Hollowness And Mockery Rule Today

Readers of the London Times online have it all over the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee when it comes to having a grip on reality. By slightly over four to one, the self-selecting members of the online poll nixed the granting of the award to the Nice Young Man From Chicago. If only the POTUS could put his ego in check long enough to do the same.

Not surprisingly there is--and will continue to be--enormous speculation over just what motivated the members of the Norwegian committee to take the action which they did. The Geek rather likes the view taken by Her Geekness, "It's preemptive. How can Obama go ahead and send more troops to Afghanistan after getting the Peace Prize?"

Admittedly, Her Geekness has a slight propensity for the darker view of Norwegians, perhaps because she is of Norwegian descent. Still, the award of the PP will make it easier for Mr Obama to take the most-worst of the several options being discussed during the current "strategy review" process. Both the man and his fellow "progressives" within the Democratic Party want very, very much to end the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The US is ramping down its presence in Iraq. It will continue to do so probably at an accelerating rate given both the reality that the US has done all it can hope to do there and the heavy emphasis given nationalism by al-Maliki's political apparatus. It is not improper for the US in effect to declare victory and go home. Nor is such a declaration unsupported by the facts on the ground.

Afghanistan is a completely different proposition. A careful reading of General McChrystal's assessment shows it not simply to be grim but to paint a portrait of impending loss. While honest people may honestly differ on the General's portrayal, it behooves the senior leadership of the US to take a worst realistic case view of the dynamic in Afghanistan--and its implications over time.

The buzz from inside the Beltway is that the administration, that is to say, President Obama, are all set to forget about Islamist jihadists in general, ignore or deprecate the Taliban in particular, and focus on al-Qaeda. This shift would provide a plausible basis for denying any increase in troop strength or limiting it to one of a purely symbolic level.

The recasting of Taliban from the role of co-conspirator with al-Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks is a nifty bit of political slight of hand. Like a stage prestidigitator, Mr Obama and his assistants need only divert the attention of We the People with one hand while sawing the woman in half with the other. And, just like the audience at a magic show, We the People are ready, willing, and eager to participate in our own deception.

The Obama crew speak the truth when they describe Taliban as a purely "local" phenomenon. This "truth," like so many in politics is a partial one. Yes, Taliban is local. Local to Afghanistan. Local to Pakistan. It is also part of the global Islamic jihadist movment. This means that it is a non-local phenomenon.

What the Obama administration evidently does not want to know is the relationship between all the various Islamist jihadist entities around the world. All may be separate; all are connected. They are connected by basic ideology. By goals. By methods. By the psychological dynamics of True Belief.

What this means not only today but into the foreseeable future is that the defeat of one component is a defeat for all. A victory by one is a victory by all.

This dynamic is particularly salient when the Islamist jihadist group either defeats the US or is generally seen as having been defeated in the field by the Great Satan.

The Taliban has assumed an importance in the sump of Islamist jihadism which transcends even that enjoyed by the largely symbolic al-Qaeda. The status of Taliban comes from the simple fact that it has survived--and even prospered--under the impact of the US led invasion of Afghanistan. The status of Taliban has been enhanced further by its ongoing capacity to withstand the combined efforts of the Pakistani Army and CIA UAV strikes.

There is a really delightful, downright delicious irony in the increased status of Taliban today compared to that which it had eight years ago. It comes from the perfect synchronicity between the origins of Taliban and its recent growth.

Remember when and by whom Taliban came into existence?

That's the ticket, bucko! When the Reagan administration turned responsibility for operating the anti-Soviet fighters to the Pakistanis. We provided money and materiel. The Pakistanis, particularly the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), decided who got what and to what effect. It was an ISI officer, "Colonel Imam," who created Taliban and guided its efforts.

The colonel and his fellows from both the ISI and Army were quite successful. Taliban came out on top after the Soviet withdrawal. Taliban became the government. Sure, it was opposed by the Northern Alliance, but with Islamabad on its side, Taliban was secure.

Secure enough to offer protection to al-Qaeda. The protection was no doubt agreed to by the men behind the scenes at ISI. After all, it was a phone call from Islamabad that allowed Osama bin Laden to beat feet a few minutes ahead of the incoming cruise missiles following the USS Cole bombing.

As the first American boots hit the ground eight years ago, ISI and seconded Pakistani Army personnel were there to facilitate the withdrawal of threatened al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters and leaders. The US government knew this--and allowed it to happen.

Presumably, the reason for turning a Nelsonian eye to the flight of the jihadists included guarantees from the Pakistani government, military, and ISI that the fugitives would not return to the field. Any American decision maker who took such assurances at face value was severely deluded. But, such has happened before (and will again in the future.)

Not to put too sharp a point on the matter, the Pakistani government, military, and ISI provided sanctuary to both Taliban and al-Qaeda. The Pakistani government, military, and ISI provided at least some of the means by which Taliban recovered over the next several years. What the Pakistanis did not provide, the Americans did with the undermanned and poorly planned campaigns over the same period.

The take-away?

The US (inadvertently) and the Pakistanis (intentionally) created Taliban. The US (again inadvertently) and the Pakistanis (once more intentionally) resuscitated and buffed up Taliban.

Now, Mr Obama and his administration are poised to give not only Taliban but the entirety of the global Islamist jihadist movement a hefty shot of growth hormone. Before they do so by seeking to give peace a premature chance in Afghanistan, they would be well advised to consider a couple of bits of recent history.

The Nice Young Man From Chicago might want to talk with his Secretary of State--or better yet, her husband. He might want to explore what happened when the lawyerly Clinton administration withdrew in a huff from Somalia following a failed (and desperately poorly planned/executed) special forces raid.

If the Clintons could bring themselves to be honest, they would respond that the precipitous American flight convinced Osama bin Laden and others that the US had even less political will when faced with fatalities than the Soviets.

Then Mr Obama might inquire as to the consequences of the inept American ripostes to the al-Qaeda attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Again, if the Clintons could forget their law school predicated propensity for obfuscation and pettifoggery, they would have to fess up that in both cases the flights of cruise missiles only emboldened the Islamist jihadists.

The Clinton administration had a deep distaste for foreign affairs generally--and those of a violent nature in particular. It offended the deeply entrenched lawyers' love for matters being neat, tidy, precise, and predictable. As a result the administration attempted neat, tidy, precise, and predictable tactics with which to answer the jihadist attacks. The cruise missiles are neat, tidy, (relatively) precise, and predictable in effect.

The eminently predictable, if quite unintended, consequence of the cruise missile strikes was a further strengthening of jihadist political will and certainty of victory. That is why both Osama bin Laden and the Taliban chieftain, Omar, shrugged off the US demands following 9/11. They expected nothing more than another round of cruise missile attack.

While George W. Bush and his neocon ninnies have much to answer for, at least it can be said fairly that they demonstrated the American capacity and political will to wage up close and personal war against jihadists and those who support them. This unexpected development shook, rocked, and rolled the world of the Islamist jihadists.

The Koran waving, bomb wearing jihadists recovered their poise, their will to kill, their will to die in the name of the Faith. And, as outlined above, we helped them in the process.

The lawyers in the Oval now face the choice of doing what needs to be done--fight and defeat not simply al-Qaeda but the far more significant Taliban. Or, inflict one more defeat upon the US and all other civilized countries which will have to face the increased and lengthening black shadow of Islamist jihadist terror.

The Norwegian nincompoops have not helped Mr Obama in the slightest. By their hopelessly ill-considered action they have made peace in the world far less likely.

Mr Obama wants desperately to see himself as a "transformational" figure such as those he animadverted have preceded him to the rostrum in Oslo. The irony is that the transformation he will wreak by making the easy, popular, but disastrously wrong choice on Afghanistan will be one which makes life here and elsewhere more likely to be nasty, brutish, and short.

The Geek Takes On A Challenge

A few days ago, a reader left a comment directly challenging the Geek to consider the matter of anthropogenic climate change (aka global warming). The commentator added a pair of escape hatches for the Geek. One was that the Geek might not consider the subject to fall in the foreign policy domain. The other was that the Geek might view Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore "too big" a target to take on.

Like any combat infantryman, the Geek prefers large, highly visible targets. The reason for that is self-evident. So, escape hatch number two is closed.

As for the first way out, the Geek has to reject that as well since the weather is global as would be any significant human impact upon it. The Geek has to admit it: He's trapped. Bushwhacked.

Now for some obligatory disclaimers. The Geek is not a science wonk. Neither is he a politician. Nor a journalist. Thus, he is obviously unqualified to put his oar in the global warming swamp.

However, the Geek is a historian. That might be at least as good a qualification as having been Vice President of the United States.

It is important that we get a historical grip on the realities of climate change. At the least we have to recognise that right now, today, is not the first time the human race has experienced an alteration in the base annual temperature of, if not the entire globe, the Northern Hemisphere.

Take a brief look at a couple of well-documented historical examples.

During the Roman occupation of Britain, vineyards were planted with success throughout the southern portion of what is now England. For this to have happened, the average annual temperature would have had to be greater than it is even today. Unless one wants to posit that the hard marching legions exhaled truly awesome amounts of carbon dioxide, the cause had to rest with some component of nature other than human activity.

Later, the climate cycled again. There was the famed "Little Ice Age" of the Middle Ages. This was followed by a period when Greenland merited the name. As archaeological explorations have confirmed, Leif Erickson was not a progenitor of real estate promoter hyperbole when he named the place "green." For several generations, the Norse outposts on the southern portions of the enormous island flourished.

Then the climate cycled again. Green was defeated by white. The white of snow and ice. Cut off from resupply or trade with Norway or even the badly misnamed Iceland, the settlements withered and died.

Paleobotantical research in the northwestern United States indicates that the climate of the Cascade mountain region was formerly much warmer than it is currently. Species of vegetation which now grow only at low altitudes used to be present near the summits of peaks now crowned by rock or very sparse, cold adapted growth.

In a similar way, there is evidence that the southwestern US enjoyed a wetter and slightly warmer climate a few hundred years ago (roughly contemporaneous with the green in Greenland.) Then, the conditions changed in a short period of time becoming dryer and slightly cooler. The dryer part of the statement is the more important as it indicates a shift in the moisture carrying winds from the Pacific Ocean which would track with a larger scale cooling trend.

Clearly, there is historical evidence for the contention that the atmosphere, weather, the earth itself, constitutes a dynamic system that shifts and changes without respect for either the desires or the actions of humans. None of this is meant to imply that humans cannot or have not had at least a marginal impact on the weather. It is meant to show that the current fixation on anthropogenic climate change is overstated.

We have been going through a period of history marked by exceptionally rapid technological, economic, social, and cultural change. The past thirty or forty years in particular have been a time of extreme turbulence in all these areas. To say that it has been disquieting is to engage in understatement.

To many in the United States (and the West generally) many, if not all, of the anchor points of life have been torn loose. The downsides of science and technology, particularly the latter, have been exposed. Economic growth has been shown to not be the unmixed blessing it was supposed to be in former years. The increase in the human cargo of the planet has been demonstrated to be less than desirable, not to say an out-and-out curse.

Old beliefs, old ideologies, time hallowed values have been challenged and in some cases dethroned. In what can one rest faith has been asked by quite a few quite often.

In this context, it becomes easy to see how early, imprecise, and to some extent speculative data regarding global warming could be picked up and run with not only by media outlets in never ending pursuit of a flashy, splashy story, but by individuals in search of an agenda. An agenda not perhaps seeking power, but one where control might be asserted.

Control. That's the key word.

Control carries with it the chance of reintroducing certainty in an inherently uncertain world. Control brings with it the chance of gaining political status, authority, power.

Everyone seeks to establish as much control in and over their lives and the lives of those around them as possible and allowable. Institutions are simply individuals writ large. Scientific, journalistic, political institutions are certainly not immune to the drive for control and the goodies it brings in its wake.

Viewing with alarm is a fine way to gain control. Nothing is more alarming (with the possible exceptions of nuclear war, bioterror attacks, economic catastrophe) then the idea that the weather is changing around us. Changing for the worse.

Viewing with alarm is the journalists' stock in trade. From the if-it-bleeds-it-leads philosophy of television news to the portentous analyses of the print media, the worse life now and in the future can be portrayed--the better.

Viewing with alarm competes in the politicians' lexicon with pointing with pride. Given the choice, most pols will stick with producing fear. Grave warnings or shrill cries of peril are the best ways of securing and maintaining control.

Scientists, perhaps beset with some unsettling residual sense of guilt over the promises which past science has either failed to deliver or which have been undercut by real world demands, have not been slow to realise that viewing with alarm results in larger grants and greater respect in political circles. Contrary to a pervasive belief, scientists are human. They scramble for money, status, and power just as fast as businessmen or politicians. Scientists are as fast to run for the protective cover of group-think as journalists or academics.

Scientists are as willing to put aside objectivity when it conflicts with prejudice, predilection, or political correctness as are members of any other occupation. When the group mind changes or the winds of social-political emphasis shift, scientists are willing and eager to follow suit.

This gives rise to "junk science," which has been seen time and time again in the past century or so. It ranges from the ill-founded basis of eugenics in the early Twentieth Century to the equally dismal misuse of statistics and biology to support the anti-smoking campaigns of recent years.

The same dynamic can be seen with respect to anthropogenic climate change. A cursory look at the literature shows the oft-proclaimed scientific consensus on the matter is far less real than alleged.

Journalism plays a critical role in the exploitation and magnification of less-than-totally-credible scientific research and the tentative conclusions that careful scientists achieve. The great amplifier cranks up repeated and increasingly shrill cries of impending doom. We all know the result. We've all experienced it. Time after time.

The synergy between politicians and journalists further magnifies the findings of "science" until the cry of "something must be done!" resounds everywhere. And, dissenters are banished from the public square.

Anthropogenic climate change is the perfect issue for politicians (and others) with an agenda which includes internationalism, anti-corporate beliefs, and some sort of abstract love of the environment. It is also a made-to-order base for leaders of lesser developed countries and international organisations seeking another reason to insist upon wealth transfer at the expense of more developed nation-states.

A consensus on anthropogenic climate change has been formed. It is not comprised of scientists ranging from biologists to climatologists to atmospheric physicists. It is instead a consensus of internationalists, greens, politicians, the chattering class members who extol political correctness over mundane reality, and those who wish Marxism really, really worked in practice.

The foregoing helps explain why the Geek is not surprised by the action of the Norwegian Storting in awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the UN Panel on Climate Change. (Although the Geek doubts that many of those voting on the prize even read so much of the dense pack climate change report as the Executive Summary.)

It also helps explain why the UN has established yet another international commission, this time to address the humanitarian needs of Third World countries brought about by climate change. Is there an issue more suited for any latent (or not so latent) ambitions for power in the UN Secretariat than anthropogenic climate change?

For now, the Geek is an agnostic on the actual effects of human activity on the climate. As a historian specializing in the arcana of the power seeking process of governments, he has to cast a jaundiced eye on the credibility of the viewing-with-alarm posture adopted by so many so recently. At the same time the Geek has the sneaking suspicion that so much that we humans do is not in our best long term interest.

(That's it for now. Winter is coming. The Geek has to go cut firewood. As he cuts, he will be thinking that he could use some of Al Gore's global warming in the next few months.)