Imagine a race of extraterrestrial beings doing something to collect information about us and our planet to send back to their world. To this end, they plant censors we cannot detect in places all over the Earth and in the outer space near it. Among the tasks that the gadgets are capable of performing is to read the brain signals of individuals as they go about their daily lives doing what they normally do. The sensors send the information to a Coordinated Overseeing Super Intelligence (COSI) which is capable of learning on its own but that is also programmed to scan our media, learn from them as to who is who on the Planet (such as political figures, military leaders, opinion makers and the like) then look for these people in their natural habitat, lock in on their brain signals and read their thinking.
Having once locked on the signal of Edward Luttwak, having followed him for a while and having dismissed him as inconsequential, the interest of COSI in that man was rekindled when the prestigious Wall Street Journal printed an article of his on February 17, 2012. The article was published under the title “The President Has Been Given a False Choice on Iran” and the subtitle: “The Joint Chiefs have said a massive, sustained air campaign would be needed to set back the nuclear program. Not so.” Seeing this, the COSI reopened the file it had on Luttwak to reanalyze the old information it had on him and compare it with what is now being revealed about him.
The reason why Luttwak was dismissed the first time was that he appeared to discuss matters at a superficial level despite the fact that he managed to make his presentations sound profound. To be sure, there were occasions when he arrayed a subject the way he saw it but most of the time, he constructed the presentation in such a way as to serve the purpose of a third party – something that he and a few others did for one of many reasons. But because he had acquired a reputation of being a respected analyst, it was difficult for his peers to catch him doing something under pressure, do it under duress or do it out of deference to someone he values or someone that pays him. The consequence has been that very few of his peers dared to argue against him. But the censors of COSI picked up telltale signs that told it the man was less authentic than he appeared to be, and thus judged him to be so inconsequential as to dismiss him.
Having followed the debate regarding Iran and having noted both the huge quantity and the low quality of the incitement that is being generated to have someone attack that country, COSI came to the conclusion that the mouthpieces of Israel doing the incitement were failing to impress an America that remains reluctant to risk life or treasure doing a dirty work that need not be done. But what puzzled COSI and what prompted it to reopen the Luttwak file was that he did not try to sound profound this time around in his Wall Street Journal presentation. On the contrary, he seemed to deliberately tread on the light side of the discussion as if to insert in the article telltale signs that say: “Don't take me too seriously; I'm only having fun going along to get along.”
COSI started to pick up such signs when it read this sentence: “The magnitude and intensity of an attack is a matter of choice, and it needs to be on the table.” He came to this suggestion having made the false assertion that: “everyone ... assume[s] the attack is … a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.” But the fact is that the Americans had said and have repeated all along that everything was on the table which is a lot more than a single take-it-or-leave-it proposition. So then, how did Luttwak come to make that assertion? Well, this is how he did it: “That, by all accounts, is exactly how the issue was framed … in the last years of the … W. Bush administration.” What the author admits here is that he has relied on accounts of something about which he had no first hand knowledge; something that happened at least four years previous under a president that is no longer presiding.
Thus, COSI detected signs that Luttwak was making a point based on a fake reconstruction of old events he did not even attend – if they happened at all – while ignoring everything that has been said from that time to the present, and while negating all that was done during the same time frame. What a joke! And to say that this is done by someone who was supposed to be respected for his professional conduct! Yes, the man is having fun at being frivolous but the tragedy is that he is talking war and peace where people may die, properties destroyed and where unmitigated horror could be unleashed on a world that never asked for it.
He gets to the core of his presentation by comparing what he wants to see done versus the strategy that is said to have been prepared by the Joint Chiefs and presented to a previous president years ago. Theirs was a full scale air war, says Luttwak, one that would have gone on for a long time, resulted in a large number of casualties and been financially draining to the Pentagon budget. By contrast, his strategy consists of a surgical operation that will be: “inaudible and invisible, start and end in one night, and kill very few on the ground.” What a lovely little war, you might say. Don't you wish all wars were this sweet?
Before you respond to that rhetorical question, ask yourself what would be the purpose of a war like that. If you have no idea, here is a clue: “The resulting humiliation of the regime might be worthwhile in itself...” Hey, look at that, my friend. We are playing war games – little ones mind you, where only a few people are sure to die. But in return, we shall be rewarded with the knowledge that we have humiliated people we do not like. And the best part is that these people will be humiliated in the eyes of their own population not just ours. Ain't that great? Iranian leaders humiliated in the eyes of the Iranian population. Wow, what a neat idea! Let's go out in the street and dance the steps of jubilation in anticipation of the upcoming dainty little war.
Luttwak then argues the justification for adopting his strategy by first admitting: “That option was flatly ruled out as science fiction [and] … dismissed as political fiction.” But, he goes on to say this: “Yet this kind of attack was carried out … when the Israeli air force invisibly and inaudibly attacked the nuclear reactor [in] Syria.” Well, this is not the first time during this debate that someone has point to the Syrian example. The fact is that using the pretext of living under an existential threat, the Israelis and their cohorts in the American Congress have made sure that Israel always gets to be equipped with the appropriate mugging tool for every occasion to “invisibly and inaudibly” come behind a neighbor who is minding his own business and mug him like would do a common hooligan bent on terrorizing his neighborhood.
This happens while America which is playing the role of the self-appointed policeman of the region, protects the Jewish mugger from the wrath of a world that wants to see the Middle East go back to being the Garden of Eden it was before the advent of the hooligan. And if it happens that the mugger cannot complete an operation and get out of there unscathed, the policeman sheds his uniform, puts on the mugger's garb and joins the fray to do the job himself. He usually does not get in to finish off the victim but to save the mugger from humiliation, and maybe humiliate the victim just a little while he is at it.
A notable example in this vein was the moment during the 1973 crossing of the Suez Canal by the Egyptian army that America found it necessary to come to the direct aid of the Israelis. Even though the Egyptians had smashed through the Bar Lev line like a hot knife through butter, the Israelis were not at peril of being crushed because the Egyptians only wanted to retake the Eastern side of the Canal to reopen the waterway, get the revenues back on stream and shore up their economy. They so advised the Americans who then asked for a ceasefire that the two warring sides accepted. The thing, however, was that Israel would have been humiliated under these circumstances. Thus, to counter this possibility, the Americans flew their own planes and brought supplies to the Israelis at the front line. It happened during the 6 to 12 hours that followed the acceptance of the ceasefire and in violation of it. The rules of engagement were to the effect that the American pilots could shoot at the Egyptians if the latter intercepted them, something that happened on a few occasions.
The result has been that Israel was able to put a few soldiers at the outskirts of the city of Suez, a place that had been vacated since the 1967 war, six years earlier. And it was this little piece of theatrics that the Israelis have been using to claim that they counterattacked the Egyptian army and won another war. Nobody in the world believes this claim except the Americans who get their information from a Jewish media that never explained why the Israelis are out of the Sinai and the Egyptians are in. Still, the consequence of an illusion to the effect that Israel is invincible is that when the time comes and Israel needs someone to bankroll it and/or die for it, the Americans agree to pay through the nose to enrich both domestic and foreign Jews, and go to foreign lands where they die to please those same characters.
COSI uncovered all that information and correlated it with another piece of information it deemed startling even to an artificial intelligence. It is that Edward Luttwak had once asserted that Barack Obama who was running to be President at the time was actually a Muslim who will be considered an apostate if he won the election. And the author predicted that Obama will most probably be assassinated by a fanatic.
Well, Obama won the election; he has been President for more than three years, was never called an apostate and no one has tried to assassinate him. Thus, COSI has concluded it must be that Luttwak was not writing an actual opinion piece in the WSJ but was outlining a script for a Hollywood movie that will combine the intrigue of someone attempting to assassinate a president with the action of a lovely little war. How sweet can life get on Planet Earth!
This is the message that COSI has sent to its home planet about life on Planet Earth.