Rot and Rhetoric

I suppose you could argue that all language is political at least to the extent that writers or speakers do not necessarily share the same assumptions, or motives, as readers and listeners.  Then, of course, there is the problem of euphemism, a kind of polite mendacity. We seldom say what we mean for fear of being mean.  Phrasing like “politically correct” is at once a cliche and an oxymoron.  Things political are seldom correct.

And when political language becomes news; it’s a safe bet that the thought police have unleashed the howling dogs of rhetoric. Several recent examples come to mind.

Early in Barack Hussein Obama’s first term, John Brennan was unleashed to CSIS to lecture assembled scholars on the correct usage of language associated with all things Islamic. Any politician who aspires to cook the rhetorical books does well to start with the academy and government subsidized think tanks. Sympathetic Press coverage helps too. Redundancy is reinforcement.

At CSIS, Brennan sought to sever any linkage between Muslims, terror, and jihad in Washington – and elsewhere.  The then White House advisor actually argued that the very term jihad had many meanings, including ritual “cleansing.”  There was more than a grain of literal truth to the Brennan claim: the Arab attack on New York was indeed a bath, a bloodbath. The Brennan spin on the word “Islamist” was a kind of housecleaning too, an attempt to alter history and minimize future threats.

Thought police understand the value of consistency and repetition. Any lie repeated often enough, as Joseph Goebbels was fond of saying, assumes a life of its own. Truth is a function of retailing and retelling. When President Obama was asked subsequently about jihad in Mumbai, he almost quoted the Brennan CSIS pitch verbatim.

Still, John Brennan’s early assignment was more than a bit of a stretch.  Most terror, certainly the strategic variety, originates with Muslim groups or countries. Global terror is now accompanied by intramural carnage as the Arab “spring” morphs into an Islamic winter. The cold winds of irridentism, some say religious fascism, still blow across Africa, Iran, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Turkey.

Withal, you might think that any attempt to separate Islam from terror, or Muslims from backward looking Islamist, would be dead on arrival; a little like trying to reboot modern history, a little like painting Catholics out of the Inquisition or absolving German, French, and Scandinavian quislings for the Holocaust.

Never underestimate the power of persistent political spin and the capacity of fearful journalists to forget and conform.

There was a time when English language style manuals were confined to good usage not politics. The other day, the Associated Press (AP) issued a revised style manual which could have been written at the Executive Office Building – or at the CIA.  Two revisions prominently tack with political winds blowing from the White House and the Intelligence Community: revisions to terms such as “illegal immigrant” and “Islamist.”

AP will no longer use the adjective ‘illegal’  to describe immigrants who enter the country in violation of law, nor will the term be used to describe those who remain with expired visas. Thus the 9/11 hijackers, many of whom were visa overstays, might be described today as students, guest workers or martyrs, but not criminals.  After all, not a soul, no Arabs nor Muslims, have been convicted of anything associated with the Twin Towers massacre after ten years of diligent investigation. Arabs, especially Saudis, are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

The word Islamist is also about to go the way of the Yo-Yo too. Apparently, such loaded language might suggest religious zeal; implying that imperial terror and global political crimes might be traced to prophetic admonitions, the Koran, Muslims, or political Islam. The logic of revision here is similar to the double-think associated with terms ‘illegal immigrant.’ Labeling any negative deductions about terror as presumption or guilt by association is a kind of rhetorical preemption.  

Surely genocidal terrorists, nee Islamists, have no more to do with intolerant clerics or religion than a stroke might have to do with brain damage. And why shouldn’t logic have the same elasticity as language? Truth is simply what you are willing to believe, isn’t it?

Rhetorical acumen is not without rewards. Brennan is now the Director of CIA, a position from which he may become Chef de Cuisine in the analytic kitchen too. Brennan is cut from the same cloth as his predecessor, David Petraeus. The erstwhile general was a reliable soldier in the appeasement wars until he literally stepped on his crank. Before Paula, there were hijabs, instead of helmets, on US soldiers in Afghanistan.

And Brennan is not without domestic institutional allies either. In January, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) petitioned AP to have the word “Islamist” stricken from the vocabulary of journalism. And now the AP style manual is revised to suit those religious sensitivities. Any organization with the hutzpah to merge adjectives like ‘American’ and ‘Islamic’ in their title is a force to be reckoned with. Secular America and theocratic Islam share values in the same sense that prey and predator share.

Surely the Brennan spin, the CAIR complaints, and the now revised AP Style Manual are cuts from the same cloth. Cause and effect for such cultural drift is seldom obvious. Yet, the substance and logic of all three arguments is remarkably consistent – and consistently wrong. Withholding judgment about theocratic political movements grants pernicious religion equal standing with secular democratic government.

But now it’s a done deal. So let’s give credit where credit is due. AP copy is used in 17,000 newspapers and by 5000 TV outlets worldwide. Their product services 120 countries. The Associated Press might be the most profitable non-profit multi-national wire service on record. Any victory there in the global war of words is a big win.

Corks are popping over at Langley and the fellaheen at CAIR are crowing over the AP capitulation. Words matter. Language is the vehicle for cultural values. And strategic mendacity, like truth, is a value of sorts.  John Brennan and the editors at AP would do well to remember that political decay begins when great nations stop doing all those things that made success possible. The rot begins with rhetoric.

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This essay appeared in the 9 June 2013 edition of American Thinker.

 

 

 

 

 

The End of Reason

Presumption is the pride of fools, and it ought to be the scholar’s pride not to presume.” – Kedourie

Institutions are the product of good ideas. Unfortunately, over time, the institution often becomes the enemy of the idea. The subversive character of “success” has an ancient lineage in the history of human experience.

Athenian democracy may have been undone by cynical philosophers and egotistical generals. Ancient Greece cultivated both. Roman republicanism is thought to have been victim to Vandals in the north and then imperial Islam to the south. Another culprit may have been an avatar empire that grew too fond of mercenaries and tax exemptions. When Roman citizens stopped doing the heavy lifting, the graffiti was on the wall. Surely Christianity before Constantine was an inclusive institution, but when Catholicism (or Eastern Orthodoxy) became state religions, monotheism foretold an age where new ideas were dangerous.

The Communist empire collapsed from internal contradictions. Marx and Lenin made all the correct noises about noble principles, justice and democracy for example. Eventually, however, inept totalitarians spiked those promising ideals.

Most small enterprise disappears without a historical murmur. The rise and fall of these may be as natural as the change of seasons and tides. Yet, many institutions probably fade simply because they outlive their usefulness, become victims of financial success – or excess. Contemporary “non-profit” research corporations, think tanks, may fall into this category.

Perched high on the sea cliffs of Santa Monica, California, the RAND Corporation is the mother, indeed, the queen of modern think tanks. Yes, this is the very same firm that was satirized by Terry Southern as the “Bland” Corporation in Doctor Strangelove (1964). RAND managed to outlive ridicule because it was the product of a very good idea.

Towards the end of World War II, the Douglas Aircraft Company funded a small cadre of experts, whose purpose was to provide systematic analysis of strategic options, including nuclear planning. The president of Douglas and the commander of the Air Corps believed that a critical mass of intellects ought to be kept intact after the war. The advent of the Cold War seemed to validate such prudence. So a small group (approx 200) of mostly civilian specialists was sited in Santa Monica in 1948 that they might be as far from the political winds of Washington as possible. RAND is still with us today. Douglas Aircraft and the Air Corps are not.

In the early days, Santa Monica was indeed host to a band of independent intellectual giants; Bernard and Fawn Brodie, Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter, Herman Kahn, John von Neumann and others. When Brodie or Kahn came to the nation’s capital with a dog and pony show, the Pentagon auditorium was standing room only. The brass and gold braid in the audience was blinding. Today a RAND power point ranger might have trouble filling a basement snack bar with corporals.

What happened to RAND might be a cautionary tale for all “research” foundations, those intellectual barnacles that now cling to city, state, and federal sponsors worldwide. The purpose of think tanks, simply put, is to study issues and policies that government apparatchiks are unable or unwilling to tackle. An optimistic view of this industry is underwritten by the belief that “outside” contractors provide objectivity or independence. In fact, what has happened to the industry, of which RAND is the charter member, is that financial success, or endowment, has become more important than focus, impact, or integrity. Indeed, RAND no longer sports the virtue that made her prom queen.

The advent of “RAND lite” was probably a function of a complex matrix of personalities and issues which began with Daniel Ellsberg, and was accelerated by exponential competition, revolving doors, and the toxic onslaught of political correctness.

The Ellsberg Affair

The history of the RAND Corporation falls into two eras; before and after Daniel Ellsberg. With an Ivy League PhD in economics, Ellsberg was a typical revolving door dervish, alternately working at the Pentagon and at RAND. In 1971, Ellsberg Xeroxed and leaked copies of a TOP SECRET Pentagon report that had originally been commissioned by Robert McNamara. Ellsberg had access to the report because he was one of the researchers. The study painted a very unflattering portrait of DOD’s, and particularly the Johnson administration’s, handling of the Vietnam War. Given the anti-war politics of the early 70’s, Ellsberg and the so-called “Pentagon Papers” became instant celebrities.

The Pentagon Papers thus came to be the most notorious and overrated national security study in the annals of such reports. On the one hand, the 7,000 page study was commended for its candor; still, the analysis did not reveal anything that skeptical citizens didn’t already suspect after the Tet Offensive of 1968; that is, that two administrations had been spinning a very tedious, unwinnable war. The Pentagon Papers didn’t impact policy much either, the war went on for another four years, until 1975 – when General Giap snuffed the light at the end of General Westmoreland’s tunnel.

The policy impact of the Pentagon Papers may have been marginal in Washington, but in Santa Monica the blowback from the Ellsberg leak was a game changer. Predictably, the RAND board found a new president, Donald Rice, another dervish who would later ride the revolving door and become Secretary of the Air Force at the Pentagon. Rice quickly saw the handwriting on wall and realized that the near exclusive corporate focus on national security was a shaky pole in a windblown tent. National security candor was hazardous also, an existential threat to funding!

Under Rice, the corporate ship came about and made flank speed towards the social sciences. Indeed, today RAND boasts that 50% of 1700 some odd employees (up from 200 in 1948) are doing social work. Their health care projects may be the largest of their kind in the history of such things. It might be too cynical to suggest that RAND got into the health care fracas for the same reason RANDites migrated to the Middle East; cultivating Arabs for the same reasons that Willie Sutton was attracted to banks. “That’s where they keep the money!”

Yet, more ominous than relegating national security, their strong suit, to the back burner, was the likelihood that RAND, after Ellsberg, had become gun-shy; and too willing to tell sponsors what they wanted to hear.

The Competition

If the Urban Institute and the Internal Revenue Service can be believed, there are now approximately 15, 000 non-profit think tanks servicing city, state, and federal governments in the US alone. That would be 30 think tanks for every state in the nation. This number does not include some 150,000 educational establishments which are separate IRS 501(c) reporting categories. Total annual nontaxable revenues for think tanks now approximate 28 billion dollars. The number is nearly a trillion if educational institutions are included. There is more than a little overlap. The growth rate of 501(c) (3) institutions was 60% in the last decade; twice the growth rate of all non-profits combined. Non-profits overall are now a multi-trillion dollar industry.

There are a number of conclusions that might be drawn here. The most obvious is that RAND now has a lot of competition, thus diluting the talent pool of “experts” available and presumably the quality of analysis. If Apple and Microsoft must go abroad to find first string intellects; think tanks like RAND may be playing with scrubs today.

And the numbers raise other questions. If 15,000 “outside” consulting firms are doing the thinking for government at municipal, state, and national levels; what justifies those thousands, if not millions, of super-grade government bureaucrats? And if there is no profit in “non-profits,” what is the explanation for the explosive growth of think tanks? Patriotism?

Part of the truth may lay with endowments; RAND, for example, may have one of the richest nest eggs outside of Harvard yard. And clearly, the designation “non-profit” is an oxymoron. The more appropriate designation would be “untaxable” – for reasons yet to be justified. Successful think tanks may be a lot of things, but like wealthy universities, they are not “charities” by any stretch of logic.

Financial success has allowed RAND to diversify the research agenda and expand their physical plants. The ideas of geographic isolation, and keeping politics at a distance, have been jettisoned with a vengeance. Mother RAND now has offices in Virginia (near the Pentagon), Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Mexico, England, Belgium, Qatar, UAE, and Abu Dhabi. For objective national security analysis, the last three locales are the most worrisome. Hard to believe that systems analysis or scientific candor will ever put petro-dollars or Islamic autocrats at risk.

When asked about analytical diversification, and the new geopolitical reach, an old RAND hand recently observed: “RAND has become just another Beltway (expletive deleted)! Now, the most profitable tool in their kit is a wet finger in the political winds.”

The Revolving Door

RAND’s financial success, like many elite private academies, may be a function of a distinguished alumni association. Any list of former members of RAND’s Board of Trustees, Santa Monica management (aka “mahogany row”), or senior analysts reads like a historical Pentagon “A” list. Names like McNamara, Schlesinger, Carlucci, Rumsfeld, Rice (Donald and Condi), Marshall, and of course, Ellsberg, all sport RAND connections. Over the years, RAND has been a placeholder of sorts for out-of-work political appointees. RAND is a good example of the post-war “military/industrial complex” of which Dwight Eisenhower spoke so persuasively. And to be fair, the satraps of mahogany row make no secret of their insider connections. Indeed, the available boilerplate on the internet celebrates the history and the personalities of the RAND/Defense Department matrix.

The pivot for the RAND revolving door may the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA) and its long serving director, Andrew Marshall, a RAND alumnus from that golden era, the Kahn/Brodie days. ONA has schooled many a defense analyst, like James Schlesinger, who later went on to high office. Over the years, think tank CEO’s who presume to dabble in defense related national security matters are well-advised to genuflect at Marshall’s door.

Serving from the Vietnam era through the recent expedition to Afghanistan, Andy Marshall at 82 years of age is not so much the Delphic Yoda, to whom he is often compared, as he is like a Pentagon’s version of J. Edgar Hoover. Marshall knows where all the bodies are buried. More importantly, with a small elite staff, Marshall is still a dispenser of significant contract research monies. When he calls, masters of the universe in Santa Monica, or at the Pentagon, do not put Andy Marshall on hold. ONA reports directly to the Secretary of Defense.

Political Correctness

Any research should have three elements; scientific standards, a catalogue of potential unintended consequences (blowback), and an impact appraisal. The pharmaceutical or auto industries could serve as models. Drug trials and auto tests have measures of effectiveness; and the hazards of blowback (side effects or dangers) are clearly labeled, and advertised. And finally, chemists and engineers regularly assess the impact of their output.

True science always asks two questions; does this work and how well? The bonus from high standards in these, and similar industries, is their willingness to recall clunkers – or modify products that do more harm than good. Unfortunately, America seems to have higher standards for aspirin and seat belts than it does for national security research products.

The Ascent of a Priori

Strategy gurus, like Herman Kahn, used to scold his peers that, if national defense analysis goes awry, nothing else mattered. Indeed! Today there is more than a little evidence to suggest that a significant number of government, academic, and think tank analysts are cooking the books; that is, telling politicians what they want to hear – instead of what they need to know.

The problem is compounded by a timid generation of elected officials cowed by dubious notions of diversity, moral equivalency, and social leveling. Such qualities may be hard-wired in a generation where sensitivity trumps sensibility. Movers and shakers know what they believe and mostly they know what they believe got them to where they are. As a consequence, politicians in a democracy tend to confuse votes with validation. Contradicting the conventional wisdom of such a political class is hazardous duty.

And keeping a host of bureaucrats and federal camp followers on message requires a fairly consistent cueing system. In the national security arena, the obvious players are the usual suspects.

Unfortunately, the American cueing system now includes the Intelligence Community.
When Colin Powell, then Sectary of State, and George Tenent, then Director of CIA, appear before the United Nations and misrepresent ground truth in Iraq with the key judgments of a National Security Estimate (NIE), clearly policy cueing crosses some uncharted threshold.

The tone is set at the top. Cues trickle down. When a US president visits a host of Muslim capitals in his first term, but not Israel, a signal is broadcast. When a CIA Director (John Brennan) claims, nay insists that jihad is personal or ritual cleansing, he sends a message. When a US theater commander (David Petraeus) approves infidel hijabs, in lieu of helmets, for female soldiers, he provides a clue. When an Army Chief of Staff (George Casey) deploys to the Sunday chat shows to rationalize the unspeakable barbarity of a home-grown US Army jihadist; even dullards get the message.

The problem with policy cueing is that it is most likely to influence those listeners with the most to lose if they ignore the muezzin. Indeed, cueing is at the heart of the political correctness problem. A fairly consistent set of institutional signals now appears to have created an axis of appeasement. This axis includes the White House, the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, and more than a few “objective and independent” universities and think tanks that are subcontractors to government at all levels. RAND Corporation provides several recent examples of how the “private” sector responds to political signals.

War, Crime, and Anti-Semitism?

Hours after 9/11, George Bush allowed a plane load of Saudi elites to flee the US before the blood was dry at the World Trade Center. Never mind that most of the New York suicide martyrs were Saudis. The political cue here was meant for domestic and foreign consumption; to wit, America would not hold passive aggressors, sponsor nations, or clerical hate speech accountable for the atrocities of “extremists.”

The majority of Muslims were thus anointed “moderates,” on the authority of an asserted conclusion. All the while, fellaheen danced in the streets of Arabia. Future definitions of the terror threat would be confined to specific non-government agents like al Qa’eda or the Taliban. By fiat, Islamic terrorism was henceforth fenced as isolated phenomena with local motives; in short, jihad is represented as a perversion of, not a tenant of, a global Islamist theology – or Muslim politics.

This politically correct version of reality would be reinforced by a subsequent administration in a series of forays into the Ummah where Barack Obama would declare unequivocally that America, and NATO by extension, is not at war with Islam or Muslims. Never mind that NATO or American troops might be killing Muslims in four, or is it five, separate venues. “We are not at war!” is still the party line.

Then came “independent” analysis which backfills or rationalizes the political Esperanto. RAND report (MG-741-RC); How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qai’da, 2000 is an example. Notice the assumption embedded in the title; “counter” not defeat. The body of the report is devoted to asserting that terror (a military tactic) is best addressed by political, not military means. Separating war, an amalgam of tactics and strategy, from politics is not an assumption that Churchill, Eisenhower, or even Stalin would have made. A politically correct world-view turns logic inside out; where tactics are confused with strategy.

The report ignores the larger strategic phenomena of jihad bis saif and protected Islamist hate mongering. But the bottom line of RAND’s “systematic” analysis is the most revealing: “Terrorists should be perceived as criminals, not holy warriors.” Such assertions may be a kind of strategic masochism; but, not science nor even common sense.

How the West views Islam is more important then how Islamists act – or see themselves! By such logic, Arizona sheriffs might be deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan instead of the US Marines. And by such logic, where might genocidal Islamic felons, should they be caught, be tried; lower Manhattan?

Another RAND paper on the South Asia massacre, entitled “Lessons of Mumbai,” is an even better example of cooked books; a case where analysis and credibility is undone by evidence ignored.

The Mumbai attack was unique in two respects; a small Jewish center was targeted, the occupants were slaughtered; and the hotel hostages were then screened for religious affiliation – again, seeking Jews. It’s a safe bet that none of the Mumbai killers were ever stopped at an Israeli checkpoint or sold a building lot in east Jerusalem. This attack was planned and executed with motives removed from the usual; the India/Pakistan rift or the Israel/Fattah impasse. Mumbai was clearly motivated, in part, by a strain of virulent, contagious, and global anti-Semitism. No mention of this appears in Lessons of Mumbai’s “key judgments.”

The global bloom of anti-Semitism since the turn of the 21st Century is no accident. Those who ignore it, especially scientists at place like RAND, make it possible. Ironically, many of RAND’s most eminent researchers are or have been Jewish.

(This report also reinforces suspicions about non-profit excess. “The Lessons of Mumbai” paper is a mere 25 pages long, yet lists ten (sic) authors; an average of two and a half pages per analyst. Makes you wonder how many scientists are required to screw in light bulbs out in Santa Monica. Clearly, featherbedding is not just restricted to government operations.)

Some recent RAND national security analysis may actually qualify as apologetics. The 2010 paper entitled Would-be Warriors analyses the incidence of terrorism in the US since 9/11. The paper actually ends with the assumptions, concluding:

“There is no evidence (sic) that America’s Muslim community is becoming more radical. America’s psychological vulnerability is on display…panic is the wrong message to send.”

“No evidence” – or none that RAND can detect? If 16 US intelligence agencies didn’t connect the 9/11 dots beforehand, RAND’s statistical assurances ring more than a little hallow. Islamic terror didn’t begin with the barbarisms in lower Manhattan. And assertions about psychological vulnerability or “panic” are straw men or worse. Who sees such fears in the wake of the Twin Towers atrocity? Indifference or political apathy maybe; but surely no panic.

Nor does the RAND analysis account for the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) or the fact that this home-grown political movement was recently hijacked by radical Muslim Americans. The NBPP’s most recent outrage was to threaten to burn the city of Detroit at a city council meeting.

And on US Muslim radicalization; clearly RAND statisticians rarely audit student sentiment at any Los Angeles “occupy” rallies or any California campus when an Israeli speaker appears. Anti-Semitism is ever the canary in the geo-strategic coal mine.

The creation of veiled apologetics is not as worrisome as the pervasive misuse of such scientific reports, a trend which does nothing but devalue the currency of government financed analysis.

While the overall cast of RAND national security research is cautious and in many cases politically correct; the occasional old hand still puts mustard on his fastball. In 2003, Jim Quinlivan wrote an essay in the RAND Review (Summer, 2003), based on statistical analysis, that suggested American excursions against insurgents or terrorists in dar al Islam, were bound to end badly – using strict military measures of effectiveness. Unfortunately, such voices are seldom endorsed or underlined with corporate authority.

The Quinlivan essay was written shortly after 9/11 when “kinetic” solutions were all the rage; his paper flew in the face of the prevailing political winds. More recent RAND reports, as discussed above, tack with the prevailing winds. The difference is integrity.

The Fukuyama Era

The apparent political metamorphosis at RAND has always been more than a bit of a chimera. Early on, Hollywood and a few Santa Monica activists managed to brand RAND as a neo-conservative thought factory. RAND may have been sited on the “left coast” to be as far removed from Washington as possible, but RAND was not immune to the political smog of southern California. Ellsberg was an example, a known enthusiast of local radical activism after office hours. Even today, during think breaks, an employee might pump iron on muscle beach, play beach volleyball, skateboard on the strand, or cruise the head shops of Ocean Park. Since the Strangelove days, Santa Monica has become a kind of destination resort for left-leaning intellectuals.

Indeed, Rand’s most influential political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, now sits on the RAND Board of Trustees.

As a RAND analyst, Fukuyama jolted the world of political and social science with a 1989 essay, the “End of History,” in the National Interest – later to become a book of the same name. The Fukuyama thesis, briefly stated, is that the defeat of fascism, National Socialism, and the implosion of Communism were symptoms of the triumph of a liberal ideal – democratic socialism with a happy face. Ironically, in another day, RAND challenged the conventional wisdom. Now RAND is the conventional wisdom.

Fukuyama’s sentiments have Hegelian threads; in short, a belief that political consciousness evolves with time. Unfortunately, equating progress with the passage of time ignores more than a bit of history and contemporary reality; the Dark Ages and the irredentist vector of Islam today come to mind. History, or the passage of time, is a two way street; going backwards is as likely as moving forward. And like evolution in the natural world, political history is littered with dead ends and dead civilizations.

Nonetheless, to his credit, Fukuyama’s utopian positivism is, today, probably the dominant political idiom for most social democracies including America. The recent and ongoing revolts in the Arab world provide examples.

The belief that democracy is the default political setting in the Muslim world is almost universal among Western politicians, academics, and journalists. The two most common adjectives used during the ongoing Arab revolts are “peaceful” and “democratic.” Neither is underwritten by ground truth.

Surely, political optimists have confused change with progress; or worse still, confused revolt with reform. The best that can be said of the “jasmine” revolution to date is that it is, as Tennessee Williams might have put it, like “the sickly sweet smell of mendacity.”

Indeed, utopian is often confused with dystopian in a world view that fails to accommodate, or minimizes, the dark side of human nature and creeping national security threats. Fukuyama acknowledges the possibility of “political decay,” but seldom sees decay as irredentism. Indeed, Fukuyama, like RAND, has become a member of the “Islam is not at odds with democracy” lobby.

If your primary concern is religion; your world view is authoritarian, not democratic. The Ummah doesn’t get a vote on the Koran or Hadith. And the various interpretations of sacred scripture or the Prophet’s life are made by clerics and religious scholars, not the fellaheen. The adjectival Islam portrayed in the West (i.e. moderates versus radicals) does not exist for most Muslims. As the Turkish prime minister tells us; “Islam is Islam!” For Islamic party leaders like Tayyip Erdogan adjectives like ‘moderate’ are an “insult.”

The big tent mirage is another triumph of hope over experience. Islam is one tent. Spokesmen (emphasis on the second syllable) argue for tolerance only where Muslims are a voting minority. Polities with Muslim majorities may be ethnically diverse in some cases; but religious, sexual, or political diversity is rare. ‘Islamic republics’ are oxymorons where trivia like dress might be enforced with corporal punishment. Alas, a global Islamist movement, and its continuing barbarisms, metastasizes with the support of delusional western rhetoric born of asserted conclusions – and fear.

The most troubling assumption is religious moral equivalency; the conjecture that any religious belief or practice, and associated politics, deserves the same respect and protection as faiths which have, evolved with, and been enlightened by secular democracy. Apologists in the West refuse to consider unreformed Islam as the threat. Nonetheless, Islamic clerics, scholars and politicians are in fact at war with reason, science, and secular democracies.

In this, the aforementioned axis of appeasement and the Fukuyama world view may be cut from the same cloth. This is not to suggest that the appeasers are without critics. Samuel Huntington, Bernard Lewis, Paul Berman, and even the late Christopher Hitchens, are all informed and articulate skeptics who have provided candid assessments of Islamic theology and subordinate Muslim politics; now another variant of fascism dressed in a burka of religion.

Nonetheless, research on all things Islamic, with few exceptions, fails to consider religion as the nexus of all those Muslim wars. Indeed, clerical literalists are dismissed as radical or small minorities. However; the literal, (as in scriptural), and emotional, (as in survey), evidence of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic, and anti western sentiment in Arab and Muslim communities is overwhelming. The Islamic mimber and cowering Muslim politicians are the problems. And the issue is not simply Jewish reputation among the dysfunctional majority at the UN. The strategic threat is survival – the specter of a 21st century Holocaust.

Elie Kedourie (1926-1992) laid a foundation challenging the conventional wisdom about Muslim “victims.” He more than any other scholar, warned about the pernicious effects of half-baked academic political theories, especially those applied to the Levant and Arabia, as a basis for policy. It is instructive on this point to note that the term “developing world” has replaced the phrase “third world” in the political science lexicon;” surely, like “Arab Spring,” another early euphemistic triumph of hope over experience.

Unfortunately, pragmatic (and mostly traditional) voices are often smothered with name calling, and neologisms like “islamophobia,” instead of reasonable discourse. Language often needs to be reinvented to accommodate quislings. Colonial guilt, self-loathing, and political correctness are, however, merely symptoms of a much larger problem.

The great cipher of the early 21st Century is the growing indifference or unwillingness of “scientists” in the West to defend the traditions and ethos that make reasonable discourse and modern science possible. Richard Rubenstein calls the phenomenon in Europe a surrender of cultural identity.

In another day, Kedourie took Arnold Toynbee and others to task for academic hubris, but the few critics of early political “correctness,” and other advocacy idioms, did little to alter a consciousness of who or what is responsible for the perennial pathology that plagues Muslim countries. If the West absorbs Muslim culture; Islamic values become crimes not virtues – immigration then becomes a kind of blowback imperialism. The major achievement of modern Islamism is that it has undone, for honest observers, the myths of religious and political moral equivalence. Suicide terror, religious war, and resurgent theocracy represent a trifecta of evidence that should speak for itself.

Epilogue

Possibly, the intersection of government sponsored study and policy has never been a crossroad for truth. In today’s analysis, facts seem to have two faces; truth and ignorance. Evidence might be used to establish the truth of a matter, but facts are just as likely to be manipulated or ignored; indeed, used to spread polite, yet false, narratives. Systematic cherry picking of evidence to support a prioi judgments is now a cottage industry among the social, environmental, and political sciences.

Why RAND?

We use RAND Corporation in this discussion because that institution is representative of the think tank phenomenon; the outsourcing of national security analysis, policy, and responsibility. RAND was there at the beginning and continues to be a prominent player. It seems politicians and generals seldom think for themselves anymore. Outsourcing allows the elite to take bows for policy achievements while providing a convenient scapegoat for any failures.

To be fair, RAND’s strong suit, historically, was always technical. Santa Monica made substantial contributions to space, gaming, systems analysis, and communications technology. Unfortunately, that’s history. The great dilemmas of contemporary national security are moral, not technical.

Today’s challenges are not ‘why’ or ‘how.’ “Should” is the tougher nut. Here RAND and its many brethren have failed. Failures like the mislabeling of terror tactics, regime change characterization, factual cherry-picking, and the minimization of global jihadism are all symptoms of moral malpractice. Most analysis of Muslim terror, theology, and links to political dysfunction suffers from want of candor.

Such practices are now classified as a separate “science:” Agnotology – the cultural production of ignorance. Necrosis of objectivity is compounded by virulent strains of Islamism; not simply threats to democracy and freedom, but more significant as threats to a culture tolerance, logic, and reason.

Surely, any view of reality is a compromise between ideals and experience. Total objectivity is impossible. Unfortunately, politically correct national security analysis now corrupts scientific method on the one hand and underwrites a plague of distortion on the other.

Threat is a function of two things; capability and intentions. The dominant clerical factions of Islam, Shia and Sunni, have been crystal clear on intentions. And their military capabilities improve daily. A Sunni nuclear capability already exists, and the Shia bomb is waiting in the wings. Such facts do not require much study; unless the purpose is to dismiss the evidence.

Citizens expect politicians to hedge their bets. Similar evasions are fatal for science, research, and analysis. RAND was originally an acronym which stood for research and development. The RAND Corporation never did much “development” and now their “research” might be more political than correct.

The Intelligence Community may have already been compromised; and now think tanks seem to know more about making money than they do about making sense. We should expect nothing but cold candor from official Intelligence sources and “independent” national security analysis – or stop wasting borrowed money on both.

Time may show that RAND and Fukuyama are half right. The collapse of Communism, now followed by the rebirth of religious fascism, is the end of something –the end of reason maybe, but surely not the end of history as we know it. The liberal ideal is anything but triumphant. The Twin towers, Benghazi, and now Boston are reminders; not lethal enough yet to be wake-up calls, but we might do well to think of terror as down payments on the next big bang.

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A condensed version of this essay appeared in the spring (2013) issue of Otechestvennye Zapiski: the Journal of Russian Thought.

 

More is Never Enough

‘Humankind cannot bear too much reality.” – TS Eliot

Barack Hussein Obama finally went to Israel. Before the trip, America had a schizophrenic, yet constant, Mideast foreign policy; stroking autocratic Arabs and alienating democratic Israelis.

Indeed, the ‘Brennan’ doctrine took sides in the Shia/Sunni nuclear competition, the Ummah Armageddon that haunts every Semitic nightmare. American solidarity with Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, has become a peculiar variety of national masochism.

Most Islamist terror originates with Sunnis. Irredentist Sunni theology originates in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and finds funding and sectarian solidarity in the Emirates, putative allies all.

And recall the first Islam bomb, a Sunni gift from another dubious ‘ally,’ Pakistan.  The Sunni nuclear threshold was breached 20 years ago while American Intelligence slept. This is the same Pakistan which harbored Osama bin Laden for ten years after 9/11. This is the same Pakistan which is always just a bullet away from dictatorship or theocracy too.

Ten years of South Asia weapons testing in the 1980’s hardly made a strategic ripple. Turning a blind eye to nuclear weapons in Pakistan is a little like ignoring a straight razor on a crowded playground.

Now the Islamic dystopia is converging on Mecca and Medina from two directions. And when Bashir Assad falls, the oil oligarchs will feel the heat from two sides. Shia theocrats and Sunni Islamists have the same target set. That over ripe Arab establishment is ground zero.

The ayatollahs of Tehran are buying time to build another bomb too. John Kerry, former anti-war zealot, is touring the Levant; threatening to intervene in Syria on behalf of Sunni Islamists – another US Secretary of State choosing winners and losers in the great minus-sum game.  America learned nothing from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Tahrir Square, and Benghazi.

The nuclear dimension of Islamic politics is unique in the annals of death wishes; a fascination with improved ways to kill coupled with suicide theology and cultural decay. Child marriage, misogyny, homophobia, and martyrdom flourish side by side at the expense of education and social maturity. Beyond symptoms; the core pathology, the modern incarnation of fascism, is dressed in a burka of religion – a perennial toxin in Muslim culture. 

Why would any rational Western democracy – apostates or infidels –continue to throw dogs into this fight?

No matter.  Americans and Europeans press on into the dark night of tribal feuds and religious quarrels. The ancient wars between modernity and irredentism metastasize today under a variety of labels; revolution, regime change, civil war, insurgency, and terrorism just to name a few.

Rather than face the ugly truth about the contemporary face of fascism, western politicians have manufactured an elaborate set of political illusions, a kind of strategic transference, if you will. The most pernicious illusion is the “two-state” solution.

The binary formula, an Israel beside a Palestine, is underwritten by several flawed assumptions, not the least of which is poor arithmetic.   There is no single representative of Palestinian interests. Israel’s proximate enemies are three in number, Hezb’allah, Hamas, and Fatah. Only Fatah pretends to make a deal.

And the four Arab nation states bordering Israel have probably killed more Palestinians than the IDF. Palestinian militias have been purged from Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt. Yasser Arafat was run out of Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia before Israeli indulgence allowed his return to the West Bank.  The terror vacuum in Lebanon was filled by Hezb’allah. Alas, all of those Arab states bordering Israel are capable of influencing Palestinian politics when it suits their needs.

Yet, who believes that a sovereign Palestine will be a good or pacific neighbor? Who believes that the UN, or the Arab League for that matter, needs another dysfunctional member?

Even if Israel could negotiate a settlement with non-state players, any agreement would have to be underwritten by four unstable, if not belligerent, Arab states. The likelihood of Israel accommodating one Muslim partner is slim; the probability of pleasing seven is near zero.

The Palestine dilemma has always been an Arab problem, but Arab governments have always preferred to let the refugees from lost Arab wars stew on the Israeli frontier in a pyric quest for sovereignty. Implicitly, that which could not be done by conventional force of arms, might be done by time, terror – and a poison pill like Palestine.

In sixty years, Israel has made numerous one-sided financial, humanitarian, and territorial concessions. Little of this is reciprocated at the borders where Arab state players, at worst, sponsor and, at best, ignore terror cells. Israel’s borders might be secured in a fortnight were it not for indifferent or duplicitous Arab neighbors.

Muslims within Israel live better than any minority in the Arab world, an Islamic world where Jews have been systematically purged. Twenty percent of Israelis are Arabs, living peaceably in Israel. The third holiest mosque of Islam survives in Jerusalem. How many synagogues stand in Mecca, Medina, or the Emirates? If Jews need to give more for peace; how much is enough?

Palestinians and Arabs are arguing for a Jew-free West Bank and Gaza; and ultimately a Jew-free Palestinian state. Where is the argument for Jewish human or civil rights in this edition of ethnic cleansing?

The two state formula isn’t a solution, it’s a symptom; a sign of moral cowardice and political charades. Israel is not likely to make a suicide pact with hostile neighbors and the Arab world is unlikely to give up the Palestinian cause; its favorite crutch, its favored excuse, and its favorite wedge issue.

And western political elites, right and left, can’t stop doing what doesn’t work either; endorsing a “two-state” chimera for example. Intemperate indulgence of Muslim rage prevails in America, Europe, and even parts of Israel. Social democracies, and their embedded dependencies, are the captives of fear – and excess. More of the same is always better.  Clear eyed candor is seldom an option.  Unfortunately, more is never enough when the threat is fascism underwritten by religious imperialism.

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This essay appeared  in the American Thinker and the Iconoclast blog in early April.

Pogonophobia

“What difference does it make?” – Hilary Clinton

If you were wondering about the vector of American foreign and military policy in the next four years; you could do worse than examine the new national security team: John Brennan, John Kerry, Charles Hagel, and Martin Dempsey.

John Brennan

Brennan is first among equals as a White House intimate; heretofore a minor White House staffer who has had the president’s ear for the last four years. Yet he is the sponsor of a foreign policy where Islamism is the central, yet invisible, nexus of near and distant national security threats.   “Invisible” because Mr. Brennan has made his mark as an articulate apologist for, and co- architect of, a policy of stealth appeasement.

The pillars of the Brennan doctrine are threefold: high visibility engagement with Islam, low visibility isolation of Israel, and clandestine kinetic containment of “radicals.” Wars of the future war under a Brennan doctrine will be confined to joystick combat, military gamers in Nevada using drones for selective global retribution.

Withal, any solo holy warrior, or Muslim organization, that kills in the name of Allah or jihad, or sympathizes with terror tactics, will still be characterized as an unrepresentative minority.  Thus, a larger Muslim culture, especially the Arab vanguard, enjoys a kind of blanket absolution – and no incentives for reform.  With Brennan, oblivious is the burka that obscures the obvious.

Alas, the roots of Muslim cultural pathology are religious, not political. Recent regime changes, especially in the Arab world, facilitate religious recidivism; not because Muslims misunderstand democracy, but because most adherents see no need to subordinate religious dogma to secular choice. Tribal aristocrats and military autocrats might get the rope or a bullet; but ayatollahs and imams are immune.

In the Ummah, internal and external instability are symptoms of this continuing conflict between rote and reason. The Muslim East is still struggling with a dilemma that the Christian West resolved centuries ago, a religious Reformation followed by evolutionary political Enlightenment.  Misguided contemporary notions of moral equivalence tend to ignore the dangers of Islamic religious homogeneity and political absolutism. Such naiveté enables theocratic despotism and inspires genocidal fanatics.

The logic of the Brennan doctrine allows the ideological threat to be contained; theoretically limited to the likes of al Qaeda. Never mind that PEW surveys of Muslim attitudes in general, Arab opinion in particular, consistently registers toxic levels of hostility towards the secular West; anti- Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-American sentiments.

With appeasement, statistical evidence, numbers of Islamist adherents and numbers of western casualties do not matter. The lynchpin of 21^st century moral malaise may be a phenomenon that Dalrymple calls “incontinent forgiveness” and Rebecca Bynum clarifies as “tolerance raised above justice and forgiveness (raised) above mercy.”

With the Brennan doctrine, the body bags of  US Marines in Lebanon, New York’s Twin Towers, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lockerbie, Beslan, the USS Cole, or Benghazi are negligible investments in soft power; a strategy downsized to accommodate elusive goals like nation building (nee development), transition, and stability – objectives with no clear measures of effectiveness.  Defeating theo-fascism is not part of the Brennan plan.

In his new role as CIA director, John Brennan is now the official curator of the Islamist foreign policy trope. If the Brennan doctrine does not tilt or pander to Mecca, then someone needs to explain why President Obama has yet in genuflect in Jerusalem.

John Kerry

Senator Kerry of Massachusetts might be the perfect choice to fill Hilary Clinton’s pants suit as chief American “cookie pusher.”

Mrs. Clinton was the most mobile, most visible, most popular, and least effective member of the president’s national security team. If frequent flyer miles are a measure of merit, then Mrs. Clinton is an over-achiever. Unfortunately, per diem and apology tourism might signify celebrity, but not social progress.

Like Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice before her, Hilary was in the cat bird’s seat to confront global chauvinism and misogynistic obscenities in the Muslim world, yet she did little save preach, provide timid lip service to woman’s and human rights. Like Brennan, Mrs. Clinton seems to be pogonophobic.

As Hilary took her victory lap before congressional committees, she provided a fitting coda for Obama Cabinet beliefs about hate crime, cultural terror, and the global jihad to date. “What difference does it make?” says Mrs. Clinton. To be fair, we should note that Hilary Clinton, like her husband, is a fairly typical representative of her generation – an era where celebrity is confused with achievement.

Now comes John Kerry another reliable sailor from the US Senate, America’s axis of political inertia. The Senate has not passed a budget in recent memory, yet deficit spending proceeds apace midst the worst economic threat since the Great Depression.  Alas, Kerry is not known for his economic acumen; his marriage into a pickle fortune notwithstanding.

Senator Kerry is a 30 year veteran of the foreign policy wars on the apologetic Left. Like Ted Kennedy, Kerry made his bones as an anti-war zealot, scion of the Jane Fonda wing of the Democrat Party. And like Mrs. Clinton, Kerry is likely to be a loyal and reliable face for the Brennan doctrine, a mix where timidity in the West will encourage the worst in the East.

John Kerry’s rehabilitation by near unanimous bi-partisan consent is a foreign policy marker too, a signal that there are little or no significant differences between the American Left and American Right on the Brennan doctrine.

Charles Hagel

If Kerry is a poke in the eye, then Charles Hagel is an inside joke – or a deer caught in the national spotlight. The only choice for Secretary of Defense that might be worse would have been John Kerry. Hagel’s confirmation hearing was astounding. In a few short hours he managed to backtrack on every controversial position he took as a senator.  Hagel has defined himself as a political eunuch.

As a self-described ideological castrato, Mister Hagel might be a cynical, yet logical, choice for a Defense Department that is about to undergo a surgery that cuts more than giblets. Hagel is painted as a bi-partisan player, but his Republican record is one of political opportunism underpinned by ‘closet’ anti-Semitism.

Hagel was probably selected because he is malleable, reliable, and an ecumenical complement to Brennan – another loyal subscriber to the defend Iran and “blame Israel” idioms. Painting Jews as scapegoats for Muslim angst has a history at the Pentagon. David Petraeus, Brennan’s CIA predecessor, while at CENTCOM, sponsored a ‘study’ to that effect. The “two state” chimera is underwritten by the ludicrous belief that tempering Arab and Muslim belligerence is a function of Israeli concession or capitulation.

Martin Dempsey

There was a time when flag officers might be excluded from any analysis of policy futures. Military officers were expected to stay out of politics. Alas, that ship sailed with Admiral Mike Mullen, the last chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Mullen, you might recall, led the charge for gay rights, a political hot potato if ever there was one.  Under Mullen, sexual preferences, or gender orientation, became a military readiness issue.

And political correctness was not limited to rear echelon warriors. During the same period, then ISAF commander, David Petraeus had female soldiers wearing hijabs rather than helmets in the field.

Taking a cue from Mullen, the new JCS Chairman, Martin Dempsey, jumped into the social sweepstakes before Leon Panetta departed. Dempsey opened the combat arms to women in the name of equality. The top four star claims that “sexual assaults will decline” (sic) in the US military with women at the front.

When Dempsey was asked why he did not act to save the Benghazi four, he replied that he was aware of the crisis in real-time, but did not receive a request for help from Mrs. Clinton. While Brennan and Clinton might be afraid of beards, Dempsey’s cavalry seems to be saddled with a “mother may I?” complex.

JCS crisis timidity does not limit enthusiasm for social engineering; risky experiments unencumbered by experience or evidence. Never mind that candidate women have already failed to meet infantry training standards in the Marine Corps.   Statutory equality among first responders, police and firemen, has led to significant alteration of training and qualification standards. Marksmanship was the first casualty.

If the Joint Chiefs were serious about equality, they would be lobbying to have women included in selective service registration. Calls for equal rights without equal obligations are a fraud.

Flag officers routinely allow themselves to be drawn into iffy domestic politics, and such generals are sure to be pushovers for hirsute fanatics abroad, zealots who care little for women’s rights and even less for alternative life styles.  And herein lays the real tragedy when misguided notions of equality subvert common sense. When gay State Department envoys and Defense Department women are deployed to Ummah battlefronts, they are exposed to double jeopardy, military and cultural risk. Feminism and homosexuality are capital offenses among Islamists – and sharia justice in these matters is often instantaneous.

The Obama cabinet and the JCS seems to have learned nothing from the executions and mutilations at Benghazi.  American Cabinet officers and generals have elevated special social pleading at home above the special hazards in all those Muslims wars abroad.

Dark Horizons

There is no evidence that the Brennan doctrine supports prudent near or long term strategy. Strategic appeasement has now produced a generation of catamite tacticians, leaders that assume a defensive crouch after each indignity, hoping that the next atrocity will not hurt as much as the last.  Blowback after Benghazi illustrates the phenomenon.

The knee-jerk Cabinet response is defensive; blame You Tube then throw more money at outpost “security.”  Indeed, a billion dollars will be taken from Defense Department accounts and thrown into the bottomless pit of Foggy Bottom consular vulnerabilities. Alas, passive “engagement” is again raised above justifiable, if not necessary, action and confrontation.

The moral cowardice embedded in the Brennan doctrine is underwritten by fear, naiveté, and misplaced assertions of moral equivalence. We fear that things could get worse; fears about oil, debt, and terror. We also pray that our tolerance will overcome their dogma; forgetting, unfortunately, that most Muslims are tolerant only where they are a minority. And we continue to be seduced by the shibboleth that Islam is one of the “world’s great religions” and not just another mutating variant of political fascism.

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This essay appeared in the March issue of the New English Review (London)

Generals and Geographic Bachelors

             “It wasn’t his infidelity that I couldn’t bear; it was his cowardice.”

                                                    – Tatiana de Rosnay           

General David Petraeus illuminates two grand military issues at just the right moment; officer corps character and flag officer performance. Petraeus could be the poster child for a clueless Gilbert and Sullivan character too; “The very model of a modern major-general.” Major-general was the highest rank to which an officer might aspire to in the last century. Grade inflation created the contemporary glut of four stars, including Petraeus.

 David Petraeus gloried in wearing every token of service on his chest, including presumably the good conduct ribbon. Or maybe not! The good conduct medal only goes to grunts, not officers. Clearly, the good conduct award should hereafter be a badge of misplaced military expectations.

Nonetheless; the US Army, West Point, and officers like Petraeus continue to pay lip service to traditional military values and ethics like “duty, honor, and country.” The second imperative seems to have been honored in breach by the former ISAF commander. It’s hard to believe, as it was with Bill Clinton, that Paula Broadwell was a “one of.”

Or maybe the West Point honor oath is more relevant: “a cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal; or tolerate those who do.” Ironically, cheating on your wife seems to be a moral misdemeanor in the Army; while cheating on your trigonometry quiz could lead to dismissal. Alas, Cadet David gets the hat trick here. On the larceny count, Petraeus stole reputation from both sides of his family. His wife Holly is the daughter of a former West Point Superintendent.

And be not distracted by any “honey trap” nonsense; cheating on wives is a military tradition, not a scandal. Officially, a remote tour is designated “unaccompanied,” but overseas orders seldom require celibacy. Alas, unaccompanied officers are known in the trade as “geographic” bachelors. A senior officer is not busted for cheating; he gets drummed out of the corps for getting caught – too visibly.

And morality only becomes an issue when it embarrasses the Service. In this respect, contemporary military culture is no different than American political culture. If and when, Holly Petraeus, sings a few choruses of “Stand by Your Man,” as did Hilary Clinton; the triumph of bimbo ethics will be confirmed. Men behave like swine because the women in their lives, mothers and wives, have low or no expectations.

Patraeus not only gives new meaning to terms like “embedded” and “all in” but he and Mrs. Broadwell give a whole new dimension to “ring knockers,” a military euphemism for arogant military academy graduates. Indeed, if the general was making booty calls with GI Jane in Kabul, the angst in the ranks should be unique. Unlike Europe, Korea, and Vietnam; ordinary soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are discouraged, if not prohibited, from fraternizing with Muslim women. Like Saigon back in the day, however, apparently the brass gets first run on the imported camp followers. Rank still has perks.

For those who might argue that the military ethos is different, consider who comes to defend Petraeus and the nature of the arguments. Members of both political parties, (e.g. Nancy Pelosi and Lindsey Graham ) and the Media lament the loss of a “great leader” to personal, as opposed to professional, failings.

This is the same limp mantra cooked up for Bill Clinton. Neither defense holds water. Perjury is a crime in any court; and adultery, as Petraeus should know, is a court martial offence under the UCMJ. Note that it is the Republican House who excuses Petraeus from testifying, as scheduled, in the Benghazi fiasco. Republicans can’t seem to court enough ill will these days.

So much for the general’s character.

Defending Petraeus on performance grounds may be an even a shakier argument. The general belongs to the “kiss up, kick down” school of military management, again an import from the political world. Like politicians, political generals insist on deprivations from which they usually exempt themselves.

Recall, that during the hot war in Iraq, serving under a Republican, Petraeus was vilified as General “Betrayus.” Now, under a Democrat administration, as the retreat from Afghanistan unfolds, the former ISAF commander is held up as a national hero. Where are the victories? Is the Arab or Muslim world more pacific or stable today, because Petraeus marched through?

Even insipid goals like “transition” are a shell game. We still have troops in Iraq; and after 2014, a similar contingent will remain in Kabul. The true accomplishments of all those small wars in the Muslim world to date are twofold; NATO has simplified the Islamist target set and enabled the triumph of radical religious politics. Indeed, American troops are now killed by our so-called “moderate” Muslim allies; surely a comfort to Islamists.

The great failure of senior officers like Petraeus is candor, or more bluntly, integrity. America cannot do for Muslims what Islam is unwilling to do for itself. That fundamental ground truth is ignored or spun by senior military officers and politicians alike.

And are we to believe that Petraeus reinvented the Army with novel counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine? The test of any doctrine is achievement; or to use a word absent from flag officer vocabulary these days, the test of military theory is victory. There are only two routes to change in the Ummah; reform or defeat. Neither is evident after 50 years of futile American sacrifice.

Politics and yearly troop rotations are at odds with the Petraeus doctrine. The force ratios required by the Army Manual (FM 3-24) will never be achieved with the current force structure; and brief, but repeat, deployments are at odds with consolidating any annual gains or winning any “hearts or minds.”

Problems with academic theory begin with flawed assumptions; nearly all conflicts in the Muslim world are civil wars, not insurgencies. The Army doesn’t have a foreign civil war mandate. Unfortunately, the Marine Corps has bought into the COIN nonsense too. The elimination of the draft makes it easier for politicians and generals to play fast and loose with national treasure and volunteer lives; another ground truth ignored by Petraeus doctrine.

Before leaving the performance report, we might look at some of the small steps that allowed Petraeus to advance from Kabul to Langley. First was that borderline anti-Semitic CENTCOM study commissioned by Patraeus that suggests that resolving the Israel question is key to abating Muslim rage. Nonsense!

Israel/Palestine is a regional problem; Islamism is a global conflict. Secular governments worldwide are the real Islamic targets. Israel is a convenient distraction, a political stalking horse. And Tel Aviv has made a host of territorial concessions since defeating the Arab armies; all to no avail. Elimination of Israel is the oft stated goal of Palestinians and Islamists alike.  Appeasement in the Levant could only hasten another Holocaust. Petraeus is no friend of Israel, and that alone made him a poor choice for CIA.

Israeli Palestinians are better off than any similar group living in any Arab country, including Jordan and Lebanon. Indeed, at one time or other, Jordanians, Egyptians, and Lebanese have successfully exterminated militant Palestinians. Israel’s tolerance of Arabs and Islam, by any measure, is enlightened.

The CENTCOM study and Petraeus clearly catered to existing bias, a kind of closet anti-Semitism, among the American academic Left and Obama acolytes. Petraeus subsequently consolidated his politically correct posture on Islam by taking a knee in Afghanistan. American women in uniform were encouraged to wear the hijab while on patrol. Pandering now trumps American troop safety as America slinks out of South Asia.

By such baby steps does an officer, with little or no Intelligence experience, advance from Princeton to CIA. Petraeus garnered an Agency sinecure with a wet finger in the political winds. He was politically correct on all things Islamic. He was reliable – until Paula came along.

So we are left to ponder the merits of several heliographic Petraeus biographies. In retrospect, Paula Broadwell’s powder puff pastiche, All In (sic): the Education of David Petraeus  is at once an inside joke and reminiscent of Doris Kerns Goodwin’s methodology and subsequent biography of Lyndon Johnson – another politician who quit in the middle of a tedious war. The literary world needs to stop calling tomes about the living, “valentines.” A more appropriate classification would be toilette biography.

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Originally published in American Thinker and the New English Review

Peacocks at the Pentagon

  “There is nothing as agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the rough sand of truth.”

                                                      – Bulwer Lytton

The Davis Petraeus saga is another urban legend; a myth about a great man felled by a single flaw or indiscretion. The truth is that Petraeus is a bit player in a larger, uglier drama, the political corruption the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and that exclusive four star glut that sits atop the military.  And the rot didn’t start with Petraeus.

Recall Army Chief-of-Staff George Casey taking to the airways to rationalize the Fort Hood Islamist massacre in 2009. Somehow “diversity” and Muslim sensitivities were more important than twin dangers of domestic sedition or troop safety on American bases.  Casey was thrown at the Sunday chat shows, like the more recent Susan Rice mendacity tour, to spin a politically correct message.

And then there was Admiral Mike Mullen leading the charge for sex with any sex a year later on the E-Ring at the Pentagon. Say what you will about booty call as a “civil right,” but gender choice is not a significant national security issue in the middle of a shooting war.  The legality of relationships are social issues that should be addressed by an elected, yet too often cowardly, Congress; not the appointed military brass. And while the JCS was riding point for preferences, nobody seemed to notice, or care about, failure in all those Muslim Wars.

Indeed, a four-star public relations campaign reinvented the English language to avoid words like victory. The new word for retreat is “drawdown.” And real goals like winning or victory have been corrupted with terms like “nation building,” or worse still, military gibberish like “transition.” Euphemism is the first refuge of analytical cowards. CIA, if not the entire Intelligence Community, takes a bow here too. Only a loser needs to create another word for failure.

In the interests of such political correctness, relevant terms like Islam, Islamist, Muslim, and even terrorist have been stricken from the public vocabulary with JCS help. Witness the recent Benghazi fiasco! The debate is not over mayhem or atrocity committed in God’s name. National politicians and the military brass are arguing whether or not to use the word “terrorist” in their reports dealing with Muslim barbarities.

And consider the ‘inside baseball’ spat over doctrine to be used against the nameless enemy; the counter-terror versus counter-insurgency (COIN) debate within the military.  Petraeus apologists believe that the former ISAF commander reinvented the US Army with new doctrine; and then rode the COIN horse to promotions and prominence.

In truth, COIN played little or no role in Iraq or Afghanistan for two reasons; the force ratios required by Army doctrine, impractical theory, were never achieved. And both conflicts, like most Muslim wars, are civil, not insurgent. These internecine Islamic fights are between Sunni and Shia or between autocrats and theocrats. Neither NATO nor the US Army has the charter or doctrine to resolve these or any other religious or tribal civil wars. Evolution might be the only solution to any Muslim pathology.

COIN had nothing to do with tactical “success” in Iraq or Afghanistan either, but such distractions may contribute to strategic defeat. Theoretical illusions, even those nursed in the halls of ivy, are blinders. Theory, or more honestly, politicized military doctrine does not win wars.

Combat Petraeus-style doesn’t just presume to alter military doctrine; it presumes to alter the nature of war. Unfortunately, war is not about hearts and minds or social services; it’s about winning and losing. Kick enough azimuth and hearts always follow. Even terrorists understand this. And that understanding explains why Islamists are winning now – on a global scale.

War is a time-tested primal exercise, not a venue for intellectuals, polite politics, or poseurs. Combat is the definitive zero sum enterprise; the competent live, the inept die. With skill and luck, the righteous might prevail. But there are no guarantees.

There are no draws and you can’t spin a loss. The enemy and toxic ideology needs to be beaten first; and then the diplomatic social workers and nation builders can be deployed.

As with COIN, Petraeus has been taking bows for the “surge” in two countries, but especially, the so-called “turnaround” in Iraq. Alas, tactical success there has only two parents; bribery and the US Marine Corps.

Sunni allies were bribed for the short haul as they are bought in so many Muslim tribal cultures. This perennial CIA tactic is myopic too. When the money runs out, all you have left is another well-equipped foe. Consider the blowback in Afghanistan. All those mujahedeen that used to be romanticized, when they were fighting the Soviets, are now killing Americans with better gear.

And the US Marine victory in Fallujah had nothing to do with COIN doctrine either. The Marines took that city with the same tactics that Marshal Georgy Zhukov used to take Berlin; house-to-house fighting. What the Marines didn’t destroy in Fallujah, they killed.

David Petraeus and John Allen seem to have been a perfect fit in Tampa; sun, fun, and bimbos – military camp followers. How do senior flag officers use cyber drop boxes and send thousands of emails to married groupies and not think such behavior is compromising?  Do they not know that NSA can read their mail? And those who defend all of this as “private” are correct – as long as character doesn’t matter. Character is how you behave when no one is watching.

Yet, someone is always watching. The night before the Petraeus ‘sierra’ hit the public fan, he and Broadwell were a couple at the annual Office of Strategic Services (OSS) awards dinner. “Wild” Bill Donovan and “Vinegar” Joe Stillwell must be spinning in their graves.

Jim Clapper didn’t fire the CIA chief for private behavior; Petraeus was fired for public, professional stupidity.

Nonetheless, both political parties are tripping over each other with accolades for Petraeus. They argue that drop box sex is a private, not a professional failing – which is simply another way of saying that personal integrity doesn’t matter.  If character doesn’t matter, then America has the top brass that it deserves.

Or maybe we expect the Joint Chiefs to entertain, not lead; but then again, even the Village People might be embarrassed by today’s four star peacocks.

The Joint Chiefs live in a bubble. They learned nothing from the Boorda incident. Recall that Admiral Jeremy Boorda, then Chief of Naval Operations, ate his gun over a bit of ribbon.  Boorda awarded himself a few valor devices that he had not earned. He had never seen combat; but the admiral embellished his chest hair at the expense of JCS reputation anyway.

The fruit salad debate may seem trivial to those who have never seen combat; but for real warriors, such pretense is an insult. The logic of awards and decorations is simple. It’s easier to pass out buttons and bows than it is to give a promotion or a pay raise. Therefore, most awards are for attendance, not achievement. Senior officers like Petraeus get awards or decorations for changing their skivvies – or their address.

Indeed, if you audit the sentiments of troops or their dependents; the cynicism about flags like Petraeus is universal.  One veteran seemed to think that American senior officers resembled Muammar Gadhafi. Another underlined the Petraeus political career track with questions:

“How does an officer with no personal experience of direct fire combat in Panama or Desert Storm become a division CDR (101st Airborne) in 2003 … (and how does) a man who served repeatedly as a sycophantic aide-de-camp, military assistant and executive officer to four stars get so far?”

Nonetheless, the men who presume to lead continue to parade on the E-Ring in drag. Petraeus alone had nearly 50 badges, awards, and decorations on his Class A blouse; yet, no Combat Infantry Badge (CIB). After West Point, between cadet and general, Petraeus attended seven (sic) schools before getting his first star.

This is a chap who probably never saw a firefight, and then at a distance, until very late in his career. Yet, he and the Joint Chiefs still need fork lifts to get dressed in the morning. Such are the hazards of softening “soldiers” at Princeton instead of hardening them in combat.

With no signs of prudence or modesty at the Pentagon, maybe Congress should mandate a limit on gold braid and other uniform claptrap; no more than two rows of fruit salad and then only ribbons for heroism or combat tours. Appearances – and restraint – matter.

America has the best grunts, sergeants, and junior officers in the world. They deserve good models, they deserve better generals. They deserve modest flags promoted for valor and achievement – warriors with personal and professional integrity. No officer who fails to serve in combat as a junior or field grade officer should command any storied fighting division, no less an entire theater.

                                 —————————————————-

 This essay appears in the 5 November 2012 edition of American Thinker.

 

 

Pandering With Junk Science

Two successive administrations now have sought to appease Muslims by minimizing the threat from Islamists. Indeed, science has now been enlisted in that effort. Early stimulus came from the White House.

Hours after 9/11, a Republican president allowed a host of Saudi elites to flee  the US by chartered aircraft before the blood was dry at the World Trade Center. Never mind that most of theManhattan suicide martyrs were Saudis. The political cue then was meant for domestic and foreign consumption; to wit,America would not hold passive aggressors, sponsor nations, or Islamic propaganda, accountable for the atrocities of “extremists.”

From the beginning, the majority of Muslims were anointed “moderates,” on the authority of an asserted conclusion. Concurrently, fellaheen danced in the streets of Arabia. No matter; blame for the terror threat was still confined to specific non-government agents like al Qa’eda or the Taliban. By fiat, Islamic terrorism was fenced as isolated criminal phenomena with local motives; in short, militant jihad was represented as a perversion of, not a tenant of, Islamic theology or Muslim politics.

This politically correct illusion was reinforced by an Obama administration in a series of forays into the Ummah where the American president declared unequivocally that America, and NATO by extension, is not at war with Islam or Muslims. Never mind that NATO or American troops might be killing Muslims in four, or is it five, separate venues. “We are not at war!” was the party line. And never mind that Obama has yet to visit Israel as president.

Less well known is the “independent” science which now back fills or rationalizes the political Esperanto of the last decade.  A RAND Corporation  report, How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qai’da, is an example. Notice the assumption embedded in the title; “counter” not defeat. The body of the report is devoted to asserting that terror (a military tactic) is best addressed by political, not military means. Separating war, an amalgam of tactics and strategy, from politics is not an assumption that Churchill or Eisenhower would have made. A politically correct world-view turns logic on its head; tactics are confused with strategy.

The RAND report ignores the larger strategic phenomena of jihad bis saif and protected Islamist hate mongering. But the bottom line of this “systematic” analysis is the most revealing: “Terrorists should be perceived as criminals, not holy warriors.” Such assertions are a kind of strategic masochism, not science; not even common sense.

How the West views Islam is more important then how Islamists act – or see themselves? By such logic, Arizona sheriffs might be deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan instead of the US Marines. And by such logic, where might the holy warriors, if caught, be tried; lower Manhattan?  Treating terror as crime allows the lazy analyst with an agenda to dismiss the political implications of Islamism.

Another RAND paper on another recent South Asia massacre, entitled “Lessons of Mumbai,” is an even better example of cooked books; a case where analysis and credibility is undone by evidence ignored.

The Mumbai attack was unique in two respects; a small Jewish center was targeted, the occupants were slaughtered; and the hotel hostages were then screened for religious affiliation – again, seeking Jews. It’s a safe bet that none of the Mumbai killers were ever stopped at an Israeli checkpoint or lost a building lot in east Jerusalem. This attack was planned and executed with motives removed from the usual; the India/Pakistan rift or the Israel/Fattah impasse. Mumbai was clearly motivated, in part, by a strain of virulent, contagious, and global anti-Semitism. No mention of this appears in Lessons of Mumbai’s “key judgments.”

The recent terror attack, against a religious school in Toulouse,France, is a macabre echo of Mumbai. A rabbi and four young Jewish children were shot at point blank range by Mohamed Merah, a home grown Arab terrorist of Moroccan origin. Let’s assume for sake of argument that Israeli intransigence is the source of Muslim anger. How does blowing a little girl’s brains out advance the “two state solution?”

The global bloom of anti-Semitism since the turn of the 21^st Century is no accident. Those who ignore it, especially scientists at places like RAND, make it possible. Ironically, many of RAND’s most eminent researchers are or have been Jewish.

(This Mumbai report also reinforces suspicions about non-profit excess. Lessons of Mumbai  is a mere 25 pages long, yet lists ten (sic) authors; an average of two and a half pages per analyst. Makes you wonder how many scientists are required to screw in light bulbs in Santa Monica. Clearly, featherbedding is not just restricted to government operations.)

Some recent RAND national security analysis may actually qualify as apologetics. The 2010 paper entitled Would-be Warriors  analyzes the incidence of terrorism in the US since 9/11. The paper actually ends with the assumptions, concluding:

“There is no evidence (sic) that America’s Muslim community is becoming more radical.America’s psychological vulnerability is on display… panic is the wrong message to send.”

“No evidence” – or none that RAND can detect from the sands of Santa Monica? If sixteen USintelligence agencies didn’t connect the dots before 9/11, while suicide bombers were training in America; RAND’s statistical assurances ring more than a little hollow. Islamic terror didn’t begin with the barbarisms in lower Manhattanin any case. And assertions about psychological vulnerability or “panic” are straw men or worse. Who panicked in the wake of the Twin Towers  atrocity? Indifference or political apathy maybe; but surely not panic.

And on US Muslim radicalization, clearly RAND statisticians rarely audit student sentiment at any urban “occupy” rallies or any California campus when an Israeli speaker appears. Nor does the RAND analysis account for the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) or the fact that this home grown political movement was recently hijacked by radical Muslim American bigots. Anti-Semitism is ever the canary in the geo-strategic coal mine. The NBPP’s most recent outrage was to threaten to burn the city of Detroit at a city council meeting.

In the interests of fairness, we should point out that other non-profits,PEWResearchCenterfor example, also fail to account for the sea change in the very visible American Black Panthers. PEW claims to be non-partisan, but apparently that doesn’t rule out political correctness. Indeed, with modern pollsters and sociologists, American Muslim groups like the Panthers and the Nation of Islam seem to enjoy a double immunity; race and religion. Somehow such groups are, at the same time, Islamic; but not Muslim.

The growth of radical Islam in African American communities is complimented by a surge in prisons nationwide. Congress and Public Television seem to have access to prison data, but non-profits likeRAND and PEW apparently do not work in those neighborhoods.

The creation of veiled apologetics is not as worrisome as the pervasive misuse of such “scientific” analysis. Part of the problem may lay with endowments. Like more than a few major universities,RAND courts Arab or Muslim good will for the same reason that Willie Sutton frequented banks. That’s where the money is.

Attempts to curry Arab favor are underwritten by a priori  beliefs about Muslim “moderation.” Assumptions about what Muslims believe may make terror possible, providing a permanent rationalization, a kind of laissez passer for militants.

Today, RAND has one of the richest nest eggs outside of Harvard yard. And clearly, the designation “non-profit” is an oxymoron. The more appropriate designation would be “untaxable” – for reasons yet to be justified. Successful think tanks may be a lot of things, but like wealthy universities, they are not “charities” by any stretch of logic.

Recent government sponsored national security research has reversed the poles in the “non-profit” equation. Think tanks are richer and government sponsors are going broke. If quality of analysis is the return on government sponsored research, national security research is nearing some kind of strategic default.

Financial success has allowed think tanks like RANDto diversify the study agenda and expand their physical plants. Yet, the ideas of geographic isolation, and keeping politics at a distance, have been jettisoned with a vengeance. Beyond the original site at Santa Monica;RANDnow has offices inVirginia(near the Pentagon),Pennsylvania,Louisiana,Mississippi,Massachusetts,Mexico,England,Belgium,Qatar, UAE, and Abu Dhabi.

For objective national security analysis, the last three locales are the most worrisome. Hard to believe that systems analysis or scientific candor will put petro-dollars or Islamic theocrats at risk. Politically correct “science” allows universities and think tanks to work both sides of the threat equation. Call it the Ellsberg legacy.

While the overall cast of RAND Corporation national security research is cautious and in many cases politically deferential; the occasional old hand still puts mustard on his fastball. Jim Quinlivan wrote an essay in the RAND Review (summer, 2003), based on statistical analysis, that suggested under-manned American excursions against insurgents or terrorists in dar al Islam, were bound to end badly – using strict military measures of effectiveness. Today, that report might be considered prophetic. Unfortunately, such voices are seldom endorsed or underlined with corporate authority.

The Quinlivan essay was written shortly after 9/11 when “kinetic” solutions were all the rage; his paper flew in the face of the prevailing political winds. More recent RAND reports, as discussed above, tack with the prevailing political winds. The difference is integrity.

The early rhetoric from President Bush categorized the Manhattan attacks as “acts of war.” But since then, the Bush and Obama administrations, and government sponsored research, take great pains to confuse the issue with criminality – and policies where victory over Islamism is never a goal or an option.

First, there was the Iraq distraction, a theater that had little to do with world-wide terror or Islamism; and then came a period of dithering over Afghanistan, the so-called “war of necessity.” Throughout, neither political party could decide whether to treat the soldiers of Islam as prisoners of war or criminals. While Americans remained confused; Islamists made steady gains. For the West, the drift into the muck of appeasement and the humiliation of a Soviet-like retreat now seems inevitable.

America and NATO are headed for the exits in the Levant and South Asia. Yet, the greater problems of a nuclear Iran and the growing Arab irredentism are still metastasizing. And all the early political Pollyanna about democracy and freedom in Arabia hasn’t altered the vector of religious politics.Tunisia,Egypt,Libya,Bahrain, and now Syria, are on the cusp of clerical control. Like Iran,Turkey,Iraq, andAfghanistan; the political prospects for Muslims today are largely theocratic.

All of this seems to be a kind of pandering with junk science. Indeed, the decline of a Euro-American vision that made creativity, art, science, and democracy possible has been underwritten by the worst possible political “science” that borrowed money can buy. Insh’allah!

————————————————–

This essay appeared in the 30 May 02 edition of the American Thinker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the interests of fairness, we should point out that other non-profits,PEWResearchCenterfor example, also fail to account for the sea change in the very visible American Black Panthers. PEW claims to be non-partisan, but apparently that doesn’t rule out political correctness. Indeed, with modern pollsters and sociologists, American Muslim groups like the Panthers and the Nation of Islam seem to enjoy a double immunity; race and religion. Somehow such groups are, at the same time, Islamic; but not Muslim.

 

 

The growth of radical Islam in African American communities is complimented by a surge in prisons nationwide. Congress and Public Television seem to have access to prison data, but non-profits likeRAND and PEW apparently do not work in those neighborhoods.

 

The creation of veiled apologetics is not as worrisome as the pervasive misuse of such “scientific” analysis. Part of the problem may lay with endowments. Like more than a few major universities,RAND courts Arab or Muslim good will for the same reason that Willie Sutton frequented banks. That’s where the money is.

 

Attempts to curry Arab favor are underwritten by a priori beliefs about Muslim “moderation.” Assumptions about what Muslims believe may make terror possible, providing a permanent rationalization, a kind of laissez passer for militants.

 

Today, RANDhas one of the richest nest eggs outside of Harvard yard. And clearly, the designation “non-profit” is an oxymoron. The more appropriate designation would be “untaxable” – for reasons yet to be justified. Successful think tanks may be a lot of things, but like wealthy universities, they are not “charities” by any stretch of logic.

 

Recent government sponsored national security research has reversed the poles in the “non-profit” equation. Think tanks are richer and government sponsors are going broke. If quality of analysis is the return on government sponsored research, national security research is nearing some kind of strategic default.

 

Financial success has allowed think tanks likeRANDto diversify the study agenda and expand their physical plants. Yet, the ideas of geographic isolation, and keeping politics at a distance, have been jettisoned with a vengeance. Beyond the original site atSanta Monica;RANDnow has offices inVirginia(near the Pentagon),Pennsylvania,Louisiana,Mississippi,Massachusetts,Mexico,England,Belgium,Qatar, UAE, andAbu Dhabi.

 

For objective national security analysis, the last three locales are the most worrisome. Hard to believe that systems analysis or scientific candor will put petro-dollars or Islamic theocrats at risk. Politically correct “science” allows universities and think tanks to work both sides of the threat equation. Call it the Ellsberg legacy.

 

While the overall cast of RANDCorporation national security research is cautious and in many cases politically deferential; the occasional old hand still puts mustard on his fastball. Jim Quinlivan wrote an essay in the RAND Review (summer, 2003), based on statistical analysis, that suggested under-manned American excursions against insurgents or terrorists in dar al Islam, were bound to end badly – using strict military measures of effectiveness. Today, that report might be considered prophetic. Unfortunately, such voices are seldom endorsed or underlined with corporate authority.

 

The Quinlivan essay was written shortly after 9/11 when “kinetic” solutions were all the rage; his paper flew in the face of the prevailing political winds. More recentRANDreports, as discussed above, tack with the prevailing political winds. The difference is integrity.

 

 

 

The early rhetoric from President Bush categorized theManhattan attacks as “acts of war.” But since then, the Bush and Obama administrations, and government sponsored research, take great pains to confuse the issue with criminality – and policies where victory over Islamism is never a goal or an option.

 

First, there was the Iraqdistraction, a theater that had little to do with world-wide terror or Islamism; and then came a period of dithering over Afghanistan, the so-called “war of necessity.” Throughout, neither political party could decide whether to treat the soldiers of Islam as prisoners of war or criminals. While Americans remained confused; Islamists made steady gains. For the West, the drift into the muck of appeasement and the humiliation of a Soviet-like retreat now seems inevitable.

 

Americaand NATO are headed for the exits in theLevantandSouth Asia. Yet, the greater problems of a nuclearIranand the growing Arab irredentism are still metastasizing. And all the early political Pollyanna about democracy and freedom inArabiahasn’t altered the vector of religious politics.Tunisia,Egypt,Libya,Bahrain, and nowSyria, are on the cusp of clerical control. LikeIran,Turkey,Iraq, andAfghanistan; the political prospects for Muslims today are largely theocratic.

 

All of this seems to be a kind of pandering with junk science. Indeed, the decline of a Euro-American vision that made creativity, art, science, and democracy possible has been underwritten by the worst possible political “science” that borrowed money can buy. Insh’allah!

 

 

 

The author is a former Senior USAF Intelligence Research Fellow at RAND Corporation, Santa Monica. This essay is an excerpt from a longer treatment of the think tank phenomenon, and political pandering, to appear In the New English Review later this year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two successive administrations now have sought to appease Muslims by minimizing the threat from Islamists. Indeed, science has now been enlisted in that effort. Early stimulus came from the White House.

 

Hours after 9/11, a Republican president allowed a host of Saudi elites to flee theUS by chartered aircraft before the blood was dry at theWorldTradeCenter. Never mind that most of theManhattan suicide martyrs were Saudis. The political cue then was meant for domestic and foreign consumption; to wit,America would not hold passive aggressors, sponsor nations, or Islamic propaganda, accountable for the atrocities of “extremists.”

 

From the beginning, the majority of Muslims were anointed “moderates,” on the authority of an asserted conclusion. Concurrently, fellaheen danced in the streets of Arabia. No matter; blame for the terror threat was still confined to specific non-government agents like al Qa’eda or the Taliban. By fiat, Islamic terrorism was fenced as isolated criminal phenomena with local motives; in short, militant jihad was represented as a perversion of, not a tenant of, Islamic theology or Muslim politics.

 

This politically correct illusion was reinforced by an Obama administration in a series of forays into the Ummah where the American president declared unequivocally that America, and NATO by extension, is not at war with Islam or Muslims. Never mind that NATO or American troops might be killing Muslims in four, or is it five, separate venues. “We are not at war!” was the party line. And never mind that Obama has yet to visitIsrael as president.

 

Less well known is the “independent” science which now backfills or rationalizes the political Esperanto of the last decade.  A RANDCorporation report, How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qai’da, is an example. Notice the assumption embedded in the title; “counter” not defeat. The body of the report is devoted to asserting that terror (a military tactic) is best addressed by political, not military means. Separating war, an amalgam of tactics and strategy, from politics is not an assumption that Churchill or Eisenhower would have made. A politically correct world-view turns logic on its head; tactics are confused with strategy.

 

The RANDreport ignores the larger strategic phenomena of jihad bis saif and protected Islamist hate mongering. But the bottom line of this “systematic” analysis is the most revealing: “Terrorists should be perceived as criminals, not holy warriors.” Such assertions are a kind of strategic masochism, not science; not even common sense.

 

How the West views Islam is more important then how Islamists act – or see themselves? By such logic, Arizona sheriffs might be deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan instead of the US Marines. And by such logic, where might the holy warriors, if caught, be tried; lowerManhattan? Treating terror as crime allows the lazy analyst with an agenda to dismiss the political implications of Islamism.

 

Another RANDpaper on another recent South Asia massacre, entitled “Lessons of Mumbai,” is an even better example of cooked books; a case where analysis and credibility is undone by evidence ignored.

 

The Mumbai attack was unique in two respects; a small Jewish center was targeted, the occupants were slaughtered; and the hotel hostages were then screened for religious affiliation – again, seeking Jews. It’s a safe bet that none of the Mumbai killers were ever stopped at an Israeli checkpoint or lost a building lot in east Jerusalem. This attack was planned and executed with motives removed from the usual; the India/Pakistan rift or the Israel/Fattah impasse. Mumbai was clearly motivated, in part, by a strain of virulent, contagious, and global anti-Semitism. No mention of this appears in Lessons of Mumbai’s “key judgments.”

 

The recent terror attack, against a religious school inToulouse,France, is a macabre echo of Mumbai. A rabbi and four young Jewish children were shot at point blank range by Mohamed Merah, a home grown Arab terrorist of Moroccan origin. Let’s assume for sake of argument that Israeli intransigence is the source of Muslim anger. How does blowing a little girl’s brains out advance the “two state solution?”

 

 

 

The global bloom of anti-Semitism since the turn of the 21^st Century is no accident. Those who ignore it, especially scientists at places likeRAND, make it possible. Ironically, many ofRAND’s most eminent researchers are or have been Jewish.

 

(This Mumbai report also reinforces suspicions about non-profit excess. Lessons of Mumbai  is a mere 25 pages long, yet lists ten (sic) authors; an average of two and a half pages per analyst. Makes you wonder how many scientists are required to screw in light bulbs inSanta Monica. Clearly, featherbedding is not just restricted to government operations.)

 

Some recent RANDnational security analysis may actually qualify as apologetics. The 2010 paper entitled Would-be Warriors  analyzes the incidence of terrorism in theUS since 9/11. The paper actually ends with the assumptions, concluding:

 

“There is no evidence (sic) thatAmerica’s Muslim community is becoming more radical.America’s psychological vulnerability is on display…panic is the wrong message to send.”

 

“No evidence” – or none that RANDcan detect from the sands of Santa Monica? If sixteen USintelligence agencies didn’t connect the dots before 9/11, while suicide bombers were training in America; RAND’s statistical assurances ring more than a little hollow. Islamic terror didn’t begin with the barbarisms in lower Manhattanin any case. And assertions about psychological vulnerability or “panic” are straw men or worse. Who panicked in the wake of the TwinTowersatrocity? Indifference or political apathy maybe; but surely not panic.

 

And on US Muslim radicalization, clearly RANDstatisticians rarely audit student sentiment at any urban “occupy” rallies or any California campus when an Israeli speaker appears. Nor does the RAND analysis account for the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) or the fact that this home grown political movement was recently hijacked by radical Muslim American bigots. Anti-Semitism is ever the canary in the geo-strategic coal mine. The NBPP’s most recent outrage was to threaten to burn the city ofDetroit at a city council meeting.

 

 

In the interests of fairness, we should point out that other non-profits,PEWResearchCenterfor example, also fail to account for the sea change in the very visible American Black Panthers. PEW claims to be non-partisan, but apparently that doesn’t rule out political correctness. Indeed, with modern pollsters and sociologists, American Muslim groups like the Panthers and the Nation of Islam seem to enjoy a double immunity; race and religion. Somehow such groups are, at the same time, Islamic; but not Muslim.

 

 

The growth of radical Islam in African American communities is complimented by a surge in prisons nationwide. Congress and Public Television seem to have access to prison data, but non-profits likeRAND and PEW apparently do not work in those neighborhoods.

 

The creation of veiled apologetics is not as worrisome as the pervasive misuse of such “scientific” analysis. Part of the problem may lay with endowments. Like more than a few major universities,RAND courts Arab or Muslim good will for the same reason that Willie Sutton frequented banks. That’s where the money is.

 

Attempts to curry Arab favor are underwritten by a priori beliefs about Muslim “moderation.” Assumptions about what Muslims believe may make terror possible, providing a permanent rationalization, a kind of laissez passer for militants.

 

Today, RANDhas one of the richest nest eggs outside of Harvard yard. And clearly, the designation “non-profit” is an oxymoron. The more appropriate designation would be “untaxable” – for reasons yet to be justified. Successful think tanks may be a lot of things, but like wealthy universities, they are not “charities” by any stretch of logic.

 

Recent government sponsored national security research has reversed the poles in the “non-profit” equation. Think tanks are richer and government sponsors are going broke. If quality of analysis is the return on government sponsored research, national security research is nearing some kind of strategic default.

 

Financial success has allowed think tanks likeRANDto diversify the study agenda and expand their physical plants. Yet, the ideas of geographic isolation, and keeping politics at a distance, have been jettisoned with a vengeance. Beyond the original site atSanta Monica;RANDnow has offices inVirginia(near the Pentagon),Pennsylvania,Louisiana,Mississippi,Massachusetts,Mexico,England,Belgium,Qatar, UAE, andAbu Dhabi.

 

For objective national security analysis, the last three locales are the most worrisome. Hard to believe that systems analysis or scientific candor will put petro-dollars or Islamic theocrats at risk. Politically correct “science” allows universities and think tanks to work both sides of the threat equation. Call it the Ellsberg legacy.

 

While the overall cast of RANDCorporation national security research is cautious and in many cases politically deferential; the occasional old hand still puts mustard on his fastball. Jim Quinlivan wrote an essay in the RAND Review (summer, 2003), based on statistical analysis, that suggested under-manned American excursions against insurgents or terrorists in dar al Islam, were bound to end badly – using strict military measures of effectiveness. Today, that report might be considered prophetic. Unfortunately, such voices are seldom endorsed or underlined with corporate authority.

 

The Quinlivan essay was written shortly after 9/11 when “kinetic” solutions were all the rage; his paper flew in the face of the prevailing political winds. More recentRANDreports, as discussed above, tack with the prevailing political winds. The difference is integrity.

 

 

 

The early rhetoric from President Bush categorized theManhattan attacks as “acts of war.” But since then, the Bush and Obama administrations, and government sponsored research, take great pains to confuse the issue with criminality – and policies where victory over Islamism is never a goal or an option.

 

First, there was the Iraqdistraction, a theater that had little to do with world-wide terror or Islamism; and then came a period of dithering over Afghanistan, the so-called “war of necessity.” Throughout, neither political party could decide whether to treat the soldiers of Islam as prisoners of war or criminals. While Americans remained confused; Islamists made steady gains. For the West, the drift into the muck of appeasement and the humiliation of a Soviet-like retreat now seems inevitable.

 

Americaand NATO are headed for the exits in theLevantandSouth Asia. Yet, the greater problems of a nuclearIranand the growing Arab irredentism are still metastasizing. And all the early political Pollyanna about democracy and freedom inArabiahasn’t altered the vector of religious politics.Tunisia,Egypt,Libya,Bahrain, and nowSyria, are on the cusp of clerical control. LikeIran,Turkey,Iraq, andAfghanistan; the political prospects for Muslims today are largely theocratic.

 

All of this seems to be a kind of pandering with junk science. Indeed, the decline of a Euro-American vision that made creativity, art, science, and democracy possible has been underwritten by the worst possible political “science” that borrowed money can buy. Insh’allah!

 

 

 

The author is a former Senior USAF Intelligence Research Fellow at RAND Corporation, Santa Monica. This essay is an excerpt from a longer treatment of the think tank phenomenon, and political pandering, to appear In the New English Review later this year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two successive administrations now have sought to appease Muslims by minimizing the threat from Islamists. Indeed, science has now been enlisted in that effort. Early stimulus came from the White House.

 

Hours after 9/11, a Republican president allowed a host of Saudi elites to flee theUS by chartered aircraft before the blood was dry at theWorldTradeCenter. Never mind that most of theManhattan suicide martyrs were Saudis. The political cue then was meant for domestic and foreign consumption; to wit,America would not hold passive aggressors, sponsor nations, or Islamic propaganda, accountable for the atrocities of “extremists.”

 

From the beginning, the majority of Muslims were anointed “moderates,” on the authority of an asserted conclusion. Concurrently, fellaheen danced in the streets of Arabia. No matter; blame for the terror threat was still confined to specific non-government agents like al Qa’eda or the Taliban. By fiat, Islamic terrorism was fenced as isolated criminal phenomena with local motives; in short, militant jihad was represented as a perversion of, not a tenant of, Islamic theology or Muslim politics.

 

This politically correct illusion was reinforced by an Obama administration in a series of forays into the Ummah where the American president declared unequivocally that America, and NATO by extension, is not at war with Islam or Muslims. Never mind that NATO or American troops might be killing Muslims in four, or is it five, separate venues. “We are not at war!” was the party line. And never mind that Obama has yet to visitIsrael as president.

 

Less well known is the “independent” science which now backfills or rationalizes the political Esperanto of the last decade.  A RANDCorporation report, How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qai’da, is an example. Notice the assumption embedded in the title; “counter” not defeat. The body of the report is devoted to asserting that terror (a military tactic) is best addressed by political, not military means. Separating war, an amalgam of tactics and strategy, from politics is not an assumption that Churchill or Eisenhower would have made. A politically correct world-view turns logic on its head; tactics are confused with strategy.

 

The RANDreport ignores the larger strategic phenomena of jihad bis saif and protected Islamist hate mongering. But the bottom line of this “systematic” analysis is the most revealing: “Terrorists should be perceived as criminals, not holy warriors.” Such assertions are a kind of strategic masochism, not science; not even common sense.

 

How the West views Islam is more important then how Islamists act – or see themselves? By such logic, Arizona sheriffs might be deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan instead of the US Marines. And by such logic, where might the holy warriors, if caught, be tried; lowerManhattan? Treating terror as crime allows the lazy analyst with an agenda to dismiss the political implications of Islamism.

 

Another RANDpaper on another recent South Asia massacre, entitled “Lessons of Mumbai,” is an even better example of cooked books; a case where analysis and credibility is undone by evidence ignored.

 

The Mumbai attack was unique in two respects; a small Jewish center was targeted, the occupants were slaughtered; and the hotel hostages were then screened for religious affiliation – again, seeking Jews. It’s a safe bet that none of the Mumbai killers were ever stopped at an Israeli checkpoint or lost a building lot in east Jerusalem. This attack was planned and executed with motives removed from the usual; the India/Pakistan rift or the Israel/Fattah impasse. Mumbai was clearly motivated, in part, by a strain of virulent, contagious, and global anti-Semitism. No mention of this appears in Lessons of Mumbai’s “key judgments.”

 

The recent terror attack, against a religious school inToulouse,France, is a macabre echo of Mumbai. A rabbi and four young Jewish children were shot at point blank range by Mohamed Merah, a home grown Arab terrorist of Moroccan origin. Let’s assume for sake of argument that Israeli intransigence is the source of Muslim anger. How does blowing a little girl’s brains out advance the “two state solution?”

 

 

 

The global bloom of anti-Semitism since the turn of the 21^st Century is no accident. Those who ignore it, especially scientists at places likeRAND, make it possible. Ironically, many ofRAND’s most eminent researchers are or have been Jewish.

 

(This Mumbai report also reinforces suspicions about non-profit excess. Lessons of Mumbai  is a mere 25 pages long, yet lists ten (sic) authors; an average of two and a half pages per analyst. Makes you wonder how many scientists are required to screw in light bulbs inSanta Monica. Clearly, featherbedding is not just restricted to government operations.)

 

Some recent RANDnational security analysis may actually qualify as apologetics. The 2010 paper entitled Would-be Warriors  analyzes the incidence of terrorism in theUS since 9/11. The paper actually ends with the assumptions, concluding:

 

“There is no evidence (sic) thatAmerica’s Muslim community is becoming more radical.America’s psychological vulnerability is on display…panic is the wrong message to send.”

 

“No evidence” – or none that RANDcan detect from the sands of Santa Monica? If sixteen USintelligence agencies didn’t connect the dots before 9/11, while suicide bombers were training in America; RAND’s statistical assurances ring more than a little hollow. Islamic terror didn’t begin with the barbarisms in lower Manhattanin any case. And assertions about psychological vulnerability or “panic” are straw men or worse. Who panicked in the wake of the TwinTowersatrocity? Indifference or political apathy maybe; but surely not panic.

 

And on US Muslim radicalization, clearly RANDstatisticians rarely audit student sentiment at any urban “occupy” rallies or any California campus when an Israeli speaker appears. Nor does the RAND analysis account for the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) or the fact that this home grown political movement was recently hijacked by radical Muslim American bigots. Anti-Semitism is ever the canary in the geo-strategic coal mine. The NBPP’s most recent outrage was to threaten to burn the city ofDetroit at a city council meeting.

 

 

In the interests of fairness, we should point out that other non-profits,PEWResearchCenterfor example, also fail to account for the sea change in the very visible American Black Panthers. PEW claims to be non-partisan, but apparently that doesn’t rule out political correctness. Indeed, with modern pollsters and sociologists, American Muslim groups like the Panthers and the Nation of Islam seem to enjoy a double immunity; race and religion. Somehow such groups are, at the same time, Islamic; but not Muslim.

 

 

The growth of radical Islam in African American communities is complimented by a surge in prisons nationwide. Congress and Public Television seem to have access to prison data, but non-profits likeRAND and PEW apparently do not work in those neighborhoods.

 

The creation of veiled apologetics is not as worrisome as the pervasive misuse of such “scientific” analysis. Part of the problem may lay with endowments. Like more than a few major universities,RAND courts Arab or Muslim good will for the same reason that Willie Sutton frequented banks. That’s where the money is.

 

Attempts to curry Arab favor are underwritten by a priori beliefs about Muslim “moderation.” Assumptions about what Muslims believe may make terror possible, providing a permanent rationalization, a kind of laissez passer for militants.

 

Today, RANDhas one of the richest nest eggs outside of Harvard yard. And clearly, the designation “non-profit” is an oxymoron. The more appropriate designation would be “untaxable” – for reasons yet to be justified. Successful think tanks may be a lot of things, but like wealthy universities, they are not “charities” by any stretch of logic.

 

Recent government sponsored national security research has reversed the poles in the “non-profit” equation. Think tanks are richer and government sponsors are going broke. If quality of analysis is the return on government sponsored research, national security research is nearing some kind of strategic default.

 

Financial success has allowed think tanks likeRANDto diversify the study agenda and expand their physical plants. Yet, the ideas of geographic isolation, and keeping politics at a distance, have been jettisoned with a vengeance. Beyond the original site atSanta Monica;RANDnow has offices inVirginia(near the Pentagon),Pennsylvania,Louisiana,Mississippi,Massachusetts,Mexico,England,Belgium,Qatar, UAE, andAbu Dhabi.

 

For objective national security analysis, the last three locales are the most worrisome. Hard to believe that systems analysis or scientific candor will put petro-dollars or Islamic theocrats at risk. Politically correct “science” allows universities and think tanks to work both sides of the threat equation. Call it the Ellsberg legacy.

 

While the overall cast of RANDCorporation national security research is cautious and in many cases politically deferential; the occasional old hand still puts mustard on his fastball. Jim Quinlivan wrote an essay in the RAND Review (summer, 2003), based on statistical analysis, that suggested under-manned American excursions against insurgents or terrorists in dar al Islam, were bound to end badly – using strict military measures of effectiveness. Today, that report might be considered prophetic. Unfortunately, such voices are seldom endorsed or underlined with corporate authority.

 

The Quinlivan essay was written shortly after 9/11 when “kinetic” solutions were all the rage; his paper flew in the face of the prevailing political winds. More recentRANDreports, as discussed above, tack with the prevailing political winds. The difference is integrity.

 

 

 

The early rhetoric from President Bush categorized theManhattan attacks as “acts of war.” But since then, the Bush and Obama administrations, and government sponsored research, take great pains to confuse the issue with criminality – and policies where victory over Islamism is never a goal or an option.

 

First, there was the Iraqdistraction, a theater that had little to do with world-wide terror or Islamism; and then came a period of dithering over Afghanistan, the so-called “war of necessity.” Throughout, neither political party could decide whether to treat the soldiers of Islam as prisoners of war or criminals. While Americans remained confused; Islamists made steady gains. For the West, the drift into the muck of appeasement and the humiliation of a Soviet-like retreat now seems inevitable.

 

Americaand NATO are headed for the exits in theLevantandSouth Asia. Yet, the greater problems of a nuclearIranand the growing Arab irredentism are still metastasizing. And all the early political Pollyanna about democracy and freedom inArabiahasn’t altered the vector of religious politics.Tunisia,Egypt,Libya,Bahrain, and nowSyria, are on the cusp of clerical control. LikeIran,Turkey,Iraq, andAfghanistan; the political prospects for Muslims today are largely theocratic.

 

All of this seems to be a kind of pandering with junk science. Indeed, the decline of a Euro-American vision that made creativity, art, science, and democracy possible has been underwritten by the worst possible political “science” that borrowed money can buy. Insh’allah!

 

 

 

The author is a former Senior USAF Intelligence Research Fellow at RAND Corporation, Santa Monica. This essay is an excerpt from a longer treatment of the think tank phenomenon, and political pandering, to appear In the New English Review later this year.