Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Instability Is Becoming Unstable

Instability in the Middle East is nothing new. It is a feature of the region. So where is it going? The always/sometimes/never reliable Debka Files reports/propagandizes/misinforms on the situation in Turkey.

Both Tehran and Ankara have no doubt that the intelligence data released to them by the US military in the course of the counterinsurgency campaign is partial and limited. The complete picture remains exclusively in American hands. , Turkey sought the deployment of US Predators on its soil to fill the gap. That request was spurned until Prime Minister Erdogan backs away from his aggressive stance against Israel.

For those reasons, Turkish Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin announced Tuesday that his country would launch a cross-border ground offensive against the PKK in northern Iraq at any time.

Our military sources report that Ankara is pondering the same sort of campaign as Israel launched in Gaza against Hamas terrorism in Dec. 2008. It aims to demonstrate Turkey's ability to defeat the Kurdish rebels without US or Israeli drones.

Israel was wrongly accused of threatening to play the Kurdish card against the Erdogan government in reprisal for those threats. The fact is that Turkey is playing the Kurdish card against itself.
Well political/military/economic stupidity is never in short supply in the Middle East. I expect we will see a flowering of same in short order. Followed by a flowering of the graves of the fallen. A kind of devilish symmetry.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Sunday, June 05, 2011

The Looting Has Begun

What does social breakdown look like? Spengler has a few thoughts about Egypt.

From Arab-language online media, it appears that Egypt's economic troubles have metastasized. Last month, rice disappeared from public storehouses amid press reports that official food distribution organizations were selling the grain by the container on the overseas market. Last week, diesel fuel was the scarce commodity, with 24-hour queues forming around gasoline stations. Foreign tankers were waiting at Port Said on the Suez Canal to pump diesel oil from storage facilities, as government officials sold the scarce commodity for cash.

This is the sort of general breakdown I observed in 1992 in Russia, following the collapse of the communist government. As an adviser to finance minister Yegor Gaidar, I heard stories of Russian officials selling unregistered trainloads of raw materials on foreign markets and depositing the proceeds in Swiss banking accounts. Anything of value that could find a buyer overseas was sold. I didn't last long as an adviser; looting and pillaging wasn't my area of competence. Russia, it should be recalled, is largely self-sufficient in food and is among the world's largest oil producers, while Egypt imports half its food. Russia had enormous resources on which to draw. Egypt, Syria and Tunisia have nothing.
So how are things going in Syria?
Robert Fisk wrote in the London Independent on May 30 that Turkey fears a mass influx of Syrian Kurdish refugees, so that "Turkish generals have thus prepared an operation that would send several battalions of Turkish troops into Syria itself to carve out a 'safe area' for Syrian refugees inside Assad's caliphate." The borders of the affected nations have begun to dissolve along with their economies. It will get worse fast.
I think what Spengler meant by fast was like today.
Israeli forces fired on a crowd marking the anniversary of the 1967 Middle East War by trying to enter from Syria, where human rights groups said Syrian troops killed 25 protesters in a village in the country’s north.

A general strike took place for the second day today in the Syrian city of Hama in mourning for dozens of people killed there by security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad last week, according to the independent Web site Syrian Observatory, which is monitoring the unrest.

“The city is completely closed and the army has pulled out, but the people are scared” that the army may attack again, Mahmoud Merhi, the head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, said by telephone from Damascus.
Ah yes. The Israelis fire on a crowd - top of the news. Syrians kill 25? Not quite so important.

And the people of Hama are scared? Why not? There is some history there.
The Hama massacre occurred in February 1982, when the Syrian army, under the orders of the president of Syria Hafez al-Assad, conducted a scorched earth policy against the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the Sunni Muslim community against the regime of al-Assad. The Hama massacre, personally conducted by president Assad's younger brother, Rifaat al-Assad, effectively ended the campaign begun in 1976 by Sunni Islamic groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, against Assad's regime, whose leaders were disproportionately from president Assad's own Alawite sect.
The death toll estimates run from 10,000 to 40,000. I wonder how many boy Assad will bag this time?

And of course I wonder what kind of plan our esteemed man from Chicago ne (Hawaii) has developed to cope with coming events. We shall know in time. I'm betting that it will be - borrow money from China to give to the crooks in the various Middle East governments.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

The Country That Isn't Barking

There is large scale unrest all across the Middle East. Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Iran, Kuwait, Algeria, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and probably others. Which country (besides Israel) is not on the list? Iraq.

And yet we were told by our anti-war and lefty friends that Iraq was the biggest military/foreign policy mistake the US had made since Vietnam.

I know we have lefty/anti-war readers. Would any of them care to explain the Iraq anomaly? Comments are open.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Friday, February 04, 2011

They Still Have To Eat

Spengler at Asia Times makes a very good point about how Asian prosperity is hurting Muslim countries lacking exportable resources.

It wasn't the financial crisis that undermined dysfunctional Arab states, but Asian prosperity. The Arab poor have been priced out of world markets. There is no solution to Egypt's problems within the horizon of popular expectations. Whether the regime survives or a new one replaces it, the outcome will be a disaster of, well, biblical proportions.

The best thing the United States could do at the moment would be to offer massive emergency food aid to Egypt out of its own stocks, with the understanding that President Mubarak would offer effusive public thanks for American generosity. This is a stopgap, to be sure, but it would pre-empt the likely alternative. Otherwise, the Muslim Brotherhood will preach Islamist socialism to a hungry audience. That also explains why Mubarak just might survive. Even Islamists have to eat. The Iranian Islamists who took power in 1979 had oil wells; Egypt just has hungry mouths. Enlightened despotism based on the army, the one stable institution Egypt possesses, might not be the worst solution.
It all depends on what proportion of the total family budget is devoted to food. In the US it runs under 10% (in 1900 in the US it was around 30%). If food prices double in the US it is an inconvenience - especially since so much of the food dollar goes into transport and processing. If food prices double in Egypt the number of calories consumed pretty much has to decline by 50% - at least among the poor. Which are quite numerous in Egypt.

When the oil runs out (or some technology replaces it) the Middle East is going to be a very sorry place.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Egyptian Roundup 29 Jan

Al Jazeera streaming Internet coverage. Love the Brit accents of its reporters.

Al Jazeera's Egypt coverage embarrasses U.S. cable news channels

America-hating Jihadists in the Muslim Brotherhood well-positioned to take over after Mubarak toppled

Michael Totten: Egypt On Fire

Belmont Club Text Like An Egyptian

Telegraph UK - Egyptian News Roundup

New York Times - Egyptian News Roundup

Culture in the Islamic World:

Taliban stones woman to death, shoots man in ditch accused of Adultery.

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome. - Winston Churchill
Not much has changed since Winnie said that.

UGANDA: Leader of Gay Rights movement Brutally Murdered in his Home

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

I Had Hopped

I had hoped by voting for Bush in 2004 that the situation in the Middle East would be so set that even an unsympathetic President couldn't undo what Bush had done if he did a good job in the Middle East.

Bush did a good job. The price he had to pay to the Democrat Congress was to open the government pocket book. That has now come back to haunt the Democrats. Heh. Outsmarted by the dumbest President ever. It has to gall.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Peace Declared

Despite some people who insist on fighting a war, President Obama has announced the forthcoming peace in the Middle East, declaring that war will not be an impediment to peace.

WASHINGTON – Condemning Mideast peace "rejectionists," President Barack Obama convened a new round of ambitious talks Wednesday and vowed not to allow a fresh burst of violence dim hopes for an accord creating a sovereign Palestinian state beside a secure Israel.

Obama, who met separately at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, assailed those responsible for the killings of four Israelis near the West Bank city of Hebron. The militant Hamas movement, which rejects Israel's right to exist and opposes peace talks, claimed responsibility.

Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations broke off nearly two years ago, in December 2008, and the Obama administration spent its first 20 months in office coaxing the two sides back to the bargaining table. Obama was adamant Wednesday that extremist violence would not derail the process.
Let me see if I can wrap my head around this. Having sex is no impediment to keeping your virginity. Or better yet, death is not a serious impediment to voting.

You see he learned everything he needs to know about politics in Chicago.

Or maybe he is a George Orwell fan.

War Is Peace


Cross Posted at Classical Values

Monday, June 01, 2009

Failing States Or It's The Money Stupid

Not California. Although California is failing. The States I'm going to discuss are Muslim States affected by the world wide financial crisis. Spengler is taking his usual jaundiced look at the world.

Financial crises, like epidemics, kill the unhealthy first. The present crisis is painful for most of the world but deadly for many Muslim countries, and especially so for the most populous ones. Policy makers have not begun to assess the damage.
Spengler wrote this in December of 2008 and half a year later the policy makers are no further along.
Moderate Islam was the El Dorado of the diplomatic consensus. It might have been the case that Pakistan could be tethered to Western interests, or that Iran could be engaged peacefully, or that Turkey would incubate a moderate form of Islam. I considered all of this delusional, but the truth is that we shall never know. The financial crisis will sort them out first.

As I commented in the late autumn, the world is not flat, but flattened (see Asia Times Online, October 28, 2008), leaving the economies of the largest Muslim countries in ruins. It is hard to forecast the political fallout, for when each available choice leads to a failed state, it is a matter of indifference which one you adopt. As state finances crumble, states will become less important, and freebooters will seize the stage. Think of the Mumbai terrorists as a political cognate of the Somali pirates, and the character of a Middle East made up of failed states comes into focus.

Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad controls Iran through a kleptocracy of Central African proportions, dissipating the country's oil windfall into payoffs to an "entire class of hangers-on of the Islamic revolution", as I wrote in June (see Worst of times for Iran, Asia Times Online, June 24, 2008), when oil still sold at US$135 a barrel. What will Ahmadinejad do now that the oil price has collapsed? According to my Iranian sources, the answer is: Exactly the same thing, but without the money.
Iran is a State that depends on oil socialism. And the problem with all socialisms is that they eventually run out of other people's money. Did I mention California? I do believe I did. First thing too. Surprisingly California has oil which they do not intend to drill for. It's the ecology don't you know.
The point of the joke is that Iran's regime cannot reduce subsidies or raise taxes without losing control of the constituencies that brought it to power. They are the peasants and the urban poor who barely afford shelter and food as matters stand. Despite the oil-price collapse, the government has not reduced energy subsidies that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) puts at more than a fifth of gross domestic product (GDP). A proposed value-added tax was withdrawn last October after strikes in the bazaars, starting in Isfahan and other provincial towns and spreading to the capital Tehran. Iran is eating through its $60 billion of foreign exchange reserves, unable to adjust to a collapse of its only significant revenue source.

Iran must break down, I argued last June, or break out, through a military adventure. The sand is slipping out of the hour glass, and the regime must decide what to do within a few months. If it does nothing, the default position, as it were, is Pakistan.
Pakistan has a couple of ways to reduce its dependent population. A civil war - which appears to be underway or foreign adventures which have as yet not seriously materialized.
Iran's Ahmadinejad rules through massive subsidies. Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari does the same thing, but without the money. Pakistan ran out of foreign exchange reserves in November and obtained emergency financing from the IMF. Its current account deficit was running at an alarming 14% of GDP, or about $20 billion a year, a small sum, but an important one for a country two-thirds of whose 175 million people subsist on less than $2 a day.

Pakistan received just $7.6 billion from the IMF, covering a third of its current account deficit, which means that imports must be reduced drastically (although lower oil prices may help a bit). Inflation is running at 25% a year.

Pakistan has one of the world's youngest populations and an enormous capital requirement. Young people borrow from old people, and countries with young populations should import capital from countries with aging populations. That is out of the question, for the world markets have turned Pakistan into a pariah. The cost of credit protection on Pakistani sovereign debt
is now more than 3,000 points (or 30%) above the benchmark London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), reflecting a complete shutout from capital markets.
A 30+% rate implies that Pakistan can't last more than three years as a country. I believe that in this case the market is underestimating the risk. Where have we seen that before? The US housing market? Evidently a clue stick is insufficient to get the world wide money boys to wake up. Perhaps a clue bomb is required. It is coming.
Pakistan was at least able to raise a modicum of official support. What will Iran do if its reserves run out? The same thing as Pakistan, but without the money, for Iran is a geopolitical pariah without access to official aid.

The Muslim risk premium has become so pervasive that investors are looking cross-eyed at Saudi Arabia. The cost of credit protection on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has jumped since August, and now is considerably higher than Israel's.
But what about all that oil? Israel has none and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is awash in it. Evidently a barrel of oil doesn't carry you as far, money wise, as it used to.
Turkey has been able to keep afloat through the crisis, but barely so. The Turkish currency has fallen by a third, its stock market has fallen by nearly 80% in dollar terms, and the central bank must keep interest rates at a punishing 20% to prevent money from fleeing the country. Turkey has a real economy with a few first-rate manufacturing companies, unlike Iran and Pakistan, so the comparison is not quite fair. Nonetheless, Turkey relied heavily on short-term interbank borrowings to finance its balance of trade deficit, and the crisis has pulled the carpet out from under its economy. In August, before the crisis erupted in force, Turkey had 10% unemployment. It will get much worse.

Turkey was the poster-child for the so-called carry trade, in which hedge funds and other investors borrowed in low-interest currencies, for example the Japanese yen, and lent the money in high-interest currencies, of which Turkey's lira was the highest. The carry trade was the main source of money for Turkish business. What will Turkey do now that the credit crisis has made the "carry trade" a painful memory? The same thing, but without the money.

Pakistan is about to become a failed state, and Iran and Turkey will be close behind. As I commented to Chan Akya's report of December 2 on this site (see The
hottest place in the world), Pakistan's military-age population is far greater than those of other Muslim military powers in the region. With about 20 million men of military age, Pakistan today has as much manpower as Turkey and Iran combined, and by 2035 it will have half again as many.
Spengler goes on with more grim details and finishes with:
The lights are going out across the Middle East; states are failing, and it is not in the power of the West to make them whole again. All the strategic calculations that busied policy analysts and diplomats are changing, and the West has a very short time to learn the rules of a new and terrible game.
So the question is this: can Obama and Company raise their game? My personal opinion is that they are not up to the job. America is currently short of carrots and Obama, unlike Bush, is not big on sticks. My prediction: a crisis (financial) carried Obama into office, a crisis (military) will carry him out of office. Ah for the good old days of FDR. He was no better than the Obama crew relative to economics but, from his tenure as Secretary of the Navy, he knew how to fight.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Monday, January 12, 2009

War Profiteers

Hamas has found a way to profit from its war with Israel.

Hamas on Monday raided some 100 aid trucks that Israel had allowed into Gaza, stole their contents and sold them to the highest bidders.

The IDF said that since terminal activity is coordinated with UNRWA and the Red Cross, Israel could do nothing to prevent such raids, Israel Radio reported.

Between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., the army had ceased all military activity in Gaza and once again established a "humanitarian corridor" to help facilitate the transfer of the supplies.
Evidently Iranian cash is no longer enough to keep Hamas running. After bringing death and destruction to the Palestinians by keeping their war with Israel going, they have to steal food out of the mouth's of their own people to keep themselves going.

I don't think that Hamas is going to be in charge of Gaza for too long after the fighting stops. And to make the change happen Egypt is training Fatah fighters who will no doubt be escorted to Gaza through the Egyptian border once the fighting stops.
"The Iranians and Syrians are using Hamas to undermine the Palestinian Authority and other moderate Arab governments," the Fatah official told the Post. "Victory for Hamas in this war would mean victory for Iran, Syria and Hizbullah. This is something we need to prevent."

The official expressed hope that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip would revolt against Hamas when the IDF operation ended. He also expressed hope that Hamas leaders Mahmoud Zahar and Ismail Haniyeh would be tried before a Palestinian court as "war criminals." The Hamas leaders, he charged, were responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent Palestinians. "Ever since they came to power, they brought death and destruction to our people."

The official would neither confirm nor deny a report according to which Egypt was training Fatah activists to regain control over the Gaza Strip. According to the report, some 300 Fatah militiamen who had fled to Egypt during the violent Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007 were being trained by Egyptian security experts.

Ahmed Abdel Rahman, the official Fatah spokesman in the West Bank, mocked statements made by Syrian-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal to the effect that Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip had failed.
Evidently not every one involved in the war sees what is going on as a Hamas victory. Maybe the Arabs are not totally delusional after all. Just some of them.

The light of reality may be finally shining on the Middle East. There has been a sea change among the Arabs. Their rhetoric is unchanged, but their policy is different. They are now in fear for their future. They can see the end of oil. Not soon. Maybe in fifty years, maybe a hundred, but the sands of time are running out of the hour glass and the oil is running out of the sands of the Middle East. If they are to survive on other than charity they have to make things the world wants.

The first thing they intend to make to reach that goal is a Palestinian State. The Palestinians are relatively well educated. Arafat after all was an engineer. The Palestinians under good government will unite to reform the Middle East. There is nothing the Israelis want more than to see its neighbors prosper. The reasons are two fold. One is that such a stance is part of their culture. The other is that well off nations need no longer use Israel as a scape goat for their failures.

They were so close in 2000 to the irreversible integration of the Palestinian and Israeli economies. So close. It may take a couple of decades, but I think the reintegration of the Israeli and Palestinian economies is now on the table. Followed closely by a change in the Arab culture and economy. I'm sure the hope is that the Israeli work ethic will rub off on the people of the Middle East. It will be difficult.

In that regard America is very fortunate. It is one of the few places in the world where aristocracy never took root. There is no monarch in America to confer titles. No Kings, no Queens, no Dukes, no Duchesses. The children of our wealthy have no special place in our society. If they want a place they have to earn it. It can't be earned by their ancestors. This is a huge change in culture for the Middle East. If they want it to take hold by the time the oil runs out they will have to get cracking. I think they finally know that.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Last Chance For No Chance

Israel is warning the Philistines of a wider war in order to reach its objectives of stopping rocket attacks on its territory and preventing rearmament of the Philistines of Gaza.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israel dropped bombs and leaflets on Gaza Saturday, pounding suspected rocket sites and tunnels used by Hamas militants and warning of a wider offensive despite frantic diplomacy to end the bloodshed.

Egypt hosted talks aimed at defusing the crisis, but war had the momentum on a bloody day on which more than 30 Palestinians, many of them noncombatants, were killed.

At hospitals, distraught relatives — men in jeans and jackets and women in black Islamic robes — sobbed and shrieked at the loss of family. Flames and smoke rose over Gaza City amid heavy fighting.
So far Hamas (or should I say Harm Us?) has declared that they will not agree to Israel's terms.
A top Hamas leader said the Gaza war has killed the last chance for settlement and negotiations with Israel.
Yeah. The Israelis are always blowing their last chances. Except if you read the Hamas Charter.
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."
They are getting their jihad. They are getting their martyrs. And they are getting creamed. I guess it is the last part they object to.

In any case, given the Hamas Charter what chance was there of an equitable negotiated solution with Hamas? None. So the Israelis have lost their last chance for no solution. I believe, however, the Hamas guy is lying. The Israelis will have future chances at no solution. After all since 1948 Israel has had numerous chances at no solution.
But neither strength nor magnanimity nor the combination of the two has solved Israel's basic problem. For all its brilliant victories on the battlefield, its gains in regional diplomacy remain modest. The Six-Day War of 1967, one of the most decisive military triumphs in history, led not to acceptance but to the famous "Three No's" of the Khartoum conference ("no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it").
The wars with Israel will go on until the Arabs find something better to do with their lives. Some times these things take centuries to work out. Israel should be in no hurry. After all their enemies are in no rush for a settlement of differences.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Friday, November 30, 2007

A Word With You Senator

A man with what appears to be a bomb strapped to his chest has taken hostages at a Hillary campaign office. The Wall Street Journal has an AP report.

ROCHESTER, N.H. -- A man who displayed what he said was a bomb was holding two hostages at Hillary Clinton's campaign office Friday afternoon, police said.

Authorities were sending a tactical bomb unit to assist local police, and the area was evacuated, said Maj. Michael Hambrook of New Hampshire State Police.

Mrs. Clinton was in Virginia Friday. She canceled her appearance at a Democratic National Committee meeting because of the situation.
That report is a little sketchy. What does the hostage taker want?
Hillary Project has details.
A young woman carrying an infant ran into a nearby store in tears, saying she had been in the campaign office when a man walked in, opened his coat and showed them a what looked like a bomb strapped to his chest with duct tape. She said the man let her and her child go.

There are reports from the scene that the hostage taker is demanding to speak with Senator Clinton.
This is really terrible for the hostages and can't be too good for Hillary either.

I just hope we are not entering an era of Middle Eastern politics in America. No one should take politics that seriously. Not even against Ms. Hillary.

Dandylion Salad provides this live video link.

Update: no live video is available as of now. Dandylion Salad has this report:
It was not immediately clear what was happening inside the office, and police have asked television stations to stop broadcasting live images of the offices so as not to interfere with their attempts to negotiate with the hostage-taker.
Update: Commenter LarryD informs me that Michelle Malkin has continuing updates and some info on the hostage taker.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Every One Knows There Is A War Coming

I have been interested in the future for a long time. Especially once I figured I was going to live the rest of my life there. So Michael Totten's bit on what the Israelis expect in their near future was of great interest to me.

While the United States is psychologically preparing itself to lose the war in Iraq, the Middle East may be plunging headlong toward a catastrophe.
Israel is preparing for an imminent war with Iran, Syria and/or their non-state clients.

Israeli military intelligence has projected that a major attack could come from any of five adversaries in the Middle East. Officials said such a strike could spark a war as early as July 2007.

On Sunday, Israeli military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Cabinet that the Jewish state faces five adversaries in what could result in an imminent confrontation. Yadlin cited Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and Al Qaida.

"Each of these adversaries is capable of sparking a war in the summer," Yadlin was quoted as saying.
I think that a general Middle East war is in our future. It will make last summer's action seem like a very small affair indeed.

So what is the word on the Israeli street?
UPDATE: A reader emails:
My daughter just came from spending five months at Ben Gurion University in Beer-Sheva. She had a wonderful time studying, hiking, camping, student demonstrations, working in soup kitchens, skiing up north, petra...etc. She came home two weeks ago and just matter of factly stated that "everyone knows there is a war coming."
That is pretty much how the "Israeli street" feels right now according to just about everything I've heard and read lately.
There are a couple of reasons (at least) why you might want to open a new front in a war.

1. You are winning - press the enemy on all fronts.
2. You are losing - provide a distraction.

It is hard to say which it is without an insiders look at both camps. If I was betting on this I'd favor the second point. Our enemies are not far from internal collapse. They have to move. The one thing you cannot do with bayonets is sit on them - Talleyrand approximately.

Will the U.S. get drawn in? Odds favor it because we are already in. I believe our success in Iraq means that a new front must be opened. Since a major new front against the US is not possible the only thing left is to go after our major ally in the area.

The US is making progress in Iraq. There is unrest in Iran. Our enemies may not be on the ropes but they are being severely punished. So this move to open a new front could be a strategic blunder due to overstretch unless the jihadis are hoping that with an Israeli war on the front pages they can lay low in Iraq and regroup.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Defeated By Pornography

I have been hinting around about what our Grand Strategy should be in the War On Islamic Fascism. Some of the hints can be found at: Islam vs American Morality and In The Long Run Their Struggle Will Be Hopeless and The New Middle East. So what should our strategy be in plainer terms? We should be undermining Islamic fascist culture. How? There in lies a tail.

Let us start with the BBC.

Up to 70% of files exchanged between Saudi teenagers' mobile phones contain pornography, according to a study in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.

The study quoted in Arab News focussed on the phones of teenagers detained by religious police for harassing girls.
So who is winning the battle of mobiles?
"The flash memory of mobile phones taken from teenagers showed 69.7% of 1,470 files saved in them were pornographic and 8.6% were related to violence," said report author Professor Abdullah al-Rasheed.
So sex is more popular than violence by a factor of better than 8 to 1. Excellent.

The Opinion Journal has some early news from the battle for Iraq.
In the giddy spirit of the day, nothing could quite top the wish list bellowed out by one man in the throng of people greeting American troops from the 101st Airborne Division who marched into town today.

What, the man was asked, did he hope to see now that the Baath Party had been driven from power in his town? What would the Americans bring?

"Democracy," the man said, his voice rising to lift each word to greater prominence. "Whiskey. And sexy!"

Around him, the crowd roared its approval.
That was a definite vote of confidence for my proposed strategy.

Ralph Peters takes a look at strategy in information warfare.
For the world masses, devastated by information they cannot manage or effectively interpret, life is "nasty, brutish . . . and short-circuited." The general pace of change is overwhelming, and information is both the motor and signifier of change. Those humans, in every country and region, who cannot understand the new world, or who cannot profit from its uncertainties, or who cannot reconcile themselves to its dynamics, will become the violent enemies of their inadequate governments, of their more fortunate neighbors, and ultimately of the United States. We are entering a new American century, in which we will become still wealthier, culturally more lethal, and increasingly powerful. We will excite hatreds without precedent.

We live in an age of multiple truths. He who warns of the "clash of civilizations" is incontestably right; simultaneously, we shall see higher levels of constructive trafficking between civilizations than ever before. The future is bright--and it is also very dark. More men and women will enjoy health and prosperity than ever before, yet more will live in poverty or tumult, if only because of the ferocity of demographics. There will be more democracy--that deft liberal form of imperialism--and greater popular refusal of democracy. One of the defining bifurcations of the future will be the conflict between information masters and information victims.
We can already see who the victims are. They are the people whose information on every subject has been restricted. The people who have no immunity to the torrent.
The contemporary expansion of available information is immeasurable, uncontainable, and destructive to individuals and entire cultures unable to master it. The radical fundamentalists--the bomber in Jerusalem or Oklahoma City, the moral terrorist on the right or the dictatorial multiculturalist on the left--are all brothers and sisters, all threatened by change, terrified of the future, and alienated by information they cannot reconcile with their lives or ambitions. They ache to return to a golden age that never existed, or to create a paradise of their own restrictive design. They no longer understand the world, and their fear is volatile.

Information destroys traditional jobs and traditional cultures; it seduces, betrays, yet remains invulnerable. How can you counterattack the information others have turned upon you? There is no effective option other than competitive performance. For those individuals and cultures that cannot join or compete with our information empire, there is only inevitable failure (of note, the internet is to the techno-capable disaffected what the United Nations is to marginal states: it offers the illusion of empowerment and community). The attempt of the Iranian mullahs to secede from modernity has failed, although a turbaned corpse still stumbles about the neighborhood. Information, from the internet to rock videos, will not be contained, and fundamentalism cannot control its children. Our victims volunteer.
I think that is one of the real keys. Our victims volunteer. My original idea was to have our government print up a bunch of pornoraphy and distribute it in the Middle East. I thought that there was no way this could become a government program. Too many Americans with loud voices would object. Fortunately with the advent of computers and mobile phones we do not have to print anything. Nor does our government have to have its fingerprints on the job. There is more than enough free porno on line to satisfy the immediate demand. In other words Open Source Pornography to the rescue.
Secular and religious revolutionaries in our century have made the identical mistake, imagining that the workers of the world or the faithful just can't wait to go home at night to study Marx or the Koran. Well, Joe Sixpack, Ivan Tipichni, and Ali Quat would rather "Baywatch." America has figured it out, and we are brilliant at operationalizing our knowledge, and our cultural power will hinder even those cultures we do not undermine. There is no "peer competitor" in the cultural (or military) department. Our cultural empire has the addicted--men and women everywhere--clamoring for more. And they pay for the privilege of their disillusionment.
We are addicted to their oil, it is the engine of our prosperity. They are addicted to our culture, the engine of their defeat. Strategy Page looks at the turmoil our communication technology is causing among the Arab/Persian masses:
May 3, 2007: One reason for Islamic terrorism is there are too many Moslems. At least in the sense that the economies of Islamic countries cannot create enough jobs for all the young people coming of age. Consider that for the last fifty years, the population of all Moslem countries has tripled. That's population growth that is more than double the rate of the world as a whole, and about ten times the rate of Europe. It's about five times the rate in the United States.

Many of those unemployed young men are angry, and making war is a typical activity of angry young men. But the women are not too happy either, and this is becoming one a major threat to Islamic terrorists. In Islamic societies, women's activities are greatly restricted. One thing they are encouraged to do is have lots of children. Many women in Islamic countries are rebelling against this. You don't hear much about this, because women don't rebel in the same loud, headline grabbing way that men do. What unhappy women often do is stop having children. Not so easy to do, you think? Well, think again.
That is the wind up. How about the pitch?
While Islamic countries tend to have very low levels of education, especially for women, the introduction of satellite television and DVDs has enabled even illiterate women to learn that there are other options. Ignorance is an excellent form of control, but when the ignorance is lost, so is the control.

Thus in most Islamic countries, the women are having fewer children, and making more noise about economic and educational opportunities. This resonates with some of the better informed Islamic men. One reason the West, and other parts of the world, have enjoyed much better economic growth than the Moslem countries, is that they have added large number of educated women to their work force.

Losing control of the women is something that makes Islamic conservatives very angry. Murderously angry. This is a vicious, lethal battle taking place largely out of the media spotlight. But, long term, it is destroying the source of Islamic terrorism.
Yep. I think the Saudi statistics bear that out.

Matthew Parris discusses the end of the End of the American Empire. He says that it is premature to blow taps for America.
Writing in The Spectator two weeks ago (‘Why there will be no future Pax Americana’), the distinguished essayist, author and thinker had sniffed the wind and concluded that it is all up for what he calls the US ‘imperium’. Islam has been Washington’s undoing, he believes, and after six short decades as top dog of the world, America is already stumbling and set to lose her predominance.
So does Islam really have the appeal its adherents claim? I don't think so and neither does Mr. Parris.
Have we not noticed how incompetent are Islamic governments and organisations the world over? Has it not occurred to us that if al-Qa’eda really were as wily and resourceful as we tell ourselves they are, and if their tentacles really did extend as wide and deep as some say, they would be on the advance — not battled into a stalemate by Western security and intelligence? If I were an al-Qa’eda activist I could have blown up Parliament or shot at least one of a range of prime ministers by now. Al-Qa’eda’s failure to infiltrate or penetrate Western structures has been complete.

There is a reason for this. Islam, in its more fundamentalist form, doesn’t work. Serious, committed Islamists are most unlikely to succeed within any structures but their own. Their own, meanwhile, are notoriously inefficient and corrupt. Only by lucky coincidence have much of the world’s known petrocarbons been found beneath Islamic nations, giving them what temporary influence they wield. How can any culture which despises modernity, hates mobility, distrusts individual liberty and autonomy, persecutes those who deviate from cultural or ideological norms, imposes a kind of brutal conformity on the way people live, love and work, and at a stroke disempowers 50 per cent of its people (women) from proper education and from all career opportunity so that every boy-child it produces is being brought up by a person who knows little of the world and only a fraction of what the boy must learn — how can such a culture bestride the 21st century, as Selbourne fears Islamism will do?
Which is not to say that Islam can't cause a lot of trouble. It can, but is it something with appeal to the Western World? I don't think so. Islam prescribes the most minute details of a person's life. The West says: tear down the Walls. Minimize the restrictions. Enlarge the limits. Which will ultimately be more popular?

Wretchard at the Belmont Club takes a look at the issue and our secret weapon:
And that, come right down to it, is why some Muslims believe in the power of Allah. Allah strengthens the will of his adherents past any breaking point. They are willing to go past death itself. And they say to us: with our rifle and our belief in Allah we can defeat you with your laser guided weaponry and your belief in Harry Reid. Come to prayer. Come to Islam.
We have a secret weapon. Come to Brittany. This is a weapon more fearsome than any 20 divisions of soldiers backed up by 10 CBGs.

The munitions are delivered at the speed of light. The targeting precice and once a target is located follow on rounds are almost automatic.
We are making them desire and pay for the liquifaction of their culture. Every dollar we pay for oil, not only buys physical weapons to be used against us but aso buys them our best weapon to be used against themselves and our weapons have better targeting and a negative cost for delivery. We profit from their desires. How much more American than that can you get? It tuns out much more.

Memri TV has a video clip from the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International about Saudi women stripping for Web Cams. They also have a transcript of the show.
Reporter: Behind closed doors and far from any supervising eyes, they remove their shame and turn their backs on all customs and traditions. Girls display their bodies in chat rooms on the Internet, in most cases, free of charge. As soon as one of these girls places the camera in front of her, she begins to strip, displaying her seductive charms to more than 300 young men of different ages. Some believe that the phenomenon of stripping over the Internet may be understood within the framework of social hypocrisy, especially since they believe that our religious and educational discourse does not attribute importance to the strengthening of self-restraint, and prefers the appearance over the essence. This drives some people to play several roles and wear several masks.
The liquifaction is well underway.
Reporter: On the other hand, many believe that web stripping has not reached the proportions of a phenomenon, and that these are merely isolated cases. They emphasize that the vast majority of our girls protect their modesty and respect the customs, and traditions. These people believe that web cams can be useful tools. They can be used to maintain family ties, and can have educational applications, in lectures and conferences, for example.

Many young men and women believe that the endless prohibitions drive them to hide behind closed doors, and surf in relations that rebel against all costumes and traditions, in search of love, in some cases, and in order to satisfy their urges, in other cases, especially since the Internet gives them the opportunity to openly declare their repressed desires without fear.

Young Saudi woman in shopping mall: The girls misuse the web cams. They take them into their rooms, and even their families do not know that they have cameras, or what the girls use their laptops or web cams for.

Young Saudi man in shopping mall: A girl can buy a web cam for a very cheap price, 70-75 riyals. She takes it to her room, closes the door, and begins the show.
As one of my favorite bands has said, "On with the show".

Yep it is just a few isolated incidents and outside agitators causing all the trouble. Sure it is. The subject is well known and yet no one knows who is involved. I believe that. Sure I do. Hasn't any one explained that when family members surf the 'net supervision is required?

I'm going to let Dr. Sanity have the last word.
If there was ever in history a better example of the paranoid fear of female sexuality, I can't think of it. You don't have to be much of an expert on Islam or Muslim culture to be able to observe that it has evolved into a societal structure whose primary purpose is to contain and manage female sexuality.

This containment has not only become a key aspect of the worship of their god; but it also is a key factor in individual personality development; as well as the main pollutant of all possible social interactions within the culture.

The men of Islam are obsessed with sex beyond even the wildest imaginings of the Western male's mind. And the obsession is far from healthy and even further from reality.

We frequently joke about men's preoccupation with sex and female body parts in the West, but our fascination with "T&A" is nothing when you consider that the Muslim world is literally consumed by female sexuality and with their fear of it. It is ironic that both Muslim men and women are under the mistaken impression that Western society is oversexualized compared to them, when in fact, it is practically impossible to be more obsessed with sexual matters than they are in Muslim communities.
It is unhealthy. However, in an information resticted society such obsession is inevitable.

It looks to me that their defeat by pornagraphy is inevitable. I might also add that I have been doing some field research for this article (yeah, right) and it appears that pornography by Arabs are increasingly frequent on the free amateur pornography sites. A sub theme in all this is that American music is popular as background on about half the videos that have any music. It is not just sex. Democracy, whiskey, sexy is more popular than Islam. Which means that what ever military action we take is just a holding action while our culture does a number on them.

H/T Little Green Footballs, and Instapundit, and The Daily Brief, and Instapundit again.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

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Sunday, December 24, 2006

Middle East Politics

You can't play Middle East Politics unless you know the rules. Thomas Friedman lays them down for reporters and other interested parties.

Rule 1: What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language. Anything said to you in English, in private, doesn’t count. In Washington, officials lie in public and tell the truth off the record. In the Middle East, officials say what they really believe in public and tell you what you want to hear in private.

Rule 2: Any reporter or U.S. Army officer wanting to serve in Iraq should have to take a test, consisting of one question: “Do you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?” If you answer yes, you can’t go to Iraq. You can serve in Japan, South Korea or Germany ­ not Iraq.

Rule 3: If you can’t explain something to Middle Easterners with a conspiracy theory, then don’t try to explain it at all,­ they won’t believe it.

Rule 4: In the Middle East, never take a concession, except out of the mouth of the person doing the conceding. If I had a dollar for every time someone agreed to recognize Israel on behalf of Yasser Arafat, I could paper my walls.

Rule 5: Never lead your story out of Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq with a cease-fire; it will always be over before the next morning’s paper.

Rule 6: In the Middle East, the extremists go all the way, and the moderates tend to just go away.

Rule 7: The most oft-used expression by moderate Arab politicians is: “We were just about to stand up to the bad guys when you stupid Americans did that stupid thing. Had you stupid Americans not done that stupid thing, we would have stood up, but now it’s too late. It’s all your fault for being so stupid.”

Rule 8: Civil wars in the Arab world are rarely about ideas ­ like liberalism vs. communism. They are about which tribe gets to rule. So, yes, Iraq is having a civil war. But there is no Abe Lincoln in this war. It’s the South vs. the South.

Rule 9: In Middle East tribal politics there is rarely a happy medium. When one side is weak, it will tell you, “I’m weak, how can I compromise?” And when it’s strong, it will tell you, “I’m strong, why should I compromise?”

Rule 10: Middle East civil wars end in one of three ways: a) like the U.S. civil war, with one side vanquishing the other; b) like the Cyprus civil war, with a hard partition and a wall dividing the parties; or c) like the Lebanon civil war, with a soft partition under an iron fist (Syria) that keeps everyone in line. Saddam Hussein used to be the iron fist in Iraq. Now it is America. If America doesn’t want to play that role, Iraq’s civil war will end with A or B.

Rule 11: The most underestimated emotion in Arab politics is humiliation. The Israeli-Arab conflict, for instance, is not just about borders. Israel’s mere existence is a daily humiliation to Muslims, who can’t understand how, if they have the superior religion, Israel can be so powerful. Al Jazeera’s editor, Ahmed Sheikh, said it best when he recently told the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche: “It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about seven million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West’s problem is that it does not understand this.”

Rule 12: The Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always make sure they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary.

Rule 13: America’s first priority is democracy, but the Arabs’ first priority is “justice.” The warring Arab tribes are all wounded souls, who really have been hurt by colonial powers, by Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, by Arab kings and dictators, and, most of all, by each other. For Iraq’s long-abused Shiite majority, democracy is first and foremost a vehicle to get justice. Ditto the Kurds. For the minority Sunnis, democracy in Iraq is a vehicle of injustice. For Americans, democracy is about protecting minority rights. For Arabs, democracy is about consolidating majority rights and getting justice.

Rule 14: The Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi had it right: “Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.”

Rule 15: Whether it is Arab-Israeli peace or democracy in Iraq, you can’t want it more than they do.
Which pretty much covers it.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

In The Long Run Their Struggle Will Be Hopeless

Martin Van Creveld is discussing (from a 1996 article) the fate of the state:

Finally, the unprecedented development of electronic information services seems to mark another step toward the coming collapse of the state. Traditionally no state has ever been able to completely control the thoughts of all its citizens; to the credit of the more liberally-minded among them, it must be added that they never even tried. Though the invention of print greatly increased the amount of information that could be produced, the ability to move that information across international borders remained limited by the need to physically transport paper, as well as by language barriers. The first of these problems was solved by the invention of radio. The introduction of television, which relies on pictures instead of words, to a large extent eliminated the second. During the 1980s cable and satellite TV, as well as videotape, became widely available and capable of providing near-instant coverage of events on a global scale. With the advent of computer networks and the consequent democratization of access to information, the battle between freedom and control was irretrievably lost by the latter, much to the regret of numerous governments.

Though the role of the various information services in the collapse of the former Eastern Bloc cannot be measured, it was certainly very large.[24] Indeed, even as these lines are being written, the future of Russia and its fellow republics of the Commonwealth of Independent States will be determined partly by the way the media will represent developments inside them. Conversely, states such as China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are imitating the late East Germany, doing what they can to prevent their populations from being corrupted by these developments. The social, economic, and technological price that these states pay for their self-enforced isolation is considerable. In the long run, their struggle almost certainly will be hopeless.
That is our enemy's weakness. The corrupting effect of knowledge, information and Britney Spears's crotch. Which is why the distribution of more Electricity every where around the world is so critical. A Neighborhood Development Package could help.

The Godly can not withstand good old American corruption. An environment Americans are used to if not exactly comfortable with. Not to mention Page 3 Girls for my Brit friends. BTW if you actually go to page 3 you are on your own. May not be work safe. The link provided is work safe. Generally.

Pamela the cutie from Atlas Shrugs has a nice bit about blogging for democracy.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Terrorists Say: Vote for Democrats

According to World Net Daily the jihadis are rooting for the Democrats.

"Of course Americans should vote Democrat," Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, told WND.

"This is why American Muslims will support the Democrats, because there is an atmosphere in America that encourages those who want to withdraw from Iraq. It is time that the American people support those who want to take them out of this Iraqi mud," said Jaara, speaking to WND from exile in Ireland, where he was sent as part of an internationally brokered deal that ended the church siege.

Jaara was the chief in Bethlehem of the Brigades, the declared "military wing" of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party.

Together with the Islamic Jihad terror group, the Brigades has taken responsibility for every suicide bombing inside Israel the past two years, including an attack in Tel Aviv in April that killed American teenager Daniel Wultz and nine Israelis.

Muhammad Saadi, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, said the Democrats' talk of withdrawal from Iraq makes him feel "proud."

"As Arabs and Muslims we feel proud of this talk," he told WND. "Very proud from the great successes of the Iraqi resistance. This success that brought the big superpower of the world to discuss a possible withdrawal."

Abu Abdullah, a leader of Hamas' military wing in the Gaza Strip, said the policy of withdrawal "proves the strategy of the resistance is the right strategy against the occupation."
Anybody who has been watching could have figued thios out.

You have to wonder though if the jihadis are so smart why they didn't keep this under their turbans until after the election.

Obviously if we have to do something like Iraq again then the jihadis will hold on longer because they believe that even with a good hand Americans will fold. After all General Giap says that the Americans never lost a major battle in the war. How is it possible to lose a war while winning all the battles? Cut and run.

Update: 05 Nov '06 0919z

CNN reports that the Middle East hopes for a policy change by the US Government.
"The whole region is volatile and it cannot face more problems and challenges," Arab League official Hesham Youssef said in a recent interview.
I think they will faces as many problems and challenges as they create. The volatility of the region is historical and very little to do with US policy.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Theologically Based Cultural Norms

Jonah Goldberg over at NRO says that theologically based cultural norms are the foundations of our liberties. I correct that impression:

--==--

Actually it was the opposition of one set of theologically based cultural norms against another set of theologically based cultural norms that gave us all the good things you mention.

Sometimes theologically based cultural norms are wrong. Thus no theology or its attendant ideology ought to be ascendent.

--==--

I had more to say about this on 17 October in relationship to Bush's Foreign Policy.

Geoge Bush, in the most radical change in American Foreign Policy in 200+ years has embarked on the world transforming policy of separating church and politics. This is quite surprising for a man so deeply involved in the politics of the religious right in America. America's stated policy is democracy, but not just any kind of democracy. It will be a democracy where the will of the people is supreme. The will of a few will not have ultimate sway. We see this in America. The government is secular and bad policy is not the writ of god. Dread Scott is no longer the law of the land.