Center for a New American Security

Marc Sageman has strong words for Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller and others:

Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”

 

“This rhetoric,” he added, “is not cost-free.”

1. Yesterday, it was Gen. Mattis. Today's big cup o' ice water comes from Sec. Gates:

In his most pointed comment, Mr. Gates said that “we also have to think about, frankly, the use of the U.S. military in another country in the Middle East.”

I have written about how horrified I am that so many folks here in Washington are so casually considering military intervention in Libya -- just 24 months after the negotiation of a status of forces agreement effectively wound down the U.S. war in Iraq. Many* of the people I have read advocating for military intervention in Libya

a) have no expertise in no-fly zones or other military operations,

b) will not be the ones responsible for the lives of any U.S. troops committed to such an intervention,

c) were prominent advocates for another military intervention in an Arab state a few years back and,

d) were themselves no where to be found when Capt. Exum and his Merry Band of Rangers actually ended up fighting in Iraq several months later (and thus were not on hand to learn the lessons about the limits of power than some of us did).

The U.S. military should give the president every available option on Libya and should plan for possible contingencies. But it is good to hear Gen. Mattis, Adm. Mullen and Sec. Gates informing what has thus far been a woefully informed public debate. And it is good to see some needed push-back against what, again, has been an entirely too casual dialogue about possible military intervention.

2. That's a great segue to this heart-breaking, beautifully written piece by Greg Jaffe in today's Washington Post about Lt. Gen. John Kelly, USMC, and his son, who was killed in Afghanistan. I myself fought in Afghanistan in 2002 and again in 2004 and, since 2009, have pretty consistently advocated for counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan because I think they support the president's strategy to end that war. But when my cousin leaves active duty next month, my family will, for the first time since 2000, be one of those many, many American families that do not have any members serving on active duty or fighting overseas. And it will then be my turn to feel a little guilty about the incredible sacrifices that have been made by far too few Americans and their loved ones.

3. Finally, one of the best pieces of investigative journalism I have read in quite some time is this article in the Washington Monthly on the lucrative and poorly regulated terrorism counsultancy business. We basically have a cadre of yahoos running around the country teaching our police forces to fear any and all Muslims, which, if you're trying to radicalize your Muslim population, seems like a damn good way to go about doing it. Very few of these yahoos have any formal training or education in radicalization or currents of thought in political Islam. One consultant they profile is from the minority Christian community in Jordan and has a decidedly hostile view of Islam which he proceeds to share with his audience. Now, don't get me wrong, some of the very best scholars of Islam and political Islam in particular have been Arab Christians and Jews -- you can learn a lot from Albert Hourani (Protestant, Lebanese) and Sami Zubayda (Jewish, Iraqi), to name but two. But this article reminded me of this one scholar who often consults for the U.S. government and teaches about radical Islam without ever mentioning his ties to a certain right-wing Christian militia during the Lebanese Civil War. That has always rubbed me the wrong way.

What am I not reading? Well, Tom Friedman gets the bit about Google Earth and Bahrain right, but all the rest of this column -- the stuff about Salam Fayyad, al-Jazeera's coverage of Israel, President Obama and the Beijing Olympics -- just strikes me as crazy. Students of and experts in the politics of the Arabic-speaking world have never been big fans of Tom Friedman, but I have never seen a column of his greeted with such derision as this one, and I understand why. In defense of the man, let me just say that I once spent six months of my life reading newspaper dispatches in English, French and Arabic from the Lebanese Civil War, and Friedman's reporting for both the Associated Press and the New York Times stood out as top-notch. I sure can't defend this column, though.

*Note: "Many" does not mean "all," gang. Crisis Group has called for a no-fly zone, to pick but one example, and no one would dare accuse the folks on staff there of being callow about military interventions in the Middle East. I have read others make a case -- responsibly, and aware of the gravity of their recommendation -- for military intervention, and the majority of my above criticism does not apply to those people. So relax, David Kenner!

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

This staff editorial in the National Review -- like so much of the rhetoric deployed in opposition to the proposed mosque near Ground Zero -- is disgusting. The passions expressed in it -- and it is, fundamentally, an argument based on emotion and not reason -- are a threat to American values and freedom. On the one hand, you would think "conservatives" would be pretty clear on matters related to the freedom to practice one's religion -- not to mention private property rights. But when that religion is Islam, what passes for "conservativism" these days apparently takes a vacation.

Writing as a Christian, I am firmly within the majority in the United States. As a Protestant Christian, I am also within the majority. And as an Evangelical Protestant Christian, I belong to the largest subset of all Christians in the United States. I treasure the way the 1st Amendment protects my rights to worship. But I also understand that the 1st Amendment -- the "first draft" of which was written by one of my ancestors -- exists more to protect religious minorities than those of us in the majority. It's an amendment written with Huguenots and Quakers and Catholics in mind. Where the Bill of Rights really has its value is as a check against the tyranny of the majority. It's for times like these when the passions of Americans -- stoked by the memory of September 11th -- cause us to do and say things that spit in the face of the freedoms we claim to cherish.

Defending America starts with defending our values. "We" are America. And "we" are Christians and Jews and Muslims and Athiests. A movement to restrict the freedom of one of us to worship -- and a corresponding move to demonize a minority religion -- is an affront to us all.

As the Republican mayor of New York put it yesterday, "I believe this is as important a test of the separation of church and state as any we may see in our lifetime - and it is critically important that we get it right."

Update: Kevin D. Williamson of the National Review is quite right that his editorial board never called for government action. That doesn't mean the stance offered by the National Review isn't an affront to the principle of freedom of religion as enshrined in law through the 1st Amendment -- which is why I led with that text. This about more than doing the legal thing; it's about doing the right thing by way of American values. Demonizing a minority sect is not the right thing. Neither is seeking to restrict their right to free assembly through a public campaign of intimidation. (Also, I don't the sense that Mr. Williamson has ever stepped inside a mosque, but I'm sure most mosques in the United States would welcome the debate he suggests. Just take your shoes off, guys.)

Regular readers of this blog wont be surprised to hear that I've been banging on about ways to do something useful in Pakistan. Just for a change, this time, I've been at it over at Foreign Policy's afpakchannel. There are some quotes in there that haven't seen the light of day before. Such as:

"Of all the terrorist attacks carried out so far, no American culprit has been caught, no one from Britain and no Israeli. All those who have been apprehended belong here. And with great sorrow, I say that they have been men with beards (religious men)," said one speaker, who holds a high-profile position within Pakistan's religious education establishment."

And:

One of Pakistan's highest-ranking religious officials said of extremists; "In religious garb they organised hatred into a force. Now it is an organised force. These people are in society... The attacks on army installations were done by their followers who are in the army."

As well as:

In a madrassa in the rural hinterland of Punjab, an elderly former Barelvi leader with still considerable influence within the community's nationwide network said Barelvis should arm and organise a militia to take on the Taliban. "Our ideology is lying in its grave. And before long, if we do nothing, our lifeless bodies will be joining it," he said in Punjabi.

Read the whole thing here.

A few months ago, I read Hilary Synnott's International Institute for Strategic Studies report Transforming Pakistan. I thought at the time that Sir Hilary's suggestion that the international community basically take it on itself to transform Pakistan was unrealistic and an even bigger disaster waiting to happen. However, I'm beginning to think that a major game change is needed and the only question remains who the real domestic partners should be. The best option, and the most willing potential allies, are the general public. The question is how to approach them and how to tool the options avaiable to the international community so that they actually work effectively.

To see someone else expertly demonstrate what kind of mess we are talking about here, read (and watch) this great bit of reporting from Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times.

"..in Pakistan, the lack of a workable tax system feeds something more menacing: a festering inequality in Pakistani society, where the wealth of its most powerful members is never redistributed or put to use for public good. That is creating conditions that have helped spread an insurgency that is tormenting the country and complicating American policy in the region"

Way to go, WTVF-TV Channel 5. After idiots at one of Nashville's television stations aired this ridiculously irresponsible and fear-mongering report on a group of apparently peaceful Muslims who have been living in rural Tennessee since the early 1980s, someone spray-painted epithets and Crusader crosses all over a mosque in Nashville. Watch this report and tell me if this in any way approximates responsible journalism. The hero of the story ends up being the rural country sheriff, John Vinson, who refuses to take the bait he's offered from the reporter and instead says reasonable things like, "The way I look at it, their customs are obviously different from most people in Stewart County. But still, they have a right to that."

Which just goes to show you that we Tennesseans are tolerant, good-natured people at heart until some carpetbagger reporter shows up trying to cause trouble. I mean, really, what must people at Northwestern's famous school of journalism think of this alumnus? The essence of this dude's report is, "We cannot say for sure that these people are not terrorists, so we're going to show some footage of terrorist training camps." Unbelievable.

[To be fair, I think this is the first time "Tennessee" and "Islam" have ever appeared as tags on the same post.]

Update: The Columbia Journalism Review weighs in.

Okay, it was a really good speech. I finally listened to it -- I had read it on paper yesterday morning -- and he nailed it. I mean, he botched a lot of the Arabic words (hijab, al-Azhar, etc.), but it was good. I suspect that I agree with the Washington Post that all anyone will remember will be the Israel stuff, and that's too bad. And I even agree with the very end of Krauthammer's unintentionally hilarious and epic whine about settlements today (in Israel, only far-right MPs struck the same tone as Krauthammer yesterday) when he says this might cause some leaders in the Arabic-speaking world to just sit on their hands and expect Obama to deliver Israeli concessions with no movement on their sides. (Because this was exactly the vibe I got during Abu Mazen's press conference with Obama last week.)

But still, it was a really good speech. I watched it using this cool interactive feature provided by the New York Times, so if you have not seen the speech yet, click here.

Matt Duss responds to my post from yesterday:

By offering democratic reform as a component to the war on terror, which many in the Muslim world see – rightly or wrongly — as a war against Islam, Bush alienated at the outset scores of potential reformist allies. By then promoting the war in Iraq as a showpiece for his broader agenda (”This could be your country! Who’s in?”) he discredited it even more.

I met up with an old commander of mine last night for a beer, and while I was waiting at the bar, I got caught up on some of the reading I had missed over the weekend. Included in that reading was this article in the Financial Times on Islam, the Middle East and democracy. For those of you who have read Hourani's classic, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 1798-1939,this article offers little new by way of intellectual history. The first part is basically a quick tour through the life and thought of Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, Mohammad Abduh, Rachid Rida, etc. (I am not sure about the declarative statements the author makes about al-Afghani and Abduh, though. al-Afghani in particular did not leave much of a written record of his thought, so I have never really been able to get a clear handle on his thought or that of his student, Abduh. Which, granted, may just be because I am not a specialist in 19th-Century Arabic thought but -- assuming it's not just me -- might also be why the inheritors of the legacy of al-Afghani and Abduh include everyone from Arab secularists to radical Islamists.)

But the article asks a key question -- the key question, perhaps.

Unless the Arab countries and the broader Middle East can find a way out of this pit of autocracy, their people – more than half of them under 25 – will be condemned to bleak lives of despair, humiliation and rage. Western support for autocracy and indulgence of corruption in this region, far from securing stability, breeds extremism and, in extremis, failed states. It will, of course, be primarily up to the citizens of these countries to claw their way out of that pit. But the least they can expect from the west is not to keep stamping on their fingers.

One of the tragedies of the neo-conservative era (2001-2006) is that it got the ends right and the means so very, very wrong -- thus discrediting the ends in both the Arabic-speaking world and in domestic U.S. politics. How the hell we Americans managed to discredit the idea of democracy promotion at home and abroad is anyone's guess.

Any sane policy would be devoted to preventing the evolution of a lethal form of radical Islam, in no small part by finding space for a thoughtful Islamism to emerge.

That is no longer easy. The freedom agenda proclaimed by George W. Bush has been discredited. Yet the insight brought to the west so violently by al-Qaeda on September 11 2001 and subsequently – that tyranny breeds terrorism and instability, infantilises politics and holds back development – is no less valid. Not the least of the challenges facing Barack Obama is to rescue that insight before it is too late.

I very seriously doubt that the United States -- facing the problems it faces in the Arabic-speaking world and the initiatives with which it needs regional help (the Iranian nuclear program, Iraqi reconciliation, the Middle East Peace Process) -- has democracy promotion anywhere on its list of priorities.

That is understandable. But sad nonetheless.

What are we, France?

A Muslim woman was asked to leave her place in line at a credit union in Southern Maryland and be served in a back room because the head scarf she wore for religious reasons violated the institution's "no hats, hoods or sunglasses" policy, the woman said yesterday.

Update.