It is reasonable to assume that Iran is at some stage in the development of nuclear weapons. Once they are built, however, the Iranians are believed to have several types of missiles already built that can carry them to their intended targets. (See range maps on bottom of page.)
This gives rise to several questions. The first of these being, will Iran immediately use its nuclear weapons as soon as they are built? Unfortunately, the harsh rhetoric and unpredictable if scheming behavior of their government gives no clear answer. It is even unclear who would have the authority among them to make such decisions, to use such weapons.
Not being able to answer this fundamental question requires the rest of the world potentially affected by such use to prepare strong countermeasures, even to considering proactive efforts to prevent development in the first place.
A proactive approach, namely what amounts to aggressive war carried out by the US and possibly Israel, would be an extraordinarily difficult achievement, and would have to be done in an exceedingly hostile international environment. Both nations would much prefer some alternative means. I will add that first use of nuclear weapons to prevent the development of nuclear weapons would not be considered a viable option.
An alternative would be the creation of a multi-layered defense, designed to detect pre-launch and launch efforts, which would then be met with an "overkill" anti-missile effort to insure that such a weapon could never find its target. The last layer of such a defense being an airburst nuclear munition, raising kill probability to over 99%.
Such a first use, and subsequent defense would be presented to the nuclear powers, stripping Iran of any international support through any number of war treaties. A war to supress Iranian nuclear ambitions would be far easier in such circumstances.
And to postulate such an eventuality, and to receive assurances before the fact, would be wise foreign policy.
That is, the US presenting the other nuclear powers with the scenario, "If Iran launches an aggressive nuclear war by firing a missile, and the US documents its shoot-down, presenting such evidence to you, will you pledge full support to the de-nuclearization of Iran?"
Given the strong anti-first use policies of the nuclear powers, I would suspect they would readily agree to such a sanction.
The next question would then be, what if the Iranians build such weapons, then either just announce that they have them, or perform a nuclear test to prove it? To admit the fact would be to invite economic sanctions against Iran, and could be the deciding factor to attack them militarily sooner rather than later.
This then begs the next question, if the Iranians build such weapons, but do not intent to use them immediately, then what do they hope to achieve with them?
Much like pre-WWII Japan, Iran wants "its place in the sun", dominating its region militarily, economically and religiously.
Its stated ambitions are seemingly not territorial, that is, they do not wish to carve out sections of other countries to annex to their own. However, they would like to have military hegemony in the region, which right now is only challenged by the US and Israel; and economic hegemony, controlling or dominating the oil of the Middle East.
This economic hegemony is intertwined with their desires for Shia religious dominance. That is, a Shia caliphate including all of the Shia peoples, from Afghanistan to Palestine. This would also include the Shia of Arabia and Iraq, thus cementing their control of Middle East oil.
Lastly, through this military, economic and religious hegemony, their "place in the sun" would be assured as a world, not just as a regional power.
The final question would strictly be tactical, how would the US and possibly Israel, reduce the Iranian military and Iran's nuclear weapons and missile capability? Ironically, it would seem that the variation from Gulf War I would be less tactically, then technologically.
First of all, unlike GWI, the US would be intensely devoted to stopping *any* missile launches from Iran, for the obvious reason. Not just of the nuclear capable missiles, but even of the ubiquitous SCUDs that dot the landscape, but are able to carry other types of WMDs.
Achieving air superiority and supression of both ADA and CCC would be similar to GWI, excepting that it would be considerably more advanced and dangerous, much of it state of the art technology provided by Russia specifically to protect their nuclear targets.
Unconventional war would also work both ways, the US attempting to incite civil unrest in at least three ethnic minority provinces (Kurd, Arab and Baluch). This could well lead to the partitioning of Iran, re-drawing the map of the Middle East.
Experts have concluded that air power alone would not be sufficient to guarantee de-nuclearization, leaving the options of the use of significant ground assets, or the use of space based weapons that could annihilate hardened targets. Both of these have their advantages and disadvantages.
Ground forces would be under great restriction from concentrating, less they make a good target for a ground nuclear weapon. Even remaining in Iraq, they would have to be spread out for their own protection, the shorter distance making a missile shoot-down more problematic. They would also need considerable reinforcement of heavy weapons, such as tanks and artillery. Last, production of replacement weaponry back in the US still lags, and shortages of critical equipment could impact ground forces.
Space based weapons are still mostly on the drawing board, though how quickly they could be built and deployed is indeterminate. Their other drawback is that they are very powerful weapons, perhaps weapons that should be reserved for the future instead of used against Iran.
#1
"Layered defense": Now why else is FOXNEWS focusing on "Missing Blonde" stories ala ARUBA - ARUBA is on the other side of CHAVEZ and Venezuela, with the "Chavez Line" weirdly and mysteriously going thru CUBA-HAITI, espec Cuba - A-A-T-T-T-A-A-A-C-C-K-K-K NOWWWWWW. INVADE NOW, SAVE THE BEACH BABES - BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHA..............!
A non-idiotarian view from an assumed left, may still irritate, but refreshing.
Christopher Hitchens is one of America's and the English speaking world's leading public intellectuals. He is the author of more than ten books, including, most recently, A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq (2003), Why Orwell Matters (2002), The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001), and Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001). He writes for leading American and British publications, including The London Review of Books, The New Left Review, Slate, The New York Review of Books, Newsweek International, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Washington Post. He is also a regular television and radio commentator.
For many years, Hitchens was seen as one of America's leading leftist commentators. Shortly after the September 11 attacks in the United States, he began publicly criticizing fellow leftist intellectuals for what he viewed as their "moral and political collapse" in their failure to stand up to what he saw as "Islamo-fascism". He publicly feuded with many of America's leading leftist intellectuals about the war in Iraq, which he supported, much to their anger. He subsequently resigned from his position as a columnist for the Nation, America's leading leftist magazine, in protest.
Born in England, Hitchens has lived in the United States for more than twenty years. He is one of America's most recognizable intellectuals and has taught as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Pittsburgh; and the New School of Social Research. He spoke with Washington Prism at his home in Washington D.C.
Q - Your much-discussed separation from the American left began shortly after the September 11 attacks. What prompted your displeasure with the left?
A - The September 11 attacks were one of those rare historical moments, like 1933 in Germany or 1936 in Spain or 1968, when you are put in a position to take a strong stand for what is right. The left failed this test. Instead of strongly standing against these nihilistic murderers, people on the left, such as Noam Chomsky, began to make excuses for these murderers, openly saying that Bin ladin was, however crude in his methods, in some ways voicing a liberation theology. This is simply a moral and political collapse.
But its not only that. Itâs a missed opportunity for the left. Think of it this way: If a group of theocratic nihilists drive planes full of human beings into buildings full of human beings announcing nothing by way of a program except their nihilism and if they turn out to have been sheltered by two regimes favored by the United States and the national security establishment, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to be precise, two of only three countries to recognize the Taliban, and if Republicans were totally taken by surprise by this and if the working class of New York had to step forward and become the shield of society in the person of the fire and police brigades, it seemed to me that this would have been a good opportunity for the left to demand a general revision of all the assumptions we carried about the post cold war world. We were attacked by a religious dictatorship and the working class were pushed into defending elites by the total failure of our leadership and total failure of our intelligence. The attack emanated partly from the failure of regimes supported by that same elite national security establishmentâ Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. If the left canât take advantage of a moment like that: whats it for? whats its secularism for? Whats its internationalism, class attitude, democracy for?
You donât get that many measurable historical moments in your life, but you must recognize them when they come. This was one of those moments and the left collectively decided to get it wrong and I realized at that moment that, to borrow a slogan that slightly irritates me, but is useful: "Not in my name.â I'm not part of that family. I wanted to force a split, a political split on the left to which a small extent I think succeeded. Today, there is a small pro-regime change left and I'm a proud part of it.
Q - It seems that the left had less difficulty accepting the war in Afghanistan as they did the war in Iraq.
That is true, but of the hard core left it isnât true. They also opposed the removal of the Taliban. When it came to using force, the least they did was predict a quagmire. By the way, there weren't alone. The New York Times did so too. They said at minimum we would witness another Vietnam, which is a pretty serious charge to make as someone who believes that then and now the Vietnam war was a war of aggression and atrocity and racism. When someone says something is another Vietnam, they better be serious because thatâs a serious charge.
But lets look at the case of Iraq and the left. If you asked someone who has the principles of a 1968 leftist the following question: what is your attitude to a regime that has committed genocide, invaded its neighbors, militarized its society into a police state, that has privatized its economy so it is owned by one family, that has defied the non proliferation treaty in many ways, that sought weapons to commit genocide again and cheated on inspections, that has abolished the existence of a neighboring arab muslim state? What is your view of this as anyone who is a 1968 leftist? For me, I would be appalled if anyone knew me even slightly would not guess my attitude. Iraq should have been taken care of a long time ago. Instead, when I made my view public, I was berated by the left and my view was seen as an insane eccentricity.
I should also note that I have friends and comrades in the Iraqi and Kurdish left going back at least till the early 1990s. For me, supporting the war was an elementary duty of solidarity. I said: I'm on your side and Iâll stay there until youâre in and theyâre out.
Q - If there was a Democratic president on 9/11, would there have been a difference of opinion in the American left about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Not from people like Michael Moore (the American film director and strong critic of President Bush), who makes a perfectly good brownshirt [fascist]. Or Noam Chomsky. No, it would not. To them it would have been further proof that the ruling class just has two faces and one party. But I think, in the mainstream of the democratic and Republican parties, you would have seen an exact switch. Richard Holbrookeâs position (Holbrooke was Clinton's UN Ambassador and is a leading Democratic foreign policy thinker) would be Dick Cheneyâs position. The ones in the middle would have just done a switch, finding arguments to support or criticize the war. In fact, I remember that people in the Clinton administration spoke of an inevitable confrontation coming with Saddam. They dropped this idea only because it was a Republican president. That is simply disgraceful. It is likewise disgraceful how many Republicans ran as isolationists against [former Vice-President] Al Gore in the 2000 elections. The only people who come out of this whole affair well are an odd fusion of the old left â the small pro regime change left â and some of the people known as neoconservatives who have a commitment to liberal democracy. Many of the neocons have Marxist backgrounds and believe in ideas and principles and have worked with both parties in power.
Q â In your book, Why Orwell Matters, you noted that Orwell once refused an invitation to speak at the League of European Freedom on the question of Yugoslavian freedom â a cause he believed in. He refused to speak because he felt that the organization failed to condemn British imperialism in India and Burma. He saw that as a fatal flaw. Do the neoconservatives have a fatal flaw: on the one hand supporting Middle East democracy, on the other refusing to condemn Israeli policies that stifle Palestinian freedom aspirations?
A â Orwell said, at the time, that he would not speak for any organization that was opposed to tyranny that did not demand British withdrawal from India and Burma. He also noted that the liberation of Europe did not include the liberation of Spain from the fascists or Portugal. He also noted that it had included the enslavement of Poland.
In the case of the Palestinians, it is generally true that United States political culture doesnât care about the Palestinians. We are taught to think of them as an inconvenient people who are in the way of Israel and a regional settlement. They are people about whom something should be done or, more condescendingly, for whom something should be provided.
I've spent three decades writing about the Palestinians and publishing a book with Edward Said [leading Palestinian intellectual and critic of Israel] about it. All political factions in this country have been lousy on this issue, but none lousier than the Democratic party. The Democrat party truly is what some people crudely say: a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Israeli lobby. It is one thing it has never deviated on: that and abortion. The only two things the Democrats have never flip flopped about.
The neocons are honorably divided on Israel. Take Paul Wolfowitz, for example. He is very critical of settlements and the whole idea of Greater Israel. Whereas Richard Perle (a prominent neoconservative thinker) doesnât regard the areas known as Judea and Samaria (the West bank) as occupied territory. He regards them as part of a future Israeli state. I'm looking forward to the neoconservative split on this getting wider.
Q - Some have said that only columnists and public intellectuals can afford principles, whereas politicians sometimes must succumb to realism. In your book, Why Orwell Matters, you admired Orwell because you said that he understood that that politics are fleeting but principles endure. In our day, can a politician rule by principle?
A - It depends on what the principle is. If the principle is that all men are equal or created equal, I donât think its possible to observe that principle in practice. But if the principle is, say, something cruder such as: can we coexist with aggressive internationalist totalitarian ideologies, then I think you not only can but you should act consistently against that. Never mind the principles for one minute, but the lesson of realism is: that if you donât fight them now you fight them later.
They [Islamist radicals or, as Hitchens calls them, Islamo-fascists] gave us no peace and we shouldnât give them any. We can't live on the same planet as them and I'm glad because I donât want to. I donât want to breathe the same air as these psychopaths and murders and rapists and torturers and child abusers. Its them or me. I'm very happy about this because I know it will be them. Itâs a duty and a responsibility to defeat them. But it's also a pleasure. I donât regard it as a grim task at all.
#1
gag - it was all I could do to get past the puff. Sure, some pretty words - but he's far from a leading public intellectual..
witness: All political factions in this country have been lousy on this issue, but none lousier than the Democratic party. The Democrat party truly is what some people crudely say: a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Israeli lobby.
The neocons are honorably divided on Israel... blah, blah.. I'm looking forward to the neoconservative split on this getting wider.
#2
He falls down on the colonialist bit. We are all colonialists. Its just a matter of how far back you go. But he is solid on Islamo-facists and the Left's moral and intellectual incoherence on the subject.
It's not really opinion, but it's not news, either. I was fooling around on google today and I came across this tidbit. Does anyone know what the original source was for this story? Can anyone confirm this is the same house the FBI recovered the explosives from earlier this year? Between that and this (link) I'm thinking that the Feds knew it was there the whole time.
The FBI made mortgage payments on Terry Nichols' home after he was arrested and before he was convicted of conspiring to bomb the Oklahoma City federal building, according to new court documents. A Justice Department spokeswoman said Tuesday she did not know why the government made the payments nor the amount. The small, frame house is in Herington, Kansas, where Nichols was living with his wife and their two children when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed April 19, 1995. The mortgage payments were disclosed by Nichols' lawyers in a court filing Monday, part of Nichols' arguments that he does not have sufficient assets to pay a fine or restitution.
#1
I assume the gov. made the mortgage payments to preserve evidence. Otherwise the house would have been foreclosed and sold off.
It was the same house that the explosives were found. It was stored in a crawl space and it was a tip-off that caused the feds to search the house again. I am surprised the feds didn't use (my assumption) an explosives sniffer diring the first search.
Posted by: ed ||
08/13/2005 23:25 Comments ||
Top||
Thereâs an abandoned town in Labrador called Davis Inlet. An Innu community â i.e., natives, of the Mushuau people, if youâre big on whoâs who in the Great White North. About a decade ago Canadians switched on their televisions and were confronted by âshockingâ images of the townâs populace passing the day snorting drugs, glue, petrol and pretty much anything else to hand.
So, as any impeccably progressive soft-lefties would, Her Majestyâs Government in Ottawa decided to build the Mushuau a new town a few miles inland â state of the art, money no object, new homes, new heating systems, new schoolhouse, new computers, plus new more culturally respectful town name (Natuashish). Total cost to Canadian taxpayers: $152 million, which works out to about $217,142.85 for each of the townâs men, women and children. Got a wife and two kids and youâre looking at a government handout of about nine hundred thousand bucks.
And the upshot of Canadian taxpayersâ generosity? Two years after the new town opened, the former Mushuau chief and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police both agreed that there were more drugs, alcoholism, gas-sniffing etc., than ever before. Also higher suicide rates.
Gas-sniffing is not a traditional native activity. Before the first European settlers came, the Mushuau did not roam the tundra hunting for Toyota Corollas to siphon the tanks of. Thatâs a particularly perverse form of cultural co-mingling, but one in which âcompassionateâ white liberals seem determined to keep the natives mired. The government showers native communities with money; thereâs no economic downside to sniffing petrol all day; and as everyone in Natuashish is driving around in brand-new pick-ups on roads that go nowhere you might as well use that full tank of gas for something. The net result of 40 years of a âcaringâ policy intended to maintain communities in their traditional âcultureâ is that Canadian natives now have tuberculosis, diabetes, heart disease and brain damage at levels accelerating further and further away from those in society at large, not to mention lower life-expectancy, higher infant mortality, and endemic suicide. On the last point, the Canadian government doesnât give natives the rope with which they hang themselves, but they do give them free supplies of ammunition. (Natives have higher murder rates, too.) Identity-group grievance-mongers routinely go on about the first Europeans introducing disease to hitherto vigorous North American Indians four centuries ago, but the current health crises afflicting literally dying communities are of less concern. Nonetheless, the math seems unarguable: too many agonised white liberal multicultural chiefs leads to not enough Indians.
Canadian natives, as the most comprehensively wrecked minority on the continent, are a microcosm of everything thatâs wrong with multiculturalism. The premise of multiculturalism is that all cultures are equally âvalidâ, but of course thatâs bunk: some cultures are better, some are worse, some are successes, some are failures. Iâm not being âEurocentricâ here. Perish the thought: an awful lot of European cultures have proved hopeless at sustaining over any length of time representative government, property rights, the rule of law and individual liberty. Those are largely features of the Britannic world â not just of the United Kingdom, America, Australia and New Zealand but also of India, Singapore, St Lucia, as well as Quebec and Mauritius, to name but two francophone jurisdictions all the more agreeable for having spent their formative years under the British Crown.
Thatâs one reason why Iâm a Eurosceptic â because I donât think the British have anything to learn from the Belgians or Germans; on the other hand, the Belgians and Germans have quite a lot to learn from Belize and Barbados. The debate led by the editor of this magazine and others over this last month about promoting âBritishnessâ is perplexing to an offshore observer, if only because the superiority of the Britannic inheritance should be self-evident. Even in the dodgier parts of the globe, a good rule of thumb is head for the joint that was under British rule the longest: try doing business in Malaysia and then in Indonesia and youâll see what I mean. The fact is that the further you remove people from the Britannic inheritance, the greater disservice you do them â the unfortunate Innu of Davis Inlet, excluded from the normal currents of advanced society (home ownership, economic activity, etc.) are merely a particularly grim example of this general truth.
In the Telegraph the other week, Boris Johnson mentioned Mary Seacole, a 19th-century black nurse from Jamaica who was in her day as famous as Florence Nightingale. And, reading of her, I was reminded for the umpteenth time of why the British, of all people, should never have fallen for the neo-apartheid of multiculturalism. âBritishâ was the prototype multiethnic nationality: if you were a doctor from Kingston-on-Thames or a nurse from Kingston, Jamaica, or an assistant choreographer from Kingston, Ontario, you were British â and, unlike the Germans, race didnât come into it. âThe British,â wrote Colin Powell of his Jamaican background, âtold my ancestors that they were now British citizens with all the rights of any subject of the Crown.â Thatâs correct: in law, there was no distinction between a British subject in Wales and a British subject in Tobago. Britishness was far more of a genuinely multicultural identity than the yawning we-are-the-world nullity of modern multiculturalism. Iâm still a wee young thing but my earliest passports bore in bold print on page three the words âA Canadian citizen is a British subject.â It requires a perverse ahistorical fanaticism to decide that Britishness is some shrivelled Little-Englander thing that should never be passed on to our children. Itâs always been the great outward, global, embracing identity.
Conversely, I donât see why we should pretend that self-evidently deficient cultures are our moral equal. In so far as I understand the Arabist mindset of the FCO, it would seem to be something to do with the old Lawrence-of-Arabia routine, dressing up in robes and singing âThe Desert Song calling/ Its voice enthralling/ Will make you mine...â. Iâm sympathetic to the romance of the noble Bedouin riding his Arab on the moonlit sands, just as, apropos the Innu, I can see the attraction of seal and bear hunting. But both cultures seem to have a difficulty accommodating contemporary life. Even in corners of the Arab world that have the veneer of modernity, people say nutty stuff to you all the time. Not misfit weirdsmobiles in loser jobs, but fellows at the very heart of the community. To pluck at random, take Abd Al-Sabour Shahin, respected Egyptian professor, lecturer at Cairo University and head of the Sharia faculty at Al-Azhar university, the Harvard of Sunni Islam. On Monday on Saudi Channel One, Dr Shahin told viewers:
âOur enemies weave many lies about us, which we are not necessarily aware of. For example: one day, we awoke to the crime of 9/11, which hit the tallest buildings in New York, the Empire State Building. There is no doubt that not a single Arab or Muslim had anything to do with these events. The incident was fabricated as a pretext to attack Islam and Muslims.â
Er, OK. So if no Muslim hit the, um, Empire State Building, who did? On that, Dr Shahin was in no doubt: âI believe a dirty Zionist hand carried out this act.â
Dr Shahin is the product of a deformed culture. In the days after 9/11, we heard innumerable reprises of the lazy leftist trope âpoverty breeds terrorismâ. But the Arab world is wealthy. It suffers, as David Pryce-Jones has said, from intellectual poverty. And, whether or not Boris and co. need to talk up Britishness, weâd be doing ourselves and them a great favour if we were to make a concerted effort to talk down Muslim nuttiness. With hindsight, the problem with the Salman Rushdie affair â the prototype example of the Islamists claiming global jurisdiction for their psychoses â was that the resistance was left to a bunch of largely humourless self-important literati who made it all into a dreary business about the âneedâ for âtransgressiveâ âartistsâ to âchallengeâ ...zzzzzzz ...losing will to type.... Instead we should have resisted with a gleeful mocking campaign against Islamoparanoia. Every day of the week you can find some bonkers story from the Muslim world. Hereâs the Sunday Age in Melbourne reporting on 31 July on Werribee Islamic College:
âThe imam told the students that the Jews were putting poison in the bananas and they should not eat them.â
You donât have to be bananas to teach in an Islamic school but it helps. Thatâs a college, by the way, that receives funds from Australian taxpayers of about $3 million a year. For three million bucks they canât hire a catering guy who can find them Jew-free bananas?
Even their terrorism is mostly laughable. The shoebomber gets his bomb on the plane but has only a damp book of matches. The 21 July bombers are all hot for their 72 virgins but their bombs refuse to perform, like a bunch of dud fireworks. One Palestinian suicide bomber is intercepted en route by another Palestinian who tries to steal his suicide bomb and they both get blown up before theyâve got near any Jews.
The only thing these guys have going for them is our undervaluation of ourselves and perverse boosting up of them. By pretending that all cultures are equal, multiculturalism doesnât âpreserveâ traditional cultures so much as sustain them in an artificial state that ensures theyâll develop bizarre pathologies and mutate into some freakish hybrid of the worst of both worlds. With the Innu, the destructive âcompassionâ of guilt-ridden white liberals is no big deal â at least for us. The Innu live a long way away from anybody else and so for the most part they mostly harm each other.
But the Islamists are much closer to home. Like the Innu, theyâre a dysfunctional amalgam of traditional and Western culture, fundamentalist Islam filtered through an old-school European fascist movement. Like the Innu, theyâre hooked on welfare and the glorification of self-destruction. Like the Innu, theyâre the creations of Western largesse â from the firebrand imams bilking the British welfare state, to the bananaphobic imams of taxpayer-funded Aussie schools, to Osama bin Laden himself, who took his paâs dough from the US-fuelled Saudi construction boom and sunk it into a hole in the ground in Tora Bora. Remember Mohammed Atta? He piloted the jet that hit the first World Trade Center tower â or, for any Saudi TV viewers reading this, the first Empire State Building tower â and his main concern seemed to be that his corpse would make it to paradise without being contaminated by infidels and whores. As he wrote in the will he left behind, âHe who washes my body around my genitals should wear gloves so that I am not touched there.â
Young Mohammed graduated from Cairo university with a degree in architectural engineering and later studied at Hamburg university. One had assumed his wealthy parents didnât put junior through architectural engineering in order to pull off one spectacular demolition job. But his dad, also called Mohammed, recently popped up on CNN to praise the 9/11 attacks and the 7 July bombings and tell the network that if it wanted another interview it would cost $5,000 which heâd donate towards financing the next attack in London. Heâs a lawyer, his son was an engineer and qualified pilot (well, except for the landing and take-off part, which he told his flight school he didnât need to learn). But theyâre kookier than the most in-bred backwoods up-country yakherd.
Yet somehow weâve wound up in a situation where it requires a hugely agonised public debate â even in the Telegraph â about whether we should state the obvious and historically indisputable truth about British culture, while simultaneously we all agree to dissemble like crazy about Muslim culture, handling it with the kid gloves Mohammed Atta wanted reserved for his genitals. This is a disastrous strategy. One lesson of Dr Shahinâs drivel is that a culture in which it is difficult if not impossible to tell the truth eventually goes nuts. It would be a most unBritish ending.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/13/2005 13:08 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Awesome Steyn grab, Steve.
I'll say it: Arab culture sucks, and we should denounce and ridicule their pipsqueak fatwas and pronouncements at the loudest voice possible.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/13/2005 15:57 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Frank - luv ya, man. But hear me now and believe me later. In publicity, it's all about focus and there is no such thing as negative publicity focus
When you denouce in the loudest possible voice that your date does not have a big butt - everyone in the room will turn around and wonder if your date's butt is too big.
If someone says your date has a big butt and you tell him he's got a small you-know-what - it's now his you-know-what that is suddenly on trial.
#3
If I say , lets say for ..uh..discussion's sake only...that my ex-wife is a RAVING lunatic, and all pronouncements coming from her mouth are likely to be lies, or true only in her little universe, then I'm doing my best at defending myself in the battle of ideas. To say Mogadishu culture is as valid and civilized as our own is an out-and-out lie, something that hasn't yet been brought back to bear in Academia and the MSM. There is such a thing as too much negative PR - ask the Saudis...they just figured it out
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/13/2005 16:21 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Ok. But if your wife has to defend in the loudest possible voice that she is not a lunatic, then I have to wonder if she is sane.
#5
wait - that didn't come out right. When I say that I wonder if she is sane, I mean her sanity is up for debate. Before, she was just a wife. Now she is a wife with her sanity in question.
If you walk into a room and say, "my wife is not insane", we will immediately question your wife's sanity.
#6
ex - and that was a facetious example. I simply meant that in the battle of civilizations, words and ideas matter, and to say that all are equal is false. We shouldn't allow for the "Arab" or "African" seats on the Security Council for the same reason. Either you have a stabilized society that feeds all who are willing to work, or you're Zim-Bob-We. ....that's a judgement I'm willing to make
BTW - her psychiatrist says she's making progress. Since we've been divorced 14 + yrs, I would expect that I am no longer a possible suspect :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/13/2005 16:36 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Well, ok, but I'm still wondering if your wife is sane. The damage is done.
#10
A number of years ago a wealthy white infiltrated the KKK -- essentially a terrorist organization -- to learn its culture in order to figure out how to best dismantle it. He gave its secret codes, pass words, etc. to a friend who developed television cartoons, and pretty soon, Superman was chasing and destroying the KKK on Saturday's kids cartoons. That one act (resulting in making KKK members look ridiculous and bad to their children) apparently caused KKK membership to rapidly shrivel and contributed to its eventual demise.
#11
but that's my point! Your wife's (or ex's) sanity is now the question. You put it in focus. It never occured to me before. Heck ..I never even though about you being single, married or divorced. The more you tell me she's sane, the more I have to wonder if she is crazy.
#12
Ok..I'm sorry Frank. I'm being over zealous in my point. I know if you have a wife - she's probably really nice. Sometimes I go overboad to make a point. Please forgive.
#17
what's left that's British in Rhodesia ZimBobwe? The removal of all that's british has left a nasty brutish starving society, begging for help from outside without willingness to reform. Your point is?
Oh yeah, you forgot, didn't you? Glenmore
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/13/2005 17:48 Comments ||
Top||
#18
Instead we should have resisted with a gleeful mocking campaign against Islamoparanoia
I know we're late to the party, but isn't that what we're doing now?
At least at Rantburg, LGF, etc.?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/13/2005 17:48 Comments ||
Top||
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/13/2005 15:35 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
I find the data fairly convincing that global warming is currently occurring, and at a rather rapid rate. Warming has been going on, at greater or lesser rates, since the end of the last Ice Age.
I find the premise that increased atmospheric CO2 should enhance global warming rather convincing. And it is certain than mankind is increasing atmospheric CO2. If that was all that was going on, then we're 'guilty, as charged.'
Methane is, I believe, an even more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Mankind is busily extracting it from the ground before it can leak into the atmosphere, and converting it to CO2. What effect does that have?
Increased temperature and CO2 seem to remarkably enhance plant growth. What effect does that have?
How does oceanic CO2 concentration change in response to temperature and atmospheric concentration, and how does that concentration affect carbonate-fixing activities within the oceans? And how do changes in oceanic plant levels affect oceanic temperatures, or animal concentrations? And how do human fishing activities tie in? Etc.
Improved pollution control reduces atmospheric particulates ('shade'). What effect does that have?
Global climate is complex. It warrants great study. Reduced CO2 emissions make good sense on a number of levels - climate effect (whatever it is), energy conservation, 'unknown' effect.
The Kyoto treaty does not make sense. It is an economic redistribution scheme disguised as an environmental protection scheme. Bush's recent proposal would be substantially more effective from strictly a climate perspective. But it is 'sacrilage.'
#2
Glenmore: as your notes follow - nobody really knows how it works, and our contributions may/may not/have neglible effects/increase warming, especially in respect to global changes outside man's effects (cyclical). We shpould avoid Kyoto as a document written for western elites' guilt and to strap down our eceonomy. EU wishes....
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/13/2005 18:05 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Glenmore,
1. at the climatic optimum (about 8500-6500 BCE), the temperateures averaged about 3.5 deg C higher than today. Whole freaking 2k years. Due to the fact that estimated number of humans at the time was just a few millions, it is unlikely that they had any effect on the climate.
2. Granted, we count about 6 billion at the present time, but our output is still rather negligible compared what nature can produce. For instance, the last eruption and volcanic activity that followed of Mt. Etna produced during 2 months as much of particular and gaseous pollution as the whole mankind during previous 15 years. That was just Mt. Etna.
3. CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. It is climatically neutral. You've mentioned its function as plant food--it gets recycled all the time and there seems to be a substantial margin for excess or lack of the gas.
4. The amazing fact is that the rise in temperature has been noticed in oceans, from bottom up, but there is actually a measurable decrease of average temperature in athmosphere.
Del Valle is a solid expert on islamism but is pretty controversial, and he is (was?) a quasi-eurasian self-styled geopolitician, having notably one of his earlier book about the use of islam as a proxy by the United States against Russia and Europe. He now has at least publicly changed his view on that matter, and is attacked by the left for his rightwing background, and by the right for now being too "pro" USA (while he used to be a vocal opponent of the US Grand Strategy) and an Israel supporter. Some articles in english :
http://www.alexandredelvalle.com/publications.php?rub=etrangers&rub2=48
"The Western world should not be surprised by the ferocity of the attacks that are hitting the four corners of our planet: World War Three is well underway and for the moment the fundamentalists are winning" argues Alexandre Del Valle, a well-known French writer and expert on radical Islam. In an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI) Del Valle commented the recent terrorist attacks in Sharm el-Sheikh and London and said the West must rethink its approach and recognise the enemy.
"The third world war has started and, despite those who think it started on September 11th, it actually began well before that, after the first military operation in Iraq in 1990" said Del Valle. As the expert argued in his controversial book "Islamic totalitarianism's assault on democracies" (2002), the enemy is a reactionary anti-colonial Islam, in favour of the third world. This Islam wants to kill the "bad Muslims", who betray the original Islamic message, and its major goal is to conquer the West and islamise it.
"It's a real and serious war," emphasises Del Valle, "a war between civilisations fought on two levels."
The first level is within Islam, a clash between reactionary Muslims backed by rich Islamic states - such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and Pakistan - and moderate Muslims, considered apostates - a wide category which also includes the Egyptian and Tunisian Presidents Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali.
The second level of this global conflict touches us much more closely, points out Del Valle: It is the attempt to islamise the Western world, a precise project that includes terrorist attacks "to advertise the radical ideology" as much as killing people.
"In order to move forward and conquer the West, the terrorists use our own values of freedom, democracy and equality" explains Del Valle. He underlines how for the moment the winners of this war - fought without armies but with high stakes - are the extremists.
"We saw it in Spain, with the withdrawal of the troops from Iraq right after the bombs in Madrid. And we can see right now even in the Middle East or in Iraq where the West is afraid and is more open to a dialogue with Hamas and the guerrilla groups," said Del Valle this attitude is a big mistake."
"The fundamentalists use our values against us and we pretend it isn't happening" he said. Even in Europe, says the expert, "we listen to people, associations and radical groups that are actually our enemy."
"Something has to change. We have to understand that this is the third world war and they are winning."
#1
Because this war doesn't involve massed armies and fleets of warships or aircraft most people simply can't make the mental leap to the fact that this is a World War. And if you want a start date November 1979 is as good as any. The goal of one side is nothing less than Global Hegomony while for the West it is nothing less than survival
#2
If 1979 is indeed the date, it is incumbent upon George Bush to apologize immediately on behalf of the American people. It was the height of arrogance to send those helicopters into Iranian territory without their permission. Never should America have given to its lust for power to satisfy a primitive urge for retribution.
Posted by: James E. Carter ||
08/13/2005 13:06 Comments ||
Top||
#3
yeah right, Jimmuh. We also never thanked them for feeding and well-treating our "tourists" who carelessly left our embassy unsecured....
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/13/2005 13:21 Comments ||
Top||
#4
1968 - a pal kills a pres candidate.
in between hijackings and an attempt to take over Jordan.
1974 - an oil war against the US pubic
WHEN MUSLIM extremists murder innocents in cold blood, there is often a politically correct reluctance to call the killers terrorists, or to denounce them unequivocally. But there was no such reluctance last week when an Israeli Jew, Eden Natan Zada, opened fire inside the bus he was riding through the Arab town of Shfaram in northern Israel. Zada, 19, was active in the outlawed extremist Kach movement, and had deserted his army unit to protest Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. His rampage left four Arabs dead -- Michel Bahus, 56; Nader Hayak, 55; Hazar Turki, 23, and her sister Dina, 21 -- and another 12 wounded.
Zada was immediately labeled a terrorist and widely condemned. ''A reprehensible act by a bloodthirsty Jewish terrorist," one Middle Eastern leader called the massacre. Another said he was ''deeply shocked and distressed by the murder of innocent people." A senior cleric expressed his ''disgust and severe condemnation at the despicable act . . . a murder that is impossible to forgive."
Israel and its supporters complain with reason that Arab terrorism against Jews is too often shrugged off or excused by Arab and Muslim leaders, or that a murderous attack will be condemned in English for international consumption, while the government-run local media extols the killers in Arabic. But when the terrorists themselves are Jews -- admittedly a rare event -- do Israel's defenders live up to the standard they expect of others? How many of the statements quoted above, for example, would leading Israelis have been willing to make?
All of them.
It was Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who described Zada as a ''bloodthirsty Jewish terrorist" and Shimon Peres, the vice prime minister, who referred to the attack as ''the murder of innocent people." The cleric who pronounced Zada's ''despicable act . . . impossible to forgive" was Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel.
Equally harsh was the judgment of the Yesha Council, the organization of Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. Though passionately opposed to the Gaza evacuation, it denounced Zada as ''a terrorist, a lunatic, and immoral." Especially noteworthy were the words of Rabbi Menachem Froman of the West Bank settlement of Tekoa, who spoke at the funeral of two of the victims. ''We the Jewish people in the land of Israel share in the pain and suffering" of the mourners, he declared. ''All people who believe in God . . . express their outrage at such an act."
Indeed, so horrified were Israelis by Zada's bloody crime that, as the newspaper Ha'aretz reported on Sunday, ''No cemetery will accept Jewish terrorist's body." (Zada was lynched by Shfaram residents in the wake of his attack.) The defense minister banned an interment in any military cemetery, saying Zada was ''not worthy of being buried next to fallen soldiers." Neither his hometown of Rishon Letzion nor Tapuah, the settlement to which he had recently moved, wanted his grave to be within their borders.
The denunciations weren't limited to Israel. Among American Jews, too, the repudiation of the Israeli terrorist was swift and unsparing.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations issued a statement almost as soon as the news broke: ''We unequivocally condemn today's attack. . . . Such acts must be denounced by all responsible leaders."
The American Jewish Committee ''condemned in the harshest language" the slaughter in Shfaram, while the Zionist Organization of America called it ''a terrorist act which we condemn unreservedly."
Speaking for more than 900 Reform Jewish congregations nationwide, Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center in Washington deplored the massacre, calling it ''a betrayal of the dream of Israel as a pluralistic nation and an attack" on its fundamental values. In Boston, the Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Judaism assailed the killings as ''a desecration of God's Name" and prayed that ''never again will a Jew so wantonly spill blood."
The reaction of the Orthodox leadership was equally fervent. Agudath Israel of America said it was ''tragic" that any Jew could adopt ''the methods and madness of the enemies of the Jews." The Orthodox Union declared: ''Acts of violence in the name of Zionism and/or Judaism must be eradicated from the midst of the Jewish people."
All of these statements -- this is only a partial list -- were made within a day or two of the atrocity in Shfaram. Without being prompted, without making excuses, Jewish communities instinctively reacted to Zada's monstrous deed with disgust and outrage, all the more angrily because the perpetrator was a fellow Jew. When that is the way every community responds to terrorism, terrorism will come to an end.
Dr Ayesha Siddiqa
Partnering extremist religious groups was an acceptable policy framework until 9/11. It started with the US-led effort through the use of Islamist proxies to counter the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Actually, it began with the Soviets and the Chinese using guerrilla armies to subvert the rest of the world. Greece, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Congo, Angola, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and a host of others would come to mind given a moment's thought. The Soviets were merely getting some of their own back in Afghanistan. I'd also add that these were guerrilla movements and not terrorist movements. While there were acts of terrorism associated with most of them, they didn't rely on terrorism as a primary tool. Contrast the Viet Minh and the Viet Cong with Algeria's FLN, which did run their war using primarily terrorist tactics and in fact perfected them.
Most governments have used terrorist groups for achieving policy ends. The US, Britain and Pakistan â states that are today central to the terrorism debate â are known for keeping company with the terrorists.
We're not. See the above, re the difference between guerrilla and terrorist movements. Counter-guerrilla movements like the Contras fall under the same heading.
The general perception is that these groups can be used and ditched, as and when required. In other words that they are controllable or that their use is unlikely to change the character of a society or state. This is a total misperception.
The purpose of a guerrilla movement is usually to hold territory. Terrorism is used to influence state decisions. The FLN didn't so much take power as cause the French to leave, at which point power fell to them by default. The Viet Minh and Viet Cong, along with many other guerrilla operations, established shadow governments and attempted to administer the territory they controlled.
The recent bomb blasts in London require that all states that have employed violent non-state actors reconsider their approach. As the use of such actors in West and South Asia shows, it is difficult to completely control these elements. Their use in sub-conventional warfare is, therefore, not cost-efficient. Seen particularly in the India-Pakistan context, the sub-conventional warfare option has, in the long run, escalated Pakistanâs cost rather than Indiaâs. Furthermore, the use of non-state actors as strategic reserve is not a viable option in the nuclear or the post-nuclear scenario. In case of a nuclear exchange â if the conflict escalates from the sub-conventional to the conventional and the nuclear â no one would live to tell the tale. In any case, it would mean the failure of deterrence.
In the event nuclear weapons are actually used, no one is going to care whether their use was initiated by the government or the government's proxy, or even if they were used by intrusive actors. The results will demand retaliation in kind.
Over the long term, the jihadi option has not only increased the cost for Pakistan but also shown the policy objective of acquiring strategic depth to be flawed. That is if strategic depth is not just measured in terms of territory but as a sum total of territory and resources. The fact that India today has greater financial resources, military hardware, knowledgebase and purchasing power means Pakistanâs strategic depth has steadily been eroded...
The policy has returned suboptimal results, to say the least. Obviously the guys pushing it aren't big on cost-benefit analysis. Either that or the benefits don't resemble anything the rest of us would recognize as such.
The opportunity cost of using non-state actors or, in a larger context, ideology is extremely high. This is a lesson one learns from the extremely readable and thrilling book by Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan â Between Mosque and Military . While claiming to discuss the relationship between the military and the mosque, the book actually analyses the larger structure of the stateâs use of religious ideology and ideologues to fulfil its interests. However, the book aught to be read along with Vali Nasrâs 2001 publication on the Islamic states of Malaysia and Pakistan. Haqqaniâs excellent case study on Pakistan provides clothing to Nasrâs theory that in the two above-mentioned Muslim countries the state itself was party to manipulating and using religious ideology to further its political goals... Vali Nasr argues that the state, which may have some secular character or might not be an outright theocracy, could still adopt religious principles since these are not opposed to stateâs hegemony. He focuses on General Zia-ul Haqâs period to elaborate his point. However, the relationship between religious forces and the state is not new to Pakistan.
They've been in place since the country's foundation. It was founded as a Muslim majority state and has evolved into an Islamic state. The next step in its evolution will probably into an Islamist state, which will mean that the jihadis are actually running things. This will be the result of 60 years of somewhat less than brilliant policies on the part of Pakland's military and civilian governments.
The nexus began soon after the countryâs independence in 1947. Haqqaniâs work explains both the cause and effect of the state using religious ideology strategically. The authorâs basic argument is that soon after its birth the Pakistani state used religious ideology to sustain itself against the Indian threat. Although the civil-military establishment was keen to develop contacts with the US as well, this connection did not necessarily make the state secular. The military, both Vali Nasr and Haqqani argue, tailored the ideological bearings and the alignments to meet the organisationâs strategic objectives rather than anything else.
Maybe they know more about it than I do, but I'd suggest they tailored things to meet a series of tactical objectives, rather than working toward a strategic objective. This state of affairs has been aggravated by the funhouse mirror view of the outside world that appears to be common in Pakistan. They're a lot longer on guile than they are on comprehension.
This policy had its adverse consequences. It was ideology rather than alignment that had an impact on the minds of the people and the larger civil society.
Yeah. It aggravated their pre-existing condition, y'might say...
Unfortunately, during the process of the tactical use of ideology, the character and chemistry of the state changed as well. Pakistan today is at greater risk of becoming a theocracy than it ever was before... States have, in the past, eagerly surrendered their monopoly over violence to non-state actors for military gains. Other than reaping short-term dividends, this approach has not benefited any party. The times have indeed changed and the non-state actors of today are more focused on and sure about their role as a player in global and regional geo-politics and geo-strategy.
The non-state actors, and not only al-Qaeda and the Pak jihadis, are able to command greater resources today than they did when they were dependent on the Soviet Union, which tried to spread itself all over the world. The price of oil, paid in petrodollars, hit $66 a barrel today, which is a lot more money to flow from Soddy Arabia into international subversion.
So, Pakistan is currently facing the problem of keeping or abandoning the jihadi elements.
My guess is that the decision hasn't yet been made to dump them. Until it is, they're stuck with them. Once it's been taken, there's going to be a fight to shut them down. The Paks have plotted themselves into a corner.
The anger and frustration of the world with Islamabad, especially after the 7/7 attacks in London is very obvious.
I think that after the London booms it's turned from frustration into impatience edging into open contempt. Unless the Western attention span kicks in even faster than usual, Perv might actually have to do something. If he gets out of doing something this time, the reaction next time might be more than simply impatience.
The desperation to see Pakistan pack up the jihadi venture is accompanied with the understanding that the link has been there for too long to be severed in a day or a few months. But there is also an understanding that the jihadi elements are not exactly running on autopilot and their links with the Pakistani state are too deep for the outside world not to notice them.
It's not only Hafiz Saeed who needs to be shut down, but the people running him, which means the ISI, which means the military itself has to be brought under control.
Clearly, Islamabad needs to look carefully at the comparative cost of maintaining the jihadi option as opposed to abandoning it. Pakistan and other states have, in the past, engaged in destroying self-created threats. Eliminating this one would be of a different nature. However, the governmentâs ability and will to clean up the house and the kind of reaction from the society at large would determine the extent to which the societyâs face has changed by years of engagement with an ideology.
Dr Siddiqa is currently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington DC
Posted by: Fred ||
08/13/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Fred, a couple notes:
* The whole "The US created the Taliban" myth is well on its way to becoming the historial "truth" even if it's false; it's being done the same way the "The US created the Khmer Rouge" myth became "reality:" endless repetition on the part of the media and university faculty.
* In part of your analysis I think you're off base, but you come close to getting it:
The purpose of a guerrilla movement is usually to hold territory. Terrorism is used to influence state decisions. The FLN didn't so much take power as cause the French to leave, at which point power fell to them by default. The Viet Minh and Viet Cong, along with many other guerrilla operations, established shadow governments and attempted to administer the territory they controlled.
The Viet Minh and Viet Cong followed the same rules of "guerilla warfare" that Mao did: you perform terrorist acts upon a civilian population in a given area until they support you. You wind up with fifteen-year-old kids charging "evil western imperialist" machine guns because the "evil western imperialists" are at worst going to kill *him*, but the "noble guerilla resistance" is going to kill his Mom, his Dad, his two younger sisters, and a large number of uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. if he doesn't.
THAT IS TERRORISM, and it has NOTHING to do with trying to influence the state that you're fighting. Attacking govenrment troops (or their families, etc.) is something you usually put off until you have enough critical mass/territory controlled via terrorizing peasants. Mao miscalculated the tipping point at least once, but it didn't matter to him, because _he_ survived and managed to terrorize a new batch of peasants after the long march.
The Viet Cong miscalculated the tipping point twice, but it didn't matter, because even though the drafted peasants mostly died in the process, the attacks managed to convince the West of an illusory "anti-colonialist" resistance, at which point we stopped supporting South Vietnam and they fell to an armored assault from the PAVN.
It's the standard "model" that Maoist guerillas have followed everywhere.
I know you probably know most or all of this but I'm repeating it because it appears that a lot of readers here (and heads of allied governments and their armed forces) don't understand how pseudo-nationalistic-revolutions are really made.
Some of the recent reports I've seen here lately suggest that the coalition forces are letting a new "Viet Cong" set up shop in Basra, and some are saying that it's OK because it didn't result in any coalition forces casualties last month...
Anyway, that's all of my griping for the day. Take with requisite grain of salt mine.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
08/13/2005 18:11 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
