The roots of today's wars
by Ralph Peters
President Bush’s refrain about Iraq is that we’re engaged in a ‘war of ideas.’ Not true. Our enemies are waging wars of religion and ethnicity, whether we like it or not. Critics have made the case that insurgencies can’t be defeated. Wrong again.
I cringe each time President Bush repeats his claim that we're engaged in "a battle of ideas." We're not. Our enemies aren't fighting about ideas, but over fundamental issues of identity: faith and ethnicity. Their motivations make them far more implacable, and even crueler, than yesteryear's ideological opponents.
In Washington, Republicans and Democrats alike are lost in history, clinging to an outmoded, if comfortable, view of the world as we wish it to be, rather than as it is. But we face a radically changed global environment that makes nonsense of the last century's theories of international relations and the ability to regulate warfare. An epoch has ended, and a new historical period — with terrifying new rules — has begun.
From 1789 and the French Revolution until the Soviet Union's disintegration in 1991, humankind took a bizarre historical detour through the Age of Ideology, when hundreds of millions — if not billions — of people accepted the notion that intellectuals and other charlatans could design better systems of social and political organization than had arisen naturally.
The arrogance of men such as Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong in believing that they could compress human complexity into their scribbled utopian visions may have been stunning, but the willingness of the masses to put their faith in such systems was a form of collective madness.
Inevitably, human beings disappointed the demagogues who tried to perfect humanity. Leaders responded by forcing men and women to fit the "ideal" pattern and the quest for utopia led inexorably to the gulag and Auschwitz, to Mao's Cultural Revolution, the killing fields of Cambodia or, at best, the poverty of today's Havana.
The Cold War was a battle of ideas. Iraq isn't.
Back to the mainstream:
The Age of Ideology still echoes in Latin America, but the great "isms" of the 19th and 20th centuries are essentially dead, unlikely to rise from the grave. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean we've entered a new era of peace: We've simply returned to the mainstream of history, to conflicts over religion and ethnicity.
As globalization paradoxically revived old identities of faith and tribe in traditional societies, such default allegiances became worth fighting for again. Men are once more killing to please an angry god or to avenge (real or imagined) ethnic wrongs.
The turmoil in Iraq and Afghanistan today, and that which we are bound to face elsewhere tomorrow, is asymmetrical not only in military terms, but in the motivations that stoke the violence. We have ideas, ranging from the universal validity of individual freedom and the power of democracy, to equal rights for women. Our enemies have passions — the ecstatic intoxication of faith and the Darwinian bitterness of the tribe — that give them a ferocious strength of will.
Iraq has been a terrible disappointment to many who believed in the galvanizing power of our ideas. Instead, we unleashed the killing power of faiths struggling for supremacy and the savagery of ethnic strife. This is the warfare of the Old Testament, of the book of Joshua, an ineradicable pattern of human behavior. For our part, we try to fight with lawyers at our elbows.
Our two major political parties may have different views on Iraq, but what's deeply worrisome is their shared view of the world as amenable to the last century's solutions: Negotiations first and foremost, with limited war when negotiations fail. But our enemies are only interested in negotiations when they need to buy time, while our limited approach to warfare only limits our chance of success.
Washington's unwillingness to face the new global reality is compounded by our ignorance of history — which lets spurious claims pass as facts. For example, talking heads somberly assure us (vis-à-vis Iraq) that insurgencies are virtually impossible to defeat. That's false. Over the past 3,000 years, insurgencies and revolts have failed overwhelmingly. It was only during the brief and now-defunct Age of Ideology that insurgents scored substantial victories — usually because imperial powers were already in retreat and anxious to leave the territory the insurgents contested.
The bad news here is that, while throughout history most insurgencies failed, they had to be put down with substantial bloodletting. Across three millennia, I can find no major religion-driven insurgency that was suppressed without significant slaughter.
Even the insurgencies of the Age of Ideology failed more often than not: French savagery won the Battle of Algiers, but the victory came too late because the French people had already given up on the struggle (a foretaste of Iraq?). The British destroyed the Mau Mau movement in Kenya with hanging courts, concentration camps and resolute military action — then left because they had no interest in remaining.
What has worked:
Historically, the common denominator of successful counterinsurgency operations is that only an uncompromising military approach works — not winning hearts and minds nor a negotiated compromise. This runs counter to our politically correct worldview, but the historical evidence is incontestable.
Simply because the truth is hateful to us doesn't mean that we can declare it false. We have entered a grim new age in which we must cope simultaneously with a return to old-fashioned wars of blood and belief, with the fatally flawed borders left behind by European imperialism, with the destabilizing effects of the information age on traditional societies, and with the explosion of our cherished myths about the pacific nature of humankind.
There were many things we failed to understand about Iraq, but our comprehensive mistake has been failing to understand our place in history.
Ralph Peters is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors and the author, most recently, of Never Quit the Fight.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Global Warming Baloney!
One of the hot topics of our time is the talk of human-caused Global Warming. We should not be surprised that so much attention is devoted to this nonsense issue. First, it postulates a great global catastrophe, which all media loves. Second, the nature of the looming disaster REQUIRES massive central governmental action and control, which socialists and communists of all stripes love. Third, the entire argument is cloaked in scientific mumbo-jumbo, which sidesteps the need for discussion and debate, which psuedo-intellectuals and academics love. Finally, the issue is being publicized through a spokesman, Al Gore, that the Left views as a symbol of What's Wrong With America, namely the Stolen Florida Election, which cast the United States back into a dark age of Republican rule.
I only ask that we step back a bit and assess the claims of the Global Warming enthusiasts. The key to their entire argument is that rising Global Warming Gases (GWG) are the direct result of increasing human activity. If that argument doesn't fly, then the rest of their case falls apart. With that in mind, consider the following from Pete duPont:
Plus Ça (Climate) Change
The Earth was warming before global warming was cool.
BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, February 21, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
When Eric the Red led the Norwegian Vikings to Greenland in the late 900s, it was an ice-free farm country--grass for sheep and cattle, open water for fishing, a livable climate--so good a colony that by 1100 there were 3,000 people living there. Then came the Ice Age. By 1400, average temperatures had declined by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the glaciers had crushed southward across the farmlands and harbors, and the Vikings did not survive.
Such global temperature fluctuations are not surprising, for looking back in history we see a regular pattern of warming and cooling. From 200 B.C. to A.D. 600 saw the Roman Warming period; from 600 to 900, the cold period of the Dark Ages; from 900 to 1300 was the Medieval warming period; and 1300 to 1850, the Little Ice Age.
During the 20th century the earth did indeed warm--by 1 degree Fahrenheit. But a look at the data shows that within the century temperatures varied with time: from 1900 to 1910 the world cooled; from 1910 to 1940 it warmed; from 1940 to the late 1970s it cooled again, and since then it has been warming. Today our climate is 1/20th of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than it was in 2001.
Many things are contributing to such global temperature changes. Solar radiation is one. Sunspot activity has reached a thousand-year high, according to European astronomy institutions. Solar radiation is reducing Mars's southern icecap, which has been shrinking for three summers despite the absence of SUVS and coal-fired electrical plants anywhere on the Red Planet. Back on Earth, a NASA study reports that solar radiation has increased in each of the past two decades, and environmental scholar Bjorn Lomborg, citing a 1997 atmosphere-ocean general circulation model, observes that "the increase in direct solar irradiation over the past 30 years is responsible for about 40 percent of the observed global warming."
Statistics suggest that while there has indeed been a slight warming in the past century, much of it was neither human-induced nor geographically uniform. Half of the past century's warming occurred before 1940, when the human population and its industrial base were far smaller than now. And while global temperatures are now slightly up, in some areas they are dramatically down. According to "Climate Change and Its Impacts," a study published last spring by the National Center for Policy Analysis, the ice mass in Greenland has grown, and "average summer temperatures at the summit of the Greenland ice sheet have decreased 4 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the late 1980s." British environmental analyst Lord Christopher Monckton says that from 1993 through 2003 the Greenland ice sheet "grew an average extra thickness of 2 inches a year," and that in the past 30 years the mass of the Antarctic ice sheet has grown as well.
Earlier this month the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a summary of its fourth five-year report. Although the full report won't be out until May, the summary has reinvigorated the global warming discussion.
While global warming alarmism has become a daily American press feature, the IPCC, in its new report, is backtracking on its warming predictions. While Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" warns of up to 20 feet of sea-level increase, the IPCC has halved its estimate of the rise in sea level by the end of this century, to 17 inches from 36. It has reduced its estimate of the impact of global greenhouse-gas emissions on global climate by more than one-third, because, it says, pollutant particles reflect sunlight back into space and this has a cooling effect.
The IPCC confirms its 2001 conclusion that global warming will have little effect on the number of typhoons or hurricanes the world will experience, but it does not note that there has been a steady decrease in the number of global hurricane days since 1970--from 600 to 400 days, according to Georgia Tech atmospheric scientist Peter Webster.
The IPCC does not explain why from 1940 to 1975, while carbon dioxide emissions were rising, global temperatures were falling, nor does it admit that its 2001 "hockey stick" graph showing a dramatic temperature increase beginning in 1970s had omitted the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warming temperature changes, apparently in order to make the new global warming increases appear more dramatic.
Sometimes the consequences of bad science can be serious. In a 2000 issue of Nature Medicine magazine, four international scientists observed that "in less than two decades, spraying of houses with DDT reduced Sri Lanka's malaria burden from 2.8 million cases and 7,000 deaths [in 1948] to 17 cases and no deaths" in 1963. Then came Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring," invigorating environmentalism and leading to outright bans of DDT in some countries. When Sri Lanka ended the use of DDT in 1968, instead of 17 malaria cases it had 480,000.
Yet the Sierra Club in 1971 demanded "a ban, not just a curb," on the use of DDT "even in the tropical countries where DDT has kept malaria under control." International environmental controls were more important than the lives of human beings. For more than three decades this view prevailed, until the restrictions were finally lifted last September.
As we have seen since the beginning of time, and from the Vikings' experience in Greenland, our world experiences cyclical climate changes. America needs to understand clearly what is happening and why before we sign onto U.N. environmental agreements, shut down our industries and power plants, and limit our economic growth.
Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears in the Wall Street Journal once a month.
I only ask that we step back a bit and assess the claims of the Global Warming enthusiasts. The key to their entire argument is that rising Global Warming Gases (GWG) are the direct result of increasing human activity. If that argument doesn't fly, then the rest of their case falls apart. With that in mind, consider the following from Pete duPont:
Plus Ça (Climate) Change
The Earth was warming before global warming was cool.
BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, February 21, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
When Eric the Red led the Norwegian Vikings to Greenland in the late 900s, it was an ice-free farm country--grass for sheep and cattle, open water for fishing, a livable climate--so good a colony that by 1100 there were 3,000 people living there. Then came the Ice Age. By 1400, average temperatures had declined by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the glaciers had crushed southward across the farmlands and harbors, and the Vikings did not survive.
Such global temperature fluctuations are not surprising, for looking back in history we see a regular pattern of warming and cooling. From 200 B.C. to A.D. 600 saw the Roman Warming period; from 600 to 900, the cold period of the Dark Ages; from 900 to 1300 was the Medieval warming period; and 1300 to 1850, the Little Ice Age.
During the 20th century the earth did indeed warm--by 1 degree Fahrenheit. But a look at the data shows that within the century temperatures varied with time: from 1900 to 1910 the world cooled; from 1910 to 1940 it warmed; from 1940 to the late 1970s it cooled again, and since then it has been warming. Today our climate is 1/20th of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than it was in 2001.
Many things are contributing to such global temperature changes. Solar radiation is one. Sunspot activity has reached a thousand-year high, according to European astronomy institutions. Solar radiation is reducing Mars's southern icecap, which has been shrinking for three summers despite the absence of SUVS and coal-fired electrical plants anywhere on the Red Planet. Back on Earth, a NASA study reports that solar radiation has increased in each of the past two decades, and environmental scholar Bjorn Lomborg, citing a 1997 atmosphere-ocean general circulation model, observes that "the increase in direct solar irradiation over the past 30 years is responsible for about 40 percent of the observed global warming."
Statistics suggest that while there has indeed been a slight warming in the past century, much of it was neither human-induced nor geographically uniform. Half of the past century's warming occurred before 1940, when the human population and its industrial base were far smaller than now. And while global temperatures are now slightly up, in some areas they are dramatically down. According to "Climate Change and Its Impacts," a study published last spring by the National Center for Policy Analysis, the ice mass in Greenland has grown, and "average summer temperatures at the summit of the Greenland ice sheet have decreased 4 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the late 1980s." British environmental analyst Lord Christopher Monckton says that from 1993 through 2003 the Greenland ice sheet "grew an average extra thickness of 2 inches a year," and that in the past 30 years the mass of the Antarctic ice sheet has grown as well.
Earlier this month the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a summary of its fourth five-year report. Although the full report won't be out until May, the summary has reinvigorated the global warming discussion.
While global warming alarmism has become a daily American press feature, the IPCC, in its new report, is backtracking on its warming predictions. While Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" warns of up to 20 feet of sea-level increase, the IPCC has halved its estimate of the rise in sea level by the end of this century, to 17 inches from 36. It has reduced its estimate of the impact of global greenhouse-gas emissions on global climate by more than one-third, because, it says, pollutant particles reflect sunlight back into space and this has a cooling effect.
The IPCC confirms its 2001 conclusion that global warming will have little effect on the number of typhoons or hurricanes the world will experience, but it does not note that there has been a steady decrease in the number of global hurricane days since 1970--from 600 to 400 days, according to Georgia Tech atmospheric scientist Peter Webster.
The IPCC does not explain why from 1940 to 1975, while carbon dioxide emissions were rising, global temperatures were falling, nor does it admit that its 2001 "hockey stick" graph showing a dramatic temperature increase beginning in 1970s had omitted the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warming temperature changes, apparently in order to make the new global warming increases appear more dramatic.
Sometimes the consequences of bad science can be serious. In a 2000 issue of Nature Medicine magazine, four international scientists observed that "in less than two decades, spraying of houses with DDT reduced Sri Lanka's malaria burden from 2.8 million cases and 7,000 deaths [in 1948] to 17 cases and no deaths" in 1963. Then came Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring," invigorating environmentalism and leading to outright bans of DDT in some countries. When Sri Lanka ended the use of DDT in 1968, instead of 17 malaria cases it had 480,000.
Yet the Sierra Club in 1971 demanded "a ban, not just a curb," on the use of DDT "even in the tropical countries where DDT has kept malaria under control." International environmental controls were more important than the lives of human beings. For more than three decades this view prevailed, until the restrictions were finally lifted last September.
As we have seen since the beginning of time, and from the Vikings' experience in Greenland, our world experiences cyclical climate changes. America needs to understand clearly what is happening and why before we sign onto U.N. environmental agreements, shut down our industries and power plants, and limit our economic growth.
Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears in the Wall Street Journal once a month.
Monday, February 19, 2007
It's Time for the Democrats to Take Over!
It's been more than three months since I last posted. And it has been a difficult ninety days. Our country is struggling in a dangerous world. President Bush and the GOP are facing all-time low levels of public support. Yet we have the best economic conditions in twenty years. So, we are fat and happy. Most of us could care less what happens in Iraq or North Korea, or anywhere else, for that matter. What's important is what's happening to our favorite celebrities (wasn't the premature death of Anna Nicole Smith a tragedy?).
We are ready, as a nation, for an extended period of isolationism, and we have just the people to lead us into that new era of head-in-the-sand stupidity: the Democrats. Today, I am declaring myself in favor of a Democratic presidency, beginning in 2008!
Now some of you may think that such a turn of events will cause great harm to our Republic. Of course, you are correct. But we can afford a few years of socialism, utter stupidity, and other associated silliness (we survived eight years of Clinton, didn't we?). What we cannot afford for a generation is the spectre of nearly half our people behaving so irresponsibly as to create a danger for all of us. Today, in the Senate and the House, we have our highest-paid public servants acting like complete jackasses. There is a reason for this behavior: Democrats do not take the threat of Islamo-fascism seriously. Almost all of them believe that a Republican in the White House is more dangerous than a group of Muslim fanatics on an airplane.
The only way to cure them of that blindness is to put them in charge, which is what my friend Jonah Goldberg advocates in his most recent column in National Review:
Jonah Goldberg's column
Some long-term damage will result, whether it's Hillary, B.O., or any of the other wannabes (please, Dear God, don't let it be Joe "Blowhard" Biden). But whoever it is will have to face reality within days or, at the most, weeks of the 2009 inauguration. Shortly thereafter they will call meetings with key Capitol Hill Democrats and explain the Truth to them. The result will be a return to a realistic, bi-partisan foreign policy during a time of war. The last time such a thing occurred was more than forty years ago, in 1966, when Lyndon Johnson was President. Before that it was 1948 when Harry Truman was President. And before that it was 1941, when Franklin Roosevelt was in office.
Eventually, the Democrats will screw it up so badly that Republicans will be returned to office, probably in 2012. We were able to stomach Jimmy Carter for only four years, remember. But in the meantime, for the sake of the country, we need a Democrat in the White House.
We are ready, as a nation, for an extended period of isolationism, and we have just the people to lead us into that new era of head-in-the-sand stupidity: the Democrats. Today, I am declaring myself in favor of a Democratic presidency, beginning in 2008!
Now some of you may think that such a turn of events will cause great harm to our Republic. Of course, you are correct. But we can afford a few years of socialism, utter stupidity, and other associated silliness (we survived eight years of Clinton, didn't we?). What we cannot afford for a generation is the spectre of nearly half our people behaving so irresponsibly as to create a danger for all of us. Today, in the Senate and the House, we have our highest-paid public servants acting like complete jackasses. There is a reason for this behavior: Democrats do not take the threat of Islamo-fascism seriously. Almost all of them believe that a Republican in the White House is more dangerous than a group of Muslim fanatics on an airplane.
The only way to cure them of that blindness is to put them in charge, which is what my friend Jonah Goldberg advocates in his most recent column in National Review:
Jonah Goldberg's column
Some long-term damage will result, whether it's Hillary, B.O., or any of the other wannabes (please, Dear God, don't let it be Joe "Blowhard" Biden). But whoever it is will have to face reality within days or, at the most, weeks of the 2009 inauguration. Shortly thereafter they will call meetings with key Capitol Hill Democrats and explain the Truth to them. The result will be a return to a realistic, bi-partisan foreign policy during a time of war. The last time such a thing occurred was more than forty years ago, in 1966, when Lyndon Johnson was President. Before that it was 1948 when Harry Truman was President. And before that it was 1941, when Franklin Roosevelt was in office.
Eventually, the Democrats will screw it up so badly that Republicans will be returned to office, probably in 2012. We were able to stomach Jimmy Carter for only four years, remember. But in the meantime, for the sake of the country, we need a Democrat in the White House.
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