This blog is that of Steven Pressfield is the author of Gates of Fire and four other historical novels set in the ancient world, including The Afghan Campaign. His most recent book is Killing Rommel, a WWII story. He is also the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and The War of Art.
The blog entries below begin with a feature of the work now available in the full original, Reference: One Tribe at a Time by Maj Jim Gant and then segue into new work by Steven Pressfield.
“The Crusader would have been quite justified in suspecting the Muslim even if the Muslim had merely been a new stranger; but as a matter of history he was already an old enemy. The critic of the Crusade talks as if it had sought out some inoffensive tribe or temple in the interior of Tibet, which was never discovered until it was invaded. They seem entirely to forget that long before the Crusaders had dreamed of riding to Jerusalem, the Muslims had almost ridden into Paris.”—G.K Chesterton (1874-1936)
“O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.” —Qur’an (5:51)
“No one can be a true Muslim and a true American simultaneously.”—Wafa Sultan (From “A God Who Hates”)
Are you familiar with the word “dhimmi?” You should be; it means an infidel (non-Muslim) living under the heel of an Islamic theocracy. The plural is “dimam,” and Europe has increasingly become a Balkanized checkerboard of nationalistic strongholds, and Islamic dimam regions.
The servitude of the dimam will be America’s fate as well, unless “we the people” wake up to Islam’s threat to our freedom. That’s not hyperbole people—just check out what has happened, and is happening, in Europe—Nazi Eurabia. America’s next.
$26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected
WASHINGTON — Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.
Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.
Today, the Air Force is buying hundreds of Reaper drones, a newer model, whose video feeds could be intercepted in much the same way as with the Predators, according to people familiar with the matter. A Reaper costs between $10 million and $12 million each and is faster and better armed than the Predator. General Atomics expects the Air Force to buy as many as 375 Reapers.
Full Story Online
Additional Insights from CBS News Beyond Wall Street Journal
The implications of the Predator's unencrypted transmissions have been known in military circles for a long time. An October 1999 presentation given at the Air Force's School of Advanced Airpower Studies in Alabama noted “the Predator UAV is designed to operate with unencrypted data links.”
A 1996 briefing by Paul Kaminski, an undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology, may offer a hint about how the Iraqi's interception was done. Kaminski said that the military had turned to commercial satellites – “Hughes is the primary provider of direct (satellite) TV that you can buy in the United States, and that's the technology we're leveraging off of” – to share feeds from Predator drones.
Phi Beta Iota: We thought we would look at one month's English-language news reporting on the term <stabilization and reconstruction> in relation to top countries of concern to the USA. Here is what we found. Our general conclusion: the US is doing all it can in Afghanistan; the Strategic Communication in Iraq is totally hosed, no one knows how to get the word out on all the good things being done as we transition from advise & assist to exit; and we are totally out to lunch on Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. As is its custom, the US Government is waiting for those three places to explode into a fiery inferno rather than ramping up what General Al Gray, USMC, then Commandant of the Marine Corps, called “peaceful and preventive measures.”
Haider Mullick is a Senior Fellow at the US Joint Special Operations University and a research fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.
The Diplomat speaks with South Asia analyst Haider Mullick about Pakistan’s counter-insurgency efforts, conspiracy theories and the prospects for stability in Afghanistan.
You’ve recently returned from a trip to India and Pakistan. How have perceptions of the United States settled since US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited?
You’ve written recently about how the US needs to market itself in Pakistan. In a nutshell, what does it need to be doing differently?
Clinton was critical of Pakistan’s failure to capture top al-Qaeda leaders. Broadly speaking, how do you rate Pakistan’s counter-insurgency efforts?
How effective has the Pakistani leadership been in rallying public support for its counter-insurgency efforts?
Looking across the border at Afghanistan, what do you make of the recent US announcement to send 30,000 more troops. Was President Barack Obama right to set out a timeline for withdrawal?
Are you optimistic about the prospects for long-term stability in Afghanistan?
Ikram Sehgal suggests that Pakistan’s offensive in South Waziristan has cornered Al Qaeda and urges the Pakistani military to capitalize on this opportunity to disrupt the network’s leadership.
Three facts are staring us in the face about certain communities around the world: more people in poverty; rising and large numbers of unemployed youth; and an increasing absolute population (increasing the demand for resources). This is a recipe for violent unrest even in ordinary times.
The unfortunate reality is that trust is at an exceedingly low level between the elites and publics of both nations. Building that trust requires a leap of faith that they can work together on the most difficult issues.
