Note from Robert Spencer:
Yeah, the Saudis are really cracking down on the elements that give rise to terrorism. From IMRA, with thanks to Alyssa Lappen

Ethelred Note: Post, response and answer

It is very likely hopeless, because despite Bush's insistence that some would "deny the right of people of a different skin color" to democracy, one's skepticism has nothing to do with "skin color" (in this respect, his invoking racism is akin to CAIR's sinister and deliberate policy of claiming that close inspection of Muslims amounts to "racial profiling" -- when clearly it is ideological profiling), Iraq is one of the most unlikely places in the world to bring democracy.

First, democracy requires a strong sense of the individual -- the individual not as subject or slave, but as citizen. That requires a mental set quite different from the tribalism in which most of Iraq is mired. It is absurd to generalize from the handful of amiable, plausible, and completely unrepresentative or misrepresentative, Iraqis -- Kanan Makiya, Ambassador Francke, Ahmad Chalabi -- who have been met with so frequently in Washington. They have all spent decades abroad, and learned to think, and to speak, as Westerners. They have themselves largely forgotten just how crazy, who susceptible to rumor and falsehood, and how impervious to the truth (such as that the Americans really are not there to steal the oil, or that Quday and Uday really did die, or any number of things). Lies are likely to be believed, if they fit the pre-existing hostility to Infidels. Truths are likely to be shrugged off, if they show the Americans in a good light.

Paul Wolfowitz was taken to task by Richard Pipes in a Globe interview some months ago. Wolfowitz, he noted, was a "brilliant weapons systems analyst" but knew little of history, and nothing of the effect of ideology and culture on people. And what's more, those who thought that somehow democracy could be transplanted, like a Cavendish banana or a pretty phalaenopsis of the kind you can now buy cheaply at Costco rather than expensively at White Flower Farm (but do support your local nursery, not the all-in-one giants), show a failure to understand how long and complicated and difficult was the development of democracy in the advanced, non-Muslim world. Those who want "democracy in Iraq" before Ataturkian de-islamization, and want it within 3-4 years, not 3-4 decades, do not understand Iraq, and what's more, do not understand democracy.

To achieve an imporovement in Iraq, it must first be allowed to deal, by itself, with its own historical hells. American soldiers should not be used as a way to unite Sunni and Shi'a in frenzied mobs, nor should they be protecting one group from another. Nor should all those Reservists and National Guardsmen be put at quite foolish risk in keeping at all these "reconstruction" projects which we ought not to be paying for (that money, applied to alternative energy projects, would do far more to crimp the world-wide Jihad), and which the Iraqis, with their whining and complaining and palpable lack of gratitude, have done nothing to deserve.

If Iraq has to endure some period of chaos, and possibly a reappearance of something like the old Ottoman vilayets, that is not a bad thing. If it yields fully to the fissiparous forces that are now held in check only by the Americans (who keep the Arabs from again attacking the Kurds, and whose presence allows Shi'a and Sunni to join in a common hostility). Get those Americans out.

And meanwhile, make sure that no one in the Arab and Muslim world mistakes our leaving Iraq to its own fate, to stew for some years in own juices, for a defeat. No, quite the contrary: by attacking the Arab satellite channels (appeals to the Al-Thani family in Qatar failed -- well, that's their last chance), by putting 5,000 or 10,00 American troops in the southern Sudan to protect the blacks from the Arabs (a move that would be wildly popular both in the United States, and in much of black Africa -- and would cost very little, and could hardly be opposed by Arabs claiming that they have some kind of god-given right to persecute, rape, and murder both Christian and animist blacks, and even non-Arab Muslims in the Darfur region). Stay, in order for the local referendum that will create a new nation, out of the oil-rich, and therefore economically potentially independent, southern Sudan. A good place for an American airfield. A good place from which to shore up the forces of Christianity, everywhere from southern Nigeria to Kenya and Tanzania; a full stop may be put to Arab Muslim da'wa and internal conquest of black Africa.

And after putting Al-Jazeera out of its hysterical misery (and the technical backwardness of the Arabs reinforced, for all to see -- one more example of the intellectual failure of Islam, which is permanently backward, though OPEC money can buy weaponry, and even finance nuclear programs based on bluepritns stolen by A.Q. Khan and his ilk), and taken southern Sudan in a mission that would be simultaenously anti-Jihad and humanitarian, let America turn its attention to winning back "hearts and minds" in Europe, by providing the kind of subsidized and intelligent help that was so useful in limiting the attractiveness of Communism in post-World War II Europe. There are, all over Europe, people sick at how their own EU, and particular government swithin the EU, have permitted unhindered Muslim immigration. From Palermo to Marseilles, from Cologne to Madrid, Europeans are beside themselves with secret worries and feaars, and no one except the unacceptable Le Pen, Megret, and company articulates the worry about Muslim immigrants. Pim Fortuyn was killed by a weak-minded Dutchman who was not so much an "animal rights activist" as he was offended by Fortuyn's desire to stop further Muslim immigration. All over Europe there are those who need support, who need to buy newspapers, who need to hear ex-Muslims testify at conferences on what Islam is really all about. The United States can help. And it can count on "New Europe," the Europe that contains a historic memory of the Ottoman devshirme, and the destruction of Christian life -- Bulgaria, Rumania, much of the Balkans, even Poland (Sobieski) and Hungary (the Magyars who turned back the Turks). All of this needs to be developed and played upon.

And there is much more that must be done, so that the sensible leave-taking from Iraq -- which is at this point (not before, not in March or April or May or even unto December 2003) has become a gross mis-allocation of men, materiel, money, and political capital.

Sorry, Iraq -- we're leaving now. We tried. We didn't fail. You did. You turned out to be far more unpleasant, ungrateful, and passive than we had any reason to believe. You did virtually nothing to help yourself rebuild, and waited for us to do it for you. You were happy to take what we offered, but there was no real gratitude -- not outside a handful of people. And policy cannot be built on the loyalty or unfiegned gratidue of 1% or 2% or even 5% of the population. It just can't. And we are not going to sacrifice further American lives for you. Oh, and that $18.7 billion you are confidently expecting (and certainly all the crooks, such as Adnan Pachachi, are circling about, hoping some of them is left for them)-- well, it turns out that most of it is now going to tanks and other military supplies we find we need, and also to pay our Reservists and National Guard units a good deal more, now that they have been risking their lives, and also to pay for our new venture in the Sudan, and to put al-Jazeera out of commission, and to start a Radio Free Europe -- beamed not at Eastern Europe, but at all of Europe, with stories just like the stories you find at www.jihadwatch.org, and www.secularislam.org.

Think of it, all you Washington consultants -- you don't have to contemplate some horrible months in horrible Iraq. Pack your bags -- Paris, Rome, Madrid, and London beckon. It will be great -- all you have to do is learn about Islam, and then help Europe help itself, after three decades of Euro-Arab appeasement. Don't you want to be able to visit, in 30 years, the Prado, the Louvre, the Uffizi, the Alte Pinakothek, the Rijksmuseum, the National Gallery -- don't you want to ensure that the statues and paintings are still safely there? Don't you want to ensure that France, Italy, and Holland are not lost to Islam? Don't you want your children and grandchildren to be able to spend those Junior Years Abroad in Europe, and not in part of dar al-Islam? Sure you do, even if you're just a little too lazy to really study Islam. So get with my program, will you?

"We split and parted, the university and I. I am again a carefree Cossack." That is how Nabokov translated Gogol's lines about leaving his post at the University of St. Petersburg, after his short stint as a professor of universal history (he only performed well the day that Pushkin came to hear his lecture). Well, time for America and Iraq to "spit and part." Not so that we can again be "carefree cowboys," but so that we can with cunning and art, and all the instruments of modern war, propaganda, economic pressure, and moral suasion, deal with the world-wide Jihad the way it must be dealt with.

Stay the course? Sure. But the "course" is not Iraq; the "course" to stay covers much more than Iraq, and ought to be more cunningly conducted than it is at present. That "course" must be stayed without misallocating resources, and what could be done in Iraq of value -- knocking out an aggressive regime, assuring ourselves of its weaponry, and destroying most of that country's military might -- has been achieved. Leaving Iraq alone now is the best way to bring about the kind of changes -- the Ataturkian changes -- that will make things, from our point of view, better.

The real "course to be stayed" is everywhere, and Iraq is now a diversion, a distraction, a tarbaby. Not a quagmire, but a tarbaby. The "course to stay" is in southern Sudan and the Moluccas and the Moro Islands, in Waziristan and Kashmir, in Madrid and Paris, in Beirut and Riyadh, in Ramallah and Lackawanna and in the airports, on the planes and trains, in the LNG terminals, in the seaports --everywhere in the world, whether currently controlled by the forces of Islam, or still as yet unsubjugated.

Yes, out of Iraq, in order to carefully choose, in each place, the appropriate anti-Jihad instrument, and the means for its most effective application.

Hugh, the better part of me wants to say, "Here, Here!" You made some brilliant points. However, what happens if we leave without stabilizing Iraq? I question the wisdom of allowing the Islamists to take over and control the world's 2nd largest oil supply. Could you imagine how far those revenues would go towards financing the global jihad? (from "Linny")

I want the "war on terrorism" clearly defined as a war of self-defense against the world-wide Jihad. Some will recognize the justice of the description; others will move heaven and earth not to recognize it.

Would not the seizure of the southern Sudan and Darfur be eminently justifiable, and the best possible way to send a message that parts of dar al-Islam where non-Muslims are being murdered will no longer be part of dar al-Islam. Can Kofi Annan, worried about the Oil-for-Food scandal, and knowing full well that it was he who was most responsible for the UN's failure to intervene in the last African genocide, dare to raise his voice, or allow the Islamic infiltrators who have virtually seized control of the UN, to express their own fury at the Americans, when clearly the scenes of starving and terrorized black Africans, flocking to receive food and protection from the American soldiers, will be ungainsayable Too bad for the UN, the Arab League, and the world's Muslims. Very good for the non-Muslim world, and it could be a clear defining issue, not only for Africa's Christians, but for others as well. We need to find, and use to our own advantage, those defining issues. Iraq is a mess, not a quagmire but a mess. If we get out and accompany the withdrawal with several clear aggressive anti-Jihad measures, that will undercut all the crowing in Fallujah. Oh -- and if they crow, that crowing will not last long. Who is going to keep the Sunni and Shi'a from being at each other's throats, beginning with some settling of old scores in and around Sadr City?

See above for other possibilities: in Europe (identifying, and supporting, those non-Fascists who are worried about Muslim demographic conquest, and prepared to undertake all necessary measures -- including expulsions on a large scale -- to preserve Europe, which despite its decadent and cretinized political class, does not deserve to be jettisoned quite yet.

And if that Al-Jazeera satellite can't be shot down, or put out of commission, there are ways of blocking its transmission.

I forgot to mention that we should, simultaneously with an Iraqi withdrawal, announce a cutoff of all military aid to Egypt and Jordan -- and if they join in the general celebration of America's withdrawal, they will find that all economic aid will also be cut off. That should inhibit their press and television just a bit, no?

And finally, announce a tax on gasoline, and relate that tax directly to the need to deprive "certain groups" of the wherewithal to conduct Jihad, to limit the number of "institutions" that help to produce, and support, Jihads "such as madrasas"(no, do not name "mosques" -- let everyone fill in the blanks. It's so much easier).

And before, during, or perhaps just after Iraq has been left to Iraqi devices, the American airforce should destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. That will cause such upheaval in Iran, and so shake and humiliate the regime that the reformers may be emboldened to take more aggressive steps -- and that will concentrate the world's attention for a while. No, the Muslim Arab world will not be given a chance to gloat or to interpret our studied withdrawal as a defeat, when our every action will show that the anti-Jihad is finally beginning to be articulated, with a many-pronged attack on the military, economic, propagandistic, and demographic instruments of that Jihad.

Sooner or later it will have to come to this. Much better sooner. This isn't turning tail, but turning the tide, and making the world safe for little ataturks.