Adam Garfinkle at the American Interest: ‘To Strike Or Not To Strike, That Is The Question:’
‘The point is, limited airstrikes might be justified—and very soon—if we’re playing ordnance keep-away with ISIS, but it’s hard to see how airstrikes alone can do much good from a macro-military or political point of view, given the situation in Baghdad.’
A piece from Mashable on ISIS gains:
https://twitter.com/MsIntervention/status/482580268684173314
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Theodore Dalrymple at The City Journal: ‘The French (Jihad) Connection:’
They’re out there:
‘What they found instead in Nemmouche’s possession was a Kalashnikov rifle, a revolver, lots of ammunition, a gas mask, a short video of the weapons in his possession accompanied by a verbal commentary (probably in his voice) on the recent murder of four Jews at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, clothing similar to that worn by the perpetrator of that attack, and a white flag with the words Islamic State of Iraq and of the Levant in Arabic inscribed on it.’
France and Algeria have a complicated relationship, to say the least, but when even French ‘rock-star intellectual’ of the Left, Bernard-Henri Levy notes the anti-semitism in France these days…
Perhaps North-African Arab Muslims imported for cheap labor, many of whom live in ghettoes, coming into contact with an underlying native anti-semitism, French nationalism and somewhat fascistic far Right and socialist Left in a huge State complex…isn’t so great for a small French Jewish minority.
Paul Berman had a piece on Albert Camus and Algeria a while back.
Interesting note from Wikipedia (I know…it’s Wikipedia) from Berman on European nihilism:
‘Berman tries to trace the influence of these European movements into the modern Muslim world. He identifies two principal totalitarian tendencies in the Muslim countries, Baathism and radical Islamism – mutually hostile movements whose doctrines, in his interpretation, overlap and have allowed for alliances. Berman regards suicide terror and the cult of martyrdom as a re-emergence of totalitarianism’s nihilist strand.’
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On that note…some further speculation:
George W. Bush had commitments to a vision of human-freedom-based economic liberalism and democracy promotion in Iraq, along with I’m guessing a personal religious faith, social conservative alliances and the neo-conservative application of military force to achieve our aims there. His support of the unpopular surge to give the Iraqi government a monopoly on power in 2007 managed to stabilize the country somewhat, which has since been squandered by a sectarian Maliki coalition and no real follow-up during our withdrawal (whatever your thoughts on the war and invasion itself).
I wouldn’t be surprised if, via Bernard Lewis (and similar to Berman’s analysis above), Bush shared a view that the nihilist and totalitarian exports from the West grafted onto the Middle-East (Saddam party Ba’athism, Gadhafi’s Green Book and ultimately Islamism and Islamic terror) manage to constitute a very important threat to American liberty and security here at home. After all, 9/11 happened on his watch. Hence, the War On Terror and the global hunt for bin Laden. It was time to root out the threat and fight for a global vision of liberty against a global vision of Islamism.
As Bernard Lewis argued, perhaps an Islamic caliphate that isn’t radicalized and Islamist may be the Muslim’s world’s version of power-sharing. This is something to think about: The Muslim world may not really be that compatible with Western liberal democracy, but at least the Ottomans weren’t as bad as what we’ve got now.
Barack Obama seems to possess a kind of further-Left, pro-peace (and by my lights, impossibly ideal and utopian) democratic activist vision which often finds Clintonesque humanitarian intervention too much to swallow (as in Bosnia). The Obama foreign-policy coalition is pretty hostile to neo-conservatism, social conservatism etc.and frankly suspicious of even the humanitarian interventionists at times. Obama aims to, and has largely withdrawn, U.S. forces and influence from the region entirely, arguably without much strategic consideration or competence, by the looks of our State Department spokespeople and hashtag activism.
What do we do next? What’s most important and how do we get there from here?
Feel free to highlight my ignorance.
Any thoughts and comments are welcome.
Addition: There are many factions to think about, neo-conservatives, many of whom haven’t properly examined their assumptions for the original invasion and have careers to protect, pro-peace Democrats who seem as angry at neo-conservatives as dealing much in foreign policy reality and have political power to maintain for progressive aims, anti-war libertarians and Hayekians with wisdom to offer, paleo-cons who want to return to a vision of conservatism at home and don’t support any more engagement abroad, middle-of-the-road Americans riding a surge of isolationism on foreign matters and showing disgust with D.C. here at home…