The Hilary Weapon Unleashed

H/T Diogenese via e-mail

Playing By The Old Rules

The Taliban seems to be in a spot of bother in Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD – A group of Taliban fighters under siege by hundreds of angry tribesmen tried to sneak to another village in northwest Pakistan, only to find themselves cornered there too, an official said Tuesday.

A citizens' militia that sprang up over the weekend to avenge a deadly suicide bombing at a mosque in Upper Dir district appeared unwilling to stop pursuing the Islamist fighters, underscoring the rising anti-Taliban sentiment in Pakistan.

And why are the locals upset?

Officials have said the Taliban carried out Friday's mosque bombing that killed 33 in the town of Haya Gai because they were angry that local tribesmen had resisted their moving into the area, where minor clashes between the two sides occurred for months. Rabi said the tribesmen had sworn on the Quran that they would not let the militants go unpunished.

At least 13 insurgents have died in the fighting since Saturday.

The citizens' militia, or lashkar, was using its own weapons and had no police backup, Rabi said.

The army's chief spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, on Monday urged civilians to consider the kind of rule the Taliban was trying to impose — they stand accused of whippings and beheadings in the name of Islamic law in Swat — and join the fight against them.

"Citizens should ponder upon the way of life they are introducing, if that is acceptable to us," Abbas told the News1 television network. "If not, they have to raise a voice against them, they have to rise against them."

The Obama administration is supporting the efforts in Pakistan against the Taliban. I wonder though if Mr. Obama wanted to see the General's message repeated in America. Some people might get ideas.

Failing States Or It's The Money Stupid

Not California. Although California is failing. The States I'm going to discuss are Muslim States affected by the world wide financial crisis. Spengler is taking his usual jaundiced look at the world.

Financial crises, like epidemics, kill the unhealthy first. The present crisis is painful for most of the world but deadly for many Muslim countries, and especially so for the most populous ones. Policy makers have not begun to assess the damage.

Spengler wrote this in December of 2008 and half a year later the policy makers are no further along.

Moderate Islam was the El Dorado of the diplomatic consensus. It might have been the case that Pakistan could be tethered to Western interests, or that Iran could be engaged peacefully, or that Turkey would incubate a moderate form of Islam. I considered all of this delusional, but the truth is that we shall never know. The financial crisis will sort them out first.

As I commented in the late autumn, the world is not flat, but flattened (see Asia Times Online, October 28, 2008), leaving the economies of the largest Muslim countries in ruins. It is hard to forecast the political fallout, for when each available choice leads to a failed state, it is a matter of indifference which one you adopt. As state finances crumble, states will become less important, and freebooters will seize the stage. Think of the Mumbai terrorists as a political cognate of the Somali pirates, and the character of a Middle East made up of failed states comes into focus.

Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad controls Iran through a kleptocracy of Central African proportions, dissipating the country's oil windfall into payoffs to an "entire class of hangers-on of the Islamic revolution", as I wrote in June (see Worst of times for Iran, Asia Times Online, June 24, 2008), when oil still sold at US$135 a barrel. What will Ahmadinejad do now that the oil price has collapsed? According to my Iranian sources, the answer is: Exactly the same thing, but without the money.

Iran is a State that depends on oil socialism. And the problem with all socialisms is that they eventually run out of other people's money. Did I mention California? I do believe I did. First thing too. Surprisingly California has oil which they do not intend to drill for. It's the ecology don't you know.

The point of the joke is that Iran's regime cannot reduce subsidies or raise taxes without losing control of the constituencies that brought it to power. They are the peasants and the urban poor who barely afford shelter and food as matters stand. Despite the oil-price collapse, the government has not reduced energy subsidies that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) puts at more than a fifth of gross domestic product (GDP). A proposed value-added tax was withdrawn last October after strikes in the bazaars, starting in Isfahan and other provincial towns and spreading to the capital Tehran. Iran is eating through its $60 billion of foreign exchange reserves, unable to adjust to a collapse of its only significant revenue source.

Iran must break down, I argued last June, or break out, through a military adventure. The sand is slipping out of the hour glass, and the regime must decide what to do within a few months. If it does nothing, the default position, as it were, is Pakistan.

Pakistan has a couple of ways to reduce its dependent population. A civil war - which appears to be underway or foreign adventures which have as yet not seriously materialized.

Iran's Ahmadinejad rules through massive subsidies. Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari does the same thing, but without the money. Pakistan ran out of foreign exchange reserves in November and obtained emergency financing from the IMF. Its current account deficit was running at an alarming 14% of GDP, or about $20 billion a year, a small sum, but an important one for a country two-thirds of whose 175 million people subsist on less than $2 a day.

Pakistan received just $7.6 billion from the IMF, covering a third of its current account deficit, which means that imports must be reduced drastically (although lower oil prices may help a bit). Inflation is running at 25% a year.

Pakistan has one of the world's youngest populations and an enormous capital requirement. Young people borrow from old people, and countries with young populations should import capital from countries with aging populations. That is out of the question, for the world markets have turned Pakistan into a pariah. The cost of credit protection on Pakistani sovereign debt
is now more than 3,000 points (or 30%) above the benchmark London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), reflecting a complete shutout from capital markets.

A 30+% rate implies that Pakistan can't last more than three years as a country. I believe that in this case the market is underestimating the risk. Where have we seen that before? The US housing market? Evidently a clue stick is insufficient to get the world wide money boys to wake up. Perhaps a clue bomb is required. It is coming.

Pakistan was at least able to raise a modicum of official support. What will Iran do if its reserves run out? The same thing as Pakistan, but without the money, for Iran is a geopolitical pariah without access to official aid.

The Muslim risk premium has become so pervasive that investors are looking cross-eyed at Saudi Arabia. The cost of credit protection on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has jumped since August, and now is considerably higher than Israel's.

But what about all that oil? Israel has none and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is awash in it. Evidently a barrel of oil doesn't carry you as far, money wise, as it used to.

Turkey has been able to keep afloat through the crisis, but barely so. The Turkish currency has fallen by a third, its stock market has fallen by nearly 80% in dollar terms, and the central bank must keep interest rates at a punishing 20% to prevent money from fleeing the country. Turkey has a real economy with a few first-rate manufacturing companies, unlike Iran and Pakistan, so the comparison is not quite fair. Nonetheless, Turkey relied heavily on short-term interbank borrowings to finance its balance of trade deficit, and the crisis has pulled the carpet out from under its economy. In August, before the crisis erupted in force, Turkey had 10% unemployment. It will get much worse.

Turkey was the poster-child for the so-called carry trade, in which hedge funds and other investors borrowed in low-interest currencies, for example the Japanese yen, and lent the money in high-interest currencies, of which Turkey's lira was the highest. The carry trade was the main source of money for Turkish business. What will Turkey do now that the credit crisis has made the "carry trade" a painful memory? The same thing, but without the money.

Pakistan is about to become a failed state, and Iran and Turkey will be close behind. As I commented to Chan Akya's report of December 2 on this site (see The
hottest place in the world), Pakistan's military-age population is far greater than those of other Muslim military powers in the region. With about 20 million men of military age, Pakistan today has as much manpower as Turkey and Iran combined, and by 2035 it will have half again as many.

Spengler goes on with more grim details and finishes with:

The lights are going out across the Middle East; states are failing, and it is not in the power of the West to make them whole again. All the strategic calculations that busied policy analysts and diplomats are changing, and the West has a very short time to learn the rules of a new and terrible game.

So the question is this: can Obama and Company raise their game? My personal opinion is that they are not up to the job. America is currently short of carrots and Obama, unlike Bush, is not big on sticks. My prediction: a crisis (financial) carried Obama into office, a crisis (military) will carry him out of office. Ah for the good old days of FDR. He was no better than the Obama crew relative to economics but, from his tenure as Secretary of the Navy, he knew how to fight.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

An Insufficiency Of Troops

When he was campaigning for President Mr. Obama thought that bombing people was bad.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Asked whether he would move U.S. troops out of Iraq to better fight terrorism elsewhere, he brought up Afghanistan and said, "We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there."

Evidently he has changed his mind.

Fri Jan 23, 2009 5:11 pm ET

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Suspected U.S. missiles killed 18 people on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border Friday, security officials said, the first attacks on the al-Qaida stronghold since President Barack Obama took office. At least five foreign militants were among those killed in the strikes by unmanned aircraft in two parts of the frontier region, an intelligence official said without naming them. There was no information on the identities of the others.

Pakistan's leaders had expressed hope Obama might halt the strikes, but few observers expected he would end a tactic that U.S. officials say has killed several top al-Qaida operatives and is denying the terrorist network a long-held safe haven.

Good to see Mr. Obama decisively putting into action the policies that he really believes in. Those of George Bush.

Happy days are here again. I wonder if he has any plans to bomb Iran after Pakistan?



H/T Pal2Pal

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Obama Be

Team Obama has figured out a way to stop his slide in the polls. Summer Camp.

The BHO campaign has sent out emails to me and probably millions of other lucky recipients encouraging us to sign up for a local "Camp Obama" (my.barackobama.com/page/s/campobamaus, my.barackobama.com/page/s/campobama08la), a two-day session where we'd learn how to be effective organizers for the campaign. Hopefully a citizen reporter will sign up to report back with a critical eye, but for now all we have are the positive and very many negative connotations brought to mind. You can see a full copy of the email here, and if you want to be creeped out even more see the description of last year's "camps" here:

Rivals of Obama know that while he may at times appear to channel Martin Luther King Jr., his methods sometimes give evidence of his allegiance to [Saul Alinsky], who shunned starry-eyed idealists and recommended purging do-gooders from organizations. Alinsky wanted results. And his methods often forced the hands of elected officials... It's not enough to want to help others, [an Obama campaign staffer] says. These campers need to focus on people's self-interests. What do they want? How can Obama help them? ..."We want you to stop thinking about Barack Obama and be Barack Obama," she says.

Did some one say Clone Wars?

Obama has taken Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers and turned it into a national campaign. Can you say reparations?

So let us have a look at Alinsky's handbook Rules For Radicals. Just so we can see the train coming and get off the tracks. Here is a list of the rules.

RULE 1:"Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have." Power is derived from 2 main sources - money and people. "Have-Nots" must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)

That would explain a lot of the current campaign's dynamics. Obama is running on the idea that a lot of people fear being called racists. If that fear is not there then his campaign has no power. McCain has neutered that whole line of attack. It may play well among the latte liberals (Tom Wolfe called them the radical chic) but it will not play well against the original anti-slavery party (Abe Lincoln was a Republican).

RULE 2: "Never go outside the expertise of your people." It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. (Organizations under attack wonder why radicals don't address the "real" issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.)

This would explain Obama's One note campaign: "I'm Black. Vote for me or we will brand you a racist." All his other policy positions are amendable (see flip-flop, Obama). Obama might not know math, science, economics, or any number of other things. He does know race and so does his base.

RULE 3: "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy." Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

Again. This may work for latte liberals but Clinton supporters (whose husband was touted as the first "black" President) are not buying it. Did I mention that Republicans were the original anti-racist party?

RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

There may be racists in the Republican Party (as there are racists in the Democrat Party). McCain is not one of them. His strength is as the strength of ten because his heart is pure.

RULE 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

This has been turned against Obama with McCain's "Paris Hilton" ad and his "The One" ad.

RULE 6: "A good tactic is one your people enjoy." They'll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They're doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid "un-fun" activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)

Evidently the Obama Campaign and his mighty minions love calling people racists. I don't see any fun in that. Only sadness. However, to each his own.

RULE 7: "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag." Don't become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)

So far the Obama campaign has been a one note campaign. Besides any tactic that is over used wears out its welcome. The "cry wolf" syndrome. I wonder which way they can turn now? The post racialist candidate has been branded a racialist. Where do they go from here?

RULE 8: "Keep the pressure on. Never let up." Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

Well they have to find pressure points. Places where the pressure is effective. So what are Obama's choices? Anti-surge? The surge is working. McCain was way out front on that one. More drilling for oil? McCain was at least a month ahead of Obama on that one and Obama's statement was not unequivocal. He wants limited drilling. McCain placed no such limits on his policy. Higher taxes? That has been death for any candidate pushing that proposition hard. So what can he come up with that will keep his team on side and make advances on his opposition? This is going to be interesting to watch.

RULE 9: "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself." Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists' minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)

Ah yes. "We will call you a racist if you keep attacking our positions. How is that working out Barry? That threat is gone. He is going to have to come up with a new one. Fear of labeling McCain a war monger? I think Obama is weak on that. He called for pulling out of Iraq and attacks on Pakistan in August of 2007. He labeled McCain McSame. So what has Bush done? Well he has attacked the terrorists in Pakistan and threatened further attacks if Pakistan didn't straighten out. Preempting Obama's whole line on that front. I wonder if Bush and McSame are working together? They are both Republicans. What are the odds? In any case warmongering does not play well to Obama's base. He will have to tread lightly. So far he has not come out with "we were right all along" on this one. No need to remind the base about it, because for him it is a double edged sword.

RULE 10: "If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive." Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management's wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)

How is that racism thing working out? McCain has refused to take the bait. In turn he has counter attacked making Obama look obsessed with race. And he is obsessed with race. Just read his books.

RULE 11: "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative." Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)

Of course the alternative to racism is the post racialist candidate. Obama needed to present himself as anti-racist not anti-white. He screwed the pooch on that one with this primary attacks on Clinton. Ooops.

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

Well he has gone after McCain in particular AND the Republicans in general. McCain blunted the attack, and counter attacked. Republicans are not buying it at all.

McCain, the fighter pilot, has gotten inside Obama's OODA loop. Something the Navy teaches fighter pilots to do.

The OODA Loop, often called Boyd's Cycle, is a creation of Col. John Boyd, USAF (Ret.). Col. Boyd was a student of tactical operations and observed a similarity in many battles and campaigns. He noted that in many of the engagements, one side presented the other with a series of unexpected and threatening situations with which they had not been able to keep pace. The slower side was eventually defeated. What Col. Boyd observed was the fact that conflicts are time competitive.

Elections are nothing if they are not time competitive. Evidently the "freezing of the opponent" that Alinsky recommends has not worked on McCain. He was not frozen. Once that happened McCain was operating inside Obama's decision loop.

Evidently Boyd is beating Alinsky. Or to put it another way. The fighter pilot is beating the community organizer. As a Navy man myself, I'm not surprised.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Iran And Al Queda

Time Magazine discusses the connection between Al Queda and Iran:

A senior U.S. official told TIME that the Commission has uncovered evidence suggesting that between eight and ten of the 14 "muscle" hijackers—that is, those involved in gaining control of the four 9/11 aircraft and subduing the crew and passengers—passed through Iran in the period from October 2000 to February 2001. Sources also tell TIME that Commission investigators found that Iran had a history of allowing al-Qaeda members to enter and exit Iran across the Afghan border. This practice dated back to October 2000, with Iranian officials issuing specific instructions to their border guards—in some cases not to put stamps in the passports of al-Qaeda personnel—and otherwise not harass them and to facilitate their travel across the frontier. The report does not, however, offer evidence that Iran was aware of the plans for the 9/11 attacks.

The senior official also told TIME that the report will note that Iranian officials approached the al-Qaeda leadership after the bombing of the USS Cole and proposed a collaborative relationship in future attacks on the U.S., but the offer was turned down by bin Laden because he did not want to alienate his supporters in Saudi Arabia.

Which brings up my esteemed Senator from Illinois, Mr. Barack Obama who wants to bomb Pakistan. I think he should consider bombing Iran - our enemy - before he takes on Pakistan - our ally.

Update: At one point I was wondering why Obama didn't mention Saudi Arabia. I found out why he didn't mention Saudi Arabia. Edwards already has it.

Assault On The Red Mosque

For a full chronology of what has caused the Red Mosque explosion in Pakistan the International Herald Tribune runs down the happenings since January.

Jihad Watch has the short version.

The mosque is surrounded by several thousand heavily armed government commandos and rangers. The siege began Tuesday, after a vicious gun battle that left 19 people dead. Clerics at the Red Mosque, in a residential neighborhood in the heart of the normally tranquil capital, had been provoking the government for months with operations aimed at stamping out vice. Students from a madrassa, or religious school, affiliated with the mosque abducted police officers and alleged prostitutes, and they threatened music store owners with attacks.

The mosque standoff comes as Pakistan faces a growing threat from religious extremists, who have been moving eastward from the Afghan border in recent years.

Attacking music stores seems to be a recurrent theme among the jihadis. Now if they were just against rap music I could understand it. This seems excessive. Don't they have any respect for culture? I think I know the answer to that one.

Bill Roggio has the play by play.

10th July 7:00 AM
A part of Lal Masjid on fire!! Black smoke rising from the complex. Intense fighting going on, and severe resistance from the militants.

10th July 7:15 AM
Commandos enter the basement!. The top of complex has been cleared. 10 big buses dispatched towards Lal Masjid. Intense shelling of tear gas and firing continues and rounds of automatic weapons can be heard from here. Ghazi Rasheed says he will fight till martyrdom. Security forces dead bodies being rushed to PIMS. 50 people arrested from the complex till now. Residents of G-6 advised not to leave their homes. 70 resistants killed or injured in the operation so far.

10th July 7:20 AM
3 special forces personal die. 20 militants casualties. 15 militants injured. Nerve gas used in the basement. Firing has reduced a somewhat probably due to causalities within the complex. 40% of the complex under security forces control. A significant portion of the complex was bobby trapped according to the army spokesman

10th July 7:30 AM
Firing has subsided a lot, which could probably mean that security forces have essentially taken over a major portion of the complex. Operation probably has moved into it’s final phases. Media persons not allowed near the quadrent off site, and security personal have been ordered to shoot them on sight. Media people not allowed near the hospitals too. Scout helicopters flying over the complex.

Evidently it is all over, except for the postmortems. I have seen reports of six families going to the school before the shooting started to retrieve their children. So far there are no reports of the return of the families. With or without their children.

That is really a tragedy. Kids suffer because of their parent's. Later in life kids get to return the favor. With interest. We are in fact today suffering from what children of the Middle East were taught 15 to 20 years ago. Our current difficulties are of recent origin in terms of proximate causes. In terms of more general cause we are suffering from banditry disguising itself as religion. Ultimately it breaks down as it always must because there is no honor among thieves. Starting with the Shia-Sunni split.

The BBC has pictures.

Bloomberg has some more detailed news.

H/T Instapundit

Pakistani Blogger in Canadian Trouble

Isaac Schrodinger needs your help. He is an apostate Muslim trying to get asylum in Canada. It appears that the Canadian authorities are not too sympathetic.

I was presented with a few documents such as the photocopy of my personal file and the supporting papers that I had provided them a few months earlier. A curious two-page document called the Screening Form was also given to me. Basically, in there, my claim was boiled down in a few words. I wasn't satisfied with the summary. In turn, the person(s) who made the Screening Form weren't satisfied with my claim.

For example, a part of the "Claim Description" in the Screening Form:

"PAKISTAN, Punjab, Lahore
Fear is unspecified/unclear
appears to fear persecution because of his anti-Islamic views."

Apparently, I have done an atrocious job of presenting my case. Fortunately, I still have three months to rectify the situation (since I can mail in documents at least 20 days before the hearing).

I asked a few questions about the summary. I was told that it comes down to credibility or rather the lack of it. The Refugee Protection Officer tried to console me by saying that that is the problem with everyone in my situation.

The officer made a phone call to schedule the time for my hearing. She inquired if X day in January is alright. I thought to myself for a second and then asked if it was possible to make it the day after that. The officer went back to the call and in a few seconds answered in the affirmative.

I left the building at 11:30 a.m. Leading up to the meeting, I tried to stay calm but somehow anxiety crept up ever so slowly. When I exited the building, I was mentally tired. I walked to the bus station in zombie-mode.

On the trip back, only one thought echoed in my mind: On my next birthday, I will fight for my life.

If you can offer any support (even just kind words) visit his blog.

H/T Instapundit

Update: 10 Sept '06 0743z

Captain's Quarters is covering the story. Thanks Carol Herman for the heads up.

BTW the way these immigration depts. work is that a generalized muslim threat will not help. What is needed is incidents in Pakistan.