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

DON'T OVERPLAY THE FIDDLE OF LEGAL PROCESS WHEN CIVILIZATION IS THREATENED WITH BURNING

Con George-Kotzabasis A brief reply to: This Time We Were Lucky. This Time…by William Rees-Mogg in The TimesOnline July 2, 2007

Luck is a scarce visitor in the affairs of mankind and in the Age of Terror one scarcely would expect it to come the second time around. Sir William argues in his article, in the aftermath of the failed attempts of the terrorists in London and Glasgow, that “the danger will become greater” and therefore we need new laws to protect ourselves. He also contends, that there are serious flaws in our culture that hinder us from fighting effectively this external and internal foe.

As always Sir William pens his thoughts with wisdom and one would be a fool not to take them seriously. If the danger is going to be greater in the future, as he correctly points out, then the present “gaps” in our legal system must be closed. That means that the old regime of laws which are completely inadequate against religiously inspired terror must be overthrown and replaced with a new regime of laws that will apprehend and convict terrorists not on “solid evidence”, as he argues, which in the murky and shadowy world of terror is a will-o’-the-wisp search, but on reasonable suspicion.

Furthermore, our culture is flawed because of our mutual respect for other cultures, for our tolerance, generosity, care, and kindness that we continue to exercise ceaselessly in these most unkind of times generated by the atrocious actions of the terrorists. It’s therefore necessary that we harden some of the soft features of our culture that prevent us up till now to take on this great and long challenge posed by global terror. By a set of stronger measures and imaginative concepts that will have a chance quickly and decisively to subdue this portentous danger that arises from an irreconcilable and undeterred enemy, who having been bred in the madrassas and Mosques has been anointed with his suicidal fanaticism. Western governments therefore will have to counter-generate the moral fortitude that in the legislation of these new laws the latter will make the most “unkind of cuts”, that is, deny suspects of home-grown terror of a spate of legal processes that normally apply in peaceful times but should never apply in times of war.

This is more urgent than ever because of the logic of this war. If unarguably the latter is going to be a long war with a remorseless, immoral, evil enemy who is not open to negotiation or to political or economic rewards and whose goal is the accomplishment of his godly mission, one does not have to be a prophet to foresee that with the inevitable further development in technology and its easier accessibility by people, the holy warriors of Islam will soon be armed with weapons of mass destruction, and indeed, with nuclear ones. And boosted by their religious fervor will unhesitatingly use them against the infidels of the West. Hence, these jihadists in civilian clothes with their deadly belts around their bi-gender, and indeed, childrens' midriffs, will open the door to Armageddon.

Politically and strategically it’s always prudent to defeat such an enemy, by using against him both overt and covert overwhelming force, while he is still weak and before he becomes stronger. The question however is, whether the political leaders of the West will have the wisdom and mettle to use “uncivilized” means and methods to defeat such a mortal foe, and will not overplay the fiddle of legal process when civilization is threatened with burning.

ALL THE PUNDITRY THAT IS FIT TO DEFEAT AMERICA


When men’s pride swells in folly, then their tongues become their true accusers Aeschylus


Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s both interesting and revealing that the critics of the war in Iraq, and generally on the war against global terror, have never formulated their position in concrete and effective terms what should have been America’s response to the lethal attack of 9/11; an attack that was far from being an aberration but on the contrary threatened to be the order of the day for the United States and the rest of the civilized world. Other than the pious wishes of “containing” a religious fanatic enemy, whose godly agenda was to destroy the West, by the nostrums of non-belligerence and diplomacy and the abracadabra of the United Nations, and addressing the root causes of terrorism by benign economic means, the critics of the Bush administration never presented a realistic and feasible plan how to deal and confront the immediate threat that terrorism and its state supporters, such as Saddam’s regime--not to mention the Saudis whose second major export commodity to the West, after oil, is terror, through their financing of Mosques and Madrasas in the cities of the Western world--posed against Western civilization.

This cognitive absence of the war critics and of the media in the designation of a pragmatic strategic articulation of what America should have done toward the protection of its mainland and its people from the impending fanatic thrusts of a mortal foe, speaks volumes of their moral and intellectual effeteness and lack of imagination. As a compensation for their absence at this critical roll call of the times to “abort” the birth of global terror, they present themselves now, with the benefit of hindsight, as prophets who predicted the disastrous consequences that the war would have in Iraq and in the Middle East in general.

One such prophet or rather prophetess from The New York Times punditry, is the enchantingly charming Maureen Dowd. But like a scorpion whose nature is to bite she stings both Bush and Cheney with her sarcastic and vitriolic tongue. In her latest Op-Ed of the Times Bush’s Fleurs du Mal, with exquisite sweet phrases and metaphors that are like French éclairs, which for her diabetic readers consuming them would be deadly—but I guess it’s better to take leave of this world with a sweet tongue than a bitter one—she lambastes and drags Bush into her swamp of sarcasm by accusing him of being a “loop of sophistry,” and asserts that as a result of his war “terrorists moved into George Bush’s Iraq not…in Hussein’s,” implying that the latter had no links with terrorists nor did he support them--when there is ample and glaring evidence that he did, both in Sudan, during the short domicile of bin Laden in the country, and in the Palestinian territories--as well as insinuating, like so many other pundits, that it was Bush that gestated the increasing number of terrorists in Iraq by hopping in bed with the neocon architects of the war. Further with unparalleled flippancy she places Bush among “presidents who race to war because they want to be seen as hard, not soft”, using in this case the same sophistry that she accuses Bush of using, i.e., the war issued from the psychological and ideological malfunctions of the President and his entourage, and not from the geopolitical and national interests of the United States.

The “race” to war was not a display of machismo by the Bush administration, as Dowd avers, but a demonstration of political awareness and astuteness that the US and Western civilization were going to be locked in a long battle with a formidable, fiendish, and deadly foe. It was a race to prevent the future coupling of terrorists with rogue states that possessed weapons of mass destruction and nuclear ones whose use by the terrorists against the cities of the West would bring the end of Western civilization. That this threat is not a fairy tale but a real and continuous one has been lucidly illustrated by the recent arrests of the Islamist terrorists who were planning to blow up the JFK International Airport in New York, which according to the officials who apprehended the partly home-grown terrorists would have been much more devastating than the 9/11 attack.

The media as the fourth estate in a democracy, does not only protect its citizens from the abuses and the corrupt practices of governments and private corporations, but also from the threats of external and internal enemies who imperil the lives of its people and the vital interests of the nation. One would have expected therefore that in times of war, as the United States presently is engaged in fighting a mortal foe, the media’s primary responsibility would have been to unite Americans and rally them behind their government. And while not absconding for a minute from its responsibility to highlight and criticize the government’s fault lines in the conduct of the war, it must do this constructively and creatively with the aim of correcting the Administration’s mistakes, and not taking its eyes for a moment off the ball that this is a war that America definitively must win.

Regrettably and tragically what we see in the major outlets of the American media is a dereliction of its duty to unite its people in this major and critical war against global terror. The media is more interested in sensationalizing the negative parts of the war splashing on its pages and in the air its ugly and gory aspects and the difficulties that arise from fighting an elusive, determined, and fanatic enemy. As if wars can be fought clinically without cruelty. War is the greatest atrocity of all and within its context it’s inevitable that some atrocities will be committed even by the best disciplined of armies, especially when the enemy appears and commits his murderous actions in civilian clothes whom those who fight him cannot identify before he commits his heinous action. And on this issue the media is locked in an illogical bind. While emphasizing the traumatic experiences that US soldiers—traumas that will probably carry for the rest of their lives-- are experiencing in this “ghostly” war, seeing their buddies killed by road bombs and by insurgents clad in civilian clothes, they expect these soldiers to remain cool and not to break their discipline under this enormous stress and pressure of this kind of war.

The American media has reneged itself from its moral, political, and intellectual responsibility to be objective about the real stakes of the war in Iraq, and sold its soul to populism and ratings. Its sotto voce position on the devastating consequences that a premature withdrawal from Iraq will have upon the prestige and the continued ability of the US as the sole superpower to provide stability and peace to the rest of the world is historically tragic and inexcusable. Demeaning its cognitive and intellectual power, it’s in a race to jeopardize and defeat the geopolitical and vital interests of the USA, led by the dowager of journalism the New York Times under the masthead, all the punditry that is fit to defeat America.