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.

Agriculture
From Marginal Revolution, a post on how agriculture got its start stimulated this comment:

I remember reading somewhere (Spengler?) that agriculture developed because some smart, aggressive guy realized he could use control of agricultural resources like water to expand his power over other men and expand the size of the unit over which he has control to maximize his wealth. Sounds very - human. Settling down and farming was not a collective decision but a command directive. There does seem to be some evidence that agriculture did not benefit the individual hunter-gatherer sufficiently so that it would have been adopted without force being used. Cowboys, for instance, don't see "sod-busters" as having a better life. All changes in society don't have to lead to better lives for the masses. But those that lead to more power for those in power may be falsely portrayed as leading to better lives for all.

I'm right again
On a trenchant post titled "Is Israel's strategy working?" on Alenda Lux, a blog I've just found, after this statement:

Even without taking Israel's side, world opinion has clearly come down against Hezbollah as the instigator of the crisis. Admittedly, this is a somewhat more complicated situation than those that simply involve two governments and the people of the target state. In some cases, therefore, nationalism could be causing the Lebanese to side with the Hezbollah-skeptic government over the arguably more powerful Hezbollah. At the same time, claims by the usual suspects (which, as I mentioned, I considered myself) that Israeli bombing would turn the Lebanese back to Hezbollah are apparently unfounded.

I had to lay out my analysis of the Hezbollah attack on Israel, in terms I've seen nowhere else. Which makes me think I'm right:

The most interesting aspect of the Hezbollah attack is their lack of success. They've had six years to accumulate weapons and refine tactics. Their rockets have accomplished nothing. Those who say Israel cannot win without going in on the ground do not apply the same logic to Hezbollah, who cannot win by standing off and sending inaccurate rockets. They cannot invade Israel in significant force. They cannot keep the IDF out of South Lebanon. They have been condemned by Saudi Arabia (!). Looks like a loss to me.

I might add, that when the only suspense in a military situation is whether one side (Hezbollah) is going to be completely annihilated or not, it isn't too hard to figure out the balance of power. And the lack of practical non-verbal support from the Muslim world, thanks to the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan, is also remarkable. Those Islamic terrorists (but I repeat myself) who think they can make a career out of sending a few rockets over the Israeli border and getting other murderers to blow themselves up in crowds of Jewish civilians had better think about getting some job retraining.

Israel=North Korea?
I was playing War Nerd, considering how things could be if Syria got crushed and its territory could be used by our - and Israel's - military. this post on The Adventures of Chester stimulated my thinking with these remarks:

In the past few days, Tigerhawk has excerpted two reports from StratFor discussing the likelihood of an Israeli attack on Syria. First was an excerpt on Friday with this tidbit:

Israel will not put ground forces in Lebanon, particularly in the Bekaa Valley, without first eliminating the Syrian air force; to do otherwise would be to leave Israel's right flank wholly vulnerable. If al Assad does nothing, Israel will have to assume that Syria is waiting for an opportune moment to strike, and will act accordingly.

So I kicked this in. I don't know if it will make it into the comments any time this century:

On the plus side, consider the tactical situation if Boy Assad is overthrown, even if no invasion/occupation of Syria occurs. The Syrians would end up fighting each other as well as the Lebanese factions that hate them. Iran has all of a sudden no staging ground for resupply to Hezbollah and Hamas. The battle space is clear from Israel right through to Iran. This prospect must be irresistible to US war planners. Israel is our North Korea. Jordan and Egypt and SA will stay out, not knowing which side to back in Syria. Iran will back down, end their nuke program or see it utterly destroyed and blame the Arabs' lack of fighting ability, as always.

Trouble in the Mideast?
Yeah (And I don't just mean the misspelling of a three-letter word in the title of the post):

On Sunday, Jeff Jacoby writes “It all boils down to Iran.”:

A sustained assault into southern Lebanon, one that leaves Hezbollah in shards and Israel's northern border at peace, would be welcome evidence that the old Israel is back. And it would represent a significant victory in the worldwide war against Islamist terrorism.

For Hezbollah:

Hezbollah is in trouble. If they don’t bring down Israel in this new offensive - and they won’t - they have nowhere else to go, nothing else to try. Iran and Syria aren’t going to intervene, thanks to the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Sooner or later Hezbollah will run out of rockets and suicide bombers and hideouts. Then we will see that this was their last effort. Faster, please.

40. Denial of reality

This Frontpagemag.com story makes it clear how far the organs of Western culture will go to deny an obvious threat to the very existence of that culture:

“In investigators’ offices, an intricate graph plotting the links between the 17 men and teens charged with being members of a homegrown terrorist cell covers at least one wall. And still, says a source, it is difficult to find a common denominator.” But illustrating the story was a photo of two women in full Islamic dress, their faces entirely covered except for a slit for their eyes.
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Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair joined in the denial, noting proudly that during the press conference following the arrests, “I would remind you that there was not one single reference made by law enforcement to Muslim or Muslim community.”

No reference at all to the fact known by everyone that it is Muslims - and Muslims alone - who are willing, eager and at least somewhat able to kill innocents in the name of destroying Western Culture. For the Unabombers and Timothy McVeighs of the world are not attacking the culture per se, on behalf of a competing - but even more decrepit - culture. They are simple nihilists, as have existed on the fringes of all cultures, even at their heights. No culture has ever thrived, though, when it appeases and simultaneously denies the existence of threats from competing cultures. The lack of self-confidence and simple unmanliness shown by this reaction is definitely a sign of the death of Western culture.

The post from Samizdata containing this:

For myself I'm only surprised the cops did not take careful note of the brand of footware, and take his footprints for the national footprint database, which they have recently acquired the power to do - I kid you not. Or perhaps they did...

inspired my favorite comment of the day:

If we all started wearing Bozo-size shoes when wearing offensive T-shirts we could get the clown in all kinds of trouble.

39. Too many laws

This preposterous story from the Washington Times relates the failure of the bureaucracy responsible for administering the Social Security system to, you know, ADMINISTER the Social Security system:

Privacy concerns prevent the Social Security Administration from notifying an employer that a hired foreign national is not authorized to work in this country, including someone who may be a potential national security risk, says a government audit.

Since 2003, the SSA has issued Social Security numbers, dubbed "non-working," to foreign nationals who need them to collect state or federal benefits, such as public assistance.

But, gee, guess what? Some are using these non-numbers to work and report income to the SSA. To the tune of $4 billion dollars a year. And no doubt expecting to qualify for SS benefits in due time. All illegally.

Can anyone still maintain that our culture knows what it is doing? As in late Rome and Hellenic Greece, laws are ignored and confidence in the right is absent.

39. The decline of Suspenders, rise of the proletarian belt

Not to be confused with the Bible belt, where I'm sure some men still wear suspenders. At least some people still revere the suspender:

In theory, suspenders should be functionally superior to belts and therefore belts would be expected to be the rarity. Suspenders, provided they don't become detached, can be adjusted just so in order to keep trousers at a desired position. The crease is maintained and there is no piling up of the legs atop one's shoes as can happen wearing a belt that can work its way down an inch or two during the day. This is why men's formal clothes are worn with suspenders and not belts.

I made a related point:

Every stall in men's bathrooms has a survival from the suspender era - the hook on the back of the door. When men wore suits, with suspenders, the hooks were absolutely necessary. Suspenders make it impossible to take your pants down without taking your jacket off. And the hook gave you somewhere to hang your jacket - and your hat. Today's suits have belts, so the hooks are no longer necessary. But they're still there. Perhaps the suspender revival will happen before the hooks are discontinued or rust away from disuse.

and Spengler would agree, I'm sure. Can one even imagine him wearing a belt?

38. "Humankind" instead of "Man"
Need a man say more? What reason is given for this replacement? What argument is allowed or listened to? A Man's a Man for a' that.

37. oikophobia

Hatred of the culture within which one has been brought up is an unmistakable feature of decline. And I do not mean to imply that such hatred does not exist in cultures on the rise or at their zeniths. But in such times self-hatred and the lack of self-confidence it signifies is not tolerated or even glorified the way it is today. This feeling is certainly relevant to 31. on immigration and 27 about the reluctance to punish treason. An obvious marker of the predominance of such feeling is the failure to exhibit such symbols as the national flag. How many homes in Britain or America fly the flag? Or display any symbol, such as the Cross or a picture of the Queen or the President - formerly de rigueur, at least in governmental offices - that would express cultural self-confidence? Nowadays the foreign and the destructive are the only "cool" symbols allowed in most homes. Even taxpayer-funded bureaucracies shy away from any display that might express solidarity with Western culture.

36. He/she and Ms

Of course these are related to 2. and 3., as part of the attack on men and the family. The rewriting of history to portray women as the stupid powerless dupes and victims of men by insisting on the need to remake the language is one of the most arrogant and irrational aspects of the attempt to restructure the culture. The irrationality is not hidden, it is proudly on display, as in the use of a "." after the new abbreviation "Ms." even when there is no ellipsis to be memorialized. Perhaps the most annoying aspect of "Ms." - and I cannot believe it is unintentional - is that the pronunciation approximates that of the sound made by uneducated Southerners when pronouncing the traditional "Mrs.". And this from a group which despises the regional and redneck dialect! No further proof could be needed of the corruption of thought. One is brought close to tears by this pathetic attempt to insist that a change in the language can cause a change in power relationships. And this from the generation that always insisted that those in power would never give up that power without physical violence! The horsemen truly ride.

35. Loud cars

Surely there could be no more certain sign of imminent collapse of a civilization than idiots crusing around in flashy cars booming out loud music that they know 95 per cent of the public hates. This is done simply to annoy and proclaim the idiots' immunity from punishment or even verbal chastisement. Not that I don't try. Add in that this occurs in the early morning on a holiday like July 4th and the signal is clear. I noticed a similar phenomenon in Paris last April, but on a much smaller scale. That is, the cars are all smaller, and there were fewer of them, probably because most of them were burned in the recent rioting. Can anyone still believe that Western culture is on the upswing?