My latest YouTube:

Precis: Psychosexual frustration is a defining characteristic of modern terrorism. Faced with the Manichaean dichotomy of religious purity and the sins of the flesh, the terrorist sublimates his libido into violence against the society which tempts him. Where the id is, there also is the ego.

Last Wednesday, a suicide bomber killed the CIA base commander and an undetermined number of agents in the gymnasium of FOB Chapman at Khost, Afghanistan. The Haqqani clan took credit for the kills. The CIA has promised revenge. It has all been seen before.

FOB Chapman is a misnomer. Chapman Airfield, pictured, is a raw white scar, now vastly enlarged and lengthened to 2700 meters since its inception as a USSR helicopter LZ. If Afghanistan was the USSR’s version of Vietnam, Khost was the USSR’s version of Khe Sanh: the city was besieged by the Haqqani clan from July 1983 to November 1987.

FOB Chapman is now the staging point for our war against the Haqqani clan. This is no little outpost on the edge of nowhere: this is the tip of the spear. Thousands of Americans are now in theater, and more are coming. We have set up shop in the enemy’s parlor. We are not welcome, and we have chosen to attack an enemy who not only knows Khost, but who knows the CIA rather better than you and me.

Late last night, fitfully scrolling through the news. Google News reloaded, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 pulled into Detroit and yet another would-be terrorist was hauled out, burned and alive.

I have watched as northern Nigeria collapses into a shari’a state over the last fifteen, twenty years. Saudi Arabia, for all its mealy-mouthed opposition to terrorism, has funded Wahhabi missionaries in the Sahel for many years. Now, Christian pastors are being murdered, their churches burned to the ground, hundreds of thousands of refugees are internally-displaced in Nigeria.

Merry Christmas from Phoenix.

A Reply to Asif Haroon Raja

Mr. Raja writes in the PakTribune of 10 December 2009, declaring the Obama administration is totally confused or is inept or is purposely behaving wickedly. He writes of the Muslim world pinning its hopes on President Obama, believing he might undo the wrongs inflicted upon Muslims.

An old Urdu proverb sums up Mr. Raja’s argument: ملا کی دوڑ مسجد تک Mullah ki daur masjid tak. The mullah can only run to the masjid (mosque). Mr. Raja suffers from tunnel vision: the enemy counts his dead and we count ours. Why should America pay any mind to Muslims, merely because they are Muslim? Americans pay no especial heed to Christians or Hindus nor should we. USA is a secular nation and Pakistan is manifestly an Islamic republic.

So I woke up last night, again around 0300, L’s cell phone is again screaming for power. The house is as dark as the inside of a cow: the power’s out. There’s L in the doorway of my bedroom, candle in hand, asking if I can call her cell phone so she can locate it.

Groggily I get up, find my phone in my pants pocket and dial her phone. It rings with that odd, cheesy sound of a simulated school bell.

Bird Dog opines trying detainees in civilian courts as proposed is a bad idea. In the course of researching how civilian courts have handled cases of this sort, I came upon this amazing statement at sentencing from the bench by then-Judge Michael Mukasey in United States District Court, Southern District of New York. Courtesy of INTELWIRE

The Arabic language blogs are exploding with this news. Here it is on CNN

Going through my /stories directory I found this little thing I wrote when someone asked me for a ghost story. It happened to me, pretty much as described. Maybe you'll like it.

Meat Space

While I was yet still in meat-space, we neatly divided up the world between the living and the dead. Kids like me were told stories of ghosts, returned from the dead to terrify the living. It’s all kind of funny, because the people still in meat space are truly terrifying. They hurt each other, make each others’ lives miserable, they steal and lie and murder, they make wars and justify them in the name of their eternal gods.

We the so-called Dead are beyond all that.