IT'S A TAD MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT...:

9/11, Islam and War (Walter Russell Mead, 9/11/10, American Interest)

Enraged by defeat, occupation and mistreatment, many Iraqi Sunnis took Al-Qaeda at its word — and the insurgency took off. Hopes ran high in the inner circles of Al-Qaeda. Fighting a stubborn guerrilla war, the Americans were caught in another Vietnam. Politicians at home were deserting a war they once supported as public opinion shifted. Al-Qaeda was a legend in its own mind: having defeated the Soviet superpower in Afghanistan it was now defeating the American superpower in Iraq. The momentum seemed unstoppable: angry young men all over the world were flocking to Al-Qaeda’s recruiting offices and training centers. Terrified governments were temporizing with it; America’s enemies around the world were reckoning with the emergence of a new and perhaps unstoppable force.

But then something happened.

Sunni Iraqis took a long hard look at Al-Qaeda. They watched bombs go off in marketplaces and mosques. They watched reprisal killings of respected tribal elders and innocents. They watched undisciplined groups of fighters, freed from all moral and social restraint, innocent for the most part of any serious religious knowledge, imposed narrow and poorly conceived ideas on society by force in the name of an Islam Al-Qaeda neither understood nor respected.

And the Sunni Arabs of Iraq made a choice.

They saw Al-Qaeda at its best — volunteer freedom fighters come from around the world to fight for them — and they saw America at its worst, incompetent, insensitive, vacillating and violent.

And they chose the United States.

They decided that the future of their families, their children and their values was better served by aligning with the United States against the terrorists and against the fanatics.

What those Sunni Arabs in Iraq came to understand is the basic truth of this conflict. The war unleashed nine years ago is not a clash of civilizations between Islam and the west. It is a clash between civilization and barbarism, and in that clash the Americans and true Muslims are on the same side.

I have met many Muslims in the last nine years, in Iraq, in Pakistan, in Indonesia, Turkey, Nigeria, Kenya, Algeria, on the West Bank, Italy, France, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Syria, Lebanon and in many other countries who have reached the same conclusion.

Many — most — of these Muslims do not approve of many of the features in western and American life. Many — most — of these Muslims have profound differences with certain aspects of American foreign policy. I have engaged in some bitter and tough discussions during the last nine years, and like to think that maybe I have learned a few things.

But as we look back on the nine years since 9/11, one thing needs to kept clearly in view. The more the world’s Muslims see of Al-Qaeda and its agenda of indiscriminate murder, the less they like it.

And there is something more. Over the years I’ve also had the good fortune to meet many of the Americans who have served on the front lines of this conflict. I hear the same message from them. When General Petraeus and Secretary Gates denounced the Qu’ran-burning loons in Florida, they weren’t just speaking as PC commanders at the top. They were speaking out of the experience of American warfighters who have learned in the last nine years that at the end of the day the Muslim majority isn’t our enemy in the war on terror. That majority is our best and our most important ally in winning it.

Over and over in Iraq, American soldiers turned near-defeat into victory as they built relationships with Arab Muslims. American commanders staked the lives of the men under their command on the word of the sheikhs, the tribal elders, the village notables — and that word proved true. They gave good information, provided honest help, and thanks to their wisdom, their courage and their integrity Al-Qaeda in Iraq was pushed back.

This means many things, but here’s one of the most important. For the next generation, the American military is going to be led by people whose formative experience was the establishment of relations of trust and respect with angry, frustrated and suspicious Muslims under combat conditions in the Middle East. The American military knows deep in its guts that working with Muslims is the key to beating the bad guys.

...after all, the Sunni of Iraq rejected extremism in the face of elections that showed just how large the Shi'a majority was--they'd been led to believe the Shi'a were even a minority--and reprisals by Moqtada al-Sadr and other armed Shi'ite groups. The combination made Sunni resistance to the new Iraq an existential matter in which the odds did not favor continued existence. Thus it was effectively the liberation of Iraq that made the Sunni decide to come down on the side of civilization rather than barbarity. The rest of the essay seems pretty much right.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 11, 2010 1:24 PM