That’s the title of my CPAC panel this afternoon. I’ll be sharing the stage with Jim Gillmore, president of the Free Congress Foundation and the former governor of Virginia, and Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and to Afghanistan. (Incidentally, I think I can safely say that I’m the least distinguished member of that panel.) If you’re not at CPAC or don’t care to make it over to the Marriott Ballroom at 2:05 p.m., here’s a brief look at my position:
First, when confronting a truly mass movement (as the Arab Spring is), the resulting governments are much more likely to reflect the underlying values of the culture than the previous, undemocratic dictatorships.
Second, while everyone seems to exalt “democracy” without qualification, democracies that do not respect individual liberties are just another form of tyranny.
Third, while it may (arguably) be true that the human heart longs to be free, there is nothing in the human heart that typically longs to make someone else free — especially if that someone else has substantially different religious beliefs and values from you.
Thus, an Arab spring that combines a culture that seethes with anti-Semitism and a population captivated (at least for now) by Islamists cannot possibly be good for America (or Israel) in the short term. It has certainly not been good for religious minorities in the Arab world. Much of the irrational exuberance over the various Arab rebellions rests in naive misunderstandings of modern Middle Eastern culture. The ultimate result of the Arab Spring is less the ascendance of a bunch of secular Facebooking and Twittering idealists than the Iranian Revolution 2.0.
This may very well be the true face of the Arab Spring:
David---Arab Spring--good or bad? A panel? Uh--this should be one of the shortest "panels" ever held! Any person arguing for "good for America" has to be discounted as a lunatic! So adjourn the panel and go have a martini!
"Much of the irrational exuberance over the various Arab rebellions rests in naive misunderstandings of modern Middle Eastern culture. "
Bingo. There is an tremendous disconnect between what "Arab culture" (and Persian culture) really is and how it's reported in Western media. The traditional media is eager to exaggerate the cultural similarities between the West and the Middle East, particularly as it relates to the more youthful Arabs and Persians. Sure, the kids really like American pop-culture. But, the fact of the matter is just because people love Lionel Richie in Iraq (and they do), doesn't mean that they don't want to stone women to death for cheating on their husbands, or decapitate men who come out of the closet. The "moderate" Muslim really only exists (in that part of the world) in the imagination of Western liberals and journalists.
Moreover, the Arab Spring is a popular uprising. Nothing new there, we have seen dozens of these kinds of uprising throughout the world in the last 100+ years. Even in the best of circumstances with the most docile of cultures, they generally end badly. I would point to 1959 Cuba for a great example.
What complicates these popular uprising in the Muslim world is - well - Islam. Ismamacism is the populist movement of the Arab/Persian worlds. How can that end any way other than badly?
"especially if that someone else has substantially different religious beliefs and values from you."
I would add that it's just not their religious values and beliefs that are problematic - and they are very problematic. It's their cultural beliefs that go back 3-5 thousand years that are a problem. While the Founders of this country were raised on the works that sprang from the Enlightenment, and Rome and Greece, those kinds of texts and ideas don't exist anywhere in the Middle East. As I have heard other people describe it: Democracy and freedom as it is understood in the West just doesn't exist in the cultural DNA of the Arab and Persian cultures. I don't see that changing in the next 40-years.
The problem is that we have an amateur in the White House, who is appointing naive amateurs to critical posts in our government, on the advise of his academic theorizing friends who hate America.
This is way past the emperor has no clothes. In that story the emperor's nakedness only made a fool of him. In this one the emperor's nakedness has set the world on fire.
There's a recent video game called "Don't Take it Personally, Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story."
I think the talk should be renamed: "Don't Take it Personally, USA, It Just Ain't Your Story."
I am 36 years old. For as long as I have been politically aware, I have been assured that the Arab Street is really quite nice, just whipped into periodic frenzies against the US, the West, Christianity, short skirts, Israel, or the logos of ice cream cups by their dictatorial leaders, who use those things as a convenient distraction for the discontented people of their countries.
I rejoice in the Arab Spring and Arab democracy because I want that excuse to go away.
It never served the United States well to support anti-communist authoritarians anywhere: the Communists merely continued spouting rhetoric unhampered by the necessity of actually sustaining an economy. Communists only collapsed when they ran out of opponents to blame.
So it will be with the Islamists: eventually Arabs will discover they cannot have a 20th or 21st century standard of living with a 8th century standard of government -- and they will change or disppear. (I said disappear, not die. I'm not a theoretical historian, but if it can happen to the Romans, it can happen to Islam.)
That "eventually", of course, glosses over years of pain and suffering in the Middle East -- but I'm not sure any American policy enacted would do anything but prolong the suffering, simply by virtue of being from the hated Americans. Our best bet is to keep the pain and suffering limited to the Middle East, which means ending non-proliferation, viciously hunting and punishing terrorists, and developing energy independence.
Having once thought that reading Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy magazines, earning two Int'l Affairs degrees at prestigious universities between USMC combat tours o'seas gave me special insights into war as politics by other means or some such mierda…
I now know that toppling/helping to topple/standing by while others topple Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, Mubarak, Ahmadinejad, assorted Princes named Faisal, the whole lot of them is good for the West and something we should seek to hasten. No worries about what follows. It’ll be chaos. So what. Muzzie on muzzie violence is good for the West – but for the oil. Yeah, that’s a big caveat that we COULD fix if we wanted to.
71% of Egyptians don’t want US aid. Good! Solves that one. Pakistan undermines us in Afghanistan. Super! No aid to you either. Karzai unhappy. Scheisse soup for all Afghans under Taliban rule from here to eternity!
I don’t know which of these goshforsaken heckholes is most scroowed but Syria is certainly a leading contender. Safe to say, the Alawites days are likely numbered. Even the majority Sunnis are split among a hodgepodge of competing regional/tribal and ethnic/sub-national groupings.
It’s possible to overintellectualize this stuff and I always have. Folks like Dr K_hammer and other smart conservative scribblers do so ‘cause they are compelled to write oped pieces for the big bucks. The fact of the matter is as many others have said and continue to say, there is no fixing Arab culture and Islam in particular. Let them kill themselves.
I'm guessing bad...but I'm not going to panic just yet. The bozo in the WH may yet do more harm, though.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDavid---Arab Spring--good or bad? A panel? Uh--this should be one of the shortest "panels" ever held! Any person arguing for "good for America" has to be discounted as a lunatic! So adjourn the panel and go have a martini!
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Much of the irrational exuberance over the various Arab rebellions rests in naive misunderstandings of modern Middle Eastern culture. "
Bingo. There is an tremendous disconnect between what "Arab culture" (and Persian culture) really is and how it's reported in Western media. The traditional media is eager to exaggerate the cultural similarities between the West and the Middle East, particularly as it relates to the more youthful Arabs and Persians. Sure, the kids really like American pop-culture. But, the fact of the matter is just because people love Lionel Richie in Iraq (and they do), doesn't mean that they don't want to stone women to death for cheating on their husbands, or decapitate men who come out of the closet. The "moderate" Muslim really only exists (in that part of the world) in the imagination of Western liberals and journalists.
Moreover, the Arab Spring is a popular uprising. Nothing new there, we have seen dozens of these kinds of uprising throughout the world in the last 100+ years. Even in the best of circumstances with the most docile of cultures, they generally end badly. I would point to 1959 Cuba for a great example.
What complicates these popular uprising in the Muslim world is - well - Islam. Ismamacism is the populist movement of the Arab/Persian worlds. How can that end any way other than badly?
"especially if that someone else has substantially different religious beliefs and values from you."
I would add that it's just not their religious values and beliefs that are problematic - and they are very problematic. It's their cultural beliefs that go back 3-5 thousand years that are a problem. While the Founders of this country were raised on the works that sprang from the Enlightenment, and Rome and Greece, those kinds of texts and ideas don't exist anywhere in the Middle East. As I have heard other people describe it: Democracy and freedom as it is understood in the West just doesn't exist in the cultural DNA of the Arab and Persian cultures. I don't see that changing in the next 40-years.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe problem is that we have an amateur in the White House, who is appointing naive amateurs to critical posts in our government, on the advise of his academic theorizing friends who hate America.
This is way past the emperor has no clothes. In that story the emperor's nakedness only made a fool of him. In this one the emperor's nakedness has set the world on fire.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere's a recent video game called "Don't Take it Personally, Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think the talk should be renamed: "Don't Take it Personally, USA, It Just Ain't Your Story."
What is the exact context of the video? What exactly is the occasion that drew this crowd. Where is it happening?
This seems too unreal to believe; and what is harder to believe is the profound silence of the US media- including Foxnews.
Is the media dead in the USA?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am 36 years old. For as long as I have been politically aware, I have been assured that the Arab Street is really quite nice, just whipped into periodic frenzies against the US, the West, Christianity, short skirts, Israel, or the logos of ice cream cups by their dictatorial leaders, who use those things as a convenient distraction for the discontented people of their countries.
I rejoice in the Arab Spring and Arab democracy because I want that excuse to go away.
It never served the United States well to support anti-communist authoritarians anywhere: the Communists merely continued spouting rhetoric unhampered by the necessity of actually sustaining an economy. Communists only collapsed when they ran out of opponents to blame.
So it will be with the Islamists: eventually Arabs will discover they cannot have a 20th or 21st century standard of living with a 8th century standard of government -- and they will change or disppear. (I said disappear, not die. I'm not a theoretical historian, but if it can happen to the Romans, it can happen to Islam.)
That "eventually", of course, glosses over years of pain and suffering in the Middle East -- but I'm not sure any American policy enacted would do anything but prolong the suffering, simply by virtue of being from the hated Americans. Our best bet is to keep the pain and suffering limited to the Middle East, which means ending non-proliferation, viciously hunting and punishing terrorists, and developing energy independence.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHaving once thought that reading Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy magazines, earning two Int'l Affairs degrees at prestigious universities between USMC combat tours o'seas gave me special insights into war as politics by other means or some such mierda…
I now know that toppling/helping to topple/standing by while others topple Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, Mubarak, Ahmadinejad, assorted Princes named Faisal, the whole lot of them is good for the West and something we should seek to hasten. No worries about what follows. It’ll be chaos. So what. Muzzie on muzzie violence is good for the West – but for the oil. Yeah, that’s a big caveat that we COULD fix if we wanted to.
71% of Egyptians don’t want US aid. Good! Solves that one. Pakistan undermines us in Afghanistan. Super! No aid to you either. Karzai unhappy. Scheisse soup for all Afghans under Taliban rule from here to eternity!
I don’t know which of these goshforsaken heckholes is most scroowed but Syria is certainly a leading contender. Safe to say, the Alawites days are likely numbered. Even the majority Sunnis are split among a hodgepodge of competing regional/tribal and ethnic/sub-national groupings.
It’s possible to overintellectualize this stuff and I always have. Folks like Dr K_hammer and other smart conservative scribblers do so ‘cause they are compelled to write oped pieces for the big bucks. The fact of the matter is as many others have said and continue to say, there is no fixing Arab culture and Islam in particular. Let them kill themselves.
Ah, but for the oil.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse