Ah, the New York Times.  Once the paper of record, now the paper that has broken all records for idiocy and irrelevance brings us the ruminations of a dozen “Americans who don’t labor in politics or the media” on “what they’d do if they were president.”

Searching for, “ ideas that might challenge or inspire, ” Jesse Kornbluth assembled a group of 12 illuminati and asked them what they would do if they lived in the White House.  The responses, which come from professors, authors, a CEO, a nun, the president of something called the Children’s Zone in Harlem, an artist, an inventor and an astrophysicist, read like a perverse combination of Rainbow Fish and Pedro’s campaign speech from Napolean Dynamite. (Vote for me and your wildest dreams will come true.) 

 One numbskull (a Harvard professor, no less) said he would “lead a campaign against the skyboxification of American life…” It seems the professor thinks that people are too separated from each other.  Rich people, sheltered in their skyboxes, don’t get out and rub elbows with the poor, he says.  ”The affluent retreat from public schools, the military, and other public institutions, leaving fewer and fewer class-mixing places.”

 Ah yes, “class-mixing places.” Like Harvard, right?  Two tips for you, professor.  First, the mixing of the races has nothing to do with the presidency.  Second, to borrow from the very embodiment of race (and gender) mixing, Michael Jackson - if you want to make a change, don’t wait to become president.  Start with the man in the mirror.  Step away from your skybox job at Harvard, and spend some time teaching at a community college.  We’ll all benefit from your example. 

 The next suggestion is from a poetess, and it’s worth quoting in its entirety.

I’d grant the very rich the boon of helping them help others, as a form of gratitude for their good fortune. I’d also connect every creative writing program with a hospital, a school, a library, a prison, a neighborhood center — workshops in the supermarkets! (“Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!”)

You’d grant the very rich (according to whose definition?) the boon of helping them help others…  Is there a reeducation camp somewhere in your plan?  So you’d force them to “help others,” right?  Because they don’t already?  Where does Bill Gates’ $10 billion donation to charity (29 January, 2010) fit into your calculations? And you’d connect every creative writing program with a hospital?  Sure, because people in hospitals have nothing better to do than help people learn to write.  As for connecting them with schools – that’s a novel idea and I approve wholeheartedly.  You might want to rethink that part about connecting them to prisons; I see tragedy just over that horizon.  Or were you thinking of just low-security joints, like the ones where you’ll send the very rich who refuse to accept your generous boon?  As for the aisles full of husbands, avocados, tomatoes and whatnot.  I’ll admit it.  I have no idea what you’re talking about.

 The next contributor said, 

 I’d tell the nation that I was powerless to control the war machine, Wall Street, big oil and the other interests that run the country, and I would urge Americans to form a new political party not beholden to them.

I’m not even going to bother with that one.  All I can say is, good luck running on the “powerless” ticket.

 The CEO’s contribution was slightly better.  He at least acknowledged that our economy isn’t a zero-sum game, but then he said he would  ”appoint a blue-ribbon committee” to “imagine innovative industries,” which, of course, would be aided by tax code that was supportive of sustainable industries.  How about this; if you’re ever president, just get out of the way.  A free-market economy doesn’t need a blue ribbon committee to come up with innovative industries.  People will do that for themselves if government isn’t intervening in every aspect of their lives, and if they aren’t being punished for their success.  (Take note of that, poetess.) 

 Maybe one of the best responses came from this Pepperdine University professor. 

“With my staff, I would decide what my administration was for…”

Wow.  You need your staff to tell you what you stand for?  And you intend to figure that out AFTER you’re elected?  The article doesn’t mention what he teaches.  I wonder if he knows, or if he’s still trying to figure it out.

The next contributor is all about being a president with ”passionate clarity.”  Her presidency would be only one term, and it would feature “a stable and productive economy; an environmentally viable planet; a humane, efficient government capable of educating its young and protecting its vulnerable members.” How can I argue with any of that?  After so many years of presidents who stood against those things, it’s refreshing to see a president in favor of Utopia for a change.  And to think she’ll do all that in one term.  Awesome!  Then we can all have ponies!

This is the part where I’m going to make people mad.  I don’t mean to, but it’s going to happen and I’m powerless to stop it, because I’m going to criticize a nun.  Yes, there are no holds barred here.  Mr. K’s next prospective president is a nun, writing from the Holy Wisdom Monastery in Wisconsin.  And if what she says is passing itself off as wisdom there, then I hold out little hope for her and her sisters, because if she were president she would,

 ”invest half of our defense budget in children, young people and in energy conservation…”

I’m just going to leave it at that, ok?  There’s no sense kicking the sister while she’s down.  And besides, there’s much more fun to be had with the president of the Children’s Zone, who is all about spreading “sacrifice,” updating our “social contract,” and paying our country back.  I’m all for renegotiating the social contract.  In fact, if he’s referring to the New Deal, I think it should be done away with altogether.  What bothers me most about this input is the subtle implication throughout that we owe the government.  Wrong.  Backwards.  Dangerous.  Do away with the notion that we work for the government.  Strip away all the bureaus, departments, and agencies that have accumulated along the nation’s arteries for decades.  Do away with entitlement and the idea that government can distribute largess.  That’s the kind of “sacrifice” we need, but I don’t think that’s what he’s referring to.

The ninth contributor had this to say,

“I would invite all of the members of Congress to join me in an improvisation retreat. We would spend the time practicing saying “yes” to each other and really listening to one another’s offers.”

I’m supposing she is only suggesting practicing saying “yes” now that Congressman Anthony Weiner is out of office.  There’s more, of course, and some of it’s even sillier, but you have better things to do, don’t you? 

 Reading the tenth contribution is probably not among those better things, so let me summarize it for you.  This is from a painter, who’s done some very nice landscapes and portraits, and has won quite a lot of acclaim for his work.  This is good, because he should never be president.  He says that legislators should be required to live outside the US for two weeks.  He doesn’t say why.  Nor does he seem to realize that they do this anyway.  They usually call those “fact-finding” trips, or some such thing, and they always find a way to make taxpayers foot the bill.  I could muster some enthusiasm for his idea if those legislators stayed wherever they went, but otherwise I don’t think it’s a good idea.

 The next-to-last (You’re relieved, aren’t you? ) suggestion comes from the inventor, who says schools should “get rid of binary right and wrong answers,” because, “Experimentation is learning.” Here’s an empirical study to test his theory.   You’re in a cage with a grizzly bear and a rifle.  Would you like to have been taught how to load and fire the rifle, or would you prefer to experiment?  Yes, experimentation is learning, but I would like the guy who works the cash register to understand the binary right and wrongness of making change.  Call me old-fashioned.

 Thankfully, the astrophysicist disagrees with the inventor.  “… objective realities matter,” he tells us.  And I must confess I’m relieved to hear it.  If elected, he tells us, his job would be to “bring an objective reality to the electorate so it could choose the right leaders in the first place.” I’m all for that.  Jefferson (or Franklin, or both of them) is credited with having said that a republic relies on an educated, virtuous population and I agree that, to a large extent, our current situation is due to a voting population whose understanding of our republic seems to be inversely proportional to the number of people eligible to cast ballots.  At least two generations have been raised to think that government can and should provide for them, and we are reaping the fruits of that deception now.

And that brings me to the underlying theme of these 12 statements.  Despite their obvious educations, not a single one of their contributors seems to have a clue about what the role of president is supposed to be.  Not a single person referred to the Constitution, and not a single person mentioned the primary responsibility of the republic’s chief executive, which is, first and foremost to maintain the nation’s security. 

 Our nation’s founders never intended the president to be focused on the daily lives of Americans.  He (or She) was intended, as was the entire federal government, to be focused outwardly.  To represent us among the nations and to keep us secure from depredation.  It was never expected that a President of the United States would concern himself with education, distribution of wealth, or class-mixing.  (Is it just me, or is that not an abhorrent phrase?) None of that is the president’s job, and none of it should be.  Education, the accrual and distribution of wealth, association  – these are the personal concerns of free men and women.  They are the responsibilities of those who are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.  Government that claims these duties for itself is by definition tyranny, something these twelve, Mr. Kornruth, and the New York Times would do well to understand.

Just as it used to be fashionable to talk about the “Revolution in Military Affairs,” defense experts and analysts are now talking about “Counter Insurgency” as the new way of waging war. At the NATO Operational Planning Course in Oberammergau, Germany, and at the Joint Combined Warfare School in Norfolk, Virginia, students learn not about operational planning for warfare, but about planning to cope with insurgencies after combat operations are complete. That each course seems to take for granted our success in major combat operations is cause enough for concern, but a less obvious issue is what this says about our nation’s changing attitude regarding war, and how far that attitude has shifted since the founding of our republic. From President Thomas Jefferson, who built the US Navy to fight the Barbary Pirates, to President William Jefferson Clinton, whose National Security Strategy deepened our commitment to Military Operations Other Than War, to President Barack Obama, whose approach to Libya is making new law, US notions about war have moved farther and farther away from constitutional precepts. For anyone who swore to defend the Constitution, this should be a matter of interest.

There is little in the Constitution that suggests our founding fathers recognized what we now refer to as the spectrum of armed conflict. But the problem is not that our founders failed to equip our leadership for that broad range of activities. The problem is that they never intended us to apply a grey scale to what they saw as a black and white issue. The Constitution recognizes the necessity of war, and sets forth the process for declaring it. What it does not recognize is the state of violent un-war that we have come to accept as normal.

President Roosevelt’s description of December 7th, 1941, as a “day that will live in infamy,” has passed into public memory, but what few recall is that he uttered those words during a joint session of Congress, at which he asked for a declaration of war against the Axis powers. Within an hour, his request had been granted, and the United States focused the totality of its energies on defeating her newly declared enemies. Although we have been involved in considerable military efforts in the intervening 70 years, no other president has repeated that request. Also, not coincidentally, we have never been as focused, or as united in our efforts as we were during the years of World War II.

We entered a state of violent un-war in 1950, with the “police action” in Korea. In the three years of active fighting there we lost 25,600 lives. As if this weren’t enough, there were two other casualties as well, the original intent of the authors of the Constitution, who could not have conceived that such an extensive effort could have been made without a declaration of war, and the notion of war as a unifying national effort, which could not help but wither in the absence of a declaration.

While there may be compelling political reasons to refrain from declaring war, it remains to be seen whether their gains outweigh the disadvantages that come from deviating from the Constitution. Aside from contributing to a growing disregard for the rule of law itself, there are immediate and practical problems that arise from the start. In failing to declare war, we limit ourselves in every way, and we give a free hand to those who oppose us.

This is because the declaration of war is more than just a formality. Not only does it send an unambiguous message to those with whom you intend to fight, providing one last chance for them to meet your demands, but the declaration of war is also a message to ourselves, calling us to unify politically, economically, and emotionally. It is not for nothing that it is Congress that is charged with the responsibility to declare war. In a body known more for deliberation than for deliberate action, a declaration serves to pin them down. But fail to call it war, and we can be certain that neither Congress, nor the US population, nor the strategic levels of our military will be able to fight it as one. War, we know, is supposed to be Hell, but the media and the public are led to expect that contingency operations, and nation building, and Military Operations Other Than War shouldn’t be. The media, which were largely cooperative in the Second World War, see no reason to be so in engagements that are less than war. They (perhaps rightly so) convey a more cynical view of non-war, a view that affects public perception and helps shape political support – or lack of it – for the effort.

 With a skeptical press, a public that is not unified, and politicians who are concerned with making popular choices, we cannot help but be unprepared when the IEDs start dismantling our resolve. We are unprepared because, in the failure to declare war, we have already ceded the initiative, and broadcast a message that tells our enemy and the world that we are unwilling to do whatever it takes to win. Instead of war, we will conduct counter insurgency, but we have failed to recognize a basic fact of life: Insurgency is war, fought at your enemy’s initiative.

And how do we respond to that initiative? With one hand we try to destroy (as we should) but since we are not at war, we try to build with the other hand simultaneously. This does not work. Counter Insurgency doctrine calls for civil efforts to separate the population from the insurgents, but this cannot be done with schools and roads and other bribes. Even if it could, none of our gains would be meaningful, because we would always face the possibility that our enemy could outbid us. Instead, we must convince populations that harboring insurgents is too costly and too dangerous, and the only way to do that is to inflict a lot of pain. My southern relations have no love for Sherman, but even they would agree that he was right about one thing. To end a war quickly, you have to burn your own path to the sea, and much of what you burn through will be civilian infrastructure. This necessity of war is not recognized in counter insurgency, or Military Operations Other Than War.

So failing to follow the Constitution leads us to half-hearted military efforts. This, in turn, leads directly to an inability to bring those efforts to a satisfactory close. If you do not wage war in a manner that is sufficiently brutal, you will undoubtedly fail to press what remains of the enemy’s leadership for a public, complete, and unconditional surrender. This is deeply unfortunate, because nothing else will work to give the population permission to cease its resistance. In the Second World War, we expected tremendous resistance in the Japanese homeland, and when resistance failed, we expected wholesale suicides. We had neither, because we had the presence of mind to make a public ceremony of the Japanese surrender, and because the emperor himself addressed the Japanese people by radio, and told them the war was over. More recently, we have made war (or none-war, if you please) on people who have suffered for years under brutal dictators. Despite the hardening effects of that suffering on their societies, we expected them to give up after only a few hours of battle. We thought that Iraqis, who for years feared crossing the street without permission from Saddam Hussein, would suddenly shift their support to us when he went into hiding. Then we expected it would happen when he died. We’re still wondering why we don’t enjoy broader support from Iraqis. It’s because, no matter how much they feared their leader, he was still THEIR leader, and absent an official surrender from him or his representative, they were left without orders to stop fighting. To put it into Oprah-speak, they have no closure. Without closure, without permission to stop being what they’ve been for 40 years, or, in the case of the Japanese, for centuries, they find it very difficult to make the psychological leap.

We’re of no help to them in making that leap if, while we’re trying to destroy insurgents, we’re building schools and digging wells. We should be doing nothing of the kind. Suffering is what is needed to make the population shift its perspective, and alleviating the suffering at the same time we’re administering it does not help. The Japanese people went from preferring suicide to laying down their arms and accepting occupation because they had suffered grievously first, which made the surrender acceptable and meaningful. If we had been passing out lead suits and airdropping food at the same time we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our message would have been seriously muddled. It’s no different in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else.

As MacArthur demonstrated, there is plenty of time for magnanimity after the surrender. After the surrender, kindness means something. It’s appreciated. How else can we account for MacArthur’s popularity in Japan after the war? Before the surrender though, these well-intended gestures are seen as a sign of weakness, and they are skillfully exploited.

If our presidents returned to the constitutional practice of calling upon Congress to declare war, we could have a national debate before we committed our military to “kinetic actions.” If Congress declines to honor the President’s request, then the endeavor should be shelved. And if an effort is too insignificant to merit a declaration, then it is most likely not serious enough to warrant the loss of American lives. If, however, Congress consents to declare war, that declaration will have a galvanizing effect on the population, just as it should have a sobering effect on the leadership. Failure to subject ourselves to this process erodes respect for the Constitution we swore to defend, just as it deprives us of these other beneficial effects.

Congressional leaders from both parties expressed relief today after a last-minute meeting with the President to discuss Libya.  A source who wished to remain anonymous said that the President had laid out his objectives for the North African country in a clear, concise manner and had answered legislators’ questions.  Lawmakers were particularly heartened to find that they agreed with his explanation of why the operation did not require Congressional approval.  Said the source, “The President made it clear that, since our activities in Libya are classified as humanitarian aid, there is no application of the War Powers Resolution.”

“Thank goodness for that,” said a veteran Republican senator.  Now we can get back to the the peoples’ work: growing a government that more effectively provides for peoples’ needs.” 

In other news, Libyan relief agencies lodged a complaint with NATO after a 2,000 pound laser-guided “humanitarian aid package” fell short of its target.  9 were killed in the resulting explosion.

Because we don’t begin them:

Lately there has been a significant shift in US defense doctrine.  Just as it used to be fashionable to talk about the “Revolution in Military Affairs,” defense experts and analysts are now talking about how “Counter Insurgency” is the new way of waging war.  Large force engagements, we are expected to believe, are relics of a bygone era.  Now, instead of preparing ourselves to win wars, we have accepted the premise that victory is a foregone conclusion, but that victory will be attended by endless insurgencies such as we see in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I reject this premise.  Firstly because I interpret America’s current trajectory as an invitation to large-scale war.  Secondly, and this is what I want to talk about right now, I reject the premise because we are mistaken if we accept the notion that we must address insurgencies at their own level.  This is a trap, the result of which is to cede the initiative to the insurgents, and to be drawn into a battle that obviates our strengths and highlights our weaknesses. 

The mainspring of this trap is our unwillingness to declare wars. Fail to call it war, and you can be certain that neither Congress, nor the US population, nor the strategic levels of our military will be prepared to fight it as one. War, we know, is supposed to be Hell, but contingency operations and nation building shouldn’t be. So when the IEDs start going off we are unprepared.  We are surprised because we have failed to recognize a basic fact of life: “Insurgency is nature’s way of telling you that you’re not done with major combat operations.”

Which leads me to the second thing we do wrong. Having failed to declare war, we fail to fight it like a war. With one hand we try to destroy (as we should) but with the other, we try to build simultaneously. This does not work. Counter Insurgency doctrine calls for civil efforts to separate the population from the insurgents, but this is foolishness. We must convince populations that harboring insurgents is too costly and too dangerous, and the only way to do that is to inflict a lot of pain. My southern relations have no love for Sherman, but even they would agree that he was right about one thing. To end a war quickly, you have to burn your own path to the sea, and much of what you burn through will be civilian infrastructure.

If you do not wage war in a manner that is sufficiently brutal, you will undoubtedly fail to press what remains of the enemy’s leadership for a public, complete, and unconditional surrender. This is deeply unfortunate, because nothing else will work to give the population permission to cease its resistance. In the Second World War, we expected tremendous resistance in the Japanese homeland, and when resistance failed, we expected wholesale suicides. We had neither, because we had the presence of mind to make a public ceremony of the Japanese surrender, and because the emperor himself addressed the Japanese people by radio, and told them the war was over.  More recently, we have made war (or none-war, if you please) on people who have suffered for years under brutal dictators.  Despite the hardening effects of that suffering on their societies, we expected them to give up after only a few hours of battle. We thought that Iraqis, who for years feared crossing the street without permission from Saddam Hussein, would suddenly shift their support to us when he went into hiding. Then we expected it would happen when he died. We’re still wondering why we don’t enjoy broader support from Iraqis. It’s because, no matter how much they feared their leader, he was still THEIR leader, and absent an official surrender from him, they were left without orders to stop fighting. To put it into Oprah-speak, they have no closure. Without closure, without permission to stop being what they’ve been for 40 years, or, in the case of the Japanese, for centuries, they find it very difficult to make the psychological leap.

We’re of no help to them in making that leap if, while we’re trying to destroy insurgents, we’re building schools and digging wells. We should be doing nothing of the kind. Suffering is what is needed to make the population shift its perspective, and alleviating the suffering at the same time we’re administering it does not help. The Japanese people went from preferring suicide to laying down their arms and accepting occupation because they had suffered grievously first, which made the surrender acceptable and meaningful. If we had been passing out lead suits and airdropping food at the same time we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our message would have been seriously muddled. It’s no different in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As MacArthur demonstrated, there is plenty of time for magnanimity after the surrender.  After the surrender, kindness means something. It’s appreciated. How else can we account for MacArthur’s popularity in Japan after the war? Before the surrender though, these well-intended gestures are seen as a sign of weakness, and they are skillfully exploited.

*****?

If our presidents returned to the practice of calling upon Congress to declare war, we could have a national debate before we committed our military to “kinetic” actions.  If Congress declines to honor the President’s request, then the endeavor should be shelved.  And if an effort is too insignificant to merit a declaration, then it is most likely not serious enough to warrant the loss of American lives.  If, however, Congress consents to declare war, that declaration will have a galvanizing effect on the population, just as it should have a sobering effect on the leadership.  Failure to subject ourselves to this process deprives us of these effects, and leaves us ill-prepared politically and emotionally for the brutality that awaits us.  It is this ill-preparedness, rather than a shift in the fundamental nature of warfare that leaves us unable to end our current wars. 

The New York Times no doubt expected to take some flak for its publication Monday of an Op-ed piece by terrorist Mahmoud Abbas, but one doubts whether this was what they had in mind. On Tuesday, spokesmen for despotic ruler of Zimbabwe and platinum-earning rap artist Robert (Kronic) Mugabe issued a statement decrying the publication in light of the fact that the Old Gray Lady has rejected every one of Mugabe’s numerous submissions, despite the fact they were all written in rhyme. “In Zimbabwe,” the spokesman said, “we have eradicated the oppression of the white man, but it’s clear that the same cannot be said for the New York Times.”

On the same day, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran and “Mo” of Mugabe’s globally popular rap group, “Kronic Mo-Go,” made his own protest known, asserting that the ‘Times was not only racist, but Islama-phobic as well. “There can be no question,” Mo said, “that if I were a Jew, my letters to the editors would all have been published, instead of being shamelessly suppressed. Likewise with my cartoons.”

Today saw the third strike against the paper. Leader of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea, Kim Jong Il, posted a video on You Tube, in which he excoriated the Times for its failure to share his enlightenment with the impoverished people of the decadent western world. Kim, who appeared to be naked in the clip, rolled in pans of bright pigments before flinging himself onto large sheets of rice paper, creating art which, he said, “demonstrated the virtue and energy of the people of the Peoples’ Republic,” while reciting free verse that questioned the intelligence and lineage of New York Times’ publisher “Pinch” Sulzberger.

Some things never change.  After holding them in prison for only two years, including time served awaiting trial, the Yemeni government is releasing Saddam Hussein al-Rimi and Rami Hermel Hans.  Al-Rimi and Hans, who is originally from Germany, were convicted of carrying out terrorist attacks on behalf of al-Qaeda, one of which was a bombing that resulted in the deaths of eight Spanish tourists in 2007.

This is standard operating procedure for the Yemeni government.  Nearly every arrest of al-Qaeda members in Yemen has been followed by either a quiet release or a prison escape on a scale so large that it had to have been an inside job.  Even when the Yemeni government claims to have killed major al-Qaeda figures, those same men are often featured as dramatic arrests in news releases several months later.  Either resurrections are fairly commonplace in Yemen, or it is a matter of routine for the government to claim counter terror credit to which it is not entitled.  In spite of all this, President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been referred to repeatedly by the US government as an ally in the war on terror.  In an exceptionally naive assessment of the strength of this allegiance, the US and other western nations have provided weapons and training to Yemeni counter terrorism forces, with the assurances of President Saleh that none would be used for purposes other than suppressing al Qaeda. 

Surprise!  Almost immediately after receiving their diplomas, one of the first groups of Counter Terror experts was deployed by Saleh to the north of Yemen, where they were thrown into battle against the Houthi rebels.  This mission, which was regime protection, not counter terrorism, was directly counter to Saleh’s promise.  Not surprisingly, because the CT forces were trained for completely different conditions, they suffered embarrassing losses.

Not to let mendacity spoil a good thing, nations like the US and the UK redoubled their efforts in Yemen, contributing more weapons and training in the hopes that Yemen, against all historical evidence to the contrary, would dedicate itself to the eradication of al-Qaeda.  Instead, CT weapons and trainees were used to suppress peaceful protests aimed at forcing President Saleh out of office.

America seems to have gotten the message.  As pointed out by Yemen expert Jane Novak, recently released documents suggest that the US suspended weapons shipments in February, when it became clear that the regime was murdering its citizens as they protested. 

Better late than never, but why have we dallied with Saleh at all?  It is an open secret that his regime has long enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with al-Qaeda; there is no veracity to claims that he is an ally in any sense of the word.  Neither is he any boon to his own people.  When he should have been preparing his economy for the impending collapse of his oil reserves, he and his cronies have been systematically stripping everything of worth from the country, pocketing foreign aid, and leaving his nation destitute.  Anyone who has the nerve to protest is either bought off or beaten down. 

Other regimes, like that of Hosni Mubarak, former President of Egypt, at least gave us something for our contributions.  We may have sullied our name by supporting him in his thugishness, but for all his problems, he at least maintained peace with Israel.  In Yemen though, our aid has bought us nothing more than illusions, while forming in the minds of Yemenis a lasting impression of our association with a criminal regime.

Pakistan’s so-called leader Pervez Musharraf is vexed. 

He’s upset – not that his nation remains an example for third-world nations of how not to conduct their affairs, and not because his country is a cesspool of corruption and inefficiency.  He’s embarassed - not because he can’t account for the millions of dollars in foreign aid his nation has received, and not because his intelligence agencies can’t seem to figure out what side they’re on, and have been revealed as having helped hide the recently departed Osama bin Laden.

He’s not bothered by any of these problems, but he’s peeved that American troops violated the sovereignty of Pakistan in conducting the raid that killed the world’s most wanted terrorist.  He has been overheard whimpering:

It would have been far better if Pakistani special services group had operated and conducted the mission.

To which one must reply – yes, it certainly would have.  But they didn’t.  Instead, the government of Pakistan provided aid and shelter to the man they should have killed or captured.  Here’s an important message for Mr. Musharraf – If you harbor men like Bin Laden, your sovereignty means nothing to me.  You forfeit your right to whine about the sanctity of your borders when you harbor within them transnational terrorists. 

Deal with it.

I’ve had my suspicions for a while now, but this settles it.  The President referred to “carnival barkers” in his most recent speech.  Hardly common parlance for a presidential speech; it probably induced a double-take on the part of the presidential teleprompter.

But if you read this blog, as I now know President Obama does, you know that just four short posts ago, I referred to my secret source within the administration, and divulged that source’s code name – wait for it -

The Optimisic Conservative is reporting that the White House is threatening, in the event of a government shutdown, to interrupt pay for active duty military members.  This would mean that the 15 April paycheck would contain payment only for duty up to 8 April.

There are dozens of readily apparent reasons why this is a bad idea, and almost all of them have to do with the scores of thousands of men and women who are deployed, and whose families are dealing with all manner of problems in their absence.  The one thing those families should be able to count on without question is that the government will honor its word and pay the members who are out there getting shot at.  Families of deployed members have to deal with all kinds of uncertainty.  Wondering whether they’ll be able to count on their paycheck should never – ever – be added to the list of worries.

Much farther down on the list of concerns is this small matter:   I’m supposed to go on temporary duty assignment soon. The way this works is, I pay all expenses up-front with my government credit card, and I’m reimbursed at the government’s convenience when I file a travel voucher upon my return.

If I’m not being paid for the time being, I’m still supposed to lend the government money to send me on temporary duty, and I’ll still be expected to pay that credit card bill when it comes due – paycheck or no paycheck.

If I refuse to go, I’m failing to obey orders. If I go, I may incur a debt for the government that it could very well refuse to repay in a timely manner.  That, of course, could impact my career.

If Joseph Heller were alive, this would make it into a new edition of Catch 22.

Yesterday I interviewed a high-ranking source in the administration who wishes to remain anonymous.  To protect his identity, I will refer to him by the clever code name, Carnival Worker. 

Carnival Worker and I met in one of those out-of-the-way bistros a block or two from Embassy Row, where he believed the wait staff would be less likely to recognize him from his frequent TV appearances.  There, during a time-limited kinetic engagement of medium rare porterhouse steaks and Caesar salads, I asked him, “How do you characterize the Obama Doctrine?”

Carnival Worker made a credible show of choking on a crouton, but to one with journalistic instincts such as mine, it was clearly a stall for time.  I offered the Heimlich maneuver, but he declined.  I waited.  He took a large gulp of the passable house red, “What do you mean,” he rasped, “How do I characterize it?” even though it was obvious he knew exactly what I meant.

I spoke very slowly, in case the crouton had interrupted the flow of oxygen to his brain, “How do you characterize it – describe it.  Put a label on it for me.”

Blank look. 

I was beginning to worry just a little about that crouton, but my ever-skeptical journo-instincts still told he was being coy.   “When people talk about the ‘Bush Doctrine’ it’s pretty clear what is meant – the whole ‘If you’re not with us you’re against us, preemptive strike, black and white worldview’ sort of thing,” I explained.  “How do you describe the doctrine that’s guiding the administration’s foreign policies?”

Carnival Worker patted his lips with his napkin.  I sensed that, for the briefest of moments, he was about to mop his brow as well.  Instead, he took another slug of wine.  “Look,” he said, and mustered up his best condescending, patiently tolerant sort of smile, “One of the reasons we’re in such a mess these days is that the previous administration had that sound bite, one-size-fits-all, good vs. evil Unified Theory, labels, and stereotypes view of how everything works.  We’re trying to get past all that.”

“You were in the press then,” I pointed out.  “Wasn’t the press instrumental in packaging that view of the Bush Doctrine?”

He traced furrows in the linen napkin with his fork, and watched as balsamic vinaigrette made abstract patterns in the material. 

“Looking backward doesn’t do us any good,” he said.  “What this administration has always been about is going forward – new policies designed to bring us forward into a new era of global prosperity and security.” He looked very pleased with himself when he’d said that, so pleased, in fact, that I couldn’t resist.

“Did you want to write that down before you forget it?” I offered.

He began to reach into his suit jacket for a pen, but caught himself just in time.  Instead, he carefully arranged his silverware so left side and right side implements were equidistant from his plate. 

“So if they’re all about moving forward and devising new strategies,” I said, “Why does the administration have so many old heads running the show – at least on the international front?  Gates, Clinton, Biden – They’ve been around since the Punic Wars.”

Carnival Worker anxiously searched his salad bowl for a crouton, but none were left.  I figured it was time to get us back on track.

 “What I’m looking for is the central principle that drives this administration’s foreign policy.  Certainly, a label will still be just a label, but if it’s built around a core principle, that can be helpful, right?”

Carnival Worker took a deep breath.  He mopped his brow with his napkin, leaving a smear of wine and salad dressing across his forehead.  I would have told him, but it lent him the air of a youthful Gorbachev, and added to the likelihood that he would not be recognized.  “The President’s guiding principle is the spread of democracy and freedom.”

“Is that what led to the decision to engage in Libya?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, with a deep nod, and only a tiny bit of smugness.

“Then how has it informed our decision to remain hands-off in Iran, and Syria, and Yemen,” I wondered aloud. 

I felt we were closing in on something important here.  I almost leaned forward in anticipation, but I was prevented by the fear of dragging my tie across my plate, and by the look of discomfort on my companion’s face.  I knew it couldn’t be a crouton; I wondered if it could be an allergic reaction.

He opened his mouth and his lips moved, but no sounds issued forth.  He looked a lot like a bass that had been momentarily relieved to have a hook removed from its mouth, only to discover that it could no longer breathe.  That is, if you can imagine a bass with wine and salad dressing smeared across its brow.

I was about to ask our waiter if there was an atropine injector in the house when Carnival Worker finally began to speak. 

“That’s different,” he said. 

Long ago, I read in a detective novel that silence can be an interrogator’s best weapon.  I said nothing, but nodded, hoping he would continue.  After a deep breath, he did.

“I mean,” he said.

I favored him with an encouraging smile, and a look that I hoped mirrored that of a student, awaiting wisdom from a master.

“Well really, it’s…” he tried again, and gestured with his hands spread, palms up, over the table.  The movement, as far as I could tell, was meant to suggest that the answer was self-evident – not worth explaining – but to me it seemed more the act of a supplicant in some ancient temple ritual.  I maintained my look of hopeful ignorance and kept my mouth shut.

“Look,” he said, seeming to suddenly find inspiration in his perfectly-spaced tableware, “You can’t really expect to find a one-size-fits-all approach to these situations.  They have to be examined in the light of their unique contexts.”

I nodded, and smiled as if relieved to finally achieve enlightenment.  “So what you’re saying,” I proceeded slowly, “is that the principle of supporting democracy and freedom depends on the circumstances.”

“Exactly!” he said.

“I suppose that makes sense,” I volunteered.  “We can’t be expected to stick our nose in everybody’s business, after all.”

“That’s right; we can’t.  We don’t have the resources for it, since the Bush administration left us over-tasked. 

“But if it depends on the circumstances,” I said, “it’s not really a principle, is it?”

His face fell. 

“Which brings us back to the original question.  Is there a principle at work here, or is the administration making it up as it goes along?”

“Well of course,” he began, only to be interrupted by his telephone. 

“Yes, hello,” he snapped.  “Oh, hello Robert,” he said, dispensing a “wait a minute” wave in my direction. 

“Yes, I’m enjoying the new job just fine.  Stressed?  No, I’m not feeling particularly stressed.  What about you?  How’s the yoga working?”

There was a brief burble of unintelligible phone speak at the other end, but I couldn’t make it out.

“I’m sorry to hear that.  Maybe you should avoid starches for a while.”

“Ask about you?  No, nobody’s asked about you.” 

I’m not sure, but I thought I heard sobbing at the other end.

“Hey, look at the time,” Carnival Worker said suddenly, “I’m due to call the President.  Gotta go.  Glad you got in touch.  Yeah.  Right.  You bet.  Thanks for calling.” He snapped the phone shut and dropped it like it had scorched his hand.

“Where were we?” he asked.

“You were just about to explain the role of public opinion in determining our foreign policy,” I said.

“Ah, yes,” he said, but then he stopped.  “Was I really?” he asked.

I made a show of consulting my notes.  “I certainly looks that way to me,” I said.

He looked confused, and a little unsure of how to proceed.  He began with the bass impersonation again.  The waitress arrived with the check, and despite his obvious disorientation, he still managed to indicate that I was buying. 

“Thanks for lunch,” he said, hastily getting to his feet.  He added, “I hope we can do this again soon,” but something made me question his sincerity.

From the excellent Jane Novak at Armies of Liberation comes this answer to Ambassador Feierstein’s question, “What do the Yemeni protestors want?”

It’s not that difficult, really.  They are asking for the dissolution of the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, for the implementation of a transition plan, which has been drafted and published, and for the establishment of a constitutional convention in order to build a government that safeguards their personal freedoms.

In their request for the dissolution of Saleh’s regime, they seek an end to a dictatorship that has flaunted law and public welfare at every opportunity, and that has raised to an art form the usurpation of public services to private ends.  Unfortunately, the western world has been complicit in this, hoping that financial aid and military hardware would be used by the Saleh regime to combat Al Qaeda and Somali pirates, despite continuous signs that Saleh enjoys a symbiotic relationship with both, and despite the fact that the coast guard vessels provided by the west are openly rented out as escorts by Lotus Maritime Security Services and Gulf of Aden Group Transits Ltd, which are front groups for Saleh’s son and nephew.  According to Abdullah Alasnag, Yemen’s former Foreign Minister, now in exile in Saudi Arabia,

The Coast Guard was also involved in diesel smuggling to Somali pirates in the area. Although the American embassy was involved in the removal of the previous Yemeni Coast Guard commander in 2007, the operation continues today and has expanded to include sales of arms, GPS, and radar equipment.

In addition to being far cozier with pirates than we would like, the Saleh regime has always concealed the true nature of its relationship with Al Qaeda, which it uses as an enforcer against those who resist presidential authority.  The main challenger for Saleh’s job, General Ali Mohsen al Ahmer, recruited Yemenis to fight with Bin Laden in Afghanistan, and then found homes and jobs for them when they returned from the fight.  He used them to support the regime in 1994, when southern Yemen tried to break away to form its own government, and all signs indicate that ties are still strong between them.

Although Saleh skillfully portrays himself as an ally to the west in its war on terror, it is clear that he has no intention of taking any real action against them.  His government steadfastly resisted US efforts to investigate the bombing of the USS Cole, and almost every capture or killing of al Qaeda members by the Yemeni Security Forces is followed closely by an escape, a release, or a miraculous resurrection. 

The bottom line in Yemen is that a dictator with no redeeming qualities is about to go the way of all tyrants.  He is opposed, not by merely 1,000 rebels as recent reports indicate may be the case in Libya, but by the population of Houthis in the north, with whom he has waged war for the last six years, and by the population of the south, which has long chafed under his punishing rule.   Members of his government and his military leaders have abandoned him, and even his tribe, which has long been enriched by his presidency, has called for his departure. 

Yemen, then, especially compared with Libya, provides a very clear picture of a regime about to cease.  We know who the rebels are, and, also unlike in Libya, we know they are not aligned with Al Qaeda.  They are not asking for arms.  They are not asking for no fly zones.  They are asking for a peaceful transition from the Saleh regime to a transitional government.  Perversely, according to Yemen’s former Foreign Minister, in recent negotiations regarding that transition, is has been the Americans who

…insisted that key figures including Ahmed Ali Saleh, the President’s son, as well as Yahya Mohammed Saleh and Amar Mohammed Saleh, his nephews who are currently heading the CSF/CTU and the National security agency respectively, are not relieved of duty.  This American insistence seemed bewildering to the attendees, specially considering that the record of these commanders and Saleh in fighting terrorism is full of failures, corruption, and misleading intelligence which has yielded little if any results to show for compared to the aid Saleh has received over the years.  In this regard, there has been no approach by the west towards the opposition or the youth with respect to security matters which is wrong since it seems that Saleh is well on his way out of power.

We seem to have jumped into Libya without knowing who we were supporting, and without examining closely their chances for succeeding.  In Yemen, can it be that we’re making exactly the opposite mistake?

Today’s Wall Street Journal contained one of the saddest stories I’ve read in a long time.  It details the horrendous state of the education system here in Portugal, where just 28% of people between 25 and 64 years of age completed high school.

Author Charles Forelle ties the state of education to Portugal’s weak economy, as well as to the negligence of her former dictator, Salazar, all of which is fair enough, as far as it goes.  But in doing so, he misses a significant point.  Many of the undereducated people he interviews see no reason to get an education and this, I think is where the story lies.  In a country whose dictator, and now, whose socialist system, tells you that the role of government is to provide for people, there is very little incentive to go to school.

In our capitalist system, with all of its flaws, there is still a strong incentive for investing in one’s education.  From high school on, every successfully completed year of school, especially if one chooses one’s area of specialization carefully, can pay significant dividends in terms of income.  And although we are rapidly becoming an entitlement society, there are still large numbers of Americans who consider it their responsibility to prepare themselves to compete in a labor market.

Contrast that with Portugal which, although I love it for many reasons, I must say is afflicted with a nearly terminal lack of initiative.  House hunting here is a daunting task, because most landlords cannot be bothered to clean or paint or do much property maintenance until AFTER they receive a deposit from a prospective tenant.  It doesn’t matter to them that a cleaner, nicer-looking home could sell or rent more easily.  For the most part, they are unwilling to put forth effort in advance of the payoff.  This, as far as I can tell, stems first from the Salazar regime, where citizens were supposed to look to the dictator as the provider of all good things, and now the government without Salazar, which citizens are supposed to see as the provider of all good things.

If government exists to provide you with housing, food, and healthcare, why in the world would you waste your time in a classroom when the beach is beckoning?  Why learn trigonometry, for crying out loud, when at the end of the road, British tourist girls are rolling towels out onto the sand?  If everything can be had simply by voting the right party into power, or by going on strike, education is for chumps.  This is the true cost of socialism.  By promising everything, it deprives people of incentives for self-improvement.  It may take a generation or two, and its effects vary somewhat depending on the culture in which they are exhibited, but ultimately, the system that promises to provide everything takes away the one thing that matters – the drive to do, or make, or become something. 

At the end of the article we get just a glimpse of this.  A 16 year-old dropout – not in a forgotten rainforest village, and not in a shotgun shack in the Ozarks, but in 21st Century Europe, mind you – is asked if he might someday like to go to college, and study engineering.  “It’s never crossed my mind,” He said. ”I don’t know anyone who went.”

But really, that’s not much of an accomplishment.

 On the 15th of February, I wrote this response to a Wall Street Journal article that had, in my opinion, failed to reflect the dangers inherent in the Muslim Brotherhood’s surge to the forefront of Egyptian politics.

Today, the benighted New York Times informs us that Gee, the Muslim Brotherhood is taking over the Egyptian revolution – and that might not be a good thing!  “The Muslim Brotherhood,” we are told, “an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes.”  

Well, better late than never, but one would think that, arriving at the obvious conclusion more than a month later than yours truly, the Old Gray Lady might compensate for her tardiness with wisdom.  Or insight.  Or something.  One would be disappointed, because instead, we are subjected to more of the thoughtless schlock that so effectively raised my ire in the Wall Street Journal article.  For instance, we are treated to the highly ironic, and completely unchallenged assertion that the Muslim Brotherhood, “has never been a revolutionary movement,” which would come as quite a shock, I’m sure, to Hassan al Banna, who founded the Brotherhood in part, to toss the British out of Egypt.  It would also surprise Sayid Qutb, the Brotherhood’s most prominent theologian during the time that the Brotherhood joined with the Gamal Abdul Nasser and the Free Officers to overthrow the monarchy.  It would surprise anyone, as a matter of fact, who knew the slightest bit about the Brotherhood, such as their motto, which states,

Allah is our objective.

The Prophet is our leader.

Qur’an is our law.

Jihad is our way.

Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.

In an apparent campaign to derive income from stating the obvious, the article trundles on, spewing out gems like, “…there is growing evidence of the Brotherhood’s rise and the overpowering force of Islam.”

The Times goes on to explain that the Muslim Brotherhood, comprised as it is of a network of civil institutions, (as I mentioned a month and a half ago) is in a better position to benefit from early elections because it has a base – and access to that base – that newer parties can only dream of.  So when a referendum was offered for early elections, nobody with a brain should have been surprised that the Brotherhood pushed for a yes vote, and couched its campaign in religious terms.  “A banner hung by the Muslim Brotherhood in a square in Alexandria instructed voters that it was their “religious duty” to vote “yes” on the amendments.” (Somebody call Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who famously assured us  the the Brotherhood was “largely secular.”)

The point of all this is that nothing here should come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about Islam or the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Brothers, in building civic institutions and in meeting the needs of their members and their members’ families since 1928, have been doing nothing more amazing than putting their motto into practice.  In raising successive generations of Egyptians who are delivered by Brotherhood doctors, grow to attend Brotherhood schools, and are provided with jobs by the Brotherhood, the leaders of the organization are no less revolutionary than were members who used violence to accomplish their goals.  A revolution is no less a revolution if it overthrows the current system quietly, is it?  So now that circumstances have paved a path to power for the Brotherhood, it should be expected that the emergent Egypt will reflect the values of the motto written above.  When someone tells you what they’re going to do and then does it ceaselessly in the face of opposition for 83 years, it would be remarkable if they stopped doing it when they rose to power.  I hate to break this to the New York Times, but if you’re only just now catching on to all this, you really shouldn’t be bringing that fact to our attention.

?

CNN is reporting that Somali pirates have killed the four Americans aboard the yacht “Quest.” 

When news outlets began reporting that one of the couples aboard was sailing around the world to distribute Bibles, I was very concerned that their lives were in greater jeopardy than those of most hostages of Somali pirates.  You may recall that I mentioned in a recent post that pirates had begun, in some cases, executing hostages for the crime of not being Muslim.

We’ll probably never know whether that was why their captors killed them, if indeed, the reports of their deaths are true, but I couldn’t help wondering when the press started carrying the story, if it wouldn’t have been wise to delay discussing that aspect of their trip.  What would it have hurt? 

And don’t tell me about the duty of the press to publish every detail, come what may.  In recent posts I’ve shown how western media go out of their way to avoid addressing the possibility of Islamic motivations to certain crimes.  If they’re willing to exercise such discretion, it seems they could have done so in this case, and maybe bought some time for these unfortunate people.

It’s good to know that in a changing world, there are still some things that remain constant.  We may not be able to rely on the value of the dollar and our republic may be sliding into chaos, but as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, Jimmy Carter will have a new book to flog, and he’ll have no idea what he’s talking about. 

At a University of Texas lecture yesterday, former President Carter, whose primary career success was to have fended off an attack by a killer rabbit, expressed his faith that everything in Egypt will turn out just fine.  “The demonstrators will not accept anything less than honest, fair and open elections,” he said, and then shamelessly added that the Carter Center, which has grown infamous for rubber-stamping rigged elections, would be as ”involved as possible” in that process.  That’s all Egypt needs.

 Despite the immense weight of history and human nature to the contrary, Carter seems to think it likely that the Egyptian military will relinquish control when the time is right.   ”My guess is the (Egyptian) military leaders don’t want to give up their political influence or power,” Carter said. “But the military has seen what the demonstrators have done and will most likely submit to their demands.”  “My guess,” indeed.  What he doesn’t mention is that it’s thanks to his misguided policies that we’re all guessing these days.  It was, after all, Carter who gutted our international intelligence capabilities, and we’ve been hopelessly behind ever since. 

 Nor does the former president find anything to be concerned about if it’s the Muslim Brotherhood to whom the military hands the reins.  “I think the Muslim Brotherhood is not anything to be afraid of in the upcoming (Egyptian) political situation and the evolution I see as most likely,” Carter said. “They will be subsumed in the overwhelming demonstration of desire for freedom and true democracy.” 

 The Muslim Brotherhood has not been subsumed by anything since it was founded in 1928.  It has endured brutal crackdowns by authoritarian regimes and increased its followership at the same time.  Its backbone in Egypt has been its establishment of civil institutions that have consistently done better than the government at providing jobs, finding homes, and caring for its members.  If true democracy is ever unleashed in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood stands more to gain than anyone, because it has been quietly at work in peoples’ daily lives for more than 80 years.  For all that time, it has been shaping the landscape that is most likely to emerge if or when the military turns over control.

 What is most amazing about Carter’s ignorance is that he seems totally unaware of the grave danger the Muslim Brotherhood poses to his only other career success, the Camp David Accords.  Brotherhood leaders have made it unmistakably clear to everyone but the former president, that an Egypt under the influence of the Brotherhood will find cause to “renegotiate” the agreement that has done more to stabilize international relationships in the Middle East than any other.

For all his fecklessness, Carter has shown a surprising ability to keep rehabilitating his image over the years, which implies at least an animal cunning as far as self-preservation is concerned.  With his naive statement about the organization that poses the single greatest threat to his legacy, he seems to have lost even that.

Today’s Wall Street Journal features an article about the Muslim Brotherhood that tries so hard to be evenhanded that it ignores facts central to the question of what the Muslim Brotherhood represents. 

Author Charles Levinson paints of a picture of a Brotherhood that is deeply divided between secularlists and Islamists, but he makes the fatal mistake of knowing too little about his topic to be able to discuss it intelligently.  He and Josh Stacher, a political science professor at Kent State University whom he quotes at length, make the all-too-common error of taking things for face value, as a result failing to understand what’s really going on.

Take this reference to the Brotherhood, for example:

They also stood up for the independence of the judiciary and pushed for press freedoms, and didn’t work to ban books or impose Islamic dress on women—moves many critics had feared.

The fact that the Brotherhood made no overt attempts to ban books or impose Islamic dress is immaterial, since through its well-developed civic institutions, it has cultivated a society that makes those demands for it.  That Egypt has become more conservative over the last decade is unquestionable.  Laws notwithstanding, women are pressured to cover themselves, and behavior that does not conform to strict Islamic standards meets with increasing opposition, even hostility on the street.  When Mr. Levinson refers to members of the Brotherhood who, “who eschew politics in favor of proselytizing Islam,” he misses the fact completely that in eschewing politics, those members have not given up the Brotherhood’s goal of an Islamic state; they are simply working toward their goal through extra-political means.

And this:

…Casting further doubts on the organization’s commitment to the separation of church and state…

There are no doubts.  The concept of separation of church and state is totally foreign to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Any doubts regarding that are fantasies cultivated in the western press. 

Mr. Levinson goes on to say:

On Wednesday, when it was still unclear whether Mr. Mubarak would step down, Essam el-Eryan, one of the only reformists currently on the group’s 12-member ruling Guidance Council, said in a statement that the group didn’t seek the establishment of an Islamic state; believed in full equality for women and Christians; and wouldn’t attempt to abrogate the Camp David peace treaty with Israel—all tenets espoused by Brotherhood leaders over the decades. Mr. el-Eryan said those Brothers who had suggested otherwise in their writings and public comments in recent days and years had been misunderstood or weren’t speaking for the organization.

But does nothing to address the patent falsehoods in this statement.  First of all, there is no misunderstanding here.  The Muslim Brotherhood has maintained its existence on the notion of installing an Islamic state and on the destruction of Israel.  Its founding statements and the bulk of its internal documents confirm this.  Furthermore, while statements about the equality of women and Christians in Islamic countries are common, they are always made in the context of the Islamic state, which places such limitations on that ”equality” as to make it nonexistent. 

What Mr. Levinson fails to address is the fact that any debate between factions of the Brotherhood take place within an Islamic context and Islam has definite things to say about the concepts being discussed.  This is not a western debate.  So while a “reformist” faction of the Brotherhood may state that it’s for equality of the sexes and tolerance of Christians, equality and tolerance must and will be defined, not as Americans define those terms, but as the Koran defines them, and there is a world of difference in those definitions.  This world goes unexplored by Mr. Levinson, and this leaves his readers at a considerable disadvantage.

BBC News published this report on the failure of EU’s catch-and-release tactics to stem the rising tide of Somali piracy. 

The position of NAVFOR, the EU naval task force assigned to – well, I don’t really know what they’re assigned to do, since it doesn’t seem to be stopping piracy – their position, regardless of their mission, seems to be that it’s better to do nothing than take the chance that someone might get hurt.  This in spite of the fact that pirates are ranging farther, using more complicated tactics and weaponry, and holding more ships and hostages than ever (30 ships and 700 hostages, according to the article.) “When you use the military, people get hurt, that’s a fact,” says the task force spokesman, Wing Commander Paddy O’Kennedy.  To which I would reply, “Yes.  That’s the whole point.  Hurt the pirates badly enough, and piracy becomes, once again, the sole domain of Johnny Depp.”

But the Wing Commander was referring to captain of the Samho Jewellry, the hijacked South Korean merchant vessel that was recently freed by South Korean commandos.  During the rescue, in which eight pirates were killed and five captured, the captain was shot in the stomach.  This is, of course, lamentable, even in view of the lopsided score at game’s end, but to say simply that – using the military endangers hostages’ lives – is to give a skewed view of the board.  First of all, it’s not as if doing nothing ensures hostages’ safety; two hostages were executed recently for the capital crime of failing to be Muslim, and others have died of malnutrition during their long captivity.  (Hostages are generally held from 6 to 9 months, during which they sometimes peform the dual role of ballast and human shields, rotting in the holds of their own vessels, which the pirates use as mother ships. 

But saying all this is to set up a false dilema.  The truth of the matter is that we could effectively stop piracy in a fortnight if anyone had the guts, and it wouldn’t have to endanger any hostages.  The locations on the coast of Somalia that serve as jumping-off points for pirates are well known.  They are small camps on desert beaches, where pirates maintain, fuel, and arm their skiffs in preparation for their sorties.  These camps are free of obfuscating foliage and separate from civilian settlements.  They are a targeteer’s dream. 

Any number of platforms suggest themselves for the pirate eradication mission I have in mind, but my personal favorite is the venerable AC-130 Gunship.  Orbit a Spectre (That’s the gunship’s nickname, mind you, not Arlen Specter, although I’d be happy to send him to Somalia if anyone thought it would help.)  off the coast on a few clear balmy Somali nights, and let it dispense a little old-school Counter Piracy.  I have a feeling that would sort things out in a hurry.

Of course, there are endless lines of lawyers waiting to tell us that firing on the Somali Coast is an act of war.  I have no problem with that.  As a matter of fact, that would just be putting a legitmate title on what they’ve been doing to us all along.  Besides, attacking the pirate bases is exactly what Thomas Jefferson did over two hundred years ago, and I think it’s no coincidence that they haven’t been much of a problem until recent times.

Oh, and a note to Wing Commander O’Kennedy – If I’m ever held by pirates, you have my permission to shoot me in the stomach if it saves me dying of scurvy or being executed for being a Christian.

The Muslim Brotherhood was formed in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al Bana. Its goal was to establish an Islamic state in Egypt. By that, it was intended that Shariah law would govern every aspect of human interaction in that state, from matters of personal hygiene to banking regulations. At a time when colonialism was still the distinguishing characteristic in the land, the Muslim Brotherhood ingratiated itself with the Egyptian people through charitable and beneficent institutions, which continue to this day, and which have earned a better reputation than the government for providing jobs, homes, and food.

With the help of deserters and escaped former German officers of WWII, it trained men and armed them to kill Jews in 1948. (If you can find a copy, read the book Bedouin Doctor.)

The Brotherhood helped the Free Officers of the Egyptian Army overthrow the monarchy, but when it became clear that Gamal Abdul Nasser would not institute a Shariah state in Egypt, the Brotherhood set itself in opposition to began to him too. They tried to assassinate him in 1954, and instead made him more popular than ever. Five hundred of the Brothers found themselves in prison, and many more fled to other countries as a result. Saudi Arabia, which was badly in need of teachers and doctors at that time, became a new home for many of them. It is believed that some of Bin Laden’s teachers were Muslim Brothers.

Still other members found their way to the America, where the Muslim Brotherhood has adapted itself amazingly well to our legal and political system, and has established a large number of lobbying and advocacy groups that are doing their best to bring Shariah law to the United States. Among these, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is the most prominent. The Brotherhood even has several members serving as Congressional staffers. Through their work, avowed terrorists have lead Muslim prayer services in our own capital building. (Read Muslim Mafia.)

Sayyid Qutb, an author and literary critic, was one of those members who found himself in prison in Egypt. While in the care of the state, he wrote his manifesto, Milestones, which would earn him a permanent place in the pantheon of militant Islamists, and would provide justification for a generation of misfits seeking to work out their issues violently.

Because al Bana and Qutb considered that, in a true Islamic state, differences between Sunni and Shia would become inconsequential (a view that was shared by Ayatollah Khomeini) The Muslim Brotherhood, although its members are Sunni, has never had a problem working with the Shia. This is how the Brotherhood manages to be the bridge between Sunni militantism and Iranian-backed anti-Israel groups like Hizballah. Their common desire for the wholesale slaughter of Jews helps cement that bond.

After long imprisonment of many of its most influential members, the Muslim Brotherhood renounced its calls for the violent overthrow of the Egyptian government, but it has never given up its goal of instituting Shariah law in Egypt. Just as it is doing in the United States, Great Britain, and elsewhere, the Brotherhood is still marching toward that goal in Egypt, but through mainly political means.

Since their party is banned in Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood candidates run as Independents. Everyone, including the government, knows who they are. It is an open secret.

The Brothers don’t really try to conceal their identity anyway. They are often identifiable by their beards and short hair. They often cultivate a bruise in the center of their forehead as well, as an indicator of their devotion to prayer.

An important thing to remember is that whether Shariah law is brought about by politics or violent revolution makes little difference to those who find themselves enslaved by it. In order to understand the nature of this enslavement, one must realize that Islam is a legal system that includes laws about religion. It is not, as is commonly represented in the West, a religion that includes laws about other things. That view is 180 degrees out of phase with reality. There is a reason that the Arabic word “DIN,” we translate into the English word “religion” carries with it a host of meanings related to indebtedness and legal obligation. Islam is very much about submitting oneself to a system of laws, and incurring a legal indebtedness. It is not at all about a personal relationship with one’s God that is a matter of conscience.

Why don’t we know this? Islam is understood to have been revealed to Mohammed in stages. New revelations were not made available until the people were ready for them. Thus, early Quranic injunctions against killing Jews, Christians, and other “People of the Book” were abrogated by later instructions to make war on them wherever they could be found. If Allah revealed himself to Mohammed in stages, why would the Muslim Brotherhood, or any other Muslim, for that matter, not follow the same pattern, revealing only those components of Islam considered most palatable? To do otherwise would be to fail to emulate their own prophet. For this reason, most Westerners’ understanding of Islam is constricted to a very limited amount, most of which is designed to make Islam seem familiar and comfortable.

When it comes to Islam, the western press has failed to fulfill its role as a skeptic. In most cases when dealing with Islamic organizations or regimes in Muslim countries, the press has allowed those organizations or regimes to supply the narrative. You may recall how CNN buried stories of Saddam Hussein’s barbarity in order to keep their Baghdad office open and it is known, but never reported that in Yemen, Reuters’ bureau chief doubles as President Ali Saleh’s translator. Meanwhile, in the United States, organizations like CAIR have succeeded in dictating terms to the Society of Professional Journalists, dissuading them from using accurate, descriptive terms when reporting on Islamic terrorism.

So recent praise for the Brotherhood should be viewed with suspicion. The assurances that it can participate in a democratic system are based on incomplete understanding of, not only the Brotherhood, but of Shariah law as well. The are given to us by people who, as is pointed out here by professor Barry Rubin, have never read the Brotherhood’s agenda, nor listened to its speeches.  The bottom line is that to an organization whose raison d’etre is to institute a complete, comprehensive legal system based on what they consider the word of God, democratic institutions are a temporary aberration.  It is blasphemy, after all, under Islamic law to consider that man (democratic institutions) can be a source of law, since Allah is the only legitmate law-giver.  At best, democratic institutions are, to the Muslim Brotherhood, a disposable tool.  They will never consider them ends to be desired in and of themselves.

Back in 2000, I spent a month in Tunisia, brushing up on my Arabic.  Since that country has been so much in the news lately, I thought I’d post these notes from my visit.

Mohamed, my Arabic instructor, was 61 and a devout Muslim. When I met him he was eagerly anticipating his next marriage – to a 28 year old woman.  Understandably, this impending marriage was one of his favorite topics of conversation.  He was almost as fond of reminding me that, when he lived in Libya, he had been Qaddafi’s best translator.

Professor Mohamed was convinced that the crowning achievement of his life would be to convert me to Islam.  The evidence of this inevitability was the revelation that my son’s name is Zachariah.  I tried several times to tell him that it’s Zachary, but he corrected me every time.  Mohamed was a nice guy who taught enthusiastically, which was his greatest deficiency.  When he got excited he either quoted long passages of the Koran (which he compelled me to write down) or he lapsed into French.  I’m not sure which was worse.

One day Mohamed and I were exploring how to make a statement negative in Arabic.  There are several ways of doing this, depending on verb tense and other factors.  I’d grown accustomed to professor Mohamed veering off in strange directions and he had just done so to discuss his impending marriage again.  I was well accustomed to this topic of conversation, but this time he varied the theme by including a disturbingly graphic description of the steps he’s taking to ensure that he’ll be physically capable of meeting the renewed demands of married life. Directly after this lengthy exploration of the upcoming nuptials he steered us abruptly back on task with the segue, “So, let us discuss for negation.” 

If you try saying “fornegation” aloud in a heavy Arabic accent, you’ll understand what a shock I sustained.

Of course, linguistic differences aren’t the greatest challenge you meet when you travel.  They’re just one of the easiest to talk about in polite company.  When it comes to visiting foreign places, what everyone secretly wonders about but hardly ever mentions is the question of where one goes to the bathroom.

To be fair, I should emphasize that Tunisia is way ahead of the rest of the Dark Continent when it comes to porcelain technology.  I was confronted with very few bombardier toilets, those awkward contrivances where you simply squat over a hole in the floor.  They say these are better for you than sit-on toilets; that squatting strengthens the “pelvic floor” (whatever that is) and is less likely to cause hemorrhoids.  I can’t say one way or the other.  All I know is that it’s an awkward way to conduct business, and it’s no place to enjoy a good book.  Thankfully, much of Tunisia seems to have evolved beyond that stage.

But Tunisians still have some work to do before they make it into the first world, or even the second world for that matter.  This is plain when you visit even the most elegant toilets in the country.  Whether they are in the finest homes or restaurants, they almost always lack that hallmark of the civilized society we call toilet paper.

In the bathrooms I’m talking about, there is not even a place to hang the paper.  Instead, you find protruding from a spigot next to the toilet a flexible length of tubing with a spray head.  I’ll not explain how this apparatus is used.  I will say only that the water is always cold, and even when clean, you are still wet when all is said and done.

I devised three ways to solve this problem.  First, I tried never to use the bathroom when away from home. 

My second approach was to use only the bathroom in the lobby of the Hotel Belvedere.  The Belvedere is a magical place.  People there smiled at me with hope shining in their eyes.  A cynic would say it’s because they were potential émigrés to Canada and they mistook me for an interviewer on break.  I, however, put it down to the fact that the red-uniformed minions of the hotel regularly clean the bathrooms in the lobby and stock them with good old-fashioned two-ply American ingenuity.  If I owned the hotel, I would trumpet this in my advertising.  I would erect billboards and hire spots in European travel magazines saying, “The Hotel Belvedere, Tunis, is the place to go.”

But as I ranged farther from the hotel, I needed to make other arrangements.  I resolved to always carry an emergency supply of paper.  (I actually found some for sale at the “Super Marché,” which is strange, because I can’t imagine who’s buying it.)  Of course, one’s noblest goals are not always guaranteed success, and I discovered one day while deep in a labyrinthine bazaar that I had seriously under-stocked.  The timing was unfortunate, as I was in a facility that had been built during the Ottoman Empire and did not seem to have been cleaned since. 

Once I learned how much toilet paper to carry my attention shifted to a different level in the hierarchy of needs.  Transportation became the issue.

Traffic in Tunisia is hellish.  Friends at the embassy insisted that I should not even consider driving.  If they could have been any more emphatic, they would have been so regarding driving at night.  This is when people with an underdeveloped sense of distance, mass, and impact are further impaired by the lack of streetlights, bright clothing, and sense of self preservation.  Dark-clothed Tunisians lurk in the shadows and launch themselves in front of cars like jackrabbits.  And that’s just the pedestrians. Drivers are bound by no laws of courtesy or reason.  I think the national motto is “make your own lane.” 

In the capital, Tunis, a street with two lanes is an invitation to drive 5 abreast, and there is no restraint when it comes to passing.  It is a national law that you must pass everyone ahead of you at all costs.  Failure to pass is probably the only behavior for which you can receive a ticket. 

Despite their wild driving, no self-respecting Tunisian would ever wear a seatbelt.  I astounded all my friends by digging the belts out of the recesses of their car seats and buckling myself in.  My friend Khalil made a gesture of solidarity once by draping his lap belt across his arm, but his heart was not in it and he soon gave up.  This is to be expected from a man who has developed an extensive list of better places for his hands to be than the steering wheel of the car.

Among the better uses for his hands are brushing nonexistent crumbs from his lap, rubbing his eyes, (That’s the one that scares me the most.) stretching, scratching, and adjusting the radio. (Yes, it can be done with both hands.)  Sometimes Anisa, his wife, points out that he should touch the wheel occasionally (not to steer the car, but just as a ritual to placate the gods of traffic) to which he responds by gripping it with his knees.

The taxis here are built by the French.  Renaults, Citroens, and Peugeots fill the streets and this makes perfect sense.  Who else could design and build a vehicle to be driven in a completely irrational manner and that is likely to be driven just as fast in reverse as forward? 

I believe Tunisian cabbies are bus drivers who have fallen from grace.  Whereas bus drivers rule the road and, by virtue of the size of their vehicles and the number of souls contained therein, can intimidate any driver of any vehicle, Tunisian cabbies only think they can.  They beetle along at frightening speed (having created their own lane) in search of a vehicular obstruction, such as the bumper of a car that is waiting for the light to turn green.  They blaze up to the halted car with no apparent intention of stopping, flashing their high beams and honking their horn as if it were the Chinese New Year.  If a bus does this, things happen.  The irresistible force dislodges the immovable object and the driver at the red light launches himself into heavy traffic rather than being crushed by tons of bus and sweaty commuters.  This hardly ever works for taxi drivers though, and they resent it.  They fume behind the car in front of them and gesticulate wildly.  They abandon their lane and create a new one, sometimes in oncoming traffic. 

One cabby seemed an exception to this rule.  He was pleasant and easy going.  He seemed at peace with the traffic around us, and he kept our speed subsonic.  Everything was relaxed for the first few moments of our trip, but all this changed when I remembered to put on my seatbelt.  In Tunisia I always did this with an apologetic explanation.  “It’s not you, it’s me,” I would explain.  Or, “It’s just a bad habit of mine.  I have complete faith in you and all Tunisian drivers.”  If none of those worked I would say, “I wear this seatbelt because I am a weak person,” with a doleful expression and hands outspread, begging for understanding.  That usually soothed even the most ruffled cabby egos, but not this one.  My driver became visibly upset.  His swarthy complexion became mottled with rage, and he flogged the accelerator to demonstrate his displeasure.  Our flimsy Peugeot rocketed down the street slewing violently from side to side and passing traffic like it was going backwards.  I have a vivid memory of a face on a billboard – a Tunisian Natasha Kinski look-alike selling feminine hygiene products – stretched into that of a leering monster by the astronomical speed.  The cabby’s voice cracked with rage and despair as he shouted and grappled with me for the buckle of the seatbelt.  I contemplated hurling myself from the speeding car into a pile of newspaper and rotting vegetables, but by the time the idea had suggested itself, I was several light years beyond my intended landing spot.  I had no choice.  I allowed him to release the buckle.  The seatbelt slowly retracted into where it had rested since the car left the factory, taking with it most of my driver’s agitation.  What was left, he dealt with admirably by humming and occasionally pounding his fist on the outside of his door.

Buses weren’t much better.  I felt more endangered in cabs, but often took the risk to avoid being pressed into the malodorous masses of compacted commuters sweltering on every bus.  Besides, taxis seemed to run on a more predictable schedule.  I discovered this when meeting my Arabic tutor in downtown Tunis one morning.  I wanted to get there early, so I climbed aboard a bus a half-hour earlier than I would have normally.  The bus idled at the stop for thirty minutes while the driver and conductor talked, smoked, and cast dark glances at passing schoolgirls.

And had I driven myself, even assuming I could avoid a fiery crash, things would not have been much better.  My tutor, a very nice lady who sweats profusely and looks like a Muslim version of Andy Griffith’s Aunt Bea, was commonly forty minutes late for our sessions because she could never find a place to park.  On one occasion I stood on the corner and watched as she drove around the block again and again.  I shouted encouragement to her in Arabic, but it wasn’t much of a tutoring session.  When she finally found a spot (And she wasn’t driving a Lincoln Town Car, you know; it was one of those tiny Euro cars that she could’ve tucked under her arm and carried through the double doors of the Hotel Belvedere.) When she finally found a spot (on the sidewalk) I told her that she must sell her car and invest in a good donkey.  Gas is very expensive and cars are hard to park, but she could tie the donkey right in front of the Cuban embassy and it could eat the bougainvillea that hangs over the wall.  She listened very politely, but I could tell she wasn’t taking me seriously.  It’s the downside of being a foreigner here, I guess.

Now that I’m home it occurs to me that I should have just jumped into the car as she went by.  That way she could have tutored me while she drove.  It’s not like she was hanging onto the steering wheel anyway.

While in every country there are certain sights that no traveler should miss (the Pyramids at Giza, Egypt, and the ancient city of Petra, Jordan, for instance) I’m usually not very interested in tourist draws.  I’d much rather spend time with people and see what their lives are like.  Professor Mohamed would have none of this.  In addition to his other talents, he was also a certified tour guide, fully accredited by the government of Tunisia.  In view of this, he insisted on taking up as much of my free time as possible with tours of the officially recognized touristic sites, of which there are too many to recount here.  I will say only that these places, the Bardo, and National Museums among them, are stuffed floor to ceiling with wonderful and ancient artifacts.  They positively bulge with displays of mosaics, pottery shards, and statuary predating Hannibal, and each, without exception, left me with the same feeling of disorientation I experience in Walmart.  The rows seem to close in on me and everything on the shelves begins to look the same.  Within minutes I can’t tell whether I’m seeing something for the first time or have been wandering in circles for hours.

So I was relieved when, after only a half day in the ruins of Carthage, the professor begged my forgiveness and headed off to an appointment.  I immediately left the tourist site and headed down a shaded lane.  Taxis honked and flashed their lights, hoping I was a fare, but having just escaped tourism vertigo I was in no hurry to risk my life in traffic.  Tall trees overhung the widening street as it led me out of town.  Sheep and goats grazed on nearby hills.  Across the street from me a stone and metal wall enclosed an area I imagined to be an estate, but when I reached the gate I saw a sign that read, “North African American Cemetery And Memorial.”

I’d heard there was an American WWII cemetery near Carthage, but I hadn’t planned on visiting.  Seeing as I was already there though, I thought I’d take a look.  I was completely unprepared for what I found.  Stepping through the gate was like entering another world.  Gone was dusty, hectic, slapdash North Africa; replaced by 27 acres of ordered peace and tranquility.  A flight of stone steps led down to a flawless carpet of grass – the kind of grass that would be envied by the keeper of a golf course, except for the 2,840 white marble crosses and stars of David that rise from it in perfect rank and file. 

The sea of white markers draws you down those stairs and the perfect order of the rows compels you to wander the walkways between them.  And while you wander, you can’t help but read the names.

It was the names that got me.  The crosses and the stars, the perfect order – the hush, through which penetrated only the sound of the luffing flag, these all combined to form an atmosphere of reverence, but the names broke my heart.  Figures of stone remain just that, no matter how beautifully wrought, but names brought flesh to the bones beneath the grass.  Italian, Polish, Danish, Irish – names of every origin, but all American, and every one of them a story interrupted.  Each a father, son, brother, husband, or lover who would never again be held by those who loved them, never tell the story of the battle in which they died.

And when I tired of walking the rows (and to be truthful, it was less a question of fatigue than of my eyes being too full of tears to read more names) I found a wall covered with even more.  On this wall were carved the 3,724 names of the missing from battles since the Second World War until the first Gulf War, those for whom not even a cross or star marks the location of their remains, those whose story while also interrupted, even so, (more cruelly) continues.  For perhaps the only thing worse than knowing your loved one lies in a far-off grave is not knowing where they lie.

Some people will travel halfway round the world, and spend their whole time there seeking out people from their own country.  I’ve never understood that, always preferring to lose myself on the hillsides or alleys where I’m more likely to meet a local shepherd or mechanic than another American.  That has always, to my mind, made for more memorable trips.  Tunisia, though, will remain the exception to that rule.  The memories of my visit there and the friendships that I formed are forever eclipsed by the afternoon I spent in the company of more than two thousand of my countrymen.