Who Creates Jihadists? [Michael Rubin]

Sorry, this is going to be a long one. Juxtaposing Jonah’s analysis of the NIE finding that the Iraq war sparked more jihadism with analysis by Clinton administration NSC staffers’ Dan Benjamin and Steve Simons in today’s Washington Post got me thinking. The real debate still seems to be between proponents of a long-term strategy to fight Islamist extremism versus proponents of more short-term, band-aid solutions. But what really bothered me about Benjamin and Simons’ argument is its oversimplification of cause-and-effect in terrorism. Jihadism is seldom spontaneous. Iraqis and Saudis don’t merely watch al-Jazeera, get pissed off, and go out to hunt Americans. Rather, there are networks that recruit and train. Part of our difficulties in Iraq and elsewhere stem from our failures to get at these networks. Before blaming Iraq for increasing the jihadist threat, a few questions:

Specifically, how do jihadists join the jihad?

Do they simply purchase high explosives at the bazaar or do they get supplied? If so, by whom? Who funds them? How does the money get there?

(Interviewing Iraqis earlier this month, they noted two patterns: An increase in shipments through diplomatic pouches to the Iranian consulates in Karbala and Basra, as well as shipments of appliances like television sets to import-export companies in al-Anbar, which then sell them, using the cash to purchase supplies).

Among European terrorists, how many received training in Afghan or Pakistani terror training camps? If they received such training, is their terror really homegrown? (In this regard, the Bush administration’s willingness to ignore terror training camps in southwestern Somalia may one day be seen in retrospect as just as negligent as Clinton’s willingness to ignore camps in Afghanistan.

How much money have Iranian, Persian Gulf Arab, or Saudi donors contributed to jihadist organizations? Have we charted an increase in donations? (Do we even have the information?) Can these negotiations be correlated to Iraq or to the rise in oil prices?

No doubt, jihadists have become more lethal. Indeed, lethality has steadily increased since the 1970s. But how have jihadists become more lethal? Does practice make perfect? (It’s difficult for suicide bombers to learn from their mistakes). Clearly, jihadists receive training. What is important is not only from whom, but rather who introduces them to those trainers.

(When journalists describe Palestinian suicide bombers as being teenagers from a Palestinian refugee camp, they seldom explored further to find out that UN-salaried teachers at UN-funded high schools had observed certain characteristics in one of their charges and facilitated the introduction to the terror masters. This is why many families did not know what their children were about to do; Alex Alexiev highlighted a recruitment system especially popular among followers of some South Asian strains of Islam, here).

How influential are mosque sermons? If Iraqis are joining jihad, to which sermons do they listen and where? If Iraqi mosques are contributing to incitement, did the resident imam serve the same mosque under Saddam? If so, did he receive his training in Iraq? If not, where did he come from and how did he happen to take over that mosque?

(In October 2003, Sunni Arab Iraqis spoke of mullahs being forced out at gunpoint with new imams installed; the same thing later occurred in Shi’ite mosques; in a more fashion, Uriya Shavit did a good piece on the intellectual history of al-Qaeda, here).

To what extent do jihadists use snippets of Congressional debate—whether in context or outside—in their recruitment propaganda? While Iraq impacts media coverage, to what extent does media coverage impact Iraq?

It may be tempting for political reasons to blame Iraq or, for that matter, Israel’s existence and occupation for jihadism and terrorism. If so, what did Iraq or Israeli have to do with Muslim Brotherhood terrorism pre-1948 (again, see this declassified document). What did Iraq or Israel have to do with Islamist slogans shouted in the French riots? What did Iraq or Israel have to do with the Danish cartoon controversy?

Does engaging terror-sponsoring regimes work (note this declassified document (.pdf), about US engagement toward the Taliban)?

Before we blame everything on ourselves and the Bush administration, I’d sure like to have some more answers. Because I suspect that jihadists may be far more bipartisan in their willingness to kill than some of the commentaries about them. Iraq appears to be the latest excuse. If not Iraq, then Afghanistan. If not Afghanistan, then Saudi Arabia. If not Saudi Arabia, then Sicily or Spain.

Bullies [Jonah Goldberg]

One very annoying criticism of my column today (which I am a bit fond of, btw) is the objection over my use of the word bully for Saddam Hussein. Although I didn't even directly call Huseein a bully — it is implied however — a bunch of dyspeptic anti-war types have written to complain that Saddam was no bully to America. How could he be? We're so much more powerful. Etc etc.

Frankly, I think this sort of thing is grotesque. First of all, I think Saddam's history of trying to intimidate the West — funding suicide bombers, pursuing WMDs and so on — makes calling him a bully perfectly accurate at that level. Second, one needn't be the one who is picked on to confront a bully. If you'd ever come to the aid of someone being picked on, you'd know that.

But, more importantly, he was so obviously a bully in his region. Just ask the Kurds, Shiites or the Kuwaitis. To mock my suggestion that Saddam was a bully is a sign of the corruption of liberal idealism in certain quarters in my eyes. If one can mock the notion that Saddam was a bully, then no dictator can count as one and the best parts of liberal foreign policy from the 1990s (and earlier) unravel into a form of amoral isolationism. Milosovic, Aideed, the Sudanese government: none of these governments can count as bullies either. I'm not trying to associate every anti-war liberal out there with these emailers. I know that the vast majority of them agree in broad brushstrokes that Saddam was evil. But still, I've gotten pretty versed in reading the tea leaves in my email box, and this just feels like a symptom of rot to me.

Torture Cont'd [Jonah Goldberg]

Noah at Gideon's Blog is passionately against Bush's interrogation/torture program and he makes a good case for his position. But what I found most interesting — or at least new — is that he rightly points out the grotesque disconnect between a government willing to abuse — the best compromise word I can come up with — a handful of people but abjectly terrified to inconvenience in trivial ways large numbers of people at airports and the like, if that inconvenience is disproportionately distributed along ethnic, geographic or religious lines. He writes:

Finally, I am appalled that we are even considering legalizing torture while standing resolute in our refusal to apply appropriately targeted screening techniques at points of entry into the United States. This President has been willing to go the people demanding the right to declare anyone an enemy combatant and torture that person, but he is not willing to go the people and say that ethnicity, religion, age and sex should determine who is subject to more aggressive searches before he boards an airline. I can find no good excuse, and no good moral justification, for his preference in this regard. I wish the opposition party could oppose this bill in those terms, but unfortunately they will not. So I am left hoping they will successfully oppose it in whatever terms, because this bill should be opposed, and defeated.

Jonah Goldberg on Fight or Flight

Of course the war in Iraq has made us less safe, and I didn’t need the National Intelligence Estimate to tell me so. Who could possibly deny that Iraq has become, in the words of the NIE, a “cause célèbre” for jihadists? One need only read the newspaper to conclude that Iraq is spawning more terrorists. (Indeed, one fears that all the authors of the NIE did was clip from the newspapers.)

If you’ve ever stood up to a bully, you know how this works. Confrontation tends to increase the chances of violence in the short term but decreases its likelihood in the long term. Any hunter will tell you that the most dangerous moment is when you’ve cornered an animal, and any cop will tell you that standing up to muggers puts you in danger. American colonists were less safe for standing up to King George III, and the United States was certainly safer in the short term when we stood on the sidelines while Germany was conquering Europe. Heck, we would have been safer in the short run if we’d responded to Pearl Harbor by telling the Japanese they could have the Pacific to themselves.

Rich Lowry on The reality of Guantanamo

In one camp, detainees were taking apart the push-button faucets in their cells to get at a metal spring that they would stretch out to use as a weapon. The Asian-style toilets on the floors of the cells used to have footrests, until detainees wrenched them from the floor to use as bludgeoning weapons. The guards are splashed routinely with urine and feces. The detainees have even been known to try to kick their soccer balls out of their recreation area into barbed wire, to cost the infidels the price of one ball.

All the disturbances or suicides have taken place in the camps where security has been loosened. It was in Camp Four, where the best-behaved detainees are allowed to live communally, that a minor riot took place this past spring. A detainee faked a suicide attempt to lure the guards into the living area, where the floor had been smeared with urine, feces and soap. When they slipped, the detainees attacked them with light fixtures and other makeshift weapons. The man in charge here, Adm. Harry Harris, says his conclusion was “there is no such thing as a medium-security terrorist.”

BRODER ON ROVE -- AND CLINTON [Byron York]

On Friday, the Washington Post's David Broder, who recently angered many readers by writing that some media outlets should apologize to Karl Rove for their coverage of his role in the CIA leak case, answered questions from readers in an online chat :
Washington, D.C.: Mr Broder, if you feel Karl Rove is owed an apology from the pundits and writers over Valerie Plame, did you also call for an apology to the Clintons after Ken Starr, the Whitewater investigation and the failed attempt to impeach President Clinton? If not, why not?

David S. Broder: As best, I can recall,I did not call for such an apology. My view, for whatever it is worth long after the dust has settled on Monica, was that when President Clinton admitted he had lied to his Cabinet and his closest assoc, to say nothing of the public, that the honorable thing was for him to have resigned and turned over the office to Vice President Gore. I think history would have been very different had he done that.
—————
Rochester, N.Y.: I'll be impressed if you take this one...
Mr. Broder, you recently argued that many in the media owed Karl Rove an apology, because we now know that the worst Mr. Rove might have done in the Valerie Plame case was to have misled prosecutors about a deed that was not itself a crime. If you feel this way now, then why were you so critical of Bill Clinton for misleading lawyers about a deed that was not itself a crime? Or do you now feel you owe Bill Clinton an apology? If not, then why not?

David S. Broder: We return a second time to President Clinton. What bothered me greatly about his actions was not what he said to his lawyers but what he told the Cabinet, his White House staff—You can go out and defend me because this did not happen. And he told the same lie to the American people. When a president loses his credibility, he loses an important tool for governing—and that is why I thought he should step down.
—————
Ottawa, Canada: I am curious about your statement regarding Mr. Clinton:"..that the honorable thing was for him to have resigned..." This resignation would have been because of private misconduct that he lied about. How sir, would you judge a president that overstated the facts and got the country into a war?

David S. Broder: I would judge that president harshly, as the majority of the voters in this country and in many other parts of the world has done. But I make a distinction between a terrible misjudgment and a deliberate lie. Do you?

The Politics of Apology [Stanley Kurtz]

Let’s look back at a recent episode in the politics of apology. Democratic Iran expert Kenneth Pollack tells the story of the Clinton administration’s failed efforts to draw Iran into a negotiated settlement of our national differences. From 1997 through 2000, the Clinton administration convinced itself that it was close to a breakthrough toward detente with Iran. If America could make just the right gesture, Clintonians believed, Iran would negotiate, a grand bargain would be struck, and detente would be achieved. So on April 12, 1999, at a state dinner, President Clinton confessed in “unprompted” remarks that “Iran...has been the subject of quite a lot of abuse from various Western nations. And I think sometimes it’s quite important to tell people, look, you have a right to be angry at something my country or my culture or others that are generally allied with us today did to you 50 or 60 or 150 years ago.” Note that Clinton here goes so far as to apologize, not simply for past actions of the United States, but for the acts of European countries 150 years ago.
Then in 2000, at a state dinner in Washington, Secretary of State Madeline Albright directly apologized for specific past American actions toward Iran, from our role in orchestrating the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq, to our backing of the Shah, to our backing of Iraq in its war with Iran. Albright also highlighted President Clinton’s personal belief that America “must bear its full share of responsibility for the problems that have arisen in U.S.-Iranian relations.”

Commenting on all this, national security expert, Thomas Donnelly says, “Even as Albright was speaking, the Iranian government had begun to crack down on internal dissent and resume a hard line, anti-American stance abroad. Donnelly then quotes from Pollack’s own verdict on Clinton’s hoped-for opening to Tehran:

“I [Pollack] felt [at the time] that we had come very close to making a major breakthrough with Iran and that if only we had done a few things differently...we might have been able to make it happen. Over the years, however, I have come to the conclusion that I was wrong in this assessment. Any rapprochement that could be nixed by two words in a speech was a rapprochement that was doomed to failure anyway. That is the fundamental lesson of the Clinton initiative with Iran. The Iranians were not ready....Iran was ruled by a regime in which the lion’s share of the power–and everything that truly mattered–was in the hands of people who were not ready or interested in improving ties with the United States.” (See Pollack’s book, The Persian Puzzle. For Donnelly, see his essay in Getting Ready for a Nuclear Ready Iran.)

So when dealing with Islamists determined to knock heads with the West, apologies for colonial history or past American foreign policy don’t work. If anything, apologies–especially anxious apologies for wrongs that were never even committed by us–convey an impression of weakness that simply invite further defiance. Yet Democrats like Clinton, Albright, and the New York Times seem to rely on such apologies as critical instruments of foreign policy–even (or especially) when dealing with hardened Islamists. And you’re telling me that when a show-down with Ahmadinejad sure to come in the next two years, we can afford to let the Democrats win this election? I don’t think so.

The Pope, by the way, has not apologized for his remarks, but only expressed sorrow at their having been misunderstood. In this respect, the Pope has hewed to a much tougher line on apologies than President Clinton and Secretary Albright.

Thomas F. Madden on Benedict XVI

A decent summary.

In November 1095 Pope Urban II called the First Crusade. To judge from the comments issuing from some Muslim groups and politicians, Pope Benedict XVI has done the same thing. According to Salih Kapusuz, a deputy leader of the majority party in Turkey, Benedict, “has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world.” Kapusuz maintains that the pope is engaged in “an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades.” And so it is that protesters across the Middle East are hastily sewing together pope effigies. In Ankara a black wreath was laid before the Vatican embassy and in Cairo people are chanting “Oh Crusaders, oh cowards! Down with the pope!”

So, what about that Crusade? Well, as one might expect, there isn’t one. Is it nonetheless true, as Muhammad Umar, chairman of the Ramadhan Foundation in Britain has claimed, that Benedict “has fallen into the trap of the bigots and racists when it comes to judging Islam…”? Not exactly. But he has fallen into the trap of association, even from the distance of six centuries, with someone who once criticized Islam. And that is clearly not acceptable.

On Tuesday, September 12, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI addressed scholars and scientists at the University of Regensburg on the topic of “Faith, Reason, and the University.” It was a very learned and scholarly lecture, which means that it would put most people comfortably to sleep. However, it is in this lecture that, some believe, Benedict revealed his true colors when it comes to Islam. Early in the address he referred to an interfaith dialogue between a Persian scholar and the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus which probably took place in 1391. Manuel was the leader of the last Christian state in the East. The descendent of the once mighty Roman Empire, Byzantium had by Manuel’s day been reduced to little more than a few crumbs floating around in the soup of the ever-expanding Ottoman Empire. This was a world in which the forces of Islam were the real superpower, and they knew it. Manuel spent his reign flattering and appeasing the Turks on the one hand and desperately seeking aid from Europeans on the other. In neither case was he very successful. Less than three decades after his death, the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II destroyed the Byzantine Empire and made its capital, Constantinople (modern Istanbul), his own.

But back to Benedict XVI. The pope resurrected Manuel II in order to make a point. He noted that the learned Manuel was well aware that the Koran states that “There is no compulsion in religion.” But he also knew, as someone who had been on the business end of jihad himself, that the Koran also speaks of holy war. With “startling brusqueness,” the pope continued, Manuel tackled this seeming contradiction by saying “’Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’ The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable.”

The pope’s purpose in citing this passage is made clear almost immediately. “The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor [of Manuel’s dialogue], Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.” Now here is where it gets a little complicated. (I said that it was a scholarly lecture.) Benedict asks the question, “Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?” He concludes that the Greek concept of reason, bound together with Christianity, fundamentally shaped, even gave birth to Europe. He then describes a process which he calls “dehellenization” in which Europeans from the Late Middle Ages onward have chipped away the fusion of faith and reason, placing them in completely separate spheres. This separation is the main focus of the lecture. It is, in fact, not about Islam at all. Benedict is calling a crusade, but it is one against a Christianity stripped of reason and a science stripped of transcendent truths. “In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith. Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.”

This is a tough lecture to boil down to one sentence, but if forced I would characterize it as: Theology belongs in the university because only by studying faith with reason will we find solutions to the problems of our time. However, if instead of reading the lecture we simply cut out everything except the words of Manuel II Palaeologus written six centuries ago, then we have a good justification for Pakistan’s parliament to unanimously condemn the pope. If we further pretend that it was Benedict, rather than a long-dead emperor, who expressed these sentiments we have a sound basis for the Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah of Lebanon to demand “a personal apology — not through his officials — to Muslims for this false reading (of Islam).” Or we can rage with Syria’s top Sunni Muslim religious authority, Sheik Ahmad Badereddine Hassoun, who replied to the pope, “We have heard about your extremism and hate for Arabs and Muslims. Now that you have dropped the mask from your face we see its ugliness and extremist nature.”

During Friday prayers in Iraq’s Shiite Muslim stronghold of Kufa, Sheik Salah al-Ubaidi reminded the faithful that “last year and in the same month the Danish cartoon assaulted Islam.” The pope’s comments were now a second assault, he said. Al-Ubaidi is at least partly right. The furor over the Danish cartoon brought in stark relief the cultural differences that exist when it comes to matters of free speech and expression. At least with the cartoon, the illustrator and publisher really were criticizing Islam and its founder. In the case of the pope, however, we have someone who is merely citing a medieval source within the context of a scholarly address. Is that really sufficient justification for Mr. Kapusuz to characterize the pope as “the author of such unfortunate and insolent remarks… [who] is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini”?

In the coming days there will undoubtedly be more protests, more outrage, and perhaps even more violence (a nun in Somalia was murdered this weekend) in response to the 14th-century words of Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus. Pope Benedict XVI has already apologized to the world’s Muslims, assuring them that he had no desire to offend them. Heads should soon cool. But the underlying problem will still remain. Interfaith dialogues, by their very nature, require some criticism and some understanding of the shared histories of the respective faiths. If these are stifled, if reason is exiled, then we will never understand, let alone bridge, the religious and cultural gulfs in the world today. And that is what the pope’s lecture was all about.