Yes, a civil war in the Arab world:

Seventy percent of insurgents fighting in Iraq come from Gulf countries via Syria where they are provided with forged passports, an Iraqi intelligence officer alleged in a published report Wednesday.

I don't understand why we aren't doing anything about this.

I should also repeat, as has been noted before, that 911 and the "War on Terror" is indeed an Arab/Muslim civil war that they've been exporting along with their oil.

Unfortunately, I can think of an excellent reason why we aren't doing anything about this: the Gulf country most of them are coming from is Saudi Arabia.

I would also question the quality of the data, given its source, but in any case the motivation for the "insurgents" is being preached every Friday in mosques in ... guess which Gulf country.

Makes me wish we had an Administration interested in winning.

I can give an additional reason: "kill box" (and it has pretty much been described as such by the US President although not quite that blunty).

If we moved our economy beyond the petroleum era, WE could blockade Hormuz and whack some bad guys without fear of economic collapse.

We could also SELL our new post-petroleum energy technologies to the rest of the world -- perhaps at lower prices for India and Japan and other favored nations and higher prices for China.

And, whether you believe in global warming or not, GW would be a very useful argument for building a solid national consensus across Left & Right for doing exactly this.

But, certain Texas-based oil stocks might decline in value. Nah, we need a different plan.

"But, certain Texas-based oil stocks might decline in value. Nah, we need a different plan."

Aw, fer chrissakes, not the "its all about the OIL" sh*t again.

Which oil companies are headquartered in Texas? I am pretty sure it isn't:

Royal Dutch Shell
Totalfinalelf
Aramco
Citgo
Sinclair
.
.
.

Anyone?

Oohh! Yeah! Let's invent something to replace oil! Then everything will be just fine!

And... err... what will we use? Snowflakes and sunbeams?

We *could* build a few hundred reactors, use them to replace a lot of the coal and natural gas that are currently being used to generate electricity, and then start making synthetic fuels from them... but then, that would require the same folks who hate Bush to stop hating nukes. And so far, there are only a few heretics here and there.

Other than nukes... there really isn't a magic wand. Wind? Solar? Don't make me dig up SDB's old posts on the scales involved.

last I heard, there were at least 20,000 listed insurgents
according to DoD figures.

Of course, the DoD also said there were less then 2000
foreign fighters.

So are the Insurgents now almost entirely foreign fighters?

Is this article crap?

I'm betting for the second

John Robb (in Brave New War) estimates insurgent strength at 150,000+, with an attrition rate of only 1%/month. He does not consider what portion, if any, may be from outside Iraq.

As I noted above, the source of this information is problematic. Iraqi institutions have a long way to go before official announcements can be taken at face value. A better approach would be to 1) go after the most dangerous few thousand insurgents, as we may be doing, and 2) go after the source of their motivating ideology, as we are obviously not doing, notwithstanding that the same source was behind 9/11.

Jay:

"..go after the source of their motivating ideology, as we are obviously not doing, notwithstanding that the same source was behind 9/11."

(1) How do you propose we should/could go after this source ?

(2) Do you think our presence in Iraq is a major source of motivation for this ideology? It certainly adds fuel to the fire, doesn't it?

1) Make the Saudis an offer they can't refuse. The word "blockade" comes to mind.

2) Actually, the power vacuum in Iraq is the major source of motivation for the insurgents in Iraq.

Now, to make this more constructive than the usual comment-thread drive-by ...

The overall picture is much bigger, of course. FWIW, Robb recommends we leave Iraq ASAP and begin developing decentralized defenses for the US, which he predicts will experience considerable domestic terrorism soon. I'd have agreed with every word he wrote on 9/10/2001. Now I think there's a need to be a bit more prophylactic about some things, like the memetic engineering underway amongst the bad guys. Also the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, but that's yet another topic.

"....memetic engineering.....

Posted by Jay Manifold at May 25, 2007 10:28 AM"

Hmm, I learned a new term today.

jay

if John Robb is correct, and i think he's pretty darn close
that is more insurgents then we have soldiers in Iraq.

While Robb's analysis is subject to critique -- it is, at points, Gaussian where it perhaps ought to be Mandelbrotian, to borrow terminology from Taleb's The Black Swan (and I note that Robb quotes Taleb in his book) -- it impressed me as a far more realistic estimate of overall insurgent strength than the Pentagon's published figures. As you might expect, Robb goes on to quote the somewhat stereotypical rule of thumb about how insurgencies need to be outnumbered 10-20 to 1 to be successfully suppressed, and to call for immediate US withdrawal.

Robb is imaginative enough elsewhere, as in suggesting that the survivability of the electricity grid in the US would be greatly improved by allowing ordinary people to generate and sell power, but I found his thinking on Iraq to be a bit on the linear side. A really good risk-management discussion in this area has, to my mind, yet to take place; it is usually presented as risk acceptance (stay there forever and kill as many people as we have to) vs risk avoidance (leave ASAP and let it turn into the next Cambodia). The real choices are risk mitigation (do better at what we're already doing) vs risk transfer (transition security to someone else, ideally the Iraqis themselves).

Mr. White,

The crickets continue to chirp.

Which crickets?

Yup, not all oil companies are based in Texas. That said, the boards of directors often overlap and the phrase "Texas oil companies" is short-hand for a larger concept -- namely that this Administration is not willing to do the needful to destroy radical Islam, which is to eradicate their economic base, which is petroleum.

In other news, Andrew Sullian is spot on, here:

What can one say? Well: we can say this at least. The president is right that al Qaeda remains a terrible threat to Americans. He is right to insist on this. But one core reason he is right is because he has been in the White House for the last six years. Al Qaeda surely never had a more helpful man in such a powerful place. After over six years of this presidency, Bin Laden is still at large. Five and a half years after Bin Laden's religious tools murdered 3,000 innocents, this president still cannot find or capture or kill him. Five and a half years after that dreadful day, al Qaeda's reach in the Middle East is more extensive than ever, centered in Iraq, where it was barely existent before the war. Over four years after invading Iraq, the security situation there is as grave as it has ever been. Tens of thousands of innocents have been added to the three thousand murdered on 9/11 - many of them unspeakably tortured and murdered by death squads or Islamist cells empowered by Bush's jaw-dropping negligence. Over three thousand young Americans have died in order to give al Qaeda this victory and this new platform.

Here is Bush's gift to the victims of 9/11: two new al Qaeda safe havens - in Anbar and in Pakistan. He gave Zarqawi a second career, by refusing to kill him when had a clear shot in 2003, and then allowing him to run rampant across Iraq for several years. Islamists, moreover, are far closer now to getting their hands on WMDs than they were when Bush became president - the very casus belli I foolishly bought to go to war with Saddam. Given the financial boost al Qaeda has gotten from the Iraq invasion, the massive propaganda coup they have won by Bush's authorization of torture, and the triumph of Iran as a consequence of Bush's non-existent "strategy", isn't it simply a fact that Bush is the best thing to happen to al Qaeda since its founding? Is not the record now clear that, whatever their intentions, Bush and Cheney have actually advanced the day when Islamist terrorists will kill and murder more Americans?

"....memetic engineering....."

Madison Avenue has been doing this for many decades.

The elimination of petroleum as the lifeblood of the economy will not occur under any bulk-technology regime. Do Bush's opponents support a pedal-to-the-metal approach to strong nanotechnology?

Andrew Sullivan is eminently Fiskworthy, as usual; a few examples:

• Bin Laden's remains are probably splattered across the wall of a cave somewhere. In any case, his survival is no more relevant than those isolated Japanese troops who remained in hiding after World War 2.


• The safe haven in Anbar is being dismantled, after an extended period of dithering by a none-too-competent Administration and with no support from the left, who seem to have never figured out that liberals and those they ordinarily defend are at the top of the Islamist hit list. Will they now begin supporting it?


• The safe haven in Pakistan exists because this Administration is unwilling to invade that country, seize its nuclear arsenal, and crush the Taliban once and for all. Will Democrats support this?


• "[T]he financial boost al Qaeda has gotten" is from illicit trafficking, mostly narcotics, of course (read the Robb), which this Administration is far too obtuse to destroy by ending Prohibition. Will Democrats support this?


• "Bush's authorization of torture" is right up there with "plastic turkey." Indeed, this Administration gets away with incompetence precisely because its critics are so mesmerized by such fictions, just as Clinton's critics obsessed over supposed hit jobs and cocaine-running. CDS then = BDS now.


• The "day when Islamist terrorists will kill and murder more Americans" is advancing by one per 24 hours, and has as much to do with events in Mexico and Nigeria as it does with Iraq. Again, read the Robb -- who may be (and we should hope is) wrong about future events in the US, but whose description of the learning process currently underway among terrorists is entirely in accordance with what we know about adaptation and survival.

Madison Avenue is preaching that the West should be destroyed? Wow, that's some marketing.

Mr. White,

Forgive me, but Mr. Sullivan is not someone whose opinions I give much weight to, and Mr. Manifold has done a fine job replying to that.

Blame the current administration all you want, but the reality of ME oil remains.

Is it too obnoxious of me to point out to you that the US gets very little of its oil from the Persian Gulf? That the Europeans and Asians are a far bigger problem re: ME oil dependency?

And, as soon as you have invented an all-encompassing solution to an oil-based economy, do please make it public domain, so we all can use it, okay?

Good point MG, since most of what the US refines is Heavy crude, versus light sweet crude from the ME.

Big D:

Electrostatic confinement fusion? Tidal? Ocean thermal? SPS?

Or to help reduce the need for fuel, district heat and power systems, and/or just plain saving fuel?

Never mind though, Americans' two-ton steel replacement genitalia are more important.