Three Tyrants and a President

As 2006 ends the news is dominated by the stories of three tyrants and a president of the United States, men whose lives have something to teach us.
The first tyrant was Augusto Pinochet, the general turned military dictator who terrorized Chile for about fifteen years. Now as dictators go Pinochet wasn’t that bad he didn’t kill that many people only around 3,000, he didn’t wreck the nation’s economy, he didn’t build up a loathsome personality cult and he did step down and make way for democracy in.
Yet Pinochet’s story is still a frightening one , Pinochet wasn’t a wild eyed man or a megalomaniac who set out to seize power. He was simply a middle class professional army officer, a career soldier pushed too far by events. Pinochet overthrew Salvatore Allende the democratically elected Marxist President of Chile in a violent coup on Sept. 11, 1973. Pinochet and his followers did this because they were afraid of Allende, afraid that Allende was turning Chile into a Communist dictatorship abolishing basic freedoms and turning Chile into a puppet of the Soviet Union. Pinochet felt that he had to take radical action to defend his country and did so.
The lesson from Pinochet and Allende is an obvious one for us, in 1973 Chile was the most democratic nation in Latin America with a long tradition of elected constitutional governments. Yet its politics had become completely polarized between right and left, the right feared the left, the left feared the right and average people feared political extremism. Rhetoric got ratcheted up and the other side got demonized, eventually the situation got so bad that average Chileans could murder their countrymen for simply having the wrong politics and other Chileans could sit by and let it happen. That should be a lesson for us Americans as we replace democratic dialog with pompous rhetoric, character assassination and demonisation we risk turning our politics into a shooting war. Especially if we start thinking of our political opponents as the enemy rather than the opposition.
The second tyrant is Fidel Castro, the world has been mindlessly this monster who may or may not be on his death bed. Unlike Pinochet, Castro has wrecked his nation, ruined its economy and turned his people into slaves. The problem with Castro is that we are paying attention to him when we shouldn’t, Castro’s time has passed he is no longer capable of emptying his own bed pan so how can he run Cuba? The official line is that Castro’s sycophantic younger brother, Raul who is almost as old as Fidel and is in lousy health has taken over.
That’s nonsense, yes Raul Castro and his friends are still playing Communist Party in Havana but are they really running anything? Just because there’s a group meeting in Havana claims to be a government doesn’t mean that group controls Cuba? We should ask ourselves who is really running Cuba and how? It maybe local Communist thugs or it maybe the Colombian drug cartels, after all Cuba is on the main drug corridor to the US, and the drug cartels are in an excellent position to take advantage of the situation. They have real hard cash to hand out to allies, all Fidel and Raul have to offer is empty rhetoric and stories of a revolution that exists only in their minds. Even if the cartels aren’t in Cuba right now they will be soon.
Another frightening thought, it would be in the drug cartels’ advantage to start a Cuban civil war say an all out battle between Cubans of African descent (who’ve been relegated to the back of the bus in Fidel’s socialist paradise) and Cubans of Spanish descent (hint the Castro Brothers’ dad was born in Spain). If different factions were fighting for control of Cuba they’d need arms and money and the drug cartels could provide arms and money in exchange for passage. The question we should ask ourselves are the drug thugs on the ground in Cuba right now handing out the cash and the guns getting ready for Fidel’s death to spark the fight for Cuba’s future.
Naturally, our media wouldn’t notice little things like a Cuban civil war brewing or drug thugs stoking the fire until the shooting starts. No the reporters are too busy singing Fidel’s praises while gorging themselves on the free buffet Raul has put out for them. Nor would our intelligent agencies they’re too busy trying to collect samples from Fidel’s bed pan for scientific analysis so they can determine when he will die than to see what the real situation in Cuba is.
The third tyrant is Saddam Hussein, he was hanged Friday night and there was no reaction. His time is past more importantly the time of the all powerful nation state that Saddam embodied has passed, the last of the great dictators dragged into a shabby room somewhere by a bunch of angry men and lynched. Okay, the bastard got what he deserved but Saddam’s death marked the effective death of the modern state and the beginning of a new era.
Finally there’s the death of Gerald Ford, Ford was an average President who did one great thing he pardoned former President Richard Nixon. By pardoning Nixon Ford prevented impeachment proceedings that would have led to an orgy of destructive political warfare that might have fatally undermined our democracy. The incriminations would still be going on and compromise and national healing would have been impossible.
Beyond that the great project of Ford’s presidency the attempt to negotiate a political solution to the Cold War was a miserable failure. The Soviet Union was willing to sign all of Ford’s agreements, détente and the Helsinki accords but not to follow them. Instead the Soviets became emboldened and more aggressive and the Cold War heated up. Ford’s noble experiment ended up as meaningless paper and a footnote in history.
The lesson from Ford’s foreign policy is an obvious one, diplomacy only works when both sides are willing to go along with it. Meaningless diplomatic agreements like Ford’s détente can actually make things worse by emboldening aggressors and creating a false sense of peace that lulls good people into complacency.
So what can we learn from the three tyrants and a President just that our world and its history have lessons to teach us and we’re not learning those lessons. Hopefully our minds will be more open to those lessons in 2007.

Conservation With Jennings

Answer: Basically none as events in Iraq and Afghanistan prove we’re still conducting large scale conventional wars against entire nations, responding to national security threats by deploying huge armies and focusing on the threat posed by national governments while ignoring that posed by non government actors unless they do something really outrageous like Sept. 11.
Question: Why is this?
Answer: It’s simple the whole power structure in Washington is set up around the idea of all powerful national governments and all powerful nation states, so is the thinking. Our military is designed to fight other nations, our state department to conduct relations with them, our Congress to react to actions of other countries, the press corps to cover the behavior of government. So it’s easy to see why these people don’t get it and don’t want to get it. Everything in Washington is centered around the nation and national government so a theory that states power is now in the hands of entities out of government will not be well received.
Question: How does this affect our war in Iraq?
Answer: Simple we’re squandering our resources on efforts to build an Iraqi government when there is no such thing. Instead of working with effective non government entities on the ground, our troops are fighting to protect a chimera called Iraq. Our politicians and generals come up with no constructive suggestions for Iraq only the failed policies of the past: negotiate with other Iran and Syria, send in more troops, pull out, call in the United Nations none of these things will work. But they’re all we hear because these solutions involve the nation state. Unfortunately our leaders can’t think beyond the nation state even though entities other than the Nation state are driving war and diplomacy these days. Our military is in a particularly bad situation because it’s traditional weapons and methods are ineffective and no new ones are being suggested.
Question: What is the reaction of the two parties Democrat and Republican and the left and the right to 4G Warfare?
Answer: The Left doesn’t get it at all, the right halfway gets it but refuses to acknowledge its consequences. Democrats, with the exception of Gary Hart who is long out of power, don’t even talk 4G, Republicans seem to understand it but don’t want to think about it.
Question: What is the cause of this refusal to understand a basic fact of our time?
Answer: Well first the media has basically ignored 4G and refused to talk about it. Two thirds of our politicians these days refuse to even discuss an issue or a concept unless they see it in The New York Times or hear it discussed on Rush Limbaugh. Since the mainstream media has effectively kept 4G out of the national consensus it can’t be discussed.
Question: Why does the media not want to discuss 4G? Even though the theory has obvious merits in real life?
Answer: My guess is that it contradicts the Neo Marxist Dogmas that pass for political thinking in modern America. 4G certainly contradicts Cultural Marxism which teaches that all cultures and peoples are slowly becoming one in a global utopia and war can be prevented by cultural sensitivity it also makes nonsense of Neo Conservative dogmas which teach that American military power and free trade will lead to a one world Utopia. The opinion leaders would rather ignore 4G rather than think about it because it requires them to think beyond their prejudices.
Question: Are there any other reasons why our political leaders ignore 4G?
Answer: It shows that their basic beliefs are flawed and obsolete. Virtually everyone on the left believes in all powerful government, the reality of shadowy non governmental entities being able to effectively wage war upon and sometimes defeat governments destroys their fantasy of unlimited government power. They can’t accept the fact that government is merely a limited human mechanism and not an all powerful force. Most politicos on the right are old fashioned patriots, they believe in the nation and in loyalty to it. They can’t accept the reality of a world where a large percentage of the world’s populations rejects the nation state and places their loyalties elsewhere. That’s a completely alien concept to them and it disturbs them because to them the nation is something holy to be worshipped and any rejection of it is treason.
Question: So mentally neither left or right is prepared for 4G or capable of effectively reacting to it?
Answer: In a word yes.
Question: What will it take for our leaders to come to grips with 4G?
Answer: Either a complete disaster in which a great many innocent Americans die, something far more destructive than Sept. 11, or the rise to power of a new generation of leaders who reject the old thinking. Hopefully, it will be the later and not the former.

Rail in the Blizzard

Nothing proves we need more passenger and mass transit rail in America and Colorado than the Blizzard that hit Denver on Dec. 21 and Dec. 22. Everything in Denver, except the RTD light rail line seemed to shut down. The freeways and the side streets were snowed in, buses stopped moving and the airport shut down but the light rail kept running. The only problem light rail seemed to have was snow covering the platforms, something easily dealt with by RTD employees with shovels and snow blowers.
I was able to get to work using a combination of light rail, walking, the bus and bumming a ride from the light rail station to the office. My boss who drives an expensive new SUV wasn't even able to leave his driveway.
Backers of bus rapid transit should note that most bus service in Denver shut down even as the light rail kept running. I was able to use it to travel nearly thirty miles to work.
Elsewhere in Denver, the Amtrak train was able to reach Denver from points east even though Denver International Airport was shut down. Thousands of people were trapped at the airport many of them only twenty or thirty miles from their towns. They couldn't leave the airport because the main road to it Pena Boulevard was blocked by snow. There was no way to move all of the passengers out of the airport to shelters or hotels in Downtown Denver or elsehwere. No way to haul those passengers back to some point near their homes.
I couldn't help thinking that if they had a train to the airport like the one proposed in the FasTracks plan they could have hauled all those people out of the airport. The trapped passengers cooling their heels at the airport could have been downtown spending money at restaurants, movie theaters and hotels and contributing to our tax base.
The blizzard of 2006 proves how vulnerable our ground transportation system is to the weather. We need an alternative, the best alternative today is rail, it isn't a perfect alternative and it's an expensive one but it's the best one we have. The question is will we learn from this or not?

Colorado Rail

I’ve gone on record as supporting the idea of a state wide Fastracks type initiative to finance the creation of a statewide passenger bus and rail network. Now I suppose this gives me the right to say what this system should look like, so here are a few of my ideas.
First on the agenda should be bus system expansion because it’s something that we can do right now without much investment. A cheap early way to do this would be to expand the Regional Transit District’s Regional Bus service into Park, Clear Creek and Gilpin Counties. Since this would simply involve extending the routes of existing buses it would be easy to do. These counties are commuter country full of people who drive long distances to jobs in Denver, many of them drive to RTD Park in Rides to catch a bus to Denver The first step would be to extend RTD’s CS and CV bus service to Shawnee or Grant that could be done instantly and bring bus service to thousands of Park County Commuters. A longer term service would be to extend RTD Bus service to the South Park and the Town of Fairplay.
Further North new RTD Regional Routes could be set up to serve Gilpin and Clear Creek Counties. One route would run up I-70 to Georgetown or perhaps to Sliverthorne and Dillon in Summit County. Perhaps an hourly bus service along I-70 could be set up and eventually extended to points farther West. This would serve as a Commuter service year round and as a ski bus in the Winter. This bus would also serve the growing Evergreen and Genesee areas. Other routes would serve Gilpin County and especially the gaming towns of Central City and Blackhawk.
Further South Colorado Springs Bus Service should be extended into Teller County to service the bedroom communities around Woodland Park and the gaming town of Cripple Creek. Springs buses should travel as far a field as Guffy and Lake George. A bus service along US 50 connecting Pueblo with Canon City, Salida, Gunnison and Montrose should be established. As should a bus service along I-70 connecting Grand Junction with Glenwood Springs. Perhaps such bus services could be established fairly cheaply by contracting with private companies that operate buses. Bus service to Steamboat Springs and Durango should be a priority as well.
We could have in a few months or a couple of years we could have bus service to all of Colorado’s mountain towns in place. That would certainly benefit the poor and many middle class commuters as well.
As for rail service well I really like the plan for I-70 rail promoted by the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority, an elevated rail structure with the electric powered FLIRT (Fast Light Innovative Regional Train) made by Stadler of Switzerland running along it. Although I hope we look into other alternatives including the Transrapid Maglev train from Germany which has been tested for thirty years. The Flirt offers some obvious advantages, first it could operate on existing rail lines and possibly on RTD’s light rail lines in Denver, it could certainly share tracks with the commuter rail RTD is planning as part of FasTracks.
My suggestion would be to build the I-70 rail line RMRA is proposing with a few additions. First RTD commuter rail trains would run along it to connect with the mountain suburb of Evergreen and the towns of Clear Creek County. Second, there would be a spur line up Clear Creek Canyon to serve the gambling towns of Blackhawk and Cripple Creek this would be paid for with a tax on gambling revenues. This could follow the old railroad right of way up Clear Creek Canyon.
Third, the existing Union Pacific rail routes through the Moffat Tunnel and down the Colorado River Canyon to Grand Junction would be electrified. This would increase efficiency trains now have to wait to go through the tunnel while fans blow out diesel fumes, it would let FLIRT trains from DIA service both Winter Park and Steamboat Springs. It would also allow trains to carry skiers from the Grand Junction Airport to the ski areas and carry workers who live in Western slope towns to the ski areas. Perhaps we could make a deal with Union Pacific to create this service. Let Union Pacific freight trains use the I-70 line in exchange for letting passenger trains use the Moffat line and the tunnel which is owned by Colorado. Perhaps Union Pacific could operate the I-70 Passenger trains as well.
Fourth, the state of Colorado would buy the existing rail line up the Arkansas Valley from Pueblo to Desarto Junction. This should be electrified it would allow passenger trains to serve fast growing Arkansas Valley towns like Salida, Canon City and Buena Vista and to carry ski workers from Leadville to Vail. It could also allow rail service between Colorado Springs and the ski country.
Fifth we should start planning now for four new rail lines, one between Loveland and Rocky Mountain National Park. One along US 24 and Colorado 9 between Colorado Springs and Dillon, and a line along US 50 between Pueblo and Montrose this could incorporate the existing Arkansas Valley Line as well as new track. The final line would be along US 50 and US 550 between Grand Junction and Durango with a spur line to Cortez. There would be a spur line to Telluride as well.
Now I know these plans are ambitious but are they any more ambitious than the highway system that connects our state. Our forebears had the courage and foresight to create transportation networks to ensure their future namely the railroads and the highways. We need the same kind of courage and foresight if Colorado is to have a future.

William S. Lind on Iran

There is nothing more pathetic than a prophet who fails to heed his own predictions. That prophet is Col. William S. Lind USMC retired (Marines for us civilians) who has done the world a service of incredible value by warning us of the horrors of Fourth Generational Warfare which American service people are now facing everyday on the streets of Iraq.
Lind is now warning the American public through the American Conservative that the greatest danger American troops face in Iraq is the Iranian Army. Lind has spun a fantasy that the Iranian Army with its 1950s weaponry could somehow take US forces by surprise and overwhelm and defeat them. He says this is possible because Shiite militiamen in Iraq would cut our supply lines. With all respect to Col. Lind, I’m not at all afraid of this scenario, my guess is the likelihood of Iran defeating US forces in Iraq is about as great as that of space aliens descending from the sky and aiding the Iranians in our defeat which is about the only way I figure Iran could defeat the USA.
Yes the Iranians could launch a surprise attack upon the US and maybe take a few of our boys by surprise. But the majority of our troops would strike back and strike back hard, their weapons and training are still superior and so is the airpower. Lind’s only answer to air power is that well the Germans succeeded during the first part of the Battle of the Bulge during World War II because cloud cover grounded US and British planes. Note to Col. Lind, when the cloud cover lifted back in 1944 and American and British planes took off again the Germans lost.
My guess is that the Iranian Army would be slaughtered in an attack on American forces or more likely the Iranian soldiers will quietly walk up to the first American they see and calmly lay down their guns the one or two Revolutionary Guards in the area will run off out of fear , the Iranians could take a few Americans by surprise but once Americans figured out what was going on that would be the end of that. Lind claims the commanders of Shiite militias in Iraq are loyal to Iran. How loyal are these guys going to be with some GI sticking a pistol in their ear? The militia commanders in Iraq are shrewd realistic politicians they’ll go with the winning side, and sell out Iran to save their sorry hides. The average Iraqi Shiite well, he’ll have a headache or couldn’t find his gun until the battle was over then he’ll show up to back the winning side. My guess is the Iraqi comparing the Iranian draftee with his forty year old AK-47 asking where the Americans are so he can surrender in time for chow to the American regular with the latest in high tech weaponry and eager for a fight will start singing America the Beautiful.
The Iranian Army today is not Das Wehrmacht of 1940, it’s the Italian Army of 1940, a bunch of draftees looking for the first enemy to surrender to. The loud mouthed leader who will run away the minute his troops loose on the battlefield. Just like Mussolini did and probably be lynched by his own soldiers just as Mussolini was.
Even if Iran were to do the impossible that is somehow defeat and capture the US Army in Iraq. It would still loose, the US still has overwhelming air power and nuclear weapons. The US President not wanting to see a single GI harmed will call the Presidential Palace in Tehran and say, “the Trident class Submarine USS something or other has just locked on to Tehran. Gee wouldn’t it be unfortunate if there was a malfunction and a missile accidentally launched, I’m on the phone with the Captain of that ship his orders are to push the button if he doesn’t hear your unconditional surrender within the next minute.” Think this is a fantasy, well how would George W. or Hillary react if given the choice.
Victorious Iranian soldiers in the field gathered for the surrender ceremony would be confused to see their general quietly walk out of his headquarters and hand his pistol to the supposedly surrendering American commander. Then pull out a bullhorn and say, “men if you want your families to live turn all of your weapons over to the Americans now.” The one or two Revolutionary Guard officers who objected to the surrender, well, there was this American sniper who didn’t surrender and he was right over there. Too bad the only guy he shot was the RG commander before we got you him you all saw the sniper didn’t you. Nobody saw me pull out my pistol and blow the SOB away.”
Lind is wrong and right, there is a danger in a US war with Iran. The danger is that we’ll win and win easily and find ourselves responsible for Iran like we’re responsible for Iraq right now. The danger is that Americans having easily defeated Iran’s sorry excuse for a military will try to occupy the country and find ourselves fighting the Revolutionary Guard in the streets of Tehran. On the battlefield, the Revolutionary Guard is useless as a fighting force, but as a non government fighting force it would be superb. The big brave Revolutionary Guardsman would surrender to the Americans get disarmed and sent home, then dig his second gun out from under the bed and start the real war when the American occupiers arrived.
If the most powerful military on Earth can’t cope with the confusion of Fourth Generational Warfare how can a third rate power like Iran?
As a brilliant thinker, Bill Lind understands 4G Warfare perfectly but as a traditional military officer and a patriot he rejects it. Unfortunately his idiotic rejection of his insightful thesis only makes more Fourth Generational Warfare likely. Traditional warfare of the kind Lind fears is not the threat the threat is more Fourth Generational warfare and a repeat of the Iraq debacle in Iran.

Fourth Generation Warfare in London

Fourth Generational Warfare as defined by Col. William Lind is the world’s new status quo in which war is waged by entities other than the traditional nation state in other words non state entities operating like the state waging war, making laws, collecting taxes etc.
That is only half the story, the other half of the story in Fourth Generation Warfare is the state acting like a non state player. Governments finding traditional methods of war and diplomacy ineffective will turn to other methods.
A perfect example of a state waging Fourth Generational Warfare was the assassination of former Russian spy Paul Klebnikov in London. Klebnikov was poisoned with radioactive isotopes quite possibly by Russian secret agents. Klebnikov was a well known critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin who openly sympathized with Anti Russian Islamic rebels in Chechnya he apparently converted to Islam so there’s more to this story than we’ve been told.
Scotland Yard detectives are now knocking around Moscow talking to ex KGB agents in a futile attempt to find Klebnikov’s killers. I doubt they’ll find any answers and they won’t dispel the many conspiracy theories being flung about.
Most of the conspiracy theories point to the Kremlin and Putin and that’s entirely possible. It’s totally in keeping with Fourth Generational Warfare, Russia a weak state is besieged by all manner of Fourth Generational warriors. In such a situation Russia has to strike back with everything at its means including assassination and treachery. A former Russian agent making common cause with Russia’s enemies is a legitimate target in such an environment. He’s a traitor and a turncoat, the Russian government like a Mafia family then has to eliminate anybody who sells them out.
Of course, Vladimir Putin may have had nothing to do with Klebnikov’s death. Klebnikov may have been eliminated by the Russian secret police or some faction thereof perhaps for reasons of their own. If this is the case, the situation is more complex and frightening than we had thought, the Russian government is fragmenting into different factions pursuing different agendas.
Klebnikov’s death may then be the opening act in a disturbing new round of Fourth Generational Warfare, a war of covert operatives. In the new war groups of spooks will fight each other in the shadows, some of them will be pursuing political goals, others will simply be mercenaries and entrepreneurs seeking money and personal gain. Perhaps Klebnikov was killed because he betrayed one covert faction, the former KGB and joined another the Chechyan rebels.
One frightening aspect of all this is that laws may be meaningless in this new world of Fourth Generational Warfare. Russians can murder a man in London and get away with it. The British police are powerless to do anything about it, they can investigate but can they do anything? Will any Russian Court or judge extradite a KGB man to stand trial I doubt it. Will any Russian in his or her right mind cooperate with a British police inspector, of course not? The British police will go home empty handed and the Russian spooks will order their agents to eliminate the next enemy living in London.
The only recourse Her Majesty’s Government have here could be to order its legendary spy agency MI-6 to activate a real life James Bond an agent licensed to kill and send him or her out to deal with the Russians behind this. That may not happen right away but if bodies start piling up in London there’s a good chance the Prime Minister will ask the head of MI-6 to take such action.
Fourth Generational Warfare has come home to the streets of one of the world’s great cities in a truly frightening way. A man has been murdered for simply exercising his freedom of speech, worse he’s been murdered in a particularly cruel and sadistic way that threatens the life and health of many other people. The historians of the future may never know who killed Klebnikov but I have a feeling that many of them will mark his death as the first of many.

Martin Luther King’s Effect Upon Politics & Religion in America

Why is it that religion seems to play a bigger role in America’s politics than those of any other major industrialized country? Why do America’s conservatives appeal to God and the Bible to justify all their stands on social issues, while liberals invoke the name of Jesus every time they make a point?
The growing influence of religion over American politics is particularly puzzling because it is a thoroughly modern phenomenon, just forty years ago religious issues barely registered in American politics. Today they seem to be the only issues, the advocates and opponents of virtually every cause abortion, gay rights, stem cell research, war, peace, welfare etc. invoke God and Jesus to justify their arguments.
This is largely the work or rather the effect of one man, one of the giants of the 20th Century Martin Luther King Junior. MLK didn’t plan to politicize American religion instead that was a side effect of King’s ministry. King was a man of God, an ordained minister who used his ministry, his personal charisma and his gifts as an orator to achieve a highly political goal the dismantling of the system of racial segregation. He later expanded his ministry to include stands on the Vietnam War and the issue of poverty.
King succeeded by taking a political issue and defining it in moral and religious terms much as Gandhi had done a generation earlier. Like Gandhi, King defined his mission in moral and religious terms rather than political ones. King’s principal tool in achieving this end was the sermon, he used the traditional southern Sermon to appeal to both his black followers and his white opponents.
In achieving his goals and incredible fame King redefined the role of religion in American life and the role of the clergy. King became something more than just a pastor, he became a moral critic of society something akin to the Biblical prophets. For the first time in American history, a clergyman had power and influence over the nation’s political leaders. King’s tragic death in a shadowy circumstances made him into a Christ like martyr.
King created a new activist brand of American Christianity by challenging Christians to take stands on political issues and become politically active. His influence was compounded by the fact that MLK was the last great American orator or at least the last orator to be in a position to influence public opinion. The next great American to gain prominence as a speaker was Ronald Reagan who used a chatty style of speech more attune to television and radio commentary than the pulpit. This means King will be quoted long after he is gone by vast numbers of people who disagree with everything King stood for.
Now it must be pointed out here that King had to use religion to achieve his goals. Because he was a pastor who used the language of the Bible, King could promote the cause of Civil Rights without being labeled a Communist in Cold War America. Instead of a radical promoting a new social agenda, King was simply a man of God preaching brotherly love. There was probably no other way to carry out the Civil Rights Revolution that transformed America in the 1950s and 60s.
Unfortunately, King also demonstrated what a potent force for political and social change faith can be. By moving America closer to racial equality, MLK showed conservatives how to use faith to achieve their goals of traditional values and smaller government and MLK showed leftists how to use faith to achieve their radical agenda of Anti-Americanism and socialism.
Both the Religious Right and the Religious Left are the illegitimate stepchildren of Martin Luther King Jr’s ministry. Both the Religious Right and the Religious Left claim to be King’s heir, both groups evoke his memory constantly and mindlessly repeat his oratory. The more radical elements of both groups try to utilize King’s strategy of Civil Disobedience to achieve their goals. The pro life movement sits in at abortion clinics, the peace movement at recruiting stations. Both try to transform America by mobilizing the Church to take political action.
So what does this mean for us today? Fortunately, King’s great achievements of Civil Rights and racial equality seem to be irreversible, unfortunately, so does King’s unintentional politicizing of American religion. Hopefully, the end of the separation of church and state and the freedom it guarantees us won’t join segregation in the ash heap of history.

Fourth Generation War in Iraq

A few decades from now we’ll look back at the Iraq War and see exactly what went wrong and why. Now, only a few visionaries see what’s wrong but in a few decades we’ll all know Iraq is the first Fourth Generational War.
Fourth Generational Warfare as envisioned by Col. Bill Lind of the Heritage Foundation is warfare waged by entities other than the nation state. The theory is this since the 17th Century the nation state has had a monopoly on warfare and the use of force. Today, the status quo has changed, the theory states, modern technology has given groups other than the state the capability to wage and win wars.
In Iraq the United States and its massive armies are being humiliated by shadowy insurgents and bands of religious fanatics. The nature of Fourth Generational Warfare favors the terrorists and not the state. The bad guys can do whatever they want and commit any crime but the nation state’s actions are limited by the media spotlights. The terrorists can loot, pillage, torture, maim, murder and commit any crime they want against unarmed civilians. The US government gets raked over the coals for making things tough for the bad guys it’s holding prisoner. The media mindlessly covers every activity of the government but ignores the behavior of the terrorists who hide in the shadows.
In many ways the Iraq War is the perfect example of Fourth Generational Warfare the US is trying to demonstrate its power after the humiliation of Sept. 11 by invading and occupying Iraq. Yet its massive military is humiliated by the insurgents and terrorists who hide in the shadows. Our government and the people who lead it are trying to shore up the Iraq government which is a bad joke with no real power or influence. The Iraq War is showing the world Fourth Generational Warfare in action but nobody is learning the lesson.
The idiotic efforts of our leaders to end the Iraq War prove this. The Iraq study group suggests that we engage in dialogue with the governments of Iran and Syria to end the conflict. Iran and Syria are third rate powers whose governments barely control their nations how can they influence let alone control the situation in Iraq? They suggest the Iraqi government seize control of the situation in Iraq even though it can’t. Iraq’s politicians who know their future is in the hands of various political and religious factions serve those factions interests and ignore the US.
The chaos in the streets of Iraq should scare us because it is our future if we don’t learn from it. There is no government in Iraq, non government actors, terrorists, religious fanatics, gangsters are in control. US soldiers aren’t an occupying army they’re a small force in enemy territory. Even worse the US government has to turn to non government actors like private security contractors and Shiite religious militias to secure Iraq.
The world seems to be mindlessly watching everything that’s happening in Iraq but nobody seems to be paying any real attention to what’s really happening there. Nobody seems to see what Iraq really is the graveyard of the nation state. The Iraqi nation state is already dead, the Iraqi people realize it, nobody else does now the US government seems intent on impaling itself on the same stake. Other countries including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria seem intent on doing the same thing.
Where this will lead, I don’t know? Corporate warfare? Military entrepreneurs forming private armies to fight wars, religious orders and big business on the battle field. All are possible and all should scare us. For we’ve entered a brave new world in Iraq, the world of Fourth Generational Warfare.

The Collapse of the United States

The current rage on the Internet seems to be predicting the collapse of the United States, James Kunstler is highlighting an amusing take on that subject by Russian émigré Dimitri Orlov comparing the US to the Soviet Union and the usually positive Tech Central Station is schilling for Empire, a gloomy little novel of a contemporary American civil war by Orson Scott Card. The question is do I believe in this stuff or not?
The answer is yes and no, I believe the United States will decline and its position will quite probably collapse but not in the way these people predict. I seriously doubt an American Civil War is in the cards but Orson Card Scott seems to think so. In particular he believes the Far Left could launch a violent assault on our government. Probably farfetched but Card, as science fiction writers go is no right winger. His books have a definitely liberal slant, so paranoia about the Far Left from him is something to be examined. I have to admit the American Far Left scares me it is socialistic, fascistic, elitist and undemocratic in a way I .
Orlov’s rant is more amusing, he thinks the US may collapse like the Soviet Union, I think the British Empire is a better example. Like Imperial Britain America is a capitalistic and militaristic society with limited resources. Like Imperial Britain America runs the world but is paranoid about its position and potential rivals namely China.
Britain didn’t slide into poverty and third world hell because of its’ decline. Modern Britain seems to be richer and a better place for citizens to live than ever. It seems to work economically when other European countries don’t and it functions in the modern world when countries like France don’t. Britain has even preserved some of its military power in interesting ways.
Even the partial collapse of British government in the 1970s wasn’t a bad thing the crash of the British welfare state and regulatory regime cleared the way for the British economic revival of the 1980s and 1990s. The collapse of the Chinese Communist state in the 1970s cleared the way for the modern Chinese economic miracle. So the partial collapse of American government might not be a bad thing. The collapse of bureaucratic government opens up new opportunities for entrepreneurs and in the long run increases opportunity and prosperity.
Still, the collapse of government was a big thing to the people of New Orleans when they needed a government and it wasn’t there for them. Note Wal-Mart was there for the people of New Orleans when Uncle Sam wasn’t and it is now being punished for that transgression.
So a collapse of the US government or political system might not be a bad thing. A collapse of the US economy however, would be a bad thing. The last time that happened in 1929 many average Americans went hungry.