Jimmy Carter lost his presidency in 1979 (I think that was the year), when he was shocked that the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan. He had trusted them. Shocked. Americans didn’t want a naive president. They turned to Ronald Reagan.
I was shocked by Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Any fool knew it was coming, that is the not the point. It was the pure evil infamy of it. They hate democracy. Who hates democracy? Well, some elements of radical Islam. When David Axelrod of Obama’s campaign yesterday hinted that Hillary Clinton was somehow responsible because she voted for the Iraq War, I thought, Don’t be an idiot. (Though yes, Hillary Clinton should be rejected because she supported that hateful war and has never said she was wrong…)
I feel a need for revision. I am not saying there is a clash of civilizations, I don’t believe that. I don’t believe it is world war iv. But for a universalist like myself, there has been no greater nobility in the last few weeks than watching the Pakistani journalists going to jail for their freedom. They are more inspiring to me than our corporate media, most of whom wouldn’t sacrifice any portion of their salaries to tell an important truth. These guys were willing to go to jail! Love them.
I am not saying that the U.S. is a righteous force. Axelrod is right, we are hated in the region for good reason. We are occupying an Arab/Muslim country, and have caused incredible suffering. One thing I take away from this is that Robert Pape’s realist analysis of suicide bombing must be revised. Pape’s argument in Dying to Win (as I recall; my books are packed, sorry) is that suicide bombers are responding to two conditions: occupation with religious difference. The religious difference allows them to demonize the occupier. Critically, in Pape, the suicide bomber is honored by his own culture. Streets are named after him. They are licensed freedomfighters against an occupier. Not religious fiends from a debased culture who hate modern freedom, as Paul Berman and Norman Podhoretz would have it (those advocates for the great democracy in Israel).
Pape’s sample was mostly suicide bombers on Sri Lanka and in Israel/Palestine, as I recall. There is now a much larger database. Yes, it includes suicide bombers who have attacked the U.S. forces in Iraq–an occupier with a religious difference–but suicide bombers have also attacked Shi’ites, Sunnis, etc. And now they are attacking democratic forces in Pakistan. Where is the suicide bomber who has attacked the Taliban? Or attacked Al-Qaeda?
After the Cold War, Susan Sontag famously said that the National Review was more reliable than the Nation on the Soviet Union. This time around the left must show that it is more reliable than the Weekly Standard and the New Republic about "the war on terror". We are winning this ideological battle because we have not overstated the threat, and they have, and we do not ignore the fact that the Palestinian situation is a red flag across the Muslim world. Yet we can’t forget: there are forces of darkness out there.
