Yesterday, NYT columnist Thomas L. Friedman noted that for all of the polls documenting the decline in American popularity around the world under President Bush, people in those countries might want to consider the alternative — a world of too much Russian and Chinese power.
Glenn Greenwald (a/k/a “Rick Ellensburg,†“Thomas Ellers,†“Ellison,†“Wilson†and “Ryanâ€Â) flailed at Friedman with his typically overwrought prose, arguing that the US is unpopular because it enagaged in unprovoked wars and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.  First, Greenwald’s use of the plural “wars” may refer to Iraq and the potential of conflict with Iran — but our fight in Afghanistan is not popular in the Muslim world, where many doubt that al Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Greenwald does not say how much influence he thinks Islamic truthers should have over US foreign policy. Second, Saddam’s Iraq not only flagrantly violated UN sanctions and the terms of the Gulf War ceasefire, but also killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people.  Greenwald’s claim that the US is responsible for hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths apparently relies on the thoroughly debunked, possibly fraudulent, Soros-funded Lancet study of Iraqi war deaths (as it is the only source for numbers that high), which speaks volumes about his ignorance or dishonesty.ÂÂ
The kernel of truth in Greenwald’s screed is that the unpopularity of the US is due in part to a resentment of its position as the world’s sole superpower.  He fails to note that this is coupled with resentment toward US policies regarding Israel and globalization that predate the current administration. (In one poll, 28% of Jordanians and 22% of Egyptians volunteered that “Jews” are mostly to blame for bad relations between Muslims and the West, though Jews were not even mentioned in the question.)  Moreover, public opinion data generally shows that anti-American attitudes in the Muslim world are due in no small part to the view that the US has had a double-standard in promoting democracy, supporting authoritarian regimes in the Arab and Muslim world while not promoting democracy there as it did elsewhere after the fall of the Soviet Union.  Greenwald focuses on the plunge in US popularity following the invasion of Iraq, but ignores that in the Mideast, favorable views have generally trended upward since 2003, while support for terrorism has dropped in nations like Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan, and of course Iraq, where al Qaeda is on the run.
Greenwald also ignores that the US will still be the world’s sole superpower under the next administration. While his latest screed heaps scorn on Bush and John McCain, Greenwald ignores that people in the Mideast have little more confidence in Barack Obama (another blow to Andrew Sullivan’s “magic face” theory). If an Obama administration followed through on his current campaign rhetoric — being careful in withdrawing from Iraq, supporting Israel and so on – there would be no reason to expect that world approval of the US will skyrocket to its pre-Iraq invasion levels.
Moreover, once we move from the streets to the governments of these other countries, we find the prospect of an Obama administration creates anxiety among countries from Israel to Iraq and China (largely due to trade concerns likely echoed in South America), indifference in Russia and happiness among the mullocracy in Iran. That last bit no doubt warms Greenwald’s heart, but not the hearts of those governing elsewhere in the world. The European “street” may like Obama, but their governments fear Obama will unconditionally surrender to Iran, possibly triggering a nuclear arms race in the Mideast.
In short, the people holding power and responsibility in Europe and the Mideast have done the thinking that Friedman suggests and come to the obvious conclusion he suggests, while Greenwald and his ilk are still wallowing in their Bush hatred.
Update: Relations between Venezuela and the US will not improve even if Barack Obama becomes president, Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan leader, predicted today. Ouch.
****
related: protein wisdom’s first ever podcast is now available!
****
Update x2: Insta-lanche!
O! is looking more like an absolute disaster evevry day.
All brand no cattle. He’s also kind of a snooze.
Nice post, Karl. Greenwald’s a fucking dope, but then again, that has been shown many times over, but it is interesting when people say that we are hated because of Bush. Um, we were hated, by many, before Bush and will be hated, by many, after Bush due mostly to our sole superpower status. The european that dislikes America is nothing more than a petulant teenager “raging against the machine” and thumbing his nose at his old man. The problem, if there is any, is that they aren’t likely to grow up. And anticipating raving stupidity, yes, disagreements with our policies are fine and healthy. However, the BDS afflicted european street has gone way beyond that.
Great point, Karl, too in regards to the Afghanistan war. Not very popular with the Muslim world, either, indeed. I thought that was the just war? What gives, Gleen(s)?
Not to drive the train, but can we please have a story/thread about the release of Sair Kantar, and a in-depth discussion as to why HE wasn’t returned in a coffin?
sorry, missing an “m” in the fucker’s name. Don’t know where it went, but are a few extra mmmmmmmmm
Baracky wants to be careful getting out. That’s goddamn visionary. The world will say, wow, say what you want about the Americans, they sure are careful getting out. A commitment to a free and prosperous Iraq would be better I think. The world will say, hrmmm, you Americans always running around making people free and prosperous… oh brb I’m late for the ten-year commemoration of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. Hey did you guys see it made the cover of Newsweek?
Gleen(s), like the Lancet hacks, are also all too willing to attribute thousands of Jihadist caused deaths to America. Fuck you, Gleen(s).
Carin, coffin for coffin is an appropriate exchange. Why they let that scumbag breathe free air is beyond me.
“there would be no reason to expect that world approval of the US will skyrocket to its pre-Iraq invasion levels.”
This is sarcasm, right?
I mean, has approval ever been sky high? Did it really fall all that far?
Yeah I do seem to remember video of people dancing in the streets after 911. I guess pre 911 approval ratings for the US were sky high.
Pablo – and that they are dancing in the streets makes me sick to my stomach. Honestly, HOW could they do this? Those soldiers are prolly turning over in their graves.
Greenwald also ignores that the BBC will still be the broadcaster with the greatest international reach under the next administration.
Gilad Shalit wasn’t released. Can someone explain to me why Israel agreed to this?
I listened to the Hezbollah Dance Party thing they had in the suburbs of Beirut.
Live guys for dead ones = WOO! Party.
Carin, the way I heard it, getting bodies back is such a big deal in Israel, that they will encourage more dead bodies and solidify powers of the authority responsible for making them dead, to have the bones.
I’m trying to find research on the issue. So far I find where Americans believe that respect for the US is down, but precious little about actual opinion overseas.
Either that or they picked the wrong Deal or No Deal suitcase.
Gee, RTO, haven’t you heard? Freeing oppressed people and killing and capturing untold thousands of jihadists has made America “less safe.” Also, standing up to the most oppressive ideology on the planet has made us a “pariah” amongst the erudite, historically enlightened hoi-polloi.
What, you think this is a war or something? Tell that to the shredded remains of TEH BILL OF RIGHTS AND TEH CONSTITUTION!!11eleventy11!!!
What do you know, you live in Texas fer cryin’ out loud! ;-)
These are NPR’s go-to people for the America hate, RTO, if that helps.
What do the Brazilian cabana boys think about America? Does anybody know?
If we have lost the cabana boys, that means the terrorists have won.
feets – He needs to repeat that one Jerusalem line in the Middle East to show he has some backbone and not some Belgian confectionary sugar covered waffle.
And they didn’t start measuring until August 2001. So not much baseleine to check against.
Daleyrocks: Methinks that Obama’s high opinion of his ability to reach out and find consensus on everything is about to take a long, cold reality bath.
Yeah, a cynic might wonder why Pew suddenly decided to focus on what foreign countries think of
Bushthe US.Daleyrocks:
I think Brazillian cabana boys could stand to lose a bit; though, Mr. Ellison still fitting in the steel bikini it seems.
Oh no, lost the A link
Gleens illustrated at link.
That link tried for a final time.
I don’t know, guys.
But I don’t need Glenn or idiot Friedman tell me what I know first hand.
USA was loved by the majority of Russians, and I bet majority of citizens of other countries , who know firsthand dictatorships and socialistic redistribution.
Just up until the time when some in here lost their minds in fear of a few assholes who came from Afghanistan and Pakistan which caused the support of the invasion of Iraq…
Carin, that is absolutely the greatest question I’ve seen in a while.
Why not to exchange dead Israeli soldiers for the dead terrorist? Just mind boggling.
sashal,
Try telling the 9/11 families that we’re just afraid of a few assholes, as opposed to righteously pissed off.
sashal: To be fair, those “few assholes” were well funded, fanatically committed and demonstrated a remarkable ability to plan ahead and with creativity. Couple that with their fervent desire to acquire and use WMD’s, be they nucs, radioactive materials or various chemical and biological agents, made (and make) them a significant threat to national security.
As Karl says, righteously pissed off and out to crush are the operative attitudes.
Per usual, Sashal comes in and gums it all up with his ignorance of Islamism. A few assholes?
Great point Pablo, and one that I have argued with anti-war types in the past. Full disclosure: Much like the commenter by the name of McGruder, I was pretty much against escalating the violence with Iraq, but am now cautiously optimistic. Anyhow, to the majority of these types, the absence of war equals peace to them AND every death in Iraq is the United States doing. Bullshit on both accounts. They are either one of two things. Lying crapweasels (thanks JD) of the highest order or ignorant of the facts as they pertain to pre-escalation Iraq. They either didn’t give a shit about Iraqis before the escalation (now they suddenly “care” about them?) or they thought it was a nice place to live. Whatever the case, the vast majority of death and destruction over there, and Afghanistan, is being caused by the spineless dumbfuck jihadists.
Men driven by the same animus as the Al Qaeda elite and the agents of 9/11 are not few in number, Sashal. They are too many to ignore. They have chosen their path (or think Allah has chosen it for them). Most of the believers in this animus must either be killed or they will kill in turn. This is the way they (or their Allah) would have it. We will accommodate them with their destruction. Let the monkey watch.
sure,Karl and BJTex, those assholes were well prepared and funded FEW assholes, which did not come from and were not funded by Iraq.
But we already discussed that many times before ( and I am not feeling going through this again) about our misdirection in the WOT. Hopefully Obama or even McCain(judging by his attention to Afghanistan lately) are going to reverse that…
Who said they did?
You do realize that the first place invaded by US forces after Pearl Harbor was French North Africa, right? Why? They weren’t responsible for Pearl Harbor; I don’t even remember if the Vichy government had declared war on the US.
They were in a strategic position we needed to secure.
Now, think beyond your childish concept of war as purely a matter of revenge, and try to apply that lesson to today.
“USA was loved by the majority of Russians”
You’ll have to show me.
I’ll say Saddam did provide subsidy for attacks against Israel. Suicide bombings were a payday for the terrorists families, thanks to Saddam.
“which did not come from and were not funded by Iraq.”
So?
about
our misdirection inmy misconception of the WOTFixed that for you.
Anything important in between, say, Iraq and Afghanistan? I don’t have a globe handy.
Oh, never mind, now I remember. It’s that Caspian oil pipeline. Man, say what you want about imperialism and hegemony, but I am really digging this 59-cent a gallon gasoline!
“Hopefully Obama or even McCain(judging by his attention to Afghanistan lately) are going to reverse that…”
You just keep hoping and see what it gets you.
Hope is neither a method nor a plan.
No, between Iraq and Afghanistan is the Middle East’s version of “flyover” country.
well, RTO, I just heard both of them the other day with the foreign policies speeches.
Sounds like the day and night compared to what we had with the Bush administration.
SarahW – Getting sand in a steel plum smuggler would have a tendency to make you cranky I should think. I don’t have an explaination for the dishonesty.
43 – How Sashal? In what ways?
Oh, never mind, now I remember. It’s that Caspian oil pipeline. Man, say what you want about imperialism and hegemony, but I am really digging this 59-cent a gallon gasoline!
We stopped talking about the pipeline when Afghanistan ceased being the new Vietnam and became the good war that everyone supported.
Perhaps Seymour Hersch can give it a comeback.
“well, RTO, I just heard both of them the other day with the foreign policies speeches.
Sounds like the day and night compared to what we had with the Bush administration.”
I don’t trust your capacity to judge. You have no apprehension of the strategies or the larger picture…and you strenuously resist all attemtpts at enlightenment.
“Perhaps Seymour Hersch can give it a comeback.”
If the violence in Afghanistan escalates (which is a result of our success in Iraq) enough you can bank on it.
Oh. By “talking” I mean “hearing”.
If the violence in Afghanistan escalates (which is a result of our success in Iraq) enough you can bank on it.
The other day, that Brandon Whats-his-name from VoteVets was on DailyKos trying to make a case that the Bush administration had given aid to the Taliban just months before the attacks. Afghanistan as the bad war is on it’s way back, baby. It’s 2002 all over again.
Afghanistan is quickly becoming a distraction I think.
Give Peace(in Iraq) a chance, MayBee. Then you’ll see a huge Afghanistan backlash.
To be scrupulously fair to sashal, it was always my experience that Russians liked Americans, but the Soviet gov’t did not. Much like the flyover country between Iraq and Afghanistan.
I actually have a more full response to sashal’s other “points,” but I think I’ll save them for a post, probably tomorrow.
No, for real. I can hardly get anything done. It’s worse than a new puppy.
#51, btw, is sheer brilliance, as it is pretty clear that O! and Dems are looking to change the subject from Iraq to Afghanistan.
First, why does anyone shivagit about if we are popular or not? It’s not like we’re trying to get a date for an afternoon at the Chok’Lit Shoppe.
Second, give a poor slob burning an effigy of anything at an anti-American rally just about anywhere in the world a visa and a plane ticket to Muncie, and he’d kiss momma goodbye so fast he’d leave a hickie.
TheGeezer,
I think our popularity matters in more democratic countries, as some allied gov’ts may feel domestic constraints on their ability to cooperate with the US. But it’s certainly not the only factor.
Hope is neither a method nor a plan.
“He who lives on hope dies farting.” Ben Franklin
#47 that’s funny,
coming from the guys who cheer-leaded the unnecessary war. Talking about judgement, sure
#51 no, HF.
Iraq was a distraction, which thankfully pretty soon will be over with.
#55, Karl, to be scrupulously fair to me, you should admit, that I was always giving high priority to Afghanistan and so did many other ones(including Obama) with the REAL vision and understanding on the WOT.
“a few assholes”
Um, I thought estimates of the number of terrorists trained by Al Qaeda in Afganistan was over 40,000. And in Iraq John Kerry and Bill Clinton said there were more than a few WMD’s.
I… with the REAL vision and understanding on the WOT.
Somehow what comes to mind is the scene in “Zoolander” where Stiller and Wilson try to get the data out of the computer…
Sash, you can assert that Iraq was unnecessary, and we can give that opinion the attention it deserves.
Give Obama some time, sashal, and Afghanistan will become a “distraction” and a place that “makes America less safe.”
Just give it some time… and unicorns!
Behold, the unmaking of Salvador Dali before our eyes. It’s not so much “the Persistence of Memory” anymore — more like “the Persistence of Meme-ery”.
#60: sashal,
As I have noted elsewhere here, Iraq was a distraction for al Qaeda.
Plus, this bonus from the new ABC News poll:
http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/Politics/Story?id=5370538&page=3
But feel free to empower that crowd.
#66, fine, Karl.
I am not advocating for the majority of democrats.
Or republicans for that matter.
I am happy not to belong to ANY political organization.
Since I was a young pioneer, I developed strong immunity to the rigid political structures with party discipline.
I am sure we talked about it, Karl, or you may have figured that out long ago:-
I was and am not criticizing the decision to go to war with Iraq(as well as the destruction of Serbia, which brought independence to Kosovo) from the approved positions by the headquarters of the democratic or republican parties
sashal,
You were just asking for me to give Obama credit.
Also, as we have discussed more than once, you can choose not to belong to a rigid political structure all you want. Voting puts some in power and some out of power, regardless of whether you’re a card-carrying member of any party. Your isolationism helps empower the people who oppose the mission in Afghanistan you supposedly support.
Of course Afghanistan is a failure, we eventually followed the Democrat’s, more specifically John Kerry’s prescribed, “multilateral” International community’s approval approach by making it a NATO action. Given their shining historical examples like Vietnam, Korea & Kosovo, Democrats still wonder why voters or world leaders have a problem taking them seriously – any other reason why Obama is practically tied w/ McCain after all of the free, positive press & leader after leader has expressed serious reservations regarding his Presidency? Have you seen the latest polls regarding the Pelosi/Reid lead Congress?
I don’t know, why you are keeping calling that isolationism.
It is not.
It is just making right or wrong decisions on foreign policies.
I am all for active engagement, and not a pacifist at all.
You would not call my friend D.Larison isolationist , right?
We just have to pick our fights wisely and when it is absolutely necessary and the last resort…
sashal
All that many of us are trying to accomplish is the acceptance of the idea that positive results from Iraq won’t be dismissed simply because you and others may think that the entire enterprise was the misguided fumblings of Neo-con imperialists pushing a starry eyed ChimpyMcburtonHitler.
Look Michael Yon, who has been imbedded in Iraq more than any other journalist and most certainly is not a member of the VRWC (he was one of the first people to call Iraq a “civil war” back in early ’06) notes that by any reasonable definition, the “war in Iraq” is over. Oh, there will still be moments of violence and possible a couple of major attacks and the political situatiuon will undoubtedly get messy but Iraq was a violent place and a political mess before Coalition troops arrived.
It’s perfectly OK to acknowledge what might be ultimate success while still arguing that the initial invasion was a bad idea. Although I would disagree with the former, the latter indicates to me that you are looking at the broad picture of reality rather than just shouting geo-political polemics based upon experience with a dead regime.
Let’s also note that NATO is being less than helpful in Afghanistan, the country where most Americans think we should be fighting. While Obama talks about multilateralism those NATO nations are being mighty niggardly with both their troops and their tight fisted ROE’s.
Maybe if we bombed Serbia again…
BJ, you said: “It’s perfectly OK to acknowledge what might be ultimate success while still arguing that the initial invasion was a bad idea”
And this absolutely my point too. Let’s agree on what success is.
The guy, who is running for president said this the other day:
…”true success in Iraq – victory in Iraq – will not take place in a surrender ceremony where an enemy lays down their arms. True success will take place when we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future – a government that prevents sectarian conflict, and ensures that the al Qaeda threat which has been beaten back by our troops does not reemerge. That is an achievable goal if we pursue a comprehensive plan to press the Iraqis stand up.”~ Obama
Do you agree?
“Iraq was a distraction, which thankfully pretty soon will be over with.”
Iraq was a strategic necessity without which we’d be facing, not only engagement in Afghanistan (and the Philippines and Indonesia and the Horn of Africa, and Colombia, and Georgia…) but a fully operational al-Qaeda as well–at minimum.
Which, thankfully, we’ll have succeeded enough to be able significantly to draw down from soon.
sashal,
I call it isolationism because that’s what paleo-cons are ultimately about. Again, having grown up here, I may be a little more familiar with the history of that intellectual tradition, just as you can correct me when I mix up Pushkin and Chekhov. ;-)
For example, here’s Larison claiming that our pre-9/11 presence in Saudi Arabia was an “occupation”:
http://larison.org/2006/08/15/occupation-does-have-something-to-do-with-it-ii/
#73: sashal,
The Iraqis are increasingly standing up — and increasingly reconciling. Obama’s statements ignoring this are an insult to the Iraqis and are hardly the mark of someone to support for Diplomat-in-Chief.
“Maybe if we bombed Serbia again…”
Bombing Serbia again should always be an option in a Democrat White House.
73? Fuck sashal, you’re difficult. No other way to put it. That is Bush’s plan, too. That has been his plan for a long time. Again, how is Obama going to win in Afghanistan? What will he do different? I’m thinking this is along the same line as the whole Jonah Goldberg book thing. You argue, but are not very sure what you’re arguing about.
Obstreperous – Haven’t seen that infidel moniker in a while, or maybe I am just getting old. Good to see you.
Bonus for sashal
Here’s the great Larison on WWII:
http://larison.org/2006/10/24/war-war-war/
Well, RTO, those Serbians are so icky, anyway. My wife, being 1/4 Serbian, would kick my ass if she read this.
sashal: Obama’s statement is bass ackwards. We created the situation by invading the country and giving the Iraqi’s the opportunity to vote three seperate times for a freely elected government. That government cannot possibly govern if the security situation is unsecured and chaotic. Thus we are committed to helping the Iraqi’s achieve that security so that they can govern.
Obama would like us to forget his January 2007 declaration that the surge “would fail” and continues to quote the same 16 month withdrawal plan that he was trying to get passed in Congress over 16 months ago.
Nobody on any side has ever suggested that that success in Iraq would be from a “surrender signing ceremony.” Instead, it’s taking place in villages and cities and provences with tribal and religious leaders. Young men are going home to their families and al qaeda has expended an enormous amount of men, money and material for nothing. As the government continues to progress we continue to train Iraqi forces, turn over security to them and gradually withdraw our brigades as circumstances permit and as we have already done.
None of these things appear in anything that Obama says nor will they. He has to play a balance game with the anti war screechers in his party. Expect more “evolving” policy positions from “inartful” comments that, ultimately, say nothing about policy and everything about his obvious unfitness to be Commander in Chief.
I think anyone who agrees with that must be suffering from infundibulomata.
JD – PW was blocked for a bit here at work (the horrors indeed!) and then I went on vacation. I lurked, but didn’t comment too much. I didn’t want to put my glass down.
Lest we forget, an Iraqi Sunni tribal leader was offering a month or so ago to send his forces to Afghanistan to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban with us. While it may have been merely a gesture and one not taken seriously anywhere, still, what a gesture.
Karl,nobody is perfect(remember that scene from “Independence day”?)
Yes, Daniel is wrong here.
I’ll tell you, that my closest friend here where I live is a staunch republican, no matter what.
And was a vivid and active supporter of the Iraq invasion( he is also active in local GOP-elections, donations, activism and what not).
I still love him and the amount of the time together and consumed alcohol surpassed I dare say, some past friendly relationships I had in the old country and those were longer(time-wise) ones….
Iraq is the practice piece.
It always amuses me, with some sadness mixed in, to hear from sashal-like thinkers who have accepted the Left’s basic justifications without the supporting bullshit. The thinking goes: these are the people who hurt us, and it’s OK (or necessary, depending on attitude) for us to hurt them back. This is true from both left and right — the leftoids want us to do it police style, with investigations and due process and civil rights; put the bad guys in jail! Rightoids just want to kill some badguys. Either way it’s a narrowly-focused, revenge-based ideal that fits like a glove with Middle Eastern attitudes. They’ve been doing revenge for thousands of years, and putting it into that paradigm just enrolls us in the Legion of Sand-N*s.
It ain’t gonna work. It most especially ain’t gonna work in Afghanistan. The police idea is especially ludicrous. Visualize a mud-hut village on a windswept, vegetation-free hill twenty miles from the nearest paved road. The householder comes to the door, to discover Sgt. Friday and Bill Gannon. Just the facts, please… The purely military, whack-em-all concept is only barely less silly. In the first place, the Afghans (especially the Pathans) have been making fools of military invaders for a couple of millenia. In the second place, a widely-dispersed population living in a mountainous area is not a good target for the 82nd Airborne. Visualize a single guy with a rifle, dodging in and out of rocks and gullies while five thousand Americans with M1A2 tanks, personnel carriers, and the full logistics train clank and gasp in pursuit; they might as well display gonfalons with the likeness of Wile E. Coyote.
Police or military, the whole thing turns into a game of whack-a-mole with the quarter-slot leading to a black hole. The only approach with any possibility of success — and it contains no guarantees, only a nonzero possibility — is to go for first causes. Now, “first causes” as a concept has been discredited by overuse from the leftoids, who cannot conceive of such a thing in other than quasi-Marxist economic and/or class-warfare terms, but there are first causes that generate the problem, and in many ways they resemble what the leftoids propose. It’s just that it would appear that George Bush and I are the only ones on the planet willing to address them.
What we have to do is corrupt them, and we are perfectly capable of doing so provided that we can get access. Their teachers preach purity; their leaders exploit that teaching as a way to attain power. Our tactic is necessarily to go after the leaders and teachers, co-opting (nicer word!) them into world society, which requires that they live and let live in order to get access to the goodies, from decent sanitation to SUVs.
The reason for Iraq was the perception, partially true, that the populace was half-corrupted already, so that we didn’t have to work so hard. Naur al-Maliki is a case in point. Sometime in about the last year he had a road-to-Damascus moment, realizing that there are a lot more perks and privileges for the leader of a multifaceted society than there are for a pure sectarian, and the rest followed. The people of Iraq appear to have gotten a similar message.
Afghanistan will be much harder in the long run. It’s important to realize that “the surge” did not work in military or quasi-military terms. What did work was that the Iraqi populace, knowing that such things as clean water and air conditioning existed, became convinced that those things (along with 52″ flat-screen TVs and the other appurtenances of a wealthy society) were more readily available from us than from al Qaeda and/or JAM; it then became possible for us to remove the blockages with relatively little effort, and the Iraqis did the rest themselves, including further blockage-removal. The Afghans are ‘way behind in that respect. They hardly have any idea of what living in a wealthy pluralistic society might be like. The single most striking picture I’ve seen at Totten’s was of the remote Kurdish village in the mountains along the Iranian border — every house had a satellite dish! You won’t see that in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, where the poison comes from. Those people don’t know what the world is like. They have less idea that there is a “rest of the world” than Prof. Caricature does, which is pretty remarkable when you think about it.
What we have to do in order to “win” in Afghanistan is generate “awakenings”, and we don’t have much leverage. The strictures applied by the Taliban aren’t all that much worse than the ones they’ve been living by for centuries, and the more-nearly cosmopolitan residents of Kabul (e.g.) are pretty much irrelevant — as long as the countryside is a free-fire zone, the city dwellers cannot respond without putting themselves into danger. Never the less, the lessons learned in Iraq — plug away at infrastructure, maintenance, public safety, and training, and wait for the tide to change — point in the direction we will have to go in Afghanistan. Iraq shows us it can be done. It remains to be seen whether it can be done in Afghanistan (and Pakistan), but if it can be done at all it will be done in a remarkably similar way.
It’s gonna take a long time, though.
Regards,
Ric
But we already discussed that many times before ( and I am not feeling going through this again) about our misdirection in the WOT.
So how long were we supposed to tie up our combat forces enforcing the “No Fly Zone” to make the Middle East safe For Saddam?
Glenn Greenwald…[et al.] flailed at Friedman with his typically overwrought prose, arguing that the US is unpopular because it enagaged in unprovoked wars and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
The Iraq policy which the US pursued btween wars was “containment.” The Clinton administration openly admitted that this was not a sustainable policy for the long term, and that regime change in Iraq would be an unavoidable necessity. The cornerstones of the containment policy were the “Oil For Food” sanctions program and the “No Fly Zones.”
Saddam Hussein (with the help of the Left) was able to to use the sanctions to engender sympathy for his regime and hatred for the US in the court of world opinion by creating the canard that sanctions (rather than his regime) were responsible for humanitarian crises in Iraq.
In order to carry out the No Fly Zones the US was obliged to maintain a large Air Force base in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The proximity of this American base to the Islamic holy city of Mecca was the first justification employed by Osama Bin Laden for his terrorist jihad against America.
Obviously, we were doomed to unpopularity for our attempts to constrain Hussein’s ambitions regardless of how we chose to go about it. The irony for Greenwald(s) is that the Clintonian containment policies were driving opinion of the US in the Arab world into a downward death-spiral, while world opinion towards the US in the wake of our success in Iraq is rebounding nicely.
Ric,
Good points (as always) though I might quibble about whether the surge worked in military or quasi-military terms. I suspect it’s a semantic argument about the degree to which one includes the full scope of the counter-insurgency approach within the definition of the surge. Guys like Kilcullen and Petraeus get that it’s mostly about convincing the locals that while we are the “strong horse,” we’d rather not be there, while AQI is effing up generations of their tribal relationships. (and the sheikhs likely had their own Maliki moments where they realized what siding with the US does for them in getting seats at the big table.)
As for generating Awakenings in Afghanistan, I don’t know that such is impossible. Some of the Iraqi sheikhs want to go there to help on that front.
“As for generating Awakenings in Afghanistan, I don’t know that such is impossible. Some of the Iraqi sheikhs want to go there to help on that front.”
And we should take them up on it. But not with them as Soldiers, rather as Representatives.
Pick the smartest, most committed ones to Afghanistan and let them speak as examples and persuaders to the Jirgas.
Well, I gave Sashal’s opinion the attention it deserved, but a lot of you kept talking to him about it.
What’s up with that?
“….We just have to pick our fights wisely and when it is absolutely necessary and the last resort…”
– Actually we’d be far better off if we were absolutely brutal when getting into disputes.
– Most of the world doesn’t share your “sensitivity” or nuanced moderation, and humanitarian thinking sashal.
– Most of the world respects strength, strong horse/weak horse, very much so most of the ME countries. In fact for many centuries its been the sum total, along with lies and treachery, of about the only politics they know, understand, or respect.
– You might have been right in the instance of Iraq/Afghan, had Bin Laden not been able to attract the Talibon into his grand plan, but once that happened the die was cast. Almost overnight al Qaeda became an organization counted in the tens of thousands, not just a “few”.
– In fact your approach, which Clinton basically followed in his two terms, the appeasement ploy, ignore the attacks and try to get traction for an understanding through diplomacy, was probably the very reason Bin Laden used the “soft under belly of America” thinking to carry out his plans. Yes, I do think that the actions of the Clinton administration was largely responsible for 9/11. Not from “action”, but rather from in-action.
– If you’re wondering why the approach to Iran is changing, I think that Bush is doing this cynically, knowing full well it will go no where, and either that glaring example in real time will cut off Obamas nuts with his Iran position, thereby helping McCain, or Iran will do the same thing as Bin Laden, under-estimate the US resolve and make some aggressive miss-step, and the game will be on. A win-win.
– It has to be something like that, otherwise theres no incentive. The other possibility is the foreign service is now running the government.
Karl, the function and success of the surge was and is to cover the Iraqis’ backs while they get on with it, with a secondary function being confidence building. At some point in the Basrah operation there were Iraqis looking at one another in astonishment: Well, sheeit. We can do this! That is the moment we’ve been waiting for. We could whack every Qaedist or JAMmer as they appear, and never “win” unless we chose the make-a-desert option.
And that was the entire purpose of the Iraqi Adventure in the first place — to whack enough badguys to let the Iraqis take over on their own. The surge, as a “surge”, is more publicity stunt than anything else; far more important was the change in tactics.
RTO Trainer is right, as usual. We ought to be recruiting Iraqis, especially Sunni, not as soldiers but as propagandists. Teachers and persuaders, if you don’t like the pejorative term. Soldiers will be needed when it comes Iran’s turn :-)
Regards,
Ric
– Oh, and Hugo is simply showing he knows his own, and hes not too happy about the prospects.
Geezer:
a plane ticket to Muncie
…it’s true. We got this statue at the edge of town with an inscription: “Give us your slobs, your scarecrow-burners, your mama-hickie-givers…”
Successful marketing.
Two words: “humble country.”
I see Afghanistan as the distraction, for a very different reason.
I remember reading back in history of one of the many European wars of the 1700’s and early 1800’s, how it wasn’t considered sporting or proper to shoot officers. The soldiers were to line up and shoot the other sides soldiers, while the officers pranced around on their horses and looked good. And I think it was in some cases that soldiers could be executed by their own side for having the gall to deliberately target an enemy officer. War was civilized, and if you were one of those poor soldiers that got shot, then tough. And I remember thinking that one good thing about the American civil war was there was none of that whole business; if killing the enemy officer made the war easier, than that was what you did.
Afghanistan and Al Quaeda itself are those masses of soldiers. The officers prancing around are the rulers in Damascus, Tehran and (until recently) Baghdad. They’re fine with letting the US bleed money and, well, real American blood, fighting those insignificant soldiers. It’s not their blood that’s on the line. Those terrorist “soldiers” can always be replaced. It’s not until the rulers face their own mortality, as Saddam recently did, that they’ll stop engaging in acts of war against the United States.
Those rulers are perfectly content to keep the US tied up in Afghanistan. It’s an insignificant little landlocked country, where we need to court regimes that we should be putting pressure on to even operate. They can keep giving us insignificant forces to fight there indefinitely, and fighting them there will accomplish nothing. As such, it is a distraction.
May I nominate Bashar Assad as the next chicken to kill while the monkey watches then? I don’t much care what the Frenchies may have to say about it. In fact, given the numbers of jihadists who’ve crossed into Iraq from Syria, I’m kinda surprised Ass-ad isn’t dead already.
Civilis,
Excellent points. The only thing I’d have to say is about it is that by taking the tack we do in Afghanistan, we may create the changes that will bring down those rulers. By focussing on improving life for Afghans, the Syrian, Iranian and Saudi general public see what could be, if not for their fearless leaders.
Which makes me wonder what our propaganda efforts are like in those places–not robust enough by half, I’d bet. The same lefty squeemishness about acting directly in those places applies to “propaganda” as well.
RTO,
I didn’t mean to imply that it was wrong to invade Afghanistan. You still need to kill the enemy soldiers in addition to their officers. aAnd now that we’ve invaded Afghanistan, it’s a good thing to work on improving the place as well as killing Taliban guerrillas, in part because by doing so it reduces the number we need to kill.
Sashal’s mistake is in seeing modern war as the same as warfare in the middle of the twentieth century. Our ultimate opponent is not a nation, but a set of cultural beliefs that drives its followers to make war on the United States and the Western world. Until those beliefs are destroyed, the war against the US will not stop. Going in, killing the dude in charge, and leaving does nothing to the culture that is at war with the US. Changing the culture, with boots on the ground, rebuilding the infrastructure of government and changing hearts and minds is the only way to defeat the enemy cultural beliefs. But that culture has chosen to make war on the US, and has chosen its terms of battle, and we have no choice but to stop it.
Perhaps it would be better for me to have said that you have to defeat the enemy where he is. And he is in Afghanistan, and it’s good for both the US and the people of Afghanistan for us to improve the place. A college classmate of mine who I knew a bit died trying to make the place better. But confining ourselves to Afghanistan means we will never accomplish anything. It’s not until the Baathists and Mullahs decide to give up that the war will end, and as long as they believe they are safe and sound elsewhere they’re not going to give up. American politicians of both parties had been content to leave the Baathists and Mullahs safe and sound to avoid having to face the difficult task. It wasn’t until 9/11 made it clear to most Americans that there was no reciprocal restraint from the other side that that calculus changed.
This is going to leave a mark on Pelosi et al
This ought to have Pelosi breathing fire.
And the NYT ..
So much for Obama’s 7 year claim .. now it’s 2 to 4 years.
Obama appears to be the most sensitive of hothouse plants. He cannot be exposed to pointed questioning. He must control his local environment in the extreme.
Per Jennifer Rubin at Contentions:
“One big challenge for Obama will be how to handle his expected discussions with Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq during the troop surge that has helped lessen violence in the country. (Petraeus is widely considered the architect of the surge policy.) What Obama advisers want to avoid is a situation where Petraeus undermines the presumptive Democratic candidate’s stated policyâ€â€such as by saying a phased withdrawal would jeopardize the hard-won gains of U.S. troops, ignore their sacrifices, and put the future of Iraq at risk. ‘That would reverberate around the country in a negative way,’ says the Democratic insider.”
Heaven forfend Petraeus should tell Obama the truth as he sees it.
civilis,100, very superficial and wrong assumption or limited knowledge about my position.
I actually always claimed the cultural thingy as one of the reasons of the neocon delusions of changing the world by bombimg or invading.
Yeah, “defeat the enemie’s cultural believes”.
I do not think even the dumbest man on the planet-D.Feith, would have said that utter BS…
In a region where cultural disagreements are routinely settled by bombing and invading…
Sashal, can you please explain what you mean in your second sentence in 104?
I’ve always pegged your position as being that the US has no right to impose it’s values system on other nations through military force. You seem to see it as no different than the USSR imposing it’s political system on other nations through force. And, looking at it from a values-neutral perspective where one does not evaluate the moral component of the systems involved, you are right. On that level, the US invading other countries for the greater good (as defined by the US) is the same as Militant Islam subverting other cultures for the greater good (as defined by Militant Islam). Sound about right?
no it does…..
no=now
“Update: Relations between Venezuela and the US will not improve even if Barack Obama becomes president, Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan leader, predicted today. Ouch.”
That was just Chavez attempting to give Obama a boost in his election chances. Chavez has basically fully endorsed Obama in the past.
sashal
being “values neutral” is to be amoral. Who wins when the good is the same as the bad?
At least he admits he ignores the moral component.
Insta-lanche
[…] WISDOM: Sorry, America is not getting an Extreme Makeover. But it’s interesting who thinks it needs […]
“there would be no reason to expect that world approval of the US will skyrocket to its pre-Iraq invasion levels.”
What exactly were those levels, anyway?
Civilis: “And I remember thinking that one good thing about the American civil war was there was none of that whole business; if killing the enemy officer made the war easier, than that was what you did.”
Actually, there was still a bit of that whole business early on in the Civil War. At one point in Chattanooga, Grant strayed near the enemy front lines & was recognized by them. They deliberately refrained from shooting him. This according to Shelby Foote.
I just noticed that for some reason (unclear to me) the comments have taken a diversion into energy resources. I’d like to opine that I couldn’t care f… all about what the environmoids want, including the a..holes in Europe and elsewhere. There is one and only one reason why we are sensitive to oil prices, which is that we haven’t diligently exploited our natural resources. It’s been what? 30 years since an oil refinery has been built in the US, and probably longer since a nuclear reactor has been built. These are proven and viable sources of energy, which wind and solar are notably lacking. I have no objection to the development of alternative sources — given time, I’m quite confident that the free market will do so. But it is quite literally insane to demand that we give up all viable resources now and place all our hopes in weak and inadequate technologies. It is even worse that we try to impose this faustian crap upon developing 3rd world countries, who, if we would just leave them alone, would undoubtedly dig themselves out of the endemic poverty that we have forced on them.
Humanity has never ever run out of anything.
The problem really goes back to the conflict between the Cairo and Indian branches of the Foreign Office; Mssr. Lawrence, Wingate, and Shakespear,(no it’s not a typo)St. John Philby. Percy Cox and Gertrude Bell on the latter side; One account by H.V. Winstone:
Shakespear was very much a creature of the Raj, confirmed through generations of his family. They had been pillars of the Indian empire for generations past, surviving and succeeding through the ups and downs of the Company, the Mutiny and the power conflicts between political and military wings of the viceroys’ administrations. Close relatives were high officials in Calcutta and Simla. His father worked for the Bengal forestry service. Mother, a descendant of English – West Indian slave traders was the dominant parent. And by the time he was ready for school it was one of the up and coming public schools with a reputation for taking on the progeny of empire that attracted his devoted mother, King William’s College in the Isle of Man. ’Shakers’ left school with a modest academic record and an all-round sporting presence, especially on the rugby and cricket fields. Sandhurst led straight to India and reunion with the family. He learnt Arabic and Farsi, and was soon in demand as an interpreter and translator. Thus his passage from the Devonshire Regiment to the Bengal Lancers and thence into the Indian political service was determined. He became the youngest political officer in the service when in 1904 at the age of 25 he was appointed Consul and PO at Bandar Abbas, He was also made first assistant Resident to Cox at Bushire. Five years later he was in Kuwait at the court of Mubarak bin Sabah. From then on he moved freely among those classless stalwarts of the desert, the Badu and their leaders, and among the seafarers of the Gulf. He won the friendship and admiration of both but he kept them at arm’s length. He was ever the Englishman abroad. Arabs were always amused to see him retire to bathe privately in the special compartment of his tent designed for the purpose, or taking his meals in splendid isolation, usually with a glass of Moselle to hand, eating his lamb with a strange greenish fluid or a red jam-like substance, putting on weight as the years went by. The Badawin, those most gregarious of humans, lived and ate in heaps and told endless tales round the evening fire. In the context of this exhibition, I should add that when night and darkness fell on the desert he used the ‘bathroom’ section of his tent as his photographic dark-room, developing the pictures he had taken of people and places and which you see on the walls today. I suspect that it was his independence, his determination to retain his identity as a British officer, unlike others before and after him who tried to assume Arab dress and habits, that most appealed to Bin Saud.
What of Leachman? Lijman of the Arabs could not have been more different. Lanky, wiry, ascetic, capable of going for days with little food or water, ruthless, fearless, and cavalier. His physician father put him through the powerhouse of Charterhouse School without his laying claim to a single distinction, academic or sporting, though he just made it to Sandhurst and left there in time to serve bravely and with some distinction in the Boer War. Unlike Shakespear, he learnt Arabic not from books and teachers but from the vernacular of the Badu. By the time their paths crossed in Arabia, the two men already represented separate sides in the increasingly divisive Calcutta – Whitehall dispute. None-the-less, they had a common interest, Britain’s role in the Arabian peninsula. It was a role dictated by the incursions of France, Germany and Austria-Hungary into what was hitherto regarded as British India’s extended back yard – even if it did belong legally to the empire of the Ottoman Turks. Arab leaders were already starting out on the road to statehood, making up their minds as to which imperial power best represented their interests. I wrote a book about these matters called ‘The Illicit Adventure’, a term I borrowed from that unashamed imperialist Lord Milner. He said that Britain’s policy from the outset was to ‘diddle France out of Syria’. That assuredly became Lloyd George’s policy a few years later.
Strangely, Shakespear and Leachman were destined never to meet, though they would come within shouting distance of each other in the desert region between Kuwait and Najd, and would engage in angry personal conflict over Leachman’s incursions into the Kuwait territory that Shakespear had been sent to guard as Britain’s strong man in the region.
Leachman and Shakespear made their first simultaneous excursions in the Arabian desert in the last days of 1909. Leachman had been on the ‘Special Duty’ list for two years, most of it spent in India. His Arabian exploit was preceded by a visit to London and MO2 (a), military intelligence in those days being part of the Military Operations directorate. His task was to reach Hail in disguise if he could and assess the strength and stability of the regime that the Turks and Britain regarded as the dominant power in Najd. He headed from Baghdad to Najaf, disguised in Arab dress, in company with a party of Shammar. They proceeded along the Darb Zobaidah, the pilgrim path that led to Hail and Madina. Shakespear followed in much the same direction. In defiance of Whitehall’s injunction that he should not become involved in the affairs of the Amir of Riyadh, he headed out of Kuwait, coming close to the tribal territory that Leachman was making for. Thus he was able to keep in touch with the desert grapevine as his fellow countryman passed close by. Leachman was being followed not only by his compatriot, however, but by the very able Austrian spy Alois Musil, a Jewish academic who was the eyes and ears in Arabia of the developing alliance between the empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. Austria was already instrumental in sending arms supplies to Ibn Rashid at Hail. For Shakespear and the Indian government it was a matter that should be addressed before it led to irreversible change in the balance of power in central Arabia. By February 1910, three men, representing diverse interests and major powers that would be at war with each other within three years, were found themselves at the epicentre of Arab tribal politics. What was happening here in a desert region that saw some of the early 20th century tussles between tribes loyal to Al-Saud and Al-Rashid would lead to alliances and contracts that would determine the emerging map of the Arabian peninsula. Events, indeed, that could be said to represent a starting point in the imperial battle for control of the Arabian peninsula which bedevils the world at the present day. Up to this moment these tribal lands had been more or less closed societies, inaccessible to the outside world. With a resurgent German empire in Europe and World War threatening, they became an embryonic battlefield of the great powers.
There were essentially two principal tribal alliances in the large expanse we are concerned with, forming a triangle between Bagdad, Basra province at the head of the Persian Gulf and Hail in central Arabia. They were the great Anaiza confederation led by two of the most powerful of desert sheikhs, in the east from Baghdad by Fahad Beq ibn Hadhhal and in the west from Damascus by Nuri ibn Shalan; and secondly the Shammar of the family of Ibn Rashid of Hail, currently led by the imposing Zamil ibn Subhan, regent for the infant prince Saud bin Abdal Aziz al-Rashid.. A third and vitally important desert force was the Muntafiq, a highly disciplined army of Shi’a horsemen from the towns and marshmarshlands of southern Iraq, the Turkish vilayet of Basra, led by Abdul Mehsin Beq, known to his people as Sadun Pasha, whose exploits, incidentally, had greatly impressed Anne Blunt when she was told about them by Muhammad al-Bessam, who supplied her and Charles Doughty before her, with desert guides. She renamed her favourite horse, Abeyan, after the Muntafiq leader. There were of course other important tribes, not least the Ajman and Mutair, which like the Anaiza pledged fidelity to the House of Saud,though their allegiances tended to sway in the desert wind.
Leachman the intrepid representative of military intelligence and his company of Baghdadi adventurers left Karbala on 26 January 1910. After a week or so on the open road they were enjoying the spree. They were mounted on ponies, Leachman’s long legs touching the ground for he had no stirrups, causing much amusement. They expected to excite no more interest than would any small group of Arab travellers on the road so generously provided with watering places in the 4th century of the Hegira, by Harun Rashid’s Queen. Zubaidah.
Imagine then their surprise when they were suddenly confronted by a posse of armed camel riders sent by the Anaiza sheikh Fahad Beq, sworn enemy of the Rashid force he intended to visit, to take them to his camp in protective custody. Imagine, furthermore, the surprise of this English agent when he and his companions found themselves in very short time at a vast Anaiza encampment that stretched as far as the eye could see, occupied by an army that was also on its way to invade Hail, home of the Rashid and the fortress capital of Jabal Shammar.
In very short time, Leachman’s captors were themselves overwhelmed. He was quite unprepared for the sudden appearance of the Shammar, the very people he intended to visit at their capital of Hail, under the very able leadership of the Regent Zamil Subhan. The Anaiza encampment was thoroughly ransacked by rampaging horsemen and Fahad Beq led his dejected troops back towards Baghdad. The Englishman and his companions were taken to the new conqueror’s tent.
There seems to have been some extensive planning by the Anaiza. Not long before Fahad Beq’s force proceeded towards Hail, another Anaiza army, its western arm led by the paramount chief of the Ruwalla faction of the mighty Anaiza, Nuri bin Shaalan, had captured the strategically important northern town of Al-Jauf from the Rashids. Leachman somehow dispatched a letter by desert messenger to his rival Shakespear in Kuwait, telling him the story thus far. It was their first communication.
Dear Shakespear
I know you by name from Gibbon in the Intelligence at Simla. I am here at camp with Ibn Rashid near Hail. Three days ago I was with a very large mass of the Anaiza on their way to attack Ibn Rashid. In the evening Rashid appeared and utterly defeated the Anaiza who got away with their camels only. Rashid’s men looted thousands of tents.
He told Shakespear how he had escaped with his friends and had joined up with the victorious Shammar at Zamil’s HQ. Not the precise truth, but near enough. The Rashid regent wanted the news of his victory to ‘resound widely’. Zamil had spared the Anaiza chief, said Leachman, ‘always insisting the enemy chiefs should not be harmed’.
Leachman was much impressed by Zamil Subhan who he said had ‘the straight gaze of an honest man’. He also met the boy prince of Hail, Saud bin Abdal Aziz al-Rashid and found him an ‘attractive if ill-tempered youth’ of about 12 years, whose only apparent interest was in horses. Until recently he had been in the care of the Sharif of Mecca. The Englishman sought permission to go on to Hail but Zamil refused him, though he allowed him to join the Shammar army at its camp at Shahiyah where he was granted further interviews by regent and the boy prince Saud.
It was two months later, in April, that he was allowed to leave the Shammar camp and make his way back to Baghdad. It was not by any means an ignominious end to an ‘intelligence’ operation. Indeed, for a young soldier on a covert mission it was a remarkable stroke of good fortune that he had been able by sheer chance to speak with the ruler of a large part of central Arabia whom he had set out to meet, if he was lucky, after several weeks’ arduous travel. It was sufficient to cause Shakespear to make an envious response when the Turks and Shaikh Mubarak questioned him about Leachman’s presence among the tribal assembly. Shakespear told the Shaikh and his chief that he was not ‘enamoured of Leachman’s imposture in the desert’. Britain’s consul in Basra, F.E.Crowe, was more discreet. Asked by the Turk governor what Leachman was doing he replied ‘he’s an English dervish studying botany’.
When the adventure was over, Leachman wrote to John Gordon Lorimer, that most informed of British Political Residents in the Middle East. In that letter, he told Lorimer: ‘This movement of the Anaiza was concerted with Ibn Saud with the idea of utterly finishing the Rashid power.’ In fact, it was less than half the story. Zamil Subhan was well disposed to Bin Saud. Indeed, the two men had great respect for each other, and had the former survived assassination at the hands of his own kin, it is not inconceivable that an alliance would have been forged..
¤
While Lijman remained at the camp of Ibn Rashid, Shakespear was dealing with matters closer to home. Shaikh Mubarak and the man he called his ‘son’, Bin Saud, were also on the warpath. Back in Kuwait in March 1910, with Leachman’s adventure still very much in mind, the Political Agent went out to the fortress of Jahra in time to witness a remarkable gathering of tribes. A massive encampment of tents both black and while signalled the presence of large forces of Bin Saud’s and Shaikh Mubarak’s men, the latter under the leadership of the Shaikh’s son Jabir, along with Ajman tribesmen who were making their peace with the Kuwaiti leader after recent raids on his subjects.
Shakespear was convinced that Abdal Aziz, Mubarak, and Bin Hithlain of the Ajman, having waited on the outcome of the battle between the Anaiza and Shammar warriors, were about to launch a fresh attack on the Shammar. As it happened they came face to face with the 4000 horsemen of the highly disciplined Muntafiq army of Sadun Pasha. The conflict was over almost as soon as it was joined. The Kuwaiti force took flight and lost almost all its arms and animals. The Saudi and Ajman forces fought for a while but the flight of the Kuwaitis left them hopelessly exposed and they too gave up the struggle and hurried back to Kuwait, often five or six to a camel, for Sadun had decreed that his men should take as many animals and arms as they could transport, but that the men themselves should be spared.
Shakespear had kept a watching brief at the rear of the Kuwaiti force, but he was told sternly when Whitehall heard about the fiasco ‘You will see that the Government of India direct that a warning be conveyed to Shaikh Mubarak, in terms of a previous warning, not to enter into any operations calculated to involve him in difficulties in Najd or with the Turks.’ But it was game set and match to Leachman, who on the instruction of Zamil Subhan had joined up with the Muntafiq and was by now on terms of close friendship with Sadun Pasha and the Rashid leadership of Hail, while Shakespear was left to cope with the mercurial Mubarak and the Sabah shaikhs of Kuwait. When Shakespear went out to the Sabah fortress of Jahra to deliver HM Government’s latest warning to Mubarak, the Shaikh was already gathering another raiding force, hoping to repay the Muntafiq. He attributed his men’s defeat not to his son’s leadership but to a ‘dust storm’. The old Shaikh of Kuwait was described by Lovat Fraser, the well-informed editor of The Times of India, as ‘the Richelieu of Arabia’. Britain’s Foreign Minister in 1903, Lord Lansdowne, was less complimentary. He described him as ‘an untrustworthy savage’.
The planned retribution by Kuwait, launched on 1st April 1910, was no more effective than the last. Again, the Muntafiq force was triumphant. But it was to be Sadun’s final victory. Shortly after, the great leader of the tribal confederation of Southern Iraq’s Shi’a , was invited aboard a gunboat by Sayyid Talib, the son of the Naqib of Basra. There he was handed over to the Turks and sent to imprisonment at Aleppo.. He was found dead early in 1911, it was said from poisoning.
I have tried to portray as a vividly as I am able the circumstances in which two of the most spirited and courageous figures of the British administration came into close proximity in the early years of the last century, in tribal forays that were beginning to excite the interest of the imperial powers of Europe, without ever meeting. Shakespear went on to become the close friend and confidant of the founder king of Saudi Arabia, Ibn Saud. And of course he made one of the outstanding exploratory crossings of the peninsula in 1914 before dying at the hands of Shammari at the side of Bin Saud on the battlefield of Jarab, close to that first encounter of the Anaiza and the Shammar. He had just reached his 36th birthday.
At the time of his death, Shakespear was officially Britain’s Political Officer on Special Duty in Arabia. A year before he was sent out to act as special envoy to Ibn Saud he had visited Riyadh on his way across the peninsula.. I record his journey briefly. When he reached Riyadh on 11 May 1914, he camped in the date garden outside the town. He never accepted the shelter of his hosts. In his report to the Viceroy and the Secretary of State for India after that visit he described his entry into Riyadh: ‘…went by moonlight along the Shaib until we crossed a bit of rising ground and the whole east wall of the town with its bastions was in front. Taken through east gate along a wide road, past a lot of ruins and some big houses built on a palatial scale…Greeted warmly. Tea, coffee and sweets until evening prayer.’ Of his host he wrote:
‘Abdal Aziz is a broad-minded and straight man…His reputation is that of a noble and generous man…’. He spoke of the enmity Abdal Aziz felt for the Turks who then occupied al Hasa, and of the Arab leader’s desire for friendship with Britain. Contrary to most received opinion, Shakespear thought that Palgrave’s plan of Riyadh was ‘exceedingly good’. And it is worth noting that he differed radically from Philby with regard to Palgrave’s description of Ayun, the Arabian ‘Stonehenge’, again finding it ‘accurate if sparce’.
Almost the entire male family of Bin Saud joined the Englishman on the second day of his visit in the palm grove of Shamsiyah, the garden mad by Mahbub, prime minister of Bin Saud’s grandfather Faisal bin Turki. The Englishman was able to photograph the procession of sons, several of whom would inherit the throne of the kingdom – Fahd and Muhammad, Turki, Saud, and Faisal. And he was to speak in report after report to his government of the Saudi leader’s ‘sincerity and utter reliability’, of his single-minded devotion to his people and his religion’, and to the securing of their independence from Turkish imperial rule. But it was not until war was declared that Whitehall took his offer of alliance seriously.
Leachman made one more journey in Arabia proper, from Damascus to Riyadh, at the instigation of the War Office, before becoming the hero figure of Britain’s war in Mesopotamia, the soldier’s soldier, known to his men as ‘OC desert’. He became the first post-war governor of Kurdistan before he too lost his life at a place little know then to the outside world – Fallujah. He was the victim of a gunsho attributed to a shaikh of the central region, Dhari, though it was widely rumoured that the shaikh’s son, Khamees, actually fired the fatal shot.
Between them, Shakespear and Leachman took the first photos of Riyadh and its ruling family, al-Saud. Shakespear, with close family ties to the Fox Talbots, was a keen and expert cameraman. His bulky heavy equipment and the pictures he produced in his improvised desert darkroom, were a source of much wonderment to the Badu. Their reputations and their photos survive them. Unfortunately, neither was more than .adequate with the pen. At least they were spared the battles of words that followed thge war and brought another name to the fore, TE Lawrence, as they were spared the consequences of the promises Britain and France to each other, to the Zionists and to Arab leaders. Goodness know what they would have made of it all.
§
So for my two ladies of the Arab lands. We always call Anne Blunt ‘Lady Anne’ since she was a ‘Lady’ by birth. I need hardly add that she was the granddaughter of Lord Byron and the daughter of Ada, the poet’s only legitimate child, Countess of Lovelace. She was the pioneer woman of desert exploration, the first of her sex to reach central Arabia, yet she was dominated by an irascible, arrogant, vain husband. Gertrude Bell was very much ‘The Lady of Baghdad’.
Gertrude, Anne’s successor in the lands of the Tigris and the Euphrates, was a woman who dominated the male world she inhabited by force of intellect. But she would most certainly have preferred marriage and family life had her powerful opinions not stood in the way of any such contract. They succeeded each other too in wearing that Turco-Arabic courtesy label ‘Al Khatun’, a title that denoted a lady of esteem in the Arabs’ midst. If they were so different as women, they were remarkably alike in strength of mind and in their stoicism as travellers.
More to the point of this talk, she was the first European of her sex to make a recorded journey into Central Arabia. Her passion, of course, was the Arab horse, and she devoted much of her life to its salvation at her famous Crabbet stud in Sussex. Between times she translated into English some of the finest pre-Islamic verse, including the celebrated tale of Abu Zaid al-Hilali and the Stealing of the Mare, wrote two books recording the journeys she and her husband made to Najd and the Euphrates Valley which remain in print to this day, and – as we see today – displayed very real ability as a water colourist. For Anne’s determined grandmother Lady Byron, in whose care she was raised, only the best tutors were good enough. Her drawing master was Ruskin no less. Joachim taught her the violin, Hallé gave her piano lessons. Certainly the influence of Ruskin, and of his idol Turner, is evident in some of the work you see here today, photographs of those delightful watercolour sketches made in he notebooks as she went in search of the tribes and the pedigree horses of Arabia. Her skill with pencil and brush is obvious, but there the comparison ends. In art as in life, the charming, attractive lady with the melodious voice said to come from her grandfather and the aristocratic demeanour, lacked imagination above all else. Her drawing had charm but not life force. She won for herself a reputation for bravery and perseverance in the face of hazard and hardship that persists to this day in many parts of the Arab world. Her Arabic was good enough to keep up a correspondence with Arab shaiks and the Ulema across thirty years or more.
¤
It is apparent from what has gone before that the years 1900 to 1912 were a busy period in the complex interrelationship between the European powers and the Ottoman territories. War was in the air. It was on 18 March 1911 that TE Lawrence, newly arrived as an apprentice archaeologist at the site of Jerabalus, or Carchemish, wrote to his bother to say ‘We are expecting a Miss G.Bell’. The world knew little of either of them at that time, though Gertrude had published two well received books and was the better known. It was a time of intense archaeology and widespread espionage. The two came together almost inevitably. At such places as Carchemish, Nineveh, Ashur, Babylon, learned spies from Britain, Germany, France and other lands proliferated, soon to become staff officers in their respective armies. Miss G..Bell was one of them.So were Lawrence and his colleagues Leonard Woolley, Campbell Thompson and their chief, David Hogarth, Keeper of the Ashmolean.
Gertrude’s contribution to the political make up of the modern Middle East may have its detractors. But of her contribution to the western world’s understanding of civilisations of the Middle East there can be no question. You will see from the work on display here that her contribution to the pictorial record of Najd and other Arab lands before the First World War was immense. More than anyone, she caught the Badu, those most serious and solemn of humans, off guard. She worked with faster film and more responsive cameras of the Rolleiflex and Leica variety. She could afford the best cameras that money could buy. For almost the whole of her life she travelled as the favoured daughter of one of the wealthiest families in England, owners of the major steel, aluminium, chemical and coal enterprises of the North-East of England. Only in the year of her death, 1926, were there signs that the solid fortune that underpinned her life of travel and adventure was on the wane. Had she lived for just another year she would have seen the sale of her beloved home, Rounton Grange in North Yorkshire, with its Morris and Burne-Jones decoration and the garden that she had so fondly created.
As Rebecca West wrote of her: ‘she was the incarnation of the emancipated heiress, using the gold given her by the industrial revolution to buy not privilege but the opportunity for noble performance’. Rebecca West saw in her the realisation of Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Shirley’.
She was indeed, as both Arab and British admirers pointed out, a woman of great valour, and remarkable intellect. Her visit to Hail certainly demanded that combination of features, and more. There is little doubt in my mind that her visit to the Rashid capital a few months before the outbreak of world war had obvious undertones of espionage. Perhaps she was favoured by the absence of the Rashid princes on one of their not infrequent bouts of regicide. At any rate she escaped from ‘house’ imprisonment to reach Baghdad safely. A year later, as a member of the Arab Bureau in Basra – as LS Amery never tired of telling us, the first woman officer of Britain’s military intelligence service – she set in motion that train of events that would lead to Britain’s adoption of the Sharifian family of Husain bin Ali as the princes of all the conquered Arab lands, though France prevented their realisation in Greater Syria. And of course, the stewardship of Iraq and Transjordan, was counterbalanced by the victorious progress of Bin Saud in central Arabia.
Gertrude, as we know, became, in her own words, a Sharifian through and through, but that made little impact on the Saudi leader. Abdal Aziz for his part was never able to take very seriously the belief of this determined English lady that she could single handedly determine the fate of the emerging Arab nations. According to Philby, he often entertained his tribesmen with imitations of a shrill feminine voice calling ‘Abdal Aziz, look at this’, that or the other. But hers was the most generous and most vivid of all the pen portraits to this very day. In fact she wrote two descriptions, the first before she met him at the famous Kuwait durbar, and based on information supplied by the American missionary doctor, Paul Harrison. ‘He possesses great personal charm, with a ready and attractive smile. He is a great kingly-looking man like an Assyrian picture…’ And so on, with references to his many wives and children, and some very misleading references to his dealings with other Arab chiefs.’
It was the meeting at the subsequent Basra durbar of 1916 that caused Gertrude to write for the Arab Bulletin, the fortnightly journal of the Bureau in Cairo, her famous portrait|:
‘Ibn Saud is now barely forty, though he looks some years older. He is a man of splendid physique, standing well over six feet, and carrying himself with the air of one accustomed to command. Though he is more massively built than the typical nomad sheikh, he has the characteristics of the well-bred Arab, the strongly-marked aquiline profile, full-flesh nostrils, prominent lips, a long narrow chin accentuated by a pointed beard. His hands are fine, with slender fingers…and in spite of his great height and breadth of shoulder he conveys the impression common enough in the desert of an indefinable lassitude, the secular weariness of an ancient and self-contained people, which has made heavy drafts on its vital forces and borrowed little from beyond its own forbidding frontiers..’
She wrote of Ibn Saud’s deliberate movements, his ‘sweet smile and the contemplative glance of heavy lidded eyes’. By then, the eyes had succumbed to the desert glare. Dr Stanley Mylrae, the senior medical man with the American mission, was there too. He had attended Bin Saud once, three years before, and he added:
This was the view that prevailed in the British foreign office, of the warlord
that had used the Ilkwan, the Wahhabi version of the Cossacks, to subjugate Arabia; driving away the more moderate
Hashemites, across the border to Jordan
‘Among all the richly dressed Arabs in the room, he was easily the most conspicuous figure. His magnificent bearing still commanded attention. The three years had only increased the attractiveness of his personality, and when presently Sir Percy Cox presented him with the KCIE and the beautiful ornament glittered on his handsome brown cloak, he would have made an unusual subject for an artist.’ As he watched the proceedings, Mylrae was reminded of Mark Twain’s description of King Arthur, ‘Armour is proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it.’ Others have been inclined to describe Bin Saud as the Richard Lionheart of the Arab world, H.V. Winstone puts it
??? Who are these people anyway? And what is the point of this bloated post? I know enough to expect a modicum of inanity on the Internet, but do the promulgators of inanity feel compelled to spread it to every site?
Oh, that’s just Nishi, being nutty.
From a neutral, national interest perspective, the objective of a war must be to ensure the nation’s security, and victory has always come with reducing or eliminating the loser’s ability to make war on the victor. At first, this was accomplished by killing (or selling into slavery) everyone in the defeated nation and basically destroying everything. In the modern world, we’ve decided that it is unconscionable to kill entire civilian populations, and so we’ve settled for eliminating their ability to wage war on us through other means. We turn their military into a capable self-defense force, and rebuild the infrastructure of government so they can get back to a normal life. As such, imposing our values on them is not the objective but one of the methods of winning the war and ensuring our national security. We could go back to the old way of doing things, and if China or Russia had been the ones to secure the middle east, they probably would.
But given our self-imposed morality, in order to eliminate the enemy’s ability to wage war, imposing our values is as much a component of our waging war as eliminating the enemy troops in the field.
Meh… Reagan was just about as popular with the European leftwing and mainstream media (pardon the redundancy) as Dubya is today.
You’ll never be able to please these anti-american morons, and frankly, why even bother trying?
If anything, Europeans should actually fear Obamas rather than McCains policies, but how would we know? The media here is so in the tank for Barack it’s ridiculous, and they simply leave out anything Obama says that might be problematic.
She’s just living in her own Duncan Idaho, is all.
No, it’s not Nishi, I’m just pointing out how there’s more than than one view of say Middle East policy; and rarely is
the liberal one, the right one. Feith,
(now being demonized by the Congressional
affiliates of the net roots)pointed out the danger of Saudi oil blackmail; a quarter century ago. Wolfowitz, along with Dennis Ross, figured out that supporting Saddam was a bad way to challenge Iran. The CIA backed Hekmatyar,
Raisul Sayyaf, & Haquanni; (and by
extension Bin Laden) over Shah Massoud’s faction, that included the late Abdul Haq and Karzai; despite the fact, that the latter actually killed more Russians
than fellow Afghans. And this is not unlike what happened a hundred years ago
on the Arabian peninsula. Shakespear fought and died with Ibn Saud’s Wahhabi
Ilkwan forces, but his viewpoint was carried forth by St. John Philby, and to a lesser extent, Gertrude Bell who prevailed over those like Leachman, who had met with Saud, and found him
‘unsuitable’ to say the least, and backed the more moderate Aneiza tribes.
Bell was also the one who despised the Shia majority representatives like the first Sadr and eventually turned power over to the likes of the Ghailanis who would return the favor a generation later by siding with Hitler and Mussolini. She drew up Iraq along the same lines, marginalizing the Kurdish Mosul and Shia Basra districts. One of her aides, Arnold Wilson, briefly joined the British forces of Oswald Mosley, for a brief bit. Samantha Powers (the one time? Obama advisor and expert on genocide, has basically followed these same principles. All but suggesting we invade Israel to secure a Palestinian state, and abandon Iraq to its Saudi, Iranian, & Syrian ‘concerned neighbors.
This is not unlike the partition plans suggested by Hagel, Biden, & Lugar, which would do pretty much the same thing.
The European elite – intellectuals and journalists – have disliked the U.S. for 230 years. Yes, even before Bush I. The Statue of Liberty inscription says it all: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Europeans expelled their riff-raff; the U.S. welcomed them. And we are the result. Those rejected by the European aristocracy – both real and self-appointed – produced the sole superpower in the world today. Quelle Horreur! Bush represents a conservative political and economic perspective which is entirely American; it’s equivalent – except possibly in the new Eastern Europe – is virtually unknown. They may despise us a little more now, but this basic jealousy and resentment will continue long after Bush has faded into history.
So, only 15 people have been killed in Iraq, Kosovo, Somalia, Panama, etc. etc etc, because that evil soros study has been “debunked” by pajama-wearing bloggers.
Everybody really really REALLY loves us. So there.
Oh, and Obama will be just as bad.
Protein “wisdom” — not the regular kind of wisdom, but hey ….
The next time you think you have a point to make, making your point will almost certainly work better than copy-and-pasting somebody else’s words by the thousands.
M’kay?
McGehee: this is nishi here, remember. Personally, I’d rather see someone else’s words cut and pasted than more of her own illiterate maunderings.
If it’s a choice between one encyclopedia-length act of plagiarism, and half of a 200-comment thread being the nishtoon arguing with itself, …
Um, okay. Point taken.