July 16, 2007

Ivan Eland's excellent work is well known to all who read TPOL and other on-line and hard-copy libertarian publications. His article last week makes some excellent points, but needs to be answered in some particulars. Hence, this response, with my utmost respect and regard to Ivan. His analysis is incomplete and therefore, his recommendations, if implemented, might lead to a worse problem than the one we are living with, today.

Ivan's original article: U.S. Role in Islamist Terrorism, published on July 2, 2007. All quotes from Ivan's article are for the purpose of commentary and response, and not intended to violate his copyright or his rights to his work in any way.

When U.S. government officials and foreign policy pundits discuss terrorism, they usually focus on the characteristics, personnel, history, tactics, targets, objectives and effects of terrorist organizations. They rarely talk about motives.

Excellent point, Ivan, though motives are very often connected to the objectives.

To fully understand Islamic terrorism, one needs to understand what triggers this extraordinary rage. And throughout history one factor stands out above all else: the occupation of Muslim land by non-Muslim forces.

Obviously, this is the thesis that Ivan is arguing. However, he starts off with a major assumption: that the "anger" which fuels "Islamic terrorism" is in fact "extraordinary." We must also clearly understand what is "Muslim land" and what are "non-Muslim forces."

From the time of the Crusades, the pattern has been consistent. The Soviet Union learned this difficult lesson following its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the late 1970s. The Russians learned it again when they occupied Chechnya in the 1990s. Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza after the 1967 Six Day War and its military interventions in Lebanon triggered similar reactions, as did the U.S. military presence in Lebanon in the early 1980s. Indeed, it's fair to say that Israel's very existence—a non-Islamic state in land claimed by the Muslims—is part of the same pattern, as is the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ivan's view of history is rather short in this paragraph. Although Ivan claims that this goes back to the Crusades (but says nothing further about that beyond this claim), in fact, we must look back still further - further, indeed, than the introduction of Islam. The Arab people, once confined to a small part of what today is the Arabian peninsula (Saudi Arabia and a dozen other states), were best known as the inhabitants of small towns and semi-nomadic pastoral (herding) people, and occasionally known for raiding their neighbors and the surrounding territories, or running caravans selling dubious goods (slaves, fenced items, etc.). Oh, and for their interminable internal feuds and struggles, legendary in the Eastern Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire.

Until 622-632, when a brilliant man (pbuh!) figured out a way to unite a winning faction (not necessarily a majority) of Arabs and then proceeded to wipe out or forcibly amalgamate their neighbors (Arab, Jew, Amorite, Greek, Egyptian, etc.) into a "Greater" Arab Nation, apparently in an attempt to end the internal fussing and feuding. Fired now with a red-hot religious fervor which echoed and reinforced their newfound national identity, Islamic/Arabic armies exploded out of their desert homeland and swept much of the known world away, within decades racing to the Indus, the Atlantic Ocean, and far to the north. In their cataclysmic conquest, they overran and enslaved, absorbed, or eliminated dozens of different ethnic groups and nationalities, reducing still more to tiny, almost-forgotten remnants either in their own land or in some relatively safe refuge. The Arab-Islamic nation (the "Ummah"), reinforced by its millions of enslaved breeding stock, those who would be called Quislings in later centuries, and the slow but steady conversion of dhimmis into Muslims (albeit of a lower status than the Arab elite), was perhaps the most successful imperial expansion known in history - certainly more successful and long lived than the Assyrian, Babylonian, or Macedonian attempts. However, its internal weaknesses ultimately destroyed it.

Within years of the Prophet's (pbuh) death, the old Arab feuds had ripped time and again into the peace, power, and wealth of the Arabs - even the wealth of conquest that would not be seen again until the Spaniards swallowed Azteca and Peru. Now, religious issues and dynastic issues joined the usual Arab motives for warring with each other: greed, lust, envy, sloth, etc. Their segregated military camps quickly became polyglot cities as the conquered populations became Arab by culture, if indeed not by ancestry as well. Some conquered peoples (notably the Persians, the Canaanites we today call "Lebanese," and the Tuareg, to name a few) were more successful than most in resisting the Arabization that wiped out the ancient Egyptians, ancient Sumarian/Babylonian, Greco-Romano-Celtic peoples of Asia Minor, and dozens if not hundreds of other nationalities as thoroughly as the AmerInd has been excised from eastern North America or the Gaelic population of modern England.

And despite the rot at the core, the Ummah continued to expand at its perimeter (although once in a while, as in the Reconquista of Iberia, they retreated) to take much of South Asia to the vast island chains of the Philippines and Indonesia, the east coast of Africa, vast areas of the former Soviet Republican 'Stans, and a major chunk of Europe. Though badly hurt, they withstood the "barbarian invasions" that had previously and at the same time utterly ravaged Europe and destroyed whole nations and cultures; even, ultimately, Islamizing (if not Arabizing) the most successful of the barbarians, the Turks.

The point is, except for that portion of Arabia stretching along the Red Sea from the Dead Sea south to modern Yemen, and including the mountainous region of western Arabia (the historical Arabian province of Hejaz), EVERYTHING today considered "Arabic" or "Islamic" - that is, the Ummah, was conquered (stolen) from another nation between 622 and today. EVERYTHING. This is the "Muslim land" of which Ivan speaks: Palestine, El Haza, Nejd, Syria (Aram), Mesopotamia, Egypt, Libya, Morroco, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Kashmir, Bangla Desh, Indonesia, and all the rest. It should be pointed out that the closest I've been able to come to an generally-accepted definition (within Muslim society) of "Muslim land" is "any land which has or had a majority Islamic population at any time in history or which is or was ruled by a government in which Islam was the dominant religion." Notice that this includes areas today NOT having majority Islamic populations and NOT ruled today by Islamic rulers. Thus, Spain and Portugal, much of the Balkans, Greece, Hungary, much of southern Russia and Ukraine, parts of the Philippines, much of India, and a good chunk of Africa are considered by at least "radical" Muslims (estimated at 25% of the population) if not ALL Muslims to be their "land."

THUS: First point: Muslim land itself, for the most part, didn't belong to Muslims or Arabs in the first place: it was conquered (governmentese for "stolen"). Muslim land, as defined by many Muslims, includes major portions of three continents.

Ivan talks about non-Muslim occupation of Muslim lands, but really addresses only a very few examples in just two periods: the Crusaders occupation of Canaan (1099-1291) and the modern (1948 to present) occupations by Russia, Israel, and the United States. He thus leaves a gap of right at 660 years of history which he does not address.

A brief review of that period indicates that there were, indeed, MANY non-Muslim occupations of Muslim lands during that long period. The Turks themselves were not Muslim when they conquered virtually ALL of the central Muslim lands, including Arabia (although they quickly became Muslim). The Reconquista by which modern Spain and Portugal were founded began almost immediately and took more than 700 years, followed soon thereafter by the conquest (not reconquest) of North Africa - all Muslim lands occupied for centuries. The Turkish conquests in Europe, all Muslim lands, were gradually won back by various nations, including the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires, over a 300-year period, and today many areas with majority Muslim populations are ruled ("occupied") by non-Muslim governments: portions of Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia, Slovenia, and others. The Philippine homelands of the Moros were occupied by the Spanish, then the Americans, and now the non-Muslim majority Filipino government. Vast maharajadoms of India were once Muslim-ruled, and still have large (maybe even majority, after 50 years) Muslim populations, but today are ruled from non-Muslim New Dehli, after several centuries rule from (then) non-Muslim London. The Soviets occupied majority Muslim lands for most of 70 years, including Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and the other former Soviet Republican 'stans. Other European powers eventually controlled the Muslim lands of Indonesia, East Africa, and the shores of the Indian Ocean.

Of course, those are all on the periphery of the Ummah. Egypt was occupied by the non-Muslim French in the early 1800s, and then starting about 1870, effectively occupied by the British (with a puppet government) for 80 years. Ultimately, ALL of North Africa was occupied by European, non-Muslim, non-Arab nations. (Even the US briefly occupied portions, first in the early 1800s and then again in the early 1940s.) And it was from here, in 1914-1918, that the British Empire moved to conquer much of the Muslim heartland and take it from its Turkish masters: "Palestine," Syria, Lebanon, Mesopotamia, and Kuwait, and even carved a large sphere of influence in Persia (Iran). Pakistan (and its erstwhile province Bangladesh) was also occupied by the Brits. The Franco-British occupation of the entire Fertile Crescent lasted for more than a quarter-century, in fact, from about 1920 to the late 1940s or early 1950s. Greece (though only half its proper size) has occupied erstwhile Muslim territory since 1830. Israel, and the Jewish Zionist settlements from which it formed) has occupied land that is just as much "Muslim" as the West Bank or Gaza, starting in about 1900, and "legitimizing" it in 1948: the post-1967 occupation was just the latest, except for the brief occupations of portions of Lebanon.

Thus: Second point: Millions of hectares of land, inhabited by millions of Muslims, have been occupied for years, decades, and centuries by non-Muslims. Billions of "Man-Acre-Years" if you would. Some of those "occupations" are still underway today (Greece, Spain, Portugal, Philippines, to name a few). But NONE of these created the kind of "extraordinary rage" that Ivan speaks of today, and many had nothing to compare with it. Yes, there were terrorists and "insurgents" in various places during all those centuries, but you did not see bombing attacks in London because Pakistan was a part of the Empire, nor suicide attacks on New York because Pershing was in the Philippines. Nor were there attacks on French troops occupying Syria in the years between the Wars or British troops in Egypt or Mesopotamia during those same periods. MERE OCCUPATION BY NON-MUSLIMS WAS NOT THE TRIGGER.

The same thing can be seen in both the Soviet/Russian and the Israeli experience: the Soviets had occupied Muslim land for six decades before occupying Afghanistan; the Russian Republic contains many other Muslim enclaves than Chesnya; although far from peaceful, the 1948 lands of Israel included many areas of Muslims, and the Intifada did not really start until more than TWO decades after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Even the nigh-universally condemned Crusades did not trigger the sort of blood-soaked fury that we see in the first years of the 21st Century.

Nor was occupation by the US the trigger: No one declared a jihad on the US for the occupation of Tripoli by US Marines in 1802; nor for the occupation of much of Morroco, Algeria, and Tunisia by a force bigger than the US occupation force in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, in 1943-1946; nor, for that matter, for the US occupation of most of Lebanon in 1953!

Ivan's claim is therefore, at least in large part, disproved by history. There must be something else. What that "something else" might be is probably beyond the scope of this analysis, but it is important to keep it in mind, as we continue.

There is much the United States could do to defuse the problem, and a good place to start would be by removing land-based U.S. forces from the Persian Gulf.

Since the mere occupation of Muslim land by non-Muslims is apparently NOT the cause of the "extraordinary rage" of Muslims of the 21st Century, there is absolutely no assurance that removing land-based US forces would have any impact at all. Yes, it is logical to think that it would - but humans are seldom logical. In fact, as we shall see, the withdrawal of such occupation forces might exacerbate the attacks on the US and the West: there seems to be at least some correlation between the withdrawal of British forces and French forces from large Muslim areas (nations) and the rise in immigration and what would today be called terrorist attacks in the British and French homelands, as well as other colonial possessions.

Even Osama bin Laden claims he attacks the United States primarily because of its military presence in the region. Other reasons, he claims, are secondary.

Why on earth should bin Laden be believed any more than any other Arab, Muslim, or for that matter, American politician? Consider British Prime Minister Lloyd George in WW1, American President Roosevelt in WW2, American President Johnson in the Southeast Asia War, Egyptian Presidents Nassar and Sadat, Persian Shah Pazlevi, or "Palestinian President" Arafat... Would you believe them if they said the sky was blue, without checking? Not a good addition to an argument, especially considering that bin Laden's entire war against the West uses deceit and deception (maskarova) to fight.

Remember, bin Laden first went to war not against the United States, but against the Soviets in Afghanistan. When he returned to his Saudi Arabia homeland after fighting the Soviets, he found a large--and to him unacceptable--U.S. Military presence in the desert kingdom, which remained after evicting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. It was then that the United States became a target.

Was this a "reason" or an "excuse"? After all, there had been what could have been considered an "unacceptable" presence of US military in the Sinai for two decades, in the MFO (Multinational Force of Observers), by the time bin Laden "noticed" the US presence. Also, the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1988 - two years BEFORE the US had troops in Saudi Arabia to fight for Kuwaiti liberation (the fighting in Afghanistan from then until 1996 was effectively an internal Muslim-on-Muslim war, like so many since 622). No, just as with Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor, or Wilson and the Lusitania, or Hitler and the Reichstag, it sounds very much like the US military presence in Saudi Arabia was an excuse, not a cause, for bin Laden's war. (In fact, US troops in Saudi Arabia are hundreds of miles away from the "Holy Sites" of Medina and Mecca: a US warship in the Red Sea is closer to those cities than a US division in a Saudi National Guard controlled base near Riyadh or Kuwait. And we are constantly told that Jerusalem is the "third holiest place" in Islam, but the British occupied it for more than 30 years without the kind of grief attributed to being four hundred miles away from #1 and #2 has brought the US.

Besides, the US was NOT just a target for Islamic imperialists (jihadists, or whatever term you prefer) since 1988 or 1991 or 1996: the suicide bombing of a USMC barracks in Beirut occurred on 23 OCT 1983: five years before Osama stopped fighting Soviets, and indeed at a time when the US was an ALLY of the Taleban fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Dozens of other attacks against the US or US citizens or companies predate the US-led liberation of Kuwait in 1991.

During the Cold War, one could make a plausible argument for some U.S. involvement overseas to counter the expansionist Soviet superpower. When the Soviet Union collapsed, that rationale disappeared.

There is no argument here - even assuming that rationale was justified during the Cold War. Still, in the period 1991-2003, Iraq was effectively still in a state of war with the Coalition, which included both Saudi Arabia and the United States; although probably wrong, Saddam was seen as a viable and very real threat to the Saudis, since he had not been taken out of power in the First Gulf War. And the Saudis, right or wrong, were actually subsidizing (and almost assuredly on a voluntary basis) the "occupation" of the US Forces - the stationing of US troops, aircraft, and ships in the Persian Gulf and on Saudi soil. So this argument isn't a real strong one, either.

Even if the United States believes the global oil market will fail to deliver Persian Gulf oil to U.S. shores without U.S. Military forces protecting it (a dubious proposition), the U.S. Military could protect our oil lifeline from offshore, without troops stationed in Muslim countries.

Here Ivan is not demonstrating his usual understanding of world economics, if nothing else. The US itself gets relatively little of its oil from the Persian Gulf states. Of the top five sources of US-imported oil only one is there: Saudi Arabia (June 2007 data) (The rest are: Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, and Nigeria). Of the top ten, only two (Saudi Arabia and Iraq) are there, and of the top fifteen, only three (Kuwait being the third) are: we import more oil from the UK than from Kuwait, and more oil from Canada than from the Saudis and Iraq combined (based on five-year averages). No, the US is just being "world policeman" or "stooge for Europe" as you prefer: it is the Europeans' lifeline we are protecting, not our own. But a lifeline does no good if there is nothing flowing in it, and here Ivan makes a mistake common even in some military circles: ships afloat and aircraft above do NOT replace boots on the ground. A pipeline can't suck air out of a burning well, and naval guns don't stop "terrorists" from blowing up loading docks.

The United States has done so before. In 1991, when the George H.W. Bush administration believed U.S. oil supplies were endangered by Saddam Hussein' s invasion of Kuwait, U.S.-based land and air forces were sent to the Gulf to push Saddam out of Kuwait. After the job was done, those forces should have been brought home. Instead, the United States established a large military footprint in the region, which, in retrospect, was exactly the wrong move.

It may have indeed been the wrong move (but keep in mind NOT the cause of the present -day jihad, as discussed above), but it was done at the behest of a good many Muslim leaders: Saudi, Kuwaiti, Omanese, and tacitly, Egyptian and Iranian. For their own reasons, of course, one of which was to use the US as a hammer against their own Muslim enemies. (Remember, some of the Hasmodeans tried to do that with Rome, back about 63 BC.) But Ivan needs to remember that we had US troops "occupying" parts of Saudi Arabia for six months before pushing Saddam out (Operation Desert Shield was first, THEN Desert Storm). If occupation was the trigger for bin Laden or anyone else, the damage was already done by the time the Republican Guard was toast on asphalt.

Now it's time to get rid of that unneeded land presence, not to increase the ante by talking about permanent U.S. bases in Iraq.

It is well past time for US land presence in 99.9% of the rest of the world to end, but preventing (or ending) jihad against the US is not a justifiable reason (or even excuse) for that.

Just look at the troubles the United States has caused in Afghanistan. There, the continued U.S. Occupation—which has changed its main focus from killing or capturing bin Laden to nation-building, counterinsurgency, and drug interdiction—is fueling a resurgence of the Taliban movement.

Here, Ivan is mixing cause and effect. Given the history and internal politics of Afghanistan, the resurgence of the Taliban was a given, UNLESS the social and political culture of Afghanistan could be changed enough - and ANY US Administration of the modern era has not the guts nor the political capital to do to Afghanistan what was done to Japan and Germany between 1945 and 1955. Anything less would have failed - and indeed, has failed.

Only by minimizing the permanent U.S. Military presence in Arab and Islamic lands can we hope to stem anti-U.S. terrorism. The United States should withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, inform the Afghans that U.S. Forces will return if any Afghan government harbors al Qaeda, and use Special Forces to hunt down al Qaeda's leadership. This process needs to be repeated in Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

By his logic, this paragraph is indeed an appropriate conclusion. But I believe that Ivan's logic is wrong, and therefore, minimizing or even totally eliminating ALL US presence (at sea, in the air, or on land) is unlikely to stem the anti-US terrorism. Indeed, the perception of a massive victory for the Ummah, for Islam, is likely to further accelerate the rate of growth of terrorism. And what Ivan is recommending is NOT a complete withdrawal, but what would be viewed as a "temporary" and "bogus" withdrawal, by leaving special operations forces to still seek out and remove the Islamist threat: more terrorism would then be seen as appropriate to force a "real" withdrawal and at the same time, it would be a signal that the last 150 years of Muslim retreat is ended not just in Europe and Africa, but in the entire world. According to several sources, out of the 1.2billion Muslims in the world today, no more than 25% are extreme enough (fanatic enough) to support or carry out direct (read, suicide) attacks against the West and especially the USA. Let us say that they are off by a factor of 10, and that in reality, only 2.5% are extreme enough. That means that we face ONLY 30,000,000 murderous fanatics willing to blow themselves up to take infidels with them. If they averaged 10 infidels apiece (just a number I picked out of the air), that's ONLY 300,000,000 of us: between the US, EU, Japan, the Commonwealth and the peripheral European countries, that would mean only about 1 in 4 dead. I guess we could live with that. But if they do the same ratio as the Bloody Tuesday (9/11) attackers did (3,000 to 20, or 150:1), I think the West might be in trouble.

The lesson learned is that empire does not enhance security--it undermines it. U.S. power on Islamic soil is especially problematical.

The first part has been taught since at least the time of Augustus - he learned that lesson at Teutonbergerwald, as I recall. The second part is at best, irrelevant: for whatever reasons, the very existence of the USA, in its present or any of its past forms, is completely unacceptable to the true Muslim - that 25%.

In summary, we are back to Ivan's original question - what is their motive? I don't think his answer is the right one. So I propose an alternative or alternatives. The true answer to why we have this "extraordinary rage" is far more complex than Ivan's simple (and therefore, tempting) one of US (non-Muslim) occupation of Muslim land. And it is beyond my ability to articulate properly in this already long message. But as simply as I can, here are my thoughts:

1. Islam is a messianic, world-conquering religion. Unlike Christianity, its founder (Prophet, pbuh) did NOT exclude military means of that conquest - such would have defeated what I believe was a primary objective of his, back in 622.

2. Christianity WAS a messianic, world-conquering religion. The pale imitation which most "Christians" practice today, at least in the western world (those who even bother to practice) is not: as John wrote Jesus' words: they have lost their first love, they are lukewarm.

3. Islam is badly divided today between Shi'a and Sunni, and between Arab and non-Arab. While Islam HAS expanded in periods when they were divided, their greatest expansions have come when they were united, either under Arab leadership or under Turkish or Persian leadership.

4. As the Prophet (pbuh) knew, the best way to unify your people is to find a very strong, powerful enemy, but one with weaknesses you can exploit, or one you outnumber, or both.

5. Europe is a goner - it is ripe and will fall within decades - IF someone doesn't come to their rescue. There are just three choices for that: the US, Russia, and China. China? No way. Russia, unlikely, given that they are just one rung up the ladder. Only the US remains.

6. And the US is the prime candidate for that "very strong, powerful enemy" - and it HAS been an enemy of Islam (in their eyes) since 1802. And the US "fight" against Islam is not a one-horse sort of effort, as they see it, confined to occupying Mesopotamia and Afghanistan and a few other chunks of territory. Remember it was first the UK and the Raj, and today the US, that kept India from falling completely into Muslim hands starting in the 1700s. That is both political and religious: the rapidly growing Christian community in India today is mostly the result of American missionary work, direct and indirect. Same thing in Africa south of the Sahara: it was European colonization that slowed up and pretty much stopped Muslim expansion in the 1800s, and that expansion didn't resume until after WW2. Today, it is mostly Commonwealth and American missionary work that supports the growing Christian community in Africa: a community often more moral and more serious than even the US (look at Anglicans in Africa versus the US).

7. Take out the US, either by really taking us out, or by completely neutralizing us, and the rest of the world except China falls to Islam, and becomes Dhimmiland at best, and part of the Ummah, most likely. (China is Ragnarök or Armageddon, maybe).

8. At the same time, SOMEONE has to take control of a united Islam; and so the fight between Iran and the Arabs, with the Pakistanis and maybe even Indonesians thinking about it - after all the Turks did it once, didn't they? And the split between Sunni and Shi'a needs to be healed: if you kill off most of the Shi'a by having them kill off your enemies, so much the better (and how many times has that happened?).

9. The "extraordinary rage" is actually being misread: we are seeing the rise of a resurgence or explosion similar to that seen in Europe in the Crusades, or in the Protestant Reformation, or in the English-speaking nations in the "Great Awakening." How far it will climb to a peak, I cannot say, but it could really hit a high: similar to the revival under the Turks (after the era of the Mamelukes and the Crusades). In political terms, think of the creation of Napoleon's empire after the Revolution and its aftermath, or the explosion of Spain across the Atlantic in the 1500s: sudden, violent, arousing, and maybe - unstoppable.

10. Or not - for those past cases didn't run up against human freedom, or (in the case of religion) were a step in the right direction, and still got bogged down, at least some.

Enough for now. In a future article, I want to take a look at the alternatives (or perhaps, additions) to Ivan's recommendation on how to deal with the "Islamist terrorism" on a worldwide basis, but especially from our position here in North America. How we respond and what we do immediately will have a very long-term effect on the cause of Liberty in the future.

Nathan Barton, Four Corners Country

Nathan Barton is writing this from a wonderful place in the West, which might be in the Black Hills of South Dakota or Wyoming, or might be in one of the Four Corners States. Exactly where it is, the breezes blow with the scent of liberty, and the sound of the pines or the pinions is the sound of freedom. For thousands of years, people have fought and died for the liberty that Americans in the great spaces of the West enjoy, and he writes these commentaries in the hopes that continued generations will be able to do so, until the end of Time.

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