Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Warrior Message

Blumenthal has an interesting update on General Aimee Semple McBoykin in tonight’s Salon. I was aware that he was Cambones very own GI Joe, but I didn’t know until now that he personally went to Cuba to tell Miller to Gitmo-ize the mud-people over in Eye-Rack.

Saving Gen. William ‘Jerry’ Boykin seemed like a strange sideshow last October. After it was revealed that the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence had been regularly appearing at evangelical revivals, preaching that the United States was in a holy war as a ‘Christian nation’ battling ‘Satan,’ the furor was quickly calmed.

[…]

Boykin was not removed or transferred. At that moment, in fact, he was at the center of the secret operation to “Gitmo-ize” Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. He had flown to Guantánamo (known as “Gitmo”) in Cuba, where he met with the commandant of Camp X-Ray, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, ordering him to extend his methods to the Iraq prison system, orders that had come from Rumsfeld. While Boykin weathered his public storm, he remained the operational officer overseeing Miller’s new assignment.

[…]

Just before Boykin was put in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and then inserted into Iraqi prison reform, he was a circuit rider for the religious right. He allied himself with a small group known as the Faith Force Multiplier that advocates applying military principles to evangelism. Its manifesto, “Warrior Message,” summons “warriors in this spiritual war for souls of this nation and the world … God has given us the stewardship and accountability of FAITH as our strategy for this time to mobilize an exceedingly great army.”

As the head of the Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, N.C., Boykin invited Southern Baptist ministers for prayer meetings that would be highlighted by demonstrations of Special Forces hand-to-hand combat and guided tours of the “Shoot House” and “Snake Room.”

Boykin staged a traveling slide show in which he displayed pictures of bin Laden and Saddam Hussein around the country. “Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army,” he preached. “Why do they hate us? The answer to that is because we’re a Christian nation. We are hated because we are a nation of believers.” They “will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.” It was the reportage of his remarks at one such revival in Oregon that made him a subject of brief controversy. But public relations handling rescued him so that he could pursue his job, including turning up the heat at Abu Ghraib.

So, they sent this crazy, fucked-up Christian crusader to whip the Muslim heathens into shape.

Terry Southern and Stanley Kubrick must be laughing hysterically right now, wherever they are. It can’t get any more absurd than this.

Can it?

American As Rotten Apple Pie

Following up the story I posted about yesterday, EditorandPublisher has this:

E&P today obtained from Reuters a report submitted to the company’s senior editors in mid-January, less than two weeks after the journalists were detained, by Bureau Chief Andrew Marshall, who had interviewed the three staffers separately. The Reuters employees are Salem Ureibi, who has worked for the company since 1991, mainly as a cameraman; Ahmad Mohammad al-Badrani, who has worked with Reuters on a freelance basis since July 2003, shooting video; and Sattar Jabar al-Badrani, a driver.

Marshall observed in his report, ‘It should be noted that the bulk of their mistreatment — including their humiliating interrogations and the mental and physical torment of the first night which all agreed was the worst part of their ordeal — occurred several hours AFTER I had informed the 82nd Airborne Division that they were Reuters staff. I have e-mail proof of this.’

Reuters also made available to E&P about two dozen pages of transcripts of Marshall’s interviews with the three staffers on Jan. 8.

Here are excerpts from Marshall’s report:

‘When the soldiers approached them they were standing by their car, a blue Opel. Salem Uraiby shouted ‘Reuters, Reuters, journalist, journalist.’ At least one shot was fired into the ground close to them.

‘They were thrown to the ground and soldiers placed guns to their heads. Their car was searched. Soldiers found their camera equipment and press badges and discovered no weapons of any kind. Their hands were cuffed behind their backs and they were thrown roughly into a Humvee where they lay on the floor. …

‘After half an hour to an hour they were transferred to a larger armored vehicle. Ahmad and Sattar (along with NBC stringer Ali who I have yet to formally interview) were thrown on the floor under the seats. …

“Once they arrived at the U.S. base (this was FOB Volturno near Fallujah) they were kept in a holding area with around 40 other prisoners in a large room with several open windows. It was bitterly cold. They were given one blanket between two. All were interrogated separately at different times and the worst treatment they suffered was on the first night when for several hours (they believe it was from around midnight until dawn) all of them were put in a room together and subjected to hours of abuse.

“Bags were alternately placed on their heads and taken off again. Deafening music was played on loudspeakers directly into their ears and they were told to dance around the room. Sometimes when they were doing this, soldiers would shine very bright torches directly into their eyes and hit them with the torches. They were told to lie on the floor and wiggle their backsides in the air to the music. They were told to do repeated press ups and to repeatedly stand up from a crouching position and then return to the crouching position.

“Soldiers would move between them, whispering things in their ear. Ahmad and Sattar did not understand what was whispered. Salem says they whispered that they wanted to have sex with him and were saying “come on, just for two minutes.”T hey also said he should bring his wife so they could have sex with her. …

“Soldiers would whisper in their ears “One, two, three…” and then shout something loudly right beside their ear. All of this went on all night. … Ahmad said he collapsed by morning. Sattar said he collapsed after Ahmad and began vomiting. …

“When they were taken individually for interrogation, they were interrogated by two American soldiers and an Arab interpreter. All three shouted abuse at them. They were accused of shooting down the helicopter. Salem, Ahmad and Sattar all reported that for their first interrogation they were told to kneel on the floor with their feet raised off the floor and with their hands raised in the air.

“If they let their feet or hands drop they were slapped and shouted at. Ahmad said he was forced to insert a finger into his anus and lick it. He was also forced to lick and chew a shoe. For some of the interrogation tissue paper was placed in his mouth and he had difficulty breathing and speaking. Sattar too said he was forced to insert a finger into his anus and lick it. He was then told to insert this finger in his nose during questioning, still kneeling with his feet off the ground and his other arm in the air. The Arab interpreter told him he looked like an elephant. …

“Ahmad and Sattar both said that they were given badges with the letter ‘C’ on it. They did not know what the badges meant but whenever they were being taken from one place to another in the base, if any soldier saw their badge they would stop to slap them or hurl abuse.

What was that inspiring saying I heard again?

Oh yes.

“I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country’s gift to the world. Freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help spread that freedom.”

After 30 years under Saddam, I just don’t know how much more “freedom” these poor bastards can take.

I think the saddest thing about all this is that once again we raised these people’s hopes that we were coming to rescue them. That makes us even crueler than Saddam in some ways. Under him they didn’t have any dreams. We, on the other hand, encouraged them to dream and then crushed them. Laughing in their faces while we did it.

Boys Crying Wolf

Atrios has a great post up today, featuring the long lost Mighty Mighty Reason Man, about Instapundit and his gang’s early retreat to threats of force when things don’t go their way.

Instapundit: (Via alicublog)

Freedom of the press, as it exists today (and didn’t exist, really, until the 1960s) is unlikely to survive if a majority — or even a large and angry minority — of Americans comes to conclude that the press is untrustworthy and unpatriotic. How far are we from that point?

Gosh, I don’t know. But just as soon as I get over the whiplash, I’ll give it some thought. After all, just over a year ago, when the media slobbered like a bunch of 2 dollar hookers over Dear Leader’s codpiece on that aircraft carrier, they were being extremely patriotic and trustworthy. I don’t know what the hell has happened to them. Maybe we should ask Eliot Abrams if Sy Hersh is the anti-Christ.

Atrios also quotes Newties former flak, and current editorial whore for the Washington Times, Tony Blankley, saying:

It is heartbreaking, though no longer perplexing, that the president’s political and media opposition want the president’s defeat more than America’s victory. But that is the price we must pay for living in a free country. (Sedition laws almost surely would be found unconstitutional, currently — although things may change after the next terrorist attack in America.)

Isn’t that sweet yet sad? It’s heartbreaking … On the other hand, blowjobs were also such threats to the country that we had to use the nuclear constitutional option of impeachment, so there doesn’t seem to be much that isn’t cause for putting the jackboot on the neck if that’s what it takes to make America free. (Certainly, it’s nothing that a little harmless forced sex couldn’t cure, eh Tony?)

What’s happening here is entirely predictable because modern Republicans are demented children. They have two modes — smug and rabid. When things are going well for them politically, they are unbearably arrogant, shoving it in everyone’s faces, ungraciously lording it over all concerned. When things go badly they instantly begin foaming at the mouth and escalate rapidly into a psychotic break.

The thing to remember is that their threats and tantrums are real but usually ineffective in the long run — but they often have the unfortunate salutary effect of cowing the press, who are a bunch of prissy little sissies.

The Reason Man says:

It’s as if I stood on a street corner screaming about the malevolence of the homeless, and then asked a homeless guy how long he thought he would survive if a large mob bent on hanging winos were to suddenly form in the vicinity.

How, then, can this be interpreted as anything other than “how long before the people I represent use their influence to forcibly ‘balance’ the news”?

It can’t, and they know it. They use this intimidation technique all the time.

One perfect of example of this phenomenon is the Florida Recount. Underlying all the legal mumbo jumbo and the behind the scenes maneuvering, lay a palpable nervousness in the media. Their daily refrain was, “hurry, hurry, hurry — the country is getting impatient,” “so far, there are no tanks in the streets, so at least we can be grateful for that,” even though polls showed that the people weren’t particularly in a hurry and were too riveted to their televisions to contemplate revolution. But the Greenfields’s and the Williams’s and the Matthews’s were constantly referring to some dark possibility of civil insurrection if things didn’t wrap up quickly.

They weren’t dreaming, they were just taking Republicans at their word. Bush’s team was down there in Florida ginning up the emotion, hysterically accusing little old ladies of “diviiiiining the will of the voters,” pounding down doors in mock riots, appearing on television shows and ranting delusionally about the Democrats stealing the election. (William Bennett on Capital Gang became so red-faced I thought he was having a heart attack.) The freepers sent in their goons to shout at the VP residence to “get out of Cheney’s house!” Tom DeLay said quite openly that he would not allow Al Gore to take the presidency. Justice Scalia hinted darkly at civic upheaval if Bush didn’t get his way.

The public, reasonably, were unimpressed. After all, the Republicans had been in high dudgeon over something or other for years. From haircuts to travel agents to Chinese espionage to Lincoln Bedroom to cattle futures to blowjobs and state troopers and wagging the dog, Republicans were always foaming at the mouth. What wasn’t a threat to the republic with these people?

But, the press continued to respond as if each GOP meltdown means that there are going to be riots in the streets, apparently led by a bunch of paunchy middle aged men in ill fitting suits who never got laid when they were young, never went to war, never made a team or played in a rock band so their dreams of masculine glory remain unfulfilled well into their 50’s.

Whether it will work again is up for grabs. After suffering under more than three years of smarmy, unctuous GOP “success” even the media may have reached a point where they find it preferable to have these people raving from the sidelines. Their impotent threats of revolution are clearly far less harmful than their proven incompetence at governing.

Kenny Boy and Grandma Millie

Before I forget

Enron Corp. employees spoke of “stealing” up to $2 million a day from California during the 2000-01 energy crisis and suggested that their market-gaming ploys would be presented to top management, possibly including Jeffrey K. Skilling and Kenneth L. Lay, according to documents released Monday.

The evidence of apparent scheming — in one recorded conversation, traders brag about taking money from “Grandma Millie” in California — is in a filing by a utility in Snohomish County, Wash.

[…]

While it has long been established that Enron engaged in market-gaming tactics — two top traders have pleaded guilty to fraud-related charges for manipulating California’s energy market and a third awaits trial — the 450 pages of recorded conversations provide another vivid look into the organization’s exploitive subculture.

They also suggest that knowledge of alleged wrongdoing may have reached the level of Skilling, Enron’s former chief executive, and Lay, the former chairman.

In a Sept. 14, 2000, conversation, an employee named “Sue” from Enron’s governmental affairs operation checks in with a trader named “Bob” for information that could be used in an in-house presentation to corporate executives.

“This is the time of year when government affairs has to prove how valuable it is to Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling,” Sue said, according to the transcript.

The Snohomish utility identified Sue as Susan J. Mara, Enron’s California director of regulatory affairs until December 2001, when she and thousands of others lost their jobs as the result of Enron’s financial collapse.

In talking with Bob, whose identity couldn’t immediately be learned, Mara touts Enron’s success in delaying a lowering of energy price caps by state officials.

Then, still seeking helpful material for the planned executive presentation, she asks: “Do you know when you started overscheduling load and making buckets of money on that?”

Overscheduling load — a tactic that Enron traders famously dubbed “Fat Boy” — involved purposely overstating how much electricity would be needed in the future, creating the appearance of power shortages and leading to inflated prices.

Mara, who is now an energy consultant, said Monday that the recorded conversation came about as she gathered information for a budget presentation to be made to executives at corporate headquarters in Houston. “We had to show what our accomplishments were for the year,” she said.

Mara said she didn’t recall what the final presentation contained or which executives heard it. The presentation was not prepared expressly for Skilling and Lay, she said, even though her statement in the recorded conversation implied that they would hear it.

The trading tactics discussed on the recording weren’t considered illegal or manipulative by Enron, Mara added.

[…]

Federal prosecutors in February brought a range of fraud charges against Skilling for his actions when he was at the helm at Enron, but none was related to trading in the California market. Lay has not been charged.

In a different conversation in the transcripts, Enron’s West Coast trading chief, Timothy N. Belden, discusses the profitability of the company’s strategies in California, particularly those executed by a trading desk led by Jeffrey S. Richter:

“Well he makes … between one and two [million] a day, which never shows up on any curve shift…. He steals money from California to the tune of about a million — ”

At this point the other speaker interrupts, asking Belden to rephrase what he just said.

“OK,” Belden says. “He, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day.”

We were told by President Cheney that the problem was too many environmental regulations. They screwed Grandma Millie and then blamed it on Gray Davis.

Say what you will about Republican competence, but they are really good at screwing people over. I’d go so far as to say they’re gifted.

The Hit Man

When Nixonites go bad.

This guy wrote the book. He will be reprising his role as GOP character assassin in a state near you over the next few months, you can bet on it.

Zell’s Latest Spew:

The two times I think I have been most humiliated in my life was standing in a big room, naked as a jaybird with about fifty others and they were checking us out, now that was humiliating. It was humiliating showering with sixty others in a public shower. It didn’t kill us did it? No one ever died from humiliation.

Gee Zell, did they also make you stick your finger in your ass and then taste it? Did they throw a towel over your head and then force you to jerk off in front of the cheerleading squad?

Man, high school was a lot tougher back in the 1800’s than when I went to school…

Insufficient Dedication

That Political Animal (who’s celebrating his 13th wedding anniversary today) writes about Wes Clark’s interesting article in the Washington Monthly, which I have linked before:

Clark’s point is a simple one: Neither Reagan nor any of the seven Cold War presidents before him ever attacked either the Soviet Union or one of its satellites directly. This wasn’t because of insufficient dedication to anticommunism, but because it wouldn’t have worked. In the end, they knew that democracy couldn’t come at the point of a gun; it had to come from within, from the citizens of the countries themselves.

Is this right? To argue otherwise is to suggest that our Cold War strategy was also wrong. Perhaps we should have rolled our tanks across the Iron Curtain after World War II, when the Soviet Union was exhausted and weary. Or attacked China instead of accepting a truce in the Korean War. Or sent NATO troops into Hungary in 1956.

Of course not. Even if we had “won,” we wouldn’t have won. In the end, the patient strategy of military containment and cultural engagement was the right call, and it’s the right call for the war on terror as well. Too bad George Bush doesn’t seem to get this.

Too bad George Bush doesn’t seem to get how to eat a pretzel without passing out either, but that’s just who he is. The problem, of course, is the Republican intelligensia[sic] who wanted to play Risk with real soldiers.

The Neocons have always been wrong about everything. Remember, Paul Wolfowitz wanted to invade Russia after the Berlin Wall came down. They are, and always have been, nuttier than fruitcakes.

Bad Apples Stinking Up The Whole Country

Reuters Staff Abused by U.S. Troops in Iraq

By Andrew Marshall

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – U.S. forces beat three Iraqis working for Reuters and subjected them to sexual and religious taunts and humiliation during their detention last January in a military camp near Falluja, the three said Tuesday.

The three first told Reuters of the ordeal after their release but only decided to make it public when the U.S. military said there was no evidence they had been abused, and following the exposure of similar mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

Two of the three said they had been forced to insert a finger into their anus and then lick it, and were forced to put shoes in their mouths, particularly humiliating in Arab culture.

All three said they were forced to make demeaning gestures as soldiers laughed, taunted them and took photographs. They said they did not want to give details publicly earlier because of the degrading nature of the abuse.

The soldiers told them they would be taken to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, deprived them of sleep, placed bags over their heads, kicked and hit them and forced them to remain in stress positions for long periods.

The U.S. military, in a report issued before the Abu Ghraib abuse became public, said there was no evidence the Reuters staff had been tortured or abused.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq, said in a letter received by Reuters Monday but dated March 5 that he was confident the investigation had been “thorough and objective” and its findings were sound.

The Pentagon has yet to respond to a request by Reuters Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger to review the military’s findings about the incident in light of the scandal over the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

[…]

Schlesinger sent a letter to Sanchez on January 9 demanding an investigation into the treatment of the three Iraqis.

The U.S. army said it was investigating and requested further information. Reuters provided transcripts of initial interviews with the three following their release, and offered to make them available for interview by investigators.

A summary of the investigation by the 82nd Airborne Division, dated January 28 and provided to Reuters, said “no specific incidents of abuse were found.” It said soldiers responsible for the detainees were interviewed under oath and “none admit or report knowledge of physical abuse or torture.”

“The detainees were purposefully and carefully put under stress, to include sleep deprivation, in order to facilitate interrogation; they were not tortured,” it said. The version received Monday used the phrase “sleep management” instead.

The U.S. military never interviewed the three for its investigation.

On February 3 Schlesinger wrote to Lawrence Di Rita, special assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying the investigation was “woefully inadequate” and should be reopened.

“The military’s conclusion of its investigation without even interviewing the alleged victims, along with other inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the report, speaks volumes about the seriousness with which the U.S. government is taking this issue,” he wrote.

This was in Fallujah at some bullshit camp. It wasn’t in a high level prison where they supposedly held the “worst of the worst.”

It’s now an official cover-up all the way to Sanchez at a minimum. The managing editor of one of the two biggest wire services in the world gives them transcripts of his employees’ statements and offers them as witnesses all the way back in January. They say that nothing untoward happened. The managing editor of one of the two biggest wire services in the world then writes directly to the Pentagon and complains about the “investigation.” This is after the Taguba investigation was underway. He hears nothing further. The managing editor for one of the two biggest wire services in the world then receives a letter on May 17th, dated March 5th from General Ricardo Sanchez saying that he is confident the investigation was sound.

For the first time, I think it may be worse for us to stay than leave. If this sick shit was so widespread it was happening in every detention camp in Iraq, we are lost.

And George W. Bush Is The Best President We’ve Ever Had, Too

Michelle Cottle in TNR observes the right wing meltdown, in particular the desperate assertions by the ladies of the Right, (Coulter, Nooner and Chavez) that the fault for Abu Ghraib lies with the “babes in uniform.”

… I nonetheless feel a pang of sympathy for all those Bush fans who increasingly find themselves laboring to defend the indefensible (e.g., the continued employment of George “Slam Dunk” Tenet or Donald “Don’t Show Me the Torture Pics” Rumsfeld). Whatever outrage-related stress I’m suffering, it’s clearly negligible compared with the complete mental meltdown occurring on the right, particularly in regards to the torture of Iraqi internees at Abu Ghraib.

As photos (and maybe even video!) trickle out documenting the misdeeds of American soldiers, conservatives are scrambling to find an acceptable party to blame. A few, like George Will, have risen brilliantly to the occasion, offering the administration a tough-love critique. But most have treated the two most logical candidates–the Pentagon and the White House–as off-limits.

For them, the current unpleasantness must be somehow pinned on a reassuringly liberal villain. You can actually hear the gears whirring in their heads as they cycle through the usual suspects: Bill, Hillary, unions, tree-huggers, taxes, the French–surely some left-wing bogeyman can be found to take the heat off poor Rummy!

Fortunately, a trio of right-wing chicks–Linda Chavez, Peggy Noonan, and the perennially unbalanced Ann Coulter–have leaped into this breach, peddling the ideologically soothing notion that Abu Ghraib is the sad, but predictable, by-product of permitting women in the military.

[…]

Behind all the novel theories is this basic truth: The Bush administration never makes a mistake. Sure, American personnel in Iraq have been stretched dangerously thin thanks to a certain defense secretary’s reluctance to call up more troops. It’s also true that terrified, inexperienced reservists received virtually no training in preparation for sensitive postings. And military intelligence probably did ‘request’ that internees be softened up a bit to aid interrogations. But all of this was part of a brilliant plan that would surely have succeeded if not for some misguided lefty notion about gender equality. Which is why the most important task the Pentagon faces these next few months isn’t upping our troop count, or investing the international community in Iraq’s future, or even ferreting out who ordered the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. It’s drumming every coarse, vulgar, uppity, sexually corrupting woman out of the military. And, if that doesn’t work, we can always blame the gays.

Let’s face it. The feminazis are clearly culpable. But, it’s liberals in general who are at fault. They must be. They always are. And something should be done about it. Then, as Rush says, “we should keep just one around in a museum somewhere, so people can see what they looked like.”

I know that most readers of this blog never watch Fox, and for good reason. But, it’s kind of fun watching Fred Barnes’s head explode after trying to resolve its internal contradictions. Give it 5 minutes. You’ll enjoy yourself.

The End Of The Modern Era

Robin Wright is one cool customer. I’ve been reading her work for many years — before she went to the Washington Post, she wrote for the Los Angeles Times, my daily paper. She regularly appears on The Newshour and is an acknowledged mid-east expert from whom I have never seen or read any trace of hysteria or even much emotion. She’s a real journalist.

Her analysis today of how the Iraq war has changed everything in the region — for the worse — and how the consequences are much more serious than anything that’s gone before in the region, brought me up short. This is not a writer who is given to hyperbole, yet she writes today:

Over the past quarter-century, I’ve covered the rage of the Islamic world, witnessing much of it up close, losing friends who became victims to its extremist wings and watching its furies swell. But I’ve never been scared until now.

The stakes in Iraq — for which the Abu Ghraib prison has tragically become the metaphor — are not just the future of a fragile oil-rich country or America’s credibility in the world, even among close allies. The issues are not simply whether the Pentagon has systemic problems or whether Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the Pentagon brass or even the Bush administration can survive The Pictures. And the costs are not merely the billions from the U.S. Treasury to foot the Iraq bills today or the danger that Mideast oil becomes a political weapon during tumultuous days down the road.

The stakes are instead how the final phase of the Modern Era plays out.

That 500-year period, marked by the age of exploration, the creation of nations and the Enlightenment that unleashed ideologies designed to empower the individual, faces its last great challenge in the 50 disparate countries that constitute the Islamic world — ruled by the last bloc of authoritarian monarchs, dictators and leaders-for-life. The Iraq war was supposed to produce a new model for democratic transformation, a catalyst after which the United States and its allies could launch an ambitious initiative for regional change.

But now, whatever America’s good intentions may have been, that historic moment may be lost for a long time to come.

Funny, that. We find today that the Bush administration is making policy based upon the apocalyptic fantasies of a bunch of crazed American fundamentalists . And on a political level, rejection of the Enlightenment has been in the works in the Republican Party for a long, long time. I doubt they quite had this in mind, however.

Over the past dozen years many factors favored transformation in the world’s most volatile region. The buzz among students at Tehran University, editorial writers in Beirut and Amman, the leading human rights activist in Cairo, a feminist leader in Rabat, intellectuals in Lahore and teenage girls in Jakarta has increasingly been about democratic reforms and how to achieve them. New public voices, daring publications, occasionally defiant protests in widely diverse locales gave shape to an energetic, if somewhat disjointed, trend.

Thanks to satellite dishes, shortwave radios and the Internet, Muslims have longingly watched societies from South Africa to Chile to the former Soviet republics shed odious ideologies and repressive regimes. Many haven’t wanted to be left behind; they’ve wanted much of what we’ve wanted for them.

[…]

The bottom line: The primary battle for the majority of Muslims has not been with us. Their jihad — or struggle, as the word is accurately translated — has been against their own autocratic governments. A surprisingly small minority of extremists, from Lebanon’s Hezbollah to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, have gone after us most often because we were seen as the prop for corrupt and immoral regimes, or we deployed troops on their land to achieve suspect objectives.

Yet I am scared because the foundation for the region’s democratic transformation has steadily eroded over the past year. Whether the U.S.-led occupation was wise or well-handled, the way it unfolded in Iraq has profoundly disappointed many Muslims both near and far from Iraq’s borders. The accumulation of events threatens to undo rather than remake the region, in turn delaying or diverting the course of the Modern Era’s final phase.

The occupation of Iraq has affirmed the worst fears of the Islamic world, reinforcing distaste for America and what it represents, and spawning wild conspiracy theories about the motives of the West. Many Muslims now see the American intervention as a devastating betrayal, starkly reflected by the Red Cross’s recent conclusion that 70 to 90 percent of all Iraqis who were “deprived of their liberty” — by the world champion of democracy — “were arrested by mistake.” Others in the region react with fury to the symbolism of a naked Arab male on a concrete floor tethered to a female American soldier looking down with disinterested arrogance on her prisoner at Abu Ghraib.

“Beyond those frolicking soldiers, there is a certain cavalier attitude toward Arabs and Muslims that has created a sense that Arabs are guilty until proven otherwise,” reflected Hisham Melham, a Washington correspondent for al-Arabiya television. So while America’s ambitious postwar initiative to promote democracy in the “greater Middle East,” — which includes imaginative proposals, such as training 100,000 female teachers to instruct and empower girls by closing the gender gap — will probably still make its debut at three international summits next month, it’s unlikely to generate much traction anytime soon.

This is where George W. Bush and his facile cowboy talk really fomented the hell that is unfolding in Iraq. I hold him (and the speechwriters like David Frum and Mark Gershon, whom everybody extolled for providing the moron with such stirring oratory) responsible. The purposefully and for craven political purposes unleashed the beast.

But what I fear most is that frustration over Iraq and disgust with Abu Ghraib will give common cause and a rallying cry to far-flung Muslim societies. Until now, al Qaeda — with its global reach — has been the exception. Most Islamic groups have had local causes and operated at home or very nearby. And they’ve always been a distinct minority.

The worst-case scenario is that the Cold War of the 20th century is followed in the early 21st century by a very warm one, with no front lines, unpredictable offensives and a type of weaponry from which we’re not yet sure how to protect ourselves. This time the majority could become involved, either by empathizing, sympathizing or actively participating in a cause they see as righting a wrong against them.

The unintended consequence of the Iraq experience could well produce a third generation of militants — a cadre that didn’t fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s or train in bin Laden’s camps in the 1990s — who will launch a conflict whose tactics, targets and goals will be even more amorphous. Their conflict will be more than an intensified or expanded war on terrorism. And, I fear, we’ll be groping for a long time to figure out how to counter it — and how to get back to finishing that final chapter of the Modern Era.

I’ve always maintained that we couldn’t have designed a better recruitment plan for bin Laden than invading Iraq. It looks as if it’s working. And, like Robin Wright, for the first time I feel truly scared.