Old Europe’s motives in opposing the US in Iraq are opaque, but the Arab countries’ reasons are pretty clear.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the rest of the West stepped up to the plate in the broader context of the war against Islamist terrorists? That’s what Jules Crittenden muses. While complimenting the Canadians on their continuedf fighting in Afghanistan, he says,

But I would still like to know where the Canadians, the French and the Germans in particular were when we needed them in Iraq … if only to get out of the way. In fact, we could use a lot more troops in Iraq right now. More to the point, the Iraqis could use a lot more troops. …

Some people say they don’t want the French there … deer hunting with an accordian. Some people say coordinating a multinational force can create as many problems as it solves. More to the point, most people would say this is all idle and pointless dreaming.

But I’m an optimist and a dreamer. Why not? Tens of thousands of troops flooding in, under NATO leadership, to engage aggressively as we’ve seen them do in Afghanistan. Do these nations care about Iraq? They claim to. Do they care about freedom and stability in the Middle East? They pretend to. So let’s end the hypocrisy. We all know what is needed in Iraq. It isn’t a pullout.

I’m ready to see the free, prosperous nations of the world stand up. Even the French nation, about which I’ve expressed disgust, I am ready to welcome into the fold of purposeful, moral nations such as Australia, Britain, the United States, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Romania, ever-true South Korea and Thailand — with us in Vietnam, as was my ancestral land of Australia — even pacifist Japan. I live for the day when I don’t have to disparage the French. I know the French people are capable of bravery in the face of adversity. Let’s see it. …

But not only the West.

Then, there is the issue of Muslim nations. A lot of noise, a lot of trouble, not a lot of action to any good end. Muslim nations want peace in Iraq? How about cutting off the support to the terrorists from Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. How about, from Morocco to Indonesia, offering up some troops? Do you care about Iraq? Prove it.

In a short email conversation with Jules gthis morning, he wondered why, if the other Muslim nations claim to be so interested in peace in Iraq, they don’t send troops to help the Iraqi government suppress the insurgency.

My answer was basically that it is a mistake to presume that the other Muslim nations, especially the Arab nations, actually want peace in Iraq. Or at least, they don’t necessarily want peace on the Iraqi government’s terms. Why?

1. As I wrote yesterday, they are profiting by exporting their homegrown Islamist jihadis to Iraq, where they are promptly killed by American and Iraqi forces. The Iraqi militias are not necessarily friends of the American forces (though some are) but they are unwelcoming of the Sunni jihadis who have been flocking to Iraq. Especially do the Shia Iraqi militias oppose them.

So for the while, the combat in Iraq serves countries such as Egypt, Algeria, Syria and Saudi Arabia as a safety valve for bleeding off the energy of homegrown Islamist movements and eliminating a great many of homegrown Islamists.

2. There is an enormous fear among most of the Arab world, especially Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, of a “Shia crescent” extending from Iran through Iraq to Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon, thence to Iran-backed Hamas.

The idea of electorally established Shia dominance of Iraq deeply troubles Arab regimes, with or without Shias of their own.

Jordan’s King Abdullah has most publicly declared what others keep to themselves. For him the great peril is Iran, the world’s only (apart from Azerbaijan) Shia-majority state that is also Shia-ruled - and clerically, militantly ruled to boot.

Iran’s “vested interest”, he says, is “to have an Islamic republic of Iraq; if that happened, we’ve opened ourselves to a whole set of new problems that won’t be limited to the borders of Iraq”. He warned of a Shia “crescent” stretching from Iran into Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, destabilising Gulf countries and posing a challenge to the US.

“This is the first time,” said the Lebanese commentator Joseph Samaha, “an Arab official has used such crude, direct and dangerous language to publicly incite against a particular confession and warn that it may turn into a fifth column to be used against the majority.”

3. As well, while it is true that democracy is the mortal enemy of Islamism, it is likewise the ideological enemy of the Arab regimes generally. For the former,

Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin Laden’s closest associates since the early 1990s, was killed by Saudi security forces in Riyadh in 2003. He wrote a book published by al Qaeda entitled, The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad. In it Ayyeri wrote, “It is not the American war machine that should be of the utmost concern to Muslims. What threatens the future of Islam, in fact its very survival, is American democracy.” Islamic absolutism, Ayyeri wrote, cannot exist inside a society where the people think they can pass their own laws and makes their own rules.

Because democracy is “seductive,” as Ayyeri put it, its defeat in Iraq is the first imperative in all the world for al Qaeda. More than 18 months ago, al Qaeda’s head man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (now dead) wrote that Iraqi democracy is “suffocation” for Islamist aims.

For the latter, as Ralph Peters pointed out,

No major Arab state wants to see a functioning democracy emerge in Iraq. They don’t want a free Iraqi media or decent human-rights practices to set an example for the oppressed in their own countries.

Even a marginally successful democracy in Iraq would undermine the decrepit, villainous regimes, from Riyadh to Damascus to Cairo, which have done so much to retard Arab development.

While the motives for Arab regimes in staying away from Iraq, or even covertly working to foil American aims there, can be understood is realpolitik and religious terms, the motives for “Old Euriope” are less clear. Any ideas?