Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Jihadis Sell Out

Spengler at Asia Times looks at demographic collapse in Iran.

Wars are won by destroying the enemy's will to fight. A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women.

The French sold their women to the German occupiers in 1940, and the Germans and Japanese sold their women to the Americans after World War II. The women of the former Soviet Union are still selling themselves in huge numbers. Hundreds of thousands of female Ukrainian "tourists" entered Germany after the then-foreign minister Joschka Fischer loosened visa standards in 1999. That helps explain why Ukraine has the world's fastest rate of population decline. On a smaller scale, trafficking in Iranian women explains Iran's predicament.

To understand Iranian politics, cherchez les femmes: the fate of Iranian women sheds light on the eccentricity of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. By Spengler's Universal Law of Gender Parity, the men and women of every place and every time deserve each other. A corollary to this universal law states that the battered Iranian whore is the alter ego of the swaggering Iranian jihadi.

In the interest of balanced reporting, I cite the history of Jewish prostitution before delving into the Persian example. The Jews have lived long enough to be defeated more often than any other people. After Spain expelled them in 1492, the Jews sold their women so widely that the character of the Jewish prostitute figured prominently in 16th-century literature, notably in one of the earliest novels, La Lozana Andaluza (1528), a story of refugee Spanish-Jewish whores in Rome. After Russian pogroms drove Jews out of the Pale of Settlement in the late 19th century, Jewish women became the raw material of the white-slave traffic, supplying Argentina as well as Western Europe. Jewish prostitutes are almost unknown today, a measure of the revival of the Jewish nation.

These distasteful facts bear directly upon Iran's national decline, and the impulses that push the Iranian leadership toward strategic flight forward. Iran's plunging birth rate, I observed in essays past, will burden the country with an elderly population proportionately as large as Western Europe's within a generation, just at the point at which this impoverished country will have ceased to export oil. By 2030, Iranian society will collapse.
Bad Eagle gives us the "women are indicators of defeat" saying from an American Indian perspective.
The Cheyenne people have a saying: A nation is never conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground.
Which reminds me of an old Jewish joke. A Jewish woman is standing before a judge asking for a name change. She told the judge her name was Nafkawitz and "nafka" means whore. So the judge asked her what she wanted to chage her name to. The woman replied "Horowitz". Bada boom. Bada bing. So much for jokes.

It has been my contention that we are in a war with the jihadis because this is their last chance. Oil is running out for them. Funny thing is that America and Canada have plenty of oil because of oil shale. In fact even the Israelis have a fair amount of it. In Canada the cost of extraction runs around $10 to $15 a bbl. Even the Americans are getting into the act with pilot plants in Colorado. There is easily enough oil shale in the Americas to support our transition to income energy (solar, wind, biomass etc.)

Jihad today is not the result of a vibrant Muslim culture. It is a sign of desperation. Just as the kamikaze attacks by the Japanese in WW2 were a sign of desperation.

Spengler goes on:
One does not have to destroy an opponent's military forces to defeat him. Russia collapsed without a single shot fired when Mikhail Gorbachev and his generals understood that they could not compete with Ronald Reagan's United States. The Islamic world also has been defeated, by a globalized economy in which the US dominates the top, and China blocks entry at the bottom. As the most urbane people of Western Asia, the Persians grasped the hopelessness of circumstances quicker than their Arab neighbors. That is why they have ceased to bear children. Iran's population today is concentrated at military age; by mid-century, today's soldiers will be pensioners, and there will be no one to replace them.

That is why it is folly to approach Iran as a prospective negotiating partner, and meaningless to offer the clerical government security guarantees, for the threat to its security arises from within. Once a people has determined to extinguish itself, nothing will prevent it from doing so. There is no doubt as to the demographic data, which come from the demographers of the United Nations. But it is one thing to read the statistics, and quite another to consider the millions of intimate decisions that together sum up to national suicide.
it is interesting to note that the Europeans are also in decline for the same reason. They have given up.

On a side note: there was an Iranian blog called "Faheshe" a few years back which means prostitute in Persian. It was about an Iranian prostitute's relations with the men in her life. It was a glimpse in to the corruption of Persian life. It was not complimentary to Iranian men. It had a very interesting graphic on the mast head. The authorities shut it down.

Spengler concludes with:
What is it that persuades women to employ their bodies as an instrument of commerce, rather than as a way of achieving motherhood? It is not just poverty, for poor women bear children everywhere. In the case of Iran, deracination and cultural despair impel millions of individual women to eschew motherhood. Prostitution is a form of psychic suicide; writ large, it is a manifestation of the national death-wish, the hideous recognition that the world no longer requires Ukrainians or Moldovans.
As Spengler points out but doesn't make explicit: the Islamics have lost. What we are involved with now is a mopping up operation. Iraq has proved that mopping up operations can be very costly. The Japanese kamikazes were a fearsome weapon. They caused a great number of casualties. However, by the time they were employed the outcome of the war was not in doubt.

What we need most is faith in ourselves and perseverance. It furthers.

H/T Israel Matzav

Update: 21 Nov '06 0758z

Clayton Cramer has some interesting things to say. You should visit him often.

Update: 21 Nov '06 1431z

Welcome Instapundit readers.

Update: 21 Nov '06 1537z

Sgt. Mom in the comments suggested ROP and ROP part 2

Update: 22 Nov '06 0320z

CIA Factbook on Iran.

Update: 27 Nov '06 1236z

This may be an even better technology for Energy Independence

13 comments:

linearthinker said...

Simon,
Your post, Spengler and links provide a piece to the puzzle that's troubled me for a couple of years. With Western Europe on the brink of demographic collapse from within, I haven't been able to understand why the jihadis are hell bent on raising cain and inciting the wrath of the great satan just now, to say nothing of the celts and vikings. Now it begins to make more sense. It may be too late though, if the great global orgasm comes off as planned on the 22nd of December. That could tilt the balance of power once again, depending on which side takes it more seriously.

Karridine said...

Simon, well done. YOU didn't win the war, but you address some issues I grappled with- no, make that 'contemplated'- a few years ago.

The Iranians had The Glory of God come to them, the most corrupt and wayward society on Earth; He demonstrated the redemptive and transformative power of the Love of God, when Iranians reflected the Holy Spirit.

But the great bulk of Iranians turned away from His love, His teachings, which are empowering other societies and individuals around the world today, but in their absence, are demonstrating (in Iran at least, but other Muslim nations also) the terrible spiritual bankruptcy now evidenced by those deprived peoples.

Iranian Prostitute = Swaggering Jihadi

They CANNOT escape the shadow of their decision to kill the Messenger of God. And the Writings of Baha'u'llah indicate it will get worse, MUCH WORSE, before they expiate their national guilt!

Anonymous said...

Just be careful now.
Since the US legalized babykilling back in the 70's, the birthrate in the US has plunged dramatically.

Ever want to know why a Mexican can sneak across the border, squeeze out a baby, and the baby is an instant citizen? It's because the US gets to count that baby in it's birth stats, keeping us hovering barely above the minimal sustainable level before we appear to be in decline.

Yes, the babykiller abortionists, and their supporters, are, in fact, defeating the US on the world stage, just as the whores of Iran beat their own nation.

There, I said it. Tell me I'm wrong.

Anonymous said...

Look at the fertility rates for the US, broken down by State. The blue states look like the EU. The red states are above self replacement. Our "liberals" are basically Europeans.

I used to worry about this issue a lot, until a reporter let slip that one woman in five in the US wasn't having kids. Then I calculated the fertility rate for the remaining 80% and relaxed. It's not hard to see that the make up of the 20% childless is heavily liberal. James Taranto over at OpinionJournal calls it the "Roe Effect".

Anonymous said...

Guys, I hate to break it to you, but we don't *have* a generation to spare if they get nukes.

I kinda doubt that they'll leave them unused as their citizens revolt, the way that Gorby did.

M. Simon said...

The Sgt. Mom links:

ROP

ROP part 2

Anonymous said...

All of this is somewhat comforting if we ccan just skip to the part where my two year old granddaughter is 25. Unfortunately we have the next couple of very dangerous decades to get through.
I might remind you of the Battle of the Bulge of Dec. '44. The European War was in it's last stages when all of a sudden several Nazi Divisions swept out of the snow and fog. If anything that battle actually shortened the war, those Divisions, used right, would have slowed Patton and Zhukov and probably stopped Monty. Fat lot of good that did the American prisoners of Malmedy.

Matthew said...

The Islamists have been losing for over 300 years now.

The problem is to keep them from destroying civilization as we know it before they finally collapse into the grave.

Nothing is more dangerous in war than the complacency that comes from underestimating one's enemy. Our enemy hasn't lost yet, so let's close the deal please.

Here is one data point which argues against the imminent demise of our foe: the rise of radical Wahabbism across the globe in places where such radicalism did not exist before.

kipwatson said...

Y'know, I don't actually disagree with your ultimate conclusion, meandering though the path was to reach it

But whenever I hear someone smut-mouthing the French -- after their extreme and unstinting sacrifice throughout two world wars, out in the killing zone before everyone else, and fighting and dying in their veritable millions even while their homeland was occupied -- well, I just think 'there goes another historically illiterate a-hole disparaging old alliances and friendships'.

And as for the pimp-and-whore theory of history: well, I guess it's good for a few chuckles with the other a-holes, but that's about as far as it goes...

M. Simon said...

as for the pimp-and-whore theory of history

It is a pretty good indicator in Cuba.

Anonymous said...

Your notions of the value of "shale oil" deposits are just so much pie-in-the-sky. There may well be plenty of hydro-carbons in those geologic formations but extracting them economically is a whole new ball game. Limiting factors such as availability of water & power in addition to environmental restoration will keep these HC's underground.

M. Simon said...

PatD,

The Israelis are doing the extraction in the Negev Desert near the Dead Sea.

I do not believe water will be a problem for that process.

Besides - when companies invest their own money it is because they belive that there is profit potential.

Anonymous said...

"It has been my contention that we are in a war with the jihadis because this is their last chance. Oil is running out for them."

Gee, where to begin...Iraq by all est. that i have seen has the second largest deposits of oil IN THE WORLD, not to mention the untapped deposits in Afghanistan..but then maybe I'm confused by how you define "jihadis"..is that anyone who follows Islam and is against US policy of controling mid-east oil?...
It is sad to see the decline of the US "empire", but we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Let corporations do anything they want, pass any laws they want, buy any politicians they want and you end up with a situation like this. "Free Market" as it is will be the death of the Constitution.