I wrote a commentary some months ago at webcommentary. com about the coming of the third world war. I now believe the Angels are right. There is tension and unrest in the Middle East and growing. Drugs are overtaking South America and Mexico and seeping their way into the USA. The US economy is sluggish to say the least, as well as economies throughout Europe and Asia. And protests, ethnic dissatisfaction, illegal immigration, the right to bear arms, starvation, all these issues and others have people all over the world pulling their hair out for answers.

     China is now under attack from rising inflation. Afghanistan’s war on terror, reminds me of a function limit in calculus, where fools mistake infinity for a finite number. The spirit world does not lie. They may appear to be apparitions or even figments of the imagination but in point of fact they are not.

     Nuclear bombs are at the core of all this tension. Why? Well, the have’s refuse to share with the have-not’s. This type of disparity is spurring developing countries to band together and aid one another in the fight to protect themselves from tyranny and possible imperialism, by-way-of nuclear threat. The UN, NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank, are beginning to perceive now today that for some nations, they will forego international aid, suffer loss of economic improvement, for the sovereign right to arm themselves with nuclear bombs for self-protection against foreign attack from another nuclear-armed aggressor.

     These events are not accidents. They are preparatory stages of the inevitable. The Gulf Spill by BP. Not an accident. Rising crime worldwide. Not an accident. Killer Tornadoes, and massive flooding everywhere. Not an accident. Signs. Signs. Signs. We are on course for the inevitable.

     Heed my warning my friends, the bombs will at some point in time make their presents anew since 1945. But this time on a grandiose scale. It is high time the world open its eyes to reality before it’s to late.

The Seventh Man

   To cut US appropriations, some $3 billion to Israel, as suggested to the US Assistant Secretary of State, Philip J. Crowley, by one of the BBC’s world news’ hosts, is essentially immaterial to the solution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict in the region. Such a foreign policy strategy by the US would be blatant coersion on its part.

     America’s allies have their own self interests to protect, independent of, yet aligned with, that of the Western superpower, the United States. In other words, this is not about money in and of itself, but to amend social behavior gone awry for decades, due to unfathomable ancient religious convictions, generational, on the part of both the Israelis and Palestinians, that has to do with their place with Yahweh or Allah in heaven, due to the Abrahamic covenant, in the Afterlife.  

     Such deeply religious convictions are unlikely to be underpinned by money alone. But by a joint commitment, free of hubris, selfishness, and mainly egocentrism, on the part of both the Israelis and Palestinians, in order to apprehend the necessity for such a positive bilateral undertaking. Moreover, that their expectations should be moderate, while cooperation high.

     Thus, they again, should succeed slowly, but invariably. And the right to worship as one so chooses should be above all respected. Any violators of such a truce on either side should be jointly decried and punished severely for attempting to disrupt an ongoing efford to lasting peace.   

Part One: Focus on the Middle East

     This commentary deals with why I believe President Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan may fail. One of the biggest obstacles to his impending success is opium. Not just opium as a raw material but what the raw material opium can become. The fact that this raw material is essential to many other medicinal and chemical, both legal and illegal, products means there is large scale global trade in this industry and the U.S. is largely involved. This realization alone is one of the major reasons Obama may run into industry road blocks politically as he pursues an end to terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan in a fight to reduce the illegal trade of opium. Something that has not been done ever. The grappling with this necessary evil goes as far back as the nineteenth century when the Opium Wars loomed between the British and the Chinese. Yet opium is still around and ostensibly shall always be with us. Thus securing its place among the most powerful inelastic commodities in the world. A good example of why I hold this political viewpoint is the fact that Adolf Hitler mostly held power because the Hitler regime was financially backed and supported largely by Corporate America, with major allies like Henry Ford.

     Statistically, Afghanistan has an estimated population of 32,738,376 inhabitants. Sunni Muslims are the major religious group with 80 percent and only 19 percent for the Shiites. Roughly only 28 percent above the age of 15 can read and write. That is, 43 percent males and scarcely 13 percent females. It is an Islamic republic. That means its government type is based on a religious foundation. Unlike U.S. Republicanism, which is founded on a written constitution and church and state are separate. The president or chief of state is Hamid Karzai. There is the ANA, the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Army Air Corps. But remember the literacy rate among males is average and thus their means of highly developed intelligence capability would appear weak in contrast to lets say the Soviet’s, Great Britain’s or the American’s, where the literacy rate is much higher for males over 15. As far as transnational issues goes Pakistan and Afghanistan are invariably engaged in border disputes. The main disagreements are: terrorism and illicit drugs. Afghanistan is the largest producer of opium globally with a steady increase in poppy cultivation. The Taliban participates in this industry explicitly. Not to mention the fact that most of the heroin that goes to Europe and Eurasia comes from Afghan opium. And there are various financial networks covertly involved in drug money laundering, such as U.S. corporations and perhaps even banks though as far as banks I am speculating. But it would make sense that since we face a financial economic global crisis in 2009, I would not rule such a hypothetical out.

     GDP for the Afghan economy in 2007 was estimated to be about $35 billion, which came mostly from the agriculture and service sector of the economy. Industry that same year only mustered 24 percent of the GDP. One big problem the Obama administration has is the fact that the Afghan labor force is only 15 million people out of a population of 32,738,376 inhabitants. And statistically the unemployment rate is about 40 percent, with a population below the poverty line of 53 percent. This is a huge barrier to President Obama’s political and military objectives for the region. These numbers clearly point out the advantage the Taliban and al-Qaida have in furthering their ambitions, which is to fundamentalize the Afghan state and secure a nuclear bomb from Pakistan. Moreover, the global recession has gone unrestrained. The national unemployment rate in the U.S. alone is over 10 percent not counting those that work part-time or the jobless worker who has totally given up seeking work altogether, and those who volunteer, but receive no pay. Such hopelessly depressed conditions for many people nationally and even worldwide has brought disfavor with the President and his administration.

     This hamstrung economic social paradigm has produced, high rates of violent crimes, from drugs, within families, hindering the efforts of police doing their jobs, on the highways, and many more social conflicts worldwide.

     U.S. interests in the region is more than the threat of Soviet expansion as I mention in my last commentary. The fact is the U.S. is Afghanistan’s third largest trading partner among a group of four with India its leading Exporter. Another major political problem vaguely discussed by the Obama administration is the border disputes between India and Pakistan. Even if the U.S. could by 2011 stabilize Afghanistan militarily from terrorism they may underestimate the Taliban’s ability to drive a wedge further between India and Pakistan. This wedge would target the 80.5 percent Hindu population in India and the 97 percent Muslim population in Pakistan. Including the competition that exist among Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in the opium trade. But beyond that, there is India’s ongoing conflict with China. One of America’s major debt holders. The Pharmaceutical industry would not look favorably on the Obama administration if any hindrance to licit opium were to materialize in this area. In addition, the President, Admiral Mullen, Senator John Kerry, and General McChrystal has failed to mention the illicit narcotics trade exported to Southeast Asia by India. Again, stabilizing Afghanistan will only have a minor impact on destroying terrorism. Admiral Mullen told Charlie Rose the draw down of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by mid-2011 does not mean a complete withdrawal. And with such uncertainty the question arises, “What does draw down mean then?”

     Iran, on the other hand, has a population of 65,875,223 inhabitants, of which 98 percent are Muslims, and of that, 89 percent are Shiites and 9 percent are Sunni. It has a literacy rate of 77 percent. Eighty-three percent males over 15 and 70.4 percent females. Its government type is a theocratic republic. That is, both state and church are combined. The capital is Tehran and the chief of state or Supreme Leader is Ali Hoseini-Khamenei. The head of government is President Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad. The Iranian economy is reliant on oil. It supplies about 85 percent of revenues. A major barrier for the UN and NATO is the state has sovereignty and thus most economic activity is under the state’s authority. And too, corruption plays a big role in sociopolitical progress for the Iranian economy. Something the Obama administration fails to address. I think the U.S. abstains from this encounter with the Iranians, primarily Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is because Iran’s major Importer and Exporter is China. Although Japan leads China as Iran’s major Exporter overall.

     What does this mean in the short and long term for the Obama administration when time to draw down the troops in Afghanistan? I believe it means there will have to be politically some concession on the part of the superpowers, spearheaded by President Obama, Gordon Brown and Angela Merkal, and Nicolas Sarkozy.

     We must not forget as far as the terrorists are concerned, al-Qaida is backed by Osama Bin Laden, and according to Forbes magazine, issue: November 30 list of most powerful people, had Mr. Bin Laden at No. 37. He is estimated to be worth more than $300,000,000. And maybe considerably more in the light of the opium trade he is engaged in as well. Bin Laden most definitively has ties with U.S. corporations as well as corporations in Europe and Asia. All this has to do with the probability of his acquiring a nuclear bomb at some point in the future. Neither President Hamid Karzai, a Sunni Muslim, of Afghanistan nor President Asif Ali Zardari, a Shiite Muslim, of Pakistan can control all the political factions in their respective governments. Let me underscore a very important point… and that is the Taliban, a radical Sunni Islamist movement, was a legitimate government from 1996 until late 2001, when they were removed by NATO forces. It is the Sunni connection between President Karzai and the Taliban that holds weight here. Though Karzai may appear to be a Patriot he could switch sides for any reason and become an Islamic nationalist. I would not rule out pecuniary bribes, patronage, from the Taliban, once the U.S. begins military withdrawal.

     Even though Pakistan is a federal republic as mentioned above, they may see a need to employ Taliban forces to help fend off Indian’s attacks should they materialize. Or they could find the Taliban instrumental with their impoverished and underdeveloped economic circumstances and as such would be willing to grant political favors, such as vital political positions in government. But one thing is for certain above all else and that is, the Taliban and al-Qaida are both in Pakistan. In fact according to Senator John Kerry, al-Qaida is headquartered there, while Bin Laden is in the Northwest region of Pakistan. So the border that divides both Afghanistan and Pakistan could seem to disappear, in the light of Islamic fundametalist objectives, in terms of the war on terrorism.

     One of the major goals of General McChrystal should be to drive the Taliban to the Northeastern sector of Afghanistan from the southwest central region. That is, from the Helmand province to the Palmir Mountains in the Gorno-Badakhshan province. The mountains are covered in snow year round. Palmir has long and bitterly cold winters and short cool summers. Making Drone attacks more effective in the summer while the winter would take its toll on the Taliban forces almost unaided by Afghan and NATO forces. I know some officials maybe going through the roof, since the U.S. is interested in these mountains for trade purposes, but that is every reason to drive the Taliban there and put an end to their insurgency.

     Let me switch focus at this point. I had the opportunity to see a movie called ‘Head-On’ about a young Turkish woman, a cocaine addict, who moved from Germany, to Istanbul because her husband, a cocaine addict also, had been put in prison for manslaughter, where her sister lived, and got turned on to opium. Probably illegally imported from Afghanistan. Certainly this movie was fictitious. But that does not mean opium is not in reality flourishing in Istanbul or Germany in one form or another. Turkey is a republican parliamentary democracy somewhat similar to the U.S.’s government and has no restrictions on religious freedoms. You can dress as Western or Eastern as you please without coercion from the Turkish government. Ironically, in terms of religion the country is 99.8 percent Muslim, mostly Sunni. The point being, opium could be purchased or acquired for recreational use in the real world as well. The movie makes the old adage, “there is a thin line between fiction and reality” a true aphorism.

     In summary, let me state we will take a closer look at opium in part two of this two part commentary. I think up to this point in the discussion the reader gets an understanding of the complexity of President Obama’s foreign policy dilemma. He can save the American ship of virtue from the eye of the radical Islamist storm so-to-speak, but he can’t save all the people in it. Such a metaphor helps us to grasp his likelihood of having to make many unfortunate sacrifices, politically. Jobs are eating at his will to rescue an America under siege by a global economic crisis that does not seem to want to go away. Surely he inherited all these political fire dragons. But it was he, was it not, who said he could bring about resolution over time. I say the two most important tidal waves you have to get us through Mr. President is the war in Afghanistan and the economic global depression in full swing right now. And if you can do that you will then have to turn your attention to the likely internal rise of illicit drug distribution and use, and the gun violence that will escalate culminating in the new terrorist hydra residing in America covertly derived from its parent Islamic fundamentalist groups, the Taliban and al-Qaida, from the Middle East, formulating since 9/11.

     I listened to the speech Mr. Obama gave to the U.S. Military Academy about his ordering 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. It would appear that Senator McCain is in accord with the President’s new strategy, and I am too… but unconvinced whether it will work. What he hopes to do, the president that is, I believe is to push the Taliban and al-Qaida back far enough to the north that the Afghan military can takeover and finish the job of driving the Taliban out after the U.S. pulls out in what is predicted 2011.

     This strategy on the part of the president breeds uncertainty. Call me a skeptic all you want. But I don’t see the Taliban or al-Qaida responding to the wishes of either the President of the United States or any other president for that matter.

? What Mr. Obama again fails to take into consideration is the fact that this war is a battle of wits, two diametrically opposed interests in the host, that is, a game theory. While the U.S. troops under the command of General McChrystal will seek militarily to drive the Taliban insurgents out of Afghanistan and Pakistan by the various psychological resource methods available, i.e., bribes, trained Afghan government forces, reduced corruption in the Karzai and Pratibha Patil regimes, use CIA agents and or fake Islamic defectors of U.S. contingents or the CIA itself, to infiltrate the Taliban forces and pose as reliable and genuine recruits for the cause of the Fundamentalist’s holy crusade in both Afghanistan and Pakistan against the infidels, even commit to tactics of intimidation by posing [the CIA’s agents] as Taliban and al-Qaida troops in order to threaten Afghan peasants, with hopes that such a stratagem on the part of the CIA will cause hate for the insurgents permanently, while once inside the Taliban they will be sending co-ordinates back to U.S. forces for aerial assaults and will attempt to drive wedges of dissension in between Taliban Loyalists to weaken their internal bonds of unity. Sounds like a good infallible plan. But what may sound good may have bad and disappointing repercussions overtime.

     What does both General McChrystal and the President think the Taliban and al-Qaida will be doing all this time as their opponents? Just sitting on their duffs letting it happen or giving up the jihad? Not hardly. Since this is as I have stated a war based on game theory, it is safe to suppose that Osama Bin Laden and his followers in al-Qaida, along with the Taliban will employ whatever methods, be they voodoo, black magic, mysticism, summoning Islamic Clairvoyants, intimidating the Afghan and Pakistani peasant enclaves with torture and murder or the reverse, that is, use virtue and good deeds to win their loyalty, and any other vile wicked schemes to offset any military strategies the U.S. may apply. But that is not all. What’s more, they will, because they have nothing to lose, since they are fighting what they perceive to be a just holy war, increase and step up suicide attacks both in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in addition to that, they may then set their sights, full blown, on internal attacks in the United States. That is for two reasons, first because of the direct connection to the drug industry and this countries abuse of illegal drugs, and second, because I predict such a strategy would shift the political and domestic focus away from the Middle East to the U.S. directly, and may weaken American morale here at home, not to mention undermine their faith in our leadership if they [the Taliban] succeeds.

     To the Taliban and al-Qaida the war is not just a war to prove who is the most powerful militarily, but a war to prove Allah is on their side. This makes such a jihad, machine-driven. Like the Japanese were, during World War Two, (but most were atheist) when they bombed Pearl Harbor. Their behavior stunned American military high officials, who had no idea to win to the Japanese meant to die and die unnerved and heaven bound. Such an attitude toward a desire to defend one’s religious convictions is the worst foe psychologically any army can face in battle, analogous to the attitude of the Knight’s Templars. Oh, sure the U.S. can nuke the Taliban and al-Qaida like they did the unyielding Japanese in 1945. Or they can get out of the Middle East altogether, if they fail to succeed in driving the Taliban and al-Qaida into internal self-destruction, with their tails between their legs and their heads hung low in shame.

     This war seems to be about winning to the U.S., but not to the Islamic Fundamentalists. To them the war is about religious freedom from foreign Christian rule. And that basic aim is no different than the aim the American colonists had when they fought the British in the Revolutionary War, which was a human right’s struggle.

     It is not going to be a downhill ski-ride for Obama. He is fighting religious Nationalists, who control a large portion of the drug industry, globally, and ethics, surrounding the cause of the Islamic brotherhood is morally indiscriminate, Antinomianism, that is, there is no moral law in war. That alone tells me what the President and the Pentagon can’t see, the Taliban and al-Qaida can, and will use, to defend themselves, and Allah will forgive them, according to the Quran, when all is said and done. This is the principle of the Greater Good Doctrine, that is, there are no exceptions to immorality but there are exemptions. Worst still, as the body count rises on both sides, the American people down the road, lets say by mid-2010, will begin to question the country’s real intentions once again. More United Nation’s troops deployed to the region, if called for and approved by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, would only add to the overall regional devastation as the war drags on.

     I don’t call the uncertainty in my mind now brewing in the Middle East for the American forces there a Vietnam; I call it an Islam-nam.

     On the subject of using food to bribe the Afghan peasant into aiding U.S. forces in the region to fight the Taliban and al-Qaida cannot last and will not last. If U.S. forces are scheduled to defect in 2011, and return military control to both Afghan and Pakistani military personnel, I predict in time corruption will rage once more, due to drugs and political corruption of the Afghan and Pakistani peasantry and nothing would have changed. Just like the Vietnam War after the Americans departed in 1975. The North Vietcong took over power in the south regardless of U.S. superior military might in the aftermath. So the war in Vietnam was a waste of human life and the same results will occur in Islam-nam as well; as fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, son-in-laws, daughter-in-laws etc., (the Tet Offensive) see the value of multicultural unity through socialization based on one religious culture, Islam, whose roots go back to the prophet Muhammad in 570 to 622 A.D.

The desire for denuclearization is in game theory the tragedy of the commons. And it means that though the superpowers know it is in their own best interest to denuclearize, that being to avoid a nuclear war and its consequences, however, rather than be rational, they choose to continue stockpiling nuclear weapons. In principle, they do this because they can never be certain that the other countries with nuclear weapons will keep their agreement, and reduce their stockpile, believing it is in their own best interests to maintain production of their nuclear arsenal. And to avoid being discovered by UN peacekeeping forces or on site inspectors directed by the UN security council, they stockpile their most advanced weapons systems underground in secret bunkers. Thus we realize, in truth, no nation is willing to totally cooperate with the other, but would rather defect and continue amassing nuclear weapons, since it is in their own best interest to do so, regardless of their UN membership status. And consequently, our fate for the future will be an unavoidable nuclear war.

Admiral Mike Mullen, on Face The Nation today, Sunday July 5, 2009, mentioned Israel launching a first strike, or preemptive strike against Iran. I take it he meant an aggressive nuclear attack on an Islamic country without there being a real current physical threat of some kind from that particular nation. To engage in nuclear war without probable cause, other than a defensive counterattack, means such unscrupulous behavior will surely have disastrous effects globally. One event is sure to occur thereafter, and that is, other Islamic countries that are democratic and partial to the US or the West and perhaps members of the UN, like Egypt, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, maybe even Turkey and Saudi Arabia, could change sides, due to a religious affinity. Such a strategy, whether overt or covert, would come about from religious sect pressure, such as, the Sunnis, the Shi´ites, the Zoroastrians, Christians, or other religious sects within each regime.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty since August 2008 halted any forward progress to enter the organizational phase in 2009. Thus this impasse reeks of uncertainty for all the countries involved, including the US, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, and many others for the future. Which reinforces my suspicion about the assertion of the Tragedy of the Commons. Besides that, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty discriminates on the bases of economic wealth as well, and thus prevents other nations such as Pakistan, North Korea, India and Iran for example, from having a strong political voice in world affairs in the UN security Council, which consist mainly of five major countries. The US being one of them, and Russia another. Such disparity leaves the excluded nations no choice but to act totally in their own best interests. The adoption of UN security council resolution 1874, 12 June 2009, by the General Assembly, has only a marginal affect on North Korea’s push forward with nuclear testing. And this means you can only push people so far, and that goes for countries too, before they stop caring about the consequences of their actions.

The Seventh Man

When the first nuclear weapons were produced at Los Alamos under the Manhattan Project it is obvious the US perceived such an accomplishment as one of a kind. That is, that they, the US government, would lead, as well as dominate the world in military might. It is hard to apprehend why they presumed the rest of the world would sit idly by and just let them [the US] dictate the rules of life based on the rules of war. Since they now had the atomic power to crush a nation without much ground-fighting or risk to human life.

Shortly after careful study and testing at Los Alamos New Mexico from 1942 to 1945, and the bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in 1945, the US government learned that its enemy the Russians had the atomic bomb. Suddenly the game changed. No longer did the US sit atop the realm of the atomic mountain of mass destruction alone, but thereafter they had to share it with the Russians.

And down through the years they have continued to misjudge other countries equally eager in producing a nuclear bomb for their own protection in an otherwise hostile world. Is this equity? Is it okay for the fox to raid the chicken coop, while all the other foxes sit idly by and go hungry? I don’t think so, and neither should the American government. One kid can’t have all the money to buy all the candy in the neighborhood candy store. Some other kids will have to have a chance to acquire money and buy too. That is just the way the world has become today.

Now other developing countries want atomic protection in addition. Why shouldn’t they be any less equipped with the bomb? Even if it gives you a false since of security. That is to say, that as proliferation moves ahead, an even greater risk of nuclear annihilation is ever looming on the horizon. There is no other way to assess it. And even though the big countries with atomic weapons know this, they are powerless to stop less developing countries from aspiring to better arm themselves against a nuclear war, in which, they realize they will be defenseless if they don’t acquire the technology needed to build the A-bomb, the N-bomb, the H-bomb, or Thermonuclear technology.

To deny other countries the right to possess weapons equal to the weapons the superpowers possess is a form of world Imperialism. This type of game theory strategy is the underlying factor that is driving nuclear proliferation throughout the globe. The psychology that only the superpowers are divinely worthy to have nuclear weapons of mass destruction is falling on death ears. No one wants to be without an ace-in-the-whole, so-to-speak, in this nuclear day and age, or in a time of a world war. Or think of it this way, your friend has a nuclear bomb, and you want to be like your friend; so you want one too. Or your enemy has an atomic bomb, and you want to be like your enemy; so you want one too.

Imperialism, espionage, the meddling in the internal affairs of others, usurpation, enslavement by military means, military intimidation, the establishment of puppet regimes, the turning of one country against another by lies and deceit for the ultimate takeover, has all occurred in the past to stop weaker countries, by stronger ones with nuclear weapons, from the achievements they have attained,
[the stronger ones] that is, the military power to destroy an entire city. And to prevent these smaller weaker countries from being the masters of their own destinies in this global society by any means.

The wanting of nuclear weapons by less developed countries such as Iran or North Korea, is not uncommon a desire. Why shouldn’t they want to protect themselves from those that wield atomic power? That is, to prevent, or deter a nuclear preemptive strike. What is wrong with that? What we have here is a double standard, which these smaller less developed countries no longer see as sustainable, and moreover, as they see it, both morally and militarily wrong. There is only one way to stop the expansion of WMDs, weapons of mass destruction, and that is for the superpowers to begin comprehensive denuclearization now, and can the UN crap, or be run over by the smaller countries with an inexorable political will, and money, to develop nuclear bombs for their own self protection. And as destiny has in the past provided the knowledge for a few to acquire nuclear weapons, destiny will for many in the future.

The Seventh Man