Who today remembers the once-mighty Warsaw Pact? Not the punk rock group, of course, but the Soviet Bloc’s formidable answer to U.S.-led NATO. Twenty years have now passed since it was peacefully dismantled in what was a finishing touch on the collapse of Communist power and the end of the Cold War. Yet unlike the Warsaw Pact, the North Atlantic alliance did not disband; it steadily pushed east toward an exhausted Russia and then metastasized. Like any successful multinational, NATO went global.

Largely through its role in NATO, the United States had applied generations of resources and manpower in containing the Soviet threat, and its investment paid off. America’s triumph against such a dangerous peer competitor was total and unambiguous- the one state that spanned the length of Eurasia had fractured into fifteen. The End of History was at hand, and with Marxist management practices discredited only one contender for humanity’s future remained. A democratic-capitalist world system, already organized in the post-war years, could now be fully implemented under Washington’s benevolent aegis.

One Cold War veteran who can well recall the course of this vast transformation is Robert Gates. After all, he operated behind the scenes and at the highest levels of power during critical moments of the U.S.-Soviet struggle. A career CIA analyst, Gates was National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s staff aide when the Carter Administration launched a covert action program to aid the Afghan mujahideen in 1979. The White House signed off on the order six months before the Politburo in Moscow committed to an invasion of its southern neighbor, along with a disastrous occupation that would cripple the USSR.

In the last few months of 2010, the United States has intensified its air campaign over the Pashtun tribal lands that lie astride a mountainous and poorly defined Afghan-Pakistan border. In the course of 102 days, 58 strikes against Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives (as well as a high but unknown number of innocents) were carried out by the Air Force and CIA’s fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Jihadists and civilians alike are incinerated by Hellfire missiles without much notice from the media, and American soldiers and marines who fall in combat can expect little better. Yet one death connected to the war in the Hindu Kush certainly did garner attention in Washington: that of Richard Holbrooke, the Department of State’s Special Representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Holbrooke, responsible for diplomatic coordination of the ongoing conflict, died from a ruptured aorta on December 13^th. Since then the press and the Obama administration have unleashed torrents of praise for this “giant of American diplomacy”. But perhaps the most fitting tribute to the man has been the ever-expanding role of killer drones in the execution of policy, as reported from Pakistan’s northwest. Despite his earlier experiences in Vietnam, Richard Holbrooke came to believe firmly in redemption through coercive air power. In bombing there is progress; in bombing shall we find peace.

As the young Napoleon Bonaparte ventured into Egypt in 1798, his aspiration to world-transforming power was already apparent. In the shadow of the pyramids, the future Emperor and his men made short work of the antiquated Mamluk cavalry that had once repulsed the Mongol Horde. He would later relate his grand vision:

I was full of dreams…I saw myself founding a new religion, marching into Asia riding an elephant, a turban on my head, and in my hand the new Koran.

While Napoleon’s desire to recast the East in his own image is understandable in the context of his megalomania, Western ruling classes have no such alibi for entertaining similar delusions. Their technocratic language is much less inspiring than that offered by Le Petit Caporal, mired as it is in the blandest incantations of “development”, “good governance” and “civil society”, but the same carnage results. Our policy establishment sends men to die in far-off mountains and deserts so that Muslims may discover the New Koran of liberty, equality and progress. In Europe and the United States its dictates are already enforced to the letter.

Since the time of Bonaparte, armed proselytism of the new religion has received an upgrade. Grenadiers and dragoons have given way to special operators, precision-guided munitions and killer drones, all in the service of a united humanity marching toward a bright new tomorrow. For confirmation of such deadly flights into fantasy, one can read a recent article on the UK’s new Chief of the Defense Staff, General Sir David Richards. Britain’s top strategist seems quite committed to imposing the Open Society upon various benighted tribes in the wilder corners of our world. He acts at the behest of his political masters, of course, but is resolute about the need to occupy Afghanistan for another 30 or 40 years. As Richards articulates:

The national security of the UK and our allies is, in my judgment, at stake – that is why we are engaged in a global struggle against a pernicious form of ideologically distorted form of Islamic fundamentalism.

Why must NATO maintain indefinite deployments of forces in the Hindu Kush, the Horn of Africa and elsewhere, fighting against this ‘pernicious form of ideologically distorted form of Islamic fundamentalism’? The reason behind the interminable Long War goes beyond maneuvers to secure control over Eurasia and its energy corridors. The contemporary West is engaged in a global counterinsurgency campaign as a final, desperate effort to affirm the permanence of the liberal order, to prove that history has indeed come to an end. Yet no more than savage bands of Pashtun mountain men have exploded that myth, as well as its pretensions to universal validity.

As long as the elites retain a level of material power, though, they will be unrepentant and undeterred in their redemptive materialism. There may be disagreements among them on Western courses of action in the Muslim world, though never on the necessity of the latter’s evolution toward secular democracy. In this the modern is as devoted to his doctrines as the Mohammedan. Phenomena essential to Islam’s origins and nature (such as jihad) are just a big misunderstanding, you see; changing the Ummah’s cultural and historical norms only requires the right calibration of social engineering policies:

Education, prosperity, understanding and democracy, he argues passionately, are the weapons that would ultimately turn people away from terrorism, although he admitted that to believe that such an undertaking could be achieved "within the time frame of the Second World War would be naive in the extreme".

It would be naive in the extreme to imagine that NATO will succeed where other empires failed catastrophically. General Richards may argue passionately for further international police action and welfare programs, but such measures are the last, dying gasp of Enlightenment rationalism applied to its logical end-point. Of still greater concern must be the destruction wrought by these ideas in our own lands, for enlightening the Muslim nations is only half of the equation. In a striking echo of Anglo-American designs on the ruins of the Old Order after the Great War, the Long War’s crowning achievement would be to eradicate the very last vestiges of European Christendom. Thus is the world made safe for democracy.

Salvation through government by “The People”, in turn composed of atomized market units, is the message of a false faith. To drive home the absurdity of this proposition, The American People today amuse themselves with celebrity escapades and video games as the predators of high finance and Empire carry on their machinations to the tune of nearly $14 trillion in national debt. And while geopolitical and economic conflicts define the character of Western interventions and Muslim terrorism, the bloodshed and chaos we witness ultimately derive from a crisis of the spirit.

Whether or not weary and passionless moderns are inclined to admit so, the current war is a religious one and centers upon Europe, the heart of the West. At the end of the 19th century, the great Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev compared the development of the two most powerful threats to Christendom, heresies both born in some measure from perversions of Christian teaching. On the frontiers of the Eastern Roman Empire arose Islam, collective submission to the divine will of an inhuman despot. In the Occident humanism would eventually prevail- the integrity of the individual superseded every higher reality and led to man’s self-worship. Despite their radical incompatibilities, the adherents of the New Koran and the old both seek to wipe out the memory, specifically the European memory, of Christ the God-Man who in noblest sacrifice conquered death.

With traditional Europe long ago overpowered by the Revolution, the counterfeit prophecies of humanism and Islam now move into active confrontation. From the clash emerges a strange dialectic. As the West sets out to modernize Dar-al-Islam, democratic universalism has produced the conditions for its own societies’ Islamization. Whereas our ancestors fought heroically to prevent the Continent’s subjugation by Moors and Turks, today our governments, champions of “human rights” all, throw the gates wide open to millions of them and enable the rise of Muslim power in places where Ottoman sultans could barely have dreamed of invading.

How much longer must Pakistani rape-gangs roam Britain? And how many more Britons will meet an early death fighting in Afghanistan to uphold this state of affairs? Answering on behalf of transatlantic elites, General Richards was remarkably frank: the occupation of Afghanistan and other expeditions will continue effectively forever. Never can multiculturalism, mass immigration, and secular pluralism be questioned under the regnant ideology that made the present nightmare even possible.

In its advanced stages of development, the liberal project reveals a totalitarian nature. Postmodern imperialism lays claim not simply to mere territories and resources; it asserts itself as the sole arbiter of humanity’s future and fate. The managerial regime will attend to organizing its vision of happiness on earth. In return, and as a gesture of gratitude, you need only relinquish a few minor things: the cultural and blood-inheritance bequeathed to you by your fathers, your faith, and the destiny of your nation.

You, children of Europe, are but ethnographic material to be indoctrinated, demoralized, exploited and dissolved in a new enterprise more magnificent and equitable than anything ever conceived by your invisible, forgotten God. Besides, relax; you’re all consumers now! Enjoy a football game and some pornography, or just go shopping for life’s meaning.

Or you can revolt. For the sake of true justice, such an act would necessitate solidarity not only with our unborn descendants, but also with our dead- the generations past who made Europa uniquely beautiful even amidst the fratricide of a fallen world. Love and honor carry zero market value; of what use are valor and charity against the coercive mechanisms of Leviathan? Yet these principles transcend earthly power, for they reach back into eternity itself. It is in the dark hours of spiritual struggle, not in self-compromising electoral success, that liberalism will finally be shattered. On that day let us raise skyward the banner of the once and future West.

The Pentagon has begun field testing for a new and devastating experimental weapon still shrouded under a cloak of secrecy. A spin-off of anti-gravity technologies, the highly anticipated platform operates on the latest developments in the realm of “anti-logic”. Its use will enable our information warriors to defy reason and intellect, paralyzing an opponent with unrelenting streams of contradiction as well as sheer nonsense.

DOD’s anti-logic weapon underwent its first trial run this summer, as it was rushed into action amidst the Koran-burning controversy. An obscure Florida pastor’s plan to barbecue the Muslim holy book on September 11^th was foiled, one suspects, largely due to the intervention of General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. and Coalition forces in Afghanistan. Deploying the anti-logic technology, Petraeus spoke against such an act, since it would “endanger troops” in his theater of responsibility. While the wisdom of the pastor’s step was very doubtful, Petraeus in his victory managed to obliterate truth and standards of reason. After all, the actual threat to U.S. troops stems not from a small Florida church’s play at publicity, but from occupying Afghanistan.

In the Postmodern Empire, news serves not so much to inform, but to blind, distract and intimidate. Our much-celebrated information age is defined by an incoherence that permeates society. Welcome to Absurdistan.

Up until September 15, 2008, when the American political scene was thrust into a new dimension by the financial crisis, if someone had told me that George W. Bush’s successor would go on national television and unequivocally announce, “American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over,” I would have said that this would be nothing less than a political shock -- granting relief to many (including me), while enraging neocons and conservative die-hards, who’d be acrimoniously debating the matter for at least the next year.

Not too long ago, Left-liberal pranksters created a parody edition of the New York Times with the headline “IRAQ WAR ENDS,” making it clear that this policy was the Progressives’ ultimate project. In turn, it’s hard to underestimate the degree to which the development of the “conservative” blogosphere was informed and motivated by war-agitation -- many of its most prominent sites are all but unthinkable without updates from Baghdad, “Remember Munich!” polemics, and various accusations of “treason” directed at prominent liberal commentators. My old employer The American Conservative was founded, in 2002, at the point that the neocons had Iraq in their sights, and most of its energies were (and are) dedicated to opposing Republican foreign policy. For good reason.

I woke up today to find that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was being charged in Sweden with one count of rape and one count of molestation (they’re not the same thing?).  I checked the news an hour later, and the more serious charge (rape, I guess) was rescinded. 

STOCKHOLM — Swedish prosecutors withdrew an arrest warrant for the founder of WikiLeaks on Saturday, saying less than a day after the document was issued that it was based on an unfounded accusation of rape.

The accusation had been labeled a dirty trick by Julian Assange and his group, who are preparing to release a fresh batch of classified U.S. documents from the Afghan war.

Swedish prosecutors had urged Assange — a nomadic 39-year-old Australian whose whereabouts were unclear — to turn himself in to police to face questioning in one case involving suspicions of rape and another based on an accusation of molestation.

"I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape," chief prosecutor Eva Finne said, in announcing the withdrawal of the warrant. She did not address the status of the molestation case, a less serious charge that would not lead to an arrest warrant.

The Pentagon has been taking the position that Assange had blood on his hands, an absolutely jaw dropping allegation coming from those killing innocent people because Obama can’t afford to look like a wimp in front of Fox News.

I give this “molestation” charge another 24 hours.

This week Croatian police netted an impressive haul at a customs post on the border with Serbia. A Norwegian man driving into the country was arrested with 88.6 kilograms of heroin stored away in his vehicle, along with over a thousand boxes of cigarettes. The value of the narcotics amounts to 3.7 million Euros, about 4.75 million dollars. The suspect was looking to bring the drugs into the European Union with his family in tow. Apparently having the wife and three kids along for the trip was supposed to draw attention away from the 200-pound payload of heroin stuffed into his car. This may well have been a reasonable calculation on the Norwegian’s part, since the great majority of narcotics flowing from east to west do indeed reach their intended destination in Europe’s cities.

It is still undisclosed where the courier received the drugs, but we can make some reasonable conclusions about the shipment’s journey westward and who facilitated it. The logistics comprise the infamous Balkan Route.

I’m still not sure whether the recent Wikileaks scandal has proven the power of the Internet to bring the dark dealings of the Pentagon into the light and challenge government authority, or whether it has actually proven the impotence of “Web 2.0” vis-à-vis the state and political inertia. (Justin Raimondo has a wrap-up here; the Guardian has created an interactive map connected with the leaked documents, which can be explored here.)

I certainly didn’t need help from Wikileaks to conclude that Washington’s war aims are incoherent, that its soldiers are confused and demoralized, and that the national interest is not being served in the land of the Afghans. All of these things have been abundantly clear for years. Moreover, most of the people fascinated with the Wikileak revelations are antiwar anyway, and it’s not certain whether the conservative push-back against Afghanistan, launched by Ann Coulter and (shockingly) World Net Daily super-hawk and Christian Zionist Joseph Farah, will be much affected by the revelations, which are easy to classify as “anti-military.” (The leaked documents could even conceivably be spun as a call to expand the war into Pakistan...)

The reality is, the American public doesn’t care about the Afghan War enough for it to be an election issue. Most everyone outside deluded Weekly Standard subscribers feel in their guts that Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t going well, and that we’re taking far too long to be done with them. But with job loss and the sustained recession, Americans would rather let these concerns be muffled by the calm reassurance of “the Surge is working!” The only way Afghanistan could become a political issue would be if Obama ended both wars and the neocons and conservative movement reacted by howling about national pride and Democrat surrender monkeys. As Austin Bramwell put it recently,

Obama doesn’t really care about Afghanistan and probably sees the occupation as pointless. Still, he supports it because it keeps Afghanistan boring and therefore off the front page. Rather than order of withdrawal, in other words, Obama prefers to buy an option at $70+ billion a year that lets him pursue his domestic agenda without distraction. … [N]o President would have the courage to make Afghanistan policy based on what’s actually best for America. The paramount concern is public relations.

Obama seems incapable of confronting, 1) the bureaucratic inertia of the Pentagon, whereby Afghanistan will be fought much like Washington’s other endless wars on drugs and poverty, 2) the ideological inertia of his conservative critics, who will attack anything mildly antiwar as an insult to the troops, and 3) the largely invisible Power Elite, which is interested in Afghanistan’s mineral wealth as well as having American military bases stationed around the world.

The Imperial Presidency ain’t what it used to be. 

Is Ann Coulter going antiwar?

Bill Kristol Must Resign

07/07/2010

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele was absolutely right. Afghanistan is Obama's war and, judging by other recent Democratic ventures in military affairs, isn't likely to turn out well.

It has been idiotically claimed that Steele's statement about Afghanistan being Obama's war is "inaccurate" -- as if Steele is unaware Bush invaded Afghanistan soon after 9/11. (No one can forget that -- even liberals pretended to support that war for three whole weeks.)

Yes, Bush invaded Afghanistan soon after 9/11. Within the first few months we had toppled the Taliban, killed or captured hundreds of al-Qaida fighters and arranged for democratic elections, resulting in an American-friendly government.  […]

Having some vague concept of America's national interest -- unlike liberals -- the Bush administration could see that a country of illiterate peasants living in caves ruled by "warlords" was not a primo target for "nation-building."

Yesterday John McCain was on Meet the Press.  The following exchange in the context of discussing the Afghanistan war reminded me of what I find so distasteful about him

SEN. McCAIN:  ...you know--and I sound, I sound a little tough to you.  But I just talked...

MR. GREGORY:  Yeah.

SEN. McCAIN:  ...on the phone to a young man named Todd Nicely, quadruple amputee.  I met him at Walter Reed, and he's now at Bethesda.  I'm, I'm not prepared to say that--to these young men and women who are putting their lives and their families on the line that we are going to leave it at date certain, which means we are pursuing a strategy that I think is doomed to failure.  We owe it to their families.

Nice dragging out of dead and maimed soldiers to make your point.  He does this in situations like this and when he’s talking about the importance of fighting more so soldiers didn’t “die in vain.”

America could very well still have soldiers in Vietnam, Somalia, and Lebanon going by the same reasoning since in each of those countries servicemen were killed and the US left without leaving behind anything that could be considered a victory.  In none of those countries did the US belong and there isn’t greater “meaning” to the Vietnam War because 58,000 more died in Indochina than Mogadishu.  It’s simply more of a tragedy.  

If somebody wanted to leave Afghanistan after fifty deaths McCain would tell us that we were letting the soldiers die for nothing.  Now we're on a thousand plus and he could conceivably still be using this same argument if the death toll ever reached 10,000 or 100,000.  There's nothing to accomplish there.  Yes, the soldiers did die in vain but it's the fault of those who sent them there in the first place, not those who want to stop this madness and make sure other parents and spouses don't go through the same thing.