The awesome asymmetry of power between the United States and the Taliban of Afghanistan is such that it creates a spurious sense of hubris in Washington that it alone can decide the pace and intensity of the military conflict, and that it alone can set the timetable for the withdrawal of its forces from the conflict zone.  That was the major assumption of Henry Kissinger’s approach to negotiating the modalities of bringing about an end to the conflict with the North Vietnamese representatives in the 1970s.  The United States found out, to its bitter surprise, how wrong Kissinger really was then.  The North Vietnamese had a stout sense of America’s growing vulnerabilities – the public war protest movement and the intensifying refusal of the U.S. Congress to finance that war.

In Iraq, thanks to the Sahwa movement of the Sunni Iraqi insurgents, the United States did not face defeat, even though it came to the precipice of it.  It eventually succeeded in creating a false semblance of victory, when the level of violence went down in Iraq and the Bush administration brought about major troop withdrawals.  However, as we are finding out on a weekly basis, the conflict in Iraq is far from over.  Thus, only future historians will decide whether the United States won or lost in Iraq.

Things are entirely different in Afghanistan in 2011.  It is a conflict that refuses to go away.  America cannot decide whether or not it wants to implement the counterinsurgency (CI) doctrine in Afghanistan that General David Petraeus famously (and ostensibly successfully) implemented in Iraq.  President Obama’s chief objective is to create some ground realities that would convince the highly skeptical American voters that he is winning in Afghanistan.  So, he is putting all his eggs into the basket of Counterterrorism (CT) strategy, which does not require a high number of boots on the ground in Afghanistan.  There seems to be a profound conclusion in Washington that there will be a credible government in Kabul by July 2012 that would be able to govern the entire country, and that Afghanistan’s security forces will be able to replace the international security assistance forces (ISAF).  That variable became an important aspect of the “talking points” that the talking heads in Washington have been using since President Obama’s speech on June 22, 2011.

However, the ground realities in Afghanistan have a special way of making fools of all of the Washington-based (or Kabul-based for that matter) experts whose full-time indulgence is to live in a make-believe world.  The surprise attack of June 29, 2001, when the heavily guarded InterContinental Hotel was attacked by Taliban suicide attackers, jolted all the forecasters to reexamine their conclusions regarding America’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.  President Hamid Karzai described it as “the worst attack in the Afghan capital for months…”  What is important to note is that, by carrying out that attack, the insurgents are “trying to tighten their psychological grip on the capital with a two-pronged campaign to sow urban terror and extend their influence in surrounding provinces.”

So, what should the Obama administration do now?  The most obvious and vital option is to abandon all notions of withdrawal of American troops and introduce a mega-strategy to fix Afghanistan through nation-building.  I know, “nation-building” is currently a four letter word in Washington, and there is absolutely no constituency for it there.  However, the aforementioned Pottery Barn rule is just as applicable to President Obama today as it was applicable to President Bush in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  The only difference is that Iraq in 2011 continues to create a spurious sense of stability, which is eroding steadily, while political stability in Afghanistan has never existed since 1978, when it was invaded and occupied by the Former Soviet Union.

America’s post-World War II success stories – Japan and Germany – are shining examples of nation-building that lasted over several decades.  And both of those countries were “modern” polities before the war.  Afghanistan also requires nation-building.  However, unlike Germany and Japan of the post-World War II years, it will require an infinitely longer period of time to fix.  It has remained a hellish place since 1978.  It is an absolutely corrupt society with a very high degree of illiteracy, gross absence of institutions, and rules of engagement for “good governance.”  It is a place where obscurantism rules all walks of life.  It has a large expatriate community that can play a crucial role in nation-building.  However, that community is too smart to resettle in Afghanistan as long as warlordism, an opium trade, and religion-based terrorism rule the day.  But, they are likely to return to Afghanistan if the Obama administration signals its serious commitment to nation-building strategy in Afghanistan.

The option of nation-building may appear more palatable for the Obama administration if it considers the fact that it may have no intention of totally withdrawing from Afghanistan.  If it plans to keep a sizeable number of troops in country for the purpose of continuing its exercise of its counterterrorism (CT) strategy, the implementation of that strategy without elaborate  nation-building promises to sink that country deeper into chaos and instability.  Make no mistake, these are variables that both al-Qaida and the Taliban prefer, in order to escalate their own effective capabilities for carrying out deadly attacks and mayhem.

Her apology was not sufficient for the bloodhounds who wanted her fired. She spoke her mind, but, in a politically correct world, she had to pay by resigning. That was very unfortunate, because the push to be politically correct is creating a world where no one would dare challenge conventional wisdom of the West. If one does, one has to be ready to pay the price by ending their productive career.

As much as I am exposed to the American media, it never ceases to amaze me how powerful the pro-Israeli frame of reference really is in this country. It is more powerful than the legendary pro-Israeli lobby AIPAC. It is more pervasive and it is sharply honed to collect any comments about Israel that are considered derisive or even mildly offensive. No one dares to apply the same standards of freedom of speech regarding Israel as they do about everything that is not part of the United States. I was watching Washington Week in Review last Friday (June 4, 2010). The subject was Israeli commandos’ killing on the Turkish peace vessel that broke the Israeli embargo that day. All four journalists on that show were doing their best to dance around the issue. I invite the reader of this column to watch that show.

But entirely different standards are applied to Islam and most things Muslim. When I read about a cartoon contest insulting the Prophet of Islam, or damning Muslim women for wearing hijabs, or banning of hijabs in France in the name of secularism, or the recent vote in Switzerland about disallowing the building of the minarets to a mosque and the related hateful cartoons making the minarets looking like missiles, I wondered how those “fearless” practitioners and defenders of freedom of expression would behave when it comes to Judaism or Israel. There are even laws in some European countries making it a crime to deny that the Holocaust ever happened. I think it is idiotic to deny the occurrence of a shameful incident in history (or any other historical incident for that matter). However, sending someone to jail for denying it is a borderline insane act.

Then there is Helen Thomas, who had very unconventional ideas about the Middle East and Israel, as a dispatch of the Washington Post makes its quite clear. She asked hard questions that no regular American journalist dared ask about America’s war in Iraq: “Why are we killing people in Iraq? Men, women, and children are being killed there. . . . It’s outrageous” she asked. Regarding the Israeli intense bombing of Lebanon during the Hezbollah-Israel war of 2006, she told Tony Snow, one of many Press Secretaries of George W. Bush, that the United States “could have stopped the bombardment of Lebanon” by Israel, but instead had “gone for collective punishment against all of Lebanon and Palestine.” Snow acerbically thanked her for “the Hezbollah view.” On another occasion, according to a freelance cameraman, she was reported to have said “thank God for Hezbollah” for driving Israel out of Lebanon, then added “Israel is the cause for 99 percent of all this terrorism.”

Okay, these are not conventional views, and some of them are certainly politically incorrect. However, the last time I checked, Helen Thomas is living in a democracy, and she has views like all thinking persons or journalists. She was not a reporter, but a columnist. As such, she could (and did) ask questions that were more editorial remarks than questions. So, what? Why shouldn’t she ask them? Just because she was the only person of the White House Press pool given an assigned seat did not mean that she should have become a mouthpiece of whichever president was in the White House or should have never asked questions that would have rattled America’s special friends.

As much as we hear that there is freedom of expression and freedom of the press in the United States, one must also keep in mind a highly implicit aspect of that freedom which goes like this: if you ask politically incorrect questions, and especially anti-Israeli questions, you will pay the price by losing your career or being cast away as a “whacky” person or “nerd.” Almost all dispatches that I read on the Helen Thomas incident identified her as a Lebanese American. One of her former colleagues, Sam Donaldson, former ABC News correspondent and an obnoxious questioner of the powers-that-be during his career, without defending her comments on Israel, said her views likely reflect the views of many people of Arab descent.

If it is okay to relate Thomas’ views with her ethnicity, I wonder how others would react if I were to merely report that a Jewish-American columnist for National Review, Jonah Goldberg, said the following about Thomas: “She’s always said crazy stuff.” Or, another Jewish American, Ari Fleisher, former Press Secretary to George Bush, was reportedly leading the campaign for her ouster and was in the lead in “e-mailing journalists who might have missed her remarks.”

Ideological warfare is becoming too pervasive and strident inside the American political and social arenas. There are extreme right wing Tea Baggers and their pal, Sarah Palin. You want to get your blood boiling? Start or end your day by watching the “fair and balanced” Fox channel, or listen to Rush Limbaugh to find out how much the airwaves are being polluted with insult, bigotry, and other nonsense in the name of journalism.

What is important to know (and remember) is that for most of us there are rules, which we cannot violate even in the name of freedom of expression. For some selected few, no such rules apply. Helen Thomas belonged to the former category.

American Muslims – a great number of them – do not seem to have gone through the kind of socialization process that other Americans have about developing a strong sense of belonging to this country. I am not questioning their patriotism; and I am certainly not stating that there is any sympathy among them toward any terror groups. What I am saying is that Muslims anywhere in the world grow up with an overarching love for, and commitment to, Islam, which overrides all other sentiment. That issue does not cause any problem with their loyalty to a nation, or steadfastness to a secular idea, as long as there is no tension – or worse yet – contradiction between their commitment to a nation or to a secular idea and their religion. That has never been the case until al-Qaida and other Islamist groups started to emphasize in the post/911 era that Islam is under attack. The United States’ invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq made that argument for some American Muslims, if not necessarily credible, at least not as contentious as it is generally thought in the West.

However, no equally powerful voices emerged in the world of Islam to counter the claims of the Islamists. The Sunni Muslim regimes – who always suffered from a lack of domestic legitimacy for their rule, and who persistently exploited Islam to seek that legitimacy by co-opting Sunni Islamic scholars to endorse their autocratic and illegitimate rule – were not going to stick their necks out by countering al-Qaida’s Islam-related argument. That is not to say that they agree with that terrorist entity.
For Sunni Muslim regimes, to defend the United States – which remains the chief occupying force of two Muslim countries, and which is waging a “global war on terrorism” – has become a highly risky proposition in the world of Islam.

Besides, the Bush administration, as part of its confused strategy of intimidation in the Middle East between 2003 and 2006, waged a public campaign of vilifying major Sunni Arab governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt for not being democratic, as if Washington had discovered that fact only after it was attacked on September 11, 2001 by the 19 young Arab hijackers of three U.S. airplanes. The lone superpower was being swept away by its then newly-found logic that terrorism in the non-democratic states of the Middle East was growing, and that the autocratic regimes were tacitly encouraging the terrorists to terrorize the outside world so that they would not focus their energy on destabilizing or overthrowing those governments.

Another major Muslim country, Pakistan, once again became a “frontline” state in another of America’s major wars within a span of a little over ten years. As a frontline state, Pakistan was gradually being pushed toward an era when its own Islamist forces would become a major threat. Thus, the major focus of Pakistan’s dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, was to make sure that his country remained a faithful player in America’s war against terrorism, which was increasingly viewed inside both Afghanistan and Pakistan as a war against Islam.

So, different Muslim regimes were involved in their own struggle to survive and were not interested in becoming chief defenders of the United States against the rhetorical barrages of al-Qaida and other Islamist groups which stated that the lone superpower was waging a war against Islam. Even if one or more Muslim regimes were to make an audacious stand to defend America’s global war, they would not have made a convincing case in the eyes of the Muslim masses. It is the nature of Sunni Islam that allows no monolithic authority—a la the Catholic Pope or even an Ayatollah of Shia Islam—to become the chief interpreter of Islamic theology. Those who criticize Muslim leaders for not authoritatively condemning terrorism and becoming a convincing “voice” of Islam are either uninformed of this reality, or choose to ignore it.

In the meantime, two aspects of the United States’ handling of terrorism are emerging as its chief sources of resentment among Muslims. First, the continued U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq is adding further fuel to the Islamist argument that the lone superpower is determined to establish its firm grip on Muslim countries and to make sure that they remain subservient to its policies and its resolve to maintain the supremacy of Israel in the Middle East. The second source of anti-Americanism is President Barack Obama’s determined approach to heavily rely on counterterrorism (CT) – which has been symbolized by the heightened use of UAVs to kill al-Qaida forces in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or in any other Muslim country where Islamic forces are gathering momentum. On the contrary, in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal’s application of the counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, developed by General David Petraeus, emphasizes nation-building on a mini-scale (the “clear-hold-build” approach that was proved effective in Iraq). The United States hopes to remain popular among the masses in Afghanistan by applying the COIN approach to dealing with the Taliban, yet it is so insistent upon applying the CT approach in Pakistan. The inherent contradictions between the two approaches are becoming obvious to people of those two countries, and to Muslims at large, on a daily basis.

From America’s point of view, the CT approach is most effective and least damaging. It is also popular inside the United States, because it requires no troops on the ground, no casualties, and no body bags. If in the process of using the UAVs there are civilian casualties, the United States government issues the usual statement of regrets or apologies, or worse yet, it calls it “collateral damage.” But the fact that, more often than not, the UAV attacks also result in the loss of innocent civilian lives creates ample resentment among Muslims toward the lone superpower.

America’s global war on terrorism – even though it is no longer labeled thus by the Obama administration – has created an environment where a number of Muslims, even inside the United States, are having a hard time developing a sense of shared rationale for its related military actions, violence, death, and mayhem.

However, alternatives to America’s current approach to fighting terrorism are easy to proffer; they are hard to implement. Despite that fact, I will offer a few suggestions.

The foremost suggestion is to end America’s occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. However, that is not going to happen anytime soon, because the conventional wisdom among Washington officials is that both countries would descend into chaos. It may be that the U.S. occupation of those countries might create the same result over the long run. But no serious examination of that proposition is taking place inside the United States. There are, to be sure, a number of stated deadlines regarding the redeployent of American forces from Iraq and Afghanistan; but no one really believes that they should be taken as serious commitments. The Obama administration, like the preceding one, wants no part of becoming responsible for “losing” in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The second alternative for Washington is to fully focus on nation-building both in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the United States has introduced nation-building through the Kerry-Lugar legislation. However, the use of a CT approach in that country is overshadowing the good will that should stem from the Kerry-Lugar Bill. President Obama has ruled out an ambitious commitment to nation-building in Afghanistan, regardless of the fact that it holds promise for stabilizing that country.

As the mid-term congressional election gets closer, the Obama administration, in an attempt to minimize electoral losses of Democratic candidates, is likely to be focused on making populist choices regarding its dealings with terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That means there is going to be an increased emphasis on CT tactics over implementing a comprehensive nation-building strategy. However, in order to win against terrorist forces in South Asia, the need for now is to make realistic choices, which means earnestly thinking about conducting nation-building campaigns in both of those countries. The growing popularity of the al-Qaida mentality of creating chaos and mayhem in Yemen, the Horn of Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan is proof that killing terrorists does not equal defeating terrorism.

The third approach is to consider developing Joseph Nye’s concept of “smart power” into complex policies aimed at nullifying al-Qaida’s potent argument that Islam is under attack. Nye has defined it as follows: “Smart power is about tapping into diverse sources of American power, including our soft power, to attract others. It is about how we can get other countries to share our goals without resorting to coercion, which is limited and inevitably costly.”

As promising as the notion of smart power is, it still requires considerable tweaking to deal with the complex strategic realities of South Asia and elsewhere. For instance, the goal of the United States in Pakistan and in Afghanistan is to enhance stability and democracy and to defeat and minimize, if not eradicate, the Islamist influence. The first two goals are laudable. Washington is not likely to have any problem persuading either of those countries to pursue it. However, on the issue of minimizing the influence of the Islamists, the Obama administration faces a major problem. It is relying heavily on the use of military power (or in the words of Nye, “hard power”).

There are additional problems inside Pakistan that are coming into conflict with America’s objectives related to that country and neighboring Afghanistan. India’s increased presence in Afghanistan has become a major problem from Pakistan’s perspective. When the United States asks India to train the Afghan police or military forces, Pakistan views that development with considerable alarm. The Indian-trained Afghan security forces are likely to be anti-Pakistan. That is just a perverse reality of South Asia that has yet to be taken into consideration. Despite its long-term involvement in South Asia, the United States either does not understand the overarching nature of regional rivalry between India and Pakistan, or is choosing to ignore it at its own peril.

Using Nye’s notion of smart power, the Obama administration must find a way of minimizing Pakistan’s strategic concerns over heightened interest and the presence of India in Afghanistan. Otherwise, Pakistan is not likely to cooperate with the United States wholeheartedly as long it remains wary about India’s enhanced presence in Afghanistan. It has shown its displeasure allegedly by conniving about, if not directly supporting, two terrorist attacks on India’s Consulate in Afghanistan.

At this time, India, after getting encouragement from the United States about its involvement in stabilizing Afghanistan, has even approached Russia to seek avenues of cooperation with that country. India is also conducting a separate dialogue with Iran on the subject. The Obama administration may be too overwhelmed with its domestic politics to fully study the implications of Indian overtures toward Iran and Russia in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s reactions to them.

Lately, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Pakistan’s Army Chief, has been quite candid about his country’s strategic interests in Afghanistan and India’s heightened presence therein. He has resurrected the concept of “strategic depth” that was first mentioned by General Zia ul-Huq in his interview with the American Journalist, Selig Harrison, in the mid-1980s. The upside of Kayani’s candor is that the Obama administration is receiving an earful of what Pakistan really wants in Afghanistan as a price for its cooperation with the United States. The downside is the fact that the Pakistani Army, once again, is proving that democratically-elected leaders in that country continue to play second fiddle to the Army. In any event, it is up to Washington to decide what policy to develop by fully utilizing the concept of smart power.

America’s involvement in Afghanistan and its ties with Pakistan have to be properly advertised, once again through the use of smart power, both in the world of Islam and inside the United States. The purpose of such a strategy is to consciously develop “Muslim stakes,” both domestically and internationally, regarding America’s fight with the Islamist forces. The congruities between American strategic and Muslim interests have to be acutely and incessantly developed by the U.S. government using the blueprint of the congruity between American and Israeli interests.

The recent fatwa of a leading Pakistani Muslim scholar, Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri, condemning terrorism is the second revolutionary development in the Sunni world; a similar fatwa issued by India’s Deoband Madrassa in June 2008 being the first one. Even considering the highly independent nature of Sunni Islam, these fatwas are eminently better than any official statements issues by any U.S. or Western agencies condemning terrorism. Even though they do not instantly become a source of Muslim consensus, the legitimacy of condemnation by Dr. Qadri and the Deoband Madrassa are incontrovertible. They already have been given ample publicity by the world media. As an important aspect of the use of its smart power, the United States ought to incessantly publicize it to condemn terrorism.

America’s efforts to defeat the Islamist extremists will only succeed when they become comprehensive and dynamic in the sense of ever-changing to suit altering circumstances. For this purpose, the U.S. should use smart power ingeniously, and launch a highly visible campaign (i.e., public diplomacy) to publicize all Muslim condemnations generated in different corners of the world of Islam. In the final analysis, the best way to use smart power is to fight the Islamists’ attempt to legitimize terror in the name of Islam with the endeavors of highly credible Muslim sources to condemn it as inherently anti-Islamic.

Such an approach is direly needed, not just in South Asia, but in a number of failing and near-failing Muslim countries and also for educating American Muslims about America’s approach to the Muslim world. That is the best way to curtail the long reach of al-Qaida.

President Barack Obama decided to show his “outrage,” since some so-called pundits were upset that he was not showing the kind of passion that George W. Bush had shown after the 9/11 attacks. But, Bush’s record in his so-called “war on terrorism” has been a miserable failure. During his regime, the United States became an occupier of two Muslim countries. That might be one reason why the lone superpower under Obama is facing such an uphill battle in dealing with “violent extremism.” If Obama were to follow Bush’s example, then the United States is likely to face future quagmires and inertias.

Another dim-witted statement that was uttered by one of the “pundits” is when he wondered out loud why Muslims are not condemning what the young Nigerian tried to do. Statements of that nature imply that all Muslims, until every one of them yells at the top of his/her lungs condemning such action over and over again, are condoning terrorism. At no time in the history of human kind was such a reckless notion deemed worthy of air time.

What happened to America’s dealing with terrorism is that, under a new president, another country (Afghanistan) became the focus of it, as if by “winning” in that country the current administration would defeat terrorism once and for all. What the United States is not considering is that there cannot be any victory against the terrorist forces unless it develops comprehensive anti-terrorism policies. Firing cruise missiles or using UAVs to shoot a group of terrorists here and there, or sending Special Forces to take out a few terrorists is not the solution. Actions of that nature only intensify feelings of hatred and revenge against U.S. personnel all over the world. If the United States’ invasion of Iraq taught anything to America, it is that the use of military power (“hard” power) alone is no guarantee of victory.

As President Obama is busy developing some sort of blueprint (I will not call it a strategy, because there is no such thing up to this time), Pakistan and Afghanistan look increasingly precarious places. In both those countries, Islamist forces are on the offensive. Iran, totally unrelated to the latest episode of terrorism, is getting increasingly unstable. The Iranophobes in America are eagerly waiting for the Islamic regime to fall, hoping that the next government will be pro-Western. No one is considering that the alternative to the Islamic Republic might be chaos, which might have its own deleterious spillover effects in Iraq.

Across the Persian Gulf, Yemen is boiling over as another failed state. Northern Yemen and areas of Saudi Arabia contiguous to it have become the new battleground between forces of those two countries and al-Qaida, with the United States increasing its pressure on both of those countries to let loose their hard power on them. America’s answer to problems of al-Qaida is: kill, kill, kill, never mind what happens to Yemen or Saudi Arabia in the process. Farther East to the Arabian Peninsula is the Horn of Africa, which contains Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eretria. Somalia is already the poster child candidate for a failed state, while Ethiopia and Eretria are right behind it.

The question of the hour—indeed, of the decade—is what should be done about all these countries that are steadily becoming havens for al-Qaida. Does the United States have enough cruise missiles to shoot at all of them, ensuring the eradication of all supporters of al-Qaida? Does it have enough drones to fly them on a 7/24 basis on all the aforementioned countries?

In the last presidential election, there was no debate about how to win against the terrorists worldwide. Terrorism as an issue had already fallen way down on the list of American voters’ concerns during that presidential campaign. Candidate Obama made his electoral fortune by banging the drum of the failed policies of Bush, and then insisting that he would go after al-Qaida and would do everything to eradicate it in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Who could have argued against that without having his/her patriotism questioned? What bears repeating here is that the 2008 presidential election campaign was totally devoid of any debate regarding how to be victorious over global terrorist forces because, by then, the 9/11 attacks were fading in American memories.

That fading process would have continued if not for the fact that Obama remained true to his promise and started the use of hard power in Afghanistan and Pakistan, assuming that he would win where his predecessor had failed.

The widening popularity of al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula and on the Horn of Africa, and its sustaining capacity in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, should intensify the feeling in the U.S. that the need of the hour is to develop comprehensive anti-terrorism policies, and not to solely rely on killing (counterterrorism emphasis) and hope that such a measure would also eradicate terrorism. But right now, examining the public debate, one gets the feeling that the American government is in the process of reinventing the wheel. There is the usual blame game that various agencies are still not cooperating; or the process of terrorist monitoring has become so cumbersome that it does not work even when a young man’s father reports to the American embassy that his son might have joined the ranks of the terrorists, yet that young man is allowed to travel to the United States.

Watching the process of recrimination, looking for fall guys, the blame game that is currently in progress in Washington, one wonders whether the lone superpower would ever become invulnerable to the actions of those who attach no value to life, neither of their own nor of others.
If there is a fall guy inside the United States in this whole process of countering terrorism, it is the cumbersomeness related to securing America that has become the chief culprit of making America unsafe. The strength of the terrorists stems from the fact that they operate on the basis of simplicity: one person or a few persons specialize in or invent new ways of creating death and mayhem. All they have to do is to find just one or more loopholes in the cumbersome security processes. At least in incidents of this nature, the culprit is the incompetence of the intricate bureaucracies, which promise to become even more intricate and, in all likelihood, more incompetent in the coming months.

The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission of creating an intelligence czar was a wise one. Instead, Congress diluted most of the recommendations of that Commission by playing politics. Today, we have eight or more intelligence agencies. All of them are busy fighting budget and turf battles and performing the redundant tasks of collecting intelligence. Those types of redundancies are also contributing further to the aforementioned cumbersomeness. As the co-Chairs of the 9/11 Commission observed in their OpEd of January 11, 2010, “The DNI [Director of National Intelligence] has been hobbled by disputes over its size, mission and authority, but forcing information-sharing and enabling the NCTC’s [National Counterterrorism Center] best analysts to do their work should not be subject to dispute.”

What America needs is an anti-terrorism strategy that is geared toward homeland security, but a strategy that also deals with causes of global terrorism that is focused on Africa, the Middle East, and South, Central, and Southeast Asia. Of these regions, Africa—the Horn and the trans-Sahel region, North and West Africa—is where terrorism is likely to run rampant during the next decade. South Asia and the Middle East will remain hotbeds of terrorism from now until at least the middle of the next decade. Central Asia appears calm; however, we know so little about that region because countries of that area are governed by autocrats who want absolutely no outside scrutiny of their tyrannical rule. So, it is a safe bet that one or more countries of Central Asia is likely to experience internal turbulence or even violent regime change. In all likelihood, such change would not result because of terrorist groups, but such groups are most likely to take every advantage of the resultant political turbulence.

If the prognostications of increased transnational turbulence are correct, then it behooves the United States to have trans-regional strategies to counter such events. Merely appointing “czars” and “special envoys” is not enough. However, considering how unprepared the United States has shown itself to be about dealing with terrorism last December, one has little reason to remain optimistic.

In the post-9/11 era, America’s war against terrorism was interpreted as a war against Islam. Usama Bin Laden harped on that issue quite consistently and effectively, and a large number of Muslims believed him.

President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan to retaliate against al-Qaida and its chief sponsors, the Taliban regime.  It was expected that he would focus on constructing that country after ousting the Taliban.  But Bush went after Saddam Hussein’s regime, something he wanted to do soon after he entered the White House. His determination to invade Iraq went blind against all sings of protests and disagreements to the contrary.  Perhaps it was his slowly burning, but intense, rage to eliminate the man who wanted to “kill my Dad”—as he frequently stated—that led him to ignore what was in America’s best interests.

The blood and gore, and enormous instability and turbulence, that stemmed from Bush’s revenge against Saddam created a deeply-rooted and an equally intense hostility and hatred toward the United States.  One has to examine the Pew public opinion polls to get a real sense of how much America was despised in the world of Islam, from Indonesia to Morocco, while Bush sat in the White House.

Bush might have been sincere in insisting that his country has no quarrel with Islam.  But one has to examine the daily flow of briefings that Donald Rumsfeld sent for the President’s reading that were peppered with Biblical quotes.  A contemporary reader of those briefings is left with little doubt that a self-styled born-again Christian president was really on a crusade against the terrorists.

That type of retrospective debate aside, what was working against America during the Bush presidency was that the United States was occupying two lands of Islam:  Iraq and Afghanistan.  Iraq became a hellish place between 2003 and the early part of 2007.  In 2006, there were several powerful voices inside the U.S. urging Bush to “declare victory and get out of Iraq.”

Then came the Sunni protest movement against al-Qaida in Mesopotamia (AQIM) and the introduction of the “Surge” by the U.S. force commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus.  Aside from inserting more troops in Iraq, the United States also introduced a new counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine.  That doctrine became a success, largely because it was supported by the Sunni insurgents—also known as the Sahwa or the “Sons of Iraq” movement.

That reality also improved the security situation inside that country.  Still, the hatred of Bush and antipathy toward the United States remained pervasive all over the Muslim world.  It was clear that, even if Bush were to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq, the hatred of Bush and America was not about to dissipate.  A clean break from his administration was necessary before Muslims were to be persuaded that the lone superpower was not fighting a war against their religion.

President Barack Obama has fulfilled that requirement.  The son of a Muslim father, and a person who spent four years of his life in Indonesia—despite the fact that he is a Christian—he has brought an enormous amount of credibility to his office.  Even though, under Obama, the United States is still occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, he is believed when he says that his country has no fight with Islam.

President Obama is not part of the white American elites, who read Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis’s contentious books on Muslim and Arab countries and became instant “experts” on Islam and Muslims.  Obama understands the intricacies and multi-dimensionalities related to Islam and the Muslim world, and is not ready to formulate instant judgment. On the contrary, Bush saw the world of Islam through his highly partisan lens of a “born-again” Christian faith.

Obama, also a Christian, does not have the Manichean perspectives related to the Christian evangelical world.  Muslims sense his sophisticated and respectful view of the world when they hear him speak.  Bush could never convey that sense.  Even when he might have been sincere when he said that his administration is not fighting Islam, his policies conveyed a contrary perspective to most Muslims all over the world.  Obama does not carry that baggage when he speaks to Muslims.  He is much more believable than Bush ever was for the Muslim masses.

Muslims also know that Obama is no Bush.  He is very sincere in his resolve to arrive at a rapprochement with their world.  Obama sent his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to the largest Muslim country, Indonesia.  He declared the resolve to arrive at political understanding with Iran.  He went to Turkey and delivered a major speech in his message of peace and respect toward the Muslim world.  Obama told Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, during their first meeting, that he supports a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and he also told him that Israel must stop building settlements in order to reach a peace with the Palestinians.  Obama’s speech in Cairo was yet another historical step in his desire to reach a grand bargain with Muslims.

By speaking candidly to the Muslim world, President Obama has taken a major step in nullifying Bin Laden’s recurring diatribe that portrays a negative image of the United States.  Muslims of the world at large are likely to give enormous credence to Obama and his respectful message of peace and harmony.

The Bin Laden camp understood how potentially powerful Obama’s message from Cairo was likely to be.  Bin Laden decided to issue his own video, in an attempt to preempt the American president.  But Obama’s message had the power of a tidal wave, while Usama’s message barely had the influence of a “storm in a teapot.”

The Muslim world and the United States under Obama are entering a new phase.  The post-Cairo speech period has to be followed up by specific maneuvers toward a number of major Muslim issues where America’s presence and influence are enormous. They include creating new momentums in the peace process in the Palestine, nation-building in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and pushing India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir conflict.   

• порно галереи бесплатно негри

Samuel P. Huntington died on Christmas Eve at the ripe age of 81.  I never met the man.  But I read most of his work.  I had the occasion of hearing his presentation as a Ph.D. candidate, when he was invited by our Political Science Department at Southern Illinois University around 1974 or 1975.  All the faculty members were present to hear one of their brainiest, if not most famous, counterparts.  Huntington was well known for two books then: 

The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations

(1957), and Political Order in Changing Societies (1968).  The discussion of his presentation revolved around the second book.

I also heard Huntington’s presentation in one of the Political Science conferences in the 1990s.  I can’t even remember the topic; I only went there to hear him.  I guess we were all in awe of his brilliance. 

As much as I disagreed with his “Clash of Civilizations” thesis, there was some element of truth to it.  When the book came out, I had been a Professor at senior military colleges for a few years.  I still remember how popular his thesis really was at a time when the Pentagon was figuring out who the next enemy of America would be in the post-Cold War years.  The fact that Huntington branded “civilizational antagonism” or even animosity as the next “enemy,” the Pentagon could not have been happier.  That was an intriguing proposition for the military brass, which is not known for its intellectual prowess, but is most willing to follow as gospel, if the idea is about protecting America’s interests and dominance worldwide.  Huntington knew that fact only too well when he wrote about the highly patriotic and conservative nature of a military officer in his book The Soldier and the State.

I recall a four-star General visiting the Joint Forces Staff College, where I was teaching then.  He presented Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis not as a highly contentious idea of a Harvard professor, but as valid and substantiated laws of physics in describing the emerging global conflict.  I knew that the younger generation of military officers—most of whom were taking copious notes of the speech by that four-star General—would be passing on his “words of wisdom” to the next generation.  I could not resist challenging the General.  I stated that he was presenting some highly controversial ideas as “facts,” instead of the opinions of an intellectual.  

Needless to say, that General was taken aback at my audacity, and did what most senior military officers do when they are challenged on brainy issues.  My apologies if I created that impression, he said.  However, his young underlings were not about to change their mind, even if their god was willing to apply a different spin to his message.  I knew that I was not the most popular person in the auditorium.

My chief criticism of Huntington’s brilliant observations is that they were loaded with gross generalizations, which, more often than not, sounded simplistic and even naïve.  The Economist best captured my feelings regarding Huntington’s broad brushed generalizations in his obituary.  It noted: 

…his pronouncements often distorted reality rather than imposed order on it.     He skated over the fact that many of the nastiest clashes take place within civilisations rather than between them: more Muslims die at the hands of their fellow Muslims than die at the hands of “Jews or Crusaders”; and Europeans fought the 20th century’s bloodiest conflicts among themselves. He also downplayed the extent to which the American model attracts people the world over: the Chinese business elite are much more interested in Silicon Valley than in their Confucian past. His arguments can produce policies that are just as naive as those he excoriated: policies that drive Muslims together into a single angry mass, rather than prising them apart, for example, and policies that encourage Western self-doubt just as surely as do the hand-wringing of the multiculturalists.

Huntington’s book, Clash of Civilizations (1996), was translated into numerous languages and read by the intellectuals and elites all over world, especially by those who make a point of remaining at the cutting edge of “what’s in vogue” at a given time.  In fact, al Jazeera asked Usama Bin Laden the following question:

Interviewer :  “What is your opinion about what is being said concerning your analogies and the ‘Clash of Civilizations’? Your constant use and repetition of the word ‘Crusade’ and ‘Crusader’ show that you uphold this saying, the ‘Clash of Civilizations.’”  Bin Laden responded, “ I say there is no doubt about this. This is a very clear matter…”

Former Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami, gave the civilizational approach further global publicity by stating that he wished to start a dialogue among civilizations.  He spoke on the subject at the U.N. General Assembly in 1998.  That world body designated the year 2001 as the year of Dialogue Among civilizations.  In 2006, Khatami also spoke on the subject at the University of Virginia. 

Through a civilizational dialogue, Khatami wanted to see a change in the power arrangement at the U.N. Security Council, which is dominated by the victors of World War II.  That power structure is brought together after a global war.  It is likely to be replaced only by a conflict of similar proportion.  Khatami was most articulate when he said, “[The] present paradigm regards the interests and values of a select group of elites as the interests and values of the entire world even if at times it clashes with it.” 

But no powerful leader or nation was interested in bringing about institutional changes or giving high consideration to the interests and values of the Asian or Muslim community of nations over Western values and interests.  In this sense, the old Harvard Professor was half right.  We are constantly encountering clashes, but not necessarily civilizational.  We have the entrenched interests of nations that are incessantly conflicting.  The West has long epitomized the rich and technologically advanced part of the world.  It is not likely to give up its advantaged status and open its ranks to include the Nouveau riche of the 21^st Century in the name of conciliation among civilizations.  To be fair about the issue at hand, no non-Western country or bloc of countries would have behaved differently.

As the United States and the West are encountering economic meltdowns, no one really knows what the status of the U.S. or the West is likely to be.  We don’t even know what types of conflicts are likely to preoccupy nation-states.  Kishore Mahbubani, a former diplomat of Singapore has predicted the shift of power toward Asia.  That is a possibility.  But no Asian country has created its own niche yet, or its own way of being unique or different from the West.  In this sense, being modern still means emulating the United States or the European community in different realms of activities. In other words, being modern still means being Western when the West was in its best form.  Thus, the notion of a clash among nations has become a permanent fixture. 

The idea of a clash of civilizations appeared novel when it was first presented.  Huntington presented it at a perfectly suitable time (1993, the year his essay containing that phrase was first published in Foreign Affairs magazine) when the Cold War–a major conflict of the 20^th Century–was just over.  The durability of that concept is proven by the fact that, even to this day, it has not completely lost its charm or attraction as a possible reason for conflict among nations. 

Huntington will be missed for generating new concepts, new ideas, and new and iconoclastic paradigms—albeit highly contentious—to explain major issues of our time.  No matter how much one disagreed with him, there is no denying that he was a giant among us.  The intellectual gap that his death has created is not likely to be filled anytime soon.

The U.S. turned Iraq into hell between 2005 and 2006; Pakistan is steadily edging toward becoming a hellish place in the post-9/11 era; and Afghanistan is heading in that direction.  In the Horn of Africa, a similar situation prevails.

In the post-9/11 era, the militarily powerful nations have taken it upon themselves to set the “rules of engagement” for wars or war-like violence in Muslim lands, while the extremists are letting loose violence and mayhem from their side.  Iraq had its killing fields between 2005 and 2007, and Afghanistan’s most “fertile” killing fields started in the late 1970s, when the Soviet Union invaded it with a view to incorporating it into the Soviet empire.  Those killing fields continue to multiply in the first decade of the 21^st Century.  Lebanon’s killing fields come alive periodically, and—in view of its highly explosive internal dynamics—that country seems at the precipice of witnessing them on a regular basis.  Gaza’s killing fields are getting bloodier by the hour.  

The chief victims of this bloody phenomenon are the ordinary people, whose main aspirations is are to have productive careers, raise families, and live happily.  But happiness is increasingly becoming a rare commodity.

Here is the essence of the problem in many Muslim countries:  The U.S. has decided to wage violence in the name of that awful phrase “global war on terrorism,” which is as meaningless as the “war on poverty.”  Terrorism, like poverty, has been around forever, and no use of military power alone will eradicate it from the face of the earth.  Awful concepts like “regime change,” “preemptive war,” and the “war of choice” were applied to Muslim countries.  George W. Bush’s warning, “either you are with us or with the terrorists,” was also largely aimed at Muslim countries. 

The United States encountered something called the “Iraqi quagmire,” and almost lost its war in that country until the Sunni Muslims came to its rescue.  The same group (Sons of Iraq) is still crucial for the durability of peace and continued success of America’s “surge” strategy.  A strategy, which was aimed at clearing the hostile territory, by holding it, stationing security forces, and by rebuilding civilian authority and economic development.  But that is just one precondition; the other being a systematic inclusion of Sunni Muslims in the governance of Iraq.  Iraq remains a work in progress.  It is likely to return to its instability of 2005-2007, if the Sunnis do not become an important part of its ruling circles.

Israel has adopted the same approach—letting loose its military fury—in the name of establishing its “credible deterrence” among Arab nations, especially since it was humiliated by the Hezbollah in the “war” of July-August 2006.  Purely on a force-on-force basis, Israel did not lose that war.  Its mistake was that it established very precise goals of eradicating Hezbollah and having its own captive soldiers released.  When those objectives were not achieved and Israel stopped bombing Southern Lebanon, both the Western and the Arab media declared it the “loser” of that war.  To Israel’s bitter resentment, the Hezbollah not only survived, but became an inordinately popular organization in the Arab streets, as well as in Lebanon.  As such, it also challenged the governing authority of the U.S.-backed government of Premier Fouad Siniora.  Siniora has remained a weak head of the government in Lebanon primarily, if not solely, because Washington supports him.  Consequently, the legitimacy of the government in Lebanon remains shaky, at best. 

It has been a long-established fact that no outside power can institute its credibility inside a country through the use of military force or through occupation alone.  That is a universal principle. 

Syria learned that lesson at the end of many years of occupying Lebanon.  The U.S. has also learned that bitter reality after remaining an occupying power in Iraq for the past eight years.  It is likely to face the same fate in Afghanistan.  Israel refuses to learn that lesson as it invades Gaza and remains an occupying power of Palestine.  The gloomiest fact of that occupation is that the mounting toll of Palestinians will create new generations of even more enduring—and even more radical-minded—resistance to Israel than Hezbollah and Hamas have thus far demonstrated.

Unlike the historical accord between the U.S. military and the Sons of Iraq, no basis of rapprochement has been established between Israel and the Palestinians.  The Oslo Peace Accords of the early 1990s are long dead and buried.  Israel does not want to trade land for peace, and the Palestinians are much too divided to offer the Jewish state a great deal of confidence that they are ready to live in peace with their Jewish counterparts. 

Israel played a crucial role, if not in the creation of Hamas, then in definitely enhancing the presence and clout of that organization in the occupied territory many years ago.  As an Israeli historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Zeev Sternell, stated, “Israel thought that it was a smart ploy to push the Islamists against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).”  Today, Hamas is the governing authority in Gaza.  Ironically, Israel’s stated objective of waging a war against Gaza is to weaken, if not eliminate, Hamas. 

However, no matter how badly the military conflict damages Hamas, it is likely to emerge as the most popular organization within the occupied Palestine as well as in the rest of the Muslim world.  According to a news dispatch from Egypt, “As the war in Gaza burned though its 14^th day, Arab governments have felt their legitimacy challenged with an uncommon virulence.”  It adds, “With each passing day, and each Palestinian death, the popularity of Hamas and other radical movements has ratcheted higher on the Arab street, while the standing of Arab leaders has suffered.”

The frustrations of the Arab masses stem from a reason that is larger than the occupation of Palestine, even though the mounting suffering of the Palestinians is also adding further fuel to those frustrations.  The chief reason for the Arab frustrations is the presence of authoritarian rule, which lingers on like an eternal curse over their existence.  From their point of view, their collective suffering will not end unless the United States stops supporting the status quo in their countries.  From the U.S. side, that authoritarian rule-based status quo is preferred over the alternative–the return of Islamist rule.  Two examples continue to haunt the U.S. decisionmakers–the Islamist-dominated rule in Iraq and the successful emergence of Hamas as the ruling entity after the elections of January 2006.  The Arab autocrats in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia suffer from the same fear.  The emergence of Hamas as the governing body over Palestine did not end their internal turbulence. 

The plight of the Palestinians was worsened when, after a bitter fight between Hamas and Fatah in June 2007, the latter took over the West bank, while Hamas maintained its political control of Gaza.  However, Hamas was unable to make a breakthrough regarding reaching a peace an agreement with Israel. 

Egypt did bring about a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in June 2008.  That agreement ended early last November.  The fact that Hamas was describing that agreement as tahdiya (a period of calm, which is temporary), as opposed to hudna (truce, which is concrete and lasting) underscored the fact that it was only a tactical maneuver.  The leaders of Hamas were adamant about describing on Al-Jazeera a tahdiya as “a tactic in conflict management and a phase in the framework of the resistance [meaning all forms of struggle].” The Israelis were not willing to fall for that ploy.  That so-called tahdiya ended early last November.  The escalating violence between the two sides since then has led to the Israeli military invasion of Gaza.

The systematic destruction of the already feeble institutional infrastructures and mounting human misery has already transformed Gaza into a hellish place.  Even though Hamas challenged Israel, and even though Hamas is also largely responsible for the breakdown of the tahdiya, the fact that Israel has been wreaking major havoc and is responsible for mounting civilian deaths in Gaza, Hamas’ popularity is most likely to escalate.  

In a perverse way, similar conditions prevail in Afghanistan.  The Western occupation forces are attempting to strengthen the authority of the government of President Hamid Karzai, whom most Pushtoon regard as a puppet of the United States.  The legitimacy of the Karzai government is a shrinking commodity.  Historically speaking, the occupiers of Afghanistan—from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union—have faced nothing but bloody battles and resulting defeat.  The Taliban—who are primarily Pushtoon—know that fact only too well.  They also know that history is on their side, as long as they do not let up on the use of violence.  The United States cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan, and the Taliban refuse to seek a rapprochement with the Karzai government.  In the process, Afghanistan has become a hellish place.

No single actor is more responsible in Pakistan’s emergence as a highly unstable country than Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and General Zia ul-Huq.  The former started the process of Islamization of that country, and the latter took it to the extreme.  The practice of using an extremist interpretation of Sunni Islam, which was intensified under Zia’s rule, was continued under the rule of General Pervez Musharraf, but with a different twist. 

Zia was forthright about his commitment to the extremist interpretation of Sunni Islam and used it unabashedly to maintain himself in power.  Musharraf, on the contrary, was duplicitous and cunning.  He presented the face of moderation toward the American interlocutor, while sustaining his alliance with the Islamists inside his country, especially in Baluchistan and in the border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The extremist Islamist forces had a clear sense that Musharraf was creating a façade of suppressing or containing them.  They understood that game and played along until they decided to take on the Army, after the massacre at the Lal Masjid (red mosque) on July 13, 2007.  That bloody event marked the beginning of the end of the Musharraf regime.  But when he was forced out of office and democracy returned to Pakistan, it was a feeble government while extremist forces were very much on the offensive.

The continued escalated pace of violence—which resulted in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007, and an assassination attempt on the life of Prime Minister Yusuf Reza Gilani on September 3, 2008—numerous suicide attacks and the resultant deaths of civilians as well as military personnel, leave little doubt about the march of Pakistan toward further instability.

As the United States gets ready to enlarge the presence of its troops in Afghanistan, the biggest question is whether the Surge strategy can be successfully implemented in Afghanistan.  Even if one were to be optimistic about such prospects, it should be kept in mind that stability and security of Afghanistan has been intrinsically linked to the security and stability of Pakistan since the 1980s.  The United States has known that fact.  But, under the administration of President Barack Obama, it might not remember, at its own peril.

In summarizing the overall situation in many Muslim countries, what is needed in Gaza, for starters, is a reinstatement of indirect negotiations between the parties, with Egypt serving, once again, as an intermediary.  After that, the only alternative for the Obama administration will be to plunge itself into endless rounds of negotiations, first with Hamas and Fatah, and then by bringing all Arab and Israeli contenders to the negotiating table. 

Even under the heap of mounting bitterness, the Palestinians know that the United States is the only actor that can exercise its influence on Israel.  This is not about putting pressure on the Jewish state.  Israelis know better than anyone else that there is no way they can resolve the conflict with the Palestinians by resorting to military force alone.   However, there is no denial of the significant role of an intermediary.  And only the U.S. can play that role, largely because Israel trusts the U.S., and also because it is a major recipient of U.S. military and economic assistance.  Besides, the Obama administration does not carry the same baggage of high partisanship that the Bush administration demonstrated toward Israel.

In South Asia, there is an urgent need for the application of a new “surge” strategy.  Such a strategy must treat Pakistan and Afghanistan as two sides of the same coin and it should be multi-dimensional.  Its features include massive economic assistance, revision of educational curricula, building of civilian infrastructure, implementation of civil-military relations that assign supremacy of civilian authority, eradication of the opium trade culture, and elimination of the proliferation of small arms from both Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

The chief tactic to escalate the feeling of security in the Pakistani ruling circles (of which the Pakistan Army is the most important part) is to ensure that India has minimal diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.  Any heightened Indian diplomatic presence in Afghanistan—which is the current reality on the ground—will motivate Pakistan to destabilize Afghanistan, fearing collusion between Afghanistan and India, whose purpose it is to destabilize Pakistan.  A general suspicion is that Pakistan’s highly secretive intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), sponsored the terrorist attack on the Indian embassy in Afghanistan in July 2008. 

The most unfortunate part of the current reality is that both Pakistan and Afghanistan have become fertile places for the mushrooming of extremism.  The deteriorating quality of life in those countries—as is also the case in occupied Palestine—is definitely adding further momentum for the growth of that phenomenon.  No simple solution that comprises only the use of military force will work.  In the pre-surge days, Iraq was the primary example of that fact.  It was only through the multidimensional application of the surge strategy that Iraq is making steady progress toward political stability.  That reality becomes a powerful argument for the implementation of the aforementioned multidimensional strategy in Afghanistan.

There is some reason to be optimistic, however, that the United States will develop a sophisticated understanding of the significance of Pakistan in the coming days.  According to a recent New York Times dispatch, the outgoing Bush administration has handed over to the Obama transition team a lengthy report on Afghanistan and Pakistan.  That report concluded, “that in the end, the United States has far more at stake in preventing Pakistan’s collapse than it does in stabilizing Afghanistan or Iraq.”

The Cold War in its old form disappeared when the Soviet Union imploded.  But the U.S.-Russian competition did not.  The United States continued a strange policy of expanding the NATO membership and bringing that Alliance all the way to the Russian borders, despite strong and continued protestations from Mosow.  It was highly irrational on the part of the United States to think that Russia should only listen to its rhetoric—which went along the lines that “we are no longer adversaries”—and totally ignore its near obsession with the NATO enlargement.

Russia responded in its own way, when that little megalomaniac president of Georgia, Mikheil Saaskashvili, sent troops into the Moscow-backed breakaway province of South Ossetia, hoping to teach them a lesson.  Russia let loose its fury.  That was, to be sure, a disproportionate response, but it underscored that Russia does not wish to be taken for granted.  Even to this day, there is no certainty that American military advisers were not involved in that Georgian action.

Moscow’s antagonism is continuing.  It appears that its current rulers have decided to challenge the incoming president, Barack Obama, by escalating ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile production.  The arsenal includes multiple-warhead ICBMs called the RS-24, which was first test-fired in 2007.  The then Deputy Prime Minister, Sergei Ivanov, made oblique references to the U.S. decision to deploy anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and Hungary by stating that those new missiles are “capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defence systems.”

President Obama’s dilemma will be how to respond to Russia.  His best option is to postpone the NATO expansion, not as a symbol of giving in to any Russian blackmail, but as a symbol of empathizing with Russia’s security concerns related to the seemingly endless enlargement of that Alliance.  If its raison detere is no longer to contian Russia, then why is it that NATO appears poised to take the entire Europe under its security umbrella?  Who is NATO’s “enemy” toward the end of the first decade of the 21^st Century?  If the motivation of rubbing Russia’s face into the dirt is no longer driving U.S. foreign policy, then what other objectives are?  If those objectives are as benign as Washington has claimed under the presidency of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, then why is the lone superpower relying on expanding a predominantly military alliance?

These are only some of the questions the Russian leaders are raising.  They deserve serious answers and a series of follow-up actions.  Otherwise, the totally illogical arms race appears set to get into full swing.

YOU HATE YOUR WAY; WE WILL HAVE A SHOE THROWING CONTEST

The Clinton and Bush administrations will be known for either underscoring or creating new hateful sobriquet for Iran.  In the 1990s, it was described as one of the so-called “rogue states.”  Then, in the post-9/11 era, it was referred to as a part of an imaginary “axis of evil.” 

On its part, Iran used a doozy of a characterization for the United States: “the Great Satan.”  A more benign version of that depiction was “tyrannical power,” a phrase that Iranian president Ahmadinejad recently used in his “alternative” Christmas message to the West.

In the aftermath of the shoe throwing incident at President George W.Bush in Iraq, Iran has started a new ‘mini-sport.’  On Christmas eve, a university in Teheran started a shoe-throwing contest at an effigy of Bush.  The news dispatch also contained the following observation: “No details on the prize, nor how the intensity of the shoe throwing will be judged.”

A GLOBAL FATWA CLEARINGHOUSE?

One of the chief differences between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam is that the Sunnis have no hierarchy of Ayatollahs who issue Fatwas (religious decrees) to which their followers adhere.  In Sunni Islam, a qualified religious person (a Mufti) or other equally learned scholar might issue a fatwa; however it is up to individual Muslims to follow or ignore it.  That is one reason why some scholars call a person who indulges in suicide attacks a shaheed (martyr), while others condemn those acts as inherently contradictory to the essence of Islam.

What about the concept of Jihad?  A number of foreign insurgents who were arrested in Iraq reported that they were following Fatwas that depicted their participation against the U.S. occupation as a conduct of Jihad.  There is a similar absence of any agreement among Muslim scholars on this matter.

As one dispatch entitled, “Fatwa Chaos in Sunni Islam,” in Open Source states:  “Fatwa chaos may lead to confusion among Sunni followers over which fatwa, or prescribed course of action, to follow.”

One suggestion that often pops up in Western circles is that some sort of central religious authority is required for interpretations that are followed by Sunni Muslims all over the world.   However, wishing for such a clearinghouse is akin to wishing for a Sunni version of a Pope.  You know that is not going to happen.

In the wake of global visibility given to the nefarious terrorist activities of those who perpetrate those acts in the name of Islam, the global community has stopped becoming inquisitive about unproven accusations that Indian officials make by blaming Muslims way before such a linkage is established. 

Consider the following observation of Brian Cloughley, who describes the political environment in India regarding Muslims in general, Pakistan in particular, and the attitude of the global media.  It bears reminding that a professional requirement for all journalists is that they must be objective in dealing with all events, no matter their personal feelings toward them.  But there is a palpable manifestation of bias and Islamophobia.  To be sure, Cloughley does not use that phrase.  However, anyone who reads the Western media’s coverage of tragic and violent events affecting the world of Islam may be able to draw a fair conclusion along those lines. 

He writes:  

There is something very wrong going on in India, but the blame for the surge in fanaticism cannot be laid at the door of the moderate and sensible Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He and his government are hated and reviled by these wild savages. There is a certain ambivalence in the international media’s treatment of events in the sub-continent. When terrible things happen in Pakistan, there is wringing of editorial hands in New York and Berlin; sighs of horror in London and Paris; varying degrees of condemnation in the blogosphere from Ottawa to Auckland; and, alas, a hint of satisfaction in Delhi. But when horrible things happen in India, there doesn’t seem to be quite as much international concern.

Regarding the treatment of Muslims in India, an Indian human rights activist and a former journalist, Amesh Misra, states, “Let this be very clear and loud – today, supporting the persecution and the arrest and the torture of thousands of Muslim youth, is tantamount to being anti-national. Today being anti-Muslim is tantamount to being anti-national.”  He further adds:

What India needs today are not just protests – we need a special prevention of atrocities against minorities act – something which makes refusal of housing and flats to minorities, refusal by a Police officer to register a FIR [first information report--filed when police receive information about the commission of a cognizable offense] by minorities, or to act in their protection, failure of a District Magistrate or a Senior Superintendent of the Police to prevent a riot or a bomb blast, the picking up of Muslims and other minorities without a formal charge, the very idea of detention of Muslim youths after blasts, or encounter killings, the calling of Muslims by the name Laandiya or Katua (a derisive reference to the fact that Muslims are circumcised), a stringent crime with due punishment.

Given the state of affairs affecting Muslims, no one should be surprised by how readily judgment was passed about the origin of the terrorists who paralyzed India’s business hub in Mumbai (Bombay).  The so-called “experts” as far away as London and Australia were eagerly speculating about those terrorists, long before the Indian authorities could determine who the so-called “Deccan Mujahideen” were and from whence they came. 

If those terrorists were from Deccan (which presumably means Hyderabad Deccan), why did they have to take boats to enter Mumbai?  As the crisis was brewing, we were told that the Indian Navy was in “hot pursuit” of a “mother ship.”  We need to know what exactly happened to that hot pursuit, and who was captured.  If the pursuit ended in arrests, the international media needs to view the evidence, and the global law enforcement officials should be given access to those captured.

There were reports that a few “Deccan Mujahideen” terrorists were captured.  What did the Indian police find out about their origin?  What evidence is the police willing to share with the global media in order to reestablish its credibility regarding its claims?

In this day and age, each explosive carries with it a profile or a signature, which enables law enforcement officials to determine the origin of those explosives.  The Indian law enforcement officials need to let global experts examine whose explosives.  Interpol ought to look into the veracity of findings related to the origin of those explosives.  

Even then, considering the fact that international gun runners are exporting small arms to different regions of the world on a massive scale, one has to be leery about claims that a particular country was directly involved.  The U.S. military found that out when it started blaming Iran for every explosive that was captured in Iraq containing markings from Iran. 

Terrorist attacks in every country become a ready topic of political football in the domestic arena.  India is no exception to that rule.  There is always ample pressure to identify the “culprits.”  More often than not, when events of that nature occur, one hears in South Asia of the involvement of a “foreign hand.”  The London Times reported that India was pointing its accusatory finger toward Pakistan, while Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the nefarious terrorist attacks in the strongest possible terms.

Still, all efforts must be made to look into the potential involvement of Pakistan, if for no other reason than for the sake of clearing the air.  If India and Pakistan were to continue to make progress in improving mutual ties, there should not be even a shadow of doubt about Pakistan’s involvement.  If Pakistan has nothing to do with this round of attacks, that fact should be brought out before the international community to make South Asia a threat-free place.

These are very complicated issues.  Only by examining them and analyzing the available data with an enormous amount of objectivity will the global community be able to come to grips with who is behind such acts.  Nothing regarding terrorism is simple, but having a clear notion of who the culprit is would enable both India and Pakistan to cooperate in fighting this scourge.