The Hardest Thing To Do--Nothing

The signs of ascendant, austere, political Islam are unmistakable in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.  The sharply Islamist party, the Renaissance Party, is expected to hold a plurality if not an outright majority in the new constituent assembly in Tunisia.  In Libya, the outgoing head of the National Transitional Council (NTC) announced changes in banking and family law to make Libya more Shariah compliant.  In Egypt, the Salifists who are the granddaddy of all the austere, politically oriented Muslim groups, are battling with the Muslim Brotherhood for the number one spot in the forthcoming government, with the inevitable result being the triumph of austere political Islam as the two entities share far more than not.

Throughout both Egypt and Libya, both Christian and Muslim communities are under direct, physical attack.  The Sufi shrines, venerated graves, and mosques in both countries have been vandalized, even destroyed by armed men bearing the symbols of Salifist affiliation.  As the world well knows, the Coptic Christians of Egypt have been brutalized, killed even, not only by mobs of the austere and violent but by security force personnel as well.  In Egypt as in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, Christians have become a highly endangered species, occupying the same slot in the local social and political ecology formerly possessed by Jews.

There can be no doubt but the austere groups--the Salifists, the Wahhibists, the Deobandis--are well on their way to establishing operational dominance in the countries of the "Arab Spring" as they are in Pakistan and the Arab Peninsula.  The Shia equivalents have done the same in Iraq.  The outcome in the next few months will not meet the expectations of the Western leaders and governments which embraced the purportedly democratic fervor of the "Arab Spring."

In the context of looming disappointment, the opinion molders of the West would be well advised to consider a chain of events which hit the tipping point twenty years ago in Algeria.  Back in 1991, Algeria was experiencing the same basic problems as ignited the "Arab Spring."  There was very high unemployment, particularly among the educated youth.  The economy was stagnant despite oil riches.  Internal divisions of tribal and class origin split the nation.  The long running autocratic government was out of ideas, and, more importantly, out of perceived legitimacy.

The government decided to call for elections.  The campaign was loud, enthusiastic, energetic.  Algerians went to the polls with joy, believing a real future beckoned.  When the votes were counted, the government, its supporting elite, and the armed forces were shocked.  The parties of the austere, political Islamists had won.

The army nullified the elections.  Next it took power directly.  Then, quite predictably, violent unrest started.  By the time the shooting stopped, more than 150,000 Algerians were dead.  Scores of thousands more had been wounded.  Even more had been jailed.  Many of these had been tortured.

Even today, more than a decade after the internal war ended, the scars remain.  Despite the return of a semblance of democracy, a sort of "guided democracy," the echoes of the police state soldier on.  Voices are quiet and furtive.  After sunset, streets are weirdly quiet, a testament to the curfews of the period of military rule.  The government supported Gaddifi until the bitter and bloody end.  And, jobs are still scarce, the economy still in doldrums, regardless of the special relation with France.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

There is no real probability that rule by austere Muslims will see the end of the myriad economic and social problems which propelled the demonstrations which brought down ben-Ali, forced the military to toss Mubarak to the wolves, and led to the NATO enhanced violence in Libya.  Prayer, beards, and putting women in garbage sacks will not assure jobs--particularly for the over educated, Western oriented youth which served as the shock troops in Tunisia and Egypt or provided many of the trigger pullers of the revolt in Libya.

Islam and the Koran will not, pace the Muslim Brotherhood's two best known slogans, be the answer.  When the faces of disappointed revolutionaries are rubbed in the mud of reality, the most probable result will be another round of violence.  Also, topping the list of outcomes to be expected will be the charges levied by the austere Muslims running affairs.

The folks in charge will accuse a sinister conspiracy on the part of the "Zionists" and the US for any and all failures.  There will be calls for jihad to defend the new, faith based governments against the cabal of Jews and Americans.  The path blazed by Iran (and to a lesser extent, Pakistan) will be traveled by the incoming regimes of Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt.

The countries will either go the way of successfully focusing anger on the mythical enemies in Israel, the US, and Europe or dissolve in a welter of internal war and blood.  In the latter case, it is to be expected that the military will step in to restore order in a manner akin to the process which drew a bright blood red line through Algeria twenty years back.

Absent a miracle of Biblical proportions which will do the impossible--squaring the circle of austere Islam with the real requirements for success in the contemporary world--the picture which will be painted across much of the Mideast and North Africa over the coming months and years will be ugly as hell.  The challenge to opinion molders and senior governmental wallahs will be to watch.  To watch while doing nothing.

Given the past record of Western colonialism, neo-colonialism, or plain vanilla intervention and interference, the West, including the US, has no viable alternative.  Rightly or wrongly, many, perhaps most, citizens of the countries in the regions see the West, its governments, its institutions, its corporations, its policies, its militaries as the props and supporters of dictatorships, the adversaries of indigenous desires, internal perceptions of dignity, as both indirect and direct exploiters, and as "the Crusaders" bent on the destruction of Islam.  The truth or falsity of this belief set is irrelevant.  What is relevant is simply that the beliefs are widely and deeply held.

The only viable option for the West, for the US, is to keep out.  The people in the several countries must travel the very rough road alone.  We must not even seek to use "soft power" methods to shorten the journey or pave over the worst parts of the road.

All we can or should do is make it clear that internal affairs of any and every Muslim majority state is of no concern to us.  Beyond this, we must make it plain that any export of political Islam, most importantly, any export by violent means, will be met by robust, very robust means.  As long as the austere, politically motivated Muslim governments keep it at home, they will be left to their own devices, but should they cross their borders, we will stop them by means of our own choosing.

This posture will be difficult, very difficult for NGOs given to humanitarian goals to accept let alone support.  It is an unfortunate truth that any approach other than patient watching and vigilant guarding of our interests will make life worse both for us and the people who live under the sway of Salifists and others of their ilk.  This is a stinging nettle of the sharpest sort, but we all need to get a grip on it.

Going To Hell In (Allah's) Bucket

Due to cloudy weather, the demands of woodcutting (winter is a-coming on) and the debilities of age, the Geek has been kicking back reading the news from around the world and generally coming to the conclusion that a large segment of the globe and its attendant population is going to hell in a bucket.  And, the hand carrying the bucket is a collective one--the aggregate of the large and rapidly growing advocates of austere, political Islam.  Not to put too fine a point on the knife of reality, the single largest problem resident in the global political order is not the economy, nor is it "global warming," not even American "arrogance" and "unilateralism."

The problem confronting all of us today, whether or not we like the idea, is simply Islam.  Islam is the necessary and sufficient foundation of that most detestable phenomenon, austere political Islam.  In both its violent and non-violent forms, political Islam, particularly the most common sort, the variety growing from the austere roots of Salifism, Wahhibism, and Deobondism, constitutes the single largest threat to international and national stability, order, and peace.

In all the hosannas ringing out during the days of the "Arab Spring," a simple and critical fact was ignored by the political and opinion molding elites in the US and the rest of the West.  That seemingly willfully ignored ground truth was the power of austere political Islam to attract and mobilize adherents during periods of great political, social, and economic turbulence.  Also ignored by all the applause makers of the West was the companion fact: As uncertainty increased due to the many, often violent changes in all aspects of life, the appeal of austere political Islam would necessarily grow.

Humans are genetically programmed to fear uncertainty, to be risk averse, to seek security in the storms of change.  Islam, more than any other religion promises certainty, assures security--if only the rules of the faith are followed absolutely and completely.  Islam also provides a roster of acceptable scapegoats upon whom blame can be foisted and whose persecution onto death is given positive sanction.  The combination of rule based security and approved scapegoats affords a powerful appeal to austere Islam of the Salifist sort or of the Wahhibist variety.

The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt caught it perfectly in its slogan: Islam is the solution.

When fear or apprehension or anxiety or insecurity threaten, the bracing and strict requirements of austere Islam in its political expression do constitute the solution.  The irrefutable fact that life under the rigor of austere Islam is unlivable in practice is no bar to the inherent appeal of the promise given by the faith.  The equally irrefutable fact that Islam is inherently incompatible with modern economics, contemporary technology, or even the oft asserted "universal" rights of all humans is likewise no barrier to its attractiveness to people suddenly confronted with all enveloping upheaval.

We have seen the direct correlation between social and political tumult and the rise of austere political Islam in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, and, over the past nine months, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.

It is worth noting that ten and more years ago, Pakistan was peaceful.  Back then, before George W. Bush presented the "with us or suffer the consequences" ultimatum to the government of Pakistan, sectarian violence was essentially unknown.  Also a stranger to Pakistani life was the horrid specter of "honor killings."  Also absent were suicide bombings.  Even the FATA was relatively quiet.  Karachi was not the political murder capital of Asia (or, to err on the side of accuracy, the world.)

The peace left never apparently to return with the influx of Taliban from Afghanistan.  The ISI undoubtedly believed it could continue to exercise full operational control over Taliban, the Haqqani network, and all the other entities predicated on violent political Islam.  ISI and the rest of the military and government committed an error in this belief.  In justification stands the reality that the destruction of critical elements of traditional society and its polity which occurred in the wake of the Afghan invasion promoted an unexpectedly rapid growth in fear and uncertainty which resulted in an ever widening recruit pool for the advocates of austere violent political Islam.  Events outpaced the capacity of ISI to control its monsters.

In the Big Three of the "Arab Spring," Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the organizations of austere political Islamists were not only the only groups ready to take advantage of the new situation.  That was reasonably widely understood even if belittled here in the US and elsewhere in the West.  What went by unnoticed was the automatic appeal of austere political Islam to the uprooted, the suddenly unmoored, the majority of the people living in all three countries.

Islam is the answer,  the solution for those who crave certainty, security, a firm mooring in the new, white waters of "democratic change."  Only austere political Islam pretends quick, easy, certain remedies for all the myriad ills resident in the gales of social, political, and economic change blowing through the high deserts and crowded cities of each and all of the Big Three.  Not surprisingly, the Salifists, the Wahhibists, have gained the most support in record time.

Equally unsurprising has been the fast boost increase in "honor killings," and overt persecution of Christians, which has been seen with particular drama in Egypt.  While most visible in the Land of the Pharaohs, these uniquely Islamic crimes have been occurring in Tunisia and Libya.  (It is worth noting that fear of the same happening in Syria has motivated Christians and other sectarian minorities to side with the Baathist regime regardless of other considerations.)

In Libya, the values and imperatives of austere political Islam have been demonstrated in the persecution of sub-Saharan Africans.  The rebels have averred repeatedly that the victims (if, indeed, there were any) had been Gaddafi "mercenaries."  This excuse is fantasy.  The vast majority of black Africans singled out for persecution were not fighters but simply guest workers, most of whom happened to be non-Muslim.  This second consideration is non-trivial when assessing the basis of rebel behavior.

The groups advocating austere political Islam will be the new ruling class in each and every of the Big Three.  The inevitable failure of the new regimes to address effectively the economic concerns of the citizenry will be met by charges of "infidel" or "Zionist" or "apostate" directed counter-revolutionary conspiracies.  Blood will flow in attempts to quash dissent or divert attention.  The afflicted countries will, like Pakistan, become less rather than more stable, less rather than more peaceful, less rather than more prosperous.  Dissent and repression will lock in a mutual and deadly embrace.

As the societies grow less stable and life less secure, there will be an accelerating move to more austere, more inclusive forms of political Islam.  Nothing else can be expected given that tumult and fear demand the anodyne of certainty--the only anodyne promised by Salfiism and the rest of the austere ilk.  The predictable failure of Salifism and the rest to provide an effective cure will (as in Iran) result in more and more repression.

The search for outside sponsors of failure along with the religiously sanctioned need for scapegoats will have a high probability of resulting in war.  War with Israel is highest on the list, but there can be other candidates as well--including Turkey which can be cast in the role of the model which failed or branded with interference in internal affairs given Ankara's search for Ottoman Empire 2.0.  The mere fact that the combined armed forces of the Big Three even if augmented by other Arab or Muslim states will be defeated will be of no moment should the austere Islamists running the show see war as the only way to stay in power.

Looking at the Mideast or North Africa or Northwest Asia or almost anywhere austere political Islam has and is making headway provides no pleasure.  Rather, it provokes a strong desire to engage in projectile vomiting.

Only ten years and a month ago, the world looked like a good place to enjoy life.  Thanks to advocates of austere violent political Islam, that all changed.  Worse, there is no way back to the good years before the Muslims of Osama bin Laden's world view forced the entire globe into Allah's bucket on the road to hell.

Ethno-Religious Democracy And The Next Mideast War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The point?

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

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

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

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


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

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

Pleasant thought, eh?

Egypt (Or Its Generals) Looks To Ataturk's Turkey

In a set of moves which is in no way surprising, the supreme command of Egypt's armed forces is seeking a continued, large role in the upcoming government.  The reason for the sudden political aspirations of the generals is not hard to unpack.  They are more than a tad scared of the Muslim Brotherhood and other advocates of political Islam.

Both the Washington Post and New York Times have taken note of the development.  That implies the US government will soon do so as well.  One would hope that the Deep Thinkers of the current administration have already taken cogniscence of this development, but you can never be sure given the number of blunders which constitute the Obama and Company's excuse for a Mideast policy.

It is clear both from the US media accounts and those appearing in Egypt that the senior leadership of the Egyptian armed forces sees the military as the guarantor not only of territorial sovereignty but also the integrity of the government.  As the ultimate protector of state, nation, and government, the Turkish model is completely accurate.

Until the recent stare-down between the Islamist predicated AKP and the military, the people of Turkey not only allowed but expected the army to take over whenever the civilian government was unable or unwilling to put a stop to internal violence of whatsoever origin and goal.  Parsing the public remarks of Egyptian generals in recent days, it is evident that they see the army as the only neutral party able to impose and maintain peace between highly motivated contestants willing and able to resort to violence in pursuit of political goals.

The armed forces' moves in the direction of greater authority to be exercised over an indeterminate span of time has perturbed some of those who provided the muscle of the "Lotus Revolution."  Many of these individuals see the armed forces' counsel, the transitional government, as having stolen the fruits of the revolution, of having become a set of Mubarak clones.  This sense of betrayal has motivated the recent sit-in demonstrations in the same Cairo square as those which brought down Mubarak.

Months ago as Mubarak prepared to call it quits, the demonstrators chanted, "The Army and the people are one!"  Now to many, the memory of that chant rings hollow and empty.  Many in the younger demographic segment of the Egyptian population no longer see the armed forces as a protector or the powerful force multiplier which assured Mubarak had no choice but abdication.

The generals who run Egypt behind the screen of carefully chosen civilian political nonentities have made concessions to the outraged "kids" in the square.  Hundreds of senior police officials were forced to take early retirement.  Mubarak, his sons, and close associates have been arrested and face trial on a number of charges even though the armed forces high command had promised initially to spare the aging autocrat this fate.

The concessions have not been enough to satisfy the dissidents.  They could not be.  The very success of the protesters assures that.  In a completely understandable way, the heady aroma of having dumped the dictator has clouded a lot of folk's judgement.  The armed forces commanders have recognized something of which the dissidents are either totally unaware or, at best, have a dim awareness.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to any sort of secular Egypt.  The Brotherhood has employed very slick public relations moves to convince many in the West, in the US particularly, that the MB is not a collection of Muslim crazies with delusions of power.  The leadership, or at least the visible portion, has denied any ambition of taking power--immediately.  They have publicly distanced themselves from any imposition of Shariah upon the state--again immediately.  They have declined to run a candidate for president and will not enter a candidate in many of the upcoming parliamentary elections.  The message is: See, we are not hell-bent on taking over Egypt, of establishing a new Cairo caliphate.

Not unlike the senior echelons of the world's foremost seat of Islamic learning, al-Azhar university, located in Cairo, the commanders of the Egyptian military do not believe the Muslim Brotherhood's protestations of innocence.  Alone or in conjunction with other apostles of political Islam, including those willing to use violence, the Muslim Brotherhood will move as quickly as is politically expedient to establish a Shariah compliant state, a Cairo Caliphate.  This is what the generals hope to preclude.

Kemal Ataturk had the same fear in the wake of World War I and the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire.  He and his fellow officers knew the power of Islam, its raw emotional force acting on a people who had been oppressed and humiliated for years.  The inevitable internal violence which would accompany a religious conflict would destroy Turkey at worst or, at best, prevent its entering the modern world for generations.  The Turkey of Ataturk would be resolutely secular--and the army would guarantee that.

In the days following the Second World War, the Turks discovered that secular political ideologies could be as violent and disruptive of social and political life as any religious conflict.  Thus, the army was expected, empowered really, to step in and take over whenever political passions overflowed the dikes of civil discourse.  Much as the periodic military takeovers bothered the states and people of Western Europe, the Turks saw them not only as unexceptional but quite necessary.

(Her Geekness was a student at METU in the early Seventies when the Left and Right exchanged gunfire on campus.  She found no dissenting voices--save among the ideological combatants--when the army moved onto the streets and lowered the noise level to a saner level.)

The Egyptian generals are not any less perceptive than Ataturk and his supporters.  They know the Egyptians and the Muslim Brotherhood with the fine grained detail that no foreign observer can muster.  They also are aware that the armed forces of Egypt (like those of Turkey in an earlier period) have a level of universal approbation that no other institution possesses.  They fear the passions of a long oppressed people which can be tapped with ease in the full flush of democracy poorly understood as to practice.  They fear with good reason the potential power of the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, a power which can unleash the passions with no good result for Egypt.

The move by the senior commanders to keep a firm hand on the levers of power is both prudential and justifiable.  It can be hoped that they use the firm hand with caution and restraint, a caution and restraint which was often lacking under Mubarak and Sadat.  If they fail to use their authority in a controlled and minimal way, their failure will bring more problems, problems which cannot be solved by tanks and troops.  For decades the Turks played the game well, so there is a paradigm for the Egyptian military to follow.

It is questionable whether or not the Obama administration recognizes the motives of the generals in Egypt.  It can be hoped that the Deep Thinkers will understand that stability in Egypt and the region requires not only an exercise in plausible democracy but also mechanisms to assure the passions will not swamp a civil society and a polity sailing in new and troubled waters.

Well, one can hope.  Can't one?

Need A Country Commit Suicide In The Name Of Human Rights?

The British Prime Minister has put the UK in the center of the storm which has been brewing for years both in Europe and the US.  In a speech before an international conference on terrorism held in Munich, David Cameron mounted a direct frontal assault on the bastion of multi-culturalism.  In spring loaded responses, assorted UK Muslim groups as well as fellow travelers from the British Left countered that Mr Cameron by his stance promoted, among other evils, racism, xenophobia, marginalizing Muslims, and, horror above horror, giving aid and comfort to the far right English Defense League.

In his remarks, the PM drew a sharp distinction between Islam per se and political Islam, particularly that of the violent sort.  He announced that the government would be reversing a course followed by his Labor predecessors.  Instead of remaining silent--or, in fact, even facilitating by money and public facilities--groups and individuals who espoused positions on gender issues, law, and democracy repugnant to defining British values and norms, the government would robustly counter these.  No longer would Her Majesty's ministers genuflect before the multi-cultural totems of de facto segregation, turning a Nelsonian blind eye to "preachers of hate" or allowing separate development of non-majority social and cultural groups.

In the tenor and scope of his remarks, Mr Cameron followed the path explored earlier by German chancellor Merkel and French president Sarkozy.  Not that this reality inhibited the automatic excoriations pouring from both Muslims and the denizens of the Left.  The views offered by the Big Three of the European Union may be offensive to the deeply held beliefs of the "sophisticated" and ever-so-tolerant elites of Europe (and the US) but accurately reflect not only the realities which have insensibly developed in Europe over the past couple of decades but the perceptions of most of the hoi polloi of the UK, France, Germany, and, for that matter, the rest of Western Europe.

As Cameron made clear, the relation between Muslim groups and Muslims generally within the UK and the majority population of that country has profound implications for the internal security of the realm.  Due to rulings by the overreaching European Court of Human Rights, it has become virtually impossible for British authorities to deport even very dangerous, terror inclined believers in violent political Islam.  The same unintended consequence of the ever-so-tolerant-and-accepting elites' decision to invest very broad powers in the unelected, unaccountable Human Rights Court applies to every member of the European Union.

As a report Thursday by the top monitor of counterterrorism in the UK, Lord Alexander Carlile, made plain, the result of the European Human Rights Court decisions taken in conjunction with the rapid growth of violent political Islam in the UK has been to make the country a "safe haven" for terrorists and their supporters.  Similarly, the briefings given to visiting American congresspeople by MI-5 emphasized that the security organ as well as the police are nearly overwhelmed by the number of primarily young Muslims who have surrendered to the appeal of violent political Islam.  The clear implication for the Americans was the threat could not be confined to the UK but could easily cross the Atlantic.

This dreary reality underscores the earlier lessons from Germany.  A decade ago it was the ever-so-tolerant German milieu which allowed the nurturing of several well-educated, economically well-off, young Muslim men to gravitate to the flag of violent political Islam with results which arrested the world's attention on 9/11.  Even with that capstone to a series of earlier outbreaks of violent political Islam, it took years before the German government made any moves to inhibit the activities of those who pursue the defeat of the West.  The power and seductive appeal of multi-culturalism held too great a sway with the German political, media, and intellectual "elite" to do otherwise.

France traveled a similar route albeit without the enormity of 9/11.  Years of violence by "youth" were waved aside by the elite as being nothing more than rage and frustration caused by economic and political marginalization.  It took great political courage as well as the growth of a backlash by French people wondering what had happened to "their France" before the government commenced actions intended, in essence, to compel and end the self-inflicted Muslim segregation from the majority population, the majority culture, the norms, values, and world views which defined the French nation.

Cameron is calling for nothing less.  He is demanding an end to segregation.  True, the segregation was in large measure well-intended by the True Believers in multi-culturalism and cultural relativism.  These True Believers, members in good standing of the self-selected, self-anointed hoi ollogoi, really thought that separate development of Muslim communities following their own native customs and religious traditions would benefit them and, by some mysterious process, the country as a whole.  Well intended segregation even when embraced wholeheartedly by those being segregated is still segregation.  And, segregation harms all, those who are put in the ghettos and those who do the putting.

No matter what gloss is put on the matter, there are no upsides to segregation.  The record of history is very clear on that.  Whether the Jews of Europe or Americans of African ancestry in this country, segregation does only damage, grave, even well nigh onto fatal damage.  The intentions of multi-culturalists does not change this reality one iota.

Cameron, like Merkel and Sarkozy before him, called for (to use a lawyer loved phrase) a bright and shining line to be drawn between Islam as a religion and Islam derived political ideology.  While that sounds like a good idea, it is one which is fraught with danger in application.

The fundamental difficulty is simply that there is no dividing line between Islam as a religion and Islam as a political ideology.  Islam is a self-consciously totalistic system covering all aspects of life, the profane as well as the sacred, the political and economic as well as the theological and eschatological.

On one level Islam is a very simple religion to accept and practice.  Its five pillars are straight forward.  Its basic requirements and strictures are likewise simple, direct and not at all difficult either to articulate or to follow.  The basics of being a good Muslim are arguably simpler in application than are those of being a good Catholic or a good Presbyterian or a good reform Jew.

On  another level, Islam is a very difficult religion to practice in its totality.  This is particularly true when one is a Muslim living in a secular Western country.  The assorted imams, ayatollahs, and sheiks who have preached on the utter incompatibility of Islam and democracy are not perverting the faith.  If, as these clerics believe, all law must come directly from the deity, then the laws of a democracy being made by men are anathema unless they are somehow certified by a cleric as fully compatible with the law of the deity.

Similarly, if, as these clerics preach, women are inherently inferior to men by the will and design of the deity, then any human created laws to the contrary are anathema.  The notion of gender equality is directly contrary to the expressed will of the deity and is an attack upon the deity.  The same reasoning applies to any number of other features of life and law in contemporary Western states.

The lack of any separation between the political state and the religious community, which is a baseline position articulated by any number of Muslim clerics, as well as the absence of any concept akin to the radical British development nearly a thousand years ago of the "King's Peace" assure immense practical difficulties confront Mr Cameron's goal of full integration of Muslims into the larger British comity.

Mr Cameron must recognize this as he asserted in his speech a truth which will not sit well with either many Muslims or their multi-cultural supporters.  He averred that the responsibility to conform with larger, defining British norms, values, world views, and traditions resides with the individual Muslim.  To put it bluntly, Cameron challenged each and every individual Muslim to decide between accepting the defining characteristics of British culture, society, and polity on the one hand or getting out of the UK on the other.

The choice is blunt but fair.  A society, a nation, as well as the state, the polity, is defined by a set of values, norms, traditions, world views, all of which have been developed over generations.  The job of defining is never finished so each and every nation as well as the state which embodies it is a work in progress.  This means that each and every Muslim by agreeing to accept the norms and values currently governing the nation and state in which he lives can enter into the process of the never completed work in progress.

The UK or the Germany or the France or the US of a century hence will not resemble its current incarnation in many aspects.  That is a given.  This implies that Muslims are free to do what so many non-majority groups have done in each of these countries for many generations now--accept the present in order to participate in creating the future.

This ground truth implies that Prime Minister Cameron has issued an invitation which is far greater than the explicit ultimatum.  He has invited the Muslims to leave their cushioned ghetto and enter the mainstream in order to be full participants in creating the UK and the British nation of the years to come.  Seen this way, it is hard to understand why the Muslim groups and their Left wing apologists did other than praise the PM for his generous invitation.

As well as inviting Muslims to join the "Big Society," Mr Cameron has issued a challenge to the elites of Europe to reevaluate their stance.  Implicit in his remarks is a demand that each and every member of the EU as well as their component elites step back and reexamine just what human rights might mean.  He has implicitly demanded that the Human Rights Court be looked at closely and harshly.

Most particularly in the sub-text of his speech, Cameron has rejected the stance of the Court on the balance between the rights and privileges of an individual and the legitimate security needs of a state.  In all too many of its decisions the Court, has seemed to be of the mind that a state must commit suicide in order that a single person's human rights might receive the most generous of protections.

To his credit the British PM has challenged that dubious proposition.  This challenge has come rather late in the day, but finally it has been made.

Hosni Mubarak, The Shah Of 2011?

Over the last couple of days as demonstrators, albeit in diminished numbers, took on the security forces of Egypt, the US has been issuing contradictory statements which are redolent of those made in 1979 in the weeks before the plug was pulled on the Shah of Iran.  Secretary of State Clinton, for example, has tacked between imploring the government of Hosni Mubarak to refrain from suppression and to seize the opportunity to meet the grievances of the demonstrators and averring that the Mubarak regime was "stable"--presumably even without granting ground on the demonstrators demands.

The "stability" of Mubarak's rule is identical to that of the late Shah's.  That is to say, it has the appearance of short term order being (mis)represented by Washington as the reality of long-term stability.  To err on the side of accuracy, it is not so much that the Deep Thinking Global Strategists of the current and prior administrations have simply represented the Egyptian government as stable over the long haul as they have inappropriately invested the regime with capacities it never has possessed.

During the Cold War this confusion of the autocrat's ability to impose and maintain public and political order on a day-to-day basis with the substance of long term stability based upon a perception of existential and functional legitimacy widely shared within the country's population drove most of the glaring errors of US foreign policy.  It was this confusion of the short and long term which joined the US shoulder and hip with the most distasteful dictators in the world.  When night fell as it must on each of these despicable creatures, a roster which includes the Shah, the legacy was one of profound anti-American sentiment which took firm hold not only on the new rulers but the population at large.

The long practice of supporting odious and repressive regimes simply because they assured Washington that the enemies of America were their enemies as well went on a (short) hiatus following the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The rise of violent political Islam brought the Cold War golem out of the tomb and back into the policies of the US government.

Hosni Mubarak made the transition of Dictator Meriting American Support due to his anti-Soviet, anti-Communist stance to the new role of Dictator Meriting American Support because he was resolutely opposed to violent political Islam, at least the sort espoused by the Egyptian based Muslim Brotherhood.  Of course, ole Hosni had reinforced his position by carving a key if sometimes ambiguous role for himself in the Mideast Peace Process.  (You gotta admire professional competence even in the service of a rotten cause--the perpetuation of Rule By Hosni.)

It is necessary to recall that Mubarak came to power courtesy of a subscriber to violent political Islam having gunned down his predecessor Anwar Sadat thirty years ago.  Mubarak moved quickly and effectively to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood and other exponents of violent political Islam.  The jails, torture chambers, and graveyards were filled to capacity by Egyptians who either did or might have supported violent political Islam.  Since then Mubarak and his effective internal security organs have launched waves of repression separated by carefully calculated intervals of tolerance.

Many of the periodic tolerance festivals remind the observer of Mao's Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom campaign which encouraged dissent in order that all dissenters might expose themselves and subsequently be liquidated.  At the same time Mubarak did take measures which allowed followers of political Islam to engage in the allegedly semi-secular political life of Egypt.  This served to tie the Muslim Brotherhood to the government at least to a limited extent and gave the government some relief from public criticism as a result of the Muslim Brotherhood's highly effective social welfare programs.  (And, never forget, it gave additional opportunities for the several secret political police agencies to penetrate the Brotherhood and related entities with greater effect.)

All of this implies that Mubarak is a crafty and calculating political survivor.  His use of robust coercion, official terror as well as his willingness to rule by decree when such is either necessary or merely desirable show Hosni is one determined dude, determined to hold on to power by all means necessary be they fair or foul.  Taken together, these aspects of the Egyptian dictator's character indicate strongly that he is not going to exit the stage easily or gracefully despite his advanced years (he is on the wrong side of eighty) and less than splendid health.

There is no sign that the Egyptian army is likely to emulate its Tunisian equivalent.  Nor have the internal security police shown any suddenly developed sense of tender mercy or squeamishness.  Without defection by either or both of these instruments of state power, the probability of Mubarak acceding to the importuning of people power and getting on a jet plane to Saudi Arabia is very slim to none.

The dissidents are cranking up for another round of monster rallies on Friday following prayer services   These may be a real humdinger.  But, they will not mean the end of Hosni.

The anti-government movement is diffuse, lacking a national stature leader (although ElBaradie is headed back home from Vienna) and confined in the main to those meriting the loose sobriquet, "youth."  On the downside, Mohamad ElBaradei is lacking street cred due to his frequent and prolonged absences from Egypt since announcing his presidential candidacy, which impairs his status as a leader of the demonstrations and the movement of which they are the most dramatic sign.

Another very big unknown is the intention of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Brotherhood has been on the sidelines.  Perhaps its leadership cadre has been taken by surprise but that seems unlikely.  Far more probable is the assessment that the Brotherhood is being cautious.  The leaders most probably do not expect the demonstrations to have any useful outcome beyond radicalizing an ever larger segment of the politically disaffiliated.  This means the Brotherhood will have a much larger potential recruitment pool in the months to come.

Another, less probable, motive for the Brotherhood's bystander posture is they are waiting for the main chance.  In the event that Mubarak does decide that a trip to Saudi Arabia is in his best interests, the Brotherhood will be in the catbird seat for a takeover bid.  The Brotherhood is very large, quite well organized, highly motivated, sufficiently financed, possesses tendrils nearly everywhere (including the armed forces), and can count on the support of the clerics and faculty of al-Azar university.  In short, it is the only entity in Egypt that can take control of the government.

The ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood to the seat of power in Egypt would be a very real nightmare for the Deep Thinkers of Global Strategy in Washington.  The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt could equal the mullahocracy of Iran as a sinister actor in the region and on the global stage.  From the perspective of either Israel or the US, the Muslim Brotherhood taking control of Egypt is a worst case scenario--on steroids.

There is not much the US government can do to directly influence events in Egypt in the short run.  And, there is not a whole lot more it can do in the longer term.  In a very real sense we chopped off our options when we climbed into bed with Mubarak back in the days following Camp David.  The perceived imperatives of the Cold War and the quest for Mideast peace pushed the US and Mubarak together in a marriage of mutual necessity.  When the Cold War ended, the continued search for the chimera of Arab-Israeli peace precluded ending the marriage.

The coming of Osama bin Laden and with him the challenge of violent political Islam prevented any sane and objective reassessment of the American support for the Egyptian autocrat.  We were stuck with him.  And, stuck with him today we remain.  Our least-worst option is to hope that (and in a low key way, assist) Mubarak remains in power.

Mubarak may be as unpalatable as cyanide but the Muslim Brotherhood would be much, much worse.  And, that, bucko, is all the choice we have.

A Dilemma Always Has Two Horns

Once again the schizoid view of Islam is on display.  Over the past week two diametrically opposing understandings of the relation of Islam the religion and terrorist acts have been advanced by men skilled in the use of the written word for purposes of convincing.

One view, the benevolent one, is offered by Time, Online in the person of Romash Ratnesar.  Mr Ratnesar is an editor-at-large who contributes a weekly column on national security and foreign affairs.  In this piece he takes the view that homegrown terrorism of the violent political Islamic sort is a myth conveniently manufactured and exploited by assorted political and media figures in order to advance an agenda.

In the course of the essay Mr Ratnesar deprecates the assorted homegrown actors as insignificant people who generated plots doomed to fail even had the FBI not used undercover assets to gain control of the plotters and abort their efforts.  In Mr Ratnesar's view the wannabe martyrdom seekers were all pathetic members of the gang that couldn't shoot straight and barely deserved the attention they received.

In the course of marginalizing the homegrowns, Mr Ratnesar blithely discounted the Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal, as having motivations which were "not strictly ideological" and by asserting that in any event his targets were not exclusively civilians.  This animadversion is breath taking in its scope and baseless nature to say the least.

The opposite viewpoint was adopted by Barry Rubin in the Jerusalem Post.  Rubin is well known as an advocate of Israel and a well-informed attacker of all things relating to political Islam both violent and peaceful.  In this commentary he considers the nature, scope, and probable impact of a fatwa issued recently by Dr Imad Mustafa of Cairo's very prestigious al-Azar university, the leading theological institution of Sunni Islam in the world.

Dr Mustafa, in his fatwa, not only rehearses the traditional understanding of defensive jihad, but defines defensive with such breadth that nearly any act can be construed as an attack upon Islam which invokes defensive jihad as an absolute obligation upon every believer.  But Dr Mustafa goes far beyond defense.

In his fatwa this al-Azar professor invokes a basis for offensive jihad.  One of the acceptable causes of offensive jihad against a non-Muslim majority state is any action by that state which in any way restricts the absolute freedom of Muslims to use and observe every stricture or requirement of the religion--including such cultural additions as the burqa, polygamy, or child brides.  Other causes of offensive jihad include the purging of all religions other than Islam from all the states of the Arabian Peninsula and--most sweeping of all--"to extend God's religion."

Guacamole!  The good professor in this fatwa has made a mighty step back to the future--bringing back the imperatives of the Seventh and Eighth centuries for use in the Twenty-first!

While the Mustafa Fatwa may be utterly irrelevant to the majority of Muslims abroad and here in the US as they pursue the challenges and opportunities of daily life, the fact remains that the most extreme of the advocates of violent political Islam have received the blessings as it were of the most important school of Islamic religious studies in the world.  The Mustafa Fatwa empowers every cleric, every loud mouthed exponent of the Triumph of the Will of Allah (as I see it) to exhort violence against any and all non-Muslims wherever they might live.  It is all that an Osama bin Ladin could have hoped and prayed for--and more.

Stripped to its essentials, the Mustafa Fatwa is a universal declaration of religious war against any and all infidels everywhere.  Compared to this fatwa the call for the First Crusade preached by Pope Urban over a thousand years ago was an invitation to an interfaith love feast.

Professor Mustafa's fatwa must come as an embarrassment to President Obama, the WaPo, and the legions of Islamophiles littering the American and Western European elites.  The Mustafa Fatwa puts the lie to all the assertions these past years that terror acts are the product of an insignificant number of individuals who have hijacked Islam for their own narrow and perverse purposes.  At least in the mind of Professor Mustafa and others of al-Azar university, the concepts of defensive (construed broadly) jihad and, now, offensive jihad reside in the mainstream of Islamic jurisprudence.  Rather than being a perversion of the religion, jihad is an obligation upon each and every believer.  In short, it is the religion.

Still one must be cautious in responding to the broadened challenge represented in the Mustafa Fatwa.  It is not the final word.  It is subject to debate within the community of religious scholars.  It can be repudiated by others even in the al-Azar faculty.  And, it most assuredly can be ignored by believers generally as are most fatwas.

The best basis for policy still remains a careful distinction between Islam qua Islam and political Islam which is an ideology predicated on Islam as a religion.  It is even more critical to distinguish between violent and non-violent political Islam as each requires a different approach to combat successfully.  It is better policy to accept even the conceit advanced by Mr Ratnesar to the effect that homegrown terrorists are few, far between, and relatively inconsequential in their acts.

Policy must focus upon the most pressing threats while never totally ignoring the context which now includes the expansive but well historically rooted Mustafa Fatwa.  The most critical threats are those emanating from overseas, from the FATA or from Yemen.  This implies that a posture of close and careful monitoring of those within the US most susceptible to the messages from abroad must be maintained and even enhanced as new intelligence and new methods allow.

Longer term policy should focus upon ways in which the appeals of jihad might be lessened.  These include the usual suspects of moving to enhance democracy and responsible, responsive government in majority Muslim states and actions oriented toward economic development, particularly the empowerment of women.  But longer term policy must also consider ways in which the splits endemic to Islam can be used to benefit peace, tolerance, and a reduction of the appeal of violent political Islam.  High on this list of it-takes-a-Muslim approaches is that of reinvigorating the unfortunately moribund Sufi school of Islam.

It is also important that policy be based on a more accurate understanding of the ways in which fear, insecurity, and a sense of marginalization have factored into the rise of violent political Islam.  Many of the psychological preconditions for violent political Islam are inherent to certain but not all of the different schools of Islam.  Others are the inevitable consequences of living in authoritarian and repressive environments.  Still others are the results of effective propaganda delivered by clerics with an agenda.

None of these factors exist outside the competence of the relevant agencies of government to comprehend, and act upon.  The problem has come from an unwillingness of these agencies and their superiors to think outside of narrow, ideologically determined lines.  One use for the Mustafa Fatwa and its slap in the face of all Islamophiles is that of thinking the previously unthinkable.  By doing that, and only by doing that can the US move beyond purely military responses or the reflexive view that economic improvement and education cures all of the jihadist syndrome.

The US has been facing the challenge of violent political Islam for thirty plus years now.  It is about time that someone look beyond the horizons of the conventional wisdom.  Professor Mustafa has given a very good motive to do just that.

Tunisians Better Have Fun While They Can

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Calling It Like It Is

It is hard to tell very unpopular truths.  In the West to do so is to run the risk of falling afoul the myrmidons of political correctness, the minions of multi-cultural affection, or simply those who cow down to the fear of maybe, perhaps, offending someone's sensitivities somewhere, somehow.  In other countries, Pakistan is on the list near the top, to tell it like it is means to run the very real and present hazard of being killed by a person so warped by the perverse messages of faith as to lose his mental and moral moorings.

In the recent weeks a pair of blunt spoken advocates of human rights, particularly the right to one's personal conscience, have made it plain what is at stake in the struggle between the advocates of violent political Islam and their opponents.  The pair are French president Nicholas Sarkozy and Pakistani member of parliament Sherry Rehman.

In a speech a week ago to an interfaith conference in Paris, M. Sarkozy set his sights on the Mideast.  In specific he drew a steady bead on the violence perpetrated by Muslims on Christians.  He stated the campaign of bombings, shootings, beatings, and general intimidation was an effort at "religious cleansing."  The phrase is redolent of the damning "ethnic cleansing" against which the US and other countries employed armed force a bit more than a decade ago.

M. Sarkozy linked the two forms of "cleansing" as conjoined twins of evil.  As the French president sees life and the world, "religious cleansing" deserves the same sort of active opposition as did ethnic cleansing in the ruins of Yugoslavia.  The Muslim attacks on Christians as well as the lame efforts of Muslim majority governments to protect Christians are, in M. Sarkozy's view, assaults on the liberty of conscience, which is a bedrock principle on which French society and polity have existed for a mort of years.

Sherry Rehman is a pillar of courage in a swamp of cowardly violence.  She is a principled person whose goal is simply human rights for all Pakistanis--including Christians.  In this she is following the course set by Pakistan's founding father.  Her specific goal at the moment is the ending of the Zia era blasphemy laws.  To this end the former government minister and PPP heavyweight has introduced a Private Member's Bill to end the death threat of the blasphemy law.

As a consequence the lady has been marked for death by assorted clerics of the political Islam end of the Muslim spectrum.  She has been declared officially by these men as an "infidel," and branded "worthy of death" in fatwa after bloody fatwa.  No doubt all these death messages were presented in the name of "Allah the Merciful and Compassionate."

Thus the probability of Ms Rehman being done to death by a True Believer in the same manner as Salmaan Taseer is high, very high.  President Zardiiri with the courage of a startled rabbit has urged Ms Rehman to leave the country until the "situation is stabilized."  With a physical courage which matches her moral and intellectual bravery, Ms Rahmen has spurned the request.  Pakistan is her country and there she will live and die, triumph or fail.

Surrounded by tens of thousands of fear driven, insecure men who seek an identity in True Belief, the stance taken by Ms Rahmen can only excite the greatest respect.  She transcends borders with her stance and her courage.  Even should she die under the assassin's knife or gun, the coward's bomb, Ms Rehman must serve as a beacon for any and all Pakistanis who seek to see their country among the ranks of the Civilized States rather than within the narrow and reactionary tribe represented by such as Taliban in all its incarnations or al-Shabaab or the assorted Baby al-Qaedas--or the Iran of today.

The reformers of Pakistan are at the point of decision.  They can leave for the West which will welcome them.  They can lay low, hide out, talk only to one another, and hope the clerics and their mobs miss them.  Or, like the late Punjabi governor Salmaan Taseer and Ms Rehman, take a stand and fight it out against the forces of the Eighth Century.  They may die, but in that case their deaths will mean something.  If they do nothing, they will live with the knowledge that they failed in their obligation to themselves and their fellow countrymen.

M. Sarkozy for his part has tossed down the gauntlet to his fellow Western leaders.  They can either take up his challenge and repudiate the "religious cleansing" underway throughout the Muslim majority states with all the instruments of national power at their disposal or they can remain silent.  They can either stand on the side of the most basic human right of freedom of conscience or they can in their denial surrender to the forces of reactionary fear driven prejudice and hate.

The US and UK no less than France have long stood for freedom of belief.  It would be shameful as well as self defeating for either Prime Minister Cameron or President Obama to fail to measure up to the French President.  It is to be hoped that M. Sarkozy will bring the matter of Christian killing, Christian intimidation, Christian terror to the attention of Mr Obama when they meet in Washington a few days hence.  It is to be devoutly hoped that Obama will shed his pose of multi-culturalism and tell it like it is with respect to events in Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Nigeria, and other Muslim majority states.

Quite simply the "religious cleansing" deserves the same measure of response as did the ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia.  Any less is to say the assorted conventions on human rights espoused by the UN and subscribed to by the US as well as all the Muslim majority states are, as Bismark once was reputed to have said, "mere scraps of paper."  It is also to cast aside a foundational principle of the US.

For the American president as for the reformers of Pakistan the choice is simple: Fight or surrender.  For the US, the second choice is to admit to self-inflicted defeat.

Lenin Was Right! And Wrong

The Geek is back.  The two week break was involuntary.  It was imposed by Al Gore Weather--snow, cold without precedence in all the years here in the canyon.  With the cold came frozen, broken pipes which tested the Geek's less than well evolved handyman skills to the max.  Now the water is flowing, the snow is melting and the world continues to give much (disastrous) grist for the mill.

You all  remember Lenin, right?  The man had a glib tongue, a facile pen, and one profound insight which led in the fullness of time to the Soviet Union.  The not overly bright Bolshevik-in-Chief gained his success by hitting on a truth which has, can, and will apply to all  human societies.

Here is the Lenin Insight: Because the vast majority of people are preoccupied with the mundane realities of quotidian life, a small, well disciplined group can use a combination of propaganda and terror to overthrow a regime which lacks confidence in itself and has little if any legitimacy in the estimate of the inertia enchained majority.

Lenin depended first and foremost on his ability to impose discipline on his followers.  He was convinced that only rigid, from the top authority enforced by the most robust measures would provide the hardened and sharpened tool of revolution necessary to accomplish the goal of Communism over all.

The Lenin method worked in Russia.  And, you can't argue with success.  The Lenin method was also successful in its several export versions.  From China to Vietnam to Cuba to Yugoslavia it worked like a charm.  And, you can't argue with that kind of success, can you?

With the Lenin Insight, the ability of a very small number of True Believers to impose their views on a majority more focused on the matters of living than on True Beliefs and against a government lacking self-confidence and widespread perceived legitimacy is possible.  Lenin's Insight is bang on.

But, it is possible, indeed, necessary to dissent from Lenin's Method, the method of a tightly disciplined group ruled strictly from the top in which, as the Germans used to put it, "corpse like obedience" is required and enforced.  We even have a case in point which demonstrates that the Lenin Method is not necessary to cause a government to waver and a radical, revolutionary movement to come ever closer to power.

That case in point is called, "Pakistan."

It is not a dedicated, hardened, and sharpened movement under rigid discipline which threatens the stability and future integrity of Pakistan but rather a set of ideas fostered and magnified, spread and implanted by a loose assemblage of clerics.  The ideas may be rooted at some point in the sacred literature of Islam, but in their current manifestation are the products of the minds of men and not the word of the deity.  If anything, this makes the words, the ideas, and their impact on the minds of men throughout Pakistan more deadly not less.

The shooting of the governor of Punjab by a member of his own bodyguard as well as the widespread praise of the killer and his deed give ample example of both the breadth and power of the words of clerics who, propelled by fear and hate, have served to find and stroke the suitable lines of Koran and Haddith with the intent and goal of spreading their views farther and harder.

In a very real sense, the process is the hijacking of a religion by a very small number of clerics and their followers.  The truth of this is, however, irrelevant.  It is irrelevant because of the powerful accuracy of Lenin's Insight.

The utter and absolute accuracy of the Lenin Insight is the reason that the Geek has groaned (or worse) every time some "authority" has proclaimed that political Islam, particularly in its violent form, is the product of a "tiny minority" of Muslims generally.  It may be an accurate observation, but it is massively irrelevant.

In short, Lenin was wrong in insisting on the necessity of a tightly disciplined cadre, a "vanguard of the proletariat."  It is sufficient to have a set of ideas, rooted in a shared belief system, articulated over and over by men of persuasive tongue to an audience disenchanted with their identity, their status, their lives generally.  Given this and the fact that most people, most of the time, simply want to live their lives with a modicum of dignity, peace, and certainty, the potency of the tiny minority is awesome.

The power of the minority is potentiated by the willingness of the clerics and their followers to employ violence in the service of the "Cause."  The violence can be low level like street demonstrations.  Or it can be high and lethal as in the killing of the governor of Punjab.  In either the result is the same.

Over time the social compact is tested to the point of failure.  Over time people are forced to choose sides.  Over time the adherents of political Islam will gain strength.  Over time the government will find its self confidence further eroded.  The polity and society fall into a graveyard spiral.

Humans detest risk.  Uncertainty is risk.  The true cause of the graveyard spiral underway in Pakistan is the growing uncertainty in the minds of the vast and all-too-silent majority.  As the "liberals," the reformers such as the dead Punjabi governor, retreat in fear the uncertainty is accelerated.  The only voices are those of the New Order, the advocates of political Islam.  In search for certainty, in quest of lowering risk, the majority will fall ever deeper in the gravity well created by the clerics and their fellow travelers in the mob.

The Obama administration is attempting to reinforce the spine of the Pakistani government and military by the promise of more money.  Money and cooperation, the Deep Thinkers of the administration believe will bring the reformers out of their funk, mobilize the government, the army, and the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence to abandon support tacit or otherwise of groups or individuals espousing political Islam.  It is not likely that this proposed increase in bribe payments will be any more successful than all the earlier efforts to buy Pakistani political will.

The dreary conclusion is that Pakistan has passed the tipping point.  Whether the current trajectory can be arrested, let alone reversed, is up to the Pakistanis alone.  It is up to the cowed reformers, the ever silent majority, to decide if they really want to live in the future envisioned by the clerics and their mobs.  The US can do little to change the minds, to charge the courage, to bolster the political will of the government and the elites of the country.

Realistically, the only course of action available to the US is contingency planning regarding the Pakistani nuclear capability.  In addition, the Afghan operational planning must take into account the continued existence of cross border safe havens in the FATA and beyond.  This, in turn, implies that the US and other civilized states must contemplate the prospect of failure in Afghanistan and plan accordingly.

Hating to start the New Year on a pessimistic note, the Geek must point out that a similar dynamic is under way in Iran.  This time the dynamic is running against the theocratic regime.  There are profound indications that in the contest of political wills, the Green Movement is gaining the upper hand.  The Supreme Guardian and his stooges are showing increasing signs of confusion, of non responses to the challenge of the opposition.  There is a failure of political will to squash the Green Movement leadership despite very tough talk.

Iran like Pakistan exhibit the critique of Lenin's Method as they show the correctness of his basic insight.  In both countries the anti-government movements are diffuse in leadership.  In both it is the power of words and ideas which galvanize the discontented, the disaffiliated, the alienated.  In both the government and supporting elites have been lacking faith in themselves and their position of power.  In both places the majority simply want a lack of risk, an abundance of certainty in the pursuit of daily living.

Most importantly, in both Pakistan and Iran, the long suffering and inarticulate majority will gradually, perhaps with glacial slowness or, less likely, with fulminating speed, move to the side which most credibly promises the prospect of certainty and absence of risk.  The Obama administration would be well advised to consider the truth of Lenin's Insight in the formulation of policy with respect to both countries.

Only in this way can failure be avoided.

Uncle Sam, A Most Reluctant Cop

Some cables within the WikiLeak dump of diplomatic data, most importantly those coming from the several Gulf states, urge a re-asking of the old questions regarding the role of the US as a sort of global cop.  The position attributed to several Gulf governments actually serves to expand the old stand-by questions which have surrounded the American entry into an already extant conflict (a category which includes both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam.)

Assuming the cables accurately reflect the views of the local interlocutors, there is a consensus among the Gulf states that an Iran equipped with a nuclear capacity is so threatening, so much a danger to peace that the Arab leaders want the US to take military action even before the Iranians actually achieve a deliverable nuclear weapon.  The stated desire is for American preemption.  This, of course, is a course of action qualitatively different from what the US has done traditionally.

The several Arab states are using the US invasion of Iraq as the precedent.  This is unlike other, earlier wars from Korea to (at least arguably) Afghanistan, where the US has acted after the fact.  Historically, the US has entered a war already in progress as in Korea and Vietnam or, with an almost plausible local invitation, sought to restore stability and stave off a threatened war as in Lebanon.  The US has also, as in the case of the Dominican Republic and Grenada, deployed force to protect the lives of US nationals or, in Afghanistan, in retaliation for an armed attack on the US.

The Iraq precedent was another one of those recurrent slippery slope precedents.  There was no direct attack on the US.  There was not, as there had been in 1991, a breach of the international peace.  There were no US lives at risk.  There was certainly no plausible invitation from local political leaders.  In place of these assorted justifications for the use of armed force, there was a stack of UN Resolutions and a heap of less than accurate intelligence.  Judged by past American employments of force, the invasion of Iraq was even more poorly predicated than the war with Spain over a century earlier.  And, that is saying a lot.

The Arab desire for the US to do something robust against the Iranian threat is understandable.  No countries have more at risk than those of the Persian Gulf littoral.  The scale of the Iranian threat is easily measured--compared to it none of the Arab states seem to have a thing against Israel.  It is more than merely interesting that none saw the Israeli nuclear arsenal in being as a threat while all saw the Iranian nuclear arsenal in prospect to be terrifying.

Given this, it is not surprising that there was a monolithic call for the US to take out the Iranian threat regardless of other considerations such as how an attack might be justified to the world generally or the absence of a cause of war even as compelling as that provided by the pile of UN Resolutions directed at the Iraq of Saddam Hussein.  Put at its most basic level, the call by the Arab states was prompted by a genuine and highly compelling national interest.

To the diplomats and leaders of the Gulf states, their countries and the US had a coinciding national interest in nullifying the Iranian nuclear program (and, quite probably the current Iranian regime.)  And, as every person wise to the ways of international politics knows, the only reason that the Gulf states (or any state) has positive relations with the US is that doing so is vital to their national interest.

In this context it might be noted that Secretary of Defense Gates gave a short course in Diplomacy 101 the other day when he opined that other countries do not have relations with the US because they like us or because they trust us or because they believe we can keep secrets safe but only because such relations serve their national interests.  The Arab proposition was predicated upon this concept pure and simple.

The Arab request hints at what attracts some states to seek and maintain good relations with the US.  Even today as We the People drift in a depressant doldrums viewing our present to be poor and our future to be worse, there is a compelling attraction for states to seek and keep good relations with the US.

Put bluntly, other states are most impressed with our military capacities.  They are struck with the potentials resident in that hardest of hard power capabilities--the military's ability to break things and kill people.  It may be disconcerting to those Americans who value our economic power or the soft power appeals of our diplomacy, values, norms, culture, and so on, but in much of the world it is our military alone which gives appeal, which compels the seeking and maintaining of good relations, which defines coinciding national interests.

In short, there are more than a few governments--and not simply Arab autocracies in the Gulf region--which see the pistol on Sheriff Sam's hip and believe their interests (and ours) would be best served by using it against regional bad actors.  Whether we like the notion or not, there are many, important states which want to see us in the role of global cop.

(OK, bucko, the Geek acknowledges that there are also many states which see the US as the Great Global Cash Cow to be milked at will.  These states are also most likely to be most averse to Sheriff Sam ever pulling out the hog leg on his hip.)

Even the Western European countries which are quite willing, even eager, to accuse the US of being an international provocateur are quite happy to lay off the burdens both economic and political of global policing on the US.  This happiness is only going to grow as the assorted states of the European Union facing a collective as well as individual economic challenges downsize their national military capabilities.

In the good cause of deficit reduction, the Coalition government in the UK has taken measures which will shrink their military forces overall to a point that would make a replay of the Falklands Island War impossible.  Other NATO states are lessening their military expenses as well.  The net result will be the rendering of NATO to the status of military nullity at least as regards out of theater operations.  The longer term consequence of this downsizing trend is either shifting the burden to the US or surrendering the global insurgency to the purveyors of political Islam, including the adherents of armed Islamic insurgency.

The evil genii of the global Islamic insurgency will not skulk back to the bottle from which it has emerged over the past thirty or so years.  It is and will continue to be a feature on the global political scene regardless of what we or anybody might wish.  This means, quite simply, that war will not disappear soon from the experience of the human race.

The global insurgency will remain primarily a conflict of asymmetry, of wars almost too small to merit the name, of violence which is small scale but unending, of conflict which saps political will slowly but steadily over the years, the decades, perhaps generations.  It is nonetheless a war which will determine both the nature of the future and the quality of life in the present, each year's successive present.

Insurgency and its counter depend upon both violent and peaceful tactics and methods.  Within that truism the governing reality is that the violent portion is the more important.  It is violence which acts most directly and with greatest intensity upon the political will of the contestant populations.  And, as long as the violence continues, the conditions for that endgame necessity--conflict resolution--will not exist.  The ground truth is simply that the insurgents have to be cowed into submission before there is any possibility of developing a long term detente between differing world views and concomitant civilizations.

In this context it is critical to recall that diplomacy depends upon either the existence of coinciding national interests or a credible capacity for effective coercion.  With respect to coercion, when night falls, all the lesser means of coercion such as sanctions and diplomatic isolation rely upon the credible capacity and political will to employ force in support of policy.

Few governments question seriously the physical capacity of the US to employ force.  Most have a good handle on just how much destruction we can inflict even without using our nuclear weapons.  The quantum level improvements in all the many technologies involved in fighting wars made in recent years render even the observations from the Kuwait War no longer instructive.  The US way of war in both Iraq and Afghanistan has used only a small, even a very small, fraction of the lethality resident in our conventional capacities.  Still, most governments have a reasonably accurate appreciation of what the US could do should it need to.

Indeed, it has been American restraint in how it has fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan which has fed the long standing suspicions in many quarters of the world--including Iran and the purveyors of violent political Islam--that the US lacks the political will to use force in support of policy.  From the time the US withdrew from the Vietnamese War on to the present, there has been a broad sentiment to the effect that the US cannot muster the will to fight a seemingly endless war, to accept the deaths of American service personnel in a "no-win" war, to spend never ending torrents of money in pursuit of what at best constitutes a stalemate of the Korean War sort.

The much maligned unilateralism of George W. Bush went a long way to settling the doubts held by so many leaders around the world.  Unfortunately, the words of the Obama presidency have restored these doubts.  The doubts have been enhanced by some of the administrations actions, such as the apparent willingness of the president and his foreign policy "team" to toss Israel off the sleigh and to the wolves.  This lack of steadfastness disturbed the same Gulf state leaders who pressed the US to take swift and effective military action against Iran.  It might even have prompted the requests as a form of test of American realism and political will.

The sine qua non for success in foreign policy generally and war fighting in particular is consistency and persistence.  Radical shifts in either policy or action calls the reliability and predictability of the US into question in ways which do not further our national interests--or those of our more or less allies.  In a real sense, Great Powers are not allowed to change their minds without penalty.  That penalty is loss of credibility and with credibility goes the most important prize of diplomacy--influence.

For this reason the only rational choice for the Obama administration to make with respect to Afghanistan is to continue what we have been doing with one major addition.  The addition is convincing Pakistan that the governments there have been wrong for sixty years, that Pakistan needs the US more than the US needs Pakistan.

It is for the reasons of consistency and predictability, for the reason of credibility and influence maintenance, that the US must not only draw a line in concrete regarding Iran but must use all means at its disposal to bend that country's regime to our policy requirements.  The same applies to Israel and the Palestinians, choose a policy option which is in keeping with past American requirements and stick with it even if the Palestinians moan, groan, and toss a hissy fit.

While modifications in policy are a requirement of realism, these modifications must be on the margins and carefully explained to all parties.  The requirement for careful explanation also applies to assuring that We the People both understand and support policy including the use of military force should such be necessary.

In that connection this administration in common with all presidencies past and future must understand that We the People are very reluctant global cops.  The American public has never felt at home with the US being a Great Power.  Down deep inside most of us are just fine with Ron Paul's isolationist position.  Down deep inside where it counts, the majority of Americans past, present, and, probably, future see very few compelling reasons for Americans to leave their bones bleaching in the sun of some far away country the name of which most of us cannot pronounce let alone spell.  We see very few compelling reasons to spend vast sums of present and future money on weapons.  Most of us at the time agreed with Ike's "Farewell Address" and its warning against the "military-industrial complex."

We are not imperialists by nature any more.  Our period of seeking empire ended more than a hundred years ago.  Where we have been forced by reasons good or bad to send troops, we have never sought to stay.  (It might be noted that many foreign governments are quite well aware of this and thus are less uncomfortable with American troops being in the neighborhood than is the case with soldiers of other nationalities.)

The irony of the situation resident in the Gulf states request is simply that foreign governments are much more eager to see Sheriff Sam than We the People are willing to pin on the badge.  We Americans, pace many on the Left, are not seeking to be global cops on patrol.  The reality, however, is the world generally is not ready to see us be other than the Good Cop.

You Bet, Bucko, It's Going To Be A Very Long War

Recently, a friend sent the Geek a very useful review of the foundational literature on which the edifice of violent political Islam has been predicated.  It is more than simply a useful primer in the intellectual basis for the current and future conflicts between the US and other civilized states and the Trigger Pullers For Allah, it gives a strong measure of support for the contention that we are facing a global insurgency with the Bombers Of The One True Faith as the opponents.

An insurgency consists of the quest for political power by an identifiable group of politically disaffiliated people who use a mix of armed and peaceful means to acquire political power at the expense of the status quo authority.  It does not matter if the status quo authority represents the majority of any given population.  Nor does the absolute size of the disaffiliated group matter.

Historically, insurgencies have been frankly political in both nature and goal.   Whether the insurgency was of the offensive variety, (usually referred to as "revolutionary)," or defensive, ("wars of national liberation" or "wars of independence"), the stakes have been limited to political domination of a definable geographic area.  The motives have been rooted in a sense of political emasculation or, more uncommonly, economic exploitation.  The quest has been simply to redress the grievances, peacefully if possible, violently, if that was the only option.

Never before has the human race been confronted with an insurgency which has the political core so wrapped with religious ideology as is the case with the advocates of violent political Islam.  Never before in the entire bloody record of human conflict has there been an insurgency without geographic limits.  Due to the universalism resident in the ideology of Islam and the presence of Muslims in virtually every country on Earth, the developing insurgency by those who espouse political Islam is an absolutely new phenomenon.

As every student of insurgency knows well, such wars are promoted and waged by numerical minorities.  Even insurgencies with globe rocking outcomes (such as the French, Russian, or Chinese revolutions or the American War of Independence) are the creations of minorities too small to register on public opinion polls--had such existed at the time.  The first shots of the current insurgency were fired in Iran by a minority so small that the Shah's security services initially dismissed the advocates of Ayatollah Khomeini as being less than a nuisance.

Insurgencies are like avalanches.  The smallest dislodged stone results in catastrophe.  It is for this reason that the oft proclaimed position by the Obama administration and other apologists for Islam that only a tiny minority of extremists is responsible for the deaths and destruction which have plagued the world for decades now is false--fatally so.  The stone has been kicked--get a grip on it.

Even today, years into the "Global War on Terror," it is no doubt true that most Muslims do not actively support the insurgent efforts of al-Qaeda, Taliban, and the others.  This does not matter.  The majority of the Russian population did not support the Bolsheviks--or even know Lenin existed.  Most colonials wanted only to be counted out of the war during the long years of the American War of Independence.  The same was true in Iran even though the Shah was widely and soundly despised.

However, the current insurgent dynamic resembles its smaller, more localized progenitors in other ways as well.  As has always been the case, the status quo authority has had the initiative--and misused it in ways which has driven the insurgency to spread and deepen.

For all too many years the US and other civilized states either ignored the signs of the coming insurgency or, worse, deprecated their meaning.  For example, the administration of Ronald Reagan ignored the evil synergy between the Islamization campaign of President Zia in Pakistan and turning over the endgame of the proxy war in Afghanistan to the Pakistanis.  Later, the Clinton administration totally misread the significance of the declaration of war against the US issued by Osama bin Laden as well as the several attacks on US interests and forces conducted by al-Qaeda.

False policy linkages between the rise of violent political Islam and the relations between Israel and the Palestinians did nothing to bring the emerging threat into clearer focus.  Rather, they did the opposite, encouraging American policy makers in the incorrect belief that peace between Israel and the Palestinians including the successful establishment of the "Two State Solution" would end the growing insurgency.

Another similarity between the Muslim insurgency and its smaller, localized precursors is the mix of violent and peaceful techniques.  The quest for special accommodations to Muslim sensitivities or religious practices by peaceful political, judicial, or public relations means constitutes an effective way of (to use the old Leninist term) "boring from within."  The overarching even if unstated goal of these efforts at "accommodation" is the slow sapping of political will in the US and other countries.  Without political will to continue the war against the Trigger Pullers of the Prophet, the war is lost regardless of what happens on the battlefield.

The presence within American political and public opinion molding elites of apologists for Islam--including the violent political sort--is another point of identity between the present insurgency and its historical progenitors.  The American Declaration of Independence was written with a firm eye on influencing elite opinion in Great Britain.  The existence of a pro-American faction in the British elite was well known in the colonies and the Declaration was a transparent effort to strengthen its potency in parliament.  Note well that the Continental Congress chartered a fast schooner to carry a copy directly to England in order that Edmund Burke and others of the county Whigs persuasion would get the best, latest ammunition.

Similarly, the Russian Revolution--the second one, the one which brought the Bolsheviks to power, had strong supporting voices in the US and Europe.  Lenin might have disparagingly called John Reed and his fellow travelers as "useful idiots," but the utility of these mouthpieces cannot be overestimated.  The Muslim insurgents are equally or better served by their apologists and exponents today.  And, they know it even in the mountains of the FATA.

The final point of coincidence between today's global insurgency and the earlier versions is the most important.  The ultimate test in an insurgency is the political will of the contestants.  The side which can absorb casualties and accept suffering, the side which can spend endless time in a war without milestones or phase lines without losing its political will to continue, is the side which will win.

In this most crucial of areas the present correlation of forces favors the Bombers of the Koran.  There are two major forces at work which move in opposite directions to the disadvantage of the US and other civilized states.

The combination of religion with local, national grievances and causes of political disaffiliation provide a powerful wellspring of political will to say nothing of recruitment.  The power of religious identity is also seen in the total absence of any popular demonstrations by Muslims anywhere against the actions of the advocates of violent political Islam--this means most Muslims either tacitly support the insurgency or have been cowed into silence.

In the US and the West generally there is an identity crisis within the elites.  There is also a sapping conflict between the views and beliefs of the common people and the self-defined elites.  The result is an uncertainty as to who we are and what we are all about which can do nothing but sap political will.  This sapping is exacerbated by the nature of Western culture today with an emphasis on the material and secular with a concomitant unwillingness to confront frankly the threat before our eyes.  Of course, the present and persistent economic decline of the US and Western Europe does no service in this area.

The dynamic hinted at by the present correlation of forces (the Geek loves that old Soviet term) is not favorable at all.  It implies the war will continue for a long, long time with the US and others losing, staying on the defensive for many of the years ahead.  In this way the future will resemble World War II on steroids--a long period of defeat, failure, retreat until the awesome potentials both physical and spiritual of the US and other civilized states is aroused, mobilized, and employed with full vigor.

Until and unless that day of turnaround comes, our future is one of greater constriction, greater fear, greater sense of futility.  The best that can be hoped for is that we will hit bottom quickly so that the rebound can occur before it is one day too late.