By Caroline B. Glick
On June 7 Hizbullah will likely take over Lebanon and formally bring the oldest Arab democracy into the Iranian axis. Iran's stalking horse will not become the ruler of the largely pro-Western, non-Shiite majority country through a violent revolution. Lebanon will become yet another Iranian vassal state through ballots, not bullets. On June 7, Hizbullah and its allied parties are set to win a smashing popular victory in Lebanon's parliamentary elections.
Hizbullah's projected victory in these elections is of course not an isolated event. It is part of an Islamist electoral sweep in democratic elections throughout the region. Indeed, Islamists have won every free or partially free election in the region for the past six years.
Beginning with Turkey's Islamist AKP party's first electoral victory in 2003 followed by its even more decisive reelection in last year's race; moving to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election in the relatively free, (although not open), presidential elections in his country in 2005, to the Muslim Brotherhood candidates' sweep of nearly all electoral races they were permitted to contest in Egypt's 2005 parliamentary elections, to Hamas's electoral victory in the Palestinian Authority's legislative elections in 2006, the Islamist candidates and parties have been victorious in state after state.
The only outlier in this pattern is Iraq. But then, Iraq is the only country in the region where the West overthrew an enemy regime and retained an empowered military force in the country in the years that followed. What will happen in Iraq once US forces are withdrawn is an open question.
Generally speaking, Western analysts have attributed the Islamists' victories to their well-run welfare programs for the poor, and to the fact that unlike their secular opponents, Islamist parties and politicians are perceived an honest. No doubt, economic interests have played a role in their election. But the fact is that people who voted for the likes of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Ahmadinejad, and those who are poised to vote for Hizbullah are not blind and they are not disengaged from the ideological currents of their societies. They know full-well what these parties and their leaders represent and seek.
Turkish voters, for instance know that Prime Minister Recep Erdogan wishes for Turkey to be an Islamic state and a leader in the Islamic world. Palestinian voters did not vote for Hamas just because it runs the best soup kitchens. They supported Hamas because they support its goal of destroying Israel. Iranian voters chose Ahmadinejad over former president Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani not merely because Rafsanjani was corrupt, but because of Ahmadinejad's outspoken extremism. Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Egypt know that the jihadist movement calls for the overthrow of the government and its replacement with a caliphate and that the group spawned both al Qaida and Hamas. And in Lebanon, voters know that a vote for Hizbullah is a vote for war against Israel and the West and a vote for placing Lebanon under effective Iranian control.
They know all this, and still they vote for these parties and leaders. And once in office, these leaders do not disappoint them. In addition to expanding welfare benefits for their supporters, they have worked steadily and aggressively to Islamify their societies internally and to strengthen their alliances with likeminded governments against the West in foreign affairs. At home, through patronage, repression of political opponents, introduction of Islamic laws, and incitement against the West, these democratically elected regimes have been moving their people further and further away from secularism.
As for the burgeoning alliances between and among these likeminded jihadist states, events of the past week alone make clear that backed by popular support at home, these governments are steadily expanding their military and commercial ties in a naked bid to challenge and defeat the West.
Buffeted by US President Barack Obama's warm embrace of Turkey earlier in the month, Erdogan has moves swiftly to consolidate his place as a central pillar in the new regional jihadist axis spearheaded by Iran, which includes Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Over the past week, his government signed a military pact with Lebanon committing Turkey to providing arms and training for the Lebanese army a force which is already largely subservient to Hizbullah and will likely come under its complete control on June 7.
It signed a defense agreement with Syria's Ministry of Defense, and even more provocatively conducted a three-day joint land forces exercise with the Syrian military. This was the first joint exercise between Syria and a NATO member.
As for Iran, Turkey signed a trade agreement with the mullocracy that is slated to double bilateral trade between the two countries within five years. Even more significantly, Ankara gave a green light to Iranian gas exports to Europe through the Nabucco gas pipeline which runs from Turkey to Austria. The Nabucco pipeline was supposed to bypass both Iran and Russia and increase instead gas exports from the former Soviet republics to Europe. Iran's access to the pipeline will earn it billions of dollars in annual income and increase its political power as Europe increases it dependence on Iranian gas.
Both the popularity of Islamist parties and their behavior after being popularly elected have confounded conventional Western reasoning particularly in the US. Quite simply, successive administrations in Washington have been unable to provide an accurate explanation of what drives the populations of these countries, and increasingly of the Islamic world in general to support Islamist parties and movements.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration came to the conclusion that it isn't that these parties and movements are popular. It is just that people are intimidated into supporting them. Were the people given the freedom to choose, they would choose to be led by liberal political forces interested in living at peace with the West. For former president George W. Bush and his advisors, the root of Islamic extremism was authoritarianism and the solution was Westernization through open elections.
When time after time the citizens of these countries or societies voluntarily elected jihadists, the Bush administration was confounded. Rather than seek an alternative explanation to understand what was happening, the administration alternatively denied reality as in the case of Turkey where it pretended that the AKP was a moderate, pro-Western Islamist party in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. Or they claimed that the people were simply voting against corruption and showered them with money as has been the case with the Hamas-supporting Palestinians. Or, as in the case of Egypt and Iran, they have simply ignored the fact that elections took place. The same of course occurred after Hizbullah's violent coup last May. Rather than cut off ties with the Saniora government which had been compelled to accept Hizbullah control over its affairs the Bush administration continued to support Saniora and increased US military assistance to the Lebanese army hoping that it could pretend away the problem.
Since his first moments in office, President Barack Obama has embarked on a policy course which rejects Bush's belief that the quest for freedom is universal as so much American chauvinism. For Obama, Islamic hostility towards the West is caused by American arrogance, not the absence of freedom. And because American arrogance is the root of the problem, the solution must be American contrition. It is this view that propels Obama from one international apology tour to the next and causes him to air the CIA's laundry in public. As far as he is concerned, the more apologetic he is, the more contrition he expresses for the actions of his predecessors, the greater the pay-off will be.
And yet, as we see from the behavior of Lebanon, Turkey, Syria and Iran over the past week alone, Obama's apologetics are not winning them over, but emboldening them to take more aggressive positions against the West. How can this be explained?
There is an alternative explanation for the behavior of the peoples of the Islamic world that actually can explain events, and has successfully forecast them. It has even engendered policy recommendations that might have mitigated both the popularity of Islamist parties and deterred these parties, once elected from taking provocative steps against Western states and interests. Unfortunately, every time this explanation is raised, Western policy makers head for the hills.
This explanation is really nothing more than an observation. It observes that the populations of Islamic countries and societies support Islamist parties like the AKP and Hizbullah and Hamas because they support what they stand for. This explanation notes that tens and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians, Turks, Egyptians and others voluntarily congregate in public venues and swoon when Islamist leaders tell them that Islam will defeat the West and promise the death of America and the death of Israel.
The jihadist message resonates with them. Their hearts and minds have already been won over. Contrary to what Western leaders as distinct as Bush and Obama believe, the hearts and minds of the Islamic world are not presently in play. From Beirut to the Taliban-controlled Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan, jihadists enjoy public support because the public supports their aim of defeating the West with bullets, with bombs, and with ballots.
It is too early to know how Obama will react when he like Bush is no longer able to deny that his strategy for winning over the hearts and minds of the Islamic world has failed. We don't know if like Bush before him, he will simply ignore reality and pretend that nothing has happened; if he will blame his political opponents or Israel for not joining him in his contrition; or if he will cast about for another central organizing principle that will explain hostile Islamic behavior.
What is clear is that in the absence of Western and specifically American willingness to consider the possibility that what is happening in the Islamic world has next to nothing to do with either what the West embodies or what it has done, and everything to do with the resonance of the Islamist message within the Islamic world, events like the expected loss of Lebanon in June will continue to be met with incoherent prattling and confusion.
Like it or not, it appears that the rising forces in the Islamic world perceive themselves as at war with Western civilization. They cannot be convinced to believe otherwise by either elections or apologies. And the current situation, in which only one side is willing to recognize that there is a war going on between two mutually exclusive ways of organizing human societies, will only lead us to more violent and devastating clashes in the future.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/01/2009 20:03 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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#1
Islam metastasises into another country thanks to Saudi oil rent-seeking.
#2
Saudis have minimal influence in Lebanon - it's becoming another Iranian satellite, like Syria, but even more of a whore-subsidiary
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/01/2009 20:30 Comments ||
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#3
Islamists have won every free or partially free election in the region for the past six years.
Good. It will make domestic US resistance to Total War much lower once the provocation is delivered. This is ultimately a cultural/religious war.
No Arab nation has yet felt the western way of war the way Germany, Russia and Japan have. They need not a hudna from which they can recover to prey upon the world yet again, but a mouthful of the terrible swift sword. If they want to set themselves up for it, so be it.
When you do not confront evil thugocracies like Iran and Syria, you get run over or pushed back. Our tepidness and confronting evil will get us a ME nuke war.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
05/01/2009 21:13 Comments ||
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#5
See also SPACEWAR: IFF PAKISTAN FALLS [in series]; + WINDS OF CHANGE > THE TALIBAN AND PASHTUN NATIONALISM.
ALso from SPACE WAR > [William S. Lind]MILITARY MATTERS: COMING CRISES PARTS I, II. espec as under POTUS BAMMER + ADMIN
* US will fail to get of Iraq before the next insurgency phase inside Iraq begins, or ISRAEL attacks IRAN.
* US will be defeated in PAKISTAN = AFPAK due to the USA's failure to adjust WOT-PK policies which ALIENATE the local Muslims.
* US may ignore the collapse of MEXICO which will incur intensified anti-US sentiments = suppor for US enemies.
* US policies will induce the disnitegration of nuclear Pakistan.
VARI NET POSTERS > proclaim THE "LONG MARCH" OF AMERICA'S STRATEGIC DEFEAT + GEOPOL ROLLBACK, IFF NOT PER SE NATIONAL DESTRUCTION, HAS BEGUN UNDER POTUS BAMMER???
A professor at the American University here recently ordered copies of "The Diary of Anne Frank" for his classes, only to learn that the book is banned. Inquiring further, he discovered a long list of prohibited books, films and music.
This is perplexing -- and deeply ironic -- because Beirut has been named UNESCO's 2009 "World Book Capital City." Just last week "World Book and Copyright Day" was kicked off with a variety of readings and exhibits that honor "conformity to the principles of freedom of expression [and] freedom to publish," as stated by the UNESCO Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the UNESCO's "Florence Agreement." The catch is that Lebanon has not signed the Florence Agreement, which focuses on the free circulation of print and audio-visual material.
Even a partial list of books banned in Lebanon gives pause: William Styron's "Sophie's Choice"; Thomas Keneally's "Schindler's List"; Thomas Friedman's "From Beirut to Jerusalem"; books by Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and Isaac Bashevis Singer. In fact, all books that portray Jews, Israel or Zionism favorably are banned.
Writers in Arabic are not exempt. Abdo Wazen's "The Garden of the Senses" and Layla Baalbaki's "Hana's Voyage to the Moon" were taken to court. Syria's Sadiq Jalal al-Azm was prosecuted for his "Critique of Religious Thinking."
Censorship is carried out by the Sûreté General, which combines the functions of the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security. It does not post a list of banned works, much less answer questions. However a major book importer, in an email, provided a list of banned films and the reasons given by the Sûreté. Here are some: "A Voice From Heaven" (verses of Koran recited during dance scenes); "Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" (homosexuality); "Barfly" ( blacklisted company Canon); and "Daniel Deronda" (shot in Israel).
All of Jane Fonda's films are banned, since she visited Israel in 1982 to court votes for Tom Hayden's Senate run. "Torn Curtain" is banned: Paul Newman starred in "Exodus." And the television series "The Nanny" is banned because of Fran Drescher.
According to Beirut newspaper L'Orient, any one of the recognized religions (a system known as "confessionalism") can ask the Sûreté to ban any book unilaterally. The Muslim Dar al-Fatwa and the Catholic Information Center are the most active and effective. (The latter got Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" banned.) Even works by self-proclaimed Islamists such as Assadeq al-Nayhoum's "Islam Held Hostage," have been banned, and issued only when re-edited in sympathetic editions (in Syria).
Censorship is a problem throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Though a signatory of the Florence Agreement, the Academy of Islamic Research in Egypt, through its censorship board al-Azhar, decides what may not be printed: Nobel Prize winner Naghib Mahfouz's "Awlad Haratina" (The Sons of the Medina) was found sacrilegious and only printed in bowdlerized form in Egypt in 2006. Saudi Arabia sponsors international book fairs in Riyadh, but Katia Ghosn reported in L'Orient that it sends undercover agents into book stores regularly.
Works that could stimulate dialogue in Lebanon are perfunctorily banned. "Waltz with Bashir," an Israeli film of 2008, is banned -- even though it alleges that Ariel Sharon was complicit in the Sabra and Shatilla massacres. According to the Web site Monstersandcritics, however, "Waltz with Bashir" became an instant classic in the very Palestinian camps it depicts, because it is the only history the younger generation has. But how did those copies get there?
The answer is also embarrassing. Just as it ignores freedom of circulation, Lebanon also ignores international copyright laws. Books of all types are routinely photocopied for use in high schools and universities. As for DVDs, you have only to mention a title and a pirated copy appears. "Slumdog Millionaire" was available in video shops before it opened in the U.S.
#2
There must be a commission (Sharia lawyers or religious police) that reviews and bans everything. I suggest they dismantle the commission and just ban everything--save some time and money. If they don't do this we can just assume without too much trouble that they do ban everything. Please feel free to ban islam.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/01/2009 19:12 Comments ||
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#5
Ummm Wait just a minute here
Quote "any one of the recognized religions (a system known as "confessionalism") can ask the Sûreté to ban any book unilaterally."
so christianity, an organized recognised Religion can ask to have the Koran banned as a hate book?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/01/2009 20:23 Comments ||
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By email (to the Counterterrorism Division) and by regular mail:
The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.
Attorney General of the United States
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001
Dear Attorney General Holder:
This letter is respectfully submitted to inform you that I must decline the invitation to participate in the May 4 roundtable meeting the Presidents Task Force on Detention Policy is convening with current and former prosecutors involved in international terrorism cases. An invitation was extended to me by trial lawyers from the Counterterrorism Section, who are members of the Task Force, which you are leading.
The invitation email (of April 14) indicates that the meeting is part of an ongoing effort to identify lawful policies on the detention and disposition of alien enemy combatantsor what the Department now calls individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations. I admire the lawyers of the Counterterrorism Division, and I do not question their good faith. Nevertheless, it is quite clearmost recently, from your provocative remarks on Wednesday in Germanythat the Obama administration has already settled on a policy of releasing trained jihadists (including releasing some of them into the United States). Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues. I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the presidents first obligation to protect the American people. Under the circumstances, I think the better course is to register my dissent, rather than be used as a prop.
Moreover, in light of public statements by both you and the President, it is dismayingly clear that, under your leadership, the Justice Department takes the position that a lawyer who in good faith offers legal advice to government policy makerslike the government lawyers who offered good faith advice on interrogation policymay be subject to investigation and prosecution for the content of that advice, in addition to empty but professionally damaging accusations of ethical misconduct. Given that stance, any prudent lawyer would have to hesitate before offering advice to the government.
Beyond that, as elucidated in my writing (including my proposal for a new national security court, which I understand the Task Force has perused), I believe alien enemy combatants should be detained at Guantanamo Bay (or a facility like it) until the conclusion of hostilities. This national defense measure is deeply rooted in the venerable laws of war and was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in the 2004 Hamdi case. Yet, as recently as Wednesday, you asserted that, in your considered judgment, such notions violate Americas commitment to the rule of law. Indeed, you elaborated, Nothing symbolizes our [adminstrations] new course more than our decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay . President Obama believes, and I strongly agree, that Guantanamo has come to represent a time and an approach that we want to put behind us: a disregard for our centuries-long respect for the rule of law[.] (Emphasis added.)
Given your policy of conducting ruinous criminal and ethics investigations of lawyers over the advice they offer the government, and your specific position that the wartime detention I would endorse is tantamount to a violation of law, it makes little sense for me to attend the Task Force meeting. After all, my choice would be to remain silent or risk jeopardizing myself.
For what it may be worth, I will say this much. For eight years, we have had a robust debate in the United States about how to handle alien terrorists captured during a defensive war authorized by Congress after nearly 3000 of our fellow Americans were annihilated. Essentially, there have been two camps. One calls for prosecution in the civilian criminal justice system, the strategy used throughout the 1990s. The other calls for a military justice approach of combatant detention and war-crimes prosecutions by military commission. Because each theory has its downsides, many commentators, myself included, have proposed a third way: a hybrid system, designed for the realities of modern international terrorisma new system that would address the needs to protect our classified defense secrets and to assure Americans, as well as our allies, that we are detaining the right people.
There are differences in these various proposals. But their proponents, and adherents to both the military and civilian justice approaches, have all agreed on at least one thing: Foreign terrorists trained to execute mass-murder attacks cannot simply be released while the war ensues and Americans are still being targeted. We have already released too many jihadists who, as night follows day, have resumed plotting to kill Americans. Indeed, according to recent reports, a released Guantanamo detainee is now leading Taliban combat operations in Afghanistan, where President Obama has just sent additional American forces.
The Obama campaign smeared Guantanamo Bay as a human rights blight. Consistent with that hyperbolic rhetoric, the President began his administration by promising to close the detention camp within a year. The President did this even though he and you (a) agree Gitmo is a top-flight prison facility, (b) acknowledge that our nation is still at war, and (c) concede that many Gitmo detainees are extremely dangerous terrorists who cannot be tried under civilian court rules. Patently, the commitment to close Guantanamo Bay within a year was made without a plan for what to do with these detainees who cannot be tried. Consequently, the Detention Policy Task Force is not an effort to arrive at the best policy. It is an effort to justify a bad policy that has already been adopted: to wit, the Obama administration policy to release trained terrorists outright if thats what it takes to close Gitmo by January.
Obviously, I am powerless to stop the administration from releasing top al Qaeda operatives who planned mass-murder attacks against American citieslike Binyam Mohammed (the accomplice of Dirty Bomber Jose Padilla) whom the administration recently transferred to Britain, where he is now at liberty and living on public assistance. I am similarly powerless to stop the administration from admitting into the United States such alien jihadists as the 17 remaining Uighur detainees. According to National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, the Uighurs will apparently live freely, on American taxpayer assistance, despite the facts that they are affiliated with a terrorist organization and have received terrorist paramilitary training. Under federal immigration law (the 2005 REAL ID Act), those facts render them excludable from the United States. The Uighurs impending release is thus a remarkable development given the Obama administrations propensity to deride its predecessors purported insensitivity to the rule of law.
I am, in addition, powerless to stop the President, as he takes these reckless steps, from touting his Detention Policy Task Force as a demonstration of his national security seriousness. But I can decline to participate in the charade.
Finally, let me repeat that I respect and admire the dedication of Justice Department lawyers, whom I have tirelessly defended since I retired in 2003 as a chief assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. It was a unique honor to serve for nearly twenty years as a federal prosecutor, under administrations of both parties. It was as proud a day as I have ever had when the trial team I led was awarded the Attorney Generals Exceptional Service Award in 1996, after we secured the convictions of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and his underlings for waging a terrorist war against the United States. I particularly appreciated receiving the award from Attorney General Renoas I recounted in Willful Blindness, my book about the case, without her steadfastness against opposition from short-sighted government officials who wanted to release him, the blind sheikh would never have been indicted, much less convicted and so deservedly sentenced to life-imprisonment. In any event, Ive always believed defending our nation is a duty of citizenship, not ideology. Thus, my conservative political views aside, Ive made myself available to liberal and conservative groups, to Democrats and Republicans, whove thought tapping my experience would be beneficial. It pains me to decline your invitation, but the attendant circumstances leave no other option.
Very truly yours,
/S/
Andrew C. McCarthy
cc: Sylvia T. Kaser and John DePue
National Security Division, Counterterrorism Section
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A professor at the American University here recently ordered copies of "The Diary of Anne Frank" for his classes, only to learn that the book is banned. Inquiring further, he discovered a long list of prohibited books, films and music.
