Leadership in Iraq

Many people find the Middle East and its people difficult to understand (For an excellent introduction to the region listen to Scott Powell's The Islamist Entanglement). In particular one gets the sense that our former President George W. Bush was under the impression that there are no significant cultural differences between Iraqi Arabs and Americans (what our current President Barack H. Obama thinks is really too depressing to dwell on). Strategypage.com reviews the reality encountered by American soldiers in the field. Their experiences do not inspire much hope. Here are two examples:

# Most Arab countries are a patchwork of different tribes and groups, and Arab leaders survive by playing one group off against another. Loyalty is to one's group, not the nation. Most countries are dominated by a single group that is usually a minority (Bedouins in Jordan, Alawites in Syria, Sunnis in Iraq, Nejdis in Saudi Arabia). All of which means that officers are assigned not by merit but by loyalty and tribal affiliation. This continues in democratic Iraq, where political parties or powerful politicians strive to control individual police or army units.

# Islamic schools favor rote memorization, especially of scripture. Most Islamic scholars are hostile to the concept of interpreting the Koran (considered the word of God as given to His prophet Mohammed). This has resulted in looking down on Western troops that will look something up that they don't know. Arabs prefer to fake it, and pretend it's all in their head. Improvisation and innovation is generally discouraged. Arab armies go by the book, Western armies rewrite the book and thus usually win. Despite years of American advice on this matter, many Iraqi police and military personnel stick with the old, less effective, traditions.

A total of 14 examples of such difficulties are recounted. They are well worth reading.

Islamist Entanglement: Conclusion

Scott Powell presented his tenth and last lecture in the Islamic Entanglement series (you can still enroll in individual lectures or the whole course -- check it out) last Wednesday. The lecture summarized the previous ten and in light of what was presented suggested what we can expect for the future. Not entirely surprisingly, Scott does not view the future with much optimism. Not much can be expected in the way of improvement from the likes of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, and the rest. To varying degrees these countries will either remain Islamist or becomes more so. The kind of actions necessary by the United States to convince the locals that real change is required, namely a truly convincing military victory, are very unlikely to happen in the near future.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Scott for presenting these excellent lectures. I very much appreciate Scott's unique methodology. Rather than simply overwhelming one with events and personalities that one cannot absorb (as many a modern history book tends to do), his unique methodology focuses in on the essentials while not overlooking the necessary details, thus presenting the material in a highly retainable form. I highly recommend his approach to teaching history.

The Islamist Entanglement and Israel

Scott Powell's most recent Islamist Entanglement lecture, his ninth, focused on Israel. I have to admit that as far as the historical details Scott mentioned I didn't expect to be particularly surprised and I wasn't. This is no fault of Scott's but simply due to the fact that I happened to have a reasonably good knowledge of Israeli history, particularly early Zionist history before the founding of the state. I was, for example, already aware of the mixed role that Britain played in this history, first promising everyone everything, and second, and necessarily, reneging on the promises, particularly with regard to Jewish immigration to Palestine before and during World War II. Nevertheless, even I benefitted from this lecture since it now puts the Arab-Israeli conflict in the its proper context, namely, the several century old Islamist Entanglement of the West with the Islamic Middle East. As Scott points out at the beginning of the lecture, once one understands the full context and thus the basic reason for the conflict, the absurdity of the constant attempts at an isolated resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict via land-for-peace schemes becomes quite evident. With the next lecture, the tenth, Scott will conclude the Islamist Entanglement series and, I expect, tie everything together.

Saudi Arabia: The Arrogant Kingdom

Unlike some of the other countries that Scott Powell has lectured on in his Islamist Entanglement series, Saudi Arabia was never occupied by Western Powers. While it did face threats from the Ottoman empire, the West was content to let the Saudis rule in Arabia, as long as access to oil was provided. The Saudis had their own agenda. Born of an alliance between Wahabi Islamist elements and the leaders of the Saudi tribe based in the center of the Arabian peninsula (an area referred to as Nejd), the Saudis managed, after two unsuccessful attempts, to establish control over the remaining parts of the country. This success was subsequently guaranteed when, following the discovery of oil in Dhamman in 1938, then American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with the Saudi King Ibn Saud in 1945 and guaranteed the Kingdom's security. The effective result here was a kind of feudal arrangement between the United States and the Saudis, where the Saudis were supposed to play the role of feudal vassal to the US overlords. However, a problem here is that a few years years later the United States supported the creation of the State of Israel and recognized it upon its declaration of independence. As effective vassals one would expect the Saudis to join the US in supporting Israel. However, as Arabs and Muslims unwilling to accept a non-Arab, non-Muslim entity in the region, this was not possible to them. Inevitably this lead the Saudis to oppose the US whenever it supported Israel. and eventually in 1973 the Saudis joined the OPEC oil embargo after the US supplied Israel with the military means to defeat the Arab armies of Egypt and Syria during the Yom Kippur war.

Only two lectures remain in the Islamist Entanglement Series: One about Israel and one putting everything together entitled "The Middle East: Its Past and Its Prospects". It's still not too late to catch up!

Iraq: In Search of Unity

I finally got a chance to listen to Scott Powell's latest Islamist Entanglement lecture which focused on Iraq. The key to understanding Iraq seems to be that for most of history there was no such thing. Unlike Egypt or Iran, Iraq does not have a unifying history, race, or even religion. For much of its recent history the area now occupied by the state of Iraq was made up of three separate provinces within the Ottoman Empire. No modern Iraqis identify with the ancient empires that used to occupy parts of what used to be called Mesopotamia. The Iraqi population is made up of Arabs in the center and south of Iraq and Kurds in the north. Like Iran, the Shiites represent a majority of the Iraqi population; however, unlike Iran there is substantial minority of Sunnis. Thus, the only basis for the existence of an Iraqi political entity are the imperial machinations of the Western powers after World War I, in particular Great Britain. For a while, Iraqis were able to unite somewhat around enmity toward the West. However, after independence, such unity was only possible to be maintained with the brute force of dictatorships. The Iraqi history and background does not lead to optimism with respect to the present attempt to create a united, democratic Iraq by the United States, particularly after the departure of US troops.

Iran

Scott Powell's Islamist Entanglement lectures (also available as individual lectures) help set the historical context for an understanding of the Middle East and last week's lecture on Iran was no different. Beginning briefly with ancient Persia, Scott traces the development what became Iran as part of the various Islamic empires. Important in this regard is that most of Iran, unlike much of the rest of the Muslim world, is Shia. Its religion has thus always put it somewhat at odds with the rest of the Muslim world. After the usual confrontations with the West, Iran began to modernize a little and by the early 20th century some of its intellectuals were attempting to enact constitutional reforms. Unfortunately those reforms failed. Iran has a long history of having an alliance between a military and the religious leadership. The leader is supposed to follow the sacred path and if he does not he deserves to be overthrown. When the leader starts to endorse Western ideas, that is usually when he is regarded as having betrayed his office. Ultimately this is what happened to the American-supported Shah in 1979. Also of note is that Scott presents a somewhat different perspective on the whole Mossadegh-CIA affair of 1953. All in all, this is a highly recommended lecture.

Afghanistan -- The Highway of Conquest

Last week's Islamist Entanglement lecture was about Afghanistan. It is difficult not to feel sorry for Afghanistan -- after all, until the 18th century it was not really so much a country as a place that had been conquered numerous times over the centuries, by empires from the East, West, North and South, earning it the description as "highway of conquest". In 1747 the first independent Afghan Kingdom was finally formed when various tribal factions agreed to submit to the rule of a relatively weak central ruler. However, the situation in the country did not dramatically improve after the 18th century and Afghanistan remains the most primitive of the places so far discussed. The country reminds one of Europe during the Dark Ages or present day Africa -- tribalism and religion predominate in the population's thinking and, apart from foreign interventions, continue to guide its course. No serious attempts at Westernization have occurred until the early 20th century. Scott concludes the lecture with a pessimistic assessment of Afghanistan's future, even more so than either Egypt's or Turkey's. He predicts that the Bush administration's attempt to "democratize" Afghanistan will fail. Next up -- Iran. Don't miss it -- sign up now for the whole course or individual lectures!

Why Ahmadinejad is smiling...

As usual, Caroline Glick has some of the best analysis of what to make of recent events in the Middle East. Here are a few exerpts:

And the fact is that the Sunni states are aligned with most of Iran's policies. They keep Iraq at arm's length and loudly criticize US operations in the country. They continue to back Hamas and ostracize Israel. And they have taken no substantive stands against Hizbullah's subversion of the Saniora government since the end of the Second Lebanon War.

The main reason that the Sunni Arab countries cannot contend with Iran is that their publics share Iran's jihadist ideology. And their publics share Iran's general jihadist ideology because the Sunni states have indoctrinated their publics to believe in jihad through their state-controlled media.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and their Sunni Arab brothers are in no position to argue with Iran publicly or to confront Iran's Arab proxies because they can't explain to their own people why Iran's bid to destroy Israel and to dominate the world in the name of Islam is a bad thing.

However, to get the full context of how we got to this point, I recommend Scott Powell's Islamist Entanglement lectures which are available both as a set and as individual lectures. Sign up now!

Egypt

The most recent lecture of Scott Powell's Islamist Entanglement series focused on the history of Egypt. Despite the fact that Egypt had not been an independent country for many centuries, Egypt follows a path somewhat parallel to Turkey's. Its first (unsuccessful) period of westernization started while still under Ottoman rule early in the nineteenth century under the leadership of Muhammed Ali in reaction to the British and French interventions in 1798. A much-hated British occupation followed some disastrous financial decisions that the Egyptians made. Egypt has what Scott termed a somewhat hollow but nevertheless strong "sense of nationhood" that's tied to its ancient history. As a result, there was much anti-colonial sentiment in Egypt which resulted in clashes with the British and ultimately culminated in Gamal Abdel Nasser's takeover that kicked out the remaining British influences by 1954. Nasser's rule was ultimately a failure, having governed as socialist dictator at home and squandered his perceived grandeur during the Six-Day War with Israel, in which Egypt lost territory along with Syria and Jordan. Nasser was nationalism's last great champion in Egypt. The leaders that followed Nasser, including Sadat and Mubarack, merely tried to maintain the dictatorial system that Nasser established. Thus, nationalism as a motivating political ideology in Egypt is spent. In its wake, Islamism has begun step in, in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood and can be expected to ultimately prevail, as has also been discussed elsewhere.

Why Palestinian statehood is not in our interest

I hope to write my review of Scott Powell's latest Islamist Entanglement lecture on Egypt as soon as I get a chance to listen to it. In the meanwhile, Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Institute has written an excellent op-ed on the topic of how the present administration has been acting against our interests in pursuing the creation of a Palestinian state.

Around the Web

• Scott Powell's posting on his blog today elaborates on what I discussed yesterday with respect to his view on Turkey, its history and its prospects
• George Reisman analyzes our current "financial house of cards" and suggests that the only long term solution is a return to the gold standard
• A new post on the We Stand FIRM blog by Lin Zinser demonstrates that it is the free market that lowers medical costs, not the government
• Check out the reorganized Ayn Rand Institute web site for the latest op-ed pieces and numerous videos, including several of Yaron Brook's appearances on Fox Business Network
  

Scott Powell on the Truman Doctrine and the Cold War

Scott Powell, author of the highly recommended Islamist Entanglement series, reviews some points from the most recent lecture in the aforementioned series, in which he covered the actions and goals of the U.S. in the Middle East. Scott makes some points sure to be controversial in some circles:

The Truman Doctrine was a blanket commitment to combat communism, wherever and whenever it might arise. In philosophical terms it was a “moral imperative,” or context-less absolute, not unlike a religious commandment. Acting according to it, in much the same manner as one might try to adhere to a religious code, every subsequent president failed to properly perceive where America’s self-interest really lay and directed the country’s resources in ways that while opposing communism actually harmed America both in the short and long term.

Be sure to read the whole essay in which Scott gives his detailed reasons for the above claim.

The latest on the Middle East

To get a deeper understanding of the Middle East and its relationship to the West, sign up for Scott Powell's Islamist Entanglement lecture series. But in the meanwhile there's the inimitable Caroline Glick. Her latest column is up on her website. Here's a long excerpt:

In a radio interview this week, Michael Leiter, the director of the US National Counter-Terrorism Center, noted that al-Qaida today is stronger than it was two years ago. This development, he explained, is a consequence of Musharraf's decision to sign peace accords with the Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border.

The first agreements in North and South Waziristan were signed in September 2006. They involved the removal of Pakistani military forces from the areas, and the release of 2,500 Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners from Pakistani prisons.

The Waziristan accords made the area the Taliban's and al-Qaida's first safe haven since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. Freed from the need to defend themselves against the Pakistani army, al-Qaida and the Taliban immediately turned their attention to Afghanistan. Within weeks of the signing ceremony, cross-border raids from Pakistan tripled.

And so began a devastating calculus. Systematic breaches of the accords by the Taliban were ignored. But any anti-Taliban operations launched by Pakistan or US forces in Waziristan or anywhere else in Pakistan were met with massive brutality.

Speaking to CNN recently, Michael McConnell, the Director of US National Intelligence, concurred with Leiter's dim assessment. McConnell noted that from its safe havens in Pakistan, al-Qaida has reconstituted itself as the central command post for global jihad. "They have the leadership that they had before. They've rebuilt the middle-management and the trainers. And they're recruiting very vigorously," he said.

These American acknowledgments of the consequences of Musharraf's "peace process" with the Taliban come rather late in the game. When he first signed the accords, Musharraf pretended that the Taliban were not involved, claiming that the accords were with "tribal leaders."

Musharraf's statements were obvious lies, and yet the US decided to pretend along with him. In September 2006, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "The [Waziristan] agreement really has potential to work... Talibanization will not be allowed in the area of or in the cities near the tribal region."

The State Department had no excuse for believing Musharraf because by the time Boucher made the statement, Musharraf had already released the 2,500 al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners.

But American praise for the agreement didn't end with Boucher. President George W. Bush also endorsed it.

Well, at least it's nice to know our President knows what side to be on. I suppose as long as we stand by our "allies" nothing can go wrong. Read the whole thing.

Around the web...

• Scott Powell, who is currently offering the exciting Islamist Entanglement lecture series has posted a fascinating analysis of what we can expect from McCain and Obama about Iran and the implications for Israel
• Principles in Practice, the blog of the Objective Standard, has posted Alex Epstein's excellent essay on the pernicious effects of the "Too Big to Bail" policies that encourage more risk taking by financial institutions
• The Objective Standard has recently released Craig Biddle's excellent essay on Immigration and Individual Rights
  

Preview of new Islamist Entaglement Lecture

Scott Powell has posted a preview of Wednesday night's lecture in his Islamist Entaglement series.
The lecture will focus on the history of the United States as it relates to the Middle East and comes on the heels of his previous lecture, the first in the series, on Great Britain which I blogged about here. I am very much looking forward to his upcoming lecture. I will blog on the new lecture shortly after I hear it (which likely won't be until the weekend). Feel free to sign up as lectures are recorded digititally and are available after the fact and be sure to mention that you heard about it here.

Around the web...

• Caroline Glick has written another excellent column reviewing a recent AEI report on Iran's activities in the Middle East. She writes:

  IN AN attempt to break through the post-Iraq invasion compartmentalization of Western discourse on Iran, the American Enterprise Institute published a 68-page report last week that sets out Iran's actions in Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Iraq and Afghanistan. Authored by Frederick Kagan, Kimberly Kagan and Danielle Pletka, the report, "Iranian Influence in the Levant, Iraq and Afghanistan," shows in copiously documented detail how Iran is strengthening its regional posture at the West's expense not only through military actions but also through economic, cultural and infrastructure projects that build bilateral and multilateral relationships with states and terror groups based on dependency on Teheran.

• Scott Powell has posted the second part of his fascinating series on intellectual trends in Europe called Europism: Collectivism’s Failure and the Resentment of America.
• Alexander Marriot posts an anecdote from his graduate school experiences that illustrates the remaining loyalty to socialism (and its moral basis altruism) and its relation to slavery:

  ...it means quite unequivocally that socialists are the only ones who make a moral case against slavery as a labor system. When I queried in class if it were possible for a capitalist to morally condemn slavery I was told quite simply, "No." The only thing which comforted me in this moment was the fact that I was not the only one in the room insulted by this remark, in fact the sense of shock was quite palpable.

• A combination of David Brooks and Robert Scheer make the case of why I will not vote for John McCain. Let's take the Nation's Scheer first:
  

  ...the 1996 legislation, although you would never have learned this from the mainstream media at the time, opened the floodgates for massive media consolidation, thus rewarding media moguls for their many millions in campaign contributions. McCain was a big player on that Commerce Committee at the time, and I expected a Times revelation as to just how Iseman got McCain to help gift the media barons with their dream legislation.
  
  The revelation never came, because the annoying reality is that McCain was one of the rare Senate opponents of the telecom bill that Iseman was pushing--as opposed to the New York Times, which, like every other major media outlet pushed for the legislation (in the case of the Times, without ever conceding its own corporation's financial bias in the matter). McCain was one of five senators (and the sole Republican) who, along with Democrats Russ Feingold, Patrick Leahy, Paul Simon and the great Paul Wellstone, who voted against the atrocious legislation, which President Bill Clinton signed into law.

  I'm sorry but I think legislation that removes barriers for companies to merge is something to be supported not opposed. Brooks mentions McCain's opposition to the above law as well as his support for some others. Examples:
  

  In 1998, McCain championed anti-smoking legislation that faced furious opposition from the tobacco lobby. McCain guided the legislation through the Senate Commerce Committee on a 19-1 vote, but then the tobacco companies struck back. They hired 200 lobbyists and spent $40 million in advertising (three times as much as the Harry and Louise health care reform ads). Many of the ads attacked McCain by name, accusing him of becoming a big government liberal. After weeks of bitter debate, the bill died on the Senate floor.

  and
  

  In 2003, the Senate nearly passed the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act. The act was opposed by the usual mix of energy, auto and mining companies. But moderate environmental groups were thrilled that McCain-Lieberman was able to attract more than 40 votes in the Senate.

  In all fairness to McCain, Brooks also mentions McCain's opposition to agricultural subsidies, a position I support but I'm afraid the negatives (particularly support for campaign finance legislation, which Brooks also mentions) here overrule any positives.
  

Europism

Speaking of Scott Powell, check out the first part of a new series of posts of his on his Powell History Recommends blog. Scott discusses "Europism," a term he coined to identify an important feature of European history:

Europism is rooted in the dismal historical record of European people living as separate, antagonistic tribal and national groups. From the earliest time of the barbarian migrations, to the nineteenth century and twentieth centuries when Germany, Italy, and the various Slavic nations were formed, Europeans have had virtually no grasp of “man qua man.” They’ve always seen themselves as man qua Briton, or man qua Salian Frank, and later man qua Aryan, and man qua Serb, Bosnian, Croat…

Read the whole thing.

The Islamist Entanglement

The situation in the Middle East poses a substantial challenge to those who seek to understand what exactly our government has been doing there over the last few years. At times, the deeper significance of these actions seems a mystery. Let's take a look at a small sample of headlines from the BBC:

• Claim UK troops 'executed' Iraqis
• Hamas urges EU Israel pressure
• Israel to vanish, says Hezbollah
• Kuwait warns on Lebanon travel
• Iranians spar with Israel at UN
• US slaps sanctions on top Syrian
• W Bank building 'bias' condemned
• Ahmadinejad Imam row grows
• Palestinians 'may declare state'

etc., etc.

Clearly, the number of players local to the Middle East is quite large and, combined with the interaction of various Western countries such as the UK and US, there seems to be no lack of complexity to the situation. Add to that the fact that the region's issues did not arise yesterday but have a long history, it becomes a non-trivial problem to study and understand what exactly is going on there and why. I like to think I know more about the Middle East than many Americans, since I lived in Israel for a few years, and have read a good amount about the history of Israel and its neighbors. However, even I get overwhelmed by the number of facts, dates and the sheer complexity of it all.

Fortunately, there is now a new resource available to make sense of the region: Scott Powell's course on the Islamist Entanglement. Scott Powell, who also happens to be my daughter's history teacher, has, via a generous arrangement, allowed me to blog on each of the upcoming 10 lectures of the course. Registration is still open and all lectures will be digitally recorded and available, so feel free to join now. The Islamist Entanglement is part 3 of Scott's A First History for Adults and I have not taken the first two parts. However, based on having now listened to the first lecture, I think that Scott reviews enough relevant history so that I can enjoy part 3 without having to listen to the previous parts.

After an excellent orienting introduction, the first lecture in the course focused on the history of Britain's relationship with the Middle East. Britain was one of the first major European powers to get deeply involved in the Middle East and the effects of its influence are still evident. The pattern of Britain's involvement was guided substantially by its imperial interests, until those ended shortly after World War II. Scott discusses the origin of British involvement in the region, its sometimes conflicting motivations, and the reason for the decline of its involvement. The next lecture will focus on the history of the United States in the Middle East.

I was impressed with Scott's ability to create the sense of an overall story with specific causes leading to specific effects. Scott is quite properly ruthless in only allowing relevant facts to play a role in the story he tells. As a result, while there is still an abundance of dates and events, I never felt lost while listening to the lectures. The milestones that he outlined at the beginning served as anchors to strongly ground the overall story.

A key element of Scott's approach, the five key dates or milestones for the history of the Middle East vis-a-vis the West, are crucial signposts to the history's important trends. The first date is 1683. The date refers to the failure of the siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Turks. This event marks the beginning of Western Ascendancy after a previous period of about a thousand years of increasing Islamic threat. The other dates also refer to pivotal events in the history of the interaction of the Middle East and the West. Scott presents the important concrete events that point to the overall trends that shape history. He intends to review the same historical periods from the perspective of different countries throughout the course, thus reinforcing the trends, as well as the concrete events and dates. This promises to allow one to build up one's knowledge about this important history with each lecture. I'm very much looking forward to the next lecture.

Update: Fixed date.

Scott Powell Concludes Kant vs. Columbus

Don't miss Scott Powell's exciting conclusion to his previously mentioned series of articles. Here's an excerpt:

A proper assessment and celebration of Columbus’s work, however, cannot be validated by more research or the uncovering of a still more detailed picture of the past. It can only be defended by grasping on an abstract level that “the Discovery of America” is the objective term necessitated by the full context of the Story of World up to that point and–of equal importance–by the context of developments beyond it.

Around the Blogosphere

Columbus vs. Kant
That's the name of a fascinating series of posts on Scott Powell's Power History Recommends blog. There are three parts so far and I can't wait for the fourth. Here's a brief excerpt. Check it out:

Kant’s philosophical assault on man’s faculty of reason paved the way for the historical assault on Columbus by preventing a key avenue of development from ever occuring in Western historiography. By aborting the general study of abstractions as cognitive tools, Kant prevented historians from adopting the epistemological stance necessary to define and defend the most crucial instrument in the systematization of history: historical abstractions.

Consciousness and Medicines
Leitmotif has a couple of interesting posts on Daniel Dennett's view of consciousness (no such thing), as well as a leftist view on medicines (who needs them).