We Jews

are apparently a biased, untrustworthy lot — but at least we can read. Empty Days begin its response to my legitimacy post this way:

The Volokh Conspiracy (which is an all-jewish neocon outlet by its own admission) doesn’t understand how giving some international legitimacy to the Iraq war could improve things there.

Oh, that’s what’s important! We’re all Jews (not quite accurate, but close enough), and neocons to boot. Actually I’ve never said that I’m a neocon (I haven’t figured out the articles of faith enough to decide whether I am or not), but never mind. Here’s how our Jewish biases apparently manifest themselves:

That’s interesting because that’s exactly how a whole lot of people think about this. They’re convinced that 90% of Iraqis are basically favorable to US presence, despite whatever reservations, and that it’s only a small group of rabid insurgents who cause all the havoc and need stamping out, like a burning cigarette in a pile of hay. The logic is simple: just keep stamping out those cigarette buts and all will be well in the end.

What Volokh is not getting – or, more accurately, refuses to “get” – is that perhaps there is no such thing as the 90% popular support, however lukewarm, that the US can rely on. That the stack of hay may be too dry on trust – and it is this basic *trust* that needs restoring rather than just running around stamping out burning hate. The lack of legitimacy, which originally incited and continues to deepen that lack of trust, creates too much of an inflamable environment for that hate to propagate like a wild fire across all the disgruntled varieties of the local society.

How do you restore trust, if it wasn’t really there in the first place? Sure – thanks for ridding us of Saddam, but you know what: we really don’t like you, we think you are here for your own ends, you want to fight some war-on-terror that got nothing to do with us, so get the hell out. The only way to dissolve that logic is to involve the rest of the world, to show at last that you’re not there only for yourself – that’s what the argument of legitimacy is all about.

This is pretty fundamental. And it’s too bad such a lot of people prefer to imagine that USA is at all welcome in Iraq. It’s there alright – but it’s not well trusted, and with good reason. If the climate was really as favorable as people here wish to believe, I don’t think we’d see such a steady proliferation of hate and insurgency as we’ve seen in the past year. It’s important to recognize that and stop acting as if all of this were nothing but an endless series of “isolated incidents” perpetrated by some misguided thugs.

(The thing about Arab League doesn’t deserve much discussion – these guys won’t mess with Iraq at this point for the life of them, it’s too much of a messy issue, they’ll rather wait to see how the UN fares in there first.)

As I said, we Jews are apparently evil and selfish, but we are smart, and we can apparently read better than other people. When reading my post, for instance:

I don’t get this. It wasn’t the French who killed the four contractors. It wasn’t the U.N. It wasn’t anyone who cares about “legitimacy.” Would Islamist radicals behave any differently if NATO were controlling the show rather than the U.S.? Would the ex-Baathists? Would even the local supporters of the killers support them any less if NATO were in charge?

Now it is possible that the Islamists and ex-Baathists would be more open to the Arab League’s running the occupation theory. (It’s also conceivable that the same would be true if the U.N. were running it, but I highly doubt it.) But is there any reason to think that the Arab League will actually provide remotely effective security? That it would fairly treat the Shiites and the Sunni, and for that matter the non-Arab Kurds? That parts of it won’t be infiltrated by the Baathists or the Islamists? Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe I’m underestimating the competence and reliability of Arab League. But I don’t think so.

Legitimacy is not an end in itself, at least in this situation. It is a means towards effective peace-keeping, which of course means to the extent necessary, effective war-making (since even the most “legitimate” body will have to hunt down those people who keep fighting against them). I don’t see how any of the other examples that Kaplan points to will be more effective.

we’d notice that none of it remotely relies on the notion that 90% of the Iraqis like us. Rather, the post argues that (1) there’s little reason to think that Iraqis will like NATO more than they like us, and (2) even though some of them might like the Arab League and conceivably the U.N. more than they like us, being liked isn’t good enough — you also have to be effective, and the Arab League won’t be.

     But the admitted Canadian (there’s that little maple leaf flag on the blog, and obviously it tells us volumes) Mr. Days seems to have somehow missed this. Our flaming Jewishness must have temporarily blinded him.