Bernard Lewis is our greatest living scholar of the Islamic world. In today's
Wall Street Journal, he drew lessons from our Cold War experience and applied them to the current situation in the Middle East. Lewis's arguments are powerful; doubly so, considering his encyclopedic knowledge of the cultures involved. First, here are some of his observations on the Cold War era:
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...
***During the troubles in Lebanon in the 1970s and '80s, there were many attacks on American installations and individuals--notably the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, followed by a prompt withdrawal, and a whole series of kidnappings of Americans, both official and private, as well as of Europeans. There was only one attack on Soviet citizens, when one diplomat was killed and several others kidnapped. The Soviet response through their local agents was swift, and directed against the family of the leader of the kidnappers. The kidnapped Russians were promptly released, and after that there were no attacks on Soviet citizens or installations throughout the period of the Lebanese troubles.
Osama bin Laden drew a natural inference from the events that he witnessed: America is weak. To bin Laden and his followers, their victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, an event that played a key role in the demise of the Soviet Union a few years later, represented the harder part of their task. Disposing of the soft Americans, who couldn't stand to take casualties, would be much easier:
From the writings and the speeches of Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, it is clear that they expected this second task, dealing with America, would be comparatively simple and easy. This perception was certainly encouraged and so it seemed, confirmed by the American response to a whole series of attacks--on the World Trade Center in New York and on U.S. troops in Mogadishu in 1993, on the U.S. military office in Riyadh in 1995, on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000--all of which evoked only angry words, sometimes accompanied by the dispatch of expensive missiles to remote and uninhabited places.
So when the terrorists attacked America on September 11, they expected little response. For the first time, they were mistaken:
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.
Sadly, the willingness of Democrats and others to surrender in Iraq, which al Qaeda has made the principal front in its war against the United States, constitutes a reversion to the policy of weakness that encouraged the terrorists in the first place:
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.
These are not difficult lessons to draw; in fact, it is hard to see how anyone can deny them. One can only hope that, coming from a scholar of Lewis's unique stature, they will be absorbed.
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 7)
1. I don't think that is correct at all. Russia has a full scale war in Chechnya and several brushfire wars going on in various 'stans that share the border. The US just isn't going to go the retaliatory route, because frankly, we have never liked having power and uncomfortable using it except under such tight controls that its use is negated. We are ashamed of being powerful. And don't want to pay the price for using it. We want to be liked.
Richard Cook at 10:24PM on May 16th 2007
2. As applification the Russians use of retaliation has not reduced or eliminated threats to them vis a vis the stans and Chechnya. Maybe if a Beslan happened in Denver.....nah we wouldn't use it even then. We would wallow in weeping and root causes. We do not want to get our fingernails bloody.
Richard Cook at 10:28PM on May 16th 2007
3. Of course Mr. Lewis is correct.
And... Democrats and the particular breed that associate today with Democrats, do not read Mr. Lewis. I would suspect that neither the Senate Majority Leader nor the Speaker of the House have ever heard of Bernard Lewis...
Nonetheless, this conflict is not going to be won by military might - it is going to be won by monetary persuasion, just as the US has thus far "won" in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The monetary persuasion can be in bribes; or directed propaganda; or forced education; or other such "hearts and minds" campaigns, but it will have to come down to large chunks of money.
There is no military defense against Islamic fascist death cultists.
You know what they say - just like women... "Ishmael - you can't live with 'em; you can't kill 'em..."
And, there's more where they come from.... They do blow up so quickly nowadays...
Sigh...
;)
George Murray at 11:35PM on May 16th 2007
4. I have a slightly different take on the whole situation. Most commentators in my opinion are just way too quick to disregard and ignore the superficial partisan politics of it all. I'm not talking about deep hidden manipulations. I'm talking about stuff that's right there on the surface for all to see. It's not a big mystery. Think about it. After 9/11 most everybody was on the same page vis-a-vis the war on terror. No, not everybody. But most everybody. Everybody who counts. And that lasted awhile. What happened? Why'd it change? Think about it. What happened, oh, about a year after 9/11? Okay, I'll tell you. The 2002 mid-term elections happened, that's what happened. And it was in the run up to that election that the Democrats began breaking ranks with the Republicans. They began to move to the idea that supporting the president in the war on terror had no upside for them. Bush was getting all the credit. It only bolstered the Republicans. That was Bush's strong suit as they saw it. So they migrated away from supporting him. If Bush was for it, they were against it. First Iraq. The Patriot Act. NSA wiretaps. Now the whole WOT. If Bush wants it, their against it. Even if it means that they themselves are flip-flopping. It all comes down to this: they'd be much more supportive of the concept if they were in charge, if they could get some credit for it. They'd do it differently, that's for sure. But they aren't stupid. No completely anyway. They saw what happened to Jimmy Carter. They know the voters won't support weakness. And they do want to survive politically. So they'd do something. They just want to be in charge when it's done, with them getting the credit, and if they aren't in charge getting the credit, then they aren't going to support it. Simple as that.
Zeb Quinn at 12:04AM on May 17th 2007
5. Poor cherry-pickin' Hinderaker. Russia and Chechnya. Russia hit them hard and they hit back.
It's called blowback.
Webster Hubble Telescope at 12:40AM on May 17th 2007
6. I suppose it would also be unfair to cherry pick what Osama said about US weakness?
http://abw.mee.nu/ron_paul_says_listen_to_osama
abwtf at 1:24AM on May 17th 2007
7. Hmmm ... Do we really want to model our behavior on the USSR's in the cold war? I thought that they lost that one. Perhaps a reason they lost is seeing international politics as being primarily about force (Stalin's famous comment about "how many divisions does the Pope have?" and so forth).
Yes, Al Qaeda was probably shocked by our success in Afgahnastan. Then, just when they were on the disorginized run, how overjoyed they must have been when we shifted our resources away from them and attacked an Islamic country that had nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda's base of operations. I ask the reader to think about how many columns, blog postings, etc. he has seen from conservatives calling on the U.S. to be tough. Now how many have you seen calling on the U.S. to be smart? What a great idea for a foreign policy, be seen as being tough and don't care about the intelligence of your actions, just as long as they look "tough". And yet, shockingly, it has not turned out so well.
Counterfactual at 1:32AM on May 17th 2007
8. Nobody is without fault. I have not heard one side say that we need to go after the root cause of terrorism - the state sponsors.
As hard as it may be for some to believe, terrorism cost money. It is not some naturally occurring phenomena. It has to be paid for. Somebody is footing the bill.
So why aren't we going after these sponsors of terrorism? Last I heard, terrorist can die of starvation too.
It must be a sign of weakness that neither side has suggested going after the root cause of terrorism.
vegastracon at 3:02AM on May 17th 2007
9. Lewis has gone from being a hack to a senile lying war whore.
- Russian installations and personnel were targeted many times in the 70s and 80s.
- Al Qaeda did take to the hills after 9-11.
Steve J. at 5:41AM on May 17th 2007
10. Oops, I almost forgot Beslan but senile hack Lewis completely forgot (or was this just another idiotic piece of agit-prop from the incompetent Right?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis
Steve J. at 5:44AM on May 17th 2007
11. John, It sounds real shaky to me, even with your renowned Mideast scholar citation (which is a vast improvement over Paul's cites). What brought the Soviet Union to collapse was internal economic collapse. The Russian focus on maintaining a huge military, combined with the laziness that typically accompanies totalitarian Communism (but not Scandanavian socialist democracy), is what killed the USSR. However, a side note is that the Russians for all their might took a horrible beating in Afghanistan. Foreign terrorists didn't follow them to Russia, they had their own homegrown terrorists in Chechnya. Putin brutally squelched that but its requiring a constant maintenance job, which is why commenter commenter Richard Cooke notes: to this day "Russia has a full scale war in Chechnya and several brushfire wars going on in various 'stans that share the border."
The failure of the Russians in Afghanistan and the US in Iraq result from the both countries not learning the very important and very clear cut lesson of Vietnam: land based occupations do not work anymore, which is why physical occupation colonialism died in the 60's. If you notice, before we barged into Iraq, for no reason except their oil reserves, we were not creating millions of infuriated Muslim terrorists, like we're doing every day that we continue to stay in Iraq (source - Bush's own intelligence agencies). Moreover, Condi, who is supposed to be a history buff, forgot to read up on the Balkans. Sectarian religious differences rapidly arise when the strongman (be it Marshall Tito or Saddam Hussein) is no longer around. While Kosovo is still a touchy issue, Clinton, with international support, did a beautiful job of leading our military effort in the Balkans, and Milosevic died in prison, turned over to the international court by his own people.
Are you honestly naive enough to think that Bush, in invading Iraq, didn't fall right into Bin Laden's hands in his effort to radicalize the entire Muslim world. As Osama himself said (with the quote thanks to abwtf's research): "I say: Since the sons of the land of the two Holy Places feel and strongly believe that fighting (Jihad) against the Kuffar in every part of the world, is absolutely essential; then they would be even more enthusiastic, more powerful and larger in number upon fighting on their own land- the place of their births- defending the greatest of their sanctities, the noble Ka'ba (the Qiblah of all Muslims). They know that the Muslims of the world will assist and help them to victory. To liberate their sanctities is the greatest of issues concerning all Muslims; It is the duty of every Muslims in this world." Do you honestly believe Osama didn't expect invasion after destruction IN OUR HOMELAND of our monuments to economic and military might? He wanted it, so he could radicalize the entire Muslim world not only against us, but against every moderate government of all Arab nations.
This idea that somehow things will be worse if we leave Iraq is REAL shaky. Spain and England were in Iraq when they suffered their terrorist attacks - and Bush has already set us up for terrorist attack here. He's never secured our ports and for five years our Southern border under Bush might as well have had a "Welcome Home" sign up for millions of illegal aliens. Hmmmm, I wonder what else walked in with them?
The US invasion of Afghanistan didn't spark worldwide Muslim outrage because there was a very good reason for the invasion. On the contrary, invading a country purely to steal its oil has invoked an outrage and emboldened Iran to get busy building a nuclear bomb. If you don't believe oil was the motivator, look at the difference in how we treated Iraq and Libya. Iraq as recent history has proved, posed no threat at all to our national security, but Libya was actively working to get a nuclear bomb and other WMDs. We lied to the world about the threat in Iraq and rushed to invade; but Bush was absolutely silent on Libya's activities (because Libya is not a primary source of the world's oil). Americans were not even told about Libya's terrorist ambitions until Libya formally gave up those ambitions.
Our presence in Iraq, because George Bush never had to manage family finances in his privileged life and bankrupted his own business, has actually set us up for the same type of economic collapse that the USSR suffered. The tax cut, the war, and billions in Republican congressional pork have all been done with borrowed money. We are now debt slaves to Communist China and the EU; and they are grumbling about the low value of the dollar and possibly dumping their US treasury notes on the market. If that happens and we haven't left Iraq, we'll be in the exact same shape the USSR was in, except worse - in an economic depression at home and a never ending expensive slaughter house losing war in Iraq. Its time to get back to the Clintonian values of not engaging in foreign conflicts unless we have world support, facing reality when we are engaged in a war (in this case the reality that until the Sunnis and Shiites get their act together, which is solely up to them, Iraq is a no-win situation), and putting priority on a balanced budget that does not, in the course of balancing, forget the needs of the American people.
At the present time, our national treasury is so in the red and the Department of Homeland Security is so inept, that we could not handle either a terrorist attack at home (unless we outsourced rescue efforts to Walmart, who sure beat FEMA to the punch after Katrina) or a "brush fire" war anywhere else in the world. No one contests our military is so stretched its about to break - that's why we're sending inadequately trained or already exhausted troops to Iraq.
We need to get out of Iraq, rebuild our finances, keep a small force in the Kurdish area of Iraq to keep an eye on Iran (the Kurds actually love us, because ALL their neighbors have beat up on them for centuries), and stop trying to play colonial Britain in 1930. Any other course is a sure fire path to making our nation, at best, a third world country.
Phil at 6:32AM on May 17th 2007
12. vegastracon is correct. We've gotten very far away from the early days when the president made it clear that those who are with the terrorists will be nailed. It's very tough to maintain this kind of approach and it's the biggest job we face in the coming years, but it's the only way to win. Stamp out terrorist support, and the terrorists have no place to go.
Phil, all your "lessons" are phony, and you take way too long making your erroneious points. Osama expected us to invade Iraq after 9/11? You can't be serious. We're too in the red to fight anymore? But we're not too deep in the financial hole to spend $22 billion in pork for pet Dem projects, right?
Jon S at 7:16AM on May 17th 2007
13. One of the places where the U.S. is making a
mistake is in what's being taught about war
in its military academies in which military
leaders are trained and in what's being taught
in armed services' training camps. Since
history began, men have been taught that "might
makes right," and sometimes it does. However,
in the world we live in today, the number of
pushups a man or woman can do, the physical
stress a man or woman can stand is not the only
factor in determining the outcome of a war.
Neither is the number and kind of weapons necessarily the reigning factor in winning a war.
Cleverness, verve, and attacks on ideology,
language skills, and a knowledge of world history
can be just as important in defeating an enemy
as a physically fit soldier. We are going to have
to change our perception of what it takes to win
a war.
Our enemies have been using women, children, and
people of any age to accomplish their mission of
defeating us. They have been infiltrating our
governments and schools for years and have used
our Bill of Rights and our legal system to ham-
string us. Random violence, too, has been one of
their most successful M.O.'s . As a country, we
need to develop some new wartime strategies for
coping with our enemies. We can't keep making the
same mistake of being shocked when other countries
don't share our values and do things the way we
think they "ought to be done." If we keep doing
what we've doing for the past sixty years, our
enemies are going to run us to the wall.
Eva at 9:15AM on May 17th 2007
14. Of course talk of pulling out shows signs of weakness, because it is a sign of weakness. Getting involved in Iraq may have been a mistake, but now that we are there (currently stuck there), we need to go all out. 100% win policy. Our weak war policies are turning Iraq into another Viet Nam. A major reason for this happened 10-15 years ago when the Politicians dedided that a full force active military was too expensive and downsized way too much into the Reserves and Guard. We are now trapped with an active force that is too small, and pulling the Reserves and Guard forces creates havoc in the civilian community. We can win this war, but it will take dedication to an all out decisive victory.
Jim at 9:21AM on May 17th 2007
15. the whole world was surprise when in so short time we defeat the Iraq forces knowingly that the Irak force was a well training force the aftermath was the problem and everybody knows why. In afganistan yes we help osama defeact the russian and what do we get on return 9/11 the point is we're a superpower nation but the ship is saile with the wrong captain if you what I meant we no imperialism we go help and combat home the home of the braves the home of sweet and honey this message is for all of those that get education over here get rich over here and them go out thre and call us soft and weak just because we are the most higher educate people of this world. thank you anyway.
Ruben Vasquez at 1:40PM on May 17th 2007