Anders Breivik: Beta Male Rampage

Commenters on the Left are gleefully asserting that Norway Bomber/Shooter Anders Breivik, who claims to have acted alone, and plotted for nine years, is a "conservative" thinker given how he has cited writings by prominent anti-Jihad bloggers, such as Fjordman, Larry Auster, Gates of Vienna, Atlas Shrugged, Pamela Gellar, Bat Y'eor, and more. Commenters on the Right cannot understand him, either, as posted at Gates of Vienna:

This sadistic, barbaric attack must be one of the strangest terror attacks ever. One would never think, from the killer’s online comments, that he was a mass murderer in waiting.

The killer was right-wing and anti-jihad, yes, but he was not a neo-Nazi (he was pro-Israel) or a white supremacist (he opposed the BNP because they are racist). He was Christian, but not a fanatic (he was pro-gay).

In fact he was apparently like me — liberal right. He was anti-racist, pro-gay and pro-Israel. So how on earth did someone like that become a terrorist against the West?

The answer is that politics (either left, right, nationalist, multiculturalist, anti-Jihad, pro-Jihad) had nothing to do with it. It was another … BETA MALE RAMPAGE.

We've seen this before. Breivik planned to spend 1,800 pounds on a hooker before the killing. Yes, oddly reminiscent of the Jihadis, particularly the 9/11 attackers, but a big red flag as to the real motivation. The LA Times reports that Breivik copied and pasted ... the Unabomber's manifesto as his own.

Do men kill for ideology? Surely, some will. But most murders, and particularly most mass-murders sure to wind up with some nasty punishment in one way or another, come from the more common motives. Hate, revenge, sexual frustration, mental illness (Son of Sam, hearing a neighbor's dog "speak" and command to murder), jealousy, rage, and so forth. The ugly side of human nature having to do with primal urges, not which political philosophy one adheres to. What philosophy did the Columbine killers, cross-dressers, anti-racist, adhere to? What philosophy did giggling lunatic (literally) Gerald Lee Loughner, a Jew, and member of a prominent Democratic political family, follow? What philosophy did Cho Seung Hui, or George Sodini, follow? None save the Beta Male Rampage. [The picture at the top of the post is of Cho, Sodini, and Breivik from Top clockwise.]

We've seen this before, in China, as the report here, and also here show. Chinese men, not attached to any political philosophy, go off and kill kindergartners (other men's children). The men are typically loners, without any women in their lives, or any prospect at all in the sex-balance hell that is China (selective sex abortion means about 4 men for every woman in many areas among younger people). So, being beta males they plan their rampage carefully, and kill the winners in the reproduction lottery. That's not hard to understand now, is it? Ugly in the extreme, to be sure, but there it is.

In a similar manner, the ever-present Chinese bus bombings not done by Uighur separatists are lone male, beta male rampages as shown here.

China has occasionally witnessed bus explosions staged by disgruntled farmers or laid-off workers wanting to air grievances over poverty, demolitions or corruption.

Yes, the modern Western society produces a few real winners. Alpha Males (those with the ability to project breezy, unshaken dominance and sexy assurance) get most of the desirable women, leaving the beta males to slave away. A few go nuts, crazy, and unfortunately because the wealth transfer systems of modern Western oriented society (this includes China) dissolves nationalistic, unified bonds, the targets of these rogue males, beta males on a rampage, are not leaders, kings, generals, and the like.

The targets are uniformly, children, young people, and women. The very people most males are hard-wired to protect, but because of lack of any success/investment romantically-physically, and a profoundly atomizing society that acts like acid to dissolve social bonds between people (other than non-White race based organizations like LULAC or the NAACP) the groups who should be protected become targets of unimaginable brutality and cruelty.

We saw this with Sodini. We saw it with Cho. We saw it with the Chinese Kindergarten and bus attackers. We saw it with Breivik, too.

Those on the right are struggling to understand Breivik. Why he did what he did. The man was in favor of gay rights, and opposed fundamentalist Christianity for that reason (as did the Columbine Killers, who were also pro-gay rights). Breivik condemned both Nazism and Communism for violence and the amount of dead it produced, as well as pre-Enlightenment Christendom. Breivik was pro-Israel, and dismissed the British Nationalist Party as racists, the EDL as a bunch of goons, and Vlaams Belang as "pro-Nazi."

Breivik's Facebook page (Atlas Shrugged makes an observation about how it was altered AFTER the shooting) shows his interests to be Winston Churchill, Max Manus (a Norwegian Resistance Fighter) and Machiavelli. That's not important. What a man is will NEVER be revealed by his political philosophies. [Note, "Christian" and "Conservative" were added to Breivik's Facebook page after the shooting, in post after post he describes himself as no Christian, and proud of his pagan Viking heritage.]

What reveals a man's character is what entertainment he chooses. Breivik's favorite books were listed as Kafka's "the Trial" and Orwell's "1984." I doubt he ever read them. If he did, it would seem he's frustrated by what he sees as an overweening state, crushing the life out of his own individuality. In reality he suffered no real oppression, he was not beaten, electrocuted, limbs amputated, or otherwise brutalized the way many in the Third World are regularly. None of his family were murdered by police goons or militias. The reason these books were chosen, likely is that as a nameless cog unimportant to anyone (and significantly, any woman) Breivik identified with the protagonists.

But what stands out is his favorite TV shows. Gay/Female ghettos all, and quite disturbing. The Shield, Tru Blood, Dexter, Caprica, and Stargate Universe. Only a profoundly disturbed man would find these shows attractive, given that they all push a gay man's or woman's idea of an Alpha Male.


The Shield, features an amoral, corrupt bad guy (Michael Chicklis) as the leader of an anti-Gang unit. The character murders an honest cop to conceal his corruption, and frames a gang member. This is the hero. Tru Blood is a vampire/gay-civil-rights metaphor show, the titular "Tru Blood" allowing vampires to eat synthetic blood instead of killing humans. Every normal, White guy is presented as a mouth-breathing, sub-human bigot, with the Vampires being ultra sexy and of course, ultra violent. One scene has the lead vampire (played by Stephen Moyer) breaking the neck of a female vampire during a disturbingly violent and icky sex scene. Dexter of course features Michael C. Hall as the "good" serial killer, trained by his father to only kill … other serial killers. In a most sadistic manner. Meanwhile the character pretends to be a boring beta male in a forensics lab, and dutiful and boring husband/father. Caprica is the sequel to Battlestar Galactica (the revival by Ron Moore, not the original by the late Glen A. Larson) featuring icky sex and killer robots and massive corruption and no decent lead characters. Stargate Universe is the Battlestar Galactica revival version of Stargate, with icky sex, depressing and gritty themes, and no likable lead characters.

The portrait here is of a straight guy desperately wanting to fit in with the conception of an Alpha Male, and failing. The shows all are quite female-skewing, and the fantasy (violent men who kill but are "controlled" by the hotness of a woman like Tru Blood's Anna Paquin) is pretty explicit (and disturbing). The fantasy is not Cary Grant or George Clooney (beta males, get rich, famous, work out and dress suavely!) No it is one of ultra-violence and domination, pure and simple.

Breivik was a sick, disturbed man. But his motivation was primarily sexual, and primal, not political. Unlike say, Volkert van der Graaf, the assassin of Pim Fortuyn, who van der Graaf murdered because of Fortuyn's opposition to Muslim integration and conservatism. [Fortuyn of course was famously openly gay and conservative.] No, Breivik is just another Beta Male Rampage.

Every society will have sick, deranged individuals. A society sufficiently large will have people mentally ill. The question is, how does a society deal with these people, and what constraints society-wide operate to at least limit the damage a mentally ill person can accomplish?

The answer in the West (this includes btw Coastal China) is … not much exists to limit or channel the damage into minimal violence. Most beta male losers channel their frustration into things like World of Warcraft, slacker entertainment, or the like. Amusing themselves to death, as they opt out of the race they cannot win. A small minority end up doing some very nasty violence, in a run-amok rampage. Often very carefully planned and concealed, in Breivik's case for years, supposedly. Due to the sick, winner/loser nature of the society, mentally ill beta males like Breivik don't feel any connection to kids or women. They are "other people's kids" they seek to kill, like the Chinese kindergartner attackers.

The reason is not political. It is one of the losers having their revenge on the winners. Breivik reportedly bombed the Labor Party building, and then went on an attack on Labor Party kids at the Youth camp. Important questions remain: how did the bomber make a successful fertilizer bomb, given the difficulties most terrorists have found in making them go off (the Times Square bomber Faisal Shazad for example). McVeigh practiced in the Arizona desert outside Kingman with the Fortiers, to perfect a detonation system that would work (and not blow him up, he had no intention of dying) far away from Oklahoma. Indeed it was not until the FBI traced McVeigh's movements that the feds discovered this training/practice, despite neighbors at the time complaining to police. McVeigh famously also had the help of Terry Nichols. A massive fertilizer bomb requires muscle to mix the fertilizer and diesel fuel, drums to store the mixture in, and considerable muscle to move them into a big van. It does not seem to be a one-man task.

There is the question of how, after the vehicle with the bomb blew up, (there may have been more than one, according to latest reporting) Breivik made his way to the Island Youth Camp, more than 20 miles from Downtown Oslo. With, I might add, a bag filled with guns and ammo, heavy and bulky, and with a police uniform. This suggests at a minimum another car, stashed somewhere, and quite likely a driver.

Then there are the gun restrictions in Norway, which are quite restrictive and must be approved by the Government. "Machine pistols" which are military weapons, are not available to civilians. Reportedly, Breivik used a "machine pistol" in the shootings. Gun licenses are expensive, to acquire and maintain, as is ammunition, which is also quite restricted.

There is no reporting, as of yet, how Breivik got onto the Island. He certainly did not swim with that load of guns and ammo. Meaning quite likely a private boat not a ferry (the arriving SWAT team found no boats available, and dithered as the shots rang out on the island only 1,000 yards away).

I myself suspect a helper of some sort. Perhaps a weaker personality dominated by Breivik, as in the John Mohammed/Lee Boyd Malvo Beltway Sniper mass murders, or Columbine.

But ultimately, making sense of this massacre will only happen when people face the truth. The reason, the real reason all those people died, was another Beta Male rampage. These will continue to happen, until loser-dom for Beta Males is ameliorated, or crazy people are locked up quickly (easy bet, Breivik was notably mentally ill to those who saw him in person, and nothing was done), or perhaps both. Crazy people do crazy things, and naturally our society that doles out rights and is reluctant to lock up the crazy will pay a severe price. But even so, crazy people follow only the path of winner and loserdom. It is human nature for the loser beta males afflicted with deep mental illness to want to punish those (kids, women) they feel are the "belongings" of the Alpha Male winners.

Outside of the families and friends of the slain, of course, no one really cares in Norway or elsewhere about the dead. That's the ugly but effective reality. And now that he's killed about 100 people or so, assuming Breivik is not knifed in prison, he'll have beautiful women throwing themselves at him in conjugal visits. The depressing reality -- when Joran Van Der Sloot was arrested for the murder of the Peruvian Girl, women all around the globe sent him marriage proposals. He had previously cut a wide swath among women in SouthEast Asia, on the notoriety of being the prime suspect for the murder of Natalee Holloway. Accused wife-killer Drew Peterson had hot coeds throwing themselves at him, at age 55, left and right. Scott Peterson arrived in prison to find marriage proposals from beautiful women. And Scott Peterson not only married an attractive woman, but had an attractive mistress (Amber Frye). Newly accused Dodger Stadium thug, Marvin Norwood, one of two men accused of beating Giants Fan Brian Stow, has according to his cousin who called in to KFI AM 640 Los Angeles "the John and Ken Show" a number of illegitimate kids by a number of women, all of whom he beat on a regular basis.

Violence does not (sadly) repel women, it rather attracts them, and often the most attractive rather than the least attractive. Tru Blood is not a story about a man who is devoted to his wife, changes diapers, and does the dishes. That behavior is what a "Kitchen Bitch" does, a beta male with no attraction to any woman. Rather it is about a hot chick waitressing at a diner who snags the ultra Alpha male, a dominant and violent vampire. Just like Buffy the Vampire Slayer was about a hot chick who first bangs a violent, sadistic vampire who kills her mentor's girlfriend (and tortures him), and then her violent, sadistic, murderous rapist (vampires Angel and Spike, respectively).

On one sick level, Breivik merely became the fantasy that women adored. The violent, dominant, killer Alpha.

This is why things like Tru Blood are important. They didn't cause the guy to go out and kill people, but as a signal of what female audiences want, it is a huge red warning flag. Because women tend in the end to get exactly the kind of men they desire.

Breivik was a time bomb waiting to go off. Mentally ill, no doubt, no women in his life at all, save his mother, and with nothing to live for save a fantasy of violence, he was going to do damage. There was no question about it, unless he had been committed early. [That he had a hand gun and hunting license is appalling -- the man was obviously mentally ill and no one examining him spotted it.] BUT … a society more healthy and robust, would have channeled that explosion of mentally ill violence towards less damaging targets: a political leader, a celebrity, or the like. Horrible and tragic, but far less damaging than that of 100 people more or less lying dead, many of them children.

Those on the anti-Jihad side are filled with despair, feeling (accurately) that this will be used to smear all anti-Jihad, anti-Islamists. They should not despair, for there was no way Europe would ever resist Jihad and islamization in the first place. If Breivik had never been born, it would not have mattered a jot. Any more than the murder of Pim Fortuyn by van der Graaf made any impression at all on the pro-Islamicization, pro-Multiculturalist, pro-Diversity forces.

Women in the West, raised to equality or even a bit more, than their male peers, naturally find them … repulsive. Beta males. Lacking the sexy! They want … well they want Vampire Bill. Or Vampire Angel. Or Vampire Spike. Or Dexter. Or Vic Mackey (the Shield). Violent, dominant, murdering men who kill with impunity, and whom they hope to control. That's the fantasy. It certainly is not … changing diapers and doing dishes. That's what a Kitchen Bitch (derisive name for a supportive beta male coined by Sandra Tsing Loh and echoed by feminist bloggers) would do. And no one wants a Kitchen Bitch.

Western men have turned into Kitchen Bitches, by and large. Being supportive, being equal, being totally lacking in violent, sexy, domination. Is it any wonder that Western women, en-masse, have rejected Western men and their civilization? In favor of non-White men who will … dominate them? Roderick Shonte Dantzler, who killed his ex-wife, his daughter, her parents, his ex-girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend's sister, his ex-girlfriend's sister's daughter, and tried to kill another ex-girlfriend, was a Black ex-con who got his ex-wife pregnant when she was 16 and he was 22. No statutory rape charges were filed. All his exes were White. No questions there, Dontzler was far preferable, to a Kitchen Bitch, because he was violent and dominant. That he was often in prison, on anti-psychotic medications, and threatened to burn his own mother's house down made no difference. Women in the West are DESPERATE for sexy dominance. So they will put up with anything.

OneSTDV notes again, the stupid White men commercials, with the hot-sexy wife who actually makes money by being a hot-shot businesswoman, continues the theme of White guys are stupid. Larry Auster had noted that DHS had produced a video with "suspicious" White guys reported by patriotic Black/Hispanic/Muslim people. This is no mystery. White guys are mostly, beta males, equal and therefore as sexually desirable as a bowl of cold oatmeal to women. Who in turn support, widely, islamization (at least they'll get domination), mass immigration, and multiculturalism (hatred of White/European culture).

No argument, facts, stats, or anything would sway White women. They want their sexy men! Women will defend a violent, dominant, Alpha male to the end, almost. Meanwhile women despise beta males who they view as weak, untrustworthy, and icky (devoid of sex appeal). As long as women in the West found most of their White male counterparts their equal or slightly inferior, they'd support all of the anti-Western agenda: mass immigration, Islamicization, diversity, PC, Multiculturalism. So they can get sexy, back.

This means the West is doomed. So there is no point in doing anything about it, or even caring much, other than sentiment and nostalgia. White women have decisively rejected White men, hence the appalling low birthrate (they don't find men sexy enough to have kids by). White women are prey to appalling fantasies about violent domination (watch night-time TV). White women find White men unsexy Kitchen Bitches, and will vote en-masse, en-bloc, for their immediate replacement by dominant non-White men. Cherie Blair famously endorsed the Burqua and fought for it, in the UK. Her sister converted to Islam. Why? Because Islam provides domination, something most women want desperately.

That women will find the real-life "Handmaid's Tale" (Margaret Atwood's book created horror among women, because the men were not sexy enough, not the domination) quite unpleasant is of course ironic. But that is human existence.

Human society nearly always flounders on sex. It is explosive, and a limited resource that cannot be spread out much. Repressing Alpha Male, and female sexuality, to a limited set of choices, as traditional Western society did, allowing women the maximum amount of freedom before hypergamy runs wild, with ugly domination fantasies, meant building a high-trust, nuclear family society that could weather lots of shocks and competition and chaos. And still come out with more wealth than ever before. The harem-building model of Mormons before repudiation of polygamy (they were poor and beset with violence and mistrust when polygamous, middle class and prosperous now), and Muslims since the religion's founding, means violence and poverty. Though women are generally happy in it, finding men dominant and violent to their liking.

In short, Breivik is a symptom of underlying causes, rather than the cause itself. The West was doomed the moment it raised up women to full equality, female sexuality being what it is, Western women found Western men unsexy, and therefore deserving of annihilation and Western society deserving of replacement. They've set about it quite well. Had Breivik never existed, the killings never happened, nothing would have changed. Western women would have led the effort to replace the White population (which they damn for producing "Kitchen Bitches") with one non-White and at least possessing sexy, dominant men. That poverty and violence will result is no matter. Western Women are not stupid, they know what they will get. But sexy is worth it, for most of them. And therefore they will get it.

One final note, it is amazing the passivity among the youth on the island. Apparently they only tried to get away, there was no attempt by the young men to overwhelm the shooter and well, kill him. The feminized, passive orientation of young men is striking, and found at Columbine, at Virginia Tech, and many other places (Montreal). Napoleon's genius was to make the average peasant a small landh0lder, with a chance at his own family and wife. His men fought like lions as a result, even after the carnage of the Revolutionary wars. Napoleon far overperformed, with this simple insight. Men and boys will fight like lions for "theirs," had they a claim on their girlfriends likely to be their wives, the young men at Virginia Tech or Montreal or the Youth Camp Island, would have suffered horrific casualties but killed the shooter. Men fight like this in the Marines, even today, doing things of amazing bravery under fire, and they are ordinary men, not Spec Ops warriors, or super-human genetically engineered fighters. The Army, Navy, and Air Force has produced men of similar bravery, decorated for heroic combat actions.

Why then the passivity? Because Kitchen Bitches don't die for an Alpha's harem. A man might die for his "brother" (created by training and combat). But he won't die for the Alpha's squeeze.




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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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The Bombay World

The Jihadist, terror attacks in Bombay, which have at latest report have as many as 300 feared dead, are the symbol of the problems of the modern world. For most of the Twentieth Century, threats to Western nations were from industrialized, modern powers. Either other Western nations, such as the Kaiser's or Furhrer's Germany, or Soviet Russia, or modernized Asian nations such as Tojo's Japan or Mao's nuclear armed China. Failed nations and states like Pakistan or Somalia were not considered threats. What armies did they have? What navies? What strategic air forces or ICBMs? That of course has all changed, mostly without anyone noticing it until now. When it must be noticed.

The problem is that the diffusion of modern technology, like the AK-47, across the globe allows even failed societies like Pakistan to export their troubles to neighbors, or even distant places. Like England or the United States. Technology has become so cheap and widely available that even places that can't produce it on their own can buy the technology in the global marketplace. The United Nations in 2001 estimated that an AK-47 could be purchased in many places in Africa for as little as $6. That is the price of something that is a commodity. While doubtless prices have risen since that report, the ubiquity of the AK-47 worldwide is proof that Western nations no longer have technology advantages.

From what is known, by reporting from various sources, the Bombay assault was planned for a year in advance. Training was conducted in Kashmir and Rawalpindi (the military heart of Pakistan). The attack team consisted of between ten and possibly as many as twenty men. Considerable logistics support was required, to stash arms and water and ammunition inside the hotel, and other places, and keep the hotel staff away from the rooms or prevent them from reporting the arms and water caches. Targets were carefully surveilled, and the targets included the very obscure Lubavitcher Jewish Center in Bombay, which was unmarked and unknown to nearly all of Bombay (so much for security by obscurity). The gunmen operated in pairs, in the manner of US Marines and other American combat infantrymen. The gunmen, according to the survivor, expected to survive and escape. The goal, according to the survivor, was to kill as many people as possible, the number that the attackers desired to reach was 5,000 people.

India is a nation of about a billion people. The "demands" of the group claiming responsibility, the Deccan Muhajideen, were for the entire Indian subcontinent to be put under Islamic rule and Sharia Law. It was not of course, a serious demand. The purpose of the attack was not hostage-trading, or publicity for demands. Or even killing to achieve a political objective from the target, i.e. "negotiations" or giving in to demands that did not require great sacrifices from the target. No, the killing was all about raising an exile army. Liberals consistently ask "Why do they hate us?" and Conservatives answers are often "They hate us for our freedoms." Neither provide a good answer for why Bombay's atrocities took place. It is not about us, it is about them.

Westhawk believes that the attack, like 9/11 organized by Al Qaeda, is all about mobilizing the Caliphate. The attack, in other words, was designed to create a backlash against Muslims in India and create a religious-ethnic war between India and Pakistan. This is only partly right. What Westhawk misses are the goals of men like Ayman Al-Zawahari and Osama bin Laden. As amply documented in Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower," the goal of both Al-Zawhari and Bin Laden was to create an exile Army. An exile Army capable of overthrowing the regimes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where each could then rule his native land. This is the big flaw of Islam, in that there is no other path to power in Islamic societies except sitting out in exile somewhere, and organizing a coup, or assassinations of the leaders. There are no peaceful paths to power, by political organizing, as there is in the West. There is no accommodations, for powerful forces, as there is in say, China or Japan, in a more consensus-driven environment (and ruthless suppression of those who do not cooperate). Thus, Islamic society, heavily influenced by it's polygamy and "Big Man" society, with a chief who runs everything and owns everything, and everyone else below, predictably creates these exile forces. Algeria is plagued by the GIA and GSPC, Egypt by Islamic Jihad, Saudi Arabia by Al Qaeda, Morocco by Al Qaeda, Indonesia by the Jemaah Islamiyah, and so on. Pakistan is the worst, with an alphabet soup of terrorist groups, all fighting for influence and power. Each group is hoping to overthrow the current regimes, using Islam as a lever (and the convenient tactic of labeling the current regime as "infidel") and assembling it's own exile Army and group of supporters inside the nation.

Simply put, these men want power. The power of the ruler. They aim to get it. And the way they get it is by demonstrating they are winners.

Wright demonstrates how Al-Zawahari and Bin Laden only fitfully arrived at the "winning" model for assembling lots of men, money, and supporters inside their target country. At first, both tried assassination attempts and terrorism against the regime. Egyptian Islamic Jihad had a series of failed attempts to kill Mubarak, and attacks against tourists in Southern Egypt and elsewhere. Osama's attacks against Saudi regime figures, and agitation got the same results as Al-Zawahari's Egyptian endeavors. Police crackdowns, imprisonment of supporters, execution of a good many suspected backers, and very visible failure. Funding and support from backers dried up. Men stopped coming to the camps in Sudan, or Somalia, or Pakistan. Their host nations got nervous and informed them that perhaps they would find a better climate elsewhere, under pressure from Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Then, with the tactic of killing lots of Americans, with impunity, both Al-Zawahari and Osama bin Laden found men and money pouring into their camps. Al Qaeda went from an obscure bunch of "losers" who were nowhere near the vanguard of Islamic Jihad to the leaders. This success of course attracted considerable American retaliation in the end, and put both men on the run and unable to take full advantage of their ability to raise money and men and gain followers inside their target nations (for takeover). But every would-be usurper and terrorist leader took notice. To gain the lion's share of money and men, one must successfully attack and kill lots of Westerners.

The danger of American retaliation could be finessed in several ways. First, by not claiming direct responsibility, and using a cover organization, while covertly spreading the word that it was, indeed, your own that directed the attack. Second, by banking on the election of Muslim-friendly (if not Muslim himself) Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States, who has written in his autobiography "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance" that he would "stand with Muslims" rather than America in the event of a Muslim attack on the US. Third, by manipulating the desire for legalistic "proof" in Western societies before any action in retaliation for an attack takes place. By carefully choosing men who have no direct connection to a terrorist group, there can be no "proof" that a terrorist group was responsible.

Meanwhile, the advantage for any would-be terrorist kingpin for pulling off such an attack is great: he can very likely receive tens of millions of dollars at least from Gulf oil interests, and others, around the Muslim world. Not the least of which is the money that can be raised from Muslims in the West. It is alleged that much of the financing for the Bombay attack came from Muslims in Britain. It is further alleged that some of the dead attackers were British Citizens as well. At least the former seems plausible and the case of the latter is bolstered by the number of British Muslim Citizens (and Canadians, for that matter) captured or killed in the battlefields of Afghanistan in the last seven years. This is not surprising, a recent poll reveals that forty percent of British Muslims want Sharia Law in the UK. A full twenty percent had sympathy for the 7/7 bombers.

The problem for the West, and other non-Muslim societies, is that there are too many would-be "Big Men" sitting out in exile, figuring that they can quite reasonably expect to at least run their own lucrative private Armies, if only they can figure out a way to kill lots of non-Muslims and get away with it. This has of course, always been the case for Islamic societies, while both Western and Eastern societies have largely done away with exile leaders since well, Napoleon.

What has changed is the ability of technology, and the weakness of both Western and Eastern societies, which depend on cooperation and non-violence, to make this desire of Muslim exile leaders quite possible.

In examining the Bombay Jihadist atrocities, the relative cost of the operation is not high. Almost any well organized terrorist group could pursue it, at relatively little risk. The surveillance of the targets was relatively low risk, even if discovered the PC attitudes of most nations and screaming of "profiling" particularly America and Europe, would lead to charges being dismissed. Try again with another target. Groups of two men, five to six teams in all, could produce enough reporting and raw data to plan an effective attack. The cost for the surveillance could be as little as $20,000.

The training of the men who would carry out the attack, and their careful selection, would take more time, but would not cost much. AK-47's are ubiquitous and easily obtained in places like Pakistan, or Somalia, or many other parts of the world. Creating mock-ups of the targets, screening the men, training them, providing them with meals and sleeping arrangements, could very likely be done for only $70,000. The largest cost component of this phase would be security and investigations of the proposed attackers.

Next comes the plausible deniability. Care must be taken to feed appropriate intelligence agencies fake plans, intentions, and so on. Perhaps fake denunciations of schismatic people conducting the training in case of their involvement being revealed. Payoffs and bribes to the local authorities, must also be considered. This could be a sum as little as $80,000.

After that, comes the positioning of the arms and other supplies used in the attacks. The difficulties encountered by the Bombay attackers in coming from sea (the Indian Coast Guard nearly caught them) means that it is unlikely this means will be pursued further. It is more likely that the arms will be smuggled in or purchased piecemeal off the black markets, one at a time. This is likely to cost around $130,000 or so. Perhaps more in societies with a larger, more robust police presence, and concentrated geography, perhaps less in places with a more spread out geography and less able police. The aim being to keep the arms and attackers separate until right before the attack begins, for maximum surprise and effectiveness.

Finally, comes the infiltration of the attackers. Ideally they should enter the country through normal commercial means, as many of the 9/11 Hijackers did, though under assumed identities. They would be indistinguishable from the mass of people moving in and out of modern Western societies. The cost for this would be only $20,000 or so. Very cheap.

So the total cost of $320,000 give or take, could be estimated to produce around $20 million in funds raised from sympathetic Gulf interests and Jihadist networks in Europe and America. It certainly is risky. But then so is sitting out in the desert in Pakistan, hoping to overthrow the Egyptian or Saudi government, or the Pakistani government for that matter. Men who will take that risk, will take this risk. The only trick is to avoid retaliation by the Americans, who are at this point the only forces capable (well, besides the Chinese and Russians) of producing misery for the men who would plan the attacks.

The widespread affordability of cheap but reliable AK-47's, grenades and other weaponry, makes this tactic of mass-killing by sudden assaults likely to be repeated. Until they stop working, which means they fail to produce money and men and supporters at "acceptable" levels of risk for the plotters. Which means in turn that the plotters don't end up dead.

The likely targets would not at first be American. India was chosen for a reason. It was next door to Pakistan, it had poor security, and exiting to Pakistan was theoretically possible. Indeed if there were twenty not ten attackers, then ten have escaped. The Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Spain, France, Britain, are all convenient targets. All these nations lack any meaningful ways of killing the plotters, which to them is the only thing that matters in considering such attacks. Neither Britain nor France will nuke Pakistan. Certainly not over an attack that "merely" kills 5,000 people. These societies present a "free shot" for men who wish to become Caliph.

Which brings to mind the irony of how technology has created this situation. In the movie "The Man Who Would Be King," Sean Connery and Michael Caine use their superior technology (repeating rifles) and military know-how to become kings of "Kafiristan" (in reality the last pagan outpost in Afghanistan before it was conquered in 1895-96 by Muslims). Their reign as "Kings" comes to an end, however, when they are revealed to be men not gods, and the Kafiris turn on them. In that instance, the superior technology of the West enabled for a while, the Connery and Caine characters to pose as Gods and rule as Kings.

Now, cheap transportation from anywhere in the Globe, and cheap and available weaponry, means that the Man Who Would Be King is not a some ex-Sergeant Major of the British Army in India, looking for an easy target, but an ambitious exile from Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, or perhaps a native Pakistani, who would be King himself. And his means is not seizing a weak, broken place like Kafiristan, separate and outside of modern technology. No, the ambition is to be like Reza Khan, who rose from an officer in the Persian Kossack Army, to Shah. Or Saddam Hussein, who rose from a simple assassin in the Baath Party to undisputed leader of Iraq. Or Gamel Abdel Nasser, or any one of the strong men who control the Muslim world. Muslim history and particularly modern Muslim history is littered with examples of people who assembled an exile and internal army and staged coups to become undisputed rulers of their countries. All that is needed is men and money.

Both readily available to anyone who can attack Westerners with impunity.

So these types of attacks will not end any time soon. If anything they will only increase. Because they are the quickest path to power in the Muslim world.

These attacks are not about Israel, or Jews, or Freedom, or why they hate us. It is about power and money, pure and simple, and enabled by modern technology along with the limits of the West.

However, like everything else, it will not last forever. The West has been coasting on the internal peace and prosperity bought by cheap energy, as documented in my post The Bailout, along with a lack of any serious threat impacting security and safety. The Soviet Nuclear Threat was largely neutralized by America's nuclear arsenal, creating a stand-off. Soviet Marines did not pose a constant threat of landing in New York City or Barcelona and massacring holiday shoppers in a shopping mall. Success and managing the one threat facing the West depended on cooperation and signaling (to the Soviets) a lack of any aggressive intent.

That is now changed. It is quite possible and eventually likely, that holiday shoppers or stadium-goers or attendants at Mass, or any other large public event could be massacred by Jihadis intent on killing as many infidels as possible, just so their masters and planners can assemble an exile Army.

This will change Western society in profound ways just as the threat of global nuclear war with the Soviets helped produce a deep and profound feminizing influence on the West (which was in some ways deeply beneficial).

First, in culture we will see a shift away from consumerism and status (which mean nothing if there is a realistic chance of being shot up by a jihadi in a large social setting) towards independence and self-reliance. Since those are the traits that provide success when realistically threatened by sudden violence at any moment. We will see a celebration of the spread out suburbs, which are unattractive targets to gunmen, and a disdain for the "loser" cities and concentrated urban areas.

The cry of the Indian photographer of "I wish I had a gun" will be felt more sympathetically. India has strict gun control laws, and the idea that armed Jihadis will be stopped by making sure their targets are unarmed will be deeply unappealing. The alliance of women, progressives, Blacks, Hispanics, etc. who are anti-gun ownership by ordinary people, will not change. However, their influence as more and more shootings happen, particularly in European nations with strict gun control, and horror stories of defenseless victims, is likely to wane.

SWAT teams and police units are likely to be the last line of defense. Even in compact cities like New York City, there simply won't be enough police to combat the attackers. Particularly if the police face multiple attacks to spread out their response. Politically, cities will be the last to allow hand gun possession by licensed legal owners. Because of the political alliances inherent in urban politics (women, gays, non-Whites).

However, that will just reverse the trend of "new urbanization" or the move to the cities. Instead, the safe suburbs, and shopping online, will dominate. Places that allow licensed concealed carry will have more people moving into them, and those that don't (in the US) will not. In Europe, it is likely that people will simply carry concealed and highly illegal weapons.

These attacks will not fundamentally threaten Western civilization. However, they will significantly change it. When people face the prospect of being killed at random in public places, they change their behavior. We are likely to see a switch from centralized, SWAT type response, while people wait to be killed, to a series of gunfights with the attackers. We are also likely to see the development of more powerful firearms that can stop attackers quickly, and alternatives to firearms that promise the same (vortex ring weapons, sonic weapons, microwaves, etc). Particularly as body armor becomes part of the attacker's gear.

After all, SWAT is designed to respond to fairly infrequent, violent threats. That type of protection, based on a centralized and governmental response, does not work (and certainly did not) when faced by a large number of attackers over a dispersed area.

The threat from the attackers is distributed and decentralized. It is likely that the response to the threat to be effective will be decentralized and distributed also.
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The Real Meaning of 9/11: Our Science Fiction World

What are the real lessons of 9/11? The same, sadly, as the lessons of Feb 26. Remember that date? How about the full date of February 26, 1993? The FIRST World Trade Center attack? The one that killed six people? Sound family? The lesson of 9/11 is the same as the lesson of 2/26.

We live in a Science Fiction World.

We live in Science Fiction World, because we don't live in the certainties of the Cold War anymore. No stable duopoly, no "leash" on the proxy forces of each superpower, to prevent nuclear Armageddon. In itself, a good thing. But the forces of globalization, trade, economic growth, and the availability of technology coupled with "just enough" but not "enough" cultural change in failing, tribal societies guarantees major Western (and other) cities will be destroyed by nuclear devices. A truly, Science Fiction world.

First, let's examine the motives of the 1993 WTC bombers. They marked a sea-change in what was attempted, in terms of casualties and operations, and what was desired. The 1983 Beirut Barracks bombings, and other terrorist actions against the US in the 1970s and 1980's, including the Tehran Hostage Crisis, were all designed to get the US to simply LEAVE certain regions. Which, largely, the US did, in areas it had no compelling interest to stay. Such as Lebanon. The US itself was off-limits, for fear of provoking a response too unhealthy for the terrorists, who were in turn sponsored and trained, and largely controlled by various states. Hezbollah controlled by Iran and Syria, was the culprit responsible for the Beirut Barracks bombings which killed 241 US servicemen. Terrorists wanted something. They picked targets outside the US, designed to create public pressure to withdraw US forces domestically, with either hostage taking, or attacks on US forces, or bombings of jetliners (Lockerbie Scotland, Pan Am Flight 103). An ugly business, of brutal men killing Americans to use US domestic politics to achieve specific ends. But ultimately, one that did not threaten intrinsic US interests.

The 1993 WTC bombers, by contrast, planned to topple one tower onto another, and kill 50,000 people. Think about that. The plan intended to kill 50,000 Americans, in a few minutes, on US soil. What was the motive?

The motive was simple, and it was not intended to seriously influence US public opinion on any particularly issue. "Do this or more attacks." Rather, the motive was to kill as many Americans as possible. So that the plotters would have fame, fortune, and many jihadis flocking to their organization, and receive much money also. Likely masterminded by the "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel-Rahman, though he was never charged, his "Islamic Group" sought to be the Number One Jihadi organization, over Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, and Islamic Jihad (it's main Egyptian competitor, headed by Abdel-Rahman's main rival, Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahari).

Conservatives say, jihadis hate us for our freedom. Very true, but then Jihadis hate the Chinese, the Thais, the Russians, and each other's rival and splintered groups. It was widely suspected among Jihad groups in Pakistan that Ayman Al-Zawahari was the man responsible for assassinating one of the original leaders of Jihad in Pakistan-Afghanistan against the Soviets, Abdullah Azzam, along with his sons. Liberals ask, "why do they hate us?" and call for dialog and "understanding" in the desperate attempt to make some "deal" to stop further attacks.

Neither is helpful. Each jihadi, and each Jihadi organization, is in competition with others. For men, for money, for power. All of which flow to men and leaders and organizations capable of killing lots of Americans. And which wither away when such men and organizations prove themselves incapable of providing ever increasing body counts of dead Americans and spectacular scenes of destruction.

This accounts for what otherwise makes no sense: Al Qaeda's increasing attacks on the US, with no attempt to manipulate US domestic opinion to achieve concrete but limited goals. There were no hostage taking, with demands for money and concessions that an administration, eager to put the episode behind it, would concede. No actions aimed at simply pushing the US out of areas it never really cared about in the first place. That was not the goal. Instead, the goal was simple: kill lots of Americans, and gain money and men and power. Given enough of that, a man such as bin Laden might even overthrow the House of Saud. Or Zawahari the Mubarak regime. Or perhaps the Islamic Group, still led by the Blind Sheik, would do it first.

The reason this creates a Science Fiction World, is that we have a modern equivalent of the Vikings, raiders who cannot be bought off, for whom there is no "deal" to be made, and who will keep attacking, out of their own internal dynamics and with no real center of command. To whom does the Blind Sheik answer to? What about Ayman Al-Zawahari? Or Osama bin Laden? Or the leaders of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat? Or any number of obscure, Jihadist organizations and leaders.

The second part of this Science Fiction world is nuclear proliferation. Currently, the nations of Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have nuclear weapons. Short of invasion and extensive bombings, Iran will join them very soon. It is very unlikely that Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, or Israel will give or sell nuclear weapons to Jihadists. The Ukraine and South Africa voluntarily gave up their nuclear weapons, the Ukraine to the Russians, and the South Africans after the fall of Apartheid, dismantled (they claim at least) their own nuclear weapons (which were of the simple, "gun-type" Uranium variety, which Oppenheimer did not even bother to test, so certain was he in 1945 that the device would work).

But Pakistan, and North Korea remain problems. With Iran another problem on the horizon. North Korea will sell weapons and has, to just about anyone. They live under the Chinese nuclear umbrella, so do not fear US response. Which in any case has amounted to bribes to stop their nuclear program, without any verification. Since North Korea has nothing to sell other than weapons to trade for food, and it's population subsists at starvation level, it's unlikely they've given up all their nuclear weapons. More disturbing is the fact that a nation where many subsist at near or below starvation levels, can construct nuclear devices (and working Ballistic Missiles). Even if they don't always work, that they work at all shows how common, simple, and affordable nuclear weapons (and Ballistic Missiles) have become. From Hitler's crude V-2 rockets, and the Manhattan project, nuclear weapons and ICBMs have made the same transition that modern computers have. Affordable commodities.

Pakistan, of course, is a set of squabbling tribes with a flag. Divided along linguistic, tribal, regional, and factional lines, with Army and Intelligence service deeply divided itself and factionalized into pro-Jihad sentiments, the nation is a mess. Whole regions have been ceded to the Taliban and Jihadist movements, because the divided and ineffective Army cannot maintain control in those regions or defeat the Jihadis. Much of the Army and Intelligence service are in fact, Jihadis, and view them as an essential part of the nation's and Islam's struggle with Hindu India. The new President of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto's widower, has reported mental problems including depression, thoughts of suicide, and voices in his head. At any rate, he is viewed as incredibly corrupt, and detested by the military which does not respect him nor follow his orders. His rival, Nawaz Sharif, is a pro-Jihadist and makes no attempt to hide his sympathies. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is distributed about the nation, the harder for the Indian forces to destroy in a decapitation attack, but easier for Jihadis to gain access to. Given the primacy of tribal and clan loyalties, in a nation where the rule of law is an interesting theory never actually put into practice, it is questionable how long the Pakistani government can keep Colonels and Majors from handing a few to their cousins or brothers in influential and powerful Jihadi movements.

Iran is nearly as bad, with nearly as much factional struggles, and each eager to provoke a war with the US to discredit and destroy their rivals. The Hostage Crisis 1979-80 was about the Ayatollah Khomeni's desire to destroy any pro-Western forces as it was "anger" about America's sheltering the Shah. At a time when the USSR and it's client Saddam menaced Iran (and about a year AFTER the Hostage taking, Saddam did in fact invade and nearly destroy Khomeni's regime), the Khomeni regime picked a fight with the US to destroy internal opponents.

You can see echoes of this strategem with Pakistani jihadis attacking Chinese engineers on critical infrastructure projects inside Pakistan. China has been Pakistan's ally against India, for about 35 years. That these attacks have continued show the depth of the factionalization inside Pakistan, and their effectiveness.

We live in a Science Fiction World, when the internal dynamics of crude, organized crime gangs with religious aspirations, guarantee they will attempt mass murder attacks on the US. We live in a Science Fiction World when these crude groups can gain access by kin and tribe networks, to nuclear weapons created by states that exist only as polite fictions. We live in a Science Fiction World where the fear is not of world-wide Armageddon, but rather a city dying in an instant. Just so a few thugs can gain more power.

That is the meaning of 2/26, and the true meaning of 9/11.
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