Burn, Baby, Burn

By Ned Barnett

It's just been reported that two American soldiers died, and four more have been injured - shot, apparently, by uniformed Afghan soldiers - in the aftermath of the burning of copies of the Koran - books already defiled by terrorists (a fact the media and the Afghanistani government and our own government all seem eager to ignore).

I can't imagine anyone with any position of authority intentionally wanting to burn a copy of the Koran. That would be an egregious insult, pointless and unworthy. But I have no problem seeing how someone might choose to destroy a collection of books and other printed material that captured terrorists were using to share radical, subversive messages with other captured terrorists. And that, apparently, is what happened.

First, captured Taliban and al Quaeda terrorists in NATO custody in Afghanistan were using the West's foolish weakness (we give them writing material and facilitated this material's distribution) to spread messages of radical encouragement with fellow terrorists. It was the terrorists who chose to defile their so-called holy book, turning sacred scripture into radical propaganda.

Next, when the materials were finally discovered by NATO prison guards, the once-holy (now defiled) texts were withdrawn from circulation, a totally appropriate move.

Finally, instead of formally presenting these defiled texts to legitimate Islamic clerics who could take care of them respectfully (the way a US flag might be "taken care of" respectfully after it had been defiled), the Korans and other defiled books were just burnt. That was culturally insensitive (read, "stupid"), since anyone bright enough to fog a mirror knows how radical Muslims would react.

That being the case, the response of officials in Afghanistan says everything we need to know about our so-called Allies. It also says everything we need to have said about what we really ought to be doing in the Islamic world.

We are not dealing with people (forget the extremists - I'm talking about the officials) who are rational as we in the West define rational. Which gives us two choices. We either use our strength to impose our will on those who oppose us (including our so-called allies who have done nothing but pour gasoline on the fires of radical irrationality), or we get out. Now. Quickly. Before any more Americans die in a cause that was lost from Day One.

In World War II, we chose to impose our will on our enemies. Nearly 70 years later, what has happened to those enemies? Italy, Germany, Japan - they are all among our most staunch allies. However, in the war on terror, we have chosen to see our enemies as people and regimes we could "deal with" and turn into allies. But this response to the unintentional burning of the Koran shows that these people - our so-called allies - are not people we can deal with or turn into real allies. We are pouring bazillions of mega-bucks - and precious lives - down a rat-hole.

We never intended to impose our will there, and as a result, we are not going to build rational democracies (the way we did in Italy, Germany and Japan after WW-II) in the Muslim world. It's time to get out - not because we were wrong to be there, but because we never had the political and moral will to truly win, and in doing so, to impose our will upon our vanquished enemies. They are not going to join us as rational players in an International alliance of equals who share reasonable values.

Romney's Trifecta Loss and the Nevada Mormon Connection

Ned Barnett

Mitt Romney scored big in Nevada, and - especially in light of his trifecta loss in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado - it is perhaps important to look at the Nevada Mormon Connection. In Nevada's caucus, according to exit polls, roughly 70 percent of Romney's voters were Mormons. That was commented on, but largely ignored by the media - which may be gun-shy about mentioning religious affiliation as a factor in voting - instead, the media focused on how Romney dominated the votes of "very conservative" and "Tea Party" Nevadans.

Now here’s something that’s REALLY overlooked - Mormons in Nevada are, by and large, Very Conservative, and a great many of Nevada's Tea Party members are also Mormons. In 2010, I served both the Clark County (Las Vegas) Republican Party and the Nevada Republican Party as Communications Director, and also counted as my client two Nevada-based subsidiaries of the Tea Party Express - and in those roles, I was able to see that a significant portion of the "very conservative" and "Tea Party" Nevadans were also Mormons. There being nothing unusual in being a Mormon in Nevada, this was not kept hidden or swept under the table.

However, the national political media is - as noted - either gun-shy about focusing on the religious preference of voters (especially members of a controversial religion, such as the LDS), or they just didn't make the connection. But the connection is there. The research firms who conducted the exit polls know this, but chose not to share the second-tier correlations between religious affiliation and their status as "very conservative" or "Tea Party." But the information is there for anyone who cares to look into it.

Absent the exit polling data, we can look to the Tea Party revolt of 2010 that forced out "mainstream conservative" Republican Senator Bob Bennett in a hotly-contested primary. He was pushed out by Tea Party/Very Conservative Utah Republicans ... and this being Utah, there was no way that this movement could NOT have been constituted of Mormon Tea Party/Very Conservative voters.

The exit pollers have the background numbers and could easily run the cross-correlations, but since they’re not looking for a “Mormon” story, they didn’t say that X percent of the voters were Mormon, and Y percent of the Mormons were Very Conservative, and Z percent of the Mormons were Tea Partiers - and they also didn't say that these Mormons voted for Romney the way African Americans voted for Obama in 2008.

Nevada's Very Conservative/Tea Party Mormons are not to be confused with Borg drones - they can and do think for themselves, but having lived their lives as a member of a minority religion, when it comes to supporting their own, they tend to vote in a very lock-step fashion.

Which all goes to explain why Romney did so well in the Middle-American Nevada on Saturday, then lost big in three other Middle-American/Flyover states, none of which has an electorally-significant Mormon population. At 6 percent - Romney's loss in Colorado was the closest to a win - and as Fox News pointed out in its late-night coverage of Colorado's caucus, Colorado has a far higher Mormon population - as a percentage of the total electorate - than does Minnesota or Missouri. Which, I believe, is a hidden-but-important factor in understanding why Nevada didn't effectively predict other states with otherwise similar electorates.