Asymmetrical Warfare...

I've got a copy of the ISG report but haven't had a chance to read it yet. That will come.


But here's another take on asymmetric warfare. Rather surprising from the LA Times, one of the papers out there with a more than alarming tendency to report propaganda rather than the news. Must be an attempt to get back a few readers.

It's a legitimate point: we've all heard the joke where the wife filing for divorce says "what's mine is mine, what's your's in negotiable".

That's the view of Islam: what once was Islamic remains so, regardless of what has happened. It must be so, after all, everything is Allah's will.


On Sunday I watched Lawrence of Arabia for the first time in many years, the two-disk DVD. What struck me in that movie wasn't the representation of the Arabs as childish and squabbling, as many have criticized the film. I've read the Seven Pillars book by Lawrence, did so while in Jordan in 1977.

What struck me is the inability of Arab culture to adapt and change.

That has been the a significant part of the problem, is a significant part of the problem, and will continue to be a part of the problem.

But getting back to the article:


Put another way, when Muslims beat infidels, it's just too bad for the latter; they must submit to their new overlords' rules with all the attendant discrimination and humiliation mandated for non-Muslims. Yet when Islam is beaten, demands for apologies and concessions are expected from the infidel world at large.

This is the asymmetry I am talking about. The Islamicists cannot accept change and defeat: they cannot, as this would contradict the idea that everything is Allah's will. A temporary setback is something that can be expected, but there is no acceptance of the rights of others to believe what they chose. In other words, an asymmetry of allowable behavior, a double standard to which the West is held but the Islamists are not.

Makes their lives infinitely simpler: they do not believe that they *can* lose: they believe, after all, that it is the will of God. And no man may abrogate the will of God.


Makes it hard to argue with such folks.


Makes it hard to even talk to those folks.


And yet that is apparently what the ISG wants the US to do exactly that.


A sad day, a day that will live in infamy. Not that infamy: the infamy of displaying your ignorance in the face of your enemy. Abject stupidity.