Down the Rabbit Hole, Redux: 43 Notes

On a few occasions in the past, I have commented on President Obama’s speeches by presenting the text above the line and using footnotes for my own text. I did this, for example, back on December 2009 with a comment called “90 Notes” and again on September 2, 2010 with one called “54 Notes.” This method makes the result look a little (a very little, I should stress) like a page of Talmud, with Mishnah above and Gemorrah below. (If you don’t understand that, it doesn’t matter.) In this case, I am annotating the President’s March 28, 2011 speech as a follow-on to a commentary I made on March 22, called “Down the Rabbit Hole: An Introduction to Operation Rapid Serpent.” I may have recourse to refer back to that article so that I (and you, the reader) are spared the burden of unnecessary repetition. As before, too, I will comment on the speechwriting elements of the text as well as on matters of substance; in this case, however, I will try to minimize the former as I often directly address the President in my remarks. So here goes:

* * * *

The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, For Immediate Release, March 28, 2011

Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on Libya, National Defense University, Washington, D.C., 7:31 P.M. EDT




THE PRESIDENT: Tonight, I’d like to update the American people on the international effort that we have led in Libya –- what we’ve done, what we plan to do, and why this matters to us.

I want to begin by paying tribute to our men and women in uniform who, once again, have acted with courage, professionalism and patriotism. They have moved with incredible speed and strength. Because of them and our dedicated diplomats, a coalition has been forged and countless lives have been saved.[1]

Meanwhile, as we speak, our troops are supporting our ally Japan, leaving Iraq to its people, stopping the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan, and going after al Qaeda all across the globe. As Commander-in-Chief, I’m grateful to our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and to their families. And I know all Americans share in that sentiment.[2]

For generations, the United States of America has played a unique role as an anchor of global security and as an advocate for human freedom. Mindful of the risks and costs of military action, we are naturally reluctant to use force to solve the world’s many challenges. But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.[3] That’s what happened in Libya over the course of these last six weeks.

Libya sits directly between Tunisia and Egypt -– two nations that inspired the world when their people rose up to take control of their own destiny.[4] For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant -– Muammar Qaddafi.[5] He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world –- including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents.

Last month, Qaddafi’s grip of fear appeared to give way to the promise of freedom. In cities and towns across the country, Libyans took to the streets to claim their basic human rights. As one Libyan said, “For the first time we finally have hope that our nightmare of 40 years will soon be over.”[6]

Faced with this opposition, Qaddafi began attacking his people.[7] As President, my immediate concern was the safety of our citizens, so we evacuated our embassy and all Americans who sought our assistance. Then we took a series of swift steps in a matter of days to answer Qaddafi’s aggression. We froze more than $33 billion of Qaddafi’s regime’s assets. Joining with other nations at the United Nations Security Council, we broadened our sanctions, imposed an arms embargo, and enabled Qaddafi and those around him to be held accountable for their crimes. I made it clear that Qaddafi had lost the confidence of his people and the legitimacy to lead, and I said that he needed to step down from power.[8]

In the face of the world’s condemnation, Qaddafi chose to escalate his attacks, launching a military campaign against the Libyan people.[9] Innocent people were targeted for killing. Hospitals and ambulances were attacked. Journalists were arrested, sexually assaulted, and killed. Supplies of food and fuel were choked off. Water for hundreds of thousands of people in Misurata was shut off. Cities and towns were shelled, mosques were destroyed, and apartment buildings reduced to rubble. Military jets and helicopter gunships were unleashed upon people who had no means to defend themselves against assaults from the air.

Confronted by this brutal repression and a looming humanitarian crisis, I ordered warships into the Mediterranean.[10] European allies declared their willingness to commit resources to stop the killing.[11] The Libyan opposition and the Arab League appealed to the world to save lives in Libya. And so at my direction, America led an effort with our allies at the United Nations Security Council to pass a historic resolution that authorized a no-fly zone to stop the regime’s attacks from the air, and further authorized all necessary measures to protect the Libyan people.

Ten days ago, having tried to end the violence without using force, the international community offered Qaddafi a final chance to stop his campaign of killing, or face the consequences. Rather than stand down, his forces continued their advance, bearing down on the city of Benghazi, home to nearly 700,000 men, women and children who sought their freedom from fear.[12]

At this point, the United States and the world faced a choice. Qaddafi declared he would show “no mercy” to his own people. He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment. In the past, we have seen him hang civilians in the streets, and kill over a thousand people in a single day.[13] Now we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city. We knew that if we wanted -- if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could[14] suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.

It was not in our national interest to let that happen. I refused to let that happen.[15] And so nine days ago, after consulting the bipartisan leadership of Congress, I authorized military action to stop the killing and enforce U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973.[16]

We struck regime forces approaching Benghazi to save that city and the people within it. We hit Qaddafi’s troops in neighboring Ajdabiya, allowing the opposition to drive them out. We hit Qaddafi’s air defenses, which paved the way for a no-fly zone. We targeted tanks and military assets that had been choking off towns and cities, and we cut off much of their source of supply. And tonight, I can report that we have stopped Qaddafi’s deadly advance.[17]

In this effort, the United States has not acted alone. Instead, we have been joined by a strong and growing coalition. This includes our closest allies -– nations like the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Turkey –- all of whom have fought by our sides for decades. And it includes Arab partners like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, who have chosen to meet their responsibilities to defend the Libyan people.[18]

To summarize, then: In just one month, the United States has worked with our international partners to mobilize a broad coalition, secure an international mandate to protect civilians, stop an advancing army, prevent a massacre, and establish a no-fly zone with our allies and partners. To lend some perspective on how rapidly this military and diplomatic response came together, when people were being brutalized in Bosnia in the 1990s, it took the international community more than a year to intervene with air power to protect civilians. It took us 31 days.[19]

Moreover, we’ve accomplished these objectives consistent with the pledge that I made to the American people at the outset of our military operations. I said that America’s role would be limited; that we would not put ground troops into Libya; that we would focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation and that we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners. Tonight, we are fulfilling that pledge.[20]

Our most effective alliance, NATO, has taken command of the enforcement of the arms embargo and the no-fly zone. Last night, NATO decided to take on the additional responsibility of protecting Libyan civilians. This transfer from the United States to NATO will take place on Wednesday.[21] Going forward, the lead in enforcing the no-fly zone and protecting civilians on the ground will transition to our allies and partners, and I am fully confident that our coalition will keep the pressure on Qaddafi’s remaining forces.

In that effort, the United States will play a supporting role -- including intelligence, logistical support, search and rescue assistance, and capabilities to jam regime communications.[22] Because of this transition to a broader, NATO-based coalition, the risk and cost of this operation -- to our military and to American taxpayers -- will be reduced significantly.[23]

So for those who doubted our capacity to carry out this operation, I want to be clear: The United States of America has done what we said we would do.[24]

That’s not to say that our work is complete. In addition to our NATO responsibilities, we will work with the international community to provide assistance to the people of Libya, who need food for the hungry and medical care for the wounded. We will safeguard the more than $33 billion that was frozen from the Qaddafi regime so that it’s available to rebuild Libya. After all, the money doesn’t belong to Qaddafi or to us -- it belongs to the Libyan people. And we’ll make sure they receive it.[25]

Tomorrow, Secretary Clinton will go to London, where she will meet with the Libyan opposition and consult with more than 30 nations. These discussions will focus on what kind of political effort is necessary to pressure Qaddafi, while also supporting a transition to the future that the Libyan people deserve -- because while our military mission is narrowly focused on saving lives, we continue to pursue the broader goal of a Libya that belongs not to a dictator, but to its people.[26]

Now, despite the success of our efforts over the past week, I know that some Americans continue to have questions about our efforts in Libya.[27] Qaddafi has not yet stepped down from power, and until he does, Libya will remain dangerous.[28] Moreover, even after Qaddafi does leave power, 40 years of tyranny has left Libya fractured and without strong civil institutions. The transition to a legitimate government that is responsive to the Libyan people will be a difficult task.[29] And while the United States will do our part to help, it will be a task for the international community and –- more importantly –- a task for the Libyan people themselves.

In fact, much of the debate in Washington has put forward a false choice when it comes to Libya. On the one hand, some question why America should intervene at all -– even in limited ways –- in this distant land. They argue that there are many places in the world where innocent civilians face brutal violence at the hands of their government, and America should not be expected to police the world, particularly when we have so many pressing needs here at home.[30]

It’s true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs. And given the costs and risks of intervention, we must always measure our interests against the need for action. But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what’s right. In this particular country -– Libya -- at this particular moment, we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale.[31] We had a unique ability to stop that violence: an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves. We also had the ability to stop Qaddafi’s forces in their tracks without putting American troops on the ground.

To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and -– more profoundly -– our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

Moreover, America has an important strategic interest in preventing Qaddafi from overrunning those who oppose him. A massacre would have driven thousands of additional refugees across Libya’s borders, putting enormous strains on the peaceful –- yet fragile -– transitions in Egypt and Tunisia. The democratic impulses that are dawning across the region would be eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship, as repressive leaders concluded that violence is the best strategy to cling to power.[32] The writ of the United Nations Security Council would have been shown to be little more than empty words, crippling that institution’s future credibility to uphold global peace and security.[33] So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.

Now, just as there are those who have argued against intervention in Libya, there are others who have suggested that we broaden our military mission beyond the task of protecting the Libyan people, and do whatever it takes to bring down Qaddafi and usher in a new government.

Of course, there is no question that Libya -– and the world –- would be better off with Qaddafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means.[34] But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.

The task that I assigned our forces -– to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger, and to establish a no-fly zone -– carries with it a U.N. mandate and international support. It’s also what the Libyan opposition asked us to do. If we tried to overthrow Qaddafi by force, our coalition would splinter.[35] We would likely have to put U.S. troops on the ground to accomplish that mission, or risk killing many civilians from the air. The dangers faced by our men and women in uniform would be far greater. So would the costs and our share of the responsibility for what comes next.[36]

To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq. Thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our troops and the determination of our diplomats, we are hopeful about Iraq’s future. But regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.

As the bulk of our military effort ratchets down, what we can do -- and will do -- is support the aspirations of the Libyan people. We have intervened to stop a massacre, and we will work with our allies and partners to maintain the safety of civilians. We will deny the regime arms, cut off its supplies of cash, assist the opposition, and work with other nations to hasten the day when Qaddafi leaves power. It may not happen overnight, as a badly weakened Qaddafi tries desperately to hang on to power. But it should be clear to those around Qaddafi, and to every Libyan, that history is not on Qaddafi’s side. With the time and space that we have provided for the Libyan people, they will be able to determine their own destiny, and that is how it should be.[37]

Let me close by addressing what this action says about the use of America’s military power, and America’s broader leadership in the world, under my presidency.

As Commander-in-Chief, I have no greater responsibility than keeping this country safe. And no decision weighs on me more than when to deploy our men and women in uniform. I’ve made it clear that I will never hesitate to use our military swiftly, decisively, and unilaterally when necessary to defend our people, our homeland, our allies and our core interests. That's why we’re going after al Qaeda wherever they seek a foothold. That is why we continue to fight in Afghanistan, even as we have ended our combat mission in Iraq and removed more than 100,000 troops from that country.

There will be times, though, when our safety is not directly threatened, but our interests and our values are. Sometimes, the course of history poses challenges that threaten our common humanity and our common security -– responding to natural disasters, for example; or preventing genocide and keeping the peace; ensuring regional security, and maintaining the flow of commerce. These may not be America’s problems alone, but they are important to us. They’re problems worth solving. And in these circumstances, we know that the United States, as the world’s most powerful nation, will often be called upon to help.

In such cases, we should not be afraid to act -– but the burden of action should not be America’s alone. As we have in Libya, our task is instead to mobilize the international community for collective action. Because contrary to the claims of some, American leadership is not simply a matter of going it alone and bearing all of the burden ourselves. Real leadership creates the conditions and coalitions for others to step up as well; to work with allies and partners so that they bear their share of the burden and pay their share of the costs; and to see that the principles of justice and human dignity are upheld by all.[38]

That’s the kind of leadership we’ve shown in Libya. Of course, even when we act as part of a coalition, the risks of any military action will be high. Those risks were realized when one of our planes malfunctioned over Libya. Yet when one of our airmen parachuted to the ground, in a country whose leader has so often demonized the United States –- in a region that has such a difficult history with our country –- this American did not find enemies. Instead, he was met by people who embraced him. One young Libyan who came to his aid said, “We are your friends. We are so grateful to those men who are protecting the skies.”

This voice is just one of many in a region where a new generation is refusing to be denied their rights and opportunities any longer.

Yes, this change will make the world more complicated for a time.[39] Progress will be uneven, and change will come differently to different countries. There are places, like Egypt, where this change will inspire us and raise our hopes. And then there will be places, like Iran, where change is fiercely suppressed. The dark forces of civil conflict and sectarian war will have to be averted, and difficult political and economic concerns will have to be addressed.

The United States will not be able to dictate the pace and scope of this change. Only the people of the region can do that. But we can make a difference.

I believe that this movement of change cannot be turned back, and that we must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through many storms: our opposition to violence directed at one’s own people; our support for a set of universal rights, including the freedom for people to express themselves and choose their leaders; our support for governments that are ultimately responsive to the aspirations of the people.[40]

Born, as we are, out of a revolution by those who longed to be free, we welcome the fact that history is on the move in the Middle East and North Africa, and that young people are leading the way. Because wherever people long to be free, they will find a friend in the United States. Ultimately, it is that faith -- those ideals -- that are the true measure of American leadership.[41]

My fellow Americans, I know that at a time of upheaval overseas -- when the news is filled with conflict and change -- it can be tempting to turn away from the world.[42] And as I’ve said before, our strength abroad is anchored in our strength here at home. That must always be our North Star -- the ability of our people to reach their potential, to make wise choices with our resources, to enlarge the prosperity that serves as a wellspring for our power, and to live the values that we hold so dear.

But let us also remember that for generations, we have done the hard work of protecting our own people, as well as millions around the globe. We have done so because we know that our own future is safer, our own future is brighter, if more of mankind can live with the bright light of freedom and dignity.

Tonight, let us give thanks for the Americans who are serving through these trying times, and the coalition that is carrying our effort forward. And let us look to the future with confidence and hope not only for our own country, but for all those yearning for freedom around the world.[43]

Thank you. God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America. (Applause.) Thank you.

END 7:58 P.M. EDT

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[1] The contention that “countless lives have been saved” goes to the heart of the President’s case for the Libya intervention, since the purpose of the intervention is not to effect regime change but is rather for humanitarian purposes. Unbelievable as it sounds, that’s what the man is saying. But as many have pointed out, this contention is based on a counterfactual: If we had not started a war, would the regime have massacred the residents of Benghazi? Maybe, maybe not. Guys like Qaddafi say lots of things they don't mean. It made tactical sense to make such threats to try to disarm the opposition and make a regime victory less costly; whether a massacre would have actually occurred no one can possibly know. Presumably, the armed opposition currently doing pretty well would have resisted, and in the city center, where air power is not so useful, who can say what that fight might have looked like or what the outcome would have been? Who knows if regime forces would even have entered the city; regime spokesmen at the time claimed they wouldn’t, but of course these are guys one shouldn’t believe even if they claim that spinach is a vegetable. Moreover, what U.S. and allied airpower have done is to create a more level playing field for the civil war now going on. How can the President know in the longer run whether that level playing field will not prolong the war and end up getting vastly more people killed than might (or, again, might not) have died in Benghazi? He cannot possibly know.

[2] There is otherwise really nothing to comment on in this opening section; this is standard presidential-speech boilerplate, or what speechwriters call grace notes of a sort. The real question is whether the American soldiers, sailors and marines he has sent into harm’s way really feel that the President has their back if they get into trouble. I suspect they’re a little tentative about that, to put it generously.

[3] I fear that this phrase is a code word for “the responsibility to protect”, one of the most irresponsible UN gestures of recent years, one designed to legitimate “humanitarian interventions” at the same time that the UN system as a whole tries to ban the use of force for the protection of sovereign national interests.

[4] They have not yet done so in Egypt, as the President has got to know. Great line for a speech, if you don’t look too hard at the reality it purports to describe.

[5] Qaddafi has been a tyrant, to be sure, but he has not ruled alone. As noted in my March 22 essay, Libya is a tribal society, and Qaddafi has wide support in the western part of the country based on kinship ties and vast patronage networks fueled by oil money. Anyone who thinks he is a pushover, an isolated madman without any political clout in the country, does not understand Libyan society or politics.

[6] This, again, is great for an applause line in a speech, but it assumes that every opposition protest is ipso facto part of a democracy movement, and there is simply no evidence that this is on balance the case in Libya, or anywhere else in the Arab world right now. For what reality looks like in Egypt right now, see Samuel Tadros’s latest brilliant comment on the TAI blog, called “Egypt, for Real.” In Libya, quite aside from the tribal dimension—which gives the conflict the flavor of a very traditional “rule or suffer” episode that Ibn Khaldun can educate you about, if you like, from the Muqaddimah—there is the matter of AQIM. AQIM stands for al-Qaeda in the Maghreb; it is an offshoot of one side (the worse of the two bad sides) of the Algerian civil war of just a few years past. It is dangerous and growing more so. We have testimony from a Libyan opposition leader named Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi that al-Qaeda has been active in the Libyan fight on the opposition’s side. We have an AFP report from March 26 that al-Qaeda has stolen Libyan surface-to-air missiles and spirited them into Chad. We do not know very much about the Libyan opposition fighting Qaddafi, but the more we learn about it the less like a democracy movement it looks. The President’s remarks on this point are really stunning.

[7] No, not exactly. The opposition began shooting first. But that’s just a detail isn’t it?

[8] It is amazing to me that the President would so casually repeat an earlier mistake. When he said a few weeks ago that Qaddafi had lost the legitimacy to rule, he implied that he once had it. But by democratic standards he never did, unless by legitimacy he means in the Libyan context that tribal might makes for tribal right. You can’t lose something you never had. Qaddafi seized power on September 1, 1969, overthrowing the Sanussi monarchy of King Idris that did have legitimacy, though not of a strictly democratic a sort. Why repeat an error? Curious.

[9] The President speaks as though the opposition was not armed or organized in the slightest, that all the regime’s attacks were against pure innocent bystanders. This beggars belief.

[10] The USS Kearsarge was already there, sir, on normal patrol, as were most of the other ships operating from the Med now. The Boxer, Green Bay and Comstock--amphibious strike force I--was also headed out in that general direction already, on a normal patrol deployment. I was on the ship when it left San Diego on February 22 for Pearl Harbor and points beyond. So, please…..

[11] You make it sound like we acted first and then the European allies came around, when you know perfectly well it was the other way around. How short do you think people’s memories are? Wait, don’t answer that question……you might be right.

[12] This last phrase, “who sought their freedom from fear”, is way over the top—bad speechwriting. Possibly the speechwriter, probably Ben Rhodes, reassigned to the starting rotation in a pinch, was trying to be Rooseveltian here. It doesn’t work.

[13] The President seems to be referring to the Busalim prison massacre of 1996. Some 1, 270 prisoners were murdered, all but a few of them Islamists. Killing prisoners, however, after a prison revolt, isn't the same as what Hafiz al-Asad did in Hama in 1982, or what Qaddafi might or might not have done in Benghazi. Not that it's pretty, of course; but it’s not the same sort of event.

[14] Yes, “could”, not necessarily would. To base a war on a counterfactual is a form of pre-emption, it is not? I thought you were against that.

[15] Grandstanding persiflage. You, Mr. President, were entirely ready to let it happen before your Secretary of State flipped on you and you had the international cover you thought you could use to avoid taking the lion’s share of responsibility for the consequences of starting a war.

[16] Nowhere in this speech does the President use the word “war.” Just like he seems not to know what a “civilian” is—see my March 22 article—he seems not to know what a “war” is either. Where is George Orwell when you need him? When you fire over 300 cruise missiles at someone’s capital city, and drop 500-pound bombs on his forces, and bomb a country’s airfields with B-2 bombers flying from Missouri, you have started a war. There is simply no other word for it.

[17] You have stopped it temporarily, but as your own Pentagon says, stop the air operations and the whole situation could and probably would flip right around again. You have now got yourself in a position where we cannot stop the military action without jeopardizing what it has accomplished. That is why, in my March 22 essay, I characterized this operation as essentially open-ended, and not just for that reason. Yet Mr. President, you say virtually nothing about outcomes in your speech. You talk of processes, with the UN and so on, as if that is enough to justify the use of force. It’s the outcome that matters, and your reluctance to address the connection between the use of U.S. military power and that outcome is distressing. This is a point I will return to in a moment.

[18] This is totally disingenuous. The Arabs and other allies in this coalition are far more “window dressing” that the allies the Bush Administration assembled for the Iraq War, which you derided as such at the time when you were in the Senate. The U.S. military has undertaken by far the vast majority of the sorties flown, and the bombs dropped, over Libya, and there is little likelihood that our allies can assume the brunt of what we have been doing just because we say we’ve “handed it off” to NATO.

[19] It would have taken fewer days if you had not wisely resisted the siren call of the French and British. The Bosnia operation was also a mistake, in my view; we settled nothing there, really. We just froze the conflict, and it will unfreeze one day when we least wish it to. Ah, but that’s another story.

[20] But for how long? As I and others have pointed out, having started this war, we cannot leave Qaddafi standing when the shooting stops. He will be extraordinarily dangerous, far more so, in my view, than he would have been to us and our allies had we not fired hundreds of millions of dollars of ordnance at him. As I said in my March 22 essay, someone needs to go get him. If the opposition can’t, and I doubt they can take Tripoli, and if the French and British either don’t try or try and fail, who do you suppose is going to have to do this, sooner or later, one way or another? Really, sir.

[21] Yes, but it won’t change the balance of the burden. Just calling it a NATO operation won’t change the U.S. need to lead the fight, because no one else can do it.

[22] This is also disingenuous. We have in fact been doing more in recent days, not less. In recent days we have introduced A-10 Warthogs and AC-130 Gunships into the fight. And we are not using these and other platforms to “protect civilians”—we are using them to attack and destroy the Libyan military. When we attack Tripoli and Sirte (Qaddafi’s hometown), there are no civilians at risk in those places because they are on Qaddafi’s side. That is why the Arab League (and the oh, so predictable Russians, in the person of that human reptile Sergei Lavrov) are now criticizing you for going way beyond the UN mandate, and that is because you are, and that is because the mandate was ridiculous and unimplementable from the start.

[23] Not bloody likely. This open-ended commitment—and it will turn out that way no matter what you think now, sir—is not nearly over or hardly predictable. Let’s reckon the costs when it is over, and we’ll see who was right, OK?

[24] This really gets to the nub of the matter. We said we would prevent a humanitarian outrage, but we will not know the body count, and whose bodies will be counted, until this is over—and, as already noted, this is not yet near to being over. The President seems to be trying to avoid responsibility for the outcome by artificially and prematurely claiming “mission accomplished.” Does this remind you of anything, or of some other President, perhaps?

[25] Who are we going to turn this money over to? The next formally recognized Libya government, right? What if there isn’t one for a long time? What if it turns out to be de facto an Islamist government, or possibly in the process of becoming one? We still going to give them $33 billion? Better not to have mentioned this, seems to me, or to have made any promises.

[26] OK, here is where the President and his Administration go even further down the rabbit hole. What this speech as a whole says is that we will use American military power for humanitarian ends, but we will pursue regime change only with others and only by political and diplomatic means. This is a complete inversion of common sense and millennia of statecraft practice. Political and diplomatic means are typically brought to bear in humanitarian crises and, short of literal genocide (a word way too loosely thrown around lately), that is how it should be. That’s why no U.S. or other external force has been used in Congo, for example, or in Ivory Coast, where there are good guys and bad guys no less clearly on view than is the case in Libya. If we take the President at his word, we should then expect force to be used in Congo and Ivory Coast (and maybe Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, etc., etc.) any day now, if there is UN sanction for it, because the situations are not different in kind from that in Libya. In all these cases tenured but non-democratic regimes are using deadly force against their political opponents. But if we need to overthrow an extremely dangerous regime that threatens the United States and its allies, as Qaddafi’s will be if he survives the present fight, we have to rely on political and diplomatic means to do that? Are you kidding? (This reminds me a little of the Democrats’ argument before the 1991 Gulf War that sanctions would change the Iraqi regime without war, when even a victorious war failed to achieve that end.) This is madness. It is down the rabbit hole all the way to Shanghai.

[27] You think?

[28] You think? Thanks for admitting it. Libya can remain dangerous even after he is gone, too, as my March 22 essay describes.

[29] Yes, it will. Who will police it? Who will pay for it? Who will get UN authorization for it? You are not volunteering American power and money for this, I see; indeed, your diplomatic body language points in rather the other direction. So who, then? The Mad Hatter and his friends?

[30] That is really disingenuous. Most of those opposed to this intervention from the get-go, including your own Defense Secretary and National Security Advisor, are asking you to justify it in national security terms, and to connect military means to political ends. You’re trying to make all those who question the wisdom of this intervention look like isolationists. That is so foul, sir.

[31] Again, conjecture, but not wholly unreasonable conjecture, granted.

[32] It does not follow that whatever happens in Libya will affect what happens in other Arab countries. The regime in Bahrain, for example, is fighting for its life in a zero-sum sectarian conflict. It has to act as though existential stakes are at risk, because in fact they are. The idea that the Al-Khalifa might act differently if Qaddafi loses power in Libya is a fantasy. Rather the same goes for what’s happening in Yemen, Syria and the rest of the region.

[33] This is really rich. This argument, almost verbatim, is what the Bush Administration said about Iraq. At the time Senator Obama ridiculed this claim. Now he makes it, pertaining to a case in which a much lesser threat to American interests is involved—a least so it seemed before the WMD fear was proven to be mostly unfounded.

[34] A joke, right, sir? If a military operation fails to get rid of him, you think UN talkfests will? Why don’t I feel like laughing?

[35] It already has since we’ve already obviously crept (I use the word advisedly) way beyond the “protect civilians” phase. See note 22 above, about the Arab League and the Russians. Love that re-set, don't we now?

[36] We will not escape these costs; having started this war, we will have no choice but to end it if someone else can’t.

[37] Yes, that is how it should be. But what if it doesn’t turn out that way? Where’s your Phase IV planning, sir? Where’s anything but your best-case analysis?

[38] This, from the Niebuhrian Nobel Peace Prize speech, is right. Several articles in the forthcoming issue of The American Interest (by Jim Thomas, Kori Schake and others) make this argument. But as used here, this is a neon red herring. You talk like other Administrations wished to act alone when they did not need to. That’s simply false.

[39] Now the President is essentially quoting Condoleezza Rice’s “birth pangs of a new era” remark. So it’s not enough that his policy is one that qualifies as Paul Wolfowitz-lite; the language has to mimic Condoleezza Rice? Somebody pinch me, please; this is all a little hard to take.

[40] Again, it remains to be seen what the Arab street really wants, and can get. I have an open mind about the young people twittering themselves into a revolutionary fervor these days—God bless them. Obviously, things have changed in the Arab world. The word democracy was unintelligible to most Arabs just a decade or so ago; a loan word in Arabic, it meant “good governance” very generally and vaguely. It meant not the thugs and thieves we have now. It had no meaning in the Western procedural sense. Maybe now it does. That’s good, and certainly the United States must never betray or abandon true democrats. But it is not a foregone conclusion that they represent anything like a majority in any Arab country, even Egypt or Tunisia, or that they can prevail over the forces of non-democratic continuity in those places and others. The Middle Eastern country arguably closest to an understanding and yearning for true democracy along the lines that we understand it is Iran—not an Arab country and obviously in a difficult and very different situation.

[41] It is as unwise to use the word “faith” here as it was for George W. Bush once to use the word “crusade.” When this speech is translated into Arabic and traditional folk read it, they will read “faith” out of Obama’s mouth as Christianity. That will not be good.

[42] Again with the red herring. This is a Trotskyite rhetorical tactic—to associate those who disagree with you to the far outer fringe of some position they do not in fact hold. The idea that anyone who disagrees on prudential grounds with this military intervention is an isolationist is really beyond the pale. It is downright insulting.

[43] All I can say after listening to and reading this strategically incoherent statement is that I hope that you, Mr. President, are an effectual and necessary hypocrite, that you are once again, as you admitted doing before during the Egyptian crisis, speaking out of both sides of your mouth. You care about coalition maintenance, and about appearing virtual and noble (or Nobel--spell it however you like). Well, fine; that’s politics, I guess. As my friend, Kenyon professor Fred Baumann, brilliantly put it, you are expert at practicing “diplomacy as vanity,” seeming to care more about how things look than about how they really are. Still, I cannot bring myself to believe that you would really trust diplomacy and sanctions alone to oust Qaddafi if he looks to survive the present phase of this war. That would be roughly as irresponsible as having started the war in the first place. I am obviously not privy to what you have been saying to Admiral Mullen and General Ham at Africom. I just hope that the ceaseless beating the Libyans are taking from the air, even in places where no “civilians” are or have ever been at risk from regime forces, is on your order. And I hope we get lucky and it turns the trick. But if it doesn’t, you, sir, are not going to be redeemed by this or any other speech.

Down the Rabbit Hole: An Introduction to Operation Rapid Serpent

To all appearances, U.S. foreign policy in the Obama Administration has now definitively gone down the rabbit hole. It is intoxicated with an advanced form of Wilsonian madness, one shorn of all sensitivity to the consequences of the U.S. government’s behavior. Like Alice with her pills, some things are getting or will soon get bigger—risks, mission definition and casualty figures on the ground in Libya—while others are getting smaller—our reservoir of good options, our stock of common sense and our peace of mind.

I do not invoke Lewis Carroll lightly. I do so in this case for a special reason: Words we thought we all understood have now become encrusted with bizarre new meanings, or no meanings at all, as if our vocabulary has been hexed by Humpty Dumpty himself. Let me ask President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes and the rest of the crew (not to exclude accomplices like Nicholas Sarkozy, David Cameron, Ban Ki-Moon and the execrable Amr Moussa) that has steered us into this gratuitous mess to define “civilian” for me. What does it mean, folks? Does it include fairly well organized groups of Libyans attacking in formation with machine guns mounted on flatbed pick-up trucks? Apparently so, to some spellbound souls. This turns the Clinton Administration’s amusing little tiff over what “is” is into truly small change as America’s language follies go.

Words of many kinds have been flying fast and furious over the past few days, and so have cruise missiles, bombs and bullets. Those I’ve taken most to heart are words of criticism for a policy so confused that no observer has yet been able to match the means being employed to the mission’s stated purpose. It’s not easy to say anything original at this point, but it seems to me that a simple recitation in the right order of what has already been said might be of some service to clear thinking. That recitation need be composed of just three key points.

First, the military mission lacks any realistic or coherent definition. As far as the authorizing UN resolution and President Obama have said, the mission is to protect civilians. This is a humanitarian action. But the civilians compose a political opposition locked in a literally life-and-death struggle with a frightened and ruthless regime—and it was the opposition, let us remember, that started this fight last month. We are, let us be frank, intervening in someone else’s civil war. There are no humanitarians, and very few mere civilians, in Libya right now, because the struggle has at its base a tribal conflict, which the U.S. media has managed to ignore almost in its entirety.

There is no mystery as to why the opposition arose in Benghazi, in Cyrenaica, while the capital and Qaddafi’s loyalists are mainly in the old province of Tripolitania. I frankly doubt whether the advisers egging the President on in Libya have ever heard these proper nouns before, or have heard of Sannusiya (the Sufi order movement that helped ignite Libyan opposition to Italian colonialism), or know much of anything at all about the place. For them, the history of the region seems to have begun in December 2010, when Mohammed Bouazzi immolated himself in Tunis. And surely the Western laws-of-war distinction between soldiers and civilians is universal, right?

U.S. policy, on its face, suggests the absurd notion that if the Qaddafi regime stops targeting “civilians”, then we are fine with its continued incumbency. Yes, the President has said many times lately that Qaddafi has to go, but he never said that U.S. military forces were to be the proximate agent of that outcome. This is a lawyer’s cleverness bucking up against reality, however, and in this instance at least, the lawyer is bound to convince no one. (It was a lawyer’s way of thinking, too, to have privileged the attainment of multilateral cover above the need to know what the hell one was actually doing.) Clearly, the only way to reliably protect these “civilians” is to change the regime. Having started this foolish war, that is the only way it can end without producing sheer calamity—not that any end state that one can reasonably foresee is risk-free at this point.

There is another reason why regime change has to displace an impossible humanitarianism as the policy’s goal: This is French policy, and the French seem bound to take the lead in this effort, if we can find a way to pass off the command to them, or to them in league with the British. French policy bears its own mysteries, to be sure, but a lack of clarity about the mission is not among them. The French early on recognized the rebels as the provisional government of Libya and have stated unequivocally that the end of the Qaddafi regime is the purpose of the intervention. It eludes me, I confess, why the French have been so adamant about Libya, and why now. It also eludes me why, after having rejoined NATO’s military structure in 2009, Paris now refuses to allow the mission to become a NATO operation (that I can guess, however). This is an insistence that makes life particularly hard for the very worried Italians who, above and beyond all Europeans are in Qaddafi’s crosshairs for, as he sees it, the sin of betrayal. (There are lots of Libyan émigrés on Italy, each of them now likely to be seen by some Italians as potential terrorists.) But at least President Sarkozy can string together two thoughts and conclude that nothing short of regime change can justify releasing all the demons that this war has already set free.

Second, the means don’t match the only plausible, logical definition of the mission. A no-fly zone cannot, and never could, end this fight among the Libyans. This is not a set-battle conventional war; it’s a messy insurgency/counterinsurgency brawl without fixed fronts or large concentrations of forces. Air forces can do only so much, even with special-forces spotters on the ground helping them. And they can do less in the face of the fiction that their mission is to protect “civilians.” Indeed, if we take the UN resolution and the President at their word, what exactly do senior U.S. commanders tell their pilots? What possible ROEs make sense in a situation like this, where we are intelligence blind as well as way too high in the sky to distinguish friend from foe and avoid friendly-fire catastrophe?

I recently spent five and a half days (February 22-March 1) aboard the USS Boxer, a helicopter landing deck ship with a crew of about 900 “blue” sailors and 1,800 “green” Marines. I had many conversations with officers and some enlisted men and women as we sailed from San Diego to Pearl Harbor on the first leg of their 7-month deployment, and some of those conversations were with Marine pilots of the Boxer’s 20 helicopters (Cobras and Hueys) and 6 Harrier jets. I can just imagine their eyes turning into saucers on getting orders to use their craft to protect “civilians” fighting in close-combat with Libyan army forces. I can imagine them wishing to reply, in effect, “You want me to do what, with a Harrier jet?!”, but holding their very patriotic tongues. Those must be something like the orders Marine pilots have already received on the Boxer’s sister ship, the USS Kearsarge, which is right now in the Med off the Libyan coast. These pilots will do their level best to comply with whatever ROE’s they’re given, but I feel deeply sorry for them as they confront orders to do the virtually impossible.

I feel badly for General Carter Ham, too, who is trying to put the best face he can on what he knows to be an incoherent set of orders. I wonder how Secretary Gates is feeling about all this? In a way it doesn't matter now; it seems to me that he has no choice but to resign.

Clearly, only boots on the ground of one sort or another can oust Qaddafi and his bloodthirsty son, which is, again, the only way to bring the current phase of fighting under control. Whose boots will they be?

The President prefers that the “Libyan people” do it by themselves. That is of course preferable, but it is not and never was very likely. The rebels say, in effect, “Sure, we’ll do it; we just need your air forces to pummel the regime into clouds of pink meat for us first. “ That is tantamount to not exactly doing it all by themselves, and it certainly asks the pilots to do vastly more than protect civilians.

Suppose, then, that the French take their mission definition seriously and determine to go in on the ground to finish Qaddafi and son. Can French forces actually do this? Assuming they can get to the fight in sufficient numbers and hook up with the opposition (French and British special forces have been quietly on the ground in Libya now for weeks), can they prevail? This is not clear. What if the British help a lot? Can the two allies together do it, not as a NATO operation (unless the French relent on that point) but as something else, and a something else that will have neither UN nor Arab League imprimatur? (The relevant UN resolution explicitly rules out foreign troops on Libyan soil, and the Arab League will never endorse the return of “colonialist” forces to the region.) Under these political circumstances, and with an abstinent German government snarking unhelpfully over their shoulders, it is by no means clear that a major Franco-British effort will be forthcoming, or that if it is it will succeed. Echoes of Suez?

So what happens if the French and British try but do not succeed in a reasonably expeditious way? What happens is (hopefully) about as obvious as it gets: not Suez happens. The Americans come and save the day, as they demurred from doing in October 1956. The French and British know in their heart of hearts that we cannot let them fail miserably at this, or that’s what they suppose. I suppose they’re right.

What this means is that the President may before very long be forced to make the most excruciating decision of his life: to send American soldiers into harm’s way to save the Western alliance—even from an operation that is not explicitly a NATO mission!—in a contingency that has no strategic rationale to begin with; or not, leaving the alliance in ruins and Qaddafi bursting with plans to exact revenge.

I think the President simply cannot allow that latter outcome. So this is no ordinary, run-of-the-mill mission creep we’re about to encounter if our allies cannot turn the trick. That’s why I propose naming the next stage of the coalition mission, should it assume a U.S.-led shape and dimension, Operation Rapid Serpent.

Third, we’ve started a war we won't know how to end. We have a great deal riding on the success of the Franco-British operation, assuming one actually takes shape in a hurry. If it doesn’t work, the U.S. government is very likely going to be dragged, even with the President privately kicking and screaming all the way, to a mission definition (again, the only logical one available) that will presage an open-ended commitment. As I have said, a Qaddafi left armed and dangerous when the dust settles is an unacceptable outcome. Civilian planes will likely start failing out the sky, as did the one over Lockerbie; assassination attempts will multiply, like the attempted Libyan-backed murder of the Saudi king in 2003; al-Qaeda and affiliates might be aided and abetted to do Lord-knows-what to the Italians, the French, the British and, of course, to us. With nothing to lose, and way beyond the threshold of worrying about sanctions and such, Qaddafi could well become more dangerous than ever. If I were Silvio Berlusconi, in particular, I'd pick my future whorehouses with extreme care.

Ah, but suppose some boots on the ground do get Qaddafi and son; that, unfortunately, will not necessarily spell the end of the conflict. Of course, if democracy breaks out in a post-Qaddafi Libya, everything will be sunshine and roses—except that is about as likely to happen as a hookah-smoking caterpillar offering you a tuna on rye, with a pickle. Or about as likely as such a clean and clear endpoint to the battle in Iraq ever was. Whenever there is a conflict in a far-off land between some protesting horde and some morally unaesthetic incumbent government, the Manichean American mind rushes ineluctably to the conclusion that the throng in the street has to be a democracy movement. It’s the Children of the Sons of Light against the Children of the Sons of Darkness over, and over, and over again, except of course that it’s almost never quite that simple or clear-cut. This amounts to a pre-adolescent understanding of any region, and the Arab world isn’t just any region.

As noted, there is a regional and tribal element to the fight in Libya. It is unlikely that the Benghazi-based rebels could by themselves establish stable control over the whole country. It is almost as unlikely that the Tripolitanian tribes could re-establish firm control over Cyrenaica. Qaddafi managed the feat through a combination of patronage, terror and cooptation. That will be a very hard act to follow in the wake of so much bloodletting. We are therefore looking into the maw of a Libya that may well be divided, in the throes of some kind of protracted, at least low-level civil war, and that could very easily produce an insurgency spilling over the Egyptian and Tunisian borders—complete with refugees, the usual dysfunctional NGO triage operations and all the rest. And in due course, if the fractious mess lasts long enough, there is a reasonable prospect that al-Qaeda will find a way to establish a foothold amid the mayhem.

Who will want to send in peacekeepers to baby-sit a Libya that looks like that? Who’ll want to go to the UN to get the job authorized? The African Union?

Now, given that this sort of problem is foreseeable (I just foresaw it, after all, and I am not alone), and that it was also foreseeable before the cruise missiles started flying on Saturday, it stands to reason that a responsible, serious government will have thought about all this in advance, and come up with some plan for the post-combat “Phase IV” of the Libyan War, right? Not on your life; the President and his war council almost certainly have not even begun to think about this sort of thing, because they’re still in denial that it could happen. This is, after all, just a limited, humanitarian mission as far as they’re concerned. They don’t realize it yet, but these guys are on a path to make even Donny Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks look good—and you thought that was impossible.

* * *

These three observations do not, of course, exhaust the madness of what the Administration has done. This Libya caper will constitute a huge, compound distraction. Not only will it distract us from longer-term challenges, mainly in Asia, that will determine the success or failure of America’s grand strategy of forward presence on the flanks of Eurasia, it will also distract us from even more portentous Middle Eastern dangers. Just yesterday the head of the Yemeni army withdrew his support for President Ali Abdullah Saleh. This portends a major, multifaceted tribe-and-clan based civil war with a potential to put core U.S. security interests at risk—for an anarchic Yemen, a mountainous country with four times the population of Libya, can host a sanctuary for al-Qaeda that will make their Taliban-era digs pale by comparison. And in Yemen, al-Qaeda already has a kind of defense-in-depth across the Bab al-Mandeb in what’s left of Somalia.

Even little Bahrain is more important inherently than Libya; but that’s another story.

There is more, too, albeit of a more abstract nature. Before we started this crazy war, what was going on in the region was all about the Arabs—the good Arabs, the bad Arabs, the other Arabs, all the Arabs, some of the Arabs, whatever. In both their eyes and ours, it was about them. Now it is, or will soon be, about us. Every quark’s worth of negative energy in the region will in due course be drawn as if by a magnet to us, as the Arabs resume their favorite sport of exporting responsibility for their own circumstances onto others. We will subject the region, yet again, to the equivalent of the U.S. Heisenberg Effect, especially if we’re forced to bail out our allies. We’ve seen this film before. It’s a tragedy.

And finally, it bears note that the use of Western military power in Libya is bound to color the political processes going on in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and elsewhere. How will it color them? We have no clue, which is why launching a war without thinking about the broader consequences is, well—how to put it?—not a good idea. Some commentators, like one in today’s New York Times, for example, who have favored a forward-learning policy from the beginning of the Libya crisis, are now starting to worry about the possible downside implications. It used to be that serious people thought through the implications of policy proposals before they advocated them, and before the bombs and missiles started raining down. Better late than never? Maybe. Embarrassing in any case? Um…..

It wasn’t mad to advocate the establishment of a no-fly zone over Libya two or three weeks ago. Some reasoned that the psychology of the thing might have been enough to push Qaddafi out when the battle was flowing against him. Some believed, against all evidence, that a no-fly zone could be militarily effective. Some have reasoned that Qaddafi would become more dangerous if he survived his domestic challenge even in the absence of a Western intervention, so we could not let him survive if the rebels could not finish him off. That was not evidence of madness either, but it was speculative enough, in my view, to counsel waiting a good long while before shooting. It also failed to reckon seriously the downside of the undertaking and to identify other policy options short of war.

What is crazy, however, is the consequences-be-damned argument for war on humanitarian grounds that the President has apparently embraced, and the utter vacuum of strategic thinking that seems to be its handmaiden. It would have been far better to leave this hornet’s nest alone, but now that we have poked it with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ordnance, the worst possible posture to adopt is that of a Boy Scout helping an old lady across the street when only that of a warrior (hopefully French and/or British) will do.

I wish the President had never opened his big eloquent mouth about Libya, and I wish we had not started this war; but wishing won't make it go away. I have no intention of waxing banal and invoking Vietnam, because Libya has nothing to do with Vietnam; there are no quagmires in a place that, from a military point of view, is an island in the sense that every target worth hitting can be hit from the sea. But I do suspect that this can only end badly, and that what is left to policy at this point is to figure out the least bad of all possible outcomes and struggle toward it. It’s times like these that make me thank Heaven that I am no longer working for the U.S. Government. My best wishes to those who are; they now need all the luck they can get.

The Other “Iraq Model”

written February 20,2011, before boarding the USS Boxer, of which more later.

....OK, now things are finally starting to get interesting in the Middle East. Tunisia was noteworthy, but not critical. Egypt has been very dramatic, though wildly misinterpreted by most observers in the United States (of which more in a moment). Jordan is still more or less stable, but is in fact more portentous a stake in some ways than Egypt. But with Libya, Yemen and Bahrain in bloody flames, we’ve got a real story here.

To me, the story is double-sided: There is what is going on in the region, and there is what American non-expert (whatever they claim) commentators are saying about it. The latter is almost as pulse-raising as what’s going on in the region.

As for Tunisia, it is and has long been anomalous even by regional standards. Thanks to Habib Bourguiba, it is the only Arab country where women wearing the veil has long been illegal. It is in many ways both a city-state, Tunis being the major point of reference for everything, and a trading state from way back when – back when, in Hamuda Bey’s time, Tunis imported wool from Europe to make its renowned shashiyas for export. (A shashiya, for you non-Middle East experts out there, is the deep-red fez cap, with a tassle, obligatory for men of a certain class in Ottoman times, and which, in old Tunisian children’s stories are carried away in baskets by monkeys….but never mind.) So this is and has been a cosmopolitan and, in recent times, very French-speaking place—hardly typical for an Arab country. Combine this history with suddenly very high food prices, an educated and young population denied opportunity, and an old regime no longer with the verve to defend its plundering of the country, and you get a revolution. Very nice; and not a real strain on the old noggin.

Tunisia under Ben Ali did cooperate with the U.S. government in counterterrorism policy, but reports that it was a classical “friendly tyrant” were quite wrong. The U.S. relationship with Tunisia was very marginal; it was really on the French and EU watch, and watch it they did, though not in the way we or they had hoped. The French Foreign Minister was vacationing there when the ball went up; she could not be bothered to notice what with the beautiful beach and the mojitos and all. We did supply tear-gas to the police and so, note to selves: Stop printing “Made in the United States” on the canisters. Considering that we knew the by-far most likely use for these things…..talk about dog-shit dumb.

But somehow, astonishingly, in the mostly empty but fevered minds of American pundits and bloggers, Tunisia became a model for Egypt. In this the Middle-Easternly untutored made three slackjawing errors in their observations. The first was to conflate Hosni Mubarak the man with Egypt the military-bureaucratic regime, as if getting rid of the former would be tantamount to getting rid of the latter. They got rid of a sick 82-year old way past his sell date, and by so doing they got rid of a dynasty in the making. But they have not yet got rid of the regime, and, in my view, they are not likely to either. A person really has to know approximately nothing about Egypt to make such a mistake, but there you go.

The second error was to conflate a political ooze on the streets of Cairo with a “democracy movement.” Young disgruntled Egyptians had lots of reasons to be pissed off and take to the streets, but a yearning for liberal democracy was not foremost (or probably even hindmost) among them. They felt stifled, humiliated, dishonored, more than occasionally abused and just generally “had” by the state. They claimed they wanted Mubarak to go, but beyond that they could not agree on “what next.” I read as many signs unfurled in Tahrir Square as I could: I did not see a single one in Arabic script with the loan word “democracia” on it. (I also loved how Arabic-ignorant commentators referred to “Tahrir Liberation Square”, which is like saying “Mount Fujiyama”, since tahrir means liberation and yama means mountain. You’d think these people would be at least retrospectively embarrassed. There’s no sign of that so far.) For some, the model for Egypt was the Philippines’ people power uprising against Ferdinand Marcos and his wife’s shoe collection. I could not stop laughing for almost ten minutes. I can think of no event less like the Egyptian uprising than that in the Philippines, where democratic traditions were widespread, if a little shallow, where no significant strategic stake existed for the United States at the time, and which used to be a colony of the United States.

And from the first and the second errors you get the resultant conclusion that with the deposing of Mubarak the thing is for all practical purposes over. The cameras move on to Manama and San’a. Wrong again. The real pushing and shoving is just beginning in Egypt. On the one side are Omar Suleiman, Hussein Tantawi, Ahmed Sidqi, Sami Enan and an army now vastly stronger than before with the routing of Gamal Mubarak and his USA-MBA buddies, who had reformed the state party and put an impressive charge into the Egyptian economy. Now that these slicksters have been shown the door, the army is counting its money, licking its lips, and taking aim at striking workers. On the other side are, frankly, a lot of enthusiastic but completely inexperienced amateurs who are divided among themselves (oh, I forgot Mohamed ElBaradei, but I may be forgiven, I think, because almost no Egyptians take him remotely seriously. For the American press, however, ElBaradei is the only non-regime Egyptian they’ve ever heard of, so he suddenly becomes important….) Some among the opposition have seen the inside of an Egyptian jail, and so they know who and what they are up against. But few of these good-hearted twittering souls could manage their way out of the back of a mini-mart. Which side would you bet on to prevail in the end?

Nonetheless, out have come the models for the Egyptian democratic revolution, which is maybe akin to counting chicks before they hatch, maybe akin to counting them before the rooster has even entered the barnyard—we’ll see which is which in due course, I guess. Some unrepentant neocons have claimed that Iraq, via the Bush “forward strategy for freedom,” is the model that Egyptians looked to for their democratic revolution. There is essentially no evidence for this claim, although, as Fouad Ajami said back in the spring of 2003, it is hard to know how underground rumbles roll. Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt did break the chains of political tradition, though it took a long time for it to become manifest in some places—so who knows what will be in five or ten or twenty years? But it would be nice to have evidence for this, and there is none besides the one or two reported (invented?) remarks some reporters have been able to coax, in English, from the mouths of impressionable young protestors. Most Egyptians do not want to replicate the experience of Iraq, and do not think of it as a model for anything positive. Besides, what explains a lot of what has happened in Iraq hinges on its sectarian and ethnographic heterogeneity, a condition that does not apply to Egypt.

Others recently have trotted out the Turkish model, namely, that of an Islamic democracy. This is silly. In Turkey democracy came way before the rise of the current wave of political Islam. It came because there was a strong secular-minded leader who knew what he wanted, at a time when the rest of the world supported secularism as political orthodoxy. That’s hardly Egypt’s situation today, an Egypt in which a man like Yusef al-Qaradawi returns home and becomes an instant political force.

Besides, Arabs as a rule do not take Turkey, their former colonial overlord for four centuries, as guide for their own conduct. What some Turks may think is another matter. In a slightly different way, what a lot of American academics think is, too. For them, thinking about Turkey as a model for Egypt is a pleasant diversion from worrying that Islamic Turkey may succeed in putting an end to Turkish democracy altogether. That prospect, in truth, is far more likely than Turkey’s ever being taken seriously in Egypt as a model for anything.

Ah, but if you like models, here’s another that is much more plausible, one that no one, as far as I know, has raised yet….but surely many will in due course. It’s the Iraq-as-Shi`a-revolution model.

The first prospective application of this model is obviously Bahrain, where extremely pissed-off Shi`a outnumber Sunnis and their monarchy. If they overthrow the monarchy—and it’s still not clear that this will happen of that it’s even what most of the protestors want—then the same “model” may well pop up in al-Hasa province in Saudi Arabia. There are lots of Shi`a in al-Hasa, right there with all that oil. I am sure the Al-Saud is already having laundry problems over what is going on right across the causeway in Bahrain (of which more below).

Yes, folks, the real Iraq model may well end up not being that of a beacon of democracy for the autocracies of that poor benighted region, but the one that propels radical Shi`a to destroy the Al-Khalifa dynasty, summarily expel the U.S. 5^th Fleet from its base there, threaten Saudi control over their oil, and veritably invite the mullahs of Tehran to turn Bahrain into another regional ally, with the causeway reshaped as a dagger pointed toward the heart of Riyadh. Now wouldn’t that be just like the world-historical political irony we have come to know and love so well?

Just one last point, about Saudia. The Saudis are not only in deep dudgeon about now—thanks to an “ally” that, as they see it, pushed Hosni Mubarak into the pit of doom and has failed to reinforce the backbone of the monarchy on Bahrain—but they are also very likely calculating the pros and cons of switching sides. I mean by switching sides trading in one proven feckless protector for another that, while lacking lots of assets the United States still possesses, may have a keener sense of what being in the great-power protection business is really all about. I am speaking, of course, of China.

The Chinese don’t have the power projection capabilities of the United States, to be sure—but what good are those capabilities if their possessor won’t use them? They don’t own Aramco or lead in oil-industry technologies either. But they are allies with Pakistan, which is in turn Saudi Arabia’s go-to nuclear weapons connection in duress. They will never lecture Saudis about reform or democracy. They will never put limits on military purchases, and they don’t have a Congress to complicate relations. The two governments have done security business before—Sidewinder missiles, remember those?—and the Saudis probably believe the hype about America’s decline and China’s rise.

No one here really knows for sure what the Saudi princes discuss among themselves. But I’d be prepared to wager that these thoughts have already at least flitted through their minds. Have they flitted through the minds of people in Langley, and in the Old Executive Office Building? I used to think I knew the answer to that question. These days I’m not so sure.

Harvey Sicherman

A fair bit has happened lately--third son finished undergraduate school, which makes three for three; a two-week first trip to Brazil, involving five cities; more, too. But all this pales next to the fact that a very dear friend, colleague and mentor passed away last night after a fairly brief illness. It has driven all other thoughts far away. So I want to devote this note to him, to Harvey Sicherman, from whose funeral I have just returned, driving three hours in the falling snow and wind, a natural gesture that seems altogether appropriate to the moment. Harvey would have to go out of this world in a flair or fanfare of one sort of another—the Holy One would have it no other way.

I barely know how to do this, however. I don't know how to do this. So I'll have to just tell a story or two that, unfortunately, are as much about me as about Harvey--because I only know how to tell this story in my own voice, out of my own memory.

It was on May 17, 1972--and I am pretty sure about the date--that I first met Harvey. I met him at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, which at the time was located at 3508 Market Street, in the new science center near Penn. I had been invited to come in about a research/writing job, and maybe a fellowship to continue graduate school (I was getting a BA and MA simultaneously in December 1972, but hoped maybe to do more), by one of my professors, William R. Kintner--a retired US Army colonel and unrepentant Cold Warrior.

Dr. Kintner liked my performance in class, and at the time I had a summer job, which had just started two weeks earlier, killing termites with Orkin out in retirement villages in New Jersey. This was no fun. I was paired with a total brick-brain, at least twenty years my elder, who had swastikas tattooed on his arm, and who was, I believed, incapable of uttering a single English sentence, or phrase even, without use of the word fuck or shit. Usually both. I was no innocent--my father was a Teamster, and I knew the language. But still......

My job with Orkin involved crawling on my belly underneath crappily built structures, with nails, broken glass and other indescribable sharp junk all over the place in the dark, dragging a 40-pound drill and a light along with me as I went. My job was to drill the concrete cinder blocks. My "associate's" job was to go in afterwards with the anti-termite chemical and shoot the holes I had drilled. While I worked, he drank beer. While he worked after me, house to house to house, I mixed, loaded and pumped the chemical. I never saw a single termite. So, naturally enough, I was interested in Dr. Kintner's invitation.

But when I got to FPRI, Dr. Kintner said a quick hello and sent me off to see his associate, Harvey Sicherman, in the smallest office I ever saw. It was really just a closet... with no windows. Heck, the walls were too small even to fit a window had there been an outside wall available for the purpose. It was piled high with books, papers and other stuff. But that closet seemed to me like a great mansion because of the man inhabiting it.

Harvey stood as I entered. He was wearing a three-piece cream suit, with a watch fob in his right vest pocket. He held a burning garbage dump, otherwise known as a cigar, in his left hand. He smiled and held out his right: "Harvey Sicherman.....(we shook hands).....Dr. Kintner has told me about you. Please have a seat." And so I first met Harvey who was--please don't take this wrong, because I am not that way and neither was he--tall, dark and handsome. Maybe 6'1" or 6'2"; dark hair and eyebrows, and sculpted very nicely indeed about the head and neck. I, at 5'8" at my maximum, noticed these things.

As it happened, Harvey had done his undergraduate work at the University of Scranton, in his hometown. He was from an Orthodox family, and had gone to yeshiva as a boy. I was from a non-nondescript, unaffiliated family, and had gone to public school in Arlington, Virginia. I knew close to nothing about Yiddishkeit until I was at least in my mid-teens, for reasons I'll not go into now. But by the time I met Harvey, all that had changed. I lived (more or less) as a modern Orthodox Jew--shabbas, yom tov, kashrut, kiddush, much study though most of it not formal, the whole works. Not only that, but I had spent from late April to early September 1971 in Israel, and had been thinking hard about going there to live.

So in that very first conversation closeted literally with Harvey, I not knowing at meeting's outset anything about him, some curious exchanges took place. I was an earnest young man at the time (fortunately or not, I still am earnest as a not young man now). So, before our conversation had proceeded very far, I told Harvey that I might not be as conservative a person as that of FPRI's reputation, it having been founded by the-then Ambassador Robert Strausz-Hupe, and besides, I didn't know if I'd be a very good investment since I was thinking about leaving the country to return to Zion, though I think I did not use that phrase. I also told him I could not ever work on Jewish holidays or the sabbath, and that if he thought all this disqualified me from employment, so be it, because on these matters I was not willing to compromise.

It is very difficult for me to describe the look on Harvey's face after this little speech of mine, not because I don't remember it; I certainly do. But because some things are just hard to describe. Let me put it this way: A small, constrained smile began to trace across his mouth and climb his cheeks, he lifted his chin slightly, and seemed to very subtly roll his eyes. He told me curtly but gently that I shouldn't worry about any of that. He changed the subject, asking me whether I was interested in technology's impact on politics, and in truth I told him that yes, indeed, I was already fond of Penn's very fine History and Sociology of Science (HHS) department, and that the book sounded like something I would be happy to help with. I was hired. Bye, bye termites. I have not crawled on my belly with a 40-pound drill since. I have also never again worked side by side with anyone sporting swastika tattoos.

I soon set to work under Harvey’s able direction on the project about technology and international politics. I did OK, I guess, because as a result of my early work I was given several scholarships through FPRI, which William Kintner controlled, and, having been invited into the Ph.D. program without having to take GREs or even apply, I was able to pursue that degree. One of the scholarships I had was the Salvatori scholarship, which Harvey had earlier had when he was in graduate school. I think maybe William Kintner saw me as a six-years-younger version of Harvey, who had finished his Ph.D. at Penn in 1971. In some ways, I guess I was. I finished mine in 1979. I was 28. When I met Harvey in May 1972, he was, I think, 27.

I found out fairly soon after our first meeting, of course, that Harvey was an Orthodox Jew, and had been to yeshiva, and knew a great deal more than I ever would about Judaism's intellectual legacy. I soon found out, too, that with his new wife Barbara, he intended to set off for Israel himself. I then realized how hilarious my self-introduction must have seemed to him, and admired his discipline in not breaking out in uncontrollable laughter.

We worked together pretty closely on that book, he designing and drafting, me doing research fill-in and general critique. The book came out, under Dr. Kintner's name, of course. I learned quickly how real ghosts operate in this world, good training for my later days as a State Department speechwriter, an occupation in which Harvey preceded me, too, by some years.

As anyone could see, Harvey cut a notable figure. He had his passions and his own ways of doing things. He was very admirably stylish, endearing and memorable--yet never brash or anything but humble at the same time, which is no easy feat. Some who did not really know him may have thought he was merely displaying a series of affectations, trying to be a cross between Disraeli, Churchill and Don Isaac Abarbanel in the wrong century. But they would have been mistaken. Harvey was just Harvey, no matter where the pieces came from. On him, everything he chose fit naturally right.

He was certainly a mentor to me in many ways; but not in every way. He was indeed a mentor when it came to the English language. He always insisted that style mattered, and that you didn't have to write like an automaton to do social science and policy work well. He gave me early on a list he had compiled of "Most Wanting Words", which was instructive as well as very funny. I already had a knack for writing, but Harvey helped me refine it. He encouraged me along the right directions to refine it, and in the drafting process he showed me very specifically how to take mediocre writing and make it sing.

He also influenced my sartorial style, at least to some degree. Coming from a proletariat home, I had no idea how to dress for a profession. My father appeared often enough in his Sealtest Dairy overalls. I still have a fondness for overalls. Harvey liked tailored suits cut out of the 1920s and 1930s. He knew an Italian guy on Bancroft Street in South Philly named Letieri, and that's where he had his suits made. If you picked out the fabric at certain stores near 4th & Bainbridge, you could take the material over to Mr. Letieri's workship and he'd make you a three-piece suit for less money than you could buy a two-piece in a retail store. Little old Italian ladies sewed all his buttons. You get the picture.

I went with Harvey one afternoon for a fitting on a new suit he was having made. I liked Mr. Letieri; it was a case of tailor at first sight. For all I knew, too, he could have carved Pinocchio in his spare time. I had no suits, and realized that I needed at least one. So I said what the heck, and ordered up a three-piece black pinstripe, with waistcoat instead of mere vest--similar to the style Harvey liked best, but adjusted somewhat to take into account my different shape. Harvey bought me a shimmery red tie to go with the suit when it was done.

Now, I did wear a pocket-watch, with fob, with that suit. And here Harvey, too, was something of an inspiration. But it is more accurate, I think, to say that he was an enabler. I already owned and occasionally used a pocket-watch. It had belonged to my Uncle Willie, and I had obtained it via my father. I never wore a wristwatch; I don't like rings either, or anything else fixing to strangle any part of my body. And all the photos of both my grandfathers, neither of whom I was born soon enough to meet, showed the watch-fob style and, more often that not, the bowler hat as well. So I was ready for all that. What Harvey did was make it permissible. He did it, slightly outlandish as it was, so that meant I could do it, too. I realized from the start, however, that I could never cut a figure like Harvey did. Me at a maximum 5'8"--somewhat less than that today--could never look like someone at 6"2".

The old Mr. Letieri in time gave way to his son, Tommy, who was a uniform maker and did tailoring on the side. I did buy a three-piece suit from him some years later on, cream color. I was married in it on June 21, 1981, and Harvey is there in the pictures, in a red-maroon sport coat, holding one of the four poles of the huppah as we all gathered in our first house at 48th and Larchwood in West Philly. (He was also with me, right by my side, some two and a half years later when I buried my father.) But here is another difference between Harvey and me: Harvey's basic body shape seemed never to change, while over time mine did. Harvey seemed to never gain weight, never to develop a paunch, never to change his bolt upright royal posture. He remained forever handsome, even when his hair began to gray and thin a bit. For all I know, as of a few weeks ago he could still wear tailored suits he had had made in 1975. As for me, I have long since out-girthed my tailor-made items, including most certainly my wedding outfit.

Now, about cars. Harvey loved cars, old cars especially, Packards and Cadillacs particularly. Back in 1972, or soon thereafter, he had a two-toned green Packard, possibly two -- I can't remember exactly. But he liked Cadillacs, too. Now, as it happened, I bought a 1952 Fleetwood in 1978 0r 1979--`79 I believe it was--and it was through my friendship with Harvey that this occurred. He knew a guy named Gary Anderson who had a fix-in shop not too far from the office. He used Gary to work on his cars. I was momentarily carless, having gone through one `64 Impala and three `66 Impalas since leaving Arlington--that's another story, or set of stories, I will not relate here. Anyway, Gary had this `52 Fleetwood outside, midnight blue, in a kind of dilapidated but still running condition. $400. So I bought it, and handed it back over to Gary to get fixed into safe and reasonably reliable running condition. That he did in about ten days for about another $400, and I still have the car today, some 31 years later. Harvey later bought a red `55 Caddy; nice car. I wonder where that one is now...

The point, however, is that Harvey did not have to endear me to old GM cars; I was already there, long before I met him. I knew every car on the road by the time I was four, a real automotive idiot savant was I. I had from the time I was 8 years old always wanted a `58 Impala, and never have got one. But I certainly never had anything against Caddys, and my `52 has treated me well all these years. Every time I drive it I think of Harvey. I will continue to do so.

And now, let us discuss booze. Harvey had a very refined taste in good liquor, mainly single malts but also encompassing Slivovitz--one has to have something to wet the whistle on Pesach, after all. When I met him, in 1972, I was already well introduced to alcohol. I liked good Scotch, but couldn't afford it most of the time. Like a lot of younger people who appreciate whiskey, I was satisfied with a nice bourbon or a sour mash. In this my father had been my mentor, having once, in a succah, conned me as a 5 year old into drinking `ol Four Roses on the pretense that it was apple juice. I did him surprisingly proud then, but as I have gotten older, I have come to prefer the single malts and good Irish. So Harvey did not mentor me or introduce me to any of this, but, as with clothing, he functioned as a provider of excellent, reinforcing company and some well appreciated fine-point counsel. (Harvey also tried to turn me on to cigars, but that I just could not do, and do not for a moment regret it.)

Anyway, after mid-May 1972 Harvey and I saw each other every work day for a little while, and in shul as well, for I started walking down to the American Jewish Congress House downtown, on Locust Street, for shabbat. And then Harvey and Barbara disappeared......they went to Israel. My own intentions about aliyah had by then been muddled by graduate school, the needs of elderly parents and the presence of certain women. Harvey and Barbara didn't stay in Israel, however; it was a tough year for them, as I heard it.

When they came back, they rented a place downtown, and I remember once being called over to help them assemble a nice piece of old furniture--some kind of armoire, I think--they were trying to set up. My mechanical skills are just average, at best, but compared to Harvey I might have been a master carpenter. He was extraordinarily capable at many things, but things that involved machines and tools were not his forte, as reflected in the fact that he never really took to typing, did not like computers and pretty much disdained the Internet.

Instead, he liked fountain pens, and again, so always did I. I have one thing from Harvey, a gift from long ago, an old ink well device. It sits on my desk, as it has all these years, and I still use it. It replaced an inferior one I had from home. I still have a lifetime supply of Esterbrook nibs from my father's last store—three boxes of 100 each--which I had been using even before I ever met Harvey. Here, too, his tastes reinforced, ratified and shaped mine, but did not create them.

Maybe these similarities between us were founded in the stars. He and I are, were, both Geminis. His birthday was June 2, which I could never forget even if I wanted to, since mine is June 1. But, of course, six years apart, he having been born in 1945 (I think) and me in 1951.

Back now to the calendar of years: Harvey and Barbara (with an odd little dog named Teddy) were back in Philadelphia in time for the October 1973 Middle East War. I was with him, and of course some several others, in shul on Yom Kippur on Locust Street, when we all heard the news. I worked with Harvey, and saw him pretty much every day back then, as I was working on my Ph.D., until after the 1980 election, after which, in the early spring of 1981, he went off with Alexander Haig to Washington and the State Department. Having finished my Ph.D. in 1979, I was then, in the first months of 1981, not yet 30 years of age. My hair was long, I had a beard, and I was not ready or suited for high or even low government position. So, I guess, it was thought, and probably correctly. So I went nowhere.

Besides, I wasn't a Republican, and never have been. I had, thanks to Dr. Kintner and the FPRI connection, earlier worked some as an adjunct to the staff of Sen. Henry Jackson, a Democrat. I was comfortable being a liberal hawk, not a conservative one--so long as we understand liberal to mean JFK, LBJ, HHH and HST liberalism, not the post-George McGovern kind. I did that work with Sen. Jackson's office for a time in 1977 and again in 1979. While down in Washington, one time sleeping on John Lehman's couch, another time staying in Scoop's house, working with Richard Perle and Dorothy Fosdick, I was always in contact with Harvey, who took in my briefs and dispensed wise and incisive advice back to me in return.

One time I remember in particular was when General Haig testified in July or August 1979 before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Harvey and I together sat just behind Haig in the Senate Caucus Room, he on Haig's direct behalf and me representing the condominium of Sen. Jackson and Sen. Tower that had been assembled to interrogate the SALT II treaty. It must have been late summer because I distinctly remember that one day of the hearings took place on Tisha B'Av. The lights were hot; we were dressed in very nice suits. Harvey and I both sat there all day, hungry, thirsty and did our jobs. During a break I napped on one of Scoop's office couches; Harvey gently woke me up when it was time to return to the caucus room. Harvey and I looked at each other, me prone on the couch, he standing over me, and we each knew what the other was experiencing, and needed to say not a single word to communicate it. A stereo chuckle was all it took. Now that’s friendship.

Harvey did not return to Philadelphia FPRI soon after having gone with Haig to Washington. He and Barbara stayed in Washington, I think for about 12 years, living in Silver Spring, while Harvey worked for George Shultz, Jim Baker and did other things as well. He and Barbara had their three children in those years; so did Scilla and I--theirs all boys, Max, Jonathan and Zack, ours with a girl in between, Gabriel, Hannah and Nate. I think Max and Gabe were both born in 1981, so Harvey did not become a father until a bit later in his life than I did in mine. I was 30; I guess he was 35 or 36 when Max was born.

I do know Max and Gabe both played baseball in the Jewish Y league, when they were around 14 or 15 years old. I vividly remember an incident in which Max was pitching for his team and Gabriel was at bat for his, and Gabe smashed a line drive right back at Max's head, knocking him apart--glasses, glove flying--like something you'd see in a cartoon. These were real baseballs. But Max is tough, and he was fine; everyone was soon chuckling and snorting, as boys on a baseball field will do. But I will never forget the sight of it. Harvey's three kids and my three still know each other, Nate and Zach much less well than the older others. But they still know each other, mainly from shul in Lower Merion and sojourns since.

So obviously, Harvey and Barbara and the boys did eventually return to the Philly area; I think it was in 1993. Harvey came to take over the reins at FPRI. The place had been through a lot of tumult, and was not in great financial shape. There was soon a split, too, occasioned by the former director's bad behavior. I had stayed at FPRI all this time, and had done some teaching on the side. I felt no Washington fire-in-the-belly. I liked FPRI; it let me read and think and write what I wanted. I did get antsy during those twelve years from time to time and did on occasion look for other work, but to no avail. I did, however, manage to spend 1992-93 in Israel with my family, partly to get away from the office, partly just to do it for its own sake.

But with Harvey's coming back to Philadelphia, I thought things would be much better--that I would enjoy FPRI more than ever. Shul, too: Harvey also used to come to Lower Merion synagogue in those years, before he found another minyan much closer to his house at the corner of City Line Avenue and Overbrook Avenue--a wonderful, sprawling old Victorian home that fit Harvey and Barbara perfectly in every way.

Things did get better; with Harvey around, work was fun again, and again I grew intellectually from his experience and counsel. I never met anyone who could get to the essence of problem as quickly or as elegantly as he could. Our reunion was not to last very long, however. FPRI fell on bad financial times. Harvey did herculean work keeping the place from collapsing altogether, but to do more than that took him longer to accomplish. By May 1995 things had gotten so bad that the place could no longer afford to keep me full time--not that I was all that expensive. Harvey offered me half-time work, but since I had a full-time mortgage and other full-time expenses, this could not be. Harvey later told me this was the hardest thing he had ever had to do in professional life, and I believed him.

So I headed off to Washington, first as a 4-day-a-week commuter, later in earnest, having gone back to where I was born and raised in the Washington area. I still saw Harvey fairly often over these past 15 years, when he would come to Washington, or on some occasions when I would return to Philly to do FPRI-sponsored programs. We did some work together, as well, when he wrote brilliantly for magazines I edited, first The National Interest and later The American Interest. (Harvey's last publication was in the November/December 2010 issue of the latter.) We also shared some seminar work at WINEP (Washington Institute for Near East Policy), and did some work in common for MESH (Middle East Strategy at Harvard).

Even when we had no specific project to work on together, we talked on the phone from time to time just for the heck of it. And when we did we always talked Torah and interpretation as well as politics and policy. When I was writing speeches for Colin Powell and Condi Rice in 2003, 2004 and 2005, we spoke fairly often, sharing our experiences on such matters--and with navigating S/P and the State Department generally. When I drafted my book on Jewcentricity in 2008, Harvey was the only colleague I asked to read the entire manuscript, because he was the only person I knew who understood as much and probably more about the subject than I did. Around the same time Harvey asked me to read and comment on his fine manuscript on the history of cheap hawkery, which I gladly did. I think I can say, then, without exaggeration, that we were true colleagues for more than 38 years.

Harvey packed more learning, wit, style, grace, panache and love into his 65+ years than most people could hope to do in 130 years. He was brilliant, creative, almost impossibly personable and, I would not hesitate to say, wise. He perhaps did not publish as much as he might have and maybe as much as he wanted to, but I think I know why: He understood the rabbinical command to be very careful in teaching. Harvey was something of a perfectionist as an intellectual; he would not let fly in writing until he was sure he understood the material, had mastered its meaning, and took the necessary pains to express himself as perfectly as possible. He maintained excruciatingly high standards of excellence. He cared about quality, not quantity, and besides, he had administrative and fund-raising responsibilities that proved very time-consuming. It’s too bad for the rest of us that he didn’t write some of the big-sweep books he had talked about; they would have been extraordinary, like everything he did. Alas, he was the antithesis of the shoot-from-the-hip, naked opinion-to-spite-learning style of the blogosphere.

In his insistence on doing things right Harvey constantly elevated my understanding of what diligence in thought and writing is all about. He established a target for me--and others, if they know what's good for them--to aspire to. He knew what was worth taking seriously, and he did. He knew how to have some fun, too, and he did that as well. I never have known anyone who enjoyed a good story more than Harvey, and who could tell them with the very best. Above all, however, he understood how to balance what was serious and what was fun because he also knew the difference between right and wrong, and never wavered from it.

It has been one of the greatest of honors in my life to have had Harvey as a friend and colleague, someone enough my elder to give me unfailingly good counsel over many years, but not so much so that he was unable to speak with me as an equal on matters of substance as we both grew older. He could talk and teach with the very best, that's for sure; but he could also listen and learn from others--and to find someone capable of doing both is a great rarity in this world, in these days as in any.

The funeral in Philadelphia earlier today was very hard for me. Avraham Levene helped make it a little easier, for his eulogy was in perfect pitch, as his words nearly always are. But it was almost too much for me to bear watching Barbara walk out of the chapel behind the casket. She was trying so hard to be cordial and polite, but she obviously fought a total meltdown all the way out the door.

I can't know what she felt. I can't know what Harvey's elderly mother felt. I can't know what the three boys and other family members felt. But I know what I felt at that precise moment, even if only for a moment--that what I was experiencing wasn't really happening, that it was just some horrid, cruel dream that would soon go away. I felt a vaporous hand reaching down deep within me and taking hold of my very spirit, trying to choke off my air, making my soul stutter and stumble. I closed my eyes for a second and instantly became disoriented, spinning forward, falling over myself, slightly nauseous. When I opened them again; my temples throbbed, and the casket was gone.

I am better now, physically. As Scilla and I drove home in the snowfall, mostly in quiet, I composed myself. As they say, I will get over it. But as we know, all the experiences we have become integrated into our being in one way or another, to one degree or another. One never gets over moments like this; and it seems to me now that we should not want or hope to "get over" them; that would be giving up part of life that we have earned. We process them, we layer them, we come to adapt ourselves to them by learning from them, if we're lucky. I don't want to "get over" Harvey's death, anymore than I would want to get over knowing him during his life. I want to find a way to learn and grow from his passing, using the model of his life as my guide. That is the burden from this day that I choose.

The Jewish State

T

he latest Israeli-Palestinian attempt at negotiating a solution to their conflict got derailed by U.S. diplomatic malpractice before it had an honest chance to fail of its own accord. But fail it would have, not least because over the past eighteen months a major new issue has been added to the agenda of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations (as if that agenda needed more challenge). Beyond the hearty perennials of borders, Jerusalem, refugees, water and security arrangements, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asserted in a June 2009 speech that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” was now an Israeli requirement for agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

* * *

T

he reaction to Netanyahu’s assertion was take-it-to-the-bank scale predictable. Most Israeli Jews and supporters of Israel worldwide applauded the innovation. Indeed, some claimed that its importance was so obviously crucial to any genuine settlement of the conflict that it was amazing that no previous Israeli government had ever raised it. Both Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, however, immediately rejected the new requirement, and most Palestinians, Arabs and their supporters cheered their so doing.

Palestinian Authority officials raised three explicit objections to Netanyahu’s demand: that it is not for Palestinians to determine the nature of the Israeli state; that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state would jeopardize the position of the Israeli Arabs; and that if Israel did not demand recognition as a “Jewish state” in its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, why do so now, unless the purpose was to erect artificial barriers to serious negotiations. Later, in October 2010, when Netanyahu tried to link a Palestinian declaration acknowledging Israel as a Jewish state with a continuation of the settlements construction freeze, it only confirmed to many Palestinians that his demand was not as high-minded as he and his supporters claimed.

Of what does that putative high-mindedness consist? Many observers, particularly those sympathetic to Israel, cite a fourth, unstated Palestinian objection to Netanyahu’s demand: It shines a bright light on the real reason for the conflict in the first place; namely, Arab and Palestinian rejection of the right of Jews to self-determination, which presupposes the right to self-definition. According to this view, it’s not Israel that is raising a new demand in order to avoid serious negotiations; it’s doing so to make serious negotiations with the Palestinians possible really for the first time. Specifically, it addresses directly Palestinian rejection of the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism (Zionism), achieved through an insistence that a Jew is defined by religion, not nationality or ethnicity. (Never mind for now that sometimes the same people insist instead, when it suits the purposes of the moment, that Jews are an ethnic group, hence supposedly rendering Zionism by definition racist; and also never mind that this view also contravenes that of Muslim prelates in the early centuries of Islam.)

The supposed religious as opposed to ethnic or national character of the Jews has led some Palestinians—some prominent ones, at that—to insist further that no Jewish historical connection to the land in question exists, for that is another way of denying anything remotely resembling national Jewish interests or rights there. Hence the bizarre claim by Yasir Arafat and others, contradicted by earlier centuries of Muslim historiography, that no Jewish Temple ever stood on what the Arabs call the Haram al-Sharaf, and the Jews call the Temple Mount.

It is precisely because of the Arab and Palestinian denial of the Jewish right to self-definition, many reason, that Netanyahu’s demand makes sense. If the Arabs accept Israel as a Jewish state, and acknowledge that state’s Jewish citizens’ historical ties to the Land of Israel, then it means they have finally made the psychological breakthrough that makes a genuine peace possible. And if they do not, then best to know about it now, so that there will be no illusions about what the peace process, so-called, can and cannot achieve. This same basic logic, in different form given the different context, underlies proposals that Israeli Arab citizens (and, in some versions, all immigrants, too) should be subjected to a loyalty oath.

By this reasoning, then, Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish State becomes not only necessary, but central to ending the conflict. As was not the case in negotiations with Egypt or Jordan, Israelis and Palestinians have been locked in an existential conflict in which the assertion of one people’s national aspirations seemed ipso facto to negate those of the other people. Only when both sides recognize the legitimacy of the other’s national aspirations can there be peace. Israeli leaders long ago accepted the existence of a distinct Palestinian people and its right to a state—formally so as part of the September 1993 Oslo Accords. Now, goes the argument, it’s the turn of the Palestinians to reciprocate. Said Netanyahu to a conference on the future of the Jewish people on October 22, 2010, “Only when our peace partners are willing to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state will they truly be prepared to end the conflict and make a lasting peace with Israel.”

S

ome Israelis and supporters of Israel at large, however, hold another view of Netanyahu’s demand. It’s not that anyone who wishes Israel well disputes the desirability of a Palestinian declaration of the kind Netanyahu demands. Palestinian acceptance of Israel’s Jewishness, even if only declaratory and less than wholly sincere, would be a good thing according the maxim that hypocrisy is often the advanced wave of a new truth. But from a strategic perspective, some reason, Israel would gain little and possibly lose much by giving this demand a high priority, a danger further magnified should Israeli make it a sine qua non of a successful negotiation.

As Alan Dowty of Notre Dame University has insightfully explained, recognition of one state by another in traditional international diplomacy generally depends on the recognized state having effective authority within its borders and showing a willingness to abide by international commitments and rules. Sometimes the recognizing state can impose additional criteria regarding the internal arrangements of the state being recognized, as when the United States and some other countries recognized Kosovo as an independent state. But it is hard to think of any cases in which the state being recognized has imposed additional conditions on others, even as part of a peace agreement. In putting such an unprecedented condition at the top of its agenda, Israel should therefore expect to find little understanding or support in the international community.

More important, making a verbal formula so central to a negotiation does not really address Israel’s core security concerns. Hans Morgenthau used to advise giving up the shadow of worthless rights for the substance of real advantage; or, as Fiorello LaGuardia once summed up the matter, “Tickertape ain’t spaghetti.”

The logic here is manifest on other fronts that Israel has faced and still faces. Thus, the vulnerability of Sinai to Israeli reconquest reinforces Egypt’s observance of the March 1979 peace treaty; the terms of peace that have caused that vulnerability to persist are far more important to the maintenance of peace than anything any Egyptian official ever said in public. Subtler but no less real for the absence of as contractual peace, Syria renews the UNEF mandate on the Golan Heights like clockwork every six months because it stands to lose more from not doing so given Israel’s military superiority. In any imaginable Israeli-Palestinian settlement, too, the concrete arrangements on the ground—demilitarization provisions, in particular; the placement of early-warning technologies in the Jordan Valley; and more besides—will be much more important to implementing and keeping the peace than any words extracted from the lips of the Palestinian leaders.

Morgenthau’s counsel still makes sense. Governments often make verbal commitments they have every intention of ignoring; what counts in a peace agreement are the concrete arrangements that give both sides an incentive to do what they have promised. Since Israel would have to give up something to get the Palestinians to say the magic words in the way the Netanyahu government insists on their being said, one has to wonder whether some other more concrete concession would not prove more valuable in a world where negotiating assets, and hence trading capital, are finite.

Beyond that, it is for any practical purpose pointless to contend with what others may believe in their heart of hearts, but one can ensure that they lack the means or opportunity to act on those beliefs. The acid test comes down to this: If the Palestinian Authority should come one day to grant all of Israel’s terms for an end-of-conflict peace accord except explicit recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state”, should the Israeli government of that day walk away from the deal? I would hope not.

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here are, alas, two additional problems with the Prime Minister’s approach, one mainly legal and one fairly abstract, but not inconsequential for so being.

First the legal. Asking the Palestinian Authority to accept Israel as a Jewish state borders on asking its permission for Jews to be who most of them say they are. Jews do not need permission from anyone to define themselves either as a people or as a nation, nor do they really need in so many words from the Palestinian Arabs what they already have from the (so-called) international community, namely, legal title to most, though not all, of Mandatory Palestine—final borders pending negotiations among the parties, of course, as stipulated by UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.

What the current Israeli government, or any Israeli government, can and must demand is that Palestinians recognize the legal status of the State of Israel in international law. That status is clear: Let us remember that when the UN General Assembly voted on the question 63 years ago, it voted on “the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.” If the Palestinians recognize Israel, therefore, it subsumes Israel’s status as a Jewish state. This, presumably, is why earlier Israeli governments, including one led by Netanyahu himself, did not insist on a Palestinian declaration of the sort that Netanyahu now demands: It was understood that the legal framework that encompasses the conflict’s history and resolution glidepath presupposes such recognition.

To some extent, too, the Palestinians have already acknowledged that Israel is and will remain a Jewish state. Back in 1994 Yasir Arafat, during an interview with the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, was asked if he understood that Israel had to remain a Jewish state, and he answered “definitely.” Earlier, in its 1988 Declaration of Independence, the PLO somewhat grudgingly recognized, but recognized all the same, the applicability of UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947 which, its Declaration stated, “partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish.”

This history of what we might call the sideswiping Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is what has led some Palestinian officials, like Mohammed Shtayyeh, to declare that “the issue of recognition is settled, it is done.” It has also led others to reason that Netanyahu’s demand that it now be explicitly repeated amounts to negotiating in bad faith, with the aim of either foiling the chances for agreement or of using the additional demand to get a deal more favorable to Israel. And, taken together with the aforementioned practical matter of what Israel might have to trade to get its wish, this is what is leading some Israeli officials, including Labor Party Defense Minister Ehud Barak, to distance himself from the Prime Minister’s position. “Of course we are a Jewish state,” Barak has said, “but we have to make sure we do not get on a slippery slope where our justifiable demands become prohibitive obstacles” to a deal.

Second the more abstract problem. To ask for a Palestinian intellectual consensus on Israel as a “Jewish state” begs an esoteric point in the philosophy of Jewish history, and that is asking too much. It is asking too much because, even if they do not like to admit it in mixed company, Jews themselves do not agree fully on what the phrase “Jewish state” actually means.

There are at least three ways to mean the adjective “Jewish” as attached to the noun “state”: Jewish as an ethnic description, Jewish as a religious (in the narrow Western definition) description, and Jewish as a cultural description that includes part of both. These correspond to Jews as a nation, as a faith community, and as a people. These definitions can and do overlap in practice, which is to say that they are conveniently muddled to cover over their mutual incompatibility.

One can get a sense of this incompatibility by referring to the history of Zionism, which has never entirely come to terms with this definitional ambiguity. In its original essence, political Zionism—the Zionism of Theodore Herzl and especially that of the secular socialists who assumed the movement’s leadership after his death in 1904—is a form of nationalism. Jews are defined as a nation qua ethnic group, in perfectly acceptable late-19^th century parlance. But that never quite worked for all purposes at hand, not least because conversion into Judaism as a faith community over the centuries had by then created a Jewish population that significantly transcended an ethnic group, or “nation”, as such. Hence the far more common use of the more expansive cultural term “Jewish people”, a rabbinically endorsed concept from a very long time ago meant to describe all those who throw in their lot together as Jews.

Broader than nation and less restrictive than faith community, peoplehood remains the most historically accurate and inclusive way to define Jews today, but it is a definition that does not satisfy all Jews. Some insist that faith has nothing to do with Jewishness; others insist that nationality has nothing to do with it. Both points of view are represented in Israel today by Israeli citizens. Outside of Israel, too, there are Jews who have Jewish ancestry but no interest in a faith community as well as those joined to the faith community who lack Jewish ancestry. There are both secular and religious Jews who are Zionist and secular and religious Jews who are not Zionist (if not to say anti-Zionist). Today one can thus affirm Jewish peoplehood “ni Moises, ni Herzl”, to paraphrase a well-known French locution by Jean-Francoise Revel that had originally to do with Jesus and Marx, and one can deny “peoplehood” by affirming exclusive reliance on ethnicity or religious belief.

One therefore shudders to think what might happen if the Palestinian leadership were shrewd enough to respond to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s request with a question: “What exactly do you mean by ‘Jewish state’?” One Arab citizen of Israel, at least, has come close to doing so: Mohammed Darwishe, the co-director of the Abraham Fund Initiatives, pointed to the loyalty oath proposal mooted by current Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman of the Israel Betaynu Party and asked, “The Jewish State is what? A Lieberman state?”

In due course, a more general formulation of that question could turn out to be far more trouble to answer than it’s worth. After all, disaster has befallen the Jewish people in the past, one could plausibly argue, not principally because of what its enemies were able to do, but because of radical dissension within its own ranks. Netanyahu’s innovation, for all of its well-intentioned purposes, could in due course unleash demons the Jewish people can well do without. Isn’t that just like politics, though—that domain of human affairs whose sole purpose for being, I sometimes think, is to prove the law of unintended consequences?