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Editor’s Note – Over the past many years, Generals Vallely and McInerney have advocated that the COIN strategy, and nation building are failed policies, especially with such politically correct rules-of-engagement. They have advocated for the “Lily Pad” strategy that is not only cheaper, it is safer, more lethal, and a proven strategy for victory. Afghanistan was initially approached with great success, so why did the strategy change?

When you are in a burning building, you don’t try to paint the walls in the non-burning rooms, while the others are in flames. In Afghanistan, we are doing just that, and that spells failure. Victory first, re-build later, but maybe we are too late in Afghanistan now that we have purchased so much paint to renovate the walls, and lost so many lives as a result.

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9/11 triggered revolutionary changes in America’s military

By Sara A. Carter

Washington Examiner

In the first hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. commanders understood they confronted a new enemy: one without borders, but capable of projecting power around the globe. Over the next 10 years the American military would confront terrorists and insurgents across a vast international battlefield who were no match for America’s technology, but who were adept at fighting an asymmetrical, open-ended war.

That challenge would force significant changes to America’s warfighting doctrine. Young military commanders who began their careers expecting to fight conventional wars were confronted with rebuilding communities and winning hearts and minds, while fighting a relentless, shape-shifting insurgency.

Thomas W. O’Connell, former assistant secretary of defense, told The Washington Examiner that the current counterinsurgency operations, such as drone attacks in Pakistan and targeting al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, were based on operations established as early as the late 1960s in Southeast Asia.

In the post-Vietnam era, O’Connell said many U.S. military theorists worked behind the scenes on the problems of fighting insurgents.

“There are a lot of unsung heroes from the ‘80s and ‘90s trying to put together and sustain the organization who subsequently were successful,” O’Connell said.

At first, it appeared America’s edge in technology would overcome all the dangers of fighting insurgents in Asia – that “shock and awe” would prevail. The early days of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq saw lightning successes. The Taliban fell to a relatively small force of opposing Afghans aided by U.S. bombing strikes and special operations forces. In Iraq, U.S. Army and Marine divisions steamrolled opposition and captured Baghdad and the rest of the country, shattering Saddam Hussein’s army. Saddam’s sons went down fighting and he was captured, tried and executed.

But both wars then deteriorated to guerrilla fights, with a steady stream of American and civilian deaths attributed to sniper fire, suicide bombing and improvised explosive devices. By 2007, Iraq was teetering on the brink of an all-consuming civil war, and the Taliban safely outside U.S. reach across the Afghanistan border into tribal Pakistan.

It was time for the counterinsurgency theorists O’Connell described who had worked for years in anonymity to emerge. Gen. David Petraeus, who is now head of the CIA, brought together some of those theorists as he supervised the Army’s new Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

In 2007, President George W. Bush took the advice of senior officers who said the time was right for a surge of toops into Iraq. Working with Sunni Iraqis who’d wearied of al Qaeda’s methods, U.S. troops were able to achieve enough stability in Iraq to begin a long drawing-down process that is set to culminate at the end of the year with only token American forces left behind.

After years of stalemate in Afghanistan, an aggressive campaign using Predator drones to attack al Qaeda targets in Pakistan began to wear down that organization. Then, on perhaps the happiest day in a 10-year war, Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in a compound in Pakistan in May.

Still, the Afghanistan war drags on without clear resolution, and Iraq is hardly the stable bastion of Middle East democracy envisioned in 2003 by American political leaders.

Critics say the country’s politicians and Pentagon strategists made avoidable mistakes in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Retired Army Major Gen. Paul Vallely, who had worked in counterterrorism for more than 15 years, told The Examiner, the military went astray in 2002, “when we started to inject conventional forces and counterinsurgency campaign changes in the military, which we should of known from Vietnam doesn’t work.”

Lily Pad Strategy Instead of COIN

Retired Air Force Lt.Gen. Tom McInerney agreed that “the counterinsurgency doctrine to win the hearts and minds in Afghanistan is the wrong strategy.” Along with many others, he advocates a counterterrorism war in Afghanistan, focused around special forces operations and drone strikes, without the use of large conventional troop blocks.

“Bottom line is we are fighting against their strength and our weakness,” he said.

Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner’s national security correspondent. She can be reached at scarter@washingtonexaminer.com.

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By Suzanne Sharer

How can it be possible that the United States of America, the most powerful and benevolent nation in the world, comes to a moment in time where 77% of its citizenry think that their country is heading in the wrong direction? This is a staggering percentage and yet those are the numbers that a recent ABC/Washington Post poll published as of September 6th. Now, in my mind, this begs a question; how in the world did we get to the point where over three quarters of Americans are saying that something is seriously wrong with the course that has been set forth by our leaders? If truth be told, most Americans are not feeling very optimistic that this will change anytime soon, if at all!

For too many years, Americans have been busy minding their own business. They have been living their lives and raising their families investing only blind faith in the belief that our elected leaders would always work with our country’s best interest at heart. Most thinking that our political system was failure proof. Sadly, we were just too busy to be bothered with our duty as citizens to stay vigilant.

People who study America’s enemies know that the communist regimes throughout the world have boasted for decades that America would eventually fall without a single shot fired. The fall would come from within as an agenda was silently being allowed to play out; subverting our way of life little by little as people failed to pay attention until one day we wake up to an America we don’t recognize any more. That day is now as 77% of our citizens are finally admitting something is very wrong! It is shameful that all the warnings were not heeded sooner. Mountains of proof were presented to the American people, showing openly who Obama is and who these people are that are support him. We have handed America over to people that hate us, the USA, and everything that makes her stand above all others! Is it any wonder we are going in the wrong direction?

One of the most troubling trends that helped get us here today is that even the people who have seen what is happening, have chosen not to speak out. This is because they have been conditioned to remain silent for fear of being labeled a conspiracy theorist, racist, or intolerant.

But wait! Since when is it wrong or anti-American to speak out? Don’t we tout freedom of speech in America? Well, apparently in today’s America, it is not ok, and having an opposing point of view is something to keep silent about. This is becoming accepted through one of the more heinous atrocities ever to creep into the political and social fabric of our country, political correctness.

Never has there been anything more offensive to free speech than the indoctrination of this subversive manipulation of our rights to speak and think freely. Even being Pro-American is considered in bad taste. Obama and his handlers have made this an art form, effectively silencing the American people. They knew that they could push this agenda easily, because this was after-all, the election of our first Black President.

While this pervasive indoctrination has been working quite well, but thankfully, it has also served to open the eyes of the many previously blind to such machinations, and just how damaging this technique has wrought harm upon us all.

It is a misconception that our elected officials are not doing any harm, because their words are so charming, but I beg to differ. Our leaders have been very busy. They have been quietly, yet steadily, eroding our rights and Constitution by replacing the rule of law through regulations, Executive Orders, and Judicial diktat, all, right under our noses.

Our Presidents over the years have signed thousands of such documents that side step Congress. In fact, there are so many instances that we barely blink an eye when we hear of one more. Why though, are they totally ignored in most cases? I realize they are always signed without fanfare of announcement but we need to be more vigilant! One such egregious movement in this vein is perhaps the biggest example.

We are letting one of the most dangerous of decrees; the Soros sponsored Agenda 21 to remain in the shadows. This is something that every citizen needs to be made aware of as its main goal is to change the very core of our country (as in heading in the wrong direction!)

Back in 1992 President George H.W. Bush along with 177 world leaders agreed to support a UN backed global plan for “Sustainable Development”. Then in 1995, President Clinton signed Executive order (EO) #12858 creating a Presidential Council on Sustainable Development. In effect, this inserted the UN plan into America’s political system without the need for any evaluation or discussion by Congress, let alone the American people. Sadly few know of this agenda, one that plans to impose Social Justice or Socialism on us, and the rest of the world. It seems for many people it is still just too hard to believe this could happen. It is hidden away in the silence of secrecy, yet, it is not a secret!

As of August 21st 2011 President Obama has signed ninety four Executive orders. He has signed more of these proclamations in his 2 ½ years in office than any other President has within the same time frame. Including EO 13575 which set up the “Rural Council” a huge victory for Agenda 21 yet barely anybody took notice. No wonder it emboldened him to sign an order for a backdoor amnesty plan. Obama’s direction is now clear; if he cannot get it through Congress (the people), he will pass it by decree. We the People seem to have lost our voices. I would say more than 77% are correct to think this ‘ship of state’ is heading in the wrong direction!

Suzanne Sharer is the new Associate Editor at Stand Up America.

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By Clare Lopez and Paul E. Vallely

Released by Stand Up America US

September 7 , 2011

This weekend we will be remembering the attack on America on 9/11. Ten years after this horrific attack, some of the pundits have it partially right. For example, senior Brookings Institute Saban Center fellow Bruce Riedel writes for Newsweek’s commemorative 12 September 2011 issue about “How We Enabled Al Qaeda.” Yes, we may have, in a myriad of ways. But it is not just that we have made some “tactical, strategic, even geographical mistakes.” It’s much, much worse than that. We are losing this Jihad and the forces of shariah Islam are winning going away.

At the strategic level, the United States and its progressive liberal democratic allies not only have failed utterly to even identify, much less effectively confront, the enemy head on, but we Americans have allowed the top ranks of our national security to be infiltrated and influenced by that radical enemy. Not just “ruthless and agile,” as Riedel terms him, but sophisticated apparently beyond our ability to cope, that enemy has gotten us to deny he is who he says he is, thereby neutralizing our ability to implement an effective defense, much less consider an offense or victory. “Violent extremism” is not the enemy nor is it even a marginally useful term for fighting the jihadist enemy. Rather, it is the term our enemy wants us to use, because as long as we fixate on an anodyne euphemism, we cannot focus on him.

To be clear: one hundred percent of all Jihadis fighting to destroy Western civilization and impose Shariah say they are doing it for Allah in obedience to Islamic doctrine and scriptures. After 1400 years of their doing and saying the exact same thing, it would seem reasonable to believe them. In this sense, they do have what might be called a “track record.” Not one single jihadi or Islamic authority has ever told us he is fighting the West because Muslims “yearn for…democracy.” Which is not to say that millions of Muslims are not, in fact, yearning for genuine democratic change—it’s just that those millions are not the jihadi enemy?

To consider just one jihadist organization, let’s highlight some of those myriad ways in which al-Qa’eda has achieved a level of success unimaginable ten years ago.

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1. The U.S. economy is plunged into deep distress and crisis.
2. The U.S. military is strained to breaking point, crippled by suicidal Rules of Engagement and distracted and overstretched by “nation building.”
3. Al-Qa’eda and its allies are succeeding in pushing the U.S. out of both Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving both countries under Islamic Law (Shariah), which we Americans helped write into their constitutions.
4. It will be recalled that imposition of Islamic Law is, after all, al-Qa’eda’s number one top reason for conducting Jihad in the first place.
5. Al-Qa’eda operates three leadership Shuras that have survived all efforts to destroy them: one in the mountainous region between Afghanistan and Pakistan; one in Pakistani cities like Quetta; and one in Iran.
6. The U.S. campaign to eliminate top al-Qa’eda commanders is important and necessary and has achieved notable success. But to date, al-Qa’eda has continued to elevate as many leaders as we care to kill. Because al-Qa’eda’s message resonates so deeply across the Muslim world, its bench is virtually endless.
7. Pakistan, a nuclear power, is slipping inexorably into the clutches of shariah Islam and the influence of China. India is on guard.
8. Long-time al-Qa’eda ally and enabler Iran, on the verge of demonstrating nuclear power status, has to date escaped being held to account for providing direct and material support to al-Qa’eda in the 9/11 attacks.
9. Al-Qa’eda has expanded its operations into new territory: Al-Qa’eda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Al-Qa’eda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are two of its more powerful franchises.
10. Forces identified with and loyal to al-Qa’eda have just taken over Libya, with U.S. and NATO assistance.
11. Al-Qa’eda has vastly expanded its online Internet presence and reach for communications, propaganda, proselytizing, recruitment, training, and more. We have nothing that even begins to compete.
12. Al-Qa’eda has solidified its alliances with Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, and terror militias in Iraq; its message (if not necessarily its methods or timeline) is in perfect alignment with the 57-member Muslim head of state organization, The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
13. Al-Qa’eda has awakened the Muslim ummah to Jihad.

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Keep in mind that this brief list refers just to al-Qa’eda, not to its many ideological and operational allies. So, even if someday, somehow, al-Qa’eda were wiped out for good, how would that actually affect the 1400 year-old Global Jihad? This is an ideological movement, a war of ideas—not one, single, discrete terror group in time.

Until and unless the U.S. and the West acknowledge that the enemy we fight is exactly who and exactly what he says he is—jihadis who seek to subjugate the world to Islamic law—and that this group includes far greater numbers than just al-Qa’eda—we will continue to make both tactical and strategic errors. Worst of all, unless that enemy is actively engaged in violence, we will fail to recognize that he spends much more effort on stealth jihad than kinetic jihad.

When the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, which is totally aligned with the same ideology that animates al-Qa’eda, declares that its mission in America is “a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their [our] hands until the religion of God is made victorious over all other religions,” it probably means it:

1) is not secular;

2) is not a good candidate for official bilateral diplomatic relations; and

3) intends to defeat us every bit as much as al-Qa’eda does. It also means that individuals and groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood are not likely to make good advisors for senior U.S. national security officials.

The Qur’an itself provides the strategic vision that guides al-Qa’eda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and all jihadis in the war against the Dar al-Harb (non-Muslim world):

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It is He Who got out the Unbelievers among the People of the Book from their homes at the first gathering of the forces. Little did ye think that they would get out and they thought that their fortresses would defend them from God! But Wrath of God came to them from quarters from which they little expected it, and cast terror into their hearts, so that they destroyed their dwellings by their own hands and the hands of the Believers. Take warning, then, o ye with eyes to see! (Q 59:2)

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Clare M. Lopez is a Senior Fellow at both the Center for Security Policy and the Clarion Fund and a 2011 Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute. She also is a member of the Stand Up America Advisory Board.

Paul E. Vallely MG, US Army (Ret) is Chairman of Stand Up America.

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By Denise Simon

Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals has Rule #12 which states: “Pick the target, Freeze it, Personalize it, Polarize it.” Students and followers of Saul Alinsky have chosen the Tea Party as their target.

The moral compass of the Tea Party is the counter-measure to Saul Alinsky. One can never know the actual number of the Tea Party membership or supporters, as it is best defined as a compass of morality felt within the ethics and subconscious of those that place the spirit of the Founders as the motivator and objective to defend the legacy of our Founders.

TEA translates to ‘taxed enough already’. The dollars within the taxes and revenues to the government have been invoked without representation, our voice. Then to add more insult to injury, the payers of these taxes have even less of a voice in how these tax dollars are spent.

There is the usual spending by government departments such as the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Defense, Agriculture and Transportation, to list a few. Yet, spending by this government without the knowledge of the taxpayers goes far beyond the scope of any control or oversight. Spending includes subsidies, foreign aid, humanitarian aid, foreign nation building and more. Just take a moment and do your own research on programs such as:

1. Global Aids Initiative
2. USAID
3. Millennium Challenge Corporation
4. Merida Initiative
5. Peace Corps

The United States owes an estimated $2.4 Billion to the United Nations. With that kind of money going to the U.N., then why the additional money to outside initiatives such as those listed above? There are an estimated 120 countries that provide money to the United Nation in support of a variety of programs. Foreign support is not an exclusive mandate of the United States. Once again, we have no voice, no representation, no oversight and no checks and balances. The Tea Party works to do what is best for America first. All dollars and laws must be for what is beneficial for America, her citizens, her landscape, her future, her defense, her protection.

We have heard much in the media recently about the “Arab Spring”, the uprisings in the Middle East. Many suggest that Patriots in America should follow that model to force our government to heed our call. I would submit to you, that actually, the Arab Spring is actually a model formed by the creation and effectiveness of the Tea Party.

The Tea Party, with its moral compass, defined in the legacy of the Founders, gave us the spring board to demand representation of the people. American Patriots and the Tea Party supporters have a spirit of peaceful and law abiding objectives, yet we are a legally armed society as provided by the Second Amendment. The Tea Party is a movement on offense of the people gathered to speak on countless issues, most of all to regain our power and duty as citizens….as a government watchdog. Our Second Amendment right is the back-up option to tyranny and domestic and international threats.

So to foreign terrorization, domestic intimidation and especially to the Saul Alinsky subscribers, the Tea Party is a compass of morality that sparks our mission. Patriots will endure and we will prevail. Our moral compass is our guide.

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By JB Williams of the Patriots Union

Also Posted at The Patriot News

As the political left drives the U.S. economy towards the brink of no return and an increasing number of average Americans find themselves in desperate financial situations, crime is on the rise and social tensions are rocketing towards a historic level in the land of milk and honey.

Yes, I am predicting the Second American Civil War, but only because the political left is working around the clock to incite outright socio-economic and race warfare in America.

Unlike any prior American administration, this one is intentionally destroying what’s left of America’s free-market prosperity and now they are openly calling for all-out war on all patriotic Americans. Obama’s civilian army is ready to roll in the streets of the U.S.A. and as labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. put it at a Labor Day weekend rally, Let’s take these son of a bitchs out! – telling Barack Obama that “we (labor union members) are your army and we are ready to march.”

President Barack Obama proudly accepts Hoffa’s call for war against the 88% of Americans who do not belong to labor unions.

Days before, leaders of the Democratic Socialist Black Caucus called upon blacks to begin race wars against white Americans in the streets, and make runs on U.S. banks to cause even more economic chaos during the most tumultuous economic time since the Great Depression.

In Cincinnati Ohio, Vice President Joseph Biden spoke to the AFL-CIO referred to patriotic Americans as “barbarians at the gate” and called upon all union thugs to “stand up” against American taxpayers who have been Taxed Enough Already.

Biden claimed that “this is a fight for the heart and soul of the labor movement in America” – and that this is the time for all union thugs to stand a fight against their sworn enemy, the American taxpayer.

Never before in U.S. history has an administration taken such overt actions to create a class/race war in America, using the army they built out of minority groups, without whom, a Democrat Party would not even exist today.

Democrats operating under the Democratic Socialists of America groups, the Black Caucus and Progressive Caucus, led by the Obama administration, have seized total control of the Democrat Party, the White House, the federal legislature and the federal judiciary.

When the group was asked if Democratic Socialism was in competition with the Democrat Party, they responded as follows;

“No, we are not a separate party. Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community organizing movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party. We work with those movements to strengthen the party’s left wing, represented by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The process and structure of American elections seriously hurts third party efforts. Winner-take-all elections instead of proportional representation, rigorous party qualification requirements that vary from state to state, a presidential instead of a parliamentary system, and the two-party monopoly on political power have doomed third party efforts. We hope that at some point in the future, in coalition with our allies, an alternative national party will be viable. For now, we will continue to support progressives who have a real chance at winning elections, which usually means left-wing Democrats.”

The Progressive Caucus was formed by proud socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont and the Black Caucus was formed by proud communist John Conyers of Michigan.

Democrats, funded largely by the international socialist labor movement for decades, destroyed American manufacturing forcing almost all private sector manufacturing jobs off-shore and leaving over sixty-percent of union workers employed in government jobs.

Now that the federal and state budget well has run dry, and the private sector is no longer able to carry the unsustainable weight of government employment, Democrats are calling for all-out war against American taxpayers in a final hour effort to save the labor unions that make the Democrat Party possible.

Over the last five years, since Democrats regained control of the U.S. federal purse strings in 2006, the national debt has sky-rocketed from 64% of GDP to more than 100% of GDP. Black unemployment has doubled to an all-time high and union employment is now almost 100% dependent upon government jobs or government contracts.

Meanwhile, we have only 25% of the nation’s private sector workers paying for an unsustainable level of government, both at the state and federal level. There is no choice but to bust the labor unions that now survive on taxpayer-funded government employment alone, and the grip they hold on Washington DC. The situation is economically unsustainable and Democrats know it. The only nations turning the corner on their economic woes are the nations face this fact.

But without labor unions, there will be no Democrat Party today. So, Democrats are publicly calling for all-out war in the streets in an effort to save the 12% of American workers who wear the union label and fund the Democrat Party.

Are American taxpayers ready for more than café latte rallies and T-Shirt sales at Tea Party conventions that few people can afford to attend anymore? Are they ready for war?

Whether they are ready or not, war is coming to America because the political left will bring class and race war to every street in America very shortly. As Democrats have ground the American economy to a halt, they rally their civilian troops to violence in the streets and they make no apologies for it.

Democratic Socialist messiah Barack Obama is fading fast. His current ratings make Jimmy Carter look both smart and popular. Obama & Co. are following European nations right into the economic toilet, putting the labor movement ahead of American interests in treasonous fashion. But they are not stopping here…

- On September 17th, Constitution Day, leftists across the country are planning a Day of Rage against free-market capitalism in the streets of New York.

- On October 6th, American leftists plan an Egypt style occupation of Washington DC aimed at forcing every American taxpayer to accept their international socialist demands or pay the consequences.

Although Obama’s Department of Homeland Security has pre-labeled every American citizen who speaks out in defense of the U.S. Constitution or morality as a “potential domestic terrorist,” it is the Democratic Left who is actually preparing to take their war to the streets of America.

Are Americans ready to defend their way of life at all cost?

They won’t just face Black Panthers and radical labor union thugs in the streets. Over the last few years, Democrats have also worked to increase anti-American sentiments among the radical Muslim community and the illegal immigrant community in America.

Illegal immigrants think they are right to demand full citizenship rights in America, including full voting rights before the 2012 election. Muslims are convinced that they have a right to take over American communities and force Sharia Law in any area they can gain numeric control over, as the Obama administration provides opportunity and cover.

If you think Obama’s Justice Department is going to take any action against any of these anti-American acts, think again. Eric Holder’s department is fully behind this treasonous agenda.

If you think the American press is going to shine a light on any of this, think again. The American press, like American academia, has been in the international socialist bag for decades now. They won’t report on any of this until they are reporting the body bag count in cities across America.

Are Americans really ready to defend the U.S. Constitution and way of life? I see no evidence that they are.

The Tea Party is the most active resistance in America today and they are still busy playing politics, trying to gain a seat at the table of anti-American corruption instead of upsetting the table of political corruption.

Despite years of efforts to educate the masses in America, most Americans remain out of touch with reality, including most in the Tea Party movement, who still think they can stop this massive international movement to destroy America by electing a few more Republicans in 2012.

Let there be no mistake – Americans are already at war for the future of freedom and liberty in America – they just don’t know it yet. And, the enemy is not only within—it is on both sides of the political aisle.

If you don’t believe me, read this Federal Report on Global Governance originated during the Clinton years, but left intact throughout the Bush years.

Whether Americans want war or not, it is coming. The international left has been preparing for this war on Americans for decades and they can smell total victory in the air now. Even the most patriotic American is likely to vote for socialism as opposed to total economic collapse and chaos today.

How many Americans are awake, aware and prepared to defend the American way of life?

Nobody knows the answer to this question and most of the time—we have no idea who is really ready to fight until the fight begins. But any serious resistance is likely to come from the community of more than twenty-five million military veterans, who are coming together with very deep concerns about the true state of our union.

I can only pray that we still have enough true Americans left to defend freedom, because if freedom does not exist in America, it won’t exist anywhere on earth.

If you are not ready for what’s coming, you had better get ready, because it’s coming, whether you are ready or not. And it’s coming very soon! The left will not take no for an answer. The left has us between a rock and a hard place and there is no painless way out of this corner.

Evil unchallenged will prevail every time. Let no evil go unchallenged from this moment forward. We cannot pass this mess on to our children.

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Editor’s Note – Mark Steyn analyzes Americas cultural decline as MG Vallely has described for several years. It is amazing how this country has become a “Nanny State” where the federal government is now our “Federal Family”. A land where government has somehow stepped in to be the caretaker of all its citizens in a manner where growing up starts too early, and then never achieves adulthood, all the while hand outs support each.

Please read this very insightful examination by Mark Steyn as he discusses Laura Ingraham’s new book “Of Thee I Zing” and the comparison to a classic 1930’s novel by Joseph Roth about the decline of the Habsburg Empire. A decline we may not be able recover from as it is writ large today on our own stage here in America in 2011.

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Eternal adolescence lacking in romance

Jewish World Review

By Mark Steyn

I was on a very long flight the other day and, to get me through it, I had two books: the new bestseller “Of Thee I Zing,” by Laura Ingraham. The other was a book I last read 20 years ago, “The Radetzky March,” by Joseph Roth. The former is the latest hit from one of America’s most popular talk radio hosts; the latter is an Austrian novel from 1932 by a fellow who drank himself to death just before the Second World War, which, if you’re planning on drinking yourself to death, is a better pretext than most. Don’t worry, I’ll save the Germanic alcoholic guy for a couple of paragraphs, although the two books are oddly related.

(Buy “Of Thee I Zing” at a 42% discount by clicking here and in Kindle edition for $11.99 [52% off] by clicking here.)

Click on the image to select either or both.

“Of Thee I Zing’s” subtitle is “America’s Cultural Decline From Muffin Tops To Body Shots.” If you are sufficiently culturally aware to know what a “muffin top” and a “body shot” are (and incidentally, if you don’t have time to master all these exciting new trends, these two can be combined into one convenient “muffin shot”), you may not think them the most pressing concerns as the Republic sinks beneath its multitrillion-dollar debt burden. But, as Miss Ingraham says, “Even if our economic and national security challenges disappeared overnight, we’d still have to climb out of the cultural abyss into which we’ve tumbled.”

Actually, I think I’d go a little further than the author on that. I’m a great believer that culture trumps economics. Every time the government in Athens calls up the Germans and says, OK, we’ve burned through the last bailout, time for the next one, Angela Merkel understands all too well that the real problem in Greece is not the Greek finances but the Greek people. Even somnolent liberal columnists grasp this: A recent Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times was headlined “Can Greeks Become Germans?” I think we all know the answer to that. Any society eventually winds up with the finances you’d expect. So think of our culture as one almighty muffin shot, with America as a giant navel filled with the cheap tequila of our rising debt and …no, wait, this metaphor’s getting way out of hand.

These are difficult issues for social conservatives to write about. When we venture into this terrain, we’re invariably dismissed as uptight squares who can’t get any action. That happens to be true in my case, but Laura Ingraham has the advantage of being a “pretty girl,” as disgraced Congressman Charlie Rangel made the mistake of calling her on TV the other day in an interview that went hilariously downhill thereafter. So she has a little more credibility on this turf than I would.

She opens with a lurid account of a recent visit to a north Virginia mall – zombie teens texting, a thirtysomething metrosexual having his eyebrows threaded, a fiftysomething cougar spilling out of her tube top, grade-schoolers in the latest “prostitot” fashions – and then embarks on a lively tour of American cultural levers, from schools to social media to churches to Hollywood. If there is a common theme in the various rubble of cultural ruin, it’s the urge to enter adolescence ever earlier and leave it later and later, if at all. So we have skanky ’tweens “dry humping” at middle-school dances, and an ever greater proportion of “men” in their thirties living at home with their parents.

Adolescence, like retirement, is an invention of the modern age. If the extension of retirement into a multi-decade government-funded vacation is largely a function of increased life expectancy, the prolongation of adolescence seems to derive from the bleak fact that, without an efficient societal conveyor belt to move you on, it appears to be the default setting of huge swathes of humanity.

It was striking, during the Hurricane Irene frenzy, to hear the Federal Emergency Management Agency refer to itself repeatedly as “the federal family.” If Big Government is a “family,” with the bureaucracy as its parents, why be surprised that the citizens are content to live as eternal adolescents?

Perhaps the saddest part of the book is Ingraham’s brisk tour of recent romantic ballads. Exhibit A, Enrique Iglesias:

“Please excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude

But tonight I’m f—king you…”

Well, at least he said “excuse me,” which is more than this young swain did:

“Take my order ’cause your body like a carry out.

Let me walk into your body until it’s lights out.”

Lovely: I am so hot for you I look on you as a Burger King drive-thru. That’s what the chicks dig.

That’s what you’ll be asking the band to play at your silver wedding anniversary as you tell the young ’uns that they don’t write ’em like they used to. Even better, this exquisite love song is sung not by some bling-dripping braggart hoodlum of the rap fraternity but by the quintessential child-man of contemporary pop culture, ex-Mouseketeer Justin Timberlake.

It’s not the vulgarity or the crassness or even the grunting moronic ugliness, but something more basic: the absence of tenderness. A song such as “It Had To Be You” or “The Way You Look Tonight” pre-supposes certain courtship rituals. If a society no longer has those, it’s not surprising that it can no longer produce songs to embody them: After all, a great love ballad is, to a certain extent, aspirational; you hope to have a love worthy of such a song. A number like “Carry Out” is enough to make you question whether the fundamental things really do apply as time goes by.

Yet one of the curious features of a hypersexualized society is that it becomes paradoxically sexless and joyless. Guys who confidently bellow along with Enrique’s “F—king You” no longer quite know how to ask a girl for a chocolate malt at the soda fountain. It’s hardly surprising that, as Miss Ingraham reports, the formerly fringe activity of computer dating has now gone mainstream on an industrial scale.

And, even then, as a couple of young ladies happened to mention to me after various recent encounters through Match.com and the like, an alarming number of chaps would rather see you naked on their iPhones Anthony Weiner-style than actually get you naked in their bachelor pads. I was reminded of “The Children Of Men,” set in an infertile world, in which P D James’ characters, liberated from procreation, increasingly find sex too much trouble.

Laura Ingraham’s book is a rollicking read. But, as I said, I picked it up after a re-immersion in “The Radetzky March,” by Joseph Roth, a melancholy portrait of the decline of the Habsburg Empire seen through the eyes of three generations of minor nobility and imperial civil servants in the years before the Great War swept away an entire world order and its assumptions of permanence.

Roth was a man of the post-war era, yet he could not write his story without an instinctive respect for the lost rituals of a doomed world: The novel takes its title from the great Strauss march that the town band plays in front of the District Commissioner’s home every Sunday.

As much as the Habsburgs, we, too, are invested in the illusions of permanence, and perhaps one day it will fall to someone to write a bittersweet novel about the final years of the Republic. But we will not even enjoy the consolations of a Strauss march. It doesn’t have quite the same ring if you call the book “Carry Out” or “F**king You.”

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Global Security News Service

North Korea appears to have employed an illicit network to acquire material needed to establish a uranium enrichment facility at its Yongbyon nuclear complex, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded in a report issued on Friday (see GSN, Aug. 26).

Yongbyon Nuclear Complex

The Vienna, Austria-based U.N. organization said the arrangement of machinery and other specifics noted by U.S. nuclear weapons experts during their October 2010 tour of the plant were “broadly consistent” with the blueprints marketed by a “clandestine supply network,” the Associated Press reported.

The IAEA report appears to suggest that North Korea obtained assistance from the nuclear proliferation ring once operated by former chief Pakistani atomic scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, which also sold nuclear-weapon technology to Iran and Libya before it was disbanded in 2003.

The IAEA safeguards analysis was prepared ahead of next week’s meeting of the agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors. The document concludes North Korea established its uranium facility following the expulsion of U.N. inspectors in April 2009. Assuming no other clandestine network was involved, it would follow that Pyongyang purchased centrifuges from the Khan ring no later than 2003 and kept them a secret from investigators.

The Yongbyon plant holds some 2,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges, the IAEA report says. North Korean officials asserted to the visiting U.S. experts in 2011 the plant was only enriching nuclear material to the low levels required to fuel a civilian energy reactor. Bomb-grade uranium requires an enrichment level of around 90 percent.

The U.N. watchdog said it possessed additional information that would indicate other types of enrichment machinery and expertise were acquired by Pyongyang from the Khan ring (George Jahn, Associated Press/Google News, Sept. 2).

The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security had previously estimated the 2,000 centrifuges viewed at the Yongbyon plant could make up two-thirds of a centrifuge program designed to annually produce roughly 110 pounds of warhead-ready uranium.

The nuclear agency also determined that the North had “very likely” produced the uranium hexafluoride discovered in a container the Khan ring sent to Libya in 2001. That would suggest the Stalinist state clandestinely established its uranium enrichment program more than a decade ago.

The nation has a known plutonium-based program which has been used in two nuclear test explosions (Albright/Brannan, Institute for Science and International Security, Sept. 2).

One of North Korea’s top officials on Thursday accused Washington of hypocrisy for its opposition to the Stalinist nation’s uranium enrichment activities, Agence France-Presse reported.

“Not only our country but other countries in the world are enriching uranium,” Supreme People’s Assembly President Kim Young Nam said to Japanese news organizations. “But the problem is why the word pays attention only to the uranium enrichment program in our country,” Kyodo News quoted Kim as saying (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Sept. 1).

Meanwhile, South Korea’s ambassador to the stalled six-nation talks aimed at North Korean denuclearization is scheduled to visit the United States this week for meetings with Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and special envoy for North Korea Stephen Bosworth, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

“During his visit to the U.S. [Wi Sung-lac] and the U.S. officials will jointly assess the ongoing North Korean nuclear issue and consult on how to move forward with inter-Korean and other forms of bilateral talks on denuclearization,” South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Byung-jae said.

The six-nation talks encompass China, Japan, North and South Korea, Russia and the United States. The aid-for-denuclearization negotiations were last held in December 2008. They propose to reward North Korea’s permanent nuclear disarmament with substantial financial, security and diplomatic concessions (Yonhap News Agency I, Sept. 6).

The South’s foreign policy chief, Kim Sung-hwan, on Monday said participants in the six-nation talks could hold meetings on the North during the 2012 Global Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, Yonhap reported.

“I expect bilateral or multilateral discussions to take place on the sidelines of the summit because nations related to North Korea’s nuclear issue will take part in the summit,” the foreign minister said to journalists.

Even though Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons work is not an agenda item for the summit, “I think that relevant nations will naturally discuss the issue during the summit,” Kim said (Yonhap News Agency II, Sept. 5).

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The Telegraph

The commander of Israel’s Home Front issued a stark warning on Monday that the Middle East is headed for a full-scale, multi-front war that would see the use of weapons of mass destruction.

“After the Arab Spring, we predict that a winter of radical Islam will arrive,” Major-General Eyal Eisenberg told a press conference in Tel Aviv.

Major-General Eyal Eisenberg

“As a result the possibility for a multi-front war has increased, including the potential use of weapons of mass destruction.”

But yesterday Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak did his best to discredit General Eisenberg’s dramatic prediction.

While touring the Syrian border in Israel’s north he said he could see no reason for Israel’s adversaries to launch a large-scale conflict. “I am also convinced that none of our enemies will dare use chemical weapons against Israel, not now and not in the future,” he added.

General Eisenberg himself took to Israeli army radio to explain that his comments had been taken out of context. He maintained, however, that the threat of a Middle Eastern conflict was increasing and pointed to strained relations between Israel and Turkey as a cause of further instability.

Major-General Uzi Dayan, a former national security advisor to Israel, also discounted the possibility of an imminent Middle Eastern conflict. “This pronouncement came from a very young General,” he told the Daily Telegraph, but added that regional instability following the Arab Spring undoubtedly poses a growing security threat. Israel is watching Turkey and Egypt particularly closely fearing they may be about to enter into a hostile agreement, he said.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has announced he will visit Cairo next week to discuss political and economic cooperation with the Egyptian leadership.

Analysts predict he may use this trip to make his long-threatened trip to Gaza.

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