February 3, 2015 - First, Define the Problem; But Hurry, Please!

“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” ~ Albert Einstein

Shortly after September 11, 2011, President George W. Bush declared a “War on Terror” and announced that Islam was a religion of peace. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

Never mind that terror is only a tactic—that some might employ in a war. This astonishing declaration came 22 years after the Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran, seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and in effect declared war on Western Civilization—particularly the Little Satan Israel and the Great Satan America.

This response also was oblivious to numerous intervening terrorist events of the 1980s and 1990s mostly sponsored by Iran—e.g., the Beirut bombing on our Marine Barracks, the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, the attack on the USS Cole off shore of Yemen, etc. The benign U.S. response to these acts no doubt encouraged the growth of terrorism that ultimately led to 9/11 and even to many of our current problems.

Many believe Iran played a significant role in even the 9/11 attack on the U.S. to which President Bush was responding (For example, click here and here)—though Osama bin Laden and most of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and were Sunni Muslims rather than Iranian Shia Muslims. As best I can tell, Sunni and Shia “true believer” Muslims agree on the eventual civilizational triumph of an Islamic Caliphate over Western Civilization and are willing to die to bring it about—as 9/11 clearly illustrated.

Islamic “true believers,” or Islamists, or followers of “radical Islam,” or, as I have referred to them, jihadis—seek a global Jihad to re-establish and further extend the Caliphate that more or less ended with the end of the Ottoman Empire after World War II and Turkey’s emergence as a secular Muslim state, under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s strong hand, and eventually as a NATO ally. Current revisionist trends toward Islamic authoritarianism in Turkey are very troubling. America’s engagement in a war with jihadis dates to our earliest days; e.g., when President Thomas Jefferson sent the U.S. Marines to battle with the “Barbary Pirates”—whence the “Shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Hymn.

President Bush attempted to re-vector his early pronouncements, e.g., on October 6, 2005 in his speech to the National Endowment for Democracy. As reported by Daniel Pipes, he not only gave several names to the force behind terrorism (“Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism”), but he provided ample details. In particular, he presented this “murderous ideology” of Islamic radicals “the great challenge of our new century.” While seeking to distinguish it from the religion of Islam, he drew parallels between radical Islam and communism (both are elitist, cold-blooded, totalitarian, disdainful of free peoples, and fatefully contradictory), then noted in how many ways the U.S. war on radical Islam “resembles the struggle against communism in the last century.”

President Bush identified a three-step Islamist drive to power: ending Western influence in the Muslim world, gaining control of Muslim governments, and establishing “a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia;” explained the “violent, political vision” of radical Islam as comprising an agenda “to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation;” defined its ultimate goal: “to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world.”

President Bush then rightly observed that Muslims themselves have the burden of doing the “most vital work” to fight Islamism, and he called on “all responsible Islamic leaders to join in denouncing” this ideology and taking steps against it.

Too bad so little in response occurred during the rest of his presidency, especially after General Petraeus’ redirected 2007 “surge” battle plan in Afghanistan, a winning strategy, before the Obama administration captured “defeat from the jaws of victory” and produced an extended muddle of other failed policies and programs throughout the Middle East, not to mention the rest of the world.

But I am in danger of digressing. We are where we are.

At least President Bush belatedly settled on a view of the world that, in my judgment, was realistic. That was then—in 2005, but the political correctness of his initial policies had propagated throughout the national security establishment, a regrettable fact continued and expanded by the Obama administration.

How About a Real Reset?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s famous “Reset” of U.S.-Russian relations has not panned out well—for predictable reasons.

On the other hand, there seems to be an opportunity for a major reset, if we have the collective wit and will to take advantage of now evolving activities. And if we can do so before our time runs out.

The congressional testimony of several generals and others last week—and related press interviews over the weekend—make clear that, however we got to our present state, we now have no strategy worth the name. Furthermore, it has become clear that achieving sound policy means dealing with the administration’s aversion to referring to the Islamic origins of the enemy we face, not to mention the ridiculous word distinctions being made. For example, there was lots of discussion last week about whether Taliban actions are those of a terrorist organization or of a military incursion—no doubt, because our policy is not to negotiate with terrorists; whereas we traded five Taliban leaders for the return of Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl (who deserted his post and was captured by the Taliban).

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates (in both the Bush-43 and Obama administrations) observed on Sunday’s Meet the Press that President Obama’s stated goal of “destroying” the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is “unrealistic”—at least with the current commitment of forces to do so. He observed that any meaningful strategy to deal with the overall problem in the Middle East must take account of four conflicts: Between Sunni and Shia Islam; between the Islamic “authoritarians” and “reformers;” between the Islamists and Secularists; and among the various pressures created by these groups that threaten to tear their artificially defined host countries apart.

Retired Army General Jack Keene, who helped General Petraeus design the successful “surge” strategy, complemented these same points in several settings—including last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He observed there is no comprehensive strategy to defeat radical Islam, U.S. policies have failed, and “Radical Islam” has increased four-fold around the world in the past five years—and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has grown 10-fold since 2011. Click here for a very informative 7-minute interview with General Keene and references to other generals who are speaking out. He argued on Fox News Sunday that we need to take a lesson from history—from the period after World War II when we designed a system of alliances to counter the Soviet Union and the threat of global communism.

I agree, with former Secretary Gates and General Keene—and a host of other authorities that our current policies are a failure and that we need a bottom’s-up reexamination of the threats we must confront and a redesigned overarching strategy that includes all aspects of how our overall policies should be designed to counter them. I applaud their efforts to call public attention to this important issue and to encourage development of a broad strategy to counter what is clearly a global and, I believe, existential threat to all we hold dear. Pertinent information can be found on the website for the Institute for the Study of War. General Keene Chairs their Board of Directors.

I am also associated with another notable attempt to do so, led by the Center for Security Policy entitled, The Secure Freedom Strategy. It is based on President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 75, which laid out his successful strategy for defeating Soviet Communism. It begins by discussing the ideological basis of the threat we confront—sharia—and the nature of the jihad that stems from it, and then lays out a approach to counter that threat at home and abroad by a strong military, counter-ideological warfare, intelligence operations, economic warfare, and cyber warfare. Click here for the Secure Freedom Strategy report and a video of the National Press Club event that provides an excellent overview of the problem and our suggested solutions.

Meanwhile the Threat from Iran Isn’t Waiting!

Finally, I want to end with a reference to the looming Iranian threat to emphasize that there is no time to waste in taking action. Whatever may be believed about Iran’s ability to attack the United States and our potential for dealing with them through diplomatic means, it should be understood that Iran may already have a nuclear capability that could end life in the United States as we know it.

Several colleagues and I argued yesterday, in a paper published by Newsmax, that Iran could already have such a capability. As if on cue yesterday, Iran announced it had launched its fourth satellite—the first since 2012—orbiting at 280 miles altitude . . . just right for detonating a nuclear device to impose an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) over the entire United States. Most Americans would perish from societal collapse, disease and starvation within a year after subsequent loss of the electric power grid.

(My colleagues and co-authors were Dr. William R. Graham who served as President Reagan’s science adviser and administrator of NASA, and later chairman of the Congressional EMP Commission; Fritz Ermarth, a former Chairman of the National Intelligence Council; and Dr. Peter Vincent Pry who is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and served in the Congressional EMP Commission, the Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA.)

Meanwhile, the centrifuges spin on, processing Uranium for Iranian nuclear weapons—while our diplomats kick the can down the road. And President Obama threatened to veto sanctions on Iran that could strengthen their hands in those negotiations.

Hello??? We have a problem . . . As John Adams famously argued, facts are stubborn things!

Bottom Line.

Unless we prepare better than we have so far, existential threats such as those identified in our past messages—and reiterated above—will surely materialize. And time is running out!!!

In particular, a quick review of our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, will inform you of many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. Yes, we also remain vulnerable to the EMP caused by a major solar storm that will one day surely create this threat condition—and we are not dealing with it either.

Help us make 2015 a successful year to remember! And may God bless America!

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage, www.highfrontier.org for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

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