Thursday, May 13, 2004
Thinking about Nicholas Berg
So what should we do about the murder of Nicholas Berg? The al-Qaeda group that committed the deed is obviously depraved. They have a beef with American foreign policy, and they took it out on an innocent who went to Iraq to try to make it a better place. That's not war or resistance, just malice and provocation.
We need to be very careful to distinguish al-Qaeda and its siblings from ordinary Muslims, from Iraqis, and from the various home-grown insurgents of Iraq. They are no more the same than all Westerners are the same. Many of the hawks (especially, it should be said, in the GOP) want to cloud the distinctions, to try to bolster support for their war. This is a deception, and what's more, a strategic mistake. It may help them in the election, but this kind of thinking will doom us in Iraq.
Let's say a brutal dictatorship took over in America, and then a foreign power (say, France) invaded and deposed it. Freedom-loving American patriots might dance in the streets for a few days. But if the French decided to stay for a year, deny Americans any real say in governance, round up random people and imprison them without due process, and generally act like they owned the place, many of those same patriots might become freedom fighting guerillas. They would be motivated, in all likelihood, by a mixture of nationalism and the desire for liberty. They might be heroes or misguided insurgents, depending on your view and your goals for America. But to lump them in with actual terrorists would be a mistake.
Iraq doesn't have a liberal tradition, but traditions of Baathist nationalism and Islam. So naturally, these are the values its own rebels espouse. They also want power---for themselves, for their religious or ethnic groups---and they are also a destabilizing influence that likely endangers Iraq's chances of becoming a prosperous democracy. But that is our goal for Iraq, imposed, with a mixture of good and selfish intentions. We may be right that it is "better" for Iraqis, but we should admit that the sort of hubris that leads one country to invade another and occupy it---even for "its own good"---risks just this sort of resistance when the natives feel their nation and values are being stepped on.
So the murderers of Berg are not the face of Iraq. Their actions do not justify a brutal crackdown on Iraqis. In some ways, Iraqis and Berg have something in common: they were innocent bystanders caught in the midst of a global struggle between America and al-Qaeda. Neither needed to be involved, or had anything to do with the struggle to start with. America and al-Qaeda chose to make Iraqis and Berg pawns in their war. Iraq weren't any more responsible for 9/11 than Iceland was. Berg wasn't anymore responsible for Abu Ghraib than the average American citizen.
It's time to ask whether our approach to fighting al-Qaeda makes any sense. al-Qaeda is an organization, a set of actors, but it is also at the head of a movement, and is always trying to grow its base of support. We need to wipe out the organization as thoroughly as possible, without helping it recreate itself from the rage our attacks engender, and without becoming as bad as al-Qaeda in the process. We need to chop off al-Qaeda's head, but it is a hydra we cannot kill with violence alone. We need to starve it, too. Take away the basis of its appeals for fanatics and funds. We withdrew from Saudi, and we should have tried to reduce our overall footprint in the Middle East, so that it would be harder for al-Qaeda to point to American meddling or atrocities against Muslims. Instead, we made it easier.
We have killed more Iraqis than al-Qaeda has ever killed Americans. We arguably had better intentions, but many in the Muslim world perceive that differently. We are sinking into a cycle of revenge in Iraq that looks more like the Israel-Palestine conflict every week. That's in no one's interest. al-Qaedas greatest skill is provoking us, and they live off our reprisals, the more indiscriminate the better.
We need to get much better at distinguishing our bitter enemies from people we have wronged. We need to stop acting like the Middle East is all the same, for if we do, we will always treat it as an enemy. If we can't learn this lesson, it would be better to annoint a strongman in Iraq and walk away from the entire region---Israel, the Gulf, Iraq; everything. Because we are playing a game with al-Qaeda that they want us to play, a game that will debase us and that we will never win.
We need to be very careful to distinguish al-Qaeda and its siblings from ordinary Muslims, from Iraqis, and from the various home-grown insurgents of Iraq. They are no more the same than all Westerners are the same. Many of the hawks (especially, it should be said, in the GOP) want to cloud the distinctions, to try to bolster support for their war. This is a deception, and what's more, a strategic mistake. It may help them in the election, but this kind of thinking will doom us in Iraq.
Let's say a brutal dictatorship took over in America, and then a foreign power (say, France) invaded and deposed it. Freedom-loving American patriots might dance in the streets for a few days. But if the French decided to stay for a year, deny Americans any real say in governance, round up random people and imprison them without due process, and generally act like they owned the place, many of those same patriots might become freedom fighting guerillas. They would be motivated, in all likelihood, by a mixture of nationalism and the desire for liberty. They might be heroes or misguided insurgents, depending on your view and your goals for America. But to lump them in with actual terrorists would be a mistake.
Iraq doesn't have a liberal tradition, but traditions of Baathist nationalism and Islam. So naturally, these are the values its own rebels espouse. They also want power---for themselves, for their religious or ethnic groups---and they are also a destabilizing influence that likely endangers Iraq's chances of becoming a prosperous democracy. But that is our goal for Iraq, imposed, with a mixture of good and selfish intentions. We may be right that it is "better" for Iraqis, but we should admit that the sort of hubris that leads one country to invade another and occupy it---even for "its own good"---risks just this sort of resistance when the natives feel their nation and values are being stepped on.
So the murderers of Berg are not the face of Iraq. Their actions do not justify a brutal crackdown on Iraqis. In some ways, Iraqis and Berg have something in common: they were innocent bystanders caught in the midst of a global struggle between America and al-Qaeda. Neither needed to be involved, or had anything to do with the struggle to start with. America and al-Qaeda chose to make Iraqis and Berg pawns in their war. Iraq weren't any more responsible for 9/11 than Iceland was. Berg wasn't anymore responsible for Abu Ghraib than the average American citizen.
It's time to ask whether our approach to fighting al-Qaeda makes any sense. al-Qaeda is an organization, a set of actors, but it is also at the head of a movement, and is always trying to grow its base of support. We need to wipe out the organization as thoroughly as possible, without helping it recreate itself from the rage our attacks engender, and without becoming as bad as al-Qaeda in the process. We need to chop off al-Qaeda's head, but it is a hydra we cannot kill with violence alone. We need to starve it, too. Take away the basis of its appeals for fanatics and funds. We withdrew from Saudi, and we should have tried to reduce our overall footprint in the Middle East, so that it would be harder for al-Qaeda to point to American meddling or atrocities against Muslims. Instead, we made it easier.
We have killed more Iraqis than al-Qaeda has ever killed Americans. We arguably had better intentions, but many in the Muslim world perceive that differently. We are sinking into a cycle of revenge in Iraq that looks more like the Israel-Palestine conflict every week. That's in no one's interest. al-Qaedas greatest skill is provoking us, and they live off our reprisals, the more indiscriminate the better.
We need to get much better at distinguishing our bitter enemies from people we have wronged. We need to stop acting like the Middle East is all the same, for if we do, we will always treat it as an enemy. If we can't learn this lesson, it would be better to annoint a strongman in Iraq and walk away from the entire region---Israel, the Gulf, Iraq; everything. Because we are playing a game with al-Qaeda that they want us to play, a game that will debase us and that we will never win.
