The headline on yesterday’s Wall Street Journal read “Iran Arms Syria with Radar [sic]“.  My orthographic quibbles about the proper spelling of RADAR notwithstanding, the article quotes officials who say the new RADAR could pose a security threat to Israel.  No doubt it could.  The point of the article is that this level of military and technology “cooperation” constitutes a serious security threat.  No doubt it does.

Wall Street Journal, from Getty Images

One fact missing from the story was that the Syrians had already spent huge amounts on their air defenses—billions, by some estimates¹.  And as the former US top cybersecurity official, Richard Clarke, points out in his new book, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It, those investments had failed spectacularly.  Clarke those reiterated last night at the Aspen Institute Security Forum that the challenge of cybersecurity lies in the manner in which it levels the playing field in such unexpected ways.  In the case of the briefly infamous 2008 Israeli air raid on the North Korean-designed (and operated?) Syrian nuclear facility, the Syrian RADAR systems appear to have been shut down before a single Israeli shot was fired:  someone (the Israelis, we presume) hacked the Syrian RADAR networks caused them either not to detect the F-15s and F-16s overhead, or not to display them.  (Neither of those aircraft is stealthy;  there is no question the RADARs could have detected them.)  Perhaps the first public acknowledgment of cyberwar in a modern military action followed, as first publicly reported by David A. Fulghum, Robert Wall and Amy Butler (“Israel Shows Electronic Prowess,” in Aviation Week).

So one wonders about this WSJ story:  why are the Syrians buying new RADAR equipment instead of new firewalls and routers?  Well, perhaps they are….

1. Clarke, Richard A. and Robert K. Knake, Cyber War, Harper Collins, 2010

The conference is abuzz with the words of Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who spoke yesterday and twice raised the topic of terrorist synergies: the joining of forces between previously unrelated and even mutually distrusting terrorist organizations. Having spent the week fighting the fire that was Gen McChrystal’s dismissal and just himself back from a trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Israel, it is clear that Adm. Mullen was a man on a mission to identify and address this new phenomenon of terrorist cooperation.

The term and concept are relatively new: there has previously been talk of criminal-terrorist synergies, but in general those reflected local alliances made, if not as a matter of expedience, certainly not with a view towards a global strategy. The trend has existed for a while: as the Hon. Fran Townsend (former Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism) pointed out today, the trend began early in the Bush Administration: Indonesia’s Jamaat Islamia overtly supporting Al Quaeda; Sudan’s GSPC aligning similarly, etc. But US officials, at least, have taken some comfort in the rifts within Islam and the assumption that, for example, primarly Sunni organizations like Al Quaeda would not join forces with Shiite regimes such as Iran.

Take comfort no longer. There is a palpable sense among officials here that we are now fighting a globally decentralized, cooperating terrorist network which is willing to forego internal idealistic disagreements in favor of the ultimate goal: damaging the West and, specifically, the United States. We have graduated from a multitude of fights against separate entities to a unified fight against global terrorism.

As its title suggests, Shashi’s newest book focuses on the ongoing transformation of his homeland. (In an interesting aside, Shashi points out that the cover of his book in its US edition, shown below, bears an almost cliched illustration of a Hindu God—which I take to be Ganesh—holding a tiger in one hand and a cell phone in the other, but the Indian edition shows a real photograph of a Hindu Sanyashi—a monk—sitting on his bicycle, making a cell phone call.) In particular, Shashi related a couple of anecdotes which gave me some idea of just how profound the impact of modernity has been on India. One is worth re-telling: as recently as 1984, when the population of the country was approximately 650 million (it is now in excess of 1.1 billion), there were a mere 8 million telephone land lines. In 2007, India set the world record by adding 8.4 million mobile phone lines in a single month. In other words, India is adding more mobile lines per month than the entire country had a mere quarter century later. Think that might change the dynamics of the society a bit?

Skilled diplomat that he is, Shashi deftly parried the inevitable “China versus India” question by answering that the felt China had won the conflict, such as it is, some thirty years prior. (He points out that China began its economic expansion long before India’s 1991 liberalization.) One observation I wasn’t expecting: Shashi relayed that India is perhaps the only country in the world with any significant Jewish population which does not have a single recorded episode of antisemitic violence. Religious tolerance and pluralism, although certainly not an absolute (think Hindu nationalism), certainly does seem more the rule than the exception in India. As Shashi points out, where else could a Roman Catholic, Italian born Indian (Sonia Ghandi) resign her mandate in favor of a preternaturally well-educated Sikh (Manmohan Singh) who would then work with a woman President (Pratibha Patil), in order that he lead a country which is 80% Hindu? We Americans, who in 225 years have not managed to elect anyone as our president who is not white, male and Christian, could perhaps learn a thing or two from the example.

Earlier this month, I participated in a seminar led by Clark Kent Ervin, the former Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, author of the frightening and eye-opening Open Target: Where America Is Vulnerable to Attack. The seminar focused on the current nature of the terrorist threat against our country. We were an eclectic bunch: a US Army Major military intelligence specialist in counterterrorism, two State Department employees, a venture capitalist or two, and a few of us who otherwise have some association our nation’s security infrastructure.

Despite our various backgrounds, a palpable sense developed in the room that something remains deeply wrong with America’s counterterrorist strategy. My friend and colleague, Major General (Retired) Steve Siegfried, who was the Inspector General of the US Army as well as the first Director of Homeland Security for South Carolina, puts it this way: of all of the steps terrorists take before and during a terrorist attack, most of them take place before the attack: they plan, they reconnoiter, they fund, they rehearse, they stage, and only then do they execute. So that means that most, if not all, of terrorist prevention can (and probably should) take place before execution. But look closely at the structure of DHS: not a single intelligence agency exists within DHS. How can the Department prevent terrorism by staunching it in its early stages, if it doesn’t have a mandate or an internal structure to generate the intelligence necessary on which to react? Think about it differently: you can either prevent or you can react. If you can’t gather intelligence, how can you prevent? DHS is fundamentally structured to be eternally reactive!

We are not the only ones who think there’s a problem. Foreign Policy and The Center for American Progress published a fascinating–and frightening–study, called “The Terrorism Index.” They asked 100 of the country’s top foreign policy experts some basic questions. The results are shocking:

• 81% of these experts believe the world is more dangerous for America and its interests than it was immediately after 9/11.
• 43% of the American public think we are safer, while only 19% of experts agree.

• 75% believe the US is losing the war on terror. (That’s 93% of liberals, 81% of moderates, and 50% of conservatives.)
• 46% of the American public think we’re winning.

• 62% believed that US policy towards North Korea is having a negative impact on US national security, despite the fact that 73% of respondents believed that North Korea ought to be Priority Number 1.

For an excellent overview, watch this video:

So at least this blogger thinks the situation is worse than we think. And as a “business guy,” I know very well that you can’t fix what you can’t measure. So the first step is to get a measurement of the problem–start realistically measuring the threat level (no more yellow/orange/red business, please!)–and then executing to fix the greatest threat. That would be North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Irshad is perhaps best known for writing the controversial
The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith, a work which has brought her accolades, criticism, and a fatwa. Irshad is no shrinking violet: despite her faith and profound Muslim identity, she has been the target of more criticism than I care to recount, and the fatwa certainly doesn’t make her life any easier. But no amount of criticism and no number of threats will cause her to soften her message: that Islam has forgotten its egalitarian and tolerant roots, and that Modern Islam has a lot to learn from the more open and inclusive societies.

Just under a year ago, Irshad taught a seminar as part of the Socrates Society of the Aspen Institute entitled “Reforming Islam?” and I found myself both refreshed by her willingness to confront those who disagree with her and troubled by the resistance so much of the Muslim world appears to harbor towards her and those who, like Irshad, are willing to question both their own assumptions and those of their fellow Muslims. [Note to the orthographically scrutinous: there is a QUESTION MARK--an interrogation point, an eroteme--in the title of this seminar! Irshad is asking a question (should we reform? who is we? what is reform?), not stating a position.]

The seminar centered on Irshad’s core thesis: that the concept of ijtihad must return to Islamic discourse. Ijtihad, originally a narrow Islamic legal term for making legal decisions based on interpretation of independent legal texts, has a broader meaning relating to independent and interpretation. Irshad has adopted the term and created Project Ijtihad of which she is the Chief Catalyst. Fortunately, she’s not the only one calling for independent thought and interpretation: Muqtedar Kahn’s excellent website has superb material.

This afternoon, as I drove about running errands trying to recover from the weekend’s onslaught of tryptophan, I heard Irshad’s voice on the radio. BBC World Service’s excellent Heart and Soul ran a program called “The Future Of Islam – Or Just ‘Islam Lite’?” As usual, Irshad did her cause proud. More interesting were the other Muslim thought leaders, who agreed with Irshad to one degree or another: Prof. Tariq Ramadan is a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University and was the subject of a number of news stories when his US Visa was revoked in 2004 when he was teaching at Notre Dame. And even Saira Khan, runner-up in the UK’s version of The Apprentice.

Irshad has her critics, and many of them could be heard throughout this thoughtful and well-balanced BBC program. One of them makes the excellent point that, even if Irshad is too far “out there” for mainstream Muslims to accept, the very nature of her “extremism” will cause others with more moderate but nevertheless reformist voices to appear less strident and less extreme in comparison. That’s something of a back-handed complement if ever I’ve heard one, but they all miss the point: what Irshad wants, what she strives for, is the very dialogue in which all of her critics are engaging.

So Irshad is Catalyzing precisely the ijtihad and the discourse she so correctly proclaims Islam needs. And, despite their dissent, even her critics have succumbed: they are engaging in intelligent debate and consideration of her ideas. And the ideas of others. And that’s precisely what ijtihad is all about. Mission accomplished.