Nemesis

Con George-Kotzabasis
May 23, 2007

The respectable and cerebrally sharp Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security advisor to president Carter, mounts an intellectually and strategically disrespectful argument, in the Washington Post on March 25, 2007, that the war on terror has created a culture of fear in America, and has a pernicious impact on American democracy and its psyche, and on US standing in the world. He contends, that the war in Iraq, could never had gained the congressional support it got, without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Further, that terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare. And he caps his contention by stating, that the war on terror “defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies”, and also creates a “sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger”.

It’s apparent that Brzezinski’s points are instigated by his experience of the Cold War era and Soviet communism–of which he was an exemplary acute observer and had identified clearly the dangers emanating from Soviet expansionism–and it’s precisely for this reason that are completely inapplicable to the undeclared “Hot War” that fanatical Islam is waging against the USA and the infidel West generally. To replicate the policies that were successful in eroding Communist power and finally casting it into the waste bin of history and apply them to an “ unidentified”, shadowy, religiously inspired fanatic enemy is not merely a lapse of historical nous but a totally inept and faulty strategy against such a foe. The fact that Communism was a limpidly identified enemy and precisely dangerous, was the cause that united the countries of the West and rallied them to stand behind the leadership of the USA. In contrast, it’s precisely because our present “presumed enemies” are lacking a “geographical context” that makes them nationally unidentifiable and hence an “imprecise danger”, is the reason that disunites Western countries and makes them reluctant, if not inimical, to stand behind the American leadership and strategy against global terror. Moreover, a false and unimaginative sense pervades many European countries that they are not equally endangered by global terror, like the USA is, and that they can wriggle themselves out of this danger by not engaging in the war against it and indeed, by appeasing the Islamic fundamentalists.

Further, Brzezinski’s psychology does not pass muster with the 9/11 portentous event. The latter was not, as he argues, the “psychological linkage” between its “shock” and the “postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” that led to war and which “had gained congressional support”, but the reasonable reaction of the Bush administration, or for that matter of any historically responsible administration, to a future ominous and more devastating attack by terrorists armed with WMD, and indeed, with “portable” nuclear weapons, supplied by rogue states such as Saddams’, on the United States. The war on terror, therefore, did not create “a culture of fear in America” (e.a.), as he contends, since this fear was an instinctual fear on the part of Americans of the great danger hovering over their lives in the aftermath of 9/11. This was illustrated by the fact that nearly ninety percent of Americans initially supported both wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and this was the basic reason why it was also almost unanimously endorsed by congress. Hence, Brzezinski’s contention that this culture of fear had a pernicious impact on American democracy and on America’s psyche is baseless. Not to mention the fact that a culture does not spring up like a crop at the first droplet of rain. His culture of fear therefore is nothing else but a figment of his exuberant imagination.

Moreover, Brzezinski sublates to use a philosophical term, he assimilates the terrorist who is a real entity into a “technique of warfare”. Averring that terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare. Who then is the enemy? Is he a disembodied being who uses this technique? Can one separate an enemy from the war technique he uses? And is the US led coalition in Iraq that is trying to deprive the terrorists of the wherewithal of this technique, i.e., factories that manufacture car bombs and IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices), not fighting an enemy? The fact is that the terrorist who is the mortal enemy of civilians knows only this technique and uses it effectively and lethally to achieve his goals, in the case of fanatic Muslims, against the Great Satan America and the infidels of the West.

Brzezinski also states that the war on terror has tarnished the US standing in the eyes of the world. But is this surprising when so many people in the world, and especially in Europe, wrongly believe and presuppose that it was American policies toward the Middle East and ultimately its “adventurism” in Iraq that fomented and increased global terror? What people under such gargantuan misconception would be congenial to US involvement in the war against global terror? And especially when US actions are perceived to be unilateral and lack the backing of other major nations and the UN? Is it conceivable that under such misperception–not to mention the serious tactical errors committed on the ground in Iraq by US strategists in the aftermath of Saddam’s defeat that justified to a certain extent the wrath of the critics of the war–that America would not have eroded its standing and tarnished its reputation? Besides, who would expect that a powerful nation such as the USA, especially being the sole superpower, in conditions of world peace when nations are not threatened by another superpower and are in no need to be protected by the US as in the past, would have the respect and affection of the rest of the world and not the enmity and hostility that rises from the curse of envy against the great and the powerful?

By all historical standards the war against global terror in the wake of 9/11 was fully justified and prescient in its aim to prevent a future ominous and much more devastating attack on the United States by terrorists, who would use weapons of mass destruction and indeed nuclear ones in their irreversible goal to destroy the Great Satan. And if America could be attacked so easily by al Qaeda and its affiliates then European nations that are saturated with Islamic fifth columnists and activated jihadists would be sitting ducks.

It’s this great existential threat to America and Western civilization that has prompted the US to mobilize its military might and its brave soldiers in a long war against global terror. But in spite the clarity and awareness of the Bush administration about the real stakes of the war, it made a grave psychological error with devastating consequences to its overwhelming public support of the war by deflecting the invasion of Iraq which was quintessential to the defeat of global terror to the issues (a) of finding the elusive weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and (b) building democracy in Iraq. When these two issues had apparently foundered and were at the same time associated with the difficulties the US led-coalition countenanced in suppressing the insurgency, the war ineluctably lost its popularity among the US electorate, and reached the levels of unpopularity of the Vietnam War. The American electorate didn’t give a damn about whether WMD would be found or not, everyone believed at the time that Saddam was in possession of them, nor had they a modicum of interest in building democracy in Iraq. What they were concerned with was their security, and on this basis they were prepared undeviatingly to support the war both in Iraq and Afghanistan and to endure the pain and sacrifices that it would entail. This was the stupendous blunder that the Bush administration had committed. By substituting the war in Iraq as an essential part of global terror with building democracy in Iraq, it lost the support of the American people in the face of the arduous and tough difficulties of the war.

However, notwithstanding the serious errors of the Bush administration its original war plan to fight al Qaeda, its affiliate bodies, wherever they raise their hydra’s head, and the rogue states that support them, remains historically unblemished and is a tribute to the strong leadership of the triumvirate of Bush, Blair, and Howard. This was a historic decision, to stand up and fight the religious fanatics that threatened the viability of Western civilization and its freedom. And not to fall to the historically and politically naïve and supine blandishments of the nipple-fed liberal intelligentsia that terrorism and its state sponsors, like the Soviet Union, could be contained or that their Allah anointed grievances could be negotiated. It’s for this reason that the judgment upon Bush, Blair, and Howard, not to mention the indomitable, but so maligned by the media, Vice-President Cheney, whether their stand against global terror and their involvement in the Iraq war was right or not, will be made by history and not by political opportunists and leadership pretenders, such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and our own, Kevin Rudd.

A retort to Dr Peter McMahon’s “Global neo-imperial Fantasies Come Unstuck”.

Con George-Kotzabasis

The utopia builders, a la McMahon, have set up their boutiques in the global market to sell their shoddy product. After the collapse of the historically misplaced Communist utopia, with its Gulag Archipelagos and its Killing Fields, the Left’s sorcerers apprentices are now concocting their new mantric utopia of “global governance”, to take the place of the displaced one.

Two fundamental contradictions haunt your argument, and ultimately bury the phantoms of the ne-cons and of neo-imperialism that you raised in your piece. You state that “in the 1970′s a new global system was emerging”. Your phantoms however, the neo-cons, were only in power in 2000. By this time the system was already robust and on its course. The neo-cons were not fabricating a new version of it, as you claim, but were merely its new “managers”. And in the aftermath of 9/11, they were also trying to protect it. That was the reason why they went to war, not oil.

The second fundamental flaw in your argument is, that while you claim that “human experiences are too diverse to bend to the logic of one homogeneous society… Or one global market”, your panacea for the ills of “global neo-imperialism” is “global-scale governance”. At the same time you concede that such “governance”will have “to bend to the logic of…One global market”. But how will you put in place such governance upon such “diverse” non-homogeneous societies? Didn’t the recent failure of the EU to unite in reference to the amendments of its constitution, which is, moreover, culturally homogeneous, teach you anything? Your remedy of “global-scale governance”, is intellectually unhinged and cannot be taken seriously. All you accomplish with your piece is to replace the “phantoms” of the neo-cons with your greater phantom of universal governance. By such intellectual credentials, Plato would never allow you to enter his Academy.

Con George-Kotzabasis

The Democrats after seductively saying “I do” to the war bride of President Bush in their nuptial bliss to her four years ago, are wishing now that their bliss has been transmogrified into the difficulties and ugliness of war to dump and replace the old ugly hag of war with the beautiful “maiden” named “political solution”. Now that the war is showing its true changeless nature and its ugly features, the “teddy boy” Democrats, too timorous and panic-stricken to face its monstrous mien are scrambling before it and running to hide under the maiden’s bed sheets. Having lost once their hearts and minds to the goddess of war Minerva, presently they are losing their hearts and minds to retreat and ignominious defeat since they consider that a military solution in Iraq is impossible. Hence their current vehement opposition to President Bush’s new strategy in Iraq.

Politically buoyed by the unpopularity of the war and the massive opposition to it by Americans, that led the Democrats to capture both houses of Congress in the November elections, they have chosen to turn themselves into populist leaders, in these dangerous times that have been forged by the fire and ashes of September 11, and hence they have become turncoats to their historical, political, and moral responsibilities to the future of America. Instead of leading from the front they are leading from the “tail”, pushed by the populist wind.

While President Bush is seizing the chances of winning the war by their “forelock”, to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, with his quantified and qualified Surge, i.e., new rules of engagement, the devastating use of the means of war against the insurgents, and tackling the “forays” of Iran and Syria in Iraq, the Democrats are deflating their surge of honor and political and strategic nous into the fizzling balloon of populism. The fierce indomitable adventurous spirit of Moby-Dick’s captain Ahab, who would “strike the sun if it insulted him”, that is the spirit of America, is transformed by the Democrats and the besotted with defeatism “speakeasy” media, into a romantic misadventure. Their romance with a political solution in Iraq is no more than a political misadventure at the expense of the vital interests of America and its people.

AMERICA IS AT WAR

America in the aftermath of September 11 is not involved in a skirmish with the holy warriors of Islam, but in a global war against them. The attack on the twin towers in New York by the suicidal fanatic recruits of Islam, has however redefined the meaning of war. The decisive existential battles of the West against the fundamentalists of Islam are not to be fought behind Maginot Lines and by panzer divisions against clear-cut enemy lines whose combatants are easily identified, but among civilian populations where the terrorists live, are nurtured and hide and are indistinguishable from, and from where they launch their cowardly stealthy murderous attacks against civilians and on the military forces that try to protect them. Moreover, these suicide bombers with belts of death around their bi-gender waists clad in civilian clothes, are “identified” mostly only after perpetrating their murderous actions and not before. Also, this foreground of the terrorists has a concomitant lethal background of fifth columnists that reside as citizens and blend with their more moderate co-religionists in the countries that are waging war against global terror. Lastly, the overt supplying of arms and finance by rogue states, such as Iran and Syria, and covertly by the so called cultural fronts of other nations, such as Saudi Arabia, is a crucial element in fuelling the deadly actions of the global jihadists as well as “oiling” the world-wide Wahhabi Madrassas and Mosques that are the breeding grounds and cradles of Muslim Saudi “bastard” fanaticism. Taking also in consideration that in the near future these war-martyrs of Islam would be possibly armed with weapons of mass destruction, and, indeed, with nuclear weapons, which they would unhesitatingly use against the infidels of the West, since in their warped minds this is decreed by their Allah, this would be the ultimate greatest danger to the survival of Western civilization.

It’s all the above factors that have redefined the meaning of war and its combatants. The war that is waged by the jihadists against America, the sole superpower, and the “infidel” West, is the most “economical” war that one could ever fight, i.e., with box cutters and Saudi “subsidized” tickets on air flights. The “wealth” of fanaticism needs only to be armed with the poorest of war means to subdue and slay the wealthiest military power on earth, America. The holy warriors, making the most of their shadowy existence, have only to be armed economically with the most nondescript but lethal weapons, to bring about havoc, fear, and immeasurable destruction among civilians in the major cities of the West. Their arming with weapons of mass destruction and nuclear ones will bring the Islamist Armageddon in the metropolises of Western civilization.

This is the tragic reality that the latter will be facing especially because many of its political elites, academia, and media are afflicted by a poverty of thought, imagination, and historical sense, that is making them deaf to the reverberating hoofing sound that is send forth by the galloping Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with their unsheathed scimitars aiming to behead Western civilization. In America itself, the indigence of cognitive power among many of its politicians and cultural and media elites makes the country powerless, despite its military supremacy, to confront this great danger that would engulf and drown America itself in this Mohammedan made deluge.

The Democrats, especially, lacking Churchillian mettle and wisdom, are morphing themselves into political eunuchs, impotent to mobilize the American people behind a winning military and political strategy, presently attempted by general David Petraeus in Iraq, that will deal a decisive mortal blow to this irreconcilable and tenacious enemy and thus defeat the infamy of global Islamist terror sooner than later. They are totally unaware of the elementary lesson of history that instructs that when one confronts an irreconcilable remorseless enemy, whom no diplomatic demarche, no matter how refined and clever, will ever induce him to negotiate, as is the case of the jihadist and his divinely ordained grievances, it is wise to destroy him while he is still weak and before he becomes stronger. Hence, the Democrats’ search for a political solution, without the backing and relentless use of military power, is not only most unwise, but also a mortal political sin. The speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the leader of the Senate Harry Reid, will be immortalized by being quartered in Dante’s Inferno for their political sins.