Does this mean the Arab Islamic world is made up of a bunch of thuggish tribes? is the only thing the West can do is back a bunch of murderous strongmen and when Arabs step out of line kill a few? Under this view what is the responsibility of the Arab World for all the Arabs killed by Arabs?

Daniel A. Greenbaum

The middle east is occupied by more than the Arabs. There are the Kurds, the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Armenians, the Turks and Turkmen, and many others. "Arabs" generally refers to a specific group, including the Saudi Arabians. That nit aside, the citizens of Middle Eastern countries have indeed killed a lot of their fellow citizens, as well as of their neighbors. Americans intent upon destabilizing the area have contributed a lot to this killing. And, Americans looking to lock up lucrative oil deals have contributed more still.

Hoppy in Sacramento

The entire region is an artificial construct, with borders drawn a hundred years ago by people who didn't understand (or care about)nationalism; with the most powerful country in the region populated largely by Europeans who look down on the "natives" and openly covet more of their territory; it teems with religious and ethnic conflicts; is exploited for its oil; and unpopular governments are wedged on top of it all like the lid on a pressure cooker. How could such a creation not be a breeding ground for conflict and strife? Rationalize the borders of these psuedo-nations and a lot of these problems (usually called "intractable" by people who want you to throw up your hands and stop thinking about it) would go away. Sure, it would take a lot of work and effort, but we are already pouring a lot of work and effort into the region, and the only thing we're getting out of it is more problems.

Actually, I'm not sure that the bulk of the post is about Arabs at all, and neither example of the sources of extremism suggests that extremism is all there is ... that is a too shallow reading to really past muster, except perhaps out in the intellectual shallows such as television news.

An Arabian, on the other hand, is from Arabia.

Wilson tried to "rationalize" borders; it didn't work. It took Hitler and WWII to resolve the tensions resulting from artificially constructed borders.  And even then, there was Yugoslavia.

These Middle Eastern borders -- although provincial rather than national -- were established by the Ottomans acting imperially. They worked, then. Maybe, Nasser was right. Today, only a pan-Arab state in the Mashriq can work.

It wasn't really Wilson it was the British with help of the French. The British decided to make the Ottomans pay for WWI even more than the Germans. They and the French carved up the Ottoman Empire to create or shape Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

One of the interesting aspects of this region is how nationalism is at odds with many of the peoples there. As you note Nasser was an advocate of pan-Arabism. As Jo-Ann argues much of the area is actually tribal. It reminds one of the old joke that except for Egypt all the Arab countries are tribes with flags.

Now there are the religious groups the Islamic Brotherhood and its offshoots and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that make supra-national claims. This is the point of Nasr's book about the Shite Crescent.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Wilson tried to "rationalize" borders; it didn't work. It took Hitler and WWII to resolve the tensions resulting from artificially constructed borders.

SG: Okay ... but aren't borders by definition an artificial creation ...?

Maybe, Nasser was right. Today, only a pan-Arab state in the Mashriq can work.

SG: Help me out here ... the islamist, secular, sunni, shia, christian, muslim, jew, rich, poor, militant, moderate, pro west, anti-west, arab, persian, thing seems to have blinded me to that possibility ... What is it I am not seeing?

Snerd

Hey heads-up KJ ...

If you wish for a little new year's levity and wanna see some fast shuffling and a whole lotta song and dance...

Start here and follow the bouncing ball bull ...

~OGD~

ps: Your bio is a perfect reflection of my wife's explanation to our neighbors when they inquire of me...

Lest we forget, all the voices of reason and wisdom, who correctly raised these and many other issues well prior to the Bush government's bloody, costly, noendinsight horrorshow in Iraq, and all those who dared to oppose, question, or challenge the justifications and necessity for attacking and occupying Iraq going back to 2002, - were all ruthlessly slimed as anti-American, unpatriotic, French loving, communist, lunatic, spawns of the devil giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and were all systemically dismissed, suppressed, and affectively silenced.

The important question may be how to avoid making the same mistake the next time.

There was no way that there could be a good outcome, considering the forces that were on the ground just waiting to be released.

Your argument demonstrates that the current problems should not be attributed entirely to mismanagement.

It also demonstrates that claims there would be a good outcome were false.

But it does not demonstrate that the war was misbegotten and a mistake from the beginning or that pulling out now is the best policy.

Considering the forces that were on the ground just waiting to be released, the explosion after another decade or so would surely be much worse.

According to the bipartisan Baker Commission report the outcome of promptly pulling out now would be catastrophically worse than the outcome of not doing so.

An outcome being not being good is not a sufficient reason for not preferring it to worse outcomes.

Nice post. Do you include or exclude Kurds in a pan-Arab state?

It may be that some of the smaller minorities such as Turkmen are below the radar, but I'd be interested in any thoughts you have on this.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

oi vey. I've tried to make this argument many times, I don't believe it is an issue that can be discussed with people who are basking in the glow of an "I told you so" moment.

But here goes again. And I'll be right up front. I am naive. I believe a nation that can offer a certain amount of opportunity to it's citizens, diffuse polarities, and can therefore retain and grow a moderate middle class will overcome even the most intractable Religious strife.

There are two reasons why I hold onto this belief.

1. I believe human beings are good. I believe if given a choice between raising a family and enjoying a bit of prosperity, and picking up a gun, not everyone but more and more people over time will choose the first choice. What makes a moderate become an extremist is not a devout belief in God, or a messianic urge to purge the world of Non-Believers. It's the absolute lack of any other choice available. What makes a moderate become an extremist is not history or religion, it is being incapable of feeding his or her baby.

2. I can remember a time when no one ever would have believed a peace could take place in No. Ireland. All I can say is go back to the 1970s and if someone told you there would one day be a peace in No. Ireland you would look at them just as strangely as people are now looking at me arguing that there could be an end to Sectarian violence in Iraq.

Yep. I'm that naive.

One can probably see where I'm going with this. Had the infrastructure not been decimated. Had the Iraqi army not been disbanded. Had reconstruction contracts been given to Iraqis, and not Halliburton, Bechtel and Turkey, keeping most Iraqis employed. Had the middle class that had joined the Ba'ath Party in name only not been hauled off into interrogation chambers.

Etc. Etc. Etc. Then there would not have been a mass exodus of the middle class in Iraq, there would still be a population of moderates, there would be choice, and given that choice more and more people over time would choose to put down the guns, stop building IEDs, etc.

Lastly, I'll add this. I think to conclude that Iraq could never have evolved into a functioning representative government, a relatively peaceful state totally regardless of the management issue does two things: It means that one views people in the middle east as literally a group of people who, if given a choice, would choose a life of Sectarian violence over having jobs and raising families. And it also devalues anything to be learned from the fiasco except that we, as a nation, should never intervene. If the lesson is ONLY that the U.S. has no role to play in the evolution of other nations, then we must conclude that Clinton did the right thing regarding Rwanda (he didn't) and that our current policy regarding Darfur should be maintained.

"According to the bipartisan Baker Commission report the outcome of promptly pulling out now would be catastrophically worse than the outcome of not doing so." -- Arthur Dent.
---
Mr. Dent, with all respect, the ISG report conspicuously fails to mention that the entire invasion and war and occupation was launched on provably false pretenses and therefore was illegal under the U.S. Constitution, international law and the Geneva Conventions. This curious material omission renders the Report's contents and recommendations as fraudulent as the subject matter it purports to analyze.

Hitler contributed to lasting peace by indirectly enabling the transfer of 10+ million ethnic Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and other countries. This led to the establishment of more ethnically homogenous nation states, thus reducing or eliminating the tensions which were one of the causes of WWII in the first place.

You are of course right that most borders in Europe are very old (500+ years). Creation of eg. the Austrian Empire through imperial conquest did not redraw the historic borders of Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, Silesia, etc. After 1918, the empire simply crumbled to its component parts. Yugoslavia was created differently, but the end result was the same.

I don't know if or how that relates to Iraq.

It doesn't.

Actually Daniel, those Arab/Muslim "thugs" lived together relatively peacefully until the British took over from the Ottomans . . . and then (with help from the Americans) installed a "bunch of murderous strongmen" who could be relied on to protect British and American interests.

Interesting how it's become acceptable to make broad generalizations about the character of Arabs and Muslims. It's the new anti-Semitism, I guess . . .

I guess looking at the facts is an old problem of ideologues that never goes away. They lived peacefully until the British? They lived under the thumb of the Turks. The Sauds and Hashemites did a pretty good job of eliciting British help to install themselves. Those Arab strongmen, Nasser, Assad, Hussein, were mainly interested in protecting their own interests at the expense of their own people while being cheered on by some.

More to the point it would seem that you and many here want it both ways. Jo-Ann's point is the error in getting rid of the murderous Saddem was the failure to understand the tribal nature of the Iraqis. Since most of the killing going on in Iraq is being done by Arabs both the foreign Al Qaeda sorts and the Sunni and Shite Iraqis it would suggest that like Yugoslavia Iraq needed a murderous thug to run it.

Bush isn't the only one to be dishonest about Iraq and the Middle East. Don't you believe the Arabs are responsible for their own behavior or do you think they should be treated like children?

Daniel A. Greenbaum

True only if you think reality based oil executives like to do business in a war zone, or were so stupid to be in the neocon 'cakewalk' crowd.

More likely they weren't asked but were just pumped for information and told God had told Bush to start the war.

At the worst, they may have realized with the invasion the price of existing oil would more likely go up than down, earning them big bucks. Of course, Cheney and Bush thought exactly the opposite, Iraq production, they thought, would break OPEC.

Daniel, I suggest you read a history of the Ottoman empire. This quote from Wikipedia will do for now:

"One of the successes of the Ottoman Empire was the unity that it brought about among its highly varied populations. While the main reason for this was the Empire's military strength and use of intimidation as a means of control in newly conquered territories, it may also be ascribed in part to the laws of Islam, which stated that Muslims, Christians, and Jews —who constituted the vast majority of the Ottoman population— were all related in that they were "People of the Book" (Ahl al-Kitâb). As early as the reign of Mehmed II, extensive rights were granted to Phanariot Greeks, and many Jews were invited to settle in Ottoman territory. . .

"Under Ottoman rule the major religious groups were allowed to establish their own communities, called millets, each retaining its own religious laws, traditions, and language under the general protection of the sultan. Millets were led by religious chiefs, who served as secular as well as religious leaders and thus had a substantial interest in the continuation of Ottoman rule. After conquering Constantinople, Mehmed II used his army to restore its physical structure. Old buildings were repaired, streets, aqueducts, and bridges were constructed, sanitary facilities were modernised, and a vast supply system was established to provide for the city's inhabitants.

"Ultimately, the Ottoman Empire's relatively high degree of tolerance for ethnic differences proved to be one of its greatest strengths in integrating the new regions until the rise of nationalism (this non-assimilative policy became a weakness during the dissolution of the empire that neither the first or second parliaments could successfully address).

"...the Ottoman family was ethnically Turkish in its origins, as were some of its supporters and subjects. But ... the dynasty immediately lost this "Turkish" ethnic identification through intermarriage with many different ethnicities. As for a "Turkish empire", state power relied on a similarly heterogeneous mix of peoples. The Ottoman empire succeeded because it incorporated the energies of the vastly varied peoples it encountered, quickly transcending its roots in the Turkish nomadic migrations from Central Asia into the Middle East."

the citizens of Middle Eastern countries have indeed killed a lot of their fellow citizens, as well as of their neighbors

...whereas Europeans, Asians, and particularly Americans have always lived side-by-side in perfect tolerance and peace.

A "Wilsonian" Realist is only as far away as the next Christian capitalist. If complex thinking is being able to hold mutually contradicting ideas and still think you can achieve a win-win these neocons and many liberals are brilliant.Or fatally infected by cognitive dissonance.

At any rate, this "can the Arab/Islamic World Modernize?" debate among white,Christian, industrialized ,democrats is a bit ironic in light of the death and destruction of the last century,as we modern, enlightened ones created mountains of corpses for Truth and Justice(and perhaps a few resources). There is no escape fron "blowback",no running from history, and no return to a state of natural grace. Just as the individual cannot escape or erase his chilhood, the question is: how does he move on,Can he heal?

Given the fact humans are not always rational actors,that the well raised child can become the Killer and the well developed society can devise a Final Solution, what structures or systems of world governance are utopian enough to share power and resources and therefore avoid the obvious forces for conflict, yet remain "realist " enough to realize there is no end in sight to irrational behavior and force may sometimes be necessary? Arab nationalism was an avenue into modernity until it ran into hegemonic ambition. Only when the developed world curbs its voracious appetite will the worlds moderates be able to make their case without a wink and a nod.

I guess: what made the fighting so bad were years spent on overkill-sized efforts to control Intifidas and Palestinians between the intifadas.

The most agile military force in the world was converted to military police, operating in an environment of extreme superiority in arms. It may be hard to adapt the training and the mentality of officer corps to very different kinds of war.

DanielGree restated the thesis of this thread, quite accurately in my opinion. His restatement made it clear that this thesis is essentially racist. The low ratings are not appropriate.

Not that Mort or Nakash are racist. But the concept, that Iraq has no choice other than Saddam or tribal warfare, is racist.

Yes, mainly at the hands of fellow Arabs and their apologists.

Unfortunately, it is not confined to Arabs:

"The shock of these events[Palestinian acts of terror against Americans] followed the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy in Lebanon, which claimed the lives of some of the CIA's brightest minds on the Middle East, and the 1984 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, in which 241 Marines died. The Shiite terrorist organization Hezbollah had seized American hostages in Lebanon.[Coll, Steve, "Ghost Wars:The Secret History Of The CIA, Afghanistan, And Bin Laden From The Soviet Invasion To Sepetember 10, 2001."p 138]

No doubt you might use the same Shakespearean quote to explain away the role of Germans in WWI and WWII. However, rather than drama, however great, the real world makes for better policy.

How many dead Americans is acceptable?

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I don't disagree that Iraqis would prefer to live in peace. There's nothing inherent in Iraqis, or Arabs, or anyone, that would make that statement untrue. But dropping bombs on a country is bad way to get to that peace and prosperity. 

Initially, many Iraqis supported and joined the insurgency because we invaded and occupied their country. But now it's grown into a larger civil war and power struggle. Whether individual Iraqis today feel that "have no choice," I don't know enough about that to say either way. I would imagine most would prefer to get the hell out of there, but that option is obviously limited. Perhaps joining a militia is better today than waiting around for someone to kill you. 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

Whether your view of either international law or the credibility of the ISG report is correct or not, you have simply not addressed the issue of whether the outcome of promptly withdrawing would be catastrophically worse than the outcome of staying in or not.

Neither of course did the author of the main post, Jo-Ann Mort.

That is likely to be the decisive question and the inability of people advocating prompt withdrawal to even consider it, let alone address it seriously, strongly suggests that they simply do not have a case.

For the most part that's my point. Because the invasion itself was part of the mis-management that could be separated from an overall policy of regime-change.

And I try to make a finer point. Iraqis didn't join the insurgency because we occupied their country. They joined the insurgency because we took away their jobs. Which was part of the occupation. The question: can one imagine an occupation where the Authority creates jobs instead of takes them away?

Sorry, that was just shorthand for the whole invading/occupying the country thing.

But we did drop a lot of bombs. Here's how the whole thing started, at Dora Farms:

At approximately 05:30 UTC four enhanced, satellite-guided GBU 2,000-pound Bunker Busters were dropped on the compound. One missed the compound entirely and the other three missed their target landing on the other side of the wall of the palace compound.[1][2][3] Saddam Hussein was not present nor were any members of the Iraqi leadership or Hussein family. Two young boys from the neighboring farm were reported killed by the stray missile.

Really, a metaphor for everything else that was about to happen...

The bottom line is, the whole idea of peace and prosperity coming out of the unilateral invasion of another country (let alone justified through cherrypicking through and lying about intel...) is simply a pipe dream.

That doesn't mean, going back to your [stew's] original point, the use of the military is never justified. It is sometimes. But not in the case of Iraq in 2003.

Dissent Protects Democracy.

No doubt you might use the same Shakespearean quote to explain away the role of Germans in WWI and WWII

Of course . Or Tamil tigers suicide
bombing , General Dyer at Amritsar , "the Rape of Nanking" , Abu Ghraib , the Armenian massacre , the bombing of the King David Hotel etc.

"mass exodus of the middle class"

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the exodus of the middle class from Iraq is mostly Sunni, and it is the result of systematic assassination of members of the Sunni middle class by Shia, which has been going on for several years without much attention from the media.

When I first learned about this, I interpreted it as evidence that a civil war was in progress, long before the press started talking about civil war.

The Sunni, lacking oil, have dominated Iraq not only by oppressive government. Their only intrinsic resource is their education. The exodus of middle class Sunni means that the Shia are winning the civil war and the Sunni are losing.

Furthermore, the socio-economic structure of Iraq has been and is continuing to be fundamentally altered, probably permanently. If we were to project the trend indefinitely into the future, it would imply that eventually the Sunnis will no longer be a significant factor in Iraq. What will their role be in the countries that they have emigrated to?

Are the Sunnis the new Palestinians?

Since ethnic cleansing is already taking place, we should not be surprised if someday there is an eruption of blatant genocide.

As someone who has opposed this war from the beginning, I hate to say it, but that is an argument for keeping troups in Iraq. Should they be OUR troops? Maybe this is an argument for bringing in the neighboring countries. The truth is, however, that I doubt that any of the neighboring countries are interested in taking responsiblity for a genuine solution of the problem in Iraq. They might be interested in profiting from the problems in Iraq.

Unfortunately, we are in a triage situation in Iraq. In this particular place, at this particular time, there is essentially nothing more we can do to salvage the situation. We might have had the capability to do something different at one time, but that time is past.

The recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton report are really just an attempt to paper over our government's responsibility for the coming debacle. The report is the first step in the construction of our national amnesia about Iraq, or perhaps the second step, if the first step was the cloud of unknowing that was originally created by the Bush administration when it took us into Iraq.

In some cases of potential genocide, the problem seems so remote from our part of the world that it is possible to doubt the extent of our responsibility. Here, the problem is not entirely of our doing, but our government does have a direct responsibility - arguably, a criminal responsibility.

The ethical issues here are deeply troubling. I feel sorry for the next president of the United States. He or she is going to be haunted by Iraq forever.

President Bush will be judged harshly by professional historians, but I expect the results in Iraq will be so impossible to accept that the account given in textbooks will be quite different. Our textbooks will sanitize the war in just the same way that the Japanese sanitize their role in World War II.

If I may offer a friendly amendment, I agree that freedom and democracy cannot come from the muzzle of a gun. Mao's dictum that political power flows from the muzzle of a gun, however, still is true; there are many forms of political power. As demonstrated in particular societies such as Singapore, freedom, as we regard it, may not be considered the highest good of the society.

As George Orwell had O'Brien say in 1984,

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake…We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

If a civil war is going to break out (like say after Sadaam's death) better to be brought in as part of a multinational force to quell it rather than being the accelerant that brought it on.

Jo-ann asked :

Did anyone in the White House read anything about the region before sanctioning this war?

Sounds plausible. But more than 4 million people have been killed in the various Congo, and Burundi wars connected with the better known Rwandan Genocide.

Then there's the current Darfur conflict and related Sudanese Civil Wars

But surely Iraq itself is an adequate example. There is even less public support and international support for quelling civil war there than there was for the invasion.

Racist? It's not racist to say that certain things are possible for a particular culture at a particular time, and certain things simply are not. Race has nothing to do with it.

Sure, the Iraqis can have a democracy someday. But apparently, that day is not today.

Which had its moments. Jeanne Kirkpatrick and
WBAI disgraced themselves by supporting Galtieri. The Daily Mail disgraced
itself with its front page GOTCHA when the
Belgrano was torpedoed on the last day of the
fighting and 600 Argentinian sailors drowned.
(anyone but me remember " Don't cheer boys , those poor lads are dying " ?)Galtieri of course continued disgracing himself (he was on a roll)
by starting the whole thing. Maggie won and helped end the nightmare in BA with the -ha, ha - flying nuns , the junta's side splitting way of referring to its chosen method of killing religious opponents .

In this thread I only referenced the ISG report for its conclusion that prompt withdrawal would be a catastrophe.

That (plus the fact that the situation is grave and deteriating) strike me as its most important long term contributions. People here don't seem to need much convincing that the situation is grave and detiorating but they do still need to fully grok the fact that prompt withdrawal would be catastrophic and that this is now accepted in the bipartisan mainstream.

I've posted more extensively about the report here (and elsewhere in that thread and links from it).

"How many dead Americans is acceptable?"

Thats the big question: How many more Americans is Bush going to sacrifice for his ego?

Another point to make here . . . many nations consist of various groups (ethnic, religious, etc.) that could, under the right circumstances, become hostile to each other. Ordinarily, the groups co-exist peacefully as long as the society is relatively healthy and prosperous. If the society becomes more troubled and people more fearful, then tensions between groups can flare up. Sometimes an authoritarian ruler can suppress tensions (or even exploit them). But the point is that in a relatively healthy, prosperous society, these potential inter-group tensions are unlikely to be a problem. Subject the society to severe stress, however, and the tensions will intensify, resulting in conflict or requiring forceful suppression. I'd argue that the Ottomans managed to keep tensions low because (at least in the empire's early and middle years) they presided over a prosperous and successful society. The ethnic tensions in Iraq probably were beginning to flare up under Saddam (and maybe Saddam even encouraged them for political purposes)--but the stress of the US occupation is what turned potential energy into the most violent kinetic energy.