Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Emily Dickinson
I am a very flawed human being. I find myself lazy and cowardly. Sometimes from fear, sometimes from sloth I don’t do the things I really need to do.
I find myself moved to anger when I shouldn’t be and insufficiently ingenious when I should be.
But the very hardest thing for me is hope. I can muster a little faith and a little caring but hope is extremely hard for me to dredge up. It appears I’m not alone.
In a recent post over at Dean’s World Ali Eteraz proclaims that there is no hope of salvaging anything good or worthwhile from the debacle in Iraq:
When — it is only a matter of time — we withdraw from Iraq, the Sunnis of the world are going to say “the mujahideen defeated the world’s greatest superpower.” The Shi’a will say that they drove out the Americans, but only the Shi’a will hear that.
My point: in the Sunni world, it will be Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda who will get the credit for our withdrawal.
That is not good.
This empowerement of OBL and Al-Qaeda is this administration’s greatest — and any American leader ever’s most horrifying — failure. Shame on Bush, Cheney, Rummy. They got tricked by a scheming liar like Chalabi who told them about the street festivals and confetti in their honor. They got lied to by AEI, which only means they lied to themselves. NYTimes helped by talking about “defectors” (who all lied as well). Unlike 1991, there wasn’t an alternative government ready for us to prop. There was no democratic discourse. Clinton’s sanctions of Iraq, along with Saddam’s sons, which killed between 100,000 and 500,000 made sure there was nothing but silent people when we arrived. Bad planning. Lying. No strategy. Nothing.
What now? Inevitable is on its way. If not in October, we pull out in 2008. Do you know why? Because a majority of Americans have accepted that we have lost. Dean’s World can be the last bastion of hopefull idealists. Hope without work, though, is fruitless.
I deeply respect and admire Dean’s tenacious hopefulness; I wish I shared it. But I never have and I can honestly say that I don’t have a Wilsonian bone in my body. I am not a neo-con.
I don’t know why liberal democracy hasn’t blossomed in the Middle East as it has in many other parts of the world. I don’t know whether that’s due to poverty or social institutions or custom or stubbornness or just plain bad fortune or something else.
I do know that we cannot teach the people of Iraq to “long for the endless immensity of the sea”, to abandon sectarian and parochial interests in favor of liberal democracy and without that none of the individual tasks of shipbuilding or, in this case, building the ship of state, are worth a damn. I think the Iraqis, like the Americans, are lacking in hope and they’re grasping to anyone that they believe can bring a little security.
Ali holds out hope:
Someone needs to get to work diplomatically and convincing the Syrian PEOPLE, the Iranian PEOPLE, the Turkish PEOPLE, the Kuwaiti PEOPLE, the Saudi PEOPLE, that a partial Al-Qaeda state in Iraq, which can boast “defeating the greatest superpower” is the most horrifying thing in the world. Talking to the leaders of these nations doesn’t do jack. Why? Because the PEOPLE always do the opposite of what a tyrant wants. I’ve lived under two dictatorships and my father six.
We have to get to the PEOPLE and make them hate al-Qaeda.
I believe that’s a forlorn hope.
We simply have no way of making our message known either in words or actions. The powers-that-be in all of these countries control the media and any thing we say or do will be twisted to suit the needs of those powers-that-be.
The United States is a great place for Muslim people to live and prosper. They have greater freedom and opportunity here than they do in any country with a Muslim majority bar none.
In recent years the United States has sprung to the succor and defense of Muslim people all over the world on many occasions: in Kuwait, in Kosovo, in Bosnia. After the tsunami the United States Navy was among the very first on the scene providing fresh water and relief to the people struck by the great wave. Many, many were Muslims. Following the earthquake in Pakistan the United States military was the primary healthcare provider for an enormous proportion of the population for nearly a year.
For all his manifest failings President Bush has, I think admirably, been steadfast in maintaining that the United States is not at war with Islam nor with Muslims, generally.
So, why do so many Muslims believe that the United States is at war with them and with Islam?
I believe that there are a variety of reasons for this. We have lots of troops in Muslims countries. We are imperfect. So long as we don’t withdraw from the world stage altogether we will continue to have troops stationed in Muslim countries and meddle in Muslim affairs. We can’t escape it. And, so long as we give those who hate us the slightest stick, they will use it to beat us over the head. They control the agenda and the message in these countries, we don’t.
So I don’t believe that communicating with the common people in Syria, Iran, Turkey, Kuwait, or the KSA is any hope at all. So, is the situation completely hopeless? I don’t think so.
I think that we should stick to what we’re good at. I think we should push for economic liberalization and foster economic growth in these countries. If poverty and ignorance are ameliorated, it can only redound to our benefit.
We should also attempt to reduce our dependence on oil, the control of the commerce in which maintains the power of elites in these countries.
Beyond that we should trust God and keep our powder dry.
Before I bring this post to a close I would like to draw your attention to a post by Grim at Blackfive which I think is simply one of the most brilliant things I’ve read in years on fighting the Long War we have ahead of us regardless of the outcome in Iraq and fighting it smartly and effectively.
Now I’ll close with a quote from Reinhold Niebuhr:
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
Dave,
I can’t find a thing here to disagree with. I find myself teetering between despair and hope, which in some circles can get you 302’d.
But one question: how do we stick to what we do best when we are elbow deep in what went wrong?
Mate, when I read this sort of dribbling nonsense, I can only think, no wonder you fools keep duping yourselves.
In recent years the United States has sprung to the succor and defense of Muslim people all over the world on many occasions: in Kuwait, in Kosovo, in Bosnia.
Rather selective reading, and completely self decieving
Bosnia / Kosovo is a good story, but otherwise the history of American engagement with the Islamic world, over time, is … ambiguous.
The key narrative point is Palestine where it is easy to spin a negative tail – and without necessarility being particularly distortive.
US engagement in places like Egypt, Jordan has been in support of regimes considered not solely by Islamists, but generally as corrupt and abusive, and religiously oppressive (although for reasons proper to the elites as much as anything). Two interventions in the Balkans hardly lead to Muslims saying “Wow Americans really care….”
Kuwait – don’t be a fucking moron. No one believes that as a “intervention on behalf” of anything but American interest in reliable petrol supplies. Citing it merely makes you riidculous or stupid. Or both.
After the tsunami the United States Navy was among the very first on the scene providing fresh water and relief to the people struck by the great wave. Many, many were Muslims. Following the earthquake in Pakistan the United States military was the primary healthcare provider for an enormous proportion of the population for nearly a year.
Useful and good things. Overwhelmed by sustained subsidies to dictators.
Emergency aid followed by sustained support to nasty bastards… well, one can hardly blame the ordinary Mohammed for not bowing down in gratitude.
For all that
For all his manifest failings President Bush has, I think admirably, been steadfast in maintaining that the United States is not at war with Islam nor with Muslims, generally.
Bollocks.
Bush’s rhetoric has been transparently empty of content and follow-through. I hardly grant you cretinous incompetent any credit for avoiding the obvious error of alienating yet more of the world’s population.
Do you want a fucking candy for mere baseline minimal not-cretinism?
So, why do so many Muslims believe that the United States is at war with them and with Islam?
Because the Americans have managed by actions sustained on the ground (ex the mediatized items people like you notice) to give that impression.
Incompetence.
Oh, but I agree with the recommendation:
I think that we should stick to what we’re good at. I think we should push for economic liberalization and foster economic growth in these countries. If poverty and ignorance are ameliorated, it can only redound to our benefit
That can win. I am confident of that.
So it’s about Palestine, is it? No, this is not cooked up by satraps and petty criminals. Bollocks indeed.
Lounsbury is asserting that the United States is guilty of tactical and/or strategic relationships with non-democratic (hence repressive) regimes in the Middle East
He ignores the larger context in which all of this happened and offers no serious discussion of what alternative policy the United States should have pursued, and that would have worked given the complexity of geo-politics.
Policy towards the Middle East was driven by post WWII considerations: specifically the reconstruction of Europe, the placement of Jews whose survived the holocaust, and the de-colonization of the Middle East. And it had to deal with these problems while trying to contain a nuclear armed Stalinist regime.
These were the post-WWII agendas that the U.S. had to deal with. A large part of it to do to the follies of European powers, including England (who by the way authored the Belfour Declaration and created the artifice known as Iraq.) If you want to assign blame, then start looking in the mirror “mate”.
The fact of the matter is that the United States became the defacto defender of the Western world and was forced to deal with the hand that it was dealt. This including having relationships with Middle East countries who were casting the yolk of European colonization and whose oil reserves were critical to an emerging modern world economy.
This meant dealing with unsavory tyrants and dictators that were proxies in a much bigger confrontation, one which involved nukes pointing to Western Europe. That wasn’t the U.S.’s choosing. Neither was the migration of millions of Jews towards an ancient homeland that was surrounded by Muslims seething with latent anti-Semitism.
There were really no alternatives. Should we have preserved the colonial system and not let Muslim countries evolve, however so slowly and painfully into modernism. Retired into isolationism and watch the “old-world” go to hell for a third time in a century, this time armed with nukes?
Lounsbury you live in a world of childish, magical thinking.
Ah good lord.
He ignores the larger context in which all of this happened and offers no serious discussion of what alternative policy the United States should have pursued, and that would have worked given the complexity of geo-politics.
I ignorned nothing you dim-witted fool.
The question first is and was my a large % of Muslims would not weight Bosnia very heavily against the history of American support to “bad actors” they have to live under. A legitimate complaint, certainly, and a clear and rational reason for others not to have such a kind view, or rosy one of a few American interventions.
That says nothing the fuck whatsoever about an American choice to do so, nor whether it was a good choice (or remains a good choice) in a overall geo-strategic context.
Two different lines of analysis and thought. Perhaps you may be able to dimly perceive between your kneejerking smacking your noggin.
Leaving aside, then the self-serving self fellating “America defender of the world” blithering on, of course dealing with the unsavory is necessary and often inescapable. Propping up the tyrants even may be an inescapable policy choice… May be. However, such choices have second order consequences, such as large populations having concrete reasons to view your rhetoric of democracy, etc. as being divorced from reality, and hypocritical.
Now, as to this:
There were really no alternatives. Should we have preserved the colonial system and not let Muslim countries evolve, however so slowly and painfully into modernism. Retired into isolationism and watch the “old-world†go to hell for a third time in a century, this time armed with nukes?
Well, just for emphasis, nothing in my note supposed US isoloationism, it merely poked a hole in the “oh woe is us that don’t like us for all the good things we done brought to the benighted unbelievers and second order sissy Europeans” nonesense that you fools like to bleat on about.
Proxy struggle with the Soviets of course engendered some unfortunate choices, even necessarily unfortunate ones.
However, the Soviet Union disappears well-over a decade, indeed it will very soon be two decades ago.
Continuously whinging on about the terrible burden you profitably shouldered in self-interest doesn’t much say about interim choices (other than perhaps being blindered having spent too much time in self-pleasuring and self-congratulation), nor about realistically appraising future choices.
Lounsbury you live in a world of childish, magical thinking.
Amusing, you should try harder.
“Kuwait – don’t be a fucking moron. No one believes that as a “intervention on behalf†of anything but American interest in reliable petrol supplies.”
Given that the US reluctantly entered that war at the behest of UKs Thatcher, and given that the cause of the war was Iraq’s violation of Kuwait for the express purpose of taking their oilfields, the stronger case could be made for UK – not US – interest in ‘reliable petrol supplies’.
But its still shit.
Yet, even so, I’ll grant you large parts of your view regarding US historical ‘errors’ [not that they matter. We have interests, just like any country, and I won’t gild lillies by saying otherwise.]
And, in so doing, I’ll note that even if you don’t like what policy is being pursued now in the Middle East, one can at the very least say it is no longer the one held to in the past – that of propping up dictators and throwing them moneys. Whether it ‘works’ or not is another story.
But frankly, I don’t really give a damn either way. And the Palestinians can blow themselves to kingdom come [which they will anyway] for all I care.
Despite its strong Republican overtures, Grim’s piece sounds an awful lot like John Kerry’s proposed changes to the “Long War,” way back when.
Which is great, in my opinion.
“Well, just for emphasis, nothing in my note supposed US isoloationism, it merely poked a hole in the “oh woe is us that don’t like us for all the good things we done brought to the benighted unbelievers and second order sissy Europeans†nonesense that you fools like to bleat on about.”
American’s don’t expect to be liked, but we do expect that after a fifty year free ride of security paid for in U.S. money and lives, for Euros to step up to the plate and confront the various challenges to Western democracy. That’s not whining. Whining is the crap we have to listen to from folks such as you.
If Iraq is too much for you to handle, there are plenty of places you can chip in and help which haven’t been tainted by cowboy Bush’s policy.
How about Darfur, Somailia, Zimbabwe, or Thailand? All of these places need western assistance, and by that I mean money and boots on the ground not a lot of empty resolutions passed in the chambers of the U.N.
You have your post modern society with five week vacations and nationalized heath care. Now shut up and start defending it.
Simple, Dave.
Of course a big chunk of Islam feels we’re at war with them..because we’re impeding their ideological syatem from taking over.
Islam and our notion of freedom are simply incongruous at the present time.
To put it another way, they do not want what we want, and Islam historically has not `played nicely’ with others. They have a religious imperative to turn the world not ruled by Islam (dar harb) into the part of the world ruled by Islam ( dar Islam).
Thus, when Muslims say `peace’ what they frequently mean is `submission.’
With the huge influx of petrodollars they’ve received from the west since they expropriated millions of dollars of Western property back in the seventies without any consequences, they now have the wherewithal to attempt to make the OG, Mohammed’s 7th century vision a reality once more.
We simply need to make the nation states that fund and attempt to push this conquest on us understand that this is not an acceptable option for us..BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.
All Best,
ff
Bloody sad.
First, re Kuwait: Given that the US reluctantly entered that war at the behest of UKs Thatcher, and given that the cause of the war was Iraq’s violation of Kuwait for the express purpose of taking their oilfields, the stronger case could be made for UK – not US – interest in ‘reliable petrol supplies’. Is silly.
US is far more exposed to oil price variation than any other major industrial nation. The US went to war in Kuwait over its own concern for oil.
That’s not a bad thing as such. Indeed it is perfectly rational. One should simply not dupe oneself with one’s own bloody propaganda, and expect the world to be grateful for the US looking out for self-interest.
That’s the bloody fucking point. Not that the US was wrong with respect to Kuwait (although selling it in the terms it was sold was rather dim-witted, but I suppose domestic American audiences have been conditioned to respond to the Great War agitprop rhetoric).
As for current policy, there is nothing to like as it is mere bumbling incompetence that is doing nothing of what it pretends to be doing. Grotesque really, the disconnect. Haven’t seen anything quite so bizarrely disconnected since the Soviets idiotic agitprop. But then the American Right seems to have been overtaken by a peculiar form of Neo Bolshevism, Right Bolshies…
As to the self-deception part:
American’s don’t expect to be liked, but we do expect that after a fifty year free ride of security paid for in U.S. money and lives, for Euros to step up to the plate and confront the various challenges to Western democracy. That’s not whining. Whining is the crap we have to listen to from folks such as you.
This is bloody stupid self-fellating. Free ride? The US positively insisted in the Cold War to be the leader, and it was in US interest. Whinging on about “oh free ride” in retrospect is pure bollocks. Indeed, the whole line of rubbish is mere “oh woe is us” whinging on.
As is the pretencion that American views on what constitutes “challenges” to “Western Democracy” (rather often American Interests that Americans confound with all Western interests, in their particularly naive and parochial view) should be followed blindly is equally irritating. Fucking ignorant provincials.
I think that we should stick to what we’re good at. I think we should push for economic liberalization and foster economic growth in these countries. If poverty and ignorance are ameliorated, it can only redound to our benefit.
Without security, there will be no economy worth mentioning. If it doesn’t combust from socialists or dictatorships like North Korea, it will collapse from Taliban and Hamas type governments.
The US positively insisted in the Cold War to be the leader, and it was in US interest.
It is in the US interest to pay for Europe’s defense and to pay Europe for the privilege of protecting Europeans? I think not. Not any longer, assuming that it ever was.
Indeed, the whole line of rubbish is mere “oh woe is us†whinging on.
Actually, it is woe onto Europe and Briton.
That can win. I am confident of that.
Which is why a pure Hamiltonian strategy won’t win. Anymore than a Jeffersonian one would without the Jacksonian core strength.