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.

Going To Hell In A Bucket

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carrying Water And Doublethinking

Leon Panetta is an old Chicago pol.  He came of political age as a cog in the oldest, longest running, smoothest operating machine in the US--the Cook County Democratic Party.  As such, he knows well the primary duty of a machine man--loyalty to the Boss.  By definition the Boss is the Nice Young Man From Chicago, Barack Obama.

Only the overarching requirement of loyalty could have impelled the new Secretary of Defense as he moved from his old job of DCIA to announce that the defeat of al-Qaeda was "within reach."  Only days later Mr Panetta demonstrated the requisite degree of doublethink when he thundered against the possibility of doubling the 400 billion dollar cut in the next decade's defense budget under the debt ceiling increase deal.

Given that the American participation in the Great Adventure in Regime Change in Iraq is in its death throws and the rush to the exit has started in Afghanistan, the new SecDef is perfectly well aware that the costs of war will go down as well which will allow for significant decreases in the Pentagon expenditures without a single real cut in procurement or force size.  And, if his statement regarding the impending end of al-Qaeda is taken at face value, the need for the large security establishment created in the immediate wake of 9/11 and the consequent decisions of George W. Bush evaporates as well.  If al-Qaeda does well and truly turn its collective toes to the sky, the need for mountains of money marked "For the Pentagon" goes away.

Presumably, the end of al-Qaeda would allow the US to return to the (relatively) lower levels of defense appropriations which characterized the days prior to 9/11.  In that case, Panetta should quit his bitchin' and find a few additional programs to cut so as to please his Boss properly.

Of course, the Panetta Dictum regarding the morbidity of al-Qaeda like the rumors of Mark Twain's death is greatly exaggerated.  Al-Qaeda is not dead.  It is not on some sort of Islamic life support.  It is not even gravely ill.

The real deal of which Leon the Loyal must be completely aware considering his previous job as well as his daily access to the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief (as well as the Presidential Intelligence Brief) is that al-Qaeda has morphed.  It has changed profoundly from its original form.  Most critically, it is far more of a threat in its current incarnation than it was in the Bad Old Days.

In the far distant Eocene of 2001, al-Qaeda was a small, hierarchical organization with a tight command and control system.  It was dependent upon Osama bin Laden as inspiration, decision maker, leader, and chief fund raiser.  None of this obtains today.  Nor has it obtained for some time.  Long before bin Laden went to Paradise, the "Base" had fissioned, decentralized, become far more of an idea than an institution.

Just as American doctrine and tactics changed under the stresses of real wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so also have the operational concepts and organizational methods of the al-Qaeda predicated practitioners of violent political Islam.  Arguably, the Mighty Men of the Koran have changed more radically and more effectively than have the armed forces of the US.

The most obvious feature of the new, improved "al-Qaeda" is the spawning of franchises.  Both al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are obvious spin-offs or imitators of the famed original.  "Allied" groups such as al-Shabaab in Somalia may not use the old brand name but exist as self-conscious copies of Osama's group.  It is a brute fact that AQAP has become a larger threat to the civilized states than the ragged band of drone pressed fugitives headed by al-Zawihiri lurking in either the stone huts of the FATA or living in relative comfort in anonymous houses in some sprawling Pakistani city.

The far more important change in the universe of violent political Islam is the transformation of the old al-Qaeda brand into a metaphysical idea.  This coupled with the elevation of bin Laden from a jihadi ideal to the Perfect Martyred Warrior of the Prophet has provided the intellectual substrate for the emergence of powerfully motivated "lone wolf" terrorists.

In this context it is important to recall that war, all war, exists first as an idea.  It matters not in the least what type of war or what level of intensity, war is first and foremost an intellectual construct.  The now dead or captured theorists of Islamist martyrdom operations along with bin Laden have provided a basic set of ideas which define asymmetrical warfare from the point of view of the advocate of violent political Islam.  These ideas have been enlarged, filled out, and spread by the assorted jihadist websites as well as videotaped sermons (and hectoring) by Muslim clerics.  Many of these Men of the Islamic Cloth are quite unknown in the West.  Others, most notably Anwar al-Awlacki, are nearly household names throughout the civilized states.

Self-radicalization facilitated by the web and the arguments of clerics great and small, well known and unknown alike has become the major feature of the current version of al-Qaeda.  Individuals or very small groups of self-radicalized adherents of violent political Islam represent a very real threat to the civilized states as well as a quite meaningful challenge to security and law enforcement agencies.  The several high profile arrests of wannabe "martyrs," the spectacular failures of the Underwear Bomber and the Times Square Bomber, or the quick police follow-up on the alert gun shop clerk in Kileen, Texas do not militate against the reality of the jihadist threat or the thinness of the margin between tragedy and tragedy narrowly averted.

Of course, crowd sourced terror does not exist alone.  In addition to the ideological support provided by the memes originating with al-Qaeda 1.0 and the effective tools of self-radicalization and not completely irrelevant instruction in the practical considerations of waging one man wars on the West, there exist potent and growing al-Qaeda facsimiles.  AQAP has been acknowledged properly as the single largest threat.  AQIM is growing.  Rapidly.

The senior French investigative judge holding the counterterrorism brief has issued a reassuring nostrum to the effect that AQIM does not represent a threat to Europe.  This pronouncement is rather like patting the hoi polloi gently and telling them not to worry their pretty little (empty) heads about terrorism, that the adults in the government know better.  In this way M.Marc Trevidic echoed Panetta's declaration of al-Qaeda's impending death.  Feel good words which belie the substance of reality.

AQIM has extended its reach to Nigeria.  Kidnapping Europeans.  This is an expansion of their reach with the view to forcing changes in European policy.  In short, it is terror of the violent political Islamic sort.  Operations in Nigeria taken in conjunction with the local Islamist group would have been unthinkable a year ago.  Now, the action shows a growing potential to strike Europeans if not Europe.  There is every reason to believe that by this time next year AQIM will rival AQAP as a threat to the West generally.

Al-Shabaab may have evacuated Mogadishu, but that is not a sign of its defeat regardless of what the imitation government of Somalia may say.  Rather, the real potential of al-Shabaab was demonstrated by its set of highly lethal attacks in Uganda last year.  Al-Shabaab has tight links with AQAP as well as a ready source of English speaking recruits in Somali refugee communities in the US.  It is one more rapidly growing threat.

Of his two contradictory statements, Panetta was much closer to the truth when he warned against overly dramatic cuts in the Pentagon budge.  He must know that ten years from now the US will be engaged heavily even if not with conventional forces on the ground.  He must be aware perfectly that the war against the advocates of violent political Islam will be ongoing in 2022 as it is today.  Probably on a larger scale geographically.

Panetta may be a good machine politician, but he is also an American.  Doublethink like loyalty to a misguided Boss has its limits.  When push comes to shove as it must in the next few months, it is likely that the Secretary of Defense will fight with all the political skills he possesses to assure the the US has the means necessary to continue the fight against the forces of violent political Islam until the civilized states finally win.

Leon Panetta came a very long way during his years as DCI.  That was a surprise to any and all who have personal acquaintanceship with the mindset of typical Chicago pols.  It has been obvious that Panetta has learned that there is a wide and dark world out there,  that the limits of Cook County are not the limits of the US, that the interests of the machine are transcended by the interests of the US.  If a bit of experience can manufacture that level of miraculous transformation, it is not impossible that a few months running the Pentagon and talking more and more often with commanders responsible for the lives of those under them will carry the transformation to the next step--a Leon Panetta who is willing and ready to drop his Boss's water bucket in the higher cause of the country as a whole.

A Slick Trip Down The Islamist Tubes?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian(?) Terrorism and Cultural Relativism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Think Globally, Act Locally

This old bumper sticker phrase much loved by the tree hugging crowd some twenty years ago has become the new, de facto slogan of al-Qaeda under the direction of its new capo d' tutti capi, Ayman al-Zawahiri.  This, in itself, is not surprising as the good doctor has long been known for his possessing a far greater interest in making Egypt a model of shariah in action than in establishing a global caliphate.

What makes the latest expression of the world according to Zawahiri (it has a catchy title: The Message of Good Hope and Tidings For Our People In Egypt.  OK, maybe it loses something in translation.) is the way in which he combines the ideas of making Egypt safe for a Salifist view of Islam with the further disestablishment of the US as a force in the region.  The six parts of "The Message" are themselves a riff on Zawahiri's earlier and vastly important philosophical book best known by its short title Exoneration.  In both he argues that the successful jihad mounted to date by al-Qaeda and its franchises forced the Obama administration to abandon Mubarak and prepare the way for the success of violent political Islam in Egypt.

In both "The Message" and "Exoneration" al-Zawahiri contends that the moment has come to shift the focus of jihad on the internal revolutions in Egypt and other countries such as Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Tunisia and Syria so as to put more pressure not only on the local apostate rulers but on the US.  In essence he is calling for al-Qaeda to act not as a global non-state player but rather as the facilitator and coordinator of local efforts such as those being waged by al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP,) al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM,) and al-Shabaab.  It is clear that he believes that the US will be overstretched by simultaneous challenges mounted by these groups as well as smaller entities and lone wolves preying on soft targets throughout the Mideast and North Africa.

Even in this context it is self-evident that al-Zawahiri's focus in on Egypt.  His view of the Ummah is through the prism of Egyptian nationalism.  He sees the (in his eyes) necessary victory of the most austere form of Islam in Egypt will vault the country to primacy in the emerging caliphate.  As a good Egyptian nationalist, one who rivals the quite secular Nasser as a hyper-nationalist, al-Zawahiri sees Cairo as the fulcrum of the new Islam, the next Caliphate.

To this end "The Message" calls upon Egyptian Muslims to act as one, to act quickly and decisively so as to assert Egypt's pride of place among the Muslim majority states of the world.  This appeal will not fall on deaf ears.  Overlooked in all the hoopla over the yearning for genuine democracy expressed during the overthrow of Mubarak is a very basic and potent ground truth: Egyptians have felt diminished as a people, a nation over the past thirty years.  After the national high point of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 the road has been strictly downhill.

Egyptians have increasingly seen themselves as citizens of a diminished country.  More and more they have come to see themselves as having lost status, position, even dignity.  The thought that Egypt had become nothing more than a dependency of the US rankled--deeply.  As is the case in Russia, the notion of having lost national status not only rankled, it motivated.  Mubarak was deeply hated not simply because he presided over a country neck deep in corruption, nepotism, inequity, but because he had not only acquiesced in but actively fostered the decline of Egypt in the region and in the world.  On Mubarak's watch, many believed and continue to believe, Egypt was no longer a country worthy of respect but rather the object of derision.

Al-Zawahiri's skilled blending of religion and nationalism serves to counter this pervasive sense of Egyptian degradation.  By seizing the present moment, al-Zawahiri argues, Egyptians can reclaim their dignity, their status, their pride, their place in the sun.  Merging the Egyptian national identity with the true belief of basic and uncompromising Islam will bring salvation, or, if not salvation, at least pull Egypt and its people out of the slough of the marginalized, the trivialized, the ignored, the bowed head beggers.

Al-Zawahiri promises that an Egypt powered by Islam of ninety proof purity will once more be what it seemed to be many, many years ago during the heyday of Nasser--a force in the world, a country that could call the tune danced to by supposed superpowers.  All that is required, the one time medic alleges, is for Egyptians not to fall prey to American blandishments or secret plots made in the USA and hold true to the calls of the faith and the needs of political Islam--including the use of violence should such be either necessary or desirable.

In "Exoneration" al-Zawahiri extends his argument to include countries such as Yemen, Syria and the states of North Africa.  His position is both simple and inherently attractive, particularly to younger members of the over-educated and underemployed middle class.

In short he says, "All of you, Syrians, Yemeni, Algerians, Tunisians, Libyans are members of societies which were once great.  You are all citizens of states which were once respected, even feared by the infidels.  You are people of nations which were once great but are now small."

He then asks the essential question, "Why?  Why were you who were once so great are now so small?"

And, unsurprisingly, he gives the correct answer.  "Because you abandoned the path of pure and true Islam.  Because you surrendered to government by apostates, by turncoats who say they are Muslims but act and govern as if they are kaffir."

Then comes the expected call to arms.  "You will be great once more, respected and feared once again, feel the dignity you deserve only when you join the jihad.  Only when you throw out the apostates and restore genuine Islamic rulers will you regain your greatness."

Shrewdly al-Zawahiri backs his argument by emphasizing Islam's stance on social justice, economic equity, and political openness.  He contrasts the nature of the Islamic posture in all these critical and highly emotional issues with the stance of the US and Uncle Sam's local clients.  He wraps all the ills of the Islamic Mideast and North African states in an American flag.  He demands locals act for local goals while doing so in the global context of putting increased pressure on the US--pressure to withdraw.

It is worth considering that the thinking of al-Zawahiri has been picked up, reflected and even amplified by other high profile advocates of violent political Islam.  Anwar al-Awalacki in Yemen has done this in recent weeks.  Indeed much of the theoretical writing in the several issues of Inspire might have come from the keyboard of the American born and educated cleric, but the ideas and arguments, the logic and goals, are those of al-Zawahiri.

Even in the geographic expression, Somalia, where one is surprised to discover a level of literacy which would allow the reading of al-Zawahiri's rather dense prose, the locals have been extolling the ideas of the medic turned mass murderer.  The same applies to recent musings by spokesmen for AQIM.  Clearly, al-Zawahiri has a message that many are both reading and amplifying.

The US has been playing the role assigned to it in The World According to Ayman.  Our aid to the Ugandan forces in Somalia has been increased as has been the assistance provided to the fictitious government of Somalia.  Shortly we can expect more Predator strikes in Somalia along with a significant ramp-up of the remote controlled death from above operations in Yemen.  Carefully targeted special operations will not be long in the offing.

The regional impact of the ongoing mess in Libya is growing.  There will be a requirement in the not-too-distant future for the US to make some choices as to what we should or must do to help the local forces and governments in their struggle with AQIM.  While we have no bulls in the herd, particularly as compared with European countries, the small but rapidly growing AQIM will reach the level of potential threat to US interests long before the next election here.

Think Globally, Act Locally!  Al-Zawahiri has it right.  So right that we may soon be wishing for the good old days of Osama bin Laden.  The legion of experts assured us that al-Zawahiri would be a nebbish as the Lord High Poobah of al-Qaeda because he had the charisma of a nematode.

What a crock!  Brains beat charisma every time--particularly in war.

What A Difference A Word Makes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get a grip on this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If You Like Pakistan, You'll Love The "Arab Summer"

Now that all the hyperbolic prattling about the wave of democracy rushing tsunami like over the sands of Arabia is fading away, perhaps overpowered by the sounds of exploding NATO delivered ordnance in Libya, it is possible to take a less biased look at the most likely course of events for the long hot Arab "summer" which is looming like the smoke of an Arizona wildfire.  While the details of the forthcoming "summer" are obscure, the broad outlines are coming more clear by the day.

It is not inaccurate to posit Pakistan as the paradigm soon to apply to the countries of North Africa and the Mideast which were convulsed to a greater or lesser extent by the pseudo-revolutions of recent months.  This means that there will be a contest for political supremacy pitting the interests of a microscopic economic and political elite against the rising expectations of the marginalized majority egged on by increasingly extremest members of the Muslim clerical establishment.  It means the ultimate arbiter of authority will be the armed forces of those states which already possess a large, well organized, well equipped military.  Finally, there will be an overlay of regional and tribal loyalties which can serve as effective king-makers.

In the North African states, most notably Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt, the trappings and forms of democracy will be followed.  This process will not apply to Libya unless and until Gaddafi is removed--and the date for this event is impossible to predict beyond saying there is no reason for optimism.  Democratic processes are less important in Mideast centers of protest: Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen.  But even in these states there will be eventual genuflections before this prime totem of Western affections.

Despite the observance of democratic forms, the substance of representative democracy will be conspicuous by its absence.  There is a simple reason for this prediction.  Democracy per se is irrelevant to the majority of those who sought the overthrow the established regimes while the exercise of actual democracy is not in the interests of the major contestants for power: the elite and the adherents of political Islam.  Insofar as either contestant favors the appearance of democratic processes, it is only to ensure that some middle ground movement comes to power in order to assure that the inevitable failure to bring prosperity to the many will be blamed on the scapegoat so as to allow the real contest to be waged and won.

Western governments and elites would be best advised to discount any and all blather about democracy in action completely.  At best elections and the other accoutrement of vox populi is a charade.  At worst it will be a mechanism for hijacking power.  Elections, after all, sanctified not only the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933 but assured the creation of the statist theocracy in Iran in 1979.  To look at the paradigm of Pakistan, elections matter not, for regardless of what party or individuals win at the polls, the army still runs the show.

The army will run the show as well in Egypt or Tunisia or anywhere else that sees the old regime involuntarily retired.  As in Pakistan--and Turkey before--the army is the final custodian of nationhood.  It is the ultimate guarantor of internal tranquility as it is the defender of the state's borders.  Whether openly or from the shadows of the barracks, the army will do the same in the forthcoming governments of North Africa and the Mideast.  No government will be allowed to act in a way which is not approved in advance by the armed forces.  At the same time, the armed forces will have both the will and ability to direct the government to undertake specified actions or policies.

The limitations which can be imposed by the military are understood by even the most ardent supporter of political Islam.  The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt has implicitly acknowledged this in various fora.  This recognition along with the strategic consideration of assuring Islam and Islamists are not tarred with the brush of economic policy failure is behind the MG's entering into coalition agreements with a secular party.

Taking a longer term view, the primacy of the armed forces will be countered by the adherents of political Islam through a program of education and indoctrination.  This path has been blazed by the Pakistanis for the past thirty years with the result that the percentage of adherents of political Islam including that of the violent sort is higher among armed forces personnel, including company and field grade officers, than among the population as a whole.  Given both the Pakistani paradigm and the power of current social and economic pressures abroad in the several "Arab Spring" countries, there is no reason to believe that the lengthy time period need be followed.

The armed forces of Egypt and Tunisia are well aware of the limits which the West will apply to the foreign and military policies of their states.  They also understand the tools available to the West and the effectiveness of these tools.  There will be no false bravado operating as there has been with Pakistan.  The states of the "Arab Spring" have learned from Pakistan's mistakes as they have from Islamabad's successes.

The backlash against the super-wealthy currently underway in Egypt will slow and halt.  The fact is the country, all the "Arab Spring" countries, need these hated rich folk.  Even if it is true that one hundred percent of the wealthy became so as the result of the old regime's corruption, the wealth and skills of the rich business types are needed greatly for the country as a whole.  The narrow elite will be constricted and placed on the defensive, but it will not be erased.  As it will continue to exist, so also will it continue to seek and retain power.

The economically marginal will remain so regardless of the government and its promises.  This reality will be exploited by the most extreme elements within the political Islamists.  Practically, the results will be a co-option to the "left" which will be expressed primarily in foreign policy.  Terror attacks against the "Zionist entity" will increase as will strident diplomatic and propaganda support for the deligitimatization campaign.  Anti-Americanism will also ramp up markedly.  The armed forces will try to keep the level of attacks below the threshold triggering a robust Israeli response but will fail ultimately.

The evermore vituperative attacks on the US provided these are not matched with terrorist operations, will motivate the American people and its representatives to disengage from the region pleading financial exigencies.  This disengagement will exclude Israel.  The result will be the worst of all possible worlds for the US--diminished influence with the governments of the "Arab Summer" while making the commitment to Israel more and more of the "blank check" variety.

With the high probability of Yemen becoming a collapsed state, the US will become more and more involved with the assorted tribes on the ground as a mechanism of self-defense.  The US will wage an undeclared war with AQAP using civilian personnel and civilian controlled weapons systems.  As a "deniable" set of operations run by CIA, the US will be able to act in a more discrete, small footprint way enlisting tribal assistance, using paramilitary officers and UAVs with a sufficiently low public profile not to excite public or congressional opprobrium.  In fact, as the experience in Pakistan has shown, the opposite will be the case--widespread approval in both public and congress.

If the Libyan Affray ends in stalemate or a collapsed state or should the Algerian monolith once more show its underlying cracks, the US would rightly apprehend the use of the new opportunities by AQIM.  The only viable American response would be similar to that emerging in Yemen--think of it as FATA 3.0.  With a civilian agency in the lead and assets from JSOC available on an "as-needed" basis, the US would have the capacity to inhibit the rise of violent political Islam--or at least its ability to operate abroad.

The experiences of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have taught all but the most terminally obtuse American policy and decision makers all the critical lessons regarding "nation-building."  We have learned for the umpteeth time that nations cannot be built by foreign intervention.  This means that the US has only two choices when confronted by violent political Islam: ignore it and hope it goes away or target it with the most lethal and finely focused tools (both human and technological) that are available.

The inherent dilemmas posed by the uprisings of the "Arab Spring" should have shown American decision and policy makers that there is no one-size-fits-all approach possible.  The internal dynamics of each uprising as well as the regional and global contextual differences means that each event must be examined as a one-off proposition.  The realities of the game of nations also has demonstrated once again that national ideals, values, and norms must support well defined national interest.  To state categorically that national interest is predicated on ideals, norms, and values may make for good sound bites but provides a poor basis for effective policy.

On the upside, we can be thankful for our years of frustrating experience with Pakistan.  All that we have come to know and dislike about Pakistani politics and international relations has prepared us for the overriding realities which will exist for years to come as a consequence of a few fun filled and exciting weeks last spring.  The folks in Foggy Bottom and at the EOB should be pulling out the archives detailing the last twenty-five or so years of our dealings with Islamabad.  The contents will be hard to read, embarrassing even, but when the day is done, one can look up and say with genuine feeling, "Good training.  Damn good training."

Parting Company With Secretary Gates And Admiral Mullen

Robert Gates is well known as a "realist" in the areas of foreign policy and national security.  His nearly thirty years in the intelligence racket and serving as Secretary of Defense have convinced him that the realities of international politics require the US to continue its difficult relationship with Pakistan.  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, concurred with this view as the two men testified to the Senate Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on defense today.

The subcommittee pushed both Gates and Mullen hard on the question of Pakistan.  The senators were exercised not only by the general attitude of Islamabad to the purportedly joint effort against advocates of violent political Islam but more particularly with recent, dramatic actions such as the arrest of Pakistani citizens who provided information to CIA in the run-up to the killing of Osama bin Laden.  Those arrested reportedly included an army major who furnished license plate numbers among other items.

When asked about the propriety of providing cooperation and sizable aid to an "ally" who engaged in such actions while conducting a non-stop campaign of tergiversation and mendacity, Secretary Gates dismissed the question in a way which was simultaneously both quite accurate--and significantly misleading.  The secretary responded by noting that governments routinely lie to each other, that doing so allowed work to be accomplished.  He also pointed out, once more accurately but in a way which is not germane to the Pakistani Question, that even friendly governments spy on one another.

Spying and lying are normal government activities.  Only hopeless idealists or those who inhabit the lotus lands of Julian Assange and Anonymous might think (or desire) otherwise.  But as generalizing from the particular is an intellectual error so also is particularizing from the general.

And, particularizing from the general is precisely what Dr Gates and Adm Mullen were doing.  They did it well but that does not make the effort either useful or honest.

Pakistan is a particular case.  It has a unique relation with the US defined by the current context of the war in Afghanistan and the larger conflict between the civilized states and the forces of violent political Islam.  This means that Pakistan's relation with the US differs not only from American relations with other countries which do not harbor, protect, and assist some groups motivated by violent political Islam while attacking others.  It also means that Pakistan's relation with the US today and in recent years is qualitatively different from the relation between the two countries during the cold war.

Simply put, the relationship between Pakistan and the US is utterly unique.  It is one of a kind.  Further, it is a relationship without precise historical counterpart.  To put that in focus, imagine a situation during World War II where the US provided massive aid and support to a country which simultaneously harbored the Nazi party, supported its actions in third countries, protected it against any US attacks, and mounted half-hearted actions against a Fascist organization within its borders.  The mind boggles at the concept.

Yet, that is precisely what is happening in Pakistan today.  It has been precisely what has gone on month after month from the day American bombs and boots hit the ground in Afghanistan.  The government, army, and intelligence service of Pakistan have aided and protected "good" jihadists while on occasion and with great reluctance attacked the "bad" jihadists.

Throughout the charade, the government, army, and intelligence service have benefited from vast amounts of US aid, most of which has been both military and useful not for counterinsurgent campaigns but rather for conventional operations of the sort which would be required when Pakistan gets its wish for one more rematch with India.  To ensure the benefits keep pouring in while maintaining its "strategic" asset of terror, the Pakistanis have lied non-stop.  They have lied with creativity.  They have lied consistently (while being quite unperturbed when the internal inconsistencies of the lies come to light.)  They have lied loudly.  They have even lied about their lies.

An alliance, any alliance, no matter how limited in nature, scope, and goals cannot be maintained when one of the allies relies upon a dedication to untruth.  The US government has been remarkably patient with the Pakistanis and their addiction to prevarication.  However, the raid at Abbottabad made the continuation of this policy of patience politically impossible.  No person reasonably well oriented in time and place can possibly accept the proposition that the Pakistani regime at its highest levels was clueless as to where Osama might have been for the past half decade or so.

Nor can any person even cursorily aware of the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan accept Pakistani protestations that they have made great efforts, suffered mighty sacrifices in the joint cause.  The expeditions mounted by the army against the advocates of violent political Islam in Swat and other parts of the FATA were conducted not by the regular army in the main but rather by the poorly trained, poorly equipped, and very poorly officered Frontier Corps.  The three thousand fatalities so often pointed to by the Pakistani government and army as proof positive of their efforts are the result not of hard fought combat but the consequence of using second and third rank troops against a far better adversary.

As the Pakistani regular army and air force showed the bravery of being out of range, the unfortunates of the Frontier Corps were murdered by inept commanders and a self-serving bunch topside in order to provide a basis for the ongoing lies.  A close look at the several "campaigns" shows the troop movements were carefully choreographed to allow the majority of the jihadists to withdraw in perfect safety to havens in South Waziristan.  It needs to be recalled that the Pakistanis continue to refuse to operate in South Waziristan regardless of US requests and pressure.

The Geek has laid out in detail the strategic and political thinking which motivates the government, army, and intelligence service to continue their support of the several groups advocating violent political Islam which Islamabad considers to be "good," that is useful strategic assets in the war with India.  In these and other posts the Geek has provided a detailed history of the poor US decision making which facilitated the Pakistani efforts to create and maintain terrorist entities as a strategic weapon as well as the critical role played by Zia and Saudi Arabia in the overall Islamazation of the Pakistani people.  It is not necessary to recapitulate all that now.

The past, however, is prologue for the situation today.  And, today's bad situation will become only worse unless the US pulls the plug on the current relationship with Pakistan.

Dr Gates, as might be expected, raised the nuclear bogeyman.  The prospect of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and production facilities falling into the possession of advocates of violent political Islam is worrying indeed, but does not on its own constitute good and sufficient reason to continue the toxic relation with Islamabad.  If necessary there can be no doubt that the US has the capacity to eliminate the nuisance provided it is willing to accept the diplomatic consequences of collateral damage.  The ultimate fate of the Pakistani nuclear program is a grave issue to be sure but not an insurmountable problem as Dr Gates and Adm Mullen know from the contingency plans already on the shelf.

As the US draws down in Afghanistan--a question not of "if"or even "when" but rather of "how fast" and "how many," the need for Pakistani cooperation drops apace.  Reduction of the American footprint in Afghanistan is liberating as it allows Washington to focus more on the real heartland of terror threats to the US and other civilized states--the FATA.  This reality in turn puts a very real pressure on Islamabad.  Who is going to abate the jihadist menace in the area, Washington or Islamabad?

The reduction of the US and other foreign presence in Afghanistan shifts the burden for dealing with advocates of violent political Islam on Kabul and Islamabad.  The governments of these two counties will have to determine the degree to which they will exist independent of the threats and domination of the extremists.  The question for both Afghanistan and Pakistan is ultimately existential.  That should provide a real motivation for both political and military solutions to be developed and implemented.  The presence of the US and its foreign allies has given both Pakistan and Afghanistan a free pass to ignore the existential threat represented by the advocates of violent political Islam.

Now, with a withdrawal and a shift in policy toward Pakistan, the free pass will be revoked.  If the US also takes the position that it is indifferent to what happens within the borders of either country but is concerned only with the exportation of violent political Islam, the two regimes will have no real option beyond dealing effectively with the various Talibans and related groups.

In an ideal world the US would also tilt more and more toward India including supporting that country's efforts in Afghanistan.  India has a real strategic need to establish an effective presence in Kabul and has worked diligently in this direction for the past several years.  Considering the number of coinciding interests which exist between the US and India including a well-founded apprehension of Chinese ambitions in the region, the US would be well advised to shift its focus from Afghanistan and Pakistan to India so as to assist and support India in its policy gambits in the region.

The fundamental reality of policy in the subcontinent is simply that no government can do business with a regime based solely on lying.  Pakistan's behavior is over the edge when it comes to the way in which governments routinely mislead each other.  Dr Gates must be very well aware of this.  It is most unfortunate that in his last appearance before this subcommittee he felt obliged to shade the truth to a degree which constitutes an insult to American national interest--and the intelligence of many who heard or read his comments.

As there are limits in permissible lying between governments, there are limits to "realism" in foreign and national security policy.  In his assessment of Pakistan, Dr Gates regrettably transcended these limits.  It is a very sad note on which to end a most distinguished career.

T.R,s Timeless Insight--Today More Than Ever

During the run up to American participation in World War I as Woodrow Wilson was trying  to frame a reason for our coming into this purely European civil war, former president Theodore Roosevelt--personally in favor of the US going to war--wrote to his fellow progressive Republican, Henry Cabot Lodge, Senator from Massachusetts.  TR knew a thing or two about war.  He knew even more about the American people.  This shows in his words.

"In my experience," he wrote,"the American public is not disposed to overseas wars unless there is a great cause involved or the goal is plainly clear."  While the ex-president believed there was a "great cause" to be fought in the trenches of the Western Front, he properly concluded that it was not possible yet to convey this to the great mass of We the People in a way which would assure full-fledged support.  He was right.  Even later, after Wilson had put forth his vision of the "great cause" such as to gain nearly monolithic support, it was necessary in the estimate of the administration to put into place the most draconian laws restricting free speech and assembly in the Republic's history and back these laws with a shadow army of millions of hyper-patriotic snoops.

In the aftermath of the war when the noble vision of Wilson turned to foggy and nasty reality, the American public recoiled against any involvement in the affairs of Europe and Asia.  This, the era of isolationism, made both World War II and the ensuing Cold War the next thing to inevitable.

The lesson was and is clear.  "Great causes" must be real and not the artifacts of ideology or ideals.  A goal which is "plainly clear" is far more important than the purported greatness of the cause.

The lessons to be derived from TR's insight are applicable right now as the US considers when, how, and at what speed we should/must ramp down our war in Afghanistan.  The original intent, the goal, of the invasion of Afghanistan way back in the Dark Age, was twofold: Remove by killing or capture Osama bin Laden and his fellows of al-Qaeda; punish the Taliban regime for having harbored al-Qaeda even after 9/11 and repeated diplomatic efforts to accomplish the capture of the al-Qaeda heavyweights.

The goal was "plainly clear."  And, the motive did, in the estimate of most Americans, constitute a "great cause."  Not since 7 Decemember 41 had there been such uniformity of conviction regarding both the necessity and justice of going to war.  The TR dictum had been followed, well and truly.

Almost before the first American boot hit the ground in Afghanistan, the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Neocon Ninny crowd betrayed the "plainly clear" goal and undercut the credibility of the "great cause."  This was accomplished by a surprising, even shocking, set of awesomely stupid decisions driven by skewed perceptions of the requirements of political opinion both domestic and foreign.

The administration came to the conclusion that the American public or at least the left-leaning elite would support the war if and only if the American goals were enlarged to encompass the creation of a modern Western style nation-state in all its full splendor.  It was the apparent belief of the decision makers that the war would be gutted of public support without the goal of nation-building replacing the narrow, "plainly clear" one of destroying al-Qaeda and administering condign punishment upon Mullah Omar and the Taliban.

That decision as well as its predicate were both as wrong as a cat barking.

Another decision, this one powered by diplomatic considerations, made the situation immeasurably worse.  In total spite of the reasonably well developed intelligence picture which showed the long standing relation between the Pakistani military and intelligence service with Taliban and its protectorate, al-Qaeda, the administration failed to put sufficient pressure on Islamabad to seal the border or arrest fleeing Talib and al-Qaeda personnel who flooded across the border with their Pakistani hand-holders.  Nor did the US provide adequate and properly positioned forces to do the job at the border itself.  (In this context it might be recalled that credible testimony exists as to American units receiving stop orders as they closed in on critical border crossing points.)

The Afghan situation was changed quickly into a protracted multi-party insurgency in which the foreign interventionary forces had neither the numbers nor the doctrine to convert defeat into victory at least in a reasonable amount of time.  The Iraq invasion--which also fails the TR test completely as regards "great cause" and, again by self-imposed mission-leap, fails the goal being "clearly plain"--supervened to assure the situation in Afghanistan would improve only from the perspective of Taliban, the Haqqani network, al-Qaeda and, of course, the Pakistanis.

Now, not quite two years into our belated effort to retrieve some semblance of success in the place, the combination of the killing of Osama bin Laden, the new focus on the deficit and government economy as well as an election only eighteen months in the offing, the debate has shifted from how-can-we-succeed to how-can-we-get-out.  There is no doubt but that We the People have lost any and all desire to keep on keeping on in Afghanistan.

The largest single reason for this widely held view is not the passage of time.  Nor is it the quite modest losses incurred by American forces.  Rather it is simply because our "cause" there is not "great" and our goal is most definitely not "plainly clear."

Rather than engage in a sterile and bitter controversy over how many troops should be withdrawn when and with what effect, the US would be better off to define what our goal is now that the icon of terror is sleeping with the fishes.  Is our goal now what it was in the beginning, the defense of the US and other civilized states by suppressing the offensive capacities of al-Qaeda along with convincing the adherents of Taliban to stop giving "Islamic hospitality" to groups which practice violent political Islam against Western targets?  Or is our goal the more expansive one of nation-building together with forceful counterinsurgency?

The first alternative is cheaper.  Counter-terrorist operations require a lower number of boots on the ground--albeit a highly skilled and specialist bunch in those boots.  The offense-defense of counter-terrorist operations allows us to ignore the nature and character of Afghan society, polity, culture, and economy.  As long as the Afghan government and its armed forces offer no hindrance to our efforts, we can overlook any and all objectionable features of the regime and its personalities.

The downside to this operational concept is the possible blowback from Americans offended by our having left the Afghan population at the "mercy" of political parties espousing political Islam.  As a number of Americans are offended deeply by the practices of some Muslim regimes, it is probable that there will be significant opposition to drawing back from the goal of seeing Afghanistan become a stable, democratic, multi-party, free enterprise state with an honest, transparent, and responsive government which includes an independent judiciary.

The other option is, quite simply, the pursuit of the totally impossible.  Even a successful counter insurgency campaign will end with negotiations, negotiations which will see Taliban and others as part of the government. The ultimate result will be women in burkas, and clerics in charge.  Perhaps not as absolutely as during the heyday of Taliban dot one, but bad by liberal Western norms and values.  But, no purely military effort can do more than kill the most highly motivated and least given to compromise among the insurgents while placing effective pressure on the others to join in the process of negotiation.  The military by itself cannot make the status quo government legitimate either functionally or existentially.  Nor can the military by itself create an atmosphere which draws the support of the uncommitted majority.  That is up to the indigenous government.

The time is here for the Obama administration to choose one of the two options.  Choose and then make the goal "plainly clear."  At the same time the administration would not be wrong to insist that there was a "great cause" underlying our efforts in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  That cause is no less than the critical one of protecting the country against future attack by Muslims who are motivated by the goals of violent political Islam.

Even the smaller, less costly in both lives and money alternative will not see us totally out of Afghanistan for many years.  It will also necessitate putting the real screws on Islamabad to go into North Waziristan so as to put actual pressure on the black turban guys to put down the guns and stick to preaching and stoning women.

Years ago the Geek predicted that the conflict between the civilized states and proponents of violent political Islam will last so long as to render the Cold War a short lived blip in our history.  It will still be going on when President Obama is getting social security--that is if it still exists in twenty years.

Rubes Versus City Slickers

A few years ago the US military started hiring cultural anthropologists and embedding them in combat units in Afghanistan.  The idea was a better appreciation of cultural mores would make for more sensitive and effective use of combat power--that we could avoid the negative consequences of door kicking and mosque invading which had produced a wave of backlash in much of Iraq.  This notion was a good one and did have some real benefits for US effectiveness.

But, it was too limited.

In Afghanistan as in Iraq before as well as in Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, even Turkey and Syria today, there is a much larger problem involving the anthropology of culture.  It is a dynamic with which we Americans are--or should be--quite familiar.  In our own history this particular dynamic was in large part responsible for such events as Prohibition.  It is also responsible to some degree for the more recent "culture wars" which have been so much a feature of our politics.

The phenomenon is the divide which separates folks who live in urban environments and those who dwell in remote, often rugged, always sparsely populated, and usually relatively impoverished areas.  In Afghanistan or Pakistan, it is the gulf separating the hill people from the urbanites.  In Libya, it is the distinction between the ethnics of the western mountains and the coast dwellers.  Elsewhere, it is the age old tension between subsistence and marginal farmers on the one hand and those who have migrated to the cities for the opportunities which are believed to exist there and only there.

Throughout the developing world, in all continents, in countries as far removed in geography, culture, and governmental styles as China and Mexico, Russia and Indonesia, the same dynamic is at work.  Often, the work is destructive of social and, more importantly, political harmony.

There is a set of characteristics by which the hill people, the subsistence peasants, the "exiles" of remote and rugged regions define themselves in opposition to those of their fellow citizens who live in the cities.  We Americans have seen the same definitions of self and opponent in our own recent past.  There is nothing different with the far away folks in Afghanistan and the host of other countries where the destructive tension scars the social, cultural, and political landscape.

At the risk of some over simplification, the people who live far from the seductive attractions and entrancing visions of wealth existing in the cities see themselves as more moral, more honest, more honorable, more truly human than their opposites in the city.  The rubes understand themselves to be the last vestige of honor, honesty, integrity, and religious morality.  They also see themselves as being under constant, unremitting attack by the corrupt, immoral, irreligious forces of urban life.

The rubes see the cities as vast moral swamps.  They understand the goal of urbanites to be that of attracting and perverting the sons--and more particularly, the daughters--of rural purity.  The rubes fear the appeal of the cities, the seductions of wealth, bright lights, loud music, open sexuality.

For their part, the urban dwellers, whether a century or more ago in the US or today throughout the developing world, view the rubes with disdain.  The hill people, the peasants, are all seen as rude, uneducated, unsophisticated, backward looking, fear ridden, clingers of the past, chained by religious superstition.  The rubes are dismissed as the last of a deservedly dying breed.

The two groups stare at each other through prisms of distortion--or the crosshairs of a telescopic sight.  Each distrusts the other.  Each views the other as irredeemable.  The city slickers are convinced that the rubes are hopelessly outdated, ignorant, superstitious, hung up on irrelevant concepts such as personal honor.  For their part, the rubes are certain that all city slickers are pervasively corrupt, purveyors of moral degradation, apostles of apostasy, and generally as exploitative, manipulative people given to enriching themselves at the expense of their moral betters.

As a general rule, over time the rubes are willing to strike a bargain with the city slickers.  The basis of the tacit agreement is simple: You city types just leave us alone and in return we will do the same for you.

Rarely do the rubes seek to replace the city slickers as the source of collective government.  Rarely do the rubes seek to impose their social and cultural mores on the urban population by either politics or force of arms.  To this extent the American experience of Prohibition or the more recent political activities of conservative, predominantly rural origin Christians constitute exceptions to the general experience.

In a similar way the emergence of violent political Islam is also an exception to the historical norm of "you leave us alone and we will leave you alone."  The primary appeal of violent political Islam has been to threatened rubes.  The threat may be as direct as an attempt by the urban based central government to extend its sway over the remote regions or it may be the more indirect but pernicious one of inducing the young of Rubeland to emigrate to the cities.

The hill dwelling tribesmen of Afghanistan or Pakistan's FATA are not necessarily more violent by inherent nature than others of their nationality.  Rather, they see and have seen themselves as under threat from the dishonorable, corrupt, irreligious people of Kabul or Islamabad.

The situation was not different in the US a couple of centuries ago.  The Scotch-Irish who moved to the rugged and remote frontier of the eastern mountains did so not because they were inherently of a greater man-against-nature mentality than Americans who lived in the flatlands of the coastal regions.  Nor did they and their descendants remain in the far distant hollows because they were inherently antisocial.  Neither did their more recent exemplars violently resist the incursions of mine owners, state governments, or federal "revenoors" due to some inbuilt streak of cussedness.  No.  They wanted to be left alone.

To the well intentioned outsiders of urban America, the hill dwellers of Appalachia may have appeared to be hopelessly backward, trapped in endless generations of poverty and deprivation, "clinging to their guns and Bibles" (to use the formulation of a noted and successful presidential candidate) due to personal fear of progress and change.  And, to some small extent, the impressions--at least those of poverty and deprivation--might have been true.  But, far more important was the self-belief of moral purity, the upholding of time honored traditions and values.

The folks of Appalachia were quite willing to accept some of the benefits offered by larger American society such as electricity, better medical care, economic opportunity, better housing, better nutrition.  But they were not willing to take the benefits if these were offset by participating in systems both tangible and otherwise which were antithetical to basic beliefs and values.  It took American social engineers generations to find the right approach, the proper mix, the best way to include the hill people without destroying with unacceptable rapidity the values and norms which had long sustained these people.

This is also the challenge in Afghanistan, the FATA, and other parts of Pakistan.  It is the same in the other countries currently facing collapse and failure.  Put simply, the trick is that of extending the good things of modern life to the rubes without pulling the rug of tradition, traditional values, norms, and mechanisms from under their feet.  Change is acceptable as long as it is neither too fast nor too shattering in extent.

It is the rock of time upon which the grand ship of nation building must flounder.  This is the case in Afghanistan.  This is the case in Pakistan.  Insisting on a rapid and complete penetration of the land and life of the rubes by the city slickers and their foreign supporters can only promote resistance--violent resistance.  The insistence upon extending the "corrupt" and "irreligious" systems of the city into the mountain heartlands of the rubes can only result in a more ardent embrace of those ideas--in particular the religious--which make armed opposition legitimate.

The most basic war being waged in the vast arc of countries from Afghanistan to Tunisia is not between Islam and infidel.  Nor is it between the adherents of violent political Islam and those of a more secular persuasion.  It is not even a conflict between modernity and the warm certainty of the past.  Rather it is the war between the traditionally oriented "exiles" of the hills and the city slickers.

In this war of culture, the city slicker (which includes the US government)is  its own worst enemy.  A prime characteristic of the city slicker is impatience.  For the city slicker, particularly the American, the cliche, "Time is money," constitutes an imperative.  But, to the rube, time is eternal.  Time is something the rube possesses in great quantities.

The key to success in an insurgency is contained in a simple historical reality.  The side which can afford time and accept casualties will win over the side which must save both time and lives.

What this confluence means is both easy to understand and bitter to accept.  From Afghanistan to Tunisia and at all points in between, the city slickers of the West are doomed to lose.  For the insurgent rubes, powered by the force of both the past and the ideology of religion, a line from an old Rolling Stones song applies, "Time is on my side."