A new Gallup poll (HT: Tempus Fugit) suggests that we’re both wrong to a degree: Islamic radicals don’t cite religious motivations, but they’re not economically downtrodden, either.

I was particularly interested in the psychology of her abductors. The men who kidnapped Carroll murdered her translator, and they were apparently closely associated with al-Zarqawi. Yet they repeatedly expressed concern that she be comfortable, and they even repaid her for her laptop when they released her, seeming to want her to think she was treated well by them. What explains this hodgepodge of cruelty and kindness?

The consequences of leaving Iraq prematurely could be a radical Islamic regime funded with oil revenues, an unfettered platform for terrorist attacks, destabilizing the Middle East and threatening America itself. Know the enemy. Zarqawi has a long history of terrorist activities. He organized the assassination of Lawrence Foley, a U.S. Agency for International Development official, in Amman in 2002, he planned terrorist attacks in Germany a year later, and he plotted last year to attack Jordan’s intelligence service and prime minister’s office, as well as the U.S. and Israeli embassies there. Three al Qaeda operators crossed from Iraq into Jordan, smuggling seven Katyusha missiles in the underbelly of an aging Mercedes with a hidden second gas tank. Moreover, Jordanians discovered a warehouse of chemical substances and 20 tons of explosives. The 71 types of chemical substances included nerve gas and substances that cause third-degree burns and asphyxiation. Ultimately, the terrorists were diverted, but this is the kind of mayhem we can expect if al Qaeda is permitted to establish paramountcy in Iraq. This year, of course, it was Zarqawi who masterminded the suicide attacks on the three tourist hotels in Amman in which dozens died.

In short, we must stay. What may have been originally a war of choice is now a war of necessity. So we must stop all this destabilizing talk about withdrawal. To withdraw to some timetable divorced from reality on the ground would grant militant Islam a huge victory, and Arabs who want to democratize and modernize would know they could not count on America to stand by its friends. Whatever the cost of our staying may be, the cost of retreat would be much higher. It would hardly persuade Zarqawi and his fellow terrorists to stop pursuing Americans around the globe. For those who think it was a big mistake to go in, it would be a bigger mistake to quit now.

Indeed, a withdrawal would be presented across the Arab world as a defeat of the American infidels by the jihadists who would inflate the glory of victory and attract many new followers. It would also undermine our strategy of hitting terrorists hard abroad, while loyal allies and new friends around the world would find themselves leaderless in the global struggle against Islamist radicalism. A loss of nerve and a humiliating retreat would seriously undermine America’s role in the world. Indeed, what a foolish time to talk of getting out, just when we are getting our act together with the accelerated and improved training of Iraqi troops, and just before an election when Shiites and Sunnis are working to form the sort of institutions required to build a nation and quell the low-level civil war. After all, the insurgency is not destined to succeed. They are not fighting for a clear ideology; they lack any great power backing; they lack a positive agenda; they lack a charismatic leader; they have no territory of their own; they lack the support of the Shiites and the Kurds, as well as a significant portion of the Sunni population.

When America has prevailed in foreign ventures, it has been in the places where it stayed–in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan, never mind Germany, Japan, and South Korea; in the places where America left too soon–Haiti, Somalia, and Vietnam–the results speak for themselves.

The United States should start to gradually remove its troops from Iraq. We’ve been there long enough and done enough and spent enough.

UPDATED December 7, 2005: Now the Washington Post‘s taken notice:

Getting Dovish at Bob Jones

Speaking of going off-message, a notable college newspaper editorial last week carried this headline: “Congress must begin gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.”

“The U.S. government must gradually remove troops from Iraq, being responsible about the war but giving control back to Iraq,” the editorial said. “We’ve been there long enough and done enough and spent enough.”

Words from the Antioch Record? No. Turns out it’s the Collegian, published by the students of Bob Jones University.

The editorial rejected “remaining indefinitely” in Iraq and sending in more troops. “But how can we do that when we’ve already been there just about 32 months? When will the end come?

“The United States can’t really expect to make things perfect before ending its Middle East visit,” the paper said. “The Iraqis won’t feel independent and capable of launching out on their own until we, the Americans, the foreigners, have left.”

But after this Murtha-like flirtation, the editorial rejected “immediate and complete withdrawal” — settling on a variant of a Pentagon drawdown proposal, so long as it includes “a relinquishing of oversight to the Iraqis.”

UPDATED (again) December 7, 2005: Daily Kos gives moderate approval:

There isn’t anything startling or new in the editorial in the Collegian, the student newspaper of Bob Jones University. It calls for a gradual withdrawal from Iraq, cautions against a quick pullout, etc.

But it is startling because of where it appears — in the student paper at arch-conservative Bob Jones University, the place where Bush spoke during the 2000 primary campaign, the place that used to forbid interracial dating (I think they lifted that ban).

The editorial takes a few shots at war protesers, but hey, just calling for withdrawal is an earth-shifting event for them.

Steven Vincent authored In the Red Zone almost a year before he was murdered in Basra, Iraq. When I read about his death, I knew I had to read the book. A freelance journalist (actually a former art critic), he wrote articles from Iraq that were published in the National Review and The New York Times, among other periodicals. Unlike other journalists, he wasn’t whisked between safe zones in armored convoys. Instead, he rode unarmed with Iraqis, staying in their hotels and getting to know them first-hand. Though the book draws conclusions, it’s much more of a personal reflection than a political commentary. But those personal reflections and experiences revealed to me just how complicated and fascinating Iraq is.

Except for the Kurdish-controlled parts of northern Iraq where U.S. support is strong, everywhere Vincent went Iraqis told him they were thankful Saddam was gone but they hated U.S. troops and wanted them to leave. As Vincent explains it, the Iraqis are a proud people who are ashamed that they didn’t overthrow Saddam themselves and are even more ashamed about what the presence of the troops says about them: they can’t rule themselves.

The problem with Iraqi self-rule is that Iraq is a fractured country. I was already somewhat familiar with the major fractures: the independent, secular Kurds, the minority Sunni Muslims (largely former Baath party members), and the majority Shia Muslims, once oppressed by Saddam. But the fractures run even deeper. Families form enclaves, withdrawing so much into themselves that something like half of Iraqi marriages are between first or second cousins. This isolation reduces the sense of community; while many Iraqis keep the interior of their homes spotless, they allow garbage to pile in the streets, thinking nothing of constant littering.

That fractured condition allows radical religious leaders (or thugs hiding behind a religious name) to vie for ascendancy. Once they gain power these groups usually demand the rule of Islamic law, which oppresses women, stifles journalism, and offers draconian punishments (such as death for conversion from Islam). Yet Vincent was ambivalent towards Islam. He often dressed as an Islamic Iraqi, once even saying the words that made him technically a Muslim (Vincent calls himself a lapsed Presbyterian) in order to gain the trust of his translator at that time. He visited a prominent Shia festival in order to learn more about the popular Shia version of Islam. But that Shia festival also showed him one dark side of Islam.

The Shia, long persecuted by Saddam, have little love for the Sunni Wahabbi Islamists associated with Al Qaeda. Because the Wahabbi think the Shia are guilty of blasphemy, they often make the Shia victims of their attacks. Indeed, while Vincent visited the town of Karbala for the Shia festival of Ashura, the Wahabbi attacked again. However, it seems to be the festival itself, not the attack, that most impressed Vincent.

Ashura shocked him. Expecting to see a celebration along the lines of Easter, he instead realized that it was a glorification of death and suffering. Many Shia cut themselves to commemorate the slaughter of the Battle of Karbala.

Something else felt immobile, too: the spirit of the whole festival.

All this devotion doesn’t lead anywhere, I realized. It seemed circular, repetitious. For all its religiosity, Ashura lacked symbols that lift the spiritual imagination beyond the Battle of Karbala. What it needed, I thought heretically, was an image of resurrection: Hussain rising, Christ-like, from the ashes of his failure and defeat.

. . .

At the same time, though, I began to wonder if the Christian motifs in Shia iconography weren’t exactly what they seemed: a desire to emulate Christianity and–in a case of flagrant shirk [blasphemy]–deify Hussain and Ali, transform them into Christ-like incarnations of God. Ashura could use such a myth. Lacking a sense of transcendence, the festival offered the Shia no catharsis, no symbolic redemption. And so, like trauma victims, the pilgrims obsessively repeated scenes of the Karbala massacre, reliving the agonies, the suffering, their religiosity growing increasingly overwrought.

In the Red Zone pages 110-111

Vincent thought the antidote to religious extremism in Iraq would be a secure democracy, but he was under no illusions about how difficult achieving democracy in Iraq will be. However, he met a number of remarkable Iraqis, who in their fearlessness in the face of true danger and their love for democratic ideals, gave him hope for the country’s future.

Sadly, one of Vincent’s revelations about the difficulty of achieving political freedom in Iraq seems almost prescient about his own fate. Having just finished a lecture to Iraqi journalists about the relationship between freedom of the press and democracy, he felt as though “something hadn’t clicked.”

Leaving the meeting room, a tall, serious reporter from al-Ahkbaar newspaper stopped me. In English, he thanked me for my talk, then added, “but you underestimate the problems we face here. You talk about freedom, but Iraqi journalists still are not free. If we go too deep into some stories, we will anger certain people–and they will kill us.”

The reporter’s words startled me, and I realized at once my mistake. Swaggering a bit in my role as an American journalist, I’d forgotten that there are dangerous forces throughout Iraq who do not want the media to investigate their activities. . . . How glib my comments about “being true to truth” must have seemed! How naive my emphasis on “proof” and “fairness”–particularly to journalists who could lose their lives in pursuing those ideals! Too late, I remembered something Yussef told me: “In Iraq, freedom of the press is a freedom that must be carefully applied.”

I apologized to the young man for my oversight and thanked him for reminding me of how fortunate I am to be an American journalist. Taking constitutional protections for granted, I had stressed to the Iraqis the necessity of press freedom to democracy without noting the opposite: that without democracy, without the almost instinctive commitment of millions of Americans to principles of a free and responsible citizenry, true journalism (and many other occupations) would be impossible.

In the Red Zone pages 158-159

“The general image of the Arab woman is that she isn’t happy,” one audience member said. “Well, we’re all pretty happy.” The room, full of students, faculty members and some professionals, resounded with applause.

. . .

“We’re not in any way barred from talking to the other sex,” said Dr. Nada Jambi, a public health professor. “It’s not an absolute wall.”

. . .

A woman in the audience then charged that under President Bush the United States had become “a right wing country” and that criticism by the press was “not allowed.”

. . .

“There is more male chauvinism in my profession in Europe and America than in my country,” said Dr. Siddiqa Kamal, an obstetrician and gynecologist who runs her own hospital.

“I don’t want to drive a car,” she said. “I worked hard for my medical degree. Why do I need a driver’s license?”

“Women have more than equal rights,” added her daughter, Dr. Fouzia Pasha, also an obstetrician and gynecologist, asserting that men have obligations accompanying their rights, and that women can go to court to hold them accountable.

. . .

Like some of her friends, Ms. Sabbagh said Westerners failed to appreciate the advantages of wearing the traditional black head-to-foot covering known as an abaya.

“I love my abaya,” she explained. “It’s convenient and it can be very fashionable.”

This sentence appeared early in the article, but I’ve added the emphasis: “The group of women on Tuesday, picked by the university, represented the privileged elite of this Red Sea coastal city, known as one of the more liberal areas in the country.” Yet the article’s author chirps on about how “many in this region say they resent the American assumption that, given the chance, everyone would live like Americans” and Hughes “seemed clearly taken aback as the women told her that just because they were not allowed to vote or drive that did not mean they were treated unfairly or imprisoned in their own homes.”

Question: you’re a journalist at the Times and you face the dilemma of two competing narratives with which to cast your story. On the one hand, you can take the feminist angle and explore the obvious possibility that these women, seemingly so happy about their restrictions, might just be Saudi government stooges. On the other hand, you can take the multi-cultural, America-is-chauvinistic angle, about how the bumbling Bush administration just doesn’t understand the Arab world–it thinks it’s helping them when they’re just fine, thank you very much. How does a good liberal choose?

Answer: what was that about the Bush administration?

According to Danner, bin Laden’s goal has been to advance Islam by making the U.S. look weak, much as he did to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

Power, particularly imperial power, rests not on its use but on its credibility; U.S. power in the Middle East depends not on ships and missiles but on the certainty that the United States is invincible and stands behind its friends. The jihadis used terrorism to create a spectacle that would remove this certainty.

. . .

The 9/11 attacks were a call to persuade Muslims who might share bin Laden’s broad view of American power to sympathize with, support or even join the jihad he had declared against the “far enemy.” “Those young men,” bin Laden said of the terrorists two months after the attacks, “said in deeds, in New York and Washington, speeches that overshadowed all other speeches made everywhere else in the world. The speeches are understood by both Arabs and non-Arabs – even by Chinese.. . .[I]n Holland, at one of the centers, the number of people who accepted Islam during the days that followed the operations were more than the people who accepted Islam in the last 11 years.” To this, a sheik in a wheelchair shown in the videotape replies: “Hundreds of people used to doubt you, and few only would follow you until this huge event happened. Now hundreds of people are coming out to join you.” Grotesque as it is to say, the spectacle of 9/11 was meant to serve, among other things, as an enormous recruiting poster.

One of bin Laden’s stated strategies for weakening the U.S. has been to isolate it incrementally from its allies.

When, during the summer of 2003, the Bush administration seemed to be reaching out to the United Nations for political help in Iraq, insurgents struck at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, killing the talented envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 others and driving the United Nations from the country. When the Americans seemed to be trying to attract Arab forces to come to Iraq to help, the insurgents struck at the Jordanian Embassy, killing 17. When the Turks offered to send troops, the insurgents bombed the Turkish Embassy. When nongovernmental organizations seemed the only outsiders still working to ease the situation in Iraq, insurgents struck at the Red Cross, driving it and most other nongovernmental organizations from the country.

Insurgents in Iraq and jihadists abroad struck America’s remaining allies. First they hit the Italians, car-bombing their base in Nasiriyah in November 2003, killing 28. Then they struck the Spanish, bombing commuter trains in Madrid on March 11, 2004, killing 191. Finally they struck the British, bombing three London Underground trains and a double-decker bus this July, killing 56. It is as if the insurgents, with cold and patient precision, were severing one by one the fragile lines that connected the American effort in Iraq to the rest of the world.

Danner suggests that bin Laden sought to draw the U.S. into a conflict with a Muslim country, a conflict that through its Al Jazeera-broadcast images would turn the Arab world against the U.S. Bin Laden thought that conflict would occur in Afghanistan, but what happened there largely worked against his expectations. Rather, the war in Iraq provides for bin Laden the opportunity to disgrace the U.S. in battle. Al Qaeda operatives are counting on Americans’ weak stomach for war, and if recent political polls are any indication, their estimation is correct: U.S. citizens (and their leaders) seem to be casting about for the quickest way out of Iraq. Such a withdrawal, which looks like defeat, reinforces bin Laden’s narrative, in which the evil Superpower falls before the plucky Islamic warriors.

I agree with Danner about the existence of a weak national will, but I think we the American people deserve more blame than he allots. However, I too have been baffled by the way the Administration has justified and handled the war in Iraq. In early 2003 I was certain that the President’s threats were simply saber-rattling meant to force the hand of Hussein. I was shocked when he launched the invasion, and I still am not certain why he did so.

Of the many reasons that American leaders chose to invade and occupy Iraq – to democratize the Middle East; to remove an unpredictable dictator from a region vital to America’s oil supply; to remove a threat from Israel, America’s ally; to restore the prestige sullied on 9/11 with a tank-led procession of triumph down the avenues of a conquered capital; to seize the chance to overthrow a regime capable of building an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons – of all of these, it is remarkable that the Bush administration chose to persuade Americans and the world by offering the one reason that could be proved to be false. The failure to find the weapons of mass destruction, and the collapse of the rationale for the war, left terribly exposed precisely what bin Laden had targeted as the critical American vulnerability: the will to fight.

Note: Due to the New York Times‘ foolishness and fickleness regarding archived articles, I’ve quoted from the original article so that you can read it here.

Americans continue dying in Iraq, but their mission creeps steadily downward. The nonexistent weapons of mass destruction dropped out of the picture long ago. Now the United States seems ready to walk away from its fine words about helping the Iraqis create a beacon of freedom, harmony and democracy for the Middle East. All that remains to be seen is whether the White House has become so desperate for an excuse to declare victory that it will settle for an Iranian-style Shiite theocracy.

The Iraqis seem to be on the way to making Islam the supreme law of the land. And ironically, two myths of Western culture are what have led American leaders to be so blithe to this turn of events: a distorted multiculturalism that thinks every way of thinking is worthwhile and an overconfidence in the democratic process.

The distorted multiculturalism prevents us from telling the Iraqis that some of their ideas are unwise or wrong, and our overconfidence in democratic elections fools us into thinking that a just political system will spring forth even from a culture devoid of a just political tradition.

Whether or not he was right to invade Iraq, President Bush initiated a grand political experiment that requires more commitment and time (educating the Iraqis and shepherding the formation of their government) than any of our political factions seems willing to give.

The confrontation that we are calling for with the apostate regimes does not know Socratic debates . . . . Platonic ideals . . . , nor Aristotelian diplomacy. But it knows the dialog of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing, and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine-gun.

Islamic governments have never and will never be established through peaceful solutions and cooperative councils. They are established as they [always] have been

by pen and gun
by word and bullet
by tongue and teeth

Read it yourself.

According to him, one thing to be concerned about was the misguided multi-cultural relativism displayed by the American and British troops. A blog article describes a meeting Vincent arranged between his Iraqi friend Layla and an Air Force captain in charge of awarding small-change contracts:

I’d wanted to introduce Layla to the Gary Cooper side of America, and I felt I’d succeeded. Instead of the evasive, over-subtle, windy Iraqi, fond of theory and abstraction, here was a to-the-point Yank, rolling up his sleeves with a can-do spirit of fair play and doing good. “I want to have a positive effect on this country’s future,” the Captain averred. “For example, whenever I learn of a contracting firm run by women, I put it at the top of my list for businesses I want to consider for future projects.” I felt proud of my countryman; you couldn’t ask for a more sincere guy.

Layla, however, flashed a tight, cynical smile. “How do you know,” she began, “that the religious parties haven’t put a woman’s name on a company letterhead to win a bid? Maybe you are just funneling money to extremists posing as contractors.” Pause. The Captain looked confused. “Religious parties? Extremists?”

Oh boy. Maa salaama Gary Cooper, as Layla and I gave our man a quick tutorial about the militant Shiites who have transformed once free-wheeling Basra into something resembling Savonarola’s Florence. The Captain seemed taken aback, having, as most Westerners–especially the troops stationed here–little idea of what goes on in the city. “I’ll have to take this into consideration…” scratching his head, “I certainly hope none of these contracts are going to the wrong people.” Not for the first time, I felt I was living in a Graham Greene novel, this about about a U.S. soldier–call it The Naive American–who finds what works so well in Power Point presentations has unpredictable results when applied to realities of Iraq. Or is that the story of our whole attempt to liberate this nation?

Collecting himself, “But should we really get involved in choosing one political group over another?” the Captain countered. “I mean, I’ve always believed that we shouldn’t project American values onto other cultures–that we should let them be. Who is to say we are right and they are wrong?”

And there it was, the familiar Cultural-Values-Are-Relative argument, surprising though it was to hear it from a military man. But that, too, I realized, was part of American Naiveté: the belief, evidently filtering down from ivy-league academia to Main Street, U.S.A., that our values are no better (and usually worse) than those of foreign nations; that we have no right to judge “the Other;” and that imposing our way of life on the world is the sure path to the bleak morality of Empire (cue the Darth Vader theme).

But Layla would have none of it. “No, believe me!” she exclaimed, sitting forward on her stool. “These religious parties are wrong! Look at them, their corruption, their incompetence, their stupidity! Look at the way they treat women! How can you say you cannot judge them? Why shouldn’t your apply your own cultural values?”

It was a moment I wish every muddle-headed college kid and Western-civilization-hating leftist could have witnessed: an Air Force Captain quoting chapter and verse from the new American Gospel of Multiculturalism, only to have a flesh and blood representative of “the Other” declare that he was incorrect, that discriminations and judgment between cultures are possible–necessary–especially when it comes to the absolutely unacceptable way Middle Eastern Arabs treat women. And though Layla would not have pushed the point this far, I couldn’t resist. “You know, Captain,” I said, “sometimes American values are just–better.”

And in a recent New York Times piece, Vincent demonstrated that the British military has shown the same attitude when training Basra police officers:

In May, the city’s police chief told a British newspaper that half of his 7,000-man force was affiliated with religious parties. This may have been an optimistic estimate: one young Iraqi officer told me that “75 percent of the policemen I know are with Moktada al-Sadr – he is a great man.” And unfortunately, the British seem unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

The fact that the British are in effect strengthening the hand of Shiite organizations is not lost on Basra’s residents.

“No one trusts the police,” one Iraqi journalist told me. “If our new ayatollahs snap their fingers, thousands of police will jump.” Mufeed al-Mushashaee, the leader of a liberal political organization called the Shabanea Rebellion, told me that he felt that “the entire force should be dissolved and replaced with people educated in human rights and democracy.”

Unfortunately, this is precisely what the British aren’t doing. Fearing to appear like colonial occupiers, they avoid any hint of ideological indoctrination: in my time with them, not once did I see an instructor explain such basics of democracy as the politically neutral role of the police in a civil society. Nor did I see anyone question the alarming number of religious posters on the walls of Basran police stations. When I asked British troops if the security sector reform strategy included measures to encourage cadets to identify with the national government rather than their neighborhood mosque, I received polite shrugs: not our job, mate.

This is a dangerous approach to creating democracy. Some of President Bush’s speeches have suggested that democracy springs forth when people are free. While freedom is a necessary condition for democracy, it is not sufficient. Also necessary is a commitment to certain principles, principles not apparent in many of the religious groups dominating the Iraqi political scene. It seems that President Bush and the coalition troops falsely assume that those principles are universal: although they recognize cultural differences, they fail to see how deeply those differences run.

The Iraqis need to be educated in those principles, but if Vincent’s examples are representative, that education isn’t happening. And it’s not going to happen, as long as the educators adopt an anything-goes cultural relativism.

Recently, I attended a workshop organized by the Research Triangle Institute, an American NGO. Ostensibly an all-day seminar in democratic principles, the program instead stressed simple, almost childlike concepts such as “understand that you are useful,” “be aware of your skills,” “compromise,” and — rather alarming, I thought — “be calm when you lose.” Alexis de Tocqueville this wasn’t.

“Before the elections, the Governing Council was appointed by educated elites who chose capable people,” former Basra governor Hassan Alrashidi griped to me at the meeting. “The elections have brought in people whose main qualifications are their loyalty to the religious parties.” Countering Alrashidi’s point was Ahmed al-Harazi, chief of RTI’s Local Governance Project for southern Iraq: “The West has had democracy for a thousand years, we’ve had it for two. I think we’re doing pretty good.”

That last quotation is an example of the hope Vincent found among the ordinary Iraqis. Now if only the coalition nation-builders would nurture that hope, by boldly distinguishing between good and bad in political theory.