Friends

All else equal, it’s harder to win a fight when the guy who can help you the most appears to want the other side to win.

I am not sure I agree with Caroline Glick

Caroline Glick, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, believes one problem with the war or terror is that the US has been insufficiently aggressive in fighting it. In particular, she would like the US to expand its efforts to countries such as Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. Although she doesn’t directly call for US-led regime change in these countries, it seems to me that at a minimum she would like the US to do something to make these countries more unstable than they already are. After carefully considering her point of view, I have come to the conclusion that she is totally nuts. Let’s leave the merits of the policy aside (of which I think there are few) and look at the US record on regime change in the broader Middle East over the past decade. We have tried it in two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the record is, to put it charitably, mixed at best.

Don’t get me wrong – I very pleased that Glick has such confidence in the US’s capacity to get other countries to govern as we wish they would through a policy of military aggression. The problem is that I find it really hard to believe that the world would be a safer place if the US provoked more instability in the Middle East. Perhaps in a future column Glick will outline why she thinks the US military would be more successful in Iran, Lebanon, and Syria than it has been in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Until that day comes, I hope that our joint chiefs of staff don’t read her work and think, “hmm…she’s got a point. Lemme run it by Obama.”

Complicated Relationships in the War on Terror

To be blunt, the governments of the United States and Pakistan are far from kindred spirits.  Our national relationship with Pakistan is largely strategic in nature and is at best a unity of mutual benefit.  The Pakistani regime has been challenged throughout the war on terror by a need to balance its relationship with the United States with its own sovereignty and has suffered in the eyes of its people as a result.  Thus it strikes as particularly amazing to see pundits who weeks ago bemoaned our government’s failure to support our authoritarian allies in the Middle East, now  questioning Pakistan’s commitment to the war on terror in the wake of the death of Osama Bin Laden.
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Terrorism and religious freedom in Egypt

MA in Democracy and Governance student Samuel Tadros argues that lack of religious freedom in Egypt lies at the heart of the New Year’s Eve terrorist attack on a Coptic Church that killed 23 Copts:

The current attack is attributed to Islamist anger over the alleged kidnapping by the Coptic Church of a Priest’s wife whom they claim converted to Islam. The general context is Islamist anger at what they perceive as the humiliation of Islam at the hands of Copts by asking to build churches…In all of this there is no alternative provided. There is no argument for the right of an individual to choose his religion, there is no defense of the right of people to build churches, and there is no public sphere opened to Christians.

This seems like a pretty solid argument to me. Placing the communal feelings of the followers of a state’s dominant religion above the ability of an individual to practice the religion of his or her choice is only a small step away from legitimizing oppression of those who don’t adhere to the dominant religion.

Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide

Apropos of a recent post on nonsensical gibberish about terrorist threats US government travel warnings, Bill Easterly gets the award for Best Title:

Government warns against global travel and/or staying at home