THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, ELEVENTH THREAD

mm

I am astounded by your convulted, illogical stab at simplicity.

sumac wrote:

mm

I am astounded by your convulted, illogical stab at simplicity.

How is it illogical?

There are two sides in a war,no matter how many combatants there are.
If one side lost,the other side must have won.

So,since the dems think we lost,then they must know who won.
So,I ask again...Who won?

U.S. ?'in trouble' in Iraq, retired general asserts
By SCOTT CANON
The Kansas City Star

Barry McCaffrey, retired Army general and one-time White House drug czar, came to Kansas City on Tuesday to deliver a speech about leadership.

McCaffrey was one of the top commanders in the Army during the first Gulf War. Now he teaches at West Point and is chairman of HNTB Federal Services and a member of the HNTB Companies board of directors. The architectural and engineering firm has headquarters in Kansas City.

McCaffrey regularly travels abroad on missions for the Pentagon to give military brass his assessment of conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. His most recent trip to Iraq was earlier this month.

He spoke with TheKansas City Star about his assessment of the Iraq war and its strain on the U.S. military. His answers have been edited for space and clarity.

What sort of evolution do you see to the war in Iraq?

We're in trouble.

The American people walked away from the war. I don't think they're coming back. Iraq's neighbors are bearing no good will toward a favorable outcome in Iraq.

The Iraqi government in power is dysfunctional. There is essentially no province in Iraq where the central government holds sway. It's not true in the Kurdish areas. … It's not true in Basra, where there's a struggle for power among the Shiites, it's essentially not true in any part of the country.

American troops are now moving out in smaller units to integrate themselves more into Iraqi neighborhoods. That can be more dangerous work. Is it worth the risk?

That's such a large political question. If you're the four-star general in Iraq, of course it is. The consequences of being run out of Iraq and leaving the country in turmoil and leaving the six surrounding countries in jeopardy are just so serious. … Then of course it's worth it.

But collectively the American people have said that the conduct of the war has been so incompetent that we've come to disbelieve the administration has the ability to carry this off.

The next president, unless the situation in Iraq is dramatically turned around, is pulling the plug.

You've said many times that the military needs to grow. Where would you get the manpower?

I see no political energy at all to increase the size of military. … (But) who says we can't get America's sons and daughters (to enlist)? We're willing to pay the resources to (defense contractor) KBR and (private security firm) Blackwater, but we think it's mercenary to pay more to a Marine Pfc. …

They got one line in a (presidential) speech at Fort Bragg about ?'for those of you who are interested in a career of service in the armed forces, there's no more noble thing to do.' That isn't what is going on here. We don't need people to consider a career in the armed forces. We need their sons and daughters to go out and carry a gun for us.

What's your read of the case of Pat Tillman, the pro football player whose friendly-fire death in Afghanistan was first made to look like the result of enemy combat?

There was sadly, a probably criminal cover-up of evidence. … They loved this guy. ... They shouldn't have covered it up. That was wrong, but I'm empathetic to these guys. ….

You've got a unit horrified that they've killed their buddy and wanting to tell the family something noble.

I'll bet you $100 to a half-eaten apple that (then Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld knew about it right after Lt. Gen. Stan McCrystal sent that message in. … At that point there probably was a political cover-up going on.

USA Today reports that support for the al-Maliki government in parliament is eroding. He hasn't been able to push key legislation through parliament, and appears indecisive. (I think the problems are structural, not inherent in al-Maliki's personality. He seems pretty decisive to me. But he heads what is essentially a minority government, since his United Iraqi Alliance only has about 85 members in the 275-member parliament after recent defections. He can only survive by depending heavily on the Kurdistan Alliance, a bloc deeply committed to a weak federal government. He doesn't have much of an army of his own, and cannot independently do much about the guerrilla war. It is not clear who could do better.

Turning to the war in Iraq . . .

35. Thinking of the situation in Iraq over the past three months, do you think the situation there has gotten
better, gotten worse, or stayed about the same?
Gotten
better..............................
12 [240]
Gotten
worse..............................
49
Stayed about the
same................
37
Not sure.................................. 2

38b. Do you think the U.S. goal of achieving victory in Iraq is still possible, or not? **
Yes, victory in Iraq is still
possible.......
36 [244]
No, victory in Iraq is not still
possible....
55
Not sure......................................... 9
** Asked of one-half the respondents (FORM B).

39. When it comes to the debate on Iraq who do you agree with more?

The Democrats in Congress, who say we should set a deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq; OR

President Bush, who says we should NOT set a deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq?

Democrats in Congress/should set
deadline....
56 [245]
President Bush/should NOT set
deadline........
37
Some of both
(VOL)...................................
3
Not sure................................................... 4

What Do Muslims Think?
Amir Taheri
The American Interest
May/June 2007

What do Muslims think? Do most Muslims reject the radical fundamentalist interpretation of their faith peddled by Osama bin Laden and his associates, or do they increasingly embrace it? As simple and even empirical as the question is, Western observers do not agree on the answer. Several efforts by Western polling organizations to answer this and related questions have clarified little and raised serious arguments over the reliability of their methodologies.

Most do agree, however, that the question is important, for the answer ought to tell us how to fashion the political aspects of the global War on Terror?-the struggle for "hearts and minds", as it is commonly and more softly called. If most of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims oppose radical views, then U.S. (and Western) policy could usefully help organize, mobilize and in other ways support majority moderate Muslim views against minority radical ones. There would be a robust future for public diplomacy and little worry about a clash of civilizations. The short-term risks of destabilizing authoritarian Arab allies in an effort to open up political spaces within their borders, too, could be borne confidently. On the other hand, to the extent that Muslim societies have become radicalized in recent years and if still further radicalization is to be expected, then public diplomacy will not be able to accomplish much, a civilizational clash looms, and cooperation with less-than-democratic regional allies becomes a more attractive tactic.

Just a dozen years ago, virtually no one debated this question. Despite the radicalizing influence of the Iranian Revolution and the Wahhabi proselytizing of an inexhaustibly wealthy Saudi Arabia, virtually all knowledgeable observers would have dismissed the possibility that radicals would ever make up a majority, or anything near it, within the Muslim world. Now there is a plausible argument otherwise. Radicalization has advanced rapidly, runs the argument, through a combination of factors: the frustrations of living under corrupt and dysfunctional governments that have failed to congeal a focus of loyalty other than that of tribe and sect; greater literacy and urbanization, which privilege higher, formalized standards of piety over the traditional folk Islam of the countryside; reaction against the alien indignities of Western materialism, accelerated by the growing scope of post-Cold War globalization; the integration of Muslim political consciousness (and grievances) worldwide thanks to the information revolution; and an aggressive post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy that has fueled nativist reactions against Westernization on a massive scale.

As persuasive as such a narrative may be, it is mistaken. Yes, radicals have been making a lot of noise in recent years, and yes, a rise in Islamist zeal has been manifest in violent behavior on every inhabited continent. Islamist radicalism will no doubt surge in some Muslim-majority countries, and in some European ones with Islamic communities. These dangers must not be ignored. Nevertheless, broad social and intellectual trends in the Muslim world do not support a pessimistic assessment. Radical Muslim advocates today are standing on soapboxes suspended in very thin social air. Underlying currents, which Western observers almost never read about in their newspapers and magazines, point another way.

The Sound and the Fury

Seen from the West, the Muslim world has appeared over the years to be either a dark continent frozen in an epochal silence or a maze of boisterous souks?-the proverbial "Arab street"?-ready to explode with anger. The history of Islam in the past two centuries or so?-that is to say, since the first "shock of civilizations" it experienced upon encountering modern Europe?-has been marked by alternating periods of samt (silence) and jahr (loudness). What is certain is that for most Muslims the latest period of samt that started in the late 1950s, largely imposed by despotic regimes, is over. The world of Islam today finds itself in a new period of jahr, and with an unprecedented number of participants.

There are many reasons for the intellectual effervescence in most Muslim countries today, but three are of special importance. The first is that decades of investment in mass education have borne fruit, releasing into society millions of educated men and women, thus ending the monopoly that the clergy and its allies in the government bureaucracy enjoyed for centuries. Urbanization, the emergence of new middle classes and growing contact with the West, often thanks to hundreds of thousands of young Muslims sent there for higher education, have also helped create mass audiences for current debates.

The second is the general weakening of the state, which is faced with a crisis of legitimacy and is losing its monopoly on information. No longer enjoying the prestige of the early post-colonial era, alternative sources of moral and intellectual authority have either emerged or reasserted themselves outside state structures?-universities, cultural associations, literary clubs, non-governmental organizations and business and professional unions among them.

Finally, the emergence of mass transnational media, including satellite television, the Internet and multi-edition newspapers and magazines, have offered means of self-expression on an unprecedented scale. A decade ago, the number of people in the Middle East (excluding Israel) with access to the Internet was about 3.5 million. Since then that number has quadrupled. In Iran alone more than six million people reportedly surf the net each day. In 1997, the Muslim world had two satellite television networks, both in Arabic, broadcasting only a few hours a day?-and the fare they offered was mostly staid and dull. Today there are more than fifty such networks in 11 languages, often on the air around the clock, competing for viewers. There is nothing staid and dull about Muslim satellite television these days.

There has also been a massive increase in the number and circulation of newspapers and magazines?-the reverse of the trend in most Western countries. In some cases, such as Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the increase might be regarded as an accident of history. Elsewhere?-for example, in Saudi Arabia?-it reflects a natural development of demand for information and ideas. Some of this demand no doubt has been stimulated by the growth in electronic media.

Meanwhile, the proliferation of Muslim bloggers, whose number doubles almost every year, has boosted the concept of the individual as a legitimate and necessary participant in public life, and it has had a significant democratizing impact. Among the bloggers, one finds princes and presidents along with ordinary citizens from all walks of life. Muslim women, who are supposed to be neither seen nor heard in many countries, are especially keen bloggers, for reasons that do not require much imagination.

Of course, the current jahr does not affect all the fifty or so Muslim-majority countries the same way. But to allude to the diversity of the Muslim world is also to note that discussion and debate are no longer limited to the few nations, notably Egypt, Turkey and Iran, regarded as trend-setters in the "heartland of Islam" until recently. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, is making a major contribution far from the traditional "heartland", as is remote Mauritania at the opposite end of the "arc of Islam." Even countries like Libya and Syria, which still try to wall themselves in, have been unable to prevent a massive invasion of information, ideas and images from the outside world.

Because part of today's debate roams in cyberspace, Muslims living in non-Muslim countries?-almost 400 million people?-also participate. This creates unprecedented opportunities for Muslims to communicate across political, cultural and, of course, geographical boundaries. Many participants in the Islamic debate live in the West, including the United States. Often without realizing it, these "Western" Muslims convey attitudes and styles into the heartland of Islam that challenge traditional institutions such as the mosque, the hussainiya, the takiya, the howzah, the jirgah and the diwaniya, where political, cultural and religious discourse has been shaped for more than a thousand years.

To put it in the vernacular, things in the Muslim world are all shook up?-indeed, for many of the same reasons indicated by those predicting an unstoppable radical surge. But they do not see beyond the superficial, outer layers of the tumult. In truth, several features distinguish the current debate from other periods of jahr in Islam's recent history. Understanding these features gives a more textured and nuanced grasp of realities in the Muslim world.

Faith and Power

The first of these new features is the predominantly this-worldly character of the current debate. Writing at the end of the 19th century, the Persian political agitator Mirza Malkam Khan advised Muslim reformers to formulate their ideas in religious terms. "Whatever reform you look for", he liked to say, "find a justification for it in the Quran or the sayings of the Prophet." When a local ayatollah issued a fatwa banning the use of eyeglasses made by the "infidel", Malkam's riposte was ingenuous: "Believers need glasses to read the Quran."

This advice has become a wasting asset. Some Islamists still try to win arguments by quoting Quran or Hadith, but the public is fast losing its taste for such citatory tactics. Once upon a time, a saying attributed to Muhammad would have closed a debate; today it is far more likely to re-launch it, if only because increasingly literate and educated audiences will have already read and thought for themselves about the quote. But another reason is that Islamic theology, which started a long and agonizing decline in the 12th century, has been moribund for many decades. Over these decades, Muslim clergy have been gradually reduced to jurists of capillary scale, ruling in their responsa largely on questions of ritual detail, but unable to come to terms with the broader moral challenges raised by a convulsively changing world.

Without a living theology for more than a century, Islam as a religious tradition today simply lacks the vocabulary needed for discussing issues of contemporary import. The character of contemporary Muslim debate has been further secularized by a recent avalanche of new terms into all the main languages of Islam: Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu among others. Almost all of these terms are borrowed from various European languages, especially English and French, and at least implicitly express Western ideas and ideals. How does an Arabic speaker today discuss human rights, civil society, pluralism, accountability, elections, democracy, good governance, the rule of law and social justice without going beyond Islamic frameworks and concepts? It is impossible, which is why even Muslim clergy now regularly appeal to wider audiences by employing the terms of the Western political lexicon. Muhammad Khatami, a former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and a mid-ranking Shi?'a mullah, quotes Hobbes, Hegel and Locke more often than he does any Shi?'i scholar or imam.

Not only is debate in the Muslim world today this-worldly, it is overtly political. Seen from the outside, Islam may look to be a monolith. In reality, it is a house of a thousand mansions, as riven by sectarian differences as is Christianity. Shi?'a have as much in common with Sunnis as Anabaptists have with Catholics, and each of the two main schools is divided into dozens of smaller branches that often disagree even over fundamentals of the faith. And that is one of the reasons why current debate has remained predominantly political?-at least until very recently?-for those engaged in it recognize that conducting it at a religious level would provoke murderous and self-destructive schismatic tensions. Even for those with deep religious convictions, the prudent course is to avoid overt religiosity and to seek a broader Islamic consensus on political issues.

For example, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the "guides" of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Arab Sunni movement, can never agree with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Guide of Khomeinist Shi?'i Iran, even on Islam's basic principles. For Qaradawi, there are three such principles: the unity of God (tawhid), Muhammad's prophethood (nubuwwah) and the Day of Reckoning (yawm al-ma?'ad). Khamenei, however, adds two more: justice (?'adl) and the rule of the imamate (imamah). It is only in politics that the two can find a terrain d'entente by calling, for example, for the destruction of Israel or the expulsion of the United States from the Muslim world. This politicization of debate in Islam is everywhere to be seen. In most mosques anywhere in the world, even in Brooklyn, God makes only a cameo appearance in sermons delivered to the faithful these days. Instead, worshippers hear about "Zionist conspiracies", "Islamophobia", "the corruption of Western civilization" and the U.S. "attempt at imposing its hegemony on the world."

This distortion of religion is simply unsustainable, and it is increasingly unpopular. Most people seek religious affiliation for the comfort and stability it brings, for the bonds it provides to family and the solace it offers in times of sickness, disappointment and tragedy. Politicized religion cheapens and denies all this, and Muslims who understand and value their traditions will not allow themselves to be thus dispossessed. Increasingly common are remarks like those of Murad Ahmed, a British Muslim who wrote, after the revelation in late January of a radical plot to abduct and behead a British soldier of Muslim faith: "It's a failing of our ?'silent majority' for being silent too long. For cowering in the face of the perceived moral superiority of nutcases because they seem to believe in the faith more than we do. It's time to get a megaphone and tell these people that they don't speak for us."

The New Debate

The internecine battle for the hearts and minds of Muslims is hardly over. It has barely begun. As the thin political façade of the latest round of this conflict wears away, and genuine religion comes to terms with the world, we will see a different social reality. For non-Muslims, it will help to know the principal participants in the new era of jahr as this reality takes shape.

Two generations ago, two groups dominated the debate in most Muslim countries: leftist parties and organizations on the one side, and nationalist ones on the other. From these social locations came the "who's-who" of literary, philosophical and artistic stars of the 1940s and 1950s in Turkey, Iran and most Arab countries. Today, however, with the exception of Iraq, where the Communists have a dozen seats in parliament, the Left is hardly present anywhere in the Muslim world. Nor are there significant nationalist movements. Kurdish nationalism is vibrant largely because the Kurds lack a state of their own. Some Persianists try to use Iranian nationalism against Khomeinist ideology, but they are relegated to the margins of society, as are small ultra-nationalist groups in Turkey.

The virtual disappearance of the Left and the nationalists has allowed two new, or reshaped, forces to dominate social discourse. The first of these is broadly Islamic in character, but is itself divided into three conflicting tendencies. The second is hard to name. Let's call it "secularist", even though we recognize that word as having a distinctively Western historical origin.

The Islamic camp includes all who believe that Islam as a civilization is capable of self-renewal and, given favorable circumstances, could offer a universally attractive alternative to the Western model of society. This camp divides into three tendencies: holy war (jihad) and conquest (fatah), which most casual Western observers presume subsumes the entire camp; reason (?'aql) and propagation (tabligh); and traditional quietism.

The current version of the "holy war and conquest" brand of Islamism finds inspiration in two 20th-century fighter-philosophers: the Pakistani journalist and propagandist Abul-Ala Maududi (1903-79) and the Egyptian educator Sayyid Qutb (1906-66). The most vocal and popular representatives of this tendency are supported by a network of often clandestine political and social organizations, including al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad and the Salafi Group for Preaching and Armed Combat. Many wealthy Arabs, including some who are not religious at all but who wish to vex and pressure their own or other local regimes, finance the publication and dissemination of jihadist work. Its principal outlet in the mainstream media is the al-Jazeera satellite television network and its websites, owned by the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani. One of the group's best-known sympathizers, Sheikh Yussuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric working in Qatar, helps spread their ideas through an Islamic version of his weekly televangelist shows. In turn, al-Qaradawi is supported by an outfit called the European Council of Ulema, which is partly financed by the European Union.


Outside the Arab world, the school of "holy war and conquest" attracts many political activists but has few prominent writers and propagators. Among the few are the Pakistani Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, founder and leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Good), and Khurshid Ahmad, a British Pakistani.

The "reason and propagation" tendency traces its political ancestry to the Persian pamphleteer Jamaleddin Assadabadi, alias al-Afghani (1838-97), and his Egyptian disciple, Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905). In recent times, their followers have sought to describe themselves as salafis (followers of righteous predecessors), although that term has also been appropriated by parts of the "holy war and conquest" tendency. The backbone of the salafi movement is the Muslim Brotherhood, a loose association of scores of formal and informal societies spread across the globe and financed by wealthy Muslims, big corporations and, from time to time, various Arab and Muslim governments.


The "reason and propagation" camp also includes a number of Shi?'a writers and scholars, almost all of Iranian origin, most notably Sayyed Hussain Nasr, a former adviser to the Empress Farah, Hashem Aghajari, formerly of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, and Abdul-Karim Sorush, a former aide to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

These two Islamic camps, though divided from one another by theology and temperament, are both opposed by traditionalist quietists, who believe that both camps have harmed Islam by making it excessively political. This tendency is especially strong among Shi?'a. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, primus inter pares as a leader of the Shi?'i faith, is the best-known representative of the quietist tradition, but there are many others. The quietist tradition is numerically larger than the others, but by its very nature is politically self-effacing.

Among the three Islamic tendencies (and even within them) there is much diversity and dispute. Indeed, the most vociferous and effective opponents of the "holy war and conquest" tendency are not secularists but those within other Islamic schools. They all share a certain Islamic sensibility, and insist that Muslims should try to change the world through Islamic religious and cultural paradigms. What divides them is the nature of those paradigms.


While the three Islamic camps dominate much of the space in current Muslim debates, they are by no means alone. Outside the Islamist orbit there is a growing mass of intellectual energy that is decidedly non-religious, at times overtly secular or even atheistic. Many areas of cultural and artistic life in most Muslim countries have already been thoroughly secularized, not to say de-Islamicized. Even in the Islamic Republic of Iran and conservative Saudi Arabia, much of the literature and art produced is effectively Western in both form and content. The Muslim world today cannot boast a single notable Islamic poet or novelist. Books on Islamic ritual still sell, and there is a significant market for vitriolic pamphlets against "Jews and crusaders", including the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Hitler's Mein Kampf. But no one writes The Great Islamic Novel and there is little sign of Islam making a comeback as an influence in history, sociology or philosophy. Although a dozen governments, notably Saudi Arabia and Iran, offer generous grants and prizes for Islamic studies, few applicants are found inside the Muslim world.

It is in the mainstream media, however, that the strategic retreat of Islamism is most vivid. Although still capable of flexing muscle in the streets, Islamists find it increasingly difficult to defeat their enemies on the battlefield of ideas. Modern Islam generates much heat but little light. Indeed, though it will come as news to most Western readers, many secular writers and political leaders enjoy a vast and growing audience across the Muslim world. The Iranian philosopher Dariush Shayegan has been translated into all major Muslim languages. His late compatriot, Fereydoun Hoveyda, has also secured a following in the Arab world. In Egypt, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Abdul-Mun?'im Saeed, Hassan Naafeah and Mustafa Bakri are household names despite attacks against them by both Islamists and the despotic regime of President Hosni Mubarak. And there are many others, in every Arab and Muslim country, together constituting the other side of a Muslim intellectual civil war, the core issue within which is basically the same today as it was a century ago: modernity and what to do about it.

Should the modern world be rejected because it is non-Islamic, not to say anti-Islamic? Radical Muslim thinkers generally reply "yes", secularists "no", and traditionalists "it depends." But in practice these are not consistent replies, and really cannot be. Radicals see the contemporary world order as a new "age of ignorance" (jahiliyah) comparable to the one Muhammad brought to end. In their critique of the modern world, however, Muslim anti-moderns borrow massively from the anti-Western philosophers and writers of the West itself. In emphasizing the evils of materialism, industrialization and lack of concern for the environment, they have little original to say. At the same time, militant Islamist movements have no qualms about using Western technology and methods of organization and management.


Secularists, on the other hand, oppose rigid views about Islam as the final message of God that cancels out all other religions. They also reject the division of the world into Dar al-Islam (the Abode of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (the Abode of War), urging Muslims to regard their faith as one of many possible "paths to the Divine." But secularists, who experience Islam as a civilization more than a religious faith, still fear being amalgamated into an attenuated Christological Western culture. Modernity in its present form is a problem for them, too.

The Power of Tradition

Traditionalists by their very nature are reluctant to change, but the fact is that all traditions do change or they would not, could not, exist. The wisdom of tradition is that it knows how to preserve the essence of a culture even as outward forms evolve over time. Tradition must evolve slowly, however, lest its secret for success become conscious, for that would destroy its power. But if we look at the issues at play within the Muslim world today, the case is strong for the ultimate success of enlightened tradition?-defined in this way and bounded by the pressures of Islamist purism on the one side and the secularizing tendencies of modernity on the other.

For example, radical Islamists parody Western notions of human equality. Islam is based on a baroque hierarchy of inequality. Secularists embrace the language of equality, but their anchors in Islamic civilization often hold back their acting upon their own words. It is thus left to traditionalists to produce a sustainable synthesis, and they are doing so. A decade ago, there were hardly any human rights pressure groups anywhere in the Muslim world. Today, more than 400 human rights groups are active in all but two (Libya and Sudan) of the 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Who leads these groups? Self-described secularists, agnostics, atheists? Sometimes, but more often they are led by pious Muslims unafraid to engage with the modern world. These pious Muslims include increasingly large numbers of women?-and here we come to a truly critical subject.

In the Muslim debate about equality and modernity, all Islamists?-militants, radicals and traditionalists?-struggle with the issue of women in Muslim societies. In some Muslim countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, women now constitute a majority of university students. In Iran, Egypt, Syria and Algeria women's rights activists are in the vanguard of the struggle against despotism and for democracy. Islamists offer women a set of specific rights derived from the Quran, but Muslim women increasingly reject the offer as a form of gender apartheid. Next to human rights and the concept of equality, the issue of women's status in modern Islam is certain to remain a burning one in the current debate for many years to come.

We already see glimmers of how this struggle is likely to turn out. Purely secular approaches to gender issues are unlikely to prevail in Muslim societies, at least for many generations. But radicals cannot prevail either, for their strictures are a formula for economic stagnation, collective neurosis and social decay. So we now hear, for example, arguments about the Quranic source for the hijab?-not surprising, because there is no Quranic source for it. As more and more people, especially women, become literate and educated and can read the Quran and Hadith for themselves, it becomes increasingly difficult for hidebound clerics to maintain their authority and social power. Religious authority will have to change and compromise. And, very likely, enlightened tradition will be the means for this in Islam as it has been in other religious traditions over the centuries in Europe and elsewhere. Whatever else they may be, religions are mediating templates between human communities and their environments; they cannot spite reality forever and survive.

We can see social change happening along these lines throughout the Muslim world. In economics, virtually all of the Islamic principles derived from the Quran and Hadith have been either discarded or modified beyond recognition in recent decades. Because the Quran forbids usury, most Muslim ulema were opposed to the creation of banks in Muslim countries. Islam also forbids insurance, because it presumes to pre-empt the Divine will. It also forbids limited liability companies, because a Muslim cannot transfer any part of his personal responsibility to a notional body, even one sanctioned by temporal law. Another institution long regarded as "sinful" is the stock exchange. Today banks are a key feature of economic life in all Muslim countries. Insurance companies are present everywhere and prospering. The limited liability company is now the most widespread type of business enterprise in the Muslim world. In some cases, especially in Shi?'a Iran, companies include among their shareholders one or more Shi?'i "saints", allocating part of the profits to endowments named after them. And even Iran and Saudi Arabia now have stock exchanges. These innovations have all required juridical rationales, and enlightened tradition has provided them. Religious authorities have changed codes of proper conduct while insisting that nothing essential has changed?-and nearly everyone believes it. Secularists may bring pressure for change in these directions, but secularists alone could never turn pressure into results in most Muslim countries.

There is more. The Islamic "labor code" has also been discarded, replaced by norms spelled out by the International Labor Organization. Islamic "taxation" has also been discarded by virtually all Muslim states: Even Saudi Arabia and Iran cannot collect the various Islamic taxes: zakat (purification of wealth, equivalent to 2.5 percent of an individual's net worth); khoms (one-fifth of income); and ushr (one-tenth of profits).

Islamists have also lost the battle of ideas over the structures of the modern state. The idea of creating a universal Caliphate still appeals to a few dreamers in Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami and to the Iranian-American scholar Sayyed Hussein Nasr. Some Khomeinist theoreticians?-like Muhammad-Hussein Fahdlallah, spiritual leader of the Lebanese branch of Hizballah?-also dream of a pan-Islamic state under a Shi?'i imam. But they are a tiny minority even among Shi?'a. The vast majority of Muslims have accepted the Western concept of the state as a given of their political existence, and they have also accepted Western standards of political legitimacy. In most schools of Sunni Islam, legitimacy is derived from the ability to impose one's rule (sultah). An effective ruler, or a "sultan", becomes wali al-amr (custodian of affairs) on behalf of God and is thus worthy of respect and obedience by the faithful. Unless the ruler tries to prevent Muslims from practicing their faith, he is owed obedience even if he is despotic or corrupt. Rebellion against the wali al-amr is fitna (sedition), a cardinal sin. In Shi?'i Islam, all governments formed in the absence of the Hidden Imam (who disappeared in 940 CE) are regarded as ja?'ber (despotic) and ja?'er (oppressive), and thus undeserving of believers' genuine loyalty. Today, however, these concepts are dead letters for all practical purposes. All governments in the Muslim world have structures borrowed from the West, and all claim legitimacy on largely secular grounds such as the anti-colonial struggle, real or imagined revolutions, tribal affiliations, dynastic memories, victories in civil wars and free elections, in a few inchoate and still fragile cases like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The idea of elections as both a source of legitimacy and as a means of changing governments and policies reached the Muslim world in the first decade of the last century, but only now is it achieving broad consensus. Apart from small groups of hard-line Islamists, virtually all Muslims acknowledge elections as a major, if not the only, source of a government's legitimacy. The latest convert is the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest international political organization of radical "reason and propagation" Sunnis. True, in many cases the elections held by corrupt regimes or supported by hard-line Islamists are far from free or fair. But even then, the exercise merits attention as a compliment that vice pays to virtue, as La Rochefoucauld once put it.

Yet another domain of Islamist retreat concerns the role of science in society. Traditionally, Islam encouraged scientific research and study only insofar as it served to confirm "the truth of the Quran." Indeed, the term ilm (science) was specifically reserved for those sciences, such as physics and mathematics, regarded as instrumental to a better understanding of the divine. Today, however, all traditionalists acknowledge that science has a specific space of its own. A recent debate in Saudi Arabia illustrates the point.

Last year, an argument arose over which day should be regarded as the end of Ramadan and thus the start of Eid al-Fitr. According to Sheikh Salih al-Humaydan, the Saudi Chief Justice, the proper time could not be fixed unless a group of religious scholars or appointed witnesses literally observed the crescent of the new moon and informed the faithful of its sighting. Sheikh Abdallah bin-Mani?'e, however, issued an edict insisting that astronomers be empowered to calculate the end of Ramadan on the basis of scientific measurements. Heated and often acrimonious debate echoed in mass circulation newspapers as well as radio and television, and it soon became clear that the pro-science party enjoyed overwhelming support. Sheikh Humaydan's claim that "matters of faith be left to scholars of faith", was roundly rejected by most participants in the debate, including many theologians.

Also as regards matters of science and faith, it is worth noting that the absence of a central ecclesiastical authority in Islam has allowed Muslim societies to adopt pragmatic approaches to many controversial scientific issues that also roil Western societies: abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research, in-vitro fertilization and animal cloning, to mention the main ones. In actual Muslim societies, as opposed to the caricatures most Westerners receive from their increasingly dysfunctional news media, it turns out that many Muslim countries allow controlled research programs and practices in areas that are either banned or severely restricted in most Western democracies. For example, both secular Turkey and Islamist Iran have government-funded stem-cell research programs, while euthanasia has been implicitly accepted and routinely practiced in Indonesia, Malaysia and even very traditional Saudi Arabia. It is not always so clear where pragmatism and fundamentalism may be found in today's world.

Islamists are also in retreat on many social and lifestyle issues. Although Islam expressly forbids adoption, for example, most Muslim countries acknowledge it as a fact and allow it within a framework of laws and regulations. A majority of Muslim states now allow women to sue for divorce and, while Islam recognizes only men as guardians of their offspring, custody is often granted to women in divorce cases.

Islamic practices such as the execution of female adulterers by stoning or the dismemberment of those found guilty of burglary have also long been discarded by most Muslim societies (with occasional exceptions in Iran and Sudan). Polygyny, a right granted in the Quran, is still legal in all but one Muslim country (Tunisia), but outside the Arab states of the Persian Gulf and Pakistan, it is rarely practiced. Even where it is practiced, polygyny is generally regarded as either weird or scandalous. The popular Saudi television comedy show Tash-Ma-Tash ("Hit-or-Miss") caused a furor last year by lampooning men who take more than one wife. The overwhelming majority of those who reacted to the program endorsed its critical stance.

Islamic law mandates death as the punishment for male homosexuality, but in practice most Muslim countries prefer a "don't ask, don't tell" approach punctuated by cringing tolerance?-an attitude more or less consistent with Islamic life over the past dozen centuries. Al-Qaeda leaders are the only ones who advocate the mass execution of gay people, a proposition most Muslims think is crazy.


Islamism in its various forms is a mortally wounded beast. It has lost most of the major political debates of contemporary life and is in retreat on most core issues of Islamic political, economic and social practice. But it still manages to maintain a vast audience by appealing to xenophobia: more specifically, to virulent anti-Semitic and anti-American sentiments. In religious and cultural terms, the Jew is the quintessential "other" whom Muslims ought to simultaneously admire and fear. The American represents the "other" in terms of political and military power.


Hence Islamist writers dismiss the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as "a Jewish invention" designed to open the way for Jews to become rulers of the world in the name of equality. Mahathir Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia and a leading preacher of Islamism, claims that democracy, too, is a Jewish invention and that the concept of "one man, one vote" is designed to destroy Islam's hierarchy of worth. The Israel-Palestine conflict is presented and analyzed in religious rather than political terms. Israel is portrayed as "a dagger pushed into the heart of Islam" rather than a nation-state with whom some Arabs are in dispute over land, water and other secular issues. As to the United States, the typical Islamist is in no doubt that, thanks to its democracy and capitalist economic system, it is the latest manifestation of the taghut ("the rebel", a code-name for Satan). The United States is presented as the arch-tempter, with an almost magical appeal to man's "basest material instincts." Thus, wiping Israel off the map and defeating the United States have emerged as the two principal slogans of virtually all radical Islamists, Sunni and Shi?'a.

Radial Islamists hang on to these themes partly because they have no defensible positions on issues of real political, economic and social life. And here, too, a good part of the anti-Jewish and anti-American literature consumed by radical Islamists is imported from the West, including the United States itself. It is not unusual to find in an Arabic newspaper an American columnist castigating the United States or Israel in translation, while an Arab writer on the same page offers a far more nuanced or even sympathetic view of both the "Great Satan" and the "Zionist enemy."

The anti-Semitic and anti-American emphasis of radical Islam owes much to the large market for grievance in the Muslim world. Muslims are depressed by the political impotence and manifest economic dysfunction of their states, and by the personal frustrations that trickle down to them as a consequence. There is, however, not a lot that an average citizen can do about any of this. Letting off steam by associating with a "bad boy" cause becomes attractive under such circumstances. Again, Murad Ahmed puts it well in the context of British Muslims:


A poll for Policy Exchange last week found that about a third of younger Muslims would like to live under sharia. Ask a stupid question. Ask these kids if they can explain the details of sharia. When they can't, ask them what they're really upset about. . . . They're born angry, and now need a reason to be. Radical Islamism has become an off-the-peg label that young Muslims can wear to rebel against their dads and wider British society. Like punks before them, they'll grow up and grow out of it.

There are special reasons for anger and alienation among young Muslims in non-Muslim majority societies. In most Muslim-majority countries, however, radical Islamism is in retreat on all fronts. But it still exerts influence thanks to the appeal of grievance populism. Islamists are also still capable of assassinating or intimidating many critics, and where Islamists are in power, as in Iran and Sudan, they can drive millions of real or potential critics into exile. Islamists gain some legitimacy simply by being the most ardent opponents of despotic secular regimes, such as those in Egypt and Syria. At times, they also benefit from insinuating themselves into the ranks of the global anti-American movement that cobbles together the remnants of the Stalinist Left, misguided eco-radicals and assorted new age "useful idiots" who have been persuaded that the United States is a war-mongering, hegemonic power. This is the political life-support structure of Islamic radicalism today. It is not robust.

Islamism is unable to offer a coherent analysis of contemporary Islam. It has no theology for a place and time where genuine religion is sought, and it has no political program to deal with real issues. It is losing ground to traditionalists and secularists nearly everywhere. It is doomed to ultimate defeat.

Muslims Believe US Seeks to Undermine Islam
Majorities Want US Forces Out of Islamic Countries

And Approve of Attacks on US Troops

Large Majorities Agree With Many Goals of Al Qaeda

But Oppose Attacks on Civilians

Most Support Enhancing Role of Islam in Their Society,

But Also Favor Globalization and Democracy

Full Report (PDF)
Questionnaire (PDF)

An in-depth poll of four major Muslim countries has found that in all of them large majorities believe that undermining Islam is a key goal of US foreign policy. Most want US military forces out of the Middle East and many approve of attacks on US troops there.

Islamic madrassa student Muhammad Faiza Rehman, 8, at the Lal Mosque April 2, 2007, in Islamabad, Pakistan. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Most respondents have mixed feelings about al Qaeda. Large majorities agree with many of its goals, but believe that terrorist attacks on civilians are contrary to Islam.

There is strong support for enhancing the role of Islam in all of the countries polled, through such measures as the imposition of sharia (Islamic law). This does not mean that they want to isolate their societies from outside influences: Most view globalization positively and favor democracy and freedom of religion.

These findings are from surveys in Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, and Indonesia conducted from December 2006 to February, 2007 by WorldPublicOpinion.org with support from the START Consortium at the University of Maryland.

Large majorities across all four countries believe the United States seeks to "weaken and divide the Islamic world." On average 79 percent say they perceive this as a US goal, ranging from 73 percent in Indonesia and Pakistan to 92 percent in Egypt. Equally large numbers perceive that the United States is trying to maintain "control over the oil resources of the Middle East" (average 79%). Strong majorities (average 64%) even believe it is a US goal to "spread Christianity in the region."

"While US leaders may frame the conflict as a war on terrorism, people in the Islamic world clearly perceive the US as being at war with Islam," said Steven Kull, editor of WorldPublicOpinion.org.

Consistent with this concern, large majorities in all countries (average 74%) support the goal of getting the United States to "remove its bases and military forces from all Islamic countries," ranging from 64 percent in Indonesia to 92 percent in Egypt.

Substantial numbers also favor attacks on US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the Persian Gulf. Across the four countries polled approximately half support such attacks in each location, while three in ten are opposed. But there is substantial variation between countries: Support is strongest in Egypt, where at least eight in ten approve of attacking US troops in the region. A majority of Moroccans also support targeting US forces, whether stationed in the Persian Gulf (52%) or fighting in Iraq (68%). Pakistanis are divided about attacks on the American military?-many do not answer or express mixed feelings?-while Indonesians oppose them.

However, respondents roundly reject attacks on civilians. Asked about politically-motivated attacks on civilians, such as bombings or assassinations, majorities in all countries?-usually overwhelming majorities?-take the strongest position offered by saying such violence cannot be justified at all. More than three out of four Indonesians (84%), Pakistanis (81%), and Egyptians (77%) take this position, as well as 57 percent of Moroccans (an additional 19 percent of Moroccans say such attacks can only be "weakly justified").

Attitudes toward Al Qaeda are complex. On average, only three in ten view Osama bin Laden positively. Many respondents express mixed feelings about bin Laden and his followers and many others decline to answer.

There is strong disapproval of attacks by "groups that use violence against civilians, such as al Qaeda." Large majorities in Egypt (88%), Indonesia (65%) and Morocco (66%) agree that such groups "are violating the principles of Islam." Pakistanis are divided, however, with many not answering.

But there is also uncertainty about whether al Qaeda actually conducts such attacks. On average less than one in four believes al Qaeda was responsible for September 11th attacks. Pakistanis are the most skeptical?-only 3 percent think al Qaeda did it. There is no consensus about who is responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington; the most common answer is "don't know."

Most significantly, large majorities approve of many of al Qaeda's principal goals. Large majorities in all countries (average 70 percent or higher) support such goals as: "stand up to Americans and affirm the dignity of the Islamic people," "push the US to remove its bases and its military forces from all Islamic countries," and "pressure the United States to not favor Israel."

Equally large majorities agree with goals that involve expanding the role of Islam in their society. On average, about three out of four agree with seeking to "require Islamic countries to impose a strict application of sharia," and to "keep Western values out of Islamic countries." Two-thirds would even like to "unify all Islamic counties into a single Islamic state or caliphate."

But this does not appear to mean that the publics in these Muslim countries want to isolate themselves from the larger world. Asked how they feel about "the world becoming more connected through greater economic trade and faster communication," majorities in all countries say it is a good thing (average 75%). While wary of Western values, overall 67 percent agree that "a democratic political system" is a good way to govern their country and 82 percent agree that in their country "people of any religion should be free to worship according to their own beliefs."

The surveys were conducted between December 9, 2006 and February 15, 2007 using in-home interviews. In Morocco (1,000 interviews), Indonesia (1,141 interviews), and Pakistan (1,243 interviews) national probability samples were conducted covering both urban and rural areas. However, Pakistani findings reported here are based only upon urban respondents (611 interviews); rural respondents were unfamiliar with many of the issues in the survey. In Egypt, the sample (1,000 interviews) was an urban sample drawn probabilistically from seven governorates. Sample sizes of 1,000 - 1,141 have confidence intervals of +/- 3 percentage points; a sample size of 611 has a confidence interval of +/-4 percentage points.

April 23, 2007

I say, why don't we give it a chance? Getting all our troops out of all Muslim countries whether the "leaders" of that country want us there or not; I mean. It seems to me most Muslims in Muslim countries have the same problem that we have, their leaders don't listen to them.

Friends, Enemies and Spoilers
Two months in, the consequences of the surge.
by Frederick W. Kagan
Weekly Standard
04/30/2007, Volume 012, Issue 31

The new effort to establish security in Iraq has begun. At this early stage, the most important positive development is a rise in hostility to al Qaeda in the Sunni community. Al Qaeda has responded with its own "surge" in spectacular attacks, which so far has not revived support for the terrorists or reignited sectarian violence. The Coalition has also made unexpectedly rapid progress in reducing the power of Moktada al-Sadr, including killing or capturing more than 700 members of his Mahdi Army. At the same time, the rhetoric of the Iraqi government has changed dramatically, and there are early indications of an increased willingness to attempt reconciliation among Iraq's Arabs. Meanwhile, some challenges are intensifying. Diyala province in particular poses serious problems that do not admit of easy or rapid solutions. On balance, there is reason for wary optimism.
President Bush announced the new strategy on January 10, and shortly thereafter named General David Petraeus overall commander of Coalition military forces in Iraq. His mission: establishing security for the Iraqi people and only secondarily transitioning to full Iraqi control and responsibility. In January, five new Army brigade combat teams started reaching Iraq at the rate of one a month. An additional division headquarters to assist with command and control and an additional combat aviation brigade are also headed to Iraq, along with logistics, military police, and other enablers. No timeline for the increased American presence has been announced, although public comments suggest it will last at least through the fall and probably into early 2008. Activation warnings to National Guard brigades and the extension of the tours of Army brigades already in Iraq from 12 to 15 months, issued in April, would make such an extension possible.

The new strategy resulted from a combination of Iraqi proposals and discussions within the Bush administration and among American commanders. The collaborative nature of the plan led to the creation of dual chains of command: American forces report to Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, commander of Multi-National Corps-Iraq (MNC-I), and from him to Petraeus. Iraqi forces, both army and police, report through their own commanders to one of two division commanders (one on either side of the Tigris River, which divides Baghdad). Those commanders report to Lieutenant General Abboud Gambar, commander of Operation Fardh al-Qanoon (Enforcing the Law), the Iraqi name for what we call the Baghdad Security Plan. Gambar reports to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. This bifurcation of command poses significant challenges of coordination, but Generals Petraeus, Odierno, and Gambar have developed tactics that mitigate them.

The new plan pushes most U.S. forces out into the population. Americans and Iraqis are establishing Joint Security Stations and Joint Combat Outposts throughout Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi soldiers eat, sleep, and plan together in these outposts and then conduct mounted and dismounted patrols continually, day and night, throughout their assigned neighborhoods. In Joint Security Stations I visited in the Hurriya neighborhood, in the Shiite Khadimiya district, American and Iraqi soldiers sleep in nearly adjoining rooms with unlocked and unguarded doors between them. They receive and evaluate tips and intelligence together, plan and conduct operations together, and evaluate their results jointly. Wherever they go, they hand out cards with the telephone numbers and email addresses of local "tip lines" that people can call when they see danger in the neighborhood. Tips have gone up dramatically over the past two months, from both Sunnis and Shiites, asking for help and warning of IEDs and other attacks being prepared against American and Iraqi forces. People have also called the tip lines to say thanks when a dangerous individual was removed from the streets.

Most of the military operations of recent months have been laying the groundwork for clear-and-hold operations that will be the centerpiece of the new plan. Coalition and Iraqi forces have targeted al Qaeda and other Sunni insurgent cells in Baghdad, in their bases around the capital, and in Anbar, Salahaddin, and Diyala provinces. They have established positions throughout Baghdad and swept a number of neighborhoods in a preliminary fashion. They have begun placing concrete barriers around problematic neighborhoods to restrict access and change traffic flow to support future operations. Targeted raids have removed a number of key leaders from the Shiite militias as well, reducing the effectiveness of Sadr's organization, which was already harmed by his hasty departure for Iran early this year.
Over the past weeks as the enemy has responded, preparatory operations have shifted their focus. Generals Odierno and Petraeus sent reinforcements to the towns south of Baghdad to intensify efforts against al Qaeda bases there, and they sent more troops into Diyala province as the magnitude of the challenges there became clear. These adaptations are a normal part of military operations. They reflect a determination by the U.S. command not to allow the enemy to establish new safe havens when it has been driven out of old ones.

Major clear-and-hold operations are scheduled to begin in late May or June, and will take weeks to complete, area by area. After that, it may be many more weeks before their success at establishing security can be judged. General Petraeus has said he will offer an evaluation of progress in the fall. Even that evaluation, however, can only be preliminary. Changes in popular attitudes, insurgent capabilities, and the capacities of the Iraqi government and its armed forces take months, not weeks, to develop and manifest themselves. Premature judgments influenced by a week's headlines, whether positive or negative, are unwise.

Enemies and Spoilers

The United States and the government of Iraq are at war with a cluster of enemies: Al Qaeda in Iraq, affiliated Islamist groups, and determined Sunni insurgents who wish to overthrow the elected government. In addition, they face a number of "spoilers" who have played an extremely negative role so far and could derail progress if not properly managed: Shiite militias, criminal gangs, Iranian agents, and negative political forces within the Iraqi government. The distinction between enemies and spoilers is important. Enemies must be defeated; in the case of al Qaeda and other Islamists, that almost invariably means capturing or killing them. Spoilers must be managed. It is neither possible nor desirable to kill or capture all the members of the Mahdi Army or the Badr Corps. Dealing with those groups requires a combination of force and politics. Bad leaders and the facilitators of atrocities must be eliminated, but reducing popular support for these groups' extremism, coopting moderates within their ranks, and drawing some of their fighters off into more regular employment are political tasks. American and Iraqi leaders have been using both force and politics to manage these challenges.

Enemies and spoilers have responded to the Baghdad Security Plan in different ways. Al Qaeda and the other Islamist groups have increased their large-scale attacks, not only in Baghdad but also in Tal Afar, Mosul, Anbar, and Diyala. These groups rely on suicide bombings to attract international media attention and to create an exaggerated narrative of continuous violence throughout the country. They also hope to reignite the sectarian violence that raged through much of 2006. In this hope they have so far been disappointed. Within days of the bombing of the al-Askariya Mosque in February 2006, 33 mosques were attacked in retaliation, hundreds of civilians were murdered, and Baghdad suffered seven vehicle bombings; within a week, there were more than 21 peaceful protests of over 1,000 people each across the country. Reprisals for the recent spate of spectacular attacks have been much more modest.

Sectarian killings began to drop dramatically in January, and remain well below their December levels (although they are now somewhat higher than at the start of the current operations). The continuing terror campaign in Iraq is both tragic and worrisome, but it has not yet restarted the widespread sectarian conflict that was raging as recently as the end of last year.

The reasons for the drop in sectarian killings are important. First and foremost, after President Bush's announcement of the surge, both Moktada al Sadr and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its militia, the Badr Brigade, called upon their followers not to kill other Iraqis. Sadr has remained true to this appeal despite his recent renewal of his longstanding demand for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces. The fact that sectarian killings responded to the orders of Shiite leaders speaks volumes about the nature of those killings. Despite the oft-repeated myth that Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites have been killing each other for centuries, the drop in sectarian murders since January shows that last year's killing was motivated by politics rather than primordial hatred. It was organized and rational rather than emotional, and it is therefore susceptible to persuasion through force, politics, and reason. The idea that Iraq is trapped in a civil war that we can only allow to be fought out to its conclusion is so far unproven and is not a justification for withdrawal.

Second, sectarian killings have dropped because of dramatically increased partnership between the Iraqi police, the Iraqi army, and American forces. The Iraqi police were heavily implicated in the killings; the Iraqi army less so. U.S. forces do not tolerate such behavior. The partnership has helped American units identify individuals within the Iraqi police and army who have participated in atrocities. As these individuals are identified, U.S. and Iraqi leaders work to prepare evidence packets to support their arrest, detention, and conviction. As a result, the Baghdad Security Plan is supporting efforts to weed out the worst elements from the Iraqi Security Forces. In some cases, entire police units have been pulled off line, vetted, and "re-blued"--that is, retrained after the removal of known felons and militia infiltrators. In this way, the security plan is improving the quality of the Iraqi Security Forces, which is essential to giving these forces legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people. This can only occur through the close cooperation of American and Iraqi forces at all levels.

Some have complained that the Iraqi government's insistence on evidence packets rather than intelligence packets is excessively constraining, given the nature of the conflict. Evidence often requires confessions and/or formal witness statements, whereas intelligence may come from accusers whose identity is not revealed and who therefore remain safer from retaliation. In addition, information that could compromise sources or techniques cannot be presented to an Iraqi judge. But American forces have adapted to this requirement, and are working to acquire the evidence necessary under Iraqi law not merely to arrest and detain suspected individuals, but to ensure that they are convicted and duly sentenced. No doubt more suspects remain at large this way than would if forces could operate solely on the basis of intelligence. On the other hand, the Iraqi government has shown a remarkable willingness to arrest and prosecute or dismiss from their positions even senior Shiite leaders when presented with appropriate evidence of their crimes.

In sum, key potential spoilers have chosen to support the current plan rather than to undermine it. The Iraqi government is fully committed rhetorically, and has been supporting the plan practically both by sending all of the requested military and police units and by agreeing to raids on Sunni and Shiite targets, as well as to the arrest and detention of both Sunni and Shiite leaders. Sadr and Hakim continue to oppose violence, and the militias have dramatically reduced their killings in response to the orders of their leaders and to Coalition pressure. At the moment, the struggle against al Qaeda is far more central to the war in Iraq than sectarian violence--something that has not been true for many months.

Political Progress and Benchmarks

A final end to violence rests, of course, on bringing insurgents into the political fold in a way that the Shiites, including some Shiite radicals, can tolerate. It is too early to evaluate progress in this realm. Political compromise cannot take place in an atmosphere of high violence, and both sides need time to recover from the trauma of sectarian conflict before reconciliation will be possible.

There have been some developments worth mentioning, however. Prime Minister Maliki visited the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi in mid-March, reaching out to the Sunni community. The Iraqi government followed up by sending the defense and interior ministers and the national security adviser to Ramadi recently to meet with the local Provincial Council to discuss reconstruction in Anbar. This was a very important gesture. The next question is: Can the Iraqi government get funds to Anbar and actually begin projects there? It has had serious problems in such endeavors in the past, both because powerful Shiite elements resist spending money in Sunni areas and because the government is so inexperienced and under developed that it is unable to spend most of the money it has. Even here, though, there are positive signs. After more than a year of delays, the Iraqi government has finally gotten money to Tal Afar, and reconstruction is starting there. Fiscal follow-through in Anbar will be a significant test of the government's willingness and ability to rebuild Iraq in an impartial and nonsectarian way.

The withdrawal of Sadrist ministers from the government in mid-April offers another opportunity. Some of those ministers were obstacles to nonsectarian reconstruction and effective government. Their departure gives Maliki the opportunity to appoint people who are more competent and who can be more evenhanded. The resignations do reduce Sadr's stake in the government, however, and thereby increase his ability to court conflict with the Sunnis, with Maliki, or with the United States. Some argue that his departure to Iran was part of an effort to drum up increased Iranian support for his movement. If so, the withdrawal of his ministers might signal the start of a broader Sadrist counteroffensive. On the other hand, he has not withdrawn his members from the Council of Representatives or attempted to bring down the government by a vote of no confidence.

We would be wise to prepare for the worst and assume that Sadr will attempt to restore his crumbling position in Iraq. There is no question that Coalition and Iraqi forces can withstand such a counteroffensive if we and the Maliki government retain the will to weather the storm.

The threat of a Sadrist counteroffensive aside, the withdrawal of his ministers should make the task of reconciliation somewhat easier. But reconciliation in Iraq is likely to follow its own road. The U.S. political debate is increasingly fixated on political benchmarks, including narrowly defined legislation that "must" be passed by the Iraqi parliament to move Iraq along a path to reconciliation prescribed by us. We must resist the temptation to micromanage the political and emotional resolution of Iraq's internal conflicts. Sunni Arabs in Anbar, Salahaddin, and Diyala have all reached out to American forces and Iraqi leaders. The Maliki government has started to reach back. What matters is that the two sides clasp hands, not that they pass any given collection of laws, certainly not that they meet externally dictated timelines.

One of the things that struck me most on my visit to Iraq from April 3 to April 8 was the growing Iraqi desire to exercise sovereignty. The insistence on evidence rather than intelligence as the basis for arresting suspects reflects a larger desire to see the rule of law functioning in Iraq. So does the establishment of a chain of command under the control of the Iraqi prime minister. So does Maliki's appointment of subordinates in whom he has confidence, even when we would prefer others. This burgeoning sense of Iraq-ness can be seen even beyond the central government. Pictures of the Sadrist demonstration in Najaf in early April showed many people carrying Iraqi flags and few people carrying pictures of Sadr. At a minimum, the leaders of that movement clearly felt they needed to show they are Iraqis rather than followers of a particular leader.

The irony is that the more the Iraqi government feels its own strength--a very positive development from the standpoint of establishing a state that can survive on its own--the less it will be inclined to listen to our dictates about how to manage its internal affairs. Legislative or other benchmarks imposed as conditions of U.S. aid are likely to be seen increasingly as inappropriate interference and therefore not constructive. We have wanted Iraq to be independent from the outset, and we have worked hard to make Iraqi independence possible. We must accept the consequences, including the impossibility of dictating specific political solutions to Iraq's leaders.

Challenges and Dangers

Success in Iraq is not assured, and we face major challenges in some areas. Diyala province is a microcosm of almost all of Iraq's problems. Al Qaeda fighters driven out of Anbar and elsewhere have flowed into the province in the past few months and are now receiving Iranian aid. Sunnis driven out of Baghdad in 2006 moved to Diyala and drove many Shiites out of their homes. Shiites have retaliated with sectarian killings, sometimes with the support of provincial leaders. Kurdish forces have been pushing into the northern part of the province in support of historic claims to a greater Kurdish region within Iraq. All this unrest fuels, and has been fueled by, tribal conflict. And American forces are spread thin in the province (although Generals Odierno and Petraeus have sent reinforcements).

American and Iraqi forces are attacking some of these problems aggressively. They are setting up Joint Security Stations in Baqubah and elsewhere in imitation of those in Ramadi and Baghdad. The Iraqi leadership in Diyala is enthusiastically opposing al Qaeda, and Iraqi soldiers are engaged in that fight. In spite of the widespread violence, reconstruction efforts are underway throughout the province, even in Baqubah. The talented American commander in the area, Colonel David Sutherland, is working hard to calibrate kinetic and nonkinetic operations, to integrate American operations with Iraqis, and to get the violence under control. The challenges of Kurdish incursions, of increased Iranian involvement, and of the embattled Shiite minority in Diyala remain potent and will require prolonged and careful management. Diyala is likely to remain violent for many months to come.

In Baghdad, we have seen only the preliminary unfolding of a large and complex plan. Much of the city is still dangerous, violent, or out of control, and it remains to be seen how much the planned operations can reduce the violence and how long it will take. The enemy, of course, has a vote. If Sadr orders his soldiers to fight, the situation may deteriorate rapidly. No one knows how long al Qaeda can sustain the current level of violence, or whether it can increase it, or how patient the Shiites will be in the face of continued terrorist attacks. The probabilities are that Sadr will not seek a full-scale confrontation, that al Qaeda will not be able to sustain the current level of violence indefinitely, and that the Shiite leadership, sensing the chance for meaningful self-government, will restrain its people. But very little is certain in this war, or any war.

Early overtures toward reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites are not tantamount to success in that pursuit. The Sunni tribal leadership is just beginning to reconstitute itself after the decapitation of the Sunni Arab community in 2003. Current tribal leaders do not speak for all Sunni Arabs, and nationalist Sunni insurgents continue to fight American and Iraqi soldiers. Nor is it certain that this government, elected on the basis of national lists that favored extremists rather than moderates, can accommodate Sunni demands appropriately. Again, the trends and probabilities appear to be positive in both areas, but trends are not accomplishments, and there is a long and uncertain road ahead.

Can America succeed in Iraq? Definitely. Will we? It's too soon to say. The most that can be said now is that we seem to be turning a corner. In December 2006, we were losing, and most of the trends were bad. Today, many trends are positive, despite the daily toll of al Qaeda-sponsored death. That reversal resulted from our own actions, from enemy mistakes, and from positive decisions by potential spoilers. Our actions are proceeding in the right direction, as our forces work skillfully to establish order and support and assist reconstruction. The enemy is maintaining the same strategy that led to its difficulties in Anbar: ruthlessly attacking both Sunnis and Shiites in an effort to terrorize populations into tolerating its presence. And the key potential spoilers are holding to their vital decision to call for sectarian calm rather than sectarian war.

Americans have been subjected to too much hyperbole about this war from the outset. Excessively rosy scenarios have destroyed the credibility of the administration. The exaggerated certainty of leading war opponents that the conflict is already lost is every bit as misplaced. Too much optimism and too much pessimism have prevented Americans from accurately evaluating a complex and fluid situation. It is past time to abandon both and seek a clearheaded appraisal of reality in Iraq.

Today, victory is up for grabs, and the stakes for America are rising as the conflict between us and al Qaeda shifts to the fore. It is no hyperbole to recognize that a precipitous American withdrawal would undermine the current positive trends and increase the likelihood of mass killing and state collapse. Painful and uncertain as it is, the wisest course now is to support our commander and our soldiers and civilians, as they struggle to foster security in Iraq and to defeat the enemies who have sworn to destroy us.

Frederick W. Kagan is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of Finding the Target: The Transformation of the American Military (Encounter).

I say, why don't we give it a chance? Getting all our troops out of all Muslim countries whether the "leaders" of that country want us there or not; I mean. It seems to me most Muslims in Muslim countries have the same problem that we have, their leaders don't listen to them.

revel wrote:

I say, why don't we give it a chance? Getting all our troops out of all Muslim countries whether the "leaders" of that country want us there or not; I mean. It seems to me most Muslims in Muslim countries have the same problem that we have, their leaders don't listen to them.

I say we go further.
Lets remove ALL US citizens from the middle east.
Lets remove all of the health care workers,all of the scientists and geologists and other oil fieldworkers,lets remove all of the soldiers,the port workers,the medical teams from the CDC,everyone.

Lets then kick EVERY diplomat from the middle east out of the US,and lets close all of their embassies.
Lets stop ALL flights to and from the ME,along with all ship traffic.

Lets then stop any cooperation between the countries of the ME and the WHO,the world bank,the CDC,anything that we have a veto vote in,including the UN.

Lets totally isolate the ME from the rest of the world,and then let them live in the 7th century if they want.

As long as they leave the rest of the world,including Israel,alone,they will be left alone.
If they attack ANYONE,including Israel,with ANY kind of weapons,they will be met with a nuke retaliation.

That should work,and it will allow the people of the ME to make their own decisions.

British soldiers are under orders not to walk around the Iraqi-run base for fear of kidnapping, either by insurgents who have infiltrated Iraqi ranks, or by Iraqi soldiers who are tempted by the possibility of ransom.

A British commanding officer at the base also said that insurgents were "trying out new devices" against his troops. He added that his men were often being tracked by militias using mobile phones and by observers on motorbikes.

They were outnumbered,outgunned,and outfought by American forces.

WASHINGTON - A State Department report on terrorism due out next week will show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 to more than 14,000, almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday.


The annual report's release comes amid a bitter feud between the White House and Congress over funding for U.S. troops in Iraq and a deadline favored by Democrats to begin a U.S. troop withdrawal.


Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top aides earlier this week had considered postponing or downplaying the release of this year's edition of the terrorism report, officials in several agencies and on Capitol Hill said.


Ultimately, they decided to issue the report on or near the congressionally mandated deadline of Monday, the officials said.


"We're proceeding in normal fashion with the final review of this and expect it to be released early next week," State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said.


A half-dozen U.S. officials with knowledge of the report's contents or the debate surrounding it agreed to discuss those topics on the condition they not be identified because of the extreme political sensitivities surrounding the war and the report.


Based on data compiled by the U.S. intelligence community's National Counterterrorism Center, the report says there were 14,338 terrorist attacks last year, up 29 percent from 11,111 attacks in 2005.


Forty-five percent of the attacks were in Iraq.


Worldwide, there were about 5,800 terrorist attacks that resulted in at least one fatality, also up from 2005.


The figures for Iraq and elsewhere are limited to attacks on noncombatants and don't include strikes against U.S. troops.


Even after this year's report was largely completed and approved, Rice and her aides this week called for a further round of review, in part to avoid repeating embarrassing missteps of recent years in the report's release, officials said. The review process is being led by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, formerly the nation's intelligence czar.


The U.S. intelligence community is said to be preparing a separate, classified report on terrorist "safe havens" worldwide, and officials have debated whether Iraq meets that definition.


The report can be expected to be used as ammunition for both sides in the domestic battle over the Iraq war.


President Bush and his aides routinely call Iraq the "central front" in Bush's war on terrorism and likely will say that the preponderance of attacks there and in Afghanistan prove their point.


But critics say the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have worsened the terrorist threat.




The contention by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that al-Qaida terrorists were in Iraq and allied with the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before the invasion has been disproved on numerous fronts.


In September, a Senate Intelligence Committee report found that Saddam rejected pleas for assistance from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and tried to capture another terrorist whose presence in Iraq is often cited by Cheney, the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.


"Postwar findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaida to provide material or operational support," the Senate report said.


Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA officer who also worked in counterterrorism at the State Department, said that while the new report would show major increases in attacks last year in Iraq and Afghanistan, it could chart reductions in mass casualty attacks in the rest of the world.


"The good news is ... we're seeing verifiable and drastic reductions," he said.


Among the major strikes were bombings in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Dahab on April 24, which killed 23 people and injured more than 60, and aboard trains in Mumbai, India, that left more than 200 dead and in excess of 700 wounded on July 11.




In 2004, the State Department was forced to correct a first version of the report that the administration had used to tout progress in Bush's war on terror. The original version had undercounted the number of people killed in terrorist attacks in 2003, putting it at less than half of the actual number.


In 2005, the department was again accused of playing politics with the report when it decided not to publish the document after U.S. officials concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985.


The outcry forced Rice to drop that plan and publish the report.

Annual terrorism report will show 29% rise in attacks in 2006

Quote:

WASHINGTON - A State Department report on terrorism due out next week will show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 to more than 14,000, almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday.


The annual report's release comes amid a bitter feud between the White House and Congress over funding for U.S. troops in Iraq and a deadline favored by Democrats to begin a U.S. troop withdrawal.


Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her top aides earlier this week had considered postponing or downplaying the release of this year's edition of the terrorism report, officials in several agencies and on Capitol Hill said.


Ultimately, they decided to issue the report on or near the congressionally mandated deadline of Monday, the officials said.


"We're proceeding in normal fashion with the final review of this and expect it to be released early next week," State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said.


A half-dozen U.S. officials with knowledge of the report's contents or the debate surrounding it agreed to discuss those topics on the condition they not be identified because of the extreme political sensitivities surrounding the war and the report.


Based on data compiled by the U.S. intelligence community's National Counterterrorism Center, the report says there were 14,338 terrorist attacks last year, up 29 percent from 11,111 attacks in 2005.


Forty-five percent of the attacks were in Iraq.


Worldwide, there were about 5,800 terrorist attacks that resulted in at least one fatality, also up from 2005.


Attacks worldwide in 2006 were 14,338. BUT OF THESE ATTACKS Worldwide, there were about 5,800 terrorist attacks that resulted in one or more fatalities?

The figures for Iraq and elsewhere are limited to attacks on noncombatants and don't include strikes against U.S. troops.


Even after this year's report was largely completed and approved, Rice and her aides this week called for a further round of review, in part to avoid repeating embarrassing missteps of recent years in the report's release, officials said. The review process is being led by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, formerly the nation's intelligence czar.


The U.S. intelligence community is said to be preparing a separate, classified report on terrorist "safe havens" worldwide, and officials have debated whether Iraq meets that definition.


The report can be expected to be used as ammunition for both sides in the domestic battle over the Iraq war.


President Bush and his aides routinely call Iraq the "central front" in Bush's war on terrorism and likely will say that the preponderance of attacks there and in Afghanistan prove their point.


But critics say the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have worsened the terrorist threat.


The contention by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that al-Qaida terrorists were in Iraq and allied with the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before the invasion has been disproved on numerous fronts.

The contention by ican711nm that al-Qaida terrorists were in Iraq, AND NOT ALLIED WITH the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before the invasion, has been PROVED on numerous fronts.



In September, a Senate Intelligence Committee report found that Saddam rejected pleas for assistance from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and tried to capture another terrorist whose presence in Iraq is often cited by Cheney, the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.


"Postwar findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaida to provide material or operational support," the Senate report said.


Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA officer who also worked in counterterrorism at the State Department, said that while the new report would show major increases in attacks last year in Iraq and Afghanistan, it could chart reductions in mass casualty attacks in the rest of the world.


"The good news is ... we're seeing verifiable and drastic reductions," he said.


Among the major strikes were bombings in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Dahab on April 24, which killed 23 people and injured more than 60, and aboard trains in Mumbai, India, that left more than 200 dead and in excess of 700 wounded on July 11.


In 2004, the State Department was forced to correct a first version of the report that the administration had used to tout progress in Bush's war on terror. The original version had undercounted the number of people killed in terrorist attacks in 2003, putting it at less than half of the actual number.


In 2005, the department was again accused of playing politics with the report when it decided not to publish the document after U.S. officials concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985.


The outcry forced Rice to drop that plan and publish the report.

Our being there is helping how? I know the boogyman response,so save it. We aint helping a dang thing; in fact we are making it worse.

I know the "follow us home" response as well. That is one is just so entirely self centered as well as being false that it is just too tiresome to get into yet again.