By Julian Krasta

The intellectual communities all over the world are waiting in an agony of suspense as to whether John McCain or Barack Obama will be elected the next President of the United States. The suspense is rooted in the hope for granite security and the prospect for lasting peace, which could altogether vanish if, in January 2009, the wrong man raises his hand and takes the oath.

Senator McCain is uncomplicated with respect to the leadership and defense of our country. His fearless patriotism was formed and hardened by an irrefutable fact: The American People’s collective resolve coupled with the actions of our awesome military, in their harshest terms, are proof to our enemies – of the past, present and, yes, future – that we play in a bigger and badder league than they could ever dream.

By stark contrast, Obama requires a daily diet of total compliance and idolization. His word salads are a gross national product of cants and fantasies, and is devoted to injecting chaos into the jellied minds of the crowds of people (here and in countries such as Syria) that play into his fantasies. He has successfully accomplished this because his is a cocktail personality, meaning: He senses other people’s vulnerabilities, he reads their personalities, and performs accordingly. It is the classic sign of a sociopath.

Liberals argue that Senator McCain might be too old, too hotheaded, and too off the mark (and some frustrated Republicans and core conservatives chime in with the fear that he is too liberal-minded). In some respects they are all correct – in some respects. There are even those who poke fun at his banal tone. Again, some of their levity is not entirely unjustified. My view of the Senator, which is shared by many, many other conservative advocates, is quite the opposite. To quote an old saying: “Still water runs deep.”

Moreover, John McCain has served our country faithfully as a Navy fighter pilot (a stone-cold truth not even (Ret.) Gen. Wesley Clark can deny or devalue (notwithstanding Clark’s cheap shots to discredit McCain’s leadership qualifications)). He endured horrible physical pain during his imprisonment in Viet Nam. Primarily, he is lock, stock and barrel more transparent than the Democrats’ candidate claims to be because, good, bad or indifferent, Senator McCain has no hidden agendas. Neither does he feign being anything other that what we see.

Barack has an impressive record of political ineptitude: He and his party strive to expand policies such as welfare (to ensure dependence on the government dole by those below the poverty line in order to fortify their votes). Obama opposes privatizing Social Security, which is supported by Senator McCain – a proposition that would be advantageous to taxpayers in that we would be able to invest and manage our benefits.

Obama opposes school vouchers (one means to the end of our children being short-changed in their education). He used the words “ugly and racist” to depict opponents of the 2007 comprehensive illegal immigration bill, yet it is commonplace (and widely accepted by his supporters and conveniently overlooked by the media) when he repeatedly brings into the fray the fact he is black. This comes from the chosen one of the party that went up against the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution (respectively: abolishing slavery, granting citizenship rights to newly-freed slaves, guaranteeing the right to vote for blacks – Thank you, Larry Elder).

Senator McCain has always been a proponent of nuclear power, and he is calling for no less than 45 nuclear power plants to be built by the year 2030. Barack has said that this might be worth investigating – until he decides to cast his vote in opposition.

Obama possesses a superego and is fully one-dimentional. He has (with the wholesale aid of the liberal mainstream media) caused his supporters, as well as al Qaida and the militant Palestinian group Hamas, to believe that there’s a wizard behind his curtain when, in fact, there is only a brick wall.

Islamist jihadists are determined to dominate this planet, by whatever force necessary, and become our supreme rulers. From the standpoint of their blood-lust adventurism, the very future of the freedoms of the human race has become the issue.

John McCain understands this. Without equivocation, but in peremptory tones, he has said plainly that he is as equally determined to use whatever force is necessary to prevent terrorists from gaining the upper hand and, as President, would not imprudently withdraw our troops from the hot zones.

Obama, on the other hand, is hedonistic with his [politically motivated] litany of “I will end the war” and begin bringing our troops home if he becomes president. This move comes under the heading “Miscalculation and Maladroitness.” It would be as foolish as an impatient homeowner ordering the tent removed from his house before the poisoning process can fully and effectively destroy a vermin infestation “…because the tent is an eyesore.”

This smacks of arrogance and audacity. His myopic presumptions equate to reckless endangerment: gambling with our lives here at home as well as the country we call home to satisfy his aspirations – that is (using another analogy), no less irresponsible as when a parent or guardian leaves a baby or a pet locked in a hot car to go shopping.

Moreover, Obama’s ambition has blinded him to the fact that withdrawing our troops, reducing military spending, and suspending or cancelling defense programs would not only weaken the security of our homeland it would sharply increase domestic unemployment in all related sectors of private, public, and government businesses.

Furthermore, if we lose the strength in numbers of trained military personnel now – or a year or two from now – and our country is attacked again, three to four months would need to pass before capable replacement ground, sea, and air combat troops could be expected to reach required potency and supplant those who had been killed and injured. In that time, we could go beyond the crisis level and face unmitigated disaster because of a lack of trained manpower.

Our enemies could exploit this perceived weakness. They might attack, possibly with lethal chemical weapons, and destroy (but not be limited to) municipal and military communications centers and installations, commercial and military airfield complexes, fire, police and energy stations, water and food supplies, roads and railways, all personnel therein, and every civilian within specific radii of those areas.

John McCain is aware of the foregoing, because he is a long-horn, scarred, intemperate and veteran bull. Faith should be invested in him, in that he would exercise every power vested in him as President to go the distance and cut out the fanatic canker that threatens humanity and prevent such attacks.

Obama is a neophyte. His daydreaming has left him deficient of legislative and leadership experience. With neither to his credit, he wouldn’t be able to stop an asthma attack.

It would therefore come as no surprise to the GOP, conservatives or rational Democrats if, as president, he one day swings open the White House doors, flashes a smile at the beast looming above him (whose entrée into our land he helped engineer), and says:

“What a nice horsey – of course I’ll sign for it.”

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There is little doubt that the notion most Americans have in their heads of neoconservatism has been at least temporarily skewed due to the perceived failures in Iraq. Regardless of the fact that things are actually improving on the ground finally, the bad taste left in many proverbial mouths when uttering the term “neocon” is more than apparent.

Of course, the fact is what the vast majority of people associate with neoconservatism is, in fact, a complete misconception of what it actually means to be a neoconservative. Even Kristol’s article may be only one aspect, one perspective on what it means to be a neocon. Indeed, a whole new generation of neoconservative thinkers is sprouting up, both here in the US and overseas.  Why?  Irving Kristol says it well,

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The latest dust up between eventual general election opponents Barack Obama and John McCain came today in which John McCain characterized remarks made by Obama. I will recount them here to set the stage for my analysis:

Obama said on Sunday in Pendleton, Oregon:

“Iran, Cuba, Venezuela — these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, `We’re going to wipe you off the planet.’”

John McCain characterized what Obama said like this on Monday in Chicago:

“Such a statement betrays the depth of Senator Obama’s inexperience and reckless judgment. These are very serious deficiencies for an American president to possess,”

McCain further said of Iran regarding its threat to America vis-a-vis Obama’s comparison to the Soviet Union:

McCain listed the dangers he sees from Iran: It provides deadly explosive devices used to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq, sponsors terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and is committed to Israel’s destruction.

John McCain’s attempt to show Barack Obama as a naife because Obama does not see Iran and the Soviet Union as equal threats falls on its face from the start. Iran is not a world superpower. Iran does not have a military that is within the same tier as the United States military. Iran does not have missile silos with nuclear ICBMs targeting American cities simply awaiting the word to level them. In short, Iran is not an opponent capable of making war with the United States symmetrically and this is the distinction that John McCain fails to make.

On balance, most of the conflicts of the 21st century will not resemble those of the 20th century. They will differ just as the set piece battles and Napoleonic tactics of the 19th century advanced into the apex of 20th century war theory: maneuver warfare as opposed to static battle lines. That apex is reflected by the United States military today in its armor that carries great firepower while being able to move fast enough to outflank an opponent and a paratrooper force that is the envy of all nations, able to deploy anywhere in the world in a few dozen hours. The great majority of conflicts in this century will be of the asymmetrical kind. Barack Obama understands this and John McCain, it seems, does not.

It is apropos that this message be delivered in a place like Newsvine because the Internet is the primary driving force behind the change in how wars are fought just as the internal combustion engine was the primary driving force in changing how wars were fought in the 20th century. Enemies like Iran learned late last century after observing the United States fight wars that decentralization was its best option when confronting America. It was not a large army that drove the American Marines out of Beirut, it was a single suicidal member of Hezbollah.

Iran is likely our most troublesome enemy in the short term, but it is not because they resemble the Soviet Union in the least. It is because they have cultivated amorphous armies and terrorist cells across the world that it can call on to act or that are preset to act if Iran is attacked. The Iraq War only extended Iran’s reach, putting a Shiite government into power in Iraq which has allowed several powerful Shiite militias to spring into existence, two of which are al-Sadr’s group and the Badr militia. Destroying Iran is not an exercise which would be difficult if America were so disposed, dealing with the aftermath of the terrorist minefield that Iran laid to protect itself would be. Therefore, more is to be gained through diplomacy than through a standoff because diplomacy is a much craftier answer to asymmetrical warfare than brute force and it appears that McCain favors brute force while Obama favors diplomacy and, failing that, brute force.

Also fundamentally misunderstood by McCain and better understood by Obama is the threat that China presents in the long term. I believe this is a result of the generational gap between the two candidates. China is, without a doubt, the greatest asymmetrical threat that the United States will face this century. It has proved this over and over again through its satellite destroyer test that demonstrated its capability to wipe out the system that the United States military relies on (the Global Positioning System) to guide its bombs, its soldiers and its warships.

It proved that it could jam a powerful commercial computer network when Chinese hackers attacked CNN’s network because it did not like the coverage CNN gave regarding the Free Tibet protesters and the Olympic flame. China has official (black hat) hackers and unofficial (gray hat) hackers that both take direction from the Chinese government that could mobilize China’s computing power and sheer population volume to bombard and possibly take down essential defense networks that are used to relay orders to American military units. China is also the leader when it comes to espionage (corporate and military) against the United States government and American companies. This network was put on display recently when China chose to (unwisely in my opinion) use their embassies and registered college student organizations for Chinese students to organize pro-China rallies to counter the Free Tibet protesters in San Francisco.

These student organizations have been an engine for both corporate and military espionage as the students make contact with the Chinese government through the organizations and then, after graduation, go on to be employed by American defense contractors or other companies that have valuable technological developments that the Chinese government wants to obtain and disseminate to the People’s Liberation Army (which is then incorporated into Chinese arms manufacturing) or to one of China’s many industries who seek to compete on the global market with American companies in terms of quality. This is, admittedly, a cloud that is on the horizon but it is a cloud that is gathering and, in approximately 20 years, will settle over our country and will need to be weathered.

Whether it be on Iran’s asymmetrical terrorist warfare or China’s asymmetrical computer warfare and corporate & military espionage, I firmly believe that Barack Obama’s mindset and advisers far outclass John McCain’s mindset and advisers. To maintain our advantage over our direct enemies and current competitors that could turn into direct enemies in the future, we have to have a forward-looking view. McCain, to use a term from military history, wants to fight the last war. Obama’s newness is to our advantage because it gives him a view that is conducive to innovation and spurs him to envision the next war and be prepared to fight it.

Dependence on foreign oil is a national security issue. Perhaps not coincidentally, most of the foreign oil we purchase is from States that are openly hostile to our interests, or who we probably should not be aligned with, such as the Saudis who have supplied many of the terrorists, extremists, and funding for terror against the United States and the West, not to mention their insistence on the spread of Wahabism through Suadi funded Islamic schools and mosques across the globe.

Other oil producers, like the UAE, are less radical in practice, but still represent a culture that America should hardly embrace or support–after all, we are supposed to represent freedom, personal security, and individual liberty. We are supposed to embody justice and economic prosperity for the masses, not just the elite oil cartels and dictators who populate the Middle-East leadership.

Then, too, there is Venezuela and Hugo Chavez, the Western Hemisphere’s answer to its relative lack of dictators and despots. Mr. Chavez is quite friendly with the rogue leadership of Iran, and further shows the fallacy behind so-called socialist States. Chavez should be decrying the inequity present in most Middle-Eastern States. After all, he is a populist and a champion of the little guy, right?

Nevertheless, as bad as Chavez may be, at least we aren’t supporting suicide bombers and the total repression of women when we buy his oil. We’re supporting his inflated ego, and we’re not really doing the world a service by inflating him further, but we’re not funding radical imams who incite violence against Western States and Israel….at least, I hope we’re not. Where Venezuelan oil profits go is a good question. Surely Chavez is aligned with some very unfriendly people. Should some of that money find its way into the hands of organizations whose intent is the destruction of Israel or the United States, no one would really be surprised.

The Price of Oil

Oil money is blood money, no doubt about it. I understand that right now, we have very little choice in the matter. Our economy depends on oil, sadly, and alternative energy sources are still in their infancy. This is one reason that I’m fully behind the reinstitution of Nuclear Power in the United States. New reactors should be built, and this should be done sooner than later. The more we can get away from oil and coal (which has its own long list of problems) the better.

The cost of oil is also paid by the people of the Middle-East, whose leaders maintain their tight grip in part due to their vast oil wealth. Using religion as their front, the leaders of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria to name a few, manage strict, brutal control over their populations. Islam has been radicalized over the past 100 years, in part due to the natural reaction to Colonialism, but largely due to the rapid increase in wealth in the region, and the imbalanced way that wealth has been distributed. Lack of freedom, the radicalization of Islam, and an inherent yet reasonable mistrust of the West, all contribute to what has become the Iron Veil.

Religious Violence

Most of the religions of the world have embraced violence at one time or another. And most adherents to their religion have remained blessedly peaceful even during the darkest of times. Nevertheless, in Medieval Europe Christians allowed other Christians to kill millions of women in so-called witch hunts. The Spanish Inquisition was one of the bloodiest campaigns the world has ever seen.

In Spain peaceful Muslims and Jews were driven from their homes and exiled–or were put to the sword. This in the name of Catholicism. Christians remained silent as their leaders shored up power in the name of religion, using extreme ideologies to pacify their people and tighten their control. Vast wealth discrepancies existed between the peasantry and the elite, and these increased as Empires grew–the Spanish, the Austrian, each torch-bearers of the Holy Roman Empire.

Vast wealth and religious extremism cast Europe under a familiar cloud, one that can be seen above the region once known as Mesopotamia today. Gone are the days of Islamic glory–the Ottoman Empire is fallen; the Caliphates of old are no more. The height of Islamic splendor evidenced in Cordoba is a thing of the far distant past.

Perhaps colonialism left the region vulnerable for what is happening today. Perhaps globalism has followed too close on the heels of its predecessor, and now it is too simple to equate the two, and spread an anti-Western ideology that festers into hate and extremism. Then, too, there is a yearning for days gone by–for a mythical Islamic State that once existed in the form of the Caliphates of old. Islamism today is attempting to spread this Caliphate and with it Sharia or Islamic Law to all the countries where Muslim immigrants and converts have spread. The simplicity and idealism of Islamic Law ignores all the terrifying realities inherent in its practice–but a secular world, a global world, is a frightening thing. Fear of meaninglessness and a distrust of capitalism lead to the adoption of religious extremism. Sometimes this manifests peacefully–Buddhist monks who detach from society; the Amish who abandon technology–and sometimes it is a violent manifestation.

I have no doubt that most people just want to live–most Muslims just want to work, eat, love and build a life for themselves like anyone else. Family, security, stability, and though they may not understand it in some parts of the world, freedom. Freedom to achieve these things without the intervening hand of theocracy or despotism or ancient, brutal legal systems.

The Way Forward: Addressing the Issues at Hand

So from all of this–oil, poverty, economic imbalance, historical distrust of Western society, the equating of Colonialism with Globalism, social despondency–the extremists are able to grow new extremists, suicide bombers, the faithful but impoverished, the martyrs.

So can we combat this rise of extremism? Surely it cannot benefit either the West or the Islamic world. As I stated previously, I believe most Muslims just want to live and let live. The extremists poison the well. Yet, if this extremism is an effect of so many different causes, how can we ever hope to contain it, to quash it, to drive it back into the pages of history?

I think we can fight the spread of Islamism and accept the religion of Islam all at the same time.

First, we must find ways to break our ties with despotic regimes whose only connection to us is through the oil pipelines. Undoubtedly, our support of Saudi Arabia is hypocritical when we are so blatantly against the State of Iran. Both governments should be on our list of antagonist entities. Leveling the economic discrepancies in the Middle-East is vital to creating stability in the region. Dictatorships gorged and fat on their oil riches will never voluntarily move toward economic freedom, as it will invariably cut into their pocket books in one form or another.

Second, we must wage a war of ideas. Somehow we must debunk the notion that colonialism and globalism are one and the same. For one thing, globalism is here to stay. It is the way the world has evolved, and no matter what the isolationists here and abroad wish, there is no way to turn back the clock. We are stuck with a global economy for all the growing pains it may create. Friction is inevitable, but there is no reason it should spark such vehement resistance in the middle-east. The use of Islam as a fomenter of radicalism is one tool the anti-globalists in the Arab world have in their arsenal against the West.

Thirdly, we must maintain a strong military and do whatever it takes to provide stability for us and our allies, especially Israel who endures the most constant battering of terrorism. Any success the terrorists have against the West will serve only to further their cause and popular acceptance. I am an advocate of practical neoconservatism. I believe in the spread of security first, and democracy later. Security is far more important to those nations rising out of the clutches of despotism, than democracy–as is evidenced by the current state of affairs in Iraq and Afghanistan. No, neither of these wars, nor the larger war on terror can be won through military means alone, but that is no reason to abandon our military and intelligence efforts.

And lastly, we must champion womens’ rights across the globe. The lack of womens’ rights in many regions of the world has lead to the widespread poverty, increased childbirth rates, and yes, an expansion of radicalism. Promoting womens’ rights and education can combat these epidemics in a truly positive way.

The Muslim World

Democracy is important, but it is not the first priority in this war. Security, energy independence, and the continuation of the war of ideas and the war of truth against propaganda, the fight against inequality and social injustice, these are the most important factors in the war on terror.

Until these issues are addressed, the strife will continue. Islamists will continue to radicalize their religion, and dictators will continue to sap their populations and convince them at the same time that their woes are the effect of the West, of colonialism, of Israel.

The Islamic world has as much to gain in the defeat of their tyrants and extremists as the Western world, and the last step in fighting this long war must be taken by the Muslims themselves in decrying and ousting the radicalism from their own populations. It will be nigh impossible for the West to do this alone. A concerted effort by the Islamic world to end terror and accept modernity is necessary. I believe this can be done without sacrificing the culture or faith of Islamic society.

All these things must be accomplished, and we cannot give up on any front if peace is ever to be achieved.