Bush goes to the bazaar - and plays the sucker again

The net is ablaze with stories about the Saudi arms deal with the Jerusalem Post running three pieces on how this will impact Israel as well as the US.

The first features a ghastly picture of the Iron Maiden as she prepares to go to Jeddah to convince the Saudis to take a “more active role” in the peace process.

A second piece examines the potential opposition Bush faces in Congress over the deal given the largely open-ended nature of the deal.

The final piece in the Post delivers the really bad news. These three items, which are really one long piece chopped up Israeli salad style, contained two underlying comments—one hidden yet spoken once and the other completely hidden to all but Israelis and their neighbors—the Bald Eagle is being fried once again.

US President George W. Bush’s administration said there is no trade-off in its plans to sell billions in sophisticated weaponry to oil-rich Persian Gulf states whose cooperation Washington is courting in Iraq.

“There isn’t an issue of quid pro quo,” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of the proposed sales to Saudi Arabia and other nations that have until recently committed little other than rhetoric to the US-backed democratic experiment in Iraq.

The sales, along with an aid package for Israel and Egypt announced Monday, are the fruit of years of partnership and recognition of the region’s strategic importance, Rice said.

The article goes on to explain that in the world view of the State Department, this means that the US hopes to buy Saudi goodwill for things that were previously agreed to but never delivered.

The administration announced the proposed US arms package, estimated at more than $20 billion (€14.64 billion), the morning that Bush’s two top national security aides left for meetings with Saudi King Abdullah and other leaders.

The administration framed the weapons sales, which must be approved by Congress, as a way to strengthen relatively moderate regimes against extremist regimes and ideologies. An increasingly ambitious Iran is the chief opponent.

“There isn’t a doubt, I think, that Iran constitutes the single most important, single-country challenge to … US interests in the Middle East and to the kind of Middle East that we want to see,” Rice said.

The meeting Tuesday, at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik, is the first time Gates and Rice have joined for a diplomatic visit, suggesting an almost last-ditch effort to get Iraq’s Arab neighbors to fulfill their promises to help stabilize the war-ravaged country.

In the other article about Congressional opposition to the deal, Under Secretary of State, Nicolas Burns, was quoted thus:

Asked about demands made of the Saudis in return for the weapons they will receive, Burns said, “There are no formal quid pro quos in this, but it figures that we would want our friends to be supportive of Iraq.”

So, if I understand all of this, the US is giving the large men of Saudi Arabia $20 billion worth of high tech toys with no strings attached. Now, it is true that Condi is going to ask the large men to help out in the West Bank a little—does that mean they get to use some of those new toys?

House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Tom Lantos, who was briefed on the issue by administration officials Tuesday, announced over the weekend that he had concerns about any offensive capabilities the US was considering supplying. Other members went further, saying they would be sponsoring legislation to block such a weapons deal.

“We must not supply arms to Saudi Arabia while they are financing the teaching of Wahhabi terrorism all over the world,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-New York), whose office said he would help draft the legislation necessary to block the deal once Congress had been officially notified.

“Arms supplies to the Saudis may very well be turned against Israel and could easily end up in the hands of terrorists,” he warned. “And we should remember that the hi-tech arms we gave to the Shah of Iran ended up in the Ayatollah Khomeini’s hands. The same thing could end up happening in Saudi Arabia.”

Other members of Congress questioned administration support for the Gulf power at a time of increased US-Saudi tension.

Okay, here is the first warning—the Shah of Iran. Five years after the fall of Vietnam (the dread of the liberal left), Jimmy Carter lost the first round of this war without a shot. According to Professor Steve Brahms at NYU, it was largely due to the inability of the State Department to understand what Khomeini’s value preferences were in the emerging standoff.

To the point, as history has shown, it was unthinkable to the State Department mind that a rational actor might prefer death (read martyrdom) to money. Who would not want to talk to the US and not get lots of money?

While the liberal left is worried that Iraq as another Vietnam, they are ignoring the first total failure of the post-Vietnam foreign policy culture—Iran. Carter’s failure, and the first complete humiliation of the US, was simply because of a refusal to work in the Bazaar. There is no market/capitalist mode of production out here.

As I mentioned before, negotiating in the Bazaar is not working the Market. Possession is everything and all transactions are conducted in front of all other actors in the Bazaar. Whoever wins is considered to be a Big Man because he was able to force the other person (the loser) to take a lower price or pay more than the item was worth. There is nothing here about mutual benefit—whoever has the good has the power and dictates the price. Just look at Hamas’s recent change in the price for Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped (he was 19 then) last year. It is not about price, it is about power.

The worst, however, position to be in the Bazaar is to be the one who gives up something for nothing. This is the freier—a term that can only be roughly approximated as a sucker, but this lacks the total humiliation of the term. The freier is the guy who gives up a good or does a job for nothing. Even the concept of “getting ripped off” lacks the appropriate derogatory abuse that accompanies being labeled a freier.

Westerners think nothing of doing work on speculation. This could be providing a prospective client with samples, prices, and maybe even writing a grant contingent on future earnings. Pro bono efforts are considered to be the life blood of many professions—a kind of priming the economic pump. To the Middle Easterners in the Bazaar, these western traits are the mark of the freier. To work a freier is the mark of a Bazaar master and the process always starts with tokens of good will.

When I was a boy, my father taught me the meaning of the Yiddish word gonef, which is loosely translated as thief. “You meet a man in the street and when you part you discover that he has taken all of your clothes—in fact you are standing naked in the street and you think he has done you a favor.” What my father neglected to tell me was that the naked guy is the freier.

So, what’s going on here? The Saudis are working the US, once again. Since WWII, the Saudis have mastered the art of revealing to all that the State Department is a freier. The money flows but the large men do nothing in return. In English, they laud the US but in Arabic they revile US for the freier it has become.

It is perhaps the irony of living in a capitalist age that the very thing that makes a society like the US work and generates its wealth and freedoms is exactly the thing that impedes and hobbles the Middle East. Mind you, the political system of Israel, the socialist legacy of the Kibbutz collectivist mentality, is not much better. IMRA reported last week that Olmert’s recent peace rounds are nothing more than his attempt to survive to September. Likud holds its opposition party election on August 14, and Netanyahu is the sure winner—elections will not be long after. That is unless Olmert is able to make the bulk of the electorate into freiers once more.

Will the big men of Saudi Arabia play ball? Local money is ten to one against it—a long shot at best. Indeed, the latest rounds of the peace process resemble the opening rounds of negotiations in the Bazaar. The only critical question at this point is who will be made the bigger freier?

I wrote on June 14 of the possibility that Jordan and/or Egypt might intervene in, respectively, the West Bank or Gaza because of the Hamas coup in Gaza. Egypt is plenty concerned because Hamas is a ideological child of the radical, Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, members of which assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Jordan is keeping a close eye on the possibility that Hamas may move to seize power in the West Bank.

Now former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu has openly called for Jordanian intervention:

(IsraelNN.com) Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu has expanded on his general call for Egyptian and Jordanian intervention in the PA, and says Jordan should send over its PLO brigade.

Speaking with Israeli reporters in Washington on Thursday, the former Prime Minister said that Fatah chief Abu Mazen cannot be expected to maintain law and order in Judea and Samaria on his own. He said that Jordan should dispatch its Palestinian force, known as the Badr Brigade. “The Badr Brigade, which is Jordanian-Palestinian, can create law and order,” Netanyahu said.

This idea was less than warmly received even by Bibi’s political allies.

Moshe Feiglin, chairman of the Likud Party’s Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) faction, responded, “It is very sad that Netanyahu is reviving, via the back door, the Oslo illusion that Palestinian terrorists should protect the State of Israel against other Palestinian terrorists.” …

“The members of the Badr Brigade have been there for many years,” [MK Silvan] Shalom said, “and they are not the ones to bring order, chase after Palestinians, confiscate weapons and arrest them. Expecting Palestinians to do the job against Palestinians is silly.”

I have to wonder whether Bibi really thinks that, too, but is hoping that the Arabs of the West Bank and Jordan will have to spend their time and resources fighting each other rather than Israel.

Here we go again. Reporting of the violent takeover of Gaza by Hamas, the AP reports,

Abbas, for the first time in five days of fierce fighting, ordered his elite presidential guard to strike back. But his forces were crumbling fast under the onslaught by the better-armed and better-disciplined Islamic fighters.

The the presidential guard is “elite” but it crumbled fast when attacked by “better-armed and better-disciplined Islamic fighters.”

So just how was the presidential guard “elite”?

For some reason, Western media seem compelled to label Arab troops “elite.” Not all of them, of course, but it’s an adjective that falls off their keyboards and broadcasts so easily it’s become habitual. Remember the “elite Republican Guard” of Saddam’s regime that was going to fight ordinary American troops (whom the media never characterize as elite) to a standstill?

Back when this site was on Blogger, I wrote about this media habit. Unfortunately, all those posts disappeared when Blogger got bought by Google (I had already backed them up on my hard drive, though). Anyway, I posted in July 2002 an essay, “Why ‘Elite Iraqi forces’ is an oxymoron:”

Every American unit is elite compared to any Iraqi unit.

Iraqi soldiers may be individually brave or devoted to their cause (I doubt the latter), but large-unit operations are difficult and take practice, practice, practice, which the Iraqi army has not done since the Gulf War and I guarantee has never done in a force-on-force training exercise remotely resembling what the US Army does all the time at the National Training Center in California. This lack of training and capability was fatal in the Gulf War, fighting the US Army, Air Force and Navy/Marines, which are superbly equipped and have been practicing fully integrated, combined-arms, joint-service operations for decades.

I guarantee that iron rigidity, not flexibility, marks Iraqi military operations. In totalitarian states it always does. The senior commanders of the Iraqi military did not rise to high rank because of their military acumen or autonomous creativity. They are there because they are safe for Saddam to have them there.

And that is also exactly the basis on which Mahmud Abbas vetted the members of his “elite” presidential guard: they were politically reliable, not militarily capable. This is pretty much the case across the Arab world and has a lot to do with “Why Arabs Lose Wars” when fighting Western armies in modern times. (They sure didn’t lose them when Mohammed’s successors conquered North Africa, Spain and large areas of southern and easter Europe.)

Anyway, Brian Briggs wrote satirically in 2003,

Pressure from the international community has forced the United Nations to convene a special committee to review standards for calling organizations “elite.” The call for a standard was prompted after the elite Iraqi Republican Guard was seen performing tasks in a not so elite manner.

So nix with the “elite” stuff, ja?

That all being said, the new puissance of Hamas in Gaza is sure to spill over the the West Bank. Hamas was jihadist when Osama bin Laden was still a beer-swilling, club hopping rake enjoying the rich boy’s high life in the corrupt West. Hamas is a client of Iranian mullahs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, though not Shia - the alliance is tactical and political rather than religious. Hamas’ new resurgence is surely worrying Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, all of which much fear a “Shia crescent” arcing from Iran through Shia-majority Iraq, thence through Syria and Lebanon into Gaza and the West Bank; all but the latter two regions are either majority Shia or have large Shia minorities. I am not predicting, but would not be surprised to see Egypt move into Gaza and Jordan into the West Bank to shut out the closure of the crescent’s creation. In fact, Egypt may well be viewing current events with the most alarm, since Hamas is a child of the Muslim Brotherhood, a strict Islamist movement founded in Egypt in the 1920s. More on this later, I hope.

Update: Comments on. And consider this perspective, via email, from Rabbi Daniel jackson, who lives in the Galilee region of Israel and teaches several classes in Jerusalem at Touro College in Israel.

I take the Derech Allon to and from Jerusalem weekly during my commute. This is a beautiful road, rarely travelled, that strongly resembles the North American West but instead of Native Americans, it is dotted with Bedouin sheppards, their settlements, their flocks, and their children. It is a seriously controlled zone, ranging from 10 to more than 20 kilometers wide between the eastern high ridge of the West Bank to the Jordan River. The area is patrolled by heavy IDF presense with check points at all critical junctures. Moreover, the road runs generally about 500 to 800 meters above sea level while the Jordan runs from -200 meters at the south side of the Sea of Galilee to about -600 meters at the Dead Sea.

I can assure you that the Jordanians will NOT be able to move into the West Bank without Israel’s permission. Moreover, Israel will NOT cede this strip to the PA EVER.

I responded to Daniel, “As for Egypt or Jordan moving against Hamas, you are right, it cannot happen without Israel’s (covert) consent. I thought of that as I was typing the post, and should have added it - but it was late here and I was tired and wanted to go to bed. This just proves George C. Marshall’s dictum that no one ever makes a good decision after 4 p.m.”

The Jerusalem Post reports that a survey,

… conducted in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip showed that that 82.7 percent of the Palestinians are pessimistic regarding their conditions.

The survey, conducted by the Center for Opinion Polls and Survey Studies at An-Najah University in Nablus, also reported that 92% of respondents feel insecure because of the growing lawlessness in the PA-run areas.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that 10,000 Palestinians “have filed requests to emigrate from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the year,” all of which have been approved, while PA officials say that “there are at least 45,000 emigration applications being reviewed by different countries.”

The number of Palestinians who wish to emigrate increased significantly after the second intifada broke out in September 2000. Figures published by a number of Palestinian groups show that 50,000 to 80,000 people emigrated in the first few years after the violence erupted.

Note that it is not violence by the Israelis against the Palestinians that caused, and still causes, enormous numbers of Palestinians to decide to move away, it is violence done by Palestinian factions to Israel and by the factions against each other. Fact is, the Palestinian West Bank and especially Gaza have been embroiled in civil strife (literally a civil war) for at least a year, and the Palestinian people are sick of it.

The solution is so obvious that only the Palestinian Authority’s chief cleric could have thought of it. Stop the fighting? Nah! Forbid emigration out of the PA areas!

Alarmed by the growing number of Palestinians who are emigrating from the Palestinian territories, the Palestinian Authority’s mufti has issued a fatwa [religious decree] forbidding Muslims to leave. …

Entitled “No Permission to Emigrate from Palestine,” the fatwa reads: “There has been much talk in Palestine about emigration, especially among the young people, due to the difficult security and economic situation. This is being done in search of a better life abroad. Many are continuing to rush to the gates of the embassies and consulates of the Western nations with requests for visas in order to reside permanently in those countries.

“We hereby declare that emigration from the blessed lands is not permitted according to religious law. The people living in these areas must remain in their homes and must not leave them to conquerors. Those who abide by this ruling will perform an honorable deed and will support the Aksa Mosque.”

It seems that only PA Muslims are forbidden to leave. PA Christians, who used to number almost a third of the Palestinian people, are free to go.

To combat female jihadists. Reports Crossroads Arabia,

They are playing a part in the overall efforts of the Saudi government to discourage youths from adopting extremist ideologies, nipping the problem in the bud rather than having to fight them in the streets. The article points to the way Al-Qaeda has paid attention to women in its own outreach programs and how female extremists are more difficult to pull away from their ideologies.

See what you think.

I have not waded through all 90-plus pages of the Iraq Study Group’s report yet. I did see a lot of the ISG’s press conference yesterday, though not all of it. Fortunately, both the video and the transcript of the press conference are online (text, video) as is the full text of the report itself.

Quick link: Jim Dunnigan and Austin Bay will be talking about Rummy, Gates and the Iraq Study Group on a live, online webcast today at 12 noon EST. Link: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/strategypage.

I have to say that my first impression of the ISG, formed while listening to the press conference, was very close to that of Slate’s Shmuel Rosner:

More than anything else, these proposals are no more than a reiteration of the old James Baker formula for peace. A formula—just take a look at the region—that was not entirely successful in achieving its goals of peace and stability for Israel and its Arab neighbors. …

… the formula the committee outlines reads more like an ego trip than a serious, new proposal. “This approach worked effectively in the early 1990s,” the committee states. (Remember who was secretary of state in the early 1990s?) It also says, “The purpose of these meetings would be to negotiate peace as was done at the Madrid Conference in 1991.” (And who was the chief facilitator of the Madrid summit?)

Here’s why. Consider this segment of the Q & A:

*Q* You’re certainly a group of distinguished elder statesman. But tell me, why should the president give more weight to what you all have said, given, as I understand, you went to Iraq once, with the exception of Senator Robb; none of you made it out of the Green Zone - why should he give your recommendations any more weight than what he’s hearing from his commanders on the ground in Iraq?

*MR. HAMILTON:* The members of the Iraq Study Group are, I think, public servants of a distinguished record. We don’t pretend now, we did not pretend at the start to have expertise. We’ve put in a very intensive period of time. We have some judgments about the way this country works and the way our government works, and some considerable experience within our group on the Middle East.

We recognize that our report is only one.

There will be many recommendations. But the report will stand on its own and will be accepted or rejected on its own.

We tried to set forth here achievable goals. It’s a very easy thing to look at Iraq and sit down and set out a number of goals that really have no chance at all of being implemented. We took a very pragmatic approach because all of these people up here are pragmatic public officials. We also hope that our report will help bridge the divide in this country on the Iraq war and will at least be a beginning of a consensus here, because without that consensus in the country, we do not think ultimately you can succeed in Iraq.

*MR. BAKER:* Let me add to that that this report by these - this bunch of has-beens up here is the only bipartisan report that’s out there.

The smirky, dismissive way that Baker said that last sentence (I did watch this part on TV) was very revealing, IMO, of his own idea of his own importance and brilliance. What Baker was really saying was, basically, “Are you kidding? I’m James Flipping Baker! Of course what I have to say is more important that other senior officials! Did I mention that I’m James Flipping Baker?”

Another flaw, IMO, is that the ISG seems to have begun with the baseline that its report would have to be unanimous. Baker emphasized its unanimity many times during the press conference. Unanimity was apparerently sought to buttress the other all-important buzzword, “bipartisan.” So the ISG set out from the beginning, I think, to make sure that its report was a unanimous, bipartisan product. I am reminded of a quote of Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.: “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.”

I think the country would have been better served had the ISG delivered a majority and minority report. In fact, there could have easily been three reports: a consensus section, upon which all members were in broad, fundamental agreement, and a majority section and a minority section. Certainly retired Supreme Court justice Sanda Day O’Connor would have been comfortable with that. The USSC rarely renders unanimous decisions and yet no one dismisses its judgments simply because they are not unanimous.

I think that one of the inherent flaws of the ISG’s recommendations is revealed in this interchange:

*Q* Barbara Slavin of USA Today. One of the aspects of your report is outreach to Iran and Syria. What indications do you have from the discussions that you had in preparing the report that these two countries are prepared to be at all helpful? And I notice that you’ve taken the nuclear issue out of the equation. You say that should not be discussed in connection with Iraq. Why would the Iranians agree to come to a table and talk about Iraq unless the nuclear question and other questions were addressed?

*MR. BAKER:* … we didn’t get the feeling that Iran is chomping at the bit to come to the table with us to talk about Iraq, and in fact, we say there we think they very well might not. But we also say we ought to put it to them, though, so that the world will see the rejectionist attitude that they are projecting by that action.

With respect to Syria … There must be 10 or 11 or 12 things we say there that Syria - that we will be asking of Syria. The suggestion that somehow we’re going to sacrifice the investigations of Pierre Gemayel and assassinations of Gemayel and Hariri or others is just ridiculous.

*MR. HAMILTON:* … We have no exaggerated expectations of what can happen. We recognize that it’s not likely to happen quickly. …

And that’s the problem: on the one hand, the ISG says the US is facing a real crisis in Iraq and that time is short to change direction. Then, on the other, the ISG offers recommendations that even it (unanimously) says is “not likely to happen quickly.” The ISG wants to start withdrawing US combat units from Iraq by 2008, but did it stop to think that it’s highly unlikely for any of its regional initiatives and conferences even to be scheduled by then? The wheels of the gods and diplomats grind exceedingly slow, something James Baker should have remembered. Syria and Iraq have no obvious incentive to engage with us at all, a fact that Messrs. Baker and Hamilton tacitly admitted. To imagine that Assad and Ahmandinejad will jump at the chance to assist the US in achieving its goals in Iraq is the triumph of hope over experience. If anything, they’ll see the report as a sign of the slackening of American will and pretend to engage while making sure that the “peace process” drags on interminably. (We do, after all, have a track record of being victiom of that tactic, just recall the Paris peace talks with Hanoi, in which the North Vietnamese delegation spent most of a year doing nothing but arguing about the shape and height of the negotiation table.)

Richard Sanchez detailed the Syria stickiness, quoting the relevant section of the ISG report:

RECOMMENDATION 15: Concerning Syria, some elements of that negotiated peace should be:
— Syria’s full adherence to UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 2006, which provides the framework for Lebanon to regain sovereign control over its territory.
— Syria’s full cooperation with all investigations into political assassinations in Lebanon, especially those of Rafik Hariri and Pierre Gemayel.
— A verifiable cessation of Syrian aid to Hezbollah and the use of Syrian territory for transshipment of Iranian weapons and aid to Hezbollah. (This step would do much to solve Israel’s problem with Hezbollah.)
— Syria’s use of its influence with Hamas and Hezbollah for the release of the captured Israeli Defense Force soldiers.
— A verifiable cessation of Syrian efforts to undermine the democratically elected government of Lebanon.
— A verifiable cessation of arms shipments from or transiting through Syria for Hamas and other radical Palestinian groups.
— A Syrian commitment to help obtain from Hamas an acknowledgment of Israel’s right to exist.
— Greater Syrian efforts to seal its border with Iraq.

RECOMMENDATION 16: In exchange for these actions and in the context of a full and secure peace agreement, the Israelis should return the Golan Heights, with a U.S. security guarantee for Israel that could include an international force on the border, including U.S. troops if requested by both parties.

How long could Syria take arguing excruciating details of each of the points of this recommendation? Literally years, if it wanted, and why wouldn’t want?

Israeli Prime Minyster Ehud Olmert has already rejected the heart of the internationalist approach of the report, and Olmert is no right-wing hawk.

Israel has rejected claims by a team of elder US statesmen that the Iraq crisis cannot be resolved unless the US also tackles the Arab-Israeli conflict.

PM Ehud Olmert, in his first reaction to the Iraq Study Group (ISG)report, said he had a “different view” and would not talk to Syria as the report recommends.

Conditions were not right for a resumption of negotiations, he said.

Further, Olmert was quick to assert that the Iraq conflict is unrelated to the Israel-Palestinian issue. It’s hard to disagree with Dr. Mitchell Bard’s observation:

The report asserts that the conflict is “inextricably linked” to the situation in Iraq. This is demonstrably false. If the conflict ended tomorrow or Israel disappeared, it would have no impact whatsoever on the situation in Iraq. The violence is based on internal political, social, economic and religious rivalries that are completely unrelated to Israel. The interjection of prescriptions for solving the Arab-Israeli conflict was apparently done to satisfy the authors’ desire to weigh in on issues that were beyond its mandate.

Bottom line: the ISG report offers some good ideas when it sticks to Iraq itself, especially the recommendation that American Military Training Teams serving with Iraqi army units be reinforced and broadened and when it opens the door to a near-term intensification of direct military by US forces against the insurgency. But it flops hard when it wanders afield, especially when it fails to recognize that Syria and Iran are vested in our failure in Iraq, not our success. The two nations are not potential partners, they are enemies.

Update: Robert Kaplan slices the ISG report up pretty thoroughly.

The Age reports the latest Islamist threat against England:

A MUSLIM convert plotted mass murder in Britain and the US then submitted his carefully laid plans to the al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan for approval, a British court has heard.

Dhiren Barot, 34, planned to set off a radioactive dirty bomb and attack hotels, buildings and railway stations with gas bombs in cars, a Crown prosecutor told the court in what may be Britain’s most significant terrorist trial since the September 11 attacks on the US. …

Barot expressed excitement about detonating a bomb in a tube tunnel under the Thames. “Imagine the chaos that would be caused if a powerful explosion were to rip through here and actually rupture the river itself,” he wrote.

“This would cause pandemonium, what with the explosions, flooding, drowning etc that would result.”

He and seven alleged co-conspirators — who will stand trial in April — also planned to pack stretch limousines with gas canisters and explosives and detonate them in car parks under buildings, prosecutor Edmund Lawson, QC, told Woolwich Crown Court.

As chilling as these plans - which were carefully drawn and detailed - were, they are not the frightening thing al Qaeda et. al. may yet have up their sleeve. In 2002, al Qaeda claimed in a written statement, “We have the right to kill 4 million Americans - 2 million of them children - and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons … .”

The clock is ticking. Or should we say the clock is now racing?

Since 1947, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has published the “Doomsday Clock” to signify the threat level of nuclear weapons within the changes of international security. Midnight on the clock is atomic war. In those decades, the clock’s time has been adjusted 18 times. It was last adjusted in 2002 and currently stands at seven minutes til midnight.

The “Golden Hour” is a term used by trauma doctors and EMTs to refer to the sixty minutes after serious injury when medical treatment is most likely to succeed. Belmont Club once compared this term to the present security environment. The Golden Hour is this context is the time remaining until Islamist terrorists obtain WMDs, especially atomic weapons.

After this “Golden Hour” our actions will be severely constrained. In fact, once terrorists have acquired a steady source of WMDs, we will have no freedom of action at all. Or rather, the US will have as much room to maneuver as at that nightmare moment, envisioned during the Cold War, when NORAD might detect several thousand Soviet MIRVs inbound over the North Pole. In that instant, which thankfully never happened, the entire concept of choice would have become an illusion. The dreadful mechanism of retaliation would go into automatic effect with humans providing only the counterfeit of control. It follows that the War on Terror must not fail. Not if mankind is to live; not if the Muslim world is going to survive. Our current efforts carry the whole burden of future hopes and if we falter nothing will be left but to witness the consequences of our failure.

Is this overstating the consequences, severe though they would be, of Islamists obtaining and using one or more atomic weapons against us? Perhaps, but can we take that chance?

Joe Katzman picked up on that theme with the latest, distressing news from the Arab world, saying that we are now heading toward atomic perdition.

In Britain’s The Times Online, Richard Beeston reports that 4-6 Arab states announced that they were embarking on programs to master atomic technology [also RCI]:

“The countries involved were named by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Tunisia and the UAE have also shown interest….”

Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert on nuclear proliferation… “If Iran was not on the path to a nuclear weapons capability you would probably not see this sudden rush [in the Arab world],” he said.

He’s almost right. If Iran was not on the path to a nuclear weapons capability with no meaningful checks in sight and none even imagined by the majority of Western policy-makers, plus tacit support from Russia and China, you probably would not see this sudden rush. But it is, and they do, and you’re seeing it. And if you believe the bit about powering de-salination plants, you’re dumber than all the dirt in Arabia.

So, concludes Joe, welcome to a glimpse of our future:

… One that features nuclear weapons in the hands of death-cult barbarians, the vast majority of whom grew up in an atmosphere glorifying suicide-martyrdom as mankind’s greatest moral achievement.

The world in which your children will live.

I reiterate my prediction of 10-100 million dead within the next 2 decades. Or maybe numbers don’t do it for you, and you’d rather read this story as a kind of mental intro to the sorts of futures to prepare for.

Have a nice day.

Sorry, too late for that. I hope this all-too-likely scenario helps explain why I maintained that the single most important issue facing America today is our war against Islamist terrorists.