The Stalled Struggle Against Al Qaeda

The shock and tragedy of the London bombings naturally inspires reflection on the progress of the struggle against Al Qaeda. Sadly, four years later, the state of that conflict remains much the same as it was prior to 9/11. Al Qaeda has lost its base area in Afghanistan, but its leadership remains at large along the Afghan/Pakistani frontier. Whatever strategic assets it lost in Afghanistan it has more than made up in Iraq, where the US led invasion has afforded Al Qaeda and its confederates a foothold in the Arab world more profound and strategically advantageous than it has ever enjoyed in the Arab world previously. London's tragedy demonstrates that four lost years is more than the US and its allies can afford. The longer Al Qaeda is given to martial its resources and develop its plans, the more audacious and destructive its attacks will become. This, in turn, will produce a snowball effect, as Al Qaeda's political capital rises among disaffected elements throughout the Islamic world and its power to intimidate fence-sitters grows.

What, then, is the way forward? Unfortunately, the chaos in Iraq has moved one front of the struggle against Al Qaeda into an arena in which the US and its allies has no control over outcomes. The Coalition can only stand by and safeguard the political rebuilding process in Iraq and hope that, over years, it will choke off Al Qaeda's strategic resources in that country. If and when this happens, if all else remains equal, the situation would return to the status quo just after 9/11.

This is obviously unsatistfactory, however. Fighting back to square one over the next few years would be tantamount to defeat, especially as Al Qaeda can be counted on to present a "moving target" during that time and be working on building its political and material assets outside of Iraq. Genuine, proactive progress can not be made against Al Qaeda in Iraq, but it can be made in South, Central, and Southeast Asia where Al Qaeda's political appeal remains broadest. More military and economic assets must be devoted to the struggle against Al Qaeda's allies, the Taliban, in Afghanistan. The "soft support" of the Pakistani political and military establishment for Al Qaeda must be openly confronted. The Pakistani government obviously lacks the political cohesion and will to root out the Al Qaeda forces that refuge along the Afghan/Pakistani frontier.

The US must exert all of its political, diplomatic, economic, and military influence to gain direct access to Pakistani frontier territory for the US military. This can almost certainly not be done without setting off a radically disruptive international confrontation, but this is a hard medicine that will have to be taken eventually. The Bush administation's decision to focus on Iraq rather than force a confrontation in Pakistan has already had disastrous consequences. The longer US leadership remains blinkered toward the situation in South and Central Asia, the more dangerous Al Qaeda will become, and the more insuperable the task of defeating them.

London Calling

I was shocked and dismayed to read today's news that the perpetrators of the most recent London bombings were Britons of Pakistani descent. That young people born and raised in Britain could give their lives in the murder of their neighbors and compatriots must be deemed a major defeat for the forces of moderation, tolerance, and reason in what Gilles Kepel has labeled the "war for Muslims minds." That living all one's life in an open and democratic society is not sufficient to preclude one's being seduced by Al Qaeda's perverted ideology is profoundly troubling.

London's events underscore the vital importance of the cultural-political dimension of the struggle against militant Islamic extremism. Al Qaeda promotes a grand ecumenical vision the appeal of which is not limited to the Middle East. Outsiders might find its tenets and ambitions so grandiose as to be maniacal or absurd, but its sheer brash extravagance is among Al Qaeda's great strengths. For anyone feeling ultimately alienated, frustrated, disaffected, marginalized, or disappointed, Al Qaeda offers a sweeping vision- the prospect that life does not have to be petty, limited or insignificant. Conversion to Al Qaeda's ideology affords one a part in a cosmic drama of Manichean dimensions.

This might seem like a flimsy asset on which to build a global terror network, but Al Qaeda does not need many warm bodies to wreak a great deal of havoc. In the final analysis London's tragedy may prove to be as much a product of the kind of social and psychological forces that caused the Columbine high school shootings or the '92 LA riots as of an international terror conspiracy. Every community contains young people that are adrift, angry, and vulnerable- they swell the ranks of religious cults and fringe political groups throughout the world and occasionally act out in destructive ways that have nothing to do with militant Islam. Al Qaeda stands apart, however, in having the means and the ruthless will to take those young people it can gather, however few, and channel their energies in ways that will be maximally destructive of global order and prosperity.

It may never be possible to totally eradicate the appeal of Al Qaeda's message- there will always be people deluded or vulnerable enough to be drawn in. But defeating Al Qaeda depends on depleting the suasive power of its ideology. Those who stand for reason and tolerance must make it as difficult as possible for Al Qaeda to convince Muslims that its vision can or should give meaning to their lives and actions.

The first essential step in that process is to avoid playing any part scripted by Al Qaeda itself. Al Qaeda's great cosmic drama is predicated on a world divided between Islam and the forces that oppose it. Any move to bring all Muslims under suspicion or blame the Islamic religion itself for current difficulties will play directly into Al Qaeda's hands. This is not just a cautionary principle for governments- all people of conscience must work to demonstrate that participation in liberal democracy, open civil society, and seperation of church and state are wholly compatible with a life suffused by Muslim faith and practice.

Beyond this, anything and everything that can practically discredit Al Qaeda will deplete its fund of ideological capital. At present the greatest opportunity for this lies in Afghanistan. During the years of the Taliban's reign Al Qaeda had free rein to institute its "utopian" vision among Afghanistan's people, producing nothing but tragedy and resentment. If the forces of extremism can be finally defeated and Afghanistan reconstructed as a society founded on openness and tolerance in which Islam nonetheless thrives Al Qaeda will be shown false by the hard test of experience. If Osama bin Laden can be captured and forced to stand accused of his crimes Al Qaeda will be doubly humbled.

What role does Iraq play in this struggle? It is difficult to see how the invasion of Iraq decreased the appeal of Al Qaeda's ideology, as Saddam and his ilk occupied the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, thus their defeat does little to discredit Islamic extremism. Now that Al Qaeda's agents are operating actively in Iraq the situation is of course of crucial importance to the larger cultural struggle. If Al Qaeda were to succeed in creating another Islamist state in Iraq its mystique would increase exponentially, thus that outcome must of course be forestalled. But the prospects of the Coalition to win cultural ground from Al Qaeda in Iraq are much lower than in Afghanistan. Whatever transformation the Coalition is able to facilitate, Al Qaeda will be able to claim that had they been given a free hand they could have produced a more ideal and puritanically Islamic society. Moreover the majority of Iraqis are Shi'ites while Al Qaeda claims to represent the world's Sunnis, thus however Islam may thrive in the future Iraq Al Qaeda will be free to brand it a haven of heresy.

Predictions in Iraq

Telling the future is always a dicey business, but I have a strong sense of what lies ahead for the US media and its relationship to Iraq, so I will brave slings and arrows and go on the record. Right now we are in a very "down" news cycle regarding Iraq, with a new surge of violence and some very lurid incidents in the headlines (compounded by the shock of the terror attacks in London). This trend should taper off in the late fall, as the new Iraqi constitution is ratified and elections are held under its auspices. By December an "up" news cycle should be in full swing, followed by a honeymoon period in which news from or about Iraq is sparse and relatively upbeat. By this time next year, however, the insurgency will remain unchecked and the honeymoon will end, precipitating a new "down" news cycle on the run-up to midterm elections.

This may seem cynical or callous, especially as these predictions portend the deaths of more Coalition soldiers and Iraqi civilians. My point, however, is that many of us who opposed the war did so because the trajectory of this policy was all too predictable from the outset and remains predictable today. Any attempt by the US to lead an effort at nation-building in Iraq was fated to be tragically costly in both blood and treasure.

A long-term positive outcome now hinges on the Iraqis summoning the political will to develop a new stable state-structure, a process that can not be induced or even much guided by the US. If and when the day comes when Iraq is wholly autonomous and at peace (a day which, I fear, will not come for many years) the debate will no doubt continue as to whether the US invasion was a wise or necessary policy. No outcome so positive or negative as to "close the case" will emerge, partisans on both sides of the issue will be able to draw upon facts and counterfactuals 'til kingdom come. In my mind (though I know this represents a "partisan" view) this fact alone engenders one conclusion- seen in the very best light the Bush administration's Iraq policy has been an ill-conceived gamble with human lives.

Victory in Iraq

Kenneth Pollack had a thought-provoking piece in the New York Times on Friday ("Five Ways to Win Back Iraq" Op Ed p. A17 7/1/05) in which he proposed five strategic policy shifts to the Bush administration in Iraq. While I don't agree that all of his suggestions are feasible, his first principle, "Think Safety First" seems the wisest advice anyone has offered since the conflict began. According to Pollack, the entire mission should be shifted from an offensive to a security posture, rather than sending the Marines on "search and destroy" missions Coalition forces should be reassigned solely to protect the lives and property of the Iraqi people from insurgent mayhem. This would have the dual effect of increasing the prestige of the interim government and draining political capital from the insurgents, who would lose any pretensions of being Davids fighting the American Goliath and be forced into the role mere thugs working harder and harder to injure ordinary Iraqis. The urgency of this policy shift is underscored by yesterday's kidnapping of Egypt's ambassador to Iraq- the interim government can have no international legitimacy if it can not guarantee the safety of foreign delegates.

The Bush administration seems to be under the delusion that aggressive tactics will retard the operational strength of the insurgents. This notion is based on a wild overemphasis of the military aspect of the counterinsurgency and a serious underestimation of its political dimension. The number of insurgents is not fixed, it will vary depending upon the political appeal of their "cause." The technological and material threshold of insurgent needs is so low that Coalition offensives can do little to destroy assets that may not be easily replaced. Offensives do more harm than good, as however many insurgents may be captured or killed the drama of their defying US power increases the appeal of the insurgency while any neutral bystanders that are killed in the fighting do further damage to the image of the Coalition and the interim government.

"Muslim Minds" and "Arab Minds" in Iraq

Gilles Kepel has characterized the current global conflict between liberal democracy and Islamic extremism as the War for Muslim Minds. There is merit to this notion, in that the political appeal of an ideology like that of Al Qaeda's is broadest in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan where Islam forms the common bond between people divided among myriad ethnic and linguistic groups. However, within Iraq, the nation that has, for the US, become the central focus of the "war on terror," Islam is not the principal cultural force impeding efforts at nation-building.

Many of the forces that observers in the US and Europe associate reflexively with Islam- extreme patriarchy, clannishness, xenophobia- are not pan-Islamic phenomena. One must remember, in viewing the Islamic world, that 2/3 of the world's Muslims live in South and Southeast Asia. Indonesia holds the largest Muslim community on earth, India the second largest. Islam is a world religion as ecumenical in its appeal and various in its manifestations as Christianity, Judaism, or Buddhism. Anyone who insists that Islam inexorably precludes participation in an open, tolerant, liberal democracy has much to explain in places like India, Singapore, and Malaysia.

Though much of the resistance in Iraq is being led under the banner of Islamic extremism, the cultural forces most corrosive to nation-building are not rooted in Islam but in the historic traditions of Arab society, traditions that date to pre-Islamic times. Family, clan, and tribe are profoundly powerful institutions that have structured life- individual and social, personal and political- for millenia in the Arab world. The operative principles of these institutions are diametrically opposed to concepts of personal liberty, individual independence, feminism, freedom of expression, or rule of law. As I noted in a previous post, the resilience and potency of these social forms is lucidly attested by the political career of Saddam Hussein. Only they can explain how Iraqi Ba'athism, a pan-Arabist movement that originally accomodated individuals as disparate as Saddam (son of a Sunni herdsman) and Iyad Allawi (son of a Shi'ite merchant), could degenerate into a narrow oligarchy controlled by Saddam and his Tikriti kin.

It must be stressed that the power of family, clan and tribe in Arabic society is in no way a moral indictment of Arabic society or culture. These institutions only became as important as they are because they functioned very successfully for many centuries in bringing order, harmony, and purpose to Arab life. All societies have cherished institutions rendered dysfunctional by the evolving economic, technological, and political conditions of the world at large. That being said, it must also be acknowledged that at present Arab society is in desperate need of reform, as the majority of Arab cultural and intellectual leaders are aware.

How then, is this reform to come? If the experience of other societies is any gauge, it must come and it shall come internally. The success of the Coalition mission in Iraq depends on overcoming regressive forces in Arab society, but unfortunately the presence of Coalition soldiers in Iraq has only made these forces more militant. Family, clan and tribe are most adapted to and resourceful in dealing with external threats, in the presence of a perceived external threat their hold on people's minds and allegiance will deepen and strengthen. This does not mean that social reform is impossible in Iraq, it only means that it must await the departure of Coalition forces. If a new constitutional government can be formed and survive the departure of Coalition troops, it might serve as the catalyst of social and political liberalization. As long as Coalition forces remain in Iraq, however, the forces of reform and reaction will remain locked in stalemated homeostasis.

If military intervention can not aid the cause of Arabic social reform, one must then ask if the US and other liberal democracies can play no part in such a process. Fareed Zakaria has an excellent piece in this week's Newsweek in which he observes that change comes fastest in those countries with which the US remains conscientiously engaged (e.g. Vietnam, China, Eastern Europe) and is stalled in those countries toward which we have adopted a policy of "regime change" (e.g. Cuba, Iran, North Korea). From this perspective, the US can best serve the cause of Arabic social reform through economic and cultural engagement with the Arab world, by committing to those forms of trade and cultural exchange that will further material and intellectual enrichment and will expand economic, social, and political opportunities throughout the Arab world.

This might seem like an excuse for inaction, but it is not. One of the most conscientious forms of engagement toward which the US could and must commit is the reduction of our consumption of oil. Family, clan and tribal dominance has enabled Arab oil wealth of to fall, with the aid of the US and Europe, under the control of a narrow oligarchy that keeps the price of oil artificially low. The breakage of that economic-political link would destroy one of the principal stopgaps to reform, and would pave the way toward genuine economic and social diversification and political liberalization in the Arab world.

Nuclear Korea

US foreign policy seems to be heading toward an ever-deepening crisis over the issue of North Korea's nuclear program. The vaunted "six party talks" are creaking to a complete halt- the People's Republic of China has hamstrung US diplomatic efforts by announcing its refusal to tie basic economic aid for North Korea to the nuclear question. Non-military options seem to be running out quickly.

An Iraq-style solution can not be seriously considered in the case of Korea, however. An invasion would stretch US military assets beyond the breaking point, and would do incalculable damage to Sino-US relations. Indeed, there is no way to insure that such a conflict would not ultimately deteriorate into another Sino-US war.

Given the dire straits at present, it seems to me that a new diplomatic tack is needed. From my perspective, the deep structural flaw of post-cold war US policy toward North Korea has been the uncritical acceptance of North Korea's persistent existence. US policy seems resigned to the idea that North Korea will always exist, or at least that it will do so until its system collapses spontaneously under its own weight. This thinking is both unrealistic and culturally insensitive.

It is culturally insensitive because it ignores the fact that ALL Koreans, North and South, hope fervently for the reunification of their nation. Americans forget that Korea was a Japanese colony prior to WWII. The partition of Korea was a strategic accident, it resulted from US insistence that the Soviet Union join the Pacific War after Germany's surrender. In being partitioned Korea was effectively treated as an Axis power. Worse than an Axis power, in fact, since the speed with which the US' atomic arsenal brought the war to an end spared Korea's colonial oppressors the pain of partition. The partition of Korea is a relic of a cold war that is long over, no one in the diplomatic community should treat it as a necessary, inexorable, or unalterable "fact." All countries, the US included, should be discussing the paths by which this historic injustice may be undone.

Moreover, the Korean people's aspirations for unification is the chief weakness of the North Korean regime. Should the US put unification on the table as a topic of negotiation the North Korean regime would be trapped by its own rhetoric- they could not refuse to treat such a negotiation seriously, and they could not justify making something like a small nuclear arsenal an obstacle to that long-cherished goal.

The clear logic of this notion seems so apparent to me that I sometimes wonder why no US leader has even floated the idea as a "trial balloon" for the world press. Obviously, any official US endorsement of Korean unification would have to be done in very cautious, provisional language and with the close cooperation of our allies in South Korea (cooperation they are likely to give- the move would undoubtedly be wildly popular in the South). Nonetheless, such a move seems clearly to be the only way the US can restore its bargaining position with North Korea to one of advantage.

Perhaps US leaders feel that placing reunification onto the negotiating table plays into the North's hands. As said above, this school of thought posits that the North will collapse of its own degeneracy eventually, negotiating reunification with them will only give them a new lease on life. This is an unrealistic perspective, however. The North's militant isolation is what extends its longevity. Opening up cracks in that isolation through negotiated "stages of integration" (allowing for trade, travel, immigration) would hasten, not deter, the disintegration of the North's despotism. The experience of the Soviet bloc, where low-level human contacts and exchanges were instrumental in sowing the seeds of systemic discontent, proves the efficacy of this tack.

The only other reason I can think that the US refuses to broach the subject of reunification is the experience of the Korean War. When the Northern regime surmised in 1950 that the US did not have the political will to defend the South they launced an all-out surprise offensive. Since then US policymakers have felt that any slippage in our perceived willingness to defend South Korea might trigger another invasion. This thinking is outmoded, however. The Northern despots may be crazy, but they are not stupid. They know that the cold war is over and that they can no longer count on the strategic support of the Soviet Union or China if they attacked the South and the US unprovoked. A US offer to negotiate reunification would not embolden the Northern leadership, it would frighten them. Skillfully executed over the long term such negotiations would see the fears of Kim Jong-il and his ilk realized.

Iraq Cabinet Woes

The swearing-in of the new Iraqi cabinet bodes trouble when viewed against the backdrop of Peter Maass' report in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine. In that article Maass described the "Salvadorization" of the Iraqi counterinsurgency, its being shouldered increasingly by elite paramilitary groups created and directed by individual ministries of the Iraqi government rather than the nascent Iraqi national army. These new police commando units are largely composed of and commanded by Sunni Arabs, many former soldiers and officers of the Republican Guard.

These units have a natural advantage over US soldiers or even other US-trained Iraqi units in that their background and experience are incalculable assets in the collection and analysis of intelligence on the insurgents. Maass' article describes the commando's high rate of success, he also candidly reports the severity of their methods. Though their American advisors officially discourage human rights abuses and breaches of the Geneva Convention, Maass himself witnessed beatings and death threats and saw evidence that worse was transpiring out of sight of American advisors.

All of these facts are bad portents given today's swearing-in of the new Iraqi cabinet. Though a compromise break in the deadlock over a new government seems to have been reached, key ministerial posts remain unfilled, including defense, oil, and human rights. The new government's best hope of continuing the counterinsurgency effectively rests with establishing its authority over the new commando units that are operating most successfully in the field. Those units were formed under the provisional department of the interior, but any successful integration of the paramilitaries within regular government authority requires a viable deparment of defense. Even if the paramilitaries remain seperate from the Iraqi national army, a legitimate defense department will be necessary to lay down an authoritative policy with which the paramilitaries will feel compelled to comply.

In this regard, wrangling over the defense post bodes ill. Reportedly the Sunni contingency of the government covets the defense ministry, but all proposed Sunni candidates have bee rejected as having too close ties with the former Ba'ath regime. As the Sunni troops currently operating in the field against the insurgency are "tainted" with the same ties, for this to be a source of friction at this juncture does not hold out good hope for the complete and successful integration of the paramilitaries within the umbrella of government authority as the insurgency wears on.

As hopeful an event as the January election was, the peril in Iraq may be measured against a very definite minimum gauge. A US pullout within the next 18 months seems certain, and the continuation of the insurgency in the wake of a US pullout is just as predictable. Civil war is inevitable from this perspective, what remains uncertain is whether the battle lines in that civil war will remain drawn as they are now (with all forces currently for or against the government continuing unchanged in their allegiances) or whether the conflict will become more complex in the wake of the US withdrawal.

A diverse tapestry of armed groups contribute to the strategic situation in Iraq today. In addition to the various factions that comprise the insurgency, the Iraqi national army, and the new paramilitaries, there are the Kurdish pesh merga militia, the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade, and Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. If the new police commando units become alienated from government authority not only will the Iraqi government lose its most effectve counterinsurgency weapon, but a collapse of trust might occur that would set all the various armed factions into motion against one-another, turning the civil war from a bilateral conflict into an anarchic cataclysm resembling the situation of Lebanon in the 1980's.

Much of the strategic situation in the long view will be determined by political developments in the weeks and months ahead. If the Iraqi government can build a defense ministry that can coordinate the various armed assets to which it has claim the civil conflict in the wake of a Coalition withdrawal may be attenuated. If not, that conflict may become very protracted and destructive. The only thing that is certain now is that the ultimate outcome of the Iraq war is out of the hands of US policymakers and rests upon the actions of Iraqi politicians, actions which US leaders will not be able to dictate or micro-manage as they might like.

Shifting with the Winds in Iraq

The tone of news from Iraq shifts as press coverage moves through different cycles, slow and fast. January's election created an ambiance of success, but gridlock in the formation of a new government and more lurid violence from the insurgents has caused a new tide of pessimism. This see-sawing of perspective creates a deficit of credibility. At this point it is difficult to rely on the media for significant indices of the state of affairs in Iraq. Amidst all the spin and sound-bites, however, several factors seem to indicate future trends.

Though tactical shifts made by the US general staff have brought the casualty rate down, US soldiers continue to die at an average rate of more than one a day, during both "hot" and "cold" news cycles of insurgent violence, with wounded far exceeding that number. This fact is significant as force security is priority number one of the US soldiers stationed in Iraq. If the presence of 140,000 of the most technologically advanced soldiers in world history can not prevent the insurgency from killing 10 or more of their number weekly one can only imagine what the insurgency will be capable of once that force of soldiers has departed Iraq.

For its own part, the insurgency has remained persistent, if not consistently frequent and intense. Amid all reports of its "slowing down" or "speeding up" one must remember that time is on the side of the insurgency. Building a government is a slow, difficult process, where tearing one down can generally be achieved in short bursts of intense effort, timed carefully. The insurgents have very little incentive to stop fighting- their extreme politics will make them marginal to any system that emerges from a successful program of democratic nation-building. Their chances of successfully reconstituting Iraq on their terms are very low, but for the Islamic extremists among them that fact provides little deterence and for the Ba'athists among them days of past glory just might fuel dreams of future triumph.

It must be as clear to the insurgents as it is to me and to other observers world-wide: US forces will not remain in Iraq indefinitely. Once the new Iraqi constitution is approved by the end of 2005 the clock will begin running down marking time to the end of the Coalition occupation. UN resolutions call for an end to the Coalition occupation in 2006. As that will be a mid-term election year it will be very difficult for the Bush administration to justify extending the US presence in Iraq beyond the UN mandate.

The insurgency must know this timetable as well as anyone, and so their strategic situation amounts to a waiting-game. The continued presence of US forces until then might erode some of the insurgency's capacity, though the opposite effect might well result. Persistent adaptation and innovation in contention with US forces might make for a more capable and deadly insurgency in the wake of a US withdrawal. The surest deterrent to insurgent success between now and 2006 rests with the conduct of the new Iraqi government. If the winners of January's elections can come together forge stable and effective institutions (which hinges most crucially on whether they themselves respect the institutional accomodations they negotiate with one-another) the new Iraqi goverment will almost certainly emerge victorious from the civil conflict that will inevitably follow the Coalition withdrawal.

China and Taiwan

The National People's Congress of the PRC recently adopted legislation authorizing the Chinese government to use force in the event of a Taiwanese declaration of independence. This is not really a policy change except in that the legislation outlines in detail small changes in Taiwan's constitution that may be deemed a provocation and initiate a military response. For example, were Taiwan to change it's official name from The Republic of China to The Republic of Taiwan, the PRC military could attack Taiwan with full legislative authority.

The proximal incentive for this rather inflammatory piece of legislation seems to have been a referendum included on the ballot of last year's presidential election in Taiwan, in which voters were asked to vote in favor of a resolution calling on the PRC to stand down all missiles fixed on Taiwan. Though that referendum was not ratified by a sufficient percentage of the electorate to pass, it was widely perceived as a dry run for a plebiscite (or series of plebiscites) on changing the Taiwanese constitution and declaring de jure independence from China.

The prospect of a Chinese attack on Taiwan is often followed by the question "what would (or should) the U.S. do?" Few options are left to the U.S. once hostilities break out in the Taiwan Strait, and none of them are very good. Thus U.S. policy should and has been geared toward preventing such choices from ever having to be made.

Unfortunately, few in the U.S. understand the situation in the Taiwan Strait. I am leery of speculating how many Americans can not distinguish between Taiwan and Thailand. Even those Americans aware of Taiwan's geography and political status are confused as to why the PRC and Taiwan are technically "one nation." Few are aware of the history of the Chinese civil war and the flight of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government to Taiwan. Fewer still are aware of Taiwan's fifty years as a colony of Japan.

This general ignorance is troubling, because a number of factors have to be kept in mind in order to clearly analyze the situation. Partisans on both sides of the issue will quote a blizzard of facts and figures in support of seemingly rock-solid cases, but the facts are torturously complex and clear moral imperatives extraordinarily difficult to draw. Advocates of Taiwanese independence will note that the Taiwanese "speak a different language" and that Taiwan was "part of China" for less than 10% of China's recorded history. A defender of the Chinese case will counter that the language spoken in Taiwan is no more different from the language spoken in Beijing that that spoken in Canton or Xiamen or Shanghai or any other of dozens of unimpeachably Chinese cities in which a dialect other than Mandarin is spoken. Moreover, Taiwan came under the administration of Beijing in 1687, making the history of "Chinese Taiwan" longer than that of the United States.

Perhaps the most salient fact that must be kept in mind by U.S. policymakers is evinced by the recent actions of the National People's Congress. Though the PRC remains an authoritarian state, the NPC is the institution within that system most responsive to the democratic impulses of the Chinese citizenry. The cold, hard fact is that the legislation drafted by the NPC most likely reflects the passionately held opinion of the vast majority of ordinary people in the People's Republic of China. Many in China are deeply disatisfied with their government, but they remain at the same time zealously nationalistic. The reunification of mainland China with Taiwan is a sacred cause of Chinese nationalism, and has been since Taiwan was ceded to Japan (after defeat in the first Sino-Japanese War) in 1895.

Three summers ago I had an encounter in Nanjing which helped illustrate some of the situation for me. I was invited to the opening of a chic new night-spot by a young man, one of China's new entrepreneurs. The interior was lavishly decorated in the height of "bourgeois decadence (the kicker were the pornographic tiles airbrushed over the urinals in the men's lavatory). Posters adorned the walls in which quotations from Chairman Mao had been edited to turn them into dirty jokes. An old surplus army truck had been turned into a stage on which bands performed ear-splitting rock music. As I sat and watched one of the bands I noticed that along the side of the truck had been spray-painted a slogan: "We will definitely liberate Taiwan!" The young owner noticed me reading it and smiled proudly, declaring, "I painted that!"

Taiwan is a robust young democracy and must be protected. At the same time, U.S. leaders must understand that a declaration of independence by Taiwan will mean certain war. No Chinese government, whether the current Communist regime or some future democratic administration, could survive the tidal wave of public outrage that would occasion a Taiwanese declaration of independence. Because independence would mean war and war leaves no good options for the U.S., the U.S. must tread VERY carefully in conducting Strait diplomacy.

The Next Pope

As the world mourns the passing of Pope John Paul II it is natural to speculate about who his successor might be. Reflection on John Paul II's legacy always occasions admiration for the prescience or serendipity that brought him, the first non-Italian pope in centuries, to the Vatican throne at the historical moment he arrived. John Paul II was nothing if not a man of his era, it would be difficult to imagine a pontiff better equipped to confront (and facilitate) the last decade of the Cold War and the fall of Communism.

As someone standing outside the Catholic church with a purely "academic" interest in the disputations of the College of Cardinals I am inclined to ask, "what type of pope could exert the same kind of historic influence as John Paul II?" Many have speculated that the next pope will be drawn from among the Catholic clergy of the world beyond Europe and North America. The ascension of an African, Asian, or Latin American pope would almost certainly create an impact that would influence the future long-term direction of world culture and society.

In my view, the boldest choice the Catholic leadership could make, one that would exert the same kind of profound shock to the larger global order as that of John Paul II, would be a pope of Chinese nationality. The state of Christianity in the People's Republic of China right now is one of intense dynamism and volatility. Statistics are very hard to assess, but all indications are that various Christian doctrines are more popular now than they have been at any previous time in Chinese history- as many as 80 million Chinese citizens may have joined various church groups throughout China. Many of these churches are doctrinally quite radical- one, for example, is led by a living Chinese woman who claims to be the current incarnation of Jesus Christ. I think that speculation about the imminent Christianization of China is premature, but it would seem obvious that many Chinese citizens are turning to Christianity out of some sort of intrinsic appeal, perhaps as an expression of discontent with the current social or political order in which they live.

The place and role of the Catholic church in this environment is one full of both peril and potential. As of now the Chinese government acknowledges a community of 5 million Catholics organized into 500 dioces throughout China. However, these "Catholic" congregations are not, by law, allowed to have contact with or take direction from the Vatican. The "openess" policies of the Chinese Communist Party are not yet elastic enough to allow the free and unimpeded operation of religious organizations, especially one with the ecumenical mission of the Catholic Church. Believing Catholics are placed in a precarious position in China, as to participate in the sacraments of China's official church is a violation of Catholic dogma, whereas to accept the ministrations of priests ordained by the Vatican is a political crime punishable, in many cases, by death. A "secret Church" of Vatican-ordained priests is known to shadow the official Church in China- its priests are among the groups most prone to execution under the PRC's penal law.

In this climate the selection of a Chinese pope would, I surmise, hit Beijing like an earthquake. It would pose a fundamental challenge to the structuring principles of PRC state and society, and would force (perhaps violently) a reworking of Beijing's relations not only with the Vatican but with the world at large. I could not say whether the ultimate outcome of such a crisis would be unequivocally positive, either for the people of China or the global Catholic community at large, and for this reason such an event is perhaps not likely. It is certain, however, that the ascension of a Chinese priest to the throne of St. Peter would have a historical impact equivalent to that of the late John Paul II. Perhaps such a papacy would only be possible once the world has changed sufficiently to "catch up with history."

Violence in Lebanon

Last week's assassination of Rafik Hariri, former Prime Minister of Lebanon, is a troubling augury for the future of the Middle East. The difficulty of ascertaining who perpetrated the deed underscores the fragile nature of civil society in Lebanon. So many contending interests are coiled in tension against one-another that anyone who takes a prominent role on the political stage (as did Mr. Hariri) inevitably places him- or herself in the path of all or most of them. One of the most troubling questions about this reprehensibly violent attack is not who? or why Mr. Hariri? but why now?

Another deeply divided society is that of Iraq. Previously I had worried that as a result of the U.S. invasion Iraq would begin to look like Lebanon (the Lebanon that was broadcast into our homes nightly throughout the 1980's, that is). Now it seems possible that as a result of the U.S. invasion not only Iraq, but Lebanon will look increasingly like Lebanon. The deep investment of U.S. power (to as yet unpredictable effect) in Iraq may well produce a climate of opportunism in the Middle East, a willingness to transgress the bounds of civil institutions that have recently been put on a solid footing. With U.S. forces seemingly stretched to their breaking-point and the U.S. treasury deeply in the red, the prospect for meaningful U.S. retaliation in instances like that of Mr. Hariri might seem dim, the opportunity cost of such abominable behavior uniquely low.

The Bush adminstration's response to Mr. Hariri's death has been characteristically unequivocal. They see the Syrians as the most likely culprits and have demanded that they pay for this outrage by withdrawing from Lebanon. I would never question the desirability of a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon in ideal terms. But Lebanon and Iraq are in structurally if not morally analogous situations at the moment. Both are nations where the trust in, loyalty to, or fear of central civil institutions is not sufficient to stave off civil war and anarchy. Both nations borrow stabilizing power from another nation with strong state institutions (Syria in the case of Lebanon, the U.S. in the case of Iraq). Again, I would not draw a moral equivalency between the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. But in purely structural terms, the Syrians have been able to produce more stability with fewer soldiers (15,000 as opposed to the U.S. 150,000) than the U.S. has achieved in Iraq. It has occurred to me, as it must surely have occurred to the assassins of Mr. Hariri (whoever they are): if Syria withdraws from Lebanon, who will prevent the re-outbreak of civil war? The U.S.? I can only wonder what the Bush administration's thoughts are on this score. To paraphrase the favorite movie of a friend (and one of my own): "I would worry less if I thought they worried more."

Looking Forward Toward the Historical Memory of Iraq

By all reports, yesterday's election in Iraq was a success. Security at the polls was good, the level of violence was low, and the turnout was exceptionally high. Everyone must admire the courage of the Iraqi people for coming out to vote in the face of very real threats. One can only wonder how high turnout would be in the U.S. if voters here faced even a fraction of the danger Iraqis take for granted.

The election will no doubt leave an enduring and important legacy in Iraqi and even Middle Eastern history, though just what that legacy shall be will take a very long time to emerge, if indeed it ever "stabilizes" as the event is interpreted and reinterpreted over time. For the present the election is the first step in a year-long process of institution building planned to culminate in the popular ratification of a new constitution in October and the election of a government under that constitution in December. If the Coalition can meet those two threshholds and conduct those two votes with equivalent results (and I suspect they will) the current Iraq policy will have scored a significant success.

Will this event produce a universal consensus on the wisdom of the Bush administration's Iraq policy? The historical legacy of the Iraq war in American memory is likely to mirror American political opinion over the coming months. Though the election is an inspiring event, if the insurgency and casualties among both coaltion forces and Iraqis continue American opinion is likely to see-saw. Whether or not the institutions in place at the end of 2005 can stand in the absence of U.S. military force will play a large role in shaping public perceptions. If after Iraqis institute a new constitution and elect a new government U.S. soldiers are still dying in Iraq opinion about the Coalition mission is likely to be mixed.

I personally see much promise in yesterday's elections, but I would temper that optimism with caution. The success of yesterday's election leaves hope that the next year will see the formation of an institutional structure that can, in the long term, form the nucleus of a stable and effective Iraqi sovereignty. However, in the short term the formation of that structure will not, I fear, end or significantly slow the rate of casualties among U.S. forces. Ultimately U.S. forces are likely to leave an Iraq still plagued with insurgency and violence, and the constitutional order built over the course of the next year will be forced to establish itself through a costly contest of arms.

Will Iraqis be better off if a democratically elected government emerges from that civil war (provided the democratic operation of its institutions survives the degrading influence of civil violence)? Yes. Will that definitively prove the wisdom of Bush policy? Not likely. The coming year is sure to bring many unanticipated events both within Iraq and in the world at large. Unknown costs will have to be paid, both in U.S. blood and treasure and in the opportunity price of foreign policy conducted under the handicap of a continuing heavy commitment in Iraq. All told, the only certain prediction I would be willing to venture is that the legacy of the Iraq war will remain uncertain for years to come.

U.S. Power in the Middle East

Last week's tragic earthquake and tsunami in South and Southeast Asia underscore the narrowness of the parameters of U.S. power. Though the U.S. may be the most powerful nation on earth, even in human history, there will always be crises and trials that test the limits of any state's power. Every effort will surely be made to bring relief to those who are suffering, but the magnitude of this disaster is so great that true relief and recovery will most likely be achieved only after long work and more grievous loss.

For the moment more dramatic events in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India have eclipsed the ongoing crisis in Iraq. But that conflict too is casting harsh light on the limits of U.S. power. The force-projection capacity of the all-volunteer U.S. military is stretched to its absolute limit, yet it seems increasingly doubtful that the U.S. and its allies (both within Iraq and without) will succeed in dictating a political solution, even a provisional one. This naturally raises the question, what could have been done? If the U.S. military, the most technologically sophisticated and devastating force in world history, can not put its imprimatur on Iraqi society is the U.S. then totally powerless to sway events in the Middle East?

The answer, of course, is no. There are two fundamental and potentially earth-shaking "grand strategies" available to the U.S. that our current leadership have ignored or abjured. These two grand-strategy operations would exponentially leverage U.S. power in the region and realign forces on the ground in ways that integrally serve U.S. interests. Unfortunately, in the absence of these moves any U.S. attempt to effect even small changes in Middle Eastern politics must be deemed Sisyphean tasks.

The first strategic asset available to the U.S. resides in Israel-Palestine relations. Every forward movement in that situation has been achieved with U.S. participation and guidance, and the international community recognizes that any final or stable resolution of that conflict waits upon U.S. brokerage. If and when a two-state solution is realized in Israel-Palestine a lion's share of the credit will redound upon the U.S. The realization of Palestinian nationhood is a goal so cherished among Muslims generally and Arabs more particularly that U.S. prestige will rise dramatically in the wake of its achievement. Conversesly, because U.S. power is viewed as so intrinsic to the Israel-Palestine peace process, every day that a two state solution is delayed sees a decline in U.S. prestige and influence among Muslims and especially Arabs. One of the greatest assets of Al Qaeda and its confederates, groups that inhabit the lunatic fringe of Arab politics, is that they can exploit the Israel-Palestine issue to drum up anti-U.S. sentiment and to attract sympathy and support to their cause. Al Qaeda cares very little about the plight of the Palestinian people, but because Anti-Zionism dovetails well with their radical vision of jihad they are able to exploit this accidental and somewhat arbitrary confluence between their own twisted ideology and the sympathies of the wider Arab community to maximum political effect. If the U.S. were to broker a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine Osama bin-Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would be robbed of this asset and all of the political capital they derive from the issue (and more) would be transferred to the U.S.

Even more than its influence in Israel-Palestine, the U.S. possesses a potentially devastating strategic weapon in its participation in world oil markets. The U.S. remains the single largest consumer of fossil fuel in the world, and oil wealth remains the bedrock upon which the dysfunctional political regimes of the Arab world are founded. Without the revenue they can draw from oil, tyrants like Saddam Hussein would never be able to dominate Arab society as they have done since the mid-20th century. A reduction in the U.S. consumption of oil would take money out of the hands of despots and terrorists and force a fundamental restructuring of the Arab world. Such a move would force a wave of the same kind of industrialization and political liberalization the Bush regime hoped to achieve by force of arms in invading Iraq. Unfortunately, as long as the U.S. remains economically addicted to Middle Eastern oil it will be too deeply implicated in the regressive political structures of the Middle East to do anything to substantially change them. Until Arab leaders have incentive to invest their nations' wealth in infrastructure that will create new wealth and add value to their economic output none of the exploitative structures of Arab society can be expected to change. Those leaders will never have such incentive as long as they can count on a steady stream of petrodollars from the bottomless coffer of the U.S. economy.

I would have cautioned our leaders against an invasion of Iraq under any circumstances. However, launching Operation Iraqi Freedom in advance of these measures was strategic folly of the worst kind. It is now perhaps too late for these steps, even if taken in all haste, to produce an optimal outcome in Iraq. It is certain, however, that the faster and more thoroughly the U.S. moves on these two fronts, the more successful all of our political and military efforts will be in the Middle East in both the long and short run.

Whither Iraq

We have now passed the midpoint between our own elections here in the U.S. and the elections scheduled in Iraq for January 30, 2005. After securing a second mandate the Bush administration predictably launched offensive operations in the Sunni triangle that, though they cost lives of American soldiers, dislodged insurgents from their bases in and around Falluja. The strategic impact of these operations needed a space of time to assess. Tuesday's tragic attack in Mosul would seem to suggest that, howevermuch U.S. offensives have operationally retarded the Iraqi insurgency it remains very much a going concern.

At this juncture it seems appropriate to take stock of the situation in Iraq and reflect on where it might be heading. History is not a predictive science, and it is always presumptious of historians to claim possession of a crystal ball. But from a historian's perspective certain outcomes can be judged as more or less likely.

In this sense, two modular outcomes seem symetrically improbable. One is the future widely broadcast by the Bush administration and its surrogates, in which a robust and independent Iraqi state takes charge of the counterinsurgency with the use of its own armed forces. In this vision U.S. efforts at nation-building would meet the same kind of success achieved in 20th century Japan, South Korea, or West Germany. Even if such success were provisional as in the case of Korea, requiring a continued U.S. military presence of 30,000 or so soldiers, such an outcome would wildly outstrip the rather pessimistic expectations prevalent at this current moment.

Though this rosy future is not likely to mature, its converse- a "Saigon 1975" type cataclysm- must be judged equally improbable. Events in Iraq may well reach some new homeostasis in the next two years, but when that sea-shift does come it is most likely to be with a whimper rather than a bang. No images as dramatic as the refugee-laden choppers lifting off from the U.S. embassy in Saigon are likely to punctuate this current crisis.

The reason why both these outcomes may be discounted is the same. A robust and independent Iraqi state is unlikely because Iraqi society has little or no history of robust state institutions. Since its inception in 1920 Iraq has never achieved anything approaching true "nationhood." Its most successful experience of state unity was achieved through adherence to an absurdist ideology, reliance on atavistic forces of kinship and tribalism, and the grotesque application of brutality and terror. Coalition officials are betting that the legitimating power of democratic elections can fight the entropic tide of Iraqi history. The sad fact is that even a completely successfully and unimpeachably elected government would face almost insurmountable challenges in the regional, ethnic, sectarian, and economic divisions that tear at Iraqi society. In the current conditions the government which emerges from the January 30 election is likely to have only a provisional mandate, making the task of nation-building that much less likely to succeed.

Until a robust and legitimate Iraqi government is constituted there is no hope of creating an Iraqi army competent to manage the counterinsurgency, and since such a government will not likely emerge the counterinsurgency will remain dependent upon the U.S. military indefinitely. While this is true, it must also be noted that the insurgency itself is not likely to cohere into a force capable of producing a "Saigon 1975" type outcome, for reasons that are historically transparent. The same forces which hinder the formation of a state also hinder the creation of a "counter-state." The insurgency (or rather, any group among the diverse insurgencies) is not likely to produce a vision of a new Iraq coherent or compelling enough to serve as the matrix of a sophisticated and effective opposition. While the insurgency feeds on powerfully entropic forces capable of producing unlimited mayhem, it will probably never be able to force a scene quite as definitive as that signal moment in 1975.

Where then goes Iraq? If my assessment is correct, the current situation is not likely to change over the course of the next year. The presence of 150,000 U.S. troops will remain capable of staving off total anarchy, but will fail to end (or significantly slow) the insurgency. If I am reading the signals coming out of the Bush adminstration and the international diplomatic community correctly, a staged withdrawal of U.S. forces is likely to begin some time in late 2006. As U.S. forces are removed the state of insurgency will transition naturally to a state of civil war. Who might win such a civil conflict (if indeed there could be a long-term victor) I would not venture to predict. Conditions on the ground at the time will determine the long-term outcome of that new dynamic.

Victor Davis Hanson and the Polemics of "Will"

A dear friend sent around an essay by Victor Davis Hanson, a Stanford historian, as a general manifesto in support of the Bush regime. It begins:

The terrorists cannot win either a conventional or an asymmetrical war against the United States, should it bring its full array of assets to the struggle. Indeed, the Middle East, for all its revenue from inflated oil prices, has a smaller economy than Spain's. It has never won a war against a Western power. Arab nations lost in 1967, 1973, 1991, and 2004. Hence the fatwas must go back to millennia-old glories about Saladin, the siege of Cyprus, the Moors, and the Caliphate — about the last examples of Islamic victories over the West. The Middle East's only successes in 1956, or during the 1980s in Afghanistan, were due to either a United States' veto of British operations or the importation of American stinger missiles. The Iranian hostage crisis, Lebanon, and Mogadishu were Western retreats, not battlefield defeats — grievous, yes, but hardly arbiters of relative military advantage. The present terrorists are a nasty sort, but they are still not the SS or millions of Tojo's crack Japanese troops; nor do they have the organization or the skill of the Vietcong or NVA. These are losing hundreds of jihadists every week in Iraq and have failed to retake Afghanistan.

So why do the now-surrounded and desperate insurgents in Fallujah think they can prevail, especially after the rout of the Taliban in six weeks and the implementation of a consensual government in less than three years in Afghanistan?

~Victor Davis Hanson
"The Power of Will: Winning Still Matters"
National Review Online, October 29, 2004

One hopes for Hanson's sake that this diatribe was generated by politics, because as history it is made of pretty flimsy stuff. By moving seamlessly from "the terrorists" to "the Middle East" Hanson casts the current crisis as a "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West, one in which the struggle with Al Qaeda and Operation Iraqi Freedom were a priori parts of an organic whole. Even if we grant Hanson his first principles his historical analysis makes no sense. If we further probe the logical basis of his arguments the absurdity of his claims becomes even more starkly apparent.

Allowing for the moment that the situation in the Middle East today may be viewed, a la Hanson, as a clash of civilizations, his rock-solid assessments of sure victory are built on a gossamer net of distortions and ellisions. Glaringly absent from the roll call of historical precedents deployed by Hanson is the Algerian War of Independence, fought from 1954-1962. Perhaps France does not pass muster for Hanson as a "Western power." Nonetheless this case not only completely subverts Hanson's totalizing historical thesis it is also (as has been pointed out to me by my colleague, Stuart Schaar) indisputably the closest analogue to the current U.S. dilemma.

The French were operating at a much shorter logistical distance from their home country, could count on the support of thousands of French settlers and Arab collaborators, could draw upon the experience of more than one-hundred years of colonial engagement, and were willing to fight for eight years and lose 18,000 men. Despite all this they suffered a complete strategic defeat in Algeria. The assymetry between French and Algerian forces was no different than that between those of the coalition and the Iraqi insurgency today, and the tactics employed on both sides in either conflict are identical. From the beginning of the industrial age until 1962 no Arab army could boast a victory like Port Arthur or Dienbienphu or Dunkirk. In the end, however, not only did Algeria win independence but even second-order French strategic goals such as control of Algerian oil production or legal guarantees of the rights of French settlers and pieds-noirs were abandoned.

The experience of Algeria makes the "lessons" Hanson would draw from history all the more strange. Later in the same piece he writes:

"In short, the more sophisticated, the more technological, the more hyped and televised war becomes, the more pundits and strategists warn us about "fourth-generational," "asymmetrical," "irregular," and "new dimensional" conflict, the more we simply forget the unchanging requisite of the will to win that trumps all other considerations. John Kerry has no more secret a plan than George Bush — because there is no secret way to pacify Iraq other than to kill the killers, humiliate their cause through defeat, and give the credit of the victory, along with material aid and the promise of autonomous freedom, to moderate Iraqis. Victory on the battlefield — not the mysterious diplomacy of "wise men," or German and French sanction, or Arab League support — alone will allow Iraq an opportunity for humane government."

Hanson's basic strategic principle, that "the will to win...trumps all other considerations," is so obvious as to be a perfect tautology. A truism that can be applied equally well to either the First Punic or Vietnam War is about as informative as the advice that "hunger is best fought with food" or "nothing cures poverty like money." If we take Hanson seriously for the moment, and apply his analysis to the comparison between Iraq and Algeria, his posture of supreme confidence becomes quite phantasmagoric.

Hanson's "will" in fact has two aspects. In the above quote only one is highlighted: the will to kill ("kill the killers"). Examining Algeria, it is difficult to fault the French on this score. The French commander in the final phases of the conflict, Jacques Massu, was mandated to use "any means necessary" to secure victory. Among the tactics he applied were the deployment of paramilitary terror squads and the internment of 2 million Algerians in concentration camps. The French government's own (conservative) estimates place the number of Algerian dead at 350,000.

Comparing coalition efforts in Iraq with the French campaign in Algeria one can not find them wanting on this score. A recent survey by Johns Hopkins University scholars places the Iraqi dead at 100,000- an impressive sum when one considers that Iraq has only about 2/3 the population of Algeria and the Iraq conflict has lasted just over one year thus far. Even if the previous estimate of 12,000 Iraqi dead is more accurate, the coalition is well on pace to kill the same number of Iraqis per capita as the French achieved over the span of an eight year conflict.

Hanson would no doubt decry this type of accounting as a manifestation of "postmodern Western guilt." How else, however, is one to empirically gauge this facet of Hanson's strategic "will?" Suspending all normative considerations of these figures their message is yet clear- despite the fact that the coalition in Iraq is already ahead of the pace of French lethality in Algeria Hanson would admit that there is yet much more killing to do. Hanson is undoubtedly correct that the coalition will eventually attack cities such as Falluja, and that when they do (as he writes elsewhere in the essay), "Fallujah [will] not stand as a mecca for the jihadists, but an Armageddon better to watch on television than die in." But Hanson is deluding both himself and his readers if the lesson he would draw from history is that easy victory only awaits our resolution to take this one last, small step. He might argue (though it must be stressed that he has not) that the lesson to draw from Algeria (and apply to Falluja) is that the French were not lethal enough, but he is demonstrably wrong that our difficulties in Iraq thus far can be put down to a failure to show a kind of resolve that Westerners have shown in the past.

The other aspect of Hanson's "will" which he would exhort Americans to embrace is the will to die. He laments that "those who endured Omaha and Utah or scaled Suribachi are long sleeping in their graves, and that a few thousand creeps in Fallujah scare us more than a quarter million in the Bulge did our parents." Hanson would have us believe that the moral courage of the current generation is not even a fraction of that of the "greatest generation" who defeated Hitler and Tojo. But a look at actual numbers tells a different story. Of the 16,111,566 servicemen and women who served in all theaters over four years of WWII 405,399 were killed. Of the 350,000 or so U.S. forces who have served in Iraq, in just over a year already 1100+ have died. Doing the math, one sees that the per capita casualty rate in Iraq is already about half that of WWII. So the question posed by Hanson, "why is U.S. resolve so weak," might well be supplemented by the question "are the objectives in Iraq worth half the rate of sacrifice in WWII?" It would be wrong to claim that the answers to either of these questions is clear or easy, but it would be equally wrong to leap to Hanson's conclusion that our generation lacks the moral courage to pay a cost to which our parents blithely acquiesced.

The tautological nature of Hanson's reasoning becomes especially clear when we pause to reflect upon his "will to die" principle. During the course of the Algerian war the French suffered no battlefield defeats, no Arab army was able to strategically invest any Algerian city or significant swath of Algerian territory. Had the French been willing to lose 28,000 rather than 18,000 men Algeria would undoubtedly have remained a French colony beyond 1962. If the French could have tolerated a yearly loss of 2,250 soldiers a year (assuming casualty rates did not rise after 1962) Algeria would remain a French colony today.

The point is that no honest exhortation to the American people to embrace sacrifice can be divorced from at least the attempt to assess what those sacrifices might be. Hanson may or may not be right when he states, "Al Qaeda and their appendages in Iraq do not know the requisite numbers of dead or wounded Americans necessary to break the resolve of the United States, but brag that with 1,000 fatalities they are nearing their goal." I do not think that Hanson is correct in his scorn for the American public, but even if he were America might perhaps be forgiven for cherishing its 1,100 sons and daughters and wives and husbands more than either Al Qaeda or Victor Davis Hanson. That aside, what is beyond doubt is that the coalition can NOT brag, with 100,000 fatalities, to be nearing the goal of breaking the resolve of the Iraqi insurgency. Hanson can rightly predict that U.S. forces will kill scores or hundreds of insurgents in Falluja (along with hundreds or thousands of Fallujan noncombatants), but he can not confidently augur that this will bring an end to the insurgency.

As Hanson himself admits, the insurgency does not depend on control of a city or the integrity of an army- it persists wherever anyone is willing to risk deploying a roadside bomb: "The improvised explosive device is a metaphor for our time. The killers cannot even make the artillery shells or the timers that detonate the bombs, but like parasites they use Western or Western-designed weaponry to harvest Westerners. They cannot blow up enough Abrams tanks or even Humvees to alter the battlefield landscape. But what they can accomplish is to maim or kill a few hundred Westerners in hopes that our own media will magnify the trauma and savagery of their attack — and do so often enough to make 300 million of us become exhausted with the entire 'mess.'" Hanson writes as if the fact that the insurgents may depend upon low-tech tactics somehow counts AGAINST them. This is of course absurd. The fact that the insurgents can not blow up Abrams tanks or Humvees might matter if these assets were of any aid in achieving the strategic goals of the coalition. Humvees and Abrams tanks and Blackhawk helicopters are useful in destroying buildings and other high-tech weapons. If only the insurgency depended upon such things these assets might make a difference in this conflict. As the situation stands a roadside bomb will serve just as well as an Abrams tank in the "kill or be killed" contest Hanson himself describes.

Here is where Hanson's blind reasoning brings him careening into a logical brick wall. Once you have reduced a conflict to a contest of will you must acknowledge that the same calcus applies on BOTH SIDES. Victory will not be decided only by the coalition's "will to kill/will to die," but also by that of the insurgency. The insurgency's will to kill can not be held in serious doubt- not only have they demonstated their ruthlessness with barbaric scenes of kidnapping and beheading but they may be credited with a significant portion of the 100,000 Iraqi fatalities suffered thus far. What then of their will to die? Hanson asks why the surrounded insurgents of Falluja feel they can prevail, but given his hard-bitten "will to kill/will to die" polemics it is either naive or disingenuous of him to discount the possibility that they do not. It might be as perfectly clear to the insurgents as it is to me and Victor Davis Hanson that they are doomed, and if that is the case then what inevitably follows is that THEY DO NOT CARE.

What might motivate them in this folly? Perhaps a belief that once they have died a fiery death the insurgency will not end. This is the unerring logic of the type of "will to kill/will to die" contest Hanson describes: kill the killers and they may be replaced by other killers. Hanson would no doubt argue that the Fallujan insurgents desire to be replaced by future combatants is a gamble. He would be right, but it is likewise undeniable that the coalition's hope that the fallen Fallujans will not be replaced is no less of a gamble. What can be said as a certainty is that none of the precedents to which Hanson refers are at all useful in predicting the trajectory of the Iraqi conflict beyond an assault on Falluja. "1967, 1973, 1991, and 2004"- none of these dates have any bearing on the Iraqi conflict moving forward. A much more significant date is January 28, 1957, the day from which General Jacques Massu began his systematically lethal counterinsurgency in the Battle of Algiers. The final outcome of those events do not bode well for coalition success in Falluja.

Among the ironies of Hanson's reasoning is that his own emphasis on will helps explain why his fallacious arguments hamper the coalition cause in Iraq. Nurturing national will is as much a function of managing expectations as anything else. The American people's current distress over the situation in Iraq arises principally from the fact that the Bush administration told them the sacrifices would be limited. Hanson now, on the basis of flimsy precedent, has the audacity to claim that a further measured commitment will secure victory. Will he blame the American people for their anger if the coming assault does not, discounting the soldiers who will fall in the assault, reduce the rate of coalition casualties in Iraq?

There is furthermore a less obvious but potentially more damaging consequence of fallacious reasoning like that of Hanson's. The reduction of the conflict in Iraq to a "clash of civilizations" may aid in lumping it together with the struggle against Al Qaeda, but it contributes nothing in the way of strategic clarity to either contest. Hanson writes as if the Islamist control of Falluja was foreordained, but this is of course absurd. People like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would love to have operated in Falluja prior to 2003, but if they had attempted to do so they would have been brutally surpressed by Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime- much more brutally, in fact, than anything they may expect from the U.S.-led coalition. The swift defeat of the Ba'athist regime in 2003 created a power vacuum, it is true, but it is false to assert that the filling of this vacuum by Al Qaeda's confederates was in any way an inevitability.

The initial coalition victory set a clock ticking, counting down the preciously short time in which the moderate Iraqi authority Hanson describes could be formed at least in embryo, giving the people of the Sunni triangle at least the incipient germs of a national project in which to invest their loyalties in the wake of Saddam's collapse. The cultural, economic, and institutional synthesis of this new Iraqi nationhood was admittedly a Herculean task from the outset, but it is the catastrophic failure of that project and NOT the intrinsic appeal of Islamist ideology that has created the conditions in Falluja and Ramadi. Politics, like nature, hates a vacuum. The humiliation of the Ba'athist regime understandably discredited its adherents among the residents of the Sunni triangle (though even this movement is evidently far from a dead letter). 9/11 gave Islamists like al-Zarqawi a basic grounding of credibility among people casting about for leadership, and the deteriorating conditions in the Sunni triangle have provided a golden opportunity for Al Qaeda to build upon that foundation.

Though Hanson writes very bombastically about the imperative to "kill the killers" and "humiliate their cause through defeat," he overlooks the fact that in the current conflict these two phenomena are almost wholly unrelated. Hanson treats the Iraqi insurgency as if it had only a military and not a political dimension, but this of course flies in the face of the strategic experience of the past century. Beyond the credibility it garners from 9/11, the Islamist movement in Iraq draws strategic strength from its admittedly extreme ideology. Mao demonstrated that victory is at least in part a product of the conditions one imposes upon the conflict- one prevails through fighting only the fight one can win. In this regard there is a kind of strategic genius in the ideological framework of the Islamist cause. In Al Qaeda's doctrine martyrdom is an end in itself, thus it is unclear how Hanson can claim that "killing the killers" will result in their being humiliated or defeated. No one can doubt what the immediate tactical outcome of the assault on Falluja will be, but neither can it be denied that the fiery death of all those RPG wielding terrorists ("martyrs") will be hailed by Islamist leaders as a great victory. Hanson may insist that young Arabs' natural aversion of death will overcome the appeal of martyrdom in the anti-coalition cause, but this is at best a gamble, and a very tenuous one. The coming assault on Falluja may slow or stop the Iraqi insurgency, but I would not gamble money on it. Even less would I gamble the will of the American people by feeding them expectations of an event the ultimate outcome of which is shrouded in doubt.

American Perceptions of Zionism

Israel is one of the United States' closest allies in any part of the world, and is thus one of the foreign nations about which Americans are most familiar. It is ironic, in this regard, that Zionism, the movement and ideal that gave birth to Israel and continues to undergird its existence, is so little understood in the United States. Like any movement of historic importance, there is not one but many "Zionisms," as it has fragmented and metamorphed in moving between cultural, social, and geographic contexts. Even so, it is remarkable how little American images of Zionism (likewise diverse) resemble any of its real-world avatars.

In historical terms, Zionism was originally the product of a group of secular European intellectuals. The revival of a Jewish state could not perforce be a religious ideal in the rabbinic age, as no biblical models of Jewish statehood were truly amenable to modern politics- a Jewish state without a king, a temple or a priesthood was inconceivable to religiuos believers. Indeed, many orthodox Jews initially opposed any Zionist project in the pre-messianic age on principle as a form of heresy or apostasy.

Thus Zionism was originally a secular movement born among secular Jews, a fact that naturally raises the question "why a Jewish state disaggregated from Jewish religion?" The answer is that Zionism was one of a series of options developed by post-Enlightenment Jewish intellectuals in response to changes in European state and society. The opening of the ghetto and the admittance of Jews to the social and economic life of Europe created new problems and opportunities for European Jewry. One enticing possibility was assimilation- Jews could now opt to put aside religious garb, abjure adherence to restrictive dietary laws, and assume full citizenship in the new nation-states of Europe. Enlightenment ideals of humanism and tolerance promised a new era of full integration in a community structured according to "natural" rather than religious law. Zionism was born out of disenchantment with this promise, once it became evident that European society was pervaded by a new and pernicious form of secular anti-Semitism, a perception that was embodied for the foundational author of Zionist theory, Theodor Herzl, by the trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus in 1894.

The fact that even a Jew who had divested himself of his "Jewish identity" sufficiently to serve in the French armed forces (an impossibility for anyone determined to live according to Jewish law) could be persecuted for his "Jewishness" persuaded Herzl and many others that assimilation was an impossibility. Jews would never be safe or able to live with true dignity in a nation in which they were not the majority. Herzl was thus moved to write his seminal work, The Jewish Nation (Der Judenstaat). It is crucial to underscore, however, that Herzl's ideal was not predicated on a reversal of cultural assimilation. The purpose of the "Jewish Nation" was not to allow "Jews to be Jews," but to give secular Jews like Herzl and Dreyfus a realm within which they could freely embody and act upon the modern ideals they had come to embrace without fear of anti-Semitic persecution.

This Zion did not bear any relationship with any image taken from the Torah or the Prophets, but was a new type of state conceptualized by thinkers whose principles owed more to Montesquieu, Hegel, Fichte, and Marx than to Moses, Isaiah, and Hillel. Though many voices have contributed to the concept of Zion over the course of the last 100+ years, the historical "mainstream" of Zionist thought has always been principally a strain of nationalist socialism. Herzl and his successors articulated the concept of the Jewish Nation in the same terms as non-Jewish intellectuals had constructed the emergent nation-states of 19th century Europe and America, as a transcendant ideal laying claim to the ultimate loyalties of the community that nevertheless was only tangentially related to purely "religious" values such as God or the Church. At the same time, socialism was perceived as a particularly progressive and amenable organizing principle of this new community, especially since most of its transplanted members would necessarily arrive in their new home effectively dispossessed. A common stake in the new land was the minimum inducement necessary to make the Zionist project at all practicable.

The fundamental principles of the new Zion were thus modernist, rationalist, and even atheistic in their initial conception. The progressive and antisectarian outlook of the early Zionist founders was reflected in their flexibility over the location of Zion. Any space on earth would be suitable to the national enterprise, demography, not geography was the definitive criterion of the Jewish Nation. Uganda and South America were two locations seriously pursued as possible alternatives.

In the end the situation of Zion in Palestine (and thus the metamorphosis of "Zion" into "Israel") was driven neither by the fundamental Enlightenment rationalism of the early Zionist founders or the intrinsically "Jewish" nature of Zionist ideology. Rather, Zionism itself fell into the orbit of the same antirationalist, Romantic forces that controlled the evolution of nationalisms throughout Europe and the Americas and that ironically had given rise to the same anti-Semitism the Zionist founders hoped to flee. Palestine inexorably became the pole star of the Zionist project because it was the one place to which the regionally and culturally diverse population of world Jewry had a common emotional affinity. While the ultimate realization of the Zionist dream would not have been possible without this shift, it has paved the way for the emergence of a religious Zionism that is wholly divorced from the secularist, socialist roots of the original movement. Because the modern Zion, despite its lack of resemblance to the "Israel" of Torah, is actually situated on biblical terrain (a condition deepened by the occupation of "Judea and Samaria," or the West Bank, in 1967), it has been embraced by some modern orthodox as the stage for a religious prophetic drama.

Americans looking at Israel are rarely able to distinguish between secular and religious Zionism. Because "Israel" is intrinsic to the sacred geography of most Americans they tend to assume that the Israeli nation is religiously constituted and that it embodies a sectarian mission. Even American Jews often fall into this misperception, believing that all Israelis naturally desire that the territorial boundaries of their nation conform to those of Solomon's domain. The foundational Zionist mission, to serve as a bulwark against modern secular anti-Semitism, does not require Israel to have specific or non-negotiable boundaries (indeed, it would have accomodated the placement of Zion in Uganda). Despite this fact most Americans assume that the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is motivated by concerns of religion rather than those of strategic security.

The most intense adherents to this form of misperception in the United States are evangelical Christians. Indeed, their engagement with Zionism has been so intense in recent decades that they can be perceived as a new and influential species of Zionist who have transformed the ecumenical culture of Zionism itself. Their Zionism shares certain salient aspects with that of modern religious Israeli Zionists. For these groups the identity of Zion does not rest in such seminal institutions as the kibbutz or the Knesset, but in the restoration of Israel to its biblical borders and the reconstruction of the Solomonic Temple. These goals naturally preclude any end to bloodshed in the Middle East, and are thus profoundly distressing to most modern agents and observers of Mid East affairs.

It is unsurprising that, as is so often the case in all societies, Americans' perceptions of Israel and Zionism are conditioned more by their perceptions of themselves and their own values than by the objective conditions of the Middle East. For many if not most Americans "Zion" is the stage of a soteriological drama that expresses a fundamental yearning of the American psyche. Though there are many reasons why America's call to serve as a "fair broker" in the Israel/Palestine peace process have fallen short, the chronic American misperception of Zionism is certainly one, if not the most important cause. In order to broker wisely and effectively Americans must clearly understand the original rationale and historic mission of the Zionist project and must distinguish clearly between those Zionisms that are conducive to peace and those that make peace impossible.

Tariq Ramadan and Owen Lattimore: Deja Vu All Over Again

Arthur Balfour famously quipped that "history does not repeat itself, historians repeat each other," but the repetitiveness of historians' encounters with the state can descend to the depths of the surreal. At the outset of the Cold War the resounding cry of "who lost China?" convulsed U.S. politics. The victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 and the flight of Chiang Kai-shek's government to Taiwan was not deemed an internal Chinese affair, but a failure of U.S. policy. The search for the source of this failure quickly became intense, and suspicion fell squarely upon one of a tiny handful of accomplished scholars of Chinese history then working in the United States, Professor Owen Lattimore of Johns Hopkins University.

Lattimore had spent his early life in China and was the author of the definitive history of China's relations with Inner Asia (Inner Asian Frontiers of China, 1940). In 1941, at the request of the Roosevelt administration he took up a post as advisor to Chiang Kai-shek at his wartime capital in Chungking. Lattimore was initially a great admirer of Chiang Kai-shek and was instrumental in negotiating China's parity as one of the "Big Four" in the Allied war effort.

Despite his distinguished record of scholarship and service, in 1950 Lattimore was accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy of being the Soviet Union's "top spy" in the United States. Lattimore's crime? By 1950 he had become deeply disenchanted with Chiang's Nationalist regime, which he judged to be irredeemably autocratic and corrupt. He became an advocate of official recognition of the People's Republic of China, a step he viewed as indispensible to the rational conduct of the United States' foreign affairs in Asia. These ideas brought him to the attention of the FBI, who received anonymous reports that he was spreading "sedition" among his students at Johns Hopkins.

Even at the height of the McCarthy era no U.S. court ever convicted Lattimore of espionage. All evidence of his being a "spy" was purely circumstantial. Despite these facts and the publication of a comprehensive study exhonerating him (Owen Lattimore and the "Loss" of China by Robert P. Newman), Lattimore's "treason" remains a fetishistic myth among the pundits of the far right even today.

Lattimore's experience is not most affecting because of the injustice done to one man. Rather, its deepest sorrow lies in the crippling distortion it produced in the American discourse on Asia at a critical moment in the nation's history. Agree or disagree with his perspective, Lattimore was one of a very few knowledgeable American voices equipped to intelligently comment on the rapidly evolving situation in mainland Asia. His persecution guaranteed that U.S. policymakers would receive a one-dimensional perspective of Asian history and politics, a situation that contributed to tragic errors in policy theaters throughout East, Southeast, and Central Asia.

If there is a lesson to be derived from Owen Lattimore's experience, the United States have evidently not learned it. Today America is confronted with a new enemy in the form of radical Islamist terror. The roots of this phenomenon are excruciatingly complex, far more so than those of the multifarious forces of Communism that drove U.S. policy during the Cold War. During that era nuanced critics like Lattimore were sacrificed to the destructive fantasy that Communism was a global monolith and that local cultural and historical conditions could be ignored in the formulation of U.S. strategy. Despite the suffering this obstinate misguidedeness produced, today America seems hell-bent on repeating the mistakes of the past.

Today the New York Times reports that Tariq Ramadan, an internationally admired and intensely prolific scholar of Islamic Studies, has been refused entrance to the United States, where he has been offered a teaching position at the University of Notre Dame. Though Ramadan is widely regarded as one of the most thoughtful and incisive commentators on Islam and its relations with Europe and America, the U.S. government evidently suspects him of some links to terrorism. Why? Just as in the case of Owen Lattimore, much of the "case against" Tariq Ramadan is circumstantial. Ramadan's grandfather, Hasan al-Banna, was one of the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist group established in Egypt in 1928. What is not circumstantial in the "evidence" concerning Ramadan is grounded in his scholarship. He does not hide his reverence for Islam as a living religion, nor does he refrain from criticiizing capitalism and globalization from an Islamic perspective. In the judgment of one European official who has (fruitlessly) investigated allegations against Ramadan, he has "dangerous ideas."

Like the persecution of Owen Lattimore, the rejection of Tariq Ramadan augurs an ill future for the United States. The polarization of the world into "us" and "them" camps on the basis of sympathies with or against Islam is even more destructively absurd than the Cold War red herring of "monolithic global Communism." An acknowledgment that the perpetrators of 9/11 were irredeemably malevolent does not necessitate the conclusion that their appeals to Islam may be safely discounted or ignored. President Bush is right that leaders like Osama bin Laden have "hijacked a great religion," but his bland assertion that those who find the teachings of Al Qaeda appealing "hate us for our freedom" is so simplistic as to be practically meaningless. The U.S. can not hope to effectively countervail the malice of Islamist extremists if we refuse to understand how their ideas might possibly resonate with the attitudes and experiences of at least some of the world's one billion+ Muslims. Now more than ever America desperately needs teachers and critics who can educate both policymakers and the public about the nature of Islam, its history, its diversity, and the values and aspirations of its adherents.

The fate of Owen Lattimore was a harbinger of destructive mistakes the U.S. would commit throughout East Asia. A half century later a similar tragedy of errors is being played out on the streets of Baghdad and Falluja. Is there hope that America will choose a different course today? The treatment of Tariq Ramadan will serve as a gauge of what we may expect moving forward into a dangerous century.

Case in Counterpoint: Thomas Friedman on Iraq

Today's New York Times contains a new editorial by columnist Thomas Friedman, returning from a long leave of absence devoted to a new book project. In his first post-leave column Friedman returns to a theme on which he has expounded for much of the past two years: Iraq. On this score he cuts to the chase quickly, declaring dramatically that "we're in trouble in Iraq," that the Bush administration has "hugely mismanaged" the conflict, and that "as a result the range of decent outcomes in Iraq has been narrowed and the tools we have to bring even those about are more limited than ever." I can find very little in this assessment with which to take issue. However, as a long time reader of Mr. Friedman's column I can only wonder whether or why this state of affairs would come as a surprise to him.

In today's same column Friedman declares, "Being away has not changed my belief one iota in the importance of producing a decent outcome in Iraq, to help move the Arab-Muslim world off its steady slide toward increased authoritarianism, unemployment, overpopulation, suicidal terrorism and religious obscurantism." Again few could critique Friedman's professed goals. But one could well ask why anyone, especially someone as knowledgeable as Thomas Friedman, would ever believe that the achievement of these goals could be aided through the application of U.S. military power.

Later in the same paragraph Friedman sounds another note that will have become familiar to his readers, "...my time off has clarified for me, even more, that this Bush team can't get us there." This seems to be the consistent crux of Friedman's perspective- invading Iraq was the right thing to do, but it was unfortunately done in the wrong way by the wrong people. Reading his column one senses an implicit argument being made: in a Friedman Presidency the U.S. would have invaded Iraq, but it would have been done "correctly," so that all the bright promise tragically discarded by the Bush regime would have been redeemed.

I must confess my shock to find such a perspective coming from someone so knowledgeable about the history and culture of the Middle East. It would seem self-evident to any educated observer that Iraq is a society deeply divided along ethnic, regional, social, ideological, and sectarian lines. No one could reasonably excuse the mad excesses of Saddam Hussein's regime, but it would be equally unreasonable to deny that some part of its violence and brutality reflected the powerful centripetal forces always militating to tear Iraq apart. The notion that the U.S. could keep those forces in check after forcibly removing the lynchpin that had held Iraq together should have been a very tenuous and controversial one for any knowledgeable policy critic. Anyone who has studied the recent history of Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, the Balkans, and any number of other cases should have been intensely skeptical of the United States' ability to even hold a post-Saddam Iraqi nation together, much less to bring about significant gains in human rights, political liberalization, and other "progressive" agendas. Given what appears to me as the clarity of the message to be read in the historical record, I am deeply surprised and disturbed to see how much legitimacy Thomas Friedman has given to recent U.S. policy through his constant advocacy of even the theoretical wisdom of invading Iraq.

The case of Thomas Friedman is, I must admit, an object lesson that stands counter to my own personal philosophy and the central perspective of this weblog. My guiding principal in this forum is (and shall remain): "politics can not be conducted in the ignorance of the history and culture of foreign nations." Thomas Friedman can not, by any fair relative measure, be called ignorant of the history and culture of foreign nations. Even so, I would judge his political perspective and advice, at least with respect to Iraq, deeply flawed. The lesson? Knowledge of the history and culture of foreign nations is no guarantee of wise policy. Conceeding this fact, I would still defend the central proposition of this blog. While knowledge may not guarantee wise policy, ignorance does guarantee foolish and even destructive policy. The case of Thomas Friedman notwithstanding, I would contend that our current situation in Iraq is far more the product of ignorance of history and culture than the opposite.

The Many Faces of Iyad Allawi

Few historical actors acquire a social persona as intensely ambivalent as that of Iyad Allawi so immediately upon mounting the political stage. Richard III had to wait more than a century before Shakespeare fixed his villainy in iambic pentameter. The historical judgment on Chairman Mao has slid gradually along a numerical scale: he went from being the people's infallible savior to being "7 parts right, 3 parts wrong," to being "6 parts right, 4 parts wrong." If this trend continues we will eventally reach the point where the post-Long March CCP would have done just as well by flipping a coin. Even so, this erosion has taken time, and as Mao's stock falls among China's political cogniscenti his currency rises as an object of devotion in the popular religion.

By contrast, the newly minted Prime Minister of Iraq's interim government has almost as many faces as he has biographers. He is, by various accounts, an accomplished surgeon and ardent patriot, a quack fraud and craven puppet of the CIA, a near-martyr for the cause of Iraqi liberation, an inscrupulous opportunist to whose hands clings the blood of past Iraqi dissidents. Such a panoply may not aid clarity, but it does inspire a kind of respect. Hero or villain, we are left with little doubt that Iyad Allawi has done something to someone.

The cloud of ambiguity surrounding Allawi trailed after him when he, like many other Iraqis, crossed an ideological boundary in 1975. It was in this year that, for reasons which (like so much else about Allawi's personal chronology) remain murky, Iyad Allawi resigned from the Ba'ath Party of Iraq. This step set him on the road of anti-Hussein activist, and almost certainly resulted in a failed assassination attempt that hospitalized him for one year in 1978. Prior to his personal "de-Ba'athification," so say Allawi's detractors, he was a close associate of Saddam Hussein's and a willing collaborator in the crimes that brought the latter to power.

The truth or falsity of these allegations is far less interesting than what they themselves can tell us about the recent history of Iraq. The polarity between inscrupulous scoundrel and patriotric doctor may surprise, but this disjunction is no less ambivalent than the political and moral legacy of Ba'athism itself. Michel Aflaq, one of the Ba'ath Party's founders and its ideological pole star, wrote movingly on human rights, the dignity of the worker, and the need to overcome sectarian strife. Himself raised a Syrian Chistian, he propounded a vision of pan-Arab brotherhood and prosperity. At the same time that Aflaq served these high ideals, his thought pulsated with a none-too-latent undercurrent of Nazism. Pan-Arab unity was to be rooted in a radically racist and xenophobic doctrine of "Arab supremacism," the application of which had gruesome consequences for groups such as the Jews, Turkomans, and Kurds.

One can see where motives both pure and ill could naturally be attributed to those who would join such a movement. With 20/20 hindsight we may judge that anyone who colluded in any way with Saddam Hussein must have been either degenerately amoral or insanely misguided. Yet there may have been a time when the ascendancy of a movement that could accomodate both Hussein and Allawi, the scions of a Sunni shepherd and a Shi'ite merchant, seemed a ray of hope on Iraq's bleak political horizon.

The shaping of Iyad Allawi's life into a kind of personal morality tale will never be of any more than prurient interest. As the recent play Copenhagen suggests, it is entirely possible that the famous 1941 conversation between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg was understood, even as it transpired, by the former as an invitation to join the Nazi war effort, by the latter as an offer of aid to the resistance. If a single experience can be clouded in such ambiguity, it is folly to suppose that the entire course of a man's life can be compelled to yield an unequivocal moral a la Aesop.

More intriguing is the larger systemic tale to be read in the shifting tea-leaves of Iyad Allawi's social image. The raw fact that Allawi and Hussein could move from being fellow travellers to mortal enemies tells the story of a movement that fell catastrophically short of its highest ideals and a society in the throes of a profound developmental crisis. The degeneration of Iraqi Ba'athism from a pluralistic coalition accomodating Iyad Allawi into a narrow oligarchy centered on Saddam Hussein's Tikriti kin is not, in the final and ultimate analysis, most usefully plumbed for information about the character of these two men. Rather, it speaks of a nation in which atavistic patterns of tribalism, regionalism, and sectarian chauvinism can so violently subvert efforts at unity and modernization as to leave the moral status of all but the most egregiously evil actors permanently shrouded.