Is President-elect Obama Capable of Handling Violence in India?

The Wall Street Journal Online has a useful map of where the violence in Mumbai has occurred. The terrorists' orchestrated attacks involve the killing of more than 100 people and the taking of five Jewish families as hostages, including Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, at a community center. The Wall Street Journal notes that "it remains unclear who was responsible for Wednesday's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. But by Thursday, Indian officials had voiced suspicions that some of the terrorists were from Pakistan." Pakistani officials condemned the attacks, yet the training involved in an orchestrated assault could not have taken place in India. Also, "one of the attackers reportedly spoke with a Pakistani accent in a phone call to India TV."

It seems more than coincidental that the attack comes weeks after the election of Senator Barack Obama to the presidency. Even during the election, Joe Biden stated that an Obama victory would stimulate terrorist assaults. The question that comes to my mind is whether President-elect Obama will be capable of handling violence in Pakistan and India. Incompetence would not be a first for American presidents--Presidents Carter and Clinton were both inept at handling terrorists. However, there is an additional issue with respect to President-elect Obama.

In 2007 then-Senator Obama claimed that he would take a hard line on Pakistan. This position had the flavor of psychological compensation. Mr. Obama has long had close ties to Pakistan, and there are serious reasons to consider whether he will be morally capable of impartially responding to Islamic terrorism in ways that reflect American interests. Some might argue that the psychological force of cognitive dissonance, the need to resolve conflicting psychological forces, might impel President-elect Obama to be more aggressive than necessary with respect to Pakistan. However, cognitive dissonance is notoriously difficult to predict, and the response could go in the opposite direction as well--or none at all.

According to Amir Mir, of the Pakistani Rupee News, who quotes an article by Umar Chema:

"Chairman (of the Pakistani) Senate Muhammadmian Soomro may be having a friend in White House if Barak Hussain Obama finally succeeds in his presidential bid. Hardly a few people know about Soomro’s link with Obama, which he never discussed it in public. But in private interactions with influential Pakistanis here in the US, Obama disclosed that Soomro’s father was his host when he went on a hunting expedition in Jacobabad during his visit to Pakistan in 1981."

"Many say that Obama visited Pakistan: Didn’t learn anything!

"While in Karachi, Obama had stayed at the residence of his college friend, Hassan Chandio. In Jacobabad, he was the guest of Soomro family. Muhammadmian Soomro confirmed this information and said it was his first meeting with Obama.

“Yes, he had been our guest and spent three days in Jacobabad,” he told The News. Soomro, presently in the US, his second home, said an American friend had told his father, Ahmadmian Soomro, about Obama’s arrival in Pakistan and asked him to look after the American. Soomro’s father was the deputy speaker of West Pakistan Assembly and had also later served in the Senate.

"By the time Soomro’s father had hosted Obama, he was only a college student who went to Pakistan on his way from Indonesia where his mother was working with the Ford Foundation’s micro credit finance project. Also Obama’s mother was a frequent traveller to Pakistan and according to Time Magazine, she had a little bit proficiency in speaking Urdu.

"Although, Obama has not disclosed his link with Soomro, he mentioned it during his canvassing campaign while talking to a Pakistani American, Shahid Ahmad Khan, member of Board of Trustees Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

"Obama’s war mongering should be repudiated not encouraged. During the 2008 elections Senator Barack Obama listened to the hawkish members of the Bush Administration and threatened Pakistan...Pakistani Americans are a powerful lobby in the US. Pakistani-Americans ask Obama to ease rhetoric about bombing targets in Pakistan.

"...According to news reports Mr. Obama visited Pakistan. His mother had visited the country so many times that she had a working knowledge of Urdu-the national language of Pakistan as well as many Muslims in the Subcontinent.

"He had travelled with a college friend whose family used to live in Karachi.” As a matter of fact, Obama had travelled to Pakistan after leaving Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1981 to transfer to the Columbia University in New York.

"The Afghan war was at its peak at that time and the US State Department had already issued a warning for Americans travelling to Pakistan.An August 14, 2008 report by the Associated Press even alleged that Obama had actually travelled to Pakistan under his Muslim name-Barry Soetero-while using an Indonesian passport.

"As a matter of fact, Barack Obama Junior was born to Barack Obama Senior, a black Kenyan, and Ann Dunham, a white American. Barack Obama Senior and Mrs Ann Dunham were divorced when their son Obama was two.

"Obama Senior, who had died in a car accident in 1982, met his son only once after the divorce. Ann Dunham later married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian Muslim.

"A news report carried by a US-based website www.pakistaniat.com http://www.pakistaniat.com/ in Sept 2008 stated while quoting the US media that Barack Obama had many Pakistani friends during his college days, and it was friendship that brought him to Pakistan. In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama talks of having a Pakistani roommate when he moved to New York, a man he calls Sadik (his 1982 roommate at an apartment at a sixth-floor walkup on East 94th Street). Obama describes Sadik as a short, well-built Pakistani who smoked marijuana, snorted cocaine and liked to party. During his years at the Occidental College, Barack befriended Wahid Hamid, a fellow student and an immigrant from Pakistan. Wahid Hamid is now a vice president at Pepsico in New York. His third Pakistani friend was Imad Husain, a Pakistani, who is now a Boston-based banker.

"According to www.pakistaniat.com , during his Pakistan visit, Obama stayed in Karachi with the family of his college friend Hassan Chandeo. Now a self employed financial consultant living in Armonk in Westchester County of New York, Hassan Chandeo took his African-American college friend on traditional partridge hunting trips to Hyderabad, Larkana, Shikarpur and Jacobabad districts. Partridge hunting is considered a symbol of good hospitality in Sindh. Barack Obama made friends with a Sindhi politician Muhammadmian Soomro as well, who hails from the Shikarpur district of Sindh and is Senate Chairman. The newly elected American president reportedly lived at Muhammad Ali Society residence of Ahmad Mian Soomro, the father of Muhammadmian Soomro.

"Another US-based website www.freerepublic.com quoted Time Magazine on September 1, 2008, stating that Obama may have visited Pakistan again in the second half of 1980 and stayed there for a month with his mother who was an employee of the Ford Foundation and posted in Gujranwala as a microfinance consultant for an Asian Development Bank micro-credit finance project that ran from 1987 to 1992.

"The report said Mrs Dunham, who died in Hawaii-Obama’s birth place-in 1995 from ovarian cancer, used to stay at Hilton International Hotel in Lahore. She travelled daily from Lahore to Gujranwala and Obama stayed with her in the same hotel which has been already renamed as Avari Hotel, the report added."

To what degree does Obama's background color his attitudes about Pakistan? Amir Mir is uncertain. So am I.

CAIR Implicated in Terrorist Activity

Irene Alter has forwarded a link to Investors' Business Daily. A Texas jury has convicted the Holy Land Foundation of illegally financing Hamas. IBD writes:

"Over the course of the years-long case, prosecutors put more than 300 co-conspirators on notice. They include...the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which lobbies the government from its headquarters in the nation's capital.

"Wiretap evidence heard in the case for the first time put CAIR's executive director, Nihad Awad, at a Philadelphia meeting of Hamas leaders and activists secretly recorded by the FBI. Participants hatched a plot to deceive Americans and disguise payments to Hamas as it launched a campaign of terror attacks. CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad joined Hamas big shots at the summit."

Phil Orenstein on Fahad Hashmi

Phil Orenstein's trenchant article "No Terrorist Left Behind" appears in the current issue of Frontpagemag. Orenstein traces the pro-terrorist atmosphere among leftists in universities. Orenstein writes that:

"According to the indictment filed in Manhattan federal court, he (Fahad Hashmi) was charged with providing and conspiring to send money, material support and military gear including night-vision goggles to associated al Qaeda fighters in South Waziristan, Pakistan to use against United States forces in Afghanistan. The charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 50 years. Due to a violent outburst attacking arresting officers at Heathrow Airport, and shouting that he hoped they would be killed, bail was denied at a hearing and he was placed under secure lockdown."

Yet, oddly, over 500 academics have signed a petition protesting Hashmi's arrest and treatment. These same academics include a swathe of those who supported Ward Churchill's statement that the 9/11 victims were "Little Eichmanns" and many spread nonsensical lies such as the claim that the United States and George Bush perpetrated the 9/11 disaster.

Orenstein notes that:

"According to the NYPD intelligence report (2007), Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, Hashmi became radicalized while he was a student... Those who knew him described him as a quiet, bright, and caring young man who was passionate about Islam but not overzealous. However, Hashmi as well as many young Muslims in New York City struggling with their identity, often fall victim to extremist Islamic ideologies."

As well, university 9/11-deniers have attacked the distinguished Professor Sharad Karkhanis when he attempted to bring this and similar abuses to light. Professor Karkhanis has been subjected to a frivolous, $2 million law suit. The named plaintiff, Susan O'Malley, has publicly stated her case against Karkhanis is "silly", yet she has forced him to incur legal fees to defend himself against the Professional Staff Congress, the CUNY faculty union's, surreptitious suppression of free speech.

Phil Orenstein does a public service by bringing these often secretive academic abuses to full public view.

Four Terrorists Blown Away

Tom, a former Marine, just forwarded this video of four terrorists being blown away. Tom writes:

>What surprises me most about this A-10 attack…the pilot did not kill any of our people!

>This is a video taken inside the cockpit of an A-10 by the pilot and it was a night view. What you see is from 9700 feet away (almost two miles). The four terrorists had no clue there was someone watching them from almost 2 miles away. The A-10 was using a 30 mm cannon WITHOUT injuring the dog nearby who escaped unharmed. You can see the gun camera shake a bit as the pilot fires; then count about 4 seconds for the rounds to travel 2 miles. Every tenth round is a tracer, so the bullets you actually see are every tenth; they are getting hit with hundreds of rounds, but the dog is unscathed. Muzzle velocity on the 30mm is 2430 feet per second. Four fewer guys to blow up women and children!

I'll throw in my two cents: These guys are awesome!

New Ships of 9/11 Steel

The USS New York is an anti-terrorist ship that the Navy just launched (h/t Contrairimairi). The wrenching story behind it is that it is made from steel melted down from the World Trade Center. The USS New York website is very inspiring. Below are three pictures of the USS New York. The second one shows the christening where the Navy, NYPD and NYFD bands all played. God Bless America. And I hope they hit those terrorists very, very hard.

Sharad's Law

Several people met at a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn to discuss the establishment of a not-for-profit that would serve the function of raising money on behalf of students and faculty who are sued or otherwise legally harassed by higher education institutions. The meeting went well. In the course of the meeting, Phil Orenstein suggested a law, which I call Sharad's Law, after Sharad Karkhanis, who is being sued by a union officer of the faculty union of the City University of New York. Sharad's Law would prohibit the hiring of convicted terrorists by governmental institutions, including higher education institutions.

O'Malley v. Karkhanis in the New York Post

Dareh Gregorian has written an article in the New York Post about Susan O'Malley's lawsuit against Sharad Karkhanis (also see earthtimes.org coverage here). While the article is a good one (see below), Gregorian fails to ask a few critical questions:

(1) Why haven't O'Malley and her attorney contacted the producers of Judge Judy, which is a more appropriate venue for a case that O'Malley herself describes as "silly" than is the New York State Supreme Court?

(2) Why are the people of the state of New York being asked to subsidize a case that the plaintiff describes as "silly"? Here are the synonyms of "frivolous" from dictonary.com :

barmy*, childish, dizzy*, empty-headed*, facetious, featherbrained*, flighty, flip, flippant, foolish, fribble, frothy, gay, giddy*, harebrained*, idiotic, idle, ill-considered, impractical, juvenile, light, light-minded, minor, niggling*, nonserious, not serious, paltry, peripheral, petty, playful, pointless, puerile, scatterbrained*, senseless, shallow, silly, sportive, superficial, tongue-in-cheek*, trivial, unimportant, unprofound, volatile, whimsical

(3) Why is the Professional Staff Congress unable to provide a dispute resolution mechanism that will spare the public the cost of resolving this "silly" dispute through the courts?

(4) One of the chief justifications of unionism is the provision of low-cost dispute resolution mechanisms. If unions like the Professional Staff Congress utilize the court system as a dispute resolution method of first resort, can such unions be justified from the standpoint of public policy?

(5) Has the Professional Staff Congress ever established guidelines for competent hiring?



CUNY PROF WAR
LIBEL SUIT OVER 'TERROR'
By DAREH GREGORIAN
November 5, 2007 -- A CUNY professor has filed a $2 million lawsuit against a fellow Ph.D. who's been lambasting her for allegedly trying to "recruit terrorists" to teach within the City University system.

In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Susan O'Malley charges that professor emeritus Sharad Karkhanis defamed her by accusing her of having an "obsession with finding jobs for terrorists" in recent issues of a newsletter he's been e-mailing to CUNY faculty members for 15 years.

Citing O'Malley's efforts to land jobs for convicted activist lawyer Lynne Stewart's co-defendant Mohammed Yousry and former Weather Underground member Susan Rosenberg, Karkhanis wrote:

"Has Queen O'Malley ever made a 'Job Wanted' announcement like this for a nonconvicted, nonviolent, peace-loving American educator for a job in CUNY? . . . Why does she prefer convicted terrorists bent on harming our people and our nation over peace-loving Americans?"

The retired Kingsborough Community College political-science professor said O'Malley, an English professor there, "is recruiting naive . . . faculty into her Qaeda-Camp to infiltrate . . . Personnel and Budget Committees in her mission - to recruit terrorists in CUNY. Given the opportunity, she will bring in all her indicted, convicted and freed-on-bail terrorist-friends."

O'Malley believes the terrorist-recruiter claim to be libelous. But an unapologetic Karkhanis, 73, told The Post: "Give me a break. I'm going to fight this vigorously."

He added that he considers what he wrote to be satire but that he was also "raising questions I believe are appropriate."

He said O'Malley crossed the line when she tried to land a job for Yousry, who's out on bail pending appeal of his conviction for helping Stewart disseminate messages from 1993 World Trade Center bomb plotter Omar Abdel-Rahman.

O'Malley, on leave from CUNY, could not be reached for comment.

dareh.gregorian@nypost.com

Is there a Difference between Democrats and Republicans?

I saw an interview of Nancy Pelosi last night. Ms. Pelosi was discussing the Iraqi War. She stated that the Bush administration should not defend the elected Iraqi government and instead limit the military to fighting terrorism. It is difficult for me to understand Ms. Pelosi's point. There is a fine line between fighting terrorism and supporting the Iraqi government. While Ms. Pelosi claims that her position is a major departure from President Bush's, the difference seems vacuous.

Is there a difference between Democrats and Republicans? In the late 18th and 19th centuries there was a debate between federalists and anti-federalists. The federalists, led by Hamilton, were elitist. They believed in central banking, supported the interests of the wealthy and believed in limiting democracy. In contrast, the anti-federalists, led by Jefferson, opposed a central bank (what today is the Federal Reserve Bank), believed in maximizing democracy and believed in supporting the common man, who was a farmer. The Jeffersonian anti-federalists were often more racist than the federalists. Ultimately, the Jeffersonians were allied with early labor unions (and the Workingmen's Parties) but also with the southern "slave power".

Through their successors, the Whigs and then the Republicans, the federalists allied business and northern religious interests, northern farmers and abolitionists. The anti-federalists, through the Democrats, allied labor interests, the white working class of big northern cities like New York, southern interests and the "slave power".

Today, it would seem that the federalists have won a complete victory for two reasons. First of all, central banking is no longer debated, although it ought to be. The public has accepted the Keynesian monetary project.

Second, the New Deal reinvigorated the federalist concept that an elite was necessary for the US economy to work. In the progressives' view, the elite is comprised of university-trained experts. But the knowledge that enables such experts to make decisions has never been specified. The reason is that it does not exist. Business schools have multiplied in number, but competence to manage the New York City subways, for example, has eluded both Democrats and Republicans for seven decades.

What struck me about Ms. Pelosi was that she evinced no indication of the slightest grasp of military strategy or anything else relevant to the War in Iraq, but she is entirely convinced that she is expert concerning it. Is Ms. Pelosi's arrogance peculiar to the Democrats, or do both the Republicans and the Democrats implicitly favor Pelosian elitism? Are both parties alternative versions of neo-federalism?

Both favor inflationary Federal Reserve policies. More than $10 trillion have gone gone into circulation around the globe, with less than $2 trillion in circulation here in the US. We are sitting on an inflationary time bomb. With demand for stocks inelastic because of loose credit, companies have followed easy, low-risk cost strategies of moving jobs overseas to to nudge up stock prices, inflating executive compensation but leaving average Americans feeling alienated. Jefferson would turn in his grave.

Both parties favor regulation. The Democrats say they do, the Republicans say they don't, but after three Republican presidents and a decade and a half of a Republican Congress there is as much regulation now as there was under Jimmy Carter. Since 1980, government has markedly expanded in cost and scope.

The difference is that the Democrats would have unemployed American workers dependent on them for welfare, while the Republicans would have underemployed American workers working for Wendy's. Both are willing to support policies that encourage home buyers to borrow five times their annual incomes to purchase homes; both oppose policies that would permit Americans to keep their paychecks to pay cash for their homes.

It is difficult for me to see the difference.

Iraq and the Terror Threat

The New York Times (paid access) writes that a new intelligence report indicates that the terror threat from the Islamic world has grown in response to the Iraqi War, Guantanimo Bay and Abu Graib. The Times also indicates that prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 there was a similar report which argued that the invasion might increase support for political Islam and terrorism.

I don't have the polling facts, but let's say that popular dislike of the United States among Germans increased in Germany after Germany declared war against the US in 1941. Should we not have declared war on Japan in order to avoid the decline in popularity in Germany? The New York Times appears to think so.

The problem with the Times's reporting in this article ("Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat", Mark Mazzetti, September 24, 2006) and in general is its imbalance. In this article Mark Mazzetti examines only Type I but not Type II error. Type I error is the probability that the null hypothesis is true given a finding that it is false. Type II error is the probability that the alternative hypothesis is true, given a finding that the null hypothesis is true.

In plain English, you need to be aware of and control for the effect on terrorism of both invading and not invading. While it may be that the risk of terrorism has increased following the invasion of Iraq because of increased Islamic support for terrorism, it may also be that if we did not invade Iraq the risk of terrorism would have increased even more because terrorists would have perceived us as weaklings. Popular opinion is not the only necessary condition for terrorist threats. The ability and willingness to engage in terrorism are also important. It is entirely possible that these have been deterred while popular dislike for the US has increased. Better a hobbled terrorist infrastructure with hatred of us than a robust terrorist infrastructure with the entire world in love with us.

For example, we did not invade Iraq after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and that was followed by the attack on the Cole in 2000. We did not invade Iraq after the bombing of the Cole in 2000, and that was followed by September 11, 2001. It is clear that the trend toward shorter time intervals between major terrorist attacks that evolved during the Clinton administration has been reversed. It was seven years between the World Trade Center I and the Cole. It was less than two years between the Cole and 9/11, but it has been five years since a major attack against the US outside of Iraq.

The intelligence report may be completely correct, but that might speak well for President Bush. Would the Times have liked to see the German people have more positive feelings about the US in 1945 than in 1935?

Ommission as per Charles Ellison of the University of Denver

Charles Ellison of the Center for African-American Policy of the University of Denver points out three additional major terror strikes during the Clinton years, namely Nairobi Kenya in 1998 and the car bomb explosion at the United States embassy in Dar es Salaam. In addition, there was the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Ellison writes:

>You may have inadvertently omitted the U.S. Embassy bombing in Nairobi, Kenya in 1998 that killed 257 people and the car bomb explosion at the United States embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. These two explosions also resulted in he wounding of 4,000 people. In addition, we shouldn't forget the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

It was the 1998 Kenya bombing that attracted serious international attention to bin Laden for the first time and put him on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List.

Regards,


Charles D. Ellison
Senior Editor/Producer
Blackpolicy.org
Center for African American Policy
University of Denver

Fifth Generation Warfare: 4GW No Longer Applies

The model of 4th generation warfare as enunciated by Thomas Hammes and others is rooted in the insurgencies that Mao led in China and Ho Chi Min led in Vietnam. As Hammes depicts it, such insurgencies depend on the insurgents' willingness to withdraw and attack; to govern and develop loyalty in territory which they control; and to refrain from orthodox warfare until they control sufficient territory. Hammes does not dissect the interaction of ideology with 4th generation warfare tactics. However, the insurgencies he describes are mostly communist or leftist and prevailed in the age of radio and television. Such insurgencies were not Islamic, and pre-existed technological innovations that have occurred since the days of the Vietnam War, namely, the internet and cellular phones.

It is obvious that Islam plays an important role in the Middle East, and the Iraqi War cannot be understood outside of Sunni-Shia relations and Islamic value systems. Sunni-Shia relations are only beginnning to be understood in the popular American mind, notably via Vali Nasr's Shia Revival.

New technology, Islamic values and relations radically change the implications of Hammes's strategic model. In some ways, Islamic culture makes fifth generation conflict more like pre-modern warfare. Categories such as the Islamic ummah and historical beliefs about the role of religion in government need to be understood and utilized. Such understanding is not only a matter of public relations and propaganda, but also of management of conflict within target populations. The notion of an insurgency that has national parameters is not applicable to the Middle East. Also, evaluations about attitudes and loyalties need to be made in the appropriate historical context. It is as naive to think that fighting a terrorist enemy is like fighting the Vietnamese as it is to think that fighting the Vietnamese would be like fighting German General Eric Ludendorff in 1918. In particular, the interactivity of Islamic belief with military action means that a more total approach to war might be necessary than it would be with insurgencies that are built on shorter term loyalties to the personalities of specific leaders. 4GW may be passe.

Mitchell Langbert Podcast Interview on www.blackpolicy.org

Charles Ellison of www.blackpolicy.org and the University of Denver interviewed me about Iran, Iraq and North Korea on podcast on Blackpolicy.org

http://www.ascentperspectives.blogspot.com/ at www.blackpolicy.org

Phil Beckman on Fifth Generation Warfare

Phil Beckman writes:

>"In a recent post Mitchell mentions that 4GW may be passe and that many of the things that Hammes writes about aren't necessarily relevant to fighting an extremist enemy. I agree. I've used the term 4GW within the framework of our discussion out of convenience, but I think the phenomena we are dealing with have yet to be adequately described and are much larger than what 4GW theorists are talking about. Over the past several years there have been many discussions of 4GW, 5GW, asymmetric war, unrestricted war, media war, idea war, meme war, etc. Not only do the Islamists present us with a different kind of threat that challenges our existing categories, but these theories allow us to review the left's success in achieving "cultural hegemony" in our universities, media, government and generally throughout our society, as well."

Phil Orenstein had written in a recent post:


>"To win the war of ideas that is central to this debate we need to put partisan politics aside and refresh ourselves with the spirit of the American Revolution and our founding fathers who fought the battle of ideas before winning the revolutionary war against the British Empire."

Beckman continues:

>"I agree that this is exactly what should happen, but it's not going to happen. We can't put partisan politics aside because the left's ideology is not only not rooted in the ideals of the American founding, but is inherently inimical to them. Remember that we live in a time where if you are a judicial candidate and you believe that the federal gov't should exercise only those powers that have been delegated by the Constitution, then you will be attacked as a right-wing extremist. Our goal should be to have the ideals and spirit of the American founding be generally accepted across all political differences. This is what we would be championing in a 4GW, media war, idea war campaign etc. But we have to accept that this is going to bring us into direct conflict with the left.

>"Around July 4th, the LA Times published an Op Ed in which the liberal writer asked, was the American Revolution really worth it? After all if we had remained part of the British Empire slavery would have been abolished in 1830 rather than 1865 and chances are we would have established the same socialist welfare state that the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have. The reality is that the left has no use for the ideals and spirit of the American Revolution.

>"The recent ISI study revealing the disastrous ignorance of American history and government shows us just how real our challenge is. We can't expect people to be inspired by the ideals of the American founding and be willing to risk their lives in defense of these ideals if they don't know what they are. This ignorance creates a population that is susceptible to the idiocies of Chomsky, Moore, et al. So promoting these ideals and educating people about them needs to be a central component of any pro-liberty, pro-American campaign.

>"While partisanship is inevitable, at the tactical level setting aside partisanship is important. For example, the Kelo decision created an opportunity to run a campaign against against eminent domain abuse and offered an opportunity to educate people on the importance of private property rights to the free society. People of all political persuasions own property and thus this kind of a campaign can appeal to everyone.

>"What we are talking about is creating a movement in which people are inspired by the ideals and a vision of the American Experiment to take action on their own, independent of any centralized control and guided by their ideals and values. The specific kinds of non-violent action available to us are many and varied. Any type of media, technology, activism, rhetorical technique and organizational form is there in the tool box. What I would like to see is a proliferation of dozens perhaps hundreds of organizations all promoting pro-liberty, pro-American ideals and working to counter the postmodernist left and Islamic fundamentalism. How do we inspire people to do this?

>"I keep coming back again and again to ideas, attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and interpretations because that seems to me to be the primary battlefield. Alinsky references the well-known statement of John Adams that the revolution had taken place in the minds of the people before the war was fought. Something like that needs to happen now. This is the kind of thing that operates at a more fundamental level than electoral politics. This is about what people believe about their country and ultimately what they believe about themselves. We need to be striving to create this kind of a revolution in the minds of the people. So whether we call it 4GW, meme war, media war, culture war, whatever, I don't care, but it needs to be done."

My comment:

Phil Beckman's points are well taken. There needs to be more assertiveness and more discussion of laissez faire ideals. Individualism and the spirit of the American revolution have been attacked for ten decades by leftists, progressives and the acolytes of JP Morgan and rationalized markets, e.g., the Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party and the New York Times. Groups like ISI are critical, and I am delighted that my student Pini Bohm has started an ISI group at Brooklyn College.

Beckman continues:

>"I believe that if any generation deserves the title 'Greatest Generation' it is the founding generation. The more I learn about what they achieved the more I admire them. But we can't be constantly looking backward to them and using their words to express our beliefs. We have to drink deeply of the ideals of the American founding, make them a part of us and articulate them in our own words in a way relevant for our own time. Future generations should look back to our words and deeds and be inspired. The challenge that we face is to create a vision of where we as Americans are going together in the future. A vision of the American Experiment for the 21st century. One sign of our success will be when the American-born children of immigrants from Vietnam, Ghana, Ecuador, Korea, India, El Salvador, and Ethiopia adopt the ideals and vision of the American Experiment and root their identities there and reject the multiculturalism and cultural relativism propagated by the left. If we can't out-compete the left with people who made great efforts to become Americans then we are screwed. Our vision is what they came to pursue; the left's vision is a recipe for failure and dystopia.


>"We need to stoke the hearth-fire of liberty. If 300 million Americans are filled with and inspired by the vision of the American Experiment then the Jihadists have no chance in disrupting our society. But if half the populace ranges from ambivalence to hatred of America then we are in trouble. And it is the left that is responsible for that ambivalence-hatred."

The Left's Plan to Stop Terrorism?

In his book The West and the Rest (ISI Books) Roger Scruton contrasts the evolution of the European nation state, attributable to such historical developments as Roman Law, where "strangers are expressly included in the web of obligation", with tribal rule and theocracies. Scruton reminds us of the importance of public spirit to democracy.

One of the interesting questions that is facing America is whether it is capable of facing up to a realistic military threat, or whether the media and liberal establishment are committed enough to anti-Americanism and a chimerical belief in world citizenship that they will ultimately succeed in tearing apart the nation by crippling our sense of citizenship.

For instance, although there has been considerable criticism of the Iraqi War, I have not heard any suggestions from the left as to how to stop terrorism. Instead, there seems to be an implied argument that terrorism does not exist, or that radical Islam poses no threat. This is easily refutable, ignorant nonsense.

So if liberals argue that the Iraqi War is wrong strategically, the question must be what is the liberal plan to stop terrorism? Indeed, a failure of the Bush administration has been to soft-peddle this obviously important objective (of fighting terrorism via the Iraqi War) to the point of denying it.

I do not believe that we are worse off with regard to fighting terrorism because of the Iraqi War. It might be arguable that the loss of American life isn't worth the strategic accomplishments of the Iraqi War. However to prove this would require facts that do not appear in the New York Times or elsewhere.

Al Qaeda recently issued a statement that it has 12,000 fighters in Iraq. If we were not accomplishing important strategic goals there, why would al Qaeda be deploying so much of its resources to Iraq? It would be nice to know everything, like the folks at the Times, Seymour Hersh, Bill Maher, Michael Moore and the long list of left-biased journalists and academics. Unfortunately, they are unschooled buffoons with respect to this question, and their views are, well, dumb.

Many liberal and left-wing Americans delude themselves about the nature of the terrorist Islamic threat. This is not new for the left, as the Stalinist left aligned itself with Hitler in 1939-1941, and Walter Duranty of the New York Times promised us that all was well in Russia during the Stalinist 1930s. Similarly, Arthur Hayes Sulzberger recommended to his Jewish relative that he remain in Germany in 1938. The Ochs-Sulzbergers have a long history of making idealistic recommendations that harm others. Now this crew assures us that Bernard Lewis is wrong, and there is not a thing to be concerned about. So what that Christians are lynched in Palestine; that Christians are lynched in Turkey; that Christians are murdered in Nigeria; that there is an ongoing Islamic-Christian conflict in the Phillipines; that there is a five-decade-old Islamic-Hindu conflict in India; that there is an Islamic-Russian conflict in Chechnya; that the Arab-Israeli conflict is six decades old; that we have been repeatedly bloodied by Islamic attacks? So what? Islam is a peaceful religion and anyone who disagrees is biased.

It may not be that liberal factionalism has prevailed. The most interesting race in the recent election was in Connecticut, where the anti-war Ned Lamont lost to a pro-war former Democrat, Joe Lieberman. Yet, the ceaseless anti-American propaganda coming from the left-dominated media is bound to take a toll.

The liberal-left's factional anti-Americanism can be seen in its attacks on Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. The media demonized Rumsfeld, but the liberal borg's arguments lacked grounding in fact or theory and contradicted parallel arguments that it had made about Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in the 1960s.

For the past 25 years I have taught my students David Halberstam's version of the management errors that Robert McNamara made during the Vietnam War that appear in Halberstam's book The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam argued that McNamara had allowed the military to manipulate him into sending excessive numbers of troops given the nature of the Vietnamese insurgency. In other words, Halberstam argued that McNamara was too willing to be manipulated by the military. This is a valid argument if fourth generation warfare necessitates a complex of propaganda, political and surgically targeted actions for which the military is unprepared.

Now, the media's criticism of Rumsfeld is that Rumsfeld did not listen to the military and so failed to send more troops.

In short, I don't think the criticisms can be correct because they are equally ungrounded, contradictory criticisms. If McNamara has been criticized for being gullible (and establishing statistical decision systems that did not screen for accurate inputs and so listened to a biased military too much), then why would Rumsfeld be criticized for not listening to an unbiased military? What theory or body of knowledge do the Times, New Yorker, and television networks rely on to make such criticisms? What delusions lead them to imagine that they know what they are talking about?

The other criticism of Rumsfeld that also strikes me as nonsensical is that he encouraged torture at Abu Gharaib and Guantanimo Bay. In the January 2005 issue of City Journal Heather McDonald published an analysis of the left media's torture accusations and thoroughly debunked them. Yet, the media has not addressed McDonald's facts.

The main vision of the Iraqi War ought to be that to stop terrorism a conflict in a Sunni nation was necessary and that democracy might be installed that will institutionalize resistance to terrorism. However, the main point is to stop terrorism. It might be that the Iraqi War can be criticized, but it does seem to me that, if al Qaeda has sent 12,000 troops to Iraq and is attempting to base an insurgency in Anbar (opposed by Sunni tribes), the United States has pursued an intelligent strategy and needs to grapple with the insurgency using fourth generation warfare, not traditional military warfare.

Perhaps the left and the media disagree. Then it is up to the left and the media to inform us as to what their plan to stop terrorism is. Do nothing and let them explode dirty bombs? Please tell us, Seymour Hersh and Thomas Friedman. What is your plan to stop al Qaeda? If the left, the Democrats, Seymour Hersh or Thomas Friedman don't have a plan, then the question becomes: why are they so unhappy with the Bush administration?

One possible reason, which is probably true of the far left, is that there is hope that America will be harmed. Many on the far left are outright anti-American and aim to sabotage legitimate attempts to stop terrorism because they, far left Democrats, dislike America.

Because of the danger of faction; and because of the threat that the extreme left potentially poses, conservatives must insist that the left explain: What is the left's plan to stop Islamic terrorism?

The NAS, ISI and Student Therapy

I was able to attend the twelfth conference of the National Association of Scholars only on Friday, November 17 because I teach on Saturday and Sunday. The part of the conference that I was able to attend was among the best academic conferences that I have ever attended. On Friday, the keynote speaker was Senator Hank Brown, who is now the president of the University of Colorado. Senator Brown talked about strategies that he has employed in cleaning up Ward Churchill's mess. Churchill had been promoted to department chair even though he lacked a Ph.D. and had not produced a meaningful body of research. As chair, he claimed that the victims of the 9/11 attacks were "little Eichmanns", implying that their murders were justified. Hearing about some of the steps that Mr. Brown and Colorado are taking to improve things suggested hope.

Other Friday speakers included included Candace de Russy (SUNY), Anne Neal (ACTA), Tom Lucero (Colorado), Mike Ratliff (Intercollegiate Studies Institute) and Todd Zywicki (Dartmouth). Neal is the head of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni; Rafliff is vice president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute; and de Russy, Lucero and Zywicki are trustees. On Saturday, de Russy was awarded the Barry R. Gross Memorial award.

The day before the NAS conference I had addressed a group of students who have established an Intercollegiate Studies Institute club at my college. I am the club's faculty advisor, so they suggested that I lead the first meeting's discussion. The students had read Roger Scruton's excellent book The West and the Rest, which I discussed. After a brief lecture, I asked the students to each describe their thoughts on Scruton's ideas and I also asked them what brought them to the meeting.

Attendance at the ISI event was excellent. Many full-time students also work full time, so it is difficult to get good attendance at extra-curricular events. Nevertheless, 30 students attended.

As each student discussed his or her views, one mentioned that an English professor at the college had sent around an e-mail saying that ISI should be prevented from meeting and that the students should not be permitted to set up an ISI group at the college. At the college, the "collegiality" of conservatives has been fetishized while intolerance is reflexive from the campus's left wing. The left's intolerance recrudesces when anyone, student or faculty, has the temerity to question its tired theories.

Several students at the meeting mentioned that all of their professors espouse extreme left wing views and that the assumptions of all class discussions in the social sciences and humanities are steeped in Marxist theory. Given the fixation on Marxism, it would appear that much social science has become, like pharoah worship, a fossilized religion.

I made a point of asking these students whether the constant repitition of left wing ideas has affected them intellectually, and several replied that it has. Even though they know that the left's ideas are erroneous, the constant propagandizing that occurs at universities has had a brainwashing effect, according to the students. In effect, the students imply that university attendance serves not to open the mind intellectually, but to create psychological imbalance.

One issue that the NAS program did not address is whether the political correctness that the NAS has combatted for twenty years has influenced America's ability to defend itself, for example against terrorism. Based on my students' responses, I suspect that it has. Responding to a quote often attributed to the Duke of Wellington, George Orwell wrote in his 1941 essay "England Your England" that "probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there."

Since the left supports terrorism and allies itself with America's foes, the left's dominance on college campus seems likely to have crippled our ability to think coherently about defending our nation. That diverse disciplines, journalism, inteligence, and political, have been incapable of thinking coherently about how to eliminate terrorism, suggests some common ground for the intellectual vacuity. The common ground is the poor job that universities have done.

There are two psychological effects of university brainwashing: narcissism and sociopathy. I have previously posted about the Shrinkwrapped blog's discussion of the liberal borg's narcissism. The left is sociopathic, or lacking in conscience, as well as narcissistic.

Let's review some of the characteristics of sociopathy:

I. Grandiose, deceitful
2- Lack of remorse and empathy
3- Lack of goals*
4- Poor behavioral controls; antisocial behavior (anti-social personality disorder is a component of sociopathy).

It seems to me that although Robert Godwin's point about the narcissism of the left is totally right, it needs to be supplemented with a separate sociopathic complex. The left amply demonstrates each of these sociopathic traits. Its practitioners imagine themseleves smarter than others; they are proud of their manipulative skills; and they are often highly emotional and disruptive.

For example, Saul Alinsky, a radical activist, wrote Rules for Radicals in 1971 in which he argues that deception is a characteristic strategy of left-wing radicals. Likewise, left wingers often lack behavioral controls and are highly disruptive, as we have seen in the antics of Ward Churchill and numerous similar cases. The left may be characterized as the sociopathic movement of the twentieth century, and for that reason I would characterize Nazism as a left wing ideology.

The chief trait of sociopaths is lack of remorse or conscience. It is here that the views of the left come into clearest sociopathic focus. The left has been responsible for more murder than any religious or ideological movement in history. More than the Romans, more than the Ku Klux Klan, more than radical Islam, and more than Nazism. Yet, unlike the Germans, who have mostly disowned Nazism, the left continues to advocate its murderous, bloodthirsty ideology without apology. The tens of millions whom Mao and Stalin killed are meaningless statistics to the conscienceless left.

Hence, The Intercollegiate Studies Institute can be viewed as a form of therapy. During the meeting, a student said that he supported alternative approaches to financing public higher education. I mentioned that Milton Friedman had suggested the idea of tuition vouchers in his popular classic Capitalism and Freedom. The students said that they might be interested in a meeting to discuss this book. Friedman, who had been born in Brooklyn in 1912, had died the same day, November 16, 2006, at age 94. But his spirit is very much alive.

Let the therapy begin.

*The left's lack of goals can be seen in its willingness to ally itself with radical Islam without grasping the implications of such an alliance. Similarly, the American labor movement allied itself with slave owners in the 19th century; and the American communist party allied itself with Hitler in 1939. Now that communism has completely failed and only buffoons can advocate centralized economic planning, the left has no goal or model to advocate. Its only role is disruptive and critical. It has nothing to construct. It is at this point in history that the sociopathic nature of the left comes most clearly into focus, and the role it has played in the mass murders of the twentieth century comes into sharp relief.

The Failure of American Public Debate

The New York Sun reports that various politicians and pundits have been offering pessimistic assessments about the Iraqi conflict. Henry Kissinger, the foreign policy expert from the 1970s and 1980s who did not predict the important emergence of Islamic terrorism in the millenium, advises us that the war in Iraq is not winnable. The same Sun article quotes John McCain as saying that "there's only one thing worse (than deploying more troops), and that is defeat." Today, the Sun quotes Senator Obama of Illinois as saying that "a substantial number of American troops ought to be withdrawn" from Iraq. Thomas Friedman of the Times (Paid access, November 8) insists that the Bush team arrived in Iraq with too few troops (ignoring that, like Friedman, the Bush team was mostly in the United States and that it relied on the US military, specifically Tommy Franks, to project troop strength). Friedman, bombastic and ill-informed as always, suggests either reshaping Iraq into a federation (bad) or leaving Iraq by a fixed date (worse).

What is fascinating about all of these analyses is the willingness to make strong or absolute assertions without the benefit of a falsifiable theory or a body of empirical evidence that would point to the viability of one theory over another. Rather, pundits like Friedman and Kissinger and politicians like Obama and McCain (with whom I viscerally agree) pretend to know what they are talking about.

What is revealing about the discussion about Iraq is not just the failure of US intelligence and strategic planners (on both the intelligence and military sides) to anticipate and devise an updated strategy that would anticipate the diverse tribal and religious differences in the Arab world and methods for effectively handling terrorism, but the degree to which the politicians, press and media continue to remain uninformed. The arguments being made in the public press suggest a failure of American public debate and an unwillingness to learn.

In particular, Kissinger, McCain, Friedman, Obama and their ilk have had many years to conceptualize an intelligent response to terrorism and to develop a method of proactively responding to strikes like 9/11. Yet, no ideas are forthcoming. Instead, given their assessment that the American military has failed to respond competently (a point concerning which they offer no information and are apparently utterly uninformed), the "pundits" and politicians carp critically but offer no body of falsifiable theory nor any empirical evidence for their endless complaints and criticisms. Those of us who have other occupations (I work in the human resource management field) are forced to spend our valuable time reading about Iraq because those who are paid to do so have done such an incoherent and, plainly put, stupid job.

For example, consider Kissinger's claim that the war in Iraq is not winnable. This is obviously false. We can win any war by redefining it as a total war and killing the entire country of Iraq. I am not suggesting this as an option. However, the use of our moral restraint as propaganda to attack us is a tactic that ought not be permitted to work indefinitely. Perhaps total war ought to be an option against population groupings that support terrorism. I'm not sure why saying it isn't is "realpolitik". Because Kissinger says so? But Kissinger hasn't come up with a solution to terrorism, so what does he really have to offer? Is he the kind of 17th century physician who used leeches to bleed patients? I suspect that the entire field of foreign affairs has this quality of quackery. So why is the public taking the quacks seriously?

The Iraqi war is certainly winnable. The question is which path maximizes the US's interests. One thing that I am certain of: defining the war as not winnable is not in the US's interests. Kissinger ought to reframe his analysis to make it more precise. Someone who has failed to grasp the nature of or project methods to resolve the terrorist assault on America, like Kissinger, ought to be busy revising his theories and doing some basic reading instead of offering advice that has proven unsuccessful in the past. Yet, I do not hear anything new.

It seems evident that in dealing with a multiplicity of terrorist groups the concept of winning and losing that held true through World War II may no longer apply. The question is, how to convince the people of Iraq to support a moderate government and how to convince them to take action to stop terrorist violence. This might involve securing control of specific territories, providing economic support in those areas, propagandizing to the remaining areas, targeting specific terrorists and eliminating immigration here to the United States. There are likely other approaches. One might be total war.

But we are not hearing about them. What we are hearing is that the US's media, press and politicians lack ideas.