Middle Ground in the Middle East?

Audio available at 11:05 a.m.

The war in Lebanon continues. There’s speculation about an expanded conflict involving Syria and Iran. This leads to a question: where’s the middle ground in the Middle East now? Today on Weekday we’ll find out who the moderates are on all sides. And we’ll ask what they’re thinking. What proposals have a chance of bringing the various sides together?

Guests:

Ellis Goldberg is an expert on middle east politics and a political science professor at the University of Washington.

Daniel Levy was a member of the official Israeli negotiating team at the Oslo and Taba talks and the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative.

Walid Jumblatt is a Druze leader who sparked the Cedar Revolution in February 2005. He heads Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party.

http://www.kuow.org/programs/weekday.asp

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“I never said that (they don’t) have a different morality.�

True. My beef isn’t actually with you anyway, but with our collective habit of labeling people for their actions, as if a single aspect of a human’s behavior is adequate to define the person or persons. Yes, it’s useful shorthand and therefore in some ways essential, but we all-too-typically begin to believe the ‘truth’ of the shorthand instead of recognizing its limitations. This is especially true with sweeping and condemnatory labels like ‘terrorist’. I’ll explain what I mean below.

“Their morality in which it’s desirable to kill large numbers of civilians to achieve political or social goals is dangerous to peace-loving, civilized people. I was providing a simple, operational definition of terrorist.�

I won’t argue that this isn’t a valid definition of ‘terrorist’, but it’s much more applicable to 1970’s era entities like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or the Bader-Meinhof http://www.rotten.com/library/history/terrorist-organizations/bader-meinhof gang, than it is to complex socio-political jihadi movements like Hezbollah and Hamas. These groups, as we have learned repeatedly lately on ROS, are very much more than militias.

And as General William Odom explained in the “Terrorism Index� show, terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy, and certainly not a ‘movement’.

‘“To anticipate our enemy’s weaknesses, we must first understand him.�

First you have to present evidence that it’s POSSIBLE to understand them. You are making the same mistake that Bush, et al, made in Iraq – that of intellectual hubris.’

ME? No way! I don’t think for an INSTANT that Bush and gang had a clue about Islamists: their endlessly calamitous policies are patent proof. Bush and his gang are the clowns who insist that the Islamists are nothing but ‘terrorists’.

I’ve suggested before that understanding Islamists is as easy as reading the scripture that informs and molds their minds. And I stand by that suggestion. It’s not enjoyable reading, I’ll grant you that, but there’s no substitute for it.

Jihadis don’t make up their goals from thin air: they apply the preachings in the Koran to the world around them. It’s not rocket science – but it was apparently too complex for the neocon crowd to analyze and respect.

And you don’t even need to buy it: http://www.infoplease.com/t/rel/koran/sura2.html

“You THINK we know more than we really do about what makes people tick.�

On the contrary, I think we currently know very little, but I’m right beside you in curiosity and the willingness to scientifically study the irreducibly complex phenomena of human behavior. (“Irreducibly� complex is the key too: I don’t plause for an instant that creatures with so much conscious free will as humans are constantly acting out mechanistic genetic impulses, as the behavioral geneticists like to believe. I find such reductionist suppositions preposterous and even hilarious. Try Jonathan Marks’s What it Means to be 98% Chimpanzee – http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-0520226151-0 – for amusing and enlightening evidence.)

“We do not HAVE a science of human behavior that can account for why thousands of young men would happily volunteer to blow themselves up along with a crowd of bus travelers, shoppers, or office workers.�

Right – but we don’t need science for this – it’s sadly simpler than that. Much, much simpler. It’s all about belief and faith in the ‘Great Beyond’.

Try Sam Harris’s The End of Faith – http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-0393327655-2

“I’m not “demonizingâ€? them – to ascribe “demonsâ€? to people is a sort of explanation people used to use for mental illness or other conditions. I am merely noting that terrorists EXIST.â€?

The people you define as ‘terrorists’ couldn’t care less that we’ve got them wrong – in fact, they can use our mistaken labeling of them to their advantage. Any 14-year-old Lebanese Shiite can see for himself that Hezbollah provides schools, hospitals, and social services to their constituency. This young lad will therefore know much more immediately than any American that the imam who claims that Americans are lying infidels must be right: Hezbollah, to him, aren’t ‘terrorists’– they’re heroes.

Thus: “So long as we call them by our word ‘terrorists’, they win and we lose.�

We can’t afford to keep proving our enemies right in the esteem of their prospective recruits. Our failure to recognize the obsolescence and misapplication of our pejorative labels only plays to the hands of the Islamists.

We have to see them for what they are: religiously formulated non-state alternatives to the sham governments of the region. And then, to counter them, we have to offer something more compelling than ‘martyrdom’. This will take a lot of fresh thought.

Many Islamists want a reprise of the classical Arab caliphates. I don’t know how we counter that, but I’m damned sure we can’t figure out counter-alternatives so long as we conceptually reduce them to secular demons like ‘terrorists’.

Here’s a post that speaks to my worries: johnhartwell @ 9:46 PM Aug 2nd in the New Map of the Middle East thread.

John’s fears match mine: once the thundering boil knocks the lid off the pot, it won’t stop. The scalding water and steam will affect most of the Muslim world and even the EU, whose countries are home to millions of Muslims.

We haven’t got much time. We’ve got a lot of innovative thinking to do, and fast. Sadly, our government’s neglect of American liberal education is a millstone currently dooming us to unimaginative acceptance of vacuous words like ‘terrorists.’ This ain’t the 1970’s any more. We’re living in a very new world: The Beginning of the Future, as Ari Shavit dubbed it this past Monday night.

Q: “What should we call them?�

A: Islamist jihadis, who believe that paradise awaits martyrs to Allah’s cause. Nothing less. What we deem ‘terrorism’, they term jihad. Righteous jihad. Moral jihad – and a Muslim duty. (Read the Koran.)

I suspect one reason we want to insist that they’re ‘terrorists’ is that we just can’t honestly believe that they believe in martyrdom and paradise. Well, it may seem ridiculous, but we’re wrong. (See the Harris book.) Muslim kids who blow themselves up truly believe that their next stop is paradise and that delectable pleasures await them.

Our definitions are as inoperative as the ancient belief that the atom was a hard kernel of matter, and that nothing was smaller and all was made from atoms. Boy was that wrong. Atoms are in fact bundles of smaller bundles of energy, and have no solidity at all.

Likewise, our ‘terrorist’ definition completely misses the depth of religiosity—the dynamic bundles of energy—motivating the jihadis. And we can’t even begin to think the problem through if we insist on calling what it ain’t.

Feel free to cite actual, concrete, 3-dimensional evidence. I think we dress things up differently and talk about them with different language, and obviously some individual societies are either nicer or meaner than 60 years ago, but I see no evidence that human behavior or institutions overall are different.

Please translate that proposal into something specific and concrete. The rockets launched by Hezbollah, and previously by Hamas, ARE specific and concrete – the threats from them were definite and clear. So you at least owe us the courtesy of an equally clear and concrete proposal for how to deal wkith them using “diplomacy”.

I certainly agree that a diplomatic solution to PREVENT Hezbollah from setting up bases in Lebanon with the help of Syria and Iran would have been preferred in recent years but all the people who are NOW calling for “diplomacy” were strangely silent then.

Are they utterly lacking in any morality?”

I never said that. I agree with you that they have a different morality. Their morality in which it’s desirable to kill large numbers of civilians to achieve political or social goals is dangerous to peace-loving, civilized people. I was providing a simple, operational definition of terrorist.

“To anticipate our enemy’s weaknesses, we must first understand him.”

First you have to present evidence that it’s POSSIBLE to understand them. You are making the same mistake that Bush, et al, made in Iraq – that of intellectual hubris. You THINK we know more than we really do about what makes people tick. We do not HAVE a science of human behavior that can account for why thousands of young men would happily volunteer to blow themselves up along with a crowd of bus travelers, shoppers, or office workers.

I’m not “demonizing” them – to ascribe “demons” to people is a sort of explanation people used to use for mental illness or other conditions. I am merely noting that terrorists EXIST. I’m not opposed to trying to understand them – my background is in science and I’ve always been an enthusiastic supporter of scientific research and a member of several national science organizations. So, yes, by all means we should try to understand them.

BUT I disagree that the current state of the art makes such understanding a practical tool in preventing or countering terrorism.

“So long as we call them by our word ‘terrorists’, they win and we lose.”

Why? It seems like a perfectly accurate description to me. What should we call them?

It is conditions of radically disproportionate power and domination that produces these tactics, and they have a proven track record of success. ”

To the extent that Germans ended up dropping a bomb on a house by mistake because they couldn’t distinguish it from the real CNR or AS house, yes, exactly.

Most of the time the Germans didn’t both with long-distance weapons like that; they just rounded up villagers and shot them. But to the extent that the AS or CNR deliberately created conditions to result in civilian casualties, then the same dynamic applies, of course.

“Forget the human behavior speculations, it is political conditions that produce these tactics, and they should be addressed primarily in a political (as against military) fashion.”

THAT is the speculation. The empirical fact is that Israel has a heavily armed force on its borders TODAY dedicated to its destruction. Any political solution would take decades or generations to work; what is Israel supposed to do in the meantime?

What about them? Everything you’ve cited is just declarations and documents. Prior to that point in history we had plenty of saints and religions with pious positions on things. In practical terms that didn’t amount to much either.

SINCE most of the things you cited came into existence we’ve had Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, and countless other violations. We’ve had several wars where the total tonnage or ordnance expended has exceeded what was used in WWII’s ETO.

I don’t see any concrete, empirical evidence that anything has actually changed in either human nature or human institutions since WWII.

I know what you’re thinking, Sadat was the strong head of a central government, so he could take up the opportunity when it presneted itself, whereas unstable governments like the PA and Lebanon can’t even dream of attending the party… they’re just ticked off having to be kept up all night by the noise of merriment in their building without being able to leave their crumbling apartment without it caving in.

Remember that the Second Temple, and Israel as we knew it under the Romans, was destroyed 1,938 years ago not really because of the Romans themselves, though they certainly contributed the starting and finishing touches to the devastation and diaspora. It was because of the gratuitous hate rife among and for those living within Israel at the time, creating an irreparable instability.

Both Palestine and Lebanon suffer from this crippling internal instability, making them intractible, impossible neighbors. And what makes any foreign-bolstered armed religious militia ‘tick’ within these weak environments is the very nervous energy of the instability itself; otherwise, they would have no place nor need to exist.

What defines a “terrorist group” is exactly that: any ‘Non-Governmental-Organization’ that feeds off the mounting instability of a country that is in the throes of losing its hold on power, both on central power, and on person-to-person power. ‘Power’ as defined by Hannah Arendt as opposed to ‘Violence’, where mounting violence indicates a loss or a vacuum of true power, where true power needs no instruments (like arms) to perservere and prevail.

Obviously, a diplomacy of stability-fomenting collaborations among individuals, non-governmental bodies, and even the governments themselves, will lead to the absolute dissolution of any extant “terrorism,” state-sponsored, grassroots fundamentalist, or ‘psychotic’.

And then the milk-farmer combat photographers and reporters can go home and get a real job, instead of unwittingly aiding, abetting, and expanding the vacuum of true powers attempting futilely to take hold in the region.

Maybe their prodigious talents of eye and word can be put to true-power-fomenting use: like when Barenboim and Said began the East-West Divan Orquestra out of their pass-time of playing four-handed Bach piano pieces together as friends.

Now there’s a far better, far more peaceful, use of abundant talent… instead of gunning for the Pulitzer with story after story about the wanton abrogation of true power to instrumental violence.

Of course we’ve all got the right to defend ourselves from attack, but the underlying problem of instability must be resolved through true-power-fomenting collaboration, or the violent self-defense will go on ad nauseam and ad infinitum.