John Miller
Why We Are Vulnerable
My introduction to this series is by way of apology. I am hoping that it will be a series of relatively short articles, knit together, bound by common language. It has been suggested that at my time of life, I should retire and leave the writing to the younger brigade. For various reasons, I have been requested not to follow my inclinations and I provide a few reasons. America is still the bastion of freedom that it has always been but like any great country, it is subject to various pressures in any area you care to name. I think of America fondly as a country, which carried the Allied war effort against Hitler and his odious Nazi regime. I think of America as a country that carried the torch of freedom during that much misunderstood and intellectually denigrated period that we call the Cold War. The Western Allies of the US can be given some credit for their part in that great struggle and in smaller undeclared conflicts around the globe. But over the past 20 to 30 years, there has been a rather dismal trend about American politics and other aspects of life. In particular, I think of the way many Americans have turned their backs on science and the scientific method. Had this not been the case, Al Gore, the sainted one and leader of AGW around the globe would not have been allowed to get away with slack science, evidence that had been tampered with and statistics that had been massaged to suit the case.
This general revolt against the scientific method has been contagious in Western society. Science is not trusted because it brought nuclear weapons into existence and, to quote John F. Kennedy, the “power to destroy life on the face of the earth.” That science also put man on the moon, and I am not going to succumb to political correctness and say humankind. The power of JFK's inaugural speech has stood the test of time and as a foreigner, I listen to it quite often. However, his call for a moon landing was even stronger and more powerful because it invited man to look at the stars and consider his destiny. I regret profoundly that domestic politics prevented the space program from continuing because by now, we should have landed on Mars. The proportion of the US budget spent on the space program was miniscule by comparison with the budget for weapons. That is not to say that weapons were not required and under Ronald Reagan, the U.S. Navy became the most powerful in the world.
Through various social movements, the underpinnings of our societies have been steadily eroded. My generation talks of the 1950s, the quiet decade which preceded the turmoil of the Vietnam War and associated protest movements. We were at war in the 1950s and Soviet repression in East Europe was brutal, none more so than in 1956 when Hungary attempted to break away from the Soviet model and I remember the radio broadcasts of anti-Communist forces begging and praying for US intervention. Then the broadcasts ceased and we found out later that the Soviet ambassador in Budapest had played a canny game with the Hungarian leader Imre Nagy. It should come as no surprise to learn that the Soviet ambassador was none other than Yury Vladimirovich Andropov, known to some as "the Butcher of Budapest" and later head of the KGB and then First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. When dying, Andropov actively contemplated a first strike against the West especially the US, such was his hatred for America and the capitalist system and a morbid obsession, proven by later events that communist states could unravel quickly. Just in passing, remember the fall of Nicolae Ceauşescu and his swift trial and execution in December 1989.
That the Communists had so many dupes and fellow travelers in the West, especially among elites and intellectuals continues to surprise, but the powerful influence of Karl Marx should never be underestimated, nor its influence in academe. It made little difference that early travelers to the Soviet Union were enchanted by deception, whether it be in the form of happy workers, Potemkin villages or first-class treatment. A whole generation was duped as Paul Hollander has pointed out so vividly in his book Political Pilgrims, which stands as one of the great texts of the Cold War. Even today, it is astonishing to find that images of communist icons abound in the West from busts of Marx to T-shirts emblazoned with the idealized form of Che Guevara. I have even visited the offices of politicians and found pictures of Chairman Mao adorning the walls. Now, we have a younger generation believing that Hugo Chavez in Venezuela is building something new, which is decidedly better than the Western way of life. For those who do not value freedoms very highly and for the simpleminded, it's all too easy. And quite apart from those categories, Chavez is tweaking the Yankee tail and the anti-American left laps it up in large doses. At the same time, successive US administrations try to deal with the devil without any great success but the tin pot dictator of Venezuela harbors Hezbollah and terrorist groups whose aim is to destroy not only the West, its way of life and freedoms but to wipe the state of Israel from the face of the planet.
The law has become a jackass and lawyers are like sharks looking for blood. The legal system itself is too open to manipulation; prisons are not centers of rehabilitation but instruments of punishment that function as colleges of higher education for hardened criminals and increasingly, recruiting grounds for Islamic fundamentalists.
Then we have the case of the established church. Western civilization was built on Christian principles and ideals grafted onto Roman law, amended by English common law and in due course revised by the constitutions of various countries. However, the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness was common to all. I'm not going to simplify matters too much but Western liberal democracy as we know it today was increasingly modified by the secular humanist movement that started in France with the philosophes and The Enlightenment (Zeitalter der Aufklärung) of the 17th Century and the bloody revolution that followed. Then the Napoleonic law became a viable model for many Western countries and some of its features were exported to countries far away - consider Tom Paine and his Francophile tendencies.
With the advance of science, in the face of resistance from the Vatican, the church was slowly but surely undermined and with it, traditional authority. Many countries claim to be Christian but it is superficial. Religion has become a private matter and even in Italy, the Roman Catholic Church has not been able to maintain the allegiance of the population especially on matters of morals and doctrinal affairs. As for non-catholic churches, they are slowly fading into obscurity and quite possibly irrelevance. The new God is green and Al Gore is his prophet. To any believing Christian, we are stewards of the planet but not in thrall to some of the more far out doctrines, which claim we live in the end times. As a sometime student of history, we have always lived in the end times and have done since the events of the New Testament, when people believed the Second Coming was imminent. It is a very sobering experience to cruise the Internet and see just how many millenarian and apocalyptic doctrines attract so many people. It appears that we cannot believe any old faith and are desperately casting around for answers and new beliefs. In short, modern Western liberal democracy in all its forms is now lacking confidence and belief in itself and its history - it has had its feet kicked out from beneath. Having said that, we all know that nature abhors a vacuum and it is not surprising that the vacuum is being filled by a force that has deep roots in history.
Keep it simple, stupid.
(The so-called KISS principle of management)
To many non-Americans, the name of James Carville will not mean a great deal, despite being a familiar face on TV but for those who take an interest in US politics, his influence has been quite remarkable. During the presidential campaign of 1992, Bill Clinton's team made wide use of simple phrases, the most prominent being: “It's the economy, stupid," and it was part of the brilliant strategy masterminded by James Carville. It is widely reported that in order to keep the campaign on the straight and narrow, a sign hung in Bill Clinton's campaign headquarters in Little Rock with a simple message:
1. Change v. more of the same.
2. The economy, stupid.
3. Don't forget health care.
These simple statements became part of a slogan which helped to defeat George H.W. Bush, as several writers have pointed out. The word economy has been substituted for others for various reasons, such as the deficit, the oil spill, the math and so on, becoming as much part of the political rubric as the tendency to attach the suffix -gate to various events since Watergate. I have my own theory about education and politics. It involves the rapid transfer of information and rather disturbingly, dumbing down of the population to the extent that slogans are more powerful than ideas and we are shooting ourselves collectively in the feet because the 30 second soundbite on the evening TV news is now down to around 10 seconds and we have played ourselves into the hands of the hucksters of philosophy, who thrive on notions of increasingly rapid change, consumerism and entropy.
In the face of a complex world, we value simplicity and reject the complications of detailed problems - we have no time to sit and think, only to Twitter or send SMS messages. By way of digression, I became fascinated with the TV program Numbers and the mathematical genius Charles Epps. The story lines are never particularly complicated but the mathematical formulae conjured out of thin air by Charlie Epps quite often rang a bell with me because I was familiar with some of the mathematical propositions and theories but unfortunately, I think I was in a minority, as I am today. And so, it's time to cut to the chase.
KISS and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism
(not to be mentioned in polite society or among the politically correct)
Western liberal democracy stands at a crossroads in history. Whether we like it or not or choose to ignore it, we are at war and have been since the mid-1990s, because that appears to be the generally agreed time when Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda declared war on the US and Israel and by extension, Western society. In one of the strange quirks of life, on July 28 this year, the French government declared war on Al Qaeda in a formal sense (AFP) after the killing of a 78-year old French national engaged aid work in Africa, where he was taken hostage in April this year. French forces struck at an al-Qaeda camp in Mauritania, after French foreign Minister Francois Fillon announced in what were described as no uncertain terms that: "We are war with al-Qaeda." French counterintelligence and counterterrorist organizations have conducted operations against Islamic fundamentalists but usually behind the scenes in cooperation with some of the former Francophone colonies in North Africa. M. Fillon added in part: “It's a universal threat that concerns the whole world... not just France or the West.”
In a sense there was a similar declaration by Pres. Obama after the aborted terrorist attack on Christmas Day 2009, conducted by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. It represented a milestone for an administration criticized by many for using weasel words and rubbery phrases to avoid words such as “fundamentalist,” “Islamic” and “terrorist.”
What follows in this series will be large self-evident and I make no apology. Practically every journal and website carries complex explanations of why Islamic terrorists appear hell-bent on destroying our society. By and large, America and the West in general is extremely rich in explanations but the problem seems to be that no one understands, wants to understand or tries to evade the issue.
This then is the first part of our dilemma: it's a simple problem that we ignore or do our best to rationalize away. It is endemic to Western society because our freedoms, values, norms and folkways lead us to be disinclined to stare truth in the face and admit that we have problems which involve violent solutions.
In Part Two of this series I will examine the key question of why we are at war with fundamentalist Islam and the unintended consequences of well-meaning democratic policy. From there, certain cases will be examined as paradigms and some of the lessons learned by the authorities spelled out in plain text.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor John W. Miller is a former senior intelligence officer with NATO and allied forces, with considerable experience in Russian (Soviet) affairs and counterterrorism.
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