How wrong is Obama on Pakistan?  So wrong that both The Economistand I agree that he is being foolish:

Although Pakistan is more complicated, one certainty is that the idea proposed recently by Barack Obama—sending in American troops against al-Qaeda—would be high folly.

My next column will talk more about Obama’s foreign policy, so I’ll leave that there for now.  My latest column in TAChas also laid out why Musharraf’s continued hold on power is undesirable for both Pakistan and America, so go find yourself a copy of the 27 August issue.  Strangely, and rather shockingly, I find myself once again agreeing with much of this Economist leader:

Until recently America turned a blind eye: better the general you know than the deep green sea of jihadism. But to see General Musharraf as lone defender against the Islamic tide is to misread Pakistan. It is not the Islamists but the moderate mainstream that has lost faith in him. His sacking of the chief justice (since reinstated) and his desire to have himself re-elected by the existing legislatures before the next general election have disgusted voters. America should not give uncritical support to a military ruler who is blocking the return of the democracy that Pakistan appears now both to want and to need.

The “moderate” mainstream’s moderation should not be talked up too much, but this analysis is still more right than wrong.  The “democracy” to which Pakistan would be returning should not be exaggerated or treated as a panacea, since it has been a deeply dysfunctional democracy (during the time, and to the extent, that it has been one at all).  The reason why Musharraf should step aside and be succeeded by an elected civilian government is not because glorious democracy makes all things better, nor is it because we should always prefer democracies to dictators for our allies, but because Musharraf’s continued hold on power and his errors in wielding that power have themselves become a serious threat to the stability of Pakistan and the security interests of both Pakistan and America.  (Incidentally, it never ceases to amaze me how some of the people who found Putin’s head-cracking, clumsy, brutal methods in Chechnya so distressing are among the same who think that we need more head-cracking, clumsy brutality in Waziristan.)  Democratisation is not normally the right answer, and it is never a cure-all or a “solution” to persistent political and social problems, and it is only a very small part of any remedy for what ails Pakistan, but real national interests of both countries dictate that a civilian government should take over from Musharraf in the very near future.  The more that this can be done with minimal American involvement, the better for the new government’s credibility, since it has been the (often mistaken, but widespread) perception of Musharraf’s slavishness towards America that has weakened him at home.  

What is amazing to me is that there is so much agreement in foreign policy circles in America that Pakistan’s truce with the tribes in Waziristan was a horrible mistake and that a resumed military offensive there by the Pakistani army is the right answer.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

(We haven’t) come to terms with how much time and money and commitment and unity it’s going to take to prevent radical Islam from reaching its goal and that is the subjugation of the United States and the western world. They say they’re right on schedule, and we’re going to have to do a lot of things better. ~Fred Thompson

Here’s the thing: “radical Islam” has so far made next to no progress towards this goal.  Check that–it has made no progress towards it.  Actually, “radical Islam” doesn’t have any goals–“radical Muslims,” if you like, are the ones who have goals and try to reach them, and these have not been at all successful in moving towards this goal of this subjugation.  This isn’t to deny that such jihadis have a strong interest in such subjugation, but simply to look at the actual strength of such people to seize and rule territory.   

Let’s suppose that “they” do say that “they” are right on schedule–should we accept this at face value?  What does a brief glance around the globe tell us?  Far from trying to subjugate any Westerners, “radical Muslims” are mostly focused on two things: getting Westerners out of Muslim countries (or those they consider to be historically Muslim territories) as much as possible, and enforcing their sort of Islam on the people in those countries (to date, they are not having all that much luck with either of these goals, either).  It is only to the extent that “radical Islam” is influencing the Muslim populations in Europe and here that there is any remote chance of such “subjugation,” and this is still fairly remote.  (This is not an argument over whether, in theory, Muslims seek the subjugation of all lands to Islam, but whether there is any chance of this actually happening in any Western countries in our lifetime.)  Even the Eurabian thesis is not one of jihadis subjugating the West, but it is instead an argument that white Europeans will die out and be replaced by growing Muslim populations.  The problem in that case, of course, is one of demographic change, migration patterns and the non-assimilation of immigrants.  Since the more extreme cases are to be found in Europe, it is not clear what an American President is going to do about this, no matter how much money, commitment and unity he can muster. 

On the other hand, if Fred believes that jihadis are on pace to conquer the West (“right on schedule”), it seems to me that he shouldn’t be entrusted with any position of responsibility connected to our foreign policy.  Al Qaeda itself actually has a pretty lousy record of taking, holding and governing territory, since its “administration” these days largely consists of murdering people and alienating the locals, and the Taliban’s horizons have never realistically gone beyond Afghanistan.  In principle, jihadis are ultimately out to conquer, but at the present time their priorities and their theaters of operation seem focused on throwing out perceived occupiers and invaders, reclamation of old territory, irredenta.  Thus far, the only places where mujahideen have been reasonably and more or less permanently successful have been those places (e.g., Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo) where Washington either encouraged the introduction of foreign jihadis into the territory and/or gave those already there weapons or direct military support.  “They” have enjoyed some moderate, often fleeting, success in those regions loosely or poorly controlled by central states (e.g., Somalia), which means that jihadis tend to thrive in the absence of effective public authority but are not terribly good at displacing and then replacing existing authorities.  They do not fight like armies of conquest, but have instead adopted the tactics suited to a role of being Islamic insurgents.  Some jihadis may talk about the glories of medieval Cordoba, but their chosen type of warfare is that of modern guerrilla.  Describing this conflict in terms of defending against territorial occupation may be psychologically and ideologically satisfying for neo-imperialists, since it obscures the role of U.S. policy in helping to worsen the danger and allows any act of U.S. aggression to be cast as pre-emptive defense, but it is not an accurate description of the nature of the conflict.  

It must be disappointing for people raised on the glories and myths of WWII and who lived during the entirety of the Cold War, and who have always wanted to have another Great Cause of their own where they get to take the leading roles, to find that the epic “existential” conflict of their time is neither epic nor existential.  For people accustomed to thinking in terms of hunting the geopolitical equivalent of bear, warding off and swatting hornets and mosquitoes must seem beneath them–hence the constant refrain from these circles about the “global” struggle, WWIV, the “existential threat” and the impending appearance of the green flag and crescent over Washington and London.  One other problem with a nationalism that demands that the nation be the preeminent world power is that it forces its adherents to believe that anything less than a major, lengthy, global, existential conflict is unworthy of the mission of the nation’s world-historical “mission.”  It ceases to be a matter of coolly assessing the scale and scope of foreign threats–the threat must be as dangerous as, if not more dangerous than, anything we have ever faced before, because nothing less will suit the “indispensible nation.”

What is desperately needed in American foreign policy discourse is a sober discussion of the limits of American power, not a rehashing of the supposed need for renewed leadership abroad. Real leadership in American foreign policy involves a mature acceptance of the changes in the international system and a carefully calibrated effort to manage change in a way which avoids the extremes of war and suffering. What it does not require is a celebratory call for a return of American leadership of the rest of the world. Only by puncturing its cheerful faith in its own leadership can America come around to a more judicious and effective use of its power. ~Michael Boyle

…Obama’s ads were not exercises in self-parody?

Via Ambinder, I see that fake populist Fred takes to the Iowa state fair in Guccis while riding in a golf cart (he really is lazy).  A man of the people he aint.

In all of the commotion about Obama’s remarks on Pakistan, I neglected to note that his 01 August speech contained this Bush-Romney-Giulianiesque soundbite:

Just because the President misrepresents our enemies does not mean we do not have them. The terrorists are at war with us. The threat is from violent extremists who are a small minority of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims, but the threat is real. They distort Islam. They kill man, woman and child; Christian and Hindu, Jew and Muslim. They seek to create a repressive caliphate.

But if that is the enemy, how exactly does the President misrepresent the nature of the enemy?  Obama is saying the same things that Bush (“they distort Islam”, Romney (“caliphate”!) and Giuliani (“terrorists’ war on us”) have said.  (Yes, of course, Bush misrepresents things by including Baathists and Iranians and everyone he can think of and lumping them all together, but Obama doesn’t say that here.)

I’ve posted about Martin Kramer once before after he offered a transcript of his remarks at the Prague dissident conference where President Bush also spoke.  In Prague, he said:

My teacher and mentor Bernard Lewis has put it starkly: “We free them or they destroy us.”

Now Kramer is less of a democratist than some others, which is one thing that can be said in his favour, but his Prague speech showed clearly that he shared his mentor’s diagnosis about the source and nature of the threat.  He is, it must be said, more skeptical about the democratist cure and the inevitability of democratisation than is, say, Mr. Bush. 

Now that Dr. Kramer is advising the Giuliani campaign, we should look out for a combination of this sort of thinking with the dangerous foreign policy outline offered by Giuliani himself.  Giuliani’s recent debate appearance where he poured a little cold water on democratist enthusiasms may be the result of Kramer’s influence.  The Kramer post from last month announcing his involvement with the campaign points us towards a paper by the campaign’s chief foreign policy advisor, Charles Hill, whose arguments from this paper are echoed quite clearly in Rudy’s Foreign Affairs essay.  The most damning thing that can be said against Dr. Kramer is that he wrote:

I believe that Mayor Giuliani gets it. He understands perfectly what is at stake in the Middle East, he sees precisely the forces arrayed for and against us, he knows this will be a long contest, and he has the resolve to see the United States prevail. I don’t see that same depth of understanding in any of the other candidates.

If that doesn’t disqualify Martin Kramer’s judgement on such matters, I don’t know what does.

Via Pithlord, I see that Prof. Bainbridge has commented on this story about a Dutch bishop proposing that Dutch Catholic churches use the name Allah in their services “to ease tensions between Muslims and Christians.”  Pithlord is, of course, right that the concession, such as it is, is actually only a linguistic one.  Allah does mean God, or literally “the God” in Arabic.  As far as it goes, the change is fairly innocuous as a matter of literal meaning, but therefore all the more unnecessary and symbolically discouraging in that it is another example of Dutch natives accommodating and assimilating themselves to the immigrant communities rather than vice-versa.  The Islamic understanding of God is obviously quite different and opposed to that of Christians, but the bishop was not proposing introductions of Qur’anic passages, such as Ma qataau-hu wa ma salabu-hu during Communion and La taqu thaalatha during the Sanctus.  It is a trivial proposal in a way, but this makes it all the more foolish and pointless.  It is the ultimate in condescending tokenism while also managing to introduce a pointless change into the liturgical life of the bishop’s flock.  Should Anglicans begin saying Khuda Hafiz to make their Muslim neighbours feel more at home? 

It is not exactly an embrace of relativism, as Prof. Bainbridge fears, but it is fairly stupid all the same.  It is an example of the embrace of rather pointless symbolic gestures that are intended to foster ecumenical dialogue and such, but which routinely backfire and are viewed either as insults, attempts to muddy the waters or even aggressive attempts at appropriating someone else’s beliefs.  Do you suppose that a Muslim in the Netherlands will have a better view of non-Arabic-speaking Christians if they begin using the name Allah?  Would this not, in fact, inspire some resentment against those using this name to refer to the Trinity or to Christ Himself, when Muslims recognise neither the existence of the former nor the divinity of the latter?  At best, it would not achieve the intended goal, but would become one more episode in European Christianity’s own self-marginalisation.  

Update: On the other side of the world, there is apparently no small controversy over the changing usages from Khuda Hafiz to Allah Hafiz, as this older article also relates.  I had noticed that Allah Hafiz had been cropping up in more and more Bollywood movies over the past few years, but I suppose I had not realised that this reflected such significant changes in South Asian Islam.

You don’t often hear any Congressmen or Senators demanding answers on how long the duration or how great the number of troops will be required in Kosovo, South Korea, or Germany.

But you hear little other than those questions when the subject of Iraq comes up. ~Hugh Hewitt

Via Clark

Might the different reactions have something to do with soldiers being killed and blown up in Iraq? 

Hewitt really has us cornered now!  You know, it’s true: I and other opponents of the war in Iraq have not made a top priority of calling for a withdrawal from Okinawa, and I have not stipulated that troops withdrawn from Iraq should not be sent to Okinawa.  I thought this was because it would have been a distraction to argue over other foreign deployments when the priority of withdrawal supporters is to get American soliders out of a futile, senseless war that Hewitt will apparently support to the very last moment.  Little did I know that it was just because I wanted to embarrass the President.       

Update: For extra amusement, read the entire Hewitt piece to the point where he describes Max Boot and Fred Kagan as “serious analysts.”  Why, if Max Boot and Fred Kagan agree, it must be true!  When have they ever been wrong in the past?  Ahem.