Pictures of the dead
Yet again, our glorious and supremely eloquent counterinsurgency strategy stands to be liquidated by the foolishness of our troops in Afghanistan.
Really? Photos, published by the LA Times, depict soldiers posing with the remains of a suicide bomber who’d just tried to kill them. Is it the burning Korans and photos of dead terrorists that’s causing us to lose this war, or is the strategy itself the problem?
Let me be clear that the soldiers did wrong. The photos (2 years old, I may add) should not have been taken for the purposes of personal collections. Why? Because it’s the rule. Mostly, just because it’s the rule and soldiers follow orders. A breakdown in the ability of troops to follow the rules results in a mob, not a professional army.
But it was not the soldiers who killed the dead terrorist. He killed himself while trying to kill them. Do we feel the same way about photos photos taken of dead robbers and criminals in the Old West?
How about photos of gangsters and miscreants from the 20′s and 30s? Remember Bonnie and Clyde?
Michael Yon wrote an article saying we shouldn’t blame the media. He’s right. The Soldiers are the first cause of this problem. But how big of a problem is it?
American soldiers in WWII mailed the skulls of dead Japanese back to their ladies:
And frankly, the sight of the dead insurgent is the historical tool used by rulers to crush uprisings. Ask the Romans and Vlad Drakul. Hiding the results of being a terrorist doesn’t help our cause. The message to all young Afghan and Pakistani males should be that this is what you look like when you strap on a bomb and try to murder people.
Let’s get real. This is not an atrocity. This is soldiers breaking an administrative rule. There should be no talk of kicking them out of the military. And, the soldier who gave the photos to the LA Times is a weasel. If he were so concerned, he should have given the photos to his chain of command–years ago. We need a little more outrage aimed at the culture that breeds these self-immolating haters. In any event, don’t ask me or other soldiers to like the people that are trying to kill us. Blog and talk bravely of our philosophy, and cultural sensitivity and all that, but just don’t ask us to hug the dude trying to take me from my kids. Maybe 10 years from now, but not now.
I’ve spent more time in Afghanistan than most. I worked along side young soldiers every day. I never once saw anything like this. I did not witness any heroic deeds, though there are many in the last ten years that have become heroes. But I did witness an incredible adherence to duty, to getting the job done, day in, day out, under very uncomfortable circumstances. 20 year old men doing whatever was asked of them, going without real sleep or hot food for days, sleeping in trucks waiting for a car bomb to drive up. Being dirty for a week at a time. To say that these photos depict some sort of evil culture within the military is just plain stupid.
Paul Krugman: Repugnant
Paul Krugman penned a spectacularly awful article in the New York Times regarding 9-11. He has outdone himself as a left-wing zealot whose hatred of America bleeds into his vitriolic episodes.
I myself do not like sloganism in regards to 9-11 or much else. It violates a law of good writing: avoid the cliche’. But Krugman’s articles border on the insane to me. His ideas on economics are ludicrous. Interestingly, Krugman disabled all comments on the article.
Donald Rumsfeld tweeted that he was cancelling his subscription to the New York Times over Krugman’s article. I encourage everyone else to do the same.
To those who died in the Towers, on Flight 93 and the Pentagon 10 years ago: I salute, honor and remember you. And to those who have and will die fighting the global insurgency called al-Qaeda, you could give no more.
The descending Arab Winter
The new government in Egypt appears unable to maintain law and order. In my opinion this will likely snowball. Look for armed militias to begin roaming the streets, first to maintain security. Then, as certain militias gain power and notoriety, look for warlords to step to the front.
In Libya, raiders looted Gadaffi’s surface to air missile stores. There are thousands missing, and with no air targets in Libya, it’s safe to say that al-Qaeda will get control of some of the SAMs and use them in other theaters. Air travel, civilian and military, just got more dangerous in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.
The Arab Spring and global insurgency
Recently, Israeli Major-General Eyal Eisenberg predicted an “Arab Winter” in which the revolutions taking place around the Arab world culminate in a multi-front general war against Israel. While it remains to be seen if that’s the case, I take a very dim view of what’s happening in places like Egypt and Libya. Not surprisingly, many on the Left are overjoyed at the Arab Spring. To them, it’s about Muslim hippies fighting The Man. At an intellectual level, they may sense the guile and will of Jihadist Islam, but they willfully ignore this in favor of Coke and a Smile in Muslim lands.
The Arab Spring fits quite nicely into the Global Insurgency theory of modern terrorism. This theory posits that Islamic Salafists (those holding to rigid, medieval views of Islam and life in general), are not only working in local insurgencies, but hope that various uprisings around the world will eventually coalesce into a greater Islamic state. It is similar in ways to Mao’s and Lenin’s doctrines. The local fighters of course do not think at this level, worrying only about their immediate needs. But people at the top of al-Qaeda and similar terrorist organizations do think about the big picture.
We must also consider how clever al-Qaeda’s masterminds are. Jihadists, for instance, have actually studied the homosexual movement in America in order to find out how such a small group can cause so much change on its behalf. I believe that many in the jihadist movement came to recognize the Western mind’s affinity for a popular uprising. In stead of a “top down” jihad, with men like bin Laden and Abu Zarqawi getting lots of media attention, the jihadist movement is now trying to put a grassroots face on its global insurgency. And it’s worked brilliantly. There’s very little to indicate that those who’ve seized power in Egypt and Libya know very much about running a country, but al-Qaeda got what it wanted: the removal of secular Arab leadership from the Sinai Peninsula with all the trappings of state power left intact and with no Western troops on the ground to make sure things turn out the way the West would prefer.
The Palestinian cause represents the great Red Herring for al-Qaeda. Arab despots and terrorist groups need the Palestinians because it keeps the worlds eyes off what those Arab leaders are really doing. No mater what happens, they can keep pointing to Israeli “oppression”, which is why Palestinians never really want to come to the discussion table and cut a real deal; they’re being manipulated and funded by terrorists in order to maintain pressure on Israel. The Palestinians are being used as a classic, global insurgency agitation tool. The Palestinians will continue to sucker-punch Israel. Al-Qaeda et al hopes that Israel will respond in a way which negatively changes world opinion against the Jewish state, thus opening Israel to attack by Arab states without Western intervention.
The Long War gets longer
Moammar Gaddafi has been wrenched from power by a group of rebels whose composition remains ambiguous and possibly quite dangerous.
In the end, it seems like the West is worse off than it was a year ago; the entire Sinai Peninsula is essentially under the control of the combined forces of al-Qaeda in Iraq, The Muslim Brotherhood, and a rag-tag group of insurgents whose loyalties will likely go to the highest bidder. We now have to worry about Gaddafi’s massive stocks of surface-to-air missiles and his alleged loads of chemical weapons. What? WMD you say? The rebels descending on Tripoli have already raided some of the Libyan military’s weapons stores. We must assume that al-Qaeda has operatives stalking the land trying to get their hands on weapons not otherwise easily obtained. After all, the highest numbers of foreign fighters that entered Iraq to join the insurgency were from Libya and one of the Libyan rebel leaders admits to fighting and recruiting for al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Without NATO forces on the ground, expect chaos to reign and civil war-lite to be the order of the day in Libya.
Meanwhile, the media largely ignored events in Egypt prior to the recent death of Egyptian security officers in clashes between Palestinians and the IDF. Egyptian prisons were opened up after Mubarak resigned, releasing hundreds if not thousands of hard core jihadists. Many Egyptian police stations are subject to attack and some have been abandoned. The gas pipeline between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai has been attacked 5 times. Yet nary a peep from the media, whom loves a good revolution. A look at history shows bad things happen in Egypt when the jihadists are released from jail, even in an act of goodwill. Sadat paid the price for such folly.
Perhaps most troubling is that Egypt and Libya border one another. While it may not be the Caliphate, it seems the same forces are active in both countries, and their proximity will make whatever plans al-Qaeda has in the region all the more tenable.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and its the elements that are most willing to employ force in the Muslim world that always fill the voids. Fundamentalist Islam has doomed the Muslim world to these options: Either a heavy handed if anti-extremist ruler controls the country with harsh laws and uses of his security forces to crush extremists; religious extremists maintain power in many of the same ways while funding proxy terror orgs, as Iran does; or fundamentalist militants rain chaos and destruction, such as in Somalia and Yemen.
None of this bodes well for Israel, and ultimately the West. The Long War just got longer.
Will Pakistan Collapse?
Recently, the United States government stated it was withholding $800 million of a $ 4 billion package to Pakistan. In response, Pakistani government officials hinted that Pak military units may be removed from western Pakistani regions, citing the cost of keeping troops in those areas without the money that the US threatens to hold back.
The diplomatic relationship between Pakistan and the United States has all but collapsed; the two countries’ military forces, however, are still cooperating and coordinating operations along the Af/Pak border, though even in that, hostilities have arisen. Pakistani troops have fired on US helicopters and US helicopters have fired on Pak troops said to be helping insurgents cross the border, and US troops die from mortar and rocket fire emitted from areas just inside Pakistan.
CIA contractor Raymond Davis’ detention by the Pakistani government severely eroded what little trust remained between the US and Pakistan, and after weeks of intense interrogation by Pak intelligence, it seemed the Pak government didn’t like the answers it was getting. The Pakistanis demanded that the US cease all covert activities inside Pakistan; the US balked.
Then, the stake through the vampire’s heart: Bin Laden is found camping safely inside a Pak military garrison city, running al-Qaeda while watching a television with a coat hanger for an antennae.
The question now, is, will Pakistan fall to the rabid assaults of Islamic terrorists it berthed and bred?
The answer is not found by looking at the situation purely from a military, logistics, or correlation of forces standpoint. Pakistan’s military is strong enough to hold off insurgents attempting to seize control of Islamabad. That is, if we are to believe that the military is not already in the clutches of insurgent elements.
The Pak military and notorious intelligence service, the ISI, are sometimes called states within a state. They seem to act with complete autonomy and without regard to civilian masters in Islamabad. Such is the inheritance of the Pak mindset where the country has vacillated between military and civilian control for decades. Despite the problems the country faced when run by the generals, it did even worse under civilian leadership. And so the military still holds a significant amount of prestige and power.
Woven into the ISI and Pakmil quilt, are Islamic extremists. These extremists use Islamic zeal and jihad in order to fortify its position against arch enemy, India. The extremists have created proxy armies consisting of radical Islamic militants in order to maintain strategic depth in Afghanistan and to wage a punitive terror war in the Kashmir region on the Indian border. However, the dog got off the leash. In classic Asian style, Pakistan has tried to play both ends, or at least appear to do so. But Islamic radicals are notoriously bad at compromise. Viewing the civilian government in Islamabad as a US puppet, terrorists began waging war against these “heretics and traitors”. Some of the insurgent groups, such as Tehriki-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), even attacked an ISI headquarters building.
So the question that must be answered, is how many Islamic radicals exist within the ISI and the Pak military’s general staff. To what extent do these radicals have access to the deepest secrets of the Pak military, such as the location and activation codes of Pakistan’s 150 some odd nuclear warheads?
The real danger to Pakistan and indeed the world, is not from Pakistan’s Islamic militants per se, but from a potential military coup in which the extremists inside the military attempt to gain control, possibly recruiting hoards of Islamic guerrillas for its fight.
There is also an outside chance that a small group of extremists within Pakmil provides a singular nuclear weapon to a radical group, which then explodes the weapon in India or in a Western nation. There is only a small chance of this happening as only a truly suicidal group would consider such a thing. While suicide is certainly not out of the minds of jihadists, it tends to be used by individuals, particularly uneducated young men with no stake in a future. It is a strategic and operational weapon employed by al-Qaeda, the Haqqani Network and TTP, but the ideological leadership within these organizations never themselves employ it. The use of a singular nuclear weapon would almost certainly guarantee a massive response–possibly nuclear– by the victim nation. The terrorists’ government handlers are likely loath to risk their own nuclear immolation.
The most likely scenario involves what can be termed a “Lamprey Insurgency”. That is, a state becomes the puppet of a terrorist organization. In this case the insurgency’s goal is not to become the government; that involves far too much responsibility and accountability and also makes the organization an easier target for attack by Western militaries. Instead, the terrorist organizations maintain a certain level of control of the government through threats of assassination and other terrorist actions. The government attempts to maintain peace by passing and enforcing laws that reinforce terrorist world views ie sharia. The host government may also provide funding, training and military equipment to the Lamprey Insurgency. This is notably different from organizations such as Hezbollah because the Lamprey Insurgency essentially holds the host government hostage, whereas proxy terror organizations like Hezbollah are fully, though surreptitiously, under the full control of state governments.
In actuality the Lamprey Insurgency possibility has already taken place in Pakistan. But there are still conflicting interests between the extremists and the moderate civilian politicians. The insurgents want to expel the Infidel from Afghanistan whereas the Pakistani civilian government finds that the war eases tensions in the country. The trucking industry constitutes a huge portion of a struggling Pakistani economy. Eighty percent of all nonlethal US supplies moves through Pakistan via the Pakistan trucking industry. The US government also buys some items produced in Pakistan for use on its Forward Operating Bases. Some of this equipment is sold at massively inflated prices, such as $200,000 golf carts used by troops to move around large US bases. Additionally, the Pakistani government is able to export underemployed, violent extremists into a warzone, minimizing the chaos such men can create within Pakistan.
Perhaps the greatest threat arising from Pakistan is its enmity with India. Some say that Pakistan is obsessed with India. The two countries have fought four wars since 1947 and continu a quasi war, so it’s quite understandable that Pakistanis hate Indians and vice versa. At some point India will find it necessary to maintain its legitimacy as a state by retaliating for the terror attacks in Kashmir, and another large military confrontation between the two countries may ensue. Considering the level of hatred and the Islamic extremist factor, a nuclear war between the two countries is not out of the question.
One factor that is rarely spoken of is Pakistan’s Asian culture. Instinctively, people think of Pakistan and Afghanistan as Middle Eastern countries, but they are Asian and carry with them the propensity for war by deception. Sun Tzu did not form their cultures but was formed of them. The acme of Sun Tzu’s warfare may have been winning without fighting, but this does not mean winning without killing. Terrorism works and it always will.
And so it is unlikely that Pakistan will collapse in a classic sense. But the possibility of a coup by extremist factions within the military is quite high. Coups are a national past time in Pakistan. Pakistan is likely to remain the heart of international terrorism for decades to come because its nuclear arsenal prohibits Western nations from taking decisive action.
Alexander in the Af-Pak War
America no longer has the will to fight and win wars. If our enemies are able to weather our airstrikes, we are wholly unprepared at nearly every level to place sufficient pressure on fanatical guerrillas whom find war a preferable state to peace. Never in history has an army enjoyed such a monopoly on firepower and mobility as does America, and yet been so unwilling to use it.
We are blessed by the geographical bulwarks of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and cursed with partisan demagogues in Washington who know little of military history or the culture of war. Perfectly willing to start a war, the politicians don’t want to hear what it takes to win it. No matter how much data multi-million dollar computer networks feed those in the Pentagon and Congress, few of the recipients of that data can feel our wars; the data crunchers and politicos can know the wars, but the visceral sensations of ground commanders and grunts will always be beyond them, as thus we can assume that almost all of their decisions will prove inadequate. When war does not fit into comfort zones or proffered theories, many believe we just need to try harder to make the theories work. Few would question the theories themselves lest horrible answers become truths.
Washington’s elites are safe when we lose. The 25 year old squad leader in Afghanistan is not.
The quaint mythologies of counterinsurgency theorems have us following a Yellow Brick Road paved by Non-Governmental Agencies and State Department aid money. We hoped that Oz was a place where suicidal zealots laid down their rifles and stopped making bombs in exchange for a school house and a new pair of shoes. When the curtain was thrown aside to reveal the Wizard, we saw his bloody hand raised skyward, grasping the severed head of the school teacher. And even when the sheer brutality and power of the Taliban terrorist revealed itself, we refused to believe what we saw. We prefer to think that all men want peace, that brutality doesn’t work, and that killing cannot be the answer. Convenient dreams for those in Washington whose greatest daily danger is a Tweeted revelation of sexual misconduct. We question ourselves whereas the men of old, seeing the world more clearly than do we, quickly identified the problem and dealt with it. Swimming is oceans of information, we find it more difficult to choose proper paths, but the ancient warriors of yore, though lacking technological aids—perhaps because he lacked those aids—instinctively discerned human psychology.
Enter Alexander The Great. Imagine for a moment that future technologies could spring the Macedonian king back to life and the modern social and political delusions that prevent decisive victories in war have vanished by the wayside. Now place Alexander in command of history’s most powerful military and charge him with defeating the insurgency in Afghanistan. First, we’ll have to listen to Alexander give us a history lesson. Contrary to revisionists whom extol the invincibility of Afghans fighters, Alexander was never defeated by the people inhabiting the land we now call Afghanistan. And then he would tell us that his tutor, Aristotle, wasn’t about giving peace a chance; the father of Western philosophy implored young Alexander to force Hellenistic ethnic supremacy upon the world of the barbarians.
To the Neo-Alexander, defeating the Taliban begins with an offer to meet insurgent leadership at the bargaining table. And here’s the offer: Submit or die. This language resonates with the Taliban at a far deeper level than does the current Coalition Force offers of reintegration and power sharing. A reasonable man, Alexander offers the Taliban their religion and way of life in exchange for their weapons. The sovereign lines of the Pakistani border mean nothing. They are semi-porous membranes that hold back American power and allow insurgents to move freely to and from their safe havens in Pakistan. In response to each suicide bomber making his way from Western Pakistan, Alexander orders biometric identification through DNA testing, and using covert CIA intelligence cells seeded throughout Pakistan, identifies the village from which the suicide bomber originated. The Macedonian orders B-2 bomber and Reaper drone strikes on all known Madrassas in the village. No apologies are offered for civilian casualties. The retributive strikes are timely and painful. The suicide bombers quickly transform from heroes to sources of great pain in the villages. Soon, being a suicide bomber is disgraceful, not honorable.
The terrorists resort to using their greatest weapon: The media. In response, all media embeds are ordered to leave Afghanistan. Journalists stream into North and South Waziristan, hoping to document American atrocities. Members of the Haqqani Network set up ad hoc repeater stations, hoping to broadcast propaganda from small, handheld Motorola VHF radios. America counters by dropping electromagnetic pulse bombs at random intervals into the tribal areas. These weapons destroy any modern electronic equipment, leaving journalists to their pens and notebooks and Haqqani insurgents to courier communications.
As for terrorist infiltration along the Pakistan border, Alexander knows that not every infiltrator can be stopped. However, it is possible to make crossing into Afghanistan too painful a gamble. Areas along the border are declared free-fire zones. Approximately 5 kilometers on each side of the border are free-fire; that is, since the areas are assumed cleared, anyone in those areas can be fired on. The 5 kilometer range allows for ranges of Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan and Haqqani Network rocket fire, such as which killed two American Soldiers at FOB Salerno in May of 2011 (with no punitive action taken by the US military out of respect to our Pakistani “friends”).
Entire villages will be held accountable for the actions of individuals that live within them. Villagers in Afghanistan always know what goes on within the village. Villages where US forces are attacked will be subject to curfews and those found to be involved in insurgent activity shall be given a field trial by US military officers and if found guilty, executed. Special Operations night raids and air assaults will be constant in areas infested with Taliban, al-Qaeda and Haqqani fighters. Protests by villagers about the night raids will be ignored, as most of these protests are spawned by agitated insurgents. The cooperation of local villagers is the goal, but America under Alexander will place the safety of her troops and the destruction of the insurgency above the safety of villagers. Civilian casualties will be avoided when possible, but local Afghans will need to provide intelligence and information to American forces in order to ensure that America kills the right people. Otherwise, the insurgents will merely use civilains as living shields. Cooperation will help both the Afghans and America. The “sanctity” of the people will no longer be assumed; entire populations can be just as evil as individuals. The terrorists will be held to the same standards that the US military is held. All war crimes will be prosecuted in the field if possible.
The shrines of dead al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters will be closely monitored by payed CIA informants. Sympathizers who come to venerate terrorist grave sites will be followed, and at a convenient time, interviewed and their biometric data entered into a huge data base known as BATS–Biometrically Automated Toolset. These people will be placed on watch lists, denied entry to US bases, and denied the possibility of serving within Afghan government security forces for 5 years. Individuals assessed to be of a higher threat level shall be denied access and government work on a permanent basis.
Alexander will reward the friends of America. India, the largest democracy on Earth, will be provided special trade rights. She has earned it. A full embargo of Pakistan will commence. We have treated our enemies better than our friends in hopes that our goodwill would bring them to our side. But they mistook our goodwill for weakness. Those who fought bravely beside us, such as Britain, did not get 4 billion dollar rewards, such as did Pakistan.
Every chance will be given to those in the Federally Administered tribal Region of Pakistan to formally surrender Siraj and Jallaludin Haqqani, the familial leaders of the Haqqani Network. America will make war for a better peace denied her by maniacs. Letters will dropped in each village in North and South Waziristan, telling the inhabitants to give up their weapons and submit to searches of their residences. Aggressive actions taken by Pak military units will result in 5,000 lb GBU-28 Penetrator Bombs being dropped on all Pakistani nuclear missile sites, which have been carefully tracked by the National Ground Intelligence Center and the National Geospatial Agency for years. Alexander–a genius at war–knows that this war will escalate. All wars escalate. But no one can out-escalate the United States Military.
Villages not wishing to submit to search will be given 24 hours notice to evacuate. Then the village will be razed by Fire Support Teams (FIST) utilizing 155 mm Howitzer fire and B-52 Arc Light strikes and tactical airstrikes under the guidance of Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) teams. Not only will there be no apologies for these actions, Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) units will broadcast images of the destruction to other villages, warning them of the implications of resistance.
Anything less than the above guarantees an American defeat in Afghanistan. If our leaders cannot do what Alexander would do, they should save the blood of our Soldiers and Marines and bring them home. And they should never again begin or escalate a war for political gain if they don’t intend to win it.
My time walking through the Old Testament
I’ll be writing several entries on my blog about my experiences in Afghanistan. Look for it soon. It’ll include photos and several vignettes. Not everyone will like what they read; we screwed the pooch on this one.
An article I wrote on Pastor Terry Jones, published in The Gainesville Sun
Pushlished in April in the Gainseville Sun. Originally accepted for publication by The Jerusalem Post, but that’s another story…
My opinions on Pastor Terry Jones, who oversaw the burning of a Koran which resulted in riots and death in northern Afghanistan.
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20110406/NEWS/110409713/1123/opinion?p=all&tc=pgall
Target: Bin Laden
Knowing the rules
I read an article written by David Killcullen, one of the world’s top counter-insurgency men. He stated that the populace in a counter-insurgency want to know the rules that have been set in place for them. They want to know their boundaries, what will bring punishment and what will bring reward.
I believe that one of the biggest failures of the last 8 years in the war in Afghanistan is the lack of effort in reporting the real reasons and intentions for America being in the country in the first place. Since General Petraeus took over, there’s been a concerted effort to rectify this, but there’s a long way to go.
As Washington Post writer, David Ignatius points out, according to recent polls, Afghan haven’t a clue as to why Americans are in their backyard.
Nature abhors a vacuum. And so it is with information and propaganda. Whenever Coalition Forces fail to fill information gaps, we can be sure the enemy will oblige. Add to this the propensity of people in the region to believe the wildest of mythology–a neck-tie is a secret symbol of Christianity, Osama Bin Laden is a CIA operative–and you have a formula for unending war. Many Afghans, since they may not have even heard of 9-11, can only assume that America is in-country to do what every other invader has tried to do: Become a colonial power. And since America is primarily a Christian power, we must want to destroy Islam, too. No Afghan tribe that believes these things will ever fully support our efforts. And we need full support if the people are to be the eyes that find insurgents, not just a level of support that takes our money and goes about enabling the Taliban. The Taliban aggressively speads its message and rules through Shabnamah or Night Letters as well as face to face contact. The message and rules? Cooperate with the Coalition and you die. The Taliban has won the information war in to this point in Afghanistan. After researching the subject for an intelligence paper I wrote, I believe it is the number one reason that this war has lasted so long.
In a land rife with illiteracy, getting the word out is a huge task. But it is doable. When I visited a refugee camp in Afghanistan, I saw 25,000 inhabitants whom were ripe for Taliban picking. I made sure when I spoke with the camps leader to ask him why he thought America was in Afghanistan. I also told him that he needs to tell all of his people that America is here to fight al-Qaeda and trans-national terrorists, that American soldiers don’t want to spend years in his country; they want to go back to their family and friends. But we needed his help.
Every leader that interfaces with various tribes in Afghanistan should have a list of things that they tell the people. On that list should be an explanation for American presence and the rules that the people are expected to follow: Do this and we help you. Do this and we kill you or arrest you. The messaging should also include a laundry list of all the horrible things that the Taliban does, and a negation of the myth (propagated as much by Western media as the Taliban) that Americans kill more civilians than the insurgents do. All of this should be SOP with every engagement.
It’s not about rights, it’s about adaption
I remember when I was in college and driving on the University of Maine campus back in the early 90s. Young college students being the unenlightened ideologues they were and are, would often step into the road to cross without looking both ways for oncoming vehicles. I’m sure many of them simply regarded it as their right to cross the road, regardless of the dangers. It was the job of the car drivers to stop for them.
As a cop, I would tell people that ”rights” were not force fields set against the laws of physics. Even if a person does have the right of way to cross, it’s still a good idea to look both ways before one steps into the street. Just because the state has given you the right to cross and mandates that a vehicle stop and wait (this is not always the case by the way), doesn’t mean that a .5 ton car will bounce off you in reverence of state law. As such, I consider a pat down the same as looking both ways. A little more time, but it’s worth it, with no material harm done. If the government took cash out of my pocket every time I stepped through security, then I’d have a problem. It seems the right to be un-offended is the only right being violated. And as a cop, I offended many sensibilities, to the point where I didn’t want to tell people what my job was, lest they give me a laundry list of how their rights had been violated by cops in the past.
And I think that this idea applies to pat downs and other security measures taken to minimize the threats of terrorism. Some want to stubbornly stand their ground claiming their right to be free of too much government intervention. But what about all of the people getting on the plane that want to know that no body else is carrying a bomb? Legal rights will not protect them from an explosion.
But as far as I can see, no one’s rights are being violated. People of course can sue the government claiming that search and seizure laws are being violated. If they are, I feel confident that the courts will figure it out. I also suspect they’ll come to the same conclusions as before.
This also leads me to the second part of this posting, which is that some people want to call this a war, and yet do not want to feel the least inconvenienced by it. In this America and in this war, it is a very small percentage of the people doing the actual fighting and suffering. There’s been no draft, no co-opting of industry by the government, no forced imprisonment of Muslims simply for being Muslim. In fact the the majority of the discomfort experienced by Americans is the ceaseless drum beat of news coverage about the war. Would most people really know there’s a war on if the news didn’t tell them so?
All of these facts stand in stark reality to what Americans of past generations faced in war. Conscription, racially based imprisonment, huge death rates. None of which we face today. And yet a pat down has some saying that the terrorists are winning because we’ve been forced to change something in our day-to-day lives. Well excuse me for thinking that that’s to be expected in a war.
“We’re only fighting yesterday’s threat”, some say. Yes. But if you didn’t fight yesterday’s threat, it would continue to be today’s threat. If I’m in a gunfight, and I keep shooting enemy soldiers in the chest because they have no body armor, guess where I’ll be aiming in the next fight? The chest–it’s the biggest target with plenty of blood in it. Put body armor on the enemy and suddenly I have to aim for something less lethal or at least smaller, like the head –a notoriously bad gamble in a gun fight. And so it goes with terrorists. Yes we have to constantly adapt. Sometimes that means inconvenience (in the most convenient age in history). When we find our rules too constricting, we, as now, will be forced to consider what we value more: Our rights and convenience or security.
I’m just not that offended
My liberal friends are pissed at me. My conservative friends are pissed at me. Sorry everyone, but I’m just not that offended by the TSA pat down process. Maybe I’ve lost my edge, but I don’t think so because I’m still for killing terrorists. Janet Napolitano is not qualified for her job, but that’s not the particular issue here. Even my favorite author Ralph Peters is against the pat down.
I see a lot of chain-reaction outrage. People see the news reporting all the outrage going on, and suddenly, “How outrageous”! I keep seeing it on Drudge Report, which I look at daily–all the outrage. Sure, much of what the TSA does is stupid, but not outrageous. Much what of our government does as a whole is short-sighted and stupid. The new health care for instance. Add 32,000,000 patients but tell us it’ll be cheaper? Hmm. Didn’t quite work out.
I keep trying to feel offended. I really do. I keep imagining over and over being screened and becoming so enraged that I renounce my citizenship for free-er lands, such as Venezuela, but I just can’t summon the angst over the pat down.
Maybe it’s because I’m in the Army and so used to having my “rights” trampled on that a simple pat down seems more like a free rub down to me. I mean, I’m subject to supplying the Army with urine during random drug tests in which a fellow NCO glares at my junk while I give a sample. And not through an x-ray machine’s screen, either. Further more, when I was living in the barracks, the Army could at will come in to my room on a “Health and welfare” check and take a gander through all my stuff.
Did the Army become un-American by doing so?
I thought I was the only “right winger” who wasn’t outraged and the only liberal who didn’t feel a twinge more self-serving, self-hate. But no. I looked on my friend and author’s Facebook page, John Ringo, and he thought it was rather amusing, the whole thing. He too was in the Army and has had so many run-ins with foreign security services that he found a recent situation where TSA searched US soldiers returning from war, for two hours, just stupid, not outrageous. They all had weapons, too. He just pointed out that it was dumb of TSA to even bother with military chartered flights, given that all soldiers come back with weapons.
Seems that TSA has become the punching bag of both the right and the left, whom hate them for different reasons; the left because they are the brood of the War on Terror, and the right because TSA is viewed as an intrusive government organ. But TSA in its current capacity could never be as intrusive as the IRS because if people became so offended at the security measures being taken, they’d just stop flying and collapse the industry. At which point the government would just renege on all the offensive security measures. People would have to stop working to avoid the IRS, which is an impossibility so the IRS is far more powerful than TSA. Then I just think about what George washington and Nathanael Greene did to American troops who misbehaved: They beat them with sticks and whips. But we’re on the verge of Orwellian interlude for a pat down.
The terrorists haven’t won, they won’t win, they can’t win. But neither can murderers, rapists, or thieves win. Yet justice demands we address those issues. And so, I’m for the pat down because I believe it closes an obvious window of opportunity for people who’ve been given every opportunity to kill us. We give them civilian trials, and lose, we refuse to profile, even though 95% of terrorists are Muslim, and we release men from Gitmo to gain political power, only to have them return to fight and kill Americans again.
So I’ll keep my rage for dead Americans. I’ll keep my rage for the fight at hand and I’ll remember Thomas Jefferson’s words, when he issued the orders on how to handle the Barbary Pirates: “Destroy them for their impudence.”
And we will.
Tyner’s argument is junk
I know that just about everyone has heard about John Tyner, the 31 year old who threatened a TSA employee with arrest, 
should they touch his “junk”.
I have a degree in law enforcement, and am fairly well versed in law when it comes to searches and seizures. I’m not however, a lawyer, though I’ve faced them many times as a witness for the State of Maine in criminal proceedings. In my current professional field, I’m trained to resist the urge to let media coverage determine what’s important. It’s called a “shiny object”. That is, it glitters in the media spot light, so many assume that the story is in fact a new or important story. In reality, this situation has been addressed decades ago in courts of law. And no one really cared until this was caught on video, and the entertainment media began its usual drum beat, harkening the long awaited cataclysm so many on both the Right and the Left believe so imminent. Plus, people think it’s funny that Tyner used the word “junk” to denote his genitals. To me, he just displayed a severe lack of class.
Let’s look at this issue, first, from a legal perspective. Many are saying that this is a violation of peoples’ rights of privacy. I’m not sure if they mean that the courts have improperly allowed the 4th Amendment to be trampled on, or if TSA is ignoring the law. But they would only be correct in asserting the former, because the courts decided decades ago that people being searched at airports and at customs checkpoints in fact are submitting to consent searches. There are signs that tell people that they will be searched before they pass through the detectors and into the screening area. We need only look at the 4th Amendment to see that it places no more emphasis on a body than it does a bag that a person carries:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
There is no special protection for the human body. The person, house, papers and effects are offered equal protection under the law. But it’s this pat down that has people up in arms. Yet, as long as there have been x-ray machines in airports, people have been placing their bags into the machines to be what? Searched. With X-rays.
Here’s a case decided in the 9th circuit court of appeals that explains why Tyner did not have the option after passing the the screening area, to simply say that he now did not want to be searched and didn’t want fly:
United States v. Aukai
“The constitutionality of an airport screening search, however, does not depend on consent, see Biswell, 406 U.S. at 315, and requiring that a potential passenger be allowed to revoke consent to an ongoing airport security search makes little sense in a post-9/11 world. Such a rule would afford terrorists multiple opportunities to attempt to penetrate airport security by “electing not to fly” on the cusp of detection until a vulnerable portal is found. This rule would also allow terrorists a low-cost method of detecting systematic vulnerabilities in airport security, knowledge that could be extremely valuable in planning future attacks. Likewise, given that consent is not required, it makes little sense to predicate the reasonableness of an administrative airport screening search on an irrevocable implied consent theory. Rather, where an airport screening search is otherwise reasonable and conducted pursuant to statutory authority, 49 U.S.C. § 44901, all that is required is the passenger’s election to attempt entry into the secured area of an airport. See Biswell, 406 U.S. at 315; 49 C.F.R. § 1540.107. Under current TSA regulations and procedures, that election occurs when a prospective passenger walks through the magnetometer or places items on the conveyor belt of the x-ray machine. The record establishes that Aukai elected to attempt entry into the posted secured area of Honolulu International Airport when he walked through the magnetometer, thereby subjecting himself to the airport screening process.
Although the constitutionality of airport screening searches is not dependent on consent, the scope of such searches is not limitless. A particular airport security screening search is constitutionally reasonable provided that it “is no more extensive nor intensive than necessary, in the light of current technology, to detect the presence of weapons or explosives [] [and] that it is confined in good faith to that purpose.” Davis, 482 F.2d at 913. We conclude that the airport screening search of Aukai satisfied these requirements.”
The law serves us, we do not serve the law. There is a real reason for not letting people just walk away when they see the will be searched. It’s the same thing at police traffic checkpoints. I was a cop for almost a decade, so I have a lot of familiarity with search and seizure law. If a car is seen to turn around and drive the other way as they approach a police checkpoint, the police have the right to pull the car over. This too, is a decades old rule, so let’s not get pulled into conspiratorial arguments about new justices being activists.
The case that upheld the constitutionality of sobriety check points
is US Supreme Court, Michigan Dept of State Police vs. Sitz, 496 US 444 (1990). Also checkpoints have been upheld in US vs. Martinez-Fuerte.
Tyner, argues (rudely) during his interaction with TSA officials, that it is not an assault, only because the government is doing it (the search). Assuming his argument is true, he negated his assertion that he would have the TSA person arrested for assault if they touched his “junk”. What he is really saying is that he doesn’t feel it’s fair that the government has more power than he does. Does anyone anywhere believe that the government doesn’t in fact wield more power than the individual? Would we want it any other way? This fact was settled hundreds of years ago when Thomas Hobbes penned Leviathan. Most people, even Tyner most probably, agree that the state must have more power than the individual. For the state’s primary responsibility is security of the people. In order to provide security, the state must have a monopoly on violence; that is, it must be able to bring more guns to a fight than any gang that decides to pick up arms. If it cannot do so, the state, and all the benefits that come with it, will not last long.
Some will argue that the measures go beyond the actual threat. They also point out that the recent underwear bomber failed in his attempt. Is this the kind of security we want? There are only three pieces needed to make a bomb: Explosives, a switch and a power source. If one can get their hands on the materials, the rest is fairly easy. Do we want to hedge our security on the fact that the last terrorist didn’t correctly hook a wire to the 9 volt battery? How many planes would have to go down before the entire industry shut down? Before people no longer wanted to fly? All because a 20 second pat down–on principle supposedly–is a bad idea. If a bomb were found tomorrow in one of those 20 second pat downs, would people still argue that the searches aren’t a good thing? Is anyone really that offended that a pat down is occurring or are they being pulled into the media hype? I say the latter. Hope is not a plan of action, and not changing the way we screen passengers as terrorists adapt is legalistic insanity. It’s also fraudulent, as many people arguing this type of search really just don’t like the War on Terror. They see it as a Bush legacy.
We need only ask ourselves this question to know whether the pat down procedure will be effective:
If you were a nihilistic terrorist with a bomb, would you target an airport terminal that patted people down, or one that did not?
Effective? Go one month without a screening process at any major airport in America and see what happens. I’d bet my next 16oz. Heineken that a plane would blow up. The hallmark of the modern terrorist is the soft target. Not military targets. Politicians, markets, mosques, political and civilian structures. The terrorist cannot fight our military and win on any regular basis. To give him any more opportunity than he already has to attack the best prize of all is sheer political stubbornness. Why is a plane such a great target? Because even if a suicide bomber were to wade into a crowd of people and detonate, he would not be able to kill as many people as he can with a plane. In a plane, he’d kill a dozen people around him in the blast, and then hundreds more die when they hit the ground. Plus, airlines are a major part of the US and global economy. It’s a node, whose destruction would have a cascading effect. Almost any high school has a police officer assigned ot it. How many shootings are there at high schools? Should we not have a cop with a gun posted at high schools? If the cop makes $35,000 a year, and never has to pull the trigger, should we pull him out of the school because there’s been no violence? Are we that sure that security is only the result of people not trying or thinking about committing violent acts? Human nature cannot be changed. The only way to stop violence is to make it an unviable option.
Walk on to any military base, and you’re subject to search of all your bags and your person. You consented when you came through the gate. Just as people argue that military personnel consented to giving away some of their rights when they joined, so does the person who flies consent to a search when he or she flies. The signs tell him so beforehand.
What we cannot do is fall prey to hyperbolic rhetoric. “Beginning of the end” speak that’s so in vogue. As Ralph Peters said, it is America’s apparent duty to mind the brute children of failing cultures. It is not us that is failing. it is the culture that feels it necessary to place bombs amidst children and innocent civilians. We’re only trying to stop them from doing so.
In ending:
1) Patting people down is minimally intrusive (less than a minute).
2) It likely deters people from wearing bombs under their clothes and bringing them on to planes; we know Islamic terrorists place bombs under their clothes and do so over and over around the world.
3) The procedure is legal since the 1970s, as supported by case law .
As such, John Tyner, though famous for 15 minutes, is just plain wrong.
What I think of the war in Afghanistan now
After having spent four months in Afghanistan and seeing much of the war from the inside, some may wonder if my opinions of the efficacy of fighting there have changed. In short, they haven’t changed much.
While I do see the benefit of having some foot print in the country, I also see that the country’s leaders and outside influencers in Pakistan are playing both sides in hopes that when the US leaves, the Taliban won’t have any grudges. Their actions form a self-fulfilling prophecy and enable the Taliban to continue maintaining some legitimacy.
I want to dismiss the myth that Afghan fighters are incredible guerrilla warriors, able to defeat our troops because of their years’ experience in this kind of fighting. In fact, the Taliban and Haqqani fighters get severely smashed every time they confront US troops. Obliterated. I’m talking 40 bad guys dead, and 0 US dead on several occasions since I’ve been in the country. The way they kill our troops is by paying some dupe with no job to plant a bomb on a road and then detonating it as we ride by.
So why can’t we win? I have several opinions on this. First, we must define what winning is. I think in some ways, we have won. Al-Qaeda is almost non-existent in Afghanistan. The Taliban in many areas is reduced to a loose crime syndicate. And America is still a great place to live. If we read the memo that directed then-General Stanley McChrystal on the objectives of this war, the goal was to “degrade” the Taliban. We’ve done that.
But the one conclusion that I’ve come to that means the most to me is this: Democracy is a reward. Democracy is not a cause, it is the result of doing the right things. The people of Afghanistan have not earned Democracy because they refuse to change the way they do business. And they must suffer the consequences. The people of Iraq have earned the right to reap the benefits of Democracy (much to the chagrin of the Left) , as they demonstrated in the Anbar Awakening. To ask that Democracy be the cause that brings success to Afghanistan is like buying a teenager a new BMW in hopes it brings him a sense of responsibility.
I must point out that General Patraeus has made it clear we only need to make Afghanistan “good enough”. We don’t need to make it Switzerland, as he quipped. He is absolutely correct, and I do think that a good enough Afghanistan is in reach. But until the problems in Pakistan are dealt with, good enough is not possible. Our military leaders know this.
This is not a military failure. The military has defeated the Taliban on every battle front, though I don’t think we’ve been nearly aggressive enough. There’s also the problem of defining the enemy himself. Any guy can pick up a Kalashnikov and call himself Taliban, just as any person could now call himself a Nazi. So when do we know the Taliban has been defeated? The problem at this point, does not have a military solution. It is a Rule of Law problem and the result of cultural failure. The military part of the problem had been solved. The puzzle that remains is the endemic collapse of stabilizing social structures within Afghanistan. Chaos begets chaos. Corruption fathers corruption.
The War on Terror has not been a failure. Al-Qaeda suffered a massive strategic defeat. It’s plans are consistently disrupted, its fighters arrested or eliminated, many of it’s leaders killed or facing trial. The Taliban barely has a corporeal existence in Afghanistan, but its ghost remains in the form of criminal gangs and warlords. There are very real and positive results that’ve been gained from ignoring the defeatists. And we should continue to fight Islamic extremist. It is a fight that will continue in some form for the rest of our lives. That does not mean it’s not worth fighting. And the whining of the Left over this fight will also continue. We should throw them a couple of bones, like allowing gays in the military or legalizing pot. And then we should ignore them.
Our lesson should be that nation building while under fire is a bad idea. You don’t fix social structures while the enemy shoots at you. You smash the enemy, grab as much power as you can, than build. In most places you have to let everything burn out before you move in, and that can take generations.
The fact is, we’ve reduced the threat to America by fighting in Afghanistan. We just shouldn’t be giving the teenager a new car.
Afghanistan
I arrived in Afghanistan almost two weeks ago, flying into Bagram Airfield, then moving to Kabul and finally back to Bagram.
I was transported by semi-covert convoy from Camp Julian to ISAF HQ. I’ll leave the description of the vehicle that I travelled in out of this writing for security purposes. Armed men, contractors working in one of the world’s most unstable countries packed in around me, each carrying Serbian M-92s, 7.62mm, shelled in body armor, sleek Oakleys covering their eyes. We moved through streets packed bumper to bumper with cars and shoulder to shoulder with people. Garbage floated everywhere, piles of random junk stacked high on the sides of the road, craters from IED blasts gaping at us.
I gained a sense of hyper-alertness. Only a few months prior, insurgents killed several officers with a Vehicle-born IED just down the road from where we were driving. Though our vehicles were non-descript, the people somehow knew who we were. I could tell by their looks. I know that look from my days as a cop. The simmering distrust, the envy, the sniggering smile. They knew we were ISAF.
Every few hundred meters we would get sought in a knot of traffic, the bearded driver would swear. “Why’s he taking this fucking route?” Referring to the vehicle in front of us. Every time we stop, I watch for bulging robes, wires sprouting from sleeves, and stumbling gate and blissfully high face of an insurgent, high on heroin, ready to visit paradise. My doors combat locked, the heavy, hidden armor of our vehicles..can it resist a suicide bomber up close? No way. I know better. I imagine a holy warrior, perhaps only a few days prior a dirt farmer, striding up to my door, my last vision: his thumb depressing a plunger. I’d be blown out the other side of the vehicle, my insides liquified if my body held together at all.
We stopped. We raced. We clenched our weapons. But Kabul only winked at us. At anytime she could kill us. But not today. It would be too easy, no fun. Better to play with the mouse before it dies. As we drew closer to ISAF headquarters, it was as if the chaos and dirt melted away. I saw the Afghan police officers suddenly appear pressed uniforms, where only a couple of kilometers before , they appeared dishevelled, unshowered. A sense of calm and order arose as we approached the NATO base. It was an oasis from the anarchy that grips Afghanistan.
Since then, I’ve flown Blackhawk to several districts. What’s the war like? Well, let’s just say that American power and ingenuity are plainly evident on our bases, but Afghanistan’s tribalism, warlordism and primitive state rule the hinterlands. Behind our walls, we are invincible. The foolish man who hopes heroism will come in the form of an arching mortar round into an American base is quickly annihilated in a shower of 30mm cannon, belched from the nose of Apache gunships. Sometimes, they manage to get in, but their losses are catastrophic and for the most part, the insurgents have given up attacking our bases.
But the roads are a different story. Kidnappings, murder, theft. These are the tools of the Talib highway man. And don’t think of this as Taliban against NATO. It’s NATO against Chaos. Just because a man is Taliban or HIG does not mean he kidnaps foreigners for ideological reasons. He may just want money. He may be doing the bidding of his boss who wants regional control.
They are a giant mob, and we’re the cops. The mob is feeding on its moment of freedom, on its rage, rolling itself into a juggernaut-snowball. Only order–any order–can stop this. I don’t know if we can “win”. but I sense that if we leave, hundreds of thousands of civilians will die in the struggle to fill our vacuum. And we won’t be left with anything that amounts to a peaceful, liberated Afghanistan.
A pig with lipstick is still a pig
According to this report, the Whitehouse has banned the use of the word Islam when it comes to describing or reporting Islamic terrorists.
This doctrine was proven true, when in the Pentagon’s report on Major Hasan’s assassination of 13 US Soldiers could not even mention the fact that Hasan was a fundamentalist Islamic, or that Islam was a prime, motivating factor in his crime. Here is a man who made contact with al-Qaeda officials approximately 20 times, yelled the name of his Muslim god as he repeatedly drilled lead into men he swore to fight and die with–if need be. Major Hasan was some Soldier’s last hope. He treated people with PTSD who have fought in our wars. He betrayed them. He betrayed his nation. If not Islam, what was his motivation?
The coffins of Soldiers killed by Major Hasan
What a slap in the face to the Soldiers who sought psychiatric care from the Army. Instead of worrying about damaged warriors who put their life on the line, the Pentagon and this administration were worried about offending people sworn to kill us.
The reflexive argument is: Well, just because Timothy McVeigh declared he was a Christian, doesn’t mean all Christians want to be mass murderers.
Is this where we’ve come? Do we not know by instinct whom the enemy is? Sure, it is not all Islamic peoples. This is a Great Strawman set up by people who’ve never been in a real conflict. We don’t–and never have–targeted all Islamic people. We’ve protected them when they were the victims of genocide. Does anyone remember Bosnia? Kosovo?
We are targeting the men whom are targeting us, and they happen to be Muslims. If you are Muslim, and are not committed to jihad against the United States, then you are not our enemy. Is it not that simple? Can we not see the degrees between one, lone bomber in Oklahoma City two decades ago, and the onrushing wave of thousands of sworn jihadists? How does the label of Christian terrorist stand against Muslim terrorist? About 15,000 dead people since 2001 is the difference. But our incompetant Secretary of Homeland Security worries about backlash against Muslims. Like that’s the way Americans act. She believes that the average American is a raving red-neck with a 2nd grade education, a trunk-load of ammunition and an urge to kill people with mocha-colored skin. I got news for ya, Janet.
And yet, General George Casey, Army Chief of Staff had this to say after Hasan mowed down his own (we thought) brothers:
“What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.”
Diversity? Who joined the Army because of diversity? Most people joined the military because of sameness. They hoped that all of the people that they worked with respected America and its values. They knew that each person standing and fighting beside them had raised their right hand and promised to die before giving up the Republic. They joined not because they hoped everyone was different, but because–despite the differences– everyone could function as a team. General Casey said it outright: Being different is more important than the safety and integrity of the Soldier’s unit. General Casey was saying exactly what he thought this administration wanted him to say. Because Democrats are obsessed with diversity.
Who was the enemy in Germany in 1943? Can we call them Nazis? I’m sure not every person registered tot he Nazi Party actually picked up a rifle and shot at our troops.
In 1864, who was the Union Army fighting? Was it ok to call them Rebels? Or did that just make them fight harder and create more enemies?
What exactly would it take to be able to call the majority of modern-day terrorists, Islamic?
Here’s the ironic thing: The terrorists want us to know that they are acolytes of Islam. That’s why they plead guilty in most of the cases against them. They state clearly that they want the West to clearly understand that they knew what they were doing and that they are proud to be fighting in the name of Allah.
And yet the current administration takes the course of an ostrich; it buries its head and hopes its enemies won’t see its gigantic, bulbous body. We’ll drone on endlessly about Guantanomo. Our elites will smack their lips over lattes in smug agreement. But when Soldiers die, Amnesty International is nowhere to be found.
We can expect that the platitudes will keep flying. Political Correctness is worth dying for to some. But it’s an insult to the intellectually honest.
The Inevitability of Armageddon
“Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. 16 And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. 17 And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. 18 And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.”~The Book of Revelations
The recent incident involving the aid-for-Gaza ship illustrates the inevitability of a catastrophic war in the Middle East. Israel can only fight a defensive war, fending off attack after attack, responding to past damages. Israel’s enemies on the other hand, can repeatedly attack Israel and than scream bloody-murder when Israel responds. And the media cooperates.
Israel cannot, for political reasons, preemptively attack, with the intent to eliminate, its enemies. To do so would risk losing America as an ally. Should America disown Israel, Israel will cease to exist as a Jewish state; her enemies are too numerous. The Israeli government is forced to rely on retributive and defensive operations which do not root out the enemy’s hive, but only swat at individual wasps in a swarm. While the hive exists, there will always be more swarms.
Various Islamic nations call for the destruction of Israel, all the while attacking her through proxy terror organizations such as Hezbollah. And yet, the call now is for Israel to rid itself of nuclear weapons. Iran, it is now believed, has enough fissile material to produce two nuclear weapons. Given the nature of suicide attacks, even the threat of a massive nuclear retaliatory strike against Iran may not be enough to stave off an initial nuclear attack on Israeli soil. Though many reports focus on Iran’s nuclear delivery systems, those systems are not nearly as important to Islamic fundamentalists as the weapons themselves. A suicide bomber is the ultimate smart weapon. In addition, an atomic suicide bomber presents a greater chance of plausible deniability. A missile launch would be easily traceable as to its origin. A man annihilated in a nuclear blast passes into oblivion.
So because Israel cannot destroy her enemies before they build an ultimate weapon, Israel can only wait until the ultimate weapon is used. Her enemies repeatedly remind us that the destruction of Israel is at the top of their wish list. Not world peace, not that their hungry are fed, not education of the masses, but the death of millions of Jews. The calls for the destruction of Israel occur so frequently that the threats seem to mean nothing. Many assume that the promises of this destruction are only rants or calls for attention. The Arab-Israeli Wars, the thousands of rocket attacks and suicide bombings, the incessant political posturing, all of that means nothing to the cynics. Too many believe that Israel merely wishes to make Palestinians suffer for no real reason. So much so, that the reports of suffering have become hyperbolic and the aid and concessions given to Palestinians are all but unreported.
And it is clear what Israel will do if her existential fears materialize. They will use their own ultimate weapons, just as we would. And then we shall see the prophecy recorded in the Book of Revelations become reality. Some will say it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, that religious zealots read the prophecy and did what they could to make it happen. I’ll say a self-fulfilling prophecy is nonetheless a prophecy fulfilled.
Give us all your guns and please remain seated
Not surprisingly, airline security is carrying on the great American and European tradition of punishing the masses for the misdeeds of the few.
The rules are being stacked on top of rules. But rules reach a point of severely diminished returns at some point. Then they start to weigh down the system and create a general disrespect for authority.
And like government gun grabs, only the good guys tend to obey the rules. My feeling is this: We know the system failed in this instance. Rectify the specific leaks in security, and go after the people that are trying to kill Americans. Don’t succumb to the pathologies of bureaucracy, bundling the system in gobs of red tape until it can’t move.
Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab was on a terror watch list
Authorities drew up the indictment of Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab, who is identified as the person who attempted to detonate explosives on Northwest Airlines flight 253.
Sources state that Abdulmutallab attempted to explode 80 grams of PETN. PETN or Pentaerythritol tetranitrate is a military grade explosive.
I’m familiar with PETN from working on the police department’s bomb squad. It’s used in Det Cord (Cord used for door breaching as well as a tertiary detonating device). Apparently Abdulmutallab’s detonator did not work properly, otherwise, hundreds of people would quite likely have died. Without a detonator, PETN will only burn like C4. Richard Reid, the notorious Shoe Bomber of 2001 also used PETN but only 20 grams. That bomb also failed to explode. Al-Qaeda is aware that the current scanners used by TSA at airports will not reliably detect PETN.
Though further investigation is needed, it appears that Abdulmutallab was radicalized by al-Qaeda contacts in Yemen, specifically Imam Anwar Awlaki whom with Fort Hood shooting suspect Major Hassan spoke to on several occasions.
Incredibly, Abdulmutallab is on a US terrorist watch list but not on a no fly list. Abdulmutallab’s father even called a US embassy warning of his son’s radicalization and asking why he was allowed to fly.
The Army’s political correctness in the Hassan case is beyond shameful–its borderline traitorous. What could have led anyone in the government to ignore the case of Abdulmutallab is anyone’s guess.
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