by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
Advancing a Free Society<\/em><\/p>\n Citizen control of the military is one of the most important foundations of political freedom. Rather than an instrument of a powerful autocrat or king, the army in a republic serves the collective interests, security, and policies of the state as determined by the citizens through the constitutional processes of deliberation and election. Generals are limited to one task: managing conflict so that those political aims are achieved. Thus they should keep quiet about politics, which frequently requires knowledge that professional soldiers do not necessarily possess.<\/p>\n This circumscribed role for generals has a long tradition, one famously reinforced by President Truman when he fired General Douglas McArthur in 1951 for public comments that went beyond that role. More recently, General Stanley McChrystal was fired in 2010 for remarks some of his staff made that were critical of political figures. Yet McChrystal\u2019s replacement, General David Petraeus, in his public comments frequently strays into areas beyond his competence, recycling received wisdom and unexamined dogma detrimental to our winning the war of morale we are fighting against the jihadists.<\/p>\n For example, in March 2010, General Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services committee that the Arab-Israeli conflict \u201cfoments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of US favoritism for Israel,\u201d and that \u201cArab anger over the Palestinian question\u201d hampers US military effectiveness and \u201cweakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world,\u201d allowing jihadists organizations to \u201cexploit that anger to mobilize support.\u201d How does the General know this? Certainly not from the facts of history, but from decades of Arab propaganda that has successfully deflected the blame for the Muslim Middle East\u2019s manifest dysfunctions and failures onto the West and tiny Israel.<\/p>\n The falsity of this dogma was revealed recently by the uprisings throughout the Middle East, in which the protesters were silent about the Palestinian issue, consistent with the Arab indifference to the reality, as opposed to the propaganda value, of Palestine evident for the last half century. After all, the Arab nations didn\u2019t invade Israel in 1948 to create a Palestinian state, but rather to carve up the rest of British Mandatory Palestine, as the secretary-general of the Arab League, Abdel Rahman Azzam, confessed at the time: \u201cAbdullah [ruler of Transjordan] was to swallow up the central hill regions of Palestine . . . The Egyptians would get the Negev. The Galilee would go to Syria, except that the coastal part as far as Acre would be added to the Lebanon.\u201d The Arabs don\u2019t hate Israel because there isn\u2019t a Palestinian state, or because of checkpoints or settlements that make life hard on the people the Arabs have kept penned up in refugee camps for sixty years. They hate Israel because it exists, and because it harbors the people Muslims historically have scorned as subjects and inferiors.<\/p>\n As for recruiting jihadists, the doctrines of Islam provide more than enough reasons for becoming a martyr, not the least being a chauvinistic certainty that Allah intends for Islam \u201cto conquer the whole world,\u201d as the Ayatollah Khomeini put it, for \u201call the countries conquered by Islam or to be conquered in the future will be marked for everlasting salvation.\u201d The conflict in Israel is what Thucydides called a \u201cpretext,\u201d an excuse to pursue actual aims under the rhetorical camouflage of some principle dear to the enemy. Osama bin Laden has been the master of manufacturing such pretexts for consumption by self-loathing Westerners, even harping on Bush\u2019s failure to sign the Kyoto treaty. But as bin Laden said to his jihadis in November 2001, \u201cThis war is fundamentally religious. Under no circumstances should we forget this enmity between us and the infidels. For the enmity is based on creed.\u201d So too Khomeini in November 1979: \u201cThe Muslims must rise up in this struggle, which is more a struggle between unbelievers and Islam than one between Iran and America: between all unbelievers and the Muslims. The Muslims must rise up and triumph in this struggle.\u201d Israeli settlements or American foreign policy are merely tactical pretexts, to be replaced by others if necessary.<\/p>\n Given those religious motives for waging jihad, it is bizarre that Petraeus believes this cosmic struggle really comes down to Israel and settlements. Yet the General once more has intruded his questionable received wisdom into matters beyond his professional purview. In response to the riots in Afghanistan that followed an obscure pastor burning a Koran, Petraeus and NATO proclaimed \u201cour condemnation of any disrespect to the Holy Qur\u2019an and the Muslim faith. We condemn, in particular, the action of an individual in the United States who recently burned the Holy Qur\u2019an. We also offer condolences to the families of all those injured and killed in violence which occurred in the wake of the burning of the Holy Qur\u2019an. We further hope the Afghan people understand that the actions of a small number of individuals, who have been extremely disrespectful to the Holy Qur\u2019an, are not representative of any of the countries of the international community who are in Afghanistan to help the Afghan people.\u201d<\/p>\n