Looking on the bright side

Whenever the cloud of revolution appears on the horizon, the New York Times famously sees only the silver lining. All those kindle "agrarian reformers" of the past, who turned into murderous thugs! The Gray Lady is at it again, as in this story by Scott Shane:

For nearly two decades, the leaders of Al Qaeda have denounced the Arab world’s dictators as heretics and puppets of the West and called for their downfall. Now, people in country after country have risen to topple their leaders — and Al Qaeda has played absolutely no role.

Of course that's true as far as it goes. But Mr. Shane goes on to a rather breathtaking either/or:

Will the terrorist network shrivel slowly to irrelevance? Or will it find a way to exploit the chaos produced by political upheaval and the disappointment that will inevitably follow hopes now raised so high?

Shrivel to irrelevance? Well, one can only hope. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The Mosque at Ground Zero

Dorothy Rabinowitz, who ostensibly is a TV reviewer for the Wall Street Journal, is also one of the most brilliant writers on the follies of contemporary life. Yesterday she weighed in on The Mosque at Ground Zero.

Nine years after the Twin Towers fell into the street, and took three thousand people with them, we still don't have a replacement to fill that great hole in the ground. The political-legal process just can't handle it. (During the Great Depression, the Empire State Building went from ground breaking to first visitor in eleven months.) So it looks like the first new building to rise in the area, and to look down into that hole, will be--a thirteen-story mosque!

Read Ms. Rabinowitz's take on this. No summary of mine can do it justice. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

We could call it 'Islamicism'

Mighty Joe Lieberman has a worthy op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning, complaining that our recently released National Security Strategy affirms that the United States is at war, but defines the enemy as "violent extremism." I've always mistrusted phrases that can be turned around and still be meaningful. ("This nation, going forward, is at war with extreme violence!" . . . .One must never omit the ruling idiocy of the day: going forward.)

Senator Leiberman prefers the Bush-era term: violent Islamist extremism. "The United States is definitely not at war with Islam," he writes. "But a group of self-identified, extremist Muslims has definitely declared war on us, a war which they explicitly justify by reference to their religion." Well, VIE is a start, but I think it could usefully be defined even more strictly: Islamicism. That's the term I will use, going forward. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Call them nitwits

The Atlantic has a hilarious if perhaps over-optimistic essay about Osama bin Laden & Co: "Our terrorist enemies trade on the perception that they’re well trained and religiously devout, but in fact, many are fools and perverts who are far less organized and sophisticated than we imagine." It's not just the homegrown variety, the hapless Underwear Bomber and his soulmate in farce, the Times Square Bomber. Routinely, argue the authors, jihadists blow themselves and their friends up when they perform the ritual group hug before setting out to off the infidel. And those aren't the only rituals they perform! Read it and snicker.

The authors also have a serious point to make: we should "work to undermine some of the myths built up around our enemies by highlighting their incompetence, their moral failings, and their embarrassing antics. Beyond changing how the Muslim world perceives terrorists, we can help ourselves make smarter counterterrorism choices by being more realistic about the profile and aptitude of would-be attackers."

 The first part at least could have been written by John Boyd. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Soldier of the Lord

Here's a taped rant from that American-born spokesman for al-Qaeda who may or may not have been captured the other day. Like all ideologues, he goes on and on, and even an excerpt is windy, but also revealing:

The year 2009, the inaugural year of a new administration in Washington, ended in a truly miserable fashion for the Crusader West and its intelligence organs, who suffered a series of moral and material blows which culminated in the bloody deaths of at least 8 CIA operatives in a masterfully-planned and executed martyrdom operation inside their clandestine base in Afghanistan. This crushing blow came just a few days after the compromising of America’s supposedly airtight security in a valiant attempt by a heroic soldier of al-Qaida to bring down an American airliner over Detroit. But I would like here to take you back to an earlier event, one whose hero wasn’t a member of al-Qaida or any other Islamic group, but was in fact, a ranking officer of the United States Army, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who, this past autumn, opened fire on a group of American soldiers preparing to deploy to Afghanistan deep within the army’s largest domestic base, Fort Hood, Texas. According to official army figures, at least 13 Crusaders were killed and more than 30 wounded in this surprise attack. Major Nidal Malik Hasan himself was shot, wounded and captured, and has had charges filed against him in a Crusader military court of inquisition in preparation for a summary show trial whose outcome is not in question....

The Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan has shown us what one righteous Muslim with an assault rifle can do for his religion and brothers in faith, and has reminded us of how much pride and joy a single act of resistance and courage can instill in the hearts of Muslims everywhere. The Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan, by the grace of Allah and with a single 30-minute battle, singlehandedly brought the morale of the American military and public to its lowest point in years. The Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan, lightly armed but with a big heart, a strong will and a confident step, again brought into sharp focus the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of America, and again proved wrong those who claim America cannot be hit where it hurts. And most significantly, the Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan is a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role-model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers and yearns to discharge his duty to Allah and play a part in the defense of Islam and Muslims against the savage, heartless and bloody Zionist Crusader assault on our religion, sacred places and homelands.

If you want more, here it is on Threat Matrix. You will find, among other things, that Norway is in the crosshairs for being complicit in honoring Mr Obama. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Another bloody century

This is a remarkably fine book, in which the Anglo-American war scholar Colin Gray takes an educated guess at what future warfare will be like. 'It is a rule in strategy,' he writes in one of his piquant declarations, 'one derived empirically from the evidence of two and a half millenia, that anything of great strategic importance to one belligerent, for that reason has to be worth attacking by others.' He happens to be speaking of space, and in particular the American communications satellites in earth orbit, but as China's recent hacking of American business sites has demonstrated, the warning is equally true of cyberspace. We depend on the internet more than most: ergo, the internet is a particularly inviting target for China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Al Qaeda, und so weiter. Eminently worth a read. Click here to find it on Amazon. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

It's the inheritance, stupid

Now in his second year as president of the United States, Mr Obama is facing a bunch of problems, and guess what? They're all Dubya's fault. 'For a president who campaigned on a promise to close Guantánamo, and who just missed a self-imposed one-year deadline to get the job done, the meltdown of a potential Manhattan 9/11 trial is the latest measure of the stubborn complexity of his national security inheritance,' gravely explains the New York Times today. One would think, rather, that they were the latest measure of his national security policies. Mr Bush, after all, did not force Mr Obama to close the Caribbean prison, nor to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to trial in downtown Manhattan.

Federal law requires that a criminal trial take place where the crime was committed. (I didn't know that!) If Ground Zero has been ruled out, rural Pennsylvania would seem to be a prime candidate. But the Justice Department is also looking at Newark and Boston, from whose airports the fatal jetliners took off. That will thrill the folks who just sent Scott Brown to Congress. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The new shape of war

He might not be your first choice for scaling the walls of Troy, but this soldier spends his days on the cyberwar front, and we can hope he's agile enough for that. In Foreign Policy yesterday, Robert Haddick discusses the silent menace of Chinese, Russian, and al-Qaeda cyber attacks. This is warfare at which the Other has all the advantages, given that the US is arguably the most open and the most networked nation in the world. He links to a lengthy document from the Center for a New American Security, Contested Commons. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

From Osama to Obama

Most of my friends (Good People, all!) don't believe that we are at war, except in two mistaken campaigns of our own choosing. Their arguments to this effect bring Leon Trotsky to mind: 'You may not be interested in war,' the old Bolshevik may or may not have said, 'but war is interested in you.' We may not be at war with Osama bin Laden, but he is most certainly at war with us, as we are reminded by a recent audio tape claiming credit for the underpants bomber of Christmas Day:

In the name of God, the Compassionate and Merciful

Peace be upon those who follow the right path

On behalf of Osama to Obama: if our message could be sent to you by the word, we should not have sent in by planes.

The message we wanted to provide you with the aircraft of the hero Umar Farouk, May God lighten his sufferings confirms the previous messages transmitted by the heroes of September 11, which were repeated before and after that date.

The message is that the United States can not aspire to security before it becomes a reality in Palestine. It is unfair that you have a quiet life while our brethren in Ghaza live in bad conditions."

By the will of God, our attacks against you will continue as long as your support the Israelis.

Peace be upon those who follow the right path.

Like Trotsky's quote, the warning may be misattributed, and even if genuine Osama may be taking credit for something he had little to do with, but the words nonetheless worth hearing. Al Qaeda is interested in us. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford