I suppose President Bush is used to it by now: suggesting a new plan for war, administration, or policy and receiving quite a hostile response from his opposition. The topic of discussion is no longer consequential, either, as many choose to judge policy actions on past actions. Yet, contrary to popular belief, discussing the topic at hand is still important even if the war was a mistake. This week’s proposal by President Bush to increase troop levels in Iraq was met with “hostile opposition.” The Democrats, lead by Nanci Pelosi, vow to fight the troop increase with every resource available.
Yet, what exactly do the Democrats plan on doing to restrict troop increases? As Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, troops levels are at the sole discretion of the president. Short of refusing to pay serviceman salaries, denying arms and vehicle purchases, or decomissioning all US aircraft carriers, Speaker Pelosi has little power to influence President Bush’s decision. This is also not Vietnam, regardless of how many times the parallel is made in the media. The US people still have more patience for this unsavory war than 20,000 unpaid servicemen deployed in a foreign land lacking in basic equipment. President Bush isn’t so much requesting a troop increase as informing the country of his intentions.
A not-so-recent piece in Foreign Affairs is recently featured discussing a timely topic: Hamas and its prospects for peaceful political activity. It argued in March 2006 that Hamas would not moderate its military aims in the near future just because of political integration, a prescient argument in light of recent events. The article–which, incidentally, is written by the son of a former president of Israel–identifies three conditions required for the successful integration of a radical movement into mainstream politics: a healthy political system, a way to leverage power against extremists, and enough time for moderation to occur.
By drawing on examples of state/Islamist cooperation–and the occasional lack thereof–in Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt, Herzog observes insightfully that Islamic groups in stable Arab states generally have either legal political power or illegal military power, but never both. Unlike the case of Mahmoud Abbas’s government, peaceful states like Jordan or Egypt draw a strict line between encouraging Islamist participation as political movements, or banning them outright as illegal terrorists. To allow Hamas’s political participation without demanding disarmament was the Palestinian Authority’s first mistake, according to Herzog. As he mentions,
Islamists in Jordan were recognized publicly and given a stake in the political life there from the country’s founding, in 1946, and as a result they have led the most establishment-oriented and least violent Islamist movement in the region.
On the other hand,
The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt…which favored violence to the point of assassinating a prime minister in 1948, was outlawed in 1954. Decades of repression and political exclusion eventually split the movement into two branches.
In a way, however, Herzog’s argument is a bit of a political tautology. (more…)
