Michael Scheuer | Non-Intervention

While our all-seeing neoconservatives, liberal internationalists, and realists argue about democratizing the Muslim world — their argument is not if we should, only how — the real authors of our Muslim-world disaster remain hidden. These wretches are America’s history teachers. They have failed so utterly that no leader in either party appears to understand U.S. history or the basically nontransferable nature of America’s experience. So ineffective have the teachers been that Americans — leaders and led — expect to replicate abroad the republic under which they live but about which they know almost nothing.

Recently neoconservatives and the editorial pages of major dailies have brooded about the failure of Iraq’s constitutional convention to produce a document worthy of the Founders. While the neocons try to limit damage to the Bush Administration, other pundits on the right and the left draw on “history” to remind Americans the U.S. constitution was not made in a day, and that the 1776–1789 period passed before the Founders produced a constitution which still is the indispensable guide for those aspiring to self-government. Because it took America’s greatest men 13 years to create the constitution, the pundits say, we should not worry that the “Iraqi Founders” are having trouble.

This argument is glib and, as a friend says, sounds convincing if you say it fast. It is, however, an argument that can be grounded only in a malicious intent to mislead Americans or a fundamental ignorance of our history. It may be both, but certainly is the latter. For that reason, we should build gallows sturdy enough to accommodate our history teachers.

The road to the U.S. constitution began, to choose a plausible date, with Magna Charta in 1215. From then, Anglo-American political and constitutional thought meandered through five-plus centuries of evolution — guided by Christian scripture and punctuated by theoretical debate, civil and religious wars, regicide, electoral politics, and world wars — until 1789 and what Catherine Drinker Bowen aptly described as “Miracle in Philadelphia.” Questions: How many Americans know, let alone can discuss, that fact? How many Americans can identify a similar post-1215 process in the Islamic world from which the Iraqi Founders can seek guidance? Whose fault is it that such elemental realities elude America’s bipartisan governing elite?

Next, when the Founders signed Jefferson’s Declaration, beginning the journey to the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, they were not only informed by Christian scripture and instructed by centuries of evolving Anglo-American political theory and moral philosophy, but also drew on 150-years experience of self-government in North America, beginning in Jamestown and Plymouth. The Founders were not off-the-cuff, 90-day wonders when it came to self-government. They were steeped in centuries of republican theory and history, and many participated in the day-to-day politics of self-government. Questions: How many Americans know these clear, bare-bone facts? From what comparable body of self-governing theory and what record of practical electoral experience are the Iraqi Founders drawing? Are they informed and guided, as were our Founders, by Christian scripture? How can any rational American expect the Iraqis to produce a “Miracle in Baghdad”?

Finally, when the Founders signed and the states ratified the Constitution, how did they know power would be peacefully passed from one government to another? Well, they didn’t. But based on the post-Magna Charta development of Anglo-American self-government, the Constitutionu2018s provisions, and the unity-producing reverence Americans had for George Washington’s actions and guidance, the Founders hoped for an orderly transfer. The accession of John Adams to succeed Washington did not fully prove the Founder’s formula because the Federalists kept power. But their scheme was validated by the 1800 transfer from Adams to Jefferson, from one party to another after a vicious election campaign. Questions: Why do Americans believe elections in places lacking 800 years of Anglo-American political experience, like Iraq and Afghanistan, make any difference? Whose fault is it that U.S. leaders fail to see that elections are meaningless in societies where there is have no history of peacefully transferring power and men do not shelve their AK-47s and wait for the next election?

History teachers are the villains. They have left Americans without a sound understanding of their history. Crippling at home, their failure causes our humiliation and defeat abroad. America’s experience is long, arduous, bloody, Christianity-based, and largely unique. Others may aspire to replicate it, and to them we owe rhetorical support, prayers, and best wishes. Our experience, however, cannot be installed in alien cultures in a few years time; and certainly not at bayonet point. That our otherwise brilliant U.S. leaders do not know this deep in their bones speaks to the failure of America’s history teachers, a failure that should shame them more painfully than any pain derived from the noose they richly merit.

This month’s burial of 20 U.S. Marines from a single Ohio reserve battalion is the result of Marines doing what they have done for 200-plus years — fighting their country’s battles. Dignified as always, Marine officers and men handled the news of the deaths and subsequent dealings with the bereaved families with a sincere, dry-eyed compassion that sets them far apart — and far above — the cloying festivals of televised grief on which our society thrives. In war, peace, and mourning, Marines are the epitome of the now much-denigrated but still cardinal virtue which the 19th Century called manliness.

It is for the rest of us, rather, to ask for what did the 20 Ohio Marines die? We have heard from the president that the Marines were killed because the enemy in Iraq is trying to break America’s will. Others have said the Marines died because of terrorism committed by religious fanatics. Still others claim they died to bring freedom and democracy to a country long scared by a mad despot’s tyranny. As a corollary to the latter, the president claims installing democracy in Iraq and across the Islamic world is necessary because the freedoms of Americans increasingly depend on ensuring others have the same freedoms.

Each of these reasons bulked large in the rhetoric of the politicians speaking at or about the funeral and memorial services for the 20 Marines. Some spoke somberly, others pounded their chests and asserted the nobility of lives spent bringing freedom to others. And all of them lied.

The 20 Marines died because America’s bipartisan governing elite is intoxicated with the belief that they should, can, and must govern the world. When Americans push the voting machine’s button for their candidate, the victor who emerges immediately forgets the voters’ concerns and rushes to Washington to participate in the bipartisan crusade to rebuild the world in what the politicians see as America’s image. Drunk on the headiness and self-flattering nature of this belief, the governing elite mindlessly pursues building overseas democracies as if it is their self-evident, Jeffersonian duty. Make no mistake, it was these politicians and their obsessive, ignorant-of-America crusade that helped kill the Ohio Marines and 1,780 of their brethren.

Until the last half-century, America’s Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen were not used to pursue a war aim called “building democracies.” Historically, U.S. leaders have understood the American way of war: Get there quick with the biggest stick, annihilate the enemy, his supporters, and infrastructure, and come home. In recent decades, and particularly under the Bush and Clinton administrations, however, our military has been used as armed social workers. From Somalia to Bosnia, from Haiti to East Timor, from Afghanistan to Iraq, our democracy-crazed politicians have used our servicemen and women as glorified policeman who are sent abroad to use minimal force — thus becoming targets and allowing enemies to survive — and to run schools, administer towns, build roads, provide potable water and improved health care, and to do a thousand other things irrelevant to their one valid mission: Remorselessly annihilating America’s enemies.

The 20 Ohio Marines and all the other military dead in Iraq died not only from enemy action, but also from the gleaming shivs that were knowingly and gleefully driven into their vitals by the hands of democracy crusaders named Bush, Clinton, McCain, Cheney, Gore, Pelosi, Biden, Albright, Kerry, Wolfowitz, Harmon, Tenet, Feith, Rumsfeld, Rice, hundreds of other politicians, and their acolytes in the press, electronic media, and think tanks. We might be in Iraq because we need to ensure oil supplies, protect the neocons’ masters in Israel, or fight Islamic insurgents, but we have no need to be there to spread democracy. America’s democracy does not now and never has depended on the democracy of any other country. The freedoms and liberties of Americans do not now and never have depended on forcing others to have the same freedoms and liberties. Indeed, if the democracy crusaders knew American history, they would know that 800 years of America’s at-times-violent democratic evolution — if we date its start from Runnymede — cannot be replicated in short order, in foreign lands, and in alien cultures by men named Sistani and Karzai. Such a belief can only come from ignorance or a profound contempt for the centuries of sacrifice by Americans to reach the still less-than-perfect state of our democracy.

So the 20 Ohio Marines were buried with the quiet dignity and patriotism that characterizes the Marine Corps. Americans should commend their souls to God and turn with white-hot fury on their killers, those in Iraq and those miserable, self-righteous, and blithely murderous wretches from both parties who inhabit the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, who worship their idol Woodrow Wilson, America’s most enduringly malignant contribution to world affairs, and who sent the brave Ohioans and nearly two thousand other Americans to their deaths — for nothing.

“An ELECTIVE DESPOTISM was not the government we fought for,” James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper 41. As America nears the 229th anniversary of its independence, it is well to recall Madison’s words and to remember what the Founders fought for is best described in Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, which remains the single most important statement on the nature of our republic. It is true that Christian scripture informed the work of Jefferson and the Founders, but the declaration and the constitution that followed it are the only scripture to which Americans must hew. God, after all, will work His own will, to His own satisfaction, in His own time.

On this July 4th Americans must consider if it is again time to “dissolve the bands which have connected them with another” — this for the third time in their history. We did so in 1776 to shed ourselves of Britain’s thrall, and our wrong-headed but valiant Southern brethren did so in 1861 after deciding the Union’s political bands threatened their “country’s” economy, political aspirations, culture, and domestic institutions — including especially the abominable practice of black slavery.

Today, Americans confront a despotic threat to themselves and their nation like those of 1776 and 1861, but one that neither Jefferson nor the Southern secessionists would have imagined possible in the America the Founders designed. Americans now live under a Federal government that is pervasive and dictatorial — like Britain in 1776 — and which acts as the destroyer or suppressor of culture, economic endeavor, and political aspirations. In addition, today’s Federal government is the main inciter of American-vs.-American hatred, much as the South perceived the Federal government in 1861. The threat posed by the Federal government’s deliberate pitting of citizen against citizen, however, is not most dire threat to America. That tragic honor belongs to another aspect of the government’s performance: Its supine and resolute refusal to protect American citizens and territory. In regard to national defense, Americans today find themselves in what Thomas Paine described as the “intolerable state” of being “exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government …”

Assertions

The three branches of the Federal government, and the two political parties that run and staff them, are knowingly and willfully failing to protect what Jefferson termed the “unalienable Rights” of Americans, chief among which, he wrote, are “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Declaration described in simple terms what governments are meant to do, and what citizens are obliged to do if governments fail to perform to specification. “That to secure these [unalienable] rights,” Jefferson explained,

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and Happiness.

Jefferson went on wisely to warn that long-established governments must not be changed for “light and transient reasons.” He added, however, that the documented record of a government’s “long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing … a design to reduce them under an absolute Despotism” creates for its citizens a right and a duty “to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

The “Despotism” Americans face today is not that of George III’s Britain, nor is it the expanding Northern commercial and social juggernaut the Secessionists despised and feared. No, Americans are confronted and oppressed by an “absolute Despotism” of incompetence, cowardice, and self-interest, a despotism controlled by an aristocracy of male and female life-time office servers who have forgotten that they are hired help, not demigods. These men and women care only for the perpetuation of their power and sinecures and only act to preserve their power. They care not a jot about protecting Americans and their land.

Americans today are ruled by a despotism of failure that is unresponsive — indeed contemptuous — of their needs, demands, culture, and history. As citizens, therefore, they must consider recourse to the duty the Founders assigned them: To rid themselves of a tyrannical Federal aristocracy willing to permit the destruction of their country in a selfish effort to preserve the power and prerogatives they exercise over their brethren. The citizen’s role in this unavoidable duty is central and immensely daunting. Still, citizen action is the only path toward safety and away from despotism. Calling for resistance to British tyranny, Patrick Henry in 1775 argued that America’s freedom depended on the willingness of its citizens to defend their liberties against “so formidable an adversary.” Delay, he said, would be fatal. “Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope until our enemies have bound us hand and foot?,” he asked. No, Henry concluded, whatever the risks of defying a despotic and powerful foe, the danger to liberty demanded the risks be run. Henry’s prescription was valid in 1775; it is valid today. Americans must either act or allow a despotic aristocracy of incompetence to commit suicide for them, their children, and their nation.

Assertions Explained

Assertions made are not assertions proved. Jefferson recognized this and so enumerated in his declaration the British transgressions that compromised the “unalienable rights” of Americans. He and the Founders submitted their list for review by “a candid world.” In this bill of particulars, Jefferson used the pronoun “He” to refer to George III and his ministers, whom the Founders identified as the agent and symbol of America’s oppression. Hereafter in this essay, the pronouns “He” and “His” will refer to the elected officials and their senior political appointees — of both parties — who run and administer the Federal government. Let the “candid world” of the American citizenry consider the following:

• He has taxed citizens at usurious rates and yet has failed to avoid budget deficits astonishing in size and crippling to future generations. He has spent massive amounts of these taxes on building the strongest military on earth, and yet refuses to use that military to remorselessly destroy America’s enemies, instead allowing America to be attacked with impunity. Preferring not to offend the opinion of foreign nations, He refused to exploit numerous opportunities to kill Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before they became strategic threats, and then hid those failures through the work of three intelligence investigations staffed by safe and trusted former members of the Federal aristocracy. More recently, He wantonly wasted the lives of U.S. Marines by aborting, on victory’s threshold, the first attempt to take Fallujah in Iraq. And today, as Americans wait for their foes to detonate a nuclear weapon in their country, He shamelessly begs and bribes a South Asian military dictator to use a Third-World army to find and kill the terrorist most likely to inflict nuclear devastation on America.
• He has routinely ignored constitutional sanctions by allowing the president to oppress the American people by initiating wars without an official, public, and recorded vote by the legislative branch declaring war. Nothing in our Constitution is clearer than the requirement for Congress to declare war. In Federalist 41, Alexander Hamilton stressed that the Constitution made sure the president’s ability to make war would not equal that of the British king. To this end, the powers to declare war and raise and regulate military forces were given to the legislative branch. Our first and greatest president respected this limit on his power. “The constitution vests the power of declaring war in the Congress,” George Washington wrote, “[and] therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.” Notwithstanding the Constitution’s clear intent, He has, for half a century, acted in the arbitrary manner of the British king and rendered the Founders’ absolute requirement an irrelevant anachronism.
• He has passed laws with unbecoming fanfare and bravado and then refused to enforce them. Thus today, in time of war, the nation is under a continuous and growing domestic threat because of His deliberate failure to control borders and check illegal immigration, as well as His cowardly refusal to identify the millions of aliens in our midst because He fears political retribution. He has thereby created and nurtured a situation that vastly increases the chance of more terrorist attacks in the United States. Worse, this situation all but ensures American-against-American violence — targeting immigrant Americans — after the next attack.
• He has failed to make laws that would curb the undue and destructive influence of foreign powers in America. He instead holds hands with tyrannical Arab princes who sponsor religious war against America and extort billions by manipulating oil supplies. He lines up to genuflect before and pander to the agent of a minor, arrogant, and larcenous foreign power in the guise of the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee. He recoils in terror before the war-through-inundation-of-immigrants threats issued by yet another venal mountebank who is ensconced as Mexico’s president.
• He has dictated that a cruel bureaucratic war be waged against all religions in our own country, consistently passing laws and issuing decisions from the bench that denigrate and humiliate the faiths of American believers. In so doing, He has set American against American as each religious group strives to protect its identity. He has, for the first time, and by deliberate policy, created an environment conducive to the spread of religious acrimony — and perhaps violence — among believing Americans in America. He has done the same through His dictations on issues ranging from education to road construction to law enforcement. He has made Federal domestic polices the single greatest instigator of disunity and divisiveness in America, almost as if pitting American against American is His goal. He has, moreover, negated the ability of Americans to talk, debate, and, if necessary, argue out their differences by imposing Federal censorship laws cynically and deliberately mislabeled as prohibitions on hate speech.
• He has recklessly squandered hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to foreign powers whose policies and ambitions are antithetical to U.S. interests. He has, moreover, spent like amounts in monetary and/or military aid to support religious theocracies in places like Saudi Arabia and Israel, thus supporting religious persecution abroad and unilaterally abrogating the Constitution’s prohibition against official U.S. support for religion. It is patently absurd to fund and promote established, discriminatory, state-dominating religions overseas, while waging war against the faiths of the American people at home.
• He has negated the ability of the nation’s military to protect Americans and their territory by continuing to purchase weapons systems irrelevant to defeating the enemies now threatening America. He has done so because the makers of these unusable weapons systems contribute massively to the funds that allow His continued manipulation of the electoral system and thereby maintain both His power and His ability to ignore citizens’ safety. He then involves the nation’s military in wars it is not equipped to fight and binds it with rules of engagement that make our military personnel more targets than soldiers.
• He has for more than thirty years knowingly failed to create an energy policy that lessens America’s dependence on foreign energy resources. He has willingly put the country under the thumb of Arab tyrants and Latin American dictators, leaving it liable to unexpected and savage increases in energy prices. He has deliberately left Americans in a situation where they will pay extortionate energy prices which will, in turn, fund the terrorists who are killing their children serving in the military.

The Road Back: Citizen Action, State-based Defiance, and the Ballot

Clearly, the Federal government, as now constituted and run, has the capacity but not the will, courage, or commonsense to protect what Jefferson called the “Safety and Happiness” of American citizens. Americans must act, therefore, to protect themselves and their country. At this date, violence against the Federal government is not needed, and must not be in the current set of options for Americans to consider.

Where to Start? The only place to start is with the physical security of the United States. Addressing this issue first has two clear benefits. First, without physical security, all of America’s so-called post-9/11 victories over Islamic militancy are mere eyewash. Second, if there is a single issue on which those we elected to run the Federal government have, for decades, failed monumentally and deliberately, it is the physical security of our nation. Criminal actions against these knowingly negligent men and women are in order, but for now let us leave them to babble lies about “improved Homeland Security” and act at the state and local levels to protect Americans by taking the responsibility for domestic security that the Federal government has abdicated.

How to Proceed? It has taken two-plus centuries to statutorily empower our elected Federal aristocracy of incompetence, arrogance, cowardice, and greed. These men and women are now the masters of the Federal system and have, through arms-makers and other industries, domestic and foreign lobbying groups, and incestuous relationships with foreign powers, built dependable financial resources that make them independent of and superior to the citizenry. These funds allow them to pay cynical lip-service to the American electorate. Armed with the power of legal precedent, the aristocracy will delay and ultimately defeat efforts by citizens to restore to themselves a government dedicated to securing their “Safety and Happiness.” In the short term, there is no way to alter the cupidity, cowardice, and self-serving arrogance of the Federal aristocracy. At first it can only be isolated, but then, over time, it can and must be destroyed from the bottom up by massive, popular resistance to its policies. “It was by the sober sense of our citizens,” Jefferson wrote in words as true today as two centuries ago, “that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.”

For now, then, an active defiance of the Federal government through cooperation at the state and local levels is the only means by which America’s domestic security can begin to be protected. At times such defiance will mean using the same state-government powers that governors invoke when man-made or natural disasters occur; at other times, defiance will require blatantly refusing to obey Federal edicts. The state governors must for now be the leading agents of defiance. If America is to be protected, the governors must work across party lines and focus solely on the security of their citizens and nation.

• The Governors should exert their control over the military reserve units that fall under state jurisdiction and refuse to transfer that control to the Federal government. The governors should then mobilize and deploy these units to staff and administer state-mandated, border-control regimes to stop the flow of illegal immigration. Of course all governors do not have a border-control problem, but all governors do suffer from the adverse consequences derived from those who do. If extra military manpower is needed by the governors on the front-lines of this federally mandated and protected immigration debacle — such as those in California, Arizona, Washington, Texas, New York, Michigan, and New Mexico — it should be provided by the governors of interior states who do not have contiguous borders with negligent, apathetic, or ill-intentioned foreign powers. If the federal aristocracy threatens legal or physical action against the states, the governors must defy them. The Federal time-servers will quickly find that the electorate, in time of war, will rally to governors who act to protect them when the Federal government will not. The Federal aristocrats will also find themselves impotent: Can any American imagine a U.S. soldier shooting his brethren for defying the Federal government and trying to protect all citizens?
• The Governors can also use their control over military reserves to begin to rein-in the president’s unilateral and unconstitutional war-making ability. The U.S. military’s reserve forces — including those state governors command — are key components of America’s war-making ability; without them large, long-duration wars overseas are not possible. Because the Federal legislature has allowed the president to abrogate the constitutional requirement that Congress declare war, such action by the governors will deny the Federal government vital military manpower, thereby negating the ability of presidents to take America to war simply because he or she is so inclined. By using the military units under their command to protect citizens, the governors will provoke a needed confrontation with the federal government that may at last return constitutional sanity to the issue of making war. Such actions are not meant to make America vulnerable or render it unable to wage war abroad. Rather, they are meant to help destroy an unconstitutional power that has been assumed by presidents, and to make domestic security certain and reliable, without which winning victory over our enemies overseas is, in any event, an illusion.

In the longer term, Americans must destroy the current Federal aristocracy by establishing litmus tests for all candidates elected to the Federal legislature. For now, such litmus tests must have nothing to do with today’s contentious social issues. Those issues are important, but their resolution is both impossible and irrelevant unless America survives. The litmus tests should rather deal with a limited number of issues that pertain directly to national security and constitutional rigor. No candidate should be sent to the Federal legislature before he or she unambiguously pledges to support:

• Effective control of our national borders by the U.S. military: the temporary suspension of all immigration until America puts its domestic house in order vis—vis immigration policy and enforcement; the deportation of proven illegal immigrants with tightly limited right of appeal; and the creation of an immigration system that welcomes foreign nationals if they enter America via the established legal system. Candidates must also support the construction of physical impediments to crossing U.S. borders, thereby forcing all individuals entering America to pass through official checkpoints. Without such barriers, the tens of billions of dollars spent on computerized identification and detection systems will be easily defeated by foes who will simply avoid official border crossings.
• Equipping the U.S. military with appropriate weaponry to defeat America’s current enemies; reformulating rules of engagement to facilitate the killing of as many of America’s enemies as quickly as possible; and curtailing by statute the use of U.S. forces in other than war-fighting situations. Also, the immediate and permanent abrogation of Executive Order 12333, which forbids assassination of foreign leaders. America’s young must fight no more wars, and the U.S. government must invoke no more civilian-killing economic sanctions, when both can be avoided by killing simple butchers like Saddam and Castro or nascent brilliant, charismatic, and brutal leaders like Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Our own leaders are hired help and replaceable. If their lives are put on the line as the cost of eliminating threats to Americans as a whole, it is a chance they are paid to take. Their protective blanket of E.O. 12333 should be shredded in the interest of the greater good.
• Substantial reductions in and eventual elimination of foreign aid to governments — especially dictatorships, tyrannies, and theocracies — and the creation of a foreign aid program catholic in its approach and limited to food, medical, technological, and educational aid, preferably administered entirely by secular private or public U.S. institutions.
• An energy policy that demonstrably begins to reduce America’s dependence on foreign energy sources. This policy should include alternative energy sources, increased domestic production and exploration, and hybrid automobiles. Funds now spent on aid to foreign tyrants, theocrats, and gangsters must be used as a catalyst for creativity and innovation in the energy sector.
• The immediate reclamation of the Congress’s now-usurped control of the war-making power. This to abide by the constitution, to end a half-century of the American people being oppressed by presidents who take them to war on personal whim, and to heed Madison’s warning that “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
• The reestablishment of Free Speech rights by systematically abrogating the Federal hate-speech laws that are meant to preclude criticism of Federal policy and action, allow the Federal aristocracy to experiment with and impose domestic policies antithetical to America’s culture, history, and constitution, and which pit Americans against Americans.

Finally, once the current Federal aristocracy is destroyed and a legislature is installed that has the protection of Americans as its foremost goal, we must work toward a constitutional amendment that will sanction the initiative, referendum, and recall for all Federal officials — elected and politically appointed — in all three branches of government. These measures must be applied to all Federal judges. Both political parties long ago made ideology, not talent and objectivity, the standard for judicial appointment. It seems best, therefore, to afford citizens the right to decide the brand of ideology they want in their judges. The Internet Age allows these measures to be executed in reasonable amounts of time and, once undertaken, they will begin to reestablish a link between citizens and their government that is vibrant, effective, and vigilant.

Conclusion: Heed Jefferson and the Founders

The current Federal despotism is ample proof that the Founders were correct about the imperfectability of human nature and the corrupting nature of centralized power in a republic. Sadly, it also is clear that their system of checks-and-balances has been destroyed by the men and women who staff and run the Federal government. These individuals will not reform themselves, and so the people who elected them must seek to take charge. The nationalization of the initiative, referendum, and recall is essential not only to remove those who deliberately pit Americans against Americans, but to block polices that further that goal and, concurrently, to initiate policies to stop the current divisiveness of American politics from descending into a new civil war.

The Federal government is now run by individuals who too closely resemble those Walt Whitman described as responsible for the Civil War. Listen to Whitman’s description of the members of a pre-Civil War political party convention and prepare to cringe as you recognize the same character types now populating our national parties and Federal government.

“The members who composed it [the convention] were, seven eighths of them, the meanest kind of bawling and blowing officeholders, office seekers, pimps, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, custom-house clerks, contractors, kept editors, spaniels well trained to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, mail-riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the president, creatures of would-be presidents, spies, bribers, compromisers, lobbyists, sponges, ruined sports … crawling, serpentine men — the lousy combings and born freedom-sellers of the earth.”

Walt Whitman

Using ballots to destroy today’s venal, self-serving, and incompetent ruling elite may be the last chance to reclaim, without violence, a democratic republic in which, as Jefferson wrote, “the people [are] the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.” While close to being too late to do so, there is no need to despair. The Founders’ wisdom is at our disposal; indeed, it silently but forcefully demands our attention and action.

So on this Independence Day let all be of good heart as we accept our duty as American citizens and begin to destroy an elite — not a system of government — that is knowingly failing to protect the nation’s “Safety and Happiness.” In the early, dark days of America’s war against Britain, Thomas Paine outlined the dangers his countrymen faced from British military power and urged them to act with unity and confidence. “I thank GOD that I fear not,” Paine wrote. “I see no real cause for fear. I know our situation well, and see the way out.”

“… I call not upon a few, but upon all; not on THIS State or THAT State, but on EVERY State; up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and repulse it. Say not, that thousands are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burthen of the day upon Providence, but ‘show your faith in your works,’ that GOD may bless you. It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach all of you. The far and the near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor, shall suffer or rejoice alike.”

Thomas Paine

There is, again, no cause now for Americans to use violence as they confront the Federal despotism. That said, the threat Americans face is as desperate as that faced by Paine and our forbearers. Our domestic security is deliberately and disastrously compromised by presidents and legislators who refuse to defend America. Our constitution is defied by presidents who covet the role of overseas military buccaneer. And worst of all, these presidential buccaneers are aided and abetted by a Federal legislature more concerned with safeguarding their sinecures than in exercising their constitutional duty. These failures must be rectified, and measures must be emplaced to prevent their repetition.

Let each of us, then, draw inner strength from belief in the God of our choice, but let all of us steel ourselves with the resolve and power found in Jefferson’s timeless declaration and the Founders’ actions and legacy — the eternal right and duty to change a government that does not secure our “Safety and Happiness.” “I love the man,” Paine wrote, “that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ’Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” Fortunately for todayu2018s Americans, the Founders and their compatriots pursued their principles and were victorious. Now it is our turn, and we must keep in mind that our failure to act will yield the same result Paine forecast if his own generation had failed to act: “The blood of his children shall curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole and made THEM happy.”

The recent torrent of Internet and print media stories about the wounding and demise, and then the resurrection and return to battle, of al-Qaeda’s commander in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, kicked up a great deal of dust but little solid information. After the initial announcement of al-Zarqawi’s wounding was circulated on the Internet on May 24, 2005 (posted on www.alhesbah.org among other sites), little has been clear except that he was wounded “lightly,” is still fighting, and has reported to Osama bin Laden that all is well with him and the mujahideen in Iraq. What conclusions should be draw from this episode that — as reported in the Western media — reeks of melodrama?

Two weeks on there are several conclusions that can be based on the material now available. First, it does indeed seem that al-Zarqawi was wounded in a battle that occurred in May in the area of al-Qaim, near the Syrian border in Iraq. That multi-day engagement featured an offensive near al-Qaim pitting a force of U.S. Marines against the Iraqi Mujahideen, including al-Zarqawi and his group. The media reports that fighting was intense around al-Qaim, and that casualties were heavy: U.S. military spokesmen claim that nine Marines were killed and 40 wounded, while 125 insurgents were killed. No total for insurgent wounded was given, but al-Zarqawi was among them.

Initial reports on 24 May said that al-Zarqawi was shot in a lung and offered little hope for his survival; his organization‘s website soon confirmed the news of his wounding and asked Muslims worldwide to pray for him. (See “Reports of Zarqawi’s Injuries Continue amidst Talk about Possible Successor” in Terrorism Focus, Volume II, Issue 10) On May 25, a user by the name of Abu Doujanah al-Tunisi of the “media committee of al-Qaeda in Iraq,” posted a statement on an Islamist website reporting that because of the seriousness of Zarqawi’s injuries, he had been “temporarily” replaced by Shaykh Abu Hafs al-Qarni, a senior military adviser of al-Qaeda‘s military committee in Iraq. Al-Qaeda quickly shot back with a message that al-Qarni had not replaced al-Zarqawi — temporarily or otherwise — but did not clear-up the condition of his health. There the matter stood until al-Qaeda, with its traditional sure flair for surprise and drama, announced on the afternoon of May 30 that al-Zarqawi would speak via tape to Osama bin Laden, a statement that was advertised as “A Message from a Soldier to His Commander.” [1]

Al-Zarqawi’s message to bin Laden suggests that the former took advantage of his injury to achieve at least six important objectives:

1. Zarqawi acted to assure his own fighters and al-Qaeda’s supporters around the world that he was physically able to continue the war. Following al-Qaeda’s tradition, neither the group nor al-Zarqawi himself sought to hide his wounding; saying “my wounds are light” and all other reports “which left minds boggled … are sheer rumors, which are baseless.” It also seems likely that the confusion over whether al-Qaeda had named a temporary commander to replace al-Zarqawi arose more from the difficulties of communicating inside Iraq than from a deliberate effort to misinform. Parenthetically, al-Qaeda’s ability to handle al-Zarqawi’s wounding deftly, and then exploit it for propaganda successes, speak volumes about the quickly developed quality and physical security of al-Zarqawi’s media apparatus.
2. Zarqawi used his message to bin Laden to tie his wounding to the recent battle between insurgents and the U.S. Marines in al-Qaim. Al-Qaeda has long identified the Marines as the only courageous and respectable U.S. fighters, and al-Zarqawi focused attention on the battle against the Marines at al-Qaim, describing it “as one of the greatest battles of Islam.” “O beloved commander [bin Laden],” al- Zarqawi wrote, “your soldiers are, by the grace of God, writing remarkable chapters about sacrifice and the defense of religion and the honor of Muslims in the city of al-Qaim….” While the Marines cleared al-Qaim area, al-Zarqawi used the survival of his forces as evidence of victory, a tactic al-Qaeda consistently employs in the media to show Muslims that its fighters can battle the best American forces and survive. “Al-Qaim,” al-Zarqawi told Muslims, “is the battleground and arena of men; the legend of the Marines collapsed in it… The goals of their crusade vanished at the gates of al-Qaim”
3. Zarqawi also told the Muslim world about the developing cooperation among insurgents groups in Iraq. He explained that in the fighting at al-Qaim, insurgent forces included the “Muhajiroun” (emigrants) — fighters who came to Iraq from other Muslim countries — and the “al-Ansar” (supporters), from among the native Iraqi insurgents. This is an important issue for the West to watch because, if true, it suggests that non-Iraqi fighters are integrating with native Iraqis at a rate that far exceeds that at which Arab fighters integrated with the Afghan mujahideen during the jihad against the Soviets. The language employed by Zarqawi also seems intended to evoke the setting of the first Muslim community in Medina, which was similarly made up of al-Ansar and Muhajiroun. Interestingly, Zarqawi’s statements also appeal to the modern takfir wal-hijra ideology, which calls for a period of isolation from unbelievers and a hijra, or emigration, to create a pure community, as occurred for the earlier generation of mujahideen in Afghanistan. Whether Iraq will become a long-term training ground and safe haven for mujahideen is yet to be determined, but a higher rate of foreign fighters entering Iraq to join the insurgency will certainly bolster the community of mujahideen for the short-term.
4. Al-Zarqawi’s message to bin Laden also again acknowledged the rules that bin Laden laid down for attacks on Muslims in Iraq; that is, such attacks are permissible under Islamic law if they are aimed at Muslims supporting the foreign and infidel occupying power. Al-Zarqawi explained his attacks on Shi’as and Kurds were religiously justified because these peoples were lead by Shi’a Ayatollah al-Sistani, who was supporting the U.S.-dominated regime and thus is the “leader of infidelity and heresy,” and by Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, who was likewise assisting the U.S. coalition and so had made himself into an “enemy of God and a “Zio-American.” Al-Zarqawi strongly implied that Iraqis taking direction from al-Sistani and Talabani would be regarded by al-Qaeda as heretics and enemies.
5. Al-Zarqawi’s message also underscored his status as bin Laden’s lieutenant, not his equal or rival. From the opening line — “From a soldier standing in the line of fire … to his gracious commander” — al-Zarqawi made clear his allegiance to bin Laden, and prayed that God “protect you and give you a long life and make you a thorn in the side of your enemies and grant you martyrdom in the end. We are awaiting your orders and instructions.” Al-Zarqawi even implied that his forces fought the U.S. Marines to avenge the recent loss of a senior member of bin Laden’s inner circle. “O our Shaykh [bin Laden],” al-Zarqawi wrote, “if the Byzantine dog Bush was pleased by the arrest of our brother Abu-al-Faraj al-Libi, he was disturbed by what happened to his soldiers at al-Qaim and elsewhere in the Land of the Two Rivers [Iraq].”
6. Al-Zarqawi concluded his message with an attempt to increase U.S. anxiety about al-Qaeda’s future plans in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi told bin Laden that “I think the plan that was drawn up has reached you or is on its way to you,” adding that “the enemy, praise be to God, is proceeding as was planned for it. We, praise be to God, are about to tighten the noose on it.” Al-Zarqawi thus left doubt in his readers’ minds: are his activities in Iraq part of a larger, near-term al-Qaeda attack plan, or was he simply trying to “terrorize” his foes? The brilliant analyst Bruce Hoffman has described al-Zarqawi as a “master of disinformation,” [2] and no small part of the brilliance is leaving substantial doubt in his enemies’ mind about what al-Qaeda has on tap.

And there may still be another shoe to drop in the al-Zarqawi saga. His message to bin Laden gives al-Qaeda’s overall chief an excellent opportunity to respond, both to congratulate al-Zarqwai on his personal survival and his “success” against the U.S. Marines, and to exploit the uncertainty created by al-Zarqawi’s reference to the attack plan that “was drawn up … and has reached you or is on its way to you.” In this context, it seems fair to conclude that al-Zarqawi and his media committee succeeded in turning his wounding to the clear advantage of the Iraqi insurgency and Osama bin Laden.

Notes

1. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, “A Message from a Soldier to his Commander,” lajnah22m3.co.uk/forums, 30 May 05. (All quotes in the rest of the article are from this document except for note 2 below.)
2. Katherine Schrader, “Search for al-Zarqawi Highlights Problems,” AP, 31 May 2005.

Published: Terrorism Focus Volume: 2 Issue: 11 (Jamestown Foundation)

Professor Robert Pape’s brilliant new book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism gives Americans an urgently needed basis for devising a strategy to defeat Osama bin Laden and other Islamist militants. In scholarly and low-key prose, Pape delivers the results of his own extensive research and that done by the University of Chicago’s Project on Suicide Terrorism. In so doing, Pape demolishes the relentlessly repeated assertion of the neoconservatives and Israeli politicians that Islamist suicide attacks against America and other counties are launched by undereducated, unemployed, alienated, apocalyptic fanatics who are eager to kill themselves because Americans vote, have civil liberties, and allow women to drive cars. This assertion always has been transparently false, and I have argued so in my own work on al-Qaeda. It has been, however, an assertion that is easy to protect because its authors simply dismiss their critics by calling them anti-Semites, thereby foreclosing debate. But Pape avoids contentious rhetoric and employs facts to kill the assertion, and he does so coolly and with the precision of a Marine sniper.

The basis of Dying to Win is Pape’s study of the 315 known suicide terrorist attacks that occurred in the world between 1980 and 2003, attacks carried out by Muslims, Tamils, Sikhs, and Kurds. Pape concludes that “the data show there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any of the world’s religions.”

“Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective.”

Yes, Pape has documented both the valid logic behind the use of suicide attacks — they are an effective weapon for an inferior force fighting a great power, especially a pain-averse, democratic great power — and the reality that groups using such attacks are playing for strategic stakes: Their goal is victory, not mere destruction. The suicide attacks by each of the groups studied in Dying to Win, Pape concludes, were “mainly a response to foreign occupation rather than the product of Islamic fundamentalism.” In sum, America faces a logical, patient, and deliberate enemy, one with clear strategic goals. This enemy is attacking because he perceives his country, culture, and/or religion are under attack. In addition, Pape shows conclusively that suicide attackers are usually respected and even revered in their own societies because they are defending those societies against a foreign threat. Simply put, Pape suggests there is no sound reason to believe the pool of potential suicide attackers can be dried up as long as their societies perceive an existential threat to their existence.

Pape’s conclusions flow into a set of recommendations that cannot be too highly commended to American leaders and citizens, whatever their political persuasion: For near-term self-defense, America must kill as many of this generation of terrorists as possible while simultaneously beginning to terminate the interventionist policies and presence that motivate our present enemies and, if continued, will motivate greater numbers in the next generation. Pape warns that the hands-on, Wilsonian crusaders who today control both U.S. political parties have already vastly increased the likelihood of another 9/11 attack via their efforts to use military force to spread democracy abroad; this he calls the “taproot” of the suicide attackers’ motivation. Pape argues that the “most important” concept for Americans — the leaders and the led — is that

“[A]n attempt to transform Muslim societies through regime change is likely to dramatically increase the threat we face. The root cause of suicide terrorism is foreign occupation and the threat that foreign military presence poses to the local community’s way of life. Hence, any policy that seeks to conquer Muslim societies in order, deliberately, to transform their culture is folly. Even if our intentions are good, anti-American terrorism would likely grow, and grow rapidly.”

This reality, Pape recognizes, will require changes in America’s relations with the Persian Gulf states, getting our military out of Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula, and the implementation of an energy policy that makes Arab oil production substantially less important to our economy. In other words, America must heed John Quincy Adam’s advice that disaster lurks for America in every effort it undertakes to destroy monsters abroad in order to install democracy in their place. What Adams knew based on historical study and intuition, Pape has splendidly documented with cold, hard facts. All honor and praise to Professor Robert Pape and his colleagues at the University of Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism not only for solid and penetrating research, but for leaving the neoconservatives, the Israelis, and the world’s other Wilsonian democracy-installers with the formidable task of finding a way to attribute “anti-Semitism” to the mass of data painstakingly accumulated and evenhandedly presented in the invaluable book, Dying to Win.

Published: Antiwar.com

Winston Churchill once remarked that God protects drunks and the United States of America. Fortunately, the divine protection Churchill detected for the United States seems still in place — if we are wise enough to see and take advantage of it.

In the past month, America has been blessed by two events that ought to put us on a better path toward defeating our Islamic militant enemies. The spontaneous and worldwide Koran controversy — as discussed previously in this journal — focuses a bright light on the deep religious motivation of our foes and their supporters. If this episode begins to put paid to the idea that America and its actions are under attack only by Islam’s lunatic fringe of criminals and gangsters, the Koran-desecration issue will have provided us a hard-earned but invaluable lesson.

The second event is the wounding of al-Qaeda’s commander in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The aftermath of Zarqawi’s wounding provides two graphic, always available, but long-ignored lessons about how al-Qaeda works. First, the speculation that often emanates from Western officials and commentators that one or another major al-Qaeda leader is dead — be it bin Laden, Zawahiri, or someone else — and that the group is suppressing the news for morale reasons is, well, nonsense. From the most junior al-Qaeda fighter to bin Laden himself, their efforts are aimed at becoming martyrs while defending Muslims and fighting for Allah’s word. Achieving martyrdom is thus a cause for celebration and an occasion for issuing a sad but congratulatory message upon the death of a fighter. In this regard, al-Qaeda’s record bears irrefutable evidence: It has, to date, never sought to deny or disguise the death or capture of any of its leaders, from bin Laden’s military commander Muhammed Atef, to 9/11 planner Khalid Sheik Muhammad, to leading WMD-procurer Abu Hajir al-Iraqi.

The more important lesson to be drawn from Zarqawi’s wounding is the depth to which al-Qaeda plans for succession. Within 48 hours of Zarqawi’s wounding, al-Qaeda in Iraq had announced the event on its Web site and soon thereafter named a “temporary” commander to serve while Zarqawi is incapacitated. That announcement was followed quickly by a retraction of the naming of the temporary commander, but that action should not blur our view of what happened — al-Qaeda is prepared, today and tomorrow, to replace Zarqawi if he dies or requires a long convalescence.

This brings up a point that many U.S. officials and some commentators have missed; namely, that al-Qaeda is not structured as a terrorist group but rather as an insurgent organization modeled on the Islamist insurgent groups that fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is a linear (if far more sophisticated) descendant of those groups, and so is always planning to face a far more powerful enemy. Al-Qaeda clearly is not eager to lose leaders, but one of the prices for challenging a superpower militarily — as the Afghans learned in battling the Soviets — is the loss of significant numbers of leadership cadre. Thus, succession-planning becomes one of the most vital keys to survival; the organization must be able to survive the loss of key commanders more or less without missing a beat. The best Afghan insurgent groups did this, and al-Qaeda has done so in spades.

However the current Zarqawi episode works — will he die, will he be temporarily replaced, was the nature of his wound exaggerated, is he in place and stronger than ever, etc. — we have the correct lesson to be learned already in hand: al-Qaeda plans for leadership losses, has not yet hidden them when they occur, and has trained replacements who are waiting in the wings. If this lesson is taken to heart by U.S. policymakers, analysts, and pundits, they will realize that repeated claims that “We have killed two-thirds of al-Qaeda’s leadership since 9/11” are true but virtually meaningless. These casualties are of course a great plus for America, and the men and women who inflicted them deserve all praise and honor. But because we are working against an insurgent organization, we are not subtracting individuals from a finite list but rather killing or capturing quality leaders from a constantly growing organization, one that prepared for just the sort of cadre loss we have inflicted. We have an accurate body count, but given the attention al-Qaeda pays to succession, we do not have a measure of progress. To assume otherwise is self-deception, equivalent to the folly of al-Qaeda assuming that a U.S. Marine division makes no plans for succession and could be destroyed if its senior leadership is killed or captured. For al-Qaeda, as for our Marines, no individual is irreplaceable.

And so Churchill was right, God’s protection still prevails for the United States. In a mere month, He has willed America two key lessons about its enemies, lessons that are a grim reminder of the power and pervasiveness of the foe’s religious motivation and the carefully prepared depth of his leadership bench. Both lessons portend a long and bloody war, but if integrated into our understanding, thinking, and planning, they are ones that begin to make a strategy for victory possible.

Let us hope, then, that what the Washington Post on May 29, 2005, called “a high-level internal review” of the Bush administration’s terrorism policy, studies these lessons before, as the Post suggested, it heads off to attack a broader array of terrorist enemies. Al-Qaeda’s back is far from broken, it was and is prepared to absorb and replace leadership losses, and to assert, much less believe, otherwise is errant nonsense. Drunks and America God may protect, but self-deluding fools never.

Published: Antiwar.com

“It [the Koran] is the great visceral connector that makes all Muslims feel that there is a community between them. … For Muslims, dissing the Koran is the hot button of all hot buttons.”

Lee Harris, May 12, 2005 [1]

One need not be a Pollyanna to find a bright spot in an otherwise negative experience. A case in point is the violence and demonstrations that erupted across the Muslim world after Newsweek’s May 9 article claiming copies of the Koran were deliberately desecrated by U.S. soldiers at Guantanamo Bay. In Afghanistan, 16 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in four days of demonstrations, and protests occurred in Yemen, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Gaza Strip, and elsewhere. Newsweek has since retracted its article and expressed sympathy for those killed in the violence the article sparked. But as the major Pakistani daily Dawn said on its editorial page, the disclaimer comes too late, “the damage has been done.” [2]

While the violence over the Koran-desecration story may or may not continue, it is important not to hastily cross off the incident as an ephemeral issue. It is even more important to avoid attributing the reaction to al-Qaeda’s cynical manipulation of the crowds, or knee-jerk anti-U.S. bashing by anti-Western Muslim governments. Instead, the Newsweek article provides a timely opportunity to test the two main Western assumptions that undergird strategy for the War on Terrorism: (a) barbarism not faith motivates Islamist terrorists, Islamic militancy, and anti-U.S. Muslims, a group small in number and on the fringe of Muslim society, and (b) America and the West are hated for what they are and not for what they do.

The Reaction I: Motivated by Barbarism or Faith?

Popular reaction to the Newsweek story shows the extent to which the everyday lives of Muslims is dominated by their faith. Demonstrations occurred spontaneously around the world, showing the immediate and powerful impact a perceived slight to an Islamic sanctity has among ordinary people. Granted that this is the fourth instance in which Muslims believe their sanctities have been profaned; they already consider the three holiest places in Islam — the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and Jerusalem — to be occupied by infidels. It may be true, therefore, that Muslim nerves were rubbed raw before the Koran controversy, and that previous irritation sharpened the reaction to it. Nonetheless, the intensity and extent of the popular reaction suggests that it would be incorrect to assume that only those who support Islamist leaders like Osama bin Laden viewed the episode as an attack on the Islamic faith. Troublingly, it also highlights the Muslim world’s readiness to take at face value, and without reflection, accusations of intentional U.S. and Western offenses against Islam. The desecration was not a surprise, one protester in Gaza told the media, because “The Holy Koran was defiled by the dirtiest of hands, the hands of the Americans.” [3]

Beyond the negative reaction of the so-called “Arab street,” the reported desecration of the Koran immediately became a top-priority issue for Islamic, secular, and dictatorial Muslim governments. Pakistani President Musharraf called for a “thorough investigation,” and his regime dismissed as “inadequate” Newsweek’s retraction;[4] Qatar’s state-run al-Watan called the episode “an unusual crime … showing the depth of hatred inside some Americans for Islam;” [5] official Syrian television described the incident as a “horrible crime … [that] went beyond aggression on humans and touched the essence of the Islamic faith;” [6] Prime Minister Badawi of Malaysia called the episode “very saddening” and assessed that it was “meant to humiliate Muslims” — the latter, of course, a theme prominent in bin Laden’s writings; [7] and the Saudi regime expressed “deep indignation” over the issue and urged “deterrent measures should be taken against the perpetrators.” [8] In addition, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, representing 57 Muslim states, denounced the incident; the Gulf Cooperation Council called for the “harshest punishment;” and Iran’s foreign ministry said the incident showed “a hostile tendency in the United States toward Islam.” [9]

The purported desecration also earned attacks from some of the world’s most senior Islamic religious leaders. In Egypt, the Grand Mufti Dr. Ali Gomma termed the incident an “unforgivable crime” in the face of which Muslims cannot stand with “hands folded,” while the sheik of al-Azhar University, Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, said, “The Quran’s desecration is a great crime and should be dealt with at once.” [10] This reaction also bridged Islam’s Sunni-Shia divide. The Sunni grand mufti of Lebanon, Muhammed Rashid Qabbani, for example, described the event as a “crime” and called for an investigation by a multinational committee with Muslim state members, while Lebanese Shia leader Sheik Mohamed Hussein Fadlallah called the reported desecration as “part of an American program — of contempt for Islam,” and “one of the American methods of torture” used against Muslims. [11]

The Reaction II: Prompted by What the West Is or What It Does?

The outpouring of protest and violence after the Newsweek report also suggests that U.S. and Western actions vis-à-vis the Islamic world are watched closely, and with a mindset now conditioned to believe Muslims and their faith are under attack by the West. To date, not one of the major Islamist militant leaders — bin Laden, Zarqawi, Zawahiri, Abu Bakr Bashir, et al. — has said a public word about the desecration incident, and yet worldwide demonstrations have occurred and the air has been filled with harsh condemnations from government and religious leaders.

This reality suggests that when bin Laden repeatedly claims that Islam’s war with the United States and the West is based on what they have done and are doing in the Muslim world — and not by the mere existence of their societies and freedoms — he is speaking not only for himself and other militants but for a very broad swath of the world’s Muslims. This does not mean that all of those Muslims will pick up guns to defend their faith. It does suggest, however, that the West may be whistling past the graveyard when it concludes that bin Laden’s followers are nihilists and that their views are shared only by the Muslims’ world lunatic fringe.

Conclusion

Before attributing the Koran controversy solely to a poorly sourced magazine article and the ability of al-Qaeda and other groups to cynically exploit it, the West would do well to draw a lesson from the episode that would help formulate better plans to cope with and defeat Sunni militancy. That lesson is simply to conclude that a substantial number of the West’s opponents in the War on Terrorism are motivated by faith, and that they find U.S. and Western actions — especially those that seem to target Islamic sanctities — overwhelmingly more offensive and humiliating than the norms and lifestyles of Western societies.

Objectively, the negative reaction of Muslims at all societal levels to the Newsweek story, and their reluctance to credit the magazine’s retraction, should not have been a surprise in the West — and yet there is every indication of Western shock. This reaction can only be explained by the West’s stubborn and widespread belief that Muslims have no legitimate complaints about Western actions. The Sunni mufti of Lebanon put this reality concisely during the Koran controversy, suggesting that such self-delusion is a recipe for the West’s ultimate defeat. “Every day,” Sheik Qabbani said, “the United States commits new follies that deepen the hatred of the Islamic world toward it, and still Americans officials say ‘why do they hate us?’” [12]

Endnotes

1. Lee Harris, “On Not Getting the Koran,” May 12, 2005, Techcentralstation.com.
2. “In the Grip of Violence,” Dawn (Internet), May 15, 2005; James Rupert, “Islam’s Growing U.S. Rift,” newsday.com, May 14, 2005; and Carlotta Gall, “Muslims’ Anti-American Protests Spread From Afghanistan,” New York Times, May 14, 2005.
3. Sayed Salahuddin, “More Deaths Follow Koran Abuse,” www.sundaytimes.news.com.au, May 14, 2005.
4. Ahmed al-Haj, “Reported Quran Desecration Sparks Outrage,” Associated Press, May 14, 2005, and “Pakistan Dismisses Newsweek Retraction on Koran,” Reuters, May 17, 2005.
5. Ibid.
6. “Analysis,” Syrian Arab Television, May 14, 2005.
7. “Throwing al-Quran in Toilet an Act to Humiliate Muslims,” Bemama (Internet/Malaysia), May 15, 2005.
8. “Saudi Ire at Koran ‘Desecration,’” BBC News, May 13, 2005.
9. Sayed Salahuddin, “Afghan Press Urges U.S. Action Over Koran,” Reuters, May 14, 2005 and “Tantawai: Qur’an Abuse ‘Great Crime,’” Gulf Times, May 17, 2005.
10. MENA, May 15, 2005, and “Tantawai: Qur’an Abuse ‘Great Crime,’” Gulf Times, May 17, 2005.
11. “Lebanese Cleric Urges Probe into Koran Desecration,” Reuters, May 15, 2005.
12. Ibid.

Published: Antiwar.com

At the U.S. Army War College’s 16th Annual Strategy Conference last week, a senior Department of Defense strategist defined U.S. “Grand Strategy” as the export of freedom and democracy. He added that the U.S. military would play a huge role in implementing the strategy. In short, and to paraphrase, the official said: “Get ready, soldiers, you’re going democracy-crusading.”

Exporting freedom and democracy is not a Grand Strategy. It may be an ambition, an obsession, or — most likely — a hallucination. The idea that such exports are a “Grand Strategy” spotlights the ignorance about America of the men and women who today lead the country. Ditto for many of the 535 individuals in the Senate and House. America is not a nation meant to order others how to live and then push them at bayonet point into that lifestyle. The cost of such a policy, John Quincy Adams wrote, would be the loss of America’s soul.

The force behind this Grand Strategy is President Bush’s inane, ahistorical claim that “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.” This is pure Wilsonian claptrap with the lethality-multiplying extra of being hands-on, rather than rhetorical Wilsonianism — the difference being that foreigners died from the latter, while Americans will die from the former. Mr. Bush, Mr. Rumsfeld, Ms. Rice, Mr. Cambone, Mr. Wolfowitz, Mr. Bolton, and their acolyte front organizations at the Weekly Standard, American Enterprise Institute, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, etc., are not bad or evil people. They’re just confused and ignorant about the meaning of America.

And, like Wilson, Bush is ill-served by some of his advisers, public and private. Wilson had House, Page, and Lansing, each of whom put British interests above American and pushed us into world war. Bush has Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Perle, who seem to conflate Israel’s interests with America’s and are pushing us toward a war with Islam. Indeed, U.S. elites across party lines bask in this American-killing conflation.

Wilsonianism is nothing more than cynically promising oppressed people freedom that cannot be delivered without using force. As an anti-military, provincial bigot, Wilson knew this. He knew Americans would not allow their sons to be killed in large numbers so that 1919 Bosnia-Herzogovinians could vote. He also knew the rhetoric of “self-determination” and “teaching people to elect good men” would cost him nothing. He did not care what it cost the foreigners who believed his twaddle; they could not vote.

Today’s Wilsonians, with father-and-son Bush in the van, are far more dangerous to America than the late, unlamented Wilson. Their ignorance of the Founders’ intentions and lack of any semblance of the Founders’ wisdom have made them democracy-crusaders in every blood-spilling sense of the phrase. Knowing nothing of, and thus having no respect for, the long and bloody post-Runnymede struggle of Americans and their ancestors to build an equitable democracy at home, the new Wilsonians are using — and intend to expand the use of — the U.S. military to seek overseas the unobtainable, war-inducing goals of the crazed Woodrow.

As the president and his aides expand the Bush-family-spawned democracy-krieg, they are also preparing the world’s strongest, smartest, most decent, and best-trained military to be shock troops. Ignorant of America, contemptuous of other cultures, and driven by the fantasy that our liberties depend on those of others, the new Wilsonians will use our sons and daughters to teach all peoples, in all cultures, at all times, and in all places to “elect good men.” This is a recipe for war in each place we decide to “help.” Hands-on Wilsonianism means our leaders will go looking for trouble around the world. They will find it and then cheerfully spend the lives of our soldiers and Marines on warfare in numerous places, overwhelm the volunteer military, and necessitate conscription’s return. Worse, our soldiers and Marines will be transformed by this ignorant crew from the protectors of the United States to the bloody — and bloodied — imposers of a brand of democratic orthodoxy that brooks no opposition based on others’ history, culture, or faith, and is eager to teach democracy with the sword.

Sadly, for America, the neocons and many Republicans differ from the Democrats only in that the latter are eager to teach democracy with the sword until there are U.S. casualties, then they run for the hills. Neither the neocons nor the Democrats — an imperial power in their own right, serving as the master of numerous, single-interest colonial constituencies — seem to know that the Founders they often praise believed in a nation of laws and in non-intervention in the affairs of other countries. Refusing to enforce laws they pass — witness immigration and border control — and meddling in multiple foreign nations knowing that they will provoke war, this entire crowd is a pox on America’s house. Americans should damn them, damn Wilson, and cull the strength to resist their plans from three things for which this crowd will never tumble: the Founders’ timeless guidance, the traditional repugnance of Americans for bullies, and the innate common sense, insularity, modesty, and quiet patriotism of non-elite Americans. A presidential candidate for 2008 could do no better than talking to as many of these folks as possible, while systematically absorbing the Federalist and Washington’s Farewell Address, and reading the essays of Congressman Ron Paul and Paul Craig Roberts on this Web site.

Published: Antiwar.com

The new Robb-Silberman report on U.S. intelligence capabilities should but won’t enrage Americans. Too long at 600 pages for most to read, the report completes the destruction of the Intelligence Community — especially the CIA — begun by Congress’s Goss-Graham inquiry and the wrong-headed, dissembling Kean-Hamilton Commission and its predecessor, the Goss Graham Joint Congressional Inquiry.

Like a French farce’s final act, Robb and Silberman show the Republic is run by men and women who will inflict any amount of pain on America to avoid harming one of their own. This federal-level group amounts to an unaccountable, murderously cynical aristocracy of power. Cowardly senior bureaucrats and policymakers have failed to act on good intelligence or misused bad intelligence; congressional oversight committees ask puerile questions — it’s politically safer not to know — and deceitful senior bureaucrats dutifully give non-answers; and presidents abscond with the constructional prerogative to declare war from the pliant, derelict federal legislature.

The aristocracy’s shamefulness came home to roost on 9/11 and in Iraq. Those responsible reached for the most reliable of all white-washers — the blue-ribbon, special commission. These panels have been stocked only with those who will reliably chant: “We are not here to point fingers.” Believing Americans are inattentive yokels, the Commissions take testimony, ignore or bury truth, and issue reports exculpating those who appointed them. What caused 3,000 dead on 9/11; 1,500-plus dead in Iraq; failure to eliminate bin Laden; and the calamity-in-the-making of open borders and unenforced immigration laws? Why the Intelligence Community’s “structure” of course! Americans are to believe that antiquated structure — an inanimate object — caused multiple U.S. defeats. Case closed; aristocracy safe; and Americans — like Union troops at Cold Harbor — pinning on name tags to identify their corpses after al-Qaeda’s next strike

The recent commissions have ensured Federal officials — elected and appointed — and their senior bureaucrats are inviolably protected by one rule: No one is responsible for anything at anytime, ever. This phrase should placed on the Great Seal and used to prepare America’s obituary. Though too late to make a difference, lets review several “serious” problems Robb-Silberman identify, but for which no one is responsible.

• Dissent/debate are not present in the Intelligence Community. This is not caused by “structure.” Leaders alone promote debate or suppress it. The 1996 report detailing al-Qaeda’s state-like effort to acquire WMD was suppressed for many months by senior CIA officers. They then wanted no debate on al-Qaeda’s WMD program.
• CIA officers doubted primary Iraq WMD source “Curveball,” and military analysts were skeptical of Iraq having UAV’s to disperse chemical or biological weapons. “Structure” did stop keep these analyses from the White House, senior managers did.
• The FBI does not share information with the Intelligence Community. Again, fault lies not with “structure,” but with the astonishing, pathetic, and perhaps negligent failure of Judge Freeh and Mr. Mueller to purchase a reliable computer system.
• The Intelligence Community lacks the expertise on Islamic extremism it had on the USSR Is this a “structure” problem or the failure of three DCI’s — Woolsey, Deutch, and Tenet — who seem not to know the term “Islam” and mandated no training on the issue? Also, why have we expanded the Intelligence Community if, as Robb-Silberman says, there are no experts for thousands of new jobs?
• No “Red Teams” challenged pre-war intelligence on Iraq. “Structure” creates nothing; mangers create Red Teams. It is an aberration in Community practice not to have had Iraq intelligence “red-teamed” before the war. The absence of Red Teams means Intelligence Community leaders knew the analytic answer they wanted, or were told by Administration officials the answer to deliver.

Hows them apples? The Robb-Silberman report is the third coat of whitewash meant to make Americans think effective intelligence reform is underway. The commissions have produced institutional chaos and debilitating bureaucratic growth, not movement toward reform that builds on Intelligence Community strengths and better defends America. In a successful effort to protect their patrons in the aristocracy of power, the commissioners let the culpable escape. Worse, they saddled America with the absurd Intelligence Community “structure” demanded by the uninformed 9/11 families, installed by a Congress and President who followed polls not conscience, and led by many of the same bureaucrats who got us to 9/11 and Iraq.

After the commissions’ failures help al-Qaeda detonate a nuclear device in the United States, Americans must ensure the next Commission has individuals animated by the spirit of those anti-aristocratic paragons, the Marx Brothers. For Americans, trusting their childrens’ and nation’s future to Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo will be infinitely preferable and safer to relying on more commissioners like Goss, Graham, Hamilton, Kean, Robb, and Silberman.

Published: Antiwar.com, April 29, 2005

Junk food and junk laws, neither are good for you. Unfortunately for Americans, an ever increasing number of junk laws are paving our way to national disaster. What are junk laws? They are laws passed by the Congress and then ignored; to wit, unenforced immigration laws, unregulated borders, and dual citizens voting in U.S. and foreign elections. Then there are those Constitutional mandates that have been transformed into junk law. For example, the Congress has unconstitutionally delegated to the president its exclusive prerogative to declare war. As a result, our children in the military are being killed and our country’s resources dissipated on the basis of one man’s decision, rather than by the informed consent — witnessed by a formal, public, and recorded vote — of the majority of the people’s representatives, as the Founders required.

Another law, this one protecting classified intelligence from deliberate mishandling, was turned to junk last week. Mr. Samuel Berger, Mr. Clinton’s National Security Adviser, pleaded guilty to stealing classified intelligence documents from the National Archives, taking them home, and cutting them up with scissors. What Mr. Berger had previously described as an inadvertent mistake is now, according to the same gentlemen, better described as the deliberate theft and destruction of classified documents pertinent to how the Clinton administration addressed — or failed to address — the al-Qaeda threat. In sum, the papers secreted in his shoes, BVDs, and pockets were not a surprise discovery when he got home and undressed. No, Mr. Berger now acknowledges that he had hidden them on his person, apparently with the joys of scissoring them into a mound of destroyed evidence foremost in his mind.

Well, Department of Justice officials last week delivered firm justice to Mr. Berger in the form of a virtually pain-free plea bargain. In doing so, they junked a law meant to protect U.S. security, at least insofar as it is to be applied to America’s political aristocracy. Mr. Berger pleads guilty to that about which he previously lied to the American people, the 9/11 Commission, and the families of the 9/11 dead. In turn, he is punished with a fine and a three-year ban from holding a security clearance. In plainer terms, Mr. Burger ponies up a month’s pin money and gets his clearances back just in time to retake a high public office of trust if a Democrat is elected president in 2008. Boy, that’ll teach ‘im.

Alongside the new intelligence report and the Pope’s death, the junkifying of another federal law for Mr. Berger’s benefit seems like small beer. Still, can Americans be sure that the documents Mr. Berger snipped into oblivion were not vital pieces of the 9/11 puzzle, notwithstanding the Kean-Hamilton crew’s blithely mindless assertion that they are confident they saw all pertinent documents, though they cannot know what papers fell victim to Mr. Berger’s blades? More importantly, can Americans take comfort in a legal system that bends federal law for a self-confessed liar and thief, thereby preserving that political aristocrat’s ability to return to an office of public trust, even after deliberately betraying the trust he swore to protect classified intelligence documents?

The answer to both questions is no, Americans can take no comfort from the proliferation of junk laws. If forced to choose, they should take junk food over junk law. For while the former may kill them over time, the later will kill their country far more quickly.

Published: Antiwar.com