The Razor

It takes a lot to scare Japanese into action. Evidently one drunk Chinese ships captain, and the Chinese reaction that followed was enough to get the Japanese to begin to take the Chinese threat seriously.

Mr Azumi declined to discuss such specifics, but says the new policy will stress in particular the need for greater military mobility so that forces can be deployed quickly by air or sea to wherever they might be needed.

“Island defence is not just a matter of stationing 500 or 1,000 men on an island,” the vice-minister says. “As we know from our tough fight against the US in the (1941-45) Pacific war, it’s no use leaving them standing on their own. You need to have a lot of back-up and support.”

That’s the first time I have seen a Japanese referring to the lessons of the Imperial armed forces that fought in World War II. That alone tells me that something is seriously out of whack in East Asia.

The thing about the Japanese is that they resist change to a ridiculous extreme, but once that limit is reached, the change flows quickly. But has it quieted down the Okinawans?

UPDATE: StrategyPage reports the obvious:

Reacting to an American suggestion, Japan and South Korea are planning the use of Japanese forces to help defeat another North Korean invasion of the south. This cooperation was long considered impossible, because of Korean hatred for brutal Japanese occupation from 1905-45. The brief North Korean occupation of South Korea in 1950 left a mark as well, a more vivid one at that. Japan, however, is more concerned with China, and is expanding its navy, and defense ties with Australia and the United States, to improve its defenses against possible Chinese aggression.

Real Politic 101: Find a stronger but distant ally to guard against a stronger, closer enemy.

One of the results of the Wikileaks debacle has been to highlight America’s problem with Saudi Arabia. Secretary of Defense Gates stated that the Saudis want to fight Iran to the last American. Meanwhile al-Qaeda and other Islamofascists have treated the country as an ATM, with the kingdom funding terrorist groups around the world. Of the many questionable and downright evil things Wikileaks has done, it has shown that at least some members of our government aren’t complete idiots when it comes to the danger that kingdom presents to the world.

The Saudis have a very long track record of undermining American foreign policy. It has bought off members of both the Left and the Right in Washington DC, and has avoided scrutiny of its actions. Some apologists have noted that the Saudi government has been helpful in the fight against Islamic terrorism, and that Osama Bin Laden himself hates the House of Saud almost as much – if not more – than the United States. But they ignore the fact that the Saudis are the primary bank rollers of the puritanical Islam espoused by Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and the vast majority of nut jobs with a suicide belt around their waists and a Koran in their hearts.

The founder of the Saudi regime, Ibn Saud, used Wahabism to achieve domination of the Arabian peninsula, and his family has used it to maintain power ever since. Religion was a potent weapon in Ibn Saud’s rise to power, but controlling it has been difficult. Over the decades the Saudis have funded Wahabist causes around the world in exchange for zero tolerance of any religious actions targeting the regime within the kingdom itself.

Saudi money has spread the Wahabi brand of religious intolerance to all parts of the globe. It has built mosques throughout the world, bringing Wahabism to places that it had never been before including Pakistan, Indonesia, and sub-Saharan Africa – areas with more tolerant, indigenous Islamic traditions. As the Saudis became wealthier after the oil shocks of the 1970s, their funding of Wahabist causes grew. The United States, locked in an ideological battle with the Soviet Union, even welcomed the Wahabist influence as a tool to undermine Soviets in South Asia, and as a potential firewall against the spread of Shiite radicalism that Iran began exporting after the Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979. Less than two decades later the United States would come to regret their support and encouragement of these Wahabist elements.

It is only in retrospect that we see the extent of which the Cold War defined American foreign policy actions until September 11, 2001. During those decades the United States didn’t see the threat Wahabist terror posed since it was locked in what it thought was a greater struggle with Communism. It was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s that the United States began to reassess its strategic threats, an action that the events of September 11, 2001 brought home.

But people cannot change their views quickly, especially after a lifetime of seeing the world through the Cold War prism where Saudi Arabia stood as an ally. In hindsight, however, it is becoming much more apparent that while we may have been the Saudis allies, they were never ours. With the Cold War over we are locked in yet another ideological struggle that threatens our way of life just as surely as Soviet nuclear weapons targeted on our cities. And the heart of that struggle is in the Arabian peninsula.

What is ironic is that some Saudis may recognize the predicament they are in. They don’t want an end to the status quo whereby they can stay in power by buying off discontent and forcing it to go elsewhere, but they cannot stop supporting jihadists without risking the jihadis turning on them. The Arabs were never great strategists – as T.E. Lawrence proved in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Julian Assange wasn’t a slave to the truth; his goal was much more mundane and common amongst his Leftist supporters. He wanted to damage the United States – to punish it for its sins. But what he has inadvertently done is the opposite: he has exposed a truth that can strengthen the US if it acts upon it. And that truth is that Saudi Arabia is its enemy and must be treated accordingly.

UPDATE: SoccerDad provides some info on the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia that I wasn’t familiar with. Many thanks.

Time to fight back...

“Burn down the House”.

Yes, in your world, graphic or martial imagery is only to be exploited by the Left.

“We bring a gun”

“Get in their faces”

Oh yes, your side “went there”. Not only was there no outcry about the “violent imagery”, there were claps and cheers of agreement. You framed the imagery. Own it.

“Retreat and Reload”and “Burn down the house”. Get used to it. Don’t think for a moment you’ve earned the right to open your mouth in protest.

Here’s some more martial imagery for you.

Yes, we will burn down the house of Progressive Democrats and lay waste to the entire construct of the welfare state. It will be a long, decades-long battle, but we will prevail because we learned the consequences of not teaching our young ourselves. We delegated that to you, and that was our first mistake. We assumed you were honest brokers, but now we know better.

Carthago delenda est.

I accept that’s the intellectually lazy response, but I have to work with what you can understand.

My preference is more of a “Thucydides account of the no-mercy overthrow of the oligarchs at Corcyra” type of historical reference.

Either way, I am confident you can deduce the “tone”of my rebuttal.

Realizing that you are losing your grip on the public schools, that the youth that propelled the boy-king to victory have abandoned you, that the bitter, blue collar white workers are now Tea Party grandmas and grandpas, that you have lost control of the federal checkbook and the legislative calendar,

now you want to petition for peace?

now you cry out for civility and consensus?

I have a message for you:

Go. To. Hell.

When you retreat back to the comfort and safety of your salon filled with like-minded Hopeium addicts, perhaps you can rouse them from their stupor long enough to send them this message.

We don’t want civility.
We don’t want to “play nice”.
We don’t want to “compromise” with you.

From coffee shops to soccer fields and everywhere in between, the message has been clear.

Draw a line in the sand.

Those who we have sent to Washington this January who yield will be removed from the field and replaced. Make no mistake about it.

We came to you with ideas and a sincere intent to find common ground.

Our emissaries were told,

“I won”.

We tried to engage you and bring alternative solutions to the health care crisis. We met in good faith at Blair House. Our concerns and our emissaries were rudely dismissed.

So, this is our message to you:

The scorched earth policy is in effect.

A court of accounting will be convened.

Fix bayonets.

I grew up in Missouri where tornadoes and thunderstorms scour the landscape beginning in the spring and only ending when fall comes and ends the summer heat for good. There is always a time before the biggest storms when the sky doesn’t look “right”, and the air feels “funny.” It’s hard to explain; it’s a different feeling you get before the weaker storms. It’s as if we unconsciously judge the severity of a storm and know that something big and dangerous is heading our way. That’s the time Midwesterners cast an eye at the basement door.

I recently was reminded of this unconscious knowledge on a drive through the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains with my son. We had left our home for a trip to the gun shop – an isolated but well stocked outpost run by a kind couple in their 60’s. The sky was heavy with dark blue clouds when we started, but as we drove on the wind changed and the skies quickly darkened. The storms lay on our path, and the Wife made a rare cell phone call to warn us that a tornado watch had been issued for our county. I ignored the warning, feeling excited by the light the storm cast on the rolling hills and mountains, and the air that became noticeably colder within a mile or two. Perhaps emboldened by shows like Storm Chasers, I drove towards a pea-green colored bank of clouds that threw up some fast moving wisps in the afternoon heat, but seeing a hint of rotation in the cloud I felt deep down that what I was doing was wrong – that I needed to return home and protect my family and property from the storm. But I went against my sensible Midwestern instincts, and drove into the storm.

On a winding country road I found myself driving head-on into gale-force winds that sprayed water onto my windshield like a fire hose. Lightening danced around the car followed by near-instantaneous cracks of thunder. I rolled down the window and stuck my head out of the window to see, and felt the sting of sweat and water in my eyes. A cold, paralyzing fear settled deep within me. Instincts evolved for a purpose, well before foolhardy minds could overrule them. The thunder sounded like an artillery barrage, and the lightening cast unnatural shadow shadows within the corn and tobacco fields.

My son nervously shouted above the din of the storm that we should stop at a house for shelter. This being rural North Carolina there were no houses – just mobile homes. At this point the fear weighed me down, slowing each movement as my mind raced on, cursing me for my terrible mistake in judgment. Thinking through our options, I focused on making it to the gun shop, solidly built with brick and concrete. It was the nearest structure that could best survive the storm, but it was still a quarter mile away. But even that option disappeared as I hit the brakes and came upon a fallen tree that blocked our progress.

With no options left, I whipped the car around and floored it, driving with the wind while listening for the deep, bone chilling sound that is always described as sounding like a “freight train.” The rain cascaded into my face but I kept my eyes open, watching for flooded dips in the road that could sweep my little Japanese car away. We came upon another fallen tree that had fallen after we had passed just moments before, and I tucked my head back in and powered the car through its leafy crown. Feeling every slip of my wheels on the damp pavement, I pushed the car to the very edge of my skill, driving as fast as I could without losing control.

Minutes later we were safely out of the storm, and the fear gave way to a heady adrenaline rush. But as my son whooped and hollered and patted me on the back for being the “best driver ever”, I silently cursed myself. I knew the storm was going to be bad before I drove into it. I knew the danger that lay ahead, but I ignored the unconscious knowledge built up over decades of experience.

Today sitting in my home baking in the heat and humidity, I feel much the same way about our country. Simply being alive and politically aware over the decades have taught me that something is seriously wrong with the direction of this country, our government and especially our leaders.

Wikileaks publishes the names of collaborators, their villages and even the names of their fathers (critical in cultures where sons take the names of their fathers as surnames) to support a group that executes gays, treats women as property, kills aid workers, harbors al-Qaeda terrorists and targets civilians. All in the name of peace. It’s as if Wikileaks in the name of justice published the faces, fake names, and the ages and names of the children of under cover police officers who infiltrated the mob.

The president and vice president laud the season as “Recovery Summer” while jobs evaporate. The politicians aren’t the only ones living a fantasy; Wall Street wheels and deals as if the recession never happened, bidding up the prices of stocks well above where they should be at this stage of the business cycle.

The worst oil spill in American history happens and the oil can’t be found.

Our government erects billboards warning us to stay out of the desert to avoid being murdered by illegal immigrant and drug smugglers, but sues Arizona for trying to enforce border security.

A mosque rises in a place covered by the ashes of thousands killed in the name of Islam just nine years ago – built by an imam who holds the dead accountable at least partly for their fates. Under democracy the People are responsible for their government, so his saying that the US government was at least “partly responsible” for the attacks places the blame on the Americans who died. Think of it as the Islamic version of “the bitch asked for it” defense of the indefensible.

A president who shares the same skin color as them – but nothing else – is venerated by the African-American community. George W. Bush has more in common with African-Americans than our president. At least he’s grown up in contemporary American culture – much of it stolen from Black culture – instead of the rarefied atmosphere of intellectual salons, and not taught by racists like the Rev. Wright.

The liberal-dominated mainstream media ignores it all, glorifying in their success at helping to elect the most inexperienced leader this country has seen in a century. As Nile Gardiner of the Daily Telegraph notes, “As much as the media establishment turn a blind eye to [negative stories on Obama], which are major news in the international media, the American public is increasingly turning to alternative news sources, including the British press, which has a far less deferential approach towards the White House.” I used to go to the British media to get international news; over the past year I have relied more on it to tell me what is happening just 300 miles away in Washington DC.

As with the storms, my instinct tells me that something is seriously wrong with my country. That same paralyzing fear that I had during the storm is with me everyday. The skies are ominous, yet Obama and the Federal Government are driving us deep into the storm and there is nothing much we can do it about it since both are deaf to our concerns. All we can do is listen to our instincts and take every chance we can to limit the danger to ourselves and loved ones the President and the Feds seem determined to visit upon us.

Thank you to this week’s Watchers Council for voting this essay the best for the week of May 7, 2010. I am honored.

So it turns out the Times Square bomber used M-88 firecrackers as a detonator in his car bomb. The firecrackers were meant to ignite the gasoline containers which would then ignite the propane tanks, turning the Nissan Pathfinder into a giant hand grenade. M-88 firecrackers are consumer class 1.4G (formerly known as Class-C) fireworks that look like the M-80 firecrackers of yesteryear: small red cardboard tubes filled with black powder and sealed with wax. But they have little powder and no where near the explosive power of the mythical M-80. They look much more powerful than they are, which probably tricked the jihadi into using them and saving scores of New Yorkers and tourists.*

The Underwear Bomber of Christmas Day 2009 used a plastic syringe as a detonator. It turns out that the detonator chemical melts plastic, turning it into a flaming gooey mess but failing to set off the explosives. Had a metal or glass syringe been used, it’s doubtful that we would have known that jihadis prefer briefs over boxers, and would still be mourning the deaths of hundreds in the sky above Detroit.

Both these incidents show the role dumb luck plays in carrying off any terrorist operation. They do not show the effectiveness of our government in protecting us. This hasn’t stopped Attorney General Eric Holder from claiming that it was an alert citizen that prevented the attack in a news conference today, as Shepherd Smith on Fox News has repeated over and over. Only luck prevented the car bomb from going off, luck that the jihadi wasn’t as familiar with American consumer fireworks as your average pyrotechnic aficionado. Holder seems to be repeating Janet Napolitano’s claim immediately after the Christmas Day bombing attempt that “the system worked.” Even administration mouthpiece Robert Gibbs claimed the fallback procedures in place worked. Napolitano herself couldn’t explain how Shahzad was able to board the plane even after being placed on a No Fly List hours before.

No. In both cases the system failed. Only dumb luck prevented the terrorist attacks from being successful.

What also concerns me is the nature of the bomb and the government’s reaction to it. Its crudeness led many to suspect that it was crafted by a homegrown terrorist – as Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday. Over the weekend the administration emphasized the crudeness of the device, as if it were put together by a crazed right winger. Yet the men behind the 2007 Glasgow International Airport terrorist attack used propane tanks.

al Qaeda pioneered the high-concept, low-tech approach to terrorism. They use whatever is at their disposal. It’s hard to smuggle propane tanks into aircraft, so they use homemade plastic explosives. In Iraq and Afghanistan they use easily obtained artillery shells leftover from previous wars to fashion IEDs and suicide bomber jackets. In New York City propane tanks, cars and gasoline are easy to buy so they used those.

Had the bomb been successful, Faisal Shahzad would be smoking cigarettes in the Emirates lounge in Dubai waiting for his connecting flight to Karachi. He would no doubt have gotten a good laugh with his co-conspirators as the American mainstream news media and the Obama administration searched for a right wing extremist responsible for the bombing in Times Square. Yesterday before Shahzad was caught NPR emphasized that the suspect was a “white male 35-45 years of age”; Shahzad is in his twenties and of Pakistani origin. Even this morning NPR referred to Shahzad as “American,” and did not refer to his ethnicity or the fact that he became a naturalized citizen in 2009.

Had the bomb gone off, what is the likelihood that Shahzad would have escaped? Given the conclusions being drawn over the weekend by Mayor Bloomberg, the Obama administration, and the media’s hyperventilation over the possibility that a Tea Party extremist was behind the attack, is it going too far to believe that had the bomb gone off there would have been a witch hunt against the Tea Party movement?

But dumb luck saved the day. No New Yorkers died on Saturday, and the only thing lost is face by the administration. But dumb luck doesn’t last forever. The administration needs to wake up and get serious to the threat posed by jihadis. As Roger Simon asks, “How can we begin to defeat this enemy if we are not even willing to name it?” The administration got lucky in Times Square on Saturday. Hopefully America’s luck will hold until Obama gets serious about the threat posed by the jihadis, or his administration is replaced by one that is.

UPDATE:
As MSM outlets like AP and ABC News pursue the story that made Shepherd Smith so apoplectic this afternoon, the administration is doing what it does best: blaming someone else. In this case it is surprisingly not George W. Bush, but the Emirates airline. The administration claims evidently the airline doesn’t refresh its No-Fly database frequently enough.

Having done my fair-share of database design and system requirements, I would bet that the database used by Emirates Airlines was built according to US government specifications. Former 9/11 Commission vice chair and Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton isn’t accepting this explanation either, telling ABC News “We’ve done a pretty good job on the first part of it people entering the country. But with regard to those exiting the country we simply have not been able to set up a system to deal with that and it showed in this case.”

*UPDATE #2: Shahzad purchased the M-88’s at Phantom Fireworks in Matamoras PA. According to Bruce Zoldan, the store owner, each M-88 contains just 50 mg of black powder and is about 98% paper. This is the legal limit for 1.4g firecrackers and is about the size of a quarter of an aspirin. While legal consumer fireworks often use names like “cherry bomb”, “silver salute” and “M-80” to capitalize on the explosive power of these legendary firecrackers (a single M-80 thrown in a sewer could send a manhole cover high into the air) in terms of power they are mere shadows of their namesakes. Today’s firecrackers can go off in your hand and might cause a wicked sting but they will not take off your fingers (I personally confirmed this by setting off a Thunderbomb in my hand. Yes, I watch too much Mythbusters.)

Tom Hanks recently said “They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different.” Hanks’s opinion seems to be based on the American propaganda at the time, much of which would be considered racist today. But setting aside the Japanese genocidal campaign in China, let’s take a moment to consider what Japan would look like today if what Hanks said is true.

If Hanks was correct, there would be no independent Japan today; it would be an American state populated by white Americans. Instead Japan is completely true to its 2500 year history and character.

This came about due to the conscious efforts by the American military and Foreign Service. Starting around 1943 Americans were debating what a post-war Japan would look like. It was decided that after the war the country would have the militarized elements of its society stripped out (most of these had crept in during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s as Japan’s history was romanticized by the militarists so it wasn’t tinkering with Japan’s “DNA”) and returning the country to its pre-militarist democracy: the Taisho period at the turn of the 20th century. Japan would be rebuilt as if the 1930’s and 1940’s had never happened – just without the modernizing military (that would be provided by the USA).

The Japanese were stunned. They even kept their Emperor – although the Occupation Authority made sure that the laws passed by the Japanese Diet made him a figurehead along the lines of the British Monarchy. The Americans just pulled the military out of civilian life and left the rest of Japanese society alone. I personally believe that it was this treatment which allowed the Japanese economy to recover so quickly after the devastation of the war more than America’s open market – but that’s a debatable point and impossible to prove.

In the end, however, I view our rebuilding of Japan – and Europe under the Marshall Plan – as truly America’s Finest Hour. It’s what separated us from other conquering empires, and which even today causes me to laugh whenever I hear some lefty rant about “American Imperialism.”

UPDATE:
Bookworm Room goes into more detail and does a better overall job explaining how Tom Hanks’s comments shows a disturbing lack of historical knowledge for someone who has made his career at least partly on historical narratives.

My favorite fighter plane of all time is the A-10 Warthog. It isn’t fast, and it isn’t pretty, but it can be an infantryman’s best friend. Michael Yon writes about the plane here.

Link:

The U.S. army medic also told members of the research unit that she and her colleagues had to explain to a local man how to get his wife pregnant.

The report said: “When it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, ‘How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.’”

It also explains this:

And makes me wonder how far from the truth the following is:

A rich foreign kid who couldn’t get laid has knocked the administration of the most powerful nation on earth off message. For the past three years Obama and his supporters have led themselves to believe that the Global War on Terror was a myth propagated by the Bush administration to further its own agenda. “The politics of fear” they called it. With the removal of the Bushies the myth could be forgotten, replaced with Obama’s agenda to turn the United States into a multiethnic and politically correct version of Sweden. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian who claims ties to Al Qaeda, may have failed to blow up an airliner over Detroit, but he succeeded in bringing the Obama administration’s willful ignorance of the terror threat down in flames.

With fingerpointing in place of a coherent anti-terror strategy the administration has yet to regroup. The administration wants to throw somebody in front of the bus to protect Obama, but so far hasn’t found a willing patsy. The intelligence agencies are angry with the administration and won’t take the fall, even though the CIA leaked information that undermined the Bush administration and thereby supported Obama’s senatorial assertions. Worst of all a 2007 intelligence assessment played down the threat of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, an assessment that foreign intelligence services including the British, French and German disagreed with and that was later undermined by the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear facility missed in the assessment.

Foreign intelligence services are also publicizing the administration’s failures instead of keeping quiet. British intelligence admitted that it sent files alerting US authorities that Abdulmutallab met with radical preachers in 2008. The Obama administration has seemingly gone out of its way to disrespect the UK for that nation’s active participation in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, a war that catapulted Obama to power. Now the British are returning the favor. Calls for foreign nations to save the administration from having to reform by using full body scanners and improving security are being ignored. Europeans view the incident as a failure of the American administration to connect the dots, so why should they be the ones forced to change?

The obvious fall-guy would be Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano whose inept handling of the Christmas day attack brought memories of FEMA’s failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina to the fore. I fully expect her resignation to be accepted within the next two months after the initial furor has died down to avoid the appearance of appeasing the Republicans – one of the few groups left in the world that the Obama Administration has not gone out of its way to mollify.

The failure to detect Abdulmutallab would not be as bad for the administration if it was perceived by the American people as taking the threat jihadis pose to America seriously. Instead the failure becomes symptomatic of a bigger problem: the Obama administration’s failure to recognize the threat and act accordingly. Napolitano’s asinine “man caused disasters” and “the system worked” comments are indicative of a mindset that indicate the administration doesn’t take terrorism seriously. Obama’s comments that the shooters in Little Rock and at Fort Hood acted alone, when all three can be traced to known al-Qaeda figures in Yemen, only support that conclusion. Obama may not be able to connect the dots, but the average American can.

Firing Napolitano will not save this administration. Worse, firing Napolitano will not protect this country from attack. The only thing that will protect it is a change of heart at the top. Obama has to believe that the threat posed by jihadis is real, and act accordingly. But if 9/11 itself wasn’t enough to convince him of the threat al-Qaeda poses to our nation, I’m not sure what will.

At this point I believe the president is beyond redemption. I hope that he proves me wrong, but I do not see him ever taking terrorism seriously. I imagine him serving one failed term in the Oval Office, then spending the rest of his long life trying to convince the world of his brilliance. If that sounds a lot like Jimmy Carter, then it should. He’s doing an excellent job walking in his mentors footsteps.

As a proponent of the multiverse theory I have to say that there are quite a few universes nearby where hundreds of people in Detroit and around the world are having pretty lousy Christmases. In our universe the Briefs Bomber can very close to taking down a Detroit bound flight over the Motor City, killing hundreds on board and perhaps scores more on the ground. But for a poorly chosen plastic syringe and a heroic Dutchman that reality could easily have been our own.

We are scrambling to figure out what we can learn from this failure to prevent such attacks in the future. As Deitrich Dorner points out in his classic work the Logic of Failure, failure or disaster does not occur from a single instance; instead it is the result of a series of adverse events each of which could prevent the disastrous outcome had they gone the other way.

I believe that what we as a society find particularly disturbing about the Briefs Bomber plot is how easy it was for him to reach a point where the only outcome preventing the success of the attack was the chemistry of the plastic used in the syringe containing the plastic explosive’s detonator. Eight years of taking off our shoes, infiltrating terror groups, waging war, apologizing to Muslim countries, standing in lines and missing flights apparently did nothing to keep us safe. Our fate was in the hands of a bunch of sullen Muslim guys who knew how to take a plane down but not how to talk to girls.

The Briefs Bomber carried 80g of PETN - an explosive first developed in World War I and the one chosen by al-Qaeda in the Shoe Bombing plot 8 years ago. The US government conducted tests after the Shoe Bomber failed and found that 50g was enough to take down a full-size airliner. I measured out 80g of sugar and found that’s less than half a cup. That amount of powder fits in the palm of your hand. There is simply no way that we can screen millions of people and their carry on bags – trillions of grams – in order to find 80g. To find those 80 grams would require our screening system to achieve an accuracy of 99.999999999%. For you Six Sigma freaks out there, that’s 3 more ‘9’s – or a 1000 times more accurate. Achieving that level of accuracy against an attack using technology alone is simply impossible.

Americans love technology fixes. As a technology geek myself I love them too. But the full body scanners proposed as a solution to this problem won’t work. They subject everyone to an intrusive scan that raises a whole raft of legal, religious and privacy issues. As the former head of El Al said today on Fox News, the scan itself would offend Muslims by showing their wives and daughters naked. It could also be easily defeated. In an August 2008 attack on a leading anti-al Qaeda figure in the kingdom, a Saudi minister was injured by a suicide bomber who had explosives concealed in his rectum (WARNING: link contains photos that are not for the squeamish). The full body scanners proposed to prevent attacks like the Briefs Bomber and Shoe Bomber would be easily circumvented by al Qaeda just as the metal detectors are today. Just like the metal detectors, they are an expensive fix that makes the government appear that it is doing something when in fact it is accomplishing little.

So what is the solution? As with any complex system, there isn’t a single point of failure so there cannot be a single solution. Each opportunity that leads to possible failure – in this case a successful bombing on a US bound airliner – must be examined to determine what we could do to prevent that outcome from leading to the next event in a chain ending with pieces of aircraft and bodies falling from the sky.

First an engineering fix must be found to prevent 80 grams of anything causing a catastrophic failure of an airplane. Judging by his seat selection, the bomber chose to detonate his bomb over the wings. This would place him nearest the fuel as well as structural parts of the wing whose failure would lead to a crash. Such a fix could include armoring the fuel tanks, baggage compartment and passenger cabin over the wings. This would be an expensive retrofit, without a doubt, but we cannot continue to rely upon al Qaeda to screw up.

Second in place of new screening technology, we need to use existing screening techniques. These include ethnic and behavioral profiling used by other nations especially Israel’s El Al airline. In the 1980’s the Wife was dropped off at the airport by her Japanese-American boyfriend for a flight to Jerusalem on El Al. While standing in line she was met by El Al security and taken to a room in the airport where she was subjected to 2 hours of intense questioning by several El Al security guards. They asked her personal questions about her relationship with her Japanese-American boyfriend, her political and her religious beliefs. They also searched her and her luggage intensively. Because of the interrogation she missed her flight. At the end of the interrogation she was exhausted and asked why she was singled out. It turns out there had been cases where Japanese Red Army members had used their boyfriends and girlfriends to unwittingly carry explosives onto El Al airplanes. She was angry about missing her flight, but when she was placed on the next El Al flight to Jerusalem, she said that she knew she was on the safest flight in the sky. Ethnic and behavioral profiling techniques work and are much more effective than handsearching little old black ladies.

Third we need to remove the barriers between domestic and foreign sourced intel. Terrorists don’t recognize boundaries and neither should we. The Department of Homeland Security was supposed to accomplish this. Obviously it hasn’t, so it should be abolished and the existing intelligence services be allowed to pool their information and analyze it together and in secret.

We must accept that the terrorism we face today is not criminally based. It is not a law enforcement issue or solely a military one. It is much broader than that. Terrorism has a religious and ideological basis that we cannot combat with prison sentences and drone attacks alone. We must fight it in the same way we fought slavery, Nazism, Communism and other ideologies: by actively countering their propaganda with our own and attacking it on every front. That means supporting Islamic groups and institutions that disagree with Wahabi teachings and investigating Saudi funded mosques in the US and the UK. For every Youtube video extolling the virtues of 72 virgins, we should put out a video by an Imam explaining why the jihadi was going to hell instead. The Federal Government has done a good job containing the spread of white supremacist hate groups, so we need to apply the same techniques we used with those groups to Wahabi mosques.

Saudi Arabia needs to be treated for what it is: a state sponsor of terrorism. The Saudis have been allowed to spread their hatred around the world unhindered for decades because of our addiction to oil; we are now paying the true price of the cheap oil that nation supplied to us and our allies. What this would ultimately mean is a reverse oil embargo: The US and its allies should refuse to buy oil sourced from Saudi Arabia or sold by companies owned by the kingdom. Such an action would be unprecedented and would no doubt throw western economies into recession. But the truth is that 9-11 did the same thing and was completely beyond our control. We could use the action as a diplomatic threat to the Saudis, but we should be prepared to institute the embargo should the Saudis call our bluff. I would expect all Gulf nations to support the Saudis, so we would have to do without their oil as well. We would subject Saudi finances to the same international sanctions we apply to Syria, Iran and North Korea.

Can we do it? Oil is nowhere near as critical to our economies as it has been in the past, and will continue to decline in importance as we move to electric cars and hybrids. I currently cannot imagine an American administration with the guts to do this, but another 9-11 could change that.

Lastly the Obama Administration must ultimately be removed from office. It is clear by its conduct in the Global War on Terror that the administration does not take the threat posed by terrorism seriously. It has begun rebuilding the Chinese Walls separating the sharing of intel between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering operations, miring the sharing of operable intelligence with bureaucratic red tape. It is closing down detention facilities around the world including Guantanamo Bay, releasing experienced terrorists into society. Two alumni from that prison are leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group behind the Briefs Bomber plot. It is pursuing a legal approach to terrorism which by its very nature is reactive: in most cases you cannot charge a person with a crime until he actually commits it. Like the Bush administration before it, it refuses to recognize the role Saudi Arabia plays in sponsoring al Qaeda directly with cash and indirectly by funding Wahabist mosques around the world.

These are some hard choices needed to stop al Qaeda on top of hunting them down with predator drones and special forces, and building successful states in Afghanistan and Iraq. No wonder the Obama administration acts like its 1999 when it comes to terrorism. Things like health care and global warming are only important when someone isn’t trying to kill you.

Our choice is simple: our way of life or their way of death. One would hope that such a choice would be easy, but given the way our leaders have failed us so far, I have my doubts.

UPDATE #1:
Toby Harnden writing for the Daily Telegraph gives Obama a failing grade for protecting Americans.

In his studied desire to be the unBush by responding coolly to events like this, Obama is dangerously close to failing as a leader. Yes, it is good not to shoot from the hip and make broad assertions without the facts. But Obama took three days before speaking to the American people, emerging on Monday in between golf and tennis games in Hawaii to deliver a rather tepid address that significantly underplayed what happened. He described Abdulmutallab as an “isolated extremist” who “allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body” – phrases that indicate a legalistic, downplaying approach that alarms rather than reassures.

Update #2:
Charles Krauthammer points out why America seems unsettled by Obama’s responses to the “man-caused disaster” attempt:

The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration’s response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to play down and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism “man-caused disasters.” Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York—a trifecta of political correctness and image management.

And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term “war on terror.” It’s over—that is, if it ever existed. Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term “asymmetric warfare.”

Update #3:
More on the failure of the proposed body scanners to detect the powdered explosives of the type used in Detroit.

UPDATE: This post was voted First Place by the Watcher’s Council. Thank you!

A friend who voted for Obama last year (and regrets his decision BTW) asked me why I opposed the civil prosecution of terrorists and supported military tribunals. He thought that treating them as run-of-the-mill criminals was an insult, and that by convicting and sentencing them in a military tribunal elevated their status from terrorist to warrior. Here are the reasons I gave him for why I believe that Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision is the worst political decision made since President Ford pardoned Nixon in 1974.

1. Confusion on the battlefield. Imagine that a terrorist has been captured near the Afghan-Pakistan border. The commander in the field has to consider what the likely political decision will be: will he be tried in an American civilian court or in a military tribunal? At the point of time of capture – and for weeks later – he won’t know whether to mirandize the terrorist and give him an attorney or detain him for military tribunal. This reflects the role of the military in conflict: are they soldiers subject to the rules of war, or are they well-armed policemen?

It’s not clear whether this political decision to try one terrorist in a military tribunal and another in a civilian court is even legal. One terrorist who is tried in military court could demand to be tried in civilian – or vice versa. Sen. Lindsay Graham pointed out yesterday in the hearing with the Attorney General that this was one example how the decision clearly wasn’t well thought out by Holder and the administration.

2. Civilian courts and military tribunals follow vastly different procedures and requirements. The presumption of innocence for example. There isn’t any in a military tribunal. Consider the Nuremberg Trials. Goehring was guilty; the question was the extent of his guilt. In fact Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) had already plead guilty and faced a death sentence by the military tribunal – until the Administration halted all military tribunals for review.

So KSM suddenly becomes innocent and it’s up to prosecutors to prove him guilty according to the rules of the venue selected by the Obama administration. But being mirandized is a prerequisite by civilian courts.

When captured KSM demanded an attorney. He didn’t get one. This fact alone could sink the prosecution, and was brought up by Graham in yesterday’s hearing. “We would never allow that to happen,” Holder replied. Graham pressed him on that answer, but Holder didn’t explain further (video here).

Setting the issue of acquittal aside for a moment, a civilian court relies on evidence. That evidence has to be collected methodically and in a transparent manner.

3. Secret evidence cannot be used in a civilian trial. Any evidence against KSM must be made public. How was he located? What methods were used? Were these methods themselves legal? Any illegally obtained evidence – from waterboarding or an illegal wiretap for example – could be the basis for an appeal or overturning of a sentence as laid out by the legal concept of the Exclusionary Rule.

4. The procedure of capturing and detaining KSM gets put on trial. Were his rights violated? Was his imprisonment lawful? In short the Bush Administration gets put on trial for its procedures rather than KSM’s murder of 3000 civilians.

5. Civilian courts are public; military courts private. Did you follow the trial of the 20th Hijacker? I did. It was a complete farce. In the end he was convicted but after providing him with a forum to preach.

6. KSM could walk. Military tribunals are not subject to appeals; civilian cases can be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Any technicality could be used to convince a judge to overturn or restrict his sentence. However Attorney General Holder stated there was no way KSM or any other terrorist would walk.

“if one of these terrorists” in the future were found not guilty or given a short sentence, Holder agreed that the Justice Department would still retain the authority to lock them up as enemy combatants.

“I certainly think that under the regime that we are contemplating, the potential for detaining people under the laws of war, we would retain that ability,” Holder said.

So we’re going to try KSM and associates, and if there is a problem with the trial, Holder is going to do a Plan B.

What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) “do not get convicted,” asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. “Failure is not an option,” replied Holder.

Charles Krauthammer noted:

Not an option? Doesn’t the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure—acquittal, hung jury—is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

Attorney General Eric Holder is a smart man, as is his boss, so watching these two men say and do something so blatantly stupid is unnerving.

First, prosecutors said the same thing with OJ 14 years ago. Last I checked he was on the golf course somewhere presumably with better fitting gloves. (CORRECTION: Simpson is currently serving time in prison for robbing a sports memorabilia dealer in Los Vegas-thanks to Jack S.) Secondly federal courts are not Kangaroo Courts. If the primary reason for Holder and Obama to try KSM is to tout the American Legal System, they would have to abide by its decision should a terrorist like KSM received a favorable ruling.

“It’s heads I win, tails you lose,” says Joshua Dratel, a top New York criminal-defense lawyer who has represented numerous defendants in terrorism cases. “It does unfortunately ruin the effect of the notion that we are bringing them to federal court to uphold the rule of law, if you say, ‘If the rule of law doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.’ ”

Ruin it? Yep, I’d have to agree. What’s the point of touting the virtues of American Justice if everyone knows the “fix is in” for a defendant? I don’t think it is. I have a hard time believing that the administration would have the spine to stand up to the courts to keep terrorists locked up. At the same time I don’t see them committing political suicide by letting them go free either. In short I don’t see any benefit at all to trying defendants in civilian courts.

Can you imagine KSM walking away – what it would do to our image abroad? Jihadists already think we are weak; such an outcome would be the biggest recruitment tool since Carter sat on his hands while Iranians tortured embassy personnel.

Bin Laden liked to call America the “weak horse” in his speeches. “...when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.” He saw his vision of Islam as the strong horse and freedom as exemplified by America the weak horse. The decision to try terrorists in civilian courts is yet one more example supporting Bin Laden’s belief.

UPDATE: I spoke to my 88 year old mother over the weekend. She too regrets her vote. She lives with one of my sisters who is a devout believer in the One. She and her husband won’t let my mother watch Fox News – so she waits until they are asleep.

My mother is a life-long Democrat. The last Democratic president I heard her talk about this way was Jimmy Carter over 30 years ago.

My father died suddenly when I was 11 years old. I last glimpsed him through the rear window of my parents’ Pinto wagon as he exited the car at the city hospital where he worked as a maintenance man. Seven hours later the phone rang and my world was never the same. I can still hear my mother’s screams echoing from 32 years ago.

I have gone on, made a family of my own, and become successful in my own way. But some wounds never heal. They don’t scar. And while they don’t hurt as much as they once did, they nevertheless do hurt and occasionally even bleed.

My father’s death is like that to me. It wounded me and changed me in ways that are so numerous that it’s impossible to state for sure what ways exactly other than to say every way possible. I am the man I am today because of my father’s death. I am the father I am today for the same reason. My son has now passed the age I was when I lost my father, and each day with me still around is a small triumph in my modest goal to never have him experience what I experienced in 1977.

What about “closure”, “getting over it” or other lame commands stated by well meaning people who have absolutely no clue what they are talking about? I’m amazed at how quickly the “c” word gets thrown about after a tragedy. Within hours of the Fort Hood shootings I swear I heard it used once by someone discussing the investigation. I’m sure the person’s motives were pure, but to even mention the concept when the corpses of loved ones are still warm shows a callousness, emotional ignorance, if not downright stupidity about grief. Better that the loved ones be ignored and left to their devices than for such goat-like prattling in the aftermath of a massacre.

I am deeply troubled by the Obama administration for a similar reason. The decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) in New York shows an ignorance by the administration and lack of appreciation of the magnitude of the 9-11 attacks. Worse it betrays the fact that this administration has not learned the lessons of 9-11 and endangers the American people by failing to prevent future attacks.

Here’s an experiment: ask a friend what they were doing that day, and let the memories of 9-11 come back from the closet that most of us have hidden them in. For some of us it makes us feel uncomfortable. For others it is downright painful. Yet either way that day touched us and changed us forever.

9-11 wounded us as a people and each of us individually. While most of us were lucky to not have a friend of loved one die in the attacks, we each still suffered that day from the pain of our identify as Americans. This is exactly what the men like KSM and Osama Bin Laden intended. What they had not intended was to provoke a war that would send the former into a prison without trial and bury the latter under hundreds of tons of rubble in Tora Bora (for the record I personally believe Bin Laden is dead).

9-11 damaged us. It changed how we looked at the world; we weren’t too big to be hurt after all. Our safety disappeared. Every public place could be the venue for the next attack. We closeted ourselves in our homes. Comedy died because no one felt like laughing. David Letterman and Jay Leno avoided the air waves knowing that the time wasn’t ripe for us to laugh. Even such irreverent staples as The Onion begged “We want our boring lives back.”

Eventually we got them back. 9-11 changed us but eventually normality reasserted itself and the flag stickers that we all spontaneously pasted on our cars and in our shop windows faded and were removed. 8 years on we have achieved a new normalcy and the fear and determination that 9-11 inspired have been replaced by our own personal day-to-day concerns.

But the pain is still there. And it will be there forever just as the pain has never left those who experienced November 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy died.

Unfortunately members of the Obama administration including the President himself seem ignorant of the pain of 9-11 and more importantly, it’s lessons. Has anyone in the administration even read the 9-11 Commission Report? The failure to prevent the shootings at Fort Hood show that the “Chinese walls” separating our law enforcement agencies – a key reason for the failure to prevent the attacks according to the report – have been reconstructed after being torn down briefly under the Bush administration. The report showed that the battlefield was not a place to conduct criminal investigations protecting the rights of the accused. Finally it proved that the terrorists had become adept at using the legal system to its advantage. Like a virus that hijacks a healthy cell, destroying it and flooding the body with copies, al-Qaeda and other like minded groups used the limitations of international and domestic law to raise money, recruit, plan and execute terrorist attacks around the globe. Yet the authorities have been unable to develop a prevention strategy of their own to prevent these attacks.

The legal system is designed to punish crimes after they have been occurred and to deter future crimes through the severity of those punishments. It is reactive after the fact and has difficulty being proactive, preventing the attacks from occurring. Had the 9-11 hijackers been stopped and searched before the attacks, civil liberties and Muslim groups could have accused the authorities of “racial profiling.” Had the authorities clamped down on the preaching of radical imams there would have been accusations by these same groups of religious persecution. These limits are real, as shown by the failure of the authorities to stop Maj. Hasan from shooting up Fort Hood.

Yet the Obama administration clings to the legal system that existed prior to 9-11 and has changed very little since. Like the human immune system the American legal system is a remarkable system. Most of the time both systems function well and protect us. But terrorists can evade and hijack that system just like HIV can infect the human body. In both instances something must be done to halt or reverse the infection.

With HIV our society has come up with drugs that destroy the virus and hold it at bay. With terrorism our military has attacked the militancy at its sources in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The solution is not perfect: I’d be happy to see Riyadh added to the list – but it has been effective. Since 9-11 there have been countless plans devised to kill Americans on American soil, but only one – the Fort Hood attack – has been successfully executed.

Now the Obama administration wants to stop the anti-virals and surgeries and let the system take care of the disease of terrorism. This is akin to an HIV positive man quitting his antivirals in the belief that he never had HIV to begin with. When such a man acts, he’s the only one who suffers. When the Administration acts, we are the ones who ultimately pay the consequences.

My father drank and smoked for most of his life. I quit both. He hated travel and was afraid to fly; I have lived in some of the world’s most exotic places. He was distant from his children; I struggle not to hug my son in public to avoid embarrassing him. Most importantly I faced my father’s death and learned from it. The Obama administration on the other hand hides from 9-11 and willfully ignores its lessons. The trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed is the ultimate proof of that.

So the President apparently has now rejected all four military options on Afghanistan. The reason? Corruption in the Afghan government. An NPR reporter in Kabul went to the local DMV and met with a frustrated taxi driver who had been trying to get a drivers license for 3 weeks. He said that he had just been told by them to provide documentation that was impossible to get, using an Afghan idiom “find the Black Keys” – the rough equivalent of a fools’ errand or “needle in a haystack.” If he paid 5000 afghanis – a month’s salary of $100 – he would get the drivers license delivered to his front door the next day.

The Obama Administration is now saying that something must be done about corruption in Afghanistan before it commits more troops, tying our commitment to its containment. Perhaps what the Afghans learn during the anti-corruption effort can be taught to the pols in Chicago – perhaps the most corrupt city in the USA (although Philadelphia comes a close second). Am I the only one finding irony in an administration with roots in Chicago complaining about corruption in one of the poorest nations on the planet?

I have questioned Obama’s commitment to the fight in Afghanistan from the beginning. I have yet to see him show that he has the stomach to lead the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Instead I see his administration looking for excuses to do nothing until they can justify pulling out and leaving the nation to be overrun by Mullah Omar, al-Zawahiri and their terror-plotting pals.

First the administration tried shifting the focus of the war on Pakistan; now its corruption. Both are red herrings meant to distract the American public from what the administration truly wants to do: retreat to the pre-2001 world of lobbing a few cruise missiles at tents in the desert after a few attacks on our embassies.

There is no way we can shift the war effort to Pakistan without flat-out invading it in violation of international law. Even the drone attacks which Biden is so fond of (and which I support as part of a comprehensive war strategy) have been called into question as illegal.

There is also no way that we can uproot corruption in a culture that has depended on it for thousands of years. Look at Chicago. We have yet to clean it up there, yet we expect a weak regime and unstable nation to accomplish it in short order. The Afghan people have been in essence told to “find the black keys” by an administration that is itself rooted in corruption.

A local policeman listened to the Kabul cab driver complaining then laughed and said that he didn’t get the license because the taxi driver doesn’t know how to drive. Having been in many 3rd world taxis including one which hit and injured a young boy on a dusty road outside of Kigoma Tanzania, I think it’s fair to question their driving skills. Perhaps that same policeman would laugh at all the hand-wringing in the White House and say that the President doesn’t believe in the war and never has.

Wants other Muslims to join the fun.

Someday a predator drone will be launched into a stiff Arabian Sea breeze. It will soar ever higher under the command of a pilot remotely controlling the drone from a base in Nevada. The pilot will have arrived at his remote station with a cup of coffee served to him by an Indian immigrant who came to this nation with a few rupees in his pocket and now worries about whether the bank will approve his loan so that he can expand beyond his four shops.

The pilot will receive an order and drop a hellfire missile on a painted target in the Yemeni desert, sending the “holy man’s” penis through his skull at supersonic speeds, between sips of his gradually cooling coffee.

And I can’t wait for that day.

Officer Kimberly Munley is credited with taking down psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

Munley, who had been trained in active-response tactics, rushed into the building and confronted the shooter as he was turning a corner, Cone said.

“It was an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer,” Cone said.

Munley was only a few feet from Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan when she opened fire.

Wounded in the exchange of bullets, the 34-year-old Munley was reported in stable condition at a local hospital.

In a posting on her Twitter page before the shooting, she wrote: “I live a good life….a hard one, but I go to sleep peacefully @ night knowing that I may have made a difference in someone’s life.”

Thanks to her wits and guts people are alive today that would otherwise be in the morgue.