Center for a New American Security

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!

The debate over whether or not Lady Gaga or Israeli settlements is a bigger driver of conflict and anti-Americanism in the Middle East has heated up in spectacularly hilarious fashion since Brett Stephens wrote his original op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and I responded by posting videos of Haifa Wehbe, noting that sex and pop culture already mix in the Arabic-language public space almost as much as they do in ours. Stephens responded to some of the criticism that's been aimed his way here and makes the perfectly uncontroversial claim that America should stand up for its principles, its liberties, and its allies. Well... yeah. (The unasked and more controversial question is whether or not confronting Israel on settlements is good or bad for both U.S. and Israeli security.)

One point I made in my post, though, was that those whose understanding of the strands and evolution of Islamist thought is that of a learned amateur should be very careful holding forth on the subject and using the writings of people like Sayyid Qutb as evidence to support their claims. Someone with a more sophisticated grasp of the literature is likely to make your life miserable, which is one reason why I keep my mouth shut on the subject. Thomas Hegghammer briefly weighed in through the comments section of my post, and as I amended the post to make clear, I follow two rules concerning the study of Islamist ideologies:

1. Thomas Hegghammer's analysis is correct.
2. When you believe that Thomas Hegghammer's analysis is incorrect, refer back to Rule #1.

Read what Thomas wrote on Foreign Policy in response to Stephens. It's not that Palestine is the only issue Islamists care about, but it is an issue they care about, and in a big way. And that has potential consequences for policy-makers as they try to reduce drivers of conflict and lower levels of anti-Americanism in the region. Pretending otherwise, or walling all issues concerning Israel and the Palestinians off from your analysis, is just silly.

Brett Stephens starts his op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal with the following question:

Pop quiz—What does more to galvanize radical anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world: (a) Israeli settlements on the West Bank; or (b) a Lady Gaga music video?

You see where Stephens is going with this one, right? I mean, you don't really need to even read the rest of the column, the point of which is that Islamist outrage over decadent western culture is a more significant driver of conflict and anti-American sentiment in the region than Israeli settlements.

I have no idea if this is actually true. It seems to me that I have seen both empirical evidence and anecdotal evidence lending credence to the idea that outrage over the plight of the Palestinians is, in fact, a driver of conflict and/or anti-American sentiment in the Arabic-speaking world, but there may be more sophisticated research and analysis out there that proves otherwise. And Stephens leans heavily on the writings of Sayyid Qutb to support his arguments, which makes me nervous, because for all his talents, Stephens is no scholar of Islam, and a few things that should not be studied as a hobby include:

1. Brain surgery
2. Multilinear algebra
3. The strands and evolution of Islamist thought

Many serious scholars have written very good work on Islamic fundamentalism, and for those wishing to learn more, allow me to recommend, among many other works, Marty and Appleby's multi-volume Fundamentalism Project and Hourani's single-volume, highly-readable Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939. The latter is a great primer on the intellectual roots of pretty much all the major ideas in the Arabic-speaking world of the 20th Century -- to include Arab nationalism and Islamism.

But I am not weighing in to either defend or attack Israeli settlements or to explain the intellectual history of the Arabic-speaking world -- two subjects I know just enough about to know that I should keep my mouth shut and let the experts do the talking. The purpose of this post is to highlight a key lesson of Middle East peacemaking: Leave Lady Gaga the hell out of it.

Brett Stephens may have read a few books on Islamist thought, but how many Arabic-language music videos has he watched? I ask because I have seen a lot (as they play pretty much 24-7 in 90% of the cafes and restaurants of the Arabic-speaking world), and I have also, this very morning, made a careful study of the oeuvre of Lady Gaga to determine which are more provocative sexually. The verdict? Lady Gaga is, in the words of my office mate (like Sayyid Qutb, an alumnus of the University of Northern Colorado!), "a brilliant art school trainwreck." She is a ridiculous mess who uses sex among many other provocations to entertain. And as I have well-documented soft spot in my heart for Italian girls from Westchester County, I feel I need to stick up for her.

Haifa Wehbe, meanwhile? Well, judge for yourselves, but whereas Lady Gaga is a Tisch School-trained provocateuse, Hizballah-supporting Haifa strikes me as a less sophisticated one-trick pony pretty much mixing sex with music with, well, more sex. Regardless, with music videos like this one, Stephens can hardly argue that Lady Gaga is the one importing sexual provocation into the Arabic-speaking world and stirring things up, can he?

And here is Her Gaganess for comparison.

And, back to Haifa.

By contrast, look at this tame video from Lady Gaga.

Uh... Crap. Okay, maybe Brett Stephens has a point. Dang. Me airing that last (in retrospect, NSFW) video might have just started a holy war in some internet cafe in Sana'a. Sorry?

UPDATE: There are some good and very funny comments below. Thomas Hegghammer even briefly weighs in to shake his head at Stephens's op-ed. Just so you guys know, I obey two simple rules when it comes to studying Islamist ideology (that I have borrowed from Will McCants): (1) Thomas Hegghammer's analysis is correct. (2) If you find yourself in disagreement with Thomas Hegghammer, refer back to Rule #1.

I am determined to convince the United States government what an underutilized asset it possesses in Will McCants. So it is nice to see Will's blog, Jihadica, get a major shout-out in the New York Times along with another one of my heroes, Thomas Hegghammer:

For the Western analysts, being cited approvingly by a Qaeda figure can be unsettling.

“It is inevitably a little bit flattering,” said Thomas Hegghammer, a fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, who first pointed out Mr. Maqdisi’s complaint on the blog he edits, Jihadica. “But it does make me worry a bit about the implications of what I do and what I write.”

The home page of the Jihadica site, founded a year ago by the scholar William F. McCants, advertises itself with an anonymous quotation said to be taken from a survey of jihadists about Internet sites that monitor militant Islamism online: “It is, in my view, the most important and dangerous among the sites in this group.”

All this self-consciousness is multiplied by the Internet, which has become a recruiting tool for jihadists but is also uniquely vulnerable to spies and informers. The fact that Western scholars and defense analysts have occasionally proposed using influential theorists like Mr. Maqdisi to undermine jihadist movements only makes this worse.

I was supposed to have had dinner with Will and Hegghammer two weeks ago, but church obligations -- and the fact that Will lives off the metro -- conspired against me.

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.

You'll remember that I echoed Philip Bennett's lament in Sunday's Post that so many of the narratives to have emerged from the Iraq War have left out the voices of Iraqis themselves. The exception to the rule has been the work of Anthony Shadid, who is now back in Iraq and busying himself with speaking to ordinary Iraqis on the streets of Baghdad. Our understanding of Iraq and its peoples is much richer for his reporting, so read what he wrote today. Most reporters in Iraq are hard-working professionals who hustle to keep track of the latest military and diplomatic maneuvers. But an Arabic-speaker like Shadid can spend two hours at a schwarma stand and proceed to tell us more about Iraq than 90% of other stuff out there.

Give some credit, too, to Robert Pollock, who went to Lebanon for the Wall Street Journal and interviewed Muhammad Hussein Fadhlullah. This is a very good interview. Pollock presses Fadlallah on key questions but also allows him time to formulate cogent responses. The title of this post, actually, should have been "Talking with Arabs." Because listening to their responses is often more important than what we Westerners have to say.

Building off yesterday's extended thoughts on Hizballah, here are a few more quick readings on Hizballah and, more generally, Political Islam that have caught my eye over the past week:

1. Qifa Nabki on Hassan Nasrallah's latest speech.
2. Emile Hokayem on Political Islam and the West.
3. Nathan Field on "correcting" radical Islam. (more from WPR)
   
4. Josh Stacher on how the Gaza War weakened moderates in the Muslim Brotherhood.

The three convicted Bali Bombers were executed late last night by firing squad. Indonesian security forces await violent gatherings and events today. The three bombers were unrepentant to the end, glorifying in their celebrity all through their trial.

One of the convicted was Imran Samudra, and his jailhouse autobiography, Saya Melawan Teroris" (Me Against Terrorists) had sold over 10,000 copies over three print runs. (Plans to translate the book into other languages, including English, have been on hold since late 2005. The Indonesian Government has said it would be reviewing the book to evaluate banning its continued publication).

Counter-Radical publications have been less popular in terms of sales, though this may be more about notoriety than agreement.

This goes to the heart of the problem regarding de-radicalization programs and movements. In many ways, they require what could be euphemistically termed "Passionate Moderation", and that is an incredibly difficult emotion to stir.

There are, of course, the structural obstacles first. See this still-relevant report by the International Crisis Group on de-radicalisation programs in Indonesia. The ICG notes that the success of the programs are undermined by the problems within the prison system. Many critics have suggested that the Indonesian Government's failure to close off the Bali Bombers from the media heightened their celebrity and continued to fan the flames of the radical movement. On this score, the government cannot win, as if they had closed the prisoners off, they would have likely been subject to criticisms from simple mistreatment to torture.

But even if prison reform magically occurs, the energy needed to keep these programs going, and to make them relevant to the ones that need to be reached, will remain difficult. Simply put, MODERATION IS BORING. Regardless of how one ties recruitment into ANY group/movement to the need for young (men, especially) to find excitement, note that NONE of the "recruiting" movements stress even-handedness and balance.

So, how to counter the militant, the true believer? Arguably with someone who's been there, as the Indonesia program attempts to do. The experiences of those like Ed Husain are also interesting. (Husain's book is a wonderful read. It is available via Amazon.co.uk, but not in the US directly. Carlos bought it when the dollar was much stronger, interested readers in the US now have to deal with a tougher exchange rate).

Alternatively, there are those who have the same experience but not the same result. In this light, Carlos recommends the blog by Noor Huda Ismail. Ismail was for six years a student at the Al Mukmin Ngruki, the boarding school founded by Abu Bakkar Baasyir (spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah. Ismail is a contemporary to the Bali Bombers and many of their supporters.

Passionate Moderation is so hard to come by. On one level it may manifest in perceived hypocrisy. Carlos remembers fondly his time in Kosovo, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes (though Carlos does not partake of the tobacco)with large groups of Albanian Muslims. One of them referred to Kosovo as home to "Rock and Roll Muslims," and that is either the hope or the danger of such presentation. R'n'R Muslims certainly don't play in Southeast Asia. Well, if they do, they aren't as blatant:

(Carlos remembers being in grocery stores in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, one of his favorite cities. Next to the beer and wine, there are frequently prominent signs in Malay, English, and sometimes Arabic. The signs state "Muslims Cannot Buy Alcohol." Carlos wonders which Muslim needed to be told that).

But that is of course the symptom of the problem. "Integrated" believers either allow for others to "sin," or (more problematically for the believer) allow for a certain amount of secular hypocrisy. It's not hard to see why the militant voice has such play in comparison to that. Carlos cheers for the Rock and Roll Muslims (and Christians, and Buddhists, etc,) but he recognizes the problem with such "movements" toward secularization and moderation. They in fact increase the threat to those who feel both disenfranchised from the "society to come" and view the "society that was" (even if only in mind) being erased and degraded.

Londonstani's been taking a peek at the dark side recently. You might wonder what this means. Has he been hanging out with Jihadis, again? Has he decided to call it a day with journalism and take up a government job?

Nope, it's much worse. Londonstani's been reading academic papers... yes, a complete mortal straight-to-hack-hell sin. He's not yet willing to admit (publicly at least) that the white towers of academia have even an iota of knowledge to impart to hard working journalists who spend time actually among the subjects studied from afar in dusty libraries.

However....

After spending quite a bit of time with radicals in London, Londonstani was pondering whether theologically based initiatives to de-radicalise were actually of any use. It was difficult not to get the niggling feeling that while the young men he was talking to justified their ideas Islamically, there were other more mundane issues of belonging, group dynamics, access to social mobility, community dynamics etc coming into play. By the end of the time Londonstani spent with them, he couldn't help wonder whether these guys would have happily made up the ideology they were spouting if it hadn't already existed before.

In his readings, he came across a paper comparing Sayyid Qutb, Marxism and National Socialism.

These lines near the end stood out:

"Since radical Islamism is not simply an aggressive variant of Islamic belief, but an
interpretation of the Qur’an in modern categories, it is an illusion to think that the
people attracted by this ideology can simply be turned around by information
and education. Rather, it is necessary to react to the ideology’s strategy of
unmasking the promises of modernity which have not been kept. To be able to do
this, however, one needs to realise that radical Islamism is part of the inside strug-
gle for the right understanding of modernity, a ‘dark side … of modernity’ as
Eisenstadt calls it. As long as western societies are unwilling to recognise the
modern character of radical Islamism, they will continually underestimate its
power over people and its attractiveness."

Interesting..

Londonstani has just realised that there is a cross over of reference points between the narrative Maajid Nawaz is describing and what is understood in the wider world.

When he talks about western-backed puppet regimes; many Muslims believe that it's likely ALL leaders in the Islamic world are actually Western backed. This includes countries like Syria, Iran, Ghaddafi etc. where the present policy of the United States seems hostile to those governments.

It's this tacit understanding that serves as a backlight to the conspiracy theories that pop up so often. And like all sweeping simplistic generalisations it emanates from a gap between people's outlooks and the events they see around them. For example, Muslims in Britain in the 1990s, found it hard to understand why America would want to go to war with Saddam who was an ally just a couple of years before. Therefore, there must be something dodgy afoot. Or, a more contemporary situation; Afghans find it hard to believe the US can put a man on the moon and built a floating battle island but not bring a bunch of warlords to heel, supply electricity, fix an economy or squash a ragtag army. Therefore, the Americans must secretly be supporting the Taliban. Al Qaeda's propaganda is very effective at tapping into these unvoiced suspicions. It's not like you hear Syrian President Bashar al-Asad saying, "Hey guys! You know what? I'm not a Western lackey."

However, to keep a sense of perspective, it has to be remembered that some silly percentage of Americans thought Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks. And, many, many British people will tell you that Osama Bin Laden in the president of Pakistan.

In anycase, what follows below is the rest of Nawaz's introduction, where he describes his move away from the radical Islamist outlook he had adopted.

"In prison, I had time to contemplate my ideology and discuss it with other prisoners.

"Some of the people inside had been imprisoned from a young age for involvement in attacks carried out inside Egypt in the 1980s and 1990s by Islamic Jihad. Some of these people had changed their ideas and others had only become more stringent in outlook.

"One of the things that shocked me was how exclusionary Islamist ideology became the further you followed its route. I knew one man in prison who would condemn everyone he came across as a "kafir", unless they could prove their Islamist credentials to him. He basically lived in a world where he was the only true Muslim.

((Londonstani would like to add - at the risk of putting words into Nawaz's mouth - that he was probably also shocked by the realisation that those acting with the purest Islamist intentions can cause suffering, that the most committed Islamists can have violent disagreements, that many of the answers he sought involved simple solutions such as good governance, accountability and justice. And that many of his fellow prisoners could easily go from being the oppressed to becoming the oppressors because although they had beards and wore robes, their understanding of how to wield power was not very different from their jailers.))

"For a year after my return I continued with Hizb ut Tahrir. But I was suffering inner turmoil. Questioning the ideology of Islamism is like questioning your faith.

"But this is what I realised: Islam is a religion. This religion can cater for more than one political ideology. God did not reveal one political or economic system, he only laid out guidelines. So much of it is open to interpretation.

"I studied in prison. As an Islamist, I believed that sovereignty is for God alone. But then I realised that sovereignty is a modern concept. And that anyone who says sovereignty is for God is saying he is God because he is saying that he has sole right to say what God thinks.

"Isn't it about time we realised that political ideas are not from scripture but drawn up according to our preferences.

"In terms of identity, I realised that the companions of the prophet called themselves by their ethnic titles. For example Salman al Farsi - Salman the Persian. So you can be Muslim and Pakistani, Muslim and Syrian or Muslim and British.

"We have to promote debate so Muslims can develop a social contract which allows us to replace dictators.

"Islamism has to take responsibility for the way it has contributed to radicalism. I believe that Islamism is a modern phenomenon that has been attached to Islam and is detrimental to Islam.

"Islamism is an ideology that believes sovereignty belongs to God and there is such a thing as an Islamic state. I don't think there is an Islamic state anymore than there is an Islamic car."