Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
Well, only partly; my joke was intended to support your argument rather than oppose it, but yes, there’s been a lot of demographic churn over the millennia.
I don’t believe that this is true. Even the mythical salting of the earth only applied to the capital region and even there there were substantial numbers enslaved. The Carthaginian empire included a lot of Carthaginians in other areas of North Africa, though, and for them it was less drastic a regime change than a total genocide.
I think the numbers depend considerably on the criteria to qualify, but I agree that large scale massacres have often had meaningful impacts. You’ll note that I was defending Assad Sr. against charges that his thuggery was incompetent as well as evil (his handling of the economy was mostly incompetent rather than evil, but he reversed this when it came to internal security).
Bah! I must bow to facts and logic.
(Though I still think they could have done better by being better.)
Does not being a socialist feature in your diagnosis? I think that if they’d renounced terrorism, accepted peace with Israel, and renounced socialism in, say, 1993, they might have been able to get a Sadat-like boost from American funding and freed markets. Although that ended badly for Sadat personally, and although the Egyptian regime fell, it’s possible that Assad’s superior secret police would have made the difference and Syria would be peaceful and stable today.
Can you paint a rosier picture in which doing well does better? In general, it’s hard for dictators to ride out the storm. Even the most benevolent of dictators for the 20th century, Pinochet, after he’d guided his country to prosperity and democracy, ended up being consigned to jail by an Albion at her most perfidious and lacking in principle. The myth of dictatorial stability does have some examples to hang the theory on, but very few who retained their position other than through abuses.
Again, this doesn’t mean that abuses would work for us. For a secret police to work, you have to know the people pretty well, and atrocities are only part of the recipe for tyranny.
I’m afraid I hadn’t gotten that far.
It did end badly for Sadat, but the regime didn’t fall. Sadat was succeeded by his Vice President, Hosni Mubarak. Whose long and mostly secular rule resulted in majority support for things like the Muslim Brotherhood or IJ.
(As did the Assad’s. And Ghaddafi’s. And those clowns in Algeria. And even Tito’s. I fear the same outcome in Uzbekistan. To an extent I think it’s because MB etc are the only ones bloody minded enough to be left standing of the all the alternatives.)
Yes, true – the whole gig sort of paints them into a corner. Which is why, unless we are okay with unending dictatorship (which is bad, mmmmkay?), or disruptive change (when the dictatorship cracks), encouraging or supporting dictators seems like bad policy.
Perhaps sometimes short term gain is the least bad option. I’m starting to think this about Assad. Which is appalling, because look what it resulted in.
Sure. I meant in the Arab Spring, when Assad ran into trouble, Mubarak ran into trouble, too. Indeed, Mubarak’s prospects may be dimmer than Assad’s. Under the worst case scenario, we’ll get Biden, Paul, Cruz, Trump, or similar, and Assad will be returned to power. I think every other top table candidate is more responsible, but even assuming that, Assad’s chances are probably better than Mubarak’s.
Have you read Shadi Hamid’s Temptations of Power? What follows is not his view (he seems to me to suggest that oppression moderated the MB, and that the problem may have been the insufficient oppression of the Salafis), but I think you would enjoy the book and I’d be very keen to hear your views on it.
I’m somewhat of the view that democratizing the MB in most places will remove a lot of their mystique. It’s like with the Libertarian Party; given the choice, people argue that they’re some kind of platonic ideal of purity in a very appealing way. This makes it helpful when you can go through the actual actions of their politicians when they were in power. No one is as flawless in practice as they can appear in theory, although most politicians are better than the MB or LP.
The best outcome was in Tunisia, where the Islamists were voted in, and then voted out again. I think that in Turkey I’d prefer more change of power than there has been; I don’t like the fascists or the Islamists, but I think an alternating mix of the two might be the best outcome available, since the third option is Communist (somewhat like having to hold a very hot object; juggling two of them is less awful than grasping one). The more you can normalize and democratize their interaction with the world, the better you can get at
It is wonderful when you agree with me, Zafar.
During the Cold War, when evil regimes were funding revolution, there were times when dictators were the lesser of two evils (Pinochet, the Shah, the Colonels, the various Turkish coup leaders), and many places where enemy dictators could shelter behind an iron curtain (almost innumerable). Today, there are places where gradual change works (Saudi’s steady expansion of elections, Morocco, and such; maybe Cuba), and places where enemy dictators are hard to budge (Sudan, Burma, Bolivia, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Syria), but there is nowhere where dictators should be given a long term lease on life. Everywhere, it should be clear that the harder they kick against the traces, the more uncomfortable life will be for them.
Around the world, as in New York City, crime and abuse fell. We’re often told that war has caused endlessly fewer deaths, year by year. I’m under the impression that this decline has halted, and for the same reason that it halted under DeBlasio; you need enforcement for civilization. Like homicide, governmental abuse can never be eliminated, but like open and notorious organized crime, dictatorship can be. There’s every reason to hope that Obama will be replaced by someone with a morally decent foreign policy and the world will be democratic in 2030.
Indeed. The cold kiss of reality. Which is evening happening with the AKP in Turkey.
A lot to be said for letting the process unfold.
(I will look for this Hamid’s book.)
Do you do audiobooks? I’d be happy to send you a copy if you do.
I don’t, given my commuting pattern, but it’s kind of you to offer. Also it looks like a weighty tome and I may need to read some paras twice.
Just so you know, the “Go back 30 seconds” button on the audible app works pretty well for this. Still, yes, I found myself using it a lot.