Abu Muqawama: Post
Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS. Abu Muqawama retains the right to delete comments that include words that incite violence; are predatory, hateful, or intended to intimidate or harass; or degrade people on the basis of gender, race, class, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. In summary, don't be a jerk.
Yemen
I am hardly the pro's pro on Yemen, but I want to call two things to your attention. The first is this excellent reported essay from yesterday's New York Times Magazine by Bobby Worth, who I can say has done some solid reporting from Yemen for the past year at some personal cost. It's great to read a talented reporter -- and all-around good guy -- like Bobby in long form. Second, I cannot find anything about this on the Washington Institute's website, but April Alley and Chris Boucek are supposed to be speaking there at an event tomorrow on Yemen which I would most definitely attend if I did not have other business. Those two would be at the top of my list on people to consult on matters relating to Yemen (residing in or around the 202 area code), and I am sick to miss the event. So if you have the chance, work in DC and can find the details, do attend.
no body cares about yemen.
no body cares about yemen. unless they start exporting qat.
"The Koreans - they
"The Koreans - they discovered Islam." ROFL.
Yemen and isolationism go together like cheese on a cheeseburger. Why not just let Yemen be Yemen? With a big fence around it? "Senator Cornpone, what is your Yemen policy?"
Alas, if Senator Cornpone is running for President, he needs a Yemen policy. If his Yemen policy is "let Yemen be Yemen, with a big fence around it," he has a serious problem. His problem is that Washington is full of Yemen experts. "People to consult on matters relating to Yemen."
And to these experts, "let Yemen be Yemen" translates as: you're fired. Worse, if Pres. Cornpone starts firing Yemen experts, what experts will he fire next? If you let Yemen be Yemen, pretty soon you might let Paraguay be Paraguay. Or Kenya be Kenya. Or... you see the problem. It's a very dangerous slippery slope. Experts everywhere agree on that.
Especially since experts have beers with reporters, and reporters write for USA Today, and the Senator's prospective voters get USA Today gratis at the Quality Inn. You might just think that April Alley and Chris Boucek are young, dynamic, talented people and can go do something else with their lives. Outside the 202 area code, even. But Sen. Cornpone knows better - or at least, his handlers do.
Something most Americans don't realize: when our soldiers get their balls blown off in Afghanistan, handing out Bibles and chocolate, they are actually performing a valuable service to their soft and cowardly compatriots such as myself. Not by giving Pashtoons Bibles and chocolate, a doubtful service even to the Pashtoons. Rather, by sacrificing their young healthy bodies to barbaric Yemeni fuckwads who, after watching too much CNN and reading Rabi'a al-Cheeba, decide that life is not worth living if you're not blowing up Americans, they are performing a ritual sacrifice of patriotic martyrdom which the rest of us assholes will only truly appreciate once it is no longer performed.
Why do barbaric fuckwads fight? For glory. America rules the world, so blowing up Americans is glorious. But which is more glorious? Blowing up an airplane, a shopping mall or a movie theater? Or blowing up American soldiers, defeating a neocolonialist imperial invasion sent (under bogus pretences of international development assistance, which we all know is just a cover for the Jews & BP) to relieve the blue monkeys of their $1 trillion in unobtainium? Don't think they don't have DVD players in Yemen. They can watch Avatar with Kufic subtitles all day long - stoned out of their gourds on that fine, fine, qat-laced Yemeni hash.
Problem is: if and when the Bibles & chocolate finally stop flowing, and the flower of Iowa is no longer dispatched as human sacrifices to the hippie Jesus of Pashtoonistan, it's back to Plan B. Those student visas look a lot juicier. It's more glorious to blow up soldiers. But it's still glorious to blow up JetBlue.
Just like imperialism, or anything for that matter, isolationism is not an effective policy if pursued as a half-measure. Isolationists and defeatists share the goal of getting America out of Yemen. But cooperation should be pursued with caution, because it's really quite easy to see us paying tribute to our new Yemeni overlords. Heck, that's pretty much how Europe solved its problem with the PLO.
As a foreign policy, "invade the world, invite the world" sucks. But it sucks less than the latter alone. Isolationism without isolation is not isolationism. The Romans, too, found this out the hard way. In 403 AD, Prudentius writes:
God, wishing to bring into partnership peoples of different speech and realms of discordant manners, determined that all the civilised world should be harnessed to one ruling power and bear gentle bonds in harmony under the yoke, so that love of their religion should hold men’s hearts in union; for no bond is made that is worthy of Christ unless unity of spirit leagues together the nations it associates... Let those who din into my ears once more the story of past disasters and ancient sorrows observe that in your time I suffer such things no longer. No barbarian foe shatters my bars with his spear, nor with strange arms and dress and hair goes roving through my captured city, carrying off my young men to bondage across the Alps.
John Lennon: older than you think. A century and change later, Gildas - no less the Jesus freak - is singing a different tune:
The barbarians being thus introduced as soldiers into the island to encounter, as they falsely said, any dangers in defence of their hospitable entertainers, obtain an allowance of provisions, which for some time being plentifully bestowed, stopped their doggish mouths. Yet they complain that their monthly supplies are not furnished in sufficient abundance, and they industriously aggravate each occasion of quarrel, saying that unless more liberality is shown them they will break the treaty and plunder the whole island. In a short time they follow up their threats with deeds. [...] Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to the ground, of high walls, holy altars, fragments of human bodies, covered with livid clots of coagulated blood, looking if they had been squeezed together in a press...
Which I suppose is what you get when it's 9/11, but your lofty towers are 5 stories max.
The probability that April Alley or Chris Boucek, or any of the Yemen experts from #3 down, has even heard of Gildas or Prudentius? Zero percent. The probability that they favor more engagement and international development assistance, with appropriate safeguards, for Yemen? To stop said doggish mouths? One hundred percent. Professor Santayana was definitely on to something.
After I posted that I was
After I posted that I was concerned, for whatever scraps remain of my credibility, about that "one hundred percent." After all, I'd divined Chris Boucek's position on Yemen without even reading it:
In the years since, the United States has stepped up substantially its military and intelligence cooperation with the Yemeni government in an effort to combat terrorism, but the fragile Arab republic faces much bigger problems. Without more help from abroad, it will become a danger far beyond its borders.
"Yet they complain that their monthly supplies are not furnished in sufficient abundance."
Anyone got some spare "supplies"? Looking for someone to "help"? What would we get if we all held a bake sale, and bought Chris and April first-class one-way tickets to Sanaa, so they can cavort with their blue monkeys 24/7?
I suppose the answer is: a new top two Yemen experts. For lo, the supply of US foreign policy is inexhaustible. Will the Carnegie Foundation ever run out of money? Jesus Lord God, we can only hope.
@Mencius Moldbug Yes, yes,
@Mencius Moldbug
Yes, yes, we get it:
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"
But let me ask you Mencius, what would *you* have done about those accursed Nazarenes?
I thought only black inner
I thought only black inner city youth from Anacostia say 'trifling'.
In fact I've already
In fact I've already accepted Julian the Apostate as my personal savior. There's a small problem with his birth certificate, but we hope to have it sorted out by 2012...
Again, the journalists, the
Again, the journalists, the media and the experts are late. This is too late to focus on Yemen, and thus the global Network of Strategic Minds of the West will not understand Yemen.
Yemen is a beautiful country, with beautiful people living in it. And I wish they stay strong no matter what happens, America and its allies will wage war again and again because they are getting close the end of their supremacy. Yemen, just like afghanistan will be the next target, but they will stay strong and my brothers in Mukhala, in Mareb, in Ibb and in Saada will fight.
Good luck
About the "excellent
About the "excellent reported essay from yesterday's New York Times Magazine by Bobby Worth" it couldnt be further from the truth. This "essay" is propaganda. Warmonging. A very acute methodical story on how to portray poor people as threats while we bomb them.
Very awful and appaling. Not surprising coming from such a mainstream media outlet, the NYT. There is nothing in the essay but a list of exageration and bits of scaring information about qaeda video editors and graphic designer.
The amazing irony is that the only objective piece of information is about these 4 men that were sleeping in a house in a remote village and that were murdered by an american cruise missile shot from offshore. That is the story. The real violence, blind violence, comes from America, but all along these 10 pages you are forced to believe that the Evil is on the other side. Amazing.
1. We kill
2. they're poor
3. they're evil, evil, evil, evil
3b. they're evil, evil, evil, evil
3.c they're evil, evil, evil, evil
4. what are we going to do with these evil men that (could) kill us?
Do you remember point 1. ? No.
Ex- When will you learn its
Ex- When will you learn its not about the 202, it all about the 703!
Well done Mencius; Julian is
Well done Mencius; Julian is one of my heroes too.
I get that a significant
I get that a significant portion of the Americans no longer see a future for other parts of the world and wish to wall them off, to enclose them in their own filth and deprivation, to leave the to their own devices and to safely shut them away so as to render them harmless.
My issue with the - aside from what I see as a massive moral deficiency - in short summed up by the idea that if you get to drive a Lexus then shouldn't;'t we all get that same opportunity - is that there is no real way to make these countries harmless.
In fact the more that we shut them off, the more we wall them away, the more they will climb up and over that wall and throw Semtex at us.
Not saying that I have the answers but I doubt if cutting off a dangerous place and leaving them to fester in their own poverty and remain shackled to the out dated and barbaric doctrines of radicalism or despotism is the best solution. But I do understand the attractiveness of saying , " we've been doing this for nearly a decade, let them deal with themselves for a while,."
One last note on a side issue - this wile be my last post here at AM under my own name. I'll soon be moving to a new job, one that for valid reasons needs it employees to remain anonymous on sites like this.
But I'll be around, posting under a witty pseudonym, possible recognizable by my child like optimism.
Let's nuke 'em. We still
Let's nuke 'em. We still have over 10,000. Let's get rid of our warheads by getting rid of shit holes in the Muslim world. Syria, the UAE, Malaysia and certain parts of Indonesia can stay, but nuke the rest.
I get that a significant
I get that a significant portion of the Americans no longer see a future for other parts of the world and wish to wall them off, to enclose them in their own filth and deprivation, to leave the to their own devices and to safely shut them away so as to render them harmless.
I wish it were a significant portion. Actually, I'm afraid, it's an insignificant portion.
In the abstract, I prefer imperialism to isolationism. You want the mission civilatrice? Okay, then. But to civilize, you need to rule. Aid without conquest is not ruling, but ruining. Compare Somalia to Somaliland. Compare either to the rule of the British or the Italians.
In 1945, America found an effort to civilize the non-European world. It destroyed that effort. It left filth and deprivation, and called it the "Third World." Originally, as you may know, a term of optimism. Should we praise ourselves for this? Au contraire - one day, we will have to go through a serious, German-style period of national guilt. We didn't operate any gas chambers, our intentions were the best, but our actions destroyed a lot of lives nonetheless. Manslaughter remains homicide.
But I just can't see USG as it exists today reinventing imperialism. Isolationism is a serious stretch - imperialism is impossible. And if it's possible, it can only be preceded by a serious period of isolationism.
My issue with the - aside from what I see as a massive moral deficiency - in short summed up by the idea that if you get to drive a Lexus then shouldn't we all get that same opportunity?
You know, I used to be a libertarian and think exactly the same way. Your issue is a logical extension of liberal principles shared by almost all Americans. It leads to open borders - "no person is illegal." And believe me, once this principle is drummed into all our heads by the educational system, our children will consider us unbelievably evil for ever having seen it another way. Morally, what's the difference between closed borders and apartheid? Not much.
But when I believed this, I argued it with my father. Who at the time was economic counselor in US Embassy Lagos. He said: if you open the borders of the First World, all that will happen is that the First World will turn into the Third. The difference between Japan and Nigeria is not a matter of constitutional language. It's the result of the fact that Japan is inhabited by Japanese and Nigeria is inhabited by Nigerians.
Your Lexus was not built in Nigeria. If you merge the populations of Japan and Nigeria, the result will be a lot more like the latter. The former may not even survive. Result: no one gets to drive a Lexus. Is this justice? Whom does it profit?
When principles plus logic lead to an absurd result, which do you question? Not the logic. If you look for more cases in which your liberal principles, extended logically, lead to an absurd result, you will find them. Your logic is as good as ever. The trouble is in the principles, and here you must be your own guide.
is that there is no real way to make these countries harmless. In fact the more that we shut them off, the more we wall them away, the more they will climb up and over that wall and throw Semtex at us.
As Hume reminded us, you're entitled to your own principles but not your own facts. Securing a border is easy. India can do it. Been to India lately? If India can do it, Google can do it. If Google can do it, America can do it. Heck, even the Soviets could do it, though their barbed wire pointed inward not outward. But a fence is a fence.
Border security is a virtuous cycle. The more secure your border is, the more extreme methods are needed to penetrate it, the more extreme the security response can be. Anyone desperate enough to infiltrate a two-layer razor fence with mines in between is desperate enough that he can't really complain when a robot sniper blows his head off.
What is missing is not the physical technology, but the will. Isolationism - a gigantic break with the 20C US foreign policy tradition - implies that will.
Switzerland has avoiding
Switzerland has avoiding invading the world while also having a large population of foreigners (though they don't receive citizenship). Seems to have worked out pretty well for them.
This source has the E.U giving 638 million in aid to the Palestinians annually (I wasn't aware they'd previously had a PLO problem). Mearsheimer & Walt have the U.S giving Israel 3 billion annually. Wikipedia reports that for 2009 Obama has proposed 130 billion in additional funding for the Iraq & Afghanistan wars. So even if true isolationism was not an option and we had to imitate the foreign policy idiocies of the E.U, that still seems a lot cheaper.
A possible distinction between India and the U.S is that it is still basically a third-world country. There are not as many economic migrants going over for jobs and there's less financial incentive to corrupt officials. If the U.S followed the Gulf State model we could also accommodate truly GUEST workers, who would send money home to their families and return to see them rather than bringing them here. Lant Pritchett has begrudgingly accepted that sort of compromise, and I now I have to give credit to Will Wilkinson for advocating the abolition of birthright citizenship. Bryan Caplan goes even further by advocating heavy taxes on them to bribe nativists (which I would reframe as a bond for good behavior, and allocate each a sponsor-employer held liable for any problems including failure to show up for deportation when their visa expires). About half of all illegals are on expired visas, including basically all of the non-hispanics (the "semtex" issue should be quite manageable, don't give them visas).
I agree with Duke Nukem, if
I agree with Duke Nukem, if they want to return to the stone age, let's help them out.
This is such an excellent
This is such an excellent site, wherein reality is a model used to describe philosophy.
Add your comment