Monday, 28 July 2003

War and Peace. I'd really like to respond to Steven Den Beste's over-the-top "strategic overview" of the War on Terror; it deserves to be answered and refuted at length, and Steven is practically daring me to do it—I'd like to take on that task, but I have a day job, for crying out loud. Steven cranks out 1,000-word essays more often than I change my socks; I'm lucky if I can do more than skim his latest opus while I'm getting ready for work in the morning.

I will say this, though: When the first sentence of your outline is titled "What is the root cause of the war?", and you then go on about Why Arabs Suck for twenty lines without ever actually identifying a root cause… well, this is not a promising beginning. Steven's original outline is in gray; my comments are in blue:

1. What is the root cause of the war?

   Root cause implies a single catalyst. Saying that "X is the root cause of the war" says that if we could travel back in time and prevent X from occurring, the whole war would never have happened. The only actor whose premature death might have prevented this war is Osama bin Laden, whose role in the forming of Al Qaeda may have been pivotal enough that killing him in '93 would have kept the planes from hitting the World Trade Center; any other "root cause" fails the litmus test, unless you want to allow "Islam" (or "America") as your root cause.

1. Collective failure of the nations and people in a large area which is predominately Arab and/or Islamic.

   America does not wage war on "collective failures of nations and people in a large area" just because they are not measuring up to our standards. If we did, our War on Africa would take precedence over a war in the Mideast. This cannot be our root cause.

1. Economically the only contribution they make is by selling natural resources which are available to them solely through luck.

   If Arabs have natural resources "solely through luck," then Europeans were lucky beyond any other culture's wildest fantasies: They began their journey up the cultural ladder blessed with three of the five major cereal crops (wheat, oats, and barley), the top three farm animals (cows, pigs, and sheep), lush forests, rich soil, high annual rainfall, and easy access to mineral ores. Meanwhile the Arabs got goats, mineral-poor soil, not enough rain, and simply didn't have the food surpluses throughout most of history to sustain as many Newtons and Galileos and John Stuart Mills as Europe did. This is the "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" scenario writ large.

2. They make no significant contribution to international science or engineering.

   See above. You can make the argument that the last 50 years of Arab culture have played out along "redneck wins lottery, goes bankrupt" lines—that the governments and peoples of the Middle East have largely squandered the proceeds of their oil windfall—but these governments were imposed upon the Arabs by Western interests and dedicated to the proposition that oil men are creating equity. Slamming those governments now for not promoting the welfare of their citizens is a spectacular change of direction from our policies of the previous century, which at best were isolationist and at worst put tyrants in charge.

3. They make little or no cultural contribution to the world. Few seek out their poetry, their writing, their movies or music. The most famous Muslim writer of fiction in the world is under a fatwa death sentence now and lives in exile in Europe.

   In the world outside San Diego, Iran's movie industry is at its artistic and financial peak: Films like Kandahar and Baran are raking in jury prizes and box office receipts; the most famous Muslim director of movies in the world has a Palme d'Or on his mantle. Salman Rushdie's example does not support the claim that Muslims "make little or no cultural contribution to the world;" that would be like citing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as proof that Russian writers were inarticulate hacks.

4. Their only diplomatic relevance is due to their oil.

   Oil, oil, oil. "Diplomatic relevance" is such a nebulous term that I can't really say what it means—a personal measure of how important a country is to Steven Den Beste, maybe, or perhaps a fancy way of saying that if the Arabs didn't have all that oil, then we would ignore them and their petty troubles just like we ignore Bolivia or Senegal. There are many, many countries that are "diplomatically irrelevant" on this scale, and it doesn't necessarily follow that these countries are failures.

5. They are not respected by the world, or by themselves.

   …and our strategy is to raise their self-respect by humiliating their armies in battle? Be serious.

6. Since this is a "face" culture, shame about this this has led to rising but unfocused discontent, anger and resentment.

   Yes, and it's a lucky thing that Jacksonian America is not a "face" culture—goodness knows where we'd be if America's neo-cons held grudges for years at a time, or if they were not so tolerant of slights and humiliations. Or, heck, for that matter we're lucky that Germany and France are not "face" cultures, and were so eager to forgive that "Old Europe" crack from the other month. Yes sir-ee, it's a good thing we advanced civilizations have moved past that "face" culture stage, because if we hadn't the whole Third Infantry Division might be stuck in Iraq right now, with no friendly foreign relief troops in sight. (Except for the Japanese, of course. Aren't they a "face" culture?)

7. Some governments in the region have tried to focus it elsewhere so as to deflect it away from themselves. (The "Zionist Entity" is a favorite target.)

   Agreed. Trying to deflect blame is unfortunately not unique to the Middle East (and I'll resist making any digs about George Tenet and Condi Rice here), but no question that this is taking place.

8. Ambitious leaders of various kinds of tried to use it for their own purposes.

1. Khomeinei and the Taliban used it to support revolutions respectively in Iran and Afghanistan.
2. Saddam used it to gain support for creation of a united pan-Arab empire ruled from Baghdad.

I think what Steven is trying to say here is that the political situation in the Middle East allows extremist movements to come to power, because the people are more willing to give extremists a try under the circumstances—a government of clerics has to be better than the Shah and his secret police, right?

This may be a valid observation, and I could generously sketch in an analogy to fascism and 1930s Europe here that might actually help make the case for invading Iraq—but that's not why we're here, is it? We were talking about root causes, and we've reached the end of Part I without ever identifying one.

Maybe if I ask the question "What was the root cause of World War II?", it will help to illustrate the problem here: History doesn't give us black-and-white answers to questions like these. We can't point to a single person or event and say, "Here was what led to World War II." A world without Hitler would have still had the Anschluss, the Kristallnacht, and all that followed; a world without Versailles would still have gone to war. (A world without Churchill might have been radically different, but there still would have been a World War II.)

Steven's response to "what is the root cause of the war?" (which, I might add, is really the "why do they hate us?" question in disguise) is that Arabs are a bunch of sore losers who don't measure up to America and are jealous and resentful of our success. While that may summarize Steven's opinions of Middle Eastern culture, a more thorough analysis would note that the Mideast states were pawns in the great-power game from about 1910 to 1990, that their borders and governments were imposed from without during this period, and that their lack of success in modern times cannot be wholly blamed on Arab or Islamic culture.

Due to a configuration problem on my end, this article didn't actually appear on the web site until the 3rd of August—by which time I had already gone beyond it and started writing my own outline. No wonder it didn't stir up much debate.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 10:03 am. comments.