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ISIS and Horror
We all laugh at The New York Times, but Rukmini Callimachi’s reporting reminds me of its ability to be a great newspaper. Her story today on the front page is so sickening that even the Times’ loyal readers — to judge by the comments — are beginning to grasp that some problems in the world are morally more important than others:
The Islamic State’s formal introduction of systematic sexual slavery dates to Aug. 3, 2014, when its fighters invaded the villages on the southern flank of Mount Sinjar, a craggy massif of dun-colored rock in northern Iraq.
Its valleys and ravines are home to the Yazidis, a tiny religious minority who represent less than 1.5 percent of Iraq’s estimated population of 34 million.
The offensive on the mountain came just two months after the fall of Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq. At first, it appeared that the subsequent advance on the mountain was just another attempt to extend the territory controlled by Islamic State fighters.
Almost immediately, there were signs that their aim this time was different.
Survivors say that men and women were separated within the first hour of their capture. Adolescent boys were told to lift up their shirts, and if they had armpit hair, they were directed to join their older brothers and fathers. In village after village, the men and older boys were driven or marched to nearby fields, where they were forced to lie down in the dirt and sprayed with automatic fire.
The women, girls and children, however, were hauled off in open-bed trucks.
Peter Brooks asks in the Boston Herald,
What’s our plan for when the regime of Syria’s Bashar Assad falls?
Yes, I said “falls.”
I wonder too.
Published in Foreign Policy, General, Islamist Terrorism
It would be nuts to say this over a year out. We have no idea what territory would be held at that point, or what the balance of forces will be. The promise would offer no benefit. It would have a cost, though. People would constantly use any detailed plan as evidence of a flip flop when circumstances change and make a different response better.
Fiorina and Walker both take my position that the primary change should be a dramatically increased level of support for our allies. As Fiorina puts it in response to a question about whether she’d put troops on the ground: ““I think it’s premature until we have a conversation with our allies,” she said. “It’s a little bit like saying, ‘Okay there are all these alternatives in front of us that our allies who are there have told us will help, and we’re just going to leap over all of those and talk about boots on the ground.’ And I think President Obama has created this dichotomy where basically what he says is, if you don’t agree with me, the only option is to go to war. It’s just false. It’s a false choice. So we shouldn’t fall into that trap.”
Rubio favors more direct engagement. The only exception to the general rule that detail is unhelpful at this stage is Bush, because people are more likely to make stuff up about his position. As such, unsurprisingly, Bush has a more detailed plan than most. I thought that this VOX piece was pretty funny about it. Obama’s plan is to set up a safe zone. Bush’s plan is to take over from Obama and continue his policy, setting up more safe zones, and a no fly zone. This means that Bush is a terrifying neocon and Obama’s a wise policy maker. Even more disturbing, Bush calls ISIS “evil”, which reminds Beauchamp of Bush’s first term more than his second. I don’t know about you, but I believe that there has been no point in Bush’s life, pre-presidency, first term, second term, or post-Presidency, when Bush would have been uncomfortable terming ISIS’ sort of atrocities as evil. Obama has been known to use the term “pure evil” in reference to ISIS, so maybe he’s way more aggressively neo-con than Bush.
It’s articles like this that make me sad when you link to VOX, incidentally, Zafar, because you don’t always do it solely with the intent of showing how worthless a journalism degree can be. I don’t believe that the average member of the bottom decile of Ricochet would produce analysis that poor.
Which of Cruz’s responses? Cruz’s current line is to suggest support for destroying ISIS in 90 days. How would he do that? Well, he’d use the words “radical Islamic terrorists”, and he’d punish Americans who tried to join ISIS.
Even Trump’s message is more thoughtful and adult. At other times, Cruz has opposed intervention or been angry with Obama for not intervening.
When Cruz doesn’t have a consistent position, you can tell that the polls of the base are not clear.
James, are you asking me to defend an article I didn’t actually post? (I’m not saying I won’t, but I need to read it first.)
To ME Christians, and how and when and why they matter (or don’t really matter). Resisting the urge to link to Vox, how about American Conservative?
* gnashes teeth and rends remains of hair *
How will this be meaningful in Syria and Iraq?!!!
The impact on ISIS’ military strength of “not calling them RITs” is zero. Correct?
In fact “not calling them RITs” makes it easier (possible, even) for the West to work with allies (such as they are) in the area – the alternative (no allies because we have declared war on a whole religion) strikes me as deeply dysfunctional decision making. Cruz is no dumbo, so why does he say this stuff? Cui bono? (Hint: he does.)
Indeed. Or that their opinions on the Middle East are troubling. If we want a reality-based US foreign policy in the here and now.
Completely agree with you on this, Zafar. Completely. This is an inter-American culture war debate, not a debate that has any impact on the world.
That said: It’s untrue that calling them “Islamic terrorists” would be tantamount to declaring war on the region; I’ve spoken to security officials throughout the region — not the entire region, but enough of it to know that RITs, as we’re calling them here, are called “jihadis,” “terrorists” and/or by their specific names, e.g. Daesh, Nusra, Boko Haram, etc. We wouldn’t be declaring war on the whole religion by referring to these groups as other Muslims do. We’d just be harmonizing our nomenclature.
I don’t know to what extent our foreign policy bureaucracies have truly been hypnotized by the idea that there’s no deep connection between what these groups are doing and an internally consistent Quranic interpretation (which ISIS’s is, of course), but I frankly doubt it’s all that much. Everyone who studies these groups know this perfectly well and knows it backward and forward. This debate is about domestic politics, and when Cruz says these kinds of things, he’s simply saying, “I’ve got no plan. I’ll make this problem magically go away by calling these groups another name — in English.”
The damage done through pretending this has nothing to do with Islam is greater than that of irritating those who pretend.
But don’t we already mostly do just that? Call them terrorists, jihadis, Boko Haram, Daesh etc? Call Islamic State “Islamic State”? Call Al-Qaida “Al-Qaida”? How else do we refer to them?
(Australia’s Prime Minister has been [imho unsuccessfully] using “Death Cult” which is a bit try-hard – and sounds very doubleplusgood, along the lines of Great Satan and Little Satan. Hasn’t caught on – so now he’s going to use Daesh instead. Apparently this will make Daesh very unhappy – if they notice.)
This evening I’m just back from watching a truly depressing film “In the Sands of Babylon” – which provides what seems to be some of the emotional back story to post-2003 Iraq’s trajectory. Depressingly it seems like it a cognate to what’s going to happen in Syria, one way or the other.
Well, we hold conferences about “violent extremism,” which is what I think Cruz is referring to. We also call them all of the above. The issue is really not what we call them; it’s what we do. I mean, we could call ISIS something really positive — name it after an Egyptian goddess known for being a patroness of the downtrodden, say — and still, people would grasp what they are pretty well.
The new term of art from the Obama Administration is “perverted jihadist.”
There we go, the war’s over. Phew. It was beginning to worry me. V-Day, folks! We’ve defeated perverted jihadism! All it took was saying those words!
Now, admittedly, being from a Muslim family and all I’m predisposed to believe that the problem is not Islam, but let’s say I’m wrong and it is. (It’s possible. I’ve been wrong before.)
So if the problem is Islam, then what is the solution?
Wrt the Middle East, this means a lot fewer allies.
The Kurds? Muslim.
Jordan? Muslim.
The Free Syrian Army? Muslim.
The Iraqi Govt in Baghdad? Muslim.
The Gulf States (including Bahrain, current host of the US Fifth Fleet)? Muslim.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Hahahahahaha! Very Muslim.
Morocco? Also Muslim.
Turkey? Muslim Muslim and Muslim.
Assad’s regime? Still Muslim.
Sisi’s Egypt? Muslim yet again.
So – okay – we’ve decided that all these places in the Middle East are tainted and sick to the core because of Islam.
Confronting, but it is what it is.
So now what?
Let’s have the courage of our convictions and spell out what this necessarily implies about the solution.
What will it look like?
How much will it cost?
How long will it take?
Who will achieve it?
How will you measure success or failure?
Conferences, workshops, brainstorming sessions – I’m sure they’re useful, but what to do if Al-Baghdadi keeps declining to attend?
I suggest calling it VPJ Day, which includes a (deep) bow to tradition.
Ideally, ” Fix your damn problem yourselves, because if we have to fix it you won’t like the costs and going to be very messy.”
I did not say that Islam is the problem, and I do not think so. But the problem undoubtedly comes from within Islam. I suspect you think this as well.
What will it look like?
How much will it cost?
How long will it take?
Who will achieve it?
How will you measure success or failure?
[Edited to include your comment, because I started off just repeating mine.]
Yes, I do think that’s true. At its heart it is a prolonged multipolar civil war, and like all wars it is about power.
If they continue to act like barbarian savages…
Probably involve lots of bright lights.
We already own the weapons
20 -30 minutes tops.
US Strategic Forces
Size of the parking lot
Look, I’m just tired of this. Right now pretty much the entire Islamic world is a gigantic MGF(Coc violation). The only way it stops is if the alleged “large majority of moderate reasonable muslims” get control of the alleged “small minority of radicals” and starts ratting them out when they get jihadi in the West, and shuts them down in the Ummah. We need to call a spade a spade, and insist they control their problem and that problem is Radical Islamists. No more evasions, no more circumlocution, no more excuses (Crusades!)
If they don’t eventually we will have a big war, with the gloves off, and nobody, but nobody does war like Western Civilization.
The winners would be China and India. But I think quite a bit of Western civilization will survive and flourish in India, albeit possibly without Delhi and Bombay and perhaps a half-dozen other population centers following this all-out thermonuclear war. But that’s okay: India’s invincible even without those, as I’ve argued.
Don’t see why we wouldn’t do fine. The entire crescent from Morrocco to Pakistan ( with the exception of Israel) produces next to nothing in the way of manufactured goods, has almost no scientific or technical know how and can’t even feed itself. If not for oil ( and thats becoming something we don’t need from them) we wouldn’t even notice them.
Part of the conventional wisdom now streaming from Afghanistan is that our achievement has been to make Taliban rule safe for Chinese capitalism.
I wrote this in 2012. I decided not to publish it, since I was worried no one would grasp the satirical undertones.
Give it to China, They’ll Eat Anything
The general hysteria in the United States over the prospect of China’s rising military might has prevented us from making a shrewd assessment of the potential benefits to us of China’s imperial ambitions. In some cases, China’s expansion is a direct threat to American interests. In others, it is not–and indeed, it should be warmly and cynically encouraged.
Afghanistan is such a place. What is done in Afghanistan is done. Foreign troops will be withdrawn at the end of 2014, and the country will be left to fend for itself. While Japan will continue to be a major investor in the region, it is no longer in a position to be a major aid donor. Under these circumstances, only a fool would discourage China from assuming the Afghan burden.
When President Karzai met President Hu Jintao in Beijing in June, the countries agreed to develop “a strategic and cooperative partnership.” Last Saturday, Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan. Zhou, the most senior Chinese official to make this trip since 1966, again pledged Chinese assistance to Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s government. And why on earth should we object? What two nations could better deserve each other?
China covets Afghanistan for its strategic geographic location and for for its spectacular mineral resources. Last year, the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that some $1 trillion of minerals, copper, iron, gold, and cobalt were sleeping under Afghan soil. Most importantly, so was lithium — a treasure trove of it. Americans use lithium-powered products daily; it is a key component in cell phones and laptop computers. Afghanistan’s lithium reserves, it seems, may be the largest in the world: A Pentagon memo uncovered by the New York Times suggested that Afghanistan may prove to be the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” rivaling or exceeding current title-holder Bolivia. Immediately recognizing the significance of this mineral bonanza, China entered negotiations with the Afghan government to claim it.
American strategic planners with a short-term view find this development immensely disturbing, as they did the news that the Afghan government had entered into its first oil contract — not with the United States, but with China’s National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).
The dawning realization that US military personnel have effectively been providing entry and security for Chinese mining companies in Afghanistan has prompted lachrymose hand-wringing in US security circles. Last December, China’s state-owned National Petroleum Corp. signed a deal allowing it to become the first foreign company to exploit Afghanistan’s oil and natural gas reserves. Three years earlier, the China Metallurgical Construction Co. signed a contract to develop the Aynak copper mine in Logar province. Beijing’s $3.5 billion stake in the mine is the largest foreign investment in Afghanistan. Afghan officials hope these vast untapped mineral deposits–valued by the U.S. Defense Department at $1 trillion–will help offset the loss of foreign aid once foreign troops withdraw. Thus, in effect, the United States has borrowed money from China, spent it to protect lucrative Chinese operations in Afghanistan, turned tail and run.
While this sounds like an egregious strategic blunder, American anxiety is misplaced. When foreign troops leave and the aid dries up, there is a good likelihood that Afghanistan will descend again into civil war. China has a direct interest in preventing this, for such a conflict will aggravate the already tense conflict in China’s Muslim-majority province in neighboring Xinjiang. Yet even after decades of Soviet and American intervention, Afghans seem willing, even eager, to give Chinese intervention a shot. Curious, that, but why dissuade them? Either it will work, and China will bring Afghanistan under its control, or it won’t. The United States will be the winner either way: Either Afghanistan will be permanently pacified, or China will be tied down and unable to threaten our interests elsewhere. The minerals and the energy will come out of the ground one way or another, and this will lower the cost of these commodities on global markets. All this will benefit America.
The Telegraph, headquartered in Calcutta, recently reported that China is seeking to open its narrow border with Afghanistan by building roads, or possibly a tunnel, through the Pamir mountain range. “It is an outflanking move,” said a distressed General V.K. Singh, India’s retired former Chief of Army staff. “India risks losing the influence it has in Afghanistan because of a China-Pakistan link that is getting stronger and seen in evidence here. China’s objective is to increase connectivity with Afghanistan where it already has considerable presence, like India, in development and other projects.” Reports have also emerged suggesting that President Karzai discussed with China’s President Hu Jinatao the prosect of building a direct road connection between China and Afghanistan. This would encourage Chinese inward investment while providing Afghanistan with access to Chinese goods. India, still stuck in myopic nationalist indignation, has not yet appreciated that it will also be the benefactor:The roads will allow India to piggyback on Chinese labor and investment, giving India quick access to Southeast Asia through Chinese ports. India will not need to spend a penny or a single India life to capitalize upon them.
Meanwhile, the situation of the indigenous people of Gilgit-Baltistan, a UN-declared disputed territory under Pakistan’s control, is worsening, which is a human tragedy for its inhabitants, but a strategic gain for China. Gilgit-Baltistan is home to more than a million people of Balti, Shin, Burushu, Khowar and Wakhi ethnicity, and shares cultural ties to Tibetans, Kashmiris, Tajiks, Uighurs and Mongols. At the intersection of Central Asia, China and South Asia, Gilgit-Baltistan greatly helps China to establish access to markets and energy strongholds in the Middle East and the Indian Ocean, and is itself is a resource-rich region where uranium, copper, and gold are abundant. Glaciated water bodies cover a catchment area equal to the size of South Carolina. Despite repeated local demands, Islamabad has failed to transfer legislative authority over trade and transit routes to its indigenous institutions, limiting the territory’s access to revenue worth millions of dollars. Pakistan also denies natives royalties and usage compensation for the rivers, which the Pakistani provinces currently receive on annual basis. Simultaneously, Pakistan’s unilateral decision to award mining licenses to Chinese companies has effectively nullified native control over the land. According to media sources, China plans to invest more than thirty billion dollars in Gilgit-Baltistan to construct large water storage dams that will displace hundreds of thousands of people. Since we can do nothing about this, we may as well see the bright side.
A new border crossing at the Wakhan Corridor will directly facilitate the exploitation of Afghanistan’s natural resources. The passage between China and Afghanistan would mark the first border crossing since Mao Tse Tung’s communist forces took over China in 1949 and permanently closed inter-country travel. As of now, the the 16,000-foot Wakhji mountain pass remains closed half the year due to inclement weather. Singh holds that the most reliable border crossing would be a tunnel, but admits that the designing of such a tunnel under the mountains would require an engineering wherewithal India does not yet possess.. The Chinese, however, are undisputed masters of building technically challenging infrastructure, as their all-weather access railway line to Tibet amply demonstrates.There has even been talk of a building an electric plant and a railway system from Tajikistan to Pakistan with $500 million in Chinese investment. Afghanistan has reiterated its support for China in combating terrorism, extremism and separatism, Beijing’s standard term for the Muslim ethnic Uighurs independence movement in the far western region of Xinjiang. The Afghan government has also pledged to take “tangible measures” to protect Chinese citizens and institutions in Afghanistan. If Afghanistan fails to keep its terrorists in check, China will no doubt lend them a hand, in its own special Chinese way. Much better China suffer the casualties–to its soldiers and its international standing–than us.
From New Delhi’s dismayed perspective, China is pursuing this advance as part of its garland of pearls strategy to surround India with military bases and logistics centers stretching from naval outposts in Sri Lanka and the Maldives to ports in Pakistan and Myanmar to the High Himalayas north of Kashmir. China intends, clearly, to exploit these territories’ resource and use the ladder to climb to superpower status. Indian analysts are understandably dismayed by this prospect. But why should we be? We didn’t need Afghan minerals and energy before and we don’t now; more to the point, once China has done the dirty work, we can buy them on an open market for less than it would cost to steal them. We have achieved our only essential war aim: Osama bin Laden is dead. We should have no quarrel with China if it now wishes to assume the burden of colonizing Afghanistan; in fact, we should weep with gratitude–all, of course, while pretending to be very outraged, so better to extract meaningful concessions on other, more important issues
The scenario in which thousands of Chinese personnel have assumed de-facto control of the region will be seen by pessimists as a serious threats both to its inhabitants and to the United States. Indeed, China’s presence in Gilgit-Baltistan complicates the Kashmir issue and prolongs the dispute between India and Pakistan, offering oxygen to terrorists and rogue elements within the ISI. In a worst-case scenario, this could lead to war among the three nuclear nations, sparking political and economic instability on a global scale. Many locals fear that Gilgit-Baltistan will resemble Tibet and East Turkestan if China’s interventions are not challenged. They emphasize that neither Pakistan nor China enjoy legitimate sovereignty over Gilgit-Baltistan and urge the international community (read: the US) to push them to withdraw their personnel and citizens from the region.
The are surely right about the human rights catastrophe that will ensue. But on the other hand, so what? We clearly have no more appetite for undertaking long-term colonial projects in benighted, distant lands where we have obviously worn out our welcome. Such an unpopular policy would hardly be sustainable domestically, given that we are an island democracy with a free press and a small population of draft-age men we cannot afford to waste. China, on the other hand, can literally throw millions of lives at this problem and no one will complain; indeed, no one will be the wiser. We can amuse ourselves by passing impotent resolutions at the UN, taking the moral high ground, clucking with “concern,” and doing nothing. In the end, China will perhaps have all the treasure, but they will still have to build something of it and export it on a free global market. It is hardly as if the lithium or the copper are worth more to us than what it would cost us to hold on to that territory directly.
But surely, readers will cry, we cannot reduce our role to carving out an entry for China, our rival, only for it to prosper on American blood and ideals?
We did already. It’s too late. The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on. We won the war for China, and we may as well see the bright side of it, because there is one: Afghanistan is China’s problem now, and either they will be do a better job of civilizing it than we did, or they will be too bogged down in it to get in our way for a very good long time.
Brava. They will not have the difficult time there that we did.
Claire & All,
I don’t wish to appear a scold or certainly not a obsessive over nomenclature. However, all of this demonstrates my point. It is Jihadism, the specific theological set of beliefs, that is the consistent thread throughout all of these groups. Biden’s blurted phrase “perverted jihadism” is interesting. At some level it shows that this understanding is sinking in. It is the “perverted” part that, as usual for the Obama administration, is delusional.
Both the literal interpretation of Jihad and what I would refer to as the mystical interpretation of Jihad have been in existence for at least a 1,000 years if not from the very origin of Islam. We are concerned with the literal interpretation in which an absolute holy war is declared against all non-Muslims and virtually any merciless tactic is justified. This is the problem. Any Muslim can choose not to believe in a literal interpretation and choose to believe the very benign mystical interpretation that of an internal personal struggle with evil. Virtually every group who is committing these merciless atrocities makes it crystal clear that they are full blown believers in a literal Jihad. Nothing could be a greater indication of this than expressing a desire for a “caliphate”. This belief system would result in a total dehumanization of anyone they saw as a non-Jihadist Muslim. The merciless war crimes and genocidal tactics go hand in hand with the literalist Jihadist ideology.
If Biden were to accidentally say the right thing (which he still hasn’t) he’d stumble and say something hopelessly absurd the next day. They can never quite get it through their head that they have been just plain wrong about the Middle East.
Regards,
Jim
Either they will or they won’t; either way, we should look on the bright side.
Great outcome, if it happens. Once those people get focused on buying washing machines and computer games that part of the world will become a whole lot less troublesome for everybody concerned (not to mention its inhabitants).
I sympathise with you, truly (esp if you are, or recently have been, in the KSA), but I just don’t think that’s realistic. Has it worked anywhere to date? (It didn’t with Saddam in Iraq after the first Gulf War.)
But – the West is already involved in Islam’s civil war (hence the current borders and things like the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) because it has backed a side. (Mubarak, now Sisi, in Egypt against the Muslim Brotherhood. All those dictators who got overthrown in the Arab Spring. Karzai in Afghanistan, the Sauds. The Govt in Baghdad….)
Iow its’ already invested in the outcomes – and if the outcomes aren’t to its liking, then it’s because these were poor (or perhaps unwise?) investments rather than because the “moderates” let the West down by failing to build the consensus to stand up to men with guns. How many of these investments was about building a consensus and how many were for other goals? We’ve consistently funded grubby elites that were good for (our) business, with the wellbeing of the people not really on the agenda. The Arab Spring was a consequence of this, not an aberration.
Time for a rethink.
Z re Egypt. Do you think the people did or did not support Sisi’s coup against Morsi, just curious.
you know, spanking is outlawed right?
<sarcasmOff>
Wow on this lengthy but very informative comment, to highlight the complexity of it what goes on on the continents across the ocean.
What scares me are these two things:
I never heard the phrase, “The moving finger writes”, but it reminded me of Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin from the story in Daniel of the fall of Babylon, because of the hand that wrote on the wall.
because of their “special Chinese way“?
so, Christians and any-non Muslims, who are clearly infidels, along with those believing in the benign mystical jihad interpretation are ALL at risk from those who believe, and execute, the literal jihad called for in Quran.
Why don’t more people understand this concept?
except for those deemed infidels, by those interpreting and executing literal jihad?