Starting with Juan Cole
Shaikh Khalaf al-`Ulyan, a member of the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front, emphasized that “The American presence in the country is dependent on the security situation. A timetable for withdrawal has become an urgent need at the present moment, even if some of the political blocs do not support an immediate withdrawal.” He added, “The request by the president of the republic for a long-term American presence contravenes the prerogatives of the president of the state, which are guaranteed by the text of the Iraqi constitution, since the question of whether the US troops stay or go must be debated in parliament.” He insisted that the Iraqi Accord Front “will never permit the establishment of permanent bases on Iraqi soil on the pretext of protecting it.” He accused unnamed political forces of deliberately provoking a security crisis in Iraq in order to keep the American presence.
Dc: there has been increasing talk that the US has not wanted a solution in Iraq. His needs careful thought.
Qusay Abdul Wahhab of the Sadr Movement said that Talabani’s statements contradict the express desires of the parliamentary blocs that are demanding the departure of the Occupation forces from the country. He pointed to the joint coordination among these blocs to arrive at a specific instrumentality for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in the shortest time possible. He added that the plan was being worked on, and that “the parliamentary blocs will not permit the government to make [unilateral] decisions on this matter, especially since the al-Malik government promised to study the document signed by 140 MPs asking for a timetable for withdrawal and for no futher extenstion of the American military presence in the country.”
Pasted from <http://www.juancole.com/>
And, from an email without attribution,
…Islamic world are doing in common is trying to get the eyes of the world
> to focus on what they feel are neglected injustices, to destroy silence
> and hypocrisy. If someone accuses the Pope of defaming Islam, it’s
> blatantly ironic not to point out that Muslims who attack innocent
> people by association are defaming Islam too.
>
> Perhaps it is through these parades of symbolism and outrage that we
> synchronize ourselves out of duplicity and hypocrisy. A lot of people
> will condemn pedophile priests with no mention of suicide bombers.
> Others will condemn Israeli and American attacks while ignoring attacks
> by Muslims against Muslims in Iraq, or genocide in Sudan. Everyone has
> one eye open and one eye shut, and it may be through media displays of
> rage and apology that we learn to open both eyes at the same time and
> condemn all violence against innocent people simultaneously and with
> enough momentum to produce lasting change.
>
> Still, how many people will condemn the Pope but gloss over the
> deliberate use of rage and attacks on non-combatants by Islamic
> extremist groups? How many Christians will condemn Muslims as religious
> ideologues who want to destroy Christianity, while promoting the belief
> that Islam is a Satanic religion that God will destroy after it tries to
> destroy Israel? Many groups have been living in separate worlds, each
> with its own view of the other’s sins and belief in its own superiority.
> A collision of worlds is inevitable, although it may not necessarily
> require as much suffering as people like to believe. When people living
> in different worlds voluntarily cross lines and expose themselves to the
> Other, the toxic silence that leads to objectification, demonization and
> atrocity is dissolved, with less pain. The question for us is, have we
> made the Islamic and Arab worlds real to ourselves, and have we made
> ourselves real to them? When the real is denied, what fills the vacuum?
And
From TNR, a look at why
By CARLA BARANAUCKAS
September 24, 2006
NEW GERMANY, Minn.
Top Dog Country Club is emblematic of one of the most sweeping changes in the boarding kennel industry in decades, said James Krack, founder and executive director of the American Boarding Kennels Association, in Colorado Springs.
“Twenty years ago, the dog run was where the dog lived when he was in the kennel,” said Mr. Krack, who started the association 30 years ago and ran a kennel for 16 years. “Today a dog run is where he rests between activities.”
ON a sunny day in August, a half-dozen large dogs — mostly Labrador retrievers — bounded in and out of the swimming pool here at Top Dog Country Club. Others lounged on the artificial-turf lawn, or looked on with envy and vocal protests from “time out” pens on the edge of the play yard.
DC: since children are so expensive, thi is cheap.
And, Rice, this can get interesting.
What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years,” Rice said Monday during a meeting with editors and reporters at the New York Post.
- And, a book review
- Hidden Iran
Author:
Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies
Book
A groundbreaking book that reveals how the underappreciated domestic political rivalries within Iran serve to explain the country’s behavior on the world stage. A leading expert explains why we fail to understand Iran and offers a new strategy for redefining this crucial relationship.
Pasted from <http://www.cfr.org/issue/>
and
From National Review, a review of The Jewish Divide over Israel:
Dc: this above is a typical I they are against Israel they are against jewss article, this time about jews who question Israel. What about
Accusers and Defenders. From Forward, a review of David Mamet’s The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-hatred and the Jews;
And then David Mamet steps in with a whip and a sneer, to line up those recalcitrant Jews and shove them into synagogue. Mamet’s new book, “The Wicked Son,” consists of 37 brief essays on three major themes: the ineradicability of antisemitism; the rich appeal of Jewish peoplehood for those able to get with the program, and the sickness of assimilated, cosmopolitan, “self-hating” Jews. All that really holds the book together, however, are Mamet’s teeth, sinking again and again into the psychic flesh of that “wicked son” —
Who is this… freethinker, newly convinced Episcopalian, detractor of Israel, and whose approval is he courting? Does he think that his brave assertion of his racial taint, coupled with a repudiation of his people’s history, traditions, and religion, is going to win him friends anywhere?
Pasted from <http://www.forward.com/articles/the-wicked-witch-and-the-straw-man/>
Dc: neither seem to be going anywhere.
And
” Yale establishes the Yale Initiative for Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, the first center of its kind in North America.
A look indicates consideration of cultural Judaism but not political. The two have been held together to justify the later. Toady Israel is a nationalist holdover from another epoch. Judaism as a culture suffers through the connection.
And, quoted at gerat length for its importance.
From Policy Review, Tony Corn (USFSI): Clausewitz in Wonderland.
Amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics.” In the five years since the 9/11 events, the old military adage has undergone a “transformation” of its own: Amateurs, to be sure, continue to talk about strategy, but real professionals increasingly talk about — anthropology.
The first major flaw of U.S. military culture is of course “technologism” — this uniquely American contribution to the phenomenon known to anthropologists as “animism.” Infatuation with technology has led in the recent past to rhetorical self-intoxication about Network-Centric Warfare and the concomitant neglect of Culture-Centric Warfare. The second structural flaw is a Huntingtonian doctrine of civil-military relations ideally suited for the Cold War but which, given its outdated conception of “professionalism,” has outlived its usefulness and is today a major impediment to the necessary constant dialogue between the military and civilians.2
Besides the fallacy of equating jihadists with Al Qaeda alone, this static conception of the global jihad in terms of finite “stock” ignores the dynamic created by media, i.e., the cyber-mobilization as the new Levee en Masse. On what planet does the good professor live? From the Balkans to Londonistan, Europe has been, for at least a decade now, the closest thing to a “frontline” in the global jihad. In Colin Gray’s Britain today, 6 percent of the Muslim population (i.e., 100,000 individuals) think that the 7/7 London bombings were “fully justified;” 32 percent of British Muslims (half a million people) believe that “Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end;” and 40 percent want to see sharia law adopted in the uk.4
would be better inspired to meditate the truly “remarkable trinity” engineered by Arab governments for more than thirty years: natalist policies, anti-Western mass indoctrination, and mass emigration to the West. Isn’t time at least to add a chapter to On War on “demographic warfare?”5
DC: like so much, I don’t quote it because I agree, but because it is worth understanding. And comparing to other perspectives and arguments.
Since the end of the Cold War, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (which can apparently walk and chew gum at the same time) has been rethinking both conventional and irregular warfare. For the former, the pla turned to the American Mahan, not the Prussian Clausewitz; for the latter, the pla went back not only to Sun-Tzu, but also to Lawrence, Beaufre, Arquilla, Lind, etc. — anything that can be of use in the conceptual toolbox of “unrestricted warfare” (urw). In America, meanwhile, — and despite a guerilla war engineered by “Netwar” and “Fourth Generation Warfare” insurgents — the military educational establishment has continued to peddle Clausewitz or, to be more precise, an increasingly Jominized version of Clausewitz.
DC: so much to learn – and they are.
For those who naively thought that the current Iraqi predicament could safely be blamed on three dozen “neocon chickenhawks,” Thomas Ricks’s recent book will be a revelation: Failure was not the least preordained, and the military, as much as the civilians, has its share of responsibility. Talking about a military fiasco would be excessive, because it is not the U.S. military that made the two most fateful decisions (disbanding the Iraqi army in 2003; taking four months to form a government in 2006). But the fact remains, “well into 2005, the American military … didn’t imagine or prepare for the possibility that former regime members had their own ‘day-after’ plans to fight on even if they lost the conventional battle. It didn’t imagine that Iraq would become a magnet for international jihadists, so it failed to seal the borders. It didn’t imagine the Sunni tribal militias would react with such violence to the American presence, so it failed to take the pre-emptive economic and political steps to address their grievances. And it failed to understand that there were elements within the Shiite community that would use force to try to establish a theocratic system.”9
Since the proverbial military-industrial complex can always be counted on to push for a technocentric approach to war, isn’t it the duty of the military-educational complex to make sure soldiers never lose sight of the anthropocentric approach?
If, as Gray rightly points out, “strategy is — or should be, the bridge that connects military power with policy,” what kind of a bridge is On War, which devotes 600 pages to military power and next to nothing to policy? Between the “strategy for strategy’s sake” of the Clausewitzians, and the “tacticisation of strategy” of Network-Centric Warriors, genuine strategic thinking seems to be forever elusive — missing in action as much as in reflection.
Dc: these reflections also pertain to much of business and much of academic research. Valuable for 80%. I am going to continue long quotess because it is such a good education.
Why such an irrational “resistance” (in the Freudian sense) on the part of military educators? After all, it does not take an Einstein to realize that, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon, the greatest generals for 20 centuries had one thing in common: They have never read Clausewitz. And conversely, in the bloodiest century known to man, the greatest admirers of Clausewitz also have had one thing in common: They may have won a battle here and there, but they have all invariably lost all their wars. One suspects that the Prussian Party is in fact not so much interested in meditating Clausewitz (their endless exegeses of Clausewitz in the past 30 years has yielded no new insight beyond the interpretations of a Raymond Aron and a Carl Schmitt) as such, as in maintaining a “Prussian folklore” in the U.S. military. One can understand their hostilite de principe to the idea of teaching irregular warfare: from Marshall Bugeaud to General Beaufre, from Marshall Gallieni to Marshall Lyautey, from Colonel Trinquier to Lieutenant Galula, the majority of the leading theoreticians on the subject happen to be, not Prussian but — horresco referens — French. And as is well-known by anyone who gets his military history from Hollywood rather than Harvard, the French, since 1918 at least, have proven utterly incapable of fighting.14
as Raymond Aron observed long ago, it should not come as a surprise that Clausewitz could only conceive of guerrilla warfare in the form of the traditional (defensive) “guerre populaire” and not the twenty-century (offensive) “guerre revolutionnaire.”
the conceptualization of irregular warfare will take a new turn, through the combined effects of the anthropologization of military theory (Calwell, Lawrence) and the militarization of revolutionary ideology (Lenin, Trotsky).16 Meanwhile, in the field of the conventional warfare, the traditional Clausewitzian emphasis on “annihilation” and “decisive battle” will find itself challenged by Delbruck and Corbett, while Liddell Hart will bring the debate on an altogether different plane: that of Grand Strategy.
If there is a real “Revolution in Guerrilla Affairs,” then, it is not to be found in Mao’s Long March, but in the French-Algerian War (1954-1962). By 1962, the Algerian fln forces are reduced to 10,000 men, while the French regular forces include more than 100,000 Algerian volunteers. But through the clever use of media (in particular Nasser’s “Voice of the Arabs,” the al-Jazeera of the time) and high-visibility fora provided by nascent international organizations (the un, the Arab League, etc.), the Algerian fln, while thoroughly defeated militarily, will be able to level the playing field and — the asymmetry of political wills being what it is17 — to prevail politically, in a way totally unanticipated by Mao.
For another, as the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review puts it, the Long War will have to be waged across the proverbial dime spectrum, now renamed dimefil (diplomacy, information, military, economic, financial, intelligence, law enforcement).
Just as On War has little policy relevance for Muslim civil-military relations and interstate competition, so it sheds no light on another increasingly salient question: the “deep coalition” between Muslim state and nonstate actors. Though the Shiites represent only 15 percent of the Muslim world, the emerging Shiite Crescent has a formidable potential for nuisance in the region (due to both the sheer number of countries with Shiite minorities, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, and the fact that Shiite territories tend to be where the oilfields are). What is the nature of the relation between the Shiite center (Iran) and the periphery (from Iraq to Pakistan)? What is the relative weight of religious (Shiite) vs. ethnic (Persian) factors in the “deep coalition” between the Iranian State and nonstate actors (Hamas, Hezbollah)? Under what conditions could Shiites and Sunnis overcome their differences and come up with a joint grand strategy against the West? These are difficult questions, but one thing is sure: not only On War won’t give you the right answers, it won’t even lead you to ask the right questions.
some Western observers describe the China/Russia-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (sco) over Central Asia as an emerging “nato of the East.”
China’s growing global activism, from Latin America to Sub-Saharan Africa, from the Middle East to Central Asia, is bringing anything but stability in its wake, and China’s recent development of second-strike capabilities, along with the construction of giant bunkers accommodating 200,000 people, cast doubt on the “softness” of its balancing act.
In domestic politics, since the advent of the so-called “Permanent Campaign” in the late 1970s, political communication has become a job where there is “no place for amateurs.” The “ballot-box warriors” are by now fully aware of the importance of narratives. But there is today, in terms of sheer sophistication, a 30-year time lag between political communication at home and strategic communication abroad.
DC: permananet campaign? I think so, yet never thought it.
In the ongoing battle for hearts and minds, public diplomacy and information operations will continue to go nowhere fast so long as they stay on “message” instead of moving on to “narrative.” From John Arquilla to Lawrence Freedman, the best strategists have — unsuccessfully so far — tried to draw attention to this fundamental rule of strategic communication: “Opinions are shaped not so much by the information received but the constructs through which that information is interpreted and understood” (Freedman).
In the ongoing battle for hearts and minds, public diplomacy and information operations will continue to go nowhere fast so long as they stay on “message” instead of moving on to “narrative.” From John Arquilla to Lawrence Freedman, the best strategists have — unsuccessfully so far — tried to draw attention to this fundamental rule of strategic communication: “Opinions are shaped not so much by the information received but the constructs through which that information is interpreted and understood” (Freedman).
At the micro-level. As two defense intellectuals recently pointed out, “a grand counterterrorism strategy would benefit from a comprehensive consideration of the stories terrorists tell: understanding the narratives which influence the genesis, growth, maturation and transformation of terrorist organizations will enable us to better fashion a strategy for undermining the efficacy of those narratives so as to deter, disrupt and defeat terrorist groups.”27
At the meso-level. It is time to bring genuine scholarship back in the meta-narrative of twentieth-century Middle East history. Since the Arab Revolt of 1916, the history of the region has been first and foremost the history of three successive rivalries. A first rivalry between the reactionary Saudis and the progressive Hashemites (1916-1925) for the control of the Holy Sites (and of the Oily Land, as it turned out later). A second rivalry between pan-Arabist Egypt and pan-Islamist Saudi Arabia (1945-1979) for leadership in the Arab world. A third rivalry between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran (1979-today) for the leadership of the re-Islamization of the global umma.
In short, from the point of view of Muslim history, the twentieth century has been as much a “Saudi Century” as Western history has been an “American Century.” Will the twenty-first century be an “Iranian Century”? If it gave up its nuclear fantasies, it certainly could. At any rate, analysts would do well to focus on the impact of the renewed Saudi-Iranian rivalry on the region, and once and for all see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for what it once was (a sideshow but a useful alibi to maintain a “state of emergency”) and what it is fast becoming today (a probing ground to test the determination of the West).
At the macro level. The most effective retrospective meta-narratives rise to the national (or even global) level and acquire the status of “collective memories” — which, more often than not, have little to do with scholarly history. If there is one grand narrative that needs to be thoroughly deconstructed, it is that of “Western imperialism vs. Muslim victimization.” For nearly a thousand years, 711 until 1683, it was Islam which was on the offensive, and the West on the defensive, with a few sporadic counteroffensives (aka the Crusades). And it is thanks to the continuous pressure of Russia on the Ottoman empire from 1699 on that Western Europe became free to safely turn its back on the Muslim question and develop an Atlantic Civilization (Russia is the unacknowledged enabler in the Plato-to-nato narrative).28 So much for Western Imperialism, then.
DC: just smart and informed.
Need, Greed, and Creed: this “remarkable trinity” owes nothing to Clausewitz, yet has always governed the political economy of warfare in most of the world most of the time. War seems to have been the continuation of economics (as much as of politics) by other means for the better part of the past 2,000 years. At the other end of the spectrum, a traditional neglect of the economic dimension also leads Clausewitzians to forget that U.S. hegemony today rests as much on its monetary “command of the common currency” as on its military “command of the commons.”30
At a very slow pace, the train has in fact already left the station. Since the introduction of the euro in 1999, various countries have quietly begun to shift their reserve currencies and, at regular intervals, Russia, China, and various opec countries (the latter, for instance, in retaliation for the cancelled Dubai Ports deal) have threatened to continue to do so.
Like Clausewitz, Carl Schmitt is a dangerous mind — only more so. Paradoxical as it may sound, the one-time jurist of the Third Reich is today an icon among the Western leftover left and its jihadist allies, who know that they will find in Schmitt, rather than Marx, the precision-guided weapons they need against liberalism. At his best, Schmitt remains to this day the most cogent critique of liberalism as a “political theology.” And while the leftover left may hold it against him that he provided the best philosophical basis for a distinction between authoritarianism and totalitarianism, they are forever grateful to Schmitt for having put forward a proto-theory of Lawfare.
Nothing is more urgent today than a confrontation between Schmitt and Clausewitz, if only because Schmitt’s two “remarkable trinities” (Law/Politics/War and State/Movement/People) are more policy relevant than Clausewitz’s. It is Schmitt, rather than Clausewitz, who will help you understand the current subversion, through international lawfare, of the un system by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (oic) under the guise of “dialogue of civilization,” “tolerance,” “global governance,” and other niceties. For military lawyers who want to become genuine “warrior-lawyers”34, Schmitt remains the best point of departure for the elaboration of counter-Lawfare.
P
Last but not least: in an age when there is much psychobabble in the West about “identity politics,” Schmitt also offers the most coherent articulation between identity and enmity. In that respect, it is to be hoped that, in the spirit of “jointness,” the National War College and the Middle East Studies Association will sponsor a comprehensive, multi-volume study on: “The Social Construction of Enmity/Identity: The Representation of ‘Jews and Crusaders’ in the State-sponsored Schools, Mosques and Media of the 57 Countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.” That way, we will know once and for all if the global jihad is primarily the unfortunate symptom of a Sartrian, existential mal de vivre in the face of globalization, or if it is primarily a concerted, state-sponsored first phase for an assault on Western Civilization.
As for Fourth-Generation Warfare, chances are it will continue to offer precious insights. If it wants to avoid a “tacticisation of strategy,” though, it will have to bring the state back in and distinguish between premodern, modern, and postmodern states while looking at sovereignty for what it is: an “organized hypocrisy.”38 Rather than retire the concept of 4gw altogether, though, it should be given a fuller meaning, one that goes beyond the operational conduct of war and identify the epochal causes of the conflict in the perspective of the historical longue duree. To put it simply: 4gw theoreticians will have take into account that, if the global jihad can be called Fourth-Generation Warfare, it is first and foremost because it is the fourth wave of an age-old human comedy known as the “Revolution of the Saints”: Puritans, Jacobins, Bolsheviks, jihadists.39
A theo-political Revolution of the Saints, against the backdrop of an energetic Great Game, in the context of an informational Global Village. It is going to be a “long, hard slog” indeed …
DC: then come the footnotes, an education in themselves. Tough world? Are there alternatives? Can garden world survive in this world? Or does the long slog have to happen first?
Pasted from <http://www.policyreview.org/000/corn2.html>
