[Drizzt]

February 26, 2003, 10:00 a.m.

Voice of Iraqis
Why don’t antiwar types want to hear them?

By Amir Taheri



Could I have the microphone for one minute to tell the people about my life?" asked the Iraqi grandmother.

I spent part of a recent Saturday with the so-called "antiwar" marchers in London in the company of some Iraqi friends. Our aim had been to persuade the organizers to let at least one Iraqi voice to be heard. Soon, however, it became clear that the organizers were as anxious to stifle the voice of the Iraqis in exile as was Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

The Iraqis had come with placards reading "Freedom for Iraq" and "American rule, a hundred thousand times better than Takriti tyranny!"

But the tough guys who supervised the march would have none of that. Only official placards, manufactured in thousands and distributed among the "spontaneous" marchers, were allowed. These read "Bush and Blair, baby-killers," " Not in my name," "Freedom for Palestine," and "Indict Bush and Sharon."

Not one placard demanded that Saddam should disarm to avoid war.

The goons also confiscated photographs showing the tragedy of Halabja, the Kurdish town where Saddam's forces gassed 5,000 people to death in 1988.

We managed to reach some of the stars of the show, including Reverend Jesse Jackson, the self-styled champion of American civil rights. One of our group, Salima Kazim, an Iraqi grandmother, managed to attract the reverend's attention and told him how Saddam Hussein had murdered her three sons because they had been dissidents in the Baath Party; and how one of her grandsons had died in the war Saddam had launched against Kuwait in 1990.

"Could I have the microphone for one minute to tell the people about my life?" 78-year-old Salima demanded.

The reverend was not pleased.

"Today is not about Saddam Hussein," he snapped. "Today is about Bush and Blair and the massacre they plan in Iraq." Salima had to beat a retreat, with all of us following, as the reverend's gorillas closed in to protect his holiness.

We next spotted former film star Glenda Jackson, apparently manning a stand where "antiwar" characters could sign up to become "human shields" to protect Saddam's military installations against American air attacks.

"These people are mad," said Awad Nasser, one of Iraq's most famous modernist poets. "They are actually signing up to sacrifice their lives to protect a tyrant's death machine."

The former film star, now a Labor party member of parliament, had no time for "side issues" such as the 1.2 million Iraqis, Iranians, and Kuwaitis who have died as a result of Saddam's various wars.

We thought we might have a better chance with Charles Kennedy, a boyish-looking, red-headed Scot who leads the misnamed Liberal Democrat party. But he, too, had no time for "complex issues" that could not be raised at a mass rally.

"The point of what we are doing here is to tell the American and British governments that we are against war," he pontificated. "There will be ample time for other issues."

But was it not amazing that there could be a rally about Iraq without any mention of what Saddam and his regime have done over almost three decades? Just a little hint, perhaps, that Saddam was still murdering people in his Qasr al-Nayhayah (Palace of the End) prison, and that as the Westerners marched, Iraqis continued to die?

Not a chance.

We then ran into Tony Benn, a leftist septuagenarian who has recycled himself as a television reporter to interview Saddam in Baghdad.

But we knew there was no point in talking to him. The previous night he had appeared on TV to tell the Brits that his friend Saddam was standing for "the little people" against "hegemonistic America."

"Are these people ignorant, or are they blinded by hatred of the United States?" Nasser the poet demanded.

The Iraqis would had much to tell the "antiwar" marchers, had they had a chance to speak. Fadel Sultani, president of the National Association of Iraqi authors, would have told the marchers that their action would encourage Saddam to intensify his repression.

"I had a few questions for the marchers," Sultani said. "Did they not realize that oppression, torture and massacre of innocent civilians are also forms of war? Are the antiwar marchers only against a war that would liberate Iraq, or do they also oppose the war Saddam has been waging against our people for a generation?"

Sultani could have told the peaceniks how Saddam's henchmen killed dissident poets and writers by pushing page after page of forbidden books down their throats until they choked.

Hashem al-Iqabi, one of Iraq's leading writers and intellectuals, had hoped the marchers would mention the fact that Saddam had driven almost four million Iraqis out of their homes and razed more than 6,000 villages to the ground.

"The death and destruction caused by Saddam in our land is the worst since Nebuchadnezzar," he said. "These prosperous, peaceful, and fat Europeans are marching in support of evil incarnate." He said that, watching the march, he felt Nazism was "alive and well and flexing its muscles in Hyde Park."

Abdel-Majid Khoi, son of the late Grand Ayatollah Khoi, Iraq's foremost religious leader for almost 40 years, spoke of the "deep moral pain" he feels when hearing the so-called " antiwar" discourse.

"The Iraqi nation is like a man who is kept captive and tortured by a gang of thugs," Khoi said. "The proper moral position is to fly to help that man liberate himself and bring the torturers to book. But what we witness in the West is the opposite: support for the torturers and total contempt for the victim."

Khoi said he would say ahlan wasahlan (welcome) to anyone who would liberate Iraq.

"When you are being tortured to death you are not fussy about who will save you," he said.

Ismail Qaderi, a former Baathist official but now a dissident, wanted to tell the marchers how Saddam systematically destroyed even his own party, starting by murdering all but one of its 16 original leaders.

"Those who see Saddam as a symbol of socialism, progress, and secularism in the Arab world must be mad," he said.

Khalid Kishtaini, Iraq's most famous satirical writer, added his complaint.

"Don't these marchers know that the only march possible in Iraq under Saddam Hussein is from the prison to the firing-squad?" he asked. "The Western marchers behave as if the US wanted to invade Switzerland, not Iraq under Saddam Hussein."

With all doors shutting in our faces we decided to drop out of the show and watch the political zoology of the march from the sidelines.

Who were these people who felt such hatred of their democratic governments and such intense self-loathing?

There were the usual suspects: the remnants of the Left, from Stalinists and Trotskyites to caviar socialists. There were the pro-abortionists, the anti-GM food crowd, the anti-capital-punishment militants, the black-rights gurus, the anti-Semites, the "burn Israel" lobby, the "Bush-didn't-win-Florida" zealots, the unilateral disarmers, the anti-Hollywood "cultural exception" merchants, and the guilt-ridden postmodernist "everything is equal to everything else" philosophers.

But the bulk of the crowd consisted of fellow travelers, those innocent citizens who, prompted by idealism or boredom, are always prepared to play the role of "useful idiots," as Lenin used to call them.

They ignored the fact that the peoples of Iraq are unanimous in their prayers for the war of liberation to come as quickly as possible.

The number of marchers did not impress Salima, the grandmother.

"What is wrong does not become right because many people say it," she asserted, bidding us farewell while the marchers shouted "Not in my name!"

Let us hope that when Iraq is liberated, as it soon will be, the world will remember that it was not done in the name of Rev. Jackson, Charles Kennedy, Glenda Jackson, Tony Benn, and their companions in a march of shame.

— Amir Taheri is author of The Cauldron: The Middle East behind the headlines. Taheri is reachable through www.benadorassociates.com.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-taheri022603.asp

[Pendragon]

:fire: :cuss: :fire:

Can we charge them with accessory to genocide?

[Chris Rhines]

Heh. If a bunch of Iraqi expats want to overthrow Saddam, why aren't they footing the bill for it?

- Chris

[longeyes]

The anti-war types don't care about Iraq. They care about Bush pooping their party. To them he is the Stern Dad who will send them to their rooms or, worse, the Reformed Addict who ain't buying the "anything goes" agenda. I've talked to a lot of people on the Left and I hear the same mantras again and again and again. When it's not fear of Bush it's about fear of the world and their responsibilities in it.

[Atticus]

"Heh. If a bunch of Iraqi expats want to overthrow Saddam, why aren't they footing the bill for it?"

For the same reason Einstein didn't attempt to overthrow Hitler. I guess he should have financed his own nuclear research as well. Idealism vs. realism - I'm glad some know the difference.

[2dogs]

Voice of Iraqis: Why don’t antiwar types want to hear them?

The anti war protesters are liberals- liberals never want to hear the truth because if they did they would be unable to go on being liberals.

Cognitive dissonance.

"Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which has two major effects on learning:

*if someone is called upon to learn something which contradicts what they already think they know — particularly if they are committed to that prior knowledge — they are likely to resist the new learning. Even Carl Rogers recognised this. Accommodation is more difficult than Assimilation, in Piaget's terms.

*if learning something has been difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating enough, people are not likely to admit that the content of what has been learned is not valuable. To do so would be to admit that one has been "had", or "conned". "


Liberals KNOW the "truth"- they don't want to hear it.
:banghead:

[Atticus]

It's simply proof that they hate Dubya more than anything else.

Where was Carter, Sheen and the rest when Clinton was acting unilaterally against Milosevich?

[Chris Rhines]

For the same reason Einstein didn't attempt to overthrow Hitler. Translation - they don't have the money, and/or they would rather spend mine. Sorry, that don't cut it.

I guess he should have financed his own nuclear research as well. Yup. He should have.

Idealism vs. realism - I'm glad some know the difference. I'm an idealistic realist - does that count?

- Chris

[Pendragon]

I would rather have my tax money spent on this war than most of the programs in the Fed and any of the programs in CA.

At least you are realistic. You are not arguing that Saddam is not a problem and that the Iraqi people have not been brutalized and murdered.

Nice to know that its just bottom line thing for you.

There are many atrocities occuring the in the world at any given time and it is a given that we cannot intervene everywhere.

However, as a free person, I think we owe it to ourselves to intervene when there is another manifestation of Hitler or Stalin in the world.

But then, perhaps you would have said - to hell with the Jews and the slavs and the gypsies and everyone else - if they don't want to bake, they should raise an army.

O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife.
Who more than self the country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

[Atticus]

Chis: I don't usually agree with you (and I don't on this one either) but I do respect your opinion. Idealistic realist? I like that. It's never any fun if we all agree!:D

[Chris Rhines]

I would rather have my tax money spent on this war than most of the programs in the Fed and any of the programs in CA. I would rather have my tax money back. :D

Nice to know that its just bottom line thing for you. I think that greed is a virtue, so I don't bother to conceal mine.

However, as a free person, I think we owe it to ourselves to intervene when there is another manifestation of Hitler or Stalin in the world. Couple of logical problems in this statement. First, comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler or Stalin is faulty reasoning at best. Compared to the #1 and #3 (I think) mass murderers of the last century, Saddam rates nothing more than a flyspeck. Second, why do 'we' owe it to ourselves to go kick the snot out of Iraq? For the money? For our own safety? Just because we are nice people and we want the rest of the world to like us? None of it washes.

But then, perhaps you would have said - to hell with the Jews and the slavs and the gypsies and everyone else - if they don't want to bake, they should raise an army. Funny you bring this up, considering that it was the policy of the US government up to 1940. The Weremacht would have been a tough fight if the USG had gotten into the war in the late '30s; I'd lay fair odds that the US Army would have lost a European ground war at that time. It's a bit different when there's a real fight in the offing...

Anyhow, speaking only for myself, I have a lot more respect for the Jews, the Poles, the Slavs, the Free French (even though they were mostly commies), the Norwegians, etc, who fought rather than accepting their fate.

- Chris

[Desertdog]

If they were anti-war they would have been out in droves each time Clinton did something. Not a peep though.

They are anti-Bush!! Nothing more, nothing less, unless of course they are just anti-American.

[Nightfall]

If they were anti-war they would have been out in droves each time Clinton did something. Not a peep though.

They are anti-Bush!! Nothing more, nothing less, unless of course they are just anti-American.

Bingo.

[fallingblock]

you've just made their point for them:D

****************************************************
"Funny you bring this up, considering that it was the policy of the US government up to 1940."
****************************************************

Isolationist, 'anti-war' American public declines to help Europe resist Hitler.


****************************************************
"The Weremacht would have been a tough fight if the USG had gotten into the war in the late '30s; I'd lay fair odds that the US Army would have lost a European ground war at that time."
****************************************************


Hitler had little but determination until the end of the '30's. The success of his forces had far more to do with lack of will among the allies. The French actually outgunned the Germans by a considerable margin, and the U.S. could have out-produced Nazi Germany at any time. And Hitler would have lost sooner.



****************************************************
"It's a bit different when there's a real fight in the offing..."
****************************************************


Does the 'reality' of a fight depend on the scale, or the results?


****************************************************
"Anyhow, speaking only for myself, I have a lot more respect for the Jews, the Poles, the Slavs, the Free French (even though they were mostly commies), the Norwegians, etc, who fought rather than accepting their fate."
****************************************************

Wouldn't these groups have been honored to have had help earlier in the fight??

And would anyone with 'respect' for their brave but futile stand been truly 'respectable' for having declined to help them?

[Beorn]

The anti war protesters are liberals- liberals never want to hear the truth because if they did they would be unable to go on being liberals.
Truth is a subjective thing my friend. Based upon point-of-view.

What you would do well to argue is fact. I have some liberal attitudes, but I am always willing to listen to the facts. Sometimes they change my mind, and sometimes I feel they are not pertinent to my current thought; therefore not changing my mind.

Accommodation is more difficult than Assimilation, in Piaget's terms.
2dogs, why must you make me relive my Educational Psychology classes?!? :)

I would rather have my tax money spent on this war than most of the programs in the Fed and any of the programs in CA.
I disagree. I feel that if we withdraw ALL AID from ALL COUNTRIES for a period of 5 years, we'd be a lot better off (admitedly at the expense of the rest of the world) [see posts by me elsewhere in THR]:)

[HABU]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife.
Who more than self the country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Well said Pendragon. Unfortunately, verse three is lost on the resident liberal. :rolleyes:

[0007]

Sorry, while it is a cornerstone of liberal idiology that "truth" is a relative subjective term, the reality is that very few real "truths" are relative to a particular viewpoint. Those that are usually are called opinions. Truth to Saddam is whatever he says at any given moment (as it was and is to clinton and most of his followers). There is nothing wrong with wanting to call one's own opinions, "truths" as long as one accepts that they may be true only relative to how you "feel"; oops, there's that other touchstone of liberal idiology - how I(they) feel about something.

[Khornet]

I think you miss the point of the article. That is that the Iraquis weren't allowed to speak. They weren't allowed not by some ill-informed teenage follower; they were shut up by the leaders and representatives of the antiwar movement.

Now I have no doubt that had they aproached you fellas, you would have let them speak, and then debated them. But that's not the way of the antiwar movement, and that makes it a lie even if their point is correct.

[ravinraven]

In the '30's we did not accept the truth about Hitler therefore we paid the consequences. Hitler could have been stopped with the loss of little Eurpean blood and no American blood.

There is evidence that the US gov't knew about the Japanese task force sitting off Pearl Harbor. We did get our carriers out of Pearl. We parked the battleships there. There was argument in the Navy at the time that the battleship was obsolete. [Hmmm...] There is one report floating around that the "Day of Infamy" speech was written on the second of December.

If we had smashed Hitler "way back when" we'd have never known for sure what he was. If we'd have smashed that Japanese fleet, we'd have never known what they would do.

Odd isn't it? You can't know what somebody would have done if you prevent him from doing it. So we are into that PC bugaboo, PROFILING. "H" could have been prevented from doing "A" if he had been stopped while doing "X". "S" is doing "X". Stop him so he can't do "A".

Now the liberals hate Bush since he is trying to stop Saddam. If Bush says, "OK, Liberals. You win. Let's go home," and he pulls back the troops and then IF Saddam does what the profile suggests he may well do, the same Liberals will blast Bush for "failing" to stop him.

Bush the first followed the UN idea that we leave Saddam intact in 1991 and he's being blamed for not getting him then. The same "blasters" would have blasted Bush #1 if he had taken Saddam out then. "He violated UN policy!" they would have screamed.

So why do we have these seeming illogical Liberals appearing to thwart every move that is made toward the furtherance of Liberty and Individual Rights both here and abroad? Simple. Liberalism is the kid brother of tyranny. They thrive in these area of uncertainty. That uncertainty involves the thought: "We know what WILL happen but we can't PROVE it in a court of law."

Hitler was a Liberal. NAZI is an acroynm incorporating the German word for Socialism. Socialism is a failed Liberal idea. Socialism and its big brother, Communism, cannot survive in an atmosphere featuring liberty and individual rights.

The question remains: "Why did American Liberals love Stalin, who murdered far more people than Hitler, but hated Hitler?" before he declared war on the USSR. Probably because Hitler was the new kid on the butcher block when he emerged. Stalin already was in business.

Remember. Liberals in this country are promoting and drooling for the installation of totalitarian government here in America. Why else do they work so dilligently against the Bill of Rights? They only promote freedom of speech when a porn geek is trying to entice your child. They only promote the fifth amendment noisily when that fifth amendment is protecting a known terrorist. And it goes on. Liberals support the so-called Multiculturalism programs on college campusses. Multiculturalism is the code word for Anti-Americanism. The first amendment is dead on copllege campuses both in its freedom-of-speech area and in its government-establishment-of-religion area. Multiculturalism is a religion complete with chants, rallies and the smashing of rival religion's ceremonies, symbols and holidays.

Make no mistake about it. American Liberalism is the enemy of Liberty everywhere. That's why they protest the present war of liberation. So they are being logical. Any piece of information that does not promote their Anti-Liberty, therefore Anti-American agenda is to them "a lie."

Accept and act on this truth or pay the consequences.

Action?? Vote carefully. That's the best way as long as the American system is not corrupted beyond an ability to correct itself. But what happens if the system can't correct itself?

[Chris Rhines]

fallingblock -

Does the 'reality' of a fight depend on the scale, or the results? Not sure what you mean. My point was that it's easy for the government to start banging the drums and sending the boys off to war when there's little risk of a major fight. Things are different when the body bags start to pile up.

Wouldn't these groups have been honored to have had help earlier in the fight?? I would hope so.

And would anyone with 'respect' for their brave but futile stand been truly 'respectable' for having declined to help them? Um, respectfully, fallingblock, you missed the point by a country mile.

Look, if you want to grab a rifle and a plane ticket and go out and fight tyrrany and injustice, you won't hear a peep out of me. Go to it. Depending on the cause, I may join you.

What chaps my butt is when people start hitting me up for the plane fare and ammo costs.

What REALLY chaps my butt is when the government says, "Here's your rifle and plane ticket, there's the enemy, go get em!" Thanks, guys, but I decide who I fight. My concience is not subordinate to that of the state.

Khornet -

You are indeed right, and this illustrates the reason why I have little respect for the leftist arm of the anti-war movement. They have no internal consistency. They're against war, but they're plenty happy to pick my pocket to pay for nation building, UN civics projects, and other social.eng causes. And I have a feeling that many of them (I can think of a few notable left-wing exceptions) would heartly cheer on a war against a libertarian-capitalist nation-state with no public works or social benefits.

- Chris

[Khornet]

Mr. Rines.

And you in turn are right about our pockets being picked. Mr. Durante was right, as somebody's sig line here says.

BTW, there's a Rines Road near me in NH, where I take my boys squirrel hunting. You should see it. Lovely place.

[fallingblock]

I do seem to have been a bit confused about your point there.:)

****************************************************
"What REALLY chaps my butt is when the government says, "Here's your rifle and plane ticket, there's the enemy, go get em!" Thanks, guys, but I decide who I fight. My concience is not subordinate to that of the state."
****************************************************

Been there, done that. We are in total agreement !:D

I suppose that sometimes it is neccessary to apply force, or the convincing threat of force, to protect the nation from attack.
We seem to be in a new kind of geopolitical game after 9/11, where the goal of the enemy is not to conquer us in the military sense, but rather to obliterate us in the cultural sense. If Saddam has WMD, I'm quite happy for G.W. to whack Iraq before he can deploy them. I will add that I'm considered too old to bring the rifle to the party anymore ;)

[Zander]

I'm an idealistic realist - does that count? -- CRWell, no...because that's a practical oxymoron.

Realism seems to be far from your strong suit.

To wit, this gem:

What REALLY chaps my butt is when the government says, "Here's your rifle and plane ticket, there's the enemy, go get em! [sic]" Thanks, guys, but I decide who [sic] I fight. My concience is not subordinate to that of the state.

I am happy that my primary language isn't Hochdeutsch...and that our country didn't have to depend on your sort of mindset in our fight against Nazism and communism.

Fortunately, for those of your "idealism", there are good men and women who fought and died for your right to express your opinion.

And equally fortunate, there are those who willingly volunteer, train and deploy to keep us free from those who would destroy us and our way of life.

[QKRTHNU]

Chris,

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I guess he should have financed his own nuclear research as well.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yup. He should have.

Come on now. Defense research is one of the only things the government SHOULD be spending OUR money on.

[Chris Rhines]

Zander -

How exactly is the current invasion of Afghanistan protecting my freedom? How would an invasion of Iraq, for that matter? "Soldiers on the front lines, fighting for our freedom" is a wonderful patriotic meme, but it doesn't stand up to the bost elementary test of causation. Sorry.

QKRTHNU (how do you pronounce that?) -

Sorry, but government making unilateral decisions to spend my money on anything is nothing more than theft. Regardless of how noble the goal.

- Chris

[The Plainsman]

A Case for War

A CASE FOR WAR will not attempt to explain the reasons for attacking Iraq because Iraq is part of a bigger picture, and the attack there will be one battle in a much longer war. Trying to understand one particular battle without the context of the larger war is an exercise in futility. (By analogy: what excuse is there in 1942 for the US to attack Vichy France in Morocco? Vichy France wasn't our enemy; Germany and Italy were. Taken out of the context of the larger war, the Torch landings in Africa make little sense. It's only when you look at the bigger picture of the whole war that you can understand them.)

We must attack Iraq. We must totally conquer the nation. Saddam must be removed from power, and killed if possible, and the Baath party must be shattered.

But Saddam isn't our enemy. bin Laden (may he burn in hell) is not our enemy. Iraq isn't our enemy. al Qaeda isn't our enemy. The Taliban weren't our enemies. They are merely symptoms of decay.

In most wars, there's a government or core organization which you can identify as the enemy. It isn't always a single person; in World War II it was Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, but it wasn't Tojo in Japan. Tojo was deposed in 1944, but the war went on. It also wasn't Hirohito; he mostly kept his hands off of policy. Still, it was the Japanese government, and that could still be understood. But in this war there is no single government or small group of them, no man, no organization. Our enemy is a culture which is deeply diseased.

It's really difficult to exactly delineate who our enemies are, but they number in millions. They're Arab and Muslim, but not every Arab is among them, and most Muslims are not. But even to discuss it in these terms is to cross the boundaries of political correctness. Not that I care, but it isn't politically possible for our leaders to say things like these, which makes the political wrangling all the more difficult. I think that they know what I'm about to say, and I at least am free to say what I believe whether others find it offensive or racist.

Islam is larger than greater Arabia, and the majority of Muslims are not Arab. But in the beginning, Islam was both a religion and a political movement. The Qur'an is a source of moral teachings for everyday life, telling people how to live and how to act towards one another. But it's also a manual for conquest, describing how to face enemies, how to fight, how to treat those who have been conquered, how to treat prisoners, how to treat enemy soldiers.

It lays a dual obligation on Muslims: to live a good life and to spread Islam to the entire world, by any means necessary. All successful widespread religions are evangelistic to a greater or lesser extent (with Judaism being the notable exception), but I know of no other major religion whose holy teachings include instructions for how to go to war to spread the faith.

Until Mohammed, the Arab tribes were divided and spent most of their time fighting one another. The great achievement of Mohammed was to unite the Arabs and face them outwards, strengthened and given will by his new religion. And for two hundred years, nothing could stand in their way; they created one of the great empires in the history of the world which was bounded on the south by the Sahara, on the west by the Atlantic ocean, on the north by Christendom, and on the east by the Hindu nations. Extending from Spain to Iran, from Turkey to Egypt it was much larger and more powerful than was the Roman Empire before it, and it lasted longer. Within its borders art and science and poetry and architecture flourished.

But like all empires, it eventually fell. Unlike other empires, this was against the word of God, for the Qur'an says that Islam will eventually dominate the entire world. In reality, it's been in retreat for more than three hundred years, and its decline became far more precipitous with the collapse of the Ottomans. Once-great Arab nations became little more than colonies for heathen Europeans, or economic dependents of America.

Our enemy is those who inherit the culture and heritage of that empire. Not everyone within the empire's physical realm now partakes of that culture, but many do.

I am having a difficult time coming up with a pithy term for our enemy. It's hard. It isn't really greater Arabia. It certainly isn't Islam. Islamic fundamentalism is a symptom of it, not the core. Arab nationalism and imperialism is also a symptom of it, not the core. Each of those can and does exist without the other, but they're both expressions of the real enemy we face, something deeper than that.

To refer to it as Arab nostalgia is wrong, for many of those within the body of our enemy inherit the beliefs and dogma which make them our enemies without knowing where they came from. They aren't necessarily traditionalists, for the same reason, though that's perhaps closer. I'm afraid I'm going to have to use the partly-fallacious term "Arab culture", accepting that not all Arab culture is our enemy and not all Arabs are among our enemies.

Our enemy holds to a traditional belief, a traditional culture. Islam is a core piece of that, but it isn't the whole thing, and not everyone who believes in Islam is part of the enemy. Our enemy is the majority of the people who live in what we think of as the large Arab nations, plus certain other groups. Our enemy is concentrated in Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, plus the Palestinians are part of it. There are lesser concentrations of our enemy in Morocco, Algeria, Yemen, Oman and (non-Arab) Pakistan. And Iran is, as usual, a complicated aspect of it. While not being Arab, it is closer culturally to the Arabs, and to a great extent our enemy also holds sway there. The traditionalists and theocrats in Iran are part of our enemy, even though not being Arab, because Persian Iran was a key part of the original Arab/Islamic empire, and still retains much of that culture.

The problem with our enemy's culture is that in the 20th century it was revealed as being an abject failure. By any rational calculation, it could not compete, and not simply because the deck was stacked against it. The problem was more fundamental; the culture itself contained the elements of its own failure.

The only Arab nations which have prospered have done so entirely because of the accident of mineral wealth. Using money from export of oil, they imported a high tech infrastructure. They drive western cars. They use western cell phones. They built western high-rise steel frame buildings. They created superhighways and in every way implemented the trappings of western prosperity.

Or rather, they paid westerners to create all those things for them. They didn't build or create any of it themselves. It's all parasitic. And they also buy the technical skill to keep it running. The technological infrastructure of Saudi Arabia (to take an example) is run by a small army of western engineers and technicians and managers who are paid well, and who live in isolation, and who keep it all working. If they all leave, the infrastructure will collapse. Saudi Arabia does not have the technical skill to run it, or the ability to produce the replacement parts which would be needed. It's all a sham, and they know it. Everything they have which looks like modern culture was purchased. They themselves do not have the ability to produce, or even to operate, any of it.

The diseased culture of our enemy suffers from all seven of the deep flaws Ralph Peters identifies as condemning nations to failure in the modern world. Peters makes a convincing case that there is a correlation approaching unity between the extent to which a nation or culture suffers from these flaws and its inability to succeed in the 21st century. He lists them as follows: Restrictions on the free flow of information. The subjugation of women. Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure. The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization. Domination by a restrictive religion. A low valuation of education. Low prestige assigned to work.

And carrying all seven of these, our enemy is trying to compete in the 21st century foot race with both feet cast into buckets of concrete. They are profoundly handicapped by the very values that they hold most dear and that they believe make them what they are.

The nations and the peoples within the zone of our enemy's culture are complete failures. Their economies are disasters. They make no contribution to the advance of science or engineering. They make no contribution to art or culture. They have no important diplomatic power. They are not respected. Most of their people are impoverished and miserable and filled with resentment, and those who are not impoverished are living a lie. They hate us. They hate us because our culture is everything theirs is not. Our culture is vibrant and fecund; our economies are successful. Our achievements are magnificent. Our engineering and science are advancing at breathtaking speed. Our people are fat and happy (relatively speaking). We are influential, we are powerful, we are wealthy. "We" are the western democracies, but in particular "we" are the United States, which is the most successful of the western democracies by a long margin. America is the most successful nation in the history of the world, economically and technologically and militarily and even culturally.

Our culture as exported is condemned as being lowbrow in many places, but it's hard to deny how pervasive and influential it is. Baywatch was total dreck, but it was also the most successful syndicated television program around the world in history, racking up truly massive audiences each week. Our culture is seductive on every level; those elsewhere who are exposed to it find it attractive. It isn't always "high culture"; but some of it is, and with the world revolution in telecommunications it's impossible for anyone in the world to avoid seeing it and being exposed to it.

Nor can anyone ignore our technology, which is definitely not lowbrow, nor our scientific achievements. We're everything that they think they should be, everything they once were, and by our power and success we throw their modern failure into stark contrast, especially because we've gotten to where we are by doing everything their religion says is wrong. We've deeply sinned, and yet we've won. They are forced to compare their own accomplishments to ours because we are the standard of success, and in every important way they come up badly short. In most of the contests it's not just that our score is higher, it's that their score is zero. They have nothing whatever they can point to that can save face and preserve their egos. In every practical objective way we are better than they are, and they know it.

And since this is a "face" culture, one driven by pride and shame, that is intolerable. Nor is it something we can easily redress. The oft-proposed idea of increasing aid and attempting to eliminate poverty may well help in South America and sub-Saharan Africa, but it will not defuse the hatred of our Arab/Islamic enemies, for it is our success that they hate, not the fruits of that success.

It isn't that they also want to be rich. Indeed, the majority of the most militant members of al Qaeda came from Saudi Arabia, out of comfortable existence. What they want is to stay with their traditional culture and for it to be successful, and that isn't possible. We can make them rich through aid, but we can't make them successful because their failure is not caused by us, but by the deep flaws in their culture. Their culture cannot succeed. It is too deeply and fundamentally crippled.

Everything they think they know says that they should be successful. They once were successful, creating and ruling a great empire, with a rich culture. God says they will be successful; it's right there in the Qur'an. God lays on them the duty to dominate the world, but they can't even dominate their own lands any longer. They face a profound crisis of faith, and it can only resolve one of three ways.

First, the status quo can continue. They can continue to fail, sit in their nations, and accept their plight. By clinging to their culture and their religion they may be ideologically pure, but they will have to continue to live with the shame of being totally unable to compete. Solution one: they can stagnate.

The second thing they can do is to accept that their culture and their religion are actually the problem. They can recognize that they will have to liberalize their culture in order to begin to achieve. They can embrace the modern world, and embrace western ways at least in part. They can break the hold of Islamic teachings; discard Sharia; liberate their women; start to teach science and engineering in their schools instead of the study of the Qur'an; and secularize their societies. Solution two: they can reform. Some Arab nations have begun to do this, and to the extent that they have they have also started to succeed. But this is unacceptable to the majority; it is literally sinful. It is heresy. What good does it do to succeed in the world if, by so doing, you condemn your soul to hell?

Which leaves only one other way: become relatively competitive by destroying all other cultures which are more capable. You level the playing field by tearing down all the mountains rather than filling in the valleys; you make yourself the tallest by shooting everyone taller than you are. Solution three: they can lash out, fight back.

It's vitally important to understand that this is the reason they're fighting back. It's not to gain revenge for some specific action in the past on our part. It isn't an attempt to influence our foreign policy. Their goal is our destruction, because they can't keep hold on what they have and still think of themselves as being successful as long as we exist and continue to outperform them. al Qaeda grew out of this deepening resentment and frustration within the failed Arab culture. It is the first manifestation of solution three, but as long as the deep disease continues in the culture of our enemy, it won't be the last. Its initial demands to the US were a bit surprising, and not very well known. (And obscured by the fact that as their struggle continued recently, they kept changing their stated demands in hopes of attracting allies from elsewhere in the Arab sphere.) The original demand was for a complete cessation of contact between America and Arabia. Not just a pullout of our soldiers from holy Arab soil, but total isolation so that the people of greater Arabia would no longer be exposed in any way to us or our culture or our values. No television, no radio, no music, no magazines and books, no movies. No internet. And that isn't possible; you can't go backward that way. But it's interesting that this shows their real concern. If they're no longer exposed to us, they are no longer shamed by comparing their failure to our success, and no longer seduced by it and tempted to discard their own culture and adopt ours.

Solution three manifests, and will continue to manifest, in many ways. Another way it manifests is in a new Arab imperialism, an ambition in some quarters to recreate the Arab empire and by so doing to regain political greatness. Arab nationalism doesn't directly spring from Islam, but it does spring from this deep frustration and resentment caused by the abject failure of the enemy culture, and it's most prominent practitioner is Saddam Hussein.

Both al Qaeda's terrorist attacks, and Saddam's attempts to incorporate other Arab nations into Iraq, spring from the same deep cause. But when I say that al Qaeda and Saddam are not the real enemy, it's because they both arise due to a deeper cause which is the true enemy. If we were to stamp out al Qaeda as a viable organization and reduce it to an occasional annoyance, and remove Saddam's WMDs no matter how, by conquest or inspections, someone else somewhere else would spring up and we would again be in peril. We cannot end this war by only treating the symptoms of al Qaeda and Saddam, though they must be dealt with as part of that process. This war is actually a war between the modern age and traditional Arab culture, and as long as they stagnated and felt resentment quietly, it wasn't our war.

It became our war when al Qaeda started bringing it to our nation. With a series of successively more deadly attacks culminating in the attacks in NYC and Washington last year, it became clear that we in the United States could no longer ignore it, and had to start working actively to remove the danger to us. We didn't pick this war, it picked us, but we can't turn away from it. If we ignore it, it will keep happening.

But the danger isn't al Qaeda as such, though that's the short term manifestation of the danger. This war will continue until the traditional crippled Arab culture is shattered. It won't end until they embrace reform or have it forced on them. Until a year ago, we were willing to be patient and let them embrace it slowly. Now we have no choice: we have to force them to reform because we cannot be safe until they do.

And by reform I mean culturally and not politically. The reform isn't just abjuration of weapons of mass destruction. It isn't just promising not to attack any longer. What they're going to have to do is to fix all seven of Ralph Peters' problems, and once they've done so, their nations won't be recognizable.

Continued in next post

[The Plainsman]

First, they will seem much more western. Second, they'll start to succeed, for as Peters notes, nations which fix these problems do become competitive. What he's describing isn't symptoms, its deep causes. We're facing a 14th century culture engaged in a 14th century war against us. The problem is that they are armed with 20th century weapons, which may eventually include nuclear weapons. And they embrace a culture which honors dying in a good cause, which means that deterrence can't be relied on if they get nuclear weapons. Why is it that the US is concerned about Iraq getting nukes when we don't seem to be as concerned about Pakistan or India or Israel? Why are we willing to invade Iraq to prevent it from getting nukes, but not Pakistan to seize the ones it developed? It's because those nations don't embrace a warrior culture where suicide in a good cause, even mass death in a good cause, is considered acceptable. (Those kinds of things are present in Pakistan but don't rule there as yet.)

It's certainly not the case that the majority of those in the culture which is our enemy would gladly die. But many of those who make the decisions would be willing to sacrifice millions of their own in exchange for millions of ours, especially the religious zealots. If such people get their hands on nuclear weapons, then our threat of retaliation won't prevent them from using them against us, or threatening to do so. Which is why we can't let it happen. The chance of Israeli or Pakistani or Indian nukes being used against us is acceptably small. If Arabs get them, then eventually one will be used against us. It's impossible to predict who will do it, or when, or where, or what the proximate reason will be, but it's inevitable that it will happen. The only way to prevent it is to keep Arabs from getting nukes, and that is why Iraq is now critically important and why time is running out.

It's wrong to say that this would be "irrational" on their part. It is a reasoned decision based on an entirely different set of axioms, leading to a result totally unacceptable to us. But they're not insane or irrational. Even though they're totally rational, deterrence ultimately can't stop them from using nuclear weapons against us. All major wars started by someone else that you eventually come to win start with a phase where you try to consolidate the situation, to stop the enemy's advance. Then you go on to the offensive, take the war to him, and finish it.

Afghanistan and Iraq are the two parts of the consolidation phase of this war. al Qaeda had to be crippled and Saddam has to be destroyed in order to gain us time and adequate safety to go onto the offensive, and to begin the process which will truly end this war: to destroy Wahhabism, to shatter Islamic fundamentalism, to completely break the will of the Arabs and to totally shame them. Because they are a shame/pride culture, that latter may seem paradoxical. But the reality is that we cannot win this by making them proud, for they are not a stupid people and they actually have nothing to be proud of. We can't make them proud because we can't give them anything to be proud of; they need accomplishments of their own for pride, and their culture prevents that. The only hope here is to make them so ashamed that they finally face and accept the thing they are trying to hide from in choosing to fight back: their culture is a failure, and the only way they can succeed is to discard it and change.

It may sound strange to say, but what we have to do is to take the 14th century culture of our enemies and bring it into the 17th century. Once we've done that, then we can work on bringing them into the 21st century, but that will be much easier.

But they've got to accept their own failure, personally and nationally and culturally. That is the essential first step. They've got to accept that the cause of their failure is their own culture, and that we're not. And they've got to accept that the only way to succeed is to change. That will be a difficult fight, and it's going to take decades. Along the way it's going to be necessary to remove many governments which come to power and yet again try to embrace the past and become militant, nationalistic, fundamentalist, or again attempt to try to develop nuclear weapons.

Saddam has to go not merely because of his programs for development of WMDs. He also has to go because he manifests Arab nationalism and imperialism. Even if he actually consents to disarm, he and the Baathist party must be destroyed. The reason that Iraq's nuclear weapon program is critical is that it means we have to do so immediately; it makes it urgent. But removing their program to develop nuclear weapons doesn't remove the deeper reason to destroy Saddam and the Baathists, for they are part of the deeper pathology which must be excised.

After the consolidation phase of this war is complete, with the destruction of the Taliban and occupation and reform of Iraq, then we will go on to the offensive and begin to strike at the deeper core of the problem. Part of that will be to force reform on Saudi Arabia, through a combination of diplomacy, persuasion, subversion, propaganda and possibly even military force.

What this shows is just how deeply I disagree with many who oppose this war. I am forthrightly proposing what some might call cultural genocide. The existing Arab culture which is the source of this war is a total loss. It must be shattered, annihilated, leaving behind no more traces in the Arab lands than the Samurai left in Japan or the mounted knights left in Europe.

I am forthrightly stating that it will be necessary to destabilize the entire middle east, which puts me exactly counter to European foreign policy. No band-aid will do. It isn't possible to patch things up with diplomacy because the rot runs too deep. Diplomacy now would be treating the symptoms and not the true disease. I am forthrightly stating that no amount of aid to the poor will stop the aggression against us, which will anger liberals everywhere. It isn't our wealth they hate, it's our accomplishments. The only way we can appease them is to ourselves become failures, and that is a price I'm not willing to pay.

And I claim that the US bears essentially no blame for the fundamental source of their anger towards us. They don't hate us because of our foreign policy. They don't ultimately hate us because of past mistakes. They don't hate what we do or what we have done. They hate what we are, and what we show them that they are not. They hate our accomplishments and our capabilities because we force them to see their own lack of accomplishments and their incompetence and impotence. And I'm saying that the US must do this, with help or without, because the US will be the continuing target of Arab solution number 3 as long as this resentment continues to boil, which it will do as long as Arab culture is not shattered and reformed. We will accept help from others if it's truly helpful, but we'll do it alone if we have to. (Or we will try and fail.)

We will be the primary target because we're the most successful. It's as simple as that. And that means that this ultimately will be a unilateral war by us; we're the ones with the most on the line. If the Arabs eventually do get nukes, the first one they use will either be against Israel or against us. It won't be against Europe, and if more conventional terrorist attacks continue, the most damaging ones will be directed against us. We will pay most of the price for this war, in staggering amounts of money, in losses on the field of battle, and in death and destruction at home, and therefore any talk of unified multilateral international action by a coalition of equals is nonsense. The other nations won't risk as much and won't pay as much and won't contribute as much and therefore deserve less say in what will happen.

In the mean time, now that al Qaeda has broken the ice, there will be further terrorist attacks against us as long as this war continues. They may be made by al Qaeda itself, or they may be made by other groups who will spring up. We can't totally prevent that until we've removed the true cause of those attacks: Arab cultural failure. Nothing short of that will stop the attacks. They're part of the setbacks which always accompany any major war. We'll do our best to foil such attacks, but inevitably some will succeed.

And those who don't understand the true issues will inevitably point to such attacks as proof that our campaign is a failure, that by our aggressiveness we raised further terrorist groups against us, that we should abandon the war and try appeasement, concession, aid, humanistic solutions.

And they'll be wrong, because they don't understand the real reason why we're being attacked and therefore why such approaches won't truly remove the source of the grievance. They won't stop hating us until they become successful and begin to achieve on their own. We can't make them successful with material gifts, including aid to their poor. We can only make them successful with cultural changes, and they will resist that. Now that we've been attacked, we are ourselves compelled to force them to accept those cultural changes, because that is the only way short of actual genocide to remove the danger to ourselves. This war will end when they change, but not before.


Jim Teeter
Carlsbad, CA 92009