The place to start is the Haidt essay. He begins by noting the famous study that treats conservatism as a sort-of mental condition: "conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death."

He then adds:

Diagnosis is a pleasure... But with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes seduction wearing a halo. Our diagnosis explains away Republican successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies, and it blinds us to what I think is one of the main reasons that so many Americans voted Republican over the last 30 years: they honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats. To see what Democrats have been missing, it helps to take off the halo, step back for a moment, and think about what morality really is.

I would go farther than that, and suggest that the model is self-evidently false. What percentage of entrepreneurs are conservatives in some sense of the word? What percentage of small business entrepreneurs -- that is, those who risk not just something, but everything? Voting habits indicate it's a clean majority -- yet these people are supposed to be 'especially fearful of uncertainty'? What percentage of military officers -- or soldiers of any rank in the the combat arms of the military -- are conservatives? Voting habits, again, indicate a strong majority: and these are the people supposedly afraid of death?

What has happened here is that the halo blinds from the beginning. It blinds people into accepting results plainly at variance with reality, because it answers their preconceptions. It also allows them to discard the fact that these economic questions do have a conservative answer: even Dr. Haidt's explanation, which I will praise on more important grounds in a moment, simply takes as read that conservatives who are poorer are voting moral rather than economic interests. In fact, they have a different concept of where their interests lie.

There is something deeply worthy in the Haidt piece -- what is far more important than the wrongness of the concept that conservatism is a mental state to be diagnosed, rather than a philosophy to be explored and considered. It lies here:

My first few weeks in Bhubaneswar were therefore filled with feelings of shock and confusion. I dined with men whose wives silently served us and then retreated to the kitchen. My hosts gave me a servant of my own and told me to stop thanking him when he served me. I watched people bathe in and cook with visibly polluted water that was held to be sacred. In short, I was immersed in a sex-segregated, hierarchically stratified, devoutly religious society, and I was committed to understanding it on its own terms, not on mine. It only took a few weeks for my shock to disappear, not because I was a natural anthropologist but because the normal human capacity for empathy kicked in. I liked these people who were hosting me, helping me, and teaching me. And once I liked them (remember that first principle of moral psychology) it was easy to take their perspective and to consider with an open mind the virtues they thought they were enacting.

"The normal human capacity for empathy" is just what we have so long been missing in this discussion. The implicit advocation that you should try to like the people you are observing, that it would open new avenues for understanding them, is long overdue. Dr. Haidt is to be praised for this insight, but also for being the kind of man who could have it.

Judith Warner has read his piece, and is trying to do what he advocates. She is not -- still not! -- able to understand these women. She is still afraid of them, and that fear of them comes through in her piece in many ways. From her recognition that her children's love for brie might mark her as an outsider here, to the sense that this is all an alien environment she cannot comprehend, it is clear she is afraid of these people, and of a joy she can neither name nor understand.

Yet she is trying to understand it. She is trying to make friends.

Both she and Dr. Haidt ultimately are far from understanding -- reading Dr. Haidt's clinical descriptions is enough to make a man chuckle. Yet I respect their kindness and their humane desire to understand, to have empathy, to like and befriend.

They will probably not quite grasp what I mean when I say that conseratives are not subjects-for-observation but neighbors; and that in choosing "Love thy Neighbor" as their method, they have found the right road. I expect Dr. Haidt will read that as my desire to enact my life in accord with a defined sacred order, to reduce uncertainty and bring meaning to my life.

That is not at all what I mean: what I mean is that, in this world, that is the road most likely to lead to genuine understanding between people. Like Chesterton, I learned that from the world, and then found it reflected in the books.

That, though, is a longer trail. For now, it's enough to take a moment to recognize a good thing, to welcome it and praise those who are trying to make it work.

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Later he discovered that while the basic sales price was indeed $500 over invoice, the dealer had added more than $5,300 for chrome plating the wheels. It was a "dealer added" option that Edmunds says a local specialty shop charged $850 to do.

Always carefully review all the sales documents the Finance and Insurance salesman hands you. Yes, that right - the guy or gal who draws up the paperwork is not a clerk, s/he is a salesperson, and often the highest earner in the dealership. In 1986 I bought a Subaru that this guy just loaded up with extra charges. I just handed it all back to him and told him that the salesman had agreed on a certain price plus nothing but TT&L, and that I was going back to the salesman to tell him that the F&I guy had just cost him his commission. It was amazing how quickly all that stuff came off.

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(This is long, but I do have a point that goes beyond the movie review. I welcome your responses and thoughts about how this applies to current events in Iraq and elsewhere.)

For those who don't remember the film (or haven't seen it), the plot is fairly straightforward. Seagal plays a Navy SEAL who was busted from the highly respected rank of Chief Petty Officer to lowly corpsman after striking an officer in an argument after a failed operation. He's now posted as the Captain's personal cook in the USS Missouri, a battleship on its last trip home before decommissioning. The Captain, who knows about his past, benignly allows him to keep a low profile (for instance, by avoiding dress uniform which would require him to wear his Silver Star, Bronze Star etc., which would reveal his past to the rest of the crew.)

The slimy and corrupt Executive Officer on the ship detests Seagal. He's already plotting to enable a rogue ex-CIA agent, played by Tommy Lee Jones, to hijack the Missouri and sell her nuclear and other arms on the black market. To get Jones and his accomplices on board to take over the ship, the XO plans a party for the captain complete with a stripper (played by Erika Eleniak, ex-Playmate and Baywatch actress). After confining Seagal in a refrigerated locker, ostensibly for insubordination but actually because he just can't stand him, the XO countermands the usual security procedures, leaving few marines on watch. When the party is going strong Jones and his mercenary band round up nearly all the ship's crew and lock them below decks, then take control of the ship.

The rest of the film, predictably, shows Seagal methodically escaping, figuring out what is going on and saving the day. It's HOW he does that, and how he's different from the XO and the rogue agent turned mercenary, that made this a popular film in the States, I think.

When we first meet Seagal's character, we don't know his past and he comes off as a cocky smartass who demands special treatment. But he's not unlikeable -- he makes a great bouillabaise, keeps the galley crew in good spirits. And there's the Captain's cryptic comment to the effect that "I don't know why you don't want to wear your medals. If I had those decorations I'd sleep in them!"

We also suspect Seagal's basically a good guy because the XO detests him and the XO comes off as (excuse the language) a pr*ck. He's status hungry, proud and overbearing and you can tell he disrespects the Captain for the latter's easygoing demeanor.

We learn more about both these characters later in the film, when Jones demands that the XO find out who that (now escaped) cook is. Seagal's personnel folder was in the now-dead Captain's private files and discloses the SEAL's identity, heroic past and official disgrace. On the other hand, we learn that the Captain had written up the XO for a psych evauation when the Missouri returned to home port because of the latter's abusive treatment of the crew. Whereas the SEAL accepted his demotion with quiet humility (more or less), the XO reacted to the well-deserved criticism of him by turning the ship over to Jones for a cut of the money they expect to earn.

Seagal's SEAL character is contrasted with Jones' rogue CIA agent in similar ways. We learn that the rogue agent had been responsible for some of the Agency's most spectacular covert ops but had spun out of control. The Agency tried but failed to kill him and the Missouri hijacking is his revenge. Jones delivers some deliciously over-the-top acting in this character, who is borderline psychotic but lethally dangerous nonetheless. In contrast, our SEAL -- equally accomplished -- not only accepts his punishment from the Navy but maintains his inward emotional and moral balance in response to his demotion and throughout the ensuing action on the ship.

While some of that apparent emotional balance is no doubt due to Seagal's limited acting range (to quote others, his emoting runs the gamut from A to B), it's significant that Seagal's personal martial arts background is in Aikido. Osensei ('great teacher', i.e. the founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba) was known as the pre-eminent master of many Japanese martial arts in the early 20th century. However, despite his mastery of their techniques he felt something was missing in them. He found that 'something' in the spiritual teachings of a neo-Shinto school which emphasizes loving compassion to all and the unity of all beings.

This spirituality pervades Aikido teaching and practice, both in the cultivation of inner serenity while in the middle of conflict and also at the physical level in the flowing movements of the art and its emphasis on ways to counter force without inflicting more force, when possible. Unlike Karate-do, which overcomes force with superior force, the ideal outcome of an Aikido encounter is that the Aikidoka redirects an attacker's force without needing to counter-attack. My sensei called the various judo-style throws "helping the attacker get to where he's determined to go". However, when mastered, Aikido is arguably the most lethal of the open-hand martial arts. (It also incorporates weapons in the form of the Japanese sword.)

Which brings me to the No Ditz Left Behind principle.

Seagal's SEAL character in Under Seige is not identified as a Aikidoka, but he embodies many of the characteristics of one: the ability to blend into his surroundings (moving silently just beneath a group of mercenaries, for instance); exquisite sensory awareness (advanced Aikido exams may present the blindfolded candidate with multiple attackers at once); and mastery of a variety of techniques (open hand throws, punches, kicks, blocks, joint locks, knife work).

But perhaps the most characteristically Aikido element -- and, I will assert, American element -- of the Seagal character is the way in which he interacts with the ditzy dancer, who fell asleep before she was due to come out of the party cake and so was overlooked during the roundup of the sailors. Seagal knows something's very wrong but he doesn't know the nature of the ship takeover when he runs across this semi-hysterical bimbo belowdecks. His first thought is to hide her in a locker where she'll be safe while he investigates further, having already survived an attempt by two of the mercenaries to kill him.

The ditzy blonde will have none of that and makes so much noise he agrees she can come with him. It's a useful plot device, but from most perpectives it's highly improbable. Most contemporary scriptwriters would have the protagonist gag her and maybe knock her unconscious to get her out of the way. (Or would have her be cool, calm and a deadly shot.) But Seagal reacts as an Aikidoka would, by accepting the situation and seeing what he can make of it.

At first she's a lost cause. Depite pronouncing they're going to die, she seems unwilling to do much more than emote. When Seagal gives her a semi-automatic rifle and explains what he wants her to do, she responds, "I have two rules. I don't date musicians and I don't kill people."

Still, in spite of our exacerbation exasperation with this ditz -- and there is no better word for the blond stripper with well-endowed mammaries and seemingly not a clue in her head -- we tend to admire her spunk, I think. We're not really surprised when she ends up tossing granades with the best of them, any more than we were surprised when the XO turned out to be a snivelling resentful traitor. Or when the ex-SEAL takes on a difficult mission single-handed and succeeds despite being, at this point in his life, "just a cook" with a ditzy companion provided, improbably, by the Universe.

No Ditz Left Behind. Hollywood is enamoured with flawed, world-weary protagonists -- not 'heroes' -- but audiences know better. Seagal's character flows with events and integrates the stripper into his plan not only because she was making enough noise to alert the mercenaries, but also because she explains she did so because she's claustrophobic and couldn't stand to be shut into the locker where he wanted her to hide.

That same combination of compassion with strength, that willingness to put oneself at risk to protect others, gives power to photos we've all seen of US soldiers tenderly cradling children in Iraq. It's why the realism of the Brezhinski crowd in Washington doesn't resonate much outside the Beltway, even when the US public is war-weary and frustrated with the failure of Iraqis to step up to the plate and act as we hope we would after being liberated from the depredations of a tyrant.

The Iraqis have few stories like Under Seige and no aikido dojos to teach these virtues. The Arabs in particular are shaped by a culture with very different stories whose thrust, T. E. Lawrence notwithstanding, tends not to provide much training for service to others of this kind. But our culture does, and we can and should be proud of that fact.

We just need to realize that not all apparent ditzes rise to the occasion when given the chance.

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The Middle East Quarterly explains the essence of the honor/shame culture:

[I[n traditional Arab society ... a distinction is made between two kinds of honor: sharaf and ‘ird. Sharaf relates to the honor of a social unit, such as the Arab tribe or family, as well as individuals, and it can fluctuate up or down. A failure by an individual to follow what is defined as adequate moral conduct weakens the social status of the family or tribal unit. On the other hand, the family's sharaf may be increased by model behavior such as hospitality, generosity, courage in battle, etc. In sum, sharaf translates roughly as the Western concept of "dignity."

Honor, then, is what is granted by the community, by the social units of society. Likewise, shame or disgrace is also so given. I demur, though, that what MEQ describes at sharaf corresponds, even "roughly," to the Western concept of dignity. A person's dignity comes from self-concept: you cannot rob me of my dignity because of my inherent worth as a human being. The idea of dignity of mankind was a concept that undergirded the American revolutionists and that led Thomas Jefferson to write that, "The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them." I wrote several years ago that the American Civil War pitted the Southern states' honor concepts against the Northern states' dignity concepts.

Holy War from the legacy of the American South is waged from an offense to the nation that is seen as a stain upon the national honor, or as vengeance for wrongs done to the nation. (Southern concern with honor was a major contributor toward both Southern secession and the attack on Fort Sumter, precipitating the worst war in our history.) Honor can be restored only by confronting the foe with great force. The foe's surrender or destruction restores the national honor. Honor codes have not played a large role in shaping the Northern model of of Holy War. Instead, the Northern codes spring from ideas of the dignity of humankind, and deep notions of sin and judgment. From the Northern model, Americans readily answer the call to colors to liberate the oppressed and punish the oppressors, a combination that probably springs from the North's Puritan and Calvinistic founding.

Back to MEQ:

In contrast, ‘ird relates only to the honor of women and its value can only decrease. It translates roughly as the Western concept of "chastity" or "purity." And as with chastity or purity, exemplary moral behavior cannot increase a woman's ‘ird but misconduct reduces it. In addition, ‘ird trumps sharaf: the honor of the Arab family or tribe, the respect accorded it, can be gravely damaged when one of its women's chastity is violated or when her reputation is tainted. Consequently, a violation of a woman's honor requires severe action, as Tarrad Fayiz, a Jordanian tribal leader, explains: "A woman is like an olive tree. When its branch catches woodworm, it has to be chopped off so that society stays clean and pure."

This dynamic, says MEQ, explains "honor killings" in Muslim societies, but especially Arab ones, in which a woman whose chastity has been compromised, even by rape, is punished.

As for rape, society perceives the violated woman not as a victim who needs protection but as someone who debased the family honor, and relatives will opt to undo the shame by taking her life. Failure to do so further dishonors the family.

Rape in such societies is not held to be principally an offense against the woman, as it is in the West, but against first the men of her family and secondarily the other women, whose reputation for chastity can be sullied by libertine ways of one. Because it is not really dishonorable for a man to commit rape as much as for a woman to endure rape, things like this occur:

On May 31, 1994, Kifaya Husayn, a 16-year-old Jordanian girl, was lashed to a chair by her 32-year-old brother. He gave her a drink of water and told her to recite an Islamic prayer. Then he slashed her throat. Immediately afterward, he ran out into the street, waving the bloody knife and crying, ‘I have killed my sister to cleanse my honor.' Kifaya's crime? She was raped by another brother, a 21-year-old man. Her judge and jury? Her own uncles, who convinced her eldest brother that Kifaya was too much of a disgrace to the family honor to be allowed to live."

The psychologist who uses the nom de blog of Dr. Sanity explained in Shame, the Arab Psyche, and Islam, that in Arab cultures, the principal concern over conduct is not that which is guilty or innocent, but that which brings honor or shame.

[W]hat other people believe has a far more powerful impact on behavior than even what the individual believes. [T]he desire to preserve honor and avoid shame to the exclusion of all else is one of the primary foundations of the culture. This desire has the side-effect of giving the individual carte blanche to engage in wrong-doing as long as no-one knows about it, or knows he is involved.

In contrast, he says, the West has a Guilt/Innocence culture. "The guilt culture is typically and primarily concerned with truth, justice, and the preservation of individual rights."

The great difference between the two cultures is illustrated by this matrix:

The key: if your principal concern about your social self is your standing in your community and what others think about you rather than your own inherent sense of conscience and personal sense of worth, then you are operating on a honor/shame model.

I am wondering whether honor/shame codes play a much larger role for the left side of the American political aisle than is first evident. It was mostly from that side of political aisle that just after 9/11 the plaintive cry was raised, "Why do they hate us?"

To many people in the Middle East and beyond, where US policy has bred widespread anti-Americanism, the carnage of Sept. 11 was retribution. And voices across the Muslim world are warning that if America doesn't wage its war on terrorism in a way that the Muslim world considers just, America risks creating even greater animosity.

Note how the concerns of others is implied to be of supreme importance even in waging war, even if the others are the actual enemy. The Abu Ghraib offenses called forth honor/shame language from all around the aisle.

U.S. military policy was to treat the detainees at the Abu Ghraib facility outside Baghdad in the same manner as enemy prisoners of war. ... For an American soldier, there are few crimes more shameful than breeching the standards of conduct established by the laws of war. ... Nothing will regain the respect of the Iraqis and the world more than doing the right thing in Iraq. That is the most determined response that America can make to the betrayal at Abu Ghraib.

Then there was the entirely false report that copies of the Quran had been abused at Guantanamo, which evoked strong honor/shame language from Western critics, especially on the left:

This is worse than Abu Ghraib; Abu Ghraib represents the physical and psychological torture of a few Muslims, Quran desecration represents a spiritual, emotional and psychological torture of all Muslims. Even if it turns out that the Newsweek report was false, most people will see it as a cover up and another American attempt to eschew accountability.

Note that this author deliberately eschews a guilt/innocence code by claiming that that fact of innocence does not matter. Only the perception of guilt matters. Then he comes to another part of the honor/shame code: rectufying by penance or even debasement of the offender:

The ramifications of mistakes such as this one, even if it is proven that ultimately the report was a false one, will take a long time to rectify. Perhaps Newsweek should dedicate a special issue to celebrate the Quran and the deep devotion that Muslims hold for it.

These words come as no surprise since their author is one Muqtedar Khan, a Muslim teacher in the United States. And it is no surprise that he was writing not for, say, National Review, but for Common Dreams News Center, "Breaking News and Views for the Progressive Commnity." (As for National Review, see this piece on the story and note its concern with truth or falsehood of the allegations, that is, whether the accused is guilty or innocent.)

So is the left side of aisle more concerned with image than with substance, that is with the opinion of others rather than the interior compass of the self? It seems to me to be so. I am not saying that, politically speaking, the right side of the aisle evinces no such conerns - pundits love to wax eloquent about how all politicians need to make sure they are attractive to the base of their party. But it does seem to me that the left side overall acts more within honor/shame frameworks than the right side. If so, it also helps explain why the left side is pretty fast to sympathize with the aggrieved feelings of Muslims generally when it comes to US policy: accusations are more important than evidence.

Crossposted at DonaldSensing.com

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What Tashbih Sayyed is saying here (link), and what some other splendid people who are Muslims have said lately, is what I expected Muslims in general to say after 11 September 2001, when I was still very pro-Muslim and I expected Osama Bin Laden to live six months at most, because his fellow Muslims would turn against him for associating the name and image of their religion with shocking crimes.

History has taken another course, and it is now clear that Muslims will turn against crimes in the name of jihad in decisive numbers only when these crimes are against Muslims, or under Western pressure of various kinds, or in atypical cases, such as when Westernized or just individually great people who happen to be Muslims are speaking eloquently and that is all that is required.

When Westerners fight against aggressive Muslims, even when it's against genocidal terrorists like Hamas, or simply terribly tyrants like Saddam Hussein, the global Muslim nation (the "umma") unites more than not against the unbelievers, and with double fury against Jews and their friends. This means that if all you want is to be less unpopular with Muslim populations, such as the population of Iran, this is possible to some extent, but you can't fight the crazy jihadists, you have to let them win, otherwise you unite the moderates with the radicals against you.

While unbelievers fighting against Islam provoke deep, lasting, widespread and deadly reactions, Muslims fighting against unbelievers (or sometimes Muslims fighting against non-Arab or otherwise "lesser" Muslims as in the Darfur conflict) provoke only sad musings by isolated individuals, reactions that are inconsequential and can easily be set aside later, because, hey, we won.

This is why, speaking to gamers, I liken our relations to the global Muslim community to a bunch of reaction rolls where we get a permanent penalty of one pip on a 1d6 roll, making friendly reactions weaker than might have been expected and unfriendly reactions more common and more deadly than would have been the case if we were not dealing with Islam. Individual reactions genuinely differ, and reactions to individual cases are pretty random. (For example, nobody knows in advance which opera or other art-work will spark Muslim rage next.) Each individual case, such as the Muhammed cartoons jihad, could have been different. But the dice are loaded against us, and in the long run bad reactions, grievances and struggles mount up.

And of course friendly reactions are disaggregated because the system of Islam is against them (even to the point of the Koran declaring specifically against Muslims being friends with Christians and Jews), while unfriendly reactions are readily rewarded, collectivized, organised and acted on in sharp, consequential ways by the system of Islam, which is inherently political and which strives (makes jihad) for Muslim domination without limit.

We have seen all this play out, year after year, after 11 September, 2001, which ought to have been enough to make anyone take pause.

So five years ago, had decisive numbers of Muslims said what Tashbih Sayyed, Ph.D. is saying, I would have said "Here is the strongly moral Islam I was talking about. Organizations like Al Qaeda are doomed, because sooner or later they will all trespass over the boundaries that the dominant majority of good Muslims will permit, and then they will each be destroyed." But today I say "Tashbih Sayyed, Ph.D. what a great guy!" And I attach no further significance to all such friendly opinions.

On the question of whether Islam is inherently political, I don't think we have to get into amateur theology and speculate on what the Koran "might" lead to or which verses "should" be abrogated, I think history has answered that question and the answer is yes, too often.

On whether political Islam inherently aims at sharia, I think it tends to, inherently, as that will alway be the preferred solution, all things equal - but in history all things are rarely equal, and jihad (which I think Islam does produce inexorably) can be carried on under its natural color as we see today, or under any "mask", such as pan-Arabism or Socialism or Arab Nazism, that demonstrates advantages such as winning over allies (for example by gaining German backing in World War II or Soviet backing during the Cold War) and gets the job done. If aiming directly at sharia is less effective at achieving key Islamic goals such as the destruction of Israel, it can be rejected, as Soviet-influenced socialism was. (However, it will never be rejected once and for all, as it has a legitimacy in Islam that alien ideological "masks" for jihad can never have.)

Can success be defined and ideological "masks" be evaluated by different, friendlier goals approved by Israel and the rest of the West? Unfortunately, no. Islam must dominate, and it is very big on making those who have been subdued feel painfully every day that their position is humiliated and inferior. This hasn't changed in Islam's long history, and there is no indication that the mentality that strives for domination and fears the domination of the other will alter.

It's not personal. It's a system, and it's in the Koran and in the example of the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) and in history and in the systems of laws and the cultural influences derived from all of the above. This, you can't alter. You can't get a fundamentally friendly Islam.

What you can have is simply less Islam, and more of other alternatives which aren't so hostile. And that is what I advocate that we aim at.

I think we should use the most moral, humane and I hope effective means, such as protecting and enabling people who want to quit this bloody and onerous religion. We should stand up for freedom of religion, not occasionally and reactively in high profile cases such as that of Abdul Rahhman in liberated, democratic Afghanistan, but boldly, globally and pro-actively. We should stand up boldly and pro-actively for other values and customs that militant Muslims have declared incompatible with their religion, such as freedom of speech including freedom to criticise religion, including Islam. What militant Muslims say will destroy their religion we should give them in spades, including broadcasts of the Miss World contest yearly. (As they chanted while they rioted: "Death to beauty! Miss World is sin!" Well then...) And when fatwas calling for assassination are issued, as they are from time to time (typically with those who issue them paying no cost to send others into hiding for fear of their lives) we should make it more dangerous to issue them than to receive them, so that the practice stops and those who want to criticise Islam or even leave it can do so boldly and safely, or at least with complete confidence that they have our full and muscular backing, not just empty words calling for "tolerance" and "tact" (sending the tacit message that those who are threatened by militant Islam are on their own). And we should seek alliance with and support people throughout the world who are threatened by the fearful pressure of militant Islam.

If we do that, Muslims are sure to say that their chronic accusations that the "crusaders" want to change their religion have been validated, and moderate and radical Muslims will rally together on that basis, and we will lose the moderate Muslim goodwill we have invested so heavily in cultivating. (Without, however, impressive results to show for it.)

But if we do not aim to diminish the intractable source of our troubles, the jihad-driven clash of civilizations will continue anyway, and one-sidedly, to our detriment. If someone pounds on you, not as hard as he can, but still hard enough that you can't keep taking that, and he won't see reason (as after five years from 11 September, 2001 it is clear that the Muslim world will not see reason), but he will get really mad if you fight him - you have to fight him.

This is an adversarial view of Islam, and an adversarial set of recommendations about dealing with Islam. I do not advocate avoiding a conflict of civilizations, because I think we are already in one and we can't get out of it, and the sooner that we recognise that we are in a struggle and start fighting to win, the better our chances are to emerge as the winners.

This is also a tragic view of the position of good people who are Muslims and our relations with people in Iran and other places who are willing to be friendly, though of course not if we fight their leaders and their religion and thus them.

The tragedy can be denied if we deny that there are really moderate Muslims and friendly and upright people on the other side of the line that Islam draws between itself and the non-Muslim world, but I don't agree with blinding ourselves to the goodness of other people, even if we may not be able to avoid fighting them.

Rather, we are called by history to face up to a tragedy: that we have to oppose and diminish a system that is intractably and (in the context of proliferating nuclear weapons) fatally hostile to us, even though that will enrage and alienate the large absolute numbers of genuinely good and moderate people within that system, people who would like Islam to be friendly, kind and fair, even though, friendly or unfriendly, kind or unkind, and fair or anciently wedded to prejudices and violent supremacism in practice, it is still their religion, and since it is a political religion, still their side.

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The truth is that North Korea is an irrelevant bit player in this whole drama. The real player here is China. They have helped North Korea at every step, and North Korea's regime cannot survive at all without their ongoing food and fuel aid. Kim Jong-Il's nuclear plans may be slightly inconvenient to the Chinese - just not not inconvenient enough to derail a strategy that still promises net plusses to those pursuing it within China's dictatorship.

Recall Winds' comprehensive look at the forces within and around China, its geo-political goals and imperatives, and its military options. Korea is a potent potential competitor that has historically had some rivalry with the Chinese, and South Korea is part of the chain of countries that helps to box China and prevent unimpeded access to the sea lanes on which it is so dependent for resources. With its highly developed economy, it's also an investment rival for projects in Russia, and thus complicates Chinese efforts to secure Siberia's resources as a land-based alternative.

Hence the two-faced strategy China is pursuing. One that uses North Korea as their deniable "cut out," and works in conjunction with South Korean political elements to irritate the US and build pressure to push them out of Korea. Once that is achieved in whole or in part, or South Korea concludes for other reasons that the US security guarantee cannot be relied upon to the extent required, South Korea can be "Finlandized" by making China its key security guarantor. Of course, this will happen in return for the same kind of quiet veto power and political interference the USSR exercized in Finland during the Cold War.

That's a very big strategic carrot to dangle in front of fellow members of China's ruling dictatorship. This approach is also bolstered on the flip side by a Chinese aversion to seeing a wave of starving North Korean refugees from what may be the most evil regime in human history wash over Manchuria. Hence, both advantage and fear work to keep Chinese support in place, while shaping South Korea toward a strategic Chinese double-win in which they also pick up the pieces in any northern collapse. The current South Korean government's "sunshine policy" which preaches "one Korea," plays down issues with the North and will not confront it, and demonizes the USA at a grassroots level is perfect on all counts from a Chinese perspective. North Korea's threat will not go away, of course, but friction with the USA, paralysis that keeps their North Korean client safe from retaliation, and positioning Korea psychologically to be responsible for the North later (but not, for instance, for starving North Korean refugees now)... all are exactly what China's doctor ordered from a geo-political perspective.

That will not change. Not until - and unless - the potential advantage is seen to be outweighed by very immediate consequences, and the fear of regime collapse in North Korea is replaced by a greater fear. Since China's is also an absolutist dictatorship, the consequences and greater fear must be far greater in order to trigger the kind of to-the-death (and here we mean the real deaths or equivalent of people and families, not just political careers) internal political battles required to remove the architects and proponents of the current strategy. Who cannot back away from it normally, both for fear of their lives and positions in such a system and for more culture-specific reasons around "face."

In other words, China won't move unless its current strategy is seen to cost them, big-time.

The biggest cost, and the only one that will be real to them in any sense, is to have Kim Jong-Il's nuclear detonation result in parallel nuclear proliferation among the nearby states China wishes to dominate/ bully. That would be a foreign policy disaster for the Chinese, and would cause the current architects of China's North Korea policy to be buried along with their policy. Which, as we noted earlier, is the only kind of policy education that works in a system like theirs.

So... if this turns out to be a nuclear test, ignore North Korea. Sanctions et. al are a total waste of time. Target China indirectly, with consequences it can easily understand as horribly bad from their perspective but which appear to be perfectly reasonable responses to North Korea.

In other words, make it clear to the Chinese via back-channel diplomacy that anything Taiwan chooses to do re: acquiring nuclear technology is no longer of any interest to the USA until Kim's regime is gone - and that the Taiwanese are being briefed to that effect (the US had stopped a Taiwanese nuclear effort by threatening a cutoff of all military aid). Be clear also, and make public statements that "other states in the region" now have a viable reason to respond in kind. One could also drop hints about and then refuse to deny to the Chinese that back-channel discussions have begun with South Korea and Japan that involve America offering them a set number of working nuclear weapons from US stocks as a counterweight. They can also be told more directly via diplomatic channels that the USA will also support either or both countries if they choose to pursue their own programs, meanwhile floating diplomatic "trial balloons" re: a system that gives these countries their own deterrents as a better option, because it does not produce the capacity for further manufacture and so is "less destabilizing to the region."

How China chooses to fix the North Korea problem after that and thus stop all of these intiatives is, of course, up to them. Welcome to the big leagues, and have a nice day.

Nothing short of that kind of response is going to change anything.

----
POST SCRIPTUM:

I'll add here, since we're inevitably going to hear the Democrats and their media allies lionizing the Clinton approach, that what we're seeing here is directly Clinton's fault. By signing an agreement that everyone knew would be cheated on by North Korea as a substitute for taking action, he, personally, left any successor no viable options and made this day a 100% certainty.

And that day is a 100% certainty, whether or not this particular event is borne out as a nuke. The only question now is when, and that was true the day after Clinton/Carter's "peace in our time (subtext: and war in someone else's)" agreement was signed. That transparently phony agreement, and not his negligence in pursuing al-Qaeda, has always been the #1 screw-up of Clinton's Presidency. It may yet surpass his #2 screw-up in terms of the American lives it costs before all is said and done.

If the GOP has 2 brain cells left, they'll hit that point with everything they have. Which means, of course, even odds at best.

UPDATES:

• Sen. John McCain guest blogs about North Korea - but his proposals are inadequate, for the reasons discussed here.

• Iraqi Bloggers Central takes a moment and does a wide-ranging blogosphere roundup, with short summaries from each. Great job.

• Funny aside: see this YouTube political ad, which references the NK situation in a truly hilarious way. We need more political ads like this in the USA, it would liven up the proceedings.

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There are those who would hope to escape the pain of war. Can't we just live and let live and pretend every thing is OK? Let's discuss, negotiate, reason together. The film accurately shows an enemy who will stop at nothing in a quest for control. This enemy does not seek our resources, our land or our materials, but rather to alter our very way of life.

I encourage my fellow Americans and free people everywhere to see "United 93."

Be reminded of our very real enemy. Be inspired by a true story of heroic actions taken by ordinary people with victorious consequences. Be thankful for each precious day of life with a loved one and make the most of it. Resolve to take the right action in the situations of life, whatever they may be. Resolve to give thanks and support to those men, women, leaders and commanders who to this day (1,687 days since Sept. 11, 2001) continue the counterattacks on our enemy and in so doing keep us safe and our freedoms intact.

May the taste of freedom for people of the Middle East hasten victory. The enemy we face does not have the word "surrender" in their dictionary. We must not have the word "retreat" in ours. We surely want our troops home as soon as possible. That said, they cannot come home in retreat. They must come home victoriously. Pray for them.

Right. The definition of "those who would hope to escape the pain of war" includes much of the American left (Sheehan/Moore, etc.) and much of the European elite. But there is a subtler division among the remainder.

We all do see the enemy for who he is and we read his own words and take them at their face value. Some of us recognize this as a Long War for Civilization, and think the obvious disparity in firepower and national economies masks a vulnerability in the West. The people we are fighting say certain things very clearly: we are infidels who have offended their religion, they are at war with us, and they want us to die. They may not have an air force, but they have other weapons, more intangible, perhaps more powerful. And we have weak spots. We could be brought down hard by a combination of lack of will and a few hard, well-timed terrorist strikes with the right volume.

To some of us, on the other hand, the Islamists are simply not a long-term threat worth the name of "enemy" or worth a serious reordering of American rights and priorities. They talk nasty and hurt when they can, but they should be taken no more seriously than a 5-year-old in a temper tantrum. 9/11 was something of a one-off, a combination of a few extraordinary individuals and good luck based on our lack of vigilance. A little more vigilance on our part will be sufficient to prevent a repeat performance. To involve American resources and lives in a major Middle Eastern "war" against this, with the inevitable bungles and unforeseen consequences, is doing more harm than good.

I am not trying to parody that view, but I perhaps don't capture it very well. I'm leaving out the figure of Bush, on both sides, because ultimately he doesn't matter. People who put him at the center of everything lose sight of the long-term picture.

The main difference among Americans today is that some of us believe the United States is at war, a dangerous war against a desperate enemy.

And other people don't believe that's true at all.

To the non-believers, the people who are waging war look insanely violent, paranoid, and unstable. To the people at war, it takes great mental effort to look at those who don't believe it and not see appeasers and useful idiots, if not outright traitors.

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When I think of wartime reporting, I�m drawn to the standard set by Ernie Pyle in World War II. Get past the grit in one of his dispatches, and you realize that you're reading a partisan account. There�s no doubt about it, Pyle wants his guys--the Allies--to win.

Journalism hadn�t always been that way, and it didn�t stay like that. The Cold War and Viet Nam swung the pendulum away from �patriotism� and towards neutrality. Aspirations of objectivity can reward in their own way�such as by exposing malfeasance, groupthink, and incompetence among our own leaders and civil servants. But we lose the Ernie Pyles, supplanted by the likes of Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace. Their famous 1989 interview on proper journalistic conduct in combat is here.

There are Western journalists who combine a hatred of their own culture with wishful idealizing of The Other to arrive at an ancient cry, �the enemy of my enemy is my friend.� While these folks might have been called traitors in the World War II era, today their perspectives are simply part of the discourse. Be that as it may: the description doesn't fit Michael Ware. From Tim Blair's account and Hewitt's interview, Ware is a brave man, and an insightful observer. His first loyalty is to his profession, not to his country (Australia). Ware is the kind of reporter journalism schools are hoping to turn out.

Ware has made his mark by reporting from within the Iraqi resistance. He�s cultivated contacts that have gotten him embeds in armed cells of the insurgency. Ware recounted numerous brushes with death to Hewitt, once being seconds away from a bullet to the brain. It�s a record that Ware is proud of, and one that would no doubt be emulated by many other Baghdad journalists�if they shared Ware�s willingness to taunt the Fates.

But for all that, it strikes me that Ware betrays his ideals as he follows his leads and writes his gripping stories.

For Hewitt�s listeners, Ware described his dance with insurgents. He's aware that they use him to present their story to the world�and in particular, to frame it in ways that advance their military and political plans. Ware notes that the insurgents read the international press very carefully�and they pay special attention to Ware's own work. For as long as he keeps on as a reporter, his life depends on the insurgents' continued approval of his work. They know that. Ware knows it. And Ware's readers know it, too.

In other words, Ware has entered into a contract with his hosts. You agree to spare my life, and to keep giving me access to exciting material. In return, I agree to write reports that portray you in favorable terms. Terms that make you look good even after my sophisticated readers have taken my precarious situation into account.

Why is Ware so solicitous of the jihadis? Out of admiration for Zarqawi? Of course not. Instead, it�s the result of a comprehensive and well-thought-out jihadi media policy. The insurgents have succeeded in sculpting the media battle space through the kidnap and execution of journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports 67 journalists killed in Iraq, of whom 34 were murdered (by insurgents, one can reasonably assume). The choice: stay in your hotel, or be in constant fear of kidnapping and execution -- or play by our rules.

Well and good for Michael Ware: he�s shown that he�s a Player.

But what about the next ugly insurgency? The one that's going to start a few years from now, in some country with a history of restiveness and grievances that are already making it into the International Roundup, now and then. The one whose future rebel leaders are, right now, studying history as they ponder strategy and prepare for their day. They are already reading Sun Tzu and Mao, of course. And General Giap, and the Marines' Small Wars Handbook.

And, when it comes to formulating relationships with the press, they'll read Michael Ware's dispatches in Time, and the Hewitt interview, with great care and with rising interest. There are some tremendous pointers on how to handle reporters. How to shape the battlefield. What sacrifices must be made to properly run the propaganda war--and who is to be selected to make them, in the service of the Cause.

The mainstream media's sachems haven't figured this out quite yet. Here is Tara Sonenshine (formerly an editor at Newsweek and a producer at Nightline, now at Georgetown U.) in a recent Baltimore Sun Op-Ed:

Most troubling about these reports from the war zone is the chilling effect that conditions in Iraq are beginning to have on journalists trying to bring us the story. The inability to move freely about Iraqi cities has constrained the ability of reporters to find out what is going on beyond the perimeters of their bureaus. The growing security risks have dissuaded some reporters from rotating into Iraq and left others confined to hotel rooms and offices.

I've bolded the author's passive constructions. Who is responsible for these troubling, chilling, confining problems? Perhaps this is meant as coded blame for the Coalition. More likely, Sonenshine is describing the weather--another one of those things beyond anybody's direct control. Not a hint to the reader that these are the intentional results of a deliberate policy of targeting reporters.

In contrast to Sonenshine, Michael Ware has few illusions. Yet the impact of Ware's actions on the lives of reporters working on this and future conflicts doesn�t seem to trouble him. Nor does the encouragement his approach gives to presenting news in accordance with the dictates of one side�s storyboard.

I�ll close with a relevant quote:

Don't forget also that this is an information war. This is a propaganda war. This war, as, you know, insurgents said way back in 2003, isn't going to be won on the battlefield. It's going to be won on the air waves. It turns out it's going to be won or lost on the internet. So these things become critically important.

The speaker? Mike Ware.

UPDATE 13 April 5:10 PM -- The combination of reporters' deals with the devil and the selective vision typified by Georgetown's Sonenshine has ignited another controversy. See The Belmont Club's Corrupting Our Sight 2 for a discussion of the recently-awarded Pulitzer Prizes in photojournalism.

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I've talked in the past about 'wicked' problems - problems that are not readily reducible to formulas, which cannot be 'rationalized' in the traditional sense (although recent advanced in agent-based modelling are actually beginning to put a net over them) and which we have to conceive of in different ways than the formal, rational, deterministic ones we use in discussion, planning, and often in politics.

The result of living outside those rational models (which we do, whether we admit it or not) is that we spend a lot of time not knowing how we're doing.

Prince Hal stated it best:

KING HENRY V

I tell thee truly, herald, I know not if the day be ours or no;
For yet a many of your horsemen peer
And gallop o'er the field.

MONTJOY

The day is yours.

KING HENRY V

Praised be God, and not our strength, for it! What is this castle call'd that stands hard by?

MONTJOY

They call it Agincourt.

When you don't know if you are winning or losing, when the decision is outside rational calculation, how do you decide what to do? Combat is obviously the extreme case, but it serves as an example of anything that must be done that is difficult and where the outcomes are unknowable. You act on faith, and prejudice, and to a lesser extent, on fear.

You have faith in yourself and those with whom you are struggling. You are prejudiced, because you believe that your succeeding - Henry and the English winning at Agincourt - is better than your failing. And you are afraid, both of the real losses that will come if you lose, but of the loss of reputation, of esteem, of the regard of trust of your fellows. back to Henry:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhood's cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

In early warfare (and in modern as well) one of the roles of the leader is to inspire the troops with speech before the battle. Thucydides is full of these speeches:

Remembering this, the old must equal their ancient exploits, and the young, the sons of the heroes of that time, must endeavour not to disgrace their native valour; and trusting in the help of the god whose temple has been sacrilegiously fortified, and in the victims which in our sacrifices have proved propitious, we must march against the enemy, and teach him that he must go and get what he wants by attacking someone who will not resist him, but that men whose glory it is to be always ready to give battle for the liberty of their own country, and never unjustly to enslave that of others, will not let him go without a struggle.

These speeches amplify the faith, prejudice, and fear of those who listen to them. Is that a reprehensible thing? To us, those three words are themselves pejorative.

The arguments that support them we call propaganda, which is itself a significantly pejorative term today.

But should it be? And if it is, what does that mean in terms of how we function as a society?

The LA Times today had an article about the new film on Flight 93, which cast a fascinating light on the issue. The article, "Is America ready for movies about 9/11?" talks about films as propaganda:

While some might think Hollywood is moving too quickly, history suggests otherwise. Within five months of the Pearl Harbor attack, Republic Pictures had cranked out "Remember Pearl Harbor," the first in a series of Hollywood films that sought to depict the war and rally the American spirit.

"The nation was totally mobilized for war," said Robert Sklar, a cinema studies professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, who watched from the roof of his apartment building as the twin towers fell. "There was an Office of War Information that had some direct control over Hollywood, and there was the Army Signal Corps producing documentaries. People like Frank Capra and John Ford and John Huston went into the military and made films."

Some films were overt propaganda; others were more subtle.

"There was a string back then about the bombing of Pearl Harbor and kind of holy crusade that came after that," said Richard Jewell, a professor in USC's School of Cinema-Television. "There were a lot of movies made during that time period that dealt with events in the war that weren't that great for the U.S. but that were used for propaganda to show how brave our people were even when they lost battles, like Bataan and Wake Island."

Only after the war was over did movies take a less one-dimensional view.

More nuanced movies began coming out shortly after the war's end, such as "The Best Years of Our Lives" in 1946, about soldiers trying to resume their prewar existences, up through "The Men" in 1950, about wounded soldiers trying to recover physically and emotionally in a veterans' hospital.

"Relatively soon after World War II, we were able to show the soldiers in a much more complex light as opposed to having them be unambiguously heroic," Rodman said. "We could show the cost of the war on our soldiers, which is something we could not have done during the war."

The Korean War similarly gave rise to "The Steel Helmet" in 1951, a grunt's view of the war zone, but "MASH" didn't materialize until 1970 � and though set in a Korean War mobile medical unit, the movie was generally viewed as a Vietnam allegory. A year after the 1975 fall of Saigon, more direct treatments came out, such as "Taxi Driver" in 1976, which helped establish the now-familiar character of the troubled Vietnam veteran; "The Deer Hunter" and "Coming Home" in 1978, followed by "Apocalypse Now" in 1979.

Between Korea and Vietnam, the role of the filmmaker moved from the propagandist to the critic, and our national hero moved from John Wayne to Travis Bickle.

The problem, of course, is that without the self-confidence of faith - and yes, without prejudice and fear - it's probably very hard to fight a war. To many, that's a feature, not a bug, I get it. But...

...let's put war aside for a moment and ask ourselves how it is that we can function as a society without a certain kind of faith (I'm not suggesting religious faith, but rather the kind of faith that Schaar talks about:

"To be a patriot is to have a patrimony; or, perhaps more accurately, the patriot is one who is grateful for a legacy and recognizes that the legacy makes him a debtor. There is a whole way of being in the world, captured best by the word reverence, which defines life by its debts; one is what one owes, what one acknowledges as a rightful debt or obligation. The patriot moves within that mentality. The gift of land, people, language, gods memories, and customs, which is the patrimony of the patriot, defines what he or she is. Patrimony is mixed with person; the two are barely separable. The very tone and rhythm of a life, the shapes of perception, the texture of its homes and fears come from membership in a territorially rooted group. The conscious patriot is one who feels deeply indebted for these gifts, grateful to the people and places through which they come, and determined to defend the legacy against enemies and pass it unspoiled to those who will come after.

But such primary experiences are nearly inaccessible to us. We are not taught to define our lives by our debts and legacies, but by our rights and opportunities. Robert Frost's stark line, "This land was ours, before we were the land's." condenses the whole story of American patriotism. We do not and cannot love the land the way the Greek and Navaho loved theirs. The graves of some of our ancestors are here, to be sure, but most of us would be hard pressed to find them: name and locate the graves of your great-grandparents."

"But if instinctive patriotism and the patriotism of the city cannot be ours, what can be? Is there a type of patriotism peculiarly American: if so, is it anything more than patriotism's violent relative nationalism?

Abraham Lincoln, the supreme authority on this subject, thought there was a patriotism unique to America. Americans, a motley gathering of various races and cultures, were bonded together not by blood or religion, not by tradition or territory, not by the calls and traditions of a city, but by a political idea. We are a nation formed by a covenant, by dedication to a set of principles, and by an exchange of promises to uphold and advance certain commitments among ourselves and throughout the world. Those principles and commitments are the core of American identity, the soul of the body politic. They make the American nation unique, and uniquely valuable among and to the other nations. But the other side of this conception contains a warning very like the warnings spoken by the prophets to Israel: if we fail in our promises to each other, and lose the principles of the covenant, then we lose everything, for they are we."

Schaar's claim is made against the kind of reflexive and abstract cosmopolitanism that Chris Bertram talks about today:

I recently wrote a review of a couple of books on global justice, one of which expended a great deal of effort in explaining how a liberal cosmopolitanism could be consistently combined with a reasonable patriotism. For some reason, the concern to combine these positions seems to especially concern liberal Americans who want be good patriots and think of themselves as endorsing universal values at one and the same time. Well I guess I agree about this far: that, within the limits justice allows, one both may feel an affection for one�s country and compatriots and promote the good of that nation and community, just as one can legitimately promote the good of one�s family and friends within the bounds set by justice.

To Bertram, patriotism is a kind of affection; like the affection one might have for a sports team or a television show (yes, I'm being a bit dismissive, but affection is itself a dismissive term). Schaar (and I) would disagree.

To Bertram and others, the intention is to reclaim the sphere of the political from the sphere of belief; to create an abstract, Rawlsian, rules-based justice and then expect that the result will be something other than the Panopticon.

I'll switch to a scene from Yankee Doodle Dandy (released in 1942):

President: I'm sorry I missed the opening of your show. George: Maybe it was just as well.
President: Don't worry about it. We understand each other perfectly...The Herald Tribune says that you make a better president in I'd Rather Be Right than I am.
George: Don't forget, that's a Republican newspaper.
President: I can remember you and your family very well - the Four Cohans.
George: Do you really, Mr. President? That was a long time ago.
President: Yes, it was while I was attending school near Boston.
George: (smiling to himself) I was a pretty cocky kid in those days - a pretty cocky kid. A regular Yankee Doodle Dandy, always carrying a flag in a parade or following one.
President: I hope you haven't outgrown the habit.
George: Not a chance.
President: Well that's one thing I've always admired about you Irish-Americans. You carry your love of country like a flag, right out in the open. It's a great quality.
George: I inherited that - I got that from my father. He ran away to the Civil War when he was thirteen - the proudest kid in the whole state of Massachusetts.
President: So you've spent your life telling the other forty-seven states what a great country it is.
George: Well, I never thought of it just that way before, but I guess that's about the size of it. And I lost no time either. It started with a very funny incident about sixty years ago...

So here's the question. Could we have won World War II without George M. Cohan, Frank Capra, and Michael Curtiz? Without Rick's Cafe Americain? How would history have been different if M.A.S.H had been released in 1952?

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I will admit that I was duped by Mark Buehner's recent satire, How I Learned to Stop Worrying about Mullahs and Embrace The Bomb. I see that it was satire in hindsight, and I feel sheepish in admitting I was so easily deceived. But the large wave that is barreling down upon us at the moment disarmed me from parodic sensitivity. Mr. Buehner's satire was laden with factual, convincing sources. It felt like yelling 'fire' in a theater to me because the nuclear scenarios he laid out are credible in so many minds. We live in a world on edge.

I believe we are already at a historical threshold. The first indication is utter confusion. The secular world's response to Shi'a Islam's nuclear ambition is confused, on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific. There really is no cogent consensus on what to do, because Iran's challenge is a square peg that will not fit in our round hole. Responsive, credible policy is paralyzed from transnational organizations down to national governments because no political strategy promises a clear solution.

It is clear that the crisis is upon us and all roads lead to a very different world. We may not realize it, but we are not really talking about a country that is seeking nuclear arms. We are talking about a fundamentalist, ancient Islamic cult seeking nuclear arms as its ultimate sacrament. While it is necessary for a 'country' called 'Iran' to exercise its sovereignty in order to achieve the making of nuclear weapons, once achieved those weapons will respect no borders. They are being constructed to defy and nullify sovereign borders as we know them. Shi'a's nukes will proliferate like smoke in the wind; their very being is meant to unravel our world, which we have slowly conceived over centuries, at the expense of the Mullahs' world.

The headlines in our papers betray our fundamental misunderstanding of the crisis, referring to the 'Iranian nuclear program,' presuming that this is an entirely Westphalian affair. Therein lies the guise -- the mask about to be lowered. We only see things through the prism of our own perspective, which moves the crisis into high gear. To help clarify what is happening, swap 'Iran' for 'Hezbollah' and ''President Ahmadinejad' for 'Sheik Hassan Nasrallah' in the headlines about the nuclear crisis. Here's a few examples culled from the presses, so altered:

Germany, IAEA to Discuss Hezbollah Nuclear Activities

Russia Opposes Issuing Hezbollah an "Ultimatum" on its Nuclear Program

Hezbollah to Go Nuclear This Year, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah Says

UN Inspectors to Check Up on Hezbollah Nuclear Program

Looks pretty bad, doesn't it? Cultists dedicated to our destruction, answerable to no one but their vengeful god, playing with nukes? To not consider Hezbollah and Persian Shi'a as morally and strategically interchangeable is to tragically misinterpret the hallmark of our time.

A religious suicide cult funded by billions of our petrodollars obtaining weapons of mass destruction has no historical precedent. None. The rules of engagement will be completely upended. Familiar metaphors of superpower warring will be unworkable and irrelevant. Watching sovereign entities flail and dither like paper dolls before their ultimate post-sovereign challenger indicates that the threshold is beneath our feet, if we care to look down.

This is no satire. These are the stakes in 2006.

If Shi'a's radical mullahs manage to proliferate their nukes like smoke through their post-sovereign proxies, certain as-yet-to-be-named cities will unexpectedly fall through trapdoors. No one will lay claim to the atrocities. It need only happen once. If London, or Paris, or New York, or Detroit, or even Fresno falls into oblivion, our well-oiled socioeconomic global merry-go-round stops. Indefinitely. Because of the threat of mass destruction, all borders will be shut. All ports closed. All shipping stopped. Air travel halted. Since the very infrastructure of modern commerce will be the delivery device for Shi'a's nukes, that infrastructure will be indefinitely frozen solid. It won't be an option. There won't be a debate.

If the 'West' manages enough moxy to attempt a preemption of Shi'a Persia, the result will be different than their striking first, but only by degrees. The rubicon will have been crossed. The fact is, we don't know if the mullahs have nukes at this point. It is plausible to suppose that they do. It would be reckless to presume otherwise. We can nuke their nukes with all the gusto we have and not come out of it thinking that we have fully abated the threat of rogue nuclear strikes. Striking first wounds radical Shi'a, but doesn't kill it. And like a wounded bear, it will chase off into the woods for a while, only to come back with a bloody vengeance. Striking first also puts aside the idea of sovereignty, if only for self defense. The world will take that baton and run with it.

What struck me about Mr. Buehner's piece was how his idea of the absurd came off as plausible, depending on one's view of the threat's enormity. And even then, the most aggressive preemptive strike against Persian Shi'a still leaves us stranded between the world that we know -- with largely open borders that facilitate free trade and expansive prosperity -- and the next world, where borders are defined by padlocks, moats and walls, not openness -- just like the good old days of sovereignty, when borders meant 'stop, go no further.' In a world of nuclear trapdoors, there will be a lock-down of borders to secure their inviolability. Globalism, transnationalism and our jet-setting postmodern lifestyle presume that we can have our cake and eat it too: National borders exist to contain political, social and economic zones while cultures, religions and civilizations are free to transgress sovereignty ad infinitum. That wonderfully open-minded and trusting view of the world is on the chopping block, whether we attack first or Shi'a attacks first.

As far as whether or not to strike first or wait to be struck, I guess I am in the 'Strike First' camp. Spin the bottle -- better to take the initiative than sit around and wait for the enemy's blow. But I am not deluded in thinking that our marvelously open world will survive this crisis unchanged. What we have now is historically unprecedented, and incredibly fragile. We hang by a thread.

After the 3/11 Madrid bombings, Lewis �Atiyyatullah, claiming to represent al-Qaeda, said:

The international system built-up by the West since the Treaty of Westphalia will collapse; and a new international system will rise under the leadership of a mighty Islamic state.

Al Qaeda is Sunni, not Shi'a, but that may be a difference that will be temporarily patched-up to achieve a common, pan-Islamist goal. Mr. �Atiyyatullah is right. Our open system is not impervious. It is, in fact, quite pervious. How we engage being in a closed world will be most telling to our character as free people.

I will end this dour essay on an optimistic note. If the world becomes closed in the name of self-preservation, some countries will fare better than others in isolation. Though all modern countries are thoroughly ensnared in global economics, if ripped away, some countries have enough national will, freedom, natural resources and innovative citizens to positively reinvent themselves in a closed planet. I think the United States can weather isolation better than most countries, should isolation be foisted upon us.

I am not suggesting isolation as some kind of regressive policy option that we can choose; I am suggesting that it might be the only option left, whoever pulls the nuclear trigger. It will be incredibly painful to endure, but perhaps out of the transition we will reclaim our sense of self-worth. Our history of independence is still longer than our history of dependence. Out of all the uncertainty of this time, relying on our indomitable free spirit is the one possible future I can still imagine.

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�The use of large quantities of energy is central to the functioning of an advanced economy. There are severe limits to energy conservation even in the long run. Global economic growth will bring about significant increases in primary energy demand.

� Energy resources are fungible, especially among the fossil fuels. For example, coal can be converted into liquid fuels such as gasoline at low cost. So, too, can other, nonconventional fossil fuels like oil sands and shale and potentially the methane hydrates that are abundant on the sea floor. Noncarbon energy sources such as nuclear and solar energy could each provide a substantial fraction of the world�s long-term energy needs, but both present problems in the short term.

�There are no serious long-term (century-scale) shortages of fossil fuel supply once the interconvertibility of oil and other fossil fuels is taken into account. Even the arrival of �peak oil��the point at which oil production reaches a maximum�would not mean a global energy shortage at today�s prices. However, the transition from oil to other sources of liquid fuel will require a significant lead time, and engineering that transition should be part of public policy.

�The greater constraints are likely to emerge from environmental concerns, especially the rising concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) acting as a greenhouse gas. Carbon emissions will have to be mitigated, because the business-as-usual course is fraught with grave global risks. The limits on the global oil supply will not reduce the risks from CO2, since coal and other low-cost fossil fuels will in any event substitute for declining supplies of petroleum and natural gas, and their CO2 emissions will be larger, not smaller.

�Realistic technologies that can mitigate the carbon challenge up to the middle of this century at modest cost are nearly ready for application. The centerpiece of such a strategy will most likely be carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) at power plants and other large industrial units such as steel and cement factories. The cost of implementing these technologies on a large scale is likely to be below 1 percent of gross world product if they are carried out with a long lead time. In addition to CCS, conversion of the vehicle fleet to hybrid or other lower-carbon technologies is very likely to be cost effective and might well pay for itself...

They discuss the century-long time scale as well, with a healthy optimism about our ability to develop and deploy advanced zero-carbon technologies. The paper is comprehensive and I don't really disagree with anything they say so far (I haven't gotten to the policy recommendations yet, of course).

However, I think that they may be missing a significant part of the picture. The 'energy problem' stands not on just two, but three legs - not just environmental damage and limited resources, but security drives much of the current concern, and is likely be an increasingly significant motivating force behind our search for energy alternatives over the next few decades. And not just 'security' in the limited sense of 'reducing our dependence on oil imports from the Middle East', but in the broader sense of the decentralized, resilient energy system envisioned by John Robb in his fascinating, must-read article in Fast Company, "Security: Power to the People". I've excerpted only the relevant grafs - read the whole piece for the rest of Robb's big picture:

We have entered the age of the faceless, agile enemy. From London to Madrid and Nigeria to Russia, stateless terrorist groups have emerged to score blow after blow against us. Driven by cultural fragmentation, schooled in the most sophisticated technologies, and fueled by transnational crime, these groups are forcing corporations and individuals to develop new ways of defending themselves. The end result of this struggle will be a new, more resilient approach to national security, one built not around the state but around private citizens and companies. That new system will change how we live and work--for the better, in many ways--but the road getting there may seem long at times...

The terrorists have developed the ability to fight nation-states strategically--without weapons of mass destruction. This new method is called "systems disruption," a simple way of attacking the critical networks (electricity, oil, gas, water, communications, and transportation) that underpin modern life. Such disruptions are designed to erode the target state's legitimacy, to drive it to failure by keeping it from providing the services it must deliver in order to command the allegiance of its citizens. Over the past two years, attacks on the oil and electricity networks in Iraq have reduced and held delivery of these critical services below prewar levels, with a disastrous effect on the country, its people, and its economy...

The strikes of the future will be strategic, pinpointing the systems we rely on, and they will leave entire sections of the country without energy and communications for protracted periods. But the frustration and economic pain that result will have a curious side effect: They will spur development of an entirely new, decentralized security system, one that devolves power and responsibility to a mix of private companies, individuals, and local governments...

Cities, most acutely affected by the new disruptions, will move fastest to become self-reliant, drawing from a wellspring of new ideas the market will put forward. These will range from building-based solar systems from firms such as Energy Innovations to privatized disaster and counterterrorist responses...

By 2016, we may see the trials of the previous decade as progress in disguise. The grassroots security effort will do more than just insulate our gas lines and high schools. It will also spur positive social change: So-called green systems will quickly shed their tree-hugger status and be seen as vital components of our economic and personal security.

Insert whatever standard disclaimers you want about buying into Robb's Global Guerrillas framework wholesale - it's a potent work of ongoing futurism that any serious attempt at prognostication ignores at its peril. The Engineer-Poet has touched on this subject before in the context of economic crises and natural disasters in his post from last October, "Alternative Energy is Civil Defense," and his points are at least as relevant to the threat of terrorists employing systems disruption techniques against our energy infrastructure.

Security concerns can't be our sole consideration as we work to evolve our energy systems - continued economic growth (globally, not just in the US) is obviously our top priority for the forseeable future, and environmental issues will continue to shape the market. But the security benefits from more robust, decentralized energy systems should be valued when we consider the costs and benefits of various alternatives - preferably before, but most certainly after the US gets hit with its first systems disruption attack. The energy crisis of the '70s provoked by the Arab oil embargo spurred enormous changes to the functioning of global energy markets, creating a much more flexible and efficient system for trading oil and gas that completely blunted the impact of the 'oil weapon' within a decade; I think we'll see even deeper and more obvious changes to energy markets and technologies in the coming decades as a result of these new threats. Stay tuned, and keep watching this space - we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming next month.

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