Posting will be light

Real pressure at work these past days has left me with no time to post. Pretty exciting stuff is happening in Lebanon though. Go to the Syria Comment site for additional info. Across the Bay is another excellent site.

Betrayals

Betrayals

The Denver
Channel reports that 200 University of Colorado faculty members have
published a petition in a local newspaper asking that the investigation against
Ward Churchill be dropped.

The faculty members paid for the ad to run Monday in The Boulder Daily
Camera. The ad says the review of the professor, expected to complete by
the middle of March, should be stopped immediately. The ad says the inquiry is
the result of political pressure and not based on "any prior formal
complaint of specific professional or academic misconduct on his part."
...

CU's Arts and Sciences Council passed a resolution Feb. 10 protesting the
investigation, and said administrators should know that faculty members are
serious about their opposition to what some consider a witch hunt. Margaret
LeCompte, an education professor, said, "It is going to be extremely
difficult, if academic freedom is on the block, for us to hire and keep good
faculty members.' LeCompte and the other teachers who signed the ad paid
$1,600 to have it published. "We're all thinking twice about what we're
saying," LeCompte said, recalling the climate in the McCarthy era when
professors were fired for alleged communist ties.

The same story is being carried by the Rocky
Mountain News on a feed from the Associated Press. Some newspapers are
connecting this 'witch hunt' with the mandatory Loyalty Oaths the State of
Colorado requires of teachers at institutions of higher learning. According to
the Denver
Channel:

State law requires anybody who teaches at a higher education institution to
sign an oath affirming they will uphold the U.S. and Colorado constitutions.
University officials said somewhere between 80 percent and 90 percent of staff
have signed loyalty oaths. Those who haven't, will be required to do so.
Churchill was among the minority that hadn't before the controversy. But he
subsequently has signed.

Dissent has long been described as a patriotic and legitimate activity and
Professor Churchill's patriotism is a thing to behold. A transcript of a speech
he gave on February 21, 2005 is provided by InfoshopOrg,
an anarchist website, from a Counterpunch source.

Ward Churchill: Hello my relatives; you humble me. Bill Owens: do you get
it now? [applause] If you can count on your toes, you'll be able to count the
percentage points of contribution to the budget the University of Colorado you
and your ilk have reduced the taxpayer contribution to. It comes to seven. I
do not work for the taxpayers of the state of Colorado. I do not work for Bill
Owens.....

Question #4: I'm glad I came here tonight; I've heard a lot more than I
heard on the average sound bytes we've been hearing on the radio. I agree with
some points, there are other points that I disagree with, but I do believe you
have a constitutional right to say what you have to say. On the other hand, do
you agree that the First Amendment rights for the people marching in the
Columbus Day parade should be taken away, because that is their freedom of
expression as well, and I'm one of those people.

Ward Churchill: Let me answer the man. No, I don't believe you have a
First Amendment right because that bounces off against my Ninth Amendment
right. You know what my Ninth Amendment rights are? Do you know what the
Ninth Amendment says?

Question #4: No, sir.

Ward Churchill: Yeah. Do we have a law professor in here? I think this is a
lesson for law school, because I addressed another university auditorium with
about this many people in it last week, and I posed the same question to the
whole group. Professors, students, townspeople and all, not a soul, including
law professors, could tell me what the damn Ninth Amendment said. [laughter]
S'pose there might be a reason for that?

Question #4: Sir, sir, sirdoes that negate the First Amendment?

Ward Churchill: No, no, wait a minute; let's get an answer to it.

Audience Member: Basically it says that whatever rights were not given to
federal government are given to the states.

Ward Churchill: Actually, wrong, beep. [laughter] What it says, in very
close paraphrase, is that all rights not otherwise enumerated herein that are
inherent in people are retained by them, OK? You can have a real entertaining
time looking at the nature of those rights as articulated, and it can be
rather nebulous and it can be debatable, but I'll tell you one place you can
look where it's not debatable at all and that's in black letter legal
articulation. That goes to human rights, particularly the articulation of
international human rights that take the form of ratified treaties. Under
Article Six of the Constitution of the United States, those are the supreme
law of the land, and among them, are fundamental human dignity, OK? And
celebration of the conditions that I was describing as pertaining to native
people as an outcome of the process initiated by Christopher Columbus,
celebrating that guy in any respect at all is a celebration of those
conditions. That's a denial of fundamental human dignity, that's a denial of
my Ninth Amendment rights and you don't have a right to do that, and you
know exactly what you're doing. [applause]

This exchange recalled an earlier Belmont
Club post which said:

The implicit assumption underlying this discourse is that "we" --
and not you -- ask the questions. ...  As Robert Kaplan pointed out in The
Media and Medievalism, the most powerful tool of totalitarianism is to don
the guise of righteousness and assume "the right to question and to
demand answers, the right to judge and condemn, and the right to pardon and
show mercy." It is in the end an attempt to usurp the wellsprings of
legitimacy.

From that acceptance a tyranny follows from which even the dead have no
escape. The victims of the World Trade Center may have spent their last moments
imagining that they would be avenged. Wrong. Society cannot even undertake to
preserve their memory from those who would call them "little Eichmanns".
What is at stake is not even the remembrance. To paraphrase another Churchill,
it is the universal human experience to be forgotten; but what is at stake now
is incomparably greater: the ability to remember who we are, and to prevent, for
those who trusted us on that September day, the extinction of their light, their
memory and their story.

A Teaching Moment

A Teaching Moment

University of Colorado officials are considering offering Ward Churchill an
early retirement package that could end an increasingly uncomfortable standoff
with the controversial professor. ... David Lane, Churchill's attorney, said
he has not been contacted about a buyout offer. But, he said, while his
primary focus is on protecting Churchill's constitutional right to speak out,
he would be willing to listen to a university proposal. "If they offer
$10 million, I would think about it. If they offer him $10, I wouldn't,"
Lane said.

Freedom of speech is not priceless. It's worth ten million dollars and
not a penny less. This, according to the Denver
Post, is preferred way to get Professor Churchill off the campus. The
alternative, it sources suggest, is far worse.

Typically such dismissals - even if done by the book - result in years of
expensive lawsuits that Hoffman told legislators last week the university
would like to avoid. Sources involved in the talks said if an arrangement
could be made, it could get everyone off the hook, including Churchill, the
subject of daily press revelations. The latest controversy is whether an
artwork by Churchill titled "Winter Attack" was copied from a 1972
piece by Thomas Mails, "The Mystic Warriors of the Plains."

The Rocky
Mountain News depicts the CU administration as practically paralyzed
with fear at the possible retaliation Churchill could visit on them should they
attempt to chastise him.

University of Colorado President Betsy Hoffman had some fairly strong words
Tuesday for those who have argued that professor Ward Churchill should be
fired. "The more talk there is about the need to fire him, the more
difficult it becomes for us to do that, if that's what we decide to do,"
she told Republican lawmakers, urging them not to join calls for action.
"If we approach this issue wrong," she said, "not only will
every regent be sued personally, but every administrator will be sued
personally and professor Churchill will win his lawsuit with triple damages
and be back on the faculty, a very wealthy man at our expense."

This fear, whether real or pretended, is an impressive demonstration of the
power of Political Correctness,  a compound of legal menace, the threat of
extralegal action and of retaliatory vilification that is not some figure of
speech but an actual, material force. Even if Churchill is 'bought out' at $10
million -- should he stoop to accept such a beggarly sum -- he will have
unambiguously demonstrated the value of leftist protection. That he could have
survived repeated exposure as an ethnic identity thief, academic fraud and art
forger; that he could have assaulted a newsman on television and
withstood the personal opprobrium of the Colorado Governor, only to receive a
fortune in compensation, can only add to his fame.

The perception of danger depends on one's perspective. Neville Chamberlain's
Foreign Minister, Lord Halifax, argued against opposing the Nazi aggression by
asking "was any useful purpose served by treading on the landslide and
being carried along with it"? Another Churchill, unrelated to Ward,
counterargued that the danger lay entirely the other way: that capitulation mean
stepping onto a "slippery slope" every bit as perilous as Halifax's
metaphorical landslide; how each moment of procrastination increased the
awfulness of the inevitable clash. The case, on smaller scale, describes CU's
dilemma. From Hoffman's point of view, it is resisting Ward Churchill that is
dangerous; from another standpoint it is not resisting him that
constitutes the threat.

The World Turned Upside Down

The World Turned Upside Down

Don't that beat all. When the blog Dutch
Report reported that two parliamentary representatives, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and
Geert Wilders had been kept in prison cells to protect them against Islamic
death threats, I refused at first to believe it. The Dutch Report is in
English and since I could not read the source documents directly, the report
seemed too unlikely to be true. But the more I read, even in translation, the
less it seemed like a parody. For example:

Parliamentary chairman Weisglas now says he is �shocked by the
disinterested reactions� in parliament after the protest of representatives
Hirsi Ali and Wilders. �I think the parliamentary members accept it way to
easy that a colleague, has to sleep for months in a prison cell�. He
describes it as a �disgrace� and �a pathetic show� that Wilders is in
prison to protect him against terrorism. Weisglas says he has this weekend
made it �very clear� to the government that the two representatives should
be able to live in normal circumstances. ...

Security expert Hans Salman says in NRC newspaper that he nearly couldn�t
believe the news: �Wilders? In a prison?�. With his company International
Security Partners (ISP) he often works for families who need personal
protection....  He was also involved in the protection of the Turkeys
ambassador, who was under threat of the ultra nationalistic Turkeys Gray
Wolves. ... �This is asking for trouble� he says and continues with: �Every
body knows that nobody can endure something like this.�.

Former Amsterdam police commissioner and security expert Kees Sietsma
...  says, Hirsi Ali and Wilders are right to say that in countries like
Israel, the United States, Spain and Italy, the living addresses of people
under threat are not secret. ... Arie Duijdam of Interseco, the biggest
personnel protection firm in The Netherlands also thinks there are other
alternatives.

But Reuters provided collateral confirmation. The article Threatened
Dutch MP Reveals Living on Navy Base says:

NRC Handelsblad said Ayaan Hirsi Ali had revealed her secret residence on a
navy base to protest against the circumstances of her hiding. ... The
newspaper said Hirsi Ali was living on a heavily guarded navy base in
Amsterdam, while anti-immigration populist Geert Wilders, whose life has also
been threatened, was sleeping in a prison cell in the central Dutch town of
Zeist.

Expatica
reports that the accommodations weren't the equivalent of a BOQ or any such,
but a real jail cell.

Wilders is also an outspoken critic of the Islamic faith, calling for an
end to immigration of Muslims to the Netherlands. He is also opposed to Turkey
accession to the EU. He has been living at Camp Zeist for some time, which was
formerly used to house the two Libyan suspects of the Lockerbie bombing. It
now houses arrested immigrants and normal detainees. Wilders has been told he
will be staying at the jail � and sleeping in a jail cell � until at least
September when he will be given his own living space.

The complaints of the Dutch parliamentary representatives were greeted with
dismay. The revelation, it was said, would put the base in danger of attack. Hirsi
Ali 'put guards in danger' says:

22 February 2005 Amsterdam � MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali placed not only herself
and right-winger Geert Wilders, but also their bodyguards and other officials,
in danger by revealing the location of her safe house, Justice Minister Piet
Hein Donner said on Tuesday.

The description involuntarily recalled the classic scene in the original Terminator
movie where an unstoppable android kills all the cops in a station house to
reach its designated target. Camp
Zeist -- the secure location in question -- was used to hold the Lockerbie
bombers, and is, if anything, somewhat more formidable that the garden variety
station house. No one wants to put things to the proof. According to the Dutch
Report, members of the press are asking why Hirsi Ali simply doesn't quit
politics to avoid further unpleasantness.

The press and other parliamentary members, some even of her own liberal (VVD)
party have attacked Hirsi Ali in the past and suggested that her work as
representative is under pressure and said she could better stop.

That would solve the problem for sure, but what happens if Europe is
threatened by more than a handful of Islamic terrorists? What to do for an
encore?

The Cancer Ward

The Cancer Ward

Hat tip to Michelle
Malkin for linking to an Inside
Denver article on Ward Churchill which catalogues the lengthy history of
his denunciation by bona-fide Indians before Colorado University. His accusers
include his ex-inlaws. Some excerpts:

David Bradley, a Santa Fe-area American Indian artist whose feud with
Churchill has endured more than a decade, says he told CU a long time ago that
Churchill should be fired. ...

Vernon Bellecourt, an American Indian Movement activist, says he first
approached the university with questions about the veracity of Churchill's
claim to American Indian heritage in 1986. "We went out there with a
stack of documents to tell them about him," Bellecourt said. "I made
a special trip to Colorado and went to the university.

"We told the university he wasn't Indian and was disruptive in the
community," said Carole Standing Elk, a California Indian activist.
"We said, 'He doesn't represent us, and how did you put him in the ethnic
studies department?' "

"I sent a letter to the university in 1992 saying he's not a native
person," said Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute.
She says she received a response from a university official saying Churchill
had not been hired because he was an American Indian.

Bradley, a Chippewa, said there are several reasons he and Churchill
clashed. ... In 1994, Bradley contacted CU, lodging his complaint with Evelyn
Hu-De-Hart, then director for CU's Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in
America. ...

Rhonda Kelly, 41, of Winnipeg, the older sister of Churchill's deceased
third wife, Leah Renae Kelly, also contacted CU. ... Churchill later published
a book of Kelly's writings, In My Own Voice. In a lengthy preface, he
contended that the American Indian woman's alcoholism and other personal
troubles could be traced ... Rhonda Kelly, a second-year law student, has
produced a 15-point brief of inaccuracies she said she has found in
Churchill's preface. She has asked the book's publisher to remove it from
circulation, and to ask a man writing a screenplay based on the book to
desist. ... He said his wife was a victim of acute alcoholism and that he
"fought a long and lonely battle to save her." ... Churchill, in the
wake of Leah Kelly's death, established a fund at CU for Rhonda Kelly's two
children and contributed $200. ... "My sister Leah Renae Kelly had so
much promise, but ... she instead turned to alcohol to escape the torment and
humiliation in her marital home."

Controversy, or perhaps more accurately, acrimony, has been on Churchill like
a cheap suit from the git-go. At least some of the accusations leveled against
him received official cognizance from the University, which used the equal
opportunity argument as a justification for retaining him, whatever he was and
whatever he claimed to be.

"However, given the fact that equal opportunity is the law of the land
and that positions in the public sector are to be awarded to all persons
regardless of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and based only on
their ability to do the job, the university does not believe that any attempt
to remove Mr. Churchill because of his ethnicity or race would be appropriate.
Even if Mr. Churchill is not an American Indian, as he claims, Title VII
protects Caucasians as well as persons of color. Further, it has always been
university policy that a person's race or ethnicity is self-proving. ...
observation and self-identification are the most reliable indicators of one's
racial grouping."

But allowing a person to adopt any race that he chooses makes a nonsense of
racial preferences. There is an inner and inescapable logical contradiction
between adopting a policy based on racial diversity and then making race, in
turn, a dependent on some other variable. By transitivity, the policy based on
'racial diversity' would really be driven by this hidden variable, which is a
function of 'consciousness'. In other words, 'racial diversity' becomes a dummy
for ideological quotas. In plain English: "all your base are belong to
us".

Ward Churchill's Art

Ward Churchill's Art

This fascinating thread from the Freerepublic
convincingly shows that Ward Churchill has been selling plagiarized art from Thomas
Mails as original work on Ebay.

The item up for auction now is a very striking and impressive
serigraph/lithograph by renowned Native American author and artist, Ward
Churchill ( Keetoowah Band Cherokee). Churchill is Professor Emeritus of
Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, and is the Coordinator of
American Indian Studies at the same institution. He is also Associate Director
of the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America and Co-Director of
the Colorado Chapter of the American Indian Movement. Additionally he is a
member of the American Indian Anti-Defamation Council and the author of many
books and scholarly publications

It is the same plagiarized work described in Little
Green Footballs and further described by Colorado News4.
The News4 man, Raj Chohan, confronted Churchill with a copy of his signed
"original" artwork obtained from a buyer called Duke Prentup and was
nearly punched for his trouble.

"Get that camera out of my face," Churchill said.

"This is an artwork we've got called 'Winter Attack.' It looks like it
was based on a Thomas Mails painting; it looks like you ripped it off. Can you
tell us about that?" Chohan asked.

That prompted Churchill to take a swing at Chohan while he held a stack of
papers in his hand. The exchange continued:

Chohan: "Sir, that's assault, you can't do that. Can I ask you about
this? It looks like you copied it."

Churchill: "I was just grabbed by the arm. And that (camera) gets out
of my face."

Chohan: "Sir, we're allowed to take these pictures, this is a public
space."

Churchill: "You're not allowed to grab be by the arm."

Chohan: "He didn't touch you sir, we've got it all on tape. Sir, this
is called Winter Attack. It's a serigraph by you. It looks like it was copied
from Thomas Mails artwork. Can we talk to you about that please?"

Freerepublic
posters also discovered what may be more plagiarized Ward Churchill artwork, one
of which is a copy of an historic photograph. Stranger and stranger.

Short of War

Short of War

The peculiar problem facing US counterterrorism efforts in Southeast Asia,
according to the Congressional Research Service paper Terrorism in Southeast
Asia is that it cannot do so directly without offending regional political
sensitivities. Thus the US has been forced to work through host governments even
when the hosts are corrupt and inefficient. In the Philippines, for example, a
constitutional provision prohibiting the presence of foreign combat troops has
severely limited US ability to provide support for the Philippine military.

In consideration of the Filipino Constitution�s ban on foreign combat
troops operating inside the country, Washington and Manila negotiated special
rules of engagement ... U.S. Special Forces personnel took direction from
Filipino commanders and could use force only to defend themselves.

The main focus of counterterrorism efforts has been the Abu Sayyaf
terrorist group. But not only were US efforts to attack them directly hamstrung
by the constitutional provision, but their key military allies were declared
'off limits' by Manila for political reasons. Two of the older-line Muslim
insurgents groups, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), had long been the object of 'peace-making'
efforts by left leaning groups in the Philippines. These groups have since
loosely cooperated with the Abu Sayyaf and have provided them with
sanctuary by merely rebranding them as their own personnel, placing them under
the protection of the 'peace agreements'.

The U.S. focus on Abu Sayyaf is complicated by the broader Muslim issue in
the southern Philippines, including the existence of two much larger groups,
the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF). Both groups have been in insurrection against the Philippine
government for much of the last 30 years. The MILF, with an estimated armed
strength of 10,000, has emerged as the larger of the two groups. Its main
political objective has been separation and independence for the Muslim region
of the southern Philippines. Evidence, including the testimonies of captured
Jemaah Islamiyah leaders, has pointed to strong links between the MILF and JI,
including the continued training of JI terrorists in MILF camps.... The MILF
has had tenuous cease-fire agreements with the Philippine government. ...
However, there continues to be evidence that the MILF provides training
facilities to JI.

Nevertheless, US trainers managed to produce a force of 16 light infantry
companies which could be deployed in an offensive capacity against the
terrorists. It is worth noting that although the Philippine Army has nearly as
many divisions as the US Army only the merest fraction of Manila's forces are
available for offensive, the great bulk being passively scattered in garrisons
and camps throughout the archipelago. In an earlier post, I had informally
estimated that the Philippine Armed Forces could field approximately one brigade
for two months without running out of ammunition, money and steam. Philippine
government 'all out-war' campaigns have historically been limited to these
parameters. In a sense, Manila must negotiate with the Muslim rebels
because it has not had a military victory option available for the last forty
years. While the Muslim insurgency was limited in scope that fact did not
matter. Now that the insurgents have been souped up by Al Qaeda they may
now pose an existential threat to Manila. The availability of 16 additional
companies and US logistical, intelligence and fire support would have been
transformative. But the capability can't be used, again due to leftist-inspired
constitutional provisions.

The United States and the Philippines have attempted to negotiate a second
phase of U.S. training and support of the AFP since late 2002. The
negotiations have experienced difficulties in determining the �rules of
engagement� for U.S. personnel and the terminology to be used in describing
Philippine-U.S. cooperation. The basic issue has been whether any facets of
the U.S. role could be considered a combat role. The two sides initially
announced that U.S. training of AFP light reaction companies would take place
in northern Luzon and again on Mindanao. The objective was to train 16 light
infantry companies by the end of 2003 for use against both Muslim insurgents
and the NPA. ...

In February 2003, Pentagon officials described a plan under which the
United States would commit 350 Special Operations Forces to Jolo to operate
with Filipino Army and Marine units down to the platoon level of 20-30 troops.
Another 400 support troops would be at Zamboanga on the Mindanao mainland.
Positioned offshore of Jolo would be a navy task force of 1,000 U.S. Marines
and 1,300 Navy personnel equipped with Cobra attack helicopters and Harrier
jets. ...

This and subsequent statements indicated that the Special Operations Forces
on Jolo would participate in AFP offensive operations against Abu Sayyaf and
that the Special Operations Forces would not be limited to using their weapons
for selfdefense. The U.S. Marines were described as a �quick reaction� force,
undoubtedly meaning that they could be sent on to Jolo to reinforce AFP units.
The Cobra helicopters and Harrier jets would give AFP commanders the option of
requesting U.S. air strikes in support of AFP operations or transporting
Filipino troops on U.S. helicopters. ...

President Arroyo and AFP commanders reportedly had agreed to the plan for a
second phase of U.S.-Philippine joint military activity in a meeting on
February 4, 2003. The announcement of the plan caused immediate controversy in
the Philippines. Filipino politicians and media organs criticized the plan as
violating the constitutional prohibition of foreign troops engaging in combat
on Philippine soil. Filipino Muslim leaders warned of a Muslim backlash on
Mindanao.

American support would provide what would be a two-brigade Philippine force
with exactly the complementary capabilities they would need: mobility,
communications, combat logistics and fire support. They could actually pursue
the enemy with greater agressiveness and confidence, in the assurance that US
firepower could extract them from any tactically disadvantageous position. But
military strategy must in this case, be subordinate to political feasibility.
Recent attacks by the Abu Sayyaf on the Philippine capital itself may
eventually start to turn the political tide as it becomes evident that the
Philippines is already flooded with foreign combat troops -- supplied by the
JI and Al Qaeda -- and that American support is actually required to
repel an invasion. But things will probably have to get worse before the
tipping point is reached.

Wrong But Right

Wrong But Right

You've heard of accurate but fake, Indian but White Man. But have you heard
of right but wrong?  Hat tip to a great blog,

The American Future, which is following events in Europe. They've
spotted this gem of sophisticated thinking from the

Guardian describing President Bush's recent European trip.

The transatlantic reconvergence, in other words, is for real. The problem
is that its purpose remains both unstated and, even to those closest to the
process, somewhat unclear.

Much of this is summed up in the current transitional fluidity over the
politics of Iraq. The war was a reckless, provocative, dangerous, lawless
piece of unilateral arrogance. But it has nevertheless brought forth a
desirable outcome which would not have been achieved at all, or so quickly, by
the means that the critics advocated, right though they were in most respects.

Historians remarked that the European upper classes never recovered their
prestige after the blunders of the Great War. The idea that 'the public school
men knew best' took a knock in the mud of the trenches. But it was not ignorance
which was at fault; for that after all can be amended. It was the obstinate
persistence in error, the steadfast refusal to learn that was really at the root
of much of the tragedy. Those who will not learn from history are condemned to
repeat it.

Second Front (Naval)

Second Front (Naval)

Austin Bay sends a link to an article he did for the

Weekly Standard which describes some of the goals of Al Qaeda in
Southeast Asia.

Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia lie first and foremost in JI's
geo-strategic kill zone. JI (Jemaah Islamiyah) has large plans for the whole
of Southeast Asia, plans dating from well before 9/11. Drawing on cadres
schooled in past radical political movements that used Islam as both a wedge
issue and a rallying cause, JI seeks to establish a grand "Islamic state"
stretching from southern Thailand through Malaysia, the Philippine and
Indonesian archipelagoes, and Australia. Indeed, JI produced a "green map"
where the reach of sharia, as interpreted by JI leadership, extends into the
Australian continent and New Guinea. Fanciful? Megalomaniacal? After 9/11 only
the willfully blind can dismiss the motivating power of such an imperial
eschatology.

At the time Bay was visiting Singapore, the JI was considering an attack on
American naval targets as a demonstration of their power, the better to rouse
the Muslim millions of the Southeast Asia.

The fast boat, packed with explosives and a suicide pilot, could slip from
an inlet on the Malaysian side, gun its engine, whirl around an islet, perhaps
Pulau Tekong, seeking the slate gray side of a carrier. ... An American
officer familiar with U.S. Navy security concerns in southeast Asia first
tipped me to the aircraft carrier scenario. "Singapore's a logical choice for
a 'super Cole' operation, or something similar," he said. That was October
2001.

Their method emphasizes patience. A videotape captured in Afghanistan showed
the surveillance of US naval targets in Singapore. Bay spoke to the director of
Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and asked how Al Qaeda could
obtain the personnel to carry out this scheme.

"Jemaah Islamiyah in Malaysia. They are clever, yes. They have an education
program. But their secret is no secret. It's money. Arab money. Saudi Arab
money."

"Can you prove that?"

"Where else but oil does it come from?" he says. "I know what I am told.
With that money they promote the Arabization of our Islam in Southeast Asia.
Object and you face personal violence."

That money was used to good effect in the United States itself. The object
was not to recruit a suicide attacker who would sink a supercarrier but merely
to assassinate the American President. As

Little Green Footballs notes, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, the US citizen charged
with conspiring to assassinate President Bush, was not simply "a former Virginia
high school valedictorian" the regular newspapers make him out to be. The "high
school" he attended was a Saudi funded madrassa called the Islamic Saudi
Academy.

The Second Front

The Second Front

While the main focus of public attention has been on Iraq, the Congressional
Research Service's Terrorism
in Southeast (its an older version of the newest report a copy of which I
can't find on the Web) reminds us the second front against terrorism is in
Southeast Asia particularly "the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Thailand, and Singapore".

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States has
considered Southeast Asia to be a �second front� in its global campaign
against Islamist terrorism. ... Since the early-to-mid 1990s the Al Qaeda
terrorist network has made significant inroads into the region. Al Qaeda�s
Southeast Asian operatives -- who have been primarily of Middle Eastern origin
� appear to have performed three primary tasks. First, they set up local
cells, predominantly headed by Arab members of Al Qaeda, that served as
regional offices supporting the network�s global operations. ... Second,
over time, Al Qaeda Southeast Asian operatives helped create what may be
Southeast Asia�s first indigenous regional terrorist network, Jemaah
Islamiyah ... Third, Al Qaeda�s local cells worked to cooperate with
indigenous radical Islamic groups by providing them with money and training.

The stakes on the second front are considerable. "By 2002, according to
one prominent expert on Al Qaeda, roughly one-fifth of Al Qaeda�s
organizational strength was centered in Southeast Asia." Most of the
agitational activity has been carried out through Saudi funded madrassas, of
which the pesantrens which largely hatched the Jemaah Islamiyah are are
archetypical. At stake is what Ralph
Peters called the "future of Islam".

We have been looking in the wrong direction, because that is where we have
been conditioned to look. ... Our focus on the Middle East has been so
exclusive that we have come to see Islam largely through an Arab prism. ... In
terms both of population density and potential productivity, wealth, and
power, Islam�s center of gravity lies to the east of Afghanistan, not to the
west. The world�s most populous �Muslim� countries stretch far to the
east of the Indus River: Indonesia, India, Bangladesh . . . Pakistan . . . and
other regional states, such as Malaysia, make this the real cockpit of crisis.

Whatever the military gains in the area, "public diplomacy" still
leaves much to be desired. The CRS report notes that "the United States�
popularity amongst Indonesians has dropped significantly in recent years.
According to polling data, 79% of Indonesians had a favorableopinion of the
United States in 1999, 61% did in 2002, and only 15% did in 2003. Another poll
stated that 83% of Indonesians took an unfavorable view of the United States in
2003." Leftist pressure groups in the Philippines have effectively
prevented the United States from training that country's army to the fullest or
even an adequate extent. Whatever may be said of the "second front",
it is not won. In subsequent posts, I hope to sketch out who the players are and
what the dynamic of the struggle consists of.

The Message is the Message

target="_blank">Oxblog
reports news that should be surprising, but isn't. After all, consistency is an
easier policy than rampant exceptionalism.

Not long ago, I criticized the US government for its silent response to an
anti-democratic href="http://www.oxblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_oxblog_archive.html#110807441900309619"
target="_blank">coup
d'etat in Togo. Thus, I am indebted to JT for pointing out that the US has
now cut off all military assistance to Togo and endorsed the tough sanctions
imposed by the regional organization known as ECOWAS. After my initial
criticism of the administration, one liberal realist chided me for assuming
that this President literally intended to promote democracy across the globe.
... Yet it seemed that the White House has surprised all of us.

Everyone's Hour

What do these signals indicate? (Hat tip: The

Freerepublic)

href="http://news.channels.aol.ca/news/article.adp?id=20050218152709990019">
Paul Martin to announce that Canada sending 30 soldiers to train Iraqis

Canada will contribute up to 30 soldiers to a NATO-led force that
will help
train the new Iraqi army, senior federal officials confirmed Friday. The
formal announcement will be made when Prime Minister Paul Martin gathers with
other leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting Tuesday in
Brussels.

EU
to Open Baghdad Training Office; Officials Hail Unprecedented Unity
Over Iraq

The European Union agreed Monday to open an office in Baghdad to
coordinate
the training of Iraqi judges, prosecutors and prison guards in a step hailed
as a sign of unprecedented unity over Iraq within the 25-nation
bloc. ... "We
are for the first time really united on Iraq," said EU foreign
policy chief
Javier Solana. "That without any doubt is going to be very
important to the
meetings we are going to have ... with President Bush."

href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=aaQ0S2xpZ6eA&refer=europe">
Bush, Chirac Call for Withdrawal of Syrian Troops From Lebanon

U.S. President George W. Bush and French President Jacques Chirac, meeting
in Brussels before European Union and NATO summit talks tomorrow, called for
Syria to pull its troops out of Lebanon. "We urge full and immediate
implementation" of a United Nations Security Council resolution
calling for
withdrawal of all foreign troops from Lebanon, the two leaders said in a
statement. "We have the same approach to the situation which is
prevailing in
Lebanon," Chirac said before a dinner with Bush. ...

href="http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-bush-france,0,2926650,print.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines">
Bush Suggests Chirac Is 'Good Cowboy' (Hat tip:
The
Vodkapundit)

Only months after he criticized countries "like
France," President Bush was
lavish in his praise of French President Jacques Chirac, one of the sharpest
critics of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. "I'm looking for a good
cowboy," Bush
said Monday when a French reporter asked him whether relations had
improved to
the point where the U.S. president would be inviting Chirac to the U.S.
president's ranch in Texas.

If there is something a little unseemly about the sudden cooperativeness of
recently truculent friends, President Bush is making light of it. He has grown,
in the best way, beyond the need to gloat. The dangers facing the
world have not
yet abated, but are starting to be recognized by allies who were hitherto too
fearful or uncertain to look upon them. "This is not victory of a
party or of
any class." It is
href="http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=428">
everyone's hour.

Many Partings

Put these together.

Hillary Clinton judges that the

Insurgency in Iraq is Failing (hat tip:
href="http://austinbay.net/blog/index.php?p=79">Austin Bay)

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said that much of Iraq was
"functioning quite
well" and that the rash of suicide attacks was a sign that the
insurgency was
failing. ... Clinton said the last time she visited Iraq in late 2003, she
traveled to the Green Zone by road from the international airport. Today,
security is so bad that none of the senators dared drive through Baghdad's
streets, even in armored cars. Aside from the Green Zone, their only glimpse
of the capital came from the relative safety of U.S. military
helicopters that
ferried them from the airport. "It's regrettable that the
security needs have
increased so much. On the other hand, I think you can look at the
country as a
whole and see that there are many parts of Iraq that are functioning quite
well," Clinton said.

Powerline asks: is a Ba'athist surrender in the works? It provides two
links. The first,

"U.S. in Secret Talks with Iraqi Insurgents" describes
alleged negotiations
between elements of the Ba'athist insurgency and US officials.

U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers are conducting secret talks with
Iraq's Sunni insurgents on ways to end fighting there, Time magazine reported
on Sunday, citing Pentagon and other sources.

The magazine cited a secret meeting between two members of the U.S.
military and an Iraqi negotiator, a middle-aged former member of Saddam
Hussein's regime and the senior representative of what he called the
nationalist insurgency.

"We are ready to work with you," the Iraqi negotiator
said, according to
Time.

Iraqi insurgent leaders not aligned with al Qaeda ally Abu Mousab
al-Zarqawi told the magazine several nationalist groups composed of what the
Pentagon calls "former regime elements" have become open
to negotiating. The
insurgents said their aim was to establish a political identity that can
represent disenfranchised Sunnis.

The second link,

"Sunnis Seek Place in New Iraqi Government" recounts the
efforts by Sunni
leaders to get on the train as it is leaving the station.

Gathering in a central Baghdad hotel, about 70 tribal leaders from the
provinces of Baghdad, Kirkuk, Salaheddin, Diyala, Anbar and Nineveh, tried to
devise a strategy for participation in a future government. There was an air
of desperation in some quarters of the smoke-filled conference room.

"When we said that we are not going to take part, that
didn't mean that we
are not going to take part in the political process. We have to take part in
the political process and draft the new constitution," said
Adnan al-Duleimi,
the head of Sunni Endowments in Baghdad.

The available data suggests that the Sunni insurgents are still capable of
showing strength within their strongholds and menacing traffic on the Baghdad
streets. However, even within their bailiwicks, their capabilities are not
decisive. They have been unable to impede or even delay the political goals set
by the US as evidenced by their failure to stop the January 30 elections.
Moreover, they are unable to project any significant combat power in
Shi'ite and
Kurdish areas. Faced with the loss of oil revenues, a growing Iraqi security
force and the gradual depletion of their stored weapons and suffering
a terrible
attrition rate their relative power is irretrievably on the wane.

href="http://austinbay.net/blog/index.php?p=79">Austin Bay
recalls being in a Corps' Joint Operations Center(JOC) during his tour in Iraq
and watching the computer display reel out what was effectively a
gauge of enemy
losses, ticking like a taximeter.

The biggest display, that morning and every morning, was a spooling
date-time list describing scores of military and police actions undertaken
over the last dozen hours, Examples: "0331: 1/5 Cav, 1st
Cavalry Division,
arrests two suspects after Iraqi police stop car"; "0335 USMC
patrol vicinity
Fallujah engaged by RPG, returned fire. No casualties."

The spool went on and on and on, and I remember thinking :
"I know we're
winning." ... Every day coalition forces were moving thousands
of 18-wheelers
from Kuwait and Turkey into Iraq, and if the "insurgents" were lucky
they blew
up one. However, flash the flames of that one diesel rig on CNN and "oh my
God, America can't stop these guys" is the impression left in Boston, Boise,
and Beijing.

The regular newspapers have in their own way chronicled the insurgency's
decline. The new European friendliness towards the Bush administration; Kofi
Annan's pitiful attempt to claim credit for the Iraqi elections; America's
recent agressiveness towards Syria; Senator Clinton's newfound optimism; the
Ba'athist recent despair -- each chronicles after its fashion the story of
defeat -- though the reader is left to deduce who is defeated.

It will probably be many months before the insurgency finally flickers out.
Attempts will be made to extend its life through negotiations to win breathing
space, through renewed and ever more heinous attacks. Unexpected events or a
blunder may yet breathe life into it. But for the first time since terrorist
warfare was developed and perfected in the Algerian war it has met its match on
the battlefield. The vanquishing arms may have been American, but the
heart that
drove it was in large measure Iraqi.

European Constitution Referendum in Spain

Franco Aleman at
href="http://barcepundit-english.blogspot.com/2005/02/today-is-referendum-day-in-spain-so.html">
Barcepundit is blogging the referendum on the European Constitution.

The biggest fear by Zapatero's government is in case the voter turnout is
really low, since the whole thing would be a real slap in the face of the
Prime Minister utopian pro-European stance. A "yes" vote
is virtually
asssured, after the propaganda campaign (and I mean, propaganda) and
since the
main party in opposition, the right-of-center Popular Party is also for a yes
vote. I guess they won't cry much much if the turnout is low, though.

According to Barcepundit's latest update, the initial exit poll stats are as
follows:

Turnout -- 41%

Yes-- 77/80%

No-- 15/17%

Blank-- 5/6%

We Shall Overcome

Martin Peretz in href="http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050228&s=peretz022805"
target="_blank">Not
Much Left says what many have been saying for a while: that
Liberalism is out of ideas. The
curious thing about his intelligent and literate essay is that he never manages
to explain why this condition has taken place.

I think it was John Kenneth Galbraith, speaking in the early 1960s, the
high point of post-New Deal liberalism, who pronounced conservatism dead.
Conservatism, he said, was "bookless," ... At this point in history,
it is liberalism upon which such judgments are rendered. And understandably
so. It is liberalism that is now bookless and dying. ... Liberalism now needs
to be liberated from many of its own illusions and delusions. Let's hope we
still have the strength. 

Liberalism has lost its books because it has burned them. The campaign to
dismiss Harvard President Larry Summers for remarking that women may have less
aptitude than men for mathematics and sciences is a case in point. The
target="_blank">Boston
Globe reports:

Late yesterday, one of Harvard's most famous faculty members, law professor
Alan Dershowitz, issued a statement backing Summers's presidency, in which he
said the storm of opposition "sounds like the trial of Galileo. In my 41
years at Harvard, I have never experienced a president more open to debate,
disagreement, and dialogue than Larry Summers," wrote Dershowitz, adding
that "professors who are afraid to challenge him are guilty of
cowardice."

Dershowitz noted that he disagreed with Summers's comments last month that
innate differences might help explain why more men than women are top
achievers in science and math, but he defended the university president's
right to raise the proposition. "This is truly a time of crisis for
Harvard," he wrote. "The crisis is over whether a politically
correct straightjacket will be placed over the thinking of everybody in this
institution by one segment of the faculty."

Paradoxically, dogmatism is rooted in relativism more than in the belief that
real truth is discoverable. For as long as the truth is believed to be "out
there"; it will be sought. When its existence is doubted none will venture
into the dark. Under those conditions, we get exactly what Peretz
describes: an illogical attachment to old formulations of the
1960s, which can be uttered only because they are hallowed.

It's much easier, more comfortable, to do the old refrains. You can easily
rouse a crowd when you get it to sing, "We Shall Overcome." One of
the tropes that trips off the tongues of American liberals is the civil rights
theme of the '60s. Another is that U.S. power is dangerous to others and
dangerous to us. This is also a reprise from the '60s, the late '60s. Virtue
returns, it seems, merely by mouthing the words.

But when the world changes -- and it is no longer the 1960s -- Liberalism
finds it that cannot, dares not utter anything new; and that is dangerous
because it means inaction. Peretz scathingly describes how Liberals attitudes
have buried themselves in a time capsule where blacks are forever to be
maintained as objects of pity to be defended from Bull Connors. And where no
real black Americans can be found to fit the bill, a mountebank will be
produced.

The biggest insult to our black fellow citizens was the deference paid to
Al Sharpton during the campaign. ... To him can be debited the fraudulent and
dehumanizing scandal around Tawana Brawley (conflating scatology and sex), the
Crown Heights violence between Jews and blacks, a fire in Harlem, the protests
around a Korean grocery store in Brooklyn, and on and on. Yet the liberal
press treats Sharpton as a genuine leader, even a moral one, the trickster as
party statesman. ...

Any port in a storm, for the men without books, means anyone willing to
destroy America. Not out of spite, though there is that, but out a twisted love
because "U.S. power is dangerous to others and dangerous to us".

This leaves us with the issue of U.S. power, the other leftover from the
'60s. ... Pose this question at an Upper West Side dinner party: What was
worse, Nazism or Communism? Surely, the answer will be Nazism ... because
Communism had an ideal of the good. This, despite the fact that communist
revolutions and communist regimes murdered ever so many more millions of
innocents and transformed the yearning of many idealists for equality into the
brutal assertion of evil, a boot stamping on the human face forever. ...

It is typologically the same people who wanted the United States to let
communism triumph--in postwar Italy and Greece, in mid-cold war France and
late-cold war Portugal--who object to U.S. efforts right now in the Middle
East. You hear the schadenfreude in their voices--you read it in their
words--at our troubles in Iraq. For months, liberals have been peddling one
disaster scenario after another, one contradictory fact somehow reinforcing
another, hoping now against hope that their gloomy visions will come true. I
happen to believe that they won't.

One senses in Peretz the momentary triumph of intelligence over loyalty. He
understands the symptoms of the Liberal disease, but his uncertainty over the
location of the tumor makes him hesitates to press down on the scalpel. But this
does not stop him from denouncing the fake cures offered up by others.

And it is a condition related to the desperate hopes liberals have vested
in the United Nations. That is their lodestone. But the lodestone does not
perform. It is not a magnet for the good. It performs the magic of the wicked.
It is corrupt, it is pompous, it is shackled to tyrants and cynics.

To be trapped in an intellectual desert with a faked lodestone and Al
Sharpton for company -- if that were not bad enough -- there is the world
phenomenon of Jihadi terrorism. Curiously absent from Peretz's essay is
the long shadow cast by radical Islam on Liberalism itself. Islamism has already
displaced Marxist Nasserism as the primary ideology of the Middle East and if
demographic trends continue will displace the Left in Europe too. How will the
aging men without books fare against the youthful adherents of the book which is
the Koran? Will it still be possible for them to link arthritic arms and totter
around in a parody of militancy?

Paradoxically, the only hope for Liberalism is to reject Liberalism itself.
It must regain the idea that the truth is discoverable and not a matter of
political correctness; and then a whole succession of insights will follow: who
the enemy is; how he may be beaten; what the sound of children playing in the
yard really means. For there is no guarantee that it not too late to beat back
the tides of darkness; no assurance that we will ever regain the carefree life
we took as given. But if Liberals can think again they can sing again, though it
may not be "We Shall Overcome"; and however they meet their end it
will be one of which books should be written.

Nonconfirmation of The Explosive Ambulance

Note to readers: I cannot find collateral confirmation of this incident
described in href="http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2005/02/explosive-ambulance.html"
target="_blank">The
Explosive Ambulance reported in either Al Jazeera or Reuters. Moreover,
there are no reports in DOD News Releases of casualties involved in an incident
fitting the description of an attack by explosive ambulance. The
New Sisyphus
says it will post a link soon. Until then, the ambulance report is
unconfirmed.

Response to Cardozo

Reader Cardozo asked in href="http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2005/02/oh-lord-wont-you-buy-me-mercedes-benz.html"
target="_blank">Oh
Lord Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz, a post which dealt in part with
growing car-bomb making capability of terrorists in Southeast Asia, how to say a
strange thing.

W: How do you say "Ich bin ein Israeli" in Tagalog? I hope
they never have to learn that phrase, but should they have to, I hope
they do.

Cardozo,

I guess the sonorous way to say 'ich bin ein Israeli' in
Tagalog is 'hindi
kayo nag-iisa', which literally means 'you are not alone'. Of the course
proper setting in which to say it is to imagine yourself in a low dive called
the 'Boteng Umiilaw', a tin shack with packed dirt floors under a
decrepit bridge by an open sewer in Vitas, Tondo. It would be lit by a 15-watt
red-colored incandescent bulb. A really cheap sound system will be thumping
out the guitar introduction to "Faithful Love" as wary stares are
exchanged from bleary eyes all around. All the drinkers would be butchers in
the municipal abbatoir located right over the fence, next to the sewer; their
clothes stained with blood. When the inevitable fight breaks out the red
bulb should be shattered by a thrown glass, but in the glow of the jukebox,
you might see, as in strobe photography, the glint of balisong blades
flashing open: some in a smooth overhand and others with a flip, twist and
flip back. The man you came to see will be pinned in a corner and you will
hear yourself saying, in a voice not quite your own, 'hindi ka nag-iisa'.

The Explosive Ambulance

The diploblog href="http://newsisyphus.blogspot.com/2005/02/iraq-suicide-bomber-uses-ambulance.html"
target="_blank">New
Sisyphus asks why the sighted are blind.

We've just received word that Al-Jazeera ... has aired a videotape showing
a suicide bomber ... driving a bomb-laden ambulance into a U.S. checkpoint in
Iraq. Reuters is also reporting: "The videotape shows the person ...
while preparing the booby trapped vehicle camouflaged as an ambulance with a
number of explosive devices ... before ramming into a US checkpoint
near the Iraqi-Syrian
border."  The 47-second video can be viewed at Al-Jazeera's
website.

So many on the Left seem to think that the enemy is a figment of a
crazed-right-wing-maniac's authoritarian imagination. But, perhaps--just
perhaps--the real problem lies in the Left's inability to see an enemy even
when the enemy appears on television, explains that he wants to kill us and
then proceeds to commit a war crime, all on tape.

First of all, New Sisyphus is wrong: the men shown on tape are not any
sort of 'enemy'; they are brave militants and freedom fighters. A href="http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=74&ItemID=7166"
target="_blank">European
court held that individuals charged with fighting US troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan are guerilla fighters resisting enemy occupation.

According to the magistrate, Clementina Forleo of Milan, even if it was
proved that there were contacts between the accused and a paramilitary group
nevertheless one could say at most that they were supporters of the guerrilla
war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that this did not signify that they were
terrorists because there was an enormous difference between guerrilla action
and terrorism. ... She makes an appeal to the United Nation's Global
Convention on Terrorism of 1999 and affirms: "Violent or guerrilla
activity taking place in the context of an armed conflict, even if conducted
by armed forces different from institutional ones cannot be persecuted not
even at the level of international law, unless international humanitarian law
is violated."

What about the ambulance you say? Well what about it. A search on news at
Google for 'checkpoint bomb ambulance' yields 4 hits, none of which relate to
the incident, but a search on the keywords 'US torture' yields 10,400 hits.
Except for the videotape the incident doesn't exist; it's gone, down the memory
hole. And the sighted are blind.

target="_blank">Testimony
Before Congress 2 described how intelligence estimates showed the War on
Terror still expanding; that it was primarily an ideological war, a war of
ideas. On that ideological battlefield, the Left is the most powerful ally of
Sunni Jihadism, the fascism of our times. In that post I observed that
"those being the stakes, it necessarily follows that the War ... will if it
does not result in the triumph of Islam, mean the ruin of Sunni jihadism and its
Leftist allies." One commenter called the observation a load of hooey and
that is understandable; the Left has escaped the consequences of its words and
actions for so long it scarce remembers they exist. Witness Lynne Stewart. The
"Left's inability to see" -- is the product of their unshakeable
belief in the immutability of their world whose safety is guaranteed by the very
system they hate the most. In that make-believe garden, academic tenure,
human-rights lawyers, newspaper articles and political correctness will always
protect them. They are dimly aware of, but do not really believe in the
existence an outside world governed by what Tom Friedman called href="http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3043665"
target="_blank">Hama
Rules, of which the explosive laden ambulance is a part.

When Syria's Baath regime feels its back up against the wall, it always
resorts to "Hama Rules." Hama Rules is a term I coined after the
Syrian army leveled � and I mean leveled � a portion of its own city, Hama,
to put down a rebellion by Sunni Muslim fundamentalists there in 1982. Some
10,000 to 20,000 Syrians were buried in the rubble. Monday's murder of Hariri,
a self-made billionaire who devoted his money and energy to rebuilding Lebanon
after its civil war, had all the hallmarks of Hama Rules � beginning with
650 pounds of dynamite to incinerate an armor-plated motorcade.

Message from the Syrian regime to Washington, Paris and Lebanon's
opposition: "You want to play here, you'd better be ready to play by Hama
Rules � and Hama Rules are no rules at all. You want to squeeze us with Iraq
on one side and the Lebanese opposition on the other, you'd better be able to
put more than U.N. resolutions on the table. You'd better be ready to go all
the way � because we will. But you Americans are exhausted by Iraq, and you
Lebanese don't have the guts to stand up to us, and you French make a mean
croissant but you've got no Hama Rules in your arsenal. So remember, we blow
up prime ministers here. We shoot journalists. We fire on the Red Cross. We
leveled one of our own cities. You want to play by Hama Rules, let's see what
you've got. Otherwise, hasta la vista, baby."

The Left will wake up one day, on the morning it is led down a dark corridor
to a cell floored with rubber mats, sloping curiously down to a corner where a
single drain waits to carry fluid away. The walls will be bare but for a banner
with the words 'Allah is Great' opposite a video camera whose tripod legs are
protected with a drop cloth. On a table will be a single knife. And then they
will know. Then they will see.

Note to readers: I cannot find collateral confirmation of this incident
described in The
Explosive Ambulance reported in either Al Jazeera or Reuters. Moreover,
there are no reports in DOD News Releases of casualties involved in an incident
fitting the description of an attack by explosive ambulance. The New Sisyphus
says it will post a link soon. Until then, the ambulance report is unconfirmed.

Technical Problems

I am trying to resolve some technical problems with Blogger that appear to be associated with the template.

I've fixed things temporarily by dumping the old template. The new models are more concise, but whatever is parsing them didn't like my old legacy stuff. I think Blogger is having a hard time handling the archives now and republishing after adding to the Blogroll is killing. It may be time to move to another site.

The Ashoura Attacks Part 2

But aside from being the time of Ashoura, recent days in Iraq were filled
with negotiation to form a government after the elections held on January 30.
Although the Sunni party finished the election with only 5 seats it held the
trump card of intransigence. The desirability of creating an 'inclusive' Iraq
led Prime Minister Iyad Allawie to href="http://www.sltrib.com/nationworld/ci_2576534"
target="_blank">suggest
that the Sunnis be mollified in part through concessions. This is a code word
for spoils in exchange for desisting from violence.

Allawi told The Associated Press that the alliance must change its platform
of purging Sunnis who were members of Saddam's Baath Party from government
positions if it wants national unity. ''The alliance talks about
de-Baathification.
I hope if they get control and they're chosen to be the ones running the
country, I sincerely hope that they revisit these issues in their program and
re-discuss it with a view of having reconciliation and national unity,''
Allawi said. ''We cannot afford in this country, for now, to go on a route
different to that of national unity,'' said Allawi, who spoke English in the
interview. Otherwise, ''it will throw the country into problems, severe
problems.'' The key challenge for the new government will be ending the
insurgency that kills dozens of people every week. Most Iraqis say only
negotiations will end the attacks.

What Allawi fears is that the currently elected politicians take their
mandate at face value. The recent href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Australians-hunted-over-Hariri-deaths/2005/02/18/1108709436870.html"
target="_blank">assassination
of Lebanese politician Rafiq Hariri -- which interestingly enough may
involve 12 Australians -- and the href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Iraq-mosque-explosion-kills-30s/2005/02/18/1108709438662.html?oneclick=true"
target="_blank">attack
on Shiite worshipers during their holy days are reminders of the alternative
Ba'athist method of bombing one's way into power. Even though the Ba'athists
have no chance whatsoever of prevailing against the US militarily, they could
plausibly hope to convince the Shi'ites and Kurds that attacks on them will not
stop until Americans are evicted from Iraq; after which of course there will be
even less to stop the Ba'athists from redoubling their onslaughts on these
formerly subjugated peoples. Yet this tactic of intimidation has worked time and
again: on Madrid; on Clinton and Carter by Kim Jong Il; on Manila by the Abu
Sayyaf, so there is no reason to suppose it will not be tried again. John Lucaks
book target="_blank">Five Days in London, May 1940
describes how Hitler came within an ace of intimidating Britain into submission
without landing a single soldier on its shores. What he had not counted on was
Winston Churchill -- his sheer obstinacy and singular inability to accept peace
with a tyrant in preference to extinction in defiance. "Even as a quarter
of a million British troops were being evacuated from Dunkirk, Churchill
struggled to reverse the British government's policy of appeasement. In this, he
faced opposition from several quarters, including prominent figures within his
own Conservative Party." href="http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/007246.html"
target="_blank">Samizdata
argues that Britain was defeated  in the summer of 1940 and that
Churchill, to his everlasting credit, tricked it into believing otherwise by
holding up a mesmeric vision of itself. He snatched victory from defeat; let us
hope that our generation will not find a way to do the reverse.

The Second Ashoura Attacks

They knew it was coming. The href="http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4148257"
target="_blank">Scotsman
reports:

Iraq partially sealed its land borders today as part of stepped up security
on the eve of the holiest day of the Shiite Muslim calendar as violence
persisted unabated around the country. Iraq's fledgling government is hoping
to avert the bloodshed that marred Ashoura last year, when twin blasts ripped
through crowds of worshippers at Shiite Muslim shrines in Baghdad and Karbala,
killing at least 181 people.

The precautions weren't good enough. According to the href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1489953,00.html"
target="_blank">UK
Times, "As many as 30 people are believed to have died in an
suicide bombing during Friday prayers at a Shia mosque in Baghdad today. A
further 22 people have been wounded, although that total is expected to
rise."

target="_blank">Ireland
Online says the attack was carried out by a 'suicide bomber',
and now a second
attack has taken place.

"In the first blast this morning, a suicide bomber killed about 30
people when he blew himself up outside one of Baghdad's main Shiite mosques
during Friday prayers, a National Guard officer said. The attack took place
near the al-Khadimain mosque in the capital's Dora district, Lieutenant
Ahmad Ali said."

These mirror the twin attacks on the same occasion last year which took the
lives of 181 people. Much of the press at that time reported that Iraqis blamed
America for 'failing to provide security'. A contemporaneous href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0303/p01s02-woiq.html"
target="_blank">Christian
Science Monitor article said, "many Shiites, reeling from the
bloodiest day in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was toppled from power, were swift to
pin blame on the US and 'outsiders.'" At the time the US suspected Abu
Musab Zaraqawi of carrying out the attacks. It will be interesting to see what
the reaction will be this time.

Although the loss of life has been heavy, it has not been as bad as the
Ashoura carnage of 2004 -- so far --  possibly due to the precautions taken
in anticipation.

The Hills of Lebanon

Reader DL sends a link to a
href="http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110860948586057420,00.html">
Fouad Ajami article describing the effect of the Hariri assasination in the
context of the history of Lebanon. Read the whole thing. But here are some
excerpts.

A great, pitiless hoax was played on Lebanon. A country that had known the
crosscurrents of the world, a place of culture -- French culture in east
Beirut and the mountains, American culture on the western seaboard -- was to
pass into the control of the conquering army of a brutal, backward
regime. The
Syrians had usages for Lebanon: There was money there for the Syrian
kleptocracy, opportunities for drug dealings and contraband, a border from
which the Syrians could wage intermittent little wars and deeds of terror
against Israel, while maintaining the most quiet of borders on the
Syrian-Israeli front.

Truth be known, this steady encroachment on Lebanon was aided and abetted
by the silence of the world. In one of those astonishing changes, the Syrian
arsonists had come to be seen as the fire brigade of a volatile Lebanese
polity. A generation ago, the Pax Americana averted its gaze from the Syrian
destruction of the last vestige of Lebanon's independence: In
1990-91, America
had acquiesced when the Syrians put down the rebellion of a
patriotic Lebanese
officer, Michel Aoun, whose cause represented the devotion of the Christian
Maronites to the ancestral independence of their country. That was the price
paid by President George Herbert Walker Bush for enlisting Syria in the
coalition that waged war against Saddam Hussein for his grab of Kuwait. Pity
the Lebanese: They had cedars, Kuwait had oil. We would restore Kuwait's
sovereignty as we consigned the Lebanese to their terrible fate in that big
Syrian prison.

And remember, Assad was Hussein writ small.

Oh Lord Won't You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz?

A car bomb attack on the Marina Hotel in southern Thailand target suggests a
new level of capability for Jihadis operating in that area. According to

href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=atx1B_JW.lHI&refer=asia">
Bloomberg News:

The explosion occurred today at about 7 p.m. Bangkok time in the Sungai
Kolok district of Narathiwat province, 1,150 kilometers (719 miles) south of
Bangkok, Pracha Tayrat, the province's governor, said in an interview with
Bangkok-based 96- Megaherz radio. The bomb was placed in a pickup truck in
front of the Marina Hotel, he said. "The situation is worsening
and becoming
more violent with the use of a car bomb," Pracha said.
"It's the first time
that a car bomb was used in an attack, compared with motorcycles
earlier. That
will be hard to prevent."

The Thais had formerly feared only motorcycle-borne IEDs. According
to the
href="http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2005/02/17/car_bomb_kills_5_injures_40_in_thai_tourist_town/">
Boston Globe:

"We were paying attention to motorcycles because we thought
they might use
them as they have before. We never thought that Thais would have become this
cruel. Such a car bomb here is similar to those in Iraq,"
Pracha said. ...

Officials said the bomb, estimated to contain about 220 pounds of
fertilizer, exploded in a car behind a hotel in Sungai Kolok, a town near the
Malaysian border whose bars and nightclubs are popular with
tourists. "This is
the first car bomb in the region after we defused a similar one made of a gas
cylinder and fertilizer here two years ago," Narathiwat
provincial governor
Pracha Taerat told Reuters at the scene, littered with charred
motorcycles and
cars. Sungai Kolok police chief Surasak Rommayanont said four people died
instantly at a noodle shop near the blast. A medical officer at the local
hospital said more than 40 were injured. Fourteen were taken to hospital, but
Pracha said one of them had since died.

Director of Central Intelligence
target="_blank">
Porter Goss testified that Jihadists who survived Iraq
would leave it
"experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a
potential pool of contacts to build transational terrorist cells, groups, and
networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries" Whatever
the provenance of
the new technical sophistication of Islamic attackers in Thailand, it
represents
an advance in their capabiity to kill. Goss added that terrorist networks in
Southeast Asia communicated expertise among themselves. The car bomb technology
demonstrated in Thailand had every potential of diffusing regionally. "In
Southeast Asia, the Jemaah Islamiya (JI) continues to pose a threat to US and
Western interests in Indonesia and the Philippines, where JI is colluding with
the Abu Sayyaf Group and possibly the MILF."

The Philippines was recently attacked by three separate bomb attacks on
Valentine's Day. One of those was a motorcycle bomb. According to the

BBC:

One of Monday's blasts happened in General Santos City, when a bomb
destroyed a parked motorcycle taxi outside a shopping mall, killing at least
three people. Almost simultaneously, a bomb exploded at a bus terminal in
Davao City. A 12-year-old boy is reported to have died in the attack. About
half an hour later, a third blast went off in the Makati business district of
the capital, Manila, killing at least three people.

It is probably only a matter of time before car bomb attacks are made on
cities in Thailand, the Philippines and Australia. It may be recalled that the
Philippines withdrew its participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom in
2004 in the
expectation that it would be spared by the Jihadis. A contemporaneous
account from
MSNBC recalls the jubilation by official Manila after recalling
their troops
in exchange for the release of a Filipino hostage.

July 22, 2004 -- A Filipino truck driver who was released from
captivity in
Iraq after the government withdrew its troops a month early returned
home to a
hero's welcome Thursday. ... The Philippines drew sharp criticism from the
United States and other allies over its decision to meet the demands of dela
Cruz's kidnappers and withdraw a 51-member peacekeeping contingent
from Iraq a
month early. The move was branded a dangerous precedent that put other
coalition allies in danger. Arroyo has said she does not regret her decision,
and her spokesman claims her critics should appreciate that she had to put
national interests first.

The recent attacks on the Philippines were accompanied by a demand for the
release of Nur Misuari, who led a rebellion after having refusing to step down
from office in an autonomous Muslim region when his term had expired. Having
succeeded through intimidation in Iraq the Jihadis probably
believed that
bombs, which they described as a "Valentine's Day gift"
would renew his term of
office. Already the Filipino
Peace
Lobby is arguing that further concessions will buy
"immunity" and are asking
for Misuari's release as a 'confidence building measure'. Perhaps Arroyo now
understands that immunity from the Jihad cannot be purchased except by
ever greater measures of abjection and tribute: that neither being Buddhist
Thailand nor being a 12 year old boy in Davao City makes any difference at all.
In the meantime she will expect her ally the United States to stand firm beside
the Philippines in the way that she would not. It is more than likely that
Arroyo will appease the Peace Lobby and the Jihadis to buy another space
of "peace".  It will not last. She should remember that the next
Valentine's Day gift from the Jihadis will probably be a string of car
bombs.

Testimony Before Congress 2

The testimony of various counterterrorism executives before Congress
eloquently described the vast scope and comprehensiveness of the War on Terror.
The testimony was distinguished by the emergence of a common nomenclature for
the ideological enemy,'Sunni Jihadhism'; an appreciation that some form
of WMD attack against the United States was being planned by the Sunni
Jihadism (we are replacing the variable word "enemy"
with a value now) and
the appreciation that the nature of the struggle was total,
especially in
the ideological realm. And that struggle, far from slowing down, was still
expanding.

target="_blank">
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld provided the broadest description of the
nature of
the conflict and laid out what it took to defeat the enemy.

After more than three years of conflict, two central realities of this war
are clear. The first is that this struggle cannot be won by military means
alone. The Defense Department must continue to work with other government
agencies to successfully employ all instruments of national power. ... A
second central reality of this new era is that the United States cannot win a
global struggle alone. It will take cooperation among a great many nations to
stop weapons proliferation. It will take a great many nations
working together
to locate and dismantle global extremist cells. It takes a great many nations
to gather and share the intelligence crucial to stopping future attacks. Our
friends and allies are increasingly aware that the danger confronting America
is at their doorstep as well, as underscored by attacks in Madrid, Bali,
Beslan, Casablanca, Riyadh, Istanbul, and elsewhere.

What necessarily follows, though it was not specifically stated in the
testimony, is that the consequences arising from the totality of the conflict
will apply to the enemy as well. Defeat when it comes, will result in a loss to
the vanquished proportionate to the scope of the war. To take one example, the
Sunni jihadi WMD threat against America implicitly raises a
corresponding
threat against the Islamic world. Nuclear war, once started, means nuclear war
against Sunni jihadism as well. Osama Bin Laden's wager on September 11
has been called and raised in Iraq. No one will walk away from the table in the
state he sat down. It is already unlikely that Saudi Arabia will survive in its
present form, as Porter Goss' survey suggests. One might add Israel, Iraq and
Iran to the list of nations which will be radically transform by coming events
as well. The truth of Rumsfeld's observation that the war against terror is
largely an ideological battle can be seen in the effect it has had on Islam and
the Western Left. The Sunni jihadis have long maintained that war will
continue until the Islamic flag flew over Downing Street and the White House.
Those being the stakes, it necessarily follows that the War, as
described in the
testimony of the counterterrorism executives, will if it does not result in the
triumph of Islam, mean the ruin of Sunni jihadism and its
Leftist allies.
Vast changes have already taken place in the US and Europe, which we are
reminded will be nothing compared with what is yet to come.

The
href="http://dailydemarche.blogspot.com/2005/02/so-happy-together.html">
Daily Demarche links to a
href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/10919732.htm?1c">
Miami Herald piece focusing on the car-bombing of former Lebanese Prime
Minister Rafik Harari, showing how the law of unintended consequences sharpens
-- always tends to sharpen -- the issues along the fault lines of the
underlying
conflict.

The Law of Unintended Consequences warns us to expect the unexpected.
Prepare, then, for the unexpected to take shape as the shockwaves pushing out
from the smoldering crater in Beirut recast crucial relationships around the
world. Whoever orchestrated Hariri's assassination imagined the explosive
event would produce results in accordance with a master plan. It is unlikely,
however, that the master plan included strengthening the bonds between the
United States and France. But closer ties between Paris and Washington will
undoubtedly result from the Hariri murder.

The
href="http://dailydemarche.blogspot.com/2005/02/so-happy-together.html">
Daily Demarche observes that as each side blunders into each other in their
own ways the nature of their antagonism is reshaped in the encounter.
The vortex
expands and acquires its own dynamic.

Message from the Syrian regime to Washington, Paris and Lebanon's
opposition: "You want to play here, you'd better be ready to
play by Hama
Rules - and Hama Rules are no rules at all. You want to squeeze us with Iraq
on one side and the Lebanese opposition on the other, you'd better be able to
put more than U.N. resolutions on the table. You'd better be ready to go all
the way -- because we will. But you Americans are exhausted by Iraq, and you
Lebanese don't have the guts to stand up to us, and you French make a mean
croissant but you've got no Hama Rules in your arsenal. So remember, we blow
up prime ministers here. We shoot journalists. We fire on the Red Cross. We
leveled one of our own cities. You want to play by Hama Rules, let's see what
you've got. Otherwise, hasta la vista, baby.

Testimony Before Congress

The Counterterrorism
blog links to the testimony of intelligence,
finance,
defense
and military
officials before Congress on the status of the War on Terror.

The intelligence testimony unanimously identifies the key threat to America
as Al Qaeda and the 'Sunni Jihadist movement', referring to both in the same
phrase as essentially comprising the same set; their choice of weapons a
Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear (CBRN) attack on America.
Operationally, they are adapting to the heightened  Homeland Security
defenses using covert methods or under the guise of charities, religious
organizations, academe and the like. The intelligence community unanimously
believed that 'Al Qaeda' -- shorthand for the Sunni jihadist movement -- was
successfully using US operations in Iraq to create a favorable political
environment for their cause not only in the Middle East, but in Muslim
communities and in the Left of center political spectrum. Great power rivals,
although not directly in league with terrorists, could potentially use the
threat of tactical collaboration with terrorist organizations to checkmate the
United States as part of their national policy by providing the enemy with
enabling technologies and weapons..

All in all, the intelligence briefings painted a picture of an enemy that had
not yet realized its power potential. It had been stayed, but not fatally
wounded. On the contrary, if it could overcome its disorganization and mend
fences with enablers it could become even more dangerous. To illustrate the
resilience of the enemy, Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) Director Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby described
enemy forces in Iraq with these words:

"The insurgency in Iraq has grown in size and complexity over the past
year. Attacks numbered approximately 25 per day one year ago. Today, they
average in the 60s. Insurgents have demonstrated their ability to increase
attacks around key events such as the Iraqi Interim Government (IIG) transfer
of power, Ramadan and the recent election. Attacks on Iraq's election day
reached approximately 300, double the previous one day high of approximately
150 reached during last year's Ramadan."

Yet it was not an invincible force, spreading like wildfire. It remained a
curiously local devil, deriving its particular strength from the social soil of
the area.

"The pattern of attacks remains the same as last year. Approximately
80% of all attacks occur in Sunni-dominated central Iraq. The Kurdish north
and Shia south remain relatively calm. ... We believe Sunni Arabs, dominated
by Ba'athist and Former Regime Elements (FRE) comprise the core of the
insurgency ... collaborating, providing funds and guidance across family,
tribal, religious and peer group lines.'

It was interesting that Porter
Goss chose to characterize Iran as a WMD proliferation threat rather than as
the direct source of a terrorist threat, reflecting perhaps not so much a
different intent, as a different strategy of hostility towards the United
States. Even more curious was Admiral
Jacoby's intriguing reference to the Syrian WMD capability.
"Longstanding Syrian policies of supporting terrorism, relying on WMD for
strategic deterrence, and occupying Lebanon remain largely unchanged." Both
Syria and Iran are depicted as having specific regional goals. Iran's objective
according to Jacoby, is regional power. "Iran's long-term goal is to see
the US leave Iraq and the region. Another Iranian goal is a weakened,
decentralized and Shia-dominated Iraq that is incapable of posing a threat to
Iran." A fairly sharp distinction is drawn between 'Al Qaeda or Sunni
Jihadism', with its apocalyptic vision of an incinerated America, and the
ambitions of Syria and Iran, which seek merely specific gain. Yet the threats of
course, run together, with the suppliers of weapons and their users
indistinguishable at the last.

Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury Zarate's testimony takes us down from the heights
of religious and geopolitical motivation to the way the enemy works. It is a
world of crooked charities, suborned 'non-traditional' funds transfer systems,
blackmarket currency exchanges, couriers and the trade in precious commodities.
Author Douglas
Farah described the workings of the Al Qaeda in the African gold, gems and
precious minerals market.  These descriptions, far more than Koranic
quotations and nationalistic rhetoric, describe the day-to-day working of the
terror networks.

The transition from Farah's testimony to that of Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld is somewhat startling for two reasons. First, the DOD .pdf
files are the only ones formatted for copy-and-past operations, but more
secondly, the testimony and its prequels raise the implicit question of how much
of the War on Terror should actually be of a military nature. Rumsfeld addresses
the issue up front.

After more than three years of conflict, two central realities of this war
are clear. The first is that this struggle cannot be won by military means
alone. The Defense Department must continue to work with other government
agencies to successfully employ all instruments of national power. ... A
second central reality of this new era is that the United States cannot win a
global struggle alone. It will take cooperation among a great many nations to
stop weapons proliferation. It will take a great many nations working together
to locate and dismantle global extremist cells. It takes a great many nations
to gather and share the intelligence crucial to stopping future attacks. Our
friends and allies are increasingly aware that the danger confronting America
is at their doorstep as well, as underscored by attacks in Madrid, Bali,
Beslan, Casablanca, Riyadh, Istanbul, and elsewhere.

My own personal impression of the testimonies is that Rumsfeld alone, of all
the witnesses, articulated a complete grand strategic view. In particular, he
understood that the threat, so well described in component by the
representatives of intelligence and finance, menaced the world  as a whole
and not simply the United States and that it had been emerging over a long
period of time.

Ours was a dangerous world in the years leading up to September 11, even
though it might have seemed otherwise. Consider the world as it was on
September 10, 2001. Terrorists trained and plotted in Afghanistan while
America�s sworn enemy in Iraq sought ways to expand his power and regularly
fired at U.S. aircraft patrolling in the Northern and Southern No Fly Zones.
And the next day, on that bright September morning, 19 men killed over 3,000
people in the Pentagon, Lower Manhattan and Pennsylvania. The extremists
continue to plot to attack again. They are, at this moment, recalibrating and
reorganizing. And so are we. This thinking enemy continues to adapt to new
circumstances. And so must we refocus our efforts to defeat a network
dispersed across the world and which lacks a fixed territory to defend.

Against this menace, the United States had set the following counterstrategy
in train.

The President�s strategy has been to create and lead an international
effort to deny terrorists the resources and support they need to operate and
survive. And since, ultimately, what they need to survive is the support of
those who they can indoctrinate, this is an ideological battle as well. The
strategy has three main components that require the support and coordination
of all agencies of government and all aspects of national power:

• First, defending the homeland: which has led to the creation of the U.S.
  Department of Homeland Security, the National Counter-Terrorism Center,
  the military�s Northern Command, and this Department�s homeland
  defense division.


• Second, attacking and disrupting terrorist networks: With the help of
  allies and partners the U.S. has had considerable success in Afghanistan,
  Iraq, the Horn of Africa, Northwest Pakistan, and elsewhere. Some
  three-quarters of known al-Qaeda leaders have been captured or killed;


• Third, countering ideological support for terrorism: This war has
  required not only the vigorous pursuit of known terrorists, but finding
  ways to stop extremists from gaining recruits and adherents. It is this
  ideological component, I suggest, that is the essential ingredient for
  victory.

Rumsfeld went on to describing the marvelous increase in American fighting
capacity. The threefold increase in firepower; the 30% increase in available
manuever brigades by restructuring the ground forces. He alluded indirectly to
the increased offensive role of the Special Forces Command, �a sports car
nobody wanted to drive for fear of denting the fender" now being utilized
to its fullest extent -- a fact reflected in the statistic that its operating
budget has doubled although it remains at virtually the same manpower strength.
Nothing captured the global reality of the struggle more than the incessant
movement of personnel. Sixty three thousand military personnel were in
movement at any given instant to and from their duty stations somewhere on the
planet.

Yet despite the successes of the military, Rumsfeld remained acutely aware
that the decisive area of operations -- the political and cultural fields --
remained largely outside his remit. He ended his testimony with these words:

Terrorists have brains and use them. They adapt and improvise quickly.
Despite the size of our bureaucracies, we must learn to be equally agile. Our
enemies are nimble and media savvy, and through networks like Al Jazeera
deliver their message undiluted to their target audiences. Victory in this
global struggle will require a military configured and funded to defend
against the security threats of this century, not the conventional battles or
the conventional wisdom of the last.

It was a remarkably inarticulate peroration for a man who is anything but,
and may have reflected the frustration of someone who knew that the decisive
blows against the enemy were reserved for someone else; and those persons yet
asleep and wholly unaware.