Read Closely

Mark Steyn's not happy that when James Kitfield talked to a bunch of foreign policy experts from both parties and several ideological tendencies (Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Francis Fukuyama, etc.), he didn't make time to give equal weight to the views of crazy people. Fair enough. Then this:

But, if the jig is really up, you could just as easily make the case that it dates back to what Mr Kitson considers that golden age "less than a decade ago" - ie, America's holiday from history, when the wise old foreign-policy stability fetishists had nary a word to say about resurgent Islam, freelance nuclearization, and the demographic decline of the west which makes traditional great-power clubs like the G7 about as relevant to the future as dinner theatre in Florida.

It's obviously quite false to say that the 1990s-vintage foreign policy establishment had nothing to say about nuclear proliferation. But note that the "demographic decline of the west" is paired here quite simply with "resurgent Islam" -- not Islamism or Islamic radicalism or any other kind of qualified version of the worry. The thing we should have been worrying about is simply a resurgence of Islam. I'll count it as a damn good thing that the country wasn't run by people whose idea of the key foreign policy issue of our time was finding a way to get Christians to outbreed the Muslim hordes.

Comments

What used to be considered "good editing"--that is, carefully revising a piece with the intent of getting its language, reasoning and rhetoric to a state of high precision--seems to be pretty much dead and buried these bloggy days.

With that in mind, you might want to give Steyn a break. He wrote "resurgent Islam" when--judging from the context--he almost certainly meant "Islamic militant fundamentalism."

Posted by James Gary | May 23, 2007 9:30 AM

Big Media Matt:

Can you or Sully tell us what the deal was, or hint at least, with Steyn's rather huffy and seemingly unamicable departure from The Atlantic? I know you can't, but a morsel would help. Is it just that he sucks so badly that they got embarrassed by him? Was it the racist, fact-free book he wrote? What was the final straw? The ridiculous arrogance and condescension towards intellectuals from high school-dropout disc jockey?

Only NRO will publish him now, but they're like the bloody Moonies anyway (except for Derbyshire, who is crazy in his own unique way).

Posted by Ben Cronin | May 23, 2007 9:33 AM

I genuinely don't know. I wasn't at the Atlantic whenever it went down and I'm not really privvy to management gossip in general.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | May 23, 2007 9:44 AM

James Gary is almost certainly right, but in any event the question Steyn was addressing wasn't whether the end of American dominance was BAD, but whether Scowcroft et al.'s policies would have prevented it. And since the U.S. isn't an Islamic country, a "resurgent Islam" outbreeding Western populations tends to reduce American dominance regardless of whether the surging breeders are Islamist or radical.

Posted by Alex | May 23, 2007 9:44 AM

Just noticed this was titled "Read Closely." Ironic.

Posted by Alex | May 23, 2007 9:46 AM

UH, calling Fukuyama a "foreign policy expert" is a bit of a streach. He certainly knows many facts about foreign policy, but "expert"? Yeah, has he been right about anything? I remember when I was in college 15 years ago, his "end of history" was quite the topic of discussion. Even back then, I and all my friends basically realized that he was an idiot.

Posted by IMU | May 23, 2007 9:56 AM

Religious scholar Philip Jenkins has a new book -- God's Continent--that uses actual data to examine the "resurgent Islam" thesis. Turns out it's not so true about Europe, or the world.

Posted by Pithlord | May 23, 2007 10:02 AM

resurgent Islam? (and all manner of substitutes)

Who says that it's resurgent? It's declining and has been declining for quite awhile.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | May 23, 2007 10:03 AM

Jesus christ, yglesias! 'resurgent islam' is a long used term referencing those theological strands of islam which are animated by the theme of islamic resurgence(restoration of the caliphate ect.). Once again you pwn yourself with your own ignorance.

Posted by pimp hand strikes! | May 23, 2007 10:05 AM

Which are the non-theological strands of Islam?

Posted by Tom | May 23, 2007 10:10 AM

I bet he meant theocratic. Is that you, Mark Steyn? Yglesias says you should edit more carefully.

Posted by Sam L. | May 23, 2007 10:18 AM

when the wise old foreign-policy stability fetishists had nary a word to say about resurgent Islam, freelance nuclearization, and the demographic decline of the west

Did foreign-policy hawks have anything to say about that stuff during the 90s? Weren't they obsessed with the looming threat of China or something?

Posted by Consumatopia | May 23, 2007 10:24 AM

Steyn's previous writings pretty much nail him as a raving Islamophobe (see his tidbit about "culling" Bosnian Muslims as an admired solution to the problems of European integration). So yes, he meant Islam as a religion, which for him is indistinguishable from Islamic radicalism.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007760

Posted by tequila | May 23, 2007 10:25 AM

The fear that Muslims are outbreeding Christians is also overblown, even if one were to accept the premise that it is a bad thing. A recent article made the case that the only belief system that is increasing its share of the population pie is secularism:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/paul07/paul07_index.html

This, of course, is a very good thing.

Posted by Jim W | May 23, 2007 10:25 AM

Did foreign-policy hawks have anything to say about that stuff during the 90s? Weren't they obsessed with the looming threat of China or something? - Consumatopia

True. Steyn, although he only seems to care about this threat himself 'cause he's racist, is actually somewhat right about the "fetishists" missing the boat on the terrorist threat. The odd thing is that, while the neo-cons and similar sorts of hawks oftentimes did identify correctly some of the problems missed by the "fetishists", their solutions were just as "realist" as what the fetishists were proposing when they proposed anything.

They still, for example (maybe 'cause they like certain non-state actors, e.g. trans-national corporations, too much), ignore in everything but their rhetoric the role of non-state actors in terrorism at the expense of focusing too much on state actors (c.f. the Iraq debacle and their current focus on Iranian influence).

The only people who have been consistently right about these sort of things have been us moonbats. Ironically, the Steyns of the world, when they don't consider us dirty hippies, consider our concerns about, e.g. the war in Iraq, as evidence that we are just "fetishistic realists in disguise" even as that is far more true of their beloved neo-con hawk types.

Doth Steyn project much?

Posted by DAS | May 23, 2007 10:57 AM

"Which are the non-theological strands of Islam?"

Pedantry is never flattering. Even less so when it is so strained and utilised to so pitiful a purpose.

It is quite clear why I said theological strand. I wanted to make clear I was talking about forms of islam which were characterised by specific interpretations of islamic doctrine, and not region, culture or anything else 'strand' could refer to were it used in isolation.

It is really quite pathetic you were driven to make such a weak attack on me just to deflect from the revelation that your boy yglesias is very much out of his depth.

Posted by pimp hand strikes! | May 23, 2007 11:09 AM

A small point, but isn't the writer's name Kitfield? As an editor, I've always considered sloppy writing a symptom of sloppy thinking.

Posted by Toad | May 23, 2007 12:27 PM

No calm down, it wasn't an attack. I actually meant which strands.

Posted by Tom | May 23, 2007 12:39 PM

I'll count it as a damn good thing that the country wasn't run by people whose idea of the key foreign policy issue of our time was finding a way to get Christians to outbreed the Muslim hordes.

Raise your hand if you'd like to move to any Muslim state. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

I know, it's oh so much more fun to sit there and call people racist...

How effective have Scowcroft et al. been at dealing with the likes of Saudi Arabia and Iran, anyway?

Posted by Mike S. | May 23, 2007 2:18 PM