War on Islam

OK, for Conundrum purposes, it's no longer the "War on Terror". It's the "War on Islam". Amounts to the same thing, anyway. A real concentration on undermining the existence of the Mohammedan religion is the only practical path to reducing the risks of terrorism. Whatever it takes.

Nazis as role models?

The Cap'n posts about German soldiers protecting Israel's borders:

So now we have the spectacle of another genocidal nutcase threatening to kill off millions of Jews in the form of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the nation that will protect them will be the last nation with the same genocidal impulse, if Olmert gets his way.

Some German history would appear to have application to the process of reducing Islamic terrorists to the Middle Eastern analogue of a bunch of drunken thugs universally despised by the people they live among who are permanently barred from political power:

The involvement of Germany may send a message that a murderous, racist, warmongering ideology which controlled millions of people can, with enough time and effort, be expunged from the soul of a nation. If the influence of Islam in Lebanon or Iraq can be reduced to the level of influence exerted by Nazism in present-day Germany, modern rationalism will have won. Unfortunately, the example of Nazism in Germany shows how much blood and time it can take to extirpate such a violent cult.
Posted by: Robert [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 4, 2006 11:10 AM

Spengler agrees

I have always said that instability in the Middle East favors the US, not the Islamists.

Now Spengler at the Asia Times agrees with me.:

The benefits of chaos most likely redound to the US and Israel, even though squeamishness prevents Washington from thinking this way. The Iranians, who are utterly ruthless, profligate in the expenditure of human blood, and adept at the use of chaos as a strategic weapon, know just what is afoot.

I think I'll write him a letter.

Cedar Fraud

I'm bemused by the lack of attention paid in the press and among pundits of all stripes to the obviously fraudulent nature of the "Cedar Revolution" that supposedly marked the emergence of an independent Lebanese state a couple of years ago. It's now clear that everyone, including me, was fooled by the euphoria of a few upbeat pictures of proud, independent, young Lebanese women into thinking that Lebanon had freed itself from rule by Syria and by Hezbollah and that it was master in its own house. This obviously was only a cover strategy by Hezbollah to lull the Israelis and the West into a false sense of security, into thinking that Hezbollah and its Iranian and Syrian masters would not cause trouble because they were afraid of the reaction of the Lebanese. In retrospect, it was absurd to think that the Islamonazis cared one little bit about the well-being of anyone, themselves included, and that the Lebanese had any real power over Hezbollah's actions. I just hope that no more surprises of this sort await us.

Freedom and The Scotsman

David Farrer, one of the intrepid blogsters at Freedom and Whiskey, posted (scroll down) about his surprise that Brian Wilson (no, not that one!) founder of the West Highland Free Press, published an article in the Scotsman showing some sense about the Israeli reaction to Hezbollah aggression:

When criticised, it (Israel) can point out with justification that listening in the past to the same voices calling for restraint would have led to it being wiped off the map many years ago.

So I had to add my favorite analogy for Lebanon, which supplies grounds for approval of Israel's actions and explains the status of Lebanon in terms most Westerners can understand:

I like the comparison of Lebanon to Vichy France in WWII. Certainly the French weren't one hundred per cent in favor of the Nazis, but that made no difference to the tactical realities. Many French "civilian" facilities - train stations, factories, docks, road junctions - were bombed in order to deny resources to the Germans. But Paris escaped nearly unscathed. Then again, the Nazis didn't launch V-1s and V-2s from the roofs of French kindergartens.

Or the towers of Notre Dame.

VDH agrees

Victor Davis Hanson must have received my thought transmissions. He points out the factor that is energizing the terrorist world:

Why, then, are socialists such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia now expanding an anti-capitalist bloc in Latin America--nationalizing companies, jailing dissidents, and whipping up the cult of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro from Peru to Mexico? Why here at home, when the stock market is near all-time highs, the unemployment rate low, and home ownership at record levels, with interest rates and inflation both in check, do the American people express little confidence in their economy and President Bush's leadership?
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The answer to all of these diverse anomalies is oil, oil, and more oil.

I need to think not only outside the war, but outside the Middle East as well. Establish a rule for the American century: Mess with America and we take your oil. All of it. Anywhere in the world. Sounds "proportionate" to me.

Thinking outside the war

Remember all those people saying that without oil the Muslims would be irrelevant? Well, let's do something effective about the Middle East, something to convince Bill in DC that, though he's right:

there's a common idea, almost exclusively promoted among right-wing pundits, that more force is necessarily more effective force.

that more force exerted against the right target can be more effective force:

Perhaps the answer lies in concentrating on the source both of the terrorists' power and their leverage over us, namely, oil. Protesters incoherently shout that the GWOT is a "war for oil". Maybe the problem is that it isn't. So let's make it one. Let's go in and take all the oil fields of the Middle East and put them under US - not NATO, not UN, not EU - control. Anyone who tries to stop us gets nuked or at least carpet-bombed. Let's see how many Iranians are willing to die for control of oil, how many Muslims will fight when we make it clear Mecca and Medina and Qom aren't threatened. Limited objective. Result - Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, etc. no longer have any oil. They can eat sand. We control the oil price. The EU and Japan and China and India pay the price we set. Hezbollah gets no more oil money for missiles. Gasoline, eventually, goes down. Win-win.

Four Mothers

If you want to understand the last few decades of the struggle, you have to understand this article and especially this statement from it:

I am in Israel, because only in Israel will my child not be turned into soap.

Haaretz is one of the most left-leaning Israeli newspapers. And yet even they understand. The latest Hezbollah outrage makes me understand even better the nature of this war. It is a war to the last civilian. Hezbollah kills as many Israeli civilians as it can and then uses its own civilians as cannon fodder. Makes sense to the average Arab/Iranian fanatic. If the death of a two-year-old living in a house with rocket launchers on the roof can put pressure on the Israelis so they stop bombarding Hezbollah "fighters" then that two-year-old is worth as much as, perhaps more than a fighter. I can just hear the shouts of "Praise be to Allah!" when that tactic was discovered. And in two years there can be another two-year-old. Yep. It's that nasty and that inhuman.