WAR ON TERROR: ISSUING FROM CULTURE OF FEAR
OR DANGER FROM OMINOUS ATTACK

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The respectable and cerebrally sharp Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security advisor to president Carter, mounts an intellectually and strategically disrespectful argument, in the Washington Post on March 25, 2007, that the war on terror has created a culture of fear in America, and has a pernicious impact on American democracy and its psyche, and on US standing in the world. He contends, that the war in Iraq, could never had gained the congressional support it got, without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Further, that terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare. And he caps his contention by stating, that the war on terror “defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies”, and also creates a “sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger”.


It’s apparent that Brzezinski’s points are instigated by his experience of the Cold War era and Soviet communism--of which he was an exemplary acute observer and had identified clearly the dangers emanating from Soviet expansionism--and it’s precisely for this reason that are completely inapplicable to the undeclared “Hot War” that fanatical Islam is waging against the USA and the infidel West generally. To replicate the policies that were successful in eroding Communist power and finally casting it into the waste bin of history and apply them to an “ unidentified”, shadowy, religiously inspired fanatic enemy is not merely a lapse of historical nous but a totally inept and faulty strategy against such a foe. The fact that Communism was a limpidly identified enemy and precisely dangerous, was the cause that united the countries of the West and rallied them to stand behind the leadership of the USA. In contrast, it’s precisely because our present “presumed enemies” are lacking a “geographical context” that makes them nationally unidentifiable and hence an “imprecise danger”, is the reason that disunites Western countries and makes them reluctant, if not inimical, to stand behind the American leadership and strategy against global terror. Moreover, a false and unimaginative sense pervades many European countries that they are not equally endangered by global terror, like the USA is, and that they can wriggle themselves out of this danger by not engaging in the war against it and indeed, by appeasing the Islamic fundamentalists.


Further, Brzezinski’s psychology does not pass muster with the 9/11 portentous event. The latter was not, as he argues, the “psychological linkage” between its “shock” and the “postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” that led to war and which “had gained congressional support”, but the reasonable reaction of the Bush administration, or for that matter of any historically responsible administration, to a future ominous and more devastating attack by terrorists armed with WMD, and indeed, with “portable” nuclear weapons, supplied by rogue states such as Saddams’, on the United States. The war on terror, therefore, did not create “a culture of fear in America” (e.a.), as he contends, since this fear was an instinctual fear on the part of Americans of the great danger hovering over their lives in the aftermath of 9/11. This was illustrated by the fact that nearly ninety percent of Americans initially supported both wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and this was the basic reason why it was also almost unanimously endorsed by congress. Hence, Brzezinski’s contention that this culture of fear had a pernicious impact on American democracy and on America’s psyche is baseless. Not to mention the fact that a culture does not spring up like a crop at the first droplet of rain. His culture of fear therefore is nothing else but a figment of his exuberant imagination.


Moreover, Brzezinski sublates to use a philosophical term, he assimilates the terrorist who is a real entity into a “technique of warfare”. Averring that terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare. Who then is the enemy? Is he a disembodied being who uses this technique? Can one separate an enemy from the war technique he uses? And is the US led coalition in Iraq that is trying to deprive the terrorists of the wherewithal of this technique, i.e., factories that manufacture car bombs and IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices), not fighting an enemy? The fact is that the terrorist who is the mortal enemy of civilians knows only this technique and uses it effectively and lethally to achieve his goals, in the case of fanatic Muslims, against the Great Satan America and the infidels of the West.


Brzezinski also states that the war on terror has tarnished the US standing in the eyes of the world. But is this surprising when so many people in the world, and especially in Europe, wrongly believe and presuppose that it was American policies toward the Middle East and ultimately its “adventurism” in Iraq that fomented and increased global terror? What people under such gargantuan misconception would be congenial to US involvement in the war against global terror? And especially when US actions are perceived to be unilateral and lack the backing of other major nations and the UN? Is it conceivable that under such misperception--not to mention the serious tactical errors committed on the ground in Iraq by US strategists in the aftermath of Saddam’s defeat that justified to a certain extent the wrath of the critics of the war--that America would not have eroded its standing and tarnished its reputation? Besides, who would expect that a powerful nation such as the USA, especially being the sole superpower, in conditions of world peace when nations are not threatened by another superpower and are in no need to be protected by the US as in the past, would have the respect and affection of the rest of the world and not the enmity and hostility that rises from the curse of envy against the great and the powerful?


By all historical standards the war against global terror in the wake of 9/11 was fully justified and prescient in its aim to prevent a future ominous and much more devastating attack on the United States by terrorists, who would use weapons of mass destruction and indeed nuclear ones in their irreversible goal to destroy the Great Satan. And if America could be attacked so easily by al Qaeda and its affiliates then European nations that are saturated with Islamic fifth columnists and activated jihadists would be sitting ducks.


It’s this great existential threat to America and Western civilization that has prompted the US to mobilize its military might and its brave soldiers in a long war against global terror. But in spite the clarity and awareness of the Bush administration about the real stakes of the war, it made a grave psychological error with devastating consequences to its overwhelming public support of the war by deflecting the invasion of Iraq which was quintessential to the defeat of global terror to the issues (a) of finding the elusive weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and (b) building democracy in Iraq. When these two issues had apparently foundered and were at the same time associated with the difficulties the US led-coalition countenanced in suppressing the insurgency, the war ineluctably lost its popularity among the US electorate, and reached the levels of unpopularity of the Vietnam War. The American electorate didn’t give a damn about whether WMD would be found or not, everyone believed at the time that Saddam was in possession of them, nor had they a modicum of interest in building democracy in Iraq. What they were concerned with was their security, and on this basis they were prepared undeviatingly to support the war both in Iraq and Afghanistan and to endure the pain and sacrifices that it would entail. This was the stupendous blunder that the Bush administration had committed. By substituting the war in Iraq as an essential part of global terror with building democracy in Iraq, it lost the support of the American people in the face of the arduous and tough difficulties of the war.


However, notwithstanding the serious errors of the Bush administration its original war plan to fight al Qaeda, its affiliate bodies, wherever they raise their hydra’s head, and the rogue states that support them, remains historically unblemished and is a tribute to the strong leadership of the triumvirate of Bush, Blair, and Howard. This was a historic decision, to stand up and fight the religious fanatics that threatened the viability of Western civilization and its freedom. And not to fall to the historically and politically naïve and supine blandishments of the nipple-fed liberal intelligentsia that terrorism and its state sponsors, like the Soviet Union, could be contained or that their Allah anointed grievances could be negotiated. It’s for this reason that the judgment upon Bush, Blair, and Howard, not to mention the indomitable, but so maligned by the media, Vice-President Cheney, whether their stand against global terror and their involvement in the Iraq war was right or not, will be made by history and not by political opportunists and leadership pretenders, such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and our own, Kevin Rudd.

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NEW YEAR FAIRY TALES OF AN EDUCATED MUSLIM MASQUERADING AS REALITY


A reply by Con George-Kotzabasis to:


Domestic Issues Return To Spotlight, By Waleed Aly, The Australian December 27, 2007


The lawyer and commentator on political and Muslim affairs Waleed Aly argues in his latest co-ed like someone who has a brief as an undercover agent. To disseminate a false sense of peace in times of war purportedly to disarm those who are attempting to defend themselves from an external and internal deadly foe. Therefore the whole argument of his article is far from being disinterested, from a political and religious standpoint.


He claims that there has been a “paradigm shift in the politics of the Anglosphere…September 11, the London bombings, the war in Iraq—are losing their political bite” and “politics has entered a post terror phase” (My emphasis). He continues, “Australians’ fear of terrorism was diminishing… Iraq barely appeared on the radar” during the election campaign and “the issues of the day are indelibly domestic in nature…Improbably 2007 may prove to be the year that the politics of terror passed into history”. But at the end of his piece he offers as a lawyer his professional and wise caveat—but only as an afterthought—and at the same time willy-nilly uncovers the falsity of his sense of peace and his “defusing” of terror, by stating more realistically that “of course one bomb would rapidly change all that…as I say, nothing is inevitable”.


From what source does Aly derive his knowledge that makes him feel confident that his analysis of events is correct and that the fear of terror is abating? It’s none other than the gut feeling of ordinary people who a lot of them in their somnambulistic complacency do not consider terror to be a great threat, and as a consequence are against the war in Iraq which presently is the template of global terror. Moreover, laymen who are not cognizant of the plans of the jihadists, like professionals in this field are, and therefore cannot make a prudent judgment on the issue of terror. It’s by this reading of the gut feelings of hoi polloi that Aly makes his prophesies. Disregarding completely the serious cogitations of professionals in the fields of anti-terrorism and war strategy. Who have gathered their information from concrete evidence about the plans and strategies of the holy warriors against the infidels of the West and the Great Satan America. In this Aly is like the artless trite person who is attempting to tell a scientist how to formulate his equations or, more cognate to Aly’s profession, of telling someone who studies law how to do his articles. One would have expected Aly as a professional not to have committed this ‘carnal’ sin by putting the ignorance of a freshman above the knowledge of a professional. Yet this is exactly what he does on the issue of terror and its continuous and conspicuous presence in our times.


The American think tank Strategic Forecasting in a recent study avers that with the defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq members of the latter are preparing to move into Pakistan. And the assassination of Benazir Bhutto by the extremists is a fillip to the holy warriors of al Qaeda and its affiliates to move into the country and form a chain of command that would attack its present political status quo with the aim of overthrowing it and establishing an Islamist regime. Another savvy observer of the plans of the jihadists William Arkin of the Washington Post states that “beginning early next year, U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan… to train counter-terrorism units”. Within this context of the intact ability of jihadists either as a group or as individuals to move in and out of countries to engage in their stealthy murderous war against both the so called apostate regimes of their own and against the infidels of the West, to state, like Aly does, that ‘2007 may…be the year that the politics of terror passed into history’, is the ultimate inanity.


Even as a ‘moderate’ Muslim he should know that the fundamentalist doctrines of Wahhabism and Salafism have been propagated for many years now constantly and with the intensity of religious fervor among the Muslim intelligentsia and the middle classes---both of which are the cradle of pretenders for Islamist political power. It's because of this long "gestation" of terrorism that makes it inextinguishable in the short term. Furthermore, these doctrines have such a hold among the masses that make even moderate Muslims to be held in awe before the enormity and influence of their ideological power and hardly dare to challenge it. That is why we often see moderate Muslims jumping on the Wahhabi Salafi band wagon especially when it succeeds running like a juggernaut over the powerful infidels of the West, such as the U.S., or at least not to put any spokes in its wheels, and Aly may be of the latter category.


Further Aly knows full well, and he cannot fool anybody by hiding this fact, that there are radical Sheikhs and imams that preach the Wahhabi-Salafi doctrines to their followers and especially to young Muslims whose religious fervor makes them vulnerable to the “heroics” of martyrdom and to the chase of the seventy-two virgins. One of those Sheikhs is Mohammed Omran of Brunswick whom a Somali mother accused him of being responsible for her son’s abandonment of his family and going to Somalia to fight on the side of the Islamist extremists. Also The Australian reported on December 28, 07, that young Muslims in Australia go to the internet searching for information about fatwas and jihad from local and ‘ultramontane’ imams. And I would add that ASIO has reliable information that some Australian Muslims have gone overseas to join the Islamist battlefronts against the apostates of Islam and of course against the infidels of the West.


In the post 9/11 global political constellation, the trajectory of Islamist fanatic terrorism is developing a momentum of such magnitude that if it’s not going to be stopped by the civilized nations of the world it will threaten the existence of Western civilization. Only one with a fool's cap or with a sinister agenda pertaining to the anti-terrorist laws of this country could believe and inculcate that this trajectory of fanaticism will be entering in 2007 a ‘benign’ orbit of post-terror. And that the “spotlight” will “return” on “domestic issues”. It seems that Santa has given a unique gift to Waleed Aly as a Christmas present: Aladdin’s magic lamp. All he has to do is to rub his lamp and the geniis of terror will disappear. But there is still the possibility that one terror ‘fairy’, among so many, will appear with “one bomb” and destroy Aly’s fairy tales masquerading as reality.


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Clausewitz and the Military Involvement in Politics

In Presidential Sweepstakes McCain Sees Stars By William M. Arkin

Washington Post December 19, 2007

A response by Con George-Kotzabasis

If Clausewitz's dictum is correct that 'war is the continuation of politics by other means', then Arkin's "dictum" that 'the military...stays out of politics,' is a caricature of reality.I am using Clausewitz's dictum to illustrate that one cannot separate war from politics if the military arm which is engaged in hostilities is going to be successful in defeating an enemy. Politicians to make the right decisions about a war must rely for their concrete data on those engaged directly in war, i.e., the military, even if these data are inevitably tinged with politics. Since no rule can prevent the political beliefs and values of military personnel from spilling into politics. Therefore the "rule" that decrees that the military should not be involved in politics, as Arkin argues, is an oxymoron.

It's a farcical rule and goes against the grain of all experience. A perfect admittance of this reality was the questioning of General Petraeus by Congress, on the formers military report on Iraq, when its democrat representatives, and indeed, many from the media and the anti-War movement, like MoveOn org, accused Petraeus of being involved in politics, since they all considered his report of being politically biased as it purportedly supported the policy of the Bush administration on Iraq.

Ironically, the critics of Petraeus while upholding the fiction that the military should not be involved in politics were admitting at the same time that the generals military report was influencing politics. As indeed, it should have done. Where else politicians would get their information so they could make their judgment about the policies and the strategies that are needed for the conduct of a war?

Your turn now...

Iranian Nuclear Heat Presages No End To "Cold War"

2007: The Cold War Ends
By Ali Ettefagh
Postglobal, Washington Post, January 2, 2008

A response by Con George-Kotzabasis

Ali Ettefagh has laid Iran’s libido dominandi on his psychoanalyst’s couch and has given us his professional prognostic diagnosis that it’s rapidly finding its gratification not in the acquisition of nuclear weapons but in “common sense”, “stronger friendship, good neighborly conduct and removing doubt…(by ‘holocausting’ Israel?), in trade…and in the launch of an Egyptian –Iranian car”. According to Ettefagh, “stability and peaceful co-existence” is President’s Ahmadinejad’s agenda. He states, this is “the stark reality of today against the fog of yesterday’.

But the fog has not disappeared! And it’s behind it that Ahmadinejad’s regime is building its nuclear arsenal by which it will dominate the region and find ultimately its gratification in the establishment of the twelfth Imam Mahdi’s prophesy of a Caesaro-Ayatollah state, seizing the leadership of the Muslim world and posing a stupendous threat to the existence of Western civilization.

This is why a politically and historically prudent U.S. administration should have all options on the table.






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