TOO MANY “EXPERTS” spend a few days, weeks, months or even a few years in the Middle East, or some other Muslim country, never really living outside the wire with the locals, then they come back home claiming they know the Muslim mind and Islam. Of course they know more than some of the talking heads on TV, the Islamic scholars and apologists who have never visited a Muslim country, but do they really know, or do they just know about? There’s a BIG difference.

Lately I have had the honor to address some very savvy people across the country and found a marked difference in attitude toward Knowing the Enemy. Very encouraging indeed. The two groups we (K.W. and I) found most knowledgeable and eager to know the truth were, the Coalition and Irregular Warfare Center of Excellence, and members of the 57 IAS/ATF at Nellis Air Force base.

Without naming names, I must say I was most impressed by the Chief of Mobility of one of these groups, a man who had read my friend Spencer’s books and was not at all fooled by political correctness. It is heartening to know as we at CSA have been stressing education in Asymmetric and Irregular Warfare (jihad), these fine airmen (and women) are actually delving into the murky waters of Jihad (Irregular Warfare).

A far cry from our politicians, and namby-pamby educators in higher education who feel the need to be politically correct by supplying footbaths, at airports and in the hallowed halls of academia that smell of misplaced understanding and tolerance. Tolerance for a so-called religion of peace, a religion that has no tolerance for non-Muslims, from Kashmir to Thailand, Indonesia to Chechnya, Africa to the Middle East, and from Europe to America.

It is so disingenuous of the talking heads, politicians, and so called “experts” who make it a point to say, “I have Muslim friends, so I don’t believe Islam is not a religion of peace,” it doesn’t matter if you present them with the following verses from the Koran, their holier-than-thou attitude is, “You are taking it out-of-context!”

Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, must be a...

Then there are some military groups, and expert organizations that offer “Mirror Imaging” programs to our soldiers heading to enemy territory (one of them has been in the news lately and is being kicked out of Iraq), whose contractor experts have watched too many Hollywood movies, where enemy women are combatants with their men (not in Afghanistan and Iraq, my friend), not in any Muslim country.

A military group version has women walking into the street serving tea (horribly sweet) to our “warfighters” (what happened to soldiers?), as they, our “warfighters” are being set up for an ambush. Yep, Hollywood’s version of “Arabian Nights.”

With retired generals who ran the war in Iraq, now saying it’s a theatre of disaster, and the Secretary of State praying for peace, what better way to end the bloodshed by arming the Sunnis (who haven’t read the Koran apparently) to attack other Sunnis (so called al Qaeda), even though, according to government reports, al Qaeda’s back is broken in Iraq, sounds more like the straw that broke the camel’s back, and Hollywood lives on.

What better way to win the hearts and minds of the enemy in Iraq, than to kick them out of their houses/palaces in the dead of night, because our warfighters need a place to stay. Why make enemies when there is a better way to make friends (and enemies), by winning their hearts and minds, with the old maxim—two to the heart, one to the mind? Seems too many security firms in Iraq believe in that maxim and are now under the microscope for their heavy handedness, or is this just a ploy by Iraqi officials who see the fortune to be made in security contracts?

Seems some contractors in Iraq are lighting up the enemy with incidents such as the Feb. 7 shooting of three Iraqi guards at an Iraqi TV station, Feb. 14 smashing of windshields, a May 2007 killing of a civilian near the Interior Ministry, September 9 killing of five civilians, September 12 wounding of five civilians, 17 civilians killed on September 16, followed by two women in a taxi killed on October 9. A sure way to make enemies not friends, especially if you are seen as occupiers.

In all fairness to those working for security companies in danger zones, amongst them are  honorable men like two of our members, my friend “Q,” who served a full year in Iraq and Afghanistan losing friends to VBIEDs and being under the gun daily, sacrificing time away from friends and family, the “Kid” now in Afghanistan, and “X,” who knows where.

The areas they serve in are not rat holes, they are snake pits, and where you can only make so many friends while being surrounded by enemies who have the Koran-sanctioned habit of cutting off the heads of infidels. These are areas that most talking heads, journalists, and politicos avoid like the plague, reporting comfortably from Kuwait or Islamabad.

While contractors derisively called mercenaries are memorialized with the words by Alfred Edward Housman in his epic poem:

“Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries”

These in the day when heaven was falling

The hour when earth’s foundations fled,

Followed their mercenary calling

And took their wages and are dead

Their shoulders held the sky suspended

They stood, and earth’s foundations stay,

What God abandoned, these defended

And saved the sum of things for pay

Needless to say we go on making enemies through ignorance and arrogance, like in Afghanistan where the so-called “GWOT” began. A “tough lookin’” US colonel (no need for mentioning which branch), wanting to win hearts and minds, invites local Pakhtoon leaders to a hearty meal, then threatens and chides them. What is definitely surprising (no, not the colonel’s ignorance and arrogance) is the fact that none of the Pakhtoons present, retched out the infidel’s food, an infidel who was “jahil” and had dared to offend them. This chiding and humiliation will call for “badal”—revenge, a mainstay of the Pakhtoon psyche.

Didn’t the dumb colonel know anything about “Pakhtoonwali”? Not likely, maybe he had taken a sensitivity course offered by CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), that would purposely never tell him how not to make a fool of himself (and the US) when dealing with the Pakhtoons of Afghanistan. Pakhtoonwali—is the Pakhtoons code of hospitality wherein even an enemy asking for sanctuary in a Pakhtoon’s house, will not be turned away.

There is still time for us to change in Afghanistan, where the hardy and pragmatic Pakhtoons can be won over with genuine friendship, honor, and courage. The courage to end this senseless “War on Drugs,” that destroys poppy fields of poor tenant farmers, while warlords and politically connected families grow their poppies with impunity and flood the addled heads of European and American druggies.

With no way to repay loans after their poppy crop is destroyed, many of these farmers will sell their daughters in marriage, take an oath to fight and kill the Americans, and become friends with the enemy. If one has ever seen the desolation of hell, then one has been to war torn Afghanistan, where an infidel’s life is not worth a bullet, just a knife across the throat.

Who needs enemies, when you have friends such as…