Let’s consider two combatants contemplating war against one another and make a wager on which will be victorious before their war begins (“victorious” meaning : “to get the outcome the combatant wants in the war”).

On one side are the “haystacks.” They are the common-variety haystacks, made of golden harvested grass, pitched high in a pile , shining in the sun. These haystacks want to endure , intact, until their destinies are fulfilled by deployment into the service of their makers. On the other side are the “matches” – all of them the self-igniting stick variety, having the general size , shape and aspect of large needles without eyes.

The ultimate purpose of all the matches is to set fire to all the haystacks. The easiest way to accomplish this is for the matches to imbed themselves deep inside the haystacks , where, because of their small size and the haystacks’ greater mass , it is easy for them to remain hidden until the call for ignition. When the call to ignite is given by the leaders of the matches, all the matches in all the haystacks will strike themselves and go up in flames along with their individual haystack hosts. Being thusly consumed , however, is no defeat or problem for the matches, who are all trained by masterful match mentors to believe that when they are immolated in a haystack fire they themselves start, they will be instantly transported – intact and unscathed into an after life where they’ll be safe and happy forever – that being , cushioned amidst the churlish labia and securely-clenched teeth of an aspiring cinema cowboy , sitting on a subservient bale of hay in the non-smoking section of a sushi bar in lower L.A. watching CNN and waiting for a Hollywood talent agent to phone.

Now for the wager: When all the matches in the world are safely and securely ensconced in all the haystacks in the world, and the haystacks declare war on the matches and threaten to seek them out and set them on fire, tell me , where are you going to place your bets?

REVOLUTIONARY WAR ON TERRORISM :

“REVERSE JIHAD”

When you’re marching to war in the dark , in the enemy’s own territory, and you have no idea of his whereabouts – not to mention his identity – do you turn to the strategies of Generals Patton and Rommel, or Ceaser’s Gallic Wars? Although the principles of conventional warfare helped expedite the outcome of Desert Storm, they were little help with the Viet Cong and they’ll be of even lesser utility in ferreting out those ghosts of Jihad hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan and in as remote hideouts in possibly twenty other countries. This time, rather than Schwartzkoff and the Manual of Arms, I think we’re going to need something akin to Aikido, Islamic style, al la Allah. We’re going to need “Reverse Jihad”.

The Problem:The Enemy

Our terrorist enemies are stateless. Their principal bond is their only identifying feature – the mask of holy Muslim Warrior waging a self-proclaimed revolutionary Jihad, pursuant to an auto-generated edict , or Fatwa, calling for the death of all Americans and other ” infidels”. These terrorist fanatics are willing (and in many cases wanting) to die for their cause. We are not contending with the typical motives of a territorially-acquisitive invader like Saddam Hussein; we are being attacked by a perverted belief system and the zealous followers of a brilliant and psychotic charismatic leadership. The most effective force to overcome such a belief system is the force which created it, according to one Aikido principle of martial art. We can kill any number of terrorists, provided we find them, but the only power that can disarm the entire disparate band of holy warriors is the power that created and sustains them. Like it or no, these terrorists are on a holy mission. It is rationally and theologically a twisted and perverted mission, but a mission perceived by its zealous executors as by and for Allah nonetheless . Only Islam can intervene to “end” (as opposed to “win”) this newly-declared war on Islamic Terrorism. Fortunately there may be a way this can be accomplished.

II
SOLUTIONS

Discovering a solution to the problem doesn’t end the problem – only implementing it does. The terrorist threat presents a compound problem that must be solved on three levels: the immediate, the core and the ultimate .

The ultimate problem will be dealing with the terrorists when and if we identify and locate them. The core problem is discovering a means of identifying and locating the enemy. The immediate problem is discovering the means of communicating the solutions to the core problem to our administration and military leadership.

What follows is a proposal for solving the core problem – identifying and locating the enemy. A secondary purpose of the present writing is to enlist the reader in the task of solving the immediate problem – getting the core solution to the leadership whose task is to execute the ultimate solution, and getting it to them in time … before we run amuck and enable the Bin Laden’s out there to realize their ultimate goal of global Armageddon.

The Terrorist’s Prophesy and Plan

Bin Laden wants and needs this “war between Islam and the rest of the world”, in the aftermath of which, he plans to become Iyatolla Mondo. If Americans follow through with their covert , obtuse and inchoate plans to invade Afghanistan – or any Muslim state, on the ground or in the air , innocent people will die. Muslim innocents. This will fulfill bin Laden’s prophesy, confirm his status as a prophet of Islam and quite possibly mark the beginning of the true mother of all wars – Islam vs. the rest of the world. The least we stand to lose in such a war are our oil supplies and economic viability; the most , along with others, our peaceful existence (pardon the arguable redundancy) . Fortunately there may be a way to avoid all this and still accomplish the ultimate goal of defeating the terrorists in their quest for Armageddon and world domination by default.

In Pursuit of the Core : Premises
1

With the possible exception of Israel, every Middle Eastern country directly or indirectly depends on oil, U.S. distribution of petro products and U.S. (world) economic stablity to survive. Automobiles and computers today are material and corporate composits of multi-national industry. The stock markets and monetary systems of the East , West and Europe , while posing as disparate and autonomous performers on the shimmering surface of commerce, are symbiotic and even incestuous beneath the currents of international competition. Presently the world is watching while its capital resources are beginning to trickle down a deep and dark hole an alarmingly few Persian pirates dug in the soil and soul of New York’s treasured island. Bin Laden’s terrorist team , if successful, could ultimately destroy Western , OPEC and conceivably the entire world’s economies . The keystone of economic stability is confidence. The sheiks and clerics who control Islam have been to school or else have a dozen or more sons who have. The concept that bin Laden’s agenda, unimpeded , could render the Twin Towers but the first to fall in a global house of cards is not beyond their ken.

2

Bin Laden’s counterfeit fatwa against the U.S. and others is, according to true Islamic law, criminally false and heretic. There is no room for debate on this point – unless one is debating an Islamic terrorist.

3

Islamic leaders and clerics in conjunction with secular heads of Arab state dominate the governments in all Islamic countries, including Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Pakistan , Afghanistan and the rest.

4

Seeking out , locating and eliminating Bin Laden and his twenty-thousand-strong, stateless, multi-nationally-based net strewn out in all these disparate territories is MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, at least for the U.S, with use of conventional machinations and tactics. It’s Viet Nam times ten … maybe twenty.

5

Bin Laden’s strength and the sine qua non of his terrorist revolution is his ability to convince uneducated, impoverished, desperate , marginal Islamic people that the U.S. and other “infidel” capitalistic people are the cause of their miseries, and that a holy war (Jihad) waged against them will improve their miserable plight.

6

Bin Laden’s phony fatwa and his united Jihad war are , according to Islamic law, not only criminally wrong, but religiously hypocritical and heretic, such as would justify a fatwa and Jihad being declared and waged against him and his terrorist network. Why isn’t it already? Indeed. The point.

FORWARD TO THE PRESENT

The preceding was written entirely looking forward to the war in Afghanistan. As B.E.A. founder, I was recently (in June 2004) asked by a Midwestern blog to respond to a question related to Bush’s more recent Islamic blunder….Iraq. His remedy to combat the Islamic matches in the world’s haystacks is to set them on fire apparently. Even though 20 percent (one in five) Frenchmen are Islamic, and even though we have probably three million of them in the U.S. and close to 2 billion of them ensconced in every country around the globe, and even though we haven’t established that Iraq had anything at all to do with 9/11, we have killed over 100,000 of their non-militant Islamic citizens (not to mention over 1,500 of our own valiant servicemen and women) and in the process fulfilled every one of bin Laden’s wishes and prophesies. Ideally, where COULD we go from here to begin to reverse the damage Bush and his neo-con fascist crazies have done? In a whim of magical wishfulness, I scribed the following answer. Although I wrote this before we “liberated Iraq” and declared another “victory” in the war on terror, I wouldn’t change a word of it today… As far as war on Islamic terrorism, we’ve only just STARTED it…

QUESTION: You’ve just replaced George W. Bush as president. (Don’t ask how.) What do you do about Iraq, and why? Don’t look back; look forward. Be specific….

ANSWER: I would declare and host an international summit to “Reverse Jihad”.

To the summit I would invite the head clerics and secular leaders of every Islamic country on the planet. When the meeting was called to order I would get down upon my knees before the entire assembly and say: “In the name of Allah, God, Jehova, Elohim, Jesus and Mohammed and the unmentioned gods and prophets of all here assembled, I apologize on behalf of myself and my country and its allies for having wrongfully and mistakenly invaded Iraq. I beg your forgiveness for our errors and for the lives lost and suffering incurred by this ill-conceived campaign of war, and I enlist your assistance in helping me make amends, and helping restore peace and prosperity to the people of Iraq. To accomplish this, I propose as follows.”

A sketch of the plan I would propose and implement would include:
(1) I would let all of Islam know that if their clerical leaders will immediately begin to pronounce and preach in the mosques a jihad against all (false and by Islamic law illegal) anti-western anti-coalition jihads and prevail in an effort to mandate a cessation of all terrorist activities directed against Americans, Isreal and their allies (including the Sheiks of Saudi Arabia), that I would instruct Sharon that America’s alliance with the State of Israel would end unless there was an immediate and permanent withdrawl on Israel’s part of the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank and the establishment of a truly-multilateral commission for the establishment of an Independent Palestine devoid entirely of the influence of either Sharon or Arafat.
I would do all possible to expedite the establishment of an independent Palestinian state as a proactive show of American good faith, regardless of the instant success of the Reverse Jihad effort. The independence of Palestine-and the complicity of the U.S. in delaying it, are, respectively long overdue and obvious.
I would propose the adoption of a definition of “terrorism” and an enactment of an international law proscribing it and warranting international sanctions against it (and any nation’s aiding and abetting it), and I would (by fiat, because a consensus among the invitees would be impossible) define it as “any unprovoked attack resulting in murder, mahem, or abduction upon any non-millitary personnel except where the non-military personnel are clearly and voluntarily participating in military, paramilitary or otherwise criminal conduct directly against either the attacker or non-militant civilians under the protection of the attacker”.
I would require that all Islamic clerical authorities arrange it so that
U.N. or agents of other internationally independent observers are allowed to attend services in all Islamic mosques and madrasses to determine whether the correct “jihad” sermons and cirriculum are being preached and taught , and to see to it that the mosques and maddrasses are no longer preaching and instructing anti-western Jihad messages or honoring anti-Western suicide jihaddists as Islamic martyrs.
I would demand Dick Cheney’s resignation for his conflict of interest (and/or treasonous misprison of office) in being VP and a paid profiteer (by way of “extended salary” and stock options ) of Halliburton; Next I would nationalize Halliburton and all its subsidiaries, declare by executive order a stock split vesting one-half the ownership of Halliburton in an Iraqi holding company which would issue a share of preferred stock (with compulsory distribution of one-half the annual corporate profits) to each Iraqi when and as they register to vote in the election to popularly elect a new democratic regime in Iraq. All the oil fields, refineries, pipelines and reserves-the entire oil infrastructure-would be managed and held in trust by Haliburton, audited by a team of Swiss bankers, over-seen by U.N. CPA’s, with one-half the net profits being allocated to defray the costs of re-construction of Iraqi civil and governmental infrastructure, and one-half being paid to Iraqi voters to render Iraq the first Arab state in which the Islamic citizenry at large is allowed to benefit directly from the country’s only valuable natural resource.
I would muster the Republican Guard back into active duty as “Reverse Jihad Deputies” and station them in a single, strategically-located town of predominantly Sunni population; the town should not be near any oil or pipeline infrastructure. The Guard should be mustered at double their previous pay,and assigned primarily to
anti-insurgency (and anti-terrorist) duty, because that is what they
have been trained to do for the past 20 years. They should be hired only on the condition they muster back into service carrying their previous arms, including culvert explosives and rocket launchers. No weapon(s), no job. No job, no salary. Bonuses for coming to work with explosives of massive destruction, rocket launchers and anti-aircraft munitions.
The weapons we would thereby enlist into the Reverse Jihad militia would be the same weapons currently blowing our un-armored Hummers to bits.

I would insist that the oil trust continue for a period of up to ten years, during which time I would publicly announce the Federal funding and implementing of a Detroit/Manhattan project, where the American auto and HVAC industries were incentived (through tax benefits to manufacturers and consumers) to design, develop and purchase energy-efficient vehicles and residential and commercial heating and air conditioning technologies to totally terminate U.S. reliance on Middle Easter Oil by the end of the ten-year period of Reverse Jihad Détente. It could be accomplished in half that time with already-extant technologies.

The attack of 9/11 on the Twin Towers of New York was not about Saddam Hussein or the Baath Party’s oppression of Iraq’s Shiite majority. The attack of 9/11 had to do with America’s alliance with Israel in its Zionist war with the Arabian Pennisula and American’s alliance with the Shieks of Saudi Arabia and other OPEC states. The attack on Iraq had nothing to do with the attack of 9/11, and served only to fulfill the prophesies of bin Laden and the other fundamentalist Islamics who look about themselves in the land others refer to as the latters’ “promised land” and see only the automobiles, condos, harems and castles of rich sheiks and their western partners who together mine and market their sacred holy land’s only supply of virtual milk and honey…Arabian crude. To the average Saudi, Israel is an American military ally, and the House of Saud, an American puppet regime. They believe this is so because it’s so. Until the wealth of the Middle East is shared with its largely destitude and desperate Islamic inhabitants, those who are allowed inside to reap that wealth will be viewed as “infidel” and pariah from the windows of the ubiquitous mosques.
No nation will ever successfully colonize an Islamic state. Not even Israel herself. We need to retreat from the Middle East as if our very lives depended on on, because they do. The only way to retreat from the Middle East and survive is for America to liberate itself from its dependance on Arabian oil. This task is emminently dooable. But it will take imagination, leadership, courage and initiative we can presently only dream of, because at the helm of our present ship of state, there is a cretinous oil pirate cum neo-Con Christian zealot who truly thinks he’s waging-and winning (!) an illusory war with terrorism against some imagined axis of Revealationesque evil. In fact, before Bush, terrorism posed only an ever-present danger of isolated and uncoordinated disaster. After Bush’s declaration of war, and the preemptive conquest and colonization of two Islamic nations in the illusory “war” on terrorism, he has activated/consummated the perenially-inchoate conflict between the West and Islam and managed to merge the interests of previously-isolated malcontents into the heart, soul and spleen of Islam. Bush’s brash and unilateral war policies have served to ordain the wildest of pan-arabian terrorist prophesies and characteriazations of America as “infidel” and “warring crusader”.
I would turn the Summit ultimately into a Constitutional Congress and permit the secular authorities and clerics of each sect to appoint delegates in numbers proportioned to the best available census calculations of Sunni/Shiite/etc. populations in Iraq. After the adoption of a Constitution, the mechanics of an election process would be determined.

As “power pointed” dipolmacy, any resistence to any proposals I’d (as president) make as hereinabove outlined would be met with the pat PAX-American PNAC pronouncement that is today’s state of affairs… “Well, all I can say to you Shieks, and you Clerics, and all your dissatisfied constituencies, whether civil or terroristic is…Unless you reverse this Jihad against America, Israel and your Saudi citizenry and the oil pipelines we cherish and depend upon in common, we highly-militarized Coaliationists are here to stay….It’s your call.”

Respectfully submitted by Robert R. (Dusty) Schoch, B.E.A. June 19, 2004.