Dorothy Rabinowitz's Dec. 1 commentary "Deepak Blames America," is a personal attack on me. Since your newspaper wholeheartedly cheered the disastrous war in Iraq, I can understand why you continue to mount a rear guard action in defense of the Bush administration's approach to militant Islam.This is a typical response to criticism by those who are utterly paralyzed in the face of unspeakable evil in the world. The response is, frankly, to blame the Bush administration for the chillingly remorseless massacre of the innocents in India last week.
That approach involves unilateral militant aggression without the slightest care for the effect being made on the vast majority of peaceful Muslims. Now that the right wing can no longer continue this discredited policy overtly, Ms. Rabinowitz and her ilk have adopted a fall-back position: Attack anyone who suggests a new way.
I stand by my remarks and have full confidence that the Obama administration will adopt a "root cause" approach of the kind I endorsed. The very thing Ms. Rabinowitz derides is our best hope for peace.
I wrote previously about this in my essay, "Moral Paralysis on Mumbai." I do not know Deepak Chopra other than by seeing him on TV on occasion. My first thoughts upon reading the Rabinowitz piece, as well as a couple of other reports of Chopra's appearance on cable news interviews (see video above), was that the man should stick to self-awareness and transcendentalism. International security issues require hard thinking. The realm's not conducive to fluffy new age exhortations such as "happy thoughts make happy molecules!"
Chopra's original comments on Mumbai that the "war on terror" has "caused" the outbursts of contemporary nihilist violence are not only preposterous, but morally repugnant. Rabinowitz nailed it with her original essay, and Chopra's horror that she would dare criticize him has produced a characteristic resort to victimhood rather than a defense of his own derangement in the face of the Bush administration's audacious foreign policy.
But wait! All is not lost. The Wall Street Journal has also published a letter from Chopra's son, Gotham. It's more stunned outrage at Rabinowitz's moral clarity, but this part's worth examining:
Our collective inability to construct a creative solution that goes beyond declaring a "war on terrorism" or insanely cheering "shock and awe" campaigns in Arab regions is a complicit part of the problems we face. Yes -- America, with all the democratic ideals for freedom and liberty it declares to the rest of the world, has a fundamental responsibility to stay true to them and be held accountable when we fail to even give the appearance that we care for them, as unfortunately the Bush regime has shown the past eight years. To pretend that we have no part in a global community plagued by the sickness that is Islamic fundamentalism largely brought on by economic disparity and ideological hypocrisy, not to mention policy and actual oil money and arms that nurture it, is to perpetuate and encourage more brazen attacks. To think that this creative solution should not appeal in some way to the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, the vast majority of whom are not terrorists, is plain negligence.Go ahead and read the rest, here.
Not surprisingly, nowhere to be found in Gotham Chopra's letter is a condemnation of the Mumbai killers. I'm almost sick as I write this, again..., thinking of the Holtzbergs, and all of the innocent people of India, who were caught in this time-warp of barbarian evil (in some cases from pure curiosity, as was true of Manush Goheil, a tailor in the city, who stepped out of his shop to check out the commotion, to be gunned down by one of the terrorists, who opened fire on him from the top floor of the Chabad house - that is, gunned down by the same murderers who tortured and massacred Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg and seven others at the Jewish mission).
American foreign policy has been the world's anchor since World War II. We have maintained a strategic presence in South Asia as the region's offshore balancer and arsenal of anti-Soviet hegemony. Since 9/11, American forces toppled the Taliban and eliminated the potential threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We have much work to do, not least of which will be to finish the job begun in Operation Enduring Freedom.
The first priority of the coming antiterror agenda will be to organize an American-led multilateral response to the Mumbia attacks, with India and Pakistan as primary actors in the coalition, to root out Lashkar-e-Taiba sanctuaries along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
This is the first fundamental responsibility of the West today (lest the terrorists win this round and prepare for the next), while we, of course, continue the larger, systemic goal of economic development and global cooperation that can help toward the achievement of international peace.
10 comments:
"...the man should stick to self-awareness and transcendentalism. International security issues require hard thinking. The realm's not conducive to fluffy new age exhortations such as "happy thoughts make happy molecules!" Oh, God -- that's funny! You are so right about this guy commenting on world events. Such critical and dire situations definitely do require more deep thinking -- knowledge and intel, to boot -- than his "let's hold hands and sing "Kum Ba Yah."
Donald -
How ironic that I get to be the first person to comment here. Thanks for your blog and engaging in the debate. While we may disagree on your opinion that my father is not capable of critical thinking - his millions of readers around the world would vigorously challenge that - I actually don't think we disagree that a tactical strategic approach to specifically dis-empowering the militant groups in the Pak/Afgan region is of immediate importance and that engaging India and Pakistan is the way to do it. Of curse, easier said than done and with Pak in particular there are significant factions including their intelligence unit the ISI that can sabotage the whole thing. The new pro-western pres Zidari is pretty impotent in truth so Prez Obama has some real strategizing ahead of him. I might also argue that while the US intentions in Afghanistan may have been noble, there have been serious mis-steps including Gitmo and most of all moving it to second on the priority lst behind Iraq that may have allowed Al Qaida and the Taliban (and many otehrs) too retrench themselves in the rgions and spawn more mayhem.
One more thing - I believe i made it clear that i do not empathize with the killers in this case and did have a personal connection to some of the places in the attack as well as the people that worked there. Admittedly that is not the same as condemning these barbaric primitive killers and their actions, which I may have presumed (incorrectly) was universal. Let their be no mistake that I think the world is better off with those killers no longer a part of it. I just hope we learn more lessons from teh whole incident so more folks like the people you mentioned don't become victims of such senselessness.
Gotham,
I have read several of your father's books, but I was dismayed by his unfounded and unsupported conclusion that Mumbai was
blowback from the war in Iraq.
I have read even more books on Islam, its history, dogmas and teachings, and I can say unequivocally that the root cause of Islamic terror is Islam itself.
Blaming it on poverty or Jewish settlements in "Palestine" is all a lot of hot air -- not to mention self-deception in order to avoid confronting this evil.
Your father's serious breech of logic and erroneous diagnosis of Mumbai means that I no longer trust him intellectually. So I will read no more of his books.
Stogie -
I don't think it's reasonable to attribute the cause of terrorism to any one single reason. In fact, I would suggest that it's a complicity of many factors that culminate in this sort of rage and violence. I would agree with you in principle that ultimately those that commit these sorts of atrocities need to be held accountable first and foremost.
Still, if ultimately the goal is to eliminate (or minimize Islamic terrorism) then we have to be willing to really understand the complex tangled hierarchy of factors that contribute to it. That requires a deeper understanding of not only Islam itself, its theology and history, but also the sociopolitical, historical, and contextual setting in which this problem exists. Having spent a lot of time in Israel-Palestine and Kashmir, I believe strongly that the feuds in those parts of the world - perhaps even unreasonably - do have a deep contribution toward the rage that exists in the Muslim world. That is not to suggest that policy makers should simply supplicate those that are enraged, but to deny that it is a factor, I think exposes a fundamental inability to confront the complexity of the problems we face.
Finally it's impossible for me to also understand how the death of 500,000-1,000,000 Iraqi civilians cannot have an emotional impact on Muslims around the world. That's not pin that guilt on all Americans - you and me - who I assume would empathize with anyone who suffered so much. But we are citizens of a country that allowed our president to lead us to war under false pretenses.
I hope we don't make the same mistake again and instead focus our resources in places where real change can occur.
gc
As the ultimate western power, Furor Amerikanus in the New Millennium is the ultimate western way of war in the War on Terror.
"Let us accept the risk of repaying cruelty with cruelty, of answering violence with more violence.
It will then be easy for us to overtake the enemy and to draw him back within the limits of moderation and humanity."
Gotham:
"But we are citizens of a country that allowed our president to lead us to war under false pretenses."
That's an untruth that has been foisted on the American people by left-wing extremists and a gullible, supplicant press. And the fact that you have to smuggle in some attack on the Bush administration in every comment you make about terrorism reveals not only your complete absence of clarity on the issue, but your absence of integrity as well.
I stand by what I wrote at the post: Both you and your father have been blinded by sheer Bush hatred so that you fail to see the central evil in the world today. It is not in some subterranean evil of a "BushCo" hegmonic program of neo-imperial exploitation and fascist totalitarianism at home.
The threat is the nihilism that we saw on September 11 and before that in Iraq in 1990, a true hegemony of evil that while battered down in Iraq, is propping back up in South Asia. The "feuds in the world" derive from the absence of development and a democratic culture that has little to do with the existence of the United States.
Until people like yourself quit hiding around moral relativism and multicultural anti-Americanism, there can be no clear thinking on the dangers before us, much less a common front of resolve and righteous outrage at the program of destruction that is apparent at the base of fundamentalist Islam.
Donald -
What was the rationale for the war in Iraq? I believe the Bush administration made it pretty clear that it was predicated on the existence of a significant stockpile of wmd that posed an imminent threat to our national security. No less than the President, VP, Sec Powell, and many many others assured the American people of such despite a lot of intelligence suggesting otherwise.
And while the mainstream press may lean left, there is no question that at the outset of the war, they championed the war in a despicable way - creating anthems for it!
The truth is that Iraq's legacy will manifest over time and scholars will debate it. But the reality in Afghanistan today is grim - the opposition is stronger than ever and the number of casualties do to violence (Taliban generated) is higher than at any time during the last 7 years.
So now what?
gc
Gotham ... critics like yourself imply that Afghanistan would be better if we only had "not been distracted by Iraq" and paid attention to it.
May I turn your attention to the nation who paid the highest attention to it in recent history:
The Soviet Union.
Had we "paid more attention" a la a Powell Doctrine-inspired military operation in Afghanistan, there is a better-than-even chance that we would have emulated their "success" there ... complete with a lot more dead Americans and Afghans then at present.
The long-time/relatively-low-intensity conflict in Afghanistan was inevitable, given the physical and social challenges in place there ... and it will go on for a lot longer, especially with the lead weight of a government in Pakistan that is more interested in proving they are not America's puppet than they are in interdicting the terrorists within their own borders ... the weight of an Afghan government that has to keep multiple ethnic factions happy ... and the weight of a multi-national coalition that, like with the Balkans, too often subordinates effective action to diplomatic concerns.
And that still does not diminish the threat Saddam posed ... whether or not the Bush Administration got every detail right in their presentation. Since when has ANY conflict in history stuck to predictions.
In fact, it seems to me that you critics got at least as much wrong on Iraq as Mr. Bush did, as the Duelfer Report describes how Saddam was ready to reconstitute his WMD programs once sanctions were lifted. I guess you can blame the lack of foresight on this matter, on the part of the critics, on faulty intel?
Had we heeded your advice, we wouldn't have known about that until the malevolent fruit of those programs was deployed.
Understand this, Gotham ... we know where the threats are coming from, and have known well before they took the battle to us.
All you had to do, is look at how they are governing their own people.
Yet you and others strain at every gnat of American error, while swallowing camels of death and destruction whole in the name of "diplomacy" and "respect".
That, IMO, for many of your fellow critics is not because they are necessarily anti-war ... but because they wanted to discredit a man who stands for traditional, conservative values BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, in the hope of replacing those values with their own as the dominant worldview of humanity.
You accuse the Bush Administration of going to war on false pretenses ... I think I can make the case that many of their opponents have put free people at risk of losing life and liberty on false pretenses ... the false pretenses that mere diplomacy and restraint on the part of free people will assure a sustainable peace, and the false pretense that a conservative POTUS is a greater threat to life and liberty than totalitarian thugs and fanatics who respect neither.
False pretenses, presented to free people as the "enlightened" course of action for decades.
Can you name me one time in history where a tyrant has turned away from totalitarian expansion by diplomacy sans the credible threat of force or resource-denial?
Yet there are so many who insist that it will happen ... the next time.
Had I known that this would descend into a debate about the Bush presidency, I'm not sure I would have bothered. By all objective accounts, his has been the worst presidency in modern history and that's not a reflection of his traditional conservative values as much as it is the basic state of our economy, debt, and total loss of respect around the world after 8 years in power. I understand the frustration of the Right - trust me I've been there. Alas, brighter days are ahead, they have to be for all of our sakes.
gc
and most of all moving it to second on the priority lst behind Iraq that may have allowed Al Qaida and the Taliban (and many otehrs) too retrench themselves in the rgions and spawn more mayhem.
We never "took our eye" off the ball in Afghanistan.
We've had our footprint in there, all along, even after reports of bin Laden escaping country by Dec 2001; in 2006, we did as we were pressured to do- hand over control to NATO. Great decision, huh?
The only unit pulled from Afghanistan before the invasion of Iraq was the 5th Special Forces group; they were sent to fight Al Queda in northern Iraq.
Finally it's impossible for me to also understand how the death of 500,000-1,000,000 Iraqi civilians cannot have an emotional impact on Muslims around the world.
Especially when the leading killer of Muslims has been al Qaeda with U.S. and Coalition Forces working to protect the Iraqi populace.
That's not pin that guilt on all Americans - you and me - who I assume would empathize with anyone who suffered so much. But we are citizens of a country that allowed our president to lead us to war under false pretenses.
Please elaborate for me, what were the "false pretenses"?
What was the rationale for the war in Iraq? I believe the Bush administration made it pretty clear that it was predicated on the existence of a significant stockpile of wmd that posed an imminent threat to our national security.
The case put forth for war was built around a lot more than wmd stockpiles. CIA misled the Administration, pretending to know more than they they did; but post-war findings confirm much of what the case was built upon. Stockpiles might not have been found, but as Rich Casebolt mentions, the Duelfer Report and translated post-war documents (re: Harmony Database) confirms that Saddam had intention and capability, and that he was indeed working with Islamic terror groups (which includes the al Qaeda network).
Much of what the Bush Administration cited from comes from UN documents themselves. Take a look at Hans Blix' 100+ Unresolved Disarmament Issues.
The one in violation of "international law", was Saddam. 12 years later, he finally was "brought to justice".
No less than the President, VP, Sec Powell, and many many others assured the American people of such despite a lot of intelligence suggesting otherwise.
Please cite for me the "lot of intelligence". Because the ones that were in dissent were cherry-picked from an orchard of roadsigns that pointed to Saddam as a being a clear threat.
President Bush didn't say he was an imminent threat, btw. He said that we must act before the threat becomes imminent.
And while the mainstream press may lean left, there is no question that at the outset of the war, they championed the war in a despicable way - creating anthems for it!
I wouldn't call it a despicable way; but what I do find despicable is the manner in which they distorted the war and championed the politicization of it by Democrats in 2002 and 2004.
Had I known that this would descend into a debate about the Bush presidency, I'm not sure I would have bothered.
It should not have been gratuitously thrown into the original discussion, then. Stating opinions as if they were accepted facts without dispute.
By all objective accounts, his has been the worst presidency in modern history
There ya go again...."by all objective accounts"....
Liberal professors and historians passing judgment before his presidency is even over, yet? We're still debating Lincoln, let alone the last 3 presidencies. Truman left office in disgrace; yet he consistently ranks among the top 10 American presidents on many lists today. How can I take short-sighted historians seriously when Bush hasn't even left office yet, and much of his "legacy" has been writ by a very biased media that has distorted the record?
Tell me what the Phase II final Senate Select Committee's Report on Pre-war Intell says. Then tell me how the partisan Democrats tried to sell it, and how the media portrayed it.
Then do the same for the Iraqi Perspectives Project.
and that's not a reflection of his traditional conservative values as much as it is the basic state of our economy, debt, and total loss of respect around the world after 8 years in power. I understand the frustration of the Right - trust me I've been there. Alas, brighter days are ahead, they have to be for all of our sakes.
There's more to be proud of in the last 8 years than there is to be ashamed. Really, the sky is not falling on account of George W. Bush.
I hope nothing in my tone indicates disrespect. I'm only addressing what I took umbrage with, on the fly in passing here. So I apologize if I skipped the niceties.
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