Revisiting the “Strategic Overview”

I’m really glad that Tigerhawk has decided to annotate, elaborate on, and update Steven Den Beste’s Strategic Overview. Den Beste’s “Overview” was one of the very first pieces of serious analysis I read in the blogosphere. It remains—along with Dan Darling’s work on al-Qaeda, Joe Katzman’s work on the future of weapons systems, and some of Dean Esmay’s work on Muslims and democracy—some of the very best that the blogosphere has to offer. ZenPundit Mark Safranski’s recent Roundtable on Globalization and War is yet another welcome move in that direction.

I think that Den Beste’s “Overview” deserves to be more widely read and discussed, particularly by centrists and those on the center-left. Those on the American political left will find it too unpalatable to consider seriously. Among the blogosphere’s center-right and right it already has a character of sacred writ but the blogosphere moves quickly, you can never step in the same blogosphere twice, and there’s a new crop of political and foreign policy bloggers out there who may never have read it.

Most particularly I’ve seen little in the way of engagement with Den Beste’s ideas among those who are actual specialists in either the Middle East or international relations. I did a casual search of a dozen or so leading blogs in those areas and found nothing.

Steven’s analysis is not flawless. For example, it’s unclear to me how, if part of the problem we have before us is in the interaction between Western culture and a Middle Eastern (although not exclusively so) “shame culture”, how the means he advocates will achieve the ends he desires. Shame is externally actuated; guilt is internally actuated. Ideas like “a sense of pride” or “a sense of accomplishment” are internal motivations. Can they be easily inculcated in a whole society based on external validation (if, indeed, it is)?

Here’s another example. Den Beste wrote:

Economically the only contribution they make is by selling natural resources which are available to them solely through luck.

I suspect that many people in the Middle East don’t see it that way. I suspect that the devout see the presence of oil in the Middle East as the will of God and a sign of divine favor. The difference in the implications of those two differing points-of-view would seem to me to be telling.

I also disagree with the idea of Iraq as a “honey-pot” or “fly-paper” as a benefit which my reading of the “Overview” would seem to indicate he believes. If true (which to my mind isn’t clear), it’s immoral and ultimately damaging to the main objectives.

Additionally, Den Beste is very much the individualist. I don’t believe that he gives enough attention to the roles that family and tribal affiliations have in this struggle.

I’ve written a number of times here that I opposed the invasion of Iraq. Had the Bush Administration made as cogent an argument as Den Beste does in his “Strategic Overview” I might well have supported it and I think that the Administration’s failure to communicate such a vision or, at least, to communicate it clearly and repeatedly has weakened the war effort.

So, read Den Beste’s “Strategic Overview”. Read Tigerhawk’s commentary. Right or wrong this kind of appeal to reason is precisely the style and type of dialogue and analysis in which we should be engaging.

4 comments… add one
  • I also disagree with the idea of Iraq as a “honey-pot” or “fly-paper” as a benefit which my reading of the “Overview” would seem to indicate he believes. If true (which to my mind isn’t clear), it’s immoral and ultimately damaging to the main objectives.

    I disagree. America gets to eliminate a threatening dictator, the Iraqis get their chance – with our help – to establish a democracy. Both Iraqis and Americans maintain their dignity through this process.

  • I see your point, Solomon2, but I think you’re conflating the liberation of Iraq with the fly-paper theory. The liberation of Iraq is moral. Very much so. The fly-paper theory isn’t. It didn’t (and doesn’t) have to be this way. My comments on this subject are substantial enough for a post so that’s what I’m going to do.

  • Employing Iraq-as-flypaper is in our own interests of protecting our population, so in that sense it is moral. It’s really a sort of bargain: they get democracy, we get to fight terrorists. The civilian casualty rate is less than 20% of that under Saddam’s rule.

    Furthermore, if it wasn’t for the “insurgency”, Iraqis could not comfort themselves with the knowledge, pride, and sense of security that they achieved democracy at least partly through their own efforts. The U.S. experience with Western Europe shows that even a benign protectorate is psychologically damaging to the “protected” population (as well as a drain on the protector). I read once on Medienkritik that young Germans tried to argue that “Germany is democracy because of its merits” but couldn’t bring themselves to honestly do so – they had to fake it instead.

    If the past hundred years of history has taught anything, it is that the route of false pride is the route to complete madness and destruction. The Germans took the Nazi route of race war; the French are taking the cynical route of ennui and sublimation. The Iraqis may become cured this affliction that so dominates other Arab countries, and under Kuwait-as-Mother-of-Battles Saddam, dominated Iraq itself.

  • Ron Link

    Those are some very interesting articles. Tigerhawk has to be quite ambitious and bold to take on that controversial subject.

    The violence linked to primitive religion that comes from arab and primitive tribal lands will curse large areas of the earth for a long time. Not only are the people extremely primitive and coarse in their customs and manners, but their primitive religion holds them in a lowered state. Although the average IQ for most tribal regions of the world is quite low (below 80), due to the bell curve distribution there are thousands of people in any sizeable population of these primitives who are intelligent enough to learn basic technology and engineering, and thus become competent bomb makers.

    It is to be expected that people of low intelligence living in primitive cultures would revere a primitive religion. The anthropology of primitive people is crucial in understanding islam and the people who embrace it.

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