Common Sense Democracy

Over the past several weeks the Dowbrigade has seen a sea change in his feelings about what is happening, and what will happen next, in the Middle East. We no longer see an intractable long-term struggle and the continuing deterioration of security due to factional warfare and an anti-Western insurgency.

We are now convinced in the inevitability of the establishment of an Islamic Superstate, stretching from the Himalayas to the Sahara. It will have over a billion people (With over 1.1 billion adherents, Islam is the world’s most popular single religion.). It will be fantastically wealthy, and will control the flow of oil on which the West and Asia depend. And it will have nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them.

Despite the fact that this sounds like any American’s worst nightmare, we believe it might be a manageable state of affairs, analogous to the Cold War in that two implacable and opposing systems will be confronting each other on a number of fronts around the world, without necessarily degrading into open warfare.

At any rate, get ready to live with the New Islamic Empire, because it’s gonna happen and it’s coming soon to a Mosque near you. Let us review the main reasons we feel this is an inevitable development.

First, there is plenty of historical precedent for the emergence of a Pan-Islamic Nation. Although all eventually fell to internal divisions, the Islamic world has been periodically united under inspirational leadership or in opposition to outside invasion. Currently, both conditions may be present.

Within a hundred years of the death of the Prophet, an Islamic state stretched from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to Central Asia in the east. During the intervening 1300 years the empires of the Abbasid caliphs, the Mughals, and the Seljuk Turk, Safavid Persia and Ottomans were among the largest and most powerful in the world.

Second, our current situation in the theater is untenable. Roman generals established over two thousand years ago that a powerful empire has only two choices after toppling a hostile foe. Either blast the earth bare, leave no stone standing upon stone, and kill all males in the land, or they will grow strong and cunning and come back to kill you, or put in a puppet regime to play the heavy, keep people in line, and insuring the Empire’s prerogatives in the area.

In the case of Iraq, our modern civilized self-image will not allow us to do the former, and we are failing miserably at the latter. We are failing at every one of our responsibilities and promises - eliminating the terrorists, stopping the sectarian violence, providing peace and security to the civilian population, restoring basic infrastructure like electricity and water, establishing a model for other nascent Middle Eastern democracies to emulate, and pumping Iraqi oil so the whole exercise can pay for itself.

The reason the Romans rejected the third alternative, occupying the conquered land, is that while armies are great for destroying and conquering, they are lousy at occupying and policing. They turn into constant, walking targets. They are forced to constantly watch out for attack, which can come from any direction at any time. They must constantly differentiate between friend and foe, civilian and terrorist. No wonder a lot of them are getting screwy. This isn’t what they signed up for. This isn’t what they trained for.

We are failing because we can afford to fail, and our opposition cannot. We can leave and go home, but they are already home and have nowhere else to go. Because of this simple and unalterable fact, we are the outsiders, and our enemies are seen as representatives of the local population, and have their support, shelter and succor.

Even our ace in the hole, Democracy, has been turned against us. It seems we have become so unpopular that the easiest way to win elections in dysfunctional societies is to declare yourself the implacable enemy of the United States.

After 10 or 20 or 80 years of neglect, despotic control and terror, the populations of the Middle Eastern nations are so traumatized and terrorized that they will embrace any seemingly coherent philosophy which promises to provide stability and security, like a drowning man grabs a flotation device. Right now, our opponents are able to do a better job of offering this than we are - case in point, Somalia, where the population cheered fundamentalist Islamic courts and militias which forced out the venal and cannibalistic Warlords who were our chosen proxies in the area.

We will lose for the simple fact that you cannot help people who do not want your help even if you are doing so for purely altruistic motives, which we are not.

Has it not become masochistic to continue this national flagellation, tossing our fortune and our children into the flames of an unquenchable fire? All we are accomplishing is making the civilian population hate us more, and eroding our core values and geopolitical position.

So we will have to leave, eventually, and when we do the betting here is that we will soon thereafter see the emergence of a billion-man Muslim bloc. It will include the entire Arabian Peninsula, the North of Africa, and some of the Islamic ex-Soviet republics.

Exactly which of these, as well as the possible inclusion of Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia and other peripheral states depends on exactly how the deal breaks, and when. It is possible that some of these countries will become buffer states, and limited warfare battleground for surrogates of the Islamic Superstate on one side, and the Western and Asian powers on the other.

Given that such a Superstate would have practically unlimited financial resources, a stranglehold on the planet’s energy reserves, and nukes, some will declare the Dowbrigade clinically insane for even contemplating such an occurrence. A super-rich Islamic empire with nukes and missiles? Goodbye Israel. A recipe for World War II.

But we are convinced that it is not only inevitable, but survivable. Even the current blood feud between Shi’ites and Sunni is not as intractable as it may seem. Why, just a few years ago Catholics and Protestants were killing each other in the British Isles. Give them a few decades to grow into governance, and they may evolve into sort of Islamic Democrats and Republicans, each holding sway in certain states of the Greater Islamic Republic.

In our teaching we use a very short story called “On Hope” by Spencer Holst, which takes place on the island of Gibraltar. A luxury ocean liner, with British Navy escort, is in port. Aboard is an unnamed British princess and some of the Crown Jewels, including the famous, cursed, Hope Diamond, set in a necklace.

Also on the island is a Gypsy animal trainer, whose pet monkey for some time had been climbing through hotel windows and stealing jewelry from sleeping tourists. Inevitably, the monkey steals the Hope diamond. The Gypsy realizes he could never sell a gem so famous, and returns it by mail. The monkey steals it again. Eventually, the monkey is shot and killed in a third theft, but not before delivery the cursed gem to the gypsy.

The story ends with the Gypsy swimming to shore, and spotting the necklace, glinting in the moonlight, seeming to float above the water. He starts to swim towards it. He doesn’t see the shark.

The title of the story is an allusion to the fact that what might seem inevitable - that the shark will eat the man - is not, for three separate reasons. First, the man IS a Gypsy animal trainer. Second, the shark is confused because the man is not behaving normally - he shows no fear, and is swimming AT the shark. Third, the shark is now in possession of the diamond, and its curse.

In a similar vein, we do not hold it as inevitable that a nuclear Islamic superstate would attack or attempt to annihilate Israel for the following reasons.

First, there is the MAD effect. Israel, of course, is a nuclear state, and would meet any serious threat to its existence with a nuclear spasm. Knowing this, we can only hope the Islamic state would not risk turning the entire Middle East into a nuclear wasteland.

Second, there is the Guantanamo effect. Just as the virulently anti-American Castro regime has tolerated a US Naval base un their exposed underbelly, so the Islamic state may be willing to tolerate an outpost of the Western World at its back door. Such an outpost could have uses; as a conduit for intelligence, covert contacts, and black market transfer of goods and technology.

Third, since it will have been the galvanizing presence of Israel which enabled the Islamic fundamentalists to unite the Muslim world and create the Superstate in the first place, it is probably that they will see the utility of keeping it around, as a rallying point and emotional tool.

As it is, we are playing out a losing hand in the Middle East. The nation-states of the modern Middle East are doomed to fail because they were artificial creations of the Western world from the get-go. They are fated to fade into the dustbin of history after we are forced to leave, and the betting here is that the Islamists will win the civil war that follows.

It is going to be a nasty shock, in many ways, but we had better get used to it. It would probably be prudent to get it over with as soon as possible, before we lose any more kids or international influence. The West vs. Islam is bound to be the next great confrontation in world history. Let’s just hope it’s another cold war, and not a shooting one.

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