Stardate 20030913.1600

(On Screen): Long time readers of this site will know that Joschka Fischer, the foreign minister of Germany, is one of my favorite Europeans.

In the sense of being among those I most despise. (He's been mentioned on this site many times.)

I have a friend who lives in Berlin who happens to be a supporter of Fischer's party, and he has explained to me that some of what Fischer's been saying isn't really indicative of his own point of view, because of a peculiarity of the German Parliamentary system. In coalition governments (which are the norm), the head of the largest party in the coalition becomes Chancellor, and usually the leader of the second largest party is given the position of Foreign Minister. However, establishment of foreign policy is the domain of the Chancellor, and the Foreign Minister is supposed to follow that policy even if he doesn't agree with it. My friend has pointed out that in many cases in the last year that Fischer clearly has not agreed with Schröder's policies, and there have been news reports suggesting that there has been rather vituperative arguments in private between the two.

Perhaps so. But if Fischer thought the issues were sufficiently important, he could have resigned and led his party out of the coalition, bringing the government down. And he hasn't done so. Besides which, it's clear that he does believe much of what he's saying, and even that part I disagree with.

In some cases it approaches the foolish. There's this report summarizing comments Fischer made in an interview in Stern magazine, where he contends that the underlying American strategy for the war has been a failure and should be abandoned.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer asserted Wednesday that US policy in Iraq had failed while calling for German-American ties to be redefined on the basis of equal partners.

"The American domino theory under which a liberated Iraq was supposed to stabilise the Middle East and democratise one country after another has not proven right," said Fischer in an interview with the news magazine Stern.

He added: "The decisive question now is whether a strategy which has not worked will be replaced by one that can."

Fischer said Germany wanted a swift handover of sovereignty in Baghdad to Iraqi nationals and the United Nations. Moderate Arab and Islamic states must also be involved in stabilising Iraq, he said.

It's at least progress that he's acknowledging the strategy, which was the real reason why we invaded Iraq. Perhaps he disagrees with the strategy we're following. But to claim that our strategy is now a failure is fatuous. It's a process expected to take decades rather than weeks. It is much too early to determine that it's failed. At best this is rhetoric; at worst it's a deliberate lie.

Though it's too early for it to have significant results, there are signs that it's having an effect on many levels. Some of that is the direct result of the elimination of Saddam's government (such as a cutoff of Saddam's substantial funding of Palestinian terrorism), and some is the result of direct pressure by the US. Some of it is more indirect. Amir Taheri summarizes some of the positive signs:

The liberation of Iraq has shattered the structures of two dozen terror organizations, at least one of which was directly linked to al Qaeda.

Some money is still flowing into the coffers of the radical organizations that, in turn, finance the half dozen terror groups still capable of launching sporadic attacks.

But even there, what money now flows into terror is but a trickle, compared to the flood before 9/11.

...Predictions that several Muslim countries would fall into the hands of the terrorists have proved unfounded.

Pakistan, regarded as the "ripest for a fall," is emerging from two decades of uncertainty and gaining self-confidence.

Saudi Arabia, far from inaugurating a new regime headed by terrorists, is beginning to fight them in earnest, for the first time.

Algeria, another candidate for a "fall," is arguably more stable now than two years ago. Indonesia, which was presented as the next target of the terrorists, is consolidating its newly won democracy.

Last but not least, there is Iraq, where the most brutal regime Islam had seen in more than a century collapsed like a house of cards, largely because the Iraqi people welcomed their liberation.

More important, the past two years have witnessed an unprecedented debate in the Muslim world. One weekly magazine recently ran a series based on a central question: Who are we?

For the first time, mainstream media in the Muslim world allow difficult questions to be raised, including whether Islam should remain on the sidelines of the modern world and sulk, throw bombs at it or take part in its development and improvement.

In fact, one of the most amazing changes has been the extent to which the press in the Muslim world has been willing to talk about what had been unthinkable before. Shortly after the attack two years ago, Egyptian playwright Ali Salem wrote the following:

People say that Americans are arrogant, but it's not true. Americans enjoy life and they are proud of their lives, and they are boastful of their wonderful inventions that have made life so much easier and more convenient. It's very difficult to understand the machinery of hatred, because you wind up resorting to logic, but trying to understand this with logic is like measuring distance in kilograms….These are people who are envious. To them, life is an unbearable burden. Modernism is the only way out. But modernism is frightening. It means we have to compete. It means we can't explain everything away with conspiracy theories. Bernard Shaw said it best, you know. In the preface to 'St. Joan,' he said Joan of Arc was burned not for any reason except that she was talented. Talent gives rise to jealousy in the hearts of the untalented.

But that was printed in The New Yorker. At the time, nothing like this could have been printed in the Arabic press. But since then, as Taheri says, more and more of these kinds of comments are appearing there, and that alone is remarkable.

Taheri makes this key point:

In almost every Muslim country what amounts to a civil war of ideas is shaping up. Reformists and modernizers have realized that rather than dismissing Islam as a "feudal relic," they should seek to understand it in modern terms and redefine some of its practices to reflect the existential realities of their societies.

The alienation of the modernizing elite from the largely illiterate and poor base of most Muslim societies created a vacuum that a small stratum of fanatics was able to fill with a message of hatred and terror. Many Muslim regimes, meanwhile, exploited Islam as a way of isolating and silencing their reformist critics. Those regimes have begun to realize that the monster they trained to eat their foes could also eat them.

No one can deny that the party of terror in the Muslim world has failed to attract any significant level of popular support. The liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq was largely approved by the silent majority of Muslims.

The loudest protests came from within Western societies, including the United States.

This civil war of ideas within Islam represents the most difficult, and ultimately the deciding, phase in the war against terrorism. Unless this war is won by people who wish to lead Islam out of its ghetto and into the mainstream of contemporary life, no number of military and publicity victories against terror will produce the safer world that we all want.

And this is not the kind of thing which can happen over a brief period. What we're seeing is the hopeful signs that the process is beginning. But even an optimistic prediction would expect it to take years for the process to come to fruition, and for the reformers to begin to gain enough power to be able to defeat and limit the extremists. In some nations it's going to take decades, and in the mean time there will be backlash and setbacks. It's a long and difficult road, and for every two steps we take forward we'll take one backwards. But we have no choice. In the long run, it's the only way to eliminate the danger we face.

There have been concrete changes already. Taheri points some of them out here. A few of the most interesting:

In Syria, President Bashar Assad has announced an end to 40 years of one-party rule by ordering the Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party to no longer "interfere in the affairs of the government."

...Saudi women have organized several seminars in the past few weeks, in which they called for equal legal rights.

...In Egypt, the state-controlled media are beginning to break taboos, including reporting President Hosni Mubarak's refusal to name a vice president, as required by the constitution, and to end the tradition of single-candidate presidential elections.

...In a recent television appearance, Col. Muammar Khadafy (whose one-man rule has been in place since 1969) told astonished Libyans that he now regarded democracy as "the best system for mankind" and that he would soon unveil a package of reforms. These are expected to include a new Constitution to institutionalize his rule and provide for an elected national assembly.

...Even in remote Algeria and Morocco, the prospect of a democratic Iraq, emerging as an alternative to the present Arab political model, is causing some excitement. A cultural conference at Asilah, Morocco, last month, heard speakers suggest that liberated Iraq had a chance of becoming "the first Arab tiger" while other Arab states remained "nothing but sick cats."

As Taheri says, in Syria, Assad has decided to end Baathist one-party rule:

Assad said last month that the government should make reform a priority.

Assad has promised to improve Syrians' lives by making the government more accountable, modernizing legislation, eliminating bureaucracy and revitalizing the economy.

Assad has launched several reforms, including allowing private universities and banks and freeing hundreds of political prisoners. But he has also clamped down on pro-reform activists.

He's hinky about it, as are all the other leaders in the region. But he's read the writing on the wall (or, perhaps, had it read to him by our diplomats), and now knows that he can either embrace reform voluntarily, or have it forced on him.

In part in response to American pressure and in part as a result of al Qaeda terrorist attacks inside of Saudi Arabia itself, the Sauds seem to be getting more serious about cracking down on extremists inside Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps some of this is show. The Sauds have been really good at symbolic cooperation that masked deep opposition over the last couple of years, but that's because they've been trying to play both sides. There were strategic reasons two years ago why we had to tolerate that, but most of those reasons are no longer important, and the American attitude towards the Sauds is definitely changing. The Sauds, like all corrupt rulers, are primarily concerned with retaining power and they now view American displeasure as a greater threat to their continued rule than the displeasure of the extremists within their borders, a major political crossover point. They even have now consented to setting up a joint task force that will station U.S. law enforcement officials in the desert kingdom to target individuals suspected of funneling millions of dollars to al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, according to the Washington Post.

Some of this cooperation may be the result of blackmail. There was notoriously a large section of a report about the 9/11 attack which the administration classified, and it is reported that much of it dealt with involvement by the Saudi government and various wealthy Saudis (possibly including members of the royal family) who may have been involved in finance and support of those who made the attacks. At the time I condemned the decision to classify this. I didn't think it made any sense to suppress that information.

Now I think that there was a deal made, using strong coercion. The Saudi Ambassador consulted with the Bush administration, and then publicly demanded that the information be revealed. The Saudis claimed that they were innocent b