The Enemy At Home (35 page)

IGNORING THESE REMARKABLE
signs, Bush’s liberal critics have raised two questions: What if the Iraqis don’t want democracy? What if the Iraqis don’t want American troops in their country? The first question is extremely odd because it presumes that there is a group of people that has no intention of controlling its own destiny. If there is any evidence for this, in Iraq or anywhere else, it has never been produced. On the contrary, I turn on my television and see Hajem al-Hassani, the Sunni Arab speaker of the National Assembly, say, “My dream is to be the Tip O’Neill of Iraq.”
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Recalling O’Neill’s resemblance to our federal government—big, fat, and out of control—I am not ordinarily excited to find a man who wants to emulate Tip O’Neill. But I wish al-Hassani good luck. They need more rotund, jovial wheeler-dealers in Baghdad today.

What if the Iraqis don’t want us there? Columnist Bob Herbert argues that “the occupation is perceived by ordinary Iraqis as a confrontation and a humiliation.” James Dobbins writes, “The beginning of wisdom is to recognize that Washington has lost the Iraqi people’s confidence and consent.” Robert Byrd laments that “we are now the occupiers, despised by the people of Iraq.”
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The interesting question is how all these people have become so knowledgeable about what the Iraqi people want. Their conclusions seem to be drawn solely from the existence of an insurgency that is made up of less than 2 percent of the Iraqi people and draws its support almost exclusively from the minority Sunni population. In fact, the composition of the insurgency by itself refutes the idea of a broad-based resistance of American occupation. If the Iraqi people opposed America’s presence,
all
segments of the population would rebel. In fact the rebellion derives its support entirely from the one group that was rudely ejected from power.

Congressman John Murtha points to an opinion poll showing that more than half of Iraqis “want us out and almost half of them think we’re the enemy.” Put aside the fact that the poll was ambiguously worded, and other polls find Iraqis want American troops to stay for at least another two years.
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Even if Murtha’s preferred pollsters were correct in their findings, what do those results really prove? Polls change because people change their minds. The way that democratic countries express the people’s will is not through shifting poll results but through the decisions and policies made by their elected representatives. If the Iraqi people don’t want American troops there, they can vote for a government that will demand that the troops leave. Murtha’s conclusion that “we’ve lost the hearts and minds of the people” seems to be largely a product of wishful thinking.

For a group that is supposed to be committed to democracy, liberals seem strangely drawn to a cornucopia of explanations for why democracy isn’t working in Iraq. Columnist Bob Herbert discounted the Iraqi election because “a real democracy requires an informed electorate,” whereas the Iraqi electorate is “woefully uninformed.” For Arianna Huffington, Iraq had a democratic election “in name only” since “most of the candidates lacked name recognition.” Jonathan Steele found Iraq’s election defective because many Sunnis didn’t vote and therefore “voters had only a limited choice.” Robert Dreyfuss found the process flawed because “the Sunni community was tricked into voting” and moreover “the Sunnis who were elected to the parliament do not represent the resistance.” Writing in the
American Prospect,
Ivan Eland speculated, on no historical evidence in particular, that “spreading democracy doesn’t reduce terrorism and, if anything, actually makes it worse.”
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Even in Afghanistan, after that country held its first free election in history, leading liberals complained about the inadequacy of the democratic process. “At least a third of Afghanistan is still so dicey that voters there cannot be registered.” Due to the influence of warlords, “voters had to choose between the unknown and the notorious.” “Afghanistan remains unstable.” The elected leader, Hamid Karzai, “has not managed to extend his authority beyond Kabul.” “Opium production is at a record level.”
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When evaluating these criticisms, let us remember that, in Iraq as in Afghanistan, we are witnessing fledgling democracies. Think of how imperfect and unsteady America’s first steps toward democracy were. The important point is that 50 million Afghans and Iraqis are free, and for the first time in their history, they have a chance to control their own destiny.

Finally, we must confront the argument—first advanced by the left, but now popular among all Bush’s critics—that the war in Iraq has only succeeded in creating more terrorists. Ted Kennedy argues that Iraq has now become “a fertile new breeding ground for terrorists.”
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Richard Clarke argues that as a result of the American presence in Iraq, “President Bush has sowed the seeds of current and future terrorism against the United States.” This argument is based on a paradox: the war against terrorism is producing more terrorists. The basis for the claim is the increased number of terrorist and insurgent attacks following the Iraq invasion. Jimmy Carter cites these attacks as “direct evidence that the Iraqi war has actually increased the terrorist threat.”
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Carter’s argument was supported in the fall of 2006 by an intelligence report that called Iraq a cause celebre for terrorists.

But there is an alternative explanation for the increased violence. The radical Muslims have upped the ante in Iraq because they have realized how much they stand to lose if Iraq becomes a functioning, pro-American democracy. Iraq is a grand experiment by America to see if the alien seed of democracy can take root in the Middle East. The past few decades have witnessed a great democratic tide sweep the world. Latin America, once run by dictators and strongmen, is now largely democratic. Africa, once the province of Big Daddy despots, has seen a burst of popular self-government. Despite some backsliding, Russia is on the stumbling road to democracy. Many of the “Oriental despotisms” of Asia have been transformed into democracies. Who would have thought any of this possible a century ago? Countries like Japan and India, with no history of self-government, have become functioning democracies.

Yet with the exception of Israel, until recently there were no democracies in the Arab Middle East. To find Muslim democracy you have to go to Turkey, Indonesia, or Malaysia—in the Arab world, democracy does not exist and has not existed. America is trying to change that, and to establish a new model that traditional Muslims might wish to emulate. Already the effects are being felt. Egypt held a parliamentary election in November 2005 in which all groups, even the candidates affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, were allowed to participate. “Now everybody in Egypt is talking about democracy,” says Negad El Borai, director of the Cairo-based Center for Democratic Development. “Nothing would have happened without U.S. pressure.” In 2005, Lebanon held its first parliamentary election in three decades. It, too, was the result of a popular movement inspired by Iraq. Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Druze in Lebanon and longtime critic of the United States, said, “When I saw the Iraqi people voting, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.”
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If a democratic wind blows through Iraq, and then spreads to other countries, we could see the beginning of an historical transformation no less momentous than the transformation of the former Soviet Union.

The Islamic radicals are terrified at this prospect. This is why they will do anything to subvert Iraqi democracy, even to the point of provoking a civil war that would surely produce untold numbers of Muslim deaths. Not that the radicals abhor democracy per se. As we saw with the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian territories and the advances of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the radicals are likely to do pretty well in free elections. What truly frightens them is pro-American democracy. This is something entirely new in the Arab world. Until now the Islamic radicals have had to face only America-backed dictators who are typically secular tyrants with little support from the people. Given a choice between secular tyranny and Islamic tyranny, many Muslims might prefer Islamic tyranny. But what if the choice were between Islamic tyranny and Islamic democracy? Then traditional Muslims would have a serious alternative to consider, and the outcome could well be different.

The Bush administration has made costly blunders in Iraq. Some of these could have been avoided, others are in the nature of war. There were also catastrophic blunders in World War II—errors in planning, training casualties, bad intelligence, battles lost that should have been won. Even so, the fight went on because the whole country recognized the importance of defeating Hitler. The difference now is that the United States is no longer united: one side seems dedicated not to defeating the Islamic radicals but to defeating the United States. There is a war against the war, and it is being waged by the left with mainstream liberal encouragement. The reason for this homegrown resistance is political. A few years from now, if Iraq is a standing—even if somewhat fragile—democracy, this result will be a magnificent triumph for Bush’s policy and assure his place in history. It will also consolidate the claim of the Republican Party to be the party that can be trusted over the long term with national security. The implications for the Muslim world, and for America, are huge. Therefore two groups are making supreme efforts to defeat Bush in Iraq. The first group is the Islamic radicals and insurgents, who are indeed fighting harder because they have a great deal to lose. The other group is the American left, which is also fighting harder because it too has a great deal to lose. Although these two groups do not speak a word to each other, they have in Bush a common enemy, and therefore, whether they fully realize it or not, they are allies in the war against the war on terror.

WE ARE NOW
in a position to better understand the real message contained in bin Laden’s 2004 and 2006 videotapes. Bin Laden offers a vital clue when he informs Americans in his 2004 statement that “in truth, your security lies not in the hands of Kerry, Bush, or Al Qaeda. It lies in your own hands, and whichever state does not encroach upon our security thereby ensures its own.”
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Clearly bin Laden was proposing some sort of a deal. But to whom? And what deal? Many interpreted bin Laden to be offering America the same terms that he seems to have offered European countries: stop supporting the war on terror and we will stop targeting your country.

This interpretation rested upon reading the word “state” to mean “country.” But bin Laden didn’t say “country.” This was a letter addressed to Americans, and its subject was the upcoming choice in the 2004 election. Clearly bin Laden was saying that American states that vote against Bush’s war on terror would be spared future attacks. In a sense bin Laden was taking up a complaint that Michael Moore issued immediately after 9/11. Moore protested that bin Laden had picked the wrong targets, because he had concentrated his attacks in states that did not vote for Bush. In his 2004 statement, bin Laden seems to be telling blue America: I know you may be scared of me because of what I did on 9/11, but if you vote against Bush, I will not target your states the next time.

In other words, bin Laden’s signaling can be understood as an effort to establish a broader political alliance. Speaking to Americans in his 2006 videotape, bin Laden called for a “truce.” Again, a truce with whom? Bin Laden recognizes, of course, that no truce is possible with Bush. His truce is obviously directed to a different group, Bush’s political opposition. More than once in the videotape, bin Laden refers to polls showing that a majority of Americans oppose America’s involvement in Iraq. While scorning Bush for ignoring these polls, bin Laden goes on to praise “the sensible people” in America who protest the Iraq war and who have helped to produce declining public support for it. Bin Laden calls on these “sensible people” to recognize that wars are not won based on “strength and modern arms” alone but also through the kind of “patience and steadfastness” that America does not seem to have but the Islamic radicals do.
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It is now possible to discern bin Laden’s message to the American left, which I express in my own words: “Your group and my group have very different ultimate goals. You want a permissive society, and I want sharia. Even so, the remarkable thing is that our strategic objectives at the current time are very similar. You want to destroy President Bush, and to do this you have to discredit Bush’s war on terror. I too need to defeat Bush’s war on terror. Neither one of us can succeed on our own. We in Al Qaeda are too weak to defeat the U.S. military. You are not strong enough politically to defeat Bush in your country. We need each other. So let us coordinate our efforts. I want you, the sensible people, to accept a silent truce between Al Qaeda and the American left. You may be reluctant to do this because of a fear of terrorism. But if you work with me I will make sure that I don’t target your states in any future attacks. Here is how our collaboration can be most effective. I will intensify jihad against Bush abroad, and you fight against him in your political battle at home. My insurgents and martyrs will continue to increase the body count of American casualties in Iraq and elsewhere, and you can use my efforts to undermine the will of the American people to continue Bush’s war on terror. This way, the patience and steadfastness of the Muslim fighters can outlast America’s enormous military might. I win, and you win also. It will be the greatest victory, fought by the two most improbable allies, in history.”

TEN

The Left’s Hidden Agenda

Unmasking the Liberal-Islamic Alliance

F
OR THE PAST
five years we have been debating the war on terror, yet there is something surreal about this debate. The premise of the debate is that both sides want the United States to win the war, and the disagreement is over the best way to fight Islamic radicalism and terrorism. But is this premise really true? Consider this. When there is good news for American foreign policy, it is ignored or downplayed by liberals in the press. For all Iraq’s problems, there has been remarkable progress there since Hussein’s removal from power. The country has seen the holding of free elections, restoration of sovereignty, formation of a new government, ratification of a constitution, introduction of a sound currency, revival of oil production, a newly established stock market, a surge of new businesses, training of new police and military, rebuilding of roads, opening of schools, new fire stations, an improved computer network, and the increased availability of clean water. Per capita income in Iraq has doubled since 2003 and is now higher than before the invasion. There are now more than a hundred independent newspapers and TV stations in the country.

How often do you see reports about any of this on TV or in the newspapers? Typically there is no coverage, and when there is, it is minimal. Good news in the war on terror is assiduously downplayed. Recently the U.S. government released documents seized from Al Qaeda safehouses in Iraq. The documents conveyed the Al Qaeda leaders’ desperation that the insurgents were losing their ability to destabilize the country. Each month, they confessed, the Iraqi government grows stronger. Suicide attacks had been reduced to ineffective “hit and run” operations. Indeed, according to Al Qaeda, its best hope at this point was a “media strategy” aimed at disguising the failing insurgency. One might think all of this would be front-page news in America, but typically the stories reporting the documents were minimized. A typical example was the
New York Times,
which did a small back-page report on the subject.
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When victories in the war on terror are too obvious for the press to ignore, they are greeted by leftists in the media with silent dismay or open ridicule. Matthew Rothschild, editor of the
Progressive,
was unimpressed by America’s killing of Iraq’s terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Rothschild predicted that Zarqawi’s demise would have “virtually no effect” since “Zarqawi was losing popularity even among Sunni insurgents.” The leftist blogger Juan Cole scoffed that in portraying Zarqawi as a terrorist mastermind the U.S. government had “overestimated his importance.”
The Nation
insisted that Zarqawi had become “something of a sideshow” and that by killing him Bush may have succeeded only in creating a “martyr.” Consequently Zarqawi’s death “remains part of a larger and tragic story of miscalculation.”
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By contrast, when there is bad news for American foreign policy, leftists in the media become visibly excited and cannot stop talking about it. Years after Abu Ghraib, the
New York Times
continues to report on it, and liberal outlets like salon.com titillate their viewers with “new photographs” aimed at further humiliating the U.S. government. Similarly leftists reacted with undisguised glee to civil strife in Iraq following the destruction of the Shia mosque in Samarra. At the first sign that marines may have killed some two dozen Iraqi civilians in Haditha, the liberal press began daily front-page coverage of the allegations, and John Murtha and his leftist admirers quickly proclaimed the scandal “worse than Abu Ghraib.”
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There is a pattern here: the left reacts to events as if America were the enemy and toward the Islamic radicals and insurgents as if they were the good guys. This is the most troubling consequence of a divided America: one side now cheers for the enemy and labors for its success. With the help of the left, Al Qaeda’s “media strategy” appears to be working.

But why would the left take the side of America’s sworn enemies, while treating the American government as the adversary? The issue of the left’s motives is the great unanswered question among conservatives. So far, there are several theories to explain the left’s behavior. Perhaps the most common theory is that the left is weak and does not understand the threat. The right-wing pundit Mark Steyn has made valiant attempts to show the left that Islamic fundamentalists are really illiberal and don’t care for people like Barney Frank and Maureen Dowd. Since leftists refuse to become exercised over the threat posed by “crazy mullahs,” Steyn concludes that they are “unserious” about foreign policy. Another conservative theory is that the left hates America. As Jeane Kirkpatrick once put it, the left always blames America first. David Horowitz and others insist that this is because the left is made up of “neo-Communists” in a new garb.
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Radio host Michael Savage has a different theory, conveyed by the title of his recent book
Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder.

In reality, the left understands the threat of Islamic fundamentalism very well. Contrary to Mark Steyn, it is very serious about foreign policy. Nor is the left weak in promoting the values it believes in. As we have seen, the left has an aggressive global campaign to undermine patriarchy and traditional religion, and to promote secularism, feminism, and the corruptions of American popular culture. This campaign is far more comprehensive than anything contemplated on the right. Its centerpiece is a battle against traditional Islamic morality, which is viewed by the left as the greatest barrier to achieving the triumph of liberal morality worldwide. So the Muslims who say America is “against Islam” are partly right. Of course, it is not America that is against Islam, it is the cultural left. The left does not want to acknowledge its hostility to Islam, so it accuses the right of fighting a religious war. The left charges the Bush administration with political imperialism to distract attention from its own campaign of cultural imperialism.

Yet, oddly enough, the left does not want this campaign of social transformation to be extended to the war on terror, even though military conquest would be an obvious way to transform illiberal societies like Afghanistan and Iraq into more liberal ones. The left’s reluctance is not due to weakness but due to calculation. Instead of fighting a war, the left seeks a kind of global law enforcement campaign against bin Laden and “the guys who did 9/11.” The left would prefer the narrowest possible fight against the most illiberal forces in the world. Again, the critical question is why.

One reason is that Bush is fighting Islamic radicalism with democracy. The left frequently poses as the champion of democracy. It has to, because liberals are generally committed to the democratic idea, and the left relies on liberal support to secure mainstream legitimacy for its agenda. Recall, however, that the left has won virtually all of its victories in America not through the democratic process but by going around it. How did abortion become legal? How did the left get its radical doctrine of secularism adopted? How has the left managed to overturn virtually all laws against pornography? How is gay marriage being pushed today? In every case, the left has relied on the courts to declare a “right” and then enforce that right against the will of the American people and their elected representatives. In this sense, the biggest victories of the cultural left in the past few decades have all been achieved undemocratically.

The left knows it is imperative to circumvent democracy in the Muslim world. Notice how the left never calls for democratization in Syria or Iran. The left may fault America for being “hypocritical” in supporting Pakistan, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, but it rarely presses for democratization in those countries either. In the 1980s the left constantly pressured the United States to compel its allies, like Pinochet in Chile, Marcos in the Philippines, and the Afrikaner government in South Africa, to democratize. So why has the left lost its appetite for democracy in the Middle East? The reason is that leftists have figured out that in that region the tyrants are relatively liberal, and the Muslim people are socially and religiously conservative. The Gulf kingdoms are the most liberal regimes in the Middle East today—there is a parliament and a relatively free press, and women enjoy a wide array of liberties—but all of them are ruled by kings and oligarchs. When Kuwait recently gave women the vote, it was the hereditary ruler, the emir, who had to pressure the elected parliament to adopt the measure. The most liberal regime in the Middle East in the past half century was Iran under the shah. As long as you didn’t protest against the government, you could dress as you liked, believe as you liked, and live as you liked. Eventually the shah was overthrown, not so much because he was a tyrant as because he was a liberal!

The notion of “liberal tyranny” is surprising because Americans are accustomed to thinking of “liberal democracy.” We often use the terms “liberal” and “democratic” synonymously, presuming that liberalism leads to democracy and that democracy is an expression of liberalism. In reality, liberalism and democracy are quite different. Liberalism means individual rights. Democracy means majority rule. Liberalism refers to the right of individuals to shape their lives. Democracy refers to the right of a people to collective self-determination. One may say that, in America, we have exercised our democratic choice for a liberal society. We have chosen liberalism from within democracy. But this is not an inevitable choice. Other societies can vote differently. In Algeria during the early 1990s, the Islamic Salvation Front campaigned on a platform of ending women’s employment, enforcing the veil, and making sex outside of marriage punishable by death. The party won resounding victories at the polls. The electoral success of Hamas in the Palestinian territories and of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt confirms the pattern of Muslims voting for illiberal outcomes.

For the left, Iraq is a frightening example of what happens when a tyrant like Saddam Hussein is replaced by an elected government. Repressive though he was, Saddam Hussein was also something of an egalitarian. He treated men and women with brutality, but (from the left’s point of view) at least he treated them with equal brutality. Although rights didn’t count for much under Hussein, men and women had the same rights in court. Conceding that Iraq was “no feminist paradise” under Hussein, the
New York Times
praised him for granting women “access to educational, professional and personal opportunities.” Moreover, Hussein was a secular ruler who kept the mullahs under strict control. By contrast, Iraq’s democratic constitution declares Islam the official state religion, makes Islam a valid source of law, and permits no law that contravenes the clear teachings of Islam. Iraqi elected officials seek to implement some form of sharia, at least in domestic or family law. What makes these rules even more appalling from the left’s perspective is that they have been enacted through popular consent. It is the Iraqi people who have rejected feminism and secularism. Women can vote in Iraq and they too supported the regime that is in power. Having seen what Muslims do when they get democracy, the American left seems to have secretly given up hope for democracy in the Middle East. As a consequence of Iraqi democracy, the
Times
warns, “the future of women’s freedom is in serious question.” The new leaders “could be consigning Iraqi women to a life of subjugation” and secular Iraqis to “a bleak, Iran-like future.” In the same vein, columnist Maureen Dowd fretted that “the Iraqi election may actually be making things worse” because it “is going to expand the control of the Shia theocrats.”
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This, by the way, is the same Maureen Dowd who earlier complained that the United States would never let the Iraqis choose their own leaders and rule their own society.

Author Sam Harris draws the logical conclusion: America should not encourage democracy in the Muslim world. “It would be like opening the polls to the Christians of the fourteenth century.” Harris’s candor is exceptional. Most people on the left won’t admit that they consider Muslims too backward and fanatical to entrust them with the ballot. So leftists subject democracy in the Muslim world to impossible standards. Here is a classic statement from the liberal Jewish magazine
Tikkun:
“There can be no democracy in Iraq without a fundamental redistribution of legal, economic, political and social power toward women and their equal representation throughout the region’s economies and governments.”
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By this measure democracy is impossible in the world today, since nowhere do women have equal representation in economic and political life. A kind of utopianism, in this way, is deployed as a weapon against progress.

THE LEFT WOULD
rather use the United Nations and other international groups that it dominates to promote its agenda. Liberal enthusiasm for the U.N. seems rooted in a belief in ethical universalism. “The emphasis on patriotic pride is morally dangerous,” the philosopher Martha Nussbaum writes. “We should give our first allegiance to…the moral community made up of all human beings.” Another prominent thinker, Richard Rorty, pines for what he terms “the parliament of man, the federation of the world.”
⁷
But do not for a moment think that Nussbaum, Rorty, or anyone on the left would trust the world community with genuine legislative power. The main problem with “world government” is that it would place a chastity belt on the left’s social agenda. By Western standards, most people in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East are very conservative. On issues like feminism and homosexuality, they are to the right of Pat Robertson! They are likely to impose far more restrictions than now exist in the West on birth control, divorce, homosexuality, and abortion. I doubt Nussbaum and Rorty would want to live under the moral rules enacted by a truly representative world government. For these reasons the left should be very relieved to be spared world government and to have the United Nations instead. As a self-styled surrogate for the global community, the U.N. enables the left to espouse the ideal of world government without having to actually live by that ideal.