What’s Wrong with the World

Funny, I was just composing a post on this. This one is better.

Good post. I should add that Western foreign policy can modulate the intensity and directionality of the jihad to some degree, leaving untouched its wellsprings, but that this recognition must take the form of, "What shall we instead do?", as opposed to, "What have we done to deserve this?"

I wouldn't count on right and left-liberals being able to grasp the distinction.

I too very much dislike the term "Islamofascism." But you can't tell where a person is coming from on these questions until you listen to him for a while. There are people who might be called "neoconservatives" and who use this term, but who are actually not under any illusions about Islam's being a religion of peace, about the ancient nature of the jihad, etc. On the other hand, there are people who deplore the term who are, to my mind, too much inclined to think that terrorism directed at us is "blowback" from our own policies.

Great post, Paul. I think you strike the right balance here for the most part. Like Jeff, I would want to stress the role of policy as an aggravating or focusing factor. Jihadism exists and will continue to exist in the absence of such provocations, but it is policy that makes jihadis take a particular interest in one state or set of states rather than another. I think there is blowback, but that does not mean that there wouldn't ever be jihadi aggression in the absence of intervention. The debate tends to treat this as an either/or proposition, when both are contributing factors. The one compounds the other. Evem so, in practice, jihadism and militant attacks have coincided to an extraordinary degree with our interventionism, since terrorism really is aimed at compelling changes in policy. That does not excuse or qualify the evil of the act, but it helps to explain where it comes from.

In the near term, jihadis are generally preoccupied with "liberation" struggles of territories occupied by Muslims that are ruled by non-Muslim or secular governments, which is is where they're focusing most of their energies, taking more of their time these days to attack those who "intrude" into their areas. Additionally, jihadis take over and appropriate local conflicts and fit them into their own agenda. The Chechens and Bosnians were not, for the most part, jihadis when the wars started, but jihadis made these causes their own and worked to radicalise the populations.

Still, attitudes towards Islam and "Islamofascism" are not always easy to track. There are people, such as Daniel Pipes (call him a neoconservative or not, it is almost beside the point), who are convinced that Islam is *in essence* a peaceful, lovely religion that has since been distorted since the mythical Golden Age into something bad. He is very much against so-called Islamofascism (and doesn't seem to care much for Arabs at all), but very keen on Islam, because he thinks the former is a departure from the latter. Indeed, the coinage of "Islamofascism" is, as Paul suggests, an attempt to insulate talk of jihadism from talk of Islam, as if calling it "Islamofascism" makes it a political ideology rather than a form of religious fanaticism. As I have argued on Eunomia, proponents of the term have argued that it is important that it be as vague and broad as possible to make it able to embrace the widest array of groups, including Shia, Sunni and secular Arab dictatorships. In other words, in practice, "Islamofascism" tends to mean "states and groups in the Islamic world that I oppose." There is nothing coherent about it at all, and it is a very deliberate attempt to make the entire struggle into one that can be understood in secular, purely political and ideological terms. The idea of a religious struggle is abhorrent to many of the anti-"Islamofascists," since they are neither terribly religious themselves nor do they see much value in the religious traditions of the West on which they might draw, except insofar as they serve as preludes to the wonderfulness of Enlightenment (i.e., insofar as those religious traditions have ceased to matter to public life).

Then there are the separationists, who run the gamut of views. Some are very earnest about the demographic danger of growing Muslim populations, but don't buy the foreign policy side. Most are very much opposed to Muslim immigration, but still don't think that meddling in the affairs of other countries makes any sense. Then there are some separationists who are not really at all interested in the "Islamofascism" rhetoric, but many lump all these concerns together in a big ball. This latter group would include, I think, Krikorian and Auster. Even if some of these latter separationists don't much care for the "Islamofascist" label, I believe they don't really care to object to it.

Even if some of these latter separationists don't much care for the "Islamofascist" label, I believe they don't really care to object to it.

Auster has a rather funny to read recent polemic against the distortion of language in terms like "Islamofascist". The final paragraph is priceless:

And, finally, the more adjectives they add, the less numerous and significant becomes the enemy that we are fighting. After all, if Islamic fascists represent only a "tiny minority" of the Muslim population, then extremist Islamic fascists are a tiny minority of a tiny minority. It must be the first "war" in history in which the more ferociously you denounce your enemy, the more he disappears from sight.

On the other hand, there are people who deplore the term who are, to my mind, too much inclined to think that terrorism directed at us is "blowback" from our own policies.

This has been my experience. Those the dislike using the term "Islamofascism" dislike it because they do not want to link terrorism to Islam at all (for the most part, liberals). It is also my experience that those that do use the term are willing to accept that the jihad is fundamental to Islam. It is at least something they are willing to discuss without dismissing the discussion as bigoted.

I remember Bush got slammed by the Left when he used the term. When Bush said they hate us for our freedom and way of life, the Left went crazy. "They hate us because of what we did to them" they responded. The Left, it seems to me, wants to ignore the role of Islam all together, radical or not. To the Left, terrorism is just an equal and opposite reaction to American foreign policy.

Those the dislike using the term "Islamofascism" dislike it because they do not want to link terrorism to Islam at all ...

I think that is true of the Left.

Neoconservatives like the term for the same reason though, ironically: that is, it allows them to put a label on an enemy connected to Islam while pretending that Jihad is some kind of abberation or singular perversion of Islam rather than being essential to Islam and integral to its long history.

So the Left rejects the term for the wrong reasons. Neoconseratives like the term because it allows them to imagine that the Jihad is some new fringe abberation or treatable ideological sickness that doesn't call into question their universalizing project (thus it can be imagined that the vast bulk of a billion Muslims are all one toppled statue away from being free and equal democratic supermen just like the neocons). The paleo-right rejects the term for the right reason: because it is a neconservative invention which allows neoconservatives to remain in denial about the unreality of their own modern liberal world view.

The left-liberal world view and the right-liberal (neoconservative) world view are equally steeped in unreality, and that unreality explains both the rejection of the ridiculous terminology of "extremist fascist radical islamism" by left-liberals and its acceptance by right-liberals.

As Daniel says, this is a case of both/and not either/or. The imperialism of the jihad is intrinsic to Islam, it isn't caused by anything we do, and we won't put an end to it just by choosing to be more isolationist. On the other hand we throw fuel on the fire and make ourselves more vulnerable to the jihad through (some of) our ridiculous foreign and domestic policies. The jihad isn't caused by our failure to be isolationist, but by being imperialist abroad and refusing to discriminate at home we aggravate it and make ourselves more vulnerable to it.

I am of the view that right now the most important actions we can take against the Jihad consist of domestic policies: immigration restriction, official recognition of the Islamic religion's ineradicably political character, amendment of our sedition law to embrace jihad, proscription of sharia-promotion, etc.

That said, I would certainly leave open the possibility for offensive military action abroad. Not so much large-scale invasions and nation-building like Iraq, but more limited strikes and raids. I have said before that one of our strategic goals should be to force the enemy to give us battle. Wherever we can maneuver soldiers of the Jihad into the open, we should be ready to annihilate them. Obviously this will not be easy, as everyone realizes that the enemy's greatest advantage lies in his ability to avoid pitched battle, but I do not think this an insurmountable obstacle. It is possible to provoke the enemy to recklessness.

Mr. X:

Yes indeed: the Left wants this whole thing to be about what we have done to the poor Muslims. And while I agree with Daniel and Jeff that our policies can and do have an effect, yet the Jihad would remain a threat even if we pursued a less interventionist policy. It would remain a threat not least because America stands right now as the greatest infidel power in the world, the greatest outrage, in short, of unbelief.

Well said, Zippy.

That TCS daily article is fascinating, Paul. In fact, if you are right, I really do not think much is left of the proposition that military action abroad is causally bad for America _because_ it exacerbates the terrorist desire to attack the U.S. In fact, what you say in the TCS daily article takes into account the fact that this might well provoke both propaganda on our shores and also bring into action sleeper cells of groups such as Hezbollah, yet could still be a valuable thing to do. In other words, the sense in which our policies can and do have an effect doesn't necessarily lead to the same moral that others have drawn from it-- isolationism lest we draw attention to ourselves. And this is because in my opinion you are completely right that attention would be strongly on the U.S. regardless as "the greatest infidel power."

And I wish to add that that negative attention would be on us even if America were populated almost exclusively by modest-clothes-wearing Christian conservatives, if Britney Spears didn't exist, and if our television morality were that of the 1950's. (That's my small anti-D'Souza riff.)

When you say not large-scale nation-building but limited strikes and raids, what this reminds me most of is what Israel has done again and again with various headquarters and such of terrorists on their own borders. Only we would be thinking of a much wider field of potential action than that.

Well, there's got to be a prudential weighing of costs and benefits, I suppose. This all gets back to my point about our unforgivable neglect of the domestic threat. Our freedom of action abroad is hampered by the vulnerabilities we have exposed ourselves to at home.

But let us say we discover a mosque and madrassa just over the Iranian border from Iraq that is crawling with Jihadist agents -- the real deal, including some bigshots. Let's say we send in a sizable detachment of Rangers to seize and hold the place, and simultaneously keep a strong column of armor right on the border, ready to descend on the chaotic reaction of Jihadists to this outrage. So the Jihadists rise out of the woodwork, and fly to dislodge this infidel raid -- and behind them roll in tanks to smack 'em around.

The idea here is that America wins a big battlefield victory, including a number of dead and captured captains of the Jihad.

Against this possibility, we have to weigh the potential for retaliation in American homeland. Does Iran answer with car-bombs in Detroit? Snipers in Phoenix? These are serious worries.

What's interesting in that regard is that if we took seriously the domestic threat this could actually come with _more_ willingness to act abroad rather than coming hand in hand with pulling in our horns abroad. In fact, those two (isolationism and decisive action to clear out the dangerous elements at home) are not naturally speaking two sides of the same coin. It's only a kind of historical accident that those two ideas have come to be united in people's minds.

I say all of this as someone with lots of sympathies for isolationism, but that chiefly for reasons of cost and of a feeling that American imperialism is a bad idea for America in other ways. I have never felt at all convinced that interventionism abroad is to be avoided *because of* backlash in the form of terrorism.

I'll add now as a sort of free-standing comment that I really do not see any significant difference between Ron Paul's "how would we feel" list of questions in the presidential debate and anyone else's acceptance of the Muslim victim narratives and grievance lists mentioned in the main post. One can spin it as "merely" saying this or that, but to my ear his comments sounded _exactly_ like he was saying we've brought this on ourselves, as the leftists are said to do in this very thread.

Neoconservatives like the term for the same reason though, ironically: that is, it allows them to put a label on an enemy connected to Islam while pretending that Jihad is some kind of abberation or singular perversion of Islam rather than being essential to Islam and integral to its long history.

I see a lot of truth in this. On one hand they are saying this is a religious war based on the tenets of Islam while simultaneously believing it isn’t really based on Islam. However, it is my experience that “neoconservatives” are open to the idea that Islam itself, and not some “hijacked” version of Islam, is the problem. In other words, they are at least open to the idea that “Islamofascism” and Islam are one in the same. The Left, on the other hand, will consider this idea bigoted from the get go.

"And I wish to add that that negative attention would be on us even if America were populated almost exclusively by modest-clothes-wearing Christian conservatives, if Britney Spears didn't exist, and if our television morality were that of the 1950's."

All right. That's likely true as a matter of attitude. Hostility towards Christendom in the past did not abate on account of strict social enforcement of chastity, widespread penitential spirituality and monastic practice. Yet even when there is some generic hostility towards our way of life as such, that doesn't seem to be the driving force for those launching attacks on outposts of the American government and military in the Near East and civilian targets over here. Americans have been in the Near East in a non-military capacity for decades and decades longer than there has been anti-American terrorism stemming from this region. Something has to have set off the reaction, or we should have seen numerous terror attacks on our soldiers in Lebanon in 1958, since we were there in no uncertain terms to prop up a Maronite government. (In the event, there was one fatality from a sniper.) It is not simply intervention that triggers the reaction, but perhaps the nature and length of the intervention that are decisive.

"I have never felt at all convinced that interventionism abroad is to be avoided *because of* backlash in the form of terrorism."

I agree that this is not the main reason to avoid interventionism. This would be my point: as a general rule, interventionist wars do not actually secure American interests or make America safer. On their own official terms, they are failures and cause us to build up more and more obligations around the world. Any backlash of terrorism that results from such wars is just one example of how these wars fail to provide security to the United States and American interests. Interventionism troubles me far more as a distortion of the proper role of the government and a departure from the neutrality advised and practiced by our ancestors during the majority of our history as an independent republic. As a matter of justice, intervention offends me because it forces us to meddle in other people's affairs when they are usually of no importance to us and it leads us to wage war against nations with which we have no real quarrel (e.g., Yugoslavia, Iraq most recently).

In defense of what Rep. Paul has said on this score, I believe he is attempting to engage the audience's moral imagination to try to impress upon the public that Americans would not tolerate it if major foreign powers began projecting power into our immediate vicinity. Indeed, for a very long time we have maintained that we would be strongly opposed to any attempt by an outside power to do that. It is therefore rather unjust, or more to the point unrealistic, to be demanding acquiescence from other states when we would never tolerate the same behaviour from someone else.

I believe Rep. Paul is trying to insist that we take a realistic appraisal of the situation, which I believe is what his entire argument about blowback is as well. Understanding the cause of a thing, as I think he would say, is not to condone the thing, and if it is possible to alter policies without damaging our interests in ways that improve U.S. security that seems to him to be good policymaking. If there were something worth doing there that caused blowback, that would be one thing, but when we have--as he believes--no reason to be there *and* it causes our country to incur losses and makes the country less secure it would seem desirable to reassess whether the policy is gaining us as much as it may be costing us.

Here's a You Tube link. I haven't watched it through but it looks like the right video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQrwKr_b4Lg

I see nothing there that indicates *any* acknowledgement of jihadism, of the hatred of and war against the infidel, nor of the very real possibility that we would be as much of a target (for being the greatest infidel power around, etc.) without the interventionism in question as with it. Quite to the contrary. I think the spirit and content of Paul's remarks speak for themselves. The clear indication, again, is that we have brought this on ourselves.

X says, "In other words, they are at least open to the idea that “Islamofascism” and Islam are one in the same."

That's what I've seen, too.

I just rewatched it.

For example: "We incite hatred." And "They don't come over here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come here and attack us because we're over there."

Hmmm. No idea of a third option, "They come here to attack us because jihad calls for the destruction of the infidel."

As a matter of fact, I think it could be very fairly argued that Rep. Paul is *at least as much* casting this in *distinctly political and non-religious terms* as anyone who could be labeled a "neocon." He is casting this as a bunch of unspecified other Middle Eastern countries--not even specifically Muslim countries--who are angry at us because we're bugging them, interfering with them, and thus inciting their hatred against us. This is anything but an understanding of this as a religious conflict.

I argue that if we are going to heap scorn upon the heads of those who use the phrase "Islamofascist" because we worry that this is a distraction from the religious aspect of the conflict that we ought equally to condemn the perspective that ignores the religious nature of the conflict in favor of "they come over here because we have incited their hatred by being over there." At least the word "Islamofascist" starts with "Islam."

I'd love to weigh in on Ron Paul, and I have a sneaking suspician that I would come down at least somehwat supporting Lydia's take. The paleo right does have a tendency to grab onto actual leaders who are not particularly rational, simply because those leaders are less outright insane than the usual cast of left-liberals and right-liberals.

But the problem is that I find candidates for political office mind-numblingly uninteresting, and I can't find the motivation to concentrate long enough to figure them out in their various nuances. I know that Paul's libertarianism won't sit well with a racist sexist homophobic capitalism-critical authoritarian like myself in general, so as much as I may be able to check off policy boxes that I agree with there is still an issue of fundamental world view.

Honestly I think the paleo right has an opportunity (though admittedly perhaps a slim one) to become a force for reason in all this, and that that would be a very significant improvement over the present republicrat/demmican hegemony. But in order to cease being the place for outcast racist sexist isolationist xenophobes and become the place for eminently reasonable racist sexist isolationist xenophobes, the paleo right needs to be ready to engage with the partial truths in the other camps. Ron Paul, to the extent I've been able to keep my attention on him, which isn't much, doesn't seem to engage with the reality of Jihad. That is, he seems to be in some ways as anti-essentialist as his various opponents. In part that is because "radical extremist islamist fascism" is the global warming of the neoconservatives, to be sure. But the way to take that away from the neoconservatives is to acknowledge the glimmers of truth where they exist.

At least the word "Islamofascist" starts with "Islam."

Exactly. What I have been hinting at is that acknowledging the threat of “Islamofascism” is not necessarily a rejection of the threat of the jihad, but a path towards understanding it.

"Neoconseratives like the term because it allows them to imagine that the Jihad is some new fringe abberation or treatable ideological sickness that doesn't call into question their universalizing project (thus it can be imagined that the vast bulk of a billion Muslims are all one toppled statue away from being free and equal democratic supermen just like the neocons)."

Neo-conmen are right-liberals. If they allow that most Muslims are not the same as us and not ready for neocon democracy project, they will have to admit that corner stone of liberalism, universal equility and non-discrimination, does not hold.

To admit that they must shed their liberal beliefs.

And they cannot do that.

"What I have been hinting at is that acknowledging the threat of “Islamofascism” is not necessarily a rejection of the threat of the jihad, but a path towards understanding it."

No. The term is a head-fake. There is no redeeming value in it.

An honest writer will use the term Islam anywhere he wants to use the term Islamofascism.

Oh, balderdash, Mik! The question of what a person means by "Islamofascist" has to be decided by looking at how he uses it. It isn't somehow inherently "dishonest." When Johnson at LGF heads a post on the new fashion tendency in the left to wear a terrorist scarf with the title "Islamofascist Chic," that doesn't mean that Johnson think the jihad is unreal or that Islam is a ROP hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists. Far from it.

And one of the most educational sites on the reality of the jihad, a site that unrelentingly makes fun of the whole "tiny minority of extremists" and "religion of peace" garbage, is Jihad Watch, a site funded by (gasp!) the think tank of that horrid neocon Horowitz.

You have to take people as you find them as far as what they think about things, not by the use of a term like "Islamofascist" nor by whether they can be labeled as "neocons."

An honest writer will use the term Islam anywhere he wants to use the term Islamofascism.

I disagree. The honest person questions the relation of Islam to terrorism. The Left outright denies it without thinking about it. The term "Islamofascism" acknowledges the link between Islam and terrorism, which then opens the discussion to how deep this link is. If the link is deep enough, then one can honestly use Islam anywhere he wants to use the term "Islamofascism".

An honest writer will use the term Islam anywhere he wants to use the term Islamofascism.

Well, not quite. I think the word as a substantive matter is interchangeable with "jihad", and the main reason neoconservatives use it (again) is to avoid the uncomfortable fact that jihad is as doctrinally intrinsic to Islam as the Trinity is doctrinally intrinsic to Christianity.

...jihad is as doctrinally intrinsic to Islam as the Trinity is doctrinally intrinsic to Christianity.

I do not think they would deny this, but what they might deny is the nature of jihad. We are often told that jihad is an inner struggle having nothing to do with violence or war.

I suspect some people use it just because it sounds unpleasant. Sort of like Tolkien's orc names. It can be no more than that, a sort of, "Take that, you bad guys!" added layer of insult to associate them with fascism. Is this a good enough reason? No, and I don't use the word. But I think you have to look at who is using it and what else he says to decide whether he's trying to avoid the conclusion that jihad is intrinsic to Islam. Some people no doubt do use it for that very reason, and my guess is that they are many of those in the public spotlight and that my own reactions are in part conditioned by the fact that I don't have TV channels. I see how people use it in the blogosphere, not how, say, administration officials use it in speeches.

Speaking of jihad's being intrinsic to Islam, it does seem to me that since this _is_ the case, one should look for some sort of "revival" within Islam itself to explain the resurgence of jihadism. It needn't have much or anything to do with our actions abroad at all. I say this as a somewhat a priori point and trying to take very seriously the tight connection between jihad and Islam, not because I know enough about the history of the last forty years to be able to cite names and places and to demonstrate decisively that such a revival has been largely from within Islam. My point is merely that I see no particular puzzle which is prima facie most plausibly explained by some actions of _ours_ in the rise of Islamic terrorism during this period. Religions do go, more or less on their own, through periods in which someone comes along and tells the adherents that they need to be more serious about what their holy book tells them, need to take it more literally and apply it more faithfully to their lives, etc. And we are a sort of obvious target regardless of our foreign policy.

Let me add that Sayyid Qutb, senior intellectual of the Muslim Brotherhood and perhaps the formative figure in the modern revival of the Jihad, was outraged by American decadence during his time as a student in Greeley, Colo., in the late 1940s. It was his time in the West, in the rising citadel of infidelity, that radicalized him. He did list our indifference to the Palestinian cause among his grievances against Americans (though in the late 40s we were pretty much indifferent to the Israeli cause too), but otherwise it was a catalog of social depravity, focused especially on the relations between the sexes.

And I suppose if the isolationist idea is that we aren't supposed to go meddling in the Middle East, "indifference" is a virtuous attitude for America to take.

The puzzle to be explained is not so much 'why there has transpired a revival of the jihad', as 'why the jihad has directed its fury at this target of opportunity, as opposed to that one'. I, myself, find virtually incomprehensible this impulse to exculpate every American or Western foreign policy decision, no matter how stupid, malignant, incoherent, unjust, gratuitous, or just plain Machiavellian in its evil, from any causal relationship with terrorism and undesirable outcomes. The Madrid bombings had nothing to do with Spain's commitment, massively resented among the Spanish electorate, under the Aznar government, to provide personnel for the Iraq war; they would have transpired precisely as they did, even had Spain aligned itself with France and Germany, which experienced no terrorist actions associated in the rhetoric of of the perpetrators with Iraq. This strains credulity beyond the breaking point; it tortures it, in my mind.

Again, this is not to argue that our actions explain the existence of the jihad, only that our actions sometimes explain why the jihad is directed at certain targets, as opposed to others.

Once more, I find this all quite incomprehensible, and it seems to me that such a priori judgments are inapposite in matters of history and politics. Analogously, it is argued that it is some innate, intrinsic, implacable Russian authoritarianism and propensity towards totalitarianism that accounts for the foreign policy of the Putin regime, and not Western meddling in Chechnya, Georgia, Central Asia, and the Ukraine, the imposition of a ruinous economic policy, and the well-known neoconservative ambition of weakening and dismembering Russia. All things will continue as they are predicted by our knowledge of these essences; the only thing for us to determine is how to press our advantage. I worry that this curious form of foreign-policy solipsism obviates the necessity of any self-examination that progresses beyond the discussion of the possibility of certain actions, that it simply presupposes that all of these policies and actions are licit, that the only reason to eschew them is not that they are immoral and likely to eventuate in undesirable outcomes, but that they might not be efficacious. To be certain, there obtains no analogy between Islam and any political tradition indigenous to Russia; nothing in Russian thought dictates an implacable hostility towards the West. Rather, the analogy lies in our own approaches to the situations; in both cases, we presume that nothing we have done, propose to do, or could do, could ever be causally related to an undesirable outcome: we are entitled to do whatever we desire, and so reproach the other parties for aggression when we have slugged them in the face. We, on occasion, bat about the hornets' nest of Islam, and then reproach them for responding as they must. We bait the bear, which could take us or leave us, then reproach it for aggression when we have already set our dogs upon it. The absence of self-awareness is palpable.

In truth, I think this both politically and spiritually perilous. And I trust, given my well-known convictions regarding the religion of Mahomet, that my position here will not be misunderstood.

Again, this is not to argue that our actions explain the existence of the jihad, only that our actions sometimes explain why the jihad is directed at certain targets, as opposed to others.

I think a certain visceral moral outrage may be part of why these kinds of facts aren't readily accepted: that is, that the very consideration of any movement on our part toward avoiding the viper's nest is akin to "negotiating with terrorists", and that for this reason facts of the nature you point out simply aren't to be entered into consideration. It is all well and good, from my standpoint, to self-consciously enter the viper's nest knowing that it is a viper's nest. But some seem to want something more than that: they view the very existence of the viper's nest as a moral outrage (which it may well be) and conclude that our actions must therefore proceed as if the viper's nest did not exist, that our foreign policy is therefore entitled to (nay must) proceed as if it did not exist, and that when its existence manifests itself we are entitled to pretend that this was unexpected; all of which is the height of foolishness.

..."[T]hat the only reason to eschew them is not that they are immoral and likely to eventuate in undesirable outcomes, but that they might not be efficacious."

As a matter of fact, the fact that jihadists try to kill us for doing X is scarcely evidence that X is immoral. I know some people who seem to like the Crusades and to think a Crusader kingdom in the East would be great, but that idea is hardly likely to meet with shouts of joy from Arab terrorists. And if one thinks the jihadists would try to kill us in any event, then the major reasons left for or against doing X will be _precisely_ moral reasons. The warning against terrorist reaction is a prudential, not per se a moral, argument. Which isn't to say it's always a bad arg. It's just to say that it doesn't in itself indicate the goodness or badness of the action in question.

In any event, my major reason for disagreeing about this "we're determining the direction of the jihad by our meddlesome foreign policy" argument is that we are an obvious target regardless. Why shouldn't this fact itself be taken into account? Paul has said it correctly: We're the biggest and strongest infidel nation around. And I add, this would be true even if we had a less interventionist foreign policy.

And at this point, I'm moved to ask a question that I've been a little too diffident to ask before: Prior to the first Gulf War, just what horrible thing are we supposed to have done in the Middle East? Is the previous existence of anti-American sentiment in the Middle East and of Arab terrorism supposed to have been the result of, say, the Vietnam War??? (sarc) Or is our support for the Shah of Iran supposed to have been our sin? And since then, are we really to believe Osama bin Laden's propaganda and take it that he himself is attacking us *because of* the first Gulf War and our involvement in the ME as a result? Are we to take it that OBL would have gone and attacked someone else *and not us* if we hadn't entered into the first Gulf War? Isn't that exactly what the main post is warning us against--accepting propaganda victimology addressed at us as truth?

"We, on occasion, bat about the hornets' nest of Islam, and then reproach them for responding as they must."

Just noticed this sentence with full attention. That's a heck of a sentence, Jeff. Are you really saying that OBL's knocking down two of our buildings and murdering thousands of our people was a matter of his "responding as he must"? Should we, perhaps, not "reproach" him? And what "batting about the hornet's nest," specifically, did we do to OBL that so legitimately provoked the poor man in this way?

You and Ron Paul are starting to sound like two peas in a pod. That sentence very nearly makes me angry.

The warning against terrorist reaction is a prudential, not per se a moral, argument. Which isn't to say it's always a bad arg. It's just to say that it doesn't in itself indicate the goodness or badness of the action in question.

That is true, and yet it needs to be affirmed that prudential matters are also moral matters. That is to say, if it is imprudent (though not immoral per se) to do something because it is likely to have bad consequences which are not outweighed by good consequences, then it is immoral - because imprudent - to do it.

I don't think any human acts at all can be exempted from moral evaluation.

...are we really to believe Osama bin Laden's propaganda and take it that he himself is attacking us *because of* the first Gulf War and our involvement in the ME as a result?

These kinds of questions posed as either/or don't seem to me to reflect the full reality. If we look at bin Laden and everyone who supports him, and try to reduce the reasons why they attack us to one or two highly rarified principal reasons, we will not have the whole story. "All of the above" is a better answer: we don't make the beast, but everything we do affects its size, alliances, strengths, weaknesses, tactics, and strategies. It is grossly imprudent (and thus immoral) to simply pretend otherwise out of moral outrage that God has allowed the serpent to share the same world with us.

I agree that Jeff overstated it by saying "responding as they must," at least as an isolated sound bite extracted from everything he's said on the subject; though in a certain sense, a nest of vipers being trampled is responding as it must. And if we cannot (as either a moral or practical matter) wipe out the nest of vipers, it is grossly imprudent (and thus immoral) to simply act as if it does not exist, and then stamp our feet in outrage when it manifests its existence. IOW, if you took Jeff to be morally justifying bin Laden's actions, I think you've clearly misunderstood.

As I've pointed out a great many times and I'll point out again, we don't have to justify the actions of others. We have to justify our own actions. This isn't moral equivalence, and it isn't a failure to acknowledge the evil that other men do. It is just acknowledgement of the fact that we are not them.

But is it _true_ that our involvement in the first Gulf War and in the ME since then is actually a *causal factor* in any meaningful sense in al Qaeda's targeting us? It's all very well to say that the whole thing is very complicated. But I'm not the one making these causal connections. I'm the one questioning them. For that reason it seems to me only fair to ask the questions starkly and clearly. If we are going to be told that we were being grossly imprudent in entering, say, the first Gulf War and that 9/11 is somehow an example of the viper's striking back or the hornet's nest "responding," this sounds an awful lot like saying that if we'd let Hussein take over Kuwait, or not tried to make him disarm after the first Gulf War, or perhaps some combination of these things and (just to throw another one in) stopping arms sales to Israel, 9/11 would not have happened and al Qaeda would not be targeting us.

If there is no counterfactual involved here, then why and how can America be said to have been imprudent or to have brought the terrorist acts on itself? Where does the analogy to batting about the hornet's nest and getting stung come in? If there is no claim about consequences here, there can be no blame. I therefore think the claim about consequences needs to be gotten clear and made boldly so that it can be evaluated, even prima facie, for its plausibility.

But is it _true_ that our involvement in the first Gulf War and in the ME since then is actually a *causal factor* in any meaningful sense in al Qaeda's targeting us?

I think the answer to that seems to be "yes", though I claim no special competence on the question. If you look at bin Laden's personal history, he hates the Saudi regime much more personally than he hates us, and leaving troops there after GW I was a big problem (in a number of different senses) for him. That doesn't (again) mean that we shouldn't have done it. But we also shouldn't deny that doing it helped fuel the rise of bin Ladenism.

Most propaganda isn't pure, undistilled lies. If it were then it wouldn't gain any purchase.

For myself, I think it _imprudent_ to believe that we can direct the jihad away from ourselves. To say so seems to me to downplay the evidence of a mandate to conquer infidel countries, described in this very post, and shown to be operative by the Muslim-directed rhetoric going on presently. We are the elephant in the room. We can't hide just by being a nicer elephant. And if someone has a mandate to kill everything that isn't a tiger, we should bear in mind for the sake of considering our own actions prudently that we are an elephant, and that our non-tiger-hood cannot go unnoticed.

And again I point out the irony: So-called "neoconservatives" are said to be using the term "islamofscism" in order to downplay the religious nature of the struggle. Yet from the paleoconservative side we hear, in essence, "Well, yes, jihad is native to Islam. But that really wouldn't need to concern us too terribly much if we'd just mind our own business." In essence, this is precisely to treat the conflict as a political rather than a religious one, as a conflict that is controllable and manageable by political means, by altering our foreign policy, by not bothering other people, and so forth. Our enemies are being treated as more or less rational agents with more or less reasonable grievances which we can address by altering our behavior. This could be true even if the regions in question were not Muslim at all. So we are getting here in this advice as well a downplaying, if not of the reality of jihad in (now) some quite abstract sense, then at least of its urgent relevance _to us_ as a factor in itself, independent of political issues such as intervention and reaction.

"Well, yes, jihad is native to Islam. But that really wouldn't need to concern us too terribly much if we'd just mind our own business."

I agree that Lew Rockwellish paleocons tend to take that kind of position. I'm arguing for the "both/and" view here. Though granted I tend to see the paleocon position as more "salvagable", since there is no fundamental change in world view required to salvage it, just some adjustments to the assessment of the facts on the ground. IOW I see neoconservatism as a fundamentally liberal ideology that needs to be overthrown and utterly repudiated, stamped out of existence completely, repented of without any looking back; whereas in contrast paleoconservatism needs to stop rejecting certain facts just because accepting those facts might be seen as granting any validation to anything a neocon has ever said. Paleoconservatism suffers from certain "see no evil" blindness, while neoconservatism is itself a form of blindness. Neoconservatism is intrinsically blind, while paleoconservatism is willfully blind. Or something like that.

Do you mean _on this subject_ neoconservatism is intrinsically blind? If so, I disagree. I point out, again, that Jihad Watch is very clear on the religious nature of the struggle and comes out loud and clear against the "tiny minority of extremists hijacking the religion" view. I cannot recall if their authors have ever used the term "Islamofascism" in any post headings or posts. Possibly so. If so, it was no attempt to avoid acknowledging the connection between Islam and Jihad! Yet they are a spin-off of Front Page Mag and part of Horowitz's crew, than which anything more "neocon" (at least, according to the paleocons) can be imagined.

I think you can only get that conclusion about "the neocons" if you define it into correctness: "No one is a neocon who does not support _all_ of the following propositions," etc., where a denial of the religious nature of our struggle with Islamic terrorists is built in. Which would be an uninteresting thing to do.

And as for convincing the Rockwell and Ron Paul crew of a few facts they presently reject, good luck with that. Because ideology is driving the bus there in a big way. One can, I suppose, see it as a reactionary ideology. But it influences the evaluation of events that took place long before anyone had ever heard of "neocons"--events such as World War II, for example. For real ideologically colored evaluation of facts, a truly fierce isolationist is right up there. And I say this as a (hopefully mild-mannered) isolationist-sympathizer myself.

If I had to pick for clear-sightedness an ally in the fight against the jihadists, I would pick Robert Spencer over any paleoconservative I know or know of, and certainly over any well-known one or anyone who is a paleo hero, such as Ron Paul. The worst I can say about Spencer is that he is a little over-optimistic about some things, like Muslim reform, and that he's a little too inclined to "see no evil" when it comes to Hirsi Ali. But that's nuthin' compared to...well...the problems with seeing clearly on the other side.

I think you can only get that conclusion about "the neocons" if you define it into correctness.

That is probably true. We've been fractured to the point where it is true, I should say.

Of course, my statement regarding denizens of the Islamic hornets' nest who respond as they must was hyperbolic. However, its purpose was to draw attention to the necessity of contemplating the likely consequences of our actions, as well as the morality of those actions. There is something obtuse about the ugly-American, "my country, right or wrong, and by the way, my country is never wrong" approach to foreign policy, to which every adverse reaction comes as a source of astonishment and amazement, as though the righteousness of American policy in all is aspects were manifest before all the world, and only the perverse will not to see it. It seems to me that this:

For myself, I think it _imprudent_ to believe that we can direct the jihad away from ourselves. To say so seems to me to downplay the evidence of a mandate to conquer infidel countries...

Seriously mischaracterizes the matter, inasmuch as the belief that, for example, the American presence in Saudi Arabia exacerbated jihadist sentiment, and occasioned its direction at certain targets, at certain times, and facilitated its elevation to a certain pitch, is not identical with - nor even necessarily related to - the belief that Islam does not mandate the subjugation of the infidel. This strange, binary notion of there existing an either/or here - either jihad is intrinsic to Islam and there is nothing we can do either to moderate to exacerbate it, or we are solely responsible for the outbreak of jihad - where the latter option is manifestly absurd, leaves us with the equally absurd conclusion that we need never consider the prudence and morality of our foreign policy with respect to Islam, since the consequences will always remain the same. I sometimes suspect that the function of binaries of this type, when the case is clearly one of both/and, is to exculpate the United States in precisely this manner; and there is nothing laudable in that.

As regards counterfactuals, I'm not positing one, inasmuch as I doubt the utility of such constructs for the study of history, particularly where the causal relationships are so convoluted, so derivative of incommensurable ways of perceiving the world. In order to construct a suitable counterfactual, of the type If and only if X, then Y; Not Y, therefore, not X, where X represents, say, the American presence in Saudi Arabia, and Y represents the rise of Al Qaeda, it seems to me that we would have to disentangle the causal threads, assign quantifiable degrees of influence to each, and run the scenarios. And I'm dubious that this is a path to historical understanding. I think it sufficient to acknowledge that, in the case at hand, our presence in SA, at best did not improve the situation, and at worst, well, made it worse - particularly as the first installment of the Gulf War scarcely seems to have had much to do with an American interest, as opposed to grandiloquent fabulisms about a New World Order of multilateralism, globalism, and a host of things that I thought conservatives regarded with skepticism.

Finally, where paleoconservatism is concerned, you'll find that the the sort of "if we leave them alone, they'll leave us alone" blindness is largely confined to the Lew Rockwell types, who have their own reasons. Most of the folks affiliated with Chronicles, and some of those affiliated with The American Conservative, fall into the both/and interpretation.

I, myself, find virtually incomprehensible this impulse to exculpate every American or Western foreign policy decision, no matter how stupid, malignant, incoherent, unjust, gratuitous, or just plain Machiavellian in its evil, from any causal relationship with terrorism and undesirable outcomes.

Goodness. That very nearly sounds like a description of a terrorist. I think I'm finally sick and tired of hearing my country's misteps (let's not mention any good she has done) condemned in the same breath with those committed by homicidal maniacs.

Perhaps someday we'll allay the jihadi impulse - say, once we've seen the wisdom of tendering Israeli lives as bargaining chips in a deal with her genocidal neighbors - but I doubt it. In the meantime - now that we've got an actual and substantial entity called Al-Qaeda gathered in one place, Iraq (I know, it's our fault; they wouldn't have bothered us much otherwise) - I've hit a upon an exit strategy both moral and meddlesome at the same time: kill them all.

In the further meantime, so long to you folks.

In defense of Ron Paul (hey, someone's gotta do it):

I think Paul has been getting a lot of his ideas from Michael Scheuer. Remember that Scheuer was at the press conference with Paul to prepare his "reading list" for Giuliani, and Paul has made frequent references to Scheuer and his works since the campaign has begun. And Scheuer does have a thorough consideration of the notion of Jihad. In Imperial Hubris, he argues that contemporary Jihadism is a response to American policies. He details very carefully the reasons given by al Qaeda for attacking America, and explains that the justifications given for the attacks by al Qaeda and other Jihadist groups are always in terms of a defensive Jihad - one in response to aggression against Islam, Muslim peoples, and Muslim lands. He remarks that, in the absence of a caliphate, there can be no calls for an offensive Jihad.

Now it may be too simple to assume that only a caliph can initiate an offensive Jihad (think of the jihad launched by the Wahhabis against "apostates" in the 18th century, for example). But what is clear is that the attacks that have occurred over the last decade or so have been in response to specific actions and policies: the bombing of Iraq, American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, American support for repressive dictatorships in the Near East, and American approval of the suppression of Muslims in Chechnya and China. The war in Iraq gave a whole new impetus for attacks against the US, and has no doubt encouraged radicalization in the Muslim world.

In this context, it makes sense for Ron Paul to focus on foreign intervention as a key motivating factor in current attacks against the U.S. This goes hand in hand with understanding the attacks as part of a defensive Jihad. I don't think we necessarily need to attribute a kind of "willful blindness" to Paul in this respect. Of course, Jihad would continue to exist in the absence of American interventionism; but the fire burning now has been stoked by American policies. There is a reason Osama has been able to direct so much hatred specifically toward America.

It should also be noted that Paul voted in favour of the invasion of Afghanistan, and has said that, as President, he would "go get" bin Laden. Recognizing that there is blowback doesn't have to mean pretending that there are no real enemies.

In defense of Ron Paul (hey, someone's gotta do it): I think [Ron] Paul has been getting a lot of his ideas from Michael Scheuer.

I think part of the point here though is that when Osama bin Laden himself endorses Scheuer's book in his latest tape, there is more to the story than just "Scheuer is right". The most obvious reason for bin Laden to endorse Scheuer's book is that it foments division among bin Laden's enemies. In general, while there are virtually always partial truths in propaganda (indeed sometimes the purpose of propaganda is to get those who receive it to utterly reject it as coming from an enemy), propaganda isn't something to be taken at face value. If anything we should be less inclined to adopt Scheuer's various theses at face value since the latest bin Laden tape; though again, that doesn't mean that the opposite of everything said in the book is necessarily true.

Another thing that is broken in our discourse, and this is perhaps particularly true on the paleoconservative side of things though there is plenty to go around, is a failure of basic generosity toward our own countrymen. I think Bush and his neoconservative advisors are wrong. I think that because their fundamental world-view is wrong, they've led us into an Iraq war that probably played right into al Qaeda's strategy. But the spiraling rhetoric of moral superiority and Machiavellian motivation has to go, in my view.

Part of the problem with the armchair is that it is just an armchair. I've been the chief executive of small companies before: a tiny responsibility in comparison. Everyone in his armchair thinks he can do it better, and thinks he has standing to be a critic. That and three bucks will get you a cup of coffee when the metal meets the meat. I don't know that I would personally have done as well as Bush, though that doesn't change my objective evaluation of what has been done.

I met President Bush once (before he was President), as part of a group of businessmen, and in my view people who think he is Machivallian are in some ways giving too much credit. He's just a regular guy, a bit smarter and a bit richer and a bit better connected, but mostly just an ordinary Texan. He genuinely loves America and genuinely wishes to defend America from her enemies: that and only that is what primarily drives his decisions, I can virtually guarantee you. Being wrong isn't the same thing as being wicked, and if the paleo right wants to distinguish itself from the Truther left then it had better break with the Truther left on the moralizing discourse. I think the Iraq war was objectively unjust because the putative threat we invaded to defend ourselves against didn't exist. It is enough to say that: no further moral judgement is required, nor should it be welcomed into our discourse.

I haven't studied Scheuer's work, and I would love to hear Spencer's and Hugh Fitzgerald's take on it. A quick Google search didn't turn up anything by the so-called "neocon crowd" in response to Scheuer, so if someone has a link, I'd be extremely interested. But the whole idea that you can't have an offensive jihad right now seems to fly in the face of the very evidence mentioned in the main post concerning the rhetoric used by Muslim agitators to other Muslims and the "outrage of unbelief." It flies in the face, too, of the fact that they are directly trying to take over countries like the UK by demographic means. It flies in the face of the signs held up at UK rallies about the flag of Islam flying over Downing Street and all the rest of it. I think it *incredibly dubious* that our enemies do not believe in offensive jihad--whether with money, demographics, or terrorism. If for some reason it is important to them (which I rather doubt that it is) always to have some grievance as a pretext so that they can cast their actions as "defensive," even to one another, then they will always be able to manufacture one. Remember too that the very existence of non-Muslim states in places like Spain is itself considered an outrage. "Beloved Al-Andalusia" and all that. Because those places were once Muslim.

I apologize, Bill, if I've occasioned any offense, and I'm truly sorry that you should write as you have. I written nothing that, even in its remotest implications, can be plausibly construed as an endorsement of tendering Israeli lives for a mitigation of the jihad. I support the existence of Israel, and believe that the entire Western world has an interest in ensuring its survival as Western state; I oppose the so-called Single-State solution; and I oppose the right of return, though I believe that the Christians, as opposed to the Muslims, ought to be compensated. And I am scarcely an advocate of moral equivalence, not least because it is logically incoherent.

I think it *incredibly dubious* that our enemies do not believe in offensive jihad--

Well, yes, but the mere existence of the infidel is offensive, so everything done under the rubric of jihad is defensive by definition.

Zippy, well, there you have it. In other words, "there can't be an offensive jihad without a caliphate" or whatever it is doesn't mean that "it's all about our policies towards them," as Scheuer asserts. (I just watched the video clip of Scheuer on Maher, where he says that.)

Now, to my mind, the most interesting part of that interview came when Maher said that as long as Israel exists and the U.S. supports Israel, we'll be hated by the Islamists regardless of what else we do. He parenthetically added that he's a big supporter of Israel. Scheuer said he disagreed with him on Israel, but what emerged was that Scheuer thinks we should not support Israel. In other words, Scheuer did not disagree with the claim that the Islamists consider the existence of Israel and any U.S. support for it an offense in itself. To the contrary, he seemed to be confirming this opinion by his comments that we are "generating hate" for ourselves and so forth by supporting Israel.

This, again, seems to indicate that it isn't by any means clear that there are all sorts of reasonable non-interventionist positions we could and should be taking anyway that would let us off the hook as far as bin Laden-esque rage and targeting of the U.S.

Maximos, if I may so take you, I'm glad to hear that you distance yourself on the subject of Israel from others who think and write as you do in a number of other areas. In other words, I'm glad that you apparently think the U.S. should continue in some active way (perhaps arms sales) to support Israel. On the other hand, if you mean what I think you mean about compensation, I disagree with you strongly there. But that is a debate for another time.

I expect - and this is just a prejudice of mine, I freely admit - that as a specialist in analyzing intelligence and imputing certain kinds of connections and causes, that Scheurer suffers from the kind of tunnel vision typical of any modern technological specialist. That is, one of the greatest dangers in the age of specialization is twofold: (1) we tend to hand our judgements over to experts; and (2) those experts, having expertise in particular areas, tend to extrapolate their thinking patterns in their areas of expertise to encompass everything. Thus we get cringeworthy pronouncements from scientists on philosophy, and from ME intelligence experts on the nature of the Islamic religion.

Apostolou on Scheuer:

http://www.techcentralstation.com/031705E.html

Interesting piece.

I think Jeff may have just gotten carried away in that passage.

A consideration of specifics may help advance this discussion. Since the Second World War, what would we consider America's clear foreign policy failures?

I am of the view that both the current Iraq war and the Kosovo adventure were failures compounded of folly and illusion; but of course, squashed in between them was the action in Afghanistan, which was eminently justified, well-executed, and largely unburdened by the grandiosity of Liberal rhetoric (yes, some people were already talking democracy back then, and the democratizers were starting to get revved up, but most everyone had a very clear notion of what was really going on, and it wasn't Wilsonianism). That we never killed or captured bin Laden is a strike against us which Democrats like to throw around as a taunt, but by and large we did what we set out to do: remove an enemy regime and scatter the Jihadists scheming and training there.

The Gulf War? An argument can be made against it, surely. But in comparison to the current mess, Bush Sr.'s prudence seems amply justified.

I think we'll all agree that on balance Reagan's foreign policy was a smashing success. To win the Cold War without a nuclear exchange, without even, as they say, firing a shot; to revive American patriotism and confidence without recourse to ugly nationalism; to strengthen the military without aggression; to turn to tough diplomacy when necessary -- these and more can to granted to the greatest statesman of recent American history.

What of Vietnam? Korea?

Pick a topic, expound if you believe America was foolish or gratuitously truculent.

Another thing that is broken in our discourse, and this is perhaps particularly true on the paleoconservative side of things though there is plenty to go around, is a failure of basic generosity toward our own countrymen.

Amen, Zippy.

I also second Zippy's remarks about President Bush, a man for whom I have always felt a genuine affection, and whose words around the great wound and outrage inflicted on Sept. 11 will not be forgotten. Half his errors were my own, and ours; he is an American man.

I still believe that a major unanswered question is this: If the foreign policy of the United States is supposed to be to blame for the direction of Islamic terrorism at us, what prior to the first Iraq war is supposed to have caused, say, the rise of Hezbollah and the hatred of the U.S. at that time?

Even if the Vietnam War was a colossal failure, it can't explain the existence of *Muslim* hatred of the West in the 1970s and 1980s.

I agree on Bush. I think he's well-intentioned and not anything remotely close to a monster. My main anger at him has come in domestic policy, where I believe he has not stuck to his conservative base. But it has gotten to the point where the wild hatred of him both from left and right is causing a reaction on my part. Which is not to say I'd vote for him again.

A consideration of specifics may help advance this discussion. Since the Second World War, what would we consider America's clear foreign policy failures?
Vietnam was a clear failure, and although we never lost a battle at some point it became impossible to win the war. Most everyone on the prowar side, both GOP and Democrat, will not admit that a war can be screwed up past the point of no return. It can and it has been before, the only significant argument for continuing in Iraq is whether or not that point has been passed.

If the foreign policy of the United States is supposed to be to blame for the direction of Islamic terrorism at us, what prior to the first Iraq war is supposed to have caused, say, the rise of Hezbollah and the hatred of the U.S. at that time?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax

Yes, I did allow myself to be carried away in that passage, though I do think that that motivations behind post-Cold War Russia policy have been both stupid and malignant, because informed by those hubristic dreams of imperial hegemony. So I count that as a clear failure of American foreign policy.

I should also state that I generally share the opinions expressed here concerning the President, whom I have defended on these limited grounds times without number around the office. But I do not believe that all of his advisers and hangers-on have been similarly possessed of good will, if good will misinformed, naive, and intoxicated by ideology. I do not think, for example, Vice President Cheney wholly innocent in his motivations, and I think the same of departed functionary Richard Perle. There is a certain point at which a conflation of American national security interests, American economic/corporate interests, and fetid ideology becomes objectively malign. Bush is not at that point, whereas I believe some are; he is simply wrong.

Regarding Israel, I'm at a loss as to how positions contrary to the ones I in fact hold can be inferred from anything I've written; I think th