John Keegan is England’s foremost military historian and, for many years, was the Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. His book — The Second World War — is arguably the best single volume book on World War II and his book The Face of Battle is essential reading for anyone seeking an understanding of the history of warfare. His newest book — The Iraq War — was published in 2004, and here are prior posts on Mr. Keegan’s views on the Iraq War.
In short, when John Keegan talks about war, pull up a chair an listen.
In this Daily Telegraph op-ed, Mr. Keegan provides a pragmatic analysis of the American-British approach to the war and elections in Iraq. In so doing, he disabuses several popular notions about the war effort, including the notion that the current violence in the Sunni Triangle and Baghdad reflect larger problems with the war effort:

Regarded solely as a military operation, the Iraq war of 2003 was a scintillating success. It is the aftermath that has sowed doubt among those who supported the decision to risk an attack.
Casualties among the Western forces have risen. Casualties among Iraqis have risen even higher and continue to rise; not, however, for the reasons foreseen by the anti-war party. It is not conventional force or conventional defence tactics that end lives, but something quite different, which may be called large-scale terrorism, largely by car bombing, suicide bombing and the assassination of Iraqis who co-operate with Westerners.
This is not a new development. What is going on in Iraq resembles the second Palestinian intifada, though it is more intensive and better organised. It is also more difficult to counter, since the Western forces lack the detailed intelligence to which the Israeli security forces have access.

Mr. Keegan also puts to rest the increasingly popular notion that America’s involvement in Iraq is “becoming another Vietnam:”

Some critics of Western occupation policy are raising the idea that Iraq is becoming a Vietnam, a popular thought with old-style opponents of American foreign policy, but quite inaccurate. What America confronted in Vietnam was ideological nationalism, organised at several levels, political and military, all ultimately depending on the Vietcong’s ability to defeat the enemy by conventional methods. There is absolutely no equivalent in Iraq of the Vietcong main force and its battalions of highly motivated infantrymen.

With his powerful historical perspective, Mr. Keegan goes to explain the source of the Iraqi opposition, the difficulties involved in quelling it, and the threatening nature of the upcoming elections to that opposition. These are compelling and thoughtful points of a true clear thinking expert on the nature of war. Check out the entire article.

When you have a moment, take a look at this fine New York Times feature of photos and graphics relating to last week’s killer tsunami.
By the way, when I added the donation link through Amazon to the Red Cross Tsunami Relief Fund on Wednesday, the total amount of donations was about $1.9 million. As of this writing, the total donations are in excess of $10.6 million. The power of the Internet is truly amazing.

The Belmont Club has this excellent initial analysis of the insurgent attack in Mosul yesterday that killed more than 20 people, including American military and civilian personnel.
The information and analysis that can be gleaned from blogs such as the Belmont Club puts the accounts of such incidents generated from the mainstream media to shame.

James Q. Wilson is the Ronald Reagan professor of public policy at Pepperdine University. In this must read Commentary article, Professor Wilson explores the prospects for the emergence of liberal democracies in Muslim countries such as Iraq. His introduction to the topic foretells the depth with which Professor Wilson treats this important issue:

What are the prospects for the emergence of liberal societies in Muslim countries? Note my choice of words: ?liberal,? not ?democratic.? Democracy, defined as competitive elections among rival slates of candidates, is much harder to find in the world than liberalism, defined as a decent respect for the freedom and autonomy of individuals. There are more Muslim nations?indeed, more nations of any stripe?that provide a reasonable level of freedom than ones that provide democracy in anything like the American or British versions.
Freedom?that is, liberalism?is more important than democracy because freedom produces human opportunity. In the long run, however, democracy is essential to freedom, because no political regime will long maintain the freedoms it has provided if it has an ironclad grip on power. Culture and constitutions can produce freedom; democracy safeguards and expands it.
This is what lies at the heart of our efforts to make Afghanistan and Iraq into liberal states. . .
There are certainly grounds for pessimism. For centuries, only Great Britain and its former colonies?Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States?could be called democratic. And even in those countries, the struggle to acquire both liberal and democratic values had been a long and hard one. It took half a millennium before England moved from the signing of Magna Carta to the achievement of parliamentary supremacy; three centuries after Magna Carta, Catholics were being burned at the stake. The United States was a British colony for two centuries, and less than a century after its independence was split by a frightful civil war. Elsewhere, Portugal and Spain became reasonably free only late in the 20th century, and in Latin America many societies have never even achieved the stage of liberalism. The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once remarked that, of all the states in existence in the world in 1914, only eight would escape a violent change of government between then and the early 1990?s.
Nevertheless, liberal regimes have been less uncommon than democratic ones. In 1914 there were three democracies in Europe, but many more countries where your neck would be reasonably safe from the heel of government. You might not have wished to live in Germany, but Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Norway, and Sweden offered reasonably attractive alternatives even if few of them could then have been called democracies in the modern American or British sense.
As for the Middle East, there have been only three democracies in its history: Lebanon, Turkey, and of course Israel. Israel remains free and democratic despite being besieged by enemies. But of the two Muslim nations, only one, Turkey, became reasonably democratic after a 50-year effort, while Lebanon, which has been liberal and democratic on some occasions and not on others, is today a satellite of Syria and the home of anti-Israel and anti-Western terrorists; Freedom House ranks it as ?not free.?
Is the matter as universally hopeless as this picture might suggest? Suppose, as a freedom-loving individual, you had to live in a Muslim nation somewhere in the world. You would assuredly not pick Baathist Syria or theocratic Iran or Saddam?s Iraq. But you might pick Turkey, or Indonesia, or Morocco. In what follows, I want to explore what makes those three countries different, and what the difference might mean for the future.

Professor Wilson’s following conclusion also reflects the wisdom with which he addresses his subject:

The good news is that, as compared with support for democracy, support for a liberal regime [in Iraq] is very broad. Over 90 percent want free speech, about three-fourths want freedom of religion, and over three-fourths favor free assembly. Freedom is more important than democracy?a fact that might well have been true in America and England in the 18th century.
And here is where an important lesson lurks for us. Scholars at the RAND corporation have studied America?s efforts at nation-building in the last half-century, ranging from our successes (Germany and Japan) to our failures (Haiti and Somalia) and to all the uncertain outcomes in-between (Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo). One of the most important things we should have learned, they conclude, is that ?while staying long does not guarantee success, leaving early ensures failure.?
In order for freedom to have a chance of developing in Iraq, we must be patient as well as strong. It would be an unmitigated disaster to leave too early. Our Iraqi supporters would be crushed, terrorists and Islamic radicals would have won, and our own struggle and sacrifices would have been for naught.
Liberalism and democracy would bring immeasurable gains to Iraq, and through Iraq to the Middle East as a whole. So far, the country lacks what has helped other Muslim nations make the change?a remarkably skilled and powerful leader, a strong army devoted to secular rule, an absence of ethnic conflict. If we may nevertheless be cautiously optimistic, it is because of the hope that we will indeed stay there as long as we are needed.

Read the entire piece.

Longtime Houstonian and former Secretary of both the State and Treasury Departments, James A. Baker III, opines in this NY Times op-ed that the time is now to begin substantive discussions for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and he provides some concrete thoughts on how to accomplish that goal:

Stability in Iraq and peace between Palestinians and Israelis can be pursued at the same time. In fact, working toward the latter improves the chances of attaining the former. . .
The so-called quartet (the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations), which has been working on a “road map” for peace between the Palestinians and Israelis for several years, supports a two-state solution, as do the vast majority of both Palestinians and Israelis. President Bush certainly favors this goal, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel has publicly supported it as well, . . .
So the real question is how to take advantage of this window of opportunity to achieve that two-state solution. Specifically, what steps should be taken? Who needs to do what?
First, it is critical that negotiations resume. For this to happen, of course, Israel must have a negotiating partner on the Palestinian side. That partner will best emerge from free elections. Elections have been scheduled for Jan. 9, and all who support peace between Israel and the Palestinians have an obligation to do all within their power to see that those elections are successfully held.
Palestinian candidates should clearly and unequivocally renounce terrorism as a means of achieving a political result – and call upon their supporters to do likewise. And those Palestinians should commit themselves to an unequivocal, good-faith effort to crack down on terrorist groups that make a target of Israel.
In exchange, Israel should announce that upon the election of a Palestinian negotiating partner, it is prepared to resume substantive negotiations for peace without requiring that all terrorist activities cease in advance. To require the absence of any terrorist act in advance simply empowers the terrorists themselves to prevent the resumption of peace negotiations.
The United States should itself clearly embrace and articulate the unequivocal, good-faith standard for the resumption of dialogue. The United States should further prevail upon Israel to cease settlement activity in the occupied territories pending Palestinian elections and during the resumption of peace negotiations. Washington should also do everything else that it can to encourage both sides to resume meaningful talks. And it should serve, where necessary, as a direct participant in the talks, offering suggestions, brokering compromises and extending assurances.
We cannot, of course, prejudge the final outcome of any talks. But the plan presented by President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000 – and rejected by Yasir Arafat – surely offers one plausible place to start.
While the United States cannot dictate the terms of peace to either party, it can and should actively promote the resumption of negotiations. The time to start is now.

Read the entire piece. Mr. Baker is certainly correct that conditioning talks on the cessation of terrorist attacks simply empowers the radical Islamic fascists whose only goal is the destruction of Israel.
However, the legacy of failed negotiations with Arafat is the fact that he supported such attacks, on one hand, while negotiating with Israel on the other. The lack of trust that resulted from that duplicity has permeated Israeli-Palestinian relations for the past generation. Whether the new Palestinian leadership is capable of standing up to the forces within its leadership that foment that lack of trust will ultimately be the key element to the success or failure of any new initative.

The latest news from the wild world of Equatorial Guinea is not good for Mark Thatcher, the son of former English Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Here are the previous posts on this lurid affair. Movie rights to be sold soon.

Marc Sageman was a CIA case officer in Afghanistan between 1987?89 and is now a forensic psychiatrist in Philadelphia. His book, Understanding Terror Networks, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press earlier this year.
After the attacks on New York and Washington of September 11, 2002, Dr. Sageman noticed the lack of systematic data on the perpetrators, so he began to apply the principles of evidence-based medicine to terrorism research. He gathered terrorist biographies from various sources, relying most heavily on the records of various criminal trials. After matrixing approximately 400 biographies, Dr. Sageman began a social-network analysis of this group.
This Foreign Policy Research Institute article provides a summary of Dr. Sageman’s findings and conclusions. Inasmuch as the entire article is fascinating, I had a difficult time deciding which excerpts to pass along, but here are a few.
First, Dr. Sageman notes that the key period of development for the current radical Islamic fascists was the time in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s when their leadership gathered in Khartoum, Sudan to hatch their dream of indepedent “Salafi” states:

The Khartoum period is critical, because what these violent Salafists basically want to do is to create a Salafi state in a core Arab country. Salafi (from Salaf, ?ancient ones? or ?predecessors? in Arabic) is an emulation, an imitation of the mythical Muslim community that existed at the time of Mohammed and his companion, which Salafists believe was the only fair and just society that ever existed. A very small subset of Salafis, the disciples of Qutb, believe they cannot create this state peacefully through the ballot-box but have to use violence. The utopia they strive for is similar to most utopias in European thought of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, such as the communist classless society.

Moreover, Dr. Sageman points out that the background of the radical Islamic fascist leadership is similar to that of the “best and the brightest” of the societies from which they have emerged:

Most people think that terrorism comes from poverty, broken families, ignorance, immaturity, lack of family or occupational responsibilities, weak minds susceptible to brainwashing – the sociopath, the criminals, the religious fanatic, or, in this country, some believe they?re just plain evil.
Taking these perceived root causes in turn, three quarters of my sample came from the upper or middle class. The vast majority?90 percent?came from caring, intact families. Sixty-three percent had gone to college, as compared with the 5-6 percent that?s usual for the third world. These are the best and brightest of their societies in many ways.
Al Qaeda?s members are not the Palestinian fourteen-year- olds we see on the news, but join the jihad at the average age of 26. Three-quarters were professionals or semi- professionals. They are engineers, architects, and civil engineers, mostly scientists. Very few humanities are represented, and quite surprisingly very few had any background in religion. The natural sciences predominate. Bin Laden himself is a civil engineer, Zawahiri is a physician, Mohammed Atta was, of course, an architect; and a few members are military, such as Mohammed Ibrahim Makawi, who is supposedly the head of the military committee.

Mr. Sageman notes that there really is not one profile for a radical Islamic fascist:

So what?s in common? There?s really no profile, just similar trajectories to joining the jihad and that most of these men were upwardly and geographically mobile. Because they were the best and brightest, they were sent abroad to study. They came from moderately religious, caring, middle-class families. They?re skilled in computer technology. They spoke three, four, five, six languages. Most Americans don?t know Arabic; these men know two or three Western languages: German, French, English.
When they became homesick, they did what anyone would and tried to congregate with people like themselves, whom they would find at mosques. So they drifted towards the mosque, not because they were religious, but because they were seeking friends. They moved in together in apartments, in order to share the rent and also to eat together – they were mostly halal, those who observed the Muslim dietary laws, similar in some respects to the kosher laws of Judaism. Some argue that such laws help to bind a group together since observing them is something very difficult and more easily done in a group. A micro-culture develops that strengthens and absorbs the participants as a unit. This is a halal theory of terrorism, if you like.
These cliques, often in the vicinity of mosques that had a militant script advocating violence to overthrow the corrupt regimes, transformed alienated young Muslims into terrorists. It?s all really group dynamics. You cannot understand the 9/11 type of terrorism from individual characteristics. The suicide bombers in Spain are another perfect example. Seven terrorists sharing an apartment and one saying ?Tonight we?re all going to go, guys.? You can?t betray your friends, and so you go along. Individually, they probably would not have done it.

In fact, the lack of these social networks is one of the reasons why Dr. Sageman believes that another 9/11-type attack has not occurred in the United States:

Indeed, there are not that many terrorists in America. There have never been any sleeper cells. All the terrorists are fairly obvious. The FBI cases we see in the press tend to unravel. The Detroit group has been exonerated, and the prosecutor is now being prosecuted for malfeasance on the planted evidence. He allegedly knew exculpatory facts that he did not present to the defense. The only sleeper America has ever had in a century was Soviet Col. Rudolf Abel, who was arrested in the late 1950s and exchanged for Gary Powers, the U2 pilot. Eastern European countries did send sleepers to this country, men fully trained who ?go to sleep??lead normal lives?and then are activated to become fully operational. But they all became Americans.
In order to really sustain your motivation to do terrorism, you need the reinforcement of group dynamics. You need reinforcement from your family, your friends. This social movement was dependent on volunteers, and there are huge gaps worldwide on those volunteers. One of the gaps is the United States. This is one of two reasons we have not had a major terrorist operation in the United States since 9/11. The other is that we are far more vigilant. We have actually made coming to the U.S. far more difficult for potential terrorists since 2001.

But Dr. Sageman warns that the radical Islamic fascists have adapted and changed the way in which they will plan future attacks:

We hear that Al Qaeda plans its attacks for years and years. It may have before 9-11, but not anymore. Operatives in caves simply cannot communicate with people in the field. The network has been fairly well broken by our intelligence services. The network is now self-organized from the bottom up, and is very decentralized. With local initiative and flexibility, it?s very robust. True, two-thirds to three- quarters of the old leaders have been taken out, but that doesn?t mean that we?re home free. The network grows organically, like the Internet. We couldn?t have identified the Madrid culprits, because we wouldn?t have known of them until the first bomb exploded.
So in 2004, Al Qaeda has new leadership. In a way today?s operatives are far more aggressive and senseless than the earlier leaders. The whole network is held together by the vision of creating the Salafi state. A fuzzy, idea-based network really requires an idea-based solution. The war of ideas is very important and this is one we haven?t really started to engage yet.

Read the entire article.

In this Asia Times op-ed from the Asia Times, Spengler explores the the theological challege that moderate Muslims face in siding with the West in its war against the radical Islamic fascists. The entire piece is a must read, but this excerpt gives you a taste of the dilemma that moderate Muslims face:

Smugness oozes from European politicians who demand that Muslims repudiate violence as a precondition for residence in the West. To repudiate the death sentence for blasphemy would be the same as abandoning the Islamic order in traditional society in favor of a Western-style religion of personal conscience. The West spent centuries of time and rivers of blood to make such a transition, and carried it off badly. Whether Islam can do so at all remains doubtful.

Read the entire piece.

This NY Times article reports on the agreement of The world’s leading industrial nations to cancel 80 percent of the nearly $40 billion of debt that Iraq owes them, which is a critical step in rebuilding the country’s devastated economy and an important precedent for placing pressure on Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq’s other Middle Eastern neighbors to forgive Iraq’s obligations owed to them.
Longtime Houstonian and former Secretary of both the State and Treasury Departments, James Baker III, who President Bush appointed last year as a special envoy to press Iraq’s creditors to write off money owed them, toured the world over the past year persuading various foreign governments to sign on to the debt forgiveness plan. Kudos to Mr. Baker for a job well done.

I regularly read an interesting blog called The Diplomad, which is authored by several Republican U.S. Foreign Service officers who describe themselves as being “in an institution (State Department)in which being a Republican can be bad for your career — even with a Republican President!”
In this recent post, the Diplomad passes along an analysis of Colin Powell’s tenure at the State Department from a former Foreign Service Officer. It’s an interesting and balanced piece, and I recommend that you give it a look, along with this interesting blog.