Ribbon Cutting Ceremony

Dean Jorge Bocobo at Philippine Commentary has put together an impressive chronology of what it is like to be an American at the tender mercies of the Abu Sayaf, an Islamist group affiliated with the Al Qaeda. It also illustrates why the Belmont Club believes that 'punishment' attacks by Al Qaeda are wasted on countries like the Philippines. Whatever happens to Americans goes double for the locals, and any attempts by Robert Fisk, the BBC or any other agency to convince the islanders of the benignity of the Jihadis will be met, not with outrage, but by rolling-on-the-ground, knee-slapping, uncontrollable laughter. Current polls show that 90% of the Filipinos support the US War on Terror. In the end, American Guillermo Sobero was executed in a bizarre ritual called a Ribbon Cutting Ceremony, described below.

May 27, 2001 - Twenty people, the majority of them holidaymakers, are seized from the tourist resort of Dos Palmas on the island of Palawan, the Philippines. Among those seized are three Americans and 17 Filipinos. May 28, 2001 - The Muslim separatist Abu Sayyaf group claims responsibility for the abduction. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declares an "all out war" against Abu Sayyaf and rules out any negotiations with the extremist group. May 29, 2001 - The Philippine government imposes an indefinite news blackout on the crisis. May 30, 2001 - The United States refuses to pay a ransom to free the three American hostages. June 1, 2001- Abu Sayyaf claims two hostages have been killed in an exchange of gunfire with government military troops. Philippine officials are unable to confirm the report. The group also threatens a "mass execution" if gunfire continues to be exchanged. June 2, 2001 - More hostages are kidnapped from a hospital building in Lamitan. June 3, 2001 - Four hostages, including an 8-year-old boy, manage to escape from their captors. Reports emerge of five other hostages who had also escaped. June 4, 2001 - Philippine police find the bodies of two Filipino hostages. One of the bodies had been beheaded and the other in a state of decomposition. June 5, 2001 - Villagers report sightings of the hostages lashed together with a rope being dragged by their captors through the jungle near Tuburan town in Basilan. Two Filipino soldiers die in clashes. June 6, 2001 - Abu Sayyaf claims one of the American hostages, Martin Burnham, was shot in the back three days ago by the Filipino military during ongoing clashes. The militants threaten to behead the U.S. hostages unless two Malaysian negotiators are appointed. June 7, 2001 - Abu Sayyaf says it will talk to the Philippine government but only if Manila halts its military pursuit of the group. June 11, 2001 - Abu Sayyaf threaten to kill at least one of the American hostages at midday unless the government calls off its military offensive against the group. The militant group takes another 15 captives in an attack on the town of Lantawan, near the capital of Basilan, including two 12-year-old children. Minutes before noon, the Philippine government announces it will accept the group's demands to negotiate with Sairin Karno, former Malaysian senator. June 12, 2001 - Abu Sayyaf claims to have beheaded an American hostage, Guillermo Sobero. June 13, 2001 - Filipino troops find two headless corpses but say neither of them is the body of American hostage, Guillermo Sobero. The bodies are believed to be that of two Filipino men who had been negotiating with the Abu Sayyaf. President Arroyo says she will negotiate with Abu Sayyaf kidnappers provided they release all their hostages. June 15, 2001 - The Philippines military continues to cast doubt over the Abu Sayyaf's claim that it has beheaded Sobero. June 16, 2001 - Three Filipino hostages are released. June 17, 2001 -President Arroyo says she will visit the Abu Sayyaf stronghold in the southern island province of Basilan in an effort to bolster civilian support among residents. June 18, 2001 - President Arroyo visits Basilan and says she will not offer any ransom. Military officials say they believe that U.S. hostage Guillermo Sobero has been killed. June 22, 2001 - Three severed heads are found. They are reported to belong to Philippine soldiers. June 23, 2001 - Two headless bodies have been identified as belonging to Filipino plantation workers kidnapped earlier in June. June 25, 2001 - The military clashes with Abu Sayyaf troops with a spokesman of the group airing their demand for a Malaysian businessman to mediate the hostage crisis. Malaysia refuses to get involved. June 28, 2001 - Philippine security officials say they have captured one senior member of the Abu Sayyaf guerilla group and a second who was allegedly on a mission to set up terrorist operations in Manila. July 3, 2001 - Two Filipino hostages freed by Abu Sayyaf gunmen in the southern Philippines say they have seen two of the three American hostages but not Sobero, the believed to be beheaded hostage. July 6, 2001 - Villagers report seeing several hostages and their Muslim guerilla captors on Basilan Island. July 9, 2001 - Police arrest Abu Sayyaf top leader, "Commander Global", along with three other members of the group.

According to Dubai News:

American hostage Guillermo Sobero was beheaded by the Abu Sayyaf in a macabre ceremony called 'ribbon-cutting', according to a source close to the hostage takers. The incident allegedly took place in the town of Tuburan, in Basilan, southern Philippines on June 11. "The beheading ceremony was mentioned by Abu Sayyaf leader Khadafi Janjalani in a letter sent recently through a freed hostage to the presidential palace," said Hector Janjalani, Khadafi's younger brother, who has been imprisoned in Quezon City since last year. "The ribbon cutting ceremony is a term often used by the group for the beheading of hostages," explained the younger Janjalani. Armed Forces Spokesman Brig. Gen. Edilberto Adan said the government has tasked volunteers and local government officials with locating Sobero's headless corpse.

Interesting Times

Sky News has reported that a cell of Islamic terrorists has been rolled up in Britain. They were planning on detonating an ammonium nitrate bomb.

Islamic terror suspects have been arrested and explosives recovered in dawn raids across England. The arrests were made in Crawley, Luton, Redbridge, Ealing in London and in the Thames Valley. Martin Brunt, Sky's crime correspondent, said fertiliser or ammonium nitrate had been found at an address. The same type of material was used in the Bali bombings in October 2002, killing more than 200 people.

Meanwhile, Philippine authorities say they have just broken up a "Madrid-level" attack. An Abu Sayaf cell, including a person suspected of beheading American hostage Guillermo Sobero, is now in custody.

The Philippines has foiled a "Madrid-level" attack on Manila with the arrest of four members of an al-Qaeda-linked extremist group and the seizure of explosives, President Gloria Arroyo said today. "We have pre-empted a Madrid-level attack on the metropolis by capturing an explosive cache of 80 pounds [36 kilograms]," she told reporters, comparing the plot to the March 11 Madrid bombings that claimed almost 200 lives. The explosive cache "was intended to be used for bombing [shopping] malls and trains in Metropolitan Manila," she said, adding that the four members of the Abu Sayyaf militant group were in government custody.

In Central Asia, Muslim militants killed 19 persons and were engaged in running battles with authorities. According to CNN:

A new blast, followed by a shootout between police and suspected extremists, has hit Uzbekistan -- a third straight day of violence in the Central Asian nation. Citing police sources, Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported there were injuries in the incident near the capital Tashkent, which, according to the report, involved police and "terrorists." The reported attack Tuesday follows a spasm of violence in Uzbekistan including two suicide bombings in as many days, as well as attacks on police and a blast at a bomb-making hideout. At least 19 people have been killed and 26 wounded in the violence in the capital and also the city of Bukhara. Uzbek President Islam Karimov has blamed the attacks on Islamic extremists and said arrests have been made.

Two factors unite all these incidents. The first is that all the attackers were radical Muslims. The second is that the targets were all nations allied with the United States. The obvious inference is that the Al Qaeda is mobilizing its affiliate groups to 'teach' these nations the same lesson they administered to Spain. This kind of instruction is unlikely to have much affect in Uzbekistan or the Philippines, chronically plagued by Islamic militants whose brutal behavior has been familiar for several centuries. What a successful attack may achieve in Britain no one can yet say.

The latest offensive shows the relative balance between offense and defense in the Global War on Terror. Like the kamikaze attacks of an earlier era, these Islamic bombers were probably tracked by intelligence until they could be engaged by the defenses, in much the same way the CAP and anti-aircraft shot down bogeys over Okinawa. In the case of Britain and the Philippines, the inbounds were splashed before they could deliver their ordnance. But in Uzbekistan the bogeys leaked through and killed 19 people.

It also suggests that Al Qaeda has lost its organic capability to strike and must now rely on affiliates. The quality of the new affiliated Holy Warriors is markedly lower than the cadre led by Mohammed Atta. Here too, the analogy with the kamikazes may be apt. By 1945, the superlative aces of the Kido Butai had all been killed or crippled. Forced by logistical strangulation to cut back on training, the bogeys over Okinawa were largely piloted by novices who could only fly straight and level.

The Islamist losses in both Britain and the Philippines are likely to be felt keenly by the Jihadis. The British appear to have rolled up a widely deployed network of sleepers; prized assets. The Philippines for its part took down a cell which contained core members of the Abu Sayaf, including the sadistic man who killed Guillermo Sobero, a simple tourist visiting the Islands, as he pleaded for his life. The plan to terrify America's allies into leaving Iraq appears to have failed for now despite the best efforts of the Jihadis. And for this paltry result they have paid in their dwindling seed corn. They must be now asking themselves how the British and Filipinos knew enough to foil their plans. Sleep well Osama.

5 plus 7?

Reuters has reported that Uzbek authorities have raided an Islamic hideout in Tashkent which may have been related to recent attacks, killing 5 and perhaps 7 more. Although they may have killed 19 people, in the sad arithmetic of war the loss of possibly12 trained terrorists is an unsustainable exchange rate for the Jihadis.

TASHKENT (Reuters) - Uzbek special forces attacked a suspected Islamic militant hide-out in a Tashkent suburb on Tuesday killing at least five people, a day after bomb blasts killed 19 in the former Soviet Central Asian country. Monday's blasts, two caused by female suicide bombers, raised concern in Washington which uses an airbase here for operations in neighboring Afghanistan. Uzbek forces on Tuesday struck what they called a "terrorist group" in a city suburb. "We have counted five bodies of the terrorists and police say there are seven more lying in the entrance hall," a local reporter allowed on the scene after fighting ended told Reuters.

So far, the post-Madrid attacks have been a tactical disaster for the Islamists. Unless they have been extremely unlucky, something is going horribly wrong for their networks.

The Smell of Fear

The Arab League summit, scheduled to be held in Tunisia has been cancelled ostensibly because the Arab Ministers could not agree on an agenda to discuss regional political reform, but in truth because no government wants to take a public position on the assassination of Hamas leader Yassin. The public reasons were given thus:

Near midnight yesterday, a spokesman for Tunisia's Foreign Ministry appeared on television. "It became clear that there was a variance of positions on ... proposals related to fundamental issues on modernization, democratic reform, human rights and the rights of women," the statement said. "Tunisia strongly regrets the postponement of this summit ... considering the delicate situation through which the Arab nation is going and the deadlock of the Palestinian issue after the recent tragic events."

Yet even before the cancellation, the attendees could not have been less enthusiastic than if they had received an engraved invitation in black from the Grim Reaper himself.

Signs of disintegration were evident in the days leading up to the summit: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah and the top members of Bahrain's ruling family decided to skip the trip to Tunis. Soon the heads of Oman and the United Arab Emirates followed suit. Syria remained staunchly opposed to any peace talks with Israel and to bowing to U.S. pressures on reform.

The problem was simple. The US expected the Arab leaders to discuss wide ranging political reforms at the summit, a code phrase for ridding themselves of the worst aspects of Islamism and tyranny at the same time when the Palestinian delegation and their Islamist allies expected the Arab leaders on the occasion to roundly condemn the Israeli assassination of Yassin. The Middle Eastern heads of state had a choice between enduring the baleful stare of the 800 pound American gorilla or angering the militant factions back home, who had a penchant for writing out their disapproval in lead letters, as Anwar Sadat discovered. Al Jazeera laid it on thick:

Palestinian Minister for Negotiation Affairs Saib Uraiqat on Sunday said the postponement would encourage Israel to increase its attacks against Palestinians. "I am afraid that this will bring dangerous consequences since it comes after the assassination of Shaikh (Ahmad) Yasin and the US using the veto in the (UN) Security Council (against a draft resolution) condemning the assassination," he said. "We are afraid that this will allow Israel to carry out even bigger or large-scale actions against the Palestinians."

So they engaged in the diplomatic equivalent of collectively taking the 5th. And by staying home and doing nothing yielded the initiative to both America and the Islamists. The mass stampede stampede of Arab leaders into their bolt-holes illustrates how Middle Eastern potentates, even more than European leaders, have come to fear the turn of events. Clearly the old formula of rechanneling domestic unrest by tacitly supporting anti-Americanism has reached the end of its usefulness to the Middle Easter tyrants. Or rather, it has reached the logical conclusion whose consequences they must now endure.

Neither Europe's old game of triangulation -- a grand name for unscrupulous scavenging -- nor the Middle Eastern ploy of making America both guarantor and enemy can be continued for much longer. Even if Sharon is ousted from the Israeli leadership, developments since September 11 have doomed the ancien regime. The old elite is out of moves. Even more suicide bombings will represent a continuation of the same old failed policies, a deepening of the pit rather than a way out. They may hope that a John Kerry victory in November will reset the clock to balmy years of Bill Clinton, but perhaps even that will prove too late to stem the tide.

Addendum at 1400 Z

Egypt has said it will host the Arab summit. And despite spin from Reuters it may be the United States which is forcing the pace and urging the reluctant return to the discussion table. CNN says.

Mubarak notified Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of the offer. Foreign ministers from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen have requested the summit take place before June so the Arab leaders can reach an agreement before the upcoming Group of Eight (G8) summit.

Reuters had insinuated in its coverage that the cancellation of the summit was a result of American heavy-handedness at a time of Arab mourning. It suggested that the Tunisians called off the meeting when their leader was strong-armed by President Bush into foisting an insensitive agenda upon the Arab leaders.

"Ben Ali was asked to deliver a certain scenario at the summit and, when it was clear that he couldn't deliver, the Tunisians announced they were calling it off," said the Gulf delegate, citing a report from his foreign minister. ... Diplomats said some Arab leaders were worried that the summit could not meet Arab popular demand for strong decisions on key issues such as the occupation of Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Reuters scenario of a junior player like Tunisia whipping Egypt and Syria into line is less likely than the Arabs being motivated by the need to show progress before the G8 meeting, when the US is expected to formally inaugurate the Middle East reform process and probably offer a financial reward in exchange. It would also explain Mubarak's role. According to White House archives President Bush had held nearly sequential meetings with G8 leaders in 2003 (June 1 and 2) before flying to the Middle East to meet with Middle Eastern leaders (June 3). His Arab host on that occasion was -- Hosni Mubarak -- the very man who is now salvaging the Arab summit. It is possible that the Middle Eastern leaders, then quaking in the immediate aftermath of Baghdad's fall, should have then proposed a deal to be sealed a year hence.

But what must have seemed a commutation from certain execution may now look like a bad deal. Efforts by the Left to hamstring Bush and the possibility of his defeat at Kerry's hands has opened an escape hatch. If the Arab leaders could give Bush some half-answer, they might hold out until a more congenial and less demanding administration took control in Washington. In just 8 more months another half century of convenient tyranny in the Middle East might yet be assured. The death of Yassin, however, may have dumped sand in the gears in more ways than one by making it difficult for Arab leaders to present even the appearance of accommodation with Washington. The challenge before the Arab summiteers is now to find enough ways to run out the time with small talk, leaving President Bush to go on to G8 with less than a full deck of cards.

With such an unstable situation, anything can happen. Hamas has vowed to retaliate for the Yassin killing and the Israeli offensive against terrorist leaders is still on. Another exchange of fire between Hamas and Sharon would scatter the summit like a pile driver on a rack of balls in an opening break. It has ever been thus, and every negotiation has had to live in the shadow of violence in a region where politics is war by other means.

Mordor

The possible electoral defeat of President Bush by John Kerry raises the question of whether the Global War on Terror ultimately requires a war on the Left.  That is to say whether a political defeat of the Left is a prerequisite for stamping out worldwide terrorism. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many in the Left, at least, believes that the GWOT is a war on them. America, not Osama Bin Laden is the putative enemy, and their fire is directed accordingly. Conversely, many conservatives are conditioned by the sight of a de facto alliance between the Left and Islamism to think that both parties are on the same side of the fence. But must it necessarily be so?

Answers in the affirmative normally rest on the presumption that the Left is engaged in a protracted Gramscian program of Western civilizational suicide in which Islam serves as a convenient means of attaining quietus. For those who truly subscribe to this theory, it is the Left not Islam which is Western civilization's strategic enemy. The inevitable implication of this concept is that the principal battlefield in the Global War on Terror is not Iraq or Afghanistan, but the newsrooms of the major Western cities. Supporters of this idea will point to the fact that the stunning military successes of the War on Terror were easily overturned in Spain by the cynical actuations of the Socialist Party. If President Bush is defeated by John Kerry the case will be made. The Left will have fixed him as the man responsible for 9/11 in the same way that Vietnam is now described as "Nixon's War", proving once again that the lie is mightier than the sword.

Dan Darling at Regnum Crucis suggests that the Islamists themselves on a certain level understand that their main force does not consist of armed Jihadis, nor even of the system of prosletyzing madrassas, but of the battalions of the secular Left. He quotes an Al Qaeda document as seeing the world in this way: "We can describe the international system...as a spider web. And whereas it is also all interlinked like a spider web, even a light wind is sufficient to tear apart this web." And they aim to achieve this by harnessing the power of toppling dominoes, using the potential energy of Western political hatred to achieve their goals in much the same way that the weight of the Twin Towers was used to pulverize it. Force, in Al Qaeda's most recent view, must be used as a precise scalpel for manipulating political events in the West -- for casting the dominoes. In their calculation, once the Left has hamstrung the conservatives, the carcass of what was known as Christendom will be easy meat for the Jihadis.

Answers in the negative are predicated ironically on the malignity of the Left itself. According to this view, the Left desires, not a Gramscian extinction but power above anything else. The power to regulate all aspects of human existence, all human relations, all cultural attitudes, all state authority. And while the Left might make temporary alliance with the Jihadis, the attainment of ultimate power requires an eventual liquidation of the Jihad. There is only room for one scorpion in a bottle. In this context, the assertions by Eurosocialists and John Kerry that they will be more effective in fighting terrorism are meant to be taken literally, however ludicrous that may appear at first glance.

Yet in either case, the liquidation of conservatism, with its backward notions of natural law, national sovereignty and the like, is the first order of business. For both Osama and the Western Left,  the defeat of President George Bush is the priority event after which all things are subsidiary. The question of which survivor will prevail as they struggle over the grave of their common foe is only of academic interest. One answer is that it will not matter: that a existence under a Western jackboot is little to be preferred to life under smelly cloths.

There remains a third answer. That the existence of these two great religious totalitarianisms -- one secular only in name and the other religious only in dissimulation -- is required for their mutual defeat. It relies on the observation that both the Left and Islamism react together to produce an extremely toxic combination which neither could have achieved alone. It takes some reflection to remember just how far both the notions of Islamism and Leftism have moved since September 11. The former was an unknown towards which the man in the street would have been indifferent while the latter was a kind of eccentricity, rough yet without danger. Neither will be again. Both have mutated in interaction or perhaps have become that which they really were.

Both are struggling for the space in which conservatism can never go and for the prize which no sane man ever covets: the dominion of souls. Without their mutual presence either could have occupied a kind of cultural sanctuary in which they would brood, proof against interference from people with simple day jobs. Together they guarantee that their places of safety, every media outlet, every school and every place of worship will be transformed into arenas of unparalleled ferocity -- to the possible benefit of the world. Is the Global War on Terror necessarily against the Left? We shall see. We shall see.

"There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

Rebranding Product

A reader writes to say that anti-Coalition forces in Iraq may attack Americans in the name of Sheik Yassin's death regardless of statements by Hamas that they are not at war with the United States. The attacks were probably planned regardless and by tying it to a recent hot issue, the anti-Coalition forces will get additional propaganda mileage on the cheap. As Belmont Club has observed before, Hamas itself has a fairly restricted operational radius and will probably rely on other Jihadi or terrorist groups to carry out any threats abroad on their behalf.

This underscores importance of the message element in a terrorist act. The objects of terrorism are only secondarily of military importance. It is its symbolic content that matters. Hence certain dates, particular landmarks, the nationality and innocence of the victims are part and parcel of the message. The death of 200 commuters in Spain would be less than the loss from a widebody airline crash. Yet the one conveys no political content at all while the other is a slogan scrawled in blood and body parts.

But the targeting of Americans in Iraq in reprisal for Yassin also highlights the Jihadi movement's difficulty the in controlling the exact content of the message. While it is obviously not to the tactical interest of Hamas to link Gaza to the Global War on Terror, it  is to the immediate benefit of the anti-coalition forces, recently in slow decline, to prove they still exist. Thus one terrorist band improves their prospects at the expense of another; and only a handful of Americans need pay the price.

These twin characteristics highlight why it is so difficult to negotiate or pacify terrorism. There is a structural incentive inherent in terrorism to keep up a steady stream of outrage. Outrage equals publicity. Publicity equals political stature. Political stature equals money. Outrage is the product of the terrorist industry and its astute marketing managers in Western capitals can rebrand violence in any way necessary to suit their book, in the same way that fast food restaurants can create Value Meals or Blue Plate specials out of standard menu items. The "sale" of terrorist product would be impossible without a sympathetic press; if it did not exist, the terrorists would have to invent it. Witness Al Jazeera.

But the lack of a centralized Jihadi command and control system, despite the pretensions of Osama Bin Laden, means that there is ultimately no one the appeasers can surrender to. The inability of the Palestinians to unite under Hamas or Fatah, indeed the inability of Hamas to unite itself, as evidenced by its recent power struggles, illustrates how civilization will be dealing with a succession of banditti who keep boiling out of the stews of dysfunctional Islamic societies. The recent threats by the "Servants of Allah, the Powerful and Wise" against the French Railway system probably comes from a group that has no direct operational connection to either Hamas, Hezbollah or Al Qaeda proper. But they don't need to. All they need know is that violence brings the press, the press brings the French government, and the French government brings money. It also illustrates why the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by terrorists would be insusceptible to solution by negotiation or even surrender. There will always be someone with a bomb who will not get the word, some punk who will let it off to gratify his ego and some reporter willing to convey the boast to his burned and blackened victims.

Incoming Spanish Prime Minister Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is representative of a generation of politicians eager to consume the terrorist product, to hearken to its message -- even to listen, like a connoisseur, to its nuance. In the echoes of bomb and the screams of the victims they hear other voices; sweet pleas for justice, historical warnings, deep symbolisms, policy proposals and aesthetic messages that only a sophisticated European can discern. What American soldiers will see in the moments when they confront the enemy who will attack in the name of Sheik Yassin is something rather simpler: a hopped-up thug who would kill a civilian just as soon as anyone else did they not stand immovably  in the way.

The Hand of Hamas 2

Sometimes a news article provides confirmation of a guess that is almost too good to be true. Radio Netherlands lends evidence for two crucial Belmont Club assertions. First, that the assassination of Hamas chieftain Yassin would destabilize Hamas because it is the nature of a gangland organization to wobble when it loses its boss. Second, that Hamas will seek to maintain the firewall between the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Global War on Terror.

Radio Netherlands	Belmont Club's Transition
Who is the leader in Gaza? It's not clear how much unanimity there is regarding Abdel Aziz Rantisi's taking the position left vacant by Sheikh Yassin, who was killed on Monday in an Israeli helicopter attack. It was Mr Rantisi himself who came forward with the news that, in accordance with the organisation's internal regulations, he had taken over the leadership of Hamas in Gaza. But another leader, Mahmud az-Zahar – generally regarded as a more moderate figure than Mr Rantisi – said that Hamas will organise an internal selection procedure to choose a new leader once the period of mourning for Sheikh Yassin is at an end. The conflicting statements may be an indication that the unanimous fury within Hamas following the killing of Sheikh Yassin has made way for a distinct lack of unanimity as to how to proceed now he has gone.	The frenzy in the Gaza strip tonight probably has less to do with the preparations to strike back at Israel then a frantic attempt to locate the secret bank account numbers that Sheik Yassin may have had in his possession. The Israeli strike against the terrorist top tier exploits the weakness inherent in terrorist organizations which are unstable alliances based on a delicate balance of internal intimidation. None of them, the Palestinian Authority included, are either transparent or accountable. They are exceptionally vulnerable to changes in their leadership. They can stand the loss of any number of teenage fighters or youthful suicide bombers without much damage but are rocked -- as Yassin's death illustrates -- by death at the top. Twenty million Soviet casualties in World War 2 were a statistic, but the death of Stalin marked the end of an epoch. Had the Israeli missile simply incinerated a 19-year old Hamas illiterate foot soldier it would have been another day in Gaza, hardly worth the notice of the press, but since its target was the terrorist leadership the moral calculus elevated it to a sacrilege. Yet it does not alter the fact that the foreign offices of Europe will be scratching their heads tonight to see who the letters of condolence to Hamas should be addressed to. Perhaps they should wait until a new leader climbs to the pinnacle of the bloody pole before bowing at his feet.
Radio Netherlands	Belmont Club's Hand of Hamas
In an interview with Australian television, the same Mahmud az-Zahar said there is "no connection between al-Qaeda and Hamas," and that the Palestinian organisation "concentrated their activities on the occupied territories in Palestine". But he added that it was the duty of every Islamic movement in the world to avenge the murder of Sheikh Yassin. However, this does not appear to mean that Hamas is about to start actively looking to link up with al-Qaeda as some earlier statements, made immediately after the death of Sheikh Yassin, seemed to suggest. Another prominent Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, Sayyed Siyyan, told Reuters news agency on Wednesday that it was not Hamas' policy to target the United States or its interests.	Since Hamas does not have much of an international reach and there is an urgent necessity to 'teach America a lesson', the actual act of vengeance has probably been farmed out to a better positioned affiliate group, under some reciprocal arrangement, to strike in Hamas' name. That explains why the direct warnings have emanated from an Al Qaeda affiliate called Abu Hafs al-Masri, the same outfit that claimed the Madrid bombings and which Dan Darling at Regnum Crucis thinks is actually an Islamic PR group based in London. ... One possibility would be for another group like Hezbollah, which is known to have connections in the US underworld, to mount an attack on its behalf. Something. Anything. That would ironically suit Sharon's book better than Yassin's. It would directly couple Hamas and Fatah to Al Qaeda and by transitivity connect them with the band that gave us September 11. By goading Hamas beyond tolerance, Israel will have succeeded in coupling the Arab-Israeli conflict directly to the Global War on Terror. The repercussions of a Hamas-sponsored attack on America will be felt by its fund-raising charities in Europe, such as the Holy Land Foundation in Germany, the Al Aqsa Foundation in Belgium and Holland and the Comite de Bienfaisance et Solidarite avec la Palestine in France.

Some pressure point has been touched which suggests that terrorism does not recoil from the loss of retarded teenage fighters who, for thirty dollars are told to hurl themselves against the IDF so much as blows upon persons who are specifically guilty, who deal in murder wholesale rather than retail, and who as a consequence, are considered important men of the world.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
-- from Wilfred Owen

The Hand of Hamas

Now that Hamas has sworn to punish Americans for the IDF operation against their spiritual leader, Shiek Yassin, how might they do it? Structurally, Hamas is pretty much a local devil whose principal strength is concentrated in Gaza and the West Bank. The United States has warned its citizens away from Gaza and the West Bank, so targets there are strictly limited. Since Hamas does not have much of an international reach and there is an urgent necessity to 'teach America a lesson', the actual act of vengeance has probably been farmed out to a better positioned affiliate group, under some reciprocal arrangement, to strike in Hamas' name. That explains why the direct warnings have emanated from an Al Qaeda affiliate called Abu Hafs al-Masri, the same outfit that claimed the Madrid bombings and which Dan Darling at Regnum Crucis thinks is actually an Islamic PR group based in London. Their dire warning reads:

"We tell Palestinians that Sheikh Yassin's blood was not spilt in vain and call on all legions of Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades to avenge him by attacking the tyrant of the age, America, and its allies."

Notice how they didn't say, 'we Palestinians'. But unless there is an existing operation ready to be diverted, the practical difficulties of whipping one up at short notice may prove difficult. One possibility would be for another group like Hezbollah, which is known to have connections in the US underworld, to mount an attack on its behalf. Something. Anything. That would ironically suit Sharon's book better than Yassin's. It would directly couple Hamas and Fatah to Al Qaeda and by transitivity connect them with the band that gave us September 11. By goading Hamas beyond tolerance, Israel will have succeeded in coupling the Arab-Israeli conflict directly to the Global War on Terror. The repercussions of a Hamas-sponsored attack on America will be felt by its fund-raising charities in Europe, such as the Holy Land Foundation in Germany, the Al Aqsa Foundation in Belgium and Holland and the Comite de Bienfaisance et Solidarite avec la Palestine in France.

Sharon may be aiming for a three pointer plus a foul throw. The Times of India, quoting a  Washington Post article suggests that Israeli Prime Minister Sharon is attempting to disengage, not only from Gaza but from the decade old "Peace Process".

Sharon has been engaged in intensive secret bargaining with the Bush administration in this regard and he intends to scrap the decade-long peace process in favour of a solution according to which Israel would retreat behind a fortified border of its own choosing, the Washington Post said. The proposed "long-term interim" solution would involve an evacuation of Israelis from most or all of the Gaza Strip. ... The assassination, the Post said, was part of Sharon 's attempt to radically reshape the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - "an initiative that is looking as reckless as it is bold."  "If (George W) Bush agrees to reshape the Israeli-Palestinian landscape with such a partner," the paper warned, "he can expect that other surprises will follow."

According to this analysis, the Hellfire missiles were unleashed only incidentally at Yassin. Its real target was Oslo. The Belmont Club has suggested that Sharon has deliberately escalated the conflict in order to cut the Gordian knot and escape from the cycle of hudna/attack that has hamstrung Israeli response these last ten years.

Flash! 12:00 Zulu

For possibly for the reasons described above Hamas leader Rantisi has backed off from earlier calls to strike at America. Fox News is reporting that "Hamas  has no plans to attack American targets, the group's new leader in Gaza said Wednesday." It is a valiant and sagacious attempt by the new Hamas leader to maintain the firewall between the war on Israel and the war on America. But he is burdened with two nearly insurmountable difficulties. The first is the split command structure of Hamas. In an arrangement oddly reminescent of the dual kings of Sparta, the Hamas leadership is divided between the resident in Gaza, who is Rantisi, and a worldwide Hamas leader, who is Mashaal headquartered in Syria. Rantisi's first challenge will be to make his prohibition on attacking America stick. The second and harder problem for Hamas is that Sharon has embarked on a program of headhunting their leadership. Not only will it be increasingly difficult to forbear in the face of such attacks, it may be even harder to survive them. For the first time in nearly a decade, Hamas seems truly afraid of Israel, and is backpedaling in an astonishing manner in a pathetic effort to retain the last threadbare remnants of their triumphant Oslo strategy.

For America the new developments create both opportunities and set of new problems. Does America want to link the Arab-Israeli conflict to the Global War on Terror with all that implies? If America is truly committed to a two-state solution in the Holy Land, how can it best exploit the developing political rout of terrorist forces? Perhaps that is what the delegation President Bush is sending to Israel will try to find out.

Transition 2

As the Belmont Club predicted, the hudna is dead. The next "strongman" who fights his way to the top of the Hamas will oppose any truce at all.

Gaza City, March 23. (AP): Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a hardliner who opposes even a temporary truce with Israel, is emerging as a Hamas strongman in the Palestinian areas after the assassination of the group's founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin. However, Rantisi, a 54-year-old pediatrician, is not expected to replace Yassin or take over the group. Since its creation in 1987, Hamas has been run largely as a collective of senior activists in Gaza and the Arab world, with Yassin in a key role as ideologue, spiritual leader and strategist. Hamas leaders said that while the killing of Yassin is a blow to morale, it would not hamper the group's operations, including its ability to carry out attacks. Hamas is pledged to Israel's destruction. Hamas is secretive about its organisation, though the broad outlines are known. General policy is set by the political bureau, headed by Khaled Mashaal, who is based in Damascus, Syria. Other members of the bureau include several Hamas leaders in the Arab world, as well as Rantisi, Hanieh and Mahmoud Zahar in Gaza.

The left wing journalist Paul McGeogh agrees that this means war and believes it will be a bad thing for Israel, almost as bad as President Bush angering Al Qaeda.

Like Israel's deliberate campaign to weaken Yasser Arafat, Yassin's execution will do to the Palestinians what the "war on terror" has done to al-Qaeda - fracture the leadership, leaving angered and autonomous cells to exact revenge, competing with each other for greater body counts as their leaders compete to fill the leadership vacuum.

Reader JL has a much more sophisticated analysis than Paul McGeogh, one that is probably nearer the truth.

Decapitation strikes (during the Cold War) were thought of as counterproductive, because in killing or incapacitating Soviet leadership, you would have no one to negotiate with to end the war. The Israelis face the converse, but more complex problem. Negotiation with the PA is useless if HAMAS or any other third party can come in and queer the pitch. In helping to decapitate HAMAS, the Israelis have strengthened the PA position as the sole representative of the Palestinians. The PA is the clear winner in the Yassin killing, as one of Arafat's strongest rivals is gone. Also, in putting the Palestinians more firmly under Arafat's control, it strengthens the Israeli position, as it simplifies the hydra-like nature of Palestinian leadership.

But Arafat himself is uncertain about Israeli intentions, fearing that Sharon has grown too unpredictable. The Associated Press reports that he is hunkered down in the belief that he might be the next missile target. He might also be the target of Hamas if they suspect that he cut a deal with Israel to leave the field clear.

Arafat aides say he was unnerved by Yassin's death and that he's staying holed up in his West Bank headquarters. One aide says, "He is like a man who was hit on the head because they killed Yassin and now they could kill him."

The world is now watching a very carefully engineered train wreck. Hamas is headed full speed for Israel, or will as soon as it can solve its leadership problems, and Sharon is commencing further operations against leadership targets in Gaza. Sharon has initiated a high stakes Game of Chicken, locked the steering wheel in place and thrown away the key. The only way out now is to accept the consequences of collision or to shift the roadbed.

Transition

James Mann described how the United States National Command Authority practiced dispersal during the height of the Cold War to ensure continued civilian leadership in the event of an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

Under the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations the U.S. government had built large underground installations at Mount Weather, in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, and near Camp David, along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, each of which could serve as a military command post for the President in time of war. Yet a crucial problem remained: what might happen if the President couldn't make it to one of those bunkers in time. ...

One of the questions studied in these exercises was what concrete steps a team might take to establish its credibility. What might be done to demonstrate to the American public, to U.S. allies, and to the Soviet leadership that "President" John Block or "President" Malcolm Baldrige was now running the country, and that he should be treated as the legitimate leader of the United States? One option was to have the new "President" order an American submarine up from the depths to the surface of the ocean—since the power to surface a submarine would be a clear sign that he was now in full control of U.S. military forces. This standard—control of the military—is one of the tests the U.S. government uses in deciding whether to deal with a foreign leader after a coup d'état.

America has traditionally been fortunate in that executive power is been vested in an office rather than a man. The man may change, but the office endures. America has been changing or reelecting its leader every four years for over two centuries now. However, terrorist organizations like Hamas not being constitutional democracies, do not have the benefit of an orderly transition and one of the most mischievous effects of Ariel Sharon's killing of Sheik Yassin has been to put the gore-encrused top rung of the ladder up for grabs.

Two weeks before an IDF Hellfire missile pulped Sheik Yassin, low-level fighting had already broken out in Gaza in anticipation of an Israeli withdrawal. The problem, which will be instantly familiar to anyone acquainted with clandestine organizations or gangs, was who would control the turf when the Big Boys left it open.

Gunmen killed an adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in a street ambush overnight, feeding fears of growing lawlessness and chaos ahead of a possible Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Arafat denounced the killing of Khalil al-Zaben, 59, as a "dirty assassination" and convened his Cabinet and national security council today to discuss what was seen as one of the most serious challenges yet to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority has been weakened by more than three years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, and armed gangs, included gunmen with ties to Arafat's Fatah movement, are increasingly controlling the streets.

With Yassin's death the problem can only get worse. Organizations like Al Qaeda and Hamas are in many respects indistinguishable from protection rackets and derive a large part of their income from the control of certain territories. Analogous organizations like the Communist New People's Army in the Philippines, (officially a terrorist organization but headquartered in the Netherlands), for example, charge all  public officials in the Philippines a 'permit to campaign' -- a few hundred thousand dollars for the privilege of standing for office under a constitution they don't recognize. Internal factions within that Communist organization regularly assassinate each other over the partition of their stipend from the Euroleft. The same kind of competition for turf is bound to plague Hamas. The frenzy in the Gaza strip tonight probably has less to do with the preparations to strike back at Israel then a frantic attempt to locate the secret bank account numbers that Sheik Yassin may have had in his possession.

The Israeli strike against the terrorist top tier exploits the weakness inherent in terrorist organizations which are unstable alliances based on a delicate balance of internal intimidation. None of them, the Palestinian Authority included, are either transparent or accountable. They are exceptionally vulnerable to changes in their leadership. They can stand the loss of any number of teenage fighters or youthful suicide bombers without much damage but are rocked -- as Yassin's death illustrates -- by death at the top. Twenty million Soviet casualties in World War 2 were a statistic, but the death of Stalin marked the end of an epoch. Had the Israeli missile simply incinerated a 19-year old Hamas illiterate foot soldier it would have been another day in Gaza, hardly worth the notice of the press, but since its target was the terrorist leadership the moral calculus elevated it to a sacrilege. Yet it does not alter the fact that the foreign offices of Europe will be scratching their heads tonight to see who the letters of condolence to Hamas should be addressed to. Perhaps they should wait until a new leader climbs to the pinnacle of the bloody pole before bowing at his feet.

Survival Strategies in a Barroom Brawl

The death of Hamas big Sheik Yassin at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces highlights the strategic problem of Europe. The war is spreading and is becoming increasingly difficult to sit out. The Al Qaeda attack on the Madrid train, the renewed unrest in Kosovo, the unrest in Iran and Syria and developments in Iraq -- added to the probability of escalating conflict in Israel -- make it increasingly difficult to benefit from hanging back. Historically, France's "independent" strategy  was based on being able to tilt the balance in an inconclusive struggle in a bipolar world, in the process extracting the maximum benefit for itself. This worked during the Cold War where it could play both ends against the middle, selling its support to the highest bidder, behavior that could be justified as "realpolitik" and hard-nosed maneuvering in the the national interest.

However, the struggle against terrorism now threatens to become a fight to the finish instead of a Cold War ballet of competition circumscribed by deterrence. Since Jihadistan has shown no inclination to settle for less than total victory, it invariably led to symmetrical American goals. September 11 proved that terrorism could not be contained. It had to be finished. A prescient European foreign policy would have realized on September 12 that this conflict structure would inevitably lead to a widening war, one that would engulf Europe's own borders. But it did not grasp the implications of the struggle in time. It is now terribly vulnerable to the tides of conflict that lap against its frontiers.

Fully knowing that it cannot strike with much effect at the IDF, Hamas may now be tempted to hit at Europe and through them to pressure Israel. Why not? It worked in Madrid and from now one anyone may be tempted to ring Europe's bell for whatever reason. But worse yet for Europe, the descent of the war on terror into a death match, as exemplified by the struggle between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist groups means that there will be but one victor and one loser at the end of the day. With each passing moment the odds lengthen that the EU or the UN can broker a negotiated settlement between Israel, India, Russia and USA on the one hand, and the Jihadis on the other. There will be no Congress of Vienna at which French palaver can work its wonders, only unconditional surrender by one side or the other. A zero-sum conflict guarantees that Europe will not be on the winning side. Whoever the victor, Europe will be despised and whether America or Jihadistan triumphs, Europe will have played the wrong hand.

Before this is over the world will have had a bellyful of war. Each morning's unbearable news will cast the net wider. Neither the man commuting to work in Central Madrid nor the peace marchers in costume on Market Street can escape being combatants. Leftist sympathies, whether in Israel, America or Europe will prove no armor against car bomb fragments. War was Osama Bin Laden's goal in attacking the United States on September 11. He hoped to force America into fruitless and ineffectual reprisals against the Islamic world, then offer a hudna at intervals while he prepared his next blow. George Bush's counterstroke, which history will either judge as an act of supreme folly or genius, was to go beyond Afghanistan into Iraq. In a worthy riposte to Osama's, he escalated the struggle to the point where it was mutually mortal. If the fall of the Twin Towers was a gauntlet in America's face, the fall of Baghdad was a glove shoved down the Islamist's throat. Both Bin Laden and Bush have made compromise impossible. If the jihadis believed they could control the tempo of the conflict they were misinformed; American forces in the Arab heartland have forced a zugzwang to compel the game to the bitter end.

Yassin's assasination serves the same purpose. Israel's main problem was to escape the cycle of murder and negotiation that was slowly bleeding it to death. No matter how horribly Israel was attacked it was always expected to return, in an attitude of abjection, to the negotiating table. The Jihadis learned that any Israeli counteroffensive could be aborted by throwing the prospect of further talks into its path. Israel's superiority on the battlefield would be nullified because it would always be restrained by the "Peace Process", a misnomer if ever there was one. But the operation against Yassin reverses the dynamic. By striking at so senior a terrorist target, the Jihadis will be in no mood for negotiations. They themselves will cast away the Peace Process and sheer fury will make them forswear their favorite tactic, the faux hudna -- thereby granting Israel a meeting on the battlefield. For this is Israel's mortal challenge to Hamas which has often said it would kill the last Jew. The message, now ringing in their ears, is that the Jew will kill the last terrorist, beginning at the top.

The Hunt for Ayman al-Zawahri

Recent news coverage of operations on the Pakistani-Afghan border has been principally focused on the multi-battalion Pakistani Army assault on the "mud forts" in Waziristan, with CNN supplying a photograph of a not terribly impressive set of huts set on a flat field with no discernable defensive advantages. In those huts, or near enough, is said to be Ayman al-Zawahiri, if CNN's photograph is reliable. Dan Darling has been following the progress of the engagement at Regnum Crucis. He points out that there are large numbers of civilians admixed with the combatants and that some of them are being held hostage by the Jihadis.

This operation is actually the southeastern half of Operation Mountain Storm with American troops officially on the Afghan side acting as the anvil to Pakistan's hammer along the border. However, that bland fact conceals that Mountain Storm is a tactically unconventional but ambitious operation probably aimed at rooting out the infrastructure of the Jihadis along both sides of the frontier.

Coalition ground forces are not massed together by the thousands, according to the methods of conventional warfare. Instead, Operation Mountain Storm is a series of simultaneous "search and destroy" missions spread across the Afghan interior and along 3,300 kilometers of border with Pakistan.

These rapid-tempo operations are conducted by small groups of specialized commando teams. Some raiding parties coordinate the efforts of U.S. Special Forces, light mountain infantry, and soldiers from the fledgling Afghan National Army. Others include U.S. Marines, Navy SEAL (Sea, Air, or Land) commandos, or CIA paramilitary officers. What Hilferty calls a "small-scale air assault" is also referred to by military planners as a "heliborne insertion." Twin-rotor Chinook transport helicopters land commando teams deep in the rugged mountains where Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters are thought to be hiding. Close air support aircraft -- fighter jets, AC-130 Spectre gunships, and A-10 Warthog attack planes -- are on standby to attack any opposition the commandos encounter. Sometimes the commando teams use ground vehicles to deploy from the U.S. bases that have been established across the south, southeast, and east of Afghanistan.

These nonlinear tactics probably rely on an unprecedented amount of  mobility and near-real time intelligence. These coordinate even the more cumbersome operations on the Pakistani side.

Pakistani forces were joined Friday by "a dozen or so" American intelligence agents in the ongoing operation, Sultan said. The sky was filled with U.S. satellites, Predator drones and other surveillance equipment.

If descriptions of the current engagements are broadly true, the following can be reasonably surmised:

1. The extensive nature of the Jihadi foritifications and the large amounts of ammunition available to them represent an major military investment. They must have operated on the assumption that Americans would never come for them on the Pakistani side of the border and that the Pakistanis would neither make a serious attempt or move swiftly enough to make escape impossible.
2. From press accounts, a high value target was almost surprised by the Pakistani vanguard, making only a narrow escape in an armored SUV. The Pakistanis themselves where wholly unprepared for the ferocity of the resistance they encountered. This suggests that the Pakistani forces were pretty much trucked straight into the battle, denying the Al Qaeda any significant advance warning of the onslaught. Against all expectations, the Pakistanis appear to have achieved tactical surprise.
3. Although media attention has focused on the holdouts in the "mud forts" which apparently contain as many hostages as Jihadis, little has been reported about the Western component of Mountain Storm. The Australian Broadcast Corporation reported the deployment of 100 SAS soldiers into battle. This represents a major part of British SAS strength and can only mean that the Western side of the operation is in a state of extraordinary activity requiring out-of-theater reinforcements. It is entirely probable that the main action is "offstage".
4. Offstage in this instance, is out of sight. The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is mostly unmarked and follows the high ridge line of the mountain range which demarcates the two countries. For all practical purposes Allied forces could be miles inside the Pakistani border without anyone the wiser.

Even if Zawahri is not captured, the historical military invulnerability of tribal regions on Pakistan's Northwest frontier may have ended forever. Operation Mountain Storm's lethal marriage of mobility, persistent overhead surveillance and networked weapons means that small teams of men can operate effectively over wide areas -- essentially turning the tables on tribal fighters. Never again can terrorist chieftains like Osama Bin Laden invest large sums of money in caves and mountain fortresses on the assumption of their inviolability. The mud forts and honeycomb of caves, their ammunition magazines and hundreds of fighters -- representing an expenditure of terrorist millions -- is going up in smoke.

The real significance of ongoing operations in South Waziristan may be as a template for similar operations in the near future. The same principles used in Mountain Storm can be applied in the open spaces of the Sahara, the Syrian desert or the Zagros mountains deep in Iran. It isn't just the Al Qaeda that evolve. So do their foes.

Update

Go to Winds of Change for more information. Check out this satellite map of the Pakistani operation against the "mud forts". When looking at the satellite imagery, note that:

The red dashed line running along the ridge to the west (left) of Oba Sar is the Afghan border, I think, a distance of about 3,000 meters linear. The map appears to be oriented north to south. That means allied forces are practically looking down on the Oba Sar. No way out north, however, there might be a breakout or escape route south along the valley at the foot of the hills. Twenty clicks will take them to a road network and eventually to Khan Khot in the direction of Baluchistan. -- Wretchard

The Sunday Times UK (registration required) says al-Zawahiri may already be dead.

A senior American official involved in the hunt for Bin Laden said that al-Zawahiri may already be dead. According to his version of events, the Egyptian was in the escaping car and was shot by Taskforce 121, the shadowy rapid reaction force comprising special forces and CIA agents that had helped to capture Saddam Hussein last December.

The body, he said, had been retrieved from the wreckage and was undergoing DNA tests to confirm whether it was that of al-Zawahiri. In deference to the US forces’ hosts, any announcement was being delayed to make it look as if it were a Pakistani-run operation, as well as to have time to use any information garnered to capture other fighters.

Members of Taskforce 121 — whose existence is so secret that their area Camp Vance in the main US base of Bagram is a no-go area to all other US military — were moved to the firebase of Shkin last week, on the Afghan border with Pakistan just a few miles from Wana. Their numbers were boosted by bringing some members back from Iraq.

The Toothpaste Effect

Dan Darling at Winds of Change lays out the best backgrounder to the Madrid train bombings anywhere. He points out the curious fact that many of the Madrid bombers had fled to Spain when they were hunted out of Morocco.

The more immediate origins of the Madrid attacks, however, date back to the May 16, 2003 Casablanca bombings in Morocco. As this primer explains, Salafi Jihad, the Moroccan al-Qaeda affiliate, is decentralized under the command of local emirs, each operating out of a major Moroccan city. In Casablanca, it was Abdelhaq Moulsabbat served as the emir of Assirat al-Moustaquim, the subgroup within Salafi Jihad that perpetrated the Casablanca bombings.

The Moroccan reaction to what happened in Casablanca actually serves as a fairly good example to other Arab countries of how to deal with al-Qaeda in a non-Western society. Moulsabbat was captured and likely tortured to death and 699 Salafi Jihad members arrested, including Moulsabbat's associate Pierre Richard Robert, the emir of Tangiers. In addition, King Mohammed denounced the attackers on national television, banned political parties set up along religious, ethnic, linguistic, or regional lines, having women deliver religious lectures during Ramadan, and pushing ahead with social reforms. All of these actions have been extremely beneficial for Morocco, but their unfortunate side effect is that the Salafi Jihad members who once planned revolution at home have been forced to flee abroard to avoid being detained by the authorities. They can't go to Algeria for fear of being detained by the military government there, so it appears that at least some of them have chosen to head north - to Spain. At least one of Pierre Richard Robert's minions, Abdulaziz Benayich, took that route and was planning an attack when he was arrested by Spanish authorities in likely preparation for an attack.

They are not the only terrorists who have fled to Europe looking for easier pickings. The group which has been threatening France with mayhem if it does not rescind the law banning Muslim headscarves in schools is thought to be either Chechen in origin or a false-flag operation by the Russian FSB, the descendant of the dread KGB. Either way, it represents a migration of an ongoing struggle onto more congenial grounds. An attack on the defenseless. Europe has long been the preferred base for the political arms of terror organizations. The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade which initially claimed responsibility for the Madrid attacks is thought by Dan Darling to be a public relations front for a variety of Jihadist groups based in London.

Militant Islamists, perhaps embolded by a perception of European weakness, are challenging it to its face. In Mitrovica, 400 miles from the Austrian border, Albanian Muslims were purging themselves of the last infidel Serbs, reasonably certain that Europe cannot nerve itself to stop ethnic cleansing, at least not when the cleansees are Orthodox Christians. As Serbia's nominal overlords, the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) appealed for calm,  churches burned. Reuters reports from UN-controlled Serbia:

Albanians set fire to Serb Orthodox churches in Kosovo on Thursday as NATO scrambled to deploy up to 1,000 more troops to stifle an explosion of ethnic violence. A church was torched in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica despite the efforts of French NATO peacekeepers, who fired teargas and rubber bullets to drive off the mob. Gunshots were heard, but it was not clear where from.

A Serb church and Serb homes were also set ablaze in the central town of Obilic, near the provincial capital Pristina. Reports from Obilic said NATO peacekeepers had evacuated about 100 Serbs because it could not guarantee their safety -- as happened on Wednesday night in the capital, Pristina. NATO summoned reinforcements after 22 people were killed in the worst ethnic clashes in Kosovo since the allies and the United Nations took control of the province from Serbia in 1999. Some 500 have been injured, of whom 20 were in intensive care. The new troops will reinforce 17,500 peacekeepers and 9,000 local and international police trying to keep a lid on the province of two million Muslim Albanians demanding independence and 100,000 Serbs, many in enclaves relying on NATO protection.

The Serbs will flee and the UN with them. The US offensive in Pakistan and Afghanistan,  unrest among Syrian Kurds and continued resistance to the Mullahs in Iran against which the Islamists can mount no military riposte has naturally reduced them to attacking civilian targets wherever they can -- attacks which the press represents as great victories -- and there are no softer targets than those in Europe. The dreadful strokes which will now descend upon the Old Continent will not, as some imagine, bring down the New. They will simply smite the Old, passing easily through their Maginot Line of treaties and accords with the same ease as an icepick through a sheet of paper.

Update

CNN is reporting that "Pakistani forces have surrounded a 'high-value' target believed to be Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant in al Qaeda, near the Afghan border. The troops reported fierce resistance from al Qaeda fighters." The Jihadis are facing military defeat everywhere, in Iraq, the Horn of Africa, Iran, Afghanistan and now in Pakistan. The terrorist toothpaste is being squeezed out of the tube and is even now squirming, like a thing possessed, towards the cavity-ridden European border.

Meanwhile fighting has continued for the second straight day in UNMIK controlled Kosovo. Churches and mosques are going up in flames as both sides battle for possession.

The clashes, which began Wednesday when ethnic Albanians blamed Serbs for the drownings of two children, have killed at least 31 people and wounded hundreds more, including several dozen U.N. police and NATO peacekeepers, according to U.N. spokeswoman Izabella Karlowicz.

The bloodshed underscored the bitter divisions that have polarized Kosovo's mostly Muslim ethnic Albanians, who want independence from Serbia, and Orthodox Christian Serbs, a minority in Kosovo who consider the province their ancient homeland.

Of course, the violence is all America's fault. If only the US had provided more support for the UN, after toppling Milosevic in the first place, this fiasco would never have happened in Europe, 400 miles from Austria and 4,000 miles from the United States.

The violence, which spilled beyond Kosovo's borders into the Serbian heartland, also dealt the Bush administration a potential setback in efforts to reduce the number of peacekeepers in the Balkans and redeploy them to Iraq, Afghanistan and other hotspots. About 2,000 Americans now serve with the force, down from 5,000 after the war, and the entire force has shrunk from 50,000 to 18,500.

Strange how Europe wants the very thing which they are determined the Iraqis should not have. American soldiers who are at once so valued and whose blood is so valueless are being asked again to halt the conflagration before Europe's shining socialist gates.

Your Credit is Good, but We Need Cash

Al Qaeda has promised to spare Europe as long as it maintains it's good behavior. Spanish Socialist Zapatero, who fancies himself Prime Minister of Spain, is being watched closely to see that he actually withdraws all Spanish forces from Iraq. His instructions are as follows:

In a letter published in a pan-Arab newspaper by a group that says it is linked to al Qaeda, brigades were told to stop all operations in Europe. The letter came from the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades which took responsibility for the Madrid bombings. The letter adds: "Because of this decision, the leadership has decided to stop all operations within the Spanish territories... until we know the intentions of the new government that has promised to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq."

Compliance is mandatory. Resistance is futile. Don't even think of disobeying. Because then you will incur what you wanted to avoid in the first place. Being Prime Minister isn't what it used to be.

The Spanish Prime Minister suggests that America should also follow suit. According to the Washington Post:

"I said during the campaign I hoped Spain and the Spaniards would be ahead of the Americans for once," Zapatero said in an interview on Onda Cero radio. "First we win here, we change this government, and then the Americans will do it, if things continue as they are in Kerry's favor."

Europe 2004

Dateline Europe fom Reuters -- March 16, 2004, after the Spanish capitulation.

France has received threats of a possible attack against French interests from an Islamist group apparently named after a Chechen guerrilla killed in a Moscow hostage-taking in 2002, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday. The letter, sent to several newspapers, threatened "to plunge France into terror and remorse and spill blood outside its frontiers," Jacques Esperandieu, deputy editor of the daily Le Parisien which received a copy, quoted it as saying. The ministry confirmed earlier Justice Ministry reports that the threat, which it said was sent "on behalf of the servants of Allah, the powerful and wise," mentioned possible attacks in France and against French interests abroad.

Security experts say France is also a target because of its cooperation with authorities fighting Islamic militants in its former North African colonies Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

Flash! The Guardian reports that Spain's hesitance to concede the disputed of island of Perejil may have prevented Morocco from sharing information with Spanish authorities that could have thwarted terrorist attacks. Meanwhile the Spanish Foreign Minister journeyed to Morocco to attend a funeral service for North Africans killed in the Madrid train attack.

In the Moroccan capital of Rabat on Tuesday, Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio expressed solidarity between the two countries - separated by 9 miles of water - at a memorial service for the bombing victims. "Spain is the European mirror of Morocco, and Morocco is the African mirror of Spain," Palacio said.

Dateline 1938. Backbencher Winston Churchill, reacting to Neville Chamberlain's triumphant return with an agreement from Hitler promising he would spare Britain any further demands rises to warn the House of Commons.

"And do not suppose this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in olden time. ... We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that. It must now be accepted that all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi Power. The system of alliances in Central Europe upon which France has relied for her safety has been swept away, and I can see no means by which it can be reconstituted."

Developments

CNN is reporting that France has been threatened by a Muslim group that would make "blood run to (its) borders." for banning the use of headscarves at state schools.

The letter, from a previously unknown group calling itself the "Servants of Allah the Mighty and the Wise," said it planned to take action after Muslim girls were banned from wearing headscarves in schools.

... Describing France as a country of "wine, pigs, loose morals and nudity," the group said it planned to use attack techniques imported from Gaza and Chechnya that "have never been used in the West until now." The letter, postmarked from Paris and sent to the chief editor of "Le Parisien," urged Muslims to stay out of crowded areas.

Meanwhile, a car bomb leveled an ordinary residential hotel and its surroundings in Baghdad. Casualties, mostly Iraqi, are heavy.

Several ambulances rushed to the scene with the drivers shouting over their loudspeakers: "Don't bring us the dead people. We can't help them. Bring us the injured." Two ambulances that tried to leave the scene were quickly surrounded by an angry crowd that blocked the streets as men shouted: "You can't leave now. There are children buried inside." Crowds of Iraqis gathered at the site. Some of them expressed anger at insurgents who have launched attacks in Iraq, calling on the Americans to crack down on the insurgency.

...  One of the Iraqis, Zaki Mohammad, 31, said of the people behind the attack: "They have to hang these people as criminals in front of the people in the city of Baghdad." "Long live U.S.A.," said Ali Mohammad, a 36-year-old Iraqi graduate student and friend of Mr. Mohammad. "We support the U.S.A."

The Shield Without the Sword

Spain's new Socialist prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has vowed to fight terrorism in all its forms. "My immediate priority will be to fight all forms of terrorism", he said yesterday.  But he should be careful not to fight it so effectively as to invite Al Qaeda's retaliation. If Zapatero seriously carries out his program to discommode Osama Bin Laden, the Shiek of Jihad might strike back, creating that which was to be avoided in the first place. Hence the phrase "fight all forms of terrorism" really means to 'fight the lion short of waking him', a task best accomplished with rubber-tipped children's bows and arrows and water pistols.

The operational question now facing the Spanish Armed Forces is not 'what do we do to exterminate terrorism' but what can we do without provoking them. Before anyone derides the Spaniards for adopting this absurdity one should remember that America tried this folly before them. The dilemma Lyndon Johnson faced in Vietnam was that he wished to prevent the invasion of South Vietnam without provoking China into intervening by defeating Ho Chi Minh. He wanted to avoid facing the Chinese volunteer human waves which McArthur encountered in Korea when he had driven the Nokors to the Yalu. The answering strategy provided by Robert McNamara was "calibrated response". The US Armed Forces would be allowed to do thus, and no more; pluck at Ho's beard yet caress his face. LBJ famously said, "they can’t hit an outhouse without my permission." The result of course, was endless war, war in which victory itself had been ruled out. There was never any "light at the end of the tunnel" because the war itself had been designed that way. History has not been kind to either Lyndon or Robert. They managed to suffer as many casualties as Truman did in Korea without attaining their goals. It was left to Ronald Reagan to remember that those who would embark on war must first of all be willing to win it.

Those who believe that the Global War on Terror is founded on a lie should recall the greatest deception in modern history was perpetrated upon the 2.6 million Americans who were sent to Vietnam. The government which exhorted them to endure any sacrifice and bear any burden buried 58,000 men with Lyndon Johnson's outhouse as their tombstone. As Spaniards prepare to shift from the GWOT to Zapatero's war on "all forms of terrorism" they should ask whether it includes not merely the prospect, but the intention of victory.

Dark Night of Spirit 2

There's an old saying that one should be careful of wishes because they might come true. The capitulation of Spain to Al Qaeda's terrorist offensive may momentarily gladden the Eurosocialists -- but only momentarily. Eurosocialism is ironically premised on a wall of free security, traditionally provided by the United States, behind which they can pursue utopianism. But the practical effect of the Socialist victory will be to open Europe's southern borders to more terrorist infiltration. First, the Socialist leader Zapatero is unlikely to pursue an agressive anti-terrorist policy. He will begin by withdrawing Spanish forces from Iraq. Second, the events of March 11 and the subsequent election have divided Spain as no other event in recent history and has created all manner of  political cracks through which an ill-wind may whistle. Third, Spanish access to US intelligence will inevitably be degraded. It will not be cut off, but it will not be what it was.

These circumstances create an objective weakening in the Continental defensive structure. France, already at a heightened state of alert, now faces the prospect that its southern neighbor will make a separate peace with the jihadis. For while Aznar's party might have withstood another bombing, Zapatero's, after all their promises, cannot. If the Socialists cannot take their program of appeasement to its logical conclusion then they must face the very Islamic bombings which they told the electorate their election would prevent.

The appeasement which so amuses the French may not be so funny when played by the Spaniards. For Spain, in concert with America and France, shared the watch of North Africa. And since that is where many Al Qaeda have moved, as the Madrid train bombing carried out by North Africans proves, Europe will find their relative danger increased far more greatly than the Americans, who can comfortably lose the Spanish contingent in Iraq. The loss of a solid Spain, while an annoyance to America is a catastrophe for Europe. Iraq is far from America but Spain is close to France.

In the end, the very nature of the War on Terror ultimately means that Europe needs America more than America needs Europe. The global jihad means that attacks on Europe can be planned and launched from geographical locations far beyond the reach of their defense forces. That could be ignored while Europe remained convinced that it would not be targeted. But now the doubt grows. And if the contingency eventuates, neither France nor Spain have the mobility or the means to pursue their foes into the uttermost reaches of Central Asia, the deserts of Africa or the teeming stews of the Southwest Asia. That deficiency can only be addressed by a sustained program of European defense spending --- and it will not. Zapatero has cast away the very thing that he may need and which he can neither afford nor beg.

Eurosocialism, by hitching its wagon to the fortunes of militant Islam has put itself at it's mercy. That is the definition of surrender, whose fine print the Continent will soon be familiar with. A disarmed, politically correct and supine Eurosocialist society can only exist where other free men guard their borders. By dismissing the guardians and capitulating to the jihadis the Eurosocialists have struck at the very root of their own existence. Lenin once remarked that capitalists would sell him the noose he would use to hang them. But that was before Stalin poisoned him.

The Dark Night of Spirit

The victory of the Socialist Party in  Spain and its probable withdrawal from an active alliance with the United States in the Global War on Terror is a decisive victory for the forces of freedom everywhere -- although this is not immediately apparent. It establishes the iron linkage between Eurosocialism and militant Islam, indeed demonstrates for all the world to see the subordination of the Euroleft to the Global Jihad. The last claim of Marxism-Leninism to the leadership of history is gone. They are the liveried flunkeys of Sheik Osama. Long may they enjoy it.

The events in Spain show it is no longer possible to embrace both Eurosocialism and national independence; Eurosocialism and national defense; Eurosocialism and survival. The two have become incompatible states. You can have one but not the other. And since men must live and live to breathe free, Eurosocialism must in the end pass into the night chained to its boon companions.

The task before the United States and its allies is to redouble its efforts in the War on Terror. It will soon become apparent who the Islamists prefer to blackmail, who the Islamists prefer to intimidate; which countries Islamism will attempt to dominate. And which live free. The more pointed the contrast the better. In this fight, America's greatest ally will be the global Jihad itself. As the terror network is squeezed so will it infest the countries which have given it succor. Every nation and territory which has surrendered to the Jihad has chosen for itself unending misery and abjection. Those who drink from the cup of Osama must endure it to its last bitter dregs.

Although many commentators have excoriated the Spanish electorate for its capitulation to terror, we must never forget that the slightly smaller half decisively rejected it. These we honor and the rest we pity.

The Ichneumon Wasp

The European left has reacted to news that the suspects in the March 3 Madrid train massacre were Moroccans by blaming the United States, representing it as the vengeance of Al Qaeda which Spain brought on itself for helping America in Iraq. It was natural that Osama, who remembers the fall of the Abassid caliphate well, should recall how the Mongols erected a tower of skulls before every city sacked before sending word ahead that any resistance would suffer the same fate. And so the Spanish victims caused their own deaths by being tardy in submission. The Left is now the messenger boy of Islamofacism. They know their place.

In the early 1990s, cadres of the Philippine Communist New People's Army went to Mindanao to establish a "tactical alliance" with Muslim separatists. They brought their Maoist Red Books and some light machineguns, thinking to overawe the Islamic yokels with worldly wisdom obtained at the University of the Philippines and a few hoary tips from Soviet training manuals. Instead they found a hard core of thousands who had trained in Afghanistan and the Balkans, who scoffed at the rusty Communist machineguns and whose petrodollars made the paltry Euroleft donations seem like chump change. It was a moment of revelation. Dan Darling at Regnum Crucis describes a similar moment during the early meetings between ETA and Hamas. The home team had brought their pathetic assets to the table.

The members of ETA said that although they had left in their sufficient arsenal a few hundred packages of dynamite, stolen a little earlier in two gunpowder magazines from France, they feared that it had begun to spoil. In spite of that, Hamas accepted the offer.

In return they were dazzled by a cave of wonders. The Islamists took ETA members to Afghanistan on forged Belgian passports, where they were trained in the use of MANPADS and given a few weapons via Greek freighters and a pleasure boat. That earnest was obviously convincing because somewhat later, the ETA sent 80 militants to Iraq for further training. The pecking order had been established and the coordination structured accordingly. In practice the relation between militants, even in the European and American Left, is governed by threat and intimidation. It is unnoticeable to the outer fringes of the Movement but grows increasingly more severe as one approaches the "committed" core. Among sympathizers in the media, entertainment and academic industries, obedience is largely enforced by social pressure or economic sanction. Closer in the pretenses are dropped and operational rules prevail. At the Central Committee level, as David Horowitz knows, decisions are enforced under penalty of death. Mercy is shown, within the Marxist IRA, by whether your kneecap is blown out from the front or the back. The arrival of the Islamists in the West, like a new gang arriving in town, has changed the dynamic considerably. They are given a wide berth by the Left, not merely out of a shared hatred for America, but out of fear -- pure operational fear. When the adnan or call to prayer is sounded from the bell tower at the state-funded University of Miami (hat tip: Little Green Footballs) to the approval of Leftist claques, there is a more than mutual admiration involved. People remember Salman Rushdie and the BBC Islamic prayer rooms have a certain preventive quality about them. The moribund Left knows who is boss and is selling the only thing they have remaining: access to media and cultural institutions, which suits the Islamofascists just fine. A division of labor has been established in which the Left provides the paralyzing injection on Western society leaving the jihadis a clear field within which to operate.

Steven Jay Gould, in arguing for the existence of natural evil, could find no better analogy than the ichneumon wasp, after which the monster in Alien was modeled, and which not coincidentally describes Islamofascism and its Leftist helpers.

The ichneumon, like most wasps, generally live freely as adults but pass their larva life as parasites feeding on the bodies of other animals, almost invariably members of their own phylum, the Arthropoda. The most common victims are caterpillars (butterfly and moth larvae), but some ichneumons prefer aphids and other attack spiders. Most host are parasitized as larvae, but some adults are attacked, and many tiny ichneumons inject their brood directly into the eggs of their host.

The free-flying females locate an appropriate host and then convert it into a food factory for their own young. Parasitologists speak of ectoparasitism when the uninvited guest lives on the surface of its host, and endoparasitism when the parasite dwells within. Among endoparasitic ichneumons, adult females pierce the host with their ovipositor and deposit eggs within. (The ovipositor, a thin tube extending backward from the wasp's rear end, may be many times as long as the body itself.) Usually, the host is not otherwise inconvenienced for the moment, at least until the eggs hatch and the ichneumon larvae begin their grim work of interior excavation.

Among ectoparasites, however, many females lay their eggs directly upon the host's body. Since an active host would easily dislodge the egg, the ichneumon mother often simultaneously injects a toxin that paralyzes the caterpillar or other victim. The paralyzes may be permanent, and the caterpillar lies, alive but immobile, with the agent of its future destruction secure on its belly. The egg hatches, the helpless caterpillar twitches, the wasp larvae pierces and begins its grisly feast.

Since a dead and decaying caterpillar will do the wasp larvae no good, it eats in a pattern that cannot help but recall, in our inappropriate anthropocentric interpretation, the ancient English penalty for treason — drawing and quartering, with its explicit object of extracting as much torment as possible by keeping the victim alive and sentient. As the king's executioner drew out and burned his client's entrails, so does the ichneumon larvae eat fat bodies and digestive organs first, keeping the caterpillar alive by preserving intact the essential heart and central nervous system. Finally, the larvae completes its work and kills its victim, leaving behind the caterpillar's empty shell. Is it any wonder that ichneumons, not snakes or lions, stood as the paramount challenge to God's benevolence during the heyday of natural theology?

This thing must never reach the stars.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

Now that war has come to Europe we can look with more sympathetic eyes at the magnitude of the tragedy which they had hoped to avert. Unlike the United States, whose Islamic population is growing but still small, the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East have sunk their roots deep into the Old Continent's soil. It was natural that European leaders had hoped this cup would pass away. They knew the challenge, if it came, might be beyond the limit of their waning strength. Sapped by two world wars, cynical, burdened with an aging population and with no horizons left it was overcome with an immense desire to slip away in peace.

It now awakens to the very nightmare which it hoped, in its uneasy, guilty holiday from history, never to face. Now face the horror it must, exactly 911 days behind America, lagging in all things, and most of all in hope. Whether the culprits of the Madrid train bombing are the ETA, grown monstrous on the assistance of Al Qaeda or the Al Qaeda itself makes no palpable difference. If a handful of Marxist terrorists can be responsible for the worst carnage on European soil since World War 2 it is almost comforting to hope that a more practiced demon, rather than a resurgent imp, had been the culprit. In the blackness of despair one can distinguish between shades of night.

The strategic choices facing Europe are stark. They can, like France, continue their policy of appeasement. Yet while the status quo may hold out that hope, it is forlorn. Maybe not this terrorist attack, but the one afterward and those still yet to follow will dash any expectation that a little more money siphoned from depleted coffers or a little more toadying will buy any more years. The months now will come too dear. Rather better, some will say, to face the enemy while some strength remains. Yet there can be no joy even in the most militaristic of hearts for what lies ahead, beside which the horror of the Balkans was but a small foretaste. The battle against Islamofascism will be fought on Europe's borders and Europe's soil.

In this hour the figures of Schroder and Chirac occupy the same relative positions as Chamberlain and Petain. Little men overwhelmed by events. Tony Blair, alone among the major leaders of Europe had both the wit to see the danger and the fortitude to face it. He is a flawed figure, beholden to the social policies of the British Labor Party, yet for all that the only one with a sure voice, the only captain fell and terrible now that the issue is joined. And like another British leader thrust unwilling into the crucible he can count on the immense potency of the United States of America on that dark plain whose end he cannot see. In this trial God send us wisdom that we may triumph, not under the banner of hatred which is the enemy's own standard, but under our own, mournful but unashamed.

Muerte en Madrid

The terrorist attacks on a Madrid commuter train which may have killed over 130 people has been attributed to the Basque separatist group ETA. Yet its ideology and operational linkages cannot be so narrowly confined. ETA has deep Communist roots. It's stated goal is to establish a Basque socialist state and takes the Algerian war against France for its operational model. It is another instance of the class of subnational groups, which with the assistance of modern technology, has found a way preserve an historical relic into the 21st century. Time has stopped in the world of both the ETA and Al-Qaeda. The date doesn't matter. For the one, it is forever 1917. For the other the calendar's last leaf turned in the 8th century.

The clock has run out for others too. In one candidate's mind it will always be Good Morning, Vietnam sometime before or after Camelot, who knows when? In the consciousness of others it is September 10, 2001, the world as it should have been and will be again. But in sidereal time, according to the motion of the spheres, it is the day after hundreds of people have been murdered and many hundreds more maimed, on a simple commuter train.

And tomorrow will either bring justice or time will not matter.

Addendum

ETA Party leader Arnaldo Otegi blamed "the Arab resistance" for the Madrid attacks. Pat Cox of the European Union declared "there shall be no safe haven for terrorism and terrorists in our European Union". We report. You deride.

The Summer of 2003

Although President Johnson began the massive deployment to Vietnam in 1965, it was not until 1968 when the full domestic impact of its mismanagement hit home, embodied in the experiences of those who had already served there. By that calculus, the effect of the war against terrorism will not be culturally and politically felt until around 2006, borne on the memories of hundreds of thousands who have served, with memories of liberation and victory, in all corners of the globe. Jason Van Steenwyk, a journalist and reserve officer just home from Iraq is planning a new career as a  vagabond on the way to writing a book.  He will be trading his rifle for a guitar and military transportation for decent set of wheels before hitting the road to set down his experiences, maybe between gigs. He will be cool in way that Greenpeace volunteers or campaigners of Howard Dean can never be. Steenwyk describes his plans:

I find myself torn between a desire to write EVERYTHING down for historical purposes, and a desire to move on and put the war behind me and return to civilian life. I am in the very early stages of discussing a collaboration on a book. If it comes through, it will be an all-consuming project, but I think it will be a good book--and very different from anything on the market right now. I haven't pitched it anywhere yet, though.

Every generation has its defining moments of shared experience. Once it came at Yasgur's Farm. But time moves on and for others it came in downtown Manhattan or Mosul. Captain Daniel Morgan of the 101st Airborne matter-of-factly talks about how to avoid hassles and kill Ba'athists in a fascinating article in the Army Times.

I adopted a SOP called the Button Hook, which is derived from how a unit attempts to capture or kill a sniper. A mounted patrol receives enemy machine gun fire and RPGs. The “Button Hook” calls for the immediate cordon of the suspected area by surrounding the block with its vehicles, sealing off possible enemy escape routes. The convoy commander simultaneously calls for OH-58D Kiowas to reinforce the cordon and to identify escaping personnel or suspected vehicles. If the convoy commander has the forces, he begins to clear the area from the most likely target to the least likely target. If he lacks the forces, he maintains the cordon and calls for the QRF infantry. This course of action will lead to the capture of the attackers or to some information.

Everything he says will be instantly clear and familiar to a certain of group of people, like a kind of code. There will be no need to explain QRF any more than it was necessary to define a 'roach' or 'shotgun' to an older generation. "Remember when we did the Button Hook?" If you were there, you knew. And if you weren't, you couldn't know. This effect will be magnified in the coming years. The liberals may have been correct in thinking the war on terrorism would be another Vietnam, but they got the cast of characters wrong. The right answer comes back at them from a mirror and the words, "don't trust anyone over 40".

And they've burned their bridges too. No dogs or recruiters allowed on the campus grounds. Maybe the feeling is mutual. Earlier Belmont Club posts dealt with the phenomenon of social conservatives "opting out" of what they perceive to be a society increasingly dominated by political correctness. It eerily echoes the call by counterculturists of 1960s to "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out". The admonition to try hallucinogenic drugs, invent your own religion or join a commune have been replaced by quiet exhortations to remain a virgin until marriage, home-school children or join a traditional church. And the impact is no less great. Reader PT wrote in response to Opting Out:

I will not buy French products, even though in the past I was a huge fan of Izod shirts. I have a German car, but it is the last I will ever own once my lease is up in a year. I do not watch television, nor do I subscribe to the local newspaper due to its’ clear ideological bent. ... We will fight for what we believe, but we learned after the formation of the Christian Coalition that if we are overtly vocal in our protests that we will be vilified by those who hold sway in the media. For example, I once had a girlfriend start to cry when I mentioned that I was a Christian conservative. We will fight, but it will remain as the Silent Majority. Will we ever give up on America.

One wonders how much is first choice and how much is pure rebellion. It would be entirely possible to remake Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with a Christian conservative in the role of Sidney Poitier. Peggy Noonan feels it. The times they are a-changing. If John Kerry's message sounds old, maybe it is old, like someone from the Summer of Love giving a speech in the 21st century.

And then I had it. Captain Rex Kramer in "Airplane," played by Robert Stack. At the end of the movie he's alone in the tower at the microphone, talking to an empty plane...It's tired. It's like Teddy Kennedy outtakes from 1980. Mr. Kerry sounds like an Al Gore knockoff. No, worse, he sounds like every Democratic politician of the past quarter century.

Maybe the chuckles don't cut it any more as people shy off to have families knowing they will need help to pay the pensions of a generation which left half their offspring  in the medical dumpster. Maybe rebellion is steeling yourself to clean up the weeds which were allowed to grow in all the dark corners of the world. Maybe it starts by calling things their right name. But in the meantime, there's a few books to be written and a few riffs to play.

Opting Out

Reader DA says this about the culture wars.

Interesting point. I'm a member of the (liberal) Presbyterian Church (USA) which has been losing members since it provided support for Angela Davis. Not that AD is a warcry today, but the authoritian liberalism emanating from the top is the same or worse. Congregations generally ignore the Word from Louisville. Still, we're shrinking. Ditto the other mainline ("sideline") churches. My son and his wife have joined a huge Presbyterian Church in America congregation and love it. They can't stop talking about it. The PCA is far more socially conservative. My son's two sisters in law--with their husbands--are going to conservative churches and becoming very closely involved. It is interesting that the six of them are well-educated, and have good jobs. The girls are all about six feet tall, outstanding high school and college athletes, homecoming-court-qualified. They have no deficiencies to be hidden or salved. The churches they attend are growing. My own congregation is growing, one of few in the PCUSA, partly because we are socially conservative. There is a sense of circling the wagons, in churches, Scouts, other organizations. I think the tipping point will be when a fire company arrives to find an ACLU office on fire and declines to act. That's an example. That would be a true clash of cultures. Still, there is a perverse pride among soldiers and others that the free-loaders and parasites and whiners are allowed the same freedoms as are their betters who provide the protection, services, food.

Yes, there is an opting out, which is far less noticeable than a resistance, but will probably have more of an effect in the long run.

If "opting out" becomes widespread practice it will inevitably result in a gradual resegregation of society into "separate but equal" communities divided along ideological, religious or ethnic lines. One of the strengths of America, vis-a-vis Europe was its vision of itself as a melting pot of humanity in pointed distinction to the Balkanization of parts of the Old World. The day a fire company refuses to put out a conflagration in an ACLU office will mark the end of that dream.

But there may be a temporal aspect to the culture wars as well. The baby boom generation of both Europe and America threw up its own peculiar and largely liberal ideology which naturally found its way into social mores and regulation. That generation is passing into history. In thirty years there will be no living men with a firsthand recollection of the Civil Rights Movement or the Vietnam War. Yet the dead hand of its custom will enshroud social discourse for some time to come. Social policies created when the European baby boomers were preoccupied with overpopulation will carry forward on sheer momentum into an era when its population is actually shrinking. Historians will be able to study, not without a feeling of pathos, the effects of a youth culture carried forward into a geriatric society. Reader PB from the UK writes:

Marriage is certainly, in my view, a major civilising institution for males. Single males here in the UK are neotenic and one would be hard pressed to differentiate between a 13 year old and a 30 year old as far as behaviour, dress and interests go. Only the stubble is a bit of a give away. I know of several instances where "mummy" runs them about and waits on them hand and foot, needless to say these blokes don't work, males need a "wife" to instruct them that life isn't like that.

But that is assuming there will be historians to record the tale and it is an open question whether it will be written, if at all, in English or Arabic.

All for One and None for All 2

All for One and None for All asked whether single sex marriage advocacy would set up a conflict with proponents of traditional marriage. Orson Scott Card believed it would. Some thoughtful readers disagree. Reader SC writes:

I don't think same-sex marriage advocates are encouraging a more profound turnaround of their opponents' mentality then, say, desegregation and civil rights advocates of the 1950s and 1960s were advocating. If *that* didn't "burst apart the system" (close, but thankfully no cigar; at any rate it was enough of a moral good to take that risk) I don't see how this will.

Demographic information suggests that to the younger generations this is essentially a non-issue; the fundamental decency and equality of gay people is taken for granted. As the older generations slowly pass away the threat of the ssm question or related debates "bursting apart the system" will be even less dangerous than it is now, because "the system" will in the main agree with the proposition.

This is an empirical question which will be answered in the coming years.

The campaign for gay marriages has been consistently compared to the Civil Rights movement. But the cast of characters does not transpose so neatly. By the 1960s the proponents of segregation were in the distinct minority. The Armed Forces had been desegregated in the 1950s and the United States had in political theory, though not in practice, affirmed the equality of the "Negro" by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, which were themselves largely the outcome of the Civil War. In a very fundamental sense, the Civil Rights Movement had been won on the battlefield at Gettysburg. Segregation continued to survive by remaining in the "closet". Local customs, local sheriffs. Jim Crow was a web of laws with ostensibly different aims whose real intent was to enforce segregation by stealth.

The Civil Rights activists of the 1960s understood this and organized the Freedom Rider campaign, designed to bring the values of the majority into open conflict with those of the minority. The whole idea was to put Jim Crow in direct and unavoidable confrontation with both the Constitution and established jurisprudence; to sandwich the Arkansas National Guard between Orval Faubus and the 101st Airborne.

The primary domestic use of the U. S. Army in the late l950's and l960's was in response to the civil rights revolution that established equal legal rights for African-Americans. President Eisenhower found himself in such a position in l957. Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas defied a federal court order directing the racial integration of Central High School in Little Rock. Faubus not only denounced the court but ordered out the Arkansas National Guard to halt integration. Eisenhower's Attorney General, Herbert Brownell, had cautioned the President that if Faubus persisted, Federal action was unavoidable. Eisenhower was already on record against using the military to enforce Supreme Court rulings on civil rights, having told a press conference in July l957 that "I can't imagine any set of circumstances that would ever induce me to send federal troops to enforce a court order. continued defiance, and his calling out and then removing the Arkansas National Guard, led to rioting in Little Rock on 23 and 24 September. Though still loathe to use troops Eisenhower had to act, especially after the mayor of Little Rock pleaded for federal assistance. Eisenhower began by federalizing the Arkansas National Guard, the first time that had been done since Reconstruction. In addition, the President dispatched twelve hundred paratroopers from the l0lst Airborne Division and these uniformed soldiers kept Central High School open until May 1958.

The proponents of gay marriage have reversed the sequence. The Massachusetts court and the San Francisco wedding ceremonies, via the full faith and credit clause are effectively busing North. The minority is coming out to challenge the majority and not vice versa. Whether this succeeds or not will be known soon enough. But reader SC's comparison of the process to the Civil Rights movement at least partially concedes Card's second point -- there will be sparks.

The ordination of a gay bishop into the American Episcopal church provides some kind of empirical sample against which to judge the SSM campaign. Robinson's appointment did not trigger massive secession from the ECUSA that his opponents warned of. What it reproduced was Card's scenario: a series of quiet departures by certain churches, a falloff in donations, a real schism with the Episcopal Churches of the Third World. It created a kind of "don't ask and don't tell" arrangement where differing Episcopal churches maintained a kind of uneasy unity while continuing to differ. What it did not bring was a new spirit of vitality to the Episcopal church, whose numbers continue to decline. Watching the events which recently passed through a liberal church replay themselves through the United States and its Constitution will be fascinating to watch, but not altogether pleasant.

But if one steps back for a moment, it will be readily apparent that the indifference of the younger generation to gay issues in the American Episcopal church is not an endorsement of Robinson, but an indifference to the church altogether. What the young are not indifferent toward is Evangelical Christianity or Islam, which are the fastest growing religions. Double ditto for Europe. By 2050 there may be Muslim majorities in some Western European countries and what future SSM marriages have there must be left for time to answer. If Samuel Huntington's article The Hispanic Challenge holds any water, there must be doubts about that proposition in America too.

Why, then, lead on. O, that a man might know
The end of this day's business ere it come!
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known. Come, ho! away!

All for One and None for All

Science fiction author Orson Scott Card writes a long and thoughtful article on single-sex marriages. (Hat tip: Lunar Skeletons) Card sees single-sex unions as the latest episode in a 50 year campaign to complete the "systematic destruction of the institution of marriage" which, with a writers broad sweep, he feels is the cornerstone of civilization

Because civilization provides the best odds for their children to live to adulthood ... Civilizations that enforce rules of marriage that give most males and most females a chance to have children that live to reproduce in their turn are the civilizations that last the longest. It's such an obvious principle that few civilizations have even attempted to flout it.

But it is his next assertion which is particularly startling. He regards the attempt to socially re-engineer America through activist courts as underhand and ultimately doomed.

The proponents of this anti-family revolution are counting on most Americans to do what they have done through every stage of the monstrous social revolution that we are still suffering through -- nothing at all. But that "nothing" is deceptive. In fact, the pro-family forces are already taking their most decisive action. It looks like "nothing" to the anti-family, politically correct elite, because it isn't using their ranting methodology. The pro-family response consists of quietly withdrawing allegiance from the society that is attacking the family.

His key argument is that the very "elites" who disdain traditional values ironically rely upon its continuance for their legitimacy and survival. How, he asks, if we lose our awe of marriage and God should we miraculously retain our respect for the judges in robes or titled academics who demolished them?

Who do you think is volunteering for the military to defend America against our enemies? Those who believe in the teachings of politically correct college professors? Or those who believe in the traditional values that the politically correct elite has been so successful in destroying? ... Depriving us of any democratic voice in these sweeping changes may not lead to revolution or even resistance. But it will be just as deadly if it leads to despair. For in the crisis, few citizens will lift a finger to protect or sustain the elite that treated the things we valued -- our marriages, our children, and our right to self-government -- with such contempt.

Card's argument is a strange variation of Edwin Markham's vision of the whirlwind in the Man with a Hoe. There Markham asks the "masters, lords and rulers in all lands" what would befall when the bowed thing that feeds, clothes and bleeds for them -- the Man with the Hoe -- tires of mockery and demands his reckoning.  Even the Marxist poet Pablo Neruda, himself a wealthy man, idly wondered whether he could continue to write were he not supplied with daily bread, meat and eggs by the very mechanism he was sworn to destroy. Card asks the liberal elite the same question. But if history is any guide no aristocracy, least of all a self-appointed one, has ever troubled itself with such rhetorical questions. In a response to bread riots that might have been crafted by Maureen Dowd, a French noble was said to have uttered "let them eat cake". And one set of entitlements ended.

But it is doubtful whether the proponents of traditional values will fold up their tents and withdraw, like a sulking Achilles, from the battlefield of public debate. The very attempt to pass a Federal Marriage Amendment, however doomed or ill-advised, is proof that the wall of silence has not yet been erected. And that is good news. The Constitution may be tattered, but it is not rent. Men are still in debate about how the entire nation can go forward, as Americans. Although there is a gathering in the shadows, the flag still flies -- for the moment -- over land of the free, and one hopes, the land of the intellectually brave.

A Spectre is Haunting Europe

Niall Ferguson at the American Enterprise Institute recently predicted a downward trajectory for the European Union. (Hat tip: reader K) He proceeds from the premise that the EU began as an attempt by the poorer continental countries to cut themselves in on the "German gravy train". The French jockey on the German horse. For a while this worked, but as more countries from Eastern and Southern Europe piled onto the horse and the German economy stalled the process reached its limit. The project outran its premise and now threatens to be more of a liability than a benefit.

His second argument is largely anchored on demographics. Europe is dying. It's welfare state systems have created a class of pensioners and a system of entitlements which can only be supported by piling an intolerable burden on the dwindling numbers of working young. And when Ferguson says 'dwindling', he means just that. European populations are shrinking in absolute terms and aging in the bargain. To feed the welfare furnace Europe must turn to immigration. But since the only immigrants in hail are from the Muslim countries of the Near East, North Africa and Southwest Asia, Europe can save its welfare systems only at the price of hollowing out its culture. Ferguson notes how Gibbon speculated that absent the Islamic defeats of 732 a Muslim hegemony would have established itself all the way to British isles and wonders whether that event was not avoided but merely delayed. He concludes:

I understand Samuel Huntington is worried that Mexican culture is taking a firm root in this country and shows no sign of being dissolved into the traditional American melting pot. I read an alarmist article by him in Foreign Policy this week. Well, I have good news for him. Long before the mariachis play in Harvard Yard, long before that, there will be minarets, as Gibbon foretold, in Oxford. Indeed, ladies and gentlemen, there already is one. The Center for Islamic Studies is currently building in my old university a new center for Islamic studies. I quote: "Along the lines of a traditional Oxford college around a central cloistered quadrangle, the building will feature a prayer hall with traditional dome and minaret tower." It will open next year. I wonder what Gibbon would have said.

Gibbon might have asked where European culture was. He would have remembered the many instances in which nations although physically overpowered imposed their way of life on their would-be conquerors. The Greeks upon the Romans, the Chinese upon the Mongols, Islam upon the Turks and Hordes of Central Asia. Gibbon might have observed how the actual majority of persons in Saudi Arabia, that most Islamic of countries, are actually expatriates, many of them Christians, yet how these expatriates were unremittingly pressured to conform to the strictures of Islam. He might have asked why native Europeans, with every advantage of literacy over the immigrant droves cannot bring themselves to do the same. But would that would bring us to the other missing major figure in Ferguson's argument. European Marxism.

The reality is--and it is perhaps the most striking cultural phenomenon of our times--that Western and Eastern Europe are no longer in any meaningful sense Christian societies. They are quite clearly post-Christian--indeed, in many respects, post-religious--societies. In the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, less than 1 in 10 of the population attends church even once a month. A clear majority do not attend church at all. There are now more Muslims in Britain, indeed in England, than Anglican communicants. More Muslims attend mosque weekly than Anglicans attend church.

In the recent Gallup Millennium Survey of Religious Attitudes conducted just a couple of years ago, more than half of all Scandinavians said that God did not matter to them at all. This, it seems to me, makes the claim to a fundamental Christian inheritance not only implausible but downright bogus in Europe. The reality is that Europeans inhabit a post-Christian society that is economically, demographically, but, in my view, above all culturally a decadent society.

Here Ferguson skips directly over most of 20th century history. Between the era of Christendom and today's decadent Europe, we had the Continent Militant, the Church of the First, Second and Third Internationals. The correct metric is not Anglican Church attendance but membership in Greenpeace. And if only 1 in 10 Northern Europeans attend church how many are religiously devoted to the precepts of the United Nations? The two phenomenon are related. The absence of a dynamic European identity is deeply connected to the soft Marxist orthodoxy that mandates its demise and regards all its manifestations as shameful. Europe is the grasp of a cultural suicide pact inked in 1848 and it will not survive until it rescinds it.

If America remains itself while Europe fades away, it may be in part due to the absence of a Western Hemisphere Islamic hinterland ready to overrun the Southern US border, but it will owe more to the fact that America escaped the sorcerer's spell which has locked Europe in irons. But perhaps people have already made their choice. America is, after all, populated largely by those who rejected the gulags, worker's parties, street rallies and manifestations of collective strength just as Europe is peopled by those who decided to remain in spite of them. Yet Europe is not doomed -- not yet -- if in the words of their own sorcerer "they openly declare that their ends" -- the preservation of their heritage and culture, are nonnegotiable. They must choose between Marx and survival. What should they fear, if sharia is the alternative? The Europeans have nothing to lose but their chains.

 

The Road of Bones

Kim du Toit takes us on a walk through Dachau. It's a deceptively quiet piece of writing. You can almost hear his footsteps echoing on the cement floors and the wind whistling past the cold iron bars set into the walls. Some trick of words suggests fleeting figures in the shadows. Or the sound of a child's voice just below the threshold of hearing. But it's just the wind. Dachau is empty. Then we hear Kim's own voice:

And now I have a personal message for the wiseguys: the ones who think they're being clever by walking around with their silly little protest signs which read "Bush = Hitler".

There are no Dachaus in the United States. There will never be any Dachaus in the United States. If there were a Dachau, maybe outside Quincy, Illinois, I would be there now -- and so would you.

When you equate Bush to Hitler, you're wanting to dishonor the President. I don't care much about that.

What I care about is that by trivializing the issue, by using your absurd hyperbole, you dishonor the suffering and the loss suffered by the people who were victimized by the real Hitler. Your own illusory suffering at the hands of this Republican president is not only trivial, it is non-existent, and do not even think you can begin to equate the two.

I can take it further. Your grotesque equation of the two leaders is a profound exaggeration: and it's the same kind of gross exaggeration used by Hitler and his henchmen to inflate the "Jewish problem" into a manifest danger, whereby people could ignore the excesses of places like Dachau as being justified. In case that isn't clear enough to you, let me connect the dots. George W. Bush isn't using Hitlerian tactics, you are.

Dachau and the Road of Bones, a pointless twelve hundred mile track built by Stalin's zeks, are temples to the totalitarian religions of the 20th century. There, millions were sacrificed begin a new history, the kind that did not start from the birth of Christ but the Year Zero. Their acolytes today still toil toward their imagined future sustained by the memory of their great days. And if they mention Hitler's name a trifle too often it is only because they knew him well. So spare their feelings Kim, and the next time you see them with their silly little protest signs reading "Bush=Hitler", gently correct them. It is "Bush=Stalin".

Addendum:

P.S. A lot of people have wondered about "Bush=Stalin". When I talk to people on the Left, it takes about a second, sometimes two before they get it. You can actually see the exact moment it dawns on them, even when they are walking away. The technical term is called "caught on the horns of a dilemma". But it is more subtle then that. The real effect is to reveal the inner contradiction in their own thinking. If Dachau=Road of Bones, then Hitler=Stalin, and if Bush=Hitler ... At that point the average man of the Left is really face to face with his own heritage because you are using the third term to bolster the second. You see he doesn't want to equate President Bush with Stalin. He thinks it reflects badly on Stalin. Here is where you usually press the advantage. Insist on "Bush=Stalin". Don't you want to denounce Bush? Come back mister, don't you want to denounce Bush ...

Walking the Walk

Belmont Club reader and retired pathologist WP thinks a futures market would be better than committee hearings at estimating the probability of finding Iraqi WMDs. He writes:

You should establish a futures market to evaluate the chance of finding these things. It would be brilliant and you could make some dough. Allow the world, especially including the Iraqis, to bet. You want people on the 'know' to affect these bets! Thus, we might actually find them. See the Iowa electronic market site  We need such a market to rip politics aside and settle into real beliefs. ...E.g. I would bet a thousand bucks at 2.5:1 odds that we find--within 5 years--that Iraq either had these or has these now. I'll give you 5% for placing my bet.

DARPA created a stir in 2003 by proposing a futures market in terrorist attacks to better determine their likelihood. The principles of such a market are described here. In simplified form, reader WP is offering to pay a net of $1,500 if Iraqi WMDs are found within 5 years. If he could trade this contingent contract on a futures market for $1,000 it would imply traders believed there was a 67% chance it would come true (1,000/1,500=0.67) The price on this contract would fluctuate as new information came to hand. Any insiders who actually knew the truth (say Saddam was free to trade) would bid the price up or down depending on what he knew. A "find" of material or the capture of incriminating documents, for example, would push the price up. A dearth of any findings would force the price down.

The idea is not without its problems. Casey Khan describes how the DARPA market, as proposed, would not offer enough incentive for serious investors to gather enough information about the existence of WMDs to make the game worth the candle.

Which leads us to the case of the government's terror futures "market." With the precedent of other phony markets—the market for US debt securities, EPA emission credits, or power market designs—it should be no surprise that the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) under the Information Awareness Office tried to mold such a monstrosity as the market for terror futures. In essence the market would be purely speculative unlike most futures markets which have large hedging interests. Profits in the market would also be restrained to $100 a trade thus keeping would be terrorists from having massive windfall profits on an event's occurrence.

The prospect of earning a whopping hundred dollars on a futures trade is not very lucrative. It is highly doubtful that traders would expend large amounts of capital towards better systems and information gathering to reap a hundred bucks. Since there are few restrictions on profitability in a normal futures markets, futures players are willing to expend their private capital toward all sorts of detailed information in the hopes of future profit maximization. For instance a monthly subscription to a Bloomberg or Reuters news service can run in the thousands. Some companies have paid meteorologists six figure salaries to help with their weather risk management. With the potential profitability on a terror futures trade of a hundred bucks, the prospect of any relevant intelligence arising in such a market is highly unlikely, since information is an expensive commodity, particularly on military intelligence and political instability.

Payoff caps in the DARPA-proposed futures market would remove the incentive to make the right predictions. It would be "purely speculative" and unlikely to attract serious trading and analysis. But other markets, such as for terrorism insurance, can encapsulate the degree of belief in certain sorts of events. Terrorism insurance premiums skyrocketed immediately after September 11, 2001, especially for airline carriage and "marquee" buildings in major cities, reflecting the perception of the increased risk. But using insurance rates as a direct measure of the market's belief in the WMD threat (let alone specifically Iraqi ones) is hampered by the elimination of coverage for radiological, biological and chemical losses from many policies. That avenue blocked, it might be possible to use Manhattan office rental rates as a crude measure the likelihood of terrorist WMD threats (not necessarily Iraqi ones) on the theory that Manhattan would be a prime target and rentals reflect that information. Market statistics show high Manhattan office vacancy rates which are not expected to improve much. Nobody is in a rush to move there. Although the effects of other economic factors like high prices, congestion and alternative locations need to be separated out, there is no obvious "sigh of relief" in the Manhattan rental market at not finding WMDs in Iraq, which may indicate that despite partisan political pronouncements, investors are not wholly convinced that the danger of WMDs has passed or that it was manufactured by President Bush. On the other hand its important to note that more than 6 million square feet of new office space are under construction. That might suggest a rosier long-term outlook.

No one would seriously use Manhattan office vacancy rates to quantify America's risk of a terrorist WMD attack. But it does provide a weak form of reality check. Belmont Club reader WP is right. If the politicians who now claim that President Bush 'inflated the threat' or that the war against terror pits us against an imaginary foe would invest in Manhattan office space or undertake to insure against radiological, chemical or biological  losses  with their own money they might be more believable.

 

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Roger Simon and reader SR link to an article by Douglas Hanson in the American Thinker. Hanson is not convinced that the methodology employed by David Kay to find Saddam's WMD stockpiles was sound. His doubts are anchored on the shortcomings of Kay's sampling technique:

In his recent testimony, Dr. Kay pronounced that there are no large stockpiles of WMD. This is a pretty bold assertion considering that actual surveys of sites we were familiar with were haphazard and uncoordinated. Also, according to his own interim report published in October of 2003, the ISG had not even searched 120 of the 130 known ammo storage points, much less any underground sites. In addition to these known sites, “neighborhood” arms caches are discovered all the time in Iraq. It is entirely possible that WMD stockpiles were moved out of Iraq, or that they were dispersed in Baghdad neighborhoods and throughout Iraq. All of this may even have been accomplished while the unfocused search operations were ongoing.

Hanson correctly understands that WMDs cannot be regarded as scattered across storage areas according to a normal or other type of distribution. Their locations would tend to be highly concentrated in a few facilities, perhaps even one site. A random sample of a highly stratified phenomenon is unreliable when not all the strata are sampled. To use an analogy, police searching for hidden firearms in a house cannot reach a reliable conclusion after opening 10 of 130 known cabinets on the premises. They would have to search all the known cabinets and look for the unknown ones too. Hanson then goes on to disparage Kay's reliance on debriefing Iraqi scientists.

When Dr. Kay arrived, he shifted the focus from the list of sites to interrogating scientists; not just certain scientists based upon a focused plan, but any and all scientists, as the developing trail would lead. It was apparent that the ISG was largely conducting a massive collection exercise without an operational search scheme to guide it.

This is somewhat unfair. Given the difficulty of searching every site Dr. Kay may have felt that interviewing Iraqi scientists gave him a better chance to uncover the truth. Unlike the location of actual WMDs, the knowledge of their development programs would be presumed (more on this later) to be more widely distributed. A WMD program of any size would presumably involve thousands of technical persons, some of whom may have been unaware of their roles. Kay must have calculated that a careful debriefing of scientists would have made it impossible to conceal the existence of a conspiracy to produce WMDs, however carefully hidden because an account of their activities would inevitably indicate whether they were working on something extraordinary. Yet even that would not be foolproof. An excellent account of Britain's Special Operations Executive research and development activities during the Second World War shows that many SOE personnel remained unaware who they were actually working both during and for many years after the conflict. The SOE's use of common industrial parts often made it unlikely to deduce even what they were finally making. Moreover, the interview methodology suffers from the flaw that unless corroborated independently the interviewer will hear precisely what he wants to hear. Hanson is on much surer ground when he says:

Fear of reprisal from Baathist Party “dead-enders” and enforcers was another very powerful inducement to lying and covering up important information. Lacking corroborating documents to trap liars, scientist interrogation became another collection effort with no strategy for identifying and checking on the veracity of key personnel.

Yet the major difficulty remains overlooked. The key problem to finding Iraqi WMDs comes from the underlying assumptions about how large a national WMD program had to be. In the classic Cold War model, any WMD program was assumed to be very large, a copy of the Manhattan Project. Following from that assumption, the tools used to detect these programs were overhead imaging, environmental sampling and debriefing technical personnel. These tools did an excellent job at finding centrifuges, reactors, weapons storage facilities and their associated delivery platforms. But the rollup of the A. Q. Khan network, the "Johnny Appleseed" of nuclear proliferation, in the New Yorker's felicitous phrase, showed the world another model, and in the context of Iraq, the more likely model of WMD development. In this model, the only relevant WMD manufacturing facility is a pile of cash. Everything, including possibly the fissile material, was potentially for sale from A. Q. Khan's worldwide network. From the Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article:

Robert Gallucci, a former United Nations weapons inspector who is now dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, calls A. Q. Khan "the Johnny Appleseed" of the nuclear-arms race. Gallucci, who is a consultant to the C.I.A. on proliferation issues, told me, "Bad as it is with Iran, North Korea, and Libya having nuclear-weapons material, the worst part is that they could transfer it to a non-state group. That's the biggest concern, and the scariest thing about all this-that Pakistan could work with the worst terrorist groups on earth to build nuclear weapons. There's nothing more important than stopping terrorist groups from getting nuclear weapons. The most dangerous country for the United States now is Pakistan, and second is Iran." Gallucci went on, "We haven't been this vulnerable since the British burned Washington in 1814."

Therefore the lower size bound of an Iraqi WMD program was no facilities at all. An Iraqi WMD program only had to be as big as Al Qaeda's. Saddam may have simply decided it was cheaper to buy a weapon or near-final components instead of building them from scratch. The assumptions about the character of Iraq's possible WMD programs bear directly on the failure of prewar Allied intelligence to characterize and describe the program accurately. If the relevant model was not a cheap version of the Manhattan Project but rather the A. Q. Khan commodity model, it would have misled the analysts seriously and caused them to overlook the one alarming corollary. Every WMD component in the A. Q. Khan manufacturing chain had a tradeable value. In that universe, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are not merely instruments of state power but fungible financial assets. Saddam would have looked at a nuke or bioweapon not simply as a lethal device but as an investment. Dr. David Kay's findings may not mean that Saddam destroyed or hid his weapons before the war. It may merely mean that he sold them.

P.S.

Reader J2 links to the Foresight Exchange, where bets are traded on a variety of subjects including hypothetical terrorist events.

 

Return to Lusaka

When I received email from a man called Anderson Mazoka in the middle of 2003, asking in general terms about how democracy might prosper in the Third World, I had no idea that the unassuming letter was from a man who many regard as the rightfully elected President of Zambia. Mazoka narrowly lost an election in 1991 in circumstances observers regard as controversial. Although he had ties to the South African ANC, Mazoka had come to see that Zambia's problems could not be solved by the usual Marxist nostrums. In his letter to the Belmont Club he wrote:

I am interested in the exchange of ideas and am seeking balance and a connection with conservative Americans for both myself and my country. I have young university educated supporters in Zambia and in the UK who would be willing to lend their time to this effort as well. ... Am quite taken by your writing but distressed by your pessimism.

Politics in that part of the world being what it is, Mazoka survived three assassination attempts, one of which put him in a coma for two months, and having partially recovered in a South African hospital, has announced his intention to return to Zambia to pick up where he left off. The last two gentlemen I knew who tried a stunt like that were Benigno Aquino and Evelio Javier. One was dead within minutes and the other in a few weeks after arrival. Both were idealistic Third World politicians who had done spells in Ferdinand Marcos' jails and were eager to see whether the shiny new ideas they learned at a Harvard would make a difference in their homelands. But things can look different from the vantage of Cambridge Massachusetts; safer and more reasonable. What they will actually look like is the way Anderson Mazoka is going to see it. George Tenet described the struggle to bring order and prosperity to the "stateless zones" and failing countries which breed international terrorism as essential to the security of the United States -- and to the future of the peoples who live there. There, on a high plateau on the western side of the Rift Valley, Anderson Mazoka is going to try it.

Under Southern Eyes

Dean Bocobo at Philippine Commentary has a unique perspective on the controversy surrounding the Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. He describes how Filipino penitents re-enact the Crucifixion to the extent of having themselves actually nailed to a Cross. Although no vital damage is ever done, the process is still pretty painful. Bocobo has attended a re-enactment featuring not just one, but 10 Crucifixions including one involving a Belgian nun. He may even post up a video of it at some point.

There are three points to be made in this respect. The first is that most American and European Christians will find the Filipino Lenten practices about as incomprehensible as non-Christians may find the cinematic rendition of Jesus' sufferings. The second is that the Filipino penitents are entirely sincere in their devotion. The inability of Westerners to understand this Filipino tradition in no way reduces its value to the people of that Archipelago. The third is that anti-Semitism is wholly unknown, indeed, incomprehensible to Filipinos for the simple reason that they have never encountered Jews in any quantity. The average Filipino has never nor will probably ever meet a Jew. Anyone who takes the trouble to view a Filipino Lenten commemoration will see Romans depicted as the villains and the Jews -- in one glorious lump including "the Apostles, Mama Mary and the other Mary the Magdalene, Pilate, Caiphas, Barabas (he was loudly cheered), Judas, and of course Jesus Christ himself" -- played by the townspeople themselves.

Most Christians now live in Asia, Africa and Latin America.  They far outnumber the dwindling congregations of Western Europe. The vast majority of Third World Christians know nothing about the historical conceptions of anti-Semitism -- the Ghetto, the Pogrom, the Holocaust. To a very large extent, the debate over the anti-Semitic content, or lack thereof, in The Passion of the Christ is not between modern day Christians and Jews, but across a fault line in Western and Middle Eastern history.