Federal Judiciary

The Decade We Pushed Back -- By: Jim Geraghty

Perhaps we can call Andy Serwer?s Time magazine cover piece declaring the past ten years ?The Decade from Hell? a journalistic perfect storm: a shocking headline, an excuse to rehash familiar criticism of President Bush, a chance to play to readers? self-pity, and a chance to tout the writer?s upcoming book, Starting Over: Why the Last Decade Was So Damn Rotten and Why the Next One Will Surely Be Better.

The reasons for gloom are memorable and obvious: 9/11, the global economic meltdown of late 2008, the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a slew of troubled corners of the globe (Pakistan, Iran, Somalia, North Korea, our border with Mexico and beyond).

There?s probably no dissuading those wedded to the easy, pat summary -- ?the decade was misery, and it?s all Bush?s fault? -- but for those willing to look a little deeper, the past ten years were not a period of unremitting gloom. The decade began, in earnest, with an unimaginably evil act of mass murder, and followed with a sometimes messy but much-needed pushback from the forces of civilization and justice.

It is tempting, but premature, to call these past ten years the ?Decade of Liberation.? By early 2003, U.S. military forces and their allies had made short work of the militaries of a pair of the world?s most brutal regimes, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein?s government in Iraq. The following years taught us, sometimes painfully, that what comes after the fall of a cruel regime is exponentially more complicated and difficult. But the fact remains that when the decade dawned, two separate Muslim peoples faced hellish existences: in one, rape rooms, gassed Kurds, and the sadistic whims of demonic sons; in the other, burqas, bans on anything deemed un-Islamic, and public stonings and executions. Now those peoples control their own destinies, and as chaotic as the current moment may seem, it will be better than what came before.

It was a rough decade for dictators: the hangman?s noose for Saddam Hussein, a TOW missile for Uday and Qusay, a rumored stroke for Kim Jong Il, a fatal heart attack in a Hague cell for Slobodan Milosevic, a hospital ward at last for Fidel Castro. After the Iraq invasion, Libya dismantled its WMD programs. In 2005, Syria?s Bashar Assad felt the need to tell Time?s Joe Klein to ?Please send this message: I am not Saddam Hussein.?

President Bush?s decision to end two tyrannies spurred a drastic reevaluation of the status quo around the globe, most notably symbolized by the Orange, Rose, and Cedar Revolutions. (None of those was mentioned in Time?s cover piece, although it found room for the Minnesota bridge collapse, the end of Circuit City and Tower Records, and ?doping by athletes in baseball, cycling and the Olympics.?)

At the end of 2003, a national election in Georgia appeared rigged to ensure the continued rule of Pres. Eduard Shevardnadze; a bloodless revolution of protests led to the ousting of Shevardnadze and a fair election victory of Mikheil Saakashvili. In late 2004, a similar trigger of fraudulent election returns brought Ukrainians into the streets, where their will and numbers forced a re-vote. Opposition Viktor Yushchenko -- survivor of a suspicious assassination attempt -- won that nation?s presidency in a rebuke to Russian will. The assassination of Lebanese opposition leader Rafik Hariri in 2005 brought tens of thousands of his countrymen into the streets of Beirut, where they eventually forced Syria to remove its troops. Syria?s influence on Lebanon is not gone, only mitigated, but the moment marked one of the largest advances of liberty in that region in decades.

It is easily overlooked, but Kuwaitis staged a successful ?Blue Revolution? in 2005, winning suffrage for Kuwaiti women. Elsewhere, there were unsuccessful ?color revolutions? in places like Belarus and Burma, but the playbook is clear, with recurrences up to this year: When a regime implausibly declares itself the landslide winner of an election, it opens the door for a frustrated citizenry to take to the streets and challenge the rulers: Are they willing to slaughter their own people to keep power?

After the awful ethnic cleansing that marked the Balkan region in the last decade, one could be forgiven for expecting a rerun in this decade. But Kosovo declared independence in 2008, and while Serbia and Russia refuse to recognize it, life in the mountainous region goes on in relative stability. A similar story marks East Timor, a bloody battleground last decade, a relatively stable independent country today.

At the end of 2001, you would have been forgiven for thinking we were entering the Decade of Terrorism. But despite too many bombs and gunshots -- Bali, Madrid, London, Beslan, Mumbai, Istanbul, Amman, and so many in Israel -- al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups have received a lot more punishment than they have dealt since that infamous Tuesday. Very few of the doomsday scenarios that ran through our heads in fall of 2001 have come to pass. In the interim, we?ve learned that the truly terrifying act of that season of fear, the anthrax mailings, were apparently the work of a very troubled American scientist.

By the end of 2004, the U.S. government proclaimed that two-thirds of the most senior al-Qaeda figures from 2001 had been captured and interrogated by the CIA. In Afghanistan, an estimated 24,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda have been killed, and more than 1,000 captured.

Any polling support for al-Qaeda is problematic, but it has been falling steadily; it was a long time coming, but Islamic scholars have finally begun denouncing al-Qaeda as not just morally wrong but harmful to Muslims. The year 2008 brought us the odd news of jihadist clerics? denouncing al-Qaeda and its tactics as too reckless and bloody to be any use to Muslims. The Sunni Awakening in Iraq provided a stirring example of ordinary Muslims? recognizing that for all of the flaws and mistakes of American military forces, they are better allies than is al-Qaeda.

For most Islamists, denunciation was a comparably mild misfortune. Yes, the coming years are looking a little better for Khalid Sheik Mohammad right now, but you can be certain you had a better decade than Abu Zarqawi. Imad Mughniyah, one of the founders of Hezbollah, died by car bomb in February 2008. An Israeli helicopter gunship took out Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, in March 2004. The job of al-Qaeda?s number-three man seemed to be the most death-prone role since that of Spinal Tap?s drummer.

Those with names pronounced ?Libby? had a bad decade, but Scooter Libby?s troubles were nothing compared to the others?: Al Libi translates to ?the Libyan.? Abu Laith al-Libi, one of Osama bin Laden?s top lieutenants, who commanded militant forces in Afghanistan, was killed in February 2008 in a suspected U.S. missile strike; Aby Yahya al Libi is rumored to have been killed in a drone strike this month (although it may have been another al-Qaeda member); Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was captured in November 2001, allegedly tortured, and then repatriated to Libya, where he allegedly committed suicide in prison in May 2009; Abu Faraj al-Libbi was captured in May 2005 and is still in Guantanamo Bay.

This was a decade in which non-Islamist terror groups bit off more than they could chew, too. To many Americans, ?Tamil Tigers? sounds like an obscure soccer team, but they were one of the world?s most notorious terror groups: They controlled the island nation?s northern tip, invented the suicide belt and pioneered the use of suicide bombing as a tactic, recruited child soldiers, and were responsible for massacres, ethnic cleansing, and high-profile assassinations. A new offensive by the Sri Lankan army finally and completely defeated the group this year; on May 17, 2009, the group?s spokesman conceded, ?This battle has reached its bitter end.?

In Colombia, FARC had a rough decade. Álvaro Uribe came into office as Colombia?s president in 2002 determined to smash the organization, and succeeded in steadily beating back the guerillas. In 2008, two members of its seven-man secretariat were murdered within one week, and a few months later, a small group of the Colombian military intelligence officials in disguise successfully fooled a FARC group into giving them former presidential candidate Íngrid Betancourt, three U.S. military contractors, and eleven other hostages, with the whole operation recorded on video. The country?s vice president declared later that year that while the remaining groups of FARC would be difficult to locate and capture in the jungle, the organization had been reduced to a ?minimal threat to Colombian security.?

Three Somali pirates learned that yes, the Navy SEALs can shoot you in the head from 40 yards away when you?re standing next to a hostage on a small boat on choppy seas.

And perhaps these acts -- missiles from the skies, elaborate ruses to free the innocent, and precisely aimed bullets from afar -- is the way this decade ought to be remembered. The world has always had dictatorships, tyrannies, and bloodthirsty radicals. They may pale next to the struggles of World War II and the fall of the Soviet Union, but the years since 9/11 represented insistent if not consistent global pushback against the world?s most ruthless and dangerous men.

Even where the brutes have triumphed, their victories have at best been incomplete and at worst cost them dearly. The true nature of the Iranian regime was revealed in the blood of the protester Neda, which instantly dismissed talk of the regime as sophisticated or ?an incomplete democracy? as hopelessly naïve. China may be booming, but few free minds want to live under its Communist rulers. No American president will ever murmur sweet nothings about Vladimir Putin?s soul again.

Freedom House offers a mixed review of the decade, or at least the Bush years: ?For the period between 2000, the year prior to Bush?s first term, and 2008, his final year in office, the record shows modest change in terms of overall status, with three more countries ranked as Free and six fewer countries designated as Not Free. The number of electoral democracies for 2008, 119, is actually one fewer than for 2000. At the same time, an assessment based on the numerical scale employed by Freedom in the World -- a subtler indicator than the Free, Partly Free, and Not Free designations -- suggests a more positive record during the Bush years. A total of 81 countries, over 40 percent of the world total, registered overall numerical improvements between 2000 and 2008, with 36 moving backward during the period.?

That last point is illustrated by Freedom House?s choice to rank Afghanistan ?not free? in 2009: This is a justifiable assessment, but one that obscures the fact that obstacles to Afghan freedom are different, and arguably lighter, today than ten years ago. Iraq was ranked ?not free? as well, although the group praised ?improvement in the security situation and the Sunni community?s increased participation in the political process.?

Those who believe that all good winds blow from the left would have you believe that the globe itself reacted to Bush?s election at the decade?s dawn by vomiting forth a cavalcade of chaos -- terrorism, religious extremism, chaotic failed states, financial panic, and anti-American rage. This interpretation helpfully sets the stage for the rise of a messiah-like embodiment of hope and change to usher in a new age.

But that myth aims to hide the past years? nobility and courage; rarely have so many pursued and punished the wicked on such a wide scale. It wasn?t a ?Decade From Hell,? but a lot of evil men arrived there over the past ten years.

-- Jim Geraghty writes the Campaign Spot on NRO.

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on December 30, 2009 (boomark / email).