Mark Steyn: Adventures is Idiocy
(Cross-posted at Unclaimed Territory)
As the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate and public support for the war effort dwindles, the chief cheerleaders of the Iraq invasion are desperately looking for someone else to blame. Bill Kristol has already pointed his finger squarely at Donald Rumsfeld and has accused the Bush administration of not waging the war with sufficient "moral seriousness." GOP shills like Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, and Laura Ingraham are busy pointing their fingers at the media, accusing news organizations of poisoning public opinion with a constant barrage of bad news.
But the award for pure chutzpah has to go to Mark Steyn. His Sunday column in the Chicago Sun Times is so astoundingly dumb that it sets the new gold standard for conservative idiocy on Iraq (which is no small feat!).
Before I get to the heart of Steyn's argument, I want to take one paragraph from his column totally out of context (for reasons which will become apparent). Toward the middle of the column, Steyn writes:
That sounds like something I might write. After all, this war has been "spun" from the very beginning. The American people were told that Saddam posed a grave and gathering threat; that he was in league with Al Qaeda and six months away from getting his hands on nuclear weapons. They were told the war would be quick and easy and would pay for itself. They've been treated to a string of premature declarations of victory and assured repeatedly that everything is going swimmingly when their own eyes tell them that it's not. It's no wonder they're a little disillusioned at this point.
Sadly, however, Steyn wasn't referring to any of these things I just mentioned. No, Steyn thinks the problem is that President Bush and Tony Blair have not made it sufficiently clear to the American and British people that this is really a war against Islam. Yes, you read that correctly. Steyn attributes the plummeting support for the Iraq War to, of all things, political correctness gone awry. He writes:
Cluelessness of this magnitude is staggering to behold. Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong believer in free speech and will defend anyone's right to express an opinion, even an inflammatory one. But to suggest, as a normative proposition, that the way to win this war of ideas is to attack and ridicule Islam itself is pure insanity. That approach will do wonders for our effort to win over hearts and minds.
And it's even more ridiculous to suggest--as Steyn does--that the current dwindling support for the Iraq War is due to the overly-respectful way in which our leaders discuss Islam. Yeah, if only Bush would start framing this conflict as a holy war against Islam, everyone would suddenly be back onboard.
Does Steyn really think that the American people don't know the nature of the enemy we face, that they're unaware that the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 were militant Islamists? That's ridiculous. If anything, one of the reasons people have soured on the war in Iraq is because an increasing number of them have realized that Saddam's regime had little, if anything, to do with the enemy that attacked us on 9/11 and that this ill-advised and disastrously-executed war appears to have made the situation infinitely worse.
Or perhaps people have grown a little disillusioned because columnists like Steyn told them things like this almost three years ago:
Sigh.
As the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate and public support for the war effort dwindles, the chief cheerleaders of the Iraq invasion are desperately looking for someone else to blame. Bill Kristol has already pointed his finger squarely at Donald Rumsfeld and has accused the Bush administration of not waging the war with sufficient "moral seriousness." GOP shills like Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, and Laura Ingraham are busy pointing their fingers at the media, accusing news organizations of poisoning public opinion with a constant barrage of bad news.
But the award for pure chutzpah has to go to Mark Steyn. His Sunday column in the Chicago Sun Times is so astoundingly dumb that it sets the new gold standard for conservative idiocy on Iraq (which is no small feat!).
Before I get to the heart of Steyn's argument, I want to take one paragraph from his column totally out of context (for reasons which will become apparent). Toward the middle of the column, Steyn writes:
To win a war, you don't spin a war. Millions of
ordinary citizens are not going to stick with a
"long war" (as the administration now calls it) if
they feel they're being dissembled to about its
nature. One reason we regard Churchill as a
great man is that his speeches about the
nature of the enemy don't require unspinning
or detriangulating.
That sounds like something I might write. After all, this war has been "spun" from the very beginning. The American people were told that Saddam posed a grave and gathering threat; that he was in league with Al Qaeda and six months away from getting his hands on nuclear weapons. They were told the war would be quick and easy and would pay for itself. They've been treated to a string of premature declarations of victory and assured repeatedly that everything is going swimmingly when their own eyes tell them that it's not. It's no wonder they're a little disillusioned at this point.
Sadly, however, Steyn wasn't referring to any of these things I just mentioned. No, Steyn thinks the problem is that President Bush and Tony Blair have not made it sufficiently clear to the American and British people that this is really a war against Islam. Yes, you read that correctly. Steyn attributes the plummeting support for the Iraq War to, of all things, political correctness gone awry. He writes:
The line here is "respect." Everybody's busyReferring to a respectful statement about Islam by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Steyn writes:
professing their "respect": We all "respect"
Islam; presidents and prime ministers and
foreign ministers, lapsing so routinely into the
deep-respect-for-the-religion-of-peace
routine they forget that cumulatively it begins
to sound less like "Let's roll!" and too often like
"Let's roll over!"
At a basic level the foreign secretary'sSteyn concludes his column with this:
rhetoric does not match reality. Government
leaders are essentially telling their citizens:
Who ya gonna believe -- my platitudinous
speechwriters or your lyin' eyes?
My worry is that the official platitudes in thisFor Steyn, the problem is simple: our rhetoric is not sufficiently inflammatory and jingoistic. The key to winning the war in Iraq and the overall war on terror is, apparently, to declare ourselves at war with Islam, and to make fun of Muslims.
new war are the equivalent of the Cold War
chit-chat in its 1970s detente phase --when
Willy Brandt and Pierre Trudeau and Jimmy
Carter pretended the enemy was not what it
was. Then came Ronald Reagan: It wasn't just
the evil-empire stuff, his jokes were on the
money, too. In their own depraved way, the
Islamists are a lot goofier than the commies
and a few gags wouldn't come amiss. If this is
a "long war," it needs a rhetoric that can go the
distance. And the present line fails that test.
Cluelessness of this magnitude is staggering to behold. Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong believer in free speech and will defend anyone's right to express an opinion, even an inflammatory one. But to suggest, as a normative proposition, that the way to win this war of ideas is to attack and ridicule Islam itself is pure insanity. That approach will do wonders for our effort to win over hearts and minds.
And it's even more ridiculous to suggest--as Steyn does--that the current dwindling support for the Iraq War is due to the overly-respectful way in which our leaders discuss Islam. Yeah, if only Bush would start framing this conflict as a holy war against Islam, everyone would suddenly be back onboard.
Does Steyn really think that the American people don't know the nature of the enemy we face, that they're unaware that the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 were militant Islamists? That's ridiculous. If anything, one of the reasons people have soured on the war in Iraq is because an increasing number of them have realized that Saddam's regime had little, if anything, to do with the enemy that attacked us on 9/11 and that this ill-advised and disastrously-executed war appears to have made the situation infinitely worse.
Or perhaps people have grown a little disillusioned because columnists like Steyn told them things like this almost three years ago:
This war is over. The only question now isYou would think that someone who was so massively wrong about Iraq might be humbled by the experience and opt for a less condescending and cocksure tone when discussing the war. Not Steyn. His train of idiocy rolls onward, undetered. And remarkably, his influence among conservatives continues to grow. Steyn's Sunday column was quoted at length (and approvingly) by Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds who encouraged his readers to "[r]ead the whole thing, especially the last paragraph." Peter Robinson at The Corner also quotes the column at length, noting that "Mark Steyn is at his zestful, gorgeous, truthful best."
whether a new provisional government is
installed before the BBC and The New York
Times have finished running their exhaustive
series on What Went Wrong with the
Pentagon's Failed War Plan. . . .
[T]hese are the death throes: the regime was
decapitated two weeks ago, and what we've
witnessed is the last random thrashing of the
snake's body. . . .
[F]or everyone other than media naysayers,
it's the Anglo-Aussie-American side who are
the geniuses. Rumsfeld's view that one shouldn't
do it with once-a-decade force, but with a
lighter, faster touch has been vindicated, with
interesting implications for other members of
the axis of evil and its reserve league.
Sigh.
posted by A.L. at 10:31 AM
9 Comments:
"For Steyn, the problem is simple: our rhetoric is not sufficiently inflammatory and jingoistic."
I don't see how you can attribute this to Steyn. My reading of his article is that he's simply encouraging our leaders to state the obvious and stop tippy-toeing around the fact that there is a powerful, well funded, element of Islamic society that seek the downfall of Western culture and especially it's influence in the Middle East. And that this element is armed and ready to do what they deem necessary.
I don't see this article as jingoistic in the least. Does it mean we should have gone to war with Iraq because of it (the extremeism)? My answer is no? Should we have maintained the focus on the terrorists and their supporters? Yes, with a full court press using all the resources hard and soft at out command.
Let's get back on track.
I don't see how you can attribute this to Steyn. My reading of his article is that he's simply encouraging our leaders to state the obvious and stop tippy-toeing around the fact that there is a powerful, well funded, element of Islamic society that seek the downfall of Western culture and especially it's influence in the Middle East. And that this element is armed and ready to do what they deem necessary.
Obviously I was being little cute. Steyn wouldn't himself use the words "inflammatory" or "jingoistic." But, having read his other recent columns as well, I'm pretty sure Steyn feels the problem is Islam itself and he wants Western leaders to say so.
Though Steyn doesn't acknowledge it in his column, respectful statements about Islam are almost always used by Western leaders to counterbalance statements about how we are at war with an extremist ideology. The idea is to criticize Muslim extremists without making the millions of other Muslims at home and abroad feel that we are attacking their core identity.
But Steyn clearly believes that Islam itself is the problem. Even if he's right about that (and I don't think he is) the notion that our leaders should openly state that Islam itself is the problem is totally insane. It's hard to imagine anything that could be more counter-productive in our fight against terrorism.
Steyn's idiocy is much greater than that. The war lovers who pretend that we are fighting against "Islamists" are either deluded or lying -- and I'd go for the latter, since they are the same people who brag that most of Iraq is peaceful -- meaning that they approve of the Taliban like rule that has settled like some iron wall over Southern Iraq. Basra is becoming, in some respects, more fundamentalist than the Taliban's Afghanistan; we spent the first two years of the occupation engaged in ethnic cleansing of those forces arrayed against Shi'ite militias that were trained in Iran; the current prime minister belongs to a party that is split between those who believe entirely in Khomenei's political philosophy and those who belive in three fourths of it; his rival, from SCIRI, who the Bush administration favors, belongs to a group that is even more closely associated with rule by the mullahs; and elsewhere we are sending three to five billion per year to Pakistan to prop up a government whose closest allies are paramilitary jihadists who want to retake Kashimir. Oh, and did anybody notice that the wonderous Afghanistan government the Americans set up sorta is pledged to shari'a law -- hence, the recent trial of the Christian convert?
What absolute jokes the belligeranti are: hypocritical, obscene, purveyors of the big lie and short term memory loss as their entire foreign policy. Hardly worth arguing with, except that, by massive lying and corruption, they have risen to all the seats of power.
Luckily, as recruitment levels keep going down and as the anti-recruitment movement kicks in, they soon won't have an army to play with.
Steyn goes on my ever lengthening list of those who should not be allowed to breed.
Part of the problem for Cool-Aid Consumers like Steyn is that they were so massively wrong about every aspect of Iraq that there is no safe place for them to retreat and maintain their dignity. It's only human for them to try to salvage some respectability for their side of the argument, but every passing day leaves them with a smaller cache of ammunition with which to fight. Our allies have nearly all departed, the war is way over budget in both money and time, public support is waning, and civil war is already underway. We are likely to end up much WORSE off than before we started the Iraq conflict-- we will likely have a hardline nutcase Shiite ruler in place who is even less sympathetic to US interests than Saddam. We will have squandered our political and moral capital at Abu Gihrab and Guantanamo, and we will be militarily ill-prepared for any unforseen conflicts that may arise.
Given all that, it's not hard to understand why fools like Steyn have nothing other to offer than delusional bluster.
"But Steyn clearly believes that Islam itself is the problem. Even if he's right about that (and I don't think he is) the notion that our leaders should openly state that Islam itself is the problem is totally insane. It's hard to imagine anything that could be more counter-productive in our fight against terrorism."
Why so "totally?" How would you approach things?
In the last several months I have come to the belief that in fact it may not be "extreme Islam" which is the world problem but simply "Islam." The Muslims most visble all seem to be whining kooks with some sort of weird fetish involving humiliation.
Yes, people are not ready to hear that and leaders have to not get too far in front. But I'm not sure that little bit of straight talk might not be quite therapeutic for everyone.
First of all, this is my first post, and I've been enjoying this blog immensely for the past month or so.
Re: Steyn's article. What does one accomplish by saying that Islam is the problem? I think Mr. Steyn correctly believes that certain types of people with certain types of world views will be energized by a simple, unambiguous definition of the enemy and a confirmation that this enemy is truly the source of evil. This quote from an academic at ASU helps clarify what I mean: "We refer to two types of worldviews, the Rock and the Hard Place. The Rock is a very certain, rigid worldview, in which absolutes are stressed and people are encouraged to believe they are part of a heroic triumph over evil. The Rock seems to have great appeal when people are under high threat. The Hard Place is a more uncertain worldview in which there are gray areas between good and bad, and open-mindedness is stressed."
I would guess that Steyn is a Rock, and he understands what other Rocks want to hear. When Steyn says that Jack Straw's rhetoric "doesn't match reality" he means it doesn't match Steyn's reality, the reality of the Rock. Is this the absolute reality, that the Muslim religion is simply a toxic ideology? Someone with a Hard Place view would be very skeptical: it feels overly simplistic -- after all, to make such an ambitious and all-encompassing statement, I sure hope Steyn is the world's foremost expert on all kinds of muslim societies and the religion itself.
What I fail to see is what Steyn thinks will be accomplished by energizing Rocks. In my mind, too much influence by Rocks leads a society to become chauvanistic, provocative, and begin making decisions based on riteousness, anger, and national pride, rather than on the best long-term interests of the country. No matter how patriotic you are this is a bad thing.
On a side note, I would be interested to hear the Anonymous Liberal's take on how Reagan's Rock rhetoric affected our relationship with the Soviet Union (this was, after all, Steyn's main evidence on the positive effect of the Rocks).
On a side note, I would be interested to hear the Anonymous Liberal's take on how Reagan's Rock rhetoric affected our relationship with the Soviet Union (this was, after all, Steyn's main evidence on the positive effect of the Rocks).
Thanks for the comment. I think the Soviet analogy is a particularly bad one. The Soviet Union was a regime, not a group of like-minded people. It's not hard to insult and villify a regime without personally insulting and villifying the people who live under it. Moreover, when your dealing with a state actor, the Soviet Union, hearts and minds aren't as important. Even if Reagan really pissed off the Soviet leaders, he could be pretty sure that they would not attack the U.S.; they have the continued existance of the their country to worry about. But in our current struggle, we are pitted against a stateless foe, an ideology really. If we define our enemy as Islam itself, we instantly alienate the millions of non-extremist muslims in the world. It is incredibly counterproductive.
So long story short, the Soviet analogy makes no sense in the terrorism context. If we want to engage the Muslim world, villifying Islam itself is the absolute worst thing we can do.
AL: you point out the crux of so much of what this admin misses and that's that extreme Islam is not a state, it is a state of mind and that's very hard to get the arms of your tanks around. More than any other conflict, diplomacy should have been the frontline. I'm reading Jawbreaker by Gary Berntsen about the first teams to go into Afghanistan and the tactics of ToraBora. What it illustrates from his one-guy perspective is how almost unimagineably complex it is to understand the tribal history, the historical conflicts, the terrain and the poverty when dropping in from a helicopter to "take the country". We're still trying to fight boxcutters with missle defense ... and who's more the fool, the fool himself or those who follow him?
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