Avoiding Simple Narratives in the Middle East
In the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, Andrew Sullivan, like many of his colleagues, got carried away. He was 100% in favor of invading Iraq and dismissive to the point of extreme condescension of anyone who expressed doubt over the wisdom of Bush's glorious plan. To be fair, though, he was hardly alone. Many people lost their head around that time, including any number of liberal commentators. And to Sullivan's enormous credit, over the last three years he has shown far more willingness than most of his fellow conservatives to re-examine his views honestly and candidly in light of the realities of our experience in Iraq.
For that reason (and because I respect him a great deal as a writer/blogger), I don't mean to pick on him. But it disappoints me when I see Sullivan engaging in the same kind of rhetorical excess that so afflicted his writing back in 2002-2003. Today Sullivan wrote the following about the Israel/Lebanon conflict:
First, no one knows that Iran started this. Yes, Iran and Hezbollah are connected. That doesn't mean that Iran controls everything Hezbollah does. All indications are that Hezbollah did not anticipate that the Israelis would react the way that they did to their cross border incursion. The ferocity and scale of the Israeli response seems to have taken everyone off guard. So this war may not have been part of anyone's grand master plan, much less Iran's.
More importantly, though, Sullivan's statement vastly oversimplifies an incredibly complex situation. I don't know what's going on in Ahmadinejad's head any more than anyone else does and he's certainly said a number of highly disturbing things about Israel and the Jewish people. For that reason alone, he should be taken very seriously. But he has not, at least so far, given us reason to believe that 1) he has anywhere close to full control of his own country or 2) that if he did, he would be so crazy as to ensure the destruction of his entire country by attacking Israel.
Consider this. According to the most recent State Department Country Report on Iran, there are currently between 15,000 and 30,000 Jews living in Iran. While the report details a number of difficulties this community must deal with on a daily basis, it also contains interesting bits of information like this:
So not only is there a Jewish member of parliament, but, with the blessing of the speaker of the parliament, he publicly criticized the content of state television programs. The report also notes that while some synagogues were targets for vandalism, "individual Jews worshiped without systematic persecution" and "Jewish citizens were permitted to obtain passports and travel outside the country."
Now, I certainly don't mean to imply that being a Jew in Iran is easy. Far from. The report details a number of government policies that make life for Iranian Jews far from ideal. And the Iranian regime has a terrible human rights record all around. But, needless to say, the very existence of a sizeable community of Jewish citizens in Iran seems inconsistent with the suggestion that Iran is intent on the "murder of every Jew in the Middle East." If that truly is Ahmedinejad's desire, then he clearly lacks the power to carry it out, even within his own borders.
I bring this up not to defend Ahmadinejad or Iran, but to try to rein in some the rhetoric being used by otherwise intelligent and measured people. If the lead up to the invasion of Iraq taught us anything, it's the importance of sticking as close as possible to the facts and to what we actually know. Rhetorical excess, particularly in this area, has a tendency to build upon itself until everyone has gone collectively nuts.
Ahmadinejad, like Saddam Hussein, is clearly a bad man and a dangerous man. But it doesn't serve our interests to turn him into a cartoon villain or to overlook the complexity of the Iranian political system or Iran's relationship with entities like Hezbollah.
The situation in the Middle East is far too complex and volatile to be reduced to such simple narratives. Simple narratives lead to half-baked policies and terrible diplomacy, and we've had more than enough of that over the last five years.
For that reason (and because I respect him a great deal as a writer/blogger), I don't mean to pick on him. But it disappoints me when I see Sullivan engaging in the same kind of rhetorical excess that so afflicted his writing back in 2002-2003. Today Sullivan wrote the following about the Israel/Lebanon conflict:
This is a war Iran started. I fear it has just begun. Its ultimate
end is simple: the eradication of Israel and the murder of every
Jew in the Middle East. Hezbollah and Ahmadinejad are very,
very clear about this.
First, no one knows that Iran started this. Yes, Iran and Hezbollah are connected. That doesn't mean that Iran controls everything Hezbollah does. All indications are that Hezbollah did not anticipate that the Israelis would react the way that they did to their cross border incursion. The ferocity and scale of the Israeli response seems to have taken everyone off guard. So this war may not have been part of anyone's grand master plan, much less Iran's.
More importantly, though, Sullivan's statement vastly oversimplifies an incredibly complex situation. I don't know what's going on in Ahmadinejad's head any more than anyone else does and he's certainly said a number of highly disturbing things about Israel and the Jewish people. For that reason alone, he should be taken very seriously. But he has not, at least so far, given us reason to believe that 1) he has anywhere close to full control of his own country or 2) that if he did, he would be so crazy as to ensure the destruction of his entire country by attacking Israel.
Consider this. According to the most recent State Department Country Report on Iran, there are currently between 15,000 and 30,000 Jews living in Iran. While the report details a number of difficulties this community must deal with on a daily basis, it also contains interesting bits of information like this:
Nonetheless, according to domestic media, on April 13, the
Jewish member of parliament, supported by the speaker,
complained that state television broadcast anti-Semitic
programs. He said repeated complaints had not changed the
situation.
So not only is there a Jewish member of parliament, but, with the blessing of the speaker of the parliament, he publicly criticized the content of state television programs. The report also notes that while some synagogues were targets for vandalism, "individual Jews worshiped without systematic persecution" and "Jewish citizens were permitted to obtain passports and travel outside the country."
Now, I certainly don't mean to imply that being a Jew in Iran is easy. Far from. The report details a number of government policies that make life for Iranian Jews far from ideal. And the Iranian regime has a terrible human rights record all around. But, needless to say, the very existence of a sizeable community of Jewish citizens in Iran seems inconsistent with the suggestion that Iran is intent on the "murder of every Jew in the Middle East." If that truly is Ahmedinejad's desire, then he clearly lacks the power to carry it out, even within his own borders.
I bring this up not to defend Ahmadinejad or Iran, but to try to rein in some the rhetoric being used by otherwise intelligent and measured people. If the lead up to the invasion of Iraq taught us anything, it's the importance of sticking as close as possible to the facts and to what we actually know. Rhetorical excess, particularly in this area, has a tendency to build upon itself until everyone has gone collectively nuts.
Ahmadinejad, like Saddam Hussein, is clearly a bad man and a dangerous man. But it doesn't serve our interests to turn him into a cartoon villain or to overlook the complexity of the Iranian political system or Iran's relationship with entities like Hezbollah.
The situation in the Middle East is far too complex and volatile to be reduced to such simple narratives. Simple narratives lead to half-baked policies and terrible diplomacy, and we've had more than enough of that over the last five years.
posted by A.L. at 10:36 PM
18 Comments:
If it were possible to wish away the violent extremists of the Middle East while leaving the non-combatants, women and children safe from harm, we could talk of remaking the region in a way that we might like without exacerbating the problems that exist today. Unfortunately there is no genie in a bottle to grant such a wish. Self-defense is one thing but whenever a war carries across the borders into neighboring states and causes innocent civilians to suffer and die, the country which inflicts those casualties is going to be perceived and rightly so as an aggressor.
It makes no difference that there are aggressors on both sides, if your side is an aggressor, you will cause the survivors to despise you, unto the next generation and beyond. You will never have peace in your land until you stop and sue for an end to the violence, and to do so unilaterally if necessary.
Since you don't completely & explicitly support Israel 120%, it's clear you are siding with terrorists. For shame.
Terrific post. This Ahmedinejad hysteria is more dangerous than he is. He is a nasty, ignorant crank, but what can he do?
I so agree with you. I have been reading Andrew for a long time now. He is coming down right on issues any one would: excesses of the executive and torture. although I haven't seen him speak about much on signing statements.
His recent past blogs have a flavor that runs like Iran and Syria are so tied up to what we see, that an end to this will come only by dealing with them militarily. Whether US choses to do it or Israel. I cannot think of this as anything but war mongering.
He hasn't yet contemplated what role US might play. Given he advocates increased troop presence in Iraq, he cannot possibly conceive US entering a broader middle eastern war.
I would rather that all understanding of middle east came before having deploy military. It seems like all this "complexities" come n the open only when a war is imminent, so it makes dicsussions all tilted towards nothing but one end. Who knows what new understanding US will get if it were to commit to another agression.
Israel has grossly over stepped its bounds. Lebanon is one of the weakest nations and it was gettings on its democratic feet. Now with all weak players out, the strong players are left to be in direct confrontation : The Saudi's (with Jordanians and Egyptians) and the Iranians (with Syrian help).
Infact the trumpet thats being blown is Iran and Syria are bad. Has anyone forgotten how Saudi's are a state sponsor of terror too. So this war really is not about terrorism as it is about inetrnal power struggle. And certainly Israel might unite all of them against it at least in a temporary sense.
Israel's response to being attacked by an Iranian and Syrian-supported terrorist organization whose fundamental ideology is at least partially grounded in the stated principal that Israel does not have a right to exist has certainly been disruptive to any potential peace plan (yeah, right) for the region. But it is absurd to suggest that Israel is a primary aggressor in this terrible situation. Hello. They were attacked within their borders by rockets fired by a group or groups whose ideology is to destroy a sovereign nation because they don't have the right religion. And please don't tell me about innocent Arab women and children if you're not going to acknowledge all the innocent Israeli women and children (and Arabs and Palestians who, apparently didn't get the memo) who have lost their lives and/or limbs, by suicide bombers and the like. And all that without hearing a peep from Arab nations or the European press during the entire period of Israel's existence. I don't know what it's like to live in a country whose institutions and citizens have been targets of more or less constant violent hositilty since the 1960s. But I seem to remember reading in many recent newspapers and magazines that Israel has recently conceded a great deal of land in very strategic places, which have increased its vulnerability (e.g., the Gaza strip, whence these recent attacks have been launched) for the apparantly empty consideration of a cessation of hostilities from its enemies. Israel is surrounded on at least two borders by fanatic terrorist organizations who have manipulated "democracy" to institutionlize terrorism as foreign policy. These terrorist groups now have the explicit support of Iran, Syria, and reportedly (NY Times, July 28), of Arab leaders throughout the region. Again, Hamas and Hezbollah, with the blessing of such great liberal statesmen as Osama bin Laden, have stated their clear purpose to destroy Israel and have backed that up with unprovoked rocket attacks. But Israel is the agressor? (Full disclosure: I am not Jewish, and have no hereditary or particularly emotional investment in supporting the right of Israel to defend itself. Collaterally, I think George Bush is a war criminal and should be impeached. In fact, I'm just another not quite anonymous liberal whose knee doesn't jerk every time Israel responds with armed force to armed attacks from across its borders.)
Stephen,
I realize your comment was mainly directed at another commmenter, but just for the record, I fully agree that Hezbollah was the agressor here. They crossed Israel's border and attacked Israel soldiers.
My post was not intended to suggest otherwise.
I do question, however, the wisdom of Israel's response to that aggression. I certainly think Israel had every right to respond militarily, but I fear the scale of its response will prove to be counterproductive.
Avoiding simple narratives should be easy - the right isn't talking about it. Neither is the faux "advertise liberally" circle fo links - they are just linking back and forth the usual mindless crap that has nothing to do with liberal or progressive issues while they endlessly promote themselves.
Sorry, A.L. - not sure where you think people are getting too many simple marratives. The MSM isn't saying much and neither is either side.
Both sides have created pundits by elevating their banalities to "holiday inn express" style expertise and all we really have is two different versions of the echo chamber.
Obviously, you didn't get the memo from kos - no wonder you are not the darling for that faux "advertise liberally" circle of links.
Too bad - instead we get endless links to the tripe and excessive verbage from greenwald.
Geeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I don't know if he's a "pundit" (probably is), and I don't think he's on anybody's "side," but Thomas Friedman has been writing extensively about this for years. Although I don't necessarily subscribe to his every opinion, but I do think he knows more about the middle east that practically anybody. Recent columns in the Times by Friedman have been very enlightening, IMO.
Stephen,
The issue is proportion. No one anywhere gave Israel grief for responding to the initial rocket attacks or to the kidnapping of the soldiers. But the casualties are running well past the 10-1 ratio, so it's facile to simply say that Hezbollah shot some rockets, Israel launched some airstrikes, so everything must be all even. The scale of Israel's response and the lack of discrimination in their targeting makes this a discussion about collective punishment, not about conventional warfighting. The proper analogy is with German anti-partisan actions in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans. To quote Hitler on his approach to guerilla warfare, "What should you do: the swine have barricaded themselves in a house in which there are also women and children. Should the soldier set fire to the house or not? If he sets fire to it, the innocents are burned. There shouldn't be any doubt about this! He must burn it down!"
That's one approach to irregular warfare. We happen to have decided it was a criminal response, however, regardless of whether or not the partisans acted first by attacking German security troops or supply columns.
I'm deeply sympathetic to Israel's need to defend itself, and I can understand their decisions to use disproportionate force in their defense. But we are not Israelis, and we can and should be looking at how the Israeli response affects the region as a whole.
The other thing that is disconcerting, if predictable, is the cultural nature of our response to different sorts of violence. John Keegan once argued that Clausewitz was wrong and that war was actually the expression of culture through other means rather than politics through other means. I think there's a lot of truth to it. (Keegan himself falls victim to this sort of thing in his history of the Iraq War when he approvingly notes of an instance where 200 or so fehaydeen "manfully" got out of their vehicles and tried to duke it out with a US infantry formation. An hour later all of the fighters were dead at no cost to the US unit. But they weren't cowardly insurgents!) Airstrikes have become an accepted element of Western warfare (although they were widely villified as criminal between 1917-1945), so we are relatively insensitive to the casualties it inflicts. If Israeli religious fundamentalists strapped dynamite to themselves and ran into Southern Lebanon detonating themselves in crowds, we'd recoil in horror. But if airstrikes or artillery salvos kill an equivalent number of people, it's written off as the regrettably necessary byproduct of military action. The Israelis killed a vacationing Lebanese family a few months back when an artillery round mis-fired (in fact, this was recent enough that I thought it might be the provoking agent for the Hizbollah rocket attacks and was surprised to see the incident go completely unmentioned during media coverage). True, there was no deliberate intent to kill civilians, and that's an important distinction, but the reality is that eight completely innocent people were killed and the outrage over the event was non-existent. Again, I suspect that the means of delivery had much to do with that.
I am a regular reader of Andrew Sullivan and was also taken aback by the rhetoric you highlighted. It would be so easy for this "threat" from Iran and Syria to get way out of proportion and lead us once again down a path of doomed military response.
Last night on Charlie Rose, someone else I view on a regular basis he had as a guest a scholar of Middle Eastern politics. I wish I could remember his name and university, but I don't. His analysis of Iran and Ahmadinejad was very different from what we hear in the MSM and the blogosphere.
I found the guy, Vali Nasr he was on Thurday night.
He essentially said Ahmadinejad was a blowhard who says stupid hateful things but is not the power in Iran and was elected using tactics similar to GWB among many other things.
When fools gain power we all suffer.
PS. by going to the Charlie Rose site you can watch the whole show with Vali Nasr.
Worst AL post ever.
Worst AL post ever.
Well, I guess there always has to be a worst post. Might be more constructive, though, to tell me why.
Problems with the post and the reasoning:
(1) Assuming Ahmadinejad (and other Iranian leadership) are rational actors, and would therefore would not "be so crazy as to ensure the destruction of his entire country by attacking Israel." What would make you think that Ahmadinejad thinks he is a rational actor. Not to mention the fact that others have repeateldy (seed 1948, 54, 67, 73 wars and 1991 gulf war scud attacks) attacked Israel without a resulting destruction of their country.
(2) Lies, damn lies, and statistics: claiming that there are 15-30,000 Jews in Isreal, then calling that a "sizeable community" is absurd. Sizeable compared to what? I am sure that 10, 15, 20, 25, and 50 years ago there were larger numbers of Jews in Israel and that their numbers have dwindled steadily (particularly over the past 25 years). SIzeable compared to what, and what of your evidence suggests that they are not persecuted in that country.
(3) Simply b/c Ahmedinejad has not already attacked Israel directly, or eliminated the remaining Jews in Iran does not mean it is not within his plan to do so. Plenty of Jews were still living in Germany in 1934, 35, 36, 37, 38. Your statement re: Ahmedinejad could apply just as simply to Hitler in 35 (or Stalin in 33).
(4) All of this comes down to the main critique: assuming that because a situation is "complicated" or that there are "difficult issues" invovled, that the response of Israel or the US must be mesaured and that they should "stick to the facts." Just because Iran and Ahmadinejad are difficult to understand, does not mean we must endly ponder a response, or that it must be nuanced. Clearly Israel's response has caught Hezbollah and Iran off guard, and that likely is a good thing in the long run. We shouldnt' "play it safe" and be cautious with Ahmadinejad, one could argue that the only prudent course when dealing with someone so dangerous is to shoot first and ask questions later -- particularly when later he may be armed with nuclear weapons (and be ditributing them to Hezbollah).
(1) Assuming Ahmadinejad (and other Iranian leadership) are rational actors, and would therefore would not "be so crazy as to ensure the destruction of his entire country by attacking Israel." What would make you think that Ahmadinejad thinks he is a rational actor. Not to mention the fact that others have repeateldy (seed 1948, 54, 67, 73 wars and 1991 gulf war scud attacks) attacked Israel without a resulting destruction of their country.
I just pointing out that we've dealt with all kinds of "crazy" leaders before using traditional deterence methods. Kim Jung Il, Stalin, etc. Many conservative pundits have suggested that with Ahmadinejad, you have to through all our previous experience out the window because he's so "crazy." Rubbish. The burden is on those advocating pre-emptive war to demonstrate that it is necessary, not vice versa.
(2) Lies, damn lies, and statistics: claiming that there are 15-30,000 Jews in Isreal, then calling that a "sizeable community" is absurd. Sizeable compared to what? I am sure that 10, 15, 20, 25, and 50 years ago there were larger numbers of Jews in Israel and that their numbers have dwindled steadily (particularly over the past 25 years). SIzeable compared to what, and what of your evidence suggests that they are not persecuted in that country.
I didn't mean "sizable" in some relative sense, just an absolute sense. That's thousands of people. But, for what it's worth, I believe the Iranian jewish population is the second largest in the Middle East (the first being Israel). And my evidence regarding their treatment was the most current State Department human rights report filed in March 2006. I provided a link.
3) Simply b/c Ahmedinejad has not already attacked Israel directly, or eliminated the remaining Jews in Iran does not mean it is not within his plan to do so. Plenty of Jews were still living in Germany in 1934, 35, 36, 37, 38. Your statement re: Ahmedinejad could apply just as simply to Hitler in 35 (or Stalin in 33).
The key word here is could. I wasn't suggesting that this proves Ahmadinejad has no extermination plans. No one knows what he really plans. That's the point. I raised this data point to in an effort to show that Sullivan's rhetoric is too certain. We just don't know. And I don't think it does anyone any good to use remove all uncertaintly from discussion about these issues.
4) All of this comes down to the main critique: assuming that because a situation is "complicated" or that there are "difficult issues" invovled, that the response of Israel or the US must be mesaured and that they should "stick to the facts." Just because Iran and Ahmadinejad are difficult to understand, does not mean we must endly ponder a response, or that it must be nuanced. Clearly Israel's response has caught Hezbollah and Iran off guard, and that likely is a good thing in the long run. We shouldnt' "play it safe" and be cautious with Ahmadinejad, one could argue that the only prudent course when dealing with someone so dangerous is to shoot first and ask questions later -- particularly when later he may be armed with nuclear weapons (and be ditributing them to Hezbollah).
Two things. First, you're reading more into my post that I said. I was merely calling for less rhetorical excess. Especially after what happened in the lead up to the Iraq invasion, I think it is very important not to go beyond what we actually know in our discussion of these issues. In the leadup to Iraq, all uncertainty was stripped from the equation, and assumptions built upon assumptions until reality had been left far behind.
As for the suggestion that the prudent response is sometimes to shoot first and ask questions later, I couldn't disagree more, at least with respect to Iran. We are so overextended and the situation in the Middle East is so volatile that such an approach is bound to lead to even more disastrously ill-advised moves
Arguing that the situation is "complex" contributes nothing. The factors that go into Israel's decision whether to go to war or not to go to war may be complex, but the decision itself is irreducible in its simplicity. In my view they have made the correct decision. "Complexity" has long been the left's code word for agonizing paralysis and inaction.
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