Islam is a very practical religion, very unburdensome. It is a nice communal religion much easier than Judaism. Judaism aims at creating a morally pure society. The goal of Islam is simply a decent society, a degree of civilization for barbarous Arabs. Islam does not regulate daily lives of its adherents beyond simple religious demands and basic ethical norms.

Islam exercises less control over the daily lives than Rabbinical Judaism and classic Pauline Christianity. Every Muslim cleric, theoretically, can issue fatwas, but so can any rabbi. Jewish Conservative Movement institutionalized that chaotic approach: every half-educated rabbi (including lesbian "rabbis") in a backwater synagogue can issue halacha, legal opinion, obligatory for his flock. On other hand, extreme centralization of religious authority in Catholicism led to scores of wars much bloodier than jihad. Fatwas of small-time clerics hold very little value in Islam. They have to come from recognized religious authorities, ideally from a (non-existent) caliph. Radicals interpret Islam to their ends, but Christian radicals similarly interpret their religion. Muslims are monotheists, do not worship images, follow reasonable laws, and substantially observe the Noahide laws for Gentiles. Islam is democratic and, beyond the core values – liberal.

Islam has a wonderful instrument of venting mob’s feelings: communal prayer-like lectures. Often politicized, they supercharge the masses and perhaps recruit a few terrorists most of whom would volunteer, anyway. Zeal of the masses escalates to unsustainable levels and soon evaporates. Muslim communal prayers are more like Western boxing matches than modern Christian preaching. Jews, with their formalized prayers, lack the psychological vent of fiery religious propaganda. Communal prayers convey powerful symbolism of their own: photos of million-strong crowds praying in Mecca are popular computer screensavers among Muslims.

Religions cannot afford tolerance but, as any corporations, erect monopolistic barriers against competitors. Zeal and a degree of violence are indispensable to religions. Polytheist religions competed like small firms – attracting others to their temples, but not attempting to put other temples out of business by legislative pressure. Monotheist Islam and relatively monotheist Christianity act as global corporations, influencing legislation to banish competitors. Islamist zeal is a natural behavior of monopolist religion. Christianity answered the encroachment of Islam into Europe with Crusades. Monopolists recourse to as much violence as they can within a given legal framework; stakes are very high, and global religions cannot be picky about means.

Just like with corporations, successful restructuring of mature religions is uncommon. Christianity reformed itself through Protestantism and survived as active religion for another four centuries. Muslims lack relative cultural homogeneity of Western Christians, and reformation of Islam is unlikely to succeed. Moderate Islam will remove the already low cultural barriers and allow assimilation of Muslims into the pop-culture. Zealous Islam is the only Islam which can survive as something other than indigenous tint on American culture in the Middle East.

Islam-baiters love to cry wolf about the alleged sign of female oppression, such as veil. In the 24th sura, women are commanded not to display their beauty – a reasonable suggestion among Bedu people, a matter of safety as well as modesty. The sura enjoins men similarly. In the 33rd sura, women are commanded to wear a cloak in order to be recognized as related to Mohammed – also a measure of safety. The purported reference to veil in the same sura is just the opposite of the Islamic tradition: ibn Malik tells Mohammed's guests to talk to his wives from behind a curtain (hijab), among other suggestions on how to avoid bothering him. It is men rather than women who need the curtain. In that case, curtain acts like a wall, protecting privacy of women in house, so that the men don't enter their space unannounced. There is no veil in Koran. It is Christianity that expressly prescribes veil in 1Cor11:6.

Islam prohibits usury, but Mohammed left the term undefined. Koran 2:282 deals at length with loans. 3:130 prohibits usury which doubles and compounds the original amount. 2:275 equals trade with usury, but allows trade. It seems that Koran bans only excessive interest rather than business loans. Judaism, more practically, prohibits interest charged to neighbors only. Classical Christianity prohibited interest altogether.

No religion differentiates between political and religious life. Islam is no exception. Jewish society was a theocracy for most of the recorded history. Vatican sought political dominance, and Protestantism shaped legal systems of its host countries. Think of how religious beliefs shape American life, from Christmas holidays to prohibition of polygamy to opposition to Islamic enemy. Iraq under Saddam was only a bit more religious than America. Egypt, Palestine, Dubai, Bahrain are hardly religious at all. Saudis like to legitimize themselves with religious nonsense, but other Muslims are skeptical about the Saudi Islamic credentials.

Rome was cynical about religion. Medieval Europeans were superstitious atheists rather than fervent Christians - look at the French cathedrals with persistent pagan themes. Renaissance swept dogmas away. Then came the religious resurgence. Something that the human psychological needs as deeply as religion cannot go away. Look at the number of books on Christianity and Buddhism at the US bookstores. Look at the many Americans’ experimentation with Hinduism and various types of Buddhism.
Christian sentiment is behind the anti-Muslim clash-of-civilizations hysteria. How are Iraq and Afghanistan different from the crusades? Both are the Christian world’s reaction to Muslim encroachment. Politically correct societies substitute "culture" for "religion" and "Islamism" for "Islam." Or witness public debates over gay marriage and abortion – a purely religious issue. Children are as much afraid of entering dark rooms in the 21st century as three thousand years ago. Religion, call it culture, civilization, psychology, or ideology is the most powerful drive of human beings, transforming a powerless individual into an interconnected part of transcendent all-powerful system, whether angelic or equally superstitious nationalist.

It's a delusion that suicide bombers feed on earthly failures and religious extremism. They are common nationalists, ready to die for their cause. Secular Russians were conducting suicide missions en masse during the WWII.

There is no Judeo-Christianity. Rabbis permit Jews to attend mosques, but never – churches. Islam is very close to Judaism in it affirming a single God and not worshiping images. And whatever the atheists say, no piece of Arab literature comes close to the language of Koran.

End the hostile propaganda. Purge the government and security forces of those affiliated with terrorists. Crack down on terrorists. Suppress incitation in media. Dissolve hostile militant organizations. Remove hostile propaganda from the education system. Fire those on the Most Wanted list from the government and security services. Accept foreign assistance in discovering and combating terrorists. Prosecute terrorists. Arrest the most wanted terrorists. Stop the flow of illegal arms and explosives. Clarify the hostile statements of government officials. Set a timetable for executing those demands.
The list sounds like Israeli demands to Palestinian Authority. Wrong. That’s the Austria-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia which opened the First World War.

Austria’s demands were sensible and extremely moderate. A Serbian killed Austrian prince – an extremely hostile act which, though formally short of casus belli, qualified as such in the context of Serbian militancy toward Austria-Hungary. Israel likewise invaded Lebanon after the Palestinians attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov. Assassination of Franz Ferdinand was not a criminal act by lone radical or a fringe group, but part of the large-scale plot by Serbian military.

Serbia was a secessionist territory of Austro-Hungary. Serbia was seething with political radicals and terrorists. Serbia’s government was almost non-existent, and the power belonged to security forces which supported the terrorists. Serbian radicals were pan-Slavic nationalists, just like the Palestinians are pan-Arab nationalists.

Just like Palestine, Serbia replied to the ultimatum with weasel words of acceptance. It accepted the ultimatum with minor clarifications which made the reply empty of meaning. Austria immediately sent a dispatch to European governments pointing out Serbia’s trick, but Serbia already scored huge PR victory by convincing the common Europeans of its goodwill. Just as with Arab declarations of peaceful intent, outsiders ignore the all-important small print.

Even after its ultimatum was de facto rejected, Austria-Hungary looked for a limited war, a punishing raid against Sarajevo. That proved wishful thinking just like the Israeli plans for ending Lebanon invasion at Litani River. Russia’s meddling assured a total war. Russia fought on behalf of Serbia just like half a century later it fought on Egypt’s side. Muslim countries push Palestinian to fight Israel like the Russian pushed Serbs.

WWI was fought for no good reason, over nothing but only to satisfy aspirations of nationalist grandeur and divert public attention from domestic problems. Germany didn’t expect to annex or even continuously occupy France, Russia hoped to gain very little by attacking Austro-Hungary, Serbia didn’t imagine scoring a victory against Austria, and Britain had only a remote interest in humbling Germany. WWI is often erroneously attributed to the web of diplomatic triggers and alliances. Nations, however, routinely ignore unwelcome obligations. Europe plunged into the war because everyone expected it to be short. The perspective of limited war is provocative.

WWI was about words. About joint statements. European treaties, worthless per se, became the important declarations of nationalism. Europeans elevated treaties into policies, and fought over them. Where statements are important, words become dangerous. The wording of Austrian ultimatum, Serbian response, weasel words of Austria-German treaty became casus belli.

The Europeans had no real grievances which would justify a major war. Nor do Jews and Arabs. In the situations of latent hostility, joint statements can lead to wars. The Annapolis statement ignites hopes with unrealistic promises. Unfulfilled hopes ignite societies.

Such as the Palestinian society.

Isolation is a means of Jewish existence. Anything not isolated, assimilates. If Jewish purpose is different from other nations’, then the Jewish life must be different. One cannot lead a different life while intermingling with others. Judaism is a full-day occupation. One cannot be a person like others (Gentiles) during the day, and remain Jewish at night in the private sphere. Moderately religious Jews and their atheist rabbis proclaim various "same-same but different" policies. A popular variety of such policy is economic interconnection along the ritual or demographic isolation. That won't work. People do business with trustworthy individuals. Only the predictable individuals are trustworthy. Only the individuals with readily comprehensible system of values are predictable. Throughout the history, Gentiles conducted with Jews simple business where it was enough to know of the Jews’ immediate honesty. Modern business transactions are complex and require full-fledged trust. Look at the difficulties American businessmen have doing business in China or Russia; mentality and value systems are too different for comfortable cooperation. Western (non-expatriate) investment in China remains minuscule compared to trans-Atlantic investment. A similar problem awaits the Jews if we want to be different and adhere to our own system of values. A religious Israel would be able to trade with other countries, but not engage in complex economic cooperation. No one likes odd partners.

Religious people cannot grow rich. Affluent, possibly, but not rich. Many rich hypocrites pose as religious, but they are assimilated, atheist, lack the fear of God, and conduct religion as a set of rites rather than live a religious life.

A common objection to the second Jewish state of Judea is its limited economic capacity. That is far from certain. A theocracy built around the laws of Torah would be a laissez-faire state with very low taxes and next to no regulation. Such a state can prosper in many areas from offshore banking to jewelry to tax haven. But the big question is, would Jews accept moderate economy in return for the religious and simply Jewish life? Judging by the millions of American Jews preferring assimilation and affluence of America to limited economic opportunities and Jewishness of Israel, few Jews would move to Judea.

But they will be the best Jews.

Why the Palestinian Arabs don’t proclaim a state? Nominally, they declared independence twenty years ago at the PLO meeting in Algeria, but have never followed it through with real state-building. Palestinians have all the pre-requisites for a de facto state: foreign exchange through transfers and aid, decent by the Arab standards economy, established political parties, recognized police force, government’s infrastructure from education to courts, and substantial control over their territory.

Palestinians would need some political equilibristic in proclaiming statehood, as they have to strike a balance between nationalist aspirations (the entire Palestine including Israel) and precluding Israeli invasion if their hostile intents are announced. Still, they can settle for weasel wording, such as declaring their right to the entire Palestine but recognizing Israel.

Independent Palestinian state risks Israeli blockade or at least the cessation of power and water supply, but in such a case Egypt and Saudi Arabia would supply free oil for Gaza’s power station. Drilling and water desalination can alleviate water shortages. Israel may close her borders to Palestinian labor, but Gaza is thus closed for seven years, anyway. Independent Palestine will no longer receive UNRWA subsidies, but drug revenues can substitute for the lost aid.

Jews, too, hesitated to proclaim our state. Jews could have declared independence already in the 1919 after the Balfour Declaration, but even in the 1948 many Jews doubted the independence. Ben Gurion’s declaration of independence came in the last moments of the window of legal opportunity the UN resolution offered the Jews.

As if taking responsibility for the nation were not enough, independence poses severe moral problems for Palestinian leaders. They need to betray up to three million of their kinsmen who harbor for four generations a hope of return. Palestinian state would be economically unable to absorb the refugees or even to resettle them. The relatively affluent West Bank Palestinians resent the influx of their compatriots from Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza who long lost work skills and evolved into a truly lawless bunch. The influx of refugees would be a real catastrophe for the West Bank Arab society.

Palestinians are also afraid of Jordan, a petty state which appealed to the US and Israel for protection against Syria, but plays an imperial power with the West Bank. Fatah has its own reason for avoiding independence: without being propped by Israel, that shallow egg laid by Arafat would crack open. For the Palestinian guerrillas, independence spells the descent from the gun-toting social status into unemployment. Arab governments want the Palestinian issue smoldering, both as an excuse for themselves to refuse recognition to Israel, and for their subjects to vent the hatreds on Jews.

Israeli establishment pays Palestinian leaders to avoid independence. From Israeli oligarchs who derive huge income from the monopoly trade with Palestine, to Israeli religious demagogues who speak of Jewish Judea so long as it remains under nominal Israeli occupation, to Israeli government which needs a low-intensity conflict to keep the Jewish population obedient, to Israeli security services which use the West Bank for training ground – every influential stratum of Israeli society resists de jure Palestinian independence.

Arafat miraculously refused independence in the 2000 when the Palestinians were on the brink of it. Abbas similarly rejected independence ahead of the Annapolis conference even though Israeli government only wanted him to minimally rein in the Palestinian guerrillas.

Nothing precludes Palestinians from grabbing their independence immediately. Israeli government agreed to abandon Judea and Samaria to Arabs, destroy small Jewish villages and exchange the larger Jewish towns for equal tracts of land, partition Jerusalem and give Arabs its most sacred area, and hinted at its readiness to aid the Palestinian state in absorbing the refugees.

The West’s left refuse to recognize an evident thing: there are no willful takers for the Palestinian independence.

In 2004, Israel assassinated Hamas leader Ahmed Yasin. All members of the UN Security Council except America approved a resolution condemning Israeli raid.
In 2005, police of Saudi Arabia, a major US ally and weapons buyer, arrested forty Christians in a private house in Riyadh for non-Islamic worship. The Saudi action caused no official condemnation.

For if the nations of the world should say to Israel, "You are robbers, for you conquered by force the lands of the seven nations [of Canaan]," they will reply, "The entire earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it and gave it to whomever He deemed proper When He wished, He gave it to them, and when He wished, He took it away from them and gave it to us." Rashi on Genesis 1:1.

It is simplistic to imagine that Olmert rushes for Palestinian statehood. Olmert is a master of political intrigues and unfulfilled promises. He repeatedly promised to remove checkpoints, but most are still in place. He also vowed to remove the outposts, but preserves them for two years now. He faces a powerful peacenik lobby of self-hating Jews bent on destroying the Jewish state. They strive to give the Temple Mount to Muslims and effectively relinquish Israeli control over the Old City of Jerusalem. Divesting of the Temple Mount has nothing to do with helping the Palestinians, but with crushing Jewish nationalism. The unnecessary destruction of Gush Katif was the first step. The defeatist camp successfully destroyed a huge community of Jewish zealots; until now, most cannot recover from psychological trauma and have no place to live in. Giving away the Temple Mount, the Old City, Hebron, and Judea will extinguish Jewish hope for returning to the Promised Land. Tel Aviv beaches lack biblical significance. Jews conquered Jewish land and gave it away; no nation can recover from such a shame for generations. The leftists need to give away the Temple Mount to assure their continued rule over demoralized, ideologically emptied Jews.

What is the alternative? Palestinians won't sign a peace deal with us unless we give them the Temple Mount. Fine, forget the Palestinians; why do we need peace with that primitive crowd? An alternative to peace is pacification, and Israel has enough tanks to pacify the hostile mobs. Palestinians fight for the Temple Mount; conservative Jews can fight, too. With the similar methods. More efficiently. The Knesset members who consider voting for relinquishing Jerusalem to Arabs must understand the resultant mortal danger to themselves and their families. Police won't protect them forever, and cannot protect thousands of their relatives and associates. Voting for relinquishing Jerusalem to Arabs should be a suicide, literally.

But we cannot rule the millions of Palestinians indefinitely. Nor do we need to. The number of Palestinians is vastly exaggerated both for political and economic (UN subsidies) reasons. The real number is closer to two millions. Polls indicate that at least a third of them want to emigrate, including 70% of the young. Leftist Israel actually impedes their emigration instead of wholeheartedly encouraging it. Being helped with visas and resettlement bonuses, young Palestinians would leave the West Bank and Gaza an aging society, dying out in the matter of a generation. Blockades and curfews, limited water supply and closure of Israeli markets would force working-age Palestinians to emigrate.
Even now, one percent of Palestinians live on the 58% of land in Judea and Samaria. The land is empty, prone to Israeli annexation without significant dislocation of the Palestinians.

But the world, what would it say about Israel? It will keep saying the same things Jews should have gotten used to during the two millennia.

I was the lone voice on the right against invading Iraq. The recent events in Iraq made even leftists supportive of the Iraqi affair. They are mistaken.

The reduction in the number of casualties and roadside bombs in Iraq looks awesome until we realize that further improvement will be much harder. The US Army made the security progress in Iraq by three measures: buying short-term allegiance of the Sunni tribal elders, flushing some guerrillas out of the convenient urban strongholds, and convincing Iran to step down its support for guerrillas. Now the list of macro-level solutions is exhausted. The residual guerrilla warfare represents the activity of small, semi-independent groups without state sponsors or fortified towns. They planted the whopping 1,560 roadside bombs in October.

The Mahdi Army, part of which suspended the military activity, is a militia rather than a guerrilla group. That is, Mahdi Army is a large, relatively organized, thus targetable force. The guerrillas who are attacking in Iraq now are small and loose, a target as formidable as drops of mercury in the grass. The excellent US Army did everything which could be done in military terms. Further improvement is only possible through painstaking police work or, more realistically, through the Saddam-type wide-scale terror against the supportive population.

Israeli example is instructive: it is possible to prevent 95-98% of terrorist attacks, but the 2-5% which take place eventually break the popular resistance and force major concessions. Iraq can never achieve a prevention ratio on par with small, totalitarian Israel. One market bombing a week somewhere in Iraq is a rate sufficient to bring government down. Terrorism is cheap, simple, and its sources are inexhaustible.

On the fundamental level, what can constitute an American victory in Iraq? Substituting a friendly strongman for Saddam is a rational answer, but not the one the US media would embrace. The politically correct Americans would prefer a democratic government in Iraq too weak to brutalize its people. Such government would either have to rely on Shiites and suppress Sunnis, or try balancing the rival groups like in Lebanon. The best Iraq the US can hope for will be made in Lebanon’s image, and equally unstable. Given the Kurds’ separatism and the foreign Arabs’ support of Iraqi Sunnis, the Lebanese model won’t last for long.

Republicans desperately need victory in the Middle East before the elections. They befriended a devil, that is, the ayatollahs. Iraqi militia depends on safe havens and considerable financing, and Iran provided both. The easy way to reduce fighting in Iraq was to convince Iran to desist. Iran agreed to desist. In return for what? A likely answer is that the US Administration compensated Iran for its help in Iraq with security guarantees. America will push for new sanctions but not attack the Iranian nuclear facilities.

The Administration probably worked on agreement with Syria to limit the infiltration of guerrillas into Iraq, and resented Israeli strike against Syria’s WMD facilities. Anyway, the US channeled considerable funds to Syria to strengthen its border security. Syria’s acceptance of the offer certainly hinged on the additional demands such as the Golan Heights.

Annapolis peace conference serves both to soothe the US Administration’s Arab friends and as a stand-alone PR measure for Bushies.

The purported discovery of Saddam’s documents implicating him of everything from the attacks on America to terrorism to WMD came suspiciously handy. Saddam’s connections with Al Qaeda are of the same stock as an average American’s connection to McDonald’s: like it or not, one day you eat there. Al Qaeda is a vague franchise, not organization. Everyone in the Muslim world is linked to someone in Al Qaeda. The US, too, is linked to Al Qaeda through the support of Afghan mujahedeen and the Iranian insurgents in Baluchistan. Pakistan, the US ally, was heavily involved with Al Qaeda. Syria works with Al Qaeda-affiliated Fatah al Islam in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar openly accommodate the well-known Al Qaeda cells. Saddam’s intelligence operated throughout the world, from Pakistan to Czechoslovakia to America. Sure it has some dealings with some groups affiliated with Al Qaeda. No need to translate any documents to guess that. That’s not, however, corpus delicti by the standards of international intelligence services.

The documents reportedly implicate Iraq in the anthrax mail attacks in America. So what? The United States bombed Iraq, humiliated it, patrolled it with aircraft, imposed sanctions on it – and expected no retaliation? The anthrax affair, if true, was the mildest response imaginable on the part of Iraq.

Iraq’s plans for purchasing precursors for chemical weapons are no surprise, either. Iran and Iraq used chemical weapons, and both countries clearly stocked them after the war. It is surprising that the documents only show Iraq’s intent of procuring the precursors rather than actual production. Iraqi chemical weapons, if any, are a negligible threat to Israel compared to hundreds of Syrian mid-range missiles or, worse still, Pakistani nuclear bombs. Iraqi WMD did not threaten America at all.

The touted transfer of Iraqi nuclear material to Syria is a sham. Syria reportedly received the uranium only enriched to a very low grade, not very different from nuclear waste available elsewhere. The transfer apparently arranged by the Russian military intelligence GRU already after the American invasion, is a shame to the US intelligence. GRU likely moved the uranium to Syria for purely commercial purposes, but it is also possible that the enriched uranium was Russian. In that case, GRU needed to clear the evidence. The Iraqi uranium’s origin can easily be traced from the radioactive signature of storage bunkers. The translated documents show that Iraq collected nuclear know-how – a far cry from developing nuclear weapons.

There is no honorable end to the Iraqi war, but America needs to end it.

To people who follow Ukrainian politics, Pakistan offers a sense of déjà vu. Bhutto, like Ukraine’s Julia Timoshenko, is an ultra-corrupt female leader posing as pro-Western but heavily relying on local throngs. Timoshenko relies on Ukrainian nationalists often indistinguishable from neo-Nazis, and Bhutto relies on the Islamists.

Most female leaders are inherently weak, and have to rely on someone. Bhutto, a woman, cannot control Pakistani army directly, but needs a proxy. If she opts for a proxy general, he would soon overturn her. So she chose Islamists for the proxy function. Incidentally, Bhutto’s policy put Islamists in charge of the Pakistani nuclear weapons. Many Pakistani nuclear scientists are hardcore Muslims, anyway, but Bhutto’s supporters are Islamists-Islamists, the professional Mus ims.

The US Administration obsession with Bhutto’s pro-Western attitude is ridiculous beyond words. Western diplomats commonly show such attitude toward the Western-educated, English- or French-speaking local thugs. When they lack Western education and don’t speak English, any other affiliation goes; Ukraine’s Yuschenko became the US Administration’s darling after he married a State Department’s official. Another textbook case of deception is the West’s obsession with Ahmed Shah Masood, a ruthless Afghan Islamist warlord who speaks good French and wears Bob Dylan’s beard.

Bhutto, an example of democratic aspirations, leads essentially a monarchic clique called Pakistan People’s Party, previously led by her father and mother. There is just no way that two women can be democratically elected to lead a political party in rigidly Islamic country. Bhutto spent very short time in Pakistan, staying mostly in the US, UK, and United Arab Emirates. She had very little contact with common Pakistanis, certainly not enough for the groundbreaking rise of a woman to prime minister in Islamic country. Bhutto’s leadership of PPP proves exactly the opposite of what the US Administration ascribes to her. Bhutto ascended to power in no democratic way, and is no supporter of democracy. She is the head of a clan, somewhat short of a queen. Specifically, she is the head of Islamist clan: her support comes from Punjab, a proverbially Islamist region. Bhutto routinely acts in accord with Jamaat e-Islami, the political front for Pakistan’s Islamists. She installed Taliban in Afghanistan. PPP explicitly promotes Islamic socialism, and was very close to the Soviet Union.

Bhutto’s “commitment” to transparent government is supported by the Interpol’s warrant for her arrest on corruption charges. Bhutto was sentenced for money laundering – not in the dubious Pakistani courts, but in the impeccable Switzerland’s. During her terms as Pakistan’s prime minister, Bhutto did nothing worthy of mention, except enriching herself and her cronies. To all purposes, she proved herself grossly incompetent as a country’s leader – a natural outcome for graduates of Harvard and Oxford where the leftist education is divorced from reality.

Bhutto is not particularly popular in Pakistan; how could a woman, essentially a foreigner, and a corrupt politician be popular? PPP got only 23% of the seats in the 2002 elections, and even of that modest number, many MPs do not support Bhutto, even defected to other factions.

It is puzzling what wrong the US Administration finds with General Musharaff who staunchly supports the US Afghan invasion, abandoned Taliban and Islamic fighters in Kashmir, and represses Muslim terrorists. Musharaff staked everything on the rapprochement with America. He alienated every good Muslim in Pakistan, down to Osama bin Laden. In return, the US Administration didn’t even release to Pakistan the fighter jets which Pakistan has paid for long ago, and whose delivery was frozen since.

It would be soothing if the US Administration pursued a sensible plan of installing Bhutto in Pakistan to use her home base in Sindh province as a camp for operations in Iranian Baluchistan to sabotage the Ahmadinejad’s regime. Such strategic thinking, however, is unlikely. More probably, the Black professor in the White House sympathizes with the fellow female who holds academic degree from American university.

Israel-Syria military escalation is driven by mutual fear, recalling the Cold War arms race. The Cold War ended peacefully while the similar fear-induced conflicts from WWI to the Six-Day War ended up in military engagement. The difference is crucial for understanding foreign relations: fear versus crushing fear. The first response to fear is strengthening oneself. Then, if the enemy is not deterred he should be preempted; thus the Six-Day War. The prolonged state of fear, especially combined with one’s increasing strength, provokes wars; Russia and Germany plunged into the WWI.

It was entirely different with Cold War. Tens of thousands of nuclear warheads made the war prohibitively destructive; the fear of enemy was crushing. Theoretically, crushing fear can lead to desperate attack. That hardly happens in practice for whatever is crushed, cannot rebound.

Israel fears Syrian military buildup on the Golan Heights. Syria fears Israel’s military exercises near the Golan Heights and political instability in Israel. Israel fears hundreds of Syria’s mid-range missiles and tens of thousands of short-range rockets capable of showering Israel in spite of her missile defenses. Syria fears Israeli attack against its missile sites and other military installations. That cycle of mutual fear cannot be discharged by diplomatic efforts. It should be escalated beyond the other party’s tolerance. Israel should declare the immediate nuclear annihilation of Syria in response to its rocket shower on Israel.

Assad believes he can get the Golan Heights back without winning the war, just like Egypt got the Sinai though lost the war in 1973. Threat of regional destabilization will put the US pressure on Israel to cede the Golan Heights to Syria. Assad, therefore, can start a war to lose it. Olmert needs a major victorious war for his career. Iran wants a war in the Middle East to defuse attention to its nuclear program. IDF needs a war with conventional enemy to recover its reputation losses in fighting guerrillas. The stage is set for a senseless war that everyone needs.

The concept of crushing fear fully applies to the Palestinians. The British quashed Palestinian insurrection in 1930s by overwhelming retaliation which included razing of towns, mass killings, and other orthodox military measures. Instead of provoking Arab insurgents with tales of Palestinian statehood, Israel should crush the hopes of Palestinians: kill every high bureaucrat and member of the PA parliament, ban political associations, shoot suspected guerrillas, and transfer the population. Palestine with a hope is better for Israel than a hopeless Palestinian state.

The South African model is urged on Israel by many well-wishers from the West and especially from Muslim countries. Other Muslims despise the stereotypical Palestinian brigands and are happy for Israel to repress them, albeit tacitly, without provoking the purported inter-Muslim unity. Even the West's leftists urge Israel to follow the South African example for the politically correct oppression of aborigines. Leftists are foremost social activist and subscribe to the white man's burden concept; South Africa ostensibly proves that the cultural colonialism can coexist with superficial tolerance.

The real South Africa today is a classic case of the feast in time of plague. Tourists shake their heads at the sight of endless slums, acknowledging in the depth of their conscience the white man's deserved superiority. Business is going well in white neighborhoods, and Afrikaners drive expensive cars. Black faces dot the South African politics and sometimes seen in boardrooms. White farmers got used to the rampaging murder rate, about 0.3% per annum. Police learned to ignore petty crimes such as the immense driving-under-influence, estimated at more than 20% at night. Tourists accepted a 1% chance of being assaulted. Black girls are not romantically hysterical over the 25% chance of being raped before they reach adolescence. And the whites fence their houses off with a combination of walls, razor wire, and electronic detectors which would make the Sing Sing jealous.

By breaking down the apartheid, South Africa created not one, but two societies: of Afrikaners and coloreds versus the various black tribes. There is not a chance of forging a single society. Society depends on common values and culture, shared history, and comparable development and abilities. Society has to be relatively homogeneous, but even the wildest liberals won't imagine a homogeneous society of 8% advanced, hard-working whites and 90% of backward blacks with no skills or work ethics whatsoever. Even the United States, whose Blacks are 140 years past the agricultural employment, didn't mix them homogeneously. A rare white person in America would venture to a black lawyer or doctor, even if he has graduated from the best university. American Blacks are relatively few, which gives the whites a hope of integrating them. South African Blacks are too many for the white minority to integrate them.

The white well-wishers in the West face a difficult situation. They, for example, provided food and medicines to sub-Saharan Africans to ease the horrendous death rate. In return, sub-Saharan population increased manifold – and now many more people require the assistance. South Africa's climate is more conducive to agriculture, but no agricultural scheme can employ forty million people. The US, a huge consumer of agricultural product and a major exporter, employs less than ten million people in agriculture-related industries. Even if the Blacks in South African slums miraculously acquire agricultural skills and burn all the forests and savannahs to conduct subsistence agriculture, they would still remain jealous of the prosperous whites, robbing whom would seem a preferable solution to tilling the land. Food is cheap. Feeding even the bourgeoning population is no big deal, but they keep adjusting their aspirations to what they see on car battery-run TV's and in the white neighborhoods. There is just no way of leapfrogging Africa through the several cultural stages from the Bronze Age tribal societies into modern economies. Unlike the Asian nations which leapfrogged into modernity, African tribes lack developed religion – and books which come with it, work ethics, and culture of learning. That's not to say that Africans are unable of developing. I've seen many Africans with astonishing craving for books, and Mozambique provides an example of an African country genuinely seeking progress. But institutional changes, especially on the continent level, lag generations behind the pioneering examples. Besides, too many power players from Western corporations to ex-colonial powers to new South African empire have strong interest in keeping Africans backward, attached to the lifeline of international aid and occasional peacekeeping actions. Africa is destined to remain the world's slum.
In China, a minuscule proportion of the population is engaged in efficient industrial production, and the much-touted Chinese exports are mere 2.5 times those of the tiny Netherlands; the consumable income of common Chinese is negligible. Even in America, the majority of population works in service industries. If the world cannot employ efficiently some 100 million of relatively well educated Americans, what are the chances of employing 700 million Africans? Modern efficient agriculture and industrial production require very few hands, and Africans don't even have the hard-working Chinese hands. Whatever view we take with respect to the causes of ethnic differences, Africans lag tremendously behind other cultures.

The underlying idea of post-apartheid state is that economic dominance of whites compensates for nominal political equality of the blacks. That would work in a rational world, which ours is not. Our world is the world of jealousy. South African Blacks won't sit idle watching the whites prosper. The blacks won't embark on an arduous, generations-long path of catching up with the whites, enjoying their beneficial example and crumbles from their economic table. They will rather expropriate the whites' wealth now and to hell the consequences. The expropriation will come through many venues: increased taxation and redistribution of wealth, infrastructure projects in the black slums, and robbery. Smart Afrikaners will bribe the black politicians and otherwise convince them to choose economy over the Black nationalism. As long as that nationalism is suppressed, whites are relatively safe. The creation of a class of relatively educated Blacks signals emergence of the pool of potential leaders. Some of them will call for simple solutions, such as taking over the whites' wealth. British occupation was hugely beneficial to India, but overturned. Jewish minority was hugely beneficial to various European countries, but annihilated. There is no chance that South African Blacks will prove any more rational than Europeans or Indians.

The best policy for the whites in South Africa would be to leave the country to blacks but carve for themselves a small, predominantly white enclave. That shouldn't be a problem in the vast expanses of South Africa. The Afrikaners' colonialist mentality, however, have long gave way to imperialist mentality, and they prefer a doomed empire to comfortable community.

Conservatives are simpletons. They cling to old ways and resist progress. Though time-tested, their ways are unfashionable and unscientific. Science is an experimental approach; in social issues, experiments are performed on humans. Conservatives lack the bright ideas which would dramatically improve the situation; the stubborn conservatives maintain that bright ideas never work in social relations. Conservatives condemn the world to an irritatingly slow pace of development through minor trials, errors, and adjustments. They reject the self-evident notion that peace can be achieved through negotiations and insist on the old-fashioned victory. Conservatives don’t believe that great minds shape societies, and maintain that societies develop on their own. Conservatives insult great politicians by doubting their role and influence.

The left are smart, educated, active, and well-organized. They achieve well, and easily beat the conservatives either in public debates or in politics. The left clear the scene for themselves, act, proved wrong, and act again. The left manipulate the masses and therefore depend on collective action. It is impossible to gather masses for a good purpose; people only unite out of fear or hatred. The best hope is to direct the evil collective action against a greater evil; that’s called a war of liberation. People don’t want freedom per se; family and job obligations leave little place for freedom in daily lives. Rather, people want freedom from those they hate, and so the wars of liberation are actually the wars of (justified?) hatred, against a hated oppressor. The left, therefore, are themselves hateful and unleash the power of hatred in masses. Witness zigzags of Israeli politics.

Haim Ramon is a centrist vice prime minister (the prime minister of vice, indeed). He is a convicted sexual offender. Not really a rapist, but forcibly kissed a soldier girl – a soldier who might as well die one day defending the likes of Ramon. At the same time, Ramon did an immensely important job of reining in the activist Supreme Court. Ramon fought the court’s most egregious excess: internal appointment of judges. That’s not a joke: Israeli Supreme Court opted for real independence and started appointing its own judges. The Supreme Court thus evolved into a black box churning out ultra-left verdicts with no legislative input. Back in the office after serving a mild sentence, Ramon conspired with Fatah to abandon Judea and partition Jerusalem. He criticized Ehud Barak, of the leftist Avodah Party, for right-wing views when Barak doubted that Fatah can uphold any security promises. Then, Ramon slammed Israeli government for abandoning its earlier decision to cut electricity supply to the hostile Gaza.
Ramon’s policies can be superficially designated as non-religious nationalism: he wants security for Israel but doesn’t care about religiously or historically significant places. That is a typically leftist attitude of creating artificial entities – in this case, an Israeli nation bereft of any religious or historical connections. But Ramon is smart, and cannot imagine security for Israel locked in 8-mile-wide borders. Ramon is an experienced politician and knows that concessions only embolden Arabs for further demands; they won’t stop even at partitioning Jerusalem. The only firm line in Ramon’s politics is hatred, the hatred of everyone and burning desire to manage and reform - the desire of power. Hatred and power, that’s what the leftism is about. Ramon equally hates the Jews and the Arabs. He gladly strips Jewish judges of their mammoth power, makes religious Jews suffer by abandoning Judea and Jerusalem, and oppresses the Arabs in Gaza. Ramon personifies evil, but he is not the only one.