Of Science, Christianity, Jews, War, Demography and Islam

 

We can cover the initial item, the war against the Jewish People, with a simple recognition of historical fact which has become so well known and uncontestable, as stated in the Passover Haggadah, “In every generation one rises up against us.” That simple sentence states the minimal condition where there is one person who will rise up and call for our murders. The unstated and unfortunate reality is that one is often a political leader, a leader of a nation, or the dictator of an empire who is the one rising to destroy us. The list is filled with illustrious names of their eras with names such as Pharos Ramses I and Pharos Ramses II, Haman, Nebuchadnezzar, King Ahasuerus, Tsar Nicholas II, Ottoman rulers Sultan Mehmed I, Mehmed II, Suleiman I, Mustafa I, Murad IV, Suleiman II, Mahmud I, Abdülhamid I, Mehmed V, Musa Çelebi and the remainder of the Ottoman leadership throughout the ranks all used the Jews to fund their positions. This continued from invader to invader and foreign rulers and dispersion sent Jews throughout the Roman and later the Ottoman Empires and beyond to every corner of the globe driven most often through the necessity to flee pogroms, rioting or genocidal efforts to destroy the small minority of Jews within almost every border.

 

Probably the least obvious but greatest surprise was the reaction by the Japanese High Command when visiting Nazi SS officers demanded that the Japanese release their Jews and send them to the German death camps. The Japanese flatly refused the German demands threatening to turn against Germany should these demands persist. The Nazi officers left empty handed and with much challenged authority after having their wings clipped. The Palestinians and their Arab and Iranian backers are the most evident threat to Jews with many others in the background ready to launch into the picture. Anti-Semitism has returned across much of the globe including Europe, Russia, the Arab World and even to include the United States and the rest of the Developed World. The new anti-Semitism includes two new forms, anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism. The sad part is that many far left Jews are what are referred to as Post-Zionists who no longer believe in a Jewish nation and instead call for a joint nation allowing all the Arabs claiming to have been dispossessed to return with full rights. The small problem is that under their solutions, hundreds of thousands of Arabs claiming refugee status would take advantage of the opportunity to move to the area and live in an area where the economy functions. These Arabs would far outnumber the Jews who would soon find Arab rule destroying their efforts and stealing all that has been built leading to their eventual destruction. Israel would be dissolved and the Jews fleeing or dead should such a plan ever be enacted. The problem is the leftist parties already within the Israeli governance who are willing to do whatever it takes to get into power and enact just such a dream under the idea of solving the problems. There are two ways of solving problems, allow the problem to win or to continue the limited immigration rather than opening the floodgates and surrendering to the coming destruction of all which has been built.

 

All right, so the Jews have been persecuted in both the Muslim and Christian worlds nearly constantly and before by the major idolatrous powers for close to four thousand years should one include the exile in Egypt which was where distrust of the Jews, known then as the Hebrews, first began and has continued unabated ever since. But the Christians have controlled almost half of the world for the past eighteen centuries, how are they now included as persecuted? That is an easy one to answer, there was the remainder of the world which they did not control and sometimes they suffered from Christian upon Christian violence such as the War of the Roses. the Hundred Years’ War, Second Hundred Years’ War (the first lasted 116 years and the second lasted 126 years), the Eighty Years’ War and the entirety of the Catholic-Protestant wars including the Thirty Years’ War and more all of which were ended by the treaties named the Peace of Münster and the Peace of Westphalia. Another war which has taken many forms and been fought on many fronts have been the wars between the ever expanding Islamic forces against Christendom which started as early as 622 AD or 625 AD (see map below) depending on the source, but all sources would agree that Christianity was being conquered by Islam and was well underway by 650 AD (see map below). This war is still being fought today, at least by Islam even if not by Christendom.

 

Christian World 500AD

 

 

Islamic Conquests Under the Caliphs

 

Christianity has been facing an even more insidious encroachment which has been eating at it from within. This has been the modernization and the growing Secular Humanism belief where there is no longer any reason to believe in a Supreme Being as technology and science have described most of what was originally attributed to the gods or to a Supreme Being. The rest of the reasoning for Secular Humanism claims that humans can act honestly and ethically without any expectations of rewards or punishments from any higher source. The only need is to rely on ourselves, our better inclinations, the laws we write, and the communal expectations and limits which are mutually agreed upon to prevent actions which would be deemed undesirable. Should we have any problems, those can be resolved through government actions and laws which will become the new guides as to how we live our lives. The new guardians of our humanity will be the new anointed ones in long robes, the judiciary, which will act by the cold application of the laws. This revolution has all but stripped the heart out of Christian Europe leaving it without the steadying guidance of a traditional set of moral truths which have been replaced by what one would expect of any faith where mankind is the highest moral judge, hedonism. This hedonistic value system which places the personal freedom and pleasures above any other expectation has led to a precipitous drop in the reproductive rate leaving Europe, including Russia, with a steadily declining population which has an ever increasing average age as in many instances the reproductive rate has fallen to 1.5 births per woman or even lower. Some examples include Moldova and Portugal with 1.2 births per woman; Bosnia-Herzegovina, Greece, Poland and Spain at 1.3 births per woman; Cyprus, Hungary, Italy, Malta and Slovakia at 1.4 births per woman; Austria, Bulgaria, Channel Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Switzerland and the Ukraine at 1.5 births per woman. The replacement rate in the developed world is 2.1 births per woman with it reaching as high as 3.4 births per woman in some developing countries with higher infant mortality rates and with the global average being 2.33 births per woman. Modernity and the related influences have also had an effect upon the Islamic world or, as some have theorized, the conditions have grown unbearable to the point that people no longer desire to bring children into this world in these countries which does not explain why their birth rates were so much higher ten, twenty, thirty and fifty years ago. The evidence is the introduction of electricity, television, modern comforts and conveniences have brought the same problems to the Islamic world as it develops as it has the Christian world though in the Islamic world none dare claim they are Secular Humanists for fear of being executed. The other variable is education and literacy. These are related issues and for the majority of MENA nations, they have just started to witness changes in these areas. Below we have a graph of the literacy rates for women aged fifteen to twenty-four years of age in Oman, Iran, Algeria, Egypt and Morocco as these are the prime start of childbearing ages and increased literacy usually leads to higher grade education and even increased college admissions which raise the age of initial childbearing thus lowering the average number of births per woman in a nation.

 

Literacy in Oman, Iran, Algeria, Egypt and Morocco

 

Where this will make a difference in the future is with lower births, Islam will soon approach or possibly equal Christians in reproductive rates and thus an equilibrium will have been met. The main factor which has spurred the recent upsurge in Islamic expansion was a combination of retaining high reproductive rates while experiencing lower infant mortality rates thus leading to a rapid increase in populations which strained the economic growth, or lack thereof, across the MENA states. This was brought on with the introduction of modern medical facilities in many if not most of the major cities thus providing better prenatal and post-birth care resulting in lower infant mortality and better reproductive health for the women as well. But modernity has started to catch up in the form of education and literacy which has provided women with more information and a greater opportunity to work and find economic improvement. These are items which most often have produced dropping reproductive rates in nations worldwide. The MENA nations of the Muslim world are no different. With a more steady population returning, these nations are not going to be likely to feel any need for expansionist policies nor will they be demanding greater ability for their excess population to migrate into Europe and the rest of the developed world. Further, as their world develops they will find the need to retain their populations, especially their now educated population, and this will lessen their pressures on the rest of the world. This will lessen the pressures Islam has been pressing on the Christian world and the lines will remain drawn as they currently are with hopefully a lessening in the levels of violence experienced in these regions, particularly the African Transition Zone (see map below) where some of the greatest Islamic-Christian conflicts have occurred.

 

African Transition Zone

 

This will still leave the threats posed by the increasing Secular Humanism but there may even be a light in the darkness here as well. The last centuries have seen science remove much of the mysteries in our lives and explain away things we thought mystical removing their magic and cementing explanations. Now the scientists are really getting into the very fabric which our universe consists of and they are finding some things which are changing opinions and the argument. The first item was the realization that had any of numerous constants been different by even less than one single percentage point in relationship with all of the others, then our universe would have been very different or not have existed at all. Even had it simply been different, that would still have made lifeforms, such as ourselves, impossible, and that does put a different look to things. We are now realizing how extremely special and precious our universe actually is and that it appears in many ways to have been designed especially for life to exist. Still, even with such a design we are realizing that intelligent life, if that is what we qualify as being, may not be anywhere near as abundant and actually so special that there may only be a small number of other intelligent species in our galaxy if even one other and even so, they may not exist in our time frame. We are starting to see that we may be the only intelligent life in the Milky Way at this time and as such, we may not find other intelligent life with whom we would have anything in common. It may be that if there is another intelligent lifeform, they have colonized other star systems and are so far advanced from us that we would have nothing in common, and we would be fortunate if they even considered us intelligent. On the other hand, we may be the first and foremost intelligent lifeform and should we reach the point of colonizing other star systems, then when the next intelligent lifeform evolves, we might be so far in advance of them that we would not realize their being intelligent, though we would probably think so much of ourselves that we would posit we would be capable of realizing their intelligence. Our lack of ability to see the abilities of animals on our own planet does place this in danger.

 

What does any of this have to do with the threats to Christianity and Judaism or belief in a Supreme Being at all? What would be the result of science proving that there was an actual intelligent design to the universe? What happens when science postulates the existence of a Supreme Being which came before and may very well exist currently and will continue existing even after our universe dies? Does that definition sound familiar to anybody? Should science, or a fair number of scientists which has already begun, start to make an argument, then religion, Judaism and Christianity would find their beliefs becoming more aligned with science, actually, it would be science becoming aligned with them, and this could benefit both sides of that equation. There will always be those areas of doubt where science has yet to assign numbers and equations and is still somewhat fuzzy on what is occurring, but we are not referring to using lack of knowledge as the reasoning for Supreme Being. What we are referencing is that science will have found formulations and such proofs and items which point to there being a necessity for an ordering intelligence to the universe and that this creates the need in science for a Supreme Being. Professor Einstein believed in the existence of an ordering logic behind the universe and was a believer in Hashem. His belief may not have fit with your average Rabbi, Priest, Minister or Cleric, but at least he saw a necessary place for such belief. We know that Physicist Stephen Hawking is a doubter who does not believe or find any need for a Supreme Being. But what can you expect for a person who also lends his name to the BDS Israel campaign, which is an attempt to economically cripple the Jewish State. Guess one could say that Stephen Hawking and the Supreme Being are not in agreement, and we know on which side with which we prefer to reside. But, science is growing closer to religion and religion has learned from their mistakes and has left room for science, being assured in their belief that the proof is out there. Christianity can take faith from the fact that the Jews remain a force in the world that there is hope for them to have similar lasting power providing they remain open to ideas and willing to meet facts with reasonable skepticism and sufficient confidence to admit when perhaps they had made an error in their previous position. We can only hope that the world of science can be equally acceptive and honest.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Coming American Foreign Policy Challenges and One Done Right

 

We may as well start by talking briefly about the one area that the United States has started addressing and thus far has taken the proper and righteous approach. Contrary to what many have claimed, President Trump had begun to implement a Syria strategy. The first, and thus far, primary step has been to work to show that the United States has a group they are willing to stand with and are going to protect. They have made this statement boldly and sent a message to President Erdogan of Turkey that the Kurds are to be left alone. No longer will his indiscriminate attacks by air and land against the Kurds be tolerated and if President Erdogan desires to join the fight in Syria, then it will be against the Islamic State like he has told the world he was fighting and not against the Kurds who was who he was really fighting. The green and gold banner of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and the colors of the United States were noticeable as they flew side-by-side in northern Syria for the first time. The images of Army Strykers and YPG vehicles rolling in Kurdish territories in Syria flooded social media and is intended to send a hands-off message to Turkish forces and to President Erdogan in Ankara. The YPG Militias are part of the Syrian Democratic Forces that the United States has been backing through arming them and now is showing a more active support. In the Washington Times Erdogan was quoted saying on Sunday that he vowed to carry out more strikes against Kurdish targets in northern Syria, telling reporters in Istanbul he was “saddened” by the images of the American and YPG flags flying in tandem. He impressed that this would be a major issue at his scheduled May meeting with President Trump in mid-May. We hope President Erdogan is prepared to be disappointed.

 

United States Armored Troops Move into Kurdish Areas of Syria

 

More news on the Syrian front comes as the White House has called for making areas safe-zones complete with enforced “No-fly zones” in place. President Trump spoke at length with Russian President Putin and it was reported that the talks were productive and the two men appear to have found some common middle ground. It is expected that Turkey’s President Erdogan will oppose any no-fly zones or safe zones that include Kurdish held ground as President Erdogan has sworn to wipe the Kurdish people from the map as he sees them as no different than the Ottomans viewed the Armenian and he desires applying the same solution. Should Presidents Putin and Trump reach an accord on these safe zones and no-fly zones and mutually enforce such, then Erdogan would prove to be a mad-man should he decide to test the resolve of Russia and the United States. Still, we suspect that he will test the American resolve at least twice and once he loses some of his aircraft will he finally return to Turkey and resign that he will not reach his envisioned “Greater Turkey” (see map below). Meanwhile, despite the fact that Syrian Dictator Bashir al-Assad would dearly love to see the Kurds crushed, he shares with Erdogan their mutual hatred of the Kurds viewing them as less Muslim than their own people, the Alawites for Assad and the Turks for Erdogan. As far as the Russians are concerned, as the Kurds have mostly just protected their own spaces and not attacked anyone other than the Islamic State, they are not posing any direct threat to Russia or Assad in their eyes. This will likely lead Putin to allow the Kurdish areas to be designated safe zones and placed under a no-fly order, which would fall to the United States to enforce. President Trump can expect Erdogan to attempt to disallow American aircraft from the base in Turkey to be utilized for this purpose. President Trump could then use an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea off of Syria or Israel, secretly use an Israel airfield, or ignore Erdogan and test his resolve. Erdogan just might be the fool enough to test President Trump by taking measures against American forced in Turkey thus potentially making Turkey the test case for what happens to people who test a commitment by President Trump. We figure such would be a very risky move with terrible consequences, but Erdogan believes that the United States is still under weak leadership as the American media have portrayed President Trump with their constant questioning and belittling his every move. This could have horrible consequences.

 

Greater Turkey

 

There will be two areas where President Trump will face great tests. His being used to business deals where contracts actually mean what the two sides intend to commit to is quite different than when dealing with rogue regimes. President Erdogan will simply be an introductory course in the art of international miscreants. There will be little learned here as this will be reminiscent of President Trump’s days growing up in a rough and tumble New York neighborhood where deeds were the real rest and talk often could substitute for deeds until somebody called you on your words and you needed to then prove your mettle. The real test will come from North Korea and the Palestinian Arabs. Both Kim Jong Un and Mahmoud Abbas have the same record in observing and keeping promises made in agreements, none. Both men will sign agreements, demand the other side meet all obligations and then refute that any demands or promises were made by their side and renege on everything upon which they had agreed. This defaulting by them has no bearing on their demands that everyone else meet the terms of that very agreement. This is the kind of dealing which gets one a bad name in business dealings but is not so uncommon in international affairs. The dictatorial and rogue states are well versed in double-dealing and will not feign from taking affront at others’ comments about them while dispensing insults as if they were candy at a children’s birthday party. This may be something Trump needs to realize that there is no arbitration between nations and the only means of enforcing agreements is through coercion, threat or actual use of force. Where this may be undesirable, it is still a necessary lesson that such is the way of the world and things are far from ideal.

 

Kim Jong Un and Mahmoud Abbas

 

The first installment of this message came fast and furious from the Palestinian Authority (PA) this week. While President Trump lauded Mahmoud Abbas for promising to end the payments to terrorists and their families commensurate on the numbers of Israelis the murdered and injured including those in prison in Israel, Mahmoud Abbas and nearly the entirety of the PA hierarchy upon Abbas returning came out in force to deny that any such promise had passed his lips. They also pointed out that such payments were a central tenet of their government and would continue. We guess the good news is that at least they did not announce an increase in these payments. This comes atop news that President Trump promised the PA additional funds and we can only hope that these funds are now prevented in response to the announced continuing for using such funds to reward terrorism directly, a definitive form of incitement if ever there was one. The unilateral PA announcement that funds will continue to be used to pay terrorists benefits commensurate with people murdered and maimed should be used by Congress, if the President does not take the initiative, as the reason to end all United States aid to the PA and to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). The additional reason for including UNRWA is the curriculum, which is full of terror incitement and terrorist glorification throughout their schoolbooks and enforced further by employing Hamas members as teachers and administrators in Gaza and PA appointees in similar positions in Judea and Samaria. Their teaching incitement and aggrandizement of terrorism is reason enough under stipulations already in place to end funding to all entities involved. This is but the first test from these two fronts.

 

President Trump will need to understand the duplicitous dealings from these actors before dealing with Iran who proved to have taken President Obama to the cleaners. The fact is President Obama desired just such an end and actually led the parade with the part of class clown aptly played by Secretary of State John Kerry. The fact that Secretary Kerry was actually attempting to please his boss and attempting to do as best as he could only added to the shame heaped on the United States by the Nuclear Deal with Iran. Making matters even worse was the fact that Iran wrote up the agreement they were to make in Farsi which nobody at the State Department or Defense Department ever translated or checked to verify it concurred at least with the European or Russian versions, we already knew the United States version was for domestic use only and that everyone had their own version, this deal was a farce in action. When the news broke that the United States version given to the media did not jibe with either the Russian or the European versions, the Russian and European versions at least matched fairly well and were likely the sole true representation of the actual agreement, the media reported on that for two days never quite detailing the differences and then the Iran deal became old news seldom to be mentioned again until the campaign and Trump using it as a campaign point. Such a fiasco can and must never be permitted again in the future and any and all translations need be vetted for reality and matching the actual points as agreed upon, otherwise we are allowing each member to write and sign their own version of reality and everybody leaves with copies of a treaty which do not match one-another and everyone just then does what they decide is best and no real treaty exists.

 

Kin Jong Un is also delusional, megalomaniacal, and dangerously paranoid. This is not a healthy combination when it comes to world leaders of nations, especially nations on the verge of having warhead size thermonuclear weapons and the ICBM’s on which to place them threatening the entirety of the globe. The entire population of North Korea have been raised and actually believe that when their country fails, that is when, not if, that the entire globe will also be failing as everywhere is just like North Korea. The reality is except for Venezuela of late, the rest of the globe is doing much better than North Korea which is an even more dysfunctional state than Hamastan in Gaza, the PA in Judea and Samaria and possible on par, without the warfare, with Syria. The people are close to starving as a rule of life, there is little relief in sight but they honestly believe that should North Korea fail by war, starvation or plague, then the entirety of the globe must fail with them. This is how they are educated from infancy through into the military if they are fortunate as the military at least can afford food and shelter. Kim Jong Un lives like a king and his top people, military commanders live well, and he is only shown small areas of the capital of Pyongyang where his leadership live in relative comfort with ample housing. The distressing poverty of the country is kept from his eyes as should he realize the mismanagement, nobody can predict how many and whom he would have executed as responsible. As he has had an uncle executed for speaking sharply to him, executed a general for treason with little evidence and even less of a trial and his half brother assassinated sending a hit squad to another nation to murder him, Kim Jong Un has earned his credentials as unstable. How to make such a person hold to a treaty or anything resembling sanity is the question. Strangling him through embargoes may be all it would take for him to initiate nuclear Armageddon.

 

As if Erdogan, Kim Jong Un, Hamas, the PA, Islamic State and Bashir al-Assad was not enough facing President Trump plus a roguish President Putin with his exploits, there is one last madman backed by a regime of madmen, Iran. Their Supreme Leader, the Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei (Persian: سید علی حسینی خامنه‌ای‎‎) believes that he speaks with and for Allah and Muhammad here on earth. He is to be the leader to prepare all Islam for the coming of the Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam who has been in hiding for near on nine-hundred years. His return is to be some mythically magical event and a highway has been built from the perceived well in Qom to the center of the capital of Iran, Yehran, where he will be welcomed by the Supreme Leader, the Assembly of Experts and others from the religious heirarchy in Iran. Iran had two independent militaries with seperate lines of command and sets of orders. The Iranian military is a normative military which is tasked with protection of the nation from all external enemies. The IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) is responsible for activities outside the nation and national security within the nations including the religious police. They are responsible for providing troops and weaponry for the efforts in Syria, for Hezballah in Lebanon, occasionally for arming, training and providing rocket technology to Hamas in Gaza, running and securing the training camps in the Tri-Border region in South America. The Tri-Border Region (see map and picture below) is an area on the borders of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil and an area where all three national police and militaries refuse to interfere. It was from these camps that the terror squads, which carried out the bombings on Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires, were carried out. This has been an IRGC and Hezballah training paradise since the mid 1970’s and has faced little to no interference largely because it is almost as well armed as any force that might be sent to face them in the surrounding jungles. This is the reach available to the IRGC who are in close operational interconnectivity with Hezballah as both serve Iran as foreign contingents. The advantage of the IRGC working with Hezballah is that through such affiliation they provide Iran with sufficient separation to have plausible deniability. Never suspect that Iran does not know how to play political games, remember that it was the Persians who invented the game of chess.

 

Tri_Border Region of South America Terror training haven and Iranian proxy state in the Americas and Base of operations for the 17 March 1992 Israeli Embassy Bombing murdering 29 injuring 242 and the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) 18 July 1994 bombing murdered 85 injured over 800 and now we must add the murdered Argentine Prosecutor Alberto Nisman to AMIA fatalities

 

Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as he is oft referred in the international media, knows well the art of warfare by other means. He appears to be versed in Sun Tzu and the other writers on warfare. He uses words for weapons and assassins when required to strike where he desires. His rule is absolute and as such he has grown accustom to things as he prefers to see them and his subordinates dare not fall short in their assigned tasks. The power structure in Iran follows a duality just as does the military. The Iranians have two main targets, the United States and the Zionist Entity, as they refer to Israel. Together these two make up the Great Satan, United States, and the Little Satan, Israel. Israel is privileged in this world as unlike the United States that only need worry about the Iranian Army and the IRGC military, Israel gets to have an addition to these two adversaries, the al-Quds force, named for the Arab name for Jerusalem. The al-Quds force is responsible directly for the reconquest of Jerusalem primarily and secondarily for the complete destruction of Israel and the death of the Jews, that is all Jews. The al-Quds force is a special group of squads who are selected from the Special Forces groups within the IRGC, which is considered the Special Forces taken from within the military ranks rated on their military prowess and their religious purity. The entirety of the IRGC is religious warriors modeled on the Persian Immortals from history and the al-Quds would then be the Hashshashins, a select group willing to fight to the death without a second thought. Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is a person not used to being denied that which he desires. Still, he commands the respect that one will speak only truthfully when answering his questions. This does not mean you will be well received or even survive the telling, but if you are caught in a lie, things will go even worse for you. Torture is a tool in Iran as it is in the PA, Hamastan and North Korea as well as more of the world than most would like to believe. Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei truly believes that his position will welcome the coming of the final days and be at the center of the world once it has been transformed. He realizes he might not be alive to see this day but that whoever fills the role of Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah must be prepared to take on this mantle at any moment. They will be the leader of the conquering forces, which will subdue the world and bring everybody to Islam as they believe. They honestly believe that the Shiites, who are approximately ten percent of Muslims, will win out as the preferred of Allah instead of being murdered as Apostates under a world ruled by Sunni Islam.

 

These are simply the initial individuals who often define the world as they wish it to be and then act from there. The one thing all these leaders and their followers have in common is that they believe they are the rightful and powerful on the world’s stage, and that the United States can be easily defeated and they know exactly how to proceed to do so. They all believe their country to be one of the major forces in the world or a member of what will be the ruling force in the end when everything is settled. They all believe that the world can be brought under the rule of a single individual and that they are the one. (This is where normally we would have to say, “Zathros know, you are not the one, Zathros can tell.” One need remember the show Babylon V to understand or recognize this.) The Western World has reached the decision that the world cannot be conquered and placed under a single leader. They also believe that this is intuitively obvious and that everyone can see that world conquest is a pipe dream that cannot be accomplished. All this means is that they will never rule the world but it does not mean that there are no longer people out in the world willing to try. One might remember in the early days of the Islamic State when, as ISIS, their forces of terrorists were taking uncontested ground and destroying all they could find including irreplaceable artifacts and treasures and their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was declaring himself Caliph and announcing how the ISIS fighters (terror forces) were going to conquer the world for Allah and convert or murder all unbelievers and simply murder all apostates. Their initial run was impressive until the clash with the Kurds and was bloodied. There went their invincibility, from there the Iraqis contained them, and they stalled out completely. The point was that al-Baghdadi with a few thousand fighters, many not well trained or untrained, still believed that ruling the world was possible. Turkey’s President Erdogan sees himself as the Caliph ruling over the same areas as once made up the Ottoman Empire, which started as a single tribe in Turkey that set out to conquer the world. President Erdogan sees himself as the one to reestablish the Turkish-Ottoman Empire with himself as the central Caliph. It is time that the Europeans woke up and smelled the threats at their doorsteps and their own self-made weakness and how dangerously unprepared they have become for their own defense. They have at most a decade before such might becomes necessary and already it appears that Germany, if they remain with Merkel and France after electing Macron, have simply surrendered to their conquerors. President Trump needs to awaken a sleeping world to the onrushing dangers before the onrushing dangers reach their shores and announce themselves formally. Thus far, the violence has been sporadic and disorganized. That will not remain the case and the time is drawing nigh with not a lot of time to turn Europe around and prepared to fight to save their way of life and their liberated lifestyles. President Trump may have been elected at a crucial time but it will be the two Presidents that follow Trump who will really be inheriting the whirlwind. Inbetween, we will see broken promises strewn as windblown autumn leaves.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Islamic Hierarchy Should be the Target as Well as ISIS

 

Is Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL or al-Qaeda offshoot) honestly that horrific a threat and challenge that it should be treated as an individual threat needing a solution before any further assessment can be conducted? If you were to make this an inquiry of the United States State Department, they would answer in the affirmative and probably make Islamic State the sole terror threat requiring attention. Pose this same question to the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their answer would place Islamic State as the immediate threat but would follow that up with a litany of other threats hiding in the background, in the darkest of recesses. So, which assessment is the most accurate and which should be utilized to address future actions. Obviously the Pentagon assessment is more in depth while the State Department takes a mere cursory glance seeking the least invasive path and the least need for involvement having a minimal footprint. This demands further explanation more as to why the Pentagon explains a path which is far deeper and requiring greater invasive solutions and the State Department leaves most of the problem unaddressed and untouched. The reasons are simple and would be obvious to any observers. The Pentagon is funded by the width, depth and breadth of a threat and gains funding and importance through greater involvement. The State Department gains funds by having obscured threats which it can assign staff to investigate and report threats in such a manner as to allow them to linger, requiring greater inspections over the longest time frame. Thus any military assessment should be judged knowing their report will make the threat the greatest potential possible while State Department assessment should be realized to define the situation calling for minimal involvement in order to preserve the situational threat generating further investigations. The best path would more often than not be somewhere between the two assessments.

 

So, what do these realities have to do with Islamic State? A fair analogy would be somebody waking one morning feeling poorly and upon looking in the mirror they notice there are red blotches all over their face and further checking they find more such red blotches all over their bodies. Reacting to these skin lesions they make an appointment with a physician. The question becomes what type of physician they should call. The initial assessment is the patient has a skin condition so they might make an appointment to visit a Dermatologist and treat the skin ailment while ignoring the underlying disease. The result is the patient will remain ill and would need visit the dermatologist repeatedly while if they had visited an Internal Medicine Doctor they quite possibly would have been admitted to a hospital and undergo a more rigorous cure than they would receive from a Dermatologist but would also be cured. Simply put, if you have the measles you do not visit a dermatologist, you visit a doctor of Internal Medicine. The State Department is the Dermatologist and the Internal Medicine Physician would represent the Military. So, the military will present a harder path with the greatest potential challenges you will be presented with and some painful choices need to be made. The State Department provides for a simple and immediate repair of a situation while leaving the underlying problems churning away and no difficult choices would be necessitated. So, the path you choose will likely be somewhere between the two, which one you follow more closely will dictate the level of curative actions and their lasting effects.

 

Making war on Islamic State is a requirement of immediate urgency, President elect Donald Trump will need answer the riddle of how far does he wish to peel back the onion. A fully committed military campaign to destroy Islamic State presence in Syria and Iraq could be executed taking no longer than three or four months. The time it would take would depend on how ruthless and how close to barbarism the military forces will be permitted by their Rules of Engagement (ROE). The obvious problem with such tactic is that such a solution does little to permanently change the situation. When choosing civility while fighting barbarians, one makes leaders and financiers unaffected, they will just wait for the opportunity and start right up anew. The sponsors must be made to pay a price, even to threats on their lives, before anything will change. This was proven in all theaters of World War II where German leaders needed to be hunted down even to the last bunkers in Berlin and the Emperor of Japan had to be convinced the allies could utterly destroy his nation without losing any of their military forces. This has also been proven in the current “War on Terror” where we are treating the rash and ignoring the disease.

 

By now most Westerners realize the problems caused by terrorism and the threat posed by Islamic State. Where many fall down is in linking the two problems and realizing that these two problems though often unrelated directly, both have a root cause and any logistics, funding, know-how or other support for both are derived from the same pool of sponsors. The source for both terrorism and Islamic State come from the various wealthy and powerful governing entities throughout the nations of MENA (Middle East and North Africa) and the infrastructure put in place utilizing the tribal make-up of the society often pitting one tribe against another tribe in order to procure additional power and a broader area from which to operate. Should one trace the cash flowing into the coffers of Islamic State one would see a trend that the same monies also fund the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, al-Qaeda and other Sunni terror masters and their operations. Much of the funding originates in or by those close to the Saudi Royal family as well as graft skimming funds from government funding by Egyptians and other Sunni ruled nations supporting the Sunni, Muslim Brotherhood, forces worldwide. There also exists an extensive Shiite terror networks which is not quite as expansive but still a very real threat. These groups are financed, organized and run by the Iranian government and the Grand Ayatollah (Arabic:آية ‌الله العظمی) and Supreme Leader of Iran. The leadership of these terror forces controlled by Iran starts with the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) who incorporate the leadership of Hezballah and oft time Hamas as well. The reach by Iran is not as diffused as are the disparate Sunni terror forces. Much of the reason behind this is simply numbers. The Sunni make-up slightly over four-fifths of Muslims worldwide while the Shiites find themselves around a mere 17% of Muslims worldwide thus Shiite power structure by necessity must be more centralized and rigid while the Sunni can easily create anywhere from three to five separate groups.

 

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps IRGC

 

What people in the United States need know is that the current fighting between Islamic derived forces and the Western forces, particularly in and around the Mediterranean Sea is just the latest stage in the war with the Barbary Pirates. Truth be told, the European interests back to around 632 onto the current age have felt constant rumblings of discontent filled by dreams and desires to return to their ages of conquest and swallow Europe as they have tried before only to meet a standoff or complete defeat as was Andalusia, as was Spain. Much of the march of Islam colonizing the entirety of MENA has been accomplished by Sunni though there have been Shia heroes through the ages. Still, this fight to choose the ultimate ruler, the single Caliph who talks the talk but all are curious if one can be found who additionally walks the walk. Despite gaining a sizeable following and demanding he be recognized as Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi will not become the Caliph restoring the Caliphate as the requirement is a vast stretch of lands which are individually owned and most have real air power which would decimate any ground assault not possessing sufficient air cover, something which likely plagues al-Baghdadi day and night and he likely dreams of having sufficient fighters and the people to launch adequate air support. The Arab and Islamic worlds are far too tribal and fragmented each refusing to particularly perform feats of great valor and have somebody outside your team ending up with all of the glory. The tribal overriding thought power need be abandoned should Islam ever desire to become great again and have yet a second sense of glory and accomplishment. Such an accomplishment will take a true Caliph, one such as the last Imam, the one who leads the final conquests leading to an Islamic World running under Sharia, the Islamic Code of Laws as preached by Mohammad and the original force.

 

Expansion of Islam Across MENA and into Europe before Ottoman Rule

 

There are realities which must be faced and faced immediately. Before there can be progress the new President already has a large pair of conflagrations he need work out a solution which will probably require a fair number of military service personnel. A President Trump must use all the forces at his disposal in order to remove Islamic State from the picture. After this has been accomplished the next task will be forming a governance or set of governances such that Libya becomes a normative entity capable of trade with the world which will bring wealth to these governing bodies and the people as well. Once Libya has been resolved and returned to viability it will become time to deal with Russia and do similar for Syria. Russia will press for the entire area be returned to Bashir al-Assad while the remaining “rebel” forces will protest loudly and just as vehemently as they have all along. Meanwhile, a refuge for the Kurdish population will necessarily be needed while Turkey and her President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, are edging towards conquest and taking lands formerly belonging to both Syria, a lifelong enemy, and Iraq, whose Saddam Hussein had stashed thousands of barrels of nerve agent and other chemical and nuclear weaponry in an attempt to evade justice. Erdoğan’s hopes and dreams of reestablishing the Ottoman Empire will be muted. Once again all these solutions do little to nothing about remedies for the tribal alliances and primitive culture which keeps the nations of MENA suffering while other nations quite distant as in the Horn of Africa and as far east as Pakistan and Afghanistan are all experiencing national traumas from forces at the tribal area. These problems were exasperated by the imposition of the Sikes-Picot Agreement of 1916 which set arbitrary borders, making self-rule all but impossible. Sikes-Picot ignored tribal alliances and clan structures splitting these entities between three nations in some cases and two at others which simply added wood to the fire. Sikes-Picot also redrew the maps of Eastern Europe breaking up the Austria-Hungarian Empire. All of this eventually led to World War II and has set in motion the potential for a third shooting war, World War III. The problem is amplified with the knowledge that Eastern Europe is also facing economic distress along with threats from Russia to incorporate them back under soviet style land and they wish to remain free.

 

These areas are powder kegs just waiting for the fire from a mistakenly tossed match or misread of any situation to have the entirety of these places to sheepishly huddle under Russian wings. The United States lack of influence throughout the MENA area as well as the entirety of the globe for the last eight years has left foreign policy in such turmoil as to provide room for threats from all sides and levels. The world, and the United States and allies in particular, are facing an invigorated Russia, a China willing to manufacture Islands in order to further their goal of taking certain Islands which they claim as have other nations. These threats are backed by a new and proficient fleet China is building, a worthy blue-water fleet. Add to this the dual threat of a nuclear armed North Korea who has already developed and tested a number of nuclear warheads and appears to be attempting to manufacture an EMP device to knock out the power grid in North America thus neutering the United States military and causing widespread death. Along with North Korea we also will be facing a nuclear armed Iran who has the missiles with advanced guidance and range capabilities with which to deliver them. Once Iran is confirmed to have nuclear weapons one can safely assume that Saudi Arabia will call in their markers for their financing of the Pakistani bomb thus instantly becoming a nuclear armed nation as well. After this the proliferation across all of MENA will likely occur with blinding speed. From that point the rest of the world will be rapidly acquiring nuclear weapons and from there to annihilation of the human race is a short trip and it all might take place in a blink of an eye. It is truly sobering realizing how so very close we are from slipping beyond the cusp into a reality even Hollywood was unable to imitate believably.

 

The race now is to educate and bring the third world somewhere even with the advanced world. By this we mean to teach them from our mistakes such that the world benefits. These newly acquired nuclear capabilities must be impressed not to use them for the sake of humanity. At the same time the world need share its many secrets and the desire to go into space beyond just the solar system but to other star systems even beyond our cluster setting out to truly become a space-born people. That need be our goal if we plan on being a long lived species. I guess we will soon know if the Earth will become the origin of a truly enlightened space based society or will the Earth need await the next great catastrophe to rid it of a stagnant humanity so another intelligence reaches senescence and go off into space and be the long lived Earth born species.

 

Beyond the Cusp