SEASON'S GREETINGS
A healthy, joyous, industrious, and challenging 2008 to all readers and commentators of this blog.

LAWYERS LICKING THEIR CHOPS IN ANTICIPATION OF PRIME MINISTER'S WORD "SORRY"

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The announcement of Labor policies during the electoral campaign by Kevin Rudd clearly revealed that his government would be a government of tokenistic gestures and impressionistic policies without substance. The holy trinity of his major policies, Climate Change, Workplace Relations, and Education Revolution will turn out to be the most “unholy” inexpedient promises he made to the electorate, heavy in symbolism and light in substance.

First, signing the Kyoto Protocol will hardly entice America, China, and India, the highest polluters in the world, to agree to binding emission targets. And Prime Minister Rudd already realizes that this is a great difficulty when he admits that Australia will not be a party to emission targets unless the developed and developing countries also agree to such targets. And without such agreement of the big three his signature of the Protocol therefore will just be one of the last signatures before the former is thrown into the dustbin of the UN, like so many other ineffective and impractical initiatives of the latter.

Secondly, on Workplace Relations after scaring workers that some of them might lose their benefits and even their jobs, all that he will do with his new IR legislation, even as he scraps in name Howard’s WorkChoices, is to tinker on the edges of the Coalition’s IR laws. Careful not to impose upon employers, especially in small business, hefty costs with harsh unfair dismissal laws which would produce an irreversible disincentive for employers to hire more workers, and indeed, in some cases dismiss workers before Rudd’s legislation is in place if business sniffs that the latter will seriously endanger their economic efficiency, and hence their viability, to survive in a highly competitive market.

And, thirdly, on his “Education Revolution” that will provide future generations of Australians with the ‘best education in the world’, to quote him, that will facilitate their entry into the higher levels of the Australian economy. How is he proposing to accomplish this tremendously important task, by merely .providing laptops to all students from year nine to year twelve? Without throwing his revolutionary fervor where the real education revolution lies, not on laptops, but on the quality of teachers and the curriculum they teach and where the teaching unions are a counter-revolutionary force that will not allow any transformation of the status quo, Rudd will fail to achieve his goal. Unless he is prepared to fight the intransigence of the teaching unions on this cardinal issue Rudd’s revolution will be the devolution of education.

As provision of laptops to students, without a real revolution that will overthrow the postmodernist structure of the education system and its PC advocates that is especially entrenched in state schools which are the unions’ protectorate, will merely furnish students with a technical gadget. Without tempting them to climb toward the clear crackling snow peaks of education since there is a dearth of excellent guides, i.e., teachers, to lead their students to trek on the intricate and challenging paths to the Everest of education.

Instead, in government schools where there is a poverty of good teachers and mediocre performance of students, the latter might use the mobile privacy of the laptops to play games and watch sports, and, indeed, to enter the exciting and tempting “illicit scenes" that are spread all over the internet. Kevin Rudd’s laptop “education revolution” therefore might finish as a free ticket to some students to enter the “bordellos” of the global internet.

Therefore, unless Prime Minister Rudd exorcises the spell of the teaching unions that divides government and private schools his revolution will be a farce, "laptop made" and at a high expense to the taxpayer. And parents who aspire for their children to get a good education will take the laptops and couple them with good teachers who are in private schools.

RUDD'S READ MY LIPS: EVER "SORRY"

Prime Minister Rudd’s propensity for “shambolistic” and impressionistic actions is further illustrated by his announcement after his election that unlike his predecessor John Howard he would utter the up till now elusive and unutterable word “sorry” to the present generation of indigenous people for the indignities and sufferings inflicted upon their descendants by past generations of white settlers. And at the same time expressing his strong belief that such an apology would not be followed by a spate of demands for compensation. To believe this before the trumpeting sounds that aboriginal leaders, such as Lowitja O’Donoghue, made in the past and continue to make presently, that such a generous gesture should be accompanied by a generous package of compensation, is delusional.

But one group of professionals who have no illusions and are realistic about the consequences of the uttering the word sorry are the civil libertarian and humanitarian lawyers. Who are already joining a long queue that will deliver this gold laden package to the “stolen generations” through “activist” judges and in anticipation of this lucrative banquet at taxpayers’ expense, that Rudd so capriciously and innocently has set up, lawyers are already licking their chops.

At a time when Australia could be facing a recession as a result of the economic reverberations to the rest of the world of a possible collapse of the housing market in America and its inevitable decline into recession, the country cannot afford to be lavish with its economic resources to an ever expanding cycle of compensations. If it enters into recession the government will need every cent to cushion the country from a hard economic fall. The Treasury should exercise Occam’s razor in its expenditure and should abstain from gratifying the black band arm and bad misplaced conscience of the café latte habitués.

Moreover the Prime Minister in his rash to satisfy his black band clientele does not stop to ponder the pragmatic question that no individual or group of individuals is responsible for the malign actions and deeds of another individual or group of individuals and therefore could not render any meaningful apology on behalf of the latter, as only those who perpetrated these actions are solely responsible for them. To each his own! Nor does he stop to ponder the metaphysical question that the sins of man/woman perceived by human beings as such, in the subtler eyes of history, or if you like in the subtlest eyes of God, may not be seen as sins at all as they might originate from his/her human condition and since all humans by their nature are bound to commit them therefore do not have to be exculpated. But we must stop as we are diverting into philosophy and it would be unfair to drag common politicians to tread on its dangerous mountainous paths.

Your turn now...

National Intelligence Estimate About Iran Fails But Logic Triumphs


The NIE'S Pre-Emptive Strike By Nikos Konstandaras, Washington Post, December 10, 2007 PostGlobal Blog

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

Whenever Intelligence fails to find the truth logic comes to its rescue. The Iran theocratic leadership is not concerned with not jeopardizing its people's progress by a confrontation with the U.S., but in not jeopardizing its lunge for power in the region. This is its number one priority, to become the leader of the Muslim world. And the acquisition of nuclear weapons, especially in defiance of all Western powers, opens the way, in the thinking of its leaders, toward its irreversible dominance of Islam.

All the conclusions therefore of Intelligence whether Iran has stopped or not its nuclear program are secondary before the geopolitical logic that Iran has not renounced its eschatological goal to be the new Caliphate.

The calculus of cost-benefit analysis must be replaced by the cost-power analysis, as it's by the latter that one can answer the conundrum whether Iran is building nuclear weapons or not. That is why the option of a strike by the U.S. cannot be off the table

Your turn now...

The Roots of Anti-Americanism


By Con George-Kotzabasis

Public opinion is the lowest denominator of opinion and it would be foolish to take it seriously on important issues. Often the apparent reasons for ones' aversions and hates against someone have deeper reasons that lay in the unconscious.

"Anti-Americanism flourishes" among peoples and nations that have failed to succeed in their objectives and hate and envy those who succeed. Also its virulence is even stronger among nations which in the past were the beacons of culture and civilization to the world, such as France, Britain and Germany, and therefore view with contempt the upstarts, in this case the Americans, who dare to emulate them, and indeed who so incomparably succeed in their enterprises with cosmopolitan chutzpah and "cowboy" aplomb.

Anti-Americanism is related to the Rupert Murdoch paradox. Most people would have liked to be Rupert but most of them hate Murdoch. In human beings as in nations, the spell of envy is hard to exorcise.

Old Diplomacy Useless in Age of Fanatic Terror

On Hamas Saud al-Faisal Agrees with Colin Powell...
By Steven Clemons Washington Note, November 27, 2007

A brief reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

My dear Steven,

To agree with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, who is the embodiment of Saudi nepotism and has the reputation of being a political manipulator, is hardly a pass to political wisdom.

Time and time again it was a futile and wasted effort to bring Hamas to the negotiating table. You cannot entice Hamas to embrace diplomacy. You can only force it to enter negotiations by isolating it more and more from its people. And only by making it fear a revolt of Palestinians against it will it enter the discourse of diplomacy but from a weakened position and hence make its hard line demands politically untenable.

As for the constellation of bright stars from Powell, Brzezinski, to Whitman, they are all bound to fall into the black hole of their present idealistic uselessness. The diplomacy of the past was successful because one was dealing with rational actors. But in the Age of fanatic terror such diplomacy is no longer applicable and is a parody of the art of Talleyrand.

IF COALITION LOCKS-IN CONSUMER DEBT IN LAST WEEK OF CAMPAIGN IT COULD WIN ELECTION

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Presently consumer debt is unprecedentedly high in Australia. Many Australians don’t only pay-off their mortgages but also for luxuries installed in their homes, for four-wheel drives, and for yachts and boats. If the Coalition can make it evidently clear to these consumers in the next few days that these "beloved" luxuries issuing from their debt will be at a high risk of losing them under a Rudd government (remember what Paul Keating said he would do to four-wheel drives if he was still in government?) dominated by the unions, it will have more than a good chance to shift many of those consumers to its side, especially in marginal seats, who could push it over the winning line.

The Coalition’s main slogan “Go For Growth” is totally inept, unimaginative, and does not pull voters to its side as it’s too abstract in their minds. Since the major aim of the Coalition was and is--by concentrating on the economy--to discredit Kevin Rudd as an economic manager, its slogan should have been Go For Economic Security. It’s a concrete slogan and concentrates the minds of those who are heavily in debt. It also highlights the fact that under the Coalition none, with rare exceptions, have lost any of the luxuries mentioned above, whereas under a Rudd Government, the gurus of the Liberal campaign, even at this late stage, could build up the perception among those consumers in debt of the risk that many of them might lose some of these luxuries due to Rudd's economic policies.

Rudd's Prolonged Honeymoon Will End at the Approach of Ballot Box

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to Professor Sinclair Davidson’s article, titled A Perfect Political Storm May Sink Coalition, On Line Opinion, November 6, 2007


Professor Davidson presents a serious and imaginative argument on the axis of Joseph Schumpeter’s notion of “job ownership” as an answer to the puzzling question that a government that has engendered a crop of prosperity in Australia faces electoral defeat.

But there is a fundamental contradiction in his argument that torpedoes his thesis. For if “WorkChoices legislation” and the processes of the free-market—which were in existence under Kim Beazley and had hardly impacted favorably to his electoral prospects as they presumably do now with Kevin Rudd—are psychologically threatening the “job ownership” of Australians, an untested Rudd as economic manager, who can still cannot outpace Howard as a better economic manager--as he has done on other issues-- that in the electorate is almost an indelible perception and which all polls clearly show, can hardly make workers feel more secure about their job ownership under his government. Moreover a government that is perceived to be dominated by the unions which scarcely have the reputation of saving or creating jobs. In such a situation, it’s hardly imaginable that people will vote for the devil they do not really know.

I believe that there is another subjective element that tentatively answers the puzzle. It’s the prolonged honeymoon, for as yet unknown psychological reasons, of Rudd with the electorate that continuous to drive his favorable polls. They have created a momentum of success and the people who are answering the questions of the pollsters get a great frisson, a great thrill, by thinking they are riding on this winning horse. But their thrill will cease before the end of the race, that is, as they approach the ballot box. At the vicinity of the real poll on November 24, when the prospects of the two parties will be very close, “subjective reality” will be given its knockout punch by objective reality, and the electorate will chose the current economic security against the uncertainty generated by union dominated Labor occupying the treasury benches.

ON THE BLAST OF THE TRUMPET OF JERICHO DEPENDS U.S. PRESTIGE

Bush not the only problem

By Owen Harris, On Line Opinion, October 26, 2007

A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

The respectable Australian commentantor on international affairs Owen Harris writes, “the US and the American people are experiencing a crisis of confidence” and “anti-Americanism is at all times high”. In my opinion the first issues from the US’s involvement in the war of Iraq and due to the initial serious tactical errors committed by it in the aftermath of the fall of the Saddam regime and on the up till now irresolution of the war. This “crisis of confidence” however, is momentary because it's precisely related to the unresolved war. And the signs are favorable. As Americans have corrected their mistakes and are implementing a new strategy under their capable commander General Petraeus they seem to be winning the war—as I always believed that they would—and according from reports on the ground are “crippling al Qaeda”. Hence, the restoration of “respect and credibility” to the US depends on the defeat of the insurgency in Iraq.

The second issue, anti-Americanism is not new. It was always there although in a milder form—it goes with the trappings of being the sole superpower—and it was exacerbated as a result of the “mishandling” of the war and the bad publicity of the liberal media against the Bush administration.

To be respected and credible a superpower must implement its foreign policy with wisdom and resolve and undeviatingly from the main threat it faces. The US has not lost the capacity to do so. Once the powerful blast of the trumpets of US power flatten the walls of Jericho, the Iraqi insurgency, the benign prestigious hegemony of America will continue to play its historical role as the axis of world order and peace.

A Response to an American Isolationist

Con George-Kotzabasis

It's in the nature of power politics from the Roman republican times of Scipio Africanus (Carthage must be destroyed), to our own that no superpower can metastasize itself into isolationism, as your "minding our own business" implies. A benign superpower such as America by its ineluctable engagement with the world is the axis of global order.

Also, one must not forget that bin Laden is a symbol of a fanatic mass movement with multiple heads whose goal is to destroy the West and its incarnation, "evil America". You cannot defeat such an enemy by merely "catching" or killing its symbol, bin Laden. You can only defeat him in the field of battle. Islamist terrorism is a mundanely "anarchic" movement with no centre of command. For all its true believers the centre of command is heavenly, since all of them ineradicably believe that they are the instruments of, and take their orders from, Allah.

The only way to defeat decisively such foes is to make them fail in the field of their operations , as presently seems to be happening with al Qaeda in Iraq with the new strategy of the surge which is crippling its suicidal jihadists. It's at this point that they might start having doubts about being instruments of God and abandon their cause. This is why the outcome of the war in Iraq is of paramount importance to the war against global terror and to the security of the West.

ARMENIAN RESOLUTION:DEMOCRATS COMMIT THEIR OWN GENOCIDE


By Con George-Kotzabasis

Only someone with the chutzpah of intellectual arrogance and a parvenu to boot in realpolitik and foreign affairs could be behind such a remarkably doltish resolution that puts an arrow through the heart of a much needed ally, such as Turkey, at a time when the US is engaged in war in the Middle East.

The Democrats with this resolution, from Lantos to Pelosi and Reid, have shown themselves to be immaculate political tyros in the affairs of foreign policy and war. They have committed by the passing of this resolution their own genocide. The "genocide" of the alliance with Turkey, which is so vital to America's foreign policy interests in the Middle East, and to the protection of US troops in Iraq whose major part of supplies for fighting the war come through Turkey.

By the passing of this totally irresponsible resolution the Democrats have cancelled themselves out from governing the country at this critical time when America confronts and fights a mortal foe. And the Lantos' resolution will go down in the annals of American politics as the great caricature that it's in statecraft. In their manic run to force Bush to withdraw from Iraq, they have stabbed in the back the sons and daughters of America who are fighting and winning the war under their superb commander David Petraeus, to achieve their treacherous and despicable goal.

The Danger of Tyros Handling War Strategy


A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis on:Clinton’s Statement on Kyl-Lieberman Resolution Washington Note, September 30, 2007

Like the two eminent commentators of the New York Times Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, respectable in their own professions as an economist and art critic respectably, and a bevy of politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, not so respectable because of their populist stunt, all of them being novices par excellence in the affairs of war who have attempted to pass judgment on the war in Iraq and cashier its victory despite evidence to the contrary, we now have another “tired less” tyro joining them in war strategy. The scholar and blogger Steven Clemons of the Washington Note. Clemons indirectly rebukes Senator Clinton for her support and vote of the Kyl-Lieberman resolution that designates the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, fearing that this will allow Bush to manipulate this resolution and use it to attack Iran.

He calls therefore on Senator Clinton to exercise “leadership in passing an explicit Senate resolution forbidding Bush from taking action against Iran without clear advice and consent from Congress”. But such action is not a declaration of war against Iran needing the authorization of Congress. It’s a strategic force de frappe on the part of the US against Iran in which the elements of secrecy and surprise are pivotal and decisive in the success of such an attack. Therefore Clemons’ call is strategically oxymoronic.

MOVEON Org's Ad in NEW YORK TIMES BETRAYS AMERICA


A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to: Beyond "The Ad":Getting Back to Substance in the Petraeus Controversy, by Steven Clemons in the Washington Note, September 20, 2007

The MoveOn org's ad General Petraeus Or General Betray Us in the New York Times has sparked a great controversy and debate, as it naturally was expected to do, forcing the Democrats to repudiate it and the majority of them to vote against it in Congress thus engendering a serious split between them and their anti-war constituency. It also forced some liberal gurus to stealthily detach themselves from the ad without damaging their connection with the anti-war crowd. Clemons, the liberal scholar and blogger of the Washington Note, apparently with admiration quotes Chris Matthews' wiseacre, "the ad didn't kill anybody" as being Solomonic wisdom, as well as for the purpose of sopping up and appeasing the "MoveOnes". The ad certainly didn't physically kill anybody. But it certainly attempted to kill the spirit, the dedication, and the moral fortitude of all American soldiers in Iraq who consider and applaud General Petraeus as being a superb commander, and are honored and proud to serve under his command.

It was a shameful attack upon the military front line US forces and the soldier-savants, like David Petraeus, who are the real and only defenders of America against this onslaught of fanatic barbarians. In the chronicles of this war the "ad" will be written with the obloquy it deserves. As by betraying the beliefs of the troops about their military commander, the ad by implication betrayed the interests of the nation at this critical juncture of its history that the deadly challenge of Islamofascism poses.

As a consequence of the above reply the following discussion took place on the Washington Note.

Carroll said...

May I ask if you have any military combat experience? Or any military experience? I don't, but my older brother was a three purple hearts, two bronze stars and one silver star Marine Lt. in Vietnam.

And he says that Petraeus is a prime example of the "political" generals in the military,..he called them total "suck ups" and "desk managers".

Kotzabasis said...

Yes I do Carrol! I have the "experience" of 160,000 American soldiers presently serving in Iraq who are winning purple hearts, bronze stars, and silver stars galore with their heroic stand against the stealthy murderous insurgents, and who consider, I repeat, General Petraeus to be a superb commander (not a "suck up")and are honored and proud to serve under his leadership.

So if you follow with intellectual rigor your own logic, 160,000 experienced soldiers who think differently from your brother about the subject Petraeus, surely and decisively trump the "experience" of your brother. So by your own logic you too must accept the appraisal, of all those star-laden soldiers, of General Petraeus. And hence come to the same conclusion, like myself, that the MoveOn ad was a betrayal of the troops serving in Iraq, and by implication a betrayal of America.

HOW LONG WILL KEVIN RUDD'S POLLS DEFY THE LAW OF GRAVITY?



By Con George-Kotzabasis

Since the elevation of Kevin Rudd to the leadership of the Labor Party his polls have shot up to the stars and continue to rise unabated into the electoral "stratosphere" of the country. And this is going on beyond the normal honeymoon period most new leaders enjoy with the electorate. Taking also into consideration that the “animal spirits” of the electorate were, and are, not ferociously hostile against the Howard government, one is nonplussed therefore at the rapid and high rise of Rudd’s polls that refuse even to reach a plateau and least of all to fall. It’s the reverse of the simile of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. While Howard has been politically “debauch less” and “sinless” his picture or portrait is becoming aged and uglier as if displaying his political debauchery and sins that his record does not have. On the contrary he and his government have impeccable economic credentials as good managers of the economy and prosperity of the country during their long tenure in office, as all serious commentators acknowledge.

Moreover one would expect that something that goes up must also come down. But the strength of Rudd’s polls is of such magnitude that defies even Newton’s law of gravitation. What explanation can one give to this phenomenon that prevents even the apple of Newton from falling? And is unprecedented in the experience of pollsters and challenges the professional knowledge of the latter to give a plausible answer to this conundrum?

Some pollsters and commentators have offered the explanation that the Industrial Relations legislation and global warming are the two major issues that are throttling the Coalition and the reasons why the electorate has lost its trust of the Howard government. But these two issues were around during the time of Rudd’s predecessor Kim Beazley and did not contribute even a tad of rise to the polls of the latter. Nor was ever registered by any pollsters any noticeable huge ire of the electorate on these issues against the government. Others offer as an explanation the youthfulness and apparent dynamism of Rudd against the aged Howard. While this might have some effect upon some people it’s not of such great substance that would deliver a sledgehammer blow to the foundation of Howard’s leadership as it seems to have done. The peer pollster Sol Lebovitz puts forward a shrewder explanation. He says that often the electorate has a propensity to have one-night-stands with an Opposition party until close to the day of the election. I think this is a more plausible explanation and I would only express this proposition in different terms, i.e., when it comes to the question whether the electorate should take the “slut” to the ballot box and marry her. It’s precisely at this point when voters approach the “aisle” of the ballot box that they will decide whether to jilt or marry the Labor bride.

But I would suggest and risk a bolder explanation to this ceaseless rise of Kevin Rudd’s polls. It’s the perception of the unstoppable momentum of the polls favoring the leader of the Opposition that prevents many of those who are called by the pollsters from expressing their real feelings about the two opposing parties. Most people love going along with the strong current of a stream especially when such an enjoyment seems to be the fashion of the day, and would be discomfited to be seen going against it. Hence individual members of the electorate when they are asked by pollsters which of the two leaders or parties they favor, they chose the ones who have this momentum behind them. And the corollary of this is that this choice continues to reinforce the momentum of the polls that favor Rudd and hence the ceaseless momentum that feeds on itself.

The members of the electorate therefore who provide the statistics for the pollsters are like surfies. Who enjoy riding a high wave of the sea, in this case the “victorious wave” of Kevin Rudd, and get a great frisson, a great thrill, from sliding from the heights of the wave. But until the penultimate slide that will bring them close to the ballot box and to the ebb of the wave. Once the voters enter the secrecy of the ballot box it’s at that moment that they will express, unhindered by the fashionably designed momentum, their "secret longings". And in my opinion the latter will favor John Howard for his mature solid leadership that will continue to secure, as his long tenure exemplified, the long term interests of Australia, and will reject the uncertain, callow, and risky leadership of Kevin Rudd.

All the President's Disablers


A response by Con George-Kotzabasis to:
All the President’s Enablers by Paul Krugman The New York Times July 20, 2007

The fundamental principle of power and of any political activity is that these should never be any appearance of weakness. Niccolo Machiavelli

The eminent professor of economics Paul Krugman who ditched his solid professorial chair for the ephemeral glitter and celebrity status that accrues from being a peer pundit of The New York Times, ridicules George Bush, in his latest article, of a misplaced confidence that verges to a “lost touch with reality”. Confident to bring in Osama dead or alive, confident toward the insurgents “to bring it on”, confident that the war will be won, when the latest report of the National Intelligence Estimate is so gloomy about the prospects in Iraq and the war against al Qaeda that would make even the most optimistic of Presidents to have second thoughts about his policy, but not George Bush. Krugman states, “thanks to Mr. Bush’s poor leadership America is losing the struggle with al Qaeda. Yet Mr. Bush remains confident”. Such a stand “doesn’t demonstrate Mr. Bush’s strength of character” but his stubbornness to prove himself right despite the grim reality.

But Krugman saves his main grapeshot to fire it against the Republican doyen Senator Richard Luger and General Petraeus both of whom he considers to be the “smart sensible” enablers of the President. He argues that while Senator Luger knows, and indeed, acknowledges, that Bush’s policy in Iraq is wrong, he nonetheless is not prepared to take a strong stand against it. And he cleverly in anticipation of the September report of General Petraeus that might be favourable to the situation on the ground as an outcome of the surge, he launches a pre-emptive strike on the credibility of the general by quoting extensively from an article the latter wrote in the Washington Post on Sept. 26, 2004, whose assessment about Iraq at the time was overly optimistic if not completely wrong. In the article the general wrote, “that Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously” and “are displaying courage and resilience” and “momentum has gathered in recent months”. It’s by such implied non sequiturs that our former professor attempts to discredit General Petraeus. Just because he might have been “wrong” in the past it does not follow that he would be wrong also in the future. And Krugman caps his argument by saying that because of these “enablers” of the President, “Mr. Bush keeps doing damage because many people who understand how his folly is endangering the nation’s security still refuse, out of political caution and careerism, to do anything about it”.

But how serious are these strictures of Krugman against the President and his so called enablers? Let us first deal with the optimism of Bush and his confident statements about the war in Iraq and the struggle against al Qaeda. Krugman is lamentably forgetful that when the President committed the U.S. to take the fight to the terrorists he stated clearly and unambiguously that this would be a generational struggle. And in this long war against al Qaeda and its affiliates and those states that support them, he was confident that America would prevail. Hence all the confident statements of Bush were made in the context of a long span and not of a short one as Krugman with unusual cerebral myopia made them to be. His argument therefore against the President’s optimism and confidence, which he ridicules with the pleasure of one “twisting the knife”, is premised on a misperception. Moreover, did Krugman expect that the Commander-In-Chief of the sole superpower not to have expressed his hopefulness and confidence to the American people, when they were attacked so brutally on 9/11, that the U.S. in this long war would prevail? And is it possible that our pundit to be so unread in history and not to have realized that in all critical moments of a nation’s existence it’s of the utmost importance that its leaders rally their people against a mortal threat with statements of hope and confidence, as Winston Churchill did in the Second World War, that the nation would be victorious against its enemies? Would Krugman have the President of the United States adopt the gloom and doom of the so called realists as a strategy against al Qaeda, its numerous franchises, and the rogue states that support them by sinister and covert means?

Indeed, the liberal’s and The New York Times’ “Bush derangement syndrome…has spread” not only “to former loyal Bushies”, to quote Krugman , but to more than two thirds of the American people thanks to this ignominious coterie of all the President’s disablers of the liberal establishment, and its pundits, like Paul Krugman. The paramount duty and responsibility of the media, being the Fourth Estate in the political structure of a democratic society, at a time when a nation faces and confronts a great danger from a remorseless and determined enemy, is to morally mobilize and rally its people behind their government and their armed forces that are engaged in war. In the present defensive pre-emptive war--the latter as a result of the nature of the enemy and his potential to acquire nuclear weapons--that has issued from the aftermath of 9/11 and the cogent convincing concerns of the Bush administration of a possible nexus in the near future between al Qaeda and its sundry affiliates with rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction and nuclear ones, and the portentous and abysmal danger this would pose not only to the U.S. but to the world at large, the media has a “sacred” obligation to unite the American people behind its government of whatever political hue. No errors of judgment or mishandling the planning of the war by the Bush administration can excuse the media from abdicating from this historical responsibility.

There is no fogless war and no one can see and perceive and measure correctly all its dimensions. And the frailty of human nature further exacerbates this inability. But no Churchillian confidence in one’s actions and strategic acumen throws the towel because of mistakes. One corrects one’s errors and keeps intact his resolution to defeat the enemy with a new strategy. (And one has to be reminded that the greatest scientific discoveries have been built on a pile of mistakes.) It would be an indelible obloquy to one’s amour propre to even consider that these uncivilized obtuse fanatics, and seventy-two virgin pursuers, could come close to conceiving a strategy that would defeat the know-how and scientific mastery of Western civilization and its epitome the United States of America. Only a lack of resolve of its politicians and its opinion-makers, as a result of their fatal embrace with supine populism, appeasement, and pacifism, could lead to such shameful and historic defeat.

America at this critical juncture of its historical and Herculean task to defeat Islamofascism in a long, far from free of heavy casualties, painstaking arduous war needs a wise, imaginative, and resolute political and military leadership that will overcome all the difficulties and imponderables of war and will strike a decisive lethal blow to this determined suicidal enemy. The new “Surge” strategy of the resolute Bush administration implemented by that “superb commander”, according to his troops, General Petraeus, seems to be accomplishing its objectives. Two prominent and vehement critics of Bush Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of The Brookings Institution who had accused the President of mishandling the war, after an eight-day visit in Iraq talking to high officials now believe that we are fighting in “a war we just might win”. And Petraeus, like a stronger Atlas, is pushing the rise of the sun of victory in the up till now dark sky of Iraq. Hence, the courageous actions and sacrifices of U.S soldiers in Iraq are not wasted and will be written with adamantine letters in the military annals. At this momentous noteworthy victory all the President’s and the nation’s disablers will be cast into the pit of ignominy by history.

THE IAEA IRAN REPORT Steven Clemons

Washington Note August 30, 2007

A brief reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

Once again Clemons in his urge to display his immaculate credentials for highfalutin diplomacy contra the crudity of war displaces the real issue of Iran that if the latter, beyond its dissimulation as an art form to dupe its European confreres and others, is not prepared to abide by the demands of the international community to suspend its nuclear program, America will have no other option but to attack it militarily.

Clemons by using the report of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) Director General Mohamed AlBaradei as a credible report-whose stand on this issue has been discredited so many times in the past, and who presently has fallen victim to the dissimulations of the Iran regime that it’s willing to cooperate with the IAEA-that could prevent a force de frappe by the U.S. against Iran, shows that Clemons himself has been befuddled by the same dissimulations.

HELMAN ON RICE THE NEW TRUMAN DOCTRINE

By Ambassador Gerald Helman

Informed Comment (Blog) –December 14, 2005

A reply: By Con George-Kotzabasis


Ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action Thucydides


Ambassador Helman must be reminded that even mountains can be moved by action. In the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush/Rice international order is a framework for the creation of a new order made in the image of a series of novel actions both in the world of diplomacy and in the field of war. These actions cannot be compared to any actions of the past nor can they be guided by successful actions of the past. Both the unique nature of the present enemy and the revolutionary changes in technology, especially in telecommunications and the advent of the Internet, as well the fundamental shift in geopolitical power, i.e., that the US is the sole hyperpower, demand a pivotal re-evaluation and transformation in the domains of diplomacy and military strategy.

The Bush administration had the historic burden of making this re-evaluation and transformation in circumstances where the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were already galloping with scimitars drawn against America and the infidels of the West. In such circumstances political action, on the part of the US, was the child of necessity born of the coupling of reliable and credible intelligence about the prowess of the terrorist threat and its ability soon to acquire weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons supplied by rogue states.

Once the genies of fanatic millenarian terrorism were out of the bottle, the Bush administration did not have the leisurely time to sift through a sieve of deliberation all the evidence it had in hand - and some of it was in conflict both about its source and its credibility - but had to make a swift decision how to confront this enemy on the basis of reliable evidence and of the indisputable fact that Saddam possessed WMD in the past and had used them against his enemies. As well as having links with many terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda. Within the context of a boundless threat posed by the terrorists, the argument of the critics of the Administration that there was no evidence linking Saddam to 9/11, and therefore his regime should not have been attacked, is puerile and bereft of strategic nous. Saddam’s link or not with 9/11 was already irrelevant. It was the likelihood of a future 9/11 link that was strategically relevant for imaginative, astute, and resolute policymakers.

Helman argues, that the war against terror “will require strong continuing international cooperation”. But he cannot perceive, that unlike the past when there were only two superpowers in a deathlock and America could get the solid support of all the countries of the West since it was providing the shield that protected them from the threat of the Soviet Union, now that America is the sole hyperpower it would have had great difficulties in receiving this strong cooperation from all the countries of the West. What will America then have to do now that it does not have in its grasp this elusive international cooperation from all the major countries of the world? Helman does not even pose this question least of all answer it.

Finally, he comments on the great importance and influence that NGOs exercised in the aftermath of the Second World War in the economic and political restructuring of the destroyed countries as a guide to the present problems, especially in the Middle East and in Iraq. Though NGOs can still be important in some cases, they are being to a great extent been supplanted by TV and the Internet. The people living under authoritarian and oppressive regimes by having regular access to the above outlets are daily “spoonfed” with information on how other people who reside in democratic countries prosper and live in freedom. That is why it is more than possible that democracy can be advanced by other states. And coming to my opening, it is by decisive and successful action that the Bush administration can move the “mountain” of international cooperation toward itself. There are auspicious signs that the Bush/Rice international order will as yet succeed in this historic task in Iraq.

POVERTY OF WESTERN STRATEGIES IN THE AGE OF GODLY INSPIRED TERROR


by Con George-Kotzabasis


In the beginning was the deed... ‘war’. As strife is the fate and glory of mankind, to paraphrase the illustrious philosopher Heraclitus

The following text is a slightly modified reply to Colonel Dr. David Kilcullen, the Australian advisor to General David Petraeus commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, on his paper New Paradigms for 21st Century Conflict, published on June 23, 2007 in Small Wars Journal blog.

In the sad “roll call” of the heavy casualties that your brave soldiers are sustaining as a result of the initial mistakes of the occupation, your paper is most encouraging and sanguine with its fecund and rich crop of ideas and its attempt to “split the atom” of the conduct of war in the age of godly inspired global borderless anarchic terror. As you correctly point out, all the paradigms of past wars, in an era when one is fighting a shadowy not easily identified enemy clad in civilian clothes and not less frequently in women’s, with a deadly belt around their bi-gender midriffs, and whose mode of warfare is not to fight its foes openly and directly but stealthily, are completely obsolete. This is why the “ancien regime” of war paradigms must be overthrown, since the line of their success has reached the end of its tether.

The new regime of paradigms must have as constituent parts the art of diplomacy, political virtuosity, and military might. But its parts will not have equal value. The enemy we are engaged with is not a rational enemy, but an irrational one of whose fighting fervor and suicidal attacks emanate from his perceived special relationship with his God. Hence, he is not prone to listen to the calls of “earthly” reason, since he only listens to the calls of an “afterlife”. He cannot be pacified by diplomatic and political concessions or by economic rewards, and he will accept the latter only as a respite that will enable him to build his forces for future attacks. Nor will he be “contained” in his aggressive actions by the threat of overwhelming military force, and indeed, not even by nuclear deterrence, as a rational actor would.

In such a conflict, diplomacy and politics will play an auxiliary part to the primary and vital part of the military. And in this “unholy” trinity, it will be the military that will be calling the shots. If in past, more transcendental philosophical times, the goal was for philosopher-kings to rule, in our, more down to earth and dangerous times, it will be soldier-savants in the major part that will determine the strategies and the course of war. Political elites will have the important quest and duty of (a) bringing together a notable alliance of nations against the jihadists and the states that support them, (b) supplying their military the material and spiritual wherewithal to wage war, and in the case of America, the Commander-In-Chief by exercising his constitutional right wisely in his selection and appointment of the best commanders on the ground render to them the freedom and the discretion to use the appropriate methods and armaments, that will defeat the enemy, as it’s the vocation of soldiers to wage and win wars not the politicians, and (c) along with the media, will have the historical responsibility to unify their people behind the great and Herculean task of their armed forces.

The primary and pivotal role that the military will have in this conflict rises from the nature and characteristics of this, unarguably, long war. First, the latter is not only global but also borderless. Strategically, it’s the ultimate absurdity when the terrorists or insurgents can find safe haven by crossing the borders of the country where they are waging war, that the nations that are engaged in war with them should continue to respect the national sovereignty of nations that allow their enemies to enter and use their own territories as safety zones and conduits of military supplies. (The strategic mistakes of the Vietnam War and the Cambodian sanctuary must not be repeated.) Those who are fighting them must pursue them over the border and destroy them. If international armed outlaws can cross the borders of sovereign nations then the lawful nations who are trying to apprehend them and punish them, have every right to cross these borders too. And the commanders on the ground will decide when to do so on the spot and expeditiously without being obstructed by the dilatoriness of political and legal deliberations. The nations that ostensibly are against terror, must sign a covenant with those nations whose armed forces are engaged in war against it, that they will allow these forces to cross their borders whenever their commanders on the ground consider this to be necessary.

Secondly, because of the simplicity in launching their lethal attacks-it takes only a "girdle" to spread havoc-this is an anarchic terror with no central command to plan its attacks. Every ordinary humdrum fanatic can find few brothers in their desire to pursue the seventy-two virgins. The Islamist fanatics like bin Laden and Zawahiri are not leaders in control of their forces, but sorcerer’s apprentices who have released the genii of terror without being able to control its actions that politically and strategically would have maximum impact. This is illustrated by many examples, the latest ones are Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon, and the terrorist group in Palestine who hold the British correspondent and who refuse to obey the orders of Hamas. And, indeed, this anarchic element of terror could be its Achilles’ heel. As strategically commanders who lose control of their troops are bound in the end to lose the war.

Of course, as you correctly point out, their leaders will use even these random actions of the terrorists in their propaganda to influence people in the West. And it might be true that their propaganda is on the winning side, but this not due to their cleverness but to the fact of the openness and transparency of democratic societies of whose political, media, and public response is so predictable. This multi-celled terror whose cells are spread in many parts of the world, both in Muslim countries and in the Muslim diaspora that has flooded the West, can only be dealt effectively by military and special forces led by their commanders on the ground improvising the best tactical responses and techniques that will cower and destroy this cellular body of terror. It’s therefore the nature and the long duration of this war that makes the paramountsy of the military the sine qua non for the defeat of this global menace.

The Boomerang of Terror

Moreover, psychologically and strategically, it’s of the utmost necessity to transplant the fear of terror into the hearts of the terrorists themselves. As only this boomerang of terror can defeat terror. This can be accomplished, as I had suggested six years ago (This proposal was sent to the Whitehouse on November, 2001), by setting up a covert global operational plan that will enlist the best active and non-active soldiers from an international pool and deploy them as hit squads. This clandestine group of transnational condottieri will aim at the elimination of the jihadist leaders as well as the religious radical preachers, wherever they happen to reside in the East or in the West. In my opinion it’s a stupendous folly while your soldiers are fighting the insurgents and terrorists in the foreground of battle to allow your “rear” to be inundated by a proliferation of fanatic recruits that are sired in rabbit numbers in the background of the Mosques and the madrassas which continue to supply the ranks of the terrorists with new recruits in greater numbers than you can eliminate them. The unanswerable as yet question is whether the leaders of Western civilization will have the mettle and sagacity to use uncivilized methods and means to defeat this barbaric horde, whose eschatological goal is to put an end to civilized life. One must be “brutally unsentimental’ as to the use of the instruments of war, to quote Roy Jenkins from his magisterial biography of Winston Churchill, as the latter was in the use of poison gas in the First World War.

Finally, your concept of “anthropology”, that sheds like a beacon its light upon the turbulent sea of terror, searching not only for the causes of this turbulence but also for the social, civil, and political unrest and repercussions upon people who breath this terror day and night, and how the counterinsurgency should address them, is most interesting. And it’s cheering and heartening to see that your new tactics to clear and hold and isolate the insurgents from the civilian population show some positive signs in the al Anbar province. I would only couple it with its other half “anthropotheology”, since this martyr’s terror is mainly fuelled with the fire of Allah.

I also agree entirely with our confrere in this discussion, Hawkwood.

Well done, Dr. Kilcullen

Delenda est Carthago

DISCUSSION ON THE MERITS OF WAR IN IRAQ

Con George-Kotzabasis

The following is a discussion with professor Steven Metz Chairman:Regional Strategy and Planning Strategic Studies Institute of U.S. Army War College, held on Small Wars Journal blog on June 8, 2007

Dr. Metz said,

I'm no Obama fan, but I'm uncomfortable with logic of this essay. Iraq--like all counterinsurgency--is not a two-way game which pits the United States against the insurgents. While I personally disagree with the set-a-time-definite-for-withdrawal crowd, I can understand their argument (even while I do not accept it): the Iraqi government is not fully motivated to do what it needs to do to resolve the conflict as long as the American presence remains what it is. Moreover, every conflict forces the participants to decide whether the costs of persisting outweigh the costs of disengagement.

Certainly an American withdrawal from Iraqi would be trumpeted by AQ as a victory, but the question is whether that is worse than the costs of persistence (in terms of blood, money, the erosion of the military, political prestige, etc.)Not sure if you wrote the essay or someone else did, but I also take great issue with the contention that Petraeus can or should defeat the insurgency in Iraq. Primary responsibility lies with the Iraqis; secondarily with the U.S. embassy. Petraeus, in military jargon, is the "supporting" participant, not the "supported."

Kotzabasis said,

Dr. Metz, I would agree with you entirely that one has to count the costs of withdrawal with the costs of persistence if the Iraq war was an isolated one disengaged from the war against global terror. The fact however is that the war in Iraq now-whether it was so or not in the past is no longer the question-is an essential part of global terror. We see this not only in the pull that it has on the true believers of Islam from all over the world who fervently enter the ranks of the insurgency, but also in the imitation of the techniques of the latter, since they appear to be so successful against the coalition forces, by other jihadists, who are also waging war against the infidels in other parts of the world. Hence, America is involved in a long global war and not an isolated one, and must therefore count its costs on a mega-scale as they issue from its long term strategic interests, prestige, and indeed, its existence as the sole superpower that is the sine qua non of the stability of the world in these most dangerous times.

Taking a cue from John Fishel, the coalition forces are engaged in continuous major military operations against the insurgents with the goal to create the necessary security that is vital for the stabilization of the Iraqi government which is the linchpin of its ability to govern the country without American props. It seems to me therefore following this logic, that your question whether GEN Petraeus is the "supporting" or " supported", can be answered that he is both. Supporting the Iraqi government to stand on its own feet and supported by the political establishment (Ambassador Crocker) to do exactly that.

Hence, it seems to me to be obvious, that the paramountcy of resolving the conflict in Iraq, lies with the military and not with diplomacy. Especially when this conflict is drenched so heavily with religious fervour that is not open to the rational discourse of diplomacy, as we have witnessed lately of Hamas.
To your question whether I wrote the original essay, the answer is yes.

Dr. Metz said,

Important points but to me the President's logic seems somewhat like the "domino theory" as applied to Vietnam. That turned out to not be true.In terms of Iraq, we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. Disengagement will bolster the morale of Islamic extremists and reinforce the point that they can defeat the U.S.; persisting will erode the morale of the American public and do damage to the U.S. military. Which is the lesser evil? I myself am not sure. I am worried, though, that Iraq becomes a pyrrhic victory--the costs of success there so weaken us that we have failures elsewhere. To take one illustration, I think a case can made that if American morale and prestige had not been so weakened by Vietnam, we would have been able to act more effectively in Iran in the last 1970s. I'm concerned by that by so devoting ourselves to Iraq, we allow other, perhaps bigger, problems to fester and grow worse.

While an argument can be made that the foreign fighters in Iraq are not amenable to any sort of political resolution and simply need to be killed, if their support network among Iraqi Sunni Arabs is taken apart, killing them becomes much easier. Plus, I don't think AQI can, on its own, attain anything like "strategic success" without its allies in the Iraqi Sunni Arab community.Personally, I'm just hard pressed to imagine a military outcome that totally prevents suicide bombers. You can't guard everything and everyone all the time (unless we want to reinstate the draft and deploy a few million forces).

Kotzabasis said,

It's certainly true that the U.S. is in the unenviable position of being damned if she does and damned if she does not. But I would still argue, in the face of the great and ominous dangers that the West is facing and America being the only power that can defeat global terror, it's better to be damned for doing something than for doing nothing. ("Nothing comes out of nothing" King Lear.) This despite all the errors that inevitably are committed in all wars as a result of human limitations. And before the daunting huge scale operations involved in war, it's nigh impossible to probe and foresee all the unknowns embedded in them.

BLUEPRINT FOR VICTORY IN IRAQ


By Con George-Kotzabasis March 17, 2007

The ideas behind most of these proposals were conceived at the beginning of December 2006, but the paper was not published for obvious reasons as it was sent both to President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, on January 2, 2007. Now, however, that the new US strategy under the command of general Petraeus has been implemented in Iraq, I think the paper can be published without any detriment to the US strategy. As events have shown, the US military is taking hard measures against Iran by arresting some of its citizens in Iraq suspected of supplying weapons and roadside bombs to the insurgents. Also, some of the "Surge" of US forces have been deployed in the province of al Anbar where many of the insurgents, in anticipation of the Surge have abandoned Baghdad, are now heavily concentrated. But more importantly, General Petraeus has "established a network of joint security stations and combat outposts permanently manned by American and Iraqi troops around neighbourhoods in Baghdad dominated by al Qaeda and other militias...In effect Petraeus has encircled Baghdad (my emphasis) with his troops and armour. He has established an inner line more or less tracing the city's perimeter and an outer circle of 25km to 50km from Baghdad's edges. Most of the troops have been deployed in these encircling positions". ( Frank Devine, The Australian July 20, 2007). As readers will see, this is the key proposal of the Blueprint...that interdicts the movement of the insurgents and their supply shipments. And last, but not least, the US has a secret plan to attack Iran within twenty-four hours on the orders of the President.

Background: The Current Situation

A constellation of the “best and the brightest” stars of American foreign policy-makers and diplomats are presently attempting to prevent the “penumbra of defeat” from casting its ominous shadow over Iraq. Ominous, from the standpoint that the Administration’s war against Iraq was and is an essential part of the war against global terror, as the cause of the war was the reasonable alarm and concern of the Bush administration - in the aftermath of 9/11 – that the Saddam regime could potentially be in the immediate future a supplier of weapons of mass destruction to the global terrorists. Hence, a real or seeming defeat of the US forces in Iraq would have portentous ramifications on its war against the global jihadist fanatics and its state sponsors, such as Syria, and to a greater extent, Iran. So the stakes for the US are strategically high, as the outcome of an even apparent defeat by the Americans in Iraq would make the holy warriors of Islam stronger, more brazen and more deadly. In the eyes of these fanatics they will see in this “defeat” and in all of their future and impending actions, the imprimatur of Allah.

Hence, a premature withdrawal of American forces from Iraq before the consolidation of its government and the latter’s ability to quell the insurgency by its own military would be an irremediable strategic error. It would surpass by a greater order of magnitude all the other errors committed by the US in the aftermath of the defeat of Saddam Hussein. Moreover, if the rationale for the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq was the war against global terror -as President Bush pointed out and as both houses of Congress accepted and voted for overwhelmingly - no responsible and historically astute political leadership would withdraw from this war just because of the difficulties that have arisen, as a result of the past mistakes of the war-planners. War by definition is difficult and is far from being error-free. But no strategist of Napoleonic dimensions abandons the field of battle because of difficulties. The military vocation and responsibility of a good strategist is to promptly overcome these difficulties by a new adroit and unconventional strategy that will address these difficulties, while at the same time plan to deal such a surprising and lethal blow to the enemy, that within a short time will disable him and make him powerless to continue his fighting.

The Baker-Hamilton Commission, formally known as the Iraq Study Group, (ISG) rules out a victory in Iraq. Henry Kissinger also believes that victory is no longer possible. It has been reported, that the ISG will recommend to the President next month to seek political accommodation with the insurgents, and to open a diplomatic avenue of negotiations with Syria and Iran and entice the latter to involve itself toward a peaceful outcome in Iraq. Such a proposition issuing from such a high-powered group, in the face of statements by American commanders on the ground that both Syria, and especially Iran are providing arms and funds to the insurgency, reveals that the ISG has hoisted its cognitive anchor from the moorings of realpolitik. One has to remind the Baker-Hamilton Commission that whomever one seeks to negotiate with, one acknowledges as master of the situation, to paraphrase Karl Marx. To go to the negotiating table, cap in hand, when your implacable enemy perceives himself to be at the threshold of military victory, is to make a parody of realist diplomacy, as well as doing this at the expense of US strategic interests.

However, not to be unjust to the Baker panel, if the latter is prepared to enforce its demands upon Syria and Iran through diplomacy - backed by an explicit threat of a military attack by the US if they don’t comply - then such a move on the chessboard of diplomacy might checkmate the menacing and nefarious role of Syria and Iran in their support of the Iraqi insurgents and Hezbollah in Lebanon. In the event these demands are rejected by Syria and Iran then the US will have no other option but to unleash its mighty arsenal against them with no quarter given. Only by such diplomacy backed by the clear and unrelenting use of one’s military power against one’s inexorable enemies can one subdue the latter and achieve one’s strategically uncompromising demands. Moreover--and this is the ultimate issue that cannot be resolved by any kind of diplomatic discourse—even if an accommodation is reached by this US power-implemented diplomacy with Syria and Iran in regards to Iraq, the “narrative” of the war against global terror will not change. The war of Western democracies, and especially of the US - being the only nation that can comprehensively defeat it - against this infamy of international terror will continue. But a vital modification in this narrative will be that the jihadists will have a weaker base from which they can launch their attacks against the West once they lose the overt and covert support of Syria and Iran, and more generally of other states that covertly and financially support terrorists. So, the positive repercussions emanating from such a military-backed diplomacy by the US will be an enormous strategic fillip for the latter in its war against global terror, and especially against the insurgency in Iraq.

NEW STRATEGY MUST SECURE BAGHDAD

“Flipping the bird”, to use a Brooklyn term, of gradual withdrawal in whatever form before the job is done, as presumably is going to be suggested to the President by the Iraq Study Group - according to leaked reports - is not a step toward victory but a step toward defeat. But for the job to be done either by Americans or Iraqis, or in combination, the strategic and tactical “steps” on the ground against the insurgents will have to change radically. Also, for this new strategy to be successful, it will be necessary to inject a dose of ruthlessness into the coalition forces’ operations that is commensurate to the ruthlessness of the insurgents. The spread of fear by the insurgents must be countermanded by the greater fear of what will happen to them and to their sundry political supporters within Iraq by the might of US military power used against them sans civilized compunctions. The rules of engagement of US troops and the use of the instruments of war against the insurgents must change seminally in this new strategy. Only by doing so will the latter ensure the defeat of this irreconcilable and bloodthirsty enemy.

Campaign Tactics

Securing Baghdad will be the point d’ appui of this new campaign against the insurgents--with whose military tactics for the achievement of this goal we will deal with further down. Hence, a concentration of US coalition forces will be needed to clear up or eliminate the insurgents from the areas where they are hiding, and restore security under the continuing presence of the coalition forces.

The following tactics are crucial for securing Baghdad: 1. An important element in this new strategy will be degrading the ability of the insurgents to use car bombs, both against civilians, as well as Iraqi security forces. To accomplish this task, the Iraqi government must pass a law that will prescribe that no vehicle within the commercial and servicing areas of Baghdad will be allowed to park without at least one passenger being in it. In case a car has no one in it or is seen to be abandoned by its driver, that will immediately send a warning to commuters close to it that it’s more likely than not a car bomb. To prevent the insurgents from using dummies or kidnapped passengers tied to the vehicle, the latter must have its passenger side-window open so nearby commuters will be able to see or hear respectively whether it is a dummy or a kidnapped person. Hence an important corollary of this law will be the willy-nilly change of Iraqi civilians into commuter vigilantes who will promptly identify a terrorist whom they themselves could arrest when he takes leave of his vehicle, if no security personnel are in the vicinity. This law of course will not prevent the detonation of a car bomb by a suicide bomber who will not abandon his vehicle. But it will diminish in substantial numbers the car bombs by taking out of the equation all those vehicles that are exploded by remote control without suicide bombers in them. Hence, the Iraqi Government, by the passing of this law, not only will diminish the number of car bombs, but it will also actively “mobilise” all civilian commuters against this murderous weapon of the insurgents.

2. Securing Baghdad will require an increased number of US troops, as has already been adumbrated by the Bush administration. The troops will be deployed both within the environs of the city and beyond for the double purpose of clearing areas where the insurgents are hiding and receiving financial support and nourishment from local leaders as well as placing a stranglehold upon them. Bearing also in mind that because the modality of the insurgency is “anarchic” - since its operations are not directed by a central command post, as each group of insurgents is doing its own thing - the coalition forces can only decapitate the insurgency by destroying the supply lines and logistics of each group. Hence, only by destroying the caches of munitions of the insurgents will the Americans be able to enervate the insurgency.

3. At the start of the military campaign of cleansing Baghdad of insurgents, the Malaki government must make the announcement that all entrance and exit points of Baghdad will be closed and no one will be allowed to enter or leave the city. More specifically, unbeknown to the insurgents, Baghdad will be encircled by US troops, so if any of the insurgents embedded within Baghdad attempt to escape the coalition forces’ attack within the capital will be killed by the encircling US troops. (This tactic of encirclement can also apply on a mini-scale, such as Sadr city or any other areas within Baghdad. The commanders on the ground will decide on the scale of its use.) Certainly this closure of the city will cause some inconvenience to the civilians, but this “naval blockade on land” is absolutely necessary for the defeat of the insurgents within Baghdad. This will lock the new American strategy like a vise around them, for if any try to enter or leave the city they will be killed without question. And once Baghdad falls from the hold of the insurgents and the relative security of the city is accomplished by the continued presence of US troops, Baghdad again will be an open city.

4. However, the consolidation of the security of Baghdad in the long term can only be accomplished if this security is expanded and achieved in other towns that are in the vicinity of Baghdad. Therefore the towns that are situated in the province of al Anbar, and which are Sunni strongholds of the Iraqi insurgency, will also have to be cleared from the menace of the insurgents. To be successful in this task US strategists will have to pick an appropriate town from this province and resort to unique strategic tactics in the form of “a prototype of destruction” that will serve as a deadly example to the insurgents and to their clan and Sheikh leaders of what awaits them in other towns of Iraq, if they do not surrender. US forces will blockade the town and announce to its residents that if they want to save themselves from a devastating attack they will have to take immediate leave of their town. Once civilians exit their town --and quite possibly some insurgents will be amongst them but they will be unarmed, otherwise they will not be able to pass through the American checkpoints — US commanders will ruthlessly use the appropriate lethal ordnance and bombs that will destroy the town and along with it all the insurgents in their bunkers who choose to be martyrs or consider the US warning to be merely a bluff. As for those insurgents who escaped with the egress of civilians from the town, the chances that they will be rearmed and recycled back to the insurgency will considerably diminish with the security of Baghdad and the borders of Syria and Iran from which the insurgency receives its arms and munitions.

Beyond any doubt, some civilians who stayed behind because they were either relatives or supporters of the insurgents, will be killed in this remorseless destruction, and there will be a tidal wave of protest, censure, and purgatorial blame against the US military action. But one must be reminded, that throughout history all protests and censures dissolve in the cup of victory. Providing this new strategy and tactics will be victorious against the Iraqi insurgency and its foreign jihadists - and the chances are that they will be - the exponents and the practitioners of this unconventional strategy will neither be accountable to man or God, but only to history. In all great crises of mankind, morality is superseded by realpolitik and the reality of war.

5. The defeat of the insurgency also entails its covert allies, Syria and Iran, who are supplying the insurgents with armaments and whose porous borders are conduits for foreign jihadists to enter Iraq, are going to be dealt with. The US must exercise a strategy of “zero tolerance” against Syria and Iran. If they do not cease their “supply” of weapons to the insurgents and don’t stop foreign jihadists from entering Iraq, then US air power will attack their borders where the caches of weapons are stored and the jihadis recruits that continue to replenish the ranks of the insurgents and al Qaeda.

CONCLUSION

The instruments of war were invented not for the purpose of lying idle in their “silos”, but to be used as a last resort against an implacable and mortal foe. If President Truman’s rationale for using the atomic bomb against Japan was the saving of American lives that an invasion of that country would inevitably entail, then President Bush has a stronger rationale of using the current lethal weapons -although not nuclear ones at this stage- that the US possesses against the bloodthirsty insurgency in Iraq. This is not only for the purpose of saving American lives but also of defeating an enemy who, in the event of taking over Iraq, would turn the latter - both physically and psychologically - into a haven and launching pad for global terror, whose jihadists would threaten the viability, and, indeed, the survival of Western civilization, as we know it.

In order to defeat global terror one must place terror in the hearts of the terrorists themselves. Islamofanatics believe in toto that they have Allah on their side and while they even think they are winning will become an even more implacable foe. Fanatics only understand the language of force and respect only the currency of strength. It is this harsh fact which must drive the rules of engagement, replacing the hitherto “nice guy” military approach of the Americans, with some notable exceptions. This new strategy of staying the course - but with the commanders on the ground having all the appropriate means of war at their disposal to be used remorselessly against the insurgents - has a great chance of being successful. And unlike all the pessimistic pundits who have “cashiered” victory in Iraq—but pessimists cannot win wars that is the vocation of optimists—2007 could be the Annus Mirabilis for President Bush, if he has the mettle and sagacity to adopt the above strategy that could indeed be the blueprint for victory.

WILL THE SLEEPING WEST FALL INTO THE TERRORIST INFERNO?

The following paper was written on October 23, 2005, and was published on my blog Nemesis. It's republished here for the readers of this new blog hoping that they will find it to be of some interest.

Con George-Kotzabasis

The resplendent holy crescent of Islam that has been transformed by Muslim fundamentalism into an unholy black sharp scimitar is hovering over the cities of the West ready to fall and 'behead' Western civilization. Yet despite this ominous great danger, a substantial part of its population is slumbering in deep depths of insouciance and complacency, and is zestfully indulging in its economic prosperity, comforts and pleasures that emanate from freedom and the ethos of amity, cooperation, and coexistence, without realising how brittle and short-lived these have become under this scimitar wielded by the terrorist fanatics. The nannies that rock the cradle that is putting the people to sleep, is an assortment of epigonistic political leaders in Western countries, such as the politically opportunistic triumvirate of Chirac, Schroeder, and Zapatero, and a miscellany of unimaginative and intellectually malevolent, and therefore misplaced, commentators and feuilletons, such as Kerry O'Brien, Paul McGeough, and Robert Fisk - all three morally weak and with an axe to grind - who so unworthily dominate the commentary in the media. It's this coupling of an inferior breed, that has produced the offspring of drowsy disinterest among most people in the West, to this great danger that is posed by global terrorism.

It would be a gross mistake to underestimate this lethal threat that hangs over all civilised life. There is no room for complacency here that this danger will dissipate once the temporal aims of terrorism are achieved. As the terrorist threat is not 'motioned' by a political agenda, i.e., by the problem of the Middle East and the settling of the Palestinian issue or the withdrawal of the American-led coalition forces from Iraq and Afghanistan but by an apocalyptic agenda, whose primary 'motion' is the subjugation and destruction of Judeo-Greco-Roman civilisation. This threat, therefore, cannot be partitioned into certain regional areas, as it has a global reach, since its goal is no other than global dominance.

ISLAMIC TERRORISM NOT REVOLT OF POOR

The political analyses, therefore, that claim that countries which are closely allied with the American hegemon and are involved in the latter's "imperialistic" wars of monocratic rule, are targets of terrorism, are cerebrally unhinged and totally wrong. Moreover, Islamic terrorism is not the revolt of the poor, the politically disenfranchised and oppressed but the revolt of the Arab religious fundmentalist geist of the educated, the rich and those who crave to be the trailblazers of a new caliphate, all of whom are literate to such a high degree that they can distort and re-interpret even the writings of Mohammet, in their thrust for power.

Undoubtedly however, the leaders of terrorism have a plenty supply of terrorist-fodder from the under-classes of the Muslim world, both from the East and the West. And the magnetic power they have to draw their suicidal recruits into a Jihad against the West from lumpen Muslims arises from the position they hold in the pecking order of Islamic fundamentalism. To illustrate this gravitational power that proceeds from this order, two examples, one from the macroscopic and another from the microscopic world of Muslim fundamentalism will suffice. In the macroscopic domain, the tremendous influence bin Laden has among ordinary Muslims emanates from the position he has in the hierarchy of this belligerent warring fundamentalism. In the microscopic one, the influence among his followers that the imam of Melbourne, Mohammet Omran has, derives too, from the position he retains in this hierarchical order of doctrinal fundamentalism. It is this combination of the educated, literate authority and knowledge of a wealthy élite, and the uneducated, illiterate recumbency and ignorance of the lower orders, that is the magma that ignites acts of terror by lumpen Muslims.

Strategically, therefore, the loci of power and influence of global terrorism lie in the Mosques and in the madrassas, and among those fundamentalist Muftis and mentors who are its vehement, vociferous, and fanatic propagators and propagandists. It's here therefore that military strategists must strike their deadly blow. The war against global terror cannot be won in the field of battle, unless it's also taken into the breeding grounds of terrorism, wherever they happen to be located, in the East or in the West.

FANATICISM IS THE STRENGTH OF TERRORISM

In this strategic thrust, the decision-makers and planners of the war against global terror, must discover and identify both the dynamic of fanaticism, and its opposite, the static of fanaticism. It's on this dual identification, that the total defeat of global terror lies.

Since antediluvian times, history has shown that the quintessence of all millenarian movements is a dogmatic, fanatic and unshakable belief in a paradisiacal tomorrow. The earthly sufferings, nature-and-man-made, of human beings, blighted with ignorance and fear of the unknown, have motivated millions of them throughout history to embrace fanatically and fatally millenarian movements. Ultimately to their detriment, since eventually these movements would not open the golden gates to an abode of earthly paradise, but would cast them into a dark pit of hopelessness, despair, and destruction. Modern examples of this fatefully destructive millenarianism in its large scale secular form, are the Hitlerite vision of The One Thousand Years Reich, and the Marxist-Leninist utopia of utopias, Communism, and on a smaller scale in religious form, the Jonestown mass-suicide in Guyana, South America.

In all cases, millenarian-eschatological doctrines thrived in crisis situations, either in the aftermath of catastrophic wars or abominable and abysmal socio-economic injustices, as millions of people lashed by the scourge of war or poverty, clasped to their bosom these doctrines, either as a consolation or revolution of their hopelessness. Likewise, non-literate and solely religious cultures, which tend to spend more time in the affairs of heaven than in the affairs of the earth, in encountering the economic, cultural and scientific achievements of Western civilization, suffered an unbridgeable cultural shock. Their peoples, who were stuck in a milieu of poverty, lack of education, corrupt governments and destitution had no other remedy for their ordeal and despair but the panacea of religious salvation. Messiahs who promised to bring about a new age of material and spiritual blessings, and throw their respective Satan into a bottomless pit, were an irresistible force to this mass despair and destitution.

The rise of Islamic fundamentalism and its terrorist suicidal death-squads, fits perfectly the above schema. The prophet-like preaching of its leaders and their actions in the field of battle against the great Satan America - which has given to its leaders a heroic stature, such as Osama bin Laden has, even in the eyes of moderate Muslims - is drawing many young Muslims, as a result of their failed, but proud culture, both from the middle and from the under-classes, into the fatal embrace of the seventy virgins. To this wild and virile chase of the will-o'-the-wisp 'virginity' by would-be terrorists, and especially, by those who have passed the threshold of hesitation into active terrorism, martyrdom is an infinitesimal price to pay for the infinite prize of the hedonistic pleasures of a boundless seraglio. Moreover, the holy war against the West, and the telluric triumph of Islam over the great Satan, America, fulfils to the brim the great pride of Arab culture. It is of such stuff that the dreams of terrorists are made. And to the eyes of these suicidal zealots, no power on earth can prevent the realisation of these dreams, since these dreams are the epiphany of the mind of Allah.

How can the West, confront, counter and defeat such an awesome, formidable, and fanatic foe, who is fighting under the banner of God, and soon to be armed with weapons of mass destruction and, indeed, with nuclear weapons? An enemy with a shadowy existence, with the wings of Mercury on its heels, moving swiftly to its global targets, being able to hide and receive aid and comfort, and indeed, recruits, in the numerous Muslim diaspora in the West, not to mention its home-ground, the East? This is the historic challenge, of Herculean tasks, that Western civilization is being called to take. Will it be able to slay this multi-headed Hydra of terrorism and its bestial existence, and will it have the will and strength to accomplish the severe, remorseless, and stringent tasks that are absolutely essential to its defeat, or will it wear the Shirt of Nessus?

HOW THE WEST MUST DEAL WITH TERRORISTS?

The answer to the above questions resides in the kind of political leadership Western democracies will own, i.e., whether this leadership will have the ironclad characteristics of statesmanship, and the prescience, imagination and wisdom to confront this mortal challenge, not with traditional strategies and tactics, since it confronts an 'unearthly', heavenly inspired enemy, but by unconventional and ground-breaking strategies and tactics that will have more than a chance of subduing and defeating these outlaws of god .A leadership, furthermore, that will have the strength to swim against the stream of populism and its anti-war 'canons', and not to be a hostage to political considerations and repercussions that could emanate from its ruthless and merciless actions, as a result of its new strategy and tactics, against its fanatic foe. One must be reminded, that all political repercussions rapidly dissolve in the cup of victory. If its military actions lead or seem to be leading to the defeat of the terrorists, then all remonstrations and demonstrations against these actions, will burst quickly, in a puff, at the stroke of victory.

In all strategies, discerning and identifying the strength and weakness of one's enemy, is vital for his defeat. The strength of global terror does not reside in its moral courage or in its technical and mental competence to devise new means and methods in its lethal attacks against the West, or in the purported injustices inflicted by America on Muslim countries, but in its suicidal fanaticism. It's the latter that imbues in its holy-warriors the robotic courage that turns these means and methods into flagrant successful attacks against its infidel enemies. It's on this dynamic of fanaticism that Islamic terror accomplishes its most arduous and rationally most unimaginable attacks. And the more successful these attacks are against the great Satan America and the infidels of the West, the more this dynamism increases, and hence, becomes a stronger gravitational force to would-be terrorists to join the ranks of the holy-warriors.

It is here where Anglo-American strategists must strike their fatal deadly blow -to deprive terrorism of the ability to be successful in its operations. In the context of global terror, therefore, success is the quintessence of the dynamic of fanaticism. And concomitantly, failure is the core of the static of fanaticism. But the focus of this strategy on the 'success of failure' for the fanatics of Muslim terror cannot be accomplished by the 'Martial arts' of the past, but only by a new imaginative war-craft that would intrepidly and remorselessly be waged against these hordes of fanatics.

FANATICISM SPREADS LIKE BIRD FLU

One of the primary characteristics of fanaticism is, that it spreads swiftly like a bird flu. Like medical practitioners, therefore, the practitioners of war against this virus of fanaticism, have to take swift, and necessarily and inevitably, ruthless measures that will prevent this epidemic from expanding and infecting the minds of an even greater number of proud and/or vulnerable culture-shocked Muslims. As very often in medicine, the best antidote to poison is another kind of poison. Likewise, the antidote to fear is fear. Hence, the fear of terror has to be fought with fear. One has to implant the fear of the terrorists into their own hearts. This is the only and most effective way to defeat quickly and decisively global terror. But this is a very difficult task for the civilized West to take on and to perform. To fight by the laws of the jungle, even against an enemy who is the embodiment of the jungle, would be incongruent, and, indeed, a blatant violation of all the principles of a civilised people. Principles, however, in all societies since the beginning of history, are in a state of permanent 'competition'.In a critical situation of childbearing, for example, the principle of life is split in two, as an obstetrician has to make a choice whether to save the life of the baby or of the mother; in a sinking ship, its captain gives priority to women and children to have access to the ship's boats than to men. And in crisis conditions, it's obvious that the principle of life, more often than not, overrides all other principles.

In the aftermath of 9/11, it's indubitably clear, that the existence of Western civilization is under a mortal threat -a threat that cannot be negotiated away by any order of human reasoning with these addicts of fanaticism, unlike the threat of nuclear war between the two superpowers in the Cuban crisis, when Krutchev, at the reasoning of President Kennedy and of the dangers this confrontation would have upon mankind, "blinked", and withdrew the nuclear missiles from Cuba. In the case of these fanatics, however, their 'robotic programming' will never allow them to blink before any reasonable argument or danger. But this robotic program is written by the graph of success. Once, however, one destroys this success, the program becomes static and dysfunctional. As a series of mounting failures in the operations of these zealots against the West, will engender a progressive doubt in their minds that, after all, Allah may not be in favour of their actions. And, if at the same time, this doubt is accompanied with fear about their capture or physical elimination by their enemies, this will lead to an irreversible demoralisation within their ranks, and with mathematical precision will bring forward their total defeat, as the mark of death will be indelibly imprinted in the minds of the terrorists and their supporters.

For this feat however to be accomplished, Western strategists must employ remorselessly their awesome military power and technology overtly and covertly against these holy-warriors, both in the field of battle as well as in the loci of their ideological and doctrinal power, i.e., in the Mosques and madrassas. The success of this strategy will involve the setting up of a clandestine organisation of international special forces of condottieri, who will serve as covert hit-squads against suspected terrorists and their mentors, including those who have been acquitted by courts on the basis of legal technicalities, wherever they happen to be, in the East or in the West. This will give to the terrorists and their supporters an overwhelming sense that the legal process of civilized societies will no longer serve as a shield behind which they can cover. The incontestable overpowering force and Humint (spying intelligence), and the deadliness of the covert operations, will loom like an incubus over the head of global terror, and its ubiquitousness will be an endless nightmare for all its practitioners and supporters.
Undoubtedly, some innocent people will become victims of these lethal clandestine operations. But as in all human critical conflicts of such enormous and intricate proportions, the fallibility of human nature will inevitably extract its toll, in the coin of innocence. Moreover, the rogue states that continue to support terrorists politically and materially will be threatened with sanctions and ultimately with force, if they don't change their ways. (All the ideas contained in this paragraph were passed to the Pentagon by the writer in October 2001. )

It is by this strategy of 'displaced fear', from the terrorists to the terrorists, in combination of the success of failure in their operations against the West, that the nadir of fanatic terror will be reached. Only by daring to use 'infernal' means of warfare against fanatic terrorism, will the West be saved from slipping and falling into the inferno of terror. The Gordian Knot of global terror will not be loosened by any U.N. nostrums of diplomacy ( Diplomacy will have a backseat in this crucial conflict), nor by snake oil palliatives that will soothe the purported grievances of the terrorists, but by cutting it ruthlessly with the ‘unsheathed sword’. Will the leadership of the Western world, especially the American, have the gumption and the moral and political strength and wisdom to use these deadly instruments against its mortal foe? In this existential struggle of Western civilization against fanatic terrorism, the question for political leaderships with éclat, is - to be, or not to be.

October 23, 2005
MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA