A recent diary, by
jmorton,
DEMS are Weak, lamented the lack of s strong answer by Senate candidate (D-MO) Claire McCaskill when confronted over Iraq and terrorism by her Republican opponent, Talent (R). Jmorton argued:
Start out every rebuttal with "NO you are wrong - Bush and the Repub's policy are making America weaker and less safe"
But the Republicans have a narrative: "Islamo-fascists (or whatever they are calling them) are attacking us because they hate freedom. The response is to spread freedom throughout the Middle East." We need not just to denounce their wrong policies, but offer a counter-narrative that leads to better policies. Some ideas below the jump.
Al-Qaida is leading edge of a huge wave of anti-Americanism throughout the Muslim world and beyond. It is a political movement. Today we are even seeing some very radical youth converting to a kind of "Islam" in order to be part of that radical movement.
The policies of the Bush administration have vastly intensified the anger at the US throughout the world, which has greatly facilitated the recruitment and operation of jihadist movements. The collapse or absence of states -- Afghanistan, Pakistan's tribal territories, Iraq, and Somalia, for instance -- creates the ungoverned spaces in which this global insurgency can organize and recruit. It also exploits local situations, such as the conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan or between Somali warlords and the internationally recognized government, to gain some space for maneuver.
But the Bush administration is right when it says that the basic reasons for the popularity of such movements is the failure of states to deliver to their people in the Middle East and South Asia. But it is wrong in identifying how those states have failed. Whenever Bush wants to draw attention to some of the more outrageous statements of Iran President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, he says we should listen to what people say. But when it comes to the majority of Muslims, he is completely deaf.
Poll after poll shows that the main international grievance of Muslims is the suppression and oppression of the Palestinians. According to Woodward, Even Bush's buddy, Prince Bandar, came to him in 2002 and, on the order of then Prince Abdullah, threatened to cut off contact with the Saudi government if Bush did not do something to help the Palestinians.
An Gideon Levy wrote in Ha'aretz the other day:
The declared aim of U.S. policy in the Middle East is to bring democracy to the region. For this reason, ostensibly, the U.S. also went to war in Iraq. Even if one ignores the hypocrisy, self-righteousness and double-standard of the Bush administration, which supports quite a few despotic regimes, one should ask the great seeker of democracy: Have your eyes failed to see that the most undemocratic and brutal regime in the region is the Israeli occupation in the territories? And how does the White House reconcile the contradiction between the aspiration to instill democracy in the peoples of the region and the boycott of the Hamas government, which was chosen in democratic elections as America wanted and preached?
There are many other problems in the region, but so many flow from this one. At the other end of the "Greater Middle East," Afghanistan, and, thanks to our supremely incompetent occupation, Iraq, illustrate another problem: not the lack of "freedom," but he lack of rule of law and legitimate order. It is this lack of daily justice and security that makes the utopian ideal of the caliphate attractive for some Muslims, just as various Marxist or ethnic utopias appealed to the aggrieved in other societies. And the reality of the lack of security and rule of law creates the outlaw spaces where terrorists can organize.
Meeting this challenge does not mean agreeing with Arab or Muslim public opinion. But it does mean taking it seriously enough to engage in a political dialogue (not unidirectional PR run by incompetent hacks) and trying to solve problems. The US has to stand for the security of Israel. But it also has to stand for the security of the Palestinians and Lebanese and show that we mean it. This will make it much easier to enlist allies in isolating al-Qaida, arresting the hard core, and drying up its recruitment.
In sum, al-Qaida is a transnational insurgent movement. The battle is mostly political. We have failed to know our enemy, and we have failed to know ourselves. The longer this failure goes on, the more we are at risk.