Reductionism

The President had the following description of the enemy we face in his speech to the American Legion:

The enemies of liberty come from different parts of the world, and they take inspiration from different sources. Some are radicalized followers of the Sunni tradition, who swear allegiance to terrorist organizations like al Qaeda. Others are radicalized followers of the Shia tradition, who join groups like Hezbollah and take guidance from state sponsors like Syria and Iran. Still others are "homegrown" terrorists -- fanatics who live quietly in free societies they dream to destroy. Despite their differences, these groups from -- form the outlines of a single movement, a worldwide network of radicals that use terror to kill those who stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology. And the unifying feature of this movement, the link that spans sectarian divisions and local grievances, is the rigid conviction that free societies are a threat to their twisted view of Islam.

Is that, in fact, a unifying feature?

I mean, yes, in a sociological taxonomy, one could use it to classify them, but is it, in reality, something that unifies these disparate groups?

Have Sunnis and Shiites stopped fighting each other without me hearing about it? Have they said to themselves, well, I hate those heretical sons-of-dogs, but they share my hatred of Western liberal democracy, so I'll put that aside for now?

I imagine, on some level, they are happy when the other harms Western interests, but are we to believe that, if it looked like the other was getting ahead in its drive to hegemony, that they'd be happy about it? It seems to me that for many religious extremists, the only thing worse than an unbeliever is one who believes the wrong thing, not an infidel but a heretic. Where's the proof this is a single, unified "movement" bound by their hatred for us? Given the Bush administration's record on nuance and detail, I'm skeptical.

In fact, in his next paragraph, Bush undermined his own case. He called the current enemy "successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to Communists, and other totalitarians of the 20th century." The totalitarians of the 20th century weren't a unified movement. We used the Communists to help defeat the Nazis, who had no love for Communists, either. By the 60s, the Soviets were nearly as worried about the Communist Chinese as they were about us. While Americans were trying not think about Southeast Asia following our departure from Vietnam, communist Vietnam, with Soviet backing, invaded Cambodia, deposing communist (and PRC client) Pol Pot. Very shortly came a war with communist China itself.

And Idi Amin? Brutal, violent, totalitarian, hated freedom. Part of a movement?

My point is that generating foreign policy based on broad taxonomic classes like "totalitarian" or "islamofascist" doesn't make sense. The characteristic that links the items isn't the sole, or even the primary, characterstic of importance when trying to figure out how to deal with them. A wise policy understands the distinctions between them, and an even wiser policy exploits those distinctions to our benefit.

Which is why it might just be wise to talk to Syria, because they probably aren't happy about a nuclear Iran, or an Iranian client state on its border in Iraq. And it might be useful to remember that Iran, actually being a nation-state, might possibly be deterred by the same vision of being reduced to radioactive glass that held the Soviets in check all those years. And it might be good to think about why Hamas and Hezbollah, while they both hate Israel and therefore us, might not like each other all that much. What about Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the multiple players there?

In the 20th century, we dealt with totalitarians in as many ways as there were totalitarian regimes. We went to war, hot and cold, with some, and some were our allies, despite the fact that they didn't believe in democracy or liberty. Some switched roles when circumstances changed. Some we just ignored.

What we didn't do was suggest that they were the same, or that the strategy and tactics used to deal with them should apply across the board.

(As is so often the case with his speeches, he went on from this paragraph to make other points, some intellectually sound, others quite the opposite. But addressing this one bit of reductionism is all I have time for tonight.)