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Donald Trump’s recent proposals to register Islamics living in the United States and to bar more Islamics from entering this country until we can determine how to separate the dangerous ones from those who are not dangerous show that he is the only candidate who understands what a Fourth Generation world will be like. The hysterical denunciations from all other candidates except Senator Cruz demonstrate they don’t get it. While that alone may not be enough to indicate Trump would be a good president, it strongly suggests none of his opponents are fit to hold the office. Whether they like it or not, or understand it or not, Fourth Generation war is what they and this country are facing.

In 4GW, primary loyalties shift away from the state–someone’s native state or one to whch they have immigrated–to a wide variety of other things, including religions, races and ethnic groups, and cultures. Immigrants who do not acculturate are especially likely to become Fourth Generation threats, because they probably will not give their loyalty to a state whose culture is not their own (and to which they may be hostile).

Measures such as those Trump proposed vis-a-vis Islamics will be routine in a world of Fourth Generation war. Any state that wants to survive will have to take them, and stronger actions as well. If a population becomes a base for 4GW on a state’s soil, that state may have to expel them. There may be no other way for the state to perform its primary duty, maintaining order. Any state that cannot maintain order–safety of persons and property–will disappear.

Cultural Marxism forbids us to acknowlege any of these realities, which is why culturally Marxist politicians (Democrats actually believe the stuff; Republicans are too cowardly to challenge it) and institutions such as the New York Times editorial page have frothed at the mouth over Mr. Trump’s entirely reasonable proposals. Cultural Marxism says all cultures are wonderful, peaceful, “vibrant” sources of enlightenment, except our own culture, Western culture, which is evil and oppressive. Defend ourselves against another culture? The very notion horrifies the cultural Marxists; we are instead to embrace it even as it cuts our throats. Cultural Marxism’s goal, after all, from Gramsci and Lukacs onward, has been the destruction of Western culture and the religion from which it grew, Christianity.

Mr. Trump’s proposals do not indicate he has studied 4GW. I would guess he has probably never heard the term. His reactions are instinctive. But they are sound. They reflect reality. If elected, he can leave the theory to the leaders of his Defense Department (we can hope he chooses leaders who do know the theory). He would need only to keep the same instincts under the barrage of conemnation they will bring from the establishment. So far, he seems pretty good at that.

The degree to which the establishment has abandoned all grasp of reality was shown last week in Time magazine’s choice of Angela Merkel as Person of the Year. Merkel will go down in history as Germany’s poisoner, the person who flooded what was a safe, orderly country with carriers of the 4GW bacillus. That, of course, is exactly what cultural Marxism demands, so she is a hero to Time and the rest of the establishment.

Meanwhile, the more Trump insists on confronting cultural Marxism, a.k.a. political correctness, and urges us to face reality, the more his poll numbers go up. The  public, it seems, both here and in Europe, want leaders whose feet are planted in the real world. No wonder the shrieks and cries of the cultural Marxists sound ever more shrill. Ideology has no deadlier enemy than reality.

In announcing that all positions in the U.S. armed forces would be opened to women, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter lied. According to the December 4 New York Times, he said,

They’ll [women] be able to serve as Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALS, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force parajumpers, and everything else that was previously open only to men.

That statement is false. Women will not be able to do those things. Their bodies are not designed to do many of the tasks those positions entail. So long as realistic standards are maintained for those specialties, women will not be able even to qualify for them much less perform adequately in them. Men and women are different, physically and mentally, and their traditional social roles reflect their inherent differences.

Had the Truth Fairy landed on the SECDEF’s tongue as he was about to make his announcement, he would have said,

We are opening all positions in the armed forces to women. Women will not be able to do many of the duties entailed especially in the combat arms. We–the Obama administration–don’t care about that. Our ideology of cultural Marxism demands we pretend men and women are interchangeable. We will do whatever is necessary to maintain that illusion. In this case, if women cannot meet the standards, we will change the standards. If not enough women make it into the combat arms, we will establish quotas.

If, in combat, women cannot perform the mission, that’s not our problem. If it means lost engagements and unnecessary American casualties, what is that to us? Our ideology comes first. Get with the party’s program–or else.

Here again we see the slide of state armed forces into history’s wastebasket. Playthings of a political establishment that knows nothing of war, they exist for every purpose except fighting. Many of those inside them have figured this out. An Army study done at least ten years ago found that two-thirds of the Army’s women and one-third of its men disagreed with the statement, “The Army’s main purpose is to fight.” Most state armed forces produce so few fighters from their total manpower that they could not fight if they wanted to, not against any serious opponent.

So why do we keep them around, at immese cost? Mostly from habit. Few politicians know enough to see their obsolescence, and fewer still would take the political risks involved in pruning them back to budgets that reflect their military utility. The public, wallowing in the usual “Support the troops” rhetoric, cannot see their uselessness, and the air shows are fun to watch.

For the establishment, state militaries remain highly useful. They provide jobs and money that can be steered to political allies. Defense companies are big political donors. If you vote right, when you leave office many will offer you paid seats on their boards, plus lobbying contracts.

Senior officers feed from the same troughs, not to mention pensions that most people can only dream about (paid for by those dreamers). Once you make it to lieutenant colonel, the pay is great and the duties are easy, so long as you don’t object to working on vast staffs that produce nothing but contentless briefings which you must pretend to take seriously. If you hope to keep moving on up the career ladder, don’t forget the knee pads and the vaseline.

So to this dysfunctional and militarily impotent stew let’s now add women. Why not? Can anything make it worse than it already is? Actually, in this case yes, because putting women in combat units undermines the basic reason why they fight, unit cohesion. Instead of forming a band of brothers, the men fight each other over the women. When I asked the captain of an amphib with a male/female crew the fraternization rate, he replied, “100% of course. I have male sailors in knife fights over women officers.”

But in the end, it doesn’t matter much. These institutions are finished. Every time they take on non-state, Fourth Generation opponents they get their butts kicked.

4GW forces are about fighting. They don’t have much gear and their technical skills often aren’t great. But they and the men in them want to fight. Most of their personnel are fighters. Senior officers regularly get killed. Some of them seriously study war, a practice virtually unknown among our officers.

So the wheel of fortune turns. The fat, dumb, and happy careerists in their pressed camis are on the way down, and the lean and hungry believers with their AKs and IEDs are on the way up. Unserious, womanized state armed forces will vanish with the states they cannot protect and their ideologies not worth defending.

Donald Trump apparently was misquoted when he reportedly called for registering all Moslems in the U.S., but the idea is a good one. We are going to have to do it eventually, so we might as well get started now.

Moslems will not be the only non-state element fighting Fourth Generation war on American soil. Other entities, such as gangs, are already doing so. But the spread of puritanism within the world of Islam, which continues to gather strength, means Moslems will increasingly be a source of 4GW, here and abroad. At some point politically correct Washington will be forced by events to acknowledge reality and act.

A registry of all Moslems in America, if properly done, could benefit both the state and American Islamics. How? It would allow the sate to focus on those Moslems most likely to be violent, leaving others alone. For example, any Moslems registered as Sufis could and should be left undisturbed. Why? Because alone among major Islamic sects, the Sufis present no threat of violence. For that sin (the Koran commands violence against “unbelievers”), the Sufis are persecuted by both Sunnis and Shiites.

As is the case with violent crime, most Islamic Fourth Generation fighters are young men. A registry would allow security efforts to focus on them, assuming it asked for both age and sex. Children, women, and older men could be ignored, although many young Islamic women are now acting as suicide bombers.

A registry should indicate what mosque an American Moslem regularly attends. Presumably, the FBI is keeping watch on mosques where Islamic 4GW “jihad” is preached. People who attend such mosques should be prime suspects. On first thought, such mosques should be closed and their imams deported. But second thought suggest we might want to leave them open to serve as candle flames to draw the jihadis so they can be identified.

While political correctness gasps in horror at the idea of registering all American Islamics, the spread of Islamic puritanism suggests that may not be sufficient. The reason the state came into existence was to provide order–safety of persons and property–and if it is to retain legitimacy, it must do whatever is required to that end. If a registry and other security measures are not sufficient to prevent Islamic 4GW on American soil–from the state’s perspective prevention is everything; all first response is too late, because the peace has been broken and the state has therefore failed–stronger measures will be needed, including the option of exile.

Consider this scenario: A suitcase nuke goes off in, say, Seattle. It was brought in on an ordinary sailboat that came up from Mexico, where some of the drug gangs may have a relationship with Islamic 4GW entities. One of those entities–al Qaeda, ISIS, take your pick–credibly takes responsibility for the strike. An American city lies destroyed and casualties are in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

The little stage play that routinely accompanies Islamic massacres on Western soil–empty bluster from politicians, a few more useless airstrikes, blaming guns, women weeping and lighting candles–will not satisfy public anger. Across the country, mosques are being burned and Moslems strung up from lampposts.

At that point a Moslem registry might save Moslems’ lives, because it would allow the government to move quickly to send them into exile. For good reason, the age-old punishment of exile has been considered less severe than its alternative, death. Given the choice, American Moslems would probably rather leave than die. With Seattle still glowing, the public would probably not accept any lesser action.

Islam wants to have it both ways: at the same time it condemns civil society, demanding Sharia replace it, it seeks all the benefits civil society provides. The public, both here and in Europe, is beginning to perceive the contradiction. Each new incident of Islamic violence on Western soil will make that contradiction more clear. At some point, the state will have to resolve it or lose its legitimacy. A registry is a good, and rather moderate, place to start.

Why did Turkey shoot down a Russian fighter-bomber? Tactically, the Russian Su-24 may have crossed briefly into what they Turks consider their airspace. That area, now controlled by Turkey, used to be part of Syria and is still claimed by Syria. If the Russian pilots were using Syrian maps, they thought they were still in Syrian airspace. But to the Turks, they were flying over Turkish territory.

Operationally, the Turks may have shot the plane down in Syrian airspace because it was attacking Turkmen rebels in Syria. Turkmen are ethnic Turks who live outside Turkey. They are found in an arc that runs from the Mediterranean to China. Turkey claims a special right to protect Turkmen wherever they are found.

That claim ties into the real reason Turkey shot the Russian jet down. Following the islamic bombings in Paris, French President Hollande set out to form an American-French-Russian alliance against ISIS. Russia is eager for such a grand coalition. Turkey did not want it to happen. Why not? Because at the strategic level, Turkey is allied to ISIS.

The shoot-down pulled NATO and the U.S. away from Russia, because both felt they had to line up with a fellow NATO member, Turkey. Behind closed doors, they read Turkey the riot act, but in public they had to blame the Russians. Just at a point where, thanks to the French, the U.S. and Russia might have come together against ISIS, the Turks pulled them apart.

Turkey’s de facto alliance with ISIS has been visible for some time. ISIS’s supply lines run through Turkey, which they can only do with the approval of the Turkish government of President Recep Erdogan. Recent ISIS bombings in Turkey have been directed against Erdogan’s political opponents and the Kurds. Turkey regularly carries out bombing missions in Syria aginst the Kurds, America’s only effective ally on the ground and ISIS’s most dangerous opponent. ISIS in turn fights the Kurds, Turkey’s most hated enemy.

Note that Russia now has an opportunity to put an end to those Turkish airstrikes on the Pesh Merga. It can declare any Turkish warplane found in Syrian airspace a target on the grounds that what goes for (claimed) Turkish airspace also goes for Syrian airspace. Russia is openly Syria’s ally; why shouldn’t it help Syria assert its sovereignty in the air?

Why has Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey allied with ISIS? His goal is nothing less than re-establishing the regional place and role Turkey had when it was the core of the Ottoman Empire. At home, he has overthrown Ataturk’s secular state and is re-Islamicizing Turkey. In so doing, he has had strong (and idiotic) support from the U.S. and the E.U. The guardian of Ataturk’s secularism was the Turkish military. The U.S. and the E.U. demanded it surrender that role because it was not “democratic”. Both did nothing when Erdogan arrested hundreds of Turkish officers on trumped-up charges of planning a coup. That broke the power of the military domestically. Once again, the West screwed itself by its worship of its totem, “democracy”.

Abroad, Erdogan seeks to re-establish Turkey as the leader of the region’s Sunnis. That is why Turkey is so bitterly opposed to Assad’s governemt in Syria: it is Alawite, a Shiite off-shoot. Turkey’s support of Turkmen throughout the region is also an element of its strategy to regain its Ottoman role. Protection of Christian minorities was a reason often used by European Powers in the 19th century to justify intervention in Ottoman internal affairs. The Turks now play the same game using the Turkmen.

ISIS is useful to Turkey as a tool to re-establish Sunni dominance over large parts of what used to be Syria and Iraq. The more territory it can take from the Shiites, the better. Again, ISIS is dependent on Turkey; it dare not threaten Turkey, other than Turkish Kurds and Erdogan’s political opponents. Erdogan may well have calculated–rightly, in my view–that the puritanism ISIS and al Qaeda represent will burn itself out, leaving Turkey to pick up the pieces. Those pieces, once parts of the Ottoman Empire, come home to mama. Perhaps Erdogan even sees himself becoming caliph, a title the Ottoman sultan used to hold (it still rightly belongs to the House of Osman).

Is our foreign service too bloody dumb to see all this? Yes. So we continue to act as Turkey’s ally, which is ISIS’s ally, which makes us…? That’s what happens when you intervene in someone else’s Thirty Years War. It gets complicated. Wise men stay home and tend their own fire.

Don’t miss William S. Lind’s latest book, co-authored with Lt. Col. Gregory A. Thiele USMC, the Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook. A follow-on to Mr. Lind’s well-known Maneuver Warfare Handbook, the new Handbook is a practical, action-oriented guide for all soldiers and Marines facing 4GW opponents. Now available as an e-book (the paperback will come out in early 2016).

You haven’t yet read Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War by Thomas Hobbes, the famous author of Leviathan? Not just entertainment, Victoria offers a series of 4GW tactical decision games as Americans confront the break-up of their country later in the 21st century. It also points the way toward the recovery of our traditional culture and the defeat of political correctness. Start reading here and order a copy from Amazon today!