Strategery After Zarqawi

A “transparent psychological operations campaign run out of the Pentagon”; “a double tragedy”; “part of a larger and tragic story of miscalculation”; a possible fraud; a conspiracy; not “moral”; an “obscene spectacle”; no “big deal”; and good cause to beat a hasty retreat.

Hmm. That certainly is a point of view, but I’d advise our Democratic friends not to get too carried away by such talk.

Blogger Austin Bay ties the victory back to President Bush’s “forward strategy of freedom” and the year 1950 when President Truman had set up the strategy of containment for fighting the Cold War. Truman did not win the Cold War, but he set the strategic direction for the United States that subsequent presidents all more or less followed, beginning with President Eisenhower.

In April 1950, the "unpopular" Truman administration produced NSC-68, a strategic study that shaped U.S. foreign policy for five decades. In 1953, the Eisenhower administration "tested" NSC-68 with a secret analysis commissioned by President Eisenhower (the Solarium project). The Eisenhower group ratified NSC-68's basic containment strategy.

And “faster please” Michael Ledeen ties everything back to Iran. After praising the operation that involved the “great performance of our Special Forces and the active cooperation of Sunni tribal leaders in the Anbar Province, plus the Jordanians, plus the various party leaders in Baghdad” he goes on to identify Zarqawi, the man who fanned conflict between Shia and Sunni, as a tool of the Iranian mullahcracy.

Despite his intonations against the Shiites, and his manifest efforts to promote civil war in Iraq, Zarqawi was happy to work with the radical Shiite regime in Tehran, and they were happy to work with him. It is quite wrong to view him as a leader of one faction in a religious war; his promotion of religious conflict was simply a tactic designed to destabilize Iraq and drive out the Coalition.

This ties back to the basic strategic proposition for invading Iraq: to have a platform for operations against Iran, the real strategic problem in the Middle East. However much of a mess Iraq may be it is still a strategic block against Iranian expansionism.

There is another side to the Middle East conflict. It is described by Jay Nordlinger at the World Economic Forum in Sharm El Sheikh. Says Prime Minister Aziz of Pakistan: “Globalization is a tidal wave: You can either ride it, and go far; or resist it, and be swept away.” Or there is Prime Minister Nazif of Egypt, who

is presiding over what everyone sees as Egypt’s economic opening: Tariffs, taxes, regulations, and other barriers are falling. Foreign investment is pouring in, and the economy is growing at 6 percent.

The Middle East is not all terrorism and beheadings. It is a climactic war between the western civilized team, the realm of trust, exchange, and transparency, and the “eternal gang of ruthless men.”

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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