Ethno-Religious Democracy And The Next Mideast War

Turkey has declared rhetorical war on Israel.  To err on the side of accuracy, the Islamist leaning government in Ankara has been escalating words to almost the this-means-war level over the past few days.  Behind this development resides not only an ambition of regional power status but the explosive growth of a new Turkish nationalism based on the merging of ethnic and religious identities, which has substantially replaced the strongly secularist predicated sense of national self inaugurated by Kemal Attaturk.

The target of Turkey's ever more intemperate attacks has likewise reinvented its sense of national identity on the merging of religion and nationalism.  When founded, Israel was both a Jewish state and an outpost of European socialist thought which centered upon secularism.

The seismic shift in Turkey's national identity came only in the past decade when the long ignored peasant population of the Anatolian highlands moved to the urban centers of Ankara and Istanbul in large enough numbers to form an effective political base for the AKP, a party whose roots ran deeply into the rich soil of political Islam.  When the internal migrants, searchers for a better life, joined with the equally ignored Muslim clerical establishment, it became possible to organize the discontented and marginalized new arrivals into a potent political base.  This, in turn, brought the AKP to power--a power it has developed further by defanging the military and the secular elites of the cities.

The shift of Israeli politics from the secular left to the ethno-religious right started back in 1977 when Likud tapped the pool of resentment felt within significant segments of the Israeli population.  By melding a new coalition of expansive hyper-nationalists, new immigrants, and the more religiously minded, Likud was able to gain power.  As the years went by, the nationalist and religiously observant right was strengthened in numbers by arrivals from the Soviet Union, and, after the collapse of that state, its ruins.

The movement to the right was accelerated by the First Intifada and the consequent bloodletting imposed by the Palestinian terrorists.  This reaction on the part of the Israeli public was to be expected.  Terror is normally counterproductive.  With every suicide bomber, every rocket, every new outrage, the median of Israeli politics moved more and more into the right hand lane.

The external pressure joined with the Second Intifada to push Israelis even more into the harsh and uncompromising position of national identity based on the juncture of Jewishness and Israeli-ness.  This dynamic was fully predictable as pressure consolidates political will long, long before it fractures it.  In this context, it is easy to see why the ill-advised efforts by the Obama administration to put the screws to Israel generally and the Netanyahu government in particular were counterproductive failures.

The result is the current loggerheads relation between mirror image politicians--Erdogan and Netanyahu--along with the daggers drawn nature of Turkish-Israeli relations.  A larger consequence of national identities based on the merger of ethnic and religious definitions is looming as the "Arab Spring" rolls into Fall, a Fall which will be marked with a very early freeze.

Democracy is dangerous.  The power of this truth informed the thinking of the authors of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.  Democracy is nothing more or less than the popular expression of whatever fad, fancy, or fantasy can be employed effectively to move voters to mark one person's name preferentially.

Among the many fads, fancies, and fantasies which can be employed to this end, none are more powerful than nationalism and religion.  The advocates of political Islam in Egypt, in Libya, in Tunisia, and elsewhere in the Arab Muslim states know this perfectly.  Knowledge need only to be put into action.

In the classic treatment of revolution, Anatomy of Revolution, the author makes a key point.  Although only ancient offensive insurgencies were considered in this book, the power of this one observation has been enhanced by each and every revolution which has succeeded in the post-World War II years.

The point?

Revolutions move to the extreme.  That is to say, the group with the most radical agenda for change following the overthrow of the old regime will win.  The reasons for this inevitable move to the extreme are few and simple.  The more extreme the group, the more sweeping will be the changes contained in its agenda.  In addition, the more extreme groups are tightly organized, their action plan is simple, easy to understand, and addresses fundamental fears and aspirations held by the majority of the public.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Salifists, and others advocating political Islam are all tightly organized.  All have agendas which are virtually interchangeable, making group merger thinkable.  And, most importantly, all have action plans which are predicated on the strictures and requirements of Islam as well as the notions of dignity and pride resident in nationalism.

In all the countries involved in the dramatic events of the past nine months, the advocates of political Islam enjoy great advantage over their secular opponents.  Not only are the assorted groups well organized and possessed of a radical agenda, all make profound appeals to both Islam and national pride.  "Stand tall, you are Egyptian" is a chant virtually identical to the more recent, "Stand tall, you are Muslim."

The necessary inference from what has been observed and reported throughout the Mideast and North Africa  is simply that Egypt, Libya, and perhaps others will move to the totalistic national sense of self which has been in play in Turkey and Israel.  One implication of this trajectory is that Turkey will fail to reestablish the Ottoman Empire.  Another, far more disturbing one considering all that has been at work in the Israeli political system is that war will become far more likely in the near to mid-term.


The next war will sneak up on the West.  This is to be expected.  The elites of the West generally discount nationalism as a spent force, a ancient relic which has outlived whatever usefulness it once may have possessed.  At the same time, the Western elites of politics, the media, and academia pretend that religion does not exist as a real force in the lives of people and the policies of governments.

In the US, in the West, the leaders of state and molders of opinion alike will not see what is happening on the Arab streets and states alike.  What will not be seen, cannot be prevented.

Pleasant thought, eh?

Going To Hell In A Bucket

To paraphrase a mantra of the early (1920s) self-help movement, the Mideast and coterminous regions appear "in every way and every day to be growing worse."  For those of us who are fans of collapse and chaos, these are the glory days for the benighted folk living in the vast arc from Pakistan to the Persian Gulf and beyond to the point where sand dunes meet the surf in Morocco.

Pakistan remains what it has been for some years now, a national definition of the old military term SNAFU.  You almost have to feel sorry for the Pakistanis.  In the rush to use Islam of the Wahhibist flavor to unify the nation, the result was not only to undercut whatever potential for unity might have existed but to assure the place would dissolve into a bloody froth of differing views of what sort of Islam held the total truth for the Pakistani national identity.

The crimson foam of theological disputation conceals but does not mitigate the other divisions which constitute the political and social terrain of Pakistan.  Corruption is an ever present "flavor of the day," providing the basic diet of politics and business.  The Baluch defensive insurgency refuses to simply go away despite the fervent desires of Islamabad.  The national judiciary would provide much comic relief were it not for the tragic results of its combination of lethargy and incompetence.  The national fisc is a disaster area such that the country depends upon international aid (aka protection money and bribes) so that the army can continue to prepare for the hoped for next round of war with India.

Arguably, the real world challenges of inefficiency, bankruptcy, insurgency, corruption, broken government, and general poverty would be solvable were it not for the more powerful threats presented by the aforementioned religious disputes.  Stripped to the politically incorrect essentials, Pakistan is rumbling dangerously close to the cliff of failed state status due to the Islamic tendency to stay stuck in a war of religions, or, more properly, a war of competing sects not all that unlike those which left the German states in utter ruin nearly four hundred years ago.

The same dynamic of warfare between conflicting interpretations of theology threaten to turn the "Arab Spring" into an endless winter of very violent discontent in Egypt and, perhaps, Libya, as well as other countries--here Syria comes to mind.  No matter the gloss applied by Western journalists, academics, and politicians, the ugly face of conflict between adherents of austere Islam, Salifists, Wahhibists, and others of similar ilk with adherents of less austere forms as well as "secularists" can be seen easily.

Bad ideas do not die.  It does not matter to the True Believers of austere Islam that the appeals of their form of Islam have been shown in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and elsewhere to have a short life in the real world.  The seeming exception of Iran can be explained easily by reference to the numerous and well equipped internal security forces.  The lesson of life remains the same.  Austere Islam is not acceptable to the vast majority of Muslims and can be imposed and maintained only by robust, eternal repression.

Taliban in Afghanistan had outworn its welcome before the Americans arrived a decade back.  Al-Qaeda in Iraq rapidly expired as a direct result of its dreadful behavior in Anbar province.  Even in Somalia, the "kids" of al-Shabaab have insured their own ultimate defeat by their efforts to forcefully impose an unacceptably harsh interpretation of Islam on a people who previously wore their Islam lightly.

These lessons are lost on the Salifists of Egypt, a group which has not garnered the attention in the West lavished on the better known Egyptian Brotherhood.  It might be noted that a self-proclaimed voice of Salifism in Egypt, a man named Ismaili, has a very good chance of becoming Egypt's first democratically elected president.  The Salifists are dead set against peaceful relations with Israel.  Rather they are fully committed to seeing an end to the Jewish state.  Even more than the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's Salifists are anti-West, anti-American.  They are also of the view that the current regimes in the region are apostate and must be overthrown.

The Salifists of Egypt are four square in favor of Shariah.  They are equally firm in their opposition to making any accommodation to the West (or Western tourists.)  Some would go so far as to treat the monuments of Egypt's long pre-Islam history as "unlawful" suitable to be treated as Taliban did the great statutes of the Buddha.  Others would allow them to exist--hidden behind protective screens.

The Salifists are not so evident in their presence in Libya.  The invisibility doesn't imply absence.  Rather, it is indicative of caution, the same sort of caution which impelled the Renaissance Party in Tunisia to deny its goals and interim agenda for weeks after the collapse of the old regime.  It is a caution bred of the hard experience of Salifists and kindred souls in the deadly war between them and the Algerian army twenty years ago.  While the old regime in Egypt suppressed Salifists as it did the Muslim Brotherhood, the Algerian armed forces obliterated these advocates of political Islam.

The Salifists, the Brotherhood members, the Wahhibists, all those who espouse austere and politically oriented forms of Islam learned the lesson and keep their heads well down until such time as they can be raised with impunity at the least and an expectation of victory at best.  Splits between "secularist" militias and those representing the advocates of austere, political Islam are already apparent in Libya.  There is not yet fighting between militiamen without beards and those whose faces are bearded (but lack mustaches--a clear sign of Salifist tendencies), but there is no reason that today's lack of inter-group trust will not degenerate into exchanges of fire in the not too distant future.

Egypt, Tunisia, Libya all face very large problems in the wake of their respective adventures in regime change.  Big as the problems might be, seemingly insurmountable as the challenges seem, there is no reason to believe that each state and its people would not be able to overcome them.  That is, there would be no reason were it not for the presence of religious disputes.  The dynamic pitting those of powerful austere beliefs against all others bodes well to assure that each case is more likely than not to fail in achieving the goal of a more or less open, more or less democratic, more or less free market society, polity, and economy.

Once again it may be politically incorrect but it is not inaccurate to observe that each of these states is likely to dissolve in a welter of sectarian violence not unlike that which occurred in Iraq.  This eventuality is not in the interests of regional or global stability--to engage in an exercise of belaboring the obvious.  It is also an eventuality which cannot be halted or mitigated by Western action or inaction.

The takeaway?  To paraphrase the campaign mantra of Clinton in 1992: "It's the religion, stupid!"

The Bugs Bunny "What A Maroon!" Award Returns

It has been some time since the Geek last bestowed the highly coveted "What A Maroon! Award."  This has not been due to a dearth of candidates.  Quite the contrary, the past several months have been awash to the scuppers with moronic policies and the severely intellectually challenged folks behind them.  Simply, there have been entirely too many possibilities to single out just one each and every week.

Fortunately, a person has emerged from the fog of merely inept, incompetent, brain dead wonks and pols inside the Beltway.  Finally there has been an act of such unmitigated idiocy that the Award must be bestowed.

The envelop, please.  Riiippp.  Raise the slip of paper inside.  Read the distinguished name of the winner.

"And, the winner is.....(drum roll.)  Lick lips in anticipations.  "The winner is Hillary Clinton!"  Applause.

That's right, bucko.  The recipient is our most distinguished Secretary of State.  Ms Clinton gets the Award not for her efforts to push back on the eviscerated foreign aid budget.  Nor for her opposition to the cuts to the Foreign Service appropriation.  No.  Those were not moronic.

Well, what then?  Is this belated recognition for Hilary's hard work to bring about the Libyan policy morass?  No, although a strong case can be made for her receiving at least an honorable mention in this area.

SecState Clinton deserves the "What A Maroon!" Award for her recent collaboration with the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC,) the Turkish proponent of political Islam and historian manque, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, in the area of preventing religious defamation.  In an announcement datelined Jeddah, Ms Clinton and Dr Ihsanoglu declared the US would host a series of meetings to focus on the implementation of a UN Human Rights Council resolution 16/18.

This measure passed by the discredited Human Rights Council last March is intended to combat in an "urgent" fashion the growth of something called "Islamophobia."  While carefully avoiding the use of either the word "Islam" or "Muslim," the intent of the resolution to single out the faith of the Prophet for special protection is clear.  The fifty plus Muslim majority states of the OIC have long pushed for the criminalization of any written, spoken, or graphic consideration of any aspect of Islam in any manner other than the adulatory.  After many failures, the OIC and its supporters such as Russia and China succeeded in getting 16/18 passed by a minority of the HRC members.

It is always essential to keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of the OIC membership is well known for limiting free expression and inquiry.  The same is true of states which have sided with the OIC in its efforts to stifle open expression and the equally free inquiry which accompanies expression.  Some OIC states, such as Pakistan, whose delegation introduced 16/18 as well as its numerous predecessors, has blasphemy laws of the most draconian sort enshrined in law.

It is equally necessary to recall that OIC states such as Egypt are (in)famous for the easy availability of antisemitic billingsgate such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Throughout the Muslim states, Judaism is defamed in the worst imaginable ways and in all media.  Christianity is no better treated.  Nor is Hinduism.  Or Buddhism.  Or minority groups within Islam such as the Alawites of Syria.  All religions other than the most mainstream versions of Islam are fair targets for "defamation."  Even the two largest subgroups of Islam, the Sunni and the Shia are willing, even eager, to "defame" the other.

Of course this "defamation" is not seen as such by the Muslims.  To a good Muslim, the other faiths are either bastions of the infidel or expressions of apostasy.  Thus, it is impossible by definition to "defame" them.  Having not submitted to the unique Muslim view of the deity, adherents to all other faiths are fair game for whatever vitriol any Muslim cares to spill forth.

Logically, as the only "true" faith, only Islam merits protection as only Islam can be "defamed" by the vile slanders of the infidels and apostates.  It is not extreme to assert that even the most objective, fact based, well documented assessment of Islam is automatically "defamatory" if it comes from the tongue or pen of an infidel or apostate.  Considered from a Muslim perspective, the HRC resolution and all national policies or actions which arise from its application can serve to protect only Islam as only Islam resides in the realm of true faith.

As a dedicated adherent of political Islam, the OIC Secretary General is willing to do whatever is necessary to advance and protect the interests and position of Islam.  Thus, it is not surprising that he seized upon the Norwegian tragedy to argue that now more than ever the states of the West must move quickly and effectively to turn the theory of resolution 16/18 into legal practice.  The unfortunate reaction of so many in the Western and American elites to the berserker act of Brevik gave added power to Ishanoglu's argument.

The elites in the post-Brevik days continued and amplified their assertion that any criticism of Islam or any linkage of Muslims with terror serves the end of alleged "rightwing extremists" with the results such as those in Norway.  This exercise in absurdity and political correctness automatically plays into the censorious hands of the OIC.  Somehow, even the most objective and well-documented negative interpretations of Islam or the relation between the tenets of the faith and violent political actions are seen by the left leaning elites as being responsible for the action of Brevik.  Without any documentation, the same people argue that a myriad of potential Breviks are lurking all through Western and American societies waiting to be triggered into violence by some less than hosanna laden treatment of Islam or Muslims.

Showing her elite credentials and leftward bent, Ms Clinton signed onto the OIC's gag-the-infidels gambit.  No matter what her intentions are and no matter what the outcome may be, the secretary's agreement to a series of meetings oriented to putting 16/18 into practice gives the Muslim "speechophobic" move a legitimacy it does not deserve.  Her action provides an imprimatur to a resolution which strikes at the heart of the most basic and critical right resident in Western societies.

Free inquiry and expression is a protean right.  It is also a right from which many others emerge.  It is so basic to Western liberties and Western economic, social, political, and cultural development that it is simply impossible to separate free speech from the West as it exists today.  The utter absence of any real free inquiry and expression in the countries of the OIC goes far to explain why these states are comparatively backwards in all respects.

The irrelevance of rights, including that of free expression and inquiry, in Muslim majority states is not surprising.  Islam, unlike other major faiths, has no inherent concept of rights.  Islam is all about duty.  Believers have duties to the deity and to other believers, but, as good slaves, they have no inherent rights.  In sharp contrast, other faiths, particularly those preeminent in the West, not only acknowledge the existence of rights, rights which are inherent to the human condition, but exalt those rights by stating clearly and repeatedly that the exercise of rights requires the concomitant acceptance of duties.

To the faithful Muslim, the Western emphasis on rights constitutes a world through the looking glass.  It is not comprehensible to the good and faithful Muslim with his focus on knowing his duties and executing them with willing joy.  The Muslim has a duty to protect his religion against the words of the infidels and apostates.  His duty goes so far as to seek to prevent the infidel and apostate from sullying the faith by even an honest and objective narrative treatment.  The Muslim has a duty to exalt his faith above all others, which means he is allowed to attack the "false" beliefs.  His double standard is not hypocritical but rather is an honest expression of duties and beliefs.

Ms Clinton is not a Muslim as far as is publicly known.  She is, however, an American.  As a holder of an office of trust and confidence under the Constitution, she has taken an oath of office swearing to protect and defend the Constitution to the best of her ability.  She is a lawyer by education.  Putting the two aspects of Ms Clinton's life together, it must be concluded that she understands the OIC backed resolution is repugnant to the Bill of Rights.

She became a "maroon" of the highest order when she did not meet the demand that the US support 16/18 with any reaction other than gales of derisive laughter.

Christian(?) Terrorism and Cultural Relativism

Reading the manifesto of Anders Behring Brevik is a bit of a trudge, a long yomp uphill with wind and a cold rain in your face--and mud sucking at your boots.  But, it is worth it.  More than, say, the Unibomber's treatise on the ills of technology, the Norwegian's great effort, "2083: A European Declaration of Independence" provides real insight into a warped mind.  In this it is not unlike reading Osama bin Laden's "declaration of war" against the US some fifteen years ago.

This is an appropriate analogy as Mr Berserker Brevik is a mirror image of the assorted practitioners of violent political Islam.  Brevik, like bin Laden, made a list of quite valid objections to key aspects of contemporary life in the areas of the world in which each lived.  Bin Landen's negative views of US policy to (and presence in) the Mideast were neither lunatic nor trivial.  Brevik's critique of both multiculturalism and the impact of assimilation resistant Muslim immigrants upon Western Europe are also neither lunatic nor trivial.

The objective, intellectual predicates of bin Laden and Brevik were unobjectionable.  Neither was over the edge in their thinking in and of itself.  Where each went over the edge was in the manner by which they made their thoughts manifest.  It was in the reliance upon lethal violence as the only way of obtaining redress for unacceptable conditions that the two men--one a Muslim with Salifist roots and the other a "fundamentalist" Christian (whatever the word "fundamentalist" might mean in this specific case)--became brothers in spirit.

The spiritual kinship between Brevik and his Muslim opponents carries a risk for all of us in the West which needs both recognition and effective addressing.  The public opinion molding "elites" of Western academia, journalism, and politics, as well as many of us in the non-elite are damned currently with an overabundance of fairmindedness, openmindedness, tolerance, and a desire to accept the other which is evident only in its absence within the ranks of those who subscribe to political Islam.

This tendency, which is both a source of strength and weakness within the West, is already evident.  The NYT has set its sights on those who have written and spoken negatively regarding Islam--particularly those cited and quoted in "2083."  There can be little doubt but other individuals and organs will take the same censorious path.

This is as wrong as a soup sandwich--and as dangerous as tossing sweating dynamite against a stone wall.  Any effort to suppress open and critical assessment of negative aspects of Islam such as the myriad contained in political Islam, particularly the form which admires and employs violence in pursuit of its goals, simply because as one person quoted by the NYT put it, "words have consequences," is both anathema to the ideals of the US and other Western states but dangerously counterproductive.  Regardless of individuals such as the apparently delusional Brevik, there is a crying need to expose the dark underside of Islam.

Had Brevik been a Muslim, his actions would be applauded by many around the majority Muslim countries--and within the self-segregating Muslim enclaves dotting the European landscape from Norway to the UK to France, Germany, and beyond.  But, Brevik was purportedly a Christian, and thus his actions receive only the condemnation they deserve from Christians around the world.

In this there resides the most significant distinction between the two religions.  Islam celebrates violence undertaken in either the defense or the expansion of the faith.  Christianity denounces violence.  Regardless of the many, many times that Christians have violated their faith, the reality remains unchanged--Jesus was not the Man of the Sword (or the bomb or the semi-automatic rifle.)  There is no faith rooted excuse or reason for offensive violence.  There can be and is no greater difference between the two largest monotheistic religions than that.

Whether the people and opinion molders of the West like the idea or not, there is and will be for some while to come a struggle between the advocates of violent political Islam and the civilized states.  As part of this struggle there will be ongoing attempts to use the openmindedness, the tolerance, the desire to be fair which characterizes the West against it.  The only defenses against this are understanding of the nature and motives of the adversary and a willingness to reject the pernicious concept of cultural relativism.

Cultural relativism hides behind the bland and "fair" term of multiculturalism.  This doctrine holds that no society, no polity, no culture is inherently "better" or "superior" to any other.  Cultural relativism holds that it is impossible to have absolute standards regarding human behavior, that all standards can be applied only within specific cultural contexts, preferably only by individuals living within the context.

This idea is, of course, utter bilge.  The Christians who condemn the acts of their fellow, Brevik, show this.  So do the Norwegians who make no excuses for their fellow countryman.  In this affirmation of condemnation there is a recognition of a universal principle--murder most foul is just that, murder most foul.  It cannot be excused nor justified by even very legitimate concerns.  There is no excuse.

It is the willingness to condemn Brevik which gives the West the right to condemn the actions of his spirit brothers of al-Qaeda or Taliban.  Murder most foul is murder most foul.  No excuses.  No moral justification.  No resorting to theological spinning and weaving.

In sharp contrast, Muslims of the Mideast and Northwest Asia have been willing to pile vitrupitation upon vitriol in their consideration both of Brevik and the early speculation that a Muslim group might have been behind the atrocities.  At the same time, there is not and never has been the slightest rejection of the murder most foul committed by Muslims in the name of the Prophet and faith.

In this difference resides the justification for not censoring criticism of Islam.  In this difference resides the need to continue critiquing that which deserves it within Muslim ranks.  Brevik is an anomaly and has been cast out as such both in Norway and throughout the West.  In the lands of Islam, however, Brevik's spirit brother, Osama bin Laden, remains a hero, a model, a zenith to which all too many aspire.

Consider that difference and ask yourself, "Are all cultures really equal?"

What A Difference A Word Makes

Ten years ago in an exercise of free association the challenge "terrorist" or "terrorism" would have brought an instant and automatic response from the lips of most Americans: "Arab." Nowadays the same challenge words would bring a different reaction.  Despite the best efforts of the Obama administration and other devotees of the high minded and lofty thinking school of politically correct multiculturalism, the words "terror" or "terrorist" would result in the reply of "Muslim."

Why this change considering that way back in the salad days of international terrorism the vast majority of the Arab perpetrators were at least nominally adherents of Islam?  A close examination of the curricula vitae of the assorted leaders of the numerous groups who bombed, shot, and garroted their way into the Mideast datelines of the Seventies, Eighties, and most of the Nineties shows that none were Christian let alone Jewish.  They were, without exception, Muslims.  Yet, the description "Arab" always prevailed.

There are several reasons for the change in both nomenclature and its underlying implications.

At the top of the list is the fact that the terrorists of the earlier, "Arab" age were pursuing a goal which was rational even if not realistic.  The master bombmakers, the hijackers of aircraft, the killers of Olympic athletes, the shooters of tourists and Jewish civilians were doing their dastardly deeds in the quest to roll back the verdict of conventional war.  More specifically, from the time that Yassir Arafat of late and unlamented memory created Fatah and dedicated it to the establishment of a Palestinian state, the goal of all the alphabet soup of terrorist groups was to reverse the outcome of the Six Day War of 1967 and the Wars of Independence from almost twenty years earlier.

The use of terror tactics might have been ethically reprehensible, but the goal was understandable, rational because it was political.  A pretender to statehood was employing the only tactical concept available to it as it sought to become a state at the expense of a far stronger, far better organized, and (at the time) far more widely supported state.  As the apologists for "Arab" terrorism stated repeatedly at the time, Arafat and his imitators (more correctly, competitors) were using the only means available to the dispossessed, the marginalized, the politically and militarily debilitated.

Even the use of "Arab" terrorist groups by states as proxies not only against Israel but against each other was rational.  In the inter-Arab disputes which constituted a hallmark of regional politics during the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, and beyond, the use of terrorists as weapons served to decouple rivalry from the potential of regionally destructive escalation.  The Baathists of Syria and Iraq were not only willing but almost eager to use one sponsored group or another not only against the mutual enemy of Israel but as a means of settling the never ending quarrel between the two wings of the Baathist movement.  Syria was a master at using its sponsored terrorists as a wedge to destabilize Lebanon so as to provide the necessary excuse to intervene in Lebanese affairs--to provide stability and protect civilian life, don't you know?

The employment of state-sponsored and facilitated terrorist groups as a matter of state policy might have been abhorrent to the norms of conflict and diplomacy, but it was rational.  It did provide options seen as necessary by most in the region while maintaining the fiction of regional, ethnic, and religious harmony.  The technique also had the benefit of allowing sufficient plausible deniablity to prevent an effective coordinated response by the "international community" or even individual states--including the US.  In a sense "Arab" terror flew under the radar of global political mechanisms even while attracting global media attention.

It was the global media attention which gave "Arab" terrorism both its power and its utility as a rational tool of state.  The fear and loathing caused by "Arab" terrorist outrages was presumed by its creators and sponsors to result in the end effect of compelling Israel to relinquish the territory occupied in the wake of the Six Day War.  At the same time, the focus on high profile events and personalities in the "Arab" terrorist escapades served as a sort of squid's ink--a cloud behind which state sponsors could conceal their intentions and degree of involvement alike.

It should never be forgotten that the many different groups of the "Arab" terrorist days were avowedly secular.  The politics of most involved whether as leaders or low level operators were a combination of nationalism and socialism.  There was very little if any reference to Islam in either the programs or statements of the many different members of the movement.  Yassir Arafat, for example, made no reference to Islam in his very high profile appearance at the podium of the UN General Assembly.  From the documents he allegedly wrote or the speeches he made, one can get no impression that the Fatah chairman was a Muslim.  The same applied to all the other media stars of the "Arab" terrorist movement.

It was only after the nature and outcome of the Iranian Islamic Revolution percolated through the Arab population that there was any shift from the secular focus to one which admitted religion.  The long lag time between the toppling of the Shah and the emergence of Islam to the public consciousness of the nascent "Islamic" terrorist movement was in part the result of two simple facts. The Iranian Islamic Revolution was (1) non-Arab and (2) non-Sunni.

The barrier to the influence of the Iranian Islamic Revolution becoming a model for a new generation of Mideast terrorists was broken by events in one more non-Arab country.  That country was Afghanistan.

The anti-Soviet fighters of Afghanistan were avowedly and devoutly Muslim in the majority of cases.  Since the only core definer of the Afghan identity which transcended tribal affiliations and loyalties was religion, this is not surprising.  The power of Islam did come as a surprise to many of the Arab volunteers who entered the Afghan conflict at and after its midpoint.  The Arab influx was a byproduct of the strong relation which had developed between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

The Pakistani dictator, Zia, had put a program emphasizing Islam in place with the goal of unifying the population in the forever war with India.  Zia had enlisted the support of Saudi Arabia in this "Islamization" campaign.  Saudi Arabia had provided the money and clerical manpower necessary to establish an extensive network of Wahhibist mosques and madrassas.  It was as inevitable as a displaced rock rolling downhill that this campaign would have ramifications.  Among these was an introduction of Arab Peninsula youth via Pakistan to the "holy war" against the Red Army.

The Afghans and their Arab emulators gave unalloyed thanks to the deity for success against the Soviets.  They also used the language of the Koran to describe the fighters, those killed in action, and the blessings of the deity as a means of increasing and maintaining morale during the long, bloody years of war.  More than a few of the Arabs involved saw the power resident in their religion to offset the material and technological advantages enjoyed by infidel and apostate enemies.  A new vow was soon to be heard from many of the Arabs having experience in Afghanistan.  No longer would the power of belief of the One True Faith sleep unused in the pages of the Koran and other sacred writings.  Now this power would be tapped to assure victory over the long triumphant infidels and their apostate local satraps.

Osama bin Laden was the best known, the most notorious of these Arab exponents of the new, far more militant view of the commands of the Koran, the orders of Allah.  There were many others.  What separated bin Laden from the rest was his willingness to announce where he stood and demand that others of faith stand with him.  His success in gaining recruits and developing an organization rapidly during the early and mid-Nineties was the result not so much of his charisma and communication skills but rather that so many were already of like mind.

The shift from "Arab" to "Muslim" terror predated the (in)famous bin Laden declaration of war on the US by more than a decade.  For those who like the idea of a specific defining event or date, the day of the truck bombing of the World Trade Center serves the purpose.  This event was a self-conscious act taken on behalf not only of an "Arab" goal--the ending of American support for Israel--but also as a shot in the global holy war which (if the deity wills) would end with the establishment of a worldwide caliphate.

It would have been appropriate for the Clinton administration to acknowledge that the US was facing a new threat--religiously based terror.  But, the administration in common with the majority of the media and academia, seized on the political portion of the motive while ignoring the fact that in the mind and words of the men who planned and executed the attack, politics was totally and inseparably connected with religion albeit in a subordinate role.

The administration made the same fundamental error when further attacks ensued.  These--the strike on Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the simultaneous bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the boat borne IED which nearly sank the USS Cole--were all manifestations of the Osama bin Laden concept of "Muslim" terror.  Yes, there was a political goal involved, but that goal was both inherent with and subordinate to the dictates of Islamic belief.  By narrowly focusing on the political aspect of the goal, the Clinton administration missed the perfect chance to define the enemy properly and direct US responses more accurately and effectively.

A more accurate definition of the enemy, his overarching goals, the foundations of his motives, the strengths and weaknesses of the appeals for support which must be predicated on the underlying beliefs, would have allowed the US to mount a better counter challenge.  More importantly, by defining the enemy correctly, it would have been possible for Americans to know what they stood for as well as what they were standing against.

The initial error made by the Clinton administration has been continued by both the Bush/Cheney and Obama administrations.  This is to be regretted.  The nature of any war against "Arab" terrorism and that of the "Muslim" variety must be different as the two expressions of terror are substantially different in both goal and motive.

Get a grip on this.

"Arab" terrorism was rational.  It sought defined and rather narrow political goals.  Terror was a tactic pure and simple.  If the tactic did not work, it could be altered or even abandoned without any loss of status or identity by so doing.

"Muslim" terror is irrational.  While it may incorporate narrow and definable political goals, these are subordinate to matters of faith.  The suicide bomber is not so much seeking a political goal as he is performing an act of faith.   Because the "martyrdom" operation is rooted in deeply held beliefs derived from the sacred writings of Islam, tactical reliance on terror cannot be abandoned without damage to the strength of the faith.

The "Arab" terrorist could be deterred or defeated.  He could be convinced by failure to abandon terrorism when the costs outweighed the benefits.  He was in most essential respects a rational actor subject to the same inducements and constraints as combatants using other forms of tactics.

The "Muslim" terrorist cannot be deterred and can be defeated only by being killed.  Mere opprobrium or failure in his operations will not necessarily cause him to seek a tactical alternative to terrorism.  As his act is one of faith and not politics as such, he will not change his ways simply because the aggregate of costs is greater than the benefits.  As a person committing an act of faith, a testament to personal strength of belief and willingness to obey the presumed demands of the deity, the "Muslim" terrorist is not a rational actor.  He is not subject to the same inducements and constraints as other combatants, including terrorists of the "Arab" sort.

In short, the "Muslim" terrorist is a far harder target than was his "Arab" cousin.  He is hard to kill and possessed of a mind impossible to change.  This implies that the US and other civilized states will have a much harder time dealing with the "Muslim" terrorist than was first thought (and still is) by those who mistake the political gloss for the religious center of the act of faith we call terrorism.

Terrorism is a tactic of war.  The "Arab" practitioner of the craft knew this.  He knew the rules which defined success and failure in the use of any tactic, terror included.  The "Muslim" may pay lip service to the notion that terror is a tactic, but he really believes it to be the strongest possible confession of faith that the individual believer might make.

When you think about it for a bit, it makes you recollect the years of shadowy groups known usually by their initials as having been the good old days.  And, so they were.

Pastor Pyro And The Afghans--A Story That Refuses To Die

Perhaps it is the sheer disproportion between stimulus and response.  Perhaps it is the wanton barbarity of the Afghan slaughter of UN personnel.  Perhaps it is due to the utter inability of Americans and Westerners generally to wrap their minds around a mentality which urges murder in response to a perceived insult.  And, perhaps it is caused by a general inability to recognize how irrelevant the concept of free will is when discussing the willingness of Muslims in Afghanistan or anywhere to resort to violence when confronted with a word, a deed, a policy that somehow in someway offends some sensibility or another.

In any event the story of Pastor Jones, the cremated Koran, and the Afghans refuses to die.  Even today, several news cycles after the all-but-ignored provocation and the widely reported Afghan response, the story lives on.  Throughout most of the coverage--from Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch to the MSM both here and in Europe--the question of free will has played a leading role.  Typically the observer/commentator has taken the position that the Afghans who stormed the UN compound and killed seven were not automatons, not agents remotely controlled, but rather actors possessed of free will who determined their own actions and could be held "accountable" for the murders they committed.

This American/Western perspective is fully expectable.  Free will is so deeply embedded in Western thought, so much the warp and woof of Western history, that is quite literally inconceivable that others in other cultures, coming from other religious and ethical traditions, might see life differently.  Similarly, it is difficult if not totally impossible for Westerners today to conceive of life in which rights do not predominate or where rights do not bring specific duties in their wake.  The notion that life consists of duties alone without rights serving as the predicate is foreign to Western understandings.

We have to all get a grip on a simple and quite basic truth: The Islam of the Koran and the other sacred writings as well as the classic works of Islamic law prescribe a life of duties, a life in which rights and free will are both notable in their absence.

In principle, the Islam of the sacred and traditional writings of the religion as well as in more recent, even contemporary interpretations, describes a belief system comprised of duties in which the highest aspiration of the individual believer is a perfect submission to the will of the deity.  Of course, the will of the deity is interpreted by clerics, men specifically trained in the fine art of teasing specific duties in specific situations from the writings of the past.  Islamic law in essence is a description of all the myriad duties imposed upon the believer by the will of the deity to whom is owed perfect obedience and total submission.

The entire panoply of rights which is central to Western law, Western government, Western norms, values, traditions, history, and aspirations is absent.  Free will is extant only as a faded, residual memory of earlier prophetic traditions which came long before the revelations given to the Prophet.

In practice, the interpretations offered by many clerics, particularly those of the Salifist and Wahhibist streams, limits free will and rights to the sole choice of accepting or rejecting submission to the will of the deity.  Once the decision to submit has been made, nothing remains except duty.

The clerics of the Blue Mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif argued that the actions of the incendiary pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center were blasphemous.  The penalty for blasphemy is death.  The death of any infidel would be sufficient or at least such was the collective impression of the mob.

The actions in that remote Afghan town were not unique.  Rather they were commonplace.  Time after literally bloody time, one cleric or another has defined the words or deeds of some person somewhere as blasphemy. The mob has understood this as a call to duty, a command to do the will of the deity.  When duty calls, the believer must respond accordingly--or risk the displeasure of the deity.

Given this dynamic there is no place for free will.  To turn one's back on duty is to turn one's back on the deity--and everyone knows what that means, right?

Well, not exactly.  As is the case in all belief systems there exists a gulf between principle and practice.

There is room for free will even in a religion which prohibits it in favor of duty.  The individual Muslim can choose which cleric he listens to.  He chooses which cleric will define the will of the deity and thus duty.  As there is no central authority establishing orthodoxy, this gives clerics a broad swath of acceptable interpretations, of acceptable forms of duty.

In the real world this freedom to choose has given rise to severe competition between differing schools of interpretation.  In short, not all Islam is the same in either the interpretation of the will of the deity or the prescription of duties.

In areas such as Pakistan or Afghanistan where a particularly severe understanding of Islam has taken firm root, the latitude for differing interpretations is narrow.  It is this fact which has made the rise of Salifist and Wahhabist schools so disturbing to the good order of so much of the world.  Insofar as these severe, austere versions of Islam have displaced older, milder, more humane modes such as Sufism, the choices available to believers have shrunk.

As choices have become more and more limited, the demands of duty have become both more raucous and extreme.  Duty, in the estimate of adherents of the severe interpretations, all too often involves killing someone.  Other schools see duty in less lethal if no less demanding ways.  It is, for example, no easier to be a follower of Sufism than Wahhibism, but it is a lot less likely to lead to violence.

When the realities of the environment preclude authentic choices between differing voices of different schools of interpretation, it is fair to characterize the believer as lacking free will.  When a specific, severe understanding of the purported will of the deity and concomitant duty exists unchallenged, the believer has no "right" of dissent, he is caught in a reality of to-hear-is-to-obey.  The believer in this situation is a sort of spiritual automaton.

To the person raised in the totalistic environment offered by the severe interpretations of Islam to shirk the call to duty issued by the cleric is to invite one's immortal soul to enjoy the torments of hell for all eternity.  If that is not sufficient inducement, the believer who turns away from the clerical call invites his own persecution as an apostate, or, equally evil, an apostle of division (fitna) within the community.

In this situation it is ludicrous to impute free will to the person who takes the course of joining the mob, of rioting, of burning, of killing.  The man who responds to duty's call by joining the mob is but one small step removed from the martyrdom seeker.  The difference between the two can be seen in motivation: The man who joins the mob is moved by a fear of persecution and eternity in hell; the martyrdom seeker is after the pleasures of paradise.

The takeaway is simple.  Islam is far less monolithic than often feared.  It has numerous divisions and fractures of interpretation and notions of duty.  While it is fruitless to call for free will, it would be profitable to do whatever can be done from the outside to promote the growth of those understandings of Islam which eschew violence, mob action, martyrdom seeking, and murder.

There is a second, equally simple takeaway.  It is not worthwhile to hector Muslims about the priority of "rights."  It is worthwhile, however, to urge upon the Muslim community the desirability of one specific right--the right to choose, to choose between more or less severe and violent forms of understanding the faith and its requirements.

Not to put too fine a point on matters, in so much as kinder, gentler, more mystical understandings of Islam, such as that of the Sufis, prospers, the harsher, more severe, violent forms such as Wahhibism must lose.  And, that, bucko, is in the collective interests of all, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

The Nuttiness Race--Terry Jones vs Muslims

The Geek is probably not alone in pining after the good old days of the Cold War.  Sure, it was scary, even very scary on rare occasions such as the Cuban Missile Crisis.  It could even be bloody, the usually well-mannered Cold War did have its moments of heat, usually on the periphery and normally limited in duration.  The US involvement in the Wars of the Vietnamese and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan were aberrations, not the norm.

The Cold War was also expensive.  Nuclear weapons and their evermore elaborate delivery systems did not come from the defense department equivalent of the Kindle Store. Nor did the elaborate, manpower extensive "conventional" forces come with a steeply discounted price tag.

Yet, there were a couple of paramount features which serve to distinguish the Cold War from the more recent "clash of civilizations."

First and foremost, the two major belligerents of the Cold War decades were conservative, rational actors.  Even the new kid on the Cold War block, China, was cautious and conservative in its international gambits.  The fact that the champions of both the "Imperialist Camp" and the "Communist Bloc" were cautious and risk averse assured that even the less controllable client states were kept on a short enough leash.  Proxy wars and sponsored pseudo-insurgencies as well as the direct duel between "wars of national liberation" and "counterinsurgency" were kept firmly under the control of the two Great Powers.  Vertical escalation across the nuclear threshold was to be prevented no matter what the short-term cost might be.

Both the Kremlin and the Denizens Inside the Beltway shared the same calculus of rationality.  Neither leadership echelon was even slightly interested in committing suicide.  Thus, no matter how frosty the winds might be, the Soviet Union and the US had a deep coinciding national interest--staying alive.  This coinciding interest provided a firm basis for agreements more or less honored by each side, which served to lower the potential of a globe destroying conflict.  Insults, taunts, and challenges might be hurled with reckless abandon provided only that the missiles stayed safely in their silos.

Conservatism, caution, risk aversion, rationality, a shared common value or two, all were defining and all too often under appreciated features of the Cold War.  Today, those terms cannot be applied with honesty or accuracy to the opponents of the US and other civilized states.  The advocates of violent political Islam as well as their numerous adherents can lay no claim to rationality, to caution, to being averse to risk, to sharing with those in the West an appreciation of life.

This is not to imply that all Westerners, all Americans, are paragons of rationality and the other defining features of the Cold War.  There are plenty of individuals in the US and elsewhere in the West who are quite irrational, given to fits of risky recklessness, and even bereft of a strong desire not to commit suicide.  But, the operative word here is, "individual."

In this context, consider the Reverend Terry Jones of the microscopic but grandly named Dove World Outreach Center in Florida.  The Reverend having backed away from last fall's intended "Burn-a-Koran-Day" following personal appeals from Messrs Obama, Gates, and Petraeus, got on with the incendiary job a few days ago.  Following a "trial" in which the defendant Koran was found guilty of being icky-poo, an associate of Jones lit up the accelerant soaked book.  It burned.  Yawn.

The exercise in controlled combustion was by and large ignored by the American media both conventional and new.  Ditto in Europe.  It was as it deserved to be, a non-event.

The Reverend Mr Jones proved his point.  He demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Reverend Mr Jones was a publicity hungry nut job.  That was it.  Nothing more; nothing less.

But as a direct and ever so easily foreseen consequence, Mr Jones' act proved something else: In mass, Muslims, especially Afghan Muslims, can be even greater, far more destructive, far more lethal nut jobs than the Florida pastor.  Lashed on by the sermons of a trio of clerics, a mob of umpteen thousand Afghan men took to the street in a usually calm town of Mazar-i-Sharif and, finding no Americans conveniently at hand, attacked the UN mission compound killing ten.

The national police made some effort to stop the crowd by firing in the air.  But, this was stopped when the commanders on the scene decided the shots only infuriated the mob making the situation worse.  That appreciation was probably accurate.

The lethal rage was accompanied by all the usual signs of Muslim disaffection--cries of "Death to---" and "Down with---."  And, the action in the street was joined by more official acts.  Elected parliamentarians in Afghanistan have demanded that the US government prosecute Mr Jones without delay and with the utmost of severity.  In less time than it takes the average copy of the Koran to burn, mobs assembled in cities far removed from Mazar-i-Sharif making the same denunciations and demands.  From Kandahar to Kabul and finally to Islamabad, the mobs were out in force.  Without exception the "angry young men" (to use a favorite MSM term) called for swift, condign punishment of the "blasphemer."

One angry man after another patiently explained to the assorted Western reporters that the burning of the Koran by Jones constituted an insult to all Muslims which could only be offset by spilling the man's blood.  To the Muslim making the explanation the matter was straight forward, it was a matter of duty.  Specifically the duty every Muslim has to punish any and all insults to his faith, its sacred writings, and its prophet.

Duty.  That is the key word.  It is the word and concept which underpins the deadly outbreak in Mazar-i-Sharif

The notion of duty is powerful in the West.  It is part and parcel of the institutions which define the US.  But, in the West, in the US, duty arises from the rights with which all are endowed.  Rights demand an equivalent duty.  The concept of rights and duties with the first preceding the second is so universal in the West that it even fully penetrated the Soviet Union providing an essential component of the shared values which allowed agreement even in the darkest days of very real global competition.

The Muslims in Mazar-i-Sharif were acting on a concept of universal duty without modification by rights.  The same applies to those Muslims who strap on suicide vests or those who stone women or those who lop off the body parts of purported thieves.  Duty is all in Islam.  All must bow in abject submission to the duties imposed upon them by the divinity which created all.

The focus on duty, the obligation of the Muslim to perform each and every duty with the perfect submission of the ideal slave assures there can be no meaningful discussion of rights between Westerners and Muslims.  There can be no understanding on the part of the Muslim bound up in a universe of universal duties that the Reverend Jones has a right to be a nut job.  That the Reverend has a right to communicate his views regarding the moral worth of the Koran by burning it.  That the US government has neither the right nor the duty to punish Terry Jones for exercising his rights of inflammatory communication.

The advocates of violent political Islam (and its non-violent cousin) as well as their adherents have a calculus of rationality.  It is based on duty, a spacious understanding of duty which places all under extraordinary obligations.  This calculus of rationality is totally antipodal to the Western one which is predicated on rights.

There is no point of coincidence between the Muslim ideal of duty and the Western one of rights.  There can be only conflict.  Not even the realty that Western ideas of rights demand mediation by companion duties alters this dismal intellectual conflict.  There is no capacious concept of rights extant in Islamic societies generally.  Within the social groups most affected by political Islam there is only one right which obtains to any and all people.  That is the right to be a dutiful slave of the deity.

Once an individual has exercised this one "right," there exists only a universe of duties.  Importantly, the duty owed by the submissive slave of the deity is announced not by the deity but by a cleric.  When the cleric states it is the duty of the believer to force the US to prosecute Mr Jones, then it is both lawful and required for the believer to run amok at the utterly innocent UN compound.  When the cleric states it is the duty of the believer to stone an adulteress, the submissive slave of the deity must pick up a rock and throw it with homicidal intent.

The roster of duties is literally without end.  The number of clerics who are willing to tell the crowd where duty resides is almost as limitless.  So, the potential for conflict extends into the future as far as one cares to look.

Unlike the good old days of the Cold War, today's "Clash of Civilizations" is absolute and typically irrational.  The opposition of duty defined as totalistically as is done by some Muslims with the Western concept of individual rights is total and absolute.  As the duties imposed by Islam are those of the slave obedient to the master and the master's driver are without limit, they cannot be inherently limited to the universe of the rational.

So, join with the Geek in yearning for the days of the Cold War--at least the motives and goals of the opponents were rational and understandable.  And, so they could be opposed with consistency and effectiveness.  The good old days?  You betcha!

Let Somebody Else Do It

Secretary of Defense Gates' message was simple, blunt, and to the point.  The US will do only those few things which other countries lack the capacity to do.  We will provide midair refueling, surveillance, and reconnaissance, some forms of communication, and intelligence.  We will not provide weapons or training to the anti-government forces in Libya.  In his view there are numerous other states which can do these tasks just as there are others who can patrol the no-fly zone or provide strike sorties intended to protect civilians from harm.

Leaving aside the more than slightly evident tensions between protecting civilians from all harm and the needs of the anti-Gaddafi forces for close air support and the accompanying sour sounds of hypocrisy, the position staked out by Dr Gates in testimony today showed a coldly realistic understanding of what the US can and cannot, should and should not do in the turgid turbulence of Libya.  The most realistic part of the Gates' view is its protective stance.  The limits placed on the American contribution to the "international community's" effort to immunize civilians from the effects of living in a war zone were clearly intended to protect against both mission creep of the sort which destroyed the American effort in Afghanistan as well as to shield Washington from the inevitable charges coming from the Kremlin, the Forbidden City, and elsewhere to the effect that the strictures of the relevant UN Security Council resolution were being transgressed.

There may be mission creep; there will be violation of the spirit and letter of Resolution 1973, but the US will not be a party to either.  This may not be the most courageous policy.  It most assuredly is not in the damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead! tradition of American war fighting or diplomacy.  It is, however, what is needed right now in the context of both Libya and the wider Mideast political tumult.  The view espoused by Gates in such clear and unmistakable fashion serves to give the US needed distance, needed time.  Both are necessary if the US is to formulate a genuine policy for facing the new political landscape of the region.

The Gates' formulation carries with it a very large downside.  This was recognized quite specifically by both the Defense Secretary and Admiral Mullen.  The downside is simply that when night falls Gaddafi may well still be in power.  The prospect of a stalemate, a de facto division between Cyrenaica and the rest of Libya, is real.  So is an outcome in which there is but one Libya under the direction of Gaddafi.

Either of these two outcomes would expose both Libyans and the world to the prospect of Gadaffi 1.0, the Brother Leader who never met a terrorist group he didn't want to fund, the international mischief maker whose wake was marked by downed airliners, blown up buildings, corpses, and failed states.  Whether for a few months or a handful of years, the restoration of the old model Gaddafi would be the worst of bad news for the people of the world.  The continuation in power of Brother Leader would be the worst conceivable development for Libyans, upon whose bodies the full fury of the man's sense of betrayal would lash.

Yet, in the real world, what alternative does the US have right now?  One can construct alternatives, but the least-worst outcome sort would have had to have been put into place weeks before the passage of the UN Resolution and the imposition of the no-fly/civilian protection zones.  Having come to the Libyan game too late and in an inherently overly limited way, the problem of constructing alternative policies to the one outlined by Robert Gates becomes far more problematical.

The problematical nature of the alternatives arise from the unique schizophrenia which afflicts the Arab mind.  It is a schizoid world view which was seen quite clearly in Iraq.  And, it has leaked around the edges of the political debates in recent weeks.

One prong of the schizophrenic view comes from the evident fact that the Libyan insurgents cannot fight in an effective, coordinated fashion.  It is not that the government forces loyal to Gaddafi are all that much better trained or equipped than the rebels for they are not.

(In this context it is worthwhile to spend some time checking out the immense amount of imagery available.  There is no essential difference between the equipment deployed by either the Gaddafi or rebel forces.  Nor is there much apparent difference in competence in military basics from digging in on the defense to the combination of fire and movement on the attack.)

The only essential difference between rebels and government is that the latter but not the former possesses a command structure.  Without a command structure, a coherent table of organization, none of the other features of military organization, communications, logistics, tactics, operational doctrine, are relevant.  The presence or absence of a command structure makes it possible for a numerically inferior force to beat its superior.  It allows a force comprised of men who are not a race of natural warriors (it there is such a critter) to defeat one comprised of heroes.  Command is all in war.

Well, if not exactly all, command, the capacity to control violence from a central location with a fair certainty that orders will be obeyed, is the sine qua non of effective war fighting.  The rebels have none.  The Gaddafi forces have some.  Therein lies the difference--and what a difference is clear from the imagery of the rabble running from a few distant incoming rockets or artillery shells.

There is nothing that can be done in a short span of time to address the critical lack of command in the rebel forces.  The lack is not simply one of training or inexperience.  Rather, the absence of command structure is organic to the society which produced the insurgents.

As a consequence the ability of outside "donors" be they NATO or Arab League to make up the deficiency is zero.  Supplying weapons will not address the absence of command.  Ditto training.  The only way command and its concomitants, control and communication, could be provided in a timely fashion would be for some outside combat force to take over the ground operations.  Sure, some Libyans could be attached to the "foreign" combat units, but they would be simply there for the optics.

In the alternative, the US and other outsiders can hope that the charade of the no-fly/civilian protection zones can be continued long enough for the insurgents to realize they must develop and put into effective practice their own command, control, and communication system--that they must gain a genuine command structure which is generally conceded to be legitimate in the eyes of the fighters it commands and controls.

The US and other countries may well introduce black and special operations forces both civilian and military, but this alone will not provide sufficient command capacity to offset the advantage enjoyed by the Gaddafi units in a timely enough fashion.  Rather, the employment of these genera of capacities will provide some aid to the insurgents by allowing better coordination of air strikes and ground movement.  This will enhance the staying power of the insurgents so as to provide time for these people to discover they need a command structure.

Of course, this brings yet another risk for the US and the other Western powers.  The individuals most likely to realize that they need a command structure are those with prior experience fighting against the US and its allies in Iraq.

(After all,  if these Fearless and Mighty Men of Islam are at all honest and possessed of a capacity for self-examination, they have come to understand that the single greatest reason the Bearded Warriors of the Prophet (PBUH) had their collective posteriors kicked by the infidels and apostates was the greater effectiveness of the infidel and apostate command, control, and communication systems.)

This means the advocates of violent political Islam will come to greater prominence in the effort to topple Gaddafi with results in the post-conflict environment not likely to promote Western norms, values, or interests. The Gates' approach coupled with the indigenous failings of the Libyan insurgents will prove harmful to our longer term interests in the country and the region.

However, we have no real alternative.  Remember the Arab schizophrenia?  The other prong of this world view arises from the antipathy Arab Muslims have for the notion of infidels killing Arab Muslims.  As the pretended(?) horror expressed by the Arab League at the idea that Arab Muslims were dying downrange as the US and others imposed the no-fly/civilian protection zone showed dramatically, there is a genuine loathing aroused in the Arab mind at the killing of good Arab Muslims (even soldiers) by the infidels.

If the Americans or the British or the French put troops on the ground and these troops actually kill Gaddafi's fighters, the hatred will be both real and explosive.  There would be a replay of the dynamics of Iraq and Afghanistan.  There is no way around that.  It is an emotional reality which cannot be denied.  It can only be exploited.  And, exploited it would be.  Not simply by AQIM but by every advocate of violent political Islam in the world.  The wave of fear, loathing, and hatred would be ridden by others as well, by Muslim "moderates" eager to keep their heads above the political tide, by non-Muslims who are rivals, even enemies of the US and its Western allies.

That is why we cannot simply go in and square matters away.  Matters would refuse to be squared away.  The emotional sensitivities of Arab Muslims and their capacity to deny realities other than those conditioned by a narrative of religion would assure what should have been a simple, direct, and straight forward ending of a very nasty regime and its death squads would transmogrify into one more protracted war of religion and identity.

The Libyan Question admits of no good answer.  The approach espoused by Secretary Gates is no more and no less than the least-worst way of dealing with the Question while honestly admitting that we have no capacity to answer it.

Oh Boy! Does Fear Ever Rule The World

More than usual today the news is filled with proof that fear is the dominant emotion in the human mind.  Fear is so prevalent, so pervasive that often we are as unaware of it as the fish is the water in which it swims.  But events of the past few days and weeks have so highlighted the power and universal presence of fear that it cannot be ignored as a motivator of political decisions.

Pakistan is ruled by fear.  The corrosive effects of fear, fear arising from a religious belief system which itself is predicated on fear, are clearly seen in the indecisive nature of the civilian government.  The government of Pakistan has been hollowed out by fear.  The civilian leadership has been rendered the next thing to powerless by the fear created by Muslim clerics espousing the line of violent political Islam.

These clerics and their followers cannot win more than a microscopic percentage of the votes in anything approaching an open and fair election, admittedly a broadly defined thing given Pakistan's "democratic" history.  The clerics and their thuggish mobs can, however, make for impressive street demonstrations.  More saliently the clerics have the capacity to motivate their zombies to commit murder.  Nothing attracts the full and undivided attention of a politician more completely than the prospect of ending up on the wrong end of a gun held by a hollow minded man convinced by his neighborhood preacher that pulling the trigger is an act of obedience by the good slave of Allah.

President Zardiri and the rest of his "democratically" elected government as well as the equally "democratic" parliament have been rendered both irrelevant to the future of their country as well as impotent in its current policies and actions by their surrender to fear.  As a result, Pakistan is becoming a hollow state with great rapidity.  The government has no genuine authority in any area of activity more important than assuring paychecks are distributed to government workers on time.  The real power, the genuine authority over important matters such as stability both present and future or foreign policy or the status of minorities and women or the availability of eduction have been de facto granted to the clerics and their zombie legions.

The fear engendered by the clerics, the religion they purport to interpret, and the zombies has reached such a magnitude that even the army has been marginalized.  Whether due to Islamist subornation or because of a tacit agreement with the clerical position based upon the sense of duty, the absolute duty of slave to master repeatedly explicit in Islam, or fear of dying at the hands of a zombie, the army has backed away from confronting the danger within, the internal threat which bodes well to destroy Pakistan as a functioning state.

The army is on the sidelines.  The government is hollow.  The voters of Pakistan are massively irrelevant.  The only power in the country is that of the clerics.  They exercise the power of fear in a way which is, today, all but  unchallenged.

But the power of fear is not limited to Pakistan.  Nor is it limited to clerics with an agenda of violent political Islam.

Since the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the anti-nuclear forces throughout the West have come roaring out of the woodwork where they have been lurking.  The loss of cooling incident in the three reactors flooded by the tsunami is one of potentially catastrophic proportions to be sure.  Even if a worst case outcome results--a total meltdown of the core which breaches containment so that massive levels of radiation hit the external environment--this is not a reason to drop the flag on the use of nuclear energy to provide electricity either in the US or Europe.

The cause of the loss of coolant is both easy to understand and holds few if any lessons for nuclear power stations located in areas where tsunamis are not to be expected.  This is what makes the precipitant actions by Swiss and German authorities risible in the extreme.  Not only is neither country noted for its exposure to tsunamis, neither is prone to earthquakes.

Given that the proximate cause of the loss of coolant was the improper siting of the backup generators in a low point on the power station, the reaction of the Swiss, the Germans, American politicians such as Representative Markey, and all the others of the anti-nuclear neo-Luddite crowd is hilariously incorrect and tragically misguided.  The Tokyo Electric Power Company made a world class blunder when it was decided the expensive seawall would provide ample protection against tsunamis and allowed the backup generators to be located at a topographic low point.  An abundance of prudence would have dictated placing the generators at the highest possible location--just in case.  That is the principle behind redundancy in safety systems.

Had the generators not been flooded by the tsunami, the reactor scram triggered by the earthquake would have proceeded nominally.  There would have been no core exposure.  No hydrogen bubbles.  No explosions.  No radiation release.  No fear.

But, one bad error.  One over reliance on a single protective system had totally non-linear consequences.  In a way the outcome of the Japanese experience is understandable.  People are very afraid of radiation.  For more than fifty years, ever since the fallout scares of the Eisenhower years, there has been a deep and often quite unreasoning ever expanding fear of ionizing radiation.  The reaction of the Germans, the Swiss, the American greens is an emblem of that.

Ionizing radiation deserves the utmost of respect.  It is dangerous.  Very dangerous.  But, so is much of life.  The big difference separating ionizing radiation from other forms of equally dangerous realities of life is the nature of the beast--not detectable by the natural senses, capable of inflicting painful and fatal injuries which might not be evident for some months or years, the inability of medical science to offer more than palliative or supportive treatment.  Ionizing radiation even more than toxic chemicals or deadly microbes is the perfect metaphor for technology run amok, the mad scientist and his evil creation.

It is noteworthy that the forty year old reactors, reactors which were scheduled for decommission until a recent decision to extend their service life, have so far resisted the forces liberated within their containment vessels.  It is noteworthy that with the exception of the siting decision from hell regarding the backup generators, the scram procedures worked correctly and as planned.  It is also noteworthy that safety systems have not been stationary over the past four decades but, like reactor design generally, have been improved greatly.

Not that boring considerations from the realm of reality matter in the face of fear and those whose success in achieving their agenda demands magnifying fear.  Not even the mundane reality that the advanced economies of the world must have access to nuclear generated electricity can prevail in the minds of the most fearful--and those who desire to succeed on the wave of fear.

As the members of the Pakistani government are willing and ready to sacrifice the future of their country on the alter of fear so also are the "deep greens" and others of the vast neo-Luddite movement who distrust technology and fear its consequences.  To these people the sacrifice of the American and other economies on the alter of fear is both necessary and laudable.  To the True Believers of Greenism, lowering the American standard of living through a gospel of "conservation" and "renewable energy" is as obligatory as is the duty of the good slave to Allah for a Muslim.  Damn the consequences!  I'm fulfilling my duty is the motto of both the Greens of anti-technology and the Green Flag Wavers of Islam.

Fear is even a controlling factor in the Oval.  President Obama is loath to act properly regarding Libya due to fear.  He and his ever-so-small group of foreign policy advisors are frightened of possible negative reactions by Arabs and Muslims generally should the US act to defend not only its national interests but those of other countries to say nothing of the Libyan insurgents.  And, the Nice Young Man From Chicago is afraid of being seen as another George W. Bush, a humiliating proposition for a man whose career has been based on running against George W.  And, he may well be afraid of losing the next election.  Fear as a motivator is strong but rarely right.

There are so many other examples lurking in the pages of the MSM of the world.  But the Geek is a sensitive and tender soul.  He can take only so many depressing thoughts in any one day.  He has reached his limit.  But, feel free to add your own examples; they sure as hell aren't hard to find.

Two Opposing World Views: Rights Versus Duties

"Endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights..."  In this phrase Thomas Jefferson not only proved himself to be a master propagandist but also a fine epitomizer of the Enlightenment idea which was deeply rooted not only in Christianity but the Hebraic seedbed from which the Christian tree grew.  Stop and think about the phrase for a moment for the focus on rights serves to define one side of the greatest, deepest, widest, and most unbridgeable gap between the West and Islam.

The foundational idea which emerged centuries ago in the Hebrew faith is that of free will.  The deity provided human beings with free will, the right to choose.  The right to choose, to either accept the grace, mercy, and gifts of the deity as well as the obligations imposed by the deity or, to reject the deity.  In a slightly different form, free will existed so that humans would have the ability, the right to sin as well as the right to repent.

Free will as part and parcel of the human condition has significance only insofar as the individual has both the capacity and freedom to decide, to choose.  This capacity coupled with the freedom necessary to exercise it constitutes the most basic right of all--the right to decide.

From this beginning the concept of inherent rights, rights which accrued to humans simply as a consequence of being born, grew to include not only the famed trio listed in the Declaration of Independence--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but the plethora of rights which must exist so that humans could pursue that elusive and subjectively defined condition called "happiness."

The concept of people being imbued with rights by the deity is resident in Christianity from its earliest days.  So is the notion of happiness.  Jesus spoke of a deity who was not a remote, judgmental "father" but rather a kind and indulgent "dad" who very much wanted humans to enjoy, to have fun in the Earth over which man had been granted "dominian."  Jesus enjoyed eating.  He enjoyed drinking in the company of tax collectors and fishermen.  He went to weddings and presumably danced there along with the other guests.  In short, the behavior and words of Jesus bespoke of choosing, of having the right to pursue happiness, of having the right to liberty, the freedom to live and enjoy life.

Rights bring with them the companion necessity of duties.  Duties or obligations derive from the existence of rights, most particularly the right to choose.  When one looks at the history of law in the West, examines how the law has evolved over the generations, a conclusion is evident.  Duties emerged so as to assure that all could exercise their manifold rights freely and without fear.  Duty exists to protect the more fundamental feature of life: rights.  The rights with which humans have been endowed demand the handmaiden of duty.

Indeed the polity and its instrument, government, exist because humans have the right to choose.  Since it is inevitable that some humans will choose not to execute the duties incumbent upon them by virtue of the rights with which they have been endowed, the government must intervene to protect the rights of others against the individual's failure of duty.

Historically it was a simple and direct line: deity to free will, to right to choose, to ever broader rights all accompanied with commensurate duties and, finally, the justification of the state by the requirement that the freedom of the individual to exercise rights does not lead to license, to the absence of duty.  To the Jews, to the Christians, to the sons of the Enlightenment, the existence of rights and the direct linkage of rights with duties was not only self-evident but the sign of a deity directly involved in the nature of the human condition.

Islam has a diametrically opposed view.  The sacred literature of Islam makes clear that the deity has imposed duties on humans.  That the relationship of deity and human demands the human to submit to the duties placed upon him by the deity.  The submission is total.  Every bit as total as the breadth of Islam's authority over all aspects of human life, human society, the human condition, and the material universe.  There is no reference to endowed rights in the sacred writings of Islam.  Put bluntly but accurately, there is no such referent as divinely endowed rights resident in Islam.

While tortured arguments can and have been made which purport to demonstrate the process by which divinely imposed duties lead to rights, the logic is not as clear, simple, and accurate as the rights demand duties contention of the West.  Duties lead only to duties.  Duties also lead to doubts regarding whether or not the individual has adequately and completely performed his duties.  This second consideration can become of greatest importance when evaluating the nature of so-called "radical extremists" and the processes by which these people develop.

There was a time--centuries ago--when Islam made genuflections before the idea of free will and the right to choose.  At one time Islam maintained that the individual believer had to exercise personal judgement in matters of faith, doctrine, and praxis.  But, over time in an insensible fashion, this concept of personal judgement became attenuated.  Finally, it resolved itself to selecting which of the long established and well respected schools of theological jurisprudence one would affiliate.  This process became in practice choosing which local cleric one would follow.

There are a couple of ground truths you have to get a grip on before going further.  The first is Islam means "submission," that is, the total submission of the good slave to the will of the master, in this case the divine creator.  The will of the deity is transmitted through human instruments.  Whether the Prophet Mohammad or an established cleric or the collective of clerics, the human instrument interprets and explains the will of the deity to the community of believers.  The role of the believer is to accept and act upon the message provided by Prophet or cleric or the tradition of theological jurisprudence represented by that cleric.  Hear and obey.

All law comes from the deity through the several human instruments.  This means that insofar as the polity and its manifestation, the government, have legitimacy it is limited to passing and administering laws which apply the revealed will of the deity to a particular time and place.

The Western concept of the role of the government is antipodal to the Islamic ideal.  In the West the polity and its government are legitimate in their actions when and only when these acts serve to reinforce duties and thus protect the free exercise of the divinely imbued rights of the individual.  The government exists to backstop the general concept of rights occasioned duties to meet particular requirements of time and place as well as to accept the reality that humans are imperfect and likely to fail in fulfilling their inherent duties.  The state exists as a melancholy recognition that humans can and do choose to "sin."

OK, bucko, to summarize.  In the Western tradition derived from Hebrew and Christian roots and expanded by the Enlightenment and its follow-ons, rights are inherent to the individual but demand the performance of certain duties so that the rights of all can be exercised freely.  In Islam there is only duty.  There is only submission, total and abject obedience to the will of the deity as interpreted and set forth by human instruments.  There is no such thing as a "right" divine in origin or otherwise.  And, if there are no "rights" accruing to a Muslim, then infidels have no "rights" and even greater duties.

One more point deserves brief consideration before shifting from the general to a few specific examples of the vast gulf between Western rights and Islamic duties.  Both the Western and Islamic practice of jurisprudence rely upon applying universal principles--whether from sacred writings or human made laws and constitutions--to specific matters of fact.

A Western appellate or supreme court (or a Jewish Talmudic judicial body) makes a good faith effort to divine the intentions, purposes, and goals of the authors of the Constitution and amendments to a particular case with specific facts, facts which may have been utterly inconceivable to the original writers.  The judges and justices have some latitude in their translation effort, but are expected to refrain from exercises in creative non-fiction, that is rewriting the original document to meet the predilections of judge or the prejudices of time and place.

The judges or justices may lean to the strict constructionist pole of the spectrum of interpretation.  Or the individual may tilt to the opposite end of the continuum, the pole marked "living document."  As courts at all levels are political bodies and not immune to the winds of public opinion, the courts may veer from one pole to another as times or context changes, but overall the courts must stay within the parameters of precedent or run the very real risk of losing legitimacy in the eyes of the public.  The dynamic tension has resulted historically in jurisprudence which shifts over time but shifts slowly, cautiously, and in a way which allows stability and predictability in the application of law.

The Islamic view of jurisprudence places the greatest weight on precedent.  In a real way the several major schools of theological jurisprudence (and all jurisprudence must be theological in Islamic societies) can be characterized as strict constructionist, more strict constructionist, very strict constructionist and impossibly strict constructionist.  As a result even the most "liberal," most "living document" oriented of the schools, the strict constructionist one, does everything conceivable to "let the decision stand," which is to say fit the facts of a case into an intellectual bed of Procrustes designed and constructed in and for the ways of living in the Arabian Peninsula more than a thousand years ago.  Within the two most "conservative" schools, the temptation simply to lop off the inconvenient and unpleasant facts is irresistible.  That means repress new developments of whatsoever nature when these cannot be fitted on the ancient Arabic framework.

Whew!  That's it for the basics.  The very quick course in the roots of rights and duties in two opposing civilizations is done.  Short, even brutally short, but not inaccurate.

Now for some specifics of contrast.  Let's start with sex.  It is a good place to kick off, since all religions seem to be fixated on bodies thwacking together in a pool of sweat, other sticky liquids, and passion.

No, bucko, we aren't going to pop into the bedroom.  That is too much for the Geek's aging blood pressure.  We are going to start with the public presentation of women.  That's fair.  It is where all sex starts.

In the West a woman has the right to present herself in public in whatsoever way she believes shows her to her best advantage.  She has an untrammeled right to dress, to use makeup, to style her hair however she wants, however she believes will meet her needs and goals for the moment.  In exchange men have the right to an  aesthetic experience.  They have the right to whatever imaginings might result from encountering an attractive woman who presents herself well.

At the same time the man has a duty not to act upon his imaginings in an untoward or improper way.  He has a duty to limit his behavior, to control the hormones regardless of the visual provocation and the resultant fantasies.  If the man fails in his duty--as some will--the state has the obligation to intervene, to punish the man's failure of duty.  That is the job of the state.  It must act in order that women generally may exercise their inherent right to present themselves however they may choose.

The matter is rather different in an Islamic context, particularly one where the more austere and repressive schools of theological jurisprudence reign supreme.  In the sacred writings of Islam, the deity imposes the duty of modest dress on both men and women.  Over the centuries the more severe and austere human interpreters of this duty have defined it to mean that women must be placed in all encompassing garbage bags so as to prevent lust from bursting forth in the minds (and other body parts) of men.  The woman has the sole duty to protect men from their own presumed inability to control their twangers.  The fact that this duty reduces women to perambulating interchangeable lumps without personal identity or freedom is frankly irrelevant.

In the West a woman has the right to choose with whom she will publicly associate.  She has the right to walk down the street with a male coworker, a male friend, a suitor, or anyone (or no one) else.  Again the man, the coworker, the fellow student, the friend has an affirmative duty not to transgress the limits of the non-intimate relationship.  Even the suitor, a potential intimate, has the duty not to go over the edge of what the woman considers to be proper behavior.  Should the man fail in his duty, the government has the obligation to intervene, to punish in order that the general right of all women to select their company may be protected.

Not so in Islam.  The woman has the duty to not appear in public with a man who is not either her husband or a close relative.  She has no right in this matter only duty.

(Yes, it is true that Christianity has exhibited a similar sense of female "duty."  But that came long after the life and death of Jesus.  It was in large measure the artifact of a Church Doctor who was scared to death of his own sexual nature, his own "tumescence."  His own fears offloaded the responsibility on women and the preposterous invention of "original sin" which contended that the surrender of Eve to the smooth talking serpent constituted a rebellion against the deity subsequently transmitted like mitochondrial DNA down the generations.)

In the US as in the West generally people have the right to pursue happiness.  We have the right to have fun.  The Christian roots of the West acknowledge this, even celebrate it.  We can listen to music, participate in or watch sports.  Go to the movies.  Watch television.  Whatever constitutes "fun."

Not so in the more severe and austere parts of Islam.  As the Ayatollah Khomeini famously said, "There is no fun in Islam."  Certainly Taliban, al-Shabaab and other groups advocating violent political Islam agree.  There is a sound foundation for this in the sacred writings of Islam such as the Prophet's prohibition of musical instruments and singing.

Beyond the specific prohibition there is the general duty that all Muslims spend every waking moment possible contemplating the will of the deity, the duties owed the deity, and the requirements of being the perfect slave of the deity.  Music, sports, movies, all these other forms of fun are distractions from the basic duties of determining and obeying the will of the deity, of being the full and complete slave of the creator or the universe and all life.  The total absence of diversions is inherent to Islam--at least as interpreted by some of the deity's human instruments.

There is another, far more critical duty imposed on all Muslims, all members of the ummah.  This is the duty of perfect conformity.  Islam fears disunity.  Islam fears internal divisions.  It fears, therefore, all debate, all disagreement, all dissension.  Inherent to the sacred writings as well as the life of the Prophet, the "perfect man" is the duty to impose perfect uniformity upon all members of the faith community.

Nothing could be at a greater distance from the traditions of the West.  The right to dissent, to disagree, to oppose is a defining hallmark of the West generally and the US in particular.  The right of free expression is specified in the Constitution and well recognized by the courts.  As was true with the recent Westboro Baptist Church case, expression of even the most obnoxious and wounding sort is protected jealously.  The right to hold and express even highly unpopular and distressing views is foundational.  It is also a key to evolution in political, social, cultural, economic, and technological thought and deed.

In some Islamic contexts the dissident, the person standing in opposition to those in power, is subject to dreadful punishments as an apostate, even as one in rebellion against the deity.  Signs of discontent, of dissent, must be stomped on and stamped out lest the faith community be divided against itself.  Whereas in the West dissent and opposition are signs of positive change, in at least some Muslim contexts they are perceived as emblems of evil, refusal to be submissive to the will of the deity as interpreted by the clerics with power.

It is undoubtedly the case that the overwhelming majority of Muslims like their counterparts in Christianity and Judaism wear their religion lightly.  They follow the Five Pillars, perhaps renounce the temptations of John Barleycorn, dress modestly but reject the garbage sack, and are discrete in their sexuality but do not go the entire duty route.  Yes, it may be true, but, unfortunately for the world, it is also irrelevant.

The True Believers of Islam, the men who follow the lead of the most strict constructionist and impossibly strict constructionist schools of theological jurisprudence, the men who desperately fear the wrath of the deity, the fires of the pit, are the men who set the agenda for political Islam both violent and otherwise.  These are the men who take the duty of offensive jihad most seriously.  They are the men who are willing to die in fulfilling this duty--provided they can kill a suitable number of infidels, apostates, or the merely unfortunate in the process.  These men, the men who proudly proclaim they love death more than we infidels love life, are the fountainheads of terror, fear, war.

Their sense of duty.  Their commitment to the duty of offensive jihad like their dedication to the other duties serves to define Islam in the minds of most of us in the West.  These men are the enemy.  But what gives them a power far greater than their numbers may merit is the simple fact that they can invoke the pervasive sense of duty which is inherent to the religion.

It has often been stated that rights without duties leads to degenerate license.  That is true historically.  Equally true in the historical record is the blunt fact that duties without commensurate rights leads to fatal extremism which harms not only the target but the faith community which produces the attacks.

Rights must be balanced with duties.  So also must duties be balanced by rights.  The West has gotten the balance right.  Islam has not.  Unless and until Islam does address this reality effectively, the conflict of civilizations will continue and grow.  The responsibility rests with Muslims, particularly those Muslims who are not True Believers in the duty of offensive jihad.