Let me also suggest Benjamin's Rumsfeld's
Folly in Slate @ http://slate.msn.com/id/2090529/
and
Friedman's End of the West?, in today's NYT
@ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/02/opinion/02FRIE.html.
From
Rumsfeld's folly:
"As
foreign fighters pour into Iraq to attack U.S. troops and undermine the
occupation, the questions are long overdue. They suggest that a top official
is beginning to recognize what others outside and inside government have been
arguing since Sept. 11, 2001: The United States faces an insurgency that is
not tied to one piece of Middle East real estate or to one rogue state.
Instead,
it is a global fight with lots of ideological fuel to burn. Rumsfeld observes
that we have no "metrics" for judging how well we are doing in the larger war
on terror. Surely a key issue is whose ideas are gaining ground. When I worked
in the government, analysts closely followed the Friday sermons and the public
statements of Muslim clerics. Review some recent ones, such as those posted at
www.memri.org, and you can see
preachers who are paid by the state, usually counted on for moderation,
delivering pronouncements that approach Osama Bin Laden's in spirit, depicting
America as the head of world infidelity whose presence in Iraq justifies
jihad. Rumsfeld might also consider polling data, such as the June results
from the Pew Global Attitudes
Project, which shows majorities in seven of eight Muslim
nations surveyed believing their countries are militarily threatened by the
United States-again, much as Bin Laden argues.
There
is, in fact, overwhelming evidence that the radicalization of the Muslim world
is deepening. That means more sympathizers, more fund raising, and more
recruits for the jihadist camp. On the tactical side of the war on terror,
counting the terrorists captured or killed, as the administration frequently
does, is a somewhat useful approach-and the record is better than anyone could
have predicted two years ago. But strategically, we're slipping.
Rumsfeld's
memo, informal as it is, also says much about the basic assumptions of the
Bush foreign policy team. It takes for granted that stopping the next
generation of terrorists is the job of the Pentagon and, secondarily, the CIA.
Is a new organization needed, Rumsfeld asks, to integrate efforts better?
Unmentioned is the existing institution that ought to play the lead role in
dealing with the long-term problem of radical Islam and terror: the State
Department."
From
Friedman's End of the West?
"What
I'm getting at here is that when you find yourself in an argument with
Europeans over Iraq, they try to present it as if we both want the same thing,
but we just have different approaches. And had the Bush team not been so
dishonest and unilateral, we could have worked together. I wish the Bush team
had behaved differently, but that would not have been a cure-all - because if
you look under the European position you see we have two different visions,
not just tactical differences. Many Europeans really do believe that a
dominant America is more threatening to global stability than Saddam's
tyranny.
The
more I hear this, the more I wonder whether we are witnessing something much
larger than a passing storm over Iraq. Are we witnessing the beginning of the
end of "the West" as we have known it - a coalition of U.S.-led, like-minded
allies, bound by core shared values and strategic
threats?
I
am not alone in thinking this. Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister,
noted to me in Brussels the other day that for a generation Americans and
Europeans shared the same date: 1945. A whole trans-Atlantic alliance flowed
from that postwar shared commitment to democratic government, free markets and
the necessity of deterring the Soviet Union. America saw the strength of
Europe as part of its own front line and vice versa - and this bond "made the
resolution of all other issues both necessary and possible," said Mr.
Bildt.
Today,
however, we are motivated by different dates. "Our defining date is now 1989
and yours is 2001," said Mr. Bildt. Every European prime minister wakes up in
the morning thinking about how to share sovereignty, as Europe takes advantage
of the collapse of communism to consolidate economically, politically and
militarily into one big family. And the U.S. president wakes up thinking about
where the next terror attack might come from and how to respond - most likely
alone. " While we talk of peace, they talk of security," says Mr. Bildt.
"While we talk of sharing sovereignty, they talk about exercising sovereign
power. When we talk about a region, they talk about the world. No longer
united primarily by a common threat, we have also failed to develop a common
vision for where we want to go on many of the global issues confronting
us."
