Pardonnez-moi, I stand corrected
Below, I disparaged France as lacking the will to step up to the plate as a military ally of the U.S. I seem to have been half wrong. In The Weekly Standard article No Truer Friend Than . . . France?, author Christopher Caldwell writes:

In an extraordinary and little noticed series of polls over the past month, the Paris-based public-opinion research firm Ipsos has found that not only are the French on board for the war--they're crazy about it.

Granted, the country's leadership has sent mixed messages. While President Jacques Chirac has offered the country's "unconditional" support, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who's supposed to keep his nose out of foreign affairs but is running against Chirac next year, has been hedging since the morning of September 11. To his enduring disgrace, Jospin was warning America against overreaction even as survivors were still screaming in the Trade Center rubble.

But there is no such division among the French public: 68 percent described themselves to Ipsos as wanting France to participate in the American war against terrorism, versus only 34 percent opposed. This is not soft support: 61 percent back involvement even if it means risking "terrorist reprisals on French soil"; 46 percent back involvement even if it means a "significant number of casualties" among French troops.

Thus, the French people are supportive, but the leadership isn't, while the situation appears reversed in Germany. Caldwell speculates that French support for US retaliation may have to do with majority French resentments towards their sizeable (5 million!) Muslim minority. He also reports that Nablus-style celebrations of the 9/11 attack occurred in French Muslim neighborhoods. France could be a real powderkeg someday, a Bosnia squared.

I've found some recent Ipsos polling about the US retaliation here. My French is terrible, but "une majorité à approuver l'intervention militaire américaine et les frappes aériennes en Afghanistan" sounds good to me.

Incidentally, I noticed this article via the excellent Hotline World Extra service provided by The Atlantic Monthly. Thanks to my dad for pointing it out to me, it's the best "roundup" I've seen.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:58:00 AM -- |    

 

Your mission: refuel flying gas-tank/bomb in midair four times, attack enemy, dodge missiles, land on 150 yard aircraft carrier at night. Repeat.
Details such as this may be having a real effect: (BBC News) Eyewitness: Night shift on USS Roosevelt

"The flight crews are in the air seven or eight hours", says the Admiral. "They come back tired and stiff and then they have to make a night landing on this aircraft carrier and that's never easy." In an effort to ease the demands on the 5,500 men and women on the Roosevelt, the normal daily cycle has been reversed. [...]
The F-14s and F-18s will need mid-air refuelling at least four times during every night sortie.

Refueling itself is no piece of cake; this is a stressful, dangerous maneuver that can only be more difficult at night. Altogether, this reports seems to tick off all of the classic ingredients for a buildup of fatigue and stress. That, in turn, will eventually contribute to bad decisions by pilots aboard the planes attacking Afghanistan, perhaps such as this one (BBC News: US admits second bombing error). True, the Roosevelt pilots are the only "night shift", but the pace and stress are similar for all the carrier pilots, despite being motivated as never before.

So why are our pilots forced to make 4 hour commutes to work? Because, as Thomas Friedman points out in the New York Times, other than the British, we are to all intents and purposes all alone in this fight. Other than Great Britain, no country has both the will and the means to really materially assist us*. To think that our best hope for a nearby land-based air base will be somewhere in Putin's back yard is to realize, in my opinion, that we'll either need

* to slow down the air campaign,
* to not worry about bombing errors, or
* to focus air sorties on ground support of our own troops on Afghan soil, or
* another aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean soon

Put me down for troops on the ground, and another aircraft carrier.

=====
* With the possible exceptions of Australia (a bit short on power) and France (enough said). Despite my entry below, I'd put Germany in the "no means" category here. This is a country that has basically got nothing left militarily (Die Zeit) after huffing and puffing and stripping its best units to put together a credible presence in Kosovo and Macedonia. Whether that's as it should be is obviously up to Germans, but it illustrates why economic power by itself shouldn't give Germany (or, for the other big example, Japan) a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, let alone veto power in that body. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:55:00 AM -- |    

 

Due to understandable inexperience fighting mass-murdering fascists, two out of three Germans support ceasefire in Afghanistan:
The German newspaper "Die Welt" reported that 69% of Germans supported a halt to bombing Afghanistan in a survey conducted by the Forsa Opinion Research Institute. Moreover, this opinion prevailed across all party lines, from the Christian Democrats to the Greens; to be sure, the rationale for the ceasefire in the survey question was to bring aid to refugees and the hungry. Correspondingly, "most Germans have a critical stance towards a military deployment by their country," according to the head of another survey research group (Emnid). Only 41% share Chancellor Schroeder's opinion that Germany must act in unconditional* solidarity with the U.S.**

The Green Party, naturally, is threatening to come apart at the seams about this. Foreign minister Fischer -- pretty much on board with Schroeder in the matter -- is accused of privately "mocking pacifism." Senior founding member Frejya Scholing resigned from the Greens, sharply criticizing the Green defense politician Angelika Beer for also supporting further bombing strikes. It may be a hopeful sign that even Ms. Scholing's pacifism seems to be running low: "The Greens are going completely nuts. One would like to nonviolently knock them dead."

=====
* Mr. Schroeder's word was "uneingeschraenkt"; alternatives in this context might be "unstinting" or better "without reservations". While "unconditional" works too, it's maybe too, well, unconditional, and its best German translation would be "bedingungslos." Whichever translation and precise shade of meaning Mr. Schroeder would be most comfortable with, the sentiment is obviously "I'm really with you".

** Cheap fun with polls: Since 69% support a ceasefire, and 41% support Schroeder's stance, I conclude that at least 41-(100-69)=10% of Germans are so confused as to support both. posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:01:00 AM -- |    

 

Victor Davis Hanson on war
I've mentioned Mr. Hanson previously (on 9/23/2001 and 10/14/2001), and wondered what he might say about these events. Here is his statement, in the National Review Online: If This Be War. I am forced to agree with him practically every step and sentence of the way. We should defeat Bin Laden, the Taliban, and ultimately Hussein, root and branch, come what may, regardless of Muslim street opinion, and certainly regardless of Saudi and Kuwaiti royalty opinion. I don't relish the idea at all, it makes me scared to think about it: a world war of a new kind, and one we may often be fighting alone. But like Hanson, I see yielding to Bin Laden and Hussein as even worse, and I believe that half-measures are part of what got us in to this mess. I would again add that in my opinion, this war is not about mere vengeance, it is about justice, and it is about preventing more and worse attacks. If and when we prevail, the world will eventually get around to thanking us for it. Not that that is overly important. Read the whole column. The beginning and end of it:

No American wishes to contemplate the idea of war — the horrific circumstances in which our country could lose many of its most precious citizens in a brutal effort to kill other humans. War is tragic and it is unfair, and we must weigh very heavily any decision that results in our own being killed in efforts [far away] to kill others. Yet sadly, killing is what we have suffered, and war is what has been unleashed upon us — losses incurred on American soil far more grievous than those at Fort Sumter or Pearl Harbor, the powder kegs of our two worst conflagrations. [...]

If we really are at war, let us perhaps have pity upon our doomed enemies. But after what we suffered on September 11, if we are not at war, then we should have pity upon ourselves for what we have become.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:59:00 PM -- |    

 

Teach a man to say "globalization"
PeterMaass.com: Emroz Khan Is Having a Bad Day: Which is not unusual, and helps explain why Peshawar's youth are tinder for Islamic extremism. (published in the The New York Times Magazine, 10/21/2001)
Peter Maass is an excellent reporter, who wrote one of the best books about the Balkan tragedy of the 1990s, "Love Thy Neighbor". Here he writes about the conditions he finds in Pakistan, which make "Dickensian" seem a feeble description. But after a compelling portrait of the dusty, hopeless poverty of Peshawar, Pakistan, come two diagnoses and prescriptions:

''Peshawar has suffered rather than benefited from globalization,'' Bilour says, sitting on a couch in his office. He has bolted the door, because the flow of assistants and colleagues and needy citizens cannot be halted otherwise. ''No aid package or special package of any kind has been provided by the world at large, or by the government of Pakistan. This is a very sorry state.''

Globalization means suffering. How exactly? If anything, without globalization the West would give even less of a flip about Peshawar. And Mr. Bilour's unrebutted reliance on aid packages is a bit remarkable for Mr. Maass, who has previously published a persuasive account of how Mogadishu flourished once aid stopped coming to town (Ayn Rand comes to Somalia, The Atlantic Monthly, May 2001).

For Bilour, the answer to Peshawar's problems comes down to one issue: schools. Building them and ensuring that parents can afford to enroll their children. Not counting refugees, only 52 percent of the city's school-age children attend school, and of those, nearly one-third attend madrassahs. If the city had the infrastructure to encourage investment and create jobs, and if it had more schools to neutralize the madrassahs, youths might not be tempted to spend their days chanting ''Death to America.''

But Bilour is a realist. He knows how reluctant politicians in the West are to lower tariffs, ease quotas or raise foreign aid, even though, currently, foreign aid accounts for only a tiny fraction of government spending. He also knows that the government in Islamabad is unlikely to be much help; corruption is endemic, and a large portion of state revenues go into military spending.

No argument here. Aid for education makes sense, as do Musharraf's recent moves to control the madrassah school system. But to blame the ills of world tariffs, corruption and military spending on "globalization" is backwards. The reluctance of politicians to lower tariffs is more accurately despite globalization, not because of it. True globalizers arguably want Peshawar to prosper and provide cheap goods that other economies and work forces don't want to produce. Anti-globalizers want, to be a bit uncharitable, as much Peshawar-style "donkey work" done within their own countries' boundaries as possible. Globalizers and anti-globalizers alike are presumably against corruption and unnecessary military spending.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 4:49:00 PM -- |    

 

When you put it that way
Check out the State Department's Issue Focus Reports web page. This was in the October 22 installment: "Russia Joins West Without Leaving East"

Reformist Izvestiya (10/22) carried a page-one report by Svetlana Babayeva in Shanghai: "Yesterday's meeting between the Russian and U.S presidents produced no grandiose sensation. But obviously, both sides needed it. It was timely, too.... Having Americans in Uzbekistan is better than having Taliban in Krasnodar (southern Russia). Let independent post-Soviet states decide for themselves with whom they want to be. A year from now NATO will reach the Russian border anyway. So why waste our energy and strain our vocal cords to try to stop it? Is that a concession? No, it is pragmatism, Russian officials say.... Russia is tired of being an exception. 'We want to be part of the civilized international community,' high-ranking Russian officials say."

(emphasis added)

The State Department link is also installed on the companion page to this blog, at newsrack: News: world perspectives. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:17:00 AM -- |    

 

One quarter of Palestinians and Pakistanis consider 9/11 attacks acceptable
In National Review Online, Daniel Pipes writes Bin Laden is a Fundamentalist. That's not exactly a news flash to most of us. But it is to Bush pal David Forte, who wants to think of Bin Laden as some kind of rare, mutant variety of Muslim, probably because (as Franklin Foer argues in The New Republic) he and Bush want religion and government intertwined in America's future. Forte wrote a recent rebuttal to Andrew Sullivan's recent New York Times Magazine piece This is a Religious War, titled Religion is Not the Enemy. But so far I'm more persuaded by Sullivan than by Forte, and I think Pipes also makes a sensible factual reply:

Fully one quarter of the populations in Pakistan and the Palestinian Authority (survey research finds, in separate polls both overseen by U.S. organizations) consider the September 11 attacks acceptable according to the laws of Islam. To me, this suggests that a very substantial body of Muslim opinion is already in bin Laden's camp; more, that virtually the whole range of fundamentalist Islamic opinion agrees with his goals and his methods. [...]

[David Forte] can cheerfully advise Washington to work with the huge majority of Muslims to isolate a tiny fringe of violent ideologues. I grimly tell the policymakers that the problem is not just the miniscule element he points to but the much larger one of fundamentalists, which I estimate at 10 to 15 percent of the Muslim population.

Trying to track down those survey results: in another article Pipes says that the Palestinian poll was done by Bir Zeit (University; no word on their American co-workers), while the Pakistan one was done by Gallup. Best I can do for now; neither organization's web site trumpets these numbers, so that the figures are probably released to subscribers and not to the public. Incidentally, Pipes piles on a bit in the 2d article cited by mentioning an on-line Indonesian survey "showing" high Bin Laden support. Such surveys are not random samples, but just counts of how many people are motivated to click a mouse about something. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:38:00 PM -- |    

 

Islam links
I've been struggling with a pretty negative view of Islam lately, to put it mildly. I wondered how hard it could be to unequivocally denounce flying planeloads of people into skyscrapers, to forego "yes, but"-U.S.-bashing while body parts were (are!) still being pulled from the smoking ruins in New York.

So I've been bookmarking various and sundry links to a kind of public "Favorite Places" site that I've imaginatively called "Islam". Obviously, this is a very subjective and incomplete survey of web resources about Islam; it's one I will add to from time to time. I've tried to incorporate instances of "honest Muslim" writing (honest by my lights), and more general articles about the relationships, twisted or otherwise, between Islam, Al Qaeda, and the Arab political world. The "Favorite Places" site is maintained by a very nice, useful free service, Backflip.com. You may want to use it for your own "bookmarks".

Some conclusions, lame though they may be:
1) "Islam" covers a lot of territory
2) there are many Muslims who are not satisfied with Islam in general or with its fundamentalist movements (Wahhabism, Khomeini Shi'ism, etc.) in particular
3) that said, such Muslims may not exactly be the opinion leaders and trendsetters of their Islamic generation


After browsing around for a while at various bookstores and online, I decided to get In the Shadow of the Prophet: The Struggle for the Soul of Islam, by Milton Viorst, who writes frequently for The New Yorker. He decided to write a sequel to an earlier book about Arab nationalism, Sandcastles, that instead focused on the current relationship of Islam itself to Arab politics. He visited leading seminaries, religious universities, and intellectuals throughout the Arab world, from Egypt to Iran to Saudi Arabia to France(!) to research the book. From the first chapter, "Through the Damascus Gate":

Arab culture [is deeply attached] to a heritage that has been transmitted largely intact over countless generations ... [while] Westerners [are more ready to] subject their practices to constant review, experimentation, modification... I would argue that this difference, in large part, explains why the West is rich and the Arab world poor [...]

...The West's focus on Middle East terrorism is much too narrow. Terrorism is a serious problem, one that requires constant vigilance. But terrorism is a symptom of ailments that the social lens must be widened to include... Terrorism is the cry of a society in disarray, a society which acknowledges that it has lost its bearings. [...]

...[Modernist Muslims have] been targeted for attack not just by a secular state but by orthodox and fundamentalist Muslims. In the struggle for who rules Islam, the modernists are underdogs. Islamic history teaches us that the odds heavily favor traditionalist beliefs.

Thus, Chapter 2 is titled "The Murder of Farag Foda." Farag Foda was an Egyptian Muslim dissenter who was assassinated in 1992 by members of "Gama'a Islamiyaa", a terrorist organization committed to suppressing heresy and establishing an Islamic state. Foda's crime: taking on Islamic scholars at a Cairo book fair to argue that Islam would actually be better served by not becoming part of the state, that the rashidun era immediately after Mohammed's death could not have been as idyllic as Islamic orthodoxy proclaims (3 of 4 of his closest apostles were murdered), that Egyptian Christians (Copts) deserved the protection of the state, and other heretical notions. posted by Thomas Nephew at 4:07:00 PM -- |