A Wise, Outspoken Marine

FIASCO, by Thomas Ricks, introduced me to Marine Corps General James Mattis, esteemed by his peers as the finest soldier our country has produced since the Korean War. The portrait of the politically incorrect General Mattis, drawn by Ricks, brought to mind one of my heroes, Joseph W. Stilwell, esteemed by his contemporaries as "the fightingest General in the United States Army."

General Stilwell often exasperated his civilian overlords with his caustic remarks. Frequently, he was cautioned to to stop referring to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, El Supremo in China, as "the Peanut." Finally, the G-mo wore out FDR's patience. A firm message (a "hot bundle of paprika," according to Stilwell) was dispatched to the G-mo insisting he implement reforms to "increase the combat efficiency of the Chinese Army." General Stilwell memorialized the event with a poem:

I've waited long for vengeance, at last I've had my chance.
I've looked the Peanut in the eye and kicked him in the pants.
The old harpoon was ready, with aim and timing true,
I sank it to the handle and stung him through and through.
The little bastard shivered and lost the power of speech.
His face turned green and quivered as he struggled not to screech.
For all my weary battles, for all my hours of woe,
At last I've had my innings and laid the Peanut low.
I know I've still to suffer and run a weary race,
But, Oh! The blessed pleasure, I've wrecked the Peanut's face.

General Mattis looks like General Stilwell. And he sounds like him, too. The protocol boys had to do back flips trying to anesthecize these remarks in San Diego in February 2005.

It's fun to shoot people. Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. I like brawling. You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they don't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.

About the fighting in Iraq, General Mattis said it is "almost embarrassing intellectually." Then, he warned,

Don't patronize this enemy. They mean business. They mean every word they say. Don't imagine an enemy somewhere in the future, and you're going to transform so you can fight him. They're killing us now. Their will is not broken. They mean it.

Naturally, the press focused on the colorful bellicosity and political INcorrectness of the "fun to shoot people" part of this quote. The underlying wisdom and criticism of the Bush blood for oil policy went by unnoticed.

The only objective worth achieving in this confrontation with Islamic Fundamentalism is the end of purdah, getting women out into the sunshine. So far, that aspiration, dressed up as a War for Democracy, has been swallowed up in the pretext for an oil grab. Or, it has been lost sight of in a shallow game of opportunism.
During the Soviet regime in Afghanistan, 55% of government employees were women. Unfortunately, for those semi-emancipated women, we saw an opportunity to use the Islamic Fundamentalist rebels to get even with the Russians for their meddling in Vietnam. Our clients won - and the Berlin Wall came crashing down on the women of Afghanistan. They were pink-slipped, sent home and forced back behind the Veil. Those who persisted in modern ways were marched to the new soccer stadium and executed in front of 30,000 cheering men.

We had a chance to redeem ourselves for this crime against the women of Afghanistan. Instead, we left the job half-finished and rushed off to invade Iraq, perhaps the most secular country in the Middle East. Our Saudi masters were calling.

Iraq, like Afghanistan (and Ba'athist Syria) had made great strides bringing women out from behind the Veil. Our ally, Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, was still punishing the women, who, in 1990, had gone out for a drive unescorted.

(In addition, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Osama bin Laden, penniless after his alms-giving mission to the Sudan, relied on a network of Saudi and Gulf States donors to finance al Qaeda.)

We chose to back away from an unfinished mission of redemption in Afghanistan in order to bring down the most secular country in the Middle East, adding the women of Iraq and Saudi Arabia to the list of those betrayed. How pathetic!

The remarks of General Mattis bring into sharp relief the essence of this struggle. The enemy wants the Veil. We don't. That is a fight worth having.

(There is more along these lines in my essays A WINNABLE WAR, THE REAGAN LEGACY, THE FOUR BASIC STRATEGIC CHOICES, and RUMFOORD'S POCKET HISTORY OF IRAQ.)

A Winnable War

(This was written at the end of September 2004)

Al Qaeda recruitment must be up. The President sounded downbeat, opining that the War Against Terror is unwinnable; that containment is the best we can hope for. I feel his pain. But the war is winnable.

This war, fundamentally, is all about Legitimacy. Terrorists take no responsibility to govern territory. Though Islamic terrorists may distribute alms to the poor - as a religious duty - that hardly constitutes taking up the full responsibility of governing. To set up shop, they need a failing state, a stretch of earth teeming with potential recruits.

When it became apparent that Pakistan had become a haven for al-Qaeda, the Bush Adminstration quickly forgave billions of dollars of debt and ended trade sanctions. Afghanistan, a total basket case teeming with terrorists, became the subject of an international donor's conference. A Democratic administration, certainly, would have implemented the same policies. Under the present (essentially anarchic) system of competing nation-states, the best hope for a failed state is to get on the list of "havens for terrorists."

Three out of every ten human beings goes to bed hungry at night. 90% of humanity must eke out an existence in bribery economies - failed or failing states. They are desperate and under the present system, terrorism pays. No wonder bin Laden is a hero to millions, perhaps a billion people worldwide. The Islamic fundamentalists, led by the Jihadists, hold a trump card given to them by the G8, a vast and growing gap between the developed and developing world.

The Nation-State has served its historical purpose. Humanity cannot stand still. We can either go back to the days of competing patriarchal theocracies or forward to an elected, representative and sovereign United Nations.

Here in the United States, President Bush is touted as a decisive leader. A great number of people do not care whether those firm decisions are also wise. There is a reason for that indifference. A big chunk of the Republican base are evangelical Christians - people who were disappointed when Y2K failed to bring on the Rapture. They pray for a Day of Judgment. Prod them on Iraq, point out the lies and manipulations, and they remain unruffled. It is Prophecy, they say: Armageddon. To them, President Bush is a divine instrument. They do not care whether American credibility is obliterated overseas. They do not care how many foreign countries are turned into playgrounds for terrorists. It is Prophecy. America is the instrument of divine retribution. And, since the Day of Judgment is coming, they are indifferent about the multi-trillions of dollars of debt this administration has racked up. It is an investment in death, part of God's plan to destroy the world.

(Less robust souls seem to buy into the deficit as a form of suicide. It is almost as if the Administration has cut a psychic deal with bin Laden: "If we commit suicide, will you promise not to attack us? Pretty please!")

This death wish, to a certain degree, is shared by at least 23% of the rest of us. In a starving world, nearly one quarter of the American population is clinically obese. Adolescent boys today consume nearly four times as much soda pop as my generation. Girls don't drink milk. Schools around the country have prostituted themselves to the fast food and soft drink industries. Imagine the number of diabetics there will be two decades from now.

Bush Republicans don't care about unfunded entitlements. Bush Republicans don't care about Halliburton raiding the Treasury. They don't care because the future is unreachable - just as the War on Terror is unwinnable. They just want to be the last to die, so they invest their tax rebates on panic rooms in walled, gated communities.

A fundamental reality of Capitalism - price-factor equalization (manifested as 'out-sourcing') exacerbates the terrorist crisis. Californians want to keep the Punjabis, Bengalis and other Indians out of Silicon Valley. They want to keep Hewlett Packard out of Bangalore. Will this solve the problem? Of course not. Capitalism will always find the most willing, able, productive, and profitable hands. Today, those hands are in China and India. If HP fails to put those hands to work, someone else will. Do the technology workers of the developed West expect their counterparts in the developing East to politely starve?

American credibility in the Middle East has been eroding ever since the CIA installed the Shah in Iran five decades ago. The present Administration has utterly blown whatever little credibility remained. It is ironic that people calling themselves conservatives have nailed us into this coffin. Traditional conservatism postulates that tax-averse citizens, by their stinginess, limit the capacity of Government to implement foolish policies. They once understood, better than liberals, that our power far exceeds our wisdom. How ironic that those old-fashioned xenophobic isolationists are the ones who would have prevented us from discrediting ourselves abroad by denying us the means of prosecuting foreign adventures. No future administration will ever restore the credibility they would never have lost.

So - the factors determing whether the War on Terror is winnable are:

1. The Nation-State system is only as good as its weakest link. Thus, it has failed.
2. Structural deficits and high tolerance of cognitive dissonance is evidence that the United States is in a self-destructive swoon.
3. American military power vastly exceeds the wisdom of the Electorate, resulting in the final erosion of American credibility - the rock on which postwar security has been based.
4. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the greed of weapons manufacturers worldwide has brought about an unlimited supply of lethal weaponry.
5. Price/factor equalization is a tremendous opportunity for the developing world.
6. Into the future, the entitlements programs of most developed countries are insolvent.

This mixture will ferment. The future is indeed perilous. Our stratetic margin of error narrows monthly.

There are two basic paths to a livable future. One is Fortress America. The other, its opposite, is Globalism, a forward strategy. I'm afraid we must choose.

Fortress America, in this new world, would be a constellation of ideas associated with Patrick Buchanan - Protectionism, Isolationism, and Nativism (anti-immigration policies). To that, I would add a Jeffersonian embargo - to demonstrate our sincerity to the Islamic World and other traditional societies. They are deeply offended (and destabilized) by the filth (movies, music, fashions, idolatry and pornography) we export. Imposing an embargo would demonstrate our sensitivity to the disruption we cause in traditional societies.

Historians generally agree that Jefferson's embargo failed. I disagree. It helped keep the United States neutral during the Napoleonic wars. (In fact, we were able to exploit Napoleon's desperate need for cash and purchase the enormous Louisiana Territory for 3 cents an acre!) It does not matter whether embargoes completely choke off all exports. It matters that we make a sincere effort to so choke. The world may be unstable for awhile as Europe and China take up the burden we have shouldered for half a century. But, both of those civilizations have taken up the responsibility of stabilizing their respective regions in the past. They have experience. They are mature civilizations. The world may well breathe a sigh of relief that America will no longer project our collective un-wisdom outward. And, the world market will no longer be a dumping ground for our excess capacity.

Fortress America, sensibly, accommodates the worries and fears of traditional societies. It is important to recall that we are not so removed from ignorance and misogyny. During the 19th Century, overworked women were often diagnosed with "neuralgia." One of the recommended treatments - a clitorectomy - is better known as female emasculation. Misogyny ran deep in our culture. In 1848, a court in New York state upheld the right of a clergyman to whip his wife once every month - essential to her "better instruction" according to his theology. So, we have little right to jump on our high horse and beat our breasts about the backwardness of the Islamic World.

Yet, that is precisely what I urge with the forward strategy - Globalism.

Mankind must now dump the Nation-State. That system, a liberating force during the 18th and 19th Centuries, is now a curse. While 1/3 of humanity goes to bed hungry, the populations of wealthy countries dispute silly, self-absorbed nonsense like gay marriage. While 90% of humanity must find a way to keep body and soul together in bribary economies, the populations of wealthy countries fret over their entitlements. Why are those 90% NOT entitled? Do you really think we are more beloved of God? Small wonder there is an endless supply of suicide bombers eager to die for bin Laden. Only an elected, representative, and sovereign United Nations - a necessary institution awaiting birth - can act legitimately to dry up that pool.

The Nation-State, morally, died on June 28, 1914. We are still squandering resources trying to revive the corpse. Nine decades of investment and what do have to show for it? World War I. World War II. Proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam. Genocide in Rwanda. Communal terror in the Holy Lands. Ethnic cleansing in the Balkans (again! right where the first shot was fired!). And now the transformation of Iraq into a terrorist playground.

Resuscitation has failed. The stinking, festering corpse of the Nation-State is spawning lethal maggots - bin Laden and his disciples. Incinerate the corpse and the maggots will die. Or, would you rather die with the corpse?

In my opinion, Fortress America would be more investment in resuscitation - throwing good money after bad.

When Tropical Storm Bonnie struck Florida, I predicted that 2004 would be the worst hurricane season in that state's history. I predicted that landfall for one of those hurricanes would be Palm Beach County. Instead, two hurricanes hit where the 2000 election was stolen. In September 2001, I predicted that for every year the world delays amending the Charter of the United Nations, there will be five years of war. By my reckoning, this war will last well into the third decade of this millenium.

Do not regret the end of the Nation-State, even our beloved United States of America. The Bible told us this day would come.

"All nations before Him are as nothing, and they are counted to Him less than nothing, and vanity." Isaiah 40:17

Grooving the Nuclear Option

Dear Mr. Carlson,

The media - and especially conservative media - is grooving debate on Iraq into a rut to make it seem we have no choice but to support the surge or expand the war into Iran. Conservative media - and most of the so-called "liberal" media, as well - lament Iranian support of Shi'a insurgents, making it seem we have no choice but to strike Iran. Nobody in the conservative media - and damn few "liberals" - mention that 50% of Sunni insurgents in Iraq are Saudis. Why do you all ignore that fact? Are you owned by Aramco?

And - you all keep framing the "al Qaeda in Iraq" issue exactly as President Bush wants it framed. You really want us to believe - that if we leave Iraq - that al Qaeda will just march into Baghdad and take over, unopposed. Do you really think a bunch of Sunni sectarian bigots will be greeted as liberators in a country with a Shi'a majority? In a country with mobilized Shi'a militias? Will Hezbollah idly stand by while al Qaeda takes over? The only thing uniting the sectarian lunatics is the competition to see how many of us they can kill. With us gone, they will have only each other to immolate. That inferno should keep them busy for a long, long time.

It's a pretty shameful thing we've done - light-heartedly and light-mindedly bringing this catastrophe upon the peoples of Iraq. But the surge cannot reverse the insurgency. Counter-insurgency specialists talk of an immobilization ratio of 10-1. Irregular/Guerrilla/Insurgent forces outnumbered 10-1 by conventional forces can achieve stalemate. Defeating an insurgency - and Malaya in the 50s is the gold standard of counter-insurgency - requires at least a decade and a 30-1 advantage. Those are the numbers. Read them and sober up.

The Wright Stuff

Lawrence Wright's, The Looming Tower, is the essential primer on the rise of al Qaeda. Leave it to a screenwriter to illuminate the obvious fact that this is a war of imagination. Every American should read this book. Your failure to do so compromises your usefulness in the War on Terror.

Mr. Wright made hundreds of observations, calmly expressed, which bring to mind President Lincoln's efforts to get the Northern people focused on the task at hand: "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

(Perhaps I will place a long list of specific reactions at the end of this essay. But there are two things I must comment upon.)

First, on the partisan level, it occurred to me that both the Clinton and Bush Administrations have made stupid decisions driven by mass angst. Clinton reacted to the Embassy bombings in Africa by sending cruise missiles after a pet food factory in Sudan. True, he had some intelligence suggesting the production of chemical weapons, but it was poorly vetted. Yet, at the same time, Sudan was trying to open a diplomatic channel to us promising the capture of bin Laden. This offer was spurned, in part, because a diplomatic success lacks the pyrotechnic splendor of a bombing. In sum, Clinton, like Bush, sought to appease American angst. We keep telling our leaders: "Sling some bombs around! Tell those towelheads, DON'T FUCK WITH US!!" The upshot is, of course, that we keep providing bin Laden with recruiting posters. More terrorists, not less.

Mr. Wright, I remind you, remains calm. Even when he describes the appalling failure of the C.I.A. to share (with the F.B.I.!) the Agency's knowledge of Mihdhar's and Hamzi's presence in the country, Mr. Wright maintains his composure. The Agency, perhaps, assumed that Saudi intelligence was trying to turn Mihdhar and Hamzi into double agents. They didn't want the F.B.I. charging in with arrest warrants. Instead, they permitted a team of doggedly motivated investigators working for a brilliant team of prosecutors (including Patrick Fitzgerald, by the way) to labor in semi-darkness. Astonishing stupidity! If it wasn't so stupendously tragic, it would bring to mind Captain Flagg from the M.A.S.H. television series.

Maxim for a Free Society

Dear Dr. Mahin,

I applaud One War at a Time, your tribute to President Lincoln's wise management of foreign policy during the Civil War. Throughout the escalation into this misadventure in Iraq, I could not help but make comparisons between the Lincoln and Bush Administrations.

Our 'shock and awe' for the citizens of Baghdad, tactically, reminds me too much of bin Laden's 'shock and awe' for the citizens of New York. The choice between the terrorists and us, for the rest of the world, is not as clear as I would like it to be. President Lincoln, I am certain, would have demonstrated the clearest possible distinction. I borrow a quote of Lincoln's from your book.

"... the Founding Fathers 'meant to set up a standard maxim for a free society which could be... constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to people of all colors everywhere."

The present crisis requires a leader with Lincoln's breadth of view. But, perhaps, it is not meant to be. Perhaps American power must be de-legitimized - that we must be exposed as too immature to be trusted with this kind of power - in order to pave the way for the emergence of a truly representative and sovereign United Nations capable of 'augmenting the happiness and value of life to people of all colors everywhere.'

The Third Most Over-rated President

Dear Dr. Schweizer,

The present-day phenomenon of the 'chicken hawk' - warmongering conservatives who found ways to ditch their duty during the Vietnam era - has renewed my interest in McCarthyism. I wonder whether the same type - the loud-mouth, self-proclaimed super patriot - succeeded politically then using the same tactics Karl Rove succeeds with today. Rove has successfully trashed men whose patriotic credentials seemed beyond reproach - John McCain, Max Cleland, and John Kerry. Does this repeat an ugly pattern from the past? Do the loud-mouth, sunshine patriots always win?

I began compiling a list of Predators and Prey from the McCarthy period. I was considering adding Ronald Reagan to the Predators list - when I picked up your book as part of the research. I also picked up Eric Bentley's,Thirty Years of Treason, where I read Reagan's testimony before HUAC. The only person Reagan trashed was Herb Sorrell (and I'll take your word that Sorrell merited trashing) so I decided that he was not a true Predator. And Reagan was fairly eloquent expressing his confidence that a free society could win an open debate with Communism.

Your book disappointed me in several ways. Your portrayal of the Hollywood strike made it appear that the strikers were all dupes - puppets on Sorrell's string. Your analysis struck me as shallow and perfunctory. People do not, like zombies, risk their livelihood. I could not buy your assertion (on p. 282) that 'Moscow and its supporters did try to gain a level of control in Hollywood.' Frankly, I am still with Lillian Hellman's confession that she was wrong about Stalin but the McCarthyites were the ones who damaged the country.

Your analysis of the Hollywood strike raised my suspicions. I skimmed the index. Lo and behold, there was no mention of 'Beirut' or 'Marine barracks' or 'Lebanon' or 'national debt.' Warily, I read on. Imagine my disgust with your omission of any reference to the cut and run after the bombing of the Marine barracks on February 23, 1983. That omission is especially nauseating given the fact that Marines (who had been on the way to Beirut and diverted at sea) landed on Grenada on the very same day! That is a startling fact. Your failure to comment upon it makes it difficult to take you seriously as a biographer.

(Would it not be perfectly logical for the terrorists - comparing President Reagan's tough policy toward the Soviets with his cut and run from Beirut - to conclude that assymmetric war might very well work against the United States? May I suggest this as a topic for your next book? Would not that be a meatier, more dignified topic for someone with your credentials than joining Ann Coulter in her petty hectoring of liberals?)

The Wall in Berlin fell at some cost. The women of Afghanistan paid a very high price for the re-unification of Germany. The bureaucrats of the Soviet puppet government in Kabul were 55% female. When that government fell (after holding on for several years after the Russian withdrawal), those women were handed pink slips and blue burkahs. A reign of Terror was unleashed. Our abandonment of those women was a great sin. Connect that sin up with Reagan's obscene deficit spending - and the unheeded warning of Deuteronomy, chapter 28, seems our just desserts. After warning, in verse 12, that God's people "shalt lend unto many nations and thou shalt not borrow," verses 49-52 describe the punishment: "The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth... and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates until thy high and fenced walls come down..."

In conclusion, your use of Soviet and old Warsaw Pact sources briefly made an impression upon me. But upon consideration of the startling omissions, the bias with which I began reading the book still stands. Ronald Reagan, though a very nice guy, is the third most over-rated President in American History.

Rumfoord's Pocket History of Iraq

Civilization, to date, has created 10,000 wars. Regrettably, there are only four intelligent commentaries on war: those of Thucydides, Julius Caesar, Shelby Foote, and Winston Niles Rumfoord, my uncle, who chose 75,000 words so well that nothing remains to be said about the war between Earth and Mars. That war, of course, is prologue to my war. As such, the enquiring scholar must carefully study The Pocket History of Mars.

My purpose would be well- served with a brief excerpt from my uncle's masterwork:

"The mastermind of the Martian suicide was Winston Niles Rumfoord... It was Rumfoord's intention that Mars should lose the war - that Mars should lose it foolishly and horribly. As a seer of the future, Rumfoord knew for certain that this would be the case, and he was content. He wished to change the world for the better by the great and unforgettable suicide of Mars."

I served in the war between Earth and Mars, a veteran of its greatest skirmish - the Battle of the Basel Meat Market. When the Swiss demanded my surrender, I ejaculated, "Nuts!" My bravery that day inspired Winston Niles Rumfoord to adopt me as his nephew, heir to his Legacy. I carry on today, in Iraq, the high ideals of his Martian adventure.

The American Commander-in-Chief responded to 9/11 by announcing a Crusade. Imagine the consternation in the Islamic World! Could any announcement more inflame them? The radio antenna we had installed in his head worked perfectly! He followed this up by christening our military response, "Operation Infinite Justice." Since only Allah can dispense Infinite Justice, he might as well have code-named it Operation Blasphemy.

The perpetrators of 9/11 left a trail of bread crumbs leading to Afghanistan. The terrorists were funded by a network of Wahhabi charities tracking back to Saudi Arabia. 14 of the suicide bombers were Saudis. None were from Iraq, a secular Ba'athist country. I reminded everyone that there were few good targets in Afghanistan, no place less suited for demonstrating the overwhelming strike capacity of the American war machine.

I went, reluctantly, with the World into Afghanistan. We kept the pressure on, offensively, as our NATO allies came in behind us to secure liberated areas. Once we trapped the al Qaeda leadership in Tora Bora, we were finally free to go after Iraq, my preferred target. The oil men were overjoyed. Secretly, I smiled at their naive greed.

The easy victory in Afghanistan failed to satiate the urge to avenge 9/11. We manipulated that angst mercilessly. We cherry-picked the intelligence, elevating to the status of revealed Truth the fairy tales of an embezzler and a doubtful source code-named 'Curve Ball.' In our public pronouncements on national security, we always coupled Iraq with 9/11. We casually dismissed the conclusions of the inter-agency Iraq Assessment Group, which warned that high troop levels would have to be maintained after Liberation. We laughed in the face of the counter-insurgency theorists, who warned of a protracted struggle. Generals who questioned our rosy scenario were put on the fast track to retirement. We squawked about a (non-existent) nuclear threat. We retaliated against those who questioned our pronouncements.

It was a masterpiece of Mendacity.

The war in Iraq commenced with our bombing of Baghdad, something we christened 'shock and awe' - an obvious synonym for Terror. Humanity was put on notice. Though the bombs were very smart, the technological transformation of the American military was still incomplete. Institutionally, the objective was to transcend the human factor, boots on the ground. Simultaneously, this would make morale, as a factor to be consulted, obsolete. With Morale obsolete, morality could be jettisoned as well. All war calculations, for the first time in History, would be purely objective. Humanity would lie prostrate to pure power. And it would be America, an apathetic democracy, which would wield that power.

The war in Iraq, sold to Americans as quick and easy, has entered its fifth year. The war, meant to be financed by Iraq's oil revenues, is costing the United States $5,000,000,000 per month. Selling the war was a masterpiece of deception. The American people blinded themselves to the ruthless manipulation. The rest of the World watched in disgust.

Many at DoD like to think the war would have been better put off until transformation was complete. But, they admit that 9/11 presented a golden opportunity. We had to seize it. My colleagues at DoD like to think that American public opinion today would be more positive if we were fighting with a transformed military - where we had elevated war to a simple mathematical calculation. They don't ask themselves the next series of questions. Would the rest of the World serenely submit to American domination? How many would we have to kill and maim with our machines to secure that submission? In securing that submission, would we become better people? Or would we continue to rot, growing ever more obese - denizens of the Third Circle, slush-meat for Cerberus - as our machines performed our dirty work?

The virtue of transformation, in terms of the Rumfoord Legacy, would have been to clarify the central issue. Is the life force, Universal Will to Become (UWTB), stronger than the death force? Would Humanity submit to the whims of an overfed superpower?

The war in Iraq, politically, for Americans, has been an exercise in flatulent patriotism, orchestrated by men notorious for their lack of service in an earlier imperialist adventure. The end of the American Empire is being greeted with a Greek chorus of 'Support our Troops,' the theme song of people who have no intention of joining them. Instead, the volunteers suffer third and fourth tours of duty. (They remind me so much of the grossly misused Army of Mars.) The army wastes away through attrition. Morale seeps, like blood, into the desert sands ready to blow away forever with the next brisk gale.

The American people bought our argument that, by tying down the terrorists in Iraq, they could not attack our homeland. Few considered the possibility that the reverse would be true, that terrorists could tie us down for decades fighting an insurgency in Iraq. And consider the chill this policy has up the spines of the rest of the World. Americans are willing to see other countries, any country, turned into playgrounds for terrorists as long as the United States is not hit. Imagine adopting such a morally bankrupt strategy while, simulaneously, claiming moral leadership of the World.

Nothing could suit my purpose better.

American casualties, to date, are over 3500 killed - more than 2500 of those after victory was (prematurely) declared in May 2003. At least 15,000 have been wounded, a high percentage of those seriously. Indigenous casualties number somewhere between 30,000 and 650,000. Nobody knows for sure, and most Americans - especially the Rapture-impaired, Culture of Life mob - don't care. Nobody knows how many have been seriously wounded. Is there anyone in Iraq unscathed by this war?

In The Pocket History of Mars, my uncle takes the measure of Leadership. I am certain he would admire our Commander-in-Chief immensely.

"Any man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people's blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed. Every failure of Earthling leadership has been traceable to a lack on the part of the leader of at least one of these things. Enough of these fizzles of leadership, in which millions die for nothing or less! Let us have, for a change, a magnificently-led few who die for a great deal."

The American Commander-in-Chief believes he is a divine instrument. Oh! If he only he knew to what purpose! Consider the irony. The man was voted into the most powerful office in the World thanks to the Electoral College, a vestige of the old Slavocracy. Then, in office, this man (the living embodiment of the failure of the great American democracy) announced that he would impose Democracy on the Middle East! Americans, robot-like, nodded their heads approvingly. The rest of
the World hung their heads in dismay.

Iraq is the vomit of the anarchic system of competing nation-states. The liberating force of the 18th Century, Nationalism, has decayed into a death wish. The nation-state is a millstone around our necks. Either we get rid of it, or it will get rid of us. In a world where two billion people go to bed hungry every night, $1,000,000,000,000 is immolated every year on the funeral pyre of defense spending. An elected, representative and sovereign United Nations is long overdue. The life force, Universal Will to Become (UWTB), imposes an intelligent design. Only a re-chartered United Nations can act legitimately against Terrorism. Such an institution cannot emerge until the last superpower is brought to its knees.

I am the mastermind of the American suicide in Iraq. It was always my intent to lose this war - to lose it foolishly and dishonorably. Flaws in the American character, runaway hubris, and an abundance of right wing lunatics on talk radio simplified my mission immeasurably. The great and unforgettable humiliation of America will bring on a great consummation which will usher in a millenium of peace.

The Argument for a Principled Accommodation

Dear Mr. Brooks,

Among clever, witty co-workers (Maureen Dowd and Tom Friedman), on Meet the Press, you made the funniest statement. And like most insightful comedy, your remark sprang from tragedy. "In my black moments," you said, "I sometimes think President Bush is the Manchurian Candidate sent to discredit everything I believe in." As a registered Libertarian, I share some of your pain. Yet, without major party affiliation to bind and blind me, I quickly perceived the war mongering of this Administration. I never bought into the neo-con self-delusion of spreading Democracy, at gunpoint, throughout the Islamic World. What an excursion into the stratosphere of wishful thinking!

There are four basic responses to the challenge of Islamic Fundamentalism.

1) Capitulation.
2) Religious War
3) A Principled Accommodation
4) Victory

Capitulation should not be taken seriously. The Islamic Fundamentalists, though they may fantasize about exterminating us, do not wish to rule us. They do not want such depraved, secular people to experience the joys of their Caliphate.

Religious Warfare is a distinct possibility. I am sure that Pat Robertson, between selling his diet shake and praying for John Paul Stevens to die, dreams of a War of Civilizations. Frankly, I do not see anything in that for me and the secular majority. Focus on the Family's utopia too closely resembles the Caliphate. And after all these millenia of religious extremism, God must yearn for a secular world, don't you think? How many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people have been butchered in God's name? This continuous stream of sanctified blood, century after century, surely has convinced God that we are too primitive to comprehend Him. Don't you think?

A Principled Accommodation with the Islamic World can be pulled off by men of good faith. (Lying about WMD to justify a blood for oil foreign policy does not quite pass muster as good faith.) Yet, such an Accommodation, realistically, must include a Jeffersonian-style Embargo. The traditional societies of the Islamic World are de-stabilized by all of our garbage - the music, the movies, the halter tops, the blue jeans, etc. etc. etc. We must help those countries keep the garbage out. That, of course, means an even more enormous trade deficit. So be it.

Victory means sacrifice. High Taxes. Conscription. Etc. We haven't the stomach for such sacrifice. (And, as a Libertarian, such sacrifice defies my principles.) The necessary instrument to achieve Victory - an elected, representative and sovereign United Nations - does not even exist. Americans are not the only ones unwilling to sacrifice the graven images of Nationalism just to achieve Victory over the Caliphate.

The Bush Doctrine - defying and castigating the World to impose Democracy on Iraq at gunpoint - cannot achieve Victory. The necessary means to achieve the stated ends add up to an UnPrincipled Accommodation with the Islamic World.

Will we ever work off this angst over 9/11 and start Thinking?

A Brief note to a Serbian for Victory

Dear Mr. Silajdzic,

I watched you on Richard Perle's paean to Neo-Conservatism. So far, you are the only public figure (I know of) who has stated the obvious: that one single country policing the entire world is inherently illegitimate. I say over and over again that the only institution which can WIN the war or Terror does not yet exist: an elected, representative, and sovereign United Nations.

The Reagan Legacy

The Electoral College travesty in 2000 has proven tragic to the Legacy of Ronald Reagan. How much better for his memory had Al Gore assumed the Presidency after his victory at the Polls! President Gore would have erased the ill effects of President Reagan's most glaring errors, namely:

1) $1.7 TRILLION added to the national debt
2) arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, thus empowering the Taliban
3) the cut and run from Beirut
4) the arms for hostages policy

If Al Gore had taken office after his electoral victory (and continued President Clinton's conservative fiscal policy), we would now be on the verge of retiring the national debt. Instead, the Bush/Cheney junta drew the conclusion that "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." True to their word, they opened the floodgates, raising the debt limit to $9 TRILLION! What happens if the Russians and Iranians denominate petroleum sales in anything other than the dollar and all those unwanted reserve dollars fly back home?

If Al Gore had taken office after his electoral victory, our military energy would have remained focused on Afghanistan after 9/11. With the support of our European allies, we would be fully engaged in the useful work of nation building, following the successful Kosovo model. This would have wiped out the foul taste of the expedient Reagan/Bush policy of abandoning the women of Afghanistan to the tender mercies of the Taliban (after the Soviet withdrawal). Karzai would be secure in Kabul and his country, not secular Iraq, would be the Islamic laboratory for democracy. Imagine the impact of that success on the secular youth of Iran!

We should have selected Afghanistan for the neo-con experiment in democracy. Anchored there with our allies, we would be spared the extreme pressure to cut and run from Iraq. We could happily forget how Reagan invented the cut and run after the Marine barracks were blown up in Beirut in February 1983.

Iran/Contra, of course, would still tarnish the Reagan Legacy. He went a long way toward cleaning that up by apologizing to the American people. Al Gore could not - and should not - clean up that part of Reagan's statue. It was Reagan's own nonsense, and a healthy reminder of Republican wishful thinking in foreign affairs.

Pop Sociology with Mr. Kristol

Dear Mr. Kristol,

Your conversation with Brian Lamb on Q&A left the impression that our escapade in Iraq is a giant stride Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy. A perusal of the transcript confirms that impression. How curious! As I recall, President Reagan dispatched Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad over Christmas in 1983 with a $500,000,000 stocking stuffer, tangible evidence of a tilt toward Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War. Our object, apparently, was to keep Iran in a box. Iran is twice the size of Iraq. The mullahs of Iran are the spiritual leaders of the Shi'a world. Iraq's Shi'a majority is concentrated in the oil-rich south. Saudi Arabia's Shi'a minority is concentrated in the oil-rich northeast. Iran exports Terror through Hezbollah. These sobering reflections urged the distasteful necessity of tilting toward Saddam, even though he was using chemical weapons in that vicious war.

Im March 2003, the containment of Iran was no less a necessity that two decades earlier. The invasion of Iraq repudiates the Reagan policy. Only someone self-deluded enough to discount 1300 years of Sunni-Shi'a hostility as "pop sociology" could praise this misadventure as Neo-Reaganite.

The Four Basic Strategic Choices

The American Civil War commenced in April 1861 with the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Four years later, in April 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered his magnificent Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Courthouse.

American participation in World War II began in December 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Less that four years later, in August 1945, the proud Japanese Empire was forced to surrender, unconditionally, at a ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri.

The World Trade Center towers came down on a lovely late summer day in 2001. Today, more than five years later, we are bogged down in a country that never attacked us. Our President keeps blathering about "complete victory." Has he ever given a moment's thought to basic strategy? Did any of us put much thought into it before bombs away? We simple-mindedly rushed off to a silly war in Iraq just to work off a little angst. Now, our nuts are in a vise and its getting quite late in the game. Previous generations, at this point in titanic struggles, had finished mopping up and were building institutions for the coming century.

There are four basic strategic responses to the challenge of Islamic fundamentalism: capitulation, religious war, a principled accommodation, or Victory. A productive discussion of the Victory option requires some discussion of the capitulation option which requires a lengthy rehash of mistakes made in Iraq. So, let's set that aside for awhile.

Religious war is an option distinct from Victory. Religious war means scorched earth. It has always meant scorched earth. Religious zealots, persuaded absolutely of their righteousness and virtue, inhabit a moral universe where the ends justify the means. They can commit the most unspeakable atrocities, convinced that those butcheries are blessed by the Almighty. A smoking, lifeless, radioactive landscape - purged of infidels and secular humanists - is Paradise for Rapture-impaired theocrats. Christian theocrats, if victorious in a modern Crusade against Islamic fundamentalism, would bring us a hellish Heaven on earth indistinguishable from the Caliphate.

A Principled Accommodation, of course, is the most sensible option. In order to be "principled," the accommodation would have to be bloc-negotiated. The second biggest advantage bin Laden has going for him - greater even than idiotic American leadership - is Nationalism. The best way to neutralize this advantage, short of ridding ourselves of the nation-state, would be a negotiated "East is East and West is West" settlement. All of the countries of the Islamic World would have to get together to hammer out a unified negotiating position. All of the Western, historically Christian countries (and Israel) would have to do likewise. Then, the bargaining would commence. The West needs the petroleum, but would prefer to not soak up the excess(politically unstable) population of the Islamic World. That world often faces shortages in food production. The secular modernizers need to import heavy machinery and technology. They would rather not import the cultural garbage - the fashions, the music, the films - of the West. The West could demonstrate good faith by imposing a Jefferson-style export embargo on the cultural garbage. The Islamic World could demonstrate good faith by repatriating its religious fundamentalists. Etc., etc. The negotiating vista is panoramic.

The decision to attack Iraq defied two basic precepts of foreign policy. First - a nation always seeks to keep its enemies balanced against each other. Second - in titanic struggles - the nation must identify its primary enemy. Secondary enemies, willing to fight the primary enemy, must become allies.

Shortly after 9/11, our President identified an Axis of Evil - North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. One - actively, aggressively, and publicly - was working to obtain weapons of mass destruction. The second was, secretly and mendaciously, attempting to do the same. The third had used WMD prematurely, in a domestic dispute, bringing upon itself an internationally monitored inspections regime. Complicating all this is the fact that Iran and Iraq share a long border. Iran has double the population. More than half of Iraq's population are Shi'a Muslims, dominant in Iran. 90% of Iraq's petroleum is extracted from the Shi'a region. Classic balance of power Realpolitik urged s slight tilt in favor of Iraq. The Reagan Administration, recognizing this reality, so tilted. In 1983, during the Christmas season, Donald Rumsfeld showed up in Baghdad with a $500,000,000 goodie bag for Saddam.

Prior to the invasion, the power relationship vis-a-vis Iraq and Iran was fundamentally the same. Iran still had a much larger population. The Shi'a Muslims of Iraq still looked to the ayatollahs of Iran for spiritual guidance. Obviously, the chief beneficiary of the bludgeoning of Saddam's secular Iraq would be the Iranian theocracy.

It also merits noting that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. The President was so informed of this in his daily brief of September 21, 2001. Osama bin Laden, a stateless Sunni fundamentalist, orchestrated 9/11. In 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait, Osama begged permission of the Saudi royal family to bring his mujahideen fighters from Afghanistan, certain he could expel Saddam's infidels. The royal family coolly dismissed his offer and called upon the United States to rescue them. Osama went off the deep end when foreign fighters - most of them Christian infidels - took up quarters on sacred Saudi soil.

Saddam and Osama inherit a regional ideological dispute going back to the rebellion of the Young Turks a century ago. It is a bitter, violent feud. Secular modernizers, like Saddam, are natural allies against Osama and the fundamentalist terrorists - our primary enemy (just like Stalin was a natural ally against Hitler, our primary enemy during World War II).

What considerations could possibly negate these fundamentals? The neo-conservatives argued that a functioning democracy in Iraq would transform the entire region into a Jeffersonian utopia (a curious twist of the domino theory of the 1950s). Sounds delicious on the face of it, but when one takes a clear-headed look at the obstacles, it looks more and more like an excursion into the stratosphere of wishful thinking, a recipe for disaster. The execution of such a plan, running counter to the eternal verities of foreign policy, would have to be implemented flawlessly to stand any chance whatsoever. The objects of that plan - the Shi'a, the Sunni, and the Kurds - would have to meekly submit to foreign re-engineering of their society.

Instead, the United States, led by the neo-cons, made mistake after mistake. We acted unilaterally, alienating our friends and energizing our foes. Our leaders dismissed the advice of the multi-agency Iraq Assessment Group, which warned that high troop levels would have to be maintained, postwar, to quell insurgency. Our lack of troops, coupled with the dismissal of Iraq's army and police forces (de-Ba'athification) led to looting, a sure-fire way to alienate the propertied, productive people. (Celebrating that looting as the prerogative of a free people, as our Secretary of Defense did, was an instance of verbal diarrhea polluting the entire war.)

Our leaders ignored insurgency theory, which teaches that a small, localized resistance (like Malaya during the 50s) takes about 9 years to put down. A high-level insurgency will take 30 years to put down. Rather than prepare the American people for this kind of sustained effort, our Leader dressed up in a flight suit and celebrated victory prematurely.

More mistakes followed. De-Ba'athification was a mistake of mythic proportions. Imagine giving 400,000 armed men pink slips on the same day! The mind boggles at the inspired lunacy of such a decision. Restricting reconstruction projects to political contributors eroded bi-partisan (and non-partisan) support for the war. Poor accounting for those projects, resulting in the waste of $8,000,000,000 plus, rewarded the most rapacious people in Iraq, slowing reconstruction to a crawl. Retaining Saddam's torture center at Abu Ghraib was more inspired lunacy.

Neo-Conservative leaders (backed up by the lunatic right wing radio echo chamber) who blended this toxic Kool-Aid, curiously, share a common biography. Few have any direct experience of war, having taken advantage of family connections or the college deferment program to avoid service in Vietnam. Instead, they stayed home muttering bitter imprecations against the liberal media and urging the lily-livered politicians to nuke the gooks. They've been waiting decades to show everyone how real men deal with brown-skinned primitives. But, we drank the Kool-Aid. The gun they held to our heads wasn't loaded.

Now that the neo-cons have faked us out and manipulated us into this brain-dead war, they say we must stay the course - a classic example of failing in order to succeed. If we cut and run, the damage to American prestige would be devastating (especially having given the world the finger in the run-up to the war). Securing Iraq would require at least a quarter of a million troops. The counter-insurgency formula actually calls for more like half a million. Meanwhile, the war is draining the Social Security Trust Fund. The hyper-rich scream bloody murder when anyone suggests they should give back their tax cuts. All of this "support our troops" from the right wing loonies is just verbal diarrhea. So, our leaders sit around hoping for a miracle. They've staked American prestige on a sideshow, a diversion from the War on Terror.

One of the more irrational right wing nuts, Melanie Morgan, actually blurted: "If we don't win in Iraq , we are going to lose America." What funky weed has she been smoking? Capitulation in Iraq does not mean the capitulation of America. Does anyone really believe that bin Laden's murderous fundamentalists purpose to rule America? Why is there so much hyper-ventilating about bin Laden trying to destroy the American way of life. Clearly, his primary aim is to stop the penetration of Western materialism into the Islamic World. He does not seek our unconditional surrender. But capitulation in Iraq would expose us as a paper tiger to the Islamic World. It would be wise to get ahead of this, diplomatically, by proposing a Principled Accommodation. That would mean admitting we have made a colossal mistake. God would smile on such an admission. (Chronicles II, 12:7, "They have humbled themselves, therefore I will not destroy them.")

A Principled Accommodation could be dressed up to look a lot like Victory. But, it's not. To defeat Islamic Fundamentalism, we must face the fact that the system of competing Nation-States is an abject failure. In a world where 2 billion people go to bed hungry every night, $900,000,000,000 is immolated on the funeral pyre of defense spending. This priority of swords over ploughshares - the inevitable priority of the Nation-State - is roundly and systematically condemned throughout the Bible. (Jeremiah 25:31 for instance - "the Lord hath a controversy with the nations...") Worshiping the graven images of nationalism leads to a mass grave. Now is the time to tear up the Charter of the United Nations, just as the United States tore up the Articles of Confederation. Just as the United States empowered itself with a Constitution creating competent central authority, the United Nations must write a Constitution transforming it into an elected, representative, and Sovereign body. Such a body would be able to act legitimately against Terrorism.

George W. Bush is a Diving Instrument. An elected, representative, and Sovereign United Nations cannot emerge until the United States fails. The last six years - with neo-con misadventures in foreign affairs and trillions of dollars of new debt - has speeded up that process a hundredfold.

Let's have no more aimless chatter about a Strategy for Victory. Like the American Civil War, the aims of the War on Terror must elevate beyond national self-preservation. Humanity, especially the hundreds of millions of veiled women in the Islamic World, victims of clitorectomies, must be given "a new birth of freedom." With the United States discredited, only an elected, representative and Sovereign United Nations can serve as the midwife.