Recently I reviewed Jamie Kirchick’s new book about Europe for National Review. What I wrote was much too long for them, though, so it had to be severely condensed. This is what I wrote originally. (National Review kindly gave me permission to reprint the parts of this that they own.)
Claire, despite your protestations to the contrary, you are trivializing antisemitism in France. What you dismiss as “insults” might very well be characterized as hate crimes in some American States (although not on American College campuses where hate crimes against Jews are celebrated.)
Did you forget the widespread debate in France about whether Jews would be wise to stow away their kippahs and other religious garb? Don’t Ms Le Pen and the Muslim extremists agree about exactly one thing-that outward displays of Jewish identity are so difficult to stomach that naturally they inspire violence? If French antisemitism is exaggerated, why do French soldiers guard synagogues and Jewish Schools?
And it’s not just France,
A year ago or so, the antisemitism czar in Germany warned Jews that it was unsafe for them to express outward signs of their Jewish identity.
The irony in all of this is that Hungary is far more tolerant and pluralistic (at least when it comes to religious expression) than the two leading nations in the EU.
Hungary’s 100 thousand Jews (a larger percentage of the nation’s 8 million citizens than in France) walk to synagogue unmolested. Wear a kippah in Hungary and nobody notices. Where do you think I would be safer walking down the street with a yarmulke on my head-Budapest or Marseille?
France’s antisemitism is also manifested in its treatment of Israel. Isn’t France one of several European nations that refuses to sanction the “political wing” of Hezbollah? Compare this with Hungary which is a bulwark against the European tendency to rabidly criticize Israel first and ask questions later.
In 2018 the French Ambassador to Hungary (Ambassador Fournier) wrote a private memo to Macron highlighting all the reasons that accusations of Orban’s antisemitism were a canard. The memo leaked and Macron promptly fired him.
Accusations of Hungarian antisemitism rest entirely on Orban’s Jihad against George Soros. Could it be that Orban doesn’t hate Soros because he’s Jewish but hates him because of Soros’ lust for eliminating national borders? If Soros had is way, how long would it be before Budapest was as dangerous for Jews as Marsaille?
Much to agree with here, but I would like to make one point. It's quite true that the US failed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Those failures, however was not military, at least not primarily. They were political. Clausewitz put it thus: “The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish…the kind of war on which they are embarking.” Sad to say, no such act of judgement seems to have been undertaken in the case of America's post-9/11 wars. Thus there was no point at which the soldiers could look around, nod and say "Mission accomplished." Strategically speaking, the wars were fought in a hand-to-mouth manner. It's been astonishing to me, a Vietnam veteran, to see the same failures of leadership that marked that war being replicated over the course of the so-called GWOT.
Of course the US had the military power necessary to smash al-Qaeda in its Afghanistan haven, and to savage the Taliban for its role in facilitating 9/11. Those were reasonable—and limited—objectives. What was not reasonable was the blithe assumption that Afghanistan could be transformed into a modern state. So the soldiers came to find themselves in an impossible position: Given the vague and unrealistic nature of the plan, they had no working definition of victory to guide them. And though of course I cannot say for sure, it seems that the senior military leadership never stood up and advised the politicians that Afghanistan was a strategic black hole.
Much the same thing happened in Iraq. Assuming that the invasion and the deposition of Saddam Hussein were justified, the US would have been well advised to set up some cabal of generals as the new government, sign an alliance with them, and withdraw all but a residual force from the country. Instead we repeated the same mistakes we were making in Afghanistan—and they were even more costly.
I'm not against military intervention, e.g. to get rid of a rat like Saddam or to prevent genocide in Syria. I am, however, against starry-eyed idealism. We can to some extent prevent the worst from happening. But good intentions backed by military power can't fix places like Afghanistan or Iraq.
You bring up an interesting point in terms of just trying to replace Saddam(or Assad) with a cabal of generals. I don't know what the answer to this question is other than this seems to go against modern American sensibilities. It is something France on the other hand is known to do(and by many accounts was trying to do quite recently with Assad) and may very well have caused France to have joined such an action if that was the sole intention in Iraq War II. I think some of the cause of Iraq War 2 was the fact that Iraq War 1 at first seemed to have been "won" and then everyone started to complain about Saddam still being in power.
I think it has to be noted that the post 1945 situation of US troops being stationed in Germany, Japan, Korea(and other countries in Europe) in a high state of readiness but essentially remaining in their barracks in a military capacity(excluding civilian/tourism type interactions with local communities) while maintaining a positive relationship with there "host" countries is something totally unique in human history. Occupying armies have almost always been just that occupiers. This has never really been the case in German et all, yes there are occasional flare-ups in places like Okinawa but there is no sense of "occupation".
I think the US made the mistake shortly after Iraq War I that this same type of experience would be how a permanent US military presence in the Middle East would be greeted when instead history reverted back to it's tradition story of occupying armies being unwelcome.
Well, after the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany and its assumption of full sovereignty, the US troops there did not really constitute an occupying force. Even so, as I can attest from personal experience, they were not universally popular. Ditto South Korea, more or less. Still, there is a difference between occupying troops and troops stationed in a country pursuant to a treaty of alliance.
I tend to agree with your point that in Gulf War II, the US overcompensated for its failure to cap victory in Gulf War I by toppling Saddam Hussein. However, that's an explanation, not an excuse, for what has happened there since 2003.
As for "American sensibilities," since they produced poor results they need to be revised in the light of experience.
My biggest problem with Kirchick is in the US he would be best known as an anti-anti-Trumper, that is one that does not explicitly praise Trump and Trumpism but instead criticizes opponents of Trumpism of acting in bad faith.
The strange thing is that I wrote this several years ago, but suddenly it showed up at the top of the feed, as if I'd just written it. I wonder why? Surely owing to some button I pushed--I'm always screwing things up on Substack--but I hope it doesn't keep happening.
Claire, despite your protestations to the contrary, you are trivializing antisemitism in France. What you dismiss as “insults” might very well be characterized as hate crimes in some American States (although not on American College campuses where hate crimes against Jews are celebrated.)
Did you forget the widespread debate in France about whether Jews would be wise to stow away their kippahs and other religious garb? Don’t Ms Le Pen and the Muslim extremists agree about exactly one thing-that outward displays of Jewish identity are so difficult to stomach that naturally they inspire violence? If French antisemitism is exaggerated, why do French soldiers guard synagogues and Jewish Schools?
And it’s not just France,
A year ago or so, the antisemitism czar in Germany warned Jews that it was unsafe for them to express outward signs of their Jewish identity.
The irony in all of this is that Hungary is far more tolerant and pluralistic (at least when it comes to religious expression) than the two leading nations in the EU.
Hungary’s 100 thousand Jews (a larger percentage of the nation’s 8 million citizens than in France) walk to synagogue unmolested. Wear a kippah in Hungary and nobody notices. Where do you think I would be safer walking down the street with a yarmulke on my head-Budapest or Marseille?
France’s antisemitism is also manifested in its treatment of Israel. Isn’t France one of several European nations that refuses to sanction the “political wing” of Hezbollah? Compare this with Hungary which is a bulwark against the European tendency to rabidly criticize Israel first and ask questions later.
In 2018 the French Ambassador to Hungary (Ambassador Fournier) wrote a private memo to Macron highlighting all the reasons that accusations of Orban’s antisemitism were a canard. The memo leaked and Macron promptly fired him.
Accusations of Hungarian antisemitism rest entirely on Orban’s Jihad against George Soros. Could it be that Orban doesn’t hate Soros because he’s Jewish but hates him because of Soros’ lust for eliminating national borders? If Soros had is way, how long would it be before Budapest was as dangerous for Jews as Marsaille?
Much to agree with here, but I would like to make one point. It's quite true that the US failed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Those failures, however was not military, at least not primarily. They were political. Clausewitz put it thus: “The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish…the kind of war on which they are embarking.” Sad to say, no such act of judgement seems to have been undertaken in the case of America's post-9/11 wars. Thus there was no point at which the soldiers could look around, nod and say "Mission accomplished." Strategically speaking, the wars were fought in a hand-to-mouth manner. It's been astonishing to me, a Vietnam veteran, to see the same failures of leadership that marked that war being replicated over the course of the so-called GWOT.
Of course the US had the military power necessary to smash al-Qaeda in its Afghanistan haven, and to savage the Taliban for its role in facilitating 9/11. Those were reasonable—and limited—objectives. What was not reasonable was the blithe assumption that Afghanistan could be transformed into a modern state. So the soldiers came to find themselves in an impossible position: Given the vague and unrealistic nature of the plan, they had no working definition of victory to guide them. And though of course I cannot say for sure, it seems that the senior military leadership never stood up and advised the politicians that Afghanistan was a strategic black hole.
Much the same thing happened in Iraq. Assuming that the invasion and the deposition of Saddam Hussein were justified, the US would have been well advised to set up some cabal of generals as the new government, sign an alliance with them, and withdraw all but a residual force from the country. Instead we repeated the same mistakes we were making in Afghanistan—and they were even more costly.
I'm not against military intervention, e.g. to get rid of a rat like Saddam or to prevent genocide in Syria. I am, however, against starry-eyed idealism. We can to some extent prevent the worst from happening. But good intentions backed by military power can't fix places like Afghanistan or Iraq.
You bring up an interesting point in terms of just trying to replace Saddam(or Assad) with a cabal of generals. I don't know what the answer to this question is other than this seems to go against modern American sensibilities. It is something France on the other hand is known to do(and by many accounts was trying to do quite recently with Assad) and may very well have caused France to have joined such an action if that was the sole intention in Iraq War II. I think some of the cause of Iraq War 2 was the fact that Iraq War 1 at first seemed to have been "won" and then everyone started to complain about Saddam still being in power.
I think it has to be noted that the post 1945 situation of US troops being stationed in Germany, Japan, Korea(and other countries in Europe) in a high state of readiness but essentially remaining in their barracks in a military capacity(excluding civilian/tourism type interactions with local communities) while maintaining a positive relationship with there "host" countries is something totally unique in human history. Occupying armies have almost always been just that occupiers. This has never really been the case in German et all, yes there are occasional flare-ups in places like Okinawa but there is no sense of "occupation".
I think the US made the mistake shortly after Iraq War I that this same type of experience would be how a permanent US military presence in the Middle East would be greeted when instead history reverted back to it's tradition story of occupying armies being unwelcome.
Well, after the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany and its assumption of full sovereignty, the US troops there did not really constitute an occupying force. Even so, as I can attest from personal experience, they were not universally popular. Ditto South Korea, more or less. Still, there is a difference between occupying troops and troops stationed in a country pursuant to a treaty of alliance.
I tend to agree with your point that in Gulf War II, the US overcompensated for its failure to cap victory in Gulf War I by toppling Saddam Hussein. However, that's an explanation, not an excuse, for what has happened there since 2003.
As for "American sensibilities," since they produced poor results they need to be revised in the light of experience.
My biggest problem with Kirchick is in the US he would be best known as an anti-anti-Trumper, that is one that does not explicitly praise Trump and Trumpism but instead criticizes opponents of Trumpism of acting in bad faith.
The strange thing is that I wrote this several years ago, but suddenly it showed up at the top of the feed, as if I'd just written it. I wonder why? Surely owing to some button I pushed--I'm always screwing things up on Substack--but I hope it doesn't keep happening.