Regarding the NIE line that that “[t]he Iraq conflict has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement,” Tom Barnett asks rhetorically:
- You want to know what this estimate would say if Saddam was still in power?
- You want to know what this estimate would say if the Taliban were still in power?
- And if Musharref was gone?
- And if Israel was gone?
- And if the Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt?
- And if the Salafi jihadists got control of Saudi Arabia?
Very well done, and very well summed up:
Is there anyone out there naive enough to believe the Salafi jihadist movement has ever been without a ‘cause celebre’?
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Comments to this entry
Elizabeth
September 28, 2006
12:31 am
That's what is so annoying. They have been able to move the discussion away from, "Should we control Egypt and Saudi Arabia with shari'a, and should Israel be destroyed?" (to which most Muslims would say, er, no, no need to go that far) to "Should we get the United States and Israel out of Muslim lands?" to which most Muslims, and many others, would say, well, yes, eventually at least.
That is their victory and why we should have better considered the effects of long-term occupation of an Arab, Muslim country on our national security policy.
Mike
September 29, 2006
4:36 am
The Germans as a people were galvanized as a nation behind the Nazi party more than ever after FDR made his famous call for an unconditional surrender of the Third Reich. The realities of war were much easier to bear than the burden of defeat on the terms of their British, Russians and French enemies. Should we not then have insisted on unconditional surrender? Of course not, we rightly slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Germans to achieve victory and we shall have to slaughter that many radical Muslims before all is said and done with.
I don't really blame you for your viewpoint, it is a product of a soft and weak society that has forgotten the fundementals of war and peace. Does the war in Iraq radicalize Muslims who are on the fence? Certainly, and it is a good thing that it does. It seperates the wheat fromt he chaff, the radical from the reasonable. Anyone not able to logically work his way through the American occupation of Iraq without deciding that the solution to the problem is to support radical Islamists is someone we will have to fight and kill eventually anyway.
Why care if this enrages Muslims? After they have dedicated themselves to killing infidels they have hit a critical mass of rage that makes any further action on our part irrelevant. I don't spend much time worrying about how mad they are at us, I concern myself with worrying about how afraid and guilty most of us seem to feel "about why they hate us". Why did Nazi Germany "hate us"? Who cares, they were the enemy so we killed them. If the war takes us to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or even into Mecca itself . . . so what? That is the nature of war, you fight it until the other side gives up or you do.
Every war since WWII we have given up before we have finished the job and it looks like we may be leaning that way again.
Elizabeth
September 29, 2006
4:51 pm
No, it doesn't. I'm not radical, I'm not Muslim, and I don't believe in violence, but I disagree with the US decision to go to war in Iraq, to collect suspects at what seems almost at random (okay, not at random: they have done the equivalent of detain men named "John Smith" and "Peter Miller" because their names matched those on lists), and to support Israel in the war with Lebanon (I wouldn't support Hezbollah, either, but that's another story). Does that make me a radical?
Whereas the US might have had an ally in me, someone to sign up for action, someone to argue for their point of view at the UN, someone to give the soldiers a tip on suspicious activity (even criminal), they no longer do. Actually they lost me at Iran-Contra but whatever, my point is, we are losing allies not to the terrorists, necessarily, but just losing them and we need them.
Our policy has to be reasonable to keep the reasonable people. In fact, we have only proposed an alternative radical solution. "With us or against us no matter what we do" is radical.