THE TALONS OF A DOVE:

Practice to Deceive: Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan. (Joshua Micah Marshall, April 2003, Washington Monthly)

Imagine it's six months from now. The Iraq war is over. After an initial burst of joy and gratitude at being liberated from Saddam's rule, the people of Iraq are watching, and waiting, and beginning to chafe under American occupation. Across the border, in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, our conquering presence has brought street protests and escalating violence. The United Nations and NATO are in disarray, so America is pretty much on its own. Hemmed in by budget deficits at home and limited financial assistance from allies, the Bush administration is talking again about tapping Iraq's oil reserves to offset some of the costs of the American presence--talk that is further inflaming the region. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence has discovered fresh evidence that, prior to the war, Saddam moved quantities of biological and chemical weapons to Syria. When Syria denies having such weapons, the administration starts massing troops on the Syrian border. But as they begin to move, there is an explosion: Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon blow themselves up in a Baghdad restaurant, killing dozens of Western aid workers and journalists. Knowing that Hezbollah has cells in America, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge puts the nation back on Orange Alert. FBI agents start sweeping through mosques, with a new round of arrests of Saudis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and Yemenis.

To most Americans, this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn't the nightmare scenario. It's everything going as anticipated.

In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future."

In short, the administration is trying to roll the table--to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism. So events that may seem negative--Hezbollah for the first time targeting American civilians; U.S. soldiers preparing for war with Syria--while unfortunate in themselves, are actually part of the hawks' broader agenda. Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments--or, failing that, U.S. troops--rule the entire Middle East.

There's an important subtext here that it's necessary for Mr. Marshall to ignore. He assumes--perhaps accurately, but hopefully not necessarily--that the reaction to efforts to liberalize Iraq will be a rise in Islamicism throughout the world. Not only do the Iraqi people not want freedom and self-governance, no Arab/Muslim peoples anywhere want it. In fact, if you try handing it to them, they and their coreligionists will try and kill you in return.

The problem for Mr. Marshall and other doves is that if this is true, if the immutable destiny of Islam is anti-Western totalitarianism, then we're going to have to fight them anyway. Instead of a series of wars of liberation it will be a genuine clash of civilizations and it will be wider and bloodier--no need to spare civilians if they're all hopeless fanatics at heart, is there?--but there's no realistic alternative. The American people simply will not tolerate repeated terrorist attacks. They'll demand a nuclear holocaust before they'll accept the kind of existence that Idraelis live, constantly in fear of the next car bomb. Just look at the polling last week, when the war was in its two day quagmire phase--support for the war didn't budge; instead there was increased support for harsher methods. It is a bitter truth for the liberal minded to face, but a truth nonetheless, that no one is as lethal in the pursuit of war as a democracy.

So, which is it? Are the hawks right, and the Middle East can be transformed, can join the rest of mankind in moving towards liberal democratic-capitalist-protestantism (small "p")? Or are the doves right, and Muslims somehow unsuited to liberty and an inherent threat to world peace? Is this to be a smaller series of wars or a massive world war?

ALTHOUGH...:
Voices of Islam: Five leading Muslim thinkers speak out about war in Iraq--from its murky morality to the threat that it will radicalize Asia's Muslims (SIMON ELEGANT, 3/24/03, TIME ASIA)

What does conflict with Iraq mean to Muslims? In Kuala Lumpur last week, TIME's Southeast Asia correspondent Simon Elegant gathered five of Asia's most prominent Muslim thinkers and opinionmakers to debate the vexing issues an Iraq war raises—including the danger that it might radicalize moderate Muslims and trigger a violent anti-U.S. backlash. The panel comprised lawyer and writer Karim Raslan; parliamentarian Mustafa Ali of Malaysia's Islamic Party (PAS); scholar and human-rights activist Chandra Muzaffar; lawyer and activist Latheefa Koya, and journalist M.J. Akbar, editor of Asian Age in New Delhi. Highlights of the discussion: [...]

TIME: What is it that turns a middle-class kid from Kuala Lumpur into a jihadi? He's not despairing. He has a comfortable life. Now he's suspected of trying to bomb a mall in Indonesia? A Catholic from Italy would never go on a mission for the I.R.A.

CHANDRA: The feeling of despair is much greater and more widespread for Muslims; it cuts across class lines.

MUSTAFA: Muslims believe in life hereafter, in heaven and hell as described in the Koran. So if a Muslim sacrifices his life he believes he will be rewarded. They are preparing for the next life. They want to die as martyrs.

AKBAR: The poor socioeconomic conditions of so many Muslims make heavenly afterlife a very attractive proposition. For Muslims, jihad is not just cleansing the inner spirit; it is also a call for a holy war which has been heard since the beginning of Islam. There's a saying by the Prophet: "Paradise comes under the shade of swords." This is not an invitation to kill. It is an invitation to die. Only martyrs are guaranteed paradise. Jihad is a signature tune of Islamic history. [...]

TIME: All this puts moderate Muslims in a difficult position.

AKBAR: Take the case of a country like Turkey. It has an Islamist party in power which has come through a proper exercise of democracy. Its parliament has voted against supporting America's war despite huge bribes being offered. If the credibility of this government, which is moderate and modern in its approach, is destroyed by American pressure, who will occupy the space vacated? Not Ataturkists, but those more radical. Do you want a Hamas to rule Turkey?

As it is, there is hardly any democracy in the Muslim world, which is one of the terrible problems afflicting it. And most dictatorships have the protection of the West because of the cozy relationship between power and oil. Muslims treat these dictators or local elites as quislings, who sell the national interest to line their pockets. I see the Muslim world caught in what I call the push-and-pull trap. The push comes from interests hostile to Muslims, and the pull comes from increasingly Islamist parties that lure Muslims with the dream of revival through a return to pure Islam. The levels vary, but this has happened even in a liberal state like Turkey. The future is not going to be smooth. I feel that the Muslim world is a decade away from its own French Revolution, except that this upsurge is going to be led by various shades of Islamists, thanks to the policies of leaders like Bush. France and Germany understand this, which is why they have taken the stand they have taken. What Bush does not understand is that you cannot exercise power without understanding the limits of power.

CHANDRA: After the coming invasion of Iraq there is going to be tremendous outrage in the Muslim world. Every sort of argument will be used to increase the outrage against America. The moderates are going to be pushed away.

KARIM: This saddens people like me, who support what America has always stood for, and which we believe it continues to stand for in its core values. America has stood for freedom, creativity, human endeavor. Under Bush, America has lost its prestige and credibility.

...maybe Mr. Marshall's right.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 2, 2003 10:51 PM