A Slick Trip Down The Islamist Tubes?

The Islamist AKP has gained an apparent unassailable superiority over the armed forces of Turkey.  The shocking simultaneous "early retirement" of the military chief of staff and three other service commanders over the weekend seemed to have put the final nail in the coffin of the military's role as the ultimate guarantor of Turkish secularism and the legacy of Ataturk.

The act came on the eve of the semi-annual meeting of the combined armed forces senior leadership with the head of the civilian government, the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and has been seen by many observers, Turkish as well as foreign, as a welcome sign of Turkey having become a normal democracy where civilian supremacy over the military is a given.  In the past, there has been a great deal of discomfort in the US and Western Europe over the periodic military excursions out of the barracks and into the presidential palace.  The European Union (or at least France) demanded that the armed forces be defanged as a prerequisite for membership.

The recent mass resignation must be taken in conjunction with the ongoing trial of nearly three hundred past and present senior commanders (ten percent or so of the entire flag officer complement) on charges which are at best politically motivated and most likely fabricated in whole or major part.  The massive series of arrests over the past year or so constituted the AKP's direct attack on the military, which was the only plausible obstacle to permanent Islamist domination of Turkish politics.

The armed forces and AKP have been at daggers drawn since the once-banned AKP won power in 2002.  The military missed its chance to send the Islamists packing in the wake of the narrow electoral victory mainly out of regard for EU sentiments and a proper regard for the benefits of EU membership.  As the years slipped by, the chances for a military coup slipped away until they were lost beyond any hope in the most recent election where AKP took no prisoners at the polls.

Erdogan had made much of his stated intent to pursue EU membership even though it was more than slightly obvious that France would spare no effort to block the application.  The economic success of the AKP has been based not on trade with the EU but upon increased ties with the Mideast and the Turkish speaking Central Asian Republics.  In the process, a new class of very rich middlemen and entrepreneurs drawn from urban migrants originating in the Anatolian highlands has become a key component of the AKP base.  These new millionaires join with displaced peasants in the slums of Istanbul and Ankara and "conservative" clerics to provide the electoral majority.

The rivals to the AKP drive to the east have been the senior officers of the armed forces along with the "traditional" business and commercial elite of Istanbul.  The military has at its upper ranks men who are far more Western in their outlook, far more liberal in their views as well as far more educated than the mass of the political class and the new moneyed class.  Their instinctive perspective is Western.  That of AKP and its base runs to the East, to the Muslim marches of Central and Northwest Asia--and the states of the old Ottoman Empire.

The seemingly decisive victory of AKP over the inheritors of Ataturk is not universally welcomed in Turkey.  There are more than a few Turks who fear that without the army as a counterweight there will be no limits on Erdogan and AKP.  There is an undercurrent of apprehension that now the Islamists will be free to pursue the goal of reestablishing the old caliphate with all that implies.  Others, unsurprisingly, pooh-pooh that notion and welcome AKP confining the armed forces to a subordinate role and, thus, allowing a return to the values and norms of the pre-Ataturk era.

Very few Turks are aghast at the new diplomatic muscle enjoyed by Ankara in the Mideast and Central Asia. Likewise, very few resent the new economic options brought by the "Ost politik" practiced by Erdogan.  Other than some trepidations over Turkey's ever closer ties to Shia Iran, there have been few complaints over the foreign policy of Erdogan and company.  There is definitely majority support for the very hard line drawn by Erdogan over Israel, particularly the IDF takeover of the Mazi Marmora "humanitarian relief" ship over a year ago.

The net effect has been the tilting of the longstanding conflict between nationalist and Islamist, secularist and Islamist in favor of the latter.  For the moment this is just jake with the majority of Turks.  But, there is likely to be a quick withdrawal of support for AKP should there be heavy handed attempts to "purify" Turkish society of "infidel" aspects.  So far, the party has been sensitive to this dynamic and has moved only slowly to "Islamify" Turkey.

Almost overlooked in the political discussions of the resignations has been another, critical subject: The impact of Turkey's Muslim oriented "Ost politik" on NATO.  In as much as Turkey's membership in the alliance has been considered, it has been in the boilerplate terms of "NATO's second largest army."  As if size matters.

Turkey's large army is also quite irrelevant to NATO in the post-cold war period.  Not only is the army incapable of any effective action outside of Turkey, it has not shown any particular utility in the local "forever war" against the Kurdish defensive insurgency.  Pace NATO public statements (or those of Admiral Mullen), the armed forces of Turkey are totally irrelevant to NATO today and into the future.

The armed forces of Turkey, while large, are also largely immobile, poorly trained, indifferently equipped, overly expensive, a drain on the Turkish fisc, and a political drag on the alliance.  The new Erdogan ministry strongly opposed the US driven invasion of Iraq making much political hay from proclaiming the operation as a "war on Islam and Muslims."  In addition, the Turks have been a major non-participant in the NATO mission in Afghanistan.  And, the AKP government bitterly opposed the no-fly zone and its follow-on in Libya.

There is no reason not to believe that Turkey has passed along critical NATO information to Iran as a part of its charm offensive with Tehran.  The same may be true regarding the opposition in Afghanistan and, possibly, Libya.  Having Turkey in NATO today is tantamount to having the Italy of Mussolini sitting in on the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff during World War II.

If it is true, as it appears to be, that the Islamists have won in Turkey, the time has come to restructure NATO without Ankara.  The hoary alliance is at a difficult crossroads.  There is looming, embarrassing failure in Libya joining with the rush for the exit in Afghanistan to undercut any lingering credibility accruing to it.  Given further that most NATO members have shown an ability to hit the funding targets akin to the performance of a visually impaired sniper, the time is now to rethink the alliance.  The time is now to contemplate the impossible: The dissolution of NATO.

It is questionable whether or not NATO has any utility or even relevance to the world of now and tomorrow where the major enemy of any and all civilized states are the advocates of violent political Islam.  The best way for civilized states to counter the threat resides not with NATO or any other Cold War artifact but rather with "coalitions of the willing," ad hoc structures of states with coinciding national interests which perceive the threat from violent political Islam or the challenges presented by any particular failed, failing, or hollow state in similar ways.

As George H.W. Bush showed during the Gulf War, the ad hoc coalition can work well provided the necessary preliminary diplomatic work is done with care.  Even George W. Bush's ham handed counterparts worked reasonably well.  In comparison, the NATO effort in Libya has been an example of how not to go about the task.  While this can (correctly) be blamed on the relative absence of the US from  the shooting war, the real lesson to be learned is that the effort was not undertaken by a genuine coalition of the willing.

The AKP has taken Turkey away from the West.  Its lurch to the lands of Islam is understandable and even forgivable.  It is, after all, a choice made by the Turkish electorate--at least up to a point.  We can have no beef about it.

Rather, we should embrace the Turkish policy.  We should use the stimulus to take a long hard look at the role of NATO in our alliance system, and jettison it as currently constituted unless a very strong argument can be made for its continuation.  The inclusion of Turkey was contextual to the cold war; it has no permanent root in the Atlantic community.  This is the geographical, cultural, and political reality.  We should admit it with at least as much honesty as have the Turks.

The ideological and political blocs of the world have reformed since the end of the bi-polar world.  Turkey has recognized this.  The AKP has acknowledged bluntly that religion and language ties trump the artifacts of global alliance politics.  Erdogan and company have chosen their side.

The US and Western Europe can and should do no less.

We Are Safer Today--Or Not

Fareed Zakaria has charged to the fore once again with his contention that we Americans are far safer from the threat of terror operations conducted by proponents of violent political Islam today than the doom-mongers of the Right would have us believe. He argues that the Bush/Cheney administration's decision to invade Afghanistan and displace Taliban in favor of a democratic (and presumably pluralistic, liberal, free enterprise) system--and the "amping" of the effort by Mr Obama necessarily resulted in the defanging of al-Qaeda and the insurance of our safety.

Ironically, one of the architects of the Great Effort In Afghanistan, Robert Blackwell, has come to an antipodal conclusion. Reportedly, he has told the London based International Institute of Strategic Studies that the US led effort has come such a cropper that the only viable option now is to partition Afghanistan. Taliban should be left alone in the Pushtun dominated areas while the US and its partners limit their efforts to securing some sort of rump state in the rest of the geographic expression, those areas where Pushto is not the primary language.

The reason for this volte-face on the part of Mr Blackwell is one commented upon quite frequently by the Geek. He now rues the mission leap decreed by his bosses which shifted the goal from that of a limited punitive expedition directed at destroying al-Qaeda and the upper layers of Taliban to one of displacing Taliban with the mythical democratic etc. new regime. As a consequence of this change in mission, the Islamist insurgents were given time, a place, and motivation to recreate themselves and come back bigger and badder than ever.

Leaving aside such bagatelles as Mr Blackwell's role in the shift or the under-resourcing of the Afghan effort in favor of the main event over in Iraq, there are more important considerations which can be adduced to support the Blackwell Thesis that the US is losing (or already has lost) the war in Afghanistan. These more important considerations also serve to undercut fatally the unjustifiably optimistic view taken by Mr Zakaria.

Several often overlooked or quite underestimated factors combine to point in the direction of an American failure in our ongoing conflict with the advocates of political Islam both armed and unarmed. Oh, this gloomy prognostication should not be taken to mean that in the future We the People will be banging our heads on the floors of mosques five times a day or putting women in garbage sacks. But, it does mean the US will be limited, perhaps quite severely, in its ability to operate diplomatically in a wide area of the world.

And, it means that We the People will have to live with the limitations of fear and the mechanisms of security put in place to assuage our anxiety for many, many years to come, essentially in perpetuity. It means the "war on terror" will prove to be not the "long war" but the "forever war."

One of the key factors at work to our collective disadvantage was alluded to by Victor Davis Hanson albeit in an unnecessarily indirect way. The thrust of Dr Hanson's point as the Geek understands it is that the motivation, the evil, if you will, has been denatured from the attacks of 9/11, making the events as disconnected from human authorship and motives as would be the random strike of a meteor. The net effect of this deracination is to strip the progenitors of the attacks as well as their consequences from the human context.

That result is as wrong as grilled watermelon.

The subtext of the neutering of the attacks of 9/11 as well as the resultant US actions constitutes a set of phenomena permeating contemporary American values. Bluntly put, this set revolves around the major message of the American Left over the past forty years--the US is inherently evil, intrinsically mean spirited, reflexively imperialistic, arrogant, self-serving, self-seeking, and, all in all, a thoroughly unpleasant member of the global neighborhood. Beyond that, Americans, We the People, are afflicted with every "ism" listed in the catalogue of misery. We are a completely unpleasant bunch of chauvinists, sexists, xenophobes, religious bigots, and fanatical "clingers."

As a result, the American people are encouraged to back away from the challenges to us, our values, and way of life by our own self-appointed political, media, and academic elites. We are and have been told repeatedly that our values and way of life are not exceptional, that they are no better (but might be worse) than the values of other societies and cultures. There is no message from those who purport to mold and lead public opinion that we are unique, that we possess qualities and values which have provided institutions worthy of both envy and emulation.

As has been true throughout the West, the US has experienced not simply a crisis of confidence, a crisis of faith, but a meltdown of belief in ourselves and our worth which has extended for the best part of three generations. Absent the buoyant self-assurance of earlier generations, we have been unwilling or unable to both articulate what we stand for, why we stand for it, why it worth believing and standing for, and not simply defend against all comers but advance against all odds.

From the closing years of the Vietnam War forward the loss of faith in ourselves and the unique past which served to make us an equally unique people and nation in the present has become evermore pervasive and structured into the rituals of passage from the child to the adult. The early and complete capture of academia by the aging New Lefters nearly forty years ago has resulted in a transformation of the formal mechanisms of inculturalization (and most of the informal ones as well) from one which both reinforced and celebrated American exceptionalism to one which denied and deprecated it.

Our faiths both religious and civic have evaporated over the years. The education reinforced evaporative process has left us rather hollow, and certainly confused about the value of our values, the worth of our institutions, the deservingness of our nation, even the status of our country in the world. It is hard as hell to fight a war when you have little if any idea as to why you are fighting and what difference it might make if you win or lose.

This opens the door to the folks on the other side of the hill. The Muslims. Or, to err on the side of accuracy, the proponents of political Islam, particularly those who advocate the necessity or desirability of armed, violent political Islam.

Unlike the faiths, both religious and civic in the West, in the US, the faith of the Muslim is alive, vivid, vigorous, full-bloomed. In a very real and critical sense, Islam has recaptured the militancy of its youth during the past thirty to fifty years. While the faiths of the West have aged, aged quite ungracefully, the faith of Islam has regained its full vigor of centuries ago.

Islam, it must be understood, is not simply a religious confession. It is that. It is a faith. But it is much more. Islam is a way of life and of living. It is a complete, total system encompassing all aspects of the human condition. It is law. It is government. It is a system of economic philosophy. It is a community. It is a way of war. There is no part of life too small to elude its all inclusive embrace.

The basics of Islam, the Five Pillars, are both easy to understand and not overly onerous to execute. There is no complex liturgy, no complicated doctrine to parse and accept even if not understood. In effect, Islam provides emotional engagement, a strong sense of community, an equally strong and appealing sense of purpose, even destiny. It provides a commonsensical, real world based system for governing relations, solving disputes, maintaining harmony.

So far, so good. And, it gets better. Islam is multifaceted. Not only is there no central clerical establishment, there are actually two foundation forms of Islam.

No, not Shia and Sunni. Rather there is an "official" Islam, the Islam of the clerics, the scholars of jurisprudence, the Ulema. There is also an "unofficial" Islam, the Islam of people, particularly people organized in the semi-secret brotherhoods, the tarika.

For centuries the tarika have been the primary instrument of missionary activity, humanitarian efforts, community organization, and a multitude of other matters. These brotherhoods give Islam a flexibility, a vitality, a capacity to expand unequalled in other religions and unrivalled by government entities.

Today, the brotherhoods are alive and well as the shock troops of Islam both political and otherwise. The prototype Muslim Brotherhood has given rise to a near tsunami of derivatives, offshoots, descendants which cover the globe and do all manner of activities both laudable and (to us) potentially threatening. The capacities of the brotherhoods have been consistently underestimated by decision makers here and elsewhere to our profound disadvantage.

There is another area which has been underappreciated in the US. It is the one factor which ties together disparate elements in the recent history of Muslim majority countries so as to explain why there has been the sudden expansion of not only militant Islam but the advocates of political Islam, again, particularly those who espouse violent political Islam.

That factor is the educational systems of majority Muslim countries. The essential contextual matter is the expansion of the number of genuinely independent majority Muslim states at the end of World War II--four--to the nearly sixty of today. With independence came the new educational systems which universally emphasized a heady combination of nationalism and Islam.

Particularly since the late Fifties, the expansion of educational systems indoctrinating students in the glories of Islam and the evils of the West has been critical. By the time of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the somewhat later perceived triumph of armed Muslim believers over the Red Army, the educational systems of many, even most, Muslim majority states were producing large numbers of graduates who may have been deficient in their proficiency in secular subjects but were most knowledgeable in Islamic belief, values, and history as well as in the purported lacks, weaknesses, and "sins" of the West.

Against the backdrop of this form of indoctrination oriented education, the youth of Muslim countries soaked up the perceived victories of their co-religionists in Iran (against the Great Satan, the US) and Afghanistan (against the atheistic Soviet Union) with the result they were good to go in jihad. All that was needed was a "brotherhood" ready, willing, and able to provide the leadership, training, and strategic goal.

This was the role of al-Qaeda, Taliban, and the numerous others in Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, across North Africa, in the Arabian Peninsula, and even in Europe. The troops were there, produced by the madrassas and state operated systems alike. The "brotherhoods" were there. The motive was there--cleansing the Arab Peninsula of the "infidel" Americans and the Arab Mideast of the "Zionist entity."

The decentralized nature of "official" Islam is both complemented and potentiated by the assorted brotherhoods. Simultaneously, the educational systems of Muslim majority states continue to churn out fully indoctrinated graduates who are eager to defend and advance the One True Faith, to die (and kill) for the faith.

In short, Muslim strengths mirror our weaknesses.

They are confident. We are not.

They are educated to believe in the high value of their faith, their beliefs. We are educated to doubt, to distrust, to eschew the beliefs and values upon which our society, our polity, our culture are predicated.

They have a broad set of flexible, informal, self-organizing brotherhoods. We rely upon remote, rigid, tinted with arrogance official bureaucracies.

They see the future as theirs, ordained by Allah. We see our best days as being well in our past.

When these more basic considerations are given their proper priority, the conclusions are simple and not particularly enjoyable. It really doesn't matter if we "triumph" in Afghanistan. Nor will merely surrendering a part of that place to the violent political Islamists of Taliban buy us any peace.

Nor does it really matter if every last member of al-Qaeda is killed. We will be no "safer."

Not unless and until we regain the confidence, the faith which we have so heedlessly and unnecessarily tossed away these past two generations, can we hope to wage effective war with the violent political Islamists. And, not unless and until we can see the decay of the current high level of Muslim certainty that the future belongs to the Slaves of Allah can we have any hope of being safe at home and potent abroad.

Looks like some very grim decades ahead.

ADMIN NOTE: The Geek invites, welcomes and will post all on topic comments but due to having been attacked by spam comments he has had to take precautions for which he apologizes.

Terminally Adrift At The Policy Level

Both the US and the UK are adrift at the policy level. Potentially, the two allies are fatally floundering in the currents of challenge. This unpleasant situation exists in both London and Washington for the same reason: Neither government is willing and able to acknowledge that they are in a conflict which is tantamount to a total war of national survival with the purveyors and practitioners of violent political Islam.

In matters both great and small the two governments--and their respective publics--have sent mixed messages regarding both the nature of the wars forced upon us and our political will to not only accept the gauntlet but press on until the opposition is crushed. Whether the burka or the Taliban, whether Afghanistan or Pakistan, Somalia or Yemen, Iran's nuclear quest or the effort by Muslims to build a gigantic mosque and monument to Allah's grandeur where once the shadow of the Twin Towers fell, the governments and peoples of both the US and the UK speak with confused voices.

The ground truth upon which the shaky and ultimately fatal drift at the policy level is based is not hard to state--or to understand. Violent political Islam as well as its non-violent kin arises from the religion of Islam. The requirements and justifications for war against the "infidels" even unto death, perhaps most certainly unto death, is written in the Koran, the collected sayings and acts of the Prophet. These requirements and justifications have been commented and elaborated upon for centuries by learned and highly esteemed Islamic theologians and experts on jurisprudence.

While these requirements and justifications are not accepted by all Muslims anymore than violent political Islam is practiced by all followers of Islam, the path of jihad is walked, the justifications and requirements accepted, by a portion of the Muslim community. This reality, unpleasant as it may be to the sincere believers of the ideals of multi-culturalism, has been accepted by no less a paragon of Islamic apology and multi-cultural correctness than the WaPo.

Americans generally and the British generally do not want to accept the idea that violence for political ends may arise organically from religious faith. We are victims of our own successes in separating the communities of faith from the secular state. As a direct consequence, we can afford the luxury of religious tolerance.

The wars of religion reside in our distant past. Never really waged in North America, the wars of faith molder in the collective archives of distant memory, of half or more forgotten lectures about European history. For us the very idea of killing in the name of faith is so bizarre, so reprehensible that it passes the boundary of rationality and enters the dark land of mental illness. Not unlike the Jews of Germany in the 1930s as the flames of antisemitism flared ever higher, we reject the notion that civilized people do that sort of thing, commit that kind of crime, perpetrate that variety of horror.

While many Muslims share the same sense of bewildered outrage which afflicts us when a bomber does his worst, there are those followers of the Prophet who approve the bombing, celebrate the killings of "infidels" and "apostates," who cheer those who inflict slaughter on the unarmed to the heavens above. It is this latter group, the Muslims who either promote and practice violent political Islam or support and approve of those who shed the blood of the innocent, which is the enemy of the US and other civilized states including Great Britain.

Caught in cognitive dissonance between what we wish to be the truth and the ugly realities presented to us by the bombers and trigger-pullers of violent political Islam, we, the Americans, the British, and our respective governments temporize, equivocate, take halfway measures, deliver mixed messages, question the rightness of our cause, find excuses for those who would kill or change us and our societies, and generally go adrift at the policy level.

The world is not the way we would wish it to be. As a result we know we have to do something, but there is nothing we can do which comports well with our beliefs in the secular state and the appeal of religious tolerance and respect.

Consider the burka. This garbage sack like garment is not required by the Koran or other sacred writings but has been imposed in much of the Islamic world by force of custom and the exaggerated fear of hell which is part and parcel of an Islamic upbringing. Because the burka is a highly visible, irrefutable cultural expression of Islamic faith, it has become a focus of attention on both sides of the vast invisible line dividing the Muslim community from that of the assorted "infidels" which comprises the majority of the globe's population.

Public opinion in the US is tolerant of the all-encompassing garbage sack burka. This is probably because so few Americans come into contact with burka caged women. It is hard to have a definite view of something seldom if ever encountered.

The situation is different in Europe. There the burka is common. In France, Spain, the UK, and other Western European countries, the average citizen is likely to encounter the burka daily particularly if living in an urban center. As a consequence, emotions are running high over banning or not banning the garment.

Belgium, France, and Spain are moving rapidly toward a ban of the most extreme versions of the dress, those which cover the face. In England the majority of the public, the hoi polloi, are reported to support a French style ban. Simultaneously, the political elite, the hoi ollogoi, at least as represented by two cabinet members, oppose any ban. One, Caroline Spelman, the Environment Minister, considers the burka to be "empowering" and "conferring dignity."

Not surprisingly, agreement with Minister Spelman's position is not universal. Not even all Muslim women agree with her. The philosophical and political responses to apologists for the burka run the spectrum from classical liberal to ancient conservatism.

Leaving aside the question as to how voluntary wearing the burka might be in a male dominated culture, (Husband, father, or brother to woman, "Wear the burka or else...") the fact remains that the commodious garment allows the ready concealment of a suicide vest. The basic question is simply how comfortable would even the most liberal, multi-culturally, sensitive person be within say twenty meters of a person who might be carrying twenty kilograms of explosive and ball bearings?

An even more fundamental consideration is that of political will. The burka, like the minaret appended to a mosque, is a political expression. Resistance to such alien manifestations within a Western society and its polity is also a political expression. The conflict is one of political will: which side has the greater political will?

In this way, the issues of garbage sacks on women or minarets mirror the larger, bloodier wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Whether one considers Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or even the Iranian "Mahdi Bomb," the crux is political will. The side with the greater will is the side destined to win in any and every one of these foci of conflict between West and political Islam.

One of the most important considerations in developing and maintaining political will is the definition of goal. As important is the defining of the enemy: Who is he and what is he after? Next in line is the necessity of defining and articulating in a compelling way just what motivates us in our fight.

If the US, the UK, and other civilized states are going to prevail, or even survive, in the struggle forced upon us by the Ever Faithful To The One True And Pure Vision Of Islam, it is utterly essential that we escape from the cognitive dissonance which has clouded our thinking, our policies since that horrible day nearly nine years ago. We must accept that not everyone in the world, not every Muslim, accepts the separation of institutions of faith from those of the state which has emerged in the West over the past two or so centuries.

We must accept that there exists a sizable number of Muslims who see the obligations of their faith to include the violent imposing of their beliefs, their law, their customs upon all of us. We must acknowledge that these good Muslims read in their sacred literature a limitless remit to seek a global caliphate in which only the writ of Allah as interpreted by Muslim clerics governs.

The devotees of violent political Islam are neither madmen nor "misunderstanders" of their religion. They are True Believers in their understanding of the requirements of their faith. No apologies for their beliefs and consequent actions are needed. Also unnecessary are well meaning efforts at outreach, accommodation, or appeasement.

The imperatives of their faith preclude all attempts at outreach, accommodation, appeasement. The same imperatives render any efforts at apology or explanation mere exercises in self-delusion.

What is needed, needed far more than weapons or foreign aid, is political will. We are faced by a hydra-headed enemy possessed of a political will of the greatest sort. The only way we can oppose, or better, defeat the violent political Islamist is by having a greater political will held for a longer period.

From the outset the war has been one of political will in which corpses and ruined buildings, like burkas and minarets, are merely means of expressing, testing, and either eroding or reinforcing the political will of each belligerent.

The Danish theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, "Purity of heart is to will one thing." Today, it must be recast as, "Success of policy is to will one thing."

Get A Grip, Mr President--It's A Real War---

And you are in charge of it. You may not like the idea, Mr Obama; it may perturb your tidy little lawyerly mind; it may disrupt even more your visions of transforming the US into a socialist republic, but the world insists--there is a war out there. A war which if lost by the US and the rest of the civilized states means the blackest of dark days will be upon us.

It appears that the al-Shabaab inspired if actually indigenously conducted bombings during the World Cup finals which littered Kampala with blood and body parts has convinced you that al-Qaeda and its ilk have no respect for the "lives of Africans." This particular outrage, unlike all the others perpetrated by practitioners of violent political Islam during your administration's life, has persuaded you that they "do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself."

The spectacle of maimed and murdered black bodies has moved you, Mr President, to violate your own prohibition against naming names and pointing the finger of guilt at those who deserve it--the jihadists, the suicide bombers, the exploders of remote controlled lethal machines, the people who believe above all else that their particular and perverted notions of the Will of Allah both makes right and necessary the killing of any convenient civilian target--provided the killing garners headlines and invokes fear. The innumerable deaths, the countless wounded resulting from other attacks directed against Israelis, Westerners, Arabs, Afghans, Pakistanis, and oh so many others may not have rubbed your nose in the reality of the war declared by the True Warriors of The One True Faith, but this time they went too far--they slaughtered people of black skin.

Well, Mr President, get a firm grip on this ground truth: War is race neutral. The Mighty Men of the Koran are equally willing to kill regardless of race, creed, national origin, age, or any of the other federally recognized categories for defining victims in need of protection. The Always Brave And Victorious Fighters Of Islam know no exempt classes--any who are not of us are against us is their motto.

The devotees of political Islam, regardless of name, place of origin, or specifics of agenda are linked by the web of hatred for any and all who oppose them, any who refuse to submit to the True Faith as they define it. They make no distinctions between Americans and Ugandans, between Africans and non-Africans. For the jihadis, all infidels are equally deserving of death.

(Of course, historically, Arabs, and al-Shabaab is predominantly comprised of Arabs, have shown a particular predilection for holding black Africans in contempt. Black Africans were for many centuries seen only as fit candidates for enslavement. The terrible trade in human flesh was conducted by Arabs for generations before the Europeans arrived. And, there is powerful evidence that the Arab lust for purchasing black Africans as chattel continues to the present day. This gives a real piquancy to your remarks on South African television. African life is of value to Arabs only insofar as it is a marketable commodity.)

The reality which you have yet to admit is that the war being waged against us by the jihadi and those states which harbor, facilitate, and to some extent direct and control their actions is global in nature. It is not limited to Afghanistan. Nor is a simple and necessary extension of the war's area to Pakistan sufficient. Even adding Somalia to the list of war zones is insufficient.

As today's attacks in southern Yemen makes manifest, the new, improved, and renamed al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP), has a very real capacity to kill and, by so doing, further destabilize the very fragile country of Yemen. Given the several armed threats confronting the corrupt, inefficient, broke central government of which AQAP is far from the least, there is a great likelihood that Yemen will soon join Somalia in the roster of failed states.

When, not if, that happens, the jihadis will have a stranglehold on the entrance to the Red Sea with the negative implications for global trade that ability brings with it. As a failed state, Yemen will provide a safe haven for the jihadis who hold the House of Saud in the greatest contempt as an apostate regime with a record of truckling to the infidels of the West. This potential is guaranteed to perturb the sleep not only of the Saudi royals but the equally apostate heads of states throughout the Gulf region.

And--need it be written?--as a failed state Yemen will prove a fertile ground for the Iranians. The mullahs have an unsurpassed record in effectively developing proxies. Adding AQAP to the roster would provide a new level of flexibility and horizontal escalation potential to Tehran's quiver.

The dark potentials resident in the collapse of Yemen will demand that some state or group of states intervene. The most directly threatened are Saudi Arabia and other Gulf littoral countries, but, the notion of actually fighting a war, particularly one with the jihadis of AQAP, may be more than the very cautious Saudis can stomach.

The US has not been directly threatened by the imminent success of al-Shabaab in Somalia. It will be only indirectly threatened when Yemen goes down the Islamist tubes. But, as Mr Obama noted in his indignation on South African national television, the US was attacked indirectly when its embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were bombed during the Clinton years. The line between indirect and direct threats in thin, wavy, and hazy.

This implies that the US does have a palpable stake in both Yemen and Somalia. When the responsibility of the US during both the Clinton and W. Bush administrations for the creation of current Somalia is considered, the nature of the stakes is enhanced.

We and the rest of the Civilized States created Somalia in its present form by a combination of ill-considered intervention and even less well advised retraction. The dynamic behind the Somalian mess is essentially identical to that which assured the creation of Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan--robust intervention followed by hasty retraction. In recent months the same pattern has been clearly observable in US policy toward Yemen. The result is virtually foreordained.

Wars--like foreign policy generally--are successful only if there is a clearly stated goal, a definition of success which is organic to the goal, and a resolutely followed consistent focus on orchestrating the instruments of national power to achieve the goal. Hesitation, irresolution, vacillation, the alternating tough words and outreach are each and all guaranteed to assure failure.

The US under several successive administrations has followed the same route--the way of robust entrance and hasty exit, the avenue of tough words and soft deeds. The result has been the creation and strengthening of the advocates of violent political Islam. The consequence has been a war which has deepened and widened until it comprises much of the world.

Unless President Obama is willing to enlarge his personal "teachable moment" and see that the US is engaged in a war which we most assuredly did not seek but absolutely must win, there is no hope of reversing the dangerous trend of the past twenty plus years. While there is little realistic reason to conclude the current man in the Oval will see the light, it must be hoped (prayed?) that he do so as time is not on the side of the good guys in this war to the death.

"The Kids" Are Getting Plumb Dangerous

Al Shabaab, (the youth, if you prefer English) has hit outside its home turf of Somalia for the first time. It was a hard hit. A hard hit which "The Kids" had promised if Uganda did not remove its "occupying" troops from the few blocks which comprise the writ of the Transitional Federal Government.

The High Minded and Lofty Thinking diplomats of the West created the fiction of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and then abandoned the field to the forces of the African Union. The AU is notoriously long on ambition and delusions of adequacy. It is equally short on competence, funding, able armed forces, and consistent political will.

When all the AU promises had been made, only Uganda and Burundi sent peacekeeping forces. Of these, the Ugandans have done the most freight hauling. Uganda has done this for several reasons, none of which are altruistic. In large measure the Ugandan government has kept its presence in Mogadishu as an emblem of its enlarging status on the continent.

With the discovery and proving of significant oil reserves, Uganda has been announcing its ambitions to be a major player in African affairs. New visions of prosperity and the status which such will bring in its wake have been accompanied by apparent success in finally defeating the long running sore caused by the Lords Resistance Army's insurgency. Muscle flexing in Somalia can be seen as a natural extension of these factors as well as a counter to the influx of refugees from Somalia.

The deadly triple bombing during the World Cup final game in Uganda's capital Kampala gives the country's government a stark choice: withdraw from Somalia or enlarge the effort. Neither option is good.

Al Shabaab is riven at present between two major competing factions. One wants to focus on the final elimination of the TFG and the installation of a shariah compliant Islamist regime. The other, the internationalist wing which is aligned with al-Qaeda and numbers hundreds of foreign fighters in its ranks, wants to export the war to other countries in the Horn of Africa including not only Uganda but Kenya as well. The Kampala attack hints that the internationalists are either winning the internecine struggle or are both willing and able to go it alone.

Either of these two alternatives indicates that the very dynamic the US feared when it employed the Ethiopian army as a proxy to eliminate the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) is coming to pass. The ICU was seen by the US as providing another safe haven for violent political Islamists of the al-Qaeda variety. The extirpation of this potential was seen as both necessary and high priority.

The failure of the US and other Western governments to look one day beyond that upon which the ICU was deposed guaranteed that the aftermath would be worse. As Somalia has never been other than a mere geographic expression in which all politics were local and clan based, the avenue of chaos was wide open to any group sufficiently motivated and willing to kill. Of the various groups so oriented, al-Shabaab was the most dedicated and most willing to pile up corpses.

With the exception of former British Somalia, which peeled itself away from the rest of the mess assembled by Western diplomats at the UN a half century earlier, Somalia rapidly fell under the shariah clad heel of al-Shabaab. Resistance to "The Kids" was just enough to ensure the group became more and more extreme, more willing to kill, more dedicated to winning--and more willing to call for outside support.

It was the political equivalent of a person taking just enough antibiotic to assure the weak bacteria were killed and the survivors made stronger, more resistant, and more deadly. Al-Shabaab is comprised of battle tested and slaughter hardened survivors.

These indigenous survivors have been reinforced in recent months by equally battle tested and slaughter hardened fighters from other theaters including Iraq and Afghanistan. They have also been joined by recruits from the twenty plus years of Somalian diaspora. Arabs, Afghans, Uzbeks, returning refugees or the children of refugees, all are united by the ideology of violent political Islam, by the vision of a global caliphate or, at the least, by a deep and abiding hatred of the infidels of the West and all the baggage those infidels carry.

The less than half-hearted measures taken to date by the US and other Western countries to bring, or, to err on the side of accuracy, impose, stability on Somalia have done absolutely nothing useful. All have been counterproductive. From the cut-and-run decision taken by President Clinton in the wake of the killing of nineteen special forces troops in an ill-conceived and worse executed attempt to "arrest" a Somalian warlord nearly twenty years ago to the present time, the actions of the US could not have been more carefully calculated to produce an Islamist victory and the dreaded new safe harbor for al-Qaeda.

The triple bombing in Kampala should serve as a wakeup call not simply for Uganda or the AU but for the US and the West generally. The hope that proxies would provide a low risk, low cost way of preventing an Islamist takeover of Somalia has been proven disastrously wrong. Al-Shabaab has shown a will and ability to engage in significant horizontal escalation of the war. It is no longer an internal matter, resident in Somalia alone.

With the Kampala attack "The Kids" have shown their threats to Kenya and elsewhere must be taken seriously. The Bad Boys Of The True Faith can and will make good on their threats. The proof is in the mangled bodies of those who died, shredded by al-Shabaab's bombs. "The Kids" own the initiative now. They can choose when, where, and how to strike. No country, certainly not Kenya, nor Yemen is safe.

It will not be sufficient to leave the task up to the AU. While the association may want that to be the case, the bitter ground truth is that the Union is not up to the job. Not even a massive influx of foreign money will change that. Only years of careful training backed by shipments of modern equipment can spin up the AU forces to a level of skill which would allow them to undertake either effective stability operations in Somalia or adequately guard against replays of the Kampala attack.

That leaves the usual fall back--the US and the West. Considering that the US is still neck deep in the Big Muddy of Afghanistan, it is not in the cards for Washington to send in the Marines or the airborne. Considering the West is locked in a losing contest of wills with Iran on the rather critical matter of the mullahs getting their Mahdi Bomb, it staggers the imagination to conclude that the European Union or any member state will decide to send troops to Somalia.

To go completely outside the box--how about Russia? That's a non-starter considering that the Kremlin cannot even deal effectively, "clarify and put to order" in the words of Vladimir Putin, the Islamist insurgency in the Caucasus--and that is conveniently close to Russia.

To keep on pushing the envelop of theoretical possibilities--what about China? Well, China always needs more oil and Uganda has oil. Perhaps China can form its version of Blackwater security and contract with Kampala. That would assure one country could be held harmless against "The Kids."

No. The Geek was being jocose. Even as a hedge against the loss of Iranian oil, China is quite pleased to sit back and watch--as it deals with its own homegrown Islamists.

In short, there will be no volunteers from anywhere willing and able to take on "The Kids." Any way the political-military cake is sliced, al-Shabaab looks to get the biggest piece. Worse, the auguries point to the better organized, more resolute, more ambitious internationalist faction winning out over the provincials so as to assure that Somalia will be both the long feared safe haven and a major exporter of both violence and political Islam.

Oh, well, as Allah wills.

It's Time To Toss Turkey Out Of NATO

Had it not been for the accidents of geography, the limits of technology, and the plain fact that the Truman Doctrine specifically mentioned Turkey along with Greece as being under direct threat by the Soviet Union, Turkey would never have been invited to join an alliance with the words, North Atlantic, in its name. The original justifications for Turkey's membership in NATO have expired along with the cold war, but had Turkey not changed so much in the past few years, it could still play a major--and positive--role in the new cold war between the civilized states and the countries dominated by political Islam.

It is not as if the US and the other members of NATO had not known for years before the event that simple demographics assured the eventual fall of Turkey to political Islam. (Even the Geek got a timely heads up from a Turkish officer at Leavenworth some fifteen years ago. The captain told the Geek that the Islamist leaning "peasants" from Anatolia outnumbered the urban descendants of Ataturk.)

The astute warning given by the Turk proved accurate. The AKP (Peace and Freedom Party) got the votes and now is the government. To pass legal muster the AKP applied a modicum of rhetorical whitewash to its Islamist manifesto. No sooner did Erdogan and company take over in Ankara than the agenda of political Islam came roaring forth. In its conduct of affairs both internal and external the Erdogan regime has followed the political Islam playbook albeit with less bloodshed than has been the case elsewhere. (They had to be careful at least until the Army was defanged and kept to the barracks.)

To keep the Army muzzled, Erdogan's merry crew used the pending and obviously hopeless petition for membership in the European Union. The idealistic Europeans cooperated by insisting that the Turkish army be firmly subjugated to civilian control so as never again to take over the government as had been the case repeatedly when the civilians allowed too much chaos. (The Geekess witnessed this up close and personal when she lived in Ankara in the early Seventies, ducking bullets as she went to class at a local university.)

A quick wave of arrests of scores of high ranking military officers, both serving and retired, on charges related to a conspiracy of such elaborate and convoluted nature as to rate as very bad fiction finished the job. The admittance of an ever larger number of Islamist recruits from both Anatolia and the urban ghettos filled with displaced Anatolians assured the army became ever more politically reliable, ever more aligned with the political agenda of AKP.

Without the army the diminishing and aging secularist population has little, if any hope of regaining political supremacy. And, absent a secularist, Ataturkian restoration, there is no feasible probability of Turkey being regarded as a civilized state on a par with the other members of NATO.

Erdogan and his supporters have lashed the fortunes and future of their country and fellow citizens firmly to the mast of political Islam. They are convinced that the future has a restored Ottoman Empire and Caliphate in store for them.

Sure, the new, improved Ottoman Empire will be far different from the one which shuffled into oblivion ninety years ago. And, unless firm alliances are made with alternative centers of Islamist power such as Iran and Pakistan, the new AKP version of the Ottoman Empire will be embroiled in war both hot and cold.

It is probable that Ankara and Tehran have an understanding currently. It is probable that the understanding--not unlike the infamous pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in August 1939 has delineated spheres of interest. Again, not unlike the referenced predecessor in cynical exploitation, the understanding will eventually evaporate.

In the meanwhile Turkey can carry the heavy freight in the battle for Iran's bomb. It can also do the pioneering in the fomenting of ever greater quantities of hate Israel sentiment among the useful fools and leftists of the West.

The Erdogan rejection of the West and embrace of the mullahs of Tehran is obvious enough to be visible even to the astigmatic Barack Obama. There is no profit in trying to cozen, bribe, or otherwise make nice to the political Islamists of Ankara. The only road to profit is the one which takes Turkey out of NATO.

The sooner Turkey is invited to hit the highway out of NATO the better for all hands. If nothing else, consider just how much information of a sensitive sort flows from Brussels to Ankara and thence (perhaps) to Tehran. Really, from a purely security standpoint, having Turkey in NATO today makes as much sense as would having Mussolini's Italy as one of the planners of D-Day.

Don't Worry--They're Just "Radical Extremists"

Or, maybe the suicide bombers and other brands of wannabe martyrs are "extremist radicals." Or, perhaps they are simply radically extreme or extremely radical. Whatever they might be, all those who desire to enter Paradise through the killing of "infidel" or "apostate" civilians are most definitely not "jihadists." Nor are they "Islamists."

And, they are not and never have been "terrorists."

So pontificated John Brennan, the senior guy in the White House in the field of "counterterrorism" and "homeland security" in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. One can only wonder why this example of vocabulary warped, twisted, and perverted by the requirements of presidentially imposed political correctness was not met by gales of derisive laughter.

It was one more demonstration of the current administrations pathological inability to look reality in the face for fear that someone, somewhere, somehow might take offense and decide to claim his Virginal Reward at the cost of a bunch of American lives. Or, some hyper-sensitive Muslim somewhere might take it into his challenged cerebellum that the US was "waging war on Islam" with consequences too dire to contemplate.

The one time CIA lower, upper level factotum was right in rejecting the notion that the US was fighting a war against "terrorism" per se. Everybody with enough intellectual horsepower to differentiate between the moon and the sun has long commented on the inapposite nature of the George W. Bush formulation. No one would dissent from the proposition that one does not wage war on a specific tactic of war but rather against the practitioners of the tactic.

Mr Brennan was less correct when he averred we were not fighting against "terror" as terror constitutes a state of mind and we Americans refuse to live in fear. That sounds great even if the aftermath of every terrorist episode--even those which failed--shows a residue of fear of greater or lesser extent and magnitude. So it does the American people no disservice to admit that we can have the flaming piss scared right out of us--at least every now and then and at least for a short while.

However the always-on-the-reservation Mr Brennan is totally out-to-lunch when he got around to declaring that the US was not engaged in a war with either "Islamists" or "jihadists." You see, in the view of this newly minted Scholar of Islamic Theology and Jurisprudence, the real deal is simply that "jihad" is a legitimate tenet of Islam denoting the inner struggle of the believer to purify his belief and that of his community.

Duh!

Leaving aside such inconsequential factors as the Koran, the Sunnah, and the long standing and readily available conclusions of all the major schools of Sunni and Shia Islam which underscore time and time again the affirmative duty laid upon the believer to use armed force in order to protect and advance the Islamic faith, there is no doubt but Mr Brennan's interpretation is accurate. Of course, ignoring this much of the heart and soul of Islam cheapens and demeans the religion. (It is interesting that in this effort to be ever-so-sensitive-and-tolerant, Mr Brennan and others have the effect of deprecating the nature and character of the faith as well as the dedication of many of the adherents of the faith.)

Once the sensitivity based deprecation of a faith and its power to move believers is commenced, the speaker is on a very steep, exceptionally slippery slope. This reality came in Mr Brennan's remarks when he thundered that the US would "disrupt, destroy, and defeat" al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers. He named the names but could not bring himself to acknowledge that the leaders of al-Qaeda and, to an even greater extent, Taliban, relied upon the authority of their religion--Islam--as total justification for all they did and will do.

Continuing on his slippery slope to the destruction both of language and the necessary ability to know and understand the enemy so he might be successfully defeated, Mr Brennan invoked the usual suspects as to motivation. He trotted out the list of long discredited social, economic, and political factors such as poverty and marginalization which have been the favored icons of those of a "progressive" bent.

To replace the reality of religion with the fantasy of social and economic factors required that Mr Brennan put aside completely the well documented information regarding the background of many, even most, of those who lead the "martyrdom seekers" as well as those who personally seek the solace of the next life. As those boring facts show time after (literally) bloody time, the background of leaders and followers alike is disquietingly privileged. From KSM to the failed "Underwear Bomber to the guy in the Times Square SUV, education and money lurk in their personal pasts.

To paraphrase Bill Clinton's campaign slogan from 1992, "It's the religion, stupid!"

Finally there is Mr Brennan's confusing formulation describing just who we are fighting, "radical extremists." Is this Deep Thinker of the view that there exists a creature called the "moderate extremist? Or, perhaps, a "reactionary extremist?"

Maybe he even believes that out there somewhere in the mountains of the FATA and Afghanistan or in the deserts of Yemen or Somalia there lurks the dreaded, "uncommitted extremist."

Ah, yes, bucko, that must be it! That must be the reason for his and the administration's mushy wording and pudding thinking, a justification for abusing both language and logic, a need for the soft speaking of political correctness.

Should the US be so bold as to call an Islamist an Islamist, the uncommitted extremist just might turn radical.

Way To Go, Dr Liam Fox!

The new British Defense Secretary, Dr Liam Fox, opened his mouth in Kabul the other day. Out came a whole heap of truth. In response the Afghan government and media have gone exoatmospheric. In the process of going ballistic they have proven Fox to have been spot on.

In a press conference at the British embassy in Kabul, the visiting Defense Secretary said bluntly that the purpose of the intervention in Afghanistan was to facilitate British national security. He went on to say what the American led operation was not about in his estimate. It is not, he opined, "for the sake of an education policy in a broken 13th Century country."

Well, at least someone involved in the multi-national effort to squash Islamist jihad oriented assemblages of thugs such as al-Qaeda and Taliban has the intellectual, moral, and one might add, political courage to tell it like it is. The US and its associates--the first among which was and is, the UK--put boots on the inhospitable ground of Afghanistan in order to expunge not only the architects of the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda, but the government which protected these international criminals pursuant to the requirements of "Islamic hospitality," the government of Mullah Omar's Taliban.

The intent of the operation at the outset, before it was distorted by the Bush/Cheney administration, was simply to make the world safer for civilized folk by nullifying for once and all the threat posed by Islamist jihadists. As such, the operation was both legally and ethically justified. Had it kept to the original intent, the US, the UK and all the rest would have been long gone from a geographic expression which can be characterized with accuracy and honesty as being both broken and 13th Century.

The initial response by President Karzai, according to at least one (conveniently) unnamed "senior government source" and the Afghan excuse for a newspaper of record, was vehement, even vitriolic. The assorted respondents agreed that Dr Fox "dissed" Afghanistan something fierce.

The unnamed "senior source" averred that despite the "sacrifice" of British lives and the expenditure of British money, it was evident that the Brits were "racist" and showed "a lack of trust." The source also belabored the obvious: That Dr Fox thinks Afghanistan has not changed since the 13th Century and was as a consequence both "tribal" and "medieval."

Yeah, dude, that is pretty much the size of it. So, where's the problem?

Afghanistan is highly tribal in its social and political complexion. That reality has been noted by everyone from President Karzai to General McChrystal and from Joe Biden to George W. Bush. It is probable that even President Obama agrees.

As for being "medieval," that is another self-evident feature of much of the Afghan cultural, social, political, and intellectual landscape.

The ascendancy of religion over secular matters was a hallmark of Europe's medieval period. And, so it is in Afghanistan today. Consider a few salient points.

The primacy of personal loyalties over the demands of institutional affinity is another prominent feature of the European medieval experience. So it is in Afghanistan today.

Women were generally subjugated in Europe in those days. Such is their status in contemporary Afghanistan.

A preeminent dynamic in Europe during the medieval period was the struggle to establish and maintain the authority of a central government over regional and tribal figures. Tell us, Mr Karzai, how is it different in Afghanistan today?

There is nothing that foreign intervenors can do to fix the "broken 13th Century country" which Afghanistan is. Mounds of money and torrents of "advice" will do nothing real to address the reality to which Dr Fox referred. Externally sponsored (imposed?) nation-building is a monstrous fraud perpetrated upon not only those who furnish the ways and means but upon those who are the recipients.

When the Bush/Cheney bunch--along with the New Labor government in the UK--shifted the goal in Afghanistan from one of permanently abating the nuisance of al-Qaeda and Taliban to one of creating a 21st Century Western style ideal in Afghanistan, they did nothing but assure a long, bloody, and ultimately failed effort. Only blunt and realistic honesty of the type shown by Dr Fox can serve to deflect the collective effort from its current course.

Far from whining, complaining, and carping about the presumed racism and disrespect shown by the British Defense Secretary, the Karzai government and its supporters should welcome the honesty. They should be gratified by the retreat from the well-intended effort to impose a view of society and politics quite foreign to the Afghan experience.

Rather than using the Fox remarks as one more cause to bitch and moan, the Karzai government should embrace them. How refreshing it would be to hear Karzai or even some unnamed "senior source" allow that Afghanistan is a broken 13th Century country. "But it is up to us and us alone to fix it and drag it into the 14th or even 21st Century if we and we alone want to."

Not only would it be refreshing, such a statement would be a real step along the road to a more stable Afghanistan, an Afghanistan which might have a future other than one dictated by the most violent proponents of political Islam.

Once Again Fear Trumps Free Speech

Admittedly Pakistan is in a world of hurt currently. In this context it is important to recall that the country brought most of this unpleasant present upon itself. In large part the cause of its current place midway between the hammer of the contemporary world and the anvil of Islamism is the necessary consequence of decisions made by General Zia during the Eighties.

One of General Zia's splendid ideas was to force feed Islamist doctrine on the nation's youth through an ambitious program of building madrases. This seemed a good idea in several respects. The emphasis on religious indoctrination was believed to be a sure way to bring greater social and political cohesion. The construction costs in the main would be borne by Saudi Arabia and thus indirectly by the US, Europe, and Japan. Finally, the madrases would provide a simultaneous means of keeping young men off the job market while providing willing personnel for Zia's far less than covert war against India.

A second Zia-made contribution to Pakistan's current world of hurt was his taking over the war in Afghanistan, first against the Soviets and then to assure a pliant tool gaining power in Kabul. That tool, Taliban, was a direct product of the madrass construction program. The US contributed mightily to this aspect of the developing evil stew in Pakistan by willingly giving money without restriction to Zia's regime and then blithely ignoring just what was happening in the post-Soviet withdrawal internal war period.

Even though General Zia long ago left the scene, the Law of Unintended Consequences which his actions necessarily invoked now drives the dynamic in Pakistan in all of its bloody and repressive features. As the slow-on-the-uptake Pakistani government, Army, and Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence finally came to realize, the growth of Islamism (or political Islam, if you prefer) came to be an existential threat to the status quo.

The actions taken by the government, army, and ISI as a result of this belated awakening have been a mixture of repression and placation. The army has launched a series of operations against Pakistani Taliban with mixed success. At the same time the government has made efforts to placate Islamist opinion.

In the most recent of these obnoxious genuflections to the very vocal adherents of political Islam, the government has ordered the banning of Facebook and YouTube. The reason given for this draconian action was, as is drearily expectable, the charge of "blasphemy."

More specifically, the Pakistani government alleges that it is in a royal snit over the Facebook site inviting one and all to "draw Mohammad." The specifics regarding YouTube's exercise in blasphemy are not so clearly delineated. However the Pakistani Ministry In Charge Of Protecting Muslim Sensitivities assures the world that the site is awash with videos which somehow or another deprecate Islam, the Prophet (PBUH), and whatever just makes Muslims all over go weak in the knees from the insults.

The Pakistani ministry has shown the sort of open minded attitude which one can expect from an official governmental protector of all things Muslim. The responsible(?) official has invited representatives from both of the offensive sites to send representatives so as to "resolve the dispute in a way that ensures religious harmony and respect."

Duh?

Is it credible that this Pakistani equivalent of the pope commanding King Henry to stand barefoot in the snow of Canossa will be taken seriously or that such will result in repentance on the part of the purported malefactors? Does this official exemplar of Pakistani sweet reason really, really believe that the Internet will genuflect before the alleged sensitivities of Muslims?

The answer, unfortunately, is, "Yes."

Pakistan has a record of blocking "offensive" Internet sites. Along with other Muslim majority countries such as Iran, Morocco, Indonesia, and Turkey, Pakistan has played the embargo game before albeit for short periods. Taken together, the record of Muslim countries rivals that of China in blocking access to the Internet on the part of citizens.

Driven by naked fear, these governments have done their dead level best to isolate citizens from the contemporary world. These are all governments which live in fear of social turbulence, political unrest, and the potential of violence on the part of citizens who come to realize just how much the government has suppressed, prevaricated, and manipulated perceptions for the sole benefit of the governing elite.

In the case of Pakistan the fear is prompted by the existence of Islamist jihadists who by and large exist because the government made them. The Taliban of Pakistan and akin groups are creatures of Islamabad. Now, like the fictional monster created by Frankenstein, they have escaped the control of their maker and threaten the continued existence of the men who manufactured them.

Of course, the restrictive efforts of the Pakistani government are assisted powerfully by the widespread hypersensitivity present in all-too-many Muslims. Unlike adherents to other monotheistic faiths, Muslims are routinely indoctrinated with fear. Fear that they are marginal. Fear that they are victims of discrimination. Fear that they are under constant attack.

A pervasive climate exists within much of the Muslim opinion molding community not only in Pakistan but throughout the Islamic majority societies. That climate can best be described by the word, "insecurity." There are too many opinion molders and thus far too many Muslims who are insecure in the worth and validity of their belief system. This is self-evident given the constant drive for censorship sponsored by Islamic governments.

A person--or a group--which is secure in fundamental beliefs need not seek the false security afforded by limiting free expression. Christians, Jews, even Buddhists, are repeatedly subject to critical, even insulting, expressions from people who do not share their community of faith. Yet they do not demand "respect for religion," particularly one which is imposed by legislation or fiat.

The government of Pakistan has been at the forefront of efforts to impose a global convention under the auspices of the UN which has as its only intent the "protection" of Islam against any criticism, any questions, any raising of doubts on the part of its adherents. It is an effort to protect Muslims which can be rooted only in the belief that Islam and Muslims alike are too weak, too insecure, too fear ridden to accept dissenting or disapproving views.

Of all the Muslims alive today, the most insecure, the most fear driven are those who subscribe to political Islam, Islamism. These people and the groups they comprise are so unsure as to the worth and validity of the faith to which they subscribe that they are more than simply willing to employ any and all methods including the most violent and indiscriminate to achieve their ends. Ends which include absolute protection against questions or criticism by world domination.

The equation is simple: free speech makes free people. Freedom is the most fear producing of all possibilities to an Islamist. These people can exist only in a society of complete submission as the word, "Islam," makes abundantly clear.

Ironically, the government of Pakistan is willing to submit to the dictates of the Islamists who seek the destruction of the government which bows before them. The only losers are those Pakistanis who seek to live a simulacrum of a free life, think and express ideas without the specific permission of a religious authority, that is Pakistanis who are secure in their identity and their faith (if any.)

The Latest Twist For A Long Running Insurgency

Once upon a time the Spanish flag whipped in the sirocco where sandy wastes met the sea in a geographic expression then known as Spanish Sahara. Thirty-seven years ago, even before Richard Nixon cashed in his Watergate tinted chips, a group known by its Spanish initials as Polisario declared itself to be the vanguard of an independence oriented revolution. (Well, to use the proper term, a defensive insurgency with the goal of making the hot, arid, economically useless desert a zone as free of Spaniards as it is rain.)

The post-Franco Spanish government allowed as how it was quite willing to let this meaningless remnant of past colonial glory go its own way. At a speed which would put a thoroughbred racing camel to shame both Morocco and Mauritania claimed the now orphaned area of miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. Polisario disagreed. Forcefully.

The lackluster Mauritanian simulacrum of an army after a tad of defeat in its token resistance packed it in. The Moroccans were made of sterner stuff. By 1976 Morocco was in defacto control of most of what was now called simply, Western Sahara.

Never one to admit defeat--and having secured the not unimportant backing of Algeria--Polisario kept on with the good fight. Over the next decade or so the Moroccans pushed the Berber and Arab fighters of Polisario back until their only secure bases were refugee camps in Algeria.

Following the UN brokered ceasefire in 1991, which had the promise of a referendum on the future status of Western Sahara as a key feature, Morocco secured its status in the largest and more valuable part of the place with a sand berm of monumental dimensions. Polisario repaired to lick its considerable wounds in the Algerian camps. Given that Algeria had leveraged a seat in the Organization of African Unity for Polisario and continued to support its political and military ambitions, the situation was acceptable to the Polisario insurgents, leader and follower alike.

The situation stayed in this stasis with the promised referendum being postponed time after time and Morocco perfecting its hold on most but not quite all of Western Sahara for the next decade. The stasis continued for several reasons chief among which was the political crisis and attendant mass deaths which blighted the Algerian political and social landscapes as government and Islamist (primarily Salifist) opposition. The Algerian military needed more stability not less and thus acted to inhibit Polisario's ambitions.

The new century opened with changes in Morocco, particularly the coming to the throne of Mohammed VI in 1999. Since then the Kingdom has been able to inaugurate a series of political, social, and, most importantly, economic development measures which have had the incidental benefit of strengthening Morocco's hold on Western Sahara. This development has raised the bar to Polisario's success.

Also impairing Polisario in realizing its long-held dream of independence is the recurrent tilt of the UN, particularly the Security Council, in Morocco's favor. Thus frustration has grown year by year during the past decade in the camps of Algeria. No one is more frustrated and willing to embrace the most extreme of measures than the young men who have been born and come of age in the camps.

Once again something first noted in the concentration camps of the American West (aka "Reservations") has been demonstrated in the remote camps of Algeria. As on the assorted "reses" of the US and the refugee camps inhabited by Palestinians, the involuntary "refugees" constitute a ready, willing, able, and eager source of recruits for war. Even the certainty of death in war has once again been proven to be less unacceptable than continued life in the camps.

As a result the young men of the camps have become a source of recruits for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Polisario-AQIM linkage has been demonstrated with increasing frequency in the past several months with Polisario members and leaders such as Imam Muhamad Seedi and Abu Musab Abdul Wadud.

The Polisario recruits are powerfully motivated--and not simply nor solely by the desire for independence. The Salifist ideology of AQIM is at least as important--probably more so--in providing the impetus to revival within the almost moribund ranks of Polisario. This implies that the fresh troops are as willing to kill and die in Algeria as they are in Morocco or Western Sahara.

AQIM is not noted for harboring limited ambitions. The reach of the AQIM dreams (or, perhaps delusions) is seen in their urging that Morocco be attacked. The goal is not the liberation of Western Sahara. No. That would be too limited. The aim is that of compelling the Kingdom and Army of Morocco to serve as the mechanism of Islamist revanchism.

The target of the revanchist dream is Spain. More precisely it is the recovery of the lost province of al-Andalus. Actually the goal is not limited to the far marches of the Pyrenees, and since the Islamic and Islamist tenet is that any territory over which the crescent flag of the Prophet's forces once flew is forever Muslim, AQIM and its supporters demand the reconquest of south France. (Apparently the victory of Geoffry Martel at Tours was only a preliminary decision.)

AQIM has failed to gain great traction in Algeria perhaps because the memories of the pools of blood are too recent in the collective memory of Algerians generally. The addition of a large chunk of the twenty-five or so thousand young men without a country but with a faith is a most welcome boost to AQIM.

The "refugees" from Western Sahara also provide a strong mechanism for penetrating on a peer-to-peer basis the alienated youth of Morocco--thirty percent of whom are currently unemployed. Radicalization of Moroccan young men was shown in a melodramatic way last week with the deportation of two such from Italy following the discovery of their hazy plan to kill the current pope.

Moroccans are well represented in France, Spain, and Italy. They are present all through the EU. Not all are even marginally integrated in their host societies. Not all are meaningfully employed. More than a few have convinced themselves that they and their religion is the focus of baseless excoriation by Europeans. These, particularly those of the last category, represent fertile recruiting pools. The same religion based approach which has proven quite successful with the Polisario in Algeria will work with the rootless young men living in Europe.

Morocco presents a cheerful face to the world, particularly the West and the US. It likes to portray itself as a modern, tolerant, open society with a well-respected and regarded constitutional monarch supported by a democratically elected parliament. In comparison to other Muslim majority states, the Kingdom does enjoy a wide measure of civil rights, a relatively free press, a reasonably efficient bureaucracy, and a prosperous economy.

The image is attractive. It is also fragile. Morocco as a state is tenuous. It would fall before a resolute Islamist attack. This is precisely what AQIM intends as the first, necessary step to grander things.

Polisario provides a tool to mobilize people against the Kingdom. This is the case not only in the arena of domestic stability but also in international fora. Polisario has legitimacy in international affairs given its status in the African Union. It is not a declared terrorist entity unlike AQIM. It has access to the UN. And to the international media as shown by its protests during the vote to reauthorize the UN mandate in Western Sahara.

AQIM and Polisario are not strange bedfellows. Their goals are intertwined, interlocked, not simply coinciding but mutual. Beyond that, the two groups share the most intimate of connections, those of faith.

Pakistan--A Dangerously Split Personality

Pakistan tested two nuclear capable ballistic missiles. In the context of this event the Pakistani Prime Minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, made two statements of importance.

In the first he flatly declared that Pakistan had "laid to rest" all the concerns held regarding the security of the country's nuclear arsenal and program. In the second Gilani said, "It is time for the world to recognize Pakistan as a dejure nuclear power with equal rights and responsibilities."

Don't you love the ambiguity of the PM's use of the phrase "equal rights and responsibilities?" Is it Mr Gilani's intent to assert that Pakistan's possession of nukes gives the country "rights and responsibilities" which are "equal" to those appertaining to other, longer established members of the Official Nuclear Club--the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China? Or does he mean that as a "dejure" nuclear power (whatever that might mean) Pakistan has "responsibilities" which exist equally with its "rights?"

Then there are are a couple of other, more basic questions which scream for answers buried in Gilani's adventure in declaratory policy: What "rights" accrue to a state as a consequence of its owning some nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them? The second is that of just what "responsibilities" can Pakistan be trusted to shoulder?

It is all well and good for Mr Gilani to urge, "There is now a need for the world to move on beyond safety and security concerns." It is something else all together to provide a sound, credible basis for the world to believe the accuracy and relevance of his assertion.

It requires a vast willingness to suspend disbelief to accept the Pakistani PM's contentions. To swallow unquestioningly his view that Pakistan can be counted upon to exercise its "responsibilities" as a nuclear power would necessitate taking a very potent reality altering drug.

The primary responsibility of a country possessing a nuclear capability no matter how small--or large--is to act consistently in its foreign policy so as to be both a force for stability and a predictable actor on the global and regional stages. A closely related responsibility is that of forming a political and military strategy as well as supporting doctrine which serves to decouple crises or uses of force generally with the potential for vertical escalation across the nuclear threshold.

Undergirding both of these exercises in responsibility is the prime requirement that a government be in full and effective control of its country. This duty includes demonstrating both the will and capacity to thwart any group working from an extreme ideological base in its attempts to gain access to the nuclear capacity.

It is not necessary to adopt an unduly jaundiced view of Pakistan's history or current dynamics to conclude that Pakistan fails on each and every of the four points adumbrated. With specific regard to the second two areas of responsibility, the observer need not be overly skeptical to conclude that the government of Pakistan is not in control of its own territory and that it lacks the inherent capacity to prevent Islamist and jihadist groups from accessing its nuclear capacities.

There is no need to resort to overstatement to allege that Pakistan is the epicenter of transnational terrorism conducted by True Believers in political Islam--Islamists. Nor is it mere rodomontade to contend that Islamists exist within the Pakistani government, military, and intelligence service.

The lack of structural integrity so evident in Pakistan is evident not only in the ongoing, daily requirement for their army and our Predators to carry the war against Islamists to the hills, villages, and towns of the FATA. The holes in the hull of the Pakistani ship of state are also demonstrated in the reality that the vast majority of transnational terror operations can be tracked back to Pakistan.

Americans were reminded in a most dramatic way of the role served by Pakistan in the terror business with the failed Times Square vehicle bomb. Leaving aside all the apologetic quacking seeking to explain (and justify) the action of Faisal Shahzad, one important fact remains: The guy went to Pakistan and received training in the fine art of bomb making.

Even if Shahzad was self-recruited to the jihadist mission, there is no way of ignoring that he knew where to go, who to see in order to get both instruction and resources to carry off his attack. Shahzad was no wannabe martyr. He had no intention of dying while he killed. He was expected both to live and return to the hills of Pakistan.

The obvious fact that Shahzad not only intended to live but to return to the people who had underwritten his effort puts his case in a different league all together from that of the Underware Bomber or others of the martyrdom brigade. Inferentially at the least, Shahad's controllers in Pakistan wanted him to come back alive so the knowledge base of penetrating American security could be enhanced. Perhaps the controllers even anticipated Shahzad coming through so clean that he could be used again. Experienced assets with valid US passports are thin on the soil of Pakistan (it can be hoped.)

It is true that Pakistani authorities have made a great show of activity in the days since the smoking Pathfinder attracted unwanted attention. They have made arrests. A good number of arrests. Beyond that they have made promises to the US. A very great number of promises.

But then, the Pakistanis have made any number of promises to the US over quite a few years. On occasion they have even delivered on the promises. These times have occurred when immediate and pressing Pakistani national interests are involved. (Recall that the Army got serious about operation in Swat and portions of South Waziristan only after the Islamists showed a very real, quite immediate capacity to fatally destabilize the regime.)

Even when the Islamists present threats which border on the existential, the government, military, and intelligence service of Pakistan show remarkable reluctance to act with rapidity, overwhelming force, and palpable determination. No amount of American provided mood music regarding Pakistani efforts and sacrifices can change that.

Nor can the honeyed words and soothing music change the reason which most probably underlies the slow, hesitant, and anything-but-resolute actions taken by Islamabad to extend its uncontested authority over all of the geography constituting Pakistan. The real deal of motive is simply that many senior members of government, military, intelligence service, and nuclear weapons program are in basic agreement with the goals of the Islamists.

When ground truths are reached in Pakistan, it is evident that the Islamist agenda, even the jihadist actions, are not actually existential in nature. The structures of the government, the army, the intelligence service, are not threatened in the slightest by the Islamists. Even if the Taliban and its ilk were to come to power, it would not change business as usual for any of these features of state.

The emergence of Taliban from the mountainside caves would mean the faces at the top would change. It would mean more beards, more garbage sacks covering more women, more amputations, more casting of stones, and a whale of lot more regional, even global instability.

It would not mean, however, any fundamental alteration in the government, the army, the intelligence service, or the nuclear weapons program. The agendas of the army, the intelligence service, the nuclear weaponeers, even the bureaucracy, mesh almost seamlessly with the goals and agendas of the Islamists. Both the history of Pakistan from its creation and the current dynamics of the place underscore this melancholy reality.

None of these unpleasant truths mean, necessarily, that Prime Minister Gilani was intentionally dissembling when he made his remarks to a collection of Army officers giddy with the most recent test of missiles capable of planting mushrooms on New Delhi. But, they do mean that the US along with much of the rest of the world should--even must--expend as much anxiety over the nuclear status of Pakistan as is demonstrated over the still under development Iranian bomb project.

More, President Obama must disabuse himself of any specious notion holding Pakistan to be an "ally" of the US in a joint war against the Islamists. At best Pakistan is a semi-hostile neutral in the war. At worst it is in semi-covert league with the enemy.

In any event Pakistan is not capable of exercising the "responsibilities" of being a nuclear power. Thus the time has not yet come when the "world can move beyond safety and security" as such obtains to the defacto nuclear status of Pakistan.

Hey, Vladimir, You Going To Wimp Out This Time?

The Jolly Swashbucklers of Somalia have hit the big time with the seizure of the MV Moscow University. The ship is registered under the Liberian flag but is owned by a Russian company and is crewed by honest-to-gosh Russians. It is carrying a fifty megabuck cargo of oil to China.

The ship was taken by the usual skiffs filled with "unemployed fishermen" equipped with the ever present Russian designed AK-47 and rocket propelled grenades (probably also of an initial Russian provenance.) The crew apparently played hide-and-seek with the pirates for some minutes or even hours while sending out distress calls. Finally the crew locked themselves in the ship's "secure room."

To some extent the Russian ship's crew (or at least the captain) has responsibility for the current predicament. The ship was not registered with the Maritime Security Center, which is the clearinghouse for maritime traffic and is supposed to assure a greater level of immunity to pirate attacks.

According to a spokesman for the European Union's pirate fighting detachment in the region, the MV Moscow University contacted a Russian warship on duty in the Gulf of Aden reporting the tanker and its eighty-six thousand tons of oil were being boarded. The Russian anti-submarine warfare vessel Marshal Shaposposhnikov headed to the Moscow University's reported position at flank speed.

As Vladimir Putin is wont to say, the situation is in need of clarification. While it may be presumed the Merry Buccaneers are in control of the ship, this is not certain. If the crew is hunkered down behind the locked, reinforced steel doors of their secure room an interesting question comes to mind: Just how are the Dauntless Ex-Fisherfolk of the Somali Coast going to drive their new acquisition given that it is a tad larger than the outboard powered skiffs they are used to?

Unless the teenage thugs are the greatest sailors since Barnacle Bill, the likelihood of getting the Moscow University to safe(?) harbor in Somalia some five hundred miles away are slim to none. This means they will have to elicit the cooperation of at least some of the Russians. If, as is typically the case, the Brigands of the Briney Deep have RPGs it will be possible for them to blast a good sized hole in the bulkheads or hatches of the "secure room."

Such a robust action brings with it the high chance of one or more Russians ending up dead or, if truly (un)lucky, badly wounded. In the past the Somali Swagmen have been reasonably careful not to kill crew members of the ships they hijack, but accidents can happen.

Right now, even in the absence of Russian corpses Vladimir Putin has a challenge. A very real challenge which if not handled properly will have an impact on his major league problem in the North Caucasus.

Unlike the last time the pirates captured a vessel with a Russian connection--remember?--the ship filled with tanks and other weapons, the MV Moscow University is laden not only with oil but with political symbolism. Consider the name. Now add to it the fact that the ship is owned by Novoship a subsidiary of Sovcomflot. As the name implies, Sovcomflot is owned by the government. Finally, think about the cargo--oil--and the destination--China.

Then there is the crew. Unlike the last time, the time of the tank carrying freighter, the crew is Russian. Not Ukrainian. Not a mixture of swab jockeys from former Soviet components or Warsaw Pact subordinates. Russians.

Think for a moment about the impoverished unemployed fishermen of Somalia. Think particularly of their religion. That's right, bucko, the pirates are Muslims.

Now the Geek is perfectly well aware that it is completely against the good manners of today to link icky-poo things such as armed robbery on the high seas or ineptly constructed but malignly intended vehicle borne improvised explosive devices left in Times Square with a religion. The Geek also acknowledges that Islam qua Islam in all probability is not high on the list of motivations for most Somalian gun-toting skiff-riders.

The connection between piracy for ransom and Islam is not a matter for clerical debate; rather it is a matter of both political and financial importance for the jihadists of Somalia. And, (drum roll, please) the North Caucasus. In Somalia there is a direct link between the pirates and the Islamist jihadist groups currently contending for ultimate ascendancy in Somalia. It has been well documented that the pirate syndicates provide financial comfort to the Islamists. The transactions may fall under the term, "extortion" or "protection," but it is equally likely that the pirates are purchasing information, support, and other services from Islamist jihadist entities. It does not stretch credulity to posit that the pirates are giving money to the Islamists as a free will offering, a material sign of shared religion, mutual values, and common goals.

The insurgents of Chechnya and the rest of the North Caucasus region are Islamic. The leadership and many of the lower ranking sorts are not only Islamic but Islamist. The impact of political Islam, Islamism, upon the people of the North Caucasus has grown geometrically over the past few years. It is not exaggerating to see the insurgents of the North Caucasus as part of the multi-party wave of Islamist jihadism which includes but is most certainly not limited to the two Talibans and al-Qaeda.

The very blunt and quite unpleasant ground truth facing Vladimir of the Bare Chest is this: If the seizure of the MV Moscow University is allowed to run the normal course of prolonged captivity followed by payment of a large ransom, the jihadists of the North Caucasus will be handed a great propaganda victory. The Mighty Men of the Kremlin will have been humbled by the Will of Allah expressed by a handful of teenagers with automatic weapons.

Worse for Vladimir, Dimitry, and Company the propaganda will have the great advantage of being true. Anything other than a clear, quick ending to the hijacking without the payment of ransom will constitute a defeat of Moscow by the forces of Islam in the eyes (and on the lips) of the Muslim insurgents of the North Caucasus.

In the view of the proud, highly nationalistic Russian people generally any finale to the current contretemps off the Somali coast which does not involve a military dimension--and victory--will be a defeat of Vladimir the Good Czar. At this juncture in Russian history the people of Russia, particularly their hoi polloi, are not inclined to see a defeat of Russian will and arms with equanimity. Being bested by a bunch of dark hued, Muslim kids with speedboats, guns, and chutzpah would be totally unacceptable to Ivan in the street.

Nor would China be impressed by a surplus of "restraint" on the part of the Kremlin. The Mandarins of the Forbidden City tend to base their calculus of power on another country's will and ability to exercise force effectively when faced with a direct challenge. Should Vladimir and the Boys of the Kremlin balk at the jump, the Chinese senior leadership would find it necessary to engage in (to use John Foster Dulles' fine term,) "an agonizing reappraisal" of Sino-Russian relations.

Taken together all these factors and implications add up to an amount of freight far outweighing the cargo of the MV Moscow University. And, that, bucko, must add up to a sleepless night or two for Vladimir Putin. It couldn't happen to a more deserving fellow.