Was Osama Right?

Filed under: Middle East

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Princeton Professor Bernard Lewis notes the difference between U.S. and Russian policy towards the Middle East during the Cold War:

During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: "What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?"

He then draws an comparison with current U.S. policy towards Osama bin Laden:

Stage One of the jihad was to drive the infidels from the lands of Islam; Stage Two--to bring the war into the enemy camp, and the attacks of 9/11 were clearly intended to be the opening salvo of this stage. The response to 9/11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock, and it is noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then. The U.S. actions in Afghanistan and in Iraq indicated that there had been a major change in the U.S., and that some revision of their assessment, and of the policies based on that assessment, was necessary. More recent developments, and notably the public discourse inside the U.S., are persuading increasing numbers of Islamist radicals that their first assessment was correct after all, and that they need only to press a little harder to achieve final victory. It is not yet clear whether they are right or wrong in this view. If they are right, the consequences--both for Islam and for America--will be deep, wide and lasting.

Click through the link to read the whole article, well worth your time, and offer your thoughts in the comments section: How is America to deal with the anti-democratic forces in the Middle East? The carrot or the stick? It's a vital question.

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Comments

tom says:

With the Russians showing so much strength, that must be the reason they prevailed in Afghanistan and throughout the 80's and 90's. Good analysis, if by good we mean bad and by analysis we mean whatever first comes to mind.

Aris Katsaris says:

Stage Two--to bring the war into the enemy camp, and the attacks of 9/11 were clearly intended to be the opening salvo of this stage. The response to 9/11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock,

Oh, what absurdities. This guy is talking as if he's addressing a crowd of uninformed idiots that are willing to swallow whatever "clear" conclusions this guy wants us to swallow.

The response to 9/11 (taking the war to Afghanistan) was quite well anticipated by Al Qaeda -- on 9/10 they murdered via bomb a leading member of the Northern Alliance, for example, an action whose timing would be meaningless if they didn't anticipate the Afghanistan attack.

Al Qaeda wanted America either to withdraw *or* to militarily overextend itself -- either scenario they were prepared to use to their advantage and gain a victory of prestige either way.

In this the Bush administration obliged them marvelously. Instead of just Afghanistan, they even attacked Iraq, something which must have been beyond Al Qaeda's (and Tehran's) wildest dreams.

The question is whether you ought to use carrots and sticks. The question is about figuring out which people and what ideology is fighting you, and which people and with what ideology you need to fight back.

By attacking even a secular dictator like Saddam, and using tyrannical methods like torture and abolition of habeas corpus, America simply displayed its hostility amd contempt to the entire muslim world, and helped justify every piece of jihadi propaganda.

La Russophobe says:

TOM: I'm not sure you've thought through your position carefully enough. Afghanistan didn't rise up against the USSR in a purely grass-roots action, it had a massive amount of assistance from the US, just as North Vietnam had help from Russia and North Korean had help from China. What's more, it's a fact that the US has not had one single incident of domestic terrorism since the massive military attack in the Middle East. If you simply put that down to dumb luck, your comments are hardly more worthy of the term "analysis" than that which you seek to criticize.

ARIS: "This guy" is a professor at Princeton. His qualifications are undoubtedly better than yours, so I'd be careful if I were you. That kind of hubris is not likely to lead to your views being taken more seriously. I think that the idea that you personally have some sort of pipeline into the soul of Al Quaeda is flatly absurd (you certainly don't link to any source material to support your claim about what they anticipated), and you totally ignore the fact that America has been 100% terror-free on the homeland since then. Your analysis is noticably barren of specific proposals, and the statement "the question is about figuring out which people and what ideology is fighting you, and which people and with what ideology you need to fight back" is nothing but a vacant platitude.

Aris Katsaris says:

"This guy" is a professor at Princeton. His qualifications are undoubtedly better than yours

Oh, arguing from *authority*, how can you ever go wrong with that.

and you totally ignore the fact that America has been 100% terror-free on the homeland since then.

Not counting the Anthrax attacks, you mean?

Anyway, I didn't ignore it at all. They have you where they want you, why would they be attacking you again on the homeland?

They only attack the countries whose policies they want to be changed -- like e.g. Spain just before their elections.

As a sidenote, I suggest that if you are trying to present this as a global war on islamofascism that's crucial for the defense of whole of the Western world, that you start being less parochial about *which* attacks matter. You won't be making friends in Spain or UK if you ignore *those* attacks, as you just did.

you certainly don't link to any source material to support your claim about what they anticipated

No, I only provided the plain fact that on 9/10 the leader of the Northern Alliance was assassinated. But what are plain facts in the face of ideology.

The "professor" you talk about didn't link to any source material either about his own claims.

Your analysis is noticably barren of specific proposals,

LOL, and this guy's was?

Here's some specific proposals, just for starters: Restore Habeas Corpus. Abolish torture. Define your war as a war of secularism and universal human rights against religious extremism and religious tyranny.

If you'd done just this last thing you'd have realized from the that that Sadr and the death-squads of SCIRI were an even bigger enemy in this was than Saddam Hussein was.

But you didn't, so you brought them into power.

Aris Katsaris says:

"This guy" is a professor at Princeton. His qualifications are undoubtedly better than yours

Oh, arguing from *authority*, how can you ever go wrong with that.

and you totally ignore the fact that America has been 100% terror-free on the homeland since then.

Not counting the Anthrax attacks, you mean?

Anyway, I didn't ignore it at all. They have you where they want you, why would they be attacking you again on the homeland?

They only attack the countries whose policies they want to be changed -- like e.g. Spain just before their elections.

you certainly don't link to any source material to support your claim about what they anticipated

No, I only provided the plain fact that on 9/10 the leader of the Northern Alliance was assassinated. But what are plain facts in the face of ideology.

The "professor" you talk about didn't link to any source material either about his own claims.

Your analysis is noticably barren of specific proposals,

LOL, and this guy's was?

If you'd done just this last thing you'd have realized from the that that Sadr and the death-squads of SCIRI were an even bigger enemy in this was than Saddam Hussein was.

But you didn't, so you brought them into power.

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Was Osama Right?

Filed under: Middle East

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