History: September 2006 Archives

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I got a call from my wife that there were reports a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I turned the TV on immediately, and I'm not certain to this day whether it was in time to catch the second plane hit or whether it was a replay I saw of the second plane hitting the other tower. The timing, compared to the later collapse, was about right. But I knew as soon as I saw that second plane hit that we were at a crossroads. Before Al-Qaeda took responsibility, before Palestinians were celebrating in the streets, before Saddam Hussein was gloating over our collective misfortune, I knew, as did many other people. that this was the day that the American people could no longer pretend that we can hide from terrorism behind our oceans.



This wasn't a gleeful vindication. This was sadly wishing I had been wrong. We had been at war with Islamic fundamentalism since at least 1978, probably since 1947, and perhaps as far back as World War I.



Now there is a large segment of the population that believes it was staged by the government. This contradicts so many facts that it isn't worth rebutting them point by point here. Nonetheless, these people find a vast conspiracy of thousands of people easier to believe than the simple fact that nineteen people wielding box cutters took control of four aircraft, and the American public has been so sensitized to the "wait to be rescued" mentality that three of them were able to impact their targets without the passengers - who greatly outnumbered the hijackers, by the way - doing anything to save themselves. Nearly three thousand people died because people had been taught to rely upon authority figures to save them, rather than undertaking the necessary actions themselves. Only on the fourth and final aircraft did the passengers attempt what was necessary, and that because the official response would clearly have been too late. Those people were heroes, and they are rightly lauded as such. But let's turn it around and ask why the people on the other three flights weren't. The evidence was there in front of their eyes. Had any of those jets landed anywhere in North America or the surrounding islands, they would have been easily overwhelmed by the law enforcement of whatever podunk town happened to be closest. Maybe Barney Fife couldn't have done it, but that was only because Andy only permitted him one bullet, and he's fictional in any case. The planes didn't have the fuel to make any other continent. So whatever was going to happen, it had to happen without landing, and without refueling.



A weapon is energy released on target, whether that weapon is a stick or a nuclear bomb. Indeed, whether something is a weapon lies mostly in the head of the person controlling it. It should be no stretch for anyone to believe an automobile can be used as a weapon. Indeed, most of the world has seen such fictional scenarios play out hundreds of times on movie and television screens. Well, an airliner is like that car, except that it's a couple hundred times more massive and traveling four to ten times as fast. Let's choose the middle of the road seven. So two hundred times the mass traveling 7 times as fast, by the kinetic energy function, is nearly ten thousand times more energy released on target. (7 squared is 49, times 200 is 9800). So what happened to those buildings is as if nearly ten thousand cars going freeway speed hit them all at the same time. The miracle is that modern engineers can design to withstand that kind of impact at all. But in addition to the purely kinetic energy, somewhere around 200,000 pounds of that mass was flammable, highly energetic jet fuel. The miracle wasn't just that the towers stood for a while, it was that they stood for so long. Basic physical fact: Steel melts in a hot enough flame, and before it melts it progressively loses its structural strength. Nor was the way in which the floors of the towers pancaked anything more than a design specification. The damage they did coming down was quite enough as it was, but it would have been orders of magnitude worse if they had impacted some of the other tall buildings nearby. Most buildings are demolished at some point, and the architects have long since been informed that they had better design for it, because if they don't any money their design saves will be wasted dozens of times over in the demolition.



So why do the myths about 9/11 persist? People have been told all of their lives that the world is a predictable place, and that people are reasonable and rational, and negotiation will solve all problems. They don't want to believe that crazy people - people willing to sacrifice themselves because they have been taught they will be lauded in the afterlife because of it - exist any longer. Never mind that the history of the world is one long study of people who were willing, if not precisely eager, to make that sacrifice if it was demanded. Read journals of the second world war and before, and you will read the same sort of things thousands if not millions of ordinary Americans wrote about because they understood how implacable that enemy was: "doing their share" for the war effort. We had twelve million Americans out of a population half of today's in uniform, and the vast majority of them were volunteers. The Civil War actually had a higher proportion of draftees than any subsequent war until Vietnam.



But after World War II, the weapons of unlimited conflict became the weapons of genocide, and if the atomic weapons of the Cold War had ever flown, most of the earth would have been turned into a charnel house, with casualties counted by the hundreds of millions. This, of necessity, led to a different, limited approach to warfare. Remember that if your opponent has nuclear weapons, or somebody on their side does, you had to leave them a way out of everything, lest they drag the world down to destruction with them. So negotiate, chivvy, work little by little, and never try to destroy them completely, and don't forget to negotiate. Did I remember to say negotiate?



We've now spent sixty years fighting this kind of battle, and there are few people even alive now who remember anything different. We've grown so used to it that we have forgotten any other way exists, and only historians and the military have any real exposure to other methods. But this method of conflict resolution has a critical weakness: What if your opponent isn't rational? What if they do not care if the world is destroyed so long as they get their way? Suppose they are willing, even determined to die if only to bring the realization of their goals a little closer?



This far different scenario describes the enemy was face today. It is important to understand that our current enemy sees accommodation and appeasement only as signs of weakness, not of civilized restraint in order not to jeopardize the safety of everyone, even those who are not party to the dispute. It is critical to acknowledge that our current enemy is emboldened by the prospect of death rather than deterred by it, and as long as that death occurs with their fingers metaphorically around the throat of the enemies of their cause, they believe they will be rewarded far more richly in the next life than any suffering they may encounter in this one. They have been told this by their priesthood, their media, even their governments and their parents from the time when they first learned to understand language. It is a far more coherent, focused, unified message than we in the United States have ever heard. This message becomes for them like water to a fish - something they take for granted, as a matter of course. Indeed, if you try to remove them from it, they will lash out violently, which is what we in the west have been experiencing for at least the last fifty years from them. This describes both the cause and the effect: They do not wish to hear that what they believe to be divine words of god to which they have submitted themselves (Islam is submission, to the word of god as related by the holy men), are in fact incorrect or incomplete descriptions of events, natural law, or philosophy.



There are moderate Muslims, but the way the political process works in Muslim nations denies them the levers of power. Even should one of them attain a position of authority, their actions are circumscribed by religious authority to a degree that we here in the United States have never known, and indeed, never will - unless the Islamic extremists conquer us. It took over thirty years for New England Protestant ministers to convince half of the nation that slavery was evil, and needed to be stopped. A Muslim religious leader has only to issue a fatwa. This means that powers urging restraint and consideration are likely to be trumped by those urging precipitate action. The fatwa on Salmon Rushdie has been reaffirmed upon at least two different occasions, and only his secretive lifestyle has kept him alive.



So the Islamic extremist sees only opportunity and weakness in our usual mode of responding to their threat, which is negotiation. Negotiation has become so ingrained in our way of life that it is only through willing trades of this for that that any significant business gets done. Indeed, being a successful, knowledgeable negotiator is so much more rewarding in our culture than even being the best warrior in the world that there simply is no comparison. The rewards for the CEO who brings home a billion dollar deal run to tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. The pay for a four star officer goes as high as $14,000 per month, an E-9 goes only to a maximum of $5400. That's a pittance by business standards. In forty years at those pay grades, they wouldn't make what some CEOs make for three months work.



I would love to resolve this whole Islamic extremism thing by negotiation. I make my living as a negotiator, after all. An ideal negotiation is one where both parties believe they are better off as the result of the negotiation, and would willingly sign the same deal again. And therein lies the problem. The extremists will sign any number of deals we propose to them, but they will not honor them. Unlike a business negotiator, they feel no need to honor them beyond whatever transient benefits may accrue to them through doing so. If the extremists would honor the results of such negotiation, it would be far cheaper than any military action. With what we've spend fighting Islamic extremism thus far, every single man, woman and child in the Muslim world could have at least a couple thousand dollars. We could have built them such beautiful cities, turned their lands into a paradise, and increased their economy at least tenfold. What rational person would refuse such a deal?



The problem is that they are not responding rationally to events, nor will they honor agreements they make one instant longer than they feel it is in their best interests to do so. They have a word for it: Hudna. Hudna is not peace, it really is not even a truce and it is a mistake to translate it thusly. It is a cease fire until circumstances change to favor them. A temporary halt in hostilities until they figure that events have changed in their favor, or can arrange for them to do so. Not peace, not truce, simply a lull in the fighting, hoping that their enemies will be lulled into a sense of security while they continue their maneuvering for advantage. They talk of honor, but it is a far different kind of honor than most of us in the United States and most of the rest of the world are familiar with, although the Japanese samurai would perhaps recognize a certain kinship of ideology, committed to the struggle no matter what it requires. The tale of the forty-seven Ronin (among others) has many parallels to the Islamic extremist, even if the goals and means are vastly different. Their lives were and are unimportant considerations in the face of the accomplishment of the task at hand, which is the recovery or extension of dar-al-Islam, the land of submission.



So while I understand those who would have us negotiate a peace with Islamic extremists, I have seen the vast weight of evidence as being against the idea that it would be effective. They see generosity in terms of tribute, mercy as a weakness, and truce or peace in terms of hudna, waiting for a time when the odds are more in their favor, and the opportunity to arrange for it to be so. They are quite frank about this fact when they think nobody from the west is paying attention.



However, my biggest concern at this moment is our domestic political situation; the will to continue the fight. As I have said before, the will to fight is the most important indicator of eventual victory or defeat. I understand how and why the Democratic party became the party of surrender and accommodation - they want power and it offered a way to appeal to a certain segment of the population that does not understand the war, and is morally certain that it's all some kind of big misunderstanding. It would have been wiser and more in the national interest to appeal to this group on the margins, by being perceived as being more willing to compromise and more in tune with the aims of the antiwar segment, but the Democratic party in recent years has been unable to fathom the political game of keeping the centrists while appealing more to the edge groups than the Republican opposition. Perceiving political advantage in criticizing the administration, they proceeded to take every opportunity and manufacture others. Their opposition to Secretary Rumsfeld isn't because he's doing a bad job - judging by performance of the troops and his policies under fire, he's the best Secretary of Defense we've had since at least George Marshall. It's a way to oppose the administration, politically and visibly, in no uncertain terms, solidifying their support among this segment of the voting population.



Unfortunately, this has the effect of politicizing the war, committing the Democrats to a path that is not in the best interests of the Unites States should they gain control of the government. Had they not staked their electoral future so clearly upon opposition to the administration's conduct of the war, there would be significant room to maneuver for them. But with no room in the Democratic party for even left-wing politicians such as Joe Lieberman who are willing to evaluate the war in terms of what is best for the United States, and stand firm, refusing to criticize the administration and even speaking in their defense, the Democrats will have precisely no room to maneuver on this issue. Should they win the election and attempt to continue the war as it is currently being conducted, their own supporters would cry more loudly for their ouster than they have for that of the president. Treason, after all, is a far more serious charge than principled disagreement, and apostasy and heresy are far more serious than simply being a nonbeliever.



And it is in the best interests of the United States that we win this war. It is in the best interests of everyone, including the Islamic extremists, although they would deny this to the bitter end. Islamic civilization, because it fell heir by historical accident to the largest remaining repositories of Classical civilization, enjoys a reputation for enlightenment that it does not deserve. None of the innovations were theirs; they were only able to preserve the knowledge of other civilizations. Even the mathematical concept of zero, so widely credited to them in popular culture, came from the conquest of Hindus of India, not their own discoveries.



The brand of Islamic extremism that we are fighting in this current war intends nothing less than a mental straitjacket for the world. Whatever the Koran, the Hadith, and the Suras say, that is what shall be. If sharia says women need four witnesses to prove rape and they shall be put to death as adulterers if they fail, then that is what must be done. Sharia law does say this. Since it is my understanding that if there are multiple people present at a rape, it usually means that the others held the woman down while the deed was done, this kind of puts a crimp in accusations of rape. Indeed, the incidence of rape, and other crimes against women, is much higher in the Islamic world. Merely the act of taking a lover prior to matrimony is grounds for a death sentence if the family wants it to be. Even going on a date with someone whom your family disapproves of can be grounds for so-called "honor killings". I do not understand why so-called feminists fail to demonstrate their understanding of this fact, that should the Islamic extremists prevail, the rights that they supposedly hold in such esteem will be subject to the whims of men. The freedom of scientific and philosophical inquiry would also be highly questionable. You might not be compelled to convert to Islam (so long as you are a member of one of their favored religions, pay the dhimmi tax, and accept your status as merely a tolerated outsider rather than a valued citizen), but to question Islamic thought is punishable by death - and on many occasions, is so punished. Those Islamic extremists who kidnap and murder westerners, or even their own countrymen and countrywomen, do so under cover of Islamic fatwa, a fact which the western press frequently glosses over or fails to mention. Thought crime, that horrid crime of disagreeing with official canon out of Orwell's 1984, literally is punishable by death, and often is punished by death, preceded by torture, rape if the victim is female, and all sorts of other things such as deprivation of dignity that the press and certain members of academia get all huffy about when Americans even think about doing. Understand this in your bones: The boundaries drawn by the Geneva Conventions aren't even an issue to the Islamists. It is documented that Americans and our allies have strayed over the lines drawn by those conventions - which explicitly limit most of those rights to those representing participating nations, by the way - and those so accused are immediately put on trial, and punished if found guilty. In the Islamist world, they earn the praise of their fellows, and by the teachings of religious authority to which they subscribe, a smoothed path to a higher level of paradise in the afterlife. This would in no way change if we all became dhimmi, except that the Islamists wouldn't have to pretend it was all in the name of righteous anger. They would just do it, and we would have to put up with it. The documentation from places that they do rule is perfectly clear on this point, among many others.



Now the place in the world where the Islamists have the firmest grasp on temporal power is Iran. Outwardly a republic, but no candidate is permitted to run without the approval of the supreme religious leader, who controls the military and all police forces. In this country, it would be as if your choices for President were limited to Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, and their current president, one of those who stormed the US Embassy during Carter's presidency after the fall of the shah, makes either of those two pimples upon the American body politic look like a rational, intelligent, compassionate human being by comparison. Israel has essentially zero intersection with Iran, and yet Ahmedinejad promised to attack Israel with nuclear weapons. When Ronald Reagan poked fun at the press image of him with a joke in his first term, the press and academia treated it far more seriously, but joking Reagan was, where Ahmedinejad was deadly serious. It would be like George W. Bush making a solemn promise to nuke Sri Lanka, and the entire thing disappeared into the memory hole of nonevents a la 1984 within days. It doesn't fit the press narrative in this country; therefore it vanished within days. When he didn't think the western press was listening, he has also made similar promises to attack American interests with nuclear weapons. Furthermore, Iranian soldiers have been captured aiding the Islamists in Iraq, and Iranian equipment has been captured aiding Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as dead bodies of Iranian soldiers at the scene of battles with Hezbollah terrorists. All of these are acts of war, dropped down the memory hole by a press whose narrative does not admit that there could perhaps be a reason rational people might feel compelled to go to war with Iran.



Finally, I believe that the time is rapidly approaching when the Iranian regime will need nuclear weapons to control their own people, who are increasingly frustrated with Islamist control over the levers of power. Should a revolt happen, and the regime possesses nuclear weapons, they would consider it as much their duty to use them to maintain their grip on power as they would to use them against the "decadent" United States, against whose cultural ideals Islamist ideals have never prevailed, except when the latter had the threat of force, or its actual use, behind them. Without Iran and its technological base and its oil revenues, the Islamists would be dependent upon far lesser sources of funding. Even the bribery of Wahhabis by the Saudi Royal family has much lesser limits than that.



I would really rather not have to fight Iran at all, but that choice may have been taken out of our hands. The Iranian people are not our enemy. However, the Iranian regime is determined, willing (even eager) to die if only they can take western ideals down as well, they are acquiring the tools to destroy the United States and all of western civilization, and they intend upon taking advantage of what they perceive as our weakness in confronting them. Our choices, as with the rapist murderer who breaks into your home with intent to commit rape and murder, don't have the option of leaving his hands and feet untouched even though it is only his head that means you harm. Your choices are to kill him or be killed, and even if you put your bullets all into his head, the hands and feet and arms and legs will all die also. It is not what we would have wanted, but, willingly or not, those hands and feet and arms and legs were doing the bidding of the head, and should they succeed in following the directives of that head, we would be no less dead for the fact that they did not want to.