Brown Sand Sailor: A long rambling, philosophical rethinking of how we got here
Warning: I do mean long, almost five pages, and while I'm not sure it makes sense enough to post, er, here it is anyway...
I *do* ask a few pointed questions, most notably about why the pre-Hamas Clinton-era Palestinians rejected peace with Israel. If anyone has an argument to make that explains that, I'd love to hear it -- actually we all might.
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Like the ancient Greek philosophers, people have always sought to understand and explain the world in terms they can comprehend. Historians are no different, of course, and they are often accused of bias or misuse of evidence or simply wishful thinking when they present evidence to make an argument. Indeed, one of the pernicious effects of literary criticism is that author bias is assumed to be insurmountable and, in an ironic touch, the author is also presumed ignorant in that regard. The implication of this generalization is that all things are relative, as any author cannot have a true understanding of reality – since they are blinded by their own socially constructed understanding of the universe. One of the logical conclusions of this view is that there can be no one vision of reality. Since the world is always viewed through fallible human senses, the old Enlightenment concept that truth is knowable through argument and empirical testing is incorrect. Principles, ethics and social mores are no more than social constructs, generated by the particular give and take of human language, religion and politics.
There is an element of truth to this view, much as it pains me to agree, but I would argue it is wrong to conclude that therefore no one vision of the universe is better than another, if only because – as far as we know – people’s bodies live in the same material world regardless of where their minds’ reside. Most of us would agree that we’d rather not be peasants living under a feudal divine-right tyranny (i.e. the Taliban) or, to use a historical example, that it would have been preferable to live in early modern Spain (despite the crushing taxes) instead of living in early modern Mexico (which, in addition to crushing taxes, had the added risk of human sacrifice).
It is useful to think about the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Lebanon with this in mind, as critics of these adventures (and I use the term deliberately), make arguments that essentially call into question the legitimacy of Western intervention into the Arab Islamic world. The idea being that since the justification for the wars by the Coalition-of-the-Willing is merely based on a version of reality that is no more correct than any other (see paragraph one), it is morally wrong for the West to do so. In other words, because it is wrong for the West to make judgements about elements within the culture and mores of the Islamic world, it is certainly wrong to justify going to war by arguing one culture is better or more preferable than another. They usually do not phrase them that way, of course, instead arguing that world public opinion (meaning a majority of the votes in the U.N. general assembly, as well as public opinion polls) is hostile to the post-2001 wars in general, and Iraq in particular. And since large portions of the public in the West is also hostile to these same events, this means the wars are “illegal and illegitimate.”
I believe this is at the root of the disconnect between supporters and detractors of the post-9/11 wars. It is rare that people argue at that fundamental level of the forest, however, since most critical arguments get lost in the trees – ranging from conspiracy theories about 9/11, to raging at the Israeli lobby’s control of foreign policy, to criticisms of the handling of the war by Rumsfeld, the civilians or the generals (not enough boots on the ground, blunders by Bremer, ignoring the lessons of [fill in the blank], etc.). Less frequently, people (generally foreigners) argue about the correct or incorrect uses of power, and many use the post-2001 wars to as useful sticks to beat the United States for being a hegemon (i.e. the sole superpower), in the same manner that – as the folk saying goes – the tall poppy must be cut down (or the exposed nail must be hammered even) as it makes the rest of us look bad, or worse, feel bad. It is easy to dismiss envy in all this, but human nature is a powerful thing, ignored at our peril.
In a sense, that is the problem with the Coalitions’ vision of the war against the jihadists’ of the world – we misunderstood the ambivalence of Arab civilization as a whole towards the extremists’ vision of the world as well as the deep differences in political culture and social construction between Arab and Western civilizations. These two differences meant the wellsprings of jihadist support in the Arab world were much deeper than expected and that the reconstruction of Afghani and Iraqi civil society was much more difficult than originally suspected. In the interests of full disclosure, I too thought the reconstruction of Iraq would be much easier but, as mentioned in previous e-mails, the levels of tribal and religious identity, the culture of bribery and corruption and the very strong tradition of paternal autocracy is shocking to the Western mind. For every Iraqi that wants to live in a compromise-driven representative society, there are an unknown number of others who cannot comprehend anything other than a zero-sum world, where the victory of someone else in local or national politics means defeat for their cause. But I’ll return to this point later.
First, cast your mind back to 12 September 2001 and the shock and awe we all felt after watching the twin towers come crashing to the ground. Remember when the talk was of 20,000 dead? Remember the rage-filled newspaper editorials, the political cartoons of Uncle Sam sharpening a bayonet or an eagle poised to strike, arrows clutched in its claws and the laurel wreaths of peace cast aside?
Many asked why this could happen, and concluded it was partly our fault, for our hubris, our support for Israel, our inability to play the honest broker and/or for our hegemonic presence in the world. While most counseled revenge against the perpetrators, many also counseled understanding for the rest and a return to the status quo.
And what was that status quo? It was the world of the Cold War, where stability and predictability were preferred, even if it meant working with and supporting the worst sorts of dictators and tyrants, just so long as they caused little outside trouble and kept the oil or raw materials flowing. It was of course a tragedy that many of these dictatorships mistreated their subjects (and I say subjects because they certainly were not citizens), and indeed flaunted their violation of so many of the founding charters of the United Nations despite their current membership, but who were we to question or judge? What gave us the right to say their systems were any worse than ours (even as the scales slowly fell from our eyes as the post-1989 CNN-capable world unfolded), or especially the legitimacy to argue they should change? All that was allowed was some talking about the edges (please free this dissident, please hold elections we can delude ourselves into saying they are fair), and an occasional intervention should the news cameras align correctly, although too late more often than not (for every Liberia or Cambodia, there was also a Rwanda, a Haiti or a Darfur).
The Bush administrations’ theory of 12 September, however, held that the status quo is what brought us 9/11 in the first place. That the old policy of stability at any price, which propped up dictators to keep out the Soviets or to keep oil cheap, was simply untenable. The resulting political oppression in those dictatorships was a necessary evil during the Cold War, but the 1980-90s had shown there was little downside to supporting domestic reforms in those countries (the Philippines, much of South America, eastern Europe, etc.) and Clinton’s failure to conclude a peace in the Levant showed how painful it could be to try and hold the lid on a boiling pot. Indeed, the Middle East was full of boiling pressure cookers, with police states letting off the steam now and then by the tried and true methods of payoffs to the mob (subsidized bread and circuses like the Roman Empire) and diverting hate and discontent to foreign enemies, mainly Israel. Their alternate vision of reality, which saw no reason for compromise, was baked in an oven of Pan-Arab nationalist failure, three failed wars against Israel and insecurity vis-a-vie the West, was blast-fueled by the flow of petro-dollars, which turned an otherwise unremarkable backwater into the center of global attention.
That white hot steam was most clearly seen, and is still most clearly seen, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the “old days” of the 1990s, we all thought Clinton could come up with some plan that would work, some negotiated deal, be it the Oslo Accords (which died after Rabin was assassinated) or the Barak plan (with failed with the outbreak of the 2d intifadah), both of which proposed land for peace. That the deals fell through were less a failure of details (the status of Jerusalem, refugees, PLA subsidies, etc.) than a failure of Arafat to carry the Arab mind, and I have my doubts as to whether he wanted to carry them anyway. As the very notion of Palestinian identity in general, and Arafat’s in particular, was founded on resistance to Israel, an identity cradled and supported for decades on the media redirected discontent of neighboring States, how could he possibly make peace with Israels’ right to exist?
[As an aside, I’ve never quite understood the failure of the PLO to carry out their side of the peace plan in 1999-2000 in terms other than the above, i.e. that popular opinion in the Palestinian and Arab world was so vehemently, so irrationally, against Israel that the PLO simply could not agree to peace and remain in power. The resulting inability of the PLO to balance resistance and cooperation (in order to obtain those EU subsidies) led to the disastrous failure of Fatah in the elections and the rise of the even more militantly anti-Israel Hamas. To my mind, given the disasters suffered by the Palestinians in the past decade, why not choose a peace plan – even if only half a loaf – than refuse it and get nothing but sawdust? Actually worse than sawdust, as the failure of the peace plan led directly to Sharon, the unilateral pullout from Gaza and the building of the security fence to keep out Hamas suicide bombers, all of which made life much more miserable for your average Palestinian – somebody please explain.]
Given that I myself supported calls for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in the 1990s, for a land for peace deal, for the withdrawal from settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, I find the inability of the Palestinian mind to make a compromise peace with Israel perhaps the greatest tragedy of our age. I just don’t understand how one can so fervently believe that Israel should be pushed into the sea. In part because that alien ideology has led to so many of the problems of the last six years, not the least of which was the state of permanent war in Gaza, the West Bank and the Lebanese border. It also led to all sorts of other pernicious effects – the permanent existence of Hezbollah; the continued attacks by Palestinian rejectionist groups from various refugee camps and in Gaza and Lebanon; the flow of weapons and munitions to both groups from ideological sympathizers in Syria, Iraq and Iran; the shift by Saddam to playing the religious card (changing the Iraqi flag, paying the families of suicide bombers) and, of course, it played a role in the Arab anger and resentment that helped produce Osama bin Laden's attack on the United States on 9/11. The white hot steam had finally leaked out far enough to burn New York and the Pentagon.
Ok, so if the status quo was untenable after 9/11, what was the Bush administrations vision for a new approach?
Well, given the opening following the attacks – an opening that allowed a dramatic change of foreign policy that only happens once or twice a generation – the idea grew that maybe, just maybe, we could destroy a dictatorship or two and discredit some of the sources of instability in the Middle East. The theoretical hope, of course, was that one could kill or discredit enough current corrupt rulers to open up an opportunity for more rational, more democratic reformers, thereby allowing the creation of governments more to our way of thinking (i.e. pluralistic representative governments who were focused on improving the lives of their own citizens) to succeed. This was not wild theorizing, as the EU and the UN fully supported such activities in Afghanistan, where the Taliban (anti-woman, anti-homosexual, anti-Buddhist, etc.) had pretty much done everything possible to piss off your average liberal internationalist.
[As another aside, I have to say my first worries about support for the whole project came about when I gave a talk to some Unitarians in early 2002 and heard criticisms from the audience because the Northern Alliance wasn’t friendly enough to women’s issues. Think about that for a second. Here you have liberals criticizing the war in Afghanistan because Kabul is not gonna be Amsterdam, forgetting the fact that before October 2001 Kabul had reverted to the 8th century, with public executions of women for wearing lipstick… (sigh)]
The post-9/11 theory (as it were) was married to the notion that erican military power needed to be unleashed in the tried and true manner of international state politics. States that do not defend themselves do not get respect, which creates all sorts of known troubles down the road (read your history to understand this truism), so the idea was to smash some heads *and* try a new approach so that said smashing might have long term effects (as opposed to merely short term deterrence). And so the Iraq adventure was tried; an invasion and intervention that I still think was a good idea and, contrary to all sorts of commentators, I don't think it was carried out too badly (we can argue about that if you like), though as always, we failed to work hard enough on the non-military side of the house. Suffice to say all the pessimistic "they were stupid" arguments general fail to give our enemies free will, which is a serious mistake.
And since I can’t think of another way to end this long, rambling thought piece, I’ll refer you to Tony Blair’s speech on the subject.
It is an amazing speech, far more eloquent and cutting to the point than I can do.
In the future, people will read this speech the way historians today read anti-fascist speeches from the 1930s.
PM Tony Blair's Speech on the Middle East to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council (1 August 2006)
Fair Winds and Following Sands!
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