Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Georges of a feather. . . .


George Armstrong Custer.

George Walker Bush.

Both share a "whatever it takes" mentality in battling a rival civilization, even if the "whatever" part cuts at the heart of one's own. Both acted boldly to the point of recklessness in attacking their enemies. Both got themselves in deep, deep trouble when their boldness linked up with a fundamental misjudgment about the nature of their adversaries.

In Custer's case, all that little blunder at Little Big Horn cost was his batallion -- down to the last man . . . including Custer.

In Bush's case, all his fundamental misunderstanding of the Muslim world, coupled with his rush to rash action, cost was . . . we don't know yet. If we're lucky, the United States will slink, humiliated, out of a ruined and genocidal Iraq.

IF WE'RE NOT, it's gonna be a lot worse than that.

For example, George Bush thinks democracy is a talisman that will, of its own accord, purge the Islamic world of its violent and hegemonistic demons. But didn't fair and free elections hand the Palestinian Authority's parliament to Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic movement sworn to obliterating Israel?

How's that working out for all concerned, George?

In his Creators Syndicate column, Washington Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley points to a book Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed has written. Everywhere and in every way, things are not working out very well at all.

Dr. Ahmed is a worldly man of letters who profoundly believes that collective good can be accomplished by individual acts of good conscience -- that each of us (Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu) must connect with others and live out our convictions for our common humanity in the face of tribalism, religion and other dividing forces. Thus, his reach out to me, a fiery American nationalist TV commentator and editor to find if not complete common ground, at least common friendship.

His new book, "Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization," is thus particularly heartbreaking for me. As a trained anthropologist, he took three of his students on a six-month journey around the Muslim world to investigate what Muslims are thinking.

His conclusion: Due to both misjudgments by the United States and regrettable developments in Muslim attitudes, "The poisons are spreading so rapidly that without immediate remedial action, no antidote may ever be found." And Dr. Ahmed has always been an optimist.

He divides Muslim attitudes into three categories named after Indian Muslim cities that have historically championed them: Ajmer, Aligarh and Deoband.

Ajmer represents peaceful Sufi mysticism, Aligarth represents the instinct to modernize without corrupting Islam, Deoband represents non-fatalistic, practical, action-oriented orthodox Islam. It traces to Ibn Taymiyya, a 14th-Century thinker who lived when Islam was reeling from the Mongol invasions. He rejected Islam's prior easy, open acceptance of non-Muslims.

In short, Dr. Ahmed is an Aligarth. As a young man he was one of new Pakistan's best and brightest, led by Pakistan's founding father and first president, Dr. Jinnah. They hoped to build a modern democracy, overcome tribalism and the more obscurantist aspects of Islam while still being "good Muslims." The Deobands are the Bin Ladens and all the other Muslims we fear today.

Even one or two years ago, I think Dr. Ahmed was reasonably hopeful that his views had a fighting chance around the Islamic world. So, my jaw dropped when I got to page 192 of his new book and he described his thoughts while in Pakistan last year on his investigative journey: "The progressive and active Aligarth model had become enfeebled and in danger of being overtaken by the Deoband model ... I felt like a warrior in the midst of the fray who knew the odds were against him but never quite realized that his side had already lost the war."

He likewise reported from Indonesia -- invariably characterized as practicing a more moderate form of Islam. There, too, his report was crushingly negative. Meeting with people from presidents to cab drivers, from elite professors to students from modest schools (Dr. Ahmed holds a respected place in the Muslim firmament around the globe), reports that 50 percent want Shariah law, support the Bali terrorist bombing, oppose women in politics, support stoning adulterers to death. Indonesia's secular legal system and tolerant pluralist society is being "infiltrated by Deoband thinking ... Dwindling moderates and growing extremists are a dangerous challenging development."

Although I dissent from several of Dr. Ahmed's characterizations of the Bush Administration, Washington policymakers and journalists should read this book because it delivers a terrible message of warning both to those who say things aren't as bad as Bush says, and we can rely on the moderate voices of Islam -- with a little assist from the West -- winning; and for those who argue for aggressive American action to show our strength to the Muslims (because, in Bin Laden's words, they follow the strong horse).

To the first group he says that the "moderate" voice is in near hopeless retreat across the Muslim world. Don't count on them. To the second group he says, whatever Bush's intentions, our aggression only strengthens our enemies.
SO, OUR POLICY to date is to pursue a disastrous and pointless war in Iraq that, according to Dr. Ahmed, only strengthens our enemies -- kind of like the Enterprise firing its phaser banks into an energy-eating alien monolith. Unlike George Bush, Captains Kirk and Picard always had sense enough to Quit Doing That when they saw what the deal was.

No, our policy is to strengthen the Radical Islamic Monolith by firing our phasers at it over in the Alpha Quadrant . . . er, Iraq. And then, to make sure our cause is good and hopeless, we want to make sure the strengthened (and popular) energy-chomping monolith achieves real power all across the Islamic world via Exporting Democracy(TM).

Good God. George Custer isn't dead, he's president.

And if I hadn't been conscripted into the cavalry, I'd be putting my money on Crazy Horse.



HAT TIP: Crunchy Con.

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