MyDD :: How Edward Said would have Responded to the Beinart Piece

How Edward Said would have Responded to the Beinart Piece

by descrates, Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 02:03:19 PM EST

I can't get enough of this discussion--Chris

Watching the debate unfold last week over Peter Beinart's now notorious piece in The New Republic, I was a bit surprised that in all the discussion--and I paid pretty close attention--to my knowledge, Samuel Huntington's name was not mentioned once. I found it hard not to believe that Beinart's perspective was not informed by Huntington's infamous Clash of Civilizations thesis, which was much praised by Liberal hawks like Beinart in the initial aftermath of September 11, but which now seems to have been so internalized by the mainstream American mind that no one really needs to mention it any more.

All of this put me in mind of a critique of the Huntington thesis I read a few weeks after September 11 by the brilliant Palestinian-American writer and thinker, the late Edward W. Said. Said's piece speaks clearly to what is missing in the public debate over how to deal with the Islamic world. This is a war of ideas much more than it is a war of military might--or at least it should be anyway. Dealing in enormous abstractions and the "us-vs-them" logic of the old militant anti-Communists in the end only takes us further down the road of neo-Conservatism, though Beinart would have us believe it does not. Here is another option:

Samuel Huntington's article "The Clash of Civilizations?" appeared in the Summer 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs, where it immediately attracted a surprising amount of attention and reaction. Because the article was intended to supply Americans with an original thesis about "a new phase" in world politics after the end of the cold war, Huntington's terms of argument seemed compellingly large, bold, even visionary. He very clearly had his eye on rivals in the policy-making ranks, theorists such as Francis Fukuyama and his "end of history" ideas, as well as the legions who had celebrated the onset of globalism, tribalism and the dissipation of the state. But they, he allowed, had understood only some aspects of this new period. He was about to announce the "crucial, indeed a central, aspect" of what "global politics is likely to be in the coming years." Unhesitatingly he pressed on:

"It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future."

Most of the argument in the pages that followed relied on a vague notion of something Huntington called "civilization identity" and "the interactions among seven or eight [sic] major civilizations," of which the conflict between two of them, Islam and the West, gets the lion's share of his attention. In this belligerent kind of thought, he relies heavily on a 1990 article by the veteran Orientalist Bernard Lewis, whose ideological colors are manifest in its title, "The Roots of Muslim Rage." In both articles, the personification of enormous entities called "the West" and "Islam" is recklessly affirmed, as if hugely complicated matters like identity and culture existed in a cartoonlike world where Popeye and Bluto bash each other mercilessly, with one always more virtuous pugilist getting the upper hand over his adversary. Certainly neither Huntington nor Lewis has much time to spare for the internal dynamics and plurality of every civilization, or for the fact that the major contest in most modern cultures concerns the definition or interpretation of each culture, or for the unattractive possibility that a great deal of demagogy and downright ignorance is involved in presuming to speak for a whole religion or civilization. No, the West is the West, and Islam Islam.

The challenge for Western policy-makers, says Huntington, is to make sure that the West gets stronger and fends off all the others, Islam in particular. More troubling is Huntington's assumption that his perspective, which is to survey the entire world from a perch outside all ordinary attachments and hidden loyalties, is the correct one, as if everyone else were scurrying around looking for the answers that he has already found. In fact, Huntington is an ideologist, someone who wants to make "civilizations" and "identities" into what they are not: shut-down, sealed-off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents and countercurrents that animate human history, and that over centuries have made it possible for that history not only to contain wars of religion and imperial conquest but also to be one of exchange, cross-fertilization and sharing. This far less visible history is ignored in the rush to highlight the ludicrously compressed and constricted warfare that "the clash of civilizations" argues is the reality. When he published his book by the same title in 1996, Huntington tried to give his argument a little more subtlety and many, many more footnotes; all he did, however, was confuse himself and demonstrate what a clumsy writer and inelegant thinker he was...

What would Beinart have us do at this meeting at the Willard Hotel he proposed? Does really believe that we should delineate a clear ideology that is outrightly opposed to "Islamic Totalitarianism" as the Democrats did then to Communism? I would have thought that Liberal ideology was opposed to the excesses of the fundamentalist movements already. Is he seeking another Cold War? Can we marshal our national resources to meet this challenge? Beinart's preference for abstraction here revels a fundamental misunderstanding of what is required here. Said continues:

But why not instead see parallels, admittedly less spectacular in their destructiveness, for Osama bin Laden and his followers in cults like the Branch Davidians or the disciples of the Rev. Jim Jones at Guyana or the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo? Even the normally sober British weekly The Economist, in its issue of September 22-28, can't resist reaching for the vast generalization, praising Huntington extravagantly for his "cruel and sweeping, but nonetheless acute" observations about Islam. "Today," the journal says with unseemly solemnity, Huntington writes that "the world's billion or so Muslims are 'convinced of the superiority of their culture, and obsessed with the inferiority of their power.'" Did he canvas 100 Indonesians, 200 Moroccans, 500 Egyptians and fifty Bosnians? Even if he did, what sort of sample is that?

Uncountable are the editorials in every American and European newspaper and magazine of note adding to this vocabulary of gigantism and apocalypse, each use of which is plainly designed not to edify but to inflame the reader's indignant passion as a member of the "West," and what we need to do. Churchillian rhetoric is used inappropriately by self-appointed combatants in the West's, and especially America's, war against its haters, despoilers, destroyers, with scant attention to complex histories that defy such reductiveness and have seeped from one territory into another, in the process overriding the boundaries that are supposed to separate us all into divided armed camps...

Here Said presciently pointed out the direction America was taking. The hysteria of the 9/11 aftermath was forcing us into strange and unrealistic ideological boxes, incongruencies of thought and action with the clear realities of our world, which would eventually open the door for the Bush administration to perpetrate the biggest incongruity of all--the Iraq war.

This is the problem with unedifying labels like Islam and the West: They mislead and confuse the mind, which is trying to make sense of a disorderly reality that won't be pigeonholed or strapped down as easily as all that. I remember interrupting a man who, after a lecture I had given at a West Bank university in 1994, rose from the audience and started to attack my ideas as "Western," as opposed to the strict Islamic ones he espoused. "Why are you wearing a suit and tie?" was the first retort that came to mind. "They're Western too." He sat down with an embarrassed smile on his face, but I recalled the incident when information on the September 11 terrorists started to come in: how they had mastered all the technical details required to inflict their homicidal evil on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the aircraft they had commandeered. Where does one draw the line between "Western" technology and, as Berlusconi declared, "Islam's" inability to be a part of "modernity"?

One cannot easily do so, of course. How finally inadequate are the labels, generalizations and cultural assertions. At some level, for instance, primitive passions and sophisticated know-how converge in ways that give the lie to a fortified boundary not only between "West" and "Islam" but also between past and present, us and them, to say nothing of the very concepts of identity and nationality about which there is unending disagreement and debate. A unilateral decision made to draw lines in the sand, to undertake crusades, to oppose their evil with our good, to extirpate terrorism and, in Paul Wolfowitz's nihilistic vocabulary, to end nations entirely, doesn't make the supposed entities any easier to see; rather, it speaks to how much simpler it is to make bellicose statements for the purpose of mobilizing collective passions than to reflect, examine, sort out what it is we are dealing with in reality, the interconnectedness of innumerable lives, "ours" as well as "theirs."

This is Beinart's failure--a failure of intellect, whether willfully or simply for lack of ability I cannot say. Regardless, his compliance with the initial rationale for the Iraq war, and his continued unwillingness to see the world in any other terms than those starkly outlined by Huntington, has made him and the magazine he edits the pawns of the Conservative movement's campaign to redefine Liberalism out of existence.

Where is the multiculturalism that has been so much a part of the Democratic party's tradition? I can find it nowhere in the public debate--not even here in the "Liberal" blogosphere. Is multiculturalism really that antiquated and irrelevant? Please. I could give a litany of examples from our adventure in Iraq of ways we could have been successful had we done a bit better job of attempting to understand the Islamic Iraqi mind, most recently in Fullujah where our supposed successful attempt to "break the insurgency's back" accomplished nothing more than further alienating the Sunnis and guaranteeing their lack of involvement in the January elections. Said goes on to write:

In a remarkable series of three articles published between January and March 1999 in Dawn, Pakistan's most respected weekly, the late Eqbal Ahmad, writing for a Muslim audience, analyzed what he called the roots of the religious right, coming down very harshly on the mutilations of Islam by absolutists and fanatical tyrants whose obsession with regulating personal behavior promotes "an Islamic order reduced to a penal code, stripped of its humanism, aesthetics, intellectual quests, and spiritual devotion." And this "entails an absolute assertion of one, generally de-contextualized, aspect of religion and a total disregard of another. The phenomenon distorts religion, debases tradition, and twists the political process wherever it unfolds." As a timely instance of this debasement, Ahmad proceeds first to present the rich, complex, pluralist meaning of the word jihad and then goes on to show that in the word's current confinement to indiscriminate war against presumed enemies, it is impossible "to recognize the Islamic--religion, society, culture, history or politics--as lived and experienced by Muslims through the ages." The modern Islamists, Ahmad concludes, are "concerned with power, not with the soul; with the mobilization of people for political purposes rather than with sharing and alleviating their sufferings and aspirations. Theirs is a very limited and time-bound political agenda." What has made matters worse is that similar distortions and zealotry occur in the "Jewish" and "Christian" universes of discourse.

Here is what mainstream Muslims believe. They echo rhetoric against their religious right that really is not that dissimilar to ours. The logical step of course, would be to develop bonds with this type of thinking, to attempt to get to know it and explain ourselves to it. Not through transparent p.r. attempts, but through good faith and open-mindedness. Yet, so often we allow ourselves to be limited in our approach to the Islamic world by our thoughtless internalization of Conservative rhetoric, thinking in militant terms as Beinart does. For all Beinart's bluster, Islamic Totalitarianism is not Communism, does not pose remotely comparable threats, and does not require the same solutions. Said concludes saying:

Then there is the persisting legacy of monotheism itself, the Abrahamic religions, as Louis Massignon aptly called them. Beginning with Judaism and Christianity, each is a successor haunted by what came before; for Muslims, Islam fulfills and ends the line of prophecy. There is still no decent history or demystification of the many-sided contest among these three followers--not one of them by any means a monolithic, unified camp--of the most jealous of all gods, even though the bloody modern convergence on Palestine furnishes a rich secular instance of what has been so tragically irreconcilable about them. Not surprisingly, then, Muslims and Christians speak readily of crusades and jihads, both of them eliding the Judaic presence with often sublime insouciance. Such an agenda, says Eqbal Ahmad, is "very reassuring to the men and women who are stranded in the middle of the ford, between the deep waters of tradition and modernity."

But we are all swimming in those waters, Westerners and Muslims and others alike. And since the waters are part of the ocean of history, trying to plow or divide them with barriers is futile. These are tense times, but it is better to think in terms of powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal principles of justice and injustice, than to wander off in search of vast abstractions that may give momentary satisfaction but little self-knowledge or informed analysis. "The Clash of Civilizations" thesis is a gimmick like "The War of the Worlds," better for reinforcing defensive self-pride than for critical understanding of the bewildering interdependence of our time.

In order to ever again win in the political arena on national security, the Democrats are going to have to do what the Republicans have been doing for years: outmaneuver their opponents by redefining the terms of debate and the nature of the situation. But unlike the Republicans, we won't have to rely on a misinformation machine to inundate the electorate with misleading information--we must simply posit reality: that the world is growing more and more complex and interconnected, that the solutions to the problems we face are not simple, and that we are the only party around who is willing to acknowledge these realities. And we'll have the added bonus of saving the world.

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Complexity is a hard sell (3.00 / 0)

Nice to see Edward Said still speaking, even with an assist from descrates, the latterday Descartes.

Part of Said's general argument is that, in situations like the Iraq invasion, one defines the opposing culture in a certain way (as monolithically bent on destruction, say) in order to cast your own culture in a certain light (as defending freedom and democracy, say). And the Republican machine has been hard at work doing just that.

And it's a powerful weapon: if the enemy is, not just a band of terrorists, but something larger like a nation (Iraq) or even region (Near Eastern Islamic countries) or even a world-wide movement (Islamic culture generally), then the battle becomes the critical struggle for civilization itself, and then the fighters (Bush and Co) are made into almost heroic warriors.

Something like this, on a more visceral level, was probably in play during the last election. No matter how often the point was made that there was no connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, the right was still able to conflat the two into a single, monolithic antagonist.

And as usual, Said's point about justice was, and is, on the mark. We need to talk about justice done for the victims of 9/11, justice done for the Palestinians, justice done for Saddam Hussein's victims (and done by the Iraqi's themselves), justice done for Abu Ghraid detainees, justice done for injured American troops (adequate medical care), and all in the same breath.

Thanks for the diary.

by Denver on Mon Dec 13, 2004 at 08:56:24 PM EST

Said was my hero. (none / 0)

In my book he is up there in the pantheon with the likes of Chesterton and Lewis.

by descrates on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 01:20:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Said was my hero. (none / 0)

I saw him speak a few times, met him a couple of times, reviewed his Musical Elaborations a while back for some e-journal.

He was quiet, intense, principled, sophisticated, open. I disagreed with him on this or that point, but I never doubted his integrity, character, and commitment. It was a reak shock when I learned he had died.

by Denver on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 01:39:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Is We A Civilization Yet? (3.00 / 1)

When I teach ancient history to a classroom full of burger-flippers and hair-benders at a community college, the first question I pose to them is: what is a civilized society? When I ask that question I warn them that "civilized" is not a synonym for "good" or "decent" or "nice". In other words, the term "civilization" should be used descriptively, not normatively. Societies which are considered unquestionably civilized sanctioned such activities as human sacrifice, chattel slavery, judicial torture, and foot-binding.
The empirical and semantic difficulties involved in trying to define certain societies as discrete "civilizations" are enormous. Arnold Toynbee's famous "21 civilizations" thesis may be magnificent philosophy, but it isn't accurate history. The fact is, there's simply no such thing as a free-standing civilization untouched by external influences. That's certainly always been the case in the Old World, and since 1492 it's been true of all societies worldwide.
Against Huntington's notion of clashing civilizations, we can more convincingly argue with Benjamin Barber that our contemporary conflicts--including the "war on terrorism"--are really clashes within the same civilization. Accepting this idea doesn't mean that the clashes aren't serious or that we shouldn't fight evildoers. Nor does it mean melting into some bogus Family Of Man sentimentality--most homicides occur within families.
Of course, when various and sundry neo-hawks talk about clashes of civilization, what they're really getting at is Civilization vs. Barbarism, with the broad hint that We are civilized but They aren't. But if the term "civilization" means anything within the context of the past several hundred years, it has come to mean something called "modernity". And it's become pretty obvious in recent years that not all the enemies of modernity are found in madrasas in Saudi Arabia. Some of them you can find close to home on your AM radio dial.

by LaughingHistorian on Mon Dec 13, 2004 at 11:16:30 PM EST

Re: Is We A Civilization Yet? (none / 0)

A few comments:

First, I like your way of introducing "civilization". I may try it sometime.

When I have my students read Huntington, I also assign the first chapter from Eric Wolf's "Europe and the People Without History". I do this so they can (hopefully) get the point that civilizations or more accurately, "cultural areas" are not bounded, discrete billiard ball entities, but open, interacting, evolving entities. If we think about it in those terms, I think we do come to the conclusion that there are real differences between the U.S. and the Middle East-but that there are also strong similarities.

So this isn't a fight "in the family" so to speak (save for the family of humanity), but a fight about some radically different ideas about how to order society. Yet when we look closely, we can see that some of these same ideas about how to order society also exist and are articulated in our society.

by cspoirot on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 08:36:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Is We A Civilization Yet? (none / 0)

So, you're one of them librul perfessers who needs to get run out of our places of higher learning too, eh? Wait'll David Horowitz hears about this!

I like that concept of "cultural areas"(will re-read Wolf after I finish grading these *%&^#@! finals). In fact, interaction among societies is one recurring theme in my lectures and some of the student responses are pretty interesting.

Since about 75% of the students at my school are African-American, they have no trouble accepting that the Greeks learned a lot about math from the Egyptians. But then when I tell them that the ancient Egyptians were totally unrelated to sub-Saharan Africans they look at me like Bambi in the headlights. Then I have to tell them that our concepts of race would have totally alien to Egyptians and Greeks alike. People just weren't defined that way, any more than the Greeks defined sexuality in terms of hetero and homo.

Of course, I always have to squeeze in something about any numerals on the blackboard. Arabic(actually Indian)numerals, folks. Courtesy of Italians who wanted an easy way to count their profits. Budda boom. Budda bing.

by LaughingHistorian on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 11:41:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Is We A Civilization Yet? (none / 0)

Bernal overstates his thesis that Egypt was a black African civilization and that Greece borrowed from Egypt. But like a lot of overstated theses, it can be pared back a bit.

I'd have to check on dates (I'm not ancient historian) but there is a period of Nubian dominance in Egyptian civilization. They may not have had the concept of "race" but certainly they did distinguish ethnic groups.

And of course, Minoan civilization had extensive trade with Egypt.

So I wouldn't go as far as Bernal, but then again, perhaps there is a needed corrective here.

by cspoirot on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 06:48:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Is We A Civilization Yet? (none / 0)

Much of what Bernal said that's supposedly so earth-shattering and controversial can be found in any scholarly study of Greece published within the last half-century. Early Greek pottery designs originated in the Middle East. Some Greek deities(Demeter, Artemis, maybe Athena)originated in the Middle East and Asia Minor. Thales may have paid a visit to Egypt and learned a lot about Egyptian geometry.
So the Greeks, a seafaring people living on the Mediterranean, borrowed a great deal from other cultures. Not exactly your basic newsflash. Bernal's real problem IMHO was conceptual anachronism, imposing post-1500 Western(!) categories of race on ancient peoples for whom such categories would have been sheer gibberish.
You mentioned Nubians. Yes, there was a period after the New Kingdom when Nubians were very important in Egypt, even furnishing a ruling dynasty at one point. So? From the ancient Egyptian perspective what mattered wasn't skin color, but culture. If Nubians adopted Egyptian culture, i.e. language, customs, religion, if a Nubian "walked like an Egyptian" then they were Egyptians as far as Egypt was concerned. The Egyptian sense of cultural superiority was intense, and anyone, regardless of origins was considered inferior if they didn't take up Egyptian ways(particularly true of such trailer-park trash as the Libyans and Hebrews). The Egyptians were Equal Opportunity Cultural Snobs.
But race consciousness or racism in the modern sense? Nah.

by LaughingHistorian on Wed Dec 15, 2004 at 11:34:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Framing Beinart & Jonah Goldberg et al (3.00 / 1)

The first thing we need to do is counter the Islamic Totalitarianism and the Islamofascism phrases with a more accurate term. It is an oxymoron to refer to any group as totalitarian or fascist if they don't control a government. Islamic Totalitarian Wannabees or Islamofascist Wannabees is more truthful and more accurate. The terms totalitarian and fascist are projections of what Bin Laden and Al Quaida would like to be, but distort the threat they actually represent.

The WAR on Terror is another example. Podhoretz has an update of Huntington's thesis in the September issue of Commentary magazine linked text World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win

I did a very brief summary of the National Interest clash between Krauthammer and Fukiyama here linked text

The WAR on Terror is completely manufactured. It was planned by Huntington and Wolfowitz in the early 90's. By invading Iraq, Bush made the neo-con dream come true. There is a very good case to be made that the decisions made in the Iraq War were not failures, they were intentional decisions to create a disaster that would keep the U.S. locked down militarily in Iraq for at least ten years.

The best analysis I've seen of the neo-con philosophy and goals is "America Alone" by Halper and Clarke.

by Gary Boatwright on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 04:01:04 AM EST

Responding to Beinart (none / 0)

I really enjoyed reading this post. I've been intending to sit down and write a response to Beinart myself and post it here or at Daily Kos. So your piece helped to jog my own thinking quite a bit.

There are a number of issues. But the problem with Beinart's piece is that he is half right. And when your opponent is half right it is much more difficult to show why the half that is wrong, is really wrong and actually quite dangerous.

During the Cold War, the US really did face a threat from a totalitarian, expansionist power. At the same time, the US was really engaging in tactics and strategies that promoted some very nasty people in the world. This complexity made discussion and criticism of US foreign policy difficult.

We face the same problem now-though the parallels are being drawn much too simplistically by Beinart. There really is a movement in the Islamic world that is premised on a totalitarian and destructive ideology about how to organize society. And that movement is quite willing to use what can legitimately be called "terrorism" (the deliberate targeting of civilians to accomplish political ends), and is a real threat to existing rules, norms and conventions. It just does not follow that the solution or response to that threat is a radical expansion of US hegemony and American exemption from the same rules, norms and conventions.

Critiques of foreign policy are a tough sell in this environment-but a must sell. That is why we need the Michael Moores and the Noam Chomskys, even if there is much I disagree with them on.

So what is our way forward? How do we enable real, active discussion and critical examination of a misguided hegemonic strategy by the US while at the same time being critical of incipient totalitarian movements.

by cspoirot on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 08:46:39 AM EST

Re: Responding to Beinart (none / 0)

I've posted a couple of diaries that deal with your question and Beinart's challenge indirectly.

First is a recap of Operations Other Than War (OOTW) from General Zinni's biography, "Battle Ready" linked text

Second is a review/summary of Thomas Barnett's "The Pentagon's New Map" linked text

A robust liberal military will focus on nation building and addressing international crisis situations like Darfur. Zinni documents how the military has the capacity to provide stability and bring the necessary resources together and cooperate with NGO's and relief organizations to accomplish these tasks. All that is required is a re-definition of military goals.

This weekend I'm going to re-work these diaries to provide a more direct response to Beinart's challenge. The problem with Beinart's analysis is that it is a demand for Dems to adopt the neo-con's failed response to terrorism. Defining the problem as a "war on terrorism" and fighting "Islamic Totalitarianism" or "Islamofascism" is incomplete because a military solution to fighting the ideology of Muslim extremists is only half a loaf.

I believe Barnett is still an instructor at the Naval War College and his ideas have received acceptance from our future flag officers, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and leaders in the financial community.

There is a link to Barnett's website in the single response to my "New Map" diary. I think CSPAN is going to be replaying Barnett's three hour "New Map" presentation. He has a power point presentation that is state of the art. Because a clear, concise and persuasive power point presentation is the path to getting your ideas moved up the chain of command, it has been refined to a fine art. At one point he offers to divulge the secret of power point graphics that move at the end of his presentation.

One thing Beinart is right about is that liberals have defaulted on the debate over what the role of the military is in providing for our national security. We need to engage this debate before Johah Goldberg and Andrew Sullivan types co-opt the solution entirely. (Sullivan link, December 10th, GOLDBERG VS DRUM VS BEINART: linked text

It is already quite late in the game.

by Gary Boatwright on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 11:32:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Responding to Beinart (none / 0)

I like your comments, JollyBuddah
I've just written 2 somewhat long pieces on my new blog about the global threat, how it works, and what some options are for responding to it
If you feel inclined to read them, would be interested in your comments
http://birthofaworld.blogspot.com/2004/12/global-jihad-overview.html
http://birthofaworld.blogspot.com/2004/12/us-strategies-and-jihad.html

by jimpol on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 09:01:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Primat Der Innenpolitik (none / 0)

The WAR on Terror is completely manufactured. It was planned by Huntington and Wolfowitz in the early 90's. By invading Iraq, Bush made the neo-con dream come true. There is a very good case to be made that the decisions made in the Iraq War were not failures, they were intentional decisions to create a disaster that would keep the U.S. locked down militarily in Iraq for at least ten years.

Probably all true, but the obvious question that arises here is: why?
Whose interests are served by keeping the US in Iraq for the foreseeable future? Where's the strategic benefit? Economic benefit?
None, really. Even the oil argument doesn't add up. If we really needed the oil that badly, we could have just bought it from Saddam Hussein. As for permanent bases in the region, that argument assumes that El Qaeda will locate its main headquarters(with a big neon sign presumably) within easy striking distance of American bases.
So what's going on?
[drum roll]
Domestic politics is what's going on. Our domestic politics.
A permanent US military presence in the Middle East will bring the same political benefits to conservatives in the US that more Jewish settlements on the West Bank bring to Israel's Likud. It will guarantee terrorism in perpetuity, and that will give the American Right the political meal ticket it's lacked since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Shortly after 9/11, National Reviewcarried an intriguing cover. It showed the rubble of Ground Zero with the caption "The New Communism". I didn't think much of it at the time since normally I don't think much of NR under any circumstances. But looking back now, it appears that NR was virtually licking its chops over 9/11 and the glorious prospects it opened up for conservatism.

by LaughingHistorian on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 08:47:49 AM EST

Re: Primat Der Innenpolitik (none / 0)

Halper and Clarke lay out the entire neo-con agenda in "America Alone". There are two major prongs to their foreign policy: (1) strategic control of the largest oil reserves outside of Saudi Arabia and (2) providing military support for Israel. Wolfowitz wrote a strategic plan in the early 90's that laid it all out and blended exactly with Huntington's thesis. Invading Iraq was never about Al Quaeda or Saddam.

Control of strategic reserves of oil is not limited to Iraq. The U.S. is currently engaged in Kazakstan, and the other stans, to control the oil reserves in that area as well. When Wall Street says it's not about money, it's about money. When the neo-con's say it's not about oil, it's about oil.

Your analysis of domestic politics following the drum roll is accurate. It just wasn't the neo-con's motivation. The Cold War Worriers, i.e. Rumsfeld, have jumped on the neo-con bandwagon because it advances their agenda as well.

by Gary Boatwright on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 11:47:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Primat Der Innenpolitik (none / 0)

Control of strategic reserves of oil is not limited to Iraq. The U.S. is currently engaged in Kazakstan, and the other stans, to control the oil reserves in that area as well. When Wall Street says it's not about money, it's about money. When the neo-con's say it's not about oil, it's about oil.

If you're right, then there's some good news here after all. Because if the neocons really believe that military control of oil-bearing regions is actually going to benefit this country in any way, short or long term, then they aren't so much sinister as just plain stupid. Stupid enough to fuck up big time.
If this were 50 years ago and the US enjoyed the industrial and financial predominance(not to mention energy independence) it had then, controlling the oil regions would make a big difference. Now it wouldn't amount to squat. Not with the EU and China in a position to bring us to our knees overnight with a few Sell orders. Not with US industry hollowed out and with the country now importing as much food as it exports.
The neocons apparently are living in an America where Jimmy Stewart's always at the controls of his B-36 and where June Allyson's always back home at the base waiting up for him in her perky house dress. An America where Ike is always President and where Father Always Knows Best.

by LaughingHistorian on Wed Dec 15, 2004 at 06:35:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Motivation (none / 0)

I'm a bit suspicious the "solidify US control of oil reserves" and the "solidify Republican political dominance" explanations. I do think, though, that 9/11 made possible a course of action that neoconservatives had been speculating about for quite some time.

The Iraq War is, in effect, the neoconservative Middle East solution. Their gamble is that a prosperous, "democratic" Iraq will swing the balance of power in the area dramatically. As Iraq flourishes and young Iraqis get serious doses of American culture, young Iranians will want to follow, and the Iranian theocracy collapses. Jordan, without the need to worry about Iraqi, can move further to the West. Syria loses the clout it had while it was linked to Iraq. Hamas, Hezbollah lose their financing, and the Palestinian Authority, under new leadership, makes a deal with Israel that favors Israel.

(Secure supplies of oil are, in this scenario, just frosting on the cake.)

Thst, I suspect, was the idea. That it was misguided and counterproductive should have been clear to anyone who thought about it for a while (ideology again trumped reality), and the course of recent events simply demonstrate its absurdity.

by Denver on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 12:54:50 PM EST

Misusing Huntington (3.00 / 1)

I have no idea what Samuel Huntington thought of the Iraq war, but trying to use Edward Said's critique of his work to criticize the war on terror generally seems a bit off to me. What I took away from Huntington's work was not that "The West" should start a conflict with Islam, but rather that it should recognize the reality of the Islamic world's growing power, their vast political and cultural differences from us, their potential to cause economic crises because of oil, and a growing anti-western sentiment as their power and population grew. He also made similar points about China, and to a lesser extent, India. The Clash of Civilizations did not conclude that the Islamic world and China should necessarily be attacked, though.

I think Edward Said is misrepresenting some of Huntington's points in the snippets of his writing posted here, probably because, like many, he is offended by Huntington's belief that the West and Islam are natural enemies. He attacks Huntington for cleanly dividing the world into "us" and a series of "thems," but Huntington makes clear the boundaries of the civilizations he defined are not permanent and immutable. He cut the world into different regions based on geography, common culture (including religion, language, and history), and their relationships with other countries. The result may be a rough picture, but I think it's a useful enough picture for making some general points about where he thinks world politics is going. He is quite clear though that "the West" is not a stable entity, and depending on developments in Russian and the former Soviet Republics, South America, India and Japan, more serious rivals to the West could emerge, or they and the West could in fact merge together. He was making big generalizations, but not claiming civilizations as he conceives them are not influenced by others, integrated with others in many ways, or do not evolve over time.

After reading "The Clash of Civilizations," which I found very compelling, I did not think we needed to start a war in Iraq or anywhere else. What I thought was that we should be doing everything possible to draw closer to Europe, work at fostering more cooperation and unity within the Western Hemisphere, and cozy up to India. I thought this because these are the areas that don't seem to have all that much interest in being our rivals, while in the Islamic world and China there is already a widespread sense of rivalry which only seems to be growing along with their population and wealth. Pretending this isn't a problem just seems crazy and I think Huntington put the problem in terms both useful for understanding it and useful for dealing with it. The answer doesn't have to be attacking those who aspire to be our rivals, but drawing together those who do not.

Huntington is worth a read for liberals. Beinart may be able to use it to support his case, but Huntington's thesis need not be used in that way. It also supports greater international cooperation in many ways. He thinks the source of future conflict will be the East-West divide, which is certainly possible and must be considered. But even if it is not, the most sensible conclusion to draw from his work (closer cooperation and ties with much of the world) is a worthwhile goal anyway.

As I said, I don't know what Huntington thought about the Iraq war. But, as an admirer of his work, I was appalled by it. Not only did it stoke anti-American (and yes, general anti-Western) sentiment in the Islamic world, but drove a wedge through the alliance of Western countries (which, in case you don't know, he defines as Western and much of Central Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia), damaging the unity we should be trying to foster. It made conflict between Islam and the West more likely and weakened Western unity at the same time.

by peter412 on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 03:34:12 PM EST

Re: Misusing Huntington (3.00 / 1)

It's a good and reasonable point to make that Beinart may be drawing on Huntington and twisting things to his own ends.

I guess the question would be whether Huntington acknowledged the complexity of the Islamic world and acknowledged the fuzziness of all cultural boundaries, but then went ahead and set forth a West/Islam opposition that managed to obscure important divisions within Islam and, for that matter, within the West. If Huntington makes a gesture toward internal divisions and fuzzy edges, but really ends up with a simple, good ol' binary opposition, then I think Said is right to be suspicious.

It's possible to err in both directions. You can assert cultural identities in a way that obscures the conflicts within. Or you can assert the internal differences so much that you lose sight of the cultural whole.

For some, the Iraq war is a clash of cultures. For others, it is as much a result of conflicts within Islam and conflicts within the West.

by Denver on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 05:30:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Misusing Huntington (none / 0)

I guess the question would be whether Huntington acknowledged the complexity of the Islamic world and acknowledged the fuzziness of all cultural boundaries, but then went ahead and set forth a West/Islam opposition that managed to obscure important divisions within Islam and, for that matter, within the West. If Huntington makes a gesture toward internal divisions and fuzzy edges, but really ends up with a simple, good ol' binary opposition, then I think Said is right to be suspicious.

I think we all need to get out our revolvers at any sign of a superficial treatment of cultures different from our own. The specific kind of dumbing-down that I have in mind is religious reductionism.
This fallacy assumes that,Iraqis--or Bosnians or Pakistanis or whatever-- are primarily motivated by Islam in their thoughts, words, and actions. It's an assumption common among Westerners and reflects a sense of cultural superiority on their part: We, being a more sophisticated people, are capable of complex motives, whereas They,, being a relatively backward and simple people, are only guided by one overriding motive, which is a religious one.
I realize that being a strategic analyst like Huntington entails work--hard work!. But, as Marshal Maurice de Saxe put it, "the human heart is the starting point of all matters pertaining to war." Failing to appreciate the full range of other peoples' motives isn't just being insensitive, it's also a recipe for strategic blindness and failure.
For a better discussion of this issue, see the piece by Amartya Sen in the December 2 issue of New York Review of Books(sorry, no link).

by LaughingHistorian on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 09:56:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]

I pretty much find the Beinart peice wrong in it's (none / 0)

whole premise.

First, the totalitarian's are not the "Osama Bin Ladens", they are the regimes of the countries we do commerce with. His attempt to describe the threat as totalitarian is wrong, which makes his entire argument baseless.

Second, we can say that Osama and his followers are fundamentalist, however this is a completely different animal as a threat, if it is at all.

Fundamentalist movements exist in every single religion on the face of the earth.

The real issue with Osama is extremism, however, everyone knows that there is not an extremism movement taking over the world that we must take up arms and fight against. Once framed that way everyone would realize that these are extremist and that the fight against them should be treated that way.

However, based on his comparison, Beinart would have us believe that communism was brought to power by the people rather than forced upon them by the state and ended up taking over the world.

If Beinart advocates us to take up arms against the regimes in the middle east that we do business with every day that oppress their people which fosters fundamentalism and extremism, then he'd have made a good case, but he ends up espousing the same "us and them" rhetoric that the black & white crowd does and its just plain false.

Of course liberalism has been fighting that fight for decades.

After the 9/11 attacks I asked my some of my friends in discussion that "if the children of China, whose slave labor we benefit so much from in the way of cheap consumer goods" were to hire terrorists to attack us, and they did, would we listen, would we get the message?

Probably not, we'd just probably kill them also.

So I'd suggest that liberalism do indeed find its voice and make it loud, however it need not change its message at all, we just need to stop letting our message be shouted down by the hateful, belligerent and uninformed.

We just have a communication problem here, our message is good, sound and when we speak it, it resonates. We got out-maneuvered because we became apathetic and thought we were beyond all of that. We now realize that we were dead wrong on and the fight is never over.

by laughingriver on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 04:35:09 PM EST

Understanding Huntington (none / 0)

If you read Huntington extensively you come to understand that his view of Islamic civilization really is as simplistic as Said portrays it (and I'm usually quick to point out how Said sometimes oversimplifies and how his followers almost always do). Huntington and Lewis are both proponents of "Islam as a failed civilization" . Lewis' history and treatment is more nuanced and sophisticated and Lewis is worth reading because he contains so much real, genuine history and is, actually, a pretty damned good historian.

That said, both Lewis and Huntington have been pretty consistent supporters of the Neo-cons. It would take some time to track down, but I am pretty sure that both Lewis and Huntington have backed Bush almost 100% on both the war on terror and the war on Iraq. In both cases the underlying rationale is that "Islam" is a culturally flawed civilization whose culture has to be changed in order for democracy to emerge in the Middle East.

Why this point of view is partially true and also a gross oversimplification and therefore extremely dangerous as a foreign policy meme is a topic I hope to take up when the recount's over.

by cspoirot on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 06:54:25 PM EST

Why liberals aren't trusted on for.pol (none / 0)

Let us take the case of two men, two great men, John Kerry and John McCain. The issue at hand is Saudia Arabi and the fact that the purpetrators of 9/11 were predominantly mainstream Saudis.

When McCain reminds us that the Saudis were responsible, and hense our enegries are misdirected in Iraq, you know he wants to bomb the bejeezus out of the Saudis. He is being honest, and therefore he can be trusted.

When Kerry mentions the Saudis and their close ties to the Bush administration, do you get the feeling that had he been president, the 1st Cavalry regiment would currently be occupuying Riyahd? You don't know what he would do, but you can be damn sure it has nothing to do with punishing our enemies. That is why Americans more likely than not do not trust liberals on foriegn policy.

When you are damned if you do and damned if you don't it is a part of the American spirit to do.

by Paul Goodman on Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 08:07:18 PM EST

A new worldview and economic engine (none / 0)

A powerful response to Peter Beinhart's recent article in The New Republic came out on Tom Paine by Patrick Doherty, "Quo Vadis: Popularity Or Progress?" [http://www.tompaine.com/articles/quo_vadis_popularity_or_progress.php]:

"Peter Beinart presented the wrong moral challenge...Try as he might, Beinart's argument that Al Qaeda present a threat comparable to that posed by the Soviet Union in the Cold War or by the Axis Powers during World War II is not credible."

Doherty agreed with John Judis' statement: "I agree with what is implicit in Peter's essay: that the Democrats lacked an animating moral purpose, particularly in comparison with Bush and the Republicans."

Doherty then adds:

"Although Judis' sentiment is shared widely, so too is his lack of any alternative moral purpose...I submit that the problem hamstringing most liberals is that they view the world as a set of independent, disaggregated issues."

His construction of his alternative moral purpose begins with this:

"And so the focus of liberal efforts--as before in the New Deal--must be to remake our capitalist economy, this time to be inclusive and sustainable on a global scale...Capitalism must adapt or collapse. Capitalism must make space for the four billion people it currently excludes and make a more equitable deal for those it includes."

And continues:

"Democrats have before them the opportunity to put in place a worldview and policy program that does resonate with the world around us."

He then outlines his version of that worldview and a new economic engine, which is well worth reading.

joncehart

by joncehart on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 05:18:57 PM EST

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