Being Muslim in America After 9/11.

Being Muslim in America after 9/11. Video. Fareed Zakaria with Ayad Akhtar and Aasif Mandvi. Fareed Zakaria GPS. CNN, September 16, 2013. Transcript.

Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown, Season 2: Jerusalem.

Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown, Season 2: Jerusalem. Video. ATTHET0PITTSJUSTUS, September 16, 2013. YouTube. Originally shown on CNN, September 15, 2013.

Anthony Bourdain explains the Israel-Palestine conflict through food. By Max Fisher. Washington Post, September 18, 2013. Also here.

TV chef Bourdain reveals Jewish heritage during show in Israel. By Jordana Horn. The Times of Israel, September 16, 2013.

Watching Anthony Bourdain in Palestine. By Maysoon Zayid. The Daily Beast, September 19, 2013.

Transcript of Fareed Zakaria interview with Anthony Bourdain. GPS. CNN, September 15, 2013.

Israel Relieves Suffering in Gaza, Egypt Intensifies It. By Walter Russell Mead.

Israel Relieves Suffering in Gaza, Egypt Intensifies It. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, September 18, 2013.

Mead:

We’re not holding our breath for the BBC and others to roll out the maps and discover that in fact Egypt also shares a border with Gaza that it likes to abuse and refuses to open. Nor are we calling for any “Israel Saves Palestinians from Arabs” headlines; Israel does not and should not get a free pass in reporting about Gaza. But the lack of  MSM enthusiasm for stories about the role neighboring Arab states play in Palestinian suffering is hard to understand given stories like these. It almost makes one suspect that something more than concern for the Palestinians’ suffering is at work.

Syria War Polarizes West Bank Palestinians. By Naela Khalil.

Syria War Polarizes West Bank Palestinians. By Naela Khalil. Al Monitor, September 17, 2013.

The Illusion of American Exceptionalism. By Deepak Tripathi.

The illusion of American exceptionalism. By Deepak Tripathi. Al Jazeera, September 18, 2013.

The end of American exceptionalism. By Mark LeVine. Al Jazeera, December 19, 2009.

Banking on West Bank Prosperity. By Dalia Hatuqa.

Banking on West Bank prosperity. By Dalia Hatuqa. Al Jazeera, September 12, 2013.

Why Some Palestinians Want to Learn Like Israelis. By Ben Lynfield.

Why some Palestinians want to learn like Israelis. By Ben Lynfield. The Christian Science Monitor, September 13, 2013.

Palestinian textbooks fall short where they are most needed – introducing “the other.” By Christa Case Bryant. The Christian Science Monitor, February 8, 2013.

Israeli-Palestinian School Book Project Research Materials.

The Dangers of Russian Unexceptionalism. By Alex Berezow.

The Dangers of Russian Unexceptionalism. By Alex Berezow. Real Clear World, September 17, 2013.

Muslims, Stop Blaming Israel. By Sinem Tezyapar.

Muslims, stop blaming Israel. By Sinem Tezyapar. Jewish Journal, September 11, 2013.

In an Ocean of Islamic Hatred We Discovered True Friends. By Yori Yanover. The Jewish Press, April 22, 2013.

Sinem Tezyapar: Personal Site.

Tezyapar:

Whenever calamities befall Muslim-majority nations, there is always a country to blame: Israel. Is there a revolution against a tyrant? Zionists are responsible. Who else could be at fault if there is a clash between Sunni and Shia groups? The Jews. Did a bomb explode on the other side of the world, or is there a problem with the economy? No need look any further than Israel. And where else would the control center for destabilizing the Arab world be? In Tel Aviv, of course!

The late Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi blamed Israel for the violence and unrest in Africa. Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said that the turmoil in the Arab world is a pro-Zionist conspiracy. Saudi cleric Sheikh Ismae’il al-Hafoufi blamed Israel for the desecration of Islamic holy sites in Syria. Sheik Abd al-Jalil al-Karouri, a Sudanese cleric, pointed to Israel for the Boston and Texas bombings. And then there’s the belief that Zionists planned the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, to demonize Arabs and Muslims in the eyes of the world.

 

This madness of putting the blame on Zionists — and Israel in general — is a knee-jerk reaction with no basis in logic. The most surprising part is that so many people believe this without question and continue to disseminate such rumors far and wide.

 

Syria, Egypt, Iran and Lebanon all aggressively hold the “Zionist regime” responsible for their woes. While Bashar Assad accuses Israel of trying to destabilize Syria, the Syrian opposition blames Israel for assisting the Assad regime by giving them diplomatic cover. Both sides see Israel as responsible for all the bloodshed and unrest going on in Syria. Now with the possibility of an international intervention in Syria, Iranian legislators and commanders are issuing blunt warnings, saying any military strike from the United States on Syria would lead to a retaliatory attack on Israel. Israel’s staying out of the equation, it seems, is simply not possible. Even though Israeli politicians refrain from taking sides in the regional conflicts, all sides point toward Israel anyhow.

 

On the other hand, we have the Egyptian coup d’état, where we see both sides ascribe blame to Israel. Interestingly, the Egyptian grass-roots protest movement Tamarod blames Israel but urges the Egyptian government not to renege on the Camp David accords. If Israel condemns the violence committed against the anti-coup alliance, she is labeled as an enemy of Egypt and accused of collaborating to destroy the Egyptian army. Even the state-allied newspaper al-Ahram claimed that Israel is in an alliance to demolish the Egyptian army and to balkanize the country. Furthermore, in 2010, an Egyptian government official blamed Israel intelligence for a fatal shark attack off Egypt’s shores.

 

It must sound like a bizarre joke for some, but this tragicomic situation is quite serious for many in the Middle East. We are no longer surprised to hear Israel’s being the scapegoat for every single evil in the world, but Iran’s blaming the Zionist entity for the deadly earthquake in Iran was pushing the limits of credulity. This, despite the fact that Jews are a handful of people, a tiny population when compared to the overall population of the world.

 

Now let’s look at what is really going on in the Islamic-Arab world. There is a continuous and unending stream of hate — hate of the Shia, hate of the Wahabbi, hate of the Sunni, hate of the Alawi, hate of the Christians, hate of the Jews and so on. We also see slogans such as: “May God Destroy Israel,” “Down With the United States,” “Damn the West.” Hatred is deeply ingrained in their tradition, in their culture and in their own education. This fierce, venomous style is what is tearing the Islamic world apart; this is exactly what is happening in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan and others — Muslims killing Muslims.

 

This outcome is the result of intense efforts by some Muslim clerics who encourage hatred of the “other.” Muslims kill each other and then both sides blame the Jews. Wahabbi scholars say that all Sunnis are unbelievers and should be destroyed. Sunni scholars say Shias are unbelievers and their death is obligatory. Shias say that it is obligatory to kill Sunnis, as they are enemies. These are Muslim clerics who are promoting the most violent brand of sectarianism, preaching hatred and calling upon their followers to commit massacres. How do Jews make Muslims kill other Muslims?

 

When Muslim followers heed these clerical calls for violence, these same clerics turn around and promptly blame the Jews. What about calls for Muslims to not kill each other? What about Muslims unifying to solve their own problems without resorting to violence? What about the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, with its 57 member states, or the League of Arab States, with its 22 states, both which seem utterly helpless to bring about any solutions?

 

Some religious scholars have led many ignorant people astray with their false teachings, which plant seeds of hate. They implement a faith they have largely invented under the name of Islam — a faith that includes hatred, violence, darkness, which attaches no value to human life. They espouse bloodshed in the name of Islam, spreading hatred toward Christians, Jews and even other Muslims. These loveless, misguided people are most definitely not Muslims, but bigots and radicals.

As Muslims, let’s stop pointing the finger at others for our problems. It is time for the Muslim world to take responsibility and to ponder what has gone so horribly wrong with the Muslim world. Why is there so much bloodshed? Superstitions, innovations, localized traditions and bigotry have replaced the Quran in some Islamic countries, and their religiosity is a deeply artificial one. This hatred has to stop and Muslims must embrace the true spirit of the Quran, which is love, compassion and brotherhood for all.

 

 

How Many Millions of Americans Wish They Never Married? By Dr. Keith Ablow.

How many millions of Americans wish they never married? By Dr. Keith Ablow. FoxNews,com, September 14, 2013.

Demonizing Putin Endangers America’s Security. By Stephen F. Cohen.

Demonizing Putin Endangers America’s Security. By Stephen F. Cohen. The Nation, September 16, 2013.

What Conservative Foreign Policy Looks Like. By Andrew C. McCarthy.

What Conservative Foreign Policy Looks Like. By Andrew C. McCarthy. National Review Online, September 14, 2013.

Neither John McCain nor Rand Paul get it right.

McCarthy:

In the Syrian rubble of Barack Obama’s foreign policy lies a moment of opportunity for conservatives. It is a moment for building a muscular foreign policy based on a recognition of good and evil; on an unapologetic conviction that the United States stands firmly on the right side of that ledger because it stands for the liberty and equal dignity of every human being; and, therefore, on an unwavering commitment to have our interventions guided solely by American national interests.

 

It is a Ronald Reagan moment. Now, all we need is a Ronald Reagan. For now, we have only pretenders, split into two camps.

 

There is the progressive McCain wing, heirs to the Bush “Islamic democracy” quest. It lurches incoherently from crisis to crisis, such that the local al-Qaeda jihadist in Baghdad, who went there to wage a terror war against American troops, need only cross the Syrian border — and, voila, he is America’s ally. How’s that? Well, we’re told, we must hold our nose and support — indeed, arm — this “rebel” because he now fights the Assad regime, which is the cat’s-paw of Iran . . . the same Iran that — details, details — has been colluding with al-Qaeda for 20 years.

 

Got that?

 

Even McCainiacs sense that this nonsense world is straight out of the Looking-Glass. So, while empowering al-Qaeda, they maintain that they actually seek only to strengthen al-Qaeda’s rivals, the “moderates” . . . hoping you won’t notice that these moderates prominently include the Muslim Brotherhood. You won’t hear a Republican mention the Brotherhood, of course. But the anti-Assad “rebels” themselves have no such compunction about the Brotherhood’s key role.

 

In fact, the Syrian National Council — the rebel leadership bureau the McCain wing initially demanded that we back — was a Brotherhood creation. When that proved embarrassing, the Syrian National Council changed the sign on the door to “Syrian National Coalition” and expanded its membership, ostensibly to dilute the Brotherhood’s influence. But even the non-Brotherhood rebels concede that the Brothers are still a highly influential force, and the faction they share power with represents . . . wait for it . . . the Saudis — the Wahhabist sharia kingdom. Feel better now? Probably not, but understand that when McCain and the Obama administration talk about supporting the “moderates,” this is who they mean. Understand, too, that the Brothers have always done business with Iran — a longtime backer of Hamas, the Brothers’ Palestinian terrorist branch — and that the Saudis’ governing ideology (to say nothing of their money) spawned al-Qaeda.

 

What could be more “moderate” than that?

 

The other pretender is Rand Paul and his nihilistic brand of libertarianism. On the twelfth anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities, in which Islamic-supremacist jihadists murdered nearly 3,000 Americans, the senator refused to distance himself from the repulsive assessment of his father, Ron Paul, that the United States had brought the attack on herself. “America’s chickens, comin’ home to roost,” as Jeremiah Wright memorably  put it.

 

The senator is trying to be the silk glove over dad’s ham-handed fist — to make Ron Paul’s noxious substitution of “Blame America First” for “Know Thine Enemy” respectable. Asked about his father’s assertion, Paul the Younger tried to change the subject, opining that why someone attacks the U.S. is irrelevant — that sometimes the cause could be “our presence overseas,” and sometimes not. What really matters, he said, is “that we defend ourselves from attack.”

 

It is thin camouflage. While McCain would insert the United States into every controversy, no matter how contrary to our interests, Paul sees our government as incapable of acting beneficially in the world. One can easily understand why Paul has a surface appeal for young Americans. In their lifetimes, an era of progressive dominance in foreign affairs, to act in America’s interests has become disreputable. The McCain approach — champion Qaddafi, oust Qaddafi; condemn the Muslim Brotherhood, support the Muslim Brotherhood; surge against al-Qaeda, arm al-Qaeda — has brought dizzying discredit to American action on the world stage. The Pauls exploit this to a fare-thee-well.

 

Nevertheless, the Pauls’ indictment is against government when the real culprit is wayward government policy in the execution of an essential government function. The Paul fantasy, like the Left’s, is that we can refrain from being judgmental about other countries: Just trade with everyone while pretending to be Switzerland, and then those nations disposed against us will like us better, and if they don’t we can always respond forcefully — after they’ve killed a few thousand of us.

 

Conservatives do not want Teddy Roosevelt’s pro-American progressivism. If, as is usually the case, you don’t have an extraordinary TR-type at the helm, what you’re left with is progressivism run amok and anything but pro-American.

 

Neither, however, are conservatives anti-government. In a 1997 essay diagnosing “What Ails the Right,” Bill Kristol and David Brooks famously called for government that is “limited but energetic.” I respectfully disagree: “Energetic” proves too promiscuous a license, eviscerating the Constitution’s limits. As TR is said to have remarked — perhaps apocryphally, historian Paul Johnson cautions — “What’s the Constitution between friends?” What conservatives want is a central government that does very few things — only the ones it is expressly assigned, the ones only a national government can do — but does them exceedingly well.

 

Limited does not mean small, for these are not small tasks. The most significant function of government, national security, is what our foreign policy must serve. This is where Reagan got it right and today’s Republican leaders get it tragically wrong.

 

At a time when fellow travelers on the left and “realists” on the right wanted to come to some understanding with the Soviet Union, Reagan rightly saw Communism as an evil that could not be moderated or accommodated. It was an implacable enemy that had to be resisted and defeated. That did not mean military invasions on every front. It meant organizing American foreign policy around the conviction that Communism was the enemy of liberty, that it was aggressively revolutionary, and that it had to be opposed by whatever instruments of government made the most sense. There might be ambiguity about how the United States would respond in a given set of circumstances, but there was no ambiguity about who the enemy was or that our overarching goal was to defeat him.

 

Today, the enemy is Islamic supremacism, which inevitably reigns whenever Islam is imposed as a governing system. We must abandon the notion that this Islam is a religion.

 

In last weekend’s column, I noted that the Obama administration and the GOP’s McCain wing call al-Qaeda operatives “extremists” in order to “avoid the inconvenience that what they are ‘extreme’ about is Islam.” Well, it works the other way around, too. There are millions of “moderate” Muslims, but what makes them “moderate” is that they ignore (or reimagine) the political and supremacist tenets of Islam.

 

That’s fine. We want to ally with Muslims who, in the spirit of the Western Enlightenment, allow for a separation of religion from politics in their doctrine. But that separation is necessary precisely because whenever a political system proclaims itself as “Islamic” — whenever it establishes Islam as the state religion and makes sharia the foundation of its law — it is inevitably hostile to liberty and equality.

 

In Spring Fever, I recount the rueful observation of an authentic Muslim democrat who bristled at the West’s delusional celebration of Erdogan’s “Turkish Model” of “Islamic democracy”: “We are a democracy,” he asserted. “Islam has nothing to do with it.” When Islam defines the democracy, it’s not one.

The Islamic societal system is today’s totalitarianism — so much so that it finds a reliable ally in the hard Left. Much like Soviet-era Communists, moreover, Islamic supremacists unabashedly regard us as an “enemy” to be “conquered” while we romp about their camp desperately seeking “moderates.” The Islamic system is not nearly as fearsome as the Soviet superpower, but our blindness to its evil, and thus our abetting of it, compensate for this deficit.

 

Like Communism, Islamic supremacism threatens America and the West comprehensively — it attacks both forcibly and culturally; it pressures without and infiltrates within. A conservative national-security policy would respond in kind. Instead of promoting the charade of Islamic democracy, it would let nature take its course overseas: Allow the Islamic system’s hopeless backwardness to collapse of its own weight while promoting champions of real Western democracy — not just popular elections but individual liberty and minority rights. You can’t empower democrats, including truly moderate Muslims, without making it attractive to be one, and unattractive to be the other guys.

 

Domestic policy should align with this approach. We must be done once and for all with the folly of “outreach” to “moderate Islamists” — to say nothing of the insanity of consulting with “moderate Islamists” in the formulation of national-security policy. What makes a Muslim an Islamist is his Islamic supremacism — his preference for the Islamic system. That is the antithesis of moderation, particularly in a country built on individual liberty. That an Islamist eschews violence, or at least says he does, is welcome; it does not, however, make him moderate — ACORN is not moderate even if it resists the methods of the like-minded Weather Underground. Besides, “moderate Islamist” is the euphemism du jour for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslims who love America will never rise until our political class ends its infatuation with the Muslims who envision conquering America.

 

A conservative foreign policy would set itself firmly against Iran and Assad, as well as against al-Qaeda, the Brotherhood, and their state sponsors. It would not choose sides between them in their Syrian free-for-all. It would make the defeat of all of them — of Islamic supremacism — its strategic objective. It would tactically use the opportunities afforded by our diplomatic, economic, intelligence, military, and leadership capabilities to make it happen.

 

And it would work.

Oslo Peace Accords Provide Cautionary Tale 20 Years Later. By Edmund Sanders.

Oslo peace accords provide cautionary tale 20 years later. By Edmund Sanders. Los Angeles Times, September 13, 2013.

Sanders:

Former Israeli peace negotiator Yossi Alpher, who worked on the failed 2000 Camp David talks, said the issues are too divisive to be tackled under a single accord, as the Oslo process attempted to do.

 

He said Oslo ultimately collapsed under the weight of those issues, including borders, refugees, Jerusalem and security.

 

He said Oslo’s failure shows that a better approach would be to separate issues that arose from Israel's creation in 1948 — such as the right of return for Palestinian refugees — from those that emerged after Israel seized control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967, such as borders and Jerusalem's status.

 

“Oslo mixed post-1967 issues with pre-1967 issues,” Alpher said. “But while you saw some progress with post-’67 issues, like security, borders and Jerusalem, you see zero progress on pre-’67 issues, like holy places and the right of return.”

 

Another mistake that he said arose from the Oslo process was the negotiating-table principle that nothing would be agreed to until everything was agreed to. The concept was intended to allow both sides to take risks and to encourage creative horse-trading. But the principle made talks an all-or-nothing process.

 

“So with Oslo, not only did you lump undoable issues with doable issues, you declared that they would all be held hostage to the most intractable issue,” Alpher said.

 

Not surprisingly, each side tends to blame the other for Oslo’s collapse.

 

“The Oslo process failed because the Palestinian leadership, and especially the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, never intended for it to succeed,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

 

He said Arafat used Oslo as a ruse to extract as much as possible before launching the 2000 Palestinian uprising.

 

“The attitude toward Oslo among Israelis today can be summed up in the words of the song by ’60s band The Who: We ‘won't get fooled again,’” Halevi said.

Two-State Illusion. By Ian S. Lustick.

Two-State Illusion. By Ian S. Lustick. New York Times, September 14, 2013.

The Danger of Two-State Messianism. By Ian S. Lustick. The Daily Beast, October 2, 2013.

Israel needs a new map. By Ian S. Lustick. Los Angeles Times, March 21, 2013.

Israel Needs a New Map. By Ian Lustick. Middle East Policy, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Summer 2013).

Israel Needs a New Map. Remarks at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. By Ian Lustick. Middle East Policy Council, February 26, 2013.

Israel Could Benefit from Hamas. By Ian S. Lustick. Forbes, June 17, 2010.

Negotiating Truth: The Holocaust, Lehavdil, and al-Nakba. By Ian S. Lustick. Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Fall/Winter 2006).

To Build and to Be Built By: Israel and the Hidden Logic of the Iron Wall. By Ian Lustick. Israel Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring 1996).

Ian Lustick: Blaming Zionism for lack of two-state solution all that’s fit to print at NY Times. By David Gerstman. Legal Insurrection, September 15, 2013.

Ian Lustick’s science fiction in the New York Times. The Elder of Ziyon, September 15, 2013.

Two States and the Anti-Zionist Illusion. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, September 15, 2013.

The Depravity of the Anti-Israeli Left. By Jonathan Marks. Commentary, September 15, 2013.

“The Two-State Illusion” by Ian Lustick. By Timothy Villareal. Tikkun Daily Blog, September 15, 2013.

So Now We Have to Talk about Ian Lustick’s One State Delusion . . . By Shmuel Rosner. Jewish Journal, September 16, 2013.

Ian Lustick’s NY Times Review Rant on the “Illusion of a Two-State Solution.” By Rabbi Jonathan Rossove. Jewish Journal, September 16, 2013.

Israel and Palestine Vs. “Blood and Magic.” By Hussein Ibish and Saliba Sarsar. The Daily Beast, September 17, 2013.

Reading Lustick Carefully. By Jerry Haber (Charles Manekin). The Daily Beast, September 19, 2013.

Thinking Outside the Two-State Box. By Yousef Munayyer. The New Yorker, September 20, 2013.

Durham Redux: One-State Illusions, From Canada to the Middle East. By Bernard Avishai. The New Yorker, September 20, 2013. Also at Bernard Avishai Dot Com.

Two state vs. one state debate is a waste of time, political energy. By Noam Sheizaf. +972, September 20, 2013.

“New Yorker” follows Lustick by publishing Munayyer’s argument against two-state solution. By Philip Weiss. Mondoweiss, September 21, 2013.

Violence works– by ending complacency. By Philip Weiss. Mondoweiss, September 22, 2013.

What Future for Israel? By Nathan Thrall. NJBR, July 24, 2013. From the New York Review of Books, August 15, 2013.

The Third Intifada Is Inevitable. By Nathan Thrall. New York Times, June 22, 2012.

Ian Lustick Needs a New Map (and Flare Gun). By Dexter Van Zile. Campus Watch, March 28, 2013. Also at CAMERA.

Abbas: “I will not accept a Jewish State.” Video. Palestinian Media Watch, April 27, 2009.

Ian Lustick: Goldilocks Warrior at Penn. By Martin Kramer. Sandbox, March 31, 2003.

Ian Lustick’s position on the Arab-Israeli conflict: pro-PLO. By Francisco Gil-White. Historical and Investigative Research.

Coming to Terms with Israel. Interview with Ian Lustick by Harry Kreisler. Conversations with History, UC Berkeley, March 4, 2002. Video at YouTube.

An Anchorless World. By Roger Cohen.

An Anchorless World. By Roger Cohen. New York Times, September 12, 2013.

The Ongoing Battle Against Terrorism. By Clifford D. May.

The Ongoing Battle Against Terrorism. By Clifford D. May. National Review Online, September 12, 2013. Also at Real Clear World.

How Syria Is Like Iraq. By Robert Kaplan.

How Syria Is Like Iraq. By Robert Kaplan. Real Clear World, September 12, 2013.

Kaplan:

I supported the war in Iraq. It was an agonizing mistake. I made the mistake because I did something a serious foreign policy thinker should never do: I allowed my emotions to affect my thinking. My emotions were stirred by several visits to Iraq I had made as a reporter in the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq with the machinal, totalitarian intensity employed by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union and Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania. Iraq under Saddam was like a vast prison yard lit by high wattage lamps, in which everyone was watched all the time, and everyone lived in absolute fear. I had my American passport taken away from me by Saddam's secret police for ten days in 1986 while I was reporting on the Kurds in the north of the country. I had tasted the fear with which Iraqis themselves lived.

 

I thus assumed for years thereafter that nothing could be worse than Saddam’s rule. Following 9/11, I did not want to forcibly spread democracy in the Arab world like others did; nor did I want to topple dictators per se. I wanted only one dictator gone – Saddam – because he was so much worse than a mere dictator. He was a tyrant straight out of Mesopotamian antiquity.

 

I was wrong.

 

I was wrong because of the following reasons:

 

- I did not adequately consider that even in the case of Iraq, things could be worse. Though, in 1994, I had written extensively and in depth about the dangers of anarchy in the Third World, I did not fully consider how dangerously close to anarchy Iraq actually was, and that Saddam was the Hobbesian nemesis keeping it at bay. Saddam was cruel beyond imagining because the ethnic and sectarian differences in Iraqi society were themselves cruel and bloodthirsty beyond imagining.

 

- I was insufficiently cold-blooded in my thinking. I did not fully consider whether it was in the American interest to remove this tyrant. After all, President Ronald Reagan had found Saddam useful in trying to contain neighboring Iran. Perhaps Saddam might still be useful in containing al Qaeda? That is how I should have been thinking.

 

- I was thinking only two steps ahead, not the five or six steps ahead required of serious analysis when the question concerns going to war. I wanted to remove Saddam (step one) and replace him with another general (step two). As I said, I had serious misgivings, in print, back then about democracy in the Arab world. But I should have been thinking even more about the consequences of such a newly empowered general not gaining control of the Kurds in the north, or of the Shia in the south. I should have been thinking more of how Iran would intervene on the ground with its intelligence services. I should have been thinking more about how once Saddam were toppled, simply replacing him might be a very complex affair. I should have been overwhelmed by the complexities of a post-Saddam Iraq. I wasn’t sufficiently.

 

- I did not consider the appetite for war – or lack thereof – of the American public. The American public was in a patriotic frenzy following 9/11. I should have realized that such a frenzy simply could not last. I should have realized that there would be a time limit regarding how long public support could be sustained for having boots-on-the-ground in large numbers in the Middle East. World War I for the United States had lasted less than 20 months. World War II for the United States lasted little more than three-and-a-half years. Americans tired of the Korean War in about that same time-frame, and revolted against the Vietnam War when it went on longer. The fact that I was emotionally involved in toppling Saddam did not mean the public would be so.

 

-Finally, I did not consider the effect of a long-term commitment in Iraq (and Afghanistan) on other regional theaters. The top officials in any administration – the president, secretary of state, and so on – have only a limited amount of hours in a day, even if they work 70-hour weeks. And if they are spending most of those hours dealing with the Middle East, America's influence in the Pacific, Latin America, and elsewhere must suffer. America, therefore, must be light and lethal, rarely getting bogged down anywhere: in fact, I wrote and published exactly this – but in mid-2003, after the invasion of Iraq had already commenced. I just did not foresee American forces getting bogged down as they did. That was a failure of critical thinking. For the truth is, nobody seeks a quagmire: a quagmire only occurs when people do not adequately consider in advance everything that might go wrong.

 

On its face, Syria resembles Iraq in much of the above. The supporters of robust military intervention are not sufficiently considering how things could become even worse after the demise of dictator Bashar al Assad, with full-scale anarchy perhaps in the offing; how Assad might still serve a cold-blooded purpose by containing al Qaeda in the Levant; how four or five steps ahead the United States might find itself owning or partially owning the situation on the ground in an anarchic Syria; how the American public's appetite for military intervention in Syria might be less than they think; and how a long-term commitment to Syria might impede American influence in other regional theaters. The Obama administration says it does not want a quagmire and will avoid one; but that was the intention of the younger Bush administration, too.

 

Of course, each war or intervention is different in a thousand ways than any other. So while I have listed some similarities in the ways we can think about these wars, Syria will unfold in its own unique manner. For example, it is entirely possible that the Obama administration will not get bogged down, and that its intervention, if it still ever comes to that, will pivotally affect the situation for the better by serving as a deus ex machina for a negotiated cease-fire of sorts. For the very threatened use of power can serve as its own dynamic, revealing, in this case, the limitations of Russia and Iran which were obscured as long as America did relatively little to affect the situation.

 

The problem, however, is that such a happy outcome in Syria usually requires a finely calibrated strategy from the beginning. The Bush administration did not have one in Iraq, evinced by the absence of post-invasion planning. And, at least as of this writing, the Obama administration seems to lack one as well. Instead, it appeared until recently to be backing into a military action that it itself only half-heartedly believes in. That, more than any of the factors I have mentioned above, is what ultimately gives me pause.

The Rise of the New New Left. By Peter Beinart.

The Rise of the New New Left. By Peter Beinart. The Daily Beast, September 12, 2013.

 

Stop Blaming Colonial Borders for the Middle East’s Problems. By Nick Danforth.

Stop Blaming Colonial Borders for the Middle East’s Problems. By Nick Danforth. The Atlantic, September 11, 2013.

Angela Merkel: Multiculturalism Has Utterly Failed in Germany.

Angela Merkel: “Multiculturalism utterly failed in Germany.” Video. RT, October 17, 2010. YouTube.

Angela Merkel declares death of German multiculturalism. By Kate Connolly. The Guardian, October 17, 2010.

Germany’s Age of Anxiety. By Roger Boyes. Foreign Policy, October 22, 2010. Also here. German multiculturalism was dead long before Angela Merkel buried it for good this week.

Why European Conservatives Are Bashing Multiculturalism. By Bruce Crumley. Time, February 23, 2011.

David Cameron at the Munich Security Conference on the Failure of Multiculturalism. The National Archives, February 5, 2011. Also at Gov.UK.

Multicultural policies need replacing, says Cameron. Sydney Morning Herald, February 6, 2011.

David Cameron sparks fury from critics who say attack on multiculturalism has boosted English Defence League. By Toby Helm, Matthew Taylor, and Rowenna Davis. The Observer, February 5, 2011.

Cameron goes Merkel on Multiculturalism. Ancient Briton, February 5, 2011.

The Beginning of the End of European Multiculturalism. By Soeren Kern. Gatestone Institute, October 21, 2010.

The Failure of British Multiculturalism. By Soeren Kern. Gatestone Institute, February 10, 2011.

Americans’ Family Feud. By Joel Kotkin.

Americans’ Family Feud. By Joel Kotkin. New Geography, September 9, 2013. Also at JoelKotkin.com.

“Moderate” Fatah Opens Fire on Soldiers Protecting Israeli Worshippers. By Robert Spencer

“Moderate” Fatah opens fire on soldiers protecting Israeli worshippers after Fatah officials call for attacks. By Robert Spencer. Jihad Watch, September 13, 2013.

America the Exceptional: A Primer for Putin. By Carl M. Cannon.

America the Exceptional: A Primer for Putin. By Carl M. Cannon. Real Clear Politics, September 13, 2013.

The exceptional nation: Vladimir Putin doesn’t understand what makes America special. Editorial. Washington Times, September 13, 2013.

How Caring for Aging Parents Affects a Career. By Rosanna Fay.

How Caring for Aging Parents Affects a Career. By Rosanna Fay. The Atlantic, September 12, 2013.

Work-Life Balance, Eldercare Edition. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, September 13, 2013.

Witness to a Syrian Execution: “I Saw a Scene of Utter Cruelty.” By Patrick Witty.

Witness to a Syrian Execution: “I Saw a Scene of Utter Cruelty.” By Patrick Witty. Time, September 12, 2013. Also at Jihad Watch.

A young Syrian man kneels blindfolded before anti-regime rebels publicly executed him in the town of Keferghan, near Aleppo, on August 31, 2013. Agence LeJournal/SIPA via TIME.