The Redhunter

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 on the internet; 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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. Spec