Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Scary that this has to be explained. But if Bush would explain it half as good as you do we proably wouldn't be in this mess.

What we have here is: "Salafis Wildly Indignant About Nearly Everything." Commonly known as "SWINE"
Apologies to Al Capp

Hi Tom. I am a huge fan.
But on this topic I disagree with your conclusion. Yes there'll always be a 'cause celebre' with certain people, especially given the population of unemployed in Middle-east. However in this case it's a matter of degree.
There's a huge difference between engendering a 'cause celebre' with 100,000 people, and 1 million as a result of radical incompetence in Iraq.

Tian Chen,

you have drawn the wrong conclusion about Tom's conclusion. he agrees with you on 'radical incompetence'. the point here is that, as he also posted sunday, we should not make policy based on what is going to piss off terrorists.

Yes, Tian, size matters, but let's keep the discussion on what matters. Our f--k-ups in Iraq? Good discussion. The stupidity of rerunning the WMD drill on Iran? Good discussion. And so on and so on.

But 'cause celebre' arguments? That's like arguing the bed sheets are wet when we should be getting at the roots of the massive fever.

I wanna stay on topic BECAUSE lives are on the line. Not a new concept for me, but a professional discipline I was taught by my elders years ago when I entered the field.

Tom,

When I saw this, and Bush's subsequent press conference, I thought, "Man, doesn't this completely support the idea that Iraq has become ground zero of GWOT (militarily, not core vs. gap speaking) >

Have I got this right? Hasn't Iraq indeed become the epicenter of GWOT, and despite crappy sysAdmin execution in Iraq, hasn't Bush effectively moved the center of gravity to Iraq instead of Manhattan?

Hi Tom,

Another big fan here, but agreeing with you only a little bit here, unusually.

Afghanistan should be only a historical 'cause celebre' in the sense that the job should have been done properly, before moving on to Iraq. If that had been the case Afghanistan would be a mere historical reference point for the jihadist, but for the Core as well, namely as a success story. A proper job in AFghanistan would have built more positive momentum against the jihadist. Nevertheless, you are right, a cause celebre will always exist for these people.

Tian Chen,

Let me attempt to channel: Big Bang is about speeding up the process--killing speeds up and you're talking 4 billion people in the Core (stop smoking, eat right, exercise). Firewall option strategically very limiting.
What's done is irreversible. Let's move the pile forward shall we?

I think Glen said it best in the first comment. Bush's complete failure to explain this properly is more than half the problem. I never cared if Iraq had WMD, even when I was worried they were going to shoot it at me in the initial invasion. It was always about showing the Arab/Muslim world a different way to live was possible. The fact that we have royally screwed up the peace since then does not invalidate the initial argument.

Been reading your blog and New Map for the past month or so. This blog, however, has provoked me to kudos.

You don't try to appease someone whose world view includes your demise. It didn't work with Hitler and it won't work with extremist Islam.

Bush, however, needs to keep his eye on the ball. It's not about nukes in Iran and spreading democracy, it's about IEDs (wherever they lie) and spreading opportunity.

I think Tian Chen's point is being unfairly overlooked, and misrepresented.

The degree to which the fanatical element is being pissed off is immaterial - they will always hate the Core. The point is the uncommitted middle. That is where the battle for hearts and minds is fought, and right now is being lost due to the lack of an effective SysAdmin force.

That is the roots of the arguement, surely?

Bill Arkin, who can be a bit uneven, had a good piece on this that seem to track with Tom's thoughts on the subject, both in this post and on the NIE.

I'll take another route: I simply disagree with all of it.

There are really two questions here: One, could something have been done which would have been a net positive? And two, is the administration capable of doing such a thing?

As far as the first question, the answer is, I believe, yes. Doing Agfhanistan right would have been a much easier problem, and, given the resources and political will to go into Iraq, the raw capability to do it right was there. 9-11 gave us the perfect opportunity.

Had we done Afghanistan right (ala Marshall Plan vision and commitment), journalists would not not be estimating how badly we screwed up... which is the real point of USA Today article. If people were talking about the 'cause celebre', it would be in terms of the next problem that we were going to solve, not the last problem we had created, and I don't think any of us would have a problem with that.

Heck, had we done Agfhanistan right, we might even be in Iraq now, doing it right (or at least better).

As to the second question, is the adminstration capable of doing the right thing, I'd have to say that empirically, they are not. They invested the money and time that would have been better spent in Afghanistan in Iraq, and they screwed the hell out of that. The best score we could give them is 0 for 2.

So, given that (empirical) fact, than unless one believes that for some reason tomorrow is going to be nothing like today, or the thousand days before, then the best action for the us really is inaction. If one is empirically likely to fail, and the cost of failure is high, then one should not try, and we should wait for a more competent government before we contemplate further grand action.

The fact is that the Big Bang will go on without us, and if we're hurting the process, we should get out of the way until such time as we figure out how not to suck.

Oh, the bathwater stinks all right, but don’t let it make you wince so badly you forget there’s a baby in there!

Yeah, jihadists will always have a “cause celebre.” If they didn’t, it would be necessary for them to invent one.

But lets make a key distinction: there are “causes celebre” they can use to preach to the choir (surely any on your list would do) and then there’s the ones which work well in bringing moderates to the extremist fold.

“The US supports such and such political entity in such and such a way with such and such consequences.” Such a statement can be rather vague and abstract to those who aren’t already politically minded.

“The US started a war, which led to thousands of our civilians dying each month.” “The Americans sent a man to the moon, but they can’t bring back our electricity.” – neither vague nor abstract. You may say these statements are oversimplified (and they may be) but there’s a big grain of truth to both, and they’re plenty easy for anyone to understand, relate to, and be angered by.

Of course, if this war had been executed halfway competently (and I think you have fairly exhaustively outlined ways in which it could have been) then the above statements wouldn’t have their bite- they too would be esoteric statements, meaningful only to the choir.

But let’s not forget that while you have been theorizing better ideas, you-know-who have been acting on the old and not-so-good ones (not just an inability to react and learn but *pride* at this very fact), and those are creating very real consequences that all of us really are going to have to live with for a very long time.

To paraphrase Rumsfeld, you go to war with the leadership you have, not the leadership you wish you had. And I think it’s downright dangerous to overlook the fact that some leadership goes a lot further towards alienating reasonable, moderate people from our cause then others.

Sean: Tian Chen has a point, but it's tangential to the point Tom was making in this post.

Zane: Tom fundamentally disagrees with you. he has often gone on the record saying that he supported the Saddam take down in part because he KNEW we would suck and that it would take that amount of suckitude to change the US military and that that is happening.

I have to disagree, Zane. I'll take two major disruptions in the region over one perfect Afghanistan. Next thing you'd know, all of the extremists would be calling Afghanistan another American/Zionist imperial colony, ruled by Western leaders, built up only to flank the heart of Islamic world and put pressure on Iran.

Our reckless indicates, to some degree, our commitment to our principles. This thing is less about ideal outcomes and more about necessary actions. There are a lot of unideal states in the Middle East, but no more leaders who are completely unwilling to interact with the rest of the civilized world.

One of the great things about Ahmedinejad is his willingness to play the diplomatic game, keeping Iran "in play". Iraq and Afghanistan took themselves off the map altogether, leave military action or patience as the only options for change. The fruits of Iraq/Afghanistan are showing themselves clearly in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf states, in increased dialogue.

I agree with Tom, The terrorists have always been there and will always been there. These antiAmerican or rather antiglobalization networks do not see a future that includes them, they are chosing to isolate themselves from a new world order. As Tom states in one of his lectures "Most terrorists are middleclass, they are smart and educated. However, they do not see a future that includes them. They cannot stop the future for us but they can stop us from enjoying it". The US has been dealing with these forces in the middle-east for at least 3 decades. Bin Laden has been planning the attack on the World Trade Towers since the early-mid 90's. Don't get me wrong, the war is no laughing matter but I almost have to laugh at the fact that the NIE report is getting so much publicity. Really, is there nothing else going on in the world right now that every news channel is covering this like it's some kind of revelation.

Glenn, I agree with you 100%.

Respect your enemy and acknowledge the strategic setting.

There's a certain amount of "I ain't going to let some dirty ffking jihadi tell me what to do!" in Tom's comment.

War and killing always engenders a strong counter-reaction. We wouldn't care much about the Jihadis if they hadn't attacked us. They could have screamed at us all they wanted, or killed all the people in Chechnya for all we would really care. There was no "war of civilizations" when they were just attacking the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan.

There are different sorts of actions we can take in the Islamic world. Some of them will make us more enemies than others. That was Tian Chen's point. I'll hazard the guess that our withdrawal from Saudi Arabia engendered fewer Jihadi recruits than our invasion of Iraq. I'll even hazard the guess that our invasion of Aghanistan was seen as a legitimate and predictable defensive reaction by much of the the Islamic world. Invading Iraq on the other hand was seen as illegitimate by much of the world and appears to have spread us too thin to succeed in either theatre.

While it may be true that there is a core of Jihadi's who will hate us regardless of what we do. (Although there was a time when we were there allies.) What we want to do is to prevent that core from growing. And it would be stupid to claim that our actions and/or follies don't or can't influence that growth.

So when we invade someone else, or declare them our enemy, we should think through the consequences and counter-reactions. It may be that the action, like the invasion of Afghanistan, will be well worth the risk of making more enemies. But if we are not capable of killing our enemies in the first instance, and engendering stability and security in Afghanistan and Iraq in the follow on, I can't see how we can claim to have succeeded or improved our strategic position at the end of the day. And right now Iraq looks like a total screw-up and a net disaster. I don't buy the "creative destruction" idea that sometimes gets floated here.

I have to join the chorus, here; this is one of the very few, if not the only, areas where I'm inclined to disagree with Dr Barnett.

I've heard mentioned- by him and others- several reasons why the invasion of Iraq was a good thing: closer engagement with Iran, forced reforms of our military, waves of change spreading through part of the gap, stabilizing a part of the world with lots of oil. How many of those things could have been achieved, to one extent or other, by concentrating our efforts in Afganistan? How many opportunities have we lost, or wasted, because we overextended ourselves?

The discussion is interesting and useful, but the position that says "Afghanistan should have been done properly" before going into Iraq takes a static view of history. Events in and around Iraq were very dynamic at that time, and time was running out for the "box" that had contained him since 1991. It was all dissolving--sanctions, embargo,no-fly zones--all of it. Those inspectors that were let in at the last minute before the war would have stayed only as long as the sanctions regime lasted (i.e. not much longer). France, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and many others were working hard to dismantle the mechanisms of "containment." Remember, too, that we had just been forced to move our Headquarters out of Saudi Arabia to Qatar. It was a busy and time and there were many forces pulling in different directions.

Having spent many months in that area--Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE--before the war (as well as during and since), I saw first-hand how the cooperation we were getting from our Kuwaiti and Saudi hosts was crumbling around us. Time was running out, and fast.

John McCain offered the best description of the dynamism of that time in his address to the 2004 Republican National Convention. The full text is HERE

Not trying to take on justifying the war with this small note--only providing historical context. After the fact, (in this event and every other) we forget the strength and complexity of the imperatives we were facing at the time the history was being made. Looking back, events seem more static, discrete, and black/white than they ever do at the time.

Relevant excerpt is below.

-Marc

"Those who criticize [the decision to move on Iraq] decision would have us believe that the choice was between a status quo that was well enough left alone and war. But there was no status quo to be left alone. The years of keeping Saddam in a box were coming to a close. The international consensus that he be kept isolated and unarmed had eroded to the point that many critics of military action had decided the time had come again to do business with Saddam, despite his near daily attacks on our pilots, and his refusal, until his last day in power, to allow the unrestricted inspection of his arsenal. Our choice wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

John McCain, 30 Aug 2004

I think those who support this 'Jihadist cause celebre' view have absolutely no idea how nearly finished OBL and al Qaeda were after they escaped Tora Bora. OBL's "far enemy" 9/11 attack and the consequential loss of the only Sharia Law nation in the world (i.e. Taliban) had lost him any credibility or support in Jihad world. It was only a matter of time before the N. Pak tribes dropped the dime on him. And this was all within the context of those in Jihad world, focused on the "near enemy" (secular ME governments) moving even more quickly toward non-violent confrontations including the M. Brotherhood's strategy of using the ballot box.

Iraq changed that. In OBL's own words, a godsend for him. Iraq blended the "far enemy" with the "near enemy;" returned and greatly expanded OBL's credibility and support in Jihad world; and dramatically shifted ever faction of the Jihadists back to violence as the primary, if not only, path for getting to their objectives.

Just imagine how much better all those "Jihadist cause celebre" targets you mentioned could have been handled without our Iraq excursion. Our "deterrence bank account" would be overflowing instead of the widespread sense in the region that we are beatable. Our tangible resources would be focused on mopping up violent Jihadists. We'd have Saddam cornered and could have eventually undermine him and likely gain a regime vying with Iran for our good graces - at the very least helping to eradicate the Jihadists.

No, us impatient folks, with the odd combination of unimaginative and unrealistic thinking, looking for the big-bang, got played and played hard by the most extreme Jihadists.

Any one with any doubt should read Abu Bakr Naji's "Management of Savagery" -- al Qaeda's playbook and the evil twin of "Blueprint for Action"

http://www.ctc.usma.edu/naji.asp

or go back and read Zar's strategy that has basically come to fruition -

http://www.cpa-iraq.org/transcripts/20040212_zarqawi_full.html

For ‘shrinking the gap,’ there's a lot of options between "do nothing" and the moronic approach we're taking and continue to take in Iraq of playing right into our opponent's strategy.