James Woolsey, CIA Director under President
Clinton, gave a speech recently to the Air Force Association
that you might have missed. I thought it was pretty good:
We are in a war against I would
say at least three totalitarian movements from the Middle East... I'd say there
are three totalitarian movements who have chosen to be at war with us from
there.
One is the
fascists—I don't think we should mince words about the Baathists and many
of their colleagues. The Baathist parties of Iraq and Syria were modeled after
the fascist parties of the 1920s and '30s. They're structured like them, they're
anti-Semitic like them, and they’re fascists. So when we look at Fallujah
today, I don't think one should talk about insurgents. That's too neutral a
term. Those who hold Fallujah are trying to reestablish fascism in
Iraq.
The second group
is the Islamists from the Shi’ite side of Islam. Now, I use the term
“Islamist” to denote a totalitarian movement seeking to control a
religion. I think that it's important not to grant to people like Khamenei and
Rafsanjani in Tehran and their instrumentalities, such as Hezbollah or Muqtada
al-Sadr in Iraq, that they represent Islam, even the Shi’ite side of
Islam. Torqamada in the late 15th and early 16th Century said that he
represented Christianity. In fact, he was a power behind the throne in Spain; he
burned at the stake Jews, Muslims and dissident Christians and stole their
money. He was a totalitarian. We don't need to grant to Torqamada the
designation of Christian, and we don't need to grant to people like Khamenei the
designation of Muslim, even radical Muslim. So I tend to call them
Islamists.
On the Sunni
side of Islam, the Islamist movement, certainly the cutting edge that we have
born the brunt of attack from is al-Qaeda, but it is underpinned by a very
strong totalitarian ideology that is anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-female,
anti-modern, essentially the Wahhabi sect of Saudi Arabia. Not all Wahhabis are
or become al-Qaeda members or terrorists, but that's the soil in which Islamism
from the Sunni side of Islam has grown for the last number of years. And
somewhat the way angry German nationalism of the 1920s and early 1930s was the
soil in which Nazism grew. Not all angry German nationalists of the '20s and
early '30s became Nazis, much less concentration camp guards, and not all Saudi
Wahhabis become Islamists or terrorists, but the link is there and we need, I
think, to understand it.
There's much
more there besides, and you really owe it to yourself to give him a read. His
opinions on the "whys" of the campaign, the "how did this happen?" are
especially interesting.
You know,
I've often argued that one of the best birthrights of being born American is
that we are the beneficiary of Western culture, without the burden of all that
horrible history. We got it on the
cheap.
My father-in-law was a
Montenegrin Serb. He'd been a royalist back in the day, when the Yugoslavs were
busy fighting both a German occupation, a religious pogrom and a political
revolution, all at the same time. He was from the Balkans, a place where history
hangs around the neck of the populace like a millstone. He was... complex. A
decent man, a gentleman who fought the Nazis tooth and nail in his youth, while
in later years denying the reality of the Holocaust. When I was a teenager, he
told me about the Battle of Kosovo, and Good King Lazar. He told me about faces
and places with such detail and comprehension that I assumed he'd been part of
the struggle. What year was that, I
asked?
And the Balkans are maybe
the worst of it: After the Ottoman Turks were repelled for a second time at
Vienna's gates, the Balkans represented the westward high water mark of Islamic
expansion (set aside Al Andalus , for the now - I'm talking central
Europe). But it wasn't just Islam (Bosnia-Herzegovina) that met Christianity in
the Balkans, the witches brew included protestantism (Croatia), Catholicism
(Slovenia) and Orthodox Christianity (Serbia). Talk about a historical fault
line, what a mess. Which is why, I suppose, that the Yugoslavs could somehow
live in perfect socialist harmony with their differently-creeded neighbors for
50 post-war years under the grinding boot of Stalinist oppression, while somehow
managing to keep their knives and axes sharpened to a razor's edge in the attic,
just in case the world turned one more time, and the killing of the folks next
door was suddenly met official sanction again. Because they were the "Other."
Because one couldn't be too sure. Best to be
safe.
But there's times I worry that
maybe our lack of history might also be a burden to us. As the Netherlands , France, Spain and Germany gradually awake to the Islamist viper
that they've nurtured to their bosoms, we are left over here on the big island
cheerfully hoping we can just explain our point of view more clearly. Because
then we'll all get along.
Maybe
Europe, who has really spent more centuries fighting Islamic expansionism than
we've spent being a country, appeared slow on the post-9/11 uptake because,
frankly, they'd hoped this was all behind us now. Far better to craft a more
perfect social safety net, the more wonderful nanny state. Civilizational war
can be such a
bother.
Overdone?
Maybe.
But I'm starting to worry that our grand experiment in the Middle East just may
not succeed, no matter how much we need it to. I'm starting to worry that the
Iraqi Sunnis who'd rather be dead than share their freedom with Shi'ites, the
people who, in combination with the Syrian, Jordanian and Saudi Sunnis, who are
perfectly satisfied fighting to the last Iraqi, so long as the whiff of
democracy doesn't catch in that part of the world. The ones who cut peoples
heads off with knives? I'm starting to fear that they are more motivated for
their cause than those bludgeoned masses who don't really care who the hell is
in charge or how he got there, so long as the bombings stop. Because maybe the
Wahabbis won't kill them all. Not every last one. One can
hope.
And if it breaks that way?
Going home in disgrace, with no solace but the warm blanket of good intentions
isn't the worst of it. There would be the sneaking suspicion that maybe Saddam
ruled the way that he did because he had to, that there was nothing but terror
that would keep the masses in line. There would be the corollary suspicion that
maybe nothing can be done over there - they just aren't enough like us, they
can't grasp the ring when proffered. Our illusions shattered, we'd have to
re-assess, adjust our cognitive lenses. We'd paint Islamic Arabs as
"Others."
We'd have to come off our
vacation. We'd have to learn history.
Posted @
10:12 PM
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Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche
