June 26, 2003
Throwaway lines

The International Herald Tribune was jointly owned and published by the New York Times and the Washington Post., filling its pages with articles from the two newspapers. Since the NYT took over sole ownership of the IHT, the Washington Post has been trying to find other international outlets. Here in Europe, it has teamed up with the Wall Street Journal Europe, which has led to more general-news articles appearing in that paper. It has also led to the WSJE op-ed pages being injected with some columns from the Washington Post; the two styles can be very different at times. Reading the WSJE's op-ed page a few days ago, I came across this column by David Ignatius on the Middle East, and his meeting with King Abdullah in Jordan. It is actually a reasonably upbeat piece on the aftershocks the Iraq war is having in the Middle East.

And at the Dead Sea this weekend, Abdullah is hosting a gathering of the world's great and good, known as the World Economic Forum and devoted to the idea of reconciliation in the Middle East post-Saddam Hussein. The watchword for this session is that democratic change is inevitable -- meaning that either countries such as Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia get their acts together or their rulers will end up like Saddam.

You can see the lights of Jerusalem twinkling across the water in the evening. And Israeli guests wander among Arabs, chatting about the region's future.

This pretty much sets the tone for the whole column, but what raised my eyebrows was the paragraph about what could go wrong:
What's wrong with this happy picture? Well, nearly every element of it could go wrong, for starters. America could be up the creek in Iraq, the new "road map" could crumble in the face of Hamas/Likud rejectionism, and Saudi and Egyptian leaders could keep talking democracy even as they fire newspaper editors and professors who practice it.

Eh, "Likud/Hamas rejectionism"? This is an offhand juxtaposition of a democratic party in Israel and a terrorist organization whose avowed aim it is to murder as many Israelis as possible, indeed to eradicate the very state of Israel. The charitable explanation is that Ignatius was just sloppy and let a latent anti-Likud bias creep into the writing, or that he cut a few too many corners in the pressure to reduce word count. The less charitable explanation is that he really thinks that Likud is somehow the Israeli analog of Hamas. Either way, it's not the kind of thing I would have expected to see on the op-ed pages of the WSJ of any region. I am not familiar with Ignatius' writings to know where he usually stands on these things, so I guess I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and go with one of the more charitable explanations.

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April 28, 2003
Turning up the pressure

One down, two to go in the Axis of Evil. Although it's a Reuters report (and thereby a bit suspect), it still makes an interesting read: the US is accusing Iran of developing nuclear weapons. The tone of the article is probably meant to be critical of the US, in the true Reuters style. (Either that or I am becoming paranoid about Reuters coverage). It's full of references of how the US used allegations of WMD programs in Iraq for the war there to depose Saddam. In Reuters-speak, this is no doubt a Horrible Thing, but in this instance they're doing us a favor. Turning up the pressure on mullahs is just what the doctor ordered, and the Reuters dispatch is doing just that.

The ultimate goal is the removal of despotic leadership in Iran, and this may not require a war as it did in Iraq. The mullahs do not have as firm a grip on the country as Saddam had, and the rumblings of discontent have been going for many years. It looks as though the Iranian people will be able to overthrow the mullahs on their own without direct intervention from the US. It's a process that's almost impossible to manage or direct from abroad, but it would be wrong to interfere too much at this stage.

An Iraq-style invasion is a costly thing to do. In Iraq's case, it was a relatively simple matter; taking on Iran in direct military confrontation would likely be less simple. Not that the final outcome would be in doubt there either, as the Iranian people are fed up with the mullahs and the Iranian armed forces are about as effective as the Iraqis. The sheer size of the country would make things more complicated though. It can be done, and will be done if necessary, but the hope is that it will not become necessary.

If a hammer is your only tool, you tend to see all problems as though they were nails. In Iraq, the hammer worked fine, but other parts of the toolkit will be brought to bear in Iran. (One of the criticisms of Bush is that he's a war monger, invading Iraq, but that he's inconsistent in not invading North Korea and Iran; i.e. being too bellicose and not bellicose enough at the same time. But Bush knows he has more tools than just a hammer at his disposal.) Turning up the pressure externally on the theocratic thugocracy in Iran is one these tools.

No option is without its drawbacks though. Doing nothing means capitulating to the Islamofascists and inviting them to have another shot at us. That's clearly not an acceptable solution, and would leave the Iranian people in the lurch. Invading Iran to remove the leadership would work, but it would take time and a considerable amount of military power, and cause civilian casualties. But the current course of turning up the pressure on the mullahs is not without cost either. Part of the calculation is that the pressure will cause the mullahs to feel more nervous and encourage opposition within Iran. The downside there is that there will be more repression in the short term, a price that will have to be paid by the people of Iran. The increased repression will lead to increased resistance and opposition to the regime, improving the chances of an overthrow of the mullahs. This calculation works in Iran because the mullahs had not gone as far as Saddam (or Kim Jong Il) in terrorizing their own people. It's a cold-hearted calculation to make, but there is no alternative in the short-term. This is one of those situations in which there is no neat, tidy answer, just a messy one. All we can do is to try to make as it mess-free as possible, and hope for a quick end to the theocracy in Iran. But at least in that we're on the same wavelength as the people of Iran.

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April 26, 2003
A forced tour of Iraq

While flipping through TV channels tonight, I briefly came upon a program on a Dutch channel, where they were interviewing protesters at an Amsterdam "anti-war" march. Asked why he was there, one protester said he was against war. Then the interviewer asked him which other protests he'd been involved in, and the protester fondly recalled his memories of Vietnam, Panama, the first Gulf War. Then a question reporters never think of asking: "So it's all war where America was involved. Did you protest against any wars where other countries were involved like Russia or China?" The protester was clearly taken aback and could not answer. After some prodding he said "Tibet, I'm against Tibet."

At least all those years of protesting haven't dulled the intellectual vigor of the left. They're as sharp as ever. (Others who were interviewed were similarly flummoxed, but I didn't have much time to watch. I should have taped it.) It wasn't a big surprise to see that the protesters' main driving motive was anti-Americanism. They've long been Moscow's useful idiots, and since our victory in the Cold War they've been looking for new tyrants to appease. Now that Saddam is gone, I'm sure they'll find the next one soon.

What to do with such people? It's obvious that they're not amenable to reason, as they're living in a fantasy world of their own making. One interesting suggestion would be to give them a tour of Iraq:


It is those outside Iraq, those who enabled Saddam's killing machine, those who extended his rule through the perversion of diplomacy, those who protested and signed petitions against the "immoral war" to remove him from power but who never once mentioned Saddam's victims, whom Gen. Franks should force to see the meat hooks hanging from ceilings, the electrodes, the human meat grinders and the acid baths.

It is they who should be forced to see the flimsy coffins stacked one upon another, the thousands of corpses - men, women and children - with mutilated bodies and a single gunshot wound to the head. It is they who should be forced to see the pictures and read the record books of Saddam's victims - like the Nazis, Saddam's executioners kept detailed records in order to demonstrate their ideological commitment to the cause.


That's the only way I'd welcome Jacques Chirac and Dominque de Villepin, Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer to Iraq: on a guided tour by Tommy Franks.

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January 06, 2003
Blame the victim!

Gretta Duisenberg, the wife of European Central Bank president Wim Duisenberg is a fine example of the sophisticated European elite. Dripping with anti-semitism, she made the news in late 2002 when she made a despicable joke about the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. She's currently visiting her beloved Palestinian terrorist scum. After a visit to East Jerusalem, she blamed Ariel Sharon for the violence, claiming he's "provoking the Palestinians" and that his government is guilty of committing terror attacks.

Apparently she's a bit confused about what a terror attack is, but her Palestinian scum buddies can be counted on her refresh her memory. Shortly after she made those comments, the Palestinian vermin committed another terrorist atrocity: the deliberate and targeted murder of civilians in the most gruesome way they can pull off. That's terrorism. Undaunted, Duisenberg wasted no time in sinking even further into depths of moral depravity to join her Palestinian chums in the deepest cesspit of revolting moral disingenuity. The bodies of the murdered Israelis weren't even cold yet, the wounded were fighting for their lives in hospitals and she was already blaming Sharon. Not the subhuman Palestinian scumbags who murdered and maimed, but in true Euroweenie fashion she firmly blamed the Jewish victims. According to Gretta, Sharon has to "stop all that aggression."

Utterly, utterly despicable. At times like these I can fully identify with Steven Den Beste's emotional response, except that it extends to the likes of Gretta Duisenberg who are actively supporting this evil.

Wilders, a Dutch member of parliament for the Liberal Party (VVD) who is in Israel at the moment called Gretta Duisenberg's remarks "one-sided" and "disgusting." Speaking from Tel Aviv he said that "someone who a couple of hours after 26 people were brutally murdered by Palestinian terrorists points to Israel as the aggressor, is being one-sided and disgusting." I am glad to hear that there still are some European politicians willing to take a stance against this.

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January 02, 2003
An undeserved birthday

One of the people who recently celebrated an undeserved 75th birthday is the former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. During his rule he murder an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 of his countrymen, a substantial percentage of the population. Most of his victim were Christians; he is a devout Muslim, of course. Sort of an Islamofascist avant la lettre. He also had warm ties with various terrorist organizations, such as the PLO. The hijacking of an Air France plane to Entebbe is one of the more infamous exploits of this unholy alliance. The Israeli rescue mission is one of the great successes of the fight against terrorism. (Hint: you kill them.)

It's not been 23 years since he was driven from power in Uganda, but Idi Amin is still alive. Not only that, he's alive and living in comfort, hosted graciously by our friends the Saudis:

The Saudi government pays his huge expenses, including cars, drivers, cooks, maids and a monthly allowance. In return, the Saudis -- who won't talk about their infamous guest -- demand silence and no political activity.

Let's hope this was his last birthday; yet another reason to bring the reign of the Sauds to an end.

Posted by qsi at 09:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
October 28, 2002
The project of Democracy

Building a functioning, self-sustaining democracy is hard. It requires more than just elections. The institutions, the constitution, the rule of law all play a part. When we say "democracy," it is shorthand for much more than elections. But ultimately, none of this matters if the idea and the ideal of democracy is not understood and cherised by the population. If the people don't think democracy is a good thing and worth defending, it will vanish. Some outward signs of democracy (usually elections) may remain, like the facade of a building otherwise gutted by flame. What democracy needs is deep support. It has to be an inextricable part of life, that the mere thought of not having does not even arise. Deep support also leads to the willingness to defend democracy when it comes under attack.

Building deep support is something that requires time. Lots of time. Many generations. Peoples and cultures have their own transgenerational memories. Those cultures that have no memory of democracy will find it much harder to build a functioning, modern, liberal democracy. In the case of Russia, there is no such memory. The country never has had anything resembling a modern liberal system of government, and the deep memories of the culture reflect the totalitarian rule of the czars and the communists. The idea of democracy lives a marginalized life. The elections do exist, but deep support is missing.

The cause of this lengthy introduction is this article in the German newspaper Handelblatt. I have not seen a compilation like this in the English press, so here are some highlights. The headline is "Enough of this democracy," and the article is a summary of comments made in Russia since the storming of the theater. A high-ranking officer of the Alpha commando unit that stormed the theater is quoted as saying "Enough of this democracy and human rights." Other comments came in a similar vein. Writing in the newspaper Kommersant, Boris Volkhonsky said, "Laden with the backpack of 20th century liberal values one cannot fight terrorism." Leonid Radsikhivsky described as "very liberal" demanded the introduction of a "hard police state." As in 1941 with the German invasion, it is the survival of the country that is at stake. A "Kremlin politicologist" by the name of Sergey Markov opines: "We can be proud of Russia again." He said that the Russian had feared a storming of the theater only because they were not sure that the secrer services could carry it out competently. "This is the rebirth of our homeland."

Read these comments again and imagine them in a western democracy. How unthinkable are they? The overwhelming torrent of commentary after September 11th was a worry about the erosion of civil liberties in the wake of the attack, not an active call for their erosion. Despite the shrillest auguries from the doomsayers and Bush-bashers, America remains a free country. It remains free because the concepts of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are an inseparable part of American life. The situation is not perfect, and there is much room for improvement, but the fundamental disposition of the American republic remains intact.

I wrote a few days ago about Russia's relationship with the west. It is a country that shares a lot of cultural heritage with the west, although it is lacking that heritage in the political field. It should be relatively easy to merge Russia into the western mainstream with so much in common, yet these reactions prove how hard it is. And how much harder is it going to be in Iraq? The Japanese model has been put forward as an example of a successful rebuilding and remodeling of a pathological society. From its imperialist pre-war state to the post-war democracy, Japan is a success. But has the idea of democracy really taken root in Japan? The real power lies with unelected bureaucrats and the political elite. Elections are almost secondary, as the LDP has to screw up really badly to lose. In fact, it has screwed up really badly as it has steered the country to a decade of economic decline, but even so it remains by far the largest party. More important than the number of seats the LDP gets in the Diet is the balance of power among the LDP's factions. And the Japanese economy is pre-capitalist with a few pockets of corporate excellence in a sea of rotting zombies. But the Japan model was successful to the extent that the system in principle should be able to heal itself and the woes afflicting the country. And it has been successful in neutralizing the threat from Japan.

Reform-minded politicians in repressive regimes see the need for more popular support and one solution is to experiment with democracy. Or perhaps more precisely, elections. By giving the people a say in elections they hope to defuse anger and resentment as well as build support for their rule. It's a good first step, but again it must come with the other elements of the Democracy Package. Building an understanding of and appreciation for liberal democratic virtues is an integral part of this. So is having a free capitalist economy.

It did not get much play in the Blogosphere, but elections have been held in Bahrain, and the Islamist candidates won most of the seats. Gulf News puts of a brave face on it, by claiming that secular candidates did better this time around than in municipal elections held earlier, when they did not win any seats at all. The article goes on:

"Despite this improvement, nonetheless, they have to admit they lost and lost big to the religious movement."

The main reason, he says, is the past 30 years in which the arena has been occupied exclusively by the Islamists. "These movements have been closer to the people; they have the mosques, the charities and ability to influence people with all their talk of the Holy Quran."

The liberals, meanwhile, have been "absent" since they clashed with the government in the mid-1970s over the constitutional rights after the National Assembly was dissolved in 1975.

"They isolated themselves. They were alienated and people could no longer understand what they were talking about because younger generations have been influenced by the rise of Islamism with the Iranian revolution and other religious movements," he explained.


Is it possible for an Arab country to reform its political system from authoritarian rule to a democracy? The lure of the glory of the past is great. By promising a return to old-fashioned Islamic virtues, the religious parties play on an ancient cultural meme in the Arab world. Arab culture achieved its greatest glory when it was supposedly pure and untainted. All later misfortune is due to straying from the true path of Islam. It is a simple message with great emotive power and attraction. After all, it offers a solution without having to import any ideas from the infidel West.

The reason we were welcomed in Afghanistan is because the logical extreme of this line of thought had triumphed there. The Taliban imposed the strictest Islamic regime in history. It was not very popular. Likewise in Iran the erstwhile attractions of the Islamic revolution have long since dissolved in the caustic reality of everyday life. The murmurs of revolution are growing stronger in Persia now.

Do the people really have to suffer the reality of theocratic thuggery before they reject Islamofascism? Even in Saudi Arabia, which is already close to a theocracy, the cause of an even more extreme form of Islamism is finding converts. It is going to be a long and difficult task to establish any understanding or support for liberal democracy in these countries. As the Gulf News articles says, there is precious little internal intellectual support for it.

Do people want to be free? Do people want to be prosperous? I would answer yes to both questions. The second will find universal acclaim, the first won't. The basis for totalitarian ideology is exactly the denying of freedom to the people. Whether it be the call for a police state in Russia, or for a strict version of Sharia in the Arab world, the instincts for state-imposed restrictions of freedom run deep in countries where there is no memory of democracy. But even in the supposedly free-wheeling Netherlands the people are willing to trade freedom for apparent security.

It's not going to be easy at all.

UPDATE: Related commentary can be found at OxBlog and Sgt. Stryker.

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October 02, 2002
54 years of occupation

An often-heard complaint is that most people seem to know so little history. The chattering classes, who get their history from the latest Socially Correct book, bemoan the crass ignorance of the great unwashed masses. But there is something to it, since current events are inextricably linked to the past, and not knowing the past makes assessing the present impossible. How much history is enough? There comes a point where individuals get caught up in history, indeed become completely obsessed by it. The harmless form are the history buffs who re-enact historical battles and dress up in period costumes. The not-so-harmless form of History Overload is the fanatic, who's latched onto some cause from the past and sets out on a crusade to puts things right. The History Overload Fanatic comes in various shapes and sizes. A relatively widespread variety in the United States are the Southern revisionists, who claim that the Civil War was not about slavery at all, but about states' rights or tarriffs. They've popped up at Sgt. Stryker's place in response to his rant about the Civil War.

On the grand scale of things, the Southern revisionists are not that widespread. By and large, the American population is singularly unobsessed with the past. In fact, the same can be said of many European countries too. Ask a Dutchmen about the last war with Spain, and he might be able to get the century right. Approximately. This is a good thing. People who obsess about the past have trouble coming to terms with the present, because the present (in their worldview) is a result of the injustices that have been done to them or their cause. The present is therefore a place to seek revenge, turn things around, subvert. Fortunately, most of the time they don't really do much about it, but brood and rage and feel hard done by because nobody else understands them.

If this psychosis becomes widespread, it can infect the consciousness of an entire nation or culture. One such example is Hungary. The average Hungarian will be able to recite dates and places from a distant past, recounting the struggle of the Magyars since the honfoglalás ("taking of the homeland") until recent times. And the problem is, they see themselves as the perennial victims of history. Especially the loss of territories with large ethnic Hungarian populations in Slovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia inflames passions. Cars in Hungary are often adorned with a sticker of the map of Greater Hungary with the foreign territories safely back in the homeland. (Did I mention I hate the word homeland? Why did it have to infect the American language? Peggy Noonan said it best: Homeland ain't no American word. The reason I am using it in this context is exactly because it has that pejorative connotation.)

Beware of people who know too much history (including historians, but for other reasons). Still on my plane ride last night, I chanced upon the opinion page in the Corriere della Sera, where I saw the headline "Arafat and this lapse by Mrs. Barghouti." Now, if anybody has ever been obsessed with history, it must be the Arabs. They've been on this wrong side of it for so long that the past festers within their souls, leaving them incapable of dealing rationally with the present. But the interesting bit in this opinion piece regards Mrs. Fadwa Barghouti, who's the wife of Arafat's crony Marwan Barghouti, who was in charge of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. He is responsible for the cold-blooded murder of many Israelis in so-called suicide bombings. A true piece of terrorist scum. Or rather, alleged terrorist scum, because he's on trial and has not been found guilty yet. That's because Israel has an actual independent judiciary, unlike the Palestinian Authority where the mere suspicion of collaboration with Isreal gets you lynched. But that aside. Back to the lovely wife of alleged terrorist scum. She said: "I am opposed to the bombings, but I can understand the motives of the bombers after 54 years of Israeli occupation."

Paolo Mieli, the columnist, then delves into the true significance of this statement, aside from its moral vacuity. You see, she said 54 years. With a history-obsessed culture, that number is delibately chosen. But what does it mean? It can't refer to the 35 years since the Six Day war (June 1967), at the end of which Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza (and Sinai). Nor is she referring to the aftermath of the Arabs' first attempt to wipe out Israel in 1949, as that is 53 years ago. So what did happen 54 years ago? The state of Israel was founded, in May of 1948. Setting up a Palestinian state in the West Bank or Gaza is not the PLO's agenda. The destruction of Israel is. And this pipedream of wiping out the "zionist entity" pervades Arab and Palestinian culture to the point where a reasonable compromises are rejected. Arafat would have gotten almost all that he says he wanted (to the West anyway) in the famous summit with Barak a few years ago. He declined the offer and started up the terrorist machine once again. As long as the morbid dream of destroying Israel still exists in the Arab world, there is not going to be peace in the region, because we cannot allow the only free and democratic country in the Middle East be destroyed; that would just be another step in the islamists' campaign to cleanse of world of Western civilization.

Posted by qsi at 09:13 PM | Comments (2)