Iraq and Afghanistan

In North Carolina, General Vines is training 10,000 military advisors for Iraq. He wants to teach them about Islam, and so has assembled a group of books that they are all to read before they leave. Unfortunately, among these books is Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Huntington is a well-known Harvard professor and his recent work in this area has led to a great deal of commentary. The General certainly cannot be faulted for assigning such a book. However, assigning it is misguided, and along with a number of other recent writings by those who claim to be knowledgeable on Islam and what we are facing is likely to have a pernicious effect — particularly because of its Harvard origin.

In the book, Huntington predicted that the 21st century would be characterized by violent struggle between the civilization that had dominated the 20th century and those that were now rising up to challenge it. He particularly saw the Sinic and the Islamic as potential foes. Wars between Western Civilization and Islam, for example, were seen as all but inevitable. His predictions regarding the struggle of Western and Islamic civilizations has particularly struck observers because of the events of the last few years.

The problems with the Huntington analysis are many. First, "a civilization" is an arbitrary category difficult to define in space or time. The term was developed primarily to apply to ancient civilizations that at least had the terminological advantage of being separated more clearly in space and time than is the case today. Secondly, Huntington reads history in terms of the struggle of civilizations. A better way to read history would be to recognize that most wars were actually within civilizations, or along the periphery of civilizations against less civilized peoples (for example the story of how "the West" represented primarily by Rome moved northward to incorporate the British Isles and Scandinavia into its sphere). World Wars I, for example, was primarily within Western Civilization, with the rest of the world bit players. Third, at any one time, the peoples that are loosely lumped together as belonging to civilization X or Y are often quite diverse, speaking a variety of languages, believing in a variety of religions, and living on many different economic levels. Fourth, whatever may have been the situation in the past, today the leading sectors of all so-called civilizations are actually living more within the confines and assumptions of Western Civilization than those of their own. Paul, the manager of Hotel Rwanda, for example, did not take part in the massacre of Tutsis because he had culturally moved beyond that level. To him the calls to action by the radical Hutus were nothing but dangerous nonsense. People such as Paul are much more common in leading circles outside central Africa than they were in Rwanda. The leaders of many Muslim states are Muslims in little more than name. They hold on to their traditions just as many educated Christians or Hindus hold on to their traditions. But these traditions are not determinative of their actions in the real world. Even in Iran, a country often held up as an example of an implacable enemy, recent visitors find that the people in the street are more pro-American than anti-American. Certainly the lives they lead would be unrecognizable to the Ayatollah Khomeini. In Iraq, our main enemies are actually former Baath officers, representing a distinctly secular and anti-religious movement that only uses Islamic slogans to gain nationalistic support. The Kurds are under secular leadership. Surprisingly, the Shiites that are our best allies in the run-up to the election are also the community in Iraq with the best religious credentials.

This being the case, we should not be letting our soldiers be indoctrinated with the idea that Muslims are irrevocably against us by virtue of the fact they belong to another "civilization". Kipling said in another age that "never the twain shall meet", but in our age, they are meeting, they are living together, they are moving to America, becoming professionals, establishing relations with their relatives in Iraq. The vast majority of Muslims everywhere are individuals, pursuing individual goals, moving about, getting connected, going on line, and spending very little time thinking about how to destroy Americans.

The fact there is an al-Qaida that does want to attack us because they think we interfere too much in Islamic countries must be recognized and dealt with. We should realize there are many people who have adopted their ideas. But if we consider how little has really happened in the United States since 9/11, we might begin to appreciate the fact that the millions of Muslims in this country, even when mistreated by overzealous immigration and security personnel, are not about to sign up for a holy war. Some no doubt are, but so few that Bin Ladin has been unable to put them together long enough to carry out the continual series of attacks that he has promised and that alone should change the way we approach the world.