Ghost of a flea

The real target of this week's high seas pantomime

Much has been made this week of the deftness with which the corsair flotilla wrong-footed Israel. And not just as a matter of public relations in the West: It was a win-win scenario for the jihadis. The flotilla would be allowed to run the blockade or the flotilla would not be allowed to run the blockade; either way, the jihadi audience in the Middle East would be just as happy and the moral lesson would be just the same.

Something along these lines has long been observed to be an advantage of the jihadi worldview. Victory is victory and death is victory. This calculation has presented vexed difficulties both for strategy and for security, long geared to dealing with rational actors. What passes for long memory in the West had to reach back to kamikaze tactics to find anything remotely comparable in our military experience. Even then, the kamikazes had a perfectly rational purpose in attempting to sink Allied warships. We have been dealing with something most of us are mistaking for something new.

There was another win-win calculation at play in the pirate flotilla incident (and I find it difficult to believe I am the first to point this out). The real target of this week's high seas pantomime was not Israel but the Turkish military. Even having failed to do their constitutional duty and remove the Islamists from power, the Turkish military remains the most dangerous opponent of the new would be Caliphate/Ottoman Empire.

This is the logic. It follows a win-win reasoning comparable to the two other examples I have already outlined. The Islamist Turkish government not only placed Israel in an impossible position by sending the blockade runners but the Turkish military along with them. Now, as the Turkish government attempts to orchestrate a military confrontation with Israel the Turkish military can either choose to obey orders or to disobey orders. Short of a coup attendant to the second choice, this is a win-win for the Islamist government. It either brings the military to heel or it discredits the military as bad Muslims and sympathizers with a demonized Israel.

Worse yet, should the Turkish military choose to obey orders and if Israel cannot find a way to avoid a consequent military confrontation, the Turkish military will either defeat or be defeated by the IDF. Again, a win-win scenario for the Islamists as the first brings victory while the second materially weakens and discredits the Turkish military.

What we need isn't more sympathy or more good deeds let alone more justification for or evidence of our righteousness. They aren't listening and they don't care. What we need is a way to cut the Gordian knot by unapologetically redefining victory in our terms. We could make a useful start by enforcing our laws as they stand. The ones concerning treason and piracy are still on the books for all we have not needed them much since the last time we needed them.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at June 6, 2010 03:47 PM

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