Follow-up to my post about George Kennan (which, I am proud to say, has set off the first spirited debate here in Laboville). I thought it might be interesting to migrate that discussion from the "Comments" section to the main page. Here's what has transpired (the last post is my latest response).

The Brother-in-Law: While "strategically-placed support for budding pluralism" may have been a factor in Eastern Europe, an equally significant factor was that the USSR simply couldn't afford both guns and butter - the domestic expenditures needed to pacify a stifled populace were made impossible by the demands of matching the 80s buildup in Western (primarily US, but don't disregard Lady Maggie as the intellectual half of the right-wing western leadership) arms and armaments.

We can bombard the Muslim world with Voice of America, etc., but I'm not sure we have a second "weapon" in our arsenal. Too much of the Western thinking starts with the premise that, when exposed to western values and given the ability to make independent decisions, all people will choose these Western values. But, what if they don't? What if that stretch of world from Algeria to Indonesia just wants that old-time religion?

Me: It may be true that the Middle East just wants that old-time religion. But signs seem to indicate otherwise. After all, Iran had a hard-line Islamist revolution, but it didn't stick; the thing that replaced the iron rule of the Ayatollahs was a democratically elected and reformist minded congress. Admittedly, Khatami is no Washington, but it's a start.

Perhaps we'll never remake Bagdad in our image, but it can't hurt to try. To quote Kennan, "wherever, in this modern age, one has to choose between war and no war, such is the fearfulness of modern armaments that one should give every conceivable preference to the possibilities and arguments for peace before resorting to the sword."

The Brother-in-Law: But that would still leave Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Kuwait, Iraq and Pakistan, for starters.

(Assuming, arguendo, that in the context of the region, that countries such as Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and the various smaller Gulf states & emirates come under the category of "good enough for now".)

Then, of course, we can jump over the Indian subcontinent and deal with issues of the Asian Muslim population centers (first and foremost, of course, Indonesia, as we were so tragically reminded 10 days ago in Bali).

And, when all that is done, there are more than 100 MILLION Muslims in India, plus tens of million Muslims in China and the various "stans" of the FSU.

In the early part of the previous millenium, Christianity went through what could kindly be called "growing pains", during which it took several hundred years - and uncountable crusades, deaths, rapes, etc. - to develop a working model for interaction between "the Church" and "the State" - almost as if Christianity, having "come of age", was now being a rebellious teenager. While that was going on, however, European society had the "Dark Ages". I lack the historical knowledge and training to do an in-depth comparison between the issues and themes that Christianity faced +/- 1,000 years ago with those facing Islam today, however I throw the idea out for consideration.

Unfortunately, modern warfare doesn't consist of thousands of large, loud, sweaty & smelly warriors who trek hundreds of miles on foot or ship to use clubs, lances, rocks and spears. How the rest of the world will survive a comparable period of "adolesence" by Islam is still to be determined - but so far, the teenagers are winning...

Me: I'll grant you that the task is daunting. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there is one fundamental difference between the last millenium and this one: in the history of the world, there has rarely, if ever, been such a concentration of destructive power under one nation's control as exists in the U.S. military today. In contrast to the Crusades, which were privately financed and loosely organized battles between roughly equivalent fighting forces, this time around, the sides aren't exactly equal. Rogue nuclear states might indeed inflict horrific damage on the U.S. with their handful of nuclear weapons, but without ICBMs and multiple independently-targetable warheads that magnify the impact of each ICBM, none have the ability to eliminate U.S. retaliatory capability. Even a rogue state that merely supports a stateless terrorist network would have to think twice before condoning aggression that would likely result in the elimination of the host regime, whether by conventional or nuclear means.

And therein may lie the key to our salvation (if you can call it that): say what you will about any radical regime in the Middle East, none of them is so irrational as to invite its own total destruction. Call it the "Yamamoto principle" -- no one really wants to wake up the slumbering giant, since that would be "bad for business", so to speak. This is not to say that we should rest on our nuclear laurels, just that things may not be as dire as some would have us believe.

Of course, there is another explanation, namely that you can't believe everything you see on CNN -- as Barry Rubin postulates in the most recent edition of Foreign Affairs [article], anti-Americanism may just be stoked by the Arab power elites to keep the Arab street preoccupied and unfocused on the failings of those same power elites. The fact is, as Rubin recounts, that American involvement in the Middle East is actually more sympathetic to Arab and Islamist interests than those regimes would have you believe, but that the story has been twisted around in a sort of through-the-looking-glass kind of way. Rubin's conclusion is that if the power elites can somehow be discredited -- by standing up to them as we did in Afghanistan, and by demanding that our more moderate beneficiaries take actions to justify our support as a way of sending a message that we're not playing around any longer -- we would find that the rampant anti-American sentiment on the street might not turn out to be so rampant after all.

There is a headline in today's New York Times (front page, below the fold) that reads "Israeli Settlers' Zeal Forces Palestinians to Flee Their Town". [article] When you read the article, it explains that a group of "militant young settlers" have engaged in a year of "steadily mounting violence" against the Palestinian residents of Khirbat Yanun, including "gunfire, stone-throwing, physical assaults and vandalism".

Okay, a couple of questions:

First, how is this not terrorism in its own right? Is it because it's Israeli "settlers" doing the shooting, and not Palestinian radicals? Reread my previous description of the article, but substitute the word "Palestinians" for "settlers", and "Israeli" for "Palestinian". Now is it an example of terrorism? If so, what's the difference?

Second, what does the Times mean by "zeal" (a word that is used in the headline and repeated in the body of the article)? Webster's defines "zeal" to mean "enthusiastic and intensive interest, as in a cause or ideal; ardor"; it's hardly the word to describe a systematic year-long campaign to drive people out of their homes that included shooting at goat herders on a hillside and farmers picking olives in an olive grove. Why the soft-soaping of the settlers' terror campaign?

Third, the jump headline on page A4 restates the headline thus: "Jewish Settlers' Fervor Forces Palestinians to Flee a Town". Why, again, does the Times gloss the fact that this was a calculated terror campaign? "Fervor", like "zeal", is a morally neutral word that simply means that the "settlers" are passionate in their beliefs. These words fail to convey that what they did is criminal, and that their actions recall the tactics of the pogrom, and Kristalnacht and countless other persecutions that Jews have endured in the past. Is the Times afraid to call them terrorists and their actions a reign of terror? If so, why?

All of this leads me to a fourth question, having little to do directly with the Times' article. It is this: why are we (American Jews) in the thrall of this radical branch of Israeli society. They are racist, bigoted, intolerant and criminal. Inspired by the admirable ideal of building a Jewish homeland, they have followed a course of conduct that tramples on both ancient and modern conceptions of what it means to be Jewish. Why must we accept this and continue to support an Israeli government that won't stand up to this home-grown terrorism?

Two other notes: first, I had intended to comment on the Times' use of the term "Jewish settlers" instead of "Israeli settlers", but I think that American Jews, at least, have been complicit in the continuing support that the "settlers" receive from Israel, and so perhaps it's too late to protest the borderless (and therefore, more expansive) group-identifier. Second, throughout this post I have used the term "settlers" in quotes. The reason is that, in my view, using "settler" to describe the Israelis moving into the West Bank is disingenuous since it installs in them a nobility that, judging by their actions, is decidedly undeserved. In the end, however, even though labels are inherently political creations, they are often expedient for telling the sides apart. And so, although for clarity I use the term "settler", I have decided to set it off in quotation marks to remind myself and readers that it is not a label that I subscribe to willingly.

I'm happy to report that George Kennan is, for the moment, alive and well, both in New Jersey and in the pages of the New Yorker, as reported by Jane Mayer. [article] Kennan, for those unfamiliar with the history of American foreign policy, coined the term "containment", which underpinned American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union for the better part of 40 years. So why is he relevant now? Perhaps it's this: Kennan was wise enough then to recognize that a war borne of fundamental ideological differences was ultimately unwinnable where nuclear weapons were involved; in the process of proving the supremacy of one ideological model over the other, the U.S and the U.S.S.R. would destroy each other, and the planet, many times over. The genius of Kennan's notion of containment was that, by avoiding head-to-head conflict between ideological opposites, there could be a sort of Darwinian natural selection among the ideologies. In the end, ironically, it was the ultimate capitalist solution -- let the market decide which ideology would become the new standard.

Which brings us to Iraq and why Kennan's notion remains relevant today. It is this: whether the opponent is communism or Islamic fundamentalism, a war borne of fundemental ideological differences remains unwinnable as long as weapons of mass destruction are involved. Simply put, we will not convince the Muslim Middle East that American pluralism is superior to native despotism or religious extremism simply by bombing Iraq into submission; the more likely result is that Iraq bombs Israel who then either counterattacks or doesn't counterattack, with neither response in our control. In either case, moreover, American intervention is mistaken for American imperialism (whether on behalf of Israel or for our own aggrandizement), which begets more fundamental extremism. Better that we contain Iraq while sponsoring (or initiating) efforts at pluralism elsewhere around the Muslim world, starting with Egypt and Jordon (and, farther east, Indonesia), but then expanding to include Iran and (someday) Saudi Arabia. As we saw with the Velvet Revolution in Eastern Europe, strategically-placed support for budding pluralism might result in a more complete downfall of fundamentalist Islam than we would ever achieve through superior military might.

Now, if only we could get Kennan an appointment with President Bush...

I suppose that I should be happy to hear that the President has a plan for what happens after we win the war against Iraq and have deposed Saddam Hussein. [article] Now, I just wish we had a plan for how to win the war -- according to some reports, in contrast to the last Gulf War, which lasted all of 100 hours, a new Gulf War would be fought house to house in the streets of Baghdad, and could get ugly. [article]

In this regard, the Bush Administration has made references to the Iraqi "street", and how, once freed from the tyrrany of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi people (or, at least, a well-armed subset thereof) will join the opposition parties fighting alongside the U.S. against Saddam. While I have no knowledge of whether this is true or not, I suspect that it is less true than the President would like to believe; rumors of Saddam's demise have, up to now, been markedly premature. For a thoughtful exposition on this subject, check out Ofra Bengio's July/August 2000 article in Foreign Affairs on the resilience of Saddam Hussein. [article]

[This opinion piece appeared in Harvard University's newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, on Monday, September 23. Unfortunately, the Crimson's Website is down for "necessary maintenance", so I cannot link to the site. The article is reprinted here, but please visit the Harvard Crimson website, too. Dershowitz's article refers to a speech by Harvard president Lawrence Summers regarding a movement to require Harvard to divest its endowment of any investmetns in Israel. Summers characterized that move a form of latent anti-Semitism. This was Dershowitz's response.]

A Challenge to House Master Hanson

By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ

In my 38 years of teaching at Harvard Law School, I don't recall ever writing in praise of any action by a Harvard president, but this time I must congratulate President Lawrence H. Summers for his willingness to say out loud what many of us in the Harvard community have long believed: namely, that singling out Israel, among all the countries in the world, for divestment, is an action which is anti-Semitic in effect, if not in intent. A recent open letter by one of the signatories made it clear that he regards Israel as the pariah state, a word historically used by anti-Semites to characterize the Jewish people. As an advocate and practitioner of human rights throughout the world, I can confidently assert that Israel's record on human rights is among the best, especially among nations that have confronted comparable threats. Though far from perfect, Israel has shown extraordinary concern for avoiding civilian casualties in its half-century effort to protect its civilians from terrorism. Jordan killed more Palestinians in a single month than Israel has between 1948 and the present.

Israel has the only independent judiciary in the entire Middle East. Its Supreme Court, one of the most highly regarded in the world, is the only court in the Middle East from which an Arab or a Muslim can expect justice, as many have found in winning dozens of victories against the Israeli government, the Israeli military and individual Israeli citizens. There is no more important component in the protection of human rights and civil liberties than an independent judiciary willing to stand up to its own government. I challenge the proponents of divestment to name a court in any Arab or Muslim country that is comparable to the Israeli Supreme Court.

Israel is the only country in the region that has virtually unlimited freedom of speech. Any person in Israel whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian can criticize the Israeli government and its leaders. No citizen of any other Middle Eastern or Muslim state can do that without fear of imprisonment or death.

Israel is the only country that has openly confronted the difficult issue of protecting the civil liberties of the ticking bomb terrorist. The Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled that despite the potential benefits of employing non-lethal torture to extract information, the tactic is illegal. Brutal torture, including lethal torture, is commonplace in nearly every other Middle Eastern and Muslim country. Indeed, American authorities sometimes send suspects to Egypt, Jordan and the Philippines precisely because they know that they will be tortured in those countries.

Nor is Israel the only country that is occupying lands claimed by others. China, Russia, Turkey, Iraq, Spain, France and numerous other countries control not only land, but people who seek independence. Indeed, among these countries Israel is the only one that has offered statehood, first in 1948 when the Palestinians rejected the UN partition which would have given them a large, independent state and chose instead to invade Israel. Again in the year 2000 Palestinians were offered a state, rejected it and employed terrorism.

There are, of course, difficult issues to be resolved in the Middle East. These include the future of the settlements, the establishment of Palestinian self-governance and the prevention of terrorism. These issues will require compromise on all sides. Members of the Harvard community must be free to criticize Israel when they disagree with its policies or actions, as they criticize any other country in the world whose record is not perfect. But to single out the Jewish state of Israel, as if it were the worst human rights offender, is bigotry pure and simple. It would be comparable to singling out a black nation for de-legitimation without mentioning worse abuses by white nations. Those who sign the divestment petition should be ashamed of themselves. If they are not, it is up to others to shame them.

Among those who signed this immoral petition was Winthrop House Master Paul Hanson. I wrote to Prof. Hanson challenging him to debate me in the Common Room of Winthrop House about his decision to sign the petition.

He refused, citing other priorities. I can imagine few priorities more pressing than to justify to his students why he is willing to single
out Israel for special criticism. Accordingly, I hereby request an invitation from the students of Winthrop House to conduct such a debate, either with Hanson present or with an empty chair on which the petition which he signed would be featured. Universities should encourage widespread debate and discussion about divisive and controversial issues. A House master who peremptorily signs a petition and then hides behind other priorities does not serve the interests of dialogue and education. I hope that Hanson will accept my challenge, and that if he does not, that I will be invited by his students to help fill the educational gap left by the cowardice of those who have signed this petition and refuse to defend their actions in public debate.

Let me propose an alternative to singling out Israel for divestment: let Harvard choose nations for investment in the order of the human rights records. If that were done, investment in Israel would increase dramatically, while investments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Philippines, Indonesia, the Palestinian Authority and most other countries of the world would decrease markedly.

Alan M. Dershowitz is Frankfurter professor of law at Harvard Law School

There has been a problem between Blogger and my blog host (Blogspot) that has prevented me from updating the page for about two weeks. Because I have a somewhat stressful job, I didn't have much time to post anyway, and frankly, wasn't all that religious about checking to see if the problem was fixed. I'm a little less stressed now, and the problem appears to be fixed, so hopefully, I can resume my regular irregular schedule of posts.