Blitz Bear

Dissed by the Kosovo split - when kindred kin in Serbia lost turf, resources and populace to a makebelieve country (even worse - a self proclaimed democrazy that prett much looked West - not East), watching the old empire shrivel up faster than viagrafree swimmers, fully crunk with petrol rubles Russia watched how the game was played.

If seperatism is so sexy and desirable in the West than defending seperatism with panzers on the ground and troops in harms way would be way cooler.

Commonwealth played Ossetia - providing "Peace Keepers" that magically exponentially xformed into an armoured panzer strike force with significant air and sea power.


Pledging Russian citizenship to Ossetians sexcalated the sitch to a pitch of feverish proportions and gave the womderful reason to act out militarily and shoot for home base.

RE: Resurrecting the old school Soviet Union as an automatic autocratic new millennium imperium.

This is significant.

"These former satellites have been left in no doubt that Russia must be regarded as "glavniy", or No. 1, if they wish to avoid the fate of Georgia. Central to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's nationalistic policy is a conviction that the power of the West - seemingly unassailable at the end of the Cold War - is on the wane."

Hold up. Actually that bit is totally bass ackwards.

It is exactly the opposite - the fun, free ideas and ideals of democrazy are marginalizing the autocratic designs at the ballot box on Commonwealth's euro frontier.

Russia is launching a regime change against a democratic sovereign nation - driving a panzer blitz right into the capital of Georgia way past any Ossetian concerns.


Firing one off during the smokescreen deployed by sister autocrat China's coming out debut' the timing is significant both tactically and strategically.

While enjoying a mini surge of precious babies Mother Russia doesn't have time on her side.

Russia has demonstrated effective war-fighting capability abroad for the first time since the old school collectivist union crashed, redeeming the spiritual sons of the Red Army.

A new General who really digs the idea of a Russian rapid response force to act out against Russia's increasingly democratic Western Frontier.

Sorteeing an amphib force along with Air and ground cover Russia means biz.

"Russia enters 2008 in the strongest geopolitical position it has
known since the Cold War's end

"The rampant decay of its military has largely been halted, new weapons systems are beginning to be brought on line, the country is flush with
petrodollars, its debt has vanished, the Chechen insurgency has been suppressed, the central government has all but eliminated domestic opposition, and the regime is popular at home."

"Chinese pipelines to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan (to be constructed in 2008) threaten to divert the energy that until now could only flow northward and serve Russian purposes."

"China is stealing Central Asia, building a network of
infrastructures that will make it more attractive for the Central Asian states to integrate with China than to use Soviet-era links to Russia."

"NATO and the European Union occupy Russia's entire western horizon
and are flirting with expanding their memberships. Rising defense modernizations in Asia are forcing Russia to deal with two military fronts - something at which Moscow never really succeeded during Soviet times."

"First, the consolidation that began in Russia's energy sector in
2003 will culminate. This will be the year that state giants Rosneft and Gazprom swallowup - whether formally or through 'alliances' - most of the remaining independentplayers in the country's energy industry."

"In 2008 a number of natural gas import projects will begin
operation in Western Europe, reducing that region's dependency on Russian energy and allowing the Western European states to be more dismissive of Russian interests."

"The Russians need a defining confrontation with the West. Russian
power is at a relative peak, and American power at a relative low. It is a
temporary circumstance certain to invert as the United States militarily extricates itself from Iraq, and one that Russia must exploit if it seeks to avoid replicating the geopolitical retreat of the 1990s."

"For Russia - which has publicly invested much political capital in
opposing Kosovarindependence - European success would be more than a slap in the face.Moscowmust prevent this from happening... Simply put, for the Western world, Kosovo isnot even remotely worth an escalating conflict with Russia."

"The former pro-Western Soviet republic of Georgia, long a thorn in
Moscow's side, has two secessionist regions that rely on Russia for their
economic and militaryexistence. Russia could easily absorb them outright and thus break the myth thatAmerican protection in the Caucasus is sustainable."

"Gazprom could swallow up Russian-British joint oil venture TNK-BP,
destroying billions in U.K. investment in a heartbeat. Union with Belarus would return the Red Army to the European frontier and turn the security framework of Eurasia inside-out overnight."

"When that happens, Russia will face a resurgent United States that
commands alliances in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Russia must use the ongoing U.S. entanglement in the Middle East to redefine its immediate neighborhood or risk a developing geopolitic far less benign to Russian interests than Washington's Cold War policy of containment."

Commonwealth's Military Intell site for the GRU believes it too. And that autocratic Russia will use Georgia as a model to again control turf from the Baltic to the Med

"Georgia can win only if it is backed by the United States and its
other allies. And even with such support, its victory will mean heavy losses, and entail lengthy guerilla warfare."

"Completely Unacceptable"

We’ve heard Ambassador Churkin’s polemic, which did not respond to the call we have made for an immediate cessation of hostilities and return to the status quo ante.

He has acknowledged his government’s refusal to deal with the democratically elected president of Georgia.

He has acknowledged that this situation is no longer about South Ossetia .

He has attacked the UN Secretariat. He has made suspicious comparisons to other conflicts.

I want to focus however, on one point that Ambassador Churkin made. Ambassador Churkin referred to his minister’s phone conversation with Secretary of State Rice this morning.

That conversation raises serious questions about Russian objectives.

In that conversation, Foreign Minister Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rice that the democratically elected President of Georgia “must go”.

I quote again: “Saakashvili must go.”

This is completely unacceptable and crosses a line.

I want to ask Ambassador Churkin, is your government’s objective regime change in Georgia?
The overthrow of the democratically elected government of Georgia?

Mr. President, Russia must affirm their aim is not to change the democratically elected government of Georgia and it accepts the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia .

Mr. President, Russia is threatening the territorial integrity of Georgia and this Council must act decisively to reaffirm the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia."





Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Permanent Representative, on the situation in Georgia, in the Security Council Chambers

Missile Crush

Crushes. Everybody's had them - and are liable to develop even more anytime. Crushes can be totally innocent and totally legit. Crushes can lead to disappoint, heartache and regret too.

Especially if crushes are kinda plotted, planned and counted on.

Projecting, fantasies - soon a makebelieve world is conjured and all answers for any sitch are sweetly available.

Like Persia's crush on missiles.

Amir Taheri explains:

"Remember al-Qaher and al-Zafer? You don't? Well, what about al-Hussein and al-Abbas? No, again?

The first two were the names of missiles that the Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser relied upon as "secret weapons" in his promised "Battle of Destiny" in 1967. The other two were names of Saddam Hussein's missiles that were supposed to secure him victory in his "Mother of Battles" in 1991.

We now have to learn the names of two other missiles, Shahab and Zelzeleh presented by Iran's Khomeinist rulers as in what they regard as an inevitable war against the United States and, possibly, Israel.

In a surprisingly frank analysis delivered in a speech in Tehran last Sunday, General Muhammad-Ali Jaafari, Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran's parallel army, put the Khomeinist regime's arsenal of missiles at the centre of its strategy for the coming war. He said Iran's armament industry has been put into high gear to mass-produce all types of missiles as quickly as possible

Jaafari described a defense doctrine based on three key assumptions

The first is that the principal theatres of battle will be in the Gulf, especially the Strait of Hormuz. He said his forces had established the plans needed to close the strait "with relative ease." Because the Gulf is a shallow body of water the depth of which never exceeds 90 metres, the US navy's large vessels, including aircraft carriers, would be unable to make large maneuvers and thus would become vulnerable to suicide attacks by small high-speed boats coming at them in large numbers.

According to Jaafari, this is a tactic known as "hojum ezdehami" (overcrowding attack) in which big American ships would resemble large whales being swarmed upon by thousands of small but deadly fish.

Jaafari's second assumption is that the Islamic Republic manages to keep fighting for a few weeks, world public opinion, especially the peace movement in the United States, would come to its rescue and force Washington to stop the war before winning a complete victory. Such an outcome would then be hailed in Iran as a great victory for the Khomeinist revolution.

We witnessed a similar event two years ago during the war between Israel and Iran (via the Lebanese branchy of Hezbollah). By all classical measures, Iran's Lebanese units suffered a crushing defeat. They lost control of territory in southern Lebanon, saw their network of missile-launching pads dismantled, and left a quarter of their fighters dead on the battlefield while and hundreds more captured. And, yet, the overall perception even today is that Iran-Hezbollah won that round hands down.

Jaafari's third assumption is that his forces would be able both to fight a war against the United States for several weeks or if needed, months while also protecting the regime against its numerous internal enemies who might seize the opportunity to try to overthrow it.

General Jaafari, who has made his reputation as an expert in asymmetric warfare, was promoted Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC precisely because he has always argued that the Khomeinist regime could win against a self-doubting, internally divided, and utterly confused United States. Jafari's optimism is in sharp contrast with the pessimism expressed by his predecessor General Yahya Rahim Safavi who, in a blunt speech just weeks before his dismissal, warned that the Islamic Republic lacked the equipment for fighting a much-better armed adversary.

Under Jaafari, the IRGC has decentralized its command-and-control structures by creating 31 autonomous headquarters covering all of Iran's 30 provinces plus the capital Tehran. He has also replaced most of the key IRGC commanders in the biggest purge of the force in more than 25 years. Almost all the "fat cat" generals who spent more on their various business enterprises than their military careers have been sent home.

There is no doubt that Jaafari has done all an IRGC commander could. However, as Clemenceau observed, war is too serious a matter to be left to the generals. Although it contains a high dose of military action, war is primarily a political matter. This is why it requires a political strategy, as opposed to the tactical scenario that t Jaafari has depicted.

Seen from that angle, things might not be as simple as Jaafari seems to assume.

The first question that Tehran's leadership must ask is: what would be the goal of an American or Israeli military attack against the Islamic Republic?

The routine assumption is that the goal would be the destruction of the nuclear project that the West claims is designed to make atomic bombs.

If that is the case, Jaafari's plans to sink American warships, close the Strait of Hormuz, and destroy oilfields in Arab countries and possibly launch a few missiles against Israel as well, might prove counter-productive. Such plans would escalate the conflict and provide the pretext for a "regime change" exercise.

Obviously, it is not up to Jaafari to guess the ultimate goal of the US, or anyone else that might want to attack the Islamic Republic at this time. The answer must come from the political leadership, that is to say "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Only that answer could provide Jaafari and other military planners with the guideline needed to devise a strategy.

For the time being, Jaafari is providing a solution to a problem that has not yet been defined. Like Don Quixote who fought the windmills taking them for giants, the general is firing missiles of illusion at phantom ships sailing through a fog of assumptions. "

Revamping UNRWA

Dr Pete Berkowitz over yonder at the Hoover Institute (Oh! He got game!) wracked up a score at Washington Times with a killer piece that makes a great case for Great Satan and all her hot! democrazy girlfriends to embrace UN in a wicked, squeeze it to death embrace.

One of UN's many many corrupt, inept risible orgs is called United Nations Refugee Admin. UNRWA in show biz talk, is especially dedicated for one group of refugees only. In fact, the most especial magical one of a kind refugees in the entire history of the world.

Palestinians.

Unlike millions of refugees from Germany, China, Vietnam, Russia, Ukrania, Cyprus, Korea, etc. Palestinians have been magically excepted by the non binding General Assembly resolution #194 . Significantly, the UN maintains a separate and distinct definition of the word "refugees" for Palestinians who left Palestine (including Little Satan, the West Bank, and Gaza) in 1948 and/or 1967.

Palestinian refugees from Palestine are classed as both the individuals who left their homes and any descendants of those individuals. This stands in contrast to the UN definition of refugee as it applies to displaced persons connected with territories other than those of Little Satan, the West Bank, and Gaza: in the latter case it refers only to those individuals who were forced to flee, not to their lineal descendants.

Mostly thanks to the efforts of 22 other Arab nations who - unlike any other neighbors of any other refugees - could not bear to assimilate Palestinians as brothers into societies with the same customs, dialect, language and religious penchants.

Palestinians were later abandoned wholesale by their own motherlands of Jordan and Egypt.

Ancient history never really hurt anyone right? Not so fast!

"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may still salvage a shelf agreement - the articulation of a framework to inform future negotiations - before the next president takes office. But the Bush administration's prospects of achieving the full and final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, that was their original intention in convening the November 2007 Annapolis conference, look increasingly dim.

Many Democrats fault this administration for undertaking too little too late to bring Israelis and Palestinians together, and believe that a key to progress in resolving the conflict between them depends on finding a larger role for the United Nations. Certainly our next president should focus on reforming the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

According to its Web site, the UNRWA "is a relief and human development agency, providing education, healthcare, social services and emergency aid to over 4.5 million refugees living in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic."

But UNRWA, which since its inception in 1950 has delivered indispensable relief but very little in the way of productive work, has also for nearly 60 years perpetuated opinions among the Palestinians that could hardly be better calculated to impoverish and embitter them, and subvert the achievement of the two-state solution that Annapolis envisaged.

To be sure, Annapolis was doomed for many reasons. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, both of whom were politically weak in November 2007, are weaker today [-] with Mr. Olmert last week, amid multiple corruption scandals, announcing his intention to resign in mid-September .

Israel can't afford to withdraw its army and internal security services from the West Bank without exposing the greater Tel Aviv area to Hamas rockets. But Mr. Abbas can't sign a political agreement that diminishes Palestinian sovereignty by allowing Israeli defense forces to operate routinely beyond the Green Line.

And, not least, too many Arab leaders, who could provide the legitimacy and financial support to create a viable state in the West Bank, are unprepared to explain to their own people why Israel must retain sovereignty over even an inch of Jerusalem.

UNRWA is a more fundamental obstacle to peace because its very existence promotes the belief among Palestinians across the Middle East that a two-state solution is essentially unjust.

By encouraging Palestinians to believe that the international community owes them repatriation to the land their parents and grandparents fled when five Arab armies invaded Israel in 1948, the UNRWA faithfully carries out a U.N.-authorized policy toward Palestinians that runs contrary to U.N. policy in regard to the vast majority of the world's refugees

For nearly 60 years, the United Nations has maintained a successful and
respected organization for refugees apart from Palestinians [-] the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The UNHCR responds to refugee crises by seeking a mixture of voluntary repatriation, local integration and third-country resettlement. While it values repatriation, the UNHCR's aim is to enable refugees to become citizens somewhere as quickly as possible, with all the protections and privileges that
citizenship bestows.

In contrast, the U.N. has effectively eliminated local integration and
third country resettlement as desirable or even possible outcomes for the Palestinian refugees, and instead has enshrined in the UNRWA's mission the 1950s promise of repatriation that was implicit in the resolution that established the agency.

Moreover, contrary to the policy that it generally applies to refugees, the U.N. regards Palestinian refugee status as transferable from parents to children without limit

This enables UNRWA to fuel the conflict with Israel by cultivating a
trans-generational belief among Palestinians that the one-and-only solution to their plight consists in returning to homes and lands vacated more than half a century ago.

Finally, by providing welfare instead of work, the UNRWA has created incentives for Palestinians to remain dependent on the very international organization that is premised on resisting compromise with Israel.

Accordingly, America should seek to bring to an end the U.N. General
Assembly's annual resolutions that, year after year, renew the UNRWA's mandate to reinforce the Palestinians' false hopes for a homecoming in Jerusalem, Haifa and the Galilee.

The answer, however, is not to abolish UNRWA. That, given the composition of the U.N. General Assembly, would be impractical and counterproductive.

Instead, the United States must persuade the General Assembly to fold the UNRWA into the UNHCR, where it belongs. The UNHCR has the political legitimacy and moral authority to change the UNRWA mandate from one focused on repatriating Palestinians to one determined to help Palestinians create homes and build a prosperous economy and a decent political order in a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

It would have been far less glamorous had the Bush administration's Annapolis conference focused on UNRWA reform. It would have also provided a far greater contribution to the long-term achievement of peace between Israel and the Palestinians."

Super Change

Operation Iraqi Freedom - biggest FUBAR in American History. A horrible blunder. Great Satan lost her way amoung the 'community of nations' blah blah blah.


Thankfully, cooler heads (in more way than one!) are clawing those failed faux school inaccurracies out of the sky faster than RAF did with Luftwaffe over the fields of Kent way back in 1940.


Foreign Affairs rounded up three super smart brainiancs including Ken Pollack (Oh! He got game!), Stevie Biddle (future military fan) and Mike O'Hanlon (who sports a bit of game himself).

Pollock and O'Hanlon shocked the world a year go when they declared that Surge totally rocks.


A year later they pretty much point out that worrying about eternal quagmires in Iraq, troop drawdowns or inappropriate handwringing is really quite retarded. And sooo last year.

"The three main culprits in the ethno-sectarian violence of 2006 have stood down and agreed to cease-fires or been crippled by military defeat. Sunni insurgents overwhelmingly switched sides over the course of 2007, signing on to cease-fires with the Iraqi state mostly through the Sons of Iraq program, which now includes over 100,000 participants, who provide local security in exchange for legitimacy and financial support.

The Shiite militias, especially Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army (also know as Jaish al-Mahdi, or JAM), have seen their position undermined by a combination of Sunni realignment, U.S. and Iraqi military pressure, the increasing independence of splinter and rogue groups, and a backlash against their own parasitic exploitation of the civilians they were ostensibly defending.

And the most violent actors -- Iraq's extreme chauvinist Sunni groups and AQI -- have been driven from most of western and central Iraq and are losing their remaining urban havens in the provinces of Diyala, Nineveh, and Salah ad Din thanks to a series of offensives by U.S. and Iraqi forces. "

Was Operation Iraqi Freedom worth the time, treasure and precious blood shed by America's voltigeurs?

Iraq was brilliant. Knocking out the largest Arab amy in history in 20 days - no less. On a WMD guess provided cold rolled steel bona fides that Great Satan is crazy and unpredictable after 911 and sent a very cool message to intolerant, militias, illegitimate, murderous, courpt regimes that she is down right scary and lethal.

Brett Stephens at WSJ points out

"Here's a partial list: Saddam is dead. Had he remained in power, we would likely still believe he had WMD. He would have been sitting on an oil bonanza priced at $140 a barrel. He would almost certainly have broken free from an already crumbling sanctions regime.

The U.S. would be faced with not one, but two, major adversaries in the
Persian Gulf. Iraqis would be living under a regime that, in an average year, was at least as murderous as the sectarian violence that followed its collapse.
And the U.S. would have seemed powerless to shape events.

Instead, we now have a government that does not threaten its neighbors, does not sponsor terrorism, and is unlikely to again seek WMD. We have a democratic government, a first for the Arab world, and one that is increasingly capable of defending its people and asserting its interests

We have a defeat for al Qaeda. Critics carp that had there been no
invasion, there never would have been al Qaeda in Iraq. Maybe. As it is,
thousands of jihadists are dead, al Qaeda has been defeated on its self-declared "central battlefield," and the movement is largely discredited on the Arab street and even within Mohammedist circles.

We also have -- if still only prospectively -- an Arab bulwark against
Iran's encroachments in the region. But that depends on whether we simply withdraw from Iraq, or join it in a lasting security partnership.

None of these are achievements to sneer at, all the more so because they
were won through so much sacrifice."

All true. Plus, Iraq and Operation Iraqi Freedom demonstrated that Great Satan will go anywhere and do anything to protect and/or project democracy.

America's staying power and fire power also sent a wonderful message to friends, frienemies and enemies alike that Great Satan has got the will power too - Surging extra Regime Changers into Iraq while popularity polls reflected Americans were tired of Iraq and all things ME

Biddle O'Hanlon and Pollack conclude that

If the United States can maintain a substantial force in Iraq through the
critical period of the next two to three years, there is now a credible basis
for believing that major drawdowns after that can be enabled by success rather
than mandated by failure.

Which ties into their intro

The Iraq war has become one of the most polarizing issues in American politics.
Most Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.), want large, early troop
cuts; most Republicans, including Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), want U.S.
troops to stay until Iraq's stability is guaranteed.

Years of bad news from the front have hardened these divisions along
partisan lines and embittered many on both sides.

Today, however, there is reason to believe that the debate over Iraq can
change.

True. Super Change.

A.Q.'s Femme Fatales

The Iraqi Sajida al Rishawi was destined to fail in her attempt to blow herself up in the suicide operation she was ordered to carry out in a hotel in Amman, Jordan in 2005. Deployed by Al-Qaeda, Sajida’s failure to execute the mission is what made it possible for us to see her face and hear her voice as she confessed during her trial.



As for the rest of the Iraqi female suicide bombers, who have become one of Al-Qaeda’s most dangerous weapon in Iraq; they remain faceless and nameless and we lack information and details relating to them.



Last week [Monday 28 June], four Iraqi female suicide bombers carried out a bloody attack that ended in the death of scores of people. However, al Qaeda, like any other extremist movement, involves many contradictions, especially in matters relating to women – even if they are suicide bombers.



Women’s growing role within the movement; the fact that they have resolved to die for Al-Qaeda, does not necessarily mean that their status has been elevated. They will always be overshadowed by their male counterparts and will continue to rank lower than the men whose photographs and video footage, recorded before they set off on their mission to detonate themselves and kill innocent people, is disseminated.



Since its inception, Al-Qaeda organization used to promote its leaders and elements through videos and recordings, the most prominent of which was a [24-minute] video produced by Al-Qaeda that bore the ‘Hollywoodized’ title ‘The Shadow of Swords’. The film calls on Muslim youth to wage war against the disbelievers and shows a number of operations carried out in North Africa with voiceovers from Osama Bin Laden and second-in-command, Ayman Al Zawahiri who calls for the liberation of Al-Andalus. Disregarding the organization’s political messages relating to its activity in North Africa; the video doesn’t offer anything new.



In all of Al-Qaeda’s visual or audio productions, only males are present while the females are visually excluded from the picture that the movement presents of itself. Some men receive training while others are seen saying their last words and the beards of elderly leaders change from dark to grey – but still, no women. Women leave no trace despite the fact that for the past two years they have been employed as Al-Qaeda’s most deadly killing tools.



Undoubtedly, a woman’s motives to commit suicide and kill the innocent are different from a man’s. The men who become combatants are fully aware of the manhood connotations that come with it, however the women’s decision has to do with weakness, failure and disappointment and it is something towards which she is reluctantly driven. This is what may be concluded from the stories of Sajida al Rishawi and her Belgian precedent Muriel Degauque, who was recruited by Al-Qaeda to execute an operation in Iraq in 2005.



Al-Qaeda’s exploitation of women as recruits is a reluctant development that took place due to tactical reasons related to difficulties that the men have begun to face. And yet, the women’s acceptance of that role does not mean that they are granted the distinction that the men enjoy; there is no name, picture, video footage or celebration in return for their decision.



This doesn’t mean that I advocate the rights of female suicide bombers; this is simply a comparison between the two genders to highlight the paradox behind concealing the women’s identities and faces.



It as though she is faced with a double curse; first she is dispatched off to die then her identity suffers the same fate as her body after the explosion.


diAnA mUkKaLeD

American Power

Online for less than a year, American Power has earned a spot in the top tiers of Great Satan's intelligentsia. Created by So Cal Poli Sci guy Dr. Donald Douglas (Oh! He got game! ), Am Pow is essential reading in the new millennium.



Neophilosophical mindcandy that consistently makes the case for the undeniably sexy appeal of fun, freedom of choice and certifiable democrazy with insightful analysis, commentary and expertise on a wide variety of subjects - Foreign Policy, Education, American and Foreign politics, culture, International relationships - all from an unbound neoconservative perspective.

AmPow's "Pro Victory" stance and determined daemoneoconic devotion has generated support, robust debate and PR at sundry sites like Air America to Atlantic Monthly. AmPow's influence routinely and regularly stars at Real Clear Politics "Best of the Blogs" series.

A true son of So Cali, before he was Dr Douglas he was a champion skateboardist, a homie and peer of Tony Hawk, rocked out with cutting edge rock harbingers like Black Flag and Social Distortion and supported American Intervention in the Balkans way back in the 1990's.

He excelled so well in school, truly in love with booklearning and a first class communicator, a career in education seemed a perfect match.

GsGf correspondants recently won the highly coveted op to snag an iview with the hot doc and put the journalistic moves on at the recent super secret neocon coven "Committee Of Five" annual super secret Grand Strategy hook up.

GsGf - What was the spark to create American Power?

Dr Douglas - The fact is, when I started blogging I had just finished teaching a new course, Introduction to Political Theory. More so than other political philosophies covered in the class, I was drawn to Burkean thought for its emphasis on custom and tradition.

"Burkean Reflections" was my first weblog.

I especially liked Burke's emphasis on continuity in culture - on prescriptive authority found in a nation's historical associations and traditions, and how such bases of authority formed a bulwark against revolutionary movements, and the rise of authoritarian leadership.

I thus thought Burkean conservatism would provide excellent foundations for a traditionalist's analyisis of poltics and world affairs.

GsGf - What happened? What compelled you to ditch old school diplopoli philosophy in the new millennium?

Dr Douglas - While Burke will remain a key pillar of my thinking on the best social order, my forward orientation on America power and U.S. foreign policy diverges substantially from orthodox conceptions of Burkean restraint in foreign affairs.

I became increasingly distressed under a Burkean identity of classical conservatism. disgusted, frankly, by some of the uses of Burke among some old-guard conservatives, who've championed Burke in a program of outright American isolationism and reactionary doctrines.

GsGf - By "Restraint in Foreign Affairs" you mean the Iraq war.

Dr Douglas -Most of my blogging was on Iraq, and I started to realize that I was really neoconservative more than a Burkean conservative, so after I learned that paleoconservatives champion Burke as their intellectual pedigree I created American Power.

GsGf - What were the inspirations?

Dr Douglas - A couple of articles further convinced me that it was time to firmly authenticate the neoconservative foundations of American Power.

One of these is a New York Times essay by David Brooks. An agenda of global democracy promotion is well within the established traditions of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy, from Wilson to Reagan.

There's no ignominy in the push to harness U.S. hegemony for the expansion of world freedom.

Second, that has affirmed the importance of making more clear the ideological identity for my writing, Joshua Muravchik's October 2007 essay in Commentary Magazine, "The Past, Present, and Future of Neoconservatism."

Muravchik makes an awesome case - absolutely no apologies - for the power of neoconservative thought thus far and in the years ahead. The essay offers a fairly comprehensive review of neoconservativism's development.

This article's a modern classic, and those who so easily and utterly dismiss neoconservatism would be irresponsible to disengage from the arguments it presents. Muravchik concludes the piece by rightly noting that neoconservatism isn't foolproof, that it doesn't hold all the answers.

What it does do is offer a coherent and compelling approach to meeting today's international challenges, not the least of these being the war on terror. Those who so easily and utterly dismiss neoconservatism would be irresponsible to disengage from the arguments it presents.

GsGf - What are America's National Interests?

Dr Douglas - The national interest historical defined has physical/economic security of the state can be very narrow. It can lead to isolationism for a great power. Today, if a "realist" national interest conception would return to favor, we'd "off-shore" our political-miltary responsiblities around the world, starting with Iraq, and then with a realignment of our basing overseas.

GsGf - Wouldn't that be ammoral or immoral to outsource America's projection - or rejection of projection?

Dr Douglas - It's not moral or immoral, but simply a choice on the appropriate use of our resources and power. Unfortunatly, "national interest" can be construed so narrowly as to be isolationist.

America historically in the indispensible great power. I think the world would be less free and stable of we adopted a "come home America" national interest foreign policy.

GsGf - And Regime Changes?

Dr Douglas - The question of whether or not to intervene's relative, depending on a range of factors, but genocidal circumstances and the failure of multinational responses ought to be precipitous factors. We should have no more Rwandas or Darfurs, to say the least.

And the case could be made that criminal negligence, as in this year's case of Burma, might be added to the notion triggers on the responsibility to protect. The national interest includes moral responsibility, where material capabilities are used for the expansion of liberties and values.

GsGf - Could humanitarian needs be a trigger for interventions?

Dr Douglas - It depends on international circumstances. The U.N. structures can work if there's a commonality of interests among the key actors. Humanitarian assistance can be facilitated without regime change. But when nations refuse to act amid genocidal-scale disasters, outside action should be considered. Today, Zimbabwe is not yet such a situation.

Kenya earler this year wasn't quite on the level where we'd see calls for outside action. We'd need to see something of world historical enormity to rouse the normal recalitrance to override the norm of sovereignty for outside intervention to be seen as acceptable. There's a political calculation in all of this, so smart politics will advise proportionate responses.

GsGf - Am Pow tends to have a laissez-faire view on personal freedoms - secular in a way compared to many conservative voices per se - is this significant?

Dr Douglas - I'm kinda of into the religious values thing, only to the extent that we respect Judeo Christian values against anti-Western nihilism.

GsGf - May I ask one last question?

Dr Douglas - You just did.

GsGf - Oh, then may I ask you one more after this one?

Dr Douglas - (laughs) Certainly!

GsGf - Why does neoconservatism face such ardent foes? Are these willful mischaracterations or honest ignorance?

Dr Douglas - The left hates neoconservatism first on foremost for the powerful role leading neocons played in the lead up to Iraq.

From postmodern leftists, where forces, essentially, can't ever be considered, neocons are the enemy.

But if you look at it closely, neocons are almost exactly opposite on the issues most important to the left. Where liberals want the U.S. to be humble and focus on multilateral compromise and even supranational authority over the U.S. (the U.N), neoconservatives reject these themes, instead pushing a righteous moralism in upholding American power and values, as well as a refusal to subordinate American interests to foreign states or international institutions.

We'd have to sort out some other factors, but the fact that "neocons" have become the shorthand scourge for so many antiwar leftists it's fairly clear the movements simply a lightning rod and easy ideological demon.

Postmodernism is fundamentally challenged by neoconservatism moral optimism and stunningly unabashed willingness to promote the national interest by use of military power. "