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10/21/02  

The Geopolitical Mess

The United States and the free world have an intractable enemy of freedom, human rights, free enterprise, and prosperity, the likes of which the world has never seen. It is an enemy whose specific whereabouts are unknown, but vast, and whose military might is primitive, but deadly. It is an enemy which despises every aspect of the Free World, and clearly wants to turn the clock back and seek world hegemony. Clearly, Muslim Fundamentalism represents a threat that has brought a war without apparent reason to our shores. While the US and Israel are the obvious targets, the whole world is the ultimate object. 

Unlike the Cold War, and mutual assured destruction, which depended on adversarial love of life, we confront an enemy who has convinced its adherents that self-immolation and mass destruction is the route to salvation. The enemy lives amongst sovereign nations who do not necessarily endorse these fanatics, and hence, are not subject to our military reaction. They hide everywhere, and are virtually indistinguishable from the general population. 

The allies of the US, deluded that they are not also in the cross-hairs, are hesitant to support us in this battle. In a classic reenactment of "peace in our time", the Europeans discourage us from prevention, preemption, or ending state sponsorship, leaving us to go it alone, or gain their approval by taking the next hit uncontested. 

Additionally, civil libertarians successfully prevent us from truly securing our borders and our country from this insidious threat based on the spurious notion that illegal aliens deserve full protection under the law while our citizens cannot live with a sense of peace and security. We confront an enemy that has distinct military inferiority and devolves to terrorist acts to kill and maim innocent civilians, attack civilian targets and knows nothing of the Geneva Convention. In this way, they overcome the odds and create equivalency.

The nations who appear to support terrorists are sufficiently clandestine in their support that we cannot prove, in the legalistic court of world opinion, that we have the justification to take direct action. So, Iraq and Iran are free to watch with glee as these murderers do their bidding without accountability or retribution.  

The fact that the market has to accept the ominous warnings and threats, almost on a daily basis, as well as the seemingly intractable situation in the Israeli-Palestinian situation, provides more fuel for the bears. It is clear the terrorists want no solution, other than to continue to paint Israel as the terrorists, and put them in the harsh light of world opinion. In the same vein, they attempt to paint the US as the sole supporter of Israel. This upside down interpretation is seemingly accepted in Europe, which sees Arab immigrants as a giant political constituency to be mollified.

Another increasingly ominous feature of the spreading terrorist scourge, is the extent to which recruiting is focused on the prison population. It is becoming more clear that Muslim fundamentalism is increasingly inclined to terrorist acts and violence, and is a religion dominated by bellicosity and hate. As such, they seek like-minded people who have extreme anger and desperation. What better place to recruit than prisons. The more you look at the satanic work of the terrorists, the more understandable recruiting dysfunctional, violent, lawless, and many times, paranoid individuals. Desperation, neuroses, poverty, hopelessness, jealousy, and lost control are fertile elements for recruiting suicide bombers and fanatics.

One of the dominant facts is the extent to which the Middle Eastern dictatorships, in another act of appeasement rivaling the European precedent, have stooped to placate the radical Muslim clerics in their midst. The essential fact is that the dictatorships of the Middle East, in addition to Europe, Russia, China, and many nations of Asia are as threatened by the religious terrorist as is the US. If the terrorists overstep, and continue to test their reach in the old republics of the Soviet Union, China, and Asia (Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia, are most exposed), they could create an unprecedented alliance to destroy the threat. In essence, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, etc. should be as concerned about shutting this down as the US. In fact, this may be the US's best hope in confronting the terrorists.   

To an extent, everyone is lulled into the security that a religion could not really sponsor violence and revolution, so there is this "boys will be boys" dismissal of the extent to which Islam is completely hijacked. The extent to which dysfunctional murderers hide behind an essentially peaceful religion and high-minded notions of Holy War, banishing the infidels, and destroying the Zionist threat all hide the truth that this is a geopolitical hate cult of great reach. In essence, the peaceful have been intimidated into accepting this morphed version of the religion. 

Our best hope is that the terrorists overreach and force a greater collaboration to defeat this tremendous threat to the free world and civilization. As we understand the seemingly bottomless pit of this hate movement, the markets will be forced to adjust to something as vicious as the Cold War. The big difference is that this is group that devalues life.... not just yours, but theirs.  

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