One of Many Reasons for the Emasculated Nature of the European Union and People

Under the defense umbrella of the US military, NATO and Europe long ago gave up any credible pretense of providing for their own defense. Instead, Europe spent its defense budgets on social programs, and began to pretend that the US--its defender--was the primary enemy that it must fight. Europe's primary weapons against the evil US empire were the concocted words and images of its incredibly biased news media. Generations have been raised under this propaganda campaign--this feint, if you will, distracting the people of Europe from the abject failure of their leaders to provide a credible defense from enemies foreign and domestic.

Understanding the "Catch-22" that their leaders have placed them under, European military forces are increasingly refusing to fight. Even when given direct orders to engage the enemy, European commanders and their troops are refusing to raise their weapons against deadly threats.

Over a decade of shrinking budgets has meant less money for realistic training. There are also equipment shortages. The net result is several layers of leadership that are really not well prepared for a shooting war....several Czech helicopter pilots, when told they were going to Afghanistan, basically said no. Not unless they got more training, and helicopters that could handle that kind of tricky flying. The crew of an Italian helicopter gunship was recently sent home because they refused to fire in combat. No one will say exactly what happened there, but that sort of thing is usually the result of poor preparation, and leadership. And then there's the recent ambush of a French patrol, which resulted in ten French paratroopers killed. Most of the casualties occurred because the troops had not practiced dealing with ambushes, and the way the Taliban operate. Worse, the French troops were trapped under fire for many hours, long past the time when air cover or ground reinforcements should have arrived. Again, this has all the marks of bad leadership and poor training.

... _StrategyPage

It is not just the post-cold war euphoria that led to cutting of defense budgets in Europe. As stated earlier, European governments had already decided to let the US taxpayer carry the load of defending Europe. Europe decided that it had grown beyond the conflict stage of human evolution. Given such a high level of evolution, homo Euro would simply allow a despised ally to take care of the dirty work of dealing with the more unsavoury aspects of existing on this planet.

If a group of people exists for along enough time in this protected limbo state, their sense of reality regarding foreign relations does tend to suffer a bit. The EU, after all, has no divisions. NATO has divisions. But without the US, NATO is a laughing stock. Since the member nations of NATO (other than new members from Eastern Europe) scorn the US as a Neanderthal, and the greatest threat to planet Earth, you can imagine the solidity of the alliance--and part of the reason why Russia has begun a new phase of expansionist neo-imperialism.

Self-emasculated homo Euro. The new androgynous reality of an old, shrinking subcontinent. Let's all hold a group shriek over Abu Ghraib, shall we? Or how about a round of condemnations over Guantanamo. Show those war-monger colonials who the civilised people are, shall we?

Gun-Shy European Troops Help Lose Afghanistan

The emasculated nature of Europe has never been so clear as in present-day Afghanistan. The fear of European commanders to involve their troops in combat is leaving their troops far more vulnerable than if they would only function like proper soldiers.

The Taliban are taking advantage of the unwillingness of many NATO contingents to fight. Groups of Taliban gunmen are being sent to the vicinity of Kabul, where many of these less warlike NATO operate, and have launched attacks. They got lucky and killed ten French troops in one of these operations, in an action that highlighted the degree to which these troops, and their leaders, were unprepared for combat. By attacking, and inflicting losses, on these troops, the Taliban stir up political controversy back in Europe, leading, the Taliban hope, to withdrawal of the NATO troops from Afghanistan. _StrategyPage

As we saw in Spain after the Madrid train terror attacks, Europeans are afraid of conflict, and are unwilling to stand up for themselves or their allies if it involves any risk. Paradoxically, this quasi-cowardly stance creates far more risk to Europeans in the long run than if they had merely utilised the basic "tit for tat" strategy suggested by game theory.

The people of Afghanistan don’t realize that NATO has no overarching counterinsurgency strategy, or that many of the 70,000 troops cannot fire their weapons except in self defense. All they see is a degrading security situation, and since America is capable of anything if it can land a man on the moon, then there must be an ulterior motive, or so the Afghan people think. _CT

Combining the Euro tendency to retreat at the sign of any danger with the Afghan impressions that the US is responsible for all the troops in Afghanistan--whether or not they perform up to US standards--the PR battle is being lost in the primitive tribal country.

Pakistan's intelligence services continue to assist the Taliban and al-qaida in the border areas, which keeps the Taliban supplied with weapons and a safe haven. Of Iraq and Afghanistan, Afghanistan is the one that most strongly resembles the 60's war in Vietnam.

Sent to Subdue the World, With Minds Full of Hate

Islam is not, strictly speaking, a "religion" as we in the west define religion. It is a totalitarian socio-religio-political system from the middle ages--with grand ambitions of world conquest. The Muslim Council of Britain--financed by UK government grants and contributions from Saudi Arabian Wahabists etc.--is considered a "mainstream" religious organisation, and attempts to maintain a public face of peace and tolerance. But what is really going on behind the benign public face of the MCB, inside the UK's mosques?

Books calling for the beheading of lapsed Muslims, ordering women to remain indoors and forbidding interfaith marriage are being sold inside some of Britain’s leading mosques, according to research seen by The Times.

Some of the fundamentalist works were found at the bookshop in the London Central mosque in Regent’s Park, which is funded by the Saudi regime and is regularly visited by government ministers. Its director, Ahmad al-Dubayan, is also a Saudi diplomat and was among those greeting King Abdullah when he arrived in Britain last night for his official state visit.

Extremist literature, including passages supporting the stoning of adulterers and waging violent jihad, was also found on sale at many other mosques regarded as mainstream institutions.

Times Online

While some scholars claim that Wahabism is marginalised as a force within Islam, the Wahabi money trail tells a different story. It is not only in Britain and Australia that Saudi oil money is used to finance the warping of young minds toward fanatical violence and destruction. The trail of blood leads back to the primitive sands from virtually every western and third world country with an appreciable population or strategic location.

Islam has bloody borders, and the responsibility for that blood lies mainly with Wahabi supporters in the Sunni gulf states, and with the oil sponsored theocracy of Iran.

When otherwise intelligent people attack non-violent Christianity and Judaism, while giving the bloody, violent Islamist movement a free pass, the message sent to Islamist fanatics is that the west is so involved in attacking its own weakened belief systems that it has no time or energy to defend itself from an outside attack.

When Osama bin Laden confidently predicted that the Americans would be quick and easy to defeat in Afghanistan, should the US ever think to attack Al Qaeda in its Taliban protected stronghold, he was expressing the timeless view of the primitive and vital toward the sophisticated and decadent. When a more advanced nation or civilisation becomes so decadent as to continuously attack itself without regard for dangers from the outside, it makes itself appear to be easy prey.

The western world has achieved a momentum in world affairs that cannot be completely explained by natural resources, geography, national cultures, relative intelligence, exploitation of the primitive world, tropical diseases, or just luck. The pre-eminence of the western world can certainly not be explained by divine guidance, genocidal mania, or alien intervention.

Just a few more decades and humans will have the keys to significantly longer and healthier lives. We will stand at the doorway of augmented minds and senses. The universe itself appears to wait on the decisions of humans, for the future. Can we hold off the wolves that are nipping at our heels (from within and without) long enough to achieve the level that allows us to begin our long journey?

War, Morality, World Jihad, and Iraq

The US president Bush has chosen to make a stand in the desert country of Iraq. A curious choice perhaps? Afghanistan made more sense on the surface of things. Disrupting the jihadists' base of operations and training was logical. No more large scale jihadi terror attacks have taken place. The Madrid and London train bombings were much more modest in scale, more local in execution. The world jihad movement appears in disarray, under attack even in Saudi Arabia, the very heartland of jihad.

Iraq sits atop large oil reserves, but the oil production infrastructure is so decrepit in Iraq, that gearing up oil production there may take decades. Do Bush and his neo-con friends actually plan for decades in advance? In that period of time anything at all might happen. It is certainly more likely that their goals are more proximate.

Is Iraq truly part of the global jihad? Before Saddam's Baathist was toppled, what part did Iraq play in the global jihad? Was it truly necessary to invade and disrupt the center of the Arab world, the most powerful arab nation, the flagship nation of arab ambition?

Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya function as jihadist institutions of propaganda. These satellite networks appear to conflate jihadist ambitions with the goals of the arab world. It is as if much of the elite in the arab world have taken sides with the jihadists. When did this happen? Before Saddam's removal? Before September 11, 2001? Before the Gulf War of 1990/1991?

If one looks carefully at the history of the arabs, and the history of jihadist Islam, there appears to be a waxing and waning along parallel paths for the two entities. There is an unhealthy interdependency between arabs as a culture and jihadist Islam as a movement. The September 11 attacks were merely one more group of attacks in a long series of jihadist attacks dating back to the mid 20th century. Before that, there were other clusters of attacks going back millenia in time. A waxing and waning of the jihidast movement, along with arab cultural ambitions.

The glory days of the arabs was during the height of the jihadist wars, before the Mongols and the Turks subdued the arabs. After the Turks, the European colonials divided the arab lands. Arabs have been humiliated for centuries now. The tide appears to be turning, since the newfound oil wealth of the 20th century is finding its way to devout and fanatical believers in the oil rich societies. The wealth is being diverted to those who show an aptitude for indoctrinating the young to jihad, and supplying them with weapons of mass murder. Every nation in the world where a mosque is located is also the cradle of jihadist indoctrination. Infiltration, subterfuge, covert preparation for jihad.

Under the rule of law in developed nations, there is really no way to stop this process. Combining the stealth infiltration of jihadist indoctrination with the cultural decline of the west, and demographic trends of high birthrates among muslim immigrants and low birthrates among indigenous non-muslims, and one can see that Europe's days are rapidly slipping away. Europe is destined to come under Islamic subjugation within decades.

What about the Anglosphere? What about North America and Oceania? What about Japan, Korea, India, Thailand, and Singapore? There will be outposts of free thought, of rational activity, long after Europe surrenders.

The US and the UK have chosen to confront the jihadist in the heartland of Islam. Realizing perhaps that direct experience of war with the jihadist was the only way to toughen their troops enough for the long war ahead, the US and UK chose to take the war to the place that they knew the jihadists could not ignore, the center of the Sunni arab pride.

Some say the purpose was to bring democracy to the arab lands. That may have been a long shot gamble, a side purpose. Others say the purpose was access to oil. But we have seen how far in the future any meaningful oil production in Iraq will be. More likely the purpose was to bring a familiarity with the jihadist tactics to the military commanders, in preparation for the inevitable conflict to come. Europe's leaders had already decided on surrender long before September 11. There was no question of Europe preparing for the long war. The will to fight against oppression had been drained from Europeans half a century ago.

The post-modern concept of war is that all war is immoral. Any justification for war is mere obfuscation, excuses by the ruling classes to shed the blood of the underclasses for their own gain. This is the wisdom of the post-modernist in regard to war. There is no real post-modern wisdom regarding oppression originating from third world entities such as the jihadists. Such a thing is considered unlikely in the extreme and not worth analysing. That is the weakness of the post-modern. Ideological hatred for western civilisation to the point of denying the uniqueness and liberating aspects of western civilisation, while simultaneously denying the barbarism and mindless homicidal tendencies of virtually every other civilisation ever known to history.

Iraq is a target of opportunity. Iraq was invaded because Iraq was there, at a particular time and place and state of being. Iraq was chosen by Bush as a place to make a stand. It was a multitude of gambles thrown together in one large toss of the dice. A monumental disruption to the overall scheme of things, such a challenge as not to be ignored by the jihadist, or the arab supremacists who stand one hundred strong behind every single jihadist.

Western civilisation is the cradle of the next level. No other civilisation has approached to a fraction of the enlightenment of the west. All other civilisations have been based on slavery and arbitrary justice, and a far less favorable balance of power between groups and classes, than western civilisation.

Next level humans will be more intelligent. They will live ten times longer. They will balance their emotional brains with their rational brains. They will not fight wars because they will not have to. They will understand the underlying dynamics of power far better than primitive and between-levels humans.

The anti-jihadist wars may be the last wars that enlightened humans will be forced to fight. Forced to fight for the sake of the next civilisation to come. As they say, a war to end war. For that to be true, modern humans must forsake much of their leisure for the sake of learning and growth.