This is a review of the book, Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms Around the World.. by Gabriel A. Almond, R. Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan.#

It looks like it's a very large corpus of work with a wide range and intense detail,#

``The five-volume, decade-long Fundamentalism Project was a major scholarly effort to see if there was such a sociological phenomenon as fundamentalism that might explain similarities, or at least "family resemblances," among so-called fundamentalist groups within several major world religions. A total of 75 different movements were examined by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists on several continents. The groups included had emerged from all of the world's major religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam (both Sunni and Shi'ite), Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and neo-Confucianism. Strong Religion amounts to a concluding summation of the project's work.''

The reviewer has a bit of a problem with the assumption that fundamentalism and religion must bad and secularization must be good,#

``The larger issue raised by this effort to understand fundamentalism is the premise of the entire project: that such religious movements are "militant and highly focused antagonists of secularization." Many so-called fundamentalist movements are undoubtedly hostile to much of modernity. But the word "secularization" seems a bit loaded. It implies that increasing global secularism is somehow the natural order of things. In fact, the global upsurge of religion in recent years suggests otherwise.

As sociologist Peter Berger argues in The Desecularization of the World, "the notion that we live in a secularized world is false." Secularization theory, derived from Enlightenment views of religion and popular in American academia in the 1950s and 1960s, held that the world would gradually abandon religious faith and free itself from the shackles of religion and superstition. But as Berger notes, "The world today is massively religious, and it is anything but the secularized world that had been predicted (be it joyfully or despondently) by so many analysts of modernity." ''

David Aikman also notes some technical problems with the text,#

``The scholars also display something approaching intellectual dishonesty in their discussion of "martyrdom" in the Christian and Muslim contexts. "Christians, like Muslims," Strong Religion asserts, "have considered martyrdom a prime opportunity for holiness, and indeed, a direct ticket to heaven." This grossly distorts the difference between the Christian and the Islamic concepts of martyrdom. Within Islam, martyrdom is what happens when a person dies in jihad. Thus Palestinian suicide bombers, who try to kill as many civilians as possible while blowing themselves up in Israeli buses or discotheques, are praised by many fellow Muslims as martyrs. Christians are only martyrs when killed purely and simply for what they believe. Although Muslim "martyrs" may indeed enter paradise immediately, martyrdom within Christianity has nothing to do with entrance into heaven.''

The review ends on a strong note,#

``Efforts to analyze and seek commonalities among fundamentalist groups can certainly be helpful. The authors of Strong Religion have done a fine job in examining many often obscure groups. The sociological approach offers considerable insights. But in the end, it is hard to escape the feeling that the authors need to take more seriously the notion that it is what people believe, or do not believe, that determines their actions quite as much as their income level or their street address. If fundamentalism merely denotes strong belief in core doctrines of faith, what distinguishes an ardent churchgoer or mosque-attender from a "reactive" terrorist? The concluding paragraph of Strong Religion offers a revealing insight into the researchers' mindset as they affirm the need to understand fundamentalism "for politicians, diplomats, educators, and scientists, including those who continue to wonder ruefully how militant religion inherited a new lease on life in our supposedly postreligious age."

What sort of people have been supposing that our world was ever postreligious? Berger wryly proposes that the faculty dining hall at the average U.S. college might be a more interesting topic for the sociology of religion than the Islamic schools of Qum. Perhaps one should merely recall what an anonymous New York lawyer said on learning of the emergence of the Moral Majority in the 1980s: "Millions of people out there believe what nobody believes anymore." ''

This is a review of the book, The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought by Jerry Z. Muller.#

The book is about the origins of capitalism and what some major European thinkers have thought about it.#

It is interesting to note the "newness" of capitalism,#

``Because Americans take capitalism for granted, they often fail to appreciate what a historically recent and revolutionary phenomenon it is. Trade and commerce have been features of human society from the beginning, but it was really only in the eighteenth century that economies began to emerge in which markets were the primary force in the production and distribution of goods. And as soon as such economies did emerge, they began transforming not only economic relationships but social and political ones as well. These transformations were so radical and so destabilizing, in fact, that they prompted an almost immediate backlash.''

A little bit about where people who weren't excited about capitalism found themselves,#

``Born in 1887, meanwhile, Freyer took a similar journey but ended up at a different destination. He too grew increasingly disillusioned with the spiritual emptiness and personal alienation that characterized modern society and searched for a radical alternative to the "moral dead-end of capitalism." But whereas Lukács found his salvation in communism, Freyer found his in National Socialism. Neither a racist nor an antisemite, Freyer, like many intellectuals, was attracted to the Nazis because they seemed to offer what capitalism lacked: an opportunity to sacrifice for the larger good and participate in a world historical project.''

The general feel was that capitalism was bad for the soul and community,#

``Möser also bemoaned the way the emerging capitalist system led to a stifling homogenization. By insisting on the universality and primacy of a set of "simple principles" and by allowing the direction and nature of social relationships to be determined by economic needs, the spread of markets threatened to rob communities of their distinctive cultures and institutions. Capitalism thus departed, he declared, "from the true plan of nature, which reveals its wealth through its multiplicity, and would clear the path to despotism, which seeks to coerce all according to a few rules and so loses the richness that comes with variety." ''

The problem isn't that capitalism isn't a good way to make money, it's that money is Not A Good Thing...#

``What they fail to understand is that such narrow economistic attitudes miss the point. Yes, capitalism is far and away the best method ever discovered for producing growth. But for serious thinkers that has not been, and is not today, the only issue. Even its most die-hard critics have never doubted capitalism's amazing capacity to generate wealth. In fact, Muller notes, for someone like Justus Möser it was "precisely the superior productivity of capitalism that was its most threatening aspect," because that was what enabled it to so rapidly and efficiently undermine traditional forms of production and the lifestyles, cultures, and communities that went with them.''

Introducing the author of the essay#

``Leonardo Maugeri is Group Senior Vice President for Corporate Strategies and Planning for the Italian energy company eni.''

The first paragraph is perfect for setting the mood of the essay,#

``Since oil became vital to industrial societies, it has been the subject of mythmaking. This is not surprising since the control and pricing of energy is an emotionally charged issue that lends itself to conspiracy theories and distorted interpretations of past events. Conspiracy theorists are once again active, spurred on by the conflict in oil-rich Iraq. They see multinational oil corporations working with the U.S. government to dominate the supply, distribution, and cost of oil. To them, the ultimate goal lurking behind major international crises, such as Iraq, is access to oil. But the relationship between oil and politics is not so simple. Neither oil scarcity nor energy security -- the twin concepts that underpin much thinking about this issue even in some official circles -- is a sound starting point for thinking about oil policy. Getting beyond such notions, however, requires an examination of the myths and the realities of oil.''

Leonardo writes in great detail of the sibling spectres of oil security and scarcity...#

``Dire predictions of scarcity go hand in hand with fears about oil security. The truth is that oil supplies are neither running out nor becoming insecure. Today, the average world recovery rate from existing oil reserves is 35 percent, as compared to about 22 percent in 1980. Given current oil consumption levels, every additional percentage of recovery means two more years of existing reserves. [ed--because it's reasonable to guess that oil consumption will remain constant.] This evolution also partly explains why the life index of existing reserves is still growing even though the world is replacing only 25 percent of what it consumes every year with new discoveries and major new oil discoveries have decreased since the 1960s. Today's ratio of proven oil reserves to current production indicates a remaining life of 43 years for existing reserves, compared to 35 years in 1972, and 20 years in 1948. Advances in technology explain the apparent contradiction between fewer discoveries and more oil. Whereas an oil field does not change, knowledge about it does, sometimes dramatically.''

This essay has now reminded me of the explanation that the world will never run out of oil, because by the time there is one drop left it will be so expensive that no one can buy it, and it will have become useless so no one will want to.#

Leonardo acknowledges this idea,#

``Oil is considered a semi-mature commodity, the fate of which is closely connected with that of most raw minerals, all affected by a rise-and-fall consumption pattern in modern economic history. According to this pattern, just as the Stone Age did not end for the lack of stones, the oil age will not end because of the scarcity of oil. Rather, oil will inevitably be surpassed in convenience by a new source of energy.''

A summary of the scarcity issue is succinct. Basically this is the boy crying wolf every time he gets a little scared.#

``In short, the world is not running out of oil, and there is no oil security problem in today's world market. The problem instead is that many Western observers speak about oil security when what they have in mind is stable and cheap oil supplies. this confusion of two very different things usually stems from public hysteria when oil prices soar. When prices drop, oil matters are forgotten. Few remember the general refrain in 1998-99, when oil prices plummeted to about $10: "Bad for oil companies and producing countries, good for everyone else." No spoke then about oil security and energy alternatives.''

The author give some short advice to the builders of a New Iraq about oil stability,#

``for Arab countries it is difficult to translate creeping political rivalries into competitive oil policies. If a major producer, such as Iraq, were to open its oil fields to foreign investment again, its neighbors would be obliged to react so as not to lose future market share and revenues. In short, they would be compelled to overproduce and accept plummeting oil prices. That is the challenge that Iraq could pose if unregulated foreign investments flowed in to rebuild its oil industry. While Iraq is being reconstructed, care must be taken not to deconstruct the oil market again by sparking fierce competition among major producers.''

I take some of this with some salt because the author is a member of Oil interests, but at the same time I wonder if I should put more stock in what he says. Seeing as he is an "insider" and presumably knows a bit better than the academics.#

"Timothy E. Wirth is President of the United Nations Foundation and a former U.S. Senator from Colorado. C. Boyden Gray is a partner at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and served as Counsel to former President George H.W. Bush. John D. Podesta is Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and served as Chief of Staff to former President Bill Clinton. The views expressed here are the authors' alone."#

The Debate "over energy policy in the United States has consistently failed to grapple with the large issues at stake. It is time for an ambitious new approach to U.S. strategic energy policy, one that deals with the problems of oil dependence, climate change, and the developing world's lack of access to energy."#

The authors stress the importance of decisions these days with a historical note,#

``A century ago, Lord Selborne, the first lord of the Admiralty, dismissed the idea of fueling the British navy with something other than coal, which the island nation had in great abundance. "The substitution of oil for coal is impossible," he pronounced, "because oil does not exist in this world in sufficient quantities." Seven years later, the young Winston Churchill was appointed first lord and charged with winning the escalating Anglo-German race for naval superiority. As Daniel Yergin chronicled in The Prize, Churchill saw that oil would increase ship speed and reduce refueling time -- key strategic advantages -- and ordered oil-burning battleships to be built, committing the navy to this new fuel. Churchill's was a strategic choice, bold, creative, and farsighted. *The energy choices the world faces today are no less consequential, and America's response must be as insightful.*''

And then introduce was it wrong with the current level of discussion and decision...#

``The profound changes of recent decades and the pressing challenges of the twenty-first century warrant recognizing energy's central role in America's future and the need for much more ambitious and creative approaches. Yet the current debate about U.S. energy policy is mainly about tax breaks for expanded production, access to public lands, and nuances of electricity regulation -- difficult issues all, but inadequate for the larger challenges the United States faces. The staleness of the policy dialogue reflects a failure to recognize the importance of energy to the issues it affects: defense and homeland security, the economy, and the environment. What is needed is a purposeful, strategic energy policy, not a grab bag drawn from interest-group wish lists.''

The authors like to stress that problems associated with the increased and continued reliance upon oil...#

``The flow of funds to certain oil-producing states has financed widespread corruption, perpetuated repressive regimes, funded radical anti-American fundamentalism, and fed hatreds that derive from rigid rule and stark contrasts between rich and poor. Terrorism and aggression are byproducts of these realities. Iraq tried to use its oil wealth to buy the ingredients for weapons of mass destruction. In the future, some oil-producing states may seek to swap assured access to oil for the weapons themselves. It is also increasingly clear that the riches from oil trickle down to those who would do harm to America and its friends. If this situation remains unchanged, the United States will find itself sending soldiers into battle again and again, adding the lives of American men and women in uniform to the already high cost of oil''

Imagine commercial on TV about how "Oil Supports Terrorism".

The issue of bringing energy to the poor of the world is addressed with stark description of the current state of affairs for non-Americans...#

``Of the world's six billion people, one-third enjoy the kind of energy on demand that Americans take for granted (electricity at the flick of a switch), and another third have such energy services intermittently. The final third-two billion people-simply lack access to modern energy services. Not coincidentally, the energy-deprived are the world's most impoverished, living on less than $2 per day. And their ranks will grow: according to UN estimates, the total population of the 50 poorest nations will triple in size over the next 50 years.''

Compare the state of the world's poorest people to the bills that cows rake in from government subsidies...#

``The World Bank estimates that the $300 billion worth of annual agricultural subsidies in industrialized countries suppresses world prices and undermines developing-country exports. In total, these subsidies are about six times higher than current development-assistance levels. The average European cow receives $2.50 per day in government subsidies, the average Japanese cow $7.50, yet 75 percent of people in Africa live on less than $2 per day.''

This essay contains an interesting warning about the current state of the United States' energy distribution system that was sorely needed after the recent blackout (that happened after this was published.)#

``The electricity distribution system in the United States is perhaps the most underappreciated and vulnerable part of the country's national infrastructure. [...] the nation's electric power system is antiquated, fragile, and inefficient, operating for the most part of 50-year-old technology. Running today's digital society through yesterday's grid is like running the Internet through a telephone switchboard. [...] A serious accident or an act of sabotage could cripple major regions for days or weeks and do enormous damage to the economy, much like a disruption in oil supply.''

And finally here is something it has to say about climate changing effects of the current energy policy,#

``The problem of global oil dependence has long been apparent, whereas concern about climate change is comparatively new. Both issues suffer from their sheer size and scope: many people simply believe that the problems are intractable and that practical solutions are beyond our reach and imagination.''

"Morton Abramowitz is Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation and a former U.S. Ambassador to Thailand. Stephen Bosworth is Dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea." And in this essay they write about the way the United States role has changed, and must changed further, in Asia.#

They open strong with some pointing out that Asia is also being affected by the "war on terror" and that it is not generally acknowledge by the public.#

``More specifically, the war on terror has led to a new American focus on the growth of Islamic extremism among Muslim populations of Southeast Asia. Suddenly, that area is experiencing significant American involvement - including the United States' largely unexamined participation in a small war in the Philippines.''

There is also talk of how the people of South Korea react to the United States' policy towards North Korea with regards to the "secret nuclear weapons program"...#

``South Koreans still worry that what the United States really aims for in the North is regime change, not a negotiated dismantling of the North's nuclear program. Southerners feel the American approach could well lead to war or the collapse of North Korea, either of which, they believe, would decimate everything South Korea has built in recent years/''

Continuing on this theme is the worrisome attitude of Japan towards the less desirable, yet realistic, outcomes of the same United States' policy.#

``North Korea remains Japan's most immediate concern. Pyongyang shocked Tokyo in 1998 when it test-fired a long-range missile over Japan, and North Korea has since deployed some 100 missiles capable of reaching Japan. In response Japanese officials have recently spoken publicly of "preempting" North Korean threats. [...] Despite the tough talk, however, Japan fears that any U.S. effort to destroy North Korea's nuclear facilities will result in retaliatory attacks on Japan.''

Finally there is some thought about what North Korea could be thinking...#

``For the time being, the most pressing question-and the source of greatest uncertainty-remains North Korea and its nuclear weapons program. At bottom, the issue is an existential one for North Korea: Pyongyang appears to realize it must change if it is to survive, but it fears that change will imperil its very survival. North Korea's strategy thus remains unclear. In the aftermath of the second Gulf War, Pyongyang may well have concluded that it cannot do without nuclear weapons.''

"Bernard K. Gordon is Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire and the author, most recently, of America's Trade Follies: Turning Economic Leadership Into Strategic Weakness. An earlier version of this essay was presented to the Cordell Hull Institute in Washington, D.C.", he writes this essay about the risky business of protectionism and not supporting the WTO fully.#

He quotes some interesting statistics about the level of export to various world regions to show how there is no part of the world that is more important than any other to the United States, and how the United States stands alone as a global exporter.#

``The reality these illustrations point to is the global distribution of U.S. exports. [...] half of American exports are divided almost equally between Europ and Asia, and more than a third go to immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Putting this another way, almost 90 percent of U.S. exports are directed, in roughly equal proportions, to the globe's three main economic regions: North America, East Asia, and the EU. None of the world's other major economic players, whose exports go mainly to nearby markets, has a distribution even approaching this U.S. record. The EU export pattern is the least diversified, with two-thirds of the exports staying within the EU, and Japan's exports are almost as concentrated.''

Bernard uses the above as a indication the U.S. is indeed an important leader with a vested interest in an organization like the WTO.#

``These constrasts are a reminder of the enormity of the United States' stake in all of the world's regions, and of the corollary U.S. need to strengthen and maintain its commitment to the global trade system symbolized by the WTO.''

He continues to show that the U.S. is in good standing as a trade entity and has an interesting tidbit of knowledge here:#

``Much of the current trade dilemma and its U.S. foreign policy consequences stem from a widespread American belief that the United States has not been a successful player in world trade. [...] Nothing could be further from the truth. A long look back at the record of the last 100 years, [...], shows that the United States has largely held a steady 12-13 percent share of world exports. [...] Only in the periods that followed the two world wars did America's exports account for more than their rock-steady 12-13 percent. In those years, as a result of wartime devastation, few other nations were left on the trade scene, and American suppliers briefly and very temporarily had the export field to themselves.''

He points out that in 1913 and 1998, "the U.S. share of world exports was the same: 12.6 percent."#

In this essay Andrew Moravcsik writes about the problems created by the United States' sole venture in Iraq and what it means to international institutions like the UN and NATO.#

``The Iraq crisis offers two basic lessons. The first, for Europeans, is that American hawks were right. Unilateral intervention to coerce regime change can be a cost-effective way to deal with rogue states. In military matters, there is only one superpower -- the United States -- and it can go it alone if it has to. It is time to accept this fact and move on.

The second lesson, for Americans, is that moderate skeptics on both sides of the Atlantic were also right. Winning a peace is much harder than winning a war. Intervention is cheap in the short run but expensive in the long run. And when it comes to the essential instruments for avoiding chaos or quagmire once the fighting stops -- trade, aid, peacekeeping, international monitoring, and multilateral legitimacy -- Europe remains indispensable. In this respect, the unipolar world turns out to be bipolar after all.''

Andrew makes an interesting assessment of why the two regions differ so much in opinion and methodology...#

``For Europe, the defining moment of the contemporary era remains the collapse of the Soviet empire, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989; 11/9 is thus more important to Europeans than 9/11. Without major direct threats to their security, Europeans have felt free to disarm, cultivate their unique postmodern polity, and criticize the United States.''

His opinion of European remilitarization seems to imply it is a solution without a problem.#

``Little has come of schemes for a powerful European military, however---and little will. [...] Even if Europeans could agree on the funding and the mission for such a unified force, moreover, new transport aircraft, satellites, and soldiers would not add up to a viable European alternative to U.S. unilateralism. For what would the Europeans do with their new poer? Deploy it against the United States? Launch pre-preventative interventions? Even if they sought simply to reduce European dependency on U.S. security guarantees, the result would only be to encourage the redeployment of even more American forces outside of Europe. In the end, the best way for Europe to play a world role is to play with, not against, the United States''

The answer, it seems to Andrew, is to identify what each group is best at and find a viable way to work cohesively.#

``A better approach to rebuilding the transatlantic relationship would aim at reconceiving it on the basis of comparative advantage, recognizing that what both parties do is essential and complementary. Europe may possess weaker military forces than does the United States, but on almost every other dimension of global influence it is stronger. Meshing the two sets of capabilities would be the surest path to long-term global peace and security.''

Joseph Nye writes about what the United States' moves around Iraq say about the country in general and what that says about future directions.#

``The world is off balance. If anyone doubted the overwhelming nature of U.S. military power, Iraq settled the issue. With the United States representing nearly half of the world's military expenditures, no countervailing coalition can create a traditional military balance of power. Not since Rome has one nation loomed so large above the others. Indeed, the word "empire" has come out of the closet. Respected analysts on both the left and the right are beginning to refer to "American empire" approvingly as the dominant narrative of the twenty-first century. And the military victory in Iraq seems only to have confirmed this new world order.''

He writes about the problem of "One-Dimensional Thinking" on the part of those in power.#

``Although the new unilateralists are right that maintaining U.S. military strength is crucial and that pure multilateralism is impossible, they make important mistakes that will ultimately undercut the implementation of the new security strategy. Their first mistake is to focus too heavily on military power alone. U.S. military power is essential to global security and is a critical part of the response to terrorism. [...] But all the precision bombing [in Afghanistan] destroyed only a small fraction of al Qaeda's network, which retains cells in some 60 countries. And bombing cannot resolve the problem of cells in Hamburg or Detroit. [...]

Power is the ability to obtain the outcomes one wants, and the changes sketched out above have made its distribution more complex than first meets the eye. The agenda of world politics has become like a three-dimensional chess game in which one can win only by playing vertically as well as horizontally.''

Another interesting thing in his essay is criticism of the assertion that the United States is an "empire"...#

``[...] As the British historian Niall Ferguson points out, modern America differs from nineteenth-century Britain in its chronically short attention span.

Some say the United States is already an empire and it is just a matter of recognizing reality, but they mistake the politics of primacy for those of Empire. The United States may be more powerful compared to other countries than the United Kingdom was at its imperial peak, but it has less control over what occurs inside other countries than the United Kingdom did when it ruled a quarter of the glove. For example, Kenya's schools, taxes, laws, and elections-not to mention external relations-were controlled by British officials, The United States has no such control over any country today. [...] Devotees of the new imperialism argue that such analysis is too literal, that "empire" is intended merely as metaphor. But this "metaphor" imples a control from Washington that is unrealistic and reinforces the prevailing temptations of unilateralism.''

He closes the book by talking about "The Paradox of Primacy"...#

``The problem for U.S. power in the twenty-first century is that more and more continues to fall outside the control of even the most powerful state. [...] The paradox of American power is that world politics is changing in a way that makes it impossible for the strongest world power since Rome to achieve some of its most crucial international goals alone. [...] the United States must mobilize international coalitions to address these shared threats and challenges.''

Max Boot writes about the new way wars are fought and what this means for the military and the portrait of future conflicts. He uses the war in Iraq as the prime example for this discussion.#

One thing is consistently underlines is that because of technological breakthroughs and better control, command, and communication structures, wars can be fought with far fewer "Boots on the Ground"...#

``The second Gulf War has proved to be more impressive than the Afghan war because it was a truly combined-arms operation. An examination of the conflict shows the potential of the new American way of war and offers some lessons for the future.

Coalition forces in the second Gulf War were less than half the size of those deployed in the first one. Yet they achieved a much more ambitious goal -- occupying all of Iraq, rather than just kicking the Iraqi army out of Kuwait -- in almost half the time, with one-third the casualties, and at one-fourth the cost of the first war. Many will argue, in retrospect, that Saddam Hussein's forces were not all that formidable to begin with, and there is no doubt a great deal of truth in this. But they were capable enough when they fought the Iranian army to a draw in the 1980s and put down Kurdish and Shi'ite insurgencies in the 1990s. And, on paper at least, the Baathist regime's military enjoyed a big numerical advantage over U.S. and British forces. Although the Iraqi army was much degraded from its pre-1991 heyday, it still deployed more than 450,000 troops, including paramilitary units, the Republican Guard, and the Special Republican Guard, whose loyalty had been repeatedly demonstrated. *Traditionally, war colleges have taught that to be sure of success, an attacking force must have a 3 to 1 advantage -- a ratio that goes up to 6 to 1 in difficult terrain such as urban areas. Far from having a 3 to 1 advantage in Iraq, coalition ground forces (which never numbered more than 100,000) faced a 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 disadvantage.*

That the United States and its allies won anyway -- and won so quickly -- must rank as one of the signal achievements in military history. Previously, the gold standard of operational excellence had been the German blitzkrieg through the Low Countries and France in 1940. The Germans managed to conquer France, the Netherlands, and Belgium in just 44 days, at a cost of "only" 27,000 dead soldiers. *The United States and Britain took just 26 days to conquer Iraq (a country 80 percent of the size of France), at a cost of 161 dead, making fabled generals such as Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian seem positively incompetent by comparison.*''

He also writes that all reports of difficulty in Iraq were vastly out of proportion with the truth, and offers this story as an example...#

``On March 27, Lieutenant General William Wallace, commander of the army's V Corps, which was in charge of all army units in Iraq, said in an interview that "the enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we war-gamed against." Unfortunately, when The Washington Post reported his comment the next morning, it dropped "a bit," giving the impression that U.S. forces had suffered a serious setback. (The New York Times rendered the quote accurately in one story but flubbed it in another.) A media frenzy ensued, with numerous stories suggesting that the offensive was bogged down and that the war could last months and result in thousands of casualties. Leading the charge was a platoon of retired generals who suggested that Rumsfeld had placed the invasion in jeopardy by not sending enough troops.

This criticism vastly exaggerated the difficulties encountered by U.S. forces. The Fedayeen turned out to be more of a nuisance than a serious military menace. Many of their attacks were reckless to the point of being suicidal. They would charge m1a1 Abrams tanks and m2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles in pickup trucks mounted with machine guns. *Sometimes the tanks would not even bother to open fire; they would simply roll over the attacking vehicles.* The "dead-enders" died by the thousands; few U.S. troops were killed.''

Max writes that there _was_ much worrying about what would happen when US Troops hit Baghdad, because they would be at a disadvantage in the urban terrain. This paragraph contains an interesting note...#

``The only remaining question was how much of a fight the coalition would face in Baghdad. Right up until the last moment, a chorus of gloomy commentators warned that the United States risked another Stalingrad. That was apparently Saddam's expectation too. *U.S. intelligence believes he distributed copies of the movie Black Hawk Down to give his commanders hints on what to do.*''

Another interesting that Max talks about is how flexible and decentralized the US Army's control structure is and offers a vastly different portrayal of it's opposition's structure.#

``Coalition forces, led by the United States, severely disrupted Iraqi command-and-control systems and moved much faster than Iraqi forces could handle. In military parlance, the United States got inside the Iraqis' "decision cycle." This task was facilitated by the fact that Saddam ran a highly centralized regime. Commanders were afraid to relay negative news to Baghdad for fear of incurring the wrath of Saddam or his homicidal sons. And once they were cut off from the center, commanders in the field were afraid to exercise their own initiative for the same reason. *Saddam had actually set up systems to ensure that his army commanders could not coordinate closely, for fear that they would plot against him.* Thus the Iraqi armed forces were organized on opposite principles from those of the United States, namely decentralization and joint operations. It was the difference in mindsets, as much as anything else, that allowed U.S. forces always to stay several steps ahead of their adversaries.''

The rest of the essay is about how the Armed Forces need to be more integrated with their equipment generation programs and that laws deciding what the Army cannot do, versus what the Air Force must do are very silly and counter productive.#

Jessica Stern writes about Al Qaeda and terrorist groups in general. Why they have been effective and how they will remain effective in years to come.#

Jessica writes in length about how terrorist groups are founded upon morals, and this is how they attract new member, but they soon devolve into power structures for weak and empty souls.#

``What accounts for al Qaeda's ongoing effectiveness in the face of an unprecedented onslaught? The answer lies in the organization's remarkably protean nature. Over its life span, al Qaeda has constantly evolved and shown a surprising willingness to adapt its mission. This capacity for change has consistently made the group more appealing to recruits, attracted surprising new allies, and -- most worrisome from a Western perspective -- made it harder to detect and destroy. Unless Washington and its allies show a similar adaptability, the war on terrorism won't be won anytime soon, and the death toll is likely to mount.

Why do religious terrorists kill? In interviews over the last five years, many terrorists and their supporters have suggested to me that people first join such groups to make the world a better place -- at least for the particular populations they aim to serve. Over time, however, militants have told me, terrorism can become a career as much as a passion. Leaders harness humiliation and anomie and turn them into weapons. Jihad becomes addictive, militants report, and with some individuals or groups -- the "professional" terrorists -- grievances can evolve into greed: for money, political power, status, or attention.

In such "professional" terrorist groups, simply perpetuating their cadres becomes a central goal, and what started out as a moral crusade becomes a sophisticated organization. Ensuring the survival of the group demands flexibility in many areas, but especially in terms of mission. Objectives thus evolve in a variety of ways. Some groups find a new cause once their first one is achieved -- much as the March of Dimes broadened its mission from finding a cure for polio to fighting birth defects after the Salk vaccine was developed. Other groups broaden their goals in order to attract a wider variety of recruits. Still other organizations transform themselves into profit-driven organized criminals, or form alliances with groups that have ideologies different from their own, forcing both to adapt. Some terrorist groups hold fast to their original missions. But only the spry survive.''

She writes that because the root desire of many terrorists is to enrich their lives and be free of the "humiliation of the Muslim, by the hands of the New World Order" and that terrorist tactics are not the same as traditional military tactics, Western governments will need to change their tune in order to be effective...#

``To fight such dangerous tactics, Western governments will also need to adapt. In addition to military, intelligence, and law enforcement responses, Washington should start thinking about how U.S. policies are perceived by potential recruits to terrorist organizations. The United States too often ignores the unintended consequences of its actions, disregarding, for example, the negative message sent by Washington's ongoing neglect of Afghanistan and of the chaos in postwar Iraq. If the United States allows Iraq to become another failed state, groups both inside and outside the country that support al Qaeda's goals will benefit.

Terrorists, after all, depend on the broader population for support, and the right U.S. policies could do much to diminish the appeal of rejectionist groups. It does not make sense in such an atmosphere to keep U.S. markets closed to Pakistani textiles or to insist on protecting intellectual property with regard to drugs that needy populations in developing countries cannot hope to afford.''

Kenneth M. Pollack has an essay in the July/August 2003 Foreign Affairs book about how the Gulf can be secured. (The whole thing is available at that link.)#

``Summary: The sweeping military victory in Iraq has cleared the way for the United States to establish yet another framework for Persian Gulf security. Ironically, with Saddam Hussein gone, the problems are actually going to get more challenging in some ways. The three main issues will be Iraqi power, Iran's nuclear weapons program, and domestic unrest in the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. None will be easy to handle, let alone all three together.''#

Kenneth writes that the public is correct about America's main interest in Iraq, although maybe not in the same way as hypothesized.#

``America's primary interest in the Persian Gulf lies in ensuring the free and stable flow of oil from the region to the world at large. This fact has nothing to do with the conspiracy theories leveled against the Bush administration during the run-up to the recent war. U.S. interests do not center on whether gas is $2 or $3 at the pump, or whether Exxon gets contracts instead of Lukoil or Total. Nor do they depend on the amount of oil that the United States itself imports from the Persian Gulf or anywhere else. The reason the United States has a legitimate and critical interest in seeing that Persian Gulf oil continues to flow copiously and relatively cheaply is simply that the global economy built over the last 50 years rests on a foundation of inexpensive, plentiful oil, and if that foundation were removed, the global economy would collapse.''

Kenneth has a interesting summary of the problem of Iraq, and the balance of power in any region.#

``The paradox of Iraqi power can be put simply: any Iraq that is strong enough to balance and contain Iran will inevitably be capable of overrunning Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. This was the problem the region faced at the end of the Iran-Iraq War, when Iraq's destruction of the Iranian army and air force left it in a position to conquer Kuwait and threaten Saudi oil fields soon afterward.''

The explanation of terrorism and internal instability offered by Kenneth is revealing as well...#

``Terrorism and internal instability in the Persian Gulf are ultimately fueled by the political, economic, and social stagnation of the local Arab states. It is true that American policies anger many Arabs and that the Palestinian issue is a matter of great popular concern. But these are not really what creates fertile ground for domestic insurrection or the recruitment efforts of radical Islamist groups such as al Qaeda. What is more important is that too many Arabs are unemployed or underemployed because of the utter failure of their economic systems. Too many feel powerless and humiliated by despotic governments that do less and less for them while preventing them from having any say in their own governance. And too many feel both threatened and stifled within a society that cannot come to grips with modernity.''

The rest of the essay talks about how the key stabilizing and securing the Gulf is to create a way to have all it's member states negotiate and communicate in an organized fashion. This, rather than having a big dog like the United States, would serve as a way of appealing to the sovereignty and independence of the nations. It's very interesting because he says that using the Cold War actions of Eastern European states as a model. Everything is like something else, or can be.#