Feeding The Fish

Let’s take a little issue with this snippit of Daniel Henniniger’s article in the WSJ on how democracies are better able to manage crisis:

Among the Western intellectual classes in the U.S. and Europe, there is no idea more routinely mocked than George Bush’s proposition that what the world needs today is more democracies. Much of this has to do with the Iraq war and the apparently bottomless, neurotic antipathy to Mr. Bush. But make no mistake: The steady stream of pushback against “exporting democracy” as quixotic or inappropriate has gone far toward throwing out the democratic baby with the Bush bathwater.

I don’t think anyone really disagrees that more democracies is better (with the possible exception of a century of US and British foreign policy) and the argument that they respond better to natural disasters isn’t a new one, I just think it’s hard to imagine anyone who invade a country and dismantle it’s government without any plans on what to replace it with (or even how to go about doing that) is really taking their aim of ‘exporting democracy’ that seriously.

Having just finished the book version of Taking Liberties (which made me so angry I think I have to go see the film), this part of an NYTimes article leaped out at me:

Part of the problem is that, in response to the shameful abuses at Abu Ghraib, the American military instituted vastly excessive civil rights protections for detainees. In our experience, it has worked this way: After an arrest, two soldiers must file affidavits, together with physical evidence and digital pictures, and then an American lawyer decides if the package is strong enough to withstand further review. About half of all detainees are released within 18 hours; the others are sent from battalion level to brigade level, where the evidence is re-examined, resulting in more releases.

Those detainees remaining are sent to a detention center where a combined board reviews the evidence again, and releases still more. After that, every six months a United States board must re-review the evidence in each case. Lastly, the detainee appears before an Iraqi judge, who in turn dismisses about half of the cases.

I agree, needing evidence in order to lock people up is dangerously excessive. Next they’ll be asking for a jury of peers or other claptrap. Just because it didn’t look like the evidence was going to hold up is no reason to release them! Chances are they were an insurgent anyway and if they weren’t, well, they might have become insurgents at some point in the future. It’s best to be safe than sorry.

Tony Blair wrote an article for The Times the other day, and said this in defence of his foreign policy:

I was stopped by someone the other week who said it was not surprising there was so much terrorism in the world when we invaded their countries (meaning Afghanistan and Iraq). No wonder Muslims felt angry.

When he had finished, I said to him: tell me exactly what they feel angry about. We remove two utterly brutal and dictatorial regimes; we replace them with a United Nations-supervised democratic process and the Muslims in both countries get the chance to vote, which incidentally they take in very large numbers. And the only reason it is difficult still is because other Muslims are using terrorism to try to destroy the fledgling democracy and, in doing so, are killing fellow Muslims.

What’s more, British troops are risking their lives trying to prevent the killing. Why should anyone feel angry about us? Why aren’t they angry about the people doing the killing? The odd thing about the conversation is that I could tell it was the first time he had even heard the alternative argument.

Blair’s seems completely baffled at the inability of people to act completely reasonably all the time. Yes, if you look at it logically we’re not the enemy, the terrorists are (and I suspect there are more Iraqis who would agree with that than it would seem), but we are hardly the whiter than white liberators we’d need to be to really feel incredulous as to why people are angry. We entered under a ’shock and awe’ bombing campaign (whose bright idea to win hearts and minds was that?) with civilian casualties to start off with. We can look at it as necessary sacrifices to remove a brutal dictator, but we weren’t the ones making the sacrifices.

I remember seeing on the news a little bit after the war officially ‘ended’ a crowd of people gathered after a car bombing and someone was telling the reporter how someone else (naturally) had seen an American bomber drop a bomb that caused the explosion. Ridiculous to our ears, what interest would that serve? What reasons would they have? It doesn’t matter, it seemed that people were ready to believe that that would happen. It is actively in terrorists’ interest for the Iraqi people to focus their hatred on the British and American forces and with the raw materials available I doubt it was a difficult task. Each new crackdown to hinder the terrorists (like that amazingly stupid wall) is an active intrusion on the lives of everyday citizens, necessary perhaps, but I really don’t find it as hard as Blair to see where the resentment comes from.

Why do people hate us? Perhaps as Blair wants to believe, because they’re not in full possession of the facts, I suspect a lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of the Anti-American spin doctors throughout the region, but the important fact is that their lies are just believable, who needs to construct elaborate lies when you can just show the pictures from Abu Grav over and over? Blair is right in the sense that the terrorists are the real enemy, but if he really doesn’t understand why people are angry then that is a real concern.