Two Opposing World Views: Rights Versus Duties

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sword Of Justice"--One Plenty Bad Man

Regardless of how matters play out in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden's presumably as-good-as-on-the-ropes al-Qaeda has brought a new/old and very dangerous player to the global board.  Bin Laden personally named the new operations director, the man in direct operational charge of violent efforts against the West generally and the US in particular.

The man's name may be Muhammad Ibrahim Makkawi or Ibrahim Madani.  He has been called Omar al-Somali.  His self-chosen sobriquet is Saif al-Adel.  Translated this comes out as, sword of justice.  Modest, eh what?

Muhammad or Ibrahim or Omar or Saif was born in 1960.  Or, perhaps, 1963.  If you get the idea that there is little extant in the open literature regarding this one time colonel in the Egyptian army, that is correct.  Most of the little that is known comes from the Sword's autobiography written five years ago, and is difficult or impossible to confirm without the resources of CIA (and perhaps not even then.)

The details are less important than the main theme of the man's thinking, his concept of how to wage effective war against the US and the other "infidel, Crusader states."  He has a clear concept that is well rooted in a sound understanding of both the strengths and weaknesses of his enemy.

In 1987 Saif al-Adel was a rather impatient person with great ideas of how to reform the apostate government of Egypt.  His notions featured both a truck bomb and the use of a civilian aircraft as a cruise missile.  Both instruments of death and mayhem were to be employed against Egypt's parliament building.  The plans were aborted when security forces rolled up Saif and his fellow plotters of the rather directly albeit unimaginatively named group al-Jihad.   In the slammer Mr Adel became underwhelmed with the views of his fellow advocates of violent political Islam.

No, bucko, it is not as if the future Sword of Justice became disillusioned with the precepts and goals of violent political Islam.  That would have made future life too simple, too peaceful.  Rather the man viewed his fellow travelers as too impatient, too filled with zeal, and too able to underestimate the capacities of the assorted components of the House of War and its apostate tools.

For reasons known only to the heavyweights of Egyptian internal security, the man who would become the Sword of Justice was released.  He decamped to--where else?--Peshawar.  In those hospitable environs he made contact with the new kids of jihad, al-Qaeda.  He spent '91 and '92 in Khost training al-Qaeda trigger pullers and bomb throwers in the basics of military art and science.

Not surprisingly Saif trailed along when Osama bin Laden relocated to Sudan.  As has been attested to by the convicted terrorist, Mohammed Odeh, Saif was engaged at the bin Laden owned Damazine Farm where he whiled away the days teaching.  No, he was not instructing in the area of agricultural science but rather giving tuition in the manufacture and use of explosives.

When not giving helpful hints on how to blow things up and kill people, Saif waxed philosophical.  He was all in favor of moving the jihad to other areas of the world as Taliban was winning in Afghanistan and conditions in Sudan were not suitable to martyrdom operations.  Apparently Saif could forgo the inviting conflict in Bosnia as there is no record of his having accompanied any of the Mideast origin jihadis to that nasty little war.  Instead it appears that the peripatetic Egyptian spent several years traveling around the constellation of training camps in Africa and Asia set up by al-Qaeda and others of the violent political Islam sort.  Reputedly he was involved directly in forming working relations with jihadist groups in Iraq.

Saif was involved in the planning of 9/11.  In the late summer debate over the final execute decision, Adel took sides with Omar in opposing the idea.  The dissent registered by Mullah Omar and seconded by Adel was documented to the satisfaction of the 9/11 Commission.

As the US troops entered Afghanistan, Saif al-Adel left.  He went to Iran where he amused himself by planning and organizing several attacks on US and other foreign troops.  During its transient spasm of fear following the American invasion, the Iranian government authorized the arrest of Adel and other al-Qaeda leadership figures.  He was released a few months later.

The Saif al-Adel of 2005 was a man far different from his younger incarnation, the wannabe bomber of the Egyptian parliament.  The differences are what make the Sword a dangerous, a very dangerous opponent now.

Adel has become a prophet of protracted conflict.  His observations and ruminations had combined to convince him that the US along with the rest of the West could not survive a lengthy siege of terror politically. Operationally this means he supports relatively small, one-off, single actor attacks as opposed to the 9/11 sort.  In his estimate the best method of operation is one which envisions attacks no larger than the 7/7 London bombing or the similar strike on the Madrid subway.  In his mind a slow motion sequence of such attacks carried out over a long enough time primarily by homegrown "martyrdom seekers" would exhaust Western political will such that maximal Islamist demands would be met.

Adel is also convinced that it is essential that the global movement in violent political Islam have no geographic base.  The identification of Afghanistan with al-Qaeda was, he has concluded, a ghastly mistake, bad for both Afghanistan and al-Qaeda.

The Sword seeks a network of facilitators and recruiters even more diffuse than that which has existed in recent years.  He intends to make the "leaderless war" a reality.  The absence of an identifiable and thus targetable geographic center will inhibit, even prohibit, a Western retaliation or will render any retaliation far more provocative than punishing.

In both of these theses Adel is far more right than wrong.  American political will is strengthened mightily by a direct attack on our citizens and our soil.  Even if the butchers' bill is far smaller than that of 9/11, the demand of We the People for retaliation would be loud and long.  Provided there is a place upon which to retaliate, the probability of an American president not doing so is very, very slim at best.

A series of attacks, large or small in effect, but carried out by homegrown operatives gives no target against which to retaliate.  The absence of an identifiable outside figure, foreign group, alien sanctuary would prevent any meaningful American response beyond the judicial (provided the actors survive the act.)  The same dynamic would apply to Western European states.  The combination of Western values, norms, political relations render each and every government a pitiful helpless giant when confronted by domestic actors who have no direct, actionable ties with a foreign puppetmaster.

Adel intends to make an operational doctrine compatible with the political statement of Mullah Omar, who in 2009 explicitly (and belatedly) separated the Taliban in Afghanistan from the violent acts of groups such as al-Qaeda.  Adel like Omar understands that this sort of explicit rhetorical and operational separation serves best the coinciding interests of both states and non-state actors which share a commitment to political Islam.

Bright lad, eh, bucko?

Operational successes under a (distant and discrete) al-Qaeda umbrella when coupled with the current political trajectories in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, North Africa, and portions of sub-Saharan Africa will bode best for the fortunes of resurgent political Islam.  The combination will allow for peace in the "House of Islam" and a better form of war in the "House of War."

In his current thinking Saif al-Adel is putting into practice the idea first broached by the great-grandfather of contemporary violent political Islam, Abul Ali Mawdudi.  More than seventy years ago Mawdudi wrote, "war in the name of Islam is a revolutionary ideology which seeks to change the social and political order of the entire war."

And, so it is.  Now Saif al-Adel gives the ideology a new and far sharper edge.

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."

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.

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.

White House Language Cops Deny Reality

One of the most important considerations at work in foreign relations today, arguably the most important, is that of self-identification. There are legions of ways in which an individual may identify himself and establish his relations with other humans. The most common ways in which a person so locates himself in both demographic and political space are tribe, ethnicity, region, nation, language, and religion.

Typically the identifiers merge in a reinforcing way. This is particularly true in the case of genuine, mature nation-states. Citizenship, language, geography, shared sense of history and values, all combine to provide a unitary identity by which the individual can feel a loyalty to a rather large, often remotely governed abstract--the nation--circumscribed by secure, defensible borders under the effective control of a consensually accepted polity--the state.

This can be seen quite clearly with the Americans. Not that many decades ago the emphasis was on the word, "States" in the name "United States of America." Now it is on the words "United" and "America." Our primary identity has shifted from city, state, or region to nation-state as we have become ever more mobile and ever more homogenized culturally, socially, economically, and politically. Even our once very distinguishable regional dialects have melted away in the heat of mass communications.

Americans may also have secondary identities such as ethnicity, religion, and generation, but these are most often purely secondary--unless brought forward in importance by the politics of victimization. It is only in the context of playing the game of victim-and-victimizer that any secondary identifier is given pride of place.

Unfortunately, playing the victim card has become so much a feature of our political landscape in the past forty or so years that the Law of Unintended Consequences can have great and terrible effects. This is particularly the case when the sensibilities so often invoked in the politics of victimization are invoked in the practice of foreign policy.

So, Geek, just what has this got to do with the real world, anyway?

Well, bucko, it's like this. The US and the rest of the civilized world is currently at war with--here comes the nitty-gritty--someone. Since 9/11 there has been no doubt that the US and other nation-states of similar foundational values and core institutions have been under armed attack. And, we have fought back.

But who attacked us? Against whom have we been fighting?

These key questions were not answered by the Bush/Cheney administration. The conceit held by the neocon ninnies of that time was that the US was engaged in a "war on terror." That was a logical and ontological monstrosity. It is impossible to wage war on a specific tactic of war which is what terrorism constitutes. It would have made as much sense to have declared war on air attacks without declaration of war on 8 December 1941 as to fight a war against terrorism.

The Bush/Cheney administration belatedly came to understand that it was unwise at the operational level to maintain we were waging war against Islamists or jihadists--even though we were. After the early period of boisterous enthusiasm and belief we could have a pair of quick and cheap victories in Afghanistan and Iraq in which the terms "Islamic," "Islamist," "Jihad," and similar were hurled with the rapidity of an M-4 on rock and roll, fear that overblown oratory might create ever more Muslims with a deep anti-American orientation overtook the White House and environs.

The same fear has gripped the Obama administration. Its latest excrescence is the presidential directive to eliminate "offensive" terms such as "Islamist" and "jihad" from strategic planning documents. This move is meant not only to bolster the famed Obama Outreach to the Arab and Muslim world which started in Cairo a year back but to reorient the way in which the US both approaches and is perceived in majority Muslim countries.

The goal is laudable. The means are not.

The Obama Prohibition still leaves us in the dark regarding the nature of the enemy we are fighting, the motives which propel that enemy, and the signposts marking our progress toward or regression from success in the war. The enemy needs a name. His motives and goals need to be understood. The definers of success need to be prescribed.

Admittedly, naming the enemy was much easier in the "old days." In most of our previous wars the enemy was either a nation-state or a pretender to that status. Other wars, those of an interventionary nature, the enemy could at least be identified by a specific ideology or his opposition to a polity supported by the US.

Naming names was quite easy. And, usually quite effective in mobilizing and maintaining political will here at home for the war "over there."

Outfits like the many franchises grouped together under the name al-Qaeda or even country specific entities such as the Talibans of Afghanistan and Pakistan are not so susceptible to easy and accurate identification unless one is willing to run the risk of offending someone's sensibilities somewhere. And, if those offended are Muslim in their primary identification, the consequence may be harmful to both national interest and personal health.

Whether reality imposes risks or not, whether the Obama administration likes it or not, not properly identifying the enemy, his motivations and goals makes the possibility of being successful in our efforts against him diminishingly small. The ironic elephant in the room is that by its very insistence upon extreme sensitivity to Muslim sensibilities, the Obama administration just like that of George W. Bush in its later years implicitly admits the nature and character--the identity, if you will--of the enemy.

The enemy is, of course, Islam. More accurately and specifically it is that segment of the Muslim population which accepts as a prime motivator and goal the universal, all encompassing identity of Islam. Make no mistake about it, Islam is a far more totalistic belief system than the other monotheistic religions. There is no daylight between faith and any other aspect of human life. Not only is there no daylight, there is no possibility that any will or can emerge.

Adherents of politically oriented, expansionist Islam, the Islamists, are not misunderstanders of Islam; they are good Muslims. True Believer Muslims. To think otherwise is to diminish both the power of the Belief and the sincerity of the Believer.

While some operatives of Islamism may be stooges, may be suffering from personality or character disorders, may be incomplete personalities, such is not the case with the movers, shakers, leaders, and commanders of Islamism and its armed, conjoined twin, Jihadism. The leadership cadre, even many of the trigger pullers and suicide vest wearers, are motivated by a sincere and pervasive belief that through their actions, the will of Allah to conquer the infidel and punish the apostate is being followed. They are convinced to their very marrow that their actions, including their deaths, will bring a better world, a more faithful and peaceful world into existence.

Other communities of faith have held similar, even identical views in the past, often the not too distant past. Even today there are Christians and Jews willing and able to commit murder and other crimes in the True Belief that by so doing they are following the will of the deity, and they are suffering in order to prevent sin, rectify past sins, or ushering in a better, more godly future.

The difference between the Islamists and jihadists on the one hand and True Believers in other faiths or secular ideologies is their greater number on the ground. Where the number of American "pro-life" advocates willing to commit murder on behalf of their faith is quite small or the number of ultra-orthodox Jews willing to kill archeologists who dig up inconvenient, long buried facts which contravene Biblical accounts is diminishingly small, this is not the case with respect to Islamists and jihadists.

This implies that the latest generation of language police in the White House are doing no good service to either the security and interests of the US or the best interests of Muslims by failing to properly and narrowly define the enemy. Ultimately it is up to Muslims throughout the world to decide: Is their religion is best represented by the totalistic interpretation of the Islamists or would it be better if observant Muslims rigorously rejected the blandishments and threats of those of their brethren who maintain that the way of Allah demands jihad, requires the suicide bombings, the wholesale killings, the waging of wars without end or conclusive result?

The vision of the world espoused by the Islamists is, at root, a recreation of the culture, the values, and the worldview of the Arabian Peninsula over a thousand years ago. The question for the one and a half billion Muslims today living in all countries of the world is simply what do they want for their future--life in Seventh Century Arabia or today?

This is the choice implicitly presented to the Muslims by the Obama administration's underlying strategy of engagement. It is impossible to discuss science, health care, investment opportunities, trade, education as the administration desires without challenging Muslims to choose between the Islamist worldview and agenda and one which allows for fully observant Islam lacking only the totalistic, expansionist, and death oriented features of Islamism.

This decision requires identity politics. It requires every Muslim to decide if the primary definer of faith demands acceptance of the Islamist understanding of what it takes to be a True Believer in the One True Faith. This is a decision which is not easy to make, particularly for people who have no tradition, no experience with the tortured process of evolving the sort of identity and consequent loyalty which typifies the nation-state.

Making this sort of difficult choice is not made any easier by our refusal to name our enemy in the wars today. You don't have to make a choice when you don't know there is a choice which must be made.

Mr Obama and others of the apprehensive, politically correct, multi-cultural persuasion have to understand that it is not only impossible to succeed in a war when the enemy cannot be properly, openly, and consistently named. It is also impossible to gain allies when they do not know with whom they are joining and against whom they are fighting.

Those are two very good reasons for naming names. Two good reasons for telling one and all, Muslims most of all, that our enemy, the enemy of both the present and the future, is the Islamist, the jihadist. By presenting a clear definition and thus a choice, the Muslims of the world can decide to reject the enemy in their midst.

Meanwhile, Back In The Caucasus--

It has been awhile since the last consideration of Vladimir Putin's favorite war--the one in the Caucasus. The Geek, ever motivated by an earnest belief in the fellowship of nations, did offer a recipe for success against the jihadists of Chechnya (and environs) but Vlad Of The Bare Chest did not deign to take the hint.

Instead he chose to send yet one more retired general to the region with orders "to clarify the situation and put it to order." Well, bucko, that just hasn't happened. Nor is it likely to.

The local defensive insurgent agenda which originally powered the jihadists has now been supplemented, if not totally replaced, by the all inclusive, ever expansive one of global jihad. This spells even more trouble for the Guys In The Kremlin and their subordinates in the KGB, oops! the Geek meant to write FSB, to say nothing of the army.

The leadership of the self-organizing Islamist insurgents is now comprised of genuine True Believers in political Islam. Men such as Doku Umarov may be local boys by birth and ancestry but they are globalists in their Islamism guided by clerics such as the Jordanian Sheikh Abu Mohammad al-Maqdidi. Other key figures such as the East Siberian born Alexander Tikomirov now renamed Said Buryatski have spent years studying Islam, Arabic, and the fine art or craft of waging jihad abroad. Buryatski, for example, lived in Egypt for years.

A couple of weeks back FSB special operations personnel killed a genuine al-Qaeda operational level commander, Makhmoud Mokhammad Shaaban, in Dagestan. Shaaban was both an Egyptian national and, according to FSB, the man behind several shootings and suicide bombings. This development pleased FSB as it gave credence to its long held position that the "rebels" in the Caucasus were al-Qaeda inspired and directed.

There have been other signs showing the increased importance of global jihad. An excellent example is the proliferation of "martyrdom" videos on the assorted Islamist websites. This was unheard of only a short time back. In some of the videos all of which feature flags of the North Caucasus "Emirate," the martyrs-to-be are heard chanting in Arabic. And, upon translation, some of what is being said tracks back to the words of al-Maqdidi, the Man Of The Faith who lives in the Kingdom of Jordan.

The prolific Jordanian cleric has been a person of interest to US and other Western intelligence agencies for quite a while now given his relations with and influence upon Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahri. The man is an intellectual heavyweight in the global Islamist movement and must not be underrated in his effect upon the initially rather localized defensive insurgency.

Putin, Medvedev, and Company have tried to continue the failed policy of pretending that somehow Chechnya and the rest of the North Caucasus are not part of Russia. This pretense has been driven by a desire to assure the conflict is contained to the region.

Russia has at least twenty million Muslims in its population. Only half of these live in the North Caucasus. This means the insurgents have a very real potential to horizontally escalate their war with the Kremlin. And, the Kremlin knows this.

As the hold of global Islamist jihad grows tighter and stronger within the North Caucasus insurgent groups, the drive to carry jihad deeper and stronger into the heartland of Mother Russia will grow apace. At the same time as the technical proficiency of the insurgents increases--as it must given that combat experience in Afghanistan is being transmitted by returning Caucasians--the walls of the Kremlin and the pavement of the square in front will be covered by Russian blood.

Vladimir The Robust has already missed his last, best chance at suppressing the insurgency. The Russian government and "organs of state security" failed to separate the local grievance motivated sheep. Now the power and appeal of the Islamist message assures that the goats are proliferating as the sheep die out.

Iran exists as a complicating factor for Putin, et al. The mullahs can, should they so decide, provide assistance to the jihadi of the North Caucasus. The border with Iran is even more porous than that between the US and Mexico--and we all know how permeable The Great Fence of the Southwest is. Improved munitions such as explosively formed penetrators would constitute a major enhancement of jihadi capabilities.

At the same time the Kremlin must be aware of just how easily weapons and munitions up to and including those of a mass destruction nature can be acquired within Russia itself provided the buyer has the money. Money need not be an issue given the growth in drug usage in Russia and the role Russia plays as a point of transit between the poppy fields of Afghanistan and the markets of Europe.

This reality implies a motive for Russian understanding and cooperation with the US and its allies in the Afghan war. Russia would benefit greatly from a military success on the part of the US in that venue.

In any event the initiative rests firmly with the Islamist jihadists of the North Caucasus as of this moment. Unless the Kremlin acts as though the region is part of Russia and that the conflict can spread rapidly and in an undesirably bloody fashion whenever and wherever the jihadists choose, the war can only favor the insurgents.

Putin, Medvedev, and the rest have a choice to make. It is not a nice choice. They can continue to putter about waiting for the Islamists to strike. Or, they can reprise many episodes in Russian history and create a desert named "peace."

It is nice to see that the US is not alone in making very tough choices.

Just Who Is Winning?

There has been some good news from (some of) the front in the war between the civilized nations of the world and Islamist jihad. The Marja area has been cleared of the majority of Taliban trigger pullers so the civilian government might try to establish itself and gain credibility with and support from the locals. In Pakistan the government, military, and ISI have continued in their program of selective apprehension of Afghan Taliban senior figures.

So much for the good news. It isn't much but it does show a considerable improvement in the AfPak region compared to a few months ago.

Then, there is the rest of the world.

While there is the appearance--and even some reality--of a truce in Yemen, the failing state continues to attract Islamists and jihadi faster than a honey tree draws bees. The pirates of Somalia continue to operate even though the world's press yawns. More importantly the Koran waving, AK toting thugs of al-Shabaab continue to operate with success despite losses in recent combat in the capital Mogadishu.

The al-Shabaab jihadist leadership is feeling symptoms of the "victory disease" in that it has declared war against Kenya, Uganda, and Djibouti. The "war" which has been declared has already been defined by al-Shabaab to be one of suicide and similar terror attacks against which none of the listed countries is well prepared to counter the threat.

The Islamist faction in Nigeria has increased in both size and appeal. The greatest manifestation of this is the up-tick in attacks on Christian communities and churches. The government is going through a period of internal instability with the result it has not been able to suppress the jhadists effectively. Rather they have been repressed just enough to consolidate their structures and enhance their appeal to those who are inclined to feel persecuted or neglected.

Then there is North Africa....

Important in and of itself the countries of North Africa--Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Mali--are important. They contain vast quantities of natural resources including hydrocarbons. The region is even more critical as a potential launching pad for jihadist attacks on European targets.

These countries--in particular Mali with its vast expanses of nothing but nothingness--are the stomping ground of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM.) Currently AQIM is small, not more than a thousand adherents but one has to be bullish on its future.

AQIM is descended from the Algerian Islamist Fighting Front for Salvation and Combat which waged a very bloody war with that country's security forces in the Nineties following the Algerian army's cancellation of elections which would have brought the Islamists to power. The war was, not unlike the long war of national independence, both dirty and deadly. At the end of active hostilities the surviving jihadists withdrew to the desert wastes of Mali, an area about the size of France.

The group spent the years in the wilderness profitably, developing organizational coherence, ideological consistency, and increasingly close relations with al-Qaeda. Capitalizing on a number of grievances within the more marginal members of regional societies as well as the frustrated ambitions of the often over-educated, under-employed urban youth of Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and even Libya, AQIM gained supporters, if not active combatants.

In more recent months and years AQIM has concentrated on kidnapping foreigners including oil workers and attacking security forces. This sort of humdrum has been dramatically punctuated by spectaculars, the most eye popping of which was the December 2007 attack on a UN facility in Algeria which killed seventeen staffers as well as twenty locals.

The impoverished, ramshackle governments of Mali and Mauritania have proven themselves to be utterly incompetent in dealing with AQIM even when the group subjects the governments to intense embarrassment both domestically and internationally. The efforts underway in both countries have been complemented (but not made any less ineffective) by both the US and the EU declaring AQIM to be a terrorist entity.

Recent economic aid and preliminary military assistance have not had any measurable or even noticeable impact upon the fortunes of Mali or Mauritania. AQIM continues to operate with impunity in both. Both governments--and some Western analysts--have downplayed the spike in AQIM recruiting and operations by overstating the importance of the working relationship between the Islamist jihadists of AQIM and local criminal gangs including smugglers and kidnappers.

While these relations exist having been carefully cultivated by AQIM during the Wilderness Years, they facilitate rather than replace the abilities inherent in the group. The criminals are a sort of force multiplier and not the force itself. The AQIM force itself has been growing not only by local recruiting but as a result of individuals from Sudan, Chad, and Nigeria having come to join the "good fight." It is only a matter of time (and not much of it) before gunslingers from Iraq and places east start appearing on the overhead imagery of the desert camps.

The initiative continues to reside with the Islamist jihadists for one set of very simple and compelling reasons. The first is the existence of a very credible (to True Believers or wannabe True Believers) ideology promising eschatological rewards as well as anodynes for "this world" inequities and injustices. The second is the self-organizing nature of all the myriad Islamist jihadist groups. The non-existence of a Jihadist Central Command is the second greatest strength of the enemy in the current war(s).

The greatest strength is, of course, the unmentionable reality that the Sacred Writings of Islam contain all the justifications needed for the waging of the dirtiest of wars. Islam provides a credible basis, if interpreted by the "right" cleric for any and all wars including the possession and implied use of nuclear weapons.

The combination of religious predicates and self-organization means the Islamist jihadist enemy can move fast, change locations, agendas, and threaten different targets. It has and will retain the initiative into the foreseeable future. The nations comprising the League of Civilized States may win individual battles, claim victory in assorted little wars, but will not be able to kill the hydra of innumerable heads unless and until the nature and character of the enemy is openly acknowledged.

Don't hold your breath.

Warning! Stop the "God Gap"

The WaPo reported today on a study sent to the White House by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The Council is influential not by its reputation or size but rather by its close relationship with President Obama since the days he was an ambitious state senator.

The substance of the study is the pernicious influence of secularism on American foreign policy and relations. The thirty-two member committee which authored the report sees this as having resulted in a serious diminishment of our "capabilities." As a result the committee recommended the Obama administration make religion an "integral part of our foreign policy."

Whew!

This view is, to use a Buddhist notion, both good and bad. Religion is a very powerful motivator and consolidator of political action. The world has seen this reality more times than one cares to think about over the past several thousand years.

The world certainly sees the power and pertinacity of religion today. There is no way that an individual, let alone a responsible government, can say that any factor other than religious belief systems has been responsible for the vast majority of killing and dying the past decade.

The American political, academic, and chattering class elite has been flatly schizo about religion and its effects on human behavior--particularly since the potency of religiously predicated fear and loathing was demonstrated so vividly on 9/11. On the one hand the elite of this country (and most of the West generally) has sought to uphold the secular ideal of separation between the instruments of state and the communities of faith(s). On the other they have sought to hold Islam qua Islam harmless against the charge of any linkage between its beliefs and the consequences seen on and after that fateful September morning.

The attempt to remove Islam from the realm of political expression--including violence and terror--is both a disservice to our country and an insult to Islam. In short, insofar as there is a "God gap" in this area, it comes from our willful and repeated insistence that somehow Islam has no political dimension, and thus Muslims who engage in violence, terror, jihad, are somehow misunderstanding and misinterpreting Islam.

The reduction of the resulting "God gap" and its impact on US foreign policy consists simply of acknowledging the reality contained in the Koran and the other sacred writings of Islam. It means accepting the fact that Islam contains at its very heart the justification for suicide bombings, terror, and a constant screen of intentional prevarication meant to mislead and discommode the opposition: the infidels and apostates. It means taking Islam at its sacred word: of Islam's division of the human race into the house of peace (Islam) and the house of war (everybody else) as well as the need for constant warfare until the house of war is bought into complete subjugation.

This necessary adjustment of view does not imply a couple of important things.

The recognition of the role of Islam per se in the acts of Islamist jihadist warfare does not, for example, imply that all Muslims are ready, willing, and eager to strap on a suicide vest, or pick up an AK, or even provide money to those who are doing so. Most Muslims are not unlike the majority of adherents of other faiths. They are compartmentalized in their thinking. Some matters are for the mosque, for prayers, for the sacred days; others are secular, for this world and not the next, for today and for the individual or his family not for tomorrow and the entire Muslim "community."

Most Muslims are not willing to risk all in the hopes that by doing so they will find paradise or at least avoid hell. The same may be said of most Christians, most Jews, most Hindus and so on. But, at the same time, honesty requires that we all acknowledge that the sacred soul of Islam unlike the other major religions provides rich justification, even provocation for war and its nasty ancillaries. To do less is not only to create a "God gap" but to denature Islam, to diminish it and the power the faith has for its believers.

The second implication is simpler. The US would be ill-advised to say the least if it were to hawk its presumed Christian or (much as the Geek hates this circumlocution) the "Judeo-Christian" heritage and foundation. It does not matter how "godly" we Americans proclaim ourselves to be now or in our past, the fact remains that it is the "wrong" sort of "God" to whom we offer our thanks or our importunings. To the Muslim and even more to the political Muslim, the Islamist, Christians and, to a greater extent, the Jew is misguided at a minimum. The Christian, the Jew follow incomplete revelations, revelations polluted by man while Islam is pure and complete, the final revelation given to the "Perfect Man," the Prophet Mohammad.

In short, saying, "See, we Americans are godly," won't cut the mustard with the adversary. Our propensity for political "God talk" will be of no avail in the Manichean world of the Islamist, the political Muslim. It may play well in Peoria but it is a no-sale in those many areas of the world which give rise to Islamism and its armed twin, jihadism.

However the emphasis on the "God Gap" does require that we Americans and our European cousins both think about and talk about just what it is we believe in, just what moves us, just what our collective aspirations might be. Do our fundamental predicates transcend the purely material, the transitory fulfillment of today's needs and desires? What verities do we subscribe to, promote, stand for?

If nothing else the Chicago Council's paper may cause some thinking in and around the Oval as to what and whom we are fighting. More, some thinking as to just what we are fighting for beyond keeping our country safe from the jihadists.

At the very least the paper might cause the Nice Young Man From Chicago to go beyond the glittering generalities and distortions of history which marked his Cairo address last year and put forth a clear picture of what we Americans are for--and against. This is critical even if when all is said God is conspicuous by absence.