Blog Posts by David T Jones

Tamerlan Tsarnaev fell under the influence a Muslim convert who steered him toward a strict strain of Islam.

On September 11, 2001, 15 Muslim terrorists hijacked four commercial aircraft crashing three into occupied buildings and killing approximately 3,000 people. But Islam is a religion of peace.

On July 7, 2005, Muslim terrorists exploded backpack bombs in the London metro system killing 56 and injuring 700. But Islam is a religion of peace.

On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood, Texas, a Muslim doctor killed 13 and wounded over 30 while shouting "Allahu Akbar." The Department of Defense termed it an act of workplace violence. But Islam is a religion of peace.

On separate occasions Muslim males attempted terrorist attacks. These included inter alia: the December 2001 “shoe bomber;” the 2006 Toronto 18; the 2007 Fort Dix Six; the Christmas 2009 “panty bomber”; the 2010 Times Square bomb; and two attempts to send timed explosives by cargo plane.

Most recently, on April 12, two Muslim brothers planted two bombs, killed three, and injured over 250 at the Boston Marathon. This terrorism was followed

Read More »from War on terror: History, scripture tell us that Islam is not a religion of peace

The aphorism is that “Nobody ever lost money betting against peace in the Middle East.”

The judgment remains a good gamble; it is both clever and accurate wordsmithery. However, it is not entirely true. There has been negotiated “peace” in the Middle East. The most obvious illustration of such was the President Carter negotiated 1978 Camp David Accords which orchestrated peace between Egypt and Israel. The result undid of parts of the 1967 war with the return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt (albeit with a peacekeeper contingent stationed there indefinitely) and the beginning of a “cold peace” between the two nations. Although frequently challenged by various alarms and excursions, such arrangements have endured to the present. While the consequences of the Arab Spring are still playing out, they have not (yet) ruptured the essence of the agreement.

Likewise, other neighbors of Israel have come to more-or-less effective non-war arrangements. Thus there is peace with Jordan (negotiated

Read More »from Middle East: Hope springs eternal for negotiated peace

South Korean soldiers conduct military training near the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea.

The haunting fear for an intelligence analyst of Korea Peninsula politics is missing the indicators for a North Korean attack.

We missed it in June 1950 — over 60 years ago — and the subsequent effort to restore South Korean independence cost the United States 36,000-plus lives and hundreds of thousands of Korean dead. Even two generations later, it is a never-to-be-forgotten intelligence failure, and thus an intelligence challenge that we examine with painstaking scrutiny.

The challenge has a personal face. In 1965-66, I was an Army intelligence officer assigned to 8th Army G-2 in Seoul as an “order of battle” analyst. As such, I observed and estimated North Korean military strength, composition, force disposition, and probable courses of action. The North was even more tightly closed in 1965-66 than it is today; attempting to determine what was happening in its armed forces was the proverbial “through a glass darkly.” But the rationale for the scrutiny was obvious: walls of

Read More »from North Korea: Recent military manoeuvres indicate a legitimate threat

With Justin Trudeau’s “coronation” as Liberal Party leader merely a matter of hanging up the banners and inflating the red balloons, the fun is over and the grind begins.

Is he “sizzle” or “steak”? Is there substance behind the charisma?

And does it matter?

There are a variety of political truisms to recall:

A week is a lifetime in politics: And there are well over a hundred weeks before the next federal election;

Governments are not defeated; they defeat themselves: But if you have to count on a government defeating itself, you are not starting from a strong position; and

It’s the economy, stupid: So defeating a government in good times is an uphill struggle, and defeating an incumbent prime minister is even harder.

Regarding Trudeau, nobody claims him as a public intellectual comparable to his father. Although he appears to have evolved past the dismissive sobriquet that he was “Margaret’s child” (in effect, personally pleasant but not intellectually inspiring), his career

Read More »from Justin Trudeau: Charisma alone makes him a force not to be taken lightly

The United States has historically embraced the dichotomy of being both officially secular and culturally religious. But there has never been a period when religion was not a vibrant element of the politico-social milieu.

It has never been an easy fit, and the dissonance has become increasingly strident over the past generation.

The instant history lesson is that religious dissenters of one stripe or another — but uncomfortable with Church of England stringencies — founded many original colonies.

Thus you had Pilgrims/Puritans in Massachusetts; Quakers in Pennsylvania; Catholics in Maryland; and dissenters fleeing from Massachusetts religious rule in Rhode Island. Fleeing from British intolerance, however, did not make American colonists more religiously tolerant. Indeed, some colonies had “established” churches. For example, the Congregational Church was established by the Puritans in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. And the colonies were hard on Catholics and Jews

Read More »from Religion and politics: Polarizing, but no longer a prerequisite in the U.S.

“Useless as tits on a boar hog.” — Southern slang

And some Canadians certainly so identify their Senate.

But, to offer another folk expression, “Give a dog a bad name and you have a bad dog.”

Because the Senate Canada could have is not the Senate that it does have.

Indeed, in political science/government terms, the Senate is virtually equal in power to the House. Other than money bills (restricted to the House), the Senate can offer legislation on any subject, and its concurrence is required for bills passed by the House. Much like the observation originally accorded the U.S. Senate, Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, described it as a body of "sober second thought" that would curb "democratic excesses." And, again akin to the U.S. Senate, it provides “regional” rather than “rep by pop” political presence in Parliament.

Indeed, the Senate’s “sober second thought” is not a 19th century throw-away characterization. The Senate has provided serious studies on

Read More »from Senate reform: It may be better to keep all the turkeys in one cage

New Democratic Party leader Thomas Mulcair speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons.

It is a basic rule of politics, circa Political Science 101, that the “outs” get in and the “ins” (except in Alberta) are ousted. Or, to put it another way, any political leader with historical perspective knows that the day of victory is the first day on the track to eventual defeat. And conversely, any defeated leader knows that the day of defeat is the first day of the march to eventual victory.

So for the political observer, the rule of thumb is that “the time to get to know the government is before it becomes the government.” And this is the approach the U.S. embassy took in 1992 when Brian Mulroney's Conservatives were roadkill awaiting the electoral sweeper. We met the full range of the Liberal political hierarchy, not knowing which portfolios they would secure, but getting a sense of where they were “coming from” so we could make some estimate regarding where they would go when in power. Likewise, during the long Chretien-Martin/Liberal dominance, we checked the

Read More »from The future of the NDP: Effective in opposition, but a long, rocky road ahead

The skyrocketing cost of the F-35 fighter jet program forced the Tories to "hit the reset button" on a planned purchase of the planes.

The Canadian Forces (CF) face an existential question.

It is not the quality of its individual members; they are thoroughly trained and individually highly professional, well-led soldiers, sailors and aviators.

It is not the quality of its equipment, despite substantial concerns over “rusted out” naval vessels, questionable submarines, and delays into the never/never decisions for next-generation aircraft.

Rather, the question is the mission the CF will pursue into the out years of the first half of the 21st century.

And mission equals money; money equals mission.

The CF mission statement is threefold: defend Canada; contribute to the defense of North America; and contribute to international security.

So the question is one for domestic politics. How much are Canadians willing to spend (and what casualties are they willing to accept) in pursuit of these objectives?

Unfortunately, Canadian political parties remain deeply divided regarding national security objectives. In contrast to

Read More »from Canada’s military: With little support, a new decade of darkness looms