EU Elites Get The Jitters Again

If anything perturbs the serene sleep of assorted Eurocrats more than an election success on the part of a "right wing, " populist party it is hard to imagine. Well, perhaps the thought of having to bail out Greece or one of the other "PIGS" states. But, for the moment the elites of the EU are spinning faster than an Iranian centrifuge because of the outcome of the Hungarian elections.

The Right-leaning Fidez party under the leadership of veteran politician Viktor Orban came out of its seemingly perpetual status as a minority with fifty-three percent of the vote. That meant the Socialists were out.

This is not the part of the election which is giving the Eurocrats hissy-fits. Rather it was the emergence of the hypernationalist, antisemitic, anti-Gypsy Jobbink party which gained almost seventeen percent of the votes. An obscure, fringe element founded by Gabor Vona, the Movement For A Better Hungry rode a wave of anti-status quo, anti-establishment rhetoric to a stunning degree of success.

Jobbink is deeply disturbing not only for the strong echoes of National Socialism in its verbiage, but for its militia offspring. The Hungarian Guard is also headed by Gabor Vona. In its actions if not its uniforms the Magyar Garda closely resembles the Iron Guard of Hungary's World War II Nazi days. The Hungarian Guard has been outlawed by a local court but the Socialist government did not enforce the suppression order.

The breadth and depth of the anti-status quo vote bespeaks not only a widespread frustration over current economic conditions which are, admittedly, bad even by Central European standards but also anger over corruption which appears pervasive. Of the two the former is the more often pointed to by observers, but the latter is the more critical.

A perception of corruption, of cronyism, of the hoi oligoi ripping off and exploiting the hoi polloi necessarily results in a corrosion of faith in the current system. Taken to the extreme, corrupt acts by members of the government leads to a violent exercise in regime change as in Kyrgyzstan.

Corruption along with economic conditions which seem to have a greater, disproportionate impact on the working class, the small shopkeeper, the lesser farmer provides a very rich soil for politicians hawking the wares of the farther right shore of politics. They cater effectively to a general sense that the status quo is so rigged to the sole benefit of the hoi oligoi that wholesale change is needed. This, of course, along with a hefty dose of national pride and the appointment of an evil "Other," constitutes the stock in trade of Jobbik and similar parties throughout Europe.

As has been seen in the US with the shrill, not to say, hysterical reactions of the Left to the rise of the Tea Party Movement, the European internationalist elites have responded to any success by a so-called "populist" party by attacking the voters rather than soberly assessing the real world motivations for the vote having gone the way it did.

There are very good, quite realistic reasons for disenchantment among the European hoi polloi. The rush toward meshing the many quite different nations of Europe into a single entity has been way too rapid not to perturb the equanimity of those many folks who are not by virtue of employment, education, or background given to celebrating internationalism, let alone the multi-cultural stance so fervently embraced by the "betters" of the EU.

The stresses imposed by Muslim immigration and the apologies offered by the multi-cultis on their behalf have fostered a sense of alienation within their own lands on the part of many. One consequence has been to increase the distrust felt by some as to the motives and worthiness of those in government.

Further stressing the social and political cohesion of most European states have been the effects of the Great Recession. The view from the bottom of the economic pyramid has been that somehow, some way, the Mr and Ms Bigs of the several European states have been able to ride out the recession. The conclusion drawn all-too-often is the hoi oligoi have made a corrupt bargain to protect themselves while offloading the bitter fruit of economic calamity on the lesser sorts.

Absent any of these several stressors there is little doubt but the traditional waver between Center-Left and Center-Right governments would have continued. However, the European social and political compacts have been tried and found wanting under the pressure of these several recent phenomena. The result has been a shift to the extremes on the political spectrum.

The fact that the extreme most favored by recent voters has been that on the Right is quite important. The Right emphasizes the national. National identity. National economy. National interest above all. The European voters have shown in impressive numbers that they reject the forced integration not only of the several European states but of non-Europeans into the local culture, society, polity, and, most importantly, sense of identity.

This is evidence that, once more, the lofty thinking people who live in the high mountains of the Left have no clue how the hoi polloi not only live but think of themselves, their nation, their identity as individuals and as a nation. With disdain bordering on arrogance, the high minded who inhale the rarefied air of an ideal world have shown that their belief in changing the "lesser sorts" to a similar view of life and living if only enough hectoring, lecturing, verbal beating is administered does not work.

The True Believers of the Left in Europe and, dare one write, the US as well, have been and continue to act as if they are the new divinely ordained aristocracy equipped by virtue of birth, education, employment, social and economic status to dictate to all the rest, the vast majority, how they should live, how they should view life and the world, how they should think and behave. This proclamation of being in sole possession of moral rectitude serves to provide grounds for alienation.

The alienation is enhanced when the elite slide through economic hard times relatively undamaged. The alienation is completed when the the two perceptions combine to give rise to a sense of class based corruption. If the perception is reinforced by proof positive of corruption in high (and not so high) places as it has been in Hungry, the result is the rise of the more extreme Right.

Once again an elite has been hoisted on a petard of its own making. In Hungry as in other European states the lurch to the far Right has been caused by the attitudes, words, and actions of the Left leaning elite.

That ground truth is what should be exercising the movers and shakers of the EU, not the specifics of the Hungarian election. Of course, this will not happen. The elite in Europe as in the US is too blinded by its own light, believes too deeply in its own press releases, is too sure of its own rectitude to engage in self-examination.

Failing this, the elite can only lambaste the blindness, the stupidity, the xenophobia of the lesser breeds in need of guidance, care, and supervision. And so the days of the Left elite may be numbered, small numbered.

A Goy And Yom Hashoah

When the Geek was born, while he suckled, learned to walk, felt the pleasures of beach and water for the first time, snuggled deeply in the warmth of love and security, millions of humans, many no older than himself were systematically, mechanically murdered as the direct result of hatred given power by state policy, conscious decision, and methodical execution. At least half of those who rode the cattle cars to the ovens and foul pits of destruction did so simply because they were Jews and there was no one, certainly no state, ready to protect them.

The Geek was touched deeply but indirectly by war's devastation through the death of his father in early combat, but he came of age a close friend of people whose lives had been blighted by the hideously effective machinery of death assembled by the Nazis. They had sat safe in the far away land of safety, the US, as brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and grandparents were forced onto the thousands of Murder Expresses and ended "up the chimney" in the camps of Germany, Poland, and other places under the swastika. He came to know and understand deeply the power held by the creation and survival of Israel for these people.

The Geek also came to know and believe that the existence of Israel held profound significance for non-Jews, the goyim. Israel is not only a symbol of Jewish survival against the implacable forces of hatred, dehumanization, and the constant need for an "other" on whom all ills and misfortunes can be blamed. Beyond that potent reality, Israel is a symbol to all humans that places of refuge and sources of protection must exist as any of us can become the dreaded "other," the next target of hate and dehumanization.

Israel also exists to remind us that a good can result from the most repulsive evil. Israel was founded in the ancient land of the Hebrews in large part due to the recognition on the part of peoples and leaders that they shared a degree of culpability for the Slaughter of the Innocents perpetrated by the Nazis with the eager assistance of many who were not Nazis, whose land was occupied by Nazis, who labored under the whips and guns of the Nazis but sympathized not with those marched into the gas chambers, but rather with their fellow haters of all things Jewish and all Jews.

It was an act of penance for the moral sins of the Nazi period when Western nations generally, including the US ignored the many warning signs of what was happening under the Hitlerites. Shamefully, the governments and many people throughout Europe and North America had refused to hear the cries of warning and shrieks of anguish alike until it was far too late.

Only after the evidence of the Slaughter, the Holocaust, the Shoah, was shown around the world, time after nauseating time, did the West, the US, act. The act was the creation of the state of Israel.

The act of Israel's birth was accompanied by blood, pain, and a degree of injustice to be sure, but that is often the case with birth, of individuals and nations alike. Perhaps the most important thing to recall about the birth of Israel is not the ministrations of the West, of the US, or even the Soviet Union in bringing the birth to pass but the utter, complete, total, and quite unjustifiable efforts by the governments of the surrounding Arab Muslim states to kill the infant before it had fully emerged from the womb.

Arguably, the actions of the Arab governments constituted an attempt to finish the job started by the Nazis or, failing that, to assure that Jews in the Mideast and elsewhere would be left without a refuge or protector. While any number of exculpatory glosses have been and continue to be placed upon the Arab attack on Israel-the-borning, the underlying fact is that the movement of tanks and troops was motivated by hatred, dehumanization, and a view of Jews as the ever-evil "Other."

As the years have rolled by since Israel was created from the ashes of the Holocaust nothing has shifted the hostility, the hatred felt and constantly expressed by various and sundry Arab and Muslim states. If anything the hatred has grown, the hostility increased, and the potential for war both conventional and otherwise has increased in capitals across the Mideast and throughout Northwest Asia.

The reason for this escalation in hate, threat, and menace usually invoked is the bad treatment of the "Palestinians" by the Israelis. End the "occupation," restore the "borders" extant before June 1967, compensate or allow the return of any and all Arabs (or their descendants) "forced out" of their homes way back at the beginning and all will be peace, harmony and goodwill. Or so runs the Arab-Muslim narrative.

Right. All the problems diplomatic, political, and military, all the rebirths of ancient blood libels, emerge from the sincere concern on the part of the assorted Arab and Muslim leaders for the fate of their "Palestinian brothers."

That constant theme, that undying plaint is a crock. Pure and simple, none of the many advocates on behalf of the "Palestinians" gives a tinker's dam about the "Palestinian people" now or in the past. Arab and Muslim regimes, dictators, kings, and elected presidents alike have used the "plight of the Palestinians" time and time again for their own subjectively defined self-interest. The "Palestinians" have been pawns or less in the Mideast Game of Nations. They have been expendable assets used for purposes of state. They have been pliable and easily exploited puppets dancing on strings controlled by distant and quite indifferent political and military figures.

Behind the screen of a nonexistent Israeli threat, the mullahs of Tehran pursue a nuclear capability with zealous determination not to protect the "Palestinians" but to enhance the power held by Iran in and beyond the region. The Turkish government has turned on their one time ally, Israel, not because the Islamist leaning government is worried over the repression of the residents of Gaza but because of desire bordering on need to diminish Israel.

The real deal behind all of the recent expressions of antipathy directed toward Israel and solidarity with the "Palestinian people" is based on a very mundane consideration. The assorted regimes are scared to death of the Islamist jihadists in their own populations.

The ever hardening line espoused by Arab and Muslim states most recently aimed at the Israeli nuclear arsenal is based on the palpable fear that appearing to give in in the slightest would be to excite the Islamist jihadi to strap on their suicide vests and "bring the war home." Given the deeply rooted antisemitism in Islam per se, stoked year after year by clerics and others and considering the explosive growth of Islamist based and directed violence, the anxiety permeating the governments of Arab and Muslim states is understandable.

Equally understandable is the Israeli reaction of hardening intransigence. Without excusing the land grab nature of the Six Day War, the current view of the Israeli government and people is well founded. The only wall around Israel, the only way of assuring that Jews not only in that country but around the world have a refuge and protector is the strength of the Israeli military. That strength includes the nuclear weapons resident in assorted bunkers.

It is quite true that Israel faces both external and internal problems, even large problems such as demographic, economic, and educational trends. Yet a more fundamental truth is that Israel must survive as a viable state if those are to be solved.

Survival relies in very large measure on the capabilities of the Israeli clandestine services as well as its defense forces. It relies at least to an important degree on those warheads presumed to exist on Israeli bases.

Israeli survival also rests in part upon the understanding and support of us who are non-Jews, the goyim of the US and Europe. Our predecessors not only did the wrong thing in the long dark years from 1933 to 1945, they did the right thing three years later when they midwifed the birth of Israel.

We do not need to support Israel without question. Not every decision or action by the government of Israel is correct, nor does it merit agreement simply by virtue of having been made in Israel.

However, without Israel as both a reality and a symbol, it will be only a matter of time before the Extermination Expresses take to the rails again. The next time those on board may be Jews.

Then, again, those who ride the next trains may be some other "Other." They could be any of us.

Obama Looks Reality In The Face--Finally

President Obama did something surprising. He has admitted that he possibly just might have made a mistake. By means of a thank-you letter to Hamid Karzai, the Guy In The Oval allowed as how his recent midnight raid on Kabul in which he hectored the Afghan president on the benefits of good government, the need for a meritocracy in the Afghan civil service, and the utter necessity of ridding Afghan political life of its very blood--corruption--might just have been ill-advised.

Mr Obama might have added that his descent on Karzai was also insulting on a personal level to say nothing of disrespectful to the Afghan people generally. Not even LBJ at his most abrasive and abusive ever quite equaled the Obama performance as Great White Father Straightening Out the Little Brown Brother.

The sequel, Karzai's demonstrations of pique in the first degree, was totally expectable and fully justifiable within the context of Afghan culture, society, and political legitimacy. The consequent howls of outraged dignity emanating from the White House and allied points was not justifiable and defies explanation other than having been demonstrations of just how the elite of Washington don't get it when dealing with a traditional culture and society. (Horrors! Cultural insensitivity on the part of those who have most loudly announced in so many ways just how culturally sensitive they are and the rest of us must be. Say it ain't so!)

The need for Mr Obama to back down was and is self-evident. By denouncing Karzai the administration has made it harder, much harder to claim support for its war effort in Afghanistan from Congress or We the People. At the same time the all too obvious attempt to publicly diminish Mr Karzai does nothing to inject more legitimacy in his government. Finally, personally insulting a proud man in a culture where pride is the coin of power does not provide an impetus on his part for effective cooperation with American policy requirements.

Whether the letter will do much or anything to put diplomatic Bondo on the Obama manufactured dent in our relations with and influence on the Karzai regime remains to be seen. In view of the decent relation which exists between Karzai and General McChrystal, there is a better than fair chance the letter will prove to be effective. As long as Mr Obama, Secretary Clinton, Veep Biden, Special Envoy Holbrooke, and our ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberr, can restrain their inherent desires to lecture and exhort, there is good reason to conclude this rough patch in relations will pass swiftly and without profound, lingering effects.

There is a much larger question wrapped up inside the Obama-Karzai contretemps. That question is simply when will the Young Guy In The Oval get a grip on the stingy nettle of reality regarding the nature of Islamism and its appeal to members of traditional societies?

Traditional societies, that is societies which are not nations so much as assemblages of tribes forced by mere geographic propinquity to pretend they constitute a cohesive nation at least some of the time, are not founded on the same basis as nation-states. The imperatives at work are not the same. The definitions of legitimacy are not the same. The qualities of leadership are not the same. In short, they ain't like us regardless of superficials like membership in the UN or possession of a national anthem.

For example, traditional societies value the appearance of strength in a leader. The reality of strength is even more highly valued. The man who is ruthless, energetic, a take-charge-and-move-out sort of guy is most likely to attract and retain the largest base of support. A man who swaggers, walks tall and proud, who takes no insult, who hits before he can be hit, these are the expressions of strength valued and sought after in traditional societies.

"A wise man seeks the strongest horse," is a proverb often heard in one detailed form or another in the great swath running from Morocco to Pakistan, from the tip of the Arabian Peninsula to the towering mountains ringing the Central Asian Republics. That this great global arc coincides with most of the Arab-Muslim world is scarcely accidental. Islam values this view of strength as it is the product of a traditional society and has taken deepest roots in traditional societies.

Today, people and governments, the led and the leaders alike are closely watching the US with one goal in mind: Determining whether or not the US is the "strongest horse." A little over thirty years ago when people of this region regarded the US there was no doubt as to the answer. But, starting with the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979 doubts about the strength of the American horse started to emerge.

The initially supine reaction by the Carter administration to the capture of the American embassy in Tehran and the consequent kidnapping of American diplomats particularly when capped with the dramatic failure at Desert One convinced more than a few in the Arab-Muslim world that the American horse was foundering.

The US horse seemingly was recovering its strength during the Reagan years only to once again appear freshly spavined when the "cowboy" in the White House withdrew our troops from Lebanon with unseemly haste following the suicide bombing attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut. The horse once again recovered in a very visible way with its leadership in the Gulf War.

No sooner had opinion about American strength and resolve turned positive than the horse threw its shoes again. The Clinton administration's spineless cut-and-run from Somalia following the failed, badly planned, and worse executed Special Forces attempt to capture a Somali warlord switched the view of American strength one hundred eighty degrees.

The perception of American weakness and irresolution was multiplied by the Clinton administration's weak responses to attacks on American embassies and a US Navy warship. A lot of talk and the shooting of a few cruise missiles at irrelevant targets did not constitute an exhibition worthy of the strongest horse.

While the actions of George W. Bush were in one respect (Iraq) ill-advised and in another (Afghanistan) ineptly carried out, they did represent undeniable strength. But the strongest horse can be bogged down if the mud is deep enough and the horse struggles without success for a long enough time. And so the US horse was until finally more troops were sent to Iraq and, years behind the need, to Afghanistan.

The Obama administration during the past fourteen months, the last twelve in particular, has further declared the steady weakening of the American horse. The genuflections, the distortions of history, the worried seeming importuning of the Cairo Address were meant to be a sign of change, of out reach. In the ears of many in the Arab-Muslim states these were actually words of surrender, of weakness, of failure.

Also seen as palpable signs of the weak American horse were the always shifting lines in the sand being drawn by the Obama administration regarding the Iranian nuclear program. Lots of words, no action are indicative of weakness, of flaccidity, not strength. The same may be said of the one sided pressure on Israel, paradoxical as that may seem. But, if the US cannot pressure Israel successfully, just what state can it successfully lean on?

Islamic predicated traditional societies respect strength. This does not imply the strength of weapons and warriors alone. Rather, it means the strength of belief, of values, of commitment, of the willingness to sacrifice, to spend time, to expend blood and treasure if necessary in support of belief, in defense of values, in keeping faith with commitments.

Much of these seem quite antiquated, unfashionable to all of us post-modern sophisticates in the urbanized nation-states of the West. Sacrificing for values, beliefs? What a quaint notion. Keep faith in commitments? Well, times change, contexts alter, get real!

We and our society have left the imperatives, the values, the worldview of traditional societies in the dust bin of history. But, most of the world's population has not. Our enemies, the Islamists, have not. Neither have those such as Hamid Karzai and all the other Afghans.

Mr Obama has apparently learned from one (small) mistake in personal diplomacy. It is to be hoped with both sincerity and fervor that he can learn from and correct his much greater, potentially fatal mistake.

If he does not we can be sure that all through the great crescent people will conclude that the US is not the strongest horse. And, that means those who hate us will ride over our prostrate bodies.

The "New Left" Has Finally Won--Big Time

One of the enduring myths of the Sixties, of the Vietnam War in particular, is that of the anti-war and other "New Left" activists having successfully toppled two presidents (LBJ and RMN) as well as having forced an end to the American efforts in Southeast Asia. The contemporary documents, particularly those which were originally classified drop a flag on that particular play.

Now as the always pompous and pretentious Paul Harvey used to say in his patented portentous tones, "For the rest of the story."

While the "New Left" failed to heave out presidents or end a war, it did ultimately succeed at something far more important. The final testament to the dedication and effectiveness of the aging survivors of the demos and barricades, of Days of Rage and "Bring the War Home," is the current anti-American convictions of so many members of the American hoi oligoi.

As many of the constituent parts of the "Movement" left the streets, the protests, the rallies, the teach-ins, the sit-ins, the communes, they found comfortable and highly influential positions in the groves of academe. It was as if they took the hoary Jesuit mantra, "give me the child and I will have the man," very much to heart as they took to the lectern.

As the Geek observed repeatedly during his years in the academy, the vast majority of those teaching in departments of English, history, sociology, philosophy belonged to a strain of thinking (the term is used generically only) which can be best entitled, "Blame America First." In the eyes, mouths, and computers of these folk the US was and always had been the prime fountainhead of evil on the planet's surface. There was not the smallest doubt in the minds of any of these professors (the Geek will not degrade the honorable term, "teacher," by applying it in this case) that the American republic and people stood in the dock not only accused but prima face, convicted of racism, sexism, imperialism, a nation and a state awash in greed, exploitation, repression, and related manifestations of the most base of human actions.

Students in the tens of thousands trooped into the indoctrination centers run by these militant exponents of all-sin-is-made-in-America. Year after year the kids born in the Sixties and following decades sat and took in the "wisdom" of these paragons of academic virtue. The message of America-is-the-bane-of-humanity was repeated with the remorseless repetition of a Chinese Communist self-criticism session. And, with the same result.

The result?

The message was accepted. Believed. Taken to heart. Reified. Even deified.

At the same time other aging veterans of the Sixties streets were rising to prominence in politics, the media, the law. Sharing the same intellectual heritage, the same zeitgeist as their cohorts in academia, they spoke the same Blame America First theme reinforcing the indoctrination of the classroom.

The normal processes of aging assured that finally products of the ever reinforced message would place their hands on the levers of power in our country. One such product is the current occupant of the Oval, Barack Obama.

It is not surprising that his profound expressions of Blame America First are so much a daily part of his rhetoric and policy alike. More than those of the "older generation," the now grey and wrinkled "kids" of the "New Left," such as Ms Clinton or at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Ms Pelosi, and Mr Reid, the President, and others of his age both spout and act upon the America-is-evil theme. This is to be expected, the elders merely lived through the time, those younger were heavily and repeatedly indoctrinated, intellectually marinated as it were in the bitter and poisonous wine trampled out by the "New Lefties."

There is little if any reason to doubt that Mr Obama sincerely believes that the world, the human race, would be the better if the US were humbled, less powerful, less able to lead--and be followed. Certainly his policies both foreign and domestic seem to predicated on that sort of view.

Todd Gitlin a distinguished member of the "Movement" some years ago bemoaned the fact that while the Right, those horrid, icky-poo Republicans had taken the White House, the Left had captured the English department. Dr Gitlin must have rethought his gloomy view during the administration of George W. Bush as the opposition refought the battles of the Sixties.

Except for receding hairlines and expanding abdomens the "antis" of the W. Bush years were reprising their glory days of forty years earlier. Often they were cheered on by media types of similar vintage, background, and worldview. They were supported by politicians who were likewise bonded by age and experience.

The new feature of the Bush period was the support provided to the "antis" by the younger generation, the folks who had successfully passed through the indoctrination programs run by the Blame America Firsters of academe. If anything the younger component outdid their progenitors in both volume and vitriol.

High on the list of the younger generation of "antis" was an Illinois state senator and later, US senator from the Land of Lincoln, the Nice Young Man From Chicago, Barack Obama. He may have known nothing of foreign relations, military policy, diplomacy or war but he knew one thing very, very well. He knew America was inherently evil and needed to be changed not only in and for itself but for the good future of humanity.

He knew these things because his professors had told him so--again and again. He knew it because it had been told him by the age cohort of his professors, those in media, those in community organizing, those in assorted help-the-people organizations. He had heard it, read it so often, so convincingly, that it must be true.

His view of "hope and change" was simply that the "hope" of the world would be found in a basic "change" in the US. The change would necessitate a diminishment of US status, influence, and, yes, power in the world.

The results of the Obama version of "change" is all too evident in the foreign policy of the US as well as its conduct. Whether kicking old allies in the shin (the UK) or the groin (Israel) or cozying up to hostile states or ducking, bobbing, weaving in practice while talking tougher than a South Side gangsta, it has become apparent to any not under the influence of the Blame America First ideology that the US is acting weak, trying desperately to resign its status as a Great Power.

This is not to imply that past American foreign policy is above reproach. The Geek has enjoyed pulling the wings off the American foreign relations butterfly for decades. We have made mistakes aplenty in the past. We have allowed ourselves to become blind to the requirements of realpolitik. We have pursued threats which did not exist, chased after illusions, sought unachievable goals. All of these, and, lots of times.

The Obama administration reflecting the views of the now elderly "New Left" has gone far beyond mere miscalculations, simple blunders, quotidian stupidity, expectable ideological blindness. As a direct consequence of believing deeply in the America-the-sinful school of history, politics, and economics, the president and what he proudly calls, "his team" have sought to lower the role and responsibility of the US in global affairs while doing everything possible to remove any traces of "American exceptionalism" at home.

Fortunately the fallout of the Sixties "New Left" is not universal. More importantly not everyone exposed to the indoctrination centers swallowed the approved line. Very few of us in the American hoi polloi agree with the (not atypically) anonymous administration official who said, "We were elected to preside over a graceful American decline."

Mr Obama's vision of "change" involves the historically unprecedented voluntary rejection of Great Power status by the US and We the People. Considering that we Americans have never been comfortable with being citizens of a Great Power, of shouldering the unwelcome burdens which can come with that status, the hope of this sort of change is not preposterous.

The other side of the coin is that the US as Great Power has been, on balance, good for the world generally. The US has been the "last best hope" on all too many occasions over the past seventy years. Despite our errors, regardless of our blunders, the US has done more than any other state to promote stability, reduce threats to peace, provide assistance to people in great need of such, and, far from least, serve as an example of possibility, of liberation, of genuine change for the better.

Insofar as there exists a genuine "human potential movement" it is resident in the US. We have been and remain what John Winthrop called us over four hundred years ago, the city on a hill holding the beacon of authentic hope, genuine change on high.

Not what the Blame America First crowd wants to admit. Or the president it manufactured either. But, that is the way it is and will continue to be--if We the People want it to.

White House Language Cops Deny Reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The goal is laudable. The means are not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Uncle Sam Now A Nuclear Wimp?

The Obama administration released the long discussed, long speculated upon Nuclear Posture Review in a blare of public relations speechifying suitable for a political campaign rally. Not only did the president hail his accomplishment in approving a revision of the intentionally ambiguous and thus controversial product of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld years, Secretary of Defense Gates, Secretary of State Clinton, and assorted other heavies broke their collective arms in an orgy of back patting.

Almost before the press releases hit in-boxes around the virtual world, the voices of criticism bayed long and loud. From the Right came the expectable viewing-with-alarm. On the Left heads wagged over one-more-opportunity-missed.

Both Left and Right practiced the fine art of reductionism with exuberance, which assured that each reduced matters to the point of absurdity. The Right was apparently of the view that by not promising the possibility of nuclear retaliation for any attack on the US employing a weapon more deadly than a .18 caliber airgun, Obama has opened us to any number of vile assaults by any number of evil actors. The Left evidently convinced itself that by not renouncing any first use--or perhaps, any use--of nuclear weapons the president has not only abandoned his quest for the unicorn inhabited world-without-nuclear-arms but has left the door to proliferation wide open.

The Earth shaking imaginings of both Left and Right are not borne out by the text of the NPR. A more or less close reading of this document along with its predecessor shows that little of substance has been altered. Arguably those features which constitute a change from the Bush era Review represent a change for the better.

Perhaps more importantly the changes show an understanding of the potency of the latest generation of conventional munitions along with their delivery systems. It also demonstrates a conservative estimate as to the direction and magnitude of projected future improvements in this genera of weapons.

The new NPR also reflects a realistic appreciation of the limits of nuclear utility. It is refreshing to see an explicit recognition that the nuclear arsenal has a very narrowly circumscribed area of efficacy. Other than mutual deterrence among nuclear opponents these very expensive devices and their means of delivery are fundamentally useless.

This is not to say nukes can't kill people and break things in horridly large lots but rather to acknowledge that this quality represents the basis of their uselessness. There is a point where retaliation has effects far worse than those of the initial attack. This point can be marked by a nuclear strike in response to a limited impact attack by, say, chemical or radiological means.

While nuclear munitions have been made in relatively small yields and the delivery systems tweaked greatly in their accuracy, the collateral damage from even a very small, very carefully targeted retaliatory strike would cause such massive deaths and destruction downrange as to cause diplomatic and political consequences of major dimension and nearly infinite duration.

The ruling out of a nuclear usage against a non-nuclear state which was in full compliance with its non-proliferation obligations even if that state launched or facilitated a chemical, radiological, or cybersystem attack is, to use one of George H.W. Bush's favorite words, "prudent." It is equally prudent to give ourselves an exception should the attack be of a biological nature.

BW may be a "weapon of mass destruction" by legal definition but this category of munitions has not yet reached a level of development likely to produce casualties on a scale equivalent to those inflicted by a nuclear weapon. The future of BW is impossible to predict with detailed accuracy, but it is safe to assume the field is open to development, probably rapid development. A declaratory policy which did not explicitly recognize the duty of the US government to evaluate the non-use of nuclear retaliation would be unconscionably vapid.

The new NPR gives the Obama administration at least some of the moral authority it needs coming into the Monster Rally For Non-Proliferation which goes down in a few weeks. In this context it is important to note that the NPR does put an emphasis upon the dangers of proliferation and the necessity for stronger measures to buck up proliferation inhibiting policies and systems as well as better control of all fissionable materials.

When the four dozen or so heads of state or government meet in Washington, the new NPR particularly when linked to the ReSTART with Russia, will position the US well to achieve real agreement on specific, real-world methods to enhance the physical security of nuclear materials and buff up the still too weak systems controlling the movement of dual use technology, particularly to rogue or failing states. The presence of more robust systems monitoring and, when necessary, interdicting the sale of sensitive nuclear related technology a few years ago would have gone a very long way to strangling the Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons programs in the cradle.

These two rogue states have not been given a Get Out Of Jail Free card by the new NPR as has been made abundantly clear by SecDef Gates. While not specifically referenced by Gates, the same applies to India, Pakistan--and Israel. This is a wrinkle of the NPR which deserves close attention as to its implications, particularly as applied to a hypothetical future, Islamist Pakistani government.

No NPR is perfect. This one is most assuredly imperfect in its apparent rejection of any improvement in the aging American nuclear stockpile. Any explicit or implicit renouncing of upgrading nuclear weapons particularly as regards yield, explosive effect focusing, or reliability and security does not serve our national and strategic interests. This is all the more true when both China and Russia are expending significant efforts to improve and modernize their weapons. While the risk of nuclear exchange with either country is and is likely to remain small, the erosion of our capacities which would result necessarily from not seeking improvements in our own serves to weaken the deterrent effect of both our policy and the systems on which it depends.

To answer the question which topped this post: Uncle Sam is not a nuclear wimp--yet. But, any refraining from continued questing for small, more focused, more survivable, more accurate, better secured, enhanced reliability weapons will make sure that the old guy in practice will become just that in a very few years.

Sometimes You Just Gotta Grin And Bear It

The White House, or at least flack Robert Gibbs, went exoatmospheric following the most recent diatribe by Hamid Karzai. Gibbs averred that the Guy In The Oval has found Karzai's accusation of foreign interference in Afghanistan's electoral process "troubling" and "simply not true."

Well, Gibbs and his boss are more likely right than wrong regarding the substance of the Karzai Indictment. That being said it is important to add that the official White House take on the matter is irrelevant.

What counts is the internal Afghan view of Karzai's position. Inside that country the presidential spin is seen as plausible to the max. There is no reason for an Afghani, any Afghani, to believe that foreigners are either unwilling or unable to seek the "say" in the internal affairs of Afghan society and polity.

It is not that Afghans are notably paranoid. Nor are they unduly xenophobic. Rather their suspicions of the purity or disinterested nature of foreign intentions are predicated upon centuries of experience as a buffer area between large, expansionist, and aggressive imperial powers. At different times and in manifold ways Russia, China, Great Britain, India and, (say it ain't so) the US have sought to influence, control, dominate Afghanistan's internal politics.

This historical trajectory must be considered in the context of Afghanistan's existence as an agglutination of tribes. It is not a nation-state as such is understood in the West. Afghanistan does not possess a self-conscious national identity coupled with both established, secure, and defensible borders and the means of governance which assure the borders are maintained against all comers and the internal cohesiveness is kept secure against subversion.

Internally, the Afghan population is fragmented along linguistic and tribal lines so that an individual's primary allegiances run from family to clan to tribe and ultimately to linguistic group. Allegiance to the abstract, "Afghanistan," is a null referent. Also the borders of "Afghanistan" have proven to be highly mutable depending on who has the force necessary to reposition them.

Nor should the historical nature of what passes for a central government in Afghanistan be ignored. For most of its history the central regime has been nonexistent or the next thing to it. The emergence of a strong, effective central government has come about typically when the tribes are faced by an external threat too large to be countered without dependable joint effort.

During the long years of the "Great Game," both Russia and Great Britain discovered to their respective dismay that the most rapid way to create a government in Afghanistan was to invade the place. No sooner did the first column of troops enter the fuzzily understood borders of Afghanistan than a strongman leader emerged to rally the locals against the invaders.

In a very real sense that is what Karzai has been doing of late. He has been posturing himself as a true Afghan patriot resisting the crypto-invaders.

As a good and strong Afghan patriot and leader, Karzai has asserted to the local tribal leaders near Kandahar that no US, NATO, or ISAF operation will take place in their domains until and unless both he and the tribal chiefs are satisfied that the operation is necessary and will be conducted in a way which immunizes the local civilians against harm. He gave his personal word of honor that he and not the foreigners will control the military operations so that local leaders and their people can rest easy.

It was as a good and strong Afghan leader and patriot that Mr Karzai made his allegations of foreign misconduct in the presidential elections. By his strong language and the underlying reality that his message was credible to Afghan minds, Karzai positioned himself as the sole means of guaranteeing the upcoming parliamentary election will be a strictly made-in-Afghanistan affair.

Karzai's shrewd observation, "a thin curtain separates foreign assistance from a foreign invasion" is not only soundly rooted in recent Afghan history but nicely plays with his equally perceptive comment to the effect that Taliban resists foreign invaders and if the foreigners act any more like invaders than they already have he (Karzai) would join Taliban. That statement might have "troubled" the Obama White House most of all, but it has the advantage to Afghan ears of being both believable and reassuring.

The Obama administration and the Nice Young Man From Chicago himself would do well to get a grip on two ground truths.

The first of these is that Karzai is playing a longer term game than is the American government. He is looking beyond the current campaign, or the next one. He is looking beyond the stage of hostilities termination. Karzai, to his credit, is keeping his eyes on the distant prospect of conflict resolution. President Karzai wants to be presiding still when the assorted insurgents including Taliban choose to play the ancient and honorable game of let's-make-a-deal. All of his recent statements and promises so outrageous to White House ears are necessary if he is going to accomplish is long term goal of conflict resolution with Hamid Karzai sitting at the head of the table.

The other ground truth is simply there ain't a thing we can do about Karzai's seeming spirit of non-team-playing. The Afghan president in a manner identical with assorted South Vietnamese capos forty and more years ago understood that the US lacks the credible capacity to decommit from Afghanistan.

We are there for our reasons, in pursuit of our goals. We have made it apparent to the entire world that the outcome of the fighting in Afghanistan is important to our national and strategic interests. We have invested diplomatic capital as well as lives in the outcome. These limit our freedom of action, no matter how much Karzai and his coterie may infuriate and frustrate us.

Importantly, the war is now owned by Barack Obama. The go decision might have been made by Bush/Cheney. The chances for a quick and convincing success were blown by the dunderheads of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. The years from 2002 through most of 2009 were frittered away to the detriment of the US and the sole benefit of Taliban. Those considerations no longer matter.

The war now belongs to 44. His political capital and personal prestige are now on the line. To cut and run or even to reduce our level of engagement is to suffer a self-inflicted wound. It is scarcely conceivable that the combative egoist who lives behind the ingratiating smile would suffer such a wound willingly.

President Obama is mousetrapped. Karzai has the American president by the cliched "short hairs."

There is nothing Obama and company can do realistically other than grin and (at the least pretend to) like it. Unpleasant to be sure but not without some positive potential.

Insofar as Karzai buttresses his position with the Afghan people, including the soft core Taliban types, by adopting the pose of the tough, resolute, and wily Afghan patriot and leader, he lays the foundation necessary for bringing the war to an end in a way which will not be incompatible with our minimum necessary goal of "not-losing." Ironically, one of the best weapons we can use in Afghanistan is bending over and presenting our hind end for Karzai to kick.