May 21, 2008
Bush in Egypt
Sunday, President Bush spoke in Egypt about how democracy is supposed to work. In the process he chided many Islamic countries for oppressing their general populations.
Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail. America is deeply concerned about the plight of political prisoners in this region, as well as democratic activists who are intimidated or repressed, newspapers and civil society organizations that are shut down, and dissidents whose voices are stifled. The time has come for nations across the Middle East to abandon these practices, and treat their people with dignity and the respect they deserve. I call on all nations to release their prisoners of conscience, open up their political debate, and trust their people to chart their future. (Applause.)
It is well worth reading the whole transcript.
(I originally had reprinted the whole thing in my extended entry, but it is not working for some reason and messed up the whole index page. Alas, you'll have to go to the source to read the transcript of his speech.)
April 17, 2008
SITREP: Basra
As it turns out, Basra is not the disaster that American media was trying to paint it three weeks ago. In fact, life in Basra was improved by the Maliki crackdown. Here's an excerpt from a report by Agence France Presse:
Three weeks after Iraqi troops swarmed into the southern city of Basra to take on armed militiamen who had overrun the streets, many residents say they feel safer and that their lives have improved. The fierce fighting which marked the first week of Operation Sawlat al-Fursan (Charge of the Knights) has given way to slower, more focused house-by-house searches by Iraqi troops, which led on Monday to the freeing of an abducted British journalist. Residents say the streets have been cleared of gunmen, markets have reopened, basic services have been resumed and a measure of normality has returned to the oil-rich city. The port of Umm Qasr is in the hands of the Iraqi forces who wrested control of the facility from Shiite militiamen, and according to the British military it is operational once again.
Why isn't our American media reporting this?
[Via Hot Air.]
April 15, 2008
Fallujah, then and now
Michael Totten has an excellent article in City Journal about the tremendous progress, and problems, that mark the meanest city in Iraq.
Fallujah is strange, sullen, wild-eyed, badass, and just plain mean,” writes Bing West in his 2005 war chronicle No True Glory. “Fallujans don’t like strangers, which includes anyone not homebred. Wear lipstick or Western-style long hair, sip a beer or listen to an American CD, and you risk the whip or a beating.” Fallujah has been Iraq’s bad-boy city since at least the time of the British in Mesopotamia; even then, travelers were warned to stay out. More recently, Saddam Hussein recruited some of his regime’s most ruthless officers from Fallujah. Even though it was a quieter city than most in Iraq after the American invasion in 2003, with less looting than in Baghdad and a staunchly pro-American mayor, the Americans should have known that Fallujah was trouble.But they didn’t, and so they were unprepared when a rogues’ gallery of Islamists, Baathists, and garden-variety malcontents made the city the launching pad for an Iraqi insurgency. The Fallujans who embraced the insurgency were foolhardy, too: had they looked at what similarly-minded Islamist totalitarians had done to Afghanistan, they would have known what hell awaited them at the insurgents’ hands. General David Petraeus’s radical transformation of counterinsurgency tactics has come at just the right time: the overwhelming majority of Fallujans, deciding that America is the lesser of evils, have now aligned themselves with the Marines and the American-backed city government.
The insurgency arose in Fallujah before spreading to the rest of the country. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that the insurgents—now on the run elsewhere in Iraq—were first beaten here in the City of Mosques.
Mr. Totten provides a balanced picture with both encouraging and discouraging elements, but ends with a realistically positive outlook about the future of this city in Anbar.
Go read the whole thing.
April 12, 2008
The party of fools
It seems that Nancy Pelosi is having another stupidity week in Congress. She effectively killed the trade agreement with Columbia for purely political reasons.
The Democratic Party's protectionist make-over was completed yesterday, when Nancy Pelosi decided to kill the Colombia free trade agreement. Her objections had nothing to do with the evidence and everything to do with politics, but this was an act of particular bad faith. It will damage the economic and security interests of the U.S. while trashing our best ally in Latin America.The Colombia trade pact was signed in 2006 and renegotiated last year to accommodate Democratic demands for tougher labor and environmental standards. Even after more than 250 consultations with Democrats, and further concessions, including promises to spend more on domestic unemployment insurance, the deal remained stalled in Congress. Apparently the problem was that Democrats kept getting their way.
So on Monday, President Bush submitted the bill to Congress over liberal protests, which, under a bargain between Congress and the White House for trade promotion authority, mandated an up-or-down vote within 90 days. Today Ms. Pelosi will make an ex post facto change to House rules to avoid the required vote, withdrawing from the timetable and thus relegating the Colombia deal to a perhaps permanent limbo.
Those national Democrats aren't the sharpest pencils in the box, are they?
April 11, 2008
On Iraq
Senator John Cornyn (R, TX), was present for Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Croker's testimonies to Senate Armed Services Committee about progress in Iraq. The testimony was balanced, but generally positive. Unfortunately, it seems that many Democrats in attendance had already decided not to listen to the good news.
The political pressure from far-left fringe groups like MoveOn.org is extremely important in Democratic politics. So some Democrats try to justify their calls for withdrawal with no real regard for the consequences. Sen. Barack Obama, for example, wondered aloud at the hearing why we can’t just leave Iraq in a “messy, sloppy status quo.”There are two problems with this approach. It forsakes our only real option in the war on terror — winning. And it demonstrates a fundamental disregard for what happens next — what we face in the region and the world if we don’t win that war.
We all want to bring our troops home — there is no disagreement over that goal. The question is whether they will return after defeating the threat, or whether they’ll return to an America that is less safe and more vulnerable to another terrorist attack.
If we give up too soon, according to Petraeus and Crocker, Iraq would become a breeding ground for terrorists, much like Afghanistan before 9/11. Last month, Osama bin Laden declared Iraq would be a “perfect” base for al-Qaeda. But thanks to our volunteer military, we now have al Qaeda on the run, as Gen. Petraeus declared: “We have our teeth into the jugular, and we need to keep it there.”
Yes, the cost in blood and treasure is high. But the cost would be far greater should America again face another terrorist assault on our civilian population. This is a difficult mission. But as we maintain and fortify the gains we have made, Tuesday’s hearing was an opportunity to bring our broader goals into clearer focus.
Questions from the other side of the aisle about the Iraqi government’s work toward meeting the benchmarks were noticeably absent from the hearings. Instead, the air was filled with rhetoric about the financial costs and a blind need for withdrawal. Perhaps there is no longer suspension of disbelief in progress.
Too many people have stopped listening, and have determined that Iraq must be a failure for the United States, no matter the long-term costs. They insist on taking a short-term view, dismissing radical Islamic terrorism as an irritant instead of a deadly threat.
As we digest the testimony of Petraeus and Crocker and mark the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime five years ago today, we must remember that freedom is never free. We owe to the American people, and to our troops serving on the front lines — especially those who have made the supreme sacrifice — the political courage to see this mission through.
The incredibly naive and petulant behavior of our Democrat national leaders is breathtaking! It boggles my mind that they can ignore reality even as that reality, in the form of Islamic terrorism, if allowed to florish, threatens our liberty -- if not our very existence.
April 09, 2008
IraqStatusReport.com
For news that's a little closer to Iraq and a LOT closer to reality, go check out IraqStatusReport.com.
I recommend it highly.
January 10, 2008
Where are the moderate Muslims?
Michael Totten answers that question, and much more in his latest report from Iraq.
I almost thought better of it, but I had to ask: “Have you ever been to Israel, Tom?”“Yes!” he said, beaming. “It is my country. It is beautiful. I have family there. The first time I went to Israel, after the 1967 war, I was afraid the Jews might eat my flesh. But they were so nice to me in Haifa. They welcomed me into their homes even though I am Palestinian. We hated them, you know, after all that had happened. But I was welcome as a Palestinian. The Jews are good people. Like you.”
For all the hatred in the Middle East, there is also forgiveness, and moderation. Where are the moderate Muslims? ask many Americans. I find the question bizarre. I meet them every day in Iraq, and everywhere else in the Middle East, too. The problem is they have a hard time getting attention in newspapers and magazines that wallow in sensationalism.
Read it all.
November 09, 2007
Thanks and praise
You know we're winning in Iraq when Muslims help Christians restore the cross to the roof of their church.
Thanks and Praise: I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome.
A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from “Chosen” Company 2-12 Infantry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope.The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.” Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers. (Videotape to follow.)
Pass it on . . . !
September 13, 2007
An Iraqi perspective
Bill Ardolino, embedded in Fallujah, interviews an Iraqi interpreter. Here's how he begins:
Perhaps more than any other element, contextual local perspective is missing from analysis about Iraq as a whole and Fallujah in particular. Western media, media consumers, and the political class offer strategic assessments about the conflict that confine the opinion and motivations of Iraqis to the general abstraction of religious sects and cherrypicked polls. It is a glaring oversight.I spoke with dozens of Fallujans -- policemen, interpreters, day laborers, politicians, volunteers for the neighborhood watch -- in my quest to understand them and I still do not have the complete picture. And a single interview certainly cannot encapsulate the diversity of opinion in a major city. Sections of Fallujah trend together but have different atmospherics; you will get many more waves to a Humvee on the south side of the city than you will in the northwest, for example. But many narratives and beliefs are widely shared among the population, and the people of Fallujah have a worthy spokesman in “Leo” the interpreter.
I recommend you read the interview that follows. It is quite interesting to see things from the Iraqi point of view.
September 01, 2007
Tribal revolt in Iraq
Dave Kilcullen, who has just completed a tour in Iraq as senior counterinsurgency adviser to the Multi-National Force, posts about the anatomy of a tribal revolt. Here's how he starts:
Some aspects of the war in Iraq are hard to fit into “classical” models of insurgency. One of these is the growing tribal uprising against al Qa’ida, which could transform the war in ways not factored into neat “benchmarks” developed many months ago and thousands of miles away. I spent time out on the ground during May and June working with coalition units, tribal leaders and fighters engaged in the uprising, so I felt a few field observations might be of interest to the Small Wars community. I apologize in advance for the epic length of this post, but it's a complex issue, so I hope people will forgive my long-windedness. Like much else, it’s too early to know how this new development will play out. But surprisingly (surprising to me, anyway), indications so far are relatively positive.To understand what follows, you need to realize that Iraqi tribes are not somehow separate, out in the desert, or remote: rather, they are powerful interest groups that permeate Iraqi society. More than 85% of Iraqis claim some form of tribal affiliation; tribal identity is a parallel, informal but powerful sphere of influence in the community. Iraqi tribal leaders represent a competing power center, and the tribes themselves are a parallel hierarchy that overlaps with formal government structures and political allegiances. Most Iraqis wear their tribal selves beside other strands of identity (religious, ethnic, regional, socio-economic) that interact in complex ways, rendering meaningless the facile division into Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish groups that distant observers sometimes perceive. The reality of Iraqi national character is much more complex than that, and tribal identity plays an extremely important part in it, even for urbanized Iraqis. Thus the tribal revolt is not some remote riot on a reservation: it’s a major social movement that could significantly influence most Iraqis where they live.
Later, Kilcullen points out that significant political progress has been made in Iraq, though the West has largely failed to recognize that fact. This is a key piece of information that we need to understand.
The implications of the tribal revolt have been somewhat overlooked by the news media and in the public debate in Coalition capitals. In fact, the uprising represents very significant political progress toward reconciliation at the grass-roots level, and major security progress in marginalizing extremists and reducing civilian deaths. It also does much to redress the lack of coalition forces that has hampered previous counterinsurgency approaches, by throwing tens of thousands of local allies into the balance, on our side. For these reasons, the tribal revolt is arguably the most significant change in the Iraqi operating environment for several years. But because it occurred in ways that were neither expected nor accounted for in our “benchmarks” (which were formulated before the uprising began to really develop, and which tend to focus on national legislative developments at the central government and political party level rather than grass-roots changes in the quality of life of ordinary Iraqis) the significance of this development has been overlooked to some extent.
It's a pretty long essay but, if you want to have a better understanding of what is really going on in Iraq today, it is well worth your time.
Recommended. Highly.
August 16, 2007
Beirut, a year later
Lisa Goldman, an Israeli journalist, writes an interesting article about her visit to Beirut last month. Here's how she starts.
On my first day in Beirut, the man who sold me a newspaper told me, “Many things are strange in Lebanon. Here, the strange is normal.” I wanted to answer, in a casual tone, “I know what you mean. I’m from Tel Aviv, and normal life can seem pretty strange there, too.” I wondered if the kiosk philosopher would think it strange-but-normal that an Israeli tourist was wandering around Beirut, one year after the war. And I am not sure I can describe how strange it was to feel simultaneously very comfortable and very fearful as an Israeli in Lebanon.
There are several photographs. It's a bit long, but is very informative. Recommended.
August 09, 2007
Played like a violin
An op-ed in OpinionJournal this week, written by an ex-communist propagandist, discusses specifics from his former profession in Romania to illustrate how Al Qaeda is using the American Left to undermine the war against terrorism in Iraq.
I've reprinted the whole article below the fold. It's a thinker . . .
Propaganda Redux
Take it from this old KGB hand: The left is abetting America's enemies with its intemperate attacks on President Bush.
BY ION MIHAI PACEPA
Tuesday, August 7, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDTDuring last week's two-day summit, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown thanked President Bush for leading the global war on terror. Mr. Brown acknowledged "the debt the world owes to the U.S. for its leadership in this fight against international terrorism" and vowed to follow Winston Churchill's lead and make Britain's ties with America even stronger.
Mr. Brown's statements elicited anger from many of Mr. Bush's domestic detractors, who claim the president concocted the war on terror for personal gain. But as someone who escaped from communist Romania--with two death sentences on his head--in order to become a citizen of this great country, I have a hard time understanding why some of our top political leaders can dare in a time of war to call our commander in chief a "liar," a "deceiver" and a "fraud."
I spent decades scrutinizing the U.S. from Europe, and I learned that international respect for America is directly proportional to America's own respect for its president.
My father spent most of his life working for General Motors in Romania and had a picture of President Truman in our house in Bucharest. While "America" was a vague place somewhere thousands of miles away, he was her tangible symbol. For us, it was he who had helped save civilization from the Nazi barbarians, and it was he who helped restore our freedom after the war--if only for a brief while. We learned that America loved Truman, and we loved America. It was as simple as that.
Later, when I headed Romania's intelligence station in West Germany, everyone there admired America too. People would often tell me that the "Amis" meant the difference between night and day in their lives. By "night" they meant East Germany, where their former compatriots were scraping along under economic privation and Stasi brutality. That was then.
But in September 2002, a German cabinet minister, Herta Dauebler-Gmelin, had the nerve to compare Mr. Bush to Hitler. In one post-Iraq-war poll 40% of Canada's teenagers called the U.S. "evil," and even before the fall of Saddam 57% of Greeks answered "neither" when asked which country was more democratic, the U.S. or Iraq.
Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels. This same strategy is at work today, but it is regarded as bad manners to point out the Soviet parallels. For communists, only the leader counted, no matter the country, friend or foe. At home, they deified their own ruler--as to a certain extent still holds true in Russia. Abroad, they asserted that a fish starts smelling from the head, and they did everything in their power to make the head of the Free World stink.
The communist effort to generate hatred for the American president began soon after President Truman set up NATO and propelled the three Western occupation forces to unite their zones to form a new West German nation. We were tasked to take advantage of the reawakened patriotic feelings stirring in the European countries that had been subjugated by the Nazis, in order to shift their hatred for Hitler over into hatred for Truman--the leader of the new "occupation power." Western Europe was still grateful to the U.S. for having restored its freedom, but it had strong leftist movements that we secretly financed. They were like putty in our hands.
The European leftists, like any totalitarians, needed a tangible enemy, and we gave them one. In no time they began beating their drums decrying President Truman as the "butcher of Hiroshima." We went on to spend many years and many billions of dollars disparaging subsequent presidents: Eisenhower as a war-mongering "shark" run by the military-industrial complex, Johnson as a mafia boss who had bumped off his predecessor, Nixon as a petty tyrant, Ford as a dimwitted football player and Jimmy Carter as a bumbling peanut farmer. In 1978, when I left Romania for good, the bloc intelligence community had already collected 700 million signatures on a "Yankees-Go-Home" petition, at the same time launching the slogan "Europe for the Europeans."
During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America's presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren't facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness.
The final goal of our anti-American offensive was to discourage the U.S. from protecting the world against communist terrorism and expansion. Sadly, we succeeded. After U.S. forces precipitously pulled out of Vietnam, the victorious communists massacred some two million people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Another million tried to escape, but many died in the attempt. This tragedy also created a credibility gap between America and the rest of the world, damaged the cohesion of American foreign policy, and poisoned domestic debate in the U.S.
Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, for example, Bush critics continued our mud-slinging at America's commander in chief. One speaker, Martin O'Malley, now governor of Maryland, had earlier in the summer stated he was more worried about the actions of the Bush administration than about al Qaeda. On another occasion, retired four-star general Wesley Clark gave Michael Moore a platform to denounce the American commander in chief as a "deserter." And visitors to the national chairman of the Democratic Party had to step across a doormat depicting the American president surrounded by the words, "Give Bush the Boot."
Competition is indeed the engine that has driven the American dream forward, but unity in time of war has made America the leader of the world. During World War II, 405,399 Americans died to defeat Nazism, but their country of immigrants remained sturdily united. The U.S. held national elections during the war, but those running for office entertained no thought of damaging America's international prestige in their quest for personal victory. Republican challenger Thomas Dewey declined to criticize President Roosevelt's war policy. At the end of that war, a united America rebuilt its vanquished enemies. It took seven years to turn Nazi Germany and imperial Japan into democracies, but that effort generated an unprecedented technological explosion and 50 years of unmatched prosperity for us all.
Now we are again at war. It is not the president's war. It is America's war, authorized by 296 House members and 76 senators. I do not intend to join the armchair experts on the Iraq war. I do not know how we should handle this war, and they don't know either. But I do know that if America's political leaders, Democrat and Republican, join together as they did during World War II, America will win. Otherwise, terrorism will win. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi predicted just before being killed: "We fight today in Iraq, tomorrow in the land of the Holy Places, and after there in the West."
On July 28, I celebrated 29 years since President Carter signed off on my request for political asylum, and I am still tremendously proud that the leader of the Free World granted me my freedom. During these years I have lived here under five presidents--some better than others--but I have always felt that I was living in paradise. My American citizenship has given me a feeling of pride, hope and security that is surpassed only by the joy of simply being alive. There are millions of other immigrants who are equally proud that they restarted their lives from scratch in order to be in this magnanimous country. I appeal to them to help keep our beloved America united and honorable. We may not be able to change the habits of our current political representatives, but we may be able to introduce healthy new blood into the U.S. Congress.
For once, the communists got it right. It is America's leader that counts. Let's return to the traditions of presidents who accepted nothing short of unconditional surrender from our deadly enemies. Let's vote next year for people who believe in America's future, not for the ones who live in the Cold War past.
Lt. Gen. Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc. His new book, "Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination" (Ivan R. Dee) will be published in November.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
July 26, 2007
Encroachment
OpinionJournal reports on a recent geographic survey that has determined that Syria has re-occupied 177 square miles of Lebanese territory.
I've reprinted the article in the extended entry.
Syria Occupies Lebanon. Again.
A land grab proportionally equivalent to a foreign power occupying Arizona.
BY BRET STEPHENS
Tuesday, July 24, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDTAs of this minute, Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese soil. That you are now reading about it for the first time is as much a scandal as the occupation itself.
The news comes by way of a fact-finding survey of the Lebanese-Syrian border just produced by the International Lebanese Committee for U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, an American NGO that has consultative status with the U.N. Because of the sensitivity of the subject, the authors have requested anonymity and have circulated the report only among select government officials and journalists. But its findings cannot be ignored.
In meticulous detail--supplemented by photographs, satellite images, archival material and Lebanese military maps predating Syria's 1976 invasion (used as a basis of comparison with Syria's current positions)--the authors describe precisely where and how Lebanon has been infiltrated. In the area of the village of Maarboun, for instance, the authors observed Syrian military checkpoints a mile inside Lebanon. In the Birak al-Rassass Valley, they photographed Syrian anti-aircraft batteries. On the outskirts of the village of Kossaya they found a heavily fortified camp belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in violation of U.N. resolutions and Lebanese demands.
This is a story to which I can contribute my own testimony. In May 2005 I paid a visit to Lebanon, just a month after Syria had announced that it had fully withdrawn its 14,000 troops from Lebanon in compliance with Resolution 1559. The rumor in Beirut was that a company of 200 or so elite Syrian soldiers remained encamped within Lebanon near the Druze village of Deir al-Ashaer. I decided to have a look. After a long drive over rutted roads, I found it.Or rather, what I found was a hillside outpost that I was able to enter without crossing any apparent international border. The man in charge was a Syrian intelligence officer who "invited" me into a sweltering tent while he phoned his commanders for instruction. After a few tense minutes of silence with the soldiers inside, the officer reappeared, explained that the camp was 50 yards inside Syrian territory, and ordered me to go. From there I went to the village, where the mayor insisted the camp was several hundred yards inside Lebanon.
Who was right? Inclined as I was to believe the mayor, it was hard to sort out contending claims over remote parcels of land. A week later, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced the U.N. had "verified all [Syrian military units] had withdrawn, including [from] the border area." It seemed that was the end of the story.
I should have known then that anything "verified" by the U.N. must be checked at least twice. I should have known, too, that anything to which Mr. Annan devoted his personal attention would inevitably become worse. Last September, Mr. Annan paid a visit to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad after the latter had declared he would treat any attempt by the U.N. to deploy peacekeepers along the Lebanese-Syrian border as a "hostile act." To defuse the impasse, Mr. Annan simply accepted Mr. Assad's assurances that Syria would police its border and prevent arms smuggling. "I think it can happen," said the diplomat at a press conference. "It may not be 100%, but it will make quite a lot of difference if the government puts in place the measures the government has discussed with me."
What happened, predictably, was the opposite. In May, Fatah al-Islam, a terrorist group whose leadership was imported from Damascus, attacked Lebanese army outposts outside the Palestinian refugee camps of Nahr El-Bared and Biddawi, causing a bloody standoff that continues till this day. In June, current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a report citing numerous instances of arms smuggling from Syria to Hezbollah and the PFLP. Yesterday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasted that he once again has missiles that can reach Tel Aviv--missiles he could only have obtained via Syria. Israel confirms his claims.
Mr. Ban's report is notable for its clarity and seriousness. Taken together with the border report, it paints an alarming picture. Though the land grabs are small affairs individually, they collectively add up to an area amounting to about 4% of Lebanese soil--in U.S. terms, the proportional equivalent of Arizona. Of particular note is that the area of Syrian conquest dwarves that of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms. The farms, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967 and which amount to an area of about 12 square miles, are claimed by Hezbollah as belonging to Lebanon--a useful pretext for it to continue its "resistance" against an Israeli occupation that ended seven years ago.
Needless to say, Hezbollah--which purports to fight for Lebanese sovereignty--makes no similar claims against Syria. For his part, Mr. Assad refuses to agree to a demarcation of his border with Lebanon, just as he refuses to open an embassy in Beirut. The ambiguity serves him well: He can seize Lebanese territory without anyone appearing to take notice, supply terrorist camps without quite harboring the terrorists, and funnel arms to Hezbollah at will--all without abandoning the fantasy of "Greater Syria" encompassing Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Israel itself.
It would, of course, be nice to see the Arab world protest this case of illegal occupation, given its passions about the subject. It would also be nice to see the media report this story as sedulously as it has the controversy of the Shebaa Farms. Don't hold your breath on either score. In the meantime, the only countries in a position to help Lebanon are France and the U.S. They could strike a useful blow by closing their embassies in Damascus until such time as Damascus opens an embassy--with all that it implies--in Beirut.Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
June 27, 2007
Travesty
The U.N. body charged with monitoring global human rights (in the form of the newly minted U.N. Human Rights Council) once again disregards clear indications of widespread violations of human rights in the world in order to call out Israel as the country to watch.
Where does the global human rights movement stand in the seventh year of the 21st century? If the first year of the United Nations Human Rights Council is any indication, it's grown sick and cynical -- partly because of the fecklessness and flexible morality of some of the very governments and groups that claim to be most committed to democratic values.At a session in Geneva last week, the council -- established a year ago in an attempt to reform the U.N. Human Rights Commission -- listened to reports by special envoys appointed by its predecessor condemning the governments of Cuba and Belarus. It then abolished the jobs of both "rapporteurs" in a post-midnight maneuver orchestrated by its chairman, who announced a "consensus" in spite of loud objections by the ambassador from Canada that there was no such accord.
While ending the scrutiny of those dictatorships, the council chose to establish one permanent and special agenda item: the "human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories." In other words, Israel (or "Palestine," in the council's terminology), alone among the nations of the world, will be subjected to continual and open-ended examination. That's in keeping with the record of the council's first year: Eleven resolutions were directed at the Jewish state. None criticized any other government.
Go read the whole thing. It's a global disgrace.
[Via Instapundit.]
May 25, 2007
Legitimate concerns
Time has a short article describing some of the real progress going on in Anbar Province, but the article also points out some concerns.
So let's try to put the good and bad news together. It's not impossible that the Iraqis will eventually remove the al-Qaeda cancer from the Sunni insurgency—which would put a serious crimp in President George W. Bush's current rationale for the war, that we're there to fight al-Qaeda. But it's also probable that without a political deal, the sectarian conflict between the Sunnis and Shi'ites will intensify—and eventually explode when the U.S. military pulls back from Iraq. The stakes in Iraq then become questions of moral responsibility and regional stability. "How many Srebrenicas do you have the stomach for?" a senior U.S. official asked me, referring to the Bosnian massacre by the Serbs in 1995. Given the antipathy of the American people for the war, I'd guess the public reaction would be, "Those Arabs are just a bunch of barbarians, and we could never tell the difference between Shi'ites and Sunnis anyway." A more pointed question is, How many massacres of Sunnis will the Saudis and Jordanians have the stomach for? How hard will Iran press its obvious advantage with a Shi'ite-dominated government in Iraq? The answers to those questions are completely out of American hands. They rest with the Iraqi Shi'ites. Eventually even battered children have to grow up.
Recommended reading.
May 10, 2007
Let's stick with our Iraqi allies
Hoshyar Zebari, Foreign Minister for Iraq, pleads with Americans to not abandon Iraq in this crucial time of its democratic infancy.
Last weekend a traffic jam several miles long snaked out of the Mansour district in western Baghdad. The delay stemmed not from a car bomb closing the road but from a queue to enter the city's central amusement park. The line became so long some families left their cars and walked to enjoy picnics, fairground rides and soccer, the Iraqi national obsession.Across the city, restaurants are slowly filling and shops are reopening. The streets are busy. Iraqis are not cowering indoors. The appalling death tolls from suicide attacks are often high because of crowding at markets. These days you are as likely to hear complaints about traffic congestion as about the security situation. Across Baghdad there is a cacophony of sirens from ambulances, firefighters and police providing public services. You cannot even escape the curse of traffic wardens ticketing illegally parked cars.
Read the whole thing. Then come back and leave some words of support.
March 22, 2007
SITREP: Baghdad
Mohammad Fadhil reports at PJM about the current status of life in Baghdad.
You look around in Baghdad now and see hundreds of men working in the streets to pick up garbage; to plant flowers and paint the blast walls in joyful colors. Many of Baghdad’s squares are becoming green and clean. The picture isn’t perfect, but it’s a clear attempt to beat violence and ease pain through giving the spring a chance to shine.Nights in Baghdad now are far from quiet, but the sounds cause less anxiety for me than they did before. I recognize the rumble of armor and thump of guns and they assure me that the gangs and militias do not dominate the night as they once did.
When Arabs or westerners ask me about the situation and I answer that hope remains and that we’re looking forward to a better future most would say ‘Are you living in this world?’ I answer, ‘Yes, it’s you who live in the parallel world the media built for you with images of only death and destruction’.
If it surprised some of them that a poll found Iraqis optimistic, then I’m surprised that someone finally bothered to ask Iraqis how they feel.
Just as free birds would never return to the cage, we don’t want to return to the days of the tyrant.
Godspeed to them all.
March 21, 2007
Is a European civil war brewing?
Or is is a jihadist takeover?
After the death last Sunday of Rinie Mulder, a 54-year old indigenous Dutchman who was shot by a police officer, non-immigrant citizens went on a rampage in Utrecht. Apparently Mulder intervened when Muslim youths harassed a pregnant native Dutch woman. Locals claim the police has failed to protect them for years. They say the authorities are afraid of the immigrants and tolerate their criminal behavior.This issue is not just about Utrecht or Holland. Similar resentment against Muslim immigrants, but at least as much against their own authorities, is quietly brewing among the natives all over Western Europe.
Or could it be both?
[Via Instapundit.]
March 20, 2007
Iraqi Kurdistan: A Success Story
Michael Totten reports on his recent visit to the Erbil Province in Iraq.
Fourteen months ago I flew to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, from Beirut, Lebanon, on the dubiously named Flying Carpet Airlines. Flying Carpet’s entire fleet is one small noisy plane with propellers, cramped seats, and thin cabin pressure. Only nineteen passengers joined me on that once-a-week flight. Everyone but me was a Lebanese businessman. They were paranoid of me and of each other. What kind of crazy person books a flight to Iraq, even if it is to the safe and relatively prosperous Kurdistan region? I felt completely bereft of sense going to Iraq without a gun and without any bodyguards, and it took a week for my on-again off-again twitchiness to subside.Last week I flew to Erbil from Vienna on Austrian Airlines to work for a few weeks as a private sector consultant with my colleague Patrick Lasswell. This time I didn’t feel anything like a fool. Almost half the passengers were women. Children played on their seats and in the aisle with toys handed out by the crew. We watched an in-flight movie and ate the usual airline lunch fare served by an attractive long legged stewardess. The cabin erupted with applause when the wheels touched down on the runway. The pilot announced the weather (sunny and 60) in three languages and cheerfully told us all to have a great day. Have a great day may seem an odd thing to say to people who just arrived in Iraq, but this is Kurdistan. I did, indeed, have a great day.
Go read the whole thing.
March 15, 2007
The long view
Columnist, veteran, and professor, Austin Bay, puts the recent gains made by the Iraqi people into historical perspective.
Consider what Iraq was, not simply in A.D. March 2003, but in 2003 B.C. Both historical frames provide instructive lessons in the obvious.Iraq, as ancient Mesopotamia (the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers), seeded Abraham's Ur and Hammurabi's Babylon. The region was the Eden of city-states, the consolidator and exporter of the Agricultural Revolution. It is also the center of a predominantly Muslim region where -- to paraphrase historian Bernard Lewis -- something "went wrong." Lewis was addressing the "fossilization" that began to afflict the Middle East at least six centuries ago, a cultural, intellectual and, yes, political ossification and decline.
The decline did two things that directly affect the War on Terror (which Rudy Giuliani more correctly calls The Terrorists' War Against Us). The decline undermined Islamist utopian notions of theological supremacy. That millennialist disappointment seeds the long list of "grievances" infesting al-Qaida's propaganda.
The far greater consequence (and truly grievous wrong) was arresting Middle Eastern populations. Arrest is the right word. The Middle East was trapped in the terrible yin-yang of tyrant and terrorist, the choice of one or the other -- which is no choice, for both mean oppression and death.
Go read the whole thing.
March 09, 2007
Iraqi economic reform
Austin Bay has an intriguing op-ed up at StrategyPage that advocates using economic incentives to bring long-term stability to Iraq. He's not talking about handouts, though, he's talking about economic reform in Iraq -- in the form of an "oil trust", land ownership and free markets.
Clarifying and affirming individual property rights is another important reform. Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto's "Mystery of Capital" (published in 2000) argued that Egypt's poor have around $240 billion in "dead capital," most of it tied up in property that they cannot properly mortgage. De Soto said that individual property rights and a legal system that protected contracts would instantly energize Egypt's sclerotic economy.In 2004, while serving in Iraq, I read a short, unclassified study that made the same argument for Iraq. The potential economic payoff is huge.
Go read the whole thing.
March 08, 2007
Sometimes we can be subtle
The disappearance of General, and former deputy defence minister of Iran, Ali Reza Asghari and his family has had Iran in a bit of a tizzy. Now it appears that he is defecting to the United States. Pajamas Media is providing coverage and has posted an update:
UPDATE @ 10:42 EST: “The Iranian former deputy defense minister who disappeared in neighboring Turkey last month is being questioned in a northern European country under strict supervision…. Ali Reza Asghari is undergoing thorough investigation by intelligence forces before being transferred to the United States.” (Haaretz)
See, it's not 'all war, all the time', after all . . .
Go read the whole thing.
UPDATE: It appears the speculation is at an end. General Asghari has indeed defected from Iran:
Ali Rez Asgari disappeared last month during a visit to Turkey. Iranian officials suggested yesterday that he may have been kidnapped by Israel or the United States. The U.S. official said Asgari is willingly cooperating. He did not divulge Asgari's whereabouts or specify who is questioning him, but made clear that the information Asgari is offering is fully available to U.S. intelligence.
February 09, 2007
Inside Lebanon
Michael Totten provides a fascinating glimpse of the Lebanese point of view.
“Lebanon is a disaster right now,” I said, although it certainly didn’t look that way from his spiffy uber-modern tower looking out toward the mountains and the Mediterranean. “And it looks even worse than it is in the media. I wanted to check in with you again and interview somebody sane, show the other side of the story. Lebanon looks like a terrorist state again to Americans. And also to the Israelis.”He put his face in his hands then blew out his cheeks. “This,” he said ominously and nodded. “This is the most important thing.”
The interview is an interesting and informative one. If you want to have a more complete understanding of what is going on in Lebanon, and what may follow, you should read the whole article.
January 25, 2007
Lessons learned
Varifrank posts on the ten things he has learned from Iraq. Here is one of them:
- Now that America is in Iraq, the world cares deeply of the loss of quality of life of the Iraqi people. When Saddam was in charge, the world couldn’t possibly have cared less.
I have noted this, as well. It almost seems as if the world is more comfortable with tyrants who keep their murderous excesses quiet, than with an open society wherein everything is out for all to see. Pretty sad, that.
Varifrank has more thought-provoking observations in the rest of his post. Recommended.
January 23, 2007
Ghost soldiers in Iraq
Bill Ardolino, embedded with the Marines in Fallujah, has posted a report on corruption in the Iraqi Army and how it endangers our troops as well as the mission.
Many American personnel, including former Military Transition Team (MiTT) members advising the Iraqi Army in Fallujah, vehemently complained about fuel, supplies, weapons and pay stolen by higher echelons of the Iraqi Second Brigade of the First Iraqi Army (IA) Division, as well as IA officials up the chain of command. Current members of the MiTT, however, declined to comment.A former MiTTer described how "ghost soldiers" result in both American and Iraqi deaths by compromising security operations in Fallujah.
"Let's say there are 500 soldiers reported on staff; there will really be only 300, but someone up the line will report 500 and pocket the extra pay," said the former MiTT member who insisted on anonymity. Having fewer actual soldiers available for patrols and other missions exposes both Iraqi and U.S. soldiers to more lethal attacks by insurgents, he said. The reduced manpower allows insurgents "freedom of movement" to both stage attacks and plant Improvised Explosive Devices, the number one killer of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers and police.
"There's always some level of corruption going on, and that's one thing, but when it's getting people killed, it's unacceptable," he angrily explained.
There has got to be some way that this can be spotlighted, so that the Iraqi government will do something about it . . .
January 15, 2007
Good news from Iraq
Bill Crawford has a new installment of information about what is going right in Iraq.
"None of the accomplishments presented here would make the failure to establish security and stability in Iraq any less disastrous. Yet these accomplishments are by no means rendered irrelevant because we are unsure of whether we will emerge victorious from the war. It is difficult to appreciate the good that is done by our soldiers if we are unaware of it; and it is easy to become discouraged if we ponder only the mess of the war and not the steady progress being made toward defeating our enemies and establishing a stable Iraqi society not ruled by a murderous despot. We still have a long way to go, but 2006 was the kind of year that should make us optimistic about the road forward."
Go read the whole thing.
January 10, 2007
Good economic news from Iraq
James C. Roberts at the Washington Times provides us with a glimpse of Iraq's economic strides since Saddam's regime came to an end.
Did you know that Iraqi real-estate prices have gone up several hundred percent since the fall of Saddam Hussein?That Iraqi workers' salaries have increased more than 100 percent in that time?
That the number of cars in violence-torn Baghdad has grown by 500 percent in the same period?
That the Iraqi construction, retail and wholesale trade sectors are all growing at a healthy pace?
Chances are that you are astonished by these facts. I certainly was when I read them in an article by Silvia Spring in the end-of-the-year edition of Newsweek International.
Go read the whole thing.
January 07, 2007
Pollyanna-ish Americans
Mark Bowden, author of "Black Hawk Down", has an interesting, though pessimistic, op-ed at OpinionJournal about how the rest of the world is more like Saddam Hussein than most Americans care to admit.
We Americans consistently underestimate the deep hatreds that divide people. Our political system is designed to wrestle peacefully with the divisions of race, class, ethnicity, religion and competing ideological or geographical interests, and has generally worked as intended--the Civil War being the one glaring exception. Generations have struggled to live up to ideals of tolerance and diversity. When we look out at the world, we tend to see millions longing to get past the blood feuds, to be, in short, more like us. George Bush and the neocon intellectuals who led us into Iraq are just the latest in a long line of evangelical Americanists. No matter how many times history slaps us in the face, the dream persists.
He makes a good point. However, I'm American enough to think we can pull it off once again. (Some would call this naivete, but I disagree.) We managed to forge democracy out of fascism during and after WWII with Japan and Germany, we did it again with South Korea. Why can't we do it with Iraq and Afghanistan?
December 18, 2006
Big lie
Lisa Beyer, over at Time, has an op-ed that discusses the big lie about the Middle East. Here's how she begins:
No sensible person is against peacemaking in the Holy Land. Applause and hopefulness would seem the reasonable reaction to the Iraq Study Group's recommendation that the Bush Administration "act boldly" and "as soon as possible" to resolve the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. But as a front-row observer of similar efforts over the past 15 years, I could muster neither response. In lumping the Iraq mess in with the Palestinian problem--and suggesting the first could not be fixed unless the second was too--the Baker-Hamilton commission lent credibility to a corrosive myth: that the fundamental problem in the Arab world is the plight of the Palestinians.
She is absolutely correct in regards to this. It's not about the plight of the Palestinians. It's about survival of the tyrants and despotic power-holders in the Middle East. Even such benevolent rulers as the Saudi royals are more concerned with preserving their power than with the plight of the Palestinians.
Recommended reading.
December 15, 2006
Americans in Iraq
Bill Roggio has a post up describing how Spirit of America is working to help the kids in Anbar. This is another one of those things you don't see reported by the mainstream media.
Major Britt Rosenberry, the Army Special Operations Liason officer serving in Fallujah, has just placed an order with Spirit of America for bulk of school supplies. The order consists of several thousand backpacks filled with notepads, books, pens, pencils and other school materials for the children throughout the Al Anbar Province. I met Major Rosenberry at Camp Fallujah and discussed the difficult situation with the schools and how the supplies will help the children throughout Al Anbar Province.
This is another one of those things you don't often see reported by the mainstream media.
Go read the rest.
December 13, 2006
The Iranian threat
Ed Morrissey, over at Captain's Quarters has a post up pointing out some
lessons from history as relates to Iran. And then he asks an important question (emphasis added):
That's the reason why all of this talk about wiping Israel off the map has to be taken seriously, even apart from Iran's nuclear program. When nations repeatedly talk about wiping other nations off the map, history shows that they usually follow through. Stoking anti-Semitism through bogus symposiums starring such hatemongers as David Duke fans the political fires they need to eventually take action to match their rhetoric.With Ahmadinejad's popularity dropping, he may feel pressed to take that action sooner rather than later. Do we know how we will react to an Iranian attack on Israel?
Well, do we? We need to knowthat answer, because we are going to have to act on it someday in the not so distant future.
And we need to be prepared.
A 2002 perspective
Larry Miller has a humorous and insightful, albeit 4.5 years old, op-ed about the Arab-Israeli conflict. He also makes some good points. Here's his synopsis:
The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, and there were no "Palestinians" then, and the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians" then. As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation." So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs From The Same General Area Who Are In Deep Denial About Never Being Able To Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death." I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters."
Go read the whole thing.
November 24, 2006
A case for un-pessimism
Rick Moran reminds us that some of our enemies do not want America to lose in Iraq. Here's his conclusion:
The bottom line is that as bad as things may seem to us, the fact that our enemies will be limited in taking advantage of our blunders due to consequences beyond their control should, if not make us feel better, at least lift the pall of gloom and doom that emanates from the punditocracy on a daily basis. And it should also remind us that we’re in this war for the long haul. Temporary set backs in Iraq or anywhere else should not deter us from continuing the fight to rid the world of Islamic extremists and the putrid ideology they wish to impose on the rest of us.
Go read how he got there.
November 20, 2006
Iran is the real threat
Benjamin Natanyahu is refreshingly blunt in his assessment of Iran's global designs.
"It's 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs," Netanyahu told delegates to the annual United Jewish Communities General Assembly, repeating the line several times, like a chorus, during his address. "Believe him and stop him," the opposition leader said of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "This is what we must do. Everything else pales before this."
Recommended reading.
November 03, 2006
Mixed news from Iraq
Gateway Pundit provides some good-but-unreported news about Iraq.
Then he makes and cites comments on the latest NYT leak of classified information (do they have no shame?):
. . . the New York Times appears to have doctored the slide referred to in this brilliantly well-timed bit of election propaganda by removing the classification markings which are invariably found at the top and bottom of these slide (even when they are unclassified — and this one was classified, as Central Command has already confirmed). I want to know whether there is any level of national secret the Times is not willing to betray for the political advantage of its pet causes. And I would like to know what else they may have doctored on the slide.And while we're at it, I would love to understand why the law doesn't prohibit the propagation of strategic national secrets in wartime — which has always been understood as treason.
Read the whole thing.
November 02, 2006
True patriot
Independent journalist, Heather Robinson, has a good op-ed piece up at OpinionJournal about the Iraq that we rarely see. The Iraq that is filled with millions who want democracy to work.
Polls suggest a majority of Americans think it was a mistake to enter Iraq. Mr. al-Alusi respectfully disagrees. "We didn't have any kind of hope, and now, even with all our difficulty, we have hope." Iraq today is a central front in a war against extremists who view the murder of civilians as political expression. "I will be killed--if not today, tomorrow," Mr. al-Alusi says. "The point is not me, but children--for a child to be a child, not a killer; for a teenager to be a teenager, not an extremist."
How can we give up on Iraq now? How can we even consider that possibility?
I've reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.
'My Country Needs Me'
Iraqi democrats haven't given up the fight. How can we?
BY HEATHER ROBINSON
Wednesday, November 1, 2006 12:01 a.m. ESTWith the midterm elections fast approaching, the panic over Iraq seems more intense than ever. That country, the thinking goes, is a hopeless mess, and there could be a precipitous American withdrawal, especially if the Democrats win.
But doing so would leave the silent majority of Iraqis hostage to the most vicious extremists, abandoning those Iraqi leaders who have championed liberal democratic values. One of them is Mithal al-Alusi, a 53-year-old Sunni Arab who won a seat in parliament last December after having served as director general of the National Commission on de-Baathification. Mr. al-Alusi ran on a platform of religious pluralism, human rights, free markets and a free press. He calls for an alliance among democracies--including the U.S., Iraq, Israel and Turkey--to fight terrorism.
Not only does Mr. al-Alusi champion values many in the West hope will define the new Iraq, he has risked his life--and lost more than his life--for the cause. In September 2004 he attended a counterterrorism conference in Herzliya, Israel; after which insurgents threatened his family. The following February assassins opened fire on Mr. al-Alusi's car as it approached his Baghdad home. He wasn't in the vehicle, but his sons, 30-year-old Ayman and 22-year-old Gamal, were. Both were killed as their father watched. Still, Mr. al-Alusi was unbowed. "Even if these terrorists try to kill me again, peace is the only solution," he told reporters minutes after the attack. "Peace with Israel is the only solution for Iraq. Peace with everybody, but no peace for the terrorists." He continued to build his Iraqi Nation Party, which his fallen sons had helped establish, and which now has 15,000 members.
He describes his views less in ideological terms than in human ones. "An Iraqi mother, she has the right to have normal feelings for her baby. It's the same for an Israeli mother," he told me in a phone interview from Baghdad. "This is the best way to drive the world's politics. Not to make it complicated."
Mr. al-Alusi is not the only Iraqi political leader to reject ethnic and sectarian separatism. Hajim al-Hasani, a former parliament speaker, testified at a September congressional hearing. When Rep. Christopher Shays referred to him as a Sunni, Mr. al-Hasani politely corrected the congressman: "I am Iraqi." Afterwards, Mr. al-Hasani told me it is a misconception to view the violence in Iraq as the expression of popular will: "The few bad apples can rotten the rest of the apples if nobody stops them." Many of those "bad apples" aren't even grown in Iraq. Following Saddam Hussein's fall, foreign jihadists such as the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi rushed to join former Baathists in an effort to undermine the fledgling democracy. And Mr. al-Alusi told me that "Iran is fully involved in terrorist activity in Iraq." He believes Tehran is playing both sides, backing Sunni terrorists as well as Shiite ones.Polls suggest a majority of Americans think it was a mistake to enter Iraq. Mr. al-Alusi respectfully disagrees. "We didn't have any kind of hope, and now, even with all our difficulty, we have hope." Iraq today is a central front in a war against extremists who view the murder of civilians as political expression. "I will be killed--if not today, tomorrow," Mr. al-Alusi says. "The point is not me, but children--for a child to be a child, not a killer; for a teenager to be a teenager, not an extremist."
Mithal al-Alusi could have left Iraq for a comfortable life in exile; Mr. Shays, a friend, offered to help him relocate to the U.S. But he said no: "My country needs me."
He has not given up the fight. How can we?
Ms. Robinson is an independent journalist.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
November 01, 2006
Kurdistan in Iraq
Judith Miller has an interesting piece about the success of the Kurdistan province in Iraq.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry.
Kurdistan
A conversation with the president of Iraq's most successful region.
BY JUDITH MILLER
Saturday, October 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTERBIL, Iraq--Unlike Baghdad, 200 miles away, the air here does not echo with the sound of gunfire, car bombs and helicopters. Residents of this city of a million people picnic by day in pristine new parks and sip tea with friends and relatives at night. American forces are not "occupiers" or the "enemy," but "liberators." Mentioning President Bush evokes smiles--and not of derision.
American forces were "most welcome" when stationed here at the start of the invasion of Iraq, says Massoud Barzani, the president of Kurdistan in the north. Not a single U.S. soldier was killed in his region, he adds proudly, "not even in a traffic accident." Would U.S. forces be welcome back now? "Most certainly," he declared this week in an interview in his newly minted marble (and heavily chandeliered) palace. The more American soldiers the better, a top aide confirms.
The secret of Kurdistan's relative success so far--and of America's enduring popularity here--is the officially unacknowledged fact that the three provinces of the Kurdish north are already quasi-independent. On Oct. 11, Iraq's parliament approved a law that would allow the Sunni and Shiite provinces also to form semi-autonomous regions with the same powers that the constitution has confirmed in Kurdistan. And while Kurdish leaders pay lip-service to President Bush's stubborn insistence on the need for a unified Iraq with a strong centralized government, Kurdistan is staunchly resisting efforts to concentrate economic control in Baghdad.
The U.S., Mr. Barzani believes, should leave it to the Iraqis to decide if they want "one or two or three regions." Then, he adds: "But it already exists. The division is there as a practical matter. People are being killed on the basis of identity." As for Baghdad, "it should have a special status as the federal capital. But the rest should be regions that run their own affairs. Or they should be separate. Only a voluntary union can work. Either you have federalism with Baghdad as a federal capital with a special status, or you have separation. Those are the facts."
Even the most fleeting visitor cannot but notice that Kurdistan is almost a full-fledged state. The Kurds have been running their own affairs--badly at times--ever since Washington created a safe area after Saddam Hussein crushed their U.S.-encouraged uprising after the 1991 Gulf War, sending much of the traumatized population into the rugged mountains separating Kurdish Iraq from Turkey. After CNN filmed Kurds dying of cold and starvation, President George H.W. Bush declared a "no fly" zone north of the 36th parallel from which Saddam's planes were barred, enabling the Kurds, at long last, to begin governing themselves. And so they have, with a determination born of historic vengeance.Kurds no longer speak Arabic, but various dialects of Kurdish, in offices and schools throughout the 74,000 square miles that comprise their provinces. They fly their own flag, provide their own services, raise their own army--the legendarily disciplined Pesh Merga, or "Those Who Face Death"--and have gradually consolidated their de facto state. Divided between two parties--Mr. Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party, his clan's power base in north Kurdistan, and the southern-based Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, headed by Jalal Talabani, now president of Iraq (or "President of the Green Zone," as Kurds here call the post)--Kurdistan is booming with construction, new businesses and ambitious dreams of self-rule.
Washington's refusal to accept this self-evident political reality does not trouble Mr. Barzani. On the contrary, he insists Kurdistan will remain part of Iraq--as long as Iraq remains federal, secular and democratic, and officially blesses the autonomy the Kurds managed to enshrine in the new Iraqi constitution. Besides, the fig-leaf of Iraq is useful: Declaring independence would risk provoking Turkey, for which an independent Kurdish state is anathema given its own 18 million strong Kurdish population and the continued existence of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers Party--the PKK--on the Iraqi-Kurdish side of the border. Yet Mr. Barzani adamantly denies that his fidelity to Iraq is born of fear. "Having an independent state is the natural legitimate right of our people," he insisted. "We are not ready to say that because we fear displeasing our neighbors or because we are frightened that they may attack. That's not the case," he said. "We say that because at this stage, the parliament of Kurdistan has decided to remain within a federal, democratic Iraq."
Kurdish aspirations for autonomy, however, clearly require Turkish and Iranian acquiescence, or a persuasive reason for Turkey not to attack. Hence the desire for the redeployment of some American forces to Kurdistan. "The presence of American forces here would be a deterrent to intervention by the neighboring countries," Mr. Barzani says, with characteristic bluntness.
That is unlikely anytime soon, say officials in Washington. How would the presence of American forces in what one official called a "landlocked aircraft carrier" help prevent the emergence of an Islamist entity in Iraq's Sunni-dominated center or deter Iranian control of the Shiite south? Moreover, as President Bush noted last week, dismissing proposals to carve Iraq into three virtually autonomous regions as destabilizing, such a division of Iraq would exacerbate Sunni-on-Sunni and Sunni-on-Shiite tensions. "The Kurds will then create problems for Turkey and Syria," President Bush said.
On the contrary, Mr. Barzani insists, Kurdistan seeks good relations "with all its neighbors." Indeed, Turkish-Kurdish and Kurdish-Iranian talks have been ongoing, diplomats say. As for Baghdad, Mr. Barzani adds, no one has tried harder to keep Iraq from splitting apart than the Kurds. "We worked hard with the Sunni community to bring them into the process," he says, "and also to establish Iraq's governing council, the interim and transitional government, and the drafting of the constitution. We played a leading role in the success of the process." But he was clearly annoyed by a slight: the fact that the congressionally created Iraq Study Group, headed by former Republican Secretary of State James Baker and Democratic co-chairman Lee Hamilton, which is weighing policy alternatives for Iraq, has not traveled to Kurdistan--the only successful region of postwar Iraq--to consult with him. "It's a huge failing in their deliberations," he says. "We remain willing and ready to help whenever our assistance is needed."
Mr. Barzani is not shy about offering advice to Washington. The U.S. needs to revise its policies because "the existing strategy is not effective," he says. American forces could be reduced--perhaps by half--he said, but only when Iraqi forces are ready to restore order. But that will not happen, he warns, until the U.S. permits the Iraqi government to rid itself of the "terrorists, chauvinists and extremists" in its ranks who condone and "openly incite the violence on TV" that is destroying what remains of the capital and the country. He refuses to name names. But other Kurds point to such figures as Salah Mutlaq, an extremist Sunni leader, and aides to Moqtada al-Sadr, who heads a radical Shia militia."You have a different culture; you're a different people," Mr. Barzani said. "With America's mentality and approach and regulations, we cannot win like this. There must be decisive action so the government can enforce the law and restore its prestige." This Barzani, confident and candid, is different from the reticent figure I first interviewed 15 years ago in his mountain fastness of Barzan. Although plainspoken, "Kak Massoud"--a respectful but affectionate "Mister" in Kurdish--was reluctant then to offer an American journalist a frank assessment of his frustrations and aspirations. Not so the man who has evolved into "President Barzani" of Kurdistan, who, based on an informal power-sharing agreement with his rival, President Talibani of Iraq, is determined to seize this historic opportunity to advance his people's interests.
Just as "Kak" has become "president," the Kurds have gone from resistance to nation-building, with all the challenges such a transformation implies. Mr. Barzani has complained that while he and his Pesh Merga knew how to fight, it was "easier to destroy two dams than to build one power plant." Kurdistan is changing, in substance as well as style. The capital is no longer called Erbil (the Arabic), but "Howler," its Kurdish name. While Mr. Barzani, age 60, still wears the pantaloon, cummerbund, tight jacket and twirled turban favored by traditional Kurds, Western-style business suits--expensive labels, at that--are favored by Nechervan Barzani, his nephew and the energetic 40-year-old prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Gone are the refugee tents--except for the thousands of Sunni Arab refugees from Baghdad, who, along with some 7,000 Christian families, have migrated here for safety. Temporary structures are being replaced by new brick and cement houses and apartment buildings--among them many lavish "castles," as the Kurds call these houses nestled in the hills surrounding Erbil. Expensive glass office buildings are springing up throughout the region. Apartments are priced at between $100,000 and $200,000--prohibitively expensive; and yet several of these are sold out.
"Kurds have money," Prime Minister Nechervan Barzani told me. "But until recently, they lacked the confidence to invest." If the junior Mr. Barzani is correct, Kurdistan is literally exploding with confidence and new projects befitting its ambitions: Almost $2 billion in Turkish trade and investment--the result, partly, of his outreach to Ankara--is financing the construction the Middle East's largest new conference center, a new international airport, hotels, parks, bridges, tunnels, overpasses, a refinery and an electrical plant. The Kurdistan Development Council is even advertising Kurdistan as a tourist destination. There are over 70 direct flights a week to the region's two airports from the Middle East and Europe. But Kurdistan's infrastructure is still woefully antiquated, a legacy of Saddam's privation and the ruinous civil war between the clans of Mr. Barzani and Mr. Talabani from 1994 to 1998. Most cities still provide only two to three hours of electricity a day. The rest comes from private generators, which the poor can ill afford.
Last spring, public resentment at the lack of services erupted among the frustrated residents of half a dozen Kurdish towns. Consider Halabja, which became instantly infamous in 1988 when Saddam's forces dropped nerve gas there, killing 5,000. In March, its residents trashed the expensive monument erected to commemorate their annihilation, setting the structure on fire and stripping the black marble slabs on which the names of gas attack victims had been etched in gold. On my visit last week, two Pesh Merga were playing "dama," a Kurdish version of chess, with pieces of the marble that had been torn off the wall.
Kurds are now restless after so many years of deprivation, and their expectations are high, Mr. Barzani agreed: "My main objective is to build constitutional institutions in this country, to see a Kurdistan 10 years from now in which each person is safe and free to have his own ideas." He and other government officials were determined to "put the Kurdish house in order," which means continuing to encourage the effort by Nechervan Barzani to join supporters from his and Mr. Talibani's group into one efficient administration. Although grumbling about corruption and nepotism disturbs him, security and political solidarity at home must come first.
There is, of course, the explosive question of oil. While Mr. Barzani is willing to share revenues with Baghdad, the principle of control is vital to Kurdistan if it is to have an independent revenue stream. This issue, and a referendum next year on who should control the oil-rich city of Kirkuk--which the Kurds claim as their historic capital and whose residents approved a list of Kurdish candidates for Iraq's parliament last year--are red lines for the Kurdish government. Mr. Barzani is confident that these questions can be resolved through negotiations with Baghdad. But if they cannot, or if the fighting that has gripped much of Iraq escalates beyond the control of American and Iraqi forces, at least the Kurds will not be blamed for the dissolution or partition of Iraq. "Other people will be responsible, not us," he says. "We will never become the cause of the partition of Iraq."As Mr. Barzani carefully stresses his devotion to Iraqiness--all the while promoting a political and economic agenda that would reinforce Kurdish exceptionalism--Americans struggle for an elusive solution to the violence and ethnic strife that abounds. Mr. Barzani wishes the U.S. success, he says, because so much depends on George Bush's determination not to "cut and run." His "courageous decision to liberate Iraq will not be undermined by the mistakes made after that liberation," Mr. Barzani says, although he does resort to an American cliché: "If there are people who think the solution lies in leaving this unfinished, just like Vietnam, that would be a major disaster."
But having been both saved and betrayed by previous American governments, he knows the risks of tying Kurdish fortunes too closely to an administration facing public disenchantment with its Iraq policies. "In building our new federal democratic country, our interests have not contradicted each other," he says cautiously. "They are aligned. But before I trust the United States or other people, I trust my own people."
Ms. Miller, a former New York Times reporter, is a writer in New York.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
October 31, 2006
The decline of the Eurozone
Anatole Kaletsky has some disturbing things to say about how the Maastricht Treaty, creating the European economic zone, is suppressing the economies of many of the countries who signed it.
The Maastricht treaty has turned the Eastern Europeans into second-class citizens. The belated recognition of this fact is starting to have the predictably ugly impact on the politics of Europe’s eastern periphery. But before getting too indignant about the injustices to Eastern Europe, let us spare a thought for the citizens of old Europe who are privileged to “enjoy” full membership of the eurozone. The latest budgetary crisis in Italy may well be averted and the Prodi Government will probably survive for a few more months. But as Signor Prodi’s huge tax increases begin to bite, the Italian economy is almost certain to sink back into recession. Moreover, there will be no chance of Italy tackling any of its real economic problems once unemployment starts rising next year.What Italy needs today is competition, privatisation of grossly inefficient state-sponsored utilities, deregulation of the financial system and changes in labour laws. Such reforms can be hard to implement even in a booming economy. In a stagnant or declining one, they will become impossible.
To make matters worse, Italy will be tightening its budget at the same time as Germany implements the biggest tax increases in its modern history — also in deference to the Maastricht Treaty, if not under quite such direct compulsion from the EU. These simultaneous fiscal blunders in Italy, Germany and Eastern Europe will almost mean another “lost year” for the euro zone, with economic performance falling far behind America, Britain and Japan. But the long-term consequences could be more far-reaching.
At some point the people of Europe will realise that there is something rotten in a political system that leaves them forever in the world economy’s slow lane — and which cannot be changed by any democratic process, regardless of how people vote.
Recommended.
October 27, 2006
A view from Iraq
James Taranto published an email from an intel sergeant in the 4th Infantry Division currently deployed in Iraq. In it, he maintains that we need to rethink our nation-building methodology. He also talks about what contributed to our success in re-building Germany after WWII.
In Germany after World War II, we controlled our sector with approximately 500,000 troops, directly administering the area for 10 years while we rebuilt the country and rebuilt the social and political infrastructure needed to run it. In Iraq, we've got one-third that number of troops dealing with three times the population on a much faster timetable, and we're attempting to unify three distinct ethnic groups with no national interest and at least three outside influences (Saudi Arabian Wahhabists, Iranian mullahs and Syrian Baathists) each eagerly funding various groups in an attempt to see us fail. And we are.
I've reprinted the whole thing -- including some commentary from other Taranto readers -- in the extended entry.
A View From Iraq
Our item yesterday in which we reaffirmed our support for the liberation of Iraq brought some very interesting reader comments. This is from an American there who asks not to be named:There's been a lot of discussion back home about the course of the war, the righteousness of our involvement, the clarity of our execution, and what to do about the predicament in which we currently find ourselves. I just wanted to send you my firsthand account of what's happening here.
First, a little bit about me: I'm stationed slightly northwest of Baghdad in a mixed Sunni/Shia area. I'm a sergeant in the U.S. Army on a human intelligence collection team. I interact with Iraqis on a daily basis and I help put together the intel picture for our area of operations. I have contacts with friends, who are also in my job, in every area of operations in the Fourth Infantry Division footprint, and through our crosstalk I'd say I have a pretty damn good idea of what's going on in and around Baghdad on a micro and intermediary level.
I wrote heavily in favor of this war before I enlisted myself, and I still maintain that going into Iraq was not only the necessary thing to do, but the right thing to do as well.
There have been distinct failures of policy in Iraq. The vast majority of them fall under the category "failure to adapt." Basically U.S. policies have been several steps behind the changing conditions ever since we came into the country. I believe this is (in part) due to our plainly obvious desire to extricate ourselves from Iraq. I know President Bush is preaching "stay the course," but we came over here with a goal of handing over our battlespace to the Iraqis by the end of our tour here.
This breakneck pace with which we're trying to push the responsibility for governing and securing Iraq is irresponsible and suicidal. It's like throwing a brick on a house of cards and hoping it holds up. The Iraqi Security Forces (ISF)--a joint term referring to Iraqi army and Iraqi police--are so rife with corruption, insurgent sympathies and Shia militia members that they have zero effectiveness. Two Iraqi police brigades in Baghdad have been disbanded recently, and the general sentiment in our field is "Why stop there?" I can't tell you how many roadside bombs have been detonated against American forces within sight of ISF checkpoints. Faith in the Iraqi army is only slightly more justified than faith in the police--but even there, the problems of tribal loyalties, desertion, insufficient training, low morale and a failure to properly indoctrinate their soldiers results in a substandard, ineffective military. A lot of the problems are directly related to Arab culture, which traditionally doesn't see nepotism and graft as serious sins. Changing that is going to require a lot more than "benchmarks."
In Shia areas, the militias hold the real control of the city. They have infiltrated, co-opted or intimidated into submission the local police. They are expanding their territories, restricting freedom of movement for Sunnis, forcing mass migrations, spiking ethnic tensions, not to mention the murderous checkpoints, all while U.S. forces do . . . nothing.
For the first six months I was in country, sectarian violence was classified as an "Iraqi on Iraqi" crime. Division didn't want to hear about it. And, in a sense I can understand why. Because division realized that which the Iraqi people have come to realize: The American forces cannot protect them. We are too few in number and our mission is "stability and support." The problem is that there's nothing to give stability and support to. We hollowed out the Baathist regime, and we hastily set up this provisional government, thrusting political responsibility on a host of unknowns, each with his own political agenda, most funded by Iran, and we're seeing the results.
In Germany after World War II, we controlled our sector with approximately 500,000 troops, directly administering the area for 10 years while we rebuilt the country and rebuilt the social and political infrastructure needed to run it. In Iraq, we've got one-third that number of troops dealing with three times the population on a much faster timetable, and we're attempting to unify three distinct ethnic groups with no national interest and at least three outside influences (Saudi Arabian Wahhabists, Iranian mullahs and Syrian Baathists) each eagerly funding various groups in an attempt to see us fail. And we are.
If we continue on as is in Iraq, we will leave here (sooner or later) with a fractured state, a Rwanda-waiting-to-happen. "Stay the course" and refusing to admit that we're screwing things up is already killing a lot of people needlessly. Following through with such inane nonstrategy is going to be the death knell for hundreds of thousands of Sunnis.
We need to backtrack. We need to publicly admit we're backtracking. This is the opening battle of the ideological struggle of the 21st century. We cannot afford to lose it because of political inconveniences. Reassert direct administration, put 400,000 to 500,000 American troops on the ground, disband most of the current Iraqi police and retrain and reindoctrinate the Iraqi army until it becomes a military that's fighting for a nation, not simply some sect or faction. Reassure the Iraqi people that we're going to provide them security and then follow through. Disarm the nation: Sunnis, Shias, militia groups, everyone. Issue national ID cards to everyone and control the movement of the population.
If these three things are done, you can actually start the Iraqi economy again. Once people have a sense of security, they'll be able to leave their houses to go to work. Tell your American commanders that it's OK to pass up bad news--because part of the problem is that these issues are not reaching above the battalion or brigade level due to the can-do, make-it-happen culture indoctrinated into our U.S. officers. While the attitude is admirable, it also creates barriers to recognizing and dealing with on-the-ground realities.
James, there's a lot more to this than I've written here. The short of it is, the situation is salvageable, but not with "stay the course" and certainly not with cut and run. However, the commitment required to save it is something I doubt the American public is willing to swallow. I just don't see the current administration with the political capital remaining in order to properly motivate and convince the American public (or the West in general) of the necessity of these actions.
At the same time, failure in Iraq would be worse than a dozen Somalias, and would render us as impotent and emasculated as we were in the days after Vietnam. There is a global cultural-ideological struggle being waged, and abdication from Iraq is tantamount to concession.
Reader Russ Daniel makes an interesting point about the media side of the war:
I continue to be surprised at how well the Iraqi insurgency/terrorists play our media, and how few Americans realize that we are playing right back. It is my impression that many Americans realize that the terrorists are conscious of how their actions impact American resolve--but very few Americans realize how our actions impact Iraqi resolve. It's as if Americans believe that our newspapers and media stop at the water's edge.
For example, terrorists cause chaos in Iraq with a goal of making it appear to Americans that our military is wasting time, lives and effort over there. The mirror of that result comes when Democrats intentionally disrupt American efforts by portraying our soldiers as criminals. Don't they realize that Iraqis will see these comments and will ultimately come to believe that they are wasting time, lives and effort by cooperating with us?
Reader Cliff Thier argues that our analysis "missed an important fact: the world is not static":
It is possible--I'd say likely--that had we not removed Saddam, we'd find ourselves in a much worse place today than we are. At the time of President Bush's decision to remove Saddam, U.N. sanctions were crumbling. Shortly thereafter Saddam would have had piles of money to spend on weapons, suicide bombers and bribing Russians, Chinese, the French and various U.N. factotums. If Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction then (a dubious proposition even now), he would have imported and built a stockpile by now.
The United States' credibility as a serious world power would be nil. Threatening Saddam for more than a dozen years (through the Bush and Clinton and Bush administrations) without once following through on those threats would mean we'd have no influence in any crisis whatsoever. Our position now is certainly not a good one--but had we not followed through on our threats, we'd be in a much worse place than we are.
It's always a mistake to see the world as it is today and mistakenly compare it with the world as it was on a day in the past. It's harder to do, but infinitely more useful, to try to compare today's situation with that in which we'd find ourselves if we had done nothing.
This weekend "60 Minutes" aired Lesley Stahl's interview with Nancy Pelosi, who most likely will become speaker if Democrats take the House. The Web write-up suggests how shallow is the Democratic Party's thinking on Iraq:
One issue that she is fighting about here is Iraq. She opposed the war from the start and now, like her, most Democrats support a phased withdrawal of troops beginning later this year.
"Does that not open you up then to that charge of cutting and running? This is just what they're saying," Stahl asks.
"The issue is them. The issue is the war they got us into," Pelosi replies. "If the president wants to say the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror, he's not right."
"Do you not think that the war in Iraq now, today, is the war on terror?" Stahl asks.
"No. The war on terror is the war in Afghanistan," Pelosi says.
"But you don't think that the terrorists have moved into Iraq now?" Stahl continues.
"They have," Pelosi agrees. "The jihadists in Iraq. But that doesn't mean we stay there. They'll stay there as long as we're there."
It seems entirely too pat to say that if we leave Iraq, so will the jihadists. After all, there were jihadists in Afghanistan long before we arrived. But let's say it's true. Where does Pelosi think the jihadists will go? Isn't she worried that some of them will come here?
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
October 26, 2006
French intifada continues
Though this is not being reported on very much, there are disturbing indications that a new 'intifada' is growing in France.
The recent ambush was emblematic of what some officers say has become a near-perpetual and increasingly violent conflict between police and gangs in tough, largely immigrant French neighborhoods that were the scene of a three-week paroxysm of rioting last year.
Why we must fight
Here is an under-reported story about Quds Day, during which hundreds of thousands of Iranians -- including their leaders -- call for the annihilation of Western civilization. And with special emphasis on Israel and America.
It is disturbing when the entire leadership of one nation, along with hundreds of thousands of its citizens, comes out with celebrations and parades every year that call for the annihilation of another country.It is more twisted that no world leaders or international bodies, including the United Nations, have denounced the activities surrounding Quds Day, an Iranian holiday introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini that is marked on the last Friday of Ramadan.
These people are scary, and they are well on their way to getting nukes.
Read the whole thing.
October 17, 2006
A peek inside N. Korea
Suki Kim provides a brief glimpse at the situation faced by the people of North Korea.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry.
Great Leadership
What I saw in North Korea.
BY SUKI KIM
Monday, October 16, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTDespite the much-touted label of being the most secretive nation in the world, the one thing everyone knows about North Korea is that its people have been dying in massive numbers from starvation and persecution for decades, the reality of which seems to have bypassed the nations involved in the on-again-off-again six-party talks--whose diplomacy has apparently failed. By landing a punch at the nonproliferation policy of the U.N. Security Council, an organization soon to be led by South Korean Ban Ki Moon, North Korea yet again thwarted its former promises of stopping all nuclear activities. The Bush administration is advocating harsher ways of punishing a country they maintain is a member of the "axis of evil" through tougher sanctions and cutting off its financial sources, neither of which has worked so far in stopping North Korea from doing whatever it wants to do. Now that it claims to have become the world's ninth nuclear power, I wonder what will change, if anything, for its people.
On June 25, 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea, my mother's brother, then age 18 and living in Seoul, was kidnapped by the North's soldiers. Fleeing the bombs, my grandmother, with her five children, fought through the panicked crowd onto the jam-packed, southbound train when someone screamed out that young men should give up their seats for women and children. My grandmother spent her remaining life haunted by that last moment, of her eldest son rising and reassuring her that he would be on the next train. Hers turned out to be the last train out of Seoul. Later, a neighbor reported seeing him tied up and being dragged away by the North Korean soldiers. Korean Confucian ethics holds that there is no bigger sin than abandoning one's family, and yet neither Korean government has granted reunions for the millions of separated families, except for a handful who have been used as a showcase for the failed peace summits.In February 2002, I traveled to Pyongyang in an effort to locate my uncle. I never found him, but I spent about a week with the Workers' Party leaders, ranging from the chairman of the Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries to the then-ambassador to the Permanent Mission to the U.N., who repeatedly told me that their real enemy was not South Korea, with whom they are still technically at war, but the U.S., which, along with the Soviet Union, had drawn up the 38th Parallel in 1948 and perpetuated the war by isolating them through sanctions. They were mystified as to why the United States was allowed to have nuclear weapons when it was the only nation in history to have deployed them on civilians, never mind starting wars all over the world.
My most vivid impression of Pyongyang was that an entire generation must have been eradicated for such a place to exist. Nothing on their empty, energy-deprived streets indicated that anything prior existed. Every book, piece of artwork and building was either made by the Great Leader or about the Great Leader. Their only official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, was four pages long and consisted almost exclusively of praise for their Great Leader. Their state-controlled TV showed mostly undated footage of the Great Leader. Everywhere I went, music played in the background and the subject of the lyrics was inevitably the Great Leader.
The regime of North Korea has done a most efficient job of wiping out Korea's 5,000-year history, imbued with Buddhism, Shamanism and Confucianism, with one amnesia-inflicting spell called "Juche," its political philosophy of self-reliance. And what seems to make the Great Leader so "great" is that he has replaced their lost memory. For my uncle to have survived there, he either would have had to forget everything he had known, or learned to believe in the Great Leader. Or it is possible that he held on with the hope for the two Koreas to reunite; my grandmother did, until she passed away 25 years after he went missing.
In the 1970s in South Korea, I grew up with the anthem, "Our Wish is Reunification," which children still sing. Today, however, South Koreans readily claim North Koreans as their siblings and yet they hesitate upon the topic of the Kim Jong Il regime's collapse, which might lead to the breakdown of 38th Parallel and to millions of refugees pouring south. President Roh Moo Hyun's increasingly less popular "sunshine policy" has provided a conduit through which money is funneled into North Korea for supposed economic reform, although it now looks as though it has effectually funded the North's nuclear program.
South Korea is not the only one who fears the consequence of Kim Jong Il's demise. Neither China nor Russia, North Korea's biggest allies and neighbors, wants to foot the bill for refugees. As many as 300,000 North Koreans have crossed the northern border since the Korean War despite a joint crackdown from North Korean agents and Chinese police. For Japan, the threat from North Korea has provided a basis for lobbying for remilitarization and a revision of their post-World War II, U.S.-sponsored pacifist constitution. America, whose soon-to-be downsized 32,000 troops are still stationed in Seoul's Yong San Garrison, does not want to forfeit its control over the region to China, whose trading relationship with South Korea and economic hold over the North have grown rapidly in recent years. The prospect of One Korea benefits no one except the welfare of the North Korean people, whom the mighty six-party nations seem to have forgotten. So why are we relying on their decision on what to do about North Korea?
Just last month, the World Food Program launched an appeal for more funds to fight the food shortage in North Korea, worsened by the August flood that had, according to the state's figures, killed and left homeless hundreds, although various human rights groups claim numbers closer to hundreds of thousands if not millions. Over a third of all children are reported to be malnourished. According to Amnesty International, 400,000 have perished from political persecution; 150,000 are still held in underground concentration camps. Since the much condemned July 4 missile tests, humanitarian aid has been cut drastically.In the 1970s, South Korean propaganda posters of starving children were forced upon us to show that North Korea was hell on earth and that its leader was a selfish, ruthless despot. In the decades since, during which time a famine killed over a tenth of North Korea's 23 million people, not much has changed at all. The 38th Parallel is still there. The most the Bush administration has done in its diplomatic strategy about North Korea is to call it evil. The peace talks are continuously stalled. The U.N. is in yet another emergency huddle to figure out a way of handling the problem. Now that North Korea claims to be a nuclear power, what will be different?
In the meantime, the Siberian winter is quickly approaching for the people of North Korea, where heat and food are scarcer than ever. The Rodong Sinmun headlines after the nuclear test revealed just one brief congratulatory paragraph on the success of the test, which has turned the rest of the world upside down. The other articles were about the floral baskets delivered to their Great Leader from the various communist parties of China, Laos and Cuba.
Ms. Kim, a 2006 Guggenheim fellow, is author of "The Interpreter" (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2003).
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]/small>
October 08, 2006
Inside Iraq
Callimachus, over at Done With Mirrors wraps up a series of posts written by a contractor who spent two years in-country helping to rebuild Iraq. She comments on media coverage of the events transpiring in Iraq, and contrasts that with her experience.
What I don't appreciate is the coverage that followed the battle. Because after it started to draw down, all those fighting there were immediately forgotten. Instead, the decisions about the battle turned into masses of political BS for the MSM in the U.S., and not a single Marine from the battle ever gained long-term recognition. After the battle, the media crawled back in its hole and waited for the next big, photogenic pool of blood to form on the ground.Meanwhile, I, the women working with me, the engineers on the road and our few security members kept chugging along doing the boring stuff, and living a lot like the Iraqis around us, minus the ancient social baggage. We just kept seeing the real day-to-day blood and flowers and concrete all mixed together.
There is quite a bit more, with links to the first two posts of the series as well as other related links.
Highly recommended.
October 05, 2006
Savagery
Patrick Poole has an op-ed up at American Thinker that describes the brutal savagery being visited on Iraqi civilians by fellow Iraqis.
Superlatives are insufficient to describe the horror currently seen in Iraq: bags filled with severed human heads; scores of bodies found with the eyes drilled out; limbs amputated with power saws; crowds of Iraqi children blown to bits for accepting candy from American troops; pits filled with bodies of executed “collaborators”. These are the daily deeds of the self-proclaimed Islamic “freedom fighters” in Iraq – the Warriors of Jihad.
We have got to put a stop to this violence.
Recommended reading.
October 04, 2006
Good news from Iraq
Bill Crawford has compiled a number of good reports from Iraq. Here's how he starts:
Prime Minister al-Maliki continues to tour the country in efforts at securing some sort of reconciliation, and won an important victory last week when 25 of the 31 tribes in Anbar province agreed to join in the fight against foreign terrorists and Iraqi insurgents.
He continues with stories about Kurdish thank you advertisements (perhaps you've seen one), captured Iraqi documents, security advances in-country, reconstruction efforts, the progress on the economic front, and American heroes in Iraq.
Well worth the read.
September 29, 2006
Iraqi readiness
Looking at the results of this new PIPA poll of Iraqi citizens, I'm inclined to think that the Iraqis are ready to take responsibility for their own freedom and security.
I downloaded the actual questionaire and methodology and have linked it here (the original is linked from the article referenced in the previous paragraph). I found this link more interesting because it gave the poll and results without any analysis. Thus leaving me to draw my own conclusions -- a refreshing change from most of our traditional media just reporting the parts they want to.
Highly recommended.
Progress
Fox News published a promising report this week about the increasing acceptance of Iraq by the international community. Here's how it starts:
Iraq is getting more respect now that it has an elected government, fully participating in dozens of meetings at the U.N. General Assembly."Now it's business,"said Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.As the annual meeting of the world's leaders heads to its finale on Wednesday, the Iraqi minister said that since he started coming here in 2003 he's never been busier.
"This is a good sign because Iraq really _ despite the bad news, the negative news coming out of Baghdad _ is moving steadily toward a functional state,"he said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press.
Recommended.
September 22, 2006
European invertibrates
Victor Davis Hansen has a column up at Pajamas Media wherein he speculates about Europe's (or at least its political elite) lack of backbone -- and how it might grow one.
It has been a parlor game of sorts to guess when—but even more so if—the Europeans (Britain included) will sigh, “Enough is enough,” and so get tough with both their own unassimilated angry Muslim minorities and the radical Islamic world at large. There will never be liberal values in the Middle East, no change, no future—as there would not have been in Hitler’s Germany, as there is not today in Cuba or North Korea—without the defeat of Islamic fascism, in its latest Islamic incarnation, as an ideological force.The latter always proves more frightening than any caricature, the proverbial wild teenager who starts throwing things when told that his room is a bit messy. The riots in France, murders in Holland, cartoon fiasco in Denmark, bombings in London and Madrid, foiled plots in Germany and Spain, and now the Pope threats—will Europe insidiously bleed from a thousand nicks or take action and call fascists fascists?
And yet what would such spine-strengthening look like?
He goes on to explain a dissonence he has noticed between European elites and the common European citizenry.
When I go to Europe, I am always struck how at odds the average European’s talk is from what one reads in the newspaper or hears on the television. That degree of frustration and cynicism will only get worse unless there is some honest talk about the dangers Europe faces.
And then he talks about the "American Street":
I respect and fear the American version far more, because its anger is fueled by reason and is slow and steady and furious when released. The world should not worry when the half-educated, fueled by zealotry and nursed on conspiracy theory, starts chanting; but it should when a rational and patient American slowly fumes and decides he has had it with the Iranian “President”, Hezbollah’s fascism, the various thugs on the West Bank, the Sunni Triangle’s murderers, the primordial of the Hindu Kush, or some subsidized dictator in Pakistan or Egypt lecturing us.
Go read all of it. Recommended.
September 15, 2006
A great story never told
Callimachus, over at his blog, Done with Mirrors, has a lengthy post up detailing the the thoughts and experiences of a friend who worked in and around Iraq for a contractor doing reconstruction work there. His friend, Kat, had some very non-PC things to say about, for instance, Halliburton:
There are probably only three to maybe five companies in the world with the types of expertise and experience necessary to take up this type of work. The scope of Halliburton's work in Iraq was far more extensive than the US government could readily oversee on its own. It would be monetarily impractical if not physically impossible for the government to plan and put into place overnight the kind of business structure Halliburton has taken years to build.
She is not very kind to the legacy media:
I need to say, I have a lot of anger here, and I apologize for that. Unfortunately I think you’re going to see a lot more of it in the future from others, especially if this war continues to be played more like a political football game than a real war within the press and much of the government. There’s a lot at stake, from the kids like my little brother that we have fighting it, through the people who have tried to rebuild Iraq, to the long-term futures of several nations.It’s just not as trivial as it continues to be presented, on any level. Some in the media tend to believe the Iraq story can only be related through scenes of blood. They are still trying to find the monks burning, or the naked children running along the roads of Viet Nam. But there is much more to this war than that, and now, just as then, they simply miss the big picture.
From what I saw, much of the media is simply lazy, and most of it is more concerned with money and personal politics than in delivering a good product with honesty. This is an opinion, and is a nasty, crappy thing to say to people who spend countless hours busting their asses in a tearing rush to deliver basic news to people. But understand, I'm not addressing that comment to the rank and file whose job it is to take what is available and deliver it to the masses. I'm speaking to those who decide what news to actually cover, and to those who actually provide the coverage.
[ . . . ]
Beyond a couple of poorly received White House briefings that went all but completely ignored, I never saw a thing mentioned about the massive reconstruction projects underway in Iraq. There were no fact-filled and hard-hitting stories on those jobs. By and large, the US and European publics are completely clueless about the rebuilding process and the complexities that have been involved in it. Because the press ignored it completely.
[ . . . ]
The press missed something vital about Iraq, and as a result the American and world public never really understood. Nobody ever got it. Iraq wasn’t just another city in the US or in Europe.
And as a result US and European citizens can share no connection to and no pride whatsoever in what those of us in Iraq have accomplished. You can’t feel it, because you’ve never seen it. And those of us who have experienced it have few ways to convey it to you so you can relate to it and share it with us. There’s a pretty hollow feeling that comes with that. It’s like being a sixteen year old and winning a big talent contest, but your parents weren’t there to see.
And she concludes with a very important point:
The size and complexity of the work being undertaken in Iraq was something not seen since the post-World War Two rebuilding of Europe and Japan. In truth, given the time frame available, the coalition bit off far more than it could chew, and ultimately it was forced to reduce its efforts. But that didn’t halt the most important projects from being completed or continuing to this day.
There is so very much more covering the reconstruction eforts, security, and the media. I found this a very interesting and quite informative description of what has been going on in Iraq the last two years.
Highly recommended.
September 13, 2006
Good news from Iraq (despite the press)
Bill Crawford has compiled a lot of good news from Iraq. Here's a taste:
Perhaps the senators should read what one Iraqi had to say recently about the trial of Saddam:“I’m happy to see justice taking its course today,” said Haider Kadhim, 28, the owner of an electronics shop in Baghdad, a city that suffers from chronic power shortages.
Kadhim said he had bought 20 litres of petrol for his generator to make sure he had the electricity needed to watch the trial, which was broadcast on all local channels with a 20-minute delay. This was to ensure that sensitive portions with security implications could be censored.
“It is shameful that Saddam should claim he is the president and commander in chief of the armed forces,” said Kadhim, referring to Saddam’s self-introduction when he was asked by the judge to identify himself for the record.
In addition, let me reprint the words of the Sgt. Major of the Army, Kenneth O. Preston:
"The morale of American GIs serving in Iraq continues to be high, regardless of the danger, difficult conditions and family sacrifices they face, the Army's top enlisted leader said yesterday."
"They really look at it as a badge of honor," the sergeant major said.
Indeed, the Army will meet its recruiting goal for 2006.
Perhaps this story will give lie to the idea that Iraq would be better off under Saddam:
The remains of 80 people, believed to be Kurdish victims of Saddam Hussein's regime, were unearthed in two mass graves near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Monday, a Kurdish security official said.
Tens of thousands of Kurds were killed in a military campaign in 1988 codenamed Anfal — Spoils of War — for which Saddam, his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, and five other former commanders are now on trial in Baghdad.
He reports on political and security issues, the Iraqi economy and reconstruction efforts, and some of our American heroes over there. Go read the whole thing.
Afghanistan -- heroin capital of the world
Michael Yon has an alarming report up at National Review about how the Taliban is cultivating heroin to bankroll their insurgency.
This has very negative ramifications for the world in terms of an increase in heroin addiction and resultant upsurge in crime. And yet . . .
Despite the increasing human toll levied by opium production in Afghanistan, there is still no coherent plan for stopping the violence, shutting off the flow of money to the enemy, and eradicating and replacing poppy in Afghanistan.
Somehow this is not surprising.
Recommended reading.
August 30, 2006
Perception in Iraq
America's Majority: Daily Dispatch cites an Iraqi opinion poll that indicates that Iraqi's are optimistic about the future of their country. More so than Americans are, it seems.
In a recent poll, more Iraqis, who live in Iraq, say Iraq is headed [in] the right direction than Americans who merely watch TV reports about Iraq or read newspaper reports about Iraq.Amid the drumbeat of so-called sectarian violence from the Legacy Media, one would think that Iraqis would be [ready] to throw in the towel or at least throwdown with each other at a moments notice.
But that is not the case.
There's more.
August 29, 2006
Iraq endgame
David Ignatius, currently in Iraq, has an op-ed up at Real Clear Politics with an assessment of how Iraq is progressing toward independence. Here's his conclusion:
I don't feel quite so optimistic, but I think Abizaid is right in urging a sensible, deliberate policy to reduce the American presence -- as opposed to a pell-mell rush for the exit. The situation in Iraq is difficult, but the sense of panic in the Washington debate just doesn't match the situation here. It's bad, but it's not hurtling out of control.Americans should be worried about Iraq but not so much that they take rash actions that would end up hurting American interests in the Middle East at a delicate time. We'll be out of Iraq, one way or another, over the next few years. Rushing the process because of American impatience would make a bad situation even worse.
Go read what led up to that conclusion.
August 27, 2006
Iran and the Bomb
FrontPage Magazine has a disturbing interview up of a Danish investigator who says he has information that Iran bought three nuclear warheads from Kazakhstan in 1991.
In autumn 1991 Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Khazakhstan, sold three nuclear warheads to the Iranians. The Iranians wanted to use them as a prototype for their own bomb manufacturing. The price was said to have been 7.5 billion USD. Whether this amount is true or just the fantasies of a less paid government official, I cannot verify. The amount was to cover all bribes and kick-offs and military protection during transport. Every country involved had demanded their fair share of the deal.
Anyway, the warheads were removed from a military depot somewhere in Kazakhstan and transported by train down to Makhachkala in Daghestan. Here they were reloaded onto huge trucks and then taken through the Caucasian region and into Turkey. In the city of Dogubeyazit the Iranians met the convoy and took over. The three vehicles were then driven by Iranian drivers down to the border post Bazargan, where they entered Iranian territory.
The warheads were brought down to Teheran and parked in the military campus Lavizan. Here they were seen by a soldier who later defected to Israel and told the story to the Israeli intelligence services who at that time were unable to verify the matter further. Various rumours have been circulating ever since. Some stories say two bombs, some say four. The correct number, however, is three.
You should read the whole thing.
[Hat tip to Annika.]
August 24, 2006
Israeli peace activists
Michael Totten had an interesting discussion with two Israeli peace activists earlier this month. One thing that jumped out at me was a comment by one of the activists about the common wisdom of the region:
" . . . The Israeli peace movement believes that Israel would not exist if we didn’t defend it. There is a slogan that’s going around: If the Arabs put down their arms, there will be peace. If the Jews put down their arms there won’t be any Jews left. And I think there’s a basic truth to that.”
This article is worth reading.
Kurdistan
Michael J. Totten has a good column up about Kurdistan in Iraq.
There are no insurgents in Kurdistan. Nor are there any kidnappings. A hard internal border between the Kurds’ territory and the Arab-dominated center and south has been in place since the Kurdish uprising at the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Cars on the road heading north are stopped at a series of checkpoints. Questions are asked. ID cards are checked. Vehicles are searched and sometimes taken apart on the side of the road. Smugglers, insurgents, and terrorists who attempt to sneak into Kurdistan by crossing Iraq’s wilderness areas are ambushed by border patrols.
It's worth the read.
August 20, 2006
Press briefing in Iraq
On 16 August, Major General William B. Caldwell IV presented a briefing on current security operations in Iraq.
As you all know, we are systematically dismantling the al-Qaida network. Methodical operations have continued in a very deliberate and conscious fashion as we disrupt and disorganize that network. Recent detainees have given us the unique insight into the plans and operations of al-Qaida in Iraq and what they are doing to achieve their goals here. In discussing these efforts, detainees have provided invaluable insight into Iraq's means to its end and have also identified multiple vulnerabilities and exploitable weaknesses that the al-Qaida in Iraq leaders perceive within and from without their organization.But to put this in context, we probably need to first remember what is the current security situation here. The core conflict in Iraq has transitioned to a struggle mostly between Sunni and Shi'a extremists seeking to control key areas of Baghdad, create or protect sectarian enclaves, divert economic resources and impose their political and religious agendas.
It's a good in-depth look at what's going on in Iraq from someone who is there. You should read the whole thing.
August 18, 2006
On the home front
Benjamin Balint has written a rueful missive about every Israeli citizen's destiny in life.
The Israeli press has lately been using numbers to conjure both today’s enemies and yesterday’s ghosts, sometimes to numbing effect. One television channel lists past attacks perpetrated by Iranian-backed Shiite Hezbollah terrorists: attacks on the American embassy in Beirut, April 1983, 63 dead; on the Marine barracks, October 1983, 241 dead; on the American embassy, September 1984, 20 dead; on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, March 1992, 22 dead; on that city’s Jewish community center, July 1994, 80 dead.
But there is always hope. And he writes about that, too.
Recommended.
August 17, 2006
Construction in Iraq
The Washington Post published an article about the construction efforts going on in Iraq. Major General William McCoy, Commanding General of the Corps of Engineers in Iraq, disagreed with much of that article and wrote this letter to correct the record. For some reason, the Post chose not to publish the letter.
Politics Central has an audio interview of MG McCoy and other links that are pertinent to this story.
A significant quote from his letter:
The reporter didn’t tell you about the hundreds of dedicated military and civilian professionals he saw over here working to make Iraq better, or the Iraqis who come to work every day at their own peril because they believe in what we, and they, are accomplishing together.He failed to tell you about Aseel or Salah who worked for the Corps of Engineers since we arrived in 2003, because they wanted to make their country like ours, but who were recently brutally murdered in the streets because they worked for the Americans.
He never wrote about the Water Treatment Plant he visited that will provide fresh potable water to over half a million people in southern Iraq in just two more months, or the one in northern Iraq that is providing water for the 330,000 citizens of Irbil.
He never told folks back home about the thousands of children that are now in 800 new or rebuilt schools, or about oil production now being back to pre-war levels and getting better everyday, or raw sewage being taken out of the streets and put back in the pipes where it belongs, or about the thousands of miles of new roads, or post offices, police stations or courthouses or… well, he just left a great deal out now, didn’t he?
Why?
Perhaps it’s because some in the press don’t want the American people to know the truth and prefer instead to only report the negative aspects of the news because “it sells papers.”
We deserve better from those who claim the protection of the Constitution we are fighting to support and defend.
America, don’t give up. You are doing much better over here than all too many of your press will tell you. If you are tired of fighting for freedom and democracy for those who so strongly long for the country we have, then think of the alternatives for a moment. Iraq will be better for our efforts and so will the world. And you are making it happen. Be proud and keep supporting this vital effort. It is the most important thing America can do.
I strongly encourage you to read the complete letter, then follow the second link above to listen to the interview and check out the other references.
Soon.
August 14, 2006
Warning about Iraq
Michael Yon warns us of the threat of civil war in Iraq.
Despite incredible progress in Iraq, we are now in great peril of losing the war entirely. At the current rate, we will witness genocide as a nation rips itself apart along sectarian seams.
This is alarming news. We need more voices like his to be heard by folks in the Dept. of Defense.
August 10, 2006
Israel-Hizbollah perspective
International law professor Orde F. Kittrie makes some pertinent points about who is violating international law in the current conflict in Lebanon.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry.
A War Crime at Qana?
Hezbollah, Iran and Syria--not Israel--are flouting international law.
BY ORDE F. KITTRIE
Sunday, August 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTThe Qana tragedy has intensified accusations that Israel's actions in Lebanon violate international law. Every death of an innocent person is extremely regrettable; but there is no evidence Israel has committed any war crimes. In contrast, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria have clearly violated international law in this conflict. Moreover, Israel's conduct compares favorably to how its most powerful accusers have behaved when their own interests have been threatened.
International law has three major prohibitions relevant to the Qana incident. One forbids deliberate attacks on civilians. Another prohibits hiding forces in civilian areas, thereby turning civilians into "human shields." A third prohibition, the proportionality restriction that Israel is accused of violating, involves a complicated and controversial balancing test.
Geneva Convention Protocol I contains one version of the proportionality test, the International Criminal Court Statute another; neither is universally accepted. As a result, the proportionality test is governed by "customary international law," an amalgam of non-universal treaty law, court decisions, and how influential nations actually behave. It does not hinge on the relative number of casualties, or the force used, however, but on the intent of the combatant. Under customary international law, proportionality prohibits attacks expected to cause incidental death or injury to civilians if this harm would, on balance, be excessive in relation to the overall legitimate military accomplishment anticipated.At Qana, Israeli aircraft fired toward a building to stop Hezbollah from shooting rockets at its cities. The aircraft did not deliberately target civilians; but Hezbollah rockets are targeted at civilians, a clear war crime. U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland last week called on Hezbollah to stop its "cowardly blending" among women and children: "I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this." If Hezbollah used Lebanese civilians in Qana as "human shields," then Hezbollah, not Israel, is legally responsible for their deaths.
If Israel was mistaken and Hezbollah was not firing from or hiding amongst these civilians, the legality of its action is assessed by the proportionality test. Because the test is vague, there have been few, if any, cases since World War II in which a soldier, commander or country has been convicted of violating it. In the absence of guidance from the courts, determining whether Israel's military has failed the proportionality test depends on an assessment of what civilian casualties it expected, what its overall military goals are, the context in which the country is operating, and how the international community has in practice balanced civilian risk against military goals.
Israel did not expect civilian casualties; it warned civilians to leave Qana, and Israel's official investigation has concluded its military attacked based on "information that the building was not inhabited by civilians and was being used as a hiding place for terrorists." The law of war recognizes that mistakes are inevitable, and does not criminalize soldiers who seek in good faith seek to avoid them.
Israel's overall military goal is to survive attacks by enemies determined to annihilate it. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has stated: "Israel . . . is an aggressive, illegal and illegitimate entity, which has no future. . . . Its destiny is manifested in our motto: 'Death to Israel.' " Thus Israel is attempting to prevent Hezbollah from using its 10,000 remaining rockets, and to implement the requirement of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 that Hezbollah be disarmed.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah and Iran--which provides this terrorist group with arms, direction and over $100 million a year--are in continual violation of international law. Their calls for Israel's destruction violate the international genocide treaty's prohibition of "direct and public incitement to commit genocide." Iran's effort to develop a nuclear arsenal that could obliterate Israel, or deter its responses to future Hezbollah attacks, violates the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Iranian (and Syrian) support for Hezbollah violates U.N. Security Council Resolution 1373, requiring states to "refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts." Hezbollah began the armed conflict with rocket attacks on Israeli towns and the abduction of Israeli soldiers: unprovoked acts of war violating an internationally recognized border.
Israel is acting in self-defense and avoided killing civilians, even giving advance notice by phone to the occupants of homes targeted for attack as Hezbollah hideouts. While Hezbollah deliberately maximizes harm to Israeli and Lebanese civilians, Israel puts its soldiers at risk to minimize Lebanese civilian casualties.
The track record of many of Israel's most powerful accusers--including China, Russia and the European Union--is not nearly as good at balancing civilian risk against military goals.China killed hundreds of peaceful Tiananmen Square protestors in 1989. It has for five decades occupied Tibet, slaughtering tens of thousands; and it vows to invade Taiwan if it declares independence. Neither the Tiananmen protesters nor Tibet nor Taiwan has ever threatened to "wipe China off the map."
Russia has fought since 1994 to suppress Chechnya's independence movement. Out of a Chechen population of one million, as many as 200,000 have been killed as Russia has leveled the capital city of Grozny. Chechen rebels pose no threat to "wipe Russia off the map." All of the leading EU countries actively participated in NATO's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. The military goal was to stop Yugoslavia from oppressing its Kosovar minority. NATO bombs and missiles hit Yugoslav bridges, power plants and a television station, killing hundreds of civilians. Yugoslavia posed no threat to the existence of any of the EU countries that bombed it.
Compared with how China, Russia, and the EU have dealt with non-existential threats--and despite the law-flouting behavior of Hezbollah, Iran and Syria--Israel's responses to the threats to its existence have been remarkably restrained rather than disproportionately violent.
Mr. Kittrie is professor of international law at Arizona State University and served in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. State Department from 1993 to 2003.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
August 01, 2006
Bad news from Iraq
Bill Crawford points out some disturbing news about USAID using accounting tricks to hide cost overruns on reconstruction projects in Iraq.
The US agency in charge of $US1.4 billion ($1.8 billion) in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide cost overruns on its projects and withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, an audit has found.
Idiots.
July 31, 2006
Alas, Lebanon!
Michael Totten, who lived in Lebanon for several months last year, has a somber post up about the current, and future, situation in Lebanon. He's not very optimistic.
When Israel and Hezbollah reach a ceasefire at last, round two of this conflict will commence in short order. No one knows if the Lebanese will be able to keep the gun out of politics after all that has happened. A tiny minority of Lebanese (with help from the remaining Syrian agents) can burn the country to the ground all over again.“What will become of us?” is the question on everyone’s mind. No one can know what will happen after Israel lifts its siege and the temporary national unity flies apart into pieces. And it will fly apart into pieces. The only question is how far the pieces will fly and how hard they'll land.
Go read the whole thing. And pray for Lebanon.
July 30, 2006
Status report: Iraq
Some newly compiled statistics about Iraq by the Brookings Institute -- as reported by All Things Conservative.
Recommended.
Moral inversion
Charles Krauthammer points out a double standard.
What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world and given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security? What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities - every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians - and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?[Emphasis is mine.]Hearing the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and a very few others), the world - governments, the media, UN bureaucrats - has completely lost its moral bearings.
The word that obviates all thinking and magically inverts victim into aggressor is "disproportionate," as in the universally decried "disproportionate Israeli response."
Highly, highly recommended. Really. You've got to read this column. Please.
July 29, 2006
The UN seeks to legitimize terrorism?
Alan M. Dershowitz, over at the Chicago Tribune, has an op-ed describing how the UN legitimizes terrorists. Here's how he begins:
If anyone wonders why the UN has rendered itself worse than irrelevant in the Arab-Israeli conflict, all he or she need do is read UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's July 20 statement. Annan goes to great pains to suggest equal fault and moral equivalence between the rockets of Hezbollah and Hamas that specifically target innocent civilians and the self-defense efforts by Israel, which tries desperately, though not always successfully, to avoid causing civilian casualties. In his statement, Annan never condemns, or even mentions, terrorism, which is a root cause and precipitator of the conflict.
And there is a lot more. There exists a U.N. track record -- supporting Mr. Dershowitz's contention -- that is decades long. Highly recommended.
July 27, 2006
Still more good news from Iraq
Bill Crawford has his latest progress report on Iraq up at NRO.
A recent story about the 500 WMDs found in Iraq since its liberation ignores the other findings:> Former weapons inspector David Kay declared on Oct. 2, 2003, that U.S. personnel discovered “a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B. from which a biological agent can be produced.”
> In January 2004, according to a New York Sun editorial published that June 1, a block of cyanide salt popped up in Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Baghdad safe house.
> On May 2, 2004, U.S. forces in Iraq found a mustard-gas shell, rigged as an improvised explosive device. The Iraq Survey Group sent in by coalition forces to find WMD dismissed this as “ineffective” due to improper storage. Of course, the effectiveness of Saddam’s weapons was not the issue.
> “The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found,” also reworked as an explosive device, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters that May 15. Two soldiers exposed to the device “displayed ‘classic’ symptoms of sarin exposure,” Fox News reported.
> Weapons sleuth Charles Duelfer told Fox News on June 24, 2004: “We found, you know, 10 or 12 sarin and mustard rounds.”
> That July 6, the Department of Energy announced that a joint effort with the Pentagon removed 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium from Iraq “that could potentially be used in a radiological dispersal device or diverted to support a nuclear weapons program.”
And there's much more.
July 22, 2006
The cause of the chaos in the Middle East
Mohammed Fadhil, an Iraqi parliamentarian and a blogger in Baghdad, has an essay in which he asserts that Iran is behind both the long-lasting insurgency in Iraq and the recent terrorist attacks in Israel.
This is worth reading.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry.
No More Half-Solutions
Iran is the cause of chaos in Lebanon and Iraq.
BY MOHAMMED FADHIL
Tuesday, July 18, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
BAGHDAD--In spite of what we are facing here every day I find myself, just like many others, so attached to following what's going on between Israel and Lebanon and that's mostly because of the close resemblance between the two cases.
In both cases we see a weak government suffering to control a powerful militia that is challenging the will of the rest of the country and engaging in a proxy war making the people suffer the results of regional conflicts that in no way can benefit their country.
The other reason why I'm closely following this ongoing crisis is that the powers involved in this conflict between Lebanon and Israel are closely connected to the powers fighting in Iraq and we here believe that the battle over there will have an impact on the situation here in one way or another.
It's still very difficult for people here to predict how this crisis is going to end especially that politics mix with ideology in a complex way in this region, however there's a general sense that the fires of war are going to spread to the rest of the region but still no one here can see the way this bigger war is going to end.
This comes from the nature of strategy adopted by the fighting powers and here I'm talking about the Arabic/Islamic component whose strategy relies on keeping a crisis open and always on reaching half-solutions to enable the leaderships to retain their positions--of course this also means keeping the countries of the region behind of the rest of the world and I see the same strategy being employed this time.
Iran proved that it's able to drag the region into a state of chaos by maneuvering its tools in Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and the militias in Iraq. Iran knows that such a conflict directed by militias that blend with civilians will lead to long-lasting chaos and represents a half-solution that debilitates the other powers and at the same time it's not a costly tactic for Iran! One hundred million dollars in the hands of gangs is enough to cause a lot of destruction that cannot be cured by billions in reconstruction, and it always costs less to destroy than to build.
The key point in this strategy is to keep the half-solution alive. This method proved successful in keeping the despotic regimes in power for decades and these regimes think this strategy is still valid. What makes them this way is their interpretation of international comments which came almost exactly as they always do; calls for restraint and urging a cease-fire which they (Iran and her allies) think will mean eventually going back to negotiations which they know very well how to keep moving in an empty circle.That was clear from Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah, earlier speech when he said "whether today or a month or a year from now, the Israelis will sooner or later find themselves forced to negotiate." Of course Mr. Nasrallah did not talk about the rest of his hidden policy which is provoking another crisis once the first one cools down.
The same is going to happen in Iraq if the situation does not change from the way it is today and maybe one day the Iraqi south will be similar to the Lebanese south and we will probably see the militias embarrass the country with "adventures" just like Mr. Nasrallah is doing now, that's of course is what nobody here wants to see; nobody but Iran.
The question is did Iran make the right calculations this time? And is the world willing to accept more of those half-solutions? I don't think so.
Trying to play the same scenario and adopt the same policies over and over again will bring undesirable outcomes for Iran this time and I can see that there's an Israeli determination to break the cycle; the thing is that Israel does not have to deal with the problem that America has to deal with; Israel does not have the political brakes that view the war in different ways. I mean to Israel this war is about existence and that's why Israel is going to go as far as it takes to secure this existence while the geographically-distant Americans view it differently and the attitude of some Americans who feel that this war is not that serious is understood.
But I do think that it is time to be decisive for one important reason; those who direct the conflict in the region do not seek a solution and even if America looks geographically far right now, one should not forget that technology will not allow her to remain so in the future and I think dealing with conventional arsenals today is better than to deal with nukes in the future and that's the threat the world is going to face as long as religion mixes with politics in the Middle East.The hesitation of the international community can be so dangerous and the intentions of the axis of terror are so clear. That's why firm and resolute measures have to be undertaken against Syria and Iran who are directly responsible for the mess in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.
Mr. Fadhil, along with his brother Omar, runs Iraq the Model, a blog based in Baghdad.
Standing up the Iraqi Army
David Bellavia, Owen West & Wade Zirkle, infantry veterans of the Iraq war and cofounders of Vets for Freedom, have a good column up about the birth of the Iraqi Army.
Their infantry skills aren't perfect. Iraqis carry their weapons every which way, and they enter buildings like horses out of the gate, often bumping into one another. American units drill urban movement to exhaustion; Iraqi squads may discuss it over sweet chai tea. Yet, when they search a building, they confidently rip detonation cords from under rugs and blasting caps from corners and belt-fed ammunition from hidden cupboards. Iraqis find in minutes all kinds of suspicious or incriminating items that even a polished American unit would have missed.
Highly recommended.
July 21, 2006
No cease fire
Jed Babbin, a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration and currently contributing editor and author, asserts that a cease fire between Israel and Hezbollah is the wrong thing to do. And he gives some good reasons to back that assertion.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry.
Lessons Learned
A cease-fire in Lebanon is a terrible idea.
BY JED BABBIN
Wednesday, July 19, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair want to send an international force to separate Israel from Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. Mr. Blair said a U.N. force should be sent to "stop the bombardment coming over into Israel and therefore [give] Israel a reason to stop its attacks on Hezbollah." Mr. Annan said such a force could "pursue the idea of stabilization." But their idea assumes, first, that a cease-fire would protect those worthy of protection and, second, that restoring the region's antebellum "stability" would promote long-term peace. Both assumptions are utterly false.
Hezbollah is not some small, ragged band scattered around Lebanon. It is a huge terrorist structure, built over decades, that includes thousands of men, weapons, positions, offices and everything that enables it to control southern Lebanon. Israel is now destroying that infrastructure. A cease-fire would benefit Hezbollah and threaten Israel. It would protect both Hezbollah and the nations that support it--Syria and Iran--as well as the Lebanese who have accepted the terrorist organization as a legitimate part of their government. A cease-fire would allow Hezbollah to rebuild its power base and enable it to resume its attacks whenever Damascus and Tehran desired. For Israel, a U.N. force would create no security whatever against future attacks.
The U.N.'s years-long record on the Israel-Lebanon border makes mockery of the term "peacekeeping." On page 155 of my book, "Inside the Asylum," is a picture of a U.N. outpost on that border. The U.N. flag and the Hezbollah flag fly side by side. Observers told me the U.N. and Hezbollah personnel share water and telephones, and that the U.N. presence serves as a shield against Israeli strikes against the terrorists.The Israeli response to the attack by Lebanon-based Hezbollah terrorists was much more violent and effective than Hezbollah, Iran or Syria expected. The Olmert government failed to make any significant response to previous raids from Gaza and Lebanon, which encouraged both terrorist regimes. The Syrian and Iranian regimes practice brinksmanship as their foreign policy. They attack as often as they can in as aggressive a manner as they believe will not trigger a decisive response. Iran wanted to distract the G-8 summit from agreeing to do anything about its nuclear weapons program, so it apparently told its Hezbollah surrogates in Lebanon that the time was ripe to begin a major offensive.
The Hezbollah attacks began about two weeks after Israel suffered the usual international condemnations for its response to the Gaza-based Hamas kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. Even after the Gaza incursion, Iran and Syria--emboldened by international condemnation of Israel's "disproportionate" response--were convinced that Israel would do no more than make token raids into Lebanon. For the first time, Israel has acted in accordance with what used to be President Bush's theory: that a government that contains, supports or harbors terrorists is responsible for their actions. Israel is now demonstrating that there is a price to be exacted from nations who collaborate with terrorists. The reason Israel must not agree to a cease-fire now, and why a U.N. force must be rejected is the fact that the Arab nations may be starting to open their eyes.
An emergency Cairo meeting of the 18 Arab League nations' foreign ministers last weekend produced the most significant event in the region since Saddam Hussein fell from power. These meetings are routine, held in crises or for political posturing and on every occasion before last weekend have resulted in condemnation of Israel and the United States. This meeting began with the Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh proposing a resolution condemning Israel's military action and supporting Lebanon's "right to resist occupation by all legitimate means" (which even the Associated Press report characterized as "language frequently used by Hezbollah to justify its guerillas' presence in south Lebanon"). The Lebanese draft also called on Israel to release all Lebanese prisoners and supported Lebanon's right to "liberate them by all legitimate means." The "Lebanese prisoners" are virtually all Hezbollah members and "legitimate means" translates to terrorism. The Syrian foreign minister, Walid Moallem, strongly supported Lebanon and Hezbollah. But a historic obstacle was raised that blocked the Lebanese endorsement of terrorism.The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, led a triumvirate including Egypt and Jordan that, according to the AP report, was "criticizing the guerilla group's actions, calling them 'unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible acts.' " Prince Faisal said, "These acts will pull the whole region back to years ago, and we simply cannot accept them." These are the rumblings that precede a political earthquake. The Arab leaders are afraid that the acts of the terrorists they have coddled for decades might have consequences for them. And they are very frightened of what Iran may do next. We must reinforce those fears because they provide the first big lever with which those nations can be moved.
The Arab foreign ministers apparently have the glimmerings of a lesson dawning in their minds. The U.S. veto of a U.N. resolution condemning Israeli action makes clear that if Israel imposes consequences for support of terror, the U.S. will not stand in the way. Punishing Lebanon for its government's acceptance of Hezbollah is one step. The next logical step would be punishing Syria and then Iran. If President Bush means to implement the policy he has pronounced, he wouldn't merely get out of Israel's way. He would lead. Instead of criticizing Mr. Annan and asking him to call Bashar Assad to pressure Syria to "cut this sh-- out," he should find a more reliable messenger. The name of Peter Pace comes to mind.The Iranians and Syrians are apparently urging Hezbollah to intensify this battle in the coming days. Many more missiles and suicide bombers will be used against Israel. And the Israelis will continue their attacks in Lebanon and Gaza. If we pressure the Israelis to call a halt to action prematurely, the hope that rose from the Arab ministers' meeting will be dashed, and the lesson taught that there is still no penalty for supporting, succoring and ordering terrorists to do their work. If we continue to reject a cease-fire, and openly encourage Israel to deal a decisive blow to Hezbollah, then Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan will understand the lesson is quite the opposite. For Syria and Iran, the lesson will have to be applied directly.
Mr. Babbin was a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration. He is a contributing editor of The American Spectator and author of "Showdown: Why China Wants War With the United States" (with Edward Timperlake, Regnery 2006) and "Inside the Asylum: Why the U.N. and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think" (Regnery 2004). This article appears on RealClearPolitics.com.
Strategic analysis
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross has posted a strategic analysis of any Israeli incursion into Lebanon.
It is critical to understand the strategic implications of the Israeli incursion into Lebanon. Hizballah has proven to be a far more effective fighting machine than Israel anticipated, and the Israelis find themselves in a difficult situation: Continued military operations in Lebanon risk escalation and further destabilization, while a quick withdrawal would hand Hizballah a significant victory. This blog entry analyzes the most salient strategic considerations.
Recommended.
July 20, 2006
A case for Israel
In an editorial by Ahmed Al-Jarallah, Editor-in-Chief of the Arab Times, a case is made in support of the Israeli actions against Hizbollah.
People of Arab countries, especially the Lebanese and Palestinians, have been held hostage for a long time in the name of “resisting Israel.” Arab governments have been caught between political obligations and public opinion leading to more corruption in politics and economics. Forgetting the interests of their own countries the Hamas Movement and Hezbollah have gone to the extent of representing the interests of Iran and Syrian in their countries. These organizations have become the representatives of Syria and Iran without worrying about the consequences of their action.
Highly recommended.
Implementing Resolution 1559
Charles Krauthammer has an interesting op-ed up at washingtonpost.com wherein he maintains that Israel has a golden opportunity in Lebanon.
There is crisis and there is opportunity. Amid the general wringing of hands over the seemingly endless and escalating Israel-Hezbollah fighting, everyone asks: Where will it end?The answer, blindingly clear, begins with understanding that this crisis represents a rare, perhaps irreproducible, opportunity.
Every important party in the region and in the world, except the radical Islamists in Tehran and their clients in Damascus, wants Hezbollah disarmed and removed from south Lebanon so that it is no longer able to destabilize the peace of both Lebanon and the broader Middle East.
Recommended.
July 19, 2006
Further evidence of WMD
Captain Ed has a post up that provides a translation of one of the Iraqi documents captured during and immediately after Operation Enduring Freedom. The document details information about where non-Iraqi intelligence agencies believed Iraqi WMD was located. The kicker is that this document is an order to move the WMD to other locations and cites the foreign intelligence as reason for the move.
We were informed by one of our sources working abroad, that foreign intelligence is working to obtain information about some military and scientific targets in the Country. The undercover source provided us with a map of the targets, for which he was assigned to gather information during his visit to the Country. For the purpose of pointing out the enemy’s interest, and to enable you to maneuver by changing the locations of these targets, in order to foil enemy’s plans, we hereby list the following:
Interesting reading.
Necessary steps
Michael Oren describes the necessary steps for Israel to take to secure its borders.
Efforts by the United States, the United Nations and the European Union to dissuade Iran and Syria from activating their terrorist agents have consistently proved ineffective. Therefore Israel has no realistic option but to convince these states that the price of promoting aggression is prohibitive. If Israeli soldiers and civilians are the targets of Iranian- and Syrian-backed terror, then the Iranian and Syrian militaries must become targets for Israel.
Scary, huh? But it's beginning to look like the only way. Recommended reading.
Afghani Gratitude
A touching story about an Afghani man who knotted a rug for President Bush.
Good read.
July 18, 2006
Hamas and Hezbollah are not good neighbors
Brigitte Gabriel, over at the Lebanese Foundation for Peace, provides another viewpoint on the struggle against Hamas and Hezbollah. It's not just an Israeli struggle.
No matter how much the west avoids facing the reality of Islamic extremism of the Middle East, the west cannot hide from the fact that the same Hamas and Hezbollah that Israel is fighting over there, are of the same radical Islamic ideology that has fomented carnage and death through terrorism that America and the world are fighting. This is the same Hezbollah that Iran is threatening to unleash in America with suicide bomb attacks if America tries to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapon. They have cells in over 10 cities in the United States. Hamas, has the largest terrorist infrastructure on American soil. This is what happens when you turn a blind eye to evil for decades, hoping it will go away.
Recommended.
To defend a nation
Charles Krauthammer has a penetrating analysis up about why Israel fights. For its very life.
Hezbollah has done to South Lebanon exactly what Hamas has done to Gaza: turned it into a military base and terrorist operations center from which to continue the war against Israel. South Lebanon bristles with Hezbollah's 10,000 Katyusha rockets that put northern Israel under the gun. Fired in the first hours of fighting, just 85 of these killed two Israelis and wounded 120 in Israel's northern towns.
There is so much more. Read the whole thing.
July 15, 2006
Iraq: A Status Report
Posted by Wretchard, these are the remarks presented by Iraqi Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to the Center for Strategic and International Studies on 11 July, 2006 about Iraq's current status and plans.
I will give my bottom line up front. I believe Americans, while remaining tactically patient about Iraq, should be strategically optimistic. Most important, a major change - a tectonic shift - has taken place in the political orientation of the Sunni Arab community. A year ago, Sunni Arabs were outside of the political process and hostile to the United States. They boycotted the January 2005 election and were underrepresented in the transitional national assembly. Today, Sunni Arabs are full participants in the political process, with their representation in the national assembly now proportional to their share of the population. Also, they have largely come to see the United States as an honest broker in helping Iraq's communities come together around a process and a plan to stabilize the country.
Go read the whole speech.
July 14, 2006
There be dragons
Michael Yon has an interesting dispatch up at his site about our impending success in Iraq, and the very real possibility of failure in Afghanistan.
The population of Afghanistan is significantly larger than that of Iraq: about 26 million in Iraq, 31 million in Afghanistan. Yet the roughly 21,000 troops in Afghanistan (according to Combined Forces Command — Afghanistan,) are exceeded by the number of troops in Iraq by a factor of about seven. The Coalition and NATO have so few troops in Afghanistan that wide swaths are left totally ungoverned and uncontrolled.
Perhaps we should start increasing troop levels in Afghanistan as we decrease them in Iraq. It sounds like we have quite a bit of unfinished business there.
Mr. Yon's article is quite lengthy, but it is an even-handed and insightful treatment of the issues that he has seen while over there. Highly recommended.
July 13, 2006
Milestone in Iraq
Transfer of Security Responsibility in Muthanna Province
It's under the fold.
A Joint Statement by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. George CaseyEmbassy of United States of America Press Release
July 13, 2006
BAGHDAD – Iraq witnessed a historic event today with the transfer of security responsibility in Muthanna Province from the Multi-National Force - Iraq (MNF-I) to the Provincial Governor and civilian-controlled Iraqi Security Forces. The handover represents a milestone in the successful development of Iraq’s capability to govern and protect itself as a sovereign and democratic nation. Muthanna is the first of Iraq’s 18 provinces to be designated for such a transition.
As Prime Minister Maliki announced on June 19, 2006, the joint decision between the Iraqi government and MNF-I to hand over security responsibility is the result of Muthanna’s demonstrated abilities to take the lead in managing its own security and governance duties at the provincial level. The transition decision also reflects a joint assessment of the overall threat situation in Muthanna, the capabilities of the ISF there and the provincial leadership’s ability to coordinate security. Transition teams are in place to smooth the transfer process and multi-national forces will stand ready to provide assistance if needed.
With this first transition of security responsibility, Muthanna demonstrates the progress Iraq is making toward self-governance. Several other provinces are close to meeting the criteria necessary to assume security independence. The Iraqi government and the Multi-National Force will continue to transfer security responsibilities in other provinces in Iraq as conditions are achieved.
Australian, Japanese, and the United Kingdom forces have assisted Muthanna authorities as models of international cooperation, providing economic and humanitarian assistance as well as security and stability. As Iraq develops and its needs continue to evolve, so too will the nature of international assistance to Iraq in Muthanna and elsewhere.
The United States will provide $10 million in order to enhance the quality of life for the citizens of Muthanna as they take a bold and courageous step forward in the country’s movement toward an independent and secure nation. This event represents significant progress by the Government of Iraq to achieve a constitutional, democratic, and pluralistic Iraq which guarantees the rights of all citizens.
Israel attacks Lebanon
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Israel intensified its attacks against Lebanon on Thursday, blasting Beirut's airport in its heaviest air campaign against its neighbor in 24 years. Four dozen civilians had died in the violence following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, officials said.
Veiled untruths
Ed Morrissey rebuts Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's editorial in The Washington Post. He points out the double-standards and duplicity that seem to be SOP in communications from Hamas and other terror organizations.
Recommended.
Sadrists in Baghdad
Mohammed, over at Iraq The Model, has a sober post up about how the Sadrists in Baghdad are looking more like Hamas in Iraq.
July 12, 2006
Psychopathy in Palestine
Dr. Sanity has a thoughtful and enlightening post about how psychopathic characteristics are being inculcated in Palestinian children. And elsewhere in the Middle East. Islam seems to be the key.
Islam has become toxic, infusing the entire Middle East with a culture inimical to not just the 50% who are female; but equally to the half who are male and consider themselves "superior". Children are raised in a misogynist family and cultural environment and the young boys are thus encouraged to hatred and violence. This has been going on for decades among the Palestinians in particular; but everywhere the jihad mindset has spread it cancerous message.
This is well worth your time to read. Even if you do not agree with it all, she makes some good points.
Again, good news from Iraq
Bill Crawford's latest compilation of good news from Iraq provides information that is not widely publicized. But it is important for a balanced perspective.
We begin this installment with a brief overview of the positive trends seen in Iraq over the last few weeks. The media frenzy over Zarqawi’s death is over now, and the only news being reported out of Iraq these days is car bombs and accusations against our soldiers. But that is not the whole story.On the economic front, Iraqi-oil output is now at its highest level since the liberation:
Iraq’s new oil minister offered an optimistic forecast for the country’s oil industry on Sunday, saying daily production has reached 2.5 million barrels a day and that Iraq hoped to rival top oil exporter Saudi Arabia within a decade.Iraq expects its daily oil production to reach 2.6 million to 2.7 million barrels per day (bpd) by the end of the year, rising to about 4 million bpd by 2010, and 6 million bpd by 2012, Hussain al-Shahristani said in an interview on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
Go read the whole thing. It is well worth the time.
July 09, 2006
The Arab-Israeli war, current edition
Charles Krauthammer has an op-ed in Time that provides a more rational perspective about the current manifestation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
So in 2005 the Palestinians are given Gaza, free of any Jews. Do they begin building the state they say they want, constructing schools and roads and hospitals? No. They launch rockets at civilians and dig a 300-yard tunnel under the border to attack Israeli soldiers and bring back a hostage.And this time the terrorism is carried out not by some shadowy group that the Palestinian leader can disavow, however disingenuously. This is Hamas in action--the group that was recently elected to lead the Palestinians. At least there is now truth in advertising: a Palestinian government openly committed to terrorism and to the destruction of a member state of the U.N. openly uses terrorism to carry on its war.
It's about choices. And it's about the avowed goal of the eradication of the nation of Israel.
Recommended.
Why is Israel an exception?
Victor Davis Hanson asks a lot of thought-provoking questions about why Israel is always a special exception in international politics.
What explains most of the world's dislike of Israel?Since Israeli settlers withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Palestinian terrorists have replied by consistently shooting homemade Qassam rockets at civilian targets inside Israel. Just recently, they've kidnapped a soldier and a hitchhiker (who has been killed) - and promised to do the same to others.
You'd expect these terrorist attacks on Israel to be viewed by responsible nations as similar to the jihadist violence we read about daily around the world - radical Islamists beheading Russian diplomats over Chechnya, plotting to do the same to the Canadian prime minister or threatening murder over insensitive Danish cartoons.
But that isn't the case at all. Israel is always seen as a special exception that somehow deserves what it gets.
Other states can retaliate with impunity, brutally killing thousands of Muslim terrorists, while Israel is condemned when it takes out a few dozen.
Most recently we've seen this when the newly formed U.N. Human Rights Council issued its first, and so far only, mandate -- by putting Israel permanently on the agenda of all future meetings. And this is in spite of much more blatant human rights violations going on in Darfur, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea. Ann Bayefsky discusses those:
In Darfur, there are three quarters of a million people beyond humanitarian reach, 2.5 million people displaced by the violence, 385,000 people in immediate risk of starvation, and over two million dead in 22 years of violence and deprivation. But it wasn’t genocide in Sudan that interested the Human Rights Council. Nor was it a billion Chinese without civil and political rights. Not 13 million women in Saudi Arabia whose lives depend on hiding from sight in public places and never being caught behind the wheel of an automobile. Not the dire human-rights conditions of 23 million people in North Korea. Not Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s incitement to genocide or his country’s legal system, which includes crucifixion, stoning and amputation.
Ms. Bayefsky summarizes with absolute clarity:
The original mission of the U.N. was rooted in the legacy of the Holocaust, the shield of “never again,” and the lance of human-rights protection. We are witnesses to the hijacking of the Organization to serve the purveyors of bigotry and hate.
I recommend you read both articles.
[Hat tip to Betsy Newmark.]
June 29, 2006
Taliban offensive fizzling
StrategyPage has a post up about the lack of success of the 'Taliban 2006 offensive'.
June 25, 2006: Battles with the Taliban have left 80 of the rebels dead in the last few days, and over 150 dead in the last two weeks. Afghan and Coalition dead have been much lower (a few dozen). While the Taliban claim to have over 10,000 armed men in action across southern Afghanistan, it is believed that there are only about 2,000 of them. Actually, there may now be less than that, since morale among the Taliban is getting shaky. Traditionally, Afghan warriors will simply go home if they feel their side has poor chances of success. This is how many Taliban gunmen are beginning to feel, as it becomes obvious that the Taliban tactics for the big 2006 offensive are not working. The groups of Taliban cannot stand up to Coalition firepower, and Afghan soldiers and police fight the Taliban on at least equal terms. Worse, many of the tribes in southern Afghanistan are actively opposing the Taliban, and Taliban terror tactics are not working to change minds. Most Taliban gunmen are in it for the money, but the Taliban isn't paying enough to justify the increased risks.
June 27, 2006
Mistakes
Robert Pollack has a column up at OpinionJournal about an interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. Mr. Zebari discusses American successes and failures in Iraq. This is straight from the horse's mouth and well worth reading.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry.
The Voice of Iraq
"Nobody is for a withdrawal, even a timetable," says the foreign minister.
BY ROBERT L. POLLOCK
Saturday, June 24, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTNEW YORK--"That was the center of all that happened in Iraq after the war. The people who were meeting there are the new leaders of Iraq, but nobody took them seriously in those days."
So says Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. He's talking about an unassuming little hotel in central Baghdad called Burj al-Hayat, where his Kurdistan Democratic Party set up headquarters in the heady days immediately following Saddam Hussein's fall from power. And his recollection of the period is vivid enough to include the hour or two he spent with your humble correspondent in early May of 2003. Perched on bar stools, we drank only water then to combat the heat of a sweltering afternoon. And Mr. Zebari held forth expansively and optimistically about the future of Iraq.
Portly, with penetrating eyes and a kind smile, he exuded intelligence and decency. And with leaders like him waiting on the wings, it was hard to imagine that things wouldn't turn out pretty well in the months and years ahead. On the streets of Baghdad, too, there were good reasons for hope. Not only was the tyrant who had tried to wipe out Mr. Zebari's Kurdish people gone, there was also a genuine feeling of liberation in the air. The looting--always exaggerated in any case--was done, and Americans (journalists and soldiers alike) mixed freely with Iraqis at kebab stands and ice-cream shops. The main worry was not avoiding a kidnapping or roadside bomb but how to politely turn down the day's sixth invitation for tea.
But even those of us who suspected that such peace--which former U.S. regent Paul Bremer remembers as "chaos" in his recent memoir-- would be challenged by extremists have been shocked by the extent of the violence that grew and grew after the U.N. headquarters was attacked that August.Now at least the perpetrator of that evil deed is dead. Not enough people understand that what's just happened is a "breakthrough," Mr. Zebari tells me. It shows "that Zarqawi's terror network was penetrated, that those groups are not invincible, especially through hard work and patient work. Fighting this terrorist insurgency really in the end is an intelligence operation."
"That was the difference between many of us Iraqis and our American friends," he adds, suggesting the coalition has too often preferred to try "overwhelming force." In fact, the fundamental flaw in our approach, he says, was our reluctance to let Iraqis get on with political reconciliation and their own security and intelligence efforts earlier than we did.
This time we're meeting on another sweltering day. It's only 9:30 a.m. and the thermometer is headed toward what will be a muggy 90. But we are much more comfortably ensconced in a room at the Council on Foreign Relations on East 68th Street in Manhattan. He's just addressed a breakfast meeting of the group. And the day before saw him in meetings with the U.N. secretary-general and The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, among other commitments.
Mr. Zebari has established himself as the great survivor of postwar Iraqi politics, holding his post through four governments--the Bremer period, and prime ministers Ayad Allawi, Ibrahim al-Jaafari and, now, Nouri al-Maliki. That alone bespeaks a great deal of diplomatic skill--though Mr. Zebari is hardly afraid to offend where justified. Just ask the likes of Arab League head Amr Moussa, or others with whom he has publicly tangled. But neither does Mr. Zebari seem to delight in contrarianism like his friend and longtime colleague in opposition, Ahmed Chalabi. Perhaps that's why the same criticisms of U.S. policy that would put Mr. Chalabi on President Bush's bad side starting in late 2003 never seemed to hurt Mr. Zebari's standing.
Mr. Zebari's critiques, it should be emphasized, are always offered with a liberal dose of thanks for the coalition's "sacrifice" in "a noble cause." But he also seems eager that Americans and others learn the right lessons from what's happened over the past three years. And he clearly doesn't buy the lazy journalistic trope that the main mistakes were the failure to stop the looting, disbanding the Iraqi Army, and excessive de-Baathification. Instead, he seems to think many problems could have been mitigated had Iraqis been allowed to move toward self-government much, much sooner.
"The biggest mistake, honestly, if you go back, was not entrusting the Iraqis as partners, to empower them, to see them do their part, to fill the vacuum, to have a national unity government," he says. According to Gen. Jay Garner, who briefly ruled Iraq before he was peremptorily replaced by Mr. Bremer in May 2003, that was exactly the plan. His provisional government probably would have included Kurdish leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, secular Shiites Ahmed Chalabi and Ayad Allawi, religious Shiite Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and the Sunni Adnan Pachachi. The idea was that free elections would soon follow.
But "if you read Bremer's book ["My Year in Iraq"], when he came, one of his tasks was to stop these 'exiles,' " Mr. Zebari says. "I think the biggest sin was to change the mission from liberation to occupation. That is the mother of all sins, honestly."
With his use of "exiles," Mr. Zebari is deploying--with some irony--the derogatory term many U.S. diplomats used to refer to the leading anti-Saddam opposition figures. Never mind that the term hardly fit the Kurdish leaders, who had already built what amounted to an autonomous state in Northern Iraq under cover of a U.S. "no-fly" zone. But there was an idea that the group was somehow too "unrepresentative" to serve even as a temporary government.
Where did Mr. Bremer get the idea to slow things down? I ask. "Many people collaborated. It wasn't his idea as such. There was Security Council Resolution 1483 that changed the whole thing. The Americans and British collaborated on that, relying on advice from international lawyers that one way to rebuild this country is to free it from the sanctions--from the U.N.-imposed sanctions--and sanctions can only be lifted when you have an Iraqi authority to negotiate. There isn't. And these bunch of people sitting in that hotel are not up to that job, so let's make ourselves the authority. . . . I think that was the big mistake."
Mr. Zebari is reluctant to name names. But the drivers of the anti-"exile" policy included Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Armitage and former Bremer aide (and current deputy national security adviser) Meghan O'Sullivan. In the end, U.S. attempts to empower "indigenous" Iraqis proved worse than a failure. Not only were the "exiles" overwhelmingly victorious in Iraq's two elections (all three prime ministers have been "exiles"), but our attempts to "level the playing field" needlessly delayed the development of Iraq's institutions of self-government.
No doubt this has slowed security-forces development. Which brings us to the next topic: the continuing necessity of coalition forces in Iraq. Mr. Zebari's primary mission in New York, in fact, was to review the U.N. mandate of coalition forces. He tells me about a fascinating discussion among Iraqi political leaders shortly before he left for New York. He told them, he says, that the new government was perfectly within its rights to ask for the departure of foreign troops. But he says he found no takers. In fact, the loudest objection to the idea came from Adnan al-Dulaimi, who represents a Sunni community generally thought to be most hostile to the "occupiers." They know only too well that coalition troops are their best protection against shadowy Baathist thugs who would like to lay claim to the Sunni leadership mantle. "Before the Sunnis were raising the flag for a withdrawal of all occupying forces immediately, that they are the sources of all the ills. Now they are the ones asking that they should stay," Mr. Zebari says.
Intimidation "is a problem," he continues. "That is, an intimidation campaign carried out primarily by the Baathists." He also says he believes the Baathists are behind the majority of terrorist attacks: "Identifying the enemy is very important. I personally believe the incubator of this so-called 'insurgency' is the Baath Party, is the remnant of Saddam's regime. Even with Zarqawi and al Qaeda, who are very lethal. But without them [the Baathists] providing the infrastructure, the support, the intelligence, the hideouts--then the attacks would not happen."
What about the war debate here in the U.S., I ask him. Are Iraqis worried that U.S. troops will leave too soon? Does the Iraqi press pay attention when people like Congressman Jack Murtha call for troop withdrawal?"It does. Yes, it does. This is one of things actually. The freest media in the world I think is in Iraq. Honestly. There is no censorship or restrictions or restraint whatsoever. Now you have about 15 or 16 satellite channels run by Iraqis and I don't know how many hundreds of newspapers." So "people have become more politically conscious and aware. . . . Nobody is for a withdrawal, even a timetable, for the troops."
I decide to move the topic back to Mr. Zebari's own experience on the job. How did he get it? "We were active in the Iraqi National Congress," he tells me. "I was then the person responsible for the foreign relations. It became very natural when the first government happened. I was recommended by many friends, by Ahmed [Chalabi], by Allawi, by Mr. Talabani."
What's surprised him most about the job? "We've learned many, many things. In the opposition we were struggling to open doors and to get to decision-making people in governments. Now you look from inside out it's a different world. It's much easier to work officially in a government than to work in the opposition."
Is he perplexed that international attitudes haven't been more helpful? Particularly the U.N., where he's just seen Kofi Annan? It was actually "one of the most amicable, friendly atmospheres," he tells me. "We've come a long way." But I can well remember Mr. Zebari's withering criticism of the Oil for Food program in 2003, long before the scandal ever broke. I guess he is a diplomat now, after all. And he does understand there's still a long way to go in Iraq--and that the country needs all the support it can get.
As we part ways, he offers a message for those in the international community and in the U.S. who would give up on the mission while there's still everything to play for: "There is too much at stake. Failure in Iraq means reversal of all democratic reforms throughout the region. Failure in Iraq means the power of the United States and the coalition cannot be used elsewhere in the same manner. Failure for democracy here would suggest that really these people are not used to this so its better to have one-man, one-party rule, a strong man to control this bunch of Kurds and Shia and militias and so on. Failure is a reversal of everything we've built."
Over to you, Mr. Murtha.
Mr. Pollock is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
Good news from Iraq
Bill Crawford published this article about various encouraging developments in Iraq back on 12 June. I just now found it.
Apologies!
Here's a quote from General Barry McCaffrey following his visit to Iraq in April:
1. The morale, fighting effectiveness, and confidence of U.S. combat forces continue to be simply awe-inspiring. In every sensing session and interaction - I probed for weakness and found courage, belief in the mission, enormous confidence in their sergeants and company grade officers, an understanding of the larger mission, a commitment to creating an effective Iraqi Army and Police, unabashed patriotism, and a sense of humor.2. The Iraqi Army is real, growing, and willing to fight. They now have lead action of a huge and rapidly expanding area and population. The battalion level formations are in many cases excellent - most are adequate.
3. The Iraqi police are beginning to show marked improvement in capability since MG Joe Peterson took over the program. The National Police Commando Battalions are very capable - a few are simply superb and on par with the best U.S. SWAT units in terms of equipment, courage, and training. Their intelligence collection capability is better than ours in direct HUMINT.
There's much more in the article, including a link to General McCaffrey's entire report.
Recommended. Highly.
June 21, 2006
Road map
Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, has a column up at washingtonpost.com outlining a road map to success in Iraq.
Taleban = yellow-belly
More evidence of the true nature of the type of people we are fighting came to light when Taleban fighters in Afghanistan used women and children as shields while fighting British troops this week.
And there are some that consider them noble freedom fighters.
Disgusting.
June 20, 2006
First step
An Iraqi journalist, who has been against the U.S. military being in Iraq, has re-evaluated since Zarqawi was killed.
When I saw Maliki in the conference, I wished I could shake his hands to thank him and tell him how I want his government to be strong. I have a feeling that this man is really serious in taking Iraq to the safe side. I really feel that he is doing his best to do a better job than the ones preceded him. Killing Zarqawi is a good omen that Maliki’s government is no longer silent.It occurred to me that this time, Maliki and the U.S. officials did not let us down when the criminal Zarqawi appeared on TV in his latest video that provoked all Iraqis. They all said his days are numbered and they will get him dead or alive and they did. Thank you all. Afiya [good job]…
It's worth reading . . .
June 07, 2006
Iranian protests
A not-very-widely-publicized series of protests are going on in Iran:
They are protesting against the Iran Daily publishing a caricature insulting entire Azerbaijanis.The Iranian authorities brought 20 thousand guards and police forces to Tabriz to disperse the protesters. The South Azerbaijan National Revival Movement (SANRM) Baku bureau spokesman Aghri Garadaghli told APA that there are about ten thousands of protesters in Tabriz. Bloody clashes started between the forces and demonstrators accompanied by firing gun. It is not ruled out that special provokers among the protesters fired gun.
Garadaghli also said that Iranian law enforcement bodies are using torture on the detained Azerbaijani demonstrators making them say that the US and other Western states are behind these protests. Four protesters died of severe torture in the past two days.
There was an armed clash between the Iranian military forces and the demonstrators during the protest action in Miyane city. There is no exact information about number of the killed and injured. According to the latest reports, law enforcement bodies arrested 1,700 Azerbaijani protesters in Tabriz, 1,500 in Ardabil and 1,000 in Tehran. The SANRM reports that demonstrators Ms. Hajar Sultani and Sirus Huseyninijad underwent severe torture and they are in bad health now. However, they have not been hospitalized yet.
The Gateway Pundit has the story. Recommended.
June 05, 2006
International Iranian oil embargo?
William Kucewicz, editor of GeoInvestor.com has an interesting column up at OpinionJournal about the economic impact of an international trade embargo of Iran.
It's not as bad as you'd think . . .
I've reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.
Over a Barrel
Trade sanctions could prompt regime change in Iran.
BY WILLIAM P. KUCEWICZ
Friday, June 2, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTCondoleezza Rice, in signaling a new U.S. willingness to negotiate with Iran, also warned that "international isolation and progressively stronger political and economic sanctions" would follow if Tehran defies its international obligations by continuing to develop nuclear weapons. Although the likelihood of those sanctions increased yesterday after the Iranian regime rejected the U.S. offer, it has been the threat of such sanctions, and the crippling effect an international embargo would have on Iran's economy and exchequer, that have always been the likely catalysts for any possible negotiation.
There's simply no getting around the fact that you can't eat petroleum. Iran's 132.5 billion barrels in proved oil reserves--10.2% of the world total--are of little benefit unless they're earning money. A trade embargo would hit Iran especially hard, because its economy and government budget are inordinately dependent on petrodollars. Oil shipments account for about 25% of GDP, represent 90% of total export earnings and provide as much as 50% of fiscal receipts.
Further, the country imports about one-third of its gasoline. Additional gasoline supplies and other oil products are refined in Tehran from 60,000 barrels a day (bbl/d) in imported crude that arrives via pipeline from the Caspian Sea in a swap arrangement. In Iran, gasoline, like foodstuffs, is heavily subsidized--to the tune of $3 billion this year--as part as the regime's strategy to buy off public opinion. With gasoline retailing at just 40 cents a gallon, consumption, not surprisingly, has been growing by 8% to 10% a year.
The regime already feels the pinch of unilateral sanctions, first imposed by Bill Clinton and extended by President Bush, that forbid U.S. companies and their subsidiaries from doing business with Iran. Additionally, the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996 authorizes mandatory and discretionary sanctions against non-U.S. companies investing more than $20 million a year in Iran's oil and natural gas industries. The effectiveness of the restrictions can be measured by the volume of Iranian crude oil output. In the six months ended March, Iranian production was down 1.3% from a year earlier versus a comparable gain of 1.5% for OPEC, excluding Iran and Iraq. Compared with the six months ended March 2002, Iran's output in the latest six-month period was up 13.4% against a 21.7% increase for the eight members of OPEC sans Iran and Iraq.Iran's below-average oil production is explained by a shortage of investment capital. Its 40 producing oilfields need modernizing. Recovery rates are a meager 24% to 27% compared with a 35% world average. But Iran doesn't have the capital to pay for upgrades. In fact, it has been counting on foreign investment to help it boost production from last year's 4.2 million bbl/d (of which 3.9 million bbl/d was crude oil) to a targeted five million bbl/d in 2010 and eight million bbl/d by 2015. Tehran further hopes, with foreign help, to expand its oil refining capacity by 50% to 2.2 million bbl/d by 2008. Sanctions would put the kibosh on these ambitious plans.
U.S. bans on technology transfers also have frustrated Iran's efforts to develop its massive natural gas reserves, the world's second largest. U.S. companies dominate natural gas liquefaction, and most liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants in the world use U.S.-licensed processes. Iran is limited to non-U.S. technology and so far hasn't built a single LNG facility. The cost: $11 billion in foregone annual earnings from one natural gas field alone.
What Tehran knows, and what the outside world has yet to grasp, is that an international trade embargo would hurt Iran infinitely more than it would hurt the U.S.
For oil-importing countries, even though Iran exports roughly 2.7 million bbl/d in petroleum, a complete cutoff of these shipments could be offset in large measure by increased OPEC and non-OPEC output, greatly diminishing the dreaded prospect of $100-a-barrel oil. Saudi Arabia has the most untapped capacity, in the order of 1.3 million to 1.4 million bbl/d. Other OPEC members, according to the International Energy Agency, have spare capacity of 1.1 million bbl/d, not including Iraq's estimated 700,000 bbl/d. With a total of 2.4 million to 3.1 million bbl/d in idle capacity, OPEC alone could offset a loss of Iranian exports. Furthermore, global oil consumption is anticipated to grow in the range of 1.4 million to 1.6 million bbl/d this year, while new supply is expected to increase by 1.2 million to 1.3 million bbl/d. Much of the imbalance is expected to be covered by OPEC exports of LNG.
Oil's fungibility notwithstanding, Asia in general and Japan in particular would be hardest hit by a cutoff of Iranian crude. (The U.S., Canada, Britain and Germany, among others, no longer import Iranian oil.) China has already taken steps in response to high oil prices that could lessen the effects of an Iranian trade embargo. It has eliminated tax rebates on gasoline exports, raised gasoline, diesel and jet fuel prices by 3% to 5% and levied higher taxes on larger vehicles. Chinese electric power generators, too, are scaling back on oil use.
Besides, it's not like we haven't been through this before. Following the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi oil exports fell by some 2.3 million bbl/d to a mere 61,750 bbl/d between 1991 and 1996. Even now, Iranian exports are way below their pre-revolution high of 5.5 million bbl/d, which was equal to 19.2% of OPEC's 1974 crude and products shipments. Thirty years later, Iran shipped three million bbl/d, or 11.7% of OPEC exports.
To be sure, there are other risks to global oil supply--notably in Nigeria, Venezuela, Ecuador, Chad, Russia and Iraq. But should it be necessary, the U.S. could always play its trump card--namely, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Established after the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, the reserve has a current inventory of 688.6 million barrels of oil, sufficient to provide about two months of U.S. import protection. Were, say, 500,000 bbl/d to be siphoned off to partially offset a loss of Iranian crude, the stockpile would last more than three-and-a-half years.Iran doesn't have the world over a barrel. It's the other way around. The economic and fiscal squeeze of new trade sanctions could indeed become so painful as to prompt regime change.
Mr. Kucewicz edits GeoInvestor.com.
(Editor's note: Iran's proven oil reserves are 132.5 billion barrels, not trillion as this article originally stated.)[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
June 04, 2006
Good news from Iraq
Bill Crawford's latest column with good news from Iraq is out at NRO. In it, he quotes Ambassador Khalilzad:
I am more optimistic now than I have been at times in the past, now that we have the Sunni Arabs participating in the political process, now that we have a government of national unity, but I am, of course, realistic enough to know that there are significant challenges that still are part of the picture. We need a good Defense Minister that has to be still appointed, a good Interior Minister that has to be appointed, and the security situation has to be dealt with. But I think that fundamentally, with the political participation of all communities in the political system, that Iraq has been put on the right trajectory.
Read the whole thing.
On Iraq reporting
Command Sargeant Major Jeffrey Mellinger, senior enlisted soldier in Iraq, has a post over at Michael Yon's Frontline Forum wherein he comments on the virtually non-existent reporting about Iraq by the mainstream media.
There is still an insurgency being fought as we build a government and work to provide unity, safety, security and jobs. Haven’t read a story yet on us spraying the date palms. Iraq was once the number one producer of dates. We are working aerial spraying to rebuild the crops. Where’s the story? Oh, sorry. It’s not got any sex or blood in it. Let’s see. How about the huge civil affairs festival in Irbil last week? Hmmm. No story in hundreds of kids singing and dancing, adults laughing and competing in sports. And surely no story in learning how to operate and program computers, operate tractors, dump trucks, or repair generators and motors. What was I thinking?
I can certainly understand his sarcasm. I recommend you read his entire post. In fact, you should spend some time reading the othere posts in Michael Yon's Frontline Forum. They show you a glimpse of the struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq that you rarely get to see.
June 01, 2006
Israeli disengagement
James Woolsey, a former director of Central Intelligence, has published an op-ed over at OpinionJournal wherein he makes a case against Israeli disengagement in the West Bank.
I have not been able to come to a conclusion as to the best course of action over there (not that my opinion really matters), and I'm not sure I agree with Mr. Woolsey's assessment of the consequences of continuing with disengagement. However, he makes some good, rational arguments that make a lot of sense.
I've reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.
West Bank Terrorist State
The folly of Israeli disengagement.
BY R. JAMES WOOLSEY
Monday, May 29, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTWhat does one say to a good ally who seems determined to reinforce failure? That the U.S. will pay for the undertaking?
Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was in Washington last week, where he asked for advice and assistance in financing the withdrawal of 50,000 to 100,000 Israeli settlers from 90% to 95% of the West Bank and major portions of Jerusalem, and for the Israel Defense Forces to be repositioned largely near the security barrier Israel is constructing. Most Americans are inclined to believe that such disengagement may be a reasonable step toward a two-state solution, even if some territorial disputes remain to be negotiated. It is also widely assumed that Palestinian hostility to Israel is fueled by despair that can only be reduced by Israeli concessions. Both assumptions, however, may be fundamentally flawed.
The approach Israel is preparing to take in the West Bank was tried in Gaza and has failed utterly. The Israeli withdrawal of last year has produced the worst set of results imaginable: a heavy presence by al Qaeda, Hezbollah and even some Iranian Revolutionary Guard units; street fighting between Hamas and Fatah, and now Hamas assassination attempts against Fatah's intelligence chief and Jordan's ambassador; rocket and mortar attacks against nearby towns inside Israel; and a perceived vindication for Hamas, which took credit for the withdrawal. This latter almost certainly contributed substantially to Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections.The world now needs to figure out how to keep Palestinians from starving without giving funds to a Hamas government in Gaza resolutely focused on destroying Israel. Before his massive stroke last year, Ariel Sharon repeatedly said he would not replay the Gaza retreat in the West Bank. With good reason: Creating a West Bank that looks like today's Gaza would be many times the nightmare. How would one deal with continuing launches of rockets and mortars from the West Bank into virtually all of Israel? (Israel's Arrow missile defense will probably work against Iranian medium-range ballistic missiles but not against the much shorter-range Katyushas.) A security barrier does no good against such bombardment. The experience in Gaza, further, has shown the difficulty of defending against such attacks after the IDF boots on the ground have departed. Effective, prompt retaliation from the air is hard to imagine if the mortar rounds and Katyushas are being launched, as they will be, from schools, hospitals and mosques.
Israel is not the only pro-Western country that would be threatened. How does moderate Jordan, with its Palestinian majority, survive if bordered by a West Bank terrorist state? Israeli concessions will also make the U.S. look weak, because it will be inferred that we have urged them, and will suggest that we are reverting to earlier behavior patterns--fleeing Lebanon in 1983, acquiescing in Saddam's destruction of the Kurdish and Shiite rebels in 1991, fleeing Somalia in 1993, etc.
Three major Israeli efforts at accommodation in the last 13 years have not worked. Oslo and the 1993 handshake in the Rose Garden between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat produced only Arafat's rejection in 2000 of Ehud Barak's extremely generous settlement offer and the beginning of the second intifada. The Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 has enhanced Hezbollah's prestige and control there; and the withdrawal from Gaza has unleashed madness. These three accommodations have been based on the premise that only Israeli concessions can displace Palestinian despair. But it seems increasingly clear that the Palestinian cause is fueled by hatred and contempt.
Israeli concessions indeed enhance Palestinian hope, but not of a reasonable two-state solution--rather a hope that they will actually be able to destroy Israel. The Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah-Hamas axis is quite explicit about a genocidal objective. When they speak of "ending Israeli occupation" they mean of Tel Aviv. Under these circumstances it is time to recognize that, sadly, the Israeli-Palestinian issue will likely not be the first matter settled in the decades-long war that radical Islam has declared on the U.S., Israel, the West and moderate Muslims. It will more likely be one of the last.
Someday a two-state solution may become possible, but it is naive in the extreme to believe that this can occur while the centerpiece of the radical Islamic and Palestinian agendas is maximizing Jewish deaths. A durable compromise will be achievable only when we no longer, to borrow from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "define deviancy down" for the Palestinians.Today we cannot envision the 250,000 Jewish settlers who live outside Israel's pre-1967 borders being permitted to live at all, much less live free and unmolested, in a West-Bank-Gaza Palestinian state. But some 1.2 million Arabs, almost all Muslim, today live in Israel in peace among some five million Jews--about double the percentage of Jews now in the West Bank as a share of the Muslim population there. Israel's Arab citizens worship freely--one hears muezzins calling the faithful to prayer as one walks around Tel Aviv. They vote in free elections for their own representatives in a real legislature, the Knesset. They give every evidence that they prefer being Arab Israelis to living in the chaos and uncertainty of a West Bank after Israeli withdrawal.
A two-state solution can become a reality when the Palestinians are held to the same standards as Israelis--to the requirement that Jewish settlers in a West Bank-Gaza Palestinian state would be treated with the same decency that Israel treats its Arab citizens. Until then, three failures in 13 years should permit us to evaluate the wisdom of further concessions.
Mr. Woolsey, a former director of Central Intelligence, is co-chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
May 28, 2006
May 23, 2006
Setting the record straight
Bill Roggio, who is currently preparing to go in country, provides us a picture of Afghanistan that differs from many news reports.
The news reports of a major Taliban offensive in southeastern Afghanistan are inaccurate, as Coalition offensives and Taliban attacks have been lumped together to give the impression of a coordinated Taliban assault in multiple provinces. A reading of the various reports indicates that while the Taliban has launched a major strike on a police station and government center in Helmand province and a small scale attack on a police patrol in Ghazni, as well as two suicide attacks against U.S. contractors in Herat and an Afghan army base in Ghazni, the fighting in Kandahar was initiated by Afghan and Coalition security forces during planned operations. Over 100 have been reported killed during the fighting, with 87 being Taliban. Well over half of those killed were killed during the Coalition offensives in Kandahar.
His reports have been consistently balanced and rational. Recommended reading.
UPDATE (24 May 2006): I mistakenly had Mr. Roggio in Afghanistan, but he is not yet there. He expects to get there sometime late this week.
Over the line
Michael Totten has another good article up at his blog describing conditions and attitudes in the West Bank. For those of you who are looking for a more balanced account of what's going on over there, Michael Totten is your man. He starts this account with:
I rode in an Israeli taxi with Palestinian journalist Sufian Taha from the American Colony Hotel to the Qalandia checkpoint on the road to Ramallah, capital of nascent Palestine, in the hills of the West Bank over Jerusalem. We had to take a taxi, and we had to switch to a Palestinian taxi after we reached the other side. “You do not want to drive in the West Bank with Israeli plates on your car,” he said.
He has plenty of pictures, too. Go read the whole thing.
May 21, 2006
The real Iraq
Amir Taheri, formerly the executive editor of Kayhan, Iran's largest daily newspaper, has a column in Commentary Magazine describing some very real indicators of significant progress in Iraq. He also understands the confusion many Americans have about progress in Iraq:
Spending time in the United States after a tour of Iraq can be a disorienting experience these days. Within hours of arriving here, as I can attest from a recent visit, one is confronted with an image of Iraq that is unrecognizable. It is created in several overlapping ways: through television footage showing the charred remains of vehicles used in suicide attacks, surrounded by wailing women in black and grim-looking men carrying coffins; by armchair strategists and political gurus predicting further doom or pontificating about how the war should have been fought in the first place; by authors of instant-history books making their rounds to dissect the various fundamental mistakes committed by the Bush administration; and by reporters, cocooned in hotels in Baghdad, explaining the carnage and chaos in the streets as signs of the countrys impending or undeclared civil war. Add to all this the days alleged scandal or revelationan outed CIA operative, a reportedly doctored intelligence report, a leaked pessimistic assessmentand it is no wonder the American public registers disillusion with Iraq and everyone who embroiled the U.S. in its troubles.It would be hard indeed for the average interested citizen to find out on his own just how grossly this image distorts the realities of present-day Iraq . . .
He refutes those who claim Iraq is a failed U.S. endeavor (emphasis added):
But more sober observers should understand the real balance sheet in Iraq. Democracy is succeeding. Moreover, thanks to its success in Iraq, there are stirrings elsewhere in the region. Beyond the much-publicized electoral concessions wrung from authoritarian rulers in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, there is a new democratic discourse to be heard. Nationalism and pan-Arabism, yesterdays hollow rallying cries, have given way to a big idea of a very different kind. Debate and dissent are in the air where there was none before - a development owing, in significant measure, to the U.S. campaign in Iraq and the brilliant if still checkered Iraqi response.
This is a fascinating article that is written by a man who hails from and understands the region. Highly recommended.
[Hat tip to Instapundit.]
May 20, 2006
A friend indeed
Australian PM John Howard had some kind things to say about the U.S. of A. in a speech to Canada's parliament:
“Australia, as you know, is an unapologetic friend and ally of the United States,” Mr. Howard told a Commons chamber that's heard all-too-frequent criticism of Washington in recent years.Fresh from a visit to the White House, Mr. Howard told a chamber packed with Tory MPs, staffers, lobbyists and party functionaries — but noticeably light on Liberal Opposition MPs — that the U.S. “has been a remarkable power for good in the world.
“And the decency and hope that the power and purpose that the United States represent in the world is something we should deeply appreciate,” Mr. Howard said to sustained applause.
He also cautioned those who continually slander America:
“For those around the world who would want to see a reduced American role in the affairs of our globe, I have some quiet advice. That is, be careful of what you wish for. Because a retreating America will leave a more vulnerable world.”
It is encouraging to hear such comments from other heads of state.
Captain Ed has more to say on the subject.
May 19, 2006
Hamas and the killing of innocents
Edward Bernard Glick, over at the American Thinker, gives us his take on Hamas, innocents, and the Israeli Defense Force. He starts with:
Why should Hamas care if its irredentist terrorism kills or causes Israel to kill innocent civilians?
Unfortunately, it makes a lot of sense. Read the whole thing.
May 17, 2006
Interview with a Danish Muslim democrat
Andrew Stuttaford at National Review has published an article about a member of the Danish Parliament who is also a Muslim. Here's how it starts:
The restaurant, unpretentious and vaguely chic, and the weather, cold and rainy, were as they should have been in northerly, elegant Copenhagen. The watchful plainclothes policemen were not. These are strange, unsettling times in Denmark: quiet, orderly, peaceful, nothing-happens-here Denmark; hated, reviled, infidel, embassies-in-flames Denmark. I was having lunch with Naser Khader, a Syria-born member of the Danish parliament for the Social Liberals (the party of Denmark’s metropolitan elite), a brave, engaging man who has discovered that, in today’s Denmark, for a Muslim to speak his mind about Islamic extremism means immense popularity — he’s probably the country’s most acclaimed politician — and a life under police protection.
I recommend you read the rest.
May 16, 2006
Good news from Iraq
Bill Crawford published his weekly report on Iraq yesterday. He starts with:
I had hoped this Iraq-progress round-up would include news about the formation of a new government today, but infighting has stalled the process. Still there is lots of other good news to report from Iraq, and even signs that some in the media are taking notice: The article linked to says “Statistics cited come from a report in National Review.”
Recommended reading.
Arab Israelis
Related to a blogversation I had last week with my brother, I stumbled across this article by freelance journalist Michael Totten wherein he was reporting about a recent trip to Israel and the racism he observed there.
I wish I could tell you that Israeli Jews and Arabs have created a groovy urban Middle East melting pot culture like the Lebanese have. But I’d be fantasizing or lying. It’s not that they hate each other. But they do seem to fear each other. The sense I got from talking to various people is that many Jews are afraid the Arabs might hurt them, and most Arabs do their best to keep their heads down and steer as wide of politics and the conflict as possible.
Go read the whole thing.
May 15, 2006
Still more good news from Iraq
The Brookings Institute has released its latest index report on Iraq, and the numbers show real progress.
All Things Conservative provides a good summary of the data, and The Futurist goes into a deeper analysis.
What do these countries have in common?
China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia.
One thing they have in common is their long records of human rights abuses.
The other thing is they are all now members of the newly established UN Human Rights Council.
What are those people in Turtle Bay thinking?
Why does the U.S. continue to heavily subsidize an organization, the U.N., that continuously ignores genocide?
May 12, 2006
Decentralizing Iraq
John R. Thomson & Hussain Hindawi, over at NRO have an editorial up with some good ideas on how to make a decentralized democracy in Iraq work to the betterment of its people.
Simply stated, Shia and Kurd leaders overwhelmingly favor a decentralized government, with the Sunnis nominally opposed, fearing they will be dealt out of Iraq’s oil wealth.What is required is equitable distribution of oil ownership and its attendant financial benefits, a challenge that provides an outstanding free market opportunity which we summarize below. Following is what we have been recommending for the past two years, with respect to both governance and petroleum.
An interesting concept.
And one that just might work. . .
May 11, 2006
More good news from Iraq
Bill Crawford provides us with his weekly column covering good news from Iraq. Here's how he starts:
Though the evening news and above-the-fold coverage here in the U.S. about Iraq may not reflect it, we have come far. For starters this week, here are two stories that give an indication of just how much. The first story shows the progress we have made in reconstruction, and the second story highlights the progress made in training Iraqis to secure their own country.
Go read the rest.
May 09, 2006
Arranged marriage
Bret Stephens describes an eye-opening tradition amongst Turkish immigrants in Germany. Importation of child brides.
I've reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.
The Foreign Brides
Germany tries to protect Turkish girls from arranged marriages.
BY BRET STEPHENS
Sunday, May 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTThey are called Die Fremden Bräute--the foreign brides. This year, thousands of teenage girls, very few past the age of consent, will arrive in Germany from Turkey for arranged marriages and lives of domestic servitude enforced by tradition, isolation and fear. It's a thriving one-way trade that has been going on for more than three decades, and it sits at the core of Europe's greatest predicament today: the widening gulf between an increasingly postmodern society and its often premodern immigrants.
The subject of foreign brides broke wide in the German media last year, when a 28-year-old Turkish man took his 11-year-old wife to a registry office in Düsseldorf to get her an ID card. On that occasion, the girl was detained by the authorities and deported to Turkey. But according to the Turkish-born German sociologist Necla Kelek, that is more often the exception than the rule. Ms. Kelek, 48, is one to know: In two bestselling books, "The Foreign Bride" and "The Lost Sons," she has exposed Germans to the lives of their 2.6 million-strong Turkish community in a way few of her German-born peers would have dared.
This week, the German parliament is set to debate legislation, conceived by Ms. Kelek and supported by Chancellor Angela Merkel, that would require foreign brides (from outside the European Union) to learn German before their arrival and bar entry to those under 21. "The goal," says Ms. Kelek, "is to ensure that those who come are willing to integrate."
This isn't just an academic or political issue for Ms. Kelek. It's a telling fact that the most prominent Muslim critics of contemporary Muslim societies--Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Holland, Irshad Manji in Canada, Seyran Ates and Serap Cileli in Germany--are women. "It's the women who have felt the relapse into Shariah the most," explains Ms. Kelek. "The boys might be slaves to their families, but on the streets they are free, and besides they can always look forward to a wife they can suppress. It's the women who explode."
Ms. Kelek herself came to Germany as a child in the late 1960s, along with a family that, initially at least, sought to integrate into German society. She learned German, made German friends, respected what later would be called, controversially, the German Leitkultur, the "lead culture."But things changed in the 1970s. Previous Turkish immigrants had generally come from cities and were relatively secular, but later arrivals were overwhelmingly from the countryside and traditional in their outlook. The rise of fundamentalist Islam also had an effect. Religion became the primary marker of individual identity. Codes of family honor and standards of female purity, to which Ms. Kelek's family had once been relatively indifferent, became important.
When Ms. Kelek was 17, she locked herself in her room in a fit of adolescent rebellion. Her father knocked the door down with an ax. Instead of beating or killing her, he abandoned the family for good. It was, she says, one of the happiest days of her life: "We turned on all the lights and played music. We were free."
A similar scenario between a rebellious daughter and her Turkish father might work out differently these days. There have been 55 honor killings in Germany in the past six years. Most of the victims were "fallen" girls who had broken from their families and were living "like a German." Usually the perpetrator is a brother, acting at his father's behest. The Turkish community tends to treat these young killers as heroes.
Such violence is integral to what Ms. Kelek calls the Turkish community's "organized self-marginalization." The tender age of the foreign brides, for instance: That isn't just a matter of depraved sexual tastes. "They want a girl with 'closed eyes,'" Ms. Kelek explains. The younger the bride, the more likely she is to be submissive to her husband, dependent on his family, ignorant and terrified of the world outside.
Today, every second Turkish woman who has a child in a German school is herself a foreign bride. Two-thirds of these children arrive in school not speaking a word of German. The German educational system bends over backward for them, providing religious instruction in Turkish or Arabic and excluding girls from physical education, sex ed and other subjects where Islamic mores might be offended. The results have been dismal: 60% of Turkish children leave school without any kind of certificate. "The distance between Turkish youngsters and German ones increases every year," Ms. Kelek says.
The Turkish community is not the only party at fault, however. Until last year, few Turks, including those whose families had lived in Germany for generations, could obtain German citizenship. Successive German governments compensated for their refusal to facilitate citizenship procedures by allowing the Turkish community to do more or less as it pleased. Thus the 11-year-old bride: With a parent's consent, Turkish law will allow even a 9-year-old girl to marry. Had German law applied, the age threshold would have been 16.
There's a deeper problem here, though, which goes to the heart of modern Germany's problematic notion of goodness. Germans, Ms. Kelek says, "want to do everything right that they previously did wrong. This is especially the case with the Muslim community because it's such a different culture, such a different religion. Germans are trying to prove to themselves just how tolerant they are."No surprise, then, that Ms. Kelek's legislation is being hotly opposed by the Social Democrats and the Green Party. For too many self-described progressives, limitless tolerance of "the other" has replaced the defense of individual liberty as proof of virtue.
Ms. Kelek sees it differently. Europe, she says, "has to fight for its values," not least by putting some hard questions to its increasingly alien and belligerent Muslim communities: "'Why aren't your women free? Why aren't your children free?' If we don't ask those questions, this will only continue."
Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
May 03, 2006
In Iraq
Joseph E. Robert Jr., a businessman who has recently had occasion to go to Iraq, has a column up at washingtonpost.com suggesting that we dare not leave Iraq before the Iraqis are ready.
My flight out of Baghdad was a somber one. Our C-130 cargo plane bore the flag-draped coffin of an American soldier killed helping the Iraqi people defend themselves against a vicious insurgency. Back home, as the election-year debate over Iraq rages on, I think about that soldier's sacrifice and recall a final impassioned plea from an Iraqi general named Aziz: "Iraqi troops will finish this job; we will kill this insurgency. But please tell the American people and President Bush that America cannot withdraw before the Iraqi troops are ready. We can't stand alone yet. We need more time."
Let's give them more time, and give liberty a chance.
May 02, 2006
Good news from Iraq
Bill Crawford has his Monday column up with more good news from Iraq. One notable item is this quote on the "Iraqi civil war":
And on Thursday, the military said that Iraq was moving away from the threat of a civil war: "We are not seeing widespread militia operations across Iraq. We are not seeing widespread movement of displaced personnel," he said. "So we do not see us moving toward a civil war in Iraq. In fact we see us moving away from it."
Recommended.
Middle East policy looking up
Victor Davis Hansen has a column up about positive indications from the Middle East.
But if we look beneath all these self-serving contradictions, real progress amid the carnage since September 11 is undeniable. It is not just that the United States has not been attacked again. Al Qaeda's leadership has been insidiously dismantled. Even bin Laden's communiqués are increasingly pathetic, whining about lost truce opportunities for the Crusaders while warning of more welcomed genocide in Darfur. We can be sure of his war-induced attenuated stature when some on the Left are already suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were mostly the operations of just a few criminals rather than precursors to international jihad.
Go read the whole thing -- particularly the footnote where he describes a recent life and death experience he had in Libya.
May 01, 2006
An analysis of conditions in Iraq (wrapped within a book review)
Phillip Carter, currently deployed in Iraq, has an interesting post about a book -- and his take on Iraq.
My copy of The Assassin's Gate by George Packer arrived shortly after I deployed to Iraq. One of my journalist colleagues said in an e-mail that this book could be "the one" — the single, authoritative narrative of how America marched to war in Iraq. I found that statement to be a bit odd. We are certainly at war in Iraq, but we have not finished it yet. I couldn't imagine a definitive narrative of Iraq that could be written with the war still in progress, and the outcome still very much in doubt.
This is good stuff -- go read the whole thing.
April 25, 2006
The Bush Doctrine: A New Hope
Natan Sharansky, Russian dissident and Iraeli statesman, has a thing or two to say about President Bush's democracy agenda.
He calls Bush a dissident, and Mr. Sharansky should know something about dissidents. He spent nine years in a Soviet gulag because of it.
I've reprinted his essay in the extended entry.
Dissident President
George W. Bush has the courage to speak out for freedom.
BY NATAN SHARANSKY
Monday, April 24, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
There are two distinct marks of a dissident. First, dissidents are fired by ideas and stay true to them no matter the consequences. Second, they generally believe that betraying those ideas would constitute the greatest of moral failures. Give up, they say to themselves, and evil will triumph. Stand firm, and they can give hope to others and help change the world.
Political leaders make the rarest of dissidents. In a democracy, a leader's lifeline is the electorate's pulse. Failure to be in tune with public sentiment can cripple any administration and undermine any political agenda. Moreover, democratic leaders, for whom compromise is critical to effective governance, hardly ever see any issue in Manichaean terms. In their world, nearly everything is colored in shades of gray.
That is why President George W. Bush is such an exception. He is a man fired by a deep belief in the universal appeal of freedom, its transformative power, and its critical connection to international peace and stability. Even the fiercest critics of these ideas would surely admit that Mr. Bush has championed them both before and after his re-election, both when he was riding high in the polls and now that his popularity has plummeted, when criticism has come from longstanding opponents and from erstwhile supporters.
With a dogged determination that any dissident can appreciate, Mr. Bush, faced with overwhelming opposition, stands his ideological ground, motivated in large measure by what appears to be a refusal to countenance moral failure.
I myself have not been uncritical of Mr. Bush. Like my teacher, Andrei Sakharov, I agree with the president that promoting democracy is critical for international security. But I believe that too much focus has been placed on holding quick elections, while too little attention has been paid to help build free societies by protecting those freedoms--of conscience, speech, press, religion, etc.--that lie at democracy's core.
I believe that such a mistaken approach is one of the reasons why a terrorist organization such as Hamas could come to power through ostensibly democratic means in a Palestinian society long ruled by fear and intimidation.I also believe that not enough effort has been made to turn the policy of promoting democracy into a bipartisan effort. The enemies of freedom must know that the commitment of the world's lone superpower to help expand freedom beyond its borders will not depend on the results of the next election.
Just as success in winning past global conflicts depended on forging a broad coalition that stretched across party and ideological lines, success in using the advance of democracy to win the war on terror will depend on building and maintaining a wide consensus of support.
Yet despite these criticisms, I recognize that I have the luxury of criticizing Mr. Bush's democracy agenda only because there is a democracy agenda in the first place. A policy that for years had been nothing more than the esoteric subject of occasional academic debate is now the focal point of American statecraft.
For decades, a "realism" based on a myopic perception of international stability prevailed in the policy-making debate. For a brief period during the Cold War, the realist policy of accommodating Soviet tyranny was replaced with a policy that confronted that tyranny and made democracy and human rights inside the Soviet Union a litmus test for superpower relations.
The enormous success of such a policy in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful end did not stop most policy makers from continuing to advocate an approach to international stability that was based on coddling "friendly" dictators and refusing to support the aspirations of oppressed peoples to be free.
Then came Sept. 11, 2001. It seemed as though that horrific day had made it clear that the price for supporting "friendly" dictators throughout the Middle East was the creation of the world's largest breeding ground of terrorism. A new political course had to be charted.Today, we are in the midst of a great struggle between the forces of terror and the forces of freedom. The greatest weapon that the free world possesses in this struggle is the awesome power of its ideas.
The Bush Doctrine, based on a recognition of the dangers posed by non-democratic regimes and on committing the United States to support the advance of democracy, offers hope to many dissident voices struggling to bring democracy to their own countries. The democratic earthquake it has helped unleash, even with all the dangers its tremors entail, offers the promise of a more peaceful world.
Yet with each passing day, new voices are added to the chorus of that doctrine's opponents, and the circle of its supporters grows ever smaller.
Critics rail against every step on the new and difficult road on which the United States has embarked. Yet in pointing out the many pitfalls which have not been avoided and those which still can be, those critics would be wise to remember that the alternative road leads to the continued oppression of hundreds of millions of people and the continued festering of the pathologies that led to 9/11.
Now that President Bush is increasingly alone in pushing for freedom, I can only hope that his dissident spirit will continue to persevere. For should that spirit break, evil will indeed triumph, and the consequences for our world would be disastrous.
Mr. Sharansky spent nine years as a political prisoner in the Soviet Gulag. A former deputy prime minister of Israel and currently a member of the Knesset, he is co-author, with Ron Dermer, of "The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror" (PublicAffairs, 2004). You can buy "The Case For Democracy" at the OpinionJournal bookstore here.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
April 23, 2006
Civil war: Iraq
Michael Yon is on his way to Afghanistan, and has this dispatch to share with us about the Iraqi civil war. Mr. Yon is careful to be as neutral and accurate as possible in his reporting -- efforts that I really appreciate.
We are not getting the truth through our media, or our civilian leadership. Yes, Iraq is in civil war, but there is no doubt in my mind, not the slightest doubt, that the new Iraqi security forces are becoming stronger all the time. It's not certain if they are strong enough to hold back the enemy on their own or if we need to increase the efforts of our military in a coordinated measure. But the fact that an American general recently invited me to see that progress is an indicator that our top military leaders are confident. An Army general would not have invited me back to Iraq to see a fiasco, and the mere fact of his invitation is a ray of hope.
This dispatch is a long one, and has many photos. It is also a very good summary of the situation in Iraq as he sees it. And is probably one of the most accurate assessments available to us.
Highly recommended.
April 20, 2006
Tragedy at Iraq the Model
Mohammed's family has been struck by the violence of criminals in Baghdad, and has lost a family member as a result.
Last week our little and peaceful family was struck by the tragic loss of one of its members in a savage criminal act of assassination. The member we lost was my sister's husband who lived with their two little children in our house.
Mohammed and his family have been courageously and diligently working toward a free, democratic, and safe Iraq since Saddam was removed from power three years ago. Please hold his family in prayer, and leave him a word of gratitude and comfort in his blog comments.
April 19, 2006
Mixed news from Baghdad
Bill Roggio provides a view of the current situation in Baghdad.
The political process remains a major front in the war in Iraq as the disparate political parties struggle to form a unity government. Omar at Iraq the Model fears the current political haggling and possible appointment of two Dawa Party candidates for Prime Minister would delay the formation even longer, as they are even less desirable than Jaafari. Omar warns of the deterioration of the security situation in Baghdad, and explains 'neighborhood watches' are forming at the neighborhood level. But it is the politicians who are now seen as the problem . . .
Go read the whole thing.
Good news from Iraq
Another installment of good news from Iraq by Bill Crawford over at National Review Online.
April 15, 2006
News from Afghanistan
John Tammes has picked up the torch and is assembling links on news from Afghanistan.
In light of the Taliban offensive going on in Pakistan and Afghanistan, this provides an additional source of news about the region that may provide more insight into those events.
April 14, 2006
Bad news from Pakistan
Liberal civilization, favoring individual rights and democracy, is being threatened in many parts of the world. Bill Roggio, over at The Fourth Rail has a post up about the latest bombing in Karachi, Pakistan. And he discusses other aspects of the situation in that nation -- and they are quite unsettling:
Pakistan's dysfunctional state of affairs only worsens. Various agencies in the North West Frontier Province have fallen to the Taliban. The Taliban is basically offering the Pakistani Army a truce in North Waziristan. Pakistan has been inclined to accept such offers in the past. The banned Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) recently held a 5,000 man strong rally calling for the establishment of "a global caliphate, beginning with Pakistan," and according the the Daily Times, a leader of the SSP was quoted as saying "The concept of nation state is an obstacle in the way of the establishment of Khilafat (Caliphate). We will start the establishment of Khilafat in Pakistan and then will do so across the world." And the Pakistani government recently declared the Baluchistan Liberation Army a "terrorist entity," foreshadowing another bloody confrontation in the large natural resource-rich province in the southwest corner of the country.
April 13, 2006
Genocide in the Sudan
And a call to action by a man who knows what genocide really looks like.
It's in the extended entry -- and it's not a pleasant subject, either.
Darfur
In Sudan, the world ignores Rwanda's lessons.
BY PAUL RUSESABAGINA
Sunday, April 9, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTHistory shows us that genocides can happen only if four important conditions are in place. There must be the cover of a war. Ethnic grievances must be manipulated and exaggerated. Ordinary citizens must be deputized by their government to become executioners. And the rest of the world must be persuaded to look away and do nothing. This last is the most shameful of all, especially so because genocide is happening again right now in the Darfur region of Sudan, and the world community has done precious little to stop the killings.
What is happening in Darfur is exactly what happened in my home country of Rwanda, which was left to choke on its own blood from April to July of 1994.
The United Nations took virtually no action during the genocide. A detachment of well-equipped peacekeepers, made up of less than one-twentieth of the American troops now stationed in Iraq, could have easily stopped the killings without risk and sent the powerful message that the world would no longer tolerate mass murders of civilians, a real expression of the phrase "Never Again." But this simple act was deemed, then and now, to be somehow beyond the power of the United Nations, the United States, NATO, the European community and everybody else with the real power to stop another holocaust.
There are now about 7,000 soldiers from the African Union stationed in Sudan, which is mostly an exercise in public relations. They lack helicopters, jeeps and firepower. More importantly, they lack a sense of purpose. There are no clear rules of engagement and many of the soldiers appear more interested in collecting their per diem payments than inserting themselves between the government-backed Janjaweed militia and their victims in the farming villages. The African Union recently said it will stay into September, and a handover to the United Nations may take place at that point. By that time, the genocide will have lasted for three years with a likely half-million dead, or more.To be sure, part of the debate involves the fear of an Iraqi-style campaign of insurgence against any humanitarian or peacekeeping force deemed "too Western" by the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed thugs. But we should not let ourselves be cowed by these threats. Will we allow murderers to intimidate us away from doing the right thing and saving lives?
Historically, I am sorry to say, the answer has been "yes." When modern genocide has loomed, the United Nations has shown more concern for not offending the sovereignty of one of its member nations, even as monstrosities take place within its borders. Yet "national sovereignty" is often a euphemism for the pride of dictators. Darfur is just such a case. The world cannot afford this kind of appeasement any longer.
The real lesson here is that the United Nations is in need of not only reform but also a basic rethinking of its peacekeeping philosophy. World governments must agree that the extinction of a race is a crime worth stopping at any cost, and back up this sentiment with action. And the U.N. Security Council must create a tool that it has lacked for far too long--a small multinational "rapid response" force which can quickly airlift tanks, jeeps, helicopters and troops to spots where the evidence of genocide is overwhelming.Such a force would not require endless dickering, delicacy and will-testing; it should be made up of no more than 10,000 troops and deployed only in extreme situations, because its real power is not in its gun barrels--it is in the message to genocidal regimes that the world will refuse to overlook atrocities. This would have stopped the Rwanda tragedy from happening, probably without a shot being fired. It could now stop Darfur from getting worse, with similar ease.
History offers us another lesson about genocides: The apologies, recriminations and resolutions of Never Again usually begin after the genocide is safely finished and it becomes safe once more to mourn the lack of action. That should not happen this time. The proposed extinction of an entire race should now be considered an override clause to the rule of national sovereignty. Rwanda is over and everybody mourns it comfortably. We ought not to wait until Darfur is over to start saying Never Again yet again.
Mr. Rusesabagina is the author, with Tom Zoellner, of "An Ordinary Man," published this week by Viking. The film "Hotel Rwanda," was based on his personal story as a hotel manager who saved the lives of numerous Tutsis by offering them refuge in the Hotel Milles Collines in Kigali, Rwanda. A recipient of the National Civil Rights Museum's 2005 Freedom Award, he lives in Brussels.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
Iraqi economic news
. . . is guardedly optimistic.
I've reprinted the article (originally published at The American Spectator, and re-published at OpinionJournal) in the extended entry.
Bullish on Baghdad
The Iraqi economy shows signs of strength.
BY ROBERT T. MCLEAN
Tuesday, April 11, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
A key to success in Iraq will be the ability of the Iraqi people and coalition members to transform the country's economy from a state of ruin to a model for prosperity in the Middle East. Iraqis with jobs and opportunities are less likely to join or sympathize with terrorist and insurgent efforts, focusing more of their energies on improving their individual situation than on political developments that could be interpreted as a danger to their sect. This outcome parallels one of the Bush administration's original goals of the invasion in establishing a bridgehead for reform in the Middle East, while reducing the potential of a drawn out and costly American presence in Iraq. Thus, while the vast majority of attention has been placed on the political violence plaguing Iraq, the economic development of the country deserves additional scrutiny and provides reason for guarded optimism.
As the Iraq campaign continues to be labeled a disaster by political opponents of the Bush administration at home, by those suspicious of the United States abroad, and increasingly by conservatives who call themselves realists yet have no realistic plan for Iraq, positive indicators about the Iraqi economy are not too hard to find. Though the economy expanded by an unimpressive 2.6% in real terms in 2005, that figure is scheduled to reach over 10% this year, as reported by the International Monetary Fund. Dawn Liberi, director of the U.S. Agency for International Development in Iraq, noted in February that per capita income has increased from $500 at the time of the invasion in 2003 to $1,500 today.
Despite the charge by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies that American efforts to improve the devastated Iraqi economy "have largely been a wasteful, and highly ideological and bureaucratic failure," more than 30,000 new businesses have been registered with USAID in the past seven months alone. While the bureaucracy undoubtedly has been responsible for waste and inefficiency--not something uncommon with these types of establishments--ideological efforts to introduce conservative principles into the Iraqi economy seem as little cause for alarm.
In 2004 a modest 5% national tariff rate was imposed to help fund reconstruction costs. A flat corporate tax rate of 15% was applied by the Coalition Provisional Authority and foreign investment restrictions were extremely limited, with the exclusion of national resources such as the country's oil fields. After years of sanctions and isolation--with the exception of Saddam Hussein's corrupt enterprises--the above noted efforts have been relatively successful in opening up the nation's economy.
As Niall Ferguson persuasively advanced in his work "Colossus: The Price of America's Empire": "It has been convincingly shown that one of the principal reasons for widening international inequality in the 1970s and 1980s was in fact protectionism in less developed countries." Citing a 1995 publication by the Brookings Institution, Mr. Ferguson supports the claim by illustrating that when the per capita GDPs of developing countries were contrasted, it was discovered that "closed" economies grew at an annual rate of only 0.7% while "open" countries expanded by a healthy 4.5%. The Bush administration, therefore, has not merely steered the Iraqi economy in a direction of a liberal market economy based on ideology, but has done so under a historical precedent of success.
Historical precedents are also relevant in examining how to establish long-term stability and productivity. An influential piece by Stanley Kurtz titled "Democratic Imperialism: A Blueprint" that appeared in Policy Review in April 2003 predicted a protracted but ultimately beneficial occupation of Iraq. The paradigm, according to Mr. Kurtz, was to follow the lessons of the British imperial experience in India. Of principle importance to establishing a peaceful, democratic, and prosperous nation is the development of a sound education system.
Although coming well short of suggesting a similar dawdling reform process, Mr. Kurtz professes that "the educational policies set up by liberal British administrators 100 years before independence had laid the foundation for democratic self-rule in India." Whereas the British sought to hold on to their colonial possession throughout much of their rule of India, the United States wants nothing more than to return home. Thus, the success in the construction of schools, the training of more than 36,000 teachers, and the provision of nearly nine million textbooks should prove to be a valuable investment for the political and economic future of Iraq.
Of the most disingenuous, or simply ignorant, charges that were leveled prior to, during and following the spring 2003 invasion of Iraq was that the war was conceived to rob the Iraqis of their oil reserves. This imprudent accusation has largely disappeared because few have the audaciousness to carry on this conspiratorial paranoia. However, the administration's reluctance to become thoroughly engaged in the Iraqi oil industry--a result of domestic and foreign critics--has made things unnecessarily difficult for the Washington and Baghdad alike. Put simply, the Bush administration needs to focus more on Iraq's oil.One of the first actions taken by the United States following the ouster of Saddam Hussein was the nearly immediate transfer of sovereignty of Iraq's oil industry back to the people of Iraq. Even after handing the key to nation's wealth back to Iraqis, the United States has sought little influence in oil policy-making decisions. When asked by the Baghdad based daily Al-Adalah about American and British interference in the Iraqi oil industry, former oil minister Dr. Thamir al-Ghadban responded:
No doubt the U.S., British and other forces are here in Iraq. This is an accomplished fact and known to everybody. But throughout my experience after the fall of the regime until I left the ministry I can affirm that no person or side tried to influence on the approach that we adopted in the oil policy. Where is the influence?Attacks on oil pipelines have made deliveries north to Turkey virtually unattainable, limiting Iraq's near-term export potential. Additionally, the lack of investment from Saddam Hussein's regime left the technology and infrastructure of the country's oil industry in desperate need of modernization. The goal articulated by the Bureau of International Information Programs of the U.S. State Department is for Iraqis to expand production to more than five million barrels a day from the 2.1 million that is currently extracted from the country's vast reserves. A dedicated commitment through investment and technological assistance from the United States is necessary to help the Iraqi government generate revenue and decrease dependence on American assistance. This is entirely achievable, and as attacks on pipelines decrease, the oil industry will become a boon to an increasingly diverse Iraqi economy.As with the oil industry, other significant problems needlessly obstruct potential economic growth. As noted by Rashid Ashraf of the Financial Times: "More than half of the families in Iraq still receive a monthly food parcel of basic supplies. This legacy of the oil-for-food programme in the long years of sanctions is expensive, and distorts the market." Socialist prescriptions such as these were necessary under the sanctions regime to keep millions of Iraqis from starving, but are no longer appropriate. As the economy continues to advance, free market principles will rightfully continue to be encouraged by the United States as a means to facilitate those gains.
The new Iraqi dinar, the official currency introduced in July 2003, has become a stable and unifying presence in the economy of Iraq. The banking sector is emerging as a powerful economic staple now that the Baathists no longer corrupt and distort the system. A similar development has occurred with the 2004 introduction of the Iraq Stock Exchange, as it too is free from the corruption that beleaguered the Hussein-era Baghdad Stock Exchange. About 90 stocks are listed, and market capitalization grew from $1.15 billion at the end of 2004 to $2.14 billion at the same time last year. However, fear of foreign domination of the market has kept it closed to international investors. An Iraqi investor noted to Agence France-Presse late last February that the best way to increase the capital flowing into the Iraq Stock Exchange is to "open the market to foreign investors and get money into the market." This will happen over time.
Some foreigners, however, are already bullish on Iraq. In fact, United States and other coalition forces serving in Iraq are betting on an economically successful future for Baghdad. Many American troops are putting their money into purchasing the new national currency in hopes that a secure and prosperous Iraq will emerge. The fact that they are already not paid enough for the work that they do and that they are using their hard-earned paychecks and intimate knowledge of the Iraqi environment to purchase a share of Iraq's future speaks volumes about the potential for a forthcoming significant economic expansion in Iraq. Perhaps the not-too-distant future will teach the impatient that, with time, large returns can come from a substantial investment.
Mr. McLean is a research associate at the Center for Security Policy in Washington. This article appeared on the Web site of The American Spectator.
April 07, 2006
Saddam's court strategy
Ed Morrissey, who blogs at Captain's Quarters, has an op-ed at the Weekly Standard about Saddam Hussein's attempts to manipulate his trial. And how the American media seems to be fervently cooperating:
Saddam has played his hand well, but he has one advantage that Goering never had--an American media so poorly managed that it easily lends itself to this kind of manipulation. The trial has shown detailed evidence and produced compelling testimony to support the charges against Saddam--Saddam even admitted that he had ordered the executions of 148 residents of Dujail, though only ABC thought this worthy of complete coverage. That confession received only eighteen seconds of coverage at CBS, though that still managed to more than double NBC's paltry 7 seconds.
Eye-opening reading, for sure. Recommended.
More good news from Iraq
Bill Crawford, over at NRO has published his column of good news from Iraq.
Recommended.
April 06, 2006
An honest peek inside Iraq
US CENTCOM has a story up at their website about an interview with the Deputy Commander of reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Here's an excerpt:
In nearing the close, [Army Corps of Engineers Deputy Commander for Reconstruction in Iraq Kathye] Johnson said, “Freedom of the press and the opportunity to debate are wonderful democratic institutions. But in like manner so should be open and balanced discussion. All too often only the negative stories are being told by the â€popular press’.” The two seemed to concur that the US and world public have the right to hear and learn – in the words of Paul Harvey - “the rest of the story.”
The whole story is in the extended entry.
[Hat tip to Betsy Newmark at Betsy's Page.]
Laura Ingraham Supportive of Hard Work in IraqBy Tom Clarkson
Gulf Region Division
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers“According to MSNBC “Hardball” commentator Chris Mathews, reconstruction in Iraq is a non-story.”
With that somewhat startling opening, by well known, national talk show host Laura Ingraham, commenced a lively, half hour, telephonic, on-air, discussion with US Army Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region Division (USACE-GRD) Deputy Commander for Reconstruction Kathye Johnson.
“Firstly, I’m wholly dumbfounded by such a statement,” said Johnson. “Maybe we should go back to basics here. Let me try to explain the three major pillars of the work being done by coalition forces in striving to help Iraq recover from three decades of infrastructure denigration and capacity degradation. These â€gotta’ haves’ are: security, economic development and effective self governance.”
As regards the first, she went on to describe, “We obviously continue to assist the Iraqis what with the ongoing insurgency and criminal activities. However, every day we’re seeing more and more â€capacity development’ in action. As a result, we are able to, increasingly, turn over these responsibilities to Iraqi Security and police forces as they become properly trained. But we must work with them in this transition and not allow forced and fast timetables, expecting too much too fast, to be forced upon this effort.”
In the economic development arena there are many international participants in the building of Iraq. Johnson pointed out the importance of remembering that while $21 billion of coalition and Iraqi dollars have been, or are being, effectively used, that this is only a “jump start.” She reminded her host and her listenership of the fact that the World Bank had stated that it would take over $70 billion to “help this country crawl for the morass it had fallen into under Saddam’s despotic dictatorship.”
“Governance, of course, is now fully in the hands of Iraqis,” she pointed out emphasizing that “they’re working hard and fast to create an effective, efficient one. This is no easy chore. Look at our own and how long it’s taken to get where we are today!”
The fast paced dialog of two women of similar decisive, dynamic temperament and intellect evolved to global stability about which Johnson stated the obvious, “We don’t live in an isolated world anymore.” With that comment she went on to describe how a functioning economy is being stabilized, in part, through the employment of 150,000 Iraqis who, as she stated, “Well understand the frightening alternative having lived under such for nearly thirty oppressive years.”
“In fact,” she observed, “very few anywhere in the world had any idea how terribly deteriorated the entire infrastructure of this country had become under Saddam. For example, the country’s oil refinery equipment, for the most part, is over thirty years old. Refineries are working at barely 30% efficiency as a result of such old, worn out equipment.
Both women expressed keen awareness of the fact that, by and large, the preponderance of the Iraqis are extremely supportive and appreciative of our country’s efforts. During their respective tours to project sites, each had regularly observed and experienced the beaming smiles, thumbs up gestures and sincere handshakes from scores of Iraqis of all ages thanking the US for all that is being done in our partnering with them.
In nearing the close, Johnson said, “Freedom of the press and the opportunity to debate are wonderful democratic institutions. But in like manner so should be open and balanced discussion. All too often only the negative stories are being told by the â€popular press’.” The two seemed to concur that the US and world public have the right to hear and learn – in the words of Paul Harvey - “the rest of the story.”
In her final remarks, Ingraham shared some of her emotion evoking experiences during her recent visit to Iraq and concurred with the earlier comments regarding the “main stream media” covering primarily only that which is negative.
On behalf of all of the Military and Civilians who serve with USACE-GRD, Johnson thanked Ingraham for taking time to visit several of the Iraq Reconstruction projects and invited her to return whenever she was able.
Iraqi resolve
Reuel Gerecht, of the American Enterprise Institute raises some questions about the ability of Iraq to forge a successful democracy. Though I do not agree with everything he says, and I would dispute some of what he presents as facts, he raises some interesting points.
I've reprinted the article in the extended entry.
Can the Shiite Center Hold?
The unanticipated consequences of "Iraqification."
BY REUEL MARC GERECHT
Monday, April 3, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTThe Shiites of Iraq who want representative government, and who look to the resolutely moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani for religious and political guidance, have endured Baathists, Sunni supremacists and holy warriors. They have seen the shrine of Samarra--the most purely Shiite shrine in the country, which has been for ages the responsibility of Sunnis to protect--horribly scarred. If the Shiite center collapses--if radicals like Muqtada al Sadr and some within the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) and the Dawa Party can depict themselves as more effective guardians of the faithful--then massive internecine violence, Kurdish secession and a Shiite dictatorship seem likely.
Contrary to what so many in the Bush administration hoped, Iraq's salvation still rides with the two forces that few had foreseen: the religious Shiites, who recognize Ayatollah Sistani as moral guide, not the secularists in whom U.S. officials placed such store; and the U.S. military, which remains the only effective counterinsurgency force capable of diminishing sectarian strife and staunching Sunni-led violence. Together, they can corner the militants in their midst; if either falters, Iraq will probably descend into hell.
Contrary to what the former U.S.-appointed Prime Minister Ayad Allawi recently asserted, Iraq isn't yet in a civil war if one uses that term to describe an irreversibly cataclysmic struggle. Just make a comparison to Algeria in the early 1990s, where failed, arid, brutal secularism and savage Islamic radicalism ripped the country apart, leaving entire neighborhoods and villages slaughtered. It shouldn't be too hard to see that things in Iraq--the only country in the Middle East whose violent past can rival Algeria's--could become much worse. After the bombing at Samarra, the U.S. military and the Iraqi army, which didn't fall apart, practically shut down the country to ensure raw emotions didn't flash into massive bloodletting. In Algeria, during its most violent civil-war years, the military, using indescribably brutal tactics, wasn't able to bring comparable quiet to the land. Nevertheless the attack in Samarra and Shiite counterattacks against Sunni mosques, social and political organizations, and clerics have significantly embittered politics and faith. Though the Bush administration hates to admit it, daily life in Baghdad has become worse. For those politically active, life is more dangerous now than ever. It is irrelevant whether small businesses, imports, and school and hospital construction are doing better if Iraq's political and intellectual classes (not to mention foreigners who are trying to help them) cannot walk out of their homes unguarded.
If Baghdad remains a killing zone, where Iraq's leaders can safely gather only under U.S. protection, then the prognosis for the Iraqi national identity, which has always had Baghdad at its center, is poor. Lasting political compromises will probably be impossible if the increasingly vicious sectarian strife in Baghdad and its environs intensifies. Within a year, at most two, Iraq could become Algeria.
Though declining, the odds remain decent that Iraqis will do their part to stop the descent. On the Shiite side--and the Shiites will either make or break the Iraqi democratic experiment--no party, not even the firebrand Muqtada al Sadr, has advanced a nondemocratic political ideal. Though one can certainly find Iraqi Shiites who admire an Iranian-style theocracy, they have been philosophically crippled in their own country since no prominent Iraqi cleric has come forward to challenge Ayatollah Sistani and the other senior ulema, who have rejected clerical rule in favor of democracy. Though Washington and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad are awash with those who fear the nefarious hand of Tehran in Iraq--and Iran's clerical elite and their fervid praetorians, like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, certainly intend us great harm--Tehran has relatively few loud political defenders among the Arabs of Mesopotamia. Prominent Shiite Iraqi exiles who've become political players in Baghdad do owe Iran their lives--Tehran saved thousands from certain death under Saddam--and many more are now surely benefiting from the Iran's clandestine largesse. Regions of southern Iraq appear to be increasingly under the sway of Tehran. Iran will try to prevent the birth of functioning democracy backed by senior Iraqi clerics who don't recognize the legitimacy of theocracy.Yet no Iraqi Shiite can expect to have a political future--indeed, expect to stay alive--with the rallying cry of "Shiites Unite! Join the Persians!" Saddam Hussein was not the only thing driving Iraqi Shiites to kill Iranian Shiites in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Iraqi nationalism and an organic, nonideological Arabism is alive among them and will provide stiff resistance to any Iranian effort to direct its Shiite "allies" in Iraq. Hence, in part, Muqtada al Sadr's criticism of Sciri's recent efforts to facilitate U.S.-Iranian talks about Iraq. Sadr and his men, who often deride Ayatollah Sistani's Iranian birth, can be ferocious Arab Iraqi nationalists and diehard Islamic militants. That the Bush administration would welcome Sciri-backed Iranian-U.S. talks in Baghdad is bizarre: We should want to underscore and oppose all of Sciri's Iranian flirtations.
We can certainly expect to see Iraqi Shiites cut short-term deals with Iran--the crushing poverty in many Shiite regions of Iraq will guarantee the cash-laden Iranians influence. But it is fear of the Sunni insurgency and holy warriors that gives Iran real traction in Iraqi society. If the insurgency abates, the Iraqi army becomes more powerful, or Iraqi Shiite militias become bolder (and they certainly appear to be more effective in striking Sunnis even in well-armed, solidly Sunni neighborhoods), Iran's influence will wane. Though definitely weakened by the constant savage Sunni attacks against the Shiites, which make Shiite clerics counseling forbearance look somewhat unworldly, Ayatollah Sistani still holds sufficient sway to guarantee that negotiations among the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds continue. Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of Sciri, the dominant Shiite political party, is well aware that if Ayatollah Sistani were publicly to signal dismay with his actions, his political power would shrink considerably, probably even jeopardizing Sciri's existence. It is Sciri's clerical connections--the Hakim family is among the most prominent, and in the holy city of Najaf, among the most moderate, of Iraq's influential clerical families--that give it real strength.
Washington currently has no Shiite "partner" in Iraq. In all probability, it will not find one. Stained by reports of corruption in his interim government, Ayad Allawi may well be finished as a significant political player. And his antireligious, "pro-Sunni" secular disposition doomed him long ago among most Shiites. Though still seen as the brightest politician, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi was annihilated in the parliamentary elections. The current prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, a leader of the Dawa Party, is too politically inept and his party's alliance with Sadr is likely to grow stronger. (On a grassroots level, Dawa is easily as radical as Sadr's Mahdi Army.) Which leaves Adil Abd al-Mahdi of Sciri, probably the only major player in Sciri with whom the Americans culturally feel comfortable. (Though sincerely religious, Mahdi is highly Westernized and lay, free of the evasive speech of Shiite clerics.) But Mahdi isn't Sciri.
Shiite-U.S. relations will likely get worse. The Iraqi conspiratorial reflex--powerfully on display in the recent "mosque shooting" of Sadr's followers (U.S. soldiers supposedly oversaw the execution of Shiite worshippers in a Baghdad mosque)--is now aggressively working against the U.S. American efforts to incorporate Sunnis into a "national unity" government often appear to Shiites as antidemocratic coercion to reward Sunnis who have rarely condemned the insurgency. Yet for most Shiites, Americans are still seen as indispensable, even if it is difficult for them, and especially their religious leaders, to associate with Americans in a publicly grateful and cooperative way.
Americans aside, the attack in Samarra didn't blow apart the democratic Shiite consensus led by Ayatollah Sistani. The various, often mutually hostile, Shiite parties, are likely to plow ahead, however fitfully, to some political deal with the Sunnis and the Kurds, who both now know that the Shiites will no longer passively watch their women and children slaughtered and their holy sites desecrated. Sunni and Kurdish fear of Shiite power--a fickle but growing alliance between Sunni Arabs and Kurds was inevitable--is politically overdue and healthy for all concerned. This is a tightrope act, but the Sunni Arabs must internalize the fact that they cannot leverage the insurgency into power. If they continue to try, they will only convert Shiite "sheep" (the traditional Arab Sunni view of Arab Shiites) into rampant "lions," unstoppable by even the most revered, peace-promoting divines.
And what is most likely to curtail the violence is the U.S. military--not political dialogue among the Sunni and Shiite Arabs and Kurds. Dialogue is important--the all-critical, viscerally anti-U.S. and seriously anti-Shiite Sunni Clerics Association is slowly moving toward reconciliation with a Shiite-led Iraq. But only the U.S. military has the capacity, as recently shown in Tal Afar and brilliantly reported by The New Republic's Lawrence Kaplan, to secure territory against insurgents and holy warriors. The successful operation in Tal Afar is a blatant negation of Gen. John Abizaid's "light footprint" strategy that views large numbers of U.S. soldiers as part of the problem, not the overwhelming part of a counterinsurgency solution. The current approach to counterinsurgency--transfer responsibility to the Iraqis as quickly as possible--will seriously stress Iraq's ethnic and religious divisions, perhaps to the breaking point. Do we really want Shiite and Kurdish soldiers taking the lead in killing Sunnis? Unless heavily monitored by Americans for the foreseeable future, these soldiers could well utilize Algerian-style tactics against the Sunni Arabs. It is astonishing that Shiites have not unleashed more vengeance against their former Sunni Baathist masters and current Sunni tormentors.
It is no coincidence that Shiite militias have grown more powerful and more aggressive as U.S. forces have increasingly adopted an Iraqi-centered strategy. Such an approach will not, anytime soon, curtail Sunni attacks. Counterinsurgency warfare is the last thing you'd expect a newly minted army to undertake. Shiite militias, incorporated within the government and outside it, will not be inclined to stand down: They will react even more harshly to continuing attacks on their community. The Iraqification program has actually started to fuel the very violence that Iraqification in theory was supposed to stop. This gradual, perhaps rapid, U.S. withdrawal could well unhinge the Shiite community, giving victory to the militant minority.
We are now in the unenviable position of having to confront radicalized, murderous Shiite militias, who have gained broader Shiite support because of the Sunni-led violence and the lameness of U.S. counterinsurgency operations. The Bush administration would be wise not to postpone any longer what it should have already undertaken--securing Baghdad. This will be an enormously difficult task: Both Sunnis and Shiites will have to be confronted, but Sunni insurgents and brigands must be dealt with first to ensure America doesn't lose the Shiite majority and the government doesn't completely fall apart. Pacifying Baghdad will be politically convulsive and provide horrific film footage and skyrocketing body counts. But Iraq cannot heal itself so long as Baghdad remains a deadly place. And the U.S. media will never write many optimistic stories about Iraq if journalists fear going outside. To punt this undertaking down the road when the political dynamics might be better, and when the number of American soldiers in Iraq will surely be less, perhaps a lot less, is to invite disaster.The Iraqis and the Americans will either save or damn Iraq in the coming months. Quite contrary to the purblind charges of Michigan's Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, the Iraqis really are doing their part--better than what anyone historically could have expected. The real question is, will Gen. Abizaid and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld do theirs?
Mr. Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
April 05, 2006
Saddam's terror ties
With the release of pre-liberation Iraqi documents, more and more evidence is turning up that Saddam was nurturing relationships with terrorists and dabbling in WMDs. Author Laurie Mylroie published a summative article about some initial documentation indicative of this activity on OpinionJournal this past Sunday.
I've reprinted the entire article in the extended entry below. Recommended reading.
The Paper Trail
Newly released documents provide more evidence of Saddam's terror ties.
BY LAURIE MYLROIE
Sunday, April 2, 2006 12:01 a.m. ESTAfter substantial prodding--including from The Wall Street Journal--the U.S. government has finally begun to release its captured Iraqi documents and is posting them at the Web site of the Army's Foreign Military Studies Office. This material will take considerable time to absorb and analyze, but it may yet contribute significantly to our understanding of the nature of the threat Saddam Hussein posed.
Most dramatically, an Iraqi intelligence report, apparently written in early 1997, describes Iraqi efforts to establish ties with various elements in the Saudi opposition, including Osama bin Laden. Until 1996, the Saudi renegade was based in Sudan, then ruled by Hassan Turabi's National Islamic Front. One of Iraq's few allies, Sudan served as an intermediary between Baghdad and bin Laden, as well as other Islamic radicals. On Feb. 19, 1995, an Iraqi intelligence agent met with bin Laden in Khartoum. Bin Laden asked for two things: to carry out joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia and to broadcast the speeches of a radical Saudi cleric. Iraq agreed to the latter, but apparently not the former, at least as far as the author of this report knew. Notably, the report also states, "We are working at the present time to activate this relationship through new channels."
This one report hints at the extensive international presence that the Iraqi Intelligence Service maintained. Iraq's ambassadors to Sudan and Yemen were intelligence agents, suggesting that those two countries were major centers of IIS activity. The report also mentions IIS stations in Islamabad, New Delhi and New York.
Another newly released document bears the name of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It is a flier from the "Committee for Arab Liaison with the Islamic Emirate" (i.e., Afghanistan) for recruiting volunteers in Iraq to fight in Afghanistan. It explains that the "Arab brothers" who wish to go there should send a written proposal "so that we can know him and his needs." Zarqawi is among six people listed as individuals to contact.
How close were relations between Iraq and the Taliban, a regime officially recognized by only three countries? The answer is necessary for understanding the nature of any ties Iraq may have had with al Qaeda or other Afghan-based Islamic groups. Hopefully, other documents will emerge to shed light on this question.
The formal cease-fire to the 1991 Gulf War required Iraq to recognize Kuwait and release the Kuwaiti hostages it had seized. Iraq did neither. On Marc 4, 2003, with war looming, Saddam's son Qusay ordered 448 Kuwaiti prisoners taken to sites the United States would likely attack. Nothing of their fate has been reported, and they might well have died. Iraq formally recognized Kuwait in 1994, but the official stationery of the Fedayeen Saddam in 2001 shows a map of Iraq that includes the state.
Other documents from this database were leaked some time ago. Perhaps because their provenance was not understood, these 30 pages did not receive the attention they merited. Particularly notable is an order issued by Saddam on Jan. 18, 1993: "Hunt Americans on Arab territory, particularly in Somalia."Most of these documents deal with terrorism and date from January to May 1993. They suggest that in early 1993, Saddam began to move actively to revive terrorist programs that had been established three years before, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Responding to a request from Saddam, Iraqi intelligence produced a six-page report, listing the names and nationalities of 100 Arab "martyrs" whom it had trained in the fall of 1990.
Another report explains that the IIS had reached an agreement with the deputy head of Sudan's ruling National Islamic Front "to use the Islamic Arab elements that had been fighting in Afghanistan and now have no place to go and who are physically present in Sudan, Somalia and Egypt." The IIS also agreed with Khartoum to renew its relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad--headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, familiar as al Qaeda's most prominent contemporary spokesman.
Still another report describes Iraq's earlier agreement with Islamic Jihad, concluded on Dec. 24, 1990, as the start of the Gulf War loomed. Iraq was to provide training, financing and supplies to the organization "to execute martyr operations" against the members of the U.S.-led coalition, of which Egypt was a key Arab member. However, as this document explains, those operations stopped immediately after the cease-fire.
In 1993, Iraq was cautious about backing Egyptian terrorists, more so than the Sudanese. When Khartoum informed Baghdad that it was sending an Islamic Jihad leader, who had been based in Afghanistan and then lived in Sudan, to Iraq on a Sudanese plane carrying meat (this exemption from the general ban on flights to Iraq was granted by the U.N. Security Council), the IIS asked that the visit be postponed. Sudan insisted, and the IIS approved on condition the visit be kept secret. Subsequently, the IIS recommended that assistance to the Egyptian group be limited to financial support.
Two documents relate to Iraq's proscribed WMD programs. One is a table, providing details of a Sept. 6, 2000, contract for the production of "the malignant pustule"--the Pentagon official who leaked these documents believed it referred to anthrax--along with earlier contracts for sterilization and decontamination equipment. Another table describes an Aug. 21, 2000, contract for the production of mustard gas and earlier contracts for protective equipment. Small amounts of material are mentioned: three ampules of "the malignant pustule" (an ampule is a small, sealed glass vial) and five kilograms of mustard gas. These contracts could have represented test runs, or, as a former U.N. weapons inspector suggested to me, the material could have been intended for terrorism.Many more documents are to be released in the coming months. Quite possibly, they will vindicate the decision to undertake the Iraq war; help maintain public support for fighting it; and radically change our understanding of Saddam's role in international terrorism.
Ms. Mylroie is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War Against America" (AEI, 2001).
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
Trends vs. headlines
Also known as reality vs. histrionics.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry, below.
April 2, 2006: What you see in the Iraq news, is not what you get. The news business demands startling headlines, to attract eyeballs. It's business, as the eyeballs are rented to advertisers to pay for it all. But the reality of the news is less startling, and consists of trends. These are the current trends in Iraq.After three years, the Sunni Arabs, who long dominated Iraq, most recently under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, are giving up. It took so long because of a quirk in Arab culture, one that encourages the support of lost causes. The term "cut your losses and move on" is not as popular in the Arab world as it is in the West. But even the slow learners in the Sunni Arab community had to finally confront some unfavorable trends. Chief among these was;
The Kurds and Shia Arabs have formed a national police force and army that is far more powerful than anything the Sunni Arab community can muster. Over the last year, Sunni Arabs realized that the police and army were in control of more and more Sunni Arab towns. This was a trend that could not be ignored. Added to that was the number of Kurds and Shia Arabs who had lost kin to Sunni Arab terror over the last three decades. Many of these people want revenge, and they all have guns. Many, especially those that belong to the police, or militias, are taking their revenge. The Sunni Arabs want protection, for they cannot muster enough guns to defend themselves. Now the Sunni Arabs want the Americans to stay, at least until there's some assurance that the Kurd and Shia Arab vengeance attacks have died down.
The alliance with al Qaeda was a disaster. These Islamic terrorists were obsessed with causing a civil war in Iraq, and they insisted on doing this by killing lots of Shia Arabs. The Sunni Arabs didn't want to kill lots of Shia Arabs, they wanted to rule them all once more. But that raised another contentious issue. While some Sunni Arabs were in favor of an Islam Republic, which al Qaeda insisted on, most Sunni Arabs wanted a more secular Sunni Arab dominated government. This dispute was never resolved, as the split between al Qaeda and the Sunni Arab community widened. At the moment, al Qaeda is not welcome in most Sunni Arab areas. That's "come near this place and we'll kill you" not welcome. This after al Qaeda tried to terrorize the Sunni Arab tribal leaders into compliance. Killing Sunni Arab tribal chiefs didn't work.
You can't kill enough Americans to scare them into leaving. Saddam, and most Iraqis, were convinced that, because of Vietnam (where 55,000 American died) and Somalia (where 18 died in 1993), the United States would withdraw if you killed enough of them. While that is sometimes true, it's good to remember that over a million Vietnamese died during the 1960s, and that 1993 battle in Mogadishu left over 500 Somalis dead as well. Moreover, this, "the Americans have no stomach for a fight" is nothing new. It's why Japan attacked in 1941, believing that if they beat up the Americans bad enough, the faint hearted Yankees would just go away. Hitler also believed the Americans would not fight. After three years, the Iraqi Sunni Arabs have discovered that the Americans can certainly fight, and the Yankees have also found ways to do it that involve extraordinarily low American casualties. This story has not really gotten the attention it deserves, but the Sunni Arabs have noticed. They have noticed that if you attack the Americans, chances are you will die, and the Americans will just keep on keeping on. It used to be that the Sunni Arabs could take heart from the occasional attack where they killed a few Americans. But no longer. Everyone knows the trend, and doesn't want to be another victim of it. Last month 32 Americans were killed in combat. The last time it was that low was in February 2004. Back then, the Sunni Arab tribes and al Qaeda had joined forces. Both of them had plenty of weapons, money and volunteers. Two years of bad trends have changed everything. The trend was that the Americans were much better at killing Sunni Arabs than Sunni Arabs were at killing Americans.
The economy continues to improve, except for those Sunni Arab areas where terrorists and gangsters are still out of control. Here's where it's all about money. Before Saddam fell, the Sunni Arabs had most of it. Since then, they have much, much less. The Sunni Arabs have been obsessed with getting their "fair share" of the oil money. When Saddam was in charge, the Sunni Arabs (who are 20 percent of the population), got over 80 percent of the oil money. Now they see themselves lucky to get 20 percent. Worse, all the oil is in areas dominated by Kurds and Shia Arabs. In response to this, the Sunni Arabs have continually attacked the pipelines that cross Sunni Arab territory. When paid to help guard the pipelines, some of the Sunni Arab chiefs just stole the money, and let the pipelines get attacked. The Sunni Arab attitude is one of, "if we can't have it, no one can." But now the Sunni Arabs have noted that much of the country is getting wealthier even without the oil. The Sunni Arabs have been living off oil for so long that they forgot there are other ways to make a living. The economic trends have been noted by the Sunni Arabs, and there is more willingness to do what needs to be done to bring some prosperity to the Sunni Arab areas.
Finally, there's the most important trend of all. How successful have Iraqis been in creating a civil society. This doesn't get much media play either, yet it is the ultimate goal in Iraq. A civil society is one that can run its own affairs without the constant threat of civil war or dictatorship. We take civil society for granted in the West, but in the rest of the world, it is more notable by its absence. American and British diplomats have been hammering away at the Iraqis for three years about how important honest government it. Many Iraqis agree. Yet the corruption continues, and three months after national elections, the various parties cannot agree on who will get what, and there is no government. That's because the lack of a civil society has the various ethnic, religious and tribal factions warily haggling over who gets what. There is not much trust, and the stealing goes on. Iraq's fate will ultimately be decided by how many honest politicians it has, not how many cops are on the street or what Iraq's neighbors think or do.
-- StrategyPage
Quite a bit different than the headlines, eh?
April 04, 2006
History repeats
A post on the Photon Courier blog is very pertinent to current events.
[Hat tip to Little Miss Attila.]
March 24, 2006
The consequences of defeat
An op-ed at OpinionJournal discusses what happens if we lose in Iraq.
First of all, we are not now losing:
More fundamentally, the coalition remains solidly allied with the majority of Iraqis who want neither Saddam's Hussein's return nor the country's descent into a Taliban-like hellhole. There is no widespread agitation for U.S. troops to depart, and if anything the Iraqi fear is that we'll leave too soon.
I've seen too many first hand accounts and cogent analyses of the progress being made there to think otherwise. The column, however, is about what happens if we Americans lose our resolve and leave Iraq prematurely.
I've reprinted the whole article in the extended entry.
What if We Lose?
The consequences of U.S. defeat in Iraq.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006 12:01 a.m. ESTThe third anniversary of U.S. military action to liberate Iraq has brought with it a relentless stream of media and political pessimism that is unwarranted by the facts and threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophesy if it goes unchallenged.
Yes, sectarian tensions are running high and the politicians of Iraq's newly elected parliament are taking a long time forming a government. But the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra several weeks back has not provoked the spiral into "civil war" that so many keep predicting. U.S. casualties are down over the past month, in part because Iraqi security forces are performing better all the time.
More fundamentally, the coalition remains solidly allied with the majority of Iraqis who want neither Saddam's Hussein's return nor the country's descent into a Taliban-like hellhole. There is no widespread agitation for U.S. troops to depart, and if anything the Iraqi fear is that we'll leave too soon.
Yet there's no denying the polls showing that most Americans are increasingly weary of the daily news of car bombs and Iraqi squabbling and are wishing it would all just go away. Their pessimism is fed by elites who should know better but can't restrain their domestic political calculations long enough to consider the damage that would accompany U.S. failure. A conventional military defeat is inconceivable in Iraq, but a premature U.S. withdrawal is becoming all too possible.
With that in mind, it's worth thinking through what would happen if the U.S. does fail in Iraq. By fail, we mean cut and run before giving Iraqis the time and support to establish a stable, democratic government that can stand on its own. Beyond almost certain chaos in Iraq, here are some other likely consequences:• The U.S. would lose all credibility on weapons proliferation. One doesn't have to be a dreamy-eyed optimist about democracy to recognize that toppling Saddam Hussein was a milestone in slowing the spread of WMD. Watching the Saddam example, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi decided he didn't want to be next. Gadhafi's "voluntary" disarmament in turn helped uncover the nuclear network run by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan and Iran's two decades of deception.
Now Iran is dangerously close to acquiring nuclear weapons, a prospect that might yet be headed off by the use or threat of force. But if the U.S. retreats from Iraq, Iran's mullahs will know that we have no stomach to confront them and coercive diplomacy will have no credibility. An Iranian bomb, in turn, would inspire nuclear efforts in other Mideast countries and around the world.
• Broader Mideast instability. No one should underestimate America's deterrent effect in that unstable region, a benefit that would vanish if we left Iraq precipitously. Iran would feel free to begin unfettered meddling in southern Iraq with the aim of helping young radicals like Moqtada al-Sadr overwhelm moderate clerics like the Grand Ayatollah Sistani.
Syria would feel free to return to its predations in Lebanon and to unleash Hezbollah on Israel. Even allies like Turkey might feel compelled to take unilateral, albeit counterproductive steps, such as intervening in northern Iraq to protect their interests. Every country in the Middle East would make its own new calculation of how much it could afford to support U.S. interests. Some would make their own private deals with al Qaeda, or at a minimum stop aiding us in our pursuit of Islamists.
• We would lose all credibility with Muslim reformers. The Mideast is now undergoing a political evolution in which the clear majority, even if skeptical of U.S. motives, agrees with the goal of more democracy and accountable government. They have watched as millions of Iraqis have literally risked their lives to vote and otherwise support the project. Having seen those Iraqis later betrayed, other would-be reformers would not gamble their futures on American support. Nothing could be worse in the battle for Muslim "hearts and minds" than to betray our most natural allies.
• We would invite more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Osama bin Laden said many times that he saw the weak U.S. response to Somalia and the Khobar Towers and USS Cole bombings as evidence that we lacked the will for a long fight. The forceful response after 9/11 taught al Qaeda otherwise, but a retreat in Iraq would revive that reputation for American weakness. While Western liberals may deny any connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, bin Laden and the rest of the Arab world see it clearly and would advertise a U.S. withdrawal as his victory. Far from leaving us alone, bin Laden would be more emboldened to strike the U.S. homeland with a goal of driving the U.S. entirely out of the Mideast.
We could go on, but our point is that far more is at stake in Iraq than President Bush's approval rating or the influence of this or that foreign-policy faction. U.S. credibility and safety are at risk in the most direct way imaginable, far more than they were in Vietnam. In that fight, we could establish a new anti-Communist perimeter elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The poison of radical Islam will spread far and wide across borders if it can make even a plausible claim to being on the ascendancy, and nothing would show that more than the retreat of America from Iraq.
We still believe victory in Iraq is possible, indeed likely, notwithstanding its costs and difficulties. But the desire among so many of our political elites to repudiate Mr. Bush and his foreign policy is creating a dangerous public pessimism that could yet lead to defeat--a defeat whose price would be paid by all Americans, and for years to come.[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
The consequences of cutting and running from Iraq would be paid in blood and destruction and fear inflicted on our children, and most likely their children, as well.
Do you want to support that happening?
Neither do I.
March 23, 2006
Civil war
No, not in Iraq . . . in Gaza:
Eyewitnesses said most of those wounded in Monday's fighting in the Gaza Strip were policemen who tried to prevent Fatah gunmen from taking over government buildings and security installations. The two sides exchanged gunfire for several hours in scenes that many Palestinians said were reminiscent of the civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s.
Press on in Iraq
Christopher Hitchins has a good column up at OpinionJournal about Iraq being the most important battlefield in our struggle against islamofascist organizations like al-Qaeda.
I've reprinted the entire article in the extended entry.
The Stone Face of Zarqawi
Iraq is no "distraction" from al Qaeda.
BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Tuesday, March 21, 2006 12:01 a.m. ESTIn February 2004, our Kurdish comrades in northern Iraq intercepted a courier who was bearing a long message from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to his religious guru Osama bin Laden. The letter contained a deranged analysis of the motives of the coalition intervention ("to create the State of Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates" and "accelerate the emergence of the Messiah"), but also a lethally ingenious scheme to combat it. After a lengthy and hate-filled diatribe against what he considers the vile heresy of Shiism, Zarqawi wrote of Iraq's largest confessional group that: "These in our opinion are the key to change. I mean that targeting and hitting them in their religious, political and military depth will provoke them to show the Sunnis their rabies . . . and bare the teeth of the hidden rancor working in their breasts. If we succeed in dragging them into the arena of sectarian war, it will become possible to awaken the inattentive Sunnis as they feel imminent danger."
Some of us wrote about this at the time, to warn of the sheer evil that was about to be unleashed. Knowing that their own position was a tenuous one (a fact fully admitted by Zarqawi in his report) the cadres of "al Qaeda in Mesopotamia" understood that their main chance was the deliberate stoking of a civil war. And, now that this threat has become more imminent and menacing, it is somehow blamed on the Bush administration. "Civil war" has replaced "the insurgency" as the proof that the war is "unwinnable." But in plain truth, the "civil war" is and always was the chief tactic of the "insurgency."
Since February 2004, there have been numberless attacks on Shiite religious processions and precincts. Somewhat more insulting to Islam (one might think) than a caricature in Copenhagen, these desecrations did not immediately produce the desired effect. Grand Ayatollah Sistani even stated that, if he himself fell victim, he forgave his murderers in advance and forbade retaliation in his name. This extraordinary forbearance meant that many Shiites--and Sunnis, too--refused to play Zarqawi's game. But the grim fact is, as we know from Cyprus and Bosnia and Lebanon and India, that a handful of determined psychopaths can erode in a year the sort of intercommunal fraternity that has taken centuries to evolve. If you keep pressing on the nerve of tribalism and sectarianism, you will eventually get a response. And then came the near-incredible barbarism in Samarra, and the laying waste of the golden dome.It is not merely civil strife that is partly innate in the very make-up of Iraq. There could be an even worse war, of the sort that Thomas Hobbes pictured: a "war of all against all" in which localized gangs and mafias would become rulers of their own stretch of turf. This is what happened in Lebanon after the American withdrawal: The distinctions between Maronite and Druze and Palestinian and Shiite became blurred by a descent into minor warlordism. In Iraq, things are even more fissile. Even the "insurgents" are fighting among themselves, with local elements taking aim at imported riffraff and vice-versa. Saddam's vicious tactic, of emptying the jails on the eve of the intervention and freeing his natural constituency of thugs and bandits and rapists, was exactly designed to exacerbate an already unstable situation and make the implicit case for one-man "law and order." There is strong disagreement among and between the Shiites and the Sunnis, and between them and the Kurds, only the latter having taken steps to resolve their own internal party and regional quarrels.
America's mistake in Lebanon was first to intervene in a way that placed us on one minority side--that of the Maronites and their Israeli patrons--and then to scuttle and give Hobbes his mandate for the next 10 years. At least it can be said for the present mission in Iraq that it proposes the only alternative to civil war, dictatorship, partition or some toxic combination of all three. Absent federal democracy and power-sharing, there will not just be anarchy and fragmentation and thus a moral victory for jihadism, but opportunist interventions from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. (That vortex, by the way, is what was waiting to engulf Iraq if the coalition had not intervened, and would have necessitated an intervention later but under even worse conditions.) There are signs that many Iraqi factions do appreciate the danger of this, even if some of them have come to the realization somewhat late. The willingness of the Kurdish leadership in particular, to sacrifice for a country that was gassing its people until quite recently, is beyond praise.
Everybody now has their own scenario for the war that should have been fought three years ago. The important revelations in "Cobra II," by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, about the underestimated reserve strength of the Fedayeen Saddam, give us an excellent picture of what the successor regime to the Baath Party was shaping up to be: an Islamized para-state militia ruling by means of vicious divide-and-rule as between the country's peoples. No responsible American government could possibly have allowed such a contingency to become more likely. We would then have had to intervene in a ruined rogue jihadist-hosting state that was already in a Beirut-like nightmare.I could not help noticing, when the secret prisons of the Shiite-run "Interior Ministry" were exposed a few weeks ago, that all those wishing to complain ran straight to the nearest American base, from which help was available. For the moment, the coalition forces act as the militia for the majority of Iraqis--the inked-fingered Iraqis--who have no militia of their own. Honorable as this role may be, it is not enough in the long run. In Iraq we have made some good friends and some very, very bad enemies. (How can anyone, looking down the gun-barrel into the stone face of Zarqawi, say that fighting him is a "distraction" from fighting al Qaeda?) Over the medium term, if our apparent domestic demoralization continues, the options could come down to two. First, we might use our latent power and threaten to withdraw, implicitly asking Iraqis and their neighbors if that is really what they want, and concentrating their minds. This still runs the risk of allowing the diseased spokesmen of al Qaeda to claim victory.
Second, we can demand to know, of the wider international community, if it could afford to view an imploded Iraq as a spectator. Three years ago, the smug answer to that, from most U.N. members, was "yes." This is not an irresponsibility that we can afford, either morally or practically, and even if our intervention was much too little and way too late, it has kindled in many Arab and Kurdish minds an idea of a different future. There is a war within the war, as there always is when a serious struggle is under way, but justice and necessity still combine to say that the task cannot be given up.
Mr. Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair, is the author of "A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq" (Penguin, 2003).
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
This resonates. I mean to consider it carefully.
March 22, 2006
Good news from Iraq
Bill Crawford, over at National Review Online does a good job of balancing the unending doom and gloom news from major media outlets with a weekly column providing a lot of the good news about Iraq. And it is accurate information, too.
Highly recommended.
March 21, 2006
Popular uprising in Iran?
Strategy Page has an article discussing the possibility of a successful popular uprising in Iran. It does not look very encouraging:
The moves necessary to make "People Power" work have now been turned into techniques that have been set down on check lists and presented in seminars. There's a drill that can make this happen if two conditions apply. First, most of the population must want democracy. Second, the security forces must be willing to stand down in the face of mass demonstrations. The first condition applies in Iran, the second doesn't. While the Islamic conservatives in Iran have the support of, at most, a third of the population, they do have over a hundred thousand armed men who are willing to kill to keep their religious leaders in power.
March 17, 2006
From the eye of the storm
Haim Harari, Chair of the Davidson Institute of Science Education and Past President of the Weizmann Institute of Science Talk, delivered a speech two years ago about the underlying reasons for the expansion of terrorism over the last 25 years. Still pertinent today, his remarks include a wide range of regional issues that contribute to the proliferation of terrorism -- yet he does not blame Israel:
Yes, there is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show is.The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with Israel.
The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel.
The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel.
Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endangered Saudi Arabia and butchered his own people because of Israel.
Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because of Israel.
Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel.
The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel.
The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do with Israel, and I could go on and on and on.
The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even if Israel had joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine had existed for 100 years.
This is a must read.
[Hat tip to Jack Kelly at Irish Pennants.]
March 16, 2006
'Shop and Awe'
Kris Alexander, over at Intel-Dump has an excellent post up about an ingenious approach to winning the hearts and minds of our real and potential adversarys. Here's a taste:
Our country has not pursued a strategy that capitalizes on all our assets. We have the most powerful military in the world and have not been hesitant to use it. We also have the world's most powerful economy but haven't leveraged it into the fight. We should be pursuing policies that capitalize on the success of several private sector companies and jump start the economy's of strategically important regions helping to create a bigger middle class in the Middle East. But, myopic US and European trade policy is standing in the way of total economic commitment.
March 15, 2006
The right thing to do
OpinionJournal published an op-ed Monday about how the U.S. did the right thing in the Balkans in the 1990s.
I've reprinted the article in the extended entry.
Balkan Ghost
No one now disputes that stopping Slobodan Milosevic was the right thing to do.
Monday, March 13, 2006 12:01 a.m. ESTIn the end, Slobodan Milosevic was luckier than his victims. The former Serbian leader died at age 64 in his prison bed early Saturday, apparently of a heart attack, though full autopsy results are pending. Death was his small victory over the U.N. tribunal that now can't complete the first-ever war crimes trial of a former head of state.
As Serbian leader after 1989, Milosevic unleashed the ethnic furies that sparked the bloodiest conflicts in Europe since World War II. Yugoslavia was the West's great failure for most of the 1990s. "This is the hour of Europe," proclaimed Luxembourg's foreign minister, Jacques Poos, in 1991 when the Croats and Serbs came to blows. Yet not until after Srebrenica and its 7,000 dead men and boys in 1995 did the U.S. step in and lead an ineffective Europe to stop the fighting.
For too long, U.S. officials convinced themselves the Balkan wars resulted from implacable hatreds and nationalism rather than Milosevic's autocratic ambitions. But when NATO finally used force--with U.N. support in Kosovo only after the fact--his regime fell and the furies ended.
Today the new post-Milosevic arrangements in the Balkans are imperfect, sectarian tensions are raw and democracy is fragile. Western troops are still needed on the ground in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia. But no one seriously questions whether outside intervention was the right thing to do. The tragedy of the Balkans is that it took so long for the West to generate the nerve to stop the man who died on the weekend as a largely forgotten war criminal.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
So, tell me, does anyone see a parallel between the U.S. taking out Milosevic in the 1990s, and Hussein in the 2000s?
March 14, 2006
8 Myths about Iraq
Ralph Peters has returned from a visit to Baghdad with a report on the conditions in Iraq that goes against the grain (emphasis added):
During a recent visit to Baghdad, I saw an enormous failure. On the part of our media. The reality in the streets, day after day, bore little resemblance to the sensational claims of civil war and disaster in the headlines.No one with first-hand experience of Iraq would claim the country's in rosy condition, but the situation on the ground is considerably more promising than the American public has been led to believe. Lurid exaggerations and instant myths obscure real, if difficult, progress.
I left Baghdad more optimistic than I was before this visit. While cynicism, political bias and the pressure of a 24/7 news cycle accelerate a race to the bottom in reporting, there are good reasons to be soberly hopeful about Iraq's future.
It is well worth your time to read. Highly recommended.
March 08, 2006
On the ground in Iraq
Ralph Peters has another editorial about his recent experience in Iraq. In it, he reports on the Iraq Army's role in ensuring that the Samarra shrine bombing did not result in civil war.
AMONG the many positive stories you aren't being told about Iraq, the media ignored another big one last week: In the wake of the terrorist bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, it was the Iraqi army that kept the peace in the streets.
He goes on to list some facts about last week (emphasis is the author's):
* The Iraqi army deployed over 100,000 soldiers to maintain public order. U.S. Forces remained available as a backup, but Iraqi soldiers controlled the streets.* Iraqi forces behaved with discipline and restraint - as the local sectarian outbreaks fizzled, not one civilian had been killed by an Iraqi soldier.
* Time and again, Iraqi military officers were able to defuse potential confrontations and frustrate terrorist hopes of igniting a religious war.* Forty-seven battalions drawn from all 10 of Iraq's army divisions took part in an operation that, above all, aimed at reassuring the public. The effort worked - from the luxury districts to the slums, the Iraqis were proud of their army.
He then went on with interviews of the Iraqi Army commander, Lt.-Gen. Abdul Qadir; one of his American advisors, Col. Tom McCool; and Brig.-Gen. Dan Bolger, the U.S. Army officer charged with "assisting the Iraqis in forming their military."
He goes on to say (emphsis is the author's):
This is a gigantic struggle for indescribably high stakes. We're trying to help a failing civilization rescue itself, to lift a vast region out of the grip of terror and fanaticism, and to make this troubled world safer for our own citizens. Don't let anyone tell you we're failing in Iraq.
Go read the whole thing. You'll be glad you did.
March 07, 2006
Civil war in Iraq?
Ralph Peters, a correspondent with the New York Post, is currently riding with the 506 Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, in Baghdad, and reports his observations on the "civil war" in Iraq that we keep hearing about. Here's an excerpt:
Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops.All day - and it was a long day - we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None.
And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome.
This report certainly flies in the face of the media's general assertion that Iraq is fraught with sectarian violence and disdain, or even hatred, for our troops.
Go read the whole thing.
March 05, 2006
Saddam's legacy
Michael J. Totten has an entry in his blog about one of Saddam's torture complexes in Kurdistan. Mr. Totten is currently in country. The subject matter is extremely unpleasant, but is directly applicable to why it was good that we deposed that monster and his evil henchmen.
March 03, 2006
Democracies rising
OpinionJournal has a thoughtful editorial about democracy in the Middle East -- and our perceptions of it. It starts thusly:
In the matter of Middle East elections, the results of which we don't always like: Anyone out there have a better idea?We ask amid some recent wringing of hands following elections for the Palestinian legislature, in which the terrorist group Hamas won an outright majority; elections in Iraq, where voters cast their ballots along sectarian lines, and a strong showing by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's parliamentary elections late last year.
The rest is in the extended entry.
I recommend it.
Democracy Angst
What's the alternative to promoting freedom in the Middle East?
Monday, February 27, 2006 12:01 a.m. ESTIn the matter of Middle East elections, the results of which we don't always like: Anyone out there have a better idea?
We ask amid some recent wringing of hands following elections for the Palestinian legislature, in which the terrorist group Hamas won an outright majority; elections in Iraq, where voters cast their ballots along sectarian lines, and a strong showing by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's parliamentary elections late last year.
"For some, the promotion of democracy promises an easy resolution to the many difficult problems we face," says Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde. "But I believe that great caution is warranted here." And from the man who once gave us the "end of history," we now have the demise of neoconservatism: "Promoting democracy and modernization in the Middle East," writes Francis Fukuyama in a new book, "is not a solution to the problem of jihadist terrorism; in all likelihood it will make the short-term problem worse."
The brilliant insight here is that democratic processes don't always lead to liberal outcomes. Actually, that's not an insight: The world has had fair warning on this score at least since Adolf Hitler came to power democratically in 1933. We can be thankful, however, that the experience of Nazism did not deter successive generations of Germans from persevering with the democratic experiment.
Still, the underlying argument deserves thoughtful consideration, and it goes something like this: Contrary to the rhetoric of the Bush Administration, the taste for freedom--and the ability to exercise it responsibly--is far from universal. Culture is decisive. Liberal democracies are the product of long-term trends such as the collapse of communal loyalties, urbanization, the separation of church and state and the political empowerment of the bourgeoisie. Absent these things, say the critics, democratic and liberal institutions are built on foundations of sand and are destined to collapse.
This account more or less describes the rise of liberal democracies in the West. Yet simply because it took centuries to establish a liberal-democratic order in Europe, it does not follow that it must take centuries more to establish one in the Middle East. Japan took about 100 years to transform itself (and be transformed) from a feudal society into a modern industrial democracy. South Korea made a similar leap in about 40 years; Thailand went from quasi-military dictatorships to a genuine constitutional monarchy in about 20. As the practice of liberal democracy has spread, the time it takes nondemocratic societies to acquire that practice has diminished.But, say the critics, Islamic and particularly Arab countries are uniquely resistant to change. Between 1981 and 2001 the number of non-Islamic countries rated "free"--that is to say, both democratic and liberal--increased by 34, according to Freedom House. By contrast the number of free Islamic countries remained constant at one, in the form of landlocked Mali. During the same period, the number of Islamic countries ranked "not free" increased by 10.
No doubt deep-seated cultural factors go some way toward explaining these statistics. But why seek abstruse explanations? In the same period when the U.S. was encouraging democratic openings in Eastern Europe, East Asia and Latin America--areas previously thought impervious to liberty, often for "cultural" reasons--it was supporting or tolerating undemocratic and illiberal regimes in the Middle East.
That period also coincided with the rise of al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, the first World Trade Center bombing, the bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole, the outbreak of the terrorist intifada in Israel, and September 11. Mr. Fukuyama may or may not be right that promoting democracy does not resolve the problem of terrorism in the short-term. What we know for sure is that tolerating dictatorship not only doesn't resolve the terrorist problem but actively nurtures it.
Which brings us back to the question of what American policy should be. One answer is to retreat completely in the hopes of being left alone. This is the formula recently suggested by Osama bin Laden; those who would credit it must also entrust themselves to him.Another answer is to encourage friendly autocrats to "modernize" their countries without necessarily creating the kinds of democratic openings through which Islamic fundamentalists could come to power. This is what the U.S. has been attempting in Egypt for the past three decades, without success. A related idea is to promote liberal democratic ideals by means of "soft power"--McDonald's, Oprah, USAID, Voice of America, Britney Spears. Soft power has much to recommend it, though generally only as a complement to hard power. Absent the latter, it is powerless to defend the very people it inspires, especially when the tanks are rolling.
Then there is the supposedly failed policy of the Bush Administration. In five years, it has brought four democratic governments to power in the Middle East: by force of arms in Afghanistan and Iraq, and through highly assertive diplomacy in Lebanon and Palestine. Mr. Fukuyama tells us that "by definition, outsiders can't 'impose' democracy on a country that doesn't want it."
Leaving aside the niggling examples of Japan and Germany, exactly how are we to know that country X does not want democracy, except democratically? Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians and Lebanese have all made their democratic preferences plain in successive recent elections. And with the arguable exception of the Palestinians (arguable because Fatah was as undemocratic as Hamas), they have voted to establish considerably more liberal regimes than what existed previously.
This is not to say democracy is a cure-all. It is also not to say that the peril these democracies face, from terrorist insurrection or ethnic or religious feuding, isn't grave. Nor, finally, is it to say that the "Hitler scenario" can be excluded in a democratizing Middle East; that possibility is always present, especially among nascent democracies.
But democracy also offers the possibility of greater liberalism and greater moderation, possibilities that have been opened with the courageously pro-American governments of Hamid Karzai, Jalal Talabani and Saad Hariri. And as we stand with them, it seems to us that America's bets are better placed promoting democracies--even if some of them succumb to illiberal temptations--than acceding to dictatorships, which already have.
Or does someone have a better idea?
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
March 01, 2006
A sitrep from Iraq
David Frum has an article at the American Enterprise Institute website wherein he describes his impressions of things in Iraq that he noted during a short trip there. He also spoke of the need to finish the job:
Here's something you don't have to come to Iraq to appreciate: If an elected government can stabilize itself here--if an Iraqi army, overwhelmingly Muslim, can fight and defeat jihadist extremists--the victory will deliver a crushing blow to extremists everywhere. It's significant, I think, that Iraqis have not mounted large demonstrations against the Danish cartoons. As a matter of fact, at a dinner served by an Iraqi-owned catering company, every plate came equipped with three pats of butter prominently labelled, "Product of Denmark."If, on the other hand, Iraq were to fail--if the insurgents pushed Iraq into chaos--the whole world would pay. I asked yet another U.S. officer: Why not just quit and withdraw? He answered, "These [jihadis] would follow us home."
Recommended.
[Hat tip to the Anchoress.]
February 28, 2006
Wake up call
Mark Steyn has an op-ed up at the Chicago Sun-Times that may be considered alarmist, but points out a pattern between enough seemingly unrelated world events that it cries for people to take notice -- and prepare for dark days to come. Here's an excerpt:
Something very remarkable is happening around the globe and, if you want the short version, a Muslim demonstrator in Toronto the other day put it very well:''We won't stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.''
And that will be a dark day indeed.
UPDATE: Perhaps, though, there is still hope.
Prospect: Iraq
Victor Davis Hanson, over at NRO, has published observations concerning the prospects of a successful democracy in Iraq. Here's an excerpt:
It is an odd war, because the side that I think is losing garners all the press, whether by blowing up the great golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, or blowing up an American each day. Yet we hear nothing of the other side that is ever so slowly, shrewdly undermining the enemy.
It's well worth reading.
[Hat tip to Instapundit.]
February 24, 2006
Pertinent question
John Hindraker asks a good question about the Islamic demonstrations. Why are the protest signs in English? Because that is what their target audience reads? Maybe we should think about this a bit . . . I sense some major manipulation is going on here.
February 23, 2006
Shia shrine bombing
Mohammed, over at Iraq The Model has posted on the Shia shrine attack in Samarra and its aftermath here and here. An excerpt from the latter report:
The sense in the streets and the statements given by some Shia clerics suggest that retaliation attacks are organized and under control and are focusing on mosques frequented by Salafi and Wahabi groups and not those of ordinary Sunnis.
I am keeping this situation in my prayers because the democracy in Iraq currently is so fragile that things like this could result in civil war. Which, by the way, is precisely what the Islamofascists are trying for. Please pray with me.
Holding their feet to the fire
Which is exactly what we want our ambassador to the United Nations to do.
Hundreds of thousands have been murdered in Darfur, and yet the U.N. does nothing but criticize the U.S . . .
Why is this behavior considered acceptable?
Compromise & debate: the democratic process
OpinionJournal published an op-ed on Sunday that points out some clear indicators that democracy is happening in Iraq, after all.
It's a good read. I've reprinted it in the extended entry.
The Shiite Choice
Compromise and debate lead to democratic progress in Iraq.
Sunday, February 19, 2006 12:01 a.m. ESTIt's become a cliché in some circles that Iraq won't be ready for "Jeffersonian" democracy any time soon. And maybe not. But the more we watch the political developments that the U.S. is fostering in Iraq, the more we see the kind of compromise and debate that are crucial to democratic progress.
The latest news is the orderly election last weekend of Ibrahim al-Jaafari as the Shiite Alliance's candidate to serve as Prime Minister for the next four years. Mr. Jaafari has been Prime Minister since the election of Iraq's interim government in January 2005, and he won the permanent nod by a single vote over Adel Abdel Mahdi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri). Mr. Mahdi, in turn, gracefully accepted defeat and congratulated Mr. Jaafari. "You should console me in this situation," Mr. Jaafari replied. "This is a big burden and a position of difficulties." He's certainly right about the latter.
Mr. Jaafari has been criticized as a weak leader. But to be fair, his government has only had a short time in office and has suffered from the stigma of being temporary. If he now goes on to win approval by Iraq's full parliament, his legitimacy will not be questioned and he'll have a fairer chance to show what he can do.
Though not the most inspiring of political personalities, Mr. Jaafari is well-liked by the Iraqi public and by his fellow political leaders. He delegates power and is willing to trust the skills of those around him. He has also never been associated with even a hint of corruption. And far from being a reformed Baathist, he has an untainted record of courageous opposition to Saddam Hussein's regime.
Of all the Shiite Alliance's conceivable choices for the post, Mr. Jaafari is also the least beholden to Iran. U.S. diplomats seemed to favor Mr. Mahdi for some reason. But unlike Sciri, Mr. Jaafari and his Dawa Party don't seem dependent on Tehran and are unquestionably indigenous Iraqi patriots.
Mr. Jaafari can also call upon a strong team already in office. We're particularly impressed with Defense Minister Saddoun Dulaimi, a Sunni brought in by the Shiite Alliance despite the Sunni boycott of the January 2005 vote. Mr. Dulaimi has overseen the growth of the Iraqi Army into a better fighting force and he is also uncorrupt and free of any ties to the Sunni insurgents. Another face who could return is Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi. Although he didn't win a seat after leaving the Shiite Alliance to lead his own slate for December's vote, he has a good working relationship with Mr. Jaafari, as well as managerial skills and knowledge of financial markets.
Some degree of continuity will be important. The U.S. decision to cashier the postwar Governing Council in favor of Ayad Allawi and a team of unknowns in June 2004--only to see Mr. Jaafari and the Governing Council's other leaders win Iraq's first two elections--was unnecessarily disruptive and delayed the development of Iraqi institutions. The exception here is the Interior Ministry, which Mr. Jaafari delegated to Sciri and which has been credibly accused of mistreating some Sunni prisoners. That has to be cleaned up.
Speaking of Mr. Allawi, we hope he will stay in Iraq to lead the loyal opposition if he doesn't get a post in the new government. Many secular-minded Iraqis gave their votes to Mr. Allawi believing he was the U.S.-favored candidate, and they deserve a strong voice in parliament.But whatever happens on that front, we trust that the closely divided vote in favor of Mr. Jaafari will allay Western fears of Iraq's domination by a monolithic, Iranian-linked Shiite bloc. The Shiite Alliance is a very uneasy coalition that includes leaders like Mr. Jaafari, Sciri's Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who don't always get along.
And watching them all as a source of moral authority is the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has also shown himself to be an Iraqi patriot who opposes the imposition of an Iranian-style clerical government. In any case, the Alliance lacks the two-thirds majority in parliament to impose its will, so compromise with Kurdish, Sunni and secular Shiites will be essential to successful governance.
Mr. Jaafari's nomination for Prime Minister is the latest positive step in Iraqi political development--which includes two elections, negotiations to write a new and liberal constitution and a successful referendum on that document. We'll let the cynics decided if this qualifies as "Jeffersonian," or merely Iraqi pragmatism, but whatever it is we'll call it progress.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
February 22, 2006
Seven Lessons
Charlie Munn, over at The Officers' Club, has a post up about seven lessons Iran has learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom. Though somewhat disturbing, the post presents a rational assessment of the current situation with Iran.
Read the comments, too. . .
February 19, 2006
Totten in Kurdish Iraq
Michael Totten has a good post up in his journal about his visit to Kurdish Iraq.
February 14, 2006
Terrorist activity is down
Strategy Page has an article that indicates that terrorism in Iraq is much less than in the past. Here's how it starts:
The annual Shia Ashura festival brings out the faithful in large numbers, and was banned when Saddam ruled. Since then, terrorists have attacked the Shia participants, killing 55 in 2005, and 181 in 2004. This year, the terrorists were unable to kill anyone. Iraqi police and soldiers supplied the security, with the help of some religious militias. This sharp drop in terrorist activity was no fluke.
It's worth reading . . .
February 12, 2006
Support your local Dane
Freedom of speech is an important part of a free society -- even when you disagree.
After all, this is all about liberty . . .
February 11, 2006
Good news from Afghanistan
Carrie Lukas and Lida Noory have an encouraging article up at NRO discussing some of the good things happening in Afghanistan.
Things that we don't normally hear about here in America.
Americans need to understand that Afghanistan faces many high hurdles as it strives for economic and political stability, including the continued campaign by radical Islamists against equality for women. But Americans also should hear the good news about progress in Afghanistan.
Recommended reading.
February 10, 2006
Intolerable intolerance
Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, Washington bureau chief of the German newsweekly Die Zeit has written an op-ed for the Washington Post wherein he discusses the controversy about the Mohammed cartoons, freedom of the press, and intolerance.
When the cartoons were first published in Denmark in September, nobody in Germany took notice. Had our publication been offered the drawings at that point, in all likelihood we would have declined to print them. At least one of them seems to equate Islam with radical Islamism. That is exactly the direction nobody wants the debate about fundamentalism to take -- even though the very nature of a political cartoon is overstatement. We would not have printed the caricature out of a sense of moderation and respect for the Muslim minority in our country. News people make judgments about taste all the time. . .
He brings a viewpoint to the discussion that most Americans are not aware of. It is well worth reading. I recommend it.
February 08, 2006
Nuclear Iran?
Herbert Meyer, over at American Thinker, has a chilling assessment of Iran's imminent nuclear capability. He makes an interesting analogy:
To think clearly about the looming crisis with Iran, close your eyes and imagine that you’re standing outside your children’s school. It’s 2:55pm, and you’re chatting amiably with other parents while waiting for the 3pm bell to ring. Suddenly you see a man running toward the school, holding a hand grenade and shouting: “I hate kids. I welcome death.”Now, what do you propose to do?
One option is to engage your fellow parents in a dialogue about the serious and complex questions raised by the running man with the grenade.
For instance, you might try to calculate precisely how long it will take him to reach the school. When he does reach the school, will he stop or go inside? If he does go inside, will he run toward the basement, or toward the auditorium where the third and fourth grades have been brought to watch a video? (It’s probably about “safe sex” – but what the schools teach our kids is another subject for another day.) Is the hand grenade real, or might it be a fake? If the grenade is real, does the man really know how to pull the pin? And if he does, how big will be blast radius be and what’s the potential number of casualties?
And why is the man doing this? Is he really a vicious killer? Or is he a harmless but mentally disturbed individual who didn’t take his medication today and slipped out of the house without being noticed by his wife? Or is this just a case of a well-meaning but very misguided protester who’s mad at the Bush administration for not signing the Kyoto accords, or who’s upset because dolphins are still getting caught in tuna nets? Oh, and is it possible that in addition to the hand grenade he’s got a gun inside his coat pocket?
Should you try to talk with the man? Or would it be better to notify the school’s principal, and perhaps suggest he call the police?
And remember—while you and your fellow parents debate all this, the distance between the man holding the grenade and your kids is narrowing.
Your other option is to take the man down – now, this minute, however you can – and to sort out the mess later.
[ . . . ]If you choose this option, it’s because you understand that when someone puts your children’s lives at risk, the instinct for survival trumps the analytic process. Take too long to think, and you may lose the opportunity to act – and it’s impossible to accurately project when this line will be crossed until you’re already over it.
And we may, in fact, be beyond that point . . .
Recommended.
February 03, 2006
Status report: Iraq
Karl Zinsmeister has an informative report about Iraq. And he has pretty impressive credentials . . . both journalistic and otherwise.
Your editor has just returned from another month in Iraq—my fourth extended tour in the last two and a half years. During November and December I joined numerous American combat operations, including the largest air assault since the beginning of the war, walked miles of streets and roads, entered scores of homes, listened to hundreds of Iraqis, observed voting at a dozen different polling sites, and endured my third roadside ambush. With this latest firsthand experience, here are answers to some common queries about how the war is faring.
Recommended.
January 20, 2006
Saddam's WMDs?
An article describing evidence of the existence of Saddam's WMDs.
New evidence out of Iraq suggests that the U.S. effort to track down Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is having better success than is being reported. Key assertions by the intelligence community that were widely judged in the media and by critics of President George W. Bush as having been false are turning out to have been true after all.
Note that the article's date is April 2004. Have any of you heard about this information?
January 15, 2006
An Iraqi helping Iraqis (with a little help from some friends)
Photo by Polli Barnes Keller – Gulf Region Division – US Army Corps of Engineers
The story is about Lana Aziz, the US Army Corps of Engineers, businesses and a school in America, and Iraqi school children. I've reprinted it in the extended entry.
Special deliveries made to special groupsBy Polli Barnes Keller
Gulf Region North
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Mosul Iraq - After years of tyranny and war, the children of Iraq have almost nothing and are very grateful for each gift they receive. Lana Aziz, an Iraqi citizen and junior engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), coordinates the collection and distribution of shoes and school supplies for Iraqi children. With each gift she gives to a needy child, she also gives joy and hope to their lives.Through her childhood, Aziz watched as American organizations sent clothing and items to local churches in her community. She watched as the goods were distributed and noticed some didn’t make it to the families that needed it the most. Dismayed at the lack of support for American generosity and the misdirection of goods, Aziz decided if she could, she would do something about it.
While on assignment in the local villages, she noticed the children lacked proper shoes for the cold environment. This gave her the idea to collect shoes for the needy and make sure they were distributed to those who truly needed them.
In July 2005, Aziz put the word out through co-workers, friends and family that she was collecting shoes. Word spread quickly and before she knew it, shoes came rolling in. Church groups from the States, Aziz’s family, and friends of friends rose to the challenge and collected approximately 150 pairs of shoes, which Aziz distributed in Dohuk, Erbil, and Sulaymaniyah. The collection effort was a huge success and well received by those in need.
Now, almost seven months later, packages again began arriving addressed to Aziz. She opened the boxes and was happily surprised to find not only shoes for the children, but school supplies and toys, as well. Aziz’s response to the unexpected generosity was, “If they send it, I will deliver it!”
Word travels fast when there is good news to spread and the story of Aziz delivering goods to schools last year made it all the way to Texas and Utah. Donations came not only from Aziz’s family members, but also from friends’ families, friends of friends, churches, schools and large corporations. Contributors included Southwest Airlines' Maintenance and Engineering Department in Dallas, Texas; Hewlett Packard in Richardson, Texas; and the second grade class from the William Penn Elementary School in Salt Lake City, Utah. Aziz received toys, school supplies, candy and shoes.
Early in January, she and Lt. Col. Greg Gunter, USACE Gulf Region North Deputy Commander, traveled to two schools located in Dohuk and delivered the goods.
“It was an honor to take part in such a noble and worthwhile effort initiated by Ms. Aziz. It was heartwarming to see that the generous gifts sent from within Iraq, as well as the United States, found their way to the children at these two schools,” said Gunter.
The second grade class in Utah received photographs of their delivered donated goods.
The second grade teacher commented, “My students and I were ecstatic when we put your photos on the big screen and saw our red Christmas houses! Seriously ... we went crazy!”
She added, “What a joy it was to actually see our school supplies and cards in the hands of those beautiful Iraqi children!”
In one year of employment with USACE, Aziz moved up within the ranks from interpreter to junior engineer. She graduated from Mosul University in 2004, with a degree in Computer Engineering and worked part time for the U.S. Embassy on Forward Operating Base Courage.
January 11, 2006
Saddam's training camps
Stephan F. Hayes has an interesting article about Saddam's terror training camps. He begins with this:
THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.
It's well worth reading. Personally, I'm intrigued by the possible release to the public of many of the documents captured from the Taliban and Saddam's Iraq.
January 06, 2006
Democracy is growing
US CENTCOM has a short article about the Iraqi elections last month and how the Iraqi people pretty much ran the show.
"Nationalism is defined by the actions of the people," said Maj. Ross Coffman, 4th Brigade Combat Team executive officer. "It only takes a moment to see their faces as they vote, to see their pride, not only because they are voting but because they are part of something bigger. That is promising; not only for the efforts we've made, but also for the future of the country."
Read the rest . . .
December 23, 2005
Iraqi electoral growing pains
Wretchard, over at The Belmont Club has a good round up of news pertaining to the irregularities with vote tabulation in Iraq.
This issue is worth watching.
December 21, 2005
Improving the neighborhood
Meghan Clyne, a reporter for the New York Sun has written an article citing Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2006 report that says, in part, that the past year has brought "significant improvements in personal and political rights across the region". Here's how it starts:
As the political battle intensifies over President Bush's efforts to spread democracy to Iraq and the Middle East, an influential human rights organization, Freedom House, has found that the past year brought significant improvements in personal and political rights across the region.Reports of increased freedom emerged from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian territories, and observers attributed the results to the Bush administration's support of fledgling democracies worldwide.
It's a pretty positive article. And President Bush along with all of those who have supported and fought over there deserve the credit. Stay the course!
[Hat tip to Kathy over at Cake Eater Chronicles.]
December 19, 2005
The new Arab world
Duncan Currie discusses George W. Bush's new Arab world. Here's a taste:
But what if U.S. intervention did create "a new Arab world," as Walid Jumblatt claimed? What if it did vanquish the Middle Eastern "Berlin Wall"? And what if it saved untold Americans--and Arabs--from far deadlier wars in the future? While we mourn each and every U.S. casualty, we must never lose sight of what the American military has accomplished. Despite all the setbacks, Iraq's budding democracy continues to move ahead. So does the training of Iraq's fledgling security forces, a prerequisite for any significant withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Recommended.
December 17, 2005
Saddam's WMD . . .
. . . is still an issue. The New York Sun has an article up about various indications that Saddam moved his WMDs into Syria prior to the US invasion of Iraq.
Saddam Hussein moved his chemical weapons to Syria six weeks before the war started, Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom says.
It's an interesting article.
[Hat tip to Jack Kelly at Irish Pennants.]
December 16, 2005
Election: Iraq -- the day after
Mohammed posts about yesterday's election in Iraq.
It was a day of happiness for Iraqis and a day of loss for the strangers who thought their camels brought them to a land void of patriots.It is a day we will await to come again for four long years…to do the right thing again or to correct the mistake if we did one yesterday.
Anyway, I believe we left a mark on the face of history, a purple mark that will not be forgotten easily.God bless Iraq and Iraq's friends throughout this world. It wasn't our day alone; it was your day too.
Aash al-Iraq . . . Aash al-Iraq.
We celebrate with you, Mohammed. You made history yesterday.
President's speech on 12-14-2005
President Bush made another speech outlining the reasons for and goals of our war on terror. There are similar elements in this speech to his speech on Monday, but he is fleshing out his positions and plans. Here's an excerpt:
We saw the future the terrorists intend for our nation on that fateful morning of September the 11th, 2001. That day we learned that vast oceans and friendly neighbors are no longer enough to protect us. September the 11th changed our country; it changed the policy of our government. We adopted a new strategy to protect the American people: We would hunt down the terrorists wherever they hide; we would make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them; and we would advance our security at home by advancing freedom in the Middle East.
Sooni, an Iraqi man living in Baghdad, was able to watch the speech on television there and said in his blog that our President's speech was very encouraging, and accurately reflected the sentiments of citizens of Iraq.
President Bush really did a good job of providing more insight into his decisions and his plans for the future in our war against terrorism. Recommended -- especially after reading his speech from Monday (12-12).
December 15, 2005
Election: Iraq - impressions
Thomas Smith Jr. at NRO has an article about what it is like in Iraq this week. Here's how he starts:
As Iraqis queue up at polling stations, some of the scenes look more like a series of regional block parties than what most Westerners would associate with an election day. Children can be seen waving flags or playing soccer. Adults are cheering, clapping hands, beating drums, singing, dancing, and waving at passing U.S. and Iraqi military vehicles. There simply seems to have been more energy in the run-up to this election than in previous ones. And why not?December 15, 2005, is a day of "national celebration, a day of the national unity, and of victory over the terrorists and those who oppose our march toward democracy," announced Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
He goes on to describe what our soldiers who are over there are seeing this week.
It's a well-balanced article that provides crucial information about what is really going on in Iraq during their parliamentary election.
15.5M+ voted in Iraq today!
Mohammed cited a press release by the IECI (the Iraqi electoral commission) stating that "15, 5 million+ Iraqis cast their votes in more than 30,000 stations spread nationwide." His continually updated post (with pictures) about this historic election is here.
There is a lot of news about the election in Iraq in his post. And several pictures as well.
December 14, 2005
Mohammed on the Iraqi election
Mohammed, in his blog, Iraq the Model, has a post about the historic election that he and his fellow Iraqis are preparing for. He is excited about what the future holds for Iraq, and proud of his nation's recent accomplishments in democracy:
Tomorrow it's going to be us who decide and I can feel the greatness of the responsibility because the result will draw the shape of our future and will determine how long it will take till we can announce victory in this war; our war against the past, against the past's illusions and the past's mistakes; with our hands we can make this war last shorter . . . with our own choices.One year ago we wanted to defeat terror and the shadows of dictatorship and tell them that we are not willing to go backwards and that we're ready to build a new Iraq where the people choose their representatives . . .
The choice didn't matter then as much as voting itself did; all we wanted to do was to go and cast our votes regardless of the choices we made.
[ . . .]
In a matter of one year questions and answers changed a lot; less than a year ago the question was “will you vote?” But now the question is “who are you going to vote for?”
We are making progress, definitely we are!
My thoughts and prayers are with our democratic brethren in Iraq.
December 13, 2005
Election: Iraq
The voting has started!
An Iraqi patient shows his finger tainted with ink as mark for already casting his vote at the Central Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Dec. 12, 2005. Iraqis began voting Monday in hospitals, military camps and prisons, ahead of general elections to be held Dec. 15, while the estimated 1.5 million voters living outside the country can cast their ballots at polling centers in 15 countries. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Iraqi soldiers celebrate after voting in the national election, at Kirkush Military Training Base, 65 km (43 miles) northeast of Baghdad December 12, 2005. Voting began at Iraq's military bases, hospitals and prisons on Monday, with security forces, detainees and the ill kicking off the country's first elections for a full-term parliament since the fall of Saddam Hussein. (REUTERS/Bob Strong)
I tip my hat to our noble soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who have made all of this possible.
And also to the brave Iraqi people who are forging a new nation against all odds.
Haifa Street, Baghdad
Major K. writes about a trip along the once-deadly Haifa Street in Baghdad.
We made the trip as part of our routine "battlefield circulation." (Militar-ese for checking up on subordinate units.) As we drove down the formerly infamous Haifa Street, our progress was slow, not because of the elevated threat, but because of the heavy traffic. What had been a semi-deserted shooting gallery was again a bustling business district. Kiosks and stores bursting with goods for sale and shoppers were pushed all the way to the curb.
He goes on to comment some about some of the preparations for the Iraqi election, and he ends his post with:
The overwhelming majority of Mosques are preaching participation in the election this time as the consequences of boycotting elections have been deemed to be undesireable. Both Shia and Sunni Mosques are preaching the "get out the vote" message" including several Mosques that have been virulently anti-coalition and pro-insurgency. While they are probably just "playing both sides" of the game, it is still a good thing to hear them pushing their followers to embrace the ballot rather than only the gun.
I think that we Americans are getting the best Christmas present ever this month. We are taking part in the birth of a new democratic nation of free people.
December 12, 2005
Afghanistan lost
I hope and pray that the things said in this article are not true. Here's an excerpt:
Lack of freedom is just one of the areas where little has changed. The U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom calls the present Karzai government and the new constitution "Taliban-lite." And for good reason. War lords and drug lords have strengthened their grip over large areas of the country, while opium production and exportation has boomed. There are frequent allegations that the government is involved in the drug trade, something the Afghan president does not deny. Many conservative clerics, jihadists, and war lords, even former Taliban, have gained a semblance of legitimacy as new members of parliament.
Read it and weep.
December 10, 2005
The correct frame of reference . . .
. . . for Saddam Hussein's guilt or innocence is not determined by his histrionics about dirty underwear and no showers, nor is it Ramsey Clark's line of bull, it is by things like the chemical assault on Halabja that Saddam ordered. (The pictures at the link are very disturbing, so please be warned.)
The man is a monster who spent decades brutally stripping men, women, and children of their dignity, their freedom, and their lives.
Please forgive me for saying this, but I feel that the Iraqis should give him a fair trial -- while widely publicizing his murderous excesses --and then promptly execute him.
December 09, 2005
Elections -- Iraqi style
What a difference ten months make!
In January, most candidates outside the dominant few parties largely eschewed campaigning, fearing they could be kidnapped or assassinated. Now, even long shots are getting into the act. One day this week, National Democratic Institute instructors explained get-out-the-vote techniques to a dozen members of the Free Iraq Gathering, a new coalition that "probably won't get many more votes than you see in that room," according to an institute employee.
December 08, 2005
Not a 'failed war'
FR8, over at There and Back Again, has a post up with his thoughts on US troops in Iraq. Here's an excerpt:
This is not, in my limited knowledge of this war, a failed war by any means. These media moguls, government “officials” and other experts have no clue about this war and what it is like on the ground. Until these people have actually looked into the face of an Iraqi when you stop thugs from robbing his home and see the gratitude, then they will understand that this is not a failed war. Also, where are the reports about all of the schools that have been opened since the fall of Saddam? Since his fall, there have been numerous schools for girls opened to provide an opportunity that was never there before. You never here about the good news stories. Maybe if a few more of these stories were being reported then maybe the American people could understand why we are here.
Oh, and by the way, FR8 is an officer in the Army and is currently deployed in Iraq (for his second time). He's also a fellow Aggie. To be honest, I find his assessment to be much more credible than Representative Murtha's on this matter.
December 06, 2005
Quotables
Major K provides us with some interesting perspectives on current events in Iraq.
On the trial of Saddam Hussein:-Just execute him already. Everyone knows he is guilty. Why are we keeping him alive for this unnecessary trial? The insurgency will be greatly reduced once he is dead. We should handle him like the Romanians handled Nikolai Ceausescu.
On the secret Ministry of the Interior detention facility where several detainees showed marks from being tortured:
-What is the big deal? That place was not nearly as bad as what happened under Saddam.
On the kidnapping of 4 western activists from the Christian Peacemaker Teams organization:
-They went to meet with Harith al Dhari at the Mother of All Battles Mosque and did not bring bodyguards or some other form of protection? They were asking for it.
It should be noted that these remarks were not made by Major K., but by civilian Iraqis living in Iraq . . .
December 03, 2005
Old news, but still pertinent
Back in September 2003, John Leo wrote an op-ed about John Burns' book describing western journalism in Saddam's Iraq. Here's an excerpt:
Eason said he knew all about the beatings and electroshock torture. One woman who talked to CNN was beaten daily for months in front of her father, then torn limb from limb. Her body parts were left in a bag on her family's doorstep. But CNN's viewers hadn't been told.
John Burns was the New York Times bureau chief in Iraq prior to providing comments for the book referred to in this article, so he has some credibility.
Saddam's regime was harder on the Iraqis than the U.S. occupation has been -- even with the terrorism going on there still.
December 02, 2005
Democracy rising
Jim Hoagland, over at the Washington Post, has a optimistic op-ed up about the surprising spread of democracy in the Middle East.
Events in the Middle East now force political leaders to eat vows never to do certain things and then pronounce the dish tasty. Their reversals carry seeds of hope for a desperate region.
He never actually says that America's foreign policy for that region -- including the war in Afghanistan and Iraq -- could be the impetus for these very positive changes, but at least he acknowledges that some good maybe happening over there.
And he's right.
November 26, 2005
Timeline - Iraq
Just for the record, Greyhawk over at the Mudville Gazette has posted the historical timeline of Iraq.
It's good reference material, and has a lot of links. Recommended for those who want to refresh their memories and look at Iraq from a historical perspective.
November 24, 2005
The Arab street
Mark Steyn discusses the "Arab street" response to the bombings in Amman, Jordan.
On Friday, the allegedly explosive "Arab street" finally exploded, in the largest demonstration against al-Qa'eda or its affiliates seen in the Middle East. "Zarqawi," shouted 200,000 Jordanians, "from Amman we say to you, you are a coward!" Also "the enemy of Allah" - which, for a jihadist, isn't what they call on Broadway a money review.
It is encouraging to see this happening in the Middle East. Because of the U.S. involvement in Iraq, the people in other Middle Eastern countries are beginning to see that America is not "the Great Satan", but that Islamofascism is.
Another something to be thankful for . . .
What war has wrought
Michael Yon has posted a photo essay of children in Iraq.
I truly believe that is why we fight this war -- and why we should continue. For the future.
November 21, 2005
Asylum for Bin Laden
How about a CNN report from 1999 that tells us about Saddam Hussein offering Osama Bin Laden sanctuary in Iraq.
November 18, 2005
WMDetails
Former military intel officer Bill Tierney talks about his experiences as an UNSCOM inspector and counter-infiltration officer in Iraq.
What he has to say is pretty scary. Where did the WMDs go, anyway?
November 10, 2005
Good news about Iraq
Bill Crawford, at National Review Online, has a lot to say about the tremendous progress that is being made in Iraq. Here's an excerpt:
A similarly impressive effort to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure is also underway. Opponents of our efforts in Iraq often point out that prior to the invasion Baghdad had a continuous supply of electricity, but that today supplies are intermittent. What they don’t say is that Saddam achieved steady supplies of electricity in Baghdad by poaching it from other areas of the country. The truth is that Iraq’s electrical grid, roads, bridges, health system, water systems, and oil infrastructure had been neglected for more than a decade. Not since the Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe has the world seen an effort as massive as the one now underway in Iraq, and many signs of success go unreported in the MSM: Iraq’s power output is now higher than pre-war levels, and oil revenues in September of this year were the highest in Iraqi history.
He discusses progress in the Iraqi economy, infrastructure, security, and education, among other things. Recommended.
November 09, 2005
November 08, 2005
City of Lights
Dr. Demarche, of our State Department, does not mince words as he discusses the fallacy that some folks are entertaining about the insurrection going on in France.
He has some good discussion points. Recommended.
November 07, 2005
The U.N. at 60
The L.A. Times provides a summary of the high points from a new movie : "Broken Promises, The United Nations at 60."
The rogues and terrorist and despots and dictators who run the show are not going to give up control. And they outvote us, they can veto things. You can't fix the U.N. because its members don't want it to be fixed.-- Jed Babbin, former deputy undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, on the UN
It is interesting reading.
November 06, 2005
France's intifada?
Things are not going well in France. I think America could very well have the same kind of problem in a decade or two if we don't come up with a rational, forward-looking immigration policy.
November 05, 2005
Rioting in Europe
The Brussels Journal has a troubling post up about the rioting in Europe. Not just in France, either. But in Sweden and Denmark and Belgium as well.
November 04, 2005
Iraqi women moving forward
Carrie Lukas & Michelle D. Bernard have an article posted at National Review Online that talks about Iraqi women going to great lengths to attend a conference.
The Iraqi women wanted to attend this conference because they want the things embodied in the conference agenda. They want democracy and a government beholden to its people. They want a limited government, a free press, and economic liberty. The women who attended represented almost every ethnic and religious group in Iraq. Some dressed in western garb, while others wore headscarves. Some were dressed in black abayas, and still others wore the brightly colored dress of Kurdistan. But they shared a common vision of a free and democratic Iraq.
I think things are looking up for our Iraqi friends since the womenfolk feel this conference is important enough to brave the dangers of traveling across the country.
Liar!
The L.A. Times has a succinct op-ed out about who was really lying about WMD in the Plame case. Here's an excerpt:
Making the best of a weak hand, Democrats argued that the case was not about petty-ante perjury but, as Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid put it, "about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the president." The problem here is that the one undisputed liar in this whole sordid affair doesn't work for the administration. In his attempts to turn his wife into an antiwar martyr, Joseph C. Wilson IV has retailed more whoppers than Burger King.
The Senate Intelligence Committee did come to some conclusions concerning WMD in Iraq -- and Wilson's trip report, in fact, did nothing to refute other intelligence regarding Iraq's quest for uranium.
The panel's report found that, far from discrediting the Iraq-Niger uranium link, Wilson actually provided fresh details about a 1999 meeting between Niger's prime minister and an Iraqi delegation. Beyond that, he had not supplied new information. According to the panel, intelligence analysts "did not think" that his findings "clarified the story on the reported Iraq-Niger uranium deal." In other words, Wilson had hardly exposed as fraudulent the "16 words" included in the 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." In fact, the British government, in its own post-invasion review of intelligence, found that this claim was "well founded."
It's a short article, but it makes some good points. Recommended.
November 03, 2005
News out of Iraq
Jeff Jacoby asks: What was the most important news out of Iraq last week?
That depends on what you consider ''important." Do you see the war against radical Islam and Ba'athist fascism as the most urgent conflict of our time? Do you believe that replacing tyranny with democratic self-government is ultimately the only antidote to the poison that has made the Middle East so dangerous and violent? If so, you'll have no trouble identifying the most significant development in Iraq last week: the landslide victory of the new Iraqi Constitution.
And there's more.
November 02, 2005
On Iraq
Michael Rubin, over at National Review Online, has some interesting things to say about Iraq -- and who is qualified to talk about what is going on there. Here's an excerpt:
Washington has always been an arrogant town. Whatever the issue, pundits use the crisis of the day to score partisan points. Sure, there should be accountability for intelligence failures not only about overestimating Iraq's weapons program in 2003, but also for underestimating them in 1991. Nor should policymakers feel comfortable about previous Central Intelligence Agency misanalysis of nuclear programs in India, Pakistan, and Libya. But the Iraqi people should not be sacrificed upon the altar of Bush hatred, Clinton hatred, or Kerry hatred.
I found it a fairly balanced commentary. Recommended.
October 29, 2005
No surprises here
Here's a DoD article about the attack on the Palestine Hotel, the referendom, and Iraqi security. Here's how it begins:
Insurgents targeted the Baghdad's Palestine Hotel for its inherent media value, a senior U.S. military official said today during a news conference in Baghdad. "Half the battle is in the battlefield of the media," Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq, said. "The terrorists will use the media as a combat multiplier to hide their limited capabilities."
There is some guarded optimism in this article. Recommended.
[Hat tip to The Jawa Report. For more on this, click here.]
October 28, 2005
Saddam's legacy
This article, though written 17 months ago, is not easy to read. But reading it is important. Here's how it starts:
Ibrahim al-Idrissi, 37, goes to work every day with a handgun in a holster on his hip. In most countries, the line of work Idrissi is in wouldn't require such firepower. But this is Iraq. Idrissi is the president of the Association for Free Prisoners, an Iraqi non-governmental organization that has been documenting the execution of political prisoners under the regime of Saddam Hussein.Many of Saddam's torturers and executioners are still at large. There have been two attempts on Idrissi's life, and three on the organization's headquarters in Baghdad. "Fortunately, their aim hasn't been very good so far," Idrissi says.
October 26, 2005
Constitution Adopted
Iraq's landmark constitution was adopted by a majority of voters during the country's Oct. 15 referendum, as Sunni Arab opponents failed to muster enough support to defeat it, election officials said Tuesday.Results released by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq showed that Sunni Arabs, who had sharply opposed the draft document, failed to produce the two-thirds "no" vote they would have needed in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces to defeat it.
Nationwide, 78.59 percent voted for the charter while 21.41 percent voted against, the commission said. The charter required a simple majority nationwide with the provision that if two-thirds of the voters in any three provinces rejected it, the constitution would be defeated.
Strategy for success
Military historian and author, Frederick W. Kagan, has a well-thought out blueprint for victory in Iraq.
I have excerpts in the extended entry.
Mr. Kagan begins with abrief summary of some expectations and realities in the war in Iraq from it's onset up to the present.
THE NATURE OF THE CONFLICT in Iraq has shifted over the past 30 months. A basic assumption of the war plan executed in March and April 2003, and of the counterinsurgency campaign waged since then, was that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis would welcome the establishment of democracy in their country. And although a majority of Iraqis clearly do welcome democracy, there is an important complication. The most significant challenge the coalition faces in Iraq today is the fact that the Sunni-Arab community is in large part unwilling to accept the consequences of democracy, and has not yet reconciled itself to the loss of its dominant position in the country. U.S. military strategy has largely ignored this problem so far. Victory in Iraq thus requires a refocusing of coalition military efforts against this central challenge.
He then spends a good deal of time walking through the evolution of the three major military objectives of the coalition counterinsurgency effort: Killing or capturing Saddam Hussein and his two sons, neutralizing the jihadists and foreign fighters, and transfer of the responsibility for security in Iraq to the Iraqis themselves.
As he discusses the efficacy of the American efforts in Iraq, Mr. Kagan points out some tactics being used by Americans that serve the terrorists well.
It is also essential for the U.S. political elite to abandon the current fad of discussing "exit strategies" and withdrawal timetables. There are few, if any, examples in history of a regime as young and fragile as the current Iraqi state inheriting an insurgency and defeating it. To imagine that the coalition can withdraw, turn an insurgency over to the inexperienced Iraqi army, and expect that army to defeat the insurgency is folly.
And he outlines an essential strategy for victory in, and for, Iraq.
The measure of success is not the number of "trained" Iraqi battalions available, but the defeat of the insurgency. Both the strategy and the message must be: America will not leave Iraq until the Sunni Arabs, and all other groups and ethnicities, have abandoned the hope that violence will lead to political advantage. This condition is the definitional requirement for any peaceful state, and the job Bush started will not be completed until this condition is met, no matter how many Iraqi soldiers or police are on the job.
During the course of his balanced analysis of the U.S./coalition military efforts in Iraq, he briefly discusses what our forces, under President Bush's leadership, have done right.
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION and the U.S. military deserve much praise for what has occurred in Iraq these past 30 months. The establishment of a new state, the formation of a new army, the rebuilding of a shattered economy, the foundation of a new democracy--all these are remarkable achievements in a short period of time. They will come to nothing, however, if they do not end in success.
And then he concludes with a warning about the necessity of fully engaging the Sunnis in the democratic process . . . as well as the promise of what that will mean if we succeed in that endeavor.
The problem is within Iraq and specifically within the Sunni community. The coalition and the Iraqis are creating the political preconditions for success and have largely confined the military problems to the Zarqawi network and the Sunni Triangle (where that network is, for the most part, based). But until we, working with our Iraqi partners, have persuaded the Sunni community that violence is counterproductive and cannot improve its political position, the insurgency will continue. That persuasion will require political incentives and military pressure. If we and the Iraqi government apply both in judicious measure over the course of the next few years, there is no reason we cannot win.
Though the article is lengthy, it is well written and very well reasoned. I recommend it.
October 25, 2005
Baghdad on referendum day
Michael Yon has an excellent report up at the Weekly Standard about the Iraqi referendum last week. Here's an excerpt:
On the eve of the election, I wanted to be fully prepared for combat in the morning. Once we started out, we'd have no idea how long we might be away, so I headed as quickly as possible to my room, showered, and managed to fall asleep. While I slept, terrorists knocked out electricity to most of Baghdad. Iraqis pulled out their lanterns.I walked through the morning darkness to meet the soldiers, who were laughing at the terrorists: Don't those dumbasses know that the voting will happen during the daytime? When it comes to winning hearts and minds, cutting off the electricity didn't win any support. I have been saying it for many months: The terrorists are losing. But today was litmus-day.
It's a good article that relates Michael Yon's experiences during the entire day of October 15th in Baghdad. Recommended.
A breath of fresh air, eh?
How about this article praising George Bush for liberating Iraq? It's in the Toronto Sun, no less . . . Here's a taste:
Never before -- anywhere in the Arab world -- has a population participated freely and willingly in the shaping of its government as Iraqis are doing -- despite the tremendous violence directed against them by bloody-minded insurgents. Never, in the 1,400 years of Islam, has an Arab-Muslim despot been brought into a court of justice to answer for crimes of rape, torture and murder of people under him.This is a uniquely riveting moment in Arab-Muslim history, and everyone in the region is mesmerized by the events occurring in Iraq.
But none of this could have been imagined without regime change in Baghdad. The midwife of a new Arab politics is, without any quibble, U.S. President George Bush.
It needs repeating that without Bush's decision for regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the sacrifices of U.S. and coalition soldiers, more than 50 million Muslims would not have been liberated.
It's a refreshing point of view, isn't it?
October 24, 2005
Record-breaking oil revenue -- in Iraq
Record oil revenues -- despite the supposedly rampant terrorism going on over there.
Assem Jihad, spokesman for the Iraqi oil ministry, confirmed that the Iraqi oil revenues have made a record of 2.6 billion dollars last September. He noted, "This digit is the highest in the history of Iraq, since it started exporting oil during the first half of last century."
Nobel prize winner . . .
. . . and East Timor's Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos-Horta, defends the US troops in Iraq.
TIME and again as I watch the barbarity inflicted on innocent Iraqi civilians, often women and children, pass with seeming silence and indifference from the rest of the world, I ask where are those who are so quick to take to the streets to protest every alleged US sin, be it real or imaginary?If they are so appalled at the graphic photos showing the depraved acts committed by a small number of American servicemen – photos that, never let it be forgotten, were unearthed as a result of the US Army's own investigation – surely they should be even more appalled by the daily carnage inflicted on the Shiah majority in Iraq.
Instead, those who hate the US seem to believe that every wrong committed by an American serviceman must not only be loudly condemned but portrayed as a deliberate act by the US Government, while the systematic and daily barbarities perpetrated predominantly by Sunni Muslims upon their fellow Muslims pass without comment. Such hypocrisy and unwarranted attacks increase the pressure on the US to cut and run from Iraq...
For all the present violence, in a few years Iraq could easily evolve into a peaceful and democratic country. Whether that transpires ultimately rests in the hands of the millions of Iraqis. But they cannot succeed if they are abandoned. And the brave, young American soldiers whom we today see cruising the treacherous streets of Iraq, sometimes battling the terrorists, sometimes conversing with ordinary Iraqis, will be remembered as the heroes who made this possible.
This was originally published in the Asian Wall Street Journal.
Somebody is finally speaking out truthfully about this . . .
Dr. Demarche, who tipped me off to this article, has much more.
October 23, 2005
Democracy is prevailing . . .
. . . in Iraq -- despite gloomy predictions by the western media. I just had to show you one more photo and story of the referendum in Iraq. Compliments of Major K.
October 20, 2005
Victory in Iraq
Ralph Peters, in the New York Post talks about the significance of the election in Iraq and how the MSM has woefully misconstrued it. He's taking no prisoners, either:
A startling number of editors and opinion columnists have been wrong about every development in Iraq (and Afghanistan). First, they predicted a bloody, protracted war against Saddam's military. Then they predicted civil war. They insisted that Iraq's first elections would fail amid a bloodbath. Then they declared that Iraq's elected delegates would not be able to agree on a draft constitution. Next, they thundered that Iraq's Sunni Arabs wouldn't vote.Most recently, the sages of the opinion pages declared that the proposed constitution would be defeated at the polls by the Sunni Arabs. All along they've displayed a breathtaking empathy with the Islamist terrorists who slaughter the innocent, giving Abu Musab al-Zarqawi a pass while attacking our president and mocking the achievements of our troops.
A herd mentality has taken over the editorial boards. Ignoring all evidence to the contrary, columnists write about our inevitable "retreat" from Iraq, declaring that "everyone knows" our policies have no chance of success.
That isn't journalism. It's wishful thinking on the part of those who need Iraq to fail to preserve their credibility.
Recommended reading (requires free registration).
Real pictures
Gateway Pundit has put up a post that shows several pictures and quotes from Arab news media that acknowledge the history-in-the-making nature of the Iraqi referendum Saturday.
Something that the western media has either ignored or put a negative spin on.
The post is worth reading -- the pictures are priceless! It is exciting to watch this tremendous victory for freedom going on over there.
Too bad our own news media cannot see it . . .
October 19, 2005
Iraqi optimism
Michael Rubin, over at OpinionJournal has an op-ed up about what the Iraqis think about progress in their country. As opposed to what American "opinion makers" say about it.
Here's an excerpt:
The referendum capped a constitutional drafting process over which Western commentators and diplomats had been quick to panic. They misunderstand that with freedom comes politics. The same U.S. senators who debated the "nuclear option" for judicial nominees failed to recognize political brinkmanship among their Iraqi counterparts.
I've reprinted it in it's entirety in the extended entry.
With Freedom Comes Politics
Iraqis are much more optimistic about their country than American opinion makers.
BY MICHAEL RUBIN
Tuesday, October 18, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDTOn Oct. 15, Iraqis demonstrated that their desire to determine the future through the ballot box was the rule rather than the exception. Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen; Sunnis, Shiites and Christians--all braved threats of violence to vote. The vast majority voted in favor of the constitution. But whatever their positions, Iraqis considered their decision carefully.
The referendum campaign was active. Dueling commercials and newscasts sought to sway the Iraqi vote. Such is the nature of politics in a country no longer subject to state-controlled media.
Some read the constitution. They voted for or against federalism. Some marked their ballot on the basis of how closely they wished religion to be mixed with government. Others did not read the document but learned about it on television, in newspapers and even by text messaging, the latest medium employed by Iraqi politicians to reach constituents. Security, rather than content, was a determinant for some. They voted "yes" to avoid the chaos of failure and the prolongation of occupation.
The referendum capped a constitutional drafting process over which Western commentators and diplomats had been quick to panic. They misunderstand that with freedom comes politics. The same U.S. senators who debated the "nuclear option" for judicial nominees failed to recognize political brinkmanship among their Iraqi counterparts.Many U.S. policy makers worry that disgruntled Sunnis may turn to violence if their demands aren't met. But there is no evidence to support the conventional wisdom that insurgent violence is tied to the political process. Insurgents have not put forward any platform. By denying the legitimacy of the state, pan-Islamic rhetoric is a greater affront to Iraqi nationalism than the presence of foreign troops on Iraqi soil. It is no accident that Iraqi Sunnis have started killing foreign jihadists.
Nevertheless, implying violence to be the result of demands not met is an old Middle East game. And in this game, Iraqi factions have played the Western media and policy makers like a fiddle. White House pressure, for example, led U.S. officials to amend the political process in order to augment the Sunni presence in the Constitutional Drafting Commission. Acceding to such demands is not without cost. Because Iraq's Sunni leaders are more Islamist than their Shiite counterparts, the increased Sunni presence eroded the rights of Iraqi women in the constitution's final draft.
Some critics still maintain that the "yes" vote may exacerbate conflict. What is needed is consensus, they say. On Sept. 26, for example, the International Crisis Group released a statement criticizing "a rushed constitutional process [that] has deepened rifts and hardened feelings. Without a strong U.S.-led initiative to assuage Sunni Arab concerns, the constitution is likely to fuel rather than dampen the insurgency." This NGO bemoaned the referendum as little more than an opportunity for Iraqis "to embrace a weak document that lacks consensus."
But consensus is not always possible. Though Sunnis are perhaps 15% of Iraq's population, they believe themselves to be 50%. Any agreement acceding to their inflated sense of power would automatically disenfranchise the remainder of the population. With the collapse of apartheid in 1994, white South Africans had to confront their minority status. Iraqi Sunnis must face the same reality. The process may be painful, but justice, democracy and long-term stability demand it continue.
Even without consensus, the constitution represents the type of social and political compromise lacking through the Arab world. Members of the Constitutional Drafting Commission and Iraqi power brokers spent months debating and canvassing constituents. Any politician living outside the U.S.-controlled Green Zone--Jalal Talabani, Abdul Aziz Hakim and Ahmad Chalabi, for example--had his parlor filled with Iraqis from different cities and of various ethnic and sectarian backgrounds until the early hours of morning. These Iraqi petitioners voiced interests and demands diametrically opposed to each other. Consensus was not always possible, but compromise was. As with the constitution, the nature of compromise is a result ideal to none but fair to all.
The referendum result again demonstrates that American policy- and opinion-makers are more pessimistic than are Iraqis. Part of the problem is that Pentagon officials and journalists alike chart Iraq's success through misguided metrics. Counting car bombs does not demonstrate progress or lack thereof in Iraq. Objective indicators show that Iraqis have confidence that did not exist prior to liberation.According to an Aug. 16, 2002, commentary in the Guardian--a British newspaper that often opposes U.S. foreign policy--one in six Iraqis had fled their country under Saddam. Millions left because of war, dictatorship and sanctions. Today, several hundred thousand have returned; only the Christians still leave. If Iraq were as chaotic as the media implies, it would export refugees, not resettle them.
Other indicators suggest Iraqis have confidence in their future. The Iraqi dinar, freely traded in international currency markets, is stable.
When people fear for their future, they invest in gold; jewelry and coins can be sewn into clothes and smuggled out of the country. When people feel confident about the future, they buy real estate. Property prices have skyrocketed across Iraq. Decrepit houses in Sadr City, a Shiite slum on the outskirts of Baghdad, can easily cost $45,000. Houses in upper-middle-class districts of Mansour and Karrada can cost more than 20 times that. Restaurant owners spend $50,000 on top-of-the-line generators to keep open despite the frequent blackouts. In September 2005, there were 40 buildings nine stories or higher under construction in the Kurdish city of Sulaymani. Five years ago, there were none. Iraqis would not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on real estate if they weren't confident that the law would protect their investment.
Iraqis now see the fruit of foreign investment. A year ago in Baghdad, Iraqis drank water and soft drinks imported from neighboring countries. Now they drink water bottled in plants scattered across Iraq. When I visited a Baghdad computer shop last spring, my hosts handed me a can of Pepsi. An Arabic banner across the can announced, "The only soft drink manufactured in Iraq." In August, a Coca-Cola executive in Istanbul told me their Baghdad operation is not far behind. Turkish investors in partnership with local Iraqis have built modern hotels in Basra.
Cameras and reporters do not lie, but they do not always give a full perspective. Political brinkmanship devoid of context breeds panic. Beheadings and blood sell copy, but do not accurately reflect Iraq. Political milestones give a glimpse of the often-unreported determination that Iraqis and longtime visitors see daily. Bombings and body bags are tragic. But they do not reflect failure. Rather, they represent the sacrifice that both Iraqis and Americans have made for security and democracy. The referendum, refugee return, real estate and investment show much more accurately--and objectively--Iraq's slow but steady progress.
Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is editor of the Middle East Quarterly.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
Right on the mark
Sarah, over at trying to grok has a good post up about international hypocrisy.
She says it like she sees it. And she sees it quite well. Recommended.
October 18, 2005
Hopefully so
Wretchard, over at the Belmont Club has a good post up describing the end of the beginning of the new democratic Iraq. And he's not holding back.
Just as the ouster of Saddam by OIF touched off a wave of changes in Libya, Lebanon and the entire region, the impending defeat of the insurgency will paradoxically enhance the ability of diplomacy to address many of the remaining issues. Saddam's defeat confirmed what many military analysts knew from Desert Storm, that it was impossible for any conventional army to stand up against US forces. And that modified the behavior of many rogue states. Yet there remained the hope that the terrorist model of warfare, forged in Algeria and refined against Israel in Lebanon, would bring America to a halt: that rogue regimes acting discreetly could operate within that strategic shadow. Now, for the first time since Algeria, a terrorist force of the highest quality, supported by contributions from oil-rich countries, in the heart of the Arab world, with sanctuary in a friendly regime across the border and eulogized as "freedom fighters" by dozens of major international publications is on the verge of total and ignominious defeat. There are no more strategic shadows.
Recommended.
Sooni's election photos
Check out these photos of the voting in Baghdad Saturday.
Another victory for democracy happened this weekend. In Iraq. Another step toward bringing our troops home has been taken.
And yet our press seems singularly unimpressed. In fact, they seem downright pessimistic about the whole thing.
It's a shame, really . . .
October 17, 2005
Sunset in Iraq
A US transport helicopter takes off at sunset from the International Zone (previously called the "Green Zone"), a heavily guarded area where foreign embassies and Iraq's parliament are based, in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday Oct. 16 2005. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
October 15, 2005
Iraqi Army
Gen. Robert H. Scales (Ret.) wrote an op-ed in the Washington Times about the Iraqi army's progress. Here's an excerpt:
I traveled to Iraq this week with a group of military analysts. From my visit I concluded that the greatest change in the military balance over since last summer has been achieved by the Iraqis Security forces. Their story is only partially told by the recent spike in numbers of Iraqi army battalions from only a few a year ago to 117 today. But soldiers know that the effectiveness of a fighting force is better measured by intangibles such as courage, will to win, skill at arms, leadership, cohesion and allegiance to a higher cause. These are factors that media amateurs and Washington insiders have difficulty comprehending.
October 11, 2005
Health care
Julia Gorin has an article over at OpinionJournal that makes me extremely glad that I live in the USA. The article is about health care under tyrannical governments -- specifically the now defunct USSR, and also North Korea.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry . . .
Born in the USSR
I survived Soviet health care--barely.
BY JULIA GORIN
Monday, October 10, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDTI recently came face to face with a level of Western ignorance that I hadn't encountered since the 1980s, when Russian immigrants were still a novelty to Americans. A British-American asked my father a question that could only come from someone who has known freedom his whole life: "Why did you leave Russia? Your family was there, you had a job, you had free health care. Why did you leave?" The questioner, a former editor with the New York Times, then proceeded to assert that today's Britain and U.S. are no longer free.
The exchange reminded me just how out of touch many who live in the free world are with the reality of life under tyranny--and why, therefore, so many Americans and Brits think nothing is scarier than war. On the subject even of that oft-cited "perk" of Soviet life, universal health care, a picture of the system in practice on its happiest occasion would shock Americans and Western Europeans alike.
Since ordinary people in Russia didn't have cars, Dad called a taxi to take Mom to the hospital when her contractions started on Feb. 25, 1970. Some procedural questions were asked, then Mom was sent to a room called the rodilka, or "birther," where there were 10 or so women at various stages of dilation. For the night there were one doctor, one nurse, a female orderly and a lot of screaming. (Epidurals for painless labor were unheard of.) At this stage of pregnancy a woman loses control of some bodily functions even after taking preventive measures, so that one woman would be defecating into a pot by her bed while another would be eating dinner in the next bed. Medical students passed by casually observing.After my elder sister was born and the nurses took her away, Mom began the two-day fluid-expulsion process, which in civilized countries is managed by a changing of the sheets as often as every two hours. Back in the USSR, the new mother would soak in her puddles on a small linen sheet and oil cloth, since patients weren't entitled to more than one or two changes per day. If she wanted an extra change, she'd have to beg and brown-nose the nannychka, as the orderly was addressed by the screaming women. Someone would always yell back: "I just gave you new sheets, and you soiled yourself again!"
Those who were able to bribe the nurse or orderly would get better service, but Mom didn't know and hadn't brought anything. One woman kept giving the nurse fruit so that she'd yell at her less and give her what she needed. Mom could only beg, the whole time feeling as if she'd done something wrong. Granted, the nurse was under an inordinate amount of stress. She was alone responsible for so many, and was running nonstop throughout the night.
For her second delivery, Mom never went into labor. She was two weeks overdue and the baby had stopped moving. Fearing the worst, she took the metro to the hospital."Are you in labor?"
"No."
Again Mom thought she'd done something wrong because people were yelling at her as soon as she walked in: "Then why did you come? You like hanging around hospitals, do you?"
"I don't feel anything moving."
"Oh. OK, wait for the doctor."
Fortunately, a younger nurse overheard the conversation. "What--it's not moving? How long? Since last night? OK, go over there and get undressed."
People stopped yelling at my mother then, and she got more attention.
"I don't hear the baby," said the old doctor who was on duty. "Is this your first child?"
"No."
"Did the first one live?"
"Yes."
"Good. Because the prognosis here isn't good."
Since there was no labor activity, labor was induced. In Russia this was called "stimulating labor," and it required one to drink castor oil. My mother has its taste on her tongue to this day, she told me. Her body contorted inexplicably, and she became catatonic, unable to move her arms or legs.
She could hear the yelling at the others as it continued in the background: "Stop screaming!" "You're not the first to give birth; you won't be the last!" "Shut your mouth!" After some time, Mom's catatonia relaxed and the contractions started. A few hours later the baby was born, and my mother heard the doctor call to an orderly: "Quick! You with the water--the baby is in asphyxia!" My mother lay emotionless, able only to hear spanking for what she believes to be nearly half an hour as the doctor tried to revive me. Finally, she heard crying.
Had my mother been a party boss's relative, her birthing experiences would have looked a lot more like the common woman's in America. But such was delivery for 99% of the Russian female population.
In America, women often remember abortion as traumatic. My mother barely remembers her two abortions (Russian birth control), but she can't forget a single traumatic detail of her children's births.
Today the Soviet Union is gone, but the communist system lives on in a few places. The glimpse we have into North Korea's delivery rooms is into those at detention centers for political prisoners, as described to Marie Claire magazine in 2002 by Lee Young Suk, a 65-year-old grandmother who was deported back to North Korea after she defected to China. At a detention center in South Sinuiju province, Lee Young was assigned to help deliver babies of other prisoners.When she delivered the baby of the first woman under her care and reached for a blanket, a guard stopped her: "You crazy hag, are you out of your mind? What are you doing with the baby? Just put it in the box!" He grabbed the baby by a leg and dumped him into a wooden box that was sitting on the floor. He hit Lee Young's arm with a leather strap.
"North Korea is short of food already," the chief medical officer explained. "Why do we have to feed the offspring of foreign fathers? Since China is an open country, they could even be babies of American sperm, so then we'd be feeding Americans."
The procedure was as follows: Once the box was filled with infants, it would be taken to the mountains and buried. Most of the babies would die within four days, but Lee Young recalled two particularly healthy ones who took longer, moving their heads left to right, opening and closing their eyes and making froglike croaks. Their skin turned yellow and their lips blue until the medical officer finally stabbed them through the skull. Lee Young was reassigned when her heart weakened from what she was witnessing. She eventually bribed her way out of prison and into South Korea.
We share the planet with North Korea and its ilk. As many intellectuals, academics and literary and Hollywood luminaries commented soon after 9/11--with some vindication in their tone--we do not live in a vacuum. Yet for the most part they, along with the isolationist right, seem indifferent to the suffering of tyranny's victims. They blithely champion the status quo, or in the case of Iraq the status quo ante, repeating only that Saddam Hussein wasn't a threat to us.Ms. Gorin is a contributing editor of JewishWorldReview.com.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
October 08, 2005
Iraqi charter popular
Even Reuters acknowledges that Iraqis favor the democratic process.
Recent polling shows widespread support for a new Iraqi constitution to be voted on Oct. 15, even in strongholds of Sunni Arab groups that are fighting to derail the charter.
This is good news! I am praying for the best outcome in Iraq. Please join me, if you will.
October 06, 2005
Aiding and abetting redux
LTC Tim Ryan, in this World Tribune article describes how the media's coverage has distorted the world's view of Iraqi reality. And how that equates to aiding and abetting the enemy.
This war is not without its tragedies; none ever are. The key to the enemy's success is use of his limited assets to gain the greatest influence over the masses. The media serves as the glass through which a relatively small event can be magnified to international proportions, and the enemy is exploiting this with incredible ease. There is no good news to counteract the bad, so the enemy scores a victory almost every day. In its zeal to get to the hot spots and report the latest bombing, the media is missing the reality of a greater good going on in Iraq. We seldom are seen doing anything right or positive in the news. People believe what they see, and what people of the world see almost on a daily basis is negative. How could they see it any other way? These images and stories, out of scale and context to the greater good going on over here, are just the sort of thing the terrorists are looking for. This focus on the enemy's successes strengthens his resolve and aids and abets his cause. It's the American image abroad that suffers in the end.
It's a good article from a man who has been there and done that. Recommended.
October 03, 2005
Rhma's story proceeds
Michael Yon is finally able to report a resolution to the Deuce-Four's struggle to get Rhma back to the USA for desperately needed medical treatment.
I wrote about it, knowing that if Americans knew that Rhma was stuck in Jordan, our good people would not let that stand. Once again, the good and generous nature of average Americans glimmered the moment they found the problem. People all over the United States took it upon themselves to call their congressmen and senators, many of whom interceded on behalf of a sick little girl who had faith that Americans would take care of her.
Go read the rest.
October 01, 2005
Heart of Darkness
In which Fouad Ajami blames the Arab elite for encouraging the continuation of the terrorists' war against the Iraqi people.
Recommended.
It's in the extended entry.
Heart of Darkness
From Zarqawi to the man on the street, Sunni Arabs fear Shiite emancipation.
BY FOUAD AJAMI
Wednesday, September 28, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDTThe remarkable thing about the terror in Iraq is the silence with which it is greeted in other Arab lands. Grant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi his due: He has been skilled at exposing the pitilessness on the loose in that fabled Arab street and the moral emptiness of so much of official Arab life. The extremist is never just a man of the fringe: He always works at the outer edges of mainstream life, playing out the hidden yearnings and defects of the dominant culture. Zarqawi is a bigot and a killer, but he did not descend from the sky. He emerged out of the Arab world's sins of omission and commission; in the way he rails against the Shiites (and the Kurds) he expresses that fatal Arab inability to take in "the other." A terrible condition afflicts the Arabs, and Zarqawi puts it on lethal display: an addiction to failure, and a desire to see this American project in Iraq come to a bloody end.
Zarqawi's war, it has to be conceded, is not his alone; he kills and maims, he labels the Shiites rafida (rejecters of Islam), he charges them with treason as "collaborators of the occupiers and the crusaders," but he can be forgiven the sense that he is a holy warrior on behalf of a wider Arab world that has averted its gaze from his crimes, that has given him its silent approval. He and the band of killers arrayed around him must know the meaning of this great Arab silence.
There is a cliché that distinguishes between cultures of shame and cultures of guilt, and by that crude distinction, it has always been said that the Arab world is a "shame culture." But in truth there is precious little shame in Arab life about the role of the Arabs in the great struggle for and within Iraq. What is one to make of the Damascus-based Union of Arab Writers that has refused to grant membership in its ranks to Iraqi authors? The pretext that Iraqi writers can't be "accredited" because their country is under American occupation is as good an illustration as it gets of the sordid condition of Arab culture. For more than three decades, Iraq's life was sheer and limitless terror, and the Union of Arab Writers never uttered a word. Through these terrible decades, Iraqis suffered alone, and still their poetry and literature adorn Arabic letters. They need no acknowledgment of their pain, or of their genius, from a literary union based in a city in the grip of a deadening autocracy.A culture of shame would surely see into the shame of an Arab official class with no tradition of accountability granting itself the right to hack away at Iraq's constitution, dismissing it as the handiwork of the American regency. Unreason, an indifference to the most basic of facts, and a spirit of belligerence have settled upon the Arab world. Those who, in Arab lands beyond Iraq, have taken to describing the Iraqi constitution as an "American-Iranian constitution," give voice to a debilitating incoherence. At the heart of this incoherence lies an adamant determination to deny the Shiites of Iraq a claim to their rightful place in their country's political order.
The drumbeats against Iraq that originate from the League of Arab States and its Egyptian apparatchiks betray the panic of an old Arab political class afraid that there is something new unfolding in Iraq--a different understanding of political power and citizenship, a possible break with the culture of tyranny and the cult of Big Men disposing of the affairs--and the treasure--of nations. It is pitiable that an Egyptian political class that has abdicated its own dream of modernity and bent to the will of a pharaonic regime is obsessed with the doings in Iraq. But this is the political space left open by the master of the realm. To be sure, there is terror in the streets of Iraq; there is plenty there for the custodians of a stagnant regime in Cairo to point to as a cautionary tale of what awaits societies that break with "secure" ways. But the Egyptian autocracy knows the stakes. An Iraqi polity with a modern social contract would be a rebuke to all that Egypt stands for, a cruel reminder of the heartbreak of Egyptians in recent years. We must not fall for Cairo's claims of primacy in Arab politics; these are hollow, and Iraq will further expose the rot that has settled upon the political life of Egypt.
Nor ought we be taken in by warnings from Jordan, made by King Abdullah II, of a "Shia crescent" spanning Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. This is a piece of bigotry and simplification unworthy of a Hashemite ruler, for in the scheme of Arab history the Hashemites have been possessed of moderation and tolerance. Of all Sunni Arab rulers, the Hashemites have been particularly close to the Shiites, but popular opinion in Jordan has been thoroughly infatuated with Saddam Hussein, and Saddamism, and an inexperienced ruler must have reasoned that the Shiite bogey would play well at home.
The truth of Jordan today is official moderation coupled with a civic culture given to anti-Americanism, and hijacked by the Islamists. In that standoff, the country's political life is off-limits, but the street has its way on Iraq. Verse is still read in Saddam's praise at poetry readings in Amman, and the lawyers' syndicate is packed with those eager to join the legal defense teams of Saddam Hussein and his principal lieutenants. Saddam's two daughters reside in Jordan with no apologies to offer, and no second thoughts about the great crimes committed under the Baath tyranny. Those who know the ways of Jordan speak of cities where religious radicalism and bigotry blow with abandon. Zarqa, the hometown of Abu Musab, is one such place; Salt, the birthplace of a notorious suicide bomber, Raad al-Banna, who last winter brought great tragedy to the Iraqi town of Hilla, killing no fewer than 125 of its people, is another. For a funeral, Banna's family gave him a "martyr's wedding," and the affair became an embarrassment to the regime and the political class. Jordan is yet to make its peace with the new Iraq. (King Abdullah's "crescent" breaks at any rate: Syria has no Shiites to speak of, and its Alawite rulers are undermining the Shiites of Iraq, feeding a jihadist breed of Sunni warriors for whom the Alawites are children of darkness.)
It was the luck of the imperial draw that the American project in Iraq came to the rescue of the Shiites--and of the Kurds. We may not fully appreciate the historical change we unleashed on the Arab world, but we have given liberty to the stepchildren of the Arab world. We have overturned an edifice of material and moral power that dates back centuries. The Arabs railing against U.S. imperialism and arrogance in Iraq will never let us in on the real sources of their resentments. In the way of "modern" men and women with some familiarity with the doctrines of political correctness, they can't tell us that they are aggrieved that we have given a measure of self-worth to the seminarians of Najaf and the highlanders of Kurdistan. But that is precisely what gnaws at them.An edifice of Arab nationalism built by strange bedfellows--the Sunni political and bureaucratic elites, and the Christian Arab pundits who abetted them in the idle hope that they would be spared the wrath of the street and of the mob--was overturned in Iraq. And America, at times ambivalent about its mission, brought along with its military gear a suspicion of the Shiites, a belief that the Iraqi Shiites were an extension of Iran, a community destined to build a sister-republic of the Iranian theocracy. Washington has its cadre of Arabists reared on Arab nationalist historiography. This camp had a seat at the table, but the very scale of what was at play in Iraq, and the redemptionism at the heart of George Bush's ideology, dwarfed them.
For the Arab enemies of this project of rescue, this new war in Iraq was a replay of an old drama: the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258. In the received history, the great city of learning, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, had fallen to savages, and an age of greatness had drawn to a close. In the legend of that tale, the Mongols sacked the metropolis, put its people to the sword, dumped the books of its libraries in the Tigris. That river, chroniclers insist, flowed, alternately, with the blood of the victims and the ink of the books. It is a tale of betrayal, the selective history maintains. A minister of the caliph, a Shiite by the name of Ibn Alqami, opened the gates of Baghdad to the Mongols. History never rests here, and telescopes easily: In his call for a new holy war against the Shiites, Zarqawi dredges up that history, dismisses the Shiite-led government as "the government of Ibn Alqami's descendants." Zarqawi knows the power of this symbolism, and its dark appeal to Sunni Arabs within Iraq.
Zarqawi's jihadists have sown ruin in Iraq, but they are strangers to that country, and they have needed the harbor given them in the Sunni triangle and the indulgence of the old Baathists. For the diehards, Iraq is now a "stolen country" delivered into the hands of subject communities unfit to rule. Though a decided minority, the Sunni Arabs have a majoritarian mindset and a conviction that political dominion is their birthright. Instead of encouraging a break with the old Manichaean ideologies, the Arab world beyond Iraq feeds this deep-seated sense of historical entitlement. No one is under any illusions as to what the Sunni Arabs would have done had oil been located in their provinces. They would have disowned both north and south and opted for a smaller world of their own and defended it with the sword. But this was not to be, and their war is the panic of a community that fears that it could be left with a realm of "gravel and sand."
In the aftermath of Katrina, the project of reforming a faraway region and ridding it of its malignancies is harder to sustain and defend. We are face-to-face with the trade-off between duties beyond borders and duties within. At home, for the critics of the war, Katrina is a rod to wave in the face of the Bush administration. To be sure, we did not acquit ourselves well in the aftermath of the storm; we left ourselves open to the gloatings of those eager to see America get its comeuppance. Even Zarqawi weighed in on Katrina, depicting a raid on the northern town of Tal Afar by a joint Iraqi-American force as an attempt on the part of "Bush, the enemy of God" to cover up the great "scandal in facing up to the storm which exposed to the entire world what had happened to the American military due to the wars of attrition it had suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan."Those duties within have to be redeemed in the manner that this country has always assumed redemptive projects. But that other project, in the burning grounds of the Arab-Muslim world, remains, and we must remember its genesis. It arose out of a calamity on 9/11, which rid us rudely of the illusions of the '90s. That era had been a fools' paradise; Nasdaq had not brought about history's end. In Kabul and Baghdad, we cut down two terrible regimes; in the neighborhood beyond, there are chameleons in the shadows whose ways are harder to extirpate.
We have not always been brilliant in the war we have waged, for these are lands we did not fully know. But our work has been noble and necessary, and we can't call a halt to it in midstream. We bought time for reform to take root in several Arab and Muslim realms. Leave aside the rescue of Afghanistan, Kuwait and Qatar have done well by our protection, and Lebanon has retrieved much of its freedom. The three larger realms of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria are more difficult settings, but there, too, the established orders of power will have to accommodate the yearnings for change. A Kuwaiti businessman with an unerring feel for the ways of the Arab world put it thus to me: "Iraq, the Internet, and American power are undermining the old order in the Arab world. There are gains by the day." The rage against our work in Iraq, all the way from the "chat rooms" of Arabia to the bigots of Finsbury Park in London, is located within this broader struggle.
In that Iraqi battleground, we can't yet say that the insurgency is in its death throes. But that call to war by Zarqawi, we must know, came after the stunning military operation in Tal Afar dealt the jihadists a terrible blow. An Iraqi-led force, supported by American tanks, armored vehicles and air cover, had stormed that stronghold. This had been a transit point for jihadists coming in from Syria. This time, at Tal Afar, Iraq security forces were there to stay, and a Sunni Arab defense minister with the most impeccable tribal credentials, Saadoun Dulaimi, issued a challenge to Iraq's enemy, a message that his soldiers would fight for their country.
The claim that our war in Iraq, after the sacrifices, will have hatched a Shiite theocracy is a smear on the war, a misreading of the Shiite world of Iraq. In the holy city of Najaf, at its apex, there is a dread of political furies and an attachment to sobriety. I went to Najaf in July; no one of consequence there spoke of a theocratic state. Najaf's jurists lived through a time of terror, when informers and assassins had the run of the place. They have been delivered from that time. The new order shall give them what they want: a place in Iraq's cultural and moral order, and a decent separation between religion and the compromises of political life.
Over the horizon looms a referendum to ratify the country's constitution. Sunni Arabs are registering in droves, keen not to repeat the error they committed when they boycotted the national elections earlier this year. In their pride, and out of fear of the insurgents and their terror, the Sunni Arabs say that they are registering to vote in order to thwart this "illegitimate constitution." This kind of saving ambiguity ought to be welcomed, for there are indications that the Sunni Arabs may have begun to understand terror's blindness and terror's ruin. Zarqawi holds out but one fate for them; other doors beckon, and there have stepped forth from their ranks leaders eager to partake of the new order. It is up to them, and to the Arab street and the Arab chancelleries that wink at them, to bring an end to the terror. It has not been easy, this expedition to Iraq, and for America in Iraq there has been heartbreak aplenty. But we ought to remember the furies that took us there, and we ought to be consoled by the thought that the fight for Iraq is a fight to ward off Arab dangers and troubles that came our way on a clear September morning, four years ago.
Mr. Ajami teaches International Relations at Johns Hopkins University.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
September 28, 2005
Perspective
Michael Barone reminds us about the big picture. Here's an excerpt:
A world spinning out of control: That is what the old-line broadcast networks seem to be showing us. But I see other patterns. George W. Bush has consistently asserted that one reason for removing Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was to advance freedom and democracy in the Middle East. In spite of the improvised explosive devices, that seems to be happening. Lebanon's Cedar Revolution was as inspiring an example of people power as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Libya has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction. Egypt, by far the largest Arab nation, had its first contested election this month, and, as the Washington Post's David Ignatius writes from Cairo, "the power of the reform movement in the Arab world today ... is potent because it's coming from the Arab societies themselves and not just from democracy enthusiasts in Washington." Which is evidence that Bush was right: Muslims and Arabs, like people everywhere, want liberty and self-rule. Afghanistan has just voted, and Iraq is about to vote a second time this year. Violence continues, but the more important story is that democracy and freedom are advancing.
He also covers the economy, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and America's lack of popularity with the rest of the world. A good read.
September 27, 2005
Egyptian democracy
David Ignatius has a column up at the Washington Post that discusses the very real potential for democratic reform in Egypt. Here's a taste:
But unlikely as it sounds, the 77-year-old Mubarak won reelection this month on a platform of political and economic reform. The fact that even the pharaonic Mubarak is running as a democrat illustrates the power of the reform movement in the Arab world today. The movement is potent because it's coming from the Arab societies themselves and not just from democracy enthusiasts in Washington.
And this can be attributed to the U.S. involvement, under President Bush's leadership, in founding democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bet on it.
It's an interesting read. Recommended.
[Hat tip to Michael Barone's Blog.]
September 26, 2005
Iraq Permanent Fund
Here is a good idea for spreading the wealth in Iraq.
September 25, 2005
Ex - U.N.
Claudia Rosett indulges us with a pleasant fantasy: closing up the current U.N. and starting afresh and anew.
We should be so lucky. [/cynicism]
I've posted it all in the extended entry.
On Monday afternoon the electrical power blew out at U.N. headquarters, forcing the secretary-general and the foreign ministers of four of the world's most powerful nations, along with France, to evacuate the executive offices on the 38th floor. Nonessential U.N. staff were sent home--leaving a friend to quip, "Does that mean all of them?" Ms. Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.
U.N.-Plugged
Imagining the end of the "world" as we know it.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Power has since been restored. But Monday's blackout was about as close as anything's come to Ambassador John Bolton's much-quoted line that the U.N. could lose its top 10 stories and nothing would be different. The General Assembly session, continued without interruption in another part of the U.N. complex. The global economy ticked along. The world turned on its axis. On schedule, the sun set. All of which led to a taboo line of thought: What if we simply left the U.N. unplugged?
In the debate over U.N. reform, that is the no-go zone. It is accepted practice to issue tons of documents outlining endless reform, argue over all of it, despair of most of it, mangle the remainder and then recite as an axiom of the modern universe that the U.N. is a flawed institution, but it's all we've got. To whisper that maybe the U.N. is a relic beyond repair, and perhaps a new age of the world deserves a new and better institution, is to knock yourself right out of the debate. No one would want to do that; or at least no one who has invested the eons it takes to read Kofi Annan's 87-page reform plan, Mr. Bolton's sagely line-edited version of the ensuing reform document, the final version of the "outcome" document, the stack of U.N.-reform-related congressional proposals and testimony, the think-tank documents, the zillion-and-one op-eds, and of course the recent 847-page report of Paul Volcker's inquiry.
But in the fleeting twilight moment this past Monday of contemplating a U.N. without power, I did wonder what a new world council would look like, if instead of restitching the creation animated by our forefathers in 1945, we created an institution tailored to our own era--not the 20th century, but the 21st.
The upside of an entirely new U.N. could go well beyond better electrical circuits at headquarters, or more agile computer backup (for a while, the U.N. Web site went out along with the lights). The current U.N. dates back to a time when the frontier of information technology was the vacuum tube, the ascendant philosophy in the developing world was communist central planning, and the kind of war the U.N.'s founders sought to prevent was chiefly the domain of uniformed armies clashing under the flags of sovereign states.
The U.N. founders wrote a charter at the end of World War II filled with wonderful words about reaffirming faith in "human rights" and "the dignity of human beings." They then contradicted themselves in practice from day one by respecting thug regimes enough to provide Stalin's Soviet Union a permanent seat on the Security Council and two extra seats in the General Assembly. They set up a U.N. system that not only failed to prevent a long series of wars but today fails to curb terrorism, or even adequately define it. In other words, to create an inclusive gathering of nations in 1945, our forefathers made some big practical compromises with their lofty ideals. In making those tradeoffs, their priorities did not reflect a world in which Osama bin Laden could surf the Internet.
Nor did they set up a U.N. replete with the checks and balances and transparency widely recognized these days as necessary to good governance. The U.N. founders did not provide adequate defenses against the tangled growth of U.N. bureaucracy, the packing of the ranks over the decades with cronies and rival national cliques, or the formation of influential lobbying groups of despotic regimes such as the former Soviet bloc or the current Arab League. And in setting up the U.N. as the mother of all multilateral aid agencies, the U.N. founders never came to grips with the vital principle that if private enterprise is the real engine of prosperity--which it is--then the secret is not to jack up government-channeled aid at every opportunity but to push chiefly for more liberty, even if that means a lesser role--and smaller budget--for the U.N.
If today's democratic leaders were to take the same prerogative as our grandparents--but without waiting until the world around them is reduced to rubble--and set out to create a U.N. from scratch, what would it look like? If we set out to meld the same worthy ideals of human rights and dignity that inspired the old U.N. with the practical needs, miracle technologies and hard-won wisdom of our own age, how would it work?
Would we choose to start with an organizational chart anything like that of the U.N. today--a labyrinth so vast and secret that according to Mr. Volcker's findings even the U.N.'s own management cannot decipher it?
Would we start with a Secretariat like the one we have today, which has in some disturbing respects evolved into a sort of singularly privileged 192nd member state? The original purpose of the Secretariat was to implement the decisions of the General Assembly and Security Council--in other words, to serve the member states. Over the years, the Secretariat acquired a budget in the billions, but somehow failed to develop the skills to handle it well. Now, Mr. Volcker's report informs us that no one these days expects the secretary-general to be hired for his administrative or managerial skills. Instead, he has become the "chief diplomatic and political agent of the United Nations." OK, but in that case, who or what at the U.N. does the secretary-general represent? When Kofi Annan says "we"--as in "from our point of view" the liberation of Iraq was "illegal," who exactly is he speaking for? The administrative staff? The Security Council? The General Assembly? Has he in contradiction of the U.N. charter (which is what he was at that moment claiming to represent) been promoted to the status of royalty, the head of a world state--in which case all now owe allegiance to the figure originally mandated to perform the functions of U.N. chief administrator and clerk?
Would we create a Security Council in which the despotic People's Republic of China holds a permanent seat and a fascist state such as Syria rotates through the presidency, but democratic Israel is systematically excluded from serving at all?
Would we create a General Assembly in which Zimbabwe, North Korea, Burma and Turkmenistan all wield a vote, but the elected leader of democratic Taiwan is not even allowed to set foot on the premises?
Would we create a U.N. in which the financial accounts are secret, the auditing is inadequate, and the standards are double or worse--lax for the highest officials and severe for lower-tier staff who lack patrons in the right places?
These questions belong to fantasy, of course. No one in power has seriously addressed them because no one important is seriously thinking of turning out the lights for good at Turtle Bay. But for a moment there, it was intriguing to wonder what, with the benefit of 60 years experience, we might now invent--if we ever left the old U.N. unplugged long enough to find out.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
With the rampant corruption that is becoming so evident in the U.N., I think the world should seriously consider shutting it down and starting over.
September 24, 2005
President Talabani speaks
The president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, talks about the importance of defeating terrorism. Here's how he begins:
There is no more important international issue today than the need to defeat the curse of terrorism. And as the first democratically elected president of Iraq, I have a responsibility to ensure that the world's youngest democracy survives the inherently difficult transition from totalitarianism to pluralism. A transformation of the Iraqi state and Iraqi society is impossible without a sustained commitment of soldiers from the United States and other democracies.
The rest is in the extended entry. Highly recommended reading -- it puts our military struggle back into perspective (without the distortions of viewing it through our media's dark lens).
BAGHDAD--There is no more important international issue today than the need to defeat the curse of terrorism. And as the first democratically elected president of Iraq, I have a responsibility to ensure that the world's youngest democracy survives the inherently difficult transition from totalitarianism to pluralism. A transformation of the Iraqi state and Iraqi society is impossible without a sustained commitment of soldiers from the United States and other democracies.
We Need American Troops
Thank you for liberating my country. Please don't leave before the job is done.
BY JALAL TALABANI
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
To understand why, let us recall how we reached this juncture in history. How is it that Iraq today has a democratically elected head of state, government and Parliament? How it is that members of the most repressed ethnic groups now hold the highest offices of state? All these welcome developments are a result of the courage and vision of President Bush and his allies, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, leaders whose commitment of troops to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions liberated Iraq.
Without foreign intervention, the transition in Iraq would have been from Saddam's bloodstained hands to his psychopathic offspring. Instead, thanks to American leadership, Iraqis have been given an opportunity of peaceful, participatory politics. Contrary to the new conventional wisdom, Iraq and the history of 20th-century Europe demonstrate that force of arms can implant democracy in the most arid soil.
The rapidity of the democratization and reform of Iraq is staggering. There was no German state for four years after the Second World War. By contrast, Iraq has moved from a centralized, one-man dictatorship to a decentralized, federal republic in half that time.
Inevitably, there have been stresses and strains. In Iraq these have been amplified by the terrorism of the remnants of the fascist Baathist dictatorship and our interfering neighbors. To contain these tensions, and to defend our young democracy, requires the support of American and other troops. Foreign forces are needed to train and equip the new Iraqi armed forces and to give Iraq its own counterterrorism capability. Only the United States and its closest allies are able to provide such assistance.
Creating these Iraqi forces has not been easy, but Iraqis have been undaunted by the difficulties. Every terrorist attack on Iraqi forces leads to a surge in military recruitment--the opposite of the appeasers' myth that resisting terrorism causes more terrorism. For all the short-term problems, the soundness of the long-term strategy of building up Iraqi forces was demonstrated in recent days when Iraqis took over sole control of security in the holy city of Najaf.
As Iraqi forces gain in confidence and capability, so the need for foreign troops will diminish. The number of foreign troops will be determined in consultations between the Iraqi government and its foreign allies on the basis of operational requirements.
American forces are in Iraq at the invitation of the democratically elected government of Iraq, and with the backing of a United Nations Security Council resolution. Your soldiers are in my country because of your commitment to democracy. Moreover, during my visit to Washington, Mr. Bush reaffirmed the United States' complete support for the Iraqi political process toward sustainable democracy, and for the fight to defeat fascist and jihadist terrorism in Iraq.
That commitment to liberty has shaped our opposition to any timetable for withdrawal. There are also two practical, policy reasons to avoid such a scheduled reduction in foreign troop numbers. First, a timetable will aid the terrorists and tell them that all they have to do is wait. Second, military plans must be flexible. We should have the suppleness to respond to the often-changing level of terrorist threat. Indeed, we will require ongoing security assistance in many forms for many years to come.
If we keep progressing at the present rate, Iraqis may be able to take over many security functions from foreign forces by the end of 2006. That is not a deadline, but it is reasonable aspiration. During my visit to the United States, I was fortunate to meet relatives of some of the brave troops serving in Iraq. They were staunch, and I want their loved ones to have to serve in Iraq not a moment longer than is necessary.
Americans should be proud of what its soldiers have achieved. The presence of foreign forces has prevented a renewed civil war in Iraq--renewed because there has already been a civil war in Iraq. For 35 years, Saddam and his Baath Party made war on the Iraqi people. The liberation of Iraq ended that civil war.
Above all, American forces provide Iraq with a much-needed deterrence capability. In the past, Iraq sought an illusory security through the follies of aggression, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Today, our external security comes from our alliance with the United States. Our neighbors can thereby be assured that we will settle all of our differences with them peacefully.
Sadly, some of our neighbors have chosen not to understand this. They seem either unwilling or unable to shut off the pipeline of terrorists crossing into Iraq. And in addition to what is at least passive support for the terrorists, some of them are providing financial and material support to them, too. They must desist from this behavior now.
While the problem of some of our neighbors supporting terrorism is bad enough, we can only imagine what our neighbors might have done if American troops had not been present. Most likely, Iraq would have been transformed into a regional battlefield with disastrous consequences for Middle Eastern and global security.
Without American forces, the vision of American leadership and the quiet fortitude of the American people, Iraqis would be almost alone in the world. With its allies, the United States has provided Iraqis with an unprecedented opportunity. Iraqis have responded by enthusiastically embracing democracy and volunteering to fight for their country. By giving us the tools, your troops help us to defend Iraqi democracy and to finish the job of uprooting Baathist fascism.
Mr. Talabani is president of Iraq.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
How can we possibly abandon Iraq now?
President Talabani speaks
The president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, talks about the importance of defeating terrorism. Here's how he begins:
There is no more important international issue today than the need to defeat the curse of terrorism. And as the first democratically elected president of Iraq, I have a responsibility to ensure that the world's youngest democracy survives the inherently difficult transition from totalitarianism to pluralism. A transformation of the Iraqi state and Iraqi society is impossible without a sustained commitment of soldiers from the United States and other democracies.
The rest is in the extended entry. Highly recommended reading -- it puts our military struggle back into perspective (without the distortions of viewing it through our media's dark lens).
BAGHDAD--There is no more important international issue today than the need to defeat the curse of terrorism. And as the first democratically elected president of Iraq, I have a responsibility to ensure that the world's youngest democracy survives the inherently difficult transition from totalitarianism to pluralism. A transformation of the Iraqi state and Iraqi society is impossible without a sustained commitment of soldiers from the United States and other democracies.
We Need American Troops
Thank you for liberating my country. Please don't leave before the job is done.
BY JALAL TALABANI
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
To understand why, let us recall how we reached this juncture in history. How is it that Iraq today has a democratically elected head of state, government and Parliament? How it is that members of the most repressed ethnic groups now hold the highest offices of state? All these welcome developments are a result of the courage and vision of President Bush and his allies, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, leaders whose commitment of troops to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions liberated Iraq.
Without foreign intervention, the transition in Iraq would have been from Saddam's bloodstained hands to his psychopathic offspring. Instead, thanks to American leadership, Iraqis have been given an opportunity of peaceful, participatory politics. Contrary to the new conventional wisdom, Iraq and the history of 20th-century Europe demonstrate that force of arms can implant democracy in the most arid soil.
The rapidity of the democratization and reform of Iraq is staggering. There was no German state for four years after the Second World War. By contrast, Iraq has moved from a centralized, one-man dictatorship to a decentralized, federal republic in half that time.
Inevitably, there have been stresses and strains. In Iraq these have been amplified by the terrorism of the remnants of the fascist Baathist dictatorship and our interfering neighbors. To contain these tensions, and to defend our young democracy, requires the support of American and other troops. Foreign forces are needed to train and equip the new Iraqi armed forces and to give Iraq its own counterterrorism capability. Only the United States and its closest allies are able to provide such assistance.
Creating these Iraqi forces has not been easy, but Iraqis have been undaunted by the difficulties. Every terrorist attack on Iraqi forces leads to a surge in military recruitment--the opposite of the appeasers' myth that resisting terrorism causes more terrorism. For all the short-term problems, the soundness of the long-term strategy of building up Iraqi forces was demonstrated in recent days when Iraqis took over sole control of security in the holy city of Najaf.
As Iraqi forces gain in confidence and capability, so the need for foreign troops will diminish. The number of foreign troops will be determined in consultations between the Iraqi government and its foreign allies on the basis of operational requirements.
American forces are in Iraq at the invitation of the democratically elected government of Iraq, and with the backing of a United Nations Security Council resolution. Your soldiers are in my country because of your commitment to democracy. Moreover, during my visit to Washington, Mr. Bush reaffirmed the United States' complete support for the Iraqi political process toward sustainable democracy, and for the fight to defeat fascist and jihadist terrorism in Iraq.
That commitment to liberty has shaped our opposition to any timetable for withdrawal. There are also two practical, policy reasons to avoid such a scheduled reduction in foreign troop numbers. First, a timetable will aid the terrorists and tell them that all they have to do is wait. Second, military plans must be flexible. We should have the suppleness to respond to the often-changing level of terrorist threat. Indeed, we will require ongoing security assistance in many forms for many years to come.
If we keep progressing at the present rate, Iraqis may be able to take over many security functions from foreign forces by the end of 2006. That is not a deadline, but it is reasonable aspiration. During my visit to the United States, I was fortunate to meet relatives of some of the brave troops serving in Iraq. They were staunch, and I want their loved ones to have to serve in Iraq not a moment longer than is necessary.
Americans should be proud of what its soldiers have achieved. The presence of foreign forces has prevented a renewed civil war in Iraq--renewed because there has already been a civil war in Iraq. For 35 years, Saddam and his Baath Party made war on the Iraqi people. The liberation of Iraq ended that civil war.
Above all, American forces provide Iraq with a much-needed deterrence capability. In the past, Iraq sought an illusory security through the follies of aggression, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Today, our external security comes from our alliance with the United States. Our neighbors can thereby be assured that we will settle all of our differences with them peacefully.
Sadly, some of our neighbors have chosen not to understand this. They seem either unwilling or unable to shut off the pipeline of terrorists crossing into Iraq. And in addition to what is at least passive support for the terrorists, some of them are providing financial and material support to them, too. They must desist from this behavior now.
While the problem of some of our neighbors supporting terrorism is bad enough, we can only imagine what our neighbors might have done if American troops had not been present. Most likely, Iraq would have been transformed into a regional battlefield with disastrous consequences for Middle Eastern and global security.
Without American forces, the vision of American leadership and the quiet fortitude of the American people, Iraqis would be almost alone in the world. With its allies, the United States has provided Iraqis with an unprecedented opportunity. Iraqis have responded by enthusiastically embracing democracy and volunteering to fight for their country. By giving us the tools, your troops help us to defend Iraqi democracy and to finish the job of uprooting Baathist fascism.
Mr. Talabani is president of Iraq.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
How can we possibly abandon Iraq now?
September 18, 2005
Iraqi Soldiers Donate to Katrina Victims
How's this for cameraderie?
They give because they are grateful for our help in Iraq. They give because they care.
September 15, 2005
Good news from Iraq, part 35
Here is Chrenkoff's last good news report on Iraq. However, it will live on at Good News Central.
I will miss Chrenkoff's comprehensive reporting and insightful commentary. I wish him good luck in his new job.
Now back to the report. Remember the desperate fighting in Sadr City last year? Here's an update:
Crammed into armored Humvees heaving with weapons, Lt. Col. S. Jamie Gayton and his soldiers were greeted by a surprising sight as they rolled into one of Baghdad's poorest neighborhoods.
Men stood and waved. Women smiled. Children flashed thumbs-up signs as the convoy rumbled across the potholed streets of Sadr City.
It was a far more welcoming scene than the urban war zone of a year ago, when U.S. troops and black-clad guerrilla fighters battled in the narrow alleys of the squalid slum.
"We're making a huge impact," Gayton said as his men pulled up to a sewer station newly repaired with U.S. funds. "It has been incredibly safe, incredibly quiet and incredibly secure."
Sadr City has become one of the rare success stories of the U.S. reconstruction effort, say local residents, Iraqi and U.S. officials. Although vast swaths remain blighted, the neighborhood of 2 million mostly impoverished Shiites is one of the calmest in Baghdad. One U.S. soldier has been killed and one car bomb detonated in the last year, the military says.
The improvements are the result of an intense effort in the wake of the street battles last August with fighters loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr. Within a month, U.S. officials decided to make Sadr City a showcase for rebuilding, and increased spending to $805 million in a neighborhood long neglected under Saddam Hussein.
The report goes on to report some lessons learned from the Sadr City reconstruction effort:
Unlike elsewhere in Iraq, where the reconstruction fell under the purview of a hodgepodge of U.S. civilian agencies, the American military provided sustained, focused leadership in a limited geographic area. That focus provided the oversight needed to coordinate the military's efforts with those of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Pentagon's Project and Contracting Office, the primary reconstruction agencies.
The rebuilding also held more immediate significance among mid-level commanders in the field than among higher-level Pentagon officials preoccupied with fighting the war. The field officers focused on short-term, high-visibility projects such as cleaning up trash and digging wells, instead of massive new water treatment plants or power stations that take years to build. They also hired local Iraqi contractors, who in turn employed many of the militia members who had once battled U.S. troops.
Finally, unlike the U.S. multinationals contracted to build large infrastructure projects, the military did not have to rely on expensive security contractors for protection. That enabled soldiers to more easily communicate with Iraqis, monitor progress and overcome problems.
It is well worth reading the whole thing.
September 09, 2005
Battling with votes instead of weapons
It appears as if the Iraqi Sunnis have decided to fight with votes instead of guns.
Voter registration soared in some Sunni Arab parts of Iraq as Sunnis mobilized to try to vote down a draft constitution they believe will divide the country, according to figures released Wednesday at the close of registration for the Oct. 15 referendum.
[snip]
The surge in voter registration in the heavily Sunni west signaled the minority's belated entry into the country's political process. Most Sunnis stood on the sidelines of the Jan. 30 national elections that seated the transitional government, which was charged with drafting the constitution. As a result, Sunnis were left with diminished political leverage in negotiations over the document.
This time, "we registered to defeat the constitution," said Khalid Jubouri, a guard at a government ministry in Fallujah, a city in the volatile western province of Anbar. "This is considered fighting by word and thought. We are optimistic about the battle, and we will win it eventually."
Registration in Anbar swelled from a tiny percentage of eligible adults in January to nearly 85 percent, said Muhammed Ibrahim, the director of voter registration centers in the province.
Ibrahim said about 600,000 of the province's 715,000 eligible adults registered, despite pledges from al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgent group led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian, that anyone who took part in the voting would become a target for killing.
"It is a big number we didn't expect given the security situation in the province," Ibrahim said. "It is a great number."
It looks at lot like there is a growing democracy in Iraq. This, more than any other thing, is what Iraq needs to defeat terrorism in Iraq. And it appears to be working.
September 07, 2005
Good news from Afghanistan, Part 16
Here is Chrenkoff's latest, and perhaps last, installment of good news from Afghanistan. Here's how it starts:
The country's farms are alive again.
Seven years of drought had left fields monochrome plains of brown dust. But good snows and rains have many Afghans seeing color again -- seas of golden wheat undulate in the breeze, green apricot trees are plump with yellow fruit, melons of every hue dot fields.
It is much-needed relief for impoverished farmers as well as the estimated 3.4 million Afghans who have been relying on food handouts from overburdened international aid groups.
One wheat farmer sees the end of the drought as a sign that God is pleased with the country's fledgling democracy.
"Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan has started to recover from the drought and people's lives have been getting better," said Fazah Rahman, 36.
"In previous years, no one even bothered to plant crops because our lands were dry like a desert, but that has all changed and everyone is sowing their land," he said.
Mohammed Sharif-Sharif, a senior official at the Agricultural Ministry, said the harvest is exceeding expectations.
"This year, we will be in need of less food aid from other countries," he said. "In the past seven years, nearly all our wheat was imported. But fortunately, it will significantly drop this year."
The sheer size of this compilation should be indicative that there is a lot more going on in that country than our media deems newsworthy. I recommend it.
August 31, 2005
Good news from Iraq, Part 34
This is probably Chrenkoff's final Good news from Iraq post. It starts out with an observation about the mainstream media's news reporting in regards to Iraq:
Maj. Joe Leahy, is a civil engineer with the 20th Engineer Brigade of the Army National Guard. He has been stationed at Camp Victory, outside of Baghdad, since November 2004 - enough time to get frustrated:
"We all know it's a dangerous place. But the thing that I want people to understand is that they only see those one or two instances in the country that are negative. You don't really hear about the 100 things that have gone good,"
says Maj Leahy. "One thing we've got to understand is that it's not going to happen tomorrow, but we are doing something that's getting better everyday."
Maj Leahy's good-bad ratio might be debatable, but enough servicemen and women, as well as their families and friends back home, not to mention general public, were getting frustrated lately with the media coverage of Iraq to cause some limited, though still welcome, soul-searching among major media outlets. Whether the coverage will improve as a result remains to be seen, so in the meantime, here are the last two weeks' worth of stories, at least some of them you might have missed.
Then it goes on into a long series of reports about what is going on that is good in that country. There is definitely a lot to read (it's 40 pages long, if you were to print it).
It's worth reading though -- if only to see how much information about Iraq does not receive wide (if any) dissemination by the press. [/cynicism]
Really, though, it is very heartening to see all of the things going on there -- from health screenings of children to building schools, from expert advice on constitutional forms of government to water infrastructure, from security advances to political participation by the Sunnis.
Recommended.
Democracy in Iraq - it's working . . .
. . . just maybe not the exact way we Americans would like it to. Chrenkoff has a post up from his Iraqi friend about some Iraqi poll results regarding their country's draft Constitution.
August 27, 2005
Iraq's Constitution
OpinionJournal has an excellent article about Iraq's Constitution -- at least about how it looked on Thursday.
I've reprinted the whole article in the extended entry.
Iraq's first freely elected government continues to vindicate the belief that the Mideast can be transformed, starting with Saddam Hussein's former tyranny. Its draft constitution, which appears headed for parliamentary approval tonight, reflects a remarkable spirit of compromise--and even enlightenment--among the country's political, ethnic and religious factions.
Iraq's Federalist Papers
The constitution empowers legislators, not clerics.
Thursday, August 25, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
The word "compromise" is key here. If we were drafting the document, there are many things we might have done differently. But the point of democracy is that countries have to find their own way on difficult issues. Americans also shouldn't be too quick to conclude that anything that sounds odd or unfamiliar to liberal ears is evidence of failure. While this constitution does indeed contain general appeals to religion, it is fundamentally a document that empowers legislators, not clerics.
Take the role of Islam, which is designated as "a" (not "the") "basic source of legislation." Some critics see this as evidence of incipient theocracy. But in what Western democracy are laws not generally in accord with the Judeo-Christian moral heritage? In any case, interpretation of that clause will be up to elected representatives.
The same holds true for family law. There has been much American huffing and puffing about a provision that might allow matters such as divorce to be handled by religious courts if individuals so choose. But the same clause begins with a strong affirmation of individual rights, and does not itself rewrite Iraq's current family laws but merely paves the way for a future parliament to do so. No doubt some Iraqis will want to establish the primacy of Shariah law, but they will have to prevail in a diverse parliament and in a society in which women have asserted themselves since the fall of Saddam.
It's worth noting, more broadly, that alarums about Iranian-style Shiite theocracy in Iraq have been raised repeatedly over the past few years, often by American or Arab proponents of the Sunni dictatorships that are the Mideast status quo. But one of the most underappreciated stories in post-Saddam Iraq has been the extent to which the Shiite community has remained committed to a constitutional, democratic process--despite the best attempts of the terrorist Zarqawi or cleric Moqtada Sadr to provoke them to violence. Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who adheres to a "quietist" school of Islam that shuns excessive mixing of religion and politics, has continued to play a particularly constructive role.
As for the unambiguously good news, there is both federalism and the oil-sharing formula. The draft constitution describes Iraq as "a democratic, federal, republican system"--an organizational structure that should be familiar to Americans. Some Sunni representatives have objected strongly, saying a federal structure risks the dissolution of the Iraqi state. But the reality is that federalism in one form or another was inevitable long before the constitutional talks began.
The Kurds, for starters, are not about to give up the autonomy they have enjoyed since the mid-'90s under cover of no fly zones (and would themselves dissolve the Iraqi state by secession were concessions on this matter not granted). Many Shiites also find federalism attractive after so many decades of suffering under Sunni-dominated governments in Baghdad. A federal structure will be particularly important for preserving freedom in Iraq, where not just Saddam Hussein but others before him exploited a strong central government fed by oil revenues to oppress others.
At the same time, Sunnis needn't fear that Iraq's mineral wealth will be hoarded in Kurdish and Shiite dominated provinces, where much of it lies. The revenue sharing proposal of Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi--which we reported on last week, and which would distribute wealth equally among the provinces according to population--has been largely accepted.
Finally, the draft constitution enumerates extensive rights to free speech and political participation. Of course so do the constitutions, honored largely in the breach, of many dictatorships (Cuba, China). But that only highlights the fact that there is only so much a constitution can do, and that the fate of nations depends as much or more on the goodwill and willingness to compromise of their political class. The question isn't really whether this constitution will guarantee a free Iraq. No document can. Rather, it is whether it will help enable one. And that answer seems unequivocally, yes.
"The constitution will be to serve everybody and not only one community of the Iraqi society," said Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, whose rise is one of the many reasons we see hope for Iraq. Unlike his Kurdish rival Massoud Barzani, he has risen above sectarian politics and become a genuinely popular figure throughout the country.
As for reported Sunni opposition to the charter, it's important to ask how widespread or intense it really is. The Sunnis on the constitutional committee have been operating under threat of death for participating in a process that will formalize the loss of some of the privileges they used to enjoy under Saddam. Many Sunnis may nonetheless vote for the constitution in the October referendum precisely because its oil revenue and federalist guarantees will protect them from domination by the Shiite south.
As President Bush suggested this week, it's now time that the Sunnis be asked whether "they want to live in a society that is free or do they want to live in violence." We suspect that won't be a hard choice for most Iraqis, regardless of their circumstances, to make.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
August 25, 2005
U.N. blues
Mark Steyn has a less than kind op-ed at the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph. Here's how he starts:
How many Annans does it take to change a light bulb? Well, if the replacement light bulb's being shipped to Uday Hussein's Iraqi Olympic Committee recreational basement as part of the UN Oil-for-Food programme, there's no telling how many Annans you'll need.
The rest is worth reading, too . . .
August 23, 2005
Progress in Iraq
This article is more than a week old, but it is heartening to see this going on now in Iraq, so I thought I'd post it.
Rising up against insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, Iraqi Sunni Muslims in Ramadi fought with grenade launchers and automatic weapons Saturday to defend their Shiite neighbors against a bid to drive them from the western city, Sunni leaders and Shiite residents said. The fighting came as the U.S. military announced the deaths of six American soldiers.
Dozens of Sunni members of the Dulaimi tribe established cordons around Shiite homes, and Sunni men battled followers of Zarqawi, a Jordanian, for an hour Saturday morning. The clashes killed five of Zarqawi's guerrillas and two tribal fighters, residents and hospital workers said. Zarqawi loyalists pulled out of two contested neighborhoods in pickup trucks stripped of license plates, witnesses said.
August 21, 2005
The politics of hatred
This article about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very, very disturbing to me.
What is also still going on is the incitement of hatred. In print and on broadcast media controlled by the Palestinian Authority--and subsidized by Europe and the United States--Israelis and Jews continue to be demonized, their murders blatantly encouraged. Palestinian kids are still taught that the greatest glory is dying for Allah in battle as jihadists. They save terrorist cards the way American kids save baseball cards.
And there's much more.
If you want to get a different view of this conflict than our media projects, and a more accurate one in my opinion, you need to go read it.
The balance has shifted
A subscriber to The American Spectator, who lives and works in Iraq, has some encouraging things to say about the struggle there.
* Proof of the resentment against these foreign jihaddis is seen whenever Coalition forces take back territory once under the control of the jihaddi terrorists. Ordinary indigenous Iraqis show coalition forces where the bomb-making factories are. This is a consistent fact on the ground. Iraqis frequently identify terrorists and bomb-making locations. Tips and intelligence are flowing toward the Coalition. The balance has shifted.
There's more. And it's well worth reading.
August 17, 2005
Good news (Iraq)
Deroy Murdock, at National Review Online reports on more good news from Iraq. Here's a taste:
As Saddam Hussein relaxed in his palaces, his subjects in Kamaliya lived without sewers and relied instead on trenches that often overflowed onto the streets. Now, with Coalition assistance, 8,870 of Kamaliya’s homes will receive sewage treatment. Some 600 local workers will be paid to complete this $27 million project. U.S. government-funded projects employed 110,005 Iraqis in early August.
Some 18,000 pupils will study in rehabilitated classrooms when they go back to school in mid-September. According to U.S. and Iraqi officials, 43 more schools were slated for renovation on August 6. So far, 3,211 schools have been refurbished, and another 773 are being repaired.
Iraq’s monthly petroleum exports have grown from $200 million in June 2003 to $2.5 billion last month. This is due both to higher oil prices and to fuel supplies having swelled from 23 percent to 97 percent of official production goals in that period. These key improvements also help explain why Iraq’s GDP increased from a World Bank estimate of $12.1 billion in 2003 to a projected $21.1 billion in 2004.
Go read the rest. It is good stuff . . .
Good news from Iraq, part 33
Another installment of Chrenkoff's Good news from Iraq.
The Sunnis want to be a part of the democratic process for this next election in Iraq:
Sunni preachers have called on Iraq's Sunni Arabs to take part in upcoming elections, signalling a possible new trend towards joining a Shi'ite dominated political process that Sunni insurgents have rejected...
"It is a duty for all those here to take part in the upcoming elections so that we are not politically marginalised," imam Abdul-Sattar al-Jumaili told a crowd of some 600 people in Falluja, a former insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.
"I call upon you to register your names in Falluja and other cities. You should not feel awkward about voting since you will be helping to remove the occupiers and embarrass those who benefited from the last election," he told a packed mosque.
Many prominent Sunnis have said the January boycott was a mistake since it limited their ability to influence the future shape of the country, now run by a Shi'ite-led government...
A message similar to that in Falluja was delivered at the "mother of all battles" mosque in Baghdad.
"We have to be engaged with our brothers in this country by a calm dialogue," imam Mahmoud al-Sumaida'i told a congregation at Friday prayers in the large shrine.
"Therefore let us all participate in this dialogue in order to rebuild Iraq."
I am so going to miss his bi-weekly reports on what is going right in Iraq and Afghanistan.
August 16, 2005
Mohammed responds
Mohammed, a native Iraqi who blogs at Iraq the Model, has posted a respectful response to Cindy Sheehan's public grief.
Ma'am, we asked for your nation's help and we asked you to stand with us in our war and your nation's act was (and still is) an act of ultimate courage and unmatched sense of humanity.
Our request is justified, death was our daily bread and a million Iraqi mothers were expecting death to knock on their doors at any second to claim someone from their families.
Your face doesn't look strange to me at all; I see it everyday on endless numbers of Iraqi women who were struck by losses like yours.
Our fellow country men and women were buried alive, cut to pieces and thrown in acid pools and some were fed to the wild dogs while those who were lucky enough ran away to live like strangers and the Iraqi mother was left to grieve one son buried in an unfound grave and another one living far away who she might not get to see again.
He goes on to say:
We live in pain and grief everyday, every hour, every minute; all the horrors of the powers of darkness have been directed at us and I don't know exactly when am I going to feel safe again, maybe in a year, maybe two or even ten; I frankly don't know but I don't want to lose hope and faith.
We are in need for every hand that can offer some help. Please pray for us, I know that God listens to mothers' prayers and I call all the women on earth to pray with you for peace in this world.
Your son sacrificed his life for a very noble cause…No, he sacrificed himself for the most precious value in this existence; that is freedom.
And he should know -- he's lived in Iraq his whole life. His post, in its entirety, is well worth reading.
Cindy Sheehan can rest assured that her son died in a noble endeavor to free an oppressed people. May God give her peace.
FSO in Afghanistan
One of our civil servants currently working in Afghanistan, has an interesting guest post up at Chrenkoff's blog. Here's a taste:
We doubt that we will have any lessening of our rules until at least after the September 18 election. As we approach the final weeks before Afghanistan's parliamentary election, Islamic terrorists are doing all they can to disrupt it and to kill as many innocents as they can. Today, for instance, they blew up a bomb in a women's market. Brave folks these terrorists.
These are the same type of terror bombings taking place in Iraq, most of which are aimed at police stations, schools or election organizations. A question for each of you; Do you remember before the 2003 war a number of western peace activists took up positions in front of Iraqi industrial and military locations in order to prevent the US from bombing them. How many "peace" activists have you seen take up posts in front of election locations, schools or mosques in Iraq or Afghanistan the last two years, locations that symbolize democracy and freedom? Locations that are targeted by Islamic terrorists, crueler and more deadly that the KKK.
So the question must be asked, if "peace activists" are really concerned with peace and freedom why won't they stand in front of these very real facilities of freedom? Perhaps you can ask if you bump into one of them at a "peace" rally back in the States.
I know we could use some folks in addition to the soldiers and Marines who now lay their life on the line each day to protect democratic institutions here and in Iraq.
It is worth reading the whole thing.
August 15, 2005
Surrender to terrorism
I certainly hope that this op-ed about our future struggles against terrorism is wrong. Unfortunately, there is enough in this piece to give me pause.
August 12, 2005
Bureaucratic bungling in Iraq
This report by a contractor in Baghdad says a lot about his experiences with the reconstruction effort going on in Iraq. And they're not very good right now.
Since my arrival here in mid-March, we have responded to more than 50 RFP's. Prior to my R&R trip we had not had a single response to any of them. No awards, but no rejections either. Some of these things date all the way back to March and April. This is incomprehensible in view of the parlous state of the Iraqi electric system and the country's water facilities. The lead stories on a number of recent evening news broadcasts have been the calamitous state of water and power facilities in Iraq.
He goes on in much detail about what is going on (or, actually what is NOT going on but should be) with the responsible agencies involved in letting contracts. And then he starts talking about the negative consequences that are likely to result if we don't get busy with the rest of the reconstruction.
I THINK THE U.S. IS STARTING to run out of time to make things happen here. And, I am getting a very distinct feeling that the President is going "wobbly" on what was his most persuasive (even if unpalatable) issue. To wit: the war on terror is going to be a very long and very bitter fight.
This is not good news, obviously. Our bureaucrats need to move out on getting this taken care of and getting Iraq's infrastructure back on its feet.
August 11, 2005
It is up to the Iraqis
Minh-Duc, over at State Of Flux has a good post about the need for Iraqis to take responsibility for their own success.
I have just recently started visiting this blog, and find it interesting reading.
Good news from Afghanistan, part 15
Arthur Chrenkoff will be hanging up his blogging hat this month in order to take on a new job. He will be sorely missed by many. Here is his latest installment of Afghanistan news. A small excerpt:
Sadly, there simply aren't enough gifted math students in Afghanistan to send abroad to unmake the negative image of their country being perpetrated by the Western media. Focusing almost exclusively on drugs and violence might make for exciting news, but it does great disservice both to the people of Afghanistan, who already have to work under great disadvantages to turn around one of the most impoverished nations on earth, but also to the international public, on whose strong support the Afghans are relying to rebuild their country.
Recommended.
August 09, 2005
We ARE winning in Iraq
Jack Kelly at Irish Pennants has a good post up that brings some perspective to the debate over Iraq. We really are winning (emphasis added):
Since Wednesday, we've had extensive and lugubrious coverage of the destruction of a single amtrac by a roadside bomb. The death of the 14 Marine reservists from Ohio is indeed a tragedy, but the loss of a single vehicle to mine is no indice, one way or the other, of how the campaign is going. The fact that so much attention is being devoted to the loss of a single vehicle should remind us that overall casualties are low.
He makes several good points. I recommend you read the rest.
Iraqi Democracy
May not be what we expect. At least that is the position taken by Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht in this guardedly optimistic article at OpinionJournal. Here's how it starts:
Although it appears the Iraqis are going to meet the Aug. 15 deadline for writing a new constitution, we shouldn't worry if they just can't do it "on time." It will certainly be dispiriting to many Iraqis and Americans--particularly in the Pentagon, where the counterinsurgency troop requirements for Iraq and Afghanistan haven't dovetailed well with Donald Rumsfeld's plans for a smaller "transformed" military. All of Washington wants the Iraqis to be more expeditious than our own Founding Fathers, who took years of trial and error to hammer out the mother of all modern constitutions.
Read the whole thing in the extended entry.
Although it appears the Iraqis are going to meet the Aug. 15 deadline for writing a new constitution, we shouldn't worry if they just can't do it "on time." It will certainly be dispiriting to many Iraqis and Americans--particularly in the Pentagon, where the counterinsurgency troop requirements for Iraq and Afghanistan haven't dovetailed well with Donald Rumsfeld's plans for a smaller "transformed" military. All of Washington wants the Iraqis to be more expeditious than our own Founding Fathers, who took years of trial and error to hammer out the mother of all modern constitutions.
God, Man and the Common Weal
A great democratic experiment is taking place in Iraq.
BY REUEL MARC GERECHT
Monday, August 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
Yet the Iraqis are where we want them to be: divided on critical matters of politics and faith, but still determined to resolve their differences through a binding written compromise. Their discussions are hot and sometimes intractable because all the parties know these debates matter. Federalism and the political role of Islam--perhaps the two most troublesome subjects--are critical issues throughout the Middle East. No one in Washington should want these debates toned down or curtailed.
Many in America may not like the outcome--liberals are already overwhelmingly defining Iraqi democracy's success by whether women's social rights are protected and advanced--but the deliberations foretell what is likely to happen elsewhere in the region as it democratizes. Contrary to so much commentary in the U.S., it is the compromises--the liberal "imperfections"--in Iraq's experiment that may have the most positive repercussions in the Middle East.
Assuming American anxiety, the Sunni insurgency, and jihadist terrorist attacks don't derail the political process--and the violence could only do so by penetrating constantly into Najaf and Karbala, the shrine cities, and the southern Shiite and northern Kurdish heartlands--the new constitution's drafters are likely to produce a document that has a decent chance of gaining the assent of the country's three major communities: the Sunni and Shiite Arabs and the Kurds.
The elders of the Sunni Arab community may still choose to guide their flock over the cliff. The historic Sunni Arab prerogative to rule over deviants (the Shiites) and non-Arabs (the Kurds) should never be underestimated. But the Sunni holy-warrior terrorism and the bloody revanchism of the hardcore Baathists have probably helped to produce a real willingness among a growing number of Arab Sunnis--especially among traditional clerics who fear the spread of the Saudi-born Wahhabi creed in Iraq--to accept democratic government.
Since the spring of 2003, Sunni elders appear to have lost significant ground to younger men, especially to fundamentalists. Islamic militancy, which has been gaining ground in Iraq since at least the early 1990s, inevitably tears at traditional mores and hierarchies. What Saddam Hussein did not destroy, the Sunni insurgency and holy war could well bury--unless Sunni elders continue their reluctant embrace of Iraq's elected Shiite-led government and the drafting of a new constitution.
Many Sunni Arabs want to believe they are the most numerous community in Iraq; most probably fear that they may well be the smallest of the three major communities. Fortunately, the Jan. 30 national elections showed clearly the pivotal power the Sunnis could have yielded in a national government if they'd voted en masse.
The odds are still very good that most of Iraq's Sunni Arabs don't want civil war. Historically ferocious advocates of a highly centralized state, Sunni Arabs, as they come to terms with their reduced prestige and power, are likely to embrace federalism, a non-negotiable principle for the Kurds, especially if the Shiites and Kurds design a system that divides the country's oil wealth equitably. (Most of Iraq's energy resources lie in the Kurdish-dominated North and the Shiite South). Led by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the traditional Shiite clergy has been remarkably forbearing in demanding the return of Shiite mosques given to Sunnis by Saddam. As mosques have gone, so likely will go oil.
The fate of Baghdad--mythically a Sunni town that is in fact majority Shiite--may complicate federalist sentiments. In doing so, however, it also healthily binds together the two communities, especially their more secularized elites. Continued and growing participation of the Sunni Arabs, however, may not grant Washington any surcease to suicide bombers. The Sunni elite is increasingly participating in part precisely because it has limited and diminishing influence over the young Iraqi men who fight alongside, and aid and abet, foreign holy warriors. But this cooperation should be enough to keep the Kurds and the Shiites from taking large-scale revenge on the once-dominant community. As long as revenge killings remain small-scale, the constitutional process will likely roll forward and over the Sunni Arabs who want to make compromise and cooperation tantamount to communal suicide.
It isn't clear yet how much federalism the Shiites, in particular the traditional Shiite clergy led by Ayatollah Sistani, are willing to swallow to avoid the possibility of an irreparable break with the Kurds, who will not cede much of the independence they've gained in the last 10 years. Ayatollah Sistani and other senior clerics strongly disliked the Transitional Administrative Law's article 61(c), which gave veto authority to any three Iraqi provinces where two-thirds of the people vote against the approval of a constitution. This article was the handiwork of the Kurds, although it also guarantees Arab Sunnis, assuming they vote as a bloc, the ability to reject any basic law.
As a community, the Shiites are well aware of how much the Kurds endured under Saddam (though they usually mention Kurdish suffering after they mention their own). Arabism, the intellectual engine behind Baghdad's recurring savagery towards the Kurds, is quiescent, if not dead, among Iraq's Shiites, since Sunni pan-Arabism was also used as a vehicle to deny Shiites their separate identity. However, Iraq's Shiite Arabs, especially their divines, have usually been pretty staunch nationalists. And the healthy marriage of federalism to democracy is often hard for the Shiites to appreciate, since it can easily be seen as a means to cheat them, once again, of the pre-eminence they should have had since the foundation of the Iraqi state in 1921.
However, the Shiite community isn't monolithic: The Shiite South has always maintained a certain distance from the traditional clergy in Najaf and the merchant elite of Baghdad. Sitting atop so much oil, and impoverished by Sunni Baathist Baghdad for decades, federalism has greater appeal in the South. Substantial checks and balances exist within the Shiite community on virtually every sensitive subject--nationalism, federalism, oil-wealth distribution, anti-Americanism, relations with Iran, political Islam, and theocracy. These differences will only grow as the Iraqi Shiite community matures politically and economically. Irrespective of the compromises demanded by the Kurds and Sunni Arabs, these internal Shiite differences are now likely sufficient to ensure that the political center will hold among the Shiites, the sine qua non for progress in Iraq.
This center may, however, be comfortable with a marriage of Islam and politics that many Americans fear and loathe. Indeed, a powerful bond between the Sunni and Shiite Arabs may likely be an increased stress on their common cultural and religious traditions. Many Kurds, too, may not find this as upsetting as many Western commentators believe.
Sharia or Islamic family law, probably the most resilient aspect of the Holy Law since it culturally underpins the highly stable Muslim home, may make some comeback in Iraqi law and in the new constitution. In all probability, this process will not be a Trojan horse, allowing for the subversion of democracy itself. As long as women have the right to vote and the Iraqi Parliament remains the supreme chamber for political debate--and neither is seriously in question--then the inclusion of some aspects of Islamic family law into Iraq's civil code may well reinforce democracy's chances. Iraq's nascent representative system, blessed by both Shiite and Sunni legal scholars, will gradually and inevitably open for public debate all aspects of the Holy Law and its proper place in a democratic society. The key is to begin the evolution by pulling mainstream clerics into the discussion. Americans of a feminist disposition should realize that equal rights between the sexes is not a precondition for the growth of democracy. If this were so, Western democracy never would have developed.
The secularization of religious discussions in Iraq is already very far advanced--just compare the Iraqi clerical discussion of constitutional government at the time of Iran's 1905-1911 Constitutional Revolution with the debate today and you will quickly see how successfully Western ideas, first and foremost democracy, have redefined or submerged older Islamic ideals hostile to representative government. The democratic government Iraqis are trying to build will have much more real-world appeal and traction in today's Middle East than the very liberal democracy that many Americans in the occupation's Coalition Provisional Authority and in Washington wanted to build in 2003.
We should not want to curtail or stage-manage these great debates. Only by having them will the Iraqis muster the support to pass a constitution by the required referendum. If Mr. Rumsfeld thinks the current constitutional debates are too protracted and unhelpful, he should wait for the Sunni, Shiite, or Kurdish communities to veto a draft constitution. The success or failure of the Iraqi democratic experiment will be evident in the coming months. The intersection of God, man, and the common weal are not easy things to figure out, and the Iraqis are doing far better than anyone really had the right to hope.
Mr. Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
August 08, 2005
A Fitting Tribute
Callimachus, at Done With Mirrors posted a fitting tribute to Steven Vincent, a freelance journalist who was kidnapped and murdered in Basra last week.
The post also points out some scary things that are going on in parts of Iraq that do not bode well for a free democracy.
Insurgents = Chickens
We hear the question all the time: How can those insurgents kill their own people — women and children, innocent lives — in the name of some cause?
The answer is surprisingly simple: Insurgents are chickens.
August 05, 2005
Cowards
Mathias Doepfner, a German, wrote this condemnation of European leadership for The Australian. He starts like this:
THE writer Henryk Broder recently issued a withering indictment: Europe, your family name is appeasement. That phrase resonates because it is so terribly true.
It makes for an interesting read.
Cowards
Mathias Doepfner, a German, wrote this condemnation of European leadership for The Australian. He starts like this:
THE writer Henryk Broder recently issued a withering indictment: Europe, your family name is appeasement. That phrase resonates because it is so terribly true.
It makes for an interesting read.
August 04, 2005
Not smart
When are these fools going to figure out that you should never pay terrorists a ransom?
August 03, 2005
Postcard from Iraq
Chrenkoff got a note from his Iraqi friend.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry.
A postcard from the southern Iraq courtesy of our regular correspondent Haider Ajina's father, who has just returned from his second trip to Nejaf, Karbala and Kufah were he spent a week:
He told me that he has been honored by being appointed as chief consultant and administrator of the provincial reconstruction of Nejaf province. He said he would be starting this position within a week or two. He also said that he would be moving to Nejaf from Baghdad.
I asked him how were things in Nejaf? He said there has been a remarkable change in the southern provinces. In Nejaf, Karbala & Kufah people are walking the streets at night and early morning (since temperatures exceed 125 Fahrenheit during the hot hours of the day). People are picnicking along the river in Kufah in the late afternoon. He has not seen any military patrols in the streets for the week he was there, only police patrol. It seems the military (Iraqi & Coalition forces) have pulled out of the towns. There was no gunfire at night or any other time and very low crime. Power was on, water was on etc, there is a lot of work for every one, no one is complaining about the money they are making. There is open political discussion in the cafes etc. He says people have a sense of ownership in their cities their livelihood and business is booming because of strong security, strong and fast reconstruction. He said it was better than Baghdad, were because of terrorist attacks power & water gets cut off and reconstruction is not as fast as in the southern provinces.
I wanted to share this personal good news with you, and for you to read a side of what is happening in Iraq that very few hear or read about. This is happening because of our efforts and commitments to Iraq and the Iraqis, our sacrifices, our training of Iraqis and our know how in rebuilding and developing infra structure. The Iraqis themselves have also stepped up to the plate and taken charge of the freedom we presented them, for which they are grateful. Once again to all the men and women who have served and serving in Iraq, to all the families of those who have paid the ultimate price to all those who have suffered during their service in Iraq, my family's and my deepest thanks, gratitude and pride both from the U.S. and Iraq for all the sacrifices, endurance and service for our great country and Iraq and the Iraqis.
August 01, 2005
Chrenkoff's Good News from Iraq, Part 32
Chrenkoff's latest good news from Iraq. Here's an excerpt:
Sunni leaders, meanwhile, are calling for their people not to repeat the mistake of boycotting the election:
Some 300 leaders of Iraq's alienated Sunni Arab former elite called Thursday [14 July] for participation in the next elections, due in December, after a boycott of January polls left the community largely unrepresented in parliament.
"I'm calling on my brothers ... to participate in the political process," Adnan al-Dulaimi, spokesman for the General Conference of Sunnis, told participants at a Baghdad meeting.
His comments were echoed by Sheikh Ibrahim al-Nima, a leading Sunni cleric from the main northern city of Mosul.
"We can blame ourselves from staying away at the last elections. It was a big mistake," he said.
"Participating (in the next elections) means we shall exist. If we don't participate there will be no existence for us."
A leader of the hardline Salafist movement, Sheikh Zakaria Mohi Issa al-Timimi, also endorsed taking part.
"We will be very active in our participation in the elections in order to mitigate the damage inflicted on Sunnis today," he said.
You should read the rest.
Moderate Muslims Unite
Sarah, over at trying to grok, has posted about the need for moderate Muslims to stand up against terrorism. Here's a snippet:
Where are the moderate Muslim groups? I keep hearing how Muslims are afraid of being branded as extremists, how not all Muslims are terrorists, how Muslims fear for their lives because of the actions of a few...but where are the moderate Muslim voices to stand up and say enough is enough?
I couldn't agree with her more.
July 31, 2005
MSM revealed!
Michael Fumento has a surprising revelation: Mainstream media suppress Iraq optimism.
July 30, 2005
Appeasement
Mona Charen over at townhall.com has some interesting things to say about how not to deal with a threat. Here's a taste:
Do you remember North Korea? It's the country Sen. John Kerry and the Democrats kept asserting was more of a threat than Saddam's Iraq during the campaign of 2004. Funny, they haven't mentioned it since. They've reverted to the customary Democratic methods of dealing with threats in non-election years: appeasement, bribery, denial and blame America -- not necessarily in that order.
She goes on to describe how the Clinton administration appeased North Korea by negotiating and signing the "Agreed Framework". And then she describes how Pyongyang pretty much flipped us the finger when they fired a missile over Japan.
This is the table that has been set for us. While many liberals seem to think that the greatest threats we face arise from the Patriot Act or from "Bush's lies," the truth is that bitter and evil men still seek the power to destroy as many of us as they can possibly hit.
Though she takes potshots at liberalism and the Democrat Party, she makes some level-headed observations. Go read the whole thing.
July 28, 2005
Zimbabwe's problem
An illustration of one of the very real problems in Africa.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry.
To whatever extent the recent United Nations report on Zimbabwe calls attention to the brutalities of the country's tyrant, President Robert Mugabe, the U.N. has performed a service. But as far as the report translates into nothing more than a fresh bout of aid funneled via Mugabe's regime, this U.N. initiative will only compound the suffering in Zimbabwe--where the government's latest atrocity has been to "clean up" the cities by evicting hundreds of thousands of poor people, destroying their dwellings and leaving them jobless, homeless and hungry. Ms. Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.
Ruin By Design
The U.N. misses it, but Mugabe's regime is Zimbabwe's problem.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, July 27, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
In describing this scene, the U.N. report provides a wealth of horrifying detail, but takes a detour around the basic cause, which is not, as the report concludes, such stuff as "improper advice" acted upon by "over-zealous officials." The real cause is the long and ruinous rule of Mugabe and his cronies.
With a delicacy over-zealously inappropriate in itself to dealings with the tyrant whose regime has been responsible for wreck of Zimbabwe, the report starts by thanking Mr. Mugabe for his "warm welcome" to the U.N. delegation, which visited the country from June 26 to July 8. The report, issued by the secretary-general's special envoy Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, then proceeds to the usual U.N. prescription that what Zimbabwe needs is more aid, and a framework--here comes the UN lingo--"to ensure the sustainability of humanitarian response." While the report also calls for the "culprits" to be called to justice under Zimbabwe laws, Mugabe himself is somehow excused from direct responsibility.
Instead, the report faults wealthy nations for not providing more aid already, and notes that "With respect to the funding issue, some in the Zimbabwe political elite and intelligentsia, as well as others of similar persuasion around the continent, believe the international community is concerned more with 'regime change' and that there is no real and genuine concern for the welfare of ordinary people."
Apart from the problem, not mentioned in the U.N. report's comment, that after a quarter-century of Mugabe's rule the surviving Zimbabwe elite are to a great extent Mugabe's own cronies, there is the profound difficulty that in Zimbabwe's state-choked economy, Mugabe has a record of diverting foreign aid to his supporters, while starving--as well as mugging and murdering--his opposition. Aid workers themselves in recent years have lamented the difficulty of channeling aid in Zimbabwe to the intended beneficiaries. The danger with any massive, not to mentioned "sustainable" humanitarian response, is that it will most likely translate into sustainability of Mugabe's regime (generating hefty fees along the way for any U.N. agencies involved).
What to do? Rushing aid to help the starving and homeless is an impulse common to decent people anywhere. There is no doubt that Mugabe's regime has created a crisis, to which some will be moved for the best of reasons to respond. But to downplay the role of the tyrant himself, in hope he will "engage" with humanitarian donors, and in kindly manner mend the mistakes of his reportedly wayward subordinates, is to misinterpret his methods, shore up his rule, and most probably sustain or even worsen the miseries of Zimbabwe.
Atrocities under Mugabe are nothing new. Since Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980, Mugabe has ruled with what is apparently the prime directive of remaining in power, whatever the cost. The U.N. report, in its brief history of the country's struggles, fails to mention that one of Mugabe's first moves after coming to power was to invite in North Korean advisers, to train the shock troops known in Zimbabwe as the "Fifth Brigade." In the 1980s, Mugabe dispatched this Fifth Brigade to massacre an estimated 18,000 Zimbabweans opposed to his rule--far more than the number of people slaughtered, say, at Srebenica, and more than six times the number murdered in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
The world paid no notice. Most of those who died were not members of Zimbabwe's white minority; they were black, most of them belonging to the Ndebele tribe. Mugabe then consolidated power, and was feted for years as a champion of African progress. Indeed, the new U.N. report, while omitting mention of this slaughter, describes Mugabe in admiring terms as "part of that exclusive club of African statesmen" who "fought colonialism and racial discrimination."
The report also gives an odd account of the farm invasions that from 1998 on escalated in Zimbabwe not only into the eviction of white land-owners, but the ruin of the country's agricultural base--replaced not by fair distribution of property and rule of law for blacks, but by plunder, violence, and enrichment of Mugabe's chums at the expense of millions of black Zimbabweans. The model for this was not equitable land reform, but Communist China's cultural revolution, the methods of which Mugabe and his crony "war veterans" learned in the 1960s and early 1970s at the knees of Mao Tse-tung himself. And the mobs who invaded the farms, while described as war veterans, did not consist on the ground of the aging satraps of Mugabe's elite circle--who profited from the policy. They were youth militia, unleashed by the aging Mugabe in an effort to thwart a growing opposition movement, and keep his grip on power.
The U.N. report does warn that its findings are incomplete. But they are rather worse than that. The eviction of hundreds of thousands was not, in Mugabe's universe, a policy mistake. It was, for Zimbabwe's murderous tyrant, a success--now yielding leverage over decent people who are indeed prone to send help to those suffering in Zimbabwe. We have seen this cycle before. It is what led to the U.N. devising, albeit on a far grander scale, with a far bigger cut for its own administrative services, the now scandal-ridden Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, which fortified Saddam Hussein and helped him keep power for years beyond what many in the early 1990s expected. What must be grasped in dealing with Zimbabwe is that the problem is Mugabe himself. And whatever welcome, warm or otherwise, he may provide to visiting U.N. delegations, the true recovery can only begin with his departure.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
July 27, 2005
Another dispatch from Mosul
Michael Yon has a new post up about the Iraqi police and their growing effectiveness. He also discusses the terrorists' adaptation and deadly resolve:
The enemy in Iraq does not appear to be weakening; if anything, they are becoming smarter, more complicated and deadlier. But this does not mean they are winning; to imply that getting smarter and deadlier equates to winning, is fallacious. Most accounts of the situation in Iraq focus on enemy "successes" (if success is re-defined as annihiliation of civility), while redacting the increasing viability and strength of the Iraqi government, which clearly is outpacing the insurgency.
Go read the rest. Yon doesn't pull any punches.
July 25, 2005
We must continue to run the course
Austin Bay has an op-ed up on the Weekly Standard entitled Nervous in Baghdad. Here's a taste:
My bet is that the Iraqis will pull it off. By the end of 2006 the Iraqis plan to have 250,000 troops and policemen in uniform.
But they won't if America wilts, and our weakness is back home, in front of the TV, on the cable squawk shows, on the editorial pages, in the political gotcha games of Washington, D.C. There, it seems America just wants to get on with its Electra-Glide life, that September 10 sense of freedom and security, without finishing the job. The U.S. military is fighting, the nascent Iraqi military is fighting, the Iraqi people are fighting, but where is the American political class?
Bullets go bang, and so do ballots in their own way. In terms of this war's battlespace, the January Iraqi elections were World War II's D-Day and Battle of the Bulge combined. But the bricks--the building of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other hard corners where this war is and will be fought--that's a delicate and decades-long challenge.
It is well worth reading (it is a two-page article).
July 23, 2005
Saddam on trial
I haven't seen anything like this report in any US newspapers. Here's an excerpt:
A man describes how Saddam Hussein's secret police shoved a dissident's baby into a sack with a vicious cat that scratches it.
Undercover agents throw a man to his death from the roof of a building.
Iraqiya state television is reviving images of life under Saddam as a court prepares to announce his trial date.
``I wish they were here to see the day when Saddam is finished,'' a tearful woman who lost her relatives under Saddam tells viewers of Iraqiya, which broadcast footage of abuses filmed by members of Saddam security forces as they committed them.
Saddam was, and still is, one evil hombre . Then again, maybe he really is just misunderstood like some people claim . . .
I recommend you go read the rest.
July 22, 2005
Neocon maturation
Charles Krauthammer has an excellent column up at OpinionJournal that puts the Bush doctrine into a historical perspective that, frankly, is pretty darn impressive.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry. You really need to read it.
The post-Cold War era has seen a remarkable ideological experiment: Over the past 15 years, each of the three major American schools of foreign policy--realism, liberal internationalism and neoconservatism--has taken its turn at running things. (A fourth school, isolationism, has a long pedigree, but has yet to recover from Pearl Harbor and probably never will; it remains a minor source of dissidence with no chance of becoming a governing ideology.) There is much to be learned from this unusual and unplanned experiment. "The insurgents will do what they are good at. But no one really believes that those dispensers of death can turn back the clock. . . . By a twist of fate, the one Arab country that had seemed ever marked for brutality and sorrow now stands poised on the frontier of a new political world." The elections' effect on the wider Arab world was likewise both immediate and profound. Millions of Arabs watched on television as Iraqis exercised their political rights, and were moved to ask the obvious question: Why are Iraqis the only Arabs voting in free elections--and doing so, moreover, under American aegis and protection? The rest is so well known as barely to merit repeating. The Beirut spring. Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon. Open demonstrations and the beginnings of political competition in Egypt. Women's suffrage in Kuwait. Small but significant steps toward democratization in the gulf. Bashar Assad's declared intent to legalize political parties in Syria, purge the ruling Baath party, sponsor free municipal elections in 2007, and move toward a market economy. (Not that Assad is likely to do any of this, but the fact that he must pretend to be doing it shows the astonishing reach of the Bush doctrine to date.) "It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it." The Iraqi elections vindicated the two central propositions of the Bush doctrine. First, that the desire for freedom is indeed universal and not the private preserve of Westerners. Second, that America is genuinely committed to democracy in and of itself. Contrary to the cynics, whether Arab, European or American, the U.S. did not go into Iraq for oil or hegemony but for liberation--a truth that on Jan. 30 even al-Jazeera had to televise. Arabs in particular had had sound historical reason to doubt American sincerity: six decades of U.S. support for Arab dictators, a cynical "realism" that began with FDR's deal with the House of Saud and reached its apogee with the 1991 betrayal of the anti-Saddam uprising that the elder Bush had encouraged in Iraq. Today, however, they see a different Bush and a different doctrine.
The Neoconservative Convergence
Some once famously dissenting ideas now govern U.S. foreign policy, maturing as they go.
BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
Thursday, July 21, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
The era began with the senior George Bush and a classically realist approach. This was Kissingerism without Kissinger--although Brent Scowcroft, James Baker and Lawrence Eagleburger filled in admirably. The very phrase the administration coined to describe its vision--the New World Order--captured the core idea: an orderly world with orderly rulers living in stable equilibrium.
The elder Mr. Bush had two enormous achievements to his credit: the peaceful reunification of Germany, still historically undervalued, and the expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, which maintained the status quo in the Persian Gulf. Nonetheless, his administration suffered from the classic shortcoming of realism: a failure of imagination. Mr. Bush brilliantly managed the reconstitution of Germany and the restoration of the independence of the East European states, but he could not see far enough to the liberation of the Soviet peoples themselves. His notorious "chicken Kiev" speech of 1991, warning Ukrainians against "suicidal nationalism," seemed to prefer Soviet stability to the risk of 15 free and independent states.
But we must not be retrospectively too severe. Democracy in Ukraine was hard to envision even a few years ago, let alone in the early 1990s, and Mr. Bush's hesitancy did not stop the march of liberation in the Soviet sphere. It was the failure of imagination in Mr. Bush's other area of triumph--Iraq--that had truly stark, even tragic, consequences.
Leaving Saddam in place, and declining to support the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings that followed the first Gulf War, begat more than a decade of Iraqi suffering, rancor among our war allies, diplomatic isolation for the U.S., and a crumbling regime of U.N. sanctions. All this led ultimately and inevitably to a second war that could have been fought far more easily--and with the enthusiastic support of Iraq's Shiites, who to this day remain suspicious of our intentions--in 1991. One recalls with dismay that the first two of Osama bin Laden's announced justifications for his declaration of war on America were the garrisoning of the holy places (i.e., Saudi Arabia) by crusader (i.e., American) soldiers and the suffering of Iraqis under sanctions. Both were a direct result of the inconclusive end to the first Gulf War.
Still, the achievements of the elder Mr. Bush far outweigh the failures. The smooth and peaceful dissolution of the Soviet empire began, Saddam was stopped, and Arabia was saved. But then came the second, radically different experiment. For the balance of the 1990s, for reasons having nothing to do with foreign policy, realism was abruptly replaced by the classic liberal internationalism of the Clinton administration.
It is hard to be charitable in assessing the record. Liberal internationalism's one major achievement in those years--saving the Muslims in the Balkans and creating conditions for their possible peaceful integration into Europe--was achieved, ironically, in defiance of its own major principle. It lacked what liberal internationalists incessantly claim is the sine qua non of legitimacy: the approval of the U.N. Security Council.
Otherwise, the period between 1993 and 2001 was a waste, eight years of sleepwalking, of the absurd pursuit of one treaty more useless than the last, while the rising threat--Islamic terrorism--was treated as a problem of law enforcement. Perhaps the most symbolic moment occurred at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to France in October 2000, after Yasser Arafat had rejected Israel's peace offer at Camp David and instead launched his bloody second intifada. In Paris for another round of talks, Arafat abruptly broke off negotiations and was leaving the residence when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ran after him, chasing him in her heels on the cobblestone courtyard to induce him, to cajole him, into signing yet another worthless piece of paper.
Leon Trotsky is said to have remarked of the New York intellectual Dwight Macdonald, "Everyone has a right to be stupid, but Comrade Macdonald abuses the privilege." During its 7 1/2-year Oslo folly, the Clinton administration abused the privilege consistently.
Then came another radical change. By a fluke or a miracle, depending on your point of view, because of the confusion of a few disoriented voters in Palm Beach, Fla., this has been the decade of neoconservatism. Bismarck once said that God looks after fools, drunkards, children and the United States of America. Given the 2000 presidential election, it is clear that he works in very mysterious ways.
In place of realism or liberal internationalism, the past 4 1/2 years have seen an unashamed assertion and deployment of American power, a resort to unilateralism when necessary, and a willingness to pre-empt threats before they emerge. Most importantly, the second Bush administration has explicitly declared the spread of freedom to be the central principle of American foreign policy. George W. Bush's second inaugural address in January was the most dramatic and expansive expression of this principle. A few weeks later, at the National Defense University, the president offered its most succinct formulation: "The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom."
The remarkable fact that the Bush doctrine is, essentially, a synonym for neoconservative foreign policy marks neoconservatism's own transition from a position of dissidence, which it occupied during the first Bush administration and the Clinton years, to governance. Neoconservative foreign policy, one might say, has reached maturity. That is not only a portentous development, requiring some rethinking of principles and practice, but a rather unexpected one.
It is unexpected because, only a year ago, neoconservative foreign policy was being consigned to the ash heap of history. In the spring and summer of 2004, in the midst of increasing difficulties in Iraq, it was very widely believed that neoconservative policies had been run to the ground, that the administration that had purveyed them would soon be thrown out of office, and that internecine recriminations were about to begin over who lost the war on terror, the war in Iraq and indeed the reins of American foreign policy. One prominent columnist, speaking for the conventional wisdom of the moment, called the Bush project in Iraq "a childish fantasy." And this, from a friend of neoconservatism.
As for the liberals who had come on board the project of liberating Iraq, they took its perceived foundering as an opportunity to engage in a mass jumping of ship. Some justified their abandonment of the Bush doctrine on the grounds that it was they who had been betrayed--by an administration whose incompetence, mendacity, political opportunism and various other crimes had ruined a policy that would already have been crowned with success if only they had been in charge of postwar Iraq, calibrating brilliantly precise troop levels, calculating to three decimal places the required degree of de-Baathification, and overseeing just about every other operational detail according to the dictates of their own tactical genius.
Other liberals donned the guise of realists, who by the summer of 2004 were back in fashion. At the height of this new vogue, just before the November election, even John Kerry's advisers, noting that the liberal-internationalist critique of the war (namely, that it lacked international support and legitimacy) was not exactly winning converts, settled instead on a "realist" line of attack. From then on, Iraq would be known as the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," which, translated, meant that we should be chasing terrorists cave-to-cave in Afghanistan rather than pursuing an ideological crusade in the Middle East.
If you add to this mix the classical realists, from Brent Scowcroft to Dimitri Simes, who had opposed the entire project from the beginning and were now penning their I-told-you-so's, there seemed scarcely anyone left on board the neoconservative ship. But the most interesting about-face was that of some professed neoconservatives themselves. Among these, the most prominent was Francis Fukuyama, whose lead article in the summer 2004 National Interest was a "realist" attack on the entire ideological underpinnings of the Iraq war and the liberationist idea. The article's very title, "The Neoconservative Moment," made the mocking suggestion, also very much in vogue, that neoconservative foreign policy was finished, that its moment had come and gone, that it had been done in by Iraq, by its own overweening arrogance, and by its blindness to the realist wisdom that failure in Iraq was, as Mr. Fukuyama put it, "predictable in advance."
As it happens, Mr. Fukuyama had neglected to make that prediction in advance; at the time of the war and during the months of debate preceding it, he had been silent. Moreover, from the perspective of today, even his retroactive prediction in summer 2004 of inevitable and catastrophic failure in Iraq appears doubtful, to say the least. Getting a retroactive prediction wrong is quite an achievement, but it tells you much about the intellectual climate just a year ago.
Today, there is no euphoria regarding the Iraq project, but sobriety has replaced panic. Things have changed, and what changed them was four elections: two in the West, and two in the Middle East. First came the re-election in Australia of John Howard, a firm ally of the administration. This presaged the re-election of George W. Bush, which reaffirmed to the world America's staying power, gave popular legitimacy to the Bush doctrine, and established a clear mandate to continue the democratic project. The refusal of the American people last November to turn out a president who, rejecting an "exit strategy," pledged instead to remain until Iraqi self-governance had been secured, was a seminal moment.
The other two elections took place in the areas of our exertion: first the Afghan elections, scandalously underplayed by the American media, then the Iraqi elections, impossible to underplay even by the American media. The latter were a historical hinge point. After a string of other important steps in Iraq that had been confidently dismissed as impossible and certainly impossible to do on time--the writing of an interim constitution, the transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government--came the greatest impossibility of all: free elections as scheduled. The overwhelming popular turnout, in what was essentially a referendum on the insurgency and on the democratic idea, sent a clear-cut message. Those who had said that the Iraqis, like Arabs in general, had no particular interest in self-government were wrong--as were those who claimed that the insurgency was a nationalist, anti-imperialist and widely popular movement.
This is hardly to say that things have not remained difficult in Iraq. The insurgency is still raging. It has the capacity to kill, to instill fear, and perhaps ultimately to destabilize the elected government. What the election did do, however, was to confirm what was already suggested by the insurgency's clear lack of any political program, any political wing, any ideology, indeed even any pretense of competing for hearts and minds. The election exposed the insurgency as an alliance of Baathist nihilism and atavistic jihadism, neither of which has a large constituency in Iraq.
And that is hardly all. The elections newly empowered fully 80% of the Iraqi population--the Kurds and the Shiites--and created an indigenous representative leadership with a life-and-death stake in defeating the insurgency. By giving that 80% the political and institutional means to build the necessary forces, the elections infinitely improved the chances that a stable, multiethnic, democratic Iraq can emerge, despite the current mayhem. As Fouad Ajami wrote in The Wall Street Journal on May 16, upon returning from a visit to the region:
Mr. Ajami has called this (in the title of a recent article in Foreign Affairs) the "Autumn of the Autocrats." Not the winter--nothing is certain, and we know of many democratizing movements in the past that were successfully put down. There are too many entrenched dictatorships and kleptocracies in the region to declare anything won. What we can declare, with certainty, is the falsity of those confident assurances before the Iraq war, during the Iraq war and after the Iraq war that this project was inevitably doomed to failure because we do not know how to "do" democracy, and they do not know how to receive it.
In Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere in the Arab world, the forces of democratic liberalization have emerged on the political stage in a way that was unimaginable just two years ago. They have been energized and emboldened by the Iraqi example and by American resolve. Until now, it was widely assumed that the only alternative to pan-Arabist autocracy, to the Nassers and the Saddams, was Islamism. We now know, from Iraq and Lebanon, that there is another possibility, and that America has given it life. As the Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, hardly a noted friend of the Bush doctrine, put it in late February in an interview with David Ignatius of the Washington Post:
The Iraqi elections had one final effect. They so acutely embarrassed foreign critics, especially in Europe, that we began to see a rash of headlines asking the rhetorical question: Was Bush Right? The answer to that is: Yes, so far. The democratic project has been launched, against the critics and against the odds. That in itself is an immense historical achievement. But success will require maturation--a neoconservatism of discrimination and restraint, prepared to examine both its principles and its practice in shaping a truly governing philosophy.
In a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute last year, I tried to draw a distinction between a more expansive and a more restrictive neoconservative foreign policy. I called the two types, respectively, democratic globalism and democratic realism.
The chief spokesman for democratic globalism is the president himself, and his second inaugural address is its ur-text. What is most breathtaking about it is not what most people found shocking--his announced goal of abolishing tyranny throughout the world. Granted, that is rather cosmic-sounding, but it is only an expression of direction and hope for, well, the end of time. What is most expansive is the pledge that America will stand with dissidents throughout the world, wherever they are.
This sort of talk immediately opens itself up to the accusation of disingenuousness and hypocrisy. After all, the United States retains cozy relations with autocracies of various stripes, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Russia. Besides, if we place ourselves on the side of all dissidents everywhere, must we not declare our solidarity not only with democrats but with Islamist dissidents sitting in Pakistani, Egyptian, Saudi and Russian jails?
But we do not act this way, and we need not. The question of alliances with dictators, of deals with the devil, can be approached openly, forthrightly and without any need for defensiveness. The principle is that we cannot democratize the world overnight and, therefore, if we are sincere about the democratic project, we must proceed sequentially. Nor, out of a false equivalence, need we abandon democratic reformers in these autocracies. On the contrary, we have a duty to support them, even as we have a perfect moral right to distinguish between democrats on the one hand and totalitarians or jihadists on the other.
In the absence of omnipotence, one must deal with the lesser of two evils. That means postponing radically destabilizing actions in places where the support of the current nondemocratic regime is needed against a larger existential threat to the free world. There is no need to apologize for that. In World War II we allied ourselves with Stalin against Hitler. (As Churchill said shortly after the German invasion of the U.S.S.R.: "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.") This was a necessary alliance, and a temporary one: When we were done with Hitler, we turned our attention to Stalin and his successors.
During the subsequent war, the Cold War, we again made alliances with the devil, in the form of a variety of right-wing dictators, in order to fight the greater evil. Here, again, the partnership was necessary and temporary. Our deals with right-wing dictatorships were contingent upon their usefulness and upon the status of the ongoing struggle. Once again we were true to our word. Whenever we could, and particularly as we approached victory in the larger war, we dispensed with those alliances.
Consider two cases of useful but temporary allies against communism: Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. We proved our bona fides in both of these cases when, as Moscow weakened and the existential threat to the free world receded, we worked to bring down both dictators. In 1986, we openly and decisively supported the Aquino revolution that deposed and exiled Marcos, and later in the '80s we pressed very hard for free elections in Chile that Mr. Pinochet lost, paving the way for the return of democracy.
Alliances with dictatorships were justified in the war against fascism and the Cold War, and they are justified now in the successor existential struggle, the war against Arab/Islamic radicalism. This is not just theory. It has practical implications. For nothing is more practical than the question: After Afghanistan, after Iraq, what?
The answer is, first Lebanon, then Syria. Lebanon is next because it is so obviously ready for democracy, having practiced a form of it for 30 years after decolonization. Its sophistication and political culture make it ripe for transformation, as the massive pro-democracy demonstrations have shown.
Then comes Syria, both because of its vulnerability--the Lebanon withdrawal has gravely weakened Assad--and because of its strategic importance. A critical island of recalcitrance in a liberalizing region stretching from the Mediterranean to the Iranian border, Syria has tried to destabilize all of its neighbors: Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and now, most obviously and bloodily, the new Iraq. Serious, prolonged, ruthless pressure on the Assad regime would yield enormous geopolitical advantage in democratizing, and thus pacifying, the entire Levant.
Some conservatives (and many liberals) have proposed instead that we be true to the universalist language of the president's second inaugural address and go after the three principal Islamic autocracies: Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Not so fast, and not so hard. Autocracies they are, and in many respects nasty ones. But doing this would be a mistake.
In Egypt, we certainly have liberal resources that should be supported and encouraged. But, keeping in mind the Algerian experience, we should be wary of bringing down the whole house of cards and thereby derailing any progress from authoritarianism to liberal democracy. Saudi Arabia has a Byzantine culture, and an equally Byzantine method of governance, which must be delicately reformed short of overthrow. And Pakistan, which has great potential for democracy, is simply too critical as a military ally in the war on al Qaeda to risk anything right now. Pervez Musharraf is no bastard; but even if he were, he is ours. We should be encouraging the evolution of democracy in all of these countries, but relentless and ruthless means--of the kind we employed in Afghanistan and Iraq and should, perhaps short of direct military invention, be employing in Syria--are better applied to enemies, not friends.
What is interesting is that the Bush administration, in practice, is proceeding precisely along these lines. It pushes on Hosni Mubarak, but gently. It moves even more gingerly with Saudi Arabia, fearing what may emerge in the short term if the royal kleptocracy is deposed. And, because Pakistan is so central to the war on terror, it disturbs not a hair on the head of Mr. Musharraf.
In short, the Bush administration--if you like, neoconservatism in power--has been far more inclined to pursue democratic realism and to consign democratic globalism to the realm of aspiration. This kind of prudent circumspection is, in fact, a practical necessity for governing in the real world. We should, for example, be doing everything in our power, both overtly and covertly, to encourage a democratic revolution in Iran, a deeply hostile and dangerous state, even while trying carefully to manage democratic evolution in places like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Indeed, the behavior of the Bush administration implies that in practice, the distinction between democratic realism and democratic globalism may collapse, because globalism is simply not sustainable.
Another important sign of the maturing of neoconservative foreign policy is that it is no longer tethered to its own ideological history and paternity. The current practitioners of neoconservative foreign policy are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. They have no history in the movement, and before 9/11 had little affinity to or affiliation with it.
The fathers of neoconservatism are former liberals or leftists. Today, its chief proponents, to judge by their history, are former realists. Ms. Rice, for example, was a disciple of Brent Scowcroft; Mr. Cheney served as secretary of defense in the first Bush administration. September 11 changed all of that. It changed the world, and changed our understanding of the world. As neoconservatism seemed to offer the most plausible explanation of the new reality and the most compelling and active response to it, many realists were brought to acknowledge the poverty of realism--not just the futility but the danger of a foreign policy centered on the illusion of stability and equilibrium. These realists, newly mugged by reality, have given weight to neoconservatism, making it more diverse and, given the newcomers' past experience, more mature.
What neoconservatives have long been advocating is now being articulated and practiced at the highest levels of government by a war cabinet composed of individuals who, coming from a very different place, have joined and reshaped the neoconservative camp and are carrying the neoconservative idea throughout the world. As a result, the vast right-wing conspiracy has grown even more vast than liberals could imagine. And even as the tent has enlarged, the great schisms and splits in conservative foreign policy--so widely predicted just a year ago, so eagerly sought and amplified by outside analysts--have not occurred. Indeed, differences have, if anything, narrowed.
This is not party discipline. It is compromise with reality, and convergence toward the middle. Above all, it is the maturation of a governing ideology whose time has come.
Mr. Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist for the Washington Post and an essayist for Time. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987, and in 2003 was a recipient of the Bradley Prize. This essay, in somewhat different form, was delivered in New York City in May as Commentary's first annual Norman Podhoretz Lecture, and it appears in the July/August issue of Commentary.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
Neocon maturation
Charles Krauthammer has an excellent column up at OpinionJournal that puts the Bush doctrine into a historical perspective that, frankly, is pretty darn impressive.
I've reprinted it in the extended entry. You really need to read it.
The post-Cold War era has seen a remarkable ideological experiment: Over the past 15 years, each of the three major American schools of foreign policy--realism, liberal internationalism and neoconservatism--has taken its turn at running things. (A fourth school, isolationism, has a long pedigree, but has yet to recover from Pearl Harbor and probably never will; it remains a minor source of dissidence with no chance of becoming a governing ideology.) There is much to be learned from this unusual and unplanned experiment. "The insurgents will do what they are good at. But no one really believes that those dispensers of death can turn back the clock. . . . By a twist of fate, the one Arab country that had seemed ever marked for brutality and sorrow now stands poised on the frontier of a new political world." The elections' effect on the wider Arab world was likewise both immediate and profound. Millions of Arabs watched on television as Iraqis exercised their political rights, and were moved to ask the obvious question: Why are Iraqis the only Arabs voting in free elections--and doing so, moreover, under American aegis and protection? The rest is so well known as barely to merit repeating. The Beirut spring. Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon. Open demonstrations and the beginnings of political competition in Egypt. Women's suffrage in Kuwait. Small but significant steps toward democratization in the gulf. Bashar Assad's declared intent to legalize political parties in Syria, purge the ruling Baath party, sponsor free municipal elections in 2007, and move toward a market economy. (Not that Assad is likely to do any of this, but the fact that he must pretend to be doing it shows the astonishing reach of the Bush doctrine to date.) "It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it." The Iraqi elections vindicated the two central propositions of the Bush doctrine. First, that the desire for freedom is indeed universal and not the private preserve of Westerners. Second, that America is genuinely committed to democracy in and of itself. Contrary to the cynics, whether Arab, European or American, the U.S. did not go into Iraq for oil or hegemony but for liberation--a truth that on Jan. 30 even al-Jazeera had to televise. Arabs in particular had had sound historical reason to doubt American sincerity: six decades of U.S. support for Arab dictators, a cynical "realism" that began with FDR's deal with the House of Saud and reached its apogee with the 1991 betrayal of the anti-Saddam uprising that the elder Bush had encouraged in Iraq. Today, however, they see a different Bush and a different doctrine.
The Neoconservative Convergence
Some once famously dissenting ideas now govern U.S. foreign policy, maturing as they go.
BY CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
Thursday, July 21, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
The era began with the senior George Bush and a classically realist approach. This was Kissingerism without Kissinger--although Brent Scowcroft, James Baker and Lawrence Eagleburger filled in admirably. The very phrase the administration coined to describe its vision--the New World Order--captured the core idea: an orderly world with orderly rulers living in stable equilibrium.
The elder Mr. Bush had two enormous achievements to his credit: the peaceful reunification of Germany, still historically undervalued, and the expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, which maintained the status quo in the Persian Gulf. Nonetheless, his administration suffered from the classic shortcoming of realism: a failure of imagination. Mr. Bush brilliantly managed the reconstitution of Germany and the restoration of the independence of the East European states, but he could not see far enough to the liberation of the Soviet peoples themselves. His notorious "chicken Kiev" speech of 1991, warning Ukrainians against "suicidal nationalism," seemed to prefer Soviet stability to the risk of 15 free and independent states.
But we must not be retrospectively too severe. Democracy in Ukraine was hard to envision even a few years ago, let alone in the early 1990s, and Mr. Bush's hesitancy did not stop the march of liberation in the Soviet sphere. It was the failure of imagination in Mr. Bush's other area of triumph--Iraq--that had truly stark, even tragic, consequences.
Leaving Saddam in place, and declining to support the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings that followed the first Gulf War, begat more than a decade of Iraqi suffering, rancor among our war allies, diplomatic isolation for the U.S., and a crumbling regime of U.N. sanctions. All this led ultimately and inevitably to a second war that could have been fought far more easily--and with the enthusiastic support of Iraq's Shiites, who to this day remain suspicious of our intentions--in 1991. One recalls with dismay that the first two of Osama bin Laden's announced justifications for his declaration of war on America were the garrisoning of the holy places (i.e., Saudi Arabia) by crusader (i.e., American) soldiers and the suffering of Iraqis under sanctions. Both were a direct result of the inconclusive end to the first Gulf War.
Still, the achievements of the elder Mr. Bush far outweigh the failures. The smooth and peaceful dissolution of the Soviet empire began, Saddam was stopped, and Arabia was saved. But then came the second, radically different experiment. For the balance of the 1990s, for reasons having nothing to do with foreign policy, realism was abruptly replaced by the classic liberal internationalism of the Clinton administration.
It is hard to be charitable in assessing the record. Liberal internationalism's one major achievement in those years--saving the Muslims in the Balkans and creating conditions for their possible peaceful integration into Europe--was achieved, ironically, in defiance of its own major principle. It lacked what liberal internationalists incessantly claim is the sine qua non of legitimacy: the approval of the U.N. Security Council.
Otherwise, the period between 1993 and 2001 was a waste, eight years of sleepwalking, of the absurd pursuit of one treaty more useless than the last, while the rising threat--Islamic terrorism--was treated as a problem of law enforcement. Perhaps the most symbolic moment occurred at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to France in October 2000, after Yasser Arafat had rejected Israel's peace offer at Camp David and instead launched his bloody second intifada. In Paris for another round of talks, Arafat abruptly broke off negotiations and was leaving the residence when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ran after him, chasing him in her heels on the cobblestone courtyard to induce him, to cajole him, into signing yet another worthless piece of paper.
Leon Trotsky is said to have remarked of the New York intellectual Dwight Macdonald, "Everyone has a right to be stupid, but Comrade Macdonald abuses the privilege." During its 7 1/2-year Oslo folly, the Clinton administration abused the privilege consistently.
Then came another radical change. By a fluke or a miracle, depending on your point of view, because of the confusion of a few disoriented voters in Palm Beach, Fla., this has been the decade of neoconservatism. Bismarck once said that God looks after fools, drunkards, children and the United States of America. Given the 2000 presidential election, it is clear that he works in very mysterious ways.
In place of realism or liberal internationalism, the past 4 1/2 years have seen an unashamed assertion and deployment of American power, a resort to unilateralism when necessary, and a willingness to pre-empt threats before they emerge. Most importantly, the second Bush administration has explicitly declared the spread of freedom to be the central principle of American foreign policy. George W. Bush's second inaugural address in January was the most dramatic and expansive expression of this principle. A few weeks later, at the National Defense University, the president offered its most succinct formulation: "The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom."
The remarkable fact that the Bush doctrine is, essentially, a synonym for neoconservative foreign policy marks neoconservatism's own transition from a position of dissidence, which it occupied during the first Bush administration and the Clinton years, to governance. Neoconservative foreign policy, one might say, has reached maturity. That is not only a portentous development, requiring some rethinking of principles and practice, but a rather unexpected one.
It is unexpected because, only a year ago, neoconservative foreign policy was being consigned to the ash heap of history. In the spring and summer of 2004, in the midst of increasing difficulties in Iraq, it was very widely believed that neoconservative policies had been run to the ground, that the administration that had purveyed them would soon be thrown out of office, and that internecine recriminations were about to begin over who lost the war on terror, the war in Iraq and indeed the reins of American foreign policy. One prominent columnist, speaking for the conventional wisdom of the moment, called the Bush project in Iraq "a childish fantasy." And this, from a friend of neoconservatism.
As for the liberals who had come on board the project of liberating Iraq, they took its perceived foundering as an opportunity to engage in a mass jumping of ship. Some justified their abandonment of the Bush doctrine on the grounds that it was they who had been betrayed--by an administration whose incompetence, mendacity, political opportunism and various other crimes had ruined a policy that would already have been crowned with success if only they had been in charge of postwar Iraq, calibrating brilliantly precise troop levels, calculating to three decimal places the required degree of de-Baathification, and overseeing just about every other operational detail according to the dictates of their own tactical genius.
Other liberals donned the guise of realists, who by the summer of 2004 were back in fashion. At the height of this new vogue, just before the November election, even John Kerry's advisers, noting that the liberal-internationalist critique of the war (namely, that it lacked international support and legitimacy) was not exactly winning converts, settled instead on a "realist" line of attack. From then on, Iraq would be known as the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," which, translated, meant that we should be chasing terrorists cave-to-cave in Afghanistan rather than pursuing an ideological crusade in the Middle East.
If you add to this mix the classical realists, from Brent Scowcroft to Dimitri Simes, who had opposed the entire project from the beginning and were now penning their I-told-you-so's, there seemed scarcely anyone left on board the neoconservative ship. But the most interesting about-face was that of some professed neoconservatives themselves. Among these, the most prominent was Francis Fukuyama, whose lead article in the summer 2004 National Interest was a "realist" attack on the entire ideological underpinnings of the Iraq war and the liberationist idea. The article's very title, "The Neoconservative Moment," made the mocking suggestion, also very much in vogue, that neoconservative foreign policy was finished, that its moment had come and gone, that it had been done in by Iraq, by its own overweening arrogance, and by its blindness to the realist wisdom that failure in Iraq was, as Mr. Fukuyama put it, "predictable in advance."
As it happens, Mr. Fukuyama had neglected to make that prediction in advance; at the time of the war and during the months of debate preceding it, he had been silent. Moreover, from the perspective of today, even his retroactive prediction in summer 2004 of inevitable and catastrophic failure in Iraq appears doubtful, to say the least. Getting a retroactive prediction wrong is quite an achievement, but it tells you much about the intellectual climate just a year ago.
Today, there is no euphoria regarding the Iraq project, but sobriety has replaced panic. Things have changed, and what changed them was four elections: two in the West, and two in the Middle East. First came the re-election in Australia of John Howard, a firm ally of the administration. This presaged the re-election of George W. Bush, which reaffirmed to the world America's staying power, gave popular legitimacy to the Bush doctrine, and established a clear mandate to continue the democratic project. The refusal of the American people last November to turn out a president who, rejecting an "exit strategy," pledged instead to remain until Iraqi self-governance had been secured, was a seminal moment.
The other two elections took place in the areas of our exertion: first the Afghan elections, scandalously underplayed by the American media, then the Iraqi elections, impossible to underplay even by the American media. The latter were a historical hinge point. After a string of other important steps in Iraq that had been confidently dismissed as impossible and certainly impossible to do on time--the writing of an interim constitution, the transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government--came the greatest impossibility of all: free elections as scheduled. The overwhelming popular turnout, in what was essentially a referendum on the insurgency and on the democratic idea, sent a clear-cut message. Those who had said that the Iraqis, like Arabs in general, had no particular interest in self-government were wrong--as were those who claimed that the insurgency was a nationalist, anti-imperialist and widely popular movement.
This is hardly to say that things have not remained difficult in Iraq. The insurgency is still raging. It has the capacity to kill, to instill fear, and perhaps ultimately to destabilize the elected government. What the election did do, however, was to confirm what was already suggested by the insurgency's clear lack of any political program, any political wing, any ideology, indeed even any pretense of competing for hearts and minds. The election exposed the insurgency as an alliance of Baathist nihilism and atavistic jihadism, neither of which has a large constituency in Iraq.
And that is hardly all. The elections newly empowered fully 80% of the Iraqi population--the Kurds and the Shiites--and created an indigenous representative leadership with a life-and-death stake in defeating the insurgency. By giving that 80% the political and institutional means to build the necessary forces, the elections infinitely improved the chances that a stable, multiethnic, democratic Iraq can emerge, despite the current mayhem. As Fouad Ajami wrote in The Wall Street Journal on May 16, upon returning from a visit to the region:
Mr. Ajami has called this (in the title of a recent article in Foreign Affairs) the "Autumn of the Autocrats." Not the winter--nothing is certain, and we know of many democratizing movements in the past that were successfully put down. There are too many entrenched dictatorships and kleptocracies in the region to declare anything won. What we can declare, with certainty, is the falsity of those confident assurances before the Iraq war, during the Iraq war and after the Iraq war that this project was inevitably doomed to failure because we do not know how to "do" democracy, and they do not know how to receive it.
In Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere in the Arab world, the forces of democratic liberalization have emerged on the political stage in a way that was unimaginable just two years ago. They have been energized and emboldened by the Iraqi example and by American resolve. Until now, it was widely assumed that the only alternative to pan-Arabist autocracy, to the Nassers and the Saddams, was Islamism. We now know, from Iraq and Lebanon, that there is another possibility, and that America has given it life. As the Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, hardly a noted friend of the Bush doctrine, put it in late February in an interview with David Ignatius of the Washington Post:
The Iraqi elections had one final effect. They so acutely embarrassed foreign critics, especially in Europe, that we began to see a rash of headlines asking the rhetorical question: Was Bush Right? The answer to that is: Yes, so far. The democratic project has been launched, against the critics and against the odds. That in itself is an immense historical achievement. But success will require maturation--a neoconservatism of discrimination and restraint, prepared to examine both its principles and its practice in shaping a truly governing philosophy.
In a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute last year, I tried to draw a distinction between a more expansive and a more restrictive neoconservative foreign policy. I called the two types, respectively, democratic globalism and democratic realism.
The chief spokesman for democratic globalism is the president himself, and his second inaugural address is its ur-text. What is most breathtaking about it is not what most people found shocking--his announced goal of abolishing tyranny throughout the world. Granted, that is rather cosmic-sounding, but it is only an expression of direction and hope for, well, the end of time. What is most expansive is the pledge that America will stand with dissidents throughout the world, wherever they are.
This sort of talk immediately opens itself up to the accusation of disingenuousness and hypocrisy. After all, the United States retains cozy relations with autocracies of various stripes, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Russia. Besides, if we place ourselves on the side of all dissidents everywhere, must we not declare our solidarity not only with democrats but with Islamist dissidents sitting in Pakistani, Egyptian, Saudi and Russian jails?
But we do not act this way, and we need not. The question of alliances with dictators, of deals with the devil, can be approached openly, forthrightly and without any need for defensiveness. The principle is that we cannot democratize the world overnight and, therefore, if we are sincere about the democratic project, we must proceed sequentially. Nor, out of a false equivalence, need we abandon democratic reformers in these autocracies. On the contrary, we have a duty to support them, even as we have a perfect moral right to distinguish between democrats on the one hand and totalitarians or jihadists on the other.
In the absence of omnipotence, one must deal with the lesser of two evils. That means postponing radically destabilizing actions in places where the support of the current nondemocratic regime is needed against a larger existential threat to the free world. There is no need to apologize for that. In World War II we allied ourselves with Stalin against Hitler. (As Churchill said shortly after the German invasion of the U.S.S.R.: "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.") This was a necessary alliance, and a temporary one: When we were done with Hitler, we turned our attention to Stalin and his successors.
During the subsequent war, the Cold War, we again made alliances with the devil, in the form of a variety of right-wing dictators, in order to fight the greater evil. Here, again, the partnership was necessary and temporary. Our deals with right-wing dictatorships were contingent upon their usefulness and upon the status of the ongoing struggle. Once again we were true to our word. Whenever we could, and particularly as we approached victory in the larger war, we dispensed with those alliances.
Consider two cases of useful but temporary allies against communism: Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. We proved our bona fides in both of these cases when, as Moscow weakened and the existential threat to the free world receded, we worked to bring down both dictators. In 1986, we openly and decisively supported the Aquino revolution that deposed and exiled Marcos, and later in the '80s we pressed very hard for free elections in Chile that Mr. Pinochet lost, paving the way for the return of democracy.
Alliances with dictatorships were justified in the war against fascism and the Cold War, and they are justified now in the successor existential struggle, the war against Arab/Islamic radicalism. This is not just theory. It has practical implications. For nothing is more practical than the question: After Afghanistan, after Iraq, what?
The answer is, first Lebanon, then Syria. Lebanon is next because it is so obviously ready for democracy, having practiced a form of it for 30 years after decolonization. Its sophistication and political culture make it ripe for transformation, as the massive pro-democracy demonstrations have shown.
Then comes Syria, both because of its vulnerability--the Lebanon withdrawal has gravely weakened Assad--and because of its strategic importance. A critical island of recalcitrance in a liberalizing region stretching from the Mediterranean to the Iranian border, Syria has tried to destabilize all of its neighbors: Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and now, most obviously and bloodily, the new Iraq. Serious, prolonged, ruthless pressure on the Assad regime would yield enormous geopolitical advantage in democratizing, and thus pacifying, the entire Levant.
Some conservatives (and many liberals) have proposed instead that we be true to the universalist language of the president's second inaugural address and go after the three principal Islamic autocracies: Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Not so fast, and not so hard. Autocracies they are, and in many respects nasty ones. But doing this would be a mistake.
In Egypt, we certainly have liberal resources that should be supported and encouraged. But, keeping in mind the Algerian experience, we should be wary of bringing down the whole house of cards and thereby derailing any progress from authoritarianism to liberal democracy. Saudi Arabia has a Byzantine culture, and an equally Byzantine method of governance, which must be delicately reformed short of overthrow. And Pakistan, which has great potential for democracy, is simply too critical as a military ally in the war on al Qaeda to risk anything right now. Pervez Musharraf is no bastard; but even if he were, he is ours. We should be encouraging the evolution of democracy in all of these countries, but relentless and ruthless means--of the kind we employed in Afghanistan and Iraq and should, perhaps short of direct military invention, be employing in Syria--are better applied to enemies, not friends.
What is interesting is that the Bush administration, in practice, is proceeding precisely along these lines. It pushes on Hosni Mubarak, but gently. It moves even more gingerly with Saudi Arabia, fearing what may emerge in the short term if the royal kleptocracy is deposed. And, because Pakistan is so central to the war on terror, it disturbs not a hair on the head of Mr. Musharraf.
In short, the Bush administration--if you like, neoconservatism in power--has been far more inclined to pursue democratic realism and to consign democratic globalism to the realm of aspiration. This kind of prudent circumspection is, in fact, a practical necessity for governing in the real world. We should, for example, be doing everything in our power, both overtly and covertly, to encourage a democratic revolution in Iran, a deeply hostile and dangerous state, even while trying carefully to manage democratic evolution in places like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Indeed, the behavior of the Bush administration implies that in practice, the distinction between democratic realism and democratic globalism may collapse, because globalism is simply not sustainable.
Another important sign of the maturing of neoconservative foreign policy is that it is no longer tethered to its own ideological history and paternity. The current practitioners of neoconservative foreign policy are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. They have no history in the movement, and before 9/11 had little affinity to or affiliation with it.
The fathers of neoconservatism are former liberals or leftists. Today, its chief proponents, to judge by their history, are former realists. Ms. Rice, for example, was a disciple of Brent Scowcroft; Mr. Cheney served as secretary of defense in the first Bush administration. September 11 changed all of that. It changed the world, and changed our understanding of the world. As neoconservatism seemed to offer the most plausible explanation of the new reality and the most compelling and active response to it, many realists were brought to acknowledge the poverty of realism--not just the futility but the danger of a foreign policy centered on the illusion of stability and equilibrium. These realists, newly mugged by reality, have given weight to neoconservatism, making it more diverse and, given the newcomers' past experience, more mature.
What neoconservatives have long been advocating is now being articulated and practiced at the highest levels of government by a war cabinet composed of individuals who, coming from a very different place, have joined and reshaped the neoconservative camp and are carrying the neoconservative idea throughout the world. As a result, the vast right-wing conspiracy has grown even more vast than liberals could imagine. And even as the tent has enlarged, the great schisms and splits in conservative foreign policy--so widely predicted just a year ago, so eagerly sought and amplified by outside analysts--have not occurred. Indeed, differences have, if anything, narrowed.
This is not party discipline. It is compromise with reality, and convergence toward the middle. Above all, it is the maturation of a governing ideology whose time has come.
Mr. Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist for the Washington Post and an essayist for Time. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987, and in 2003 was a recipient of the Bradley Prize. This essay, in somewhat different form, was delivered in New York City in May as Commentary's first annual Norman Podhoretz Lecture, and it appears in the July/August issue of Commentary.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
Live 8 doesn't help
Jean-Claude Shanda Tonme, an international law consultant and columnist for a Cameroonian daily paper, has an op-ed in the New York Times entitled All Rock, No Action. He starts by saying:
LIVE 8, that extraordinary media event that some people of good intentions in the West just orchestrated, would have left us Africans indifferent if we hadn't realized that it was an insult both to us and to common sense.We have nothing against those who this month, in a stadium, a street, a park, in Berlin, London, Moscow, Philadelphia, gathered crowds and played guitar and talked about global poverty and aid for Africa. But we are troubled to think that they are so misguided about what Africa's real problem is, and dismayed by their willingness to propose solutions on our behalf.
And then he goes on to propose solutions of his own:
Neither debt relief nor huge amounts of food aid nor an invasion of experts will change anything. Those will merely prop up the continent's dictators. It's up to each nation to liberate itself and to help itself. When there is a problem in the United States, in Britain, in France, the citizens vote to change their leaders. And those times when it wasn't possible to freely vote to change those leaders, the people revolted.
In Africa, our leaders have led us into misery, and we need to rid ourselves of these cancers. We would have preferred for the musicians in Philadelphia and London to have marched and sung for political revolution. Instead, they mourned a corpse while forgetting to denounce the murderer.
He concludes, cynically perhaps, that Live 8 does not help solve the problems in Africa. That, in fact, Live 8 helps to prolong those problems:
But the truth is that it was not for us, for Africa, that the musicians at Live 8 were singing; it was to amuse the crowds and to clear their own consciences, and whether they realized it or not, to reinforce dictatorships. They still believe us to be like children that they must save, as if we don't realize ourselves what the source of our problems [are].
The op-ed was originally published in Le Messager, the paper he is associated with in Cameroon. It was translated from the original French. You have to register (it's free) with the New York Times to read it, but it is worth your time.
Michael Yon's latest
Michael Yon has a very interesting post about a terrorist weapons cache. He provides a lot more than just a narrative of finding, cataloguing, and disposing of the weapons found:
Part of the persistence of the insurgency results from a staggering availability of fighting materials. There are tons of explosives and munitions here in Mosul, with more streaming in every day, though mounting evidence strongly suggests this flow is abating. For example, the street price of 60mm "mortar bombs" was about $3/shot 9 months ago. Now it’s up nearly seven-fold to over $20. Car bomb incidents in Mosul, while still causing major damage to both military and civilians, have been declining. Whether this is a temporary dip or steady trend remains to be seen. Even if the ongoing flow were completely cut off, there is still a deep well of material on hand.
There are several pictures, as well. Recommended.
July 20, 2005
Operation 'Teddy Drop'
Here's a very real indication of some of the good stuff going on in Iraq.
Stay tuned, because more and more good stuff really is happening over there -- despite the predominantly negative reporting that we get here in the States.
July 19, 2005
Good news from Iraq, Part 31
Another installment of news of a different sort from Iraq -- good news, that is!
Here's an itsy bitsy (but extremely important) excerpt:
Despite the perception of spiralling violence, the official Iraqi count of civilian and security casualties indicates that violence has actually decreased in June. While the numbers are still high, "in June, data provided by the Iraqi ministries of defence, health and the interior showed that 430 people had died in attacks and 933 were wounded, a drop of more than one-third from May's death toll of 672 dead. The number of wounded was down by 20%."
There is a lot of interesting information about new building projects in Baghdad (among other places), advances in infrastructure, health care, security, finances, etc. It's pretty exciting to see how many encouraging reports are coming out of Iraq now.
Go read the rest!
July 18, 2005
Ali reports from Iraq
Ali, over at IRAQ THE MODEL, has posted some pictures and text about his trip to the Iraqi cities of Kirkuk, Erbil and Sulaymania. Here's an excerpt:
I've been hearing a lot about how beautiful and quiet the city (Sulaymania) is and it didn't disappoint me at all; the city is living in peace and a great degree of order.
There are several pictures posted, so this will make for a long load time for those of you on a dial-up connection.
July 17, 2005
Progress - one terrorist at a time
More evidence that the Iraqi troops are starting to shoulder the load can be found in the article Suicide Bomber Captured, Attack Thwarted.
Go read it. It's like seeing your own child take his or her first step!
July 16, 2005
Interesting Survey . . .
. . . by the Pew Global Attitudes Project :Poll Finds Drop in Muslim Support for Terrorism.
Iraq Constitution on track
Iraq: The first steps of a new nation.
July 15, 2005
8 Myths about the Iraqi conflict
John Hawkins at Right Wing News posted this article refuting 8 arguments used by people who are against the conflict in Iraq.
He doesn't cover all of the bases, but he does clear up some misinformation that is still being touted as fact.
Perhaps the poverty . . .
. . . is one of a moral nature.
July 14, 2005
African tragedy
Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute in Stanford, CA, writes about why the G8 is missing the boat in regards to Africa.
[Hat tip to Betsy Newmark]
Covert (but very real) ties
This op-ed by Claudia Rosett at OpinionJournal is one of many that states what has now become very obvious -- there really was a connection between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda.
The primary collection of evidence to which Ms. Rosett refers can be found here. It is impressive.
You can read Ms. Rosett's entire article in the extended entry.
President Bush has given some good speeches lately, including his talk June 29 at Fort Bragg, N.C., in which he stressed some of the reasons for going into Iraq, and his address this past Monday at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va., in which he talked about the role of intelligence in defeating terrorists and stressed that "the heart of our strategy is this: Free societies are peaceful societies." Ms. Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.
Saddam and al Qaeda
There's abundant evidence of connections.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, July 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
But there's another speech Mr. Bush still needs to give. That would be the one in which he says: I told you so--there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
In some quarters, that would of course provoke the usual outrage. Since the U.S.-led coalition went outside the corrupt United Nations to topple the Baathist regime in Baghdad more than two years ago, it has become an article of faith that there was no such connection. Typical of the tenor in both the media and western politics is an article that ran last month in The Economist, describing Iraq as Mr. Bush's "most visible disaster" and opining that "even Mr. Bush's supporters admit that he exaggerated Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda."
If anything, Mr. Bush in recent times has not stressed Saddam's ties to al Qaeda nearly enough. More than ever, as we now discuss the bombings in London, or, to name a few others, Madrid, Casablanca, Bali, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, or the many bombings in Israel--as well as the attacks on the World Trade Center in both 1993 and 2001--it is important to understand that terrorist connections can be real, and lethal, and portend yet more murder, even when they are shadowy, shifting and complex. And it is vital to send the message to regimes in such places as Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran that in matters of terrorist ties, the Free World is not interested in epistemological debates over what constitutes a connection. We are not engaged in a court case, or a classroom debate. We are fighting a war.
But in the debates over Iraq, that part of the communication has become far too muddied. Documents found in Iraq are doubted; confessions by detainees are received as universally suspect; reports of meetings between officials of the former Iraqi regime and al Qaeda operatives are discounted as having been nothing more than empty formalities, with such characters shuttling between places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan, perhaps to share tea and cookies. Any conclusions or even inferences about contacts between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda are subjected these days to the kind of metaphysical test in which existence itself becomes a highly dubious philosophical problem, mired in the difficulty of ever really being certain about anything at all.
Certainty is then imposed in the form of assurances that there was no connection. This notion that there was no Saddam-al Qaeda connection is invoked as an argument against the decision to go to war in Iraq, and enjoined as part of the case that we were safer with Saddam in power, and that, even now, the U.S. and its allies should simply cut and run.
Actually, there were many connections, as Stephen Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn, writing in the current issue of the Weekly Standard, spell out under the headline "The Mother of All Connections." Since the fall of Saddam, the U.S. has had extraordinary access to documents of the former Baathist regime, and is still sifting through millions of them. Messrs. Hayes and Joscelyn take some of what is already available, combined with other reports, documentation and details, some from before the overthrow of Saddam, some after. For page after page, they list connections--with names, dates and details such as the longstanding relationship between Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Saddam's regime.
Messrs. Hayes and Joscelyn raise, with good reason, the question of why Saddam gave haven to Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the men who in 1993 helped make the bomb that ripped through the parking garage of the World Trade Center. They detail a contact between Iraqi intelligence and several of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Malaysia, the year before al Qaeda destroyed the twin towers. They recount the intersection of Iraqi and al Qaeda business interests in Sudan, via, among other things, an Oil for Food contract negotiated by Saddam's regime with the al-Shifa facility that President Clinton targeted for a missile attack following the African embassy bombings because of its apparent connection to al Qaeda. And there is plenty more.
The difficulty lies in piecing together the picture, which is indeed murky (that being part of the aim in covert dealings between tyrants and terrorist groups)--but rich enough in depth and documented detail so that the basic shape is clear. By the time Messrs. Hayes and Joscelyn are done tabulating the cross-connections, meetings, Iraqi Intelligence memos unearthed after the fall of Saddam, and information obtained from detained terrorist suspects, you have to believe there was significant collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda. Or you have to inhabit a universe in which there will never be a demonstrable connection between any of the terrorist attacks the world has suffered over the past dozen years, or any tyrant and any aspiring terrorist. In that fantasyland, all such phenomena are independent events.
Mr. Bush, in calling attention to the Iraq-al Qaeda connection in the first place, did the right thing. For the U.S. president to confirm that clearly and directly at this stage, with some of the abundant supporting evidence now available, might seem highly controversial. But reviving that controversy would help settle it more squarely in line with the truth.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
July 13, 2005
Medical, dental, veterinary books needed in Iraq
Michael Yon has a post entitled The Books of Salah al Din, in which he describes some soldier's efforts to help Iraqi medical, dental, and veterinary professionals get the textbooks and journals that they so desperately need. It seems that the Hussein regime discouraged these professionals from staying current with their professional publications. And the med/dental/vet schools suffered as well.
Go read the post (I've reprinted it in the extended entry - sans pictures). And if you can help in any way, please email Dr. Gifford (whose email is at the end of the post). (I hope my sister and her husband read this!)
The successful bondage of man depends, at least in part, on equal measures of ignorance and intimidation. These are the twin towers of both tyranny and terrorism. Controlling access to information constrains the power of ideas, allowing a climate of confusion and fear to rise in the vacuum. In fields such as science and medicine, ongoing access to developing ideas and emerging technologies is essential to maintaining a capacity to deliver health care and to harness the power of unfolding developments.
In most instances, it would be oxymoronic to insert the name of Saddam Hussein in a sentence which also contained the phrase “the greater good.” Under his regime, access to information vital to medicine was constricted to the point of atrophy. The danger grows over time; the quality of health care diminishes immediately, while the capacity to educate the next generation of doctors, nurses and allied health care professionals is seriously compromised.
Poverty is not the basic problem in Iraq. A helicopter flight over cities and villages reveals thousands of satellite dishes, thousands of automobiles driving about, and power-lines crisscrossing the country. The people are starved, however, but the commodity for which they hunger is knowledge and information, particularly the kind that comes unfiltered. Yet many of the terrorists who make the misery they later feed on, wish to cut ties to the outside world.
In the months immediately following the collapse of the Saddam regime, but before the tumor of insurgency invaded the body, medical officers attached to the 4th Infantry Division met with doctors and professors of the region’s medical schools and hospitals, to assess needs and find ways to share resources to facilitate the rehabilitation of the health care system. Two of the key medical officers of the Division, LTC Kirk Eggleston, the Division Surgeon (and hence the principal medical staff officer ) and Major Alex Garza, the Division's Civil Affairs Medical Officer, visited the Medical College of the University of Tikrit.
During initial visits, they were taken aback by a discovery that Iraqi doctors and medical students were relying on photocopies of outdated medical texts for information. Initial inquiries revealed that what looked like an isolated case of an improvised library was actually the presenting symptom of a systemic deficiency--Iraq's scientific and technical resources were dangerously malnourished. All over Iraq, teachers and students were using photocopies of outdated textbooks and had been doing so for decades.
This was not about saving money; the cost of making the photocopies can be higher than purchasing books and journals. The issue was availability. Iraqi physicians and professors could not simply shop online and purchase a title for shipment to Iraq. Basic medical science textbooks as well as those relating to the medical specialties were only available as well-thumbed copies of out-of-date editions. Medical journals were similarly unavailable.
Not long after that first meeting, Eggleston and Garza shared their findings with then-Major Gifford who shared their consternation and alarm. Gifford shared his concerns about the condition of Iraqi medical education to his father, David Gifford, MD, a retired Army medical officer. To Dr. Gifford, the answer was obvious--he needed to find a way to fill those shelves. Collaborating with Army Major Alex Garza, MD, he launched a public health response in the form of an old-fashioned book drive.
The potential energy of knowledge is one of the most powerful, but unpredictable forces on the planet. When these two men set out to equip the medical libraries near Bagdad, they had no idea what they were about to unleash. Their first moves were tentative–-requesting donations from textbook distributors and publishers--and lackluster in terms of results.
After fruitless weeks of efforts, they decided to modernize the book drive by taking it onto the internet. Dr. Gifford made contact with Susan Yox, RN, EdD, an editor at Medscape, an online clearinghouse for health professionals. This was the same Dr. Yox who, in 2002, publicized requests for assistance for physicians and hospitals in Afghanistan. Dr. Garza, in civilian life, is an assistant professor at the medical college of the University of Missouri, Kansas City. In this partnership with Dr. Yox, the right people combined with the right skills, and a passion for the mission.
Doctors Gifford and Garza began a small internet campaign where they sent emails and posted notices on websites for their alma maters, asking for donations of medical text books. Almost immediately, the response outraced their expectations. Although the donations began arriving through simple channels (mostly by mail or personal delivery), as groups of students and teachers in the US learned of the program, and began to work collectively, the size of the deliveries began to be measured in tons.
Outside of formal military and governmental channels, and completely on a voluntary basis, a virtual organization consisting of both military and civilian members was born. A small but growing group of Americans, medical students and professors, ordinary doctors and nurses, medical librarians and eventually even medical publishers, created a way for colleges, hospitals, nursing schools and community clinics to fill Iraqi bookshelves with recently published texts and journals.
Because of British influences in the region after World War I, Iraq’s six-year medical program is patterned after Great Britain’s model, and the training is in English. Of course, just because there’s no detour for translations doesn’t make the road clear of all obstacles, and this journey would have more than a few.
The Books of Salah al Din
As word spread on the internet, the chatter triggered an avalanche of donations. A retiring plastic surgeon in Texas donated his professional library of texts and specialty journals. Students at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City donated over 2,000 texts. A senior medical student at the University of Tennessee School of Medicine, took the idea and advanced it another step among his peers and faculty by using flyers and e-mail. His group accumulated nearly 4,000 texts and journals. Elsevier, an international medical and scientific publisher, donated packaging and postal costs. Evidence of the growing momentum was seen in the donation of 1,000 copies each of Scientific American Medicine and ACS Surgery from Medscape Publishers. This one collection of new texts weighed 17,600 pounds and had a retail value of $429,000. The magnitude of this donation was leveraged to rachet up the credibility and visibility of the project, culminating when Merck Canada donated five pallets of medical and scientific journals.
Swerving to Avoid Obstacles
When Doctors Gifford, Yox and Garza began the Internet campaign, using the services of the Medscape electronic bulletin board, they hadn’t really planned for success. Because their earlier efforts failed to gather any momentum after several months, they weren’t predicting success on either the scale or speed that reality was about to demand. But the response was overwhelming and instantaneous.
Donations directed to Dr. Garza began to arrive in Iraq through mail channels, while many other donations were delivered directly to Dr. Gifford’s office at the hospital at Fort Hood, TX. The first major obstacle was a regulation prohibiting soldiers from requesting donations. Cognizant of this, Garza had been careful in how the first internet messages were worded, but apparently, not careful enough to avoid an admonishment, with hints of court martial.
Things might have derailed then and there, since at the time, Dr. Garza was the sole point of contact in Iraq for the campaign. Rather than quit, he passed the load to the American Red Cross representative attached to the Army, who assumed responsibility for receiving the books.
To make the transition official, the team again turned to internet savvy military support and medical education communities. They asked for help putting the word out that future donations should be sent to the American Red Cross and packages should have the phrase “Humanitarian Medical Aid” clearly written on the outside. Since there is not a rule against accepting this type of mail, they interpreted the rules to allow the packages to pass through the military postal system.
Cartons and pallets arrived in ever larger quantities, while other shipments were too costly to send, creating a log jam. The daunting logistics could have spelled the end, and just as quickly as the initial Internet solicitations had gone out, the organizers could have pled “NO MORE BOOKS PLEASE.”
But this was not to be. Indeed, this is an instance where the bureaucracy of the U.S. Military paid dividends for the greater good. No organization in the world moves heavy loads about the earth—-into combat and disaster areas-—as efficiently as the U.S. military. Working with the Army, the Air Force cleared these large donations to be included as Space A cargo (space available) on military flights.
As the donor base grew, so did the list of persons willing to distribute texts, journals and related items in other parts of Iraq. When the donations to Tikrit began to saturate the capacity, other medical officers stepped up and began distributing materials across wider areas of Iraq.
The donors continue to come from different corners of the U.S. “The Muslim Medical Students Organization in the Chicago area is participating,” explained Dr. Gifford, “and a sidelight of this is that the predominantly Jewish medical school at Mt. Sinai, the Roman Catholic Loyola University School of Medicine in Chicago, as well as the secular schools have been equally involved. Students at Rush Medical College and UCLA are organizing book drives.”
Everyone who gets involved in this effort, from medical students to publishers, to the soldiers loading the books, all seem to get distracted by the desire to make a difference, and energized by the fact that they are. It’s doubtful that most could even imagine the impact of their contributions in Iraq.
Since the campaign was launched, there have been four separate iterations of medical personnel to maintain it, at considerable expense to their non-duty time, and risking considerable exposure to danger. From this vantage in Iraq, seeing so many Americans, Europeans, and others, pulling together to help Iraqis whom they have never met, is fulfilling, heartening, and provides a welcome respite from writing and thinking about war.
Anyone, anywhere in the world, who has English-language medical, dental, veterinary or nursing texts or journals and would like to send them to Iraq, should contact David Gifford, MD: dgifford@hot.rr.com, for suggestions about how to do so.
This is definitely a worthwhile endeavor for those who can help!
Good News from Afghanistan, Part 14
Another installment of Chrenkoff's Good News from Afghanistan.
July 12, 2005
Trade -- not aid
Here is an article at allAfrica.com wherein the Sierra Leone Minister of Trade and Industry Development says that trade is what is needed.
Minister of Trade and Industry Dr.Kadi Sesay said Thursday that it is only trade that can develop Sierra Leone, not aid.
In a SPIEGEL interview of another African economics expert, James Shikwati, some counter-intuitive (at least to a G8/Live 8 perspective, but not to a free market one) things were stated:
SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...
Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.
At SPEIGEL's query, Shikwati expands upon his initial statement:
SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.
Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.
Through the rest of the interview, Shikwati discusses why development aid provided by the West has been so harmful, the corruption of many African governments, and how AIDS has been overstated.
It's an informative article (in English), and one that I recommend.
Bush: End Farm Subsidies
Last Thursday, President Bush stated that the G8 was working to end farm subsidies.
President Bush said Thursday that he is seeking agreement with the European Union on a plan to eliminate by 2010 the $112 billion a year that wealthy countries spend subsidizing their farmers. "We want to work with the EU to rid our respective countries of agricultural subsidies," Bush said at a news conference in Gleneagles, Scotland, where he is attending a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations.
Here's a later report:
Leaders of the Group of Eight nations agreed Friday to work toward the abolition of farm-export subsidies and reduce subsidies on all agricultural products, though they stopped short of a broader proposal from President Bush. "We have made the commitment to end all export subsides," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at a news conference at the conclusion of the G-8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland. "We should set a credible end date" at the World Trade Organization’s December summit in Hong Kong, he said. Bush said Thursday that he’s seeking agreement with European Union leaders to scrap subsidies by 2010. Assistance should be ended as part of the so-called Doha Round of negotiations of the WTO, he said.
Bush’s appeal is the most farreaching yet by a political leader of a major industrialized nation, going beyond the proposals now being considered in the WTO. The EU has said it’s prepared to phase out farm-export subsidies provided more advanced developing countries make what European Trade Minister Peter Mandelson called "equivalent gestures."
Our President seems to be successfully pushing real solutions to our world's problems. Good for him.
Bush Doctrine
Remember Srebrenica?
OpinionJournal does. And they want the rest of us to recall what happened there, why it happened, and how we can avoid it happening again somewhere else.
Good points are made. It's in the extended entry . . .
Ten years ago today, Bosnian Serb forces under the command of General Ratko Mladic entered the Bosnian Muslim town of Srebrenica, then being defended by Dutch peacekeepers. General Mladic made three demands: that the townsmen surrender their weapons; that all males between the ages of 12 and 77 be separated out for "questioning"; and that the rest of the population be expelled to Muslim areas. Within two days, 23,000 women and children had been deported. Another 5,000 Muslim men and boys who had taken refuge on a nearby Dutch base were also delivered to the Mladic forces.
Lessons of Srebrenica
About the U.N., Europe, and the Bush Doctrine.
Monday, July 11, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
As we now know, most of the people surrendered by the Dutch to the Serbs were slaughtered, as were more than 2,000 others, bringing the estimated tally of the Srebrenica massacre to 7,200. Yet the scale of the atrocity alone is not why we remember it. We remember because the men of Srebrenica were betrayed by their ostensible protectors, and that carries some lessons for today.
The first concerns the effectiveness of the United Nations. The U.N. began its involvement in the Balkans with an arms embargo that was supposed to apply to all sides equally, but which effectively left Bosnia's Muslims ill-defended against better equipped Serbs, who had the backing of the Belgrade government run by Slobodan Milosevic.
That was followed by the U.N.'s disastrous decision to establish "safe areas" around several threatened ethnic enclaves, including Sarajevo and Srebrenica. According to a 1993 U.N. Secretariat report, safe areas would have the benefits of limiting "loss of life and property, deterring aggression, demonstrating international concern and involvement, setting the stage for political negotiations and facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aide."
From the start, however, it was unclear where the U.N. soldiers to protect the enclaves would come from; then-President Clinton had ruled out the deployment of U.S. ground troops. It was also unclear whether the U.N. soldiers in safe areas were actually authorized to use force to defend the people in their care. Worst of all, the price Muslims paid for U.N. protection was to abandon their weapons, which they did within a week of the safe areas' creation.
There was also the role played by the Europeans. As the Balkans crisis took hold in the early 1990s, the foreign representative of the European Community, a man named Jacques Poos, declared that "the hour of Europe has come." This was supposed to be a new and decisive Europe, unshackled from its Cold War subservience to the U.S.
Instead, Europeans alternated between half-measures and attempts at negotiation with the Serbs, even as they exposed thousands of their own soldiers to risk in futile operations. When Margaret Thatcher, by then a former prime minister, called Serb atrocities "evil" and said "humanitarian aid is not enough," her views were dismissed by British Defense Minister Malcolm Rifkind as "emotional nonsense."
Finally, there was the Clinton Administration, which had come to office pledging to reverse the first Bush Administration's appeasement of the "butchers of Belgrade." Today, most people remember the successful diplomatic efforts to end the Bosnian war with the 1995 Dayton Accord, as well as its successful military intervention in Kosovo in 1999.
But Mr. Clinton allowed the Balkans to bleed for three years before he "did something." He let the U.N. and Europe take the lead and was frequently heard musing about the ancient roots of the Balkans conflict, which supposedly made it intractable and beyond the reach of the United States to repair. What's remarkable is that, when the U.S. did intervene--for example, with a limited bombing campaign in 1995--it achieved fast and decisive results. Had Mr. Clinton honored his campaign pledges, he could have saved thousands of Bosnian lives and almost certainly averted the massacre at Srebrenica.
If American policy makers want to avoid facing another Srebrenica on their watch, they must never let the U.N. determine the mission. Allowing the Europeans to "take the lead" is also a bad idea. Above all, Srebrenica is what happens when Western policy makers reject taking pre-emptive measures against gathering dangers, so that by the time the dangers are obvious it is too late to do something.
It has become trendy in certain circles to speak of "No More Srebrenicas," as well as "No More Rwandas" and "No More Darfurs." If these people really believe the slogan, then the policy to make it work already has a name. It's called the Bush Doctrine.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
Learning from past mistakes is a good thing.
July 11, 2005
Thank yous from Baghdad and Brisbane
Ali and Chrenkoff post thank you notes to the USA in observance of our Independence Day celebration last week.
July 09, 2005
Call to Action
Daniel Henninger at OpinionJournal is saying that it is time for us, as a nation, to put up or shut up about really reckoning with global terrorism.
And he is 100% correct. Here's an excerpt:
The U.S. seems to have experienced a post-9/11 fall from seriousness. As the reality fades of a September 11 in America, a resort in Bali or a train station in Madrid, it somehow seems "safe" to propose setting a deadline to remove our troops from Iraq, to close Guantanamo, to dump the Patriot Act. We in America can do any of these things, and it will still be OK. We can believe that Islamic terrorism is less than it is, and get away with it.
One more time? Should one assume that July 7 in London--the ripped-open double-decker bus, the stunned, bloody faces of those who lived--will in time fall in the queue of concerns to make it safe to argue, again, that all of this will go away if George Bush goes away?
The entire op-ed is in the extended entry. And it's a good one.
London's images of blood, toil, tears and sweat were seen by all the world's civilized people yesterday, and I think there is one thing they would agree on: You don't blow up the bus. Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
'Close Guantanamo'?
Our politics fiddles while London burns.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, July 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
In cities everywhere men and women board buses daily for work or school, and you don't need a U.N. declaration on human rights to understand that part of the deal is that no one blows up the bus. You don't blow up the office building. You don't blow up the train. It's too easy. It is the most cowardly cheap shot one can imagine. But they keep doing it.
So maybe for starters, we don't want to close Guantanamo.
The U.S. seems to have experienced a post-9/11 fall from seriousness. As the reality fades of a September 11 in America, a resort in Bali or a train station in Madrid, it somehow seems "safe" to propose setting a deadline to remove our troops from Iraq, to close Guantanamo, to dump the Patriot Act. We in America can do any of these things, and it will still be OK. We can believe that Islamic terrorism is less than it is, and get away with it.
One more time? Should one assume that July 7 in London--the ripped-open double-decker bus, the stunned, bloody faces of those who lived--will in time fall in the queue of concerns to make it safe to argue, again, that all of this will go away if George Bush goes away?
Every Islamic terrorist, from bin Laden and al-Zarqawi down to the next suicide bomber, knows how politics in the West works now. They know that many people of the West react to acts of violence differently than they did in 1940 when Winston Churchill demanded "Victory in spite of all terrors. Victory, however long and hard the road may be."
But there were no cameras and satellite feeds set up on every corner of that death-strewn road. Yesterday's attack produced another new-media first: Grainy video images fed by a cell phone from a bombed subway tunnel. If the American people had seen daily the up-close reality of every battle and bomb in 1943, might we have "withdrawn" before June 1944?
For bin Laden and al-Zarqawi, the relatively small bombs they set off in Iraq or London are a second-grade weapon. Their large-bore weapons in the terror war are modern electronic news technology and, ironically, open democratic societies.
We think we're merely observers of events such as London's awful scenes yesterday or the Baghdad car bombs. No, if you watch television, you're on the battlefield. And some of us don't want to be there. Bin Laden and al-Zarqawi set off these bombs to pound the combatants at home, or in Congress, to make them put their hands on their head and, in effect, surrender. Suffering living-room shell shock, some do. The experience of seeing battlefield death or blown-up people from the couch is not normal.
What happened yesterday in London was an attack on the modern world by pre-modernists. Tony Blair said, "Our values will outlive theirs." Maybe. Ours might not, though, if against theirs of wanton murder, our answer is "close Guantanamo." But there is a better example of the fundamental inability of our politics to sustain seriousness against such a threat: the Bolton nomination to the U.N.
We know that Chris Dodd, Joe Biden and the Senate Democrats believe Mr. Bolton is temperamentally unfit to represent us at the U.N. Less well known is that in April 2004, the Security Council passed Resolution 1540 to prevent proliferation of "nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery"--what the terrorists will ultimately win with if they can get it.
Resolution 1540 outlaws A.Q. Khan-type networks, including state participation. It is a Chapter Seven action, and thus binding. It requires members to report their compliance measures in detail. It requires member states to "establish, develop, review and maintain appropriate effective national export and trans-shipment controls over such items."
We should want this if we indeed believe that a complex, globalized threat exists. Its success, however, depends on the will of the Security Council and whether its five Permanent Members will punish with sanctions any country not in compliance. Are you already ahead of me on this?
The one person in the world with the knowledge, experience and will to conceivably make 1540 work is John Bolton. At State Mr. Bolton ran the Security Proliferation Initiative, whose goals precisely parallel those of Resolution 1540. The SPI under Mr. Bolton, for example, helped to shut down the A.Q. Khan nuclear-weapon materials network.
Mr. Bolton is famous for his views of North Korea, but he is expert in the activities of one other incorrigible proliferator--Iran. Yesterday I asked a high international official, whose job is to develop global anti-terror structures, which states are still actively supporting terrorism. He said, "There are two, Syria and Iran."
If the U.S. Senate wanted to send a signal of resolve and seriousness to whoever bombed London, Democrats would join with Republicans their first day back to dispatch proven anti-terror warrior John Bolton straight to the U.N. They won't. They'll keep playing political fiddles while London burns.
The standard response to all this is that if George Bush and Tony Blair hadn't done Iraq, we'd all be as one in the war on terror. The standard response before September 11, was that if we weren't so close to terror-beset Israel, none of this would ever happen. For 30 years, the standard response to this terror has gotten many of us killed.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
I think it is time that our distinguished Senators in Washington, D.C. lay aside their petty politics, get off of their candy asses, and buckle down to the very serious long-term task of supporting the war on terrorism!
Poverty in Africa
Can you believe that I'm linking to a Max Boot op-ed in the LA Times?
Neither can I. But this column is about the poverty in Africa and all of the aid that has been poured into it over the past five decades. Here's an excerpt:
In the last 50 years, $2.3 trillion has been spent to help poor countries. Yet Africans' income and life expectancy have gone down, not up, during that period, while South Korea, Singapore and other Asian nations that received little if any assistance have moved from African-level poverty to European-level prosperity thanks to their superior economic policies.
Money alone cannot eliminate poverty in Africa. With a fifty year track record of failure, I think it is safe to say that it just is not working. Max Boot goes on to blame corruption and extremely poor governance:
Africans continue to be tormented not by the G-8, as anti-poverty campaigners imply, but by their own politicos, including Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who is abetting genocide in Darfur, and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is turning his once-prosperous country into a famine-plagued basket case. Unless it's linked to specific "good governance" benchmarks (as with the new U.S. Millennium Challenge Account), more aid risks subsidizing dysfunctional regimes.
Go read Max Boot's column. It's worth looking into.
[Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit]
July 08, 2005
Brit Grit
And now it has come to us to stand alone in the breach, and face the worst that the tyrant's might and enmity can do. Bearing ourselves humbly before God, but conscious that we serve an unfolding purpose, we are ready to defend our native land against the invasion by which it is threatened. We are fighting by ourselves alone; but we are not fighting for ourselves alone. Here in this strong City of Refuge which enshrines the title-deeds of human progress and is of deep consequence to Christian civilization; here, girt about by the seas and oceans where the Navy reigns; shielded from above by the prowess and devotion of our airmen-we await undismayed the impending assault. Perhaps it will come tonight. Perhaps it will come next week. Perhaps it will never come. We must show ourselves equally capable of meeting a sudden violent shock or-what is perhaps a harder test-a prolonged vigil. But be the ordeal sharp or long, or both, we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parley; we may show mercy-we shall ask for none.
-- Sir Winston Churchill, BBC Broadcast, 14 July 1940
Amen.
Prayers for our British friends
Please pray for those who lost loved ones yesterday in the heinous, cowardly bombings in London. Pray for those who are wounded and for their families and friends. Pray for the investigators, and the clean up and repair crews. And finally, pray for the successful elimination of terrorism as a philosophy and political tool.
I suppose that last prayer would be covered by praying for the end of evil on this earth -- which would take care of a multitude of other very bad things too.
Please just keep our British friends in your thoughts and prayers.
It truly helps.
July 07, 2005
7/7
On 9/11/2001, millions of British citizens stood alongside all Americans to support us and pray for us during the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Today, Americans need to stand in support of our British brothers and sisters who are suffering through the same kind of horrors in London.
My thoughts and prayers go out to all of you . . .
We will never be overcome.
Syria vs. Al Qaeda
Here is an article on the World Times Online website that reports on a two-day battle between Syrian authorities and terrorists bound for Iraq. Get this -- the battle took place in Syria near Damascus.
Maybe America can work with Syria in the war against terrorism, after all.
[Hat tip to Jack Kelly at Irish Pennants.]
July 06, 2005
From the WTC to Baghdad
Daniel Henninger posted an op-ed with the subtitle September 11 and the collapse of national unity. His words are well worth our consideration.
I've reprinted the entire article in the extended entry.
Ground Zero to Baghdad
September 11 and the collapse of national unity.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, July 1, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDTFourth of July weekend begins today, and among the verities certain to occur is that every waking hour in four days people will be standing at the high wire fence near Church Street in lower Manhattan, staring at Ground Zero, at what's left of what we now call "September 11."
We know these visitors to Ground Zero will be there looking into this austere pit, because those of us who work nearby and walk past it see them there, every day. They came the moment they were allowed to on Dec. 30, 2001, at the famous viewing platform, and have come each day since, amid the disgusting cold winds of February and impossible August heat. But if their presence is a certainty, its meaning, of course, has gone up for grabs.
Nearly four years after what happened on September 11, we must now debate whether a linkage exists between that day and the war in Iraq. After President Bush associated the two several times in his defense of Iraq this week at Fort Bragg, both the House and Senate Democratic leaders pounded the linkage.
House Leader Nancy Pelosi was explicit: "He is willing to exploit the sacred ground of 9/11, knowing that there is no connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq." Senate Leader Harry Reid said the September 11 references don't offer "a way forward" in Iraq and only remind us that bin Laden "is still on the loose." To be able to separate September 11 and Iraq into wholly unrelated realms may be possible for very smart people--but not everyone.
On a very warm Wednesday this past May, during Fleet Week in New York City, a passerby at Ground Zero encountered some 150 astonishingly young Marines in fatigues, wet with sweat after a run, standing at attention on the site's edge, outside the fence. They were from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and they appeared to be in the middle of a formal ceremony. Yesterday the organizer of the May event, Maj. Dave Anderson, explained they were laying a wreath to honor the victims of September 11, and that the three Marines chosen to lay the wreath had earned Purple Hearts while serving in Iraq. When the ceremony ended, he said, a woman came out of the crowd, crying, and grabbed his wrist to say that her brother had died in there that day, and she said to him, "When people see you Marines doing this, they'll know that you will take the fight forward."
So it is that below the level of exquisite analysis now common in our politics, some Americans do exist who credit a connection between September 11 and events in Iraq. Perhaps there will be a poll out in a few weeks that will expose their sentiment to the greater weight and rigor of statistical science.
In time even Pearl Harbor became more a symbol than the bloody reality that ultimately hurled American forces against a Germany that didn't attack us at Pearl Harbor. But time seems to pass faster today. The first Fourth of July after September 11 was a day of national unity, in sorrow but also in belief that the U.S. had to go on offense, over there, against the force that had hit us. Now there is no unity; September 11, the war in Iraq, pretty much anything George Bush does and even Afghanistan is a fair target.
After Mr. Bush delivered the speech on Iraq that many said, rightly, was overdue, David Letterman made jokes about the war. DNC Chairman Howard Dean dismissed it as the "darkness of divisiveness" and "pandering to fear." John Murtha, the party's top spokesmen on military affairs, said, "I believe they are going to cut and run." A Times reporter announced as well that "for the first time," Afghans are "feeling uneasy about the future."
The day following the president's speech, architect David Childs unveiled the latest design of the long-overdue tower intended to replace the twin towers in downtown Manhattan. If we must have an office building in this space so the Port Authority can restart its tax flows, and if it must be a "designed" 1,776-foot-high skyscraper, Mr. Childs's building is perfectly acceptable. But no, Ground Zero is first of all about one's politics now, so for the New York Times architecture critic, Mr. Childs's tall building "is an ideal symbol for an empire enthralled with its own power."
We've watched September 11 drift from unity of purpose to unhinged vituperation. The partisanship is easy to dismiss, but I believe the Bush team's deep disdain of a hostile opposition media has caused it to miss--until now--the need to organize a home front to support the remarkable sacrifice in Iraq. This failure may prove to be the one unforgivable thing.
As to September 11's stern symbol--Ground Zero--its place is secure no matter what New York's politics dumps into the Port Authority's 16 acres. The only true memorial that will ever be--that huge hole in the ground, that zero, a filthy, ripped and awesome aftermath--has been there to see for more than 3 1/2 years.
This is what it means to visit the memorial there now. A steel fence is on all four sides. On two of them, the Port Authority has hung simple descriptions and pictures of what happened there, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. You can read a short history of the two towers. You can read the names of each person who died there that day. After people absorb these things, they get very close to the fence and stare into the open space. Then they take some pictures, and then they go somewhere else.
By now anyone with sufficient desire or need has come to Ground Zero. By now unfathomable numbers have seen that hole in its barest form. They have taken the experience home with them. I think September 11 is going to be properly remembered, no matter what happens in lower Manhattan now. It remains for this administration to do the same for the commitments already made to Iraq and in Iraq.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
Our President's Strategy
New Sisyphus has posted an excellent essay on why our President initiated war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here's a taste:
In sum, the short-term problem of active Al-Qaeda support was solved (to some extent) by the change of regime in Afghanistan while the long-term problem of Islamic Fascism would be countered by the democratic rise of a new Iraq, leading to the spread of the ideals of democracy and liberty in the greater Middle East. Together, both prongs, along with the aggressive use of law enforcement domestically and abroad, diplomacy, and special operations in remote theatres, make up the wider War on Terror. Both were prompted by the adoption of war goals by the President, whose judgment was largely colored by what he felt were the central lessons of 9.11.
NS puts it well. Go read it.
July 03, 2005
The Arab Spring
Smiley, over at The Daily Demarche has posted some of his thoughts about the beginnings of democracy in the Middle East. You can read his post here.
And here is his conclusion:
It is important to remember that, the difficulties in Iraq notwithstanding, there is real movement towards democracy in the Middle East. Egypt, long considered the vanguard of the Arab world, could very well be the vanguard of democratic change in the Middle East. Naturally, there is still much work to be done, and Mubarak's willpower to change will frequently need the carrot-and-stick treatment, but if you are a fan of democracy promotion, this is definitely good news.
I think it is extremely important that we support the spread of democracy all over the world -- starting in the Middle East. Democracy is a keystone for security for the citizens of the USA -- and for the citizens of every nation throughout the rest of the world.
June 29, 2005
Saddam's Terror Connections
This web page has some interesting information on it.
Perhaps we should not be too hasty in embracing Saddam Hussein as a misunderstood, but basically decent guy . . . /sarcasm
June 28, 2005
Good News from Iraq, Part 30
There is a wealth of information in Chrenkoff's latest installment of Good News from Iraq. You need to go spend some time reading this -- it boggles my mind that so many good things are happening there in the world's efforts to rehabilitate Iraq.
Yes, I said the world's efforts. It appears that the UN and EU are stepping up to the plate to help Iraq get back on it's feet.
Two years and a democratic election later, the international community, deeply sceptical if not hostile at first, is now increasingly coming onboard to help Iraq make the transition to a normal country. While stories of violence dominate the news, these international and domestic efforts to rebuild Iraq after decade[s] of physical and political devastation continue to pick up pace. Below is a selection of past two weeks' worth of stories which, if get reported at all, [are] usually drowned by the tide of negativity.
Go read the whole thing. . . And marvel at the rebirth of a nation.
June 27, 2005
What happened to American resolve?
This article, describes a trend that greatly disturbs me. This country does not seem to be the same noble country that fought and defeated the Axis powers during WWII. And that's a shame.
Here's how today's OpinionJournal op-ed on this topic begins (emphasis added):
"It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."--Senator Chuck Hagel (R., Neb.), June 27, 2005, U.S. News & World Report.
"And we are now in a seemingly intractable quagmire. Our troops are dying and there really is no end in sight."--Senator Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.), June 23, 2005, Armed Services Committee hearing.
The polls show the American people are growing pessimistic about Iraq, and no wonder. They are being rallied against the cause by such statesmen as the two above. Six months after they repudiated the insurgency in a historic election, free Iraqis are continuing to make slow but steady political and military gains. Where the terrorists are gaining ground is in Washington, D.C.
And the rest is in the extended entry . . .
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
This is despite tangible, albeit underreported, progress in Iraq. In the political arena, an Iraqi transition government has formed that includes representatives from all ethnic and religious groups. Leading Sunnis who boycotted January's election are now participating both in the parliament and in drafting a new constitution. The Shiite uprising of a year ago has been defeated. The government now has three deadlines to meet: drafting a constitution by August, a referendum on that constitution in October and elections for a permanent government in December.
This political momentum vindicates the decision to hold the January election, despite warnings that it was "going to be ugly" (in Joe Biden's phrase). Some of those who predicted the worst because the Sunnis refused to participate--Mr. Biden, the Hoover Institution's Larry Diamond--are the same people who now say again that disaster looms. Clearly the smart strategy was to move ahead with the vote and show the Sunnis they had to participate if they wanted a role in building the new Iraq. So why should we believe these pessimists now?
As for security, the daily violence is terrible and dispiriting, but it is not a sign of an expanding insurgency. As U.S. and Iraqi military targets have hardened their defenses, the terrorists have turned to larger bombs delivered by suicidal jihadists aimed at softer targets. This drives up the casualty figures, especially against Iraqi civilians, but it does not win more political converts.
Insurgencies that have prevailed in history--Algeria, China, Cuba--have all had a large base of popular support. That more of the bombers seem to be coming from outside Iraq is cause for worry, since it means there will be a continuing supply of suicide bombers. But it also means that the insurgency is becoming an invasion force against Iraq itself, which means it lacks the native roots to sustain it.
The trend is in fact toward more civilian cooperation with Iraqi and U.S. security forces. Calls to the military hotline have climbed to 1,700 from 50 in January, according to U.S. commanders, and better intelligence has led to the recent capture of key insurgent leaders, including a top deputy to Musab al-Zarqawi. An Iraqi TV show profiling captured jihadists--"Terrorism in the Hands of Justice"--is a popular hit.
Everyone wishes that Iraqi security forces could be trained faster to replace U.S. troops, and to secure areas from which terrorists have been ousted. But here, too, there has been progress. About 100 Iraqi units are now able to conduct special operations on their own. General George Casey, the Iraq theater commander, says there has not been a single failure of an Iraqi military unit since the election. And new recruits continue to volunteer, even though this makes them terrorist targets.
Regarding Mr. Kennedy's "quagmire" claim, General Casey had this response: "I thought I was fairly clear in what I laid out in my testimony about what's going on in Iraq, that you have an insurgency with no vision, no base, limited popular support, an elected government, committed Iraqis to the democratic process, and you have Iraqi security forces that are fighting and dying for their country every day. Senator, that is not a quagmire."
So why the Washington panic? A large part of it is political. As Democrats see support for the war falling in the polls, the most cynical smell an opening for election gains in 2006. The Republican Hagels, who voted for the war only reluctantly, see another opening to assail the "neo-cons" and get Donald Rumsfeld fired. Still others are merely looking for political cover. Rather than fret (for the TV cameras) about "the "public going south" on the war, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham could do more for the cause by trying to educate Americans and rally their support.
It isn't as if the critics are offering any better strategy for victory. At last week's Senate hearing, Carl Levin's (D., Mich.) brainstorm was that the U.S. set a withdrawal schedule if Iraqis miss their deadline in writing a constitution. But U.S. officials have all stressed to Iraqis how important that deadline is. Mr. Biden delivered a lecture last week that boiled down to letting France train 1,500 Iraqi "gendarmes" and pressing for 5,000 NATO troops to patrol the Syrian border. Both are fine with us, assuming Mr. Biden gets to negotiate with the French, but neither is going to turn the tide of war.
The proposal to fix a date certain for U.S. withdrawal is especially destructive, inviting the terrorists to wait us out and Iraqi ethnic groups to start arming themselves. The only important idea we've heard from Congress is John McCain's suggestion that if Damascus keeps abetting the insurgency, the U.S. is under no obligation to honor Syria's territorial integrity when pursuing terrorists seeking sanctuary in that country.
President Bush plans to speak about Iraq tomorrow, and we hope he points out that this Beltway panic is hurting the war effort. General John Abizaid of the U.S. Central Command stressed this point last week. Troop morale, he said, has never been better. But "when I look back here at what I see is happening in Washington, within the Beltway, I've never seen the lack of confidence greater."
He added that, "When my soldiers say to me and ask me the question whether or not they've got support from the American people or not, that worries me. And they're starting to do that." Mr. Bush will no doubt remind Americans of the stakes in Iraq, but he also needs to point out that defeatism can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Maybe our politicians in Washington, D.C. should be issued spines, since they don't seem to have any of their own . . .
June 23, 2005
Saddam is Evil
Arthur Chrenkoff has a good post today entitled Humanizing Hussein wherein he quotes a correspondent about how utterly evil Hussein is, yet the media is trying to make him seem like an ordinary guy who is being mistreated by his captors.
I've seen this happening, and it creeps me out that people may actually think he is a decent person. He is a monster, and we should not forget that.
I have copied the entire post into the extended entry, but you may want to go to the source in order to read the comments that the post has generated.
Our frequent correspondent Haider Ajinas writes:
"Recently most of the mainstream media have been promoting a human side to Saddam. Poor old Uncle Saddam, as it were. If this goes on we will soon forget what this man has done. We must not forget the evil this man is and what he has done, lest we wish history to repeat itself."
"Saddam Hussein has not a thread of humanity in him. Every act of his is cold and calculated with an end purpose in mind. That purpose being self-preservation and self-indulgence at the cost of all others and at what ever means possible. Saddam has been a thug since his teenage years. He was implicated and later convicted of attempting to assassinate Iraqi prime minister Abdel-Karim Qassem in 1958. Later he was implicated in the mysterious death of his Baathist predecessor Bakar after Baker retired. Shortly after Saddam became president in 1979, he convened a high level Baathist meeting during which he had close allies and friends escorted out of the meeting room and shot, just for being to close to him. Saddam then proceeded to rule Iraq with an Iron fist. He gassed the Kurds, bombed the Shiites, attacked the Iranians, attacked the Kuwaitis, sponsored terrorist camps, financed terrorists, (one of his personal body guards trained in Afghanistan at an Al Qaeda camp), murdered over 1 million Iraqis, maimed, tortured and raped many more for political reasons, orphaned his grandchildren. The list goes on and on."
I ask you are the above acts those of a human being?
"Saddam is evil personified: a thug, a mass murderer, a rapist, a torturer. He is not a poor old man stuck in isolation, nor does he deserve any sympathy for his current condition. We must never forget what this man and others of his ilk have done to humanity, unless we wish it to happen again and again."
Hitler was an artist and a vegetarian who liked children and dogs. It didn't make him quite human either.
[Copied from Arthur Chrenkoff's 23 June post entitled Humanizing Hussein.]
June 10, 2005
Democracy at work in Iraq
Major K., a military blogger stationed in Iraq, gives us a glimpse of the growing pains occurring within the newest democracy on Earth. It is an informative, insiders look at a new way of doing things in Iraq. Go read it.
June 09, 2005
It looks like Bolton is right
Remember all of the rhetoric about John Bolton trying to coerce the intelligence community into producing evidence that Syria had WMD? Our Democrat Senators were heavily implying that Bolton was out to fabricate evidence against Syria.
Well, guess what? Turns out he could well be right . . .
I've reprinted the entire OpinionJournal article in the extended entry. It is well worth the read . . .
Bolton and Syria
Missile tests show he was right about Damascus.
Monday, June 6, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
On Thursday, Samir Kassir, a prominent Lebanese newspaper columnist and long-time critic of Syria, was murdered in Beirut when a bomb exploded under the hood of his car. The following day, we learned that Syria had test-fired three missiles the previous week--one Scud B, with a range of 190 miles, and two Scud Ds, with ranges of 400 miles. The missiles, of North Korean design, are configured to carry chemical warheads, according to Israeli security sources; they can hit any target in Israel along with U.S. military installations in Turkey, Iraq and elsewhere in the region.
There are several lessons here, but one of them is this: John Bolton was right.
President Bush's nominee to be Ambassador to the U.N. has been assailed because he pushed U.S. intelligence services for evidence of Syrian work on weapons of mass destruction. As Senator Chris Dodd put it, Mr. Bolton "was trying to convince people that there are weapons of mass destruction in Syria, at a time when there was no evidence of that."
We're glad somebody was on the Syrian case. A ballistic missile test is provocative enough, but missiles configured to carry chemical warheads are not the act of a country that wants to change along with the rest of the Middle East. The firing of the missiles--the first such "test" in four years--came just two days before Lebanon held its first round of parliamentary elections since Syrian troops quit the country in April.
Together with the murder of Mr. Kassir--widely suspected to be the work of Syrian intelligence agents or their Lebanese allies--the firing sends a stark message that Damascus intends to continue meddling in Lebanon. There is also the threat Syria continues to pose to Israel through its support for Hezbollah and Hamas, among other terrorist groups, or the recent arrest by Syria of human-rights activist Mohammad Radun and other political dissidents.
-----
Then there is Syrian meddling in Iraq. We have long known the Syrians have provided safe haven, and possibly logistical and financial assistance, for the former Baathist leaders now running the insurgency. The point was confirmed in February when, under U.S. pressure, Damascus handed over Saddam Hussein's half-brother Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan to Iraqi custody. More recently, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld felt sufficiently strongly about the Assad clan's cozy relationship with the jihadists to issue a warning to "neighboring countries" against harboring archterrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
Which brings us back to Mr. Bolton, who has been denied a Senate confirmation vote because, among other charges, he challenged accepted intelligence wisdom. In the Syrian case, Senator Dodd and his comrade-in-filibuster Joe Biden concede that Mr. Bolton's final testimony to Congress on Syria's WMD was accurate and cleared with the State Department. But they claim that he was too aggressive in early drafts of his statements, and they want to see the names of fellow U.S. officials whose communications were secretly picked up by a U.S. spy agency. Those names have already been seen, as is the normal practice, by the ranking Senators on the Intelligence Committee, who claim they show nothing of import.
As it happens, Messrs. Dodd and Biden both voted in favor of the 2003 Syrian Accountability Act. That law explicitly cites an unclassified CIA report that Syria "already holds a stockpile of the nerve agent sarin but apparently is trying to develop more toxic and persistent nerve agents. . . ." The law also notes that "Syria also is developing an offensive [biological weapons] capability." We guess this means our Democratic friends are also guilty of overstating the evidence on Syria.
-----
By now it should be clear to anyone who has followed this nomination that the fight here isn't over Mr. Bolton's record, his temperament or his reading of the intelligence. Rather, it is a policy dispute in which a majority of Democrats, as well as a few Republicans, have chosen to hijack the nomination process to score some points against President Bush's foreign policy. In the case of Syria, they owe both Mr. Bolton and Mr. Bush an apology. Americans need to understand the threat Syria poses to our troops in Iraq and to our allies in the region. That understanding isn't helped when Senators put their partisan animus ahead of the national interest.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
Chrenkoff's Good News from Afghanistan
Here is Chrenkoff's monthly compilation of good news from Afghanistan.
June 06, 2005
Michael Yon in Yezdinar Village, Iraq
Michael Yon was in Kurdish Iraq and took advantage being there by talking to some of the local people. This post details his experiences there.
He also asked some pointed questions of one of his hosts there. And got answers.
An Iraqi. A Kurd. A Yezidi. A village Headman. Whatever the label, more than forty years after his birth, this man came home. Only now, after the latest war, does Mr. Qatou finally have confidence in the peace, after more than a half century of life lived under orders or under sentence.
This seemed like the moment to ask the question, "What do you think of the United States?"
"We cry when America loses one soldier. We pray for the soldiers every night."
Many Kurds had expressed the same sentiment. One had said poetically: "For every drop of American blood, we shed one thousand Kurdish tears."
"What do you think about the United Kingdom?" I asked.
"Also very good."
His answer for some of the other countries, those that abandoned his people to get back to their beer and wine, was merely a quick frown followed by silence.
This post, along with the accompanying photographs, is worth a good look.
Michael Yon's reporting is straight from Iraq, is presented by a journalist unaffiliated with any news outlet, and is given without an agenda -- other than reporting the truth. His is a good blog to follow.
It's quite refreshing actually . . .
May 25, 2005
"Bush Country"
Fouad Ajami has posted an op-ed at OpinionJournal that kind of turns the "common wisdom" about the spread of democracy in the Middle East on its head. He begins with:
"George W. Bush has unleashed a tsunami on this region," a shrewd Kuwaiti merchant who knows the way of his world said to me. The man had no patience with the standard refrain that Arab reform had to come from within, that a foreign power cannot alter the age-old ways of the Arabs. "Everything here--the borders of these states, the oil explorations that remade the life of this world, the political outcomes that favored the elites now in the saddle--came from the outside. This moment of possibility for the Arabs is no exception." A Jordanian of deep political experience at the highest reaches of Arab political life had no doubt as to why history suddenly broke in Lebanon, and could conceivably change in Syria itself before long. "The people in the streets of Beirut knew that no second Hama is possible; they knew that the rulers were under the gaze of American power, and knew that Bush would not permit a massive crackdown by the men in Damascus."
My informant's reference to Hama was telling: It had been there in 1982, in that city of the Syrian interior, that the Baathist-Alawite regime had broken and overwhelmed Syrian society. Hama had been a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood, a fortress of the Sunni middle class. It had rebelled, and the regime unleashed on it a merciless terror. There were estimates that 25,000 of its people perished in that fight. Thenceforth, the memory of Hama hung over the life of Syria--and Lebanon. But the people in the plazas of Beirut, and the Syrian intellectuals who have stepped forth to challenge the Baathist regime, have behind them the warrant, and the green light, of American power and protection.
I've posted the rest of the article in the extended entry.
To venture into the Arab world, as I did recently over four weeks in Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, is to travel into Bush Country. I was to encounter people from practically all Arab lands, to listen in on a great debate about the possibility of freedom and liberty. I met Lebanese giddy with the Cedar Revolution that liberated their country from the Syrian prison that had seemed an unalterable curse. They were under no illusions about the change that had come their way. They knew that this new history was the gift of an American president who had put the Syrian rulers on notice. The speed with which Syria quit Lebanon was astonishing, a race to the border to forestall an American strike that the regime could not discount. I met Syrians in the know who admitted that the fear of American power, and the example of American forces flushing Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole, now drive Syrian policy. They hang on George Bush's words in Damascus, I was told: the rulers wondering if Iraq was a crystal ball in which they could glimpse their future.
The weight of American power, historically on the side of the dominant order, now drives this new quest among the Arabs. For decades, the intellectual classes in the Arab world bemoaned the indifference of American power to the cause of their liberty. Now a conservative American president had come bearing the gift of Wilsonian redemption. For a quarter century the Pax Americana had sustained the autocracy of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak: He had posed as America's man on the Nile, a bulwark against the Islamists. He was sly and cunning, running afoul of our purposes in Iraq and over Israeli-Palestinian matters. He had nurtured a culture of antimodernism and anti-Americanism, and had gotten away with it. Now the wind from Washington brought tidings: America had wearied of Mr. Mubarak, and was willing to bet on an open political process, with all its attendant risks and possibilities. The brave oppositional movement in Cairo that stepped forth under the banner of Kifaya ("Enough!") wanted the end of his reign: It had had enough of his mediocrity, enough of the despotism of an aging officer who had risen out of the military bureaucracy to entertain dynastic dreams of succession for his son. Egyptians challenging the quiescence of an old land may have had no kind words to say about America in the past. But they were sure that the play between them and the regime was unfolding under Mr. Bush's eyes.
Unmistakably, there is in the air of the Arab world a new contest about the possibility and the meaning of freedom. This world had been given over to a dark nationalism, and to the atavisms of a terrible history. For decades, it was divided between rulers who monopolized political power and intellectual classes shut out of genuine power, forever prey to the temptations of radicalism. Americans may not have cared for those rulers, but we judged them as better than the alternative. We feared the "Shia bogeyman" in Iraq and the Islamists in Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia; we bought the legend that Syria's dominion in Lebanon kept the lid on anarchy. We feared tinkering with the Saudi realm; it was terra incognita to us, and the House of Saud seemed a surer bet than the "wrath and virtue" of the zealots. Even Yasser Arafat, a retailer of terror, made it into our good graces as a man who would tame the furies of the masked men of Hamas. That bargain with authoritarianism did not work, and begot us the terrors of 9/11.
The children of Islam, and of the Arabs in particular, had taken to the road, and to terror. There were many liberal, secular Arabs now clamoring for American intervention. The claims of sovereignty were no longer adequate; a malignant political culture had to be "rehabilitated and placed in receivership," a wise Jordanian observer conceded. Mr. Bush may not be given to excessive philosophical sophistication, but his break with "the soft bigotry of low expectations" in the Arab-Islamic world has found eager converts among Muslims and Arabs keen to repair their world, to wean it from a culture of scapegoating and self-pity. Pick up the Arabic papers today: They are curiously, and suddenly, readable. They describe the objective world; they give voice to recognition that the world has bypassed the Arabs. The doors have been thrown wide open, and the truth of that world laid bare. Grant Mr. Bush his due: The revolutionary message he brought forth was the simple belief that there was no Arab and Muslim "exceptionalism" to the appeal of liberty. For a people mired in historical pessimism, the message of this outsider was a powerful antidote to the culture of tyranny. Hitherto, no one had bothered to tell the Palestinians that they can't have terror and statehood at the same time, that the patronage of the world is contingent on a renunciation of old ways. This was the condition Mr. Bush attached to his support for the Palestinians. It is too early to tell whether the new restraint in the Palestinian world will hold. But it was proper that Mr. Bush put Arafat beyond the pale.
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It was Iraq of course that gave impetus to this new Arab history. And it is in Iraq that the nobility of this American quest comes into focus. This was my fourth trip to Iraq since the fall of the despotism, and my most hopeful yet. I traveled to Baghdad, Kirkuk, Erbil and Suleimaniyah. A close colleague--Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations--and I were there to lecture and to "show the flag." We met with parliamentarians and journalists, provincial legislators, clerics and secularists alike, Sunni and Shia Arabs and Kurds. One memory I shall treasure: a visit to the National Assembly. From afar, there are reports of the "acrimony" of Iraq, of the long interlude between Iraq's elections, on Jan. 30, and the formation of a cabinet. But that day, in the assembly, these concerns seemed like a quibble with history. There was the spectacle of democracy: men and women doing democracy's work, women cloaked in Islamic attire right alongside more emancipated women, the technocrats and the tribal sheikhs, and the infectious awareness among these people of the precious tradition bequeathed them after a terrible history. One of the principal leaders of the Supreme Islamic Council for Revolution in Iraq, Sheikh Hamam Hammoudi, an elegant, thoughtful cleric in his early 50s, brushed aside the talk of a Shia theocracy. This Shia man, who knew a smattering of English, offered his own assurance that the example and the power of Iran shall be kept at bay: "My English is better than my Farsi, even though I spent 20 years in Iran." He was proud of his Iraqi identity, proud of being "an Arab." He was sure that the Najaf school of Shia jurisprudence would offer its own alternative to the world view of Qom, across the border. He wanted no theocratic state in Iraq: Islam, he said, would be "a source" of legislation, but the content of politics would be largely secular. The model, he added, with a touch of irony, would be closer to the American mix of religion and politics than to the uncompromising secularism of France.
The insurgents were busy with their bombs and their plots of mayhem: Georgian troops guarded the National Assembly and controlled access to it. But a people were taking to a new political way. A woman garbed in black, a daughter of a distinguished clerical Shia family, made the rounds among her fellow legislators. Religious scruples decreed that she could not shake the hand of a male stranger. But she was proud and wily, a free woman in a newly emancipated polity. She let me know how much she knew about the ways and the literature of the West. American power may have turned on its erstwhile ally, Ahmed Chalabi. But his appearance in the assembly's gallery drew to him parliamentarians of every stripe. He, too, had about him the excitement of this new politics.
A lively press has sprouted in Iraq: There is an astonishing number of newspapers and weeklies, more than 250 in all. There are dozens of private TV channels and radio stations. Journalists and editors speak of a press free of censorship. Admittedly, the work is hard and dangerous, the logistics a veritable nightmare. But no single truth claimed this country, no "big man" sucked the air out of its public life. The insurgents will do what they are good at. But no one really believes that those dispensers of death can turn back the clock. Among the Sunni Arabs, there is growing recognition that the past cannot be retrieved, that it had been a big error to choose truculence and political maximalism. By a twist of fate, the one Arab country that had seemed ever marked for brutality and sorrow now stands poised on the frontier of a new political world. No Iraqis I met look to neighboring Arab lands for political inspiration: They are scorched by the terror and the insurgency, but a better political culture is tantalizingly close.
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Women are getting the vote in Kuwait, the Lebanese clamor for the truth about the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, and about the dark Syrian interlude in their history. Egyptians don't seem frightened of the scarecrows with which the Mubarak regime secured their submission. Everywhere, the order is under attack, and men and women are willing to question the prevailing truths. There is to this moment of Arab history the feel of a re-enactment of Europe's Revolution of 1848--the springtime of peoples: That revolution broke out in France, then spread to the Italian states, to the German principalities, to the remotest corners of the Austrian empire. There must have been 50 of these revolts--rebellions of despair and of contempt. History was swift: The revolutions spread with velocity and were turned back with equal speed. The fear of chaos dampened these rebellions.
As I made my way on this Arab journey, I picked up a meditation that Massimo d'Azeglio, a Piedmontese aristocrat who embraced that "springtime" in Europe, offered about his time, which speaks so directly to this Arab time: "The gift of liberty is like that of a horse, handsome, strong, and high-spirited. In some it arouses a wish to ride; in many others, on the contrary, it increases the desire to walk." It would be fair to say that there are many Arabs today keen to walk--frightened as they are by the prospect of the Islamists coming to power and curtailing personal liberties, snuffing out freedoms gained at such great effort and pain. But more Arabs, I hazard to guess, now have the wish to ride. It is a powerful temptation that George W. Bush has brought to their doorstep.
Mr. Ajami teaches at Johns Hopkins. This is adapted from a recent lecture at the Hoover Institution.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
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May 24, 2005
Suicide-bombers and martyrs
Michael Yon is an embedded reporter attached to a unit currently in Mosul, Iraq. His blog provides a unique perspective on what is going on over there.
Here is what he has to say about "suicide-bombers" and "martyrs":
A fanatic who straps a bomb to his chest and walks into a market crowded with women and children, then detonates a bomb that is sometimes laced with rat poison to hamper blood coagulation, is properly called a "mass murderer." There is nothing good to say about mass murderers, nor is there anything good to say about a person who encourages these murders. Calling these human bomb delivery devices "suicide bombers" is simply incorrect. They are murderers. A person or media source defending or explaining away the actions of the murderers supports them. There is no wiggle room.
Calling homicide bombers martyrs is a language offense; words are every bit as powerful as bombs, often more so. Calling murderers “martyrs” is like calling a man "customer" because he stood in line before gunning down a store clerk. There's no need to whisper. I hear the bombs every single day. Not some days, but every day. We're talking about criminals who actually volunteer and plan to deliberately murder and maim innocent people. What reservoir of feelings or sensibilities do we fear to assault by simply calling it so? When murderers describe themselves as "martyrs" it should sound to sensible ears like a rapist saying, “It’s God’s will.”
How can anyone argue with that?
Yon concludes with this:
The only martyrs I know about in Iraq are the fathers and brothers who see a better future coming, and so they act on their beliefs and assemble outside police stations whenever recruitment notices are posted. They line up in ever increasing numbers, knowing that insurgents can also read these notices. The men stand in longer and longer lines, making ever bigger targets. Some volunteer to earn money to earn a living. This, too, is honorable. Others take risks because they believe that a better future is possible only if Iraqi men of principle stand up for their own values, for their country, for their families. Theses are the true martyrs, the true heroes of Iraq and of Islam. I meet these martyrs frequently. They are brave men, worthy of respect.
May God be with these brave and noble men, and with the country that they are willing to die for.
Will Germany turn around?
Here is a thought-provoking op-ed at OpinionJournal that makes me think there is hope for Europe.
I have always liked visiting Europe. Especially for the history there that just seems to ooze out of every building, field, and forest. But I have also had the opportunity to get acquainted with some of its people. Despite what you see in the news, they are a lot like us -- except that they don't seem to have the vivacious optimism that Americans have. That tired, resigned attitude is reflected in the politics and governments across all of Western Europe.
I hope that Schroeder's decisive defeat in Germany is the start of a new beginning -- a new hope, if you will -- in Germany and in all of Western Europe. The Lord knows that those people truly need it . . .
For your convenience, I've re-printed the entire article in the extended entry.
JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL
Gerhard Fall
Anti-Americanism reaches its limit in Germany.
Monday, May 23, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
SINGEN, Germany--Three years ago, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder cynically used opposition to liberating Iraq to play an anti-American card just before elections in which he trailed his Christian Democratic opponents. He barely won a second term. Yesterday, facing a likely loss in elections in Germany's largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, his Social Democratic Party's union backers played another anti-American card, this time depicting U.S. investors as blood-sucking parasites. Social Democratic chairman Franz Muntefering compared hedge funds to "swarms of locusts." This time, the tactic failed. Mr. Schoeder's party went down to a stunning defeat, losing the largely working-class state, home to one out of five Germans, for the first time in nearly 40 years. Last night Mr. Schroeder announced he would hold national elections this fall, a year ahead of schedule.
North Rhine-Westphalia, centered on the industrial Ruhr region of northern Germany, is home to 18 million people and would be the sixth largest economy in the European Union if it were a separate nation. It is beset by many of the same problems that plague Germany as a whole. Since 1995, the German economy has been growing at a slower pace than any other European country except Moldova. Germany is increasingly losing jobs and investment to countries that do not have its crushingly high wages and social welfare overhead.
Many commentators will explain away the Social Democrats' overwhelming 45% to 37% defeat by claiming it represents discontent with Mr. Schroeder's tentative moves to curb welfare benefits and reform labor laws. But if that were the real issue, the government's left-wing partners, the Greens, would have gained votes. Instead they lost support, finishing with only 6%. The Christian Democrats' free-market partners, the Free Democrats, received the same proportion of the vote. Indeed, if yesterday's vote had primarily been a left-wing protest vote, a new party, the Election Alternative Work and Social Justice, formed by dissident members of Mr. Schroeder's party, would have won seats. Instead, they failed miserably.
The centerpiece of the anti-American, anticapitalist campaign was a cover story in the magazine of IG Metall, Germany's largest trade union, which has a circulation of two million. The cover featured a fiendishly grinning mosquito with an Uncle Sam hat and the caption US-Firmen in Deutschland: Die Aussauger ("U.S. Firms in Germany: The Bloodsuckers"). The article's headline: "The Plunderers Are Here." Medienkritik, a German blog, pointed out that the artistic depiction and commentary bore a striking resemblance to 1930s Nazi propaganda against the Jews; it posted a cartoon from Der Stuermer depicting a spider with a Star of David on its back and dead Germans caught in its Web. That caption read Die Ausgesaugten--"those whose blood has been sucked out."
Guido Westerwelle, head of the Free Democrats, sharply criticized the cover, saying he was "against hate of foreigners" whether it came from the right or the left. An IG Metall spokesman called the cover "a good caricature," and Mr. Schroeder himself called on his ministers to investigate whether hedge funds should be more heavily regulated if they continued to insist through their investments that German companies be streamlined.
But such moves are inevitable. North Rhine-Westphalia's Social Democratic government has piled up debt in a vain attempt to save jobs in the dying coal and steel industries. In 1960 some 600,000 Germans worked in the coal mines; that number has declined by 94%, to 36,000. Each job in the industry costs the government a subsidy equivalent to some $90,000 a year. The Christian Democrats, while generally timid on economic reform in North Rhine-Westphalia, proposed to slice those subsidies in half by 2010 and also to give universities greater freedom to charge fees from students. The Social Democrats opposed both ideas.
Yesterday's election results are "a devastating defeat for Schroeder," political scientist Uwe Andersen told a German TV station. "It's as if they've been thrown out of their own living room."
Bad news for Mr. Schroeder is also good news for America. The Christian Democrats have announced that Angela Merkel, their pro-U.S. party chairman, will be their candidate for chancellor in the fall elections.
Ms. Merkel is a physicist who lived in East Germany when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. While cautious, she is the closest thing German politics has to a Margaret Thatcher. When asked earlier this year if she detected any similarities between her ideas and the reforms that Britain's Iron Lady carried out in the 1980s, she told the Independent, a British newspaper, "My whole life was changed by reunification. I have experienced change as something good, not something to be avoided."
If German voters, tired of 12% unemployment and of being portrayed as the "sick man of Europe," have had enough this fall and throw out Mr. Schroeder, she may well get a chance to prove how much change the notoriously risk-averse German electorate can tolerate.
[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]
Democratic Revolution in Lebanon . . . and Syria?
Chrenkoff has a short post about the upcoming Lebanese elections and the effect that they are having in the region.
Democracy is a scary thing . . . to dictators and despots.
It's a good read.
May 23, 2005
Good News from Iraq -- Part 28
Chrenkoff has published his latest installment of Good News from Iraq. He is quick to point out that there is bad news coming from that country, but he feels that the good news is woefully underreported. So he undertakes to report the good news every two weeks. He has a "Good News from Afganistan" bi-weekly series, as well.
The whole article is long, but definitely worth at least scanning. It gives you a much more comprehensive picture of the great strides being made in Iraq in terms of infrastructure, humanitarian aid, security, training, coalition troops, and society.
I have posted an excerpt of his article in the extended entry. In it he reports on several instances of Iraqis reporting the whereabouts or activities of the terrorists in country.
In recent examples of increasing security cooperation from the community:
"A young boy observed a group of individuals emplacing an improvised explosive device in Kirkuk May 1, and reported it to local police. Iraqi police and Coalition Forces disabled the device with a robot";
"On May 5, a local Iraqi tipster led U.S. Soldiers conducting a reconnaissance mission in west Baghdad to a house in the Ghazaliya neighborhood where too many cars were present for normal activity. The Soldiers searched the house and detained seven suspects, including a man specifically targeted for participating in terrorist activities and two of his brothers";
A large arms cache destroyed near Samarra on May 8, following a tip-off from the public;
"Iraqi police, aided by local citizens unearthed a large weapons cache in Narwon May 8. The operation was undertaken by the Iraqi people themselves with Task Force Liberty Soldiers transporting the munitions to Forward Operating Base Gabe for disposal";
"A local citizen found and reported several unexploded ordnance to Iraqi Security Forces after finding hundreds of projectiles near Route Ford in Dibis, Iraq, May 7. With support from 208th Iraqi Army Battalion, Task Force Liberty troops transported the civilian to the location of the unexploded rounds. The IA secured all the rounds, identified as USSR 57mm FRAG-T projectiles, and transported them to another site for disposal";
A walk-in tip-off from a local resident resulted in confiscation of a significant weapons cache and a car bomb by the soldier from Task Force Liberty near Samarra on May 12;
"A group of Iraqi children led Task Force Baghdad Soldiers directly to a weapons cache in southeast Baghdad May 13. The Iraqi children showed the Soldiers where three rocket propelled grenades and 10 fuses were hidden. An explosives ordnance disposal team was called to the site and safely detonated the munitions";
On May 15, "Task Force Baghdad soldiers, acting on a tip from an Iraqi citizen, arrested five suspected terrorists thought to have participated in drive-by shootings in southeast Baghdad. Numerous cell phones, wires and bomb making materials were found with the suspects";
"Iraqi citizens prevented a potentially devastating attack by alerting Iraqi police to a vehicle-bomb threat near a crowded marketplace May 16. Local nationals thought something was suspicious about a vehicle parked on the side of a road next to a densely populated market area in Zafaraniya, a suburb of Baghdad, and alerted local police, who responded immediately... Police officers secured the area, but the bomb exploded before an Iraqi police explosive ordnance disposal team arrived on the scene to detonate it. No injuries were reported".