For having openly ordered his secret service to hunt down and punish the murderers of Russian diplomats in Iraq, Putin deserves the moral support of all states, organizations and individuals involved in fighting terrorism.
It was indeed one of the rare instances where a statesman unapologetically announces he has given such an order.
Inevitably, fake moralists are attempting to degrade the significance of the move, arguing that states should not be seen as condoning killings. Implied in this line of thought is that Putin should have covertly given his order. Also implied is the supposition that the rest of us are morons who thought states and their snoops were perfect angels.
The fact is that Putin’s overt hit order is an expression of the new form of statecraft needed to get rogue regimes and groups to either toe the line or face annihilation.
Hail tsar Vlad for setting an example.
Whither the Peninsula?
(Skip the sections in italics if you don’t want to be bothered by personal stuff)
Absorbed as I was in my fight with the Fourth House, I thought I was done blogging. But the gadfly in me kept nagging me that my quiver is brimming with stingers itching to be released. So I thought why not throw some in deserving directions.
I’ll start by very humbly tooting my own horn. How many of my predictions were realized, though most of them went against commoners’ “common sense”? Enough to earn me a medal in the forthcoming seers congress.
One prediction that ran opposite to prevalent expectations held that the US wasn’t going to lob bombs on Iran.
In fact, it would make more sense for the US to nurture Iran into emerging as a regional hobgoblin with nuclear fangs just big enough to scare God-fearing, oil-producing Peninsula-dwellers out of their kufiyyas. But why scare the Arabistanians out of their (scanty) wits? would you ask.
Well, the answer is complex.
First, you have to understand human reactions. While a normal person would instinctively reach for the holster in reaction to fear, Peninsula-dwellers go for the purse when faced with a scary situation. “Buy out your enemy’s evil intent” is the region’s adage.
Second, you have to guess US policy and interests. Proceeds from the quadrupling of oil prices over the past few years need to be siphoned off state coffers of Peninsula countries.
Third, it is surely not in the US interest for Iran to be the beneficiary of Their Highness' Pavlovian reaction to go for the purse when faced with danger.
Combine and shake the above ingredients and you’ll have the US proposing to defend the kings, sultans, sheikhs, emirs and their harems and, why not, their vassals and pedestrians, at a price of course.
Still, the Americans would have to do their homework. To begin with, they have to convince the ruling dashdashas not to take their defense in their own hands because the days are gone when they would have drugged some ‘believer’ into daggering a ‘heretic’ Gholam Adkham Batinjani during Friday prayer. Yes, bloodletting in those days was a much cleaner and greener venture than it is today, and it used to achieve wonderful results. Nowadays things have to be done in a stately manner. A devout state would have to pay for expensive weaponry and “integrated defense systems”.
The second leg of the homework is to convince robed royalty that US services don’t come cheap. After all you are talking about the services of The Terminator of Kuwait‘s occupation; the Exterminator of Taliban; The Liberator of Kurdistan; The Mad Max of Iraq; The Intimidator of Syria; The Beachcomber of Somalia; The Lone Ranger of Libya; The Gamekeeper of Guantanamo; all combined in one.
And finally, there would be talk about the price tag. Forget about missiles, Patriot or not; these come from a millennium past. Defense systems now have to have a space dimension, they have to be controlled by a constellation of satellites. So costs would have to run in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Having said all that, let us take the longer view. A number of things would have changed a decade down the road: Iranian uranium – Iranium for short – would have grown richer, but not so the ordinary Iranians; the Emirs would have grown richer, but not so the ordinary wahabis who for sure would have grown more pious and intolerant; and corporate America would have grown much much richer.
To be sure, the US and Europe are partners in all this; the former did invite the latter to join in putting pressure on Iran, exactly as the fisherman in the fable did invite the baitworm to join him on a fishing trip. It is only when the above round of enrichment would have taken place, would the Europeans probably realize that the joke was on them, all along.
Glossary notes:
Peninsula: I have never understood why that area is referred to as the Gulf. To my knowledge, the countries over there have not gone the way of Atlantis yet, they haven’t been en-Gulfed yet, so they are still on the peninsula.
Peninsula dwellers: Means that people over there are still on land, where their countries are. And, although they go to the beach, they certainly don’t live in the Gulf.
Arabistanians: I am sure that’s how the present US Administration refers to this strain of the human race. It matches the reference to Iraqistanis.
To dagger; daggering: I don’t suppose the verb is in the dictionary. But it is the best and shortest description of the act of planting a dagger in one’s back, a nasty Arabistani habit which found its antidote in the handshake.
Iranium: That's a nice and simple one. The Isreali press beat everyone else to it.
Absorbed as I was in my fight with the Fourth House, I thought I was done blogging. But the gadfly in me kept nagging me that my quiver is brimming with stingers itching to be released. So I thought why not throw some in deserving directions.
I’ll start by very humbly tooting my own horn. How many of my predictions were realized, though most of them went against commoners’ “common sense”? Enough to earn me a medal in the forthcoming seers congress.
One prediction that ran opposite to prevalent expectations held that the US wasn’t going to lob bombs on Iran.
In fact, it would make more sense for the US to nurture Iran into emerging as a regional hobgoblin with nuclear fangs just big enough to scare God-fearing, oil-producing Peninsula-dwellers out of their kufiyyas. But why scare the Arabistanians out of their (scanty) wits? would you ask.
Well, the answer is complex.
First, you have to understand human reactions. While a normal person would instinctively reach for the holster in reaction to fear, Peninsula-dwellers go for the purse when faced with a scary situation. “Buy out your enemy’s evil intent” is the region’s adage.
Second, you have to guess US policy and interests. Proceeds from the quadrupling of oil prices over the past few years need to be siphoned off state coffers of Peninsula countries.
Third, it is surely not in the US interest for Iran to be the beneficiary of Their Highness' Pavlovian reaction to go for the purse when faced with danger.
Combine and shake the above ingredients and you’ll have the US proposing to defend the kings, sultans, sheikhs, emirs and their harems and, why not, their vassals and pedestrians, at a price of course.
Still, the Americans would have to do their homework. To begin with, they have to convince the ruling dashdashas not to take their defense in their own hands because the days are gone when they would have drugged some ‘believer’ into daggering a ‘heretic’ Gholam Adkham Batinjani during Friday prayer. Yes, bloodletting in those days was a much cleaner and greener venture than it is today, and it used to achieve wonderful results. Nowadays things have to be done in a stately manner. A devout state would have to pay for expensive weaponry and “integrated defense systems”.
The second leg of the homework is to convince robed royalty that US services don’t come cheap. After all you are talking about the services of The Terminator of Kuwait‘s occupation; the Exterminator of Taliban; The Liberator of Kurdistan; The Mad Max of Iraq; The Intimidator of Syria; The Beachcomber of Somalia; The Lone Ranger of Libya; The Gamekeeper of Guantanamo; all combined in one.
And finally, there would be talk about the price tag. Forget about missiles, Patriot or not; these come from a millennium past. Defense systems now have to have a space dimension, they have to be controlled by a constellation of satellites. So costs would have to run in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Having said all that, let us take the longer view. A number of things would have changed a decade down the road: Iranian uranium – Iranium for short – would have grown richer, but not so the ordinary Iranians; the Emirs would have grown richer, but not so the ordinary wahabis who for sure would have grown more pious and intolerant; and corporate America would have grown much much richer.
To be sure, the US and Europe are partners in all this; the former did invite the latter to join in putting pressure on Iran, exactly as the fisherman in the fable did invite the baitworm to join him on a fishing trip. It is only when the above round of enrichment would have taken place, would the Europeans probably realize that the joke was on them, all along.
Glossary notes:
Peninsula: I have never understood why that area is referred to as the Gulf. To my knowledge, the countries over there have not gone the way of Atlantis yet, they haven’t been en-Gulfed yet, so they are still on the peninsula.
Peninsula dwellers: Means that people over there are still on land, where their countries are. And, although they go to the beach, they certainly don’t live in the Gulf.
Arabistanians: I am sure that’s how the present US Administration refers to this strain of the human race. It matches the reference to Iraqistanis.
To dagger; daggering: I don’t suppose the verb is in the dictionary. But it is the best and shortest description of the act of planting a dagger in one’s back, a nasty Arabistani habit which found its antidote in the handshake.
Iranium: That's a nice and simple one. The Isreali press beat everyone else to it.
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