AL QAEDA VS. PARIS HILTON
James Frederick Dwight
Soxblog - dbsoxblog.blogspot.com
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a review of Thomas Barnett’s brilliant “The Pentagon’s New Map.” As you might recall, PNM splits the world into two different parts. One is the Core which consists of all the countries that you might purchase a good from or take a vacation in. The other is the Gap which consists of countries that produce pretty much no goods for purchasing and that you wouldn’t visit unless you were a contestant on “Fear Factor.” PNM is all about the need, the urgent need, to integrate gap countries into the core and offers itself as something of a how-to manual for the task.
While it's highly unlikely that anyone at Al Qaeda has read PNM (although we're making progress, Kabul has yet to land a Borders), I do think that on some level Al Qaeda senses the Core/Gap dichotomy. And I think they’re aware that even though PNM has yet to officially or publicly become the government’s playbook, America is steadily and inexorably entering the Gap both with our military (Iraq, Afghanistan) and with our soft power (just about everywhere). For Al Qaeda, America’s shrinking of the Gap is a huge problem. Indeed, America’s growing prominence in the Gap threatens to move Al Qaeda’s goals completely out of reach.
To put it simply, Al Qaeda needs the Gap to remain the Gap. It’s not much of an overstatement to say that Wahabbism wants to take the Islamic world back to the 8th century and have the literal dictates of Islam be the law of the land. Obviously if the Arab world becomes economically and culturally westernized, that will be impossible. If a free market of ideas develops in that part of the world, the Fundamentalists don’t have a chance.
To be culturally balanced, Islam isn’t the only religion that has problems with some adherents that desperately want to turn back the clock. The experience of Israel is instructive in this regard. Since its birth, Israel has struggled with an Orthodox population that thinks strict adherence to all aspects of ancient Jewish law should be a defining characteristic of the Jewish state.
The Israeli Orthodox know that the modern western style world is inimical to the goal of practicing religion with 3rd Century B.C. style rigor. They understand that if free to choose, most people will opt for 21st century accoutrements over non-stop prayer and devotion. To take one example from the country’s early days, they knew that if driving on the Sabbath was permitted, eventually driving on the Sabbath would be common. They confronted one of the oldest problems known to man: How do you keep the boy on the farm after he’s seen Paris?
In spite of a half century of concessions to its Orthodox population, Israel today is and always has been a relatively normal Western style state. There’s been a free market of ideas and most Israelis follow an American type model. In other words, in spite of the occasional symbolic victories, the Israeli Orthodox have lost.
Perhaps ironically, the Wahabbis face a similar set of problems. Whether our government follows the dictates of PNM or not, America is coming into the Gap in a big way. Even if our military doesn’t set foot on Arab sand, Coca-Cola will and Microsoft will and a score of others will as well. I’m pretty sure that’s what the whole “soft power” concept is about. In spite of our government’s absence of any formal plan, America is helping develop a free market of ideas in that part of the world. What a disaster for the Wahabbis the internet promises to be! Keeping the boy on the farm after he’s seen Paris will be easy compared to keeping the potential Jihadi in the madras after he’s seen Paris Hilton.
That’s why Al Qaeda feels it has to destroy the United States. Even if our government cowers as a Kerry led government might, our culture will be unstoppable. If there’s a buck to be made in that part of the world, American companies will make the trip. And even if they don’t, how will Al Qaeda prevent Western culture from entering via the internet?
To do that, they’ll have to somehow stop the dissemination of American culture. That’s not going to happen if America is still standing. And that’s why, from Al Qaeda’s perspective, war is their only choice.
As long as we’re going to be free, there will be no negotiated peace with this foe. They sense us coming into the gap. Even if to date we’re not doing it by deliberate design, our advancement is accelerating. Freedom, as ever, is on the march. In a free market of ideas, Wahabbism doesn’t have a chance. This they know.
So here’s the struggle – we’re racing to fill the Gap, they’re racing to destroy us before we do.
(An additional word about Tom Barnett, author of PNM. He writes a blog at www.thomaspmbarnett.com that is remarkable for both its quantity and quality. It's unlike anything else on the web. If you haven't already, check it out. It's really quite amazing - he puts out more stuff a day than Glenn Reynolds.)
BARNETT - COMMENTARY: This is good stuff, by my measure, and it is pointing in the same direction events have been leading me in recent weeks (i.e., recent interactions with Special Operations Command and Central Command). By that I mean I've been instinctively peddling a series of competing timelines whenever I'm sitting down with decision-makers and talking about the Middle East. They are summed up as follows:
1. Globalization timeline in terms of penetrating the Middle East
2. Al Qaeda timeline in terms of hijacking the Middle East
3. U.S. timeline on transforming the Middle East, which speeds up #1
4. Al Qaeda timeline in terms of "waiting out" the oil economy
5. Israel timeline on wall versus Palestinian demographics
6. Iran timeline on WMD versus the bottom-up counterrevolution
7. Saudi timeline on reform versus birds coming home to roost
8. Iraq settling-down timeline versus rising Shiite unrest across region
9. Developing Asia oil and gas demand timeline
10. Global peaking-of-oil-demand timeline
11. Timeline on next generation cars
12. Timeline on where the fundamentalists make their next stand (post-Middle East)
13. Russia timeline on growing role in Middle East
14. India timeline on growing role in Middle East
15. China timeline on growing role in Middle East
16. And so on and so on
Not all of these are as important as others, but you get a sense of the potential scenario dynamics for what we loosely call this Global War on Terrorism. In PNM, I tried to bundle up the whole mess based on two questions (Whither Iraq? Whither Big Bang?) to get the four regional scenarios I laid out there (Black Hawk Down-the Series, Arab Yugoslavia, New Berlin Wall, Persia Engulfed). What Dean does here nicely is highlight one of the key scenario dynamics at work across the entire process. |
