Misyar & Mut'a - Marriage Misnomers?

[Friday 9/1: scroll down for additional links and updated material]

A real eye-opener over at MEMRI, adding detail to material Robert Spencer and others have documented in books such as "Islam Unveiled":

For over a decade, the phenomenon of marriage without commitment, called misyar marriage, has been spreading throughout the Sunni Muslim world, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries. In such marriages, the woman relinquishes some of the rights that Islam grants her, such as the right to a home and to financial support from her husband, and, if he has other wives, the right to an equal part of his time and attention.

In most cases, these marriages are secret, without the knowledge of the man's other wives - even though a marriage contract is drawn up in the presence of witnesses, and although consent is commonly obtained from the woman's guardian, and the marriage is registered and documented at the courthouse. Demand is high [almost exclusively from men] for misyar marriages on online matchmaking sites, as well as through services using text messages and email.

Due to the substantial increase in the number of misyar marriages in recent years, and in light of the arguments over this issue among clerics as well as among the public, the Institute of Islamic Religious Law, which is a part of the Muslim World League in Mecca, decided to address the matter.

In a fatwa issued on April 10, 2006, the institute permitted marriages in which "the woman relinquishes a home, financial support, and her part [in joint life] with her husband, or part of it, and consents to the man's coming to her home whenever he wants, day or night."

The fatwa also permitted marriages known as "friend" marriages, in which "the girl remains at her family's home and she and the man meet any time they want, either at her home or anywhere else, as they have no [joint] home and livelihood." [3] Such marriages are aimed primarily at meeting the needs of young Muslims in the West, who are influenced by male-female relations around them but who want their relationships to have religious legitimacy...

These non-binding marriages are to a great extent similar to the "pleasure marriages" (in Arabic, mut'a; in Persian, sigheh) that have been accepted in Shi'ite Islam since its beginnings. Unlike misyar marriage, mut'a marriage in Shi'ite Islam is contracted for a particular period of time, and divorce is not necessary to end it. For the most part, misyar marriages also do not last, and ending them by divorce is no problem...

...many men set conditions for the woman, such as "if the knowledge of the marriage gets out, you are divorced," or "if you get pregnant, you are divorced"; many of the men divorce when it is even suspected that news of the marriage has reached the families; many students from out of town seek misyar marriage; and most misyar marriages end in divorce.

OK, so the West isn't exactly a pantheon of moral rectitude on this topic, but it does point up the hypocrisy of jihadi hate for Western 'decadence'. It also points out three other things:

1) the universality and unchanging (deeply flawed, sinful) nature... of human nature,

2) the sharp difference between religious traditions that hold up balanced monogamy as the single true ideal (even if secular institutions provide plenty of 'outs') and a religion that seems to go out of its way to accomodate male-fantasy lifestyles like those enjoyed by mohammed - at least one of whose 'wives', A'isha, was nine when he consummated his 'marriage' to her (he'd married her when when she was six or seven and was "playing with dolls").

3) a equally sharp difference between the idea that passions potentially damaging to the social fabric are best managed by feeding them within a controlled context (ironic analogies immediately spring to mind between heavily regulated gambling and prostitution in Nevada and the religious regulation of what amounts to male promiscuity under Islam) versus the idea that natural human passions are like fire: indiscrimately throw more fuel on them--in any context--and they only burn hotter and more widely, doing more damage in the process.

Nightmare of the Living Throwbacks

No, not Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, but Pelosi, Conyers, Obey, Rangel, Stark, Frank, Dingell, Miller and Waxman... the folks who frustrated even Bill Clinton... from the left. Average date of first election: 1960-something.

Republicans have done little to deserve re-election, and so perhaps voters will ignore Democratic priorities. But one of the ironies of current politics is that a swing in only 15 House seats would result in a huge ideological shift in the legislative agenda. Most of the House seats in play are "swing" districts held by political moderates. The most liberal seats also tend to be the safest and thus are held by Members who can stay around for the decades needed to become chairmen. Their agenda is not the one those "swing" voters would be endorsing.

Thirteen out of sixteen voted against Mr. Clinton's welfare reform bill--now widely touted as an objective success and model of bipartisan cooperation. (I know... the term sounds funny, doesn't it?)

My neighbors--including Barney Frank himself--are insufferable now in their anti-Bush diatribes. I'm not sure I can take their triumphalism should the Democrats win in November.

UPDATE: Hannity is all over this this afternoon, reading most of the WSJ piece on the air.

How The UN Fails to Work - Implications for Iran

I recommend tracking down this brilliantly tight, well-reasoned op-ed by Claudia Rosett in this morning's WSJ (available on-line to subscribers only). Ms. Rosett is "a journalist in residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies".

Despite today's United Nations deadline for Iran to give up its nuclear bomb program, Iran has done no such thing. The next diplomatic move is supposed to be for the U.N. to impose sanctions on Iran. That won't work, either... Some of Mr. Ahmadinejad's behavior can be discounted on grounds that he is a messianic crackpot. But there is plenty of evidence that he is making a highly rational calculation about the ease with which the U.N. can be corrupted, divided, delayed and defied -- without serious penalty.

U.N. sanctions programs depend on the agreement and cooperation of member states under a set of rules dictated not by the interests of the modern free world, but by the decayed, despot-infested collective that is the contemporary U.N. And, as prefigured under U.N. sanctions on Saddam Hussein's Iraq, major players, like Russia and China, will almost certainly cheat. Iran, with 10% of the world's known oil reserves, and the world's second largest proven reserves of natural gas, has enough resources to grease the way...

Iran's current and would-be business partners include some of the most seasoned smugglers and veteran cheats of the Iraq sanctions experience. To be sure, democracies such as India, Australia, the U.S. and France have investigated at least some of the officially documented allegations of Iraq sanctions-busting among their own citizens. Many of the chart-topping violators, notably Russia and China, have done no such thing...

Who at the U.N., exactly, would stop violations of its sanctions, should these be imposed? On the Security Council, veto-wielding Russia -- now counseling "patience" -- has already stressed its opposition to sanctions on Iran, with China slipstreaming along. Let's just pass by France without further comment. And among those now angling for one of the 10 rotating seats on the Security Council is Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. In his recent tours of the world's thugocracies Mr. Chavez has reportedly garnered a boost from China for his U.N. bid, as well as a medal and the promise of a $4 billion investment in Venezuela's oil fields -- from Iran...

As for the U.N. Secretariat, which would be involved in administering any U.N. sanctions, if staffers have learned anything from the multibillion dollar Oil for Food scandal, it is that inside the U.N.'s opaque and diplomatically immune bubble, there are no real penalties for dereliction, duplicity or even graft. Not a single U.N. staffer has been fired, let alone charged with a crime [over Oil-for-Food abuses]...

It is quite possible that -- after years of delay and dithering by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, the European Union and the U.S. itself -- there is no initiative that will by now stop Iran short of direct military force. But whatever the solution, it is clearly the U.S. that will have to do the bulk of the cajoling, prodding and backroom bargaining to put together any coalition both able and willing, in whatever way necessary, to get the job done. That is a challenge urgent and daunting enough, without trying to drag along the entire baggage of the U.N. [emphases added]

UPDATE I: Claudia Rosett blogs here. Try this pithy phrase from her latest post: "How to stop Iran from going nuclear is a tough question, but we should at least start by ruling out what won’t work — which is trying to go through the UN." Welcome to the blogroll!

UPDATE II: The (free) full text of her WSJ editorial can be found here.

'Genesis' - The Much-Overlooked Benefits of Climate Change

This piece in Spiegel profiles several Greenland farmers whose lives are changing for the better as a result of climate change - a return to conditions that existed 800+ years ago when the Vikings named the island in order to attract settlers.

Høegh believes that locally grown produce could be a boon to the health of the island's roughly 57,000 inhabitants, whose diet is increasingly changing from raw whale meat and seal blood to soft drinks, cookies and chocolate bars. "The sweet stuff happens to be much cheaper than expensive, imported fruit and vegetables," the father of four complains... Fresh milk... costs more than €5 in the supermarket today. Høegh wants that to change. [Today,] only 19 cows currently graze on the island, which is 2,650 kilometers (4,264 miles) long...

The first plants are already sprouting from the muddy residues of the moraine. "What we are experiencing here is a genesis," says Magnusson, his voice filled with emotion... The ice, says Magnusson, has retreated by almost 100 meters (328 feet) since he began raising reindeer more than 10 years ago. "Every meter means more pasture for my animals," says Magnusson, "and each additional day they're able to graze on a green pasture adds half a pound to their weight."

...the melting ice on his land could possibly expose treasure of a completely different nature. This winter, Magnusson, together with an expert from an Australian mining company, will travel out to the glacier again. Initial rock samples taken last year showed a high content of vanadium.

For now, Magnusson is hoping to strike it rich with a possible mining deal. The metal, he says, is used to forge the hard steel used to make ball bearings. "That's why the world needs vanadium like crazy right now."

It is the very nature of change itself that makes such marginal stories of possibility and growth - from nothing into something - attract far less attention than stories of established ways forced to change or move. Radio Shack laying off 400 (via e-mail) attracts headlines this morning. Dozens of entrepreneurs springing up in garages do not.

If, as climate change scientists themselves admit, there is nothing we could do about it - even if we wanted to - then it is worthwhile to look not only at encroaching deserts and wilting heat in some places but at the vibrant opportunities and benefits that will inevitably spring up elsewhere. Yet I have seen little if any discussion of how the global ledger may look on balance in 100 years. Why? Because it is difficult to envision the thousands of experiments, failures, adaptations and unexpected successes and heretofore unknowable positive developments that could spring up. Cattle in Greenland? Maybe. Or maybe not. Broccoli? Probably. Strawberries? Maybe. Vanadium? Who knew? ...until the ice started retreating.

William F. Buckley, Jr. coined the conservative koan that our role was to "stand athwart history yelling 'stop'!" He was refering to proven mechanisms for organizing society and the rule of law, not to the precise form of all institutions in that society for all time. It is the nature of a free society and a free market economy to evolve. So long as those freedoms are in place, people will have plenty of opportunity to adapt to climate change - as the industrious Msrs. Høegh and Magnusson are doing.

Ohmeed Aziz Popal - Hyper-Distributed Self-Recruiting Terrorism?

You've just left a Jewish Community Center in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in San Francisco when a young Afghani Muslim man drives over you and 13 others with his SUV just "because he just wanted to". He describes himself as a terrorist to arresting officers at the scene. They choose to ignore his stated motivation. Most of you have heard the story by now.

Hate crime? Terrorism? A random, mentally ill kook?

We don't know the motivation--and probably won't for sure. There is great danger in jumping to conclusions based on circumstantial evidence. And there's a good deal of arbitrariness in classifying such crimes as just one thing in any case. (Why not all three motivations? Why not several more?)

Yet there is equal danger in jumping to benign, dismissive conclusions based on the same circumstantial evidence--and that's just what local officials and the MSM seem to have done here, making "move along now" and/or obliquely administration-bashing excuses for a crime that certainly looks unusual and worthy of further inquiry. Foremost among those excuses is the idea that stress over his recent arranged marriage and over new wife getting a visa to join him in the U.S. drove Mr. Popal to go on his rampage.

Of course! that would explain why immigrants and newlyweds tend to run over Jews on the street whenever they get the chance. And if Bush weren't so paranoid about granting visas from countries he's chosen to invade, poor oppressed men like this wouldn't be so angry. Yeah, that and traffic and bills and telephone solicitors at dinnertime and meter maids and yippy dogs and judgmental people and Starbucks baristas who fill the cup too full for milk.

Here's a (hopefully) fanciful scenario to consider. There's no need to connect it to Mr. Popal's mini-jihad, though you're free to do so if you wish. I'm just thinking out loud:

What if, in light of its difficulty in getting additional airliner-crashing terrorist operations pulled off in or near the United States, Al Qaeda decided instead to switch its focus to automobiles? (or to add them as a 'bonus')

What if - again, just imagining here - Al Qaeda decided that it was a whole lot easier to recruit for and implement thousands of SUV sidewalk rampage actions like the one we just witnessed than to meticulously plot a few 'big bang' events involving 747s and subway systems?

What if they figured out that they didn't even have to recruit for the actions directly? They could just get the word out and jihadi entrepreneurs would spring up as the spirit moved.
Anyone who owned a car and harbored dreams of martyrdom could get in on the action and there wouldn't need to be a money trail or an explicit communication.

Are there dozens of such individuals in the U.S.? A hundred? A thousand? A million? Who knows? Probably not even Al Qaeda leaders themselves. But think about the advantages from their perspective: The terror would be widespread and utterly random. It could be easily extended over time. It might take months before authorities caught on. And once they did, who would they arrest? The drivers, obviously, but who else? No collusion would be necessary. Just willing martyrs for the cause - if the justice system ever got around to martyring them at all. While they sat in prison of course, they'd be free to recruit others.

Paranoid? I sure hope so. But like many industries that started big and migrated to smaller, more modular, more highly distributed forms (think mainframes and PCs, for example), why wouldn't terrorism be a good candidate for the same kind of evolution?

Just asking...

Back to the incident that inspired the digression:

California Conservative speculates on a piece of the local San Francisco scene that might have given him just a little extra motivational boost:

Perhaps Ohmeed Aziz was “inspired” by the recent anti-Israel rally in San Francisco.

Local SFO blogger 'Bookworm' has excellent commentary and coverage of the whole episode, noting in one of many updates an interesting twist on the 'devils' the perp claims to have heard spurring him to commit the crime:

We hear about devils and automatically think of the (we hope) harmless and unwashed lunatic raving on a downtown street corner. That’s because we’re a secular society of associate the Devil with madness. John Updike, of all people, suggests that the prevalence of devils in modern Islamic speak may be a spur to action, and not a sign of madness. [emphasis added]

The Anchoress beats me to blogging a thought I had last night when this broke: What would the MSM, and specifically the SFO-area coverage and political fallout have looked like if a Timothy McVeigh look-alike had gone on a similar rampage in the Castro (gay) district? She writes:

Can you imagine, if someone had (God forbid!) driven a car into 14 gay people, how quickly the press would have managed to cover the story? Can you imagine that Mayor Newsom would call it “road rage” and suggest that there really probably wasn’t a “hate crime” attached to the action?

This morning, she adds this sage, sane comment to the same post:

"When people see a thing happening and are told, “no, that’s not happening, it’s something else and if you think otherwise, you’re an immoral person,” it creates enormous resentment, a sense of disorientation and a further sense that someone, “either me or thee” is nuts and must be guarded against.

Wizbang also has excellent coverage plus many links here and here, as does Hewitt here.

'Islamofascism' - The Administration Finally Gets on the Bus

Two weeks ago, I noted an editorial by Roger Scruton in the Wall Street Journal tracing the origins of the term Islamofascism and brilliantly outlining its implications.

...the term "Islamofascism" [was coined, according to Scruton] by "[Marxist] French writer Maxine Rodinson (1915-2004) to describe the Iranian Revolution of 1978", [Scruton notes] the irony of Marxism's growing antipathy for Islamofascism's primary enemy (us) and our current leadership (Bush).

The AP, this morning didn't bother to do that much research, using instead a facile anti-Bush lede:

President Bush in recent days has recast the global war on terror into a "war against Islamic fascism." Fascism, in fact, seems to be the new buzz word for Republicans in an election season dominated by an unpopular war in Iraq.

The piece casts the change as a largely immaterial recent development, driven by conservative bloggers (well, yes, it's about time, but there's more to it than that) and hinting at cynical - i.e., purely rhetorical and political - administration motives.

Yet the move to the more descriptive term ('-fascism' is more descriptive than 'terror') and the identification of the the group responsible for motivating the vast majority of the acts we're combatting ('Islamo-') are major steps that will ultimately cause opponents to squirm trying to define - exactly - what it is that they're against that's different and why comparisons to Neville Chamberlain aren't apt. As I wrote in another piece last week:

...those who believe we are free from history... conclude that the source of evil is not Islamofascism itself, but those would would incur any serious costs in combatting it.

Conniving News Network - Strike Three

November 21, 2005: CNN 'accidentally' puts a bold, black 'X' mark over Dick Cheney's face during the broadcast of his speech.

May 15, 2006: CNN 'accidentally' turns on its cameras early and without warning, airing a live 16 seconds of President Bush stopping and starting rehearsal of a speech from the Oval Office.

August 29, 2006: CNN 'accidentally' airs several minutes of audio of CNN employees chatting over images of President Bush's speech on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

As we noted before ('Plausible Dirty Tricks'), two points make a line with this kind of Nixonian (or more currently and accurately, Clintonian), plausibly-deniable, sophomoric behavior.

Whether truly by negligence or by nefarious design, it's notable that what we're not seeing are 1) serious explanations (much less sincere apologies) from network executives and owners or, 2) similarly image-degrading mistakes for prominent Democrats in the public eye.

The Headlong Rush to Declare Defeat and Elevate the Enemy

Virtually every time I decide to venture beyond the movie listings or classified ads in my primary hometown paper (The Boston Globe), I come up disappointed. Frequently, I'm angered. Occasionally, I'm truly sickened. Somtimes - as in this piece from the Sunday edition ("No Win") - I'm disappointed, angered and sickened all at the same time. The editors' willful ignorance and overwhelming, sycophantic bias seem to have no limit.

Today the tables are turning. Despite a massive American and Israeli technological edge, including nuclear arsenals, mounting evidence suggests that the age of Western military ascendancy is coming to an end. Muslim radicals have evolved an Islamist way of war that is as complex as it is cunning. As a consequence, in and around the Persian Gulf the military balance is shifting. The failures suffered by the United States in Iraq and by Israel in southern Lebanon may well signify a turning point in modern military history, comparable in significance to the development of blitzkrieg in the 1930s or of the atomic bomb a decade later. Although the full implications of this shift are not clear, they promise to be huge, calling into question basic strategic assumptions that have held sway in the United States and Israel.

In Washington and Jerusalem alike, officials and commentators classify the activities of diverse groups like Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iraq's Sunni insurgents as "terrorism." That label sells our adversaries short. Resistance, the term that these groups favor to describe their actions, is more accurate. Although the methods employed by radical Islamists include terrorism -- that is, violence directed against civilians for purposes of intimidation -- they do not rely on terrorism alone. Today's resistance blends violence and nonviolence. [emphasis added]

'Resistance'... yeah, that's the ticket. Never mind to what. 'Resistance' sounds like minutemen gallantly defending their homeland. Like David vs. Goliath. Like Rosa Parks and Henry David Thoreau and peaceful marches against dogs and water cannons and snarling caricature sheriffs in the Deep South (booga booga!) in the 1960's. Blending violence and non-violence... please... Pardon me while I reach for a bucket.

The only reason for putting these two things together is to excuse the inexcusable and conjure up images of Ghandi and MLK to put over the faces of men so unlike them in character, motivations and objectives as to deny reason. Violence in the Islamofascist arsenal is employed towards whomever a few evil men happen to deem targets (Muslims and non-Muslims; civilians and military; domestic and foreign... the more splatter the better and the ends justify the means). Non-violence is used with... whomever they need to support their agenda in the moment.

Can one even imagine the Globe writing a piece on how the U.S. Marines use a blend of violence and non-violence? I for one cannot, though of course the USMC does exactly that, rendering the application of the phrase to the likes of Mohammed Atta virtually meaningless. The moral foundations and means of discernment about how and where to apply each one - violence and non-violence - are entirely absent in the Globe's discussion. It is simply "a blend". The moral dimension is foreshortened to the point of vanishing altogether.

Whatever the Islamofascists use to describe their motivations, the Globe swallows wholesale, not questioning the difference between defense against unprovoked aggression and a violently expansionist Islamofascism seeking - quite literally - to take over the world.

By contrast, whatever the West uses to describe its motivations (e.g., rational and highly measured response to unprecedented attack, defense of national borders, the promulgation of freedom and democracy, the routing of brutal dictators, the emancipation of women and other oppressed populations, pro-active measures to keep WMD out of the hands of those who would use them indiscriminately and without hesitation, extreme care in avoiding the targeting of civilians, the denial of sanctuary to mass murderers, etc.), is not to be taken at face value.

If Lyndon Johnson lied about Vietnam, then everything America does must be suspect forevermore. If Israel dealt forcefully with the problems that have plagued it and was naive enough to allow the press to cover it (unlike its repressive enemies), then it must be taking on the character of its original nemesis, the Nazis. The forces arrayed against either the U.S. or Israel are to be examined with care and nuance for what we might glean about how we have may have offended them and how we might do better in appeasing them in the future.

If on balance, Iraq is not as vibrant, peaceful and prosperous as, say Singapore within three years of overthrowing a crazed dictator, then it's a 'failure' in the Globe's view. If Israel accepts a truce in order to regroup, then that too is a 'failure'. Never mind how long it actually took to fully pacify Japan or Germany after WWII. Never mind the more obvious failures under Clinton - in Somalia, Haiti and elsewhere. Failure, by the Globe's standards, applies to everything Republicans touch. 'Success' applies to everything clever an enemy does to set off incendiary bombs in subways and airplanes, splatter body parts around shopping malls and behead kidnap victims on video. Moral equivalence is an ugly thing. If I could cancel my long-ago canceled Globe subscription, I would do so. In the meantime I'm going to go empty this bucket...

Calling all Feminists... Calling all Lovers of Free Speech...

While the fringe left prattles on about this administration being 'anti-woman' (code for pro-life), and willfully confuses the monitoring of speech with its regulation, Iran continues to steamroller precisely those things they claim to hold dear:

"Iran to Issue Licenses for Websites": Iran will soon issue licences for websites operating from within its borders in an effort to place further controls on the contents being published online.

"Preventing the Co-Mingling of the Sexes": Last month the language school split the group by gender, with men and women meeting on different days. Now plans are under way to move the women's classes to a separate building, to eliminate altogether the possibility of illicit mingling.

Why Convert Kidnapped Journalists to Islam?

In stories such as this, I'm reminded of playground behavior.

Two kidnapped Fox journalists appeared on a new videotape released by their captors on Sunday in the Gaza Strip, in which the reporters said they had converted to Islam...

The insecure bully feels it crucially important that - under threat of violence - the object of his bullying say something to his liking (and patently untrue).

"If you don't say that my dad is the best then I'll kick the crap out of you! Now say it!" [bully grabs skinny kid's ear and twists it] "Say it!" (The bully's dad of course, is the unemployed town drunk who regularly beats the kid and his mother and just got arrested last night. And everyone knows it. That's why he's lashing out.)

Most of us knew someone like this in junior high school. I remember just such a kid - Chris ___ - in my 8th grade gym class. The day his dad got arrested on weapons violations was the day he felt compelled to beat the crap out of anyone who mentioned it. The fact that the bully derives only a tiny, temporary crumb of satisfaction from coercing such expressions only makes the whole charade more pitiful - and him more angry and resentful.

So why do presumably adult jihadi kidnappers go to the trouble of coercing 'conversions'? For the same reason as the playground bullies: feelings of public embarassment and deep-seated insecurity mixed with impotent, omni-directional rage.

That plus the added bonus under Islam that - however obvious the coercion involved - the 'convert' is, from that point forward, subject to the death penalty for renouncing Islam. It ratchets, regardless of what one might say or think in the future. The most obnoxious streetcorner evangelists and cults have nothing on Islam in this regard. Personal conscience is secondary. The outward expression is what matters, under threat of the sword if necessary.

"Say that my dad is the best!"

"OK, sure... whatever... 'Your dad [who's due to be arraigned on Monday] is the best'. [whatever that means] There. I said it. Now please let me go [you clueless, insecure ^#$&]."

UPDATE: Now that it's abundantly clear that these 'conversions' were coerced by torture, why is the word 'torture' is not being used to describe it? Is that term only reserved for Gitmo detainees now? And why is it that virtually every news outlet is swallowing whole the Palestinian Authority's (self-serving) line that the kidnappers are not linked to Al Qaeda? (Were they to look too hard for, much less openly admit to such a link, they would bring down a major s#$%-storm on themselves.)

In Gaza, Palestinian officials said they now believed that the kidnappers of the Fox News journalists were militants from one of the many local armed factions and were not linked to al-Qaida's terror network.

Would that be 'not linked' in the sense that Socialists are not linked to Democrats, or that Libertarians are not linked to Republicans? [oops... probably shouldn'ta opened that Pandorra's box!] The idea of not being linked here is a purely technical one, just as it was for 'secular' Saddam and his friendly relations with Al Qaeda operatives. They may not be tightly linked operationally; they are linked by the same philosophy of violent jihad against the West.

Choosing Sides - Part II

Absolutely outrageous:

UNIFIL--the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978--is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old. Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces.

Mike Austin has more here. See Part I of 'Choosing Sides' here.

The grey areas are getting less grey, while the convoluted justifications for calling all parties equal and pompously splitting the differences in the interest of temporary non-conflict are getting more and convoluted - their purveyors less shy about the transparency of their moral prostitution.

Check or Checkmate? Death by Cop on the Global Stage

It's finally hit me: we're stuck. Seriously stuck. We have been for years and are only starting to realize it - and only at the margins. In a very real sense, we've been check-mated by Islamofascism, and specifically Iran.

Let's play out a few scenarios, albeit from 50,000 feet:

Iran continues to take action towards building a nuclear bomb and doesn't even work very hard to try and hide the fact. Oh, they continue to dissemble in public statements, but only enough to keep the useful idiots fired up and the world divided.

They continue to act by proxy through Syria and Hizbollah (as they have for decades) and to send out conflicting signals, knowing that it would take something utterly outrageous to get the U.S. (much less the UN or the world) to support decisive wholesale (i.e., D-Day level) action to stop their nuclear activities and/or to depose the mullahs.

In that light, a successful WMD attack on the West that kills orders of magnitude more people than 9-11 is exactly what they don't want - not yet anyway (besides the cost and risk of failure). Better to mete out the terror in dribs and drabs - 100 dead here, maybe 1000 there - just enough to keep the faithful motivated, the international jihadi terror networks primed and to keep us tied in knots (financially, socially and politically) while they slowly increase in power.

The goal of the Iranian mullahs (or at minimum, their expectation) under this scenario is to be attacked - but not decisively. They seek the kind of pulled punch that Saddam endured in Desert Storm and their distributed underground bunker systems (plus our lack of collective will for extensive collateral damage and civilian casualties) virtually ensures that such punches will be pulled. Their absolute best case would be an attack by Israel that would allow them to deepen and consolidate support in the Muslim world almost without limit.

But it remains true that a Muslim culture that's already shown its tendency to harbor grudges for centuries, even millennia, will gain generations of fodder for widespread jihad recruiting around the world after any attack.

Draw your enemy to make the first move in order to reap a much larger gain in sympathy, patriotic fervor and erosion of that enemy's resolve.

Never mind the nukes, they may think. They're nice, but ultimately the game is more about boasting that they can create them (in defiance of the West and using Islamic engineers) than about actually doing so. If they manage to build them without being opposed, so much the better, but the physical fact of obtaining them is not as essential as the political bounce they get from trying and being martyred en masse for it.

Of course if we and the Israelis think through all of these chess moves and choose not to attack, Iran continues to build the bomb anyway and of course they eventually use it (e.g., against Israel and/or as blackmail to expand their influence). Such an attack might still be Israel's last, best option to save itself even if the longer-term blowback on the rest of the West leads to Israel's loss along with our own later on. D#$%ed if we do... and if we don't.

At the same time, Islamofascism more broadly enjoys the slow, quiet encroachment of radicalism within Western culture as a result of the tolerance we generously extend to everyone. This book (Londonistan) should make that plain enough if others haven't.

Iran can play for time as the nuclear material accumulates - both in the literal sense (in the reactors) and in the figurative sense of more and more juiced-up jihadi warriors camouflaged within Western countries. The Judeo-Christian foundation of our civilization demands that we not look too hard for these individuals on the basis of their faith, culture or ethnicity.

We can choose to monitor and censor religious speech that we deem incendiary, but they know we're unlikely to go there wholesale. And if we do, they know, we only drive more converts - especially among the socially disaffected (prison populations, minorities and youth). That all begs the question of why those populations are disaffected in the first place, which points the finger back at politically correct welfare state myths and philosophies of permanent victimhood. But that's a different post.

Net/net: Advantage - Islamofascism. Which does not mean they've won the match. Yet.

We (finally) won the Cold War by forcing an acceleration in the undeniability of the internal contradictions in the Soviet system. One of the advantages that Greater Islam has been able to exploit in the West is our internal contradiction of tolerance for intolerance.

The tenets of Islam, by contrast, tend to drive away from moderation or compromise, defining them as the most egregious offenses against the almighty, punishable by death. The tenets of Islam don't just polarize (a flawed Western frame we like to apply - e.g., thinking about the difference between Southern Baptists and Unitarians). Instead, Islam draws in and ratchets: you can neither check out any time you like nor can you leave. You can only watch as your son or nephew or neighbor get more and more radical and gain more respect by doing so.

So what are the internal condradictions of radical Islam?

I don't mean the ways in which they offend our Judeo-Christian-enlightenment reverence for life, democracy, gender equality, love for freedom and all that. Within Islam, as Bernard Lewsis, Robert Spencer and other scholars of Islam make abundantly clear, those reference points carry little meaning or even negative meaning. E.g., if one embraces freedom in Islam, one embraces disrespect for the prophet, which leads to one's expulsion from Islam.

Islam's claim to loving peace is surely an internal contradiction in light of decades of terror, however it is not as powerful - again, within Islam- as those that brought down Communism. Nor are the contradictions as abundant. Soviet boasts about equality were clearly lies from the beginning, their boasts about quality of life were obviously false by the 1980's and false to those in the know by the 1960's. Their claims to military superiority became presumptively false with Reagan's initiation of SDI - the final straw.

So, where can we find these in Islam when it altogether eschews our Western reference points for validity? What if any internally critical aspects of Islam can we in the West force to the surface - force to be recognized - that would accelerate an implosion of Islamofascist ideology? Answering that question may be our last best option when Iran has already baked success scenarios based on our attacking... and our not attacking.

Friday Outrage Roundup

I'm making short additions to this post through the day as outrageous things cross my radar.

Let's start with a piece I'll call "What (CBS 'Survivor' Producer) Mark Burnett and (former South African President and apartheid apologist/perpetuator) P.W. Botha Have in Common":

For the first portion of the 13th season of "Survivor," which premieres Sept. 14, the contestants competing for the $1 million prize while stranded on the Cook Islands in the South Pacific will be divided into four teams - blacks, Asians, Latinos and whites.

Heck, maybe next season Burnett could give them automatic weapons, wads of cash and stashes of powerful narcotics... just to spice things up and juice the ratings that much more.

---------------

Next we have "Why Being An Airline Pilot is a Thankless Job When Diplomatic Niceties Start to Trump the Age-Old Principle of a Captain Having Extremely Wide Discretion on His/Her Ship", or "When 'Let's Roll!' becomes 'Let's be sure to check with all of the embassies involved and think about our options.'":

India on Friday lodged a strong protest with the Netherlands at the way it handled Indian passengers from a Bombay-bound flight that returned to Amsterdam shortly after takeoff... The men had aroused suspicions because they had a large number of cell phones, laptops and hard drives, and refused to follow the crew's instructions. [emphasis added]

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As of 9AM Eastern we have "I'm Shocked, Simply Shocked, That Russia Isn't In Total Harmony With the U.S. Over The Iranian Nuke Crisis" or "Why Toothless Threats of Possibly Maybe Risking Equally Toothless Sanctions at Some Point in the Future, that Foster Rampant Corruption and are Totally Counterproductive Anyway are Dangerous When Your Enemy is Hyper-Aware of Any Signs of Weakness or Division"

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters during a trip to Russia's far east: "...I believe that the question is not so serious at the moment for the U.N. Security Council or the group of six to consider any introduction of sanctions. Russia stands for further political and diplomatic efforts to settle the issue." Ivanov is regarded as close to President Vladimir Putin.

At least we agree on one thing:

"I know of no instances in world practice and previous experience in which sanctions have achieved their aim and proved effective." [he added]

Count it as true that if Russia had suffered its own Islamofascist 9-11, were one of its staunchest allies under direct attack by Iranian proxies and were it as wealthy and technologically and militarily sophisticated as we are (a lot of 'ifs', I know), there would be no appealing to Kofi and his buds. Tehran would already be a glass parking lot.

---------------

Call this one the "Honorary Steve Martin 'I forgot that armed robbery was illegal!' Defense Against Political Junkets Funded by Terrorist Organizations"

[Democratic] Chicago congressman Danny Davis and an aide took a trip to Sri Lanka last year that was paid for by the Tamil Tigers, a group that the U.S. government has designated as a terrorist organization for its use of suicide bombers and child soldiers...

(Original SNL monologue here.)

Owls and Ostriches on Iran

This morning's WSJ carries a pair of opinion pieces defining the edges of a veritable chasm in perception separating two policy paths on Iran. The first (by the editors), is free at OpinionJournal. I call it the 'owl' piece. Owls can see significant activity from great heights. They're particularly adept in the dark, when others are stumbling around or sleeping. They also have the ability to swoop down, silently dispatching their prey before being seen or heard themselves. The editors note first the fundamental issue of sequencing:

After three years of Iranian stonewalling since their nuclear deception was discovered, the June resolution was deliberately written to make an end to enrichment a first-order obligation.

The carrots are supposed to follow, not precede, Iran's promise not to take further steps toward becoming a nuclear power. Iran's reply looks like a calculated attempt to conquer the Security Council by dividing its members with the promise that more talk might some day, down the road, in return for who knows what, lead Iran to stop going nuclear. [emphasis added]

The seldom-identified issue that the editorial identifies is one that - on the margin at least - separated John Kerry and George Bush in the last election. It's one that has more generally (though not always fairly) separated Democrats and Republicans. That is: timing, deadlines and moments of truth or consequences.

Specifically, are deadlines to be taken literally? Are they to be enforced? Or are they simply one more can to be kicked down the road? Does what we meant yesterday have the same meaning today? ...or for that matter, any meaning at all? Professional diplomats (and rogues and thieves - the difference often being hard to discern) don't care much for deadlines. Days of reckoning make them nervous. Couldn't we just wait to cross the channel until the 7th of June? Or maybe the 8th? Or maybe if we're lucky, Hitler will have changed his mind by the 9th.

The editors continue:

The obvious next diplomatic step is to show Iran that the world meant what it said by following through with the toughest achievable sanctions... Anyone who still thinks a nuclear-armed Iran won't pose a serious, and perhaps mortal, threat ought to consult this week's bipartisan staff report from the House Intelligence Committee. Drawing on open-source information and mindful of classified background, the report lays out the history of Iranian nuclear deception and its attempts to promote trouble throughout the Middle East. It notes that "Iran probably has an offensive biological weapons program." And it discusses in detail Iran's support for Hezbollah and other terror groups, as well as its continuing support for insurgents who are killing Americans in Iraq. [emphasis added]

In other words: wake up, get educated on this stuff and most of all, don't blink. This is real - the kind of moment-of-truth that our fathers missed but our grandfathers knew only too well. The piece concludes with what can only be described as a two-by-four (replete with nails) to the side of the head of the mandarins who like to boast (perhaps for the final time) that they have a special lock on just, fair and effective mechanisms for international peace and justice.

No one wants a military confrontation with Iran, but those who want to avoid one have an obligation to show the mullahs that continuing on their current path will lead to isolation, economic suffering and worse. A U.N. Security Council that passes resolutions it refuses to enforce is itself a threat to global security.

Read that again: "those who want to avoid [war] have an obligation to show..." It's not a demand that ought to be used lightly, or often but - for perhaps the first time since the 1930's - it is necessary to shift the burden of proof to the talkers who don't like calendars, never much cared for reality, and who want to believe the best of truly evil men.

Please prove beyond a reasonable doubt, one might say to some on the left, that delay poses no threat and that the risk of continuing to talk to no effect is minimal. Prove it. And please do so without reference to Peter Pan or Oz or any other imaginary characters or societies. Prove that we are not re-enacting Neville Chamberlain's ghastly mistake with a thousand times worse possible outcomes and sketchier odds.

The other piece - an op ed by George Perkovich, Vice President and Director of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - is only available to subscribers. In a fair world that would be the other way 'round.

Call Perkovich's the Ostrich piece. Ostriches do not see very well. They are not quiet. And as every third grader knows, they have a bad habit of sticking their heads in the sand when trouble comes along. The Kerry-esque Perkovich goes out of his way to sound tough but only because he has to in order to cover his fundamental flaws in reasoning and base assumptions. Let's take 'em one by one. First sentence:

Iran has said, "No, for now," to the U.N. Security Council...

No, they have said "#$%^ *%# for now and for always you weak, dhimmi-sucking scum!" in the loudest possible voice. Anyone who hasn't gotten this by now hasn't been listening.

It's now time for the U.S. to quietly rally defense and foreign ministries in Europe, the Middle East and Asia...

By bribing them with what, exactly? And depending on them... why? The French - once again - have reneged on a promise before the ink was even dry. The Chinese and Russians have already said that they're happy to talk further with Iran, not particularly wanting to upset an economic apple-cart in which they have major interest and not particularly motivated to deter a militant enemy who's shown little appetite for blowing up discos in Beijing or St. Petersburg.

So who exactly should we "quietly rally"? The New Guineans? The Latvians?

The first step is to convince Iran's leaders that their sovereignty and security will not be threatened if they desist from supporting or conducting violence outside their borders.

Given that they've been supporting and "conducting" violence (an oddly benign verb choice) for upwards of 27 years and that one of the 1979 embassy kidnappers may be running the country, what possible actions or assurances could they make in the next few weeks or months - i.e., before they get the bomb - that would persuade the West that they'd changed their ways? And what do we say to the world if we're wrong? Uh, sorry... you can visit the Holy Land in 4007... once it's glowing a little less...

No, really, I mean it.

Let's say that tomorrow morning we saw the Ceausescu-esque pictures of Ahmadinejad lying in a pool of his own blood in central Tehran and that elections were declared for October. Would we believe that the Iranian leadership had changed and/or changed their ways? That an entire generation of government officials raised on Islamofascism - on the Iranian Revolution - would simply fade into the landscape overnight? That a passel of executives from MTV, Harrah's and Anhaeuser Busch, along with a bunch of ex-pat Jews and Christians would be well advised to be on the next plane to Tehran?

Gimme a break.

Trust is earned slowly and broken quickly - not the other way around. To imagine a sudden enough (and credible enough) reversal in Iranian policy so as to be convincing in an age of WMD and demonstrable aggression on Israel's immediate borders is, well... unimaginable. But if that one was worth a head-shaking guffaw, the next one is a gasping belly-laugher. Get ready...

If Washington will forswear regime change and the Iranian government still refuses to negotiate terms for conducting an exclusively civilian nuclear program, then Tehran must be convinced it will suffer greatly for threatening its neighbors and Israel, directly or by proxy. The message must be: "The United States and other major powers will work more closely than ever with your neighbors to monitor your activities and establish capabilities to respond forcefully and immediately to any scale of terrorism, subversion or war that you visit on others. If you have nuclear weapons, we won't tolerate your export of violence."

We call that a self-fisking paragraph. Ooh! Ouch! You got us!, will scream the mullahs, please oh pleeease don't "work more closely than ever with our neighbors"!!! Anything but that!!! We give in!!! Whatever you want!!! We'll put Sex-in-the-City on Iranian State TV if you like! Anything! Just name it!

But wait. It gets better. You thought the Mike Dukakis/Jimmy Carter school of hard-headed international relations was dead? Not so. Perkovich continues:

The U.S. and its partners should now urge the U.N. Security Council to specify that any state violating Security Council Resolution 1540's prohibition on transferring nuclear weapons to terrorists will be deemed a threat to international peace and security under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, which would provide authority for military reprisals. In light of Iran's ongoing defiance of Security Council demands regarding its nuclear activities, there is no justifiable excuse not to send such a warning to Tehran and others in case they break their treaty obligations not to acquire nuclear weapons.

Note the use of the passive voice. Note the difficult-to-parse sentences dictating how the U.S. ought to behave as supplicant to UN commissions. Note the unspecified nature of and responsibility for "military reprisals" - a term which, itself implies vindictive motives on the part of the West. Note the rising bile in my throat...

Perkovich concludes:

Iranian leaders wish to perpetuate their rule, not sacrifice it...

Except for the strong circumstantial evidence and opinion from well-credentialed experts noting that they may be delighted to go out in a radioactive fireball of martyrdom.

It is not too early to build a framework for deterring Tehran from acting outside its borders.

Too early? OK, enough. There's no sense arguing with an ostrich about reality above the ground.

Hizballah in Lebanon - The Larger Context

I stumbled across this superbly cogent piece that echoes some of the points I was making yesterday on the meaning of the conflict in Lebanon, on Iran and on Israeli strategy more generally. It's by Dr. Raanan Gissin, a former senior advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Dated today, it's up on the website of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Israel now faces the "special forces" of the Iranian military, the best guerilla warfare units, in front-line positions. The whole concept of how they operate on the battlefield and in public diplomacy is directed by Iran. Over the last twenty-five years Iran has gradually created a global network, first forming an axis with Syria and then building up Hizballah, with Lebanon serving as a regional theater, part of Iran's global design in its confrontation with the West.

Israel had been operating on the assumption that Hizballah was a terrorist organization like Hamas or the PLO that had to be neutralized in order to bring about stability. But these are not merely terrorist gangs. This is an army - a well-trained, well-organized, and ideologically indoctrinated guerilla army - and Israel did not make that point strongly enough at the beginning of the war, neither to the world, nor to itself.

The conflict with Hizballah in Lebanon is a testing ground - like Spain in 1936 - for weapons, tactics, and doctrine of how Iran is going to fight the war when it comes to confront the West. Hizballah in south Lebanon with its 13,000 missiles represents a front-line position of Iran. Not surprisingly, Nasrallah reportedly found refuge in the Iranian embassy in Beirut when his underground headquarters came under Israel Air Force bombardment...

The globalization of terror under the auspices of Iran is a much more formidable and more clear and present danger than the Iranian nuclear threat. The minute the Iranians get nuclear weapons, they may not immediately send them against Israel on their missiles. But this will give them the kind of protection and deterrence to use the methods that they're using now in Lebanon. For instance, if there was an Iranian terrorist coup in Egypt, the world would have to weigh any reaction differently if Iran had nuclear weapons.

The Iranians are coming, and we better read the writing on the wall. It is not in Arabic; it is in Persian, and it is still not too late to learn. [emphasis added]

Net/net: Human nature and organizational dynamics being what they are, Israel is - not surprisingly - still thinking about Hizballah in Lebanon the way it did in the last few conflict(s) there. They (and we) need to see it clearly as the Iranian proxy/practice war that it is. Knowing they would be crushed in a direct face-off, Iran has every incentive to continue working through Syria and Hizballah, keeping the West thoroughly distracted and divided about the nature and identity of the real enemy.

UPDATE: Dr. Sanity quotes Thomas Sowell in this excellent post, making further analogies to the 1930's. Sowell:

Nothing is easier for [Islamofascist] demagogues than to blame Israel, the United States, or western civilization in general for their own lagging position. Hitler was able to rouse similar resentments and fanaticism in Germany under conditions not nearly as dire as those in most Middle East countries today. The proof of similar demagogic success in the Middle East is all around.

Dr. Sanity:

And how much longer are we going to dignify their insane fanatacism and hatred with useless attempts at reasoning with them; only to discover that we have instead simply made them more resolute and bold about their murderous intentions?

And, when we have finally reached Sowell's point of no return; when we finally turn and face the evil that has been stalking us, who will stand on that narrow bridge that separates us from the abyss and shout out to it, "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"?
...
Like Sowell, I fear for our children and our children's children. Because, even if they live through the coming wars, they will bear the brunt of our past and present inaction and indecision.

Why do so many fail to see the cliff towards which we are speeding? One reason is a pervasive and seemingly benign "progressive" idea - a Marx-inspired view that human nature and thus society have changed permanently and positively in the past forty years and that backsliding into a horrific, radioactive Nazi-esque nightmare governed by Sharia law is therefore so unlikely as to not bother contemplating.

Rig up the sailboard and pass the Chardonnay.

It's then not terribly hard to see how those who believe we are free from history in this manner can then conclude that the source of evil is not Islamofascism itself, but those would would incur any serious costs in combatting it. Or as I noted on a bumper sticker in the supermarket parking lot yesterday: 1-20-09: Bush's last day in office.

Right. That will solve everything.

Thinking Out Loud on U.S./Israeli Strategy vs. Iran, Syria and Hizbollah

It has lately become fashionable among conservatives to ask what on earth the president was thinking in designing, agreeing to, allowing or encouraging (take your pick) a truce in Lebanon. Why not let the Israelis continue to roll?

"How", a reader asks in an e-mail, "could they have been so stupid as to let Hizbollah win by cease fire? Are they just trying to show us, or someone, that this #$%* [UN talkie-talk] does not work?"

Hizbollah has not won. I intuit a much bigger strategy building here. Bush and his cohorts are not stupid, nor are they playing the patsy. It's easy to forget: the Israelis acquiesced to the truce. Had they done so as a result of U.S. strong-arm tactics, we would have heard much more about it. Several things were gained here, among them:

• greater operational understanding of how Iranian forces will fight in the big show that's coming,
  
  
• more opportunities for visibility into Hizbollah/Syrian supply lines as a result of forcing their movement/acceleration (witness the denied permission for sophisticated Iranian missiles to transit Iraq),
  
  
• broader public understanding on the linkage between Iran, Syria and Hizbollah (this seems obvious to even the most casual blog reader; it is not to Joe Sixpack),
  
  
• a return to having nukes on the top of the world agenda (the Lebanon moves were always a distrcting tactic on the part of Iran; a (surely temporary) truce halts what was their initiative and returns it to the West,
  
  
• the cover of having gone through the motions of international diplomacy; the sooner these avenues are tried and exhausted, the sooner the real strategy can be played out, including military action - now more easily justified. That's not to say that talks had no hope (though under President Kerry they would have been the only hope). It's just that any such talks and truces must be taken at face value. Once broken - as arguably they already have been (by the French) - they are worthless.
  

Destroying or completely disarming Hizbollah was always an unrealistic goal. The initial action has allowed the enemy to gloat. Let him. The real battle has barely begun.

With What Will We Fight Them?

Wretchard added depth yesterday to a meme that's gaining increasing currency. I.e., despite its many "issues" (ahem), greater Islam has a valid point in noting the corruption and decadence of our civilization. A vast swath of the West has lost its soul and reason for being.

The contrast between the expectant, almost ecstatic Muslim gathering and sour bleakness of a middle-aged BBC presenter arranging her own suicide is striking. Where one sees the glimmer of life even in hardship and death, the other delivers a final judgment on the meaning of postmodern life: a pillow over the face in a musty room after the last glass of wine. Who thought that radical Islam stood no chance against postmodern glitter did not know Islam. Churchill knew it and said "were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science -- the science against which it had vainly struggled -- the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."

(More - much more - on the culture-of-death angle in an upcoming post. I found myself composing the mother-of-all rants on that last night as I walked the dog.)

All is not lost by any means, but as Wretchard points out, it may - in the long run - prove futile to fight only with guns for the right to replicate Times Square, Project Runway, Sex and The City, Desperate Housewives and So You Think You Can Dance around the planet. Not that those are the roots of all cultural evil, but they are symptomatic of a moral rot that's been progressing with remarkable speed over the last half century.

Yes, I know all the arguments for a free, secular (or at least tolerantly pluralistic), socially hands-off capitalist society. I even buy many of them, but...

We will not be able to escape answering the question of how an increasingly uncohesive society tossed by waves and winds of the Baby Boomer generation in its flailing, omnidirectional search for meaning, and taking the font and foundation of its privileges largely for granted, can hope to prevail - again, long term - against an enemy whose demagogues tie transcendent meaning directly to the tools of asymmetrical warfare.

Our current strategy doesn't allow us to focus very hard (if at all) on turning off the spigots of hate (i.e., the suicide-bomber-encouraging imams) who create the images linking dozens of dead Israelis and Americans with dozens of virgins in paradise. (The Brits are doing better, but mostly because they have to. The recent NSA court ruling is a bad sign that we will go out of our way to avoid confronting this, even if we could.)

Democracy and freedom are nice. They're necessary. But they're not sufficient. If we do not replace the enemy's world view (i.e., the larger meaning those misguided souls were seeking in the first place) with anything comparably meaty in the spiritual dimension, then we are lost before we begin. This is not a function of government, but of individuals. And - as Wretchard also concludes - the West itself must be the first guinea pig.

Why Israel Will Return to Playing Offense in Lebanon Very Soon - And Be Wholly Justified in Doing So

Blogging time is at a premium this week as we're in the midst of a DIY kitchen renovation. In the meantime, readers could do worse than to check out this WSJ editorial (free at OJ): "Mission Unaccomplished: The French promise a military force and Condi falls for it."

On Thursday, Jacques Chirac confirmed a Le Monde report that his government was prepared to offer only some 200 combat engineers (in addition to the 200 French troops already in Lebanon) to what is supposed to be the resolution's centerpiece: A 15,000-man U.N. force that will help the Lebanese army patrol their southern border and ensure that Hezbollah will no longer use the area as a staging ground for future attacks against Israel.

Given that the French contingent was supposed to be at the vanguard of this enhanced force, it's unclear whether other nations will be willing to chip in with troops of their own. All of this after the French used the promise of a robust, French-led international force to get the U.S. and Israel to agree to a cease-fire and withdrawal. Even less reassuring is the insistence by French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie that her troops will remain in the lead only until February, after which, apparently, it's salaam and adieu.

The WSJ's editors unfairly blame Ms. Rice in my opinion, overlooking the justification that this clear public failure will now provide to the Israelis. "What do you expect us to do?" they will be able to say, and with a strong claim to reasonableness. President Bush, furthermore, will able to return to his verbal defense of Israel - that is, to defending Israel's right to defend itself - with an equally strong claim to having tried (again) to work the international channels the left keeps insisting are essential (and functional).

No, this little detour and the French/UN perfidy it has showcased (again) allow the administration to ask of their political opponents: what exactly would you have us do that we have not? "Return to the UN" is no longer an acceptable answer except for those who don't mind seeing Israel destroyed and/or who aren't members of the reality-based community.

Back to wallboard and cabinet-building...

Apocalypse: Three More Days?

One of the things one notices after being "off-grid" for several weeks is how the MSM operates in a perennial state of ADD. What could be of (literally) world-shattering import one week gives way to endless speculation about, and monomaniacal fascination with the alibis of anorexic pedophile schoolteachers the next.

Specifically, while I was busy driving through the desert southwest, listening to Bernard Lewis on CD in my car, he was busy writing an op-ed for the WSJ (free at OpinionJournal). The piece (from August 8th) is likely old news to many. Given its spotlight on the possibility of potentially cataclysmic - if still murky - events to be initiated by Iran next Tuesday, it deserves re-reading.

In Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity, there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time--Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined. Mr. Ahmadinejad and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the U.S. about nuclear development by Aug. 22. This was at first reported as "by the end of August," but Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement was more precise.

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

The timing may be off by a lot or by a little, take your pick (end-times prophecies having had a long and rather sorry track record through the ages). Yet it's hard to deny that the outlines of such apocalyptic events are only getting sharper with time. North Korea's rumored preparations for a nuclear test could easily be a distraction orchestrated in cahoots with Iran.

Should Israel be attacked with a nuclear weapon, Lewis would presumably take no pleasure in saying "I told you so", and neither will I. There is some value however, in working to see these events through a biblical lens, if only as an exercise in mental flexibility.

Should they unfold - next week or whenever - it's worth remembering in the midst of the chaos that ensues (eight dollar gasoline being the very least of our worries), that Islam has no exclusive on anticipating or interpreting such events. One needn't be a death-worshipping nut to harbor tentative joy at the prospect of what is to come after all the smoke finally clears. Furthermore, it would only make sense that if the anti-Christ is on earth right now, part of his game plan would be to put an evil 'spin' on events long prophesied by his opposite.

And speaking of Ahmadinejad, it's worth trying to get your hands on a subscribers-only piece by Bret Stephens from last Tuesday's Wall Street Journal in which he asks the questions Mike Wallace didn't bother to ask of the man on 60 Minutes:

"The time of the bomb is in the past. Today is the era of thoughts, dialogue and cultural exchanges." -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on "60 Minutes" with Mike Wallace, Aug. 13, 2006

Q: A follow-up to that, Mr. President: Are you aware of a man named Mansour Ossanloo? He is the leader of the independent trade union representing the workers of the Vahed Bus Company in Tehran. A year ago, your security forces raided one of their meetings and cut out a piece of Mr. Ossanloo's tongue. Now he speaks with a lisp. Is this how "dialogue" is conducted in the Islamic Republic of Iran? A:
...
Q: Turn to the past. Kevin Hermening, a Marine sergeant at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran during the hostage crisis, tells this newspaper that you interrogated him personally on Nov. 4, 1979, while brandishing a pistol. For the record, he remembers you as a "very mean SOB" and described a sense of "déjà vu" while watching your performance on "60 Minutes." The U.S. State Department also believes that you were one of a group of five who planned the embassy takeover. Do you deny these charges? A:

Q: Numerous Iranian sources allege that in the 1980s you worked as an interrogator and executioner in Evin Prison in Tehran. They say you earned the nickname Tir Khalas Zan, or "The Terminator," for your methods there. You are also suspected of involvement in the assassination of Abdurrahman Qassemlou, a leader of Iran's Kurdish minority, in Vienna in 1989. Do you deny these charges, too?
...
Q: Another of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi's disciples, Mohsen Ghorouian, has said it is "only natural" for Iran to have nuclear weapons as a "countermeasure" to the U.S. and Israel. And one of your regime's hardliners, Hojjat-ol-Islam Baqer Kharraz, was recently quoted as saying that "we are able to produce atomic bombs and we will do that." Do you disavow these statements, given your repeated insistence that Iran's nuclear programs are for peaceful purposes only? A:

Have a nice weekend. Nobody can be sure of course, but it could be our last for awhile.

UPDATE I: Since this is all in the realm of wild speculation anyway, here's another left-field thought: What if Iran has taken a cue from the West by 'outsourcing' even more of its nuclear plans than we suspect? What if North Korea were to lob the first of its nuclear-equipped long-range missiles West instead of East?

I know that the MSM has made it unpopular to think of the Axis of Evil as a valid construction outside the mind of George Bush, but pause for a moment to consider if it is more real than we imagine, if only on the theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. In 2003, parts of a North Korean long-range missile were found in Alaska. That's roughly 3500-4000 miles. Three years has surely enabled improvement in their capabilities. The crow-flies distance from Pyongyang to Tel Aviv is 4954 miles. Said missile would need to traverse China. It's not clear that that would be an obstacle to it doing so. Draw your own conclusions.

UPDATE II: As one commenter notes, Counterterrorism Blog is also speculating about a link with the rumored NoKo nuke tests:

When news broke Friday that North Korea may be preparing for an underground detonation of a nuclear device, the question that immediately arose in my mind was whether this was linked to Iran's self-imposed Aug. 22 deadline for providing a final answer about its nuclear development. Certainly the two countries have cooperated in the past.

Take-No-Prisoners Friday Round-Up

A friend has observed that I will occasionally (often on Fridays, it seems) launch without warning into "take-no-prisoners" mode - a jarring contrast to my more placid reflections on the movings of the Holy Spirit. Consider this a warning. More nuanced views on these issues are but a click away. Some recent headlines, in no particular order:

Re. JonBenet Ramsey: curiouser and curiouser. What's clear is that John Mark Karr is pervert and a kook (no 'alleged' modifier necessary given his conviction on child porn charges). What's less clear is whether he's the kind of kooky pervert who molests and murders little girls or just the kind who likes the limelight. Creepy either way. A caller to Hannity's radio show yesterday afternoon made comparisons to the Boston Strangler who, forty years ago, confessed to more than he did. A journalist friend (believe it or not a liberal) who attended the JBR press conference in Boulder yesterday calls it one of the biggest media circuses he's ever seen... often a signal that what we're reading is the antithesis of truth.

Re. Catherine T. Mayo - the supposedly claustrophobic woman who, among other things, endeared herself to fellow passengers by urinating on the floor of a Heathrow-to-Dulles flight this week while fighting with and spewing invective at the flight crew: also a kook, but one whose existence and behavior prove a much larger point with frightening implications for this country.

Starting with the caveat that, on the face of it, she appears to be mentally ill and thus deserving of some degree of compassion, the following may sound terribly prejudicial. Having spent my entire life here however, I think I know my New England politics. Long before this part of the back story came to light (in this morning's Boston Globe), I would have taken almost any bet that - knowing nothing else about her - a random 59 year-old woman from Vermont traveling internationally most likely harbored deep animus towards the U.S. and its current administration. Bingo.

It was March 2003, the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, and into the office of dumbfounded Pakistani newspaper editor Najam Sethi walked an articulate, fresh-faced Vermont woman, saying she wanted to vent her anger at America in his pages.

Violence-plagued Lahore teemed with anti-American sentiment, yet Catherine C. Mayo seemed to move about with ease, Sethi recalled. And writing for the Daily Times of Pakistan, Mayo told about her 1960s activism. About her love of Cat Stevens and Howard Dean. About the mountains and lakes of her native Vermont. And about her shame and anger at America.

In an open letter to her granddaughters published on June 24, 2003, Mayo wrote: "Governments in the world right now have made terrible decisions and have caused a lot of fear and bloodshed. But remember, girls, the world is beautiful, and it is yours."

What's startling is how that same far-left whacko turns out to be explicitly in league with the Islamofascists. Johnnie Walker Lind's long-lost cousin, perhaps. Did anyone ever bother to educate her on how girls are actually treated under Sharia law? Sadly this revelation starts to answer my question from Wednesday ("Where are the feminists [on Islamic repression of women]?") The answer seems to be: blindly in league with them against the evil, woman-hating Bushitler. (Why the president is - unfairly - perceived to be so will be left to another post... but the answer begins with an 'a'.)

Re. the Middle East: Does anyone care to argue that this is not a really really good reason to have fought for and won more influence in Iraq now than we had say, four years ago?

The United States blocked an Iranian cargo plane's flight to Syria last month after intelligence analysts concluded it was carrying sophisticated missiles and launchers to resupply Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, two U.S. intelligence officials say.

Eight days after Hezbollah's war with Israel began, U.S. diplomats persuaded Turkey and Iraq to deny the plane permission to cross their territory to Damascus, a transfer point for arms to Hezbollah, the officials said. [emphasis added]

More "prisoners" (stories) may be summarily shot in this post as the day progresses.

Irony in Islam? Taking the Fascism Out of Islamofascism

Continuing on the theme I sounded yesterday, conservative writer and philosopher Roger Scruton has penned an illuminating op-ed in this morning's WSJ (alas, available only to subscribers) on the problem with Islam as currently practiced by many... and imposed upon many more who might otherwise choose differently. He begins by noting the origins of the term "Islamofascism" - by "[Marxist] French writer Maxine Rodinson (1915-2004) to describe the Iranian Revolution of 1978", noting the irony of Marxism's growing antipathy for Islamofascism's primary enemy (us) and our current leadership (Bush). He concludes with this brilliant bit that I quote at greater length than usual:

Now of course it is wrong to give gratuitous offence to people of other faiths; it is right to respect people's beliefs, when these beliefs pose no threat to civil order; and we should extend toward resident Muslims all the toleration and neighborly goodwill that we hope to receive from them. But recent events have caused people to wonder exactly where Muslims stand in such matters. Although "islam" is derived from the same root as "salaam," it does not mean peace but submission. And although the Koran tells us that there shall be no compulsion in matters of religion, it does not overflow with kindness toward those who refuse to submit to God's will. The best they can hope for is to be protected by a treaty (dhimmah), and the privileges of the dhimmi are purchased by onerous taxation and humiliating rites of subservience. As for apostates, it remains as dangerous today as it was in the time of the prophet publicly to renounce the Muslim faith. Even if you cannot be compelled to adopt the faith, you can certainly be compelled to retain it. And the anger with which public Muslims greet any attempt to challenge, to ridicule or to marginalize their faith is every bit as ferocious as that which animated the murderer of Theo Van Gogh. Ordinary Christians, who suffer a daily diet of ridicule and skepticism, cannot help feeling that Muslims protest too much, and that the wounds, which they ostentatiously display to the world, are largely self-inflicted.

To recognize such facts is not to give up hope for a tolerant Islam. But there is a matter that needs to be clarified. Christians and Jews are heirs to a long tradition of secular government, which began under the Roman Empire and was renewed at the Enlightenment: Human societies should be governed by human laws, and these laws must take precedence over religious edicts. The primary duty of citizens is to obey the state; what they do with their souls is a matter between themselves and God, and all religions must bow down to the sovereign authority if they are to exist within its jurisdiction.

The Ottoman Empire evolved systems of law which to some extent replicated that wise provision. But after the Ottoman collapse the Muslim sects rebelled against the idea, since it contradicts the claims of the shariah to be the final legal authority. The Egyptian writer and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, went so far as to denounce all secular law as blasphemy. Mortals who make laws for their own government, he argued, usurp a power which is God's alone. And although few Muslim leaders will publicly endorse Qutb's argument, few will publicly condemn it either. What to us is a proof of Qutb's fanaticism and egomania is, for many Muslims, a proof of his piety.

Whenever I consider this matter I am struck by a singular fact about the Christian religion, a fact noticed by Kierkegaard and Hegel but rarely commented upon today, which is that it is informed by a spirit of irony. Irony means accepting "the other," as someone other than you. It was irony that led Christ to declare that his "kingdom is not of this world," not to be achieved through politics. Such irony is a long way from the humorless incantations of the Koran. Yet it is from a posture of irony that every real negotiation, every offer of peace, every acceptance of the other, begins. The way forward, it seems to me, is to encourage the re-emergence of an ironical Islam, of the kind you find in the philosophy of Averroës, in Persian poetry and in "The Thousand and One Nights." We should also encourage those ethnic and religious jokes which did so much to defuse tension in the days before political correctness. And maybe, one day, the rigid face of some puritanical mullah will crack open in a hesitant smile, and negotiations can at last begin.

Studying Islam - Two Book Reviews and a Dire Conclusion

One might think that two of the books I listened to on my recent long car trip would cover much the same ground. In fact, they are great complements to one another.

"Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror", by nonagenarian Princeton professor Bernard Lewis, the virtual father of modern Middle East scholarship, is a highly digestible and evenhanded yet utterly sweeping treatise on the historical roots (some as deep as fourteen centuries) of the Middle East crises continually dominating the headlines. I.e., who did what to whom when and how those events continue to echo.

"Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith", by Robert Spencer (who blogs at Jihad Watch) provides a tight analysis of Islam itself as it's currently practiced. I.e., what do the Koran and the Hadiths actually say? How did Mohammed live his life? How are these things commonly interpreted and prioritized? What Judeo-Christian (aka, 'Western') values and assumptions are lacking in Islam? How do key tracts in Islam contrast with Christianity?

Yes, as some commenters have noted, the 'fastest growing' claim is highly disputable. Once one reads Spencer, it's clear that the question of growth warrants even more scrutiny. I.e., when one can never really leave Islam without the very real threat of being killed, all claims of freely chosen, heartfelt adherence as we think of it in the West must be questioned.

Both books were written after 9-11 but before the invasion of Iraq. With only a few exceptions, they hold up extremely well (in some ways even better) given subsequent developments. That said, they do cause me to question for the first time how naive or at least impatient we may be in our efforts at instilling democracy and Western values quickly - the proverbial suckers' game being, as Lewis puts it: "one man, one vote... once".

Both books are well worth reading - the kind that one wonders why one didn't read sooner and which leave one feeling much better educated for having spent the time. Both are also scrupulous and compelling (IMHO) in addressing criticisms easily thrown by their opponents that they are motivated by racism or religious bigotry. One of the key points in both books is simply that the Western world, including virtually our entire political, military, economic and social dialogue and that of our leaders is woefully ignorant of Islam and its history.

To that point, Lewis' entire oeuvre should be required of every post-9-11 politician and student of world history. (Alas, his highly prescient What Went Wrong?, originally published circa 1990, might have saved everyone a lot of trouble, or at least left fewer of us surprised when the planes hit the towers and the Pentagon).

Spencer's book is an essential bulwark to any conversation about a clash (or lack of clash) between civilizations, providing fodder for addressing questions such as:

• Are Islam and the West ultimately compatible?
• Must essential aspects of Islam 'lose' in order for Western values (freedom, tolerance, democracy, basic human rights as we think of them, women's rights, etc.) to prevail?
• Is Islam still Islam (in the eyes of true believers) if those values do triumph?
• Is there anything within Islam that would help to enable such moderating influences?

Another major takeaway from both is that we in the West (including Muslim converts such as Mohammed Ali and Cat Stevens) routinely assume into Islam things that simply aren't there. Christ's admonition to "turn the other cheek" is a classic example but Spencer makes many others. It's a kind of wishful Judeo-Christian hangover that leads one into the kind of "red-team, blue-team" morally blind thinking that plagued U.S.-Soviet relations until Reagan (an image minted by William F. Buckley, Jr.) .

Other key points which, while likely familiar to this audience nonetheless bear repeating:

• The Crusades were a late, limited and relatively mild response to five centuries of violent Islamic expansionism. To view them as a blanket excuse for the current behavior of Islamofascists is ignorant.
  
  
• Islam, particularly as reflected in the life of Mohammed, but also as preached and frequently practiced in current mainstream doctrine - and in sharp contrast to modern Judaism or Christianity - is a religion not only unfriendly to women, but in which the status of women is somewhat below that of domestic animals. I'd really love to debate anyone who can answer the question (as a commenter at Belmont Club noted yesterday): "Where are the feminists [on this]?"
  
  
• There is nothing within Islam that would enable one to make the case that it is merely going through it's own "Dark Ages" and will grow up given time... to say nothing of the added urgency of WMD and asymmetric warfare that render such arguments moot in practice even if they were worthy in theory. Examining the broad sweep of Islamic history, the greatest aberration has been an 80-year interlude of relative political moderation. In the eyes of many true believers, violent jihad is not the perversion but rather the secularist, pluralistic, post-colonialist experiments such as mid-20th century Turkey and Egypt.
  
  
• The West's way of looking at the world as a bunch of countries within each of which it is hoped that various religions might coexist is wholly at odds with an Islamic view of individual states as of secondary if not tertiary importance within the societal construct that is greater Islam.
  
  
• Because our values demand tolerance for personal religious conviction, rhetorical and political deference to Islam render us unable to make essential distinctions between the exception that proves the rule (e.g., Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing) and the large and increasing volume of religiously-motivated violence rendered by Islamic 'jihad' (small 'j'). This conundrum may prove the ultimate paradox of this clash.
  
  
• Through exposure to the West over the past century or so, Islam has been reinforced in its view of the West as decadent and weak.
  

Ominously, both books conclude (as does Thomas Sowell in "The Quest for Cosmic Justice" - another review for another day) that the West is weak, ignorant, extremely late to the party, wholly unsure of what it stands for and unwilling to confront the truth of who the enemy is, what they seek and what they are willing to do to get it. The West is also confused (in the eyes of all three authors) in its estimation of what it will take for deeply cherished and widely shared Western values to continue in the West, much less to spread into and take root in the Islamic world.

Alone But Not Really

I'm back. Pictures to follow. Lots of 'em. I spent six days driving from Boston to Wyoming, soaking up books-on-tape, five days hiking in the mountains, three days driving south to Albuquerque (yet more books-on-tape - several reviews to follow). I spent some time with family there, then three days with family in NYC checking out colleges for my older one.

Without question, the most profound part of the odyssey was three and a half days in the backcountry during which I did not see or hear a soul. Not a brief 'hello' passing on the trail. Not a tent, a silhouette or a scrap of color sighted in the distance. Not a conversation heard faintly across a lake or even a far-off campfire or the glow of a city on the horizon at night. (The stars were beyond magnificent... one could not but stand mute - in awe.) I could tell everyone exactly where this was - a true "blank spot" on the map... but then I'd have to kill you. :)

It was total solitude. About the closest I came to the world of people were some airplane contrails miles overhead and a few days-old footprints and horse leavings on the trail.

And yet, I never felt alone.

Ponder for a moment: When was the last time you were truly alone for an hour, much less a day? (sleeping doesn't count) Without even the simulated companions that clutter our existence these days: radio, television, iPod and the web? Without even the casual contact provided by a delivery person, waiter or toll-taker? Without seeing or hearing, much less speaking to another human being?

It is a discipline that is not easy... and yet it is essential. Why else did Christ seek time away from the clutches of his fellow humans, e.g., in passages such as this or this or this?

Everyone would benefit from a few days alone like this at least once in his/her lifetime. For myself, I hope to make it an annual respite - a refill on the deep well of peace that pervades my soul as I write this more than a week after rejoining the world.

Prayer comes much more naturally in such surroundings and with it, a more instinctual, beyond-words understanding of the One God who was is and ever shall be. One becomes conscious of how much one's "self" is - or at least can be - shaped (and distorted) by interactions with others. Not that human community is a bad thing. I'd make a lousy hermit. We were not meant to live like this full time. It's just that so much of what we take to be our modern lives is often a sought distraction from communion with the One we should be letting shape us. We squirm at quiet. We get uneasy emptying ourselves of the world and letting God take its place.

I did not go off seeking this degree of isolation - though two days on obscure alpine lakeshores off trail in the high country made it far more likely. Last time I backpacked in this area, it was sparsely traveled, not totally deserted. When I finally did encounter someone on the trail, I was not at all surprised to learn that she too had lost a brother some years ago. Of course. Who else would God send to welcome me back? (My trip was a pilgrimmage of sorts - climbing a peak my brother and I had climbed together over a quarter-century ago as teens.)

When I arrived in Manhattan Friday night, it was startling how centered the experience allowed me to be - as if I were watching a movie rather than participating in or being affected by the sturm and drang that is that city. In the world but not of it...

Thanks for sticking with me.