The Wonk Room

Punishing Arabs For 9/11

With respect to Andrew Sullivan, I don’t think “striking” sufficiently describes this statement from Fouad Ajami’s latest defense of the Iraq war:

Kabul and the war against the Taliban had not sufficed, for those were Arabs who struck America on 9/11. A war of deterrence had to be waged against Arab radicalism, and Saddam Hussein had drawn the short straw. He had not ducked, he had not scurried for cover. He openly mocked America’s grief, taunted its power.

Astonishing is more like it. Reprehensible, even more. Better yet: Racist. How else to describe the notion that, because Arabs planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks, other Arabs had to be punished, regardless of whether they had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks?

While it’s chilling to consider that Ajami is regarded as one of the “smart” neocons, all this really means is that he offers a more erudite colonialist essentialism in service of disastrously counterproductive military adventures. The statement above is basically just a more lettered, less village idiot version of the “Michael Ledeen Doctrine“, as relayed by Jonah Goldberg: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”

Nice war you got there, guys.