ShrinkWrapped

What Are You Willing to Die For?

[Update at end]

In post-religious, secularized Western countries, the answer to the title question tends to devolve to "nothing" beyond the self and its interests.  Western elites are fond of instructing their inferiors to sacrifice for their Utopian ideal of the moment but sacrificing one's life for the "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" for others is typically seen as the province of less well educated, less sophisticated, non-members of the elite.  America still has enough young people who value what this country has to offer that they are willing to put their lives on the line for us, but Europe has long since surrendered to the progressive forces of history and eschews self-defence of their ideals.   For Western elites, people who are motivated by religious beliefs, usually overlapping with those too ignorant to avoid the military, are essentially the equivalent of cannon fodder, ie, they do not count.  Our elites pride themselves on their functional atheism.  Politicians may from time to time profess their deep religious convictions but most often on the left this is a rather transparent attempt to appeal tot he rubes and when a politician appears to have genuine religious convictions, as for example Sarah Palin, they are savaged by the elites in media and academia.

Because religious belief has been so discredited by our elites, they tend to see anyone who believes as either a charlatan (using their beliefs to scam people) or as at best ignorant if not overtly intellectually limited.  The idea that there exist people whose religious beliefs motivate them to kill and die for their deity does not reach the threshold of consciousness for our elites.  They may occasionally give lip service to the idea (though less often since we are no longer at war with Islamic terrorists) and may admit that the Islamic foot soldiers of Iran, al Qaeda, Hamas, or Hezbollah are religious radicals, but they insist that the leaders of such groups can be approached as rational actors.  Greg Sheridan, in the Australian, points out how we fool ourselves by imagining our enemies to be rationally motivated:

Tehran on path to our destruction

Iran has been determined to acquire nuclear weapons for a long time. It is, as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton describes it, something of a military dictatorship, with the Revolutionary Guard assuming more and more power. It is still also, however, a theocratic dictatorship. The purpose of the state is to serve theological ends.

Most Western analysts refuse to take Islamic religion seriously as a factor in geopolitics, assuming there must always be a rational national-interest explanation for any state's behaviour.

The truth is that history is littered with states behaving irrationally and pursuing irrational ends, and doing so in often self-destructive ways. In Mao's China tens of millions of people died in famines directly caused by state policy. North Korea has driven its people into starvation. Pol Pot not only committed genocide on his own people, he then attacked Vietnam so that it would destroy him. Saddam Hussein was such a canny, realist calculator of the odds that his regime ended up gone and he ended up dead.

It is intensely ahistorical to believe political regimes will always act according to Western conceptions of enlightened self-interest.

Melanie Philips' comment on Greg Sheridan's article is apt:

It is striking, to this British observer at least, how very unlikely it would be to encounter anywhere in the British media such a well-informed, realistic and intelligent analysis of the Iranian crisis and the paralysis of the west.

Even among seasoned and reasonable observers who have been involved in thinking about the Middle East for a very long time, there is an implicit assumption that the belief structure of the enemy can be approached using rationality.  In the course of an article about Andrew Sullivan's antipathy to Israel* and himself, Jeffery Goldberg notes that he has for a long time worried about Israel becoming complicit in its own destruction:

Andrew Sullivan is Going to Tear Me To Shreds

I've been writing since 2004 that Israel will one day be considered an apartheid state if it continues to rule over a population of Arabs that doesn't want to be ruled by Israelis. That is why it is vital for Israel to establish permanent, internationally-recognized borders that more-or-less adhere to the 1967 border. Unlike Andrew, I believe that Israel has tried to free itself from ruling these Palestinians (the pull-out from Gaza is an example, as is Ehud Olmert's recent, unanswered offer to the Palestinians to pull out from virtually 100 percent of the West Bank). But the reality remains: It will be very dangerous for Israel to engineer this pull-back, but it will be, over time, fatal for it to stay in the West Bank.  Anyway, more to come, eventually.

According to this fairly common point of view, Israel has the choice of continuing to "oppress and occupy" West bank Palestinians, which will inevitably lead to the delegitimization of the Jewish state or they must engineer a (unilateral) Peace agreement which would be tantamount to Israeli suicide.  There has never been any indication that any Palestinian leader, no matter how "moderate" would be willing to accept a Jewish state.  The current favored Moderates of the PA insist upon an unlimited right of return and indefensible borders for Israel. 

It is sophistry to pronounce that a Peace can be accomplished in which the Palestinians accept some financial inducements and a token right of return in exchange for permanent Peace.  There is no evidence, zero, that any Palestinian could cede the right of return and survive, let alone continue to rule.  To believe otherwise is delusional, an invention of the Western, rational mind.

Unfortunately, this is the current choice; there can be no compromise with people who believe that compromise, and the continued existence of the state of Israel is an anathema to their deity.  They are certainly willing to kill for their beliefs, more significantly, they are willing to die for their beliefs.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can not end until the Palestinians, and their Arab backers, accept the legitimacy of Israel, yet they cannot do so and remain loyal to their religion.  Islam believes that it is the superior faith, that the Koran is the final, perfect word of Allah.  An independent Jewish state, especially one that has repeatedly humiliated the Arab world (in War and in Peace) threatens to destroy Islam merely by its continued existence.  After all, how can Allah be supreme when the hated Jews, who proclaim their G-d the one true G-d, remain victorious over Islam?  Islam, in its current form, cannot survive and adapt to he modern world; the very religious foundations of the faith are at risk every day that Israel persists.  The struggle to eradicate Israel and the Jews can only accommodate Peace if it temporary and in the service of the final solution.  This is not something I am simply making up out of whole cloth, it is what our enemies say on a daily basis, if we only choose to listen. 

Of course, for the West to accept this truth would be a deeply unsettling recognition.  Yet once we come to understand the reality, the solution becomes clearer, albeit one that makes our elites most uncomfortable.  A long term minimization of violence with occasional reminders by the West/Israel to the violent ones that we know where they live (ie, the current status quo) is the only way to keep the forces of destruction under control.  Allowing the Muslim world's most extreme variants to gain power and strength is a path to disaster.

* The question of whether or not Andrew Sullivan is an anti-Semite is a non-starter.  Andrew Sullivan has been increasingly using language which is indistinguishable from classical anti-Semitic tropes as filtered through the post-modern lens; after a while whether or not he entertains any particular antipathy to Jews is immaterial.  Others may disagree but ultimately it hardly matters.  The mainstreaming of anti-Semitic tropes is ongoing.

Update: In an excellent article today Barry Rubin points out that the complementary (mirror image?) of the ubiquitous blindness to the reality of radical Islamic religious ideology occurs in the views that  "Moderates" have of Israel:

Why Isn't There Peace? One Reason: Few People Know How Much is Being Offered

Among Palestinians, as more broadly with almost all of the public in the Muslim-majority world and a lot of the elite classes in Europe, there exists a mythical Israel, reminiscent of the fabricated antisemitic stereotypes of the past, that has little to do with reality. They believe Israel isn't interested in peace, doesn't offer the Palestinians anything, opposes any real Palestinian state, intends to keep the West Bank (until Israel's withdrawal from all of the Gaza Strip they would have added that territory as well), and is led by intransigent hardliners. Such a conception was comprehensible--if not fully accurate--describing the situation in parts of the 1980s but has nothing to do with the last 20 years.

In 2010 they have no idea what Israel actually offered in the 1990s' peace process, or at the Camp David summit in 2000, or what President Bill Clinton offered with Israel's agreement in December 2000, or what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proffered in 2008, or what is in the current Israeli government's peace offer in 2010. All proposed the creation of an independent Palestinian state, the first three in close to 100 percent and the last three as equivalent to 100 percent (with some small, equal land swaps) in size to the pre-1967 West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Lacking any knowledge of these offers, or at least knowing only very distorted ones, they can maintain that Israel has offered "nothing" and that therefore the continuation of the conflict is not due to Palestinian intransigence but Israel's alleged opposition to the creation of a real independent Palestinian state. This reminds me of how Mahmoud Abbas, today leader of the Palestinian Authority, responded to some reasonably accurate descriptions in the Palestinian media of what Israel offered in 2000 at Camp David. It is better, he said at the time, not to talk about these things at all, presumably lest some Palestinians might think that it was a reasonable deal.

Anyone who actually lives in Israel knows that--whether they like it or not--Israel is ready to make big conessions and take reasonable risks to achieve peace. They know, whether or not they agree, that the overwhelming majority is ready to accept an independent Palestinian state as long as it is willing to end the conflict and live side by side in peace.

Outside Israel, far fewer people than should do so understand this reality. And that includes journalists,academics, and politicians. If they address the issue at all, they presume that Israel is asking the Palestinians to make some huge or unreasonable concession. Often, as noted above, their understanding of Israeli views is more than 20 years out of date.

Read the whole thing.  The complementary blind spots of our elites toward Israel and the Palestinians (and in a larger sense, toward ourselves and the Islamic radicals)  has important Psychological dimensions; elaboration to follow.

Who Are We Fighting?

In Synthesis I noted that among other problems in our current confrontation with those who wish to do us harm is a conspicuous lacunae in our acknowledgement and naming of the enemy.  According to the Bush administration we were fighting "Terror", a tactic and a first order derivative of an enemy entity; according to the Obama administration, we are now fighting "man caused disasters" or some other second derivative of the enemy. 

In my humble opinion, our enemy is radical, expansionist, fundamentalist Islam in all its iterations.  One version of this is that of Thomas Friedman, who believes we are involved bystanders to the real struggle within Islam:

Father Knows Best

Every faith has its violent extreme. The West is not immune. It’s all about how the center deals with it. Does it tolerate it, isolate it or shame it? The jihadists are a security problem for our system. But they are a political and moral problem for the Arab-Muslim system. If they won’t address this problem for us, I truly hope they will do it for themselves. Eventually, we’ll find a way to keep most jihadists off our planes and out of our volleyball games — but they will have to live with them.

I almost agree with Friedman, though believe he underestimates the problematic nature of Islam itself.  There are many people who disagree that there can be a "moderate" Islam, suggesting that I do not go far enough in characterizing the enemy.  Commenter Gary K has frequently offered cogent and well parsed explanations for this point of view, as in this comment to my post:

First, as my prior comments here have spelled out, I do not believe that these Muslim attacks, this Jihad against us “unbelievers” and the West are somehow the result of some internal conflict between “moderates” and “fundamentalists” within Islam; they are policy.

From what I have observed and studied, there is no real “reformist” party within Islam of the kind we might envision—no great public, voiced yearning for reform and a corresponding popular movement, no religious communities or centers, no major politicians or leaders, no Imams calling for reform or moderation, for modernization or revision of the Qur’an, or advocating looking at Muhammad and his Sunna or basic Islamic doctrine differently--in a “modern” way--and with an eye to de-emphasizing, or removal of its central, violent, xenophobic focus on world domination, on applying totalitarian Shari’a law to all people, and on converting, conquering or killing all unbelievers.

Conservative, rigid, inward-looking Islam has been very carefully constructed so that any such challenges to its orthodoxy are quickly detected and eliminated by bringing the power of the entire Umma’s social structure and culture, of the Muslim state, and of individual inner and outer directed Muslims to bear in order to isolate, shun, threaten, attack or—if all else fails--kill potential reformers and apostates.

Gary K's view is contested by Jimmy J's wish that it were not so:

If Gary K. is correct, we can look forward to either the need to slaughter huge numbers of Muslims (would 750 million dead Muslims convince the other half that we mean business?) or eventual surrender. My hope is that he is wrong.

I suspect Gary K will be surprised to learn that I have reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that he is correct.  However, I do not believe it is in our best interests to behave as if he is correct.  Allow me to elucidate.

Societal Regression Watch

From Terror and Societal Regression:

After a national trauma, there are a number of signs of "large group" regression.  (I will not here go into some of the characteristics of what constitutes a large group; it relates to elements that I have referred to in the past as our tribal nature; see also here.)  The panel chair, Vamik Volkan, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and founder of the Center for the Study of the Mind and Human Interaction at the University of Virginia and Emeritus Training and Supervising Analyst of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, described 14 major symptoms of large-group regression:

...

9) Reactivation of a "chosen trauma" whereby a large group unconsciously "chooses" to make a shared mental representation of an event that caused it terrible losses, helplessness, humiliation, and victimization....Slobodan Milosevic exemplified this phenomenon in his reactivation of the shared memory of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, in which the Serbian hero, Prince Lazar, was killed. [Emphasis added-SW]

There has been a great deal already written about the difficult to understand decision of the Obama administration to bring Khalid Sheik Mohamed to New York for trial within eyesight of the hole in the ground where the World Trade Center once stood.  Andy McCarthy has made the point that by bringing KSM to trial in a criminal proceeding, the Obama administration can effectively put the Bush administration on trial without taking respoonsibility for their behavior.  The Bush administration's dirty laundry (renditions, secret prisons, enhanced interrogations) can be put on trial, names can be leaked via discovery, and a host of untoward events can cause great pleasure to the left and great distress to those who were involved in protecting us for the last 8 years. 

James Taranto, quoted by Glenn Reynolds notes:

“You have to wonder if the Obama administration and its supporters bothered to think through the implications of their decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohamed and four other enemy combatants as civilians. An immediate effect, and one that will only be strengthened by an actual trial or trials, is to bring 9/11 back into the public consciousness. That can’t be good for President Obama. . . . When appellate courts decide questions of law, they set precedents for future cases. If they make allowances for the exigencies of the war on terror in order to uphold convictions of KSM and his associates, it could end up diminishing the rights of ordinary criminal defendants. That’s why the smart civil-libertarian position is to oppose trying terrorists as civilians.”

It would not be unusual for the unintended consequences to far outweigh the intended.  If the administration believes this will simply be a showcase for the wonders of our legal system and that the political effects will be helpful to them or at least minimally harmful, they may end up surprised.

However, whatever the conscious motivations of Obama and Holder, et al, the unconscious ramifications may be even more powerful, more long lasting, and deeper. 

John Opie pointedly notes the juxtaposition of trial and empty space:  [Emphasis mine-SW]

WTC as Metaphor...

I've commented on the absurd situation surrounding the rebuilding of the WTC before.

And yes, it was a comment to a post by Bret Stephens at the WSJ.

He's remindedonce again that there has been, functionally, no progress there, and that indeed there are multiple ways of viewing the WTC at this point in time.

It's where what effectively amounts to a show trial is now scheduled to be turned into a media circus.

It's where literally thousands of people are waiting for closure and rebirth.

It's also where petty scrabbling and pathetically disgusting incompetence has led to no reconstruction.

... what I really want to talk about here is the WTC as metaphor: a metaphor for how screwed up things really are.

After eight years in which the views and interests of, inter alia, the Port Authority, NYPD, MTA and EPA, the several governors of New York and New Jersey, lease-holder Larry Silverstein, various star architects, the insurance companies, contractors, unions and lawyers, the families of the bereaved, their self-appointed spokespersons, the residents of lower Manhattan and, yes, even the fish of the Hudson river have all been duly consulted and considered, this is what we've got: a site of mourning turned into a symbol of defiance turned into a metaphor of American incompetence—of things not going forward. It is, in short, the story of our decade.

....

Think of it this way: as long as the WTC is not rebuilt, things will not get better. There is a malaise here, a sickness unto the heart, the ritual self-loathing of what once was the great liberal tradition in the United States, poisoned by greed and corruption from within and deliberately targeted for subversion from outside.

Rebuild the WTC. Rebuild it now.

The empty hole where the WTC used to stand is a symbol of American impotence.  9/11 was traumatic not just because of the terrible personal losses of those who lost loved ones that day.  What makes a loss traumatic is the helpless rage evoked by the victimization.  America was rendered helpless on that terrible day and all who watched the planes fly repeatedly into the twin towers and saw those poor doomed souls falling to their deaths, who watched those towers come down, felt the helplessness deep in their emotional cores.  When George W. Bush, in his finest moment, stood on top of the pile of rubble and announced we were coming, it was a necessary turn from mourning to action, psychologically necessary even if the action taken was poorly executed. 

We have now returned to a pre-9/11 passivity in our National Defense.  (I am not here discussing any actual details of how our defensive posture may have changed or whether or not our military is carrying the fight to our enemies but of the atmospherics, the zeitgeist, which is much more significant at the moment.)  By returning KSM to the scene of the crime (rather than dealing with him in a military tribunal that would mete out justice, an active position, versus the enforced passivity of the legal forum) the Obama administration is reawakening the trauma.  When the vast majority of people are opposed to treating KSM with the kids gloves required in our legal system and their wishes are ignored, the sense of powerlessness returns.  Just as the abused child is secondarily traumatized by the parents refusal to listen, those who were traumatized by 9/11 can be re-traumatized by our "parents" refusal to listen.  But where a traumatized child is forced to remain passive, the once traumatized American people may well not remain passive.  The Tea party movement is an expression of the adaptive defense of turning passive into active.  The movement can only grow with each new insult.

Obama and those who share his pre-9/11 mindset (of a wishful fantasy world) would continue to reinforce the trauma and maintain us as a humiliated, helplessly people.  They have unconsciously "chosen the trauma" and moved well down the pathway to a regressed state.  There is a connection between the still vacant hole in the ground and a President who appears to be constitutionally incapable of exercising leadership and taking action.  (Impotence is not a problem in the Academy or the Senate but in the Executive it is disastrous.)  We are facing a genuine test of whether our society will continue to regress or if the people, that amorphous mass who define the zeitgeist in America, can refuse to allow the pervasive state of helplessness and trauma to persist.

Addendum: David Brooks, who is paid to have a sense of the zeitgeist, is in tune with my post today; note the tone of resignation and near despair as he compares our sense of the future and China's sense of its future:

The Nation of Futurity

The anxiety in America is caused by the vague sense that they have what we’re supposed to have. It’s not the per capita income, which the Chinese may never have at our level. It’s the sense of living with baubles just out of reach. It’s the faith in the future, which is actually more important.

China, where President Obama is visiting, invites a certain sort of reverie. It is natural, looking over the construction cranes, to think about the flow of history over decades, not just day to day. And it becomes obvious by comparison just how far the U.S. has drifted from its normal future-centered orientation and how much this rankles.

The U.S. now has an economy shifted too much toward consumption, debt and imports and too little toward production, innovation and exports. It now has a mounting federal debt that creates present indulgence and future hardship.

Americans could once be confident that their country would grow more productive because each generation was more skilled than the last. That’s no longer true. The political system now groans to pass anything easy — tax cuts and expanding health care coverage — and is incapable of passing anything hard — spending restraint, health care cost control.

The standard thing these days is for Americans to scold each other for our profligacy, to urge fiscal Puritanism. But it’s not clear Americans have ever really been self-disciplined. Instead, Americans probably postponed gratification because they thought the future was a big rock-candy mountain, and if they were stealing from that, they were robbing themselves of something stupendous.

It would be nice if some leader could induce the country to salivate for the future again. That would mean connecting discrete policies — education, technological innovation, funding for basic research — into a single long-term narrative. It would mean creating regional strategies, because innovation happens in geographic clusters, not at the national level. It would mean finding ways to tamp down consumption and reward production. The most pragmatic guide for that remains Michael Porter’s essay in the Oct. 30, 2008, issue of Business Week.

As the financial crises ease, it would be nice if Americans would once again start looking to the horizon.

The Singularity & the 12th Imam: Part IV

In The Singularity is Near, Ray Kurzweil looked at the natural history of information processing and discovered that the rate of increase in the ability to manipulate information has a logarithmic slope; in other words, the rate of information processing ability increases at an exponential rate.  Furthermore, he suggested that within the next 30-40 years we will reach a time at which the pace of technological advance (the current embodiment of information processing) will become so rapid as to make further predictions impossible, a point which he called "The Singularity". 

Kevin Kelly, as part of an article critiquing certain aspects of Kurzweil's idea, described the Singularity in fairly accessible terms.  (Vinge refers to Verner Vinge, who originated the idea of an Artificial Intelligence Singularity):

In Vinge’s analysis, at some point not too far away, innovations in computer power would enable us to design computers more intelligent than we are, and these smarter computers could design computers yet smarter than themselves, and so on, the loop of computers-making-newer-computers accelerating very quickly towards unimaginable levels of intelligence. This progress in IQ and power, when graphed, generates a rising curve which appears to approach the straight up limit of infinity. In mathematical terms it resembles the singularity of a black hole, because, as Vinge announced, it will be impossible to know anything beyond this threshold. If we make an AI which in turn makes a greater AI, ad infinitum, then their future is unknowable to us, just as our lives have been unfathomable to a slug. So the singularity became a black hole, an impenetrable veil hiding our future from us.

In his response to Kelly's article, Kurzweil wrote a clarifying post and used the Internet to illustrate the concept of a "transformative technology":

Consider the Internet. When the Arpanet went from 10,000 nodes to 20,000 in one year, and then to 40,000 and then 80,000, it was of interest only to a few thousand scientists. When ten years later it went from 10 million nodes to 20 million, and then 40 million and 80 million, the appearance of this curve looks identical (especially when viewed on a log plot), but the consequences were profoundly more transformative. There is a point in the smooth exponential growth of these different aspects of information technology when they transform the world as we know it. [Emphasis mine-SW]

One of Kurzweil's great insights was that almost any information technology, when looked at over time, shows the same pattern of exponential growth, with minimal change until a threshold is hit, followed by explosive transformations. 

What does this have to do with Apocalyptic cults and irrational reactions to disruption fueled angst?

The Reavers of Islam

People recognize that when we try to communicate with each other, our tools of language and image are almost always inadequate to convey our full meaning, and at the same time, convey multiple meanings that we do not consciously intend.  The War on Terror, also known as the War on Isalmofascism, is being shaped by these meta-communications in ways that some of the main players seem not to recognize.

Yesterday,  Apollon Zamp guest blogged at Gates of Vienna, and in his post The Reavers' Jihad explicitly compared Islam to the marauders of the Firefly series.  The comparison may be an exaggeration, and may be based on a limited view of Islam, however it is a view that the proponents of Jihad have been assiduously advancing and in this our MSM have been complicit.  Here is Apollon Zamp's description of Reavers:

For those not familiar with the TV show “Firefly” and its subsequent film production, Serenity, the story line includes a savage breed of beings known as Reavers. Since the Firefly universe is set five hundred years in the future, one might — on a steady diet of Star Trek and other such sci-fi favorites — expect danger to come in the form of alien life. However, danger comes instead in the form of the Beast Within — the savage side of man’s nature that in civilized cultures is held in check by proper social conditioning, an instilled sense of morality, and regulation of the id by the superego.

The Rehabilitation of John Walker Lindh

Vodkapundit today takes a look at the "Long War" and wonders if we can Stay Focused.  He does not believe our society is doing what is required in order to in the war, and I see little to disagree with in his formulation:

If we’re going to win a long, ideological war, we need our primary schools to [teach] our children what patriotism is - and for the most part, they don’t. We need our college professors to give our best and brightest the intellectual ammunition to confront our destroyers – and for the most part, they don’t. We need our public thinkers to defend our laws and our way of life against foreign aggression – and for the most part, they don’t. We need our entertainers to choose the home team – and for the most part, they don’t. We need our politicians to show the backbone of Churchill, but for the most part, they don’t. And we need our military to understand, embrace, and put everything on the line for their country.

One out of six? That’s pretty bad. Is it enough? Probably not.

Our schools, our public thinkers, our entertainers, and our politicians either do not realize we are at war (which is hard to believe, but possible) or understand we are at war yet are unable to break out of their sclerotic paradigms.  Our media continues to view the world through the dialectical lens of Political Correctness.  In the PC world, there are only victims and oppressors and once a group or an individual has been determined to be a victim, they are held to minimal standards of accountability and seen as innocents whose atrocities are explained as the result of their desperate circumstances (especially their oppression by the West.)  Among other things, this allows the media to simplify the news in the service of "Stories" or "Narratives."  Although the media often has pretensions of sophistication and nuance, in reality, they have very little time or ability to explain complex stories in any depth and falling back on the ready made "victim" template is the easiest way to get stories into print.

John Walker Lindh is now being actively rehabilitated in the media.

Fast Forward: Part III

Iraq has been the central front in the war between Modern Civilization and totalitarian Islam since the United States and its coalition partners invaded.  The purpose of the invasion was primarily to destroy the regime of Saddam Hussein in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East, decrease the risk of Iraq expanding or recreating their WMD programs (the jury is still out on the whereabouts or existence of any Iraqi WMD but that is not germane to this issue at the moment, in any event), and present a third option to the world's Muslims, most of whom have lived their entire lives under authoritarian or totalitarian rule, either secular or theocratic in nature.  Democratizing Iraq was often posed as an after-thought, but it was and is a crucial aspect of the larger war against Islamofascism.

The  destruction of the dome of the Golden Mosque Samarra has been the latest and perhaps most effective, attempt yet to ignite civil war in Iraq.  Bill Roggio suggests that the next few days will be key.  In Looking for Signs of Civil War in Iraq, he offers a variety of guideposts by which to determine the likely direction of future events and concludes:

Iraq has yet to encounter any of the problems stated above. The Sunni led Iraqi Accordance Front has suspended talks to form a government, but have not withdrawn from the political process. The Iraqi Security Forces have taken appropriate measures and suspended all leaves, but there are no indications they are cooperating with militias or abetting the violence in any way. There have been both encouraging statements by the Shiite and Sunni leaders. There also have been some irresponsible statements from the politicians on all sides, but this can be understood as tensions are running high. The Shiites are devastated by the destruction of the Golden Mosque and the Sunnis are horrified at the retaliation attacks. What is critical is what is said and done by these politicians in the next few days and weeks.

Iran and Nuclear Weapons

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979.  For much of that time, America fought a passive war of defense only.  The amount of damage that Iran could inflict upon us was considered tolerable in comparison to the damage that would incur from open hostilities.  Our capabilities had been so eroded since the post-Vietnam emasculation of our covert operations apparatus that any attempts to strike back at Iran were of necessity quite limited.  This was the status quo from the time of the American embassy take over in Tehran in 1979 until 9/11. 

Post-9/11, many people recognized Iran as a greater long term threat than Iraq, but numerous constraints, internationally and at home, made a direct response to Iran an impossibility.  I firmly believe that the strategic decision was made to encircle Iran with the aim of eventually toppling the regime, which since the advent of Ayatollah Khomeini has been the single greatest supporter of Islamic terror in the world. 

Not surprisingly, in all such wars, the final battles tend to be the most dangerous.  We are approaching the end game and the timing and outcome depend on too many factors that are either unknown or unknowable. 

The problem for the West is that modernization is incompatible with the Islam practiced by the Iranian Mullahs, which is closely related to the Islam practiced by the Saudi Wahhabists and al Qaeda.  Furthermore, every day that passes, the defeat of their version of Islam inevitably comes nearer.  Obtaining a nuclear weapon is the only hope the Mullahs have for stopping the slide of "true" Islam into apostasy; furthermore, using a nuclear weapon is the only hope they have of vanquishing the infidels.  Their version of Allah demands it and no merely human intervention by the UN will have any chance of derailing their desires.

What are they Thinking?

Sometimes news stories appear that make me scratch my head and wonder, "What are they thinking?"

This morning I took a five minute break from FNS to watch a few minutes of Meet the Press, where  Tim Russert had Madeline Albright and Lindsey Graham as guests.  (I don't have a transcript and may have some details wrong, but the meaning is clear.) Russert asked Lindsey Graham what could be done to increase the level of civility of discourse in politics.  Graham answered that it would help if the opposition stopped claiming that Bush lied, and Cheney lied, as a start.  When Russert passed the question along to Albright, she couldn't do it.  She looked down at the table and nearly sotto voce, said she wondered why Bush and Cheney had misstated the intelligence.  Russert persisted and quoted her own words back to her, to the effect that Saddam Hussein had WMD and added that she was part of the Clinton administration when regime change was voted on by the Senate to be official policy of the United States; was she repudiating that now?  Her response was that they had Hussein in a box and the threat of WMD was not imminent. (This has been proven repeatedly to be a real "lie" used by the opposition to discredit the admin; Bush said we needed to act before the threat became "imminent".)   Does she really believe what she is saying despite all the evidence of how the UN (Oil for Food scandal that most of the MSM and Democrats have apparently slept through) was corrupted by Hussein and how the Iraqi embargo was failing? Add in, can she really believe she was lied to about the intelligence when she was part of an administration which, while in office, apparently believed the same intelligence and was even more extreme in their rhetoric that the Bush administration was?  It is a puzzle and I am stumped and I wonder: What are they thinking?

Next, I bring to you the new Hollywood blockbuster, Brokeback Mountain.  Apparently, the critics love the movie.