The front page of today’s WaPo has me thinking about this.
First, there is the story of the massacre of Christians on Easter in Pakistan.Along the libertarian freedom-vs.-coercion axis, the preferred explanation is blowback. That is intervention by western governments in foreign countries produces terrorism. However, it is difficult to see how this story applies here.
Next, there is a story of how terrorists met in prison in Belgium. You can see that the reporter has an urge to tell an oppressor-vs.-oppressed story of how prisoners from the oppressed class of Muslims turned into terrorists. But if you read all the way through, you see that the attempt does not really work. Still, seeing the headline, many progressives will jump to the conclusion that better treatment of prisoners is the solution to terrorism.
For me, the best explanation of terrorism lies along the conservative civilization-vs-barbarism axis. And I think that President Obama’s steadfast refusal to see Islamic terrorism along those lines is something that many Americans find frustrating and demoralizing.
Leftists and libertarians seem unable to acknowledge that their respective bugaboos of “oppression” and “coercion” can emerge from non-Western cultures without prompting from the West. In other words, according to these good-thinkers, non-Westerners have no “agency.” If they do wrong, it must somehow be the West’s fault.
You just aren’t listening to the libertarians. I have no trouble whatsoever understanding that. Blowback refers to blowback. It doesn’t refer to violence in general. If we intervened in Pakistan’s internal problems on behalf of their Christians, there might be blowback.
I have no way of knowing if these attacks are blowback, I doubt it, but it isn’t really that hard to imagine it is. We drone extremists with the tacit approval of Pakistan’s government. We (both of us) probably don’t know if these are reprisals. Terrorists attack who they do based on their own logic.
There is also a bigger point. If the objective of the jihadists is X, don’t give them X. Solve for X.
What did the eunuch-like Belgian government do that the recent attack was blow-back for?
What was the massacre of Pakistani Christians celebrating Easter blowback for? Were the Pakistani Christians droning anyone?
What are all the massacres of Christians and Yazidis in Syria, Iraq and Libya blowback for?
The Somali-“Americans” who leave Minnesota to fight for ISIS – what are they blowing back against? The oppressive government of Minnesota? Al Franken?
What was Colonel Hassan’s rampage in Texas blowback for?
You have a point that the Iraq invasion was a mistake, at least in the way it was done, that has made things much worse. But we had a problem long before the Iraq invasion, as you may recall.
You seem to have an emotional need to believe that any evil emanating from the Islamic world has been provoked by the West. This is precisely the common feature of the left and libertarians that I was noting. You, like the celebrity pseudo-intellectual in the White House, seem to assume that these patterns of Islamic violence are something that just appeared recently as a result of Western “imperialism,” and uppity Jews forgetting their proper place as doormats, and have no continuity with Islamic history going back 1400 years.
I do not think you have any idea what the “X” is that the jihadis want. Presumably you imagine that they want us to fight back and that we should therefore just go into a hands-over-head crouch, stifle any criticism of their religion, and then they will get bored and go away, and perhaps focus their interest on college basketball.
It seems to me, on the other hand, that surrender is exactly what they want from us – progressively more abject surrender over time. Until the surrender is complete, they want to signal their own “virtue” (as defined by their culture) to their compatriots. They hope that if they keep at it they will ultimately wear the West down, as Islam wore down other civilizations before.
One thing we could do that would minimize the likelihood of the “aspirations” of these sort of people being realized in the long run, without necessitating more violence: stop importing more of them into our societies. But I guess that would be too simple.
BTW, the great genius in the White House tried to atone for the Iraq invasion by pulling all US forces out of Iraq. Apparently, that did not pacify either the Sunnis or the Shia in that miserable country.
You are strawmanning again.
I said two things. Blowback refers to blowback. So, I never said those other things were blowback. Second that jihadists want jihad, so don’t give it to them.
A third point is that we have tried the Republican approach and we have tried the Democrat approach and all we know is things are worse now and getting worse.
We are not giving jihadists jihad. They are giving it to us.
All the examples I gave were of jihad. They are not blowback.
You cannot come up with a solution to a problem if you lie to yourself about its nature.
I’ve noticed a tendency for people making specious arguments, when the speciousness of their arguments is revealed, to shout “strawman!” without any basis.
No, you don’t understand the charge of strawman.
You keep claiming that I think all violence is an example of blowback.
Then you provide examples of violence you think are not blowback as “proof.”
I never said all violence was blowback.
“We are not giving jihadists jihad. They are giving it to us.”
They are using extremely easy and cheap tactics clearly to draw both sides into a bigger conflict. Jihadists almost by definition seek jihad and forever call for jihad. To act as if a few terrorist attacks is open war against all muslims is crazy on many dimensions- first and foremost because it is nothing like a hot war against a billion people.
You keep begging the question. What are you proposing that you assume I’m opposing? If it boils down to “make good on the clarion call to Jihad” by reacting in a way that causes more muslims to join the jihad, then yes, you have me pegged. Because I think that would be so stupid to do that I can’t even imagine that people I think are calling for that understand what they are doing.
I guess the issue is what is considered civilization and barbarism. If one considers it only an order, one can view them as trying to impose a rigid overarching order even if it means chaos to achieve it. Theocracies are oppressively well ordered, even more so than fascism, so one needs other values, but which values, and is there any separation between the dominant religion and civilization on them? Freedom of religion is a limitation on the power of religion as much as the state but often conservatives come across as wanting their own theocracy.
And I think that President Obama’s steadfast refusal to see Islamic terrorism along those lines is something that many Americans find frustrating and demoralizing.
Then why don’t consider Saudia Arabia a great friend versus Iran (or Iraq 2002) the great enemy? The lines of 9/11 go VERY directly to Saudia Arabia to the point Bush had to take out 28 pages of the 9/11 reports. (And my guess most foreign policy experts would know 80 – 90% of what is on those pages so it is material WE ALREADY KNOW.) Isn’t the biggest money donor to terrorist groups rich private citizens in Saudia Arabia and other oil producing nations? Additionally, Saudia Arabia was so upset by the nuclear deal, that they decided to bomb the shit of Yemen which is going terribly.
I think the liberal left supporting Obama is basically why is the US job to solve Middle East internal battles. Our meddling in the Middle East always backfires because we use military means to try to solve their political battles. We can’t force the Syria Civil War to fix itself. (And notice Putin declared Victory! and is getting out.) It is not our interest to go solve these nations battles. It makes a lot more sense to improve relations with Latin/South American nations and as well as Asian countries that could benefit our nation.
The prison article wasn’t actually that bad, I thought. It was mainly just the headline, which, if you hadn’t primed me to expect a typical faux high-minded apologia for minority-on-majority violence, I’m not sure I would have interpreted it that way, anyway.
As to your last paragraph, I find it difficult to reconcile the president’s much publicized Kill List, where he personally authorizes drone strikes from Syria to Pakistan, with the Orwellian Newspeak you hear out of his mouth condemning these “tragedies” committed by “radicals” and “violent extremists” which, when you think about it, aren’t really all that different from the Crusades and the Inquisition or whatever other ugly episodes you can think of from five centuries ago in the history of European Christianity.
The explanations that spring to mind about this disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality are:
1) the administration is worried about being bludgeoned in the press by anonymous CIA operatives who paint them as letting terrorists operate with impunity, so they reluctantly carry out the drone strikes the CIA wants.
2) the administration merely wants to distinguish between extremists and average Muslims, lest ISIS or whomever try to use harsh US rhetoric as a recruiting tool.
3) the administration is worried about a backlash against average Muslims and therefore the words “Islam” and “terrorism” are not to be uttered in any official pronouncements, otherwise those crazy right-wingers in Tennessee will be carrying out pogroms in Knoxville before the weather turns out cold again.
2) at least makes sense, in a theoretical sense, although given the drone strikes, the American troops in Iraq and now Syria, American warships in the gulf, etc., I don’t think ISIS is really lacking for recruiting tools. 1) just reflects poorly on everybody, and 3) is pretty revolting when they still haven’t hosed all the blood off the sidewalk from the latest nail bomb attack, although I don’t mind confessing to having some, shall we say, pretty uncivilized thoughts when I hear about said attacks on CNN or where have you.
Some thoughts about the “civilization vs. barbarism” angle:
1. If true, then is the only logical response for the civilized to go barbaric on the barbarians? What does this do to the civilized?
2. The civilized seem to ring up a pretty high body count as well, so what’s the true distinguishing factor? That the dirty work is done by professionals, using high-tech?
Right on #2. Also, don’t forget the Crusades.
1. I would say yes, in a sense. If a violent attacker breaks into your home, you have every right to use deadly force to eliminate the danger to you and your family, and the same holds true for a nation state. This doesn’t mean that the civilized state would be justified in committing barbaric actions (e.g. torture, using weapons of mass destruction) against the ‘barbarians’, only that deadly force could be brought to bear against the threat.
2. The distinguishing factor is intention. The civilized nation should be motivated towards living peacefully so long as that is a live option. It does not intend harm to non-combatants and does as much as it can to avoid civilian casualties – the barbarian groups murder non-combatants in gruesome ways for shock value. Consider what would happen if the relative military power of the United States and Daesh were suddenly reversed.
Libertarians seem unable to acknowledge that their respective bugaboos of “oppression” and “coercion” can emerge from non-Western cultures without prompting from the West.
Of course they can. But there’s no real reason for the US to be in the middle of the lethal mass stupidity. Not least because our track record in getting involved and not making the situation even worse (most recently Libya and Syria) is really lousy. And what, exactly, is the advantage of a civilization-barbarism framing here? How is that actionable?
Clearly we need to turn Belgium to glass!
I think your use of the word ‘see’ here is incomplete. Yes, Obama certainly perceives the overall situation in a manner that diverges from reality in the direction of his ideological biases. But I guess he does judge the jihadists and members of groups like the Taliban and Islamic State to be ‘barbaric’, and opposed to the interests of ‘civilized Muslims’ everywhere.
So his public messaging posture is even more divergent for both strategic reasons and also political expediency for the sake of his own coalition and also international relations. George W Bush was not much different in this regard.
Now, it’s clear that many Americans are frustrated and demoralized that their national leaders aren’t giving them the kind of ‘civilization/barbarism clash’ performance regarding these matters that they desire, and which pins the blame for the emergence of this barbarism on something inherent to Islam itself.
But, like Bush, Obama seems to be fighting an incredibly complicated, multiple-audiences, nested game of a long psychological campaign that is part of an epochal struggle for deutungshoheit / interpretative superiority: the effective authority to propagate a historically explanatory ‘narrative’ that will be believed by the intended audiences, and which is self-validating on a forward basis. It’s the ability to impose a new consensual hallucination.
On the one hand, the Islamists and anti-Islamists are die hard enemies but what they agree upon is that there is something about Islam which makes some level of Islamic terrorism inevitable. Islamists are trying to convince Muslims that it is their sacred duty to sacrifice themselves to blow up the infidel, while anti-Islamists (including some of the ‘New Atheists’) are trying to convince compatriot non-Muslims of a hazard to them that is permanent and inseparable from the religion itself, as if reading and believing in the Koran in any age will reliably hack the brains of a small but significant fraction of devotees and ineluctably turn them into murderous fanatics.
On the other hand, progressive politicians and the leaders of majority Islamic countries are trying to convince the same target groups, but both of them at the same time, that there is no link between Islam and political violence, and, at least tacitly, if we can all just get people on all sides to shut up and quit insisting there is such a link, then it will quickly cease to exist and we can reify the claim and bootstrap a decoupling into existence.
The idea goes that if one can people to stop talking about such a link then it will go away, and so one must use the the prestige and platform that the Presidency provides to make a different performance of a kind of existential confidence and blase insouciance regarding any terrorist incident. Notice that the entire progressive press corps (and some parts of the libertarian commentariat too) goes into cooperative overdrive with these messages of “no big deal, don’t freak out, nothing to worry about, look at the statistics,” and so forth.
In addition to oppression and blowback, the more sophisticated progressives also believe the problem is, at root, ephemeral and a kind of tragic social construct that can be replaced with a better social construct. They think that time is one their side, and see the elimination of other ideological violence and the ‘taming’ (or neutralization and status degradation) of the political role of all the other religions and as evidence of the path down which Islam, too, is destined to follow. If one views this welcome state of affairs as inevitable if only the troublemakers on both sides don’t mess it up, then one should be trying to accelerate its occurrence as much as possible, and I think that is what is behind Obama’s act.
If one believes in this strategy, then any indulgence in the temptation to make a political performance of a clash between civilization / barbarism would be profitable in the short term for trivial benefits but absolutely counterproductive in the long term when the greatest goals are at stake.
Now, it’s certainly possible to argue that this whole strategy is misguided, too clever by half, and/or simply too difficult to achieve in the messy real world. But the more unfortunate aspect of it is that it forces politicians and their enablers in the intelligentsia into Straussian contortions of layered meaning where it is impossible to have an open and frank discussion of the strategy and debate it on the merits. One just has to trust that the people in charge are the very best men who know what they are doing, i.e. there has to be tremendous domestic political capital to spend down in the name of making this kind of once-in-a-generation strategic investment. But that is precisely the kind of trust in public institutions of which we are in desperately short supply.
The idea goes that if one can people to stop talking about such a link then it will go away, and so one must use the the prestige and platform that the Presidency provides to make a different performance of a kind of existential confidence and blase insouciance regarding any terrorist incident.
So the plan is to have Barack, John Kerry, Joe Biden, and Ash Carter override the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadis of the world and dictate to Muslims throughout the world what their religion requires of them, all while pretending killing Westerners by the dozens is no big deal, anyway? Well, I can’t see any flaws in that plan. Maybe for an encore, these philosopher kings of ours can offer up their thoughts on the Torah. After all, Jews have only been studying it for three thousand years; I’m sure they could use a fresh set of eyes.
Sorry for the snark, but I think you’re giving these people a good deal more credit than they deserve. I think Obama and his fellow politicians are not so much grand strategists or visionairies, but more like a universalist botnet, just running the malware scripts they’ve been programmed to run that tell them all peoples and cultures are equal, diversity is good, inequality is bad, all humans share the same goals of peace, prosperity, and fraternity, and we can realize those goals someday soon by uniting in a transnational, globalist society, which a post-racial, multiculturalist US will clearly have to lead (and the US, in turn, will therefore have to be led by them, no surprise). Also, all dogs go to heaven and if you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with.
Reality, of course, has gotten in the way of this utopian project, and now our philosopher kings are reduced to repeating, as a line from The Big Short described Morgan Stanley’s denial of reality circa 2008, that “two plus two equals fish.”
There’s that scene in The Matrix where they upload martial arts into Neo’s brain and he says, “I know Kung Fu.” I wish I could do that with both Slone’s Theological Incorrectness and Douthat’s Bad Religion for you before embarking on the response to your comment. But the bottom line is that people are often erroneously ‘meta-theologically’ confident. They believe they are believers, but they don’t really know the content of the religion or conform their behaviors to anything like the literal mandates. They are mostly expressing group loyalties and going along with what prestigious people in their social scene are saying and doing, and they are untroubled by obvious heresies, inconsistencies, and unprincipled exceptions since they never really dwell or reflect upon these matters, and because they are rarely ‘called out’ on these deviations by anyone they care about. The confidence isn’t intellectually justified, but it has ‘social proof’ which is more than enough for most people.
This is usually a good thing! You typically don’t want people to be constantly and fanatically trying to scan, detect and eradicate each and every possible deviation and stretch messy but tolerable human existence onto the Procrustean bed of some static and unrealistic ideology. That’s a kind of ‘civilizational failure mode’. Ironically that’s the same rot that is currently eating away at both progressive and Muslim societies!
But the point is that while it’s clearly facially absurd for Bush and Obama and company to make interpretive pronouncements on the real content and meaning of Islam, it’s not completely crazy to imagine that, eventually, the vast majority of Muslims will simply fail to perceive any fundamentally incompatibility between their theological doctrine and assimilation into ordinary patterns of Western living, despite the clear dictates of the religious texts, and much as nearly all the members of almost every other religion have done.
It’s entirely possible to say, accurately, that if people were really being good Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc., then they could not possible accommodate the demands of existence in a modern Western country, and that real Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. is fundamentally incompatible with the current progressive regime, but at the same time, to observe that it’s possible to convince people that they are both devout believers and that there is no important incompatibility.
But obviously you can’t admit that to them openly, and you have to rely on the reality of cognitive dissonance and mechanisms of social psychology whereby they accommodate themselves to the necessary beliefs and behaviors simply by perceiving the kinds of compromises necessary to achieve status both in their social scene and broader culture. This is clearly the way most Muslims actually go about their lives and self-perceptions of their belief systems, which go beyond a mere dormant quiescence.
All that being said, while it may give way in the end, I think it’s reasonable to argue that Islam poses a particularly hard nut to crack via these mechanisms because of various special features distinct from the other faiths.
+1
I see where where you’re coming from, but I’d point out that it is quite possible for subcultures which teach that they are “fundamentally incompatible with the current progressive regime” to survive and even flourish in the West. Ultra Orthodox Jews, the Amish, Mormons of the Warren Jeffs variety, etc. Those groups have been at odds with the dominant culture of the United States for over a century, but the difference is they didn’t have tens of millions of fellow travelers back home in the Middle East with billions in oil money and a burning desire to finance mosque and Madrasa construction all over the New world, nor did they have social media to connect them with the Old Time Religion the folks back home were practicing in between Death to America chants, hence the ability of ISIS to recruit ex cons from thousands of miles away to come to Syria and fight the good fight. In other words, I think the project of watering down Islam into, say, a kind of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, similar to the modern megachurch Christianity or reform Judaism much derided by people like Rod Dreher and Ross Douthat, is going to be a tough row to hoe.
Almodt everything is compatible with pluralism, except blowing people up (and forcing people to pay for birth controlling pills). It is kind of the definition.
“And I think that President Obama’s steadfast refusal to see Islamic terrorism along those lines is something that many Americans find frustrating and demoralizing.”
Obama has never been shy about castigating terrorism. Where he has been stubborn is his refusal to acknowledge any role of Muslims or the Islamic faith in terrorism. And there is a thread of truth in that most Muslims, especially non-Arab Muslims, really don’t have anything to do with terrorism. Obama and the left also refuse to acknowledge any clash of civilizations element.
So, Scott Sumner and many others from Kling’s economist circle point to the relatively modest death counts as a metric that Islamic terror really isn’t that bad on the scale of global problems in the western world. I’d be eager to hear Kling’s response to that.
My main response is look how Arab Muslims have created a pervasive danger and threat for Jews in Europe that isn’t captured in simple body count stats. Across Europe authorities are giving official warning to Jews to not wear a yarmulke or any signs of being Jewish when walking in public for risk of danger from recent Arab Muslim immigrants. Or consider this, “Following the Brussels terror attack, Belgian police request that the Jewish community cancel their Purim celebrations as the police are unable to protect the community.”
Or consider the extensive attacks targeting Christians throughout the Middle East. Beyond simple body counts, Christians face serious threats on very basic safeties.
I think Kling et. al.’s concern is extrapolation of more and more terrorists. This is why everyone is concerned about the second derivative. We just differ on the nature of the variables.
Our last president saw terrorism along a barbarism-civilization axis and America liked those policies even less.
Actually, he did not.
If Bush had seen terrorism along a barbarism-civilization axis, he would have drawn a much larger circle around the civilized world and set it against the barbaric. Instead he went on an “if you’re not with us you’re against us” rampage, to all of our detriment.
In particular, 9/11 was an opportunity to bring Iraq back into the fold in unity against the new stateless barbarism threatening the West. Stupidly, Bush instead saw Iraq inexplicably as a threat to supply WMD to these same terrorists.
It’s not like Bush even needed to be a pal to Saddam Hussein. He needed only to cooperate with him to the extent that they were both fighting stateless terrorists. See also Obama and Bashar al-Assad. That red line Obama drew looks downright ridiculous today. There is a hubris in the White House that is apparently inexorable.
I like looking at it this way. Where exactly on the margin do you draw your civ-barb cutoff line.
I think we tried and learned that destabilizing nations and relatively orderly regimes was a net move toward barbarism.
Also, if the margin should be the challenge of rooting out terrorists within relatively civilized societies then creating wars makes discerning terrorists (from revolutionaries, patriots, refugees, etc.) impossible.
Blacks in Baltimore haven’t committed any acts of terrorism. However, the committee violent and petty crimes at high rates, are huge net tax liabilities for the city, rioted and shut down the city this summer, have turned city politics into something resembling the third world, and just generally make everything around them worse. As the black % of the city increases, all of these trends will get worse.
The same could be said about Arabs in Europe. Glib people will talk about how terrorism only kills X% of people, but they won’t talk about any of the above, which have a tremendous impact on quality of life. Terrorism is just one manifestation of the entire NAM dysfunction package.
Some people believe that dysfunction can be cured by education, etc. In the education view any talk of genes is counter productive.
Some believe it is genetic, and therefore only keeping NAMs out of our society can arrest these negative trends.
The latter is true but uncomfortable. The former is a lie but comfortable.
If your live in a bubble and are relatively isolated from the negative effects of believing the lie, then you can go on consuming the lie. It’s just another consumer product.
If your part of the middle class and can’t isolate yourself then acknowledging the truth is key to guaranteeing your future and that of your children.
The middle class also believed the lie, it wanted to, but over the past few decades the lie didn’t pan out. This difference is behind the populist insurgencies.
Okay, I give up, what does NAM mean?
Non-Asian Minority.
But since non-African Arabs are from Asia, I think he means Non-East-or-South-Asian Minority.
asdf,
I think you weaken your point about Muslim immigration by bringing in the entirely distinct issue of the problems of the African American community or venturing into the genetics-vs.-environment debate.
The fundamental problem with Muslim immigration, as opposed to immigration generally or the challenge facing American blacks, is that the Muslims bring with them a triumphalist, supremacist religious culture (1) to which they are strongly attached that is (2) incompatible, absent substantial modification, with a liberal, individualist Western society, given Islam’s insistence on its own predominance. The Palestinians, for example, are reputed to be a very smart people, with high rates of literacy and higher education, but, as the last 20 years have shown, their society has the same retrograde characteristics as other Islamic societies. There is little reason to expect most Muslim immigrants, however smart and able they may be, to assimilate to Western cultural norms as other waves of immigrants have, nor is there much reason to expect them, as they grow in numbers, not to try to change the surrounding society to conform to their own norms (unlike, say, the Amish and Orthodox Jews, who are content to remain small minorities whose values do not prevail beyond their insular communities, and who do not challenge secular law’s authority over them). This is especially the case in view of the guilt-ridden multicultural ideology that prevails in the West.
djf,
I don’t think so. I wouldn’t consider it a victory if Muslims abandoned their culture only to become like America blacks. Constant dysfunction, poisonous politics, economic dependence, and periodic rioting is bad in and of itself. The fact that it would be an incoherent underclass mess of a culture rather then Islamism wouldn’t be much of a victory. Eliminating the terrorist aspect of the problem only eliminates a small piece of the problem.
I think the genetic issue has to be addressed because unless it is there will always be an excuse. If genes aren’t an issue then we are always one diversity program or education program away from full integration. And if that’s true then why shouldn’t we import Muslims by the millions until they are a majority of the people in our society.
You can complain doing so makes it harder to assimilate, “but that’s the RACIST’S fault.” And anyway, we know EVERYONE assimilates to western culture eventually, so whatever problems there might be they will get solved in the long run. In the short run these Muslims are poor and desperate, how can you be so cruel?!?!
We can sort of the problems later, and as already noted, none of these problems will last in the long run if the “blank slate” is true. Heck, even questioning if there could be problems in the long run is RACIST, and RACISM is why we haven’t achieved the happy long run outcomes we all know are eventually coming.
The objective of terrorism is to maximize the disruptions and fear in the target country.
To the extent that domestic political leaders react like the republican presidential candidates have this year is playing right into the terrorists hands.
Hav
The objective of terrorism is to maximize the disruptions and fear in the target country.
To the extent that domestic political leaders react like the republican presidential candidates have this year is playing right into the terrorists hands.
Would you prefer that to the Obama reaction?