In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
Iraqi’s killing by Marine dominates Arab media
Unfortunately, the philosophy of militant Islam is seductive, especially to the poorer population of the Islamic world. It has a great narrative – “until the 1700s we were the strongest people on the earth; over the past 300 years, the West has constantly attacked us, held us down, culminating in the destruction of the Ottoman Caliphate after WWI.” It is a narrative of oppression, with a clearly defined oppressor (the West), and a clear series of actions necessary to rectify the situation (step 1: get the West out of the Muslim World).
Confronted with this ideology, we need to be clear whether it makes better strategic sense to destroy the ideologues or to convince a population that these ideologues work against their best interests. Do we attack the folks who are spreading these beliefs, organizing downtrodden people, and launching attacks? Or do we make clear to the Muslim world that the West, after admittedly oppressing the Middle East for several centuries (The French and the English did it long before America got involved, and we’re all bound together under the label of the West), now wants to help them out?
For a liberal hawk, the clear answer is the latter. In attacking Afghanistan, we implicitly accepted the responsibility to fix it, make it better – make it a shining example of how the West has the best interests of the population at heart. And this is potentially a great first step in convincing the Muslim world we don't disdain the. Sadly, we didn’t do that. Instead of focusing more of our military and civil might on Afghanistan, making the whole country safe and really convincing the Afghanis we were going to help them lift themselves out of the mess they’ve been in . . . well, forever, we decided to put the country on the back burner and apply the Afghanistan template to Iraq. So instead of finishing one operation then tackling another, we decided to tackle two at the same time, secure in nothing more than the hope that the Iraqis would greet us with the same adulation the Afghanis gave us.
There was a time for an Iraq war. Though Saddam was largely contained, the suffering that containment produced in both Iraq and the general Middle East needed to be dealt with . . . eventually. The problem with launching the Iraq war when we did is hawkish liberals considered the most important point of these fights – convincing the Muslim people the West isn’t against them – that they can be confident (despite past actions) we stand side by side with their people, thereby undercutting the propaganda of nihilist Wahabbism.
That’s an important distinction of message. What I see and read now, the Iraq war seems a war of retribution more than a war of liberation. As the MSNBC article shows, the Arab media makes that distinction even more clear. And that perception comes from stories such as these. It is not clear why the soldier shot the wounded man on the ground – but precisely that doubt is what damages our reputation. If we truly want to win a war against an ideology, our only hope is to undercut the premises on which that ideology is based.
- Alex 10:56 AM - [PermaLink] -
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