This is a blog-like annex to the Enlightenment Network. Previous blogs focusing on foreign policy and Middle Eastern policy were labeled Responsibility and Thoughts. I have recently established a follow-ons to these blogs labeled Iraq and Afghanistan and Iranian Civilization and American Foreign Policy. There was previously an Enlightenment Forum. But I decided to take it down as it was overrun with irrelevant material (mostly about viagra I believe). I have now replaced it with a new blog The New Enlightenment: Commentary. I hope that this will allow more input from others than this commentary section. Feel free to comment on anything in the enlightenment pages in your blog comments

09:54 11/28/2006

Attacks on Enlightenment Thinking and on Recent Attacks by Scientists on Religious Belief

In a recent New York Times Op-Ed (11/27/06), Richard Schweder attacks the recent willingness of scientists to once again engage in criticism of religion, particularly of the God concept. Much of his discussion is devoted to the historical failure of religion to wither away as was the assumption of many in the Age of Enlightenment. In fact, the Enlightenment thinkers did not see themselves as predictors of the future. Nor did they believe, as he asserts, that history would inevitably move steadily in the direction they would approve. They could not, for in fact much of their energy came from revisiting a classical age in which many of their propositions had already been advanced by the Ancient Greeks and Romans. The intervening centuries before their time certainly suggested the uncertainty of any such inevitability. Schweder's claim that "the secular creation myth" has shattered misunderstands both the achievements and limitations of the Enlightenment.

Moreover, Schweder's criticism of the revival of attacks on religion by scientists mistakenly indicts the Enlightenment for the disasters of the last 200 years. In fact, it was the Enlightenment that made possible the liberal transformation of Christian beliefs that, in turn, made possible the supportive relationship of science, religion, and public order that characterizes most advanced societies today. It was the absence of a comparable enlightenment in Islamic societies that is responsible for the repressive, anti-rational stance of religious institutions in the Middle East, which, in turn, bear major responsibility for the lack of development in these societies.

Shweder's proposition that "A shared conception of the soul, the sacred, and transcendental values may be a prerequisite for any viable society" fails any comparative test. The societies with the highest development indices (HDI) and the lowest crime rates are regularly reported to be the Scandinavian countries and Japan: societies that also have the world's highest atheism rates.

Scientists do not attack religious belief because they care if their neighbors believe in God. They attack because they fear that a new wave of religiosity will undermine the liberal consensus of the nineteenth century on which modern society has been constructed.

15:44 11/16/2006

The Diabolical Influence of Religious Thinking on American Foreign Policy: The Evangelicals and Israel-Palestine

A news item on the front page of the New York Times (11/14/06) again suggested the urgent need for a higher level of enlightenment in the American polity. A group of Evangelicals has recently set up an organization called "Christians United for Israel". This is spawned by the same group of "religious leaders" who asked our government during the recent Israeli attacks on Lebanon to urge the Israelis on, to speed up the delivery of their weapons, because, as they believe, Israel plays an essential part in preparing for the last days (which evidently can only take place if the Jews have the whole area). The leader of this Christian group called the conflict a battle between "good and evil", claiming that a pro-Israeli foreign policy was "God's foreign policy".

This group has now turned its attention to Iran. They see the new Iranian leader as the devil incarnate. Yet some take heart from the fact that a struggle between Iran and Israel seems to be shaping up. Such a fight might well herald the final chapter of their religious drama.

Of course, the relation of the Israeli government and the Evangelicals is not always smooth. The government cut off ties with Pat Robertson when he suggested that Ariel Sharon's stroke might have been God's punishment for having withdrawn from territories that God had guaranteed to the Jewish people. In another parting of company, the evangelicals expressed their unhappiness with the reluctance of the Israelis to unleash its full military power against in Lebanon. But they seem to be able to patch up these family squabbles.

22:04 11/4/2006

Leading Neocons Denounce Bush's Team as Incompetent

All students of the interface of ideology and policy should visit the web site of Vanity Fair to read an account of interviews with a representative collection of those who developed and promoted ideas that led directly to the Iraq war. These include Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, Michael Ledeen, and Eliot Cohen. It also includes David Frum who originated the phrase "axis of evil" for the President's 2002 State of the Union address. As a group they now denounce the war and the Bush administration as being hopelessly incompetent.

Their remarkably strong denunciations exhibit two kinds of related but somewhat different judgments. The first is a feeling that the Iraq war was a good idea that failed because it was administered by the most incompetent Administration in their lifetimes. Their assertions remind me of Alfred Rosenberg's shortly before he was hanged as a war criminal after World War II. He is reported to have said "It was a good idea, poorly administered." The second less clearly developed judgment is that invading Iraq was a poor idea all along. They simply had not known that Iraq would be such a difficult society to reform.

In a way, their positions come down to the same failure, an analytic failure that they are most reluctant to admit, even to themselves (a very Bush-like failing). It is one thing to have great ideas, and to publish them in blogs, op-ed pieces, or position papers. It is quite another to take on responsibility as part of a team engaged in the reformation of the world with the use of American dollars, reputations, and lives. In this role, much more information must be gathered and analyzed, including information about the human and organizational tools through which the policy will have to be expressed. In this analysis, persons with very different views must be involved, including persons who have first hand experience with the peoples and conditions that will need to be dealt with.

This reminds me of the years I spent analyzing nuclear war at the Hudson Institute with Herman Kahn. The staff spun out and considered many theories, and ran through many scenarios for the periods immediately before, during, and after a nuclear war. But the more we knew the less we knew. More and more we realized that the tools that we had, no matter how refined, and fail-safe, were still apt to fail the country in an emergency. So as a group we were all in agreement (as of 1969 at least) that there would never be an occasion in which we should initiate nuclear use. Our conclusion was, for example, that battlefield weapons were essentially useless. Battlefield control of weapons was a good idea, but in the heat of battle, these controls were bound to be disastrously unreliable. We never solved the essential conundrums of nuclear deterrence, but we were at least able to take many interesting ideas off the table. These were good lessons that we learned. Would that these repentant government hawks had had a little more time to work through their scenarios.

One should not with the wisdom of hindsight be too contemptuous of the failed ideologues of the current regime. We should be glad to see that under stress, people who seem to be as rigid as they were can learn and change. Hard experience has crushed their crusading spirit. It is only too bad that this country and the Iraqi people have had to pay so much for the lessons.

18:20 11/4/2006

Secularism and the Turkish State

Muazzez Ilmiye Cig, a 92 year old women who has spent her life studying Sumerian civilization was tried and acquitted the other day by a Turkish court on a charge of inciting religious hatred. She had recently written a book alleging that in ancient Sumeria, the priestesses who wore head scarves were specialists in introducing young men to sex. It seems she has long been leading a campaign against head scarves, even writing the prime minister's wife that she should not wear a head scarf.

Turkey is ruled by a secular old guard that harkens back to Ataturk and his attempt to both do away with the connection of Turkey to Islam and to align it with European Civilization. His ideology still plays a powerful role in Turkey: head scarves are not allowed in government offices, universities, or the military. Of course, Ataturk was to some extent inspired by the fascism and extreme nationalism he saw in Europe in his day. To his east, his efforts inspired similar efforts by Reza Shah in Iran and King Amanullah in Afghanistan. Their creations eventually collapsed, but in Turkey, the dream has held together. We should also remember that the Baathists that have ruled Syria and Iraq (until recently) were also secularists very much in the same neo-fascist tradition.

This should remind all would lead the world to a new enlightenment, or who long for a more secular Middle East to which the United States can more easily relate, that change does not always come in simple and clear packaging. The feminism and secularism, scientific work, and unconquerable spirit of Muazzez Ilmiye Cig and many like-minded people in her country are freighted with some most undesirable references.

17:47 11/1/2006

Misery and/or Political Democracy

The war in Iraq has made it clear that the building of political democracy in a fractured society such as that of Iraq is extremely difficult. Beyond this difficulty is the question whether we have done the Iraqis a favor by removing Saddam's hateful, oppressive political regime. The cost for the Iraqis of our interference has been huge in lives lost and torn apart, infrastructure destroyed, and personal relationships shattered. While there is no doubt a freer press in Iraq today than before, the position of women in the society has certainly declined. While certain types of expression has become freer, expression in the religious arena, and in arenas affected by religion has become less free. The jury is still out on whether we will end up giving most Iraqis even the sustainable political democracy we thought we were bringing.

It has been argued that Yugoslavia under Tito was for many people a much more livable society than that in several parts of the territory of the former Yugoslavia today. Some areas have thrived under the new order; here, freedom and happiness have gained. In many others this is not yet the case.

For several years now the United Nations has been publishing a human development index (HDI), which combines several widely available statistics, especially those for poverty, literacy, educational enrollment, and life expectancy. It is instructive to compare the maps for HDI with those for freedom as recorded regularly by Freedom House. The nearly uniform relationship of "high human development" to political democracy is as one would expect for the developed democracies, essentially the OECD countries. But many so-called democracies receive an HDI rating of "medium"; a few of the recently crowned "democracies" have a "low" HDI, especially in Africa.

But the HDI is also an insufficient measure of what I would like to get at here. Reading the daily news about social problems such as indentured servitude, child labor, and the cruel and thoughtless treatment of women in much of the world suggests that there are other levels of analysis that should be used in coming to decisions as to the relative importance of political democracy to people who have to live out their lives in a variety of social, economic, and political settings.

Clearly there are extreme cases, such as North Korea, in which the evils of life from most perspectives are clear. But for a great many countries outside of the developed West, there is something to be said for certain kinds of authoritarian rule, if it can guarantee a happier and personally freer life for the people. Has, for example, the democracy in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia made for a superior life style compared to that in authoritarian Singapore? Uganda has had a better record in many areas of life than Kenya.

So as we consider the world, and particularly as we consider countries and problems in which it seems incumbent on the United States or the international community to interfere, we need to have a broader range of conditions and issues to look at than just the existence or nonexistence of what we would call democracy.

16:10 10/23/2006

Theism versus Atheism: Demystifying the Quarrel

Two excellent recent books, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris have received a great deal of attention lately. A long book review in the latest Sunday New York Times makes a great effort to demolish the Dawkins book, an effort similar in tone to the review that attacked Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell in the Times Science section a couple of months back. From an Enlightenment perspective this interest is mostly all to the good.

However, here I wish to simplify the discussion in a few ways. It seems to me that perhaps too much time is spent on arguing about the proofs for the existence of God, as though this was to key to understanding "religion".

Religion is a social phenomenon which for some intersects only tangentially with the question of God. Buddhism, for example, has a very different relation to this question than Christianity. For the vast majority, religion is a matter of social identification. One is labeled or labels oneself Christian, or protestant, or evangelical or Muslim, or Shi'a and so forth much as one identifies with a city, a country, a nationality, or a culture. For many, the details of belief have little to do with it. Tremendous and undoubtedly valuable cultural goods have built up over the centuries around these identifications. One can value these, to some extent even participate in their expression (for example, as a member of a choir) and still not believe in God

Belief in the details of religion, such as the nature and existence of God, depends on whether one approaches the issue from a the viewpoint of a sensate scientist or not. With a scientific mindset, the existence of God is just as probable as thousands of other traditionally identified existences that have not been seen, heard, or touched in verifiable and replicable ways. Until such verification comes in, the person with this attitude will not believe in God. Similarly, he or she will not believe in the Yeti, the tooth fairy, or the affect of astrological signs on the fate of individuals.

Arguments that God must exist similarly have little meaning to a scientist. They do not ask questions about ultimate origins or ultimate reasons, for such questions are by their nature unanswerable. The "Big Bang" theory in science certainly does not help in understanding ultimate origins and scientists understand this. They know that however much research may peel back the layers of emergent existence, there will always be other layers underneath. Similarly, they know there is no inevitability in the course of existence, for existence is ruled like everything else by the indeterminacies of chance and probability.

There is, however, another level of reality that is created within human minds and communicated between human minds. Dreams are reality for the person dreaming at the moment of dreaming. Their communication among persons is inhibited, at least up to now. But purely mental creations can be developed and communicated. The massive production of fiction, which in one way or another exists within all cultures, testifies to the effectiveness of this aspect of reality. Fictive reality can be a powerful reality in that it can have major influence on those who access it, becoming an important part of their subsequent life. Most non-Mormons, taking in this instance a scientific viewpoint even when they do not take this viewpoint in regard to their own religion, believe that Joseph Smith dreamed up the experience of being brought golden tablets by an angel. Yet this presumably fictive reality has affected millions and continues to do so today. Similarly, many Jews believe that "their God" gave them an eternal right to most of what we call Palestine. This gift is to them as real as the existence of God himself.

Another good example is the development by Freud of the Ego, Id, and Superego categories. These were discussed as though they were physical entities, even though there is little doubt they do not really "exist". Yet something like them does exist; for their existence accords with common human experience. Similarly, there is actually no such thing in the verifiable world as "a culture". Every individual actually has a learning tradition that varies from that of every other individual. But we can usefully speak and act as though there were cultures. Americans, by and large, are "different" from Canadians. Cultures are a heuristic reality.

If this all is true, then there is no reason to deny the validity or reality of a "personal god" to which one prays and from which one derives "benefits". This is a social or cultural reality that is commonly accepted. If one had such a relationship to a person or being that was not socially accepted by a traditionally accepted group, that person would be put in an insane asylum. Perhaps this is a mistake. Perhaps as long as a personal belief system does not interfere with the life of others, then all such beliefs should be placed on the same plane of acceptability.

The problem comes, however, from those cases when this "personal relationship" is imagined and communicated among large numbers and the persons involved come to act on it, as we fear of the followers of Osama Bin Laden or of those who believe that the Second Coming in imminent and that all Christians should act in such a way as to welcome it, or at least prepare for it. In this case those who believe in extrasensory realities need urgently to be dealt with by those who maintain a firmer connection with the sensate world.

16:34 10/5/2006

Cultural Imposition: A Challenge for the New Enlightenment

The Smithsonian Magazine has recently published an article on a cultural group in the New Guinea highlands that regular kills and eats persons that are found offensive (imputations of black magic leading to their "conviction" and execution). The account is quite believable, and the persons involved discuss the matter in matter of fact terms. In a recent book, Daniel Dennett discusses the situation of peoples on the Andaman Islands that at least until recently have been treated by the Indian government as generally uncontactable. Their cultures are apparently to be preserved by lack of association with the wider world.

In these and other cases, we find groups of people who deliberately (although unthinkingly) prevent their young people from participating in the modern world. They have no education, as we understand the term, and they have so little understanding of the world that they are likely not to want any more than they now have. This means that the members of these groups will live relatively short and painful lives, and that what talents they might have in universal world terms will have no chance to develop.

These are only the starkest examples of the dilemma that anyone supporting a new enlightenment must face. On the one hand, they believe that the superstitions that have led to so many of the world's miseries must be debunked, overcome, or set aside for all if humanity is to survive the next few centuries. They also have many other reasons to try to transform the cultures that seem to enslave so many peoples. The Somali representative formerly in the Netherlands campaigned for the utter transformation of an Islam that she says denies women from Muslim countries basic rights. Yet we preach respect for all peoples, and the granting of maximum freedom of thought for all.

The two positions obviously cannot exist side by side. Something in our plan for humanity has to give. It would be easy to work out a solution here on the fly, but I will not attempt it.

17:23 10/5/2006

The Enlightenment Confronts God's Grace

The recent killings at a small Amish school brought the inevitable ABC news teams to observe and comment. One session was particularly striking. The Amish, including the family of the slain girls, insisted that they forgave the killer. As they pointed out, the deaths were ordained by God as is everything. Therefore, how can we blame the evident agent of God's will? Moreover, the girls were now bound to go to heaven where they will live a much better life. So what is there to be sad or revengeful about?

I do not know if these people actually believed what they said, or forgave as they claimed. But we can imagine that there might well be a group that did. In so far as this is a live possibility, it presents another sort of problem for the advocates of a New Enlightenment.

No matter how misinformed these people may be, or how foolish their beliefs, they nevertheless would be able from this standpoint to add a great deal to the peace and well-being of the world.

The Enlightenment project must devise ways in which it can effectively serve many of those needs that people have, needs that have traditionally been met by religious belief, especially by belief as unbending as that of the Amish.

17:33 10/5/2006

Beyond Theism, Nationalism, and Communism

Since the Age of Enlightenment, the world has been experimenting with alternatives to traditional religion. Beginning with the extremists of the French Revolution and romantics such as Herder and Wagner, Nationalism was the first great alternative, and even today it holds out promise to all unbelievers. The problem with Nationalism, as the examples of Nazism, Fascism and Shinto Japan attest, is that it comes to rely on at least as much superstition as the religions it was meant to replace, and it turns peoples inward to the point that only their "tribal" interests can be taken into account. These movements have had a great deal of influence on Turkey, Iran, India, Iraq and Syria (Baathist), Israel (Zionists) and other countries. The opposition between religion and nationalism is still maintained most successfully by the Turkish secularists.

Communism was supposed to be an antidote to fascism, but in fact it was only a different version, with its founding myth the unity and infallibility of the masses rather than that of a historic people. Communism was later perverted into nationalistic, more or less irrational, forms in Stalin's Russia, North Korea, Libya, Cuba, and the (former) communist China. Most of these movements have branded traditional religion as the enemy, as a threat that must be put down, although occasionally using religion for nationalistic reasons.

Enlightenment thinking has been left with no ideological model. To an extent Constitutional Democracy provides that model. Yet it is seen by most people as purely political and instrumental, as inadequate to support the emotional and material lives of peoples governed by such systems. Science is, of course, the great ideological unifier for some in modern societies. Yet for too many people, science remains ununderstood and distant, good for providing a basis for technological change, but not for the moral life of the community.

Do we have, or can we build, a new, more adequate, and less destructive alternative within which to nourish a new enlightenment?

13:48 10/5/2006

Separating Personality from Policy

The ridiculously overblown discussion of Congressman Foley's inappropriate emails led to a proposal to end the page program all together. One intelligent former page wrote into the Times that she had enjoyed her year as a page and, in fact, had learned a surprising but important lesson.

When she went to Washington, she had expected the senators with whose positions she agreed to be likeable and kind, while those she disagreed with would be despicable. In fact she found that her experience was almost the opposite. She concluded that "demeanor has nothing to do with what kind of legislator a person is". She concluded with the hope that more Americans would learn that the person who they would like to have to dinner is not necessarily the person that should be chosen as one's legislator.

This "finding" has broader implications for those who would seek for the truth in whatever field. What is comfortable and pleasant is not necessarily true. Truth can have some unpleasant companions.

10:00 9/11/2006

Pakistan and the Northwest Frontier Province

We have recently read of the agreement between the Government of Pakistan and some of its frontier tribes to withdraw the army in exchange for a promise from tribal leaders not to allow Taliban and al-Qaeda elements to remain along the border. The promise is a face-saving necessity for the government: in real life it will mean very little. The background is that at President's Bush's urging, the Pakistan army tried in the last two years to permanently establish itself in these tribal areas. The effort resulted in little accomplishment and the loss of many soldiers. Once again the tribesmen had won. Pakistan's decision to withdraw is certainly a setback for our effort to eliminate the Taliban threat to Afghanistan and the larger, though vaguer, threat of al-Qaeda to the United States.

Before we condemn too roundly the failure of the GOP to fulfill its promises in our "war against terrorism", we need to step back and gain a little historical perspective. The borderline between India (now Pakistan in this area) and Afghanistan was established by the British over 100 years ago. It cut many tribes and tribal confederacies in two, and was never more than provisionally accepted by them. In any event, the British were not able to exert full control over tribal areas on their side of the border (leave alone the other side, which provided a safe haven when British pressure got too strong). This failure was recognized by establishing a loose administrative system that accepted tribal self-government and included regular payments to the tribesmen to keep the peace.

In the struggle over India as British began to leave, the leaders in the tribal areas favored India. When joining India proved impossible for geographical and religious reasons, they mounted an independence movement looking toward an independent state (Pakhtunistan). This effort eventually quieted down (although the companion movement in Baluchistan appears again to be alive). But as a result loyalty to the GOP is not strong in the area in general.

In Pakistan today, the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) is governed like other provinces, but its tribal ("unsettled") areas are administered separately as Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Reminiscent of colonial days, each tribal area has a government agent who provides the link between Pakistan's government and the tribal chieftains.

The recent efforts of Pakistan to establish military control over tribal areas marked a sharp break with long-standing tradition. The tribes mounted its usual strong guerilla-type resistance. Apparently, the government has now concluded that it would be wise to cut its losses and return to the status quo ante. This may not please the United States, but we are coming to learn, as the British and the Pakistanis learned, that because we want something to happen in this area of the world does not mean that it will.

It should be noted that the Pashto, Pathan, or Pakhtun border peoples have lived by war and killing for generations. Their villages are often more like forts than what one assumes villages to be. Revenge killings and battles among families and clans are endemic. Every man owns a gun and the making, repair and sale of weapons has been the basic cottage industry. Pathan gunsmiths claim to be able to copy successfully any weapon there is. The extreme independence and bravery of the Pathans has often been extolled by Westerners, but it should by no means be idealized. The position of women is perhaps the worst in the world. There is certainly no independence for anyone who gets "out of line". Their close relationship to the Taliban actually the traditional tribal identification with its harsh idea of Islam. The fact these tribes or similar ones dominate much of Afghanistan suggests why we are having so much difficulty there today and why neither Americans nor NATO are likely to succeed in pacification any better than the British or Soviets did before them.

09:55 9/11/2006

Understanding Cultural and Individual Variation

In a recent column, David Brooks told us that he has discovered (Op-Ed, September 3) that variations among cultures are more abrupt and extreme than he had imagined before 9/11. Unfortunately, his subsequent discussion raised serious question as to how he, and too many analysts, understand cultural variation. He makes, for example, the amazing generalizations that "People who live in societies where authority is united — as under Islam — are really different from people who live in societies where authority is divided", and "Rising hegemons like Iran (and the U.S.)see themselves not only as nations but also as moral movements."

But do we really understand the world better, before or after 9/11, through sweeping generalizations that obscure the moral and educational variations within every society? Within the complexity of Islamic societies such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, how is it possible to say that "authority is united"? How many Iranians or Americans actually see their countries as "moral movements"?

Islamic societies typically are inhabited by people belonging to widely varying sects. Many are Sufi orders with cross-cutting international connections throughout the Muslim world. Both Sunnis and Shi'as are found in many varieties. Educated Muslims have more in common with the West than many of their fellow Muslims.

It is past time that we realized that the statements of leaders and spokesmen in any country tell us relatively little about the often more universal desires and values of the peoples they would lead. Yes, on one level, we must deal with the leaders. But to be effective in the world, we must also understand the cultural variability and commonality of the peoples that they would lead.

18:36 8/9/2006

Getting Out of Iraq: How Many Evacuees?

When we left Southeast Asia we were by no means defeated. American and South Vietnamese forces were in many ways in a stronger position than they had been in 1968. Certainly the South Vietnamese forces were more effective than the Iraqi. Regardless of these facts, we left because the perception at home was that staying would merely continue the steady loss of American men and materiel, a loss that seemed to have no end. We had no theory of victory. The public and those opposed to the war were largely correct in this judgment.

This suggests that we and our Iraqi allies do not need to be defeated on the "field of battle" in Iraq for the demand within the United States that we leave the country to become irresistible for any American administration. The resulting loss for the United States in prestige and regional influence has been pointed out by both opponents and supporters of the war. But what has not been admitted, or apparently thought about, is what will happen to the million or so Iraqis outside of Kurdistan (which we might be able to maintain at considerable cost) that have become identified with the American "administration". This will include many in the security forces we have trained as well as hundreds of thousands of others in administration, many politicians at national and local levels, and probably most of the remaining Christian population.

We do not think of most of these as collaborators. But much of the Shiite community, especially the Mahdi army and its collaborators, as well as the followers of other sometimes Persian supported Shiite militias, as well as much of the Sunni community, and of course those in the resistance itself, along with criminal elements, think of those who have been fighting them alongside the Americans or working for the new Iraqi government to be collaborators. They will be seen as collaborators in a defeated enterprise and thus particularly ripe for the picking.

Remember all those people trying to get on the last helicopters out of Saigon? And remember that the South Vietnamese government and the Americans had a much more effective control of much of the country than the Americans and their allies have in Iraq. Saigon was not nearly as dangerous, even after the Americans left, as Baghdad is today. There was no "Green Zone" within which the South Vietnamese administration cowered?

We may see these scenes again and manyfold. Our Iraqi friends will feel deeply betrayed, both by unfulfilled American promises, and by the final American withdrawal. Those who gather around the equivalent of the "last helicopters" will want to come to America out of fear for themselves and their families and out of a feeling of entitlement. I suspect that many more will try to accompany any exodus simply because they see it as an opportunity to get to the United States.

This discussion is not an argument for staying or leaving: that argument is largely over except for the details (which of course remain critical). These notes are merely to point out what might happen and the desirability that we plan now for how we will handle the size and nature of the exodus in a variety of scenarios.

Israel's Tragedy May Be the World's Tragedy

The Israeli-Hezbollah conflict goes on over the tattered body of Lebanon. Reports seem to indicate that this may take quite a while. the Israelis, as usual, feel fully justified in whatever destruction they bring on others. The Hezbollah and the Hamas leaders appear to feel that they are winning just by staying in the field. Their leaders have greater things in mind than the safety of the peoples who one might think they would feel responsible for.

In spite of their fighting spirit and bravado, the Israelis seem this time to be a little cowed and confused by their opponents. Perhaps they are better armed and supplied than the armies that they faced previously. In any event, the better training of the Hezbollah and the ability and willingness of Iran to train and support their forces suggests that down the line Israel the existence of Israel may come into question. After all, the Arab countries surrounding Israel are not strong and secure in the new climate. Either Jordan, Syria, Egypt or Saudi Arabia might succumb to a the hard-bitten Salafi line, and come under the partial or full control of factions that are not willing to tolerate the continued existence of Israel.

The threat to Israel might stem from an unending war along its borders, combined with the full takeover of the West Bank and Gaza by groups no longer willing to even tolerate its existence. One would not expect tanks to come crashing into Jerusalem any time soon. But there could be continued struggle on a massive Iraq insurgency or Afghanistan Taliban model, punctuated with continuing and ever stronger rocket attacks.

As the threat became more serious, the United States would begin to plan for more active intervention, including the use of air power or even some American divisions on the ground. This would make any continued cooperation with the United States, including the sale of oil increasing risky for any Muslim government. And, as we see in the Middle East today, American intervention does not automatically succeed, even against much weaker opponents.

Israel would try to coerce such assistance in an emergency through its political resources in Washington. If this did not succeed, it would have the final option of threatening to use its nuclear capability against intractable foes. This would surely get the American attention. We would be caught in a trap, with the escape hatches not too good to contemplate. If the Muslim fundamentalists toppled the shaky military regime in Pakistan, they too would happen a weapon (no matter what the state of the Iranian program). The world would feel endangered, but what action it could take would be unclear.

I wonder if plans have been made for such eventualities? The ability of Israel to regular defeat its enemies has allowed the United States to avoid developing a policy for what would be done if this ability was called into question. Now, as the Hezbollah rockets continue to come in, it is perhaps time that we think seriously about more negative contingencies.

Although the commentary is not organized as a forum, visitors may send in comments on comments to rdgweb at snet.net. If appropriate, they will be added to the commentary.

For additional commentary see Comments Archive 1 and Comments Archive 2 and Comments Archive 3.

Answers

Social Concepts

Iranian Civilization

Saving the Future

Terrorism

RDG Sites

Email: webmaster at enlit.net