ShrinkWrapped

Using a Scalpel: A More Refined "Samson Option"

Over the last few years we have learned that the best way to protect ourselves against terrorism is to target the leaders of the terrorist groups.  Generally the leaders of such groups desire martyrdom, but primarily for their followers.  The leaders of such groups typically cry (to paraphrase St. Augustine) "Dear Allah, let me become a martyr... but not yet."  Even when the leaders do desire martyrdom, removing the leaders means that they are replaced by terrorists with less knowledge, sophistication, and ability.  Killing Imad Mughniyah did not destroy Hezbollah, but has eroded their ability to commit terrorist acts out of the area.  (That Hezbollah has become a powerful paramilitary force is another matter entirely.)

It is incontestable that Israel cannot destroy its enemies, even with overwhelming conventional force.  It must, therefor, find an alternative approach.  It may be that Israel can maintain its deterrence by threatening the destruction of Mecca, Medina, the Dome of the Rock as Geoffrey Britain suggests (and I would add the city of Qom and a number of other sites on the "holiest sites of Islam" list for greater deterrent effect)  but it may ultimately prove to be impossible to confidently deter Islam when it finds itself faced with an existential threat (which  is what modernity and the existence of the state of Israel represent to Islam.) 

Consider a near future scenario:

By 2020, Islam has become so emboldened that it has become unmistakable to most people in the West that Geoffrey Britain was correct; the problem is Islam and Islam and modern liberal society are incompatible. 

Israel's existence hangs by a thread.  It is increasingly being abandoned by its friends, who still need Arab oil and fear the fifth column in their midst.  It has never been able to solve the moral conundrum that a first strike use of Nuclear weapons poses and its deterrent capabilities have steadily eroded as it has never been able to master the Information War in ways which disarm its foes.  In 2020, for the first time, the number of people emigrating from Israel is greater than the number immigrating to Israel.  The future looks grim:

It is early spring, 2021 

In a magnanimous gesture applauded by the global community (this is fiction, so bear with me) the Israelis announce that they are going to release every Palestinian prisoner convicted of terrorism over the course of two weeks in March  of 2021.  The Americans and Europeans, committed to the chronically moribund "Peace Process" applaud the release and commit to re-convening the long eclipsed Final Status talks.  Finally it appears that the Peace Process will resume and that the Israelis, whose intransigence has been determined to be the primary cause of the failure of the Peace Process, have become committed to Peace.   A new dawn in the Middle East appears to be (once again) at hand.

The fact that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, along with the rest of the HISH alliance (Hezbollah/Iran/Syria/Hamas) remain committed to the destruction of Israel and that genocidal propaganda remains a staple of Palestinian (along with Arab and  Iranian) media continues to be ignored as an inconvenient Israeli raised obstacle to Peace and as such has not been a matter of concern since the days of the Netanyahu administration.  With the news of the prisoner releases, the Palestinians and their allies are more convinced than ever that history is moving in its favor and that the hated Jewish state will soon be destroyed.  At the same time, paranoid conspiracy theories abound throughout the Middle East; the theories escalate and become increasingly fantastic as no one can believe the Israelis would release deadly enemies with no promise of peace, yet as the first prisoners arrive home to hero's welcomes, the idea that Israel may finally be surrendering due to exhaustion and because of the superior will of the Palestinians takes hold throughout the once occupied territories and throughout the Middle East.

Meanwhile, for the Western powers, the media are filled with the news that the new Labor government of Israel is ready to deal and a break thorough is at hand.  All assure that genocidal ravings are simply the background noise of the Middle east, not to be taken seriously.

Unbeknown to most of the participants, however, two major developments have occurred which render the Israeli behavior somewhat less than the suicidal acts that the Israeli and American right believe.

Each of the released prisoners, as part of one of his last meals, has unknowingly ingested, disguised as a grain of rice, a tiny nanobot which comes complete with an RFID and wideband transmitter.  Each nanobot is designed to not only relay real time information about its subject (including sounds in the ambient environment) but to become part of a seamless mesh network with each of the other nanobots now carried within each of the former prisoners.  For the weeks prior to their release the Israelis have been testing and bringing on line the computer network designed to integrate the immense amount of information that will be generated by these bots.

At the same time multiple squadrons of stealthed UAV's have taken off from an open field in Northern Israel.  Additional squadrons have been released near the border of Gaza.  Yet another set of UAV squadrons were already set aloft from the deck of an Israeli submarine in the Persian Gulf.  Each squadron is carrying a payload consisting of a multitude of "mosquitoes", "centipedes", "spiders" and, "wasps".  Once over their target, the UAV's all release their payloads and what appears to be nothing more than balloons drift down toward the surface, only to burst at various heights above their targets.  The bugs then drift, glide, and fly to their assigned locations (with specific locations unimportant since there are so many bugs that the coverage will be excellent) and begin to silently go about their deadly business.

One further data point: each of the nanobots and each of the bugs is equipped with a range of toxins designed to mimic various fatal conditions including cardiac arrests and intracranial hemorrhages and leave no trace on autopsy toxicology.

In the ensuing weeks and months a number of spectacular terror attacks are thwarted.  A planned cruise missile sneak attack from Southern Lebanon is noted prior to launch and coutner-measures deployed which destroy the missile and the launch crew.  A number of high ranking Hezbollah and Hamas members suffer mysterious deaths and several Iranian Mullahs along with the leader of Syria's intelligence agency also succumb.  Rumors of Israeli secret weapons, ray guns, biological agents, and other more fanciful inventions take off across the Middle East.  Paranoia escalates within the HISH alliance who have very good reason to believe they have been infiltrated by Israeli agents.  Massive purges take place as internecine warfare breaks out while the Israeli spies are sought out.  Many are executed though none have any actual connection to the Mossad.

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suffers a fatal heart attack, the Israelis announce that this is what happens to all tyrants and anti-Semites.  Several Rabbis announce that the mysterious deaths of so man of Israel's enemies in such a short period of time are signs of G-d's displeasure at the anti-Semitic ravings of our enemies.  The pace of attacks against Israel diminish as none are successful, save the rare "lone wolf" events.  Program directors at state run Arab media organizations also have been suffering the same mysterious illnesses and deaths.  The level of anti-Semitic agitprop begins to diminish as articles appear in the Arab press describing secret Jewish rays able to kill those who threaten Israel from a distance; such articles are occasionally based on suggestions from Israeli sources but more often occur to the writer de novo.  The pattern of suspicious deaths of leading anti-Semites does not go unremarked.  Eventually the Middle east quiets down. 

In this scenario the Israelis are able to wield a scalpel to remove the Cancerous stem cells from the Arab body.  The bugs and nanobots act as a powerfully enhanced immune system for the Jewish state.  Vigilance will be required for generations but the accelerating pace of technology means that those states and societies which have a lead in technology today will find their lead increasing exponentially against their competitors and adversaries.  The Arab world has existed for a thousand years as a culture based on extraction; for too many Arabs work is a dirty word and innovation is against Allah's will.  Such a  society cannot compete in a high tech environment.

Finally Peace comes to the Middle east through the workings of Jewish magic.

A Time of Testing

The news out of the Middle East is dispiriting.  Israel has suffered a major defeat in the information war being waged against it.  Among Israel's friends the reactions ranges from anger at the Israeli government for botching the response to the aid convoy to appropriate concern that Israel Does Not Understand 4GW.  The soldiers who boarded the Turkish ship were inexcusably unprepared by their military/political superiors for the violent reception they met.

Yaacov Lozowick points out the ecology of Israel's existential crisis:

We need to step back and remind ourselves of the broad picture of the concentric circles at whose center we live.

The outer circle is the utter hatred large swathes of the Muslim World bear towards the idea and reality of a Jewish state. As a demonstrator in Istanbul shouted, there can be no Jewish state in the Arab world: what bothers him about the siege of Gaza is that Jews are in the position to impose it, not it's particular details. (The irony of Turks hating Jews for infractions of human rights or international law is striking).

The next circle are the Westerners of various stripes who also wish Israel gone, and reject the right of the Jews to be a nation. Many of the hate-motivated Muslims are willing or eager to engage in violence. Most of the Westerns haters aren't. They prefer to spew their malice at places like the Guardian, as documented daily by CiFWatch, or at many similar cesspools. Some, however, go further: Gerta Berlin, for example, a spokesperson of the Free Gaza Movement which collaborated in launching the flotilla, tells proudly that she's been active in Palestinian causes since the early 1960s, when Gaza was occupied by Egypt, not that she cared. She and her ilk are enemies of Israel, and will hi-jack whatever narrative holds out promise of damaging Israel. Today it's Gaza, before that it was Jenin, and next it will be... whatever.

Then there's the very large circle of cynics idealists and the lazy. The cynics are epitomized by, say, China. The Chinese don't care about international law or morality. They care about power and China. When working with Israel fits their purposes they'll do so gladly; when not, not. In neither case will they be motivated by the conditions in Gaza, to which they are utterly indifferent unless there's an angle for Chinese profit.

The idealistic and lazy typically rely on an international media that has been repeatedly "played" by those forces inimical to Western Civilization and as a result tend to buy into the narrative of brutal (White) Western oppressors and innocent and desperate (brown) victims; this allows the aggressors to start each engagement with a decisive advantage.  Further, the early pictures and video come prepared with a ready narrative (built in the weeks prior to the incident)  which leaves the conventionally more powerful defender at a significant disadvantage.

All of this is unified by the international Jihad being waged by Islam and their allies on the Left against Western Civilization.  Andrew McCarthy discusses how Jihad is being waged in America, The 'peaceful' Jihad in America; the "peaceful" Jihadis leverage the violent Jihadis to advance their ideology.  As usual, Israel serves as the "canary in the coal mine" but where Israel goes, the United States soon follows.  Once Israel has been rendered incapable of self-defense, American efforts to safeguard our country will be further eroded in ways which make a successful defense of civilization itself problematic.

Barry Rubin tries to use reason and reality to fight this war: Sympathy for the Devil and the Gaza Sea Confrontation: How Can Helping a Repressive Fascist, Genocide-Intending Hamas Regime be Noble?  It is certainly important for supporters of Israel and Western Civilization to know the facts as clearly as possible but it seems to me we are well past the point where facts are going to sway public opinion in any significant way or advance the cause of Peace or Victory over those forces of barbarism that threaten us.

Richard Fernandez, perhaps remembering his Three Conjectures, believes that eventually the reality of this global war will become unmistakably real:

The Consolations of Philosophy

Both cases [the Gaza flotilla and the Cheonan sinking] demonstrate that nothing is more paramount either to the establishment nor to the politically correct sections of the media than the maintenance of a lie. For the lie is in the service of the greater good. High reasons of policy will be invoked to explain why the truth should not be so. But the extreme reliance on fantasy by parts of the Western establishment goes well beyond surrounding a kernel of the truth with a “bodyguard of lies.” Instead it is the lie itself which is guarded by even more falsehoods.  Gradually and inexorably, an entire political class has staked its existence on continuation of falsehood. The greater good is the fiction. Deception has become a necessity in itself.

As a result, any moderately well informed individual knows that there is no Islamic extremism, nor even terrorism. There are only man made disasters. Everybody knows that we can borrow our way out of debt, that the welfare state is the sustainable wave of the future; that Egypt has no border with Gaza through which it can provide supplies if it wanted; that the UN has kept Hezbollah from importing hundreds of missiles into Lebanon; that the thought of a handful of Jews has kept hundreds of millions of oil-rich Muslims from attaining prosperity; and that Global Warming is the main danger facing the planet Earth. That these assertions are untrue hardly matters; that they are indisputable is what seems to count. For who shall dispute them?

Reality might. And therein lies the problem.

Here’s what is going to happen with one hundred percent certainty. All of these lies will explode with considerable force in the faces of political establishment. Nothing can prevent it. Just as reality eventually exposed the hollowness of the financial bubble and showed that nothing was “too big to fail,” eventually it will demonstrate to our extreme cost, that no lie can be maintained forever. That is the real reason anyone should really care about what happened on the “peace flotilla.” We are as corrupt as a preacher in a whorehouse. It ain’t what we don’t know that will hurt us, it’s what we know that ain’t so that will drive the dagger into our hearts.

In 2010 we have been knowingly at war with radical Islam, now referred to using euphemisms designed to deny that very fact but recognized as such by anyone paying attention, for almost 10 years.  Radical Islam (with very little demurral from "moderate" Islam) has been at war with the West since the 1940s, more openly since the 1967 Middle East War, and most directly against America since 1993 (the first WTC bombing.)   Europe is, as has been their wont, determined to be the last crocodile by tossing Israel over-board.  Our current administration, convinced by the European style facile rationalization popular at elite Universities, is either confused, has ambivalent leanings, or is simply disinterested in understanding our current peril and as a result facilitates the growth of Islamist ideology. 

[In any local situation, the choice of submission to the Islamists versus alliance with the West must now be filtered through a lens of American neo-isolationism.  The local thugs will win every time in this calculation.]

Israel can not win this war by using conventional means.  It is a civilized community living in the middle of a population of sociopaths and lunatics.   As Max Boot points out, Israel Can Win Every Battle but Still Lose the War. 

I can see no way out for Israel in the near term.  It is rapidly being delegitimized and made a pariah.  The best, perhaps only, way to protect oneself from sociopaths (the Islamist leadership) is to threaten them with an overwhelming response.  Sociopaths desire to live and the Islamist leadership give every indication of desiring to live and continue to wield power, whether as a Prince in Saudi Arabia, a Mullah in Iran, or a heroic Hezbollah or Hamas Resistance fighter in Damascus.  Only if the leadership are convinced that their well being is at risk will they be at all willing to rein in the lunatics who they send to murder and die.  The problem for Israel is now several fold:

Can Israel credibly threaten, sotto voce, a Samson Option?*

Will its enemies believe its threats?

Can a democracy make such a threat and convince itself of its necessity?

The logic of the Information War against Israel and the Iranian race to obtain nuclear weapons, combined with European animus and American insouciance, suggests that at some point, a willingness to use nuclear weapons in the defense of Israel will become a necessity if the state is to survive long term.  The more credible the threat of use is, the less likely it will become necessary.  Unfortunately, in the Middle East, there will always be those willing to test Israel's resolve to use all means at its disposal to confirm Never Again.

I fear we are moving perilously close to that test.

* The Samson Option will be a necessary deterrent for the next 10 years.  At that point the asymmetry at the heart of Israel's problems will be addressable and the Islamists will no longer have the advantage in unconventional war.  That makes the next ten years the most perilous in recent memory. I will expand on these ideas in a future post.