"we liberals are paying the price"

Just got off the phone with Hazem Saghiye, a Lebanese, London-based writer for al-Hayat and in my opinion one of the smartest and insightful Arab liberals out there.   While I don't want to go into most of the details of our conversation, Saghiye said one thing which I wanted to highlight - not because it's new but because it is so relevant:

"with the atrocities being committed by the Israelis, the gap between us and anything coming from the West will become wider – democracy, liberalism, how can we talk about these right now? ....  We liberals are paying the price for this combination of stupidity and violence."

Since 9/11 this has been a constant refrain among many Arab reformers and liberals:   Bush's foreign policy has tended to harm precisely those liberals whose visions of reform he claimed to nurture.  Judging not only by Saghiye but by the overwhelming weight of comments I've heard and read in the last two weeks, the American position on the Lebanon war seems to be putting the final killing touches.   

Ironically enough, towards the end of my conversation with Saghiye, al-Jazeera's news turned to the latest videotape by Ayman al-Zawahiri.

source: al-Jazeera screen capture

Zawahiri called for an alliance of anti-American forces, including Hezbollah despite its Shia roots, and for a jihad against Israel.   (it's interesting, by the way, that right now the English version of al-Jazeera has a much more extensive presentation of Zawahiri's video than does the Arabic version - I've actually had a hard time getting the full text of his address in Arabic anywhere, for some reason).   One of the most quoted sound-bytes from his speech is that al-Qaeda "won't stay silent" in the face of Israel's wars.  Which is telling in its own way - "not staying silent" could mean as little as speaking, i.e. issuing a videotape, which risks playing into the criticism of al-Qaeda as increasingly all talk and no action.  And it's easy to mock al-Qaeda for again (as with the Danish cartoons) jumping on a bandwagon long after it left the station. 

But that would be short sighted.  I've written at length about how al-Qaeda has developed what I call a "constructivist strategy" - working primarily at the level of ideas, identity and public discourse.  Osama bin Laden's April speech could not have been more clear about al-Qaeda's goal of promoting a "clash of civilizations" as the defining frame governing world politics.  In what Gramsci might have called a war of position, al-Qaeda seeks to define the "common sense" of Arab and Muslim politics.  Its metrics for success from this perspective are less the number of dead Westerners than the number of Muslims who have increased their identification with Islam or have accepted key elements of the al-Qaeda political narrative.  Key elements such as:  the idea of equating Israel and America as partners in the Zionist-Crusader Alliance against Islam;  the idea that the West does not value Muslim lives;   the idea that the West will never allow Islamist parties to win democratic elections;  the idea that Islam and the West are locked in an eternal struggle which can only be decided by power rather than by dialogue or diplomacy, and that peaceful co-existence is impossible.  I'd reckon that such ideas look a lot more common-sensical today than they did a month ago across the Arab and Muslim worlds.   Even though he didn't mention al-Qaeda, this is one way of interpreting Hazem Saghiye's remark about the growing gap between the West and the Arab world - a gap which silences the moderates and marginalizes the liberals, while empowering the radicals and the Islamists. 

While Bernard Haykal (whose work I respect) may be right that al-Qaeda fears Hezbollah's competition, I wouldn't take this too far:  in this wider constructivist war of position, the Lebanon war has been a godsend for al-Qaeda (as they might phrase it).  The Lebanon crisis could never be contained - even if the war does not physically spread to Iran or Syria, the images of the war have already done their work throughout the Arab and Islamic world.   Just as Iraq served al-Qaeda's strategy by supplying an endless stream of images of "heroic mujahideen" fighting against "brutal Americans" - and became less useful as images of dead Iraqi civilians began to complicate the picture - the  Lebanon war offers an unending supply of images and actions which powerfully support al-Qaeda's narrative and world-view... without the complications posed by Zarqawi's controversial anti-Shia strategy in Iraq. (In that regard, al-Qaeda's open support for Hezbollah might even help to heal that Sunni-Shia breach which Zarqawi worked so hard to open against bin Laden and Zawahiri's advice). 

For Israel this may be a matter of defending itself against a threat on its northern border, but the United States should be able to see things in a wider global framework.  I seem to recall something about a war on terror?  And a war of ideas?   The Bush administration and supporters of Israel's war against Lebanon have been arguing that it is part of the war on terror. (Zawahiri, in his tape, agreed... for different reasons.)   But I think this gets things directly and dangerously backward, and - like Iraq - demonstrates the bankruptcy of the hawkish approach to the war on terror.  Winning the war on terror means discrediting al-Qaeda's ideas and building a global norm against terror (the use of violence against civilians for political ends).  It requires constructing a positive narrative - of shared interests and support for reform - which can compete with al-Qaeda's narrative.   The unilateral use of force, particularly when it resonates so intensely with the narrative frame you are trying to discredit, simply doesn't help in this real war of ideas.  The war on terror is a strong reason that the United States should have acted to contain the crisis rather than giving Israel a free hand, not a reason for it to support the war's continuation. 

As to what the US could do to set things right, Saghiye just laughed.  "Too late, my friend.  Don't you think it's too late?"

Comments

[Leila]

Agreed, Abu-Aardvark, agreed. We liberals are paying the price, in the lofty intellectual and policy circles where you work, and in the more mundane, simple life I lead. For years I've argued with Arab-American and Arab friends and relations that America is not the evil empire. Really, let's be reasonable, I'd say. Israel isn't bent on destroying Lebanon's economy out of spite, and America isn't just about murdering Arabs for power and profit.

I feel I have lost that argument. I have nothing to say any more. The most extreme positions no longer seem that outrageous. Somebody like Angry Arab has now won every dispute and I really, really don't have anything to offer besides some weak hope that maybe, just maybe, somebody else will become President who won't want to let Arabs die by the tens of thousands...

After listening to Hilary Clinton on Israel, I don't have much hope of that either.

[CKT]

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Fundamentally this comes down to a war of ideas. Al-Qaeda is ground zero for the lunatic fringe of fundamentalist Islam. Their views are way out of the mainstream, and I think the majority of Muslims see Al-Qaeda for what it is. But our cause is not helped with images of Israeli Jews dropping US-made munitions on innocents being televised all across the Mid East. The little effort we may have made on the "war of ideas" front is completely erased.

BTW, keep up the good work. I’ve been reading your blog regularly since this latest flare-up began; it’s the only place I’ve found that gives genuine expertise in following these issues.

[Chukuriuk]

I was recently in Eastern Europe, where a well-educated and otherwise well-informed young intellectual, after a couple of bottles, began to claim that Al-Qaeda was a legitimate political agent (as distinct from a suicide cult that found itself in the right place at the right time, as I recall arguing). I am afraid that the AQ "meme" is not only playing at home, but that it has moved well beyond the Islamic world.

[rodolfo Buaiz]

this meme seems to be replicating widely in Brasil, as well...
and it's truly awful to lose the Ideas War, this could cost decades of world wide terror...
I'll second Leila: good work!

[Hedley Lamar]

You guys don't get it.

On the US conservative planet, Liberalism is Evil.

The US is virtually the only country on earth where the term "liberal" is synonymous with "subversive" and "dangerous" in the mind of the political Right.

So when political reformers in the Middle East advocate liberalism--representative government, rule of law, free elections, human rights, all that good stuff--conservatives in the US immediately tune them out.

We're not talking about steel-trap minds here. Nor are we talking about much knowledge of anything outside Republican Party handouts and the assorted gurglings of right-wing talk radio..

[Leila]

Hedley, I do get it. But I'm not going to cede the term liberal just because a bunch of mouth-breathers have decided it means something it does not.

Liberal values may be on their way to the dustbin of history, crushed by the barbarian hordes, but I'll cling to them to very end. Liberal arts, liberal politics, liberal thinking: all the values that matter to me. Without them, I am just another bloodthirsty sheep.

[Hedley Lamar]

Relax Leila (refraining from Eric Clapton references). The above was intended to be snarky. I fully endorse your interpretation of the term "liberal", especially since I happen to share it. My point was that in a spin-dominated, historically-ignorant ideologically-befuddled place like the US one must tailor one's political lingo to fit the circumstances. If political reformers in the Middle East would only call themselves something besides "liberals", such as "conservatives", "born-again Christians", "finger-lickin' goobers", or just plain "good guys", they might gain more traction with those primarily responsible for shaping and influencing foreign policy in these here United States.
Jest sayin' :)