Ehud Barak: Fighting Terror Like Fighting Malaria: Kill Mosquitoes and Drain the Swamp

In a talk given to the World Leaders Lecture Forum hosted by the University of Utah yesterday, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak addressed serious Middle Eastern issues but also provided some entertaining one-liners and sound bites.

As reported in the Deseret Morning News, in describing Israel’s current posture in its dealings with Palestinians and neighboring terror sponsoring states, Barak bluntly remarked that:

Israel has one hand stretched out in peace and the other hand very close to the trigger. . . . That’s the only way to survive in the Middle East, where there is no mercy for the weak.

He later added this quippy gem:

The Mideast is not the Midwest. We would love to have the Canadians as our neighbors, but you got them.

Given Israel’s neighbors, Barak’s quip is understandable, but perhaps Canada is not quite as peaceful and benign as he implies. Canada’s radical Islamic population is increasing at a rapid pace, and anti-Americanism, along with a strong anti-Semitism, are thriving, particularly in Montreal-Quebec. Courtesy of IDF Israel, this is what Mr. Barak wishes for on his borders in exchange for what Israel currently faces:


This should provide some perspective if Barak would love to have such people as depicted in these photos as his neighbors. He considers the U.S. lucky to have Canada as a neighbor, and despite Canada’s covetous anti-Americanism, I suppose we are fortunate in our geographical location in the modern world. Of course we also have a neighbor to our south that hates us more than Canada . . . but I digress.

Barak made some interesting remarks about U.S. strategy in the war on terror, including our efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. According to Barak, the U.S. will need to compromise with China on human rights issues and Russia on self-determination for Chechnya to secure the cooperation of these nations in confronting Iran.

Human rights advocates will oppose such compromise, of course, and on the surface it is humbling to step back from previously stated demands made of China and Russia, but as I wrote about our strategy in Iraq in yesterday’s post, sometimes it is necessary to make unpleasant deals with unsavory characters or nations in order to achieve a more critical goal. We did so with Stalin in WWII, and it appears necessary now, as Russia and China are arming Iran and providing Ahmadinejad with the equipment to enrich uranium. Of course we are concerned with the human rights of the oppressed citizens of China, and we are similarly in favor of liberty and self-government for Chechnya, but neither of those issues currently imperils the existence of America and its allies. A nuclear Iran does. If we are intent on pursuing diplomatic pressure to convince Iran to change course, we must enlist Russia and China to intervene decisively in the interest of global security.

Mr. Barak seemed also to discount the importance of establishing a democracy in Iraq. According to Barak:

In the Middle East, the right to vote isn't the main issue. I'd prefer to look at the four freedoms outlined by President Franklin D. Roosevelt: expression, worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Americans would do better to insist on universal, mandatory education for women rather than the right to vote.

This statement raises important questions. In my post yesterday addressing the question of whether the Iraq War is really a mess, I called attention to several tactics we failed to utilize that would have helped secure the services and cooperation of local tribal leaders and the disbanded Iraqi army in suppressing the insurgency. I quoted author Robert Kaplan’s summary of a conversation he had with an Iraqi sheik as described in Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, and Mr. Barak's speech yesterday confirmed much of what that sheik described to Kaplan as the root problem faced by the America military: democracy, or democratic elections, was merely an intangible result of the American overthrow of Saddam’s regime. The Iraqi people wanted (and are still hoping for) more tangible offerings to improve their physical situation, and Barak echoes this sentiment by identifying the four Roosevelt freedoms as issues of more importance than elections in securing allies for America in the Middle East.

Barak assigns minimal significance to the right to vote in comparison to education for women. At first glance this appears contradictory, in that education would seem useless without the right to vote and participate in decision making. However, Mr. Barak makes an important point that others in alternative media have discussed: reform of Islam will never occur unless Muslim women are permitted to receive education and training, and gradually exercise more influence on Islamic culture. Women tend to soften extremism and provide wise counsel in public discourse. Barak is no chauvinist here. Israeli women serve mandatory tours of duty in the Israeli Defense Force and the contribution of women is critical to Israeli strength in the field and perhaps more importantly on the home front.

Few people in the world have the depth of experience with and knowledge of Arab culture that Barak has acquired over a lifetime of military, intelligence, and political service, and it should be significant to U.S. strategic planners that a former Prime Minister of the original Middle Eastern democracy would urge America to place higher priority on humanitarian and security concerns than on democracy as the key tools for winning the War on Terror. Based on his assessment, it appears we have killed many “mosquitoes” in the War on Terror, and hopefully the troop surge will contribute more to “draining the swamp” by securing Iraqi cities so Iraqis can receive Roosevelt’s four freedoms.