AMERICAN CITIZEN SOLDIER

The Tennessee Gore family compound as seen from space. During daylight hours. While vacant.

When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing--they believe in anything.
-G.K. Chesterton

The sky is warming! The sky is warming!

Poor Al Gore. He had a speech booked at a lecture hall in Hell to scold the devil on runaway carbon emissions but had to cancel when it froze over. So he rescheduled at the next closest thing: Congress.

"The plann-itt has a fay-ver," Gore twanged last week before separate House and Senate panels on climate change in a textbook display of projection. It's the end of the world as Al knows it and he is far from fine. But he's not the only one. John Edwards, presidential dopeful and fellow Democratic philosopher-king, thinks global warming will "make world war look like heaven." Right. Whatever that's supposed to mean.

But why all the manufactured hysteria, and why now? Gore's been scaremongering on this issue going on two decades. In Earth in the Balance, first published back in '92, he wrote that "we must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization," even going so far as to propose a "Global Marshall Plan."

But what if a tree is decomposing in the forest and no one's around to fear it, can you still get a million dollar grant to study all the ways it's destroying the planet?

For the majority of the earth's existence our climate has exhibited a temperature scale wholly incompatible with human life. We're now living in a time frame especially hospitable to our own existence (go figure), but from the planet's perspective (allowing that a planet can have a perspective) there is nothing especially remarkable about the relatively narrow temperature range that renders life possible.

Take the polar bear--and no, not the cuddly CGI variety made famous in the Goracle's recent Oscar winner (Best Supporting Factor in a Misleading Role?) The polar bear seems to have weathered extreme weather variations just fine over the previous millennia. Average temperatures during the Middle Ages were significantly warmer across the board than anything the global alarmists have their carbon neutral hemp boxers in such a twist over today. Were the sun's output to rise precipitously or fall off dramatically from what we in the 21st century consider "normative" levels, the plight of the We Care bear in the coal mine would be the least of our worries. Unless you're one of the growing legions of ecolytes in the Church of Al Gordo of Latter Day Senators, it already should be.

But if it is the politicization of science that has truly become inevitable then at the very least both sides of the argument should be provided equal time, rather than just the lefty columnist lockstep that ensures us "the debate is over." Funny, I guess I missed that one. Must have aired exclusively on Current TV.

Claiming that all scientists concur that we're carelessly heating up the world is a bit like saying all Hollywood actors agree that the War in Iraq is only about petroleum rights. Consensus over faulty assumptions is their stock in trade. (Interesting how the only article of faith the otherwise secular Left seems to agree on is that Big Oil is the root of all evil.)

If that neocrog Prometheus had just stolen a more sustainable source of energy from Mt. Olympus we wouldn't be in this position!

Meanwhile these same gliberal econauts minimize the danger of Islamic radicalism, a fatally proven threat that could at any time instantly vaporize a sizable portion of our citizenry; instead of the dread of a terrorist slow bleed strategy of sharia psoriasis they live in mortal fear of being slow boiled like the proverbial frog in the pot. If 24 were written by libs it would star Federal Agent Major Bore as he jets across the troposphere in his Gulfstream IV stopping at nothing--nothing!--to halt international thermostatism in its tracks. Of course, every episode would simulate a single year in the previous twenty four that the Fifth Horseman of the Apocolypse has been pounding his bongo drum of Impending Doom.

Science is by definition an unfinished debate, in that no hypothesis can ever be definitively proven, but only strengthened progressively with the addition of supportive and thoroughly tested and challenged evidence. The scientific method itself is rooted in skepticism. It's what makes the entire process of inquiry possible, how it can as a discipline exist apart from mere conjecture. So when someone instructs you that the debate's over, what they mean is that the door is closed, so stop jiggling the knobs lest the roof cave in on their preconceived worldview. Any scientist that tells you to stop doubting is no scientist at all. Just ask Galileo. He reminded the Catholic Church about the Copernican belief that the earth revolved around the sun and they answered debate's over, got it?

But if all the back and forth of the data miners and chart toppers is giving you a global case of MEGO, I really can't blame you. But just consider but one of the many points of contention upon which the entire non-debate pivots.

If temperatures are indeed gradually rising, then it stands to reason that either they are being driven by increasing CO2 levels or increasing CO2 levels are a trailing byproduct of rising temps. The Earth First! ("People Last!") crowd (more of a mob, really) would have you believe the former; that the approximately one degree centigrade increase over the last hundred years is just the tip of the fast-melting iceberg. So what they're saying is that they somehow averaged out all the varying temperatures recorded all over the planet, condensed them into a single number, and they expect us to believe that this century-long uno degree-o heat wave is actually greater than their observable margin of error? That's one kick-ass thermometer. Must be electric.

However, if instead the latter is true--a finding backed by at least a few more climatologists than the Stepford media cares to acknowledge (must not have gotten the memo about that whole debate thing being over), then the entire house of carbon credit cards collapses.

If not only do rising CO2 levels trail rising observed temperature trends--but that there exists between them a lag of potentially hundreds of years--then the truth may well be inconvenient after all. Inconvenient for whom, though, is the real question. We said debate's over! Stop debating!

Is it merely a coincidence that the secular Left has latched onto this cause with more intense quasi-religious fervor than found on the set of the 700 Club?

The unofficial religion of this new environmentalism (key word: mental) is a realization on the neo-Marxist Left that communism's biggest PR misstep was in attempting to banish the Almighty from public life lest it compete with the almighty State. But worship of the perpetually angry gods of Mother Earth can readily fill that void while simultaneously providing ample justification for the triumphant return of Big Government to reassert its grip over virtually every facet of our daily lives. The impulse to control, the will to power never truly lessens; it just changes with the times. The earth is cooling! Ice age! Ice age! Wait, now it's warming! Heat wave! Heat wave!

Gee fellas, you're finally starting to get it. The planet tends to do that kind of thing. Maybe we don't actually live in The Best Damn Shorts Weather Ever, but just got lucky in the whole Holocenic sense. When even the co-founder of Greenpeace thinks you've gone over the deep end ecologically, don't you think its time to reassess your assumptions and rein in the crazy just a bit?

In any event, us permitting Al Gore to ordain himself as our self-anointed guru of Gaia would be akin to the Senate confirming Sean Penn as Secretary of Defense. When confronted with reports of his own massive public utility consumption Gore countered that he lives a "carbon neutral life" by obtaining "offsets" to compensate for his gargantuan energy use. You know, like after the time he accidentally left the guest cottage helipad lights on all month, he footed the bill for a third party to blow up a third world electrical grid in order to make up for it. I'm a man who seeks balance, lectures the Lecturer-in-Chief. If I decide I want a steak, I'll happily pay you not to have one. I buhlieve that's mah responsibility as a co-steward of the plann-itt.

Just like they say at the annual Sierra Club meetings in Aspen: think globally, act vocally.

A very necessary and timely rebuttlal titled the Great Global Warming Swindle -- or as it's been repackaged in Deutschland, Fahrenheit Nein Danke -- has been making the rounds in the public sphere since first airing in the UK. It should be included with every sale of Big Al's rubber-stamped Hollywood imprimaturn-back-the-clockumentary; the one salient difference being that it actually makes an ounce of sense. Apparently that much-touted scientific consensus isn't quite as solid as the Ain't Easy Being Greens would have us believe.

True, we're stuck with another Clash of the Polemics, but it does seem to be the height of fashion lately. My propaganda's true, your propaganda's bunk. The New York Times said Fox News is full of it. So there. We contort, you deride.

If you fear being branded an infidel, don't worry. If your name isn't Mohammed, chances are you already have been.

Either way don't be too surprised if The Man Who Won The Popular Vote ultimately descends so far into his own ecomania that to set the example for all of us he has himself recycled, all 200+ carbon based cardio-free pounds. Just think how many starving polar bears that could feed.

Nahhh... that's not believable either. Sounds like too much of a "risky scheme." What is believable, however, is that it's eminently more likely that solar activity is what primarily drives climate change, just as it has for the millions of years prior to the invention of the smokestack, rather than human propelled carbon dioxide emissions from the previous hundred. Of course, like Al I'm no scientist, but then neither am I mad.

If this makes me a New Holocaust That Hasn't Happened Yet (But Just Might) denier, then so be it. It's the hollow cause that I'm actually afraid of. See, I've gotten pretty used to industrial civilization and I'd prefer to keep it if that's alright. If you've witnessed how the other half lives then you'd know it's not all it's cracked up to be.

Give warming a chance, Al. A few of us could still use some.

Posted by BUCK SARGENT | Permalink | Comments

In a Perfect World: Former Guantanamo Bay detainees shuffle along toward their brand new facilities relocated to the Supreme Court parking garage.

It’s easy to hate Bush because he’s not going to come and behead you.
-Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Somali-born former member of the Dutch parliament and author of Infidel

It's official: the lunatic fringe has now gone mainstream.

Perhaps I'm just being played by the choose-your-own-conjecture media, but doesn't it at times appear that half the country has gone completely bonkers? Often I wonder who it is all these Bush-haters are going to continue to hate come January 2009. Does anyone really believe that it's going to be Happy Days Are Here Again for this sad bunch when George W. leaves office after eight years without having instigated a military coup or snooping into the public library records to find out the home addresses of everyone who checked out Clueless George Goes to War?

Don't laugh, that's a real book. Sample a few of the rave (as in stark raving mad) reviews on Amazon:

...as an amusing little book about our idiot-in-chief, it is really rather poignant because it is all too true. You end up actually feeling sorry for Dumbya...if you detest the imposter in the White House as much as the rest of the US of A seems to, you will enjoy this mightily; I bought multiple copies to give to friends and relatives.

I loved it! This little book may do to George W what Uncle Tom's Cabin did to slavery!

...Only extremist radical right-wing nuts who confuse dissent with disloyalty will hate it.

This light-hearted book can really tell the truth in a great way. It should be required bedtime reading for people of all ages to keep reminding us how gullible and easily manipulated people can be.

Superb. It offers the Occam's Razor for the Iraq invasion debacle. I totally believe it's [sic] portrayal of the manipulation of George. One hopes the book will be irrelevant soon, alas, in at least two years.

For anyone not familiar with Occam's Razor, it is the philosophical precept that simple explanations are preferable to more complicated ones, in that the simplest explanation is the more likely of the two. It's also the razor that so many of Generation Y Bother use to shave their cojones while they rationalize away their lack of personal involvement in our vital generational struggle.

No, I'm not hauling out the tired chickenhawk canard again; that raggedy old bird has flown the coop. But I've noticed a trend among people who persist in calling for a return to the draft -- they always seem to be well past service age. How very expedient. Funny, you don't see too many of these placards being hoisted on college campuses these days:

Hell no, we won't go! (Unless you ask us nicely)

What these conscription artists fail to realize is that contrary to popular belief, the military draft is still very much alive. The only difference is that since 1973 it's been entirely optional. No longer do you have to flee to Canada or pursue a PhD in tribal linguistics or marry your sister's best friend to sidestep a centuries-old tradition that our grandfathers waited in Playstation 3-size lines to volunteer for. In other words, if you're one who thinks it such a wonderful idea, then go right ahead. Vote with your feet and draft yourself silly.

This reminds me of those people who write gung ho letters to the editor about how willing they would be to pay higher taxes if only the administration would just ask them for the sacrifice. Well, as luck would have it I do believe I can act as a facilitator. Please forward all charitable tax monies to:

Income Rationing
c/o Buck Sargent
Rightwing War Pawns
Ft. Richardson, AK 99505

Before you head off searching for your checkbook, allow me to direct your attention to the Coalition to Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, aka International A.N.S.W.E.R. They're typically the ones that organize those perennial D.C. protest marches that draw tens of thousands of people unless of course it's cold out and then they're not feeling it so much. Well, apparently it was formed within three days of 9/11 by none other than Ramsey Clark, aka Saddam's stellar lawyer, aka LBJ's attorney general, aka world class dirtbag.

Three days.

We didn't even know yet how many thousands had perished at Ground Zero and already they were calling for preemptive surrender. Okay, so these Men From (Cry) U.N.C.L.E. have all the answers. Remind me again what the question was?

I realize that old school media loves to overhype antiwar protests because they remind them of their own dazed and confused youth, their shaggy sideburns and discarded bellbottoms and flaming draft cards... ah, reminiscing can be such sweet sorrow. But back to reality: serious antiwar sentiment this time around is about as prevalent as was opposition to the Second Boer War. (Don't feel bad, I had to look it up too). In that sense, Iraq could be considered the Second Bored War (after Afghanistan) in that a sizable percentage of the public is simply tired of having to hear about it. Never mind battle stress, they've got a serious case of frontpage fatigue, people!

But I'm starting to get the sense it's no longer just the cuckoo for cocopuff crazies who are getting down with the sickness. Take this blurb from an Associated Press story covering the latest antiwar march on Washington:

Retired Marine Jeff Carroll, 47, an electrician in Milton, Del., held a sign saying: "Proud of our soldiers, ashamed of our president." Carroll said he served in Lebanon when the Marine barracks was bombed in a deadly attack in 1983, and thinks the U.S. should be focusing on Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden instead of Iraq. "We're fighting the wrong country."

Well shouldn't we have started with the Lebanese then, Jeff? (If this is to be believed, it may actually come to that). But I'd like to assume Jeff to be an otherwise rational fellow, and as things currently stand the reason why not is precisely the same reason we can't possibly be "fighting the wrong country." We're not fighting a country at all. Thanks to us, Iraq and Afghanistan both now have friendly representative governments that furnish (somewhat) uniformed armies that are fighting alongside us. Precisely what it is we're still battling is a viral ideological movement that has no borders and no territory other than where we allow it to operate due to our own political vacillation.

But what I really cannot believe is that there are still so many Americans out there that fail to grasp this crucial distinction. I blame the public education system. Naturally, they blame Bush:

[The President] makes me literally ill. the bile is rising up in my stomach as we speak....I wish I could race into [his] office and vomit all over his face. I wish I could stand over him and puke and gag and wretch until nothing but the last nasty drop of yellowish green bile runs down his ugly hate filled face, off his chin and down over his suit. [h/t: Best of the Web Today]

Am I alone in thinking this Anyone But Bush bile that courses through their veins is the only thing keeping people like this alive?

As Victor Davis Hanson notes, "both Republican and Democratic administrations did not reply forcibly to a series of terrorist attacks, from the 1983 Marine barracks murdering in Lebanon to the 2000 ramming of the USS Cole. That forbearance sent a message to bin Laden that there would likely be few, if any, real consequences, should he escalate his attacks."

All this talk of realists and idealists, corporate pawns and neodecepticons... I think what we really need is a new realism (you know, one that's actually "realistic"), grounded in principles acknowledging that Islam is not only at war with the West and its secularist values, but also at war with itself. And this new realism should be dedicated to siding with every struggling Muslim nation or community that chooses liberty for its people over submission to Islam’s worst impulses.

Or we can just continue to ignore the problem and allow a tiny segment of the American populace to handle our dirty business on foreign soil so that we don't have to think about it anymore. Just as long as we don't read the papers or surf the web or watch the news or suffer the Oscars.

Congressional Big Shtick Redeploymacy aside, the Democratic poll weevils are doing cartwheels trying to keep current with public opinion on the shifting sands of the war. The big D frontrunner has changed her position more frequently than her husband-in-name-only used to bite his lower lip, drop his drawers, and sexually assault unsuspecting cigars. One week she's loudly proclaiming that she'll be signing the withdrawal orders at the inaugural and the next she's patiently explaining that we can't afford to turn our backs on Iraq lest the terrorists win. The Democrats haven't had such a flip-flopping candidate since, well, since their last presidential candidate. But I digress... and apparently I'm not alone.

Liberal candidates have always been known to be wishy-washy fence riders, but tossing scraps over the Bastille wall rarely makes good political sense. I'd offer that if this keeps this up the Democratic base are going to lose their minds, but I think we're well beyond that point. That bridge over the river nuts was crossed long ago and then just as quickly blown up. Like Jesse Ventura in Predator, they ain't got time to slow bleed.

What do we want? Strategic redeployment!
When do we want it? Yesterday!

What can we expect them to get? Crazier!

And not like a Fox.

Posted by BUCK SARGENT | Permalink | Comments

 










It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.
-Seneca

This is the end, my only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
I'll never look into your eyes again

Is this really the end, (beautiful friend)? Has the Democratic takeover Congress spelled doom for the war? Should we be expecting another embassy airlift on live TV with al-Maliki and his favorite interpreter hanging from the landing wheels as the last Blackhawk leaves the Green Zone? Is Iraq about to jump the shark, or am I about to flip my lid? Um, will this be on the test?

One of the consequences of being in the majority party is that it ultimately entails a measure of seriousness on the holders of the gavel that is rarely expected of the back-benching opposition. Voters expect those holding power to behave accordingly (as we say in the military, "when in charge, be in charge"), rather than succumb to the easy out of continuing to blame everything on the top executive. The Democratic Party has spent the last six years in a death spiral of insanity, seeing as how their most vocal and angry hard left supporters are indeed clinically insane by any definition. You should read the email I get.
Is that you again, Speaker Pelosi?

How dare you mercenaries coast on the government's dime for the privilege of free foreign travel to exotic locales on your very own Air Force transports! What, you can't fly coach like the rest of us?

• Saddam is but a distant memory
• An elected government with a written constitution now stands in his place
• The indigenous security forces are increasingly in the forefront of the fight
• U.S. casualty figures, though unsettling, remain historically low
• Neither al Qaeda nor insurgent forces have ever garnered broad popular support
• The bulk of the daily violence that still plagues the country is concentrated primarily around the capital province
• Middle class Iraqis want nothing more than to raise their families free from fear and care little about the trumped-up "sectarian" divisions
• The majority of the current U.S. mission is primarily defined by routine boredom

There seems to be a reluctance to admit this last point -- especially from fly-by-night embeds or rear-echelon mike foxtrots who desperately seek to come across as brave and battle-hardened -- but it is an indisputable fact nonetheless, if only recognizable after month five or six of daily, constant patrolling. Iraq is rarely the way it's depicted on the nightly news. It is the war of perception that's harboring weapons of mass deception.

Whenever your senses are being overwhelmed by those hyperbolic headlines, cynical soundbites, or calamitous cover-stories...

"...yet another grim milestone for coalition forces in Iraq today as the U.S. death toll climbed significantly after the military reported Sunday that six more troops had died in the deadliest day in two years for American forces since the second to last deadliest day was eclipsed only by the one-day death toll that came after the third highest daily casualty count for U.S. forces since the war began when the deadliest most deadly day of death among U.S. forces who have died while braving death rose to a level never before witnessed since the day before yesterday when three more soldiers died..." (Any of this sounding familiar?)

...you must develop the discipline required to ignore the pack mentality of the journa-list o' grievances peanut gallery...

"...sectarian-fueled insurgent death squads of masked gunmen dressed in military uniforms, still inflamed over the public execution of Saddam Hussein, the humiliation of Abu Ghraib, and the lack of universal health insurance for unemployed ex-Baathists unceremoniously laid off over three years ago by Bush administration officials..."

...ignore your instincts...

"...candidates announced today that had they been President in 2003 they would not have made the decision to go to war despite voting to authorize it in 2002 and reaffirming support in 2005..."

...and trust your instruments.

Altitude: Identify the facts that apply and those that distract.
Check.

Airspeed: Pay less heed to media hype and hyperbole.
Check.

Heading: Apply common sense backed with grounded perspective.
Check.

Attitude: Keep a steady hand and a level head on the horizon.
Check, please...

Hemingway defined courage as grace under pressure, meaning that when the going gets tough, the tough don't argue endlessly about how best to retreat. They leave that to the Spartisan 300 whose only resolve is to continue gorging themselves at the public trough while insisting that war is but an anachronism. Here's to the losers.

"Spartisans! There is where they fight! Here is where we lie!"

No retreat.
No surrender.
¿No comprende?



Fortunately however, the average voter tends not to be as excitable and expects at least a bare modicum of statesmanship from their elected representatives rather than simply another stepped-up level of brinkmanship. That's what I like to tell myself, anyway.

You see, regardless of how many times Cindy Lou "Who?" Sheehan gets herself arrested for public indoctrination, or what manner of nonsense Keith Olberman's Bush Tourette's Syndrome causes to fly out of his mouth during his nightly Three Minutes Hate on PMSNBC/OMGSTFU... there was no -- rush -- to -- war. The U.S. dithered so long over whether or not to invade that it began to appear as if we were waiting for Uncle Saddam to succumb to secondhand smoke and mirrors.

So we didn't rush into war but we've spent the last few years inadvertently trying like hell to rush out of one, and all the while the Iraqi chariots of (trial by) fire simply haven't been ready to accept the baton. (Remember, we're talking about a people who own Beemers and beepers but lack toilets; their priorities are about as straight as a Hollywood hairdresser.) So up to this point they've been left little choice but to do what anyone (or at least, anyone with a [D] after their name) would do in a similar situation: go soft on terrorism while trying to make nice with the enemy. Because let's face it, it was either that or die. And despite the suicidal tendencies of the jihadists in their midst, native-born Iraqi Muslims are not real big on dying.

At the same time, those of us at home must maintain some measure of historical perspective. Think of it this way: Years ago back when I was a student pilot, one of the earliest things my instructor taught me was that if and when you find yourself caught in zero-visibility conditions, you must rely on your instrument gauges to keep the aircraft at the proper attitude and altitude. Flying by the "seat of your pants" or your "gut" will quickly cause you to become disoriented, inverted, and headed straight for the nearest mountain. Despite everything your physical senses or nervous backseat co-pilots are screaming in your ear...

We're drifting left! We're drifting right!

We're spiraling out of control!

We're pitched nose-up!

We're about to stall!

...you must do your level best to ignore them and believe in only what the instrument panel is telling you. Find the gauges that are providing you useful information, and then trust them. Granted, the Iraq War has been piloted through dead reckoning to this point, with our time hacks between waypoints being anything but on target. But even if navigating via prominent landmarks tends not to be the shortest distance between two points, and is often a long and winding course, it will ultimately get you where you're trying to end up:

Posted by BUCK SARGENT | Permalink | Comments

"Terrorism has no religion" -- rough translation of a common PSA billboard seen throughout Baghdad.
Actually, I can think of one religion in particular...
photo by Buck Sargent

While America's military strength is important, let me add here that I've always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.

That was President Reagan speaking before the National Association of Evangelicals midway through his first term, delivering what would come to be known as the "Evil Empire" speech. It was a telling window into the soul of his winning strategy for defeating the commie red giant by treating it like an exhausted white dwarf. That is, forcing it to collapse under its own immense gravity and inner contradictions through confrontation via oblique ideological warfare rather than chancing mutual annihilation through conventional military action.

Today the Soviet menace is kaput and the communist advance rolled back, and we didn't have to hug our children with nuclear arms after all. I feel it’s safe to say it worked.

Soon after, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down with the Warsaw Pact in fact crumbling to the ground, ding dong the witch is dead, long live the wicked witch. It was the End of History as we knew it (and we felt fine). Global cooling was out, global warming back in.

But the Iron Curtain lifted only to reveal an Islamic Veil that had quietly been descending behind it, which for another decade the West proceeded to ignore like it does all impending matters that don't involve the next election. Why bother tracking the market when you’re already living comfortably off your peace dividends? Black Tuesday? Never heard of it.

Exactly how does globalization promote stability again? For one, it doesn’t. True, you can purchase virtually any model of cellular phone your technological heart desires from any street vendor in Baghdad. But one moment you’re walking away with your state of the Korean art LG camera-phone and five minutes later an Improvised Explosive Daewoo is raining supersonic shards of rear axle down on you for having the temerity to engage in global commerce while wearing a reversed stars & stripes velcro-ed to your right shoulder.

So clearly "It's a Small (minded) World After All" cuts both ways. It means that wherever in the world you travel you’re no longer able to lament: "Y'know, I wish we could just get a dang cheeseburger here." But it also means that an entire culture 7,000 miles away can hate your guts before you even set foot on the tarmac.

So if your conception of "stability" refers to the fin shape on the long range booster rockets that North Korea is likely shipping to Tehran via FedEx next week, then sure, I suppose it does promote it. But ultimately, globalization is to stability what McDonalds is to world hunger. It means your looming humanitarian crisis could soon be obesity rather than famine and still it’ll be "everyone’s problem." (Though I do find it the mother of all ironies that the mid-eighties liberal bleeding heart hunger telethons helped lead to a revitalized generation of Ethiopians more willing and able to confront militant Islam without wetting their pajama pants than we currently seem to be).

We are the world...
We are the children...
We are the ones who spoil al-Qaeda's day, free of handwringing...

Condoleezza Rice prefaced her remarks to the American University in Cairo a few years back that our nation was "founded by individuals who knew that all human beings—and the governments they create—are inherently imperfect."

For sixty years [we] pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East—and we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.

A group of prominent intellectuals and dissidents then erupted in wild applause as the Secretary of State triumphantly left the podium, at which point they were promptly led away by agents from the "Mubarakat," aka the Egyptian Ministry of Love. Condi Rice is, after all, the protégé of Brent Scowcroft, the Dapper Dean of the college of Realist Arts University State, so when she mentions things like "the democratic aspirations of all people" the implied parenthetical is of course "all people (under Middle Eastern governments not already on our payroll)." Cold warriors never die, they just fade away. (With exceptions that prove the rule made for former SecDefs who fight losing uphill battles against bastions of entrenched thinking they once championed and in fact helped seat.)

But I know what you're thinking: Assuming the nation-state is still the effective unit of action in world affairs, where are we today in the life cycle of international political systems? (These are the type of questions one has to wrestle with as a redeployed postgrad). What, no multiple choice?

The Russians lost the Big Chill and they haven’t forgiven us since. And neither have most of the Middle East client-state beneficiaries of their military-industrial largesse. The Realist World of Ford, Kissinger, Carter, and even Bush père was predicated on the Soviet counterweight in Middle Eastern affairs keeping every sheik in his right place; make sure you tell-em, status quo antebellum. He may be a son of a despot, but he’s our son of a despot. But a single clear September morning changed all the rules in one fell swoop after nineteen not-so-frequent fliers rotated our nation’s foreign policy completely off its axis of see-no-evil.

If winning the Cold War by forfeit proved anything it's that it sure can be lonely at the top. If the United States is still the "indispensable nation" in world affairs it’s only due to the fact that we’re one of the few remaining Western holdouts to the Eutopian ideal of One World Government whose overriding mission often seems predicated on the coming day new Secretary General Tojo Annan can scold us for not getting with le programme sooner. Panacea-told-you-so…

But is it American primacy that’s the endangered specimen, or is it the United Nations General Assembly that is the Last of the Potemkins? The international community’s vacillation over Iranian nuclear ambitions would seem to suggest the latter.

Iran’s mullahs have plenty of petro-fueled moolah, but what they’re really seeking is the security and venture capital of the radioactive variety. Russia’s ex-coms enjoy dangling their isotopes-on-a-rope over Iran's grubby paws, even if in hindsight the enrichment they'd rather have back is all the rubles spent on them over that blasted septuagenarian cowboy. But the con artists formerly known as Persia have assessed correctly that the barriers to entry in the superpower status club are lessened mightily once you’ve passed your first underground test. Supply, meet demand. A pleasure doing business with you Comrade Ahmadinejadovich. Please give our regards to the 12th Imam, da?

The fifty-year Cold War paradigm simplified American foreign policy into one basic premise: with our guns pointed east and theirs pointed west, mutual security rested on keeping our fingers off the triggers and thumb safeties engaged. Stubborn September 10 mindsets notwithstanding, events of the past five years have proven that the U.S. is hardly a "Reluctant Sheriff,*" unless by sheriff you mean Gary Cooper in High Noon. If anything we’re a Dirty Harry--one who tries to work within the system as best he can, but at the end of the day doesn’t shy away from doing what has to be done, the system be damned. But to many of our so-called allies not only are we not the antihero, we're the antichrist.
*WARNING: Do not read prior to operating heavy machinery

Still, the $64,000,000,000,000 Question remains. In the decade since the bi-polar ice caps thawed, has the world scene become more or less dangerous? The answer, of course, varies with the individual. Which scenario do you find less appealing: the peril of Mutually Assured Destruction or the threat of Globally Acquiesced Submission? If the Cold War wasn’t the long war, then how long is the Long War really going to take?

A truly inconvenient fact is that there are currently over one billion and counting, and I don’t mean all the Happy Mao's in China. If even 1% of this billion plus have become radicalized--a process that began long before the War on Terror was even a southeasterly blip on the FAA's radar--that still equals out to as many as ten million angry young Muslims for whom the "religion of peace" means never having to say mecca culpa.

By this point our options have become quite limited. We can continue to push back, to stay on offense, to keep spreading the seeds of political and economic liberty to oppressively damp corners of the world that otherwise will remain Petri dishes of cultural backwardness -- violence and hatred their chief exports -- or we can disengage, pull the wool back over our eyes, and start memorizing our suras al-pronto. But either way, things are going to get worse before they get better.

I miss the Bad Old Days already.

Posted by BUCK SARGENT | Permalink | Comments