Since Her Majesty's Government took the remarkably ill-advised action of barring Geert Wilders from entering their "sceptered isle," there has been a rush to compare this effort of placating the Muslims of the UK with the actions of Chamberlain at Munich. This comparison is unfair.
Unfair to Chamberlain.
The oft-maligned "appeasement" policy of the British Prime Minister at the Munich Conference with Adolph Hitler was the consequence of a cold-eyed realism on the Englishman's part. Neither the UK nor its ally France possessed either the military means or the political will to offer firm resistance to the German dictator's demands. Put bluntly, the people of both the UK and France were not willing to contemplate war only a generation after the hectatombs of the Great War.
The recent barring of Wilders was not necessary. The UK has sufficient police capability and the majority of the British public (if not the New Labor elite) has the political will to maintain order in the streets. There was no need to cower before the threat of Islamist leaning "leaders" including one member of the House of Lords when they muttered dire threats against the public order should the infamous Wilders be allowed to step on British soil.
What Chamberlain did was behave realistically in full awareness of the balance of strengths and weaknesses existing in England, France and Germany. His actions gained great support at the time. Only later events made obvious that appeasement of Hitler was akin to throwing raw beef to a wolf in the hopes of inducing vegetarianism in the critter.
Only later did the word "appeasement" come to have the bad odor it has today.
The multi-culti elite of the UK has been bending over and spreading its collective cheeks to humor Muslims for months and months now. The epitomization of this hyper-accommodationist approach is seen in the video footage of London police backing up for blocks as a crowd of hate speech spewing, object-hurling Muslims jeered and chased.
The elite of New Labor has denatured the English language, perverted English cultural traditions, twisted public education, enforced unwilling compliance with Muslim snortings and generally acted in a snivelling, cringing fashion which would cause Churchill, or Gladstone or Pitt to twist in their graves at a high rate of knots.
Is it fair to ask just what HMG, New Labor and the multi-culti oh-so-sensitive elite crowd generally have gained for themselves or their nation by all these acts of submission? Has the internal security of the UK improved? Have Islamic governments or Islamist leaning groups shown an increased willingness to agreement through negotiated compromise? Have Muslims within the UK grown more tolerant? Accommodating? Generally amiable?
Anyone well oriented as to time and place (which requirement excludes multi-culti elitists) knows the answer to those all too well.
It is easy to dismiss the justifications offered by the British Foreign Minister who showed himself by his characterization of Fitna to be either a liar or a fool. The "threat to public order" emanated not from Wilders but from those who made the threats--Muslims, the lot of them.
What is less easy to dismiss is the reality underlying both the cause and the consequences of HMG's action. What is far less easy to dismiss is an alarming fact made self-evident by the Brown Ministry's interdict on Wilders.
Here it is, boys and girls. Best get a firm grip on it.
HMG, New Labor, the British multi-culti elite do not understand the nature and character of the war which has been declared upon them and the rest of the West by the apostles of Islamism. Brown, Miliband and Company do not get it.
The war which has been declared by Islamists and their ilk is not simply one of bombs, suicide vests, or aircraft flown into the sides of buildings all to the accompaniment of Allahu Akbar. The war is one of values and worldview, of the dignity and importance of the individual against the collective demands of ideology, of standing erect, free and proud versus kneeling, head pressed to the ground in submission to the dictates of dogma.
That is the war. It is a war which has been fought before. Fought against the Nazis, fought against the Commissars of the Kremlin, fought against the Bushido driven imperialists of Tokyo. Fought before. Won before.
Through its denial of Wilders' admission to the once proud bastion of free expression, England, Brown, Miliband and the rest of the cringing elitist crew have handed a defeat to the West which so far surpasses the temporary effects of Munich as to beggar the imagination. Simultaneously, it will have served to emboldened the followers of Islam to make more demands, utter more threats, become more expansive in their goals.
Not just in England. No.
The True Believers of the True Faith throughout Europe and within the US will all be encouraged by the Wilders Interdict to ramp up their (specious) claims for special treatment and consideration. They will be emboldened in their threats both veiled and not-so-veiled.
And, throughout Europe as well as within the US there are ever-so-sensitive, oh-so-multi-culturally aware members of the elite who will rush to emulate Miliband and his perversion of the cry-fire-in-a-crowded-theater dictum once offered by an American jurist. These High Minded, Lofty Thinking monuments to acceptance and embracement will comfort themselves with anodynes about socio-economic or political marginalisation of Muslims, bromides about the Muslim sense of being a "persecuted" minority, a mis-understood religion.
These well-intentioned but clueless folks are all members of The Society of the Perpetually Indignant and Concerned. They will pat each other on the back, assure one another, "We are not prejudiced. We are not fearful of those different from ourselves."
The High Minded and Lofty Thinking folks will nod gravely as they tell one another, "Not all speech should be protected. Certainly not speech that someone might find offensive."
Like the British man and woman in the street (as well as those who occupied mansions and the halls of power) who cheered Chamberlain as he waved his slip of paper and promise, "Peace in our time," those who approve of the Wilders Exclusion are wrong. Desperately wrong.
Of such seemingly small steps as the Wilders Affair are catastrophes constructed. Every small step on a very steep and extremely slippery slope carries with it the very real potential of disaster. Each tiny step seems so inconsequential, so utterly insignificant. Each appears quite safe and justifiable. Until a step too many is taken.
Then, as the glacier wall whips past, as the wind screams in the ear, as the canyon floor explodes into view. Well, by then it is just too damn late.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
Israel And The Zimbabwe Model
In a world of perfect justice, the Arabs would prevail in the conflict over Palestine. Or, in this hypothetical just world, there would be a secular state in the region in which adherents of all religions could coexist in political and economic harmony.
The impossibility of a Jewish "national homeland" existing in an Arab context was well understood by the founders of the Zionist Movement more than a century ago. Regardless of public pronouncements over the decades preceding the independence of Israel, the private position was clear: Only a clear and permanent Jewish majority could assure the permanence of the Jewish state.
And, make no mistake about it, despite the European socialist background of the first generations of Zionists and Israelis with its post-Enlightenment legacy of the secular oriented, multi-religious state, the goal was always the formation of a Jewish state in which the levers of power would remain for all time firmly in the hands of Jews. Adherents of other religious traditions would be tolerated but kept firmly in a minority position.
As David ben-Gurion wrote (privately) some seventy-five years ago, there were two problems which would confront the Jewish state in perpetuity. The first was the numerical inferiority of the Jewish population in comparison with the Arab Muslims of Palestine and surrounding areas. This problem would exist even if every Jew in the world returned to the Homeland--a clear impossibility then or now. The second problem was the "violent nature of Islam."
Ben Gurion correctly identified the ground truths of Islam. It was a totalistic belief system governing every aspect of human existence both personal and collective. It was immune to compromise except in the most narrowly defined tactical manner. Finally, it calls for violence against the non-believer generally and the Jew in particular.
Of course it would have been impolitic in the extreme to have made this position in a public forum. Ben Gurion and others of the founding generation relied on the Arabs to do the job for them. To reject compromise as in the myriad partition plans. To resort to violence whether in the riots of the late Twenties and Thirties or in the military misadventure of the Arab states upon Israel's declaration of independence.
It was not surprising that the Zionists and Israelis alike resorted to a form of ethnic cleansing. Before 1948 this was accomplished through the purchase of land and the removal (with the full cooperation of the British Mandate authorities) of the tenant farmer population. With the coming of the War of Independence, violence and threats of violence were employed to remove Arabs from the territory of the borning state.
With a degree of stupidity and arrogance which almost boggles the mind of the retrospective observer, the Israeli efforts at population removal were encouraged and assisted by the various Arab States which assumed without any basis in reality that their forces would speedily drive the Jews into the sea and the displaced population could return. The Arab leaders were wrong and thus share responsibility in creating the Mother of All Palestinian Problems--the fate of the refugees and their descendants.
None of this was just or fair or ethically justified in an absolute way. But, history shows to a nauseating extent that neither fairness nor justice are often observed conditions in the human experience. It is also fair and accurate to say that the two problems highlighted by Ben Gurion still exist.
Israeli Jews still hold the short end of the demographic stick. That end would be made even shorter should Israel agree to some sort of "law of the return" for either the refugees of the earlier wars or their descendants. Likewise it would be shortened if Israel were to reestablish an occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Israelis do swim in a very hostile sea.
The hostility is not only that of Arab nationalism which rose in parallel with the Zionist movement in the wake of the dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire. Arab nationalism is and has been alive and well for nearly a century now. And, the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are in no way immune to its inherent appeal.
Arguably nationalism is not the only or even the most important force at work in the irredentist position of the Gaza and West Bank population. The pride of place rightfully belongs to where Ben Gurion put it--Islam.
Ben Gurion was right on both of his points. And Israelis, even those of the most peace and justice loving persuasion know it. They are perfectly well aware of what would happen even in the event of a peaceful solution to the current hostilities.
Admittedly the probability of a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resides closer to the realm of myth than the cold world of reality. But, assume for the moment that it comes to pass, that a plan along the lines of that put forth by Saudi Arabia on behalf of the Arab League were to be put in place.
The Saudi plan includes a "right of return" clause. Now assume that a fraction of those eligible under its provisions come back to homes and lands in Israel.
Reside in Israel. Work in Israel. Vote in Israeli elections.
That's where the Zimbabwe model comes into play.
Consider it for a moment or two.
When Robert Mugabe and his guerrilla force outlasted the political will of the isolated white minority regime in Rhodesia and took power, the economic base of the country was the export oriented, white owned agricultural sector. For nearly two decades the efficient agricultural sector and the equally white agricultural support businesses kept Zimbabwe in both food and foreign exchange.
But, finally, to keep his kleptocratic hands on the levers of power and depending upon the "democratic process," Mugabe ousted the white farmers. The result was both obvious and immediate.
White flight. Loss of agricultural productivity. Loss of foreign exchange. Finally, in just a handful of years Zimbabwe went from plenty to poverty. Starvation stalked a land which had formerly been a net food exporter of note.
The early Zionists were scared to death of democracy. They feared and resisted any move to place the original Palestine Mandate with the United States in accurate apprehension that the US would insist on installing a reasonable form of democracy which would of necessity assure that the Arab majority would hold power.
That fear is just as alive and well today with the Israeli population. If anything the frightful example of events of the past decade in Zimbabwe have stoked the fear. It is utterly inconceivable that Israel will ever accept any sort of peace which dilutes the Jewish majority.
This means that the Arab population of both the West Bank and Gaza Strip have few options beyond accepting that they have been (as they continuously and loudly and correctly) assert the recipients of injustice. The injustice is inherent to the efforts not simply of the visionaries of the Zionist movement and the guilt over the Nazi slaughter afflicting the West in the aftermath of World War II.
It exists as well as a result of the overly ambitious nationalism of Arabs throughout the region. It exists as well as a direct result of the basic tenets of Islam and the interpretations placed upon these by a vast and terrible legion of clerics.
Just or not, fair or not, the reality remains, Israel will not go away. It is a large, potent and determined "fact on the ground." In a real sense, the people of Israel have no choice. They are not about to get on boats and leave. They will not sit with folded hands and allow themselves to be slaughtered.
Neither will they commit a slow suicide by democracy in action, allowing an Arab majority to vote for a local version of the Zimbabwe model. The combination of demographics and democracy has been seen too well and too long to be allowed. The Saudi initiative is and always will be dead on arrival.
The Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have to decide if they have killed and been killed enough so that nationalistic ambitions powered by Islamist rhetoric have run on too long and with too little result beyond blood in the streets. They will have to decide if the better course of action for themselves and their children is a Forever War or a peace which will allow some sort of future better than martyrdom operations without success.
The Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza Strip will have to decide which parts of the Quran should be observed more fully. The verses which celebrate life and progress or those which focus on death and killing.
No one else can make the decision. No Syrian, no Egyptian, no Iranian can make the choice. Neither can any Israeli. Not even President Obama can make the choice. Only the men and women of Gaza and the West Bank are able to decide.
Suffering from the historian's occupational disease--cynicism--the Geek bets hair they will make the wrong one.
The impossibility of a Jewish "national homeland" existing in an Arab context was well understood by the founders of the Zionist Movement more than a century ago. Regardless of public pronouncements over the decades preceding the independence of Israel, the private position was clear: Only a clear and permanent Jewish majority could assure the permanence of the Jewish state.
And, make no mistake about it, despite the European socialist background of the first generations of Zionists and Israelis with its post-Enlightenment legacy of the secular oriented, multi-religious state, the goal was always the formation of a Jewish state in which the levers of power would remain for all time firmly in the hands of Jews. Adherents of other religious traditions would be tolerated but kept firmly in a minority position.
As David ben-Gurion wrote (privately) some seventy-five years ago, there were two problems which would confront the Jewish state in perpetuity. The first was the numerical inferiority of the Jewish population in comparison with the Arab Muslims of Palestine and surrounding areas. This problem would exist even if every Jew in the world returned to the Homeland--a clear impossibility then or now. The second problem was the "violent nature of Islam."
Ben Gurion correctly identified the ground truths of Islam. It was a totalistic belief system governing every aspect of human existence both personal and collective. It was immune to compromise except in the most narrowly defined tactical manner. Finally, it calls for violence against the non-believer generally and the Jew in particular.
Of course it would have been impolitic in the extreme to have made this position in a public forum. Ben Gurion and others of the founding generation relied on the Arabs to do the job for them. To reject compromise as in the myriad partition plans. To resort to violence whether in the riots of the late Twenties and Thirties or in the military misadventure of the Arab states upon Israel's declaration of independence.
It was not surprising that the Zionists and Israelis alike resorted to a form of ethnic cleansing. Before 1948 this was accomplished through the purchase of land and the removal (with the full cooperation of the British Mandate authorities) of the tenant farmer population. With the coming of the War of Independence, violence and threats of violence were employed to remove Arabs from the territory of the borning state.
With a degree of stupidity and arrogance which almost boggles the mind of the retrospective observer, the Israeli efforts at population removal were encouraged and assisted by the various Arab States which assumed without any basis in reality that their forces would speedily drive the Jews into the sea and the displaced population could return. The Arab leaders were wrong and thus share responsibility in creating the Mother of All Palestinian Problems--the fate of the refugees and their descendants.
None of this was just or fair or ethically justified in an absolute way. But, history shows to a nauseating extent that neither fairness nor justice are often observed conditions in the human experience. It is also fair and accurate to say that the two problems highlighted by Ben Gurion still exist.
Israeli Jews still hold the short end of the demographic stick. That end would be made even shorter should Israel agree to some sort of "law of the return" for either the refugees of the earlier wars or their descendants. Likewise it would be shortened if Israel were to reestablish an occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Israelis do swim in a very hostile sea.
The hostility is not only that of Arab nationalism which rose in parallel with the Zionist movement in the wake of the dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire. Arab nationalism is and has been alive and well for nearly a century now. And, the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are in no way immune to its inherent appeal.
Arguably nationalism is not the only or even the most important force at work in the irredentist position of the Gaza and West Bank population. The pride of place rightfully belongs to where Ben Gurion put it--Islam.
Ben Gurion was right on both of his points. And Israelis, even those of the most peace and justice loving persuasion know it. They are perfectly well aware of what would happen even in the event of a peaceful solution to the current hostilities.
Admittedly the probability of a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resides closer to the realm of myth than the cold world of reality. But, assume for the moment that it comes to pass, that a plan along the lines of that put forth by Saudi Arabia on behalf of the Arab League were to be put in place.
The Saudi plan includes a "right of return" clause. Now assume that a fraction of those eligible under its provisions come back to homes and lands in Israel.
Reside in Israel. Work in Israel. Vote in Israeli elections.
That's where the Zimbabwe model comes into play.
Consider it for a moment or two.
When Robert Mugabe and his guerrilla force outlasted the political will of the isolated white minority regime in Rhodesia and took power, the economic base of the country was the export oriented, white owned agricultural sector. For nearly two decades the efficient agricultural sector and the equally white agricultural support businesses kept Zimbabwe in both food and foreign exchange.
But, finally, to keep his kleptocratic hands on the levers of power and depending upon the "democratic process," Mugabe ousted the white farmers. The result was both obvious and immediate.
White flight. Loss of agricultural productivity. Loss of foreign exchange. Finally, in just a handful of years Zimbabwe went from plenty to poverty. Starvation stalked a land which had formerly been a net food exporter of note.
The early Zionists were scared to death of democracy. They feared and resisted any move to place the original Palestine Mandate with the United States in accurate apprehension that the US would insist on installing a reasonable form of democracy which would of necessity assure that the Arab majority would hold power.
That fear is just as alive and well today with the Israeli population. If anything the frightful example of events of the past decade in Zimbabwe have stoked the fear. It is utterly inconceivable that Israel will ever accept any sort of peace which dilutes the Jewish majority.
This means that the Arab population of both the West Bank and Gaza Strip have few options beyond accepting that they have been (as they continuously and loudly and correctly) assert the recipients of injustice. The injustice is inherent to the efforts not simply of the visionaries of the Zionist movement and the guilt over the Nazi slaughter afflicting the West in the aftermath of World War II.
It exists as well as a result of the overly ambitious nationalism of Arabs throughout the region. It exists as well as a direct result of the basic tenets of Islam and the interpretations placed upon these by a vast and terrible legion of clerics.
Just or not, fair or not, the reality remains, Israel will not go away. It is a large, potent and determined "fact on the ground." In a real sense, the people of Israel have no choice. They are not about to get on boats and leave. They will not sit with folded hands and allow themselves to be slaughtered.
Neither will they commit a slow suicide by democracy in action, allowing an Arab majority to vote for a local version of the Zimbabwe model. The combination of demographics and democracy has been seen too well and too long to be allowed. The Saudi initiative is and always will be dead on arrival.
The Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have to decide if they have killed and been killed enough so that nationalistic ambitions powered by Islamist rhetoric have run on too long and with too little result beyond blood in the streets. They will have to decide if the better course of action for themselves and their children is a Forever War or a peace which will allow some sort of future better than martyrdom operations without success.
The Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza Strip will have to decide which parts of the Quran should be observed more fully. The verses which celebrate life and progress or those which focus on death and killing.
No one else can make the decision. No Syrian, no Egyptian, no Iranian can make the choice. Neither can any Israeli. Not even President Obama can make the choice. Only the men and women of Gaza and the West Bank are able to decide.
Suffering from the historian's occupational disease--cynicism--the Geek bets hair they will make the wrong one.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
The (Islamic) Chicken And The (Socio-economic) Egg
The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and ambassadors of various Islamic states such as Pakistan are hard at work giving advice to the Obama administration. In a move that is approximately as surprising as seeing the sun overhead at high noon, these Islamic worthies are imploring the US and the current administration to address the "root causes" of "extremism." As a corollary, the OIC and Muslim ambassadors asserted that there is no connection between Islam qua Islam and the actions of these "extremists."
Islam per se these folk argue has utterly nothing to do with groups such as al-Qaeda in all its many forms, or Taliban, or Hamas, or Hezbollah or any of the other entities and individuals who bomb, shoot and otherwise kill their way into the world's consciousness. Rather these "unfortunate" events are the result of preventable sociological and economic factors such as poverty and marginalisation. Or they are the natural consequence of political oppression.
OK.
Time to go to the old historical videotape.
Muslim majority societies and the governments which rule them have been around for a long, long time. For most of the past several centuries, most of these societies and polities have been impoverished. For most of the past several centuries, these societies and polities have existed on the farther shores of marginalization, of irrelevancy. For most of the past several centuries, these societies and polities have been the objects not subjects--they have been acted upon, not actors.
Finally, for the vast majority of the past fourteen hundred years, Muslims generally have lived in an environment of complete political oppression. It might be recalled that more than a few leading clerics, both Sunni and Shia, have maintained that democracy and its collateral's are at least non-Islamic and probably anti-Islamic.
Until quite recently, say the past thirty to forty years, none of these realities seem to have been of particular concern to Muslims generally. Endemic poverty, reactionary and autocratic rulers, pervasive marginalisation didn't motivate Muslims to strap on bombs and while shouting, "Allahu Akbar," push the clicker.
Not until the past twenty years has the supposed decadence and rampant immorality of the West generally and the US in particular been a red flag of death and destruction in the eyes of Muslims. They seemed to be as unconcerned with the Bay Watch Babe aspects of US culture as they were with the deployment of American military forces globally. Muslims were not picking up box cutters, boarding American aircraft and, with the usual shout, flying the commandeered planes into buildings.
So what has changed?
It's not the landscape of poverty, irrelevancy, autocracy. These remain the same whether one looks at the distant past, the recent past or the present.
Nor is it the religion of Islam. Islam in its doctrine and dogma is immutable. The beliefs and requirements, the strictures and demands of Islam per se as expressed in the Quran, Hadith and the life of Mohammad, the Perfect Man, have remained a constant over centuries.
Neither is it the role and status of clerics in Muslim societies. These preachers and scholars have always occupied a pride of place and continue to do so. Historically the clerical career has been one of the few (if not the only) routes open to a man of ambition and a modicum of brains and talent. Arguably, the clergy has been the vast sump sucking in the best and brightest of generations.
So what has changed?
Several things have changed over the past few decades. The first, and in many ways most important of these, is the establishment of the state of Israel. To err on the side of accuracy, the most important matter was not the establishment of Israel in and of itself.
Far more important was the role played in the creation and enlargement of Israel by Arab Muslims. The intransigence of the Arabs--rooted in the no-compromise demands of Islam--precluded the negotiation of a partition which would have benefited the Arab claims. This losing approach was quickly worsened by the combination of collective ego and military ineptitude recurrently exhibited by the Arab Muslim states continuously after 1947.
The Muslim population and rulers of the Mideast could not bring themselves to acknowledge that it was the evil combination of Islamic "no-compromise-with-the-infidels" with the worst sort of aggrandising nationalism that brought defeat in the wake of defeat. No. The truth was both too uncomfortable and too destabilizing.
It was far easier and far more comfortable to blame the defeats on some presumed Western pro-Zionist, anti-Muslim plot headquartered in either (or both) Washington and London. This continued, willful, even calculated denial of historical reality assured that whenever something went astray in the Arab Mideast or the wider Muslim world (which occurred with depressing regularity), it could be foisted off on the US and its sinister allies in the Grand Zionist Plot.
(That ought to be easy to grasp. No one, regardless of creed or ideology enjoys admitting that they have screwed the proverbial pooch and continue to do so regardless of reality. It's always psychologically more pleasurable to off-load responsibility onto someone else.)
Displacement may be good for self-esteem. It is disastrous as a basis for state policy.
The second great event of the past few decades, as the Geek has posted before, was the Iranian Revolution. But even here misunderstanding of historical actuality is at work. It is not so much that the Islamists won as the Shah of Iran lost. More, it is not so much that the Shah lost as the US lost the political will to support the Shah's regime as it came under threat. To put the matter bluntly but not in an oversimplified fashion, the administration of Jimmy Carter made the decision to jettison the Shah who was an objectionable sort in the human rights department with the hope that the emerging mullahocracy would be gentler and kinder in its rule.
Had the US maintained support for the Shah, it is highly likely that members of his family would be ensconced to this day on the Peacock Throne. It is even more likely that whoever would be running the show in Tehran today would be less abusive of internal rights and external relations than the mullahocracy. But, no one, least of all a historian like the Geek would argue that the US always made good foreign policy decisions.
The reality remains that the Iranian Revolution occurred and historical denial rides high. This has empowered Islamism and its evil, deadly clone, jihadism. It brought religious purity, religious renewal, religious fervor out of the backroom and placed it front and center.
The Islamic Revolution seemed to say to the ambitious, those who believed themselves to have been victimised by their own government, or by the "forces of history" (as if there was such a thing) or the Grand Zionist Plot that the way to become actors, the way to power, was to turn back to a living, militant Islam such as was believed to have motivated the Companions and others of the Golden Age of Islam a thousand and more years earlier.
The third event, also an exercise in the denial of historical reality, was the presumed success of Islamist/jihadist fighters against the godless Red Army in Afghanistan. Arab jihadists such as Osama bin Ladin grossly exaggerated the impact of their contribution to the withdrawal of Soviet forces. The realities of history were for a third time of far less importance than the mechanisms of distortion which allowed Islamist/jihadist myth manufacturing to continue and increase.
These three major events along with minor factors such as the Clinton vintage evacuation of US troops from Somalia following a failed commando raid and the flaccid responses during the same period to lethal insults by al-Qaeda provided the necessary change. Allowed for the effective combining of the doctrines, dogmas, strictures and requirements of Islam with the mosaic of poverty, backwardness and autocracy characterising the majority of the Muslim world.
OK, Geek, so what does it all mean?
The short answer is simple and blunt. The sociological, economic and political reasons given for "extremism" by the OIC and the Muslim ambassadors is wrong.
Yes, poverty is endemic in many Muslim societies. However, the responsibility for the poverty rests not with the West let alone the US. The responsibility resides with the Muslim governments both individually and collectively. The OIC would be far better advised to work with, to insist upon, its member governments taking immediate action to correct the pronounced maldistribution of wealth in the bloc. One does not have to be a socialist oriented economist to notice that the wealth distribution in even the most resource rich of the Islamic countries is far more obscene than even the gap between an American banker and the national median.
Yes, there are sections of the Islamic world currently experiencing the less-than-tender effects of war. But, the war in Afghanistan is the result not only of piss-poor American planning. It is the result of a deliberate set of decisions by the former Taliban government to protect al-Qaeda and by the Pakistani government to support Taliban and only half-heartedly seek to counter the Islamist/jihadist threat in Pakistan.
In Iraq the foreigners are on the verge of departing. Few, if any, governments in the Arab states were sorry in the least to see the last of Saddam. Likewise, few, if any, are pleased to see the emergence of even a poor simulacrum of democracy in Iraq. Democracy is a threat to autocracies not only because it may see the release of political passions long suppressed, but that these political passions will be reinforced by Islamist zeal with results which no one can predict.
The OIC and the Muslim ambassadors would also be well advised to recall that the on-going "Palestinian problem" is not the creation of Israel or the US. The Arab states from the very beginning were both ready and willing to use the Arab population of what became Israel as a weapon. Cruelly and cynically and continuously down to the present day, the governments and ruling elites as well as ambitious "Palestinian" leaders have sought victory through the piling up of mounds of Arab bodies in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Yes, many Muslim countries are economically and technologically backward. This is not the fault of the West let alone the US. It is the responsibility first and foremost of Islam and secondly of the governments of recent years. Their support for universal education is nil. So is investment in science and technology. So is the commitment to economic diversification.
And, the suppression of free expression and inquiry which has been a prime goal of the OIC in recent months is a guaranteed way to assure backwardness reigns. Stifle speech and progress is the first casualty.
The Geek is of a mind to give President Obama some advice. (Heck, he can't help it. He used to be a professor and that breed is very free with advice.)
Tell the OIC and the Muslim ambassadors that insofar as sociological, economic and political factors have caused Muslims to scream "Allahu Akbar" as they kill civilians at home and abroad, the responsibility for this resides solely with Islam and the governments of Islamic states. That is a tough fact to face, but a true one.
Tell the OIC and the Muslim ambassadors that they have to get a grip on history. That means the history which actually happened in all its richness and complexity, not history as they would like it to have been, all warm, comfy and wrong as a cat barking. That is a tougher fact to face for it strips away the coziness of displacement. It forces people to own up to their mistakes, errors and sins. But, it is a truth nonetheless.
Anything less than historical reality does a massive disservice to both the Muslims of the world who deserve far better than they are getting from their apologists and to We the People who will continue to live under the Islamist/jihadist threat until it is finally defeated.
Islam per se these folk argue has utterly nothing to do with groups such as al-Qaeda in all its many forms, or Taliban, or Hamas, or Hezbollah or any of the other entities and individuals who bomb, shoot and otherwise kill their way into the world's consciousness. Rather these "unfortunate" events are the result of preventable sociological and economic factors such as poverty and marginalisation. Or they are the natural consequence of political oppression.
OK.
Time to go to the old historical videotape.
Muslim majority societies and the governments which rule them have been around for a long, long time. For most of the past several centuries, most of these societies and polities have been impoverished. For most of the past several centuries, these societies and polities have existed on the farther shores of marginalization, of irrelevancy. For most of the past several centuries, these societies and polities have been the objects not subjects--they have been acted upon, not actors.
Finally, for the vast majority of the past fourteen hundred years, Muslims generally have lived in an environment of complete political oppression. It might be recalled that more than a few leading clerics, both Sunni and Shia, have maintained that democracy and its collateral's are at least non-Islamic and probably anti-Islamic.
Until quite recently, say the past thirty to forty years, none of these realities seem to have been of particular concern to Muslims generally. Endemic poverty, reactionary and autocratic rulers, pervasive marginalisation didn't motivate Muslims to strap on bombs and while shouting, "Allahu Akbar," push the clicker.
Not until the past twenty years has the supposed decadence and rampant immorality of the West generally and the US in particular been a red flag of death and destruction in the eyes of Muslims. They seemed to be as unconcerned with the Bay Watch Babe aspects of US culture as they were with the deployment of American military forces globally. Muslims were not picking up box cutters, boarding American aircraft and, with the usual shout, flying the commandeered planes into buildings.
So what has changed?
It's not the landscape of poverty, irrelevancy, autocracy. These remain the same whether one looks at the distant past, the recent past or the present.
Nor is it the religion of Islam. Islam in its doctrine and dogma is immutable. The beliefs and requirements, the strictures and demands of Islam per se as expressed in the Quran, Hadith and the life of Mohammad, the Perfect Man, have remained a constant over centuries.
Neither is it the role and status of clerics in Muslim societies. These preachers and scholars have always occupied a pride of place and continue to do so. Historically the clerical career has been one of the few (if not the only) routes open to a man of ambition and a modicum of brains and talent. Arguably, the clergy has been the vast sump sucking in the best and brightest of generations.
So what has changed?
Several things have changed over the past few decades. The first, and in many ways most important of these, is the establishment of the state of Israel. To err on the side of accuracy, the most important matter was not the establishment of Israel in and of itself.
Far more important was the role played in the creation and enlargement of Israel by Arab Muslims. The intransigence of the Arabs--rooted in the no-compromise demands of Islam--precluded the negotiation of a partition which would have benefited the Arab claims. This losing approach was quickly worsened by the combination of collective ego and military ineptitude recurrently exhibited by the Arab Muslim states continuously after 1947.
The Muslim population and rulers of the Mideast could not bring themselves to acknowledge that it was the evil combination of Islamic "no-compromise-with-the-infidels" with the worst sort of aggrandising nationalism that brought defeat in the wake of defeat. No. The truth was both too uncomfortable and too destabilizing.
It was far easier and far more comfortable to blame the defeats on some presumed Western pro-Zionist, anti-Muslim plot headquartered in either (or both) Washington and London. This continued, willful, even calculated denial of historical reality assured that whenever something went astray in the Arab Mideast or the wider Muslim world (which occurred with depressing regularity), it could be foisted off on the US and its sinister allies in the Grand Zionist Plot.
(That ought to be easy to grasp. No one, regardless of creed or ideology enjoys admitting that they have screwed the proverbial pooch and continue to do so regardless of reality. It's always psychologically more pleasurable to off-load responsibility onto someone else.)
Displacement may be good for self-esteem. It is disastrous as a basis for state policy.
The second great event of the past few decades, as the Geek has posted before, was the Iranian Revolution. But even here misunderstanding of historical actuality is at work. It is not so much that the Islamists won as the Shah of Iran lost. More, it is not so much that the Shah lost as the US lost the political will to support the Shah's regime as it came under threat. To put the matter bluntly but not in an oversimplified fashion, the administration of Jimmy Carter made the decision to jettison the Shah who was an objectionable sort in the human rights department with the hope that the emerging mullahocracy would be gentler and kinder in its rule.
Had the US maintained support for the Shah, it is highly likely that members of his family would be ensconced to this day on the Peacock Throne. It is even more likely that whoever would be running the show in Tehran today would be less abusive of internal rights and external relations than the mullahocracy. But, no one, least of all a historian like the Geek would argue that the US always made good foreign policy decisions.
The reality remains that the Iranian Revolution occurred and historical denial rides high. This has empowered Islamism and its evil, deadly clone, jihadism. It brought religious purity, religious renewal, religious fervor out of the backroom and placed it front and center.
The Islamic Revolution seemed to say to the ambitious, those who believed themselves to have been victimised by their own government, or by the "forces of history" (as if there was such a thing) or the Grand Zionist Plot that the way to become actors, the way to power, was to turn back to a living, militant Islam such as was believed to have motivated the Companions and others of the Golden Age of Islam a thousand and more years earlier.
The third event, also an exercise in the denial of historical reality, was the presumed success of Islamist/jihadist fighters against the godless Red Army in Afghanistan. Arab jihadists such as Osama bin Ladin grossly exaggerated the impact of their contribution to the withdrawal of Soviet forces. The realities of history were for a third time of far less importance than the mechanisms of distortion which allowed Islamist/jihadist myth manufacturing to continue and increase.
These three major events along with minor factors such as the Clinton vintage evacuation of US troops from Somalia following a failed commando raid and the flaccid responses during the same period to lethal insults by al-Qaeda provided the necessary change. Allowed for the effective combining of the doctrines, dogmas, strictures and requirements of Islam with the mosaic of poverty, backwardness and autocracy characterising the majority of the Muslim world.
OK, Geek, so what does it all mean?
The short answer is simple and blunt. The sociological, economic and political reasons given for "extremism" by the OIC and the Muslim ambassadors is wrong.
Yes, poverty is endemic in many Muslim societies. However, the responsibility for the poverty rests not with the West let alone the US. The responsibility resides with the Muslim governments both individually and collectively. The OIC would be far better advised to work with, to insist upon, its member governments taking immediate action to correct the pronounced maldistribution of wealth in the bloc. One does not have to be a socialist oriented economist to notice that the wealth distribution in even the most resource rich of the Islamic countries is far more obscene than even the gap between an American banker and the national median.
Yes, there are sections of the Islamic world currently experiencing the less-than-tender effects of war. But, the war in Afghanistan is the result not only of piss-poor American planning. It is the result of a deliberate set of decisions by the former Taliban government to protect al-Qaeda and by the Pakistani government to support Taliban and only half-heartedly seek to counter the Islamist/jihadist threat in Pakistan.
In Iraq the foreigners are on the verge of departing. Few, if any, governments in the Arab states were sorry in the least to see the last of Saddam. Likewise, few, if any, are pleased to see the emergence of even a poor simulacrum of democracy in Iraq. Democracy is a threat to autocracies not only because it may see the release of political passions long suppressed, but that these political passions will be reinforced by Islamist zeal with results which no one can predict.
The OIC and the Muslim ambassadors would also be well advised to recall that the on-going "Palestinian problem" is not the creation of Israel or the US. The Arab states from the very beginning were both ready and willing to use the Arab population of what became Israel as a weapon. Cruelly and cynically and continuously down to the present day, the governments and ruling elites as well as ambitious "Palestinian" leaders have sought victory through the piling up of mounds of Arab bodies in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Yes, many Muslim countries are economically and technologically backward. This is not the fault of the West let alone the US. It is the responsibility first and foremost of Islam and secondly of the governments of recent years. Their support for universal education is nil. So is investment in science and technology. So is the commitment to economic diversification.
And, the suppression of free expression and inquiry which has been a prime goal of the OIC in recent months is a guaranteed way to assure backwardness reigns. Stifle speech and progress is the first casualty.
The Geek is of a mind to give President Obama some advice. (Heck, he can't help it. He used to be a professor and that breed is very free with advice.)
Tell the OIC and the Muslim ambassadors that insofar as sociological, economic and political factors have caused Muslims to scream "Allahu Akbar" as they kill civilians at home and abroad, the responsibility for this resides solely with Islam and the governments of Islamic states. That is a tough fact to face, but a true one.
Tell the OIC and the Muslim ambassadors that they have to get a grip on history. That means the history which actually happened in all its richness and complexity, not history as they would like it to have been, all warm, comfy and wrong as a cat barking. That is a tougher fact to face for it strips away the coziness of displacement. It forces people to own up to their mistakes, errors and sins. But, it is a truth nonetheless.
Anything less than historical reality does a massive disservice to both the Muslims of the world who deserve far better than they are getting from their apologists and to We the People who will continue to live under the Islamist/jihadist threat until it is finally defeated.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
So How About All That Mideast Oil?
There is a widespread belief that the US imports beaucoup oil from the Mideast with the result that we must make nice to the various feudal despotates of wonderful, zany world of oil, sand and Islamism. So, as they say in the sports world, let's go to the videotape.
Well, to err on the side of accuracy, let's go to the figures for last October (the most recent that the Geek has found) and examine just where our foreign origin oil originated. The numbers come from the Energy Information Office of the Department of Energy.
The number one source of imported oil was that dangerously unstable and often hostile country Canada which provided 2.066 million barrels per day. Canada far outstripped the number two offshore source, Saudi Arabia. The Saudis provided 1.435 million barrels per day. At this figure the Kingdom barely edged out Mexico which held the number three position with 1.256 million barrels per day.
Next in line was Venezuela. The neo-Castroite regime of Hugo Chavez provided 1.027 million barrels per day. Fifth place was held by strife torn Nigeria with 0.935 million barrels per day.
If the top fifteen exporters of crude oil to the US that month are considered, the total amount provided was 9.098 million barrels per day. Of this the four largest Arab sources (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Algeria and Iraq) furnished 2.693 million barrels per day or roughly 22.2 per cent of all American imports.
(To put these numbers in perspective it should be recalled that the US is the third largest producer of oil in the world after Saudi Arabia and Russia. The most recent figure on US production the Geek's less than nimble computer fingers could find showed a domestic production of some 8.3 million barrels per day.)
The clear implication is simple. Should oil from the Arab states suddenly end such as it did during the prototypical oil embargo of 1973, the impact on the US would be significant but not crippling. A second implication is equally clear. The US can and should move to take mitigating actions, particularly as regards Mexico.
Mexico could furnish a greater amount of oil to the US in the near-term if its present producing fields and associated infrastructure could be improved. The mid-term prospects for Mexican oil would be greatly enhanced if the new off-shore fields could be brought online expeditiously.
The problem for both the near- and mid-term development of present and projected fields is money. More specifically, the lack of money by the Mexican national oil company and the government that owns it.
The source of this dilemma is historical. After Mexico nationalised its oil fields in a frenzy of justifiable nationalism three-quarters of a century ago, the laws of the country prohibit foreign ownership which is to say foreign investment in the Mexican oil patch. There is no doubt that the Mexicans were right in their desire to kick the foreigners (primarily Americans) out of their natural resource base given the record of crass exploitation and concomitant corruption.
But, that was then and this is now. The need and rationale for nationalistic zeal are gone. Gone but far from forgotten.
Enter diplomacy.
While the US casts about for viable, repeat, viable ways to reduce its overall use of fossil fuels, particularly oil without crashing either our styles of living or economy to pre-Twentieth Century levels, we have a genuine national and strategic interest in reducing, preferably ending, our importation of oil from the Mideast. The reasons for this conclusion are (or should be) self-evident.
Mexico has a need. From the perspective of the government and ruling elites the need is compelling and will grow more so in coming months and years. The Mexican need is simple. To paraphrase a recent statement by a committee from the Mexican Senate: Mexico must insist that the Obama administration and the American Congress reform laws so as to permit "fair and open migration."
Translation: Mexico wants the US to be the land of opportunity and remittance so that the surplus Mexican working age population can move North of the Border and send money home. This means some species of "immigration reform" which will provide real, substantial and material benefits directly to unemployed, ambitious Mexicans and indirectly to the stability of the ruling elite.
Given that immigration reform of this nature is at least as unpopular with a large number of Americans as opening the oil patch of Mexico is to the nationalist minded folks to the south, the outlines of a deal are apparent.
Mexico changes its laws so as to allow foreign investment (at least from its NAFTA partners) in the upgrading and development of its oil resources. The US engages in an exercise in immigration reform which meets at least the minimum Mexican concerns and apparent needs. The degree of openness in investment would be mirrored by the degree of openness in the US-Mexican border.
It's an old diplomatic practice. Goes by the technical term "you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours."
The Mexican government and elite might also be gently reminded of two important realities. The first is that Mexican nationalism can be protected by limiting the percentage of foreign ownership. The second reality concerns the internal Mexican economy. Improving and expanding the petroleum industry will mean more, higher paying technical jobs in Mexico and for Mexicans.
For the Mexicans it is a win-win proposition. All the government and elite have to do is put a bridle on nationalistic fervor.
For the US it is a win-sort of win deal. Cutting loose from Arab oil liberates foreign policy, puts more options in play, reduces the incentive for the continued deployment of American military forces in the Mideast and Persian Gulf. It also provides the potential for a "profit deal" (as Steve Martin once put it) investing in the new and improved Mexican oil patches. At the same time it introduces more foreign (both with and without documents) workers into the US at a time of economic distress with the potential for social and political turmoil that implies.
It is however, a time of (to quote President Obama) of "shared sacrifice." And, as history shows time after time, sacrifices are never equally shared as between a society's elite and its hoi polloi.
Sacrifice is necessary if the US is to achieve even the necessary minimal level of energy independence--that of eliminating Arab and, if necessary, other Muslim dominated states from our roster of oil suppliers. Energy autarchy, if that is what is actually meant by the buzz phase of "energy independence" will be a long time coming. Energy autarchy will require not only time, it will demand much money and some basic technological breakthroughs.
Lost in the Gore-ite and similar deep green rhetoric over the need to end human caused climate change (if such actually is at work) with its focus on still semi-exotic technologies of renewable energy and conservation is the need for measures which will meet US national and strategic interests in the foreseeable future. The US must vigorously pursue actions from those such as the diplomatic quid pro quo with Mexico to purely domestic matters such as mandating the use of irradiated foods (to reduce refrigeration requirements) and on-demand hot water heaters in lieu of the current practice of keeping jilly-poo gallons of water hot 24/7.
Finally, We the People and those who purportedly represent us at the Federal level must decide just what the hell we mean when we bandy "energy independence" around. The term has been with us for the best part of forty years now and we still don't have a consensus on what it means. Without that, any measure which we take is more likely than not to run afoul the Law of Unintended Consequences.
While we scratch our collective heads over that basic matter of definition, let's at least get a grip on the need to remove the assorted sand-and-oil despotates from our list of suppliers and look to our neighbors both north and south for agreements which meet best our collective interests. Anything less will simply be a matter of self-destructive political and ideological posturing.
Well, to err on the side of accuracy, let's go to the figures for last October (the most recent that the Geek has found) and examine just where our foreign origin oil originated. The numbers come from the Energy Information Office of the Department of Energy.
The number one source of imported oil was that dangerously unstable and often hostile country Canada which provided 2.066 million barrels per day. Canada far outstripped the number two offshore source, Saudi Arabia. The Saudis provided 1.435 million barrels per day. At this figure the Kingdom barely edged out Mexico which held the number three position with 1.256 million barrels per day.
Next in line was Venezuela. The neo-Castroite regime of Hugo Chavez provided 1.027 million barrels per day. Fifth place was held by strife torn Nigeria with 0.935 million barrels per day.
If the top fifteen exporters of crude oil to the US that month are considered, the total amount provided was 9.098 million barrels per day. Of this the four largest Arab sources (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Algeria and Iraq) furnished 2.693 million barrels per day or roughly 22.2 per cent of all American imports.
(To put these numbers in perspective it should be recalled that the US is the third largest producer of oil in the world after Saudi Arabia and Russia. The most recent figure on US production the Geek's less than nimble computer fingers could find showed a domestic production of some 8.3 million barrels per day.)
The clear implication is simple. Should oil from the Arab states suddenly end such as it did during the prototypical oil embargo of 1973, the impact on the US would be significant but not crippling. A second implication is equally clear. The US can and should move to take mitigating actions, particularly as regards Mexico.
Mexico could furnish a greater amount of oil to the US in the near-term if its present producing fields and associated infrastructure could be improved. The mid-term prospects for Mexican oil would be greatly enhanced if the new off-shore fields could be brought online expeditiously.
The problem for both the near- and mid-term development of present and projected fields is money. More specifically, the lack of money by the Mexican national oil company and the government that owns it.
The source of this dilemma is historical. After Mexico nationalised its oil fields in a frenzy of justifiable nationalism three-quarters of a century ago, the laws of the country prohibit foreign ownership which is to say foreign investment in the Mexican oil patch. There is no doubt that the Mexicans were right in their desire to kick the foreigners (primarily Americans) out of their natural resource base given the record of crass exploitation and concomitant corruption.
But, that was then and this is now. The need and rationale for nationalistic zeal are gone. Gone but far from forgotten.
Enter diplomacy.
While the US casts about for viable, repeat, viable ways to reduce its overall use of fossil fuels, particularly oil without crashing either our styles of living or economy to pre-Twentieth Century levels, we have a genuine national and strategic interest in reducing, preferably ending, our importation of oil from the Mideast. The reasons for this conclusion are (or should be) self-evident.
Mexico has a need. From the perspective of the government and ruling elites the need is compelling and will grow more so in coming months and years. The Mexican need is simple. To paraphrase a recent statement by a committee from the Mexican Senate: Mexico must insist that the Obama administration and the American Congress reform laws so as to permit "fair and open migration."
Translation: Mexico wants the US to be the land of opportunity and remittance so that the surplus Mexican working age population can move North of the Border and send money home. This means some species of "immigration reform" which will provide real, substantial and material benefits directly to unemployed, ambitious Mexicans and indirectly to the stability of the ruling elite.
Given that immigration reform of this nature is at least as unpopular with a large number of Americans as opening the oil patch of Mexico is to the nationalist minded folks to the south, the outlines of a deal are apparent.
Mexico changes its laws so as to allow foreign investment (at least from its NAFTA partners) in the upgrading and development of its oil resources. The US engages in an exercise in immigration reform which meets at least the minimum Mexican concerns and apparent needs. The degree of openness in investment would be mirrored by the degree of openness in the US-Mexican border.
It's an old diplomatic practice. Goes by the technical term "you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours."
The Mexican government and elite might also be gently reminded of two important realities. The first is that Mexican nationalism can be protected by limiting the percentage of foreign ownership. The second reality concerns the internal Mexican economy. Improving and expanding the petroleum industry will mean more, higher paying technical jobs in Mexico and for Mexicans.
For the Mexicans it is a win-win proposition. All the government and elite have to do is put a bridle on nationalistic fervor.
For the US it is a win-sort of win deal. Cutting loose from Arab oil liberates foreign policy, puts more options in play, reduces the incentive for the continued deployment of American military forces in the Mideast and Persian Gulf. It also provides the potential for a "profit deal" (as Steve Martin once put it) investing in the new and improved Mexican oil patches. At the same time it introduces more foreign (both with and without documents) workers into the US at a time of economic distress with the potential for social and political turmoil that implies.
It is however, a time of (to quote President Obama) of "shared sacrifice." And, as history shows time after time, sacrifices are never equally shared as between a society's elite and its hoi polloi.
Sacrifice is necessary if the US is to achieve even the necessary minimal level of energy independence--that of eliminating Arab and, if necessary, other Muslim dominated states from our roster of oil suppliers. Energy autarchy, if that is what is actually meant by the buzz phase of "energy independence" will be a long time coming. Energy autarchy will require not only time, it will demand much money and some basic technological breakthroughs.
Lost in the Gore-ite and similar deep green rhetoric over the need to end human caused climate change (if such actually is at work) with its focus on still semi-exotic technologies of renewable energy and conservation is the need for measures which will meet US national and strategic interests in the foreseeable future. The US must vigorously pursue actions from those such as the diplomatic quid pro quo with Mexico to purely domestic matters such as mandating the use of irradiated foods (to reduce refrigeration requirements) and on-demand hot water heaters in lieu of the current practice of keeping jilly-poo gallons of water hot 24/7.
Finally, We the People and those who purportedly represent us at the Federal level must decide just what the hell we mean when we bandy "energy independence" around. The term has been with us for the best part of forty years now and we still don't have a consensus on what it means. Without that, any measure which we take is more likely than not to run afoul the Law of Unintended Consequences.
While we scratch our collective heads over that basic matter of definition, let's at least get a grip on the need to remove the assorted sand-and-oil despotates from our list of suppliers and look to our neighbors both north and south for agreements which meet best our collective interests. Anything less will simply be a matter of self-destructive political and ideological posturing.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Qatar And The New (Sort Of) Cold War
Although not a major focus of the MSM, there has been a Junior Cold War under way for several decades now. The roots of the silent conflict extend back in time over a thousand years, but the proximate cause occurred only thirty years ago.
Although fought primarily with words and money, the Junior Cold War between Iran and Saudi Arabia has grown in both size and intensity during the past few years. The growth hormone at work has been the intractable conflict between Israel and the Muslim Arabs of the mythical land called Palestine. The seeming forever war between Israel and its antagonists has served to draw more firmly and deeply the lines in the sand scribed by the religious and political dichotomies separating the Persian Shites of Iran and the Arab Wahhibist Sunnis of Saudi Arabia.
Neither the religious nor the regional hegemonic pretenses of the two Gulf contenders should be underrated or trivialised as some sort of "conservative" state versus a "radical" one. The stakes are high and growing higher as both the Saudis and the Iranians seek allies and influence both in the region and around the world.
When the awesomely ill-advised American invasion removed Iraq as a counterweight to the ambitions of both the House of Saud and the Mullahs of Tehran, the pint-sized Cold War moved out of the fringelands of unrealisable ambition. Without Iraq as a major regional player, the way was clear for both Iran and Saudi Arabia to seek wider and deeper influence in the Arab and Muslim states--and not simply those of the Gulf region or the Mideast.
Both Saudi Arabia and Iran brought a mix of advantages and disadvantages to the rapidly blooming game.
Saudi Arabia had (reasonably) good and productive relations with the Arab League states generally once the House of Saud got over its snit with Egypt. Of course, the Keeper of the Two Mosques represented the majority branch of Islam. With oil money pouring out of every spigot, the Saudis were in a position to spread Wahhibist Sunni doctrine throughout the world including the US and Europe. Saudi Arabia also had the not inconsiderable advantage of being seen by the US and most European governments as an indispensable agent in the "peace process."
The House of Saud also deployed a significant set of disadvantages in its struggle against Iran. It could easily be seen as the seven hundred pound gorilla of OPEC, a burnoosed bully boy which used its massive reserves as a club with which to bash the "club" into compliance. (The potency of Saudi Arabia's reserves as a tool of coercion was enhanced when the US and the UN removed Iraq as a serious competitor.) Generally, the Saudi government and ruling family acted in an entirely too haughty fashion to sit well with other governments who were just as afflicted as the Saudis with an easily bruised sense of honor and propriety.
Then, of course, there was the question of religious purity. Osama bin Laden was not the only Islamist who saw the House of Saud as irredeemably stained by the sin of apostasy. Contravening the strictures of Wahhibism seemed to many Islamists and Islamist-leaners as the primary characteristic of the Saudi Royal Family. More times than can be counted easily the Saudi Royals and their hangers-on were seen as talking the austere talk of Wahhibism but never walking the walk.
The Saudi disadvantages served to potentiate the handful of Iranian advantages. The starting point for adumbrating the Iranian position must always be the fact that Shia is seen by Sunnis as both a minority (which it is) and apostate (which it isn't--at least in Shiite eyes.) The Islam preached and practiced by the Mullahs of Tehran was every bit as austere and demanding as that preached but not necessarily practiced by the Wahhibsts of Saudi Arabia or the Salifism of other countries.
The critical advantage accruing to Tehran was that Iran followed the demands of a harsh version of Sharia to a very, very large extent. This may have rebounded against the mullahocracy in both Western Europe and the US but it was very much an advantage within the the Muslim community.
This advantage must be considered together with the indisputable fact that the Iranian Revolution occurred. The Ayatollah toppled the Shah. Islamist "students" humiliated the US for well over a year. The religious zeal of Iranians--primarily young Iranians--allowed Iran to fight the militarily superior and US backed Iraqis to a stand still.
In short, the Shias of Iran proved to Muslims throughout the world that Warriors of Faith could triumph over the infidels and apostates regardless of the apparent advantages of the latter.
(The successes of the Iranian Revolution constitute the sub-text to the later narrative emphasising the victory of Islamist Arabs and their Afghan co-religionists over the Soviet Union. This reality must never be ignored despite the success of Sunni Islamist propagandists in recurrently trumpeting the presumed victory of Islamist jihadism over the Red Army.)
Another completely undervalued advantage of the Iranian mullahocracy is contained in the person of President Ahmedinejad. In the West, particularly in the US, Ahmedinejad is seen as a large mouthed nut case spouting highly objectionable rhetoric which is often clearly disconnected with reality.
That negative view may be how the Iranian Orator-in-Chief may play in Peoria.
It is not how Ahmedinejad plays in much of the Muslim world.
When Ahmedinejad came to power in 2005 his mouth started running--with effects which were uniformly beneficial to the Iranians in their rapidly blooming confrontation with Saudi Arabia. The blustering defiance of Ahmedinejad (which was backed by the senior clerics of Iran or it would have been stopped quickly) laid the ground for the conclusion of successful alliances with Syria and the crucial non-state actors Hezbollah and Hamas.
Iran no longer stood alone. The conclusion of de facto alliances with Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas served as a powerful force multiplier. This multiplier could not be and was not quickly nor easily countered by Saudi Arabia and its closest partner, Egypt.
More recently the Iranian position was strengthened and the task faced by Saudi Arabia and its associates in the Arab League made more complicated. The reason for this was the de facto adherence of the Emirate of Qatar to the Iranian side.
Qatar, incidentally the country with the highest per capita income on Earth since 2007, is run by a man who can accurately be called eccentric. The eccentric Amir Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani overthrew his money siphoning father back in 1995 in a bloodless coup. Since then his policies have been marked by a clever balancing between the demands of Islamist oriented Arab nationalism and the needs of assuring stability and pumping enough money from the ground to meet internal needs and popular desires.
From 2003 to date Qatar has both infuriated and pleased Washington.
The biggest source of pleasure was the Amir providing basing facilities at time when Saudi Arabia was tossing the US forces out of the kingdom. Aircraft operating from Qatar have provided support to US combat operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Bulging warehouses and depots have done the same on the logistics side of the house.
Washington has not been so pleased with the Amir's television enterprise, al-Jazeeria. The W. Bush Administration tossed al-Jazeeria out of Iraq because its coverage of the Great Adventure in Regime Change was less, much less, than laudatory. Overall this very popular and equally influential television outlet has pumped enormous quantities of provocative and often highly anti-Semitic views for years now. While its English language coverage of Mideast and American news can be remarkably objective in appearance (and even reality) the same cannot be said of its Arabic language programming. Al-Jazeeria is anti-Israel, anti-Saudi, anti-Egyptian, anti-American, pro-Islamist, pro-jihadist, and pro-Iranian.
The Amir most clearly tossed his lot in with the Iranians earlier this month in a controversial and perhaps illegal meeting of the Arab League states held in Doha. The Amir made so bold as to invite Ahmedinejad to the "Arab" conference. As a result some Arab states did not attend with the result that the meeting lacked the requisite quorum.
The upshot of the Doha conference was a communique which went over the edge in damning the Egyptian role in seeking a diplomatic settlement for the Israeli incursion and demanding unwavering support for Hamas. Implicit criticism (to put it mildly) was directed at Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Arab states for failing to rush to the aid of the embattled "liberation fighters" of Hamas.
Given that the US can find replacements for the facilities it currently uses in Qatar there seems to be no real national or strategic interests in play there. Considering that the Obama Administration has a very full plate of domestic and foreign policy conundrums there seems to be no need for much attention to be paid to the "whither Qatar" question.
Unfortunately any marginalisation of Qatar, any ignoring the seeming smaller matter so that attention might be paid to the larger problems will have the effect of making the larger problem less easily solved. It is essential to get a firm grip on two interlocking realities.
The Junior Cold War is not going to end quickly nor easily.
Iran is not going to toss over its ambitions for either regional hegemony or being the starting point of the final march to a global caliphate.
Saudi Arabia is neither a constant nor effective "ally" in the struggle between the US (and to some extent, Western Europe) and the Islamist movements. Quite the contrary, it is part, even a large part, of the Islamist threat. Beyond that, it is an unpleasant associate as well as an economic threat.
Iran is even worse.
Which means that the most viable course of American action is not unlike that followed by the Reagan Administration during the Iran-Iraq War or Theodore Roosevelt during the Russo-Japanese War. This course is simply that of taking all necessary actions to assure that neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia comes out ahead in their version of a cold war.
How do we go about doing this?
The Geek admits it is much easier to reach a conclusion in principle than it is to put that conclusion into effective practice. It's all the harder when putting the principle into practice demands some very unpleasant changes in both foreign and domestic policies.
It's even harder to turn conclusions into action when the two first, most basic questions have not yet been asked at the policy level--let alone answered.
What are you getting at, Geek?
Simple, fifteen years or so too late we finally have to ask ourselves, "What did the end of the US-USSR Cold War really mean for us?"
Simple, thirty or so years too late we finally have to ask ourselves, "What do really mean with the buzz phrase, energy independence?"
Although fought primarily with words and money, the Junior Cold War between Iran and Saudi Arabia has grown in both size and intensity during the past few years. The growth hormone at work has been the intractable conflict between Israel and the Muslim Arabs of the mythical land called Palestine. The seeming forever war between Israel and its antagonists has served to draw more firmly and deeply the lines in the sand scribed by the religious and political dichotomies separating the Persian Shites of Iran and the Arab Wahhibist Sunnis of Saudi Arabia.
Neither the religious nor the regional hegemonic pretenses of the two Gulf contenders should be underrated or trivialised as some sort of "conservative" state versus a "radical" one. The stakes are high and growing higher as both the Saudis and the Iranians seek allies and influence both in the region and around the world.
When the awesomely ill-advised American invasion removed Iraq as a counterweight to the ambitions of both the House of Saud and the Mullahs of Tehran, the pint-sized Cold War moved out of the fringelands of unrealisable ambition. Without Iraq as a major regional player, the way was clear for both Iran and Saudi Arabia to seek wider and deeper influence in the Arab and Muslim states--and not simply those of the Gulf region or the Mideast.
Both Saudi Arabia and Iran brought a mix of advantages and disadvantages to the rapidly blooming game.
Saudi Arabia had (reasonably) good and productive relations with the Arab League states generally once the House of Saud got over its snit with Egypt. Of course, the Keeper of the Two Mosques represented the majority branch of Islam. With oil money pouring out of every spigot, the Saudis were in a position to spread Wahhibist Sunni doctrine throughout the world including the US and Europe. Saudi Arabia also had the not inconsiderable advantage of being seen by the US and most European governments as an indispensable agent in the "peace process."
The House of Saud also deployed a significant set of disadvantages in its struggle against Iran. It could easily be seen as the seven hundred pound gorilla of OPEC, a burnoosed bully boy which used its massive reserves as a club with which to bash the "club" into compliance. (The potency of Saudi Arabia's reserves as a tool of coercion was enhanced when the US and the UN removed Iraq as a serious competitor.) Generally, the Saudi government and ruling family acted in an entirely too haughty fashion to sit well with other governments who were just as afflicted as the Saudis with an easily bruised sense of honor and propriety.
Then, of course, there was the question of religious purity. Osama bin Laden was not the only Islamist who saw the House of Saud as irredeemably stained by the sin of apostasy. Contravening the strictures of Wahhibism seemed to many Islamists and Islamist-leaners as the primary characteristic of the Saudi Royal Family. More times than can be counted easily the Saudi Royals and their hangers-on were seen as talking the austere talk of Wahhibism but never walking the walk.
The Saudi disadvantages served to potentiate the handful of Iranian advantages. The starting point for adumbrating the Iranian position must always be the fact that Shia is seen by Sunnis as both a minority (which it is) and apostate (which it isn't--at least in Shiite eyes.) The Islam preached and practiced by the Mullahs of Tehran was every bit as austere and demanding as that preached but not necessarily practiced by the Wahhibsts of Saudi Arabia or the Salifism of other countries.
The critical advantage accruing to Tehran was that Iran followed the demands of a harsh version of Sharia to a very, very large extent. This may have rebounded against the mullahocracy in both Western Europe and the US but it was very much an advantage within the the Muslim community.
This advantage must be considered together with the indisputable fact that the Iranian Revolution occurred. The Ayatollah toppled the Shah. Islamist "students" humiliated the US for well over a year. The religious zeal of Iranians--primarily young Iranians--allowed Iran to fight the militarily superior and US backed Iraqis to a stand still.
In short, the Shias of Iran proved to Muslims throughout the world that Warriors of Faith could triumph over the infidels and apostates regardless of the apparent advantages of the latter.
(The successes of the Iranian Revolution constitute the sub-text to the later narrative emphasising the victory of Islamist Arabs and their Afghan co-religionists over the Soviet Union. This reality must never be ignored despite the success of Sunni Islamist propagandists in recurrently trumpeting the presumed victory of Islamist jihadism over the Red Army.)
Another completely undervalued advantage of the Iranian mullahocracy is contained in the person of President Ahmedinejad. In the West, particularly in the US, Ahmedinejad is seen as a large mouthed nut case spouting highly objectionable rhetoric which is often clearly disconnected with reality.
That negative view may be how the Iranian Orator-in-Chief may play in Peoria.
It is not how Ahmedinejad plays in much of the Muslim world.
When Ahmedinejad came to power in 2005 his mouth started running--with effects which were uniformly beneficial to the Iranians in their rapidly blooming confrontation with Saudi Arabia. The blustering defiance of Ahmedinejad (which was backed by the senior clerics of Iran or it would have been stopped quickly) laid the ground for the conclusion of successful alliances with Syria and the crucial non-state actors Hezbollah and Hamas.
Iran no longer stood alone. The conclusion of de facto alliances with Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas served as a powerful force multiplier. This multiplier could not be and was not quickly nor easily countered by Saudi Arabia and its closest partner, Egypt.
More recently the Iranian position was strengthened and the task faced by Saudi Arabia and its associates in the Arab League made more complicated. The reason for this was the de facto adherence of the Emirate of Qatar to the Iranian side.
Qatar, incidentally the country with the highest per capita income on Earth since 2007, is run by a man who can accurately be called eccentric. The eccentric Amir Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani overthrew his money siphoning father back in 1995 in a bloodless coup. Since then his policies have been marked by a clever balancing between the demands of Islamist oriented Arab nationalism and the needs of assuring stability and pumping enough money from the ground to meet internal needs and popular desires.
From 2003 to date Qatar has both infuriated and pleased Washington.
The biggest source of pleasure was the Amir providing basing facilities at time when Saudi Arabia was tossing the US forces out of the kingdom. Aircraft operating from Qatar have provided support to US combat operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Bulging warehouses and depots have done the same on the logistics side of the house.
Washington has not been so pleased with the Amir's television enterprise, al-Jazeeria. The W. Bush Administration tossed al-Jazeeria out of Iraq because its coverage of the Great Adventure in Regime Change was less, much less, than laudatory. Overall this very popular and equally influential television outlet has pumped enormous quantities of provocative and often highly anti-Semitic views for years now. While its English language coverage of Mideast and American news can be remarkably objective in appearance (and even reality) the same cannot be said of its Arabic language programming. Al-Jazeeria is anti-Israel, anti-Saudi, anti-Egyptian, anti-American, pro-Islamist, pro-jihadist, and pro-Iranian.
The Amir most clearly tossed his lot in with the Iranians earlier this month in a controversial and perhaps illegal meeting of the Arab League states held in Doha. The Amir made so bold as to invite Ahmedinejad to the "Arab" conference. As a result some Arab states did not attend with the result that the meeting lacked the requisite quorum.
The upshot of the Doha conference was a communique which went over the edge in damning the Egyptian role in seeking a diplomatic settlement for the Israeli incursion and demanding unwavering support for Hamas. Implicit criticism (to put it mildly) was directed at Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Arab states for failing to rush to the aid of the embattled "liberation fighters" of Hamas.
Given that the US can find replacements for the facilities it currently uses in Qatar there seems to be no real national or strategic interests in play there. Considering that the Obama Administration has a very full plate of domestic and foreign policy conundrums there seems to be no need for much attention to be paid to the "whither Qatar" question.
Unfortunately any marginalisation of Qatar, any ignoring the seeming smaller matter so that attention might be paid to the larger problems will have the effect of making the larger problem less easily solved. It is essential to get a firm grip on two interlocking realities.
The Junior Cold War is not going to end quickly nor easily.
Iran is not going to toss over its ambitions for either regional hegemony or being the starting point of the final march to a global caliphate.
Saudi Arabia is neither a constant nor effective "ally" in the struggle between the US (and to some extent, Western Europe) and the Islamist movements. Quite the contrary, it is part, even a large part, of the Islamist threat. Beyond that, it is an unpleasant associate as well as an economic threat.
Iran is even worse.
Which means that the most viable course of American action is not unlike that followed by the Reagan Administration during the Iran-Iraq War or Theodore Roosevelt during the Russo-Japanese War. This course is simply that of taking all necessary actions to assure that neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia comes out ahead in their version of a cold war.
How do we go about doing this?
The Geek admits it is much easier to reach a conclusion in principle than it is to put that conclusion into effective practice. It's all the harder when putting the principle into practice demands some very unpleasant changes in both foreign and domestic policies.
It's even harder to turn conclusions into action when the two first, most basic questions have not yet been asked at the policy level--let alone answered.
What are you getting at, Geek?
Simple, fifteen years or so too late we finally have to ask ourselves, "What did the end of the US-USSR Cold War really mean for us?"
Simple, thirty or so years too late we finally have to ask ourselves, "What do really mean with the buzz phrase, energy independence?"
Monday, February 2, 2009
Another Return of the Ruff-Puffs
For those of a certain age and youthful experience the term "ruff-puff" may mean something. For most the words need some explanation.
During the Vietnam War the US proposed and implemented an idea which was very good in principle but spotty at best in application. The concept focused on the creation of local, part-time volunteer forces comprised of residents in a given village or geographic area. These forces were officially called the Regional Forces and Popular Forces. The unwieldy bureaucratic term was rapidly transformed to "ruff-puffs."
This term carried a negative connotation. Most Americans in-country were of the view that the poorly trained and inadequately armed village militias were of no military utility. At the same time the government of South Vietnam was opposed to the creation of the ruff-puffs because it feared the presence of armed peasants who might show their displeasure with the less-than-legitimate Saigon regime by either joining with the Viet Cong or just plain shooting at Saigon's troops and tax collectors.
Actually the ruff-puffs showed a surprising capacity to resist the incursions of both the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units. This capability was greatly enhanced when the Marine Corps in the First Corps Tactical Zone in the northern most part of South Vietnam had the very bright idea of embedding a Marine squad with the ruff-puff unit in a number of villages.
When the concept was tested it was shown to be quite successful. The Marines had the training, teamwork and personal firepower necessary to stiffen the will and ability of a village militia to stop even Main Force Viet Cong units from exacting supplies, manpower and intelligence from the protected area.
The Marines also had the capacity to call in assistance, both air and ground, if the threat force proved too great to be effectively countered. This ability was of almost immeasurable importance.
There was another, completely unplanned, benefit brought about by the presence of a Marine squad in any given village. This benefit did much to assure both the loyalty and the will-to-combat of the villagers.
The unforeseen benefit?
The Marines were hostages to American good behavior. In practice this meant the village and its fields were immunised against air strikes. No zoomie with an attitude or bad target coordinates would grease the village and its people. No free fire zone would suddenly grow to engulf the village as long as the Marines were present.
If keeping the Marines meant not shooting the much despised and usually corrupt district and provincial officials, that was a small price to pay. The panjandrums of Saigon breathed a long and quite audible sigh of relief.
The new combination of ruff-puffs and Marines went by the name of the Combined Action Platoon Program. It was a success. A big success.
And, as is often the case with good ideas in the military, the success of the CAP program assured its ultimate failure. The program was expanded rapidly. Too rapidly. Command and control suffered. Unit coherence was compromised. Quality control and assurance was eroded.
Even with its later less than splendid record, the CAP approach had much to recommend it. The residual institutional memory of CAP was in part behind the first Concerned Local Citizens and Awakening Council efforts in Iraq.
Nearly forty years later a similar, but far from identical effort started in Iraq, in Anbar province. The Concerned Local Citizens and the Awakening Councils were not analogous with the CAP program. Indeed, in many critical ways, the CLC/AC paradigm was quite different from the earlier model.
In one very, very important way the CLC/AC approach was identical with the CAP program particularly in its early days. The Concerned Local Citizens and the Awakening Councils were effective in denying areas and people to the insurgents. Like the CAPS of an earlier war, the CLC and the AC served to undercut and marginalise the various insurgent entities.
For years now both practitioners and historians of counterinsurgency have urged the development of a CAP type program in Afghanistan. The absence of such a program with its emphasis upon locals taking responsibility for the protection of the local peace constituted a very important missing link in the attempt to restore Afghanistan to the ranks of fully functional states.
Finally, almost too late, the US has announced the commencement of a program to arm and train local village militias. The announcement underscored the "long tradition" of Afghan peasants defending their homes and fields against invaders.
Well, duh. The Deep Thinkers at State and Defense just now find that out?
No. The prickly nature of Afghan peasants has been long known--particularly by those outsiders who have to deal with the man in the adobe or stone hut or the merchants in some wind swept and dusty bazaar.
This knowledge was a factor militating against the formation of an Afghan version of CAP.
Another, more important factor was the recognition that this sort of local militia would become a manpower drain on the overstretched US and NATO forces. But, with the advent of more US ground troops this consideration becomes less compelling.
However, as the Marines found out in I Corps forty years ago, a squad here and a squad there adds up pretty damn quickly to a lot of combat power spread about in very small packages. So very careful monitoring of the utility of this expenditure of boots is required. Cost-effectiveness measurement of a relentlessly honest (and realistic) nature is the sine qua non of success.
The final and most important reason why the Afghan village militia concept has been so slow in coming is simply the Karzai government. Karzai and his colleagues in the sham national government are quite painfully aware of how much the majority of the population detest the Kabul regime.
Karzai and many in his imitation government are members of the ethno-linguistic minority. While the boys in Kabul might get away with that if the regime inclined itself toward honesty and efficiency, both of these virtues elude them.
Not surprisingly, Karzai and his cohorts have been flat opposed to arming more citizens. The Geek doesn't blame them. Guns are a well demonstrated corrective to illegitimate government.
Apparently, Karzai has accepted the proposition that unless he risks the guns of the villagers, the guns of the Taliban are going to get him for sure. The Geek guesses the crooks of Kabul have taken the position that a risk is more acceptable than a certainty.
Village militias will not in themselves win the war against Taliban. But without the armed peasants, willing and able to deny freedom of movement, action and exaction to Taliban and its ilk, there can be no semblance of peace in Afghanistan.
The minimum necessary strategic goal for the US (and its allies) in Afghanistan is "not losing," It is assuring that Taliban and al-Qaeda and others of the Islamist/jihadist sort cannot claim an armed victory over the "Crusader states." Afghanistan will not quickly become any sort of model democracy let alone a secular state. That species of goal must be abandoned. Speedily.
The announcement that the US will organise and support a village militia program is an important indicator that realism has set in both in the field and in Washington. The increase in American (and wishfully, NATO) boots on the ground are an important, necessary but not sufficient step in the direction of implementing a realistic view in Afghanistan. Another highly necessary but, perhaps not sufficient, step is putting guns in the hands of the locals.
The next step will be strengthening both the resolve and ability of the villagers to impose and keep peace in their particular valley. This means we must take the best of the CAP program and improve upon it. In this case as in so many others involving war, history is the best and most certain guide.
We have the history. Do we have the wit and will to use it?
During the Vietnam War the US proposed and implemented an idea which was very good in principle but spotty at best in application. The concept focused on the creation of local, part-time volunteer forces comprised of residents in a given village or geographic area. These forces were officially called the Regional Forces and Popular Forces. The unwieldy bureaucratic term was rapidly transformed to "ruff-puffs."
This term carried a negative connotation. Most Americans in-country were of the view that the poorly trained and inadequately armed village militias were of no military utility. At the same time the government of South Vietnam was opposed to the creation of the ruff-puffs because it feared the presence of armed peasants who might show their displeasure with the less-than-legitimate Saigon regime by either joining with the Viet Cong or just plain shooting at Saigon's troops and tax collectors.
Actually the ruff-puffs showed a surprising capacity to resist the incursions of both the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units. This capability was greatly enhanced when the Marine Corps in the First Corps Tactical Zone in the northern most part of South Vietnam had the very bright idea of embedding a Marine squad with the ruff-puff unit in a number of villages.
When the concept was tested it was shown to be quite successful. The Marines had the training, teamwork and personal firepower necessary to stiffen the will and ability of a village militia to stop even Main Force Viet Cong units from exacting supplies, manpower and intelligence from the protected area.
The Marines also had the capacity to call in assistance, both air and ground, if the threat force proved too great to be effectively countered. This ability was of almost immeasurable importance.
There was another, completely unplanned, benefit brought about by the presence of a Marine squad in any given village. This benefit did much to assure both the loyalty and the will-to-combat of the villagers.
The unforeseen benefit?
The Marines were hostages to American good behavior. In practice this meant the village and its fields were immunised against air strikes. No zoomie with an attitude or bad target coordinates would grease the village and its people. No free fire zone would suddenly grow to engulf the village as long as the Marines were present.
If keeping the Marines meant not shooting the much despised and usually corrupt district and provincial officials, that was a small price to pay. The panjandrums of Saigon breathed a long and quite audible sigh of relief.
The new combination of ruff-puffs and Marines went by the name of the Combined Action Platoon Program. It was a success. A big success.
And, as is often the case with good ideas in the military, the success of the CAP program assured its ultimate failure. The program was expanded rapidly. Too rapidly. Command and control suffered. Unit coherence was compromised. Quality control and assurance was eroded.
Even with its later less than splendid record, the CAP approach had much to recommend it. The residual institutional memory of CAP was in part behind the first Concerned Local Citizens and Awakening Council efforts in Iraq.
Nearly forty years later a similar, but far from identical effort started in Iraq, in Anbar province. The Concerned Local Citizens and the Awakening Councils were not analogous with the CAP program. Indeed, in many critical ways, the CLC/AC paradigm was quite different from the earlier model.
In one very, very important way the CLC/AC approach was identical with the CAP program particularly in its early days. The Concerned Local Citizens and the Awakening Councils were effective in denying areas and people to the insurgents. Like the CAPS of an earlier war, the CLC and the AC served to undercut and marginalise the various insurgent entities.
For years now both practitioners and historians of counterinsurgency have urged the development of a CAP type program in Afghanistan. The absence of such a program with its emphasis upon locals taking responsibility for the protection of the local peace constituted a very important missing link in the attempt to restore Afghanistan to the ranks of fully functional states.
Finally, almost too late, the US has announced the commencement of a program to arm and train local village militias. The announcement underscored the "long tradition" of Afghan peasants defending their homes and fields against invaders.
Well, duh. The Deep Thinkers at State and Defense just now find that out?
No. The prickly nature of Afghan peasants has been long known--particularly by those outsiders who have to deal with the man in the adobe or stone hut or the merchants in some wind swept and dusty bazaar.
This knowledge was a factor militating against the formation of an Afghan version of CAP.
Another, more important factor was the recognition that this sort of local militia would become a manpower drain on the overstretched US and NATO forces. But, with the advent of more US ground troops this consideration becomes less compelling.
However, as the Marines found out in I Corps forty years ago, a squad here and a squad there adds up pretty damn quickly to a lot of combat power spread about in very small packages. So very careful monitoring of the utility of this expenditure of boots is required. Cost-effectiveness measurement of a relentlessly honest (and realistic) nature is the sine qua non of success.
The final and most important reason why the Afghan village militia concept has been so slow in coming is simply the Karzai government. Karzai and his colleagues in the sham national government are quite painfully aware of how much the majority of the population detest the Kabul regime.
Karzai and many in his imitation government are members of the ethno-linguistic minority. While the boys in Kabul might get away with that if the regime inclined itself toward honesty and efficiency, both of these virtues elude them.
Not surprisingly, Karzai and his cohorts have been flat opposed to arming more citizens. The Geek doesn't blame them. Guns are a well demonstrated corrective to illegitimate government.
Apparently, Karzai has accepted the proposition that unless he risks the guns of the villagers, the guns of the Taliban are going to get him for sure. The Geek guesses the crooks of Kabul have taken the position that a risk is more acceptable than a certainty.
Village militias will not in themselves win the war against Taliban. But without the armed peasants, willing and able to deny freedom of movement, action and exaction to Taliban and its ilk, there can be no semblance of peace in Afghanistan.
The minimum necessary strategic goal for the US (and its allies) in Afghanistan is "not losing," It is assuring that Taliban and al-Qaeda and others of the Islamist/jihadist sort cannot claim an armed victory over the "Crusader states." Afghanistan will not quickly become any sort of model democracy let alone a secular state. That species of goal must be abandoned. Speedily.
The announcement that the US will organise and support a village militia program is an important indicator that realism has set in both in the field and in Washington. The increase in American (and wishfully, NATO) boots on the ground are an important, necessary but not sufficient step in the direction of implementing a realistic view in Afghanistan. Another highly necessary but, perhaps not sufficient, step is putting guns in the hands of the locals.
The next step will be strengthening both the resolve and ability of the villagers to impose and keep peace in their particular valley. This means we must take the best of the CAP program and improve upon it. In this case as in so many others involving war, history is the best and most certain guide.
We have the history. Do we have the wit and will to use it?
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Hey! Vladimir! It's Time For A Change
Really, Mr Putin, you have to get a grip. The Cheney-Bush "Treat-Russia-Like-A-Loser" regime is history. You can lighten up on the threats. The Obama Administration is inclined to a far less unipolar view of the foreign relations.
Anyway, threatening deployment of the Iskander-M medium range ballistic missiles is not an inherently credible notion. In case it missed your attention, the Geek would like to point out that the "field test" during last summer's Georgian incursion showed the Iskander to be something of a dud. The touted "new" delivery system showed itself to be deficient in the old accuracy department among other shortcomings. So, unless your missile unit in Kalinigrad is going to mount nukes on their Iskanders, the system is not at all impressive in its warfighting potential.
Even your own defense wallahs have admitted that the Iskander-M is in need of further test and refinement. Maybe it's not back-to-the-drawing-boards time but you have to acknowledge reality: rattling missiles that don't work will not scare even the Western European give-peace-a-chance crowd let alone the Poles.
Then, Vladimir, you ought to consider what your past Iskander based threats have bought you in Poland. Way back when, before the Iskander flubbed up in Georgia, your threats affrighted the Poles enough to inveigle a new security agreement with the US which will materially improve the capabilities of the Polish armed forces. In case you have forgotten your KGB training, that is not the way threats are supposed to work. A threat is supposed to cow the recipient not provide an impetus to improve its capacity to resist.
When the Russian gentleman from the Ministry of Defense said yesterday that the planned deployment of Iskander-M to Kaliningrad was being put on hold, the Geek thought, "Well, the winds of realism are blowing through the Kremlin." Now, the message has changed.
The reports from Davos are that you, Mr Putin, huffed and puffed in the direction of the Polish PM. Further, one of your spokesmen has alleged that yesterday's reports were wrong, the victim of what he termed an "information collision." Whatever that might mean.
Now, "come, let us reason together," as LBJ was wont to say. Barack Obama expended a great deal of high quality campaign rhetoric against the deployment of "untested" anti-ballistic missile systems. While, as is SOP in campaign talk, his statements were hyperbolic, there is a large grain of truth behind the words.
The proposed system is far from glitch free and could benefit from an extended development and test period. The Obama Administration is poised to grant the time necessary. This is good.
However, if any delay in deploying the proposed ABMs to Poland is seen as capitulation to Russian (oops! The Geek almost wrote "Soviet.") shoe banging, the administration will come under increasing, perhaps intense political pressure here in the US. This could cause difficulties not in the better interests of either the US or Russia.
We all know that the handful of short range interceptor missiles in no way compromises Russia's ability to plant mushroom clouds throughout the US and the rest of the world. Anyone with the slightest awareness of Russia's nuclear delivery potential well understands that.
In all probability the boys in the Kremlin are far more concerned about the expiration of START I next December. Both Russia and the United States have large stockpiles of aging nuclear warheads. Similarly the extant delivery systems in both countries are not getting any younger or more effective. The US has made some (halting, hesitant) steps in the direction of procuring upgraded warheads or, as the Russians call them, "nuclear charges." Hints oozing around the high and tight Russian secrecy wall indicate the same dynamic is at work over there.
A new agreement would carry with it the potential of allowing both Russia and the US building down to the level of a "finite deterrent" of modernised, reliable and more robustly controllable warheads and delivery vehicles. This sort of move would be in the better interests of both countries (and the rest of the world as well.)
Then there is Iran.
Neither Russia nor the US can be contemplate a nuclear capable Iran with equanimity. Russia, far more than the United States, has direct experience with the direct effects of Islamist powered political ideology. And, Russia is far closer to Iran and its almost laughably primitive ballistic missiles than either the US or Israel.
It follows that a jointly constructed and manned missile defense system with both the American and Russian flags flying at the gate would be in the better interests of both countries as well as other nations. The demonstrated ability to swat rogue missiles out of the sky would give real pause to any adventuresome or eschatologically motivated regime. It would even give a reason for reflecting before acting to other governments which, while nuclear capable, lack the diffuse surge launch capacity of either the US or Russia.
Right now is the perfect time for both Moscow and Washington to sit back and consider non-threat based options. Both Russia and the US can step back from any rush to deploy. Both can cite legitimate "technical considerations" as the reason and let the diplomats engage in the normal palaver of the game of nations. The United States and Russia, as has so often been the case in the past, have coinciding national interests.
Both countries have a ground for diplomacy. Stand on it and use it.
Mr Putin, if you or one of your staff had been a faithful reader of this blog, you would have noticed just how often the Geek excoriated the Cheney-Bush Administration for having not treated Russia as the Great Power that it is. There is no need for Russia to engage in anachronistic Cold War techniques of threats and shouting "Nyet!"
Russian (and American) interests would be best served by having another "information collision" and announcing that the missile tweakers of Kaliningrad will just have to soldier on for a little while longer with their old missiles. Try it, Vladimir, you'll like it.
Anyway, threatening deployment of the Iskander-M medium range ballistic missiles is not an inherently credible notion. In case it missed your attention, the Geek would like to point out that the "field test" during last summer's Georgian incursion showed the Iskander to be something of a dud. The touted "new" delivery system showed itself to be deficient in the old accuracy department among other shortcomings. So, unless your missile unit in Kalinigrad is going to mount nukes on their Iskanders, the system is not at all impressive in its warfighting potential.
Even your own defense wallahs have admitted that the Iskander-M is in need of further test and refinement. Maybe it's not back-to-the-drawing-boards time but you have to acknowledge reality: rattling missiles that don't work will not scare even the Western European give-peace-a-chance crowd let alone the Poles.
Then, Vladimir, you ought to consider what your past Iskander based threats have bought you in Poland. Way back when, before the Iskander flubbed up in Georgia, your threats affrighted the Poles enough to inveigle a new security agreement with the US which will materially improve the capabilities of the Polish armed forces. In case you have forgotten your KGB training, that is not the way threats are supposed to work. A threat is supposed to cow the recipient not provide an impetus to improve its capacity to resist.
When the Russian gentleman from the Ministry of Defense said yesterday that the planned deployment of Iskander-M to Kaliningrad was being put on hold, the Geek thought, "Well, the winds of realism are blowing through the Kremlin." Now, the message has changed.
The reports from Davos are that you, Mr Putin, huffed and puffed in the direction of the Polish PM. Further, one of your spokesmen has alleged that yesterday's reports were wrong, the victim of what he termed an "information collision." Whatever that might mean.
Now, "come, let us reason together," as LBJ was wont to say. Barack Obama expended a great deal of high quality campaign rhetoric against the deployment of "untested" anti-ballistic missile systems. While, as is SOP in campaign talk, his statements were hyperbolic, there is a large grain of truth behind the words.
The proposed system is far from glitch free and could benefit from an extended development and test period. The Obama Administration is poised to grant the time necessary. This is good.
However, if any delay in deploying the proposed ABMs to Poland is seen as capitulation to Russian (oops! The Geek almost wrote "Soviet.") shoe banging, the administration will come under increasing, perhaps intense political pressure here in the US. This could cause difficulties not in the better interests of either the US or Russia.
We all know that the handful of short range interceptor missiles in no way compromises Russia's ability to plant mushroom clouds throughout the US and the rest of the world. Anyone with the slightest awareness of Russia's nuclear delivery potential well understands that.
In all probability the boys in the Kremlin are far more concerned about the expiration of START I next December. Both Russia and the United States have large stockpiles of aging nuclear warheads. Similarly the extant delivery systems in both countries are not getting any younger or more effective. The US has made some (halting, hesitant) steps in the direction of procuring upgraded warheads or, as the Russians call them, "nuclear charges." Hints oozing around the high and tight Russian secrecy wall indicate the same dynamic is at work over there.
A new agreement would carry with it the potential of allowing both Russia and the US building down to the level of a "finite deterrent" of modernised, reliable and more robustly controllable warheads and delivery vehicles. This sort of move would be in the better interests of both countries (and the rest of the world as well.)
Then there is Iran.
Neither Russia nor the US can be contemplate a nuclear capable Iran with equanimity. Russia, far more than the United States, has direct experience with the direct effects of Islamist powered political ideology. And, Russia is far closer to Iran and its almost laughably primitive ballistic missiles than either the US or Israel.
It follows that a jointly constructed and manned missile defense system with both the American and Russian flags flying at the gate would be in the better interests of both countries as well as other nations. The demonstrated ability to swat rogue missiles out of the sky would give real pause to any adventuresome or eschatologically motivated regime. It would even give a reason for reflecting before acting to other governments which, while nuclear capable, lack the diffuse surge launch capacity of either the US or Russia.
Right now is the perfect time for both Moscow and Washington to sit back and consider non-threat based options. Both Russia and the US can step back from any rush to deploy. Both can cite legitimate "technical considerations" as the reason and let the diplomats engage in the normal palaver of the game of nations. The United States and Russia, as has so often been the case in the past, have coinciding national interests.
Both countries have a ground for diplomacy. Stand on it and use it.
Mr Putin, if you or one of your staff had been a faithful reader of this blog, you would have noticed just how often the Geek excoriated the Cheney-Bush Administration for having not treated Russia as the Great Power that it is. There is no need for Russia to engage in anachronistic Cold War techniques of threats and shouting "Nyet!"
Russian (and American) interests would be best served by having another "information collision" and announcing that the missile tweakers of Kaliningrad will just have to soldier on for a little while longer with their old missiles. Try it, Vladimir, you'll like it.
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