Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Ubiquitous Computing Takes a Big Step Forward
Microsoft has developed a new highly interactive computer built into a physical desktop. The technology is called "surface computing". The video gives an impressive demonstration of its capability. It reminds me of Steve Jobs' introduction to Apple's new iPhone. Both incorporate touch technology which replaces the mouse. It is easy to imagine a military application with soldiers seated around the tabletop manipulating maps and related graphics while planning an operation.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Who, Exactly, is the Enemy?
If we are to re-envision the military, then we must consider, too, the characteristics of the enemy we may be required to combat.
It is called the "war on terror". But who, exactly, are the individuals against whom this war is being fought? "Terror" or "terrorism" is a tactic or technique which groups espousing a number of causes might employ to achieve their goals. The targets of terror seem to be individuals specially selected because of their influence, or any grouping of innocent individuals chosen to maximize mayhem. The ultimate objective is to instill fear in a population such that they, in turn, will bring pressure to bear on their government to accede to the terrorists' demands.
The group which has inspired the current war is that credited with planning and implementing the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade towers in New York. That group is al-Qaeda and its allies and sympathizers. And, in Afghanistan, that would include the Taliban who provided the training camps for al-Qaeda and sheltered them despite demands for their extradition.
But what motivates al-Qaeda? The specific trigger for 9/11 may have been the presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia which followed the ejection of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the first Gulf War in 1991. But why should that be such a big deal? If you are a Muslim who subscribes to the view that Saudi Arabia, the site of the holy shrine of Mecca, is sacred ground, then the presence of infidels (i.e. US forces) is unacceptable. A government that would authorize such a presence would, itself, be deemed unIslamic and illegitimate.
This begs the question: What kind of Muslim would that be? This brings us to the matter of Islamic fundamentalism. It is Sayyid Qutb, a leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 60s, who is credited with having a major influence on Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. {For more information on Qutb see "Qutbism: An Ideology of Islamic-Fascism", a pdf document.) This connection may have been through Sayyid's brother, Mohammad Qutb, who became a professor of Islamic Studies in Saudi Arabia. One of Muhammad's students was Ayman al-Zawahiri, now deemed a key mentor of Osama and a leading al-Qaeda strategist.
Reference to Islamic fundamentalism further begs the question: How might it differ from mainstream Islam? According to some sources the challenge to the West is Islam itself, as documented in the Koran and the Hadith. This is spelled out in detail in a full length video "Islam: What the West Needs to Know". An interview with Robert Spencer concerning this video may be viewed from this link.
In his books Qutb preached a fundamentalist view of Islam, such as:
• Islam is a complete system of laws, governance and economics. Western civilization is seen as the antithesis of such a system, with the US as its primary exemplar.
• Men are the managers of women.
• Muslims have a duty (jihad) to spread Islam throughout the world, including nominally Muslim countries which have adopted Western ideas of democracy and permit laws other than sharia, or simply do not practise a sufficiently pure version of Islam .
Such views underpin a desire to re-establish the Caliphate that dominated the Islamic world from the 8th to 12th centuries. Indeed, as explained by the reformed British Islamic radical, Hassan Butt, the ultimate goal is to bring Islamic justice (sharia) to the whole world. Another former radical in Britain, Shiraz Maher, writes:
Col. Thomas Snodgrass (USAF Ret.) defines the enemy explicitly and simply as those who espouse and actively urge the adoption of sharia. A British politician has urged the banning of the above mentioned Hizb ut-Tahrir. It has recently been reported that Hizb ut-Tahrir has been gaining adherents in the West Bank. This may indicate that the political failure of Hamas will not foreshadow a return to secularism.
Wahhabism, a variant of the Sunni religion, espouses a literal interpretation of the hadith (sayings of the prophet Mohammad). While there are Saudi dissidents who oppose it, it is the dominant religion of Saudi Arabia and of the Saudi royal family. This would seem to provide an environment or mindset in which Qutb's ideas could flourish. The royal family financially supports mosques in the US (and Europe) whose imams urge Muslims not to associate with the American or European infidels. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens. What is surprising, however, is that Saudi Arabia is still a major ally of the US, and apparently actively hunts down radical Islamists in their midst. But, then, al-Qaeda (itself founded by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi citizen) does seek to overthrow the West-friendly governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. All this serves to remind us of the widely varying views of what really constitutes Islam.
Qutb's writings may play a role in the present era similar to that of Marx's "Das Capital" and Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in the spread of Communism and Nazism respectively in the 20th Century. Communism was an explicitly atheistic philosophy (at least as practised in the USSR) while Nazism had a major element of religiosity in its opposition to Jews and in the tacit approval by Christian groups in Germany. In the current Islamic extremism, however, religion is the dominant force, indeed its sole raison d'être, while other religious views, political systems and economies are seen as the pagan rites of heathens (infidels). Another significant difference with the earlier two philosophies is that they were state-based (USSR and Germany) after their proponents gained political control, while, since the ousting of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is not state-based or supported. Iran, transformed by the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, may be sympathetic and some evidence indicates the active but secret involvement of the Revolutionary Guard in providing aid to Iraqi Shia insurgents, Within Pakistan there is substantial support within the population, particularly among the Pashtun tribe bordering Afghanistan. A particularly worrisome possibility is that Pakistan may be the next state to offer a haven to al-Qaeda and its like-minded Islamic extremists. The assault on the Red Mosque in Islamabad by the Pakistani Army on 10 July 2007 may lead to a major battle against the militant Islamists which may clarify the situation.
Because al-Qaeda has been deprived of a firm territorial space from which to plan and launch its attacks, it has resorted to cyberspace. The number of active radical Islamist websites has been estimated to have grown from under 100 in 1996 to over 5,000 today. This electronic network links Muslims world-wide, reinforcing the global consciousness of the "ummah" or Islamic nation, even among those who are citizens of Western countries. The resulting mindset among some Muslims in the UK, for example, has led them to label as "traitors" British Muslims who joined the British Army, and to threaten them with beheading, the Koranic punishment for "apostasy". However, it may still be the case that the most likely agents of bomb attacks are immigrant Muslims holding radical beliefs, such as those members of the UK medical service accused in the recent failed car bombings in central London and the Glasgow airport.
More insidious is "stealth jihad" which is explained in a recent article, "US Sleeps While Society, Values Get Undermined By Stealth Jihad", published in the online version of the "Evening Bulletin", a Philadelphia, PA, newspaper. It draws a distinction between "explosive jihad" and "stealth jihad". The latter term refers to efforts to have sharia law become embedded in the American legal system, by influencing the decisions of judges hearing cases which involve Muslims. The approach is well advanced in Europe, especially in the Netherlands and England. The views of the American based Revolution Muslim are summarized here.
That there is a latent threat from radicalized Muslims in Canada seems evident from a recent CBC documentary aired on The National entitled "Who Speaks for Islam?" which focused on two Muslim organizations with differing views, the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) and the Muslim Congress of Canada (MCC). While the MCC seems to be quite outspoken in its condemnation of Islamic extremists and their interpretation of Islamic theology (the Koran), the CIC appears to be reluctant to adopt such an unequivocal stance, but instead accuses the MCC of "Islam-bashing". Further, the CIC favours a role for Sharia law in Ontario in family matters involving Muslims, while the MCC opposes it. It gets worse, as MCC members have been attacked and beaten, and a former executive member, Tarek Fatah, felt it prudent to resign after receiving threats to his life. To date there is no report of the identification and arrest of those responsible. One is left to wonder whether the CIC condones such crimes and, if so, is it because they are consistent with its interpretation of Koranic scripture? While the CBC video is not currently available online, an article entitled "Islam's angry women" also exemplifies the lack of unity among Muslims on interpretations of Islam.
In spite of the above evidence of a significant threat from Islamic extremists, there is a growing demand that our forces be withdrawn from Afghanistan. What are some of the possible implications of such a move?
If NATO, including Canada, withdraws from Afghanistan before the Afghan government and its military and police forces can contain and eliminate the Taliban, we may be called upon again to intercede to prevent a social and humanitarian disaster. A general retreat by the West from the Middle East may encourage the extremists, provide them with solid bases in which to train and from which to launch attacks against the West. Such a development will also encourage those Muslims in the West who have been radicalized to expand their operations. Those Islamic zealots who aspire to the establishment of a new Caliphate extending from Morocco to the Philippines may rapidly move to fill the vacuum left by the retreating West.
Such a "domino effect" may only be realistic, however, if there is substantial support for the radical Islamic views of the extremists. It seems clear that a majority of Muslims do not support such views but, without strong support from their peers and the general non-Muslim population (in Western countries), are understandably reluctant to expose themselves to retribution. It has been argued that it is unrealistic to consider that the imposition of a new Caliphate is even reasonable, given the minority position of al-Qaeda in countries of the Middle East. It has been noted that the Taliban only came to power in Afghanistan after that country was exhausted by fighting the Soviet Union.
Furthermore, once our forces withdraw, extremists will no longer be able to claim that they are fighting a foreign occupying force, and hence support for their views may decline. Indeed, recent trends in the western Iraqi province of Anbar indicate a growing dissatisfaction with the actions of al-Qaeda in Iraq in employing suicide bombers, many of whom are not Iraqis, to inflict casualties among many innocent Iraqi civilians, often Sunni. The departure of NATO forces may result in a refocusing, not only among Iraqis, but in the Middle East generally, upon the destructive interpretation of the Koran championed by al-Qaeda. There are certainly elements in Iran who are agitating for greater freedom of expression in that modern country and, officially, that country has not been keen to align itself with al-Qaeda. That may be because, as one report notes, "Iran's Shiite Muslims are considered infidels by the Salafi (cf. Wahhabi) sect of Sunnis that comprise Al Qaeda (sic)".It should be borne in mind, however, that the Kenyan and Tanzanian bombings of US embassies, the USS Cole attack, the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and, of course, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon were not responses to an occupying force (except, as noted earlier, US Forces were present in Saudi Arabia after the Kuwait war). Indeed, they may have been inspired by a belief that the US lacked the courage and decisiveness to respond with devastating military force. (As an aside, it should be recalled that some argue that those who planned the twin towers attacks were explicitly hoping to draw the US into the Middle East to confront their forces directly, and to make it appear as a "war against Islam".) Even in the event of a planned withdrawal there should no longer be any doubt about the willingness of the US and its allies to act forcefully if threatened again, and armed, next time, by valuable lessons learned.
Note: This blog has not yet addressed issues raised by the massive immigration of Muslims into Europe and North America since the end of World War II. Such issues have been raised in books by Bat Ye'or, "Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis" and by Christopher Caldwell, "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe".
Contrary to the official view that the attack on the World Trade Center towers marked a turning point in the war against the West by Islamists (i.e. those espousing a radical (fundamental) interpretation of Islam), there has been a mass distribution among Muslims of a warning entitled "Warning of a Global War On Islam". The signatories are an American and a Canadian. The "warning" concludes by urging the following:
To be continued as time permits ...
It is called the "war on terror". But who, exactly, are the individuals against whom this war is being fought? "Terror" or "terrorism" is a tactic or technique which groups espousing a number of causes might employ to achieve their goals. The targets of terror seem to be individuals specially selected because of their influence, or any grouping of innocent individuals chosen to maximize mayhem. The ultimate objective is to instill fear in a population such that they, in turn, will bring pressure to bear on their government to accede to the terrorists' demands.
The group which has inspired the current war is that credited with planning and implementing the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade towers in New York. That group is al-Qaeda and its allies and sympathizers. And, in Afghanistan, that would include the Taliban who provided the training camps for al-Qaeda and sheltered them despite demands for their extradition.
But what motivates al-Qaeda? The specific trigger for 9/11 may have been the presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia which followed the ejection of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the first Gulf War in 1991. But why should that be such a big deal? If you are a Muslim who subscribes to the view that Saudi Arabia, the site of the holy shrine of Mecca, is sacred ground, then the presence of infidels (i.e. US forces) is unacceptable. A government that would authorize such a presence would, itself, be deemed unIslamic and illegitimate.
This begs the question: What kind of Muslim would that be? This brings us to the matter of Islamic fundamentalism. It is Sayyid Qutb, a leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and 60s, who is credited with having a major influence on Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. {For more information on Qutb see "Qutbism: An Ideology of Islamic-Fascism", a pdf document.) This connection may have been through Sayyid's brother, Mohammad Qutb, who became a professor of Islamic Studies in Saudi Arabia. One of Muhammad's students was Ayman al-Zawahiri, now deemed a key mentor of Osama and a leading al-Qaeda strategist.
Reference to Islamic fundamentalism further begs the question: How might it differ from mainstream Islam? According to some sources the challenge to the West is Islam itself, as documented in the Koran and the Hadith. This is spelled out in detail in a full length video "Islam: What the West Needs to Know". An interview with Robert Spencer concerning this video may be viewed from this link.
In his books Qutb preached a fundamentalist view of Islam, such as:
• Islam is a complete system of laws, governance and economics. Western civilization is seen as the antithesis of such a system, with the US as its primary exemplar.
• Men are the managers of women.
• Muslims have a duty (jihad) to spread Islam throughout the world, including nominally Muslim countries which have adopted Western ideas of democracy and permit laws other than sharia, or simply do not practise a sufficiently pure version of Islam .
Such views underpin a desire to re-establish the Caliphate that dominated the Islamic world from the 8th to 12th centuries. Indeed, as explained by the reformed British Islamic radical, Hassan Butt, the ultimate goal is to bring Islamic justice (sharia) to the whole world. Another former radical in Britain, Shiraz Maher, writes:
One of the principal proponents of this view in Britain is Hizb ut-Tahrir, of which I was a member and regional officer for north-east England. It was through my membership of the group that I first met Bilal Abdulla and Kafeel Ahmed, the two men suspected of driving an explosive-laden jeep into Glasgow Airport.
During that year we became close friends, and met frequently to discuss politics. The atmosphere was always highly charged when we considered the decline of political Islam. We felt humiliated by it. We all believed in championing the supremacy of Islam, wanting to see a future Islamic empire dominate the world and, of course, to establish a puritanical Islamic state.
Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/200707120030
Col. Thomas Snodgrass (USAF Ret.) defines the enemy explicitly and simply as those who espouse and actively urge the adoption of sharia. A British politician has urged the banning of the above mentioned Hizb ut-Tahrir. It has recently been reported that Hizb ut-Tahrir has been gaining adherents in the West Bank. This may indicate that the political failure of Hamas will not foreshadow a return to secularism.
Wahhabism, a variant of the Sunni religion, espouses a literal interpretation of the hadith (sayings of the prophet Mohammad). While there are Saudi dissidents who oppose it, it is the dominant religion of Saudi Arabia and of the Saudi royal family. This would seem to provide an environment or mindset in which Qutb's ideas could flourish. The royal family financially supports mosques in the US (and Europe) whose imams urge Muslims not to associate with the American or European infidels. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens. What is surprising, however, is that Saudi Arabia is still a major ally of the US, and apparently actively hunts down radical Islamists in their midst. But, then, al-Qaeda (itself founded by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi citizen) does seek to overthrow the West-friendly governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. All this serves to remind us of the widely varying views of what really constitutes Islam.
Qutb's writings may play a role in the present era similar to that of Marx's "Das Capital" and Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in the spread of Communism and Nazism respectively in the 20th Century. Communism was an explicitly atheistic philosophy (at least as practised in the USSR) while Nazism had a major element of religiosity in its opposition to Jews and in the tacit approval by Christian groups in Germany. In the current Islamic extremism, however, religion is the dominant force, indeed its sole raison d'être, while other religious views, political systems and economies are seen as the pagan rites of heathens (infidels). Another significant difference with the earlier two philosophies is that they were state-based (USSR and Germany) after their proponents gained political control, while, since the ousting of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is not state-based or supported. Iran, transformed by the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, may be sympathetic and some evidence indicates the active but secret involvement of the Revolutionary Guard in providing aid to Iraqi Shia insurgents, Within Pakistan there is substantial support within the population, particularly among the Pashtun tribe bordering Afghanistan. A particularly worrisome possibility is that Pakistan may be the next state to offer a haven to al-Qaeda and its like-minded Islamic extremists. The assault on the Red Mosque in Islamabad by the Pakistani Army on 10 July 2007 may lead to a major battle against the militant Islamists which may clarify the situation.
Because al-Qaeda has been deprived of a firm territorial space from which to plan and launch its attacks, it has resorted to cyberspace. The number of active radical Islamist websites has been estimated to have grown from under 100 in 1996 to over 5,000 today. This electronic network links Muslims world-wide, reinforcing the global consciousness of the "ummah" or Islamic nation, even among those who are citizens of Western countries. The resulting mindset among some Muslims in the UK, for example, has led them to label as "traitors" British Muslims who joined the British Army, and to threaten them with beheading, the Koranic punishment for "apostasy". However, it may still be the case that the most likely agents of bomb attacks are immigrant Muslims holding radical beliefs, such as those members of the UK medical service accused in the recent failed car bombings in central London and the Glasgow airport.
More insidious is "stealth jihad" which is explained in a recent article, "US Sleeps While Society, Values Get Undermined By Stealth Jihad", published in the online version of the "Evening Bulletin", a Philadelphia, PA, newspaper. It draws a distinction between "explosive jihad" and "stealth jihad". The latter term refers to efforts to have sharia law become embedded in the American legal system, by influencing the decisions of judges hearing cases which involve Muslims. The approach is well advanced in Europe, especially in the Netherlands and England. The views of the American based Revolution Muslim are summarized here.
That there is a latent threat from radicalized Muslims in Canada seems evident from a recent CBC documentary aired on The National entitled "Who Speaks for Islam?" which focused on two Muslim organizations with differing views, the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) and the Muslim Congress of Canada (MCC). While the MCC seems to be quite outspoken in its condemnation of Islamic extremists and their interpretation of Islamic theology (the Koran), the CIC appears to be reluctant to adopt such an unequivocal stance, but instead accuses the MCC of "Islam-bashing". Further, the CIC favours a role for Sharia law in Ontario in family matters involving Muslims, while the MCC opposes it. It gets worse, as MCC members have been attacked and beaten, and a former executive member, Tarek Fatah, felt it prudent to resign after receiving threats to his life. To date there is no report of the identification and arrest of those responsible. One is left to wonder whether the CIC condones such crimes and, if so, is it because they are consistent with its interpretation of Koranic scripture? While the CBC video is not currently available online, an article entitled "Islam's angry women" also exemplifies the lack of unity among Muslims on interpretations of Islam.
In spite of the above evidence of a significant threat from Islamic extremists, there is a growing demand that our forces be withdrawn from Afghanistan. What are some of the possible implications of such a move?
If NATO, including Canada, withdraws from Afghanistan before the Afghan government and its military and police forces can contain and eliminate the Taliban, we may be called upon again to intercede to prevent a social and humanitarian disaster. A general retreat by the West from the Middle East may encourage the extremists, provide them with solid bases in which to train and from which to launch attacks against the West. Such a development will also encourage those Muslims in the West who have been radicalized to expand their operations. Those Islamic zealots who aspire to the establishment of a new Caliphate extending from Morocco to the Philippines may rapidly move to fill the vacuum left by the retreating West.
Such a "domino effect" may only be realistic, however, if there is substantial support for the radical Islamic views of the extremists. It seems clear that a majority of Muslims do not support such views but, without strong support from their peers and the general non-Muslim population (in Western countries), are understandably reluctant to expose themselves to retribution. It has been argued that it is unrealistic to consider that the imposition of a new Caliphate is even reasonable, given the minority position of al-Qaeda in countries of the Middle East. It has been noted that the Taliban only came to power in Afghanistan after that country was exhausted by fighting the Soviet Union.
Furthermore, once our forces withdraw, extremists will no longer be able to claim that they are fighting a foreign occupying force, and hence support for their views may decline. Indeed, recent trends in the western Iraqi province of Anbar indicate a growing dissatisfaction with the actions of al-Qaeda in Iraq in employing suicide bombers, many of whom are not Iraqis, to inflict casualties among many innocent Iraqi civilians, often Sunni. The departure of NATO forces may result in a refocusing, not only among Iraqis, but in the Middle East generally, upon the destructive interpretation of the Koran championed by al-Qaeda. There are certainly elements in Iran who are agitating for greater freedom of expression in that modern country and, officially, that country has not been keen to align itself with al-Qaeda. That may be because, as one report notes, "Iran's Shiite Muslims are considered infidels by the Salafi (cf. Wahhabi) sect of Sunnis that comprise Al Qaeda (sic)".It should be borne in mind, however, that the Kenyan and Tanzanian bombings of US embassies, the USS Cole attack, the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and, of course, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon were not responses to an occupying force (except, as noted earlier, US Forces were present in Saudi Arabia after the Kuwait war). Indeed, they may have been inspired by a belief that the US lacked the courage and decisiveness to respond with devastating military force. (As an aside, it should be recalled that some argue that those who planned the twin towers attacks were explicitly hoping to draw the US into the Middle East to confront their forces directly, and to make it appear as a "war against Islam".) Even in the event of a planned withdrawal there should no longer be any doubt about the willingness of the US and its allies to act forcefully if threatened again, and armed, next time, by valuable lessons learned.
Note: This blog has not yet addressed issues raised by the massive immigration of Muslims into Europe and North America since the end of World War II. Such issues have been raised in books by Bat Ye'or, "Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis" and by Christopher Caldwell, "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe".
Contrary to the official view that the attack on the World Trade Center towers marked a turning point in the war against the West by Islamists (i.e. those espousing a radical (fundamental) interpretation of Islam), there has been a mass distribution among Muslims of a warning entitled "Warning of a Global War On Islam". The signatories are an American and a Canadian. The "warning" concludes by urging the following:
We were promised that the “war on terror” would be a very long one. Do you think this will all blow away? If so, you’re sadly mistaken. For example, 28 million copies of a DVD outlining Muslim plans for world conquest have been sent to American homes — often enclosed in newspapers and magazines. Rumors persist of large-scale detention facilities currently under construction by Haliburton Inc with a capacity of about three million persons. Given the nature of this war on Islam, you have no choice but be involved.
You have been warned by knowledgeable and sincere Muslim brothers. You really have no choice.
To be continued as time permits ...
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