An important Pakistani Army General was killed in a helicopter crash in the "restive South Waziristan region," near the Afghan border. Two other generals died in the same crash. The copter "crashed because of a technical fault."
"According to the BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad, the death of Maj Gen Sultan will dent morale among Pakistani troops who have already suffered heavy casualties in the region. He is the most senior Pakistani officer to be killed in military operations in the area. Hours before the crash was reported, Taleban militants based in Pakistan said they were scaling back operations against the military."
In the meantime, Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, said in Munich that the European public needs convincing that Nato’s mission in Afghanistan is part of a wider fight against global terror.
Gates: "On a conceptual level, I believe it falls squarely within the traditional bounds of the alliance’s core purpose: to defend the security interests and values of the trans-Atlantic community. We must not - we cannot - become a two-tiered alliance of those who are willing to fight and those who are not. Such a development, with all its implications for collective security, would effectively destroy the alliance."
How the Europeans miss the Islamic threat is beyond me. Did you see this video (watch to the end) that I picked up from The Belmont Club this morning. The title "My sentence was reduced to beheading" was arresting.
If the Archbishop of Canterbury can't be bothered to defend the Christian faith, where are we? At least his remarks seems to have made the BBC consider that sharia law might not be terribly desirable. Secular Europe, as represented by NATO, ought to be desiring to keep world-wide political peace and that not of the peace of the grave sort that would come of such capitulation. Are those governments who do not contribute troops not as concerned about the larger threat because the internal threat is plenty to think about?
NATO is dead. RIP.
Of course the State Department and our foreign policy establishment hasn't yet gotten used to that idea, but it's been dead for years.
Part of the problem is the politically correct moniker we've given to the war effort. The "war on terror" is a name that's almost perfectly suited for warping, distorting and ultimately confusing not just the American people, but people across Western civilization.
Had the enemy been properly identified ab initio, had the overall war been accurately identified as well, then this widespread confusion and defeatism wouldn't be as pronounced as it is today.
For war, you need CLARITY. STRATEGIC clarity. MORAL clarity. INTELLECTUAL clarity and COMMUNICATIVE clarity.
You can't wage war in a mental and moral fog.
My dear, how would you put it? I mean, what is a nice, succinct, clear title for this war? I agree, words have meaning and there might be a better title than "war on terror", but I do not know what that might be.
NATO is not dead. It is a huge entity. It is merely obsolete as to its original purpose. Surely, applying NATO as it is to this purpose would give the organization a reasonable reason for existence.
What would I name the war?
How about the war on muslim supremacism? Or how about the war on totalitarian islam. Or then again the war on jihadism, or the war on jihadist islam?
And as for NATO, when that organization assumes certain obligations in a theater of war and fails to meet those obligations, fails even to come close, fails even to make the old college try, ------------------------------ then that organization is dead. Not dead by our action or inaction. But dead because its natural life came to an end some time ago. NATO is dead. Not moribund, dead, finis. The mission of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was successfully completed with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Bloc. It was an organization to stave off Communist domination of Western Europe. It prevailed, NATO vanquished her enemy, she triumphed over her foe, she successfully defended the people and nations of Western Europe.
Well done! Well done indeed.
However, NATO is now a glorified talking salon, a boutique organization, without a mission, without a goal, without a raison d'etre. Her forces are not allowed to fight. I don't know if you noticed, but we just sent the Secretary of Defense of the United States to beg, BEG Europeans to allow their paras and special operators to fight an open and avowed enemy very much in the field. NATO's behavior since 9/11 has been nothing short of scandalous, absolutely scandalous.
Outside of the British Commonwealth, we've very few allies with the will to order their men to close with the enemy and annihilate him.
And that's a sad, sad statement, but a truthful one for all that.
So what should we do?
We should declare the mission of the North Atlantic Alliance completed, and declare the operative treaty to be null and void en passant.
THEREAFTER, we should immediately open negotiations to form a new grouping of nations, such as Britain and Denmark for instance, whatever WESTERN countries that are so minded we should ally with to form a new alliance, a war-waging, war-winning alliance of nations determined to defend Western Civilization, against any and all enemies, totalitarian islam by name, and defend Western Civilization by any and all means necessary.
We need a NEW ALLIANCE for apparently a "new" enemy, but in reality, an enemy that crawled forth from the tomb of the Middle Ages. We need a new alliance for a new mission.
We need MORAL, INTELLECTUAL, CULTURAL, STRATEGIC, ECONOMIC and DIPLOMATIC CLARITY. And the sooner the better.
As our problems are new, we need to think anew. And our diplomacy needs to take cognizance of that. We need to stop trying to force new wine into old wine skins.
Our jihad on Jihad?
Yes, mostly I agree about NATO. The structures built for NATO should probably be put to this new purpose, though the whole thing would need to be rethought and restructured. Wouldn't the problem be, especially for the European nations, but also for us, that to make an organization overtly anti-Islamic whatever you want to call it, would seriously offend the Moslems in those nations? If we were talking about authoritarian nations, something could be done. But we are not. We are talking about democratic nations and the demographic nature of those countries (even ours, maybe) is that such a new alliance based on such a new mission would be an outrage. I am NOT saying you are not right in your call for MORAL, INTELLECTUAL, CULTURAL, STRATEGIC, ECONOMIC and DIPLOMATIC CLARITY I am just saying it is not politically viable in the world right now. Probably by the time it is recognized as needed, it will be too late.
Did you see that video I referenced in my first comment? We really do need a miracle.
I wouldn't call it jihad. I would call it a crusade though.
The deployment of Pershing IIs wasn't politically viable either, but those missiles were nonetheless deployed.
When the establishment wants something done, whether that establishment is in North America or Europe, that thing gets done. Witness the European Union, where citizens of one state after another rejected the whole project, but nonetheless, the project moves inexorably forward, as if their votes had never been tallied.
The political difficulties you mentioned are DIRECTLY attributable to the moral, intellectual and cultural fog surrounding the issue of islam and jihad. One of the reasons I suggested shelving NATO and creating a new alliance for a new purpose is that such an event would require governments to address islam.
As for the miracle, we'll get it. But it will come only after much suffering. And it will come only when all seems hopelessly lost.
Islam will not prevail over Christianity. It will not prevail over Western Civilization and Western Europe. And that's because it will not be permitted to prevail.
As for that video, I've not seen it yet.