Once all my opposition is dead and only my policies are in force without meaningful opposition, there will be stability. Ayatollah Khomeni said it best. When I have atomic weapons there will be stability. That is how Syria has been run. That is how Russia was run until the collapse of the Communist regime, and how it was run under the Czars before that. That is how China was run until recently, and it isn’t that far from totalitarianism even now. That is how Iran is run. That is how Afghanistan was run under the Taliban. That is how Iraq was run under Hussein. That was the way of the Third Reich – when all my policies are in force, there will be stability.

          There was never any such notion as “the consent of the governed” in Europe. True, there was that skirmish called the French Revolution, but the royal decree was replaced in not too much time with the French dirigiste attitude. Since attitude is not a real form of government beyond social issues, the French government changes frequently, until recently. Maybe it’s settling down now that they have the overwhelming common problem of dealing with so many people who live in France who aren’t French or anything even remotely like French. Nothing galvanizes the French like the aroma of something unFrench. England’s Magna Carta had a somewhat similar notion, but it was rather moderate for the reason that the English class system was never removed. America – our great model of democracy - is the product of classlessness, but for economics. Class via economics in a free enterprise society is simply recognition of initiative and genius. It is more transient than class established by birth. In America, fortunes rarely endure for more than three generations – “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”.

          Now we Americans come along with the notion that what all the absolutist regimes in the Middle East need is a healthy dose of democracy.

          I dare anyone to come up with an example of any person, company or country that was enjoying absolute, divine right, totalitarianism to join voluntarily in any program to dilute their enjoyment of absolute power. It has never happened, and it will never happen. The only way absolute power is ever overcome is by all out warfare. My God! Take the little island of Cuba for example. The United States, ninety miles away, with all its supposed capability has not been able to topple Castro in the almost 50 years he has been in power on the island. We have used every bozo tactic and technique imaginable, all without success. What that shows is that if you are not willing to go in and take out the regime through main force, you aren’t going to accomplish it at all. If we did in Iraq then what we are doing in Iraq now, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. How stupid can we be?

          The most important point that we are missing is that when we don’t really devastate the enemy, the enemy thinks it is winning. That enthuses the enemy even more. If we keep on trying to be politically correct in some ridiculously absurd political major premise – that the Middle East wants to be democratic – the enemy will continue to be more and more aggressive. The same may be said for the recent absurd campaign by the Israelis in Lebanon. Since they failed to destroy the ability of Hiz B’Allah to wage war, Hiz B’Allah has now become the most potent political factor in Lebanon. Hello out there! Are you awake? Pull your head out of your ass!

          The more we pretend that we “care” and wish to inflict the least amount of damage, the more the enemy thinks we are idiots who can be overcome if they just keep increasing the pressure.

          “Turn the other cheek” does not mean – and Christ did not intend for it to mean – that we should stupidly let people slap us around. It means that if you do get knocked down, you get back up and get back into the fight, even if it may mean that you get smacked again. The idea that you should just stand there and get the shit slapped out of you is stupid. Christ is not stupid. Christ knows that if the “right” does not prevail, no matter how the loss is incurred, the “wrong” will prevail. And Christ doesn’t want that. Is that so hard to understand? So we ought to do as Christ instructed us to do, and put the enemies down as decisively and as quickly as possible. Onward Christian Soldiers!!!

          The role of money – economic aid – call it what you like – is also greatly misunderstood in the context of the Middle East. If you do as we are now doing, provide liquid resources before stability is achieved, it will not hasten the advent of stability. The resources will simply be ripped off – misused – misapplied – transferred to someone’s Swiss bank account. Nothing intended will ever happen as the result of providing liquid resources. What little percentage of what we are now providing reaches intended applications is simply a target for the insurrectionists. The target gets destroyed and the result is exactly what it would have been had we not provided anything at all. Without stability, if anything could possibly be accomplished – just for the sake of argument here – it would cost multiple times what it should – not just your normal political corruption cost over runs like we have here in America, but many orders of magnitude over runs. Delivery of materials to any project site requires armed convoy transport. The materials are then stolen from the project site. If the site is built/remediated, it is blown up. That too is the real politik of the Middle East.

          If we wait until stability happens we would not have wasted the money. Then we could make a more rational decision about providing resources to the kind of government that is in place once stability occurs. Do you want to know what is wrong with this approach? What is wrong with it is that it makes too much fucking good sense! As much as I detest the deviousness of our so called European “allies”, I must credit them with knowing the difference between providing resources and promising to provide resources. A quick review of the status of fulfillment of pledges to provide aid will show at any given moment in history that the Europeans are always the first to promise and the last to provide! Et voila!!! They have so little to teach us. But this one critically important tactic incentivises the achievement of performance of what is desired from the intended (?) recipients of the largesse. It is bad enough to have to give the bastards anything at all, but to give it in advance and then receive nothing in return is idiotic.

          The scenery never changes unless you are the lead dog. Everyone tires of being behind the lead dog. They resent that grander perspective that is not available to them, and they want the lead dog to be hobbled. Therefore, the ranks behind are always scheming to unsettle the lead dog. Since World War II, we have been the lead dog for so long that we seem to have lost sight of that tendency. And with the collapse of Russia as the death threat at everyone’s throat, our obvious primacy has stuck in the craws of many nations. That is probably healthy overall, as primacy begets complacency, and we have become far too complacent already. It is time we were challenged. It is time that we get some mud on our shoes. And we have started on that road. We started on it militarily in Viet Nam, and the French who had just been defeated there were overjoyed at our having made that mistake in military doctrine. The mistake is that we went to war without intending to commit the resources to win the war, and then we started making up stories about what was happening that eventually came home to roost, a blinking beacon like a big red blemish on the tip of someone’s nose. And then we didn’t learn from that, because we are doing the same thing in the Middle East.

          And those who would be the lead dogs if only they could are rubbing their hands in glee at the ineffectiveness of our delusional military doctrine. When military doctrine is dictated by politicians who understand the situation, success happens – World War II. When military doctrine is dictated by politicians who are really out of touch with the extant military realities, failure results – Viet Nam and the current situation in the Middle East.

           We have enemies who thrive on being threatened and then not having the threat brought to fruition. When we promise to overcome and then don’t overcome, they win. If we overcome quickly, we do so at far less expense to ourselves – in lives as in other resources. We are back to World War II again. We must kill or be killed. We didn’t start spending money to rebuild Germany or Japan until we had defeated them and received their unconditional surrender. The result of doing it that way was far better than what we are experiencing in the Islamic world where we are financing our enemies’ agendas and making no progress at all. Is that stupid or what?

          We seem also not to appreciate that we are causing our only major ally who might actually enter a fight on our side if need be to become complacent and incompetent. Since the Israelis are signing on to this bullshit agenda of ours, they have let their guard down. That is so bloody obvious to everyone since they failed to be competent enough to deal with Hiz B’Allah in Lebanon. They have lulled themselves into believing that, since the United States is there covering their collective arse, they no longer have to maintain combat readiness. Now that little scenario has convinced Hiz B’Allah that they really do not have to fear the Israelis or the United States, and they are attempting to take over Lebanon. Everyone in Lebanon is sufficiently afraid of them and of being assassinated by some pro Syrian apparachik, that there won’t be effective opposition to Hiz B’Allah in Lebanon and the government probably will fall.

          At least the Israelis now know that the United States can’t/won’t protect them from their neighbors. Hopefully that will rouse them from their torpor. One finds it hard to accept that they are concerned these days more acutely with whether El Al is willing to serve non kosher food in a pinch and with whether Jews converted by non orthodox rabbis are really Jews at all in the sense of Israeli law. If anything is evidence that they are unaware of the real problems, the decision by the orthodox community to try to start their own airline just to insure that the food served on the planes is always kosher represents the frosting on the cake.

          One of the things that is extremely important and that we apparently have no conscious recognition of is the fact that, when you have managed to alienate most of the people of an entire region, and they are violently extremist, what you wish to accomplish is automatically rejected by that majority. And in a violently tyrannical environment, even those who might harbor some sympathy for your position are fearful for their lives and for the lives of their families about any notion that they might speak out on your behalf. In fact, to make certain that they do not become suspect of collaboration with you, they will actively go out to oppose you, notwithstanding their secret desire to see you succeed. Because we don’t understand that, whenever we say democracy, they hear evil. Whatever we want to accomplish/share with them becomes evil incarnate.

          Any political faction known to be friendly to our positions is marked for assassination and has no chance at all of accomplishing any agenda that might be helpful to us. Accordingly, the USA friendly so called government of Lebanon is about to be toppled by Hiz B’Allah, and the so-called leadership of the Falastinian Authority is constantly under actual attack and has no control over anything outside its office door. Idiotically, they now call for an early election. That will show that Hamas is the government that the Falastinian majority will support, because Hamas will willingly and gleefully kill anyone who they may perceive to be obstructionist of their agenda – refusal to recognize or accept the continued existence of Israel. When we identify anyone in the Middle East as friendly to us, we are actually fingering that person or group for elimination. Harriri and his friends in Lebanon are being assassinated now. Siniora is living on borrowed time. In Gaza, if Hamas cannot find you, they will simply shoot your children, as they did in the instance of the Falastinian Authority chief of intelligence this month. Mohammed Abbas is also living on borrowed time. Al Maliki of Iraq is alive simply because he isn’t worth killing. The Sunnis are better off with him as the totally ineffective figurehead bozo than they might be with any replacement, even someone who is Sunni. A Sunni might invite assassination by the Shiites, but a clown Shiite like Al Maliki is perfect for the Sunni agenda.

          That is so obvious from what is presently and actually happening on the ground in the Middle East that one wonders why our government does not recognize the obvious. The reason for that denial of reality is that our government wishes for a situation that does not exist and for which there is no practical support, and then pretends that if we simply continue insisting upon fantasy something positive will result. If any student of international relations were ever to take such a position in answer to any question on any examination, the grade would be an F. In the Middle East, anyone who can oppose us and thrive, like Hamas, Hiz B’Allah, Al Quaeda and Iran, will win support. If they could not oppose us in military action and thrive, they would have no support that is effective. By not really waging war on our opposition, we are strengthening them in their ability to mount effective opposition.

          If we were really waging war on somebody, the losses would have some rational basis and we could accept them as necessary sacrifices. But to take casualties for the sake of this bullshit is without justification.