Drunkard's Walk To Another "New World Order"

David Rothkopf wrote a sarcastic--and rather inaccurate--appraisal of Tea Party foreign policy ideas a few days ago in Foreign Policy. About the same time James Lindsey from the Council On Foreign Relations gave a more measured and far more accurate analysis of the unimportance of foreign policy in the midterm elections. Rothkopf's jocosity and Lindsey's sobriety coincided on the main point--foreign policy is a non-starter in the minds of most voters.

Given the state of the economy and the parlous effects of the Deficit From Hell, any other voter focus would be tantamount to a total loss of reason on the part of We the People. While easy to understand--and to agree with--this narrow gauge view will bring very real difficulties in its wake, if, as many expect, or at least hope, the Republicans, including those bearing the Tea Party Seal of Conservative Approval, gain control of the House and pick up a half dozen or more seats in the Senate.

Absent a very real, very high profile threat to the American land and way of life, foreign relations and its cognates, diplomacy and national security, have never gained great traction for long with most of We the People. For much of our corporate existence we have been quite comfortable with the central point of Washington's Farewell Address, the one about "no entangling alliances."

Not until 1917 did we take a direct hand in the quarrels of Europe and then we did so only under the presidentially sponsored misapprehension that by spilling American blood in the mud of Europe's trenches could we "make the world safe for democracy." Our president also assured us that by fighting this war we would end the scourge forevermore.

Of course, these halcyon ends did not come to pass. One of our reactions, a reaction which held particular popularity with the Republican Party of those decades, was the withdrawal to our own hemisphere. Isolation felt good but it removed the potential of American influence having any effect upon the plans and policies of resurgent Germany or Imperial Japan.

Countries which held goals antithetical to the national and strategic interests of the US were exempted from considering the US as a factor as Nazis, Fascists and Japanese militarists wove their webs of expansion through war. The war we were powerless to stop in its infant stages was brought to an end only after the most massive armed conflict in human history.

The reality of World War II coupled with the perceived hostility and expansionist agenda of the Soviet Union dragged We the People from our long lasting relationship with the Farewell Address and into a new global order of alliances, permanent American garrisons in far away countries, and the necessity of using all the numerous instruments of national power in a consistent, coherent way to assemble, maintain, and lead a coalition of states in opposition to the Soviet Union, the Peoples Republic of China, and their clients.

This adventure in global leadership was long, bloody, expensive, distorting to domestic and economic affairs, and lasted a half century. At no time was American leadership of the Free World actually popular among We the People. It was seen as a necessary duty, or imposed by the reality of self-defense, or, by some few, as a noble service to humanity. But, it was never popular, never a burden cheerfully born, never a welcome exercise in global muscularity.

When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Great Wall of the Warsaw Pact tumbled, Americans were relieved. The talk of the day was of "a peace dividend" and the enjoyment of the new freedom from global responsibility given to us by the fall of the Red Menace. Academics and other unworldly types gushed paeans to the "end of history" as we sought to resign our status as the only Great Power standing.

Much ink was spilled on the "new world order," an order which would be designed and implemented by the US, the only "superpower" and an eleemosynary one at that. The ugly mug of reality again intruded--the world generally and some states (or non-state actors) would not allow the US either to abdicate as a Great Power or accept an unchallenged Pax Americana.

Perhaps there did exist a short window of opportunity for the US to construct a "new world order" but that chance, if it ever did exist outside of the wishing and imaginations of some American politicians, went by unused, or, perhaps, used unwisely. No stable "new world order" has emerged to replace the stable bi-or tri-polar one of the late Cold War.

As a result the world--which includes the US much as some Tea Party favorites such as Dr Rand Paul might desire--has stumbled into the most dangerous international dynamic since the one which existed a century ago on the verge of the First World War. Back then the global political order centered on and was maintained by a Pentarchy--Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Around the fringes of these Great or Near-Great Powers were a series of small, ambitious, and inherently destabilizing lesser states.

Today the world has a functional "Quadarchy" consisting of the US, the EU, Russia, and China. On the fringes there are a number of small, ambitious, and inherently destabilizing states as well as a new phenomenon, the non-state actor having access to sufficient funds, recruits, and advanced technology weaponry as to rival states in their ability to make mischief. The rivalries within the Quadarchy provide numerous opportunities for both lesser states and non-state actors to gain and retain support so as to render the collective Quadarchy impotent as a force for status quo stability.

The rivalries within the Pentarchy of a century ago provided the context in which ill-advised but national interest serving policies of one or more of the lesser states produced a war of devastating proportions. World War I was both massively destructive--it caused the demolition of no fewer than three empires--and so inconclusive that it assured a sequel thirty years later.

Today, the frittering away, the purposeless wastage of American resources and diplomatic influence served in an unintended way to lessen the capacity and the political will of the US to act in its own best interests. The reduction of the US economically, militarily, and in terms of political will has had the effect of enhancing the power of the other members of the Quadarchy. It has also had the consequence of providing both inducements and opportunities for the lesser states to act in ways which are both dangerously destabilizing and threatening of American national and strategic interests.

In terms of both the capacity and will to employ the instruments of national power in pursuit or protection of core national and strategic interests, the US is essentially at its eleventh hour. We no longer have sufficient resources, including time, to waste influence, to eschew effective leadership, to fail to prioritize the truly critical national and strategic interests from those activities which might be nice or feel good but are not central to our existence in a world agreeable to our values and imperatives.

Foreign policy is rather like the deficit. Foreign affairs as well as the deficit require living in the future. Both require looking ahead to see what the long term effects upon our corporate and individual existence will be. Both demand understanding where we are today, where we will be if nothing changes, and what must be altered now if tomorrow is to be to our liking.

As Harry Hopkins famously observed to his rival in the FDR administration, Harold Ickes, "Harold, people live in the short-term." How right he was. This is why the issues of jobs and the current economy top the list of concerns for We the People. That hazy, vague monster, the deficit, is barely comprehended as to its capacity to destroy our futures. Foreign affairs, foreign relations, diplomacy, even war or peace, are far more vaporous in the minds of most of us. They exist too far in the future and in too nebulous a way to engage our interest, let alone to galvanise our votes.

Pace Mr Rothkopf, the members of the Tea Party, or Republicans for that matter, are not more pointy headed, more concerned with the affairs of the trailer park than those of the world than are liberals from New York or Los Angeles. The Tea Party types, like the liberals they detest so much, are good examples of We the People, as Harry Hopkins observed: they live in the short-term not the long view required for effective practice of foreign relations.

The real bitch comes in that the long-term inevitably becomes the short-term. The distant, virtually unseeable future always morphs into tomorrow. But, in foreign affairs, by the time that happens, it is too late. Often too late for anything other than war.

Pak Government Says, "Taxed Enough Already!"

While Dick Armey, Sarah Palin, and the rest of the TEA Party types weren't looking, their movement was joined by a new recruit. The newest imbiber of the heady beverage composed in major part of lower taxes is the government of Pakistan.

Pakistan already has one of the lowest tax revenue rates in the world, nine percent of the country's economy, (this should be compared with the 28 percent obtaining currently in the US,) but even that is thought to be too much by the government as well as the Pakistani elite. Almost nobody pays any taxes at all, only two percent of the 175 million Pakistanis are losers in this particular game of life. Again the figure of ninety-eight percent not paying a single rupee should be compared with the estimated forty percent of Americans who fork over nada to Uncle Sam.

It isn't that Islamabad doesn't need revenue. As a result of the massive flooding of recent weeks, the government is faced by umpteen billion dollars worth of recovery, repair, and reconstruction costs over and above the customary expenditures for a bloated, inefficient, and corrupt legion of civil servants, the building of nuclear weapons, and the appetite of an army always alert and ready for the Indian hordes to pour into Kashmir.

The Carnegie Endowment has issued a blunt report on Pakistan's Nation of Tax Avoiders which pulls few, if any, punches. The financial elite of the country in conjunction with politicians both in and out of uniform have resisted any attempts over the past six decades to install an equitable, progressive system of taxation which would meet the legitimate needs of government. Led by the large landowners of Pakistan's highly lucrative agricultural sector and ably supported by the urban upper and upper middle classes, government after government has backed down from even modest changes in the tax code. It might be noted that agribusiness pays no taxes on anything, ever.

The US and other donor states have been huffing and puffing something fierce over the demands by Islamabad that the taxpayers of "more fortunate" countries spew forth the gushers of money said to be needed in the wake of the flood while wealthy Pakistanis sit back free from any obligation to their own country. Even the Obama administration has detected a lack of fairness in this arrangement.

Washington and other capitals have been placing a surprisingly high degree of pressure on the What-Us-Tax? Zardari regime. While some of the pressure has been applied with a view to encouraging Islamabad to reform the tax system, much has been directed to a much more modest goal--collecting all the revenues to which the central government is currently, legally entitled. Simply getting the money which is owed by the taxable members of the elite today would generate an additional ten billion dollars per year according to the former director of the central bank.

Ten gigabucks annually would not cover the costs of rebuilding but chump change it ain't. You don't have to be Allan Greenspan to understand that.

But, the government of President Zardari hasn't gotten the message. Or, to err on the side of accuracy, it has received the message from abroad, but it has heard a domestic message more loudly. The domestic elites of Pakistan (which includes the military both active and retired) have countered with a resounding and unified, "No!"

Of course it would be impolitic in the extreme for the Zardari government to tell the truth. To say, "Our Mr Bigs won't pony up and any attempt on our part to make them do so simply means they will destabilize the country, at the least, putting their money in Swiss accounts and getting the next flight out of town."

No, the Islamabad Movers and Shakers will be more delicate, more indirect, more implicitly threatening. The man who wrote the cited Carnegie report, Akbar Zaidi, puts it this way. "If you don't help us, the economy will crumble. The Taliban will take over. And, there goes your war on terror."

Zaidi has it right on. Islamabad will go to its default position: Pay up or something horrid but unspecified will occur. It has worked before, time after expensive time. And, it will work again.

It will work not because Pakistan is, as has been claimed so often by American presidents from Nixon to Obama, a key "ally." Pakistan has not been an American ally for more than a half century and isn't going to become one no matter how many greenbacks are shipped over there.

Pakistan has importance to our national and strategic interests for two reasons only. The first is geographic. The overarching second reason is simply that Pakistan is a member of the nuclear club. Were it not for the second factor, the first would be of no compelling moment. There are sufficient pieces of real estate around the world which can serve as (to use the dramatic but less than accurate formulation of President Obama) "the central front."

The nuclear factor is the critical element in the equation. It is what gives Pakistan the muscle necessary to displace the domestic responsibility for flood reconstruction--as well as economic development generally--onto the unwilling (and increasingly unable) shoulders of American and other taxpayers.

The question as to the limits of Pakistan's nuclear based extortion has been raised by a most unlikely champion--the International Monetary Fund. Recently the IMF held back a billion dollar installment of the multi-billion dollar economic stabilization loan taken out by Islamabad two years ago. The reason was Pakistan's failing to undertake a number of agreed upon reforms including a revamping of the tax system.

Previous attempts by the IMF to draw a line in the sand have failed because one or more of the major players invoked Pakistan's "strategic importance." The same dynamic is likely to apply once more. There is no doubt that Islamabad is counting on it.

The donor nations are playing a game of chicken with Pakistan. In the past it has always been the US which has swerved to avoid apparent disaster. The highest probability is that we will do it again--after some "tough" talk from Secretary Clinton, President Obama, and Special Envoy Holbrooke. There will be some harsh words, the pronouncement of an agreement, praise for Pakistan's earnest efforts, some tears for the "innocent victims," and the money will flow again, flow in torrents rivaling those of the river at full crest, and with results not much more beneficial.

There may be a lesson here for the American TEA Party types. All they have to do in order to get the US government to do what they wish is to gain a rudimentary nuclear capacity. Then they will have Uncle Sam by the short ones.

That, of course, is a lesson already well understood in Tehran.

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Squaring Circles

In the good old days when we lived in a nice, predictable bi-polar world, the Old Guys In The Kremlin were fond of the Marxist view that it was the "internal contradictions" endemic to capitalism which would assure its destruction in the fullness of time. These folks and their ideological soulmates throughout the world were also gratified by the "historical inevitability" of capitalism's collapse.

The twin pillars of "internal contradictions" and "historical inevitability" served heroically to bolster morale in the Soviet Union and attract followers, particularly in the newly independent states which proliferated during the Sixties. There is something quite appealing about the notion that the remote, impersonal force of a deity called "history" is on your side. This appeal is reinforced by being able to convince yourself that you need do nothing to win but could rely upon "internal contradictions" to bring about the defeat of the "capitalist, imperialist camp."

There are similar ideas drifting around today. On the other side of the hill, in the venues of the advocates of armed political Islam, there is a constant refrain to the effect that Islam is destined to win over the "infidels" of the West, the "apostate" regimes which govern in so many Muslim majority states, and, last but certainly not least, "the Zionist entity." There is and has been much spewing of quite overwrought rhetoric to the effect that should there be enough men who desire martyrdom, Allah will crown their expressions of faith with total victory over all of us in the "House of War."

This sort of thinking characterizes "theological inevitability," which is the Islamist's version of the Marxist dictum. If anything, the "theological inevitability" is more comforting, more motivating, more potent than was the Communist invocation of "history." Even leaving aside the proposition of seventy-two soulless virgins awaiting every incoming martyr, the idea of committing an action heartily approved by the deity has a power for True Believers which those of us who are not given to such unqualified zeal can scarcely comprehend.

OK, Geek, enough of these hosannas to fundamentalist Islam, you did write something about "internal contradictions," go somewhere with it.

Sure thing, bucko. Last time around it was the opposition which was convinced that we in the West (and particularly the US) were so riddled by the termites of contradictions that our basic economic, social, and political structures would inevitably collapse, hollowed from within. This time the internal contradictions exist as an Achilles' heel for the adherents of political Islam.

For the best part of five generations now, Islamic society, more particularly the Islamic polity, has been at odds with itself--and with basic features in the divinely given Koran. On more than a few occasions the being at odds has reached, and continues to reach, the level of a very deadly internecine war. At issue has been alternative understandings of the substance of the Koran, the Hadith (what the Prophet said,) the Sunnah (what the Prophet did and how he lived,) as well as both classic and contemporary Islamic jurisprudence. Also in play have been differing interpretations of how best to meld Islam with the realities of the contemporary world.

All of these issues bedeviled Christianity. Wars were fought. Martyrs were made in wholesale lots. It took centuries but most of the issues were settled, at least to the degree necessary to assure a high measure of social and political cohesiveness. Arguably, the only reason Judaism was spared a similar set of bloodletting fissions was the consolidation forced upon the religion by prejudice and persecution.

Islam is a late comer to the "internal contradiction" game. The heavy hand of convention, of tradition, suppressed the emergence of contradictions. The expansionist nature of Islam whether by the sword or by the slow infiltration and persuasion of the tarikas (brotherhoods) did the same. There was always the safety valve of expansion to offset the pressures of contradictions.

In recent generations, and, in particular, the years following World War II which saw the number of independent Muslim majority states go from four to almost sixty, have been the years during which the internal contradictions of Islam have become more deeply divisive and high profile. It is impossible for anyone, Muslim or not, to overlook the passionately held and massively differing views regarding what Islam is all about and how it relates positively to the realities of contemporary life.

Time to consider some of these. The roster intentionally omits the deep differences of belief and practice which pit Sunni against Shia or which relegate to the margins "minor" faith communities within Islam--which group now includes the large and in time past influential Sufis.

The most basic internal contradiction is that of the proclaimed universality of the Muslim umma (the community of believers) and national identity. In principle, loyalty of the Muslim to Muslim sort takes precedence over loyalty to any given nation, tribe, or leader. In practice, the tension has normally been resolved in favor of the latter. Leader, nation, tribe all nudge religion to the side should push come to shove--which is inevitable.

Mohammad came to receive his revelations in the context of a society deeply riven by tribal loyalties. In order to survive, Islam had to deprecate loyalty to the local. The Prophet and his successors had no option other than to exalt the religious identity over all others.

To this end not only was the concept of the Brotherhood of all Muslims central to the belief system but other aspects by which people differentiated themselves were downplayed. An example is the primacy of Arabic over other languages. Another is the insistence down to the present that the concept of the nation-state, like that of borders separating nation-states, is an invention of the Western infidels.

In practice, both national and tribal identities have prevailed. So also have local languages in all usages beyond the sacred, the theological. Even the practice of the haj, which makes the global nature of Islamic congregations most manifest, has not served to erode national, local, or tribal identities for most Muslims. This unpleasant truth has been recognized and deplored repeatedly by leaders of political Islam oriented groups both non-violent and violent.

Another contradiction which arises from the basics of Islam is that between ijtihad (independent judgement) and ijma (consensus.) This contradiction is complicated and thus worsened by the tension over when independent judgement can be made properly and disagreement over who achieves consensus--the ulema (clergy) or the society of laymen. This set of interlocking and reinforcing contradictions comes into sharpest focus over interpreting the requirements of the Koran as well as past jurisprudence.

This matter of who can interpret and to what degree interpretation is allowable has been the frontline of conflict between reformers and traditionalists, between Muslims who embrace violent political Islam and those who nail their flag to the mast of peaceful coexistence. An important symbol of this internal contradiction exists in the use of the word, jihad--does it mean the internal struggle for self-improvement in the faith or is it a reference to armed combat with the "infidels" and "apostates?"

Yet another very important internal contradiction exists in the matter of inherited monarchies. Historically Islam frowns upon inherited rule. Despite this, inherited monarchies have existed and continue to exist today as in Saudi Arabia. To a pure Muslim (which includes most if not all of today's exponents of violent political Islam), it is apostasy pure and simple that the Keeper of the Two Mosques is a king by inheritance. Kingship per se is of no importance, but kingship by virtue of birth is both important and a reason for violence.

Given the importance of Saudi Arabia and the other oil powered sheikdoms, this internal contradiction looms large in the considerations of Western decision makers. And, given the totality of Islamic jurisprudence, it is a circle which cannot be squared. The House of Saud is non-Islamic and even the bargain made between the House and the Wahhabi clergy of the Peninsula cannot change this reality and assure stability.

Then there is the matter of who has the power in an Islamic polity. Since all sovereignty rests ultimately with Allah, what is at stake here is the matter of who rules as a legitimate interpreter of the perceived will of Allah. Islam has no particular preference for any specific form of government, but it does require that the ruler be "just" as such is understood in the context of the Koran, other sacred writings, and the weight of Islamic jurisprudence. The people have the right to displace an "unjust" ruler, even violently. That, of course, leaves the question of who determines when a ruler is "unjust."

Not surprisingly, the clergy, the ulema, is of the view that only men well versed in theology and jurisprudence can do the job. This is disputed by assorted laymen who argue that determining how the will of the people mesh with the "will of Allah" is a task best suited for leaders who have the confidence of the people. In this conflict between the sacred and the profane, the victory has generally gone to the profane as has been the case repeatedly in Egypt. On the other hand, when the "sacred" win as was the case in Iran, the result can be frightfully discomfiting.

The last internal contradiction to consider (for now) is that between the implied fatalism of Islam, the "if Allah wills" sort of resignation and the demands not only of science but of life generally. Bluntly put, science is incompatible with Islam. As long as one must grant that Allah is personally responsible for the movement of each and every atom, as long as one must grant we live in a universe subject to supernatural caprice, there can be no science. There can be only the cloning, the exploitation of scientific and technological discoveries and innovations made by others.

The implications of the "will of Allah" approach to life go far beyond science. It serves to reduce humans to the status of objects, removing their capacity to be effective actors in their own drama. One result has been the conflict between reformers (and Westernizers) on the one hand and the traditionalists (once again including the majority of armed political Islamists) on the other.

Reformers and "Westernizers" have pointed to the emphasis on the power invested in the individual in both Europe and the US as the root reason these areas have not only bested the Muslim world but have dominated the globe for centuries. Their opponents whether ayatollahs in Iran, terrorists in the caves of the FATA, or the "stealth jihadists" of Muslim Brotherhood offshoots respond with claiming that emulation of any Western norms would insure that Islam ceased to be Islam.

Any of these internal contradictions can prove fatal to the "theological inevitability." Taken together they assure the advocates of violent political Islam can spill a lot of blood, most of it more innocent than not but not have any realistic chance of imposing their agenda on the rest of the world.

Therein rests the ultimate sorrow and tragedy of the war on the modern world the Islamists have started. No matter how many "martyrs" bomb their way into Paradise, no matter how many unfortunates they kill or maim, the result will be the same. They lose. They lose not simply because the rest of the world stands against them but because Islam, unlike capitalism, is termite riddled with contradictions which cannot be resolved without changing Islam beyond recognition.

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A Better State Of Peace

In every war, both inter-state and interventionary, each and every belligerent fights in order to see the war end with a better state of peace. It is the conflicting views of what would constitute an improvement in the pre-war state of peace which lies at the heart of every war.

A very real complication emerges in the case of interventionary war. In this situation there may be real, deep contradictions between the "host" government and the foreign intervenor. So it is in Afghanistan. Not only is there a variance of view between the Karzai government and the insurgents, there is no harmonious symphony of agreement between the US government and its "host" in Kabul.

Had the US limited its goals in Afghanistan to the elimination of al-Qaeda as a threat and the punishment of Taliban for its ill-advised exercise of "Islamic hospitality," there would have been no disagreement between Washington and most of the rivals for power in Afghanistan as to what constituted a better state of peace. But the shift in American policy to the goal of creating a Western style pluralistic democracy with an independent judicial system, an absence of mass market corruption, civil liberties, gender equality, and, at least implicitly, a separation of faith and state assured that an increasingly large gap would emerge between Kabul and Washington (as well as other foreign capitals) as to the precise nature of a better state of peace.

The dichotomies have emerged in a high profile and utterly unmistakable way in the past few months. On subjects as crucial as power sharing, ending governmental corruption, squeezing the flow of drugs, corruption, and extortion generated money out of country, the animus between the governments of the US and Afghanistan have grown.

In each of these areas as well as the legion of lower profile issues, a careful parsing of the causes of the differing understandings of the much desired better state of peace hinge on one word. The word is one which is most unwelcome not only by the current American administration but by the opinion molding elites of the US and Western Europe. In the minds of many, perhaps all of these self-elected hoi olligoi, the word is a virtual epithet.

And, you might wonder, just what is this magic word, this word of unlimited ju-ju?

Nationalism.

Yep, bucko, that is the evil and ever-so-potent word. It is the word invoked by President Karzai and his people almost every other breath. To the Afghans the better state of peace is defined almost exclusively by the implications of nationalism.

In the US and most of the West, nationalism has been unilaterally consigned to the scrap heap of history. Nationalism is seen universally within the elite, academic, political and journalistic, as the cause of wars, the basis of misery, the virus of xenophobia, racism, and other ills which have beset humanity for generations. We are assumed to live in a post-nationalistic age where trans-national corporations, multinational institutions, the "international community" are celebrated as the axis around which the globe now rotates.

Ironically, the foreigner forces led by the US have been attempting to impose a highly nationalistic template upon the raw material of Afghanistan and the Afghans. Tossing multi-cultural sensitivities to the winds, the US and its partners have been beavering away in an effort to create a nation-state with all the features of the liberal democracies of the West, an arrogant and highly nationalistic notion to say the least.

Why anyone in the Obama administration would be surprised by the Karzai government's invocation of nationalism as a defense against the better state of peace sought by the outsiders is a mystery. Only Afghans can determine what is in their domestic interest which is to say what constitutes a better state of peace, Afghan style.

To Americans or Westerners generally it is impossible to believe that Afghans would willingly accept a government which tolerates, indeed engages in, corruption. Or why they might accept a better state of peace predicated upon an austere interpretation of Islamic law. Or, why they might welcome former insurgents, including the most barbaric members of Taliban, into the central government. Or, why they might be comfortable with a society and government which has more centripetal than centrifugal features.

We the People and our Western European counterparts would not see such features as desirable in our polity or society. Nor would we be comfortable with a legal system which is, at best, a hybrid of the sacred and the secular. We wouldn't find the pervasive presence of corruption, cronyism, or the supremacy of family, clan, and tribal identities conducive to a stable and comfortable environment.

The people of Afghanistan see the matter differently. For them all these features are as familiar and comfortable as one's own living room. To be sure some features are more objectionable than others, but as far as the locals are concerned, the most ineffective local remedies are infinitely superior to the best ideas imported or imposed by outsiders.

Governmental corruption is a very real, very live issue in Afghanistan. The Taliban uses its existence as a powerful tool for motivating support among the people who are always paying the graft--never receiving it. The use of graft is a universal tool for cementing political alliances, assuring family and tribal fortunes as well as (to quote Bruce Springstein) "to get a little something for yourself." Nearly everyone in Afghanistan wants to "do something" about corruption (usually make sure they are on the receiving end of it) but no one wants the outsiders to move in, take over indirectly, and clean the mess impartially.

Corruption and its control have become the line in the sand dividing the definition of a better state of peace as between Kabul and Washington. In a microcosm who does what with the corruption issue will determine whose definition prevails as the war enters its penultimate stage.

The takeaway for the donor nations, most of all the current administration, is simple. When all the money is spent (or blown) and the diplomatic rhetoric is exhausted, the Afghan people and only the Afghan people will define the better state of peace.

We had best get used to the idea. Get a grip on it. After all, it is nothing new in our experience. The towering figure of international morality, President Woodrow Wilson had the Marines land in Vera Cruz, Mexico to give the locals a lesson in good government and good citizenship. Even Mexican historians have allowed that under the American Marines the city and its surrounding area never had such good, effective, efficient, honest government.

It was a great lesson in good government. It failed to inspire the locals to emulate it. The huge elastic band which is culture, society, the force of "that's how things are done--here" took over the day after the last marine left. The good ole days of graft, corruption, ineffective government resumed as if there had been no interruption.

The lesson is simple. There is no need to relearn it in Afghanistan. When you are the outsider, your notions of a better state are as relevant as would be mammary glands on a bull. Only the locals know what is a better state of peace in terms of their history, their culture, their society, their ideas as to how "things are done around here."

That means we should kill al-Qaeda, Taliban and other armed troublemakers so as to provide an example to future Afghan governments as to what will happen should they repeat the fatal mistake of Mullah Omar and his Koran-waving thugs. Everything else must be left to the locals, for only they have a direct stake in the future.

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We Are Safer Today--Or Not

Fareed Zakaria has charged to the fore once again with his contention that we Americans are far safer from the threat of terror operations conducted by proponents of violent political Islam today than the doom-mongers of the Right would have us believe. He argues that the Bush/Cheney administration's decision to invade Afghanistan and displace Taliban in favor of a democratic (and presumably pluralistic, liberal, free enterprise) system--and the "amping" of the effort by Mr Obama necessarily resulted in the defanging of al-Qaeda and the insurance of our safety.

Ironically, one of the architects of the Great Effort In Afghanistan, Robert Blackwell, has come to an antipodal conclusion. Reportedly, he has told the London based International Institute of Strategic Studies that the US led effort has come such a cropper that the only viable option now is to partition Afghanistan. Taliban should be left alone in the Pushtun dominated areas while the US and its partners limit their efforts to securing some sort of rump state in the rest of the geographic expression, those areas where Pushto is not the primary language.

The reason for this volte-face on the part of Mr Blackwell is one commented upon quite frequently by the Geek. He now rues the mission leap decreed by his bosses which shifted the goal from that of a limited punitive expedition directed at destroying al-Qaeda and the upper layers of Taliban to one of displacing Taliban with the mythical democratic etc. new regime. As a consequence of this change in mission, the Islamist insurgents were given time, a place, and motivation to recreate themselves and come back bigger and badder than ever.

Leaving aside such bagatelles as Mr Blackwell's role in the shift or the under-resourcing of the Afghan effort in favor of the main event over in Iraq, there are more important considerations which can be adduced to support the Blackwell Thesis that the US is losing (or already has lost) the war in Afghanistan. These more important considerations also serve to undercut fatally the unjustifiably optimistic view taken by Mr Zakaria.

Several often overlooked or quite underestimated factors combine to point in the direction of an American failure in our ongoing conflict with the advocates of political Islam both armed and unarmed. Oh, this gloomy prognostication should not be taken to mean that in the future We the People will be banging our heads on the floors of mosques five times a day or putting women in garbage sacks. But, it does mean the US will be limited, perhaps quite severely, in its ability to operate diplomatically in a wide area of the world.

And, it means that We the People will have to live with the limitations of fear and the mechanisms of security put in place to assuage our anxiety for many, many years to come, essentially in perpetuity. It means the "war on terror" will prove to be not the "long war" but the "forever war."

One of the key factors at work to our collective disadvantage was alluded to by Victor Davis Hanson albeit in an unnecessarily indirect way. The thrust of Dr Hanson's point as the Geek understands it is that the motivation, the evil, if you will, has been denatured from the attacks of 9/11, making the events as disconnected from human authorship and motives as would be the random strike of a meteor. The net effect of this deracination is to strip the progenitors of the attacks as well as their consequences from the human context.

That result is as wrong as grilled watermelon.

The subtext of the neutering of the attacks of 9/11 as well as the resultant US actions constitutes a set of phenomena permeating contemporary American values. Bluntly put, this set revolves around the major message of the American Left over the past forty years--the US is inherently evil, intrinsically mean spirited, reflexively imperialistic, arrogant, self-serving, self-seeking, and, all in all, a thoroughly unpleasant member of the global neighborhood. Beyond that, Americans, We the People, are afflicted with every "ism" listed in the catalogue of misery. We are a completely unpleasant bunch of chauvinists, sexists, xenophobes, religious bigots, and fanatical "clingers."

As a result, the American people are encouraged to back away from the challenges to us, our values, and way of life by our own self-appointed political, media, and academic elites. We are and have been told repeatedly that our values and way of life are not exceptional, that they are no better (but might be worse) than the values of other societies and cultures. There is no message from those who purport to mold and lead public opinion that we are unique, that we possess qualities and values which have provided institutions worthy of both envy and emulation.

As has been true throughout the West, the US has experienced not simply a crisis of confidence, a crisis of faith, but a meltdown of belief in ourselves and our worth which has extended for the best part of three generations. Absent the buoyant self-assurance of earlier generations, we have been unwilling or unable to both articulate what we stand for, why we stand for it, why it worth believing and standing for, and not simply defend against all comers but advance against all odds.

From the closing years of the Vietnam War forward the loss of faith in ourselves and the unique past which served to make us an equally unique people and nation in the present has become evermore pervasive and structured into the rituals of passage from the child to the adult. The early and complete capture of academia by the aging New Lefters nearly forty years ago has resulted in a transformation of the formal mechanisms of inculturalization (and most of the informal ones as well) from one which both reinforced and celebrated American exceptionalism to one which denied and deprecated it.

Our faiths both religious and civic have evaporated over the years. The education reinforced evaporative process has left us rather hollow, and certainly confused about the value of our values, the worth of our institutions, the deservingness of our nation, even the status of our country in the world. It is hard as hell to fight a war when you have little if any idea as to why you are fighting and what difference it might make if you win or lose.

This opens the door to the folks on the other side of the hill. The Muslims. Or, to err on the side of accuracy, the proponents of political Islam, particularly those who advocate the necessity or desirability of armed, violent political Islam.

Unlike the faiths, both religious and civic in the West, in the US, the faith of the Muslim is alive, vivid, vigorous, full-bloomed. In a very real and critical sense, Islam has recaptured the militancy of its youth during the past thirty to fifty years. While the faiths of the West have aged, aged quite ungracefully, the faith of Islam has regained its full vigor of centuries ago.

Islam, it must be understood, is not simply a religious confession. It is that. It is a faith. But it is much more. Islam is a way of life and of living. It is a complete, total system encompassing all aspects of the human condition. It is law. It is government. It is a system of economic philosophy. It is a community. It is a way of war. There is no part of life too small to elude its all inclusive embrace.

The basics of Islam, the Five Pillars, are both easy to understand and not overly onerous to execute. There is no complex liturgy, no complicated doctrine to parse and accept even if not understood. In effect, Islam provides emotional engagement, a strong sense of community, an equally strong and appealing sense of purpose, even destiny. It provides a commonsensical, real world based system for governing relations, solving disputes, maintaining harmony.

So far, so good. And, it gets better. Islam is multifaceted. Not only is there no central clerical establishment, there are actually two foundation forms of Islam.

No, not Shia and Sunni. Rather there is an "official" Islam, the Islam of the clerics, the scholars of jurisprudence, the Ulema. There is also an "unofficial" Islam, the Islam of people, particularly people organized in the semi-secret brotherhoods, the tarika.

For centuries the tarika have been the primary instrument of missionary activity, humanitarian efforts, community organization, and a multitude of other matters. These brotherhoods give Islam a flexibility, a vitality, a capacity to expand unequalled in other religions and unrivalled by government entities.

Today, the brotherhoods are alive and well as the shock troops of Islam both political and otherwise. The prototype Muslim Brotherhood has given rise to a near tsunami of derivatives, offshoots, descendants which cover the globe and do all manner of activities both laudable and (to us) potentially threatening. The capacities of the brotherhoods have been consistently underestimated by decision makers here and elsewhere to our profound disadvantage.

There is another area which has been underappreciated in the US. It is the one factor which ties together disparate elements in the recent history of Muslim majority countries so as to explain why there has been the sudden expansion of not only militant Islam but the advocates of political Islam, again, particularly those who espouse violent political Islam.

That factor is the educational systems of majority Muslim countries. The essential contextual matter is the expansion of the number of genuinely independent majority Muslim states at the end of World War II--four--to the nearly sixty of today. With independence came the new educational systems which universally emphasized a heady combination of nationalism and Islam.

Particularly since the late Fifties, the expansion of educational systems indoctrinating students in the glories of Islam and the evils of the West has been critical. By the time of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the somewhat later perceived triumph of armed Muslim believers over the Red Army, the educational systems of many, even most, Muslim majority states were producing large numbers of graduates who may have been deficient in their proficiency in secular subjects but were most knowledgeable in Islamic belief, values, and history as well as in the purported lacks, weaknesses, and "sins" of the West.

Against the backdrop of this form of indoctrination oriented education, the youth of Muslim countries soaked up the perceived victories of their co-religionists in Iran (against the Great Satan, the US) and Afghanistan (against the atheistic Soviet Union) with the result they were good to go in jihad. All that was needed was a "brotherhood" ready, willing, and able to provide the leadership, training, and strategic goal.

This was the role of al-Qaeda, Taliban, and the numerous others in Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, across North Africa, in the Arabian Peninsula, and even in Europe. The troops were there, produced by the madrassas and state operated systems alike. The "brotherhoods" were there. The motive was there--cleansing the Arab Peninsula of the "infidel" Americans and the Arab Mideast of the "Zionist entity."

The decentralized nature of "official" Islam is both complemented and potentiated by the assorted brotherhoods. Simultaneously, the educational systems of Muslim majority states continue to churn out fully indoctrinated graduates who are eager to defend and advance the One True Faith, to die (and kill) for the faith.

In short, Muslim strengths mirror our weaknesses.

They are confident. We are not.

They are educated to believe in the high value of their faith, their beliefs. We are educated to doubt, to distrust, to eschew the beliefs and values upon which our society, our polity, our culture are predicated.

They have a broad set of flexible, informal, self-organizing brotherhoods. We rely upon remote, rigid, tinted with arrogance official bureaucracies.

They see the future as theirs, ordained by Allah. We see our best days as being well in our past.

When these more basic considerations are given their proper priority, the conclusions are simple and not particularly enjoyable. It really doesn't matter if we "triumph" in Afghanistan. Nor will merely surrendering a part of that place to the violent political Islamists of Taliban buy us any peace.

Nor does it really matter if every last member of al-Qaeda is killed. We will be no "safer."

Not unless and until we regain the confidence, the faith which we have so heedlessly and unnecessarily tossed away these past two generations, can we hope to wage effective war with the violent political Islamists. And, not unless and until we can see the decay of the current high level of Muslim certainty that the future belongs to the Slaves of Allah can we have any hope of being safe at home and potent abroad.

Looks like some very grim decades ahead.

ADMIN NOTE: The Geek invites, welcomes and will post all on topic comments but due to having been attacked by spam comments he has had to take precautions for which he apologizes.

Insurgency Or Not, Mexico Sure Is Bloody

President Obama and his Secretary of State are on opposite sides of a proposition: Resolved, Mexico today is Columbia of twenty years ago. Ms Clinton took the affirmative yesterday. Today, Mr Obama argued the negative for the benefit of a Mexican outlet.

The Obama view is far more popular in Mexico, particularly with Mexican president Calderon, than is the pessimistic assessment of Hilary Clinton. Equally unsurprising, Ms Clinton's flack stated the secretary had not wandered off the reservation.

Seemingly shoving Mr Obama's rather rosy assessment that Mexico is a vibrant democracy with an expanding economy, the drug thugs went on a tear in Juarez racking up a total of twenty-five corpses making it the deadliest day in that city since the Mexican drug war started. The roughly 6,400 cadavers which have littered the city across the line from El Paso would seem to argue that Ms Clinton is right. That much spilled blood despite the presence of the army, the federal police, a reconstituted local police, a passel of new government programs intended to show the government is present and able to aid in assuring security and prosperity would tend to show the place is no longer under effective government control, and that is a chief criterion for defining the presence of an insurgency in progress.

But the presence of dead bodies and the absence of effective security or basic government services do not on their own show an insurgency exists. An insurgency is an organized political expression of underlying disaffection on the part of a definable segment of the population.

That isn't the case in Mexico--yet.

Twenty years or so ago in Columbia there was an insurgency. FARC was both political in its goal and representative of disaffection. The alliances made between the insurgents of FARC and the several cocaine powered cartels were tactical in nature and did not alter the political color of the insurgent group at first or for many years to follow.

FARC and the cartels used each other with effectiveness. However the combination did stimulate the American response which ultimately saw the Colombian government defeat the cartels and toss FARC almost out of the arena. The awesome amount of American aid including highly pertinent training and critical intelligence support coupled with Colombian political will to bring about the eventual marginalization of FARC until the desperate remnants of the once dread insurgent group were reduced to playing the part of criminals and begging Hugo Chavez for assistance in order to survive. The political agenda of FARC went by the wayside as survival needs took the highest priority. Today FARC is a bunch of brigands without any political will or consequence.

In Mexico the several cartels have not yet demonstrated any notable political character beyond that of establishing safe zones in which they can conduct their activities. To that end the cartels have terrorized and corrupted local governments as well as members of the police, armed forces, and judiciary. Those officials at any level who have proven resistant to bribes or threats have, perforce, been killed--usually in a manner which terrorizes others similarly situated.

Carving out safe zones has been paralleled by inter-cartel fighting to secure turf and its necessary concomitant, a greater share of the forty billion dollar drug trade. The most critical consequence of this focus has been that the majority of the dead have been cartel members or gunslingers. The high profile killing of police, officials, bystanders, journalists, and other non-combatants capture attention and obscure the fact that most of the nearly thirty thousand dead to date have been combatants of one sort or another. This imbalance is not typical of insurgencies in progress.

This is not to say the Mexican soil may not yet sprout a full fledged insurgency, but the probability is low. Regional issues in the states where the violence has been most concentrated have not yet produced widespread disaffection. Nor is such likely to emerge in the near- or mid-term, provided the safety valve of the northern frontier remains open enough. Only if the American border security program becomes far more effective is the absence of effective, responsive governance in combination with ever present violence likely to produce any sort of pre-insurgent conditions.

Even then, a regionally based defensive insurgency would be short of life as the central government, its supporting elite, and the armed forces would have both the political will and capacity to suppress any genuine insurgency rapidly (and very bloodily.) Further militating against any insurgency developing is the deep scar left by the years of civil strife marking the first quarter of the last century.

Ms Clinton was, in short, too alarmist in her comparison. Mr Obama is closer to the truth on this one, but absent any significant improvement in the Mexican government's ability to face down the cartels and simultaneously improve the economic lot of the long suffering Mexican lower classes, the vacuum will grow as will the violence.

This means, that Mexico will continue to bleed whether or not the basis is political, whether or not there is a real insurgency underway. The necessity for both Mexico City and Washington is to stop the violence, the killing. The problem lies in the inconvenient fact that the most efficient and rapid way of doing this is unacceptable to American morality--legalize the drugs which power the cartels and make their violence both necessary and possible.

Bugs Bunny "What A Maroon!" Award VI

This time around the high coveted and hotly contested "What A Maroon!" award goes, not to pastor Terry Jones, who has proved himself too brilliant a captor of the media and world "leaders" beyond count to even enter the running, but to the President of the United States, Barack Obama. The Clueless Smiley Nice Young Man From Chicago has outdone his previous performances as Global Apologist In Chief with his cringing adoption of what might be kindly called, "a passive prevent-defense."

Handed a perfect opportunity to go on the offensive against the advocates of political Islam and their snivelling co-religionists currently holding purportedly responsible positions in governments from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan, Pakistan to Indonesia, Mr Obama instead went on the pure defensive. Instead of holding the banner of American "exceptionalism" high for the world to see, rather than proclaim the existence of the First Amendment for all ears to hear, Mr Obama retreated behind the cordon of fear.

He (correctly) stated that torching a pile of Korans would put American lives at risk. He (incorrectly) restricted the heightened risk to American military personnel in Afghanistan. It was alright when General Petraeus singled out the enhanced risks attending American troops in Afghanistan, for the POTUS to do the same was disingenuous at best, a means of framing the narrative in a way which attempted to invoke patriotism and evade the reality that most risks would pass on to the unarmed, the unprepared, the unsuspecting, the tourists, the business wallahs, the humanitarian workers.

By focusing on the presumed threat to troops, Mr Obama tried to place himself above the fray, above the most critical issue involved in the Great Jones Fire Threat. The real issue sits at the heart of the vast difference which separates the United States from the bastions of Islam, from the repressive Islamic states as well as the proponents of violent political Islam.

The issue is simply freedom versus submission. Had the current American president the backbone of a banana split, he would have pointed out that in the US unlike the feudal states of Islam (including those with a transparently thin veneer of democracy) a citizen is free to say what he thinks free of any governmental let or hindrance. In the US the basic law of the land protects even the most obnoxious among us to speak--either literally or symbolically--and there is absolutely nothing the federal or state governments can do about it.

The meaning of Islam is "submission." In states having a Muslim majority, the idea of submission goes far beyond that of the believer submitting to the perceived will of Allah. It embraces the notion that the government has the right to control the speech (and presumably the thoughts) of all those living under its sway. The proof of this contention is found in the numerous quotes from Muslim clerics to the effect that pastor Jones could not be contemplating this incendiary exercise absent the approval of Mr Obama's administration and the demand that pastor Jones be arrested and his church be permanently shut down.

Mr Obama ought to have had the moral and intellectual courage to state clearly that the First Amendment was one of the features which marked the exceptional nature of the US as well as the even more exceptional freedom of its citizens. He ought to have challenged the Muslim majority countries as well as the proponents of violent political Islam to demonstrate even one percent of the faith in citizens and their institutions which our First Amendment requires.

At the same time Mr Obama could have made a strong reference to the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy. In this affair as in the pastor Jones contretemps, the basic law of the US prohibits any governmental action beyond the requirements of local land use authorities to block the construction of a building, even one whose location is disapproved of by some three quarters of We the People. American freedoms, the freedoms still available under the Constitution, are an ax which cuts in all directions with remarkable equality. Mr Jones has his rights and the folks behind the mosque and community center have theirs. Neither must nor can be forced to submit to governmental dictate.

In his moronic use of the defense, Mr Obama threw away a fine chance to show the world--including Muslims--just what the US stood for. He tossed aside a way by which people around the globe, again including Muslims, could decide which side they supported or at least the side toward which they inclined.

Instead, by his example Mr Obama gave Americans and the world generally tacit permission to surrender to fear. To submit to the coercive effect of fearing what those Mad Muslims might do if they felt insulted, or if they did not get the fullest of their demands. His invocation of the defense and eschewing of the offense have served to make more potent the panic producing potential of even implicit Muslim threats.

The bully has won. Mr Obama may not have appeased as he has so many times before but he did the equivalent by going on the defense. A defense which admitted fear is not even one full step removed from fear induced appeasement. In either case the bully is emboldened. In either case the bully will be back ready to extort more, able to gin up fear--and capitalize on the fear he engenders.

There is a grain of truth in the hoary military maxim: "The best defense is a good offense." In this case Mr Obama chose to ignore the fine offensive platform provided by the First Amendment. He hid our freedoms behind the troops who have pledged their lives to protect those freedoms. By doing so he not only weakened us and our freedoms, he made mockery of the oath sworn by all military personnel, and, come to think of it, himself.