This image is Ouroboros the serpent that forever consumes itself and a symbol of "Eternal Recurrence". I am one of the few people who take this theory seriously as did Nietzsche. We are doomed or blessed, depending on your viewpoint, to live this same life again and again for eternity. As a code for living it has the advantage of making you think about the things you do and encourages you to enjoy every minute of life as it will be better to have more enjoyable moments than miserable ones if you have to relive them for eternity.

There appears to be two ideas on how to deal with the aftermath of 911. One that it is a law enforcement issue dealing with a band of criminals. The other that it is a war against a virtual state headed by OBL.

Law enforcement deals with piecing together the evidence and bringing the criminals to justice. Warfare deals with eliminating the immediate threat and deterring future threats. The main problem with the law enforcement idea is that Western justice has very little deterrence value and notions of justice prevent you from attacking targets that are not directly related to the crime.

The advantage of the warfare model is that action can be taken that is possibly illegal yet has great strategic worth. Thus an unrelated country could be invaded if it had strategic value in the war. War has little to do with law but should have everything to do with an effective strategy.

Bush no doubt had a strategy planned long before 911 as 911 was simply the largest attack in a long string of attacks. There is no reason to believe that the attacks will abate therefore war is inevitable. Saddam can consider himself to be collateral damage in the GWOT. Could not have happened to a nicer bloke.

Saddam wasn't a threat? But he was certainly a nuisance there is no denying it. He did invade Kuwait remember? He didn't keep the promises he made after Gulf War 1 and he repeatedly massed his army on the border forcing the US into costly troop moving exercises. And the no-fly-zone thing was becoming tiresome.

Also Saudi Arabia was becoming a liability. It is after all the location of Islam’s holiest places and, hey, we respect that now. So a move into Iraq, setting up fortresses there was a good idea. Many birds were killed with this one stone. I counted at least twenty good reasons to invade Iraq. One of them was that you cannot insult the US and expect to live in peace - we have a reputation to keep.

All you mocking, lefty leaning, bleaters have got to get in your thick skulls the fact that there exists an Anglo-American Empire. It doesn't care a wit for your hand wringing protest marches and numbskull loony ideas of moral equivalence. It cares about wealth and security. It doesn't work at the intellectual level of a Marxist college professor but is altogether more primal.

Most of these "protestors" just do it because they like playing the part of protestor. Deep down they don’t care about third world poverty or justice. They don’t donate significant money to charitable causes or do anything practical. They depart the protest marches in their gas guzzling CSV's. They hate America because they have weird notions about all the ills of the third world and Latin America being caused by the Yankees. There are some genuine types who believe all war is bad and cruel and ugly and they are probably right in theory yet utterly impractical. The reality is that the West controls vast amounts of wealth and territory and this needs to be actively protected.


Non-democratic regimes are illegitimate if they exit for too long. There should be some international law that states that there must be elections after the rulers are in power for a certain period of time. Sometimes martial law is necessary for a time but all governments should work toward fair elections.

A thug like Saddam taking control by force and ruling for decades is not legitimate. It makes me laugh when they talk of Iraq as being a sovereign state as if Saddam was installed by a Deity.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- John Walker Lindh, the so-called "American Taliban" was summarily executed at dawn today on the South Lawn of the White House.
Lindh, who reportedly offered to plead guilty in exchange for leniency, was not granted a final meal nor a chance to speak with his bereaved parents before facing the firing squad. He was offered a cigarette, but being a devote Muslim, he refused it. He was shot an estimated 51 times, and then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tied his body to the back of a Humvee and dragged it around the National Mall for a couple of hours.
"Today is a good day for freedom," said newly appointed President-For-Life George W. Bush, after personally firing the first shot. His shot was followed by rounds from the guns of Attorney General John Ashcroft and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.
Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was not invited to the execution. It is rumored he will face his own firing squad tomorrow, as will Noam Chamosky, Ramsey Clark, Angela Davis, Stanley Fish, Tom Hayden, Norman Mailer, Ralph Nader, Edward Said, Susan Sontag and Howard Zinn, along with the entire cast of Warblogger Watch.
Just before the execution, Bush signed the executive order making him, in effect, America's new dictator. The order disbanded Congress and the Supreme Court, suspended press freedoms, made Fundamentalist Christianity the official religion of the new Federal Christian Republican of America, and in a sop to his father, outlawed broccoli.
"This is the final, logical conclusion to the slippery slope I initiated on Sept. 11," Bush told his press aides, who immediately rushed his pearly words of wisdom to the news wires. "I have achieved the goals I set out to do."

September 11 and the emergence of the Anglosphere.

It wasn't a sudden awakening this realization that the English speaking nations had more than just a special relationship. Indeed it has emerged slowly after much argument, disagreement and strife. The 9/11 atrocity brought about a coalition of many more nations than just the Anglophone ones. The western world and others were generally supportive of the war against terrorism and rallied behind America. How could it be otherwise unless you were already a pariah state Even those states on the fringes of civilized behavior such as Libya and Iran expressed support for the war.

Yet supporting the war against terror is quite different to actually prosecuting the war and when specific countries were identified as terrorist training centers true colors began to unfurl. Afghanistan was the first test and some nations did show themselves as willing to actually kill (let¡¯s be blunt) the enemy.

However it was the reality of actual combat in Afghanistan that awoke the Left. Grumbling was heard amongst the usual suspects about American imperialism. The Islamic states questioned aloud whether this was a war against Islam rather than terrorism. The odd man on the street in places like Finland thought it wrong that a great power such as the USA should attack an impoverished one like Afghanistan - as if wars should somehow be fair. For a fair war think WW1 and recall what happens when both sides are near even. Some people felt that the root cause of terrorism should be addressed and that it was really all the fault of the Western imperialists ¨C we brought it upon ourselves. As if the perpetrators of September 11 were somehow able to be reasoned with. Some thought that it would be a good idea if peace delegations were formed and despatched to reason with the Taliban and placate al Qaeda.

However most of the world supported the war against Afghanistan in 2001 yet few were willing to commit combat forces to assist the Americans. Those that were notable for doing so were the British, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. Germans, French and others were there but not in any especially notable way except that the French aircraft carrier would take a year to get there. The Russians turned up after the fall of Kabul although they had provided great assistance to the Northern Alliance in the way of weapons. Of all the nations that actually did the fighting in Afghanistan it is quite remarkable how many were English speaking.

Musings on the Anglosphere and its rise to dominance in the world.