I must be on somebody's list in Minnesota. I get daily and often
several times daily e-mails from the North Star state. From the
Democratic Farmer Labor Party, which has an intriguing history having
once been dominated by the Communist Party until Hubert Humphrey and Gene
McCarthy came along. From Al Franken's campaign. And from
various public commentators on the contest between Norm Coleman and
Franken. I am not neutral in this campaign, having
contributed a thousand bucks to Franken's race.
But I am troubled that Franken and many of the other Democrats running
for office are locking themselves into a(nother) war they do not want,
and it is the war in Afghanistan. Last night in a debate among the
three candidates for the U.S. senate seat Franken said that the greatest
threat to the country was Al Qaeda. Now I understand and sympathize
with the yen to go after the Taliban. I assume (but do not know)
that after 9/11, had Al Gore not been cheated out of the White House in
Florida the previous fall, he probably would have sent troops to
Afghanistan with the precise mission of cutting off the head of Al Qaeda
and dismembering its body. But Al Gore was not president. And
from that "not" stem many present-day mysteries and
tragedies.
The fact is that the Iraq war is progressing quite steadily. The
tribes have vanquished their own militant Sunni ultras. The Shi'a
clerisy has smothered its own Sad'rist flanks in the south. Sectarian bloodshed has not entirely stopped. But it is not a daily
occurrence. It seems that the people have themselves rebelled
against their own fratricide. The Kurds have constituted their own
autonomous region. Is all this attributable to General Petraeus and
his honorable troops? Well, much of it is. And much of it
also to Maliki who used to be treated as a joke. No
longer.
You may recall the wan corollary joke about how what Iraq needed was a
President Karzai. You don't hear that anymore, and not just because
Maliki has shown his mettle and metal. So it would be tragic were
the Democrats to continue to criticize the beginnings of the war just
when its intensity is subsiding and many of its aims are being met. Moreover, the seemingly reflexive yen for an expanded war in Afghanistan,
meaning more troops and more money, is bound not to be fulfilled.
The American people don't want it, and the triumphant Democrats won't pay
for it. Yet Afghanistan is where Al Qaeda is
headquartered. And Pakistan is from where Al Qaeda's smuggled
equipment and warriors are dispatched. Barack Obama is, in fact,
quite right about Pakistan, not a nation and hardly a state, Jinnah's
dream metamorphosed into not a fantasy but a nightmare.
It is the wilds. Like Afghanistan. You cannot grasp how
different these territories are from the places even adventurous visitors
go. At least, you cannot grasp what Afghanistan is and is like
unless you've read Rory Stewart's stark travel narrative in The Places
in Between. It is not Stewart's subject. But one
of the features that differentiates countries A and P from Iraq is that
Iraq is Arab. A neo-imperialist (I mean this as a compliment), Rory
Stewart is the modern day Wilfred Thesiger who knew Iraq like no one else
did, as one can tell from The Marsh Arabs. And the tribes of
the peninsula from Arabian Sands. And the people of Pakistan
and Afghanistan from Among the Mountains.
But back to Arab Iraq and the mystery and magic of Arabic. Of
the Muslims of the world, the Arabs are the chosen people. The
Koran was given to them as revelation in Arabic. Muslims are
summoned to prayer in Arabic. If they are altogether illiterate
they are illiterate in two languages, their own and the holy
tongue. Those who speak the holy tongue hold a special
status. Which is at least one reason why Iraq counts to the
Muslims, as Pakistan does not and as Afghanistan also does not. For
fanaticism to be dealt a blow in Iraq is to have been dealt an enormous
blow.
An Arab country means more to the Muslim world than a non-Arab
country. Most especially, then, the people of Iraq speak
Arabic.