Sunday, December 10, 2006

Brooks and Wanker

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Mr roT said...

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: December 10, 2006
In fall 2007, the United States began to withdraw troops from Iraq, and
so
began the Second Thirty Years¹ War. This war was a bewildering array of
small and vast conflicts, which flared and receded and flared again
across
the entire Middle East, but which were joined by a common theme.


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The essence of all this disorder was that the Arab nation-states lost
control. Subnational groups ‹ like Hezbollah and the Mahdi Army ‹ and
supranational groups ‹ like loosely connected terror networks, the new
Sunni
and Shiite Leagues and the satellite television networks ‹ went from
strength to strength while central national governments toppled and
fell.
The collapse of national governments led to a power vacuum that the
more
authentic and deeply rooted social groups sought to fill.

This war had several stages. The first was the disintegration of Iraq.
No
national institutions could survive the onslaught: there was no
impartial
justice, no effective law enforcement, no political organization that
put
loyalty to nation above loyalty to sect or tribe. Absent a government
of
laws, government by death squads emerged. Militias ‹ with their own
hospitals, schools and indoctrination systems ‹ sought to impose order
through assassination and revenge.

The Muslim world watched the Sunni-Shiite bloodletting on satellite
television and became enraged. Militias, seminaries and terror
organizations
developed transnational alliances. Shiite uprisings occurred in Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain and Pakistan. Furious Sunnis rallied in places like
Egypt,
demanding that their leaders preserve Sunni supremacy.

The environment was ripe for new sorts of radical leaders, influenced
by
Moktada al-Sadr and Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. These leaders were hot,
charismatic and divisive. They had no intellectual ties to the old
20th-century Arab nationalism, which was scorned as the model that
failed.

Chaos spread as governments in Lebanon and Jordan collapsed. The
Palestinian
Authority fell into complete dysfunction as Hamas and Fatah waged a
low-boiling civil war. Al Qaeda reveled in the bloodshed and spread it
with
rapturous fury. The spreading disorder vindicated an observation that
the
historian Michael Oren had once made: that there are really only three
nations in the Muslim Middle East: Iran, Turkey and Egypt. The other
nations
are make-believe. The borders are arbitrary and the governments are
artificial.

The surviving governments scrambled to stay in front of their
radicalized
populations and meddled ceaselessly in the wars around them. Turkey
meddled
in Kurdistan. Iran meddled everywhere through Hezbollah and a legion of
mini-Hezbollahs. The Saudis tried to buy their enemies off, but only
ended
up financing them. Egyptians spread out everywhere as foot soldiers and
assassins, especially after the end of the Mubarak era.

Westerners had a great deal of trouble understanding the ever-shifting
conflicts among sects they didn¹t understand and tribes they¹d never
heard
of. Early in the war, Americans engaged in a moronic debate about
whether
Iraq was in civil war, which illustrated that American vocabularies
were
trapped in the nation-state paradigm, and how unprepared Americans were
to
understand the non-nation-state world.

Parallels were made, some apt, some inapt, to the first Thirty Years¹
War,
which decimated Europe in the 17th century. That, too, was a spasmodic
constellation of conflicts not among nation-states, but among faiths,
tribes
and local groupings.

This second version of that war produced a Middle East that looked
medieval
and postmodern at the same time. The core weakness of Middle Eastern
nations
was that over centuries Arab society had developed intricate social
organizations based on family, tribe and faith. Loyalty to these
superseded
national bonds. Notions of federalism, subsidiarity and impersonal
administration ‹ the underpinnings of the nation-state ‹ had trouble
flourishing in these sands.

The Middle East¹s weak national ties were ripped apart by the rising
forces
of the 21st century: religious fundamentalism, global terrorism,
economic
globalization and transnational communications networks. Efforts to do
nation-building without security faced long odds. Efforts to exhort
Iraqi
and other leaders to behave ³responsibly² ‹ as defined by Western
nationalist categories ‹ were doomed to failure. The American defeat
sealed
the deal.

It was a terrible era for those brave patriots fighting for national
unity.
There was horrific turmoil, and the emergence of sociopolitical
organizations whose likes the world had never seen.

--------------

Op-Ed Columnist
The Muslim Stereotype
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By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: December 10, 2006
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei


Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof.
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Whatever happens in Iraq, we may be inching closer to a ³clash of
civilizations² between Islam and the West.

There¹s a fatigue in the West with an Arab world that sometimes seems
to put
its creative juices mostly into building better bombs. Even open-minded
people in the West sometimes feel a sense of resignation that maybe the
bigots are right: maybe Islam just is intrinsically backward,
misogynistic
and violent.

After I wrote recently about reform elements in Islam, I received a
long
note from a 24-year-old Chicagoan, Paul Williams, who ventured what
many
people feel: ³I went to school in Macalester College and the whole time
there I wrote paper after paper defending Islam,² he told me. Now, he
says,
after reading the Koran cover to cover and living in Turkey, he has
lapsed
into political incorrectness: ³The more I¹m here the more I¹m beginning
to
think that there¹s just something wrong with Islam.²

That¹s a common view, shaped partly by the way we in the news business
focus
on violence in the Islamic world. So let me step up and say that I find
the
common American stereotypes of Islam profoundly warped.

Those stereotypes are largely derived from the less than 20 percent of
Muslims who are Arabs, with Persians and Pashtuns thrown in as well.
But the
great majority of the world¹s Muslims live not in the Middle East but
here
in Asia, where religion has mostly been milder.

At the moment I¹m in Brunei, a Muslim country nestled in Southeast
Asia. At
the University of Brunei, women outnumber men. Women here drive, fill
senior
offices in government and the private sector, serve as ambassadors and
are
pilots for the national airline. ³Young women have equal opportunities
now ‹
it¹s up to your capability,² said Lisa Ibrahim, president of the Young
Entrepreneurs Association of Brunei.

Brunei has gold-domed mosques in its skyline, and the sultan has two
wives.
But Brunei is also home to churches and Hindu temples serving a
multiethnic
society. Young people flirt together in the cafes, and non-Muslims are
allowed to drink alcohol.

Anwar Ibrahim, the former Malaysian deputy prime minister, says he
reminds
Americans that the most populous Muslim country (Indonesia) is a
democracy
whose elections run more smoothly than Florida¹s.

Yes, Islamists are a threat in Asia, and many imams are more
scandalized by
female flesh than by honor killings or illiteracy. Indonesia has tried
the
editor of the local edition of Playboy magazine, and a state in
Malaysia has
threatened to fine women who wear miniskirts. But Indonesia has had a
woman
as president, while Bangladesh has had two female prime ministers and
has
more girls in high school than boys.

³We tend to be more tolerant,² Yusof Halim, a prominent lawyer in
Brunei,
said of Asian Muslims. He then confided: ³My honest opinion is that
Arabs
are male chauvinists.²

Meanwhile, many Muslims are as disenchanted with us as we are with
them.
They complain about hypocritical Americans who parrot slogans about
human
rights but brutalize Muslims at Guantánamo and supply the weaponry that
kills Muslim children in Gaza and Lebanon.

The Koran and Bible alike have passages that make 21st-century readers
flinch; most Christians just ignore sections on slavery or admonitions
to
kill a disobedient child. Likewise, some Muslims are reinterpreting
Koranic
passages on polygamy and amputations, saying they were restricted to
particular circumstances that no longer apply.

Frankly, I don¹t see that any religion¹s influence is intrinsically
peaceful
or violent. Christianity inspired both Mother Teresa and pogroms.
Hinduism
nurtured Gandhi and also the pioneers of suicide bombings.

These days, ferocious anti-Semitism thrives in some Muslim countries,
but in
the Dreyfus affair a century ago Muslims sided with a Jew persecuted by
anti-Semitic Christians. And the biggest sectarian slaughter in Europe
in
modern times involved Christians massacring Muslims at Srebrenica.

The plain fact is that some Muslim societies do have a real problem
with
violence, with the subjugation of women, with tolerance. But the mosaic
of
Islam is vast and contains many more hopeful glimpses of the future.

There is a historic dichotomy between desert Islam ‹ the austere
fundamentalism of countries like Saudi Arabia ‹ and riverine or coastal
Islam, more outward-looking, flexible and tolerant. Desert Muslims grab
the
headlines, but my bet is that in the struggle for the soul of Islam,
maritime Muslims have the edge.

12/10/2006 10:39 AM
My Frontier Thesis said...

This war had several stages. The first was the disintegration of Iraq. No national institutions could survive the onslaught: there was no impartial justice, no effective law enforcement, no political organization that put loyalty to nation above loyalty to sect or tribe. Absent a government of laws, government by death squads emerged. Militias with their own hospitals, schools and indoctrination systems sought to impose order through assassination and revenge.

I just saw a replay of the NASA launch that took place last night, and momentarily thought, "That's what Iraq needs... a focal point that the country could rally around." Then I remembered the difficulties in getting a shuttle into space, especially when so many religious lunatics are running around with RPGs.

12/10/2006 11:44 AM
Mr roT said...

Pyromania is the stuff of zoroastrianism, no?

12/10/2006 5:47 PM

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