The Redhunter

March 11, 2010

Book Review - Whose Ethics? Whose Morals?

I listen to a lot of Christian radio, mostly music during the day and talk at night. Of course, I also listen to Laura, Rush, Dennis Miller, and others too. But I can't go a whole day without some time with God, and radio is part of His ministry.

Like any other genre, some Christian talk radio is good and some is bad. Spare me the fire and brimstone. Bring on insightful, intellectual, and intelligent commentary. Of the latter, Christian Research Institute Chairman Hank Hanegraaff is one of the best. I've listened to him long enough to know that he didn't earn the moniker "the bible answer man" by accident. Check your local radio listings for availability.

Hanegraaff has published a number of works, and one day I'll buy more of them. My time for reading being somewhat small, I decided to start with one of his smaller ones, Whose Ethics? Whose Morals? The Best of the Christian Research Journal. At 95 pages, it's not a long read.

The book is a collection of short essays; one by Hanegraaff, and 5 by other authors. My conclusion; there are a few good sections, but in general it was a letdown. Partially this is just me, because any reader of this blog knows that while I am pro-life, I don't spend much time on the subject. Ditto with other hot-button social issues such as cloning and stem cell research. If the details of these subjects interest you, you'll probably find the book more useful than I did.

In the first part of the book Hanegraaff poses a series of everyday moral questions, and addresses them from a Christian perspective. "What's the problem with pornography" and "What should Christians think about global warming" are two typical ones. You can guess his answer to the first, the second is a bit more complicated. Global warming, climate change, or whatever you want to call it, is a scientific issue which is on the surface removed from Christian thinking. However, there is more to it than that. God has called us to be good stewards of the earth, so we must pay attention to environmental matters. On the other, the environmental movement has a strong quasi-religious aspect to it, and we must avoid falling into this trap.

The best essay is "Dispelling False Notions of the First Amendment: The Falsity, Futility, and Folly of Separating Morality from the Law" by Michael Bauman. There are those who argue that "you can't legislate morality," which is usually a prelude to "keep religion out of government/the/law etc." Bauman presents a convincing case that all law is ultimately based on moral and ethical judgments.

For example, one can justify environmental laws on pragmatic grounds by saying that clean air or water benefits us all. But the simple idea that more people leading healthy lives is itself a moral judgment. Speed limits can be justified on pragmatic grounds by saying that they save lives and we benefit economically and that "cleaning up" wrecks is expensive. Again, the idea that saving lives is good and that cost is a factor is itself a moral judgment. It is therefore foolish to think that law can be made on a strictly pragmatic basis.

Right now we are in a stage whereby vice-type laws are being removed, and more and more moral prohibitions relaxed. A quick look at the supermarket magazines and the cover of Cosmopolitan, or the window of you local Victoria's Secret, makes the point. And that's before turning on the TV for the evening sitcoms. Even the most cursory look at all of the social indicators; divorce rate, single parenthood, etc show a downward trend in the past 40 years, and every serious study out there shows these conditions lead to poverty. The cause-and-effect / chicken-and-egg is complicated, but if "pragmatism" was the basis for our law we'd make divorce and single-parenthood illegal. Neither I nor Bauman are saying these things should be illegal, just pointing out that pragmatism isn't the basis for our legal system.

More, vice-laws have more effect than many people want to admit. Prohibition didn't stop drinking but even after it ended, alcohol consumption was considerably less than before it was enacted. Before prohibition the average American drank 3 gallons of alcohol per year. After it was lifted it was at 1 gallon for the next 10 years, and took 40 years to return to pre-prohibition levels.

Obviously not all sins can or should be legislated, and Bauman makes this explicitly clear.

I don't want to say there is a "worst" essay, but unless you're interested in reading about the ethics of abortion in excruciating detail, you'll find the two essays on abortion tedious. The authors take on seemingly every imaginable "pro-choice" argument, including many I'd never heard of before. They not only take you through the biology of conception and pregnancy step-by-step, but address the very issue of "what does it mean to be human?" I'll admit that in a way it is interesting and indeed important, but it's just not my personal hot-button topic.

Before too long, though, we as a society are going to have to face all the hard questions about "what it means to be human" that we can now see but are just over the horizon. The debate over embryonic v adult cell research is all the rage now, but other issues will be at the forefront soon. Before too many years human cloning will not only be possible but cheaper and easier. Even the Brave New World scenario whereby babies are "grown" test-tubesin baby-factories is not too far off as our technology advances. We'll have to answer the question; just because something is technically possible, do we want to do it? Should these things be legal, illegal, or regulated? These questions are not my cup of tea, but in the end I'll be affected by them as much as anyone.

Posted by Tom at 7:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 7, 2009

Book Review - The Confrontation: Winning The War Against Future Jihad

All wars have their center of gravity, that one vital thing that determines victory or defeat. During the American Revolution it was whether the colonists could stop bickering and form a continental army commanded by a competent general. From the North's perspective during the Civil War, it was whether Lincoln could find a general who would fight before anti-war sentiment forced a negotiated peace. After the initial stages of World War II it was mostly just a question of firepower. The Cold War was more complicated, but it and the others all had one thing in common; everyone agreed that we were at war, and they no one had any difficulty identifying the adversary (this excepting domestic anti-American leftist elements during the Cold War).

The situation is different today because so many, including the administration in power in the United States, do not even see their country as being at war. Last month John Brenna, President Obama's top homeland security and counterterrorism official, said that the administration will no longer use the terms "war on terror," "jihadists," or "global war." The only acceptable formulation, he said, was to say that "we are at war with al Qaeda."

It's not just President Obama, either. This has been the position of American liberals and European leftists since 9-11. To their way of thinking, President Bush wildly overreacted to a simple, if large, terrorist incident. They supported the invasion of Afghanistan (though are having second thoughts now), but beyond that think that the problem can be addressed as a criminal matter through the legal system.

Walid Phares says that this is completely wrongheaded. We are in a long term war with a worldwide Jihadist movement that aims to completely destroy us and has the means to do so. In The Confrontation: Winning The War Against Future Jihad, Phares lays out his case in well-organized format and in easy to read prose.

In Phares first book on the subject, Future Jihad (2005), he explained the basics of who the Jiihadist enemy was, where they came from, what they believed, and what their goals were. In his next book, War of Ideas (2007), he explained the competing strategies of the two camps; one dedicated to democracy and the other to global jihad and the reestablishment of the Caliphate. The Confrontation builds on these two and as the title implies adds his ideas on how to fight and win the war against the Jihadists. While it is not an absolute prerequisite to read the first two books before tackling this one, it would be helpful to read Future Jihad so as to have a good grasp on the history and structure of the jihadist movements.

Professor Phares himself has the scholarly background to speak with the authority that few can muster. A native of Lebanon, he obtained a degree in law and political science from St Joseph and the Lebanese Universities of Beirut. Phares emigrated to the United States in 1990 and obtained a Masters degree in International Law from the Université de Lyon in France, and a Ph.D. in international relations and strategic studies from the University of Miami. He has testified before the US Congress, the European Parliament and Commission, and the UN Security Council, and has appeared on most major news outlets around the world, including NN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, NBC, PBS, Discovery Channel, C-Span, BBC TV (English-Arabic), Sky News, France 24 (English, Arabic, French), CTV, CBC, Canada Global TV, al Jazeera, al Hurra, Abu Dhabi TV, al Arabiya, LBCI, Russia Today TV, Voice of America TV, as well as local ABC, CBS, PBS, NBC, and others. He has taught at taught at Florida International University and at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, and is currently a Senior Fellow and the director for Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington. He has published numerous books and magazines in Arabic, French and English.

Book Summary

Outline of the Problem

A brief recap for new readers unfamiliar with the situation; Jihad means holy war against infidels, with the objective of reestablishing the Caliphate which lasted from the seventh century to 1923. The two branches of the Sunni Jihad are the Wahabists based in Saudi Arabia, and the Muslim Brotherhood, which started in Egypt but is a broad based movement with branches in many countries. On the Shi'ite side are the Khumeinists, based obviously in Iran but with branches in Syria and Lebanon(Hezbollah). Their objective is to establish a regional Imamate.

The method Jihad is about more than just using terrorism, which to them is a military action. They aim to undermine the West through a variety of means, including massive immigration, disinformation about their religion and goals, and spreading their culture through a sort of "creeping Sharia."

The Goal of the Jihad

One of Phares' most important points is that the essential goal of the Sunni Jihad is not to spread Sharia law internally in existing nations. Rather, they reject the current world order in it's entirety, and want in it's place a worldwide Caliphate. There is simply no room in their world for infidels in other than dhimmi status, let alone our current nation-state system complete with modern concepts of international law and everything that goes with it.

To them, there is no break from ancient or medieval times and today. They see what they are doing today as directly linked to and descended from the seventh century beginnings of the spread of Islam. They don't see themselves as starting anything new but as continuing an ancient battle against the infidels.

This rejection of the modern nation-state system and desire to reestablish the Caliphate is in fact the central difference between the Jihadist Muslims and those who accept the modern world.

As a step along the path of reestablishing the Calphiate, he objective of the Jihad is to force the United States to withdraw from the world politically, economically, and most important, militarily. In short, they wish to weaken our resolve and force us into isolationism. U.S. withdrawal will make it easier for the jihadists to bring down secular governments in the Muslim world.

The Confrontation

Since 9-11 many in the West have started to sense the danger of radical Islam, even if they don't fully understand it. In the Muslim world, most people see the danger and experience the oppression of the radicals full well, but do not understand why, because for all their talk of human rights Westerners do not try to help them.

9-11 also saw the start of the third War of Ideas. Our conflict with the Salafists and Khumeinists is not just on the battlefield of bombs and bullets; it is also in the intellectual world of books, newspapers and the Internet. The side that convinces the next generation that it's ideas are better is winning.

The key to winning the War on Terror is understanding the nature of the threat. If we miss it, we will lose because we will fail to resist. If we grasp it's essence, we stand a chance.

One of the biggest problems facing the West is that most of our own elites and intellectuals misunderstand the nature of the threat. As such, the public at large is misinformed.

Today we are at a crossroads; either the jihadists will undermine and destroy the democracies, or the democracies will defeat the jihadists.

The party that defines a conflict enjoys a huge advantage. Because this is in large extent a war of ideas, propaganda, or the message, is hugely important. The tactics of the jihadists reflect a saying in the Arab world; "They hit me and cried, beat me to court, and sued me." In other words, strike the other guy first, then cry that you're the real victim, and trumpet this in the media. Be the first to define the conflict and paint the other side as the aggressors.

Behind the Jihad

The Jihad requires money, and 90 percent of it comes from the oil revenues of the gulf states. As such, the whole "root causes" of terrorism line is completely manufactured. It is the wealthy elites who are pushing Jihad, not the poor and downtrodden. If these elites really cared about poor Arabs, they would spend their oil wealth on improving their lives, not on promoting the Jihad. Instead of insisting that the money they send to Gaza be spent on weapons, they ought to insist that it be spent on improving infrastructure and building an economy. Instead of providing an eduction that would help young people get practical jobs, , they send them to madrassas where they learn Jihad.

The Effects of Oil Money

The effect of oil money is something Phares calls Economic jihadi Imperialism, or EJI for short. It is, he says, a sort of economic imperialism which starts with a hard core Jihadist idiology and ends with attempting to use that money to influence the West. Rather than spend money improving the lot of their own people, these elites would rather spend it undermining Western liberal democracies.

One effect of oil money has been to prevent the West from coming to that aid of the oppressed peoples of the Middle East. When the Middle East Studies Departments at major Western universities are funded by Saudi Arabia, no one at them is going to criticize the human rights record of their benefactors.

The oil embargo of 1973 sent a huge shock through the West. We realized that our economies were dependent on a steady flow of petroleum, and that our Middle Eastern suppliers had the ability to do significant damage to us when they so choose. The consequence is that we did not wish to examine too closely, let alone criticize, the human rights records of Arab countries.

The problem we face is that as long as oil dollars go to funding jihadist movements, the world will be at risk. Phares identifies several strategies that we should use to break this link. Most involve obtaining oil from other, non-jihadist countries, investigating alternative energy sources, promoting liberalism in their lands, and insisting that they spend their money on humanitarian needs and not on Jihad. The latter can be done through regulation that would prevent companies that do business in the U.S. from, say, building luxury hotels in Muslim country X until said country A) gets out of the business of funding Jihad, and B) spends more of it's own money on the poor and oppressed in Muslim countries.

One of the primary objectives of the jihadi networks is to prevent the West from focusing on human rights abuses in Muslim countries. They do this by constantly attacking our foreign policies and alleged human rights problems and thus manage to keep us on the defensive. One of their tactics is to exploit Western guilt over our colonial days and use that to paralyze us into inaction on the human rights front.

Liberty or Sharia

We do not have the choice of sealing our borders and ignoring the Muslim world, or any other part of the world, for that matter. Ignoring the problem will not make it go away. Neither in this day and age can we say "that part of the world is none of our business." This might have worked two hundred years ago, but modern travel and economic ties ensure that what happens in other parts of the world will affect us. More, it is simply impossible to "seal the borders" against (legal) immigration and business travel, so Europe and the United States will be influenced by the Middle East whether we like it or not.

Further, the idea that if we just kill or arrest enough terrorists we can make the problem go away is wrongheaded also. There is a "root cause" of jihadi terrorism, but it is not either the economic poverty or "legacy of colonialism" that some imagine. Rather, it is political and religious oppression coupled with the control of propaganda organs by radicals that breeds the extremism that is the danger.

The solution, Phares says, is political and economic liberty for Muslims. As the historian Bernard Lewis said, "bring them freedom or they will destroy you." By "them" Lewis mean the Arab and Iranian victims of the jihadists. By "they" he meant the jihadists themselves. Stated another way, either we bring democracy to the them, or they will bring Jihad to us.

Seen through this lens the American invasion of Afghanistan and especially Iraq make perfect sense. The strategy was at once to bring the war directly into the enemy camp, to contain the terrorists, and plant the seeds of liberty and democracy.

Of all the strategies we adopt to win the war, at the top of the list must be the liberation of the peoples of the Middle East. We must state this forthrightly and purse this goal openly. It would be arrogant and indeed immoral of us to think that only Westerners (and a few select others like the Japanese) are deserving of liberty, when all peoples, including those of the Middle East, are just as deserving.

As mentioned earlier, the two arms of the Sunni Jihad are the Saudi-based Wahabists and the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood (although the latter has branches in many countries). Both, however, share the same goal of reestablishing the Caliphate. They aim to do this by first weakening the Western democracies and our will to intervene in the Middle East. Their greatest fear is that we will start to support domestic democracy movements which threaten existing regimes as well as the Jihad itself.

Russia

Russian foreign policy with regard to the Jihad has been ambiguous. On the one hand they seem to recognize the problem of terrorism and Muslim fundamentalism. On the other they sell weapons to Iran an Syria, two state sponsors of terrorism.

It is in the long-term interests of Russia to work vigorously to defeat Jihadism. Unfortunately, for the most part they are pursuing the short term goal of seeking financial gain by working with Iran. Oddly, they seem to recognize the problem to a greater extent than Europe or America, but are unable to use their intellectual knowledge to see past the short-term economic benefits. Phares believes that we can influence Russia to change their policies, and offers several suggestions.

The jihadists saw the collapse of the Soviet Union as divinely inspired as well as a message from God that He was on their side. It was for this reason that there was a split in the Jihad in the early 90s after a series of meetings in Khartoum, Sudan. The hotheads wanted immediate terrorist action against the United States and secular Arab regimes, while cooler heads argued for a long-term strategy of infiltration. Phares calls the hotheads "Combat Salafists" and the latter "Realist Salafists." They share the same ideology and goals and differ only on methodology. The hotheads went into al Qaeda and the rest, as they say, is history.

The United Nations and Alliances Among Nations

The United Nations is at best useless. Kofi Annan has said that the UN "stands neutral between and those fighting it." The UN criticizes democracies when it believes it sees them doing wrong, but largely ignores human rights abuses in Muslim countries. This must change if progress is to be made.

However, the end the U.S. cannot do it alone. We must use every tool at our disposal to recruit other nations to create a united front against the jihadists. As such, the solutions Phares proposes involve alliances outside of the UN structure.

Phares has several ideas for a diplomatic offensive against the jihadists. One is to hire and put into place a new generation of diplomats who are educated in the ways of our enemies. Second is for Congress to "set the guidelines for a new foreign policy based on suporting human rights, self-determination, pluralism, and democratization on the one hand and a confrontation with the regimes, movements, and ideologies that promote threats to international law, security, peace, and liberty on the other." Third is to use the first to to actively support democracy movements and combat the jihadists.

The Middle East as "Middle East"

Phares calls the Middle East and surrounding areas a "Middle Earth." Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman are constitutional monarchies. They are mostly at peace and are moving, albeit slowly, towards pluralistic societies. Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, and Mauritania are republics moving from authoritarianism to pluralism. Syria and Libya are ruled by nationalist socialist dictators. Saudi Arabia and Iran are Islamist theocracies. Iraq is a fragile democracy. Qatar is a constitutional monarchy but harbors an Islamist al Jazeera. Lebanon is a battlefield. Israel and Palestine are in conflict, with the latter divided between factions with varying ideologies.

In general the region is plagued with extremist ideologies and violent groups. What characterizes all of the countries is that after the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate all failed to liberalize and turned authoritarian to one degree or another. Almost all of the people are oppressed and persecuted, with civil liberties being almost nonexistent.

One often hears the term "the Arab street" with regard the the "righteous anger" that would "spontaneously" erupt in response to this or that action by the United States. In reality, the term was created by Jihadi propagandists with the express purpose of manipulating the West. Scenes of protesting militants are as often as not manufactured. It is, after all, just about impossible to know what the average Arab wants when he or she lives under a dictator.

The Vital Need for Democracy

Before 9/11 Western elites excused the lack of democracy in the Middle East because of our support for authoritarian governments. Western governments were criticized as being hypocritical; we wanted democracy for ourselves but denied it to others. After 9/11 these same people now oppose American attempts to spread democracy, especially in Iraq. The argument is now that we are "imposing" democracy on them and "interfering in their internal affairs."

Democratization will be opposed and moving toward liberty will not be easy. Both Western elites and Jihadist Muslims will create roadblocks.

But all people deserve freedom, and we must develop a more humane policy towards the people who live in these oppressive countries. Middle Easterners are no less deserving of liberty than Europeans, Americans, Asians, or Africans. More, these peoples have a natural right to learn about democracy and liberty.

Certainly we cannot "force democracy on other people," but this is a slogan, not a policy. But by the same token, freedom and liberty must be options before anyone can choose to adopt them. We can and must work to create the conditions where they can grow.

The War of Ideas

Information, or propaganda, is a large part of our fight against the jihadists. They try hard to get out their message, and we must be ready at all times to effectively counter their misinformation. We can start by exposing the lie that Jihad' does not mean "an internal spiritual journey" or "spiritual experience," but rather means conflict and war. Unfortunately, their deceptive messages are spread not only by Muslim jihadists, but by their apologists in the West as well.

The Salafists do not represent the majority of Muslims, and indeed there are many Muslim dissidents. The struggle between the jihadists and the reformers is in it's early stages. The forces of reaction currently favor the status quo.

We in the West must educate our citizens about the dangers of the Jihadist movement. We must confront not only the forces of Jihad, but their Western apologists as well. Finally, we must identify and support Muslim dissidents who are working for reform.

Vast numbers of Muslims live in poverty and are politically oppressed, yet oil money is used for Jihad rather than to relieve their suffering. Education, jobs, scientific advancement, infrastructure, everything is subordinated to the Jihad.

Terrorist Threats

Of the many domestic threats we face, one that Phares discusses that I have not seen elsewhere is that of "Urban Jihad." His study of various sources, including training manuals and other documents is that the Combat Salafists wish to establish "urban armies who, when the signal was given, attack and create widespread chaos. Their objective would be to turn our cities into Beirut in the 1970s/80s or Baghdad in 2006. We have already seen small-scale examples of this attempt with the Virginia "Paintball jihadists" and the Fort Dix cell in New Jersey, as well as at various training camps in places from Oregon to Florida.

Right now, domestic jihadists/terrorist cells must rely on militants who come into the United States legally or otherwise. The "breaking point," Phares speculates, will come when they are able to recruit enough militants from domestic sources, and can from there grow exponentially. At that point they may pull the trigger and launch the "Urban Jihad" scenario.

Europe

The existence and indeed expansion of Jihadism in Europe has been an embarrassment to European leaders. When Phares visited them in the 1980s and 90s they dismissed that such a thing could happen in their countries. After 9/11, and with the extremism of many Muslim leaders in Europe now undeniable, they are taking a second look at the situation and now admit that they too are vulnerable.

The objectives of the jihadists in Europe vary from one part of the continent to another. In the south their claims are mainly territorial, as they wish to reclaim "lost" lands such as the Spain and parts of what was Yugoslavia. In the rest of Europe the initial objective is a change in foreign policy, and following that the establishment of self-governing enclaves. They wish to neutralize and then convert Europe.

Both the Wahabists and Muslim Brotherhood are also spending tremendous resources in trying to spread Islam, not just through immigration into Europe (and to a lesser extent America) but by converting the natives.

Phares describes his travels though out Europe, and concludes that the younger generation "gets it" to a greater extent than older people, and that more people overall "get it" in eastern Europe than in the western part of the continent. The east-west dichotomy is probably do to the former's more recent experience with totalitarianism; they are able to recognize the approaching danger because they just experienced a form of it.

As in America, 9/11 and to a greater extent 3/11 and 7/7 "woke up" many ordinary people and security experts. But elites, particularly those who inhabit the Brussels bureaucracy, still speak the language of political correctness. To them, as with the newly installed Obama administration, words such as "Islamic terrorism," "War on Terror," and "War of Ideas," to say nothing of "Jihad," are completely banned.

The first thing Europeans need to do to defeat the jihadists, Phares says, it to properly describe and label the problem. The second step is to pass legislation that will "equate Jihad with racism because it "calls for a forcible sectoral division of existing democratic societies, and identifies Salafi and Khumeini Jihadism with terrorism on the ground that it calls for violence against segnmemts of these societies."

9-11 And Beyond

The American reaction to 9/11 was unexpected. As Phares explains in Future Jihad, bin Laden thought that the United States would

1) Lash out incoherently, killing tremendous amounts of civilian Muslims
2) Descend into domestic chaos
3) Be paralyzed into inaction

That numbers one and two are somewhat contradictory tells us more about the mindset of the Combat Salafists than anything else.

However, the United States executed a precise strike into Afghanistan which deprived al Qaeda and the Taliban of a base country from which to conduct operations. As such, they have shifted priorities to contain and ultimately reverse U.S. interventions in the Middle East.

While the West was debating our reasons for invading Iraq, the jihadists knew perfectly well what the threat was; the establishment of a democracy within "their" realm. They knew that a successful democracy venture would lead to the overthrow of dictatorial Arab regimes (through slow evolution if not immediate revolution) whether they be secular or theocratic. Thus, the battle for Tehran and Damascus was and is taking place inside Iraq.

Middle East Roots

The Arab League was formed in 1945 and adopted surprisingly democratic goals. It failed to achieve them for the following reasons

1) They put Pan-Arabism ahead of democracy
2) They adopted a frankly racist attitude towards non-Arabs, freezing Kurds, Berbers, Copts, Assyrians and other minorities out of any steps toward progress
3) They focused on destroying Israel, which spawned extremism in and of itself
4) They allowed Jihadism to spread freely

Understanding these will allow us not to make these same mistakes again.

Despite the importance of Europe and the United States, the war against Jihadism will be won or lost in the Greater Middle East. Two factors will determine who wins; one, whether the Western democracies have the willpower to stay the course, and two adopt a strategy of liberation and promoting democracy. Their are numerous battlefields, and sometimes the fighting is military and sometimes in the realm of ideas, but it all depends on whether the Western democracies will stay the course and adopt the appropriate policies.

Other Battlefields

The conflict is a global one, and the most important battleground in the Pacific region is in the Philippines. The separatist movement on the large southern island of Mindanao was not originally Islamist, but was transformed into one by the efforts of Salafi-Wahabists from Saudi Arabia and Libya.

In Central and South America, the key nation is Venezuela. Hugo Chavez has allied his nation with the Khumeinists of Iran. The worrysome part is that this is not just the result of Chavez, but is the culmination of years of Venezuelan ties to radical movements.

State of the Confrontation

Phares ends his book with a summary of the state of the conflict. Following are his main points:

1) We are in a war, not a series of isolated terrorist incidents
2) It is a war with a known entity
3) The enemy, whether Salafist, Wahabi, Takfiri, or Khumeinist, has actively declared war on us.
4) The jihadists are ahead
5) It will be a long war, more along the lines of the Cold War than World War II

Critics will say that the people of the Middle Est "are not ready for democracy." The truth, Phares says, is that they would like to move in this direction but have been prevented from doing so by our own policies of supporting the status quo. Radicalism is something that has grown worse in recent decades, so if we had supported the existing democracy movements when the Middle East came out of colonialism we could already have a relatively free region.

In contrast to obsessing about "finding bin Laden," which Phares likens to "looking for Waldo," we need to understand that we are fighting a movement, not a person or single organization. The emphasis on personalities, while understandable, can only impede progress, because it causes us to focus on the storyteller, not the story. Likewise, Saddam was not the problem in Iraq, Ba'athism was, and Ahmadinejad not the problem in Iran, Khumeinism is.

My Take

Phares hits a home run with this book. It is well written, and does not require specialized background information to read. Light-years from a rant, his prose is calm and dispassionate. The chapters are well organized he lays out his argument in a logical fashion that makes his argument easy to follow.

I am in agreement with Phares in his overall view of the world situation. We are not fighting a limited terrorist network but a war against a global Jihad. It is a restart of the old on-again/off-again war between the Caliphate of old and the West that lasted a millennia. It is a war, not a police action. We have been seriously negligent in pursuing a human rights agenda. Leaving millions to live under tyranny and oppression is counterproductive.

Our war on Jihad is more like the Cold War than any other recent conflict. It will require at least decades to fight, and will run both hot and cold. Actual fighting will be more of what the military calls "low intensity" than World War II style "high intensity." Much of the conflict will be in the realm of ideas and as such will take place in the media. At the center of gravity is the West's ability to recognize and identify the problem, and willpower to stick it out in the face of opposition at home and abroad.

One of the primary things that separates this book from Future Jihad and The War of Ideas is that in this one he offers many concrete proposals to fight the war. The first two books were mostly proscriptive, this one mostly prescriptive.

What most impresses me is Phares' commitment to human rights and insistence that people deserve to live in a pluralistic society. His is the opposite of realpolitik and the m"it's none of our business" isolationism that is found on both the right and left.

We are simply not going to be able to switch to alternative sources of energy as a means to stop buying Middle Eastern oil anytime soon. At best we can slow down the pace, but even so I rather doubt we can do enough to seriously put a financial damper on revenues. As such, we are better off working to influence where and how Muslim regimes spend their money. We need to get them to spend their money to help their own people, and liberalize their societies. How we should go about this can be debated, but the necessity of the goal seems clear.

All of Phares' recommendations should be acted up. Unfortunately few will be. We have an administration in the United States with it's head firmly in the sand regarding this problem. President Obama is pandering to the Europeans' worst instincts. The Jihadists will have at least four years to advance their agenda unencumbered. Let's hope that they do not get much farther during this time before we can turn things around at home.

Posted by Tom at 8:15 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 10, 2009

Book Review - Now They Call Me Infidel

It takes a brave Muslim to speak out about their religion. It's perhaps more impressive when that person is a woman.

Nonie Darwish was raised Muslim in Egypt, and came to the United States while in her 20s. She was the daughter of a Shahid, or martyr, her father killed while fighting the hated Israelis.

She is now a Christian, Republican, and American living in California. Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror is the story of her life's journey from a culture of hatred to one of love.

Some Muslims are able to speak the truth about their religion and remain Muslims. Dr M. Zuhdi Jasser, chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, is one. Other reform minded groups are the Free Muslims Coalition, the International Quranic Center, Muslims Agrainst Sharia: Islamic Reform Movement, and of course Irshad Manji.

Others, like Darwish, have left Islam. Perhaps the most prominent among these is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose book Infidel is the classic of the genre.

Following is a summary of the Darwish's book, followed by my observations.

Book Summary

The Daughter of a Shahid

Darwish was born in 1948 into a solidly middle-class Egyptian family. Her father, Colonel Mustafa Hafez, was an intelligence officer in the army. Shortly after the coup that deposed King Farouk in 1948, President Nasser assigned him to Gaza with orders to organize the Palestinians into a fighting force and "drive the Jews into the sea."

It was clear to Darwish at an early age that the Arabs wanted the Palestinians to live in poverty and squalor in their camps, the better to motivate them to fight "the Zionists." The last thing they wanted was for the Palestinians to establish their own state in Gaza or elsewhere. Indeed, Palestinians were denounced by other Arabs if their zeal to destroy the hated Zionist enemy was not seen to be ardent enough.

In 1956 the Israelis killed her father, who had been organizing raids into their country. He was immediately proclaimed a shahid and the highest honors were bestowed upon his family. As of the writing of her book in 2006 there was still a high school named after her father in Gaza.

Her mother moved the family to Cairo shortly after her father's death. Realizing the value of a good education, she sent the children to St Clare's College, a British Catholic school run by English nuns. Despite the name, it was K-12. Also despite the Catholic nature of the school, half the students were Muslim, no doubt because the education offered by the school was superior to the public schools. Darwish recalls that unlike the public schools, hatred of the Jews was never taught at St. Clare's.

The Primacy of Jihad

One of the primary themes of the book is the pervasiveness of the call to jihad and the exhortation to destroy Israel. It was part of every subject in school. It was everywhere in the media. The idea that there could be any sort of peace with Israel was unthinkable. Jews were not simply the enemy, they were subhuman, "pigs and apes," if not worse. Every day the students at her school were required to write anti-Jewish poetry and stories, and express their desire to become a shahid, or martyr.

Darwish makes clear that the term "jihad" means violent holy war, something that is crystal clear to all Muslims. Further, it is a call to fight all infidels, not just Israelis, the objective of which is to extend the realm of Islamic control over the entire world. It is only in the West that the lies start, and we are told that it means something like "peaceful internal struggle" or some such nonsense.

A Woman's Plight

Another theme in the book is how badly women are treated in Islamic countries. Like in all Islamic countries, Egyptian societies are organized around the clan, and as such there is no social structure or support services at all available apart from it.

Poligamy was practiced in Egypt, and it was extremely harmful to social cohesion, to say nothing of it's effects on men and women. Married women never trusted non-married women, and when a woman got married she usually cut off all contact with any friends were were not married.

There are several types of polygamous marriages, from overt to the secret, or urfi marriage. Another type is the mutaa, or "pleasure marrage," which is literally a legalized one-night stand. As you might imagine, all of these are destructive to society and harmful to the people involved. There is simply no trust in marriage when such things are permissable.

Of course, there were a million restrictions that are unthinkable in Western countries. No dating, no partying, no social mixing between men or women was permitted at all. Women could not go out of the house without a male escort. Of course sex outside of marriage was unthinkable. Marriages were all arranged, and the concept of romantic love unheard of.

A woman's reputation was everything, and in typical Islamic hypocritical fashion, did not apply to men. Women could not so much as smile at a man (or girls to boys, it started very early) or they would be accused of being "loose." On the other hand, it was quite acceptable for men to grope women on a crowded bus. Men could be promiscuous, for women it was forbidden.

The Effects on Men

The repression of women and double standards described above are also harmful to men. Poligamy reduces the number of women available for marriage. Complete repression of sexuality and sensuality in society franky drives young men into the hands of extremists. Reality is replaced with the promise of 72 virgins if one dies in jihad. Given their lot in life, it seems a good deal, and one they're promised every Friday at the mosque.

It it considered good and normal for superiors to abuse their employees through rude and brutal treatment. Young men are by definition low on the hierarchy, and are the recipients of much ill-treatment. It is part of human nature that many will react by coming home from their jobs and take out their frustrations by beating their wife (if they are lucky enough to have one) and children.

A Young Woman

Through the adroit use of several maneuvers within her family, Darwish managed to avoid the fate that befell many of her friends, the arranged marriage. As such she left home single and went into the job market.

Her first job was working as an editor, translator, and censor for the Middle East News Agency. As censor she was by definition able to see information that the public in Egypt never saw. As part of her duties she also traveled to several foreign countries. That, coupled with her knowledge of English led her to realize that there was a lot more to the world than what she had been told all her life, to say the least.

As part of the Camp David Accords signed in 1978, Egypt got the Sinai back, which it had lost to Israel in the 1967 war. As with many Egyptians, she was amazed at how the Israelis had developed the area economically in that short time. It completely changed their perceptions of the area, which they had assumed was only a wasteland. It was also one of several events which led Darwish to question what she had been told about Israel and Jewish people.

Coming to America

In November of 1978 Darwish moved to the United States. Egypt and the United States had gradually been establishing closer ties, and her boyfriend had moved to California to live with his brother and cousins.. Between that and the desire to get away from the totalitarian control of the Egyptian state and society, she went to California to join him.

Describing herself as a naturally outgoing and open person who questioned authority and existing social arrangements, the experience of America provided a sharp contrast with her life in Egypt. Americans would talk about almost anything with anyone, constrained by few of the inhibitions so typical of Arab and Muslim society. A women talking openly about anything in Egypt was seen by the man as an invitation to sex, in America it was just two people talking. In Egypt honesty in everyday life was seen as naive, in the West it is considered a virtue. Class and sex provide few if any barriers. As such, she found that her personality fit more with the West than the Middle East.

However, many Egyptians and Arabs she met in the United States felt quite alienated. Far from accepting American society, the rebelled by becoming more Islamist. Women who would never wear a veil or headscarf in their home countries put them on here. Men who never went to a mosque or grew a beard did so in America. While Darwish found living in America as a liberation from radical Islam, many of her fellow Muslims determined to bring a radical version of their faith here.

Islamism in the United States

The paradox of Middle Eastern Muslim societies is that although Islam is dominant, the vast majority of the people are quite ignorant of it's details. Illiteracy is high, so few have read the Koran,and fewer still understand it. As such, most people only know what the Imams have told them. Further, although everyone is a Muslim, it is often in name only, as many do not go to mosque or pray regularly. It is a situation similar to the West in the Middle Ages.

Darwish and her family were themselves not regular mosque goers. They decided to attend a service only when a friend from Egypt came to visit. To their surprise and horror the mosque turned out to be quite radical and the experience was quite bad. This opened her eyes to the pervasive influence of Islamist ideology in the United States. Upon doing some research, she found that many of these mosques were funded by Saudi Arabia.

To be sure, most Muslims in America blend in happily and want no part of radicalism. The problem is that they are intimidated into silence, and too many mosques are controlled by radicals. To avoid these influences, and avoid being denounced, many of them simply choose to worship at home, including Darwish and her family. Her experience at the mosque began a move by her away from Islam.

All of this builds a process whereby Islamists are trying to undermine the West and impose their values on us. As one prominent Muslim leader said, "Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you, thanks to our religious laws we will dominate you."

There is much doubletalk from Islamist Muslims. An obvious case discussed above are the lies about the definition of jihad. More subtle is when they say they're against terrorism but go on to express sympathy for groups such as Fatah and Hamas, or refuse to denounce any Islamic terrorist group by name. Another tactic is to say one thing in English to Western audiences, and another in Arabic to Muslims.

Second Marriage And A New Life

For reasons not entirely clear, Darwish divorced her husband in 1987. Whatever the causes, she stresses that she maintains good relations with him and his family and taht her main goal was to be a good mother to her children. in 1991 she married again to a man who she describes as politically very liberal who was born and raised in Berkeley, California. He was not at all religious.

One day she saw a pastor on the TV and liked the message. The basis of his sermon was 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

She found this quite inspiring and different from what she had heard in Islam, it containing none of the "destroy the infidels' rhetoric she had heard as a child, and decided to visit a local church. She liked the message of tolerance. It is not entirely clear if she became a Christian per se, but describes it as a "cataclysmic" event and says that "I had turned from a culture of hatred to one of love."

A Visit To Egypt

Over the years Darwish had kept in contact with her family back in Egypt. In 1994 her brother fell ill and they took him to a hospital in Israel. He lived, and her mother regaled Darwish with tales of the Israeli hospital the contradicted everything she had heard about the way Israelis behaved. This incident started a process that led her to change her view of the Jewish state.

In 2001 Darwish and her family went to Egypt to see her relatives, arriving back in the United States on September 10. What she found shocked her. The nation had become far more Islamist than when she had lived their previously. Many more women now were veiled while in public. Men were more radical in their religious views. Anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment was at an all-time high.

Speaking with people, she found their attitude was that the problems in Egypt and other Muslim countries were entirely the fault of the West and Israel. Few if any were able to look inward and say that they bore some of the responsibility themselves. Paradoxically, though, many of these same people wanted to go live in the West for it's economic benefits and political freedoms.

In what may seem strange to Westerners, the veil has become the new identity symbol for Muslim women, both in the West and in traditionally Muslim lands. They are taught from a young age that they are nothing but sex symbols to men, who are not expected to control their desires when confronted by a woman. Thus, to preserve modesty, the entire onus is on her to hide herself from men.

Politically, the Muslim Brotherhood exerted more influence than ever before. While previously it had been marginalized, it was now gaining in popularity. Saudi money was also flowing into Egyptian mosques, ensuring that the most radical messages where the only ones heard.

The entire experience was a bad one for Darwish and she and her daughters were happy to leave. It solidified her decision to live in the United States, something her daughters were quite thankful for as well.

The Reaction to 9/11

To Darwish, it was obvious that yes, it was al Qaeda who had attacked us. But when she called her friends in Egypt she was shocked. To a person they were convinced that it was an Israeli plot and that there was no way Muslims would do such a thing.

The situation was little better when she called her Arab friends living in America. Although most of them acknowledged the reality of who was behind the attacks, none were willing to speak out. Some even repeated the lie that "3,000 Jews who worked in the World Trade Center did not show up for work that day."

Most Muslims are not terrorists and say that they oppose it. However, this "silent majority" will not take a stand, publicly or privately, against the agents of jihad. Everything they have been taught since childhood was jihad, jihad, jihad, with Islam victorious against the infidels. Worse, they are taught the culture of victimhood, that Muslims are constantly persecuted by the infidels.

As such, they will denounce terrorism out of one side of their mouth while providing a "but" with the other. They usually refuse to criticize any terrorist group except for al Qaeda by name. If Israel or any non-Muslim nation kills Muslims it is instantly condemned, while the worst by Muslims is ignored or excused.

Speaking Out

It was at this point that Darwish decided to speak out and write herself. Her first articles appeared in Republican Women's Club publications. One of the first was "The Daughter of a "Shahid" Speaks out for Change" She soon received invitations to speak. Because there were so few Muslims willing to issue more than a few rote statements condemning terrorism, Darwish soon found herself in demand.

In the past few years she has spent time speaking in numerous forums; colleges and universities, on television, and before private groups. She has written many articles and this book in an attempt to get her message out.

One of the things that shocked Darwish is how radical Muslims have become on American college campuses, even by Egyptian standards. Bearded men and veiled women are becoming the norm, all with a chip on their shoulder and attitude to boot. Muslim student groups refuse to label Hamas a terrorist group, and openly say that Israel should not exist. Yet at the same time they insist that Islam is a "religion of peace."

As mentioned earlier, one of the PR ploys of radical Islam, Islam in general, really, is to claim that the word "jihad" means "peaceful inner struggle" and all that business about holy war is a relic of the past. Nothing could be farther from the truth, she says. Everyone in the Middle East knows that "jihad" means "holy war against the infidels to spread the faith." It's only in the West that this new definition is heard.

Another misconception is that jihad is only supported by a few Muslims who operate at the fringes. The truth is that such philosophy is widely accepted, even if most Muslims do not actively participate. The problem, in other words, is larger than we have been led to believe.

My Take

Her take on Islamic society is confirmed in whole or in part by such scholars and writers as Walid Phares, Andy McCarthy, Steve Emerson, Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, and Bernard Lewis, most of whose work has been used on this blog.

This said, I did not try to verify individual details about the book. And Darwish is clear that she is not a scholar, nor is this meant to be a scholarly book. It is one person's lifelong observations.

It's understandable that Darwish and others like her are portrayed as evil hatemongers by many Muslim groups. After all, they don't want their agenda's exposed. What's more perplexing is that so often the liberal-left often takes this line. Muslims have managed to get themselves portrayed as "victims," and so Islam escapes the scrutiny reserved for Christianity. It's ironic because almost all that liberals claim to stand for is antithetical to just about everything in Islam.

Saying that "only ten percent of Muslims are radicals" isn't really true, and more than that misses the point. Islam and Muslim societies are under the domination of the jihadists, and even many or most moderates hold opinions that are shocking to most Westerners. Most reform minded Muslims are afraid to speak out not only because they'll be attacked, perhaps violently, by other Muslims, but because they know that they will get little support from Westerners. The message of this book is that Islam as practiced today is antithetical to Western values, and if it is to change we need to support people like Nonie Darwish. Ignoring the problem won't make it go away.

The last chapter or two tend to read like a newspaper editorial, which is perhaps expected but most of her recommendations are by this point predictable. Perhaps though I only see it this way because I've read so much on this subject.

Otherwise, this is a reasonably good book and is recommended to everyone who wants to understand the realities of Egyptian society this past half century, as well as an insight into Muslims in the United States.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 3, 2009

Book Review - Defending Identity

Identity - Merriam-Webster; he distinguishing character or personality of an individual. The Free Dictionary; The set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group. Answers.com; The collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known.

What is your identity? How do you see yourself?

There's personal identity; father, mother, Little League coach, Girl Scout leader. Some people see their identities through what they own; a fast car or a multitude of electronic gizmos. Others see it through their work; teacher, lawyer, business executive, construction supervisor.

These identities are important but they're not what Sharansky has in mind. In Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy, Natan Sharansky is more addressing group identities; political, ethnic, religious and national. His thesis is that for the most part these identities are good, and in fact are vital the success of democracy. Attempts to suppress these identities will not only fail, but are counterproductive to the success of free societies.

Before I read this book this book identity is not something I've thought much about, and after reading it I have come to realized that it is far more of a complicated subject than I had realized. But before giving my own thoughts on the matter, a summary of the book is order.

Time in the Gulag

Some say that strong identity and democracy are incompatible. Many intellectuals insist it it so. Sharansky is convinced that this is false and that just the opposite is true. Identities, he says, vitally important to us not only as individuals but as democratic nations. The main message of Defending Identity is that identity is the ally of freedom, not it's antithesis.

Authoritarian regimes repress ethnic and religious identities not in accord with those prescribed by the state. Democracies allow multiple identities along these lines to flourish. The Chinese totalitarians are threatened by the Falug Gong and Tibetans, whereas the tolerant Indians do not persecute any of their minorities (the issue of the "Untouchables" and the problem of caste is somewhat different).

The formative experience in Sharansky's political life that has formed the basis for much of his thought was the nine years he spent in the Soviet Gulag. The gulag, he says, was a laboratory where he discovered truths and tested ideas against the harshness of the prison system. His time there convinced him that identity and freedom were inseparable.

In prison Sharansky discovered, or rediscovered, his Jewish identity. In it he found the strength he needed to get through his time there. Far from dividing him from non-Jewish prisoners who also had strong identities, it enabled him to join them in a common struggle. Most of these identities were religious; Pentecostal, Catholic, Baptist, or national-ethnic; Crimean Tatar, Ukrainian. It wasn't the details of their particular identities that mattered, just that they were strong ones. It was those with weak identities who had the most trouble adjusting or adapting to prison life.

Further, the various identity groups didn't 'come together' to defend each other's goals. Far from it, for each acted in it's own interest. They defended each other not because they believed in each others causes, but rather because they came to realize that if the government could persecute one group for it's beliefs, it could persecute any of the others as well.

Trouble in Europe

Many or most native Europeans have lost most sense of identity. Christianity is dead or dying. Nationalism is perceived as a throwback and the cause of world wars. Guilt over real or perceived historical injustices has caused the crisis of confidence, resulting in a loss of identity. Identity in Europe must be uniform, and everyone must have the same identity, which is to say no identity. The loss of identity in Europe has helped lead to the erosion of democracy. It's a long subject, but for example they do not have freedom of speech in most parts of Europe as we have it in the United States. The structure of the European Union is also such that it has become a rule by bureaucracy, not elected leaders.

The Muslim immigrants who have swept into Europe in the past few decades have no crisis of confidence. They have very strong identities and are not shy about them. In many or most cases, their values and identities are in fact antithetical to Western notions of liberty and tolerance.

The result is a clash; the natives want democracy without identity, and the Muslim leaders want identity without democracy. As a result, identity and democracy are seen as opposites. In reality, he says, you can't have democracy without identity.

Assaults on Identity

There have been two major assaults on identity since the start of the 20th century; Marxism and post-modernism. The Marxists wanted to subjugate all identity that was separate from their own vision of the communist utopia. The post-modern movement inherits much from Marxism, but while the goal of the latter is to strengthen class consciousness as the only acceptable identity, the former seeks to weaken all identity, especially one's own.

The post-moderns see the wars and assorted social problems of the 20th century as stemming from nationalism and religion. Their solution is to transcend these identities and merge everyone into a global community. In this view, since identity causes problems, eliminating them would result in a world without conflict.

The problem, of course, is that you can't get rid of all identities at once. If just a few aggressive ones are left, they will dominate, sometimes to the point of eliminating democracy. We are seeing the start of this in Europe, where the natives are helpless against the strong identity of an aggressive, radical, Islam.

Multiculturalism is a form of post-identity. Unfortunately, the muliculturalists (along with "diversity," and uber-tolerance it's twin sisters), favor some identities over others, which adds to the problem. Western nationalism is bad, but third-world national movements are good. Christianity is frowned upon and only tolerated if it of the left-wing variety, but the most fundamentalist Islam is just another lifestyle choice.

One problem with the post-modern liberals is that when they look at problem areas of the world, such as the Middle East, they "look for explanations not in ideology but in grievances because the belief in absolute values is rejected and the idea of Western guilt plays a central role." As a result, post modern thinkers see the solution as an end to settlements and the establishment of a Palestinian state rather than in changing the ideology of the jihadist mindset of Fatah or Hamas.

Types of Identity

Sharansky opposes the attempt by the French government to ban the wearing of the veil in schools because it contradicts their "enormous tolerance toward the coercion and repression that daily transpires in many Muslim areas within that country." In other words, rather than oppose all coercion, they are being selective, with the result that they are preceived as opposing a Muslim expression of identity. And no democracy, Sharansky says, should repress identity unless it is harmful to that democracy.

He also does not object to the use of hyphens by immigrants to describe themselves. While it is popular on the right to criticize the use of "Italian-American," "Arab-American," or "African-American," he sees it as a positive expression of identity that compliments rather than threatens democracy.

Just as ethic identity does not threaten democracy, neither does religious identity. In our current age the secular left is doing everything it can to remove religion, or at least Christianity, from the public square. But if religion is to be an identity, it cannot be banished in this manner. Indeed, all of American history shows that public expressions of religion compliment, and do not threaten, democracy.

Again, this is not to say that all identities are acceptable. Mormons were made to disavow the practice of polygamy in order for Utah to be accepted into the Union. Giving this up reduced or changed a part of their identity.

Where we have failed in America is to incorporate Native Americans and African American identities. On the other side, surveys universally show that Muslims in America feel their identity is more respected than those in Europe.

The Special Case of Israel

Because Israel is a state created out of nothing (no the land wasn't stolen), it is a unique laboratory with which to study the subject of identity and democracy. Further, the Jews who emigrated there from Europe were naturally quite traumatized, so it would be interesting to see how they handled the subject of identity. Would they embrace their historic Jewish identity, or abandon it?

The surprise answer - to me, anyway - was that they abandoned it. The question of identity was an aspect Israeli history that I'd never considered. I'd always assumed that Israeli Jews were, if anything, even more cognizant of their history and traditions than those of the diaspora. It turns out that at least for the first thirty or so years of Israel's history nothing could be farther from the truth.

It wasn't supposed to be that way. Theodore Hertzl, the Austrian Jew who founded the modern Zionist movement, envisioned an Israel that embraced classic Jewish heritage. Although he himself was mostly secular, he envisioned an Israel of diverse Jewish beliefs and cultures, but all rooted in the past.

The actual founder of Israel and it's first president, David Ben-Gurion, had a completely different vision. A socialist, Gurion had little use for religion. His socialist ideal "was of a person who disconnects himself from his past - a past that is seen as two thousand years of humiliation and slavery - and takes fate into his own hands." It all very much paralled the "New Soviet Man" concept. Ben-Gurion's equivalent was the Sabra, or "new Jew," borne of the "Jewish dust." The past was mostly meaningless, and a new identity for Israeli Jews would be forged. Not just words, this ideology was taught in the schools as state dogma.

This started to change when over one million Jews emigrated from the Soviet Union, mostly in the 1970s. Having been deprived of their identity in their former communist country, they were anxious to get back to their Jewish roots, and not about to adopt another "new man" as an identity. It was this group to which Sharansky belonged.

Long story short, the new immigrants kept their Jewish identity and changed Israel in the process. Rather than segregate themselves, they became fully part of Israel. The result is an Israel structured more along the lines of the "mosaic" of identities envisioned by Hertzl rather than the "melting pot" of multiple identities into one. According to Sharansky, it has all been a huge success.

Defending the Nation-State

Israel is important because "for the believers of post-identity, Israel has become equated with the colonial sins they are intent on expiating." Almost thirty years ago, I remember a college professor tell us that Israel was illegitimate because it was founded on Judaism, a concept that according to him was anachronistic in the modern world. Without realizing it I had run into my first post-identity thinker.

The worst and most important of the post-nationalist and post-Zionist thinkers are Eric Hobsbawm and Edward Said. Most arguments against nationhood and Israel can be traced back to one or both of them.

Zionism, nationalism, and identity are for Sharansky tied closely together. All three are for the most part good (there are always unhealthy exceptions) and combined produce democracy. Weaken one and Israel collapses. For other countries, weaken the other two and democracy collapses. The concept of the nation-state is itself vital in establishing identity. As discussed above, a weakened sense of statehood is one reason why Europe is in trouble.

The justification for a Jewish Israel is that that's what the majority of Israelis want. This does not mean that the rights of minorities cannot be protected. Further, it does not mean a theocratic state per se, but rather one that embraces a Jewish heritage, a somewhat different concept.

Further, the survival of Israel as a predominantly Jewish state is crucial not just for it but for the entire world. Israel is an island of democracy in a region of dictators, religious fundamentalists, and terrorists, and a sense of Jewish identity is vital to its own survival. As a democracy surrounded by totalitarian neighbors it is a beachhead of freedom, something we should want to spread. Therefore it is vital that Israel survive as a Jewish state.

Peace or War

For life to be of any value it must be lived freely. The peace of slavery is no peace worth having. To live freely you must be able to have your identity. It is this freedom, then, that liberates, not simply the absence of war.

As mentioned above, many in the West today see identity as the cause of war, they thus seek to suppress it in the name of peace. Four hundred years ago John Locke wrote in "A Letter Concerning Toleration" that the attempt to impose one religion was what was leading to wars in Europe, and his recommendation was to let everyone believe what they wished. His views were adopted, but today we have come full circle.

Weaking identity may seem to lead to a happy society of no conflict between identity groups, but in reality leaves it defenseless against anti-democratic groups with their own strong identities. People without strong identities tend to be sheep and not resist when a group with a strong one comes into town.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the so-called "peace process" born of the 1993 Oslo Accords. As Sharansky tells it

The so-called Oslo peace process took place between two societies moving in directly opposite directions in terms if identity. Israeli society was being pushed in the direction of cosmopolitanism. Palestinians, under Arafat's corrupt dictatorship, were going through a crash course in hatred of Jews, Israel, and Zionism and making the rejection of the Jewish-Israeli identity the basis of their own. The hope for peace became predicated on a rejection of Israeli identity and a rejection of Palestinian democracy. On one side stood democracy without identity. On the other stood identity without democracy. The explosion was inevitable.

And indeed not only has the so-called peace process gone nowhere, but Palestinian society has not become any healthier.

Many people do not take radical Islam, or other such movements, seriously. We're told that ok they can blow up a few buildings, but the idea of them taking over Europe or the West is preposterous. "They'll integrate peacefully" is the line we've all heard.

Part of the problem is that most of those who believe this are of the post-modern mindset who have no identity themselves. "Multiculturalism," "diversity," and "tolerance" are not identities. As such, these people have a hard time understanding the power that strong identities can have on others. The result is that they think that if only Israel will stop building settlements the Palestinians will abandon all that talk about jihad. They don't understand that it is not issues that motivate them, but an ideology driven by a strong identity.

My Take

I'm not sure that Sharansky has it all right, or that he's thought through every nuance or complication as well he might of. Further, I'm not certain that the experiences of his own life, or that of Israel, are directly transferable to the United States or the rest of the world.

But the book has caused me to rethink my own assumptions about identity. It is fashionable for us on the right to criticize the use of a hyphen when describing one's identity; "Italian-American," Irish-American," African-American" and the like. This is a debate where I am sympathetic to both sides. I suppose the hyphen business is all a matter of degree and emphasis, and whether it's used for identity or to seek political advantage.

Malcolm X is not someone who gets much sympathy from conservatives. And there is much to criticize in his life. But in recent years I have become quite sympathetic to his adoption of "X" as a last name. After all, his African heritage had not only been stolen, it was quite ignored in the public educational system and culture at large. It was quite acceptable for those with Irish heritage to have a St. Patrick's Day parade, but how dare you think there was anything about Africa to celebrate.

Let's be honest, we all have a tendency to think that our own identity is good and certain others are bad: those crazy fundamentalist Christians, or those gay people and the way they dress, or maybe why does he have to wear his business success on his sleeve? Sometimes it's ethnic, sometimes religious, and sometimes political. But I think we all tend to view certain identities as good and others as bad.

Further, there is much about identity that Sharansky does not address in the book. What are proper and improper expressions of identity? Good v bad identities are also barely expressed. It 's one thing to have your own identity, but to what extent is everyone else expected to publicly acquiesce to it? For example, if a religious minority within a country wants their holidays off work with no penalty, that's one thing. It's quite another though if they insist everyone else recognize it also and government and business close down.
How far do concessions go?

In the end, though, this is not a scholarly tome It is a 232 page treatise that serves it's purpose well. Sharansky has a powerful life story, and Israel is at the center of the conflict between democracy and tyranny, between modernity and fundamentalist Islam. As such, his is too important a voice to ignore.

Posted by Tom at 9:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 19, 2009

Book Review - Liberty and Tyranny

I don't normally read or review books by TV news people or radio talk show hosts, but I'd heard so much about Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto that I decided to make an exception. Most of them are simply extended newspaper editorials, and it's like riding a roller coaster; a whole lot of fun but something you can only take in small bites. And while it's a thrill it's not the type of thing that changes your life.

Levin's Liberty and Tyranny is better than most in this genre, which is probably why at the time of this writing it has been #1 on the New York Times best seller list three weeks in a row. Ok, that and the fact that the excesses of Barack Obama have energized the conservative base. Levin benefits from timing.

Besides his career as a radio talk show host, Levin is president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, and a contributing editor to National Review. Prior to these he was an attorney in the private sector, chief of staff to U.S. Attorney General, Edwin Meese, deputy assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education at the U.S. Department of Education, and deputy solicitor of the U.S. Department of Interior. He holds a J.D. from the Temple University School of Law.

It's a relatively short book, at 245 pages including footnotes. But his writing is succinct, so I found myself marking many pages for this review. Without further ado, I will summarize several of the arguments that Levin makes in his book.

The difference between the Conservative and Modern Liberal(his capitalization) is that for the former, "the civil society has as its highest purpose its preservation and improvement," whereas for the latter it is "the supremacy of the state." Because people and society do not fit his view of how things should be, the Modern Liberal uses the power of the state to force change, resulting in a soft tyranny. In order to not confuse the Modern Liberal with classic liberalism, Levin uses the term "Statist" throughout the book. Levin capitalizes the word, and I will follow his convention in this review.

The Statist seeks as much control as he can get, and is never happy with what he has. He is constantly agitating for yet another government program to solve some supposed social ill. Productive members of society are demonized so that their money can be taken to fund his schemes. His message is cloaked in a tone of high moral indignation.

It's not that conservatives reject change, as is the cartoon view most Statists have of us. Rather, we should go about it slowly and deliberately, not rushing as the Statists want and President Obama is doing today. Levin uses the words of Edmund Burke to explain

I knew that there is a manifest, marked distinction, which ill men with ill designs, or weak men incapable of any design, will constantly be confounding, that is, a marked distinction between change and reformation. The former alters the substance of the objects themselves; and gets rid of all their essential good, as well as of all the accidental evil, annexed to them. Change is novelty; and whether it is to operate any one of the effects of reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict the very principle upon which reformation is desired, cannot be certainly known beforehand. Reform is, not a change in the substance, or in the primary modification, of the object, but, a direct application of a remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops there; and, if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the very worst, is but where it was.

All quotes are used in the book. Link provided for reference only

Good change, then, is that which preserves and improves the basic institutions of the state. Change as innovation or as a radical departure from the past is destructive of existing institutions and usually results in more damage than good.

The Statist can brook no challenge, and uses the power of the state to end it. We hear some in congress want to bring back the so-called Fairness Doctrine. It was the left on college campuses that drafted the infamous "speech codes" (fortunately most of which did not survive legal challenge). They are the ones behind PBS, which has completely outlived its original usefulness. You don't have to go far on the Internet to hear the one and only conservative news outlet, Fox News, denounced in the most vicious manner by liberals apparently oblivious that all other TV outlets, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and of course MSNBC, slant to the left.

In the end, we do not get our rights from the Constitution but from Natural Law. After all, the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights starts out as "Congress shall make no law...." which presupposes that the right already exists, and Congress simply cannot take it away. Natural Law is a complicated subject, but essentially comes from God. The Athiest left will argue that they can arrive at the same result through the application of human reason, but the history of our planet argues against it. The worst tyrannies of modern times have come from atheism, not religion.

Conservatives are originalists with regard to the Constitution, while Statists want a "living Constitution" so they can manipulate it to suit their political program. But if we go to the founders, they make clear that they intended for it to be interpreted by later generations in the manner in which it was written. James Madison explained in a letter to Henry Lee,

I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers. If the meaning of the text be sought in the changeable meaning of the words composing it, it is evident that the shape and attributes of the Government must partake of the changes to which the words and phrases of all living languages are constantly subject. What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense. And that the language of our Constitution is already undergoing interpretations unknown to its founders, will I believe appear to all unbiased Enquirers into the history of its origin and adoption.

The problem with seeing the Constitution as a "living and breathing document" is that it allows the Statist license to pursue his every fantasy completely unchecked by the law. The law, in fact, becomes meaningless, as it can be "reinterpreted" by whoever is in power to suit their political goals of the moment.

The Statist is not interested in what the framers said because he views them as getting in the way of his political objectives. Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall said that his judicial philosophy was "you do what you think is right and let the law catch up." Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg mirrored that sentiment when he said that his approach was to determine "what is the just result." In other words, ignore the Constitution and law and make it up as you go along.

The Statist President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not happy with the Bill of Rights, because they simply protected the individual from the power of an overreaching state. He proposed a Second Bill of Rights, which went like this:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

But these are not rights at all as properly understood. It is tyranny in disguise, an excuse to take from A to give to B in the name of a utopian goal. The Second Bill of Rights makes the individual the ward of the state rather than the free men and women we are.

Rather than surrender our liberty to self-anointed elite do-gooders, the conservative agrees with William F. Buckley Jr's quip that "I would rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University." Indeed.

Conservatives are federalists, which means that we think that more decisions and power should be granted to states and localities. This does not mean that we think all decisions and power should be granted to the state (as is the cartoon caricature by the left), simply more of it than do the Statists.

Of all the parts of the Constitution abused by Statitsts to achieve their goals, few have been tortured as much as the interstate commerce clause. Originally intended for just that, regulating trade between the states, it is now pulled out to justify just about any expansion of federal power. Indeed, in the infamous case of Wickard v. Filburn, the Supreme Court ruled that a farmer growing wheat on his own land and for his own use was still subject to federal laws regarding it, even though none of his wheat left the state. The reasoning was that by withholding his wheat from interstate commerce, he (and other farmers, since it was assumed he was not the only one doing it) was affecting interstate commerce (look it up if you don't believe me). By this logic, just about anything can be regulated under this clause, which it usually is.

Conservatives do not object to graduated, or "progressive" income tax rates, to finance the legitimate functions of government. The problem today is that government has grown beyond all reasonable bounds. If one compares the inflation adjusted cost of past programs with what Obama and the Democrats are proposing today, one sees the magnitude of the problem. Following are a few programs, their cost at the time, and their inflation adjusted cost:

Louisiana Purchase - $15 Billion - $217 Billion

Marshall Plan - $12.7 Billion - $115.3 Billion

Apollo Program - 36.4 Billion - $237 Billion

Korean War - $54 billion - $454 Billion

The New Deal - $32 billion - $500 Billion (est.)

By today's standards, these programs were pikers. They hardly even merit a raised eyebrow.

But for all the money Roosevelt spent, his New Deal didn't even work. As his own Treasury Secretary, Henry Morganthau admitted in 1939

"We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get jobs. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot."

So why, then, are New Deal programs held in such high regard by Statists? In 1976, economist and reporter for the Washington Post wrote an article critical of Social Security. The result:

I was deluged by calls and letters from the guardians of the social security system--you know, from Wilbur Cohen on down--saying, "Gee, Jodie, we always liked you, but how could you say this?" I acted very politely, and I said, "Well, what's the matter with this; isn't it true?" And they said, "Oh, yes, it's true, but once you start saying this kind of thing, you don't know where it's going to end up." Then I came to perceive that social security was not a program; it was a religion.

The modern environmental movement got its start with the publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in 1962. In the book, Carson alleged that the insecticide DDT was a "silent killer" that must be banned. As a result of her efforts and the movement it spawned, it was. DDT had been instrumental in ending the scourge of malaria that killed or disabled tens of millions a years. As the result of it being banned, deaths from malaria have gone up dramatically. The issue is complex, but DDT can be safely used in some circumstances. The problem had been not with DDT per se, but that it was used improperly in an uncontrolled fashion. Rather than an outright ban, simple regulations regarding its use would have sufficed. But because the banning of DDT is so important to environmentalists, rational discussion of it has become all but impossible.

Perhaps nothing so illustrates the Statist's desire for control than global warming. Everything is said to be caused by global warming, from hurricanes to unusually warm weather to unusually cold weather. The "carbon credit" trading schemes being proposed are breathtaking in their audacity. The Statist thinks nothing of imposing all manner of rules and regulations, all to combat something for which their is no scientific consensus.

One can and should be able to debate levels of legal immigration, but sadly this has become all but impossible. Current levels were set in a 1965 law partially drafted by Senator Ted Kennedy. The Statist acts as if these levels are carved in stone, and any attempt to even discuss them is met with charges of racism.

Worse, illegal immigration is an area where the Statist openly flouts the law. One the one hand they don't want to remove the immigration laws from the books, but on the other they resist all attempts to enforce them.

Current levels of immigration are changing our society, and they are coming in faster than we want to absorb them. The conservative is not against immigration, he just wants to make sure that immigrants are properly absorbed. We are in danger of creating a divided United States, with two languages, two cultures, and two peoples. The Statist wants seemingly unlimited numbers of immigrants, and makes no distinction between legal and illegal status.

"Certainly America cannot export democracy everywhere simultaneously, not should it attempt to...however there are occasions when democracy building is prudent." Europe after World War II was one time when it was prudent. We used the Marshall Plan and the presence of U.S. Troops to make sure our portion of Germany and the rest of Western Europe took the democratic path. It was right that we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Unfortunately, there are times when we must make alliances with non-democratic regimes. Conservatives rightly view the United Nations with distain.

The Statist, however, talks of "global citizenship" and sees the UN as a positive force for good. He does not see American as a uniquely good nation but as one nation among many, and perhaps a more flawed one (witness President Obama's speeches and op-eds while abroad). He advocates multilateral power sharing and conducting foreign policy through coalitions and international organizations.

The Statist would also have us sign onto treaties that would limit our sovereignty. These include but are not limited to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, The Kyoto Protocol on climate change, the Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the International Criminal Court.

To remedy all this, Levin says we on the right must work to build "a new generation of conservative activists, larger in number, shrewder, and more articulate than before, who seek to blunt the Statist's counterrevolution - not imitate it - and gradually and steadily reverse course."

In his final chapter Levin presents a short conservative manifesto; basically a party platform type document. All are solid conservative positions, and few if any are unusual or unexpected. A few of his goals will surely never be realized, such as making federal income tax increases require a supermajority vote of three-fifths of Congress, but the idea is solid.

All in all a decent book for the beginner activist or someone who simply doesn't have time to wade through a weighty 400 page tome. It's no God and Man at Yale, but Levin wouldn't claim to be a William F. Buckley Jr. anyway. You won't learn a whole lot that's new, but many people just need a short and sweat book that summarizes conservative positions and how they differ from liberal, or Statist, ones. If that is what you are looking for then this is a good book to get.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

March 29, 2009

Book Review - Basic Economics

Of the many authors whose books I've read over the years, Thomas Sowell is probably my favorite. Certainly that would be the case if you looked at my bookshelf, because I have more from him than any other author.

The reasons for this are many; Sowell is an unusually clear writer, he writes on a variety of subjects, and his research is impeccable. Rather than the "extended editorial" we get from so many populist writers, when you read a book by Sowell you'll find footnotes on every page. If you follow them you'll find they're usually from other scholarly works as well.

Another thing that attracts me is his world-wide perspective on just about any topic. The examples he uses in Basic Economics come from all around the world, and this is typical of his writing. To gather his data Sowell personally travels around the world and interviews scholars, businessmen, and political leaders.

Given that the economic crisis is the biggest thing happening, I figured I'd better bone up on the subject. I stated out with Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, a short treatise promoting free market economics. It's a good primer, but without much depth. And although he is mostly right, one has to admit that Hazlett was not trained as an economist.

The same certainly cannot be said of Thomas Sowell. Educated at Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago, he has a Ph.D. in Economics from the latter. After having been an Associate, Assistant, and full Professor at some of the most prestigious institutions in the country, he is currently the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow at The Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Over the years he has authored a couple of dozen books on a variety of topics, including of course economics.

None of this automatically makes Sowell right. There are plenty of people with fancy degrees who are wrong in their areas of expertise. What it does is lend some background so that when you read Basic Economics, you at least know you're looking at something written by someone trained in the subject matter he's writing about.

As with Hazlitt, Sowell is a conservative free market economist of somewhat libertarian bent. As such, you can expect that many or most of the lessons in his book revolve around his basic world view.

As the title implies, Basic Economics was written by Sowell for the average person who has no particular knowledge of technical economic terms. There is no jargon, no graphs or tables, and no equations that you'll find in textbooks. While it is footnoted liberally, for a book on "the dismal science" it is a surprisingly easy read. What helps keep it interesting is that Sowell uses some very interesting examples from business history to make his points.

For example, did you know...

That White Castle was the largest hamburger chain of the 1930s, with almost as many stores per capita as McDonalds has today?

That A & P Grocery was the Wal-Mart of the 1930s and 40s, because it drove so many mom 'n pop grocery stores out of business?

That James Cash Penny made his fortune because he studied the 1920 census?

White Castle made a fortune because they located their fast food outlets near factories in cities, giving them direct access to a huge market. All their stores were company owned, which gave them a decided advantage over a franchise chain during the Great Depression because a profitable store could subsidize an unprofitable one. But in the 1950s, the great era of factories ended, and workers moved to the suburbs and other types of jobs became more common. White Castle was slow to respond. Ray Croc operated McDonalds on a franchise model, which could grow more quickly than a model in which the company owned all the stores. His franchise stores were mostly in the suburbs, which is where the action was. We know who came out on top.

Before the automobile, it was hard to carry much home from the grocery store, and in any event the range of a horse and buggy was limited. As a necessity grocery stores were mom 'n pop affairs on every streetcorner. The owners of A & P saw how the automobile changed how people could get around, and so they developed the idea of the supermarket, which was so efficient it drove the smaller stores out of business. For a few decades A & P ruled the grocery business, yet was widely despised. In the 1950s the upstart Safeway located it's stores in the suburbs. A & P, whose stores were mostly in the cities, didn't initially put any stores in the suburbs because of the high cost of real estate there. Before long urban decay destroyed A & P's profitability, and the chain is a remnant of the giant it once was.

In the late 19th century Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck and Company made a fortune in the mail order business. They were the Amazon's of their day, selling everything from books to bicycles, to furniture to sewing machines to people all over the country. Instead of websites they had lavishly illustrated catalogs. This model worked because most Americans lived in the country, and the economics of large physical stores didn't work out. Then one day a guy named James Cash Penny studied the 1920 census, and realized that for the first time more Americans lived in urban areas than rural ones. He saw that the time for large physical department stores had come, and he built a chain of them. He almost drove Montgomery Ward and Sears out of business before they realized what was happening and hurriedly built their own stores.

These are just a few of the stories Sowell uses to illustrate his points. Many are from other countries, in particular India. Before 1991, business in India was tightly regulated.
A change in government allowed some losening of restrictions, and Sowell uses this to show how the resulting growth benefited more Indians.

Following are a few of the principles of economics that Sowell explains in his book. There are many, many more, so please understand that this is just a brief sample:

Price Controls

Scarcity means fewer goods available relative to the population, while a shortage is a price phenomenon. The earthquake of 1906 destroyed thousands of housing units, but there was no housing shortage because people immediately put extra rooms and buildings up for rent. These people did not do this out of the goodness of their hearts (in most cases, anyway), but were entrepreneurs who saw the chance to make money. As such, although 200,000 had their housing units destroyed, no one was forced to live on the street except for the shortest period. Likewise, Sowell explains how the gasoline "crisis" of 1972 and 1973 was entirely created by the U.S. government and did not reflect a shortage of product.

Complex effects can have very simple causes. For example, it is a simple concept that people buy more at lower prices than at higher ones. It is also simple to understand that producers will make more of something if they can sell it for a higher price than at a lower one. Price controls are also a simple concept. But if you put them all together you get all sorts of complicated reactions, most of which were not what was intended.

Rent control is the most prevalent attempt at price control by well-meaning people that has led to many problems, many of which were directly counterproductive to what the lawmakers intended. Sowell uses examples from Sweden, New York City, Australia, and other places to make the point. Sweden was the most illustrative. After World War II, Swedish lawmakers inposed rent control. With prices low, demand skyrocketed, especially as incomes increased in the post-war boom. No matter how fast they built housing units, the waiting list got longer and longer. Housing units were not scarce in any meaningful sense, but there was a shortage (remember our definitions). Finally, Swedish lawmakers abolished rent control, and prices went up to their natural level. As soon as they did, the waiting lists disappeared. There was neither a scarcity or shortage of housing units.

Other effects of rent control in a capitalist system is to reduce the incentive to build new housing units, and to maintain existing ones. It also incents builders to construct luxury units for the wealthy, since lawmakers almost always make a few exceptions in their legislation. Finally, rent control incents tenants to occupy a larger unit than they would otherwise, since prices are kept artificially low. The net effect is to create a housing shortage.

The concept of Cost is part of this discussion. Prices are not arbitrary, and serve the purpose of forcing people to make choices between scarce products (something is scarce if it isn't available in unlimited supply, such as air, and with pollution that's scarce too). Schemes by well-intentioned people to make things "more affordable" or a "right" ultimately run up against economic reality. Prices are not just a nuisance to get around, Sowell says, but reflect scarcity. Thus it may make some people feel morally superior that they make health insurance a "right," but the always ignore the effects on supply and demand while making their speeches.

Eliminate the Middleman

I think we're all heard the commercials that end with "and what did they do with the middleman, anyway? Something fishy there...." While this makes for a good commercial, it never really works out that way. Farmers are never going to truck their own eggs to the supermarket. Ranchers won't butcher their own stock and can their own stock. Newspapers don't own and operate their own newsstands, and automobile companies discovered a long time ago that it's cheaper to let someone else sell the cars.

There are more middlemen in Third World nations than in industrialized. Far from reflecting inefficiency, it is more efficient in underdeveloped economies to have more intermediaries. Sowell explains in some detail why this is so, but essentially it is because the quantities produced by farmers working small plots is less than in the West.

Metrics

It can be much harder to measure things like efficiency than one might imagine. Sometimes it's relatively straightforward. For example, European farmers brag that they produce more product per acre than their American counterparts. American farmers brag that they produce more per agricultural worker than their European counterparts. Both are factually correct. Who, then, is more efficient? Both, and neither. Each has tuned their efficiency to their own circumstances. Europeans have a shortage of land, Americans, labor.

Other times it is more difficult. During the Cold War, Soviet propagandists bragged that their railroad system delivered more goods per railcar than their American counterpart. And they were right. Did this, then, mean that their system was more efficient? No, because they were using the wrong metric. A better measure of efficiency is whether products get to where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to get there. By this measure, the American system was clearly superior. After all, we're all familiar with stories of Soviet agricultural waste because perishable products rotted before they were delivered. That the American system required more railcars is immaterial.

The Scarcity of Knowledge

A theme among free-market economists is the impossibility of central planners to have enough information to control any aspect of an economy. Frederick Hayek expounded upon this in The Road to Serfdom over 50 years ago, and Sowell continues the tradition in his book.

An interesting example Sowell uses is from 19th century Rhodesia. The British government decided that they knew best how to grow peanuts in Rhodesia, and so micromanaged the process from London. They turned a profitable enterprise into a disaster in just a few years.

In addition to this somewhat exotic example, Sowell uses much from everyday American life in his discussion of the concept of how knowledge affects economic decisions and the perils of government control. Everything from the ability of a literary agent to know the price of a manuscript to a real estate agent understanding the local housing situation are used.

Rich v Poor

Workers and salaries are supply and demand by another name. The same principles of supply, demand, and price apply to workers and their salaries. Demagogues may talk about "exploitation" and demand a "living wage" all they want but they cannot overturn the laws of economics.

We often hear in the press about how the rich are supposedly getting richer and the poor poorer. The term is usually "income inequality." The message is that we are are an increasingly stratified country and that something must be done.

The problem with such studies, Sowell contends, is that they tend to simply compare the income of those in the top 10-20 percent with those in the bottom 10 or 20 percent. What they almost always miss is that people are constantly moving in and out of each bracket. In fact, an absolute majority of people who started out in the bottom 20% in 1975 ended their lives in the top 20%.

"Rich versus poor" thinking also tends to be zero-sum. This is the fallacy of thinking that one person's gain is of necessity another's loss. Although it is rarely stated this way, that's what it often amounts to. What it does is assume that the economic pie is of a given size and does not increate

Speculators

A year or so ago when oil prices spiked, some on the left were telling us that it was all the fault of evil speculators. The message was that there were a group of people manipulating prices in order to make massive profits for themselves at the expense of the common person. Something, we were told, must be done. Typically that something was increased regulation.

Sowell explains speculation in more dispassionate terms. He explains how speculation is not only vital to a functioning economy, it benefits both producers and suppliers.

Essentially, a speculator is someone who buys or sells at a fixed price today for a product to be delivered at a later date. What this does is shift the risk from the producer and consumer to a middleman. The benefit to the parties at each end is that with an assured price their own planning is much simpler. Further, as they are not specialists in the price market or worldwide conditions, they can concentrate on what they do best. This holds true even since the speculator makes money.

Suppose we have a farmer who wants to grow potatoes. He does not know what the price will be at the end of the growing season, and doesn't know much about the potato exchange either. But he does understand farmer. His best course is before he's planted his first potato to go to a speculator and sell the entire crop at a fixed price, one at which he is certain to make a profit (otherwise he switches to a different crop). The speculator is hoping to sell the potato crop at a rate higher than he bought it from the farmer, but of course he may end up selling it at a loss. Because the speculator has reserves (or should, and here is where regulation comes in), he can bear the brunt of a loss without short-term pain.

Note that neither me nor Sowell are against regulation. What we're against are people who prefer to demagogue issues rather than understand the underlying economic principles.

Money and the Banking System

At one time American currency was redemable in actual gold or silver. We were said to be on the "gold standard" as the amount of money in circulation could not exceed the value of the gold in Fort Knox.

It was said that our money was then "backed up" by gold, but this was somewhat misleading. The value of the gold was not somehow transferred to t he paper currency, rather all it did was limit the amount of money that could be in circulation. The reason for taking us off the gold standard was so that the government could issue more money.

The Role of Government

As mentioned earlier, Sowell, like all free market economists, is not somehow against government regulation. Indeed, it is vital to the functioning of an economy.

Even maintaining basic law and order counts for a lot. What we take for granted took millenia to achieve. Further, "law and order" means "white collar crime" as well. An economy can fall apart just as fast if those at the top are allowed to violate laws just as much as if armed gangs are allowed to rule the streets. As such, laws must be easy to understand and reliably enforced.

The dependability if its laws was one of the primary reasons why noneteenth-century Britain was able to leap ahead of it's European competitors, and indeed the rest of the world. The dependability of their laws are why so many third-world nations remain mired in poverty despite both natural resources and foreign aid.

Sometimes economic decisions made through the marketplace are not better than those made by government. For example, a side effect of a coal power plant is air pollution. The people who bear the cost of the generating process is born by people who are not directly involved in the process. Breathing dirty air results in increased medical costs, which in an unregulated situation would not be paid by the utility company. These are called "external costs" by economists, and are the cause of legitimate government regulation, because only it can make decisions efficiently.

The flip side of "external costs" is "external benefits." Making truck companies put mud flaps on their vehicles does not help them, but those who are behind them on the road. Again, we have a reason for legitimate government regulation.

More and More

All this said, we have to recognize that there is a point of diminishing return to such things. Reducing air pollution is all very fine, and it is easy and cheap to get rid of the first 95% of particles from a cola plant. Getting rid of each additional percentage point costs more and more. We have to recognize that there comes a point where the cost exceeds any reasonable benefit.

It is a fallacy that American goods cannot compete because of low-wage earners in third world countries. Historically, high-wage countries have had trade surpluses with low-wage countries. The economic flaw in the argument is that it confuses wage rates with labor costs, and labor costs with total costs. "Wage rates are measured per hour of work, while labor costs are measured per unit of output. Total costs include not only the cost of labor but also the cost of capital, raw materials, transportation, and other things needed to product output and bring the finished product to market." In actuality, high-wage nations have three times the production per hour of low-wage nations.

"Dumping" of cheap products is often used as a justification for protectionist measures, but the argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny. In fact, Sowell says, it has proved impossible to accurately calculate the cost of production in a foreign country, as has been admitted to by the US government. Further, all countries both indirectly or directly subsidize or help various industries, and all impose restrictions of one type or another in imports. Ratcheting it up only results in a trade war of tit for tat.

Economic terminology can be confusing and even misleading. This is particularly true when saying that a particular currency is "strong" or "weak." A "strong" dollar simply means that its value is rising in relation to one or more other currencies. A strong dollar will buy more units of a foreign currency than previously. A weak dollar will buy less. Whether this is good or bad depends on your point of view. A weak dollar means that it takes more dollars to purchase the same amount of foreign currency that it did earlier, and vice versa for a strong dollar. A strong dollar is good if you are buying foreign goods, but bad if you are exporting American goods to other countries.

Economics is not a value system, but simply a means of weighing one value against another. The study of economics does not say whether rent control is good or bad, only what will happen if you impose it. Adam Smith, the father of laissez-faire economics, gave most of his money to charity when he was alive.

The term "greed" is thrown about often but is rarely defined. Ironically, it is often those who set out to make the most money for themselves that end up providing a new product or service that lots of people want, or find a way to make an existing profit at lower prices. Indeed, "lofty talk about 'non-economic values' too often amounts to very selfish attempts to have one's own values subsidized by others."

We also hear much talk about "predatory pricing," especially with regards to large retailers who drive smaller higher-priced rivals out of business. However, there is precious little evidence that this really exists. Both A & P Grocery in the 1940s and Microsoft in the 90s were accused of predatory pricing, both without a single solid piece of evidence.

Conservatives are often accused of promoting "trickle down" economics, but it simply isn't so, because the theory has never existed among economists. Sowell writes that

People who are politically committed to policies of redistributing income and who tend to emphasize the conflicts between business and labor, rather than their mutual interdependence, often accuse those opposed to them of believing that benefits must be given to the wealthy in general or to business in particular, in order that these benefits will eventually "trickle down" to the masses of ordinary people. But no recognized economist of any school of thought has ever had any such theory or made any such proposal. It is a straw man...

Proposals to reduce taxes on capital gains, for example, are often opposed politically by saying that those who make such proposals believe in a "trickle down" theory of economics. In reality, economic processes work in the directly opposite way from that depicted by those who imagine that profits first benefit business owners and that benefits only belatedly trickle down to workers.

Rather, when an investment in a business is first made, the first thing done is to hire people. Capital is spent on buildings, plant, equipment. This obviously benefits those receiving the money. Only years later do most businesses turn a profit. The profit, then is at the end, not the beginning, of the process.

Economics has been called "the dismal science" not because it is boring but because it tends to throw cold water on the schemes of do-gooders. Sowell does an excellent job of explaining why this is so in Basic Economics, and does so with clear writing and without the technical jargon. It is a book recommended for everyone who wants an understanding of fundamental economic issues.

Postscript to the Review: A Note on "Faith in Free Markets"

We on the right are often accused of having "faith in free markets," and sometimes the accusation is true. It usually misses the point, though. As Ramesh Ponnuru recently explained in the most recent print edition of National Review

..."faith in the market," even when taken too far, as it can be, is generally not faith that some group of people have all the right answers. it is confidence that trial and error,k feedback loops, competition, and decentralized knowledge will come closes and closer to the right answers. Friedrich von Hayek's Nobel lecture urged policymakers to emulate gardeners rather than engineers, creating the environment for growth rather than trying to bring it about directly.

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January 25, 2009

Book Review - Economics in One Lesson

Some books are only relevant for a few years or even months after they are written. Others stay important for decades or more. The Bible is relevant for all time. Dale Carnegie wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936, yet is applicable today, as human nature does not change.

While economic issues change, the basic principles do not. As such, Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics is almost as relevant today as it was when first published in 1946. The latest edition and update, and the one I have, was in 1979. Still a bit old but with many lessons that we can use in analyzing the current situation. Anyway, since he died in 1993 the edition we have is the latest we'll get.

At just over 200 pages it's a pretty short book. Hazlitt states up front that he's not going to footnote everything or provide a dozen examples or pages of statistics, as that's not his purpose here. He wrote many other, longer works on economics and other subjects for readers looking for more depth. Rather, it is to provide a basic overview for the average person who has neither the time nor the inclination to wade through a longer treatise. When it comes to the "dismal science," that's my type of book.

Here, in a nutshell, is the thesis of the entire book:

Economics, as we have now seen again and again, is a science of recognizing secondary consequences. it is also a science of seeing general consequences It is the science of tracing the effects of some proposed or existing policy not only on some special interest in the short run, but on the general interest in the long run. (emphasis in the original)

and elswhere

The whole argument of this book may be summed up in the statement that in studying the effects of any given economic proposal we must race not merely the immediate results but the results in the long run, not merely the primary consequences but the secondary consequences, and not merely the effects on some special group but the effects on everyone.

The difference between a good economist and a bad one, to Hazlitt, is that the good one sees secondary and general effects, while the bad one only the primary one.

Most of the issues discussed in the book are relevant today, but some are not. Relevant are discussions on the evils of public works programs, high taxes, tariffs, government price-fixing, saving particular industries, the minimum wage, rent control, and unions. Not relevant are disbanding large numbers of troops, parity pricing, stabilizing commodities, "buying back the product", and swatting down the alleged benefits of inflation. Some in this latter list will be unfamiliar to the modern reader, because no one anymore, for example, advocates price inflation as a good thing.

We all know that if we drink too much alcohol, the secondary consequence of a hangover will be unpleasant. There's a secondary, "hangover" effect from many economic policies as well. Yet the politics of the matter often mean that they're ignored.

The newspapers today carry news of an economic "stimulus" program that is mostly spending on so-called infrastructure projects. Hazlitt destroys the notion that this type of policy will bring any benefit whatsoever.

It's not that he's against infrastructure projects. If we need a bridge, he says, then by all means built it, and do so with public monies. But these projects should be justified on their own merits, not as part of a plan to "pump money into the economy" or whatever.

For every dollar spent on public infrastructure, a dollar is taken from the private sector, a dollar that would be spent elsewhere. As such, every job created in the public sector is a job destroyed somewhere else. We may be able to hide this with deficit spending, but in the end the piper must be paid. The immediate effect of this type of public works project is to put people to work. It is also highly visible and newsworthy. The secondary effect is to take money out of the economy that would be spent elsewhere. Because, though, this money isn't there and nothing is bought, it isn't directly seen and thus far less likely to be reported on.

Also in the news today are federal lending institutions such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The Community Reinvestment Act provided loans to people who would not otherwise qualify. The Bush Administration, a few months ago, even pushed banks to lend more money.

Hazlitt explains how by definition government will never do as good a job in making loans as will the private sector for the simple reason that people are more careful with their own money. That this is true is often hidden, because when there is a bank failure due to bad loans it's all over the news, whereby bad loans made by government are hidden with more federal spending. Political considerations also warp government lending, something that can happen in the private sector only if there is excessive or politically motivated regulation.

There is broad agreement today, I think that tariffs harm the economy. This, of course, was the rational behind NAFTA and other free trade agreements. Special interests want tariffs, something that we today call "protectionism," a word that was apparently before Hazlitt's time. We all know that tariffs hurt consumers, but Hazlitt shows that they hurt producers as well. The reason is that a tariff forces consumers to pay more for a product than they ordinarily would, and ever dollar they spend is a dollar less they can spend somewhere else. Thus, producers of other products do not get that money.

Hazlitt does not address issues such as protectionism or about saving industries for for reasons of national security. The book focuses strictly on the economic impact of government actions.

We're all supposed to worry about our trade imbalance because we import more than we export. While too much of an imbalance can be bad, Hazlitt points to John Stuart Mill's maxim that "the real gain of foreign trade to any country lies not in its exports but in its imports." The reason is simple; we import something because doing so is cheaper for the consumer. This is a good thing.

Small fallacies are also addressed, such as the idea that price is determined by the cost of production. If you break it all down it is determined by supply and demand.

Last year we were to believe that high oil prices were due to evil speculators. Hazlitt demonstrates that far from being our enemy, they are essential to economic stability and indeed our prosperity. Speculators protect us from fluctuations in price. None of this is to stay that their activity shouldn't be regulated to ensure honest transactions, simply that in and of itself it is beneficial to our well being.

While one can never say for certain what a historical figure would say about a current issue, it is hard to imagine Hazlitt approving of current government bail outs. Besides the perils of deficit spending, it is a good thing when inefficient businesses to close shop because bankruptcy is a signal that the capital they are using would be better spent elsewhere. Again Hazlitt stresses that he understands that their are negative consequences for individual workers, and that we must address their short-term needs. But by the same token the general consequence of inefficient businesses closing shop is good.

We've all seen the phenomenon whereby someone insists on regulation, price fixing, etc on some other business but "mine is different." Hazlitt addresses this as well in his discussion on government price fixing. Recently we saw this in action with the price of gasoline. No one wants to pay more for essentials, and it is a natural tendency to assume the worst motivations behind the businesses supplying those products. When in the midst of complaining, we forget that in addition to consumer each of us is also producer and taxpayer. As a producer, we want inflation so that we can charge more for our own product to justify salary increases, as consumer we want deflation or price fixing. Profits are only "obscene" when someone else is making them.

We've all heard or seen news stories in which reporters breathlessly go after a "slumlord" for conditions in his buildings. What these journalists fail to tell us is that in the majority of these cases the real culprit are politicians who put rent control into place. The immediate effect of rent control is that poor people have a better place to live. The secondary effect is that their landlord has no money to fix up their buildings. The general effect is that contractors don't build more housing (because if landlords can't make a profit, they won't have more housing built) and so there is a housing shortage. The people who end up suffering are the very people such polices were meant to help.

Liberal politicians and their enablers think they are helping people with policies such as minimum wage laws. They would do better to promote policies that would raise marginal labor productivity. The goal should be profits, which is only way to increase wages without putting other people out of work. Unions have the same effect as minimum wage laws when they agitate for higher wages. They benefit us only when they push for safe working conditions and the like.

We have been fortunate in this country in that for a variety of reasons we have generally had a strong economy. Even during times of depression or recession most of us are better off than 90% of the rest of the world. As such, politicians assume they can do anything and it won't have negative consequences, at least not serious ones. This is incorrect.

Much of the above will be familiar to the libertarian or conservative reader, and indeed most of Hazlitt's arguments were not terribly new to me, though he explains them more clearly than I have seen elsewhere.

At least one thing that was new to me was his explanation that "saving was only another form of spending." The difference was that with "savings" we give the money to someone else to spend, and it tends to be spent on somewhat different products.

When we as consumers spend money directly, it is of course on consumer items. When we put our money in a passport savings account, or mutual funds, or even corporate bonds, it doesn't just sit there. The banker lends it to a business, and the mutual fund and corporate bond managers give it to businesses through the purchase of stocks or bonds. Corporations take this money and spend it on capital goods such as buildings, plant, trucks, computer systems, whatever. The point is that it does get spent, though maybe it takes longer and is on different items.

Economics in One Lesson provides a simple and quick way to understand libertarian free market economics. You will not like this book if you are a fan of the current "stimulus" plan.

If you are of conservative or libertarian bent, I strongly encourage you to purchase and study this book. We need to learn to speak the language of economics in order to fight off the big-government liberals. Our arguments must be clear, concise, and easy to understand, and as such book provides a good primer on the subject for the average person.

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December 1, 2008

Book Review - Why I Left Jihad

I'm not sure where I first heard of Walid Shoebat, but it was probably on a radio talk show or on an Internet blog site. Finding his story intriguing, I picked up his book.

There are any number of Muslims who have seen the light and either left the faith or at least turned from radicalism. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is among the most famous, but there are others, such as Irshad Manji.

Shoebat tells his story in Why I Left Jihad: The Root of Terrorism and the Return of Radical Islam. It's an amazing story. Unfortunately, I'm not sure all of it is exactly true. More to it, his book is more than a bit odd and in the end I really cannot recommend it.

What he says in his book is basically this: He was born in Bethlehem and raised on what is termed elsewhere the West Bank (they call it Judea over there). I have not been able to find his exact birthdate, but he looks to be in his mid 40s. He was raised and educated to hate not just Israelis but all Jews. He was eventually recruited into the PLO by bomb-maker Mahmud Al-Mughrabi.

Al-Mughrabi made a bomb and instructed Shoebat to blow up the Bank Leumi branch in Bethlehem. With the assistance of confederates, Shoebat managed to get through security and to the bank. He was ready to throw the bomb into the bank, when he saw Palestinian children playing in front. Not wanting to kill them, he threw the bomb onto the bank's roof where it exploded but did no damage and didn't kill anyone.

He was eventually arrested for other acts and imprisoned for a short time in an Israeli prison. Released, he returned to the PLO.

Eventually he came to the United States, working as a counselor for the Arab Student Organization at Loop College in Chicago. He married a Christian woman, and set about trying to convert her to Islam. To do so he decided he had to learn the Bible so as to prove to her that it was false. After about six months, he changed his mind and not only decided that the Bible was true and the Quran false, he converted to Christianity himself. His studies in the Bible and elsewhere convinced him that "everything he had learned about the Jews was a lie."

To say that he has since done a 180 and become an ardent defender of Israel is something of an understatement. Fanatical defender of Israel is more like it.

Back To The Beginning

I mentioned earlier that I wasn't exactly sure if his story is completely as he says. Normally I try and write these reviews without looking at what others have to say about the book, because I want to make sure these reviews reflect my own judgment and opinion without subconsciously importing those of others. Once or twice, though, I've become suspicious and did some poking around before I'd even finished the book. This was one of those times.

There's a very interesting March 2008 story in the Jerusalem Post about Shoebat that made me start to wonder. The JP is not to be taken lightly. It's a well respected newspaper. Here are few key excerpts

Shoebat's claim to have bombed Bank Leumi in Bethlehem is rejected by members of his family who still live in the area, and Bank Leumi says it has no record of such an attack ever taking place.

His relatives, members of the Shoebat family, are mystified by the notion of "Walid Shoebat" being an assumed name. And the Walid Shoebat Foundation's working process is less than transparent, with Shoebat's claim that it is registered as a charity in the state of Pennsylvania being denied by the Pennsylvania State Attorney's Office.

Shoebat's claim to have been a terrorist rests on his account of the purported bombing of Bank Leumi. But after checking its files, the bank said it had no record of an attack on its Bethlehem branch anywhere in the relevant 1977-79 period.

Shoebat told The Jerusalem Post that this could be because the bank building was robustly protected with steel and that the attack may have caused little damage....

A New York Times report last month on the Air Force Academy event (at which Shoebat spoke), headlined "Speakers at Academy Said to Make False Claims," noted that "Academic professors and others who have heard the three men speak in the United States and Canada said some of their stories border on the fantastic, like Mr. Saleem's account of how, as a child, he infiltrated Israel to plant bombs via a network of tunnels underneath the Golan Heights. No such incidents have been reported, the academic experts said. They also question how three middle-aged men who claim they were recruited as teenagers or younger could have been steeped in the violent religious ideology that only became prevalent in the late 1980s."

That certainly doesn't sound good.

On the other side, two people I respect have stuck up for Shoebat. One is Frank Gaffney, a contributor to National Review and founder of the conservative Center for Security Policy, had this to say about Shoebat

In the 25 years I have been in Washington I have never heard anything so extraordinary and the truth so eloquently told by someone like this [Walid Shoebat].

In 2006 scholar Daniel Pipes said in response to charges that Shoebat was being less than honest that

Walid Shoebat took the time to visit me in my office today and to show me proofs that his life story is a true one. I accept that it is.

My Take

Is his story true, false, or an exaggeration? It's impossible to say. On the one hand it's certainly plausible. His family (see the JP story) may be the ones who are infected with "selective memory." They are Palestinians and Muslims and their attitude towards those who leave the faith is well known. Further, they can expect retribution if they were sympathetic to Shoebat.

Another curiosity is that on the bookcover it says that "Walid is an American citizen and lives in the USA under this assumed name." Yet the JP story indicates that this may not be true either, that it might be his real name.

I don't think he's outright lying, but it's likely that he's exaggerating certain parts. At any rate even if you accept everything he says his claim to being a terrorist is fairly tenuous, as it most of it rests on the one attack on the Bank Leumi.

Either way it's a take-it-or-leave-it type of book.

The Rest of the Book

I expected most of the book to be like Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel, mostly autobiography, with a minimal discussion of history and theology. However just the opposite is true. Only the first chapter or so is dedicated to his life story, and that is pretty sparse. Shoebat has the maddening habit of skipping around so that a narrative is hard to follow.

Even so, the next several chapters looked promising, and indeed there is much to recommend in them. Shoebat covers the recent history of the region, and goes into some detail on how Palestinian children are educated and raised, the definition of "jihad," and indeed even where the term "Palestinian" comes from. There is much interesting history here and the whole book is very well footnoted, although annoyingly there is no index.

Better, Shobat demolishes many Palestinian/Muslim claims, titling them "Common Claim" "Response" style, as a sort of catechism. His responses are pretty solid.

It didn't take long, though before I started to become uneasy. Rather than limit himself to secular arguments, he continually pits the Bible against Islam with the intent to show that God is on the side of the Jews and this is why they should have the land. This was ok for a bit, but the book went off the rails completely by chapter 6 or 7, the latter of which was titled "God and Magog War." We eventually see chapters like "Mystery Babylon," "The Antichrist, the Beast, and the Mark," and "How to Interpret End-Time Prophecy." The book starts out as regular biography and secular history and ends up pure theology.

Now, just so we're all clear, as a good conservative evangelical Christian, I like to study the word of God as much as any other believer. At my church the pastor goes through the Bible book-by-book, and his Sunday sermons are more Bible studies than traditional sermons. In the four plus years I've been there we've gone from the end of Exodus to Mark, and I figure in another three years we'll be back at where I started, so I'll have done a 360. All of the sermons are posted on the web here, knock yourself out and watch or listen to them. The point is that I like to study prophecy and end-times and all that as much as any other committed Christian.

But I am not one to base my study of the world on theology, and I certainly didn't buy this book to read about Shoebat's theories on the book of Revelation or the significance of ancient Babylon.

This is one of the few books I had to stop reading about a third of the way through and just skip through the rest. In the end, unless you are seriously interested in some of the more esoteric aspects of Christian and Muslim theology I wouldn't bother with this book. I'll have something much better for my next book review.

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November 17, 2008

Book Review - Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad

On February 26, 1993, Americans were stunned to learn that a bomb exploded in the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring 1,042. Scenes of panic were on our televisions, and for awhile Americans wondered if we weren't going to suffer a wave of terror as what plagued Europe in the 70s and the Middle East to this day.

Within a week, though, our law enforcement scored what seemed like a stunning triumph against what seemed to be stunningly incompetent terrorists. On March 4 one of the terrorists, Mohammad Salameh, was arrested as he attempted to retrieve his security deposit on the Ryder truck they had rented for the attack.

This in turn led to other arrests, and before too long it looked as if law enforcement had the entire thing wrapped up. I myself remember thinking that it we must either have the world's dumbest terrorists or the world's best law enforcement. From what I remember most other Americans thought the same thing.

But what if we had known that the FBI had had an informant inside the organization that carried out the attacks months before they occurred?

And what if we had found out that the informant had warned the JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force; FBI and local law enforcement) that this organization was actively training jihadists in guerrilla tactics for a campaign of assassination and bombing? Or that they were actively experimenting with explosives? And was apparently well-funded?

And despite all this, the JTTF ordered the informant to withdraw from the organization?

We'd have been outraged, that's what.

This and more is told by Andrew C. McCarthy in Willfull Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.

McCarthy is in a position to know what he's talking about, because at the time of the bombing he was the Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against the masterminds behind it, most notably the "Blind Sheikh", Omar Abdel Rahman, and eleven others.

McCarthy's involvement only came after the 1993 bombing, so he was not a part of the missteps with the confidential informant. Nor did he prosecute the underlings who carried out the attack. His job was to go after the terror masters. He did, and his efforts led to the conviction of all of them. The Blind Sheikh was the most important, and dangerous, terrorist ever tried in the United States.

If McCarthy's book was only about the bombing, investigation, and trial of the accused, it would be an interesting but not a terribly important book. As it is, however, McCarthy goes well beyond a simple narrative of the investigation and trial. Much of the book is a discussion of the nature of the jihadist threat that we face.

The Blind Sheikh

Omar Abdel Rahman was born in Egypt in 1938, and lost his sight as a child to diabetes. Early on recognized as something of a prodigy, impressed his teachers early on by memorizing the entire Quran. He attended the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo, where he obtained a degree in Qur'anic studies. He was recognized as a specialist in Islamic law, authorized to issue fatwas and binding legal opinions. Rahman, by now called the "Blind Sheikh" adopted the most radical views, calling for the imposition of Sharia law wherever possible.

The Blind Sheikh saw America, Israel, and secular Arab governments as his main enemies, and called for the overthrow of all of them. Nothing the United States did on the behalf of Muslims anywhere held any water for him. Mubarak, and Sadat before him were mere puppets of America. As for Israel, well, "Zionist" conspiracies were everywhere.

The Blind Sheikh's entire history is long and complicated, but suffice it to say that he developed ties to seemingly every radical and terrorist group in Egypt. He even led fundraising tours for MAK, or Mektab al-Khidmat, the organization from which al-Qaeda would grow.

While in Egypt he became the spiritual leader of an organization called Gama'at al-Islamia, or simply the Islamic Group. Formed in 1973, it is considered an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and is closely tied to al-Qaeda. Their original motivation was to overthrow the secular government of Egypt, but as their ties and size grew, they "branched out" into full-fledged jihad against the West as well.

The Blind Sheikh's method was to issue fiery denunciations of, say the government of Egypt, backed by the relevant Islamic scholarship, but stop short of calling for outright violence. He simply let his followers figure out what he meant. Imprisoned for a time in Egypt, amazingly enough he beat the charges in court by simply quoting Islamic law to the effect that it was every Muslim's duty to engage in jihad against anything anti-Islamic. Since Sadat's government was openly secular, the court was forced to admit that Rahman was right.

He entered the United States on a tourist visa in 1990, this despite his name being on our terrorist watch list. Deciding to stay here, his lawyers successfully fought off deportation orders. He brought his organization with him, and, while continuing to issue orders to his followers in Egypt, also started to pursue jihad against the United States.

The result was the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

Worse than that, his organization was working toward bombing five New York City landmarks: the United Nations building, an FBI office, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, and the George Washington Bridge. It was for this conspiracy, as well as the World Trade Center attacks, for which he and his co-defendants were convicted.

Willful Blindness

On Nov 5, 1990, Rabbi Meir David Kahane was shot and killed by El Sayyid Nosair after giving a speech in Manhattan. A subsequent search of Nosair's apartment revealed what would seem to be a treasure a trove of documents. Box after box of notebooks, assassination manuals, handwritten notes, and jihadi literature was removed. Amazingly, the authorities ignored all of it. They had convinced themselves that Nosair was a loner, and no further investigation was required.

It was an act of willful blindness. The reality was that Nosair was part of a jihadist conspiracy led by the Blind Sheikh.

The Informant

Emad Salem, a former Egyptian army officer living in the United States, had infiltrated the Blind Sheikh's organization for the best of motives; he believed that jihadists had perverted the religion and he wanted them exposed and convicted. His undercover activities started in 1991. He'd even met Rahman on several occasions, and had so thoroughly convinced him that he, too, was a jihadist that the conspirators had asked him not only to design their bombs but to help build them also.

Therein lie the problem. The JTTF did not want its informant actually building bombs. "Imagine the liability," they said, if Salem engaged in bomb building, and then the jihadists escaped the FBI's surveillance and were successful in exploding their bombs. After all, even the FBI does not have magical powers, but rather limited resources, and such a thing was eminently possible. Thus the decision to withdraw Salem from the jihadist organization altogether.

In retrospect it was clearly the wrong decision, but given the attitudes at the time, an understandable one.

What outraged McCarthy is not just that the JTTF ordered Salem off the case, but that they dropped the investigation altogether. As he points out, they still could have conducted surveillance and used other investigative techniques.

After the World Trade Center bombing, Salem was allowed to re-infiltrate the terrorist organization. He was so successful in collecting evidence that long story short, eventually the Blind Sheikh and his fellow jihadists were all arrested.

A "Perverted Islam"?

In planning his strategy for prosecuting the Blind Sheikh (as McCarthy calls him throughout the book), McCarthy realized that he would have to present a clear motive to the jury. Jurors, he explains, are hesitant to convict on forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony alone. They want to know why the accused did what he or she did. Without a convincing motive, jurors will tend towards giving the accused the benefit of the doubt.

It was clear that the Blind Sheikh was motivated by jihad. For years he had railed against the secular Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak, and ever since moving to the United States had taken up the cause against us here.

The question to McCarthy was not how to present this to the jury, for that was easy. The danger was how he would cross-examine the Blind Sheikh should he take the stand. He knew he couldn't engage in a wide-ranging debate about Islam with the Blind Sheikh, for the latter was a world renowned scholar on the subject. Rather, he would try to trip him up on a few points of Islamic theology, showing that the Blind Sheikh had twisted the true, peaceful, nature of Islam into something violent and hateful. After all, we've all been assured by "moderates" that Islam is a religion of peace.

But as he studied Islam, he came to realize that it was the Blind Sheikh who had the better understanding of Islam. McCarthy concluded that "Islam is a dangerous creed" that threatens Western values. The way the religion is practiced today, it's hard to disagree.

As it was, the Blind Sheikh never took the stand, so no cross examination occurred. But if it had, McCarthy concluded, neither he nor anyone else would have been able to show that the Blind Sheikh had twisted Islam into something it wasn't.

The Pre-9/11 Mentality

Much of the book details the comedy of errors that our various government bureaucracies made in dealing with terrorist suspects in the 1980s and 90s. Time and again agencies such as the CIA, INS, and FBI didn't communicate with each other, so that while one would list a particular person as a terrorist suspect and flag him as "no entry" to the United States, the others would not get the message and the suspect would be granted a visa. Four times, for example, the Blind Sheikh applied for visas to enter the United States, and on only one occasion was he denied entry, this despite his history of radicalism if not outright support of terrorism.

Astoundingly, the situation did not improve even after the 1993 WTC bombings, when all of the bumbling was revealed. "We caught them; problem solved." was the prevailing attitude. The public perception was that we were on top of our game and no fundamental changes need be made.

Islam and Terror

At some point during the investigation, it became clear to McCarthy that there was nothing "more elemental to Islamic terrorism than the radical Muslim ideology that fuels it." In order to prove motive it simply had to be addressed. From a legal standpoint it was more important to show that a criminal act affected interstate commerce, for example, than to show that a Salafitst interpretation of Islam was behind it all.

The root of modern Islamic terror, and the primary influence on The Blind Sheikh, can be found in the 13th and 14th centuries, most particularly in the writings of Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymayyah (1263-1328). As also explained by Walid Phares in Future Jihad, Ibn Taymayyan (spellings vary), concluded that the reason that the reason the Mongols had been able to sack Baghdad itself and end the Abbasid dynasty in 1258 was that Muslims had ceased to properly follow the dictates of Allah. The solution, then, was to purify Islam and eliminate or purge it of those who in his opinion were not practicing the religion properly.

To carry this out he developed the doctrine of the takfir, which is essentially the Muslim equivalent of the inquisition. This would later develop into the Salafist movement which would in turn spawn Wahhabism, which in turn spawned al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Ibn Taymayyah led what was essentially a "back to the Dark Ages" movement. Gone was enlightened or "progressive" thought. While Europe would go from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance and Enlightenment a few centuries later, the Muslim world did just the opposite. Taymayyah's ideas have dominated radical thinking ever since.

Central to Salafist/Takfiri thinking is the concept of the jihad. Some Westerners have attempted to distinguish between a "greater" and "lesser" Jihad, seeing the first as defensive, or good, and the second as offensive, or bad. The "lesser" jihad, in this thinking, is a vestige of the old days, and is no more. The current, "greater" jihad, is peaceful and used strictly for defensive purposes.

Unfortunately, the idea of a greater and lesser jihad is about as accurate as the portrayal of honor among the Corleone family in the Godfather series. It's good entertainment, but with little or no basis in reality. Even if jihad is strictly defensive, the radicals have been able to twist any and all circumstances into "defense of the faith." This even to the point where resisting the spread of Islam is said to be an attack on the faith and requiring a "defensive" jihad.

Others have tried to portray jihad as a "peaceful inner struggle" one has with oneself in order to purify oneself for God. As with the idea of a "greater" and "lesser" jihad, this is a notion mostly held by Westerners and some Muslims who live in the West. It is not held by many Islamic scholars.

The reality is that jihad is the central tenant that drives Islamic terrorists, and its goal is the worldwide imposition of Islamic law. Issues such as the Palestianian-Israeli conflict are tangential.

The other major influence on the Blind Sheikh was Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual father of modern jihadist thinking and the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood until his death in 1966. Qutb's focus was on replacing secular Arab governments with Islamic ones, which would be governed by Sharia law. As an Egyptian, his main focus was on Gamal Abdul Nasser. After Nasser died in 1970, the Blind Sheikh took up the cause of overthrowing first Anwar Sadat, and then Hosni Mubarak.

Moderate, progressive, Muslims want the entire concept of jihad to just go away. As McCarthy found out while preparing his cross examination of the Blind Sheikh, they have mostly proven themselves unable to debate with the scholars, virtually all of whom see violent jihad as part of the religion.

What attracts followers is the ideology of radical Islam. What keeps them there is success, and what drives them away is lack of success. It's the "strong horse/weak horse" thing, and so each victory fills their ranks, whereby each defeat depletes them. There are lots of fence-sitters who are watching closely.

Not that we should always expect the jihadists to tell us who they are. It has been said that "war is deceit," and the Blind Sheikh followed this to it's fullest. Interviewed by CNN's Bernard Shaw in 1992, he said that "I do not call people for any violence," a known lie even then as he was on record for calling for the murder of Egyptian officials. Caught gloating over his deception by an authorized Federal wiretap of his phone later that same day, Rahman not only admitted to the deception to an associate but found it hard to believe that some of his followers might not "get it."

Although it was clear to McCarthy and the JTTF that the Blind Sheikh and his fellow conspirators were guilty, there was some resistance to charging him at all. Some in the intelligence and foreign service communities thought that doing so would upset Muslims and make it harder for us around the world. They even said that it would be counterproductive; that it might provoke more attacks.

McCarthy rejects such reasoning. Terrorists, he says, thrive on weakness. As noted earlier, fence sitters look for the "strong horse," and join that side. Further, if they didn't prosecute, it would embolden the Blind Sheikh himself who would only order more terrorist attacks.

That he and his fellow conspirators were indited was due, McCarthy says, to the steely determination of two of his bosses; Mary Jo White and Janet Reno. White was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1993-2002, and Reno needs no introduction. Both were Clinton appointees. As much grief as Reno has received from those of us on the right, I was pleasantly surprised to see that she did good in this case. My hat is off to them both.

Lessons Learned

McCarthy's experience has caused him to reject a strict law-enforcement model for dealing with jihadists. For standard criminal cases, "the law is our noble, all-purpose abstraction." Time and again he makes sure the reader understands that he and his fellow prosecutors followed such things as discovery procedures to the letter of the law, even when they very much helped the defense.

A problem with the law-enforcement model is that it ignores Islam as the fuel for Islamic terrorism. Prosecutors, as explained above, tend to concentrate only on the technical aspects of proving that the suspect planted or designed the bomb because of the way the law is written. Further, prosecutors are generally not interested in bringing up the overall aim of the terrorists, rogue-state facilitation, or who covertly financed the entire operation. They just want to prove that so-in-so designed or planted the bomb, or recruited the people to do it.

Traditional criminals may want to murder, but only individuals or small groups. They want to steal money or items. They do not want to overthrow any government, just work their evil around it. But terrorists, especially those of the Islamic variety, want to kill large numbers of innocent civilians, and the more the better. They do want to overthrow our government and replace it with an Islamic one. Because the two have different motives and objectives, we cannot use the same means to go after both. It is especially problematic to use standard legal means to pursue terrorism outside of the United States.

The reality is that we are not dealing with a small band of crazies who sometimes hide out in the wilds of Afghanistan or Pakistan. We face hundreds of thousands of jihadists (of one level of commitment or another) around the world.

Further, the means used to identify terrorists on this scale is necessarily different than what is used to gather evidence against criminals. While wiretaps are secret, they are revealed during discovery. We use national intelligence means to gather evidence against terrorists, and we simply cannot reveal "sources and methods" to the public.

Lastly, trials with their associated appeals take years to complete, cost tens of millions of dollars, and end up convicting relatively few people. Given the number of jihadists, it is simply not feasible to try them in criminal courts.

In the end, McCarthy says that it is Islam itself that must be confronted. Here too he and I agree. Far from a "hijacked" religion that is really about peace, Islam as it is and has been practiced for far too long incorporates many disturbing elements and beliefs. These can be changed, just as Martin Luther and John Calvin changed Christianity, but if will never happen if we remain wedded to political correctness.

As McCarthy says at the end; "We can open our eyes and see it. Or not."

Video Interviews of Andrew McCarthy on National Reivew: "Law & Jihad"
Chapter 1 of 5
Chapter 2 of 5
Chapter 3 of 5
Chapter 4 of 5
Chapter 5 of 5

Update

After rewatching the interviews I realize I didn't do justice to McCarthy's recommendations at the end of his book. The terrorists at Guantanamo are neither criminals nor enemy soldiers as properly understood. Therefore, they are due neither the protections of our constitution nor those of the Geneva Conventions (details on the latter here). As such, they fall into a never-never world where the traditional means to deal with them don't apply.

One of McCarthy's suggestions to help resolve this is to establish a National Security Court. President Bush should have established a board of advisers to help set this up immediately after 9-11, but better late than never. The idea is to take the best of both criminal and military court system. The benefit of the military justice system is that it better allows us to protect national intelligence. On the other side, the criminal justice system works much better in that federal judges do a better job of moving cases along to resolution. When the military is fighting a war court cases will by definition be on the back burner (and I would say there's probably a conflict of interest) so the federal court system can better handle the load and move cases forward.

That's the ultra short version. Buy the book and learn the rest.

Posted by Tom at 8:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 20, 2008

Book Review - Surrender is Not an Option

William F. Buckley Jr. once called Jeane Kirkpatrick "St. Jeane" for her work at the United Nations during the Reagan Administration. To those of us on the right who remember the odious Andrew Young as ambassador to the UN under Jimmy Carter, "St. Jeane" was a godsend. Instead of apologizing for our country as Young so often did, she put the dictators of the world on defense and forthrightly stated our case.

To conservatives, John Bolton is a sort of latter-day Jeane Kirkpatrick. To liberals, he is a loud-mouth "ugly American" who is brash and arrogant. Readers of this blog well know that I am in the former camp.

Bolton may not have had to clean up the mess of Young and the Carter Administration, but he had his work cut out for him nonetheless. The UN is corrupt, and at best useless and at worst a positive harm to US and Western values. It a swamp of kelptocrats whose purpose in life is to draw a salary and prevent Western values from taking hold in other regions of the world. Process, not progress, is the watchword of the day.

John Bolton made his mark when he got a recess appointment as Permanent US Representative to the UN, serving from August 2005 until December 2006. His book, Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations, is mostly about his experience at that institution.

Bolton attended Yale University, graduating summa cum laude, and made his mark by standing up for conservative values in the face of much opposition. On "Class Day", which was just before graduation, he addressed the assembled parents and students with a few remarks. For his efforts he was heckled by the leftists, who could not stand any dissent. "A typical example of liberal 'tolerance'" he dryly remarks. In addition to his B.A. Bolton earned a J.D. from Yale.

His early career, from 1974 through 1999, was mostly spent in private legal practice, though with stints in the Reagan and first Bush Administrations in a variety of positions, perhaps the most important of which as serving as Assistant Attorney General from 1985 to 1989.

IN 1975 the United Nations General Assembly passed it's infamous Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism. Repeal of this odious measure became the test by which Israel and many pro-Israel groups in the US would measure the UN.

At the State Department

During President George W. Bush's first term Bolton served as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. Among other things, he was influential in establishing the Proliferation Security Initiative(PSI), whose purpose it was to interdict WMD shipments around the world. Hardly a unilateral effort, it started out with eleven member states and has grown to 75 countries today. What made the PSI effective was that it was "an activity not an organization", while the UN was just the opposite.

His "happiest moment at State was personally "unsigning" the Rome Statue that created the International Criminal Court (ICC)" ICC advocates contend that it simply provides a framework for trying "crimes against humanity" where there was no other judicial system that could do the work. Bolton saw it as something that would be exploited by those with an anti-American agenda to go after American politicians and military leaders. Typically the State Department was against the "unsigning", because their main (seemingly only) concern was that our action would make others unhappy. Bolton, on the other hand, only considered the well-being of the United States, and the rest of the world could go fly a kite if they didn't like it.

Bolton also thwarted attempts by elements at the UN to sneak in "global gun control" provisions which would have superseded our Second Amendment. Many attendees of the UN Conference on Small Arms and Light Weapons had a hidden agenda, which Bolton smoked out and shot down.

The "catechism" of what Bolton calls the "Risen Bureaucracy" was that "North Korea(DPRK) can always be talked out of its nuclear weapons program." As it is, his conclusion after years of effort is that the DPRK "will never give up nuclear weapons voluntarily" but "often promises to do so," and those promises fool many people.

Among the players in the administration, Rice was always "maneuvering for position," and it was to know her true thoughts. Richard Armitage comes across poorly. Powell comes across well, and Nick Burns so so.

Appointment to the United Nations

As is well known Bolton's appointment to become ambassador to the United Nations generated much opposition in the Senate. Bolton took the entire exercise in stride, though, never seeming to become upset or bitter about how it turned out. His persona, in fact, seems to relish opposition. Of the senators who opposed him, Christopher Dodd is probably the biggest villain.

One of the charges against him was that he tried to pressure an intelligence analyst named Christian Westerman. While I have neither the time nor the inclination to investigage this story elsewhere, Bolton makes a persuasive case in the book that the charge was a fabrication.

The other charge was more personal, that he wasn't a nice person. My take is that Bolton is more just blunt, and won a lot of bureaucratic battles, the result being that several people used his confirmation battle to settle personal scores.

In the end he was not confirmed by the Senate, so President Bush gave him a "recess appointment", whereby he was made interim Permanent US Representative, which lasted from August 2005 to December 2006.

At the United Nations

Revelations about what became known as the Oil for Food scandal were hitting in full force as Bolton took up residence at Turtle Bay. Paul Volker, formerly chairman of the Federal Reserve, made his report, which was highly critical of much of the UN bureaucracy involved in oversight of the program. Although the report made waves (tsumanis, really), in the United States, the UN leadership made sure that the report went nowhere and was buried without a trace. Among other incidents this confirmed Bolton's view that the UN needed a major overhaul.

Much of his tenure there, then, was dedicated to reforming the UN. Secretary General Kofi Annan would pretend to go along, but in the end always stymied any attempt at real reform, preferring to move the deck chairs around a bit. The other force preventing reform was simply that many nations see the UN as a means to soak the richer nations of money, and the last thing they wanted was an organization that spotlighted their corruption and human rights abuses.

As such, one of Bolton's goals was to replace the UN's discredited Human Rights Commission with a newly designed "Human Rights Council". Rules for membership would be changed so as to keep the worst abusers off the council. With the old commission, the worst of the human rights abusers tried their hardest to get on the commission, the better which to prevent investigations into their own abuses, and to retarget the commission's energies toward their real enemy - Israel. Unfortunately, in the end the HRC is no better than the old commission. The abusers won.

One characteristic of the UN was it's focus on process over progress, or substance. As long as a peacekeeping operation reported back to the Security Council, everyone (except the United States) was happy. Heaven forbid anyone should ask whether the peacekeeping operation was making a difference, or that the diplomats were making any progress in resolving the conflict.

Another of Bolton's initiatives involved the DPRK. Since the Six-Party talks weren't going anywhere, he wanted to use the Security Council to force (diplomatically, of course) the DPRK to give up its nuclear weapons. Japan was to prove a strong ally in our efforts there. In the end, the deal achieved in February 2007 was "radically incomplete." It contained too many flaws, and represented the triumph of the "permanent government" of go-along-get-along bureaucrats. As mentioned earlier, neither talk nor incentives will persuade the DPRK to give up their nuclear weapons. In the end, only a collapse of the north and reunification will resolve the situation on the Korean peninsula.

Throughout his tenure, Bolton attempted to bring the issue of Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons to the Security Council for serious sanctions, but to no avail. The EU-3 (UK, France, Germany), insisted that they could handle Iran through negotiations, believing that they could talk Iran out of pursuing nuclear weapons. Despite years of effort, no real progress was ever made. Instead, Iran used the time to perfect the fuel cycle and most likely work on bomb design. Bolton concludes, accurately I think, that the result is that we are on the "road to the Nuclear Holocaust."

The UN spends a lot of time, energy, and money on peacekeeping operations. Much of its efforts are focused on Africa, which is logical considering the troubles on that continent. The problem is that there is little desire to achieve actual results, the objective more being to simply "show concern," easy to do when the West is doing most of the financing. Even asking whether a given UN action or operation is helping or hurting the situation is "politically incorrect."

The Middle East, specifically the Israel-Palestine conflict, also consumes much time. Anti-Israel bias at the UN is pervasive. The double standards applied to Israel during its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon were breathtaking. Further, the war illustrated what is perhaps the biggest moral failure of the UN; its refusal to recognize that in most wars or conflicts both sides are not equally guilty, but rather most of the time one side is more in the right. But few at the UN were willing to see anything wrong with groups such as Hezbollah.

Lessons Learned

Feelers were sent out to key Senators to see if they may have changed their minds about Bolton at the end of his recess appointment in December of 2006, but to no avail. Deciding not to take another position in the Administration, Bolton retired from public service.

Bolton concludes that the EU will avoid confronting problems (such as Iran) and will "kick the can down the road" through endless negotiations. Process has been substituted for progress.

The UN badly needs reform, not so that "the US can get what it wants," as our critics (foreign and domestic) say, but rather so that it, too, can actually work towards solving problems rather than allow them to go on forever as long as there is a "process."

However, Bolton is not one who wants to withdraw from the UN. He sees it as useful, but warns that we must avoid "the trap of channeling all or most of our efforts through the UN system." We should look to and use other institutions, for example NATO and the OAS, when they suit our needs.

Another problem is our own State Department. Too many there see their role as pushing their own agendas rather than that of the president.

Unlike some who only make their true feelings known years afterward in a memoir, Bolton made his views known throughout his career. A fighter like Jeane Kirkpatrick two decades before him, he was an unabashed champion of the United States and Western values and didn't put up with any nonsense from anyone. While this no doubt earned him some enemies, it also earned him, and our country, much needed respect. It is a shame that the Senate did not have the wisdom to confirm him as ambassador.

The Book

Much of the book is a blow-by-blow account of the details of each of the subjects outlined above, as well as many more. Although rich in detail, it gets to the point while reading where I found myself skipping pages. While invaluable for the researcher, at times the detail can be a bit much for the general reader.

If you are of the type that believes that the UN is mostly corrupt, does as much harm as good, and should be hit over the head with a 2x4, then you will like this book. If you are of the sort who thinks that the US has too much power, uses it too often, and needs to be "reigned in," you probably don't like Bolton anyway so will not like this book.

Posted by Tom at 11:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 28, 2008

All Creatures Great and Small

All Things Bright and Beautiful,
All Creatures Great and Small,
All Things Wise and Wonderful,
The Lord God Made Them All

I only just looked up that poem, and discovered it was written by one Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895). Little did he know that each of those first four lines of a much longer poem would become book titles for one of the most successful authors of the late twentieth century.

Under the nom de plume James Herriot, James Alfred Wight published a series of books in the 1970s detailing his life as a country Veterinarian in Scotland in the 1930s and 40s.. The first was actually All Creatures Great and Small, the second All Things Bright and Beautiful, and the third and fourth from the last two lines of the poem. The books were eventually adapted into a television series, which I believe ran on the Arts and Entertainment channel. There are a few other Herriot books also, but these four are the most popular.

At the time I was in middle and high school, and I remember my mom talking about how much she enjoyed his books. For the life of me I couldn't understand how the story of a country Vet could be remotely interesting. Little did I know how much in later life I would enjoy them. At various points in my life I've picked up and read all four. I watched the series when it was on TV, and it was one of the few boom-to-TV transitions that worked as it captured the books perfectly.

I was reminded of the books recently when my cat Athena died. She was diagnosed with cancer of the mouth so there was really no choice but for me to have her put to sleep. Almost exactly 15 years ago I had gotten her with her brother, whom I named Zeus. He died in a mysterious accident two years later (I think he hit his head while playing and broke his neck or something. I was in the next room, heard a sound I didn't like and went in to see him immediately but he was already dead). Not too long after I got another cat, an orange tabby whom I named Bengal (Bengal Tiger...). He died two years of kidney failure.

Here are Athena and Bengal at their best:

So after each of my cats have died I've gone back and reread one or more of James Herriot books. It's what I do for therapy, I suppose. Anyway it works.

So what makes James Herriot books so special?

There are several things that make the books, and TV series, so good. One is simply the superb writing and storytelling. Much of it is also characterization. The personality quirks of his partners and the local Darrowby farmers make for great entertainment. I have come to understand that the books are only partially autobiographical, and he employed some "literary license" in his stories. In other words, some of it is partially fiction. No matter, for it is all based on true experiences.

The books are written as a series of short episodes, each taking up a chapter or two of maybe 10-20 pages. They are absolutely laugh out loud funny. Herriot and his partners are always getting themselves into impossible situations. It's also stories of successes and failures, of many animals that he saves, but some he cannot. While most of it is farm work, there are stories of cats and dogs. More than the animals themselves, the farmers and pet owners are often the real subject of each episode.

The books are usually described as "heatwarming" in the reviews, and they are that. Though funny and historically informative, they are mainly the stories of people and their everyday life as regard their animals.

The first two books are five-star, with All Things Wise and Wonderful not far behind. The Lord God Made Them All is ok, and worth reading to round out the series, but is not as good as the first three. It's that time in the late 1930s and early 40s, during the great changes in medicine and agriculture, that make for the best reading.

Historically the first two books take place in 1938-39, when both human and animal medicine was in the midst of a great revolution. When Herriot starts practicing medicine, antibiotics were unknown, and their medicines were of the "Professor Smith's Universal Cow Medicine" variety. From All Creatures Great and Small, when Herriot has just arrived at Darrowby and with his new boss (later partner) Siegfried Farnon are surveying the dispensary, with all of it's bottles and tins of old-time medicine:

The two of us stood gazing at the gleaming rows without any idea that it was all nearly all useless and that the days of the old medicines were nearly over. Soon they would be hustled into oblivion by the headlong rush of the new discoveries and they would never return.

It is in the second book, All Things Bright and Beautiful, when antibiotics such as penicillin and the sulfonamides were introduced. It is perhaps hard today, when we take such things for granted, the effect that the new "wonder drugs" had. For the first time doctors and vets had medicines that actually worked.

Another theme is that for the first time veterinarians were treating pets on a regular basis as well as farm animals. Before this time the profession was centered around livestock and horses. Again, from All Creatures Great and Small

"Not much small animal work in this district." Farnon smoothed the table with his palm. "but I'm trying to encourage it. It makes a pleasant change from lying on your belly in a cow house. The thing is, we've got to do the job right. The old castor oil and prussic acid doctrine is no good at all. You probably know that a lot of the old hands won't look at a dog or a cat, but the profession has got to change its ideas."

And indeed in the second book Herriot takes several tough cases to a vet in a nearby town who - gasp - only did small animal work. Two of the reasons for the introduction of "small animal"(read "pets") work was the elimination of the plow horse as the mainstay of the veterinary profession and thus the need to find additional sources of revinue, and two, with the rise of a middle class people had the time and money to have pets and pay vets to minister to them.

There's much else, of course. World War II intervenes and all three take time out for military service. Herriot gets married and has children. Wikipedia and an "All Things James Herriot" website have much more if you want the full background.

But mostly, though, if you've never read James Herriot or seen the series on TV you just need to go out and buy the books. Pick one or more up from the library if you're still unsure whether you'll like them. But do yourself a favor and do get one. I promise you won't regret it.

I'll also get back to blogging now on a more regular basis.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 25, 2008

Book Review - Liberal Fascism

At various points in my life I've read fairly extensively about Communism and Nazism. As a good Cold Warrior, I wanted to know as much as possible about the Soviet threat, as well as communist infiltration of the West. World War II was of great interest, and I studied not only the battles and weaponry but the Nazi leadership, ideology, and history as well.

The twentieth century being in large part a great struggle between democracy and Orwellian totalitarianism, this seemed to me natural. Today I read about Jihadism, and try to understand our enemy and their infiltration of the West. I think my book reviews show this pretty clearly.

But fascism was something that I never read much about. Part of this, I think, was that Mussolini's Italy was such a non-factor in World War II. Other fascist governments, such as Franco's Spain or Peronist Argentina, were not expansionist and relatively minor violators of human rights (relative I stress compared to what Hitler or Stalin wrought). As such I never studied them or fascist ideology. I had some vague notion that fascism was militarism coupled with extreme nationalism, but that was about it.

A few years ago I read a comment by Jonah Goldberg on National Review's The Corner blog that he was working on a book about fascism, and I thought "what a waste of time. We're in a war against radical Islam and he's investigating fascism? That can't be relevant to anything."

Was I ever wrong. The book that resulted from his years of research, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, is one of the most important books I've read about modern American liberalism, and its related twin, progressivism.

The book is now on many best seller lists, and Goldberg has a special Liberal Fascism Blog over at NRO where he answers readers questions and post news stories relevant to his thesis. Predictably, the book has thrown the left into a fit of rage, to the extent where Amazon had to delete several thousand "you suck" type "book reviews." The Amazon site was even hacked a few times and the photo of the book cover changed.

Unlike with most, the cover to this book is important. The fascism that Goldberg sees creeping up on us is not of the "hard" sort of a Mussolini or Hitler. Rather, it is the "soft" type of a Hillary Clinton.

The cartoon description of fascism which most people hold consists of two parts; 1) Extreme nationalism and 2) Militarization. While these are or can be aspects of fascism neither are central to it, at least in the way that most people think.

Book Objective and Thesis

Goldberg goes to some length to explain that no, he is not saying that all liberals are fascists or that being in favor of universal health-care coverage means that you are a fascist. Rather, his objective is to replace the cartoon image of fascism with a more historically based one, and in so doing demonstrate that it is modern liberalism, not modern conservatism that has its roots in fascism. More precisely, modern liberalism grew out of the progressive movement of the early twentieth-century, and progressivism in turn has it's roots in fascism and indeed in many cases was ideologically allied with it. Liberal fascism is different, Goldberg says, for what should be the obvious reason that modern liberals don't want to eliminate voting and line opponents up against the wall to be shot. This does not mean, however, that the ideological underpinnings are different.

Rather than go on and risk getting it wrong I think I'll just quote Goldberg himself:

In this book I have argued that modern liberalism is the offspring of twentieth-century progressivism, which in turn shares intellectual roots with European fascism. I have further argued that fascism was an international movement, or happening, expressing itself differently in different countries, depending on the vagaries of national culture. In Europe this communitarian impulse expressed itself in political movements that were nationalist, racist, militarist, and expansionist. In the united States the movement known elsewhere as fascism or Nazism took the form of progressivism - a softer form of totalitarianism that, while still nationalistic, and militarist in its crusading forms and outlook, was more in keeping with American culture. It was, in short, a kind of liberal fascism.

The term "liberal fascism" comes from a speech by H.G. Wells at Oxford University in 1932. He used it the term to describe what he called a need for a "phoenix rebirth of liberalism." Although known today as the science fiction writer who produced such works as "War of the Worlds", back then he was also known as a prominent progressive thinker. Today we see the term "fascism" as unreservedly evil, and the polar opposite of "liberal." What may surprise readers today is that his joining of the two - liberal and fascist - surprised no one in the audience, and was in fact well received.

Modern American liberalism is totalitarian but in a "smiley face" way, not like that of the twentieth century Orwellian nightmares; Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. By "totalitarian" Goldberg means that it wishes to control every aspect of our lives; from the food we eat to the light bulbs we can buy to the very words that are deemed acceptable (try using "he" as a gender-neutral pronoun and see what happens).

When liberals promote these totalitarian goals they claim that they are not ideologically driven, but are rather "listening to the experts", or seeking to overcome the left-right divide with a "Third Way".

Goldberg is not saying that simply caring about the environment or physical fitness makes you a liberal fascist. What makes you a liberal fascist is insisting that everybody else care too, or forcing everyone else to eat healthy and live a healthy lifestyle and using the power of the state to do it. The reason usually given is that it's all "for your own good," or "we all pay for it".

From here out the headings are the titles of the book's chapters.

Benito Mussolini: The Father of Fascism

The ultimate roots of fascism can be found in the Romantic nationalism of the eighteenth century, which culminated in the French Revolution. Jean Jacques Rousseau was the father of fascism and Maximilian Robespierre its executioner.

However, we all associate fascism with the Il Duce himself; Benito Mussolini. What may surprise people - it certainly surprised me - was his Fascist party's political platform. Here is some of it:

• Lowering the minimum voting age to eighteen, the minimum age for representatives to twenty-five, and universal suffrage, including for women.
• "The abolition of the Senate and the creation of a national technical council on intellectual and manual labor, industry, commerce, and labor."
• End of the draft.
• Repeal of titles of nobility.
• "A foreign policy aimed at expanding Italy's will and power in opposition to all foreign imperialism"
• The prompt enactment of a state law sanctioning a legal workday of eight actual hours of work for all workers.
• A minimum wage.
• A creation of various government bodies run by workers representatives.
• The creation of various government bodies run by workers' representatives.
• Reform of the old-age and pension system and the establishment of age limits for hazardous work.
• Forcing landowners to cultivate their lands or have them expropriated and given to veterans and farmers' cooperatives.
• The obligation of the state to build "rigidly secular" schools for the raising of "the proletariat's moral and cultural condition."
• "A large progressive tax on capital that would amount to a one-time partial expropriation of all riches.
• "The seizure of all goods belonging to religious congregations and the abolition of all episcopal revinues."
• The "review" of all military contracts and the "sequestration" of 85% of all war profits."
• The nationalization of all arms and explosives industries.

Amazing. When you just see this he seems like a pretty good guy.

What's important to understand is that these weren't just words to Mussolini; he meant it. He didn't just use this platform as a trick to get into power, because he implemented as much of it as he could once he was in power. None of this is to excuse him, it's just a statement of fact.

Mussolini started as a socialist and became a populist. "Populism" is not really right-wing, it's more a phenomenon of the left. Populism is a "power to the people" ideology, and is usually a force on the left.

Mussolini made a big deal about "getting beyond labels" and seeking a "third way" between left and right. He promoted himself as a pragmatist who "made the trains run on time." To be sure, he governed as a dictator. But he was no Hitler or Stalin in his level of brutality. He won reelection in 1924 in what were reasonably fair elections, and his granting of womans suffrage gained him applause from no less a source than The New York Times.

Mussolini defined fascism as "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State." Mussolini himself coined the word "totalitarianism" to describe his system, and it's important to note that he meant it in a benevolent manner, as he saw his system as a humane one in which everyone was taken care of.

When Mussolini finally did write out his economic theories in the early 1930s, they looked more like standard socialism than anything else. His goal was to either nationalize industry or regulate it into submission. This was called "corporatism", but it hardly meant that he was in league with big business. Far from it, he was their enemy.

Adolf Hitler: Man of the Left

As with Mussolini's Fascists, Hitler's Nazis tried to transcend left-right labeling and promoted themselves as representing a "Third Way." This said, they campaigned as socialists, stealing issues from the communists because they were trying to appeal to the same worker base. The Nazis chose red as the background for their flag precisely because it was the color the communists used.

What made National Socialism - Nazism - different than other left-wing movements was it's adherence to what we today would call identity politics. With the Nazis it was Aryan supremacy, today it is the ethnic identity of minority groups. This is today something associated with the political left. Again, Goldberg stresses that this does not make modern-day identity groups neo-Nazis. What it does say is that the roots of progressive identity politics go back to the Nazis.

Just because the Nazis were anti-Semites does not make them right-wing, as antisemitism is hardly a phenomenon reserved for the right. Stalin and Karl Marx were a vicious anti-Semites, while Mussolini protected the Jews as long as he could against Hitlers desire to get at them.

Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of Liberal Fascism

Mussolini wasn't the world's first fascist dictator; that honor goes to Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States 1912-1920. If this sounds over-the-top, consider that Wilson arrested or jailed more political dissidents than did Mussolini during his first ten years in power. Wilson's ministry of propaganda was better than Mussolini's. Wilson sent more goons to beat up and harass opponents than did Mussolini (again, during the latter's rule in the 1920s. Mussolini got worse in the 1930s).

The "goons" who carried out Wilson's orders called themselves progressives. Their agenda consisted of eugenics (racial purity and weeding out the unfit), social Darwinism, and imperialism (real imperialism, not the cartoon sort ascribed to President Bush today). They worshiped the State and political power, didn't like organized religion, and looked down on individualism. They thought the U.S. Constitution was outdated and in need of change because it's system of checks and balances impeded quick action.

In short, Woodrow Wilson and the progressive movement of the time had all the bad attributes and more that the left assigns to President Bush and the neocons today.

Theodore Roosevelt also exhibited fascist traits. Much of his appeal was based on a cult of personality. Roosevelt's America would be more like the militarist and welfare state of Prussia than anything else.

Although his campaign slogan in 1916 was "he kept us out of war", when Wilson pushed Congress to declare war on the Central Powers in 1917 almost all progressives supported him. President Wilson then proceeded to set up what can only be described as a fascist police state. His ministry of propaganda, the Committee on Public Information, or CPI, was positively Orwellian in nature. The mission of the CPI was not simply to explain the rationale for war, but to "inflame the American public into "one white-hot mass" under the banner of "100 percent Americanism."" The CPI had offices around the country, and turned out an impressive number of pamphlets, posters, buttons and the like in eleven languages not including English. It hired a hundred thousand "four minute men" who went around the country giving four minute speeches promoting Wilson and the war effort.

In addition to the "four minute men", tens of thousands more were hired to knock on doors and ask residents to sign loyalty oaths, or pledges not to use a certain luxury good that was needed for the war effort. This effort extended down to children, who were asked to sign a pledge called "A Little American's Promise."

Worse than any of this was Wilson's Sedition Act, which banned "uttering, printing, writing, or publishing any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States Government or the military." What this translated into was that any criticism of the war effort was forbidden. As an example of how it was enforced, the Postmaster General was given the authority to refuse to deliver any publication he deemed seditious, and there was no appeal to his decision. At least seventy-five periodicals were effectively banned by his refusal to deliver them.

Wilson's Justice Department created the American Protective League to enforce the Sedition Act. APL officers had the authority to read their neighbor's mail and tap their neighbors phones, all without a warrant. It had a "vigilante patrol" whose mission was put a stop to "seditious street oratory" and to physically assault draft dodgers. The Palmer Raids, named after Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, were part of all this.

It is estimated that some 175,000 Americans were arrested for some violation of the Sedition Act or failing to demonstrate appropriate patriotism. Many, though how many is not known exactly, went to jail.

In the end, of course, Wilson left office peacefully, so he was not a Mussolini or Hitler. But his administration was fascist nonetheless.

Franklin Roosevelt's Fascist New Deal

A lighter version of Wilsonian fascism occurred during the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the time of the Great Depression.

At the beginning of this review we noted H.G. Wells use of the term "Liberal Fascism" to describe his brand of socialism. Wells was an ardent admirer of FDR. The reason, of course, was that Wells saw Roosevelt as a liberal fascist.

As with Mussolini and Hitler, Roosevelt was obsessed with "the forgotten man". It wasn't a cynical act for any of them. All were genuinely concerned with the economic well being of the lower-middle classes. And indeed the economy prospered under Hitler. Again none of this is to excuse Hitler or Mussolini, it is just a statement of fact. Further, neither is it to insinuate that Roosevelt was no different than the two dictators. For all his flaws, Roosevelt, like Wilson, did respect the vote and the democratic process.

Many European fascists saw Roosevelt as a kindred spirit. Both Mussolini and Hitler saw their programmes as similar to Roosevelt's New Deal. Mussolini gave a good review of Roosevelt's book Looking Forward. The German press praised FDR and his New Deal.

A core tenant of fascism is the desire to militarize society whether there is an external war to fight or not. The whole point, in fact, of fascism is to mobilize. What is important to understand, though, is that it is society that is being mobilized, not the military. The military is usually involved, but it's participation is not really central to fascism. It is the cartoon version of fascism discussed above that only sees the military aspect of fascism.

The progressives supported American entry into World War I not because they wanted to defeat Germany, but because they saw it as an opportunity to advance their domestic policy goals at home. They wanted to militarize society. It was William James who came up with the term "moral equivalent of war" to justify mobilization for one cause or another.

The New Deal was all about the militarization of society. The premier New Deal project, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) had actually been started during World War I. The National Recovery Administration (NRA) was modeled on Wilson's War Industries Board. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) which constructed many city, state, and national parks, was the most explicitly fascist of all the programs. It's members wore uniforms and was rationalized as a program to "beef up the physical and moral fiber of an embryonic new army" (Goldberg's words).

Worse than the CCC was the NRA mentioned above. it was led by General Hugh "Iron Pants" Johnson, and man who questioned the patriotism of his critics in a manner that would have made Joe McCarthy blush. He continually referred to the NRA and it's mission in military terms, saying for example that "This is war - lethal and more menacing than any other crisis in our history." In fact, Johnson was an ardent admirer of Mussolini's fascist government.

The symbol of the NRA was the Blue Eagle. Usually depicted in textbooks as an innocent symbol that businesses put in their window to show that they went along with NRA guidelines("We do our Part" was the motto under the eagle), it was really the method by which Roosevelt and Johnson bullied businesses into joining. The NRA stuck it's tentacles into every aspect of daily life, or at least tried to. The Blue Eagle was used for propaganda in a way that Goldberg says is difficult to exaggerate, and indeed the whole thing was really more an exercise in state religion than economics. Heaven help any business that refused to sign up, because people were admonished by the government not to buy anything from businesses that didn't have the Blue Eagle in their window.

The bullying wasn't just verbal or economic; it often got quite physical. Johnson sent his goons to smash businesses that wouldn't sign up, and "G-Men" were used to spy on opponents. Goldberg says that "FDR used the post office to punish his enemies and lied repeatedly to maneuver the United States into war, and undermined Congress's war-making powers at several turns." The rationale was that as long as it was for the right cause the constitution didn't matter.

Goldberg is careful to note that despite the fascism in Wilson and Roosevelt's programs, at the end of the day they were not dictators. Neither sought to end elections, and neither cheated (at least not more than their opponents) to win. Theirs was a "nice" fascism.

The 1960s: Fascism Takes to the Streets

The New Left that arose during the 1960s and "took to the streets" had many characteristics of traditional fascism. It prided itself on it's call to unity, but "unity" is at best a morally neutral concept. The Mafia is "unified". Many of the calls to "direct action" were made without any concrete goals in mind, action itself being the objective.
The student groups that took over universities and ousted the faculty were using out and out fascist tactics.

While Nazism is evil, it does not follow that every Nazi was motivated by evil intent. Many Germans joined the Nazi party because they liked Hitler's economic populism, or thought that their country had been treated shabbily by the victors after World War I. But although one might say that Hitler's program had it's "good" parts, it obviously crossed the line into evil. As such, whatever the "good" parts of the New Left of the 1960s, much of it was outright fascist thuggery. '60s leaders such as Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Mark Rudd, Bernadine Dohrn and others were continually calling for more violence and more destruction, and would have set up an Orwellian totalitarian state if they could have.

The left does not understand that love of country does not by itself lead to fascism. Patriotism is not fascism. During the 1960s the left got the idea that displays of patriotism were fascist and that criticizing one's country was patriotic. Outright anti-Americanism became fashionable among the elite during this time.

From Kennedy's Myth to Johnson's Dream: Liberal Fascism and the Cult of the State

John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson did more than anyone else to establish the federal government as a sort of "state religion." Liberals have used the myth of Kennedy ("Camelot" and all that) to promote this idea, especially the idea that if he had lived we would never have gotten bogged down in Vietnam. The purpose of this was to expand federal power into all aspects of life.

Kennedy, like FDR, turned everything into a "crisis", the better which to whip up popular sentiment so he could get his programs passed. This crisis mongering is classic fascist behavior (though again this alone does not make him a fascist). Kennedy even created "crisis teams" to deal with issues and short-circuit the bureaucracy. Biographer Ted Sorensen counted sixteen "crises" in Kennedy's first 8 months in office alone.

"The Kennedy presidency represented...the final evolution of progressivism into a full-blown religion and national cult of the state." It was a rule by elites ("supermen") who had the special answers to our problems ("gnosticism"), all presided over by a "great man in the mold of Wilson and the Roosevelts" (cult of personality).

Remember, the progressives did not push their liberal totalitarianism because of the world wars or the Great Depression, they were glad that they occurred in that they gave them the opportunity to implement their existing ideas.

It was in the 1920s that American progressives redefined the term "liberal". Previously, the term had meant something along the lines of "individual and economic liberty without state control." It was "freedom from a dictatorial state". Led by John Dewey, they changed this to "freedom from want, from poverty, lack of education" etc. This meant that now the state had to get involved, and the idea of the activist state was born.

Liberal Racism: The Eugenic Ghost in the Fascist Machine

Modern-day liberals claim that they have always occupied the high ground on matters of race. Would that they knew their own history. It was the progressives, fathers of modern liberalism, who were the strongest backers of eugenics, one of the most racist and scary programs of the twentieth century.

If you're not familiar, eugenics is the idea that "human stock" can be improved through controlled breeding, much like we treat cattle or crops. While this might not seem too harmful on the surface, in actuality it led to practices such as state-enforced sterilization of the mentally retarded, those with Down's Syndrome and the like. It also led to much racism, as many white progressives wanted to "control the lesser races."

What is amazing is that the progressive infatuation with eugenics has been almost completely erased from history. We are supposed to believe that on matters of race, liberals have always been the good guys and conservatives the bad guys. In reality, close to the opposite was the truth. The fact is that it was the left that promoted eugenics, and conservatives who opposed it.

Progressives supported eugenics because it was one of the means by which they wanted to achieve their "utopia", or at least a better society. They saw it as all quite scientific. This may seem odd today, but remember that since progressives saw nations as bodies, and problems within them as a disease. Excise the disease and you cure the body.

Progressives admired Hitler's eugenics program. This, too, has been conveniently forgotten. But the reality is that until the truth about how far Hitler intended to go sank in, his ideas looked pretty good to progressives. As with all else, Goldberg stresses that this does not put progressives in league with Hitler, or make them Nazis. No progressive favored mass extermination. But it is a fact that many progressives of the 1930s admired Hitler's program.

In the now notorious case of Beck v Bell, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes supported forced sterilization with his infamous justification that "three generations of imbeciles are enough." The lone dissenter on the bench was Pierce Butler, usually described as an "arch conservative." Goldberg points out that it was the reasoning in Beck v Bellthat "endures in the often unspoken rationale for abortion."

To be sure, just because so many if not most progressives fifty to a hundred years ago were racists doesn't mean that their liberal heirs are too. But it does mean that modern liberalism was built on it, something that liberals are loath to acknowledge.

Margaret Sanger, whose American Birth Control League became Planned Parenthood, was a terrible racist who wanted to use eugenics and abortion to reduce the black population and anyone else she deemed "unfit." She said this directly in her 1922 book The Pivot of Civilization; "More children from the fit; less from the unfit - that is the chief issue of birth control... We want fewer and better children...and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict on us." The very stated purpose of her "Negro Project" was to use birth control to reduce the black population.

The mindset that promoted eugenics is that same one that supports abortion. Though the holocaust discredited eugenics, the idea behind it did not really disappear. "Family planning" is simply the term used today for what amounts to something very similar. Indeed, in a way Planned Parenthood is more eugenic that the old eugenicists, as abortion ends more black lives than heart disease, cancer, accidents, AIDS, and violent crime combined.

Liberal Fascist Economics

It is perhaps in the area of economics that fascism is the most misunderstood. In the left's cartoon version, fascism occurs when right-wing politicians conspire with big business to oppress "the little guy," or that European fascists were tools of big business. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, as Goldberg demonstrates, "in the left's eternal vigilance to fend off fascism, they have in fact created it, albeit with a friendly face."

The fact is that the more free the market, the less fascist, and the more regulated and close to the political center, the more fascist. The far left, at outright government ownership, is socialist. Remember; it was Hitler and Mussolini who promoted themselves by claiming that they were neither left nor right but represented a "Third way."

Both Mussolini and Hitler were supported by small donations, and not, for the most part, by money from big corporations. Both denounced big business and the wealthy time and again, Hitler most notably in Mein Kampf. Their political platforms stressed regulating business and taxing the wealthy to benefit the working middle class.

Fascism is when the state says to business "You may stay in business and own your factories. In the spirit of cooperation and unity, we will even guarantee you profits and a lack of serious competition. In exchange, we expect you to agree with - and help implement, - our political agenda." This was not only the deal that Hitler and Mussolini made with big business in their respective countries, but it was pretty much the one that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt imposed during the First World War and Great Depression as well. None of this can be called "right wing."

Indeed, as part of his New Deal FDR asked big business to write the very laws under which they would be regulated, and they happily obliged. In doing so they managed things so as to eliminate as much competition as possible through the simple expedient of making the laws so stringent that only the biggest of corporations could implement them. Thus, smaller competitors were regulated out of business.

Even more shocking, New Deal progressives studied Mussolini's corporatism, admiringly, in order to find things that they could apply here. The feelings were reciprocated across the Atlantic, with both Italian fascists and German Nazis praising Roosevelt and the New Deal.

"Fascism is the cult of unity, within all spheres and between all spheres." Therefore, as long as they followed the political goals of the regime they could keep their businesses.

it is forgotten today, but the Nazis were what we today would call "health freaks." Among their many campaigns were ones to reduce alcohol consumption by replacing beer with fruit drinks, fight smoking (before anyone else they saw the link between smoking and cancer) and promote organic foods.

In Nazi Germany, businesses proved their bona fides by being "good corporate citizens", not too different than what we have in the United States today. To be sure, what constituted being loyal differed considerably, but the philosophy is the same. In Germany it was firing Jews, in the United States today it is promoting "diversity" or "environmentalism."

Brave New Village: Hillary Clinton and the Meaning of Liberal Fascism

Goldberg uses Hillary Clinton's 1996 book It Takes a Village to Raise a Child as the example par excellence of modern-day fascist thinking. It's very title, indeed, is about as fascist as you can get. If the motto of the Mussolini's fascism was "everything in the State, nothing outside the the State, then the implicit motto of It Takes a Village to Raise a Child is "everything in the village, nothing outside the village." The message is clear; your children belong to "everyone" which in the modern world means the state.

All this does not, he stresses, mean that Hillary is evil. Far from it, for hers is "nice fascism", all meant for good. That she means it for well, however, does not make it less fascist.

"Civil society" has traditionally meant free and open "independent associations of citizens who pursue their own interests and ambitions free from state interference or coercion" and "the way various groups, individuals, and families work for their own purposes, the result of which is to make the society healthily democratic." It consists of churches, labor unions, all those clubs and organizations that people form for their own purposes and as long as they are not outright criminal are outside the control of the state.

Hillary has a different view of civil society. To her it is a "term social scientists use to describe the way we work together for common purposes." This is factually incorrect and startlingly totalitarian. There are no truly free associations or clubs in Hillary's world, for everything in her "village" is managed or controlled by the state to achieve "common purposes."

Hillary's "politics of meaning" is therefore a totalitarian philosophy. Again, this is "nice totalitarianism", but totalitarianism nonetheless. Also important to note is that she claims that she is promoting a "Third Way" approach.

Hillary and her cohort Marian Wright Edelman justify everything by saying that it's "for the children." And it's not just that she wants to make their current situation better; to her the children are in a state of crisis. Indeed, to her childhood itself was a crisis. There is no better to erase the wall between government and the private sphere than to declare a crisis.

Using "the children" as a propaganda tool to advance their goals was a brilliant political stroke. For Hillary it was just an opening to a broader political agenda. To her, families are not private units. Indeed, she has said that "As adults we have to start thinking and believing that there isn't really any such thing as someone else's child...For that reason, we cannot permit discussions of children and families to be subverted by political or ideological debate." It is indeed a favorite trick of the left to declare that one of their political goals is not in fact political, as anyone who has debated a liberal on the issue of "diversity" or "multiculturalism" has discovered.

Liberalism's entire "cult of the child" is similar, Goldberg says, to fascist thought. Children are controlled by their passions and feelings. Fascism is driven by will (see Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will). Our youth culture is driven by narcissism, so was fascism.

The New Age: We're All Fascists Now

When I was in high school in the 1970s I read both George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Both impressed me, but the former more than the latter, because I saw 1984 as a metaphor for the Cold War, which I saw as more relevant. Over the years I've reread each work once or twice, and recently have come to believe that while Orwell's work was more relevant for the twentieth century, Brave New World is the better warning for what we face today.

It was therefore flattering yet unsurprising to read that Goldberg has reached the exact same conclusion. The totalitarianism of a Hillary Clinton or Al Gore is not that of Hitler or Stalin, but it deprives us of our freedom nonetheless. Today's totalitarianism, or Liberal Fascist State, is one in which everyone is at least nominally happy. All of our needs are met, and indeed no Gestapo or KGB will be coming to break down our doors.

Environmental Fascism

Environmentalism, Goldberg says, is fascistic partially because of it's "crisis mechanism." Al Gore and others preach the gospel of global warming and insist that the world will come to an end if we do not take immediate action. Anyone who demurs is denounced and called a 'denier" or worse. He and others like him will brook no debate. Worse, they insist on all sorts of measures that would create a sort of "economic dictatorship" of just the type that progressives have always wanted.

Environmentalism in general, and the "global warming" movement in particular, are totalitarian. Everything is or can be said to be an environmental issue. The new worry is our "carbon footprint", and every human activity is said to emit carbon, and therefore is to be regulated.

Environmentalism is also quite totalitarian because everything falls under it's aegis. Nothing is private, or out of the reach of environmentalism, because they see every activity as influencing the environment, and thus worthy of regulation. From the food you eat, to the material your sofa is made of, to the light bulbs in your house, they want to regulate it all.

There are many parallels with modern environmentalism and Nazism. Part of the Nazi program was centered on what we today would call "environmentalism." Nazi thinkers were worried about the whales, nature preserves, and "sustainable forestry". They were very concerned about eating habits, and there was a virtual "cult of the organic" among Nazi leaders. Hitler was a vegetarianism and Himmler pushed for animal rights legislation.

Interestingly, the Nazis used the same rationale that modern environmentalists use; "the common good supersedes the private good." A Hitler Youth manual instructed that "food is not a private matter!" and that "you have the duty to be healthy!" Today we hear smoking and trans-fats bans justified with the "we'll all pay" line.

The Tempting of Conservatism

Although fascism is a leftist ideology, and most fascist traits today can be found on the left, the right is not immune. Goldberg identifies three areas in modern conservatism where strains of fascism can be found.

The first is "nostalgia" to the extent that it romanticizes the past into something it was not. This leads to trouble when conservatives try and translate "traditional values" into national programs. Goldberg only devotes one short paragraph to this, and I'm not entirely sure what he means. Based on years of reading his writing at National Review, I know he's not saying that conservatives should not champion their values in response to the "kultursmog", or that anti-abortion laws are fascist.

The second area where Goldberg says conservatism gets into trouble is when in desperation it turns into "me too" conservatism. Here conservatives start to copy progressives, and it turns into a "liberal fascism light."

Lastly, conservatives are not immune to the temptation of identity politics. Sometimes conservatives are tempted to mirror-image liberal identity politics to give them a taste of their own medicine, such as a white conservative referring to himself as a "Euro-American" or some such. It is all very fine to hold conservative Christian values, for example, and of course to base one's voting or governance on such values. Proposing a Department of Judeo-Christian Culture, however, would be going too far.

Goldberg identifies Patrick J. Buchanan as the one conservative who has these characteristics. William F Buckley Jr, "officially" drummed Buchanan out of the conservative movement in 1991 by accusing him (and a few others) of Anti-Semitism in his book (and NRO article of the same title) In Search of Anti-Semitism. Ever though, Buchanan still hovers around the edges of the movement, and appears as a guest on certain conservative radio talk-shows.

Really more of a populist and neo-progressive than a conservative, Buchanan identifies himself as a "paleoconservative." Nevertheless, he has at various times come out against free market trading, the flat tax, in favor of capping executive pay, in support of higher unemployment benefits, and backs a "third way" type of governance. On foreign policy he is famously isolationist and generally opposes Israeli policies. The thesis of his latest book, Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, that World War II was an unnecessary war, is downright bizarre.

For what it's worth, I wrote off Buchanan some time ago. First it was his isolationist foreign policy. Then, however, I became less and less comfortable with his talk about immigrants and the need to preserve our culture. I'm as anti-illegal immigration as the next conservative, and I want English as the official language of our country, but Buchanan takes it all too far. And if WFB says he's an anti-Semite, that's good enough for me.

My Take

The danger is that immediately upon reading the book you tend to be hyper sensitive to anything in the news that appears in the slightest fascist. It is tempting to see something fascist in all movements you don't like. I'll try and resist the temptation in the weeks and months ahead.

This warning acknowledged, I would be remiss if I pretended that there was nothing in the news that did not smack of fascism. The anti-smoking movement has morphed from something laudable into fanaticism. It's all very well to promote healthy living, but we've crossed the line when legislators want to ban "trans fats." And can't we live our lives the way we want without some sort of enforced "national service" plan?

All in all this is one of the most important books I have read in the past several years, and comes highly recommended, whether you end up agreeing with all of his conclusions or not. Goldberg has defined and explained a political ideology of which I only had a vague notion. He has also explained much about the history of the progressive movement that I had not known about. Get this book and read it.

Posted by Tom at 8:00 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

May 22, 2008

Book Review - The Iranian Time Bomb

It is perhaps fitting that I finished Michael Ledeen's The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealot's Quest for Destruction, just days after the good Senator Obama and his fellow Democrats lost it over President Bush's remarks in Israel. Obama and his friends imagine that if only they were in charge, their magical words would convince the Mullah's to quit their pursuit of the bomb and stop their support of terrorism. All this, mind you, while running out of Iraq and cutting military spending.

In his book Ledeen demonstrates that diplomacy, "aggressive" or otherwise, is an utter waste of time. The only policy that has a chance of succeeding is regime change, something we should pursue both openly and clandestinely. A direct military attack, at this time, however, would be counterproductive. It may come to military action if that is our only option to stopping them from getting the bomb, but as of now we have many options if only we would pursue them.

The bottom line is that Iran has been at war with us since the Islamic revolution in 1979. They have attacked us numerous times, and are doing so to this day by sending weapons and personnel into Iraq. Yet astoundingly, many Americans do not grasp this fact. They are at war with us, yet we are not allowed to be at war with them. This would somehow be "fearmongering", and "racheting up tensions."

Every president from Reagan to Bush has negotiated with the Iranians, though not at the presidential level. Every single our attempt to find common ground has resulted in failure. Ledeen documents the whole sad story.

The negotiations were almost always based on a search, always futile, for an Iranian "reformer". President Reagan thought he had found Iranian leaders with whom we might be able to negotiate, and famously sent Oliver North and National Security Adviser Robert C. "Bud" McFarlane with bible and chocolate cake allegedly in the shape of a key. Nothing came of it. President Clinton was encouraged by the election of Mohammed Khatami as president in 1997, only to see those hopes dashed as well. The vote for Khatami was more a vote against the regime than a vote for him.

What makes all this so frustrating is that the human rights situation in Iran is much worse than is generally recognized, and no administration of either party has done anything about it. Ledeen spends a chapter detailing the abuses of women, minorities, non-Shiite Muslims, and anyone who disagrees with the regime.

The leaders of the Iranian revolution made clear from the beginning that there's was not a nationalist movement. The Ayatollah Khomeini said it best "We do not worship Iran. We worship Allah, for patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land burn. I saw let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world." Their motivation is important to understand, because all too many Western leaders think that we can placate the Iranians leaders and they will be happy secure within their own country. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that they have quasi-religious/historical motivations which drive them to want to dominate the region, chasing out Western powers in the process.

For example, Muhammed started the practice of writing to infidel leaders, "inviting" them to accept Islam - or else. In 1989 the Ayatollah Khomeini wrote a similar letter to Gorbachev, then still leader of the then still USSR. In 2006, Ahmadinejad wrote such a letter to President George W. Bush. As with the others, Ahmadinejad's letter asked Bush to convert to Islam. Muhammed's letters presaged war. We ignore the letters they send us to day at our own peril. They mean what they say.

The main forces used by the Iranians to carry out their policies of terror are the Quds force (the overseas arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC), and Hezbollah. They are not going to attack us with conventional military forces if they can help it. They are practitioners of asymmetrical warfare. They aim to wear us down, and to hit us in ways we can least defend against.

In another example of using proxies to further their cause, in the 1990s Iran supported the government of the Sudan, the latter a Muslim Brotherhood movement born out of Sunni Islam. In 1991 they "established a strategic alliance to wage war against their common enemies in the West". The alliance between Iran and Sudan extended to the former sending several thousand IRGC trainers to the Sudan in the 1990's. al Qaeda was in the mix too, as the 1998 U.S. Federal indictment of Osama bin Laden stated that

"Al Qaeda... forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States."

The evidence is that Iran was behind the 1988 Khobar Towers attack. The al Qaeda terrorist who carried out the attack were in fact trained by Hezbollah, and the explosives came from Iran. "The entire operation was conceived, organized, and controlled by the Islamic Republic from beginning to end."

It took some doing, but finally in the spring of 1999 FBI interrogators got access to the terrorists the Saudis had captured, and what they heard confirmed Iranian involvement. Director Louis Freeh advised National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and President and Clinton that Iran was behind the Khobar Towers attack. There is some dispute as to what exactly happened within the Clinton Administration, but in the end there was no U.S. retaliation for the attack.

Unfortunately the Bush Administration has done any better than any previous one in dealing with Iran. Despite tough talk, the Bush Administration has no policy to permanently solve the problem. Regime change by whatever means seems off the table. Ledeen places most of the blame on Condolezza Rice, especially when she was National Security Adviser. In this role she was responsible for the formulation of policy, which in the case of Iran she absolutely failed to do.

Another factor contributing to the confusion is the intelligence community, which has been working against doing anything "muscular" with regards to Iran. They are quite happy to let the current negotiations regime take its course, believing that Iran will naturally flower into a democracy sometime in the next decade. Adding to that is that the CIA has very few true Iranian specialists and fewer Persian speakers. Most of the people assigned to the Iran desk are Arabists by trade.

Ledeen, like Richard Miniter, believes that bin Laden is most likely in Iran. This is hardly as unlikely as it may seem, once you get over the false notion that the Sunni-Shiite split precludes all cooperation. Ledeen takes this one more step; "...al Qaeda no longer exists as a separate entity, and that it has been integrated into the terrorist galaxy that revolves around Iran." This may be be going too far, but I don't have the information to make that judgement. I do know that al Qaeda is loosely organized, so that AQI can exist somewhat separately from the rest of the organization.

As with all totalitarians, the Iranians believe us to be weak, and unwilling to take casualties. Whether this is true or not is beside the point; what is important is that they believe it is so and act based on their beliefs.

Further, they believe themselves to be strong. Part of this is the cult of the return of the Mahdi, personified now in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a member (or reputed to be) of the Hojetiah sect. The Hojetiah believe that they can prompte the return of the Mahdi by creating bloodshed and chaos on earth, something which even the Ayatollah Khomeini thought so extreme that he banned them in 1983.

To be fair, they have not succeeded in their objectives in Iraq. They were not able to prompt the civil war they hoped for, and the "surge" is working.

It would be bad enough if the Iranian leaders simply thought themselves strong and us weak. This might lead to dangerously overstep, and then get plastered by a determined U.S. president in response. Here's Ledeen:

Some of the most thoughtful analysis of contemporary Iran believe that the Islamic Republic is currently in the throes of a second Islamic revolution, driven by Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guards Corps from which he comes. As the label suggests, Iranian leaders seek a revitalization of Khomeini's original vision - above all, the export of the revolution - and fully embrace "such events as 'destruction, pestilence, and wars' which they see as the inevitable accompaniments of the Mahdi's return. Amir Taheri terms this "a deliberate clash of civilizations with the West."

They believe they can achieve their Jihadist goal of chasing the U.S. and other Western powers from the gulf region and creating a regional Imamate.

Ledeen doesn't just complain about our past and current failings, however, for he does offer concrete proposals about what to do about Iran, ones that are in line with what I have been saying here.

One thing that he does not believe is useful is engaging in a "War of Ideas" with the Mullahs. Although he does not mention Walid Phares by name, it is apparent that Ledeen has him and similar thinkers in mind. Ledeen has other ideas for dealing with Iran.

Ledeen's starting point is that only regime change will solve the problem. The current government is inherently anti-Western and expansionist and cannot be reformed.

His basic strategy for regime change is pretty straightforward:

...the same way we brought down the Soviet empire, by exporting the American democratic revolution, by adopting the methods that have successfully been used against dictators from Moscow and Belgrade to Beirut and the Philippines. the best strategy is to support the Iranian people against the mullahs they so hate.

A direct military attack would not achieve this purpose because we do not have the capability to take down Iran as we did Iraq. Bombing nuclear installations would set back their program but not get rid of the root problem, which is the government.

Rather, we should use our vast "soft power" to do things like support Iranian dissidents and democracy movements and start a human rights campaign. We can provide these dissidents with material and moral support. Broadcast messages ("propaganda" if you prefer) should be stepped up (our current efforts are abysmal). An information campaign to educate people on the mullahs and their regime should be launched taking advantage of all media including the Internet. Simply providing moral support to regime opponents would go a long way.

Of course this may not work. And there will be many who object to such a campaign, including, sadly, the American left who is stuck in a paradigm of endless negotiations.

Unlike many others, Ledeen sees Iran as the key to winning the War on Terror, or War on Jihadism (or whatever you want to call it).

My take is that Ledeen is mostly correct in this book, but that he takes it all a step too far. Yes Iran is a huge threat, larger than is commonly realized. Yes we should revise our strategy to one of regime change, and, and no, negotiations will not work. Administrations of both parties have kicked the can down the road, and it is time to deal with it before they get nuclear weapons.

The "War of Ideas" that thinkers like Phares advocate will work well against the Wahabbists and Muslim Brotherhood, but alone cannot work against Iran. That said, I think Ledeen criticizes it too much, since I find nothing in Phares' work to indicate such single-mindedness. A War of Ideas can certainly be part of the information or propaganda war that Ledeen advocates.

I also don't see al Qaeda being submerged into Iran as Ledeen thinks. I'm not the expert, but I don't see that theory being promoted elsewhere. Bin Laden may well be in Iran, but that doesn't mean his movement has been totally captured by them. al Qaeda is a pretty dispersed and loosely organized movement, and I never did buy the idea that it's controlled from the top like the Mafia (so "getting bin Laden" would, I think, have minimal effect).

Next Up

Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Don't miss it!

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April 19, 2008

Book Review - The Last Days of Europe

With the enormous influence of Mark Steyn on the right, I suppose it's inevitable that any other books about Europe will be compared to his America Alone: The End of the World As we Know It. Steyn's basic thesis, if you're somehow unaware, is that through the power of demographics, Muslims are taking over Europe, and this-is-not-a-good-thing. Far from assimilating into Europe and adopting Western values, Muslim leaders, and most of their flock, want Europe to assimilate to Islamic law and values.

Historian Walter Laqueur lays out his vision in his 2007 bookThe Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent. Although he definitely has some differences with Steyn's apocalyptic vision, Laqueur largely agrees with his thesis that Islam is the future of Europe. .

There's a whole slew of books out with this theme; in addition to the above I've also read Melanie Phillips Londonistan. Also popular is Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. I haven't read this last one, but have heard him interviewed on the radio, and he is quite good. Bawer is a prolific editorialist, and his website is worth checking out the the links to his pieces. Lastly, The Force of Reason by the late Oriana Fallaci comes highly recommended by reliable sources, although again this is a book I haven't read.

All of these and other works say the same basic thing; that Europe is on the verge of a historic change, one that if it occurs will not be easily reversible.

There is much immigration to Europe, so much so that it will change the face of the continent forever. Laqueur runs through the demographic statistics that have become so familiar, the bottom line being that in every single European country the population will start to fall precipitously once the "baby boomer" generation passes from the scene. Native Europeans are simply not having enough babies to keep up current population levels, let alone grow. On the other hand, immigrants, especially Muslim ones, have a high birthrate, and their numbers are growing rapidly.

However, not all immigrants are Muslim, and the Muslims are not a monolithic bloc. While it is true that Muslims are resistant to assimilation, it is not clear that this will continue to be the case. So the continent "might be greatly diminished in stature and influence and in deep trouble. But it will not necessarily be predominantly Islamist."

Laqueur doesn't buy the popular notion that the plight of Muslims is because of racism. Other immigrant groups, notably Indians and those of "far eastern" descent, have done much better than Muslims. Further, Muslim girls do noticeably better than Muslim men.

Rather, "young people are told, day in, day out, that they are victims of society and that it is not really their fault." The youth culture of violence, Lacqueur says, has little to do with religion. They may attend Koran schools ("madrassas") regularly, but once out the door show little interest in Islam. He does not, for example, see a religious motive for the Nov 2005 riots in France.

Over the past several decades, Europeans have voted for themselves a vast array of social benefits. Funding these social assistance programs depended on a growing economy and, in the case of retirement benefits, a reasonable ratio of workers to retirees. In recent years economic growth has stagnated, and the number of people receiving benefits exploded. In order to bring in more payees, European governments promoted "temporary worker" programs.

Most of the Muslims immigrants were brought in to fill a need for labor during a time in the 50s and 60s when economies were rapidly growing. But things didn't turn out as expected. While some immigrants did the work that was expected of them, crime in their communities was much higher than among native European neighborhoods, and asocial behavior more commonplace. The problem was worse with second and third generation Muslim immigrants, who also decided that they needed "respect", and decided to get it with aggressive behavior on the streets. Far from adopt European ways and respect existing authority, they wanted to be the new authority, the new masters. All this, while complaining of discrimination, and taking offense at anything that criticized Islam even slightly.

Muslim immigration to Europe was "unplanned and uncontrolled". Initially brought in as "temporary workers", they simply didn't go home and noone made an effort to expel them. Because European economies are not growing as they did in the 1950s and 60s, the rationale for their existence has gone. But they have decided that they like Europe better than the countries of their birth, so see no reason to go home. Couple this with European's guilty attitude towards their colonialist past, and you've got permanent residents. Yet the host populations were never asked if they wanted permanent immigrants, and so never approved the decision.

Some native Europeans are resentful toward the new arrivals. Signs, traditionally in the vernacular, suddenly sprouted up in a multitude of foreign languages, and many of the immigrants showed no inclination to learn the any European language. Government programs, especially in housing, favored immigrants over natives. "Positive discrimination" ("reverse discrimination" or "affirmative action" in the U.S.) in the UK further exacerbated this resentment by natives.

All the while, too many immigrants became dependent on government aid, which not only fosters a culture of dependency, but creates an (attitude) of inferiority. More aid just results the perpetuation of the vicious cycle.

Anyone who dares criticize this massive immigration is typically met with the charge of "racism". Laqueur examines the charge and finds it wanting. Rather than help the newcomers find jobs, immigrants are flooded with offers of government aid, with program after program being made available to them. Indeed social workers have "taught newcomers how to manipulate the social security net." While initially resistant to the idea of taking handouts, they eventually overcame their apprehension to the point where Muslim clerics encourage their flock to take full advantage of government aid. The result is that all too many of the Muslim immigrants have adopted the attitude that they need not work to better themselves because the government will take care of all their needs.

The primary threat to Europe is not terrorism. Rather, the threat is from "Islamist organizations that officially disassociate themselves from al Qaeda-style activities but still believe in jihad, and other forms of violence". They are, Lacquer says, similar to the Nazis and fascists of the 1930s in that their method is "mass violence, (and) dominating the street, rather than in acts of individual violence".

While Russia may be able to create problems now, it's systemic problems are so severe that it poses no long-term threat to anyone. A declining population, high rates of alcoholism and drug use, and an AIDS epidemic will destroy it's potential to retain great-power status.

What does Laqueur see as the future for Europe? Muslims in Europe, he says, are too fractured and diverse be part of any monolithic caliphate. At the same time they show no sign of assimilating or (as a whole) of advancing themselves economically. No Muslim middle or professional classes seem to be emerging. As such, they will likely demand and receive regional autonomy. Sharia law will be introduced, though their be (at least in the short term) exemptions for non-Muslims.

At the same time, he sees Muslim fanaticism as being somewhat overrated. There are "centrifugal trends" in Muslim communities that will prevent monolithic blocs from emerging.

Native Europeans will not, in the end, resist these changes with enough force or in enough numbers from preventing it. Rather, a new form of appeasement will be the order of the day, as they will at all costs wish to avoid the great wars of the early 20th century. "Binational states" will most likely mark the new Europe. Self-censorship will become the order of the day; among native Europeans, at least.

In Laqueur's vision Europe will most likely suffer a slow collapse, rather than a swift, violent one. The decline is probably irreversible, but it will be the death of a thousand cuts, not one cataclysmic one.

Whether Laqueur, Steyn, or any of the others who write about this will be proven to be right is somewhat beside the point. What matters now is that we recognize that Europe has a tremendous problem and hiding behind political correctness will not make it go away. Phillips thinks that we still have a half dozen years or so to get a handle on the problem before the point of no return is reached. Others like Steyn are not even that sanguine. I don't know if Europe is still savable, but do know that it is so important that we have to try. An "America alone" may seem romantic and even attractive to that rugged individualist that fortunately still makes up a great amount of our citizens, but is not really tenable. Saving America will be a lot easier if we have allies, and in order to do that we have to save Europe. And the first step towards solving any problem is recognizing that it exists. As such, I recommend Laqueur's book as a step in that direction.

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March 10, 2008

Book Review - U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24

In a way this is the oddest "book" I have reviewed. For one, it's not really a book at all in the traditional sense, but more a manual, and a government publication at that. It's written for the soldier, marine, and to a lesser extent airman, yet is vital for civilians and policymakers. It's also freely available for download; a quick search in google and it yours free of charge (I purchased mine hardcopy from Amazon). Lastly, it's a government publication.

There is also no single author, and other than one appendix no one is given direct credit for any section.

The The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (For the Army, it is referred to as "FM 3-24". For the Marines, "Warfighting Publication 3-33.5") was released on December 15, 2006, and has been the bible for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan during the "surge" of 2007. I should have read and reviewed this much earlier, but either hadn't heard of it, or when I did, didn't realize how invaluable it was to understanding our overall strategy in both wars. So now it's better late than never.

The bottom line is that if you want to know what we are trying to do in Iraq and Afghanistan you have to read this book. Period and end of conversation.

The genesis of FM 3-24 was the realization early in the Iraq insurgency that we had forgotten how to fight counterinsurgency warfare. We simply had no current counterinsurgency doctrine. The Army and Marine Corps had not seriously considered the matter since the 1980s campaign in El Salvador, and the last field manual on the subject was FM 90-8 Counterguerrila Operations, released on Aug 29, 1986. Once matters in Central America settled down, however, few Army or Marine Corps officers had spent much time studying the matter.

When we realized our error, the Army went to work to rectify the matter. On October 1, 2004, an interim counterinsurgency field manual was published, designated 3-07.22. However, serious work on a full-scale replacement did not begin until then Lt Gen David Petreaus returned from Iraq in October of 2005.

Petraus immediately assumed command of the Army's Combined Action Center and set out to gather the team that would turn out FM 3-24. To help lead the effort, he recruited one of his West Point classmates, Lt Col (Dr) Conrad Crane (ret). The authors of each chapter, however, are anonymous. At the end are several appendixes. Perhaps the most important, or at any rate the most influential, is one by Lt Col (Dr) David Kilcullen (the first, or "A" appendix), who would go on to become Gen Petraus's senior counterinsurgency adviser in 2007.

In the February 11, 2008, print edition of National Review, Wesley Morgan identified four interconnected efforts that led to the successes of 2007 (numbers added):

..1) The adoption of classic counterinsurgency tactics, with U.S. battalions spreading out among the population and earning their trust; 2) the grassroots reconciliation of many Sunni and some Shiite communities; and 3) a series of meticulously planned corps-level offensives across Baghdad and its surrounding areas. All of these efforts have hinged on one major change: 4) During 2007, every echelon of the U.S. command -- from the four-star headquarters down through the critical corps and division levels to the brigades and battalions in the field -- was closely integrated into a cohesive whole. Without this integration, none of the four efforts that have brought Iraq forward would have made much difference.

The adoption of #1, classic counterinsurgency tactics, was the direct result of FM 3-24.

Following are some of the excerpts from FM 3-24 which I believe are most relevant for understanding what we are trying to do in Iraq. I have omitted areas which are esoteric or get into minutia, such as the details of logistics and intelligence gathering.

As you will see, the book is laid out like a giant outline, with each paragraph is assigned a number.

In addition to the narrative, throughout the book are short stories about counterinsurgency warfare. They range from Napoleon's ill-fated occupation of Spain to the current war in Iraq. While most describe how counterinsurgents overcame obstacles to defeat insurgents, the one on the Chinese Civil War obviously ends with the communists winning. There are several stories about the Vietnam War, with some telling of our successes but of course some of our failures.

Chapter 1: Insurgency and Counterinsurgency

1-4 Long term success in COIN depends on the people taking charge of their own affairs and consenting to the government's rule. Achieving this goal requires the government to eliminate as many causes of the insurgency as possible.

1-85. Access to external resources and sanctuaries has always influenced the effectiveness of insurgencies. External support can provide political, psychological, and material resources that might otherwise be limited or unavailable. Such assistance does not need to come just from neighboring states; countries from outside the region seeking political or economic influence can also support insurgencies. Insurgencies may turn to transnational criminal elements for funding or use the Internet to create a support network among NGOs. Ethnic or religious communities in other states may also provide a form of external support and sanctuary, particularly for transnational insurgencies.

1-102. Counterinsurgents remain alert for signs of divisions within an insurgent movement. A series of successes by counterinsurgents or errors by insurgent leaders can cause some insurgents to question their cause or challenge their leaders. In addition, relations within an insurgency do not remain harmonious when factions form to vie for power. Rifts between insurgent leaders, if identified, can be exploited. Offering amnesty or a seemingly generous compromise can also cause divisions within an insurgency and present opportunities to split or weaken it.

1-113 LEGITIMACY IS THE MAIN OBJECTIVE. The primary objective of any COIN operation is to foster development of effective governance by a legitimate government.

1-131 SECURITY UNDER THE RULE OF LAW IS ESSENTIAL The cornerstone of any COIN effort is establishing security for the civilian populace. Without a secure environment, no permanent reforms can be implemented and disorder spreads.

Under the self described "Zen-like" "Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency" are the much quoted and commented upon paragraghs 1-149 through 1-153.

1-149 SOMETIMES, THE MORE YOU PROTECT YOUR FORCE, THE LESS SECURE YOU MAY BE. Ultimate success in COIN (counterinsurgency) is gained by protecting the populate, not the COIN force. If military forces remain in their compounds, they lose touch with the people, appear to be running scared, and cede the initiative to the insurgents. Aggressive saturation patrolling, ambushes, and listening post operations must be conducted, risk shared with the populace, and contact maintained...These practices endure access to the intelligence needed to drive operations. Following them reinforces the connections with the populace that help establish real legitimacy.

1-150 SOMETIMES, THE MORE FORCE IS USED, THE LESS EFFECTIVE IT IS Any use offeree produces many effects, not all of which can be foreseen. The more force applied, the greater the chance of collateral damage and mistakes. Using substantial force also increases the opportunity for insurgent propaganda and to portray lethal military activities as brutal. In contrast, using force precisely and discriminately strengthens the rule of law the needs to be established. As note above, the key for counterinsurgents is knowing when more forces is needed - and when it might be counteproductive....

1-151 THE MORE SUCCESSFUL THE COUNTERINSURGENCY IS, THE LESS FORCE CAN BE USED AND THE MORE RISK MUST BE ACCEPTED This paradox is really a corollary to the previous one. As the level of insurgent violence drops, the requirements of international law and the expectations of the populace lead to a reduction in direct military actions by counterinsurgents.

1-152 SOMETIMES DOING NOTHING IS THE BEST REACTION Sometimes insurgents carry out a terrorist act or guerrilla raid with the primary purpose of enticing counterinsurgents to overreact, or at least to react in a way the the insurgents can exploit - for example, opening fire ion a crowd....

1-153 SOME OF THE BEST WEAPONS FOR COUNTERINSURGENTS DO NOT SHOOT. ...While security is essential to setting the stage for overall progress, lasting victory comes from a vibrant economy, political participation,and restored hope. Particularly after security has been achieved, dollars and ballots will have more important effects than bombs and bullets. There is a time when "money is ammunition." Depending on the state of the insurgency, therefore, Soldiers and Marines should prepart to execute many nonmilitary missions to support COIN efforts. Everyone has a role iin nation building, not just Department of State and civil affairs personnel.

1-154 THE HOST NATION DOING SOMETHING TOLERABLY IS NORMALLY BETTER THAN US DOING IT WELL. It is just as important to consider who performs an operation as to assess how well it is done. Where the United States is supporting a host nation, long-term success requires establishing viable HN leaders and institutions that can carry on without significant US support....

Chapter 2: Unity of Effort: Integrating Civilian and Military Activities

"Essential though it is, the military action is secondary to the political one, its primary purpose bieng to afford the political power enough freedom to work safely with the population" David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 1964

Chapter 3: Intelligence in Counterinsurgency

3-5 Insurgencies are local. They vary greatly in time and space. The insurgency one battalion faces will often be different from that faced by an adjacent battalion....

3-67 PHYSICAL SECURITY. During any period of instability, people's primary interest is physical security for them and their families. When HN (host nation) forces fail to provide security or threaten the security of civilians, the population is likely to seek security guarantees from insurgents, militias, or other armed groups. This situation can feed support for an insurgency.

3-79 ...Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of insurgencies; national insurgencies and resistance movements....

3-80 In a national insurgency, the conflict is between the government and one or more segments of the population. In this type of insurgency, insurgents seek to change the political system, take control of the government, or secede from the country.

3-81 In contracts, a resistance movement (sometimes called a liberation insurgency) occurs when insurgents seek to expel or overthrow what they consider a foreign or occupation government.

3-103 Terrorist tactics employ violence primarily against noncombatants....

3-104 Guerrilla tactics, in contrast, feature hit-and-run attacks by lightly armed groups. The primary targets are HN government activities, security forces, and other COIN elements.

3-108 An insurgency's structure often determines whether it is more effective to target enemy forces or enemy leaders. For instance, if an insurgent organization is hierarchical with few leaders, removing the leaders may greatly degrade the organization's capabilities. However, if the insurgent organization is non-hierarchical, targeting the leadership may not have much effect.

3-133 Counterinsurgents should not expect people to willingly provide information if insurgents have the ability to violently intimidate sources.

Chapter 5: Executing Counterinsurgency Operations

"It is a persistently methodical approach and steady pressure which will gradually wear the insurgent down. The government must not allow itself to be diverted either by counter-moves on the part of the insurgent or by the critics on its own side who will be seeking a simpler and quicker solution. There are no short-cuts and no gimmicks - Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam, 1966

5-1 ...Successful counterinsurgents support or develop local institutions with legitimacy and the ability to provide basic services, economic opportunity, public order, and security.

INITIAL STAGE: "STOP THE BLEEDING"
5-4. Initially, COIN operations are similar to emergency first aid for the patient. The goal is to protect the population, break the insurgents' initiative and momentum, and set the conditions for further engagement. Limited offensive operations may be undertaken, but are complemented by stability operations focused on civil security. During this stage, friendly and enemy information needed to complete the common operational picture is collected and initial running estimates are developed. Counterinsurgents also begin shaping the information environment, including the expectations of the local populace.

MIDDLE STAGE: "INPATIENT CARE--RECOVERY"
5-5. The middle stage is characterized by efforts aimed at assisting the patient through long-term recovery or restoration of health--which in this case means achieving stability. Counterinsurgents are most active here, working aggressively along all logical lines of operations (LLOs). The desire in this stage is to develop and build resident capability and capacity in the HN government and security forces. As civil security is assured, focus expands to include governance, provision of essential services, and stimulation of economic development. Relationships with HN counterparts in the government and security forces and with the local populace are developed and strengthened. These relationships increase the flow of human and other types of intelligence. This intelligence facilitates measured offensive operations in conjunction with the HN security forces. The host nation increases its legitimacy through providing security, expanding effective governance, providing essential services, and achieving incremental success in meeting public expectations.

LATE STAGE: "OUTPATIENT CARE--MOVEMENT TO SELF-SUFFICIENCY"
5-6. Stage three is characterized by the expansion of stability operations across contested regions, ideally using HN forces. The main goal for this stage is to transition responsibility for COIN operations to HN leadership. In this stage, the multinational force works with the host nation in an increasingly supporting role, turning over responsibility wherever and whenever appropriate. Quick reaction forces and fire support mcapabilities may still be needed in some areas, but more functions along all LLOs are performed by HN forces with the low-key assistance of multinational advisors. As the security, governing, and economic capacity of the host nation increases, the need for foreign assistance is reduced. At this stage, the host nation has established or reestablished the systems needed to provide effective and stable government that sustains the rule of law. The government secures its citizens continuously, sustains and builds legitimacy through effective governance, has effectively isolated the insurgency, and can manage and meet the expectations of the nation's entire population.

5-52 (known as the "oil spot theory") COIN efforts should begin by controlling key areas. Security and influence then spread out from secured areas. The pattern of this approach is to clear, hold, and build one village, area, or city - and then reinforce success by expanding to other areas.

5-69 To protect the populace, HN security forces continuously conduct patrols and use measured force against insurgent targets of opportunity. Contact with the people is critical to the local COIN effort's success.

Chapter 6: Developing Host Nation Security Forces

6-1 Success in counterinsurgency (COIN) operations requires establishing a legitimate government supported by the people and able to address the fundamental causes that insurgents use to gain support. Achieving these goals requires the host nation to defeat insurgents or render them irrelevant, upholding the rule of law, and provide a basic level os essential and security for the populace. Key to all these tasks is developing an effective host-nation (HN) security force.

6-6 U.S. and multinational forces may need to help the host nation improve security; however, insurgents can use the presence of foreign forces as a reason to question the HN government's legitimacy. A government reliant on foreign forces for internal security risks not being recognized as legitimate. While combat operations with significant U.S. and multinational participation may be necessary, U.S. combat operations are secondary to enabling the host nation's ability to provide for it's own security.

6-29 Training HN (host nation) security forces is a slow and painstaking process. It does not lend itself to a "quick fix".

Chapter 7: Leadership and Ethics for Counterinsurgency

7-7 ...Effective commanders know the people, topography, economy, history, and culture of their area of operations (AO). They know every village, road, field, population group, tribal leader, and ancient grievance within it...

7-8 Another part of analyzing a COIN (counterinsurgency) mission involves assuming responsibility for everyone in the AO. This means that leaders feel the pulse of the local populace, understand their motivations and care about what they want and need. Genuine compassion and empathy for the population provide an effective weapon against insurgents.

7-9 ...Therefore, military actions and words must be beyond reproach. The greatest challenge for leaders may be in setting an example for the local populace....It involves more than just killing insurgents; it includes the responsibility to serve as a moral compass....

7-11 ...Leaders do not allow subordinates to fall victim to the enormous pressures associated with protracted combat against elusive, unethical, and indiscriminate foes....

7-24 ...Counterinsurgents that use excessive force to limit short-term risk alienate the local populace. They deprive themselves of the support or tolerance of the people. This situation is what insurgents want....

Appendix A: A guide for Action

A-24 The first rule of COIN operations is to establish the force's presence in the AO (area of operations).... This requires living in the AO close to the populace. Raiding from remote, secure bases does not work.

A-26 Once the unit settles into the AO (Area of Operations), its next task is to build trusted networks. This is the true meaning of the phrase "hearts and minds," which comprises two separate components. "Hearts" means persuading people that their best interests are served by COIN success. "Minds" means convincing them that the force can protect them and that resisting it is pointless. Note that neither concerns whether people like Soldiers and Marines. Calculated self-interest, not emotion, is what counts. Over time, successful trusted networks grow like roots into the populace. They displace enemy networks, which forces enemies into the open, letting military forces seize the initiative and destroy the insurgents.
(more on this phrase here)

A-60 ...Whatever else is done, the focus must remain on gaining and maintaining the support of the population. With their support, victory is assured; without it, COIN efforts cannot succeed.

Update

Small Wars Journal has a must-read post on the the evolution and importance of FM 3-24

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February 12, 2008

Book Review - The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)

Robert Spencer is one of the bravest writers today. Those who criticize Christianity, such as Christopher Hitchens, can do so secure in the knowledge that the worst they will receive in return is hate-mail. Those who criticize Islam must live in secure locations, for the worst they will receive is to be killed.

This is not to say that I necessarily agree with everything Spencer has written. I don't. He goes too far, I think, at times. But in our age of political correctness in which we're all supposed to think that Islam is a "reiigion of peace" and how-dare-you-even-ask-questions-about-it we need someone who is not afraid to take a look under the hood.

The reason why this is important, I think, is twofold; one, that we have to force Muslims to come to terms with aspects of their faith that they would rather ignore. Second, that non-Muslims as well need to face uncomfortable truths about Islam.

The alternative is more of our current political correctness in which we issue soothing statements that "Islam is a religion of peace" and that "90% of Muslims reject al Qaeda", or the reassuring "Islam has been hijacked by a band of extremists."

Spencer shows that violent jihad is integral to the way Islam is and has been interpreted by mainstream Islamic scholars throughout the centuries, and that far from "peaceful coexistance", their goal is worldwide Caliphate.

Some months ago I read and reviewed his 2006 book The Truth About Muhammed. I just finished his 2005 book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), and will review it here. Spencer is also the founder and primary author at JihadWatch.

As the title implies, Spencer's book is divided into two main parts and a short third section. The first is an overview of Islam as he sees it, and the second is a historical overview of the crusades. There is a shorter section on "Today's Jihad".

The short version of his overview of Islam is that it is a religion of war which is intolerant of anyone who will not submit and is used to oppress women. The chapter titles for this section tell the story

Muhammed: Prophet of War The Qur'an: Book of War Islam: Religion of War Islam: Religion of Intolerance Islam Oppresses Women Islamic Law: Lie, Steal, and Kill How Allah Killed Science The Lure of Islamic Paradise Islam-Spread by the Sword? You Bet

I have not read the Quoran, so I really can't say how accurate Spencer's work is. But I can read the newspaper, and I have figured out by now that a whole lot of Muslims would indeed agree with Spencer's interpretation of their religion. They just think it's a good thing.

I do not want to get into a "Christianity/Judiasm vs Islam" here, but one point needs to be made. According to Spencer, the Quoran teaches that war must be fought against unbelievers all over the world until they are defeated and Islam rules. The old Testament books of the Bible teach only that the Jews occupy land promised them by God and make war upon those people, and those people only. Therefore, unless you are a Hittite, Cannanite, Jebusite, or Philistine, you've got nothing to worry about from even the most fundamentalist Christian or Jew.

Spencer's thesis is that Islam was not "hijacked" by extremists who have "misinterpreted" the Quoran, but that Islam is in and of itself a violent religion. This does not mean, he stresses, that all Muslims are violent or subscribe to the jihad:

...there are enormous numbers of Muslims in the United States and around the world who want nothing to do with today's global jihad. While their theological foundation is weak, many are heroically laboring to create a viable moderate Islam that will allow Muslims to coexist peacefully with their non-Muslim neighbors. They are to be commended, but make no mistake: This moderate Islam does not exist to any significant extent in the world today.

In other words, "moderate" Muslims are those who simply don't follow their own faith.

All of this raises the question; if Islam is so bad, how can we possibly succeed in Iraq? Again, we need to recognize that as Spencer says "there are enormous numbers of Muslims ...who want nothing to do with today's global jihad." Many of those, as we are seeing, are in Iraq.

The solution, I think, is that Islam needs a true reform movement. "Moderate" Islam isn't enough, for clearly they are not able to stop the extremists. As Walid Phares says, we are in a war of ideas, but it's so much not the West against Islam, as it is modernity against ancient ways of thinking. The war is being fought within Islam, and within the West. Right now it's the moderates vs the extremists in Islam, and in the West it's those who see the danger vs the new breed of anti-antijihadists (or anti-antiterrorists, as you wish. They are the intellectual heirs to the leftist anti-anticommunism of the Cold War).

By "reform", I mean that the text of the Quoran and the Hadith need to be reexamined and reinterpreted. The hard passages must not be ignored. These reformers will have their job cut out for them, and arguable have a more difficult task than even Martin Luther, John Calvin, and their heirs did for Christianity.

The Crusades

Whatever the merits of his views on Islam, Spencer is on more solid ground when discussing the Crusades. His technique here is simply to cite historical events and let them speak for themselves. Here is a brief chronology

622 - 632 A.D. Mohammed leads armies in conquering the Arabian peninsula

632 - Mohammed dies

634 - A small seaborne invasion of India is mounted

635 - Damascus falls to Muslim armies, and the whole of the region shortly thereafter

668 & 717 - Muslim armies lay seige to Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), capitol of the Byzantine Empire, but fail to take the city

639 - The Muslim invasion of Egypt begins

633-656 - The Muslim conquest and defeat of the Persian Empire

647 - 709 - The conquest of North Africa by Muslim armies

664 - Muslim armies invade India

711 - Muslim armies under Tariq ibn-Ziyad invade what is today Spain. By 715 the conquest is complete. After this conquest they head north into what is today France. They will rule all or part of the Iberian peninsula until 1492

732 - A Muslim (Moorish) army is defeated by Charles Martel ("the Hammer") at a location between Tours and Poiters in what is today France

792 & 848 - Additional Muslim armies attack what is today France but are defeated

827 - Muslim armies invade Italy and Sicily. In 846 they reach Rome, but after exacting a promise of tribute from the Pope they do not sack the city. The Muslims eventually leave Italy, but occupy Sicily until 1091, when they are driven out by the Normans

1071 - An army of Seljuk Turks defeat the Byzantines at the Armenian town of Manzikert, leaving them free to occupy Asia Minor (the modern-day Turkish peninsula)

Note all of this occurs before the first Crusade is called

1095 - Pope Urban II receives an appeal for help from the Emperor of Byzantium, who has been under attack from the Muslim Caliphate for several centuries. He issues his call to what becomes the First Crusade in response.

The Crusades, therefore, were really a response to several hundred years of unending assault by Muslim armies who did all they could to conquer the Christian world. They were an attempt to recapture land once held by Christian and Jewish nations or empires. They were, then, a defensive operation. Their practical effect was to relieve Europe from attack for a few centuries while we took the war to the Muslims.

The point of all this is not so much to justify the Crusades as it it to demolish the PC myth of "poor innocent Muslims sitting around minding their own business when the bad Crusaders swept down on them committing atrocities."

And, of course, after the Crusaders were defeated and their new kingdoms demolished, Islam started right up again attacking the West. Their last big assault (before our modern war, anyway), was an attack upon Vienna, Austria, by a Turkish army in 1683.

All in all this is a worthwhile book. If nothing else it demolishes many politically correct mantras about Islam. Those who want more from Spencer will want to consult his The Truth About Muhammed. However, none of these can really be called scholarly books, so readers who want an in depth and complete treatment of Islam will have to go elsewhere.

Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 20, 2008

Book Review - Come On, People!

On the 17th of May, 2004, Bill Cosby delivered a speech to the NAACP on the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education that rocked the Black community, and indeed the country at large. Known as the "Pound Cake speech", he pointed out negative social trends within the Black community, and said point blank that "we cannot blame white people."

In the speech, he focused on the high crime rate, lack of parenting, "50 percent drop out rate", bad English, focus on multimillionaire sports figures that "can’t write a paragraph", and other social pathologies that plague the black community. Cosby was later criticized for his remarks, but refused to back down.

Come On, People! On the Path from Victims to Victors is the book that resulted from this speech. To write it, Cosby teamed up with Dr Alvin Pousssaint, who is a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Cosby draws the readers, and my guess is that most of the writing was done by him. Dr. Pousssaint leads intellectual weight to the book, so that when they write "studies show that..." you can be sure they are not blowing smoke.

The book is written in a casual, easy-to-read style. It is unfootnoted (although there is an excellent bibliography at the end), as it is meant to be more a call to action than an academic treatise.

What Cosby and Poussaint do not do in the book is prove through a mass of statistics and academic data that the black community is in trouble. This is taken as a given. Nor do they spend their time relating the history of black people in America, and how we got to our current situation. Rather, this is more of a self-help book than anything.

Cosby and Poussaint do not deny that racism plays a role in America today. To do so would be unfactual, and they would lose all credibility. But neither do they dwell on it. Racism gets a few lines here and there, but their message is clear: Most of our ills are not the result of racism, and are things that we can and need to set right ourselves.

The intended audience for Come on, People! are the very people that they are trying to help; black people who are caught in a cycle of poverty and violence. They are also trying to reach black community leaders who can turn things around.

As such, much of the book consists of common-sense advice for black people. There are chapters on prenatal care, parenting, eating properly, managing your finances, how to get a good education and use it to seek gainful employment, and much more. Here is a small sample taken at random:

Go to a doctor early and often for prenatal care

Don't let your kids watch too much TV

Be a good role model for your children

Proper English is a must

Slow down on the fast food

If you're going to have children, get married and stay married

Stop charging anything you don't absolutely need

Whatever you do, graduate from high school

Community colleges have many great courses that can lead directly to a job

Walk away from a fight

Shield your kids from what's on the Internet

The best way to avoid diabetes is to keep your weight under control.

Intersperced throughout the book are "call outs"; most of which are brief stories of black people who faced overwhelming odds yet made it. Others are those of successful black professionals who have useful advice. All are valuable and interesting.

The overwhelming message is that values matter. Come On, People! reminds me as nothing so much as Laura Ingraham's Power to the People, in which she discussed various social ills that are the result of bad value values.

Cosby and Poussaint are all about advancement through education. Unlike too many elies, who obsess over how many CEOs or professional football coaches are black, they look to action that will help the average black person. High profile black success stories in sports and entertainment world are simply not meaningful to the average person, as the chances that he or she will achieve such fame and riches are slim. As such, their advice, as illustrated in the above list, is designed to move people toward obtaining basic degrees at average colleges (they especially stress community colleges) that lead to concrete careers.

I'm not quite sure how much Cosby's message has resonated within the black community, as surely he has faced much resistance from elites for refusing to blame everything on white racism. Yet he and co-author Poussiant are not alone in their quest. For example, NPR Senior Correspondent and Fox News contributor Juan Williams, a black man with impeccable liberal credentials, wrote Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure that are Undermining Black America, and What We can Do About It in 2006, and between the three of them perhaps they can turn the debate around.

Cosby, Poussiant, Williams, and for that matter Ingraham, have picked up on the fact that there is only so much the government can do. Ending blatant racism was good and a must, but clearly this isn't enough to truely liberate black people. Create all the enterprise zones you want, Jack Kemp, but until you change values and attitudes you're whistling dixie.

To me, the question is not whether Come On, People! is a useful book. It is. The question is how to get it into the hands of the people who need it the most. I suspect that many or even most of the people who buy it are people like me; white guys who live comfortably in the suburbs. I'd buy a hundred books and donate them to a black church uptown if I thought they'd hand them out, but such an act would be seen as condescending, I suppose.

Much of the solution, then, is going to have to come from within the black community itself. But there are things that we can do also, like stop buying "gansta rap" music, and cleaning up our own culture. Because ultimately we're all in this together.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 5, 2008

Book Review - To Set The Record Straight

Let me say up front that I never delved into the details of the John Kerry/Swift Boat controversy that erupted during the 2004 presidential campaign. I've read neither Douglas Brinkley's Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, or John O'Neill's Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. The latter book was hugely controversial, as a quick look at the Amazon reviews shows. Out of a total of 3,142 reviews to date:

5 star: 56% (1,774)
4 star: 5% (174)
3 star: 1% (59)
2 star: 1% (35)
1 star: 35% (1,100)

There's obviously a contest between right and left going on, and many of the attacks are ad hominem

So when I received To Set The Record Straight (not available, interestingly, at Amazon) at a Christmas Party, I realized I would be reading it without the full background. My coverage of the 2004 election on this blog, and my opposition to Senator Kerry, was issues based and had little to do with the swift boat controversy.

To Set The Record Straight is by Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler, with a forward by John O'Neill. It is essentially the story behind how the Swift Vets came together, their role in the 2004 campaign, and the writing of Unfit for Command. Swett created and managed Swiftvets.com and WinterSoldier.com during the 2004 campaign, and Ziegler handled media operations.

Because I haven't read Brinkley or O'Neill's books, have not and will not delve into the details of what happened with John Kerry in Vietnam, I'm not going to go into any detail on any of it. My guess is that Kerry was not in Cambodia for Christmas of 1968, as he says. He probably exaggerated other things he did, and Brinkley bought into it.

But my main bone of contention with Kerry isn't over what he did or did not do in Vietnam. It's about what he did afterwards.

John Kerry betrayed the United States by participating in the "Winter Soldier" charade in which he and others told lie after lie about American "atrocities" in Vietnam. He was deeply involved with Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), and was present at their November 12-15 1971 meetings in Kansas City in which they discussed assassinating several pro-war US Senators. More from DiscoverTheNetworks

When Kerry returned from combat, he in fact became a key figure in the early-1970s, anti-America, pro-Hanoi crowd of protesters personified most visibly by Jane Fonda. Like so many of those protesters, Kerry publicly maligned American soldiers, and went on to become a prominent organizer for one of America's most radical appeasement groups, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). He developed close ties with celebrated activists like Ms. Fonda and Ramsey Clark, the radical Attorney General who served under President Lyndon Johnson. He supported a document known as the "People's Peace Treaty," which was reportedly composed in Communist East Germany and contained nine points - all of them extracted from a list of Viet Cong conditions for ending the war. By frequently participating in VVAW demonstrations, Kerry marched alongside many revolutionary Communists.

For these reasons alone the Swift Vets had every right and duty to organize to oppose him as president.

As such, what motivated John O'Neill, Admiral Roy Hoffman (ret) and the others at first was Kerry's actions after he returned from Vietnam. They remembered with bitterness his infamous testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on April 22, 1971

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. ...

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

It has since been shown that virtually all of the charges brought against American soldiers, sailors, airman and marines at the "winter soldier" investigation was a lie.

The main charge against O'Neill and his fellow Swift Vets was that they were attacking Kerry for political advantage. There are two problems with this: One, even if they were it does not address the issue of what John Kerry did or did not due. Either John Kerry lied about his record in Vietnam or he didn't. Either he betrayed his country when he got back or he didn't. The motives of his attackers do not change the facts.

Two, Kerry is the one who made his service in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. He essentially said "I am qualified to be president because of my military service in Vietnam". As such, it was only reasonable that his record them be up for examination. That Kerry seemed indignant that anyone would have the temerity to question his record speaks to his own arrogance and haughtyness. Not a wonder he lost the election.

In the end, To Set The Record Straight is an interesting book but not one I would have bought on my own, since the 2004 election is over and I don't usually believe in fighting past battles. It was very interesting as a piece of history, and I am glad that I had a chance to read it.

Posted by Tom at 10:36 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

December 20, 2007

Book Review - In the Words of Our Enemies

To anyone who still needs evidence that there are countries and movements in the world who want to destroy us, Jed Babbin's In the Words of Our Enemies is the book for you. If you are already convinced, this book is still useful because it is full of quotes that can be used to bolster your case to naysayers.

What makes this book different is that it let's our enemies speak for themselves. Most of the book consists of quotes from various Muslim fanatics, Chinese and Russian leaders, and well known personalities such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chavez. There is some editorializing, but that is the smaller part of the book. It is truely a tale told "in the words of our enemies".

Here are the chapters.

I Before Sept 11
II The Hate Factories
III The Hate Networks
IV The Hate Networks Aim at Iraq
V Iran: The Central Terrorist Nation, Long Before Sept 11
VI The Taliban, Pakistan, and Southwest Asia
VII Radical Islam Aims at Turkey
VIII China: The Emerging Enemy
IX Putin's Russia
X Kim Jong-il's North Korea
XI Fidel Castro's Cuba
XII Hugo Chavez: Castro on Steroids

Jed Babbin is a former Air Force JAG officer, who has also served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration He is currently editor of Human Events, and his articles appear in many publicications. He also appears on TV and guest-hosts popular radio talk-shows.

Among his many books, I have read and reviewed Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States and have read (but forgot to review) Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse Than You Think

Here are a few of our enemies quoted by Babbin:

From an interview with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the "spiritual leader" of Hamas, before he was killed in an Israeli strike in 2004:

Question: Was the fact that the King of Saudi Arabia received you during your tour of the Arab states a message to the United States?

Yassin: It was an expression of appreciation on the part of Saudi Arabia for (our) activities for the sake of Palestine and to tell the world - especially the U.S. and Israel - that Saudi Arabia supports the path of jihad. Saudi Arabia has demonstrated strength and courage because it declared its position loud and clear, telling the U.S. that it supports the path of struggle to restore the plundered land. In other words, the weldcome I received was a clear message to the U.S. and a provocation of its policy.

This is from a 2004 sermon by Sheikh Ibrahim Mahdi, which was broadcast on Palestinian TV:

Blessings to whoever waged Jihad for the sake of Allah: blessings to whoever raidedfor the sake of Allah; blessings to whoever put a belt of explosives on his body or on his sons' and plunged into the midst of the Jews, crying "Allahu Akbar, praise to Allah, there is no God byt Allah and Muhammed is His messenger."

From an article titled "In the Shadow of the Lakes" by al Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith, posted at the website of the Center for islamic Research and Studies.

I lay (these arguments) before you so as to emphasize that we are continuing with our blows against the Americans and the Jews, and with attacking them, both people and installations (so as to stress) that what awaits the Americans will not, Allah willing, be less than what has already happened to them. America must prepare itself; it must go on maximum alert...because, Allah willing, the blow will come from where they least expet it.

Three statements taken from different speeches by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Undoubtably, I say that this slogan and goal is achievable, and with the support and power of God, we will soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism and will breathe in the brilliant time of Islamic sovereignty over today's world.

Such people are using words like "it's not possible." They say how could we hae a world without America and Zionism? But you know well that this slogan and goal can be achieved and can definately be realized.

Our proposal is as follows: Since you brought this regime (Israel) over there, you yourselves pick it up, by the arms and legs, and remove it from there. This will make the peoples of the region improve their attitude toward you. These will be the first steps to a long-lasting friendship with the peoples of the region. this will be to your advantage.

Chinese General Zhu Chenghu, also a professor at China's National Defense University, made in 2005 a statement that many took to be a threat of nuclear war over Taiwan:

If the Americans are determined to interfere, (then) we will be determined to respond....We...will prepare ourselves for t he destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course, the Americans will have tro be prepared that hundreds...of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.

Babbin then adds

Heritage Foundation visiting fellow Larry Wortzel, who attended Zhu's speech, reportedly offered the general a way out, asking if he meant only that China would respond with nuclear weapons if America first attacked China with them. According to one report, Zhu insisted that a nuclear response would occur even if Amerca interfered with (the) conqeest of Taiwan using conventional weapons. When a public uproar ensued, China disavowed Zhu's remarks. The disavowal is entirely consistent with china's "Twenty-four Chartacter Strategy"

Statements by Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chavez are entirely predictable. Putin doesn't come off so much as an enemy as a competitor, and as such the chapter on Russia is Babbin's weakest case.

Any quote is open to the "taken out of context" criticism (just read the hostile Amazon reviews), but if you say "kill all the Jews", there's not any context that makes sense. Besides, if anything Babbin leaves out too much, especially on our jihadist enemies.

You can also argue that intent is not capability, or that Ahmadinejad is not the real power, that these are just the words of a demagogue to stir up the masses and that they don't reall mean it... or a hundred other things. But I think history shows that we cannot afford to assume anything. At any rate, world leaders must be held responsible for what they say. So even is Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of WMD prior to our invasion, it was still his responsiblity to come clean, which he decidedly did not do. Therefore, he bears ultimate responsibility for what happened. So, then, do the people quoted by Babbin.

Some people, of course, will never be convinced that while imperfect, and West is good and worth defending. There are those who will excuse any evil, as long as it's perpetrators hate the United States and especially George W Bush.

None of this is to say that we must immediately bomb x and such a country. Babbin makes few policy recommdations, and reasonable people can disagree over what do do about madmen like Ahmadinejad of Kim Jong il. But we first have to get over the notion that there are no enemies out there that would dearly like to destroy us, or that all of their hatred is a rational response to specific American policies. Babbin's book goes a long way toward dispelling such notions.

Posted by Tom at 10:11 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 28, 2007

Book Review - The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy

Following up on his blockbuster Future Jihad, Walid Phares has written another must-read book; The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy. Although it is not absolutely necessary to read the former before the latter, it is highly recommended. In Future Jihad, Phares describes our enemy and ....the historical background. Once identified, Phares takes us through the various international battlegrounds in The War of Ideas.

Phares is Lebanese by birth, and came to the United States in 1990. He has a law degree from the University of Beirut, a Masters degree in International Law from the Universite de Lyon in France, and a Ph.D. in International Relations and Strategic Studies from the University of Miami. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington, D.C. His website is WalidPhares.com, the one for this book is TheWarofIdeas.net and the one for his 2005 book FutureJihad.com

Although the war has a military aspect, it is primarily a war of ideologies. On one side stand the forces of tyranny and opression, and on the other those of liberty and pluralism.

How do our enemies plan on winning the "war of ideas"?

All it takes for the jihadists to make progress is to continue to implant their ideology in the minds of the younger waves of followers. And all it takes for the supporters of the radicals within international society (and particularly inside Western democracies) is to prevent the public, especially youth, from understanding this equation.

What is their main weapon?

Al Qaeda and Hezbollah's real strength isn't their terrorist capacity, but the ability of their ideologues to incite and take control of the minds of their adherents to the hightest level of threat - against the very idea of life.

Soldiers from other civilizations will fight to the death, but only if necessary. The jihadi masters have developed the idea of istishhad; "jihadi suicide" or "suicide bomber", although the weapon need not be a bomb.

Clash of Civilizations?

Professor Samuel Huntington published a famous article in Foreign Affairs in 1993 titled "The Clash of Civilizations", in which he argued that rather than individual nations, economic blocs, or even ideologies as we have understood them, large civilizations would become the main players on the world stage. Phares agrees with this assessment, adding that civilizations "exist not only culturally, but also politically, including via their votes in the United Nations." While Huntington believes that clashes between these civilizations is inevitable, Phares does not.

Interestingly, although many Western (usually liberal) scholars discount or are even horrified at the thought of a clash of civilizations, the jihadists endorse it. They descrivbe their struggle as one between the umma (Muslim community) or dar el Islam (house of peace" or "house of Islam) and the dar el harb ("house of war"; any non-Muslim area) More than simply believing in it, however, the jihadists are willing to die for it, and take anyone standing in their way with them.

What is Jihadism?

Jihad is a well thought out concept that has its roots in the Middle Ages. It is not a reaction to specific Western policies, or "the legacy of colonialism". Nor is it a reaction to historical abuses (real and imagined) heaped on Arab peoples by outsiders. Although I explain jihad according to Phares more fully here and here, suffice it to say for now that jihad is defined as "constant effort on behalf of Allah".

What this comes down to is that "historically, jihad was a state tool for war mobilization under Arab and Ottoman Empires". The purpose of such war was to spread the faith. Only the Caliph or his designate could declare a jihad. Once the caliphate was overthrown in 1924, the legal body who could declare jihad ceased to exist. In the wake of this, some Muslims declared that they had the authority to declare jihad. Thus, jihad was "privatized". One of the first to "privatize" jihad was Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The objectives of the jihad are:

1) Tahrir, or "liberation" of Muslim lands from rule by non-Muslim governments.

2) Tawheed, or "unification" of all Muslims into one country with common borders.

3) Khilafa, or "caliphate". The jihadists wish to reestablish the caliphate as the government for Muslims, which will eventually rule the world.

At a risk of repeating what Phares said in Future Jihad, it is still nevertheless useful to restate the members, or three branches of the jihad: the Wahabbists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Khumeinists.

It is important to note that disguising the true nature of "jihad" is part of the war of ideas being waged against the forces of democracy. It is quite common, for example to hear the falsehood of jihad described as a "peaceful inner struggle" that one has to purify oneself so as to satisfy Allah.

The Ideas of Jihad

Jihadi propaganda, and their Western apologists say that if specific grievances were addressed, the fuel for their fire would disippate. Quite the contrary, says Phares. While their propaganda uses specific grievances to manipulate public opinion, "solving" them would do nothing, because more would simply appear in their place. It's really more a game of "whack a mole" than anything else.

Rather, the jihadists are opposed to ideas of pluralism, tolerance, and democracy as we in the West understand them.

They will use peaceful means, and even work within a democracy if necessary, but it's all just a tactic. Radical groups in Europe, North America, and Australia are pushing for Sharia-type laws to be allowed within their own communities. Far from assimilating (wth the usual immigrant give-and-take) into their host countries, all too many are demanding that the host country assimilate into them.

One of the worst aspects of jihadism or radical Islam (some would say Islam itself) is what Phares calls "gender apartheid". Under the Sharia law the jihadists have in mind, women have absolutely no rights and must live under a strict set of rules with no ifs ands or buts. The jihadists fear "womens rights" greatly, for they know that if they lose this battle then they lose their grip on power, and thus the war.

The end goal is to overthrow democracy and institute "pure" Islam, which means harsh Sharia law.

History as Yesterday

We in the West tend to think of anything that happened more than a few hundred years ago as "ancient history", and as such only marginally relevant to how we think and behave today. Not so with the jihadists. Osama bin Laden refers to events that occured a thousand years ago as if they took place only yesterday. Participitants on Jihadist websites talk as if battles that took place during the Middle Ages occured last Thursday.

It would be a mistake to see all this as simply nursing ancient grievances, or as nostalgia for the past glories of Islam. Jihadists believe that they are living out the continuation of ancient history, of ancient struggles. Theirs is the continuation of the one-thousand year running war between Islam and Europe (and parts of Asia) that went on from the 7th to the 17th centuries. To them this war didn't really end; they are fighing the same fight as Saladin did against the Crusaders, and there is no break between ancient and modern worlds.

Their most important slogan is that there is a "war on Islam", or as they describe it: "the war on Islam (al harb ala al Islam). In their view of history, it is the Muslims who have been under assault from the days of Muhammed in the 7th century, not the other way around. All of their wars of expansion, therefore, were really just defensive wars waged to defend themselves against aggression. As might be imagined, the Crusades (1095–1291) as well as 19th and 20th century colonialism play a major role in their version of history.

The First War of Ideas: 1945 - 1990

Phares has identified three distinct phases in the War of Ideas. The first took place during the Cold War. It was ignored by most people, as the Cold War swept everything in its path. Jihadism and democracy crossed paths but there was no overt conflict.

The Wahabists chose to ally with the United States against the athiest communists. Secular Ba'athist regimes allied with the Soviet Union. The Khumeinists of Iran sent shock waves through the Sunni world when they announced that they would oppose both camps.

But as Phares notes, "during the Cold War the Arab and Muslim world split along the fault line of pro and anti-Soviet, rather than pro and anti-American." All of them hated the West. We knew about but ignored this reality.

There were two defining events during this first "ware of ideas: the oil embargo launched in 1973 by OPEC, and the Khumeinist revolution in Iran.

The main consequence of the oil embargo event was that the oil producing Arab governments started to realize the power they had over the West. The price of oil skyrocketed, and they use their money to start start the "oil-funded penetration of Western education", something that continues to this day. Middle Eastern studies programs were set up on many college campuses, and were essentially told to teach the version of history that the Wahabists wanted taught; i.e. a sanitized version that misrepresented the true nature of their objectives. Human rights abuses in Muslim countries was to be completely ignored or explained away.

The Khumeinist revolution put the third leg of the jihad into place. Theirs was not a nationalist revolution, but a theological one. The objective of the Khumeinists is to establish a regional Imamate, dominate the Sunni regimes around them, and chase all Westerners from the area.

The Second War of Ideas: 1990 - 2001

Western elites and opinion-makers (on both sides of the political divide) continued to ignore human rights abuses in the Muslim world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The primary reason is that we were told that people in the Middle East were "upset not at their own governments, but were rather with the remnant of colonialism, Israel, and the new Western Imperialism." Dissidents (yes there are many) were completely ignored.

One of the primary objectives of the jihadists and their Baathist allies was to shield their respective governments from cricisism, and to prevent democracy and liberty from taking root anywere in their countries. They did not want to share in the fate of the Soviet Union. The jihadists wanted to continue to hide their real ideology and goals, and in this they were largely successful. Few in the West paid any attention to Islam in general, and "radical Islam" in particular.

As during the first War of ideas, we in the West were told that the primary problem plaguing the region was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Human rights abuses, we were admonished, were a "domestic affair", and oil money continued to fund Middle East studies programs in our universities that essentially lied about Muslim history.

In the meantime, the Wahabists continued their infiltration of Western societies, the objective of which was to "weaken, delegitimize, and then defeat" us.

The Third War of Ideas: 2001 - Present

Osama bin Laden upset the plans of the jihadists with his September 11 attacks. The Wahabists had planned a long campaign of infiltration into Western Society. The Muslim Brotherhood was busy infiltrating Middle Eastern societies in preparation to taking over their governments. The only way their infiltration would work is if we remained blind to their true nature and goals. bin Laden's attacks, however, forced the issue into the open. The jihadists rightly feared that Americans and others would now begin to study them, and when the truth became known, they would be effectively countered.

In short, bin Laden "jumped the gun." The other jihadists were furious at him, and went into full blown damage control mode. They were desperate to prevent us from learning the answer to the question many in the United States were asking: "Why do they hate us?" Their first goal was to prevent the United States and it's allies from destroying all of their totalitarian regimes. They realized that they couldn't protect the Taliban, that was asking too much. However, if they acted quickly they could protect the various countries in which Sharia or near-Sharia was practiced. They continuned to promote the primacy of "solving" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Other tactics of the "Wahabi lobby" have been to deflect any serious cricism of Islam, to insist that "jihad" can only be defined as a "peaceful inner struggle", and that there is no such thing as "Islamism". Taking advantage of Western sensitivities towards minorities is another favorite tactic, as is playing on our "colonial guilt complex". Pressure groups scream "Islamophobia" and transform anti-terrorist measures into "singling out Muslims."

As Phares puts it, "the claim that the world hates America is nothing but a retaliation against U.S. efforts (regardless of success or failure) to foster democracy in the region." further,

...the so-called hatred of America - or, as they paint it, of this specific administration - is, in fact, a manufactured political and ideological mobilization against the agenda that the Bush-Blair alliance has pushed in response to rising fascism in the region.... peoples in the region, or more precisely, certain segments of societies, were "conditioned to hate" whomever the regime bosses, the militant cadres, and al Jazeera's ideologues targeted for hating.

More

And in order to stop Ameria and its allies from tuirning the tables on regional totalitarianism, the combined resources of jihadists and authoritarians were put into the mother of all propaganda wars. The "hatred manufacturing" can be controlled, cultivated, and unleashed when needed.

Unfortunately for the jihadists, there has been an American awakening. Scholars and ordinary citizens alike have taken it upon themselves to learn about Islam and the Middle East. I spent most of my formative years studying the communist threat. I read a lot of books during the 1990s, but none about Islam. It took me awhile after 9-11 to get going, but even a quick persual of my book reviews tells you that I am at least trying to inform myself as to the nature of the threat. Indeed Phares cites the Internet as one of the primary means by which we are trying to learn about it.

What To Do About It? Conclusions and Recommendations

Here's what Phares says we should not or need not do to win

It's not about public relations. We in the West have this idea that if only we could elimiate the Abu Ghraibs, close the prison at Guantanamo bay, not torture prisoners, solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and (depending on how extreme one gets) apologize for the sins of colonialism, Muslims will "come around". This mistakes the nature of the conflict, Phares says. The jihadists and their followers do not have a set of specific greviances that they need solved. They want to weaken the West's will to self-defense so they can take us over.

Following are some recommendations taken from the book's last chapter

1. "Democracies must educate their own publics on the history, evolution, and future development of Jihadism and its allies"

2. "Open the debate about Jihadism, and vote for laws that would ban ideologies that discriminate within societies, divide humanity into enemy and peace zones, and legitimize violence outside international law"

3. Muslims too must step up to the plate. "In the Muslim world and its diasporas, what is needed is for more democratic and reformist currents to rise up and express themselves...."

4. And by the same token, we in the West must support Muslim dissidents and democracy groups. We must welcome and chamion their cause, just as we did the dissidents in the Soviet Union and apartheit-era South Africa.

5. "Within the United States and other democracies and among partners in the War on Terorrism worldwide - including those in the Muslim world - reform the educational system to advance public awareness and counter the radicalization of certain societal segments."

6. "Use the public media for education and information." This includes funding and expanding counterterrorist U.S. government funded networks like al-Hurra and Radio Sawa.

7. In short, "expose the jihadi network and lobbies and explain their strategies to the public" the point being that a "U.S.-led campaign needs to be backed by a determined, unified,a nd convinced public."

These conclusions come from a lifetime of reading literature coming out of the Middle East, watching their news shows and Internet videos, and debating Muslims on networks like al Jazeera (born and raised in Lebanon, Phares is fluent in Arabic).

Phares and similar thinkers certainly have their share of critics, most I think from the left, but many from the right. The left will accuse him of "stereotyping Muslims" and all that PC nonsense, but the Bush/Baker establishment right or who claim that they are simply part of the "realist" school do not like what he says either. Lastly, the oil lobby and all that it funds will not want to hear anything bad about their patrons.

Phares asks us to believe that there is a world movement to undermine and take over the West. Although the movement he describes is loosely organized, it is determined and fanatical. During the 1990s or before I would have said he was exaggerating. After all, we had defeated the Nazis and Soviets. How could this bunch destroy us?

I remember years ago listening to G Gordon Liddy on the radio. Liddy would go off about how "the Saudis are our enemy!" At the time I thought that while he made good points, surely he exaggerated. "We need the Saudis" for this or that strategic reason, I thought, and anyway there was no way anyone in the West would fall for their propaganda.

How wrong I was. Although of course I was familiar with the major Middle East terrorist groups, I had little clear idea of their ideology, or didn't know much more than that they hated Israel. 9-11 woke a lot of us up and prompted us to learn what was going on, to seek answers to that "why do they hate us?" question. Phares was writing about jihadism for years before that terrible day. We should have listened to him then, but we were preaccupied and didn't listen. We need to listen to him now.

Posted by Tom at 8:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 9, 2007

Book Review - Infidel

Few people on this planet have criticized the way Islam is practiced as harshly as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and few can speak with her authority. She is a hero to conservatives, hated intensely by mamy or most Muslims, and not embraced by enough on the left.

Infidel is her autobiography, published just earlier this year. In 353 pages she tells her story, and is not at all shy about discussing "intimate" matters. Indeed, these "intimate matters" are some of the most important and revealing parts of her book.

Hirsi Ali does not directly discuss political matters other than those that relate to Islam in her book. She doesn't get into whether we should have invaded Iraq, and does not make clear whether she would be a social liberal or conservative. She never mentions Israel, nor does she give her opinion on economic affairs. She is a single-issue person, and that issue is Islam. She very much belives that Islam must undergo a fundamental reform, and has no patience with those who say that "moderate Muslims" are the answer. Having seen and experienced the brutal way in which women are treated in most of the Muslim world, she has made their plight central to her cause.

Infidel is at once moving and informative. It is an easy yet intense read. It certainly falls into the "you can't put it down" category. Despite all that she has been through, this is not an "angry" book, as Because They Hate arguably was.

Born in Somalia in 1969, she was brought up mostly by her mother and grandmother, he r father having been imprisoned by the dicatator Said Barre when she was five. While her mother tended towards more modern ways of doing things, grandmother was intensely traditional, and intent of maintainly the old ways. As such, she made sure that Hirsi Ali and her sister underwent "excism" (or "female circumcision") when they were young. This procedure is described in just enough detail for the reader to cringe. Essentially, with no anesthesia the inner labia and clitoris are cut off with a pair of scissors. She was then sewn shut, with just enough of an opening left for her to urinate and later for menstrual blood to escape.

To make a long story short, she and her family moved several times around the region to escape Barre's wrath, and the civil war raging against him in Somalia. Her family, lived at times in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. In these places she learned English and Arabic. She also met and interacted with Christians and agnostics, mostly in Ethiopia and Kenya. As such, she was exposed to other ideas and ways of doing things. Hirsi Ali

Her father was away for much of the time, sometimes in prison but mostly just off on various adventures, all of which designed to overthrow the hated Barre. She was mostly raised by her mother and grandmother. Hirsi Ali's life family life was very hard, although she didn't really know it at the time. . She describes daily beatings by her mother, which continued almost until adulthood.

Although she was a Muslim, she was also a voracious reader, devouring all books that came her way. As it was these were mostly Western romance novels. While young she did not see the contradiction, but this would soon change.

Hirsi Ali experienced the Muslim Brotherhood firsthand while living in Kenya. She describes how they sent money and preachers, took over the local mosques, and made it their mission to change the way Islam was practiced. In large part they succeeded. Their brand of Islam is very harsh, and they convinced a lot of people that their more moderate practices were not in accordance with what the prophet wanted. Brotherhood preachers insisted on ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE to the various parts of the Quran that justify a husband's dictatorial rule over his wife, wife beating, female circumcision, and the like. No questioning or even discussion was allowed.

The plight of women under Islam is indirectly the subject of much of the book, if only because Hirsi Ali is a woman herself, and saw and experienced many of the horrors that Islamic culture visits upon them.

Despite the presence of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, she grew up reading western romance novels, and dreamed of falling in love Western-style. She was shocked to learn of the way marriages really worked in Islam. On her marriage night, and apparengly thereafter, if the woman shows any interest in forplay she is by definition a whore. Muslim men have a fixation on female virginity that borders on the pathological. Hirsi Ali goes into some detail on this, and some of it bears repeating herSex is not only joyless but mechanical. Afterwards the man immediately goes into the bathroom afterward to wash and thus "purify" himself (the Muslim fixation on purification is nothing short of bizarre). Also, if the woman bleeds on her wedding night (and she better, or else she's a not a virgin and can be killed by her family), the man takes the stained bedsheets and shows them to his family, friends, sometimes the entire neighborhood, and all the men congratulate him.

Hirsi Ali had female friend after female friend tell her these things while she was growing up (she was ner shy about asking questions), and of course she was horrified. That is was not what she thought marriage should or would be like. Worse, she experienced it herself the night of her first marriage (she subsequently ran away from this marriage, getting it annuled some eyars later).

All marriages are arranged ones. Girls barly past puberty were married off to older men on a regular basis. She describes how girls would disappear from school, and then a few years later she would see them with one or two children in tow. In circumstances where she found beforhand that a girlfrend was about to be married, the girl was always petrified. The wedding was joyless and so was their life. As often as not they ended up hateing their husbands. They went from a carefree childhood straight into a life of misery.

Some will object that things like female circumcision, wife beating, arranged marriages and the like are not part of Islam but are cultural holdovers from old times. Hirsi Ali makes the point that while it is true that these predated Islam, today their proponents use Islam to justify them. So it's a distinction without a difference, the point being that it is Islam that needs to be reformed.

Muslim families may appear tightly nit, but it's all with a condition; that each member absolutely obey the various dictates. If anyone, especially a woman, strays, she is at the very least disowned (even by "loving" parents), or even killed by family members.

Wife beatings were (are) at epidemic levels in the Muslim world. At night it was a regular occurance to hear the husband next door (or farther away) beat his wife. Later, in Holland, Hirsi Ali discovered that it was also widespread among Muslim immigrants.

We only know Ayaan Hirsi Ali because she chose to escape from an arranged marriage. In 1992, while in Somalia, a man approached her father while they were at a local Mosque and asked to marry his eldest daugher, Hirsi Ali. After a brief conversation with him her father immediately agreed, and Hirsi Ali was given no say in the matter. Upon meeting him she took an immediate dislike to him. After a brief ceremony in Somalia, she was supposed to travel to Canada to live with him, but fled during a stopover in Germany. She made her way to Holland, and applied for refugee status.

She admits that she invented a story on her application to gain asylum, which she said was a common practice. She also changed her name somewhat, from Ayaan Hirsi Magan to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She also changed her age, saying she was born in 1967 instead of 1969. She did this to escape detection by her Somali clan, who were trying to track her down. She has never hidden this fact, and even while running for parliament was open about these things.

While in the refugee camps in Holland she met people of other cultures, particularly Ethiopians and Bosnians. She was also exposed to the openness of Western society. As a Muslim she had been taught that if a woman simply went outside with any part of her body uncovered, men would go wild with sexual lust. She saw that this was completely false, which led her to question the basis for so many Muslim restrictions.

She also saw the Somali refugees develop a "culture of entitlement". They learned that if you cry "racism" you get what you want, Hirs Ali relates how some even bragged about this to her. Most of them sat around the camps complaining about their situation, rather than doing anything about it.

Hirsi Ali was not one to sit around, however. She got a job as translator, and eventually put herself through Leiden University, graduating with a Masters in Political Science. After this she took a position as a researcher with Wiardi Beckman Foundation, a Dutch think tank.

During this time she came to observe the effects of Dutch multiculturalism, and concluded that it's effects were harmful on both the immigrants and to Holland.
As she tells it, theDutch think they're doing good by letting Muslim minorities like the Somalis live in their own communities, maintaining their own way of life, and attend their own schools. In reality this perpetuates the complaining, the culture of entitlement, and the wife beatings. Female circumcision is widely practiced by these Muslims while in Holland. In sum, multiculturalism breads extremism because Muslim immigrants never integrate, and thus never accept Western values.

Unable to reconcile Islam with the brutal way in which it is practiced in much of the world, Hirsi Ali rejected it and became an apostate. She has not adopted any other religion, and describes herself now as an athiest. She also became quite estranged from her family, and although at times her father would warm up to her, in general ties with family and clan have been cut.

It was Dutch response the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, that shocked her into the realization that most people in the West had no idea of what Islam was about. She heard one politically correct homily after another that Islam was a "religion of peace" and that how "only a small minority were violent". Finally she had to act. She made it her mission to educate the Dutch, and eventually the world, on the realities of Islam; that whatever it was in theory, it was anything but peaceful in practice.

She was approached by the Liberal (VVD (People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, a conservative party) Party to run for parliament. She was elected in 2002, although as it turned out they were not part of the government that was formed. She had three goals as a parlamentarian: to make Holland wake up and stop tolerating the oppression of Muslim women, two, to start a debate among Muslims about reforming their faith, and lastly for Muslim women to stop tolerating their abuse and realize that no, they don't have to accept beatings because "it's the will of Allah".

While in Holland she met Theo van Gogh (a descendent of you-know-who) and in 2004 they made Submission Part I, a 10 minute film about the plight of women under Islam. "Submission" is Arabic for "Islam". The writing on the woman's body are passages from the Quran. Here it is

A part II was never made because in November of 2004 Theo van Gogh was murdered by radical Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri in broad daylight on an Amsterdam street. Bouyere ambushed van Gogh as the latter rode to work on his bicycle, shooting him several times, nearly sawing off his head with a butcher knife, then pinning to his chest a 5 page letter. The letter was addressed to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and was a threat that she would be next.

Hirsi Ali was already under police protection for threats made against her, but at this point it went to an altogether different level. Security details took her out of the country, and for the next several months she was effectively in hiding.

In 2006 she found her Dutch citizenship revoked when the government ruled that she had lied about her age and name on her application in 1997 when coming into Holland. While true, the entire affair was as much a result of political pressure as anything.
The whole thing was very controversial, and she resigned from parliament over the issue. As it turned out, however, the government fell over the issue. In the end the decision was overturned and she was allowed to keep her citizenship. Despite this trauma, she explains in the book that in the end she holds no grudge.

In 2006 she accepted a position with the American Enterprise Institute. Her role there "will be researching the relationship between the West and Islam; women's rights in Islam; violence against women propagated by religious and cultural arguments; and Islam in Europe." She maintains her Dutch citizenship, and the government of Holland still pays for her protection.

There was some recent controversy over this, and October 5 Holland announced that they would't pay for her protection while abroad. This forced her to go back to Holland. However, just yesterday it was revealed that she was back in the US, where her protection is now privately funded. The Dutch parliament is due to take up the issue again this week. As Anne Applebaum points out, given that many of the threats against her are from groups based in Holland, and she is essentially defending Dutch values, the least they could do is protect her from assassination.

Hirsi Ali has little patience with those who talk about "moderate" versus violent Islam. To her, the "moderates" are simply those who keep their heads down. She thinks that Islam must truely be reformed, and that Muslims are going to have to "enter into a conversation with Allah" if they are to be successful. As Islam is practiced now, a "conversation with Allah" is inconceivable. To her, this is the crux of the matter.

She also has no patience with those who insist that 90% (or whatever figure) of Muslims are peaceful and it is only a tiny minority who are a problem. Hirsi Ali is not talking about bombings or hijackings. She is talking about the horrors visited upon women in the name of Islam; beatings, honor killings, circumcision, complete denial of rights and total second class citizenship. She also has no patience for those who try and counter her criticism with attacks on Christianity. There is simply no comparison, for example, between the sex scandals rocking the Catholic Church in the US and what goes on under Islam. The former is a crime not approved of by the Bible or officialy by any Christian. On the other hand, it is quite common throughout the Muslim world for Imams to teach that men should beat their wives and kill their daughters if they do not obey ("honor killings"). In fact, one of Hirsi Ali's accomplishments as parliamentarian was make the police gather data on honor killings. They found it was more widespread than anyone had dared imagine.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the bravest women on the planet, and deserves the support of all freedom loving men and women. Whether you agree with all that she says is irrelevant. At the very least, Islam must learn to accept criticism without widespread resort to threats and violence. And she is right; there is no comparison between how Islam and other religions are practiced, for the moral equivalence crowd is simply wrong. I wish Hirsi Ali would adopt Christianity, but given all that she has been through can understand why she is an athiest. It is wrong and bad to say that "Islam is evil". It is also wrong to say that there is no problem with Islam except for a few extremists. Hirsi Ali asks Muslims to speak with Allah and ask the hard questions, for their religion needs to be reformed. She asks the rest of us not to ignore a problem in our midst, as we must not be blinded by multiculturalism or political correctness. In the end, everyone should listen to her.

More

There is, of course, much out there about Hirsi Ali, but in recent months these two articles struck me as worth posting:

She's No Fundamentalist: What People Get Wrong About Ayaan Hirsi Ali by Christopher Hitchens. Here's Hitch on Western intellectuals who essentially say she ought to shut up.

In ACLU circles, we often refer to ourselves as "First Amendment absolutists." By this we mean, ironically enough, that we prefer to interpret the words of the Founders, if you insist, literally. The literal meaning in this case seems (to us) to be that Congress cannot inhibit any speech or establish any state religion. This means that we defend all expressions of opinion including those that revolt us, and that we say that nobody can be forced to practice, or forced to foreswear, any faith. I suppose I would say that this is an inflexible principle, or even a dogma, with me. But who dares to say that's the same as the belief that criticism of religion should be censored or the belief that faith should be imposed? To flirt with this equivalence is to give in to the demagogues and to hear, underneath their yells of triumph, the dismal moan of the trahison des clercs and "the enlightenment driven away." Perhaps, though, if I said that my principles were a matter of unalterable divine revelation and that I was prepared to use random violence in order to get "respect" for them, I could hope for a more sympathetic audience from some of our intellectuals.

Jihadwatch excerpts an interview with her published in Reason magazine (but not available online). Here's a section of the interview

Hirsi Ali: ...There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don't all follow the rules of Islam, but there's really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There's nothing moderate about it.

Reason: So when even a hard-line critic of Islam such as Daniel Pipes says, "Radical Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution," he's wrong?

Hirsi Ali: He's wrong. Sorry about that.

And most importantly, regarding the current mainstream Western policy of appeasement and multiculturalism

The problem (of Islam) is not going to go away. Confront it, or it's only going to get bigger

Ditto that.

Posted by Tom at 9:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 16, 2007

Hanging with Laura Ingraham

Ok, so I didn't really hang out with Laura Ingraham today, but the title sounds good.

I went over to the Arlington Costco to her book signing, where I got an autographed copy of Power to the People.

Unfortunately I forgot my regular camera, so was left with the camera on my cell phone, which is only VGA quality. The Costco lady accidentally hit the button too soon, and since there were a lot of people waiting it wasn't appropriate to reset it for another try. It doesn't really matter though, I really just wanted an autographed copy of her book

Although I obviously haven't read the book yet, I did skim through sections while waiting in line, and she has talked a lot about it on her radio show. In her book she talks about negative social trends that are harming our country, such as the "pornification" of the culture. As you may imagine, I'm completely in sympathy with her.

It seemed like people of all ages were waiting in line. It was especially encouraging to see younger people, those who looked to be in their teens or 20s, as they are the ones who need this the most, since they are under the most peer pressure.

The man behind me was with his two preteen daughters, and he was telling them about Laura and her message, as they are obviously in school when she is on the air. But he was telling them that he was going to have Laura sign it to them as well as him, and in the coming months they were going to learn about her and her message.

There's a man who loves his daughters. Sometime small things give me great hope for our country.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 29, 2007

Book Review - God, Guns, & Rock 'N Roll

Theodore "Ted" Nugent - a.k.a. The Nuge, Uncle Ted, Terrible Ted, Sweaty Teddy, Deadly Tedly, Great Gonzos, The Atrocious Theodocious and The Motor City Madman

Hard rock guitarist, with over 35 million albumns sold. Rifle, pistol, and bow hunter. Member of the Board of Directors of the NRA (second only to Oliver North in number of votes in the last election). National spokesman for the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE). Famously anti-drug and alcohol; "clean and sober my whole life!" Plays hard and works hard. Devoted family man. Special deputy sheriff in his home county in Michigan. Writes a newspaper column. Carries a sidearm whereever he goes, strapping it back on backstage after each concert. Writer and star of The Outdoor Channel's Ted Nugent Spirit of the Wild show. Hasn't bought meat from the grocery since 1969.

His heros are Rosa Parks and Fred Bear. The former needs no introduction, the latter is his hunting mentor.

Either you love Ted or you hate him. I'm definately in the former camp.

Anyone who's ever heard or seen him interviewed knows he is a man of strong opinions, and is not shy about speaking his mind. He speaks fast and is very articulate. Whether you agree with him on anything or not, you're forced to acknowledge that this is not your ordinary drug-addled rocker. Nugent is a man of energy and it shows.

I've never been much of a concert goer, and have never seen him live. Several years ago I switched over to contemporary Christian music, and so do not listen to the type of stations that play his music. In fact, I don't listen to much if any secular music at all anymore, but with Nugent I'll make an exception. He was one of my favorites from the old days.

I picked up his 2000 book, God, Guns, & Rock 'N Roll, while at my brother's house recently, deciding I needed a less intense book to read and review after all of the heavy political books I've been reviewing. "...less intense book" and I picked up something by Ted Nugent? What was I thinking....

Truth be told, the book is about 2% God, 8% Rock 'n Roll, and 90% Guns. He is a self-described "gun nut" and not in the slightest ashamed of it. In fact, he revels in it. Anyone who doesn't like it can go you-know-where as far as he is concerned.

Ted Nugent is a controversial figure, for his hard-driving intense brand of rock 'roll as much for his politics. On the one hand, he's got enough money not to care whether you like him or not. On the other, he recognizes that there are plenty of people who would take away our Second Amendment and hunting rights if given half a chance, and so he has devoted much of his public life to ensuring that never happens.

Of course the liberals hate him.

He is active in dozens of organizations, some he founded himself, such as the Ted Nugent Kamp for Kids and the Ted Nugent United Sportsmen of America, to his member on the Board of Directors of the NRA, to many others as well.

Ted's god is the god of nature; the "Great Spirit", as he describes it. Nature is "God's creation", and it has a beauty nothing we create can match. He says he believes in the Ten Commandments, but never discusses Christianity or any other religion per se. Rather, to him spirituality is to be found in being part of nature. Hunting, fishing, and guns are all part of this. He sees hunting as feeding his family, as providing "life sustaining food" as he continually calls it. After killing an elephant or wild boar in Africa he goes to pains to describe how the local villagers use every part of the animal. To him this is the ultimate nexus between man and nature.

He doesn't just hunt with guns either, but I think actually prefers bow and arrow because he enjoys the challenge of having to get closer to his prey. The hunt to him is a very spiritual affair.

He has hunted with every major American Indian tribe, and I can imagine that Ted visualizes himself as being in their tradition. In another life he would be a great Indian chief, leading his warriors on the hunt. I imagine his people would have been very well fed.

Environmentalists want to preserve nature from man. Nugent, and other conservationists like him, want to preserve nature for man. The conflict between environmentalist, who sees man as essentially evil, and conservationist, who believes we can be enlightened stewards, is more than just hunter vs anti-hunter. It reveals a deep philosophical divide in how one views man and our relationship with nature. While I don't think he mentions the word "environmentalist" once in his book, he makes clear his distain for anti-gun and anti-hunters.

We are stewards of nature, but also a part of it. Hunting, camping, and fishing are not merely activities that we do on the weekend or when we're bored, they're part of our essence, of who we are. Life out of nature is unimaginable to Nugent. Buying one's meat at the grocery is unimaginable for him.

Other than on issues surrounding guns and hunting, Nugent reveals little on how he thinks about the other issues of our time. He has performed in Iraq for the troops in USO-sponsored shows, but of course that was after the book was written. Family means the world to him, and he describes homosexuality as "weird". On the gun issue alone I'm sure he votes Republican, but rather doubt he feels much affinity with social conservatives. And I'm sure he opposes big developers who want to plow under everything to make room for yet another shopping mall. As mentioned earlier, he spends much of his time making sure that there are plenty of animals for us to hunt. You'll find no greater friend of forests, wetlands, clean air and water than Ted Nugent.

I've never been one for hunting, but have done my share of fishing. I'm also above average in gun ownership, and a proud member of the NRA. Ted Nugent has received my vote for a place on the NRA Board of Directors in the past, and can count on it again. And who knows, if his next concert tour takes him near me, I may just go see him.

Posted by Tom at 8:50 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 11, 2007

Book Review - Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States

Just about anywhere you look in the United States today, and the debate is over how much of a threat radical Islam is to us. Some say a lot, some only a little, but it's certainly the subject of much discussion. This is right and good, for certainly only those farthest to each end of the spectrum would argue that radical Islam isn't a threat at all.

China is something of a different story. People are starting to become aware that all is not well in the People's Republic, and that describing them simply as a "competitor" is insufficient. Much of the discussion revolves around predatory trade practices, and recently shoddy quality that has and can have fatal consequences for us and our pets for consumers of Chinese products.

Human rights is another issue of concern. The Falun Gong movement has made us aware that the Chinese authorities see any expression of religion as a threat. Even as the memory of the massacre of several hundred people in Tiananmen Square fades, issues such as brutal enforcement of China's "one child" policy, and environmental concerns and displacement of thousands of people stemming from projects like the Three Gorges Dam.

Otherwise, when we think of a military threat from China, most of us think of a war over Taiwan. That has certainly been the subject of most of my posts on the People's Republic.

Jed Babbin and Edward Timperlake do us a favor in Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States, by showing us that the threat from China goes well beyond Taiwan.

The book is divided into three sections: The first is a Tom Clancy-style series of short chapters detailing several scenarios involving war between the United States, China, and other countries. In the second - very short - section, the authors recommend actions we should take to deter China. The third is the appendix, in which the major document is the 2005 report to Congress on the military power of the PRC by the Department of Defense.

The best is undoubtably the first section. The fictionalized wars take place between 2008 and 2012. Three things make them valuable: One, most of the scenarios are ones that many or most of us I think have not considered. Two, they bring politics into the decision-process in a way that is realistic, and in any real-world situation cannot be avoided. One valid cricitism of Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising was that once the politicians had decided on war they largely disappeared from view. Third, the authors write each so that they are less of a military techothriller and more of a geopolitical warning; there's less bombs and bullets, and more strategizing by each side. Much of the action takes place "off camera".

No US president is ever named, but it is obvious in some of the ones occuring after the 2008 election that she is Hillary Clinton. In some she performs reasonably well as commander-in-chief, much less so in others. The importance of presidential decision-making is driven home.

The scenarios are as follows

* The War of National Unity - a fight over Taiwan
* The Second Korean War - The DPRK decides it is time to impose it's will on Seoul. Everyone gets dragged into the fight
* The First Oil War - The death of Fidel Castro prompts Hugo Chavez to invervene in Cuba. The Chinese support him in his power play. The United States does not sit idly by.
* The Sino-Japanese War - Beijing decides to take the oil and gas fields near the Japanese owned Senkaku Islands.
* World War Oil - Things really get ugly in the Middle East. Driven by an insatiable appetite for oil, on which all of our economies depend, everyone intervenes.
* The Assassin's Mace War - Cyberwar gets hot. Real hot.

Unfortunately despite all this, the authors don't really make their case; if you're looking for a tightly reasoned book with lots of documentation on Chinese intentions you'll have to look elsewhere. I picked the book up at CPAC 2007 in the hopes of getting Babbin's autograph, but then I missed his book signing.

My own theory, based mainly on some Naval War College studies, is that China will step up it's efforts to integrate Taiwan shortly after the 2008 Olympics, which are to be held in Bejing. They'll only resort to war as a last resort, or if the government in Taipei does something stupid like declares independence.

But as the authors stress, that's only one scenario in which we might end up having to fight China. Beijing has been all-too-friendly with our enemies around the world, from Iran to Venezuela. We need to take notice, and prepare accordingly.

Posted by Tom at 9:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 5, 2007

Book Review: Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild

Liberals, or at least a goodly portion of them, have come unglued these past 7 years. I don't mean that they're just mad at President Bush over Iraq or Katrina, or at Republicans in Congress over the Terri Schiavo affair.

I mean some of them have absolutely gone nuts.

Michelle Malkin documents this phenomenon in her 2005 book Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. It's 170 pages of, well, unhinged actions by liberals.

Just so we're clear, the purpose of this book was not to do some soft of scientific study of the left and right to see which side is worse. There's no "balance" in this book simply because that's not the point. And truth be told, this is not the type of book that I normally don't buy or review here. I picked it up mainly because she was at CPAC 2007, and wanted her autograph. I already had In Defense of Internment, so I chose this one.

Read the title again if you don't get it; her purpose is to "expose liberals gone wild". And expose she does.

Malkin provides example after example of one nutty liberal after another doing absolutely crazy things. Here are some of the subject areas.

- Racism and sexism. Some of the most vile attacks are on Condolezza Rice, but Malkin has received her share. "You are one sick gook" is among the nicer things they say about her. Most of what she reprints in the book is vile beyond description. Conservtives who happen to be minorities are regularly called an "oreo", "coconut", or "banana" (black/brown/yellow on the outside but white inside, if you're not familiar).

- For some reason many on the left seem not be able to communicate without resorting to foul language. I've seen much of this myself at many "anti-war" demonstrations.

- Ever since at least the 80s it has been typical of leftists to try and prevent conservatives from speaking at public events. As of late it has become fashionable to ambush and throw a pie at the face of the speaker.

- Assassination fascination. You don't have to go far on left-wing sites to read people wishing Bush or Cheney were dead. But we're not just talking about Internet posts. One Sarah Vowell even wrote a book about her fixation called Assassination Vacation. Another wrote a play called "I'm Gonna Kill the President!" the president, of course, being George W Bush. Yet a third example is Nicholson Baker's novel Checkpoint, another fantasy about murdering you-know-who.

- Hollywood. Sigh. We've always known that they're mostly a bunch of leftists, but ever since the election of George W Bush they've become... unhinged.

- Colleges and Universities get another big sigh. Ward Churchill may have gotten much of the media attention, but believe you me, he's not alone in his opinions.

- The hard left absolutely does not support the troops. Stories of stolen or vandalized yellow ribbons, keyed cars (ones that displayed an American flag or support the troops sticker) and such are legendary in places like Seattle. Leftist administrators and professors wage unrelenting war on military campus recruiters.

And all this was before the Amanda Marcotte affair.

The book is entertaining to read, though you can only take so much of it at any one sitting. Page after page of one crazy liberal after another gets to be a but much after awhile. If you want documentation on the above without buying the book, just go to her website and type "unhinged" into the search tool. Enjoy.

Michelle Malkin herself drives some liberals crazy.

Not like Ann Coulter, to be sure, who taunts liberals and so brings much of it on herself.

Only chapter of this book is about the hatred that is directed towards Malkin herself. No doubt that anyone in public life will receive death threats, and will receive messages of hate. But but with Malkin so much of it is racist and sexist in nature. Perhaps because she is an attractive woman, the sexual nature of the attacks is particulary vicious. And we all know that any minority (Malkin's parents are Filipino, her maiden name is Maglalang) conservative comes in for especially rude treatment. In 2005 she posted a sample of the hate mail that she receives every day. I'm sure nothing has changed.

This book has driven some liberals crazy. It's obvious fromt he reviews on Amazon that there's a war being raged by the left to bring the *star* rating for the book down. I suppose you can say the right is equally trying to drive the ratings up, my point is simply that if you read some of the left reviews I'll think you'll agree that some of them are, well, unhinged.

Interestingly, the author of the Publishers Weekly review on Amazon also can't resist taking a gratuitous shot at the book, saying that she

...scoured blogs, speeches, media commentaries and even transcripts from Oprah for material, though she misses the boat in a number of instances, most notably in her obliviousness to sarcasm and irony, and she overextends her analytical prowess by offering shallow, shoddy critiques of theater, literature and modern art.

"sarcasm and irony"? What a joke. The examples of unhinged behaviour she cites are pretty clearly from people who have gone round the bend.

Avoiding the Temptation

It's always tempting to think that "the other side" is worse in every respect; they're more corrupt, hypocritical, unreasoned, nasty, unhinged. It's also tempting to excuse certain behaviors when they occur on your side, while condeming it on the other. This temptation to be avoided.

An equal temtation to be avoided is falling into habit of throwing up your hands and saying the "both sides do it". Sometimes this is true, and sometimes it isn't. There are times when Republicans, as a whole, are more corrupt than the Democrats, and vice versa. Likewise, there are times when one side is more nasty than the other. I believe we live in a time where as a whole the left is nastier than the right.

Some of this, I think, is simply due to the fact that liberals were out of power in both houses of Congress and the presidency. We shall see what happens if a Democrat wins the White House in 2008 and they retain the House and Senate.

Yes It Occurs on the Right

When Code Pink leader Medea Benjamin says that "Whenever I appear on TV shows such as Hannity and Colmes or Bill O'Reilly, I receive vicious messages on my phone and threatening emails that scare my children and anger my husband with their variations on the theme of "Die, you ugly, communist, lesbian, American-hating bitch."" I believe her.

When Ralph Peters says he gets email from the Islam-hating right telling him that Islam is evil and that he is "a foolish "dhimmi," blind to the conspiratorial nature of Islam", I believe him too.

And we've all been to websites in which authors or commenters go too far in attacking the left.

Lastly, yes I recall the 1990s when it many on the right fell for every Vince Foster/Waco/ dead bodyguard/case of sexual harassment case out there. I felt the temptation, but always found myself backing off when reading "the other side".

The Final Analysis

In the end I have to agree with Malkin that these past several years the left is more unhinged than the right. The insults at Christians, the racist and sexist attacks, are simply unparalleled on the right. The outlandish behavior and outrageous statements come mostly from the left.

I also know this; that when (and it's always only a matter of time) the Democrats control the White House and at least one house of congress, I'll get out Unhinged and vow not to become a right-wing equivalent of the liberals that Malkin exposes. And I'll try and hold other conservatives to the same standard.

Michelle Malkin blogs at MichelleMalkin.com Her ground-breaking video blog is HotAir.com

July 26 Update

Michelle documents more unhinged leftist behavior. You won't believe some of this stuff. Given some of the stuff they say about her, I'd say she's one of the the bravest woman around. Keep on bloggin'!

Posted by Tom at 8:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 18, 2007

Book Review: Six Minutes to Freedom

Time for a break from the war, Islam, and current events.

I'd forgotten just how rotten Manuel Noriega was. I remember the months leading up to Operation Just Cause, about all of the reports of harassment of US military personnel by Noriegas PDF (Panamanian Defense Forces) troops. It seemed to me then, as it does now, that President Bush gave Noriega a very long leash, with which the latter proceeded to hang himself. Besides using the PDF to hassle Americans at every opportunity, Noriega foolishly declared war on the United States. At any rate, there certainly was no "rush to war". When OJC was finally launched in December of 1989, it was violent but short.

This is not the place to rehash the history of United States involvement in Panama. the authors of Six Minutes to Freedom briefly discuss Noriega's rise to power, and how he was initially an ally of the U.S., how the CIA worked with him in an attempt to map drug trafficking routes, and finally our disillusionment with him and his eventual inditement by a Miami grand jury.

What I, nor anyone else outside of a select few knew, was that one of the first acts of OJC was the daring rescue of an American civilian by Delta Force from Modelo Prison ("Carcel Modelo").

This book, Six Minutes to Freedom: How a Band of Heros Defied a Dictator and Helped Free a Nation, is about that rescue operation and the events leading up to it.

The subject of the book is the saga of Kurt Muse, who is one of the authors.

Muse grew up in Panama, working as a small businessman. His wife was a schoolteacher for the DOD, a fact which would be of great importance after his arrest.

Muse came to hate Manual Noriega and his regime. Taking matters into his own hands, he and another man discovered a way to "break in" on Panamanian national radio, seize control of the transmissions, and briefly broadcast their message to the entire nation. They learned to do this after accidentally discovering the the frequencies of the much-weaker "repeater" signal sent from the broadcasting station to the main transmitter. After that, it was simply a matter of setting up small transmitters that could temporarily overpower the repeater. At certain times, for example in the middle of one of Noriega's speaches, they would interrupt the broadcast and broadcast their own anti-Noriega message.

Although they initially started out as lone operators, at some point the CIA became aware of their opportunities, and after one false start, sent an agent that they were able to trust. This agent, who only identified himself as "Father Frank", provided cash, which Muse insists was only spent on operations.

Their eventual plan was to seize control of the airwaves during a national vote scheduled for May of 1989. They hoped to urge enough anti-Noriega voters to the polls so that he would be defeated by a margin so large that cheating could not hide. However, by this time Noriega had become infuriated by the pirate broadcasts and was pulling out all the stops to identify the perpetrators.

Before the elections, however, Muse was arrested at Panama City Airport after a trip back from Miami. It is still unclear as to why he was arrested, for those who arrested him appeared for several days to have no idea what it was all about, as the interrogations rambled through several subjects with no clear direction. After searching his residence and cars, however, the interrogators eventually found evidence that led them to the transmitters. Once they realized who they had a forced confession was inevitable.

Transfered to the notorious Modelo Prison, Muse was put in solitary confinement, with a soldier outside his cell who's sole task was shoot him if a rescue was attempted. Conditions were abyssmal.

Fortunately for Muse, his wife's status as a DOD employee meant that he had some legal protection under the Panama Canal Treaty. The US military, for example, insisted on and got permission for brief visits every other day. Among other things, they brought him food so that he wouldn't have to survive on prison fare, books and used the visits to assessed his medical condition. More importantly, however, his visitors gathered vital intelligence for Delta Force, which at the direction of President Bush was planning a rescue operation.

No less important than the rescue of Kurt Muse was the securing of his family. Because of his actions, everyone related to Muse was in danger of being arrested and tortured by Noriega's thugs. Once it because known that Muse was arrested, the CIA and US Military went to herculean efforts to gather them up and bring them to safety in the US.

The rest of the book details the rescue operation. I'm going to recommend that you purchase the book or pick it up at your local libarary, so I won't spoil it for you by providing details of the mission. It's an amazing story, one that no Hollywood fiction can touch. Suffice it to say that these things never go smoothly, as Mr Murphy always seems to come along for the ride.

In the end, you can look at Kurt Muse as someone who risked his life attempting to get rid of a noxious dictator, or as a man who had no business risking his family and friends on a foolish venture. Muse himself was racked by doubts about what he was doing. Although I can certainly sympathise those who would criticize him, I have to put him in the hero category. Anyone gutsy enough to risk his life to rid the world of evil gets my vote.

Posted by Tom at 9:08 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 30, 2007

Book Review: My Year Inside Radical Islam

"At twenty-tree, I was a devout believer in radical Islam. I worked for a Saudi-funded charity in Ashland, Oregon, that was accused of funding al Qaeda. Funny thing, I was born Jewish. At the time, it all seemed pretty normal."

Fortunately for Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, author of My Year Inside Radical Islam, he eventually recognised the truth about the radical Islam that he had come to believe in.

For almost a year, however, he was a devout follower of Salafism, that form of Islam that encompases Saudi Wahabism. While at the Al Haramain "charity", more experienced Salafist Muslims instructed him on the rules of their faith, which included how to perform the most minute details of daily life. He was told that he must eat with his right hand only and wipe with only the left after using the restroom. His pants must be above his ankles but also below his knees. Neither dogs nor women not your wife were to be touched (which forbade handshakes). All music was forbidden. You must neither pay nor receive interest payments. All men must grow a full-length beard (sorry, no goatees, he was told). If you sneeze you must say "Alhamdulillah", and Muslims who hear you say this must respond with "Yarhamukallah". Strict segregation of the sexes was enforced, so that when he visited the home of a fellow Muslim all women were relegated to the basement and communicated with the men upstairs through an intercom. If this was not possible, sheets were hung inbetween rooms to prevent even accidental sightings. Games of any sort were haram (forbidden) because there is (according to the Salafists) a prohibition in Islam against spending time in "idle activities". On and on the rules went. Believing that if they were the will of God who was he to question them, he obeyed, however reluctantly.

Islam did not start out this way for Gartenstein-Ross.

His first experience with Islam was at a Sufi Mosque in Venice, Italy, while studying there as a student.

It was only after getting a job at the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation in Ashland Oregon, sold to him as work at a Muslim charity, that he conversion to Salafism began.

As indictated at top, Gartenstein-Ross was born to non-practicing Jewish parents in liberal Ashland, Oregon. They rejected traditional Judaism and joined a movement known as the "Infinite Way", which had been founded by one Joel Goldsmith. The Infinite Way is a sort of "disorganized religion", that encourages followers to seek their own path. There is no enforced doctrine, but rather followers are encouraged to seek "their own unlimited potential that could only be harnessed through spiritual conscionsness" (quote from Gartenstein-Ross's book. I could find no definition of the faith on the Infinite Way website.

With such a vague religion at home, Daveed was not provided any foundation, and thus his search for spiritual truth was something he would have to explore on his own. He did not come to Islam all-of-a-sudden; there was no "thunderclap" moment. Rather, it was a series of experiences that led him to the faith.

One of those was was discussions about faith with his Christian friends. They tried to convert him in a somewhat heavy-handed manner, offering arguments that he did not find satisfactory. So when he left high-school to attend college, he was looking for answers, and so far Christianity had not fit the bill.

A freshman at Wake Forest University in 1979, he quickly became a campus activist, involved in liberal "social justice" causes. He met up with al-Husein Madhany, a Kenyan-born Muslim who would remain his friend up to and including the present day. it was at Wake Forest that he converted to Islam, first attending a moderate Sufi Mosque. It was also there that he began dating Amy, the woman who would eventually become his wife.

After graduating from Wake Forest, he returned home to Oregon and went to work for the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation. It was there that his coworkers pushed him towards Salafism. Their primary argument was simply that this is what the Quran demanded, and it is not the place of any person to question the will of Allah. Not knowing enough about the Quran to counter their arguments, it all seemed to make sense to him.

As all of this was occuring, Gartenstein-Ross discovered some alarming things about his coworkers. They were virulently anti-semetic (despite knowing his Jewish background), admired the Taliban, and sought ways to support the Islamist army in Chechnya that was fighting the Russians; and trying to set up it's own state modeled on the Taliban. Members of the foundation visited local schools and organizations to "explain" Islam, but Gartenstein-Ross saw that these visits served to hide more than to reveal the nature of Salafism. Despite all this, he went along. It was, after all, the will of Allah.

After about a year at this foundation he moved to New York to attend law school, and it was here that he began what would become a journey away from Islam entirely and into Christianity. I won't spoil your read by going into details, you'll want to get the book yourself.

Suffice it to say that Al-Haramain was raided by the FBI, and several principles were indicted on tax and fraud charges, including smuggling $150,000 out of the country to Saudi Arabia, where, it is believed, it was funneled to al Qaeda and Chechnyan rebels. The organization was exposed as a front for al Qaeda and is now banned worldwide. Gartenstein-Ross contacted the FBI after his break with the organization (when he called they already knew who he was) and told them all that he knew about them. Two of the principles at Al Haramain, Pete Seda, and Soliman al-But'he were indited but fled the country, the former to Iran and the latter to Saudi Arabia. They are still fugitives. Saudi Arabia has since dissolved Al Haramain.

To show how much those at the Al-Haramain Foundation in Oregon had fooled the local community, Gartenstein-Ross describes local reaction after the FBI raid:

After Pete was indited, the local press was filled with an outpouring of community support for him. Rabbi David Zaslow had long been Pete's biggest public defender, and was undeterred by the inditctment. After it came down, he was quoted in the Medford Mail Tribune as saying that Pete has "been an outspoken spokesman against violence and terrorism, and he has earned my respect."

In the end, the book is a personal memoir (which is how it is advertised on the cover), not an in-depth analysis of Islam or Salafism. It is perhaps most useful as an insight as to how someone might be drawn toward radicalism.

Michelle Malkin interviewed Gartenstein-Ross and and you can view the videos at Hot Air.

All of my book reviews can be found here.

Posted by Tom at 8:00 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

May 6, 2007

Book Review: The Truth about Muhammed

This story is apocryphal but I think it's a good way to lead off this book review

A terrorist act is committed by a Muslim group that says it is acting in the name is Islam

The moderate Muslim condemns the act in no uncertain terms but then says that Islam has nothing to do with it, and that the terrorists have "hijacked" their religion.

The reformist Muslim condemns the act in no uncertain terms but admits that the way Islam is interpreted or taught is being used to justify violent terrorist acts.

Islam is a religion badly in need of reform. Moderate Muslims such as the one in our story are in denial. Christianity was reformed hundreds of years ago by movements started by men such as John Wycliffe, Martin Luther and John Calvin. Christianity has it's tensions with the modern world (the theory of evolution) but is largely comfortable with it.

Islam has never adated to the modern world. Indeed, Islam went the other direction in the 14th century, when theologians such as Ibn Taymiya (1263-1328) who with his followers developed the doctrine of takfir, essentially the Muslim equivalent of the inquisition. It was a "back to the Middle Ages" movement that has lasted to this day.

We simply cannot ignore the plain fact that Muslim terrorist groups use Islam to justify their actions. If we are going to change this situation then Islam is going to have to be reformed. Muslims have to change the way their religion is taught. This means going back and reexamining the basic tenants of the religion. And this means a no-holds barred look at Muhammed.

Robert Spencer does just that in The Truth About Muhammed: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion

What Spencer shows is that if reformers are to succeed they cannot skirt the hard facts of Muhammed's life. The must squarely confront the way the religion was founded and spread and reconcile these with the modern world. They have their work cut out for them, for their job will be much more difficult than it was for Luther and Calvin.

Here, then, are some of the facts that reformers have the face as laid out by Spencer:

The new faith of Islam was spread by Muhammed and his followers by warfare. Muhammed was personally involved in much of the fighting, and is renouned for his prowess on the battlefield. This would only be of academic consequence were it not for the fact that Muslims are supposed to look at Muhammed as their inspiration, as a model to emulate.

From Spencer's book, Muhammed the warrior is the single biggest problem that reformers with have to face. There is much killing by the Jewish tribes in the Old Testament, and it's all sanctioned by God. Much of Joshua, Kings, and Chronicles make for very difficult reading. But neither Jews nor Christians developed an equivalent of jihad that we carried to the present day. The Jews tried to live in peace once they got to the promised land (only the existance of powerful neighbors ensured this didn't happen) . In its first few centuries Christianity was spread peacefully. The apostles used persuasion, not violence.

Islam, though rests almost entirely on the actions of one person. While the Quran does contain many stories also found in the Old Testament (albeit quite different versions of them), Muslims pretty much ignore all prophets except for Muhammed. Neither Judiasm not Christianity face this "single prophet" problem. When your single prophet spent much of his time as a warrior, this is something that you either reconcile with the modern world or accept violence as part of your religion.

There are other problems too, that reformers must face. Muhammed took many wives, one who was quite young, and he made it clear that women were to have second class citizenship. The part of sharia law where it takes 4 male witnesses to convice a man of rape comes from an incident with one of his wives, Aisha. As a result, it is virtually impossible to convict a man of rape in Muslim societies. Muhammed also ordered that a man and woman convicted of adultery be stoned to death.

If Islam is to join the modern world, and integrate itself into small "l" liberal Western society, it must give up poligamy, marriage to virtual children, stoning, and must grant equal rights to women. In order to do so reformers are going to have to reinterpret many of Muhammed's actions, or find some way to explain that "that was then, this is now".

There is also the Muslim "poll tax", or jizya Muhammed instituted dhimmi status, required for Christians and Jews (all others were to be killed immediately). Apologists for Islam today who claim that Jews and Christians can leave peacefully in Muslim lands "forget" that this is only possible when the former two accept dhimmi status. Those who see the exponential increase in the number of Muslims in Europe as no big deal need to consider this fact. It is projected that Europe will be majority Muslim before the end of the 21st century. At the rate things are going, they'll try and force some sort of dhimmi status on non-Muslims as soon as they get the chance.

The last thing I'll mention is the incident of the "satanic verses", made famous by Salman Rushdie in his book of the same name. Essentially, Muhammed instructs his followers to worship pagan gods for one year as part of a deal he struck with a tribe called the Quraysh. Muslim tradition says that Satan spoke the words instead of Muhammed. If this is true, than it is certainly odd that God would let Satan speak through His prophet. If Muhammed was speaking of his own volition, then it is odd that he would instruct his followers to worship false gods, regardless of the political circumstances.

In theory I think it should not be terribly hard to do this. After all, Christians and Jews believe in the Old Testament, and none of us (save a few kooks) want to make Leviticas the law of the land. We know that they did things differently back then and why they had the laws they did. But we've learned how to square them with modern concepts. Although the job of Muslim reformers may be more difficult, it is hardly impossible.

Of course what is easy in theory is difficult in practice. Robert Spencer himself lives at an "undisclosed location", according to the book cover. Critics of Islam such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji, and Bridget Gabriel have their lives threatened. Theo van Gogh was murdered over a movie he made.

Note that none of the issues that I've brought up are relevant to whether Islam is "correct" or not. I am a Christian, and therefore believe that all other ways of seeing God are false. But here we are concerned with Islam as a political tool, as an inspiration to jihad, terrorism, and world conquest. If people want to take Muhammed as their prophet then my argument with them becomes strictly theological.

There is much more in The Truth About Muhammed that I will not be able to cover here. Of the many criticisms of this book, one that I found most curious was the one that Spencer "cherry picks" quotes from the Quran. When reading the book I found that it was not specific quotes that will be problematic for reformers, but rather the general outline of Muhammed's life. The fact that he spead the faith through the sword, was a poligamist, and considered women second-class citizens is not dependand on this or that quote.

Add this book to your library. It shouldn't be your only book about Islam, but is is a necessary addition.

Robert Spencer is also the founder and chief writer for Jihad Watch, and reguarly posts videos at Michelle Malkin's Hot Air.

Update

Raymond Ibrahim takes on Muslim apologist Karen Armstrong over at NRO. Be sure to check it out in order to see what anyone who criticizes Islam is up against.

Posted by Tom at 10:05 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 9, 2007

Book Review: 182 Days in Iraq

I first met Phil Kiver this past January in Washington DC at the Free Republic counter-protest of United for Peace and Justice. He had on his trademark Seattle Mariners baseball shirt with "Iraq Veteran" on the back. He had a bullhorn and was conversing with the leftists who were marching past us.

The left takes great delight in making the "chickenhawk" charge, and as such the marchers were shouting "Serve! Serve! Serve!" in unison at us.

Through his bullhorn Phil would say back to them "I served in Iraq!"

Without missing a beat, the leftists would holler right back "if you liked it so much GO BACK!"

It was just another example of how you just can't win with these people. If you didn't serve you're a chickenhawk, if you did you're a warmonger who needs to go back to Iraq.

About a month later I saw him at CPAC signing his book, 182 Days in Iraq: Plus a Year of Reaction at Home. I picked up a copy. When he discovered I had a blog, he asked me to review it.

The book is basically a diary-type account of what he did every day in Iraq. It reads like an daily journal, and it looks like he published it without any editing having been done. He writes like people talk, his writing is overly colloquial. It's a series of quick observances, or ramblings, actually. They're mostly about other people, and it doesn't really add up to much. You won't learn what it's like to be in the army, in Iraq, or whether our strategy and tactics are correct from this book. This is odd, since Kiver's role there was as a journalist. This should have granted him a unique opportunity to see the "big picture". The average person in a hierarchy sees the world through a straw. Unfortuantely whatever Kiver reported on doesn't make it into this book.

Here's a typical entry

16 Oct 0700 hrs I'm out at the range again. I love coming out hre to shoot my rifle. There is a soldier sitting across from me whos name is McKeever. He is loud, obnoxious, and funny. It must be all in the name. I'm sitting here, and it is like listening to me talking. It is silly how similar this guy is to me.

Two points; one, you learn nothing about the army, Iraq, much of what it is like to be there, or whether we are winning about entries like this. Two, by comparing himself to the soldier Kiver describes himself as "obnoxious"; not exactly the way most people would want to be described.

I can't really even say that I'm completely sure what his job was in Iraq. I figured out that he was some sort of army journalist, but beyond that it's not clear. Was he a print or video journalist? Where were his stories published? Nowhere in the text that I found does he say. There are several mentions of interviews he did with high-ranking officers, and of videos that he made, but it's never clear what happened to any of the material. There's also little or nothing of substance about the interviews. What did all these high-ranking officers say?

Kiver is an unabashed supporter of the president and our mission in Iraq. Unfortunately one gets little sense of how the war is going from this book, or what we are doing right or wrong. This too is a bit odd, given that as a journalist he surely saw and heard more than the average foot soldiers.

The only section of real substance was his coverage of the trial of Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, one of the soldiers eventually convicted in the Abu Ghraib scandal. Kiver was at his trial, and we get a few pages that are worth reading.

The worst aspect of the book is that Kiver constantly criticizes the people around him, especially those in his own unit. Everyone is a dope except for him and a few others. Here are a few quick samples

p. 90-91 Here is what happened when we were outside the fence. I drove out there in a regular Ford Explorer with Specialist Birmingham. She, as usual, did nothing to provide security, just wandered around aimlessly. I however, had my rifle lying across the hood of the vehicle, scanning the highway for any sign of trouble from the passing motorists.

p. 146
I got a serious a**-chewing from my sergeant major today. At least they know I am alive. I really enjoy getting yelled at by people who know I am smarter than them. At least he has a college degree from Texas A & M, I think. My supervisors seemed to be so threatened by anything I proposed. It was as if I was making those suggestings for my own benefit. I wrote some things down on paper about Captain Dunkelberger and his shortcomings and our most recent trip, so the sergeant major got his dander all up.

p.170
Today I had to help officers with very simple tasks, which is funny and sad at the same time. First, I took a DVD over to Brigadier General Pullhman, and had to sit there while they made sure there was sound on it. One of the soldiers appeared to be being a little friendly toward me. She was skinny, with straight lines for a body, except her teeth, which were all crooked. Of course, I blew her off, regardless of what she looked like (Kiver is married - Tom). After that I had to go up to the palace and help a lieutenant colonel play a videotape and record it onto a DVD at the same time. This involved pushing play on the VCR, then pushing record on the DVD player. I know I have a master's degree, but seriously, everywhere I look I see dumb people.

p 189
It seemed that every radio show wanted to interview my commander, Lieutenant General Metz, about what happened in Mozul yesterday. The officers were running around like they were on crazy pills. I was as calm as could be. It just seems that some people need to relax and realize that the war will go on with or without them and their clipboards or notebads. I had just finished a most relaxing lunch hour in Building 25, with my beverage of choice for the afternoon. We got the s&*t ready and put the general in front of the camera. I had to tell him to quit moving around. He has a habit of shifting to this left, because he gets nervous. Afterward, he slapped me on the back and told mne our army is great because anyone can tell a general if he is doing something wrong. Yeah, right!

The italicized portions are what Kiver added after being at home for a year.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point.

Any book will include observances of people that are negative. This is to be expected in any honest portrayal. But in this book it's all rather excessive. Kiver himself is perfect while so many others are dopes. Perhaps Kiver's unit was disfunctional; I am in no position to judge. But after awhile of reading personal criticisms it all gets to be a bit much and one begins to suspect that the situation may be the opposite of what Kiver says it is. It is also telling that there is no serious analysis of the situation, just random personal criticisms.

I recommend that you go read the customer reviews on Amazon of this book. Several are by people who say they served with Kiver in Iraq. They are...interesting.

Kiver does make friends with several soldiers from allied armies, notably Italy, and his experiences with them are vaguely interesting. Again, though, Kiver mostly writes about the small stuff of interpersonal relationships; anyone hoping for information on the difference between the allied armies will have to go elsewhere.

I appreciate that Phil took time to be with us as we countered UPJ.

I cannot recommend this book.

Up Next: The Truth About Mohammed: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion by Robert Spencer

Posted by Tom at 7:24 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

March 21, 2007

Book Review - "Future Jihad" - Part 6: al Qaeda

Scroll to bottom for links to previous parts of this review

It will seem odd to the uninitiated that a discussion of al Qaeda has not appeared until Part 6 of a book review on jihadism. To most people, I think, al Qaeda is the jihad. They've heard our president and leaders talk about a "War on Terror", and it was al Qaeda who attacked us on Sept 11. Most people by this point are suspicious about Islam as a "religion of peace", but they still see al Qaeda as the primary, if not the only, enemy.

And I am not trying to downplay the threat from al Qaeda. If they had the capability they would set off nuclear devices in all major American cities.

But as Walid Phares patiently explains in Future Jihad, the threat is far more extensive than that of a single terrorist organization, no matter how dangerous it might be. In the first five parts of my review of his book, I laid out the historical background and logic of jihad, and discussed the three parts of the jihad; the Wahabists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Khumeinists as explained by Phares.

In this part of the review I'll explain the origins of al Qaeda, why Phares describes it as a "neo-Wahabist" organization, why Osama bin Laden decided to directly attack America, and what he thought would happen after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The Origins of al Qaeda

As Phares tells it, "Osama bin Laden did not create al Qaeda. It created him." By this he means that it was the culture of jihad the permeates the Middle East that "sculpted" him for the roll. Comparing it to the Lord of the Rings series, Phares says that in the case of al Qaeda and OBL it was the "rings" that found the lord.

al Qaeda ("base" in Arabic) is described by Phares as "an advanced form of neo-Wahabi jihadism." He also calls them the "SS of the jihad" because they have taken Saudi-based Wahabist teachings and carried them to their logical conclusion. This is why during the 90s Saudi leaders did not reveal in any detail to American policy-makers the philosophy of al Qaeda, because to do so would have exposed them as having the same goals of al Qaeda minus the terrorism.

Once the Ottoman caliphate fell in 1924, and the ability to call for a jihad went private, al Qaeda was inevitable. As mentioned earlier, it is simply the logical conclusion of Sunni Salafi Wahabist Islam (think of it as concentric circles; Islam is the largest circle, them Salafism, then Wahabism, and finally al Qaeda).

Bin Laden's three causes were Beirut, Kabul, and Baghdad. He was in Beirut in the summer of 1982, and was incensed at the sight of Israeli jets rocketing downtown buildings. The invasion of Afghanistan by the athiest Soviets was the second outrage. The third trigger was the presence of American troops in Muslim lands, particularly Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and Medina.

The Importance of Afghanistan

Between the fall of the caliphate and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets in 1979, there were few opportunities to put the jihad into action. The Wahabists and Muslim Brotherhood could infiltrate their targets, but there was no place for those inclined to direct action to participlate. Even the fight against "the Zionist entity" was carried out by secular Arab regimes.

Afghanistan provided "the perfect war and a huge opportunity for the jihadists worldwide." The Saudis provided most of the support for the jihad, believing that they could achieve two objectives; the first to mobilize all Salafis under their banner, and secondly to get in the good graces of the West by showing that they were good allies in the fight against Soviet communism. The purpose of the first was so that the Saudis would be in control of the worldwide jihad, the second that it is simply easier to infiltrate a society that thinks you're their friend.

The war in Afghanistan drew jihadists from around the world. All those of the Salafist tradition, whether Wahabist, Muslim Brotherhood, or other factions, eagerly participated. Best of all from their standpoint, much of it was funded by the United States. Even those monies that came from Saudi Arabia came by way of oil revenues from the West. Painful as it is to admit it, our money jump-started the very jihadists we are fighting today.

Me: As commenter "jason" pointed out in the previous segment of this review, all jihadists are not allied in some sort of united movement. While they all share the same general goals, they spend considerable time fighting among themselves. In Afghanistan, for example, there was never a united front against the Soviets.

Me again: So was it right for us to support the Afghan resistance? Yes, even if we had known that we were creating jihadists. The reason is that Soviet communism was the greatest single threat to the planet in the latter part of the 20th century, and we had to do everything we could to defeat it. It was not knowable at the time whether the Soviet Union would fall, or what would be the straw that breaks the camels back. Some today say that the Soviet Union would have fallen anyway, even if we had not supported the Afghan resistance. But such things are unknowable. Our fault was not in supporting the Afghan resistance, or even in shipping them Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, it was in ignoring the country once the Soviets had left.

Why Attack America Directly

Put simply, bin Laden decided to attack America because his reading of the 1990s showed that we were a paper tiger. Time and again he or other jihadist terrorist organizations attacked Americans and got away with it.

The list of attacks by jihadist groups on America in the 80s and 90s that we did not respond to is long: Beirut(1983 Marine Corps barracks), Algeria, Somalia, the 1993 World Trade Center attack, Khobar Towers, Chechnya, Bosnia (we allowed a jihadist brigade to form up and fight "alongside" us), ignoring the Taliban, the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole.

Worse, on Feb 22, 1998 Osama bin Laden issued a formal declaration of war against the United States. He had all his t's crossed and i's dotted; the text met all of the legal requirements as established by centuries of Islamic law. Yet the United States completely ignored it. Bin Laden was stunned.

His assumption was that it was a sign from Allah that America was ripe for the picking.

What Osama bin Laden Thought Would Happen after September 11

Osama bin Laden thought that three things would happen after the attacks

Popular Chaos: Bin Laden thought that Americans would rise up by the millions against the government. He thought that congress and the president would be paralyzed and that the economy would collapse.

Backlash on Arabs and Muslims: Bin Laden expected us to do what he would do if the situation was reversed; slaughter anyone remotely associated with the enemy. Let us not think that by "backlash" bin Laden was expecting what we would call "discrimination" or even name-calling; he was expecting pogroms of the sort that used to happen against Jews in Czarist Russia. He thought there would be armed strife whereby fascist militia groups would murder Muslims by the hundreds or even thousands.

American Wrath Overseas: Just as bin Laden would have slaughtered his enemies at home, he would have done likewise with a foreign enemy that dared to attack him. He was thus expecting us to lash out at all Muslims and Arabs overseas, perhaps even using nuclear weapons in a mass slaughter.

The net result, he thought, would be that the United States would be in disarray and Arab Sunni Muslims would rally around him and annoint him the new caliph.

What Might Have Happened

It is easy to smile at what bin Laden thought would happen, for in fact he was wrong on all counts. But what if he had waited 5 - 10 years? What if he had waited until he was able to infiltrate hundreds into this country instead of barely more than a dozen?

Instead of 19 hijackers on 4 airplanes, imagine 50 - 60 on a dozen or more.

Imagine also that the terrorists are not only boarding airplanes, but that al Qaeda has infiltrated people into the FAA, where they now work as air traffic controllers. Others are mechanics at working at airlines. On the appointed day they all work in unison. The air traffic controllers issue bogus commands, and the mechanics sabatoge aircraft.

Truck bombers attack attack police stations and government offices, not just in Washington DC or New York, but around the country.

U.S. Military bases experience terrorist attacks carried out by soldiers and sailors working for al Qaeda. Aircraft are destroyed and ships crippled. Others in intelligence or communications units work to sow confusion.

Still terrorists act as snipers in cities, perched atop buildings or holed up in strategically located apartments, shooting at random those below.

How would Americans have acted then? The answer is that we don't know, but it might get ugly very quickly.

Phares lays out just such a scenario in Future Jihad. Now, I think the chances of such a plot going undetected are pretty slim, even in a pre-9/11 mentality. Yet even so, it is not clear that if we had caught some terrorists we could have prevented the entire operation. It is something to think about, certainly.

Up Next:

Guidelines and prescriptive policies.

Previous

In Part 1 I introduced Walid Phares' book Future Jihad and explained the logic of jihad.
In Part 2 I mapped out the three branches of the jihad as identified by Phares.
In Part 3 we discussed methods of the jihad as told by Phares.
In Part 4 we covered how the Saudi Wahabists Undermine the West
Part 5 was about the success the Muslim Brotherhood has had in penetrating the government of Egypt, and it's success in establishing an Islamist government in Sudan

Posted by Tom at 8:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 14, 2007

Book Review - "Future Jihad" - Part 5: Brotherhood Success Stories

In Part 1 I introduced Walid Phares' book Future Jihad and explained the logic of jihad.

In Part 2 I mapped out the three branches of the jihad as identified by Phares.

In Part 3 we discussed methods of the jihad as told by Phares.

In Part 4 we covered how the Saudi Wahabists Undermine the West

The Muslim Brotherhood: Success Stories

As explained earlier, the Muslim Brotherhood is one of the three branches of the jihad. The first two are Sunni Salafist; the Wahabists and Muslim Brotherhood. The third is Shiite; the Khumeinists. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in the 1920s by Hassan al Banna. Not directly affiliated with any government, it "uses the power of Muslims" at the grassroots level throughout the Middle East to infiltrate socities from the bottom up.

In Part 3 I laid out the Brotherhood strategy as explained by Phares; they infiltrate a target government from the bottom up and then back down again, carerful not to confront the regime until they have appropriate strength. Ideally they'll gain enough power to stage a coup, if not, influencing the rulers will do.

Their ultimate goal is the same as the Wahabi Salafists; a worldwide caliphate.

Today we'll examine some some Brotherhood success stories.

The Sudan

The biggest success of the Muslim Brotherhood has come in Sudan. In 1989 a coup brought to power the National Islamic Front(NIF). The military officers who seized power were led by General Umar al Bashir, and the NIF was led by Dr Hassan Turabi, described by Phares as a "shrewd intellectual."

As everyone knows, the government of the Sudan decided to wage a series of jihads against their own citizens. The first was against Christian and animist Africans in the south of the country, and the second, which continues today, is against African Muslims in Darfur. In addition to waging genocidal jihad, they used another weapon; slavery. Tens of thousands of Africans were sold into slavery around the Arab world in an attempt to subdue the target populations.

Turabi also invited the world's most infamous terrorist into Sudan; Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden stayed there as a guest of the NIF approximately from 1991 to 1996. From Sudan al Qaeda planned and executed a series of terrorist attacks, which we will cover in future installments.

The Palestinian Authority

In order to achieve it's goals against Israel, the Brotherhood created Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Of the two the former has been by far the most successful, gaining power in the Palestinian Authority after winning the January 2006 elections.

Hamas, of course, is part of the "rejectionists"; no negotiations and no recognition of Israel's right to exist. Their reason is not geopolitical or some Western concept of revenge for alleged wrongs, but rather purely Islamist; any land once ruled by Muslims must never revert to rule by the infidels. Brotherhood writings make clear that this holds true not only for "Palestine", but Chechnya, Kashmir, and even Spain.

Egypt

The base of the Muslim Brotherhood is still in Egypt, where it remains popular, despite being officially outlawed. President Hosni Mubarak (b 1928) is growing old, and the Brotherhood sees a chance to seize power when he dies.

In order to prepare for the day when Islamists can seize power, they have been infiltrating Egyptian institutions. Over the decades the government has attempted to destroy the Brotherhood by mass arrests and persecution, but has never been completely successful, as the Brotherhood always comes back.

The Brotherhood advocates democracy, and uses elections to place its own people in power. In fact they have made strong showings in recent elections, sometimes teaming with other parties in alliances of convenience.

Other Countries

The Muslim Brotherhood has chapters in almost all Arab Middle Eastern countries. As many of these countries have a parliament, they always try to get their members elected.

The Brotherhood is also active in the United States. According to Wikipedia, Muslim activists involved with the Muslim Brotherhood have started organizations in the US including the Muslim Students Association in 1963, North American Islamic Trust in 1971, the Islamic Society of North America in 1981, the American Muslim Council in 1990, and the Muslim American Society in 1992, and the International Institute of Islamic Thought in the 1980s.

Next Up: Al Qaeda

In the next installament we'll examine the origins of al Qaeda, it's goals, and what Osama bin Laden thought would happen after the attacks of Sept 11 2001.

Update

Two articles of interest on the Muslim Brotherhood today.

In the first one, Candace de Russy writes on NRO about that "darling of the left", Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan is the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood:

Joseph Crowley reports that this past weekend Ramadan tangled with a young policewoman who stopped him from entering a prohibited area of Charles de Gaulle Airport. Crowley writes

an indignant Ramadan pitched such a macho hissy fit that airport police felt compelled to detained and officially charged him with “insulting a public agent” - punishable by up to 6 months of relatively torture free imprisonment and a € 7,500 fine.

Crowley wonders if “you can take the chauvinist out of Sharia” and “if the SOS-Racisme…, the French equivalent of our ACLU, will pick up the Islamophobic gauntlet thrown down by the French police in this case.”

In the second, M. Zuhdi Jasser writes about "The Not-So-Moderate Muslim Brotherhood", after Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke tell us in an article in Foreign Affairs that the Brotherhood's “relative moderation offers Washington a notable opportunity for engagement.”

After reviewing their argument, Jasser comments that

As a devout anti-Islamist American Muslim I have been struggling to explain to all those who will listen the central incompatibility of the Islamist doctrine with America’s pluralistic ideology. The literal Islamization of society, consciousness, and government as advocated by the Muslim Brotherhood is an anathema to America as it is to a pluralistic and liberated Islam. Leiken and Brooke, in effect, whitewash an international organization whose mission is at odds with our own Constitutional system of governance.

Read the whole thing.

March 30 Update

Egypt is trying to stamp out the Brotherhood, and the latest tactic is constitutional reform. In an article published Monday the 26th by Amir Taheri tells how President Mubarak's proposals would rewrite 34 articles of the constitution. He says it will move the country towards democratic pluralism. Critics say that the objective is really to consolidate the grip on power held by existing elites and the armed forces. Among the critics is the Muslim Brotherhood.

Taheri relates how the proposals target the Muslim Brotherhood in two ways

* They would make it illegal for any political party or group to be based on religion, forcing the Brotherhood to drop the word "Muslim" from its name and its old slogan, "Islam is the Solution."

* They would enable the government to stop the Brotherhood and similar Islamist organizations raising funds and establishing welfare networks as a means of recruiting members. The authorities may use the new constitutional provisions as an excuse to seize the Brotherhood's considerable assets, accumulated over some 80 years of business activities.

Analyzing all this, Taheri says that

Despite the Brotherhood's objections, the idea of banning political parties based on religion appears to have substantial support across Egypt. Mubarak's liberal and leftist critics support the measure because it forces the Brotherhood and other Islamist outfits to fight for votes by offering political programs rather than fomenting religious passions.

The idea that political parties should not be based on religion is gaining ground in much of the Muslim world.

I certainly hope so.

A quick news search shows some predictable headlines: "Voters Scarce as Egypt Holds Constitutional Referendum", "Blogs show footage alleging vote rigging in Egypt’s referendum", and "Egypt introduces changes, but much remains the same"

Sigh.

Posted by Tom at 8:24 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

March 13, 2007

Book Review - "Future Jihad" - Part 4: How the Wahabists Undermine the West

In Part 1 I introduced Walid Phares' book Future Jihad and explained the logic of jihad.

In Part 2 I mapped out the three branches of the jihad as identified by Phares

In Part 3 we discussed methods of the jihad as told by Phares.

How the Wahabists Undermine the West

As Phares tells is, the Wahabi strategy runs like this:

Inside Saudi Arabia, "pure" Islam would be practiced. Sharia law in its most harsh form would be enforced.

Outside the country, a two-track strategy was pursued. The long-term one is diplomatic and financial support for like-minded Islamists around the world through their schools, charities, mosques, hospitals, and the like. The second is to use its oil wealth to influence Western governments and the media. In effect, to pull the wool over our eyes while they infiltrate us.

Phares has identified six tracks that the jihadists follow in the West:

1) Economic jihad: Oil as a weapon - Because we need their oil, we collaborate with them. This give them the opening that they seek.

2) Ideological jihad: Intellectual penetration - The Wahabis have spend much time and money penetrating academia. Many if not most Middle East studies programs are funded by Saudi money. For their money the Saudis want and get a sanitized version of Islamic history.

3) Political jihad: Mollification of the public - One, reassure the public that there is nothing to worry about, and two, promote acceptance of Islam in general and their verison in particular. They want us to turn to their approved sources for information about Islam.

4) Intelligence jihad: Infiltration of the country - The first step is to control the Islamic community in the target country. They do this by trying to gain control of the mosques, Muslim community centers and the like. The next step is to encourage their members and sympathizers to join Western governments, intelligence agencies, police units, and military.

5) Subversive jihad: Behind enemy lines and protected by its laws - As long as they obey the laws of the target government, they are relatively safe. As Phares put it during an interview on NBC after 9-11: "The safest place on Earth to hide from the dragon is inside its belly."

6) Diplomatic jihad: Controlling foreign policy - "Arabists" in the US State Department have been a problem for some time. Because we listened to Saudi advice we became convinced that the Taliban weren't really so bad, we missed al Qaeda because they didn't want us to know the truth about how close OBL's philosophy was to Saudi Wahabism, we let Hezbollah take over Lebanon, and we stalled too long over Sudan and let a genocide develop.

Other Wahabist Infiltration Strategies

Sometimes the apologists simply try to discredit their critics. Ismael Royer of CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) made it his mission to track and attempt to discredit academics such as Daniel Pipes and Walid Phares, as well as human rights activists such as Charles Jacobs.

Phares has been called as an expert witness in for the prosecution at the trials of many accused of terrorism-related crimes. He related sevaral stories about how the defense tries to conceal the nature of the material the police investigators found:

In every single case I witnessed and in all cases I reviewed (on both sides of the Atlantic), one pattern is dominant. There is a clear and firm attempt by a political faction to deny essential information and education to juries, prosecutors, and judges. The Wahabi lobby did all it could to block basic facts from reaching the United States and the western justice system regarding jihadism. In each case, where the defendants were tried for alleged terrorism, the defense and their experts would claim that Salafism is not jihadism and that jihad is not violent.

The Wahabists have also tried to exploit racial tensions by recruiting black Americans. Bin Laden and other jihadists have a somewhat strange attitude towards race. On the one hand, they talk about a war against the "white man". Yet in Sudan they favor the Arab Muslims over black Muslims of Darfur and the south. Yet again in the US they try to recruit blacks and influence the Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. As Phares tells it, "the ultimate scenario of al Qaeda and it's sisters are for many U.S cities to look more like Sarajevo, Beirut, and Belfast at the peak of urban wars." In future installments we will explore this further when we talk about what bin Laden hoped would happen after 9-11.

Why We Missed bin Laden

The reason we missed the threat posed by al Qaeda, Phares says, is because the Wahabis had successfully penetrated the US to the degree that "before Sept 11, if the government had issued national "warnings" of potential "jihadists attacks" even by al Qaeda, it would have been faced with a barrage of apologists accusing it of bashing Islam." It is hard to see how he is wrong, given that even after Sept 11, when the President talks about "Islamic Facsists", he is criticized by at least one prominent democrat. In fairness, had President Clinton declared a "War on Jihadism", Republicans and conservatives would have dismissed it as an attempt to "wag the dog".

The failure to see the danger went beyond politics and the government, however. The media completely dropped the ball, discussing terrorism but not jihadism or any form of Islamic radicalism. The worse, Phares says, was PBS, which actually showed more programs endorsing the aplogists than all of the broadcast and cable networks combined.

Phares disagrees with the 9/11 Commission that our failure to prevent the attacks of that day were a failure of imagination. He sees it more as a failure to educate Americans on the danger of jihadism. And the reason we failed is that penetration by the Saudi Wahabists successfully pulled the wool over our eyes.

Next up: Brotherhood Success Stories

Walid Phares relates how the Muslim Brotherhood has tried, with varying degress of success, to infiltrate Middle Eastern societies and take control of governments.

Update

If you doubt that Salafist infiltration is taking place in the West, consider this editorial by Paul Belien of the Brussels Journal, titled "The Islamicization of Antwerp", which appeared in today's Washington Times. Following are the first few paragraphs (emphasis added)

The decisive battle against Islamic extremists will not be fought in Iraq, but in Europe. It is not in Baghdad but in cities like Antwerp, Belgium, where the future of the West will be decided.

I recently met Marij Uijt den Bogaard, a 49-year-old woman who deserves America's support at least as much as Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Ms. Uijt den Bogaard was an Antwerp civil servant in the 1990s, who spent many years working in the immigrant neighborhoods of Antwerp. There she noticed how radical Islamists began to take over. "They work according to a well-defined plan," she says.

One of the things Ms. Uijt den Bogaard used to do for the immigrants was to assist them with their administrative paperwork. Quite a few of them came to trust her.

About three years ago, young men dressed in black moved into the neighborhoods. They had been trained in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and adhere to Salafism, a radical version of Islam. They set up youth organizations, which gradually took over the local mosques. "The Salafists know how to debate and they know the Qur'an by heart, while the elderly running the mosques do not," she said They also have money. "One of them told me that he gets Saudi funds." Because they are eloquent, the radicals soon became the official spokesmen of the Muslim community, also in dealing with the city authorities. Ms. Uijt den Bogaard witnessed how the latter gave in to Salafist demands, such as the demand for separate swimming hours for Muslim women in the municipal pools.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 12, 2007

Book Review - "Future Jihad" - Part 3: Methods of the Jihad

One of the problems we face in fighting this war is that I do not think that most people understand who we are fighting. Much of this is the fault of the Administration, which insisted on calling it the "War on Terror"

This name implies that the only people who really threaten us are those who engage directly in terrorist acts. As such, when you mention "War on Terror" most people, I think, believe that we are fighting al Qaeda and al Qaeda only.

In Part I of my review of Walid Phares Future Jihad, I introduced his book and laid out the jihadist's world view. In Part II I mapped out the three branches of the jihad as identified by Phares; two Sunni Salafist, Wahabi and Muslim Brotherhood, and the third Shiite, the Khumeinists.

In this installment I'll discuss some of the methods the jihadists use against us as identified by Phares. Readers will note that violence is not part of all or even most of the jihad.

Following is a brief overview of the methods used by each of the three branches of the jihad. In future installments I'll go through each of these in more detail.

The Wahabists: Top Down Jihad

As discussed in Part I, Salafi Wahabist Islam is the state religion of Saudi Arabia. The goal of the Wahabists is to spread their version of Islam throughout the world, and eventually unify it under the caliphate. The way they do this is by sending "pilgrims" into targeted societies/countries and infiltrate it's institutions. This process is funded by oil revenues. The function of the Saudi state is to reassure the targeted people that all is well and that there is nothing to be worried about. In effect, to pull the wool over our eyes.

At the end of World War II the Wahabists made two historic choices; first, they decided that they would adhere to Western concepts of international law, and second, they allied themselves with the West against the communists.

Their method of spreading their version of Islam is characterized by Phares as a "top down" approach:

The Wahabi state logic was perhaps the most perfect one: Float with the world, release the teachings without violence, let the teachings plant the seeds, wait for their growth irrigate them with money, and make sure to mollify any abrup reaction from the other side. ...

(At the formation of the Saudi state) a historic deal was cut between the emirs on the one hand and the radical clerics on the other. The monarchy would manage the finances and political power, including diplomacy, while the scholars would be in charge of the souls, especially the young ones. The other component of the equation, the Salafi clerics, roamed the world preaching Wahabism with state funding and encouragement.

The Muslim Brotherhood: Bottom Up Jihad

Unlike the state-sponsored Wahabists, the Brotherhood is independant of any state. It works with rulers who are sympathetic to it, but operates outside of them. Theirs is a "grassroots" strategy. While the Wahabists "float with the world", the Brotherhood floats with the target society, which thus far has always been a Middle Eastern one.

The Brotherhood is part of the same Sunni Salafist tradition as the Wahabists. To some extent the Brotherhood competes with the Saudi Wahabists for influence within the Muslim world. Sometimes they cooperate, it all depends on the politics of the moment.

Basically, the Brotherhood seeks to change a society and government by trying to put its members or symthathizers in positions of influence. These positions may be in the media, industry, military, or, if it exists in the target country, a parliament. It is willing to start small, encouraging members to join at the "entry level" and work their way up. Rather than fighting the regime directly, it seeks to undermine it from the bottom up.

After infiltrating from the bottom up, they work their way back down again. As Phares explains, "the Brotherhood would be intereted in spreading through the elites, converting them patiently into the Salafi doctrime, and only then enlisting them into the organization." They never engaged the regime directly until they reached full strength. Their methods were "amazingly fluid and adaptable to circumstances. Their ideal shortcut wa to infiltrate the ranks of the military and proceed with a coup d'etat against the government. Their next choice was to "advise" the ruler and influence him instead."

In addition, the Brotherhood has created Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to pursue the fight against Israel. Hamas is a terrorist group, but also participates in the political process. This is important to note, for it again shows the sophistication of the Brotherhood in pursuit of it's goals. We must understand that these are not a bunch of ignorants who sit around playing with AK-47s and C4 explosive.

The Khumeinists: The Shiite Superpower

It is important not to think of this group as Iranians for the simple reason is that is not how they see themselves. Yes, nationalism plays a role. But the mullah's highest allegiance is to Allah, not to their nation. While this is theoretically true of all religious people, it would be a mistake to see a similarity between the Khumeinists and Western Christians or Jews. The goal of the Khumeinists is not Iranian power but the creation of a Shiite Imamate.

As discussed in Part 1, for thirteen centuries the Shiites were shut out of the jihad. Considered a footnote, the West barely took note of them. All of the ancient calphates were Sunni. When they gained control of Iran in 1979 they shook the Musim world to it's foundations by announcing that they would not only participate in, but would lead, the jihad. This not only placed them in competition with the Salafists, but spurred the latter on to more extremism as well.

While the Salafists seek to infiltrate targeted countries/societies, the Khumeinists seek to build a superstate that will dominate the region. Their goals are limited by the demographics of where Shiites live; Iran and a few other countries in the region, notably Iraq.

From what some Shiite jihadists have said, once the Khumeinist superpower is in place, a more general jihad can ensue which will result in the Fatah(conquest of infidels).

Next up: How the Wahabists undermine the West

In the next installment we'll get into more detail on how the Wahabists go about the business of infiltrating Western societies.

Posted by Tom at 9:41 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 9, 2007

Book Review - "Future Jihad" - Part 2: Who are the Jihadists?

On September 11, 2001, our homeland was directly attacked for the first time since the war of 1812 by a foreign enemy. We learned shortly thereafter that al Qaeda was responsible. Everyone, or almost everyone, realized that what occured had been building for some time. Suddenly all of the attacks on us that occured during the 1990s around the world didn't seem so far away anymore. Further, the idea that we should respond as if the attack was a criminal matter seemed absurd to everyone except those on the far ends of the political spectrum. We were going to war.

The President quickly termed it the "War on Terror". Unfortunately, this designation has served to obfuscate rather than clarify the nature of our enemy.

The fact is that despite the horrors of that day, Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terror network make up only one part, and a small one at that, of the enemy that we face. In no way am I minimizing the threat from al Qaeda, for it is real and serious. We must devote much time and energy to destroying it and defending against it.

The threat that Walid Phares lays out in Future Jihad is much more extensive than one single terrorist organization, however. In Part 1 of my review of his book I explained how, according to Phares, our enemy is best described as "jihadists", since, after all, they describe themselves as "men of jihad" in their literature, on their websites, and in their videos. Our war, therefore, is best described as a "War on Jihad".

In this part I'll outline the three branches of the jihad as described by Phares. Readers may wish to read Part 1 in case they are not familiar with some of the terms I'll be using.

Before we get to the jihadists themselves, however, let's look at what they want, for all three groups want essentially the same thing.

The Three Objectives of the Jihad

1) Tahrir: Liberation

All jihadists want to liberate Muslim lands from "occupation" by non-Muslims. Their definition of "Muslim lands" is any territory that was at any time ruled by Muslims. Thus not only Palestine, but Kashmir, Chechnya and even Spain qualify for "liberation".

2) Tawheed: Unification

All existing states in which Muslims make up the majority are to be dismantled and unified into one superstate. Jihadists do not consider existing national boundaries legitimate.

3) Khilafa: The Caliphate

The eventual goal is to reestablish the Calphiate, which was abolished by Musafa Kemal in 1923. All Muslims the world over are to give their primary political allegiance to it. With its reestablishment, the jihad of old can be restated, which in their view will lead to the fatah, or conquest, of all non-Muslim lands.

The Three Branches of the Jihad

1) The Wahabists

Phares describes them as the "first wave" of the modern jihad because it is the oldest of the three. This extreme brance of Islam was founded by Mohammed Abdel Wahab (spellings vary. 1703 – 1792). Wahab was a cleric who lived in the Arabian peninsula, and he founded a movement within Sunni Salafism that eventually became known by his name; Wahabism.

Wahab's idea was that "the salaf under the Prophet launched the Islamic state and divided the world in two, and so should the present-day Muslim countries." Wahab opposed the Ottomans, who at that time ruled the Muslim world (or at least most of it) through the caliphate. He said that they had diverted from the ways of salafi Islam.

Several of the tribes in the region adopted his teachings. By the end of the 19th century, one of them, the al Saud, had come to power in Riyadh. Ottoman power had begun to wane, and in the 1920s the state of Saudi Arabia was founded. Wahabist Islam quickly became the official state religion.

During the latter stages of the Cold War, the Wahabists made common cause with the West against the communists. The rationale was twofold; one was a straight geopolitical calculation, the other theological. Westerners were Christian, and thus "people of the book". The communists were athiests, a concept completely alien to the Muslim mind.

The Wahabists attempt to spread their version of Islam around the world through infiltration of other societies. This is done in stages. The first step is to seize control of, or at least have primary influence in, Muslims in the diaspora. This is done by funding Mosques, Muslim schools, community centers, libraries, hospitals, and the like. The eventual goal is to influence the laws and customs of the targeted society/country.

The role of the Saudi government is to pull the wool over our eyes while all this is going on. Muslim organizations within the target country use it's institutions and customs against it. Thus in the West, liberal traditions of tolerance and diversity are used as a defense against criticism.

Only in it's final stages will violence be used, when the target society/country has been heavily infiltrated. Readers will recall Part 1 in which Phares discussed a debate that took place on al-Jazeera shortly after 9-11. Although the argument was hot and heavy, both sides agreed on the need to attack the West. One thought that bin Laden's timing was appropriate, the other said that he'd jumped the gun and that the United States had not been sufficiently infiltrated for the attack to be truely successful.

In later parts of this review we'll see where Phares thinks that al Qaeda fits into the Salafist tradition. For now, just take note that there's a lot more to what's going on than a band of terrorists hiding in caves along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

2) The Muslim Brotherhood

The Brotherhood, or "Muslim brothers", is also in the sameSalafist tradition as Wahabism. This organization was founded by Hassan al Banna in Egypt in the 1920s.

Unlike the state-sponsored Wahabists, the Brotherhood is a private organization. It has spent most of it's time in opposition to the various secular regimes of the Middle East.

While the eventual goal of the Brotherhood is the worldwide caliphate, it's near-term goals are all local to the Middle East. It attempts to achieve its objectives by establishing branches in Muslim countries, and then infiltrating it's people into key positions in government, military, the media, and industry. The eventual plan is to seize control of the country.

Sudan is such a country that has been successfully infiltrated. The National Islamist Front, led by General and President Umar al Bashir and Dr Hassan Turabi, has as it's philosophy the principles of the Brotherhood.

Egypt, the home of the brotherhood, has been heavily infiltrated by sympathizers of the Brotherhood. They now have established themselves into positions of influence in the media, business, the military, and parts of the government, such as the parliament.

Sometimes the Brotherhood establishes what it would call "military" branches to achieve local goals. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were created to "liberate" Palestine.

3) The Khumeinists

The third and final branch of the jihad comes out of Iran, but it would be something of a mistake to see it as exclusively Iranian. In a way, this is the most revolutionary of the three parts of the jihad.

For 13 centuries the Shiites were shut out of jihad. The caliphate was exclusively Sunni, and the Shiites were at best relegated to a supporting role. Historically, they've been a footnote. The majority Sunnis did not and do not believe that the Shiia can legitimitely call for jihad.

Then came the 1979 revolution in Iran. The KIhumeinists did three things that rocked the Islamic world to it's foundations, and at the same time gained them enormous prestige. First, they claimed to be the leaders of the entire Muslim world in it's age-old struggle against the infidels. Since the Sunni caliphate had ceased to exist in 1923, there was no single Sunni authority to denounce this claim.

Second, the form of government established by the Ayatollah Khumeini and his followers was unique in the Muslim world. While we in the West call it an "Islamic Republic", the best translation according to Phares is "mandate of the religious scholar". What this means is that until the return of the Mahdi, Muslims should follow the wisest Imam.

To fight a local war against Israel the Khumeinists established Hezbollah. The Alawite( a branch of Shiite Islam) regime in Syria have proved willing accomplices in this endeavour

Lastly, and most importantly, the Khumeinists announced that they would oppose both the Soviet communists and the West. Suddenly, the Wahabists in Saudi Arabia looked embarassed, for they had made common cause the the West, and especially with the Great Satan itself, the United States.

The objective objective of the Khumeinists is the establishment of an Imamate in the Shiia world, just as the objective of the Salafists is the reestablishment of the caliphate in the Sunni world.

In order to achieve this, they must first chase the United States and other Western powers from the region.

Next up: Methods of the Jihad

In the next part of this book review I'll discuss methods of the jihad as identified by Walid Phares. In it, we'll explore in greater detail the techniques described above.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 6, 2007

Book Review - "Future Jihad" - Part 1: The Logic of Jihad

If you want answers to these questions

- Who are the terrorists?
- What exactly do they want to achieve?
- What did they expect to happen after 9-11?
- Why did they attack us?
- Do they have a global strategy and if so what is it?
- Are they at war with us? If so, since when?
- Why didn't we know they were coming?
- Who obstructed our knowedge about them and continues to do so?
- Do they wish to destroy us or absorb us?
- Is it possible to conclude peace with them?
- Do they have allies and if so whom? If not now, who might they seek out as allies?
- Do they want to attack the West and United States before they accomplish their goals in the Muslim world or afterwards?

...and many more questions

Then run to your local bookstore and buy Walid Phares' Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against the West.

This is simply the best book I have read so far about our current war hands down. As such, I am not going to give it my usual one-post review, but will summarize the book sections at a time. Today's topic; "Who Are the Terrorists?"

Don't get me wrong, there are other books that I highly recommend. Mark Steyn's America Alone, Melanie Phillips Londonistan, Bill Bennett's Why We Fight , and Richard Miniter's Disinformation are must-reads.

But if there is only one book that you read, let it be Future Jihad. Like America Alone and Londonistan, it's not a particularly encouraging book.

The bottom line to what Phares has to say is this; the enemy is much bigger, better organized and has much clearer goals than most people imagine. If you think that the only people out to get us are Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, you're only seeing a tiny part of the picture.

The point is that people we consider "terrorists" are only a part of the enemy. Many are not trying to kill us, at least not yet.

Phares relates a debate that took place on al Jazeera shortly after 9-11. The show was titled Opposed Directions, and it was set up like a Hannity and Colmes or Crossfire, where the arguments get hot and heavy. The two guests, Phares says, were almost literally at each other's throats.

The question at hand was over the "worthyness" of bin Laden's attacks, whether he had done good or bad to the Arab world. However, one was not for the attack and the other agains. They both argued in favor of the attack. The only difference was that one thought that bin Laden should have waited a few years until the time was more ripe.

This debate, Phares says, was representative of what went on across the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Jihad

Before we get to who the terrorists are, let's clear up the meaning of the word "jihad", for it is central to understanding who the terrorists are and what they want.

Put simply jihad is "a call for action" to spread the faith. Jihad is the sum of all efforts, and was declared by early Muslim leaders to be a sixth unofficial pillar of Islam. In a "normal" situation, Muslims think, their faith would spread without jihad, for people should recognize that Islam is the true faith and it would be only logical to accept it. Only when things are not going smoothly is jihad needed.

The call to jihad can only be given by a legitimate authority. It is not something that can be done unlilaterally by individuals. Under the Caliphate of old, only the Caliph or his designated local political authority could declare a jihad. Jihad, then, is a "state of effort at the service of the umma, the state, and Allah (umma meaning "community of Muslims").

Jihad can be used for defense, but is primarily to spread the faith. Jihad should lead to Fatah, or conquest. And it is the goal of jihadist thinkers to spread the faith to the entire planet, violence and forced conversions if necessary.

It is also important to note that the jihad need not be violent in it's initial stages. As will be seen in later posts, infiltration leading to violence is a key element in their strategy.

The people we call "terrorists" call themselves "men of jihad" in their videos and on their websites. So rather than call it a "war on terror", it seems to me a better term is War on Jihadism.

Phares stresses that in the Middle East among Arabs there is no debate as to the meaning of the word "jihad". Everyone there, he says, knows that it essentially means spreading the faith by violence and forced conversion if necessary.

Many in the West, however, have been hoodwinded. Shortly after 9-11, the church I was attending held an "information meeting" in which two local Muslims were going to tell us about their faith. The woman insisted that it was a total misunderstanding to think that jihad meant something violent, that rather it meant a peaceful inner struggle one had in one's mind to purify yourself before God. At the time I knew she was lying, but until I read Future Jihad I didn't know by how much.

Strangely to Westerners, Muslims regard the jihad as a defensive action. They see the world as being divided into the dar el Islam, or "house of peace", and the dar el harb, or "house of war". Historically the Caliphs justified their wars by telling infidels "you will have peace if you surrender to my rule."

Islam would spread through jihad, with the Caliphs justifying their actions by saying that the infidels had not accepted their offer of peace. It is important to note this definition of "peace" whenever we are dealing with jihadists.

The Caliphate

To make a long story very short, some time after Muhammed died in 632 AD the new Muslim world consolidated itself politically. An absolute ruler emerged called the Caliph, essentially a combination king and pope. Family dynasties emerged, each of which ruled from a particular city for a few hundred years before being supplanted by the next. The Umayyads, for example, ruled out of Damascus from 661 - 750 AD. The Abbasid's ruled from Baghdad from 750 until 1258. The whole thing ended with the Ottomans ruling from Istanbul from 1299 - 1923. The last Caliph was overthrown by Musafa Kemal in that year and a secular Turkey emerged.

The ending of the Caliphate threw the Muslim world into confusion. Without a central leader, many of their tenants seemed irrelevant. How would they spread the faith? Who could declare jihad? Who was the leader?

One effect was the jihad was privatized. Whereby during the days of the Caliphate only the legitimate political ruler could declare a jihad against the infidels, now it seemed that any Muslim could. Once freed from state control, it was only a matter of time before organizations under or guided by religious leaders developed which declared that they now had the authority to declare jihad.

And the goal of those who believe in a "fundamentalist" version of Islam is that the faith must be spread thoughout the world, by violence and forced conversion if necessary.

al Qaeda, then, was an inevitability once the Caliphate fell.

The Logic of the Jihadists

Phares puts it best

Put simply, in the mind of the jihadists, there is no rupture in the evolution of the Islamic state since its inception in Medina. No refoem has taken place, and therefore the jihadists are in line to fulfill a mission launched centures ago.

Modern Jews and Christians acknowledge their history, but most of us don't base our world view on Talmudic or Biblical passages (though some do). To us the crusades are ancient history. But to the jihadists it may as well have happened yesterday. Phares again

In essence, the Islamists movements, from which the doctrine of jihadism flourished, see themselves as a direct continuation of the Islamic state and strive for its reestablishment - including its past expansionist drive.

Phares relates stories of jihadist websites in which the posters discuss ancient battles as if they occured last week and are relevant to todays newspaper headlines. bin Laden himself calls the West al Rum, or "the Byzantines"

Frozen in the Middle Ages

During the early Abbasid dynasty, the Muslim world was truely the center of learning, science, and literature. While Europe was stuck in the Dark Ages, Baghdad was experiencing what we would later call the Enlightenment.

The Abbasid's ruled the largest empire the earth has ever seen before or since. Since it was all due to the will of Allah, and expansion (fatah) had been successful so far, it only seemed natural that it would continue forever.

Then it all came to a sudden halt.

The Muslim world was invaded first by crusaders and then by Mongols. The first were bad enough, but the slaugher by the Mongols under Genghis Khan exceeded even that of the crusaders. Worse, Muslim armies seemed incapable of stopping either. The Mongols even sacked Baghdad itself and ended the Abbasid dynasty in 1258.

The full story is obviously complicated, but essentially a movement developed which concluded that the reason the Muslim world was defeated was improper adherence to the teachings of Muhammed. The leading scholar of this movement was one Ibn Taymiya (1263-1328). He developed the doctrine of takfir, essentially the Muslim equivalent of the inquisition. This would later develop into the Salafi movement which would in turn spawn Wahabism, both important concepts that we will take up in some detail in later reviews of Phares' book.

What is important is that Taymiya led a "back to the Dark Ages" movement. Gone was enlightened or "progressive" thought. While Europe would go from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance and Enlightment a few centuries later, the Muslim world did just the opposite.

And it has remained frozen in time ever since.

Phares stresses that this is not all ancient history to those who are our enemies

The literature of the modern jihadists, their speeches, their texts, and their web sites lead directly back to Ibn Taymiya's thought. ...

The complex ideology of the Salafi jihadist movement could be defined in simplest terms this way: It is a movement that wants to return the Muslim world to the times of its earliest conquests and move forward from there. This movement wants to being back Muslim society to a strict applicatiion of Sharia laws despite all the intervening evolution accomplished by Muslims through history. Finally, it is a movement that wants to resume fatah and conquests desite all norms of internationl relations and laws.

As Phares says, it sounds like something out of a Hollywood move, but unfortunately it's true.

Next up: Who are the Jihadists?

In the next part of this book review I'll reveal the three branches of the jihad as identified by Walid Phares. Stay tuned, because it's not just a small band of al Qaeda that are out to get us.

Posted by Tom at 8:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 15, 2007

Book Review - Because They Hate

It's 1978. I am thirteen years old. My family is in the third year of living in this bomb shelter, a tiny underground room that sits off to the side of a bombed-out pile of rubble that was once our beautiful home. Tonight the shelling is the heaviest it has been in two and a half years. The three of us, my elderly father and mother and me, sit in the dark on the corner of the bed.

We have been trapped in our shelter now for three days, anjd we are out of water. A shell hit near the entrance of our shelter, collapsing a wall of sandbags against our door and imprisoning us inside. We have given up trying to get it open.

No one knows we are trapped. For three days we have called out and screamed for help. But we are too far from the road for anyone to hears us amid the explosions.

The place was a small town in southern Lebanon. The writer, a young Maronite Christian girl named Brigitte Gabriel. Those manning the artillery pieces were Muslims of one faction or another, and they were attacking her town because the country was in the middle of a civil war.

Brigitte tells her story in Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America. The first half of the book is autobiographical, where she describes her childhood in Lebanon and subsequent journey to Israel and eventually the United States. The second half is the warning to America, which reads pretty much like an extended editorial, albeit a fairly stident one. I suppose if I had spent seven years of my childhood in a 8x10 foot bomb shelter I might be a bit strident about radical Islam too, although at times it is a bit much.

I became intersted in this book after hearing Gabriel as a guest on one or another conservative radio talk shows. She speaks a mile a minute, reminding me of Camile Paglia with a Middle Eastern accent. Gabriel came across as knowledgeable about the Middle East and Muslims in general, and so after hearing about her book I put it on my Christmas list.

The Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990 was a terribly complex affair, with many factions and foreign powers involved. All sides committed atrocities and war crimes, and alliances shifted back and forth many times. It was not quite all Muslim vs Christian, although that did characterize much of it. Rather than try and summarize the whole affair, I'll simply direct readers to the Wikipedia entry, which seems as good an account as any I could find.

What Gabriel saw was her childhood shattered by Muslim militias attacking her town and Christian miltias defending it. The Muslims had the upper hand in her region, effectively subjecting her village to a siege that lasted several years. In her account, snipers roamed the hills surrounding their town and artillery fire was a constant, which wa s why most families in the area had moved into makeshift underground bomb shelters.

Gabriel's view of the world changed dramatically when managed to get her mother to a hospital in Israel. Wounded by artillery fire towards the end of this seven year experience, the Israelis saved her mother's life. All her life she had listened to the Arab media describe the Israelis as devils. Her Maronite community apparently shared this extremist opinion. Her experience at the hospital changed her view of Israelis dramatically and made her question the Arab media accounts that she had heard all of her life.

The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon ended the Muslim siege of her town and allowed her to resume a somewhat normal life.

To make a long story short, she got a job working as a secretary for an Israeli general at a nearby base , which eventually led to a job as a TV journalist at World News in Israel. Now exposed to all media sources from around the world, and able to meet and speak freely with journalists from many countries, she realized that much of what she had been told as a child was a lie.

Her story of her life in Lebanon and israel is the best part of the book. It moves quickly and Gabriel does not get bogged down in details fo the Lebanese Civil War. It is at once a gripping action-adventure story and tragic tale. This part alone makes the book worthwhile.

The second part of the book starts out fairly well, with chapters on the "Clash of Civilizations" and "Terrorists Among Us". The best chapter is arguably "Societies are Not Created Equal", where because of her personal knowledge of the Middle East she can speak with some authority. However, you can't help but notice that she tends to paint with too broad a brush, not taking into account individual differences in Arab/Muslim societies.

The book also could have used a good editor. Gabriel has a bad tendency to write like one speaks. There are altogether too many exclamation points and rhetorical questions. At times the subject of her writing drifts around, and while it's not hard to follow her points, it is a bit disconcerting

All this said, she is mostly right. Radical Islam is a threat to the very existence of the Western world. They do want to establish a global caliphate. Muslim societies are mostly terrible places, something we are finding out in Iraq. Muslim media spread unbelievable lies. There are moderate Muslims, but most in the West tend not to speak up, and those who do find themselves isolated or denounced by "mainstream" Islamic organizations. Political correctness and the refusal of many on the left to recognize that radical Islam presents a problem at all inhibit a strong response.

Now living in the Washington DC area, Gabriel is the founder of Ameican Congress for Truth, whose mission is to educate Americans on the threat posed by radical Islam. The book jacket describes her as "a journalist and news producer...terrorism expert... (who) travels widely and speaks regularly on topics related to the Middle East. She has appeared extensively on television and radio, and has given hundreds of lectures nationally and internationally."

No doubt she has made many enemies. In her book she describes some of her lectures at universities in which she required police protection. The entry about her at Wikipedia is nothing but a political hit piece (and a warning about it's reliability), one I intend to rectify at some point.

You can get a much of her story by viewing this lecture that she gave at The Heritage Foundation.

All in all a worthwhile book. Her warning is timely, and despite the book's faults we ought to take heed.

Posted by Tom at 8:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 15, 2006

Book Review - "America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It"

Just when I think that the future can't be much darker for us in our war on Islamic Jihadism, Mark Steyn comes along to ruin things for me.

Consider our current situation: Iraq is in the throws of massive sectarian violence and may slide into Rwandan-style slaughter, Afghanistan is not-at-all secure, Musharraf has virtually ceded large parts of his country to the Taliban and their allies, most of Somalia, including it's capital Mogadishu, is controlled by the Supreme Islamic Courts Council, an Islamist militia, and Iran appears to be well on the way towards obtaining nuclear weapons. Did I miss anything?

Actually, as Steyn points out in America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, what I missed was the fact that the United States is now virtually alone in the world. Europe, he explains, is well on the road to being completely lost to the Jihadists.

On the surface, of course, it doesn't seem that way. Their leaders still mouth the traditional pieties, lamenting that "with only proper US leadership" and "less arrogance", why, we would all be together against the terrorists. Traditional institutions such as NATO and a European-dominated Security Council still prevail.

Further, it's tempting to think that of course we can't really lose to the likes of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Isn't Europe the rock of Western Civilization? Surely a continent that survived the Nazis, Communists, and other assorted fascists can take on a bunch of backward Islamic fanatics, right? I mean, maybe they'll get lucky with some terrorist acts, maybe even sneak a nuke into a city, but lose, as in foreign occupation? No way.

"Yes way" is Steyn's response.

Here is Steyn's argument in a nutshell; the populations of native Europeans are headed into steep decline. Not only that, but the radio of young to old people is rapidly declining. Over the past several decades they've set up an enormous welfare state which depends on lots of young people for old-age payments. European leaders, seeing that the young people simply won't be around when needed, have been encouraging massive immigration into their countries. These immigrants are overwhelmingly Muslim, and most have no desire to assimilate into European culture. Not only that, but, most or many of them plan on making Europe a Muslim continent, complete with Sharia law. Native Europeans, infected with leftist multiculturalism and a complete lack of a sense of nationhood, have no will to resist.

America, he says, will be alone in the world before we know it. In many ways we already are.

Combine a powerful argument with his world-famous Mark Steyn wit, and you've got a great book. It is at once deeply sobering and laugh-out-loud funny. Put it on your must-read list.

The Inexorable Power of Demography

In order for a population to maintain its existing numbers, there must be 2.1 live births per woman. More and it's numbers increase, less and they decline. The United States is at almost exactly 2.1. That our numbers are slightly increasing is due, of course, to immigration.

Europe as a whole is 1.38, Western Europe, 1.5 or less. A few country numbers: Germany and Austria 1.3, Italy 1.2, Sweden 1.64, Ireland 1.9, Spain and Greece 1.15. Russia has the lowest at 1.15, and France the highest at 1.89. On the other side of the globe, Japan is at 1.32, and while they'll have a benefits crisis, they don't have to contend with immigrants who want to change the very nature of their society.

All this leads to rapidly declining populations. The populations of Spain, Greece and Russia will start to halve every 35 or 40 years starting sometime mid-century. The population of Yemen will exceed that of Russia.

Besides the fact that the welfare-state will simply come crashing to the ground (it's a mathmatical certainty), no one knows what will happen economically when there are lots and lots of retired people relative to younger workers.

On the other hand, here are the birthrates in Islamic countries: Pakistan 5.03, Saudi Arabia 4.53, Iran 2.33 (though Ahmadinejad is trying to get it up), Afghanistan 6.69 and Yemen at 6.58

Calculators Don't Lie

Into all this come Muslim immigrants. Europeans want(ed?) them because of their labor and ability to fund their welfare states, and Muslims wanted to come because Europe is obviously a better place than, oh, say, Pakistan or Algeria.

Exactly how many Muslims are in Europe now is open to question, and the numbers are probably higher than advertised. However, most sources I checked conclude that about 5% of Western Europe is Muslim, with the total number being at around 23 million.

The Muslim birthrate in Europe is somewhere around 3.5 live births per woman.

The bottom line: Sometime towards the end of this century Western Europe will be majority Muslim. Get the picture?

Islam is Not Just a Religion

This is not the place for a full discussion of Islam, the law, and the nature of society. Suffice it to say that you just haven't been paying attention if you think that the difference between Westerners (whether Christian or not) and Muslims is trivial. We're not talking like the differences between Presbyterians and Mormons, or Jews and Hindus, for that matter.

The reality is that all Westerners, and Hindus too for that matter, live in countries that have been through or deeply influenced by the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment. This is why I'm not worried about the impact of Hispanics on American culture or society; fundamentally they're just like us.

Islam is another matter. There has never been an Islamic Martin Luther, much less a St Augustine or