Hearteningly insightful...and actually pretty lengthy for an effort that didn't give the essay "the time it deserved"...imagine if he'd had more time...!

I believe "Fight Terrorism: Buy Indonesian." is incredibly profound.

Hows this for a peaceful solution to the "War on Terror" - the US unilaterally removes all trade barriers (including tarrifs, duties, quotas) with West Asia (including Pakistan and yes, IRAQ). A comprehensive free trade agreement, that could be written on the back of an envelope.

Everybody wins. The US consumer gets cheaper products, Arab producers find more markets, unemployment in those countries go down, and market pressures start bearing on dictatorial regimes. Yes, some US producers suffer *in the short term*, but as in the past, they will be able to adapt to different industries efficiently and quickly. Moreover, with the availability of cheaper goods from the Middle East, new industries and jobs spring up in a formerly recession hit US economy.

Most significantly, terror groups and Saddam will have to be real creative to find anything wrong with this measure, or to distract people in West Asia from rushing into new trade opportunities, that could drastically improve their quality of life.

Compare China before and after trade liberalization. Ditto with India and Russia. Having been brought up in the Indian liberalization of the 90s, I can assure you that the difference on the ground takes barely a few years to notice.

Any comments welcome (if glen feels this is too off topic, and you want to move the discussion, feel free to make it to my blog :) http://complexmango.rahulbijlani.net)

- Rahul

Well said Reynolds. I think Barber's Jihad vs.McWorld said a lot of the things you have pointed to in this. The west must do more than just export a greedy corporate ethos (like the one that gave us Enron ) and address the essential degrading of western culture (Again as mentioned a while back, the Princess Di treatment of 9-11 anniversary) which seems ever more infantile and assaulted by both the faux populism of the right and the PC policing of the academic left (with attendant cultural and moral relativisms). Britney Spears or Stanley Fish is not a great menu to have to choose from. That said, the question of Islam and weather it inherently tends toward the repressive and militarist is one for a longer discussion. Christianity needed a reformation but that may be too facile a critique. More to be discussed; the legacy of colonialism and the inward looking isolationists of the american government.

A lot of interesting comments, but I must take exception with this line:

"Quasi-colonial style "globalization," which seeks to maintain most of the world as producers of raw materials and consumers of finished goods simply breeds political corruption and popular anger."

If that's official policy, it's sure flops regularly, as the transformation of resource-producing economies to manufacturing-based economies all over the Pacific rim has demonstrated.

The key factors preventing a country from developing a manufacturing infrastructure are internal (education, for example) -- not the result of some fantasy conspiracy.

Aren't we already on board with "Fight Maoism, buy Chinese"? But not in the case of Cuba, because Castro pockets too much of the dough and uses it to pay thugs to beat people up. We'll have to be careful where the money goes. Everyone knows where the money goes in the case of Palestine.

I think I would argue with the claim that the West
chopped up the Ottoman Empire; it took advantage
of the Ottoman Empire's collapse. Like all
multiethnic, multireligious, multilingual empires,
it was doomed. Some Western nations tried to
keep the Ottoman Empire alive as a balance
against the Russian Empire; attempts
to simplify the slow motion crash of the Ottoman
Empire into a "nasty colonialists, victimized
Third Worlders" (which I know that Glenn would
never oversimplify this to) just doesn't fit the
facts very well.

The key factor in allowing nations to prosper is a stable legal system. Effective protection of property rights and effective punishment of crimes are absent from most of the "underdeveloped" world. Islam, like other government religions such as Nazism, the Catholicism of Philip V of Spain and Communism, despises the individual and his rights, preferring to use the power of the state for mystical ends, to enhance the power of the Volk or Allah or the Kingdom of God on Earth. The restriction of the power of the state to combating crime and assuring property rights is the only sure sign that a country is becoming stable and prosperous. As long as the mullahs have any political power, the Islamic world will remain poor and unstable.

Losing US jobs? The current regime of protectionism for steel smelters means a loss of jobs for steel fabricators.

The current regime of protectionism for inland farmers means a loss of jobs for Gulf shrimpers.

The current regime of protectionism for rice producers means a loss of jobs for computer programmers.

If anything, enabling the developing countries to sell more of their agricultural and manufactured goods to the US (and the EU, but that's their problem) would raise the living standards of people in the US and in the developing countries.

SHK

I'm not sure China is a great example. China is using the money it makes with trade to build up it's military, build up it's nuclear arsenal, and threaten Taiwan. And blocking off access to Google. So it's not like people there are getting any freerer, either.

Peter's essay begins reading like a speech but he gets into some meat half way through. His thesis is that fundamentalism and rigid Islam is too strong in the Arab world, so we should look for more moderate streams of Islam to develop in other parts of the Muslim world.

In terms of the reflections on this essay on Instapundit, I think several statements demonstrate a bit of overstatement or are not correct.

“Indeed, as I have said before, one of the most effective strategies is to let the Fundamentalists have their way. Thirty years of "revolution" in Iran have left the population with a very nasty taste in their mouths. Now they want their MTV.”

A problem with “the most effective strategy” is that weapons of mass destruction, let alone airplanes, may render these thirty years very bloody for the West. Also, we have not seen the Iranian Mullahs go down without a fight yet. I think we need to find a more timely solution.

Quasi-colonial style "globalization," which seeks to maintain most of the world as producers of raw materials and consumers of finished goods simply breeds political corruption and popular anger. Just look at what oil has done to Nigeria (and, heck, the whole Middle East). Some can say "what governments do with the money isn't our problem -- but that would fly in the face of the current evidence, now wouldn't it? The West really needs to find a way to engage countries economically without engendering massive corruption and inequalities of wealth. This means REAL globalization where the West drops the barriers to products produced elsewhere and stops dumping products like subsidized rice on the rest of the world. Yes, that would mean losing US jobs, at least in the short run.

I think the real solution is not mainly free trade but constitutional democracy which will ensure that the locals benefit. The reason producers of raw materials have not become manufacturers is not because the white man has kept them down but because the dictators who control these countries have not felt the need to invest. The US actually does not manufacture much anyway, many third world countries do. Also, in the short term, free trade may devastate certain sectors of these economies such as agriculture. REAL globalization means the globalization of democracy.

Obviously the bin Ladens of the world already have financial capital, but they are preying upon the absence of it to spread their ideology and hence their power. Indeed, these guys NEED poverty in order to peddle their wares.

I think that there is an overemphasis here on the poverty point. As has been pointed out, the 9/11 hijackers were not poor but generally well off. The key problem is beliefs (Islam) not bread.

The hell with all this precious crap. This over-intellectualized twaddle is precisely what gets every single Democrat administration into foreign-policy messes. Just bomb 'em. Bomb 'em until the rubble bounces, and if they still haven't learned how to behave themselves, then keep on bombing them until they do.

"This is why poverty and corruption are very real contributing factors to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism."
This statement smaks of "root cuses". We cannot know what the "root causes" are. Claiming that poverty is the "root cause" for all evils - is to some extent true, but is nevertheless a great oversinplification. This is the Marxist doctrine that sees materialism as the one and only motivating force in history.
And even if poverty is a significant factor in producing wars, it is a grave error to claim that there is some magic measure by which we can erradicate poverty. Having freedom and the rule of law helps economic developement (and is also good in a non economic way), but - how exactely do you install "freedom and democracy" in the Arab world or anywhere ? Not easily.
As for canceling all import duties and tariffs in the US - that is a great thing to do, for the benefit of US citizens, and never mind the Indonesians.

While it's useful as far as it goes on how to contain our enemies and gradually provide counter-examples, Peters' analysis of how we should build up moderate forms of Islam in places like Indonesia are really just a sideshow. We got into this mess, after all, by giving up on reforming the Middle East, and we can only get out by fixing it. The fact that Islam in Indonesia is moderate is useless to us in the most critical breeding grounds for hate, because the Indonesians are never going to export their vision of Islam to Saudi Arabia or Egypt or France. We ignore the Indonesians or the Pakistanis at our peril, but those are the frontiers; they are not the heartland from which terror springs.

I don't mean to slight Peters, whose point that Arabs should not be mistaken as the spokesmen for all Muslims cannot be emphasized too much. However, I think his analysis of Indonesia misses a couple of key points.

The first is that prior to the mid-1990's American relations with Indonesia were conducted largely through the Suharto government. This is not a criticism -- whatever its sins with respect to corruption and the abuse of human rights in Timor Suharto's government maintained a remarkably farsighted and tolerant policy toward the country's diverse religions. That policy, known in Indonesian as Pancasila, did not just encourage tolerance but enforced it through the police and army. With the weakening of central authority since Suharto's fall extremist Muslim groups have been more active in the eastern islands and parts of Java, and there has been some involvement of these with international terrorism. The point here is that the strong central authority of the Suharto years is not coming back anytime soon; we can expect some trouble from Indonesian Islamists even though most of the population does not share extremist religious beliefs.
Secondly Indonesia faces an enormous problem in that its large, traditionally rural population has been heavily exposed to Western culture but has no very good way of achieving the standard of living associated with the West (or for that matter with neighboring Singapore and Malaysia). The educational infastructure in much of the country is weak, and the resources needed to strengthen it are beyond what the government can afford or foreign benefactors are likely to be willing to pay for. This kind of situation is a precondition for political instability even if it does not involve terrorism. However, it probably will.

Finally I sympathize with the fellow who said the way to fight terrorism was to buy Indonesian products. I wish this were more practical. A long-overdue reduction of trade barriers by Western countries could boost some Indonesian exports, but its not clear to me how Indonesia can trade its way up from poverty. The hard fact is that the country has a vast surplus of young, unskilled labor, and the forces that produced the East Asian renaissance --- mainly the purchasing power of the American economy -- do not have the strength to do the same in all the countries that share Indonesia's situation.

My view on Indonesia is not quite as pessimistic as the above might indicate, but the above is all I have time for right now. I just wanted to suggest that the lack of sympathy for radical Islamism in Indonesia, while a good thing, is probably not the decisive factor Peters seems to think it is.

Unilaterally dropping trade barriers will do nothing; we already import the only thing the Arab world as that we are interested in buying - oil - as fast as they can produce it.

Creating economies that will produce something else we might want to buy is a very different task. For that you need property rights, the rule of law (not sharia), real education (not madrassas), etc.

It is interesting watching how quickly people move on from defeating terrorist Islamofascism to transforming the entire culture, government, and economy of the Middle East. You might almost think that they believe deep down that there is something fundamentally, irretrievably wrong with the modern Arab world, that the current Arab incarnation of Islam is not a religion of peace, that the Islamofascist terrorists are not an aberration but an expression of modern Arab culture.

Gosh, but when Ann Coulter says that, she is read out of polite society.

Can we or can't we stop the terror without tearing down and rebuilding the Arab world? After all, the Africans are wallowing in poverty and saddled with incredibly bad governments, but they aren't bombing us. Why can't we just skim off the terrorists and leave the Arabs to wallow in poverty as well?

The best thing we could do is impose a system like Turkey's. Religious tolerance is fine, so long as the religions are content with leaving the things that are Caesar's with Caesar. But Islamicists demand that Muslims pursue Islamic States, making them inherently subversive to any liberal democracy. They implicitly take the position that ordinary non-clergy folks are incapable of governing themselves.

Until they give up on the use of force to impose their religious views on others, we will be at war with them. The trick will be to get a fair hearing from the people when they have never heard anything positive about us.

Another thing, just how peaceful or moderate is Indonesia? Not very, from most accounts. It might not be Saudi Arabia, but there have been bloody clashes between muslims and christians, and in some areas, muslims want to install Sharia law.

This may seem off topic, but have you seen this?
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1028186246464&p=1012571727088

Turns out the Euro's blame us (USA) for the terrorist attacks on us.

Talk about Indonesia would be much more impressive if muslim militias weren't currently running around beheading people who don't convert.
But,hey,why let mere "factual correctness" get in the way?

Check your own facts, Michael. I seem to remember (and just now verified) that Christian Dayaks were recently beheading Muslim Madurese immigrants in Kalimantan (on Borneo) to drive them off formerly Dayak lands. The Muslim Laskar Jihad (with apparent ties to Al Qaeda) may be one of the most malignant forces fomenting violence throughout Indonesia, but there are plenty of local tensions everywhere, and the hotheads are not limited to Muslims.

It is inaccurate to attribute the rise of Islamic fascism to poverty. It seems more a problem of the new rich rather than the old poor. The ringleaders of 9/11 were all middle class. The Saudi cannon fodder they shipped out to round out the suicide squad may have originated in Saudi Arabia's poorest region but if they didn't have bourgoise leadership they would be still waiting at home with no way to channel their rage other than staring contents with their camel.

Islamic fascism has been compared to the German and Italian varieties. These ideologies arose in the dangerous gap of political immaturity that arose between the end of traditional conservative monarchist leadership (i.e. Cavour, Bismarck) and responsible republican rule (i.e. Adenaur, de Gaspari). Similarly Islamic fascism has arisen between the passing of the old Arab Guard (Ibn Saud, Feisel) and before the rising of the old. The remedy may be similar to that applied in the German, Italian, (and Japanese) cases. They may need to be smacked around till they grow up. Spare the rod...

The ignorance of the secular world concerning the Christian faith never ceases to amaze me. Only a few hundred years older than the Islamic faith? Has the author forgotten the first Christians were Jews? Somebody flunked their theology class.

Without the Old Testament, the New Testament is meaningless. Try starting about 2000 B.C. That's why Christianity is more accurately referred to as the Judeo-Christian faith.

1. You can't reform people who don't want to be reformed.

2, It's always the smart guys who write these blogs and articles who think it's OK for the dumb guys who sweat while they work to lose their jobs. I guarantee that if Harvard PhD's were to be the ones to lose jobs all hell would break loose.

3. If American victory means the American Sweat guys are the only ones to pay then screw it.

4. While I'm at it, it's the sons and daughters of the American Sweat guys who are going to die fighting it. You big time writers won't shed a drop of blood and neither will your draft dodging kids.

5. You fight a war to kill people and break things, not to punish the winners by taking their jobs away.

Brent... If you count the Jews as "Christians", then you need more theology. And, since Islam builds upon the same body of ideology as Judaism and Chistianity, that would make them all the "same age." Shees...

As to Rahul's comment, I work for a Korean based company that has factories in China and Vietnam and consider them the western-most border of business oportunity. Why? Because they gave up trying to do business in the Middle East years ago after too many bad experiences. We pulled out of Indonesia last year because of the chaos. China has an orderly, productive society. Vietnam has an orderly, productive society. This attracts business. Expecting business to embrace the uneducated, religious/dictator-ruled poverty-stricken parts of the world without a track record of stability is a pure fantasy. Won't happen. It's business, not philanthropy.

Philanthropy is the job of all those ultra-wealthy Shieks/Mullahs/Shahs/Arafats who give their pampered princesses gold toilets in Paris while their people don't know what plumbing is!

Guess what? Success takes work on YOUR OWN part. Stop blaming the U.S. We're just setting a standard you choose not to follow.

As to the previous Joel's comment. I guess you had to look a long, long, long, long time to find one example of a Christian atrocity ( that is actually "religious" in nature? ) to compare with the thousands upon thousands of ongoing atrocities against Christians in this world. Mostly from the "Religion of Peace".

Congratulations. Maybe you found one. Maybe.

Please everybody. Common Sense should always be THE Litmus Test.

Radical Islam is a tool used by those who wish to remain in power at any cost. It is the same as Communism, Nazi-ism, faux monarchy, or any other ideology that allows murerous thugs to deflect the blame for the oppressive conditions in their on countries away from themselves.

Globalization will mean nothing unless we eventually have the courage to make democracy and a free press precursors to economic development. We have seen the failures in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and elsewhere when we trade with evil dictators. The money will end up in the hands of the few thugs in power and everyone else suffers.

Terrorism is more than poor angry fundamentalists huddling in caves looking for ways to strike. It is state sponsored terror camps, schools, weapons development, propaganda, and financing. I like this slogan better: "Fight Terrorism: Overthrow Your Local Dictator".

I suspect that one of the attractions for the administration of going into Iraq, other than eliminating Saddam, is that it will offer the United State the opportunity to jump start the modernization process in the Arab Middle East in lieu of waiting several centuries for the people of the region to work things out for themselves.

If I had to pick a spot in the Arab Middle East to build a secular, modern, pluralistic, tolerant, democratic republic it would be Iraq. The Iraqi people are well educated, relatively speaking, and the most secular (thanks to decades of Ba’ath national socialism) in the region. Iraqis are extremely entrepreneurial. They have one of the most productive agricultural sectors in the Middle East. They have plenty of resources, most especially petroleum, to fund development. In other words, there’s a big pie for all to share. The demographic divisions among Sunni Arabs, Shi’a Arabs, and Kurds will act as a centrifugal element initially. But if we can hold the place together long enough to establish some kind of federated government, those same divisions could lend themselves to a form of republican (small “r”) political stability, in that it would be difficult for any single group to dominate the other two.

I wouldn’t argue that this is all a given, or that it will be likely or easy. But if you scan the region in search of a candidate for a nation-building experiment, I don’t think you can come up with a better choice than Iraq. If we can coax the Iraqis into successful modernization, the example for the rest of the Arab Middle East, and for the rest of the Islamic world, will be tremendous.

If we fail, we won’t face anything that we wouldn’t have faced eventually. It will just come sooner. Given the prospects of nuclear proliferation, the sooner the better.

To Joel Andrews

All religions include fundamentalist wackos. At certain times and places one religion may have more than others.

Here is one more example for you.

http://msquared.8m.com/KKK.html

Two. So far. How about witch burnings? Crusades? Wars of Reformation in the 17th Century? The Spanish Inquisition? (bet you weren't expecting that one!) Slaughter of Native American "Heathens?" Justification of the Transatlantic Slave Trade?

Judge not...

Deiter, the difference is Christianity has been a force for civilization. Anybody who argues differently doesn't know history, or doesn't want to know history.

On the killing of indians... You're just simply not going to hold great real estate on this planet if you've yet to invent/discover the wheel and there are people around who have built navies. It's called 'the way of the world'...

On the burning of heretics. The Roman Catholic Church murdered/tortured/imprisoned untold millions of Christians. Something like five witches were hanged in the only theocracy of the original 13 colonies. (They could have gone to Rhode Island...)

Christians ended the practice of slavery. It's still going on in Africa though...

The Crusades were hardly wars of aggression. And there was no converting at the point of a sword being done. Read your history. In fact, less Chomsky/Zinn, more searching with a well-worn library card... Learn to find the truth for yourself and to think for yourself. You are capable, Deiter, of attaining some independence of mind and some autonomy in the forming of your world view... It takes both effort and just a little good will towards something called truth though. Good luck.

Terrorists and those who support them

I'd like to arrest the profiteers who have gotten rich by supporting Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. I'd like to be on the S.W.A.T. team that goes in after them. Let's see how fair minded I can be when confronted with the bastards who financed and made possible the horror that was Sept. 11. We should put the low life scum under the jail.

This particular criminal sold Saddam Hussein the equipment to get his dilapidated oil fields up and running after the Gulf War, thus enabling him to sell oil to finance the building of weapons of mass destruction. He is well placed, however, and insulated from prosecution. Read the story and decide for yourself if we should tear him limb from limb or let him off with mere hanging.

You referenced Molly Ivans. That's like bolstering your argument by quoting Ted Kazinski.

You're just going to have to go back to square one and try again.

I WOULD BE GLAD IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN A JOB SEARCH.I LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING FRON YOU