Iran 'fires satellite into space'

[GregBurch]

I appreciate the notes of support for the little bits and pieces I manage to post here. I shall try to express myself in the least offensive way possible.

Still, nobody here seems to have any solution to the problem of fundamentalism, which, if I am getting this right, is that they cannot be expected to act rationally, and therefore cannot be deterred from committing massively destructive acts involving nuclear and other WMD.

In a nutshell, that is the problem, with regard to WMD and acts of mass destruction.

Part of the problem is that we have gotten ourselves culturally into a situation where we are fighting what amounts to a cultural conflict with both hands tied behind our backs. Post-modern cultural relativism and "colonial guilt" have made it impossible to even name the enemy, much less take very effective cultural action against it. On top of this, in the West, attacks on religion are given a special scorn, both in terms of cultural relativism and in terms of the foundational (classically) liberal value of tolerance.

Therefore, the most powerful kind of combat in this instance would be viewed by many -- perhaps most -- in the West as "cultural imperialism."

Foresaking real kulturkampf, I can only offer the possibility of slow economic strangulation, while maintaining vigilant defense and the occasional "hot war" when the jihadis get close to obtaining state power someplace or to unseat other state-actor supporters of terrorism. As I've said often on this forum, the main, large-scale opportunity to choke off the jihadis' economic resources is energy independence for the West, since the primary funders of Islamist violence are Saudi and Iranian oil wealth.

If the source of these funds could be truly choked off then, eventually, the muslim world will collapse economically, because it creates no wealth.

One thing the West (including Russia) is very good at is making war against nation-states. We think in terms of kings and dictators and governments and territories. But you cannot use the traditional methods of warfare to fight a religion or an ideology. Washington seems to partially understand this, but their default solution is to impose a police state atmosphere at home and to gain control of anything they can overseas. I can't see a justification for the loss of liberty and the destruction and misery entailed in following that path.

I think terms like "police state" and "gain control of anything they can overseas" are gross, outrageous overstatements. Unfortunately, this kind of rhetoric has become so common that it no longer seems outrageous. It certainly makes discussing these issues very difficult.

I also don't believe that wacko fundamentalists are capable of running a state or an empire or a "caliphate" without toning down the wackiness enough for self-preservation. The more at stake in the material world, the less likely they are to risk losing it all. Iran seems to be run by crazies, but they are crazy like a fox, and they are good at the brinksmanship games. I also think that if the US can avoid alienating the Iranian population, which after all actually likes Western culture, the crazies will eventually become an anachronism. Attacking Iran risks hardening their nationalist attitude.

As I say above, the dreams of a caliphate are ultimately just that, dreams. The world order envisioned by the jihadis is untenable, and would starve in short order, because it cannot create wealth. The question is how to get to the point where that can happen without a nuclear exchange or one or more of our cities becoming glass craters in the meantime.

 

[Andy44]

I think terms like "police state" and "gain control of anything they can overseas" are gross, outrageous overstatements.

Well, we'll have to disagree. This business of the "unitary executive" and the administration's policy of detaining and spying on anyone it wants, even US citizens, without having to answer to Congress, is most disturbing to me. Even if it's done with the best of intentions, like preventing terrorist attacks, it undermines the very foundations of the republic and frightens me a whole lot more than a bunch of clowns with AK-47s in the desert somewhere.

And on the foreign policy side, I think our leaders are also very narrow-minded, not understanding the massive amount of blow-back that we are setting ourselves up for by antagonizing so many civilians in so many places.

 

[GregBurch]

Access to economic success and even cultural assimilation is the strongest weapon against fundamentalist recruitment.

Could be I'm feeling more idealist than usual, too.

Could be Seriously, in a sense, what you're saying is very true -- classically liberal values have proven to be extremely powerful when allowed to compete openly against any other value system -- in the societies in which that has happened up to now. The problem I see with hoping for that to happen in the Muslim world is the extreme intellectual isolation in which it still exists. The number of books translated into Arabic every year is extremely small, and the channels for extremist thought available now through modern electronic media is growing every day.

If you're not aware of MEMRI -- the Middle East Media Research Institute -- I highly recommend it. It's a very valuable resource that collects material from newspapers, magazines, television and the internet from all across the region and translates it into English. While one can certainly find moderate voices among this material, there is a terrifying proportion of incredibly violent and extreme material that is broadcast constantly into the Muslim and Arab world.

The point is this: Given the cultural isolation of the Arab and Muslim worlds, and the structural impediments to the expression and adoption of moderate ideologies ... well, as Lenin said, "What is to be done?" ...

Greg - Nice synopsis above.

Thanks -- I realize in re-reading it that I really didn't make clear why I put so much focus on the "doctrine of abrogation' in the initial section. In case it's not clear, the point is that the later, less tolerant and more violent and aggressive material in the Koran and sunna is seen by all the mainstream schools of Islamic thought to be more authoritative than the earlier "kumbaya" stuff from when Muhhamed's power in Mecca was slim.

What's interesting about this is that if you just do a sampling of what actually gets said by Muslims about Islamic beliefs, you'll find that the English language material created for Western audiences is full of references to the early, Meccan suras, but that there isn't nearly the stress on this material in what is actually relied on within the Muslim world as fundamental doctrinal authority for the practical implementation of sharia.

Looking up the Arab word "taqiya" is an interesing exercise in this regard.

I'm curious about your take on the claim that the current Jihadist movement is inseparable from neo-conservatism, as they're both born at the same time, and are in fact reactions against US liberalism.

Well, I certainly can't agree with the thesis of your question, since the current jihadist movement is a direct outgrowth of the Salafism that grew out the 18th-to-early-20th century "humiliations." This long predates the birth of what is very loosely called "neo-conservatism"

As for the latter, I question the usefulness of the term, since it has basically come to mean whatever the user feels is unpleasant about US policy. As a matter of history, it refers to a very loosely-connected group of left-leaning US intellectuals and policy wonks who became disgusted with the de-gonadization of the left in the US from about 1970 on. It can include people with views as diverse as Henry Jackson, Jean Kirkpatrick, Paul Wolfowitz and Christopher Hitchens.

But there's a level at which your comment is true, if you take the meaning of your use of the term "US liberalism" to mean "Enlightenment liberalism." In that regard, the modern jihadis from the 18th century through today are reacting to the rise of the values expressed in the Enlightenment. But I would maintain that the neoconservatives are probably more akin to people Edmuund Burke would have seen as "liberal."

 

[Notebook]

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[n0mad23]

Greg,

My question was based on the BBC documentary, "The Power of Nightmares," and Sayyid Qutb's (anti)epiphany while going to college here in the States. Qutb was the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. At the same time (I believe in Chicago), Leo Strauss was formulating political theory that later becomes the ground for the neo-cons.

The political and social strife of the mid to late `60's leads to the disillusionment of a group of US liberals (inc. Wolfowitz and I. Kristol) who look to Leo Strauss to understand the failure of Johnson's liberal society. Both Qutb and the "neo-cons" come to the conclusion that it's individual liberty that's the heart of the problem. Significantly, this is the same conclusion that Qutb came to as well.

While I think the hypothesis has some problems, I do find it significant that both groups decide that what's needed is a common enemy to unite people to their causes. For the Jihadists, it's the Satanic West and for the neo-cons it's first the Evil Russian Empire and then the Islamo-Fascists (note the inherent problems of language throughout all of this).

I find the terminology used to discuss these thing to be really problematic. Neo-Conservatism isn't conservative, and Liberalism seems to be mostly PC Consumerism. Liberalism of course comes from Liberal Arts which is nothing less than the studies of free men. Similarly, you can't have Fascism without both rabid nationalism coupled with corporatism.

That said, I guess where I'm really going with this is my ongoing suspicion of misdirection and deliberate sleight of hand maneuvering. "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that nearly all of our wars are really about resources, so ideology, religious issues, and politics are used to "defend the indefensible" (Orwell).

Part of this comes from my studies of Frantz Fannon and his claims that it's easier to unite people against the large or mythical abstractions than against the bully down the street.

 

[pazuzu]

I'm really puzzled by how nobody took the Iran-Iraq conflict into consideration.
The major cause of resentment towards the USA by the general iranian population has not to be seen in the "religion/cultural/oh my freedom" clash.
The US government, funded and armed old uncle Saddam during the Iran-Iraq conflict, he was an ally, and don't forget the "Irangate".
It was part of the political agenda for the area, after the conflict the rise of a theocracy was welcomed by the western civilized world, because it was convenient for us.
For more than a decade the rise of fundamentalism in the middle east was actively pursued/financed by both EU and USA, just think about how we "used" (financed, trained, armed) mujahedeens in Afghanistan to kick USSR out of there.
Problem is this whole strategy backfired, just like it did with Saddam.
The problem of fundamentalist islam is there and is a big one, but I think if you can understand spaceflight, you have the means to see that things are a little more complicated than just bad muslims want to nuke us.
We played (and we still are) with underdeveloped countries, in order to exploit them in different ways, and sometimes this turns out to be a nightmare in the long run.
Also you have to consider how this situations are reported by the news: every time they show feeds of Ahmadinejad saying it's declaring war to the western world, they fail to mention that he's just a representative figure, he has zero power, and just like our politicians make harsh comments when they are addressing their voters, he may use some threatening tone just to play some good old demagogy.
Infact, when he visits Europe, he's all kind and friendly, this is called POLITICS.
Also if you take the chance to go to a local islamic center and ask somebody to translate those fiercy words of hate, or the speeches about the holocaust being a lie, you will find out that the translations you'll get are a bit different by the ones you read on the papers.
Just that little that makes a gigantic difference in the actual meaning of those words.
(Ofc unless you think every arab-speaking person in the world is wetwired to tell you lies.)
In the end we spilled the milk, now complaining it's 100% not our responsability is a bit sad.

 

[GregBurch]

Also if you take the chance to go to a local islamic center and ask somebody to translate those fiercy words of hate, or the speeches about the holocaust being a lie, you will find out that the translations you'll get are a bit different by the ones you read on the papers.
Just that little that makes a gigantic difference in the actual meaning of those words.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/22/channel4.islam?gusrc=rss&feed=uknews

Good luck.

look to Leo Strauss to understand the failure of Johnson's liberal society. Both Qutb and the "neo-cons" come to the conclusion that it's individual liberty that's the heart of the problem. Significantly, this is the same conclusion that Qutb came to as well.

I think that's a misstatement of Straus. If you want to boil things down to a one-liner, perhaps "Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out" might be more accurate. Less humorously, the question was put whether societies that had enjoyed peaceful liberty for long enough might become so complacent that they lose the ability to recognize real danger when it presented itself

While I think the hypothesis has some problems, I do find it significant that both groups decide that what's needed is a common enemy to unite people to their causes. For the Jihadists, it's the Satanic West and for the neo-cons it's first the Evil Russian Empire and then the Islamo-Fascists (note the inherent problems of language throughout all of this).

Strauss et al. absolutely positively didn't "decide that what's needed is a common enemy." That's simply not true. He identified a threat. I remember working for Henry Jackson a long time ago, a Democratic senator from your home state. Today, he'd be called a "neocon" along the lines of Lieberman by the "everything's groovy" crowd. Jackson knew that Soviet Russia was a cruel despotism and didn't think it served the West's interests to sugar coat that truth. That's all Strauss was saying: "Better Red than Dead" was a prescription for a one-way ticket to the loss of everything we had.

There's one level, though, at which you're right. Q'tb and the other Islamists are correct that their world view IS threatened by Enlightenment values of individual liberty and tolerance. They have correctly identified a fundamental threat to what they value the most. In that, he is the same as Strauss: Strauss identified some political ideas that were truly dangerous to the things he valued, and openly said that failing to be clear about that threat was a mistake. In that, he was like the Islamists -- he knew what his enemy was and that it was an enemy.

I find the terminology used to discuss these thing to be really problematic. Neo-Conservatism isn't conservative, and Liberalism seems to be mostly PC Consumerism. Liberalism of course comes from Liberal Arts which is nothing less than the studies of free men. Similarly, you can't have Fascism without both rabid nationalism coupled with corporatism.

Well, I have a language question -- when you use the word "liberal" do you mean what a European or an American means by that word? I'm old fashioned; I tend to use the European meaning of classical Enlightenment values, most specifically of the Scottish flavor (Hume, Smith, et al.) I suspect that may not be what you mean when you use that word, though.

That said, I guess where I'm really going with this is my ongoing suspicion of misdirection and deliberate sleight of hand maneuvering. "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that nearly all of our wars are really about resources, so ideology, religious issues, and politics are used to "defend the indefensible" (Orwell).

It always pains me to disagree with anyone who quotes from St. George, but I have come to reject the idea that economics drives everything. It drives a lot, but not everything.

 

[n0mad23]

It always pains me to disagree with anyone who quotes from St. George, but I have come to reject the idea that economics drives everything. It drives a lot, but not everything.

I have to agree with you here as well, and apologize for the one-liners. I fall into the instant communication problem with the media a little too easily.

Economics drives things in that it supports power structures already in place (or seeking to exert new influence), but power is the key. Unfortunately as a tool, economics can be even more powerful than brute force. Think about how the old siege tactics worked, and there's a distinct parallel. Why brutally kill someone when you can starve them instead? Same results, but far less personal risk.

I need to obviously spend more time with Strauss judging from your response. I'm kicking myself a bit, as I know that the disciples usually change the original content/intent in ways that weren't intended. For example, Freud isn't quite as loopy as Freudians present (from my own readings - though a bit loopy nonetheless). Why should Kristol, et. al really be very representative of the original teachings?

However, wasn't it Strauss' conclusion that the civil strife/disobedience, etc., that was going on during the Johnson years was brought about because of individual freedom? In other words, because our "liberal society" had created such an excess of individual freedom, that we'd fallen into truly selfish behavior? Antisocial even? I ask this, as it definitely indicates a parallel between these two disparate ways of thinking.

I'm hoping that there's a way that the mythologies can unite us in a way that having a common enemy can't. America's ideal of democracy is bloody brilliant, but like Soviet communism is largely a myth. For those following along, have a read of the Soviet constitution. It says very explicitly that communism was the goal, and the compromise was to be socialism until the masses were ready for the promise.

What I'm getting at here, given the context of this forum, is to suggest the possibility of uniting populations via projects like Apollo, or today - energy independence, instead of projects that divide us. I think Rove's descent from political grace might suggest that people want to cooperate instead of fear each other. Both socially, and economically, it seems like a healthier approach than saber waving or strategic military campaigns. Especially if we consider the lingering consequences (think N. Ireland and Elizabeth 1's connection, or the Taliban and the Mujahedeen).

 

[pazuzu]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/22/channel4.islam?gusrc=rss&feed=uknews

Good luck.

Hmmm, actually I can't see any reference in this article to what I was saying, especially the part you quoted.
You could have quoted the part about "fondamentalism is a big problem", this way it sounds like racial profiling.
Good luck to you too.

 

[GregBurch]

Hmmm, actually I can't see any reference in this article to what I was saying, especially the part you quoted.
You could have quoted the part about "fondamentalism is a big problem", this way it sounds like racial profiling.
Good luck to you too.

Perhaps I didn’t understand you. When you wrote this:

Also if you take the chance to go to a local islamic center and ask somebody to translate those fiercy words of hate, or the speeches about the holocaust being a lie, you will find out that the translations you'll get are a bit different by the ones you read on the papers.
Just that little that makes a gigantic difference in the actual meaning of those words.

I thought you were saying that extreme forms of Islam being preached in mosques in the West wasn’t a problem.

So I pointed to the article, one of many.

I must have misunderstood you. Because the evidence that fundamentalist forms of Islam are being pushed into mosques in the West with Saudi funding is pretty much overwhelming:

http://www.mideastmonitor.org/issues/0705/0705_2.htm

 

[pazuzu]

We agree on that, but be sure that not all mosques in the west are a nest of fundamentalists.
Unfortunately, there will always be somebody using system of beliefs in order to trick weak minds and make them do anything they want, I would consider it a blessing if this paradigma was appliable to islam only.
Two words: intelligent design.
Problem is that, in my opinion, the actual strategies adopted to opposed this phenomenon do nothing but produce more pissed off persons that are even more susceptible to the influence of some madman.
I live in Italy and, given the actual state of fear for terrorist infiltration, nobody allows muslim communities to build temples. If they want to rent or buy an existing structure for that purpose, nobody give them the possibility to do that.
The result is integrated citizens that see their fundamental rights denied, get angry, are forced to split up and meet into private houses or in garages well hidden from the "rightly concerned population".
Tell me this is not the perfect substrate where to hand pick the next self exploding idiot.
Another example of how we are trying to extinguish fire with gasoline, the only sure thing is it will not work.