STARTING OVER
Jessica Matthews of the Carnegie Peace Endowment recently framed the current situation brilliantly: after having followed Bush and the GOP on their adventure through Iraq, we are now again at square-one, seeking to find a consensus about what are the lessons of 9/11, albeit with less money, etc.
So, where is the new, long-term strategy?
LOOKING FOR "MR. GOP GOODBAR"
It would appear that Peter Beinhart was correct. The Right is no where on the topic. Their political noise-grinder is still downing out even intellectuals from their own Heritage foundation!
VDH, linked by AS, is 'stuck' thinking that there is still a military world-order to impose, rather than lose our "Napoleonic fleet". For pity's sake, even Kissenger has publicly spoken about the decline in the effectiveness and importance of military power.
AS, for his own part, is stuck looking backward, imagining an ethereal plane on which outcomes would be sooo different had America not lost its political capital under Bush and the GOP quite the way it has done.
Not that the Left has done so much better. Jihad is NOT going away, Iraqi withdrawal or no.
THE LONG, TWILIGHT STRUGGLE :: NON MILITARY COMPONENTS
The Newsflash, from scholars like Walid Phares, is that jihadis have been festering for 30 years or more now, not just since 9/11, with ebb and flow under a variety of geopolitical circumstances and with clear, simply expressed, long-term, and abiding goals. Except in rare instances, these ideologies are not going to be rolled up by carpet-bombing.
In the search for non-military strategies to combat the growth and fostering of radicalism, the Right has come up with next to nothing worthwhile, including some disgusting gruel dished out by Dinesh D'Souza and the ice-pick animosity that passes for intelligent strategy in venues like Little Green Footballs. The focus on torture in some quarters is laudable, but I'd suggest that it is not the pivotal issue in the way many advance it. Daniel Pipes? Very mixed bag.
Can you explain why Ahmedi-Nejad just came out and said that Britain was not "responding in the legal way"? Can you pinpoint the basis on which the struggle for legitimacy is taking place on this or that issue? What methods have been tried?
A concerted, effective, broad-reaching, non-military strategy for countering the growth of radicalism, including the Iranian brand espoused by the 'Revolutionary' hardliners, can be formulated only after one has a solid sense for how the arguments are chained within those ideologies. In other words, I'm suggesting that, in order to be effective, one has to seek to discredit those ideologies on their own terms and with sensitivity to their own regional context and precepts, e.g. their formalisms, their approach to understanding and interpreting history, their view of what is 'education', who has what 'on the line' politically at any given time, etc.
THE BUILD-OUT OF A RECONSTITUTED EFFORT
I mention the ideological aspects, but I wouldn't leave the impression that the overall effort ought not to be multifaceted. One key problem today preventing such a multifaceted effort is the lack of a reasonably clear consensus formulation on the ideological, non-military aspects of a counter-effort.
In terms of political leaders who can grasp what needs to be done, McCain is not the man, nor is Guiliani - they are stuck in the old paradigms (and that ought not to be such a controversial characterization). Bill Clinton might, but it's not clear how much of that would filter to Hillary. Obama has the capacity, but does he have the experience immediately to find merit in it?
What about inside the military? Well, on paper the government understands the issues of unity of effort required by the threat, but that doesn't mean it is happening or could happen in the field or makes its way prominently into the recommendations of the NSC. Nor does it suggest what type of leadership is required to make it so.
