a nuclear-armed country, it is still plausible to believe that nuclear weapons would decisively deter us from action. We will probably need to break this taboo in the course of this war, whether in North Korea or Pakistan or Iran or somewhere. We will need to prove that we can take out an enemy's nuclear deterrent - that, in effect, it is no deterrent, but rather a provocation to American attack. That, in turn, would be a powerful deterrent to other nations to acquire nuclear weapons: the fear that, rather than deterring America, they would encourage an American attack. (Other nations might still seek to acquire nuclear weapons for the purpose of deterring conventional attack by nations other than America; Israel and Pakistan are the paradigm cases in this regard. They will be much tougher to handle; short of extending a NATO-like security guarantee, it's not clear how America could rationally persuade countries in their situation to forego nuclear weapons.)

Once again, the war in Iraq is not yet over, and the war in Iraq is not the end of the war begun on 9-11. But we are near the end of the beginning. Much more than the Afghan campaign, Operation Iraqi Freedom lays down a clear marker of progress in the larger war. There may - no doubt there will - be substantial reverses in the months and years ahead. We can be encouraged, nonetheless, that things have gone so well so far.
posted by Noah at 11:12 AM

 
Apologies to the readership. While I continue to be extraordinarily busy, that is not the only reason why blogging has been light. I've also been unable to get Blogger to publish *anything* for the past week. So again, apologies. I hope you haven't all abandoned me. Things seem to be working now, and a couple of posts below that vanished into the bowels of blogger last week have been disgorged. Out of date they are, but hopefully not completely worthless.
posted by Noah at 1:07 PM

 
1 in 3 Frenchmen hope for Iraqi victory.

I wonder if Ladbroke is making a market yet on civil war in France? I'm kind of serious here. There is a sizeable Muslim minority in France that is radically alienated from French institutions, geographically concentrated and surprisingly well-armed. There's also a sizeable minority of non-Muslim French who hate their civilization and would not defend it - the anti-globalization radicals. And, in the last Presidential election, one in five voters was willing to vote for a candidate of the radical right. Sounds to me like 40% of the country would willingly bring an end to the Fifth Republic, with one faction aiming to establish a radical left-wing regime frankly aiming to lead the Arab world and what is left of the EU against the United States and Britain, and with the other aiming to withdraw France from the world, expel a part of its Muslim population, and reassert a Catholic and ethnic-nationalist identity for the country.

Chirac is trying to ride the tiger. He opposes the U.S. enough to be a credible leader of the "non-aligned" world and tolerates anti-Semitic hooliganism to satisfy the mob. His goal is to keep the current establishment in power and leverage France's divisions into an advantage, positioning France as the "bridge" between East and West. He then hopes to spend the political capital earned by "standing up for France" on necessary economic and social changes (deregulation, more aggressive policing, etc.) and on consolidating France's position as leader of whatever remains of "Europe." But the tiger is going to get harder and harder to ride. Chirac's anti-American stance will raise expectations among the radicals that he has no hope of satisfying. And what happens then?

Wasn't it Louis XVI who said, "apres moi, le deluge"?
posted by Noah at 11:50 AM

 
The strange mood I'm in this morning prompts me to write a strange post.

Stanley Kurtz, one of my favorite pundits, has been pounding the table for some time about the need to increase the size of our armed forces. He points out that we now face a couple of acute crises that have or could quickly turn into wars (Iraq, North Korea), an ongoing war on terror that requires significant deployments all over the world (Philippines, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Georgia, Colombia), peacekeeping and nation-building missions that require significant deployments for both the core mission and force protection (Bosnia, Kossovo, Sinai, Afghanistan, soon to be Iraq), and looming threats that, while not acute, could develop into major wars quickly under certain circumstances (Iran, Taiwan). We have an official doctrine of being able to fight two wars in different theaters simultaneously, but no one really thinks that today we could fight full-scale wars in Iraq and North Korea at literally the same time, not without straining our resources to the limit and leaving us very vulnerable to any other crisis that might erupt. And even if the "transformation" enthusiats prove right about our ability to win battlefield victories with much leaner forces than the Army brass imagines, we cannot achieve the political aims of war without substantial forces on the ground for occupation, and those forces will themselves need protection. Once Iraq is won, we'll need to leave a lot of troops there to prevent it from turning into Bosnia, but those troops will be wanted elsewhere for warfighting missions.

But the proposed solutions to this manpower crisis all have their drawbacks. Kurtz has flirted with advocating reinstatement of the draft. But the draft is an extraordinarily inefficient means of staffing the armed forces. It maximizes economic disruption, delivers less-motivated and less-prepared recruits, and would likely degrade readiness for months or years while the armed forces adjusted to the influx. Kurtz argues that, over the long haul, a draft would reduce costs because we would need to pay draftees less than we would need to pay to entice additional volunteers. But I'm not sure he's right - or, rather, I think those "economies of scale" only kick in if we need to field a 5 or 10 million man army, which cannot be raised by any other means than conscription; they do not obtain if we need to increase our forces by, say, 50%, which I think is closer to the mark. There are cultural arguments for conscription (arguments I am critical of, by the way), but these are not really germane to the question at hand. The alternative to a draft, however, is quite expensive: raising pay is the only sure way to increase recruitment. Yeah, the President could issue a "call for volunteers" or otherwise attempt to effect cultural changes that would encourage more youngsters to join up. But these are unlikely to have effects other than at the margin in the absence of a national emergency.

Hence the following modest proposal: why not do for the Army what we do in every other "industry" where unit labor costs are too high to perform the mission, and employ foreigners?

According to an article in today's WSJ, there are about 30,000 non-citizens serving in our armed forces today. Only resident aliens can currently join, but it's not clear to me why that restriction serves our interests. Why not open the doors? How hard do you think it would be to recruit, say, 300,000 Mexicans and Filipinos (the nationalities with the greatest current representation in the U.S. armed forces) directly from their native countries to serve in the American armed forces, if the carrot dangled were a fast track to U.S. citizenship?

I'm sort of serious here. The big drain on manpower is not at the top of the skill chain. We need more boots on the ground to do occupation duty. We could rely on foreign armies to do this, but that means inviting these foreign powers into the decisionmaking process. It likely means handing over custody of places like Iraq to the United Nations, which does not obviously serve American interests; at the worst it means losing the peace altogether. We could achieve the same effect on a small scale by handing over some responsibilities to private contractors, something we're already doing in Afghanistan. Why not take control of the process by beefing up our armed forces with low-cost, high-motivation foreign recruits from countries that already have strong cultural ties to America?

Whaddaya think, Stanley?
posted by Noah at 10:23 AM

 
A few observations after a week of war:

First, I continue to be baffled by the way everyone seems to be reporting on the war. It seems obvious to me that the war is going extremely well, and I can't understand how anyone could see it differently. It's also obvious to me that the ground war operations were part of the same decapitation strategy behind the missile strike that opened the war. The reason to get to Baghdad quickly was to make it clear to the Iraqi leadership that an allied victory is inevitable, and induce them to throw Saddam's head over the wall of the city and welcome the invader. It didn't work. Does that mean we shouldn't have tried? Okay, so now we've got to back-fill, bring in more troops, secure our supply lines, pacify places like Basra. Fine. That's Plan B. We're supposed to be up in arms because the military had a Plan B? Or because Plan A didn't work in what, 72 hours? Or because they dared to try a Plan A that was not guaranteed success? I just don't get it.

Second, I don't understand Mickey Kaus's obsessing about what Rumsfeld and Bush are "up to." He seems to think there's something wrong with testing a strategy on the battlefield - in this case, a strategy of blitzkrieg designed to achieve victory quickly with highly focused and powerful but numerically modest application of force. How, precisely, are we supposed to test this strategy if not on the battlefield? And why is it a bad thing if America turns out to be able to wage "transformative" war? I agree that if Rumsfeld's battle plan turned out to be a battlefield disaster, there should be an outcry and his career should end. But where's the disaster? Again: I just don't get it. Similarly, why the paranoid tone in talking about enabling America to sustain a long series of wars. Does Kaus think the war started on September 11 is going to be over quickly? Bush has clearly decided that we won't have achieved victory until (a) radical Islamism is decisively defeated, and (b) nuclear proliferation to rogue states has been permanently prevented. That's a very tall order. That being the case, does Kaus *want* America to be mobilized on a WWII scale right now? Or does it make sense to try to make this conflict as sustainable as possible? Again, I'm not saying there isn't room for debate here about how much force is *necessary* to win; Stanley Kurtz is doing a very good job making the case that the amount of force needed is quite substantial, and requires a much bigger military, maybe even a draft. It's the paranoid tone - what is Bush really up to? - that I don't get. There's no hidden agenda. He's up to trying to win the war.

Third, I remain deeply disappointed with the quality of commentary on the political prospects for Iraq coming from Middle Eastern liberals - the folks we're supposed to be trying to put in power. NRO seems to have about a dozen of them, and not one of them sounds remotely hard-headed enough to merit inclusion in that space. The Weekly Standard is worse, but then again, I expect this sort of thing over there. I think the prospects for democracy in Iraq are quite poor. I don't understand why so much of the neo-con crowd seems to think that raising these questions amounts to defeatism. Someone is going to have to make this country work post-war, and that somebody is going to be us, like it or not. I don't see how we help ourselves by believing our own propaganda.

Here's a good example of what I mean. It seems clear to me that one lesson to take home from the fact that the Republican Guard continues to fight - and hard - after victory seems impossible (and possibly after Saddam's incapacitation) is that they think they are fighting *for* something. It is not plausible that the Iraqi people - if such a thing exists - would fight to the death for Saddam. But the Baath loyalists are basically one clan, bound with ties of blood, and Iraq was their property. It makes sense that they would fight to the death, because defeat would mean destruction for them and their families - not at Saddam's hands but at the hands of rival clans and ethnic groups. We may not be dealing with "a million Mogadishus" but we are dealing with a somewhat analogous situation. Saddam is not a single individual sitting at the top of society by virtue of pure terror. He - like Aidid - is the murderous head of a large clan who rule the rest of the country's clans and peoples with brutal force.

This has significance for thinking about the post-war situation. Because getting the Iraqis to give up their clan identity as a primary organizing principle is probably a pre-condition to democracy. Absent that kind of cultural change, democracy probably becomes a contest for spoils, and Iraq either dissolves into fratricidal war a la Lebanon or Yugoslavia, or succumbs to one or another form of tyranny, or is held together by a large multinational occupation force for a long period. None of these are happy outcomes.

But the Arab and Muslim liberals seems to have almost nothing to say about these sorts of problems. They blithely assert that federalism and democracy will solve everything. They assert that Iraq is uniquely poised for democracy because of its diversity. (Hah!) They claim that democracy is the form of government most compatible with Islam - indeed, the only form compatible with Islam. They proclaim that Iraq will abandon its pan-Arabist racial ideology as soon as Baghdad is taken and will embrace a "civic nationalist" vision not rooted in any one people or ethnic group.

I wish them all well. I dearly pray that some Arab country somewhere will embrace liberal democracy - why not Iraq? But I wish they would occasionally answer the quite cogent criticisms levelled at the plans for instant democratization. And I wish they would stop mouthing plattitudes; I begin to think they believe them. And if they believe them, then the subtext is: we are not responsible for making things work post-war. You, the Americans are. We will mouth plattitudes and assert principles, and if things go badly you must fix it, because letting Iraq fail would mean a failure of these high principles for which the war is (purportedly) being fought. I hate to feel this way, but I do. I want to hear from a tough-minded Arab liberal for a change. It would make me feel a whole lot better.
posted by Noah at 7:19 PM

 
I really understand Peter Hitchens' perspective. And I appreciate very much reading a Tory critique of the war that is not overtly or covertly anti-Semitic.

We come to different conclusions, of course, for basically two reasons. First, the prudential. Hitchens implicitly accepts that Iraq and its ilk are no real threat - that this is a war of choice. I disagree. This is a war of necessity, but it has been sufficiently deferred to finally appear as a war of choice. An imperfect analogy: was war necessary in 1938? There were alternatives to war; Chamberlain found one at Munich. But the justification for war - legally and in terms of the clarity of the threat - was there from the re-occupation of the Rhineland, years earlier. Because no action was taken then, the argument that military action was necessary in 1938 was far harder to make, and war then would have appeared a war of choice. Similarly, the justification for eliminating Saddam's regime was available in 1991, when Saddam massacred his people at the end of the Gulf War; in 1993, when he attempted to assassinate former President Bush; and in 1998, when he threw out the inspectors. Failure to act then, with ample justification, makes it hard to argue why war is necessary now. But it is necessary. By 1998, containment had failed decisively, and incidentally was a major contributing cause of al-Qaeda's war on America (our troops were on "holy" Saudi soil, after all, in order to deter Iraq).

But the second reason is more complicated. Hitchens assumes that the choices available in this life are to be a leftist or a Tory. But there is still the alternative of being a Whig. For that matter, there is still the alternative of being a Jacksonian. (There isn't anything really equivalent these days to an American Tory. Actually, the best description of American conservatism I've heard comes from the Canadian David Frum. Back in the Roosevelt Administration, someone (anyone know who?) explained FDR's policies as seeking to achieve Jeffersonian ends by Hamiltonian means. Well, Frum said, a good description of American conservatism post-Reagan is a movement to achieve Hamiltonian ends by Jeffersonian means. That sounds about right to me. End of digression.) In other words: you can support this war not because you believe in forcing people to be free (that would be the Trotskyite reason that Hitchens assumes animates the pro-war "conservatives") but because you believe in using force to fight tyranny and evil. Or because you believe that enemies should be obliterated, not accommodated. Those would be the Whiggish and Jacksonian arguments for war, respectively. Neither is a leftist argument.

Peter Hitchens once made the telling point that Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher had something important in common: they both wanted Britain to become less British. Thatcher wanted Britain to become more American. Blair wants Britain to become more Continental. Hitchens will have none of either, and wants Britain to become more British - or, given that Britain has been practically abolished, at least for England to become more English. It's hard to argue with the sentiment. But I am hard-pressed to think of a civilization or a nation that successfully defended what it held most dear by turning inward, rejecting the world and indulging in nostalgia. On an emotional level, Hitchens opposes the war because it involves Britain in the expense, danger and complication of involvement in the world. Well, yes, it does. What Britain does Hitchens imagine would emerge from a generation of unequivocal retreat from that expense, danger and complication?
posted by Noah at 6:47 PM