>>If CNN will air photos of abuse in Abu Ghraib they need to publish these.

CNN has only aired the tamest of the Abu Ghraib pictures. The ones of people bleeding have not been aired. If you want bloodlust, you better stick to watching Fox.

Posted by: pdf at June 19, 2004 05:09 AM

Bloodlust on Fox, haven't seen that?

Posted by: syn at June 19, 2004 06:03 AM

The other side of the fence, in the interest of balance I presume.

Posted by: Butch at June 19, 2004 10:25 AM

The other side of the fence, in the interest of balance I presume.

Posted by: Butch at June 19, 2004 10:29 AM

May I ask where in the ME? Have you ever been to Afghanistan or Iraq? Curious about what your experience of ME and points beyond is.

Posted by: Cato at June 19, 2004 10:43 AM

Cato, I'm going to Libya and Tunisia.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 19, 2004 10:50 AM

Good on ya. Perhaps a new perspective on WOT? (I love Tunisia.) I'm flying out in two weeks also, well, in 13 days, I'll be in the Emirates on way to Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Kandahar and Kabul up to Salang Pass, inshallah, for rest of summer.

Posted by: Cato at June 19, 2004 11:17 AM

Will you be blogging much from Libya and Tunisia? Don't spend all your time in the Web cafe!
(But you could get some interesting stories by asking Web cafe patrons what they like to read.)

Posted by: John T at June 19, 2004 11:19 AM

John,

I will not blog from Libya, but I will blog from Tunisia.

Both countries have Internet cafes, but I don't know if the keyboards in Libya have English keys on them. They might not. Ghaddafi banned non-Arabic languages even in the international airport.

The hotel rooms are bugged and the check-in desks are manned by people who work for Libyan intelligence. It's a total-surveillance police state. I wouldn't feel safe blogging or even taking notes. I hired a personal guide and he's connected to the government. He isn't a minder per se, he's just a tour guide who works for a state-run agency. This was the only agency I could find that would reliably answer my emails, so that's why I hired him. I will not tell him I'm a writer.

Tunisia is not a free country either, but it's relatively free compared to Libya. I won't be afraid to blog from there.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 19, 2004 11:29 AM

>>>"Here are photos of what Al Qaeda did yesterday in Saudi Arabia."

Michael,

Now you're some shill for the Right? This is old news.

/off to view more Abu Graib photos

Posted by: David at June 19, 2004 01:24 PM

I forced myself to look at these. Though I fully understand intellectually what these fiends do, the image does make a difference. For those of us who believe the war on terror is vital to our survival, it is time to face some facts. A significant percentage of the "loyal opposition" in this country appears to be doing everything possible to destroy the effort, not because they favor the enemy but because they are simply blind as to what is actually at stake. We must win this battle of ideas here at home or we will NEVER win this war. This means fighting back with our own propaganda. Propaganda is not necessarily untrue. It simply means special efforts taken to affect the emotions of the people whose opinion is at stake. We need to use the ugly truth to propagandize for the side of right and we need to do it now. Unfortunately, the Democrats have created a situation where Bush will have no choice but to attack them this fall for their failure to support the war on terrorism. He must do it because he must win the election. Roger Simon is correct and I have been saying this for a year. The Dems. have set up a situation whereby the loss of Bush will be seen as a total rejection of his approach to fighting the war on terror. We must not let that happen. I am a Democrat by the way but no longer vote for party but for the person.

Posted by: Doug at June 19, 2004 01:48 PM

Yawn. So "Al Qaeda" killed 1 (one) more guy. Why is this news? The rape camps in Sudan are news. Mass starvation and cannibalism in NK is news. The thousands killed daily in the Congolese civil war is news. This is not news. Crack-addled nutjobs toast unlucky civilians every day in every major city in the US -- and it's not national news.

What's important is decrease in body count per unit time. Our attentions should be focussed on stopping those things which are killing people the fastest, using the most efficient means possible.

Posted by: T. J. Madison at June 19, 2004 02:44 PM

MJT, when you're in Libya, see if you can spot any possible mechanisms for covert, cheap, and private infiltration of information technology. I'm curious as to the details of the visible workings of this "moderate" police state.

Posted by: T. J. Madison at June 19, 2004 02:46 PM

T.J.,

You are absolutely right.

Let's stop spending any money on the WoT and buy every family in America a treadmill and daily doses of Omega 3s and aspirin. That would save far more lives than the War on Terror will, at a much lower cost.

Posted by: A modest proposal at June 19, 2004 02:57 PM

I don't see how those pics can have any effect on anybody. They are so dark I really can't see a thing. Is it my computer or are they really that dark?

Posted by: tammy at June 19, 2004 03:06 PM

Tammy, it's your computer. I see can the pics just fine, but they are a little bit dark.

TJ Madison: Yawn. So "Al Qaeda" killed 1 (one) more guy. Why is this news?

That's precisely why some of us think the Democratic Party isn't serious enough about fighting terrorism. I can't believe you actually typed the word "yawn."

Anyway, if you're asking me to see if I can spot bugs in my hotel room (and whatnot), yes I am going to look for them. I don't expect to see much, but I can't help but look anyway. It's possible that I won't see or "feel" the oppression at all. I have no idea at this point.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 19, 2004 03:12 PM

By the way, the reason I posted a link to this is because I know very well some people still read about terrorism and want to shrug or yawn. Some, hopefully, will see these photos and stop shrugging.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 19, 2004 04:27 PM

By the way, the reason I posted a link to this is because I know very well some people still read about terrorism and want to shrug or yawn.

Care to give any examples, Michael?

Please tell me that you're not ... once again ... trying to conflate criticism of the war in Iraq with indifference to Al Qaeda.

Posted by: Mork at June 19, 2004 05:38 PM

Scale is important. I could match your beheading pictures with pictures of horrible suffering in cancer wards times 100,000.

Opportunity cost matters. 200 extra billion dollars/yr on medical research will save a heck of a lot more lives than the equivalent investment in counter-terrorism.

Medical research is also much more cost-effective than CT against biological terrorism. Attrition from non-nuclear, non-biological terrorism is trivial compared to the deaths from disease, etc., that the medical research could prevent.

$200B of research WILL crack a major disease each year. And once a disease is cracked, it stays cracked.

Even if a nuke gets through because of less CT and kills 100k people, it's still a good deal in terms of lives saved.

Of course, this assumes that the extra $200B of CT will stop the nuke. Since the current CT system can neither stop the news media from smuggling DPU, nor block the flow of drugs, this seems dubious. CT is also a chronic risk to civil liberties, leading to a small, but still important chance of a mortacracy developing.

Posted by: T. J. Madison at June 19, 2004 05:43 PM

Ah, T.J. ... I think you're venturing into an area where rationality is not necessarily the governing principle!

Here's another statistic: Al Qaeda has killed maybe 3,500 people since the beginning of September, 2001.

16,000 children die every day of starvation,lack of clean water and preventable diseases.

What's the moral calculation there?

(I'm not tryng to suggest that any particular answer is correct ... it's just something that a morally-inclined person has to work through).

Posted by: Mork at June 19, 2004 05:59 PM

Let's look at the same type of problem from a different frame of reference:

Another similar example of cost effectiveness involves Iran. Iran recently took a 30K hit in the aptly named city of Bam as a result of inadequate engineering. Preventing future such hits will require Iran to allow Western-trained engineers and capitalists to operate in their country with a minimum of hassle. Groveling at the feet of the USG could make this happen in relatively short order.

The cost: some loss of "national prestige," international status, and political power for Iranian politicians.

The benefit: Iranian citizens get much safer in several different dimensions.

Seems like an easy choice right? It is: political power trumps all other considerations. Hence, the present situation.

The decapitation situation is analogous. The terrorists have stirred up our sense of national pride, and activated our tribal and territorial instincts. This has damaged our ability to rationally allocate resources to minimize risk and maximize liberty.

Posted by: T. J. Madison at June 19, 2004 06:00 PM

>>16,000 children die every day of starvation,lack of clean water and preventable diseases.

>>What's the moral calculation there?

This one seems trivial. What's the cost in time, energy, money (often interchangeable) per life saved? Fixing the starvation problem is cheaper, right?

Maybe. The problem here is that much of the starvation occurs in areas where the political situation is Really Bad -- NK and Sudan are excellent examples. The problem isn't availability of food, but rather "political transport logistics" -- getting the food to the starving people without it getting stolen by the criminal gangs we refer to as "governments." Fixing this problem is expensive, and the costs are measured in lives, rather than directly in dollars. Maintaining clean water logistics in these areas is similarly complicated.

Using the USG to address these issues makes things even trickier -- the USG is a horribly inefficient, and very dangerous tool.

The ethics are simple: lives saved/freedom generated per hours/dollars/joules/lives sacrificed.

The logistics are NOT simple, as the example above demonstrates. This said, once everyone can agree on the (fairly straightforward) ethics, everything else is a logistical problem, amenable to empirical analysis.

It also cuts down on the finger-pointing and ad-hominem, since the potential exists for Chomsky, Totten, Bush, and myself to all be on the same moral team.

Posted by: T. J. Madison at June 19, 2004 06:11 PM

Mork: Care to give any examples, Michael?

Read up the thread. TJ typed the word "yawn." I didn't just make that up out of thin air.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 19, 2004 06:15 PM

The blindingly obvious problem with your idea, TJ, is that our civilization cannot function with random nukes going off periodically, skyscrapers falling, and trains blowing up.

If we do nothing about it, as you propose, the economic system that you are relying on to deliver the goods to cure cancer, etc. will cease to exist.

If you look at the costs in human deaths, suffering, etc. of a collapse of the global economic system and worldwide depression due to large-scale terror (say the nuking of part of Manhattan) suddenly your cost/benefit analysis shows the mindboggling importance of winning the war on terror.

Posted by: Matthew Cromer at June 19, 2004 06:19 PM

Read up the thread. TJ typed the word "yawn." I didn't just make that up out of thin air.

But you did take it out of context ... TJ was comparing this particular incident with a series of other events that he considers more significant. If TJ was your target, it is hardly fair to read into his comments an indifference to terrorism per se.

Posted by: Mork at June 19, 2004 06:38 PM

>>The blindingly obvious problem with your idea, TJ, is that our civilization cannot function with random nukes going off periodically, skyscrapers falling, and trains blowing up.

Well, both England and Germany managed to continue to function as industrial societies under much heavier targeted destruction than these Al-Qaeda punks could reliably deliver. German industrial output actually increased under bombardment, as I've mentioned here before. I think you underestimate the durability of civilization, and vastly overestimate the capabilities of the Al-Qaeda nutjobs. (If these guys were for real, they would be sniping at civilians in the US on a hourly basis. They don't and therefore aren't.)

Nuking Manhattan would indeed be a serious hit. If I believed that $200B/yr of CT would reliably stop one nuke hit per year, I might support the investment. On the other hand, decentralizing the critical infrastructure in NYC to other areas of the nation/planet might still be a better way to go.

The blindingly obvious problem with your WoT/CT plans is that the instrument chosen to protect NYC against nukage -- the United States Government -- is mind-alteringly stupid. It likely couldn't stop a nuke attack by people with a three digit IQ no matter how much money was thrown at it.

The most likely scenario in my mind is that we spend tons of money, turn the US into a police state, and then get nuked anyway. Then the calls for massive nuclear retaliation, fascism, genocide, etc. occur. With my solutions at least we keep the $200B/year.

If the USG could actually focus and do some decent risk assessment (likely impossible), then the calculations change. If the USG adopted a plan to BUY/GUARD/STEAL ALL THE NUKAGE it might actually be cost effective.

The USG could start by upgrading the Russian EWS so that we don't eat 2000 fusion warheads by accident, rather than 1 wimpy Al-Qaeda fission bomb. Wake me up when that program gets reinstated.

Posted by: T. J. Madison at June 19, 2004 06:56 PM

TJ: The most likely scenario in my mind is that we spend tons of money, turn the US into a police state, and then get nuked anyway.

The way I see it, the best way to avoid that scenario is to end the Middle Eastern police state regimes that generate terrorism in the first place. That way, we keep our freedom and the Arabs win theirs in the bargain.

As Lawrence Kaplan recently said in The New Republic:

A recent study by Princeton's Alan Krueger and Czech scholar Jitka Maleckova analyzed data on terrorist attacks and measured it against the characteristics of the terrorists' countries of origin. The study found that "the only variable that was consistently associated with the number of terrorists was the Freedom House index of political rights and civil liberties. Countries with more freedom were less likely to be the birthplace of international terrorists."

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 19, 2004 07:14 PM

Michael, were you not taught at university the difference between correlation and cause and effect?

Posted by: Mork at June 19, 2004 08:22 PM

It will be "yawn" until suicide bombers start blowing themselves up NYC or LA. Lord, there's probably enough terrorist in this country to hit every major city in every single state. You know it's only a matter of time.

Posted by: J.O. at June 19, 2004 08:42 PM

"What's important is decrease in body count per unit time."

When people start turning morality into some bogus, quantitative social science, we're all in big trouble. Don't fuck with morality.

Posted by: MarkC at June 19, 2004 08:51 PM

Mork: Michael, were you not taught at university the difference between correlation and cause and effect?

Yes, Mork. But when tyranny is the only variable that consistently tracks with terrorism I think you have to admit the cause-corelation fallacy isn't at issue here. If you think one doesn't cause the other, either directly or indirectly, then you'll have to supply an alternate theory that matches the data. I have not yet seen one.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 19, 2004 09:35 PM

Gosh, Michael, my jaw is really on the floor here. If you spend a bit of time thinking about this and stick to that conclusion (or at least, the chain of reasoning you've outlined here), then I have overestimated your intellectual capacity by a considerable margin.

First, far from it not being at issue, you exemplify the correlation fallacy precisely when you invite me to disprove the cause that you infer from the correlation ... the essence of the fallacy is that you assume cause without being able to explain the mechanism through which the factors actually relate. In this case, you have proffered no explanation of why tyranny causes terrorism, instead, you've assumed that it does from the correlation and invited me to disprove it.

Secondly, it's not even a particularly good example of correlation, because (a) it's possible to point to many other societies that have (or have had, over time) very low levels of freedom and yet have not produced any significant numbers of terrorists, and (b) there are many other factors that you could point to that correlate equally well with both tyrannical societies generally, or with terrorists in particular. Off the top of my head, I'd suggest that terrorism would correlate pretty strongly with: low-wealth societies, male dominated societies, culturally conservative societies, countries with below-average alcohol consumption and low rainfall countries, and, oh, high levels of participation in Islam.

Obviously, some of those factors are related to the causes and some are not. But you actually have to do some thinking to work out which ... in contrast to the laziness of the conclusion you drew above.

Posted by: Mork at June 19, 2004 09:56 PM

>>>"16,000 children die every day of starvation,lack of clean water and preventable diseases. What's the moral calculation there?"

Mork,

if body count is the criteria, then Abu Graib should have been on page 14 since day one; not headlines for 3 1/2 weeks.

Posted by: David at June 19, 2004 10:58 PM

Seriously, David, is that the most insightful thing you have to say in response to that statistic?

Posted by: Mork at June 19, 2004 11:22 PM

Mork,

was it too much for you? I was sitting back waiting to see how you'd weasel your way out of your own ILLOGIC, and you didn't even try. what a shame.

Posted by: David at June 19, 2004 11:30 PM

Oh, for God's sake, Mork. That isn't the entire argument and I never claimed it was. This is a conversation in a comments thread, not a Total Unifying Theory of Everything.

To take just one of your points, obviously, as you state, the Islamic religion has something to do with what we're talking about here. The subject is Al Qaeda, not the FARC. I thought that went without saying. Also China doesn't produce terrorists. But again, the subject is the Middle East. No one said tyranny always produces terrorism everywhere on the planet. We're talking about the Middle East. I thought it was obvious that we had narrowed it down at least that far.

the essence of the fallacy is that you assume cause without being able to explain the mechanism through which the factors actually relate.

There are plenty of mechanisms and this has been discussed and debated throughout the West ever since 9/11. Maybe you've missed it. I could write about this for days and days and lots of people, myself included, have covered this in detail already.

Let me suggest a reading list for you: "The Two Faces of Islam" by Steven Schwartz, "What Went Wrong" by Bernard Lewis, "The Dream Palace of the Arabs" by Fouad Ajami, and "Terror and Liberalism" by Paul Berman.

Also, read anything you can find by Sayyid Qutb. He's the single-most influential Islamofascist intellectual. Read his books. Pick his brain. If you want a summary, Paul Berman does a great job of it in his book "Terror and Liberalism."

I'm not trying to dodge this discussion, Mork, but this is only a comments thread and it's late Saturday night. This discussion can go on for years, and in fact already has been going on for years. The best I can do in ten minutes is give you a reading list that fills in all the details. It's just not possible for me to even begin summing it all up.

If you spend a bit of time thinking about this and stick to that conclusion (or at least, the chain of reasoning you've outlined here), then I have overestimated your intellectual capacity by a considerable margin.

I've spent years studying this, not "a bit of time" idly thinking about it in a comments thread argument. If you really truly honestly want to understand the "liberation" argument you'll get it if you take me up on my book recommendations. You might not agree with the argument, but at least you'll understand it.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 20, 2004 12:19 AM

Mork,

The mechanism in a nutshell: Totalitarian Islam is an ideology. People get it in their heads through indoctrination. They don't reinvent that wheel spontaneously because they're poor.

That indoctrination can enter their heads in mosques, in schools, and through the media. States with moderate governments (and I mean real moderate governments like that in Tunisia, not Saudi Arabia) do not indoctrinate their children with this ideology, nor do they lend material support to terrorist groups as Syria does even though the Baathist ideology is different from Totalitarian Islam.

In free societies (like Turkey) or partly free societies (like Tunisia), this ideology has a hard time making headway because the schools don't teach and the (state run) media don't spread it. The government of Tunisia actively combats this ideology in its school system, which is precisely the opposite of what happens in, for example, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The swamp, so to speak, is drier in liberal and relatively liberal places. The more a government supports freedom and human rights, the less that government will use its resources to spread totalitarian ideology and the lunatic hateful propaganda that feeds it.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 20, 2004 12:37 AM

The New Republic ran a great scholarly piece last year, but unfortunately I can't find the link. Anyway, the conclusion was that the poorer a person is in the Middle East the less likely that person is to be a terrorist or a passive supporter of terrorism. The richer a person is the more statistically likely they are to become a terrorist or a passive supporter of terrorism. This, however, really is a cause-correlation fallacy. Fat bank accounts don't produce terrorists.

The thing is, the people with money tend to have better educations. And the content of Middle Eastern education is the culprit. This is where the indoctrination I mentioned above comes in. A poor goat herder (or whatever) just hasn't been exposed to this toxic stuff so much.

So if you really want to solve the problem of terrorism in the Middle East, liberalize the schools and the madrassas.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 20, 2004 12:48 AM

>>The way I see it, the best way to avoid that scenario is to end the Middle Eastern police state regimes that generate terrorism in the first place. That way, we keep our freedom and the Arabs win theirs in the bargain.

Indeed. When the USG stops funding the Egyptian, Uzbek, etc. police states I'll begin think they're serious. May that day be soon.

Posted by: T. J. Madison at June 20, 2004 01:18 AM

>>Countries with more freedom were less likely to be the birthplace of international terrorists.

Are we counting state-sponsored international terrorists like LeMay, Oppenheimer, Churchill, Stalin, etc? Or just the feeble ones with no army to back them up?

Posted by: T. J. Madison at June 20, 2004 01:21 AM

Quick and easy question (I'll admit it):

How would you feel about these pictures being disseminated had it been a member of your family in the images?

Sorry, I don't care where you land ideologically on the handling of WoT, I think it was ghoulish for Drudge to publish these photos so soon after they announced the death of Paul Johnson.

And Michael, something resembling sympathy for the family in your post would have been, ahem, "nice." You showed about as much respect for the memory of Johnson as yawning T.J. did.

Posted by: Kevin at June 20, 2004 05:31 AM

" That's precisely why some of us think the Democratic Party isn't serious enough about fighting terrorism " -MJT
OK, now I am truly confused.I have been following the defense of Andrew Sullivan saga and the celebration of 'independant thinking',but since we are talking 'deal-breakers',how can that facet of the situation NOT BE ONE?
If one of the parties is un-serious does that not leave but one party in the running for SERIOUS voters?Are you expecting a miraculous conversion between now and November? Is it just a question of JFK SAYING the right things whether or not he actually believes them?Does it require a purge of the 'defeatist'wing of the party before they are serious?
I very much respect this site and your usually enlightened postings but this has me confused.Either the WOT is THE issue or it is not.Not much nuance or indecision possible as far as I can see.

Posted by: dougf at June 20, 2004 06:10 AM

>>>"Are we counting state-sponsored international terrorists like LeMay, Oppenheimer, Churchill, Stalin, etc? Or just the feeble ones with no army to back them up?"

T.J.

wow, you're so "progressive".

Posted by: David at June 20, 2004 06:54 AM

Better, Michael, but your analysis still begs a whole lot of questions. Why is it, for example, that some societies give rise to totalitarian governments and others do not? I mean, the way you describe it, those states are totalitarian because they are totalitarian. But how did they get that way in the first place? If you don't understand that, then how are you going to stop it happening again, even if you've knocked off one regime in the meantime?

In any case, there's plenty of evidence that militant Isalm requires no government sponsorship to spread virulently. Take Afghanistan: the Taliban rose through the power of its ideology, not vice versa. Take Algeria, where despite a relatively liberal government, Islamicists gained enough support to win an election ... as a result the government became a whole lot less liberal in order to keep the upper hand in the power struggle. Likewise Iran in the 1970s - Islamicism succeeded as an opposition movement.

And take Iraq today: it seems almost certain that the first elected government will be at the very least a government that has reached an accommodation with Islamacists.

In my view, the only way you can change these places is to change the culture. And history demonstrates that it is almost impossible to impose cultural change exclusively from the outside. To change a culture, you need the people who control the institutions of the country (which includes government, religion, arts, economy) to lead the change. Our objective should be making that happen, rather than getting rid of them and hoping we can do it ourselves.

Posted by: Mork at June 20, 2004 07:49 AM

Michael, the responses to this post and the previous one highlight why there are so few politicians in the center; because when you try to walk down the middle you get shot at from both sides.

Posted by: Brainster at June 20, 2004 08:24 AM

Mork:Better, Michael, but your analysis still begs a whole lot of questions.

Thanks. And of course that isn't the whole story either. You could move to the Middle East, learn Arabic, live there for the rest of your life, and read stacks of books and still not get the whole story. I don't think I have the final word on everything, and even if I did I wouldn't have time to write it all down today.

Why is it, for example, that some societies give rise to totalitarian governments and others do not? I mean, the way you describe it, those states are totalitarian because they are totalitarian. But how did they get that way in the first place?

Assuming you're making the distinction between totalitarian and authoritarian (Iraq was totalitarian, whereas Tunisia is mildly authoritarian), it's partly just a matter of who kills their way into power. Saddam's coup could easily have failed in Iraq and someone more mellow might have steered the country in a completely different direction. Iraq's totalitarianism was a product of Saddam's twisted personality more than any other single factor. The previous ruler was a much more moderate Hashemite, a close blood relative to King Abdullah in Jordan. Same Iraqi society, two totally different governments.

If you don't understand that, then how are you going to stop it happening again, even if you've knocked off one regime in the meantime?

Two things need to happen. The culture needs to be liberalized and liberal institutions need to be created. I'm not saying it's easy, but we can help if we're there on the ground ourselves a lot more than if we sit back and watch Uday and Qusay take over in Baghdad.

In any case, there's plenty of evidence that militant Isalm requires no government sponsorship to spread virulently. Take Afghanistan: the Taliban rose through the power of its ideology, not vice versa.

They killed their way into power. Most people in Afghanistan hate them.

Take Algeria, where despite a relatively liberal government, Islamicists gained enough support to win an election ... as a result the government became a whole lot less liberal in order to keep the upper hand in the power struggle.

Yes, true. And then the Islamists got a whole lot nastier. Algeria lacked the proper liberal institutions (separate of powers, separation of mosque and state, civilian control of the military, rule of law) to prevent the awful death spiral.

Likewise Iran in the 1970s - Islamicism succeeded as an opposition movement.

And it probably would not have succeeded as an opposition movement if Iran were a liberal democracy at that time. The Ayatollahs would have formed a Religious Right party and would have been strictly limited in what they could accomplish, assuming they were even electable in the first place.

And take Iraq today: it seems almost certain that the first elected government will be at the very least a government that has reached an accommodation with Islamacists.

Probably. As long as they behave relatively moderately and democratically it's okay. Turkey's current ruling party has Islamist roots. But they've mellowed over time. They are like our Religious Right. Not something I would ever vote for, but they aren't going around beating people in the streets and murdering "blasphemers" either. Turkey has the strict separation of mosque and state, and this constitutional separation is defended to the teeth by the military. The military has had to oust Islamist governments in the past who stepped over the line. That's pretty sketchy and ramshackle, but they've managed to muddle through all the same, well enough that it's at least possible the EU will accept Turkey as a member at some point.

It's going to be a long time before this problem is settled.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 20, 2004 10:43 AM

Doug: OK, now I am truly confused.I have been following the defense of Andrew Sullivan saga and the celebration of 'independant thinking',but since we are talking 'deal-breakers',how can that facet of the situation NOT BE ONE?

I hear ya. Sullivan partly answered that by linking to this piece in The New Republic by Paul Berman, who has influenced me more than any other single person. Here's an excerpt.

I am dreading what some people claim already to have learned from the blunders in Iraq. Even now, some people are saying: You see! There's no point in overthrowing dictators by force! (Though many dictators have been forcibly overthrown, to good effect--from Germany to Afghanistan.) And no point in trying to do good for anyone else! (Though humanitarian intervention has had its successes, from Kosovo to East Timor, not to mention Kurdistan.)

The U.S. failure in Somalia led to a different kind of U.S. failure in Rwanda. There will surely be Rwandas in the future--there is one right now in Darfur, Sudan (where the ethnic cleansers come out of the same mix of radical Islamism and Arab nationalism that has caused so much suffering in many other places, including our own places). Who in his right mind is going to call for U.S. intervention? Doubtless, in the future, when things are not so grim for us, some people will, in fact, call for U.S. interventions, and justly so. And yet, other people are going to say, Oh, right, and let's put Donald Rumsfeld in charge. And this will be a devastating reply.

We have learned that F. Scott Fitzgerald's axiom--about intelligence as the ability to hold in mind two contradictory thoughts at the same time--has a corollary in the field of emotion. Sometimes you also have to hold in your heart two contradictory emotions. This is difficult. To understand Saddam Hussein and the history of modern Iraq, you have to feel anger--or else you have understood nothing.

But what if, in addition to feeling anger at Saddam (and at Sadr in his shroud, and at Mussab Al Zarqawi with his knife, and at Saddam's army, which was organizing suicide terrorists even before the invasion), you have also come to feel more than a little anger at George W. Bush? What if you gaze at events in Iraq and say to yourself: Things did not have to be this way. We could have presented a human rights case to the world, instead of trying to deceive people about weapons and conspiracies--and we would have ended up with more allies, or, at least, with allies who understood the mission.

We could have applied the lessons of Kosovo, which would have meant dispatching a suitable number of soldiers. We could have protected the government buildings and the National Museum, and we could have co-opted Saddam's army--further lessons from Kosovo. We could have believed Saddam when he threatened to wage a guerrilla war in Baghdad. We could have prepared in advance to broadcast TV shows that Iraqis wanted to watch. We could have observed the Geneva Conventions. (What humiliation in having to write such a sentence!) We could have--but I will stop, in order to ask: What if, in mulling these thoughts, you find that angry emotions toward George W. Bush are seeping upward from your own patriotic gut?

Here is the challenge: to rage at Saddam and other enemies, and, at the same time, to rage in a somewhat different register at Bush, and to keep those two responses in proper proportion to one another. That can be a difficult thing to do, requiring emotional balance, maturity, and analytic clarity--a huge effort.

It is said that Bush should have asked America as a whole to make large efforts and sacrifices--and not just the soldiers and civilian workers who have put themselves in danger. The complaint is unfair. Bush has asked a great deal of America. He has asked us to draw on our emotional balance, maturity, and analytic clarity: the qualities that are needed to help us distinguish our feelings about the enemy from our feelings about the commander in chief. To distinguish between outright hatred and a certain kind of contempt. And so we have learned how to do this--the final thing we have learned during this past year. And we will have to go on learning how to do this, perhaps for a few months, perhaps for a few years.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 20, 2004 10:55 AM

Mork:

To change a culture, you need the people who control the institutions of the country (which includes government, religion, arts, economy) to lead the change. Our objective should be making that happen, rather than getting rid of them and hoping we can do it ourselves.

Couldn't agree with your observations more. Couldn't agree with you conclusion less.

Besides for military power, tell us what leverage we have to get the oppressive countries in the Middle East to stop being oppressive? If there really is a better way to go about changing the Middle East, I really want to hear it.

"Nuke us, we can take it" TJ wants us to stop supporting Egypt. Fine. Not sure exactly how that fits with the Camp David accords, but I don't suppose peace between Israel and Egypt is all that important. After all, we could be spending that money to the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry.

Bah.

Posted by: Mark Poling at June 20, 2004 11:19 AM

To MJT.
As I said previously, your comments ALMOST always are a pleasure to read.Intelligent without being pretentious and HONEST.
Just 1 small follow up if I may. I don't believe that MOST people can hold two opposing viewpoints in their heads at 1 time without becoming incapacited by internal confusion(moral equivalence anyone?).
That is why the simpler an argument is the more powerful it tends to be.Without beating to death the referenced comment above about generating MORE allies ( was NEVER NEVER NEVER going to happen)who cared about 'humanitarian'interventions and could actually do something besides talk(name 1),I agree that Iraq could have been done better but it is really not the Baathist remnants who are the problem as I see it.No matter what planning was done ---- terror was going to come calling if only to kill Americans.
I agree that it takes discipline to hold greater and lesser angers at the same time,but I still don't see how that could make one 'un-decided' if the greater anger was directed at the monsters we are engaging. Each to his/her/it's own, but ANYTHING that gives our enemies joy is to me, a BAD thing.Therefore the current incarnation of the 'loyal opposition' is a BAD thing and unless I was convinced that the WOT was a false war I could never be convinced to vote for that 'loyal opposition'. When JFK takes Teddy Kennedy out back of the Senate and either figuratively or literally beats him senseless,then count me as 'un-decided'. Not a chance otherwise,'smaller' angers or no.

Posted by: dougf at June 20, 2004 11:58 AM

Doug: When JFK takes Teddy Kennedy out back of the Senate and either figuratively or literally beats him senseless,then count me as 'un-decided'.

Well, I hope Mr. Kerry does just that. Figuratively, of course.

One of these days I'm going to write a long piece about the advantages of having a Democrat in charge of foreign policy. Maybe I'll make a column out of it. Or just a blog post. Don't know yet. One thing you can count on: it's easier to heckle and snipe from the sidelines when you're on the sidelines. When you're the one who has to make tough decisions, it all but guarantees you'll approach the problem with greater seriousness and maturity. That's just human nature and has nothing to do with which party a person belongs to.

I remember Trent Lott lecturing Bill Clinton over Kosovo and demanding he appease Slobodan Milosovic. He actually said "give peace a chance" in the middle the bombing campaign over Belgrade. That really stuck with me.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 20, 2004 01:04 PM

By the way, Doug, on a slightly related note, if you want to see what the spirit of liberal hawkishness looked like in the 1990s, rent the movie "Welcome to Sarajevo." A lot of us on the left were galvanized by what happened over there while conservatives shrugged. I think this spirit will return in Bush's absence. I hope I'm not wrong. I admit that I'm basing it partly on a hunch, but also on my knowledge of the liberal soul. When I say I'm back to being undecided, I'm factoring this in. It is, however, only one variable among many.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 20, 2004 01:10 PM

Well Michael I must honestly say I don't know how you can begin to look at John Kerry today and over the past 30 years and possibly give him the job of Commander in Chief, assuming you think taking out Saddam was the right thing to do.

I also don't think it's fair to judge Bush against the standard of perfection wrt the WoT, given that every CiC and administration has fallen short in every substantial conflict throughout the history of the republic.

By any reasonable historical yardstick, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan have been resounding successes.

Posted by: Matthew Cromer at June 20, 2004 01:46 PM

"A lot of us on the left were galvanized by what happened over there while conservatives shrugged. I think this spirit will return in Bush's absence."-- MJT

By the way,I envy you your upcoming trip to Libya.You are a true adventurer. Sincere congrats.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program. I also supported the effort in Kosovo and thought the Republicans were wrong.But in the big picture Kosovo is NOT a success and is really just on 'simmer' at the moment.This was really 'intervention-light'if truth be told( no ground troops as I recall).If it turns out that our Al-Queda buddies are established in that area among the Muslim population,I am not even sure that this intervention will be remembered very fondly.In the Balkans history has indicated that there are NO GOOD guys just less bad at a given moment in time.Still a good thing to do but--
Appropos of the quote that started this note --- ANY PARTY THAT PLACES GETTING RID OF BUSH AHEAD OF FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES AND THE WOT DOES NOT DESERVE SUPPORT. The left today is morally bankrupt and really is united by ONLY 1 thing. ANYONE BUT BUSH !!!
It would be pathetic if it were not so DANGEROUS. However when Teddy is lying prone behind the Senate(I much prefer the direct approach as he is too clueless to appreciate anything less),I will be here to apologise profusely.Many times.

Posted by: doug at June 20, 2004 02:16 PM

Doug: By the way,I envy you your upcoming trip to Libya.

Don't be envious yet. I still don't have a visa. The odds are still 50-50 that I'll even get to go at all. If it takes the embassy too long to process paperwork I'll spent an extra week in Tunisia instead.

I will go to Libya one time or another, though. If I don't go in July I'll resubmit the application and go in October.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 20, 2004 02:58 PM

TJ,
I can tell you like to throw money at problems and think that they will go away but having worked in the health industry for a while I assure that spending 200b a year is no guarantee that we will knock out a major disease every year. If I thought it were so I would be in your corner but that is more money than people will know how to spend usefully.
They will end up getting nicer offices, computers ,PDA's and other BS. Yes some of it will get to research but your assumption of success based on money expended is just wrong.
Who do you think pays for all the conferences they go to? More people will go to conferences with more money, it might help but then again it might not.

Posted by: Starhawk at June 20, 2004 04:55 PM

Certainly the resources have to be allocated efficiently. We are fortunate that the NSF/NIH bureaucracies have enough peer review accountability in them to function tolerably, unlike most other aspects of the USG. Gene Thug believes that NSF/NIH can handle having their funding doubled with perhaps an 80% increase in research yield. Maybe we get diminishing returns after we double or triple their budget, and we would have to find some other way to spend the money.

IMHO simply allowing the market to reallocate the 200B will get us results much better than letting the USG burn it on CT.

>>Not sure exactly how that fits with the Camp David accords, but I don't suppose peace between Israel and Egypt is all that important. After all, we could be spending that money to the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry.

We could be spending that money on beer and prosititutes and we'd be better off. Let's see: with Camp David we are paying two countries billions of dollars so they won't fight each other. Who's the obvious chump in this arrangement?

If the Egyptians really want to have their ass handed to them by the Israelis that badly . . .

Posted by: T. J. Madison at June 20, 2004 06:09 PM

In Sudan, couldn't we at least bomb the planes the Janjaweed are using? That should be a pretty low-risk maneuver that would slow down the genocide quite a bit. (Maybe we could hit some of Sudan's government buildings too, to tell them to cut it out.)

Posted by: John T at June 20, 2004 11:10 PM

Michael, I understand your reasons for posting these links, but just a couple of questions to consider:

• How much more publicity are you going to give these guys?
• As the number of publicity-seeking murderers increase, along with more and more grisly photos and videos, how many do you think you'll link to before deciding that you're helping encourage them?
• And if this were a family member of yours, would you still link to the photos?

While it doesn't happen often, I'm in complete agreement with the post by Joe on Dean's World on this one. Posted by: double-plus-ungood at June 21, 2004 10:13 AM

Of course I wouldn't post the picture if the victim were one of my family members. That's not a serious standard for me to hold myself to, though. I don't think everyone should publish these links, certainly not if they don't want to.

Your other questions are better ones, though. It very well may encourage them to publish their handiwork and that's the best reason for me to stop. At some point I will, and for precisely that reason. First, though, I want to give those a chance who shrug at terrorism, like "Go-Ahead-And-Nuke-Us T.J. Madison," to get a good look at what we're up against.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 21, 2004 12:07 PM

First, though, I want to give those a chance who shrug at terrorism, like "Go-Ahead-And-Nuke-Us T.J. Madison," to get a good look at what we're up against.

Fair enough, but I'd say that providing access to the photos won't make much difference to those who are so deeply partisan that they are unmoved by acts of murder like this. The other thing to consider is that many of us who are opposed to the Bush War on Terror aren't doing so because we trivialize acts of terror and are not alarmed by terrorists, but because we feel that the administration isn't doing it right.

Posted by: double-plus-ungood at June 21, 2004 12:30 PM

... oh, just to head off a possible point from some of the commentariate, if videos and/or photos come to light from Abu Ghraib or somewhere like that of acts of similar horror (say rape, or torture involving children), then no, I don't think they should be looked at either by Blogistania. At some point, we should be respecting the dignity of these victims, and not gawk at them because of a ghoulish urge to be shocked, or to satisify some political agenda.

Posted by: double-plus-ungood at June 21, 2004 12:35 PM

MJT --

Please give these people even more publicity. Those pictures are a primer on "why we fight."

Posted by: Ben at June 21, 2004 12:41 PM

D+UG: The other thing to consider is that many of us who are opposed to the Bush War on Terror aren't doing so because we trivialize acts of terror and are not alarmed by terrorists, but because we feel that the administration isn't doing it right.

Yes, I know that. I'm not Michael Savage, after all.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 21, 2004 01:59 PM

Yes, I know that. I'm not Michael Savage, after all.

Indeed, you are not.

BTW -

I'll be in the Middle East myself in two weeks

North Africa, n'est pas? I think the Middle East runs Egypt to Iran (right to left) and Turkey to Yemen (up to down).

Posted by: double-plus-ungood at June 21, 2004 02:11 PM

D+UG: North Africa, n'est pas?

Details! Yes, but it's all one cultural region. The difference is only a technicality, and Libya is usually lumped in the with ME in any case, not least by the Arabs themselves.

Posted by: Michael J. Totten at June 21, 2004 02:40 PM

A technicality?
They are located in different continents.
You are a fairly erudite fellow, however, you do have a difficult time admitting an error.

Posted by: Craig at June 21, 2004 04:09 PM

Michael - sorry for the delayed response to your very interesting series of posts.

I still think there's a very big hole in the middle of your argument here, which is more or less at the spot I've been driving at in our back-and-forth over causation. It's this: by isolating islamic authoritariansim/totalitariansim as the source of the problem, you essentially cut off your inquiry without considering whether those forms of government are themselves, along with terrorism, an effect of a deeper issue. I mean, sure, you can point, as you do above, to specific violent acts that have resulted in the people who hold power in these places doing so, but by inference you deny that there might be any connection between the fact that all of these societies have produced leaders who used violence to gain political power, and whose populations did not prevent them from doing so.

That's why I think you're naive to imagine that you can simply replace the regimes with a nicer group of people, and they'll be able to make everything OK (and I might also note that the U.S. has a long history in the middle east, southeast asia and latin america of supporting superficially attractive people who could talk the talk of western liberalism and who told us exactly what we wanted to hear, but were in fact either ineffectual, brutal, or both.)

If you accept that there is a fundamental cultural problem that, if unaddressed, makes democracy, etc. unlikely to flourish in these places, then what you need to fill the hole in your argument is an understanding of (a) what it is about certain cultures that makes them able to function as a liberal democracy and (b) how cultures change (and why most do not, or do so only very slowly). On the latter point, there are many historical examples of attempts to impose cultural change on people, and very few examples of those attempts succeeding. Unless you can explain how we are going to go about it this time, and why we are going to succeed at a task which most people fail at, your talk of transforming the middle east looks mostly like wishful thinking.

Which is why I've said to you before that while you know a lot about the middle east, you don't know enough about us to understand the solutions you propose.

I just want to address one other point, which I might also address to Mark Poling's post above: sometimes I get the feeling that you work backwards from your conclusion on this question. By which I mean, having reached a conclusion about the seriousness of the issues, you will (at least subconciously) not be satisfied with a solution that does not match the drama of the threat. And having decided that, you're simply not prepared to countenence the possibility that there is not a dramatic solution to the problem.

But, in the real world, not every problem has a solution. Maybe all we can do is do the slow, patient, undramatic leg work to track down and dismantle terrorist networks as they spring up, and then, over time, using some combination of persuasion, pressure and incentives, gradually inch these regimes into a more palatable form.

Posted by: Mork at June 21, 2004 04:57 PM

If CNN will air photos of abuse in Abu Ghraib they need to publish these.

Why?

Posted by: RoguePlanet at June 22, 2004 01:30 PM

The Dems. have set up a situation whereby the loss of Bush will be seen as a total rejection of his approach to fighting the war on terror.

I think you're giving the Dems too much credit. Bush has set it up that way with his "with us or against us" approach to other nations and domestically.

But it suits me. His approach needs to be rejected. Because it's not working.

Posted by: RoguePlanet at June 22, 2004 01:32 PM

Rogue --

The problem for the Dems is that they have not advanced an alternative. You contend the Bush approach is not working. By what metrics have you evaluated the policy to conclude that it is not working? Why should I reject a candidate who at least an approach (Bush), for a candidate who refuses to set forth an approach but contends he can do it better?

Posted by: Ben at June 22, 2004 06:50 PM