Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Israel and United Methodist Whoredom

    I’ve always regarded myself as substantially pro-Israel, and often resolutions by the United Methodist Church on this issue trouble me a bit. (For those who don’t know, I am a member of a United Methodist congregation–quite a fine congregation too!) But apparently some people are troubled a great deal more than “a bit,” and can get quite enraged on the issue. The United Methodist Portal responds to this commentary on WorldNetDaily by Joseph Farah.

    Now Joseph Farah gets to what I think is his major point–and if it’s not, it’s my major point about him–when he says:

    This is no longer a church; it is an organization of misguided political activism. This is no longer a house of God; it is a mad house. This is no longer part of the bride of Christ; it is a whore to the world. [Emphasis mine]

    I have to note here, of course, that I might say similar things about an organization like WorldNetDaily, which seems to have made overreaction a way of life. But I haven’t, and I’m not planning to. They can overreact all they like, and I’ll criticize them article by article as I see fit. I have not yet seen fit to read them out of the body of Christ, but perhaps the problem is that I have “lost [my] moral bearings” and am far too tolerant of arrogant windbags.

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  • Satellite Imagery Confirms Myanmar Atrocities

    Those interested in the situation in [tag]Myanmar[/tag] (formerly Burma) will be interested in this story from ScienceNOW published by the AAAS.

    Researchers used high resolution images from commercial satellites to confirm a substantial number of reports of atrocities by the Burmese military.

    For those interested in taking action, see the U. S. Campaign for Burma.

  • Learning from the War

    Joe Carter caught my attention again today with his post This I No Longer Believe: 5 Lessons Learned from the Iraq War. Now he’s responding to this post by Rod Dreher, but I actually found his list more interesting.

    I’m not going to make my own list, because I don’t think I’ve learned five things from the Iraq war. I’m not usually terribly prescient, and I have a long line of bad calls on elections to prove it, but I thought this war was going to be a failure from the start. The one thing I have definitely learned is that the American voters in general, and the leadership in particular do not seem to be able to think in terms of strategy. We seem to manage one step at a time, with two at the outside. “Let’s withdraw from Iraq so American soldiers will quit dying.” That’s one step. “What do we do about the genocide that will result?” That’s two steps. A third might be to ask whether there will come a time we can withdraw without destabilization, and if so when that will be, and how much it will cost. We can continue on from there to ask what other things we might do with the same resources to change the future.

    I think in general both sets of lessons learned don’t look far enough into the context of each war and why people might have supported or opposed them. I know that many people expected the war in Iraq to be short and easy, and there was no reason to expect that. In fact this is one area where I personally give politicians little slack. I think anyone should have known that establishing a stable and democratic government in Iraq such that we could withdraw was going to be massively difficult.

    A couple of days ago I made a somewhat intemperate remark about the Lybian government with reference to the Lybia 6. Despite calling my remark intemperate, and despite the fact that I might well not have said it, I’m not apologizing for it, because it does reflect what I think in an unedited way. Yet the Iraq war has involved similarly stupid activities.

    I would suggest Guantanamo as a good combination of the immoral and the strategically stupid. Leaving aside the immoral, let me look at the strategically stupid part. Is it likely that the additional information gained by the controversial actions helped against terrorism enough to justify the political fallout, both domestic and foreign? I doubt it. There is a tendency amongst some people to think it’s patriotic to say “the hell with everyone else” and go it alone. I won’t debate “patriotic,” but that attitude is definitely dumb. We do need international cooperation to fight terrorism. In addition, the domestic political viability of a policy is also one of the considerations for whether a policy is strategically viable. In other words, the political support has to last until the policy is completed.

    But I wanted to respond to one particular point Carter said he learned:

    3. I no longer believe that Arab nations are capable of sustaining liberal democracies. The empirical evidence for this belief is overwhelming: Arab culture is currently unable to sustain democratic forms of government. Some people will decry this belief as racist or xenophobic. But it is simply being realistic. I used to think that Samuel Huntington was an intelligent crank; now I think he’s prophetic. As he once noted, the Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous. Thinking that freedom could take root in the blood-soaked soil of Arab culture was a naive assumption. Iraq has disabused me of such notions.

    It simply amazes me that anyone thought that they were capable of doing so, or that if they were, such a democracy could be imposed from outside. Iraq is an especially tricky case. We try to think of all the people of Iraq as “Iraqis” in the sense that we think of Americans as Americans. But the border lines that create Saudi Arabia, Syria, Kuwait, and Jordan, amongst many others, are the product of the activities of western powers. We start with the notion of having the majority rule, or something close to that. Well, for Sunnis, that means Shi’ite rule in Iraq. They are, understandably, not crazy about it. And that’s only the first of many, many problems.

    We have somehow gotten the idea that an American style democracy is the best thing for everyone, and that, if they are given the opportunity, everybody will embrace it. It’s a highly arrogant position for us to take. Might it not be better to suggest that a country’s government needs to arise out of its own history and culture? And perhaps we should extend that to the idea that a “country” should arise out of its own history and culture.

    A similar oddity occurred with the Palestinian election. We wanted a democratic election amongst the Palestinians. But then they went and elected the wrong people! All from our point of view, of course. So we cut off funding because now the Palestinian government was run by terrorists. I would suggest that we go back to the first step and ask whether it should be up to us to tell the Palestinian government that it must be democratic. Maybe we should only specify our requirements of them in terms of foreign policy goals, not their governmental forms.

    If we, as a country, could learn something from this war, I would hope it would be this. Be determined in defending ourselves, but lose the arrogance about telling other people how to run their countries. We don’t have enough troops available to pay for our arrogance.

  • Good Judgment and Iraq War Flip-Flops

    I’m watching the list of GOP legislators who are breaking with President Bush on the war in Iraq with mixed emotions. On the one hand it’s nice to see people realizing that we are trying to force our military to accomplish the impossible. On the other hand, I have to ask why they are doing this and what changed their minds.

    According to an MSNBC story:

    More than a dozen Republican senators who are running for re-election next year head the list of lawmakers to watch. But others, too, have expressed concerns that the GOP has grown increasingly vulnerable on the issue. As the clock ticks toward Election Day, voter pressure is building against any lawmaker still standing with President Bush on the war.

    So what’s driving these defections? Is it a sudden realization that they were wrong about the original invasion? Is it an attack of strategic good sense, in which one examines the goals and the means available to accomplish them and then reassesses the appropriate use of one’s resources?

    Well, no. The legislators in question are in election campaigns. They are watching Bush’s popularity drop, and they feel the need to get out.

    The wildcards in the debate are senators, like Roberts, Stevens and Chambliss, who have staunchly defended Bush but are watching his poll numbers drop.

    Now my question is this: How will the voters react to a flip-flop to get out of Iraq just because of the poll numbers? Shouldn’t the voters in those districts have expected these legislators, who after all have research staffs and access to much sensitive information, to have made a better judgment call in the first place? And if the Iraq war was a good idea, as these senators seem to think (or have thought, at least), why is it now a good idea to pull out after thousands of casualties? If the goal is attainable, as they apparently used to think, shouldn’t one put in the resources and accomplish things? If it is not attainable, what has happened in the last few months that would change that assessment?

    I personally believe the goal of a united, democratic, and secure Iraq was never attainable in the first place, and if we did invade, that should not have been one of our aims. I’d say that the last four years lines up with my assessment. But this is not just my assessment. There are plenty of experts on the region who were prepared to say this and back up their claims before the invasion. In comparison to other wars, and in relation to the war aims, this one has not gone all that badly. In fact, I personally expected it to go a bit worse. The government building efforts have gone better than I would have expected, though not enough better to change my mind in favor of the war. I have been hoping from the start that I would be proven wrong, but time is not doing so. It is so tragic to have these numbers of deaths without success. But the bottom line is that the “Iraqi people” would need to bear the major burden of creating a free, democratic, and secure nation, and there isn’t even a truly definable “Iraqi people,” and to the extent we can imagine such an entity, their goals are not our goals.

    I welcome the idea that we will have an effort to withdraw troops. I just think these senators who have supported the war up to now and are switching in the face of opinion polls do not have the courage of their own bad judgment. They hope to place all the blame on President Bush, who is term limited, and somehow to escape their own responsibility. I hope the voters don’t let them by with it.

  • WP on Blair Legacy

    The Washington Post has an interesting article on Tony Blair, titled For Blair, a Legacy Overshadowed. The article is quite interesting, looking at the thing Blair accomplished, and what has brought his popularity from a peak of 75% down to 28%.

    It reflects on human nature that any number of accomplishments can be completely obscured by one major failure. Tony Blair did quite a number of good things, and perhaps in a couple of decades he’ll be remembered for those. But right now the quagmire of Iraq overshadows all of that.

    But further, I was interested to note the charitable motivations he had in many of his actions. He wanted to stop atrocities in various countries, and thought it was OK to invade. The basic idea of ignoring borders and national sovereignty in the pursuit of moral goals didn’t start with Bush. Bill Clinton did a good bit of that in the Balkans. I think inevitably that the aim of imposing our moral views or our system of government on other countries irrespective of their traditions is doomed to create intractable situations. When we try to do both–impose democracy and our moral view, we will commonly find our goals in conflict, and unclear goals is a clear formula for failure.

    The problem is that there are countries where what a substantial number of people want to do is to kill others and take their stuff. In general, you’ll also find a large number of people who simply go along with the majority passively, or who can be intimidated into voting a particular way. In such a country, imposition of democracy may well not be the best idea.

    In the long run, we may find that Blair was done in by idealism, but an idealism that was not guided by practical wisdom.

  • There ARE Moderate Muslims

    . . . and some of them speak up, too!

    Daniel Pipes writes about protests by moderate Muslims in Pakistan and Turkey (HT: Dispatches from the Culture Wars). It’s worth reading.

    My first thought was that the fewer and weaker moderate Muslims are, the more we ought to support them. I have always maintained that we should be careful to distinguish the guilty form the innocent whilst being vigorously opposed to those radicals who would use violence.

    But I think that our government makes a dangerous mistake when it puts democracy above freedom. It’s quite possible for a majority to be tyrannical, which was the major reasons that the United States places limits on what the majority can actually do. A major problem with “winning” the war in Iraq is that we have set goals that cannot be accomplished. One cannot blame the military for not being miracle workers. We somehow want a democratic, unified Iraq that will not be an Islamic state. We need to consider one or another of those goals

    Consider this quote from the article, regarding Turkey:

    This resolute stand against Islamism by moderate Turkish Muslims is the more striking when contrasted with the cluelessness of Westerners who pooh-pooh the dangers of the AKP’s ascent. A Wall Street Journal editorial assures Turks that their prime minister’s popularity “is built on competent and stable government.” Dismissing the historic crossroads that President Sezer and others perceive, it dismisses as “fear mongering” doubts about Prime Minister Erdo?an’s commitment to secularism and ascribes these to petty campaign tactics “to get out the anti-AKP vote and revive a flagging opposition.”

    If the Turkish military helps keep the country secular, more power to them!

  • MSNBC Article on Condaleeza Rice

    I’ve always though that Rice was a tremendously intelligent person but at the same time I intensely disliked the policies she has been advocating. There’s an interesting opinion piece in Newsweek/MSNBC.com by Marcus Mabry that may give more insight into who she is.

    She built the image the public has of her as an ice queen stuck on repeat. It’s the downside of her extreme loyalty to Bush, her discipline and her deep competitive streak. But it’s an image.

    I don’t know if he’s right, but it’s an interesting thought.

  • This I Abhor

    I believe I have established here that I like tolerance, but I have also noted that tolerance is a value for me, not an absolute. In other words, I don’t have to tolerate everything. I just believe it’s good to be as tolerant as possible. (You can find some previous comments here.)

    Ed Brayton has written a post, American Imam Calls for Death of Hirsi Ali, in which he cites this article:

    Imam Fouad ElBayly, president of the Johnstown Islamic Center, was among those who objected to Hirsi Ali’s appearance.

    “She has been identified as one who has defamed the faith. If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death,” said ElBayly, who came to the U.S. from Egypt in 1976.

    Ed comments:

    Let me explain something to you, Imam. Religions don’t have laws, governments do. Religions have rules which are followed voluntarily by those who choose – note that word – to be members of that religion. If they choose no longer to follow those rules, you are of course entirely free to kick them out of your religion. What you cannot do – and this is a real law – is threaten them or harm them. Period. This is not negotiable, it’s not optional and if you insist on doing so you’re going to find yourself in prison where you belong.

    To which I say, Precisely.

    I go further, however. It is only illegal if the Imam actually threatens Hirsi Ali or takes some actions that lead to harming her. But I personally can abhor whatever I want to, and I abhor the very idea that a religion can threaten a defector with death. It was evil in the Middle Ages when many Christians felt this was acceptable, and it’s evil today. This is not something I tolerate out of respect for someone else’s religious beliefs; it is an evil that I do not tolerate. I condemn it.

    I urge Christians to distinguish moderate Muslims from extremists and not to smear an entire faith with the actions of some members. At the same time, any gain in power by Islam as practiced by Imam Fouad ElBayly would be a tragedy for the world. No matter what religion we espouse, or if we espouse no religion at all, we need to be clear on this.

    I believe that there is a cultural conflict arising. It’s not between Christianity and Islam, but rather between tyranny and freedom. Each of us, irrespective of our religious beliefs, need to decide which side of that one we’re on.

  • A Dead Tyrant and Mass Murderer

    Nations welcome, condemn Saddam execution says the MSNBC.com headline, and the story reflects that dual reaction. There’s a large part of the world that believes Saddam Hussein is certainly deserving of punishment, but who condemn all instances of the death penalty.

    As an opponent of this war from before it started, I’ve found it interesting to hear what war proponents say about me and about other opponents of the war. Some have suggested that I’m some sort of apologist for Saddam Hussein and for his regime. The one sense in which I might approach this is in saying that under Hussein, Iraq and Iran tended to neutralize one another. Both were ruled by brutal regimes, yet the rest of the world got some peace because they had to watch one another so closely. Yet I think that the one clear thing in this war is that removing Saddam from power was justified–in a vacuum–and that allowing him to be executed was appropriate, in the context of the war as it has developed.

    In terms of results, there will probably be an upsurge of violence at the execution of Saddam, but I really doubt it will make the situation substantially worse. There were no terrorists just biding their time until Saddam was executed, saying, “We’ll leave them alone unless they execute him!” They already hate us and already want to blow us up. In the end, though I think it was justified, I don’t think this execution is going to make much difference.

    But outside of that vacuum, it doesn’t justify the war.

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  • I Thought this Before it Started

    Henry Kissinger now says that the Iraq war is not winnable, something I thought from the start. talking to the BBS (via MSNBC), he said:

    “If you mean by ‘military victory’ an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible.”

    All those factors were there before the war got started. If you combine the fact that Iraq is a nation pieced together from disparate elements that don’t really want to be a country in the first place with neighbors who would be happy to be in control of the same terrirtory you are placing a tall order. Then consider the fact that there never was a united opposition to Saddam’s reign, simply because the various elements of the opposition don’t generally share a vision for the country.

    If we allowed democracy to take it’s course, Iraq would likely become an Islamic republic led by the Shi’ites. Unfortunately what we seem to want to produce is a government that is both democratically elected and does what we want it to do. Bluntly, it’s not going to happen.

    Before the usual culprits accuse me of being pacifist and not wanting to fight terrorism, that is not my point. I believe that military force should sometimes be used. The problem is that there are those who don’t seem to choose wisely between one use of force and another. There might even have been things that could be accomplished militarily in Iraq. But the Iraq war that actually occurred was, in my view, a strategic error. My concern is not that people were killed, or that some feelings were hurt. My concern is that people were killed without any good and lasting result.

    At this point I’m afraid I see no option but to simply declare a set of doable goals–a certain amount of time spent in training, specified equipment levels for the Iraqi forces, and similar things, and then get out. Goals such as a peaceful, secure state are simply not going to happen, and all we’re doing trying to accomplish such goals is wasting time, political capital, money, and most importantly lives.