Alloyed, and Annealed

Rice is working on a ceasefire. Bush says it is a "moment of opportunity and a chance for a broader change in the region." Yet everybody seems to think a ceasefire would be an unmitigated disaster for Israel.

But maybe we're thinking about this all wrong. What if there is some variable that we are undervaluing strategically, an option that has positive consequences that increase over time, instead of the diminishing marginal returns that would undoubtedly accrue to a "total Israeli victory".

I've been thinking about that Eric Hoffer quote:

The assertion that a mass movement cannot be stopped by force is not literally true. Force can stop and crush even the most vigorous movement. But to do so the force must be ruthless and persistent. And here is where faith enters as an indispensable factor. For a persecution that is ruthless and persistent can come only from fanatical conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook.

If Israel goes all the way, dismantling Hezbollah and driving it from the south, she will have to go to extraordinary and far-reaching lengths. If this happens, Lebanon will be deeply traumatized, instead of just shocked as she is now. Worse, it will be trauma unalloyed by triumph -- just defeat, indignity, and humiliation festering in the popular mind.

But strife is sure to follow, when the Gods of Vengeance rule. What we would get is a generation of grievance for the Lebanese people, a radicalization of Arab politics, and a few years of an unsteady peace, followed, most likely, by another regional calamity. Islamists would gain a propaganda victory that would drown out the regional voices of moderation and progress.

If Israel decides to completely destroy Hezbollah with fanatical violence, she will have bowed to the pessimism of fatalism -- the fatalism of the oft cited but rarely understood cycle of violence. It is not where we want to go, if we have a choice.

But what if we do have a choice, a better choice? What if instead of pessimism we tried to formulate an option based on optimism? What would it look like?

Would it not involve the Lebanese government, which I previously referred to as the prize in this conflict for both sides (and what Wretchard calls the center of gravity)? Would it not involve legitimizing the democratic pluralists and delegitimizing the Hezbollah?

Well, that's the plan.

Basically, we have to make this fight end in a victory for the Lebanese government, and in a defeat for the Hezbollah. The Lebanese need to feel saved by the democrats, and betrayed by the Islamists. As Rice says, "The most important thing that this does for the process is that it shows a Lebanese government that is functioning as a Lebanese government. That is in and of itself extremely important."

We need to create an environment where the Siniora government can say to its people, "See, we can protect you this way, by using civilized methods, while the primitive ways of Hezbollah only bring death and destruction." That is a powerful message for a newly victorious government, especially if it can be shown to exercise influence in the diplomatic arena. The only thing that could erode its prestige would be if the Government was unable to deliver the goods afterwards.

But what if we made sure it could deliver on its promises of a better future? You see, I read about Saudi Arabia sending $500 million in humanitarian aid to Lebanon, and pledging an additional $1 billion in reconstruction aid. I realized they would in no way do that if they thought they would be funding the ascendancy of Hezbollah in the politics of the Middle East. Even more intriguing, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt have also already pledged a large amount of Money. And then it hit me. Iraq. Jordan. Egypt. Saudi Arabia.

They are all enemies of Iran, and therefore enemies of Hezbollah. How likely is it they would be out of the gates this fast with pledged money -- and at that amount! -- if it were possible that Hezbollah or Syria would be the beneficiaries. Then it dawned on me that it was even less likely that these countries would feel compelled to condemn Hezbollah by their fear of Iranian hegemony, which is the popular wisdom, and yet unmoved by the prospect of funding its surrogate. And if they weren't compelled to do this, how likely is it that moral clarity can account for these regimes and their decision to risk heightened domestic unrest by condemning Hezbollah and not Israel in the initial stages of this conflict. So what could account for this strange brew of facts?

Think about what everybody wants. US wants regional progress on the human condition to lay the foundation for a stable and enduring peace. Israel wants a stable and secure neighbor that does not threaten her with war, and an end to the militancy of Hezbollah. Lebanon wants stability and prosperity for her people, and a once and for all end to the trauma of conflict. France wants to be seen as a great and influential power. Britain wants to solve the Israel-Palestine problem. Saudi Arabia wants an Israeli ceasefire, the support of America, less pressure domestically, and a contained and receding Iran. Jordan and Egypt want the same. Iraq wants stability, a cessation of Syrian and Iranian meddling in its internal affairs, and American help and largess to see it through these troubled times.

If Israel pursues its military solution, nobody gets what they want -- even if Hezbollah is virtually destroyed. Israel cannot get what it wants militarily. But if Siniora's government and the international community foil Israel's perfidious plans, stop the fighting and send her home; if an international force augments and extends Lebanon's control over all of its territory; if calm resumes and rebuilding starts; and if the Lebanese government can acquire a monopoly of violence -- if all that happens, everybody wins, even -- and especially -- Israel.

Something Michael Totten said the other day has been floating in the back of my mind:

[Lebanon] needed several more years of careful nurturing during peace time to fully recover from its status as a carved up failed state.

By bombing all of Lebanon rather than merely the concentrated Hezbollah strongholds, Israel is putting extraordinary pressure on Lebanese society at points of extreme vulnerability. The delicate post-war democratic culture has been brutally replaced, overnight, with a culture of rage and terror and war. Lebanon isn't Gaza, but nor is it Denmark.

Lebanese are temporarily more united than ever. No one is running off to join Hezbollah, but tensions are being smoothed over for now while everyone feels they are under attack by the same enemy. Most Lebanese who had warm feelings for Israel -- and there were more of these than you can possibly imagine -- no longer do.

This will not last.

My sources and friends in Beirut tell me most Lebanese are going easy on Hezbollah as much as they can while the bombs are still falling. But a terrible reckoning awaits them once this is over.

The problem, though, is that Hezbollah is the most powerful force in the country, with much more firepower than the Lebanese Army. The reckoning would inevitably devolve into civil war, unless some kind of support was installed from the outside to mitigate Hezbollah's advantages in power and maximize their disadvantage in politics. And that's where the international force comes in.

Kissinger once lamented the American practice of separating diplomacy from war, and war from diplomacy, so that ne'er the twain should meet. By doing this, he argues, we lose many strategic openings during the course of diplomacy--by not using a calibrated and increasing force to apply pressure on our enemies--and during hostilities, by not striking deals when our enemies are at the point of least advantage. We treat war and diplomacy as opposites, so that when one is on the other is off. It's either total war, or total diplomacy. We forget that they can be intertwined, and in our ignorance we preclude many opportunities for strategic gain.

Hezbollah is now calling for a ceasefire. They are at the point of maximum disadvantage. If we could use our leverage -- which will increase over the next week or two, plateau, then sharply decrease as hostilities extend -- to cram an international blocking force down Hezbollah's throat, then we may be able to provide that support that is so desperately needed for Lebanon's democratic culture to mature. At the end of the day, Hezbollah would be degraded by violence, isolated by politics, and quarantined by force. And only in this context can Lebanon's democratic culture thrive.

France could supply the troops and be consequential again. [Update: That's what's happening.] America would increase her status as a peace broker, and at the same time lay the foundations for an enduring peace by supporting a democracy and forestalling a propaganda victory for Islamists. Blair would win domestically by stopping the violence, and Britain would be one step closer to solving the problem of the Levant. Siniora's government would win by carrying the honor of its people -- it would be the David who drove back the Israeli Goliath -- and by delivering stability and prosperity afterwards. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq would all get what they want, too: a politically and militarily quarantined Hezbollah, and an isolated and receding Iran, all while maintaining street cred with their people by demanding an end to the violence. It would be a major victory in the war on terror.

Lebanon needs to alloy its trauma with triumph and relief, and the democratic Lebanese government needs to be annealed.

It would be a brilliant move, if we could pull it off.

Update: Brent Scowcroft agrees. Excerpt:

The benefits of reaching a comprehensive settlement of the root cause of today's turmoil would likely ripple well beyond the Israelis and the Palestinians. A comprehensive peace settlement would not only defang the radicals in Lebanon and Palestine (and their supporters in other countries), it would also reduce the influence of Iran -- the country that, under its current ideology, poses the greatest potential threat to stability in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan [emphasis mine].

A comprehensive settlement also would allow Arab leaders to focus on what most say is a primary concern: modernizing their countries to provide jobs and productive lives for their rapidly growing populations.

Bush and Blair wanted to use this opportunity to address "root causes". It could work. Look for Israel to expand operations in the next few days, then agree to a ceasefire and international force without demanding a full disarmament of Hezbollah.

Everybody will get a long-term strategic victory, except the Hez, even though they will claim one.

The idea of nation-building was not necessarily falsified by Iraq. What was falsified was the idea of nation-building in the midst of a brutal and wanton insurgency supported by recalcitrant and meddling neighbors. If we create an environment where an extended insurgency is precluded by circumstance, nation-building should work. Therefore, we should have Hezbollah agree to a ceasefire, insert an international force to quarantine them, and then have the democratic government of Lebanon get all the credit. That might just do it.

To Not Accept

You know, I was reading Kissinger's Diplomacy today, and came to the part where he discussed Roosevelt's pledge that America "would not accept a Hilter-dominated world."

Kissinger writes:

"The phrase 'will not accept' had to mean that Roosevelt was in effect committing America to go to war for the Four Freedoms if they could not be achieved in any other way."

Kissinger thinks Roosevelt would have eventually mobilized for war even without the casus belli supplied by Japan and then later by Germany. He acknowledges that he might be wrong, but the argument he puts forth to support his position is very persuasive (and note, Kissinger's conclusion might be more important than reality here).

The reason I am leaning so heavily on a single paragraph in a single book should be obvious. The people in the Administration derived their knowledge from somewhere; they weren't born knowing how to conduct diplomacy. They were taught or self-taught, by a mentor, by books, or by both.

For an amateur like me, it is fortunate that the number of possible books and mentors available to our high officials is finite, and easily traceable (curricula are easy to discover, as are ideological lineages and cross-pollinations). Immersing oneself in this literature only takes time and a university library card.

It's an inexact science, though, and most of the things our officials do and say are so context-specific that any prediction about intent is nothing more than an educated guess. However, some things stand out, and some patterns are clear.

The question of Iranian nukes is the question of this Administration's second term. It has had and continues to have hundreds of the brightest minds working the problem, and a Kissingerian in Rice revising and transmitting advice to the President. Statements that are made about the issue are likely some of the most closely vetted. For the Administration to have repeatedly used the exact language that Roosevelt used, language that is sure to have rung bells for the realists in Bush's Administration, is almost a deal closer for me -- as in Q.E.D. The President has made his decision that Iran will not have nuclear weapons, and that's that.

Now, the obvious alternative to this theory is that Bush simply doesn't know, and wasn't told, that such wording has a specific history in American diplomacy, and therefore has a specific meaning and specific negotiational "value" once it has been used. According to this theory, Bush said it because he felt it, blurted it out in the glare of the moment and did not do his studying. The problem with this is that the exact same wording has now been used by multiple officials on numerous occasions (Bolton here, here, and here; Rice here and here; and even Chirac, here.) and has been repeated verbatim by Bush when asked to clarify (here, here, here, and here -- where Bush says his biggest fear is for Iran to acquire nukes).

It's exactly the kind of esoteric language that Diplomats rely on to communicate with each other discreetly -- a professional language built on history and experience (which is why Clinton's apology tour caused alarm for our allies because they were afraid we had become unreliable -- i.e. it was unprecedented). Like the lexicon of law, diplomatic phraseology derives subtly, from precedent. Therefore, when speaking diplomatically, using phrases like "unacceptable" and "we will not allow" -- which Bush as done repeatedly -- clarifies intent, for allies and foes alike.

Bob Kagan put forward this theory a few weeks ago here. Excerpt:

Let's imagine, and this is purely hypothetical, that President Bush has already decided that he will not leave office in January 2009 without a satisfactory resolution of the Iranian nuclear problem. Let's imagine that he has already determined that if he cannot obtain Iran's agreement to dismantle its nuclear weapons program voluntarily and verifiably, then he will order some form of military action to destroy as much of that program as possible before he leaves. Let's imagine that he has resolved not to end his two terms in office the way Bill Clinton ended his, by leaving every major international crisis -- from Iraq to Iran to North Korea to al-Qaeda -- for his successor.

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that Bush had made such a decision. What would he be doing right now? The answer is that he might be doing exactly what he is doing.

When I read Kagan's piece, it sounded right. Thereafter, I started looking for probative evidence that could either prove or disprove his theory. I think I've found it.

I could be wrong. I hope I'm not.

Looking Busy: Our Likely Strategy Going Forward

You'll notice the Israelis are asking for Nato (see 2164th 8:32). Bolton was asked about Nato deployment in Lebanon by Wolf Blitzer just a day or two ago, and he deflected the question completely. As far as I know, the Administration has refused to comment on this issue officially.

So the Israelis are talking about Nato deployment, while the Americans demur. I think I see a pattern.

When Stalin was fishing for a deal with Hitler, Stalin manipulated his way into making sure it was formulated in German. There was a danger that it might fall into the wrong hands, and Russia stood to lose if Great Britain and France disovered it. Stalin wanted to keep the negotiations secret just in case they didn't pan out, because just a few weeks before he had drafted a deal with the two Allies to guard against German aggression from the West. They had agreed to come to Stalin's aid should Hitler decide to strike. To keep this option as a safety net, Stalin wanted, at a minimum, for any discovered negotiations to have the appearance they were put forward by Germany. That way, should the papers be purloined, Stalin could just shrug them off and declare them irrelevant. The lesson: sometimes the order and directionality of diplomatic events can be manipulated to improve one's strategic position.

I think it matters that Israel is suggesting Nato, while America stays quiet. Israel needs to be seen as giving a damn about a ceasefire, and America, which wants to avoid losing any more prestige, doesn't want to commit to a diplomatic solution until she can be sure it will succeed. Israel's angle is to play up Nato as an exceptional out, Washinton's right now is to take the time to "marshall world opinion." Because the demand that Hezbollah declare defeat first will have diminishing marginal returns, Washington will need a plan to transition to, and it looks like Nato will be the standby, the fix that is agreeable to all parties (the Lebanonese Government has already stipulated acceptance to a multi-national deployment).

So Israel brings up an acceptable out; America thinks on it, then advocates it; the International Community commits; and in the meantime Israel destroys Hezbollah. That is what I think will happen.

Here is a like to the Nato Decision-Making Procedure:

Within the U.S. government and in allied governments, there is varied support for preserving decision-making by consensus. Most senior U.S. officials associated with NATO affairs contend that they support the principle of consensus, although some acknowledge that forging consensus in an era when NATO may go out-of-area is likely to be difficult.

Nato, as an international institution, is governed by procedural rules, rules we can use to our advantage. While there are perhaps many that I am not aware of, the salient point is that within Nato it can take some time to build a consensus for troop deployment, especially if two or three other countries are in on it. Working with our allies, we can register reasonable and believable concerns at the Nato roundtable to draw out the negotiations as far as possible. We can ensure a saturated agenda, and play for time, thereby allowing Israel to use her overmatch to destroy Hezbollah.

For instance, the question of who will contribute troops could be a stalling point. We can express reservation about deploying American soldiers, thanks to all the articles that said our forces are overstretched in Iraq. We can say, "I'm sorry, fellas, we just can't swing it." This will force the other, more zealous members to put their money where their mouth is and cough up some of their own troops. That right there could add weeks to a Nato deployment.

The same is true, of course, with the UN, from which the Administration has hinted it desires an endorsement of Nato action. This will take up even more time, and might actually fail because Russia is against Nato mission enlargement. Nato mission enlargement has a high strategic value for us, and both Bush and Putin know it. (We know Bush knows because we have access to his overall strategy, and we know Putin knows because his government has spoken against it).

So here's what I think will happen:

Israel will continue to advocate a Nato deployment on Lebanon's southern border as an acceptable alternative to the present course. We will continue our fact-finding and consensus building, which Kissinger refers to as a "well-known diplomatic acquiescence to the status-quo." When we can no longer extend this war that way, when the pressure from the international community becomes a legitimate concern, then the US can bow to the pressure and begin to talk about talking about Nato. This will happen in the next few days, I think. I also think that once the Administration starts talking about it, the transition to full blown Nato deliberation will be short -- short because the US will once again have taken the spotlight, and while there she must faithfully play her part of earnest fireman. Of course, shortly after the US starts talks with Nato, we will move into the "thrown-negotiations" phase, which will last weeks or maybe even months (it's fitting that we should destroy Iran's proxy using the same diplomatic stall-strategy they are using to acquire nukes).

We gain quite a bit by this move, and so do the Israelis. The longer this conflict lasts, the more pressure can be put on Assad and Iran. So long as the uncertainty reigns about Israel's intentions -- a confusion well documented in the blogosphere -- and so long as the situation remains fluid, the stress on these regimes can continue to rise. With Syria, perhaps even to the breaking point.

Israel gets to dismantle Hezbollah, just like we did the Taliban; furthermore, once she is satisfied, Israel can transfer responsibility for occupation to the international community. By doing this, Israel will have advanced her interests: politically, she should avoid much negative feedback in the international arena by being seen to have given in to authority; strategically, because "collective security" is strengthened when it is perceived to have succeeded -- an aura Israel can bestow up it by agreeing to a ceasefire (Israel has made it clear that she would rather "collective security" take care of Iran).

If Syria doesn't fall and Israel doesn't strike her before the conflict is over, Iran becomes Okinawa, the hope being that with the center of gravity in Iran neutralized, Syria will drift away from intransigence. For Bush to end Iran's nuclear program and maintain the aura of legitimacy -- which, per Kissinger, is one of our strategic objectives -- he will need to do what his father did and internationalize the problem. However, unlike his father who could only use the UN (Nato in 1991 had yet to act out of area), Bush II can choose between two international organizations to solve this problem-- each of them able to confer legitimacy on our pursuit of US interests (a market approach to foreign policy in the making?), and each of them stuffed with procedural hurdles.

As an aside, many wonder about the utility of institutions like the UN. I think the answer is clear.

In an age of instant communication, time and reality are distorted, causing all kinds of new pressures on international crises management. Institutions with rules, procedures and committees combat this distortion, and tend to cleave the decision cycle away from the frenetic 24/7 news cycle, allowing for a longer time to deliberate on events. Sometimes this is unfortunate because we are in a race against time, like we are with Darfur and Iran. Sometimes, however, we need to draw things out, like we do now.

And there's just no better way to draw things out than bureaucracy.

Maximin in Iraq

A conversation I had with Trish over at Belmont Club, which I thought worth saving here:

I said:
Many fault Bush for placing his bet on the long shot, on the optimal: Iraqi Democracy in the Middle East.

Of course, nobody disputes that it is, and was, best case scenario. Even Bush admits as much. ("Beginning of the end vs. end of the beginning.")

But take a closer look at the latter part -- "end of the beginning." What could that possibly mean?

Maximin, through divide and refocus (a hint: in this outcome, it's not us who becomes refocused). Never forget: a loss in Iraq means red on red. That's why the move was so smart.

Trish said:
If red on red had been our objective, that'd be one thing. We'd be achieving our objective. We'd be perceived as winning. Big.

It wasn't our objective. It wasn't anywhere in our grand declarations.

I said:
trish,

I do feel that perception is a fundamental element for which we must account, as you know. And as you stated, grand U.S. declarations alter them negatively when they don't pan out. That is a fact.

So in a sense, I'm with you. It is true that we did not declare our objective to be the introversion of Middle Eastern Islam, nor did we discuss the utility of Operation Iraqi Freedom as being the key to unleashing the ancient tensions between the Sunni and Shia. I cannot even be sure it was discussed in the highest offices. They may not have known.

But it's true nonetheless. Now, it may be a case of God watching over children, drunks, and the United States of America, but by removing the impediment of Saddam Hussein, we released that centuries-old demon that haunts Islam to this day -- the hatred that only perceived hereticism can create.

The tensions that play out in Iraq are but a microcosm of the tensions that play out in Islamdom as a whole. Sure, one might argue that by removing her enemy we allowed an ascendant Iran, just like by removing Saddam we allowed an ascendant Shia south. But an ascendant Iran leads to a paranoid Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, etc. And while they are worrying about each other, scheming against each other, attacking and killing each other -- well, while they are doing that they won't be killing Americans. And that is what we're after.

Other perceptions are at play here besides those that judge American success or failure, and these perceptions might be the dispositive ones. How many Americans currently retain any sympathy for Muslims in general, and Arabs in particular? Not many, I would imagine. How many young men in Iraq are signing up to go to New York? Few, because their problems are more immediate, and more primal, than they were five years ago.

To be defeated in a noble effort because the metal of the Iraqis was discovered to be unmalleable is not that hard for Americans to digest, though Bush will be the scape-goat for it. The fault, it would have turned out, lies not in ourselves but in the stars. Our intentions were pure, it was the Iraqis who were flawed.

In 1946 our government identified a non-pc approach to dealing with an Islamic global threat: stroke the fault-lines within the religion, and their attention will be diverted. In-fighting will consume them, and we will be spared the worst of their lashings. That has stuck with me since I read it.

If we fail in Iraq, we will have falsified the advice of 2002. But it is also true that we would have carried out the advice of a more lucid time.

Bush's hope was for Americans to win, Iraqis to win, and Muslims to win. That is a decent, noble goal.

But Americans-win, Iraqis-lose, and Muslims-lose is not all that bad either.

Cognitive Evolution Laboratory

Egnor, S.E.R. & Hauser, M.D. (in press): Noise-induced vocal modulation in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus). Abstract:

The Lombard effect—an increase in vocalization amplitude in response to an increase in background noise—is observed among a wide variety of animals. We investigated this basic form of vocal control in the cotton-top tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) by measuring the amplitude of a contact call, the combination long call, while simultaneously varying the background noise level. All subjects showed a significant increase in call amplitude and syllable duration in response to an increase in background noise amplitude. Together with prior results, this study shows that tamarins, have greater vocal control in the context of auditory feedback perturbation than previously suspected.

Hauser, M.D. & Spaulding, Bailey. (2006): Wild rhesus monkeys generate causal inferences about possible and impossible physical transformations in the absence of experience. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103:18. Abstract:

Human infants and adults generate causal inferences about the physical world from observations of single, novel events, thereby violating Hume’s thesis that spatiotemporal cooccurrence from prior experience drives causal perception in our species. Is this capacity unique or shared with other animals? We address this question by presenting the results of three experiments on freeranging rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), focusing specifically on their capacity to generate expectations about the nature of completely unfamiliar physical transformations. By using an expectancy violation looking-time method, each experiment presented subjects with either physically possible or impossible transformations of objects (e.g., a knife, as opposed to a glass of water, appears to cut an apple in half). In both experiments, subjects looked longer when the transformation was impossible than when it was possible. Follow up experiments ruled out that these patterns could be explained by association. These results show that in the absence of training or direct prior experience, rhesus monkeys generate causal inferences from single, novel events, using their knowledge of the physical world to guide such expectations.

Hauer, M.D., Young, L., & Cushman, F. (in press): Reviving Rawls' Linguistic Analogy: Operative principles and the causal structure of moral actions. In Moral Psychology and Biology. Abstract:

The thesis we develop in this essay is that all humans are endowed with a moral faculty. The moral faculty enables us to produce moral judgments on the basis of the causes and consequences of actions. As an empirical research program, we follow the framework of modern linguistics. 1 The spirit of the argument dates back at least to the economist Adam Smith (1759/1976) who argued for something akin to a moral grammar, and more recently, to the political philosopher John Rawls (1971). The logic of the argument, however, comes from Noam Chomsky’s thinking on language specifically and the nature of knowledge more generally (1986; 1988; 2000; Saporta, 1978).

Hauser, M.D et. al (in press): A Dissociation Between Moral Judgments and Justifications. In: Mind & Language. Abstract:

To what extent do moral judgments depend on conscious reasoning from explicitly understoodprinciples? We address this question by investigating one particular moral principle, the principle of the double effect. Using web-based technology, we collected a large data set on individuals’ responses to a seriesof moral dilemmas, asking when harm to innocent others is permissible. Each moral dilemma presented a choice between action and inaction, both resulting in lives saved and lives lost. Results showed that: [1]patterns of moral judgments were consistent with the principle of double effect and showed little variation across differences in gender, age, educational level, ethnicity, religion or national affiliation [within thelimited range of our sample population] and [2] a majority of subjects failed to provide justifications that could account for their judgments. These results indicate that the principle of the double effect may beoperative in our moral judgments but not open to conscious introspection. We discuss these results in light of current psychological theories of moral cognition, emphasizing the need to consider the unconscious appraisalsystem that mentally represents the causal and intentional properties of human action.

More here.

Bakhtin's Dialogic Imagination

A unitary language is not something given [dan] but is always something posited [zadan] -- and at every moment of its lingusitic life it is opposed to the realities of heteroglossia...they are forces that struggle to overcome the heteroglossia of language, forces that unite and centralize verbal-ideological thought, creating within a heteroglot national language the firm, stable linguistic nucleus of an officially recognized literary language, or else defending an already formed language from the [centrifugal] pressure of growing heteroglossia.

This is not an abstract grammatical structure that guarantees a minimum of understanding. Instead, it is a language conceived as ideologically saturated, language as a world view, even as a concrete opinion, insuring a maximum of mutual understanding in all spheres of ideological life. At any given time a language is divided into socio-ideological heterglossia: languages of social groups, "professional" and "generic" languages, literary language itself, languages of generations (period languages), and so forth. Stratification and heteroglossia widen and deepen as long as a language is alive and developing.

The authentic environment of an utterance, the environment in which it lives and takes shape, is dialogized heteroglossia, anonymous and social as language, but simultaneously concrete, filled with specific content and accented as an individual utterance.

Parody is aimed sharply and polemically against the official language of its given time. It is heteroglossia that has been dialogized.

The dialogic nature of language is a struggle among socio-linguistic points of view and not an intra-language struggle between individual wills or logical contradictions.

Artistic work is a rejoinder in a given dialogue, whose style is determined by its interrelationship with other rejoinders in the same dialogue (in the totality of conversation).

Real ideologically saturated "language consciousness": one that participates in actual heteroglossia and multi-languagedness.

The interactive phenomena are: that amid others' utterances inside a single language (the primordial dialogism of discourse), amid other "social languages" within a singel national language and finally amid different national languages within the same culture, that is, the same socio-ideological conceptual horizon. [these interactions can work simultaneously with each other]

The dialogic orientation of a word among other words (of all kinds and degrees of otherness) creates new and significant artistic potential in discourse, creates the potential for a distinctive art of prose, which has found its fullest and deepest expression in the novel.

In traditional stylistics, the direct word encounters in its orientation toward the object only the resistance of the object itself (the impossibility of its being exhausted by a word, the impossibility of saying it all), but it does not encounter in its path toward the object the fundamental and richly varied opposition of another's word.

But no living word relates to its object in a singular way: between the word and the object, between the word and the speaking subject, there exists an elastic environment of other, alien words about the same object, the same theme, and this is an environment that it is often difficult to penetrate. It is precisely in the process of living interaction with this specific environment that the word may be individualized and given stylistic shape. [choosing this word, now in this way, instead of that word, in that way]. Indeed, the utterance finds the object already overlain with qualifications, open to dispute, charged with value, already enveloped in an obscuring mist--or, on the contrary, by the "light" of alien wrods that have already been spoken about it. It is entangled, shot through with shared thoughts, points of view, alien value judgments and accents. The word, directed towards its object, enters a dialogically agitated and tension-filled environment of allien words, value judgments and accents, weaves in and out of complex interrelationships, merges with some, recoils from others, intersects with yet a third group: and all this may crucially shape discourse, may leave a trace in all its semantic layers, may complicate its expression and influence its entire stylistic profile. [The way I recoil when I hear simplistic references to "right-wingers" or "liberals" in contemporary political utterances is an example here.]

The living utterance, having taken meaning and shape at a particular historical moment in a socially specific environment, cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads, woven by socio-ideological consciousness around the given object of an utterance; it cannot fail to become an active participant in social utterance.

The way in which a word conceptualizes its object [koncipirovanie] is a complex act -- all objects are from one side highlighted while from the other side dimmed by heteroglot social opinion, by an alien word about them. And into this complex play of light and shadow the word enters--it becomes saturated with this play, and must dtermine within it the boundaries of its own semantic and stylistic contours. The way in which the word conceives its object is complicated by a dialogic interaction within the object between varous aspects of its socio-verbal intelligibility. If we imagine the intention of such a word, that is, its directionality toward the object, in the form of a ray of light, then the living and unrepeatable play of colors and light on the facets of the image that it constructs can be explained as the spectral dispersion of the ray-word, not within the object itself (as would be the case in the play of an image-as-trope, in poetic speech taken in the narrow sense, in an "autotelic word"), but rather as its spectral dispersion in an atmosphere filled with the alien words, value judgments and accents through which the ray passes on its way toward the object.

The word, breaking through to its own meaning and its own expression across the fog of heteroglossia, harmonizing with some of the elements in this fog and striking a dissonance with others, is able, in this dialogized process, to shape its own stylistic profile and tone. The novel moves beyond the direct and unmediated intention of a word by presenting it in its full, unfolded complexity and depth -- i.e. full artistic closure.

For the prose writer, the object is the focal point for heteroglot foices among which his own voice must also sound; these voices create the background necessary for his own voice, outside of which his artistic prose nuances cannot be perceived, and without which they "do not sound."

Every word is directed toward an answer and cannot escape the profound influence of the answering word that it anticipates. [me: the tension and dramatic interplay of a dialogue, one person saying something and another responding to it in a way that changes what the first man was going to say next, and so on, both parties continuously pulling back and pushing forward to establish control over directional intent. A great example of this is the "smart guy" in Miller's Crossing, and Bogart in Casablanca, where the characters hide the directionality of intent in their utterances, mask it or dilute it, shifting the conversational choice to the interlocutor, where he can then choose to increase the light or increase the shadow with his next utterance.]

The contradictory environment of alien words is present to the speaker not in the object, but rather in the consciousness of the listener, as his apperceptive background, pregnant with responses and objections. Thus an active understanding, one that assimilates the word under consideration into a new conceptual system, that of the one striving to understand, establishes a series of complex interrelationships, consonances and dissonances with the word and enriches it with new elements. It is precisely such an understanding that the speaker counts on. [She says, "You should play polo." He says, "Polo? Because of the pants?". An imperative followed by a jocular interrogative: A speaker who senses intent and finds something funny within its horizon of possibility -- expropriates the intentional possibilities of the utterance. His choice becomes a bluff at his predominant conceptualization of 'polo' -- that it has funny pants.]

Thus, this dialogism bears a more subjective, psychological and (frequently) random character, sometimes crassly accommodating, sometimes provocatively polemical. Very often, especially in the rhetorical forms, this orientation toward the listener and the related internal dialogism of the word may simply overshadow the object: the strong point of an concrete listener becomes a self-sufficient focus of attention, and one that interferes with the word's creative work on its referent.

What is important to us here is the intentional dimensions, that is, the denotative and expressive dimension of the "shared" language's stratification. Within these points of view, that is, for the speakers of language themselves, these generic languages and professional jargons are directly intentional -- the denote and express directly and fully [unselfconsciously], and are capable of expressing themselves without mediation; but outside, that is, for those not participating in the given purview, these languages may be treated as objects, as typifications, as local color. For such outsiders, the intention permeating these languages become things, limited in their meaning and expression; they attract to, or excise from, such language a particular word -- making it difficult for the word to be utilized in a directly intentional way, without qualifications. [Being on one expressive plane looking at another, intent becomes a refracted angle -- limited and qualified.]

And not all words for jsut anyone submit equally easily to this appropriation, to this seizure and transformation into private property: many words stubbornly resist, others remain alien, sound foreign in the mouth of the one who appropriated them and who now speaks them; they cannot be assimilated into his context and fall out of it; it is as if they put themselves in quotation markes against the will of the speaker. Language is not a neutral medium that is easily owned; it is populated -- overpopulated -- with the intentions of others. Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one's own intentions and accents, is a difficult and complicated process.

Consciousness finds itself inevitably facing the necessity of having to choose a language.

The development of the novel is a function of the deepening of dialogic essence, its increased scope and greater precision. Fewer and fewer neutral, hard elements ("rock bottom truths") remain that are not drawn into dialogue. Dialogue moves into the deepest molecular and, ultimately, subatomic levels. The novelistic word, however, registers with extreme subtlety the tiniest shifts and oscillations of the social atmosphere. This stylization is sometimes interrupted by the direct authorial word (usuall as an expression of pathos, of Sentimental or idyllic sensibility), which directly embodies (without any refracting) semantic and axiological intentions of the author. The "common language" -- usually the average norm for written and spoken language in a given group -- is taken by the author precisely as the common view, as the verbal approach to people and things normal for a given sphere of society, as the going point of view and the going value (a view that is always superficial and frequently hypocritical).

Born American, but in the Wrong Place

HT Winds of Change:

Born American, but in the Wrong Place.

The Meaning of Words

I know this is atavistic, but it still bugs me that liberal no longer means liberal:

"For me, it always goes back to this: If you put a gun to a Republican's head and say, 'Choose between individuality or equality,' they'll pick individual freedom. A good liberal will pick equality over individual freedom."

That's from this column in the LA Times today (which is interesting in its own right). What I couldn't stop thinking after I read this is that when I think about "Who would I rather have power?", I would rather the party in power scream "Individualism!" than hold a gun to my head and demand "Equality!".

I mean, wouldn't you?

The Russian Revival

Paul Starobin, writes about the Russia in the latest National Journal. Excerpt:

Today's Russia, under Putin, is in a period of "post-revolution stabilization," Gaidar said, and this period could last "one generation." (By "revolution," Gaidar means the shift from Soviet central planning to a market economy.) "Stabilization" is a rather antiseptic term -- other disenchanted liberals speak darkly of the "re-Sovietization" of society. "It's not Soviet at all," Gaidar firmly countered. "It's Russian. Those who now say it is the Soviet Union probably do not remember the Soviet Union."

Putin himself is perceived by his countrymen as a product of hardscrabble Russia, not merely the elite Soviet police organs. The son of a worker whose family survived the Nazi siege of Leningrad, he grew up in a rat-infested apartment building, mastered the martial arts, and was secretly raised in the Orthodox faith by his mother.

Nor does Putin's approach, except in his battles with business oligarchs, rely on Soviet-style coercion. A centerpiece, an initiative to increase the birthrate and thus halt Russia's steady decline in population, now 143 million, proposes to pay mothers large sums from state coffers to have a second child. But on this matter, for sure, Russian women will have the final word. A popular saying among those weary of the recent turbulent times is "Mui xhatim pazhit dlya sebya," which translates, "We want to live for ourselves."

Regime-imposed media controls exist -- but in their relative slackness they resemble the clampdowns of czarist-era Russia. A Kremlin with a Soviet-like "iron grip" on the public, "stifling civil liberties at every turn," as the critic Anna Politkovskaya rails in her new book, "Putin's Russia," surely would not allow her subversive tract to circulate. And yet there it was, on prominent display in Moskva bookstore, just up from Red Square on Tverskaya Street.

The current wave of interest in pre-Soviet Russian ideas and pursuits began gathering force early in the Yeltsin era. The trend can be seen in the renewed attention paid to the philosopher Ivan Ilyin, a late-19th-century espouser of monarchy and Orthodoxy who was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks for his anti-Communist activities, sentenced to death, and later expelled along with other prominent White intellectuals, never to return to Russia again.

Ilyin believed that Europe was rotting because of the anti-Christian, secular creeds of Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx -- and he saw Orthodox Russia as a gift to the world for overcoming this disease. Russian history, in his view, was the story of "morality triumphing over difficulties, temptation, danger, and enemies." He embraced the traditional idea of Russian separateness and tended to see the West as conspiratorially aligned against Russia. And he believed that the Russian character was in need of a strong, guiding, paternal hand: "Not having a mature, strong-willed nature himself," Ilyin wrote, "the Russian demands that his ruler have a will."

Kissinger, in both Diplomacy, his seminal work, and the later Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, refers to Russia as a cause, not a nation. Excerpt from the latter:

[After the fall of the Soviet Union] the Western democracies began to act as if Russia's domestic reform were the major, if no the sole, key to a stable relationship. Russia was treated not as a serious power, but as the subject of occasionally condescending disquisitions on the state of its internal domestic reform.

Equating foreign policy with Russian domestic politics tended to identify the United States in the minds of many Russians with the weird Yeltsin-era hybrid of black markets, reckless speculation, outright criminal activity, and state capitalism in which huge industrial combines were run by their erstwhile Communist managers, all in the guise of privatization. This state of affairs enabled Russian nationalists and Communists to claim that the entire system was a fraud perpetrated by the West to keep Russia weak.

[T]he world is dealing with a new type of Russian leader. Unlike his predecessor, who cut his political teeth in the power struggles of the Communist Party, Putin emerged from the world of the secret police. Advancement in that shadowy world presupposes a strong nationalist commitment and a cool, analytical streak. It leads to a foreign policy comparable to that during the tsarist centuries, grounding popular support in a sense of Russian mission and seeking to dominate neighbors where they cannot be subjugated.

Both Russia and the United States have historically asserted a global vocation for their societies...American idealism tempts isolationism; Russian idealism has prompted expansionism and nationalism.

So long as it remains parameterized, a Russian revival would be a net gain -- certainly for the Russian people, but perhaps even for the rest of us.

Eric Hoffer

From The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements:

"There is a deep reassurance for the frustrated in witnessing the downfall of the fortunate and the disgrace ofthe righteous. They see in a general downfall an approach to the brotherhood of all. Chaos, like the grave, is a haven of equality."

"When we renounce the self and become part of a compact whole, we not only renounce personal advantage but are also rid of personal responsibility...When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom -- freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse."

"The deindividualization which is a prerequisite for thorough integration and selfless dedication is also, to a considerable extent, a process of dehumanization. The torture chamber is a corporate institution."

"To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity and distinctness."

"To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair. Dostoyevsky gave words to this state of mind in Crime and Punishment: 'If one had to live on some high rock on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life whatever it may be!'"

"The same Russians who cringe and crawl before Stalin's secret police displayed unsurpassed courage when facing -- singly or in a group -- the invading Nazis. The reason for this contrasting behavior is not that Stalin's police are more ruthless than Hitler's armies, but that when facing Stalin's police the Russian feels a mere individual while, when facing the Germans, he saw himself a member fo a mighty race, possessed of a glorious past and even more glorious future."

"Almost all our contemporary movements showed in their early stages a hostile attitude toward the family, and did all they could to discredit and disrupt it...It is strange but true that he who preaches brotherly love also preaches against love of mother, father, brother, sister, wife and children. The proselytizer who says "Come and follow me" is a family wrecker."

"The discontent generated in backward countries by their contact with Western civilization is not primarily resentment against exploitation by domineering foreigners. It is rather the result of a crumbling or weakening of tribal solidarity and communal life...The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing West offers ot backward populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration...releasing him, in the words of Khomiakov, 'to the freedom of his own impotence.'"

"The policy of an exploiting colonial power should be to encourage communal cohesion among the natives...An effective division is one that fosters a multiplicity of compact bodies -- racial, religious, or economic -- vying with and suspicious of each other." [Me: An implicit endorsement of our Iraqi adventure, perhaps. Hoffer argues that individual frustration leads to the vulnerability of the individual vis-a-vis the siren songs of mass movements. Localize the individual's communal cohesion, and avoid his assimilation into a global jihadist movement.]

"A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves -- and it does htis by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole."

"It is futile to judge the viability of a new movement by the truth of its doctrine and the feasibility of its promises. What has to be judged is its corporate organization for quick and total absorption of the frustrated." [Me: If true, this does not bode well for our battle with Radical Islam. With the decentralized, solvent networks of the Mosque and Internet combined with the unifying status of the Muslim identity, Radical Islam is well positioned to be a continuously viable, adaptive and long-term threat to the West.]

"The most incurably frustrated -- and therefore, the most vehement -- among the permanent misfits are those with an unfulfilled craving for creative work."

"The more selfish a person, the more poignant his disappointments. It is the inordinately selfish, therefore, who are likely to be the most persuasive champions of selflessness."

"When opportunities are apparently unlimited, there is an inevitable deprecation of the present." [Me: Kierkegaard also touches on this. If freedom is the relation between possibility and necessity, too much freedom -- i.e. too much possibility -- can lead one to despair of all that could be, but is not.]

"Within a minority bent on assimilation, the least and most successful (economically and culturally) are likely to be more frustrated than those in between...Those of a minority who attain fortune and fame often find it difficult to gain entrance into the exclusive circles of the majority. They are thus made conscious of their foreignness. Furthermore, having evidence of their individual superiority, they resent the admission of inferiority implied in the process of assimilation...The least and most successful of the Blacks are the most race conscious."

"There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society's ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom...When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored. The consciousness of a barren, meaningless existence is the main fountainhead of boredom...Pleasure-chasing and dissipation are ineffective palliatives. Where people live autonomous lives and are not badly off, yet are without abilities or opportunities for creative work or useful action, there is no telling to what desperate and fantastic shifts they might resort in order to give meaning and purpose to their lives." [Me: We see this most often nowadays as the fallout of social welfare programs vis-a-vis the unemployment rate of young Muslim men. 50% of employable Muslim immigrants in Europe live off of government assistance -- i.e., they are "not badly off" minorities with no opportunities for useful action, with a strong identity with the aggrieved global status of Muslimness. In other words, an incredibly flammable admixture of frustrations.]

"All mass movements deprecate the present by depicting it as a mean preliminary to a glorious future; a mere doormat on the threshold of the millennium...When Tertullian proclaimed, 'And He was buried and rose again; it is certain because it is impossible,' he was snapping his fingers at the present."

"It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have something worth fighting for, they do not feel like fighting."

"The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude...It is obvious, therefore, that in order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand...Rudolph Hess, when swearing in the entire Nazi party in 1934, exhorted his hearers: 'Do not seek Adolph Hitler with your brains; all of you will find him with the strength of your hearts.' When a movement begins to rationalize its doctrine and make it intelligible, it is a sign that its dynamic span is over; that it is primarily interested in stability. For the stability of a regime requires the allegiance of the intellectuals, and it is to win them rather than to foster self-sacrifice in the masses that a doctrine is made intelligible."

"If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable."

"Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil...Every difficulty and failure within the movement is the work of the devil, and every success is a triumph over his evil plotting." [Me: This actually reconciles with cognitive science, in the recognition of agents as us-inside and other-outside, and the different emotional reactions one has for each respectively -- oddly, it's the same emotional reaction that explains why saliva in your mouth doesn't disgust you, but spit, once outside your mouth, does.]

"Where opinion is not coerced, people can be made to believe only in what they already 'know.'"

"The assertion that a mass movement cannot be stopped by force is not literally true. Force can stop and crush even the most vigorous movement. But to do so the force must be ruthless and persistent. And here is where faith enters as an indispensable factor. For a persecution that is ruthless and persistent can come only from fanatical conviction. 'Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook.'"

"Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership. There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts." [Me: this, at once, poses for us a problem and a solution. The solution it proposes is to have an army of fact checkers that would guard against any mass movement destroying America. The problem is that this solution will preclude all mass movements, even when one is necessary -- e.g. to ensure survival.]

"A dispensation of undoubted merit and vigor may be swept away if it fails to win the allegiance of the articulate minority...The emergence of an articulate minority where there was none before is a potential revolutionary step."

"There is a deep-seated craving common to almost all men of words which determines their attitude tot he prevailing order. It is a craving for recognition; a craving for a clearly marked status above the common run of humanity."

"There is a moment in the career of almost every fault-finding man of words when a deferential or conciliatory gesture from those in power may win him over to their side." [Me: Among many obvious examples, this has been seen most recently in the political blogosphere.]

Quick Thoughts

I watched Brian Lamb's interview of Michael Scheuer earlier today, and came away impressed with the man's integrity but unconvinced by his analysis. Here's his argument:

1. His overarching point is that we need to understand our enemy's motives for declaring war against us so that we can do something to assuage (for lack of a better word) their grievances. This is an intent-based strategy (as opposed to a capabilities-based strategy). His argument is that Osama's grievances flow from our foreign policy history in Arabia, and that Osama's particular perspective on American perfidy is widely held by the Muslim world. Al'Qaeda didn't attack us because of our freedoms or prosperity (as professed by the Administration and Congressional leaders), they attacked us because of our presence in the Middle East and our support for Israel. That is a distinction that must be made. Because the Muslim feeling of humiliation and duress is rationally derived, and because it is so contagious and flammable, it must be addressed on its own terms; its premises must be negated or eliminated or soon we will be at war with Islam in general. Therefore we must alter our foreign policy to soothe the rising temper of an increasingly self-aware global threat.

2. In this context, Scheuer argues that Operation Iraqi Freedom was a strategic catastrophe. Prior to this ill-advised excursion in Mesopotamia, Osama's call to arms was obscure and very theoretical. With our shortsightedness we have given bin Laden the very thing he needed to gain ascendancy: a clear and present example of Western Imperialism. His sermons about jihad ring true because we have supplied them with the veneer of immediacy. Because of the "War on Terror" the men of Islam have been given "identity steroids"--i.e. feel much more strongly about their Muslimness-- and because they feel more Muslim they are more sensitive to Muslim status. Finally, because Bush has given them a huge reason to feel aggrieved in their status, Muslims who feel very Muslim are now much more vulnerable to the calling of jihad.

That's his argument. So long as one takes it descriptively and not prescriptively, I largely agree with it; as an "is" statement, it is very plausibly true. However, I'm reticent to agree with the "ought" statement that Scheuer derives from this. Here's a quick hit of why:

1. Osama is a follower of Sayid Qutb. Qutb's critique of the West was theological and philosophical, not geo-political. Qutb diagnosed Christendom with what he termed the "hideous schizophrenia" -- i.e. the separation of church and state, religion and the society, belief and practice:

Qutb argues that the hideous schizophrenia of "separation of religion from the social order" became forever entrenched into Western civilization once the Church began to establish dogmas that contradicted logic and declared war on scientific inquiry.

Qutb was also very clear on what he thought of liberalism:

Western values are commonly understood as liberal democratic; they include the protection of individual rights, limited government, and the rule of law. Qutb views these values as misshapen philosophical concepts which are outgrowths of jahiliyyah. When the West pushes faith into a corner, Qutb argues that it alienates God from society, thereby rejecting faith as part of the social order.

Qutb speaks of "voices of alarm...warning mankind of its catastrophic end under the white man’s faithless civilization." Because the West is inherently evil and corrosive, Qutb believes that Islam must dismantle and quarantine it.

Islam cannot accept any compromise with jahiliyyah, either in its concept or in the modes of living derived from this concept. Either Islam will remain, or jahiliyyah; Islam cannot accept or agree to a situation which is half-Islam and half-jahiliyyah. In this respect Islam’s stand is very clear.

Yes, Qutb's stand is very clear, and so is Osama's. The West is the far enemy, and it is by far the worst foe Islam faces. The near enemy--i.e. the apostate regimes of Dar al'Islam--is less worrisome. America, being the most seductive and corrosive mutation of the hideous schizophrenia, must be defeated and sealed away from impressionable Muslim minds before Islam and its societies catch the Sickness unto Death.

2. Osama's grievances include the humiliation given to the ummah by Ataturk's dispanding of the Caliphate, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire. He also laments the fall of Al'Andalus. What we're supposed to do about those things is beyond me.

3. In fact, I'm skeptical whether the "intent" of the jihadis is so vulnerable that any move by us could substantially affect it. In the age of instant communication and global cultural dissemination, we are a threat to Reactionary Islam merely by being who we are.

4. Modifying our policy in the Middle East in a way that would purchase the Islamist's good will would almost certainly mean a policy of departure--a departure of policy, in its true terms. Our presence in the region is risible because we allow apostate regimes to stay in power and while there spread our infectious ideas into the popular culture. To fix this we would have to stand back while Islamist movements took power and gained control of the world's oil supply. What we would get in return would be a nightmare: an Islamic empire of rich and powerful rulers with an illiterate and mal-informed public holding the world hostage to energy while they armed themselves with petrol-dollar weaponry. We went to war against Saddam in 1991 to stop this eventuality, and he symbolized only naked power. A well-armed oil empire with the charisma of a global religion behind it would be disasterous.

5. Radical Islam has a millenium of grievances to use as a call to arms. Therefore, "intent" can be our long game, but we are walking into a trap if we make it our short. Instead, in the near-term we need to focus on Islamist capabilities, the dreaded marriage of WMD with the terrorist will to use them. The reason for this is multi-layered. One of the layers even derives from Scheuer's concerns: if America is hit with a large-scale, high-casualty terrorist attack, then it will not just be Muslims who believe they are in a war; Americans will believe they are in a war, too, perhaps with all of Islam, and they will move decisively to end it.