Things I Meant to Link To

This gripping article in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine concerning a victim extracting legal revenge on her torturer. Things aren't as simple as they seem.

In the same issue, this fair and level-headed look at Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftist candidate for president of Mexico.

Boz's analysis of Alan Garcia's win.

This, which I discussed here, gives me absolutely zero comfort, despite the appearance that I called it right.

I'm back Saturday.

Comments

[Akaky]

Called it right? I'm gone for a few days and you're already declaring yourself the winner?! Oy, vey iz mir! Randy, I still dont concede your basic premise, which for those coming late to this donnybrook, is that American intervention in Somalia on the side of the warlords is making the situation there worse instead of better and that no one in this Administration seems to be thinking strategically about the global war on terror. I, as you may have guessed, disagree, but then there seems to be very little Randy and I actually do agree on, except that the leadership of the American Library Association is a group of Fidelista sycophants.

In any case, Randy, it still seems to me that your argument is still post hoc ergo propter hoc. Yes, the Islamic judges screamed that the warlords were taking American money and weapons, but they would have screamed that anyway; true or not, smearing your enemies with the tarbrush of pro-Americanism is a classic way of scoring political points in the Third World. That the judges were able to score these points has less to do with the details of their ideology than it does with Somali society. Since the overthrow of Siad Barre that country has basically descended into the maelstrom of political chaos and stayed there. These are people who are tired of the constant struggle for power and want some kind of normalcy in their lives. In such a situation the promises of Sharia sound wonderful: society will organize itself according to the will of Allah, and anyone who gets out of line will be stepped on like a cockroach. After fifteen years of more or less incessant fighting peace, the promise of peace at last sounds almost too good to be true to these people and they will not spend a lot of time thinking through what handing their country over to the jihadis really means; when you are drowning you dont question the motives of the man throwing you the rope; you grab while the grabbing is good. That their country is the sort of failed polity the jihadis like to base their operations in is not going to occur to anyone sick of endless civil strife.

It should, however, occur to someone in the White House and in the Pentagon. The way you fight a global war against Islamic fanatics is you fight them where they are; this is always preferably to having to fight them here at home. When they do achieve a success, as they appear to have gotten in Mogadishu, then you make sure that they cannot enjoy that success; you make them fight to stay in power, since by fighting their domestic enemies you make it less likely that they will spend any prolonged period of time plotting mischief in the West. Along with the military side, you offer incentives to the jihadis' political enemies to go along with us. In your previous comments, you pointed out the examples of the Marshall Plan and the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953 as examples of the right and the wrong way of doing this sort of thing. I would counter by saying that both of these events are part and parcel of the same general view of the world. We were out to stymie Communism all over the world; that the Marshall Plan appeals to your humanitarian side speaks well for your sense of charity, Randy, but we didnt get the Europeans back on their feet to be charitable or feel good about ourselves. We did it to prevent a Soviet takeover of Western Europe. As for Iran, I would point out that the CIA overthrew the Mossadegh government in 1953; Khomeini didnt overthrow the Shah until 1979. You are basically saying that the Eisenhower Administration should not have overthrown Mossadegh in 1953 because that might lead to an equally undesirable result a quarter of a century later. Randy, you're asking a lot from government issue crystal balls.

The Eisenhower Administration was faced with what they perceived as an immediate danger to Western interests in Iran. Do they simply sit and wait and hope for the best, or do they try to do something about it, bearing in mind that the Soviets share a long border with Iran and can easily use chaos in Iranian streets as a pretext for sending the Red Army over the border. And that was not some hypothetical situation dreamed up by some doomsday policy wonk at Sperry Rand; virtually the first crisis the infant United Nations faced was the problem of how to get the Soviets out of that portion of Iranian Azerbaijan that they'd occupied during the war and didnt seem inclined to hand back to Tehran. That was the immediate problem, not whether the Shah might send a middle-aged Shia cleric into exile ten years later, who would then return to overthrow the Shah in another 26 years. Frankly, the Shah set himself up for a fall, something we should have seen and done something about, but we didnt and we paid the price for it. He and his cohorts had some twenty billion dollars worth of oil revenue every year and kept something like 18 billion for themselves. If they'd stolen five billion for themselves and spent 15 billion on developing Iran and buying off the mullahs the Shah's son would have succeeded him.

To successfully prosecute this type of war we can't wait for the jihadis to establish themselves and strike us. Where we can, we have to bring the fight to them, since if they are fighting there they cant fight here. Mark Bowden was on C-Span's 3 hour Booknotes program last week and he pointed out that he found a Special Forces team operating in a Philippine island called Jolo, which I'd never heard of and almost missed on the map; the team was there in order to help the Filipinos put down a jihadist movement among the local Muslim population. Where the threat is, we have to be, and where there are sticks, there have to be carrots as well. We have to show the people of these countries that there are benefits to being pro-American in the global war on the jihadis. Lowering tariffs on these countries' goods is an excellent place to start, and has the added benefit in getting the economic elites to move towards the pro-American way of thinking.

There will obviously be those whom we can never convince; for the true believer doing the will of Allah will always come first, no matter what the material blandishments we offer them, but for what the vast majority of people want is to be left alone, which is something the jihadis can't really offer them. The jihadis want endless blood, endless sacrifice, never-ending war to the death against the infidel, since, like someone riding a bicycle, if they ever stopped they would fall off. Our strategy should be to stop them wherever and whenever we can.

[Randy Paul]

The way you fight a global war against Islamic fanatics is you fight them where they are; this is always preferably to having to fight them here at home. When they do achieve a success, as they appear to have gotten in Mogadishu, then you make sure that they cannot enjoy that success; you make them fight to stay in power, since by fighting their domestic enemies you make it less likely that they will spend any prolonged period of time plotting mischief in the West.

That's just one way. Another way is that you support the legitimate interim government of Somalia which is apparently what they are thinking of doing now.

The warlords made the lives of everyone who wasn't on their side miserable. Don't take my word for it. Consider the thoughts of some of those who know far more about Somalia than you or I:

MARGARET WARNER: And for more on what's happened in Somalia and where these events may lead, we're joined by Herman Cohen, who was assistant secretary of state for African affairs under the first President Bush, when the U.S. sent troops into Somalia. He's now president of Cohen and Woods International, a consulting firm specializing in African issues.

And Abdi Samatar, a professor of geography at the University of Minnesota. Born in Somalia, he's now an American citizen and last visited his homeland in February.

And, Professor Samatar, the dispatches out of Mogadishu today -- and there is no film of this -- but that there were these large demonstrations with both for and against the Islamists taking over. How secure is the Islamic Courts Alliance hold on Mogadishu or anywhere else in the country?

ABDI SAMATAR, Professor, University of Minnesota: I think time will tell how secure that is, but what you have is, in my estimation, about 80 or so percent of the population of Mogadishu backing the Islamic courts.

And there were two demonstrations today, one small group led by two warlords and another group that were opposed to those same groups. So time will tell, but I think, for the time being, the city seems quite secure and that people are, in fact, able to get on with their lives in the evenings and in the middle of the night, when that was not possible when the warlords were in command of Mogadishu.

MARGARET WARNER: Help us understand who these players are. Secretary Cohen, who or what is the Islamic courts union or alliance, and where did it come from?

HERMAN COHEN, Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs: Well, when the government disappeared in 1991, there was anarchy, so local clans in Mogadishu essentially said, "We've got to do something to protect our security and give us some basis for public health and what have you."

So each clan formed their own Islamist court to provide justice and a little bit of security. And over the years, they've become stronger and stronger, because people felt, "This is all we have."

And, lately, they've formed a union and started to work against the warlords. And happily they've kicked most of the warlords out. That is a wonderful piece of news, that the...

MARGARET WARNER: Why is it a wonderful piece of news?

HERMAN COHEN: Because the warlords have caused tremendous hardship. They have roadblocks, shoot-outs, exactions. People were permanently insecure under the warlords, and it's very important to keep those warlords from coming back into Mogadishu.

MARGARET WARNER: What would you add to that, Professor? Do you see it that way? And how did the Islamic Alliance get strong enough to take on these warlords, who I gather are fairly heavily armed?

ABDI SAMATAR: I think Herman Cohen is absolutely right. It's great news, not only for Somalis, but for the international community, that the warlords are out and hopefully will remain outside of the city and the country.

The reason why the Islamic courts and the population have been able to succeed in doing this is because there are three groups who are involved in this business: One is the Islamic court; the other is a huge number of very successful businesspeople who have tremendous amounts of weaponry; and, thirdly, there's a very widely distributed civil society movement.

It's these three groups who are holding the fort, so to speak. And the reason I think they have been successful in defeating the warlords is because the people of Mogadishu and Somalia have gotten sick and tired of the violence which has been visited on them, as Secretary Cohen earlier on. And finally they decided they had enough of this and, therefore, decided to go along with the Islamic people.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, could you explain, Professor, why the business community in Somalia is supporting the Islamists? That might seem to, you know, outside observers a contradiction.

ABDI SAMATAR: I would like to call these people Islamic practitioners, rather than Islamists. Islamists has the connotation that they are incredibly politicized and of the kind that you can expect from the Taliban's.

These folks, in my estimation, are far away from that and quite different. The reason why the businesspeople have decided to join forces with this is because the businesspeople have to protect their businesses and their property, and so they literally have to have their own security systems.

If there was a state and if there is peace in Mogadishu, then they wouldn't need all of that. And, secondly, they were also the victims of the warlords, in terms of prosecution, looting, and what have you.

The civil society groups have joined the Islamic courts in large measure because they are the ultimate victims of the war in Mogadishu and elsewhere in the country, so you have a coalition of people spearheaded by the Islamic courts who are doing this at the moment.

MARGARET WARNER: So if all of this is the case, Secretary Cohen, then why is the U.S. government apparently -- though they've never confirmed that the U.S. has been supporting the warlords financially -- why is the U.S. so concerned about this Islamic group?

HERMAN COHEN: I think the U.S. government panicked. They saw Islamic group; they said, "Taliban is coming."

Also, there are friends in the region, like the Ethiopians, who probably are feeding false intelligence about terrorists being hidden and that sort of thing, because the Ethiopians are deadly afraid of Moslem control and also they have their own Moslem problem among the Oromo ethnic group in Ethiopia.

So they want to keep the Islamists out of power, and they will bring the U.S. into it, if they can.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, though you heard the president still express some concern about whether it will become a safe haven for al-Qaida-style terrorists, how great a danger do you think there is of that?

HERMAN COHEN: I think it's minor, because the people in the Islamic movement saw what happened to the Taliban and they don't want the same thing to happen to them; that's why this letter that came out in your presentation earlier is saying, "Don't worry. We're not going to have any of these folks here. Don't start fighting with us."

And I think that's right, because the first thing they need to do is consolidate power where they are. They don't want to get into a fight with the United States.

As for your comments regarding Iran, you're wrong on two counts. The triggering act to get rid of Moosedgh was the call for the nationalization of the oil. So, while it's not always about the oil, sometimes it is.

Secondly, you're acting as if Iran is sui generis. It's not. What do you think might very well have motivated Nasser's belligerence including the Suez Crisis a whopping three years after Moosedgh's overthrow? What do you think spurred the rise of Islamic radicalism and anti-Americansim in the Middle East? Boredom?

The enemy of my enemy is my friend mentality is so short-sighted. Do you really think that we were using the mujahadeen in Afghanistan? History shows that they were using us.

A crystal ball? Don't be disingenuous. All it would have taken for Eisenhower to give some thought as to how we would have felt if Iran engineered the overthrow of our president and installed Elizabeth I as Queen along with secret police known for torture.

Far-fetched and silly, perhaps, but it speaks to an underlying issue in the regime changes we have supported fairly often: they have had little consideration for the citizens of the country whose regime is being changed. One thing that distinguishes adults from children is the ability to look beyond their own narrow interests and consider the interests of others when they make decisions.

Our strategy should be to stop them wherever and whenever we can.

That's a tactic. A strategy would involve creating circumstances where we don't add to the number of potential jihadists through our knee-jerk, panicky actions, such as supporting warlords in Somalia who have made the lives of all their citizens miserable.