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April 22, 2004

Grand, but Insufficient

As I noted earlier this week, Jim Henley offered up a grand strategy for the war that lays out how he thinks we ought to proceed from here.

1) Stop borrowing trouble.

Well, that certainly sounds good, but it's also what a professor of mine used to call a motherhood statement. Everyone can agree with it in principle, but it's decidedly lacking in specific application. It also has a tinge of blame-America first, although I don't believe that's actually Jim's intent.

2) "Wait" for the people behind the trouble we've already borrowed to get old and tired or die off outright.

This sounds good, but it assumes that once the current crop dies out, there won't be a follow-on. Islam is an aggressively expansion religion, however, so it's unlikely that they will stop looking to attack us simply because we've withdrawn; in fact, it is at least equally likely that they will be emboldened by what they will see as weakness. This again sounds like Jim is saying that we're basically bringing all of these attacks on ourselves. That may be the case, I suppose, but I'm not sure I buy it. I think Jim is granting our enemies a higher degree of rationality than they actually possess. Even if we were completely isolationist in our foreign policy, I don't see how that would really prevent more terrorists from springing up and, eventually, coming after us. Jim's strategy might delay the confrontation, but the conflict would still exist.

For another thing, I believe the American system, as conceived if not always as practiced, is deeply attractive.

It's hard to argue with Jim here. We can be our own best advertisement, but we often end up becoming our own worst enemy instead. I'm not as confident as Jim that eliminating some government excesses and increased trade, travel and tourism is going to result in a Muslim reformation, though, and he doesn't really spell out how that would come about.

I'd make it a requirement of a student visa that recipients take a heavy dose of humanities, especially American studies courses.

I don't like this idea at all. First of all, Jim is apparently unfamiliar with the brand of American studies that is taught by too many colleges and universities these days. If the visitors didn't hate America when they came, four years of humanities courses would probably be enough to change their mind. Second and more important, I don't want the government laying down that kind of requirement even on non-citizens. They come to this country, let them learn what they choose to learn; that's part of what freedom is.

Bring the major players together in one room - anyone with a constituency. Tell them, "fellas, we're out of here in time for Christmas. Start talking. You've got a chance to make your country something much better than you could have imagined. Or you can turn it into hell on earth. It'll be your doing one way or another."

This is tempting, except that it would be viewed as a victory by our enemies. Every time we cut and run, we encourage our enemies to believe that they can defeat us in time, so they keep up the fight. Our decision to leave Somalia in 1993, for example, while quite defensible from the standpoint of logic, was quite costly to us in future casualties because it led bin Laden to believe that Americans were weak, and therefore could be attacked with impunity. A pullout from Iraq would further confirm that belief.

What About Israel and the Palestinians? Pull them in and tell them two things. 1) Israel will be paying its own way from now on. They can have what military equipment they can buy. 2) But we also will not be restraining them from any action they may wish to take to safeguard what they imagine to be their security. If they really want to kill Yasser Arafat, we're not going to stop them. If they want to nuke Tehran, that's Tehran's lookout. Concentrates the mind.

I'm not sure how comfortable I would feel about it if it looked like Israel could not survive without aid. Granted, it's important for them to be able to stand on their own two feet in principle, but if they can't, I don't believe I could simply stand by and watch them be slaughtered.

Remember when you were a kid, and you had a really good friend, so you started hanging out together constantly, and staying over at each other's house all the time and suddenly you realized you were really getting on each other's nerves? That's us and continental Europe.

Jim is probably right here, although I think we ought to be cautious about burning our bridges at the same time. If NATO is going to dissolve, it ought to at least appear to be a joint decision, rather than us unilaterally yanking the support structure from under it. Not that unilateralism doesn't have its place, I just don't see any reason to use it when it's not absolutely necessary.

What if there's another catastrophic terror attack? That will really suck. It will be important to summon up the resolve to stay the course if that happens.

Here's the real flaw with all of these plans. Hawks think fixing the Middle East through intervention will take a generation. Doves say they get a generation to try non-intervention. And I'm willing to bet that neither side will get anywhere near that long to actually try it. If there's another catastrophic terror attack, we're going to change what we're doing, whatever it is. I hate to say it, but that's how our government operates: someone is always popping the hood and tinkering around with the engine, even when she's purring like a kitten. When black smoke starts pouring out of the engine, everyone's going to want to fix it their way, even if it turns out the smoke isn't coming from the engine at all.

Furthermore, it's fair to ask both sides at what point do we decide that the strategy isn't working? What conditions can we point to as indicators that we're succeeding? How about failing? When do we drop our current plan and try something new. Both sides are asking us to accept their plans on faith and to give them 20-30 uninterrupted years to see if they work. I'm not sure I'm willing to wait that long to find out that, oops, this was the wrong strategy after all.

That having been said, it's easy to criticize someone else's work, but it's a lot harder to come up with a plan of your own. While I think Jim's plan fails on several levels, it also has some good points that I believe we would be wise to adopt, and Jim at least sat down and gave us an alternative. So I will try to sit down over the next few days and work out my own proposal, so it can be properly torn down.

Update: Armed Liberal offers his thoughts on Jim's treatise. I think A.L. brings up some good points, but I also think he's a little too eager to assume the worst of what Jim has written.