Russia, rebels, and Islamic terrorism

Mark Steyn chides the mainstream media for referring to the attackers who raided the Southern Russian city of Nalchik last week as “insurgents,” “rebels” and “militants,” rather than “terrorists,” and for downplaying the Islamic connection.

I see his point about political correctness in the media, but I’m also of two minds about this issue.

There is no question that right now, the radical Islamic terror network has a major presence in Chechnya and other traditionally Muslim (but until recently, secularized) regions in the Russian Republic. However, I also believe that this is a case of the Islamofascists exploiting a separatist movement that originally had non-radical, secular political goals — and exploiting the plight of a people brutally terrorized by the Russian state. The Russian Army under Putin has conducted a genocidal war in Chechnya, subjecting civilians — including Russians living in the region — to indiscriminate aerial bombardment, massacres, and torture. Murder, looting and rape by Russian soldiers routinely go unpunished. By portraying its war as a part of the War on Terror, the Russian government has gotten the West to look the other way. It goes without saying that Chechen terrorists have facilitated this task by committing such unconscionable crimes as the school hostage-taking and massacre in Beslan. And yes, religious fanaticism is undoubtedly a part of the picture. But the picture is also more complex than recognized by Steyn and others who want to see a seamless web of “Islamic terrorism” from Nalchik and Beslan to the West Bank to Fallujah to the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington.

For my take on these issues after the Beslan massacre, see this column. See also this little-noticed open letter to President Bush from Elena Bonner and Vladimir Bukovsky, two former Soviet dissidents and strong supporters of the War on Terror, who warn against treating Putin’s Russia as an ally in this war.

Miers update

Richard Bennet has an interesting theory on Harriet Miers:

Bush doesn’t care about abortion, and neither do the bibliocons. They understand that even if the Supreme Court was to strike down Roe, the states would legalize it anyway, and they’d lose their moral authority. It’s one thing to say that five men in black robes are imposing their personal views on you, and quite another to be faced with the certain knowledge that the people hold values that define you as outside the mainstream. So it’s best if Roe stays intact and the conservative movement has the issue to complain about.

The real problem that bibliocons have with the court showed up earlier this year in the great shouting match over the corpse of Terri Schiavo. All along the bibliocons and paleocons had been telling us they were fed-up with activist judges getting involved in state and local issues where they didn’t belong, but suddenly they were all over the courts for refusing to be activist with respect to the family and the State of Florida. So it became clear that the right wants the mirror image of what the left wants, an activist bench that is willing to impose its personal values and beliefs on the rest of us.

Looking for judges who have that sort of orientation is a hard search, because the conservative team that the right’s been grooming since Roe (Luttig, McConnell, Olsen, et. al.) is all about judicial restraint, and none of them can be relied upon to jump into the breech on Schiavo-type cases and do the right thing by the right. So Bush had to ignore the conservative farm team and draft a close personal friend with the proper religious credentials and the requisite lack of judicial hang-ups.

John Cole thinks Bennnett may be on to something.

But why does anyone think that Harriet Miers will rule on the basis of her “religious credentials” rather than follow the law? Aren’t the religious conservatives who now seem to be pushing this notion actually promoting a noxious stereotype about “people of faith”? Reality check: Judge George Greer, the Florida judge who originally issued the order to withhold artificial nutrition and hydration to the undead body of Terri Schiavo, is a deeply religious conservative Christian.

Meanwhile, John Fund reports that two personal friends of Miers’s, both sitting judges in Texas, personally assured James Dobson and other religious right leaders in a conference call that Miers will vote to strike down Roe v. Wade if she has the opportunity.

My own hunch is that Miers is a pragmatist, not an ideologue, and that she will sorely disappoint the theocons who have bought into the “she’s one of us” brand of identity politics.

Meanwhile, Eric Muller replies to my post on whether the criticism of Miers on the grounds that her career has been primarily in the private sector is fair or snobbish. Eric believes that the real issue is that Miers “has spent her professional life pretty much wholly outside the sorts of legal conversations that are common among top government lawyers.” Former Bush assistant Matthew Scully disagrees. Meanwhile, Juan Non-Volokh heretically suggests that expertise in constitutional law is not the be-all and end-all of qualifications for a Supreme Court justice:

My point is not the constitutional law is unimportant for prospective Supreme Court justices. I just think that those of us who teach and write in the area are inclined to exaggerate its importance on the Court. I care about a prospective justice’s approach to constitutional interpretation as much as the next legal blogger, but it’s hardly the only question I consider important in considering a nominee. Indeed, I would argue that a Supreme Court with a wider array of experience would be better than one made up of nine experts in constitutional law. Experience as a prosecutor or criminal defense attorney is likely makes a prospective justice more qualified to consider criminal procedure cases than a unified theory of federalism, representation-reinforcement, or judicial review of legislative action.

I find this argument persuasive. Maybe it’s just because the piling-on makes me want to root for Miers. My hope is that she will get confirmed, and will quickly show herself to be a member of the independent judiciary — not a loyal sevant to any leader or movement.

Just call me Ms. Rosy Scenario.

Update: Via Andrew Sullivan, an interesting juxtaposition, at Info-Theory, of two conflicting quotes from Texas Supreme Court justice Nathan L. Hecht, one of the “Friends of Harriet” who participated in that speakerphone conference with leaders of the religious right.

From John Fund’s account:

What followed, according to the notes, was a free-wheeling discussion about many topics, including same-sex marriage. Justice Hecht said he had never discussed that issue with Ms. Miers. Then an unidentified voice asked the two men, “Based on your personal knowledge of her, if she had the opportunity, do you believe she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?”

“Absolutely,” said Judge Kinkeade.

“I agree with that,” said Justice Hecht. “I concur.”

And from an October 5 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

But Justice Hecht also said he couldn’t predict how Ms. Miers might vote on a challenge to Roe v. Wade.

“If you’re asking, ‘Is she going vote to overrule Roe v. Wade, or Lawrence v. Texas [a 2003 decision striking down Texas’ law against same-sex sodomy], I don’t know that you can ask anyone that because you don’t know until you are there.”

Will the real Justice Hecht — and the real Ms. Miers — please stand up?

Iraq: A time for cautious optimism?

Apparently, the provisional Iraqi Constitution has been approved by the voters.

Two large provinces dominated by Sunni Arabs voted no on the Constitution and at least two others gave it only only a slim margin of support. As a result, Juan Cole tells The Washington Post that “this thing is an enormous fiasco,” because in the absence of a consensus, the Constitution and the political process itself will lack legitimacy and the insurgency will still find a fertile ground. Others, including Martin S. Indyk, a former Clinton administration official and now a Brookings Institution scholar, are not quite so pessimistic. More from the Post‘s analysis:

In the December election, provinces will receive proportional representation so even a low turnout in Sunni provinces will still result in more Sunni Arabs being sent to the legislature. In the January elections for the interim parliament, Sunni representation was especially low because most Sunnis boycotted the elections while Kurds largely voted for a Kurdish coalition and Shiites backed a coalition of Shiite Islamist parties.

A last-minute deal last week on the constitution — allowing it to be amended in the next year, rather than eight years as originally anticipated — is also designed to encourage Sunni Arabs to become more involved and reject the insurgency. The constitution was largely drafted to reflect the interests of the Kurdish and Shiite groups that dominate the assembly, including carving out distinct ethnically based territories with greater control over oil wealth.

But experts said that, even so, Sunni Arabs will remain a minority in the unicameral body and in a country with 60 percent of the population adherents of the Shiite Muslim faith. Some said that Saturday’s result — demonstrating anew that Sunni Arab concerns will be outvoted — could actually do little to encourage the Sunnis.

“The fundamental problem is this is not a consensus constitution, and one part of the country has massively rejected it,” said Larry Diamond, senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a former adviser to the U.S.-led Iraqi provisional government. “This was not a joyful vote. It was a pragmatic vote to continue the process.”

Diamond credited the Bush administration, especially U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, with recognizing the problem and working hard to bring the Sunnis into the process. He said that the Sunnis realize they “shot themselves in the foot” by boycotting the January elections. Now, he said, the administration should begin intense informal mediation to narrow differences between ethnic groups before the election.

…

Martin S. Indyk, a former Clinton administration official who directs the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, said the administration’s scenario of greater Sunni participation is plausible. But he said it is also plausible the Sunnis will conclude that because they failed to block the constitution, the political process is stacked against them.

It should be noted that Sunni Arabs, who make up 15 to 20% of the population of Iraq, enjoyed a privileged status under the Saddam Hussein regime; to the Sunni elite, a fall from dominance may amount to “getting shafted.” There are also, of course, Sunni Arabs who are genuinely interested in a better future for Iraq. Despite the divisions, it seems to me that they do have a stake in the political process. Is this democracy as we know it? Of course not; the draft Iraqi Constitution enshrines Islam as the state religion and the foundation for Iraqi law (though, somewhat paradoxically, it also prohibits discrimination based on gender and religion), and the people generally voted as the clerics told them to vote. But it sure sounds like a positive first step.

Andrew Sullivan, hardly a drumbeater for the war of late, sees progress and concludes: “If the turnout reaches 65 percent, this will have been a real triumph for the forces of sanity and self-government.” Further to the left, Kevin Drum sounds guardedly optimistic as well (enough for a commenter to accuse him of training to be a “Fox News pundit”).

Let’s hope the cautious optimists are right.