Monday, September 13, 2004

Richard Pipes Loses his Mind

In writing his mind-blowingly shortsighted NYT op-ed last week, Richard Pipes cast his lot with the head-in-the-ground branch of American conservatism (Think Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, et al).

Pipes's thesis, relating to the Russian-Chechnyan conflict, is fairly simple: The Chechens deserve their own state. Therefore, the attack on Russian schoolchildren - which, Pipes generously allows, was "bloody and viciously sadistic" - is not the same sort of unprovoked, nihilistic act of terror experienced by the United States on September 11, 2001. Chechnya is terrorism with a legitimate purpose. Therefore, "there is always an opportunity for compromise."

There are many holes in Pipes's view of the Chechen issue, and other elements in his argument that may be grounds for legitimate dispute. A few include: a) whether Chechnya is indeed so obviously in the right in its political demands; b) whether the 9/11 attacks should be considered "unprovoked," given that Bin Laden and company many times listed their own political demands. c) Pipes contends that "the Chechens do not seek to destroy Russia." Presumably, he is referring to the terrorists when he says this. How does he know that they do not seek to destroy Russia? d) Using Pipes's logic, the attacks in Russia and Madrid are analogous because each has a specific purpose - Pipes actually makes this comparison himself. So is Pipes in fact suggesting - as he seems to be - that Spain, if it had been possible, ought to have negotiated with the terrorists planning to oust their sitting government? (Remember, in Pipes's logic, as long as the object of terrorists is not the destruction of the terrorized, "there is always an opportunity for compromise.")

All of these considerations, particularly the last, highlight the weakness of Pipes's case. But there is one more issue, a matter in whose light Pipes's argument becomes so utterly ridiculous that Pipes does the only thing he can to combat it - he willfully ignores it. The proverbial elephant in the room here is summed up by the following question: Exactly what kind of government does Pipes imagine the Chechens will erect once the "tiny colony" is granted its "independence"? Will Chechnya be the next Taiwan or, as is almost certain, the next Taliban-run Afghanistan?

Pipes obscures two important realities:

1) Terrorism is not merely a political strategy. It's a particular kind of political strategy, one that tells us something very important about those who practice it, namely, that they reject the moral values cherished by all civilized people and nations on this planet. As they murder masses of innocent civilians - often, as in the case of the Chechens, children are particularly targeted - terrorists are not saying,

"Meet our demands, so that we can grant our people the important freedoms that they do not fully enjoy at this time."

Rather, they are, in effect, saying:

"We don't give a shit about your freedom of speech, and your freedom of the press, and your religious freedom, and your equal rights for women and homosexuals, and your free economies…"

You see, by murdering so many Russian children, the Muslim Chechen rebels (whether they were aided by Arabs or not), have made one thing perfectly clear: an "independent" Chechnya will be a first-order Islamic autocracy. People who feel politically and religiously driven to kill children do not agree to the limits on their power demanded by the democratic, republican form of consensual government.

2) So let us assume that an independent Chechnya will be an Islamic autocracy. Why should that concern us?

This is a question that made sense - or appeared to - until a September morning three years ago. At the cost of thousands of innocent lives, we have now learned that failed autocracies are the breeding ground for global terrorism.

Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky has warned the world, for decades, that totalitarianism must be defeated, not accommodated, in order for human freedom to prevail. Our experiences of the last few years have confirmed Sharansky's contention, with one important addendum: totalitarianism is the enemy of human liberty not only in the totalitarian state itself, but in all places.

Today, as ideologies have become as easily exportable as any other marketable commodity, a small number of totalitarian fanatics - left unchecked, with the tools of corrupted statecraft at their disposal - have the capacity to threaten, coerce, and, indeed, attack the rest of the world in order to achieve their own reprehensible, freedom-crushing ends.

Richard Pipes would have us create one more haven for tyranny. The idea is both morally and politically repugnant, and it must be rejected at all costs.