Islamic State and Overwhelming Force.

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“Will you station police-officers at every henroost; and keep them watching and cruising incessantly to and fro over the Parish, in the unwholesome dark, at enormous expense, with almost no effect: or will you not try rather to discover where the fox’s den is, and kill the fox?” – Thomas Carlyle.

I’ve just come across an article (published on World Net Daily) advocating the use of tactical nuclear weapons against the very much Islamic State. The author of the piece – Larry Klayman – justifies his position thus…

“If we really want to destroy ISIS” he writes “…and set an example for other radical Muslims and the Putins of the world to fear us and leave us in peace, we must use the tools that can do this. Put simply, we should employ tactical nuclear weapons to wipe out the enemy. We cannot worry that Islamic civilians will be killed in the process. In the end this strategy, as was true of the Japanese in World War II, saves not just American but Muslim lives as well.”

I don’t know much about Mr Klayman or his background. If he is a Christian (as he implies elsewhere in the article) he ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself. There are Christians in ISIS controlled territory (some of whom descend from the earliest generations of the church) desperately struggling to survive, desperate to ensure their faith stays alive in the cradle of its first vitality. To drop a nuclear weapon on that kind of situation (or even to advocate it) is the lowest Talibanic barbarism.

Still, I will agree with Klayman that drastic measures need to be considered. And while nuclear weapons are clearly too large and clumsy to achieve a moral end, there are other high-yield, non-radioactive weapons that might fit the bill.

The Massive Ordnance Air Blast device (or MOAB – to give it its mock-biblical acronym) has an explosive power exact to 11 tons of TNT.  Properly deployed, the weapon can flatten a neighbourhood, a strategic headquarters or a spread out training camp, all the while leaving surrounding areas perfectly in tact. These bombs have rarely been used in modern combat, if at all, since the conditions that would recommend their use have never before arisen. They have now.

I believe that ISIS represents the first post-WWII conflict in which very intense firepower can play a constructive (if you’ll allow that phrase in this context) and effective role. Innocent people are crying out to us for relief, and we are plainly failing to supply it.

It is clear to any reasonable person that simply fighting the tentacles of ISIS when they choose to unfurl is a foolish game, and one that fails to yield any lasting reward. Bombs of high explosive power dropped on known regime headquarters (which can be exactly ascertained by satellites) is the only way to substantially degrade the potential of ISIS to wage war. Nuclear weapons will only kill the citizens we wish to protect. Light, conventional weapons (JDAMS and the like) are pin pricks. There is a happy middle-ground to be occupied if we develop the moral courage to do so.

As to a general strategy, we should make be making placing greater emphasis on local anti-ISIS forces. While Islamic State has yet to openly threaten the Israelis, a photo-shopped propaganda picture released last month shows a column of ISIS trucks advancing towards the walls of Jerusalem. It is painfully obvious that ISIS fosters genocidal ambitions towards the Jewish State and so pre-emptive air raids by Israel would surely be greeted by the world as both justified and heroic.

To repeat my core argument, we cannot win by simply reacting to ISIS movements and fighting battles at the time and location of their choosing. The headquarters of ISIS must be attacked with overwhelming force. As Mr Klayman was right to say, we cannot be obsessively concerned with civilian casualties when such people are being randomly killed anyway.

Let’s fight ISIS – and fight like we want to win.

D, LDN.

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Pakistan’s Everyday Madness.

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When Taliban gunmen abbreviated the lives of 132 children in a Pakistani school last month, it became customary on social media to report a feeling of ‘shock’. Via facebook and twitter, Westerners lined up to report their disbelief and surprise at an event that seemed to defy understanding.

This wasn’t a bandwagon I could leap onto myself, I’m afraid. To do so would have been dishonest and almost pretentious. Knowing what I know about Islam, about Pakistan and about the abusive relationship between the two, I couldn’t be less surprised by a massacre of this kind. To be sure, I couldn’t really be shocked by any act of bestial violence occurring in that horrible, irredeemable country. If tomorrow, 300 new born babies were slaughtered in a Pakistani maternity ward, my heart would ache, but my mind would be unchanged.

Islam, you see, can only ever end in violence. Those Muslims who do not commit violence really are (as the extremists say) disobeying the spirit of the religion. That those children massacred in Peshawar were themselves Muslim means little. If Islam cannot fight those outside of its tent, it will turn on its own. Like the proverbial shark that must constantly move to survive, the pace of Islamic evil must be ceaselessly maintained. Noise must made (and what better noise than screaming) so that thought and conscience can be muffled and ignored. If the Muslims of the world could stand still and reflect without the presence of an (external or internal) enemy, even for a year, the culture would begin to crumble. Islam is total and permanent mobilisation of the lower instincts; a military-delusional complex.

Unlike Iran, Tunisia and other moderately infected nations, it is increasingly clear that Pakistan cannot be rescued. There is no cultural haloperidol we can airdrop to change the hearts and minds of that delusion-ravaged land. And when things like Peshawar occur, we should have the honesty not to feign surprise.

D, LDN.

India Will Not Be a Superpower.

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American Decline, Armies, China Vs America, Defend the modern world, Demographics of the Future, India, India vs China, Indian, Indian Superpower, Multiculturalism, No to Turkey in the EU, Nuclear Weapons, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census

It has long been standard practice among foreign policy experts to include into future projections the potential influences of an ‘Indian Superpower’.

Behind this logic lies a demographic determinism which, broadly applied, also promotes the highly fertile nations of Brazil, South Africa and Nigeria to a similar hypothetical prowess later in the century. To put the logic at its most simple:

Big population + stability = China.

Anyone with a less politically-correct mind will of course (correctly) discount the potential of Nigeria or South Africa gaining a seat at the top (economic, political or military) table any time soon. Some however might understandably find the prospect of India ascending to such a rank rather more feasible.

After all, India is due to become the most populous country in the world in a matter of years. The territory of India is large, diverse, and in a geo-strategically important position. The military of India is huge and well-equipped by EU and American exporters. The country is also the world’s largest democracy, with guaranteed representation for all faiths, genders and political persuasions. This status as a democratic counterweight to the rise of Chinese autocracy in Asia may further tighten Delhi’s ties with Washington and secure generous terms of alliance with America long into the future.

It is a strong case then, I concede, and I’ve little doubt most policy-makers will continue to believe it. But I also have a diminishing sense of doubt that they are wrong.

After the population issue is discarded, India has very little in common with its rapidly ascending Northern neighbor. In fact, the differences, considered closely, couldn’t be more stark.

For whatever reason this may be, China has industrialized at a rate that has left India scrambling in the dust. Chinese cities have shifted in just a few decades from semi-rural wastelands to New-York-grade metropolises, complete with financial districts, subways, lightening fast overground train networks and first-class infrastructures. Even the wealthiest and most important Indian cities like Delhi and Mumbai have nothing on a myriad of internationally unknown Chinese urban centres. Comparing Delhi to the prefecture level city of Chongchinq for example, is equivalent to comparing Bogota to Chicago. The distance in modernity, infrastructure and appearance couldn’t be more starkly presented.

In terms of Cultural sophistication (provided we take the West as the standard to measure against) India lags even further behind their Northern counterparts. China, under the dictats of its (albeit heavily qualified) ‘Communism’ has outlawed many tribal practices that only fifty years ago were considered the norm. India however, under the much lighter reforming hand of democracy, has yet to abandon many of its most antique oppressions. Women in India (from all religious backgrounds) are routinely married not by love and choice, but by considerations of caste and family standing.

Should the women in question flee into more modern practices, then honor killing is not unheard of even in large, middle class cities like Bangalore or Chennai.

If rape rates are an adequate measure of cultural misogyny, India is also far behind the expectations of the modern idea. Sexual assault is a horribly common occurrence in India, and this has become especially notorious of late as the ‘Delhi gang-rape’ scandal hit headlines across the world.

As to explanations for the endemic violence against women, the Guardian reported that some consider it “a consequence of the efforts of a growing number of women, even in remote areas, to claim basic freedoms denied for centuries.. ” while “…Others point to India’s acute gender imbalance, tenacious caste system and entrenched patriarchal culture. Conservatives have blamed “western influences”, women’s clothing and even fast food.

“Informal village courts run by local male elders, such as that which ordered this most recent attack, are common across much of rural India and are frequently responsible for inflicting cruel, sometimes lethal, punishments for supposed social transgressions such as marrying without their prior consent. Such courts also frequently oblige relatives to take violent action to restore the “honour” of a community.”

Despite what we might automatically (and given the situation in neighbouring Pakistan, justifiably) assume, those involved are not all Muslims, but Sikhs and Hindus too.

India is also weakened by that very diversity. The country is a very recently woven patchwork of historically divided religious communes, many of which have come to violent confrontation in just the past few decades. Though it might be said that China is equally afflicted by division (Tibetans, Uygurs etc…) – such cleavages are there managed by an efficiently centralized, undemocratic regime. Parliamentary Democracy (like that which governs India) is much less suited to holding religiously or ethnically divided countries together (for comparison, I give you the cases of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Lebanon). China’s authoritarianism also serves to manage the fallout from economic inequality, an increasing problem on both sides of the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

In conclusion, although India will certainly become more economically important as the 21st century progresses, an Indian Superpower is a most unlikely prospect.

D, LDN.