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Assessment of the Bangaldesh Bombing Situation

1. This attack is un-precidented in Bangaldesh history

2. There was no concurent attempt at a coup-de-tat

3. It comes on the heels of the Brittish preparing to deport a militant cleric and reduction in sentance for the Spiritual Leader behind the Bali Bombing.

4. It was well coordinated, took much planning time and was well executed

Assessment;

I believe that these bombing were an effort to demonstrate to the Bangladesh Government that Militant Islamic Cells exist in Bangeldesh and that they are a power to be reckoned with.

I also believe that like the reduction in sentance for the spiritual leader behind the Bali bombings was due to the government's recognition that if they push to hard against the Islamic Militant Terrorists they have and will strike out at the governments. I believe that the reduction in sentance for the spiritual leader behind the Bali Bombing is viewed as a great vitory by the Militant Islamics and is a tacit recognition of their power and influence in Asian Islamic Society.

I expect further attacks in the Asian Region to destabilize local governments and as part of an effort to influence their internal and external polices.

Ed Chesky

---

Quote:

"The bombs were crude, homemade devices. At least two people have been killed and 50 others injured in a series of small bomb blasts across Bangladesh...
Prime Minister Khaleda Zia condemned the attacks as "cowardly".

"The attackers are enemies of the country, people, peace, humanity and democracy," she said."

---

Is the price of the War in Iraq worth the cost?

Some numbers based on the United States Military’s own calculations.

The Iraqi insurgents and Al Qeada already have these numbers and are using them against us.

In rough terms we are loosing 900 men and women per year in Iraq

We have lost roughly 1800 men and women to date.

By the Pentagon’s own estimates we sustain about 9 wounded for each person killed.

We currently have about 16,000 wounded from the war. With wounds ranging from minor to severe.

The cost to care for the severely wounded is stretching our VA system to the breaking point, with annual costs expected to reach billions for care of the severely disabled wounded over teh course of their lifetimes. This does not count the cost for VA disability benefits such as adaptive housing, or the loss of productivity to our economy or the impact on families and social services stemming from the need to care for traumatized veterans

Roughly 1 out of every 6 veterans will suffer some form of mental injury from the stress of combat operations in Iraq. The cost in terms of providing them medication is on average $300.00 per month. At present roughly 30,000 Veterans of the Iraq conflict need treatment for mental injuries. That is a cost of $9,000.000 per year to trat these causulteis, if we project this out over the expected life time of the veteran’s the cost is estimated to be $360 billion dollars just for the current number of mental casualties we have sustained.

The Senior United States Military Commander in Iraq stated that history shows that insurgencies tend to last on average, in the modern era, ten years. This is roughly the same amount of time the Soviets were in Afghanistan and we were in Vietnam.

If the War lasts 9 additional years and troop levels remain constant we can expect to take roughly 8,100 killed, 72,900 wounded and 270,000 casualties from mental injuries. In terms of dollar costs the mental injuries alone, if troop levels remain constant and the war lasts 9 additional years, we can expect to spend $384 trillion dollars in drug expenses alone to treat the mental casualties for the rest of their lives.

I used to do these caculations in my head, while performing nuclear fire planning missions. Now due to a brain injury I have to use a calculator.

You tell me if what we have achieved in Iraq is worth this cost.

Osama taguht the insurgents how to do these same calculations.

Now we know why there is a cover up and attempt to disredit all the anti-war activists.....

Math error on the dollar costs for treatment of of casualties from mental injury.

Note I slipped a decimal point and the figures should be $36 Billion to treat current casualties from mental injury and $38.4 Trillian to treat the projected 270,000 additional ones if the war lasts 9 additional years and the troop levels remain constant. To put it in perspective the baby boom generations total accumlated wealth is estimated to be $41 trillian dollars. If we continue the current war in Iraq at the same level we will basically spend the entire savings of the Baby Boom generation to finance it.

In the Afghanistan War, Osama and the CIA developed a campaign plan to bring down the Soviets in Afghanistan based on this model. Osama and the Talaban expanded it to include flooding the Soviet military with illegal drugs to undermine moral and induce large numbers of drug addicts and the related treatment and social costs into the Soviet Military and Soviet Society.

Based on this model and experience in Afghanistan Osama, like Ho Chin Min in Vietnam, has developed a multi-dimensional campaign plan to engage us in Iraq and around the globe. Its being followed loosely by the Islamic Militants who understand the vision and concept behind the plan.

I expect that the militants will now expand attacks in the near term to include selected assisgnation of critical leaders and personnel in the west as we improve our defenses against suicide bombers. Having been the target of Islamic Militant assignation attempts due to my military service and accomplishments, I understand this side of the equation very well. Now being out in the open due to a government that refused to listen to me or offer me protection, I sit here on a daily basis waiting for a gunman to put a gun to the back of my head and pull the trigger as I walk down the street or slip a bomb in my car. The CIA agent exposed by the Bush administration goes through the same thing on a daily basis.

The model they will use will be based on the gunman that tried to kill the Pope, knife wielder that recently killed the tolerant French christian leader in France by cutting his throat in a crowded service or gunman/bomber/grenade throwers that killed Sadat in Egypt.

I also note that the Afghan drug trade still is in full production mode with tons of drugs flooding the world from the poppy fields in AFghanistan.

I hope this update helps

Ed Chesky

Now you know why I am angry with the Bush administration

Al Qeada is adaptable and studies the news for what works, the woman who killed Brother Roger found a weak spot and commited a crime...she is not AL Qaeda but they wil study what she did and learn from it...

I expect assinations of key western leaders to begin in the near term as part of the escallation of terror by the terrorists.

Ed Chesky

Hi Ed, without divulging classified information, is there not a technical possibility of detonating wired bombs at a distance?

For example, if each security sensitive approach area were zoned off with concrete barricades that zig-zag, allowing only one car in each zig or zag at a time, and if technology allows for a signal sent to detonate any possible bombs aboard, perhaps sent out intermittently, then any car carrying such bombs would detonate of their own within their limited range of destructibility. Would that not improve on our security situation, especially in violent places like Iraq or Afghanistan?

Not to invite a security breach, just a curiosity about whether or not this would work.

Ivan

Jihad Watch

-an important reference page explaining the Jihad.

-maybe not what most people think it is?

-watch out.

Thanks for the update anonymous.

I knew Al Qeada was planning to move to killing key leaders. A friend from the old days of the intelligence community let me know Al Qeada is planning to kill me. Thanks to the Bush administration I am out in the open instead of working for the federal government in a protected position.

I will give you an update on the info you requested later Ivan.

I have few things on my mind right now.

Ed Chesky

Ivan,

It is possible to remotely detonate wire controled explosive devices.
The problem from a engineering perspective remains the nature of the
detonating mechanism and the amout of energy required to triger it.
That data for obvious reasons is classified, although its possible to
work around that.

A typical explosive detonator that is wire controled induces
a electrical charge into the detonator. The amout of voltage needed to
cause the detonator to explode is fairly low. The United States Army
Claymore Mine uses a simple electrically stimulated detonator to fire
the mine.

Now to induce a premature firing of a detonator it is necessary to
induce a current into the firing circuit to cause it to explode.
to do this you need to generate a Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) in the
area around the bomb. The United States Military according to
unclassied publications has developed a EMP bomb that has been
fitted to cruise missles. They are designed to take out power grids,
communications sites and early warning sites by inducing a energy pulse
into the target. The energy pulse is generated by a controled
conventional explosion. Its far less energy than is generated by
a tactical nuke but very effective.

Theorectically its possible to improve and refine this technology.
We have been playing with directed and controled EMP fields since the
Cold War, again according to unclassied documents. The key issue has
long been development of a power source to generate the EMP field,
and an antenna configuration to direct it. The current generation of
EMP bombs are omni directional. To shape it takes us into highly
classified areas and must be left out of this discussion.

Now when we look at the issue of the wire detonated bomb think of the
wire as a long wire antenna and think about the effect of an EMP field
on it and the firing circuit.

I think you now get the point on this. During the Cold War we had
1950s era high power jammers, obsolete technology mounted on 2.5 ton
trucks that generated significant EM pulses as a side effect of
operation. They have been phased out now but used to be able to
put out bursts of up to 1.5 KW of energy.

If we could refine the concepts discussed above it would be possible
to remotely detonate wire controled bombs. If I was still in the
R&D field I woudl set up a remote test site in The U.S., Australia,
Canada or New Zealand and run some tests. Most of the old Cold War
Equipment we used is now for sale as military surplus on the World
market.

Hope this helps

Ed Chesky

Ivan,

I have posted a link to a good article on EMP Weapons

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/kopp/apjemp.html

I have also attached a link to a site that discusses some early prototype RF and EMP weapons and their ability to stop car engines and disrupt the firing circuits of bombs.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/1998_hr/s980225m.htm

Ed Chesky

Ivan

In terms of the energy required to detonate suicide bombers bombs, road side bombs and the like I have attached a link to a site that details the amount of Radio Frequency Energy required to detonate a Low Energy Initiator (LEI)(Detonator)

http://www.llnl.gov/es_and_h/hsm/doc_17.03/doc17-03.html#2.0

The information tracks with my initial asessement of the technological feasability of remotely detonating suicide and road side bombs

It also gives you a feel for the distance from a LEI that a RF/EMP generator could have an effect. For the Equipment I was working with, the old 1950's GLQ-3B jamming system, the distance of about 1300 feet was about right for triggering a LEI. The old GLQ-3B was a Loral Fairchild system that operated in the 20 to 230 MHz range and put out 1.5 KW of power. Its now sold as military surplus on the world market.

Just on a side note the suicide bomber and road side bomb are the two critical weapons of the terrorists. One of the reasons Al Qeada has targeted me is that any effort to counter these devices is seen as a threat to their operations...

Ed Chesky

Just an update from the following website that confirms the escallation of terror to include assissinations.....

http://www.jihadwatch.org/


"It is probably just a matter of time before we see high profile kidnappings in Europe as are described as being planned here. From UPI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

An Algerian terrorist group is calling on fellow extremists to track and strike government and civilian compatriots in France.
In an Internet message, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat called on its "Muslim brothers in France" to survey, track and "ambush" high-level political, military and economic officials on French soil, Le Figaro reports.

"Our real enemies aren't only the military rulers," the GSPC said in its Internet message reportedly published in early August. "But also numerous civilians known for their allegiance to French leaders."

"Support your brothers in Algeria by tracking these criminals in France," the statement reportedly read.

The GSPC was founded in 1998 as a splinter group of the Armed Islamic Group, which launched a bloody insurgency against Algeria's military backed government in the early 1990s. The ensuing civil war killed as many as 150,000 people...

The my inclusion on an Al Qeada Hit list was from a similar source of information......

My Best

Ed Chesky

I see people who are affraid to ask a question. I know what the question is, it goes someting like this, How can you sleep at night, having done the things you did?. To them I say I did what my government paid me and ordered me to do in order to keep this planet alive during an insane arms race and Cold War. Over the course of my career I have assisted in killing tens of thousands of people. Mostly the Children of Islam. To me at the time it was nothing more than a simple targeting problem. I used to do them all the time. Just a matter of kilotons or megatons of nuclear energy and the problem was solved. Spin the wiz wheel and figure out how many would die from radiation in days weeks or months, and then from cancer years later. Nothing to it.

Then one day I amost died and what I did came home to me. The thosuands of carbonized bodies on the highway of death, a communist sympothizer beaten to death by another army after I identified him over lunch with a high official of that army. Drinking coffee on a remote outpost and watching a soldier beat to death for sleeping on duty by another countries military.

All through it I never thought much about god or Jesus Christ until I was poisoned and almost died. During that experience things changed for me.

Unlike Islam Christianity offered me an alternative. I suspect that we will be waiting a long time for an answer to Ivan's question.

Ed Chesky

Ed, what a tragedy was the "highway of death". I had read a very brief article in a San Francisco paper nearly 15 years ago, right after it happened. The paper maybe didn't have its figures right, over 100,000 killed, but they said the burned bodies were everywhere, and that European pilots refused to fly additional missions after that. But then it was all very quickly denied, hushed up, and I never saw anything else on it again... until now.

So it was true. What a tragedy!

Ivan

Yes Ivan it was true,

When I was last in Saudi Arabia I went back to the highway of death. Its a place where the ghosts of an army still walk for those that can sense them. Our official estimates place the number of dead at 10-15,000 I suspect it was more like 25,000 dead.

During each war there comes a time when the tide turns and the other side breaks....its at that point things like the highway of death happen....for me it was a surreal experience to walk it in the days after the war and then years later...in the days after the war it was like Pompeii today the heat from the munitions fused the bodies into carbonized figures...

I trained my entire adult life to help bring about such things...people have no idea what modern mechanized combat is like...

During the hight of the Cold War we had armies across the globe standing toe to toe we had spies, agents and subversives on both sides along with the christians who preached peace and to lay down the arms...

We did many things to hold the line during that time...24 hours a day seven days a week for decades....there were great acts of bravery and self sacrifice and darker things like making an example out of people to get the rest to hold the line in the face of certain death....we had no other options and faced foes like North Korea and its networks of agents and subversives, the Soviets and their client states and all the rest...

Throughout all of it I was called upon to do many things many good and some bad...however there comes point when you know its time to walk away and consider just what it was you did...

Hyping Islam's role in the History of Science,, Cross-posted per discussion on Examined Life forum, dated today:

By Ivan A. (ac80f1ef.ipt.aol.com - 172.128.241.239) on Saturday, October 1, 2005 - 11:28 am:

Marcus, I think there is a natural balance between freedom and decadence, whereby if decadence wins out, then surely you have a collapse of society and civilization, and with it freedom itself. What I wanted to point out was the error of fighting coercive force with repression, hence the Hitler-Stalin reference, so that freedom suffers to the point where we are like our enemy. Without freedom, then why bother to fight them?

The 'republicanism' of our conservative views should not overpower our desire for freedom, anymore than family values should turn repressive on our children. On the other hand, for balance, nor can our freedoms teach our children that 'blow jobs' are okay for them, though they may very well do otherwise as adults, but that's their personal choice. Freedom does allow for personal choice, that's kind of what pretty much defines it, given that it is done in non-coercive ways. Children and adults work under different rules, since children are not yet aware enough as adults to be fully responsible for their actions. That's why they're in parental care, until they are mature as adults. So comparing the loss of freedom for a child is not the same as loss of freedom for an adult. Of course, in the Muslim tradition, all adults are treated as 'children' so everything is carefully spelled out for them, as if they had no ability of personal choice. It gets more complicated because then 'God' says this and that on each issue, so personal choice is overridden, to the absurd point where even our personal choice becomes 'God's Will', so freedom of choice does not even exist for them. We on the other hand value personal choice, adult responsible choices, and honor those choices through laws of agreements, personal contracts, social contracts embodied in our laws, and in the spirit of non-deceit in such agreements. We frown on corruption, for example, and find deceit, theft, scams, all odious to our way of life. Not that they don't happen, just that they are not allowed to happen, that laws protects us from them, as they are coercive. So my point was that to coerce away our freedoms is counter productive to maintaining our freedoms. The Islamic 'Jihadists' gleefully coerce us, to the absurd point of killing themselves in doing so, to force us away from our freedom based culture, with the desire to see us reduced to their 'child like' obsession with doing what somebody defined for them as 'God's Will', to the point where their freedoms are few if any. That is the danger I referred to, not to the decadent decline of the West, as you seem to think.

I do not champion decadence either, since I am well aware of its dangers to society. Of course, I grew up in the Sixties, so maybe have a different outlook on what institutionalized repression is for the 'counter culture', though I too did not condone free sex nor drugs. Yet, I do believe in free expression, provided it is not coercive to others, finds agreement amongst its peers, and is not harmful to society as a whole. So parental restrictions on children's actions is a duty that must be imposed, whether or not the children like it, without coercing them into such rebellion that they in the end harm themselves. This is, in my opinion, what happened during the Vietnam era, that kids were so grossed out by that war that they took it to the other extreme, and parental guidance got lost in the scuffle. But in the same vain, I would not extend this parental guidance to the population at large, if they are a population of consenting and responsible adults, which is part of our culture based on freedom, then their choices must be honored. If the conservative republicanism (as it was in ancient Rome) extends restrictions to human actions to such an extent that personal agreement which are not coercive to others are forbidden, because of concerns over decadence, then how are we different from the Islamists? That was the point. And since Islamists think it perfectly okay to coerce its population with its arch conservative moral values, like burkhas to keep men from getting horny over seeing a woman's skin, is this not treating their population like immature irresponsible children? But then to take it to the next step, to coerce us because we are not doing things their way, is that not one step too far? They cannot take away our freedoms because they disagree with our way of life, anymore than arch conservatives in our societies can take away our freedoms of expression because they don't like the results. The decadence angle is purely subjective, since what may be a decadent 'blow job' to one person may be a joyful 'blow job' to another, and who should rule on that for them? Can you? Are you authorized to forbid expressibly that no one should ever engage in oral sex? No, you can't, though you have the right as a parent to restrict it for your daughter, if she is under age. But you cannot transfer this to society at large, anymore than you can transfer all your other cultural values to society at large, without sacrificing freedom. The end result, if society is truly decadent to the point where it self destructs, its own freedoms destroys its freedoms. That is self contradicting, so clearly there is a limit to our freedoms. Once there is no society within which human expression can find safety, then freedom becomes a moot point. If local gangs rule where once there was rule of law, then what freedom can you expect? None, and we fall back upon an age old 'master-slave' relationship between human beings. That, unfortunately, is the model preferred by the islamist extremists, because they fear freedom in the way you described it for its decadent potentials. But they don't understand our freedom, and think coercing it out of us is a good thing. And they're wrong, because that is not what it is about. Repelling coercion is a must in free societies, that's what it's about. This is not only because we do not desire foreign invasion, but because our very right to agreement itself is threatened. I say that the Islamists do not understand this, are terrified of the prospects of this freedom reaching into their societies, and they are fighting back in 'self-defense' in their simple minded way. We cannot allow for that simplicity of theirs to either change how we behave in our society, to take away our freedoms, nor to allow them to coerce us in any way, even if they think us decadent. That is our business, not theirs.

I think the future of the planet rests on this issue, that it is far more important than people realize, because it is a pivotal point on which either the planet evolves with a conscious awareness of that freedom, or it remains darkened by its violent and coercive past. That's where we're at now, and decadence is really a minor problem by comparison.

Ivan

Ed, and all, I think you will find this post of interest:

War on Terror, or a War on a Cult?

Anyone, please feel free to get into that research and discussion, because though it may be only on a philosophy forum, it is important work in the cause of the future civilization of our small planet.

We are the future now.

A very good assessment of the situation Ivan,

The Bali bombing is in line with my earlier estimates of the re-emergence of Jemaah Islamiyah which is the Asian Islamic faction that is allied with but not fully part of Al Qeada. In some ways, in my opinion, this latest Bali Bombing represents a power struggle between Al Qeada (Osama) and Jemaah Islamiyah (Abu Bakar Bashir) for leadership of Islamic Militancy each wishes to establish a Pan Islamic State under their leadership. Both factions in effect are global versions of the Islamic brand of Aum Shinrikyo.

In reality they are competing cults and not representative of the greater part of Islam.

Ed Chesky

Ivan,

I just watched an interview of LTG Wesely Clark former NATO Commander and my former boss at the NTC. He and I concur with the assessment of the War in Iraq on all points.

He is also a former Presidential candidate and approved me for promotion and selction to the position of Chief of Counter Proliferation for the Asia Pacific Region.

He would also concur with your assessment of the situation you posted above.

Keep up the good work

Ed Chesky

Wesely Clark Interview

LTG Wesely Clark during an interview on Fox news made the case that torture, failure to follow the Geneva convention and need to open a dialog with Arab states based on a common set of shared interests is the only way we are going to win the war on terrorism. He also made the point that there needs to be a full accounting up the chain of command about the failure to follow the Geneva convention and that senior leaders need to be held accountable for the torture of prisoners in our custody.

He also went on to say that Arab states opposed to us are both using and allowing Al Qeada to conduct operations from their territory, safe havens.

Over all an exellent assessment of the situation in Iraq and the actions of the Bush administration which got us into the War in Iraq in the first place.

I salute LTG Clark for saying what needed to be said and am proud to have served as his senior intelligence officer at the National Training Center.

Ed Chesky

MY REFLECTIONS, on the War against Terror.

I've been reflecting on why I asked this question about the "War on Terror cum War on a Cult." In examining my motives, in retrospect, I think it was because I wanted to separate the religion from the cult, a whole people's worldwide belief system from a small quasi-religious sect dedicating itself to killing those who disagree with them.

If the good people born to Islam are to take back control of their personal beliefs away from a sect that has come to politically and by force dominate their thinking, then this politicized version of Islam must be separated from its spiritual side. This vision of a worldwide jihad to conquer the infidels is some last bold attempt to wrestle back, in the fashion of some mythical past when Islam was glorious, when it conquered many people and forced them into conversion, and recreate that glamorous time in their history when they wielded such power. The world has changed, and same as the politicized Christian Church has been made to drop its influence over our government and laws, so will a secular movement within Islam force it to drop its power over social laws and government. This is the anathema to those who want to bring back those fabulous days of old, when they could ride across the continents and force others into conversion, or die. But this is not the reality of the world today. They do not have the power, even if every Islamic adherent were to join in support, to forcibly turn a world away from a new modus operandi, that we now do things in a new way. As much as possible, within the framework of legitimate agreements protected by law, we now honor human beings as free agents within democratic society, rather than servants, subjects, of some arbitrary power. The old world is gone, even in Islam, though some within it, mainly clerics, are desperately struggling to bring it back. It will not come back. Jihad's only show of success will be to brutally terrorize and kill innocents. There is no turning back for us, since the world will not accept again an oppressive system of government, and inter human exchange, where some lord over others, even if allegedly by God's command. We are each human beings who, if we believe in God, are independent entities willed by God to be who we are. And in this new world identity, faulting that it is, we have realized a power of our new freedom, which manifests into societal progress and well being the world had never seen before. And to once again bow mechanically to some politicized 'God' in the hands of a few clerics is not acceptable to us, since to do so regresses us back to the times when human beings were kept in bondage.

For those of the planet who want to believe in God, then it is their privilege to do so, but to be done within the framework of one's personal belief. To make everyone believe the same, in some particular fashion of God, is to limit God to that one vision, which is an unacceptable limitation on the infinity of God, the Universe, Mind, or whatever name we give it. What religion, or any spiritual belief, does is allow us to rise above our small egos, to reach for something bigger than ourselves, to connect with an infinity out there which is so infinitely mysterious; yet some part of us responds to it as we are a part of it. But if that infinite potential of the human mind and soul is so severely restricted by one single line of belief, that the ego once again takes control, then in this battle of egos, one man is once again pitted against the other. Suspicion, terror, fear, oppression, all once again reassert themselves, so the smallest minds of men feel most powerful Religion, as we of the European based cultures discovered, can be as oppressive as any dictator, if it does not allow the human soul to flourish beyond the boundaries proscribed, mainly by the power of an authoritarian Church. So some four hundred years ago, we started to drop this oppressive restriction on our soul, when the Church was stripped of its political power. Unfortunately, none of this made it into the world of Islam, and thus today we are faced with a religious structure that essentially remained unchanged for fourteen centuries to today. In its politicized mode, like in Medieval Europe, all who live within it are forced to live in fear of its power, and within the bounds of strict obedience. This is the power wielded by its clerics, and it is a power they do not want to give up. So the good people born to Islam are trapped within this oppressive, regressive structure, and this is why they cannot find voice to speak out against it. They can try, but then are facing dire retribution from their same clerics, the death fatwahs. Any progressive voice trying to find a way to bring Islam into modernity is immediately threatened and silenced, or killed. How much more power can the ego have than this? This is where the fundamentalist clerics of Islam are now.

Where religion fails is where the ego is glorified above God. This is what happened to Paul's Christian Church, where the inherently rather simple teachings of Jesus, that we love one another and honor the Father, was somehow warped into a power structure, mainly to overcome Rome and its whole pantheistic world of Pagan beliefs. So it worked, the Christian Church became powerful, but at a price, that we lost our freedom to pursue God in our individual spiritual faith. Granted, the Protestant movement liberated us from some of this clerical oppression, but the political power of the Church was not really weakened until modern secularism, in its post Enlightenment form in Europe and America. Though not necessarily the same as Jesus's teachings, Mohammedism also evolved into a powerful force against the still Pagan beliefs of the desert Arab tribes. But then it did not stop there, and instead fell to the egotistical ambitions of its followers to force its belief on everyone else through conquest. This is a battle still being fought today, by them. Except that, because the world had changed into a totally different consciousness of what is a human being, this war had become entirely one sided. They are warring on us, and we could not care less about them. This infuriating response by the West's indifference to their efforts at conquest is cause enough to rage against us, and what ultimately gave birth to extremist interpretations of Islamism. So instead of teaching human beings to reach for something greater than themselves, than their egos, for God, they had been subjugated to a strict interpretation of what they may or may not do, in their belief as interpreted for them, by the clerics. So our human freedom to pursue something greater than our ego, to pursue God, is again confined to someone else's ego interpretation of what is God, and the idea of reaching for God spiritually, as a tenet of one's personal beliefs, is thus strictly forbidden: You may believe in God only as his Prophet told you, in total obedience, and anything else is heresy. This was same for our Western Roman Church at one time, where you had to obey the teachings taught in Latin, as interpreted by the priests. However, we of the West were totally oblivious to this, because today it is no longer our affair. We evolved in our social consciousness enough to allow for personal spiritual consciousness, if that is what a person chooses. So if Islamic scholars and clerics wanted to take their religion backwards, it was not our affair. But by being oblivious, and by showing that human beings are successfully enabled by certain freedoms, this so infuriated those who would control the ego, what we are supposed to be, that they turned their hatred and vengeance on us. This is the war within Islam, certain forces fed by egos of men, that had unleashed itself on us.

This war against our moral values and personal freedoms would otherwise have no teeth, would be meaningless, except that we in the West were so eager to share in our new enthusiasm for our modernity that we forgot that there was a whole large section of the world that was not ready for it. Willy nilly, we went out there with some arrogance, as if we owned the place. But there, in that world, this was an error, because you were not free. You still had to obey. Rather than having the freedom to choose within legal limits as we do, you were told exactly what you may or may not do, or be punished. Personal choices are not allowed in Islam, and if you stray from your prescribed behaviors, you are forced back severely. In some ways, it is reminiscent of the old Soviet system where if you disagreed with the tenets of Communism, you were an enemy of the state and the people, a counter-revolutionary, so freedom was totally forbidden. It is the same in today's world of Islam, that you may not think for yourself, you may not stray from the world into which you were born, or you are guilty by association with that "other world", your are an infidel. So it become okay for them to kill their women if dating men from that "other world", or killing their sisters and daughters for wanting to marry outside the faith. The men have their own restrictions too, and thus also live within their tightly bound limits. These two world, though now living side by side in their adopted countries in the West, cannot merge. They are severely different from each other. This is especially noticeable in the fact that where the Islamic population reaches a certain critical mass, rather than finding greater integration into the mainstream of local society, the opposite happens. They become increasingly self-segregated and isolated. This self isolationism is where the recruits for suicide bombers found fertile ground. That is where this Islamic cult took seed.

So yes, the religion of Islam got left behind in the modern social developments of the world, but that is not its main problem, because it can be easily fixed. Islam can easily change, and there are many fine minds within Islam who would change it. The scriptures can have, and have had, different interpretations than those bandied about by the fundamentalists, such as Wahabis for example. The main problem is that those who are embedded within the traditions of the religion, and are politically empowered by it, are not willing to surrender their power to change. Their egos will not allow them to do that. To the absurd "Tao" of the situation, like water finding its natural course, they fight back against modernity in every way they can: traditional dress, archaic mannerisms, severe restrictions on women, severely restricted school curriculums, etc. And since they found within the non-assimilated populations, living amongst the infidel, willing participants, themselves frustrated by their inability to assimilate, they were able to construct a program of cult-like followers who will do anything for the cause, for the "rescue" of their faith against modernity, even kill themselves to kill others. This is the origin of the suicide-killers cult. But no, this is not Islam, but merely a branch within the faith that could not surrender itself to the fact that humanity had moved forward, and they were left behind and largely powerless. So, how to reassert power? You kill. This killing is the power behind the cult.

Here is the cult we are facing. And it is a worldwide cult of killing and terror. Terrorism in its many forms is not new to history, since every people fighting will use it in some form or other, as mentioned above. But a concerted concentrated effort to destabilize lawful society with cult-like suicide killings to terrorize its population is a new threat. It is not the threat of Islam, though the faith has its problems with modernity and their repressive leaders would have you focus on the faith. But this is a deceptive strategy on their part. The real threat is from individuals who will put their own egos above the faith, above God, who will twist the faith to their cause, because they feel their power slipping away. That is the impetus for this threat. But this is good news! What it means is that Islam is already changing from within, that there are already intellectual forces at work to bring it into the modern age. The al-Qimnis are the Galileos and Copernicans of their day in Islam, they are the future, the modernizers, and for this, like by the Medieval Church before them, they are being silenced, or killed. Think what this means: We must support them in any way we can, cult killings aside, because they are the important people within Islam who will take it into the future. By comparison, the cult-suicide-killers are a diversion, a way to force us to think of Islam as the enemy. It is not! It is the cultists who are the enemy, who from a variety of stratagems ensnare ignorant, disaffected, simple minded and dysfunctional individuals to do their dirty work, to blow up. That is the enemy. Not Islam. And this is why I started this thread of inquiry on the War on Terror, and why I explored the psychology of the suiciders, because I think it is important to understand the motivations for why certain elements within the faith will do anything to not lose its power, and to separate the two. This is a war of egos, of power, of those who want to retain their age old oppressive power against all odds when faced with a progressive tide of modern thought: of human rights, of freedom and equality for all human beings, of freedom of information and exchange, of modern technological achievements, of modern attitudes towards all people. The world has changed thanks to jet travel, television and film, cell phones, internet, and a worldwide flow of ideas. It kills them. So in return, they will do what they can to kill us. That is our War on this Cult.

I think they will fail, that they are already predisposed for failure, and their choices, being so ego based, will be bad choices. They do not understand that though we may appear to be seemingly ambivalent towards spirituality, religiously disorganized, even confrontational between our liberal left and conservative right leanings, or that we are somehow spiritually fallen; we are united in a common goal. We are going forward as a planet, as a human species. This they do not see. The mistake on their part, due to their fundamental misunderstanding of what we are about, is that they perceive us as weak, without moral values. What they cannot see is that culturally embedded in us is a moral strain that is quite strong, not so easily erased, that defines us as a modern people: that we believe in the sanctity of life, that we believe in the rights of the individual, we believe in women as equal to men, that no one may oppress us, we believe in the right to form legitimate agreements protected by law from coercions, that we help those in need; and we believe that we have a right to our individual faith, to worship as we choose, that we have a right to choose, and that we have an inalienable right to a pursuit of happiness, that we have a right to our body; and some of us even believe in the rights of animals. These are some of the things we believe in. It goes deep! Yet, if the liberal left ever saw forward of what they were courting with their apologetic appeasements to bold coercion, if the coercers won, they would be horrified. All the things they believed in would be wiped away, women wearing burkhas, men forced to bow down five times daily, forced to obey those who interpret their beliefs for them. Their freedoms would be replaced with pure obedience, which becomes pure oppression of the soul. And perhaps for centuries, until we again regained our freedoms, we would be forced to bow to oppressive men driven by their own egos, in the name of God. The cult raised up to fight these freedoms is what this war is about, because our freedoms threaten their power over us. We are not in some Fascist-like manner trampling our Constitutional rights, but within the limits of emergency conditions, we are strengthening our defenses against those who would take away our "God given" Constitutional rights. I think this is where we are now. And that battle is not against Islam, but against a cult that formed within it to keep it from moving forward into the modern age. We cannot allow foolish egotistical, angry old men decide the future of our world. The cult of suicide-killings cannot be allowed to win. Furthermore, to succeed in this struggle, it means all of Islam is liberated as well. In my personal reflections, that is what this "War on a Cult" is all about.

So it is not Islam that is the danger, because Islam is already changing from within. This is good news! But it is the cult that wants to hold it back. This is the danger. As conscious and modern human beings, we have to choose, and choose rightly. But if we choose badly, if chosen without courage, without a strong will, then all that had been accomplished in the past four centuries will be lost, and with it all of our freedoms. Pay attention here, because this is what is at risk: our freedoms as a world. I think our victory will also be a victory for the future Islam.

A planet's progress into the natural powers of human freedom is at stake. That is what it is all about.

A very good assessment of the situation Ivan. It is also the point of which I was trying to get across with regards to Islam and terrorism. The Jihadists are a recycle of the old cult of the assassins from long ago, just updated for the modern age. They have been a plague on Islam since its inception. I have included a link to a web page with information on the Islamic cult of assassins. I argued this same point with the Counter Terrorism specialists I was working with at JAC Molesworth UK. This is a cult that we are fighting not a religion. It more closely parallels Aum than anything else.

Ed Chesky

http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/A/Assassin-1.html