The Saudis Are Hitting Their Worry Beads

The House of Sand--oops!  Bad Geek!  It's the House of Saud--is having a serious Xanax moment all because of what is going on in Egypt.  No, it's not because the feudal regime is all that worried about being the next domino falling in the Arab world.

The Saudis have their burnooses in a twist because Egypt has been a very critical ally in the ongoing conflict between the reactionary Sunni regimes and the flatly paleolithic Shiite theocracy in Iran.  The fear is that a new Egyptian government may ooze closer to the stream of Islam best called political.  Should that happen, the Saudis will find themselves more isolated in the contest with Iran.

Saudi Arabia has been more keen than even the US in pursuing a strategy of isolating Iran.  Egypt has been a very important associate in this endeavor.  The support of Cairo has been key in offsetting the efforts of other Muslim majority states such as Qatar and Turkey to lessen the impact of sanctions and other isolation enhancing mechanisms.  Should Egypt under a new government slack off on these efforts, the result would be not only a lessening of Saudi influence but a collateral increase in that of Turkey.  The net outcome would be a species of defeat for the House of Sand.

While not having received any great play in American MSM, the cold war between Riyadh and Tehran has been the highest priority within the Saudi government.  The fear felt in Saudi Arabia concerning the ambitions and reach of the mullahs has been high and continues to grow.  The Saudis fear not only the military capacities of Iran, including the impending nuclear one, but also the growth of its direct and indirect influence within the smaller states of the region.

The growth of Iranian influence was behind the frantic efforts made by Saudi diplomats--and the Saudi king--to come to an understanding with Syria regarding the political arrangements within Lebanon.  The failure of these efforts not only indicated that Damascus had fallen deeper into the Iranian gravity well, but that Lebanon was being dragged in as well.  This meant simply that as of two weeks ago only Egypt was a solid backer of the Saudi play.

Should, as seems quite likely, the next Egyptian government will include the Muslim Brotherhood under some guise, it is almost inevitable that Egypt will back down from its solid pro-Saudi stance.  This, in turn, will enhance the ability of Qatar to wean at least some of the other, lesser Gulf States away from the Saudi line with a corresponding increase in the numbers and power of the soft-line-on-Iran bloc.

Because the centuries old split between Sunni and Shiite Islam is at the center of the current Saudi-Iran cold war, the Saudis have injured their own cause with the position taken by the Kingdom with respect to Iraq.  The Iraqis have as much if not more to worry about when looking at Tehran than the Saudis--and the Saudi government undoubtedly knows this.  But, because Iraq is majority Shiite in its demographics, the Kingdom has stiff armed the requests and importuning of Baghdad repeatedly.

It does not seem to matter to the Wahhibists of the Kingdom that the Iraqis are Arab.  Nor does it seem to count for much that more that a third or more of all Iraqis are Sunni.  It doesn't appear important to the strategists of Riyadh that the national interests of the Kingdom and Iraq coincide at several key points.  None of these considerations have offset the big one: Iraq is majority Shiite.

The chance of losing Egypt as an anchor ally may prompt some more realistic thinking in the Kingdom.  That is to be hoped for as an alliance between these two oil giants would be a force for political stability in the region.

Nice as such a development might be, it does not address the key problem for the Saudi regime as it contemplates an Egypt without Hosni Mubarak.  The dilemma for Riyadh is how to find and cultivate more allies.  It is no help for the Kingdom that it is autocratic even by the standards of the Mideast.  This means that insofar as the disaffiliated citizens of any state see their own less than legitimate authoritarian regime embracing the Saudis, it weakens the local structure.

Consider Jordan.  On the one hand Jordan seems a very obvious and attractive state for the Saudis to cultivate and support.  Jordan needs money.  Massive infusions of Saudi cash would assist greatly in meeting the needs for subsidization of consumer prices, the creation of jobs through public employment projects, even direct subventions to students and their families.  The list of potentials for order enhancing bribery are legion.

And, now for the on-the-other-hand department.  The current king of Jordan, Abdullah II, has none of the popularity of his father.  That is important given how much depends on personal relations between monarch and tribal chiefs.  And, at root, order in Jordan depends upon the strong support of the Bedouin tribes against the Palestinians.  Complicating the personal factors at work in Jordan is the severe unpopularity of the queen, Riana, whose let-them-eat-cake attitude came into harsh relief during her birthday bash a while back.  Going beyond the personal, the government has a record of exceptional inefficiency.  Finally, there is the intense friction between the traditional tribesmen: the "old" Palestinians and the "new" Palestinians.

The upshot is that a too obvious, too open, too close relation between Abdullah II and the House of Saud would rebound to the disadvantage of the monarchy.  It is not going too far to assert that moving too fast and far in the direction of Saudi Arabia would produce significant disorder in Amman.  As both the King of Saudi Arabia and the King of Jordan are under the pressure of fear complicated by a perception that time is running out, the probability of a too rapid, too open movement is high.

The other alternatives are no more attractive.  The more or less constitutional monarchy of Morocco is both too distant geographically and too fragile to be of much use to Saudi Arabia.  Algeria has its own problems with violent political Islam which may--or, more probably, may not--be helped by a more open and comprehensive alliance with Saudi Arabia.

The takeaway is the House of Sand has few options when it comes to replacing Egypt as an ally against Iran.  By any realistic assessment, the least-worst approach if for Riyadh to mend its relations with Iraq.  This would fry off the clerical establishment of the Kingdom.  The elderly, ailing King Abdullah and his almost as old, nearly as frail successor(s) have already taken actions which have annoyed the religious hardliners, so this should be an acceptable cost of maintaining the House in power.

As a companion move the House would not be out of line to push a "reset" button in its relations with Turkey. The Ottoman Empire has been gone long enough to forget about the bad old days.  The AKP is religiously conservative enough.  Turkey's diplomatic trajectory is oriented to the Turkic speaking regions of Central Asia.  And, Turkey would benefit from the one product other than oil which Saudi Arabia exports--cash.

Diplomatically, which is to say, in the creation of areas of strategic interest, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are complementary.  At the same time Turkey and Iran are rivals in that both see room for the expansion of influence in the same geographic region.  Thus, there are real limits to the degree to which Iran and Turkey can work in alliance.

If Saudi Arabia is actually as worried about Iran as seems to be the case, it should be possible for the government to reexamine its stance with respect to Syria.  As the abortive effort in Lebanon shows, it is possible for the Kingdom to push the Wahhibists to the side in pursing national interest.  Syria, of course, looks to be the model of authoritarian order but as recent events have made clear, appearances can differ markedly from substance.  The embrace of Iran by Assad's government is not universally supported by the public or even the elite.  The Syria-Iran hook-up is one of convenience from the perspective of Damascus and is far less certain than the oft repeated protestations of undying love made by the Syrian government would seem to indicate.

This means the House of Saud has maneuvering room regarding Syria.  Saudi Arabia has two very important commodities it can bring to the table: money and its relation with the US.  Both of these could have high value in Damascus.  In comparison, Tehran has very little to offer.  Its money is not as unlimited as that of Saudi Arabia and it has no relation with the US.  One not need to be the most sophisticated diplomat since Bismark to see the opportunities or how to play them.

There is no question that the elderly bunch running Saudi Arabia are worried.  Nor is there any doubt about the genuine nature of the worries.  The only question is whether or not the fugitives from the moribund ward in Riyadh have the wit and will to address the anxieties with speed and effect.

Tunisians Better Have Fun While They Can

The people of Tunisia are having a well merited time of fun, frolic, and freedom--freedom won after fifty years of more or less repressive autocratic regimes.  Unfortunately, the fun police are not only lurking in the wings but actually flowing back home with the intention of blowing the whistle on both fun and freedom in the country.

While the long exiled leader of Tunisia's largest Islamist oriented political party, Rashid Ghannouchi, states that he is no Ayatollah Khomeini and his Renaissance Party (Ennahdha) does not advocate political Islam, violent or otherwise, there are others in the field which are not so inclined.  Faced with competition from the "Left" of Islamism, there is a very real probability that Ghannouchi will trim his party's sails to better catch the prevailing winds.  As Crane Brinton pointed out in his classic treatment of revolutions, there is a built in trajectory to ever more extreme positions in revolutions, or, to use the correct term, offensive insurgencies.

Make no mistake about it, the so-called Jasmine Revolution was an offensive insurgency in that the goal has been the total replacement of the status quo government and its supporting elites.  The goal of the Tunisians in the streets constantly became more totalistic in nature, culminating in the demand that all vestiges of the old ruling party be removed from government and politics.  While this sort of political cleansing is expectable and perhaps beneficial in the longer term, it leaves a vacuum in its immediate wake.

The political movements espousing political Islam were a particular target not only of Ben Ali but his predecessor.  Ben Ali bent every effort to expunging these movements after the election of 1988 in which the Renaissance Party won at least seventeen percent of the votes in an election which resembled one conducted by the old Daley machine in Chicago for its honesty.  Many prominent figures in the movements disappeared into the maws of the internal security machine while even more sought safety in exile.  This did not mean that the movements were destroyed but rather that they were forced underground to wait a more propitious day.

That day has arrived.  It is now safe for the advocates of political Islam to emerge from the shadows, to return from foreign sanctuaries.  It is implicit in the situation extant today that the advocates of political Islam are better organized, more committed to their agendas and goals, better prepared in all respects to compete for power in the post-overthrow environment.  To think that they will be less than absolute in their pursuit of power is to deny reality.

On the surface Tunisia has been more secular, more "Western," more prosperous, than its North African neighbors--or the Arab and Muslim states generally.  Tunisians are better educated, seemingly more tolerant, apparently more oriented to "Western" norms and values than those living elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim states.  The appearances have always been seductively appealing to Western governments, Western elites, Western media.

Importantly, the appearances may be every bit as deceptive as was the facade of Ben Ali's government as an efficiently repressive one.  The ease with which the ancien regime was displaced showed dramatically just how great a gap existed between appearance and reality.  The danger now is the same gulf exists and will be demonstrated just as dramatically between the appearance of "Western" secularism, tolerance, educated sophistication, and the reality of Islamism.

The Tunisians are faced by a challenge far greater than electoral reforms or economic development.  They are faced by a fundamental choice between the message of political Islam and its alternatives including but not limited to one of secularism.

One need not be overly pessimistic to bet that the Tunisians will eventually opt for the Islamist vision of an "Islamic Republic" on the lines of Pakistan.  They will do this because Islam is central to the lives of many, perhaps most, Tunisians, even those with advanced "Western" style education.  The power of the message may rest on Islam qua Islam but gains its real power from the subtext of fear and hate.

In this regard it must never be overlooked that the basic theological content of Islam is fear--fear of displeasing the deity, fear of spending eternity in hell (no religion comes close to Islam in its pornographic treatment of the torments of the damned,) fear of not being a member in good standing of the community, the Ummah.

The religion offer antidotes for the pervasive message of fear.  One of these is explicit in the name of the religion: Islam.  The word means submission, submission to the will of the deity as interpreted by the clerics.  The other counter to pervasive fear is hate.  Muslims are called upon to hate the infidels, to hate the apostates, to hate the omnipresent "others."  The necessity of hate will exist until every last human being has submitted to the will of the deity, the dictates of the Prophet, and the will of the clerics.

Islam holds that not until every last person on Earth has pounded his forehead in the dirt and raised his posterior to the Deity will any Muslim be safe, secure, able to breathe free and easy, able to enjoy certainty.  Until that day Muslims must live in fear and counter that fear by submitting to the authority of the cleric as well as hating all who are branded apostates, infidels, or otherwise being "worthy of death."  It is against this background that the other, plentiful fears of quotidian life must be placed.

Advocates and practitioners of political Islam maintain that by embracing Islam, by following Shariah, by submitting to the will of the deity as put forth by clerics, the great fears of displeasing the deity and of going to hell can be addressed along with the lesser fears of daily life.  The full acceptance of the requirements of Islam will assure that every individual can feel merged with the community, that every individual will live in the dignity and respect of the community of believers, that every person will find economic and social security, that the equality of belief will render nugatory the bogus equality of both democracy and the rule of (man made) law.

The picture of life in a true Islamic republic is paradisaical.  The ideal Islamic republic as portrayed in, say, the writings of assorted Pakistani clerics, is one of equality, security, harmony, justice.  In all essential respects the Islamic republican ideal is akin to the Perfect World described by various Communist theoreticians.  And, again like the Workers' Paradises limned by Communist philosophers, the Paradise-on-Earth descriptions put forth by advocates of political Islam fail the test of application in the real world.

Tunisians would be well-advised to consider carefully just what centuries of Islam have produced.  To what extent has the great human treasury of knowledge been enhanced by contributions from Muslims living in Muslim majority states?  What great technological or scientific discoveries or innovations have been produced by Muslims living in Muslim majority states in recent centuries?  What new, useful, social or political or economic systems have emerged from the minds of Muslims living in Muslim majority countries?  What inventions?  What great works of creative genius?  How many ideas or words have come from Muslim tongues or pens to inspire people around the world regardless of religion?

It might be instructive for a Tunisian contemplating the promises of Islamists to ask whether or not Islam per se--with its emphasis on submission, on not thinking for oneself but rather following the cues of clerical leaders--can produce a creative, dynamic, innovative society?  Is not the groveling submission demanded by Islam generally and political Islam in particular antipodal to the needs of creativity and innovation?

Is it possible, a Tunisian might ask, for a religion or a political movement predicated on religion which has fear and hate as its stock in trade able to produce anything positive?  Is the combination of submission, fear, and hate the perfect mixture to result in killing, destruction, and failure?

These and other similar questions if honestly and objectively answered point in one direction.  The necessity, the absolute imperative, to reject political Islam quickly and finally.  The alternative, following the leaders of political Islam, will result in a future compared to which the recent past under Ben Ali will seem both free and enjoyable.

If Tunisians neglect closely questioning both the Islamists and the religion they purport to represent, the Jasmine Revolution will prove to have been an abject failure.  Worse, it will have been a foreseeable and thus preventable failure.

Hillary Clinton: One For Two In Gulf Jaunt

By education Ms Clinton is a lawyer.  By concatenation of political circumstances she is a diplomat.  Among the many features the two occupations share is a reliance upon words.  Words which are carefully considered, accurately employed, and possessed of certain denotative value and connotative freighting.  Thus it was both shocking and disheartening when Ms Clinton exhibited sloppy thinking, false analogy, and harmful shoddiness of expression in assorted Arab media following the Tucson shooting incident.

Specifically Ms Clinton debased the English language, fudged truth, created a very false analogy, and further obscured the nature of the threat presented to the US and other civilized states by violent political Islam when she equated the action of Jared Loughner and the motives of the 9/11 Himmelsfhartkommando.  She was blunt, averring that Mr Loughner, like Mohammad Atta and his Eighteen Companions, was an "extremist."

This sort of casual mislabeling is a sure sign of the dynamics at work not only inside the Beltway but throughout the American elites which have assured a persistent inability to name the enemy at our gates.  Mr Loughner is not an "extremist."  In all probability he is psychotic whether or not his defects of perception and reasoning qualify him as legally insane.  Mr Atta and his Eighteen Companions were not psychotic. They were not suffering under some defect of reasoning or emotional disturbance.  Neither were they mere "extremists."  The killers of 9/11 were--at least in their own minds and the minds of other adherents of violent political Islam--good Muslims.  They were Muslims who sincerely believed they were protecting and advancing the One True Faith by their actions and by their deaths.

By her words, Ms Clinton once again gave a free pass to those Muslims in and out of government who tacitly support or at least passively accept the presence of violent political Islam.  She encouraged the false perception that only psychotics can seek martyrdom, can wear suicide vests, plant roadside bombs, persecute and kill Christians.  By her stating that a moral equivalence existed between the Loughner shooting and the acts of war on 9/11 Ms Clinton did a vast disservice to the cause of the US and its associates in the struggle against violent political Islam.  Simultaneously she removed a burden from Muslims, specifically the moral obligation to openly, publicly, and repeatedly seek the exclusion of adherents of violent political Islam from the Muslim community generally.

Ms Clinton's (in highest probability) politically motivated depreciation of the 9/11 attackers and their ilk, her marginalization of these men by linking them to the evidently disturbed Tucson shooter, her sweeping aside of the role of religion in the events of 9/11, all harm our interests both short and long-term.  Her ill-chosen and factually insupportable characterization of the martyrdom seekers as well as the psycho shooter as "extremists" underscores the unwillingness or inability of the Obama administration to accurately describe both our enemy and what is at stake in the contest.

Had Ms Clinton's trip ended on this pathetic note, she would have merited the much prized Bugs Bunny What A Maroon! Award.  Fortunately for her reputation and, far more important, the interests of the United States, Ms Clinton had another bite at the rhetorical apple.  A bigger bite before a very important audience.

At a major meeting of the region's elites in Doha, Qatar, Ms Clinton had some very well chosen, quite accurate words for the assembled officials and business leaders.  In a fine example of Hillary at her hectoring best, she gave a trenchant cowboy-mend-your-ways series of admonishments regarding endemic corruption, pervasive maldistribution of wealth, political inequality, absence of transparency, and a form of democracy illustrated more by its lacking than its abundance.

Her message was blunt and tough.  Unless the states of the Gulf, and, by implication, elsewhere in the Mideast changed their basic social, political, and economic structures; allowed more freedom in both politics and the economy; halted the corruption; ended the hyper-privilege of the narrow elites; fostered economic growth; then all would "sink in the sand."  Her performance was "tough-love" diplomacy at its best, being a fine combination of exceptional truth telling and accurate assessment.

The salience of Ms Clinton's lecture has been underscored with bloody drama by recent events in Tunisia.  The riots have been the result not only of economic doldrums, which have had a major impact on the young, but of a thorough revulsion with the corrupt, authoritarian, and nepotism riddled regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.  The seventy-four year old president has been running things for more than a quarter century with results which have been very, very good for himself, his wife, the families of himself and his wife as well as assorted favored cronies but not particularly good for everyone else.

Tunisia, which has long been regarded with more hope than realism as a modern, dynamic, and tolerant society, polity, and economy has been exposed in recent months as a wallow of all the political, social, and economic sins which beset the Arab Muslim countries generally.  Ms Clinton has called it as it is and not as the local elites would like it to be seen.

Her warning that without major changes the disaffiliated youth of the region would respond with increasing fervor to the appeals of those who peddle violent political Islam is bang on and long overdue.  It is this sort of realism and not the fantasies of the Obama Cairo Address which the region, the world, and the interests of the US and other civilized states need desperately.

Ms Clinton is to be congratulated for her Doha remarks.  She should be encouraged to keep hitting the same notes in the future.  The baseless praise so beloved by Mr Obama for all things Islam does no service for the people of the countries dominated by narrow authoritarian albeit Muslim elites.  Nor does the Obama stance benefit the interests of the US.  The stance taken by Ms Clinton (with or without presidential approval) is the only one which has any potential of useful outcome either in the region or for the US.

To say that Ms Clinton has a mixed record as America's top diplomat is to belabor the obvious.  In Doha she swung her personal diplomatic pendulum far into the positive range.  One can only hope that she will do more of the same in the future and refrain from making disastrous analogies about "extremism" either of the Muslim or the made-in-the-USA sort.

Not Much Of A Merry Christmas In Muslim Majority Countries

There can be little doubt but the advocates of violent political Islam have determined that no Christian shall remain above ground anywhere in Muslim majority countries.  From Morocco to the Philippines, from Egypt to Nigeria, it is a very risky business to be a practicing Christian.  It is nearly as lethal to be a practicing Christian in the Muslim dominated states today as it was to have been a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Having purged Jews from their midst to a degree which would have warmed the hearts of Hitler, Himmler and Co., the Muslims now have set their very deadly sights on the Christian communities.  As events of recent vintage in Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, and other, nearby locations have made plain, there is a slow motion sort of holocaust underway.

And, the reactions of Christians generally?  The response of major American denominations?  The US government?

With the notable exception of a few articles of protest and a handful of Congressional Resolutions, the word best characterizing the push back by Christians in the US as well as the US government is "none."

Nor is the lack of outrage, of protest, of sharp rebuttal limited to American denominations and officials.  The Pope in his Christmas address to the faithful made a low key reference to the plight of Iraqi Christians while reserving his big rhetorical guns to support the Catholics in China who resist the official, government approved pseudo-hierarchy   The Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the head of the world wide Anglican communion, took his Christmas opportunity to demand that the rich share in the sacrifices of governmental austerity.

Perhaps so few religious and political leaders care much because the Christians under attack generally are not members of well established, well-known denominations either in the US or Western Europe.  Copts and Syriac Christians are not long standing communities of faith in the US or Western Europe.  Few who occupy the pews of American churches are aware of the long history of these groups, how they trace their roots back to the days shortly after Paul and the other Apostles shook the dust of so many towns across the Middle East, leaving behind the seeds of a potent view of life and God which would give rise ultimately to these denominations now under terminal threat.

In dogma and doctrine, the Christians of Iraq, Syria, Egypt and elsewhere may differ markedly from Western denominations, but in their basic confession of faith they share identity with all the myriad Protestant churches as well as both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communities.  They are Christians as have been their ancestors in the region for the past two thousand years.  Only Jews have been constantly present in the Mideast for longer than these Christian confessions.

And, like the Jews, these Christians have been the target of Muslim hostility since the all conquering scimitar first cut through the clear air of the region spreading the words of the Prophet not by force of reason but by sheer force of arms.  In recent times, resurgent political Islam has taken up the scimitar with even deadlier intent and consequence.

The ancient approach of "convert or die" has been replaced by the simpler, "die, Christian."  And as the blood flows and fear grows, the West watches in silence.  The Christians of the West as well as the governments of the purportedly Christian majority Western states watch, wring their hands, and neither do nor even say anything in protest, in opposition, or in support of their badly beleaguered Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

What a far and shameful distance this behavior is from the days of the Cold War when all Christian denominations as well as the governments took sharp issue with the treatment of Christians meted out by the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe.  Those of a certain age can remember well the days of prayer, the petitions of protest, the resolutions of condemnation focusing on the Christian martyrs to their faith and the persecution they suffered from the atheistic governments of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact states.

The American Congress was so motivated by the atheistic nature of Communism and the concomitant persecution of Christians that it inserted the words, "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.  Public schools, not simply those of a parochial nature, invited speakers whose subject was the relentless oppression of Christianity and Judaism by the Communists.

All together the subject of Christian persecution by Communists was a constant theme of American culture through the Fifties and most of the Sixties.  It was a very big deal, a sort of social and political definer, a way of expressing the superiority of Western (particularly American) ideals and values.

None of that exists today.  Nor, given the triumph of faux-sensitivity and its operational handmaiden, political correctness, can it be expected to exist.  Not without intense, focused effort on the part of Christians of genuine commitment to their faith.

The simple fact that President Obama condemned violence in Iraq following the savage attack on the Baghdad church without once using the words "Christian" or "church" is telling.  It bespeaks the utter failure of commitment or even sensitivity to the rights and dignity of a group--Christians--which is subject to lethal attack simply because it is Christian.

Once before American leaders and Christian congregations were silent in the face of evil predicated upon religious belief.  That time was the Thirties when the first intimations of the foul antisemitism which would produce the extermination camps of the Holocaust were printed in American papers.  In the face of mounting evidence that the Jews of Germany and Europe generally were at risk of being wiped out, most American denominations kept silent.  The same was true of the US government.

It was because of the silence in the run up to the Nazi slaughter that American churches and government alike became so vocal in the denunciation of Communist persecution of Christians and, later, Jews.  We had learned the dangers of silence, of business as usual, of fearing to make a bad situation even worse.

Now, we Americans apparently have forgotten the truth of the Thirties and are somehow embarrassed by our collective behavior of the anti-Communist days of the Fifties and Sixties.  It is telling that today's leaders both in pulpit and politics were young in the worst days of the Cold War, were exposed unceasingly to the rhetorical overkill of those days.  We learned, falsely it seems, that speaking out is somehow ill-mannered and insensitive, somehow boorish and unsophisticated, in some mysterious way damaging to the self-esteem of the haters, the persecutors, the killers.

In the instant case, the Muslims, or at least those who are either exponents of political Islam or by their silence tacit supporters of those who preach hate, demand "death to Christians."  The situation today is far closer to that which prevailed in Germany during the Thirties and that makes silence by us in the West either personally or through leaders who fear to take a stand complicit in the crimes committed in Muslim majority states.

It is long past time for American denominations to stand up and demand an end to the butchery being done in the name of Islam.  At the very least American churches should insist that our government take a principled position against the slow motion holocaust underway in so much of the Muslim world.  American Christians should be insisting that our government use all the instruments at its disposal to stop the persecution, end the killings, succor the hurt, give refuge to those who must flee literally for their lives.

Anything less is not only anti-Christian it is most assuredly un-American.

(Full disclosure: The Geek is not a member of any denomination or community of faith.)

Change Leads To Fear--And Fear Leads To Jihad

Any number of scholarly commentators have noted that religious fundamentalists be they Jewish, Christian, or Muslim are united in motivation.  The consensus is all fundamentalists, particularly those willing to employ violence in pursuit of their political or social goals, are driven by a pervasive fear of change.  The unifying desire is to reclaim the stability of the past.

There is much value in this understanding, providing it is used with caution.  It may well be that many, perhaps even most, adherents of the hazy world called "fundamentalism" are uncomfortable with both the pace and degree of change in their lives.  This does not mean that most of these people are irrational or so unhinged by fear of inexplicable and seemingly unnecessary change in the political, social, and cultural environment where they live.  Indeed, the fundamentalist response is rational in its origins even when the ultimate expression is violent.

It is critical to understand that most humans for most of their history have lived in static environments.  Change in the basic characteristics of political organization, social structures, economic institutions, cultural norms, and ethical values typically has been very slow or even nonexistent.  We forget today in the US where rapid change is not only normative but widely celebrated that the defining American experience for most of our ancestors right down to World War II has been the changeless rhythm of the seasons, the cycle of days in which every one was nearly identical to its predecessor and its successor.

Change of rapid and pervasive nature is of recent vintage in the US.  Changes in the basic fabric of society, politics, economics, culture have been normative only for the past fifty years.  True, the rapidity of change in American society and culture over the past half century has been remarkable--and quite dislocative.  As recently as the Seventies, the words of a Springsteen tune were totally applicable not only in our rural areas but in the largest of our cities, "They bring you up to do just what your daddy did."  In a major way life was cyclical, an endless wheel of generations with only marginal changes like the height of tail fins on the new model car.

Few, if any, Americans in 1970 would have accepted the proposition that before the end of the century the vast industrial infrastructure of this country would have become an endless belt of abandoned, rusting mills and factories.  Few, if any, Americans in 1985 would have believed you if you said, "In five years the Cold War will be over and the Soviet Union will be no more--without a war."

The rapidity and universality of basic change in the US has made more than a few very uncomfortable.  The pace and extent of change has resulted in a sense of rootlessness, a feeling of alienation, of being a stranger in a strange land.  It is rational for a person under assault by change to seek stability, to need points of unchanging certainty, to demand that change be slowed.

Members of the American hoi ollogoi may be quite unconcerned by systemic change as they are insulated from ill effects or even the anxiety about the unknowable consequences of change by wealth, status, position or power, but not all Americans are so protected.  Thus it is possible for a member of the "elite" such as Barack Obama to characterize Americans from the second, unprotected category as "clingers," holding on to symbols of the past such as Bibles, guns, and Republicans.  It is possible for the elite to see the unprotected and apprehensive majority as irrationally fear ridden regardless of how divorced from reality this smug view might be.

American religious fundamentalists, be they Protestant or Catholic, may be apprehensive regarding the pace and extent of change.  They may find some of the changes totally unacceptable and impossible to justify.  They may "cling" to facets of the past both religious and secular which they believe to be desirable, beneficial, or down right necessary.  None of this makes their motives irrational.  None make their goal of conserving the best of the past while adapting and adopting desirable aspects of the new somehow unworthy of respect or meriting condemnation as fear driven clinging.

Chew over this a bit.  If, here in the US where buildings may be torn down almost before the cement on the cornerstone has dried, change can be disturbing to well educated, established citizens of a mature democracy with a well ordered economic base and a long tradition of embracing the new, what is the effect of change on a traditional society with a unresponsive government and a history of stasis?

Changes of many sorts and degrees have assaulted traditional societies, inflexible polities, and rudimentary economic structures with a series of megaton blows over the past fifty years.   The awesome footprint of the West has hit the very static Arab and Muslim world repeatedly.  It is no shock that many resident where the great Western boot has landed have reacted with fear and loathing.

The West, and the US, by their very existence in effect have demanded that traditional societies and polities throughout the Arab and Muslim world toss out each and every feature which have defined and conditioned life for centuries and replace these instantly with virtually incomprehensible foreign implants.  In essence the Western challenge has been, "You must not only do as we do, you must be as we are if you are to survive let alone prosper in the world we Westerners have created."

Consider just a couple of consequences of this Western challenge.

It has been necessary,  we Westerners believe, that the traditional patterns of social and political relations which have provided a very satisfactory life for most Arabs and Muslims for centuries be discarded.  This has meant that the old reliance on family, tribe, locality, relations which were personal and up close must be replaced by impersonal mechanisms of the market and the bureaucracy.  This has meant the replacement of customary laws and traditions of the responsibility of local or tribal leaders with remotely imposed and enforced written codes of law.  It has, in short, ripped out the face to face features of traditional societies and polities with the faceless one-size-fits-all approach of the West.  (A faceless way of governing which has fried off any number of us who have lived under it all of our lives.)

The Western creature, the "Market," has no resemblance to the up close and personal bazaar.  The Market has no human face, no human sensibility beyond getting the highest possible bottom line.  It rips the human heart out of commercial intercourse offering presumed efficiency in place of person-to-person search for advantage, even mutual advantage.

We in the West have fought long, hard, and bloody wars over the basic questions of the relation of state and community of faith.  We have done the same with respect to the establishment and expansion of "human rights."  It has taken us centuries to get answers in these areas which are even rough approximations of "right."  The same is true regarding democracy,  The same applies to transparency of government and business.  It is applicable as well to matters of social, political, and economic equity and justice.  And, even after centuries of effort, no one can honestly say that the job has been finished.

Yet the Western challenge has demanded that the Muslim majority societies do the same instantly and without the bloodshed which has marked Western changes over the past thousand years and more.  Even if a plausible case can be made for the superiority of the Western paradigm (which the Geek thinks can be made) the demand that the Muslim majority societies do the same in a matter of mere years is both unreasonable and quite contrary to the inertia filled nature of humans and their social or political constructs.

Faced with the Western challenge and its collateral imperatives, it is small wonder that a percentage of Muslims have reacted with fear and loathing which now expresses itself as violent political Islam rooted in an austere interpretation of the religion based on the foundations of the faith.  Any other response would be nearly impossible.

The Muslim, particularly the Muslim man, has been faced repeatedly with a severe challenge to all aspects of his identity as well as his world view.  Quite literally, he has been cut off from his roots by the impact of the changes demanded by the Western challenge.  With this degree of internal alienation in play, the appeal of political Islam, including that of the armed sort, has grown high and fast.

It is quite easy for the Muslim man to conclude that only by seizing power, by bringing Islam to power, can he regain control of his environment, of his life.  Even if he does not personally pull a trigger or push the clicker on a bomb, it is to be expected that many Muslim men will support and agree with those who do wage the good war against not simply infidels or apostates but on change itself.  Better to die on ones own terms than to survive on the terms dictated by another.

As the global Muslim insurgency grows, the new task for Western decision makers, well, really for all of us in the West, is to create ways in which the Muslim guy in a traditional society can effectively accept and assimilate necessary change.  This implies that we in the West have to lighten up on our demands that the Muslim in Afghanistan or Yemen or North Africa become just like us in his views and attitudes.  This is necessary but not sufficient in and of itself to counter the Muslim insurgency effectively.

We cannot do even this minimal task unless and until we understand the relation between the changes demanded by the Western challenge and the fear it produces.  Ultimately, the enemy facing both us and the Muslims we are fighting is the same--the fierce engine of change.  Change may be both desirable and necessary, but it can also be our worse enemy.

Well, no one ever said life was easy.

Yo! Muslims! You Had Best Read History--Yours And Ours

Islamic societies have never been big on history.  They tend to be worse in consulting the past than even Americans.  Islam qua Islam argues against the study of history alleging that there was nothing worth knowing of the past before the arrival of the Prophet and that, since the revelations, nothing is worth knowing other than the lives of exemplary Muslims who merit study due to their living lives of faith, virtue, and conquest.

In a major way this absence of any pervasive understanding of the past, the history of Muslim societies and polities as well as that of the West, is pivotal in the rise of fear driven violent political Islam.  Muslims have felt with great accuracy for many years that people in the West have mocked and derided them and their faith, have presented one dimensional stereotypes, have trivialized, marginalized, and patronized Muslims generally and Arab Muslims in particular.

The pervasive feeling of deprecation and the sense the West has ridden roughshod over the desires, needs, aspirations, and, most importantly, dignity of Muslims and Muslim majority states has fueled the fear which has propelled violent political Islam to its status today--the greatest single threat confronting not only the West but the globe.  Even though most of the insults have been both unintended and inadvertent--such as the portrayal of Arabs as lascivious sheiks on horseback carrying off beautiful (presumably) Christian maidens to their harems--or the more recent all Arabs are dark, sinister terrorists--the effect upon even Westernized, multilingual European and American educated Muslims has been hurtful.  Hurt breeds fear.

Fear inevitably expresses itself in attempts to coerce respect from the disrespectful, acceptance from those who have been disdainful, or at least anxiety on the part of the contemptuous.  None of this, none of the dynamic which has resulted in the current global insurgency mounted by those whose antidote to fear is the espousal of violent political Islam would have been necessary had only Muslims understood their own history and possessed some knowledge of that of the West including the Great Satan, the US.

There is an old cliche to the effect that those who do not learn from history are condemned to relearn the lessons of history from their own mistakes.  Like all cliches this one contains a sizable grain of truth.  Had Muslims taken a look at the sorry blood soaked record of the Christian West in which the people of the word took recurrent counsel of their fears with the result that war became the normative condition of life for centuries, they might have concluded that regardless of the positive effects ultimately created from the windrows of corpses, there was no need for Muslims to repeat the process.

Had Muslims coupled the study of the European record with an examination of the long years of the Ottoman Empire, they might well have concluded, with accuracy it should be added, that their religion had given a base for a period of remarkable peace, noteworthy internal tolerance, and an environment of tranquility which may not have resulted in the technological and organizational advances of Europe and the US during the same time but did provide an acceptable quality of life for the vast majority of Muslims living under Ottoman sway.  The history of the Ottoman Empire as well as the lands and people on its periphery provide a powerful argument in favor of the contention that Islam was superior to Christianity as practiced in the West.

As the flames of Muslim conquest faded to cool ashes and stability under an admittedly ramshackle empire, the main feature of life that ensued was the preeminence of the mystical,  inward looking, liturgy rich Sufi school with its emphasis on inner peace being reflected in interpersonal harmony, charity, compassion, and empathy.  The "wordless" approach of the Sufis brought interpersonal peace quite unlike the "wordy" Christian understanding with recurrent wars over the precise words, doctrine, and dogma which defined a particular group.

If the primary goal of any religion is the assurance of a better state of inner and outer peace, a community exhibiting compassion, empathy, and charity as well as the feeling on the part of the believer that the will of the deity is being followed, the Islam of the long centuries between the end of the Western crusades and the encroachment of the West less than two centuries ago passes the test by any standard.  If the same standards are applied to the Christian West, the assessment must be that Christianity failed.

It is true that the West drove technological development, mastered new forms of governmental process, invented the essentials of modern economics, created entirely new forms of social, political, and economic organization while the Muslims were static in all these areas.  But, it deserves noting that stasis or a very slow pace of change are normative across the entire sweep of human history to the extent that the Western explosion following the Seventeenth Century is without precedent or equal.

It is true that wherever and whenever the West has placed its heavy foot on a traditional society, the results have been severely disruptive particularly so when the traditional society reacts by attempting a forced draft emulation of the West.  On occasion--think Japan and China--the arrival of the West and the response to that arrival has been bloody and destructive.

The wise Muslim might benefit from examining the history of the consequences of the encounters with the West experienced by both Japan and China as well as the immediate aftermath of the encounters.  Then this hypothetical wise Muslim might ask if he wanted his people, his society, to go the same route or is there a better way, a way which takes the best from Muslim history in a way which allows features of Western origin to be absorbed and employed with greatest benefit.

In considering the history of the relations between Japan and the West following the mid-Nineteenth Century, it is important for our hypothetical Muslim student to consider the history of the US, in particular how the US embodies in concentrated form the predominant feature of the Christian West, a feature which was the necessary product of centuries of war, wars of religion and nation.  That feature is simply a capacity for what can be best called "absolutism."

In the real world of history, the term "absolutism" means that the US, to an extent which may surpass the standard set in Europe, pursues victory in war with an intensity which almost surpasses description.  As the war in the Pacific demonstrates clearly, the American people once roused, will fight with a degree of ferocity and resolve which is either most admirable or most despicable depending on one's point of view.  We showed in the Pacific war a willingness to dehumanize the enemy of the highest sort.  This tendency to absolutism not only rests close to the surface of the American public, it is what gave US troops the capacity to win against what normally would be considered unbeatable odds.

When the absolutist button is pushed, the Americans and Europeans (particularly the British) have demonstrated time after time a willingness to use virtually all means necessary to win.  Our hypothetical Muslim student might wonder at what point the button marked "absolutism" will be pushed in today's conflict with the practitioners of armed political Islam.  He might wonder if the redress of fear will be worth the ultimate butchers' bill if the Americans are pushed too far.

History also shows that the American public is slow to reach the absolutist point, but it always gets there, if pushed long and hard enough, particularly by people whose behavior is inexplicable to most Americans.  This was evident in the war with Japan.  Before that it was part and parcel of the centuries of war against the Native Americans.  A close reading of the record of these wars should convince any observer that the Americans have a limit which cannot be crossed without great and negative consequences.

The historically literate Muslim would have a unique vantage point.  From this point he can easily see the greatness of his own faith over a long sweep of time.  He can see as well the potentials of seeking to out do the West using only the tools of the West.  He can understand the risks being taken by the adherents of violent political Islam, risks which will be widely distributed on Muslims generally.  He can (or should be) see the potential benefits of combining the inner directed faith of the Sufi understanding with desirable features of Western provenance such as democracy, an independent judiciary, the concept of the King's Peace, an open press and so forth.

In short, the historically aware Muslim would be in a perfect position to meld the best of his faith tradition with the most worthy of Western products for the good of all both Muslim and non-Muslim.  But none of this is  possible for those Muslims whose awareness of the past is limited to fear producing Western insults and slights no matter how unintended.  The historically blind are condemned to undercut the interests of their own people and empower the most implacable enemies of Islam in the West.

It is far better to hit the books and get smart than it is to build a bomb and get dead.  Words to the wise.

What The West Sowed Now It Reaps

Pull up a log and sit around the fire.  It is history time, folks.  Specifically it is time to consider the sea change in the nature of Islam which started in the mid-Nineteenth Century and continues at an accelerating pace today.  More, it is time to take a look at how the nature and focus of Western understandings of the basis of organized social, political and, yes, religious life had the unintended consequence of letting loose the forces of political Islam including its violent, armed expression which constitutes the greatest threat facing the West today and into the future.

The necessary starting point, however, is today.  Right now.  A poll conducted by the highly respected and very careful Pew Research Center shows that in several key Muslim majority countries a majority of people want their religion to play a central role in politics.  This means that, among other matters, the majority want to see the harsh penalties of Shariah imposed.  They want the strictures of Islamic doctrine to be applied to economic and social matters.  The majority have accepted the view that no government which does not operate in all respects according to the dogma of Islam as interpreted by religious scholars is legitimate.

If, a hundred years or more ago, this poll had been conducted, the results would have been dramatically different.  Even as recently as the start of the Twentieth Century the majority of Muslims were not of the opinion that their religion had a direct political dimension.  The predominant understanding then was--as it had been for several centuries--that Islam operated directly on the individual in his inner life and in the way in which he interacted with and related to other individuals.

A century and more ago the predominant form of Islam was that of the Sufi.  Religious life was internal, predicated on ritual and liturgy.  The goal and intent of religious practice was to achieve a sense of merging with the godhead on one hand and living life in full accord with the personally perceived will of Allah.  Charity, compassion, empathy, accommodation, peaceful relations with all and the quest for peace internally were the primary features of the kind, gentle, and essentially non-doctrinal approach of the Sufis.

Sufis espoused a religion of practice, not doctrine.  They advanced an Islam of wordlessness, not one of dogma over which arguments and disputations could occur--and blood could be shed.  From Somalia to Afghanistan and throughout the Ottoman Empire, the Sufi understanding was the majority view of Muslims.

Largely, it was for this reason that the Ottoman Empire could survive so long even with its decrepit, inefficient, massively corrupt bureaucracy, and ineffective military forces.  It was for this reason that Muslim, Christian, and Jew could and did coexist within the Ottoman Empire with a very high degree of peace, mutual tolerance, and even friendship.  It was for this reason as well that Shia and Sunni could live harmoniously in the province of Iraq.

The Sufi view with its emphasis on the mystical, the inexpressible nature of Allah, the necessity of seeking internal peace and reflecting that inner quality in daily relations had no need of a written creed enforced by clerical decree.  To the Sufi understanding, the written word was largely irrelevant, the idea of dogma or doctrine unthinkable, the notion of killing over differences of interpretation anathema.

When apologists for Islam speak of the religion as one of "peace and tolerance," they are speaking of an understanding of Islam which is long gone.  A form of Islam killed by the ascendancy of creedal Islam, an Islam based on the written word as interpreted by clerical experts.  The Islam of today is an Islam predicated on scripture, scripture which is malleable in the hands of trained exegetes, an Islam which is usable as a political tool.

The shift away from the Islam of the Sufis started in the mid-Nineteenth Century and accelerated slowly at first but with increasing speed for one reason and one reason alone. That reason was the impingement of the West.

The West is a word based entity.  The majority religion of the West--Christianity--is a word based religion without superior.  For centuries in the West the written word was the supreme authority.  All bowed before the totem of the written word.  More importantly, men fought to the death over the written word--and fine points of interpretation.

The cruciality of the written word, of dogma and doctrine to Christianity, became obvious very early in the life of the religion.  During the Great Schism, seventeen hundred years ago, men fought and died over abstruse points--even the existence of a single syllable--regarding the nature of Christ.  Later, doctrine and dogma served as the key litmus test of adherents, of orthodoxy, of the purity of faith.

The word, which is to say the approved words of doctrine and dogma, served to define Christianity as well as to assure that the faith was communal more than individual.  The Reformation and Counter-Reformation served to further embed this dynamic just as two other fulcrum events were taking place.  These were the rise of nationalism and the introduction of movable type printing.

To simplify slightly, the combination of printing and the rise of self-conscious nation-states provided the launching pad for a key definer of the West.  This is simply the primacy of the law before which all are presumed to stand equally.  The law demands the written word and hard fought battles over the precise meaning and applicability of the words as written.

States and organized societies could not exist without the written word any more than Christian denominations could define themselves without it.  National "creeds" joined with religious ones to define and motivate people.   This assured the foundational nature of the written word.  By the Seventeenth Century at the latest, it was literally impossible for people of the West to conceive of a "wordless" faith or of a society which did not invoke the majesty of the written word to solve the frictions within.

The encroachment of the West on the Muslim societies of not only the Ottoman Empire but the very loosely organized polities on the Muslim fringes brought with it a very real clash of cultures.  The clash was, at root, between the "wordy" and the "wordless."

By the late Nineteenth Century it was obvious to the politically articulate of the Muslim societies that the "wordy" folks of the West were getting the best of the interaction.  This started the process of displacing the Sufi understanding from its long held position of prominence.  As the West gained an ever larger hold on the Muslim societies, as the Western footprint grew, one reaction was the development of a more word based form of Islam.

The development of Islamic dogmas and doctrines was a defensive reaction to the encroachment of the West.  It sought to use the prime tool of the West--the word--as an effective counter to the West.  At the same time, the growth of creedal Islam allowed for effective definition of believers as a discrete community with an interpretive center--the cleric.  It provided for Muslims as it had earlier in the Christian West an armature around which self-conscious and self-defined communities could coalesce.

By mid-Twentieth Century, Islam was no longer a religion of individuals, it was no longer a mystical quest for wordless experience of the godhead, it was no longer a faith which sought accommodation, fostered compassion and empathy, but rather was a religion of sects and doctrines, of orthodoxy and apostasy.  In this Islam echoed the earlier experiences of Christianity.

With the word as supreme in Islam, it was not only possible but inevitable that the scripture would be mined for those features which best suited the political aspirations or popular fears of any given moment.  As Islam on paper is the most totalistic of the monotheistic faiths, the quest for political ammunition, for means to define a community as differing from and being better than others was successful.  This, in turn, meant that with faith being communal rather than individual, there was no chance of any separation of faith and political power.

The coming of the word assured that Islam would become political in its focus with the certainty of water flowing downhill.  With the advent of a communal scripture and doctrine based faith, it was also inevitable that there would be a race to the most demanding, most extreme, most austere, most purportedly pure version of Islam as interpreted by the far from neutral clerics.

This particular version of Crane Britton's "co-option to the left" is seen quite explicitly in the sudden reemergence of the Shia-Sunni split in mandated Iraq, in the ascendancy of Salifism and Wahhibism in North Africa and Saudi Arabia, and in the (literally) explosive growth of violent political Islam in the past quarter century.  Once the word based West had put its heavy imprint on the Muslim societies, the consequent response and its later outgrowths had a horrid sort of inevitability which could have been predicted by an unusually perceptive historian of the Western experience.

Of course no such paragon of the historian's craft existed and the West cruised on with its haughty sense of the superiority of its word based views of all aspects of life.  In many, perhaps most, aspects of human experience, this sense of superiority is justified.  The accomplishments of the word are self-evident.  But, like most all good things in life, there is a downside.

That downside is now facing us.  Islamic populations have embraced the word--including all of its potentials as a definer of people and a source of violent conflict with avidity.  It is not shocking that the "co-option to the left (or extreme)" has resulted or that Muslims demand more direct and total use of faith in the political realm.

By understanding the historical context more accurately, we in the West can cast aside the bogus explanations of Muslim hostility such as the "sins" of colonialism or "exploitation" and realize that the word is all conquering.  The Muslims embraced the word because word based approaches to life and its problems work best.  It is a very unfortunate collateral damage that by doing so the Muslims have empowered the most extreme ideas abroad in their intellectual universe with consequences damaging not only to the West but to Muslims as well.

We can take some small comfort in the fact that we in the West have lived through the battles of the words before and come out the better for it.  We can also take some comfort in the fact that by understanding the nature of the intellectual battlefield today, we can fight the long counterinsurgency before us with better tactics and tools.  When night falls the truth remains: Words are defeated by better words.

A (Very) Rare Defeat For Muslim States At The Human Rights Council

Last Friday at the bitter end of its three week Bash-Israel-Fest, the UN Human Rights Council did something almost without precedent.  The majority rejected a Muslim sponsored amendment to the resolution creating a mechanism which would flesh out and provide means to implement effectively the UN convention on the rights of women.

The resolution called upon all member nations to "revoke any remaining laws that discriminate on the basis of sex or gender bias in the administration of justice."  This mildly worded bit of high mindedness constitutes a direct and hard kick in the gonads(?) of such pillars of Shariah as Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.  In a move as unsurprising as calls to prayer five times a day, the offended Muslim states mounted a counterattack.

The Saudi representative introduced an amendment which, if adopted, would have gutted the measure as it applied to Muslim majority states.  The carefully crafted wording would have allowed Saudi Arabia and other Muslim states, which have formally signed other conventions including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women with reservations assuring the primacy of Shariah, to ignore the requirements of this resolution.

Islamic law does discriminate against women simply on their status as women systematically and completely.  The extent of the bias is indicated by the legal requirement that a woman's accusation of rape be attested to by four men (or three men and two women.)  This is absurd on its face.  Equally absurd but even more lethal is the differential in punishment for such "crimes" as adultery.

There is no way around the ground truth involved in this resolution.  For countries such as Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia to abide by its provision--removal of sexual and gender bias in the administration of justice--would demand that Shariah be jettisoned.  And this, of course, is unthinkable to the insecure misogynists in charge of these states and the many others like them.

The delegate from Libya made a valiant effort to muddy the already turbid waters further by introducing the fashionable concept of cultural relativism.  His plea that "some concepts are relative" may haul heavy freight with members of the every-so-sensitive elites of Western Europe and the US but failed to move the majority of the delegates present and voting.  Apparently sensing the failure of his pitch, the Man From Tripoli then offered a veiled threat to the effect that Muslim states simply would not sign nor accept the resolution.  In essence, he challenged the civilized states to just try and make Muslim majority countries act as if they were deserving of membership in the civilized category.

The threat was not effective.  The majority went with the resolution.  Much credit is due the several Central and South American governments, most notably Mexico, which engineered the garnering of support from the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and parts of Africa and Asia.  Their efforts as well as the vote itself well merited the words of congratulation offered by Secretary of State Clinton.

The Mexican representative Juan Jose Gomez Camacho put it with perfection.  The root of the matter was not culture, not religion, not sensitivities, it was "discrimination against women.  Full stop."  Right on, Sr Camacho.

It may be true that this resolution like so much of the paper ground out by the UN and its subsidiaries is purely symbolic, without practical meaning, but as some observers correctly note, symbolism is important, perhaps even central in today's conflict between civilization and the adherents of violent political Islam and their state supporters.

Ms Clinton made a favorable name for herself years ago when as the president's wife she splashed onto the world stage in the context of the women's rights conference in Cairo.  Her dedication to this cause is well established and totally genuine.  Now, she needs to put her formidable political talents to work so as to assure the US actually ratifies the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.  It is long past time that the US do so--the Convention has been around since Carter was in the White House.  To be on the same side of an issue as Sudan is pathetic to say the least.

The reality is Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the rest of the reactionary Muslim majority states will continue to do everything in their power to maintain the status quo.  To do otherwise is literally unthinkable to the men in charge.  They, like the religion whose tenets they invoke with dreary repetition, is reactionary in many essential respects.  Of these, the most critical is the role and status of women.

When free of legal and other disabilities, the potential of women to change societies, polities, and cultures is impossible to overestimate.  Women are, after all, fifty percent of our collective brain power, our collective energy, our collective will.  In addition, women have the primary responsibility for the early acculturation of children.  The ancient cliche about the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world is laden with truth--and awesome power.

It is this the men of Islam fear more than anything else.  As soon as women get out from under the heel of the oppressive weight of Shariah, they will be able to fatally perturb the adolescent boys gang structure seen in so many manifestations of contemporary Islam including the adherents of violent political Islam.

Removing the shackles of Shariah will mean that some (perhaps many) Muslim men will have to do something shockingly new, revolutionary even.  They will have to look women straight in the eye as equals in all respects.  They will also have to finally toss aside the junior high fantasies of honor, of killing mom, of treating women in ways no self-respecting Homo erectus would have thought proper.  In short, they will have to grow up.

And, being grown up is a hard thing to do.  But only by exhibiting maturity can Muslims overcome their own worst enemy.  No, not the West.  Not the "Crusaders."  Not even the Jews and the "Zionist entity."  Themselves.  More than most, Muslim men can say along with Pogo, "We have met the enemy and it is us."

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Memo To Palestinians

Yousef Munayyar is the executive director of the Palestinian Center which, the Geek presumes, is located in Los Angles. At least his op-ed piece today appeared in the LA Times.

Munayyar advances the thesis that the Palestinians resident in and adjacent to Israel constitute a sovereign deterrent to any Iranian attack, particularly one of a nuclear nature. This is an interesting but utterly fallacious notion.

The events of the past sixty plus years have shown that there is no concern for Palestinians held by Arab leaders, let alone those of Iran. The assorted Arab autocrats, kings, and sheiks have exploited, used, manipulated, and assured the deaths of Palestinians time after bloody time. The Palestinians are useful and quite expendable tools in the eyes of Arab and other Muslim political and military leaders.

In and of themselves, the Palestinians are of neither interest nor importance. Beyond their base utility as a cudgel to be used against Israel--and before 1948 the Zionist movement--the Palestinians have no value, be it ideological, political, or religious. The only exception to this general rule is the use of Palestinians as hewers of wood and drawers of water in the various oil based feudal sheik- and kingdoms.

Mr Munayyar and his fellow Palestinians have to get a grip on their history dating back to the immediate post-WW I period. Throughout the ensuing eighty years the Palestinians have been far more cruelly and cynically exploited for ends not of their desire by their fellow Arabs, their coreligionists, than by the Zionists and Israelis.

The record of Palestinian misery directly and solely attributed to the ambitions and goals of assorted Muftis, kings, presidents, dictators is long and so well documented that it needs no dilation at this point. Neither is there any compelling necessity to point out that there has never been an Arab or Muslim equivalent of Israeli historian Benny Morris. No Arab, no Muslim, has done what Morris did so ably years ago--demonstrate and document the ill-usage of the Palestinians.

Morris employed declassified Israeli records to blow open completely the worst kept secret of the Israeli Wars of Independence--the program of Palestinian forced removal. That the Israeli armed forces used atrocious behavior to encourage Palestinians to leave the area is undeniable.

Equally undeniable is the role played by the invading Arab armies whose commanders and political masters worked assiduously to convince Palestinians to leave the area of operations. These appeals were accompanied by assurances of a speedy return in the wake of the victorious Arab armies.

Mr Munayyar is, not unsurprisingly, silent on the complicity of the Arab armies in the "ethnic cleansing" of the land which became Israel. He is equally silent on the manifold sins committed against his fellows by Arab states, Arab statesmen, Muslim Arab clerics, and all the others who sought their goals on the backs and through the blood of Palestinians.

The pall of silence extends to those Palestinian leaders exemplified by Arafat but including scores of others ranging from blood drenched practitioners of terrorism-without-a-reason to imitation diplomats outpointed, out maneuvered at every turn in every conference. Nor does Mr Munayyar mention any of the many times when the Palestinians were offered the better part of a perfect deal only to reject it in the bootless hopes of getting a totality which existed only in fantasy. From the Thirties through the UN offers of sixty-three years ago right on down to the silence which met the Olmert offer two years ago, the Palestinians have rejected ninety percent of the loaf in the delusional expectation of getting one hundred ten percent if only they were intransigent enough, long enough.

In addition to offering the Palestinians-as-human-shields hypothesis, Mr Munayyar spends some time severely excoriating Benny Morris for having come out in recent years as a critic of the Palestinian removal effort not for having been excessive but for not having gone far enough. Morris has repeatedly said in the past decade that the leaving of twenty percent of the initial Palestinian population resident in the land which became Israel was a serious mistake.

From the Israeli perspective the Morris criticism is trenchant. It has much to recommend it. Had all Palestinians ether been ejected or left in response to the Arab importuning, there would be no "Palestinian question" today. Stalin was right when he famously said during the purges, "No person--no problem." This is the centrality of Morris' revised position.

The Geek (who is by genetics, if not culture, three-eighths Apache) has read and heard on a number of occasions that the Whites would have been well advised a century and more ago had they exterminated the indigenous population rather than pen them on the reservations. He has heard and read the same view expressed by descendants of the once free, once proud Native American population both blended like himself and pure of lineage. Anyone who has spent any time on the "res" cannot but help thinking similarly at least every now and then.

Given the conditions under which so many of the displaced Palestinians have been forced to live for generations now, conditions fostered not only by the well-meaning folks of the UN and its lesser bodies but also by the Arab governments, it is not unreasonable to conclude that even the Palestinians of today would be much better off in all respects had the 1948 removal been total and accepted by countries in the region and around the world as a permanent fact. Where they have been allowed to integrate fully into host societies the Palestinians have shown themselves a great addition to the energy, the vitality, the economic prosperity of their new homes.

Full integration, however, has been spotty, haphazard in the extreme. Full, organized integration has been prevented by the reach of Palestinian dreams far outstripping the grasp of reality. Exacerbating this condition has been the exploitation of the Palestinian dream by the self-centered Arab states.

The Palestinian people have been driven to excesses of dream, the farther shores of despair, the violent margins of Islam by a host of manipulators, a legion of exploiters, a monstrous regiment of those who seek their own goals of power through the suffering of others. It is this concatenation of evil doers which has assured the Palestinians have had no moment of peace, no society of harbor, no new world on which to plant feet and family in which to grow a real future.

While Israel is far from guilt free, it is the lesser, even the least of the evils both inadvertent and intentional which have conspired to make the Palestinians inhabitants of a hell on Earth. The same applies when assessing the Palestinians-as-human-shields thesis advanced by Mr Munayyar. It wouldn't bother the mullahs in the slightest if a few million Arab, Sunni Palestinians became ions in a mushroom cloud.

It would be best for individual and collective peace of mind, best for individual and collective futures if Mr Munayyar and his fellow leaders and spokesmen for the Palestinians realized just what Palestinians mean in the Arab (and Iranian) calculus. The entirety of the Palestinian population ranks as less than nothing in the estimate of Arab and Iranian leaders--unless they remain as useful and utterly expendable tools of state policy.

A Goy And Yom Hashoah

When the Geek was born, while he suckled, learned to walk, felt the pleasures of beach and water for the first time, snuggled deeply in the warmth of love and security, millions of humans, many no older than himself were systematically, mechanically murdered as the direct result of hatred given power by state policy, conscious decision, and methodical execution. At least half of those who rode the cattle cars to the ovens and foul pits of destruction did so simply because they were Jews and there was no one, certainly no state, ready to protect them.

The Geek was touched deeply but indirectly by war's devastation through the death of his father in early combat, but he came of age a close friend of people whose lives had been blighted by the hideously effective machinery of death assembled by the Nazis. They had sat safe in the far away land of safety, the US, as brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and grandparents were forced onto the thousands of Murder Expresses and ended "up the chimney" in the camps of Germany, Poland, and other places under the swastika. He came to know and understand deeply the power held by the creation and survival of Israel for these people.

The Geek also came to know and believe that the existence of Israel held profound significance for non-Jews, the goyim. Israel is not only a symbol of Jewish survival against the implacable forces of hatred, dehumanization, and the constant need for an "other" on whom all ills and misfortunes can be blamed. Beyond that potent reality, Israel is a symbol to all humans that places of refuge and sources of protection must exist as any of us can become the dreaded "other," the next target of hate and dehumanization.

Israel also exists to remind us that a good can result from the most repulsive evil. Israel was founded in the ancient land of the Hebrews in large part due to the recognition on the part of peoples and leaders that they shared a degree of culpability for the Slaughter of the Innocents perpetrated by the Nazis with the eager assistance of many who were not Nazis, whose land was occupied by Nazis, who labored under the whips and guns of the Nazis but sympathized not with those marched into the gas chambers, but rather with their fellow haters of all things Jewish and all Jews.

It was an act of penance for the moral sins of the Nazi period when Western nations generally, including the US ignored the many warning signs of what was happening under the Hitlerites. Shamefully, the governments and many people throughout Europe and North America had refused to hear the cries of warning and shrieks of anguish alike until it was far too late.

Only after the evidence of the Slaughter, the Holocaust, the Shoah, was shown around the world, time after nauseating time, did the West, the US, act. The act was the creation of the state of Israel.

The act of Israel's birth was accompanied by blood, pain, and a degree of injustice to be sure, but that is often the case with birth, of individuals and nations alike. Perhaps the most important thing to recall about the birth of Israel is not the ministrations of the West, of the US, or even the Soviet Union in bringing the birth to pass but the utter, complete, total, and quite unjustifiable efforts by the governments of the surrounding Arab Muslim states to kill the infant before it had fully emerged from the womb.

Arguably, the actions of the Arab governments constituted an attempt to finish the job started by the Nazis or, failing that, to assure that Jews in the Mideast and elsewhere would be left without a refuge or protector. While any number of exculpatory glosses have been and continue to be placed upon the Arab attack on Israel-the-borning, the underlying fact is that the movement of tanks and troops was motivated by hatred, dehumanization, and a view of Jews as the ever-evil "Other."

As the years have rolled by since Israel was created from the ashes of the Holocaust nothing has shifted the hostility, the hatred felt and constantly expressed by various and sundry Arab and Muslim states. If anything the hatred has grown, the hostility increased, and the potential for war both conventional and otherwise has increased in capitals across the Mideast and throughout Northwest Asia.

The reason for this escalation in hate, threat, and menace usually invoked is the bad treatment of the "Palestinians" by the Israelis. End the "occupation," restore the "borders" extant before June 1967, compensate or allow the return of any and all Arabs (or their descendants) "forced out" of their homes way back at the beginning and all will be peace, harmony and goodwill. Or so runs the Arab-Muslim narrative.

Right. All the problems diplomatic, political, and military, all the rebirths of ancient blood libels, emerge from the sincere concern on the part of the assorted Arab and Muslim leaders for the fate of their "Palestinian brothers."

That constant theme, that undying plaint is a crock. Pure and simple, none of the many advocates on behalf of the "Palestinians" gives a tinker's dam about the "Palestinian people" now or in the past. Arab and Muslim regimes, dictators, kings, and elected presidents alike have used the "plight of the Palestinians" time and time again for their own subjectively defined self-interest. The "Palestinians" have been pawns or less in the Mideast Game of Nations. They have been expendable assets used for purposes of state. They have been pliable and easily exploited puppets dancing on strings controlled by distant and quite indifferent political and military figures.

Behind the screen of a nonexistent Israeli threat, the mullahs of Tehran pursue a nuclear capability with zealous determination not to protect the "Palestinians" but to enhance the power held by Iran in and beyond the region. The Turkish government has turned on their one time ally, Israel, not because the Islamist leaning government is worried over the repression of the residents of Gaza but because of desire bordering on need to diminish Israel.

The real deal behind all of the recent expressions of antipathy directed toward Israel and solidarity with the "Palestinian people" is based on a very mundane consideration. The assorted regimes are scared to death of the Islamist jihadists in their own populations.

The ever hardening line espoused by Arab and Muslim states most recently aimed at the Israeli nuclear arsenal is based on the palpable fear that appearing to give in in the slightest would be to excite the Islamist jihadi to strap on their suicide vests and "bring the war home." Given the deeply rooted antisemitism in Islam per se, stoked year after year by clerics and others and considering the explosive growth of Islamist based and directed violence, the anxiety permeating the governments of Arab and Muslim states is understandable.

Equally understandable is the Israeli reaction of hardening intransigence. Without excusing the land grab nature of the Six Day War, the current view of the Israeli government and people is well founded. The only wall around Israel, the only way of assuring that Jews not only in that country but around the world have a refuge and protector is the strength of the Israeli military. That strength includes the nuclear weapons resident in assorted bunkers.

It is quite true that Israel faces both external and internal problems, even large problems such as demographic, economic, and educational trends. Yet a more fundamental truth is that Israel must survive as a viable state if those are to be solved.

Survival relies in very large measure on the capabilities of the Israeli clandestine services as well as its defense forces. It relies at least to an important degree on those warheads presumed to exist on Israeli bases.

Israeli survival also rests in part upon the understanding and support of us who are non-Jews, the goyim of the US and Europe. Our predecessors not only did the wrong thing in the long dark years from 1933 to 1945, they did the right thing three years later when they midwifed the birth of Israel.

We do not need to support Israel without question. Not every decision or action by the government of Israel is correct, nor does it merit agreement simply by virtue of having been made in Israel.

However, without Israel as both a reality and a symbol, it will be only a matter of time before the Extermination Expresses take to the rails again. The next time those on board may be Jews.

Then, again, those who ride the next trains may be some other "Other." They could be any of us.

Obama Looks Reality In The Face--Finally

President Obama did something surprising. He has admitted that he possibly just might have made a mistake. By means of a thank-you letter to Hamid Karzai, the Guy In The Oval allowed as how his recent midnight raid on Kabul in which he hectored the Afghan president on the benefits of good government, the need for a meritocracy in the Afghan civil service, and the utter necessity of ridding Afghan political life of its very blood--corruption--might just have been ill-advised.

Mr Obama might have added that his descent on Karzai was also insulting on a personal level to say nothing of disrespectful to the Afghan people generally. Not even LBJ at his most abrasive and abusive ever quite equaled the Obama performance as Great White Father Straightening Out the Little Brown Brother.

The sequel, Karzai's demonstrations of pique in the first degree, was totally expectable and fully justifiable within the context of Afghan culture, society, and political legitimacy. The consequent howls of outraged dignity emanating from the White House and allied points was not justifiable and defies explanation other than having been demonstrations of just how the elite of Washington don't get it when dealing with a traditional culture and society. (Horrors! Cultural insensitivity on the part of those who have most loudly announced in so many ways just how culturally sensitive they are and the rest of us must be. Say it ain't so!)

The need for Mr Obama to back down was and is self-evident. By denouncing Karzai the administration has made it harder, much harder to claim support for its war effort in Afghanistan from Congress or We the People. At the same time the all too obvious attempt to publicly diminish Mr Karzai does nothing to inject more legitimacy in his government. Finally, personally insulting a proud man in a culture where pride is the coin of power does not provide an impetus on his part for effective cooperation with American policy requirements.

Whether the letter will do much or anything to put diplomatic Bondo on the Obama manufactured dent in our relations with and influence on the Karzai regime remains to be seen. In view of the decent relation which exists between Karzai and General McChrystal, there is a better than fair chance the letter will prove to be effective. As long as Mr Obama, Secretary Clinton, Veep Biden, Special Envoy Holbrooke, and our ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberr, can restrain their inherent desires to lecture and exhort, there is good reason to conclude this rough patch in relations will pass swiftly and without profound, lingering effects.

There is a much larger question wrapped up inside the Obama-Karzai contretemps. That question is simply when will the Young Guy In The Oval get a grip on the stingy nettle of reality regarding the nature of Islamism and its appeal to members of traditional societies?

Traditional societies, that is societies which are not nations so much as assemblages of tribes forced by mere geographic propinquity to pretend they constitute a cohesive nation at least some of the time, are not founded on the same basis as nation-states. The imperatives at work are not the same. The definitions of legitimacy are not the same. The qualities of leadership are not the same. In short, they ain't like us regardless of superficials like membership in the UN or possession of a national anthem.

For example, traditional societies value the appearance of strength in a leader. The reality of strength is even more highly valued. The man who is ruthless, energetic, a take-charge-and-move-out sort of guy is most likely to attract and retain the largest base of support. A man who swaggers, walks tall and proud, who takes no insult, who hits before he can be hit, these are the expressions of strength valued and sought after in traditional societies.

"A wise man seeks the strongest horse," is a proverb often heard in one detailed form or another in the great swath running from Morocco to Pakistan, from the tip of the Arabian Peninsula to the towering mountains ringing the Central Asian Republics. That this great global arc coincides with most of the Arab-Muslim world is scarcely accidental. Islam values this view of strength as it is the product of a traditional society and has taken deepest roots in traditional societies.

Today, people and governments, the led and the leaders alike are closely watching the US with one goal in mind: Determining whether or not the US is the "strongest horse." A little over thirty years ago when people of this region regarded the US there was no doubt as to the answer. But, starting with the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979 doubts about the strength of the American horse started to emerge.

The initially supine reaction by the Carter administration to the capture of the American embassy in Tehran and the consequent kidnapping of American diplomats particularly when capped with the dramatic failure at Desert One convinced more than a few in the Arab-Muslim world that the American horse was foundering.

The US horse seemingly was recovering its strength during the Reagan years only to once again appear freshly spavined when the "cowboy" in the White House withdrew our troops from Lebanon with unseemly haste following the suicide bombing attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut. The horse once again recovered in a very visible way with its leadership in the Gulf War.

No sooner had opinion about American strength and resolve turned positive than the horse threw its shoes again. The Clinton administration's spineless cut-and-run from Somalia following the failed, badly planned, and worse executed Special Forces attempt to capture a Somali warlord switched the view of American strength one hundred eighty degrees.

The perception of American weakness and irresolution was multiplied by the Clinton administration's weak responses to attacks on American embassies and a US Navy warship. A lot of talk and the shooting of a few cruise missiles at irrelevant targets did not constitute an exhibition worthy of the strongest horse.

While the actions of George W. Bush were in one respect (Iraq) ill-advised and in another (Afghanistan) ineptly carried out, they did represent undeniable strength. But the strongest horse can be bogged down if the mud is deep enough and the horse struggles without success for a long enough time. And so the US horse was until finally more troops were sent to Iraq and, years behind the need, to Afghanistan.

The Obama administration during the past fourteen months, the last twelve in particular, has further declared the steady weakening of the American horse. The genuflections, the distortions of history, the worried seeming importuning of the Cairo Address were meant to be a sign of change, of out reach. In the ears of many in the Arab-Muslim states these were actually words of surrender, of weakness, of failure.

Also seen as palpable signs of the weak American horse were the always shifting lines in the sand being drawn by the Obama administration regarding the Iranian nuclear program. Lots of words, no action are indicative of weakness, of flaccidity, not strength. The same may be said of the one sided pressure on Israel, paradoxical as that may seem. But, if the US cannot pressure Israel successfully, just what state can it successfully lean on?

Islamic predicated traditional societies respect strength. This does not imply the strength of weapons and warriors alone. Rather, it means the strength of belief, of values, of commitment, of the willingness to sacrifice, to spend time, to expend blood and treasure if necessary in support of belief, in defense of values, in keeping faith with commitments.

Much of these seem quite antiquated, unfashionable to all of us post-modern sophisticates in the urbanized nation-states of the West. Sacrificing for values, beliefs? What a quaint notion. Keep faith in commitments? Well, times change, contexts alter, get real!

We and our society have left the imperatives, the values, the worldview of traditional societies in the dust bin of history. But, most of the world's population has not. Our enemies, the Islamists, have not. Neither have those such as Hamid Karzai and all the other Afghans.

Mr Obama has apparently learned from one (small) mistake in personal diplomacy. It is to be hoped with both sincerity and fervor that he can learn from and correct his much greater, potentially fatal mistake.

If he does not we can be sure that all through the great crescent people will conclude that the US is not the strongest horse. And, that means those who hate us will ride over our prostrate bodies.