Now I don't want to spark a long debate about whether Israel or the PLO are the good guys. I'd rather have the debate go to the bigger question of political Islam in Iraq, in Syria, and in Egypt. And I want to know if any of the folks out there think that the growth of political Islam in the Middle East can somehow benefit either the United States, or its allies (including Israel).

I think political Islam is a necessary waystation on the road to a more liberal social structure there.  Those people are inherently conservative, inherently religious.  Iran, for example, is one of the better-off states in the region -- its geography was the least screwed up by Europe; its people are among the most heterogeneous in the Middle East.  Yet when given  the choice, they chose a theocracy, and have recently re-affirmed that choice.  Turkey, a sort of half European, half Middle Eastern country, seems to flip flop between two forms of rulers: vague Islamism when they get to choose, and military dictatorship when they move too far in the direction of Islam for the taste of the military.    

I suppose my ultimate question here is, given that our policies in the region are illogical and disastrous, but not likely to change any time soon, and given the demonstrated tendencies of the Middle East, what more can you expect?  I'd rather they exercised whatever degree of free choice they are allowed and institute Islamist governments, rather than continue with the wretched regimes they are currently suffering under.  Self-determination isn't the same thing as liberal democracy, but it's a hell of a lot better than brutal dictatorship.

I think we need to let the peoples of these countries work out for themselves what is best for them. A major reason these nations are so warped is because we keep interfering to prop up governments we like, regardless of what the people like. Honestly, I don't think Egyptians will like living under an overly-extreme religious government. Most Egyptians, while Muslim, are not religious extremists. And most are fairly secular in their outlook on life. If the Muslim Brotherhood gets to power and turns out to be extreme, it's popularity will decline. Right now it's popular largely because it is seen as the most effective alternative to Mubarak.  

I don't know if political Islam can benefit us--but I'm certain that resisting it's growth against the will of the people will hurt us. I also believe that if we don't interfere, we may be surprised to find that the people of these countries are the ones who become the moderating force on extremism. If we interfere, though, we give fodder to the extremists, because we become the enemy of the people from whom the extremist promise liberation.

Luigi!  When has religion -- and especially, that Old Time Religion -- ever led to a "liberal social structure"?

Religion itself isn't going to lead anywhere, but self-determination will.  300 years ago our Christian and political ancestors were burning people at the stake for heresy; look at us now.  I believe the King of Spain's title is still "His Most Catholic Majesty," and there was a time when that sort of stuff really meant something.  It's unrealistic (and destructive) to think we can force other cultures to skip completely an entire stage of development that it took hundreds of years for us to pass through.  Quickly pass through, yes, but entirely skip is a little much.            

Seems to me the Arabs have had close to 1500 years to pass through "that stage of development."  But I suppose giving them another 1500 years to see if they can get it the next time isn't too much to ask.

Let's break this down (something I've found myself doing too often here recently) into two parts: the factual and the argumentative.

"The Arabs" (Important point: the region has more peoples in it than Arabs) themselves have really never had a period of self determination.  First, they were under Rome's (and Constantinople's)thumb, then under the (Turkmen) Ottoman's.  So the statement you make is false on its face.  But don't feel bad about it -- everyone thinks they know things about the Middle East they don't, myself, I'm sure, included, and everyone likes to make confident, psuedo-clever statements that turn out to be false.

Now, for the argumentative.  It isn't our place to "give" anyone anything.  Self-determination means just that; it isn't a "gift" we have a right to give.  It's that attitude that's made the region what it is.        

But where are the Mamelukes, Luigi?

Yesterday I was speaking with someone who was involved in the pre-2003 war planning effort vis a vis Iraq. He told me of the exact moment when some of his colleagues realized that the New Iraq would probably be taken over not by Ahmed Chalabi but by the Shiite fundamentalists. Those radical-right parties (along with the Kurds) were the real forces that took part in Chalabi's INC bloc. And the United States consciously supported the toppling of Saddam knowing that radical Shiites would be the chief beneficiaries. This was not an intelligence failure. We knew it. This was an explicit decision by the neocon-dominated cabal to replace Saddam with Shiite crazies.

So we knew going in that by removing Saddam we would deliver Iraq into the sphere of influence of one of the countries which make up the "Axis of Evil"?  I guess Iran wasn't a big enough threat.  We needed to increase their, for a lack of a better Bushism, evilness...

Actually, there was a period between Rome and the Ottomans in which the Arabs had several great empires that were in many ways the peak of civilization at the time.

You are right - for about 900 years, from the 630s when they beat the Byzantine Empire in a series of wars until the Ottomans conquered Egypt and Syria in the 1520s.

These factors left the Middle East--like so many other ex-colonies of Europe--in a deep economic hole out of which they are still struggling to climb. Compared with other post-colonial nations, those of the Middle East have done modestly--not as poorly as many nations in sub-Saharan Africa, but about equally to many Latin American and Asian nations.  

So many people forget that the United States is an ex-colony of Europe.  As are Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. 

The PLO had a chance to deliver a viable state in 2000. Insted they chose to embark on a war against Israel. I don't see any signs that what they want is a viable state. They want the whole enchilada.

I also don't think that the Mid East should be lumped in with Africa or Latin America when talking about "post colonial states". The stamp left by "colonialism" in the Mid East pales so much in comparison to other parts of the world that it makes the term meaningless.

And I want to know if any of the folks out there think that the growth of political Islam in the Middle East can somehow benefit either the United States, or its allies (including Israel).




This is simply an absurd question. There is aboslutely nothing good that can come from the growth of political Islam. If there were a good example of politics being waged on behalf of a moderate Islam that sought peace with other religions and focused on issues of helping society, then I would say great, three cheers for political Islam. But the sad fact is that whenever Islam is tethered to politics, it tends to be the most retrograde, intolerant, violent version of Islam. Political Islam has become synonymous with radical Islam, which right now is the biggest threat the West faces in the entire world.

I'd worry about figuring out how to get people in the Middle East to manufacture something someone else wants.

Typically, countries with natural resource economies are ruled by oligarchies (usually, kleptocratic).  Maybe we should help out the Arabs by going in and taking "their" oil.

We could administer it "on their behalf" -- say by depositing a reasonable depletion rent in a regional Economic Development Bank.

I disagree with your view of European history.  Without a Reformation there never would have been an Enlightenment.  The Church controlled every aspect of thought in Europe.  With the coming of Luther, Calvin and others there was a  competition of thought.  The 18th Century with its emphasis on anti-clericalism may have opened the way for the modern world but Luther combined with the invention of movable type made the scientific revolution, and rebirth of philosophy possible.

You are right that Protestantism did not lead to tolerance.  That was more an outgrow of the disaster of the Thirty Years War.  Decades of slaughter led people to be tired of being killed.

Political Islam has become synonymous with radical Islam, which right now is the biggest threat the West faces in the entire world.

If this is the case, then we're in pretty good shape. Deaths in the West (on Western soil) from Islamic terrorism probably amount to 5,000 or so over the past decade. That's equivalent to one bad month of auto accidents in the US.

But Luther was not just your average 14th Century anti-semite:

Although Luther did not invent anti-Jewishness, he promoted it to a level never before seen in Europe. ... Luther's 1543 book, "On the Jews and their lies" took Jewish hatred to a new level when he proposed to set fire to their synagogues and schools, to take away their homes, forbad them to pray or teach, or even to utter God's name. Luther wanted to "be rid of them" and requested that the government and ministers deal with the problem. He requested pastors and preachers to follow his example of issuing warnings against the Jews. He goes so far as to claim that "We are at fault in not slaying them" for avenging the death of Jesus Christ. Hitler's Nazi government in the 1930s and 40s fit Luther's desires to a tee.

"One leading Protestant churchman, Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther's antisemitic vitriol shortly after Kristallnacht's orgy of anti-Jewish violence. In the foreword to the volume, he applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day: 'On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.' The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words 'of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.'"

And the United States consciously supported the toppling of Saddam knowing that radical Shiites would be the chief beneficiaries. This was not an intelligence failure. We knew it. This was an explicit decision by the neocon-dominated cabal to replace Saddam with Shiite crazies.

What were the choices? The choices were

A - Leave anti-American nationalists in place - either Saddam or get Saddam to leave and have other anti-American nationalists come in.

B - Allow potentially anti-American Islamists to take power, these in a country that is majority Shiite happen to be Shiite Islamists. 

C - Install a western educated ruler who is outside of mainstream Iraqi thought and hope this ruler can defeat the nationalists and Islamists at the same time in a contest for legitimacy.

Now that the choices are spelled out, not only is to argue C to argue against democracy, but as a practical matter the US probably couldnt beat an insurgency that combined the nationalists and the Islamists.

From the "blowback" perspective, there is no real difference between A and B, except that you always want to support the one that is weaker at the moment, so that the anti-Americans in power are as distracted as possible.

So the choice is really between (A or B) and C.  Mainstream indigenous leadership that is or predictably will become anti-American or non-mainstream western-installed leadership pro-American leadership.

I would hope that only in the farthest right fringes of discussion would anyone actually argue that the US should favor non-Arab-mainstream undemocratic leadership for Arabs but it is looking as if that is what is being argued here.

The presumption is there are elections in any Arab country the victors will be Islamic extremists.  This is not clear because secular opposition leaders have been supressed. 

No, not necessarily Islamist extremists, but certainly anti-Zionists and because of the relationship between the US and Israel, certainly anti-American enough that the US would consider their acquisition of power "blowback". 

A discussion of blowback in the middle east against the United States that does not address the relationship between the US and Israel is not a discussion of blowback.

This is very inaccurate.

In antiquity some Arabs were under Roman rule, but most were not. In that era, the Arabic-speaking people were largely limited to the interior of the Arabian peninsula--the peoples of Syria, Egypt etc. Were NOT Arabs. To be sure,the Arabs had begun expanding north, and in the 3rd century an Arab queen, Zenobia, even created a small, but short-lived, empire out of several of Rome's eastern proivnces.

You are essentially correct (and I'm actually addressing this to all the folks who posted in this sub-thread, with the exception of Ellen's silly thing, but yours was last, so I'm replying to it :-) ) however, for the purpose of this discussion, Arabs have literally never enjoyed self-determination.  

Ellen's original statement was to the effect that Arabs had had 1500 years to develop liberal values, and blew it.  The statement is false on its face, but more to the point, it reveals the kind of thinking that allows chronically poor decision making.  Comparing, say, one of the Arab caliphates to where Europe was at the same time, we see that the Arabs were ahead, culturally, scientifically, and, one assumes, in just about every other way.  When they were conquered by the Ottomans, the clock essentially stopped on Arab cultural development, and didn't re-start until the end of WWI.  I should have worded my statement more exactly, but the point remains.  It's unrealistic to expect Arabs to skip a period of development it took Europe 400 years or so to go through.

This was an explicit decision by the neocon-dominated cabal to replace Saddam with Shiite crazies.
Contrary to popular belief, I'm not at subject changing troll (not intentionally), however this time I have to point out one of the "Undeniable Truths of the Times." Only conservatives can be guilty of "Hate Speech!" Fact: I, in an earlier post, referred to the guys who chop people's heads off with a sword sreaming "Allah Akba" as "Islamic fanatics" and was immediatley denounced by the liberals (or progressives or whatever y'all prefer these days) as defaming the religion of peace, and attacking all Muslims. Now you refer to the Shiites who were elected to office as "crazies" and not a peep from the peanut gallery. Again, I don't want to derail any of the thought process and discussions on this thread, it's just something that hits me from time to time, and I like to point it out. (If you could direct me to a prior posting where you've refered to the terrorists we are fighting as anything close to "Shiite crazies" I'd appreciate it).

As long as Bush works with Ali Al-Sistani, I don't see anything radically going wrong.

And you don't read the recent discovery of a jail, run by Shiites and filled by starving Sunnis--effectively a concentration camp--as a frightening harbinger of what may be coming down the pike when (not if) the US military pulls out?

Although I credit Al-Sistani with holding things together (and forcing the Bush admin to hold elections), I don't think he has control over all of the elements. 

I fear we are in for a wild ride for the next few decades. Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War was effectively held together by the awful example of Yugoslavia.  I have my doubts that Iraq will see that kind of restraint.  We are likely going to see ethnic cleansing on a scale last seen during the partition of India and Pakistan.

Taylor

 No doubt there will be bumps in the road during Reconstruction (for lack of a better term).  In fact, radical Sunni's will stop at nothing to break the will of the civilian population.  Indeed, we saw this very day, 11/18/05, Sunni insurgents bomb a Shiite mosque, killing 73.  I would doubt, however, that an act such as bombing a mosque will be accepted widely--even by most Sunni's.  Full scale Civil War is possible, but doubtful.  The Sunni's, for one, are not ALL terrorists.  We must remember that it is only a marginal percentage who are radical.  Secondly, no matter how well equipped this small portion of Sunni extremists are or become, they would have no chance of "defeating" a Shiite/Kurdish alliance.  Not to mention the United Nations would certainly intervene.  I agree that there will be violence for many years, but the constitutional government will most likely work in the long run.

PghMike said: "I'd worry about figuring out how to get people in the Middle East to manufacture something someone else wants."
 
Ellen responded "Typically, countries with natural resource economies are ruled by oligarchies (usually, kleptocratic)."

The two of you have hit the nail on the head. The difference between India and China on the one hand, and Middle Eastern nations on the other, is the centralized nature of the economies involved. India and China both have highly diversified economies. lt is true that both are best known for their progress in certain sectors- IT in India and light manufacturing in China. Less well known is that their economic progress has been built slowly over many generations in many different idustries, India for example was a leader in rail and train manufacturing for many years. Middle Eastern countries like Iraq or even Saudi Arabia are far more dependent on one unique industry- Oil. The implications for power-sharing within such countries are obvious. To the extent that most wealth generation within a region is concetrated not only geographically but in the hands of a small economic elite there is no constituency, as it were, for the kind of widespread economic development that would be of direct benefit to the "man in the street.", leading in turn to more recruits for terrorist movements. In short- it takes money to make more money, and if all the money is in the hands of the executives of one industry, then economic opportunity is inevitably going to be greatly restricted.

By the way, I wasn't worried about how open our economy is. PghMike is quite right that this is not a major barrier. I was actually speaking to the opportunity our country has to make direct and sizable investments in new industries that would be owned and operated primarily by the residents of under-developed nations. That is what I meant by "Creating our own competition". That is what we did in Japan, and in Germany. There is a need for this in the Middle East because of our interest in promoting the conditions for the successful growth of democracy there (the former Soviet client states provide us with even greater opportunities, as well as the same over-riding national interest).

In response to the question Dreyfuss originally asked (is the rise of political Islam as a result of the spread of democracy in the Middle East to our benefit, or not), I'll say it again: If we do not find ways to invest in grass-roots economic development in areas like the Middle East, then we are just setting up the next Weimar Republic.

I'm disapointed that you didnt mean the question seriously. It was provocative. I understood you to be asking whether or not the rise of Political Islam was a price worth paying for the development of democratic elections in the Middle East. I have answered that question elsewhere in this thread.

Was there any such thing as an official "moderate" Christianity even 100 years ago? Institutionally, have we not always been intolerant toward other religions? Is not the official position of all Christian churches that we, and we alone, worship the Son of God himself, and that therefore we are the only ones to be granted full salvation?




The point is that Christianity evolved. Look, I'm well aware of the history of intolerance within Christianity. But I also think that there's a difference between saying, "we're the only ones who will be granted full salvation" and saying, "kill the infidels wherever you find them." Last I checked, Christians have been fighting themselves, but haven't been launching violent wars against other religions (the Holocaust of course being a special case, motivated more by racial hatred than by religious animus) for quite some time.




The problem is not their doctrine. The problem is the lack of economic and political opportunity for ordinary citizens of Muslim states. Achieve that, and the rest will follow.




I don't understand how this myth persists despite the voluminous evidence that it is just not true. Do we really need to continually go over the fact that many jihadists are middle class and become radicalized while in Europe, not the Middle East?




The problem is that violence and radicalism are all too embedded in Muslim culture and tradition. You therefore have to ask yourself where it comes from. The answer is that the seeds of this behavior are contained in the religion itself. Under the best of circumstances they can lie dormant. But history shows that they can also sprout and cause havoc.

How many people are reading the book...just curious.  Since so many comments and questions would be answered in it.

Agreeing with mhphine with regard to Islam, yes, Locke is probably what we wish for, I feel confused by the account of history.
 

Mhphine is right, of course, that the Protestant Reformation per se didn't lead to religious toleration. If that is a common misconception or not is beyond my knowledge to judge.

However, there was a considerable time gap between the main spread of Reformation and the great 30-Years War, and I am not so sure about if it's a fair representation of causes and circumstances to emphasize the religious aspect of the 30-Years War.

One could also say that the Reformation was used as a vehicle for sovereigns who wanted to increase their sovereignty. :-) This on the expense of the Catholic Church and (the cohesion of) the Holy Roman Empire [of German Nation]. And seen so, the 30-Years War was maybe "caused" by surounding powers' attempt to increase their influence when the German HRE weakened, and by the Catholic Church's reaction on it's loss of influence during the previous century.

In any case, the Reformation led to Individualism, but also (indirectly) to religious tolerance and relativism, and the start of that process predates the great war. Religious homogenity and the absolute authority of doctrins became weakened following conversions (sometimes back and forth) of sovereigns and their subjects. Particularly where these sovereigns ruled over relatively small principalities, the ideological grip of the Church grew untenable.

The situation in Bosnia and in some parts of Iraq comes to mind as similar.