Watch in amazement along with Justin Logan as The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb says Americans ought to be indifferent to the impact U.S. policy has on al-Qaeda recruiting.
« The New Nixon Library | Main | Dripping to the End »
Goldfarb: Who Cares About Recruitment?
09 May 2008 08:30 am
Comments (15)
I've seen Goldfarb on bloggingheads a couple times. He presents an odd mixture of ignorance and breezy insouciance. When presented with evidence against anything he says, the reply is always: "its not clear that..." or, "I'm not convinced that...". He never seems capable of marshaling any actual facts to back up his statements, however.
Goldfarb is not presenting an argument, he is barking pompously like Powell does, and comparing the situation to Nazi recruitment does not an argument make.
No one who ever intended to say anything serious about foreign policy begins by stating that they don't care in the slightest about understanding the conditions which either strengthen or weaken their opponents.
The same is true for those who actually fought the Nazis, who did indeed care about what strengthened or weakened the Nazis, unlike pompous fluffs like Goldfarb or Powell, who think that WWII was conducted by people as vain, preening, and shorn of argument as themselves.
Nazi recruiting went way up after the invasion of Normandy and the destruction of Army Group Center in 1944.
There is no Jihadistan homeland and even if there were, we are not invading it with hundreds of Army and Marine divisions and pummelling its cities from the air. The US is currently fighting a *limited war*, not a total war like World War II. In a limited war, enemy recruitment is a key measure of success.
It seems to me you can only afford to be blase about enemy recruitment if the enemy is a discrete political entity and your strategy involves coercing its government into surrender in a matter of weeks or months. In that case, the pool of potential new recruits is finite, and the war will be over too soon for them to make much difference. (Yes, Nazi recruiting boomed as Germany's situation became direr, but by the end its new recruits were old men, the disabled and teenagers. Population growth could not keep up with the pace of Allied military operations.)
The War on Terror, or so we've been told by people like Goldfarb, will last a generation and the battlefield is global, with the pool of potential new recruits spanning dozens of countries, almost none of which we are actually engaged in militarily. The US' current strategy holds no hope of killing jihadists faster than new cohorts of potential jihadists can be born. Thus it simply *has* to be mindful of whether those potential jihadists are becoming actual jihadists. And all sorts of policy and rhetorical choices its leaders make can have an impact on that.
Robert, what in sam hell are you talking about?
It could be added in the German case that the surge in recruits was also largely attributable to conscription. With the presumable exception of some press gang activities in local conflicts, AQ is a purely voluntary organization that taps a very small percentage of the potential pool of recruits. As a result, minimizing the organization's appeal to potential recruits should be a major part of any strategy against it.
Goldfarb's quip also suggests, "Hey; Bush is old news. He doesn't matter. What matters is Al Qaeda; they were our enemy before, and they'll continue to be."
This might suggest that the past eight years weren't really important. That the actions of the Cheney / Bush 'administration', and the effects of those actions upon the people of the Middle East, were negligible factors in creating a previously unknown level of anti-American hatred in the world -- which, coincidentally, affects Al-Qaeda's ability at recruiting.
This tripe ignores Cheney / Bush's responsibility in creating a foreign policy which pushed Muslims into believing the radical interpretation of Islam which on one level Al-Qaeda represents.
It also allows Goldfarb to dismiss his own complicity, as a visible cheerleader of Cheney / Bush -- and the very policies of hypocricy, lies and brutality which are their legacy.
Goldfarb ignores the past, telling us to focus instead on the threat of Al-Qaeda, The Muslim, The Enemy -- and on our need for a strong Leader whose wise policies will bring victory: McCain.
You know what I'm tired of? I'm tired of people arguing for various simplistic hawkish policies now acting like they were the ones who fought WWII, and speaking as if they get to claim whatever moral authority those on the Allied side accumulated in the matter.
Nazi recruiting went way up after the invasion of Normandy and the destruction of Army Group Center in 1944.
Er, no, it didn't. For one thing, apart from the non-German volunteers into the SS there was very little "recruiting" practiced by the Nazis -- they used conscription. Germans had no choice about going into the Wehrmacht.
Michael Goldfarb says Americans ought to be indifferent to the impact U.S. policy has on al-Qaeda recruiting.
i like that 'after all they'll be recruiting anyway,' comment. guess he doesn't care that the war in iraq does a great job of attracting al-qaeda wannabes. plus it gives them on the job training oppertunities, too. is he indifferent about that?
the only metric that matters is wheither america is killing jihadists quicker than inspiring them.
currently, i doubt we're doing that.
thoughts?
Even though his comment is stupid, he's trying to back a policy (un-ending militarism) without seeming to back a policy.
If you're trying to FIGHT the war on terror, AQ recruitment doesn't matter.
If you're trying to WIN the war on terror, AQ recruitment is important.
It seems to me that anything we do that some people disagree with will be said, with no supporting evidence, to be "aiding Al Qaeda's recruitment". Are they now issuing an annual report with "recruitment" figures? It appears from recent reports that they are also now using a form of conscription--many of the recent suicide bombers have been handicapped and/or coerced. I guess the one sure way to counter "Al Qaeda recruitment" is to find a way to surrender.
In my view the main thing we're doing to boost radical Islam is spreading propaganda for them--lies like, "the war in Iraq is an illegal anti-Muslim oil grab"; and inflating what is essentially marginal criminal activity into a great "global war". Iraq was an important enemy because it is a nation-state that had an aggressive, genocidal, totalitarian government that habitually launched wars, including the one we started fighting in 1991 and have been trying to resolve ever since. Al Qaeda is essentially a nuisance that got lucky one time because we weren't paying attention. Apples, oranges, except to the extent that they can claim victory if we run out on Iraq. Now THAT will boost recruitment.
Doesn't sound to me like they are saying we shouldn't care at all, only pointing out that too many people are obsessed with Al Qaeda recruitment and believe that our policies should be analyzed with that in mind as the top priority. The problem is that whether a particular policy increased recruitment is unknowable, and even if it was, does it increase net recruitment, or only gross recruitment? For example, if you take out a base camp and kill 100 militants, but it makes 75 people sign up becuase they are mad or something, you just reduced Al Qaeda's strength by 25(not counting the fact that new recruits are less valuable than experienced militants).
Excessive worrying about recruitment is just a rationalization for making our primary policy, "let's not make them mad". Problem is, no war has ever been won by worrying about what makes the enemy angry. The time to worry about making people mad is before a war in an attempt to prevent it. Once the shots have been fired that pretty much goes out the window.
Powell pretty much establishes here that he doesn't care about anything except getting paid to propagandize a bunch of bullshit.
As Michael Scheuer has pointed out repeatedly, Al Qaeda is engaged in a war with the US because of specific US policies. Change those policies and the war will move on to Al Qaeda's primary targets, the Saudis and other corrupt kingdoms in the Middle East.
And changing those policies will not cost the US one thin dime. The only people who will lose out are the oil companies and the military-industrial complex, that is, the people paying Powell to utter bullshit on Web sites.
I think Adam Herman nails it. In some respects, we can probably avoid "making them mad" without abandoning our interests and principles, but it should be pretty clear to everyone but arch isolationists that this isn't true across the board.
| 
Heads in the Sand
Goldfarb is of course exactly right, and Justin Logan is absurd. Nazi recruiting went way up after the invasion of Normandy and the destruction of Army Group Center in 1944.
Posted by Robert Powell | May 9, 2008 9:30 AM