Iranian Upheaval Turns American Liberal into a Counterrevolutionary

Con George-Kotzabasis

Voila, we have a liberal atheist leftist educated American, in the person of Dan Kervick, who ostensibly supports Ahmadinejad and hopes that the obscurantist regime of the mullahs will “work out the right combination of concessions and firmness (killing its protesting young people in their struggle for freedom), reform and continuity to keep the lid” on the young educated masses, whom Kervick inferentially and derisively calls the “Persian pot,” who are presently engaged in a deadly “bouleversement” against the theocracy, all in the name of the ‘fearful’ unknowns revolutions generate. In this assessment of his he reveals his inner deep conservatism and vulgar cynicism of human nature that the latter’s actions would not lead to a better situation for mankind in the future but only to a worst one. Since he clearly infers from his post that the present evil that is embodied in the theocracy, i.e., killing its own people and boding a second holocaust for Jews, could only be replaced by a greater evil by this revolt of the young aspiring educated classes of Iran for freedom.

One can see Kervick, this comical liberal political ‘pantaloonist’, peregrinating in his colourful patched pantaloon on the internet with the slogan “down with all revolutions.”

American Liberal Considers Obama’s Intervention in Copenhagen an “Impressive” Achievement

By Con George-Kotzabasis

What a mockery of prowess Clemons makes when he measures its depth with Obama’s “work-the-situation,” i.e., procedural matters, and “basket ball” games. Obama has irretrievably failed in all his major foreign policies; in the Middle East, as Clemons himself hints, in his diplomatic overture to Iran, and now in his Copenhagen Climate Accord sans substance and which is no more than a political statement with no bindings. Yet Clemons considers it to be an “impressive” achievement by Obama. Clemons with his “hybrid” realism, to use his term, which like all hybrids is barren, and with his inexorable wishful thinking politics has yet to realize that Obama is one of the most weak and ineffectual presidents and a crashing failure in the sphere of foreign policy if not totally in domestic policy.

And in regards to Copenhagen, Clemons should bear in mind that an alternative to nothing is worse than nothing. Or better still take heed of King Lear that “nothing comes out of nothing.”

Afghanistan: How to Mobilize the Tribal Chiefs against the Taliban

By Con George-Kotzabasis

There is a great possibility of replicating the Surge in Afghanistan with the following economic-political-military strategy: To shift the estuary of the stream of revenue from narcotics from the Taliban’s and narco-lords’ mouths to the government mouth with the aim to feed the hungry mouths of the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan. That is, to nationalize the poppy industry and make the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan the direct equity holders of the income that accrues from the production of opium. Such a policy will create a powerful self-interest and lead to a Tribal Chief’s awakening that will be more widespread and potent than the Iraqi one, since it will mobilize the whole country, through its tribal chiefs, against the Taliban and the narco-lords. Thus U.S. forces will not have to go to a wild goose chase of serendipity to get “their lucky break.”

This idea was floated by me in a paper of mine on October 2008. The link below will take you to it.
http://kotzas12.xanga.com

Limits of Imagination Transformed into Limits of Power

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Steve Clemons and Ben Katcher are using the ‘shamanistic’ art, the art of a conjurer, to turn the limits of imagination into “the limits of American power.” The “aborted attempt” of the Obama administration to “persuade the Israelis to enact a “settlement freeze”, has nothing to do with US power limits but with lack of imagination and political insight on the part of Obama and the State Department not to foresee the political implausibility of trying to impose such a doltish demand on the Netanyahu government. It’s a dismal failure of policy and not a limit of American power as Clemons and Levy in their conjurers’ role aver.

As for Daniel Levy’s ”asymmetries of power,” WigWag’s post is instructive and unassailable in its historical logic. All defeated nations in wars were due to asymmetries of power.

Moral Equivalence between Christian and Muslim Fanatics

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“The evil doctrine, the armed forces at the disposal of those professing the doctrine, and the sympathisers (M.E.) with the doctrine in other lands constitute one united threat which must be met by force”. Edmund Burke, (Writing on the French revolution, and of the English citizens who supported it either in word or deed.)

In a battle between flaming (M.E.) fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win? Irshad Manji Muslim writer

The above two quotes apply to all the naive simpletons of this thread who search in vain for moderate Muslims in a religion that is irreversibly replete with hate against all infidels. And the comparison of moral equivalence they attempt to make between Christian and Islamist fanatics shows their prodigious ignorance of history and that they are fugitives from reality. Christianity never threatened another civilization with fanatical suicide-bombers. It's Islam that does so in an era of nuclear weapons and WMD. It's this lethality which distinguishes Muslim fanatics from Christian fanatics and the great dangers that the former carry and hide around their midriffs which are incomparable.

The hackneyed terms of 'Islamophobes'and 'Muslim haters’ that the Islam sympathisers use to discredit their opponents is a defence reaction on their part for their inveterate doltishness and inanity which bars them from the course of reason.

Frolicksome Realists Attack Wolfowitz

We’re All Realists Now Paul Wolfowitz, Foreign Policy August 24, 2009

Failing to Note the difference When the US Power Tank is Full or Near Empty Steve Clemons Foreign Policy August 27, 2009

A reply by Con George –Kotzabasis

Don Quixote with the ever present Sancho Panza at his heels was attacking windmills with his lance. Don Clemons not with the ever present Sancho Panza at his heels, Dan Kervick—but in critical moments you can count that real pals will show up—is attacking the impregnable cogitative fortress of Wolfowitz with a toy tank whilst Sancho Kervick is riding his intellectual hard working donkey at galloping speed to refill Clemons “near empty” tank so they can demolish the modestly crafted and cogent realistic argument of their bete noire Wolfowitz. It’s in the images of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza that the ‘slayers’ of the Wolf are made.

The realist Clemons, oops, the “hybrid realist,” to quote him, refuses, even at this late stage, to acknowledge that it was this far from near empty tank that defeated the insurgency in Iraq and that under the strong, resilient, and imaginative leadership of General Petraeus won the war in Mesopotamia. And by defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq America became stronger not weaker as Clemons argues in his piece. But it will become weaker if as a result of the staggering foolishness of Obama in withdrawing US forces from the urban areas of Iraq prematurely that has led to a resurgence of bombings, which if they continue to increase could reverse the relative security of Iraq post-surge and its great potential to build democracy in the country and become a lodestar for the whole region, as both generals Petraeus and Odierno had warned the Obama administration. And for such a dire outcome the total responsibility will fall upon the “hybrid realists” or “policy realists” that according to Clemons rule the roost in Washington, and of course ultimately upon President Obama.

For a realist, of whatever ‘variability’, to argue in the aftermath of 9/11 that the war in Iraq was a Wilsonian idealistic intervention to impose American values and democracy on the country shows how out of his depth Clemons is from any kind of realism. Wolfowitz clearly states that the purpose of the war in Iraq was not to “impose” democracy by force but to “remove a threat to national and international security.” And as he says one can criticize the rights and wrongs of the war without diverting from, and changing, its purpose. Moreover on the issue of Quaddafi’s decision to give up his WMD programs Clemons contradicts his pivotal contention that America’s intervention in Iraq weakened its geopolitical power. For if that was the case and the perception why should Quaddafi need the “assurances” of a weakened America that “he could remain in power” as a trade-off for giving up his nuclear program, as Clemons states? Once again Wolfowitz is right on this point. Quaddafi relinquished his WMD programs because of ‘feared American will,” to quote Wolfowitz, because of America’s projection of power, of ‘can do’ might that spectacularly defeated both the Taliban and the elite forces of Saddam within few weeks and refuted all the prognostications of many pundits and so called realists who contended that the US could not defeat Saddam and would suffer the same fate as the Soviets in Afghanistan. It was also this display of US will and power that induced Iran to a ‘silent’ cooperation with the United States in the suppression of the Taliban when the US invaded Afghanistan.

Dan Kervick also is out of his depth in realpolitik with his moralizing piece. He states that “we should forbear from intervening because of odious (M.E.) behaviour to us.” States don’t intervene in the internal affairs of other states because of their odious conduct, that is, on moral grounds, but only when their explicit intentions and actions threaten the vital interests of another state. And both the intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq was not due to odious behaviour but to the potential and real threat these two rogue states posed to the US and the West in general. Moreover, international laws in themselves and checks and balances cannot be the balm for the internal and external conflicts of nations, as Kervick argues, in an anarchic world without some dominant power backing these laws and checks and balances with an implicit force and its explicit use when necessary. And in our era this invidious burden and responsibility ineluctably falls on the shoulders of the United States. “Liberty and civil peace” do not fall like manna from the sky and protected by nebulous gods. They emanate from great benign states that are not squeamish to use force whenever this is necessary for their protection. Voila Amerique

Appease! Appease! Is the Clamour of American Liberals

By Con George-Kotzabasis

This is a question that I was to put to Clemons from another thread but at the time I was under the surgeon’s knife. Since my question, however, is not completely unrelated to the present thread, I’m posing it here.

The question is related to Clemons ‘sweet’ emotional rapprochement to the leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashal, in the face of the ‘bitter’ realities of the Middle East. Is the West including that outpost of Western civilization, Israel, and especially the U.S., currently engaged in a mortal fight with a hard core fanatical Islam which includes its terrorist satrapies Hamas and Hezbollah or not? If the answer to the question by the “hybrid” realist Clemons, to use his term, is in the affirmative, then the latter is the grand appeaser toward fanatical militant Islam. If he answers it in the negative, with all the expected equivocations that he is capable of, then he is afflicted by an incurable virus of political necrophilia.

But in my humble opinion, Clemons will go down in the chronicles of American history, if he ever makes its footnotes, as the mini American Chamberlain in contrast to Churchillian mettle and sagacity. Appease! Appease! Is the clamour of the liberals and the prophets.

Putin's Russia to Weaken U.S. not Strengthen it and Will not Support Sanctions against Iran

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Posted by kotzabasis, Sep 24 2009, 4:58AM -


Link Nadine, you are wasting your valuable time retorting to the political banalities of Norheim and his kindred spirits inundating The Washington Note.

Dmitry Medvedev's “in some cases, sanctions are inevitable,” is the noose that the clever chess playing Russians are putting around the naive neck of the draught playing Obama. The operative words are “in some cases,” which the Russians alone will define and no one else. The political toddlers a la Norheim, enchanted under their inspirational wishful thinking, believe that the Russians will define these words positively in favour of sanctions, and like the stunted toddlers that they will always be they will be looking forward to Santa Klaus, Putin, on New Year’s Day to deliver to them their wishful ‘playful’ present.

Posted by Paul Norheim, Sep 24 2009, 5:33AM - Link

You`re distorting my words, Kotz. I don`t "believe" anything on these matters yet. There are too many if`s and if-not`s here. If it goes to the Security Council and Russia votes for sanctions in the Security Council, I`ll "believe" so. China delivered some critical statements on their part just hours ago. Time will tell. My initial point was an attempt to formulate how Obama seemed to see the missile shield issue, the relationship to Russia, the Iran issue, and the Israel-Palestine conflict as a connected and complex whole, and that this way of thinking contained a lot of unpredictable factors, probably too many if he has built a strategy on this. Perhaps my guesses are wrong, perhaps they are correct. But I see no particular reason for optimism on Iran and Israel-Palestine in the coming months and years. Is that clear? If you want to twist and bend this in any direction, go on.

Posted by kotzabasis, Sep 24 2009, 6:38AM - Link

Are you now repudiating all of your posts above your last one? "Russian Leader Opens Door to Tougher Iran Sanctions" and then you paste THE ASSOCIATED PRESS in all its positives on the issue with which you obviously agree. Then you follow this in your penultimate post with, "it now looks more like America is getting, than that it's not getting something." And only belatedly, after my own post, and after letting your guard down, you place your "if's and if-not's."

Paul Norheim says

For ad hominem "thinkers" and strategy geniuses like Kotz, this is an exercise beyond their capabilities, and just another opportunity to bash his opponents for their lack of strength and amour propre in their cul de sac. But now that WigWag, whom Kotz sympathize with, actually agrees that possible sanctions were behind Obama`s decisions on the missile shield, and also seems to think that the likelihood of Russia getting on board on this might have increased a bit after Medvedev`s statement yesterday, I expect that Kotz will keep silent on this issue.

WigWag says

There is an irony in all of this. Conservatives like Kotzabasis and Nadine are far more suspicious of the Russians than the Israeli Government is. They can speak for themselves about whether my surmise is right or not; but whether it's a carryover from the Cold War days or something else, conservatives are suspicious any time the United States fails to "stand up" to Russia. This is no longer true in Israel. Israel sees Russia as an increasingly important partner. A large portion of the Israeli population is Russian and has cultural ties to the "old country." Russia and Israel have ever increasing commercial relations, especially in military equipment. Israel appreciates the fact that they never have to worry about criticism from the Russians on the human rights front (Russian behavior in Chechnya makes the War in Gaza look like a Girl Scout picnic). And Israel sees good relations with Russia (and China and India) as a counter balance to their overdependence on the United States. Israel also appreciates the fact that Russians don't care about Palestinian aspirations.

This is actually one of the few examples where people who have the views of Nadine and Kotzabasis disagree with Israel. Israel wants better relations between Russia and the United States for many reasons, not the least of which is that it increases the likelihood that harsh sanctions on Iran will be enacted. It’s conservatives who get nervous every time they see increased cooperation between Russia and the United States not Israelis.

Kotzabasis says

Norheim, of course Obama’s naive decision “on the missile shield” was to entice the Russians to come “on board” on sanctions. I predicted he would do this four months ago. But WigWag is not inflicted by the illusion, like you are that the Russians will come along on sanctions. And as he correctly states, they will not do so unless they are offered much more such as “NATO expansion, support for Georgia and Ukraine, Kosovo and Bosnia/Republica Srpska.” Hence they will be putting a bigger noose around the neck of Obama’s diplomacy and will be pulling it so hard that there will be no flesh left on his neck, i.e., American power and prestige, other than the protruding bones of an anorexic superpower that would force America’s close allies to have second thoughts about the former's reliability and resolution under President Obama. And the question then arises whether the Obama administration would go the whole hog, i.e., sacrifice all its allies on the altar of getting the by now out of the equation Russians, according to WigWag’s logic, since he believes that “harsh sanctions by the United States and Europe would still sting” without the Russians being on board.

WigWag, I’m surprised that you seem to see the conservative ‘brand’ of politics only in its old form of rigidity and not see the ‘new brand’ whose strength lies in its fluidity. It’s far from being the rather very simplistic case of failing to “stand up” to Russia. Analytically that is a very hacked and shallow conclusion. And you extrapolate an avalanche of wrong deductions from a possible American agreement with Russia on sanctions, which I think is a will-o’-the-wisp, while you irretrievably contradict your own argument. Russia is not in the game of strengthening America but of weakening it. And they see in Obama in his elemental personal debility and idealistic respect all diplomacy, a perfect opportunity to achieve their great goal. It’s this that is of great concern to ‘fluid’ conservative realists and not because they carry some incurable virus from the “Cold War days.” It’s seen the Russian ‘Emperor’ with glee on his face dragging America’s benign power into the amphitheatre to be tangled in the net of the gladiator and slaughtered to the applause of the ignorant and ignoble crowd of anti-Americanism., that is the modern equivalent of panem et circenses.

And aren’t you contradicting your own argument when you say that “Russian acquiescence to harsh sanctions will be a real plus” (but at what a price) when you earlier stated that sanctions imposed by the US and Europe “will turn out to be more politically devastating” and at the same time taking the Russians out of the equation and hence making their “acquiescence” totally obsolete and thus saving the US from a politically and diplomatically ‘spending spree’ in ‘Russian malls’? In view of this why even the stolid administration of Obama would not prioritize the interest of its strong allies in Eastern and Southern Europe next to an obsolete Russian “acquiescence?"

You also totally disregard Iran’s libido dominandi for the region and for the Islamic world that can be achieved more effectively in the carapace of nuclear weapons. To say as you do, “but for the peace process, [Between Palestinians and Israelis] sanctions or military action against Iran would be far less likely,” is to be blind before the real aims of the theocratic regime and to assume that Western leadership will continue to be languidly supine before such a great threat.

Lastly, it goes without saying that the smart Israelis would of course welcome a Russian agreement on sanctions even with the high probability that they will ultimately fail. But would they be happy to see this at the expense of a weakened America, especially against Iran as a staunch supporter of its terrorist ‘satrapies’ of Hamas and Hezbollah? And only one who has ‘rolling stones’ in his head would not see the great reasoning that lies in Israel’s good relationship with Russia. And how a brownie bird like you could have come to the conclusion that either Nadine or me disagree with Israel on this issue? I guess this could have only risen up from an errant nocturnal lucubration of yours.

Liberal is asking for Dismissal of ‘Politicized’ General McChrystal

By Con George-Kotzabasis

WigWag surprisingly is on a fool’s errand. While he acknowledges the importance of victory in Afghanistan that could be delivered by the “proper course’ of McChrystal and the multi-dimensional effects such a victory would have on global jihadists, at the same time he would be willing to pull a “MacArthur” on a ‘politicized’ McChrystal and hence diminish the chances of the U.S. winning the war in Afghanistan. Alas, according to his ‘dismal’ logic, politics should trump military victory.

Moreover he unimaginatively disregards the totally negative political repercussions such an injudicious dismissal would have on Obama himself, in the current political climate in America that as Kervick notes, in an unusually correct insight, to make McChrystal a “martyr” would be a political calamity for Obama. And it would be the greatest of ironies if the ‘dismissed’ Commander-In-Chief by the world by its representative body the International Olympic Committee for sponsoring and promoting Chicago for the summer Olympics, which for a president to be directly involved in its bidding was politically most imprudent, will be dismissing his commander on the ground General McChrystal for his professional and prudent recommendation how to win the war in Afghanistan.

Posted by WigWag, Oct 02 2009, 9:33AM - Link

"WigWag surprisingly is on a fool’s errand"
Don't be surprised Kotzabasis; I'm afraid that sometimes I think that fool's errands are my specialty.

Cheers!

Posted by kotzabasis, Oct 02 2009, 10:48PM - Link

WigWag
Only a 'fool' who has your strength of character can laugh at himself.


Cheers!

Moonshine Political Romantics Run Away from Sunny Reality

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Because all three of you in your political and intellectual weakness and lack of depth are strengthening the dangerous fantasies of soft power as an antidote to the dangerous realities emanating from apocalyptic fanaticism that are hovering over the head of Western civilization and threatening it with ‘decapitation’. Of course such an existential threat you and Kervick, if not Clemons, would diagnose it as paranoia. But anyone who has studied history, without being a prisoner of it, might come to the conclusion that the art, the vocation of a statesman is to identify promptly an irreconcilable implacable enemy and destroy him before he becomes stronger.

Already the soft power fantasy as embodied in the new foreign policy of Obama is irreversibly failing. In the diplomatic overture to Iran, in resolving the Middle East conflict, and in clinching a concord cordial with Russia, of which Obama was so confident that he would have the support of the latter on the issue of Iran. Now we have Putin and his Foreign Minister Lavrov declaring that they would veto any resolution in the Security Council that would impose new sanctions on Iran.

Clemons, Kervick, and you, with your characteristic geopolitical and strategic myopia and romanticism could not foresee the failure of this new foreign policy of Obama based on ‘loving- holding hands’ and soft power that is unravelling now before everyone’s eyes.

Afghanistan Critical to U.S. Strategy to Defeat 'Blindfolded' Fanaticism

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A short response to: Afghanistan Exposing Huge Limits on American Power
By Steve Clemons Washington Note September 09, 2009

Clemons, from his political labyrinth as the modern Theseus but without his Ariadne with any hope of escape, sends desperate signals about America’s “limits” in Afghanistan and the dire repercussions these will have on American power and prestige. From the boundless darkness of his labyrinthine domicile he is bound to be pessimistic of any prospect that the US could defeat the Taliban. It’s the same kind of pessimism that he also had for years about the war in Iraq, which he had also pontificated as being unwinnable--and he has as yet to acknowledge that the US under General Petraeus had defeated the insurgency in Iraq.

Only Clemons, in his strategic myopia, could make the statement, “One really can’t tell what our overall goal is at this point.” Really, the Taliban which was a host to al-Qaeda and which would continue to be so in the event it took over once again Afghanistan, and moreover threaten the Talibanization of Pakistan, as a result of the US abandoning its strategic goal of defeating the Taliban and al-Qaeda in one stroke and hence inflicting a devastating blow of global dimensions to the holy warriors of Islam. Nor can he envisage that any withdrawal from Afghanistan would be perceived as a defeat of America by Islamists and would embolden their threats against, in their eyes, a weak America. And the consummation of these threats would be of a greater magnitude of destruction than that of 9/11. Afghanistan therefore is pivotal to America’s strategy to defeat borderless Islamist fanaticism on a world scale.

The United States is not in a ‘labyrinthine’ situation wasting and reaching the limits of its military power in Afghanistan from which it needs to escape. Its task is, like in Iraq, to persevere in the defeat of the Taliban and prevent Afghanistan from becoming a sanctuary and a training ground for the recruits of al-Qaeda from which it could launch its ‘apocalyptic’ attacks against the Great Satan America and on the infidels of the West. In this task a combination of American intelligence, military professionalism and might, and strategic nous and determination, has a better than an even chance in defeating ‘blindfolded’ fanaticism.

Prattling Guru Detaches from Iranian Turmoil


The Iranian Election is Their Issue, Not Ours By Steve Clemons The Washington Note June 16, 2009

A short reply: By Con George-Kotzabasis

For a political animal like Steve his Pontius Pilate stand that the Iranian election is “not our business” is astonishingly amusing. But I suppose saying this with a grin on his face in his TV interview is because he has no answer to the argument that Bush’s hard policies might have influenced the educated classes of Iran in their revolt against Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs, as Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary of George Bush stated.

Even if Ahmadinejad won the election fairly, the fact remains that now as a result of the election the extant split prior to the election between the modernist forces and the antediluvian ones is exacerbated. What is imponderable, and lingers in the province of Nostradamus, is whether this fissure of Iran’s society between these two forces will bring an internal ‘modernist’ change or an open dictatorship of the Mullahs and the military, as their only way to survive from this tsunami of dissent against them.

As for Dan Kervick, another luminary of The Washington Note, in his desire to present himself as an imaginative thinker he foolishly delves in ‘Rumsfeldian unknowns,’ which excellently illustrate the vaudevillian streak in him. His comment that there might be “anti-democratic” forces that would aim to “overturn” the democratic election is a laughable fiction. The forces that want to “overturn the result of the election” are doing so because of the perception that Ahmadinejad stole the election, not because they could be “anti-democratic.”

Cat Among Pigeons in The Washington Note

By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s good and encouraging in seeing a politically realist downy bird from the right like Jim Pinkerton, former senior staffer of the Bush I administration, invited as a guest by Steve Clemons to perch on the intellectually dry branches of The Washington Note. But Clemons must be in a mischievous frolicsome mood, as he deliberately places a cat among the pigeons of the TWN.

Mosque-Made Terrorism

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Short reply to: Not in the name of our Islam By Orhan Cicek ON LINE opinion August 07, 2009

Who is going to educate the educator? The author of the article, Orhan Cicek, engages in a litany of the good aspects of the Muslim religion but abhors identifying its bad aspects from which Muslim terrorism stems. All religions, including Christianity, are a mixture of the good and the bad based on fantasies and “dark forces.” That is why the reign of reason cannot find its throne in religion. All the great achievements of our contemporary Western civilization emanate from the fact that they were achieved against religion or by reforming religion. Muslims cannot liberate themselves from the “dark forces” of their own religion and achieve their own greatness without at least having their own religious reformation. But is such reformation possible when the Koran has been dictated by Allah Himself and given to His prophet Mohammad? Who among Muslims will dare to ‘edit’ the words of God?

Presently the deafening evidence is that jihadism and terror are incubated in the religious institutions and Madrasas of Islam and one can only “preserve’ one’s “objectivity” by realizing that this is Mosque-made terrorism. The Australian newspaper reports today that all of the five accused of terrorism were regularly praying at the Preston Mosque in Melbourne where the ‘moderate’ Mufti of Australia Sheikh Fehmi Naji el-Imam, who replaced the radical ‘meat exposed’ Hilaly, presides. And the other incontrovertible fact is, unlike the claim of the author that “the problem of terror and crime...is an issue that the mainstream Muslim society strongly opposes,” that all the moderate streams of Muslim society are dry of any demonstrable opposition to acts of terrorism and seem to be merely the banks within which the terrorist stream moves along.

Islamists Cannot be Pacified by Olive Branches but only by Fire of War

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Your quote states the obvious. Of course one does not fight terrorism only with police methods but the question is out of all the methods which are the most effective by which one can defeat the jihadists. And while your paragraph in your previous post that mentions “predators” and all the other ‘hard things’ that one has perforce to do against the jihadists is full of strategic clarity, by reverting back to your old argument of three years ago that the present terrorists are similar to the anarchist terrorists of the past and can be interdicted by ‘police’ methods, you unconsciously downgrade the seriousness of your ‘hard things’ position.

Moreover, you are locked in the fallacy of a rational person who premises his actions that his enemies that ‘round’ him up are also rational and if he shows by his actions, in our case America, that he is not against Arabs and Muslims this will bring a definitive change in the attitudes of the jihadists. This is a ‘straightjacket’ delusion that has lost all contact with reality. Islamic fanaticism will not be influenced, soothed, abated, or defeated by moral examples or olive branches but only in the field of battle and that is why a military deployment against it is a prerequisite. In short, it’s just another but more effective method in defeating the jihadists in a shorter span of time.

Replacing Radical Hilaly with 'Moderate' Naji as Mufti of Australia a Farce

I'm republishing this article written on June 2007 and published originally on my blog Nemesis as a result of a report of the Australian on August 7, 2009 that all five of the arrested would-be terrorists were regular prayers at the Preston Mosque in Melbourne where the Mufti of Australasia Sheikh Fehmi Naji el-Imam presides.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

"The evil doctrine, the armed forces at the disposal of those professing the doctrine, and the sympathizers with the doctrine in other lands ( e.a) constitute one united threat which must be met by force". Edmund Burke, writing on the French revolution and of the English citizens who supported it either in word or deed.

In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win. Irshad Manji, Muslim writer

As we have predicted in the past, the stepping down of radical Hilaly as Mufti of Australia and his replacement by another imam who would be just as radical but who would attempt to cover the sinews of his spiritual radicalism under the garments of moderation, has just happened. The selection by the Australian Council of Imams of the elderly and scholarly Sheikh Fehmi Naji el-Imam of the Preston Mosque to replace Hilaly as Mufti of Australasia, is no less than an attempt by the politically minded advisers of the Australian Council of Imams to cozen and dupe the Australian public that they were substituting a moderate cleric in the person of Sheikh Naji for the radical Hilaly.

But let us see whether our prejudgment of the new Mufti is too hasty and facile by looking at the past conduct and statements of Sheikh Naji. Six years now since the twin towers bombing and all the objective evidence who was behind the attack, the Sheikh still refuses to acknowledge that Osama bin Laden was behind it. His reply is that he has heard people saying that al Qaeda were the perpetrator but he himself has not seeing the evidence. Now the Sheikh is reputed to be a scholarly and intelligent man and one would expect of him to use the latter two qualities in search of the truth. If six years after the event, he still cannot make up his intelligent mind, despite the resounding evidence that is also verified by the statements of bin Laden himself that al Qaeda was the deadly agent, as to the real perpetrator of that dastardly action, then people must come to the conclusion not that the Sheikh does not have the truth in his hands but that he hides it. And the reason why he hides it is that he does not want to alienate himself both from other imams, who also believe that bin Laden was not behind the attack, and of the wider Muslim community which also believes likewise, after hearing their clerics for so long repudiating that the attack was engendered by al Qaeda.

Hence the important question is not what Sheikh Naji truly believes about 9/11 but what he truly represents. That a great number of Muslims, after being indoctrinated for so many years by their radical imams about the evils of the West and the Great Satan America have been also radicalized, and it’s exactly this fundamentalist stratum that the Sheikh represents. That there is a majority of fledgling radical Muslims in our midst has been lucidly illustrated by the recently religiously arrogant statements of the head of the Supreme Islamic Shia Council of Australia, Kamal Mousselmani, as reported in the Australian, on June 23-24, 2007. He said, his entire of 30,000 Shi’ites in Australia were avid [my emphasis] supporters of Hezbollah (Party of God) and haters of Israel, considered Hezbollah to be a “resistance group” not a terrorist organization. He continued, “Shia in Australia considers Israel a terrorist organization and also view those who support Israel in the same light”. And with the superciliousness of a fanatic who speaks in the name of God, he said to the reporters attending his press conference, “put those words down, we are not afraid to say that”.

Certainly there is a minority of moderate Muslims within their community but who would dare to swim against the stream of such torrential river of radicalism? This is why the expectation by some civil libertarians and politicians that moderate Muslims can oust the radicals from their position of power and influence, is completely unrealistic at least in the short term. And in “the long term we will all be dead”, to quote John Maynard Keynes.

Furthermore, Sheikh Naji’s record speaks for itself. He officially supported the application for residency of Abdul Nacer Benbrica, who presently awaits trial for alleged terrorist actions in Australia. Asked by a reporter if moderate Muslims should take a stronger stand against extremists, he ducked the question and answered that the media misrepresented the facts about Muslims. What he would say to those Muslims who wanted to go overseas and participate in jihad, he replied, “I don’t know what (the) circumstances outside (Australia) would be”. He also called for the removal of Hezbollah’s military arm from Australia’s proscribed list of terrorist organizations. And in a lame attempt to shift jihad in favor of Australia, not realizing that he was throwing a boomerang in the air, he said that Australian Muslims would participate in a jihad to “protect Australia from its enemies”. (m.e.) Presently Australia is fighting its enemies, extremist Muslims, in Iraq and Afghanistan; is the Sheikh going to send his holy warriors to these theatres of war as an outcome of his pledge to protect Australia? Lastly, asked in his press conference after his election as Mufti about the war in Iraq, he was promptly muzzled by his minders to articulate his views on the issue, pleading his ill-health (he had suffered a stroke), and was quickly whisked away from the tough-fisted questions of some reporters, his advisors replying that he will answer these questions another time.

Hence, the Australian Council of Imams being too clever by half, not only have they picked a seemingly moderate imam to replace Hilaly, so he can pass muster in the eyes of the general community, but a frail one to boot. So whenever Sheikh Naji faced difficult questions of the media his minders would plead his ill-health, thus shielding him from giving an impromptu answer that could compromise his position as a moderate imam, and, also, exposing all those who elected him Mufti as being also avid representatives of the radicalism of their flock since they happen to be its sires.

The general public must not allow itself to be duped by this latest farce of the Muslim clerisy that they are willing and preparing to walk hand-in-hand with the Australian maiden, on the path of moderation, mutual respect, and peace, when their sermons are replete to the brim with the seeds of war against the infidels, the Jews, and the Great Satan, America.

Former Secretary of State Equates Politics of Hamas and Israel

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A reply to: ...on Israel-Palestine Conflict by Steve Clemons
Washington Note June 21, 2009


“Absolutists on both sides need to be overcome” which Steve obviously agrees with this statement of former Secretary of State James A. Baker. This statement however ravages the truth by its direct reference of a ‘political equivalence’ between Hamas and the Netanyahu government. No Israeli government ever governed on behalf of the minority absolutist interests of the religious fanatics of Israel unlike Hamas which governs Gaza in the interests of its millenarian goals. It’s like saying that Republican governments, such as the former Bush administration, governed on behalf of the narrow interests of the religious right and not for the general interests of the United States.


If this is the quality of strategic thinking that the four eminent persons of Carter, Baker, Scowcroft, and Brzezinski, are offering to the Obama administration for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict then such advice will be a repeat performance of past failures as it rises from the lowest ebbs of their strategic ‘cogitations.’


And Steve will be found to be completely wrong if he thinks that the new turbulent situation in Iran might ‘force’ the Khatami-Ahmadinejad regime to change its policy toward its Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist surrogates. Steve in his misplaced realism does not realize that Iran will never abandon its pawns as long as it engages in its power-play in the region.

REPLY TO AMERICAN PESSIMIST ABOUT THE GAINS OF THE SURGE


By Con George-Kotzabasis


Andrew Lebovich continues pessimistically to ruminate on his doubts about the surge and on General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency plan. He states, “The strategic outcome of the surge cannot be determined now” as it depends on the establishment of a democratic Iraq “after our occupation...has ended.” And if the gains of the surge are so fragile and can be lost with a resurgence of al Qaeda how can one say that “Petraeus’s counterinsurgency plan is proven,” as is stated by McCain? He is also concerned about the “Sons of Iraq and other local militias’ being integrated “into the Iraqi security forces” and some of the corrupt practices of the Iraqi government.


Starting in reverse of his concerns, it’s decal like clear that he has not learned anything from the mistakes of the Bush administration when in toto disbanded the Iraq army instead of integrating it in the new army of the Interim government that would have forestalled the future insurgency. The Maliki government is integrating the Sons of Iraq and other militias and hence effectively disarming them instead of letting them hibernate until a possible next round of violence. Lebovich also is oblivious of the fact that corruption affects all governments that have not as yet found their point of stability and their members have a strong proclivity to get as much as they can from an assumed short term in office. However, with the stabilization of the government, as it seems to be happening now in Iraq, corruption can no longer be a stable staple feeding the mouths of corrupt officials.


As to the gains emanating from the surge, Lebovich apparently is unaware that one may have a perfect investment plan that will give one immense gains but if one “misinvests” or squanders these gains in boondoggle projects one is bound to lose them. This however does not impugn or diminish in any way the perfection of the original investment plan. And Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy falls in this category. The danger lies in squandering these gains, as McCain correctly says, before they reach their stated goal, i.e., a democratic Iraq.


Lastly, Lebovich does not perceive that even the most successful of counterinsurgency strategies can only be effective in a different geopolitical milieu if they make the necessary improvisations and modalities in the new context of their implementation. And this elementary principle applies in Afghanistan.


I rest on my oars: Your turn now...

Obama's Angelic Doctrine Defeats America's Enemies

By Con George-Kotzabasis
Reply to: The Mellow Doctrine by Roger Cohen
global.nytimes.com May 03, 2009

Roger Cohen riding his high horse as a columnist of The New York Times trots a 'neighing' argument that throws the rider on the paddock. He claims and infers that the new policies of President Obama in foreign affairs, which he frames in his term of The Mellow Doctrine, are holistic remedies for the wanton malicious inflicted maladies that the Bush-Cheney administration had placed upon the body politic of America that had alienated it in the minds and hearts of so many people in the world.

These policies now are spreading and reverberating across Latin America, Europe, and Asia Minor and are creating an echoing melodious sound of Europeans, Turks and Latinos--with only a slight discordant hoarse bass note coming through the nostrils of an old dog, Fidel Castro, who can smell in Obama another imperialist rat. In Strasbourg the French and Germans loved to hear the President expostulating on the new fully cooperative conduct of the U.S. with its major allies, the French seeing him as an exemplar of their own past mission civilisatrice in the sphere of diplomacy, and the Germans as a second Ich bin ein Berliner, after John F. Kennedy. In Prague, the multi-cultured Czechs were delighted to hear him say that he was “committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons,” and his outpouring of a profusion of mea culpa of America’s past misdeeds and the arrogance of imperial powers and its leaders, who like Roosevelt and Churchill would determine the fate of peoples “sitting in the room with a brandy.” In Turkey, the most modern of Muslim nations thanks to its insightful great Soldier-Statesman Kemal Ataturk, the Turks were regaled to see Obama parading before them his own partial Muslim origins and hear him say that Muslims had been treated with “insufficient respect” in the past. And in Trinidad and Tobago, where the Fifth Summit of the Americas was held, Obama enraptured the Latinos to such a degree that even the spirited anti-American warriors Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez were won over, the latter being moved so much so that he gave as a gift to Obama a book on American imperialism and the latter reciprocating to Hugo’s generous gesture by giving him a warm handshake and a friendly touch on the shoulder.

To Cohen, all the above related events are a clear sign that “Foes...have been disarmed by Barack Obama’s no-drama diplomacy.” Obama’s “mellow doctrine...finding strength through unconventional means: acknowledgement of the limits of American power; frankness about U.S. failings; careful listening; fear reduction; adroit deployment of the wide appeal of brand Barack Hussein Obama; and jujitsu engagement.” If the above quotes are not a perfect illustration that Obama made a confession of American weakness before the ‘priesthood’ of his ‘Catholic’ enemies, then one will ever search in vain for a definition of weakness in any dictionary. And to bring jujitsu in this bout of weakness as a saving line is like offering someone who already lies unconscious on the floor from the blows of his opponent the Japanese art of training the mind and body in unarmed combat. In this context for Cohen to mock Dick Cheney for saying that America’s enemies perceive “a weak president,” is to brand himself with his own mockery.

This confession of weakness is the ‘Eighteenth of Brumaire of Barack Hussein Obama,’ to paraphrase Karl Marx on Louis Bonaparte, the intellectual coup d’état by the constitutional lawyer against the constitution of the political wisdom of the ages in whose preamble imprescriptively is written that to show and admit weakness before one’s enemies is the cardinal unforgiveable political sin. As in any human contest only when a party is weakened is prepared to make concessions whereas the strong seek and drive home their victory. This applies more so to fanatically religious enemies who have an ineradicable tendency to see, due to their irrational cogitations, any conciliatory initiative of their opponents as an admission of weakness.

But the intellectual fragility of Cohen’s argument is exposed by his use of the weakest enemies of America, that is, the Castro brothers and Hugo Chavez, and surprisingly Turkey, which has not been an enemy of the U.S., to drive home the success of the conciliatory attitude of President Obama. In the case of Turkey, he claims that at the NATO meeting the Turks dropped their opposition to the nomination of Denmark’s Anders Rasmussen as the alliance’s secretary general because of “Obama’s conciliatory message to Muslims.” In contrast, the previous administration by “humiliating Muslims” filled the schools of Waziristan and Ramadi with recruits for future terror. When one asks whence this humiliation of Muslims started the unutterable answer of Cohen must be since 9/11. The undeniably harsh but necessary measures that the Bush administration took against Muslim terrorists to protect its citizens from, at the time, imponderable future attacks, were in the eyes of Cohen measures that “humiliated Muslims.” Just as well that columnists of this sort are ‘unsheathing’ their pens to write their columns instead of unsheathing their paper swords to protect Americans.

Most of all Cohen is apparently very fond of the following by President Obama. “Resistance” to set of U.S. policies “may turn out to be based on old preconceptions or ideological dogmas” of the previous administration, and “when they are cleared away ...we can actually solve a problem.” So President Obama with a broom in his hand once he sweeps this ideological debris of the Bush administration he will be able to start solving the innumerable problems that America is facing. But the fact is that the United States is not countenancing these problems because of “old preconceptions or ideological dogmas,” but because of its status as the sole superpower is inevitably burdened to carry like Atlas all the world’s crises and hot spots on its back and to set up actions that are not always agreeable by the rest of the world that would have a chance to resolve these crises. And inevitably because of the multiple actions it has to take in so many complex parts of the world it cannot jump over the shadow of fallibility. The alternative, to restrict its engagement with the rest of the world because of its immense risks and possible errors of judgment, is not the raison d’être of great power. Moreover, a disengagement from the hot spots of the world would allow sinister and brutal fanatical leaders to take over countries and oppress their peoples as well as endanger the stability of the world.

The political naivety and immaturity of President Obama is encapsulated in his own terms in regard to Iran: Normal relations can be restored on the “mutual respect” of opponents. This would be forsooth the reality if your opponent considered you to be negotiating from a strong position. It would not be true if his estimate was that his opponent was negotiating from a weak position contra his own strong position. The strong can be at times kind, gracious, and helpful toward the weak but never have any respect for the weak. This is more so in the hard realm of geopolitics. The Iranian theocracy will see any diplomatic initiatives by the United States as an admittance of political feebleness by the latter and will exploit this to their advantage. And by the time when President Obama will become aware of this the Iranians will be already close to the entrance of the nuclear club. No angelic or mellow doctrine of Obama will disarm America’s implacable irreconcilable foes. Only the thunder, and as last resort the bolt of Jupiter, can defeat these deadly enemies.

Hic Rhodus hic Salta

Legendary Stork Brought Unloved Child to White House


By Con George-Kotzabasis


A photo of Obama that tells it all about the latter’s ‘substance.’ Has anyone seen Obama’s photo in The Australian, April 29, 2009, when he was given the cap of the FBI at his visit in its headquarters? His expression is that of a toddler who has been given an ugly toy for a present. This photo will haunt Obama for the rest of his term.


The legendary stork has brought an unloved child in a basket to the American people. Abandoned as a toddler by his father, dumped as a child by his mother on his grandparents, he has been searching for love ever since. And finally he founded it in the initially warm embrace of the foster parenthood of the prattling classes, the politically disgruntled from the previous administration, and all the poor. And being laid in this ‘public’ bed of love and indulging its pleasures to the full Obama will eventually have to pay its high price. As to continue to be the recipient of this love, so existentially necessary for him, his agenda perforce has to be focused in satisfying these three groups simultaneously. That is why his grand social policies of universal health care, education, foreign policy, and climate change, are so important to him. But this is a task for one endowed with superior qualities and Obama has the ordinary qualities of a ‘community organiser’ dressed in ‘ivy clothes leaves.’ And in this inability to accomplish the great change that he promised to the American people the presently smitten with love public for Obama will turn against him and the latter will find himself bitten by the public adder on his path to political failure.



And the first signs of this failure are the dramatic events unfolding in the aftermath of the Iranian election which have turned his foreign policy and new diplomatic outreach to the foes of America and his hopes to placate them into shambles.

Obama’s risen aloft ‘Diplomatic Skirts’ Alluring to Enemies of America

By Con George-Kotzabasis

For Obama to “co-opt” the N. Koreans into a “new dance,” as Steve Clemons of the Washington Note suggests, in which America’s skirts will be risen aloft in the air, like Marilyn Monroe’s, one would need modicum imagination to see what the short build but sharply sighted North Koreans would do to the long legged Americans.

More seriously, the U.S. of course cannot invade or take any military action against N. Korea.
But it can take hard economic sanctions presently and suspend the six-party talks that gives to a rogue state the facade of legitimacy, which it so much desires, and even place a naval embargo on N. Korea and prevent it from exporting its nuclear technology to other rogue states. And thus by “harshly” punishing N. Korea President Obama will avoid the punishment of “a credibility collapse at home,” to quote Clemons.

While Clemons by implication concedes that a credibility collapse will damage the standing of his beloved president, especially when such a collapse will also have international ramifications, he nevertheless weirdly suggests “patience” toward the recalcitrant N. Koreans--that have already in the past violated earlier agreements they had compacted with previous administrations, such as The Agreed Framework, Pyongyang-Washington agreement, under President Clinton --as a “wise” measure, and indeed, as a “tough strategy,” to quote him again. The question that Clemons has to answer however is what kind of “patience” ever prevented a “credibility collapse.” But apparently for Clemons doing nothing or doing something that lacks strategic substance is a “tough strategy.”

The great danger is however that the N. Korean defiance has opened the bottle releasing the ‘meme’ that other rogue states such as Iran will adopt and replicate against the U.S. And one can only second-guess what the Mullahs will do to Obama’s diplomatic skirts.

What will I’ve to do to entice you to comment? I’ve neither skirts nor long legs.

Will There Be An "Obama Effect" in Iran??


By Steve Clemons http://thewashingtonnote.com

June 11, 2009

A short reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

Steve’s two question marks promptly save him from falling and drowning into the politics of wishful thinking. The hate of the Islamic Republic against America is deeply rooted and no “mesmerizing” speech by Obama will ever change that. Even if a change from Ahmadinejad to Moussavi does occur, which in my opinion is most unlikely, as I believe the silent majority of Iran will deliver victory to Ahmadinejad, the geopolitical power lunge by Iran to become the hegemon of the region and of Islam, hence clashing with the geopolitical interests of the United States, will not be derailed, and therefore its policies will not be modified by one iota. This is why Iran will continue with its nuclear program and its consummation into a nuclear bomb.

And all those wishful thinkers who believe that Obama’s Cairo speech will have an impact will be gaping with an open mouth at a mirage.

Israel's Development Stems from Cultural and Intellectual Strength of its People

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Israel is no “mercenary of the West in the heart of the Middle East” but an outpost of Western civilization in the midst of barbarians. Besieged on all sides within the short span of 60 years it became culturally, politically, economically, and scientifically the most developed nation of the region and deservedly proud of this great achievement. Moreover as a civilized outpost, Israel is at the forefront of the fight against the holy warriors of Islam, of Hamas and Hezbollah, the proxies of its most dangerous enemy Iran.

The author of the article might be rich in some of his psychological probing but has a very poor understanding of history. Great achievements are not the outcome of “victimhood” but they arise from the cultural, moral, and intellectual strength of a people. And Israel is a testament of that.

Hyping the GITMO Boys Threat

By Steve Clemons
http://thewashingtonnote.com/ May 29, 2009

A short reply: By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s more likely that “in twenty or thirty years from now” the “historic reflections” will be on the boys and girls of such as the Washington Note who delved in the sphere of geopolitics with their infantile ideas, as this post of Steve’s so pellucidly reflects. And the vaudevillian plays staged on Broadway “on the topic” ‘The Naughty Boys and Girls of the Washington Note’ will have as captions ‘Terrorists as suspects but not proven.’ There is no scarcity of Ivy League cast political comedians in Washington DC.

Dangers in Obama's Diplomacy: The Folly of Talking Wise and Acting Wise without Being Wise

By Con George-Kotzabasis


The above title is a paraphrase from William Shakespeare: “The folly of acting love and talking love, without being in love.” Statecraft like ‘romanticized’ love if exercised without wisdom can have the fate of Love’s Labour’s Lost as depicted in the great comedy of Shakespeare. President Obama by churning a wave of diplomatic exuberance, on whose crest Secretary of State Clinton and numerous envoys will be ‘surfing,’ is hoping to bring the irreconcilable and implacable enemies of America to a conciliatory peaceful agreement of “live and let live,” while placating the rest of the world from the 'dreadful' belligerent and war policies of the Bush-Cheney administration by a profligate exhibition of true American values. That is respect for the law and international conventions, seeking the resolution of geopolitical conflicts through international institutions and through consensual consultations with its allies, and living up to the great principles and values as engraved in stone by America’s founding fathers. But in this romanticized attempt in diplomacy he may become a fool of wisdom by playing out his own tragicomedy at the expense of American interests and security as well as of the rest of the civilized world.



The change of venue of the Constitutional lawyer from Harvard to the White House has transformed the attorney-at-law into a revisionist historian if not a fabricator of at least recent American foreign policy. Stephen Sestanovich, professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, argued four years ago cogently and brilliantly in his essay American Maximalism, that all the great victories of the USA in geopolitical affairs in the last thirty years under presidents Reagan, Bush senior, and Clinton were accomplished by maximalist hard policies and more often than not in opposition to its European allies. Thus the USA as a ‘soloist’ in the concert of its European allies accomplished the downfall of Soviet Russia under Reagan, the reunification of Germany under Bush senior-- which to many international observers was a “masterpiece of the diplomatic art”--against all the protests of the European powers including the UK, and the defeat of the genocidal Milosevic in the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts under Clinton, when the latter decided to intervene militarily beyond the confines of diplomacy which he considered to be futile. In all these three conflicts it was American ‘maximalist’ intransigence, decisiveness, and leadership that won the day. In the case of the fall of the Soviet Empire it was Reagan’s uncompromising and immovable position on the “zero option,” i.e., the elimination of all Soviet intermediate-range missiles that was the major factor. Gorbachev himself in a private conversation with Germany’s foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher stated that the turning point of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the lost battle with NATO over nuclear missiles in Europe. Thus it was ‘Reagan’s zero’ that brought the Soviet colossus down.



This is the danger that is enwrapped in Obama’s bouquet of olive branches that his diplomatic ‘couriers’ are delivering in the bosoms of America’s erstwhile enemies, Iran and Syria. That President Obama will be revising these past proven by history successful maximalist policies of the USA in the false hope that Iran and Syria will reciprocate genuinely, and not ingenuously, with likewise measures of amity toward the U.S., and not reading instead on the leaves of those olive branches American weakness which they will exploit to the utmost in achieving their strategic goals, and in the case of Iran by prolonging the negotiations, will render it the invaluable time to acquire nuclear weapons to the ultimate detriment of America’s geopolitical interests and those of its allies, and the dangers that will arise from a nuclear armed Iran with its apocalyptic aims written on its ‘crescent star.’



It’s impossible to believe that this wishful thinking of President Obama that by opening the door of diplomacy to Iran and its sundry terrorist proxies he could reach a peaceful agreement with them, as well as persuade the Ayatollah regime to desist from acquiring nuclear weapons, has not yet being drowned in the flood of recent evidence. The Swat valley agreement between the Pakistan government and the Taliban that presumably would have led to peace in that region, did not last more than a month. Instead of the Taliban laying down their arms as was stipulated by the agreement, it deployed its forces in an incursion of other areas abutting the Swat valley since its leadership had regarded that the Pakistani government was forced into the agreement as a result of weakness. Also, the voluntary and unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza strip of Israeli forces in 2004 by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was regarded by Hamas as a clear sign of weakness on the part of Israel instigating it to continue fuelling the second Intifada that started in 2000 and firing ten thousand rockets into Israel. In view of this incontrovertible and unassailable evidence of the conduct of the Islamist extremists that few serious and acute observers had already predicted the formers’ reaction, i.e., that any negotiations initiated by Western powers or the U.S. with the Islamists would be considered to be by the latter a clear indication of prostrating debilitation on the part of the infidel West. Thus to the Islamists any overture of diplomacy that was set in motion by Western powers would be used merely as a gambit in their irreversible goal to subdue their enemies. Dar al-Islam would employ duplicity and taqqiya throughout any future negotiations in its attempt to defeat Dar al-Harb, the infidels.



Obama’s ark of diplomacy, unlike Noah’s ark, will not survive the flood of deception, guile, and lies that Iran will bring onto the negotiating table. He will find out that his Muslim opponents are masters in dissembling as they have been educated to it by their long proud tradition that will cover any shame, any dishonourable action, as they cover their women with burqas, which could mar their individual or tribal pride. President Obama’s advocacy of a new foreign policy based on diplomacy will evaporate at the first touch with reality. His seductive universalist campaign to ‘change’ America in the eyes of the world by reappropriating the high moral ground that was presumably lost by Bush, and showing respect to Muslims by pouring oil in the turbulent poisonous pond of the holy warriors of Islam, will end up as a tragic idyll. But the stupendous danger is that in this foolish voyage of diplomacy he will bring the shipwreck of America as a great power. The Shakespearean farce will modify under Obama’s directorship into a great American tragedy. And America and the free world will pay a heavy price at the ‘box office’ of geopolitics to see President Obama’s play of “talking wise and acting wise without being wise.”



I rest on my oars:Your turn now

Anti-Terrorist Laws to Protect Australians Baneful to Soft Intellectuals

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Professor of jurisprudence George Williams demonstrates conclusively that it’s not the vocation of constitutional lawyers to either “understand thy enemy” or protect the public from his more than probable lethal attacks. He woefully laments that the anti-terror laws enacted by the previous Howard government and continue to be implemented by the present one without any revision, “imprison people for words rather than actions”. This quote of his reveals clearly that he is oblivious of the historical fact that it’s more often than not that it’s “words” that inspire and lead to action. And this happens to be truer in the case of terrorists who are inspired by the words of their fundamentalist imams and perpetrate their atrocious actions.

Further he seems to be unaware that in all critical situations and especially in war times, individual and collective liberties are ineluctably constrained. A simple example would be that in a collision of several cars in a highway the motorists’ ‘liberty’ to use this highway is temporarily abrogated. Likewise the anti-terror laws are a temporary repeal of few liberties until this great Islamist threat hovering over and lurking under the cities of Western civilization is extinguished.

Churchillian Leadership in our Dangerous Times

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The eminent economist Jeffrey Sachs is of course correct to pin point the non-commissions and omissions of political leadership. But leadership of Churchillian stature does not arise as he claims from collectivities such as the UN and the World Bank, but from the ‘soloist’ reflections, sagacity, resolution, and guidance of Statesmen.

In the present world scenario what is missing is the vocation of politics being in the hands of virtuoso politicians with the Nietzschean ethos of the “will to power” determining the affairs of mankind. And parallel to the latter, is the necessary euthanasia of the woeful populist politician, a la Obama and Rudd.

Iran: Know thy Enemy

By Con George-Kotzabasis

President Obama with his latest commitment to the war in Afghanistan seems to be harking to the realists of his political and diplomatic advisors, such as Richard Holbrooke, and is readying himself to debunk the bunk of his leftist supporters of ending America’s military involvement in the hot spots of the world and adopting and continuing the bellicose policy of the former Bush administration against the terrorist extremists. In his announcement of his ‘new’ policy in Afghanistan he very closely repeated Bush’s words that as President he would not allow Afghanistan to be a safe haven for terrorists that the latter would use once again to attack the American homeland. Hence he clearly coupled the war in Afghanistan with America’s security and therefore made it very difficult for the anti-war movement to continue influencing the silent majority, as it did against the Bush administration, toward a pacifist position since such a position would be senseless and stupid to anyone whose life was under a direct threat. Obama therefore placed himself in a politically strong position that even an increase of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan could not erode since this is the price that America will have to pay for its security. One therefore can say “hats off to Obama,” to quote Robert Kagan from his piece in the Washington Post, for his new strategy in Afghanistan.

What is most worrying however is in verity the president’s new policy in regard to Iran. In his keen propensity to detach himself from the ‘fisticuffs’ policy of his predecessor which he considered to be wrong and politically infertile, Obama, as he had promised during the presidential campaign, is opening the door of diplomacy to the ‘Mullahcratic’ regime hoping that the latter will be susceptible to the diplomatic blandishments and calls of reason that the U.S.A. and Iran could ‘live and let live’ with each other if they had the will and wisdom to change the belligerent attitudes of the past toward each other. This is a laudable aim but the question is whether it will resonate with the Theocratic regime in Tehran. President Obama in his direct address to the Iranian people, in their new year’s day, went out of his way to praise the Islamic Republic and the cultural achievements of its people. But what is in a name when one could praise in the same terms the united republics of the USSR, the republic of Mao’s China, the republic of Cambodia under Pol Pot, and a sundry of ‘genocidal’ republics in Africa with the only difference being that the scale of atrocities are not as high in Iran as they have been with the above blood-lusted republics. But who knows, with a future nuclear armed Iran the latter could surpass them all on the scale of wickedness.

It’s this great danger that a nuclear armed Iran would pose to Western nations and to the U.S. that the latter as the supreme power in the world must prevent. And the ambition of Tehran to acquire a nuclear armoury is un-ambiguous and unyielding. Only few days ago President Ahmadinejad in his address to the Iranian people proudly proclaimed that Iran would not cease its nuclear programme as its achievement is the deserved status of a great nation. It’s obvious that Ahmadinejad took his lines directly from the speech of Obama who praised so exuberantly the Islamic Republic and its cultural achievements. But in the hope of the President that by paying homage and offering peace to the Tehran regime it would de-couple the latter from its religious fanatic nucleus and its great hate toward America, Obama shows himself to be irretrievably naive and abysmally ignorant of the duplicitous enemy he is facing.

The foremost intelligence apparatus in the Middle East the Israeli one had its chief Major General Amos Yadlin saying early this month, ...”Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb.” Moshe Ya’alon, a former army chief of staff, dismissed the possibility of a revitalized peace process, saying that “the jihadists interpret compromise as weakness.”(M.E.) He cited the withdrawal from Gaza four years ago which many had thought at the time it would debilitate the conflict, instead it encouraged it. And this is exactly how the Iranian leadership sees Obama’s ‘open door’ diplomacy, as a screeching sound of American weakness, as in its eyes the relative isolation of the U.S. among its allies, Russia and China and its inability to persuade the latter to take harder sanctions against them limpidly demonstrates this weakness. And this enfeeblement of the U.S. is further exemplified in Iran’s view by the North Korean defiance in its rocket launching, which, only few months ago in the last days of the Bush administration, was participating in direct talks with U.S envoys in regard to its nuclear programme--that that stalwart and hawk-eyed in foreign affairs John Bolton had predicted with characteristic insight that the talks would come to nothing. If miniscule N. Korea could so brazenly defy the U.S., in spite of the commitments it made during the negotiations, what the great Islamic Republic of Iran would do in future negotiations with the Americans?

President Obama and his close advisers are incapable of realising that an enemy who sees the United States as being politically compelled to negotiate from a weak position cannot be forced by diplomatic means to accept the demand of the Americans and their allies that Iran must cease the development of its nuclear programme. Hence Obama’s administration is setting up its tent of diplomacy in a barren desert where the Iranian diplomatic camels will come empty of any reciprocal ‘gifts’ to the peaceful and morally generous gestures of the Obama administration. It’s inconceivable to imagine, that if not Obama, that some of his close and more astute consigliori are unable to anticipate the futility and dangers of diplomacy with a foe who considers himself to be negotiating from a position of strength. The only result that can come out from such negotiations with the Iranians is for the Americans to come out as losers from this parley or walk out of the talks with the tail in-between their legs in a scornfully embarrassed state.

This will be the fate of President Obama’s diplomatic overture with the Iranian theocratic regime as an outcome of his total inability to “know thy enemy,” a prerequisite, according to the great Chinese strategist and sage Sun Zi, in defeating one’s mortal enemy. But the final judgment on President Obama--the constitutional lawyer and former community organizer, a rookie in the art of statecraft and who in his Prague address beyond proclaiming, with humility soaked in weakness, America’s decline, indulged himself also to make some trite ‘brandy(ed)’ derisive comments about the two great statesmen Churchill and Roosevelt who defeated the Axis powers--who as a result of the pathological hate—which neutralized even the ingrained racism that many Americans have toward blacks--that a great part of the electorate had toward Bush-Cheney and by association the Republicans, was swept by this bitter wind into the Oval Office, will be rendered by a Shakespearean Sovereign, King Lear: “Nothing comes out of nothing.”

I rest on my oars: Your turn now

The Loving Concept of the Intelligentsia: Moral Equivalence

Con George-Kotzabasis

Steve Clemons’ post, by adopting Brzezinski’s “both sides of the...divide...,” has all the faults of the politically, historically, and intellectually bankrupt concept of moral equivalence by expanding it into political, diplomatic, cognitive, and intellectual equivalence between the two warring sides of the Palestinian fanatical extremists and the civilized Israelis.

And how irretrievably naive is to be a fugitive from reality that geopolitics or any conflicts are anything else than a zero-sum game. Leave the kinder-garden Steve and re-read Clausewitz or Metternich! And only a permanent tourist of Disney Land could believe in the possibility of a Gandhi-esque way exercised by Palestinian moderates that would oust the fanatics of Hamas and al-Fatah and would lead to peace between Palestinians and Jews through the road map of moderation.

Debate between American and Australian about the Merits of the War in Iraq

American says:

For those who think we need to redouble our efforts to “win” the war in Afghanistan, I take it they mean we need to do whatever it takes, militarily and financially, to build a stable Afghan state run headed by a secure and US-friendly government. I have two problems with this idea. First, I tend to doubt that the US has the wherewithal to accomplish such a goal in such a rugged, decentralized and forbidding country - no matter how much our surge surges. The whole idea seems fantastical.

Second, I don’t see how even achieving this fantastical aim would really help with the Al Qaeda issue, since I find it hard to believe that any Afghan government that we can realistically imagine taking shape will have the capacity to prevent Al Qaeda elements from gathering in remote locations and forming bases. As a basis for comparison, can we realistically imagine an Afghan government with even half the capacity of a state like Pakistan? Hardly. And yet Pakistan itself is not in control of large swaths of its country. Pursuing the quixotic state-building plans of the neoconservatives and liberal interventionists is a distraction from the methods that actually work.

My understanding is that we have been engaged in a global campaign against jihadist terrorism for several years now, and the main practical method is to rely on intelligence to stay one step ahead of the folks who actually pose a threat, and then disrupt their efforts, kill their leaders and interdict their operations. We’re probably going to have to keep doing that sort of thing for quite some time, just as the effort against organized crime in the US never really ends. If Al Qaeda cadres build some kind of training base in Afghanistan, we go in and blow it up. If they build another one, we blow that one up too. We use predators and covert methods. The same is true of al Qaeda redoubts in Pakistan or Somalia or Yemen, right? We are going to have to do this no matter what kind of government we get in Kabul.

I can’t believe that at this late date American political leaders and opinion leaders are still deluded by the theory that the chief enabling cause of terrorism is “state sponsorship”, and so that our aim is too manufacture strong states where none exist now. This seems wrong-headed to me. I’ve used this analogy before, but the militant jihadist movement seems something like the anarchist movement of a century ago. Parts of that movement were violent. Was the solution some sort of state-building process in Europe and the United States? No. There were already strong states in Europe and the US. But it is of the nature of terrorist groups to slip between the cracks in the sovereign power of states.

Anarchist terrorism was basically a law and order problem. The idea was just to stay ahead of the perpetrators of terrorist attacks, and outlast the movement as its ideological fervor gradually dissipated and it burned itself out.

We should never have gotten involved in state building in Afghanistan. Now we have a generation of American leaders who are invested in that project, and see their personal honor and the national honor as riding on its very unlikely success. They need to get real.

Australian says:

Ben Katcher’s intellectually malodorous, and disingenuous, argument has reached the other shores of the Pacific. While he claims that “pouring more troops…into Afghanistan means fewer resources to pursue our other national security objectives across the globe,” he does not mention any of them by name other than the economic crisis mentioned by Dennis Blair. Hence his statement that “strategy is about priorities and trade-offs,” while true in general, is a contrived fiction when he applies it to international terrorism since these other priorities remain nameless. The reason why he does not name them is that if he had identified these priorities and contrasted them with the priority of global terror he would embarrass himself for being ludicrous.

Dan Kervick’s paragraph that contains “we use predators and covert methods,” which incidentally is an idea that I suggested myself too eight years ago, is very interesting although he contradicts himself further down on his post when he contrasts present terror with anarchist terror in the past and says for the latter that it “was basically a law and order problem,” which he first ventilated in a riposte to me on TWN three years ago. Surely, Kervick, who has learnt his logic by sitting in the spacious intellectual laps of Hume and Russel, could not cogently argue that “predators and covert methods” fall in the ambience of “law and order.”

American says:

'Surely, Kervick, who has learnt his logic by sitting in the spacious intellectual laps of Hume and Russel, could not cogently argue that “predators and covert methods” fall within the ambience of “law and order.” '

I do. When I say that terrorism is a law and order problem, I don’t mean that the only tools to be used are the methods of the criminal justice system. Those latter tools have proven effective in many cases, including operations interdicted in the UK and Canada. But given the limits of applying these tools across borders and inside rugged countries, sometimes more aggressive means must be employed. What I mean is that terrorism is fundamentally a problem of a limited number of militant “outlaws”, and that the strategy for addressing it should focus on that fact, rather than be distracted by extravagant projects for state improvement and state overhaul.
What I am most skeptical of is the idea that the problem of terrorism is a conventional military problem that calls for the use of conventional military operations - in the form of armies, invasions and occupations - against either states or sub-national “armies”. And I am especially skeptical of the idea that the way to address the problem of terrorism is to launch massive - and generally very unrealistic - state-building operations in the hope that some day the dangerous backward parts of the world will be filled with well-functioning and capable states that will be able to suppress all of the militants operating inside their territories.

There are other means that need to be used as well, including denying the terrorists the ideological foothold that multiplies their influence and capability. That means not doing so many things that provide evidence of the very charges the terrorists make. To counter jihadist charges that the United States is hostile to the interests of Arabs and Muslims across the world the United States should stop behaving as if it is indeed universally hostile to the interests of Arabs and Muslims.

Australian says:


“When I say that terrorism is a law and order problem, I don’t mean that the only tools to be used are the methods of the criminal justice system.” Dan Kervick.

Your quote states the obvious. Of course one does not fight terrorism only with police methods but the question is out of all the methods which are the most effective by which one can defeat the jihadists. And while your paragraph in your previous post that mentions “predators” and all the other ‘hard things’ that one has perforce to do against the jihadists is full of strategic clarity, by reverting back to your old argument of three years ago that the present terrorists are similar to the anarchist terrorists of the past and can be interdicted by ‘police’ methods, you unconsciously downgrade the seriousness of your ‘hard things’ position.

Moreover, you are locked in the fallacy of a rational person who premises his actions that his enemies that ‘round’ him up are also rational and if he shows by his actions, in our case America, that he is not against Arabs and Muslims this will bring a definitive change in the attitudes of the jihadists. This is a ‘straightjacket’ delusion that has lost all contact with reality. Islamic fanaticism will not be influenced, soothed, abated, or defeated by moral examples or olive branches but only in the field of battle and that is why a military deployment against it is a prerequisite. In short, it’s just another but more effective method in defeating the jihadists in a shorter span of time.

American says:

C-G Kotzabasis,

I’m talking about the hearts and minds issue. There is a hard core of dyed-in-the-wool militant jihadists with an uncompromising Salafist ideology. They are not going to be swayed by US public diplomacy, or by forseeable changes in US policy. They can only be dealt with forcibly. They must either be captured or killed, and their plans must be disrupted.
But the hard core is surrounded by concentric circles of people who are associated with the hard core by various degrees of fellow-travelling or sympathizing or onlooking. The extent to which the jihadists are able to expand their movement to get material or moral assistance from people in the out rings depends on how well their message resonates.

In my view, the jihadists have been the beneficiaries in recent years of a number of wrong-headed US policies that help their message resonate strongly. If hundreds of innocent people in Gaza have their lives snuffed out in an over-the-top Israeli attack, some as a result of deliberate crimes, with nary a peep from the US Congress, then when your friendly neighborhood jihadist says, “Muslims lives mean nothing to the Americans,” that message is going to get much more play on the street than it would if the US Congress had stepped up and condemned the excessive use of force.

Australian says:

Dan Kervick,

Certainly the “hearts and minds issue” is a core issue. But the “concentric circles of people,” will not be influenced by US Congress pronouncements and condemnations, in this case of Israeli actions, if they perceive, which they will, that this change of American policy arises from the weakness of the latter and from the strength of the “hard core” “militant jihadists” in their war with the US. The concentric circles of support for the militants will only disappear by depriving the latter of the ‘aura’ of being seen as the victors (The ethos of Arab pride trumps all.) against the American hegemon. And that entails the imminent and decisive defeat of the militants in the field of battle, as it happened in Iraq to the Sadrist militias and al Qaeda.

Furthermore, your concentrated reasoning loses its force since your policy contains these two incongruous parts: The first one will destroy by predators and covert operations (Which will be seen in the Muslim world as American excesses) the incubators of “Salafist ideology”, which are the madrassas, while the second, will denounce American and Israeli excesses. Do you seriously believe that such denunciation will have greater influence upon fellow-travellers and sympathisers, than the destruction of the madrassas in which many civilians will be killed, and will win their hearts and minds?

Join the debate

Afghanistan has Become Harder to Win but not Impossible

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“Pessimism comes from the passions, optimism from the will”. Taro Aso, Prime Minister of Japan.

The author is right to excavate the wisdom of Thucydides from the ruins of the Peloponnesian war. But the profound insights and political fecundity of Thucydides can be used in variable ways and historical contexts. For example, on the issue of preemptive strike he said, “It was... praiseworthy to get one’s blow in first against someone who was going to do wrong.” Thus Afghanistan, as one could consider its military ‘denizens’ as a great threat to the West that must be prevented.

Moreover, the quote from Thucydides is incongruous to his own assessment of the war in Afghanistan as his estimation clearly was at the time not that the Taliban could not be defeated and “kept under”, but the failure of the defeat laid in political and military mistakes. He states that “the time for pacifying Afghanistan was when the Taliban fled into the hills or went to ground after our 2001 invasion...and broken the feudal warlords with the full force of the world behind us.”

Hence the author clearly places the blame for not accomplishing the defeat of the Taliban on the political and military errors of the Bush administration and not that on a new “Petraeus template”--although he himself at least in the past believed otherwise--applied in Afghanistan victory will continue to be elusive and unachievable. If the Petraeus new strategy In Afghanistan involves the correction of past political and military mistakes, as it was done in Iraq, and some sort of unity among the provincial warlords based on common interests against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, then victory against the latter is more than possible.

Sentimentalist Wailing of an Australian Barrister about Preemptive War

By Con George-Kotzabasis

“Adherence to the international rule of law,” to quote Tynan who studied international law, when one has fanatic enemies who are continuously in blatant breach of these laws and are determined to destroy them? What kind of sentimentalism is Daniel Tynan a votary of?

Obama’s conspicuous silence and quibbling about “pre-emptive self-defence,” as his above quote shows ( He stated when asked about Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war that “we have to view our security in terms of a common security and a common prosperity with other people and other countries.”), might be the result that he too believes , or at least his closest military advisers, but it’s impolitic for him to admit it, that Bush’s doctrine is the most pragmatic one against the kind of enemy one is encountering.

NO HALF MEASURES: PLAN TO WIN THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
By Con George-Kotzabasis

Unlike the evolution of species from an imperfect state to a more advanced one the evolution of war, as a result of the huge increase in the fire-power of armaments and lethal military techniques, in reverse, is a development for the worst. Throughout history the lessons of military confrontations have pellucidly shown that when a state decides to don the panoply of war against irreconcilable and implacable enemies, it’s by the worst means and methods that one can defeat such foes. The military forces and the armaments that a state has at its disposal have to be used disproportionately and relentlessly against the “strength” of its enemy and defeat the latter by nipping him in-the-bud and hence preventing him from becoming stronger. In the few instances when force was not used disproportionally against a “budding” foe--an exemplary late demonstration of this was the Vietnam War when U.S. strategists instead of using a force de frappe against the Vietcong and destroying them while they were still weak they used the fallacious strategy of escalation to their doom—the war, if it was won, was waged at an astronomical cost in military personnel and materiel as well as at an enormous number of civilian casualties and refugees.

It’s for this reason that a compellingly victorious strategy against the Taliban dictates that the US and its NATO allies deployed in Afghanistan must use their powerful armaments up to the hilt, as well as all the techniques of covert and clandestine operations of their Special Forces. The only powerful armaments they should keep in reserve are tactical nuclear weapons, which would only be used as a last resort, if conventional weapons are found to be wanting in destroying a fanatical unyielding enemy who considers himself of implementing the agenda of God.

Moreover, since the contour of the war against the Taliban is not separated by Maginot lines and is by its nature a borderless war which the enemy by crossing the border of a neighbourly country uses it as a safe haven and replenishment ground for its forces, it would be doltishly foolish and strategically illogical and contradictory for the US forces and its allies to stop the chase of the Taliban at the border, in our case, of Pakistan, all in the name of respecting the national sovereignty of the latter when the Taliban already flagrantly and brazenly violated. In such war it would be the ultimate inanity and an abiding tragedy for one party in a deadly conflict to “piously” abide to international conventions and treaties while the opposing party “sacrilegiously” violates. It would be like Don Quixote fighting Genghis Khan. And an abiding tragedy as an outcome of an unnecessarily prolonged war which so voraciously feeds itself on civilian casualties from the fact that the Taliban and al-Qaeda use civilians, and indeed, relatives and their own families, as human shields. When the war could potentially have been shortened and the tragic circumstances of its people involved as bystanders ended if the US military combined with its Pakistani counterpart could attack and destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda in their safe havens and replenishing and recruiting grounds.

US strategists are of course aware that to allow “Cambodian Sanctuaries” on the soil of Pakistan for al-Qaeda and the Taliban would be militarily the penultimate foolishness. And the ultimate foolishness would be not to destroy these sanctuaries either by overt or covert operations. Fortunately we have already seen that the Americans are desisting from making the strategic mistakes of Vietnam and a shift in their strategy as pilotless drones and Special Forces units are bombing and making incursions into Pakistan in search and destroy operations against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces.

Inevitably this has engendered nationalistic anger and ire among sections of the Pakistan government and many of its people against the incursion of US forces in their country which they consider to be a violation of the sovereignty of their nation. One however can argue that this “violation” on the part of the US would not have occurred if the primary violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty had not already being perpetrated by al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Further, the inability of Pakistan, either due to a political unwillingness or military incapacity, to stop these initial violators of its sovereignty made it perforce a task for its allies against terror, i.e., the Americans, to perform. The leadership in Islamabad must be reminded of these facts and their inevitable flow into a “strategic dam’ that first will stem the current of the Taliban into Pakistan in violation of its borders, and secondly, will lead to the defeat of its enemies by depriving the latter their sanctuaries and thus achieving the goal of the Pakistan-American alliance against terror. Further allies in a war cannot logically violate each other’s sovereignty as their mutual aim is to destroy their enemy wherever the latter deploys his forces. And this is exactly what the Americans are doing by chasing the Taliban across the border of Afghanistan.

Once the Taliban and al-Qaeda are deprived of their sanctuary in Pakistan and the Americans and their allies block this strategically deadly exit-and-entry of their enemy from and into the soil of Afghanistan that will ease the defeat of the Taliban and their sundry jihadists. And the ‘beheading’ of the latter will be executed mainly by the Afghans themselves if the American strategists and their allies adopt the following strategy that is to be formulated below.

To Clausewitz, the master in matters of war the following was axiomatic: That the success of a war depends on the unison of the natural resources of a nation with the existence of its people. It’s this coupling that engenders the determination of a people to protect this vital natural wealth of a country from being appropriated by their enemies. In Afghanistan opium is the primary natural resource of the country. Ninety-three percent of opiates on the world market originate in Afghanistan at a value of $4 billion. It’s well known that the drug industry has major linkages with local administration as well as high levels of the national government. Also, the Taliban controls substantial parts of its production with which it funds its war against the Karzai government and its American, Australian and European allies.

It’s imperative therefore that the Afghanistan government turns off the faucet of opium and dry up the thirst of the Taliban to continue the war. More importantly, to use opium as a strategic weapon that will deal the Taliban a coup d’eclat from which it will never recover. To accomplish the complete defeat of the Taliban the Karzai government should as soon as it’s possible nationalize the production of opium and promptly make the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan equity holders of the national consortium of opium production. As the tribal chiefs have been for aeons the shepherds of their people the profits that will be allocated to them will spread among their tribes. Hence every Afghan will have a vested interest to protect this economic benefit from being stolen by the Taliban bandits or any foreigners. Further, it will enhance the status of the tribal chiefs among their people and solidify their political and social power which has been for years their goal.

Hence with this stratagem the central government in Kabul will mobilize all Afghans through their tribal elders in a war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda that will lead to the total defeat of the latter. And it will build the foundations of a federal democratic structure in Afghanistan without impinging on the historically proud status of the tribal leaders’ independence that has been for hundreds of years the apple of discord and has fomented internecine warfare between the tribes. It’s for the Americans and their allies to persuade the Karzai government to nationalize the production of opium and turn it into the utmost political and military weapon that will decisively decimate the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Hic Rhodus hic Salta