First of all, why is McMasters still a Colonel? He should have made General a long time ago. he seems to be the most advanced thinker in the military and is consistantly way ahead of the rest of the crowd.

And making a connection between democracy and honor is indeed a good strategy. Democracy is the truest form of honor as it is based on the proposition that all are created equal. That all have the wherewithall and the means to be self-sustaining and to excell.

There is great honor in taking care of oneself anf ones family. There is honor in governing oneself and being engaged in that process. There is great honor in sharing the burden with your fellow countrymen. There is honor in having faith in your fellow countrymen to do the honorable thing.

Yep, showing the honor in democracy verses the dishonor of dictatorship and fascism. Compare it to the dishonor of having no voice. Compare it to being told your not allowed to have an opinion. Compare it to being told what to think.

There is nothing more honorable, more respectful, more dignified, than democracy.

Well, you do ask the pertinent question there at the end. We are certainly capable, militarily, economically and in every other material way, of winning the "long war" but I wonder about philosophically and psychologically. How can we carry on a counterinsurgency that anywhere between 30-40 percent of the voting public in the US is opposed to; with some fraction of that group even actively opposing our efforts, and, as the Marxists would put it, objectively favoring our enemies ?

Iraq is certainly not Vietnam, but there is one similarity, namely that, as in the earlier struggle, the strategic center of gravity appears to be in the streets of Seattle, New York, Houston and Atlanta and not Baghdad and Basra, or perhaps in the camera lenses and broadcast stations of the media networks in such places. It will take years to organize Galula’s “favorable minority” and expand it, and we simply must find a way to do so. How ? How do we finesse the hostility and opposition to our cause on the part of so many of our own citizens ?

Wiz,

Ricks also gives high praise to General Mattis, btw.

I think your point is valid, but other cultures would have different views: it might be dishonorable to live in a place where women are allowed to wear and work as they please, or leave the home at their leisure. Such behavior might be both "free" and an affront to traditional honor. That's just an example. It's dealing with those grey areas that will be our challenge, I think.

Hale, I have no good answer for your own question.

Chester, our dictionary defines honor thus: “a keen sense of right and wrong; adherence to actions or principles considered right; integrity.” In Iraqi culture, are democracy and freedom “principles considered right,” and thus honor-bound for Iraqis to defend, as they are for most in the West?

Someday perhaps, but not yet it seems. In the West, the rituals of democracy and the elements of political freedom are now long-ingrained habits. No one in the West feels the need to go back to first principles on these matters, and to reflect on the practical reasons that brought the practices of democracy and political freedom into common everyday life, like water to fish.

But students of Western civilization know that the practices of democracy and political freedom were carved out through bloody experience and struggle, going back past Magna Carta to the Roman Republic and the Greeks before that. After centuries of experience with tribal and civil wars, in other words, after trying every other way to manage political power and violence, Western civilization, through rough practical experience, settled on its current practices, rules of the political game on which all sides could agree. These rules are such a habit now that we rarely consider how we got them or the brutality of alternative ways of managing political power.

Arab culture also suffered through all of these experiences, but for some reason did not arrive at the same destination as did the West. To the Iraqis who are in dire straits every day, concepts like democracy and political freedom must seem impractically vague.

An Iraqi in the current state of emergency believes he does the honorable thing when he protects his family, his clan, his tribe, and perhaps his sect.

For better or for worse, the U.S. has placed its bet on an Iraqi national unity government, and a national Iraqi security force. It would be a great success for the U.S. cause if Iraqis could define honor as defending a sovereign and unified Iraq, something Kurdish, Shi’ite, and Sunni Iraqis could all agree on.

In other words, linking Iraqi honor to democracy and political freedom seems too much to ask. For now, we will settle for linking honor to a sense of Iraqi nationalism.

Needless to say, a sense of Iraqi nationalism is under great stress right now. Should it fail to materialize in the service of U.S. interests, the U.S. may have to step down the ladder a few rungs and rely on the Iraqis’ “honorable” loyalty to his tribe in order to achieve U.S. interests there.

Westhawk

This is a good, thoughtful discussion.

I would suggest turning around thewiz's question. Rather than blame the American people, it might be helpful instead ask how the strategy might be changed in order to win their support.

Best,
Tom Ricks

Thanks, Tom. I think you refer to Hale's question.

Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke, was seconded to the National Security Council recently due to his expertise in civil-military relations. I believe his thesis was that the American public will support the war if they can believe that it is possible to win. Therefore, Bush's speeches should focus not on the necessity of fighting, but instead attempt to show victory as certainly within the realm of possibility.

Some might complain that this is so much white-washing. But perhaps he's on to something.

Chester, you are correct. I misread the layout of the page.
Best,
Tom

Part of the problem is what image "freedom" has in the world. To the people of the ME, who see the US through the lense of Hollywood, it is freedom to be decadent and to lose one's morals.

They see MTV, rap music with bitches and hoes, slut of the month stars, porn stars, and girls gone wild videos. They see American ghettos, crime sprees, and mass murderers.

To too many people, freedom actually represents a decline in religious and moral values. Much of this image is the result of the headline grasping media and of propaganda by religious zealots.

It has long been a belief of mine that this clash of civilizations is part of what drives the Islamofascists and convinces people to follow them. They fear their own sons and daughters will be westernized to this extreme.

thewiz,

I agree: I think this is one reason why so many hostiles originate in Europe. The Europeans have largely lost any animating principles in their own societies beyond the blandest sentiments of multiculturalism and tolerance. This much be frustrating to anyone who can see through such nihilistic sappiness. At the same time, Europe has all of those same outward signs of a free society that you describe.

thewiz correctly links democracy and honor. we need to be making this case not only in Iraq but throughout the Islamic world.

But we need to emphasize the connection between tyranny and dishonor and humiliation. And, more controversially, we need to emphasize the more dishonorable aspects of Islam, like "honor killings", suicide bombings of civilians, the wasing of war from mosques, and the sort of intellectual dishonesty that allows large parts of the Islamic world to blame the 9/11 sneak attacks on someone other than its own.

Chester's sure right, in his response to the Wiz about Europe: how Europe has lost all "animating principles" beyond multiculturalism and "tolerance" -- that is, tolerance of everything which agrees with the elite there's secular and post-colonial world view.

I agree with the school of thought that holds that European culture: more specifically its cultural and political elites, have a sort of subconscious death-wish for their societies, when it's written about it's usually put in the context of Auschwitz, but I'd run it back further than that: probably to 1914.

A lot of good thinking on here about ways and means to encourage the Muslim world to define "honor" in a more useful light. Still, that's a work for centuries, and a kulturkampf Muslims -- more specifically, Arab Muslims - must wage mostly among themselves, for themselves.

We have to be careful about definining our objectives. "Democracy" or, as I prefer "liberal institutions" usually follows the development of institutions -- a legal system, a bureaucracy, and power centers in societies outside of government. Remember, for example, that liberal institutions did not develop in places like South Korea or Spain until these first steps had been completed, usually under more or less authoritarian regimes. Even the French Republic, the most "politically correct" of the major democratic powers, owes more to both Napoleons in this regard than can ever be acknowledged.

As for how this bears on our counterinsurgency efforts (getting back to the original post): we have to determine what it is we are trying to do. If we insist on implanting "democracy" in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think we are always going to come up short. This ain't Peoria, or even Seoul. Maybe we can work with the "honor" concept Chester talks about and work on linking it, not as much to "freedom" at least, not right away, as we try to link it to "regular order" and correct dealings.

First, the "freedom" we're selling is not absence of external restraint. It's a missionary attempt to transform an ancient society, up-ending power relationships and replacing them with new ones.

Second, we confuse liberalism and democracy. Fareed Zakaria has a lot of good stuff on this. And, worse still, we have passed on a non-functioning governmetn to the Iraqis and intertwined that governmetn with democdratic political forms. So, in the eyes of Iraqis, the long-standing criticism of democracies as inefficient, corruption-ridden, and chaotic rings true.

Finally, as someone above pointed out, our decadence is stupidly mistaken as a core value of America and the West. We see this also in the language of various neconservatives, who praise the half-dressed protesters in Lebanon's Cedar Revolution or who demand the end of the Burqa.

I wrote on this extensively in an entry in 2003 entitled "Burkean Nation Building." I wrote, in part, "The final thing Burkean conservatives bring to the table is a decent respect for religion. Liberty and religion, including a religion sanctioned by and approved by the state, can coexist. Whether presently in France or Germany, or less dramatically in Greece or Russia, the choice nations face is rarely between Iranian-style theocracy and American-style secularism. American liberals and neoconservatives alike indulge this false dichotomy. Neoconservatives are not altogether comfortable with religion in the U.S.. Liberals are even less comfortable. The latter speak in horror of prayer in public schools and with fear of religious Christians. (Think Andrew Sullivan). But this is rooted in a false, propagandistic history of the West and America. Free, stable, and prosperous societies have existed alongside a state-acknowledged religion. The peculiarly American practice of non-establishment has not even long meant the sharp cleavage that Americans currently experience; in the early Republic many states had established churches. Many states retain “blue laws.” And prayer in public schools was only recent undone by judicial fiat. Would the liberals and neocons say America was not free until the 1950s? Or that Europe of the 19th Century was indistinguishable from Ba'athist Iraq? . . . Some obeisance of the new Iraqi constitution towards Islam would do much to take the wind out of the sails of would-be theocrats. Iraqis, like people everywhere, are more defensive when they reasonably feel the need to be."

There are many alternatives to our current revolutionary deocracy strategy. We could sell something like "we'll share our technological blessings with you, so long as you stop trying to kill us." Or, 1950s style, "America helps its friends and punishes its enemies." Or we could say, "You've had a false start with mid-20th-century quasi-fascist systems, how about liberalism coupled with an Islamic culture." THere are so many altenratives. And they need not be touchy feely, announcing our intention to defned ourselves is both effectdive, necessary,am nd consistent with notiosn of honor. But the notion that we're going to "liberate" Iraqis and the rest of the Middle East with western-style democracy, secularism, and liberalism is the height of stupidity.

My earlier post referenced what some called the "decadance" of the west as part of the reason for Islamic rebellion against the west. While I did use some to more extreme behavior as examples, the problem is more than mere decadence.

A major issue for the fundamnetalists of the Arab world is the creeping cultural invasion of their world by the west. They see their women wear tight jeans and use makeup. They see McDonalds, Pizza Huts, and Starbucks on every corner. Western clothing, food, music, and language are taking over their societies. Western corporations line the cities' business districts. They naturally want to maintain the cultures thay have known for centuries so they resist such changes.

An anolgy is when a large number of blacks or Asians move into a conservative white neighborhood. There are cultural differences that lead to problems. Into that mix in the Mid East, add tyrants all too eager to exploit this tension for their own gain, not unlike the race-baiters on both sides of the racial divide in the US.

Religious leaders, sheiks, imams, old school leaders know that this cultural revolution in their midst will weaken their hold on power. As people become more westernized, they will less likely to blindly follow their lead. So these leaders demonize all the western influences as a way to hold onto their power.

Its all about power. . .. .it always is.

.

habit 6:

seek first to understand,then to be understood.

agree with it or not, its still more effective to conduct ourselves in a way they can handle.
this is a very interesting point.

it may make us seem even stronger by being able to show that we can bend and not mind it.
hmmm..

Chester noted that "thewiz correctly links democracy and honor. we need to be making this case not only in Iraq but throughout the Islamic world."

Seems to me that the thread running through democracy and honor--and their obverses, too (tyranny and humiliation)-- is the concept of the dignity of the individual. "All men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." Respect THAT, and the rest follows, including the Jihadis' correct conclusion that democracy is a mortal threat to all they aspire to achieve.

"All men are created equal", true, but at what point do they become less equal, that is what is troubling. Isn't that the problem between the Sunni and the Shi'ia? What is the catalist which will bring them together, like mixing oil and water? (Pun not intended.) There's more to the problem than just explaining democracy as honor. There are certain elements in Sharia law, if watered down a little, we wish they could be applied in our country, civil restrictions which would get rid of the decadence mentioned above.

How do we apply democracy and the right to speak out and at the same time say they are wrong to react violently to remarks in speeches not intended as insults? We forget this reaction runs deep in their souls, their religion is all most of them have, they have little in the way of worldly goods. To criticize the one thing all of them have without offering something in its place leaves a huge void. It is saying, 'Everything you know is wrong! But we are going to teach you what is true.'How will they know it is true?

If democracy = honor, why are U.S. Congressmen going to jail for corruption, what happened to their "honor"? It's the double standard that undercuts the teaching, the creation of the "honor".

Our task is the greatest civilization change in history. And that's a very tough job.