Hyping the Terrorist Threat?

Paul Krugman, in his commentary today, takes on the GOP presidential candidates for hyping the threat from radical Islamist terrorism (via Memeorandum):

In America’s darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” But that was then.

Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination — have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.

Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.”

Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the “main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11.” The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world “shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes.” Indeed, “Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.”

Do I have to point out that none of this makes a bit of sense?

For one thing, there isn’t actually any such thing as Islamofascism — it’s not an ideology; it’s a figment of the neocon imagination. The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn’t. And Iran had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 — in fact, the Iranian regime was quite helpful to the United States when it went after Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan.

Beyond that, the claim that Iran is on the path to global domination is beyond ludicrous. Yes, the Iranian regime is a nasty piece of work in many ways, and it would be a bad thing if that regime acquired nuclear weapons. But let’s have some perspective, please: we’re talking about a country with roughly the G.D.P. of Connecticut, and a government whose military budget is roughly the same as Sweden’s.

Meanwhile, the idea that bombing will bring the Iranian regime to its knees — and bombing is the only option, since we’ve run out of troops — is pure wishful thinking. Last year Israel tried to cripple Hezbollah with an air campaign, and ended up strengthening it instead. There’s every reason to believe that an attack on Iran would produce the same result, with the added effects of endangering U.S. forces in Iraq and driving oil prices well into triple digits.

Mr. Podhoretz, in short, is engaging in what my relatives call crazy talk. Yet he is being treated with respect by the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination. And Mr. Podhoretz’s rants are, if anything, saner than some of what we’ve been hearing from some of Mr. Giuliani’s rivals.

It's interesting that Krugman completely dismisses the terminology of Islamofascism. Christopher Hitchens noted in his Slate column last week that Islamofascist terminology has been used widely to discuss Islam's totalitarian tendencies. Hitchens cited Malise Ruthven as the first to use the term in the 1990s, and Ruthven's current piece over at the New York Review discredits the notion that Islam is a "religion of peace."

But Krugman doesn't have time to sort through genuine scholarly controversies over Islam. His project is to debunk an American foreign policy of firmness, especially of the neoconservative kind. (Krugman's not alone: Fareed Zakaria, a genuine scholar of international relations, also took the administration to task for its warnings of an impending WWIII over Iranian nukes).

Note how Krugman's careful to hedge his argument by suggesting, sure, Islamist terrorism is a real threat, but not as bad a threat as the Bush administration's fear-mongering (and note as well Krugman's omission of any mention of Hillary Clinton, who, despite her disastrous flip-flopping on national security, clearly recognizes the gravity of the terrorist threat).

That's simple, and hypocritical.

But let's be clear: Norman Podhoretz has the temerity to state openly what many people know full well: The international sanctions regime against Iranian nuclear development has run its course, failing to prevent Iran's eventual establishment of strategic capability. A military strike may be the only course of action that fully decapitates Iran's potential to back its goals for Shiite domination of the Middle East with nuclear weapons.

As I've noted before, Krugman's an economist by training. But he's obviously having fun with his gig as a New York Times columnist, and he certainly feeds the cravings among the crackpot, hard-left surrender forces for ideological denunciations of any and all things neoconservative.

Lesson From Iraq: Difficulty is No Cause for Hypercaution

Former Bush administration speechwriter Michael Gerson has a new column up at Newsweek on the lessons to be learned from Iraq. In the opening paragraph he states an obvious point: Regime change is difficult. But he makes a more substantial argument with his case against excessive caution:

There is also danger in learning the wrong lessons from Iraq—or in overlearning the lessons of caution. Some claim the American project in Iraq was doomed from the beginning, because Iraqis and Arabs more broadly are culturally incapable of sustaining democracy. That is a familiar historical charge, made in other periods, against Catholics in Southern Europe, Hindus and Muslims in India, Eastern Orthodox in Eastern Europe, and Confucian cultures across Asia. All of these groups experienced difficult days in their democratic transitions—moments when the skeptics seemed to be vindicated. Did Indian democracy look to be successful when more than a million people died by violence during the partition process in the later 1940s? But in all of these cases, betting against the advance of democracy was a poor wager.

It may be possible that the Arab world is the great exception to this trend of history; but if so, Iraq does not prove it. Americans who first entered Iraq did not report an inevitable sectarian conflict. To the contrary, the Shia were remarkably patient during the first two years after the liberation. Iraqis of every background, including most Sunnis, were pleased that Saddam was gone and were generally inclined to withhold judgment about the occupation. There was little resentment at the size of the occupation force, and great hope that the arrival of the Americans would improve the lives of the Iraqi people. Nor were the successive elections an illusion. They were real achievements. Iraqis voted under considerable threat, in percentages greater than do Western democracies—advances that should not be forgotten or denigrated.

Given these events, an imperious contempt for the Shia—a belief that barbarians will always be barbarians—is neither fair nor helpful. Iraqi patience and goodwill were not lacking; rather, they were squandered when the Coalition failed to provide security and basic services. Sectarian conflict was not preordained—it intensified when many of the Shia lost confidence in the ability of the Coalition and Iraqi army to defend them and turned for protection and revenge to militias and death squads. Iraq does not demonstrate that democracy is impossible in the Arab world; it demonstrates that founding a new democracy is difficult in a nation overrun by militias and insurgents.

This is not to say that support for democracy in the Arab world always requires immediate elections. Such elections in Saudi Arabia, for example, would likely result in a government more oppressive and dangerous than the current one. But in Iraq there was no alternative to elections. After the invasion and liberation—undertaken, it bears repeating, primarily for reasons of national security—the president was not about to install a potential Shia dictator in place of the old Sunni dictator. That kind of cynical power game would likely have facilitated a massive Shia retribution and perhaps even genocide against the Sunnis. Democracy is necessary in Iraq precisely because it is the only political system that eventually can tame sectarian tensions, giving the Shia majority the influence it deserves, while guaranteeing the rights and representation of the Sunni minority.

But democracy in Iraq certainly has enemies—jihadists, Baathist holdouts, and religious militias—who happen to be some of the worst criminals on the global stage. We have been led by history to a simple choice: do we stand with the flawed democrats of Iraq, or abandon them to overthrow and death? Some foreign-policy realists argue that such considerations of honor mean little in international affairs. But this national commitment is more than a matter of chivalry. If America abandons Muslim leaders and soldiers who are risking their lives to fight Islamic radicalism and terror—in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere—the War on Terror cannot be won.

Another false lesson is found in the assertion that the Iraq War has actually been creating the terrorist threat we seek to fight—stirring up a hornet's nest of understandable grievances in the Arab world. In fact, radical Islamist networks have never lacked for historical provocations. When Osama bin Laden proclaimed his 1998 fatwa justifying the murder of Americans, he used the excuse of President Clinton's sanctions and air strikes against Iraq—what he called a policy of "continuing aggression against the Iraqi people." He talked of the "devastation" caused by "horrible massacres" of the 1991 Gulf War. All this took place before the invasion of Iraq was even contemplated—and it was enough to result in the murder of nearly three thousand Americans on 9/11. Islamic radicals will seize on any excuse in their campaign of recruitment and incitement. If it were not Iraq, it would be the latest "crime" of Israel, or the situation in East Timor, or cartoons in a Dutch newspaper, or statements by the pope. The well of outrage is bottomless. The list of demands—from the overthrow of moderate Arab governments to the reconquest of Spain—is endless.

America is not responsible for the existence of Islamist ideology. Yet the shifting prospect of American success or failure in the Iraq War does have an effect on the recruitment of radicals. All "pan movements"—political ideologies that claim historical inevitability—expand or contract based on morale. Bin Laden talks of how the Arab world is attracted to the "strong horse"—the victor, the evident winner—and there is truth in that claim. In an ideological struggle, perception matters greatly, and outcomes matter most. Israel's perceived defeat in Lebanon in 1982 helped produce a generation of terrorists, convinced that armed struggle could humble their enemy. If America were really to retreat in humiliation from Iraq, Islamist radicals would trumpet their victory from North Africa to the islands of the Philippines … increase their recruitment of the angry and misguided … and expand the size and boldness of their attacks.

Perhaps the most dangerous and self-destructive lesson that might be drawn from Iraq is a hyper-caution indistinguishable from paralysis. In a backlash to the Iraq War, some Democrats seem to argue that any future American action or intervention will require both certainty as to the validity of our intelligence and international unanimity. The evidence on weapons of mass destruction must always be conclusive, or else it must always be mocked and dismissed. The United Nations must always grant its blessing and legitimacy. Were America to accept these ground rules, we would become a spectator in world events. The demand for intelligence certainty would allow flickering threats to become raging fires before any action were taken to extinguish them. The demand for international unanimity would make interventions to prevent genocide or ethnic cleansing nearly impossible. America acted in the former Yugoslavia under President Clinton without U.N. support, and may need to do the same in other places in the future. At some point, caution becomes demoralization, and humility becomes humiliation.

That's most of his piece, actually. His new book, from which this excerpt is drawn, might be worth a good look as well.

Don't Blame the Neocons!

Alasdair Roberts has a ticklishly interesting article at the new Foreign Policy, "The War We Deserve" (by subscription).

He argues that it's foolish to blame the violence in Iraq on the Bush administration and a "small cabal" of neocons. In actuality, the American people are deeply implicated in the developments of American foreign policy over the last decade. Americans expect more of their government but don't like to sacrifice for a greater cause. Roberts argues that's an unrealistic way to fight a global war, and might even be deadly:

There’s an uncomplicated tale many Americans like to tell themselves about recent U.S. foreign policy. As the story has it, the nation was led astray by a powerful clique of political appointees and their fellow travelers in Washington think tanks, who were determined even before the 9/11 attacks to effect a radical shift in America’s role in the world. The members of this cabal were known as neoconservatives. They believed the world was a dangerous place, that American power should be applied firmly to protect American interests, and that, for too long, U.S. policy had consisted of diplomatic excess and mincing half measures. After 9/11, this group gave us the ill-conceived Global War on Terror and its bloody centerpiece, the war in Iraq.

This narrative is disturbing. It implies that a small cadre of officials, holding allegiance to ideas alien to mainstream political life, succeeded in hijacking the foreign-policy apparatus of the entire U.S. government and managed to skirt the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution. Perversely, though, this interpretation of events is also comforting. It offers the possibility of correcting course. If the fault simply lies in the predispositions of a few key players in the policy game, then those players can eventually be replaced, and policies repaired.

Unfortunately, though, this convenient story is fiction, and it’s peddling a dangerously misguided view of history. The American public at large is more deeply implicated in the design and execution of the war on terror than it is comfortable to admit. In the six years of the war, through an invasion of Afghanistan, a wave of anthrax attacks, and an occupation of Iraq, Americans have remained largely unshaken in their commitment to a political philosophy that demands much from its government but asks little of its citizens. And there is no reason to believe that the weight of that responsibility will shift after the next attack.

Roberts notes that, ideologically, both parties converged on a model of "neoliberal" politics in the 1990s - a perspective which included a commitment to domestic spending restraint at home and the promotion of American-led trade liberalization abroad. Inherent in this model is the pursuit of individual interest and the downsizing of government. Roberts suggests George W. Bush firmly embraced the neoliberal outlook, and the administration's war policies subsequenty asked little from the public in terms of national sacrifice. Both parties are implicated, however:

It may seem extraordinary, given the experience of the past six years, to suggest that President George W. Bush’s administration pursued a Clinton-style strategy of accommodation to neoliberal realities. After all, key Bush advisors flaunted their determination to throw off the constraints that bound the executive branch. And the Bush administration’s policies have had cataclysmic consequences—in Iraq alone, there are tens of thousands dead and more than a million people displaced. How can we call this “small politics”?

However, we must first recognize the critical distinction between what the Bush administration intended to do, and what actually transpired. The material point about the planned invasion of Iraq was that it appeared to its proponents to be feasible with a very small commitment of resources. It would be a cakewalk, influential Pentagon advisor Kenneth Adelman predicted in February 2002. The cost of postwar reconstruction would be negligible. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz suggested that it might even be financed by revenues from the Iraqi oil industry.

Of course, there were critics inside and outside the U.S. government who warned that these forecasts were unduly optimistic. But the administration’s view was hardly idiosyncratic. There were many Americans who believed, based on the experience of the previous decade—including the first Gulf War, subsequent strikes on Iraq, and other interventions such as Kosovo—that the U.S. military had acquired the capacity to project force with devastating efficiency. Consequently, it wasn’t hard to imagine that the invasion and occupation of a nation of 27 million, more than 6,000 miles away, could be accomplished without significant disruption to American daily life.

Even the larger war on terror remains a relatively small affair, asking for little from its masters. Although U.S. defense expenditures have grown substantially during the Bush administration—by roughly 40 percent in inflation-adjusted terms between 2001 and 2006—it is growth from a historically low base. In the five years after 9/11, average defense expenditure as a share of gross domestic product (3.8 percent) was little more than half of what it was during the preceding 50 years (6.8 percent). The proportion of the U.S. adult population employed in the active-duty military (roughly 0.6 percent) remained at a low not seen since before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

This determination to execute policy without disrupting daily life was maintained even as it became clear that the war on terror was faltering. The U.S. “surge” of troops in Iraq beginning in January 2007, designed to wrest control of the country from insurgents, was advertised as a substantial increase in U.S. commitments in Iraq. In August, the New York Times called it a “massive buildup.” But by historical standards, it has been negligible. The United States had more boots on the ground in Japan 10 years after its surrender in 1945 and in Germany at the end of the Cold War. It deployed twice as many troops in South Korea and three times as many in Vietnam.

In 2003, the conflict in Iraq might reasonably have been described as George W. Bush’s war. In 2007, however, it has become a bipartisan war—that is, a conflict whose course is shaped by the actions of a Republican president and by Democratic majorities in Congress. The stakes are substantial: Continued failure in Iraq is bound to have tremendous human and diplomatic costs. Yet the range of policy options is still arbitrarily limited to a token “surge” or various forms of “phased withdrawal.” No major political actor, Democrat or Republican, dares to contemplate a genuine surge that would raise the U.S. commitment in Iraq to the level said to be essential by several military leaders before the invasion. Similarly, there has been no serious consideration of a return to the draft, despite strains on the U.S. military. This, the New York Times said—echoing the argument made by Milton Friedman during Vietnam—would be inconsistent with the “free-choice values of America’s market society.”

Roberts reminds us that the Bush administration's appeal to the public after 9/11 was to continue spending, to "Go down to Disney World in Florida, take your families and enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed":

“One of the great goals of this nation’s war,” President Bush said immediately after 9/11, “is to restore confidence in the airline industry.” His administration quickly launched a “pro-consumption publicity blitz” (in the words of the Boston Globe) on behalf of the U.S. travel industry. The president starred in a campaign by the Travel Industry Association of America, designed, as one industry executive put it, to “link travel to patriotic duty.” Many Americans interpreted the campaign as a call to spend more money to boost the economy. “The important thing, war or no war, is for the economy to grow,” then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said in 2003.

I've been critical of the White House for not developing a more comprehensive approach to public relations, although I understand the administration's call for Americans to carry on as normal. But note how Roberts put the criticisms of the adminstration's "threats" to civil liberties in context:

Civil libertarians certainly think Americans have paid a large if intangible price in the rollback of their civil liberties. Here, critics also reach for analogies between the war on terror and earlier conflicts. They accuse the Bush administration of trampling on civil liberties in the name of national security, just as the government had during the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War, and the domestic turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The steps taken after 9/11 were “chillingly familiar,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle. The historian Alan Brinkley said the government’s treatment of civil liberties was a “familiar story.” In 2002 The Progressive said, “We’ve been here before.”

But we haven’t been here before. Infringement of Americans’ rights after 9/11—that is, actual rather than anticipated infringements—were different in type and severity than those suffered in earlier crises. Citizens were not imprisoned for treason, as they were during the First World War. Thousands of citizens were not detained indefinitely, as they were during the Second World War. Citizens were not deported, or denied passports, or blacklisted, as they were during the Red scares.

Were there serious issues about the denial of citizens’ rights after 9/11? Undoubtedly. But those violations often had a distinctly postmillennial character. New surveillance programs were launched in secrecy and designed so that their footprint could not be easily detected. In effect, government was adapting to political realities, searching for techniques of maintaining domestic security that did not involve obvious disruptions of everyday life.

Here's Roberts' conclusion:

Was the war on terror devised and promoted by a small cadre of neoconservatives? Perhaps. But it was also a response to crisis that recognized and largely respected the well-defined boundaries of acceptable political action in the United States today. In important ways, the war on terror is not their war but our war. The desires and preferences of the American people have shaped the war on terror just as profoundly as any neoconservative doctrine on the conduct of U.S. foreign policy.

That's a point the GOP candidates might keep in mind as they're mercilessly attacked by the Democrats and leftists for their "failed" foreign policy.

Welcome to the New American University

Check out this trailer from Indoctrination U, at YouTube:

Hat tip: Saber Point.

Religion of Victory: Understanding Islam

I first learned of Malise Ruthven last last week, after reading Christopher Hitchens' recent defense of Islamofascist terminology.

It turns out that Ruthven was the first writer of recent years to identify the Islamist threat in terms of fascist ideology. I took significant interest, therefore, in his new essay on "How to Understand Islam" at the New York Review of Books. Ruthven points out that after 9/11, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair took great pains to portray Islam as a religion of peace. But according to Ruthven, core Islamic doctrine calls into question Islam's assumed pacific foundations:

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush visited the Islamic Center in Washington, where he told his audience, "These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith.... The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace." In Britain his sentiments were echoed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, who told the Arabic newspaper al-Hayat: "There is nothing in Islam which excuses such an all-encompassing massacre of innocent people, nor is there anything in the teachings of Islam that allows the killing of civilians, of women and children, of those who are not engaged in war or fighting."

However reflective such views may be of the "moderate" Muslim majority, they are not uncontested. As John Kelsay shows in his new book Arguing the Just War in Islam, debates about the ethics of conflict have been going on since the time of the Prophet Muhammad. The scholars who interpreted the Prophet's teachings addressed issues such as the permissibility of using "hurling machines," or mangonels, where noncombatants including women and children, and Muslim captives or merchants, might be endangered. In the "realm of war" outside the borders of Islam a certain military realism prevailed: for example the eighth-century jurist al-Shaybani (who died in 805) stated that if such methods were not permitted the Muslims would be unable to fight at all.

I was particularly intrigued by Ruthven's characterization of Islam as a "religion of victory." He notes that Kemal Ataturk's secularization of Turkey in the early 20th-century angered Muslims, who reject situating Islam in society in terms of moral equivalence. A core of Islamic doctrine is triumph over challengers:

In the majority Sunni tradition this sense of supremacy was sanctified as much by history as by theology. In the first instance, the truth of Islam was vindicated on the field of battle. As Hans Küng acknowledges in Islam: Past, Present and Future—his 767-page overview of the Islamic faith and history, seen from the perspective of a liberal Christian theologian—Islam is above all a "religion of victory." Muslims of many persuasions—not just the self-styled jihadists—defend the truth claims of their religion by resorting to what might be called the argument from manifest success.

According to this argument, the Prophet Muhammad overcame the enemies of truth by divinely assisted battles as well as by preaching. Building on his victories and faith in his divine mission, his successors, the early caliphs, conquered most of western Asia and North Africa as well as Spain. In this view the truth of Islam was vindicated by actual events, through Islam's historical achievement in creating what would become a great world civilization.

The argument from manifest suc-cess is consonant with the theological doctrine according to which Islam supersedes the previous revelations of Judaism and Christianity. Jews and Christians are in error because they deviated from the straight path revealed to Abraham, ancestral patriarch of all three faiths. Islam "restores" the true religion of Abraham while superseding Judeo-Christianity as the "final" revelation. The past and the future belong to Islam even if the present makes for difficulties.

These points should give pause to those advocating interfaith reconcilation amid the contemporary battle against global Islamist fundamentalism.

Ruthven reviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book, Infidel. Hirsi Ali apparently is not an expert on her own faith, although she's completely renounced Islam, based on her own experience of living a life of religious intolerance and violence. Upon her transformation to outspoken critic of Islam, some commentators identified Hirsi Ali as an "enlightenment fundamentalist":

It might be more appropriate, however, to describe Ali as a "born-again" believer in Enlightenment values. Infidel has the hallmarks of a spiritual autobiography in which she progresses through various stages of illumination, from childhood trauma in Somalia (entailing genital mutilation inflicted by her own grandmother), through an adolescence in Saudi Arabia and Kenya, where a brief espousal of the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood empowers her to question her family's tribal values within the frame of the movement's stultifying, still patriarchal religiosity, toward eventual enlightenment and emancipation in Holland, aided by encounters with Dutch fellow students and readings from Spinoza, Voltaire, Darwin, Durkheim, and Freud. This remarkable spiritual journey is interlaced with a classic story of personal courage in the face of a parochial and misogynistic social system that systematically brutalizes women in the name of God, and in which women routinely submit to neglect and violence. Told with a rare combination of passion and detachment, it is a Seven Storey Mountain in reverse: a pilgrimage from belief to skepticism.

Ruthven's article is worth a good, careful read.

I claim no particular expertise in Islamic doctrine, although my previous realist skepticism on Islam's purported peaceful nature is confirmed by the knowledge Ruthven imparts.

Turkey Hesitates on Kurdistan Incursion

The Los Angeles Times reports that Turkey is facing intense political pressure from nationalists to launch a military raid striking at Kurdish rebels treatening the country. Here's the introduction:

The Turkish government is coming under enormous domestic pressure to crush Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, but even as rebel positions are shelled and tens of thousands of troops moved to the border, leaders are reluctant to invade, fearing international isolation and a military quagmire.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan would prefer to avoid a full-scale invasion, according to people familiar with his thinking, and is pursuing diplomatic options. His government is also considering using economic leverage by rerouting valuable trade away from Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdistan region, where the Turkish Kurd rebels have found safe harbor.

On Friday, Turkey warned that its "patience has run out" and demanded that Iraq extradite rebel leaders.

Erdogan and his government want to show they are exhausting diplomatic options while waving the military threat, the sources say, because they expect international scorn if Turkey is seen as having opened a battlefront in the only relatively peaceful part of Iraq.

"You can lessen the public pressure with an all-out invasion, but it would be a short-term gain," Turkish military expert Lale Sariibrahimoglu said. "The government and the armed forces are well aware of the repercussions. This is a serious test of democracy and diplomacy."

Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, Turkey's top military commander, was quoted Friday by private broadcaster NTV as saying that the government would wait until Erdogan returns from a Nov. 5 visit with President Bush before deciding whether to launch a military offensive into Iraq.

An invasion also risks dragging Turkey into a quagmire that would play into the hands of Turkish nationalists keen to undermine the pro-Islamic government. Some of the loudest war drums are being beaten by extreme nationalists with a certain sway in parliament and who would no doubt raise their voices further if a military effort proved ineffective.

And experience makes it clear that swift success is by no means guaranteed.

The separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, survived repeated attacks by Turkey in the 1990s, its members hiding safely in the rugged mountain terrain on the Iraqi side of the border. And with winter coming, the chances of a decisive Turkish victory are even bleaker.

For days, tens of thousands of Turkish troops have been massing along the 200-mile southern border with Iraq, and commandos have entered several miles into Iraq in hot pursuit of rebels. Combat helicopters and F-16 fighter planes daily attack suspected guerrilla hide-outs and escape routes.

At the same time, Turkey is feverishly pursuing diplomatic solutions, looking especially to Baghdad and Washington to uproot the PKK and stop its violence. The Turkish foreign minister rushed to Baghdad; an Iraqi delegation arrived in Ankara, the Turkish capital, on Thursday for crisis talks that were to continue today; and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to visit Turkey next week.

In a TV interview Friday, Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq's Kurdistan regional government, accused Turkey of seeking a pretext to mount a major assault in the area. "The PKK is a justification," Barzani told Al Arabiya satellite channel. "The goal is to stop or hamper the growth of Kurdistan region."

The latest Turkish military action is in response to an ambush Sunday in which the PKK killed 12 soldiers and captured eight in southern Turkey, about three miles from the border with Iraq. But hostilities along the remote border have been building for months.

Each day since the ambush, thousands of Turks have taken to the streets across the nation to demand tough military action. The clamor became so intense that the government attempted to restrict television coverage of the soldiers' funerals and crying mothers.

And Friday, mosques were instructed to read a sermon calling for brotherhood and discouraging citizens from disunity.

The public outcry almost always goes hand in hand with a pitched fury of anti-U.S. sentiments; many Turks are convinced that America is aiding the PKK, or at the least turning a blind eye to rebel activities -- charges Washington denies.

The U.S. maintains that its troops in Iraq are already stretched thin and cannot sustain a significant presence in largely peaceful Iraqi Kurdistan. U.S. officials are demanding that Iraqi authorities crack down on the PKK, but the Iraqis have not done so.

On Friday, Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, the commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, said he planned to do "absolutely nothing" to counter PKK activity, and that he was neither tracking the rebels' movements nor reinforcing the military presence in the region. Mixon, speaking to Pentagon reporters by videoconference, also said he had not seen Iraqi Kurdish authorities acting against the guerrillas.

Read the whole thing. I've had doubts about predictions of a Turkish strike on the rebels. Turkey's interests are in not alienating the U.S., and it has a diplomatic stake in seeing larger developments in the Middle East unfold before acting decisively against the PKK. Such facts completely escape hardline leftists intent to see Turkey's pursuit of its national interests as one more sign of the Bush administration's evil incompetence.

Winning the War on Terror

Philip Gordon's got a provocative new piece over at Foreign Affairs on victory in the war on terror. Are we fighting the right war? Here's the introduction:

Less than 12 hours after the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush proclaimed the start of a global war on terror. Ever since, there has been a vigorous debate about how to win it. Bush and his supporters stress the need to go on the offensive against terrorists, deploy U.S. military force, promote democracy in the Middle East, and give the commander in chief expansive wartime powers. His critics either challenge the very notion of a "war on terror" or focus on the need to fight it differently. Most leading Democrats accept the need to use force in some cases but argue that success will come through reestablishing the United States' moral authority and ideological appeal, conducting more and smarter diplomacy, and intensifying cooperation with key allies. They argue that Bush's approach to the war on terror has created more terrorists than it has eliminated -- and that it will continue to do so unless the United States radically changes course.

Almost entirely missing from this debate is a concept of what "victory" in the war on terror would actually look like. The traditional notion of winning a war is fairly clear: defeating an enemy on the battlefield and forcing it to accept political terms. But what does victory -- or defeat -- mean in a war on terror? Will this kind of war ever end? How long will it take? Would we see victory coming? Would we recognize it when it came?

Gordon compares the war on terror to the Cold War, which lasted decades. Gordon notes that victory in the Cold War was unanticipated by experts and layman alike. He argues, however, that the United States is unlikely to face annihilation at the hands of transnational terrorists today, and current policy in the war on terror amounts to overkill. Here's the key argument:

Terrorism...has been around for a long time and will never go away entirely. From the Zealots in the first century AD to the Red Brigades, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Irish Republican Army, the Tamil Tigers, and others in more recent times, terrorism has been a tactic used by the weak in an effort to produce political change. Like violent crime, deadly disease, and other scourges, it can be reduced and contained. But it cannot be totally eliminated.

This is a critical point, because the goal of ending terrorism entirely is not only unrealistic but also counterproductive -- just as is the pursuit of other utopian goals. Murder could be vastly reduced or eliminated from the streets of Washington, D.C., if several hundred thousand police officers were deployed and preventive detentions authorized. Traffic deaths could be almost eliminated in the United States by reducing the national speed limit to ten miles per hour. Illegal immigration from Mexico could be stopped by a vast electric fence along the entire border and a mandatory death penalty for undocumented workers. But no sensible person would propose any of these measures, because the consequences of the solutions would be less acceptable than the risks themselves.

Similarly, the risk of terrorism in the United States could be reduced if officials reallocated hundreds of billions of dollars per year in domestic spending to homeland security measures, significantly curtailed civil liberties to ensure that no potential terrorists were on the streets, and invaded and occupied countries that might one day support or sponsor terrorism. Pursuing that goal in this way, however, would have costs that would vastly outweigh the benefits of reaching the goal, even if reaching it were possible. In their book An End to Evil, David Frum and Richard Perle insist that there is "no middle ground" and that "Americans are not fighting this evil to minimize it or to manage it." The choice, they say, comes down to "victory or holocaust." Thinking in these terms is likely to lead the United States into a series of wars, abuses, and overreactions more likely to perpetuate the war on terror than to bring it to a successful end.

The United States and its allies will win the war only if they fight it in the right way -- with the same sort of patience, strength, and resolve that helped win the Cold War and with policies designed to provide alternative hopes and dreams to potential enemies. The war on terror will end with the collapse of the violent ideology that caused it -- when bin Laden's cause comes to be seen by its potential adherents as a failure, when they turn against it and adopt other goals and other means. Communism, too, once seemed vibrant and attractive to millions around the world, but over time it came to be seen as a failure. Just as Lenin's and Stalin's successors in the Kremlin in the mid-1980s finally came to the realization that they would never accomplish their goals if they did not radically change course, it is not too fanciful to imagine the successors of bin Laden and Zawahiri reflecting on their movement's failures and coming to the same conclusion. The ideology will not have been destroyed by U.S. military power, but its adherents will have decided that the path they chose could never lead them where they wanted to go. Like communism today, extremist Islamism in the future will have a few adherents here and there. But as an organized ideology capable of taking over states or inspiring large numbers of people, it will have been effectively dismantled, discredited, and discarded. And like Lenin's, bin Laden's violent ideology will end up on the ash heap of history.

I agree that radical Islamism will some day be marginalized. But Gordon's comparison between America's fight against terror and the Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union is selective. You'd think nary a shot was fired before the Berlin Wall fell and the Eastern European dominoes toppled, throwing off the yoke of totalitarianism.

Sure, a smart war on terror will combine all the tools available from America's strategic portfolio - military, intelligence, law enforcement, diplomatic, etc. But the argument against Frum and Perle is a strawman, deployed to discredit a robust military component in defeating the terrorists.

Certainly, the Soviet Union's new leadership in the 1980s - motivated by international norms of comprehensive security and human rights - contributed to the final end of the Cold War crisis. But it would be completely remiss to discount American military power as a key factor in the final defeat of the Soviets. The Reagan administration's military defense build-up was especially important to American victory in the Cold War.

Gordon's right, though, that Al Qaeda can be beaten. See Audrey Kurth Cronin's excellent article, "How al-Qaida Ends" (pdf), for a more comprehensive analysis of how terrrorist groups can be defeated.

Debating Global Warming

The debate on global warming's not over, according to this 20/20 news report from John Stossel up on YouTube:

Hat tip: California Yankee.

For an additional bonus, check out Robert Samuelson's piece earlier this year debunking Newsweek's claim of a "Global Warming Machine."

Can Ron Paul Win New Hampshire?

There's a burst of media speculation suggesting that libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul might pull off an upset in the New Hampshire primary. Newsweek provides some background on the situation:

Much of the world dismisses Paul as a libertarian crank. But mainstream candidates from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have good reason to watch him. That reason's called the New Hampshire primary. Always unpredictable—there's not even a date set for it yet—the primary is more mysterious now because a record 44 percent of voters have registered "undeclared." Suspicious of established politics, with an antiwar sentiment stretching back to Vietnam, they decide at the last minute. Since they can vote in either party's race, their migrations choose the outcome in both. In 2000, two thirds asked for GOP ballots, boosting John McCain and dooming Bill Bradley, who was going after the same voters.

This time, Obama, Giuliani and Mc Cain are the big names fishing in the sea of independents. But conditions have changed: it's expected that two thirds of those voters will take part in the Democratic contest, which could be Obama's main, or last, chance. His yearning to change a "broken political system" is a good hook, but only if he can convince voters he has the guts and skill to do it. He has work to do: a recent Marist College poll shows Clinton leading him among independents 38 to 29 percent. A hot Democratic race would be bad for McCain and Giuliani, whose appeal rests in part on their perceived distance from GOP orthodoxy. The arithmetic of the undeclared is one reason Romney is sprinting to the right and why Mike Huckabee is getting a look in the state.

As George W. Bush's Republican coalition falls apart, its rougher edges become more visible and Paul's small-government, isolationist message gets heard. Many New Hampshirites see the state's Live Free or Die motto as an article of faith, and they blame mushrooming federal deficits as much on the GOP as on the Democrats. "Independents are so mad about spending they can't see straight," says Jennifer Donahue of Saint Anselm College in Manchester. These voters loathe the war in Iraq, too. "They are as antiwar as anyone here, maybe more so," she says.

For now, Paul is a blip on New Hampshire's radar; in a recent poll, he stood at 5 percent among independents. But that could change. He's banked more than $5 million, recently raised more in the state than most other candidates, has a huge Web presence and just bought $1.1 million in New Hampshire TV ads. His staff is inexperienced, but smart. Andy Smith, a pollster at University of New Hampshire, says Paul could get 10 to 20 percent of the vote in the GOP race. That would be a dramatic story, but maybe not one most Republicans would want to read.

Marc Ambinder over at the Atlantic has this about Ron Paul's campaign and constituency:

Paul is now emerging as a serious threat in New Hampshire, perhaps not to win it -- although the winner may need only 25% or so -- , but to influence the outcome in a way that reflects his worldview. He will spend most of the $5.3M in his campaign budget on television, mailings and field organizing in the Granite State. There are 450 people in largest Ron Paul Meetup group, and they're canvassing in Claremont and dropping lit in Manchester this weekend.

Who likes Paul? His aides say there is no single demographic. Many are former members of the Buchanan Brigade, suddenly re-energized by Paul's anti-interventionism and strong border stances. Others seem to be casual libertarians who never really found a sympathetic voice in any of the other presidential candidates. Yet others are self-described constitutionalists. They blame the monetary system for the credit crunch and for economic dislocation. Monetary policy has been Paul's other big bugbear.

In other words, every crank under the sun's attracted to Paul's candidacy. In my earlier post on "The Strangeness of Libertarianism," I noted how even hardline Stalinists have joined the Paul coalition, a point that generated some debate in the comments. So to follow up that thread, note FrontPage Magazine's coverage of Paul speaking at a hardline antiwar rally promoting "American Fascism Awareness Day":

The campaign mounted by campus leftists against Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, which is scheduled to take place on more than 100 campuses during the week of October 22-26 has taken a new turn with the announcement of a counter-protest at the Washington Monument. The protest, which will be called “American Fascism Awareness Day” is being organized by Adam Kokesh of Iraq Veterans Against the War, the Revolutionary Communist Party, Students for Justice In Palestine, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee among others and will feature speakers such as congressman Dennis Kucinich and presidential candidate Ron Paul, anti-war activists Cindy Sheehan and Harry Karry and actor Sean Penn. According to a spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist Party, one of the sponsors of the event, “This is an answer to the Jew Horowitz and the neo-conservative Zionists who dragged us into an imperialist war in Iraq and are spreading hatred against Muslims to support their war plans against the Republic of Iran.”

There shouldn't be any question that modern libertarianism is just a front for the most hardened antiwar America-bashers on the political scene. Moreover, Ron Paul's a fraud. He besmirches the GOP label by claiming to be Republican. With reference to the Newsweek story, I won't be surprised if Paul picks up 20 percent of the New Hampshire primary vote, which would have the effect of keeping the GOP nomination wide open.

Fortunately, all of the top-tier candidates in the Republican field boast strong pro-victory credentials on foreign policy. Their views will prevail soon enough. Paul's 15-minutes of primary fame will be over before you know it.

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UPDATE: My commenters are indicating that "American Fascist Awareness Week" might be a hoax (see this blog post at "Nice Deb" to that effect).

I appreciate the feedback, but while "American Fascist Awareness Week" might be a joke, there's no disputing Ron Paul's support among hardline Stalinist organizations, and not to mention Paul's outright pandering to them.

Adam Kokesh, one of the antiwar movements most strident America-bashers, sports a photo of Ron Paul on his blog, and he claims that he's "a card-carrying lifetime member of the Libertarian Party. " Kokesh is cited in this article from the Weekly Standard as advocating the use of American military forces to topple the U.S. government!

Also, Paul's commentaries are regularly featured at the website Antiwar.com, including a piece published Thursday, "Interventionism? Isolationism? Actually, Both."

Further, mainstream press reports indicate that Paul's coalition includes the most wid-eyed crazies imaginable (which bolsters the main conclusion of my post):

To say Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has eclectic supporters could be considered an understatement.

Paul, a Texas congressman in town today for a series of speeches and fundraisers, is compared by various boosters to liberal U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, consumer activist Ralph Nader and conservative stalwart Barry Goldwater.

Also in his tent are plenty of anti-government conspiracy theorists — the folks who a decade ago warned of black helicopters, a coming U.N. invasion, and chaos surrounding the Y2K computer bug.

It's an odd collection of people, and if Paul has his wish, they'll come ready to open their checkbooks.

Yeah, really odd. As I've said before:

In truth, Paul's appeal is strong among any and all of the whacked-out loons whose Bush-hatred knows no bounds. There's no consistency here: From paleoconservatives to Stalinists, the most hardened Bush-bashing anti-victory types have joined together in the most unprincipled outburst of blame-America-firstism we've seen in a generation.

I stand by my original thesis: Modern libertarianism is just a front for the most hardened antiwar America-bashers on the political scene.

Ron Paul is radioactive, and with their backing of him, libertarians will be squirming to disown the disastrous reputation which flows from his hatred of the military and the robust use of American power.

(Paul's so bad, even the Daily Kos nihilists are desperately backing away from him!)

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UPDATE II: From NH_GOP in the comments:

Ron doesn't pander to any hate-america crowd. He gets the most donations from the military and veterans. Look up his background before you end up in court.

The Houston Chronicle ran a story last week on Paul's support among the military, "Paul leads in donations from military voters, with Obama next."

Michael Goldfarb over at the Weekly Standard took issue with the report, in a response to an Andrew Sullivan post:

Does Andrew Sullivan read stories before he comments on them? In this case, I suspect he didn't, otherwise he's engaging in pure military-related fantasy. In response to this article from the Houston Chronicle reporting that Ron Paul and Barack Obama lead all candidates in fund raising among "donors identified as affiliated with the military," Sullivan headlines a post "Whom the Troops Support," with this stunningly self-indulgent conclusion (actually this is the whole post):

Just one indicator, of course: campaign donations from active service military members. And guess who's first? Ron Paul. Second? Barack Obama. Those tasked to actually fighting this war get it, don't they?

Except this isn't about campaign donations from "active service military members," whatever they might be, but "donors affiliated with the military," which Sullivan might have noticed had he slogged through the whole first sentence of the story. In fact, the first "active service military member" and Ron Paul supporter interviewed for the piece is 72-year-old Lindell Anderson, a retired Army chaplain from Fort Worth. Further, the Chron notes that the average size of Paul's donations from this subset was $500. How many active duty soldiers are giving $500 to fringe candidates a year out from the election? Not many, I suspect. In fact, among all the candidates, the total number of contributors surveyed here numbered less than 1,000--out of an Armed Forces of 2.2 million. And, remember, most of these contributors aren't even active duty.

NH_GOP ought to clear his own hate-addled mind before he starts in with the imbecilic (and impotent) threats.

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UPDATE III: Adam Holland's got a comprehensive post documenting neo-nazi support for the Paul campaign.

I think Holland's a bit unschooled on the fine points of states'-rights doctrine found in libertarian thought, although he nevertheless does a useful service identifying some of Paul's whacked-out right wing supporters.

Also, Captain Ed wants to know why the Paul campaign has paid for the services of Alex Jones, a prominent activist in the 9/11 truth movement.

Conventional Wisdom on 2008 Could Be Wrong

In his new column, "Hold Your Conventional Wisdom," William Kristol gives three reasons why it's wrong to predict 2008 as the year of the Democrats:

1) The Democrats' takeover of both houses of Congress last November turns out to have been a mixed blessing for them. The approval numbers for the Democratic Congress have been trending downward. It hasn't been easy for Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to keep the party's liberal base and its new supporters happy at the same time. And the Bush White House has made some adjustments. The election defeat coincided with a crisis about how to move forward in Iraq. Bush decided against Donald Rumsfeld but also against the Iraq Study Group, and for General David Petraeus and the surge. Democrats forecast an even deeper quagmire. Instead, we've seen progress -which could well continue and broaden. Meanwhile, Michael Mukasey - not Alberto Gonzales - will be making the case for the Administration on the tools it needs to conduct the war on terrorism. A respected and independent former judge, Mukasey will have credibility that Gonzales could only dream of.

2) Polls still show a hangover from November 2006, with Democrats having an advantage. But history suggests that may not hold up. Winning control of Congress doesn't necessarily signify much about the next presidential contest. The last time Congress flipped was 1994 - and that GOP sweep was followed by a Bill Clinton victory in 1996. Democrats took back the Senate (and thus control of both bodies of Congress) in 1986, and George H.W. Bush won easily in 1988. Voters like checks and balances.

It's true that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama now run ahead of the GOP candidates in matchups. But as often as not in recent presidential elections, the candidate who eventually won had trailed at some point by margins as large as those now facing the likely Republican nominees. This was true of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Bush in 1988 and Clinton in 1992. And in the two most recent elections, Republicans haven't done badly. The GOP candidate made a far closer race of it than expected in a special election in the strongly Democratic 5th Congressional District in Massachusetts, losing by only 6 points despite being outspent about 4 to 1. And 36-year-old Republican Congressman Bobby Jindal won the governorship of Louisiana with a majority in the first round of balloting.

3) Watching the Republican candidates in the debate in Orlando, Fla., I wasn't filled with dread about the general election. The Democrats are going to nominate either a one-term Senator (Clinton) or a half-term Senator (Obama), neither with much in the way of legislative achievements. Against that, the GOP will offer one of the following: a remarkably successful two-term mayor (Rudy Giuliani), a business leader as well as Governor (Mitt Romney), a four-term Senator and war hero (McCain), an effective two-term Governor (Mike Huckabee) or a Senator with as much experience as Clinton and who was a star prosecutor and has an appealing personal story (Fred Thompson).

The strength of Kristol's argument lies in his points on Iraq (where security has improved and the public has recognized the gains) and the success of Republicans in recent elections (like Bobby Jindal in Louisiana).

But I'd be careful myself in throwing too much water on the Democrats' parade. While polls show deep dissatisfaction with Congress, voters are twice as likely to view the Democratic majority favorably compared to Congress in general.

Also, there's deep unease in the country on health care and other issues. The Repubicans need to decide quickly on their nominee in the primaries - no matter which candidate ends up getting the nod. The race for the general election will be tight, but Republicans can't afford a long, drawn-out nomination battle (better to unify early around a standard-bearer), and they need to run the best presidential campaign in party history.

The Stark Truth About the Left

With Representative Pete Stark's recent anti-Bush statements as the prompt, Michael Knox Beran at the National Review offers an excellent reminder of the contemporary left's anti-American fundamentalism:

Congressman Pete Stark has apologized for saying that President Bush finds “amusement” in the spectacle of American troops getting “their heads blown off” in Iraq. Yet his comments have been embraced by many of the president’s detractors, among them bloggers at The Huffington Post and Daily Kos.

It is not hard to see why. Congressman Stark’s words are faithful to a particular way of looking at America and its place in history — are faithful to what might be called the “liberal interpretation of history.”

The liberal interpretation of history holds that the United States is not merely a flawed country — all countries are flawed — but a deeply flawed one. It was founded by statesmen who subscribed to a deeply flawed philosophy; statesmen who believed that all men are created equal, and that all men are entitled to life, liberty, and the fruits of their industry.

The founders of the United States, it is true, did not always live up to their philosophy. But by placing its principles in the Declaration of Independence, they preserved it, as Abraham Lincoln said, for all time, so that “to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.”

In the view of those who subscribe to the liberal interpretation of history, the philosophy of the Declaration is antiquated. According to the liberal interpretation, all men are created equal, except for blacks, Native Americans, Alaskan natives, Hispanics, and Asian and Pacific Islanders, who are racially challenged and must be classed apart from everyone else. (Native Hawaiians will be added to the list if the Akaka Bill becomes law.) All are entitled to life, except for those whose hearts beat in the womb; to liberty, except for those who require the supervision of the nanny state; to the fruits of their industry, except for those who have made a certain amount of money and are obligated to hand a disproportionate chunk of it over to the government each year.

Central to the liberal interpretation of history is the belief that a country founded on so flawed a philosophy cannot, as a rule, be a force for good in the world. Accordingly, when the United States acts in the world it most often acts not for good, but for evil.

Viewed in the light of such an interpretation of history, Congressman Stark’s comments become comprehensible, even predictable. President Bush adheres to the Freevangelical faith of President Lincoln, who argued that the United States has a decisive role to play in advancing the cause of freedom in the world. President Bush adheres, as well, to the belief that all human beings are entitled to liberty and the fruits of their industry: he therefore opposes the enlargement of nanny-state measures like S-CHIP when alternative measures (such as tax cuts) would promote the general welfare in a better and less intrusive way.

From the point of view of those who subscribe to the liberal interpretation of history, such heterodoxy cannot be explained rationally; the President must be not merely intellectually primitive, but morally depraved, as Congressman Stark suggested when he condemned the president for defending freedom abroad while resisting S-CHIP expansion at home.

Read the whole thing.

For more argument along these lines, see Lee Harris, "The Intellectual Origins of America-Bashing" and Cinnamon Stillwell, "The Making Of A 9/11 Republican."

Francis Fukuyama and America's Self-Defeating Power

Francis Fukuyama's got a piece up at RealClearPolitics arguing that the Bush administration's foreign policy has exacerbated global anti-Americanism:

When I wrote about the End of History almost 20 years ago, one thing that I did not anticipate was the degree to which American behaviour and misjudgments would make anti-Americanism one of the chief fault lines of global politics. And yet, particularly since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, that is precisely what has happened, owing to four key mistakes made by the Bush administration.

First, the doctrine of "preemption", which was devised in response to the 2001 attacks, was inappropriately broadened to include Iraq and other so-called "rogue states" that threatened to develop weapons of mass destruction. To be sure, preemption is fully justified vis-a-vis stateless terrorists wielding such weapons. But it cannot be the core of a general non-proliferation policy, whereby the United States intervenes militarily everywhere to prevent the development of nuclear weapons.

The cost of executing such a policy simply would be too high (several hundred billion dollars and tens of thousands of casualties in Iraq and still counting). This is why the Bush administration has shied away from military confrontations with North Korea and Iran, despite its veneration of Israel's air strike on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, which set back Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme by several years. After all, the very success of that attack meant that such limited intervention could never be repeated, because would-be proliferators learned to bury, hide, or duplicate their nascent weapons programmes.

The second important miscalculation concerned the likely global reaction to America's exercise of its hegemonic power. Many people within the Bush administration believed that even without approval by the UN security council or Nato, American power would be legitimised by its successful use. This had been the pattern for many US initiatives during the cold war, and in the Balkans during the 1990s; back then, it was known as "leadership" rather than "unilateralism".

But, by the time of the Iraq war, conditions had changed: the US had grown so powerful relative to the rest of the world that the lack of reciprocity became an intense source of irritation even to America's closest allies. The structural anti-Americanism arising from the global distribution of power was evident well before the Iraq war, in the opposition to American-led globalisation during the Clinton years. But it was exacerbated by the Bush administration's "in-your-face" disregard for a variety of international institutions as soon it came into office - a pattern that continued through the onset of the Iraq war.

America's third mistake was to overestimate how effective conventional military power would be in dealing with the weak states and networked transnational organisations that characterise international politics, at least in the broader Middle East. It is worth pondering why a country with more military power than any other in human history, and that spends as much on its military as virtually the rest of the world combined, cannot bring security to a small country of 24 million people after more than three years of occupation. At least part of the problem is that it is dealing with complex social forces that are not organised into centralised hierarchies that can enforce rules, and thus be deterred, coerced, or otherwise manipulated through conventional power.

Israel made a similar mistake in thinking that it could use its enormous margin of conventional military power to destroy Hizbullah in last summer's Lebanon war. Both Israel and the US are nostalgic for a 20th century world of nation-states, which is understandable, since that is the world to which the kind of conventional power they possess is best suited.

But nostalgia has led both states to misinterpret the challenges they now face, whether by linking al-Qaida to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or Hizbullah to Iran and Syria. This linkage does exist in the case of Hizbullah, but the networked actors have their own social roots and are not simply pawns used by regional powers. This is why the exercise of conventional power has become frustrating.

Finally, the Bush administration's use of power has lacked not only a compelling strategy or doctrine, but also simple competence. In Iraq alone, the administration misestimated the threat of WMD, failed to plan adequately for the occupation, and then proved unable to adjust quickly when things went wrong. To this day, it has dropped the ball on very straightforward operational issues in Iraq, such as funding democracy promotion efforts.

Incompetence in implementation has strategic consequences. Many of the voices that called for, and then bungled, military intervention in Iraq are now calling for war with Iran. Why should the rest of the world think that conflict with a larger and more resolute enemy would be handled any more capably?

But the fundamental problem remains the lopsided distribution of power in the international system. Any country in the same position as the US, even a democracy, would be tempted to exercise its hegemonic power with less and less restraint. America's founding fathers were motivated by a similar belief that unchecked power, even when democratically legitimated, could be dangerous, which is why they created a constitutional system of internally separated powers to limit the executive.

Such a system does not exist on a global scale today, which may explain how America got into such trouble. A smoother international distribution of power, even in a global system that is less than fully democratic, would pose fewer temptations to abandon the prudent exercise of power.

My reading of Fukuyama is that he's stuck in a pre-surge mentality.

The justification for the U.S. invasion of has been debated ad nauseum (so that's a stale rehash). Fukuyama also fails to note the recovery of international views toward the United States (public opinion in our Western democratic allies has recovered since the early days of the Iraq war).

Further, we don't need to wonder why a hegemonic U.S. "cannot bring security to a small country of 24 million people after more than three years of occupation." It is well known among security experts that the effective deployment of American military power will be most difficult in the "contested zones" of international security, in countries like Somalia in the 1990s and Iraq in this decade. In these theaters irregular forces have used unconventional tactics to neutralize the preponderant advantages of American military technology. But America has adapted, and the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy is now bearing fruit in Iraq, with most parts of the country seeing dramatic improvements in security.

Fukuyama's right that a dramatically lopsided distribution of global power will lead to international antagonism toward the system's leading state, which is currently the United States. But we will always face opposition to the forward exercise of American power, no matter who's in office. The Bush adminstration simply shook international opinion out of its Clinton-era stupor - national populations around the world had to reckon with an American hegemon intent on deploying power in its national interest.

The result has been costly, but progress is being made. It will be interesting to see how long Fukuyama will continue to make arguments such as this. Fukuyama's a top scholar in international relations, but he's flipped-flopped in his loyalties to neoconservative theory. Perhaps he's jockeying for a prominent foreign policy post in a Democratic administration. I wish him luck, but I'll be on him when he starts backpeddling from his criticism of America's mission in Iraq, particularly amid additional signs of progress in consolidating that nation's democratic regime.

The Emerging Giuliani Doctrine

Today's New York Times discusses the development of Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy, which is getting significant input from neoconservative thinkers:

Rudolph W. Giuliani’s approach to foreign policy shares with other Republican presidential candidates an aggressive posture toward terrorism, a commitment to strengthening the military and disdain for the United Nations.

But in developing his views, Mr. Giuliani is consulting with, among others, a particularly hawkish group of advisers and neoconservative thinkers.

Their positions have been criticized by Democrats as irresponsible and applauded by some conservatives as appropriately tough, while raising questions about how closely aligned Mr. Giuliani’s thinking is with theirs.

Mr. Giuliani’s team includes Norman Podhoretz, a prominent neoconservative who advocates bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible”; Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, who has called for profiling Muslims at airports and scrutinizing American Muslims in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps; and Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written in favor of revoking the United States’ ban on assassination.

The campaign says that the foreign policy team, which also includes scholars and experts with different policy approaches, is meant to give Mr. Giuliani a variety of perspectives.

Based on his public statements, Mr. Giuliani does not share all of their views and parts company with traditional neoconservative thinking in some respects. But their presence has reassured some conservatives who have expressed doubts about Mr. Giuliani’s positions on issues like abortion and gun control, and underscored his efforts to cast himself as a tough-minded potential commander in chief.

And while Mr. Giuliani, like other New York mayors, liked to be seen as conducting his own brand of foreign policy from City Hall, he had little direct exposure to many of the specific issues the next president will confront and is still meeting for the first time with some of his advisers to develop detailed positions on particular subjects.

Mr. Giuliani has taken an aggressive position on Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear program, saying last month it was a “promise” that as president he would take military action to keep the Iranians from developing a nuclear weapon.

The article quotes William Kristol on Giuliani's neoconservative persuasions:

Neoconservatives said they were generally supportive of Mr. Giuliani’s positions and saw them as being in line with those taken by the other leading Republican presidential candidates.

“I would say, as a card-carrying member of the neoconservative conspiracy,” said William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, “that I think Giuliani, McCain and Thompson are all getting really good advice — and Romney.” Mr. Kristol said that none of the leading Republican candidates “buy any of these fundamental criticisms that Bush took us on a radically wrong path, and we have to go to a pre-9/11 foreign policy.”

Then the piece lays out the elements of an emerging "Giuliani Doctrine":

The emerging Giuliani doctrine, which is being created through conference calls, policy papers, and seminarlike meetings, contains a number of main elements.

Mr. Giuliani calls for continuing the war in Iraq and building up the military by adding at least 10 combat brigades to the Army. He takes a dim view of the United Nations, which he sees as good for little other than humanitarian and peacekeeping missions, but wants to expand NATO and invite Israel to join it.

He would continue the Bush administration’s efforts to fight AIDS and malaria in Africa, but would tailor policy toward Africa to emphasize trade over aid.

If there is a central tenet to his thinking, it may be that the United States must project strength to keep itself safe. “Weakness invites attack,” Mr. Giuliani warned to cheers in a speech he gave recently to the Republican Jewish Coalition.

On the question of diplomacy, Mr. Giuliani makes it clear that he would impose a number of conditions before opening talks with unfriendly countries. In the Foreign Affairs article, he wrote that it might be advisable at times to hold serious diplomatic talks with the nation’s adversaries, but not with “those bent on our destruction or those who cannot deliver on their agreements.”

In a recent speech to the Jewish Coalition, he went further, accusing the Democrats of putting too much stock in diplomacy. “This is the great fallacy in this now very strong Democratic desire to negotiate, negotiate, negotiate and negotiate,” he said. “You’ve got to know with whom to negotiate and with whom you should not negotiate.”

The foreign policy education of Mr. Giuliani, from former big-city mayor to would-be statesman, has played out in a series of briefings and papers and calls.

I wrote earlier on "Neoconservatives and Rudy Giuliani" (for a full statement on Giuliani's foreign policy, see his essay in Foreign Affairs).

I would second Kristol's comment, that it's indeed great news that all of the top GOP contenders evince strong inclinations toward the neoconservartive foreign policy agenda.

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UPDATE: The Washington Post has but another article on Rudy Giuliani's growing list of top policy advisors, in this case Bill Simon, a former gubernatorial candidate in California, and the founder of "Simon University," a series of seminars featuring top conservatives and neoconservatives.

Code Pink Protester Accosts Secretary of State Rice

A radical activist from the antiwar group Code Pink thrust her red-painted hands in the face of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during congressional testimony yesterday. Here's the story:

An antiwar protester ambushed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a House hearing Wednesday, thrusting red-stained hands in her face and accusing her of having the "blood of millions of Iraqis on your hands" before being removed by police.

"War criminal! War criminal!" bellowed Desiree Ali-Fairooz, 51, a former teacher from Arlington, Texas, after a guard grabbed her wrists and another officer led her out of the Rayburn House Office Building.

The incident caused House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame) to order the removal of other CodePink members, an all-female antiwar group with a regular protest presence on Capitol Hill.

Capitol Police said Ali-Fairooz was charged with assault on a federal officer and three other counts. Police deflected questions about how she was able to get close enough to Rice to confront her but said that the incident did not constitute a security breach.

"Because it's an open hearing and the building is open to the public, anyone can come in," said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, a spokeswoman. "However, if anyone is breaking the law, the Capitol Police will take appropriate action."

The incident provided a startling moment at the start of a hearing featuring Rice testifying about the Middle East. Witnesses sit alone at a table at the room's front facing House members, with their backs to the audience. There are no barriers between spectators, witnesses and House members. Metal detectors at the building's entrance screen for weapons and hazardous chemicals.

Wednesday's confrontation seemed to happen in an instant. Rice entered the hearing room from a side door with Lantos, an aide and State Department security.

Ali-Fairooz strode up the aisle and met Rice at the table with arms outstretched, moving her hands toward Rice's face but apparently not touching her.

After she was taken outside the hearing room, Ali-Fairooz smeared her painted hands on the hallway wall. A crew painted over the marks.

The photograph of the confrontation is here.

Next to Ali-Fairooz is Congressman Tom Lantos, the far-left California Democrat who laid into General David Petraeus during his own September testimony. Ali-Fairooz and Lantos: Same hatred, different methods.

Note Rice's calmness as well. That's dignity.

Break in Winds Give Firefighters a Chance

My wife and I attended a parent-teacher conference yesterday with my youngest son's kindergarten teacher. She's a young woman. Her husband's a firefighter with the City of Buena Park, and he was on assignment fighting the Santiago Canyon fire. Our appointment was at 8:00am. The red sunrise over Saddleback Mountain glowed ominiously through smokey sky. I'll be glad when the fires are under control. Orange County has lost its magical happiness, and it's hard to breathe.

The Washington Post has a story on the weakening Santa Ana winds:

In a disaster driven more than anything by wind, the breezes dying across Southern California on Wednesday translated into rising hope.

About 20 brush fires continued to roar, part of a conflagration that has blackened an area 10 times the size of the District of Columbia, destroyed 1,600 structures, displaced hundreds of thousands and sullied air for millions more across the region.

But gradually decreasing winds allowed the 8,000 exhausted firefighters to stand and fight the flames rather than dash from one hot spot to another. Aircraft arriving from across the country found free rein to bombard the fires from above. Blazes in Malibu, where the first fires leapt down canyons toward the sea on Sunday, were declared under control, and the Pacific Coast Highway reopened. So did many stores as a hint of normalcy crept into view.

Farther south in San Diego County, the hardest hit of the seven affected counties, a trickle of residents ventured from evacuation centers to check on homes that, in most cases, still stood. But the way was far from clear: A fast-moving blaze in the vast Camp Pendleton Marine base threatened the last remaining power lines that provide the county with almost all of its electricity.

The other major link, which ran from Arizona, was severed by another fire earlier in the week, forcing the power company to import electricity from Mexico to keep up with demand. The Pendleton blaze also leaped Interstate 5, shutting down a stretch of the state's main north-south artery for several hours while firefighters bent to yet another task.

"I wish we could control the wind," President Bush said while announcing that uninsured victims of the fires would be eligible for grants. The president was scheduled to tour affected areas Thursday.

Officials said they suspected that some of the fires had been deliberately set. Police in San Bernardino County said they shot and killed a suspected arsonist Tuesday night and arrested another arson suspect a few hours later. County officials also beefed up patrols to prevent looting after several looters were arrested in nearby San Diego County.

So far, only one death can be directly linked to the flames. But Ron Lane, the director of San Diego County emergency services, provided the first estimate of damage: $1 billion "or more."

Here's the Los Angeles Times story on the arsonist:

Amid worries of new blazes adding to the firestorm already afflicting the region, a man in Hesperia has been arrested on suspicion of arson, and police reported shooting and killing another arson suspect after chasing him out of scrub behind Cal State San Bernardino.

Law enforcement officials said today that they didn't know whether either of the men had started any of the more than a dozen large fires that have devastated Southern California in recent days, including the nearby Lake Arrowhead blaze. The brush fire in Hesperia was quickly extinguished by residents.

Investigators have said that at least two of the huge wildfires, one in Orange County and the other in Temecula, were the work of arsonists.

The confrontation that ended in the shooting death started about 6 p.m. Tuesday when San Bernardino university police spotted a man in a rural area of flood channels and scrub near the campus. University police tried to detain the man, but he got into his car and fled, authorities said. When he began to ram officers' vehicle, they shot him.

I would like to thank everone who commented on my earlier post on the fires. It's been a busy work week, and I've haven't had time to respond. Please join me in praying for the safety of all of those affected.

Runaway Train: Hillary's White House Years

Readers will recall that I've likened the inevitability of Hillary Clinton's 2008 Democratic nomination to the potential disaster of a "runaway train." I've also suggested that - like her or not - she'll bring to the White House a degree of top-level experience rarely seen in the history of the presidency.

It turns out that a plurality of the public holds a similar view on Clinton's political credentials. The background story to the new Los Angeles Times poll has the details:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has neutralized the political fallout from some of the most difficult moments of her eight years as first lady, with Democratic voters looking favorably on her failed effort to revamp healthcare and either supporting or having no opinion of her decision to remain loyal to an unfaithful husband, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll shows.

The positive impression of Clinton's White House years -- which is shared, though more faintly, among the broader public -- is helping propel her to a formidable lead over her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton leads the No. 2 contender, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, 48% to 17%.

Her support has risen 15 percentage points since the last nationwide Times/Bloomberg poll in June, while Obama's support has fallen 5 percentage points.

As a leading actor in her husband's presidency, Clinton entered the race for the White House linked tightly to his legacy of personal scandal and political polarization. But today, the Times/Bloomberg poll found, nearly two-thirds of Democrats and nearly half of all voters say Hillary Clinton's famously unsuccessful effort in the 1990s to provide health coverage for all Americans makes her better able now to deal with healthcare as president.

More than 7 in 10 Democrats, and about half of all voters, said they would welcome a White House advisory role for Bill Clinton, who jokes that he would be called "first laddy" if his wife became president.

And 42% of Democrats agreed it was the "right thing" for Hillary Clinton to stick with her husband after his affair with a White House intern, compared with 5% who said it was the wrong choice.

At the same time, the former first lady remains a polarizing figure -- viewed unfavorably by 44% of respondents. But a favorable rating of 48% is relatively high for Clinton.

Read the whole thing.

Note that Clinton has considerably high negatives, which create some problems for her general electability. Still, voters view Hillary and Bill Clinton as a team, and her husband's popularity makes up for some of the distrust toward Hillary in the polling numbers.

The Times poll also holds some interesting findings on the Republicans. While Rudy Giuliani leads the pack with national support at 32 percent (more than twice that for Fred Thompson, the next most favored candidate in the GOP field), local polls in Iowa and New Hampshire have Mitt Romney on top. In South Carolina, Thomspon's got the lead among Republican primary voters.

Also interesting is that John McCain's the leading Republican candidate in hypothetical head-to-head match-ups against Clinton. Based on such comparisons, National Review's Kate O'Beirne argued recently that McCain deserves a second look. I'm pulling for him, in any case.

As for Hillary, I hate her flip-flopping. But for an even more critical look at Hillary's candidacy, check out Gayle's blog, where she's putting up some powerful commentaries against a Hillary Clinton presidency.