Iraq is a tragic, unhappy, and often disturbing place, but it’s less sinister and frightening up close than it is from a distance. That’s because it’s a country striving for normality, whose normal aspects rarely make their way into media reports that highlight violence, mayhem, and failure. On TV, Iraq looks like a nation of masked, gun-toting fanatics, but in person, one finds friendliness, solidarity, and reasonableness amid the chaos. “Just because Iraqis have ‘Allahu Akbar’ on their flag,” Yon writes, “doesn’t mean they’re going to blow up the World Trade Center any more than ‘In God We Trust’ means we’re going to attack Communist China.” “Iraq does not hate America,” he insists. “If they hated us, I’d be urging an immediate troop withdrawal, because there would be no hope of winning this war. If the Iraqis hated us, we would be fighting the Iraqi Police and the Iraqi Army. Instead, we’re fighting alongside them.”
Yon convincingly argues that the U.S. is winning in Iraq, at least for the moment. “The enemy learned that our people and the Iraqi forces would close in and kill them if they dared stand their ground. This is important: an enemy forced to choose between dying or hiding inevitably loses legitimacy. Legitimacy is essential. Men who must always either run or die are no longer an army and are not going to found a caliphate.” The outcome, though, is still in doubt. If Petraeus’s surge strategy fails or is prematurely short-circuited by Congress, the American and Iraqi forces will almost certainly lose. “Maybe creating a powerful democracy in the Middle East was a foolish reason to go to war,” Yon concludes. “Maybe it was never the reason we went to war. But it is within our grasp now and nearly all the hardest work has been done.” Which makes the present moment the moment of truth in Iraq.
Glenn Reynolds has a review of Ron Paul’s book. I haven’t read the book, but I agree with the points made in the review about Paul’s views, and the difference between Rothbardians and Heinleinians.
Sam Harris has a long piece at (of all places) the Huffington Post on the unwillingness of western civilization to stand up for its own values against radical Islam. And as others have noted (and he notes himself), this is particularly ironic:
In a thrillingly ironic turn of events, a shorter version of the very essay you are now reading was originally commissioned by the opinion page of Washington Post and then rejected because it was deemed too critical of Islam. Please note, this essay was destined for the opinion page of the paper, which had solicited my response to the controversy over Wilders’ film. The irony of its rejection seemed entirely lost on the Post, which responded to my subsequent expression of amazement by offering to pay me a “kill fee.” I declined.
Bruce Bawer, on the cultural surrender of the west, aided and abetted by our own media, and the multi-culturalists in both academia and government.
Not exactly a new theme, but it doesn’t hurt to repeat or remind, for those who haven’t seen things like this, or have gone back to sleep.
It’s a long piece, but this is really the nut of it:
What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, KhoÂmeini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies’ basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies.
The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success.
Since Saddam was removed from power, there’s been a vacancy in George Bush’s three-nation “axis of evil.” It looks like Syria has decided to apply for the position (and did so long ago, and even at the time was no doubt an unindicted co-conspirator–one wonders why Bush didn’t include it in the beginning). Now, Austin Bay discusses the disturbing relationship between the two dictatorships of Syria and North Korea, and their increasingly evident first-strike posture.
Given Nancy Pelosi’s idiotic visit with Assad earlier, and the dictator-soothing noises coming from the Obama campaign, Israel has to be very nervous about the Democrats running both the executive and legislative branch. Don’t be surprised to see more strikes on Syria, and on Iran itself, this fall, if it looks like Obama is going to win, or does win–they won’t want to wait until it’s too late, after he’s taken office in January.
Of course it is true that Islamic reformers are trying to redefine the very troubling concept of jihad as a positive: viz., an internal struggle for personal betterment. Much as I’d love them to succeed, it is a well-intentioned folly — largely because of modern culture, which puts such a premium on authenticity. If you want to encourage the reformers, then encourage them to drop the concept of jihad altogether. As a matter of history, jihad is a military obligation. As long as it is accorded a central place in Islam, the militants are always going to be deemed more authentic, more true to the faith of Mohammed, than the reformers.
