Dave Schuler in post #66 of the original thread (link) said: "As my contribution to the analogy I'd like to suggest that the "drop-dead" date—the last point at which the fire ant hills were confined to a small area—was in 1979. We don't have that option any more."

I agree we don't have that option any more.

The date 1979 (indicating the Iranian Revolution of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini) was well chosen, but some other date such as 1902 (Ibn Saud's seizure of Riyadh) might be proposed. Maybe Pandora's box was already open, and 1979 was only when something big enough came out that some people noticed it. It's moot now. Clearly after 1979 there was a militant Muslim theocracy inspiring Muslim militants throughout the world. From the 1980s on, there was no option to stamp out modern militant Islam before it really grew dangerous.

From the rise of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on, we were in for a long fight, for all the marbles, with a foe that loves Allah and despises us and all our most basic rules of international behaviour, such as the immunity of embassies.

A regime calling to the Muslim faithful throughout the world in the name of their sacred texts and values and institutionally committed the realisation of the Ayatollah's famous 1980 declaration ("Our struggle is not about land or water. . . It is about bringing, by force if necessary, the whole of mankind onto the right path.") meant that sooner or later our options would reduce to either beating those answering the ancient call to enforce Muslim supremacy or else surrendering to them.

It also mean that the unity of the Muslim nation - devoutly desired by faithful Muslims throughout the world - would be available only by taking one of two options and excluding the other.

If militant Muslims were declared apostates, then Islam could be at peace with the West indefinitely, though not with the heretics. There is little point in discussing whether that option ever could have been taken. Historically, there was never so much as a twitch in that direction, and Osama Bin Laden remains a Muslim to this day, as neither his calls for the slaughter of infidel civilians or any other atrocious doctrine he has propounded contradicts the essential articles of Islam.

The other option of course was to accept that the range of Muslim opinions legitimately includes those inimical to the independence, dignity and safety of non-Muslim peoples. This is the road that Islam is on now, whether you think that it was ever on some other road or not.

Example:

Sheik Al Hilaly is the senior imam of the Lakemba mosque (in Sydney, Australia). He came to Australia in 1982 on a tourist visa which he overstayed, and was untouchable because the Muslim community and leftist politicians pandering to it protected him. Faced with the Sydney Muslim community and political pressure, the law gave way, and he enjoys Australian citizenship. He has been a dangerous influence ever since, but he remains untouchable, because the moderate mass of Muslims still support him. Other authorities reject his self-given title of Grand Mufti of Australia (as they are almost obliged to unless they want to bow down and obey him), but he remains "in the family."

In February 1999 Hilaly was arrested in Egypt, after allegedly paying $A192,000 to buy pharaonic antiquities from a smuggling ring. He was charged with smuggling antiquities." (Wikipedia (link)) He got away with it, basically by returning to Australia, out of the reach of Egyptian prosecutors appealing an invalidation of his conviction. (I do not believe he is innocent, because of his lifetime of dishonesty and flouting the law.) In my eyes, this affair makes him a man of the foulest character, a trader in desecration, one step - if that - above a tomb-robber ... but he is still good enough for the masses of moderate Muslims to support sufficiently to render him untouchable.

Hilaly supports the 11 September, 2001 attacks, calling them "God's work," and in 1994 in Lebanon, not thinking that his words would be translated and get back to Australia, he preached in favour of suicide bombing against Israel. He is also a notorious Jew-hater and promoter of conspiracy theories. ("The Jews try to control the world through sex, then sexual perversion, then the promotion of espionage, treason, and economic hoarding.")

Nevertheless the support of the large mass of moderate Muslims keeps him not only safe but in authority. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) has the power to remove him from his honorary position, but there isn't the slightest chance of them doing so.

There are many other examples of men of this type, such as Muqtada as-Sadr (spiritual leader of the Mahdi Army), who continue to enjoy the protection of membership in the Muslim community even while they are at war with the West. Hilaly is just the one that gets my goat, because he lives in my home town, and he's one step up - if that - from tomb robbery, and he's as vicious a hypocrite and serial liar you could wish to avoid.

Giving moderate Muslim what they want implies increasing insecurity for the kinds of people who are on Hilaly's hate list, which is long.

As a community that supports and empowers men like Sheik Al Hilaly expands, those hated by such men - like Jews, homosexuals, Aussie girls wearing indecently brief bikinis, and surfers who refuse to be driven from their beaches by Muslim toughs - have to adapt to the shadow of fear, that is to not being really free, or they have to accept that in the long run they do indeed have to move away from the places where they have been accustomed to live and congregate. (Or of course convert to Islam.)

I believe that a policy of seeking peace through alliance with moderate Islam, which means accepting its terms, which means accepting the immunity of men like Hilaly and the driving off of everybody from Sydney surfies to Animist Black Africans if they are inclined to fight for their turf against the encroaching domination of Islam, is a flawed one.

By one-sided executive action (whether on a grand military scale or in local policing), by systematically refusing to notice Muslim aggression but readily damning anti-Muslim resistance as racist and bigoted, and by pervasively refusing to help the international victims of jihad fight and win for fear of our looking anti-Muslim (which we will have to be, for real, if we want to stay free), we purchase only a temporary illusion of peace, and that at a high price.

When you accept a tacit rule that only what moderate Muslims don't think is wildly over the odds can be done, when you enforce the peace only by fighting those so outrageous that moderate Muslims broadly reject them, you empower men like Hilaly, who make an art form of promoting dangerous hatreds while keeping their own hands (or in Abu Hamza al-Masri's case hooks) just clean enough to avoid going to prison for incitement to murder.

By letting aggressive, ambitious and unscrupulous me get away with a lot, year after year, you invite them to find out how much more they might be able to get away with.

And at the same time, you effectively say that virtually any non-Muslim target can be hit but hardly any Muslim target can be hit, because Islam is not neutral between itself, the "house of peace" and the non-Muslim world, the "house of war".

This makes an unstable situation - with militant Islam on the march globally - even less stable, even more dynamic, while forfeiting any potential trust from those you have tacitly condemned, ignored and effectively sold out for oil and the temporary illusion of peace. (Of course, in a lot of cases no trust or good will would have been on offer under any circumstances. All the world is not sweet and lovely except for the Muslim bits.)

Maybe this is the best we can do. But I'd hate to think our situation is so bad that this is the best we can come up with as a strategy. And at least the down-side should be noted.

What we do about this, basically, is seek (or seek to manufacture) allies in the Muslim world. These allies by and large are still committed to our subjugation, but they believe in tactics that in the short term are less offensive to us...We haven't asked ourselves how often empowering your enemies in the hope that they will then voluntarily reform themselves so as not to beat you and so as not to continue successfully to extract concessions from you works, historically.

The average five year old would realize that this is a stupid strategy. As a matter of fact, the stupidity of this 'strategy' is unmatched in history. We're reasonably educated, we're intelligent enough to feed and clothe ourselves - so, why are we doing this? It can't all be blamed on political correctness.

Carter had decided to support Khomeini in the context of the so-called "Green Belt" strategy developed by National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. That strategy was based on the assumption that the United States and its allies were unable to contain the Soviet Union, then expanding its zone of influence into Africa, the Indian Ocean region and, through left-leaning regimes, in Latin America. To counter that expanding threat, Brzezinski envisaged the creation of a string of Islamic allies that, for religious and political reasons, would prefer the United States against the "godless" Soviet empire...

...The second stage in Brzezinski's grand strategy was to incite the Muslim peoples of the Soviet Union to revolt against Moscow and thus frustrate its global schemes.The second stage in Brzezinski's grand strategy was to incite the Muslim peoples of the Soviet Union to revolt against Moscow and thus frustrate its global schemes.

We're still supporting Islamist allies in the hope that we can use them to intimidate the commies. We think we're using them, but we're wrong - they're using us. They've learned our divide-and-conquer routine pretty well, and they're using it against us. Whenever we annoy the Saudis, they go running to the Russians or the Chinese. Our Sudanese allies in the war against terrorism use the Chinese as a threat. Iran uses Russia.

Brzezinski's grand strategy has allowed a bunch of zealots, terrorist/extortionists and second-rate crooks to gain more money and power than they ever dreamed. There is no reason to tolerate these militarily weak enemies or their paramilitary terrorist forces. They're not helping us fight the commies - and by the way, why are we still fighting commies? Did commies slaughter Americans on American soil in an unprovoked act of war? No, our Saudi allies did. Did commies pay for the attacks? No, our allies in the UAE, the KSA and Saudi Arabia did. And the Iranians did too. But if we strike at Iran, we'll make the Russians mad. Divide and conquer.

We tolerate the Islamists because we think we need them to 'protect' us from the commies and the terrorists. We fail to realize that they're inciting our feud with Russia and China. They're also supporting the terrorists. Without everyone's Islamist 'allies' terrorism wouldn't thrive, it would wither.

oops..that should be "our allies in the UAE and Saudi Arabia did."

"Islam," like "Christianity," isn't one movement or community, but many. The Sunni/Shi'ia distinction is just one of many doctrinal, ideological, and cultural fractures within dar al-Islam.

Those of us on the outside (i.e. infidels) might hope that such diversity would counteract the forces outlined by David Blue in this post. And it does, at the margins: witness the tangled relationships between AQIZ/Zarqawi, al-Sadr, and the Iranian government factions in the war in Iraq. But notice, as well, that these "adversaries" have managed a decent amount of cooperation when it comes to fighting those they see as Crusaders.

The real meaning of the deep schisms within Islam is that--as with Christianity--Millennial dreams of a Unified and Universal Faith are in the end delusional.

If the jihadi fantasies of The West as Paper Tiger proved correct, and if the Koran-promised triumph of the legions of the Prophet did come to pass -- then the current struggles between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb would pale in comparison to the (in-house) Wars Among the Heretics that would surely follow.

I chose the Iranian Revolution and the attendant holding of American diplomats as hostages in 1979 deliberately, David, and I'm sticking to it.

The Arab-Israeli wars of the preceding years had demonstrated that the Islamists or their secular variants, the Pan-Arabists, would not achieve their ends by head-on military means (quite the opposite). The highjackings and, most importantly, the terrorist attack at the Munich Olympic Games demonstrated that the West was vulnerable to terrorism on its own soil.

The founding of OPEC and the mid-70's oil embargo demonstrated that the West was vulnerable economically, too. It also provided the Gulf States with a significant amount of additional cash, some of which was used to finance terrorism.

Finally, toppling of the Shah and the subsequent hostage crisis provided Islamist terrorism with a permanent state sponsor that was economically too significant to take down and a demonstration of Western impotence. In my view it put the last pieces into place.

1) Demonstration of vulnerability (feasibility)
2) Financing (business plan)
3) Permanent base immune from attack (location)
4) Impotence (pilot successful!)

After that there was no stopping the spread.

I agree, however, that the 1902 events are also fundamental building blocks. That yoked the Muslim holy places to the oil-producing areas in the north-east of the now-kingdom.

Thanks, Mary. I had forgotten Zbigniew Brzezinski, that "genius".

His book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives is not good. Even for when it came out, it was amazing how much the author had not learned from time.

It's especially bad if you're Australian - if I remember rightly, he has us all but married off to Muslim Indonesia, which we should be working with to erect some sort of barrier against Chinese influence. Not exactly. The one good thing Indonesia does for Australia is keep us solidly allied to America - which is to our benefit anyway - by reminding us from time to time how badly we don't want to be friendless in a world where our Northern neighbours vastly exceeds us in population and will forever hate us because they are Muslim and we remain mostly Christian. Gee, where can we find a Christian-friendly country that still has a strong interest in and a naval presence in the Pacific... ?

It's the kind of book that's hard to read and even harder to remember, not because of poor expression - I give Zbigniew Brzezinski this, he is a master of plain English prose - but because your mind keeps sliding off the sheer unreality of what he's saying.

Mary, your illustration of the strategic emptiness of seeing "moderate" Islam (defined as any Islam that is not visibly cutting your throat at that exact moment) as a critical strategic ally far surpasses in scope (and idiocy - not your fault) my petty examples.

But I think even my petty examples suffice to show the incoherence of using moderate Muslim allies to maintain a mere appearance of stability, at the cost of letting them do things that relentlessly increase the real instability that has to be covered up.

Finally, toppling of the Shah and the subsequent hostage crisis provided Islamist terrorism with a permanent state sponsor that was economically too significant to take down and a demonstration of Western impotence. In my view it put the last pieces into place.

Our 'impotence' was part of Brzezinski's grand strategy. As a result, striking at Iran without also hitting our Islamist allies won't solve anything. The problem isn't with Iran, it's with ourselves. We couldn't stop the spread of Islamist extremism because we didn't want to. In many ways we've encouraged it.

We can't win the war on terrorism until we abandon Brzezinski's grand 'headless chicken' strategy. We have to stop allying with our enemies.

Boxing Alcibiades has an interesting post in the original thread that suggests a useful fire ant counter-pattern from personal experience:

"Instead, rather than face them in their strengths, you attack their economy. Anybody with a decent pair of boots can eradicate fire ants at will -- give them a good soccer kick at the height of the day, when it's hottest out.

A real good kick, so that the nest is completely trashed. If you're lucky, eggs are showing now, and the fire ants are going nuts. Walk away and let them.

The next day their nest will be smaller. Kick it again. When they're spending all their energy rebuilding their carefully-engineered nests, rather than gathering food, and the heat is killing them, it's actually pretty easy to wipe them out... without squishing a single ant."

At a lower level, the Cash Flow Jihad against Hamas is a good example of this counterpattern in action. At a more intense level, a "civilization denial" strategy of warfighting that systematically destroyed the economies of states who acted in a hostile manner by dismantling their infrastructure (and keep repeating this indefinitely, while setting out conditions for making it stop) would be a higher-intensity response along those lines.

But I think even my petty examples suffice to show the incoherence of using moderate Muslim allies to maintain a mere appearance of stability, at the cost of letting them do things that relentlessly increase the real instability that has to be covered up.

If Hilaly says that 9/11 was God's work, people would have to be seriously delusional to call him a moderate. But, since our policies are delusional, it's no surprise.

There are some real moderate, liberal muslims (or former Muslims) out there, like Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan and Irshad Manji. One easy way to spot a real moderate Muslim - the fake moderates and the people who appease them immediately denounce them as 'Islamophobes' and 'radicals'. They say that 'Islamophobes' like Manji will never help us win Muslim 'hearts and minds'.

The appeasers alienate the Muslims who are on our side in order to win the hearts and minds of the Muslims who aren't.

Joe,

Consider what will happen when Saudi Arabia collapses and the ensuing wave of refugees collapses all the Gulf oil states except Kuwait (access into Kuwait from SA is too difficult for civilian vehicles).

The U.S. will end up taking control of the oil fields and oil exports from those former states. As John Bradley said, we've had the plans and troops for that ready for more than thirty years.

The Arabs will lose control of their oil income.

"Because, overall, if we said "no, this price is too high" then we'd have to give up our illusion that moderate Islam is our friend, and that would mean having to face fear, and we are all about deferring as long as possible a face-to-face meeting with real fear."

I don't find your case convincing at all. You have leapt from the observation that the West is trying to find some Muslims with whom to build an alliance against the extremists to the conclusion that we do so because we are afraid of... something. What the Muslims will do to us, presumably.

Here's a different account of why we try to find some Muslim countries to build an alliance with: because our alternative is to kill the people of those countries, in very large numbers. We really don't want to do that because we are basically peaceful people. But if we are going to do it, we're going to know for sure that it's absolutely necessary for our own survival, that there is no other way. In order to be as sure as we can of that, we'll try all the other ways first.

Like most readers of this site, I still have hope that we won't have to do anything drastic. But I have no doubt that if it is necessary at some point, we will do it. And that's what all the struggling for another way is about: we have the capacity and the toughness to do something historically deadly. If we didn't have both the capacity and the toughness, we wouldn't be working so hard now to find some other solution.

This is not weakness. It's reluctance. The difference is that reluctance, unlike weakness, can be overcome.

Neville Chamberlain was prime minister of Britain in 1938 because the British people didn't want war. They kept Winston Churchill in their backpocket through the thirties just in case. When it became evident that Hitler wasn't going to leave them alone, war came, Chamberlain left, Churchill took over. This was not a series of accidents. No more is what is happening today a series of accidents.

The situation is somewhat more complicated in this decade because our weapons are more terrible and our enemy is more nebulous. I think that it is because our weapons are more terrible that we tolerate such a loud, adversarial left. But those variables only "tune" our response; they do not determine it. If, in 2008, the war on terror isn't going well (by the standards of ordinary Americans), if ordinary people in the U.S. feel that they and their children are in real danger, they will elect someone President who will do what has to be done. The U.S.A. is a democracy. Willpower moves up from the people, not down from the leader.

Well said, Patrick, well said.

Yes, well said.

Joe: "At a lower level, the Cash Flow Jihad against Hamas is a good example of this counterpattern in action."

Michael Oren describes the opposite approach, for true fire ant enthusiasts only:

In contrast to the more confrontational Eisenhower, Kennedy believed that carrots would prove more effective than sticks in containing Soviet influence in the Middle East and keeping Nasser out of trouble ... Washington offered Nasser semiannual shipments of wheat and other basic commodities, an an incentive "to forsake the microphone for the bulldozer." ... by 1962, [American aid] was feeding 40 percent of Egypt's population. (Six Days of War)

Here's a different account of why we try to find some Muslim countries to build an alliance with: because our alternative is to kill the people of those countries, in very large numbers.

Fanaticism doesn't make you bullet-proof, and getting your head blown off for Allah is never as much fun as the Friday sermons make it out to be. That's the lesson that has to be reinforced.

Glen,

If nuclear proliferation becomes endemic and we are hit at home with a terrorist nuke, we will nuke all the usual suspects with genocidal force.

"If nuclear proliferation becomes endemic and we are hit at home with a terrorist nuke, we will nuke all the usual suspects with genocidal force."

That may be true, although i think it will depend who is in the White House. But most of our discussions revolve around what happens under current circumstances. What is even scarier is what happens in a few years (assuming we avoid a nuclear war that long) when Iran and NK (and god knows who else) have reliable ICBMs capable of destroying Europe and our West Coast respectively. Thats a damn serious problem if these guys are crazy enough to launch a covert brinkmanship game.

For instance, Iran either gives or provides the technology for a nuke to a third party who uses it on an American city. MAD demands we respond at least as strongly against anyone we suspect of being involved (and probably others), but that would provoke the nuclear destructions of yet more Western cities. Not every president would have it in him or her to make that trade- and suddenly we are in a situation that does indeed threaten our hegemony if not our long term survival. I suspect something similar to that is the Mullahs long term gameplan.

Mark,

That was pretty silly. Consider asking how long it would take NK and Iran to develop a significant long-range nuclear strike capability instead of presenting your opinions as fact - the latter adversely effects your credibility.

And consider who Iran would first hit when it has even a fraction of that strategic nuclear delivery capability.

I have no idea what that means. My opinion has nothing to do with it, its a proven fact (not to mention common knowledge) that North Korea is well on its way to fielding an ICBM capable of reaching the West Coast, and that they are sharing technology and selling missiles to the Iranians.

Tom, sadly i think you are projecting. I dont present my conclusions born of my own assumptions as facts- that is apparently your job.

Report From the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a report written in 1999 mind you:

"If the programs were allowed to proceed unfettered, likely developments within the next 10 years will include:

a three state version of the Taep'o-dong 2 ICBM (sometimes identified as the Taep'0-dong 3 in press reports); such a system could deliver 500 to 1000-kg warhead to the distance of 10,000 to 12,000 km (e.g. anywhere within the United States);"

As far as considering who Iran would hit first, you are arguing Iran would be content with hitting Israel, that seems strange considering the have invested hundreds of millions in its Shahab-3 missile program with its 2000 km range. Odd to spend on money on missiles capable of hitting Rome when all of Israel is within 1000km of Iran. I dont mean to present my opinions as fact, but i have a strong suspicion Iran's missile program has bigger plans than Israel in mind.

Mark,

Your strategic nuclear genius is rivalled only by your knowledge of Iranian military prowess.

Decimal points make a difference.

Tom, I admit its so difficult to debate with you using only paltry things like 'evidence' and 'experts' compared to what you know for a fact to be true. When you are done siderailing debate at WOC with this nonsense and start engaging the actual facts, let me know. I wont go so far as to ask you to humor me and read the actual sources (and find my decimals are quite accurate) as I wouldnt want anything to interfere with that smug level of blissful ignorance.

Here's another source saying the same thing:

"The Taep'o-dong-2 (TD-2) is said to be a two or three stage missile. North Korea has given various names to the Taep'o-dong missile, such as No-dong-3, Hwasong (Mars)-2 and Moksong (Jupiter)-2. Over time, the estimated range has grown substantially. It was initially estimated to have a range of 4,000 km, but is currently estimated to have a range of up to 15,000 km. The throw weight is variously estimated as between a few hundred kilograms to 1,000 kg, depending on the range."
...
"On 16 February 2005 Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, U.S. Navy, Director, Defense Intelligence Agency, testified that the " ... Taepo Dong 2 intercontinental ballistic missile may be ready for testing. This missile could deliver a nuclear warhead to parts of the United States in a two stage variant and target all of North America with a three stage variant. " "

Mark,

Tell us how a single 20-kt detonation somewhere in Europe will destroy the continent. Europe is a continent. Israel is a tiny country. You assume nuclear weapons are magic capable of achieving any results you can to allege at the moment.

You have no idea how there can be tradeoffs between missile range and payload. Perhaps the mullahs want a bigger missile than the Shahab-3 to carry a larger payload to Israel, in addiiton to the same payload to a greater range.

You repeatedly demonstrate your ignorance concerning military matters. You repeatedly make wild statements with no basis in fact.

And you don't learn.

Why should anyone bother reading your posts?

Actually, if Iran really wanted the West dead, shouldn't it just launch all its nukes at Russia and China? For say half a dozen nuclear weapons, you could probably get 100+ warheads launched on the West.

A more subtle strategy is simply to close down all the oil production in the ME for a dozen years with a bunch of carefully placed nuclear missiles. Good-bye Western (and Eastern) economies.

Iran recently boasted it now had missiles which could strike Europe. In a way that's a good thing because if Europe will not ally with us for long-range results maybe they will for their own survival. Chirac already said France would be willing to nuke Iran. Those brutal venal self-interested French are good for something.

Tom: The gracious, face saving thing to do here would be to apologize. Right now you are just digging yourself a deeper hole.

Let's go back to what you said when you first challenged Mark:

"That was pretty silly. Consider asking how long it would take NK and Iran to develop a significant long-range nuclear strike capability instead of presenting your opinions as fact - the latter adversely effects your credibility."

You've know been forced to concede that Mark is not presenting his opinions as fact, but his opinion is in fact grounded in considerable evidence. You've also been forced to concede that Iran is already well on its way to developing significant long-range nuclear strike capability. And you've been forced to concede that in the foreseeable future that they'll have significant nuclear strike capability on the North American continent and already possess the potential to strike as far away as Rome.

Now you've been reduced to the following bit of 'silliness':

"Tell us how a single 20-kt detonation somewhere in Europe will destroy the continent. Europe is a continent. Israel is a tiny country. You assume nuclear weapons are magic capable of achieving any results you can to allege at the moment."

Talk about setting up your straw men. Did Mark say anything about single 20kt detonations? This is entirely your own invention. But, even addressing the argument, are you telling me that a Hiroshima scale explosion in Rome, Paris, London, Madrid, San Diego, San Francisco, or Seattle is not something to worry about? I mean, its just a city, not a whole continent. I mean, heck, the atomic bomb only destroyed 90% of Hiroshima so you can't really say that the atomic attack actually destroyed Hiroshima can you? I mean, right, you can't actually invoke the concept of destruction until something is really destroyed, right? And while we are on the subject, a single 20kt explosion wouldn't destroy a tiny nation like Israel.

We've already established in earlier threads that in 3 or 4 years time, assuming its current rate of progress and given its large uranium reserves, that Iran could produce about 20 nuclear weapons a year. Since its quite clear that Mark was not thinking about a single 20kt device, why don't you consider the effect of say 60 or so 200kt devices. Would that qualify as significant nuclear deterence? Under your strict standards, would this qualify as significant destruction?

Now, I know what you are thinking, you are thinking, "He said 'destroy Europe'! He did! He did! He did!" This tedious peice of self-justification via semmantic nit-picking doesn't do you a bit of good, because if you go back and look at your initial responce there isn't the slightest bit of wording in it that would lead Mark or anyone else to believe that the source of your complaint was his overly lax employment of the word 'destroy'. You complained about several things, but this wasn't one of them. Only now - after he's shot down all of your other complaints - are you evolving new complaints with which to justify what is by this point and increasingly naked attack on the person rather than the substance of what he says. You've begun arguing with things he didn't even say, and after declaring victory over this phantom you've created (an argument which by its very existance seems to concede all the earlier points of disagreement), you smugly dismiss your opponnent?

I don't think you are winning nearly as much respect as you think you are.

"And that's not going to happen, because whenever Arab or Muslim militancy is translated into conventional military terms it turns out to be as soft as a rotten peach."

Glen,

Be careful about making that assumption. Your statement is historically accurate over the last 200 years. It is not historically accurate over the vast majority of Islam's 1400-year history.

Islam expanded territorially from the early 7th century until the end of the 17th century. (Defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683). The vast majority of that expansion was through territorial conquest using conventional armies and fleets, not peaceful proselytizing.

Muslim military weakness over the last 200 years is a function of the failure of their societies to modernize as rapidly as Western and East Asian societies. Muslim populations are modernizing now. Technology and organizational methods diffuse ever more quickly as globalization proceeds. Military technology and organizational methods diffuse more quickly than any other knowledge. Assuming that Muslim militaries will continue to be "soft as a rotten peach" indefinitely is dangerous.

This assumption is especially dangerous because it is combined with an unstated assumption that the current overwhelming military superiority of the West, especially the US, will continue indefinitely. We only have a few decades before China becomes a true peer competitor. Balancing against China's rising military power will consume an ever-larger percentage of our military resources. There is a strong probability that China will aid some militant Muslim states as part of an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" strategy. They may eventually extend a nuclear umbrella over Muslim allies in the same way that the Soviet Union did.

It is probable that Muslim societies will not modernize fast enough to close the gap in conventional military power with the West over the next thirty to fifty years ..... on their own. We need to remember that what cannot be developed internally may be purchased or stolen. A great power ally may provide what cannot be purchased or stolen.

Then there is the unpleasant reality that possessing even a few nuclear weapons appears to checkmate our superior military power, both conventional and nuclear. This can change, but until we are willing to use our own nuclear weapons, an Islamic nuclear ace will trump a Western conventional king.

James,

You make some excellent points. And I'd like to continue to address the topic of Muslim armies, the Muslim way of war, and modernization.

Keep in mind that during the time of Islam's great conquests, they were facing armies in parity with themselves: the same weapons and equipment, the same tactics, the same dependence on physical courage and raw determination. When Muslim armies began to lose was when the West's armies developed weapons that could not be maintained by a feudal society, tactics that could not be imitated without trust in subordinates to act in your interests while out of your presence, and doctrines that depended on interlocking fields of fire sufficient to neutralize the vast majority of the physical courage (and strength) previously necessary to prevail in war.

The Muslim armies were not built from a society with the necessary levels of technical skill and interpersonal trust, and even worse were cursed by fatalism, which is a real hindrance to fighting against massed cannon fire. The Muslim armies could not master the new way of war, and thus began their modern reputation of losing every fight against a Western foe, because their society was incapable of generating the necessary pre-requisites in its population, from which the armies were drawn.

And while the Muslim societies are now modernizing in many ways, they are modernizing towards a society that can produce the people needed to fight WWI, or at most WWII. Fighting as America now does requires not just the technology, but an independence of thought and confidence in yourself, your peers and your leaders that comes from our civil society's freedom and openness and questioning and egalitarianism. They have the weapons, but they do not have the people, because their societies cannot produce the ways of thought required for fighting as we now fight. (Very few places on Earth can, in fact, do so, and all of them are our friends and often allies.) Their societies devalue — despise — freedom and openness and questioning and egalitarianism.

So even if modern Muslim armies were to arise, equipped with all the tools at our disposal, they would continue to lose, and lose badly. On the other hand, give our military the enemy's tools, and the enemy our tools, and we would still win, albeit at a higher cost. Moreover, we could regenerate the tools, or better ones, while the enemy is dependent upon more advanced nations to produce their tools. As someone famously observed, men from a society that can build neither airliners nor skyscrapers turned airliners into weapons to attack skyscrapers. In the long term, you must be able to build as well as destroy.

But you are correct, too, that nuclear weapons provides a bit of an ace in the hole. That is why Iran feels the need to have nuclear weapons: it is the only way that they can deter the US and, if Europe becomes resurgent, Europe. It is the only way that they feel safe to continue their campaign to rule the entire Muslim world, and eventually the entire world.

And that is precisely why Iran must be prevented, at any cost short of surrender or the genocide of us or our friends, from obtaining nuclear weapons.

"On the other hand, give our military the enemy's tools, and the enemy our tools, and we would still win, albeit at a higher cost. Moreover, we could regenerate the tools, or better ones, while the enemy is dependent upon more advanced nations to produce their tools. As someone famously observed, men from a society that can build neither airliners nor skyscrapers turned airliners into weapons to attack skyscrapers. In the long term, you must be able to build as well as destroy."

Jeff,

I'm no expert on how Iran, Pakistan, or NK has gotten their nuclear know how, but I have been to a few mathematics and physics courses at the local university lately and the student body was quite ... diverse. Gaining scientific knowlege gleaned from centuries of European discovery is freely available nowadays. Turning those ideas into concrete weaponry is another matter of course.

But the assumption that the 'free minded' states of the West will continue to innovate seems on shaky ground to me. All signs in this country point to one of laziness, sloth, and ignorance. That isn't the environment which produces genius. It seems that the less you have, the more you squeeze out of it. But I live in Michigan, which has the one of the nation's worst unemployment rates and if memory serves correct, is the fattest state in the union. So my perspective may be skewed.

"I live in Michigan, which has the one of the nation's worst unemployment rates and if memory serves correct, is the fattest state in the union. So my perspective may be skewed."

I think so. Jeff is talking about the way organizations function, not engineering skills. Michigan is home to heirarchical manufacturing centers that have lost out to more flexible networked innovating organizations. If you lived in Silicon Valley you probably wouldn't say that.

One reason Don Rumsfeld is essential to the war effort is that he helped change our armed forces from a Detroit auto maker model to more of a open source software start-up model (it's not quite that but it has most of the same assumptions about how people should work together).

There are a whole bunch of cultural assumptions and practices that undergird that kind of organizaton. We are now trying to teach them to the Iraqi military, and to their society as a whole.

Air Marshal Celebrim,

The Union of Soviet Socialists Republics will be glad to hear that you feel the cost of fielding strategic rocket forces by countries with only a veneer of technological sophistication is so low. That's how they won the Cold War.

The detail you and Mark assiduously ignore is cost. You both assume based on your complete ignorance of the subject that Iran and North Korea can deploy strategic rocket forces capable of seriously menacing countries larger than Israel.

Mark talked about them destroying Europe and the U.S. West Coast.

Like I said, decimal points make a difference.

Except to fools.

Thanks Celebrim, I think you said all that needed to be said. If I was incautious with the word 'destroy', I apologize. I admit, destroying Europe will not be possible for Iran in the immediate future. Whether the destuction of half a dozen (or pick a number) NATO capitals is serious enough to warrant this hyperbole, I leave to the readers.

On the other hand, in my measured opinion Tom is grasping at ridiculous straws in a desperate attempt to retain whatever shreds of credibility he thinks he has. But thats just my opinion.

I said: "Because, overall, if we said "no, this price is too high" then we'd have to give up our illusion that moderate Islam is our friend, and that would mean having to face fear, and we are all about deferring as long as possible a face-to-face meeting with real fear."

Patrick Brown said in post #13: "I don't find your case convincing at all. You have leapt from the observation that the West is trying to find some Muslims with whom to build an alliance against the extremists to the conclusion that we do so because we are afraid of... something. What the Muslims will do to us, presumably."

You've courteously raised one of the strongest objections that can be made to what I said. In going from observation to interpretation, you always lose certainty.

I'm not a mind reader. People can have all kinds of motives for what they are doing. I can't even guess at them all.

Mary pointed to the misguided diplomacy of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who seems to be motivated (though again I'm not a mind-reader) by passionate hostility to the Soviet Union, or maybe, as a Pole (understandably) just plain hostility to Russians. (By the way, I'm not saying that like it was a bad thing. In the Cold War, hostility to the Soviet Union was necessary, and Zbigniew Brzezinski's point that the downfall of the Soviet Union outweighs any "blowback" from actions like supporting the Afghan jihadis is a good one.) So that's a strong motive that is not fear.

I mentioned oil. That's not fear either, that's greed, or sometimes sheer prudence.

But fear is in the mix. It is not just one factor among many, negligible in effect. It is huge. Over and over, in and not limited to the cartoon jihad, people say "sensitivity" and so on when what is behind what they are doing and what they are not doing is fear.

Not necessarily fear of specific, worked out negative consequences that people have thought through and been forced logically to conclude should be avoided at the price on offer. Fear also of "stuff" that isn't discussed, that never comes out of shadows into the light. Fear of crazy people not because they will do specifically this or that but because intense, pervasive hostility and dubious sanity are intimidating. Fear because people are not willing to face the hostility of a large portion of the world's population. Because as former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating said in self-praise of his (now discredited) foreign policy regarding Indonesia, those who questioned appeasement had to feel a "squirm of fear" (his phrase) in contemplating hundreds of millions of potentially hostile neighbours. Not fear of an invasion by sea (not likely) or of anything concrete - just the "squirm of fear". It is unpleasant to be the few facing the many, when the goodwill and tolerance of the many is very much not to be counted on.

#13 from Patrick Brown: "Here's a different account of why we try to find some Muslim countries to build an alliance with: because our alternative is to kill the people of those countries, in very large numbers. We really don't want to do that because we are basically peaceful people. But if we are going to do it, we're going to know for sure that it's absolutely necessary for our own survival, that there is no other way. In order to be as sure as we can of that, we'll try all the other ways first."

I think we're not in such a godlike, fearless position.

And we're not just "trying other ways" to diminish the power of Islam.

Treating CAIR as if they were moderates is not trying another way to reduce Muslim influence. It's an instance of seeking alliances and good relations with those we might wish to see as "moderates" as a pervasive policy, willingly disreagarding the fact that the people we are wooing are our stone cold enemies, and will always be inclined o be so, on religious grounds.

#13 from Patrick Brown: "Like most readers of this site, I still have hope that we won't have to do anything drastic. But I have no doubt that if it is necessary at some point, we will do it."

I have grave doubt that any such action, could be possible no matter how desperately it was necessary. Even if I thought it was desirable, and I am extremely far from thinking that, I don't think we could do it.

One alternative - of many, including better ones - is the Spanish reaction: change your government to one that will flee, not fight, when the terrorists hit you hard with exactly that intention.

Though Spanish people inform us that that wasn't about fear either, but justified anger at the outgoing government. There's always some reason why what we do isn't about fear or avoiding fear.

And now, slightly off topic, a message from the Philippines Government:

"I hope the statement that I read will touch the heart of this group," Seguis told the satellite television from Baghdad. "We know that Islam is the religion of peace and mercy."

When did we discover that Islam was the religion of mercy? When it was so conspicuously merciless that there were people who had to beg it for mercy.

But of course when you pay hostage-takers, you pay for more terrorism. The impulse to bribe and flatter those who frighten you is humanly understandable, but it is often counterproductive.

When did we discover that Islam was the religion of peace? But we all know that one.

Why did Colin Powell say that America needed to learn from Islam, that more Muslin teachers were needed in America? Because what is preached in mosques is good for America? Not at all. It was part of defining as "friends" and "moderates" people whose proven hostility the American government systematically refused to face up to.

When we deal with fear by bribing some of our enemies to pretend to be our friends, we empower them to exacerbate the real instability and the underlying insecurity that has to be covered up.

When we bend to a "moderate" moderate Muslim community that wants its children to be influenced by a radical imam, we can have the appearance of more community peace in the short term, but there'll be more problems in consequence by and by.

Over the past few days, there's been a run of excellent discussions in the comments at Winds. The way to to keep it going is to keep the focus on the issues.

With #35, it's good to see this conversation returning to the themes that David Blue brought up in the post itself.

Jeff,

Thanks for the kind remarks. You make some excellent points as well. Unfortunately, so does Kid D.

One of the reasons I'm less sanguine about our prospects in a long, drawn-out struggle over 50, 70, maybe even 100 years is the debilitating effects on our civilization of la dolce vita. To quote Kid D:

"But the assumption that the 'free minded' states of the West will continue to innovate seems on shaky ground to me. All signs in this country point to one of laziness, sloth, and ignorance. That isn't the environment which produces genius. It seems that the less you have, the more you squeeze out of it."

There are many counter examples to the Kid's point. However, we should admit that there are some large kernels of truth mixed into the hyperbole. It's not that we won't continue to develop innovative new technologies and refine existing technologies. It's that our rate of innovation versus our global competitors, including the Islamic world, may slow down. A reduction in our margin of military superiority will follow the reduction in our margin of technical superiority.

I'm also less sanguine about the enduring superiority of Western democratic cultural values as a foundation for an unbeatable military culture for a couple of reasons. First, war is a learning experience for both sides. The side that is superior must defeat the side that is inferior before the inferior side improves too much. We need to remember that Arab military performance versus Israel improved in every war, Hezbollah eventually drove Israel out of southern Lebanon, and the Palestinians drove Israel out of Gaza and are driving them out of most of the Judea and Samarra/the West Bank.

Second, the current Western democratic cultural values do not emphasize national/civilizational loyalty and self-confidence. They actively oppose the ruthless use of our full power to win a complete victory in years rather than decades. An utterly a-historical theory says that it is now bad strategy for a more powerful state to use its full strength against weaker opponents. Collective punishment of an enemy population base that is actively supporting the ultimate collective activity, war, is taboo. And we must never, never be reciprocally ruthless to an utterly ruthless opponent that routinely violates every tenet of the Western war-fighting code.

It's a hell of a way to fight a war -- if you're really trying to win. It's also a guaranteed way to degrade long-term morale among our military and our general population. In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Tom Friedman talks about how good modern Western democracies like Israel are at generating military power, or "making a fist" as he describes it. What he doesn't talk about is how difficult it is for modern Western democracies to keep their fists clenched in a long war of attrition. We're very good at full-scale war and we're very good at full-scale peace. It's the half-war/half-peace conflicts such as the Cold War or the Israeli struggle with the Palestinians and Hezbollah that we have trouble with.

David,

Great points in #35 and a great counter-post to Ben Kuiper's fire-ants of Allah post.

Do you think Tom Sowell is correct that "White guilt" is the reason for the timidity of our war against militant Islam? (See his May 2nd oped on www.opinionjournal.com).

I think he may have identified a key part of the world view of many of our elites. If you combine guilt with an assumption of long-term US military superiority versus all potential/actual competitors, it's possible to rationalize a Long War strategy of 50 - 100 years.

On the other hand, if you don't share the guilt and don't share the assumption of long-term military superiority, the Long War strategy is incredibly risky because it guarantees we will still be fighting militant Islam while one or more peer-competitors challenges us for supremacy.

Not a good strategic situation!

Thanks for your kind words, James Jones. Much appreciated. :)

I did not find the article by Tom Sowell you mentioned. I did find this (link):
White Guilt and the Western Past
Why is America so delicate with the enemy?

BY SHELBY STEELE
Tuesday, May 2, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

Before going any further, I want to know we're on the same page - literally. :)

David Blue wrote:
"I believe that a policy of seeking peace through alliance with moderate Islam, which means accepting its terms..."

Does it? Does it indeed? It is not possible to impose terms on moderate Islam as a condition of alliance? Pray tell why?

The reason rational progressives are unwilling to support your desire to make war on Islam as a whole, the reason they continue to support an attempt to divide Islam into enemies and friends, is not that they are craven cowards but that they feel that they must serve notice. Here are the terms on which we may be friends. Here are the terms on which we must fight. Choose wisely. Until you have made attempts at peace while ready to fight, you have not fulfilled the Christian conditions for just war, and thus are not morally ready to fight.

Clash-of-civilizations hawks are forever telling us that we are, despite despised modernist notions, a Christian civilization fighting for survival against an Islamic civilization. I am not completely prepared to accept this -- we are a Christian-_derived_ civilization, certainly, but there are many other aspects to us, including Greek and Roman ideas that never had much to do with Christianity. But if you accept that we are a Christian civilization, then you must accept that we must fight by Christian rules: and one of the most sacred Christian rules of war is the Just War Doctrine. We must morally convince ourselves that we have no choice but to kill before we are ready to break the Commandments and engage in WARRE.

And your rhetoric about how moderate Muslims are effectively shielding our acknowledged enemies is insufficient. We must see this perfidy for ourselves, publicly and demonstrably, before we are willing to attack those who have not attacked us. To ask otherwise is to ask us to be something other than Christian-derived civilization, to be something other than Western Civilization. By your own logic, as well as by common sense, that will not happen.

The point is made (by Wishard) that we fed the Egyptians, and now feed the Palestinians. That we do. We are unwilling as yet to use this as a weapon, though it well could be, because it is an act of genocide to do so. But the Christian Just War Doctrine states that we will not start a genocide. (Hitler and Stalin broke that rule, which is why they are considered monsters.) But if someone starts a genocide against us, say by attempting to nuke a city, the gloves will be off and methods like this will be utilized -- along with using our own nukes to perpetrate genocide.

You weep because it will take the destruction of at least one Western city to start us using the measures you deem necessary. I rejoice in the same fact. If we let go of that, we have let go of who we are.

Karen Armstrong's history of Islam makes it rather clear that the aggressive, take-no-prisoners, always-appease-hardliners, ruthless-dictatorship mechanism of Islam was a response to repeated pummelings by the Mongols, who were much better at warfare than Islam of the time. (Before that, they were scoring about the same on those metrics as the neighboring Christians, who were no paragons of virtue.) If repeated pummelings caused the Muslims to adopt societal aspects of the Mongols, might not repeated pummelings by the West cause them to adopt aspects of the West? I would hope so... because it seems to be the most likely outcome of their attempts to attack us.

"Karen Armstrong's history of Islam makes it rather clear that the aggressive, take-no-prisoners, always-appease-hardliners, ruthless-dictatorship mechanism of Islam was a response to repeated pummelings by the Mongols, who were much better at warfare than Islam of the time."

Karen Armstrong is not the best source, she has an agenda and is a bit loose with facts. (I remember in her book about Jerusalem she kept mentioning "Palestinians," meaning who that means today, although they didn't exist as a people until about 40 years ago.)

Anyway, I think most of us have satisfied ourselves sufficiently about the preconditions you want, and we think the time to go to war is overdue.

"The point is made (by Wishard) that we fed the Egyptians, and now feed the Palestinians. That we do. We are unwilling as yet to use this as a weapon, though it well could be, because it is an act of genocide to do so."

How is it genocide to refuse to "feed" a group of people who aren't starving? Egypt and the Palestinians can certainly create healthy econonmies if they want to. in the case of the Pals, the fact that they squandered a billion dollars worth of aid doesn't make them genocide victims.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

"You weep because it will take the destruction of at least one Western city to start us using the measures you deem necessary. I rejoice in the same fact. If we let go of that, we have let go of who we are."

Only if what we are are masochistic fools. Which I sometimes think Christians are, in my more bigoted moments, when I read that kind of thing.

One thing I like about Judaism is that it is reality-based. Not much heaven or hell, just how we behave toward each other. Not much sentimentality either; our sages said: "Whoever arises to kill you, kill them first." The problem is in deciding whether and when they are actually trying to kill you, which is most of your disagreement with us.

That's a fair disagreement, neither of our religions approves of making war wantonly. But if letting a city be nuked to prove how high-minded we are is Christian in your view, you've just given Christianity a big black eye. What about the inhabitants of that city? You are willing to make them sacrificial victims?

Yehudit,

I noticed what you pointed out about C N C's willingness to sacrifice a couple million people to preserve our identity, and I hope you realize not all Christians would agree. I find it interesting that he(?) mentions that Rome is part of our heritage. Because I believe that's where we should be looking for precedents to follow in this war. See especially their treatment of Carthage after the last Punic war, Caesar's treatment of the Gauls, and the Roman response to the rebellions in Judea. Unfortunately, we've lost (if we ever had) the strength and confidence the Romans had. That's why unfortunate as it is, I think CnC is right that it will take a nuked city to get us to do what's necessary, if even that does it.

Catfish,

"The strategic center gravity of the war is us, not them. We have the power to destroy them utterly. They don't have the power to destroy us. The war will be won or lost based on our will to win. We can always take our nuclear hands from behind our back if we can't win any other way.

But as Patrick implied in a more recent thread, there is a confluence of moral duty and expediency that we do our best to win by lesser means than destruction of the societies giving rise to our enemies."

We would have committed genocide on Japan, by gassing their cities from the air, had they not surrendered after being nuked, and then invaded while continuing to gas every possible Japanese until the survivors surrendered. At least a fifth of Japan's population would have died. And that decision was made before we learned that they planned on massacring scores of millions of Allied civilians in China, Indonesia, Malaya, etc., when the invasion started.

We have a moral duty to use terrible non-genocidal force to shatter the Arab world's fantasies about their own power and ours, because we really do have the power to destroy them utterly, and will do so if necessary.

"This gives a sense of Greek tragedy, with its dialectic of hubris and nemesis, to what has been unfolding in the Islamic world. If they continue to use terror against the West, their very success will destroy them. If they succeed in terrorizing the West, they will discover that they have in fact only ended by brutalizing it. And if subjected to enough stress, the liberal system will be set aside and the Hobbesian world will return - and with its return, the Islamic world will be crushed. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. And the only way to avoid this horrendous end is to bring the Islamic world back to sanity sooner rather than latter.

Nothing but force can break them from their illusion. Not because there is something wrong with them as a race, but simply because they are acting like any other individual who has been permitted to live in a dream world - they continue to fantasize. And who can blame them? It is only brute fact that shakes any of us from the single most cherished of our illusions - the myth of our own grandeur and omnipotence. And this is as true of a culture as of an individual."

David,

Re post #39, the correct article is by Shelby Steele. Apologize for any confusion caused by mis-identifying the author. Fatigue is not a friend of accuracy. ;-)

BTW, Catfish N. Cod's post #40 is a great example of Steele's thesis. He actually says that he rejoices in the fact that it will require the destruction of at least one Western city before we wage full-scale war on our enemies. If we do not wait until after the required blood sacrifice of hundreds of thousands or millions of our fellow citizens, "we have let go of who we are."

This is an amazingly a-historical statement. Perhaps CNC will be kind enough to describe the events throughout American history, British history, European history, Roman history, Greek history, or ancient Israel's history that support this assertion.

Yehudit's critique of his logic is a classic. Fred points out that many Christians would disagree with CNC's views. (The supposedly sacred Just War doctrine is not found in the holy scriptures of either the Christian Old Testament or the New Testament. This is a curious omission for a doctrine that is supposedly binding on Christian behavior in foreign policy and war fighting).

Three cheers for Fred's citation of the Roman model as the appropriate model for foreign policy and war fighting. The Roman Republic was a core influence on our own political institutions and our conceptions of citizenship. Roman's built the greatest civilization of the Classical period. Their war fighting methods were one of the keys to their lengthy success.

We will do very well if we emulate the Romans.

From the Islamic Republic of Iran to Right Wing News (link) to Joe Katzman to the support of Dave Schuler in post #6: you described the roots, Dave.

"1) Demonstration of vulnerability (feasibility)
2) Financing (business plan)
3) Permanent base immune from attack (location)
4) Impotence (pilot successful!)

After that there was no stopping the spread."

And here are the flowers:

""The world of Islam has been mobilized against America for the past 25 years. The peoples call, "death to America." Who used to say "death to America?" Who, besides the Islamic Republic and the Iranian people, used to say this? Today, everyone says this." -- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei"

Just so.

"The world of Islam has been mobilized against America for the past 25 years. The peoples call, "death to America." Who used to say "death to America?" Who, besides the Islamic Republic and the Iranian people, used to say this? Today, everyone says this." -- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei"

Just so.

The chinese started saying that in 1948. I don't know quite when it was they stopped. Some palestinians started saying that around 1967 or so, noticing the Made in USA stamps on expended artillery shells and such. But they didn't have a government to tell them to do it until the USA insisted that israel set up one for them so there would be somebody to negotiate with.

It isn't like it's something new. Did Khamenei think he just made it up from scratch? We just make a lot of enemies around the world, that's all.

Possibly we'd make a lot fewer enemies if we minded our own business more. On the other hand, every foreign government in the world is our business now. If we didn't decide which of them needs to be overthrown, often nobody else would be strong enough to do it in our place.

I'll be a bit off-topic in this post, but I'll try to refocus soon. I'm just addressing some reasonable points.

#44 from James Jones: "Re post #39, the correct article is by Shelby Steele. Apologize for any confusion caused by mis-identifying the author. Fatigue is not a friend of accuracy. ;-)"

Indeed it is not. Thanks. We're on the same page now. I read the piece, and it is good. His book is likely to be good too. (I have not read it.)

My previous posts in the Darfur thread (link) (link) (link) (link), posted in ignorance of Shelby Steele's work, don't leave me room to seriously disagree with him even if I wanted to. We are not going to be able to save Black Africans from the genocide being practiced by the racist, tribalist and jihadist Arab Janjaweed, in part because the race card will be played against us, with invincible effectiveness, if we tried to do so. It's worse than tragic, but the racial guilt card works. We'll lose if we stick our chins out and get hit with it, and the consequences would be seriously bad. Therefore, Black Africans are going to have to keep being enslaved, raped, killed and so on. Paralysed by institutionalised white guilt, we have not got the power to prevent it.

Nevertheless, in understanding the jihad war as a whole, I put the emphasis on fear not guilt, with the guilt having synergistic effects: one major, one minor.

The reason I weigh fear heavier than guilt is that Islam has been a winner for a long time. This is not a weak, passive system that suddenly, opportunistically became effective because of the unusual circumstance of white guilt. Rather, it's a monster that had a bad time temporarily due to an unusual surge in European power, and went semi-quiescent, but which is now back to kicking tail and taking turf, which in the long view is its normal state. How has it done that for most of one and a half thousand years? Aggression, violence, intimidation, armed domination and endless pressure, in a word: fear. So this is where we have to look for the mainspring of the long war.

Plus, you can just look around and make reasonable judgments. Was it white guilt or fear that played the greater part in Borders' shameful capitulation and the general reluctance of the mainstream media to show the Muhammed (pbuh) cartoons? Both contributed of course, but which was it mainly? OK, so it's fear that's driving things, isn't it?

The minor synergistic effect of white guilt is that guilty whites need coloured and/or exotic friends to be legitimate. I think white guilt does feed into our flawed policy of pervasively defining people as allies even when they are patently not. True, some of our friends have odd habits, such as calling for Israel's destruction. But who are we to judge?

I think it fed into the State Department condemnation of the Muhanmmed (pbuh) cartoons and the general reluctance of our governments to stand up for freedom of speech. If you dare not uphold freedom of speech for fear of offending your allies - and Hugh Hewitt was making a case that the war in Iraq and the need to keep in good with America's allies meant condemning or at minimum not supporting the cartoons (even though they had become a key issue of free speech) - then what kind of "allies" are these, and are you really doing yourself any favours by empowering them like this?

I think George W. Bush has handled this pretty well on the whole. But some of his exotic friends, like "Bandar Bush" I could do without. I don't like that in the "white guilt" scheme of things, George W. Bush gets moral brownie points for hand-holding with out-and-out enemies of America at Crawford. And I could do without his habit of calling "racist!" (for one example, over ports) and "sexist!" (Harriet Miers) on conservatives. These are not just examples of the problem, they are contributions to it.

The main synergistic effect of fear and white guilt is simple, and again I'm going with the cliches of military history, things that have worked over and over in many places across different eras. Frightfulness - "shriek-making" - is one of the classic techniques of war. The Mongols used it. The ancient Assyrians used it. It paralyses resistance by traumatising people with fear and horror. Even reliable reports of Mongol frightfulness were enough to make people submit to slaughter without resistance, for fear that worse would happen. (Like their whole families, tribes or cities being slaughtered too, with Mongol cruelty.)

Frightfulness has one great drawback: do this, and you earn the mighty hatred of such of your enemies as refuse to be intimidated. As soon as you are no longer militarily dominant, expect to pay a price for that.

Frightfulness combined with white guilt is "wonderful". If you can gain all the benefits of terror and horror, while not paying the blood price for it, as Zacarias Moussaoui has not paid the blood price for it, and as militant Islam in general has not paid and will not paid the blood price for frightfulness, then the balance sheet for the tactic changes. It's a bargain (as long as you are wise enough to stick to using it mostly on whites) - and we would expect it to get used a lot because of that. Except that we don't "expect" in this case, we can just observe.

As with the Darfur horror, I'm not saying that reality is unjust and therefore we should ignore it. "Slaughter away, though it leads to ruin, because we ought not to be bound like this!" No. We are bound like this, and with the villains we are up against, we have to win, whatever it takes. When our own are slaughtered with no adequate reply, as in the Zacarias Moussaoui case - so be it: no vigilante action. When there is genocide in Africa (yet again) - so be it, we must not get baited into grabbing a tar-baby, a sure loser. White guilt is immoral and crazy, but then so many realities in war are. We just have to muddle though regardless.

#44 from James Jones: BTW, Catfish N. Cod's post #40 ... " I may address that later. This post is long enough.

#44 from James Jones: "Three cheers for Fred's citation of the Roman model as the appropriate model for foreign policy and war fighting. The Roman Republic was a core influence on our own political institutions and our conceptions of citizenship. Roman's built the greatest civilization of the Classical period. Their war fighting methods were one of the keys to their lengthy success.

We will do very well if we emulate the Romans."

I couldn't agree more.

Off-topic but I couldn't resist the bait.

#46 from J Thomas:

"The world of Islam has been mobilized against America for the past 25 years. The peoples call, "death to America." Who used to say "death to America?" Who, besides the Islamic Republic and the Iranian people, used to say this? Today, everyone says this." -- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei"

...

"The chinese started saying that in 1948. I don't know quite when it was they stopped."

They probably weren't part of the global Muslim mobilisation for dogmatic, deductive anti-American hatred that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was referring to.

#46 from J Thomas: "We just make a lot of enemies around the world, that's all."

Wrong. This isn't something you or we did. This is something they did - and the ayatollah was justifiably boasting about how well it has gone.

Look on the bright side of our predicament. Being targeted by the ayatollahs for dogmatic Muslim hatred and jihad terror means we'll never be our own worst enemies again. We may hurt ourselves. We may hate ourselves. But people like Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Osama Bin Laden hate us a lot more.

In this corner, representing the modern West: Boy George! Sing it, Boy!

Do you really want to hurt me?
Do you really want to make me cry?
Do you really want to hurt me?
Do you really want to make me cry?

And in this corner, representing the cutting edge of militant Islam, the lovely Zacarias Moussaoui:

Asked if he was happy to hear her sobbing, he said, "Make my day."

"We want pain in your country," Moussaoui said. "I'm glad the families had pain. I wish there will be more pain. I want you to share the pain."

Get it?

For that matter, our very good friends the Saudis also hate us devoutly. They also have professionals on their payroll, teaching and preaching that hate globally.

I think we should get out of the business of hating ourselves. We're uncompetitive. The thrill is gone.

Back on topic.

Why did the discussion of the military strength of Islam and its potential to improve not home in on the obvious fact that we are trying to improve it?

Right up to the destruction of East Timor, the Australian army was working as closely as possible with the Indonesian military. Australian soldiers were training, teaching, sharing maps, and doing everything possible to make the Indonesian military a more efficient fighting force, on the assumption that friendship and values would come along for the ride.

As Labour's Attorney-General and Foreign Minister Gareth Evans said bitterly after it all tore loose: we overestimated their capacity for redemption.

When America supples AWACS, Abrams tanks, training and so on for Muslim countries, is it the assumption and the intention that these militaries will not gain at all in efficiency or power from that?

Or is it the (justifiable) assumption that they won't improve enough to menace American supremacy - and what they might do to other targets like the East Timorese doesn't matter?

I am suggesting in this thread that that kind of thinking may be flawed.

By the way: I am not denying that we have gotten some useful cooperation from the Indonesian military, that often it doesn't matter who the army gets turned on as long as it's not the Americans, that the contacts and relationships built with military and other forms of aid can be handy, and that in particular cases this can be the right thing to do.

But the assumption should be that assisting the fire ants of Allah to take territory, to build up in any way, is a very bad thing to do unless we have a strong reason to think that this situation is really exceptional, and we've discussed the potential down-sides honestly, in detail and in that light.

Unless it is a well-considered exceptional case, this is like encouraging the ants to spread out and take turn in every direction, "as long as it's not on my farm" Doing that just makes it all the more certain that eventually the ants will come to your farm - from every direction.

Twenty years from now you guys will have forgotten all about this stuff and you'll be very, very embarrassed if somebody reminds you of it.

The islamist threat is simply not very threatening. Within 20 years we'll have a more credible threat to be upset about, and we'll simply be ignoring islamists.

They don't have much industrial base and aren't getting it, they have to buy their weapons from their enemies.

They're poor except for oil which is running out.

There isn't much bad you can say about them that we didn't say about the chinese maoists -- who are no longer fanatics but have morphed into state capitalists who are eating our lunch. Are they really worse than maoists? No. They're only the convenient enemy-of-the-moment. They did some sabotage that was a major nuisance, and it succeeded mostly because we did nothing to stop sabotage. Now we're ready to stop sabotage by people who look like arabs, and we aren't ready to stop sabotage by anybody else. It's sheer accident that we haven't had a major sabotage operation by somebody else yet -- when we do we'll start to see that arabs are nobody special for that.

You guys are way overreacting. After this winds down you're going to be embarrassed at how you got sucked into it.

#51 from J Thomas: "Twenty years from now you guys will have forgotten all about this stuff and you'll be very, very embarrassed if somebody reminds you of it."

That would be wonderful, if it happened.

However this thread presupposes that there is a problem, and the issue is how to respond to it. I question the wisdom of defining pseudo-friendly "moderates" as our allies. I think that way you can quickly create an appearance that the problem is solved, but there are knock-on effects, and there'll be more trouble down the road.

#51 from J Thomas: "The islamist threat is simply not very threatening. Within 20 years we'll have a more credible threat to be upset about, and we'll simply be ignoring islamists."

Again, it would be nice if the view that there was no threat was true.

However this thread assumes that there is a threat (it is not about whether there are fire ants at all), and the issue is looking to the long term in dealing with it.

The threat will fluctuate - people can't keep up a pitch of frenzy forever. They must subside. But the Hell of it is, they don't subside and that's it. They come again and again and again. And we should take that into account.

#51 from J Thomas: "They don't have much industrial base and aren't getting it, they have to buy their weapons from their enemies."

No, we sometimes donate the weapons and training too.

#51 from J Thomas: "They're poor except for oil which is running out."

That is a very large "except for". And after the oil has run out, we can discuss this part of the problem further. I am not convinced by "peak oil" theories.

#51 from J Thomas: "There isn't much bad you can say about them that we didn't say about the chinese maoists -- who are no longer fanatics but have morphed into state capitalists who are eating our lunch. Are they really worse than maoists? No. They're only the convenient enemy-of-the-moment."

No, they are our very inconvenient enemies since being founded by Muhammed (pbuh) in the 7th century. The view that Islam has no more right than China or any other "convenient enemy-of-the-moment" to be considered the perennial challenger of - and often victor over - Christendom flies in the face of overwhelming amounts of bloody history. Christian North Africa and the Christian Near East were not annexed by China.

Also, the view that we are ginning up "convienient" enemies is a conspiracy-friendly one that finds that the enemy is always in the mirror. I don't think so.

#51 from J Thomas: "They did some sabotage that was a major nuisance, and it succeeded mostly because we did nothing to stop sabotage. Now we're ready to stop sabotage by people who look like arabs, and we aren't ready to stop sabotage by anybody else."

In terms of airport profiling, the opposite is the case: we're "ready" for anybody in general, but not particularly for Arabs, because Islam is the religion of peace and Arabs are our allies.

#51 from J Thomas: "It's sheer accident that we haven't had a major sabotage operation by somebody else yet -- when we do we'll start to see that arabs are nobody special for that."

We already had Timothy McVeigh and the 19 April, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, but militant Muslims went on to prove that even compared to that, they are special.

#51 from J Thomas: "You guys are way overreacting. After this winds down you're going to be embarrassed at how you got sucked into it."

How I got sucked into it starts with 11 September, 2001. You are free to predict that I will come to find that embarrassing. I am free to find that prediction not very interesting.

I don't know if Americans use the term "sucked in!" for "deceived". But the view that we invent convenient enemies and we came to define people such as the Islamic Republic of Iran as unfriendly through deception is about as wrong as possible.

On the contrary. Our leaders have sold us friendly relationships and sentiments in common that do not exist. Al Haig once announced that the Americans were ready to fight for anybody that believed in one God. That was part of our pro-Muslim, anti-Soviet rhetoric. But brotherly ties between the believers in one exclusive God didn't work out too well.

Again, defining the whole Muslim problem as not a threat can give you a feeling of peace and safety, for a while.

Assuming that we are the ones that create our "convenient" enemies of the minute can provide a feeling of control, since in that case we can always just forget them, like turning off a television channel. Hit the remote and the "threat" is gone. That is what you seem to expect.

But history tells me that there will be trouble down the road, and we should be thinking about the right way to deal with it, with a view to the long term.

Re: Tom Holsinger in #43...

The link no longer works. You can find the quote he references in this important essay.

#51 from J Thomas: "They don't have much industrial base and aren't getting it, they have to buy their weapons from their enemies."

No, we sometimes donate the weapons and training too.

If they start looking like a threat we'll stop.

#51 from J Thomas: "They're poor except for oil which is running out."

That is a very large "except for". And after the oil has run out, we can discuss this part of the problem further. I am not convinced by "peak oil" theories.

Right now, our choices are find a good alternate energy or burn up the oil fast or reduce our standard of living to 1900 levels. If it's the third approach we probably aren't going to be a superpower and muslims aren't going to be much of a problem. If it's the second, muslims are going to find their oil running out pretty fast. If it's the first, oil prices will rise and sales will slow -- they can sell for high-value uses and stretch out their supplies for a long time. Not so much money so fast but a decent income supplement for a long time.

It's only natural that you'd choose your future to match the doctrines you want now. But I don't see any way to get there from here. If the facilities get built to pump the oil real fast, it's going to be gone quick. Mostly the muslim countries don't have the technology to do that, they'd depend on western oil companies to do it for them, and their main reason to do it anyway is that we might do terrible things to them if they don't. So they don't get a whole lot of money and they run out of recoverable oil quick.

If they don't build the facilities then they can't do the work and their share of the oil doesn't dwindle away as fast, but they don't make as much money either. We get a great big giant oil shortage, and it doesn't do us any good to pay more for the oil because that doesn't result in more oil for sale. If we don't develop good alternate energy then our economy falls apart and arab economies fall apart too. Unless that goes real real slow there are going to be dislocations. Some of those are hard to predict, but some aren't -- like, most arab countries import a lot of their food, and if that food doesn't get produced they can't buy it. The world economy is built in a peculiarly fragile way; its performance is not likely to degrade gracefully. Muslim oil economies sell oil to the world economy and import a whole lot of stuff. Collapse wouldn't be a victory for anybody but it would leave them as no threat to us, and vice versa.

If we don't particularly need their oil then they have no hold on us. Fanatical muslim nations then are less of a threat to the USA than argentina.

And muslim fanatics become potentially less a threat than fanatical neonazis who want to take over the world, or white supremacists, or catholics (who have a depth of structure and organization that muslims have never achieved), or mormons (who are smaller in numbers but also very well organized).

#51 from J Thomas: "Are they really worse than maoists? No. They're only the convenient enemy-of-the-moment."

No, they are our very inconvenient enemies since being founded by Muhammed (pbuh) in the 7th century. The view that Islam has no more right than China or any other "convenient enemy-of-the-moment" to be considered the perennial challenger of - and often victor over - Christendom flies in the face of overwhelming amounts of bloody history. Christian North Africa and the Christian Near East were not annexed by China.

So? The chinese empire has had its expansions and contractions since 600 BC. Sometimes they own much of vietnam and sometimes not. Likewise tibet, sinkiang, and mongolia. It works that way with empires. The ottoman empire is gone and nothing's replaced it yet. So what? Do you have some special fondness for the Holy Roman Empire? You want it to start up and encroach on muslim land?

#51 from J Thomas: "You guys are way overreacting. After this winds down you're going to be embarrassed at how you got sucked into it."

I don't know if Americans use the term "sucked in!" for "deceived".

No, not particularly. The meaning is more like "entrained". Caught up in a mass enthusiasm. Somebody who bought a dozen hula hoops during the hoola hoop craze and spent hours a week practicing with them might be said to be sucked into the hula hoop craze.

But the view that we invent convenient enemies and we came to define people such as the Islamic Republic of Iran as unfriendly through deception is about as wrong as possible.

No question the iranians been unfriendly. We supported the Shah. Then we supported Saddam in the iraq-iran war. Then when they needed spare parts and missiles and such, and we made a secret deal to sell those to them, they paid money and got the stuff with israeli markings, and it turned out to be sabotaged. And then the secret came out and made them look bad to their people -- making deals with the USA and israel and getting cheated. We haven't given them many excuses to be friendly.

We didn't exactly invent them. But we chose to pay attention to them. I remember when the USSR fell. There was a lot of talk about a "peace dividend". I talked to a drunk military contractor at a party. "What are you guys going to do?" "I don't know." Somebody else chimed in, "You need a new enemy." "I know. We're working on it." So we tried out humanitarian missions. The ground troops hated it and Somalia mostly convinced us not to send those guys to do "humanitarian" killing. The air force was happy to do humanitarian airstrikes but that wasn't enough to sustain a budget.

Muslims are our only stopgap enemy until the chinese get strong enough to be a credible superpower enemy. North korea would be a disaster, the south koreans don't want us to attack and they have a border with china. Indonesia might be good but it's a giant population on java plus a lot of islands. Too much work for marines and not enough for army. Myanmar has nothing we want and lots of ethnic concerns. Africa is the same way plus african diseases. Europe and russia are used up, we aren't going to find a good enemy there plus if we prop russia up as the big enemy we have to decide the cold war isn't over after all. The muslims are as close as we can get to a credible enemy worth spending large sums of money against. They're hardly credible at all, but they're all we've got. They've been very weak since before 1776 and they're still very weak, but that won't stop you.

Al Haig once announced that the Americans were ready to fight for anybody that believed in one God. That was part of our pro-Muslim, anti-Soviet rhetoric.

They were an ally of convenience. Enemy of our enemy. We didn't have much trouble with soviet allies against the nazis, and I'm sure we came up with some nice soundbytes then too.

If china looks like a real threat 15 years from now we can trot out the "one god" line again while we try to get muslim allies.

But history tells me that there will be trouble down the road, and we should be thinking about the right way to deal with it, with a view to the long term.

Definitely there will be trouble down the road, there always is. In the long run there are likely to be several areas with predominantly-muslim populations, and they might cooperate some because of the religious bond -- just as christian nations tend to cooperate -- USA, britain, sweden, serbia, germany, greece, ethiopia, that sort of thing. In the long run we might see a mostly-unified middle east, a mostly-unified north africa, a degree of cooperation among malaysia and indonesia etc, and maybe a majority-muslim EU. Each area will tend to organise according to its interests, not particularly by religion. Islam is far less unified than christianity; christianity has a sanctioned hierarchy to organise christians, while islam does not. Empires try to pass themselves off as islamic empires but they have no special islamic blessing.

J Thomas,
A uranium enrichment line is enough industrial base to be a threat by itself.

Robin, it takes a lot of industrial base to build a uranium enrichment plant. Apparently that's getting easier, so that more rather-poor countries will be able to do it.

Maybe technical difficulties had more to do with nonproliferation than treaties and such. And now that the technology is getting easier and the Bush administration has failed at diplomacy, nonproliferation is dead.

We can fight a few wars to delay our worst weak enemies from getting nukes. But if nonproliferation is dead we'll just have to get used to a new world.