Two more posts from Henry. The first is here, and the second is here.
Henry, I agree that evoking Gandhi and Martin Luther King in the present circumstance is not helpful, and I’m remembering what Dale has said down the page about extremes. I also agree that the threat of Jihad is serious, though I don’t subscribe to the notion that Islamic militancy is unified or monolithic. It seems pretty disorganized to me, and I suspect that most of its adherents have no notion of a caliphate.
As to what constitutes a serious position about Iraq, David Brooks has an opinion piece in today’s New York Times that sets out pretty clearly at least part of what I think. I can’t post a link because it’s in a paid part of the NYT site, but here’s the most of his conclusion. Brooks argues that there are at present two serious positions about Iraq:
One serious position is heard on the left: that there’s nothing more we can effectively do in Iraq. We’ve spent four years there and have not been able to quell the violence. If the place is headed for civil war, there’s nothing we can do to stop it, and we certainly don’t want to get caught in the middle. The only reasonable option is to get out now before more Americans die.
The second serious option is heard on the right. We have to do everything we can to head off catastrophe, and it’s too soon to give up hope. The surge is already producing some results. Bombing deaths are down by at least a third. Execution-style slayings have been cut in half. An oil agreement has been reached, tribes in Anbar Province are chasing Al Qaeda, cross-sectarian political blocs are emerging. We should perhaps build on the promise of the surge with regional diplomacy or a soft partition, but we certainly should not set timetables for withdrawal.
The trouble is that these two positions are irreconcilable. I differ with Brooks in that I think at least some in the congress, both Democrats and Republicans, are serious, and are trying to find and articulate a vision of the broader security interests our country has in the middle East.
Zbigniew Brzezinski has a new book out about how the last three American administrations have dealt with the Middle East. I find myself wanting to read it, and not just because it is being billed by some as a manifesto for Barack Obama. Here’s a review.