"Zawahiri...calls for political action equivalent to military action."
-- from the article above

Would that the instruments of Jihad, all of them, were properly recognized, and that measures were taken to check all of them. Save for the nuclear bombs in Pakistan's possession, and those that might come into the possession of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the threat of Jihad is almost entirely non-military.

It is funded from huge oil revenues that the Western world, and especially the United States, has done almost nothing to diminish (and calls for "energy independence" or "ending American dependence on oil from the Middle East" miss the point entirely -- which is that oil reveneus received by such Muslim countries as Saudi Arabia and the sheikhdoms will inevitably fund the Jihad here, there, and everywhere)."

It is supported in the West by the presence, behind what they (and we would too, if we had studied Islam enough) regard as enemy lines, for the Dar al-Harb, the lands still possessed by the Infidels, should be taken from them, for Islam is to prevail, with any barriers to its inevitable triumph world-wide to be removed, and if those barriers are not removed -- and anything which offends Muslims or Islam, anything which gets in the way of Da'wa or demographic conquest, anything which keeps Infidels thinking that their own laws and customs should stay as they are, or that their understanding of their own history should not be suddenly given a Muslim make-over, is immediately to be treated as grounds for aggressive attack, in whatever manner is possibly (bombs, or lawsuits, or threats of either, are among the possibilities).

Where are the intelligent political figures who will grasp this, study the matter, figure out ways to most persuasively present it to a still unwary public, a public that furthermore will not like to contemplate what acceptance of home truths about Islam will necessarily imply for the future? Where are they? Millions are ready to support and vote for them, whatever their other views on other matters may be.

Come out, wherever you are.

Posted by: Hugh at October 12, 2005 2:42 PM

Hugh -

The way to render islam harmless is through impoverishment. Oil revenues provide islam the resources to conduct jihad, so deny islam the oil revenues. Seize the oil fields.

muslims Still won't like us, but they won't be able to do anything about it. The solution really is quite simple. It's just a matter of recognizing the enemy, and acting upon that recognition.

I do not believe that W is up to the task.

Posted by: Havoc at October 12, 2005 3:43 PM

Havoc:

Can you name any head of state or a collective of heads of states who are prepared to attempt to of seize all the oil production of Iran and Saudi Arabia?

Posted by: waterdragon52 at October 12, 2005 4:26 PM

Given that the only existential threat posed by Islam to the Dar al-Harb is through demographic conquest(I would say of all the western countries France is facing this the most) then all we have to do is cut off all immigration from Muslim countries. I would argue that exceptions can be made in regards to the harmless, but business savvy Ismaili and Ahmadiyya communities. However, I don't see this happening anytime soon, even conservatives, with the exception of the has beens writing for the Amercian Conservative, don't talk about immigration these days.
Its off topic but very pertinent to the subject, Mark Steyn has argued that secular humanism(the predominate faith of our elites) and all its accompaning isms is a pretty poor belief system to combat this virus. The Hijabis living in Montreal, London, Paris with ten moppets each will decide the fate of the west. If we refuse to reproduce ourselves then what can we expect.
Hugh you write well and you know and feel passionately about the issues why don't you run for office?

Posted by: spencerd at October 12, 2005 4:45 PM

One of the greatest blunders in more than a thousand years has got to be the extension of Western style property rights (minerals) to the nomadic Bedouins during the early 20th century.

Posted by: Hulegu Khan at October 12, 2005 4:50 PM

Havoc: "The way to render islam harmless is through impoverishment. Oil revenues provide islam the resources to conduct jihad, so deny islam the oil revenues. Seize the oil fields."

I'm the first one who would love to see the Gulf Arabs back on camels but seizing the oil fields would cost us too much men and treasure. Just imaging how many divisions(all American of course) would take to garrison the eastern Saudi oilfields.
We need alternate energy sources and we should be buidling more reactors and perhaps offering statehood to Alberta(They might take it) Our present fight with the mozzies, as argued before, is not an existential threat and should not detract us from the possible major conflicts of the future with China and resurgent Russia.

Posted by: spencerd at October 12, 2005 4:54 PM

Such a leader will emerge after the first big Moslem attack on American or Western European soil.

9/11 wasn't big. Nuking a city or starting a smallpox epidemic will (not would) be big.

Such a leader will emerge after that. The roster of potential candidates will be kept brief by an unspoken fact we all know but won't publicly acknowledge: to oppose the Religion of Peace is to put one's life at risk. Just ask Pim Fortuyn or Theo Van Gogh. Or Salman. Or Hirsi.

We need a thinking man with terminal cancer to run for Prez. This new leader must be ready to declare martial law after NYC or LA is destroyed, and round up all Moslems for air-drop over Mecca.

4 million Moslems, that's a lotta jet fuel and parachutes, but it'd be money very well spent.

Get our good ole America back just like we use to have it before the Marxists brought in all these Moslems to mess everything up.

Posted by: Shaughn at October 12, 2005 5:05 PM

Such a leader will emerge after the first big Moslem attack on American or Western European soil.

9/11 wasn't big. Nuking a city or starting a smallpox epidemic will (not would) be big.

Such a leader will emerge after that. The roster of potential candidates will be kept brief by an unspoken fact we all know but won't publicly acknowledge: to oppose the Religion of Peace is to put one's life at risk. Just ask Pim Fortuyn or Theo Van Gogh. Or Salman. Or Hirsi.

We need a thinking man with terminal cancer to run for Prez. This new leader must be ready to declare martial law after NYC or LA is destroyed, and round up all Moslems for air-drop over Mecca.

4 million Moslems, that's a lotta jet fuel and parachutes, but it'd be money very well spent.

Get our good ole America back just like we use to have it before the Marxists brought in all these Moslems to mess everything up.

Posted by: Shaughn at October 12, 2005 5:05 PM

Spencerd,

Hugh's intellect is indeed beguiling. But without wisdom, intellect becomes extraneous and even sometimes dangerous.

He advocates a policy of supporting Berber nationalism, even though such a policy could undermine the government of Algeria, a close ally of the USA and a country locked in its own life-and-death struggle against Islamic fanatics.

He possesses an unrealistically inflated view of American power, believing that we can dictate to the Europeans and East Asians a measured quarantine of the Saudis and of the broader Muslim world...when in fact, we are having difficulty just getting Allied support in isolating Iran as that country pursues nuclear weapons.

Hugh's condemnation of our political class is spot on. They don't understand Islam and view the Muslim world through the prism of their own values.

Hugh on the other hand, makes the mistake of viewing the Muslim world EXCLUSIVELY through the Islamic prism. His only interest in the plurality that exists there is in exploiting division. Thus for Hugh, differences in ethnicity and sect are tools to foment inter-Islamic conflict (a worthwhile enterprise depending on circumstance); ideological variations that have profound geo-political and national security implications seem to be of little or no interest to him.

Thus, Iraqi Arabs who support Democracy are not worth fighting for, even if they are threatened by the most virulent and violent anti-American, anti-Western jihadis. But Iraqi Kurds, by virtue of the fact that they are not Arabs, are worth fighting for, even if the threat to them emanates from as secular an institution as the Turkish military.

Does anyone but me see the incongruancy?

In my addmitedly subjective viewpoint, Hugh fails to see that human nature doesn't stop at the borders of Dar ul Islam; that not ALL Muslims are the enemy, that some Muslims are preferable to others (and not just based on ethnicity), that it DOES matter who controls Iraq, that Machiavellian schemes to foment sectarian division in Iraq are not worth sacrificing the hopeful prospect of Democracy.

Zawahiri has proclaimed in his letter that Iraq is the locus for jihad and the base from which to spead it throughout the region. Bush understands that. I understand it. Does Hugh?

JW's vaunted Vice-President is a dynamo of energy and intellect and certainly makes the web-site much more interesting than it would otherwise be. But he is not the fountain of wisdom many of you take him for.

Posted by: Cornelius at October 12, 2005 5:57 PM

This is confirming what we have long known. Whilst Zawahiri is laying out straight his manifesto for Iraq tomorrow, and the rest of the world the day after, we have to put up with the pontifications of so-called "human rights lawyers" - I saw one of them on the news today, babbling on about how evil the new anti-terrorism laws intended for Britain are, and how we're ripping up 800 years of tradition dating back to the Magna Carta - detaining terror suspects for up to three months instead of two weeks. These lawyers might think they're upholding human rights, but lets get one thing clear - they're not upholding my rights - my right to board a bus, train or plane, or venture into a bar, a shopping mall, or simply being able to walk down the street without fear of Islamists wanting to blow me and my fellow beings to pieces. Of course, these lawyers, cocooned away in their ivory towers are getting ever remote from reality, and what they see through their PC lenses is totally at odds with what I see in the real world. There can be no doubt they're on the side of the terrorists and not ordinary decent people who have no desire to become the forgotten victims of Islamic terrorism and brutality. Anyone found guilty of supporting, sponsoring or planning terrorist atrocities, or being the mastermind behind them should face a mandatory death sentence. No questions asked. But PC was born on the university campus, and it was hardly surprising that PC would readily seep into and eventually take over the education and legal professions, politics and the MSM as the PC brigade graduated, giving Islamists every advantage they could wish for. The US gets slagged off for Abu Ghraib but there's hardly a dickie bird of condemnation for OBL and Zarqawi. We've become dhimmified, and as a result can never produce politicians and other figures of the stature of Winston Churchill, John Quincy Adams, Voltaire and many others who described Islam as it is, and not how the PC weenies of the MSM want us to see it, and of course Churchill, Adams etc would be branded as bigots were they alive today to say what they said in their prime. Unlike US and UK troops, Zarqawi has total freedom of action. He has no MSM to hold him back, and doesn't have to explain away his actions to manipulative lawyers and media hacks. Imagine what would have happened if Patton, Montgomery, Le May, Harris etc had to operate in a PC environment back in the 1940s. The fire raids on Tokyo, Hamburg etc would have been described as wilful acts of mass murder, and the D-Day and Iwo Jima landings would have failed miserably - that is, if they ever took place - as we would have been trying to fight a PC war against crack German and Japanese outfits, with dreadful results for ourselves. Today, we're fighting against the biggest threat to civilization in 500 years with our hands tied by PC lawyers and the MSM, and despite our overwhelming superiority in every way imagineable, the portents don't look very good to say the least.

Posted by: Spirit Of 1683 at October 12, 2005 6:04 PM

Cornelius,

With this little rant you show your own limited intellect. Hugh's proposals make sound foreign policy based firmly in American (and European) real national interests. American interests, both short and long term, should be our only consideration. The well being of the non-existent "Iraqi people" should never be our goal in and of itself. Your position seems to be that we should expend our precious and limited resources on anybody making the right noises at the time just because they're making those noises. Sorry, I'm not buying.

And I believe you owe Hugh an apology.

Posted by: Rebecca JW at October 12, 2005 6:51 PM

Good ideas and concepts are where you find them. I have no personal "guru". There are many sharp people on this blog and none of them "fountains of wisdom ",although there are some slow leaks. Please keep the ideas flowing and the temperature high. P.S. Zawahiri stepped on his meat letting that communication be intercepted. He has given Bush a heads up just when Bush needed it most. I don't think George had any ideas about Iraq being a Jihadi focal point when we invaded but who cares, it is a propaganda coup for the anti-Jihad forces and that is a good thing.

Posted by: pismopal at October 12, 2005 7:55 PM

Rebecca,

So Iraqis are "non-existent"?...interesting. Just like the Palestinians, I suppose? And anybody else that doesn't meet your (or Hugh's?) criteria for viability?

As for the man himself, perhaps I shouldn't have personalized it the way I did. I guess it was Spencerd's call...'Hugh for President'...that set me off.

My intent was not to hurt the man's feelings, it was to call attention to the specific policies he advocates. He's actually a fascinating fellow with a good sense of humor.

I like to think he knows there's nothing personal here, but in the outside chance he took offence, I do apologize.

Posted by: Cornelius at October 12, 2005 8:53 PM

Cornelius sez:

..." that not ALL Muslims are the enemy..."

They are the enemy of freedom and democracy...

I say: Internment and deportations, shut down the mosques and implement the severest restrictions on Mohammedan travel in infidel countries, including a total ban on Islamic "clerics" in the West.

Not all of them may be the enemy, but how are we to know?

Let "Allah" sort them out....

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at October 12, 2005 9:03 PM

waterdragon52, etc -

I have supreme confidence in our ability to seize and hold the oil fields because I have seen, and heard, the Vulcan MiniGun fired in anger. We can hold the oil fields.

Granted, we would have to abandon the 'muslims are our friends' bullshit. I can deal with it.

Praise the Lord ... and that MiniGun. And, of course, pass the ammo. Lots of it.

Posted by: Havoc at October 12, 2005 9:18 PM

No one owes anyone an apology. What one owes one's readers is something else: evidence, grounded in a knowledge of history and what is more than history, historical sense, a feel for history, the equivalent of the linguist's need for Sprachgefuhl. Evidence, and logic, and the willingness to refuse to accept the Party Line of Republicans or Democrats, those who are Enthusiasts for whatever Bush proposes, and those who are Enthusiasts for whatever Bush-Haters have on offer.

If that Party Line was not originally based on an understanding of Islam, and the menace not "radical Islam," not "Wahhabi Islam," but Islam tout court, Sunni and Shi'a, presents to the West and indeed to the entire non-Muslim world, its states and peoples, then of course the very idea of exploiting, within Iraq, sectarian and ethnic fissures within Islam in order to weaken, divide, demoralize Muslims, and Islam, both within and without Iraq, would make no sense. It is only if one agrees, or comes to see, that Islam is the problem, that Islam and not Democracy is On the March, that Europe is in danger of appeasing the Muslims within and seems incapable of daring to halt Muslim immigration and then to reverse it by means that once would have seemed obvious and perfectly justifiable (see the Benes Decree of 1946) but that now, for many raised with their mother's milk on the sappiest kind of sentimentalism about "tolerance" and "diversity" which has been endowed with a significance, and a meaning, that will prove suicidal to all the advanced nations, if their peoples do not come to their senses in time.

When the 9/11/2001 attacks occurred, amygdalas lit up within the brains of everyone in official Washington. Someothing had to be done. Invade Afghanistan. Not a mistake. Invade Iraq. Rational, and not a mistake. The mistake came in not, over four years, beginning to study -- really study, up and down the line, from captains and colonels on up and on down, and among the civilian planners the need was even greater. They were tough-minded idealists, or so they thought -- well, they were too damn idealistic, too ignorant of the specifics of Iraq, and while everyone assumes that being reasonably quick was enough, it might have been enough for J.I.N.S.A. meetings, but it just wasn't enough in crating something comprehensive and clever and ruthless to constrain Islam. Wolfowitz was, as Richard Pipes pointed out in an interview, someone not trained in, nor self-trained in, the significance of culture in determining men's attitudes and acts. He knew nothing about Islam; he had been, Richard Pipes noted, a "brilliant weapons systems analyst" but that was it. Richard Perle, once an agent for Turkey (and recently willing to push for Turkey's acceptance in the E.U.), was not the only one who was inveigled by the smooth-talking very pleasant and winning Chalabi (a mathematician, a sensible and can-do fellow, perfectly relaxed about Israel), and others of his ilk into seeing Iraq as a Light Unto the Muslim Nations, sensibly led, with people running for dog-catcher and the Board of Aldermen, recognizing Israel, showing Arabs everywhere How To Do It. Forgotten was the little matter of that Sunni-Shi'a split, or the Kurds wanting their own independence. Why wouldn't the Iraqis be delirious with gratitude, and for years to come, and in that delirious gratitude, what with the Americans practically rebuilding the whole country, would not all manner of things be well? Wasn't Saddam Hussein just a nastly little man, liked by the handful of members of a single tribe in his hometown of Tikrit? Who would not welcome his being deposed?

And so it went.

No one consulted Bat Ye'or's "Eurabia" and wondered aloud about Da'wa and demographic conquest outside of Iraq, where it really counted -- in Western Europe. No one spoke of how Muslims were everywhere in the Western world trying, in ways little and big, to tie Infidels in knots, to limit their freedom to learn the truth, or to speak the truth, about Islam. No one raised the issue of Sunni resentment of any Shi'a attempt, through "democracy," to seize power -- which is what the Shi'a, and justifiably, have done. The Sunnis think it was just fine for them to dominate and push around the Shi'a and the Kurds, and simply cannot fathom why the Shi'a and the Kurds are showing that not only were they not happy with that arrangment, but that they might take it into their heads to do the same back -- tocca a te, tooca a me. "It's my turn now" is a concept the Sunnis refuse to grasp. And they are actually not "against" democracy any more than the Sh'a are "for" democracy. It is only that the Sunnis are a distinct minority and in any head-counting system will lose, and the Shi'a will win, and both Sunnis and Shi'a know it. That's what "democracy" means in Iraq.

Offering apologies, accepting apologies, all that sort of thing means ntohing to me. What all those who post at JW have a right to expect, from themselves as well as from others, is what Robert Frost wanted in his poem "Departmental." In that immortal verse, Frost's pet ant fell into an inkwell and emerged to walk across a blank white sheet of paper, leaving inky marks across the virgin that fell into an inkwell, and then left tiny, inky, ant-prints on that otherwise white page.

Frost's reaction to those footprints led him to this beautiful concluding couplet of iambic pentameter:

"No one can know how glad I am to find
On any sheet the least display of mind."

Posted by: Hugh at October 12, 2005 9:35 PM

"Zawahiri has proclaimed in his letter that Iraq is the locus for jihad and the base from which to spead it throughout the region. Bush understands that. I understand it. Does Hugh?
-- from a poster above

The comment above suggests that we are all to simply accept what Zawahiri says, take it at face value -- he says that "Iraq is the locus for jihad and the base from which to spread it throughout the region" and therefore, it goes without saying, why it must be. "Bush understands that. I understand it."

"Does Hugh?" No. Why should I? And by the way, I don't think Bush understands Islam, and am not overwhelmed by his last speech either. Nor do I think he has the faintest idea about the history of Iraq, the nature of Iraq, the assorted myths and lies and occasional truths about Iraq. I doubt if he has ever heard of Sir Percy Cox, Gertrude Bell, King Faisal I, II, or the Prince Regent, or CENTO, or Nuri al-Said, or Colonel Qassem. I doubt that he has the faintest idea why Christians were, for Saddam Hussein, the most trusted household staff, or why Saddam Hussein needed Ba'athism which, though it was more secular than what is now going on in Basra and round about, was never in opposition to Islam but merely a variant on it, useful in a country where the majority was Shi'a, for a Sunni despot, ruling of, by, and for Sunnis (even if not all Sunnis were included), with the odd Shi'a and Christian (think of Tariq Aziz, with his Islamic alias, and that Halloween-mask face so reminiscent of that of the Iranian Abolhassan Bani-Sadr -- remember him, and what became of him?). Bush understands nothing of this. Who else, I wonder, does not.

If we turn to the letter from Al-Zawihiri to Al-Zarqawi, we find that it says all sorts of things, none of them very surprising, and certainly it is not a document from which, despite the best efforts of CENTCOM, one can draw the conclusion that because Iraq is part of the “plan” – the dream, the scheme, call it what you will – for a Caliphate that would center on, as Al-Zawawhiri puts it, “the Levant and Egypt” – that is, Syria, Jordan, Iraq as, with Egypt, one of the two historic centers of Arab or believed-to-be-Arab Islamic “civilization.”:

Of course Al-Zawahiri is not omniscient, and just because he gives importance to winning control of Iraq does not mean he or Al-Qaeda will win such control (they won't, they can't, because the Kurds and the Shi'a have their own interests that are dead-set against those of the Sunni Arabs), and his remarks hardly constitute a reason for Americans to snap to attention, and decide that whatever Al-Zawahiri plans, the only sane policy is to do exactly the opposite. Does Al-Zawahiri want to control Iraq for Sunni Muslims who must, therefore, oppose the Shi’a-dominated “democracy”? He does. Well then, the American policy must be to stay in Iraq, and fight on, and make sure that Iraq is made safe for that Shi’a-dominated Baghdad government (not to mention the Shi’a Islamic parties, each worse than the next, that have completely drawn the black veil of Islam over life in once-easygoing Basra and the rest of the Shi’a-dominated south.

Could it be that CENTCOM is not the last word on military intellitgence, or on intelligence? Has Bush, has Rice, have the Generals been focused on Islam as the problem? They have not. They have focused on the absence of democracy in the Middle East as a problem. They have too narrowly focused on one geographical area, too narrowly focused on one instrument of Jihad – “terrorism” as in that idiotic and therefore infuriating phrase “the war on terror” and have focused only on ways to make lives of Muslims in Iraq so much saner and better and healthier in every respect that magically, we are led to believe, other Muslims in all those Sunni Arab-dominated countries will be delighted to observe the manner in which Shi’a Arabs can take over and dominate Sunni Arabs in this Iraq the Model, and what with Iraq becoming a veritable Light Unto the Muslim Nations, everyone will calm down, and no one will read the Qur'an or Hadith or find inspiration in the life of Muhammad again, and the 1300 years of hostility betwee Sunni and Shi'a, or the hatred inculcated in Muslims toward all Believers, will simply evanesce as New England Town Meetings spread from the Land of the Two Rivers all the way to the Sherifian monarch's domain in distant Morocco. And and if the Shi’a Arab-dominated state in Iraq can somehow be offered as an attractive model for the Sunni Arabs (instead of a state those Sunni Arabs wish every curse upon), can’t Iraq's now-ruling Shi'a also be a model for trouble-making and murderous Muslims everywhere – say, in the southern areas of Thailand, and the Philippines, or in the Sudan, or Nigeria, or for that matter in Bradford, England or Barbes-Rochechouart among those sinister and dangerous (to French people – but hell, what rights do they have to Paris anyway?) quartiers chauds now everywhere in France?

In the letter what is most significant is that Al-Zawahiri does agree with Al-Zarqawi on the awfulness, the perfidiousness, the dangerousness, the Infidel-ness, of those terrible Shi’a. That’s the part of his letter I would like to have had CENTCOM focus on, but had it done so, it might then have had to discuss the obvious paradox: why is American policy in Iraq not exploiting, but rather doing everything in its power to mend, the sectarian fissures within Islam? And why is it not exploiting, rather than attempting to mend, the ethnic fissures within Islam? The Shi’a deeply resent the murderous behavior not merely of Saddam Hussein, but of all the Sunni Arabs who did his bidding, and all of those in the other Arab countries who remained completely silent about the mistreatment and murder, over decades, of the Shi’a. And the Kurds deeply resent the murderous behavior not merely of Saddam Hussein, but of all the Arabs, Sunni and Shi’a, who did his bidding, and all those in the other Arab countries who remained silent about the mistreatment and murder, over decades, of the Kurds.

Well, if that doesn’t cry out for exploitation by Infidels, I don’t know what does. And here it is presented on a plate. It takes genius in reverse to avoid seeing this, to avoid even raising the matter, to avoid discussing it at such places at CENTCOM (would you mind putting this posting and a few others up at your site? Thanks, I knew you were open to Free and Open Discussion of a Sensible Iraq Policy).

All that is of interest in the Al-Zawhiri letter is that, while agreeing with Al-Zarqawi on the awfulness of the Shi’a, he simply says at the moment it is better to cool the particular methods of choice – blowing up civilians – because it is not having the desired effect, and may even be alienating those Arabs, within and without Iraq, who may not be impressed with such methods as 1) further identifying Arabs with “terrorism” in Infidel minds and that of course is a bad thing – it might even lead to repercussions for Muslims within Infidel countries, travel bans, immigration restrictions, that sort of thing and 2) not all Sunni Arabs are as convinced as such True Believers as Al-Zarqawi and Al-Zawahiri that the Shi’a really are Infidels, Rafidite dogs, and so on.

That’s about it.

Oh, here’s an example of the editorializing that they do at the CENTCOM site. Just look at the quote from the letter, and then CENTCOM’s attempt to tell the reader what the letter must mean:

Further confirmation of al-Qaida’s long-term strategy/beliefs:

· Iraq is becoming the central battlefield for al-Qaida senior leaders in Pakistan . Zawahiri views Iraq as the bridgehead for the creation of a new Islamic caliphate – their ultimate objective. The letter makes clear al-Qa'ida intends to wrest control of Iraq from the Iraqi people so they can use the country in pursuit of other goals.
o Quote: “I want to be the first to congratulate you for what God has blessed you with in terms of fighting in the heart of the Islamic world, which was formerly the field for major battles in Islam’s history, and what is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era….”

· Al-Qaida’s ambitions do not stop at Iraq ’s borders. Establishing the political dominance of Sunni militants in Iraq is only a first step—a means to an end—in realizing al-Qaida’s ambitions of imposing its control over the broader Middle East. In fact, al-Qaida’s focus on Iraq has nothing to do with Iraqi nationalism, but is purely instrumental as a beachhead for al-Qaida’s broader agenda. Under al-Qaida, Iraq will serve as a terrorist haven and staging ground for attacks against Iraq ’s neighbors and quite possibly Western nations -- all those judged to be ruling in violation of their distorted interpretation of Islamic law – and clearly destabilize the region. According to Zawahiri:
o Quote: “…the Jihad in Iraq requires several incremental goals: The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq . The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate over as much territory as you can spread its power in Iraq, i.e., in Sunni areas. . . . The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq . The fourth stage: …[This is ] the clash with Israel , because Israel was established only to challenge any new Islamic entity. . . . [T]heir ongoing mission is to establish an Islamic state, and defend it, and for every generation to hand over the banner to the one after it until the Hour of Resurrection.”
o Quote: “It has always been my belief that the victory of Islam will never take place until a Muslim state is established in the manner of the Prophet in the heart of the Islamic world, specifically, in the Levant, Egypt , and the neighboring states of the Peninsula and Iraq ; however, the center would be in the Levant and Egypt .”

· The letter demonstrates that pulling US forces out of Iraq is the wrong approach – that terrorists will not simply lay down their arms when American forces depart Iraq . Al-Qaida and its terrorist brethren will not go away when the Coalition hands over security control to Iraqi forces; rather, they are committed to overthrowing the elected, democratic Iraqi government and ruling the country according to their interpretation of Islamic law.

Note that last paragraph, which instead of allowing the reader to make sense of the letter himself, forces him to accept an entirely unwarranted conclusion. To wit, that the “letter [Al-Zawihiri] demonstrates that pulling US forces out of Iraq is the wrong approach – that terrorists will not simply lay down their arms when Armerican forces depart Iraq.”

But who anywhere has suggestedthat “terrorists” (i.e,. Sunnis of either the non-Iraqi Al-Zarqawi camp, or of the resentful Ba’athist-resentful-of-losing-power-and-money camp, would cease to be resentful and murderous if and when the American forces leave? Far from it. They will continue, only this time they will not be killing and wounding both Americans and Iraqis, but only Iraqis. And those Iraqis, or rather those Shi’a and those Kurds, who together make up 80% of the population of Iraq, and have their own militias, and have learned a thing or two (that American training has helped the Kurds, and is a useful supplement, for the Shi’a, to whatever training or equipment they may receive from Iranian agents), will have their own ways of fighting back. In fact, in arguing that the American forces should leave, the very last argument that I would offer is that in leaving we will cause the “terrorists” (i.e. Sunni Arabs) to lay down their weapons and stop fighting. That is not particularly desirable, from the Infidel point of view, if one of the aims is to lure in, and use up, Iranian men and money as well. One does not wish either the Sunnis or the Shi’a to stop fighting, but to keep fighting, if possible, forever.

One wonders if this kind of transparent attempt to tell readers – officers and men in the military, in the first place – what they should make of the Al-Zawahiri letter, how it should fit into, be seen to support, the current policy – is recognized as the insult to individual intelligences that it is. No wonder there is so much group-think in the army, so many different ways of pretending that the policy is right (and of course, who in the army has had the time to study Islam, and begin to think about the world-wide dimensions of this problem, and of ways to divide and demoralize Muslims rather than to supply them with knowhow, foreign aid, and Every Good Thing so that they will, perforce, dampen their enthusiasm for Islam). In other words, the Al-Zawahiir letter, viewed through the ready prism of the CENTCOM commentary, is taken to support the error of the current policy, which continues to result in a gross misallocation of resources, of men’s lives, $300 billion in money that could be far better spent in activities to weaken the world-wide Jihad, in desert-degraded equipment, in morale problems that are already reflected in the rates of enlistment for the Reserves and National Guard.

And the pity of it is not only that the resources are misallocated, but that if only Islam were properly identified as a belief-system that itself, not some wild or extreme or radical version of it, is the problem and the menace, and neither supplying aid (to end “poverty”) or bringing “democracy” (of the most primitive head-counting variety, not the kind that one finds in the advanced democracies of the West) to Iraq, will have the slightest effect on diminishing the power, the appeal, the danger of Islam to the entire non-Islamic world.

Obstinacy is not admirable when “staying the course” brings the ship of state, possibly a ship of fools or Narrenschiff, right into the direction of that looming iceberg. Or perhaps not that looming iceberg, because all the icebergs are melting, because that same oil that, turned into cash, funds the world-wide Jihad, is also inflicting terrible and possibly irreversible damage, on that same wide world.

I had not studied the CENTCOM site before. If the CENTCOM site’s treatment of the Al-Zawahiri letter is an example of its analysis – more like the kind of thing that one would expect in a police state, where everything becomes grist for the Government’s Official Line – then one’s fury at both the stupid obstinacy, based on ignorance and timidity and lack of thought and lack of imagination, that forces American troops to grin and bear it, and to endure such an absurd, and backwards policy (because that policy fails to exploit divisions within Islam that Iraq presents, ready to be exploited) and at the stupidity, when Islam menaces Western Europe through demographic conquest, and much of black Africa through military means, of putting so much attention, so many resources, so much of everything into this Iraq business, while meanwhile, even in our own country, Muslims outside do not hesitate to spend money to spread hatred in mosques here, and to buy up armies of hirelings and apologists, and in every way to modify or even undo our laws, our customs, our histories, our everything that makes us us.

Posted by: Hugh at October 12, 2005 10:05 PM

Cornelius,

I agree it might be machievalian of Hugh to support a Berber state in the Kabylie even though you correctly point out that it would dangerously undermine the Algerian generals fighting the Salafis. And I would not be overexagerating to claim that if Algeria did fall to the Islamofacists, either through the ballat box or the bullet, that the whole Algerian middle and upper classes would flee to France.(where their offspring would undoubtably be raised as good muslims and hate the values of the dominant culture). Something that is not in France's or our interests.
Moreover, I don't think Hugh has an inflated view of American power, I would argue that he is way ahaead of the pack--and probably understands America's limits and believes that the better part of the US army bogged down in Mesopotamia is not serving the national or Western interests.
I supported this war from the start mainly for humanitarian reasons, just as I supported the bombing of the Serbs which I now belatingly realize gave us a sad but predictable Serbfrei Kosovo and a new Muslim state in Europe. I have sinking feeling that the Iraqi Arabs who support democracy are either a handful of secularist who will not pick up a rifle to fight, or are good Muslims and want to use the ballet box to usher in Sharia. I don't think this little project is worth one American or British life let along thousands and hundreds of billions of dollars and Pounds.
Charles Moore wrote last month in the Spectator which closely echoes my views on this war with Islam. "The biggest problem facing the country is Islamist terrorism not so much because of the security threat(grave though that is), but because of the cultural and political war that is behind it." That sentence say's it all, control immigration and demand our Muslim citizens respect our values

Posted by: spencerd at October 12, 2005 10:21 PM

Hugh,

As usual, your prolofic energies are such that it's a challenge just to read much less respond to everything you've written.

I do have one question. Whould you say that the chances for a tranquil, peaceful and autonomous Iraqi Kudistan would be better served if

a) a functional federal Democracy is established in Iraq

or

b) a violent Civil war ensues with no American presence to influence the outcome

Not to denigrate your style in the least, but a modicum of brevity would be welcome.

Posted by: Cornelius at October 12, 2005 10:50 PM

Spence,

You might not think Hugh has an inflated view of American power, but it is evident throughout his commentaries. He advocates withdrawing from Iraq to let the country crash and burn...but then wants to interject US airpower to save the Kurds from the resulting carnage.

Do you really think there is an American gov't on either side of the Isle that could sell to a war-weary public a policy of RE-involvement in Iraq AFTER a tragic withdrawal that effectively negated all our sacrifices in blood and treasure? Well, this is exactly what Hugh advocates.

Do you really believe that in the face of failure in Iraq, there wouldn't be a period of retrenchment akin to the Vietnman syndrome in the mid-70s, when US foreign policy was paralyzed and Soviet challenges in Angola and Ethiopia were left uncontested? Yet Hugh is all ready in the post-Iraqi environment to charge into Sudan among other places with the US military and make war against jihadis. Given America's domestic political environment, this is completely unrealistic...except to Hugh.

Do you really think that under current international conditions, Europe and East Asia would co-operate with American calls to deny Western technology to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries?...to deny a Western education to Arab/Muslim students? It is absolute fantasy! But Hugh calls for this with a straight face.

I'm not saying that he doesn't hit the bullseye when he talks about the existential threat to Europe posed by Muslim immigration. He's right on that and on many other issues which I should probably acknowledge in the interests of fairness.

But he's wrong on Iraq...and he absolutely does inflate the relative power of the USA.

Posted by: Cornelius at October 12, 2005 11:14 PM

At one time Hugh advocated removing the US military while using predator drones to control Iraq.I don't know if he still advocates the use of drones as I've quit reading his long posts on Iraq.

I did read the entire 13 page translation of the letter from Zawahri to Zarqawi. It made for interesting reading as Zawahri clearly see's Iraq as the central front in the "war on terror". It's also clear that AQ would view any premature American pullout from Iraq as a defeat for the US and a victory for AQ.Also interesting that Zawahiri asked Zarqawi for $100,000 looks like AQs leadership is having a cash flow problem.

Posted by: Roxane at October 13, 2005 1:51 AM

Cornelius,

An American "phased" withdrawl wouldn't necessarly translate into Abu Musab Zarqawi's foreign legion having a victory parade down a Bagdad boulevard. If we did leave, I think Kurdish and Shia military commanders would just throw away the Queensbury rules, take their gloves off and deal with the Sunni problem as they see fit. That might sound rash and heartless--it is.

In the event of a withdrawl, I also don't believe we would see a repeat of a Vietnman syndrome among the political classes, don't forget we were dealing with a world super power in the mid-70s whose political philosophy had a world-wide appeal. At present we are dealing with a stateless band of dead end Jihadis whose attraction is only to elements in the Muslim community.

I'm also worried that this war is costing too much, the American deficit is nudging 480 billion! How much longer can we spend like drunk sailors on leave before the bottom falls out. Its crucial to maintain our economic health and keep our powder dry for future threats.

I can't fathom why Hugh would want us to charge into Sudan, hasn't he seen the movie "Khartoum" I hope its not to save the Muslims in Darfur. Another seemingly calous sentiment on my part, but would the Muslim world really ululate in joy if we started bombing Khartoum. A rational people would, but believe me these people are not rational.

I think it's very possible that we pressure our European cousins in denying duel use technology to certain Muslim countries. Several months ago we strong armed the EU in not dropping their arms embargo against China. They kicked and screamed(mainly the French, but they would wouldn't they) But the People’s Liberation Army Air Force are not going to get their hands on the latest Mirage anytime soon. In regards to Muslim immigration it would be churlish to nag our allies on what is a domestic problem but I believe Europeans are waking up to the realization that they have been sold a bill of goods in the benifits of multiculturism and will act accordingly.

Posted by: spencerd at October 13, 2005 6:38 AM

Spence,

We were out of Nam in '73...but it wasn't until April '75 that our national psyche was debilitated by the fall of Saigon. We didn't recover until Reagan's election 5 years later.

In the post-Iraq environment, you confined our potential enemies to Al Qaeda. Let us not forget North Korea and particularly Iran.

I find it hard to believe that should Iraqi Democracy succumb in short order after Coalition withdrawal (from either Sunni or Shia impetus), there would be a national consensus of any sort in taking on Iran or North Korea...(the idea of bombing the Turks over Iraqi Kurdistan is so remote as to be laughable...but perhaps I have a lack of imagination).

I share your concerns about the deficit. But we shouldn't be penny-wise and pound-foolish. I say the process in Iraq is moving foward...let's finish the job and see our investment through. I'd hate for us to have to come back.

As for European high-tech export controls on the Middle East, the international equation would have to change pretty drastically for that to happen, though considering the mad-dog facet of the Muslim psyche, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that new acts of terror could finally galvanize the Europeans. That's why I qualified my remarks by writing "under current international conditions."

Finally, I hope you're right about European cognizance of the immigration threat, but I'm skeptical. I believe further atrocity is a probable necessary pre-condition for an end to Europe's lethargy. How sad.

Posted by: Cornelius at October 13, 2005 7:09 AM

Spencerd:

Yes, US, UK and Australian taxpayers are, indeed shouldering a very heavy burden and there sure doesn't seem to be an end in sight, but you might find it interesting to put the US deficit of $480 billion into context. I was reading a piece by Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli of MEMRI regarding the movement for reform in Saudi Arabia. Apparently the Saudis' deficit is at $370 billion and is equal to the annual GDP, 80% of which is derived from petrolium sales and 90% of which they sell abroad. I think it might also be interesting to examine "the books" of other prime funder of jihad, Iran to see how really well financed they are. As a footnote to the above, I'd point out that on the HDI, Saudi Arabia and Iran have similarly low scores, with their average citizens enjoying a standard of living considerably lower than Palestinians living in the "territories" have had during Intifada II, which dropped considerably because of the security measures Israel had to take to protect its citizens.

My point? The jihaddists may seem to get an awful lot of bang for the bucks they put into terror operations, but they aren't operating on an unlimited budget. If the west could really get serious about national security and reducing dependency on middle east oil, we might be able to starve the SOBs out.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at October 13, 2005 8:48 AM

Cornelius,

Glad to see you return to your customary civility.

A central issue that I see missing in these analyses is the role of Islam in breaking down the nation-state level of political organization. This is especially ironic in the land of the first known city-states, ancient Sumer. For Muslims, the state level of organization is relevant only as an expedient for advancing Islam.

We must remember that the state exists not so much to join us to our neighbors as to protect us from our neighbors. Islam acts to constantly undermine this protection and reduces human society to tribalism because tribal retribution becomes the only effective means of protection for the individual living under Islamic rule. The state is rendered powerless by Islam.

We should also recognize that the great Sunni Shia war is inevitable. Zawahiri's point to Zarqawi is only that the time for it is not now, and that they should concentrate of the greater Infidel enemy for the time being.

We infidels should be moving heaven and earth to make certain the Sunni-Shia war occurs sooner rather than later. It is not in American interests to promote a Sunni-Shia alliance in Iraq or anywhere else. We should be concentrating instead on building alliances among the infidel nations, Britain, Europe, Russia, China, India, etc., to oppose the spread and growing ascendancy of Islam where ever we can reasonably do so.

Again: it is in the interest of Islam and the power of Muslims for them to unite in a strong caliphate nation-state. It is in the interest of infidels to keep Muslim power weak and divided. The only question is how to accomplish that.

Iraq, as Hugh correctly points out, is a golden opportunity that we are squandering in ignorance and to the great detriment of future generations.

Posted by: Rebecca JW at October 13, 2005 9:00 AM

"I do have one question. Whould you say that the chances for a tranquil, peaceful and autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan would be better served if

a) a functional federal Democracy is established in Iraq

or

b) a violent Civil war ensues with no American presence to influence the outcome"
-- from a posting above

The pretend-choice is between two absurdly phrased alternatives. Both are highly tendentious. No allowance is made for other possibilities.

The first alternative is ill-defined -- I am asked if I would prefer Iraq as a "functional federal democracy" to whatever the alternative, listed as #2, offers. Stop right there. What does "functional" mean? Does it mean everyone is now well-satisfied with the distribution of money and power -- and the Sunis are just as happy as the Shia, and the Kurds just as happy as both of them? And aside from the oil revenues, what about who controls what towns? Will Shi'a continue to rule over all of southern Iraq? In Baghdad, will the Shi'a be pushed around, or the Kurds, or the Sunnis? In Mosul, and especially in Kirkuk, which the Kurds regard as part of their ancient lands, will the arabization be accepted by them, or reversed?

And what about this word "federal"? What does it mean in the Iraqi context? Does it mean that, as in the United States, each person will have two sovereigns, with some areas under local control and some under national control? And will local laws have to yield to the federal, or vice-verse, or what?

To blandly write "functional federal democracy" is equivalent to offering as one alternative "a perfectly hunky-dory outcome because, you see, Bush was right and after the Constitution is ratified, and the December elections are held, if only the Americans stick around for another few years why of course bygones will be bygones and everyone will figure out how to get along and that is the Iraq I am positing, okay?" just won't do. It presupposes all sorts of things -- the very things which, everyone knows, are most unlikely to occur, and in fact, the situation moves further and further from that of an Edward Hicks painting.

And the other alternative has the Americans far away from Iraq, without the slightest ability to any longer influence events or the outcome -- as if we wanted a certain outcome, and not simply the hostility and low-level warfare to go on forever.

But why? Why can we not influence what goes on within Iraq, from afar, just as we influenced, and probably helped to prolong in so doing, the Iran-Iraq War? For that matter, why would we leave all of Iraq, and no base, no pre-positioned equipment, deep within, safe within, friendly Kurdistan, which if we do things right deserves our support, in the most tangible and useful way -- in equipment that can be used, and in the kind of air cover that, from 1991 to 2003, managed to keep Kurdistan free of incursions by the Arabs of Saddam Hussein. If we could so influence events for 12 years as to allow Kurdistan to be free of Arab aggression, why do you think we could not do it, or something even more effective (this time supplying by air and by other means, military equipment and other aid?

And if the United States managed to protect the Kurds for 12 years from outside Iraq, it also managed to influence the see-saw, margery-daw of that Iran-Iraq War that lasted a full eight years. The Americans looked on approvingly as A American-supplied tanks, bought by the Saudi s for their own forces, had their markings painted over for shipment to Saddam Hussein. For in the early days of the Iran-Iraq War it was most important to weaken the Islamic Republic of Iran, still in its most fearsome and fanatical heyday, with Iranian morale at its zenith (it is now at its nadir -- see how words of Arabic language can come in handy?).

We are not idiots. We have an air force. That air force can drop bombs, or it can drop food, or it can drop military supplies. We have a thousand ways to influence events in and outside Iraq. And furthermore, why do you assume that removing our troops from the rest of Iraq means that they must be removed from the north, in Kurdistan, where a base might be readied -- and the Kurds eager to give it to us, and alone among Muslims, be willing to allow us to keep it, out of intelligent self-interest, and at that base a small force with pre-positioned equipment, and the possiblity of more equipment constantly resupplying the Kurds, could act as a little equalizer, as they used to call a Colt revolver in the Old West -- an "equalizer." Right now the Americans are out of Somalia. Are they influencing events in Somalia? They certainly are -- merely by letting Somallia not be rescued by Infidels, letting it sink ever deeper into chaos, it has offreed a salutary lesson in what could happen to any Islamic country no longer supplied with the Infidel jizya, and where the natural Muslim tendency to warfare, against Infidels or other Muslims, over whatever tribal or ethnic or linguistic or sectarian divide their might be, or simply a quarrel over who gets what loot. Some think Somalia cannot be controlled and will become a dangerous center for Al-Qaeda. I think the mess there serves Infidel purposes well. The notion that if American soldiers are not on the ground that they cannot influence events is crazy. Are you suggesting, for example, that the American army will have to invade Iran to handle the nuclear weapons program -- and not handle it through missiles (what are all those missiles for?) and planes, and economic damage to the Iranian economy, and support for Iranian broadcating stations in Los Angeles, or anti-regime Iranians in Paris or Stockholm, or anti=-regime soldiers stationed -- well, wherever they can be?

If I wanted to be as silly as you have been, I would then ask you, in the same spirit, to Make A Choice.

And that Choice would be:

1. Letting Iran successfully bring to term its nuclear weapons baby, with which it will not merely threaten but will definitely use to annihilate Israel, the Sunnis in Iraq, and everyone in Infidel Europe within range of Iranian missiles, all the way up to, and inncluding, Paris.

OR

2. Invading Iran with the entire active army, all the Reserves, all the National Guard, and thereby seizing all the 385 sites where nuclear activities are going on, and making sure that those soldiers, deep in side Iran, destroy all of them, in the meantime fending off the Iranian basiji and fanatical suicide-bombers, and all the Hezbollah troops who will have arrived from Lebanon, not to mention reinforcements from all over Iran and Shi'a parts of Iraq. For that is the only possible way, you see, to avoid Horrible Certainty No. 1 as described above.

Of course American forces need not be in Iraq to affect, or better, to prolong, the conflict. How much useful military equipment remains in Iraq? We need not leave any of our own equipment bheind (why should we) save what we wish, for our own interests, to leave in Kurdistan. We need not refrain, at any point, from aiding now one side, now the other. That can be done simply by making supplies from outside more, or less difficult to obtain. This isn't the Ho Chi Minh Trail through the jungle, but desert. Hard to hide transfers of equipment.

The idea that there necessarily ensue a "violent Civil War" is not a given. Perhaps it will all die down. Perhaps the country will dissolve into three constituent parts, roughly those of the original Ottoman vilayets that the British put together as modern Iraq. And the notion that American soldiers need to be present, on the ground, right there, for otherwise we "cannotaffect the outcome" is crazy. We affected the outcome in Kurdistan from 1991 to 2003. We affected the outcome of the entire endifice of Soviet Communism without moving a soldier into the Soviet Union, but in a thousand ways checking Soviet moves, and constraining Soviet power, for more than 40 years.

Is the American government incapable of supplying one side, and interdicting supplies to the other? Or changing sides? Did we not support to the hilt the Mujahedin, in Afghanistan, including among those we supported all sorts of Saudis including Bin Laden? And haven't we now changed sides, in a sense, and with good reason? Why would it not make sense just to leave, take stock, and see how things develop without this continued hideous drain on our men, materiel, treasury, and morale? Don't we owe the armed services a little rest, time to recoup, time to make enlistment attractive again lest the standards for recruits be dangerously lowered, as already may be happening?

We can supply. We can interdict We can do all sorts of things, from the air, and from the air-waves. We are not idiots. You write as if you think we must be right there, and being right there unfortunately means continuing to push this silly policy of something like Iraq the Model, Iraq the Light Unto the Muslim Nations. It's nonsense. It's the reverse of what we should wish to achieve. We want to divide and demoralize Muslims. We want them to see that Islam itself is what is holding them back in every way. And even if they don't see it, we need to buy time so that Infidels will see it in greater numbers than they so far have.

I am sweet-tempered. I read, I look up words in the dictionary. Sometimes I go out and look at things, and persons, and places, in bloom.

But when the loaded "question" above is fired at me, I cannot suppress the urge to fire back. I took the bait -- not exactly like "The swallowed bait, on purpose laid to make the taker mad" but close. Next time billyclubs at 3 paces. Or, better still, nothing at all -- no encounter at dawn, no seconds, no choosing of pistols, no capes, no whistling wind in late January under a cloudless sky, no button -- just one! -- missing from the greatcoat, and the snow crunching underfoot.

And speaking of billyclubs, my alter-ego, the oldest billygoat-gruff, Der Alte, the one who protects the littlest goat and knocks the Troll off the bridge into the water, is annoyed to discover that he is being gotten. No more.

Posted by: Hugh at October 13, 2005 9:38 AM

Hugh:

Herein contained some of your very best posts (speaking as an ink drenched ant walking across a sheet of white paper (lol)), tho disagree with you completely about oil and the environment (smacks of Suzuki), but loved the line of petrodollars buying "armies of hirelings and apologists").

The analysis of Foggy Bottom being hidebound by its own idealism or mindset, by its own comments, is priceless.

As for being bearded or maligned, it is righteous to fight, for in this fight the stakes are our life or death.

Posted by: dgene at October 13, 2005 11:10 AM

OK.

Perhaps the question was loaded...at least the 2nd half of it. "Functional Federal Democracy" is pretty clear in its implication. It means a workable system in which the Kurds have a degree of autonomy under the umbrella of a Democratic state. Imperfect - like all Democracies, but functional.

Brevity has its utility, believe it or not Hugh. For example, having to include the status of every city in Iraq to conceptualize the idea of federalism would be a bit - what was the word someone used - "windy".

But to satisfy your concerns, Mosul would lie outside the Kurdish autonomous region for obvious historical reasons (even though Kurds comprise a significant % of the city's population)...and Kirkuk would lie inside the region for similarly obvious historic reasons (even though Arabs today make up a significant % of the city's population). Fair enough?

You are right about the second half of the question. It was poorly worded. There are ways other than having boots on the ground to influence events there.

But in your refutation, you ignored several points that are central to the outcome.

The geographic and geo-political juxtaposition of Turkey to Iraqi Kurdistan. You insist the Turks will not only accept Kurdish independence - a premise at total variance with their stated policy, but that they will accept Kurdish claims to lands in Iran and Syria, a presumption so preposterous as to invite ridicule.

To expect the Turks to acquiesce in the shattering of the inviolability of borders, establishing the basis and momentum for a Greater Kurdistan, giving no forthought to the status of their own restive southeast as the final piece of the Kurdish puzzle...is to live outside the realm of reality.

Your plan for Iraq to crash and burn will very likely spell the end of Kurdish hopes for freedom...with either Turkey, Iran, the Arab world, their respective Iraqi proxies...or any combination of the above to do everything in their power to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish state. The result will be tragedy.

And the grandiosity of your belief in American air power is equalled only by your inflated view of American power itself.

No, I DON'T believe that airpower alone will end the Iranian nuclear program. Degrade it, yes. End it, no. Only a change in regime policy - or a change in regime, will end the program.

And let us not forget that we were enforcing the no-fly zone over Northern Iraq from bases in Turkey. Presumably, they won't be available for us to preotect Iraqi Kurdistan. OK, we'll fly over southern Iraqi airspace from ships in the Gulf. More distance. More logistically problematic. And the very real possibility that we'd be challenged by the Turkish Air force. While there is no question that America pilots are better trained than there Turkish counterparts, just imagine the outcry in the USA as the headlines inform the American public how we're now battling our earstwhile Democratic allies in the skies over Iraq after walking away from the fight with the fanatical 'Al Qaeda in Iraq.'

Which brings us to the political equation back home...another facet you ignore. You see Hugh, the American public and our political class do not possess your Machiavellian genius. They will view American withdrawal and the fracturing of Iraq as defeat...a defeat the Left and far Right will welcome and the Center/Right will remonstrate over. There will be no consensus for further involvement...certainly none that would involve a conventional war against the Turks over Kurdistan.

In fact, the idea of going to war or even threatening to go to war with Turkey over the Kurds is inconcievable to my plebian mind, considering the political climate inside of America and the remoteness of the Kurds to identifiable national interests.

If I were an Iraqi Kurd, I sure as hell wouldn't place my faith (and fate) in the USA, given America's political fickleness, the strength of anti-war sentiment, and the prospect of a Liberal Democrat being elected in 2008.

I'm sorry Hugh, but the best guarantee for the Kurds is a successful outcome to Iraq's present Democratic quest.

Finally, I just can't fathom your celebration as Somalia descends down the road of extremism. You seem to savor the triumph of extremism just as inexplicably as Esposito (albeit for very different, though equally convoluted, reasons). If Afghanistan taught us anything, it is that the failed state in the Muslim world is the venue for the triumph of Islamic fanaticism. But somehow, this simple paradigm eludes your understanding.

No Hugh, you didn't convince me with your latest effort. Quite the contrary, you've only reinforced my belief that there is a serious disconnect between your expectations and reality.

How 'bout that Castillo-Corrales fight!

Posted by: Cornelius at October 13, 2005 6:31 PM

1. "grandiosity of your belief in American air power is equalled only by your inflated view of American power itself."

2. "Your plan for Iraq to crash and burn"

3. "Which brings us to the political equation back home...another facet you ignore."

Quickly then, against my better judgment, and furious that some ridiculous sense of duty makes me reply to this nonsense.

#1. Let's not comment on the English ("grandioisity" etc.), because that would require a book in itself, and one would begin to wonder why, why, why one bothers.

Let's stick to the point -- an "inflated view of American power."

No-- the opposite. It is I who think that American power is limited. It is I who wish, whenever possible, to husband resources, not to spend or squander them. It is I who think it was the height of hubris and naivete at the same time to think that America can "bring democracy" to the most unlikely people for that "democracy" (in any but the head-counting sense) in the world. It is I who deplore Bush, Rice, Wolfowitz, and all the rest of these ignoramuses with their grand plans for the while wide world, without having the faintest idea of the influence of culture, ideas, traditions, all sorts of things that they, with their limited understanding, indeed, of our culture, traditions, and history (what the hell does Bush think the word "Democracy" means? What does he understand, or Rice, about the American Constitution, or for that matter what does either of them know about American history? God, they infuriate me -- they are the ones with the utterly inflated sense of American power, of what America can do to change the world, of the apparently limitless resources -- $350 billion is nothing, the men are nothing, the plummeting morale in the military, and the falling away from eager resolution to defend againsat the Jihad both testify to limits. There are limits to American money that can be spent on this quixotic and from the viewpoint of doing weakening Islam, stupid venture. There are limits on men, equipment, limits on everything. I'm not the one with the inflated sense of American power. I'm the one who wants to exploit, passively, by leavinig, the natural divisions within Islam. More Kutuzov-like, more Zen-like, a strategy can hardly be imagined. Those who want to Stay the Damn Course and bring democracy and all sorts of good things to eat for boys on girls on the Little Engine that could --you are the one with the "inflated sense of American power" if you only had the ability to sit and think.

#2. What is this nonsense about crashing and burning -- this hysterical prose? I am not rubbing my hands in glee, predicting this. I don't give a damn if after we leave things quiet down. I'm not eager for innocents to die, and even in Iraq there are some innocents. Don't describe my non-existent glee in this future -- I don't know if Sunnis and Shi'a will get together. Perhaps they will. Perhaps not a shot will be fired. Fine. We will still be out, they will still be preocuccupied with somehow getting along and making a living, and we can, thank god, get on with the business that counts, such as halting Muslim inroads within Western Europe and North America (and that little problem with Iran). End of story. Don't attribute to me some scenario of gore and death that I have nowhere offered, nowhere predicted, with sinister drooling at the mouth. Stop it.

#3. This is more of your nonsense. I am perfectly aware, hyper-aware, of precisely that "political equation back home." I don't want to make America safe for those who are born appeasers. But every day that passes with American troops still in Iraq causes more and more people to be willing to listen to that siren-song that is coming from a site to our left. The damage that this little venture is causing to those who would wish to wake people up and make them look closely at what Islam teaches, what Islam prohibits, what Islam does to minds, what Islam has done to vast territories and to the non-Muslims conquered by Muslims, in time and space -- that is what needs to be learned. And the "poltical equation back home" is turning further and further to the left, and not to the intelligent left, but to the left that sees absolutely nothing wrong with Islam, that will not contemplate the kind of actions which all sensible people should favor as part of civilizational and personal self-defense. It is the Bush Administration, and you as an apparent enthusiast for this Light Unto the Muslim Nations Project, who have a tin ear as far as domestic politics go.

Don't reply, don't waste more of my time by infuriating me, so that I feel compelled to reply. Keep your enthusiasm for Staying the Course in Iraq to yourself.

Okay?

Posted by: Hugh at October 13, 2005 8:46 PM

1. "grandiosity of your belief in American air power is equalled only by your inflated view of American power itself."

2. "Your plan for Iraq to crash and burn"

3. "Which brings us to the political equation back home...another facet you ignore."

Quickly then, against my better judgment, and furious that some ridiculous sense of duty makes me reply to this nonsense.

#1. Let's not comment on the English ("grandiosity of your belief" etc.-- thousands of such excruciating examples), because that would require a book in itself, and one would begin to wonder why, why, why one bothers.

Let's stick to that "inflated view of American power" you attribute to me

No. You have it exactly wrong. It is I who think that American power is limited. It is I who wish, whenever possible, to husband resources, not to spend or squander them. It is I who think it was the height of hubris and naivete at the same time to think that America can "bring democracy" to the most unlikely people for that "democracy" (in any but the head-counting sense) in the world. It is I who deplore Bush, Rice, Wolfowitz, and all the rest of these ignoramuses with their grand plans for the while wide world, without having the faintest idea of the influence of culture, ideas, traditions, all sorts of things that they, with their limited understanding, indeed, of our culture, traditions, and history (what the hell does Bush think the word "Democracy" means? What does he understand, or Rice, about the American Constitution, or for that matter what does either of them know about American history? God, they infuriate me -- they are the ones with the utterly inflated sense of American power, of what America can do to change the world, of the apparently limitless resources -- $350 billion is nothing, the men are nothing, the plummeting morale in the military, and the falling away from eager resolution to defend againsat the Jihad both testify to limits. There are limits to American money that can be spent on this quixotic and from the viewpoint of doing weakening Islam, stupid venture. There are limits on men, equipment, limits on everything. I'm not the one with the inflated sense of American power. I'm the one who wants to exploit, passively, by leavinig, the natural divisions within Islam. More Kutuzov-like, more Zen-like, a strategy, can hardly be imagined. Those who want to Stay the Damn Course and bring Democracy and all sorts of good things to eat for boys on girls on the Little Engine That Could --that's not me. You are the one with the "inflated sense of American power" with this belief in the Transforming Power of the American Army.

#2. What is this nonsense about glee over letting Iraq "crash" and "burn"? I am not rubbing my hands in glee, predicting this. I don't give a damn if after we leave things quiet down rather than heat up still more. Even in Iraq there are some innocents. Don't describe my non-existent glee in this crash, this burn. Ideally a conflict, but low-level, would simmer on the stove for a long time, with outside help -- but not some World War I or World War II-like conflagration. Here and there, a battle, an attack. Here and there. I don't know if Sunnis and Shi'a will somehow get along. I hope not, but I won't be grief-stricken if they do, and perhaps they will. Perhaps after the Americans leave everything will be hunky-dory. I can live with that. The Americans will be well rid of Iraq, and will have learned a lesson -- bomb all you want, but if you enter by ground, crush the opposition and leave. Do not become entangled with Muslim countries, Muslim peoples. They will always confuse and befuddle you. And they will always leave you thinking there is some other way, some nicer way, to have them see what is wrong with Islam. There is no nicer way, except for them to be left to their own devices, with as little of that manna from Heaven (or perhaps closer to Hell), the oil revenues that for a time have disguised or made up for their essentially primitive peoples and polities -- made primitive, necessarily primitive, by Islam itself.

Let's hope that some in Iraq figure that out as many in Iran are figuring out, and meanwhile, Americans andother Infidels can turn their undivided attention (save for the Iranian weapons project) to the main business at hand, that is halting Muslim inroads within Western Europe and North America. Do not attribute quite so ghoulish a nature to me. I don't drool at the mouth, I don't want the Americans to urge one side to attack the other or wipe out villages belonging to the other side. I would just like to allow them, all by themselves, to do what they do so naturally, and I am sure the results will end up being good for Infidels. That's it.

#3. This is more nonsense -- this about my supposed inattention to the "political equation." I am perfectly aware, hyper-aware, of that "political equation back home." I don't want to make America safe for those who are unconcerned about the Jihad, who refuse to learn about Islam, or who are born appeasers. But every day that passes with American troops still in Iraq, fighting and taking casualties, every day that Bush tries to tell us what a noble cause it is and how splendidly things are goiing and how Iraq is the battlefield, Iraq is the place ("how does he know -- 'coz Al-Zawahiri tells him so" -- hum along with Dale and Roy) to Make or Take Our Stand. There is no one place. There are a thousand places, and a thousand things to be done. But someone who won't have a serious energy program, who cannot conceive of a Manhattan Project that could use those hundreds of billions now being squandered in Iraq, who prates about a "Palestinian state" (a sure way to whet Arab Muslim appetites, and a clear indication that he does not understand that borders don't matter to Muslims bent on Jihad, least of all the borders of nearly invisible-on-the-world-map Israel). He, and his loyal retinue (listen to what Rice has been saying to the Pakistanis, how we are right beside them, and in Afghanistan, that the whole world is watching and admiring their splendid progress, etcetera).

If American troops are still in Iraq a year from now, it is all over tor the Republicans in 2006. That might be okay, if only there were Democrats in the Henry Jackson mold still in the Party. Perhaps they are there. I just don't see them. The more this absurd venture continues, and the more this Iraq the Model is seen as the poor nothing it always was, the more people will be willing to listen to that siren-song that is coming from a site to our left. The damage that Staying the Course is causing not just to Bush (he doesn't count any more) but to those who have a real grasp of the Musliim menace, and want to wake people up, but those people are being demoralized by the Iraq venture and instead of realizing that much more can be accomplished without the deployment of troops, may end up being afraid of endorsing the kind of wide-ranging Cold-War-like chess moves that would be far less costly, and far more effective, than this business in and around Baghdad.

It is maddening to see initial eagerness to do something, and even I believe to undertake acts to constrain, contain, and roll back Islam dissipated by these last foolish months and years, and whatever eagerness that might once have existed to undertake certain ventures, including those that do make complete sense, will diminish -- it has already diminished -- because Bush and Co. are completely unaware, it seems, of how foolish they look, even or perhaps especially to those who voted for them, who would wish to support them, who have no use for those who dislike them and the war in Iraq for all the wrong reasons (there are right reasons, and there are wrong reasons, to oppose the continued presence of the Americans in Iraq). The "poltical equation back home" is turning further and further to the left, not to some just conceivable intelligent and supple left, like those European socialists who were so good during the Cold War, in the 1950s, but the horrible, Ward-Churchillesque-left, that stand for nothing, nothing, nothing. At the very moment when education of Infidels about Islam is most necessary, the Bush Administration and its loyal enthusiasts keep promoting false hopes, and the falsest of those hopes is that which I long ago called the Light Unto the Muslim Nations Project.

I have now wasted three or four perfectly good minutes on this. I might have been reading a sonnet. I might have made some tea. I might have turned on television to see how Britney Spears is doing, and whether Paris and Paris have definitely broken up, or are getting back together. Oh God, the things I could be doing.

Nothing will come of nothing. Don't speak again.

Posted by: Hugh at October 13, 2005 8:50 PM

As usual, you had me laughing even after those rhetorical body-blows. Humor is one hell of an elixir...almost as good as beer.

1) It's nice to read you've backed away from your previous insistance that fomenting Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq is a central plank in the logic for withdrawal.

2) No question you're correct about the movement to the Left in America as a result of the War. I'm also very concerned about Nov 2006. But I'm even more so about Nov 2008. If in late 2008, we have - say - 30,000 troops still in Iraq, mostly technicians, advisors and Air Force personel, the Iraqi gov't is stable and the insurgency capable of only sporadic violence, I think this will reflect much, much more positively on Republican policy than to have had the military withdraw prematurely (no sexual machismo intended) and have the extremists carry the day.

There is of course the possibility that should we stay, things could be just as bad or even worse than what they are today in 2008, and I want to acknowledge that possibility. I think it unlikely, that time was all we really needed to build up Iraqi institutions - particularly the army and police, but it certainly remains to be seen.

3) You made no comment about the fate of the Kurds and the disconnect between your presumption of Turkish policy and clearly-stated Turkish policy as it exists today. Are you still advocating the bombing of the Turkish military if they move against an independent Iraqi Kurdistan? Or perhaps you're backing away from that one also?

4) You had no comment on Iraq and Somalia as following the established template of the failed state. You seem impervious to the potential for Iraq emerging as an uncontested nexus for jihadis...becoming a base of operations to terrorize the region and the world.

5) I'm all for a Manhattan project to put an end to our dependence on fossile fuels. I'm all for restrictions on Muslim immigration to the West. But these are separate issues; the fate of Iraq has its own imperatives.

Listen Hugh, I know I can be a bit infuriating. It's not my intent. I'm really just trying to say "look man, you could be wrong here."

Isn't it possible that something in this dialogue has been beneficial in the evolution of your views? Or is the question absurd?

Posted by: Cornelius at October 13, 2005 11:29 PM

"Isn't it possible that something in this dialogue has been beneficial..."
-- from a posting above

Yes. You provided me with an excuse to allude to Pushkin and d'Anthes in the discretest possible way.

Posted by: Hugh at October 13, 2005 11:53 PM

I'm not literate enough to understand the inference, but it was funny anyway.

Posted by: Cornelius at October 14, 2005 1:35 AM

Neduel'nij vo vsekh otnosheniyakh.

Posted by: Hugh at October 14, 2005 1:18 PM

Believe it or not, I've read Pushkin.

Dostoyevski was the one who resonated with me. 'The Dream of a Rediculous Man' and 'Notes from Underground' were my favorites.

I read 'Notes' twice...once a direct Russian to English translation, the second time a Russian to French to English translation. The difference was amazing.

There was this passage in the first version as he presents us with a philosophical question:

"And what do you prefer, high suffering or cheap happiness?"

In the Russian-French-English version, the question comes off so much more poignantly:

"And what do you prefer, exalted suffering or mundane happiness?"

Of course I would choose exalted happiness, but it wasn't on the menu.

Posted by: Cornelius at October 14, 2005 3:30 PM