File Under T for Tolerance and D for Decadence

Two stories made the news. The more noteworthy one, was Comedy Central censoring the second of the two-part South Park episode dealing with (again) Mohammed. The second was Junk Reality Star "Bobby Trendy" pumping gas for the tabloid photographers. The two are related.


First, the statement released by South Park creators Matt and Trey:

"In the 14 years we've been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn't stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn't some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle's customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn't mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We'll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we'll see what happens to it."

Comedy Central won't even allow the South Park creators to stream the episode uncensored on their website. The message is clear: Muslims, Mohammed, and Islam have special privileges, enforced by violence. Any statement whatsoever that Muslims do not like, or could possibly even take offense to (such as one in favor of tolerance of opposing viewpoints) results in credible threats to kill people. Muslims, in real life, are far more insane than the South Park insanity depicted in the episode. "Tom Cruise" and the other idiot celebrities, including Mecha Streisand, are far less dangerous and insane, than real-life Muslims. Even the "Ginger Kids" seemed more reasonable.

Of course, the whole incident points out forcibly to all concerned the lie of PC, of Diversity, and of Multiculturalism. Whoever is most violent, wins. Wins by using violence to make themselves privileged and special. Political Correctness is a lie, it is merely craven surrender to violence and hatred for Western Culture. Diversity is a lie, all Diversity means is violent people who have completely alien beliefs use violence to make Westerners submit. Multiculturalism means an un-ending apology for the mere existence of Westerners, and traditional Western values.

Apparent to all, is that Westerners if they wish to remain non-Muslim, will have to fight Muslims. World-wide. Who in the West would make credible threats to kill people over a South Park cartoon? The show is about fart jokes, basically. That and ridiculing celebrities and fads. In the episode, Buddha did a line of coke, and no Buddhists have emerged to threaten death. Mohammed was not even shown. The point is, Muslims inside the West will wreak violence, but also that Muslims from outside the West will do so as well. Would Muslims fly a plane into LA's Library Towers, or Dodger Stadium, over South Park?

YES.

So to every non-Muslim in the West, the conclusion is inescapable. At some point, there will be a general fight to be either non-Muslim, or submit. No other conclusion is possible. Yes, "not all Muslims are like that." But none have spoken out against the death threats. Muslim American associations, from CAIR to others, have been silent. So too, have prominent Muslims (and Black Muslims too). Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has not spoken, nor has NFL player Muhsin Mohammed, and of course Louis Farrakhan has not spoken either. Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR spokesman, has not spoken. The threats come from overseas, and so nothing can be done about them.


But there is another issue. That of decadence. Yes, there will always be freaks like Bobby Trendy, seeking attention and creating a fuss. But in times past, people did not pay attention to him. Or people like him. Freaks were discretely tolerated, but only to the point where they did not create a fuss, and there were strict limits. Now, we have a culture that encourages all the freakish, and tip-toes around violent Muslims, for fear of being killed. The two are related.

South Park often deals with the idiotic celebrity worship, which to a juvenile male perspective seems monumentally stupid. The boys are never impressed, unlike the adults, by celebrities. They'd rather play with monster trucks or check out the latest video game. South Park captures the mentality of a nine year old boy very well. Including the innocence assaulted by the stupidity of the latest PC fads. The same show that has "Mr. Slave" who would rival Bobby Trendy for outrageousness, in class with the gay teacher, has people threatening to kill the creators … over merely mentioning Mohammed. When he was not even depicted!

A society that cannot draw and enforce reasonable social boundaries is doomed to be replaced by one that is. In South Park, the creators make a point that the whole episode was lunacy, and sanity is restored by the speech of one of the boys giving the moral lesson. Mostly, the adults listen and agree, until the next fad of idiocy comes along. Unlike South Park, there is no Stan or Kyle to give the lesson, and "reset" back to sanity. Instead, I fear we are moving rapidly to a place where there will be no tolerance at all.

A society is in balance when Muslims are on pain of violence made to cease threats of violence, and indeed don't make them out of fear of the consequences. Where Bobby Trendy can exist, but no one will pay him any attention, where he is merely the clerk at a local dress shop who seems a bit odd. Not a junk celebrity from a failed reality show based on the sad story of a now-dead reality personality.

The West is no longer in balance. Merely swinging wildly from one side, now, to inevitably the other. It will not be pretty. And much of the blame will go to folks at places like Comedy Central, and CAIR. For not standing up for Western values, and picking a fight with violent jihadis now, rather than having it forced upon us all, later.
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James Bond vs. Today's Hollywood Spies: Where are the Heroes and Bad Guys?

A series of posts by Big Hollywood contributor Leo Grin on Ian Fleming and James Bond prompts the question. Where are the villains and heroes of today? When we have real life villains such as Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova and Umalat Magomedov, the curios absence of villains even remotely resembling the real-life jihadists afflicting the West, Russia, and China is pathetic. Even worse is the matching lack of real heroes. Only throwing off the PC blinders (and catering to a female-dominated PC dogma crowd) can popular culture both regain relevance and provide useful models for boys and men.


Leo Grin's post on how Ian Fleming created James Bond out of an homage to his father who died when he was a child, in World War One, and various men with whom he served in Naval Intelligence during World War Two, prompts the question. Who were the villains, and what was the nature of the hero? What was James Bond really about?

Look at the video below, of various Bond exploits set to the tune of Barry Gray's 007 music:



What is going on? An intrepid secret agent, infiltrates the enemy, and with the aid of gadgets galore causes havoc and escapes, as the Americans come in and blast the enemy apart.

This was not limited to James Bond, either. The clip from UFO (circa 1970) shows the British again fighting the Germans, only this time the Germans are aliens:



Even the Avengers fought WWII all over again:



Note the similarities, jazzy, brassy, opening score. Not much electric guitar (that's American). Various heroes, by turns brash or ruthless, with unconventional allies (often women), using the very latest gadgets to turn the tables and defeat a vastly overpowering enemy. One with more men, or better technology, always more resources and certainly more viciousness, defeated by the very odd-ball, weird, idiosyncratic and very English/British sort of "smallness," with roots in Victorian culture, and celebration of eccentricities. Older, dignified men whose authority is respected, send Steed, or Bond, or John Drake out on dangerous missions with only weird gadgets and beautiful women to accompany their fists and determination. Col Ed Stryker, of course ,runs a modern-day RAF against the Alien Luftwaffe. Even as late as 1970, the end of World War Two was only 25 years distant. Closer in time than the start of the Reagan Administration is to us today.

The national myth of Britain was that even though the Empire was lost after World War Two, by the exhausting effort, the bravery and sacrifice of tough and daring secret agents empowered by the most oddball but devious gadgets, concocted by eccentric geniuses, along with the help of the Americans, had won the day. Saving Western Civilization. From both the Nazi and Soviet tyranny. This is why Bond constantly outwits his enemies with ingenious, World War Two-like gadgets such as cars that convert to submarines, auto-gyros, miniature jets, knives popping out of attache cases, and so on. All while maintaining the composure of a proper English gentlemen.

Then there is John Steed, equally as polished. Fighting all sorts of "home front" enemies. If you prefer, there is also Patrick McGoohan, more clipped and cerebral, and very mocking and ironic, from "Danger Man":



There's even Michael Caine as Harry Palmer in the Ipcress File:



[There is a bit of the opening sequence on Youtube, as well, it cuts off right before the whole point -- after Palmer finds the jewelry left behind in the bed by his paramour, he also finds his gun and secretes it in his waistband. A wordless opener that tells the viewer all he needs to know about Palmer.]

The British Spy heroes might be total gentlemen (Bond, Steed), or cockneys (Palmer), or something in-between (McGoohan's John Drake), but regardless they were very, very British. In Palmer's case, too stubborn, insubordinate, and eccentric to be brain-washed by the Soviet agents.

And not only were the heroes, indeed very recognizable, "National Myth" heroes from World War Two revisited, the music itself was very similar, very British, as Grin notes here, always an element of jazz, lots of brass, a natural evolution from the beloved British military marching bands (itself a feature in the Ipcress File in one key scene).

Not only the heroes came from World War Two. The villains did as well. Particularly for the Bond villains, real organizations were used. SMERSH really existed. The sort of stateless, rootless, vaguely Central European, German, or Baltic villains such as Auric Goldfinger, or the German/Chinese Dr. No, or the classic Ernst Stavros Blofeld, all could have come out of the various hangers on to the Third Reich in Europe or elsewhere.

If Britain's spy heroes were re-fighting World War Two, at a time when most people well-remembered the fight, the villains were all of a type. Vaguely Nazis or allied with them, very little was needed to explain how the villains were evil, and needed to be fought. Needed a hero to oppose them.

Oppose them in a way that was totally opposite. Where the villains ruled by intimidation, fear, and ruthless killing of their subordinates and allies, the heroes willingly accepted orders from the older, fatherly men who sent them out to dangerous missions. Never questioning the rightfulness of being sent to stop the villain. Where the villains have weird, and repellent subordinates with fairly murderous characteristics, the hero's allies are usually beautiful women, and a gadgeteer providing all sorts of things giving him a critical edge. Of course, even the music makes that point, being jazzy and orchestral, the opposite of Teutonic Wagnerian Gotterdammerung, and different from American rock.

No one at the time, needed to know why James Bond had to stop Ernst Stavros Blofeld, or Auric Goldfinger, or Dr. No. They were Nazis, thinly disguised, or Soviet assassins, or both. Enemies that needed stopping.

Now, we have bland and boring, angsty heroes who reject responsibility (the Matt Damon Bourne series), numerous bad guy assassins (the Crank series) implausibly cast as heroes, or low level gangsters forced into some semblance of duty and responsibility (the Transporter Series). Even TV cannot experiment with any meaning to the heroes or depth and evil of the villains. NBC's "My Own Worst Enemy" was its own worst enemy, finding a quickly deserved cancellation, as audiences did not find the premise (a real spy creates a split personality ordinary man to have the ultimate cover) compelling enough. The hero was no hero, and the villains colorless PC bad guys. So too with "24's" Jack Bauer, hand-cuffed by the PC nature of the star demanding a more politically correct approach to villains (again the ultimate villains being boring, politically safe White guys in corporate boardrooms). Or "La Femme Nikita," or "Alias," or NBC's "Chuck," all with endless, soapy love triangles out of "Twilight" and the enemy defined as their own bosses or intelligence services. Endless and meaningless conspiracies, as society cannot define enemies abroad and without, and so must look for culturally safe ones within.

South Park shows there is a market for non-PC conformist humor, and indeed content. That market is mostly male, as women make up the customer base for PC Dogma. Refusing to look real enemies, real villains, and real threats square on, because it would threaten the whole PC agenda. Require a real sorting out of heroes and villains.

Culture is in creative crisis when it cannot even deal, even in disguised mode, with real threats. Due entirely to a blind adherence, religiously, to PC dogma.

TV and movies don't have to depict Muslim Jihadis straightforwardly as the enemy. Ernst Stavros Blofeld and Dr. No worked for SPECTRE, a fictional alliance of crime organizations and bosses, but the real enemy was the amalgamation of rootless, stateless criminals and assassins who helped first the Nazis, and then the Soviets, depending on who was winning. SPECTRE was not the bad guys, really. It was World War Two all over again. Indeed, the very stateless/rootless nature of the bad guys, who believe in nothing but power, was always contrasted by the very rooted in British eccentricity nature of the heroes.

Anyone could figure that a 30 year old jihadi like Magomedev, who apparently met then 16 year old Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova in an online chat room, and semi-abducted her, married her, and then left her a widow at age 17, is the true picture of a villain. The photo of Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova, blank face brandishing what looks like a Makarov, while Magomedev holds a Stechin pistol and and visibly controls her (neither by the way adhering to trigger discipline) is both chilling and evil. Pretty much everyone can figure that her path, and that of her evil husband, is one that should be stopped. Child marriage, likely forcible, the hijab and covering, brandishing weapons Crips/Bloods style, and blowing up innocent Muscovite commuters is something anyone can oppose. It is the ultimate enemy of safe, middle class life the way that the Nazis and Soviets and Japanese were in WWII.

World War Two, Nazis, Soviets, and their various collaborators, are too distant. The end of WWII was 65 years ago. It simply does not have emotional force, any more. Moreover, Western society faces new challenges. That of Jihad, of Islam, of people who figure if they kill enough Muscovites, or New Yorkers, or Beijingers, or Londoners, everyone will submit. Surrender. So that the surviving killers can rule, and for those who don't, well the killing is the point in the first place. Against these real villains, the phony PC villains of corporate executives, the "White Guys in Suits" do not cut it. White guys in corporate boardrooms are subject to massive PC, lawyers everywhere, and don't blow up subways.

All creative people need to do is be … creative. Don't call it jihad, and don't call the bad guys Muslims. Call them something else. Just have lots of covering for women, beards for men, fanatic prayers, suicide bombings, and terrorism.

After all, spy shows are cheap. ITV, not known for its big budgets, had many of them for years. Any quick look at the early Avengers or Danger Man or the Saint will not find massive budgets or highly professional stunts. Men like the action and adventure, and it is quite possible that female audiences hungering for something different than pouty, hunky metrosexuals would find the latter day equivalents to say, Patrick McGoohan, or Roger Moore, or Patrick McNee far more appealing than the glittery gay vampires of "Vampire Diaries" or the rich boy metrosexuals of "Gossip Girl."

Indeed, the shocking thing to comparing TV stars from the 1960's and 1970's, when there was still living memory of just what the sacrifice to win World War Two entailed, is just how masculine the actors appeared, versus the ones of today. McGoohan, Moore, McNee, all are far more masculine than say, Chace Crawford.

Westerns, of course, are not coming back. Ever tighter budgets, and loss of the ability to depict horsemanship and everything else means Hollywood today can't do what it did in 1957, even on TV. Private eye shows, don't seem to be coming back either, though periodic attempts to revive them have been tried. Cop shows are all procedural affairs, which as Ed Bernero points out, are made mostly for a female audience. But spy shows are cheap, and the villains of our time cry out for a creative disguise in an updated Goldfinger or Blofeld.

If Bernero is right, and he makes his living producing TV shows, so he should know what he's doing, the only issue is the largely female line executives at the Broadcast Networks, and likely, the gay executives. Disney is famous for its Princess Factory at the Disney Channel, which openly gay Rich Ross nurtured into a money-making machine. Just as well known, is the complete failure of Disney XD to draw boys. Who knew, that gay men just can't connect with the action and adventure that men and boys want?

NBC ought to be hungrier than most. Their ratings are in the toilet. All the other networks have established shows drawing younger women to hunky vampires, or Desperate Housewives, or multi-threaded soap operas. Simply offer real heroes, reflecting the odd, and unique attributes of Americana, and real villains. Variations of the jihadis who blow people up. Simply make them disguised. Snake worshippers, or black magic devotees, not the obvious Muslim jihadis. This puts CAIR off your back and still allows you to have women dressed in chadors, and guys in beards and skull caps.

This approach makes the writing simpler and easier. No angsty sub-plots, soap operas, or complex arc plotting. Just deadly and dangerous villains, who have to be stopped, and are, by unique and deeply American heroes. A focus on the action, not relationship angst and drama. Which often devolves into self-pity and maudlin sentiment. Keep it simple, and execute.

Up to a point, this is what Burn Notice on USA Network has done. Though even there, the enemies are the own intelligence service, rather than people blowing up innocent commuters. It is time for Hollywood to show some innovation. Otherwise someone else will do it for them. Sooner rather than later.
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The Challenge of the Post-9/11 World: Deterrence

The challenge of the Post-9/11 World for America is summed up in one word. Deterrence. America got to 9/11 by bits and pieces, all the way back to Richard Nixon's decision not to retaliate for the Cold River assassination U.S. Ambassador to Sudan Cleo Noel Jr. and his charge d'affaires Curtis Moore, to the refusal of Bill Clinton to countenance punishing attacks on Afghanistan in retaliation for the 1998 Kenyan and Tanzanian US Embassy bombings by Al Qaeda. Both Paleocons such as Pat Buchanon, and Liberals and Democrats such as Michael Moore, and Howard Dean argue that isolationism, and variations of anti-Israeli/anti-Jewish actions, will achieve American security. But as we look back on 9/11, and recall that awful day, what stands out is the failure to create deterrence for attack, and the lessons of those nations that have responded to the changed security environment of the post-Cold War, nuclear proliferation world we inhabit today.

Above all else, 9/11 could have been, much, much worse.


During the Cold War, America's security objectives were overwhelmingly to avoid escalation of the conflict with the Soviet Union, particularly through proxies, to the point where nuclear war became a reality. The awful conflict in Korea, taking roughly 36,000 dead, which threatened to involve nuclear war with the Soviet Union, was never far from policy makers thoughts. Thus the US restrained Britain, France, and Israel during the 1956 Suez Invasion after Soviet threats, and conducted a drastically limited proxy war in Vietnam. Nixon, seeking to peel off Arafat's PLO, did not seek retaliation for Arafat's execution orders for American diplomats held hostage in the Sudan. Neither did Carter retaliate against Iran for the taking of the US Embassy and the Iran Hostage Crisis, an overt act of war. Iran was still "useful" against the Soviet Union. Neither did Reagan retaliate against Iran for its proxy Hezbollah's bombing of the US Embassy and Marine Barracks in Beirut, indeed Reagan ordered the US shortly thereafter to leave. Nor did George Herbert Walker Bush remove Saddam Hussein when he could have easily done so. Governing Iraq was too messy, expensive, and besides Saddam was "useful" against Iran. Clinton responded to Saddam's provocations, not the least of which was serial violation of the truce agreements, particularly with respect to ballistic missiles, by the impotent "Desert Fox" which had no material effect whatsoever on Saddam's rule. Clinton also responded to the 1996 Khobar Towers bombings by Iran with impotent threats of indictment, and responded to Al Qaeda terror attacks by similarly impotent indictments and limited, casualty avoiding missile strikes of Al Qaeda compounds in Afghanistan. Neither Clinton, nor George W. Bush after him, responded to Al Qaeda's attack on the USS Cole while in port in Yemen.

All the Presidents had good reasons to do nothing. Retaliation was expensive, politically. It would upset the press, Liberals and Democrats, the UN, various Human Rights groups, factions in the Saudi and other Gulf states, and gain little support at home. And so, as Andrew McCarthy in Willful Blindness, the Justice System was jury-rigged for a task it was inherently unable to complete — combating mass-casualty terrorism through indictments instead of military deterrence.

McCarthy, the former US Attorney who convicted the "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman and his associates for planned follow-on attacks after the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, argues persuasively that the Justice System is unable to deal with international terrorists who are in fact, "semi-state" figures, beyond the reach of normal government actions, the extradition of common criminals, and that using the Justice System actually makes things worse. By revealing in open court the sources and methods used to track and discover terrorist networks, including informants and electronic surveillance methods. McCarthy argues that Obama's return to using the Justice System to deal with terrorism, and Al Qaeda in particular, guarantees more attacks along the lines of 9/11, only with more casualties.

Lawrence Wright, who wrote The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 argues persuasively that Osama bin Laden's goals, that of his lieutenant Ayman Al-Zawahari, and nearly all jihadi groups, is that of forming an exile army, and many wealthy followers, in order to overthrow their native governments and become rulers in their stead. For Osama, the target being the House of Saud. For Zawhari, becoming the replacement of Mubarak. Their strategy being to emulate Mohammed, who after being expelled from Mecca, sought refuge in Medina, and through raiding Caravans (not Mecca itself) amassed a following that allowed him to retake Mecca. Indonesian, Pakistani, Algerian, Tunisian, Moroccan, and Uigher members of Al Qaeda all follow this script. Attacks on their homeland have been counter-productive. The secret police there are too skilled, powerful, and with many informants in the various jihadi networks, for any attempt at coups in their home nations to be successful. Not even Anwar Sadat's assassination brought Jihadi victory, merely the successor regime of Mubarak.

In the meantime, organizations that carry off successful attacks on particularly, American targets, find much funding from wealthy would-be jihadi supporters in the Gulf, much like the OAS spectacular terrorist attacks during the infancy of the De Gaulle regime found wealthy industrial patrons willing to aid that organization's coffers. Foot soldiers are plenty, among the alienated, unattached men caused by a tribal and polygamous system that denies a good number of men the ability to marry and form a family. Osama bin Laden's father, Mohammed, had famously 22 wives during his lifetime, and 57 children. When he would tire of a wife, he would "give her" to a subordinate in his billion dollar construction company, ranking higher or lower based on how well his wife had pleased him. This was in fact what happened to Osama bin Laden at age nine. When he mother was given to a subordinate who both hated and feared (Osama would one day inherit some of his father's wealth) the spawn of the great man.

Parapundit estimates that 12% of Muslim marriages are polygamous, though I have seen other estimates that nearly 30% of Saudi marriages are polygamous, many of them with four wives. Enough then, to make significant amounts of men unable to find wives. It's unlikely that all polygamous marriages consist of four wives, but even with most having only two, that would mean 30% of Saudi Men would not find wives. Yes, the Gulf states have much prostitution, as does Iran. But prostitutes are not substitutes for wives, and the frustration of jihadis denied family formation can lead them to willingly accept suicide for the promise of 72 virgins. Michael Yon reported that Saudi Men smuggled into Iraq for the purpose of becoming suicide bombers paid the astonishing sum of $1,100 dollars for that "privilege."

The United States is capable of neither reforming polygamy, nor erasing the Koran (and Mohammed's ability to construct an exile army, of which nearly every Muslim is as familiar with as every Christian is the broad outlines of the Crucifixion). The US cannot, with all the democracy promotion available, erase the raw hunger for power in men like bin Laden and Zawahari, nor their general knowledge of how to get it. The United States cannot ignore terrorist attacks, or do the minimum possible, because the history of the past forty plus years is that such ignoring only leads to ever-escalating attacks. The 1993 WTC plotters, for example, sought to kill 50,000 people by toppling one tower onto another. Their motive? Fame and fortune as successful jihadis, essentially.

What the US is capable of achieving, however, are limited objectives, namely the prevention of mass-casualty terror attacks on the US, particularly it's cities, which are tempting targets. From this, objective, a careful study of real US political and military constraints, along with the experience of other countries, is useful.

First, Russia experienced, as Putin put it in his address to the nation, after Beslan, a loss of fear and respect. Putin said Russia became weak, and the weak get beaten. Thus, the Moscow Theater hostage crisis (and killings), the blowing up of Moscow apartment blocks, the blowing up of Russian airliners in flight, and of course, Beslan. The killing was not about changing Russian policy. No one among the Chechen and Al Qaeda hostage takers and plotters seriously expected a dramatic change in Russian policy in Chechnya. The objective of the plotters was merely to become more powerful and famous, with more money and men flowing in from the Gulf and elsewhere, and among the hostage takers, the nihilistic pleasures of murder and suicide.

Russia's response was ruthlessly pursue the Chechen terrorists, with a proxy army of their ex-comrades, who were offered rule over Chechnya if they would only dispose of the plotters. Which was done in very short order, with much bloodshed. Russia also gained an ally, Iran, by becoming a patron and protector for its nuclear program, which conveniently posed a threat to the US. Russia's actions do not provide perfect protection, as Iran has little influence on Sunni Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, neither of which have any love for Russia. However, Russia's patronage position allows it access to Iranian intelligence on the activities of those factions and actors likely to pose a threat to Russia, and Iranian intelligence is reckoned to be quite good in identifying the players in the region.

China, for example, faces continuing unrest in XianXing province, with Uigher Muslims in conflict with the Han Chinese majority. Conflict severe enough to warrant firing the top Party official in the city of Urumqi, as well as the top police official in XianXing province. Uighers were represented in Al Qaeda, to the point where US officials held some captured in Afghanistan for years, before releasing them in Palau (no other nation would take them). Yet China has not faced airplanes flying into Shanghai, Hong Kong, or Beijing Skyscrapers, because jihadis and more importantly, their tribal hosts, fear concretely Chinese retaliation.

The principal aim of the United States in the post-9/11 world must be to prevent nuclear weapons, either "borrowed" from Pakistan (most likely through tribal leadership connivance, Pakistan being more of a tribe with flags and nukes than a unitary nation such as France) or "given" by Iran (or other nuclear proliferators), being used against US cities, with nukes forming a "super car bomb."

Prevention will require two things. The first is intelligence, which can only be obtained through alliance (as with Russia and Iran) with important factions and groups that are likely to have a good idea of who is doing what, in Pakistan, Iran, and other places. This in effect means a continuing US presence, of some significant scope, in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Only those two places contain tribal enemies, who bear little love for the regime in Tehran (the Azeris, Kurds, Kazakhs, and Turkmen minorities and the Baluchi separatists) and critical information about goings on in Pakistan, particularly tribal leadership and factions within tribes. India as well is likely to have critical intelligence with respect to Pakistan, though it would require naturally US help to be induced to share it.

The second is deterrence. Deterrence "pushed down" to the actual decision makers. In Pakistan, the new President Asif Ali Zardari, is lucky to have orders obeyed past the Presidential Palace gate, as was his predecessor, General Musharraf. The real decision makers are tribal and factional leaders, who control the tribal loyalty of clan and kin. Pakistan is a chaotic place, filled with corruption, so no one pays much heed to the government, not even the Army, which itself is riddled with conflicting religious, factional, and tribal loyalties. Among tribes and clans themselves, leaders can shift in influence and power, and often new leaders emerge as old ones lose influence or patronage. For Pakistan, the source of tribal leaders power, the tribes and the people of the tribes themselves, must see concrete demonstrations of US power and just as important, the will to use it.

Consistently, Osama bin Laden and other jihadi leaders have argued that the near forty year record of US non-response to jihad shows a fundamental lack of will to use power. That America, not the Soviet Union, is the "weak power" and can be attacked with near impunity. At worst, outlasted for a few years as Americans grow weak and weary, and simply give up. Whereas it was critical in the Cold War to avoid escalation with a power fully capable of wiping out the entire US population, i.e. the Soviet Union, it is just as critical to escalate conflicts with isolated (and therefore vulnerable) tribal populations, that have currently no deterrence in simply using borrowed or stolen nuclear weapons for what amounts to tribal counting of coup. Tribal people cannot respond — they have far greater limits on their resources than the USSR. Moreover, examples made of certain tribal peoples, who cross clearly identified red lines, and have few friends, and many enemies, make deterrence real among other tribes. This was the strategy General Crook, and others, used to fight Geronimo. The Navajo hated the Apache more than the US Cavalry and White settlers. With a few variations, it was the strategy used by General Petraeus in the fight against Al Qaeda among the Sunnis in the West of Iraq (the so-called Al-Anbar Awakening). Just as Saddam's capture (humiliating) and his execution showed US power, it also brought to mind the cost for tribal peoples allied to leaders who consistently anger the United States — the rapid gain in power of traditional tribal enemies and their own loss.

The United States cannot create democracy as it is practiced in the West, or remake Islam to outlaw polygamy, or shatter age-old tribal loyalties, or remove the lust for power in the hearts of would be tribal leaders. The US certainly can create a system of deterrence based on real fear of crossing the US, deterrence acting upon tribal peoples. Recall that the Taliban accepted bin Laden's assurances that the most that would result from 9/11 was an impotent invasion, soon to be wiped out, by victorious Muslim forces.

The United States is unlikely to ever again commit large amounts of ground troops in Muslim nations. An invasion of Iran, for example, is extremely unlikely, regardless of any provocation. The best that can be politically accomplished given elite opinions (that all war is bad, including the Afghanistan War, and that security is achieved by group hugs and kumbayah) and the public's souring of the Iraq War, is maintaining adequate troop strength to project force and aid tribal allies across the Iranian and Pakistan borders, from Iraq and Afghanistan respectively. While this is not much, it is not nothing either. It has the advantage of replicating the proven Russian success. Although at much bloodshed, inevitably, some of it American. The strategy also creates a patronage network through which vital human intelligence that can be obtained in no other way (particularly with Obama's War on the CIA) that can be used to stage Predator drone attacks on tribal enemies or support tribal allies. If nothing else, US support for Baluchi separatism, is a useful lever to induce Iranian nuclear cooperation. After all, if a "rogue" group inside Tehran decides to give Al Qaeda a spare nuke or two, the absolute guarantee of "Baluchi separatists" using some "anonymous nukes" of their own to level Tehran, Qom, and other major Iranian cities can be positively (and secretly) communicated.

What is most likely, however, is the continuation of the forty plus years of appeasement, dithering, doing nothing, and half-hearted political efforts to provide political cover, in reacting to the changed security threat. Obama and his liberal and Democratic allies want defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan so badly they can taste it. Obama has declared war on the CIA, rendering it unable to provide any human intelligence (or likely, otherwise) about any prospective terror attacks. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is far away from India, in the mostly Pashtun areas controlled by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Iran almost certainly will have nukes soon, and might indeed already have them. Political costs for promoting a policy of deterrence is high, and the short term rewards for doing nothing as in the isolationism and pacifism of the 1930's are immediate and popular.

What I fear most is a "Bombay World," only one with nukes instead of AK-47s. Ambitious, and cruel jihadis have not ceased wanting power. Polygamy, and tribal loyalties, still roil Pakistan, and to a lesser extent, Iran. Saudi Arabia is still a powder keg of a corrupt royal family, polygamy induced single men with no hope of a family, next to obscene amounts of oil wealth. While every political force in the US pushes the current President no less than last seven Presidents to do nothing. In short, I fear a day when 9/11 is forgotten. Not because people have ceased to care, but because of a day of far greater horror.

And then, the US will not respond as it did on 9/11 with Special Forces, directing bombers to Al Qaeda and Taliban targets from horseback. No, then the response of an enraged and frightened American people will be to simply eliminate as a people any and all nations thought to be responsible, with our strategic nuclear arsenal. Out of anger, but most of all fear, fear for what could happen to other cities in the US.
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