summer patriot, winter soldier

job training ... slips & falls ... mortality stuff

while performing the last of my yearly employee training for the insurance mavens who counsel my employers, i.e., sexual harassment, defensive driving, fire extinguishers and safety routes out of the building, ... , i came across an interesting training video.  it was on "falls" in the work place.

according to the people who make the little training films, and according to o.s.h.a., about 1,300 american workers are killed each year in work place falls.  these figures are quite comparable to the annual deaths suffered by our troops in the iraq and afghan theatres.

i was making a similar point to a friend, and made the rather bald faced assertion that i felt that my home state of washington probably experienced more work place and occupational deaths on an annual basis amongst its citizens, than washingtonians killed in the entirety of the current iraqi campaign.  she confidently replied, based on her incredulity that this could be so, and, based on prior experience with me in fields other than the geo political where i am far less adroit that i was a bald faced idiot, and we bet on it.  $5, something like that.

well, i looked it up.  in the last year that the washington state department of labor and industries had compiled full statistics, some 87 washington citizens died on the work place by accident, the fishing and logging industry here collecting most of these good souls.  by comparison, in the history of the iraqi and afghani campaigns, about 80 of washington's fine young people, men and women, have been killed in combat.

of those young people, 6 were from seattle, and exactly none were from tacoma, washington's second most populous city.

those casualties of war were for the entire state over approximately a four year period.  washington, thanks to former u.s. senators henry m. jackson and warren magnuson, has one of the largest military establishments of any state in the union, and a very large component of our economy is based upon u.s. military spending, both at such military enclaves as fort lewis, the yakima firing center, geiger field, and, of course, our friends at the boeing company.

it goes without saying that our state's war dead over that period do not hold a candle to those killed over that same period by car accident, and other forms of accidental death, not to mention purposeful homicide.

this is, of course, of very little intellectual solace to those who have been killed, or injured, or otherwise affected by those war deaths, and brings no succor at all to their survivors, spouses, children, family and friends.  to be among the few killed in a small engagement is to suffer the fate of the many who have died in larger wars.

but, it does go to point out the very small price in lives our society has paid for the very large returns received in the preservations of our liberties, the advancement of those liberties to other persons around the world (which continues to be a hope of mine, even though i am not as sanguine about it as i was when the first purple fingered ladies emerged from the polling booths in iraq), and the preservation of our interests and standing in the world.

we are a nation of 330 or 340 some odd million people.

if we cannot bear these losses, and honor these losses, to protect our honor, our integrity, or security in this world, we do not deserve to be a great nation of 330 or 340 some odd million people.

simple as that.

lies, damn lies & statistics ... actuaries ... how dangerous is the jihad

if you doubt what i have just said about the overall real impact of terrorists activities in the world, ... , well, you can look it up!!  you have at hand a veritable mother lode of statistical information by which you can gauge for yourself the real impact of these activities.

i always keep in mind the very cogent observation of mark twain, who quite rightfully observed, "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics."  but, ...

--the department of defense keeps statistics on deaths and injuries suffered by u.s. troops in iraq, and afghanistan.  if you live in new york state, you can check those numbers of troops from new york city who have died in iraq, this last set to.  you will be astounded!!  (hint: the principle city of the united states, both contributory to and dependent upon the general wealth and well being of the country, has done very little to defend the interests of its nation.  not very many sons and daughters of new York have suffered defending their country.  my opinion.)

--life insurance companies are one of the last bastions of flinty eyed free market businesses in action, employing risk taking sales forces who are paid mostly on commission, and undertaking the coverage of the most basic risk, death, all based upon their own assessments of the risks entailed.  if they are right in assessing those risks, they make money, and if they are wrong, they suffer the penalty of mistake makers, and it is called business death.

they have people who are called actuaries, who make statistical analyses of the actual death rate amongst given groups, and who make specific analyses of specific risks to see if it contributes additional risk of premature death over and against the general rate of predictable deaths.

if you tell an insurance agent, for instance, that you are taking up skydiving or tower jumping, then you are not buying a policy from him because you present an unreasonable risk, not of death, but of untimely death.  there is a substantial difference between the two.

yes, virginia, the nice men with the pallid complexions and the short gray hair cuts can actually guess when you are quite likely to die, in a group sense.  the accuracy of this guessing, my dear virginia, is what separates the men from the boys.  you may assume that an insurance company which has been in business for a while has accurately assessed its risk exposure.  you will also note, that there is no insurance company named the johnstown, pennsylvania flood plain assurance company: they did not do so well, actuarially speaking.

the following is my guess, and i will push a potato down the main street of my hometown with my nose on my hands on feet at noon, if i am shown to be wrong.--

the risk of dying by the hands of a terrorist in western europe and in the united states is not significant enough for life assurance/insurance companies to assign a higher premium for the acquisition of policies amongst european and american customers.  in other words, from the view of the insurance companies, it is a cause of death to be statistically indistinguishable from any other cause of death in those populations.  there will be no al queda “rider” on the policy you buy.

you may not be able to acquire life insurance because you skydive.

my further guess is, is that if you are israeli, a different result may obtain.  there probably is not a thriving life insurance business going on in iraq or lebanon, either.

for those of you who are interested in these kinds of things.

a poodle ... a bear ... an apple orchard ... theatre ... arab armies on the march ... your new neighbors

years ago i was befuddled.

i had just finished many years of schooling and decided i did not want to be what the various schools had taught me to be.  i had retained just enough of my everlasting soul through the process to have some lingering doubt about what i wanted to do.

so, i went home to work the harvests.  some of you will not understand this, but i loved the harvest of perishable products, the hustle, the bustle, the stresses associated with bringing in the products at harvest.  but i did loved it to my core.  so i worked peas, and corn, and then carrots through the winter.

i rented a little cabin up the south fork of the river, past the reach of the county asphalt, and about a 1/2 mile from the first gravel bar ford across the river.  a little, honest to god, log cabin, ... , just like on the syrup can.  and, my springer spaniel, scout, and i lived there in blissful harmony.  if i were home, and tired and grumpy and didn't want to pet him, that bothered him not a whit.  he would simply walk over, put his nose under my hand, flip his nose, and wherever my hand came down, that's where he wanted petted: he did not, apparently, miss very often.

the little cabin was by someone's early attempt to grow apples in the mountains.  apple trees are pretty hardy, and even if they will not grow commercial grade fruit, they will fruit, and they do survive some pretty heavy frosts.  you city slickers have not the slightest idea what a good apple is, so i am going to tell you: it is an apple which has fallen to the ground the morning of a good hard frost, and its interior is what is called "water cored."  translated into urban speak, this means that all the juice in the apple has gone to the center, and it is the best and sweetest apple juice that you have ever tasted, because it is “fresh” and it has not been boiled to be pasteurized.

bears love to eat "water cored" apples.  i know this because up in the little canyon across the river there was a nice, secluded canyon with a creek, and two bears lived there. they would come out of that canyon early in the morning hours to eat those apples, even as their human neighbors slept.

except this scraggily assed little female toy poodle of my neighbor.  this dog was so ugly, so scrawny, so repulsive in doggy terms, that my springer would not even associate with it, or play with it.  this toy poodle was the only animal he ever exhibited animosity to, except a stray chicken every now and then: he hated that poodle.

and so did the bears.

because that little conniving bitch would sneak up on whichever bear presented itself earliest, and commence to barking and yapping a though a pack of hounds loosed from hell, and the bear stimulated by reaction and instinct born of eons of evolution, would tree himself.  that means that he would climb up into the limbs of the tree as quickly as possible to take refuge from his tormentor.

and he would sit in that tree, and as his fear subsided and he realized that the object of the upset to his innards and the good equilibrium of his stomach was sitting below him on the ground, gloating, in the person of that damned dog, his fear transformed itself to monumental anger.  and slowly at first, and then as the first movements of his limbs affirmed his sense of things, his pace would quicken and he would come boiling down out of that tree looking to kill his little, pipsqueak insignificant, tormentor.

bears are fast.  for short distances, as fast as a horse.

poodles are calculating little things.  that poodle's calculus put it right under her owner's porch, and out of the reach of the bear, just in the nick of time, every time, as this little tableau played itself out.

i worked with the fellow who owned the poodle, worked with him at the cannery.  i would talk to him about the early morning commotion as the frost brought the apples down, and he would regale me with the stories.  early on in this contest of wills between the poodle and the bears, he said he was tempted to shoot one of the bears, but that he so enjoyed the spectacle that he just let them continue their fight without interference.  he said that he had grown quite fond of the bears, and on several occasions had witnessed one of them going up into the trees.

he allowed that it was especially funny just at that moment when the bears realized they had once again been had.

i used to go up into that canyon and hunt those bears occasionally, and skulk around in the underbrush and through the thickets, and though i came upon fresh sign and track from time to time, i never laid eyes on those bears, never had a chance to bring a gun to, ... , well, bear, i guess.  it never entered my mind to be cautious about hunting them on their own ground.

but, i would come walking home from these little expeditions, to be greeted by my loyal dog scout, and across the way, that little damn poodle would be sitting on his porch, smirking.  as if to remind me, were i to use a good and proper quality bear dog such as himself to flush or tree one of those bears, i might get a bear some day.

i really did not like that little dog very much, either.

now, i apologize to all of the victims of terror for what i am about to say, and i do not want to be seen as denigrating the horror of their deaths, their suffering, or the moral repugnance with which i view what has been inflicted by the terrorist bastards that stalk this earth.  but, i have to sacrifice a little decency here, to make this metaphor.

you know what i am going to say.

the jihad terror is to the western nations, the united states in particular, as that damnable little dog was to thse bears.

all bluff.  a loud, yapping noise sufficient to cause an initial consternation.  and, once having pressed it surprise attack, a cowardly cur running for sanctuary and hiding.  all gloat, for having accomplished nothing but momentary fright.  and, finally, totally incapable of having any capability of prevailing in any sort of actual fight.  and, an annoyance which quickly fades upon a return to the diversion of a glutinous consumption of material goods and ease.

i do not know how many people have died at the hands and knives and swords of these despicable bastards, of the jihad terror, over the years.  Far too many, however, and they should be avenged.

compare those numbers to the numbers killed in the wars of the 20th century, however, those monumental blood baths between the western, oriental and russian super powers, and the numbers of the terror fade quickly into a seeming insignificance: i know, i know, hardly insignificant to those who had to do the dying to amass the number.  in the wwii era alone, possibly 25 million russians killed by, for ease of reference, stalin and hitler’s combined malice; 15 to 20 million germans killed by the strivings of the same duo; 6 to 8 million jews killed in mechanized death factories, after the last ounces of labor were extracted from them, by hitler’s evil regime, and many more killed by stalin’s indifference; god only, god only knows how many chinese, manchurians, philipinos, vietnamese, thais, loations and indians killed by the japanese over the length of breadth of south east asia and the pacific during wwii; and, of course, we americans extracted a fairly heavy penalty upon the germans and the japanese. 

If you add the post wwii contributions of the human massacres conducted my mao, pol phot, and the excesses of the various african exercises in genocide, the numbers become even more awesome and staggering.

years and years of grinding warfare killing thousands a day, all over the globe.

one hesitates to say that it was borne by the combatants as a matter of course, but i never cease to be amazed at that very famous film footage of the russians and germans fighting in close combat in the streets, only to have some poor little lady protected only by a long court and a scarf walk right down the middle of it carrying a shopping bag for the bakery.  she has to have been viewed by as many people as the poor soldier cut down on the beaches at Normandy, just as he comes out of the water and approaches one of those metal tank traps.

between 1935 and 1945 it is not unreasonable to argue that as many as 75 million of the earth's population died very violently, extremely unpleasantly, by bullet, bomb, artillery, fire, and by the atom.

it shocks me a bit to type it, but the inescapable truth is, not many people, in purely absolute terms, have died at the hands of jihad terror in comparison to those who died in the wwii era, and those who died in the communist upheavals, turmoil  and violence in china and southeast asia.

franklin roosevelt warned against becoming of fear itself, and, for the most part, it would appear that most people were of a mind to go on about their business even as the world suffered grievously, and even though the risk of harm and defeat were quite real.

someone has forgotten to give the west this similar admonition, because we seem, quite frankly, afraid of fear itself.  We seem to indulge ourselves in formulating every conceivably unfavorable fortuity associated with their jihad terror, and savoring the process.  it is one thing to be prudent, it is quite another matter to be afraid of very thin circumstance.

and the terrorists know this, and gauge this fear.

that is why they kill the way they do.

consider this.  if terrorists killed people in car wrecks, how would the public distinguish the differing causes of mortality, between every day driving and terrorism? well, the public could not gauge the difference.  in the united states alone, about 50,000 people a year are killed by automobile wrecks, yet no person that i have ever met even considers the risk of driving when they drive: hell, it is a damned public relations industry trying to get people to "buckle up."

15 to 20,000 or so die by homicide in the united states each year, in other words, killed by their fellow citizens over the most trifling of circumstances.

you should consider those figures, the next time you calculate the effect of jihad terror.

i will try and find out how many have died in terrorist attacks in the united states, europe and israel in the past several years, but i can assure you that it will not even remotely approach the numbers killed in automobile accidents in the united states on an annual basis. interestingly enough, there are places in the world where the jihad terror exacts thousands and thousands of deaths each year, in the malaysian archipelago, in african darfur, in serbia and kosovo, but we remain blissfully unconcerned about that.  let people die in a london subway or on a spanish train, however, and the west experiences paroxysms of fear.

it is not seemly.  it is not rational.

the terrorist realize this.

so, they have turned the killing of their victims into the most macabre, most frightening theatre that their fervid and fetid and evil imaginations can come up with.  there are no limits on their cruelty, their desire to make public spectacle from agonizing deaths, so beheadings, torture, mutilation of bodies, are the order of the day.  and, at the top of the list, the all time favorite in their grisly little public morality plays, the carnage, devastation and chaos wreaked by the the suicide bomber, a person absolutely unfathomable to the west.  Buses, other public transportation and funerals and weddings and public markets seem to be the prized occasion for these explosions, that and lines for personnel recruitment for the iraqi military and domestic police forces in iraq.

they have to do this, to put this theatrical flair into it, to draw these scenes away from and to separate them from the death that is the everyday backdrop to our normal lives, to somehow make horrible death at their hands seem extraordinary as opposed to the "normalcy" of being crushed and ground to death in the confines of a metal conveyance deformed by the deceleration associated with bringing it from 70 mph to 0 mph in an instant, in the blinking of the eye it takes to die.

it is the yapping of that damned poodle which put the bears up the tree.

and, we, as a society and a civilization, come to our muddled senses, and come down out of the tree, eyes and minds red with revenge, to find the clever bastards have gone under the porch again.

and, we go back to eating our "water cored" apples, because, after all, what in the hell else is there to do.

i am going to ask you a question that is not asked enough, if at all.

just what, have the arabs and the jihad terrorists accomplished in the last fifty or sixty years by this increasingly gruesome killing, from the first arab war sprung upon israel exactly one day after she was recognized as a country by the united nations, to the last incidence of this bombing and assassination sprung on the west? 

well, the short answer is that they have accomplished nothing, save the killing of a few innocents, and a tiny number of combatants they have had the nerve to fairly and honestly face from time to time.

otherwise, they are nothing but cowardly murders.

they have no more now than what they started with, which is not very damned much.

it has been, on balance, and by any set of objective criteria that can be devised, a pitiful performance.

except for the connivance and subsidy of a leftist media and intelligentsia, which has conferred the status of misbegotten “victims” upon them.  if there is a drop of blood or gore put upon the ground anywhere on this planet by the jihad, the leftist media is there to record it, and trumpet the horror to the far reaches of the earth, yet only to intone in the very next instance that the jihad terror has done these despicable things to “redress grievances” for insults and injuries imposed upon them by israel and the united states.

notice, i did not say an ineffectual performance.  i just said it was pitiful by any measure or criteria based upon objectivity.  i most certainly do not mean to say that they have not made substantial gains psychologically, or in terms of perception.

which they exploit very cleverly.

no arab or Islamic army has conquered anything, no arab or Islamic army has entered a foreign city in triumph, no Islamic or arab economy or science has created anything which even remotely has conquered anything.

(except for lebanon, except for beirut.  islam conquered beirut and lebanon, and has stayed, and has lent to both that exquisite mixture of squalor and poverty for which it is known, making it a veritable open cesspool.  that, islam has accomplished.) 

yet, this pitiful barking dog, this miserable cur, every time it barks and puts a bear up a tree, it is trumpeted around the world and every bear in the world shudders for a moment, until he looks down and notices that it is a miserable cur that he could consume in a bite and a gulp, if only he could get his muzzle upon him.

what has this got to do with the war i think you will be fighting eventually.

well, i will tell you.

absolutely nothing.

we will speak of the real menace posed by the jihad in the next installment, who will be your likely opponent, and the kind of war you will probably be fighting before your death, and most certainly that your children will be fighting before theirs.

you will see, i think, confirmation of my views with the next 10 years or so in europe, as islam returns europe to the dark ages, complete with sewers running in the streets.

but, before i close, i want you to understand that the jihad, as run by osama bin laden, and others, is more than a sham and a diversion: it is a recruiting gound for the operatives who will direct the activities of the real threat posed by the jihad terror, and by the demographics of muslim immigration the world over.  it is the recruiting and proving ground of the operatives who will direct the enemy within, in the form of muslim immigration and population growth.

moscow, russia is between 15-20% muslim.

london, england nears 20% muslim population.

cities in the netherlands, and the european low lands, are approaching 15-20% muslim population.

osama bin laden, hiding in a squalid hut in pakistan poses no threat to you physically, poses not physical threat to any person who is european and lives in europe.

but, the influence he has as a spiritual leader the world over, perhaps upon your neighbor is you live in london, and the skills that he will impart to those he trains as al queda operatives and who will live upon your soil, that influence and threat is quite real, and not to be underestimated.

the goal of this blog ... my mission statement

what are my aims?  i want to help you learn how to protect you and your loved ones, and how to help you defend yourself from very real and looming dangers.--

probably much like you, i didn't know much about islam and the danger it presents until about 1.5 years ago.  and then i started reading and learning.

now, every day i read, completely, the articles and the accompanying commentary at http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com , and through the author, pamela geller, i have become exposed to islamic scholars such as robert spencer, mark steyn, andrew bostom, and a host of other, who discuss the nature of the islamic religion. (i will return and post the links to these sites.)  atlasshrugs is also in contact with european bloggers and authorities who paint a very disquieting and sober assessment of the state of europe, and how it is very close to being swamped by islamic immigration.  the europeans have discovered too late that the muslims they have been importing for years as workers have no intention of becoming "european," and have no intention of going home, and have absolutely no intention of being subject to the domestic law of their "host" countries.

i don't know if you know it, but france is basically involved in a low grade civil war with her islamic occupiers, as is belgium, and as is england, of all places.  the netherlands gives every indication of just giving up and preparing for the takeover.

the united states is not so very far behind, and certainly not removed from this process.

so, i urge you to read atlasshrugs every day.  i also read, on a somewhat lesser basis, because i have just become familiar with the blog, a blog at http://www.yidwithlid.blogspot.com hosted by sammy benoit, one of the funniest and most discerning men that i have ever had the good fortune to meet.

these are sober people.  they are serious about informing us about the perils facing us in the world.  By their own confession, they were not terribly interested in these matters, until confronted by the reality of 9/11, and then they wanted to know who attacked us and why.  They have found the answers, it appears to me, and they have now quite literally devoted their lives to that task of enlightening the rest of us since then.

i have no desire nor intention to "reinvent" what they have done, or to even pattern what i do here after them.

why do that?

they do the jobs they do admirably well.  they do not need to be replicated, and i certainly have no wish or desire to imitate them.  i will leave to them to do what they do best, and that is to build the intellectual foundation for understanding who, what & why our enemy is what it is.

i am convinced that we will be fighting islam on our shores in the not too distant future.

and, i am convinced that you and i, as civilians, will be the target of their attacks, just as our counterparts in other parts of the world, within our lifetime, in such places as lebanon, thailand, nepal, france, england, the netherland, and yes, in israel, ... , just as our counterparts in these countries have borne the brunt of islamic violence.

so, my goal in writing is to discuss what you can do to protect yourself, in case your government does not do a particularly good job of doing it.

we will discuss firearms.

foodstuffs.

equipment.

sources of literature where you can go to learn field crafts.

and, if i can stay open long enough, how you can organize with your fellows to form networks to communicate securely, and to become as operational as you need be in order to defend yourself.

your first order of preparation should be to, read atlasshrugs and yidwithlid regularly, every day if possible.  i also like http://www.breathofthebeast.blogspot.com and http://www.jeremayakovka.typepad.com .

your second order of preparation should be to arm yourself with a good quality firearm, a bolt action scope sighted rifle in the 7mm-08 remington, .308 winchester class, or an ar-15 type rifle in .223, .308 winchester, or 6.8mm remington spc, if you are a little more advanced in the shooting games. to arm yourself with this class of weapon is a good beginning.

if you have nothing by way of self protection for your home, buy a remington model 870 pump action or a mossberg 500 pump action shotgun, in either 12 or 20 gauge.  either will work superbly.

third order of preparation.  join the national rifle association.  right now.

fourth order of preparation. (actually, it is the first, for without the proper mental set, you are just blowing smoke out your arse.)  take this seriously.  your life is not going to be as predictable as you may have thought five or ten years ago.

we will develop these themes, and i will learn about the mechanics of this blogging stuff, as we go along. 

hey, maudie, look .... another fool thinks he's a blogger .... the red glove .... and, just what in the hell do we call it?

well, yes, just what does the world need with another blog? 

there seems a sufficiency.

as i walked home from breakfast, into something just on the gale side of a freshet, rain and little soft hail stones pelting my face, soaking my pant legs and cap, cold wind stinging my cheeks, i saw a bright red left-handed cotton glove lying sodden on the side walk.  something began to strike me as odd about it as i continued along. neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of pacific n.w. morning socked in by what i call "the grayness" could keep me from that glove, so i returned to it.

it lay flat, the fingers splayed out, except the ring finger and little finger were crossed to the palm.  and it occurred to me what was odd about it.  although the index finger and the middle finger were in the "peace sign" posture, the thumb was “improperly” pointed to the side, the little and ring finger oddly folded over it.

after musing over my observational powers, i leaned over and "corrected" the glove, so that the thumb was resting over and upon the ring finger bent into proper position, the little finger folded quietly beside the ring finger over the palm.

i left the sodden sock just where i found it on the sidewalk but now making a more intelligible gesture, like the “impeach bush” chalk markings left on sidewalks by activists.

as i walked away, i thought to myself, "give war a chance!"

segue.--

what are we to do in assigning a proper label to our soon to be successfully completed adventures in iraq and afghanistan.  are we to call these military campaigns war, or police actions, or are we to use the unsatisfactory to me label of “war on terror”

there are niceties involved here.

for one, we did not and do not fight nation states in any usual sense.  as a matter of fact, we remain in those places at the continued request of duly elected and internationally recognized governments, even though we entered afghanistan against the taliban and iraq against saddam hussein’s regime on a conventional war footing, but those campaigns were soon over and successfully completed.  so, the issue remains, what do we call our present endeavors in those places? 

mostly we don't fight in any conventional sense, very often.  since the marine assault on fallujah, several tussles around sadr's compound/mosque in baghdad, a couple of set piece battles in afghanistan, not very “opportunities” have presented themselves to our troops to wage conventional battles.  the al queda, the taliban, the iranian proxies, the egyptian wahhides, and the rest of the arabian "foreign legion" have learned that you do not stand toe to toe in combat with american infantry & tanks, or united states marines under any circumstances, unless you mean to be seriously mauled.  any group silly enough to try has gotten the express elevator to heaven and the 72 virgins, which prospect cannot be all that damned great, because not many have evidenced a desire to commit suicide in front of a bunch of blooded up marines and soldiers.

in four years of fighting, the number of american troops who have died by directed small arms fire, i.e., rifle, machine gun, mortar rounds, rpg while engaged in direct combat and fire fights, has been astoundingly small.  i will go out on a limb, and say certainly not over 1,500 and perhaps not over 1,000 in four years of operations of the over 4,000 soldiers and marines who have died in those theatres.

no, it is the damned ied's and accidents that have inflicted the bulk of the damage, not so much in numbers killed, and i don't want to be callous here, just accurate, but in horrible injuries, such as loss of limbs, eyesight, etc.

let's put several things in perspective.--

in our civil war, union troops trying to force an assault over a small bridge defended on a facing hillside by dug in southern troops armed mostly with black powder single shot rifles, but also small artillery field pieces, suffered 4,000 dead in minutes, most of the casualties at the height of the battle occurring with 30 minutes or so.  so bitter and fierce was the fighting that neither side would quit the conflict so the other could take its dead from the field, a striking departure from the usual niceties of the era.

this is the battle called "cold harbor," and indeed it was, for many a brave man.

in the american civil war, over a period comparable to our stay in afghanistan and iraq, union and confederate troops fought 29 battles exceeding or equaling the battle at waterloo:29 engagements the size of waterloo, a single battle which sealed the fate of nations and of a once invincible dictator and conqueror of much of europe.

in the same period in which u.s. forces have been in iraq and in afghanistan, the russian army has suffered about 1,200 to 1,500 "peace time" deaths per year.  i have not checked in a while, but the russian army has suffered perhaps more peace time deaths than the u.s. military has endured while actively engaged in limited combat.

in that period the united states has expended less than 1% per annum of its federal budget in matters related to the prosecution of these activities.  suffice it to say, this is in preposterous comparison to the percentage rates of the federal budget devoted to fighting wwii, and, even korea and viet nam.

i hesitate to call our campaign war.

it is no longer prosecuted against countries, and it was not for very long.

it has not been fought on soil against the express wishes of any recognized government, for some long time now.

the campaigns in afghanistan and iraq are not fought under any "rules of engagement" similar to that governing the rules of conduct of armies actually engaged in the task of trying to kill as many enemy soldiers as humanly possible while attempting to limit the casualties inflicted upon our troops.

as a matter of fact, exactly the opposite rules are imposed upon our soldiers as they go about their daily routines.  everything our soldiers do is designed to minimize "unnecessary" casualties which as a consequence makes their prosecution of their duties ever so much riskier to them.  that our troops have maintained their morale under these conditions is indeed testament to their enthusiasm and sense of duty.

so, i do not call what we are doing “ war,” because these campaigns are not prosecuted as a war is traditionally prosecuted.  my view is if you are in war, you should identify your enemy and set about killing as many as quickly, surely, and efficiently as possible.  and, that includes whoever hasn't the sense or the native wit to preserve themselves, who gets in the way.

so, here we have another red sock, lying on another sidewalk, trying to say something about itself, but its fingers garbled, its meaning in disarray.  as a society, we have walked past that sock, and ignored the dis-ease that it has caused amongst us, but no one has had the presence of mind to study it, and try and figure out where to put the fingers, and it what order.  how do we arrange the fingers to make sense? what do we call these things in which we are involved, and what is the larger context which explains that which involves us?

well, let us go back to a beginning which provides some context.

9/11?

no, not precisely, as it goes back a lot further.  i am not going to exhaustively treat all the various acts of terrorism perpetrated over the last 50 years against the west, by the like of the beider-meinhoff gang, or by carlos the jackal, or by black september, or any of the rest.

certainly, all of it was initially state sponsored, an unholy alliance of soviet/ russian training, operations directed by the soviet proxy romanian intelligence services, saudi money and fanatical egyptian clerics who provided the intellectual underpinnings for this initial spate of terrorism against the west and the united states and israel in particular.

certainly there was that aspect of it.

but the threat we confront today has undergone a transformation, and it has shaped our reaction to it and the form of the military and intelligence campaigns we now undertake.

so, for looking at this 9/11 is a convenient, if not entirely accurate place to start, and works within the grasp of the contemporary "attention span" for these sorts of things.

the transformational element in all of these later day conflicts, the current terror war, the element that drives the al queda involvement, the involvement of hamas suicide bombers, of abbas suicide bombers, of suicide bombers bought and paid for on the gaza and west bank by saddam hussein, by the iranians, by the chechnyan rebels who have visited upon the Russians what they created, ... , the common element has been the individual muslim motivated by religious fervor to commit acts, acts which have as their motivation religious impulse, to kill as many people of whatever stripe, including children and infants in swaddling and sucking at their mothers breasts, who they believe enemies of islam.  these terrorists strive to kill as many people as is humanly possible, so that they spend may spend their eternities in religious and physical bliss, so that they may their lives in devotion to islam, and kill the foes of islam, that being anyone who is not Islamic, and especially anyone who is jewish.

it was, i believe, not a brilliantly chosen tactic on the part of the arabs and their russian handlers, but a tactic chosen in desperation, as every conceivable conventional attack launched against israel, and against the united states to force us from the middle east andthe mediterranean, had failed utterly and ignobly.

the arabs acting as russian proxies we beaten soundly at every turn.  they were defeated in conventional warfare, utterly most of the time and on the one occasion they caught israel off guard, they squandered the opportunity.  they were soundly and routinely thrashed in the clandestine intelligence operations that went on for time to time.  and, they were horribly embarrassed by the special military operations the israeli’s launched in lebanon and the like, attacking the leadership of the plo.  to this day, if you say the word “entebbe,” most literate persons will know whereof you speak.

so was born the suicide bomber.

the terror war was transformed.

as a consequence of the suicide bomber islamic terror has abandoned the nation state, for the most part, as a vehicle to seek the destruction of israel and the united states and whoever else they conceive of as enemies.  iran remains deeply involved as a “state,” but this is a special condition, as iran is a theocracy of which it makes precious little sense to conceive it as driven by conventional “statist” motivations: iran, is in essence, an Islamic mosque.  these hostilities, so far as we experience them now, are not carried on by nations, nor are they directed by nations.  the acts of one nation in particular, that being iran, are entirely consistent with the aim of the jihad terror, that being the destruction of israel and driving the united states from the mediterranean: but these are the immediate aims of islam.  oh, nations friendly to these goals, such as saudi arabia and egypt and lybia and syria, help with finance, and training, but how trained do you have to be to walk into the middle of a wedding and push and button and blow yourself and some innocents who happen to let you into their company, into smithereens.  not really very adept at anything, really.

no, the vehicle of this terror is an individual made resolute by religious teaching, conviction, and the formal approval of a religious institution which approves of, sanctions, and directs the destruction of human life in order to gain the supremacy of islam. so, what do we call this?

i call this religious war.

the campaigns in afghanistan and iraq started out and were immediately conventional military operations.  and the operations undertaken as conventional military operations were swiftly and brilliantly concluded by the likes of military campaigns seldom seen in history, rivaling the napoleon mastery of warfare not seen from from american armies since the heyday of robert e. lee’s command of the army of virginia.

but, when they should have been concluded, they weren’t.  when yet another arab army faced and suffered ignominious defeat, when the afghan taliban and al queda were routed in months when the soviets could not do it in 9 years, when the conventional fighting was over, it was supplanted.

conventional war gave way to religious war.

in the civil war in spain ideological irregulars came from the world over to fight a battle between fascism and marxism on soil.  the events in spain morphed soon enough into world war two.

in afghanistand and iraq, conventional war morphed into a battle of religion, as irregular troops have come from the world over to fight a battle which they see as between islam and the foes of islam, particularly the “great satan,” the united states.  this battle, first begun in deadly earnest in afghanistan and iraq, has enlarged, and will morph into worldwide confrontation between the competing values of the west, and the values of islam.

that is why i became a blogger.

my mission is simple.

i want this conflict to be known for what it is, and to be called what it is.  this conflict, as it is waged in afghanistan and iraq, is a religious war, started and carried out by islam, whose immediate goals have been the destruction of israel and the expulsion of the united states from the middle east and are now, buoyed by their success, the conquest of europe and england, and then the united states.

well, hold on there, young fellow, i can hear you saying it now, that's not what the politicians and the elected officials call it.  why, president bush just gave a dinner for the muslims, and walked in his socks at a mosque.

and, given that the middle eastern countries don’t have a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out, isn’t this just a little bit preposterous.

this perception is why i became a blogger.  to put the fingers on the little red sodden cotton glove in the right order, and to point them to the right truths.  i would add this observation.--  i know this to be a religious war, this war we wage, because the jihadist warriors, and clerics and their supporters, have declared it upon us, and have told us repeatedly that it what it is.  one has to give one’s enemy some credence in his declarations.

others have explained these matters far better than i, and cover this aspect far more than i intend to.  for a very good explanation of all of this, i would suggest you turn to http://www.atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com , http://www.yidwithlid.blogspot.com , http://www.breathofthebeast.blogspot.com , and http://www.jeremayakovka.typepad.com  , on a regular basis and read their excellent coverage and explanation of the threat all of this poses to us.

i have a different purpose in mind.  i do not intend to cover these matters on a regular basis.  my intention is more down to earth.  i intend to deal with how to combat these threats, how to fight and destroy them, before they can destroy us.

that is the direction i intend to point the fingers on the little red sodden cotton glove.  time to go look for it.

my aunt charlotte ... benazir bhutto ... and u.s. foreign policy

my aunt charlotte died last night, succumbing to the years at age 89.  you have never heard of her, because all she ever did was lead a normal life, and, to the best of my knowledge, was never implicated in the violent death of any living soul.  she was the last of my mother's generation, and like my mother, was one of the short, fat and jolly sisters.  they all sat together on the same couch during family reunions told stories, turning beet red from the effects of prolonged laughter and shortness of breath whilst engaging in high good humor.  much to the disapproval of the tall, thin, severe sisters, who were never quite quick or glib enough to join in, so disapproved in a distant sort of way.

all the husbands of the tall, thin, severe sisters envied the husbands of the short, fat, & jolly ones, and made no particular secret of it.

i don't know much about the family life of benazir bhutto.  oh, the media have been full of stories quoting her mother to the effect that she had nursed an asp to her breast when rearing benazir, but this was just a mother's recrimination for suspecting that benazir had had something to do with the assassination of her son, benazir's brother.  i suppose we can infer from that, i.e., the dark, distraught, suspicious muttering of a distraught mother, that benazir was no stranger to the inner dynamics of families that have the interplay of family life and politics so wonderfully portrayed in hamlet, and lion in winter, and other such works.  the family that rules together, hangs together, and stabs, and garrotes, and strangles and scratches and gouges, and so on, and so forth.

well, yes, all very droll of me to make these observations, what?  laughing.

and, i notice from the title of this piece, all these ramblings have something to do with u.s. foreign policy.  well, in my opinion it does.

for you see, in my opinion, humble or otherwise, benazir bhutto's death has just about as much to do with the shaping of u.s. foreign policy as the death of my beloved aunt.  and, trust me, that jolly, chubby cheeked, feisty, prickly little woman was my favorite aunt, just like cousin jimmy is my favorite cousin.  so, i do not take her name in vain.

you see, it does no slight to my aunt to note that her death will have no impact on our** foreign policy.

nor, does it denigrate benazir bhutto in the slightest to note, similarly, that her death will have no impact on our foreign policy, substantial, cursory, tangentially, or otherwise.

these are quite easy propositions to prove, by simply noting that probably since the fall of the berlin wall, and quite certainly since the ascension of condi rice to the post of secretary of state, the united states has not possessed a coherent foreign policy.

not so anyone would notice, anyway.

when ronald reagan, whose only challenge to being ranked third best president in u.s. history behind abraham lincoln, franklin roosevelt would lie in the person of theodore roosevelt, intoned, mr. gorbechev (my good lord, were those not halcyon days, in retrospect), tear down these walls, he was merely giving eloquent and theatrical voice (what in the hell else did you expect) to a coherent policy of containing communism that had found expression in the formation of n.a.t.o., the fight against communism in the greek civil war, and the fights in angola, and the cuban blockade, and, off course, the great confrontations with communist aggression in korea and in south east asia in the war between the viet nams.

and more back alley assassinations and honey trap assignations than any one was ever able to keep track of.

from the beginnings of the cold war to its "cessation," (and if you believe the fight with russia and china are over, you have a very unpleasant "another think" coming, and your awakening to this fact is liable to be emotionally and psychologically unpleasant for you), the united states understood what its mission was.--  beat the communists, beat back the communists, and contain them in their enfeebled state.

as a foreign policy it was simple, cogent, expensive, oh god, was it ever, the struggle on the other side bankrupted the soviet union, led to the "formation" of russia, and the fall of the eastern bloc, .... , and, it was very, very successful.

and, it has led to the bone headed assumption that old fashioned struggle is, ... , well, ... , old fashioned, and, here is the clinker, out of fashion forever.

enter the age of diplomacy.

remember mr. molotov.  the russian ambassador to the united states.  remember john foster dulles.  and, george shultz.

those were men whose disapproving gaze caused some stout hearted men to pee ice water, and other to emit yellow dust.  they were not men to be trifled with.  they asked no quarter, and by damned, they were never inclined to offer it.  if you put your neck on the carpet in front of them, you received only the flat hard heel of a shoe grinding your life's blood into that carpet as they stomped your carotid arteries.  (you don't know how it angers me to have people talk about killing a person by severing his jugular veins.  a friend of mine, fresh out of medical school and looking for a job, was presented his first patient in the person of a logger who had severed a jugular vein when a chain saw "kicked back" onto his throat.  the man had driven 30 miles into town holding a hankie to his throat while driving a pickup truck with the free hand, then walking into the doctor's office asking if anyone could help him with his neck.)

returning to the diplomats, such men knew what they wanted, and they had armies and generals and tanks and missiles with which to make their points, they were not afraid to announce and assert their goals, and they were not afraid to put tanks and men on borders fully mobilized to lend some sign of conviction about their pronouncements.  oh, i will admit to a few nights of fitful sleep during such things as the cuban missile crisis, and several other minor fracases here and there, but, in the main, these people had a pretty tight rein on things, and, one went through the course of one's day, relatively certain that if something unpleasant happened, it was at least done on purpose.

oddly enough, i have no such faith in my state department at this juncture.

condi and company know how to talk, and presumably still remember where the knives and forks and napkin rings go at the dinner parties, and they know how to get the appropriations for all the poor cousins who inhabit the corridors of the united nations, but that is about all they have straight.

what are we to make, however, of a foreign policy that purports to fight the war on terror on the one hand, yet promotes that war by advocating an independent kosovo (run by jihadists, my friends, who openly flout the jihad by killing serbs even as we speak), yet promotes that war by giving funds to israel's tormentors, in the form of money, in the form of training hamas, hezbollah and abbas security forces (run by jihadists, my friends, need i elaborate, surely even the less intellectually adroit liberals who sully our midsts comprehend that). what are we to make of a foreign policy that implements a policy of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons by propping up the north korean economy through loans and capital improvements, and tries to "reason" with iran to curtail their nuclear adventures, even while iran openly continues to develop a nuclear weapons capacity?

i love casey stengel.  when he took over the yankees, he walked around his first spring training camp muttering to himself in awe as he looked upon the talented yankees, who included joe dimaggio and mickey mantle, along with yoggi berra.

i feel like casey stengel.  when he took over the mets, he walked through their first spring training camp, muttering to himself as he looked upon the miserable mets, "don't nobody here know how to play this game."

that is the way i feel when i look upon condi rice and minions.  don't nobody understand human nature, human, political, state and ideological aggression.

our state department types do not comprehend that our enemies work with a purpose.  they have not the native wit to understand that the aims of iran in working towards nuclear weapons, (which by the way, coupled with adequate delivery systems, completely kicks the u.s. navy out of the mediterranean and indian oceans), are entirely consistent with the aims of iran in advancing the goals of hezbollah in lebanon, with seeing the establishment of a muslim state in kosovo, and are entirely consistent with the aims of the muslim demographic conquest of europe.

instead, since we have moved "past history" and its little "unpleasantries," our state department thinks that if we just talk and talk some more, that everyone will just work things out, because, by golly, we are all just human beings and if given enough time, we will all understand one another and make nice.  tea, anyone?

no, we do not have a foreign policy to advance.  we have not the haziest notion of how to conceptualize a foreign policy, we have not the haziest notion of how to enunciate any goals to be achieved by a foreign policy, nor have we the haziest notion how to implement such goals by the use of military power, economic influence, or just by the clear, cogent and convincing enunciation of the great gifts conferred by democracy, free market enterprise, and political stability and civil discourse.

so, my aunt charlotte's death, regrettable as it was, will confer no benefit upon the hope for peace and harmony in the world, even though her sterling, her exemplary life, might have served as a very good model for others on how to live.

and, neither will the death of benazir bhutto.  it makes no difference that in an ordered world, what to make of her person would have presented something of a challenge, trying to comprehend a contradictory historical figure who was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma (thank you mr. churchill).  in an ordered world of diplomacy, at least the circumstances of her life and death would have been rendered serviceable in the name of coherent intellectual and policy aims.

there is no such context existing in this day and age, in terms of foreign policy.

those who are interested in integrating her death into the aims of modern feminism will have no such difficulty in formulating the appropriate dogma by which to comprehend her.

but, her death will serve no such purpose in terms of united states foreign policy.  it does not understand itself sufficiently, let alone her relations to policy goals, to know what to make of benazir bhutto.  as a consequence, her death will be put to no useful purpose, in terms of policy.  her death will advance no foreign policy aim.

in this regard, it can be said with absolute clarity and certainty, that the death of my aunt charlotte was just as important to the advancement of the interests of this country, as was the death of benazir bhutto.

i can say there was no riddle, no mystery, no enigma surrounding the life of my aunt.  she was a good and decent woman, funny, fun loving and warm, and always full of laughter.  i will miss her, of that i am certain.

i haven't the foggiest of what to make benazir bhutto, nor her death.  and neither does the united states department of state.