Bret Stephens takes disingenuousness to a new level today in the Wall Street Journal. Stephens examines some of the writings of Sayyid Qutb and concludes that Lady Gaga is much more of a security threat to the United States than Israel’s permanent settlements on Palestinian land.
Sayyid Qutb may be familiar to you. Qutb was an Egyptican poet and intellectual who spent some time in the United States (1948-1950) studying education at what is now the University of Northern Colorado. He found American women to be immodest and our culture irredeemably materialistic. After returning to Egypt, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood but was implicated in an assassination attempt on Nasser and spent most of the rest of his life in prison before he was finally executed in 1966. He was allowed to write extensively in prison, however, and his philosophy was a major influence on both Usama bin-Laden and his partner in crime, Ayman Zawahiri.
However, it is absurdly reductive to jump from Qutb’s distaste for American materialism to the conclusion that bin-Laden and Zawahiri attacked our embassies in Africa, the USS Cole, and Pentagon and World Trade Center because they were offended by our scantily-dressed women. It’s also a logical fallacy to argue that Israeli settlements don’t present a problem for American security and foreign policy simply because al-Qaeda’s leaders have a hang-up with “round breasts…full buttocks…shapely thighs, [and] sleek legs.” The complaint we’re hearing from our military leaders is quite different.
On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) “too old, too slow … and too late.”
The January Mullen briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus’s instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. “Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.”
Last time I checked, Arab leaders are no fans of al-Qaeda and no opponents of the pleasures of Western Materialism. I doubt any Arab leaders are revolted by Lady Gaga and I am certain that none of them are going to countenance terrorism against American civilians or installations because of the immodesty of our people.
Are there some Muslim lunatics out there that would want to attack America even if we didn’t support Israel’s illegal settlement policy? Sure. But that’s not the point. The point is that Israel’s policy is a recruitment tool, that it arouses intense anger towards America from Muslims of all stripes (from liberal fans of Lady Gaga to radical jihadists in Waziristan), and that it makes Arab leaders reluctant or unwilling to work openly with our government.
These efforts to paint all Muslims as irrationally angry with Israel and America, and to absolve Israel (and ourselves) for any responsibility for the anger that exists, is dehumanizing to an entire culture. It’s actually a cynical effort to dehumanize Americans by making us hate Muslims in return so that these lunatics can kill them in droves without having to make a single concession to the Palestinians.
It’s really simple. The settlements do not make Israel safer and they make America a target and a pariah in the region. So, why do we allow Israel to put us in this position? What’s in it for us?
America can guarantee Israel’s security within its own internationally recognized borders. Isn’t that a better deal that what Israel has right now?
