Dear Red States...

I got his little ditty from an ex-Republican friend of mine. (Hat tip to Red Stater Perry) I am the aggrieved Red Stater though I live in California but aside from being hilarious, I know most of this to be true, I was in stitches reading it… But it is also disturbing to a social libertarian.

Dear Red States...

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you
aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota,
Wisconsin, Michigan,Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We
get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You
get Ken Lay. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss. We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share. Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of
happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you
Need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're
Apparently willing to send to their death for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent
of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and
lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88
percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh,
Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you. Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazys believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

By the way, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico........

-----
AM says;
Ouch.

Hey Dude, WHere's My Civil War?

Hat tip Stu

By RALPH PETERS - In Iraq

BAGHDAD
I'M trying. I've been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it. Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills. And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn't stoop in such an hour of crisis.
Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops. All day - and it was a long day - we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None.
And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome.

Instead of a civil war, something very different happened because of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. The fanatic attempt to stir up Sunni-vs.-Shia strife, and the subsequent spate of violent attacks, caused popular support for the U.S. Presence to spike upward. Think Abu Musab al-Zarqawi intended that? In place of the civil war that elements in our media declared, I saw full streets, open shops, traffic jams, donkey carts, Muslim holiday flags - and children everywhere, waving as our Humvees passed. Even the clouds of dust we stirred up didn't deter them. And the presence of children in the streets is the best possible indicator of a low threat level. Southeast Baghdad, at least, was happy to see our troops.

And we didn't just drive past them. First Lt. Clenn Frost, the platoon leader, took every opportunity to dismount and mingle with the people. Women brought their children out of their compound gates to say hello. A local sheik spontaneously invited us into his garden for colas and sesame biscuits. It wasn't the Age of Aquarius. The people had serious concerns. And security was No. 1. They wanted the Americans to crack down harder on the foreign terrorists and to disarm the local militias. Iraqis don't like and don't support the militias, Shia or Sunni, which are nothing more than armed gangs.

Help's on the way, if slowly. The Iraqi Army has confounded its Western critics, performing extremely well last week. And the people trust their new army to an encouraging degree. The Iraqi police aren't all the way there yet, and the population doesn't yet have much confidence in them. But all of this takes time. And even the police are making progress. We took a team of them with us so they could train beside our troops. We visited a Public Order Battalion - a gendarmerie outfit - that reeked of sloth and carelessness. But the regular Iraqi Police outfit down the road proved surprisingly enthusiastic and professional. It's just an uneven, difficult, frustrating process.

So what did I learn from a day in the dust and muck of Baghdad's less-desirable boroughs? As the long winter twilight faded into haze and the fires of the busy shawarma stands blazed in the fresh night, I felt that Iraq was headed, however awkwardly, in the right direction. The country may still see a civil war one day. But not just yet, thanks. Violence continues. A roadside bomb was found in the next sector to the west. There will be more deaths, including some of our own troops. But Baghdad's vibrant life has not been killed. And the people of Iraq just might surprise us all.

So why were we told that Iraq was irreversibly in the throes of civil war when it wasn't remotely true? I think the answers are straightforward. First, of course, some parties in the West are anxious to believe the worst about Iraq. They've staked their reputations on Iraq's failure. But there's no way we can let irresponsible journalists off the hook - or their parent organizations. Many journalists are, indeed, brave and conscientious; yet some in Baghdad - working for "prestigious" publications - aren't out on the city streets the way they pretend to be. They're safe in their enclaves, protected by hired guns, complaining that it's too dangerous out on the streets. They're only in Baghdad for the byline, and they might as well let their Iraqi employees phone it in to the States. Whenever you see a column filed from Baghdad by a semi-celeb journalist with a "contribution" by a local Iraqi, it means this: The Iraqi went out and got the story, while the journalist stayed in his or her room.

And the Iraqi stringers have cracked the code: The Americans don't pay for good news. So they exaggerate the bad. And some of them have agendas of their own. A few days ago, a wild claim that the Baghdad morgue held 1,300 bodies was treated as Gospel truth. Yet Iraqis exaggerate madly and often have partisan interests. Did any Western reporter go to that morgue and count the bodies - a rough count would have done it - before telling the world the news? I doubt it.

If reporters really care, it's easy to get out on the streets of Baghdad. The 506th Infantry Regiment - and other great military units - will take journalists on their patrols virtually anywhere in the city. Our troops are great to work with. (Of course, there's the danger of becoming infected with patriot- ism . . .) I'm just afraid that some of our journalists don't want to know the truth anymore.
For me, though, memories of Baghdad will be the cannoneers of the 1st Platoon walking the dusty, reeking alleys of Baghdad. I'll recall 1st Lt. Frost conducting diplomacy with the locals and leading his men through a date-palm grove in a search for insurgent mortar sites. I'll remember that lieutenant investigating the murder of a Sunni mullah during last week's disturbances, cracking down on black-marketers, checking up on sewer construction, reassuring citizens - and generally doing the job of a lieutenant-colonel in peacetime.

Oh, and I'll remember those "radical Shias" cheering our patrol as we passed by.
Ralph Peters is reporting from Forward Operating Base Loyalty, where he's been riding with the 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.

Can We Use Swords?

In response to Long Time Coming...

a jacksonian The Belmont Club
Well, very interesting, there just might be room for a switch of Old Hickory in this century after all...

Please do *not* confuse Jacksonians with your everyday common conservative. The ideas of personal honor, giving help where its due, showing mercy to those that know how to show it, and helping someone who knows what surrender means to get back on their feet is something that really should cut across many lines, but is a straight line for Jacksonians. After wars Jacksonians are the first to lend a hand at helping to rebuild and try to make peace and friendship. The Marines get the right of it with: No better friend, No worse enemy.

Now this enemy of Transnational Terrorist organizations, of which Islamic stripe is the meanest but they are all a pretty foul lot, seem determined not to raise a flag, form a country, set forth something to defend, protect those under them and then interact in a decent fashion with the rest of the world.

Have I got the right of that?

Now, because they operate at this more personal level of small groups they are damn hard to deal with by law enforcement, statecraft or the military.

Keeping up?

So, these are low life, non-law abiding, abusers of liberty and freedom for common folks who seek no law but their own and often ignore even that.

Now that goes for your generic Islamic Terrorist and such as FARC and Shining Path and the such like. They just aren't decent folk who live and let live and really would rather just kill you as convert you.

Because these low life barbaric killers don't respect the fine concepts that have grown up between nations for the last few centuries and feel free to abuse them at will, that makes them deucedly difficult to deal with. Thrown in some basic bribery, regimes using Transnational Terrorists as anonymous proxies and simple gangstering with drugs and money laundering and you got yourself one helluva problem.

Luckily, the good People of the United States are loathe to give up on just about any right. Even something as simple slavery we leave around with a single proviso, just in case it is ever needed. And some things just fall into the shadows as 'progress' seems to make them obsolete. The old tool at the bottom of the toolchest that just can't change with the times.

But by ignoring the rules and throwing out the rule book, these Transnational Terrorist are starting to play in old tools areas. And because the American People have been polite we haven't dragged out the damn things for over a century. But against these low-life barbaric Transnational Terrorists, it may be just the trick.

Old tools can be given a modern cast to them and gently reforged for a new era and need. That tool is via the Letters language for Congress in the US Constitution. Unfortunately to even consider having to do such, Congress would need to be more than gelatinous sheep doing their best to bleat at actually having to understand their powers and exercise them in defense of the People.

By putting together the Treaty regularization power along with the Commerce power with Foreign Nations and the Letters language, Congress could recraft the entire asymmetry problem by reversing it. Let treaty signatories know that a long list of people, groups, companies and countries are either enemies or trafficking with the enemies of the United States, and shipment of goods or trade with those on the list is also considered trafficking with the enemy.

Now that will put liberals all in a tizzy and a good lot of Wilsonians, too, I bet! As those folks haven't come up with a better solution, they can stuff it.

Next put out bounties on the listed contraband and include the vessels moving them on that list. Warranted organizations will be put under the Congressional Law of the Seas language and allowed to stop and inspect shipping that does not have a certified and verified cargo manifest from all countries agreeing to same with the United States. This would require DHS to get off their butts and give a serious timeline to get that done. Also banking transactions entering or passing through the United States must be verified to come from totally legal sources and not from anyone on the list.

Now those free traders are howling in pain! Probably a few more civil libertarians expecting the USA to enforce their rights every damn place on the globe. You folks haven't come up with a damn thing on this and can join the others and stuff it.

So Americans and their wholly owned Companies and some private individuals of wealth would be allowed to stop suspected shipping on the High Seas if contraband and trafficking with the enemy is thought to be going on. If such is found and verified, either via Dept of Justice or State Dept. or other cognizant group, then that entire vessel and its contents would be hauled in and the Bounty awarded.

To those saying this is illegal and piracy, it is nothing of the sort! It is the time-honored and tested method of Privateering updated for the modern age. If you think Transnational Terrorists are inventive going after their goals, just wait until you hang out pure profit to Americans! Find it, verify it, bring it in, no questions asked and immunity from extradition within the confines of the United States.

The southern border probably needs to be sealed good and tight, but nothing that a couple of walls with a warning system and kill zone between can't handle. Give some of those UCAV folks a chance to test their skills on live targets. Less lethal means could be employed, but really once this sort of thing starts unauthorized entry starts to look a hell of a lot like spying. I don't care if it is just poor folks looking for a job, let the oh-so-wise President and Congress work that one out.

Now our Fine Men and Women of the Armed forces do a bang-up job against totalitarian regimes, nation states and the such. We don't want to distract them with piddly little tracking and hunting jobs either on land or at sea. They bust up the big stuff just fine, but the very fine teasing out of what is going where and to who is something I am quite sure Americans can figure out once they put their minds to it. And see a profit in it.

Yup, most of the audience has fainted dead away! Simple, easy, gets you safer in the long run, and once you take the glamor out of Terrorism and turn them into starvlings on the run unable to get regular supplies... well, that would suit me just fine!

I expect it would be a bit tricky to start, but once people started to see the first arms caches and cargo ships and aircraft coming in and bounties being paid... well that is heartwarming!

As my daddy always said: "The proper tool for the proper job."

Yes, the above is semi-in-jest. But the point is a hard and cold one. We do not need just an Army of Davids.

We need a Nation of Davids at War.
___________________________________________________________________________________

a jacksonian,
Thanks for your excellent post, interesting concept… privateers. The only hole in the scenario that I can see is the federal government wants to keep all powers not specifically granted by the constitution to themselves, a monopoly of force does not like competition. That is why we still debate, as if it had constitutional merit, the right of gun ownership, and if that right is conceded, the right to take it out of a gun safe. Some of the most successful, government sponsored privateers were subsequently hung by those who gave them letters of marquee to begin with.

This really clashes with the even lawless murderers have civil rights debacle. Oh yea, let the banks seize illegal cash, this would benefit the new monetary system that the Islamists want to float. sidebar, I watched an episode of cops where the local police in some small southern town had pulled over a minivan full of children speeding. The rope-a-doped the black woman driver and yanked a wad of bills out of her purse. $1,500.00? What is a black women like you doing with $1,500.00? This is drug money. “No, I am taking a church group to Disney World” she said. “No, $1,500.00? This is drug money !” and they confiscated it. Privateering works for small town law enforcement. I worked on a highly sensitive explosives detector that could detect second surface latent fingerprints of any one who had touched an explosive material for a week or two. Incidentally we could change some of the parameters and detect drugs. We scanned a dozen 100 dollar bills and found that an overwhelming majority had traces of cocaine on them. This is the same justification that small town police departments used to confiscate money. Later the practice was quietly discontinued when the state department issued a finding that ~67% of all new 100 dollar bills had traces of cocaine on them.

That said the answer must be making fighting the enemy a profitable enterprise instead of a dirty little distraction from global commerce. Of course this is what the shadow warriors have always been about except with a couple more layers of deniability. If you want to have your country focus in on being global business guys, you want to throw open your borders to allow foreigners to fill your working ranks, if you want to sell your port management to the highest bidder regardless of their political or ethical persuasion, outsource it all. China can run the US government cheaper, and frankly, I doubt they’d do it much differently. They couldn’t be expected to ignore the interests of the average working Joe any more than our citizen kings that we have elected. It is about the money right? Now we know that we can’t ask Halliburton to do it, Executive Outcomes was sacked, who will step up to the task, the next Bill Gates or king maker?

I was disappointed to hear that you were in “semi-jest”. Privateers. If it works I wonder if we can go back to swords?

“It's been a long time coming. It's going to be a long time gone.”

Remember 1993 WTC attempt, if they do not succeed, they’ll try try again.

We have raised Arafat’s up on our shoulders to celebrate his long war against us.

We have begun to emphasize with our kidnapers.

The new Jihad will be an infiltration operation, a redistribution of combatants, Saladin is reequipping his army. The avenues of ingress are along the old trading routes of the global economy, the target the world, the goal, the Global Caliphate, the means, the global economy, the weapon, religion and oil.

It is interesting to note that the Democrats are known for their Wilsonian views, GWB has more than used democratization as a tool against Jihadists, he has used it as a means of co-opting his enemies at home. But if the Democrats are for Wilson they are against Walker Bush.

GWB’s compassionate ideology doesn’t wash in Washington politics and it is singularly his greatest weakness, his Achilles’ heal. Kind of sad but true I believe.

Jacksonianism is most commonly associated with conservatism, the kinder gentler scree was meant to be a compromise towards the center but the center left aint buying it. Regardless of the administration politics, the State Department should be Wilsonian and the Defense Department should be Jacksonian. It is a carrot stick, yin and yang plurality, men are from mars Wilson was a sitzpinkler.

The one-two punch strategy is that the diplomats make nice until the talks are abandoned, then it is turn for the War Department to raise the playing field to the ground, then the State Department can make nice again and resume ‘constructive’ talks. Better yet, eliminate the problem with such unarguable certainty and scrub the talks. If you could do this a few times, you’d likely have more constructive talks in the future. I wasn’t for the war in Iraq to begin with, and maybe to end with, but I will never forgive the sitzpinklers from coddling the child after it’s spanking and being told not to worry, the bad man won’t spank you again. Go back to what you were doing before and I’ll see too it that daddy can’t punish you ever again.

Spare the switch and lose the child.

“Left also see the need to redefine itself away from the vestigial anti-Americanism of the 20th century, a leftover habit from the Cold War.” Wow, this is a powerful statement. The old useful idiots are now accomplices to radical Islam.

But as the future of Cuba is bound and gagged to the death of Castro, the future of the War on Terror is bound and gagged to the sucession of the lameduck GWB administration and the competing ideologies that would replace it with a “New Vision”, one free of ambition and paranoia.

By tacking left to appease the Democratic Party, GWB has ceded the advantage of Jacksonianism to the enemies, here and abroard. Johnson’s 5 bullet points are the Democratic Party platform personified and none, especially sucking up to Europe will be possible with any Repubican administration, no, not even John McCain. You want unity with the Jihadists and with the Eurosnobs? You must surrender. Vote for Hillary.

“It's been a long time coming. It's going to be a long time gone.” CSN&Y?

Behold the Vermillion Sky

I grew up in LA with a commanding view of the blanket of smog obscuring the city view. Decades later the landscape was slowly revealed as smog levels had plummeted even while the population had swelled. Breath taking sunsets of unworldly colors, purple and crimson are a thing of the past. Technology, though weighted towards entropy can be tamed in some respects and the diminishing smog of the LA basin stands as a testament to the success of societal forces in combating pollution.

I spent several weeks in Mexico City and can attest that the smog in that city would appear to drip out of the exhaust systems of the copious and fastidiously decrepit vehicles belonging to the common folk. No doubt that the answer there is a rise in wealth and the societal expectation of a cleaner modernity. Mexico has really strong government propaganda promoting health on all of its media outlets so it would seem that they have the means to affect that change.

I wonder if London hasn’t managed to cope with the pollution problems of the past. I’m sure it has.

As far as China is concerned, they successfully negotiated additional Kyoto greenhouse limits in order to take into account their recent industrial revolution. It would appear that the third world must transition through a ‘dirty’ phase of industrial development before they can establish a foothold on cleaner technology. While watching US production and jobs migrate to Southeast Asia I argued that the US was losing good paying jobs. Others argued that the lower labor rates would benefit all but I couldn’t grasp the concept; If automobile and IC production lines were mostly automated what competitive advantage could offshore companies offer if not cheaper electricity? It turns out they had the right financial markets and the right business plan for meeting the needs of the expanding high tech bubble.

But if the smoke of the industrial Northeast would come to rest in Canada, the smog of Mexico somewhere in Europe, the factories of China eventually lay their burden on the heartland of the US. To this extent we are all passengers on spaceship earth and a polluted atmosphere benefits none.

While converting our economies from industrial to high-tech to a service sector dominated by hairdressers and phone sanitizers, we must bear this in mind, that as the immutable second law of thermal dynamics states, pollution can not be created nor destroyed, it can only change form.

I live in San Diego now and due to the mindboggling incompetence of the water department, am extremely pessimistic of the future of water quality here. After each and every rain storm in San Diego the sewers overflow and runoff in to the ocean. We have enclosed bays and there are few surfers or in-the-water enthusiasts who will dare taking the plunge a week after a moderate rain. Those who do almost invariably get violently ill, I know I have. The water department just publishes the mundane missive that goes something like this…”Duh, whoops! These are the same clowns that tried to sell the city on the toilet to tap program. Don’t ask. Incidentally, about 30% of them are Pakistani or Middle Eastern decent. Hmmmm. Makes me wish they were from the UAE. [Emeriatians?]

On a lighter note, an old dope smoking surfer nearly became the mayor here(would of been the second time [no, not Pete Wilson ]) on the strength of the water quality issue alone so, alas, there is hope after all, in that the public will is strong and the mood is aspoiling.

The Wogs of Gore

Ahmed Saadat was seized by Israeli soldiers from a Palestinian Authority jail in Jericho after it was feared that he would be released by the new Hamas administration and very shortly after the British monitors guarding him had left the compound. Belmont Club

The action by Israeli forces may come off as draconian but I believe that the message has to be to Middle Easterners is that; “if you say it, we believe it”. Threaten to free a political assassin and we will do something that your fellow country wont, we will believe you. When I hear Iranians bleating “Death to America”, I believe.

The Palestinians play the Liberal game, vigorously establish guilt, then go easy on the perpetrator. The only interruption on Saadat’s life was he didn’t have to do his own grocery shopping. This description on Saadat’s incarceration evokes a scene straight out of “Good Fellows”.

“People are saying that he is someone who is a fighter and who simply has fought for his political ideals, and they do not want him to go”. One can’t fault a race of ‘rock throwers’ their heros, but the honorable way for a militant to die at the hands of his executioners is by firing squad. They should accord him the honor.

Either way this situation put British and US soldiers in an unnecessary and degrading predicament. No wonder that this humiliating decision put the Palestinians on edge. The Israelis should have pummeled the ‘compound’ to shards while everyone was expecting it. The Palestinians would have gotten over it, and if not, where would we be now, staring in the eyes of a Hamas controlled government?

Finally, the gloves come off. Maybe Belgium can step up to the bat.

AM 1170

Upon the news that he had been dropped I had to comment that the immutable Mark Steyn will rise again. It is curious that his apparent ignominy would be realized at the exact same moment of clarity for the Telegraph and the Spectator. Perhaps a more pedestrian reason will surface, such as his press agent demanding exorbitant fees or some such.

To this days the British government taxes each television set and this strange practice seems to parallel the potential for muting freedom of speech, at least it certainly gives the government a leg up on control of content. It is the relative success of this government information monopoly that makes me fear of a UN/EU/UK internet tax. If such a thing should come about we’ll all be screwed. Perhaps they will have free information of the government sort and a highly taxed information like the Steyn or the Wretchard tax. But here in the states free speech seems to be doing well. We have the Public Broadcasting Service that, though government subsidized, does a fair job of giving balanced news. Particularly shows like Frontline, though with a vaguely left taint, do admirably well. It is little surprise that the most left wing, BS propaganda comes directly out of the UK in the form of the BBC. During the most trying events in Iraq the Beeb has been just awful. Fortunately, the US public has the free opportunity to get it’s news elsewhere and PBS must walk the tight rope of consumer demand. Pledge drives have become more frequent, and overt commercials are subsumed in near infomercials that thank the grants and thoughtful patronage of the sponsor that makes these shows possible, along with viewer contributions.

We inhabitants of Southern California get much of our radio beams from Mexico. US radio station giants like Clear Channel Communications buys their RF energy from AM blow torches south of the border who made their entry into the market by having their own rules that flouted the US FCC. They are now pretty much mainstream, with the exception of occasional propaganda from the Mexican government, and an obligatory ovation of the Mexican national anthem at midnight.

A few summers back I spent the summer in the mountains of central California. Amazingly enough, I was able to get crystal clear reception of a LA radio station (AM 1170 KNX) that played old radio dramas every night at 9:00pm. So, huddled in my tent, in the pitch black I would listen to the various radio dramas of lore with the grand finale Sunday night, the Lux Radio Theater, hosted by Cecil B. DeMille. I was alone in the wilderness and in this odd crucible, transported back to a time where the radio was everyone’s common link to civilization. Phantom of the Opera with Basil Rathbone was preternatural and Jack Benny on Saturday nights was always a pleaser.

Mon. Tales of the Texas Rangers -Sherlock Holmes
Tues. Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar - Sgt. Preston of the Yukon.
Wed. Dragnet - The Whistler.
Thurs. Nightbeat (was Adventures of Sam Spade- The Lone Ranger.
Fri. Gunsmoke - Suspense.
Sat. The Jack Benny Program - Fibber McGee & Molly. -Hall of Fame Radio Hour
Sun. Lux Radio Theater

Todays radio show is the blog. It may not live up to the standards of a bygone era when communication times were simpler, but it is undeniably democratic and, as such, excellence is self seeking.

Death of a Tyrant

If the West is indeed at war with the Mohammedans, then it may be an object lesson in Machiavellian war strategy that the Serbs managed to utilize the very weakness of the UN institutions for their deadly goals.

Where history would mock the actions of the UN commanders, the strength of their good intentions alone will ensure that they are used again and again by a feckless, self-loathing European gentry class that has evolved retarded from generations of ideological inbreeding.

General George Patton famously suggested that the US Army rearm the Nazis and send them against the Russians. In the same light we must ask ourselves who the real enemy was here, the Serbs or the tactics that they employed against what they considered an existential threat to the Serbian state. We speak of the horror of the Serbian ethnic cleansing and almost in the same breath belittle the French for creating their own ethnic ghettos.

If the UN can be viewed as human shields to be used to the advantage of the aggressor, it is difficult to imagine how they might be brought to service for the West, but nonetheless, we need to consider this as we plot out future strategies.

No doubt Milosevic certainly understood this, and as “unsound” as his policies may have been, I sometimes wonder if we, in our race to prove our humanity in the face of our enemies, cast our lot with the wrong side.

Our Wars Pick Us

In his essay “The Geographical Pivot of History” Halford John Mackinder argued that ‘geography is destiny’. With the advent of the railway, he reasoned, that Eastern Europe was the world’s center of gravity.

Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland
Who commands the Heartland commands the World-Island
Who rules the World-Island commands the world

But contemplating that the earth was 78 percent oceans, Alfred Thayer Mahan focused on the role of sea power when he wrote; “ The Influence of Sea Power Upon History”.

The advent of aviation and aerospace would change all of that as well. Defense is now layered from the depths of the oceans to the vacuum of space. It is the defense of national battle space and it is quick reaction mobility in far off places by unmanned air vehicles.

It is reaching deep into the mountains of Pakistan and surgically removing a key combatant, and it is drawing a circle around a small city in western Iraq and embargoing the inhabitants from the smuggling trade that fuels their militant economy.

We can draw a circle in the sand and we can draw circle in the sea, we can even draw a circle in the air, but we cannot draw circles in the jungles, in the rugged mountains, nor in the heart of the sprawling humanity of Baghdad. For this reason we are in Iraq and not southern Columbia. We are in the lowlands of Afghanistan and not in East Timor. We are in Bosnia but not in Mogadishu. We are in Haiti but not in southern Arizona.

We need to pick our battles well because our wars pick us.

Frequency of Terrorist Incidences

Significant Terrorist Incidents, 1961-2003: A Brief Chronology

I plotted this out using Excel and the results are startling. The state department statistics indicate a smattering of attacks starting around 1961 and slowly building, with peaks of 22 world wide terrorist attacks in 1996, and rising literally exponentially to 45 attacks in 2003. This trend began way before 9-11 and if left unchecked the world would eventually be consumed by terror. I had often wondered if we were in danger of over-reacting to world terror, and that little tidbit has convinced me that we have way under-reacted.



So after viewing this chart do you think that the problem is going away?

Anarchy, Violence, and Politics

Anarchy will bow to nothing but force and I think it is a recurrent theme here that it is used in a much too calculated manner by the US military. D.R.’s constant refrain, “This is not war” rings true to the extent that we are ourselves in a grand experiment of nation building. This is a course that would not have been steered had the decision for an early cessation of hostilities in Gulf War I which had meant to maintain the strategic balance of the region and later Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn admonishment; “If you break it you own it” had not been made. The political price of breaking Somalia would have been much less because the region in which it resides is not as volatile as the Middle East. That is not to say that those societies are stronger but that like a storm starved of energy they are denuded of the strength necessary to turn the spark into a flame. Oil rich lands have no such scarcity of the fuel of war. But just the same the UN mission in Somalia went to great lengths to avoid the appearance gratuitous bloodshed, which gets to my point that as forces are attrited by chaos like relentless waves upon the rocks, so is anarchy equally as fragile for the will to fight must be completely doused and nothing damps the will to rise like the relentless certainty of despair. Rock smashes scissors but paper cuts rock.

Anarchy must be contained first and if it is to be diminished, the arduous process of draining the swamp must begin and it must be doggedly completed in whatever interval of time it takes. The moral dilemma concerns what to do with the endangered swamp monsters, the flora and fauna fair and fowl.

Violence, or counter-violence, if there is such a thing, picks up steam like hurricane and only then will it run its course.

The key point is indeed the application of force, how much and when. Why did the US forces back off during Fallujah I, why was al-Sadr allowed to go free, how come the air strikes and assaults have been so few, why are terrorists being set free so that they can return to shoot LTC Kurilla?

I think most people who support this ‘war’ effort would like to think this ‘we’re not going away’ attitude means not giving in at Fallujah 1, not playing games with Sadr, and using violence with unwavering certainty. To achieve this the appropriate responsibility needs to be pushed down to those that are doing the real work, be that a junior officer or LTC Erik Kurilla who leads from the front and in the heat of the action, else responsibility can be delegated from the divisional level, down from the brigade level, and get stuck at the wrong officer.

The US set out to force Saddam from power and inherited the decrepit political power structure left in his wake. The US, anxious to stand up a new authority by way of bolstering its own legitimacy allowed political decisions by the new government that were contrary to the interests of the US or, for that matter, the interests of the long term stability of Iraq itself. The very government that the US set out to destroy was allowed to assert itself and establish its rule in order to give credence to the legitimacy of the US military that defeated it. In this twisted logic the petty criminals were released back into the populace only to assuage local politicians and their tribes. There is a vicious cycle here and only violence will break it.

Man-has-Tan/ War-is-Tan

Wretchard's post 'By the Sword' references an article by Bill Roggio outlining the Taliban’s most recent military gains in North and South Waristan intimates that the Taliban forces unleashed westward have now become uncontrollable and are now threatening the Pakistani state. Thus; "He who lives by the sword shall die by it". Bill Roggio describes how a Pakistani military eager to demonstrate control on the eve of the Bush visit has succumbed to ‘blowback’ from a vigorous Al Qaeda/Taliban counter offensive. I raise the question as to whether this will galvanize the tepid Pakistani into a more vigorous expression of national sovereignty.

“The fact that President Bush was able to visit Islamabad(Karachi) suggests that Musharraf has at least tentative control of Pakistan, a comment that I would not have been willing to make a week ago. One could hope that the recent escalation between regular forces and foreign fighters might make it politically acceptable for the Pakistani forces to more vigorously engage them in the future. This appears to run counter to previous efforts by the Pakistani army generals who made deals with the tribal warlords but failed to effectively take control of the region. The local tribal leaders are either in cahoots with the foreigners or they are incapable of maintaining control.”

Marxist ideology split Korea North and South, then later Vietnam. While the Vietnam conflict was resolved with the ascendancy of the Ho Chi Min government, Korea remains split to this day.

If Lebanon is the prime example of factionalization within a state then the Balkans has been the poster child of regional destabilization.

Political, ethnic, and religious identity are the forces that draw together nations and they are the forces that pull nations apart when those nations are founded on less cohesive principles.

Marxism provided the organizing principles of state for North Korea and Viet Nam, ethnic identification for the Balkans, religion for the Taliban, but perhaps the strongest organizing principle and threat to national unity in the Middle East is tribal identity.

Rivalry can be exploited to create instability amongst tribes but a nation can never expect to gain the loyalty of one at the expense of the other. In part, geography and the reach of civilization will determine if tribes can be made a part of a national identity.

The reach of Iran’s multi-tiered totalitarian state within the boundaries of its geography enables it to spawn non-state actors while being able to maintain plausible deniability and resistance to blowback. Pakistan has dabbled with the same experiment and has failed because its ideology of state is not as strong as the tribes that it seeks to organize and its civilizing reach cannot penetrate the geography nor the hearts and minds of its tribal inhabitants.

Clash of Civilizations

Wretchard writes about John Kerry: “He was a placeholder for a policy that didn't exist.”

That sums it up nicely. Kerry was always an enigma to me. I must admit that I don’t recall hearing of him prior to the 2004 campaign. He was a convenient pro tem while the constituency sorted out the way forward. It seems that the argument over that way has focused the debate on a criticism of each political opponents style over substance and we are left with a myriad of paths with “Do Not Enter” signs in their entrances.

The Cold War was in itself the very ‘Clash of Civilizations’. It was a dialectic of economic competition. Still, somehow that clash had subsumed itself into the venues of a lost civilization that is ‘Islam’. If it weren’t for the intractable debacle of the Middle East, we’d be once again consumed with the reform of aboriginal societies. But this time, not to bring them into the embrace of the 21st century, but to remake ourselves more like them, a million tribes and two billion campfires burning in the cement wilderness with the internet replaced by the slow, staccato beat of drums in the binary interchange upon the aural highways.

Until there is a healthy competition of ideas to obtain the same, or nearly the same goals, we are weaving ever precariously down the road of our own destiny be it salvation or our own destruction.

Global Trade and Global Terror (GT/GT) are at direct odds with one another and the two can not be blended into a middle way. They are particle and anti-particle and for both to survive they must stay separated lest they are destroyed. But the force attracting them together is inversely proportional to the square of their distance they are from one another. This is to say, the more they come in contact through Global Trade, the greater the force that will fuse them together in a final release of energy.

It is up to society at large to decide the fate of the new world, now that we live in a global village; no manner of isolationism is possible. Tasmania has been bridged, there is no last frontier in the spatial domain of earth, just the final frontier of the mind and it will be inhabited by all the individuals that make up society. They can choose what is just or just what is to be by neglect.

Sensing the Web

My office uses WebSense, an internet content filter service. It has, for reasons inexplicable to me, blocked DanielPipes.org. It seems arbitrary to me, but in a world where there is a new URL a minute it seems an impossible task to create equitable blocking filters. It would almost make sense to have a system operator controlling content by ‘opting in’, but this would be more than a full time job.

In a larger sense of information warfare, it is totalitarian regimes that will keep information warfare from being effective, such regimes that will ban the publication of ‘offensive’ cartoons. It is anathema to a free society to block information content in the private sector, in a totalitarian society, it is an obligation.

I suspect that the actions to filter out the West that have been taken by China, North Korea, and Iran will reduce the bombardment of information on those societies, and by making information contraband, will make it eagerly sought after.

The perennial questions of information warfare states:

Deny, deceive, destroy, or exploit?

We can thank our adversaries that they have made the decision themselves.

“You can collect, analyze, and move your information faster than your opponent to get an edge. Or you can cutoff your opponent from his own information sources, distort his processing, or prevent him from issuing commands. You can fight the information war inside the weapon’s circuits, or inside the commander’s head. There is no single approach that is always the best, but the ultimate objective is always the same: collect, process, and apply information faster and better than your opponent. Whoever gets to the end of their OODA loop first gets to take the first shot. Bruce Berkowitz

It is the very insular nature of Islam that sets them back in technology. It is the craven application of violence that makes up that short coming. In the end, the West’s advantage in information processing will keep them ahead of the sheltered populace of a tyranny. The question is whether the tyrants deny themselves the same truth.