Well gee, they could also stop treating them as third world trash beneath "true" European society and then concentrating them all in what amounts to ghettos. But I suppose that would be "negotiating with terrorists," or some such.
If this isn't the stupidest cause the right has latched onto, it's awfully goddamn close. Arthur Silber has an excellent comparison of the current reaction and last year's "Newsweek is responsible for the rioting and deaths in Afghanistan." Internal consistency is a bitch.
I told Sully that I was another liberal reader who thinks he's been coming off as a major bigot lately. But I doubt that my position will be represented.
Thesis: The church bombings, riotings, lynchings, etc. perpetrated by white Americans ca. 1865-1965 gave the U.S. a choice: Capitulate totally to white supremacists, deport all white people, intern them, or throw them into the sea.
So, if we all send FL insane e-mails, can he post them without bearing any responsibility for their contents?
Like if I were to send this to FL:
By this end of this cartoonish controversy, we're going to have to deal with the fact that many conservatives don't really believe that Muslim people (or really any people who disagree with them) have rights. I only see five options for dealing with such people, and with people who post e-mails written by them:
1) Deport them
2) Deport them...to the moon! Without any air
3) Send them to the moon, but with terraforming equipment
4) Agree to be their slaves for life, and bind our offspring, real or potential, to the same agreement
5) Kindly ask them to stop being so crazy
FL can post it, and then if people want to criticize him, he can say he's just passing along his reader's views?
Well let's see: governments in the Middle East are orchestrating riots for their own purposes so Europeans should kick out the European Muslims who are, for the most part, not rioting.
7 - Yep. Sullivan's just doing the same thing Fox does (as pointed out in Outfoxed). Deploy the "some people say" tag, and you can get away with saying anything you want.
As an aside, this little ditty is fun to use in a joking way with friends and lovers:
"Some people say we should be making out right now."
Enough people have commented on this little 'outburst' of Sully's that it's clear he's the only one who believes that he's distanced himself from the "reader's" opinion.
I probably shouldn't have burned those churches in Alabama.
Mathews thinks that he can get me to confess by insinuating I'm gay. But I'm not. I'm just a liberal who burns down down churches.
There's nothing at all wrong with being gay. But I'm not. NOT! Why's Mathews saying these things?
Well, gotta go buy some marshmallows and maybe pick up some loose women. Women really get off on burning churches, that's why I do it. I'm really a heterosexual love machine, you know, besides being a pyromaniac liberal secularist.
Hey -- to be totally off-topic and self-centered, sorry for being out of touch. I've been flat on my back with strep throat. I'm probably going to redisappear until Monday, because now that I'm feeling better (God, I love antibiotics), I should spend the weekend paying attention to Sally, Newt, and Mr. Breath (who has requested to be referred to as 'Buck' from here on out. Mine is not to question.).
Juan Cole and others have been arguing, persuasively, I think, that muslim anger over the cartoon, though thoroughly baffling to us, is perfectly understandable from their perspective.
If you accept this, then people are people - we're just in different circumstances.
If you don't, or aren't informed enough to appreciate it, then there appears to be something deficient about the rational faculties of lots of muslims.
A lot on the Right are taking this second path. "The World is full of violent barbarians!"... There was a lot of taunting by righties along the lines of, "What? Don't you lefties think that teh Iraqis are capable of democracy? You don't think they''re hopeless barabarians do you?"
Now, of course, it's, "The left is going to have to do some hard thinking, because they can no longer deny that these people are hopeless barbarians."
I have always been one to listen to all sides of an argument. I have even been, I believe, indulgent. However, this last episode by righty bloggers has shown that they are of no use using their mouths for argument. I'm honestly starting to suspect that the only use they have is for fellations.
I think Yglesias misses Sullivan's point completely. Yglesias seems to think that Sullivan is simply talking about the Iraq War. But Sullivan's point seems to be that a soft accommodationist approach to Muslim fundamentalism, in which the West attempts to avoid annoying the Muslim world*, is not viable. Even if we were not looking for war, war would come looking for us. The fundamentalism needs to be confronted, and external forces must be brought to bear upon it.
I don't fully agree with Sullivan either, of course. I do think that he touches upon something important though: the left has yet to offer a coherent foreign policy alternative to the Bush/Blair approach.
*please spare us all the silly analytic obsessing over whether there is "really" a Muslim world.
The fundamentalism needs to be confronted, and external forces must be brought to bear upon it.
the left has yet to offer a coherent foreign policy alternative to the Bush/Blair approach
If by "the Bush/Blair approach" you mean the actual foreign policy carried out by George W. Bush, it seems to involve bringing external forces to bear on fundamentalism by (a) attacking the non-fundamentalist Saddam Hussein and (b) holding hands with the fundamentalist Crown Prince Abdullah. I think the left has an approach that's at least that coherent.
And this guy, though not too articulate, makes a good point: There is simply no value of "foreign policies of Bush and Blair" for which opposition to those policies means thinking that we should restrict freedom of the press to avoid offending the Muslim world. It's a ridiculous straw man.
The political dialogue Rove is preparing for us begins and ends with "The Democrats won't be tough enough, but the Republicans will. If you want to die because your leaders were nice guys, vote Democrat!"
It's worked so far (see 30). Weenie considerations of effectiveness (28) are a deliberate distraction by people trying to weaken our resolve. If we blow enough shit up, everything will be OK.
If by "the Bush/Blair approach" you mean the actual foreign policy carried out by George W. Bush, it seems to involve bringing external forces to bear on fundamentalism by (a) attacking the non-fundamentalist Saddam Hussein and (b) holding hands with the fundamentalist Crown Prince Abdullah. I think the left has an approach that's at least that coherent.
Military action against Hussein, and diplomacy with Abdullah, might appear inconsistent at first, but they're really not. I think it's easy to get lost in a very dense forest and fail to see the underlying contours of the land.
I think part of the left's problem is simply that many on the left, as on the right, disagree internally about foreign policy, but we don't have a final arbiter to decide the issue, as Bush does for the Republicans. There's more to it though. Bush has been quite good at articulating---albeit in mumbles---clear goals, and linking the use of hard power to those goals, even in the face of oppositional consensus. Bush worries less about how attractive his actions seem to the Muslim world. That's not always a good thing, but the aggressiveness of the approach gives me a sense that there is a struggle for the future of the Middle East, that Bush is aware of it, and that he wants to fight for it.
By contrast, the left seems to worry far more about angering the Muslim world, about adopting a softer approach, and about whether we have the "right" to "impose" our "culture and values" on the Muslim world. It's an approach that leans heavily towards finding ways to defuse any struggle as quickly as possible, and towards avoiding international confrontation as much as possible.
This is not to deny the substantial failings, and even mypoia, of Bush's foreign policy, or that the left does offer valid critiques in parts. But Sullivan has tapped into the sense that the left wishes to be less confrontational with, and overtly transformative of, the Muslim world. If one buys into Sullivan's idea that we can't avoid confrontation, then the left is placed in a position where it cherishes and wishes to protect certain values, while endorsing a foreign policy that prioritizes defusing and avoiding conflict.
I don't think Sullivan is entirely right, if that's what he's saying. The left needs to start talking more sharply about 1) what we want to do about radical Islam and 2) how we're going to do it.
28: That's an awful lot to read into Sullivan's post. As it stands, it's just wrong. Europeans Muslims aren't rioting. Some Middle Eastern Muslims are. Deporting the non-rioting Muslims probably isn't going to improve matters. As MW pointed out, there are coherent plans on the left and the coherent plan on the right seems to involve going after the non-fundamentalists.
I'll agree that appeasement isn't a valid foreign policy, but no one here's suggested getting rid of the free press. To hear Sullivan, one would think that unless I go right now and start a neo-Nazi march, I'm surrending my right to freedom of speech. It's perfectly consistent to think that the Danish press should have the right to publish what they want and to wish that they would exercise some prudence.
Sorry that the problem might require some analysis, but to do otherwise is rather like blaming the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal on Pat Robertson. They're all Christian, right?
Also, many of Europe's Muslims are natural-born citizens. What Sullivan is not-quite-tacitly endorsing (remember, by his standard we're all "objectively pro-Saddam") are pogroms. It's vile and he should be ashamed.
Military action against Hussein, and diplomacy with Abdullah
It's not diplomacy with Abdullah. It's cravenly servicing Abdullah. (Here's a trial balloon that proves my point: Currently the stance of the U.S. government is that Saudi Arabia is a major ally.)
By contrast, the left seems to worry far more about angering the Muslim world, about adopting a softer approach, and about whether we have the "right" to "impose" our "culture and values" on the Muslim world.
You started off by saying, basically, that the left was not monolithic. So whence this generalization? Are those words in direct quotes because you actually quoted them from an actual leftist? Who is opposed to the idea of encouraging increasing democracy in the Middle East, once that idea is separated from starting ill-conceived wars?
Some elements of the Left, like Michael Moore, are perfectly happy to antagonize, say, the Saudis. My guess is that the dominant element of non-warmongering foreign policy thinking in the U.S. is that our best chance to transform the Middle East is by winning a war of ideas. (This is generally framed in terms of hard vs. soft power, but it might be better to think of it in terms of gun vs. brain power, because the word 'soft' is too easy to make sound 'wimpy', as in 28.)
I guess if you think, with Sullivan, that most Muslims are totally committed to imposing sharia on Western Democracies then the brain power approach won't work. But I don't think some speeches from the leader of Hizbollah, the Party Of God, are indicative of that, any more than Pat Buchanan's call for a culture war to "take back America, street-by-street" showed America's Christians could only be contained by violence.
And anyway, the Bush approach still doesn't make sense in that framework. His particular war doesn't actually have any rational relationship to transforming the Middle East at all. As Emerson points out in 40, it's about looking tough. Violence is satisfying and makes you feel like you've done something (it also kills people), but that doesn't mean it necessarily does accomplish anything. The impulse to go to war against Iraq because the Middle East isn't working is like the impulse to hit your TV with a baseball bat because it's not working. Natural, but not the basis of a coherent policy.
Jesus Christ. At what point is that . . . that . . . [I can't find a vile enough word for her] that person going to be shunned and vilified in the way she so richly deserves? What is wrong with people who applaud her or refuse to condemn her?
I don't think Sullivan was endorsing the readers he quoted. To my eyes the emphasis was on the fact that these are supposedly liberal readers making some very illiberal suggestions.
Matt, I think it's an oversimplification, even for a blog, to say that the US is "cravenly serving" Saudi Arabia. The US wants to keep the Saudi government in power, and Abdullah in some control, because Abdullah is far more Western-friendly and liberal than his rivals, and because the Saudi government is far more Western-friendly and liberal than the Saudi population. The measures that have been sought, and won, include some educational reform of Saudi schools, arrests of the more radical clerics, and the beginnings of a push to deradicalize Islam. This is actually a case where a soft touch is very necessary. The last thing anyone wants is a disintegrating, weakening, or falling Saudi government.
Saudi Arabia highlights the importance of winning the war of ideas, and on this point I think the left has been particularly strong.
Finally that the left is not monolithic doesn't prevent certain generalizations from validly being made about the emphases of its rhetoric or values. But if you're right that we can't do so, then obviously we can't speak of the left as offering a coherent alternative to Bush's policies either.
we can't speak of the left as offering a coherent alternative to Bush's policies either
But of course, no liberal or Democrat (except perhaps Zell Miller) does this. Instead, we'll talk about particular people (politicians, think tankers, who ever) having good ideas for dealing with the global struggle against extremism (my personal pick for what we should call the forever-war), and we endorse those. Liberals and Democrats, when being sincere, don't go around saying "the left is X."
I don't think Sullivan was endorsing the readers he quoted. To my eyes the emphasis was on the fact that these are supposedly liberal readers making some very illiberal suggestions.
Sullivan may have left enough wiggle room to say he wasn't endorsing them, but he certainly wasn't condemning them. He said:
I'm relieved to see that this moment has forced some very hard thinking on the left.
Why would he be relieved at this if he thought it was unequivocally bad to think about genocide?
When I spoke of Bush cravenly servicing Saudi Arabia I meant specifically that he is far too cozy with and deferential to the seriously illiberal Saudi royal family. There is simply no coherent rationale for treating Saudi Arabia as an ally while invading Iraq. None.
As for the coherence of the left, my objection isn't so much that you generalized about its emphasis as that you made stuff up about its emphasis. Who's worrying about offending fundamentalist Muslims, except insofar as this is a factor in the war of ideas? And you're right that, since the left isn't monolithic, they can't come up with a coherent foreign policy, since many within the left will disagree with aspects of any given policy. That's why it's really stupid to demand that "the left" come up with a coherent alternative. Many individuals and institutions on the left have come up with alternatives to the Bush-Blair policy; address your critiques to them, not to some leftist policy in your head.
"I don't think Sullivan was endorsing the readers he quoted."
He was being provocative in a cute, despicable way. All the rightwingers use that particular plausible-deniability trick -- Limbaugh, Suullivan, Instapundit.
Andrew, one of the main points is that Saudi Arabia has always been one of the main exporters of Muslim fundamentalism, perhaps the main one, as well as being one of the most conservative Muslim countries at home.
Bush has been an effective demagogue. Unfortunately, his Mideast policy is fraudulent and inept.
So you believe that Sullivan is thinking about endorsing genocide, Matt? Seriously? I'm not sure how else to interpret this: Why would he be relieved at this if he thought it was unequivocally bad to think about genocide? Given the absurdity of such a reading, perhaps a slightly more charitable reading of Sullivan would be better.
The rationale for treating the two governments differently is simple: one acts cooperatively with the US on major interests, and is not belligerent; the other acts in opposition to the US on major interests, and was highly belligerent. The removal of one government would result in a far more hostile and belligerent regime; the removal of the other government could not possibly result in a regime any more hostile, and may well result in a less belligerent regime.
I'm not saying that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea. My only point is that it's not logically inconsistent. Nor is it, to tie this back to the original point, central to what Sullivan was referring to... though his post was so short that we might be arguing about shapes in the clouds.
With respect to the left, I think that you're insisting that a generalization be accurate across all cases in order to be useful. That some on the left will disagree internally doesn't render a generalization about the left inaccurate, or incoherent. Leftist foreign policy approaches could be said to generally favor a high degree of moral respect for international law and treaties, a deep suspicion of the usefulness of military force, a heavy emphasis on soft power, an emphasis on fairness between nations, and an analysis of international history that posits economic interest as the impetus of conflict. That generalization doesn't have to be true of every thinker on the left to be accurate as a generalization.
Yes John. But the Saudi government can't simply shut down every Wahhabist cleric without provoking a massive and possibly fatal popular reaction. Nor, for that matter, is the Saudi government internally consistent enough (as long as we're on the topic) for external American pressure to translate into such a policy. There are members of the Saudi government, some of whom exercise control over security forces, who use the Islamists as political leverage.
Sullivan wasn't seriously advocating genocide, any more than other racists really want to "send them all back to Africa". He was just being provocative in a shitty, creepy, deniable way.
The Saudi export of fundamentalism turned out to be effectively belligerent. Most of the highjackers were Saudi, and Osama got most of his financial support, from Afghanistan on, from the Saudis and the Gulf States. Saudi finance is not transparent, with all kinds of slush funds and enormous unmonitored private fortunes.
One reason that the Saudis have always been nice to us is that we mostly do what they want us to do, and that hasn't changed under Bush.
Andrew, since October 2001 all the tough guys have been telling me that the one thing that's impossible is to do anything about the Saudis who actually supported Osama.
It's been just like the mother who says "My child is very sensitive. If he misbehaves, spank the child sitting next to him, and my son will understand."
All I know is what I read. Sullivan said he was relieved to see that hard thinking was being provoked on the left. I myself am not relieved to see bad things happen. I conclude that Sullivan did not think that what happened -- that's the quote from the alleged leftist who was toying with genocide -- was a bad thing. What do you think he meant by saying he was "relieved"?
With respect to the left, I think that you're insisting that a generalization be accurate across all cases in order to be useful.
I'm not, and it's pretty rich of you to say that in a post in which you advocate "charitable reading." I'm insisting it be accurate in many or at least some cases. Your statement about how the left worries about whether we have the "right" to "impose" our "culture and values" on the Muslim world was not accurate, nor was the original claim about avoiding 'annoying' the Muslim world. The stuff about international law, fairness between nations, and soft power I would accept as accurate, but why isn't it a coherent alternative to Bush/Blair policy?
If he's not endorsing genocide, then what the fuck is he doing? Either he's making an argument, implicitly or explicitly, or else he's just shooting his mouth off to no purpose.
Matt, I said that the left, in keeping with an emphasis on fairness and self-determination, worries more i.e. more than the right, about the legitimacy of imposing political institutions and values on other cultures. I don't really feel like rummaging around to find exact quotes supporting this, but I imagine people like Chomsky or Wallerstein would fit well.
I don't read Sullivan anywhere close to regularly, though I remember finding his columns in TNR interesting and reasonable. Hard to believe that he's become so reactionary as to be yelling about fifth columns, or that he meant any kind of endorsement of that second email he quotes. Still, if it's not simply an ill-chosen example of a liberal who suddenly finds the Bush clash of competing ideologies narrative attractive, then perhaps I'm trying too hard to squeeze something reasonable from the post. Maybe he is just shooting off his mouth and being a general asshole.
John, I really think that this is where some of the criticisms of the US Middle East policy go off the rails. The argument seems to be: "We COULD put more pressure on the Saudis, and shut down radical Islam and the support of it much more completely than has been done, but we don't do so. Yet doing so is in our clear interests, and besides which, it's just the right thing to do. So the US Government must not be doing this because the Saudis have friends among US oil executives and lobbyists, who "persuade" the government to take a softer approach."
I'm sure you've seen the movie. But the premise of this argument just strikes me as wrong. The Saudi government is composed of various figures struggling for control against one another, in a country of massive and heartbreaking inequalities of wealth that has been thoroughly radicalized. The Saudis can only be pushed so far because their own position isn't exactly stable.
But hey, I'm no expert. If you've got a link to an article that takes the "Saudi is unstable, so tread lightly" thesis on, I'd love to see it.
Really? Now, my grasp of the history here is shallow, so if someone wants to point me to something that shows that I'm simply wrong, I'm happy for the education. But, my understanding of the history of Wahabism is that the only reason that it has any substantial following worldwide is that the House of Saud (whatever their personal levels of religious belief) has been pouring buckets of money into it since they've had oil revenues. My futher understanding is that if Saudi oil revenues stopped funding Islamic radical opinion worldwide, most people believe that a great deal of that radicalism would dry up (not all, of course, but a great deal). I thought this was pretty uncontroversial, but my level of knowledge on the subject is such that I could easily be mistaken.
Oh, we slaughtered the poor bastard. The partner I work for is a nightmare, but it is kind of fun watching him so long as the person he's batting around the room like a crippled mouse isn't you.
Andrew, I'm having trouble following your argument. My objections to the recent Iraq war are that it doesn't seem to be going well on its own terms and that few of the various motives we've been given for it seem to have been valid.
And as you've said about Saudi Arabia, it seems quite possible that Saddam will be replaced by someone worse. They say that the big gainer so far has been Iran. (Just recently an Israeli guy said more oir less this.)
It's always bothered me too (since long before the movie; I did extensive research) that the Saudis, who are the source of a lot of the problem, seem to be untouchable and almost unmentionable. I think that if Saudi Arabia had been a major focus from the beginning, without our being tied down in Iraq, there would have been various things we could have done with them besides kiss their cheeks. Right now we have no leverage on the Saudis at all, because we chose to go after Saddam.
And you're not only fine with everything, but you think that the problem The Left has is that it's not. And you talk in these wise tones, as if you're a serious thinker and all.
As I've said, Bush has the demagogy down pat. He may or may not have some kind of rational plan, different than any of the plans he's told us about. Or he may just be improvising on the "blow shit up" principle.
A lot of the Bush supporters seem to be supporting something that Bush has never talked about, sort of a nudge-nudge wink-wink military policy. They seem amused and contemptuous when Bush's critics ask him to try to articulate an intelligible policy.
Oh good. The deponent was an expert, and a really, really, heavily credentialed one, and he showed up without a vestige of a clue of what the case was about or what support was necessary for his opinion. He was hurting badly by the time he left.
OK, I'll grant you the point about Chomsky and Wallerstein, but that just shows what a slippery term 'the left' is. Sometimes it's used to describe barn-burning radicals like those two, sometimes it's used to describe the actual left half of the political spectrum -- Democrats and such.
And often, I'm convinced, people who are talking about 'the left' are strategically equivocating, so they can seem to say nasty things about Democrats, and when called on it say "I just meant Chomsky!" Who has approximately zero influence on Democrats; he wouldn't be invited to speak at a Democratic equivalent of CPAC (see link in 46).
(I'm not saying you're strategically equivocating like that. But the guy who said, "The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead - and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column," he was doing that.)
I also doubt it would be a good idea to bring down the house of Saud. Even though I think LB is probably right, and Wahabiism's global following is pretty much entirely due to Saudi sponsorship, I don't think that genie (so to speak) can be easily put back in the bottle. Yet I also think the Bush family's personal coziness with the Saudi royal family may be hurting our Saudi policy. We could probably do more to restrict Saudi money laundering for terrorists without bringing down their government.
Matt, Fair point on Sullivan, given that particularly stupid line. So far as the "actual half" of the left spectrum... as you pointed out, the term is itself a battleground of the political vocabulary wars, and this might be clouding the discussion. Chomsky and Wallerstein came to mind because they are some of the most outspoken (and Wallerstein ain't just a barn-burner), but I think the emphasis I tried to describe is well distributed on the left.
As I recall, the US has undertaken some serious steps against money laundering, including investigations/prosecutions of banks like Riggs, and a general tightening of the law.
John... I'm not defending the Iraq War, and I'm not really defending Bush either. So far as the Saudis go, hey, if you can figure out a way to get 25 million radical Islamists, most of whom are extremely poor, and a quarter of whom are unemployed, to become more tolerant, productive, happy folks, while simultaneously avoiding an Islamist revolution, there's a Nobel Prize (or two) with your name on it. I'm betting on Disney, McDonalds, educational reform, and possibly large dosages of Prozac.
My understanding of Saudi history accords with LB's and Weiner's. I think to understand why they spend so much to promote Wahhabism you have to look at the historical background: the House of Saud owes its power almost entirely to its alliance with the Wahhabis, starting in 1745. After the First World War, Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud began his conquest of the Arabian peninsula aided by the Wahhabi Ikhwan, motivated at least in part by the desire to spread Wahhabism. I'm skeptical of any view that the royal family is the moderate faction in KSA; although there are surely individual royals who are more liberal, the whole power structure rests on religion. I have no idea what would happen if the government collapsed, but it does seem like it would be bad.
I'm skeptical of any view that the royal family is the moderate faction in KSA
Not on our political spectrum, on the spectrum that exists in the Kingdom. Look at who they are fighting internally and it's pretty plain that they are not the most radical fundamentalists on that peninsula.
Sure, but they're still pretty radical, and probably on the right even within the Kingdom (although it depends how you conceptualize the spectrum -- left/right is probably not the best way).
Yes, they are quite radical. Moreso than Iran or really any other country in the region. However, the power struggle there is between them and the even more far out Salafists. There is no real opposition that could be considered moderate, unless you count certain factions within the ruling family, and they aren't really in opposition.
My point is that nobody should make the mistake of assuming, like the Keyboard Kommandos did with Saddam, that whatever comes next would have to be an improvement. Far, far more likely that it would be even more repressive and medieval.
I agree completely. What I'm saying is that there are more moderate groups in society (as opposed to politics) and it's a mistake to group the Saudis together with, say, Asad or Mubarak as rulers who are more tolerant and progressive than their people, when the opposite is probably the case. Of course, the people who would be most likely to replace them would probably be even more extreme.
I think it all starts with a bizarre post-modern fixation on body issues in general. I remember living outside the US, where people ate, drank, slept, fucked, lived and died, and nobody thought much about their bodies, except when their bodies told them to go the bathroom.
Andrew, what I was proposing was that we get the Saudis to stop exporting fundamentalist Islam. Not to take over the country.
There have been, as far as I can tell, no consequences to speak of for the Saudis. Prince Turki al Faisal, who was implicated with Osama, took a short vacation but he's now ambassador to London.
I followed the money-laundering question for awhile. I never got the feeling it went very far, but I'm out of touch now. One impediment was that any law which inconveniences Saudi multi-millionaires will inconvenience all multi-millionaires, and we don't want to rankle Paris Hilton's pretty little ass.
I don't feel responsible for Democratic policy. They don't listen to me at all. I think that the present war fever is thoroughly irrational, and a lot of smart Democrats have been suckered once already and look ready to be suckered again.
I really don't see the possibility of the US doing less than necessary. I see the likelihood of the US doing the wrong things, and too much too. And yes, what we should be doing is not nothing, but I don't see any danger of our doing nothing.
Well gee, they could also stop treating them as third world trash beneath "true" European society and then concentrating them all in what amounts to ghettos. But I suppose that would be "negotiating with terrorists," or some such.
Posted by Ugh | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 2:12 PM
If this isn't the stupidest cause the right has latched onto, it's awfully goddamn close. Arthur Silber has an excellent comparison of the current reaction and last year's "Newsweek is responsible for the rioting and deaths in Afghanistan." Internal consistency is a bitch.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 2:18 PM
That's a good one, Apostropher. I also recommend Ken MacLeod with a Marxist interpretation of the social-liberal-turned-hater-of-Islam which we see so much of these days.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 2:20 PM
I told Sully that I was another liberal reader who thinks he's been coming off as a major bigot lately. But I doubt that my position will be represented.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 2:21 PM
Sullivan's totally leaving out the cannibalism option.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 2:25 PM
Thesis: The church bombings, riotings, lynchings, etc. perpetrated by white Americans ca. 1865-1965 gave the U.S. a choice: Capitulate totally to white supremacists, deport all white people, intern them, or throw them into the sea.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 2:27 PM
So, if we all send FL insane e-mails, can he post them without bearing any responsibility for their contents?
Like if I were to send this to FL:
By this end of this cartoonish controversy, we're going to have to deal with the fact that many conservatives don't really believe that Muslim people (or really any people who disagree with them) have rights. I only see five options for dealing with such people, and with people who post e-mails written by them:
1) Deport them
2) Deport them...to the moon! Without any air
3) Send them to the moon, but with terraforming equipment
4) Agree to be their slaves for life, and bind our offspring, real or potential, to the same agreement
5) Kindly ask them to stop being so crazy
FL can post it, and then if people want to criticize him, he can say he's just passing along his reader's views?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 2:29 PM
Well let's see: governments in the Middle East are orchestrating riots for their own purposes so Europeans should kick out the European Muslims who are, for the most part, not rioting.
Yeah, that'll help.
Posted by my cat | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 2:30 PM
W/d, that's an excellent idea, partly because it explores the underappreciated terraforming options. Mars needs Muslims!
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 2:31 PM
ca. 1865-1965
It's still happening today. But I guess when the perpetrators are liberal homosexuals it doesn't register so much on your outrage meter, huh Weiner?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 2:33 PM
Apparently Weiner and I were dipping into the same part of the hive mind there.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 2:36 PM
(4) Throw all of them into the sea.
Typical conservative. Absolutely no thought at all about effects on the environment.
Internal consistency is a bitch.
Loathe as I am to praise him, Kaus made exactly the same point on the last bloggingheads.tv episode.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 2:39 PM
7 - Yep. Sullivan's just doing the same thing Fox does (as pointed out in Outfoxed). Deploy the "some people say" tag, and you can get away with saying anything you want.
As an aside, this little ditty is fun to use in a joking way with friends and lovers:
"Some people say we should be making out right now."
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 3:28 PM
Enough people have commented on this little 'outburst' of Sully's that it's clear he's the only one who believes that he's distanced himself from the "reader's" opinion.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 3:55 PM
Would it be irresponsible to speculate whether Sully's correspondent is also Friedman's taxi driver?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 3:59 PM
I probably shouldn't have burned those churches in Alabama.
Mathews thinks that he can get me to confess by insinuating I'm gay. But I'm not. I'm just a liberal who burns down down churches.
There's nothing at all wrong with being gay. But I'm not. NOT! Why's Mathews saying these things?
Well, gotta go buy some marshmallows and maybe pick up some loose women. Women really get off on burning churches, that's why I do it. I'm really a heterosexual love machine, you know, besides being a pyromaniac liberal secularist.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 4:19 PM
Hey -- to be totally off-topic and self-centered, sorry for being out of touch. I've been flat on my back with strep throat. I'm probably going to redisappear until Monday, because now that I'm feeling better (God, I love antibiotics), I should spend the weekend paying attention to Sally, Newt, and Mr. Breath (who has requested to be referred to as 'Buck' from here on out. Mine is not to question.).
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 4:20 PM
15: It would be irresponsible not to.
Glad you're feeling better, LB.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 4:44 PM
Feel better, LB!
And "Buck"? Great name for the Mineshaft. Rawrrr.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 4:55 PM
You have a 4-inch Buck, too?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 4:57 PM
Juan Cole and others have been arguing, persuasively, I think, that muslim anger over the cartoon, though thoroughly baffling to us, is perfectly understandable from their perspective.
If you accept this, then people are people - we're just in different circumstances.
If you don't, or aren't informed enough to appreciate it, then there appears to be something deficient about the rational faculties of lots of muslims.
A lot on the Right are taking this second path. "The World is full of violent barbarians!"... There was a lot of taunting by righties along the lines of, "What? Don't you lefties think that teh Iraqis are capable of democracy? You don't think they''re hopeless barabarians do you?"
Now, of course, it's, "The left is going to have to do some hard thinking, because they can no longer deny that these people are hopeless barbarians."
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 6:01 PM
A different subject, but it is a cartoon, it is political, and it is awesome.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 6:04 PM
Can we call Mr. Breath "Buck Breath"? Very Mineshaftesque.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 6:20 PM
Speaking of cannibalism, when *was* the last time you spoke out against it, Labs? Why so silent on the issue, hmm?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 6:21 PM
Re. 8:
Dear Mr. Abu Labs,
I have always been one to listen to all sides of an argument. I have even been, I believe, indulgent. However, this last episode by righty bloggers has shown that they are of no use using their mouths for argument. I'm honestly starting to suspect that the only use they have is for fellations.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 6:23 PM
Why so silent
Because it's rude to talk with your mouth full.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 6:23 PM
Careful, she's a maneater.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 6:24 PM
I think Yglesias misses Sullivan's point completely. Yglesias seems to think that Sullivan is simply talking about the Iraq War. But Sullivan's point seems to be that a soft accommodationist approach to Muslim fundamentalism, in which the West attempts to avoid annoying the Muslim world*, is not viable. Even if we were not looking for war, war would come looking for us. The fundamentalism needs to be confronted, and external forces must be brought to bear upon it.
I don't fully agree with Sullivan either, of course. I do think that he touches upon something important though: the left has yet to offer a coherent foreign policy alternative to the Bush/Blair approach.
*please spare us all the silly analytic obsessing over whether there is "really" a Muslim world.
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 9:00 PM
Sullivan et al are simply projecting, which is why I take 6 & 7 more seriously than probably intended.
20:You are not counting the snakeskin sheath and the optional silencer. In any case, it's not the tool...I forget.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 9:03 PM
The fundamentalism needs to be confronted, and external forces must be brought to bear upon it.
the left has yet to offer a coherent foreign policy alternative to the Bush/Blair approach
If by "the Bush/Blair approach" you mean the actual foreign policy carried out by George W. Bush, it seems to involve bringing external forces to bear on fundamentalism by (a) attacking the non-fundamentalist Saddam Hussein and (b) holding hands with the fundamentalist Crown Prince Abdullah. I think the left has an approach that's at least that coherent.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 9:29 PM
27 -- are you a pseudonymous Darryl Hall?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 9:37 PM
And this guy, though not too articulate, makes a good point: There is simply no value of "foreign policies of Bush and Blair" for which opposition to those policies means thinking that we should restrict freedom of the press to avoid offending the Muslim world. It's a ridiculous straw man.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 9:39 PM
30: What's Norbizness's approach to fundamentalism?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 9:48 PM
I just came back from Brokeback Mountain. Sheesh. I didn't expect them to get married in the end, but dang, that was some sad movie, there.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 9:56 PM
I finally get to see it on Sunday, myself. Don't ruin it for me! I'm expecting a romantic Valentine's Day heartwarmer!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 9:58 PM
Bring kleenex. Maybe a valium.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 10:00 PM
33: Truth be told I don't have any particular approach in mind, just thinking that it would be hard to be less coherent.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 10:16 PM
I think we should airdrop porn. Discuss.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 10:29 PM
Only if it's gay porn.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-10-06 10:34 PM
28 / 30.
The political dialogue Rove is preparing for us begins and ends with "The Democrats won't be tough enough, but the Republicans will. If you want to die because your leaders were nice guys, vote Democrat!"
It's worked so far (see 30). Weenie considerations of effectiveness (28) are a deliberate distraction by people trying to weaken our resolve. If we blow enough shit up, everything will be OK.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 7:27 AM
28 for 30, 30 for 28.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 7:29 AM
If by "the Bush/Blair approach" you mean the actual foreign policy carried out by George W. Bush, it seems to involve bringing external forces to bear on fundamentalism by (a) attacking the non-fundamentalist Saddam Hussein and (b) holding hands with the fundamentalist Crown Prince Abdullah. I think the left has an approach that's at least that coherent.
Military action against Hussein, and diplomacy with Abdullah, might appear inconsistent at first, but they're really not. I think it's easy to get lost in a very dense forest and fail to see the underlying contours of the land.
I think part of the left's problem is simply that many on the left, as on the right, disagree internally about foreign policy, but we don't have a final arbiter to decide the issue, as Bush does for the Republicans. There's more to it though. Bush has been quite good at articulating---albeit in mumbles---clear goals, and linking the use of hard power to those goals, even in the face of oppositional consensus. Bush worries less about how attractive his actions seem to the Muslim world. That's not always a good thing, but the aggressiveness of the approach gives me a sense that there is a struggle for the future of the Middle East, that Bush is aware of it, and that he wants to fight for it.
By contrast, the left seems to worry far more about angering the Muslim world, about adopting a softer approach, and about whether we have the "right" to "impose" our "culture and values" on the Muslim world. It's an approach that leans heavily towards finding ways to defuse any struggle as quickly as possible, and towards avoiding international confrontation as much as possible.
This is not to deny the substantial failings, and even mypoia, of Bush's foreign policy, or that the left does offer valid critiques in parts. But Sullivan has tapped into the sense that the left wishes to be less confrontational with, and overtly transformative of, the Muslim world. If one buys into Sullivan's idea that we can't avoid confrontation, then the left is placed in a position where it cherishes and wishes to protect certain values, while endorsing a foreign policy that prioritizes defusing and avoiding conflict.
I don't think Sullivan is entirely right, if that's what he's saying. The left needs to start talking more sharply about 1) what we want to do about radical Islam and 2) how we're going to do it.
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 8:05 AM
28: That's an awful lot to read into Sullivan's post. As it stands, it's just wrong. Europeans Muslims aren't rioting. Some Middle Eastern Muslims are. Deporting the non-rioting Muslims probably isn't going to improve matters. As MW pointed out, there are coherent plans on the left and the coherent plan on the right seems to involve going after the non-fundamentalists.
I'll agree that appeasement isn't a valid foreign policy, but no one here's suggested getting rid of the free press. To hear Sullivan, one would think that unless I go right now and start a neo-Nazi march, I'm surrending my right to freedom of speech. It's perfectly consistent to think that the Danish press should have the right to publish what they want and to wish that they would exercise some prudence.
Sorry that the problem might require some analysis, but to do otherwise is rather like blaming the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal on Pat Robertson. They're all Christian, right?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 8:13 AM
Also, many of Europe's Muslims are natural-born citizens. What Sullivan is not-quite-tacitly endorsing (remember, by his standard we're all "objectively pro-Saddam") are pogroms. It's vile and he should be ashamed.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 8:18 AM
Military action against Hussein, and diplomacy with Abdullah
It's not diplomacy with Abdullah. It's cravenly servicing Abdullah. (Here's a trial balloon that proves my point: Currently the stance of the U.S. government is that Saudi Arabia is a major ally.)
By contrast, the left seems to worry far more about angering the Muslim world, about adopting a softer approach, and about whether we have the "right" to "impose" our "culture and values" on the Muslim world.
You started off by saying, basically, that the left was not monolithic. So whence this generalization? Are those words in direct quotes because you actually quoted them from an actual leftist? Who is opposed to the idea of encouraging increasing democracy in the Middle East, once that idea is separated from starting ill-conceived wars?
Some elements of the Left, like Michael Moore, are perfectly happy to antagonize, say, the Saudis. My guess is that the dominant element of non-warmongering foreign policy thinking in the U.S. is that our best chance to transform the Middle East is by winning a war of ideas. (This is generally framed in terms of hard vs. soft power, but it might be better to think of it in terms of gun vs. brain power, because the word 'soft' is too easy to make sound 'wimpy', as in 28.)
I guess if you think, with Sullivan, that most Muslims are totally committed to imposing sharia on Western Democracies then the brain power approach won't work. But I don't think some speeches from the leader of Hizbollah, the Party Of God, are indicative of that, any more than Pat Buchanan's call for a culture war to "take back America, street-by-street" showed America's Christians could only be contained by violence.
And anyway, the Bush approach still doesn't make sense in that framework. His particular war doesn't actually have any rational relationship to transforming the Middle East at all. As Emerson points out in 40, it's about looking tough. Violence is satisfying and makes you feel like you've done something (it also kills people), but that doesn't mean it necessarily does accomplish anything. The impulse to go to war against Iraq because the Middle East isn't working is like the impulse to hit your TV with a baseball bat because it's not working. Natural, but not the basis of a coherent policy.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 8:51 AM
Well, maybe we do have to drive them all into the sea.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 9:00 AM
Jesus Christ. At what point is that . . . that . . . [I can't find a vile enough word for her] that person going to be shunned and vilified in the way she so richly deserves? What is wrong with people who applaud her or refuse to condemn her?
Yes, I'm sputtering.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 9:44 AM
I don't think Sullivan was endorsing the readers he quoted. To my eyes the emphasis was on the fact that these are supposedly liberal readers making some very illiberal suggestions.
Matt, I think it's an oversimplification, even for a blog, to say that the US is "cravenly serving" Saudi Arabia. The US wants to keep the Saudi government in power, and Abdullah in some control, because Abdullah is far more Western-friendly and liberal than his rivals, and because the Saudi government is far more Western-friendly and liberal than the Saudi population. The measures that have been sought, and won, include some educational reform of Saudi schools, arrests of the more radical clerics, and the beginnings of a push to deradicalize Islam. This is actually a case where a soft touch is very necessary. The last thing anyone wants is a disintegrating, weakening, or falling Saudi government.
Saudi Arabia highlights the importance of winning the war of ideas, and on this point I think the left has been particularly strong.
Finally that the left is not monolithic doesn't prevent certain generalizations from validly being made about the emphases of its rhetoric or values. But if you're right that we can't do so, then obviously we can't speak of the left as offering a coherent alternative to Bush's policies either.
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 10:16 AM
we can't speak of the left as offering a coherent alternative to Bush's policies either
But of course, no liberal or Democrat (except perhaps Zell Miller) does this. Instead, we'll talk about particular people (politicians, think tankers, who ever) having good ideas for dealing with the global struggle against extremism (my personal pick for what we should call the forever-war), and we endorse those. Liberals and Democrats, when being sincere, don't go around saying "the left is X."
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 10:27 AM
I don't think Sullivan was endorsing the readers he quoted. To my eyes the emphasis was on the fact that these are supposedly liberal readers making some very illiberal suggestions.
Sullivan may have left enough wiggle room to say he wasn't endorsing them, but he certainly wasn't condemning them. He said:
Why would he be relieved at this if he thought it was unequivocally bad to think about genocide?
When I spoke of Bush cravenly servicing Saudi Arabia I meant specifically that he is far too cozy with and deferential to the seriously illiberal Saudi royal family. There is simply no coherent rationale for treating Saudi Arabia as an ally while invading Iraq. None.
As for the coherence of the left, my objection isn't so much that you generalized about its emphasis as that you made stuff up about its emphasis. Who's worrying about offending fundamentalist Muslims, except insofar as this is a factor in the war of ideas? And you're right that, since the left isn't monolithic, they can't come up with a coherent foreign policy, since many within the left will disagree with aspects of any given policy. That's why it's really stupid to demand that "the left" come up with a coherent alternative. Many individuals and institutions on the left have come up with alternatives to the Bush-Blair policy; address your critiques to them, not to some leftist policy in your head.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 10:33 AM
Shorter last paragraph: What washerdreyer said.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 10:36 AM
Shorter Andrew: "We have to blow some shit up."
"I don't think Sullivan was endorsing the readers he quoted."
He was being provocative in a cute, despicable way. All the rightwingers use that particular plausible-deniability trick -- Limbaugh, Suullivan, Instapundit.
Andrew, one of the main points is that Saudi Arabia has always been one of the main exporters of Muslim fundamentalism, perhaps the main one, as well as being one of the most conservative Muslim countries at home.
Bush has been an effective demagogue. Unfortunately, his Mideast policy is fraudulent and inept.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 10:52 AM
So you believe that Sullivan is thinking about endorsing genocide, Matt? Seriously? I'm not sure how else to interpret this: Why would he be relieved at this if he thought it was unequivocally bad to think about genocide? Given the absurdity of such a reading, perhaps a slightly more charitable reading of Sullivan would be better.
The rationale for treating the two governments differently is simple: one acts cooperatively with the US on major interests, and is not belligerent; the other acts in opposition to the US on major interests, and was highly belligerent. The removal of one government would result in a far more hostile and belligerent regime; the removal of the other government could not possibly result in a regime any more hostile, and may well result in a less belligerent regime.
I'm not saying that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea. My only point is that it's not logically inconsistent. Nor is it, to tie this back to the original point, central to what Sullivan was referring to... though his post was so short that we might be arguing about shapes in the clouds.
With respect to the left, I think that you're insisting that a generalization be accurate across all cases in order to be useful. That some on the left will disagree internally doesn't render a generalization about the left inaccurate, or incoherent. Leftist foreign policy approaches could be said to generally favor a high degree of moral respect for international law and treaties, a deep suspicion of the usefulness of military force, a heavy emphasis on soft power, an emphasis on fairness between nations, and an analysis of international history that posits economic interest as the impetus of conflict. That generalization doesn't have to be true of every thinker on the left to be accurate as a generalization.
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 11:11 AM
Yes John. But the Saudi government can't simply shut down every Wahhabist cleric without provoking a massive and possibly fatal popular reaction. Nor, for that matter, is the Saudi government internally consistent enough (as long as we're on the topic) for external American pressure to translate into such a policy. There are members of the Saudi government, some of whom exercise control over security forces, who use the Islamists as political leverage.
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 11:19 AM
Sullivan wasn't seriously advocating genocide, any more than other racists really want to "send them all back to Africa". He was just being provocative in a shitty, creepy, deniable way.
The Saudi export of fundamentalism turned out to be effectively belligerent. Most of the highjackers were Saudi, and Osama got most of his financial support, from Afghanistan on, from the Saudis and the Gulf States. Saudi finance is not transparent, with all kinds of slush funds and enormous unmonitored private fortunes.
One reason that the Saudis have always been nice to us is that we mostly do what they want us to do, and that hasn't changed under Bush.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 11:19 AM
So you believe that Sullivan is thinking about endorsing genocide, Matt?
Those are Sullivan's own standards. Google his name and "fifth column" or "objectively pro-Saddam". He laid down the rules for this; fuck him.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 11:20 AM
Andrew, since October 2001 all the tough guys have been telling me that the one thing that's impossible is to do anything about the Saudis who actually supported Osama.
It's been just like the mother who says "My child is very sensitive. If he misbehaves, spank the child sitting next to him, and my son will understand."
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 11:23 AM
All I know is what I read. Sullivan said he was relieved to see that hard thinking was being provoked on the left. I myself am not relieved to see bad things happen. I conclude that Sullivan did not think that what happened -- that's the quote from the alleged leftist who was toying with genocide -- was a bad thing. What do you think he meant by saying he was "relieved"?
With respect to the left, I think that you're insisting that a generalization be accurate across all cases in order to be useful.
I'm not, and it's pretty rich of you to say that in a post in which you advocate "charitable reading." I'm insisting it be accurate in many or at least some cases. Your statement about how the left worries about whether we have the "right" to "impose" our "culture and values" on the Muslim world was not accurate, nor was the original claim about avoiding 'annoying' the Muslim world. The stuff about international law, fairness between nations, and soft power I would accept as accurate, but why isn't it a coherent alternative to Bush/Blair policy?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 11:33 AM
If he's not endorsing genocide, then what the fuck is he doing? Either he's making an argument, implicitly or explicitly, or else he's just shooting his mouth off to no purpose.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 11:49 AM
Matt, I said that the left, in keeping with an emphasis on fairness and self-determination, worries more i.e. more than the right, about the legitimacy of imposing political institutions and values on other cultures. I don't really feel like rummaging around to find exact quotes supporting this, but I imagine people like Chomsky or Wallerstein would fit well.
I don't read Sullivan anywhere close to regularly, though I remember finding his columns in TNR interesting and reasonable. Hard to believe that he's become so reactionary as to be yelling about fifth columns, or that he meant any kind of endorsement of that second email he quotes. Still, if it's not simply an ill-chosen example of a liberal who suddenly finds the Bush clash of competing ideologies narrative attractive, then perhaps I'm trying too hard to squeeze something reasonable from the post. Maybe he is just shooting off his mouth and being a general asshole.
John, I really think that this is where some of the criticisms of the US Middle East policy go off the rails. The argument seems to be: "We COULD put more pressure on the Saudis, and shut down radical Islam and the support of it much more completely than has been done, but we don't do so. Yet doing so is in our clear interests, and besides which, it's just the right thing to do. So the US Government must not be doing this because the Saudis have friends among US oil executives and lobbyists, who "persuade" the government to take a softer approach."
I'm sure you've seen the movie. But the premise of this argument just strikes me as wrong. The Saudi government is composed of various figures struggling for control against one another, in a country of massive and heartbreaking inequalities of wealth that has been thoroughly radicalized. The Saudis can only be pushed so far because their own position isn't exactly stable.
But hey, I'm no expert. If you've got a link to an article that takes the "Saudi is unstable, so tread lightly" thesis on, I'd love to see it.
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 1:35 PM
Unfortunately, Andrew is probably right about this. If the Saud family fell, I think we'd realize that they were the moderate faction in that nation.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 1:49 PM
Really? Now, my grasp of the history here is shallow, so if someone wants to point me to something that shows that I'm simply wrong, I'm happy for the education. But, my understanding of the history of Wahabism is that the only reason that it has any substantial following worldwide is that the House of Saud (whatever their personal levels of religious belief) has been pouring buckets of money into it since they've had oil revenues. My futher understanding is that if Saudi oil revenues stopped funding Islamic radical opinion worldwide, most people believe that a great deal of that radicalism would dry up (not all, of course, but a great deal). I thought this was pretty uncontroversial, but my level of knowledge on the subject is such that I could easily be mistaken.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 1:56 PM
I don't want to derail this thread too much, but do want to tell LB that I hope her deposition on Tuesday went well.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 2:01 PM
Oh, we slaughtered the poor bastard. The partner I work for is a nightmare, but it is kind of fun watching him so long as the person he's batting around the room like a crippled mouse isn't you.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 2:03 PM
I'm sorry -- did that sound overly bloodthirsty? It went well.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 2:19 PM
65: No, it didn't.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 2:25 PM
Andrew, I'm having trouble following your argument. My objections to the recent Iraq war are that it doesn't seem to be going well on its own terms and that few of the various motives we've been given for it seem to have been valid.
And as you've said about Saudi Arabia, it seems quite possible that Saddam will be replaced by someone worse. They say that the big gainer so far has been Iran. (Just recently an Israeli guy said more oir less this.)
It's always bothered me too (since long before the movie; I did extensive research) that the Saudis, who are the source of a lot of the problem, seem to be untouchable and almost unmentionable. I think that if Saudi Arabia had been a major focus from the beginning, without our being tied down in Iraq, there would have been various things we could have done with them besides kiss their cheeks. Right now we have no leverage on the Saudis at all, because we chose to go after Saddam.
And you're not only fine with everything, but you think that the problem The Left has is that it's not. And you talk in these wise tones, as if you're a serious thinker and all.
As I've said, Bush has the demagogy down pat. He may or may not have some kind of rational plan, different than any of the plans he's told us about. Or he may just be improvising on the "blow shit up" principle.
A lot of the Bush supporters seem to be supporting something that Bush has never talked about, sort of a nudge-nudge wink-wink military policy. They seem amused and contemptuous when Bush's critics ask him to try to articulate an intelligible policy.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 2:31 PM
Oh good. The deponent was an expert, and a really, really, heavily credentialed one, and he showed up without a vestige of a clue of what the case was about or what support was necessary for his opinion. He was hurting badly by the time he left.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 2:35 PM
Chomsky or Wallerstein
OK, I'll grant you the point about Chomsky and Wallerstein, but that just shows what a slippery term 'the left' is. Sometimes it's used to describe barn-burning radicals like those two, sometimes it's used to describe the actual left half of the political spectrum -- Democrats and such.
And often, I'm convinced, people who are talking about 'the left' are strategically equivocating, so they can seem to say nasty things about Democrats, and when called on it say "I just meant Chomsky!" Who has approximately zero influence on Democrats; he wouldn't be invited to speak at a Democratic equivalent of CPAC (see link in 46).
(I'm not saying you're strategically equivocating like that. But the guy who said, "The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead - and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column," he was doing that.)
I also doubt it would be a good idea to bring down the house of Saud. Even though I think LB is probably right, and Wahabiism's global following is pretty much entirely due to Saudi sponsorship, I don't think that genie (so to speak) can be easily put back in the bottle. Yet I also think the Bush family's personal coziness with the Saudi royal family may be hurting our Saudi policy. We could probably do more to restrict Saudi money laundering for terrorists without bringing down their government.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 2:39 PM
Matt, Fair point on Sullivan, given that particularly stupid line. So far as the "actual half" of the left spectrum... as you pointed out, the term is itself a battleground of the political vocabulary wars, and this might be clouding the discussion. Chomsky and Wallerstein came to mind because they are some of the most outspoken (and Wallerstein ain't just a barn-burner), but I think the emphasis I tried to describe is well distributed on the left.
As I recall, the US has undertaken some serious steps against money laundering, including investigations/prosecutions of banks like Riggs, and a general tightening of the law.
John... I'm not defending the Iraq War, and I'm not really defending Bush either. So far as the Saudis go, hey, if you can figure out a way to get 25 million radical Islamists, most of whom are extremely poor, and a quarter of whom are unemployed, to become more tolerant, productive, happy folks, while simultaneously avoiding an Islamist revolution, there's a Nobel Prize (or two) with your name on it. I'm betting on Disney, McDonalds, educational reform, and possibly large dosages of Prozac.
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 3:11 PM
My understanding of Saudi history accords with LB's and Weiner's. I think to understand why they spend so much to promote Wahhabism you have to look at the historical background: the House of Saud owes its power almost entirely to its alliance with the Wahhabis, starting in 1745. After the First World War, Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud began his conquest of the Arabian peninsula aided by the Wahhabi Ikhwan, motivated at least in part by the desire to spread Wahhabism. I'm skeptical of any view that the royal family is the moderate faction in KSA; although there are surely individual royals who are more liberal, the whole power structure rests on religion. I have no idea what would happen if the government collapsed, but it does seem like it would be bad.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 3:18 PM
I'm skeptical of any view that the royal family is the moderate faction in KSA
Not on our political spectrum, on the spectrum that exists in the Kingdom. Look at who they are fighting internally and it's pretty plain that they are not the most radical fundamentalists on that peninsula.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 3:21 PM
Sure, but they're still pretty radical, and probably on the right even within the Kingdom (although it depends how you conceptualize the spectrum -- left/right is probably not the best way).
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 3:25 PM
Yes, they are quite radical. Moreso than Iran or really any other country in the region. However, the power struggle there is between them and the even more far out Salafists. There is no real opposition that could be considered moderate, unless you count certain factions within the ruling family, and they aren't really in opposition.
My point is that nobody should make the mistake of assuming, like the Keyboard Kommandos did with Saddam, that whatever comes next would have to be an improvement. Far, far more likely that it would be even more repressive and medieval.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 3:38 PM
I agree completely. What I'm saying is that there are more moderate groups in society (as opposed to politics) and it's a mistake to group the Saudis together with, say, Asad or Mubarak as rulers who are more tolerant and progressive than their people, when the opposite is probably the case. Of course, the people who would be most likely to replace them would probably be even more extreme.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 4:03 PM
I think it all starts with a bizarre post-modern fixation on body issues in general. I remember living outside the US, where people ate, drank, slept, fucked, lived and died, and nobody thought much about their bodies, except when their bodies told them to go the bathroom.
Posted by Adam | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 4:05 PM
Especially in Saudi Arabia.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 4:06 PM
Andrew, what I was proposing was that we get the Saudis to stop exporting fundamentalist Islam. Not to take over the country.
There have been, as far as I can tell, no consequences to speak of for the Saudis. Prince Turki al Faisal, who was implicated with Osama, took a short vacation but he's now ambassador to London.
I followed the money-laundering question for awhile. I never got the feeling it went very far, but I'm out of touch now. One impediment was that any law which inconveniences Saudi multi-millionaires will inconvenience all multi-millionaires, and we don't want to rankle Paris Hilton's pretty little ass.
I don't feel responsible for Democratic policy. They don't listen to me at all. I think that the present war fever is thoroughly irrational, and a lot of smart Democrats have been suckered once already and look ready to be suckered again.
I really don't see the possibility of the US doing less than necessary. I see the likelihood of the US doing the wrong things, and too much too. And yes, what we should be doing is not nothing, but I don't see any danger of our doing nothing.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-11-06 4:42 PM