I am one of more than 140 scholars and experts to sign a letter to President Obama, released today (March 10), asking him to take seriously his inaugural statement that leaders who “cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent” are “on the wrong side of history.” The question is, on which side of history will the Obama administration place itself in its policy toward the Middle East?

Early indications are for a return to traditional diplomacy and jettisoning of any serious efforts to promote democracy, freedom, and human rights. While the signatories of this letter might differ on some issues, we are joined by the belief that this early course by Obama and Secretary of State Clinton needs immediate correction. We understand that promoting Middle East peace enjoys a high priority in this administration, and we believe that it is entirely possible to cooperate with Arab governments in that endeavor while also pursuing improved human, civil, and political rights for Arab citizens. In fact, not to do so would be shortsighted and ultimately counter productive.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

In the week since Israelis went to the polls, the operative word in the media seems to be “inconclusive,” based on the near-tie between the two largest parties and the prospect of bone-wearying bargaining before a government emerges. Both observations are true, but nevertheless the election did register a sharp and significant shift in the Israeli body politic.

Tzipi Livni managed to hold Kadima together and lose only one seat, against expectations, even managing to beat Likud by one seat. For the first time in Israeli political history, a strong centrist party has actually lasted for more than one election; this is a personal achievement of great note and possibly the harbinger of a long-term structural change of major significance. But having said that, the real import of the election was the clear victory of the right.

Only in 2003 have the right and religious parties, as a bloc, achieved such success; in essence, the 2009 election has erased the impact of the 2006 election that followed Ariel Sharon’s defection from Likud and the establishment of Kadima. We are back in 2003, when the second intifada produced the most hawkish Knesset ever. Israel’s turn to the right is a long-term development set in motion by the second intifada, the rise of Hamas as the pivotal Palestinian player, the intrusion of Iran, and what is seen by many Israelis as the failure of unilateral disengagement in Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. In this context, the 2006 election was a transitory fluke.

In 2006, center and left parties won 70 seats, while right and religious parties held the remaining 50. Now the center and left are reduced to 55, including 11 seats held by Arab parties, while right and religious parties hold a combined 65. The Jewish left was devastated, dropping from 24 seats to 16, as many of its voters moved rightward to Kadima, replacing voters who moved rightward from that party back to Likud, their original home. Thus Kadima maintained its strength while Likud more than doubled its numbers.

Religious parties considered separately did not actually gain; ultra-orthodox (haredi) parties lost a couple of seats, while the remnant of the old National Religious Party appeared in a new guise as “The Jewish Home” and emerged with only three seats. For the first time in Israel’s history, the religious camp in the Knesset will be dominated almost entirely by the haredim; the national religious camp, long a fixture of the Israeli scene, has practically disappeared.

The other winner on the right, apart from Likud, is Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, which has outgrown its Soviet immigrant base and has managed to attract a growing clientele with its unique mixture of secularism and a new model of hawkishness based more on ethnicity than on territoriality. This is not the old right wing of “Eretz Yisrael Hashlema” (The Entire Land of Israel); Lieberman is ready to reduce the Arab presence in Israel not only by surrendering Arab population centers on the West Bank and Gaza, but even by ceding Arab-inhabited areas of Israel itself.

Israel’s turn to the right does not mean the end of the two-state solution as the dominant model for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Apart from Lieberman’s heterodoxy, Likud’s platform neither endorses nor rules out a two-state solution, but simply condemns any further unilateral withdrawals on the model of Lebanon in 2000 or Gaza in 2005. Thus the differences between the parties are less far-reaching than differences that have sometimes existed between parties joined in the same government. Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu can therefore pursue his announced goal of a National Unity government, knowing that in any event there will not be serious peace negotiations over basic final status issues so long as there as no unified Palestinian negotiator in control of all Palestinian territories and able to implement a final agreement.

For the same reason, the formation of a government dominated by the right, with or without Kadima as a junior partner, will not stir up any untoward clashes with the new U.S. administration. With no serious peace talks in the offing, efforts will focus on stability and conflict management rather than a final resolution. A hawkish Israeli government can still work on strengthening the viability of the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, and otherwise working toward the day when Hamas can no longer cast an effective veto over an Israeli-Palestinian peace. And in any event, all Israeli parties as well as the United States are likely to be more focused in the near future on the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

With the fighting over in Gaza (at least for now), many see Hamas emerging as the victor in the same way that Hezbollah did in the war it fought with Israel in the summer of 2006. But did Hamas really win? Is it better off now than before the fighting began?

Just like Hezbollah in 2006, Hamas has survived its January 2009 conflict with Israel. Also like Hezbollah, Hamas has retained—and perhaps even increased—its control over its core constituency. In another similarity with Hezbollah in 2006, the 2009 conflict with Israel has increased Hamas’s status throughout the Arab and Muslim world. Also like before, criticism in the West and elsewhere has focused on the damage caused by Israel, and not the damage done to it.

Further, Hamas can probably still launch missile attacks on Israel just like Hezbollah can. Finally, Hamas has reportedly begun to rebuild the Israeli-damaged tunnels it uses to smuggle weapons from Egypt into Gaza.

But just how impressive are these achievements? Like Hezbollah, Hamas survived an Israeli onslaught. But also like Hezbollah, Hamas was unable to prevent or stop Israel from causing enormous damage to its supporters as well as the population it claims to protect. It is true that the conflict has increased the stature of Hamas in the West Bank. But this was something that was already occurring anyway through the incompetence and corruption of Fatah, which has made Hamas look better to many Palestinians.

Like Hezbollah in 2006, Hamas has won enormous sympathy and support in Arab and other Muslim countries. But if anything, Hamas has received even less support from their governments than Hezbollah did. America’s Muslim allies have not broken relations with Washington (as many did in 1967) or sent men and materiel to help their Palestinian brothers fight Israel. Even anti-American forces have kept their distance from Hamas. While expressing solidarity, Hezbollah has not launched a missile onslaught from Lebanon that might have forced Israel to divert its attention away from Gaza. Indeed, Hezbollah was quick to disclaim responsibility for the few missiles that were fired into Israel from Lebanon. As for Syria: while encouraging Hamas to resist, Damascus has done little to help it do so.

Tehran has actually become frightened over the genuine anger toward Israel that has welled up among Iranians. As Azadeh Moaveni’s Washington Post Outlook piece of January 25 noted, “Early this month, Khamenei appeared on national television to temper his previous declaration encouraging martyrdom on behalf of the Palestinians. He thanked the young people who had offered to go die in Gaza but said that ‘our hands are tied in this arena.’ Khamenei didn’t really want anyone’s hands to be untied, however; the whole Gaza incident was meant to distract Iranians, not to jeopardize Iran’s role in the region.”

However impressive the volume of outrage expressed in the Arab and Muslim world over Gaza, the Palestinians living there—and Hamas itself—may well have been more impressed by the fact that they received no meaningful support from these quarters in their struggle.

Also like Hezbollah, Hamas could not take much comfort from European criticism of Israel, as this did not result in effective action to halt Israeli military activity—much less any material support for the Arab side. Most importantly, whatever strains the 2006 and 2009 conflicts may have put on the Israeli-American relationship, U.S. support for Israel clearly remains strong. While criticism of Israel and sympathy for the Palestinians may be growing in the United States, this has not led to sympathy or support for Hamas. Nor is it likely to.

Finally, it should be pointed out that a large part of the reason why Hezbollah was perceived as victorious in 2006 is that it was the Israelis themselves who, in their disappointment at not having destroyed it, declared Hezbollah to have been the winner. Yet while Hezbollah’s political strength within Lebanon certainly increased as a result of the 2006 conflict, it is noteworthy that Hezbollah has been extremely careful not to provoke another Israeli attack since then.

It remains to be seen whether Hamas will follow Hezbollah’s example in refraining from firing missiles into Israel after such an intense conflict with the Jewish state. If it does, then Hamas’s behavior might more reasonably be described as prudent rather than victorious. If, instead, it resumes missile attacks, Hamas risks not only triggering another Israeli intervention in Gaza, but also being blamed by Gazans for having needlessly brought them more pain without any gain. And this would open the door for another Palestinian movement to displace Hamas through taking advantage of Hamas’s mistakes (just as Hamas did with Fatah). Hamas cannot afford a “victory” such as this.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

Israel didn’t want to attack the Gaza Strip from the ground or from the air. Hamas, which had long broken the ceasefire, canceled it altogether. Then it began large-scale attacks on Israel. This is a war of defense. And it is being conducted just 30 miles from Tel Aviv, Israel’s main city.

According to the just-released Israeli government statement on the offensive:

The objective of this stage is to destroy the terrorist infrastructure of the Hamas in the area of operation, while taking control of some of rocket launching area used by the Hamas, in order to greatly reduce the quantity of rockets fired at Israel and Israeli civilians.

The operation will… strike a direct and hard blow against the Hamas while increasing the deterrent strength of the Israel Defense Forces, in order to bring about an improved and more stable security situation for residents of southern Israel over the long term.

Even as the 2006 war was continuing, the Israel Defense Forces were evaluating the mistakes made in Lebanon—helicopters needed better short-range munitions, improved air-ground coordination, care in using tanks unsupported by infantry, and so on.

But contrary to the insistence of armchair strategists now, it would not be easy to seize control of all the Gaza Strip and govern it for an extended period of time. Hamas is not going to go away. International support for Israel is limited. Fatah and the Palestinian Authority will not react strongly to try to take Gaza back for itself. There are about one million people in the Gaza Strip and Hamas will make every attempt to ensure there are civilian casualties—and pretend there are even more.

So “total victory” is not easy, if it is even possible. The irony is that Israeli policy is based on the idea that there is no military solution to these issues. But since there is no diplomatic solution either, force must be used to protect Israel and its citizens.

It should be remembered that Israel withdrew completely from the Gaza Strip, dismantled all settlements, and wished the Palestinians good luck. The Palestinian Authority (PA) was not up to the challenge. It could and would not change its corrupt and incompetent ways. U.S. policy insisted that Hamas be allowed to run in the elections, even though it did not meet the standard of accepting the 1993 Israel-PLO agreement. Hamas won.

But Hamas invoked the radical Islamist policy of “one man, one vote, one time.” It staged a coup and kicked out its PA and Fatah rivals. Rather than focusing on economic development or even maintaining peace to build up its own power, Hamas pursued its strategy of permanent war against Israel.

Children’s programs taught the kiddies that they should grow up to be suicide bombers and kill Jews. Hamas soldiers, or their junior allies, fired rockets and mortars at Israel. And of course Hamas staged a cross-border raid and kidnapped an Israeli soldier.

In spite of this, many in the West think Israel has some kind of choice in this matter, that diplomacy was an option, that Hamas could be reasoned with. Those people have clearly never heard a Hamas leader speak or read anything on the group’s Arabic-language websites. In a real sense, Hamas is more extreme than Osama bin Laden, who periodically offers his enemy the chance to repent. Hamas’s goal is genocidal.

This has nothing to do with being dovish or hawkish, left or right. For those who are the biggest peaceniks—and this is true in Israel—know that Hamas must be defeated if Israel is ever to make peace with the PA. Even the PA knows it, and that’s what they say in private, no matter what they say in public.

The offensive is only going to last so long. It would be nice to believe that Hamas will be overthrown, less extreme Palestinians will take over, or Israel will just sit in the Gaza Strip for months or even years to come without any major problem. These are not real options.

Hamas wants nothing more than to be able to organize an underground to launch daily attacks on Israeli patrols going through the center of refugee camps. It should be remembered that, for better or worse, it was the Israeli military—not the politicians—who wanted to withdraw from the Gaza Strip for tactical reasons. It was easier to hold a defensive line in strength than to play into Hamas’s strong points by trying to control all the territory.

Clearly, this didn’t take into account the rockets but it is easy to think that if Israeli forces had been in the Gaza Strip every day since the withdrawal, Israeli casualties would have been a lot higher while Fatah and Hamas would be fighting side to side against Israel, and international diplomacy would have been far more hostile to Israel.

No one should have any illusions that this conflict is going to go away. The peace process era, 1993-2000, taught us that Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, and radical Islamist groups meant what they said. They will never accept peace with Israel. Israel will be involved in a struggle with these extremist groups for decades.

Yet that does not mean Israel cannot—and does not—prevail. It prevails by maintaining good lives for its citizens, developing its economy, and raising living standards, progressing in technology and science and medicine.

In this context, Israel will not listen to those many who counsel it to commit suicide, but it also has no illusions of a victory, of a war that will end all wars. And in a real sense that is Israel’s true strength: it is not naïve about either concessions or force. If you have realistic expectations, if you aren’t disappointed, then you never give up.

Often, nowadays, it seems as if all history is being rewritten when it comes to Israel. In World War Two, allied air forces carpet-bombed cities even though there were no military bases in civilian areas. In France alone, tens of thousands of civilians were killed by allied bombs that fell on their intended targets.

Even the Nazis didn’t put ammunition dumps in houses and use human shields. And up until now the blame for doing so would fall on those who deliberately and cynically sought to create civilian casualties in order to gain support for themselves. Up until now, a country whose neighbor fired across the border at its people and even staged cross-border raids had the right of self-defense. Up until now, there has been a capability of understanding which group is inciting hatred, trying to turn children into robotic terrorists, calling for the extermination of another people, and committing aggression.

Many people, many journalists, many governments, and even many intellectuals still understand the most basic principles of right and wrong as well as of the real world. Unfortunately, too many don’t or at least don’t when Israel is the target.

Finally, it is of the greatest importance to understand that this is not an issue of Gaza or of Israel alone. The great issue of our era, of our remaining lifetimes, is the battle between radical Islamism—whether using the tactic of terrorism or not—and the rest of the world. To isolate this question as merely something about Israel is to misunderstand everything important about the world today.

Peter Rodman, a member of MESH, passed away on Saturday. I met Peter in 1980 in Santa Monica. I was very junior, he had already worked at the highest levels in government, and was just back from a long trip. But he immediately joined into a serious conversation and worked to include me in it. This seriousness and decency would be visible to me for the next 25 years. In Washington, no matter how high he rose, or what difficulties he faced, he kept the human qualities that made him admirable. He will be sorely missed.

Remembrances are invited from colleagues.

“If Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas does not get control over at least part of the West Bank soon, he will have no authority to sign any draft peace treaty with Israel. He will be totally discredited.

“But Israel cannot cede control over any part of the West Bank without being assured that someone credible is in charge. Rockets from Gaza land on the remote Israeli town of Sderot. Rockets from the West Bank could hit, and close, Israel’s international airport. That is an intolerable risk. Israel has got to start ceding control over at least part of the West Bank but in a way that doesn’t expose the Jewish state to closure of its airport.

“Radical pragmatism would say that the only way to balance the Palestinians’ need for sovereignty now with Israel’s need for a withdrawal now, but without creating a security vacuum, is to enlist a trusted third party—Jordan—to help the Palestinians control whatever West Bank land is ceded to them. Jordan does not want to rule the Palestinians, but it, too, has a vital interest in not seeing the West Bank fall under Hamas rule.

“Without a radically pragmatic new approach—one that gets Israel moving out of the West Bank, gets the Palestinian Authority real control and sovereignty, but one which also addresses the deep mistrust by bringing in Jordan as a Palestinian partner—any draft treaty will be dead on arrival.”

Thomas L. Friedman, “Time for Radical Pragmatism,” New York Times, June 4, 2008.

From Adam Garfinkle

The Jordanian option is an idea whose time never exactly comes.

When I was writing about it—urging it, as it were, as the least bad of alternatives—nearly thirty years ago, the time was not right because, as Asher Susser put it back in April, the Israeli government of the day was not sufficiently foresighted or realistic to understand the likely future of the matter. By the time later Israeli governments did understand, it was too late for the Jordanians. What Tom Friedman has been thinking all these years I can’t say, but in light of what those of us who have been following this for more than thirty years know, his column looks to be a classical example of a BFO—a blinding flash of the obvious—but too late for prime time.

About a year or so ago Abdul Salem al-Majali was in Washington, carrying with him a very delicate version of a new Jordanian option. He raised it up the flag pole in a few places around town, and seems not to have noticed many people saluting. The problem with the idea, as was pointed out a few months ago, is that the Jordanians are afraid that instead of them re-containing Palestinian nationalism, the Islamicizing Palestinian national movement will finally toss the Hashemites into the proverbial dustbin of history. Israel would then be back where it was, geostragically speaking, before June 4, 1967, except instead of a Hashemite state in both east and west banks, with which it had a range of tacit understandings and some significant shared interests, it would have to deal with a far less cooperative neighbor.

This leads me more or less to the same conclusion Rob Satloff mooted earlier: It may be possible to bring the Jordanians into a kind of relatively quiet trialogue on issues like trade, water and energy, air space and other aspects of security, medical-technical cooperation and a few other items, but only up to the carrying-capacity of the Jordanian political system which, under the current king, is still not back to where it was under an experienced and shrewd Hussein ibn Talal. If one takes the idea of path dependency seriously, as I do, then this sort of functional mix might lay the ground for a larger Jordanian role in the future, which might still end up being part of the least-bad-of-all policy alternatives for Israel, the United States, and arguably the Palestinians, too. But we’re talking years here, and Israel’s problem in the West Bank, where the collapse of Fatah has indeed created a dangerous vacuum, runs on a different, faster, timetable.

So, as I said, the Jordanian option is a idea whose time seems never to be right—Tom Friedman columns notwithstanding.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

There was a great item on the Harry’s Place blog by the anonymous Davem who spent a long time in Syria studying Arabic. (If you haven’t read his long “Syria Diary” posted on the site some months ago, you have missed what is probably the best piece of first-hand reportage from that country in a long time.)

Now Davem has written a shorter item about some of his experiences. In it he quotes a high-ranking Syrian official as insisting that there is freedom of speech in Syria, and that people are only arrested for subversive actions. The problem is the same official had earlier spoken as follows:

Riyad Na’san al-Agha: Of course. I accept the placing on trial of whoever curses the resistance [Hezbollah]. I accept the placing on trial of anyone who wants to take part in the Greater Middle East plan, with which the United States controls our nation. I agree with the placing on trial of anyone who questions the identity of this nation, anyone who wants to shatter national unity to racial and ethnic pieces, and anyone who wants to instigate tensions between the different minorities.

In other words, he says: if you say something we will put you on trial; likewise if you “want” to take part, if you “question,” or if you “want to instigate.” In other words, we will imprison you for thought crimes.

One of the responses to the post was from an angry Syrian named Jabar, who complained about one of the anecdotes told by Davem. Davem had recalled that he had gone to hear a well-known Syrian comedian who, in the middle of the show, shouted out the name of former Syrian vice-president Khaddam, who had fled the country (probably one step ahead of being suicided by Bashar al-Asad), headed for Paris, and joined the opposition. Davem recorded that the audience laughed nervously, but he cited the event as evidence that there is a little freedom of speech, if only to serve as a pressure valve to let Syrians blow off steam.

Jabar, however, says that he went twice to the comedian’s show and it was not true that he had just said the name. No, afterward, the comedian had denounced Khaddam from the stage as a running-dog flunky of the imperialists or whatever terms they are using nowadays. In other words, Jabar wanted it to be clear—speaking with pride—that there was not even the tiniest space for free speech. In the best Stalinist fashion, he had to insist that everyone at all times loves Big Brother with no deviations.

If academics actually listened to what the leaders, officials, and mouthpieces of Middle East dictators said—many more examples can be cited—many of the fantasies (or outright repetitions of regime propaganda of which so large a portion of regional studies often seems to consist) would dissolve.

Isn’t this called working with primary sources?

So the focus shifts to deterrence. Both Charles Krauthammer (here) and Zev Chafets (here) hold out little hope for international efforts to block Iran getting the bomb, or for military action to that end (though Chafets suggests that Israel might be able “in the best case” to weaken and delay Iran’s program). As a wake-up call this is justified: the sanctions are pathetic and the military options are dismal.

It is too early to give up completely; international pressure has slowed the program down, and the Iranians are still years from possession of a significant amount of fissionable material (which is why the apparent hiatus in weapons development is meaningless). Dragging out the program gives more time for moderating trends within Iran. But it makes sense at this stage to ask how a nuclearized Iran, guided by apocalyptic notions, might be deterred.

Krauthammer offers the Berlin model of extended deterrence. Extended deterrence in the Cold War setting had two dimensions: the threat of nuclear retaliation to protect non-nuclear allies, and the threat of nuclear retaliation in response to an overwhelming conventional attack. Kennedy’s pledge on Berlin involved both. Since the United States could not actually prevent Soviet bloc forces from occupying the Berlin enclave, the answer was to threaten a “full retaliatory response” upon the Soviet Union itself. In truth, there was always an irrational side to this posture: would the United States actually sacrifice tens or hundreds of millions of American lives to defend a city that would doubtless be also destroyed in a full-scale nuclear exchange? Fortunately, this was never tested.

The suggested “Holocaust Declaration” is in some respects more credible. Krauthammer proposes that it apply only to a nuclear attack on Israel, and as he points out there is little fear—for now—of Iranian retaliation against the United States itself. On the other hand, Israel is not Berlin, and it is far from clear that any U.S. government would feel the need to reinforce a deterrence that is already in place: the certainty of a massive Israeli response to any nuclear attack. Chafets is correct: the key is deterrence by Israel.

If an Iranian government would not be deterred by the likelihood of casualties in the tens of millions (as calculated recently by Anthony Cordesman), then what additional impact would a U.S. pledge of retaliation have? The issue of vulnerability to a first strike, eliminating Israel’s retaliatory force, is raised—but it will be decades, if ever, before Iranian forces could conceivably carry out such an attack, and Israel is already moving to protect these forces.

Nor should we forget that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East is already a reality: chemical and biological weapons are already a part of the equation between Israel and Syria, for example. A Middle East “balance of terror” already exists. It is not the world that we prefer, but it may be the world we have to live with and find ways to stabilize.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

The British website LiveLeak.com has removed Fitna, intoning that it had to “place the safety of its staff above all else.” You would have thought that this is a typical reaction for all those “Euroweenies,” as the satirist Peter O”Rourke once called America’s cousins from across the sea: Let’s cave in to the mere threat of violence. In fact, the debate is a lot more thoughtful and diverse.

This is all the more significant because European constitutional practice does not share the American tradition of the “heckler’s veto.” First enunciated by Justice Douglas in Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949), the basic idea is that utterances, works of art or rallies must not be suppressed just because they might arouse uncontrollable anger on the part of those who take offense. (The actual term “heckler’s veto” was first invoked in Brown v. Louisiana, 383 U.S. 131, 1969.) The most dramatic recent case was a planned demonstration by American Nazis in Skokie, Illinois in 1978, a home to many survivors of the Holocaust. An Illinois appeals court lifted the ban. That episode gave rise to the immortal scene in Blues Brothers, where John Belushi and Dan Akroyd plow their car into the Nazi ranks, hurling them into the lake below.

Yet in Europe, the mere expectation of communal violence against hateful speech routinely leads to bans and prohibitions. Significantly, the Dutch government has imposed no such sanctions on Geert Wilder’s Fitna. The Hague as well as the EU have merely condemned the 16-minute film. On the other hand, no television station would air it, so Wilders had to “premiere” it on the Internet.

Fitna is the kind of montage that can be applied to anything in order to disgrace it. The familiar tools are selectivity, suggestive juxtaposition, incendiary commentary. In that, Fitna resembles your basic anti-semitic tract where quotes from the Hebrew Bible are used to depict Jews as murderous fanatics and their god as a vengeful, cruel deity—never mind what else is in the corpus and how revelation has been changed by two millennia of interpretation.

Come to think of it, as the respected NRC Handelsblad reminded its readers, the agitprop produced by Sergei Eisenstein or Michael Moore used the very same techniques. And what about Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which oscillates between manipulation and mendacity, but profits from its obeisance to contemporary standards of correctness?

The Dutch have not forgotten the murder of politician Pim Fortuyn and the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, and so this haven of multiculturalist laissez-faire has become a lot less tolerant of militant self-righteousness in the name of Allah. So have the French in the aftermath of bloody riots by young Muslims in their squalid suburbs. The Germans, always willing to turn the other cheek, given their murderous racism in the Nazi years, have been shocked by foiled terrorist plots as well as “honor killings” in their midst. Perhaps, Europeans are also afflicted by a nagging sense of shame, having left little Denmark in the lurch while the country faced boycotts and burning embassies in the wake of the Muhammad cartoons.

This time, Europe is walking the fine line between appeasement and self-assertion. The Dutch are a perfect example. No, they would not ban Fitna. Instead, they went into full defensive mode. The government dispatched faxes to the municipalities: Beware, Fitna is on the Net. The police were placed on alert throughout the land. Embassies in Islamic countries were instructed to ready emergency procedures planned long ago, all the way to preparing for evacuation.

On the other hand, the Dutch bent over backward to assuage Muslim rage, knowing full well that such fury is never spontaneous, but a convenient pretext for scoring another Big One in the “clash of civilizations.” Dutch diplomats were dispatched to assure Muslim regimes that Fitna was strictly a private affair—and by no means condoned by the powers that be. Alas, so the line went, we Westerners have a tradition of free speech that keeps governments from enforcing an official truth.

What these emissaries did not cite, one surmises, is another, now safely banished part of our history. This is those three centuries of million-fold annihilation in the name of the One True God, be he the Lord or a secular Deity, as in the guise of Stalin or Hitler. To invoke this bloody past in defense of free speech would have been totally incorrect, the kind of cultural hauteur that would assign to the West a higher perch on the scale of civilizational progress.

So far, so good. In their Friday sermons, Muslim clerics in Holland called for reasonability and restraint. So far, the government’s “counter-insurgency” apparatus is just idling. Islamic bloggers are keeping the flames of rage low. Have these good folks been intimidated by the harsher mood in Europe? A note of caution: In the wake of the Danish Muhammad cartoons, it took a few weeks before the propaganda engines in Libya, Pakistan and Egypt kicked in.

Next stop is Germany, where a municipal theater in Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin, will premiere Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses on Sunday. Recall that this led to Khomeini’s death fatwa against the author in 1989 and innumerable eruptions of Muslim rage throughout the world. Recall also the submissive response by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie: “Only the utterly insensitive can fail to see that… Salman Rushdie’s book has deeply offended Muslims both here and throughout the world.”

This time, twenty years later, submission and self-assertion, rage and restraint are more balanced. For now.

Comments are limited to MESH members.

Barry Rubin is a member of MESH. In 2002, he wrote: “A post-Saddam Iraq seen as reasonably democratic, independent of American control, and improving its people’s lives might become a model, promoting the cause of representative government and human rights in the region. If so, the United States would get credit and not blame for its actions.” (Read his full prediction here.)

From Barry Rubin

I was quite worried at the time about the decision to invade Iraq. There was no doubt that the United States and its allies could win the war militarily, but the key problem was what would happen afterward. Why should one believe that Iraq would become democratic—and stable as well—virtually overnight? Given the country’s history, political culture, and divisions this seemed unlikely.

And there was also the problem of risk. What if things went wrong? The existing situation was about as good as one could expect. The failure of the Arab-Israeli peace process, due to Syria and the Palestinian leadership, as well as September 11 and other events had led many more people in America and the West to understand how the region actually worked. They came to comprehend that the region’s problems were not the fault of the United States or Israel, but were due to the nature of the regimes and their ideologies.

I thought—and so did almost everyone in Israel I heard on this issue—that there was a huge amount of naiveté in the U.S. policy. The general consensus was that as long as sanctions remained on Iraq, Saddam was not going to be much of a threat. The real concern was Iran. Yet if things went wrong in Iraq, America’s political capital would be squandered and Israel would be called upon to pay a large part of the price.

But there were two other factors to be considered. First, there was the situation of the Iraqi people. How could one in good conscience advocate a policy in which they continued to live under such a brutal dictatorship, especially if an alternative was available? The other was the point that America was at war. And while this should not still criticism, it should also engender support.

How do things look five years later? It is easy to reach a conclusion but hard to be sure it is the right one. Would it have been better if the invasion had never taken place? I can see arguments on both sides. Regrettably, my worst fears about the cost in American prestige and credibility, as well as a return to the old, bad analysis of the region, have come true.

I don’t think the United States can really win in Iraq, though it also cannot lose. What I mean by this is that the U.S. effort, most recently the Surge, has improved the situation within Iraq, a state of affairs that many see as a victory. Yet all U.S. forces can do is to create a situation of relative calm after which the Iraqi political system and military capability will decide what happens next. The United States can only create suitable conditions for this—and it has—but how is the turnover to take place? If U.S. troops cannot be withdrawn or even significantly reduced, what does this tell us?

And there is also another question about who will ultimately reap the benefits of victory within Iraq. Does the added aspect of heightened Iranian influence mean the whole policy was a mistake? The internal situation is difficult, not only in terms of Sunni-Shia divisions but also due to internal Shia splits, the strength of Islamist sentiments, the ability of Iran and Arab neighbors to disrupt the society, and many more.

What of the regional situation? The war in Iraq has had close to zero effect on the Arab-Israeli conflict, as the removal of Iraq as a factor is in part balanced by the increase of Islamist power, though this might well have happened any way. Nor did it have any meaningful effect on Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons, the next big issue in Gulf security.

My prediction at the time was that the attack, if successfully carried out, would lead Arab governments to see the United States as a more dangerous enemy—and hence one not to be trifled with—and a more serious security asset. If one looks at public opinion polls, it would seem the United States is more unpopular in the Arabic-speaking world. But popularity is not the point. It makes us feel better or worse, but is simply not the way Middle East politics work where it counts. And regarding what counts, I am not sure one can say that these events have materially worsened U.S. relations with Arab regimes at all. The ultimate result will depend on whether American intervention seems successful and if the United States is seen as steadfast.

Finally, consider the tremendous irony of the situation and U.S. policy: the United States is supporting an Iraqi government whose number-two ally is Iran while fighting proxies of its own allies, the Sunni countries who oppose an expansion of Iranian influence!

There were no easy answers in 2003; there are none now.