Now, Persians, Have You Ever Looked At Japan?

The Geek doesn't mean the Japan of today, the Japan of deflation, low confidence in the future, lowered expectations, but, rather, the Japan of seventy-five years ago, a Japan to which contemporary Iran has an uncanny resemblance.  History never repeats itself, which is why the subject is endlessly fascinating, but it contains remarkable and powerful analogies, analogies which are powerfully instructive.

In the years following World War I, Japanese culture, society, and politics went through a series of changes.  None of these were disconnected from earlier changes occurring in the wake of the Meiji Restoration.  Nor were they in any way other than organic to the long sweep of Japanese history.  Indeed, most were distillations, careful concentrations of certain, well defined portions of the total Japanese experience during the preceding two thousand years.

The particular changes, the unique points of emphasis which emerged during the Twenties and Thirties show remarkable similarity to developments in Iran in the years since the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979.  First and most basic is the exaggerated form of both the ancient code of Bushido and the official "state" religion of Shinto developed and promulgated by the Japanese army.

The goal--and result--of this intentional program was the development of a mindset in which dying for the Emperor and his empire was the highest duty and greatest honor for every citizen.  While the primary focus was upon men, the present and future soldiers and sailors, the program had impact on every Japanese, women as well as men.  Death for the Emperor was celebrated to an extent that boggles today's observer.

The Japanese notion is echoed by the Iranians from the time of the Iraq-Iran War to the present time.  It is based on the Shia view of Islam with the idea of sacrifice for the faith and based on the idea of the Guardian of the Revolution, which is and has been well implanted in the Iranian consciousness.

At the same time, the Emperor was portrayed as a deity pure and simple.  In this context, it is worth noting that senior clerical officials in Iran have equated dissent from the dictates of the Supreme Guardian with denying Allah.  While not precise, the analogy between an ayatollah as equivalent of the deity and the Emperor as deity is striking.

The Japanese concept of dissent being both an act of treason against the state and a direct insult to the living deity resulted in the country becoming a national security state in which the organs of security penetrated every facet and area of daily life.  The pervasiveness of security forces far exceeded even the seemingly omnipresent Stazi of the German Democratic Republic or the OGPU and its successors in the Soviet Union.  Compared to the Japanese system of coercing those who would not respond to the inducements of community coherence, the Nazi secret police were amateurs--and ineffective ones at that.

The Iranians have aspired to duplicate the Japanese model albeit unconsciously.  The Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basji are but pale imitations of the Japanese equivalents, particularly their dreaded and extremely efficient military police, but they make their best effort.  The anti-government Green movement exists but not for the authorities lack of trying to squash it.  The failure of the Tehran regime to be efficiently repressive in no way undercuts the power of the analogy.

The Japanese elite, not simply the official elite of government, armed forces, and security services but the unofficial one of media and academia maintained that Japan had the right to a regional hegemony.  The argument that Japan merited an empire covering Asia and the Pacific Ocean in a manner identical with the presumed American hegemony over the Western Hemisphere had no opposition in Japan worth mentioning from the opening days of the Twentieth Century and became louder and more strident as well as more racially based by the late Twenties and Thirties.

The Japanese elite maintained that Japan had a divine duty to expel the Europeans and Americans from Asia and the islands of the Western Pacific so as to leave "Asia for the Asiatics" under the supreme guidance of the Emperor.  The claim of racial identity was reinforced by the notion of Japan's divinely provided mission of dominance.

Iranians have made the same category of claim basing it on faith in largest measure but reinforcing it with a dose of nationalism.  The mullahs share with the Japanese elite of eighty years ago the sense of a right based on historical and religious superiority to hold hegemony over the lesser breeds of the Gulf as well as the hinterlands of Central Asia.

The view from Tehran is one of "Islamic societies for the Muslims (of the correct sort, that is.")  The agents of the mullahs have extended their influence in pursuit of this goal from North Africa to the Philippines and Indonesia with variable effectiveness.  By the same token the Japanese during and before World War II were not universally successful in fostering cooperative political movements among target populations from India and Burma to the Philippines.

Another critical parallel is lying.  The Japanese position (well established for centuries, as for example, the old Samurai maxim, "Walk with a real man for a hundred yards and he will tell you at least seven lies") was simple: To lie in pursuit of worthy objectives was not only permissible but frankly laudable.

The same principle applies within Shia Islam and has been well practiced by Iranian officials and others.  In diplomacy and politics alike, the government and its spokesmen have raised the craft of creative lying in pursuit of national and personal interest to the status of fine art.

To summarize the impact of these features of Japanese politics and culture as they developed during the Twenties and Thirties:  They provided Japan with military personnel whose willingness to die has never been surpassed and is barely equaled by the martyrdom seekers of the Iran-Iraq War.  The changes also assured the Japanese people and government had a degree of political will which is inadequately characterized by a word repeatedly used by the Americans during World War II, "fanatical."  The Japanese were not fanatical, that is too mild and inaccurate a term, they were monolithic in their support of and belief in the Emperor and his agents, the government and, more to the point, the military.

Under a degree of punishment unprecedented in military history, the Japanese never lost their political will to continue the war.  Had not the Emperor been persuaded by a few close advisers in the aftermath of the second atomic bombing to "endure the unendurable," the resulting ground war would have been catastrophic in its costs.  Japan would have been destroyed in a welter of blood unimaginable in its extent.  Such was the political will of the Japanese.

The strength of Japanese political will, the capacity of its armed forces, the singleminded determination of the Japanese government (and Emperor) to become the Asian and Pacific hegemon took the country from success to success during the Thirties.  In their successes the Japanese were aided by events far from Tokyo in ways which again provide striking analogies with today's Iranian questions.

The West was not only badly divided but preoccupied with internal economic problems of a seemingly overwhelming sort.  The international institution of the day, the League of Nations, proved inadequate in its attempts to deal with Japanese aggression in China and Manchuria.  In a particularly noteworthy parallel, there were substantial segments of elite opinion molders in the West who were willing, even eager, apologists for Japan as well as others willing to think the worst of their own government and the best of any other one.

In summary, the West lacked political will to take any effective, coordinated action to forestall Japanese expansionism until it was too late for any approach other than total war to work.  Internal division, a very real set of economic problems, repugnance at the very idea of war, an unwillingness or inability to see the necessary consequences of delay condemned the US and others to a long, very bloody and expensive war in the Pacific.

When the war finally engulfed the US--over a decade after the first shots were fired in distant Manchuria--the Japanese launched a series of victories for itself and humiliating defeats for the US, the UK, and others such as the Netherlands and Australia.  Had the Japanese not become so intoxicated by their own successes, it is not inconceivable that the Emperor's sway over large swaths of the Pacific, China, Southeast Asia could have continued for some years.

Success led to the "victory disease."  The victory disease is one of the most lethal pathogens to infect any body politic.  The Japanese eventually died of it.  In Korea, the US which should have known better, caught a bad case, and came very close to military defeat as a result.  The Iranians of today are showing symptoms of an early infection by the same plague.

Here is where the Iranian historian in the making should pay particularly close attention.  In a very real sense the Japanese assured their own defeat by the way in which they had made war and before the attack on Pearl Harbor, by the way in which they had practiced a particularly tendentious approach to diplomacy.

The way in which the Japanese conducted war was predicated not only on their code of Bushido but on the underlying sense of racial superiority which propelled so much of their behavior at the time,  The result of these factors was the full ignition of the American propensity for an absolutist approach to fighting.  The US to an extent equaling or surpassing that of Europe, has a capacity to wage war in a particularly remorseless way, a way which seeks an absolute destruction of the enemy as if it were some form of disgusting alien life.

Americans viewed the war with Japan in a way qualitatively different from the way in which the war in Europe was seen.  Japanese were portrayed in a manner qualitatively different from the depictions of the Germans let alone the Italians.  Even the most cursory exploration of contemporary media shows that conclusively.

The absolutist way of war is seen as well in the conduct of operations in the Pacific.  The war at the grunt level was the most savage in American history with the possible exception of some of the earliest Indian wars.  The nature of the combat along with the attitude of the American public frankly scared post-war American presidents.

The truly awe inspiring nature of American absolutism as shown in the Pacific was the reason President Truman took every precaution to assure there would be no unleashing of the absolutist propensity during the Korean War.  He took political risks to keep the American temper from boiling over, calling the war a "police action," invoking UN support from the beginning, and announcing the very un-American policy of "limited war."  His refusal to widen the war, to use the American absolutist impulse cost him and his party heavily in the election of 1952 and had other, long term results not necessarily in the best interests of the US, but it was the right thing to do at the time.

LBJ and even Richard Nixon were equally careful to keep the absoluteness potential of We the People in the box during the long, frustrating years of Vietnam.  They did so for the same reason as Truman--once unleashed the absolutist inclination would lead to unpredictable outcomes.

As a result, the tradition of carefully limited wars, wars that will not release the absolutist within the American public, has become the norm.  From the Persian Gulf War on to Afghanistan today, the US fights with great deliberation and minimal force.  However, like all "traditions," this one, the one of limited, inconclusive wars, is subject to change without notice--given the correct impetus.

The exponents of violent political Islam generally and the government of Iran in particular seem bound and determined to provide the right stimulus to awaken the absolutist giant currently snoozing in We the People.  Americans are notoriously impatient folk.  The Americans are also not known for loving inconclusive and expensive wars.  Afghanistan has been lurching along for nearly a decade without any satisfactory end in sight.  Iran has been cocking a snoot at Uncle Sam for decades now.  We the People are getting restive over the present situation.

The Iranians, like the groups addicted to violent political Islam generally, bets on the US losing its appetite for continuing its role in the world.  They may be betting well; there is a growing disengagement sector within the American public.  There is also a growing sentiment within We the People to the effect that the "terrorists" have or will win not only in Afghanistan but globally as well.

In a sense the political knife in the US is balanced on its point.  It can fall in the direction of isolationism, of disengagement, of surrendering the American position as a Great Power.  Or, it can fall in the other direction, the direction of going absolutist.

It is the second possibility that should make the Iranians afraid--very, very afraid.  The Obama charm offensive may have delighted the multi-cultural devotees of the West and beguiled some in the Arab/Muslim countries, but it is seen increasingly by the moderate Right in the US as an abject failure.  As such it is likely to be repudiated--and replaced.  The most probable candidate for the role of replacement is the absolutist alternative.

Should the next Congress, the next administration, take the absolutist route, there will be no denying it.  Given the increasing distaste with which We the People are viewing international institutions (read that as UN), there will be a "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" accompaniment to the absolutist releasing of American military capacity.  Should Iran provide the cause, the effect will be the total destruction of the country as it presently exists.  Not even the coming of the mythic Mahdi will prevent that.

The record is clearly written in the history of Japan.  It is contained in the history of Japanese-American relations.  It is right there in the blood of World War II in the Pacific.  The past may not be prologue, but it is a powerful indicator of what will come if the Iranians miscalculate.  The mullahs and their frontmen are playing a highly dangerous game of chicken.

So, what are the odds of the US going the absolutist route?  Not yet fifty-fifty but getting closer to the tipping point with every failure of "diplomacy," every new sign of Iranian tergiversation.  The tipping point gets closer with every outrage committed by adherents of violent political Islam.  It gets closer with every new frustration, every new hint of declining American ability to create a world political order in which We the People can feel secure and in control of our own lives.

Iran may not be the creator of all the frustrations, of all the perceived losses of American influence and prestige, every increment of felt decline, but it is a convenient and highly visible symbol for all of these and more.  Every passing day gives a feeling that We the People have put the chip on our shoulder and are willing to dare the Iranians in lieu of another definable adversary to knock it off.  Unfortunately the Iranians seem to want to knock the chip off.

When (and if) they do, Iran will be very lucky to get off as lightly as did Japan in August 1945.  That is a fate no country, no people really deserve.

Yo! Muslims! You Had Best Read History--Yours And Ours

Islamic societies have never been big on history.  They tend to be worse in consulting the past than even Americans.  Islam qua Islam argues against the study of history alleging that there was nothing worth knowing of the past before the arrival of the Prophet and that, since the revelations, nothing is worth knowing other than the lives of exemplary Muslims who merit study due to their living lives of faith, virtue, and conquest.

In a major way this absence of any pervasive understanding of the past, the history of Muslim societies and polities as well as that of the West, is pivotal in the rise of fear driven violent political Islam.  Muslims have felt with great accuracy for many years that people in the West have mocked and derided them and their faith, have presented one dimensional stereotypes, have trivialized, marginalized, and patronized Muslims generally and Arab Muslims in particular.

The pervasive feeling of deprecation and the sense the West has ridden roughshod over the desires, needs, aspirations, and, most importantly, dignity of Muslims and Muslim majority states has fueled the fear which has propelled violent political Islam to its status today--the greatest single threat confronting not only the West but the globe.  Even though most of the insults have been both unintended and inadvertent--such as the portrayal of Arabs as lascivious sheiks on horseback carrying off beautiful (presumably) Christian maidens to their harems--or the more recent all Arabs are dark, sinister terrorists--the effect upon even Westernized, multilingual European and American educated Muslims has been hurtful.  Hurt breeds fear.

Fear inevitably expresses itself in attempts to coerce respect from the disrespectful, acceptance from those who have been disdainful, or at least anxiety on the part of the contemptuous.  None of this, none of the dynamic which has resulted in the current global insurgency mounted by those whose antidote to fear is the espousal of violent political Islam would have been necessary had only Muslims understood their own history and possessed some knowledge of that of the West including the Great Satan, the US.

There is an old cliche to the effect that those who do not learn from history are condemned to relearn the lessons of history from their own mistakes.  Like all cliches this one contains a sizable grain of truth.  Had Muslims taken a look at the sorry blood soaked record of the Christian West in which the people of the word took recurrent counsel of their fears with the result that war became the normative condition of life for centuries, they might have concluded that regardless of the positive effects ultimately created from the windrows of corpses, there was no need for Muslims to repeat the process.

Had Muslims coupled the study of the European record with an examination of the long years of the Ottoman Empire, they might well have concluded, with accuracy it should be added, that their religion had given a base for a period of remarkable peace, noteworthy internal tolerance, and an environment of tranquility which may not have resulted in the technological and organizational advances of Europe and the US during the same time but did provide an acceptable quality of life for the vast majority of Muslims living under Ottoman sway.  The history of the Ottoman Empire as well as the lands and people on its periphery provide a powerful argument in favor of the contention that Islam was superior to Christianity as practiced in the West.

As the flames of Muslim conquest faded to cool ashes and stability under an admittedly ramshackle empire, the main feature of life that ensued was the preeminence of the mystical,  inward looking, liturgy rich Sufi school with its emphasis on inner peace being reflected in interpersonal harmony, charity, compassion, and empathy.  The "wordless" approach of the Sufis brought interpersonal peace quite unlike the "wordy" Christian understanding with recurrent wars over the precise words, doctrine, and dogma which defined a particular group.

If the primary goal of any religion is the assurance of a better state of inner and outer peace, a community exhibiting compassion, empathy, and charity as well as the feeling on the part of the believer that the will of the deity is being followed, the Islam of the long centuries between the end of the Western crusades and the encroachment of the West less than two centuries ago passes the test by any standard.  If the same standards are applied to the Christian West, the assessment must be that Christianity failed.

It is true that the West drove technological development, mastered new forms of governmental process, invented the essentials of modern economics, created entirely new forms of social, political, and economic organization while the Muslims were static in all these areas.  But, it deserves noting that stasis or a very slow pace of change are normative across the entire sweep of human history to the extent that the Western explosion following the Seventeenth Century is without precedent or equal.

It is true that wherever and whenever the West has placed its heavy foot on a traditional society, the results have been severely disruptive particularly so when the traditional society reacts by attempting a forced draft emulation of the West.  On occasion--think Japan and China--the arrival of the West and the response to that arrival has been bloody and destructive.

The wise Muslim might benefit from examining the history of the consequences of the encounters with the West experienced by both Japan and China as well as the immediate aftermath of the encounters.  Then this hypothetical wise Muslim might ask if he wanted his people, his society, to go the same route or is there a better way, a way which takes the best from Muslim history in a way which allows features of Western origin to be absorbed and employed with greatest benefit.

In considering the history of the relations between Japan and the West following the mid-Nineteenth Century, it is important for our hypothetical Muslim student to consider the history of the US, in particular how the US embodies in concentrated form the predominant feature of the Christian West, a feature which was the necessary product of centuries of war, wars of religion and nation.  That feature is simply a capacity for what can be best called "absolutism."

In the real world of history, the term "absolutism" means that the US, to an extent which may surpass the standard set in Europe, pursues victory in war with an intensity which almost surpasses description.  As the war in the Pacific demonstrates clearly, the American people once roused, will fight with a degree of ferocity and resolve which is either most admirable or most despicable depending on one's point of view.  We showed in the Pacific war a willingness to dehumanize the enemy of the highest sort.  This tendency to absolutism not only rests close to the surface of the American public, it is what gave US troops the capacity to win against what normally would be considered unbeatable odds.

When the absolutist button is pushed, the Americans and Europeans (particularly the British) have demonstrated time after time a willingness to use virtually all means necessary to win.  Our hypothetical Muslim student might wonder at what point the button marked "absolutism" will be pushed in today's conflict with the practitioners of armed political Islam.  He might wonder if the redress of fear will be worth the ultimate butchers' bill if the Americans are pushed too far.

History also shows that the American public is slow to reach the absolutist point, but it always gets there, if pushed long and hard enough, particularly by people whose behavior is inexplicable to most Americans.  This was evident in the war with Japan.  Before that it was part and parcel of the centuries of war against the Native Americans.  A close reading of the record of these wars should convince any observer that the Americans have a limit which cannot be crossed without great and negative consequences.

The historically literate Muslim would have a unique vantage point.  From this point he can easily see the greatness of his own faith over a long sweep of time.  He can see as well the potentials of seeking to out do the West using only the tools of the West.  He can understand the risks being taken by the adherents of violent political Islam, risks which will be widely distributed on Muslims generally.  He can (or should be) see the potential benefits of combining the inner directed faith of the Sufi understanding with desirable features of Western provenance such as democracy, an independent judiciary, the concept of the King's Peace, an open press and so forth.

In short, the historically aware Muslim would be in a perfect position to meld the best of his faith tradition with the most worthy of Western products for the good of all both Muslim and non-Muslim.  But none of this is  possible for those Muslims whose awareness of the past is limited to fear producing Western insults and slights no matter how unintended.  The historically blind are condemned to undercut the interests of their own people and empower the most implacable enemies of Islam in the West.

It is far better to hit the books and get smart than it is to build a bomb and get dead.  Words to the wise.

Assange Ups The Ante

Julian Assange and his cronies in crime have it in for the US.  Why this is so is for psychiatrists not historians to determine.  Today the desire of the supposed foe of secrecy in government launched his most direct attack on the security of the US and many other countries by releasing a cable which never, but never should have been classified only SECRET and thus available to the nimble fingers of the mentally skewed Bradley Manning.

The latest dispatch from the neitherworld of WikiLeaks details physical facilities identified by US embassies as critical to the security interests of the US.  By any reckoning, this release puts both places and people squarely in the crosshairs of any individual or group wishing to wreak havoc.  As such, it provides direct and substantial "aid and comfort" to enemies of the United States--and other countries as well such as the UK where several facilities are located.  Admittedly any individual with even the minimal Internet skills of the Geek and a fertile imagination could have located the vast majority of the listed facilities without the assistance of WikiLeaks, but a list with the official imprimatur of the State Department makes each and every location more inviting.

This release escalates the damage caused by Assange by a significant extent.  The previous dumps were, at most, embarrassing, with the caveat that longer term repercussions caused by reticence on the part of either American diplomats or their interlocutors may cause ripples of damage far more significant than the short term appearances indicate.  This time WikiLeaks is intentionally and with malicious aforethought seeking material harm to the US and other countries, including civilian casualties.

This malice has been implicit in the earlier releases, but this time there is no mere implication--only direct challenge to the Obama administration.  It is part of the Assange strategy of seeking to terrorize the US government into immunizing him and his organization against reprisals, legal or otherwise.  It is also part and parcel of Assange's remarkable hubris, an arrogance which surpasses the capacity of mere words to describe adequately.

The Assange arrogance is resident in his belief that he alone has the moral authority to determine what constitutes a legitimate state secret.  It is resident as well in his preposterous demand that President Obama resign if it can be shown that he knew of the spy-on-the-UN cable sent over the signature of Secretary of State Clinton.  It is resident as well in his threat to decrypt a "poison pill" of state and corporate secrets currently on hard drives of Assange groupies around the world.

With respect to the threatened "poisoned pill" which purportedly includes unseemly details from Gitmo as well as footage showing an air attack in Afghanistan with civilian fatalities and details from such diverse corporate "bad guys" as Bank of America and BP, the answer is simple, "Publish and be damned!"  No "revelations" such as these will topple the US.  They will not even topple the president.  It is an Assange bark without any real bite behind it.

Assange must know that the computer system to which Specialist Bradley had access was limited to low order material, classified at SECRET and below.  The real hot metal on target stuff is not classified this low down the pole with the apparent unfortunate exception of the critical facilities list.  The probability of any "poison pill" dump having any larger impact on the interests and security of the US than that contained in the critical facilities list is slim to none.

The real issue now that Assange has so blatantly thrown down the gauntlet is whether or not President Obama will show more backbone than a snail and order Cyber Command or some other, blacker, organ of state to go ahead and take WikiLeaks down for good.  The challenge has been made.  Will our commander-in-chief respond quickly, massively, and effectively to it?

The recurrent, distributed denial of service attacks carried out by legions of zombies from Asia, Russia, Africa, and the Central Asian Republics in recent days against WikiLeaks servers provides perfect cover to move in with the killer blow.  It can be done without leaving any Made In the USA fingerprints, if the Clueless Guy in the Oval directs that it be done.

So far Mr Obama has treated the three WikiLeaks dumps with a measure of indifference which surpasses belief.  He has done zilch either to counter the potential negative effects of the dumps, reassure the American and global  public that steps have been taken to preclude any future repeats, or let Assange know he had picked on the wrong country and the wrong president.

Given that Assange, hiding behind his lawyers, has threated to unleash his version of a "thermonuclear bomb" with the promised/threatened "poison pill" of unexpurgated documents, the president must step up and strike back.  Investigations by the Justice Department and explanations or apologies from the State Department do not cut the mustard now.  Only direct and serious words--and actions--from the POTUS will be sufficient.

Come on, Barack, this Assange creature has made it mano a mano, so man up over it and slap the bastard and his buddies where it hurts.

What The West Sowed Now It Reaps

Pull up a log and sit around the fire.  It is history time, folks.  Specifically it is time to consider the sea change in the nature of Islam which started in the mid-Nineteenth Century and continues at an accelerating pace today.  More, it is time to take a look at how the nature and focus of Western understandings of the basis of organized social, political and, yes, religious life had the unintended consequence of letting loose the forces of political Islam including its violent, armed expression which constitutes the greatest threat facing the West today and into the future.

The necessary starting point, however, is today.  Right now.  A poll conducted by the highly respected and very careful Pew Research Center shows that in several key Muslim majority countries a majority of people want their religion to play a central role in politics.  This means that, among other matters, the majority want to see the harsh penalties of Shariah imposed.  They want the strictures of Islamic doctrine to be applied to economic and social matters.  The majority have accepted the view that no government which does not operate in all respects according to the dogma of Islam as interpreted by religious scholars is legitimate.

If, a hundred years or more ago, this poll had been conducted, the results would have been dramatically different.  Even as recently as the start of the Twentieth Century the majority of Muslims were not of the opinion that their religion had a direct political dimension.  The predominant understanding then was--as it had been for several centuries--that Islam operated directly on the individual in his inner life and in the way in which he interacted with and related to other individuals.

A century and more ago the predominant form of Islam was that of the Sufi.  Religious life was internal, predicated on ritual and liturgy.  The goal and intent of religious practice was to achieve a sense of merging with the godhead on one hand and living life in full accord with the personally perceived will of Allah.  Charity, compassion, empathy, accommodation, peaceful relations with all and the quest for peace internally were the primary features of the kind, gentle, and essentially non-doctrinal approach of the Sufis.

Sufis espoused a religion of practice, not doctrine.  They advanced an Islam of wordlessness, not one of dogma over which arguments and disputations could occur--and blood could be shed.  From Somalia to Afghanistan and throughout the Ottoman Empire, the Sufi understanding was the majority view of Muslims.

Largely, it was for this reason that the Ottoman Empire could survive so long even with its decrepit, inefficient, massively corrupt bureaucracy, and ineffective military forces.  It was for this reason that Muslim, Christian, and Jew could and did coexist within the Ottoman Empire with a very high degree of peace, mutual tolerance, and even friendship.  It was for this reason as well that Shia and Sunni could live harmoniously in the province of Iraq.

The Sufi view with its emphasis on the mystical, the inexpressible nature of Allah, the necessity of seeking internal peace and reflecting that inner quality in daily relations had no need of a written creed enforced by clerical decree.  To the Sufi understanding, the written word was largely irrelevant, the idea of dogma or doctrine unthinkable, the notion of killing over differences of interpretation anathema.

When apologists for Islam speak of the religion as one of "peace and tolerance," they are speaking of an understanding of Islam which is long gone.  A form of Islam killed by the ascendancy of creedal Islam, an Islam based on the written word as interpreted by clerical experts.  The Islam of today is an Islam predicated on scripture, scripture which is malleable in the hands of trained exegetes, an Islam which is usable as a political tool.

The shift away from the Islam of the Sufis started in the mid-Nineteenth Century and accelerated slowly at first but with increasing speed for one reason and one reason alone. That reason was the impingement of the West.

The West is a word based entity.  The majority religion of the West--Christianity--is a word based religion without superior.  For centuries in the West the written word was the supreme authority.  All bowed before the totem of the written word.  More importantly, men fought to the death over the written word--and fine points of interpretation.

The cruciality of the written word, of dogma and doctrine to Christianity, became obvious very early in the life of the religion.  During the Great Schism, seventeen hundred years ago, men fought and died over abstruse points--even the existence of a single syllable--regarding the nature of Christ.  Later, doctrine and dogma served as the key litmus test of adherents, of orthodoxy, of the purity of faith.

The word, which is to say the approved words of doctrine and dogma, served to define Christianity as well as to assure that the faith was communal more than individual.  The Reformation and Counter-Reformation served to further embed this dynamic just as two other fulcrum events were taking place.  These were the rise of nationalism and the introduction of movable type printing.

To simplify slightly, the combination of printing and the rise of self-conscious nation-states provided the launching pad for a key definer of the West.  This is simply the primacy of the law before which all are presumed to stand equally.  The law demands the written word and hard fought battles over the precise meaning and applicability of the words as written.

States and organized societies could not exist without the written word any more than Christian denominations could define themselves without it.  National "creeds" joined with religious ones to define and motivate people.   This assured the foundational nature of the written word.  By the Seventeenth Century at the latest, it was literally impossible for people of the West to conceive of a "wordless" faith or of a society which did not invoke the majesty of the written word to solve the frictions within.

The encroachment of the West on the Muslim societies of not only the Ottoman Empire but the very loosely organized polities on the Muslim fringes brought with it a very real clash of cultures.  The clash was, at root, between the "wordy" and the "wordless."

By the late Nineteenth Century it was obvious to the politically articulate of the Muslim societies that the "wordy" folks of the West were getting the best of the interaction.  This started the process of displacing the Sufi understanding from its long held position of prominence.  As the West gained an ever larger hold on the Muslim societies, as the Western footprint grew, one reaction was the development of a more word based form of Islam.

The development of Islamic dogmas and doctrines was a defensive reaction to the encroachment of the West.  It sought to use the prime tool of the West--the word--as an effective counter to the West.  At the same time, the growth of creedal Islam allowed for effective definition of believers as a discrete community with an interpretive center--the cleric.  It provided for Muslims as it had earlier in the Christian West an armature around which self-conscious and self-defined communities could coalesce.

By mid-Twentieth Century, Islam was no longer a religion of individuals, it was no longer a mystical quest for wordless experience of the godhead, it was no longer a faith which sought accommodation, fostered compassion and empathy, but rather was a religion of sects and doctrines, of orthodoxy and apostasy.  In this Islam echoed the earlier experiences of Christianity.

With the word as supreme in Islam, it was not only possible but inevitable that the scripture would be mined for those features which best suited the political aspirations or popular fears of any given moment.  As Islam on paper is the most totalistic of the monotheistic faiths, the quest for political ammunition, for means to define a community as differing from and being better than others was successful.  This, in turn, meant that with faith being communal rather than individual, there was no chance of any separation of faith and political power.

The coming of the word assured that Islam would become political in its focus with the certainty of water flowing downhill.  With the advent of a communal scripture and doctrine based faith, it was also inevitable that there would be a race to the most demanding, most extreme, most austere, most purportedly pure version of Islam as interpreted by the far from neutral clerics.

This particular version of Crane Britton's "co-option to the left" is seen quite explicitly in the sudden reemergence of the Shia-Sunni split in mandated Iraq, in the ascendancy of Salifism and Wahhibism in North Africa and Saudi Arabia, and in the (literally) explosive growth of violent political Islam in the past quarter century.  Once the word based West had put its heavy imprint on the Muslim societies, the consequent response and its later outgrowths had a horrid sort of inevitability which could have been predicted by an unusually perceptive historian of the Western experience.

Of course no such paragon of the historian's craft existed and the West cruised on with its haughty sense of the superiority of its word based views of all aspects of life.  In many, perhaps most, aspects of human experience, this sense of superiority is justified.  The accomplishments of the word are self-evident.  But, like most all good things in life, there is a downside.

That downside is now facing us.  Islamic populations have embraced the word--including all of its potentials as a definer of people and a source of violent conflict with avidity.  It is not shocking that the "co-option to the left (or extreme)" has resulted or that Muslims demand more direct and total use of faith in the political realm.

By understanding the historical context more accurately, we in the West can cast aside the bogus explanations of Muslim hostility such as the "sins" of colonialism or "exploitation" and realize that the word is all conquering.  The Muslims embraced the word because word based approaches to life and its problems work best.  It is a very unfortunate collateral damage that by doing so the Muslims have empowered the most extreme ideas abroad in their intellectual universe with consequences damaging not only to the West but to Muslims as well.

We can take some small comfort in the fact that we in the West have lived through the battles of the words before and come out the better for it.  We can also take some comfort in the fact that by understanding the nature of the intellectual battlefield today, we can fight the long counterinsurgency before us with better tactics and tools.  When night falls the truth remains: Words are defeated by better words.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Tribute To Honesty

Most of We the People like to think honesty is a good thing.  Heck, we may even try to be honest and open in our interpersonal dealings.  Sure, we are jaundiced--with good reason--with respect to the honesty of politicians, advertisers, journalists, and preachers of the frothing mouth persuasion.  In some areas we are even given to joking about the amount of honesty on the part of practitioners.

There is an old saw regarding diplomacy, "A diplomat is an honest person sent to a foreign country to lie on behalf of his own."  This mordant bit of semi-wit is undeserved.  More it is flat out wrong.

Two aspects of a country's foreign relations establishment depend upon blunt candor and utter honesty.  These are diplomacy and intelligence.  While it may be necessary to lie to outsiders in pursuit of the diplomat's or intelligence officer's mission, both must be fully and candidly frank and honest in their reporting from the field.  There is no room for fudging.  No tolerance for heaping sweeteners on underlying sour realities.  The diplomat must tell it like it is regardless of the hopes or fears of the denizens topside.  Any shading, no matter how slight, in deference to what the folks upchannel might want to read is a sin against the national interest.

The WikiLeaks cables demonstrate that our representatives are doing their job correctly.  The reports and accompanying assessments are bluntly honest.  We the People are, therefore, being well served.  The honesty, candor, and quality of the assessments are a very far cry from the sort of diplomatic traffic which passed from overseas to Foggy Bottom thirty and more years ago.  And, that is a very good thing for our country.

Because journalists and even the academic experts quoted in the MSM are apparently unacquainted with history, there has been an unfortunate silence regarding just how superior the leaked documents are in honesty, bluntness, and incisive analysis when compared with the tripe and pablum passing for diplomatic cables during the long dark years following the Republican attacks on the State Department and its personnel during the waning days of the Truman administration.

The shrill cries of "Communist!  Fellow traveler!  Commie dupe!" which echoed in the halls of Congress and through the media of the day served to totally emasculate American diplomats.  Diplomats high and low, accredited to countries great and small, were afraid to put the words of their interlocutors down on paper unless those words were precisely what the most ardent anti-communist in Congress or the press wanted to read.  Likewise, our Foreign Service personnel were scared to death to write an assessment which would not pass muster with the most rabid anti-communist crusaders.

The fear of being hailed before some Senate committee and accused of being the person who "lost" some country or another to the Global Communist Menace assured that the decision makers inside the Beltway--even in the Oval--flew blind, deprived of the necessary eyes on the ground and the counsel of situationally aware professionals.

As a result, American foreign policy for thirty years consisted of aligning the US with each and every authoritarian regime which delivered short term order.  As long as the local heavy promised to oppose Communism in all its many guises and kept a sufficiently strong lid on local discontent, one administration after another regardless of party pretended our "ally" was a staunch bastion of long term stability as well as free enterprise and, well, maybe, some sort of democratic appearances.

This approach--and all the many blunders which came with it--was not so much a policy as it was the default forced upon presidents and secretaries of state by sheer ignorance.  That ignorance resulted from the unwillingness of Foreign Service personnel to be honest, blunt, and candid.  The unwillingness of diplomats to be honest was the direct and completely predictable consequence of the unjustified and quite lethal attacks levied against their predecessors by totally irresponsible and self-seeking politicians riding the great wave of fear--fear of Communism.

The tree of ignorance bore us many poisoned fruits.  In some cases--think Iran--the toxin of these fruit continues to infect the world.  The Iranian object lesson by itself is proof positive of the crucial nature of honest reporting and frank assessments even when such is not welcomed in the rarefied air inside the Beltway.

Fortunately for our country and its interests, the professionals at State left the doldrums of cowardice some years ago as is illustrated convincingly in the WikiLeaks revelations.  Our people abroad are telling it like it is and offering assessments which are trenchant, well founded, and highly useful.  When Secretary of State Clinton argued the cables showed "diplomats doing the work of diplomacy," she spoke a truth of the highest order.

The worst impact of the data dump by Mr Assange's outfit is in its probable chilling effect upon both American diplomats and their foreign interlocutors.  For good and sufficient reason--the fear of future leaks--neither will be as willing to speak or write forthrightly.  While the impact may not be as devastating or long lasting as after the Republican scorched earth campaign of the McCarthy Era of Great Fear, any lowering of the candor quotient will harm our national interests.

The real work of diplomats is no more glitzy or glamorous than is the quotidian tasks of spooks.  It consists of talking to people and reading things.  It requires thinking.  Analysis.  Finally, it demands an ability to write and speak with cogency and effect.  Most of all, the work of diplomats needs intellectual and moral courage.

That is, the diplomat in all times and places must be able to see things as they actually are and not as they might be hoped or feared to be.  Then, the diplomat has to relay the results up the chain of command without any thought as to its impact on one's personal career let alone the opinions of those in Congress or the views of those who constitute the vast beast, the media.

Julian Assange as well as his media enablers at the NYT and other outlets and his source(s) such as the emotional and moral cripple Bradley Manning have conspired to impair the willingness and ability of our diplomatic personnel to do the job we pay them to do.  A job, the cables show clearly, that all hands have been doing with great skill and dedication.

The Alternative Reality Called Pakistan

One collateral benefit from the WikiLeaks diplomatic traffic data dump has been the "real time" confirmation of deep Pakistani involvement with the Taliban in Afghanistan.  While no sentient person well oriented in time and place has ever doubted the umbilical connection between the jihadists and the government, army, and intelligence service of Pakistan, there is something quite comforting in reading the assessments of qualified diplomatic observers.

The Paks were caught with their hands very deep in the cookie jar.  Rather than acting the part of the career criminal caught red handed and acknowledging that the pinch was a fair one, the Pakistani ruling elite in and out of uniform has behaved rather like a first time crook issuing denials that make Richard Nixon's famed "I am not a crook" declaration appear honest in comparison.  Indeed, the movers and shakers of military Pakistan have followed the old, disreputable approach of making counter-accusations.

To be effective, the counter-accusation gambit must be plausible.  It has to have some semblance of believability. The Pakistani effort fails this basic test.  The Paks have taken the road leading to an alternative universe by stating categorically the documents leaked are pure "disinformation" meant to discredit the government and military of Pakistan.  In the alternative reality of Pakistan, these products of the US Foreign Service are a "conspiracy" mounted by hostile forces within the US government.

The Obama administration might be wishing it too could join with Pakistan in the alternative universe given that the players of mood music inside the Beltway have been making reassuring noises about Pakistan's commitment to the joint effort against "extremism," which now seem more off key than ever in the context of the diplomatic cables.  How anybody, even one of those denizens whose brains have been damaged by too much rarefied Washington air, can really, really believe that Pakistan is and has done anything other than support Taliban in Afghanistan while doing the minimum necessary for national survival against the Pakistani equivalent boggles the mind.

Pakistan has defined its national interest in terms of a Forever War with India in which Afghanistan has represented the chimera of strategic depth.  That is why Pakistan created Taliban twenty years ago.  That is why Pakistan not only supported Taliban but gave timely warning to Osama bin Laden regarding incoming cruise missiles.  It is why Pakistan, again acting through the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), linked with the Haqqani network.  It is why to this day ISI and the army assist, support, and protect both Taliban and the Haqqani network.

The notion that Afghanistan represents strategic depth is as false as the driving imperative of the Forever War against India.  Both hallucinations are,  however, central to assuring the army's pride of place in Pakistan.  Both are the sole reason the army and ISI can continue to glom onto the sizable share of Pakistan's national resources, which has been the standard for generations now.  Without the fictions of Indian hostility and the centrality of Afghanistan to Pakistan's need for strategic depth, the army and ISI would not have the perceived moral authority to take so much of the public pie that the country as a whole is endangered by the resulting paucity of capacities to deal with very real, very pressing problems.

A key, perhaps the key, source of revenue for the army and ISI is the money paid by the US to ensure cooperation in the "joint" struggle against violent political Islam.  The extortion racket practiced by Islamabad requires keeping the war in Afghanistan perking along while somehow convincing the US that the army is doing all it can do against the areas of the FATA which provide necessary bases and support for Taliban and the Haqqani network as well as the remnants of al-Qaeda.

The release of the cables will (hopefully) make the duplicity so necessary for the extortion to continue a bit more difficult to maintain.  In this context the US government is facing a challenge of corruption far more serious than the attention grabbing graft in Afghanistan.

There is no doubt that the continued existence of cross border sanctuaries in Pakistan's FATA along with the aid and comfort provided by ISI have been and will remain crucial to both Taliban and the Haqqani network. If the FATA were to be closed or interdicted with greater efficiency than is the case presently, the pressure placed upon the trigger pullers of Islam by the US/ISAF forces would prove effective in undercutting both the ability and will of the jihadi to carry on the war.  It would lay the pavement on a genuine road to conflict resolution as well as the more limited goal of hostilities termination.

Since the documents have come out, the Obama administration can do the same.  There is ample basis for the administration to tell Islamabad in essence, "They've got the goods on us now.  Time for you to get damn serious or those highly moral Republicans in Congress will pull the plug on the money machine."

This approach, of course, requires some cooperation from the Republicans.  As the war in Afghanistan not only started under a Republican president but, far more importantly, was fought ineptly with too few resources and too grandiose a set of goals by that president, the GOP has a stake in seeing the war brought to a successful conclusion before 2012.  Doing this is impossible unless the FATA is shut down--with or without the cooperation of the Pakistanis.

Pakistan's genuine national interest including the survival of the government as currently constituted demands both the suppression of their domestic jihadis and the ending of the war in Afghanistan.  The same considerations apply to the continuation of the American money flow.  Unless and until the lads in Islamabad come to realize that here in the real world the cash cow will stop spouting as long as the army sits on its collective butt regarding the FATA, there is no chance of the US achieving even the minimal necessary strategic goal of not losing in Afghanistan.  The same ground truth apples to the domestic violence brought by the Mighty Warriors of the Koran in Pakistan.

The appeals of the alternative universe of disinformation and conspiracy may have some sort of emotional appeal to the Pakistan government, army, and ISI, but are so transparently false that they should be dismissed by the Obama administration with the contempt it merits.  Beyond dismissal, the Obama crew must insist the Pakistanis live in the same world as the rest of us--or face the inevitable and inevitably bad consequences of their tergiversation.

Perhaps as a warm-up exercise, the Obama administration can take on Turkey given that the Islamist leaning AKP regime in Ankara has done the Pakistanis one better alleging that the Israelis are behind the entire WikiLeaks episode.  Surely scotching that ploy and requiring the Turks to choose sides with greater accuracy should not be beyond the capacity of the administration and Secretary of State Clinton.

Rather than just seeing the leak as an embarrassment or a major disaster, the administration should see it as an opportunity to use a bit of honest, coercive diplomacy with respect to two troublesome "allies."  By doing so, the Obama "Team" cannot only retrieve some success from a defeat, but exploit the consequences to suit our policy needs.

Try it, people, you have nothing to lose except defeat.