How to make friends and kill people.

or, The Best Offense is a Strong Defense ... if you really are into "winning" the game.

Here's what's wrong with America's attempting to remake the Middle East: It's not our job.

In advance of Israel's pre-emptive strike on Iran, pundits are starting to ratchet up the same kind of hype that had us unwisely and inefficiently invade Iraq. See Brooks on "honor killings" and Friedman on the need to fly the color-coded Danger flags in little towns across America, because the fronts are everywhere!

There is one war with many fronts, including Europe and our own backyard, requiring many different tactics. It is a war within Islam, between an often too-silent Muslim mainstream and a violent, motivated, often nihilistic jihadist minority. Theirs is a war over how and whether Islam should embrace modernity. It is a war fueled by humiliation — humiliation particularly among young Muslim males who sense that their faith community has fallen behind others, in terms of both economic opportunity and military clout. This humiliation has spawned various jihadists cults, including Al Qaeda, which believe they have the God-given right to kill infidels, their own secular leaders and less pious Muslims to purify Islam and Islamic lands and thereby restore Muslim grandeur.

And Brooks, in his conversation blog:

Gail, Recently I was reading a book called “Moral Minds” by Marc Hauser of Harvard. The book is about the underlying grammar of our moral judgments, but in the middle of it, he has a section on honor killings. He describes a killing that took place in Jerusalem in 2001. A guy named Mr. Asasah stood in front of his 32-year-old daughter. She was single and pregnant. Asasah had a noose and an ax and a group of about 30 men and women behind him. He asked his daughter to choose the means of her death. She chose the noose.
...
The mind gapes at events like these, yet each year there are thousands and thousands of honor killings.

Now, of course, it should be said immediately these sorts of practices are perpetrated by an extremist fringe. But this extremism seems to have an outsized influence on world events.

After September 11, there were a great many books written about the dangerous conjunction between the modern world and these ancient and barbaric practices. There were many books written, which made the best-seller list, about suicide bombings and the extremist cult of honor and death. Many of these analyses were tied to the larger problem of global terror and Islamic extremism.

Some seem to argue that in order for America and her democracy to survive, it's now our job to change attitudes in the Islamic world. Jesus Christ with a gun! Where's the personal back-up for that mission?

Now before you read me the wrong way, let me say -- to an extent -- Friedman and Brooks are correct. It's just their conclusions, and implied course of action they get wrong:

First, of course, nobody should get killed, not by family not by the State, for getting pregnant out of wedlock. Enforcing personal responsibility in the home is one thing; enforcing it by blood sacrifice, another.

There's an awful lot of play in the joints between killing your shamed daughter, and what we often seem to do here in America: pretending there's no difference between a stable family prepared to take responsibility for their own, and an unwed/uncommitted single woman who has to turn to the State for help in raising her child. (I'm glad we've done away with the Certificates of Bastardy, and even the term "illegitimate child" because a child is a child, afterall.)

Unfortunately, in the "give and inch, they'll take a mile" department, some would have us believe that we shouldn't be bothered with the single woman who has 6 children from 3 different fathers -- bearing and raising them with the help of the State. That all pregnancies should be celebrated, and "honor" is just an antique notion.

Personally, I'd treat such births much as we used to do in making sure those immigrating legally had sponsors: if family members, or good friends, step up and can assure the child (newcomer) will be provided for, without becoming a drain on the country's dwindling resources, amen. No business of ours. (see Bristol Palin)

I even think you should get one "free pass" as it were, if you find yourself pregnant and with no personal resources to fall back on: one pregnancy with WIC money paying for food; one birth (including multiples like twins) paid for by the taxpayers, complete with full prenatal care, and the followup medical costs by insuring the child and mother.

On the second pregnancy though, where you have no partner and no way of caring for your child? No more State money. Encouragement to adopt out the child to couples who can provide a stable home, and afford the child's basic needs. We can't have pauper prisons anymore, but surely we can stop pretending that every child is equal, no matter the personal resources some invest before becoming pregnant. You can keep the second (and additional) children, as they are yours, of course, but no more State money, period. The birth costs should be a bill that follows the mother, encouraging her to keep her priorities in order and understand that it's not in her, or her children's best interests, to have the State become the financial guardian.

And if the children's basic needs are neglected, due to lack of money or other priorities the parent might have for the money than meeting the child's base needs (food, change of clothing, clean/safe environment), then the State steps in and removes those children, freeing them from a bad situation that too often is all they know and is then repeated. You have to teach personal responsibility and independence somewhere along the line. I'd much rather be subsidizing foster familes for a child's base needs, and teaching basic values, than inadvertently encouraging someone to breed herself again when money gets tight... And of course, once she is capable of financially caring for their basic needs, either by herself or in a committed family situation, the children return to a better home.

Betcha the "one free, but no more" policy would in the short term leave a lot of families impoverished, but in the long term would be in the best interest of children whose families cannot meet their basic needs. Adopt them out, don't have them in the first place. (And if abortion is becoming harder and harder to access, perhaps more people will realize it's in their best interests not to conceive in the first place.)

I'm getting away from the topic, but maybe there is a middle ground between the West's shameless sexual decadence and assumptions about the "rights" to bear children who will magically be provided for -- and the notion in other cultures that the shame caused by people having sex without thinking of the consequences, is a sin punishable by death before it affects the resources and future of the rest of the family.

In some parts of Asia, I hear, drug dealing and thievery are met with harsh punishments, as well. Caning the sellers, visibly "marking" the thief so others can be warned. Seems like strong punishment to me, here in the Western World, but is it America's responsibility to "correct" those cultures and protect those peoples who would find justice much more tolerable in our society?

No. Or if it is, it's the role of private organizations and missionaries, not our military.

Now I get what Friedman is saying; I live near Minneapolis-St. Paul, for example, which has a large Somali population. Even here in rural Wisconsin, our county seat in Barron has a relatively large Somali population working at Jerome Foods/Jennie-O The Turkey Store .

Sure, after young Somali men fully raised in America were "disappeared" and later reported to be training abroad as terrorists, you understand it can happen here. The Barron Somali's have their own mosque, and cultural centers, though they send their children to public schools; assimilation often takes generations. And I can understand there might be an awful lot of conflict by those living in two worlds, culturally.

We can't let our fear of what might happen though, another 9-11, blind us to the fact that changing hearts, minds and cultures is no quick slog. No easy task. And imagine trying to "retrain" a culture on their own turf. Excuse me for thinking that if you sent every enlisted soldier in the current U.S. military to the Middle East, with an unlimited budget for nation-building, that you'd be any more ahead of the game than what those private religious and non-profit organizations are trying to do in their non-militaristic way.

Can Afghanistan be "won"? Can the Islamic threat be subdued overnight by us making friends in the region, and sharing our wealth? Or would it be best to concentrate right now on containing the threat in the region, and shoring up our country's own defenses? (The fact that 8 full years, and two administrations of different parties, after 9-11 leaves us still sitting here in America with unsecured borders ... maybe that, and not recreating the Middle East, would be a better militaristic priority for America's current needs?)

Friedman is right: we shouldn't forget. But we should have learned something from our war games in Iraq. Defined so broadly, this is an unwinnable job.

If, as it appears, terrorists are not operating only out of Afghanistan but neighboring countries as well, then it's a fool's mission to believe that the best technology in the world can "win". Not unless we are prepared to take the fight into Pakistan, as well.

So maybe say a prayer today for our troops. They want to survive, they want to accomplish their mission, but they're not the ones defining what the job is, and when it will be completed.* And it doesn't take a genius to see that they aren't properly supported now, as it is.

Resources are finite, and once spent, there's going to be nothing there to counter immediate threats to our nation. And as history shows, sometimes trying to do good and get involved causes you more problems than quietly leading by example, and helping people when you can, realistically.

I've often thought, for example, that the best way to protest Iran's outrageous treatment toward their gay citizens -- the most efficient thing American political leaders could do, given the reality that other sovereign countries make different choices (see China) -- is to clean our own backyard. To recognize that our own homosexuals are fully protected by our Constitutional guarantees -- no special treatment: no lesser rights, no "special" rights.

How would that protect others in culturally different countries from the death penalty? It won't, but then again, that's not our job -- definitely not the job of our military unless as a humanitarian, you see ways to make such change your life's work.

Dangers will always exist. Extremists come in all shapes, sizes, stripes, and colors -- and every country has them. If each country worked on containing their own, though, and America recognized that it's our defense, not our offense, that really needs work, then I suspect the deadly grievances that arise from giving such extemists unfettered access to do what their G-d tells them, would be less consequential.

What's that old saying? Nothing is impossible, if you don't have to do the work yourself. Sadly, bluesky dreams are expected of our troops, when really, they're not nation-builders but primarily protectors; their skills are fighting and killing enemies, not winning hearts and minds in the war to change cultural attitudes.

Until our wise men understand that though, and see the danger that interfering in other countries and regions without specific, definite "small" goals that realistically can be measured and met, then maybe we haven't really learned all that much in recent years and our time now would be better spent looking at how we can make effective and efficient changes ourselves to keep our own citizens safe at home.

But what do I know?


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*A Middle East that adopts all our superior Western values and economic practices? Then you get to go home, when all the hate has dissipated and there's no more threat because the natives finally get that they'd be better off being more like us?