Kim Jong-Il’s death may be unexpected but it hasn’t been unanticipated.

It’s not secret that Kim has been sick for several years. A year ago he designated his youngest and favorite son, Kim Jong-un as his heir apparent.

Kim’s father and son were expected to formalize the succession in 2012, on the 100th birthday celebration of grandfather Kim Il-sung, founder of the North Korean state.

The two had hoped for a several year transition period for Kim Junior to learn the ropes.

The question now will be can the twenty-something Kim consolidate power quickly and win over the North Korean generals of the ruling elite. It won’t be easy.

Kim Jong-un is young, inexperienced and has no military background, despite being designated a four-star general last year.
He’s got two older brothers who were passed over for the job, too. He’s got an aunt and uncle who were thought to be close to Kim Jong-Il but who seem recently to have fallen out of favor.

He’s got to provide for the some 40% of North Koreans who will need food, fuel and gasoline subsidies to make it through the winter.

He’s got to juggle relations with China, which provides some 75% of North Korea’s aid donations.

And he’s got to keep all those generals happy.

So what now and what about the United States?

Here are three big issues to watch on the Korean peninsula in the days and weeks ahead:

1. Will Kim Jong-un manage to consolidate his position? How will he do it? Will he try to prove he’s tough enough to fill his father and grandfather’s shoes by provoking a military incident with South Korea?

A year ago, when he was designated heir apparent, the North Koreans sunk a South Korean ship, killing over 40 people, and shelled an island; analysts suggested Kim Junior was signaling that he would, like his father, put ‘military first.’
And, while it may be unrelated, the North Koreans tested a short-range missile a day after they announced Kim Senior’s death.

2. What will South Korea do if tensions rise? A year ago South Korea’s President Lee didn’t retaliate against the North Korean provocations. He was roundly criticized for failing to protect the South Korean people and his popularity plummeted.
President Lee can’t risk looking weak again, especially if another incident results in South Korean casualties. He has put his forces on high alert.

3. What is the greatest risk to stability on the Korean Peninsula? Miscalculation on both sides of the border.

Last year I met with the outgoing U.S. commander of our forces in South Korea who said one of the biggest problems was that North Korea’s self imposed isolation makes them hard to read, and they have trouble reading us. What might be a minor incident could quickly escalate into something much more dangerous.

Even North Korea’s most senior leaders have little contact with the outside world. They have no Internet, no Facebook, no blogosphere and they’re not on Twitter.

North Korea is one of the poorest countries in the world, and governed by an insular group of military leaders.

North Koreans don’t travel abroad and foreigners don’t go to North Korea. Yet on their southern border, just across a heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone, lies South Korea — an open, democratic society, and one of the world’s economic miracles.

So why does America care what happens to a small dictatorship half way around the world? Because North Korea has nuclear weapons and we have a mutual defense treaty with South Korea.

The United States has some 28,500 military personnel in South Korea, many serving as a tripwire at the demilitarized zone between North and South.

Our navy recently completed a joint military exercise with the South Korean Navy. There is no doubt that a military conflict between North and South Korea would involve U.S. troops.

As 2011 comes to a close, and just as America is exiting one war zone, things may start heating up in another one, half way around the world.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/12/20/three-things-to-watch-on-korean-peninsula-in-days-ahead/#ixzz1iKCumN14

Navy Midshipmen and Army Cadets spend their entire four years of college saying, “Beat Army” or “Beat Navy” dozens of times a day.

In the weeks leading up to the contest both Academies wage mock war against each other – with pranks, commando raids and high jinx. On game day the Armed Forces network broadcasts it around the world. Soldiers will listen in from their posts in the war zones. Sailors will tune in from the high seas.

Not only is the Army-Navy game one of the oldest college football competitions in the nation, in many ways it is one of the best.

It’s not that the football is great, because it’s usually not. The young men who play for Army or Navy weren’t recruited by the top university teams – they’re too small, or too light. They aren’t semi-professional football stars, living, eating and studying apart from their college classmates.

The men who play at West Point or Annapolis major in physics or electrical engineering and spend more time doing homework and marching in drills than at football practice. When they graduate they won’t be drafted by the NFL.

It is the last organized football game most of them will ever play. In a few months time, they will be ensigns standing watch on ships in the Pacific, marine lieutenants flying helicopter reconnaissance missions, and army lieutenants in remote, forward operating bases in Afghanistan.

So why is the Army-Navy game one of the best in college football? Because it is a metaphor for what is best about America. It shows us that we are at our best when we fight ferociously in the game, but afterwards, no matter who wins or who loses, we come together as brothers.

The finest moment of the game comes after the whistle blows. At the end, no fans rush onto the field. Nor do they head for their cars to get ahead of the traffic. They stand at their seats, take off their hats, and put their hands on their hearts. The entire stadium is silent, respectful, alert.

The players didn’t do war dances or whoops of victory, either. Both teams meet at the 50-yard line, shake hands and pat the backs of their opponents. They take off their helmets, tuck them under their arms and walk together to losing team’s side.

Last year it was a Navy victory, so both teams sang the West Point to Alma Mater to the entire 4,000 Corps of Cadets. Then they all turned and walked over to the Navy side of the field and sang to the 4,000 Brigade of Midshipmen.

If you looked up at the stadium screens you could see that many of the players had tears in their eyes. If you looked at your neighbors in the stands, they did too. Because what everyone in that stadium witnesses at every Army-Navy Game is the miracle that is America – that after the fiercest of contests we can rise above the victory or the defeat and come together as one nation. Regardless of our religion, family heritage or political affiliation, we are first and foremost, Americans. As much as our differences matter to us, our shared patrimony matters more.

Today the Army Navy game is being played in Washington, D.C. rather than its traditional home in Philadelphia.

All the senior leaders of government will be there. The president and vice president will attend, as will the leaders of Congress from both parties and all ends of the political spectrum.

Let’s pray they get more out of today than a good football game. Let’s pray that they will take to heart the miracle of the game, and follow the example of the cadets and midshipmen and realize that it is possible to lay down our rivalries and animosities and suspicions, and realize that we’re in this together — and that what is more important that being a Republican or a Democrat is being an American.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/12/10/miracle-army-navy-game/#ixzz1iK9PeoYb

We, like the battered wife, need to face the reality that things are only going to get worse, and it’s time to walk away and make some new friends. But it won’t be easy and it won’t be without major risks.

For ten years we have had a tortured relationship with Pakistan. We’ve needed their help in the Afghan War, and they’ve wanted our money. We’ve needed Pakistani supply routes to get our equipment and material into landlocked, mountainous and roadless Afghanistan. We’ve needed Pakistan to help take out the Taliban safe havens in the tribal areas inside Pakistan. We’ve needed Pakistan to help us find Bin Laden and destroy Al Qaeda. And we’ve given them some $20 billion in military and economic assistance as an incentive. And they have helped us….just enough…. to string us along and keep the relationship going.

But they’ve never been committed enough to the relationship to go all in. Why? Because they see things differently than we do and have different goals. Above all, they want a pro-Pakistan, government in Afghanistan after our inevitable departure, to give them strategic depth against their arch-enemy India. If we leave and the Karzai government stays in power, fine, Pakistan has helped achieve that outcome. But if we leave and the Karzai government falls, as looks ever more likely, the Pakistanis are hedged because they have given safe haven to the Taliban group most likely to succeed Karzai.
Sound complicated? Not really. They’re just doing what they think is best for them.

They did the same thing with Usama bin Laden. For years the government denied that the terror mastermind was in Pakistan. Yet Bin Laden was found in a safe house near in a military complex in… Pakistan. Shocking? Hardly.

The Pakistanis were in the “finding” Bin Laden business. Once Bin Laden was found — dead or alive — they’d be out of business. So they did the sensible thing — from their perspective — and kept him alive and hidden. They pretended to help us look for him and they continued asking us for more aid to do so.

From our viewpoint, they’ve been double dealing. But from Pakistan’s viewpoint, they’re only doing what is in their best interest: hedging their bets against our departure, hedging their bets to get our assistance.

But we’ve got to do what is in our best interests, too. Those in favor of sticking it out with Pakistan cite three reasons:
First, if we don’t Afghanistan will descend into chaos and Al Qaeda will come back. Phooey. Al Qaeda has already moved on….to Yemen….to Somalia…. we don’t have 100,000 troops there. Who needs Afghanistan if they have all of cyberspace?

Second, they point to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal and say if we sever ties with Pakistan those nukes could fall into the hands of terrorists. Yet, by that logic we have just as much to fear from North Korea’s nuclear weapons and from Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Even our most militant neo-cons don’t think we should invade Iran.

To a certain extent, we’ve been Pakistan’s enablers. Hasn’t our military assistance allowed them to devote more of their own resources to their rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal? Wouldn’t it be better for us to take those billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan and put it towards intelligence gathering and covert operations so we can know where those nuclear weapons are and if need be stop them from falling into the hands of terrorists?

Finally, some of the aid we give Pakistan ultimately ends up supporting the Pakistani intelligence services which give safe haven to and work with the Taliban. As former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mullen said, the Haqqani Taliban network is a virtual arm of the Pakistani intelligence services. — This is the same group responsible for a number of the recent attacks on NATO military and civilian targets.

Isn’t it unconscionable that we are paying Pakistan to kill our people in Afghanistan? Don’t we owe it to the men and women who have sacrificed so much for our country and who are still in Afghanistan to walk away from this abusive relationship?

None of them “won” or “lost” and they’re all getting better it debating. Come the election season, anyone of them will fare well against Obama because the dirty little secret is that while Obama may deliver a great TelePrompTer speech, he’s a lousy debater.

The big picture story is the nature of primary campaigning has changed, probably forever. In years past candidates ran state-by-state campaigns. They raised money, built ground teams, and camped out in the early primary states. If they won, donors sent in checks and the candidate could on going to the next primary state. If not, he had to quit. No money, no campaign. No ground game, no votes.

This time around retail campaigning, has given way to America’s newest reality TV series, the weekly Republican debates. Because candidates have to be sharp and well-rested or risk ridicule on “Saturday Night Live,” they’ve not had much time for chicken dinners in Iowa or diners in New Hampshire. Instead they’re running national campaigns by going on Fox News Channel and showing up at the debates. They’re reaching far more voters on national TV than they could at the pancake house in Cedar Falls. Which also means they don’t have to raise tons of cash. And that levels the playing field — all a candidate needs is a plane ticket and a hotel room and snappy debate performance. Will this translate to votes in the states? We won’t know if this strategy works until the primary states head to the polls starting in a few weeks time

There are not a lot of foreign policy differences between the candidates – except for Ron Paul. Sure Romney and Huntsman disagree on Afghanistan. Perry and Bachmann disagree on immigration. Gingrich disagrees with everyone about amnesty.

The biggest contrast will be later, between Obama and the GOP standard bearer. They will disagree on issues like how to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, how to end the Afghan war, and defense cuts. But at the core, Americans want to know which candidate can restore America’s faith in itself.

When Obama took the oath of office in January 2009 America was the undisputed leader of the world. That’s no longer the case today. Friends no longer seek our advice, foes are willing to challenge us, and worst of all the American people no longer think we’re just going through a temporary bad patch, but that we’re in an inevitable and permanent decline.

President Obama is fond of saying we’ve never been through such perilous times. He’s wrong. We’ve been in far worse places before and survived and thrived. Think of Lincoln trying to hold the Union together by having to sacrifice 600,000 lives. Or FDR dealing with the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor and World War II. In spite of the crises they faced, they never doubted our ability to get through it and climb to even greater heights. And we knew they believed it, not just with pretty speeches but at the core of their beings, and so we believed it too. Lincoln talked about preserving the ‘last best hope of earth.’ FDR said the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. Reagan talked about that shining city on a hill.

Obama believes in global solutions, and that American exceptionalism is no different from British exceptionalism or Greek exceptionalism. He prefers to lead from behind and thinks America should just be one among many. He says the problem is we’ve become lazy. And because he doesn’t believe in us, we’ve started to doubt ourselves, too.

In the end this is the only issue that matters. Most Americans believe deep in their hearts that we have something special here and we’re in danger of losing it. We think Washington is broken, and the country is on the wrong track. We can’t understand why there are no jobs, we’re looking for the candidate that can get us to believe in ourselves again, the one who believes deep in his heart that we are different from every other country in the history of the world; that we have been blessed by God and our founding principles like freedom and self reliance and equal rights have made us unique and exceptional.

“It’s a dangerous escalation of the Iranian government’s longstanding use of violence … We are committed to holding the Iranians accountable,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday.

For now, Carney said the Obama administration is focusing on pressuring Iran through economic sanctions and diplomatic coalition-building. But emerging details suggest a potential strategy shift in Tehran’s quest for influence in the Middle East could require a new level of vigilance.

Some have questioned whether the plot was crafted under the guidance of top-level Iranian leaders. The names dropped so far by the Obama administration are no small fish. Among the individuals sanctioned Tuesday by the Treasury Department for alleged ties to the plot were Quds Commander Qasem Soleimani and Abdul Reza Shahlai — a Quds official notorious for his alleged role planning a 2007 attack which killed five American soldiers in Iraq.

A 2008 statement from the Treasury Department, announcing an earlier set of sanctions, had cited Shahlai for his role in planning the attack, as well as in helping supply weapons to and coordinate training for anti-U.S. groups in Iraq.

Shahlai’s background underscores the kind of shift the latest plot could signify, if the information spilled by the lone suspect in custody is correct.

Whereas Iran had previously kept its international meddling to isolated attacks and coordination with militias in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the attempted assassination would have been an unprecedented strike inside the United States aimed specifically at its dominant neighbor, Saudi Arabia.

Analysts said the plot shows how Iran is ratcheting up efforts to outflank the Kingdom as other nations in the region regroup following the Arab Spring.

“Together with Egypt, these are three countries that fervently believe that they should be the leaders of that region,” said P.J. Crowley, former assistant secretary for public affairs at the State Department. He noted Egypt is “distracted” by its own political transition, leaving Saudi and Iran to duke it out.

“There is a definite connection in terms of the Arab Spring. How these transitions are playing out, it’s raising the stakes for leadership in the region,” he said on Fox News. “I think within that context, you see this plot between Iran and Saudi Arabia play out.”
Crowley questioned whether the plot was a “rogue operation” by Quds-tied officials, or a “strategic decision” by top brass in Tehran to target Saudi Arabia “first and foremost.”

Vice President Biden, in an interview on CBS’ “Early Show,” said it appears the perpetrators wanted to “punish the Saudi Kingdom.”
KT McFarland, a former Defense official and Fox News national security analyst, said Wednesday that a plot against Saudi Arabia would point to another phase in the long-standing enmity between Iran’s Shiite leaders and Saudi’s Sunnis.

“What’s brewing in the Persian Gulf is a fight of some sort between Iran and Saudi Arabia,” she said. “Those tribes have been fighting each other for millennia and what you’re seeing now is whose going to have dominance in the Gulf region.”

Top U.S. officials described the plot as a threatening development. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday called it a “dangerous escalation” of Iran’s terror sponsorship.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he wasn’t surprised, given Iran’s past activities, ranging from support of Hezbollah and Hamas, U.S.-designated terror groups closely tied to the Iranian regime, to its nuclear program to the export of weapons into Afghanistan.

Still, some questioned the claims of high-level involvement, which seem to derive in large part from the confession of the lone suspect in custody, Manssor Arbabsiar.

According to the Justice Department, Arbabsiar said he was “recruited, funded and directed” by apparent senior Quds officials.

Two former senior intelligence officials said that something about the plot doesn’t sit right, and that it seems to go against Iran’s pattern. One questioned why the Iranians would have allegedly tried to work through a Mexican drug cartel, as the Justice Department claimed, rather than Hezbollah.

But John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Iran may have taken the “seemingly incredible step” of going through a purported cartel representative so that they would leave “no fingerprints” on an attack that even by their standards would have been “very brazen.”

The Libyans, and their new government, are the ones who need to own this war. They don’t need the death of Qaddafi to have happened courtesy of the United States and or NATO.

The most pressing question now is what’s next for Libya?

We can only hope that the long-suffering and courageous people of Libya can put the hunt for Qaddafi behind them and get on with forming an effective government.

The future is murky but a new chapter is already underway. The hard part is that we”re still not sure who these rebels are and what their connections might be to radical Islamists.

So what does today’s news mean for the United States?

First, for President Obama it means that, for better or worse, the White House will take the news of Qaddafi’s death as vindication that “leading from behind” works.

Then there’s the War on Terror. If you look at the big picture, I’m less concerned with Qaddafi and much more concerned about his weapons of mass destruction. The Libyan strong man reportedly hid WMD around the country. — I’m thinking of the roughly 20,000 shoulder-fired RPGs and manpads that can take out helicopters and commercial aircraft, whatever fissiles materials are left over from his already dismantled nuclear program (that could still be used to make dirty bombs), and any chemical weapons (for example, could there be mustard gas stockpiled somewhere?) that might be left. These are valuable items for looters and could end up in the international black market, where terrorists go shopping.

Today, I am the National Security Analyst for Fox News but ten years ago I was a full time, stay-at-home mom, Manhattan style. My life revolved around our five children and stepchildren – play dates, homework and watching endless rounds of sporting events.

Tuesday, September 11 was a beautiful day, so after dropping my kids off at school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, I did what New York housewives do best, and headed down to Lower Manhattan to shop at a garment district, discount sample sale.

It was a few minutes before 9 a.m., and I was just about to walk into the store. I happened to glance up and saw black smoke billowing out of one of the Twin Towers, twenty blocks away. I figured it was either a colossal fire or a small plane must have hit it. But once the second tower was hit, I knew immediately it had to be terrorists and that my city, and my country, were under some sort of attack.

I bought a Sony Walkman at a local electronics store, and listened to the news as I rushed the two miles back uptown to my children’s schools. I had no idea whether my husband or children were safe — my cell phone wasn’t working, and even when I found a phone booth, there were long lines. I was quicker on foot.

When I got to my daughter’s school, parents were frantically picking up their children. My daughter’s teacher had just run out of the classroom to get to the Twin Towers, where her husband worked.

Mayor Giuliani was closing Manhattan’s bridges and tunnels, and the principal asked if I could take some of my daughters’ friends’ home with me. Their parents couldn’t be reached, and they had to get the children out and close the school. It was the least I could do. I took my daughter plus eight more. Everyone Can Do Something.

My son’s school decided to remain open. One of his classmates had both parents in the Twin Towers, and no one had been able to reach them: their office phones weren’t answering, and the cell phones weren’t working. So my son and his friends sat vigil with their classmate. Everyone Can Do Something. His parents arrived at their classroom door a few hours later, covered from head to toe in white ash.

The second we got to the apartment I turned on the TV. My daughter and her friends crowded around to see people jumping from the Towers. One girl said that the people must be jumping into safety nets. I knew no nets could catch people jumping down one hundred stories, but didn’t say anything. And then we watched together in horror as the buildings collapsed.

My daughter asked what we could do to help those people. I knew no one was going to survive inside those Towers, and that these girls probably knew some of them, including their teacher’s husband. We all had friends or family who worked in the Twin Towers, and unless they escaped in time, they were likely dead, maybe even hundreds and thousands of them.

There would be plenty of grief and tears ahead, but I didn’t want those girls to feel the helplessness that was beginning to seep in. We needed to do something, anything, to keep from being victims ourselves. I didn’t want their lesson from that day to be that we are helpless in the face of tragedy, that people could attack us and kill us and we could do nothing about it. Everyone Can Do Something.

So, I said that while we couldn’t help the people in the Towers, we could help the people who were helping them. The policeman and fireman who rushed downtown to rescue people would probably work through the night, and wouldn’t get home for dinner. So we made them cookies. Dozens of them. Chocolate-chip, oatmeal raisin, sugar cookies. And then we made them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Dozens of them, too.

When we were finished I loaded the cookies and sandwiches into shopping bags and the girls and I walked a few blocks to the local police precinct and fire station, to deliver our cookies and sandwiches.

We walked past a hospital where New Yorkers who were normally too impatient to wait for the light to change before crossing the street, stood in long lines waiting to donate blood. Everyone Can Do Something.

When we got to the police station, an officer took us into his office and thanked each and every girl for helping, saying that once his men got back they would be so thankful for the homemade cookies and sandwiches. Everyone Can Do Something.

The officer told us that volunteers from all over Manhattan had already gone downtown to help with the rescue and recovery efforts. Everyone Can Do Something.

A few days later my children set up a lemonade stand in front of our apartment building to raise money for the children whose parents had died in the Towers. They were charging a dollar for a cookie and cup of lemonade. Most people gave them a $20 dollar bill and said keep the change. A few people dropped $100 bills into the box. Everyone Can Do Something.

So what could I do? Before marrying and moving to Manhattan to raise a family, I had been a career woman in Washington, at the heart of American foreign policy.

In the 1970’s and 80’s I held top national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. In my last job, at the Pentagon, I held the civilian equivalent rank of a three star general but retired in the 1980’s, after President Reagan had put in place the policies that would ultimately defeat the Soviet Union. I had been a Cold Warrior, and figured my fight was won.

But if there were enemies out there who were now bombing my city and killing our children, I was back in the fight. Everyone Can Do Something.

So, while the acrid dust from the Twin Towers still hung over Manhattan, I sat down and wrote a long memorandum to my former colleague, Secretary of State Colin Powell, outlining a strategic communications plan should we go to war and offering to help.

I set out to educate myself about radical Islam, Al Qaeda, and Afghanistan. I rejoined foreign policy circles and gradually reentered public life.

Now, ten years after September 11, I am fully engaged as the National Security Analyst for Fox News. I comment on national security issues, write regular columns, and travel the country and the world talking about American foreign policy and the challenges we face.

One of my daughters decided the best way she could serve the country was in uniform. She graduated from the Naval Academy and is an officer in the Pacific Fleet.

My other daughter, who watched with me as the Twin Towers collapsed, studies international relations and terrorism. Everyone Can Do Something.

Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami once said that on September 11 Usama Bin Laden “wanted a battle but he got a war.”

Bin Laden thought that if he could attack the United States, damage a few buildings and kill some people he would crack the American spirit. He and his ilk preach victim hood and prey on the resentment, desperation and anger of their people.

But he never understood the American people — that behind our wealth and power and material comforts, we remain a nation that believes Everyone Can Do Something.

Act One: The Fall of the Dictator. Sometimes this act is quick, bloodless and easy, as it was in Egypt when President Mubarak was pushed aside. Libya has taken longer, six months of fighting, with a major and critical assist from NATO forces.

Act Two: The Rebels Rule. With the Dictator gone, it’s the Rebels’ turn to try their hand at governing. This is where everything starts to fall apart. The rebels, who had been united in their opposition to the hated Dictator and his gang, now start falling out amongst themselves. All the ancient animosities the Dictator had kept under wraps, are now unleashed in Act Two, as we saw in Iraq.
The Rebels have never had leadership roles, yet they’re now expected to run the country.
In Libya, Qaddafi, his relatives and his tribe, had their hands on all the levers of power for forty years. Now those hands are gone. But can the rebels take their places, and quickly enough to restore order before chaos ensues?
Act Two usually ends with everything up for grabs, and it’s likely to be the same with Libya.

Act Three: Where Everything Gets Resolved. Either the rebels find a way to get their act together, unite the country and establish security and order, and get civil society going again.
If they can’t, there is civil war, and the well meaning reformers are thrust aside by the more ruthless, violent, committed group willing to do anything to gain power. That’s what happened with Iranian revolution when the Shah of Iran fell in the late 1970. By 1980 the Ayatollahs were in charge and we all know how that turned out.
Today and for the next few days watch these main players in the Libyan drama. The next 72 hours will be crucial in whether this play is ultimately a drama, tragedy or farce. How they respond during the opening scenes of Act Two will determine how this play ends.
And, as the world watches this unfold, don’t forget the players. Here’s a look at them:

The cast:

The Rebels: Who are the rebels? Are they Islamists thirsting to establish a strict Sharia state? Are they western-educated secularists who want democracy and self-government? Are they bureaucrats who know how to run things? Are they warriors who love to fight, but don’t have a clue what to do when the fighting stops? Or…..as is more likely…..all of the above?
Will the Rebels stay united? Can they govern? Will they break along tribal, ethnic, and religious fault lines? When things get difficult — and they will — do the rebels start blaming each other? Will they spend their energies settling scores with the remnants of the Qaddafi clan, pushing for justice for the men who murdered their families and friends? Or will they get on with the rather boring business of governing — making sure the streets are safe, the water is running and the electricity works?

Clan Qaddafi: Do the extended members of the Qaddafi clan flee or stay and fight? Do they flee abroad? If so, will they be granted a safe haven or be turned over to the International Criminal Court or arrested at home for trial and probable execution, Mubarak-style? Do they go underground, Saddam-style, and lead an insurgency? Do they regroup and come back to fight again, Taliban-style?

NATO: We helped deliver the Libyan rebels a revolution with our drone strikes and behind the scenes special forces. Will we stick around to help them form a government, or breathe a sigh or relief with the fall of Qaddafi and head for the exits?

Will this be Iran redux, where the Carter administration helped push out the Shah but then failed to help the Iranian Revolutionaries form the post-Shah government — and ended up with an radical Islamist government far worse than the Shah’s ever was in Iran. Or will NATO and the United States offer technical assistance as Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush did to Eastern Europe when the Iron Curtain came down, and see an entire region become pro-Western and self-governing?

Months ago the Arab spring opened to a sense of wonderment and euphoria. But once the opening night enthusiasms faded, the Arab Spring has had very mixed reviews.

Egypt’s revolution will likely end in the election of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

Bahrain’s revolution is on hold for now, but Iran would like to see it play out again.

Morocco is turning out well so far, with a rapid transition to democratic government, but this is only at the beginning.

Syria is a simply a bloodbath.

The Arab Spring started out to cheers that the Arab Muslim world was throwing off the shackles of dictatorship and oppression. But as the season has worn on, the initial enthusiasm has given way to a harsher

The Libyan and Syrian dictators have almost always worked against our interests and objectives in the region. Libya’s Qaddafi has exported terrorism. Syria’s Assad has been Iran’s cats paw in the Middle East. Both nations have long histories of brutality against their own peoples.

But from the outset of the Obama administration, the president treated them differently. He saw Qaddafi as a pariah beyond redemption, but Assad as a reformer he could work with to create peace in the Middle East.

When the Arab Spring broke out, President Obama committed the U.S. to joint military operations against Libya, a country which is not a vital U.S. interest. He did so without a clear goal, against the advice of the military and intelligence communities, and without the consent of Congress.

Now that the Libyan war has dragged on….and on….and Qaddafi has hung on….and on…the United States and our allies look weak, indecisive and feckless. Even if rebel forces manage to push Qaddafi out, it doesn’t look like a victory so much as a long and bloody siege that finally starved him out.

We’re now faced with the crisis that does matter to us – Syria – and, thanks to the missteps with Libya, have less credibility or leverage than we would have if the Libyan war had unfolded differently.

Yet, all along Syria was the country that mattered. It has worked against Arab-Israeli peace accords, and supports terrorism. It has in the past and may in the future have nuclear weapons programs. But perhaps most threatening, its close alliance with Iran gives the world’s most dangerous and anti-American country a toehold in the most volatile region on the planet.

President Obama has finally given up his stubborn insistence, against all logic, that President Assad was a reformer he could do business with. He has finally called for Assad to step aside, and has frozen Syrian government assets. He has banned U.S. citizens from operating or investing in Syria. He’s imposed sanctions on Syrian petroleum products. Those are all good things, and long overdue.

We can only hope that the sanctions Mr. Obama announced Thursday will eventually force Assad out. Then we can look to the future: and a Syria without Assad opens up the possibility of pulling the country out of Iran’s orbit and reversing its expansion into the region.
Yet, one can’t help but wonder whether the president’s most important sanction, encouraging Syria’s major trading partners to do the same, wouldn’t have had far more effect if President Obama hadn’t first flubbed things with Libya.

First, today’s terrorists worship death. Throughout history, warriors have planned to fight and die if necessary, but to survive if possible. Today’s suicide bombers have turned that notion on its head. They don’t expect to survive, and don’t even bother making plans to escape. This death cult debuted on the world stage with Al Qaeda on September 11, but in the interceding ten years has been taken up by different groups and well as individuals. The September 11 hijackers learned how to fly 747s, but skipped the lessons on how to land them, because they expected to die.

In 2008, Muhammad Mahdi Akef, one of the founders and later Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, advocated teaching youngsters to become “mujahidin who love to die as much as others love to live.” Extremist leaders see that as their competitive advantage – as long as their followers are more willing to die than the people they attack are willing to die defending themselves, the terrorists will ultimately prevail. As long as they can sell enough of their people on the death cult as an instant ticket into a heavenly afterlife, they win.

Second, today’s terrorists, be they Islamic extremists or right wing extremists, don’t distinguish between military and civilian victims. Their ideological extremism dictates that everyone of a certain culture is the enemy, not just the governments or armies. And since they are all enemies, they are all fair game. No man, woman or child is innocent or exempt.

And therein lies their second competitive advantage. It’s easier to target civilians because they’re easier to kill. They’re less protected than military targets, rarely able to offer resistance, and just about anything can be used as a weapon against them– fertilizer, dynamite, a jet plane filled with fuel.

Finally, terrorism is asymmetrical warfare. For the ideological extremists, there are no rules. They don’t worry about civilian casualties, their own or their enemies. If their own people die conducting suicide attacks, they go to heaven. If their own people die in those attacks, they’re collateral damage, to be exploited for their political advantage in the world court of public opinion.

Yet the culture, or people, or religion terrorists attack do still play by the rules. We go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties – our and theirs – when defending ourselves at home or attacking terrorist bases abroad. We bend over backwards to extend legal rights to suspected terrorists, even if doing so exposes us to danger.

Despite all this, we have made great strides in defeating terrorism in the last decade. Much of Al Qaeda’s senior leadership has been killed, and their organization degraded. But it has come at great cost to us. And, despite two wars and over a trillion dollars, our efforts have not ended the threat of terrorism.

While Osama bin Laden may be dead, a new second generation of Islamic terrorists has taken their place, and they have opened franchises throughout the world, in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and even in Europe. They’ve proven adaptive and innovative. According to US intelligence officials, they now represent a greater threat to the US homeland than Al Qaeda. And, while they have not executed any large scale attacks on the level of September 11, they and we know one fundamental truth – they only have to succeed once, while we have to be successful 100% of the time. Eventually, they will get lucky.

There is a third generation of terrorists now emerging, who seem less tethered to international movements, and as likely to be right wing fanatics as Islamic jihadists. They are lone wolf, homegrown extremists who find their way to terrorism through the internet. They don’t go to training camps in Pakistan, and often have no military experience themselves. These individuals are often self-radicalized, and play out their violent fantasies on line first before putting them into action on their neighbors.

Anders Behring Breivik’s murderous rampage in Oslo last week is one of this coming wave of terrorists. He combines the three deadly aspects of the original Islamic terrorists – death cult, targeting civilians and asymmetrical fighting – with a new element. He could be the neighbor next door.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/07/27/why-terrorism-is-new-wave-warfare/#ixzz1TWYjiyPe