ShrinkWrapped

Presidents Day

Today in America, too many people take the day off for Presidents Day Sales and forget, or never learned, why we celebrate our past Presidents.   If our civilization survives, it will be, in part, because we remember where we came from. 

President Washington established a precedent that most countries in the world still have difficulty achieving, that is, the voluntary ceding of power after a set term of office.  Washington stepping down after two terms in office, after having already turned down the opportunity to be our first King, was arguably the greatest thing this great man did for his country.  We all continue to benefit from his example today.

President Lincoln, despite all the efforts of the revisionists to besmirch his record and achievements, risked all, and fought a war, to ensure that this great Nation would live up to its greatest of aspirations; he fought a war because he believed that "all men are created equal" and to insure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

America has been blessed with many favors, the greatest of our riches being the men who founded and built this nation.

Misadventures in Reporting

According to the London Times on -line, Imad Mugniyah was killed by the Israelis who placed a bomb in the headrest of his car, Israel kills terror chief with headrest bomb: [HT: Robert Avrech]

Minutes later he was seated in his silver Mitsubishi Pajero in a nearby street when a deafening blast ripped the car apart and killed him instantly.

According to Israeli intelligence sources, someone had replaced the headrest of the driver’s seat with another containing a small high-explosive charge.

The article goes on to describe his death in more detail, with some eye-witness testimony:

One witness said: “I held his head in my hands, kissed him farewell. His face was burnt but intact and he had received serious injuries to his abdomen.”

Far be it for me to disparage the perspicacity of the intrepid reporters of the Times, but doesn't it seem just a tiny bit unlikely that a headrest bomb could be so carefully constructed as to cause serious damage to the victim's abdomen but leave his head, the presumed target of immediate interest, intact?  Maybe its just my natural skepticism, but I would think the layers of editors about which the MSM is so proud, might have noticed the seeming anomaly. 

Of course, since the information about the headrest bomb came from "Israeli intelligence sources", perhaps it was just a bit more Israeli disinformation.  Now, apparently, the Israelis have magic bombs that can aim at one part of a terrorist and blow up another part two feet away! 

Democrats and the War

There are a number of reports this morning that Imad Mugniyah, the recently dispatched uber-terrorist, was in Damascus planning a terror spectacular.  Caroline Glick reports that the targets were Western diplomats:

On January 30, French security services raided a Paris apartment and arrested six Arab men. Three of the men — two Lebanese and one Syrian — were travelling on diplomatic passports. According to the Italian Libero newspaper, the six were members of a Hizbullah cell. Seized documents included tourist maps of Paris, London, Madrid, Berlin and Rome marked up with red highlighter to indicate routes, addresses, parking lots and "truck stopping points."The maps pointed to several routes to Vatican back entrances.

Libero's report explained that the "truck stopping points" aligned with information the French had received the week before from Beirut. There, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah convened a conference of his senior terror leaders where he ordered them to activate Hizbullah cells throughout Europe to kidnap senior European leaders.

Arutz Sheva, on the other hand, concludes that the attacks were meant to be directed toward recalcitrant Arab governments:

Mughniyeh Was in Midst of Planning Mass Terror Attack

(IsraelNN.com) A Kuwaiti newspaper reports that Hizbullah terrorist chief Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in a car-bomb attack in Damascus on Tuesday, was in the midst of planning major terrorist attacks in moderate Arab countries when he was killed. 

Al-Watan reports that American intelligence had learned that Mughniyeh arrived in Damascus three days earlier with instructions from, and in coordination with, the Iranians.  His objective was to meet with Hizbullah leaders and coordinate a mass attack, for which he was to receive help from Syrian intelligence.

Of course, Mugniyah was a bit of a terror-polymath, so it is not out of the question that both articles are correct.  The Islamists have had a dearth of high quality murderous attacks lately.

It does raise a poignant question for us in the midst of primary season:

What happens when a country is at war but a large cohort of its most vocal and influential citizens do not know it?

Victories and Dangers

This week has seen three major triumphs for the West in the Global War against Islamic terror. Imad Mugniyeh, co-founder of Hezbollah, acolyte of Yasser Arafat, liaison between the Iranian terror masters and al Qaeda, responsible for killing more Americans than anyone else prior to 9/11, received his just reward, courtesy of a car bomb in Damascus. The car bombing was a profound message and tactical triumph; this will have long term beneficial effects as terror has lost one of its most ingenious and evil geniuses. It will not end terror but will also convey to various interested parties in Damascus, Tehran, the Bekah Valley and other exotic locales, that their safety should not be taken for granted if they continue to target innocent men, women, and children. Congratulations to whoever did this noble deed. 

Walid Phares, with Mughniyah's strike: A Benchmark in the Counter Terror War and Abu Muqawama, with Imad Mughniyeh: Who Killed Him? (with a good round up of links on the subject) have insightful comments on the matter.

An equally important occurrence took place in Denmark, where the news media discovered that confronting bullies with solidarity can have a powerful impact.

The Arab Mind: Part I

Introduction:

Everyday the incompatibility of the Western world view and the Arab (Islamist) world view becomes clearer.  Read the newspapers, watch the talk shows and the news readers, survey the blogs, and you can only come away with the impression that we do not understand our enemies (and this doesn't even include all those who do not even realize we have enemies) and our enemies, though they manipulate us well at times, do not understand what makes us who we are. 

Culture is the sum total of the character traits of the people who constitute that culture.  Character evolves from an infantile neurological set of tendencies (what Stella Chess referred to as temperament) through a complex interaction with the primary caregivers, usually the Mother, later expanding to include the Father (especially important in the formation of the Superego), and finally shaped by interaction with the greater, existing culture.  As a result, cultures typically evolve slowly.  In the West, most notably in Europe, we can see how the culture that has been brought into their midst by Muslim immigrants has interfered with assimilation (not that the Europeans have made assimilation easy or appealing) and is increasingly asserting itself in muscular and often violent ways.

Over the last 40 years my appreciation of Arab culture and the Arab mind has evolved.  After the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israel Wars, I believed that the Arabs were "just like us" and that through dialog of equals and some give and take, peace would come.  My knowledge of Arab culture and character was gleaned primarily from Television news and newspaper; it did not occur to me for many years that the depictions of the Arab that was all I was privy to were superficial and distorted by blindness and deception.  After 9/11, when understanding our enemies became much more of a pressing concern, I discovered that there was a dearth of open source material pertaining to such issues as Arab child rearing practices, values, sexual norms and proclivities, etc.  Time limitations, including daily blogging and the exigencies of the real world of work and family, made a systematic exploration of the topic impossible.  However, I believe I have gathered enough data to begin to make some inferences and offer some understanding.  To that end, I am going to be presenting over the next few weeks, perhaps months, at irregular intervals, my interpretation of the Arab Mind.  My primary source material, supplemented by various open source data and private communications I have found over the last several years, is The Arab Mind, by Raphael Patai; the book and author deserve some introduction.

Accomodating to Iran

Ample evidence that our Iran policy is misguided and likely to result in a worsening situation in the Middle east is provided by Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, courtesy of Tom P. M. Barnett.  In their article, The Costs of Containing Iran, the authors discuss the fallacies of a policy of containment modeled on cold war policy of containment of communism.  recommendations.

Washington's Misguided New Middle East Policy

Over the past year, Washington has come to see the containment of Iran as the primary objective of its Middle East policy. It holds Tehran responsible for rising violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lebanon's tribulations, and Hamas' intransigence and senses that the balance of power in the region is shifting toward Iran and its Islamist allies. Curbing Tehran's growing influence is thus necessary for regional security.

...

For the Bush administration, however, containing Iran is the solution to the Middle East's various problems. In its narrative, Sunni Arab states will rally to assist in the reconstruction of a viable government in Iraq for fear that state collapse in Baghdad would only consolidate Iran's influence there. The specter of Shiite primacy in the region will persuade Saudi Arabia and Egypt to actively help declaw Hezbollah. And, the theory goes, now that Israel and its longtime Arab nemeses suddenly have a common interest in deflating Tehran's power and stopping the ascendance of its protégé, Hamas, they will come to terms on an Israeli-Palestinian accord. This, in turn, will (rightly) shift the Middle East's focus away from the corrosive Palestinian issue to the more pressing Persian menace. Far from worrying that the Middle East is now in flames, Bush administration officials seem to feel that in the midst of disorder and chaos lies an unprecedented opportunity for reshaping the region so that it is finally at ease with U.S. dominance and Israeli prowess.

But there is a problem: Washington's containment strategy is unsound, it cannot be implemented effectively, and it will probably make matters worse. The ingredients needed for a successful containment effort simply do not exist. Under these circumstances, Washington's insistence that Arab states array against Iran could further destabilize an already volatile region.

I have concluded in the past that Iran is neither containable nor deterrable, but for different reasons than the authors.  Their article is long and I will not attempt to summarize their arguments, however, I think the authors make a convincing case that containment of Iran is impossible and that our efforts to do so will fail. 

It is in their recommendations that their assumptions come most into play and raise questions that they do not address, let alone answer.

The Frightened Burghers of Europe

The definition on dictionary.com for Burghers:

1. A citizen of a town or borough.
2. A comfortable or complacent member of the middle class.
3. a. A member of the mercantile class of a medieval European city.
    b. A citizen of a medieval European city.

During my training, a senior Analyst once quipped that our goal is to be able to work with our patients without worrying about the outside world; we would ideally be "fat, dumb, and happy." He did not mention at the time but it was implicit that we can only have the luxury of being "fat, dumb, and happy" when others are willing to put themselves on the line to defend us. Luckily, this is a lesson America never quite forgot.

Since the end of WWII and the rebuilding of Europe facilitated by the Marshall Plan, European Burghers have lived comfortable and complacent lives, "fat, dumb, and happy", behind the shield of American military might. Relieved of the need to defend themselves, several generations of Europeans have come of age without an expectation, or even an awareness, of the limits of civility and the necessity of self defense.

If the privileged and pampered Baby Boomers of the United States are marked by excessive narcissism, the Europeans have been even more indelibly branded by a version of adolescent narcissism characterized by the sweet nectar of pacifism combined with "heroic" anti-American, anti-militarism. Europeans have forgotten how to defend themselves and for the last half century have reviled the uncouth and rowdy American for his insistence that self-defense remains an unfortunate necessity in a dangerous world.

Europe is now at the vanguard of the crisis facing the West. Their weakness is costing them in their own backyards as well as in those distant areas of the world from which the cancerous metastases of Islamic terror arise.

In England, the Archbishop of Canterbury has proposed that the English accept the inevitability of Sharia law in England. This is of a piece with current trends in the EU. While not speaking directly to this particular abomination, Phyllis Chesler discussed the dhimmification of Europe with Bat Ye'or; their comments concern the surrender of basic rights to the angry, violent Jihadis in the name of peace:

Perceptions, Hallucinations, and Delusions

Most people implicitly trust their own perceptions.  We believe that what we think we see is an accurate reflection of what we actually see.  When we don't see what we think we see, often we prefer to question reality rather than our own perceptions.  When our senses feed us inaccurate perceptions, those perceptions become the basis for our understanding and defining of reality.  Perceptions do not just inform reality but in many ways define reality.  At the same trime, we are typically much less cognizant of the ways in which our perceptions are shaped by our expectations of what reality looks like.

[My clinical example is actually pretty trivial, but it is an interesting story and I wanted to tell it.  There is a serious point to it, a point that has been made repeatedly here and elsewhere, but the main reason for this post is the story.]

Many years ago, during my Residency in Psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital, I ran an out-patient medication clinic.  Most of the patients were chronically ill with severe Psychiatric disorders.  They lived in SRO (single room occupancy) hotels, tended to neglect their hygiene and appearance, and often exhibited residual symptoms such as ongoing auditory hallucinations, mild, persistent paranoid delusions, etc.  One woman in particular, in her late 50s at the time, had already been maintained on Meprobamate for ~20 years by the time I saw her.  Meprobamate was the first anti-anxiety medication and by the late 60s had been replaced by the Benzodiazepines (Valium, Librium and their relatives) for the treatment of anxiety.  Since then, although the Benzos continue to be prescribed (over-prescribed, to my way of thinking), they too have been superceded by more effective and less problematic medications.  Ms. W liked her Meprobamate.

Ms. W had Chronic Schizophrenia and had been started on Meprobamate in the 1950s, at a time when anti-psychotic medications were not yet available.  She had remained on Meprobamate ever after.  As with many chronic Schizophrenics, she was extremely resistant to change and even though her medication was not a particularly appropriate choice for her (the anti-psychotics had become available in the 60s and would have been the drugs of choice) she was comfortable with her medication and her life. 

Ms. W missed an appointment and the following week when I was back in the Medication clinic she called.  In her typical rambling way she told me she had run out of her medicine and didn't feel well.  She couldn't sleep and wanted to come in.  She casually mentioned, with the same flat affect in which she described the malevolent voices she often heard, that she had bugs crawling all over her.  At that point I became alarmed.  Formication was not a symptom I had seen from Ms. W before.

Reductio ad Absurdem

Ridicule is a powerful weapon against hypocrites, thugs, and fools.  Kleinverzet offers a wonderful example from the Netherlands. 

Liberals and Strategy: A Contrary Exposition

There are two competing schools of thought about history.  One school believes that great men and women shape the trends and tides of history and mark events by the force of their character.  The other school holds that great events make great men and women.  An example of the second school comes from George Friedman at Stratfor.  In his post Foreign Policy and the President's Irrelevance, he places our current contention over Iraq in an historical context:

History deals up the agenda, and the options in response are severely constrained. If Thomas Dewey had been elected in 1948, do we really believe the Korean War would have played out differently?

Presidents are not to be judged by how they make history. They are to be judged by how gracefully they submit to the rules that history lays down. The consensus or disinterest of candidates is not important. What is important is this: The dominant foreign policy issue facing the candidates is going to hit them out of the blue one day. Their options will be few, and how quickly they recognize what must be done as opposed to what they would like to do is about all they will be judged by.

We know that Johnson made a terrible hash of Vietnam, while Roosevelt did pretty well in World War II. We strongly suspect that if Johnson had been president during World War II he would be respected and admired today, while if Roosevelt had been president during Vietnam he would be reviled. It’s not that presidents don’t matter. It’s that they don’t matter nearly as much as we would like to think and they would have us believe. Mostly, they are trapped in realities not of their own making.

I would hasten to point out that George Friedman does not make a categorical prescription out of this, he merely points out that Presidents are much more hostage to circumstance than masters of circumstance.  However, he does use these ideas to illustrate why he believes that our foreign policy in regards to the Iraq War will not be significantly effected by our choice of President: