| Pipes Calls War A Success | |
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2 Apr 2006 @ 19:31, by Bruce Kodish
Succinct review of how U.S. is doing so far in World War III (or WW IV, depending on whether you count the "Cold War").- BIK
Pipes calls war a success
by Bill Steigerwald
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
April 1, 2006
Pipes calls war a success
"It's no surprise Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes has made so many political friends and enemies. A conservative columnist, counter-terrorism analyst and author or co-author of 18 books, he's a staunch supporter of Israel and a harsh critic of radical Islam."
"Praised as an "authoritative commentator on the Middle East" by his allies at the Wall Street Journal, he's been branded "an anti-Islamist extremist" by some Arab-American groups. He's also the founder of the Middle East Forum (www.meforum.org), which, among other things, has a Web site called Campus Watch that monitors how Middle East studies are taught at U.S. colleges."
"Pipes will be a keynote speaker Thursday night at Grove City College's star-studded conference on the prospects of spreading democracy in the Arab world, "Mr. Jefferson Goes to the Middle East," April 5-6 (Info: 724-458-3302). I talked to Pipes by phone Tuesday from Sydney, Australia."
"Q: Were you in favor of going to war in Iraq, and how do you think it's progressing or regressing?
A: I was in favor. I continue to be in favor of the campaign to eliminate the rule of Saddam Hussein, with all the dangers to the Iraqis, to the region and to ourselves. From April 2003 on, I have argued that the U.S. government and its allies should have lower expectations than actually is the case. That we should treat the Iraqis like adults; that we should understand that they are going to run their own future, their own destiny, not us; that our role there is at best advisory, and that we should be patient. So lower expectations and a longer time horizon.
Q: Does that mean a significant change in what we are doing now, in terms of policy. Should we announce withdrawals?
A: The number of troops is not my issue. It's the placement and role of the troops. For three years now I have been protesting the use of American troops to mediate between tribes, help rebuild electricity grids, oversee school construction, which seems to me to be a wrong use of our forces, of our money. The Iraqis should be in charge of that. We should keep the troops there, in the desert, looking after the international boundaries, making sure there are no atrocities, making sure oil and gas goes out, otherwise leaving Iraq to the Iraqis.
Q: How do you define your politics?
A: Conservative.
Q: You're not one of those neocons who allegedly talked President Bush into going to war in the Middle East?
A: I have been called a neoconservative. I don't exactly know how a neoconservative differs from a conservative.
Q: Do you generally agree with President Bush's Middle East policy -- its goals and its methods?
A: I agree with the goals much more than the methods. I just gave an example of Iraq, where I believe the goal of getting rid of Saddam Hussein and trying to have a free and prosperous Iraq are worthy goals. I criticize the implementation. The same goes with democracy. I think democracy is a great goal for the region. I criticize the implementation; I think it's too fast, too American, too get-it-done yesterday.
Q: Is there anything major that the Bush administration should do now to make things go smoother?
A: We did something good in getting rid of the Taliban and getting rid of Saddam Hussein. That is really the extent of our role, to get rid of the hideous totalitarian regimes.
Let me add that I see these issues as basically sidelines. We are engaged in a war, a profound war and long-term war, in which Afghanistan and Iraq are sideshows. The real issue is the war that radical Islam, a global phenomenon, has declared on us and that has already been underway for many years, and we're still at the beginning of it. That's the really major issue.
Q: Recently I talked to Peter Galbraith and Ivan Eland, foreign policy experts who both favor a three-part partition of Iraq as a way to forestall or make a civil war in Iraq go away. Any thoughts on that?
A: Well, the neighborhood is unanimously against it and Iraqis are fearful of it, so I don't think there is much of a chance.
Q: What should U.S. policy be in the Middle East?
A: Well, I endorse the president's vision of a Middle East that is no longer under the control of tyrants, as it is today, or despots -- unelected officials, at best. But it is a long-term project that's going to take decades, not months, and has to be approached with that in mind.
Secondly, if we go too fast, as is the case, we bring our most fervent enemies to power, as we've seen most dramatically in the Palestinian territories, where a terrorist organization (Hamas) won a majority of Palestinian support. One can see that also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, Algeria.
We have to be very cautious about pushing a process before the people of the area are really quite ready for it -- until they've gone beyond what I call the "totalitarian temptation," so that they have a more balanced, moderate view of the world than they do at this time.
Q: Do they have a lot of catching up to do?
A: To give an imperfect analogy: Germany went through a hideous period between 1933 and 1945. The condition of the Muslim world is not that bad but it's comparable. It's going through a particularly bad time. ... Our goal is to help the Muslim world move beyond this war through educational programs and other means. Fundamentally, we're at war with a substantial minority of the Muslim world and we are at war with them because they have declared war on us and we have to answer that.
Q: What is the biggest lesson you have learned from the Iraq war?
A: The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them -- to release them from the bondage of Saddam Hussein's tyranny. They have rapidly interpreted it as something they did and that we were incidental to it. They've more or less written us out of the picture.
Q: How will we know when the occupation or the invasion of Iraq was a success or a failure?
A: Oh, it was a success. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. Beyond that is icing."
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Category: Articles
2 comments
2 Apr 2006 @ 20:19 by vibrani : PIPES
Daniel Pipes, a new kind of Israel-basher (from "Ha'aretz")
By Bradley Burston
Friday, 31 March, End of the Spin Cycle
I used to be an American Jew. And then I read Daniel Pipes.
"As Israelis go to the polls," Dr. Pipes wrote this week in an article
that originally appeared in the New York Sun, "not one of the leading
parties offers the option of winning the war against the Palestinian Arabs."
Dr. Pipes goes on to admit "a certain frustration" with the apparent
unwillingness of Israelis to go out there and do the right thing: bring
the Arabs to heel, by use of overwhelming force.
The article, entitled "Israel Shuns Victory," sets out a kind of
self-test for us, listing nine different options by which Israelis from
far left to far right, and moderates in between, all "manage the
conflict without resolving it," "ignore the need to defeat Palestinian
rejectionism." and "seek to finesse war rather than win it."
This is not the first time Dr. Pipes has let Israelis have it for
letting him down. In a 2003 speech to college students, cited on his
Website www.DanielPipes.org, he suggested that Arabs will not truly
accept Israel's existence until Israel "punishes violence so hard that
its enemies will eventually feel so deep a sense of futility that they
will despair of further conflict."
Where did we go wrong? "Wars are won, the historical record shows, when
one side feels compelled to give up on its goals," Dr. Pipes writes,
indicating that Israel will win only when Arabs are forced to give up
their goal of eliminating a Jewish state.
He notes, by way of inference, that the wars in 1948-49, 1956, 1967,
1973, and 1982 failed to persuade them. I guess we didn't fight hard
enough, or well enough.
I suppose if I were living in, say, Philadelphia, Dr. Pipes'
frustration, disappointment, and prescription for setting things right,
might make perfect sense.
In fact, a number of our readers who live in North America, some of whom
regularly use the word coward to describe Israeli moderates, have any
number of suggestions for us as well, up to and including the use of
weapons of mass destruction on Palestinians, apparently in an effort to
change their minds about us.
That said, I have a couple of questions. The first concerns people like
Mahmoud Masharka, 24, of Hebron. Masharka was apparently disguised as an
Orthodox Jew when he set out hitchhiking late on Thursday and was picked
up by a car in which four Israelis were travelling.
He then detonated the bomb belt he was wearing, incinerating the car and
killing everyone inside.
Does Dr. Pipes really believe that people who crave a violent,
Jew-murdering death are really going to accept Israel if only enough
military force is applied?
Is Dr. Pipes telling us that people who celebrate the sacrament of
suicide are going to think differently of us if we send in more tanks,
bigger bombs, more F-16s, more Apaches, more infantry brigades, more
commandos, demolish more homes, demolish more olive trees, demolish what
little is left of the Palestinian Authority?
I understand that we have disappointed the analyst with the Harvard
pedigree. But if he'll allow me one more question:
Since when did we become mercenaries for Daniel Pipes?
After reading Dr. Pipes, I'm not sure I can be an American Jew anymore.
I guess, at long last, I've become an Israeli. Unlike Dr. Pipes, I can't
bring myself to win the war against the Palestinians. At least not the
way Dr. Pipes would have me do so. I guess the guy's right. My friends
in my IDF battalion couldn't do it either.
Of course, there might be another explanation. One that might fit a guy
who lives 6,000 miles away and lets us know we don't have the Right
Stuff to show these Arabs what for.
Daniel Pipes is a new kind of Israel-basher. He is an equal-opportunity
hater of Israelis. None of us is good enough for him. We lack the will
to fight like the man he quotes as a role model for us, Douglas
MacArthur. From unilateralism to transfer, nothing we come up with is
good enough for him.
Try as we might, we just can't seem to win his war for him.
I guess he'll just have to do it by himself.
3 Apr 2006 @ 20:30 by : Burston's Argument
Rather non-argument. It is entirely irrelevant whether Pipes lives in Israel or not. There are many Israelis who more or less agree with Pipes. I assume that Burston knows this but rather than deal with Pipes' actual argument (that Arab intransigence will not be defeated by more concessions) Burston must resort to name-calling. Pipes certainly never said that Israelis who don't agree with him are cowards, as Burston seems to imply.
I find it interesting that Burston, who writes for Ha'Aretz considers his own viewpoint 'moderate'. He seems like a rather typical member of the 'annointed' group of leftist intellectuals so common in the Israeli media, universities, government bureaus, and political parties, who, in my opinion, have done so much to immobilize and weaken their country. With the best of intentions.
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