War in the Shadows

There are two interesting news stories breaking today which may be conceptually related.  From Pajamas Media roundup, various newpapers describe how a British terror team possibly composed of ethnic Pakistanis, planned to kill, torture and behead a Muslim British soldier in exchange for a troop withdrawal from Iraq. Then comes news that Osama's brother in law, long suspected to be an al-Qaeda money man, has been killed and robbed by a "mob" in Madagascar, who just happened to steal not only his money but his laptop. Has the War on Terror, long the province of the Big Battalions, now acquired a secondary character as a contest of assassinations?

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A soldier: "Muslim terrorists were to kidnap a British soldier on UK streets and force him to plead with Tony Blair for his life in return for a pull-out of troops from Iraq." (The Sun)

Kidnap and beheading plot: The eight people arrested by terror police in Birmingham were allegedly planning an Iraq-style kidnapping and beheading in the UK. They intended to post a video of the hostage being tortured and killed on the internet. Their target was an unidentified man in his twenties who is now under police protection, who was picked out because of his job. It is not yet known what this was. (Sky News)

Bill Roggio reports that Osama Bin Laden's brother in law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, was killed and robbed by a mob in Madagascar. And America's Task Force 145 may be behind it.

Khalifa, "who mined and traded precious stones in Madagascar," was reported to have been murdered by "a gang of 20 to 30 gunmen broke into his brother's bedroom, shot him dead 'in cold blood' and stole his belongings."

"I don't think [his death] was politically motivated," said Malek Khalifa, Mohammed Jamal's brother. But Khalifa's deep ties to al-Qaeda, coupled with his history of funding global terrorist operations, his operations in mining precious stones in Africa (a source of untraceable income), and the size of the 'gang' that murdered him, suggests otherwise. We suspect Khalifa was assassinated. "They stole everything — his computer, all of his things," said Khalifa's brother. Task Force 145 has a mandate to hunt down senior al-Qaeda operatives world wide, and is known to have operated in Pakistan to destroy Osama bin Laden's Black Guard. Also, the U.S. recently deployed naval assets to the region, as well as Task Force 145, in the hunt for al-Qaeda and Islamic Courts leaders fleeing Somalia.

Khalifa is alleged to have been connected with the attack on the Cole, the Islamic insurgency in Bosnia; Operation Bojinka (the rehearsal for 9/11) and the Abu Sayyaf. He was arrested in 1994 in the US but deported to Jordan, where he was released after witnesses forgot to testify against him. He was legally beyond any sanction by the United States. But nevertheless he's dead. As Bill Roggio put it:

"Khalifa was arrested in America, in Jordan, and after 9/11, in Saudi Arabia, and on each occasion was eventually released."

Khalifa cannot escape the grave.

Those Happy Faces

For more than sixty years it has been the recipient of aid from the United Nations, Europe and the United States. In fact, "the highest per capita aid transfer in the history of foreign aid anywhere." [Note: Commenters have noted and it has proved true that Israel actually receives more per capita than Palestine in foreign aid, the figure being $420 versus $300 per capita. This correction is hereby made. I will be more careful next time.] Statesmen all over the world have paid homage to it. It's leadership has been praised and defended by Jimmy Carter. Charities have been established to support it. Fund raising in its name takes place every day. It has been provided with security training and weaponry by the International Community. If any country deserves to be called the proud creation of enlightened diplomacy and peacemaking, this is is it. Caroline Glick says, 'Welcome to Palestine. And it is a nightmare.'

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In the State of Palestine 88 percent of the public feels insecure. Perhaps the other 12 percent are members of the multitude of regular and irregular militias. For in the State of Palestine the ratio of police/militiamen/men-under-arms to civilians is higher than in any other country on earth.

In the State of Palestine, two-year-olds are killed and no one cares. Children are woken up in the middle of the night and murdered in front of their parents. Worshipers in mosques are gunned down by terrorists who attend competing mosques. And no one cares. No international human rights groups publish reports calling for an end to the slaughter. No UN body condemns anyone or sends a fact-finding mission to investigate the murders.

In the State of Palestine, women are stripped naked and forced to march in the streets to humiliate their husbands. Ambulances are stopped on the way to hospitals and wounded are shot in cold blood. Terrorists enter operating rooms in hospitals and unplug patients from life-support machines.

In the State of Palestine, people are kidnapped from their homes in broad daylight and in front of the television cameras. This is the case because the kidnappers themselves are cameramen. Indeed, their commanders often run television stations. And because terror commanders run television stations in the State of Palestine, it should not be surprising that they bomb the competition's television stations.

So it was that last week, terrorists from this group or that group bombed Al Arabiya television station in Gaza. And so it is that Hamas attacks Fatah radio announcers and closes down their radio station claiming that they use their microphones to incite murder. Because indeed, they are inciting murder. What would one expect for terrorists to do when placed in charge of a radio station?

And so it is that in the State of Palestine, journalists - whether members of terror groups or not - are part of the 88 percent of their public who are afraid. Sunday they protested outside the offices of one terror faction or another that controls the Palestinian Authority.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, reporter Ala Masharawi explained, "No one goes outside, no one moves without thinking twice. Gaza's streets have become terrible streets, especially at night. Gaza is a ghost town."

As the Post's Khaled Abu Toameh reported last week, in the State of Palestine, Christians are persecuted, robbed and beaten in what can only be viewed as a systematic campaign to end the Christian presence in places like Bethlehem. As Samir Qumsiyeh, owner of the Beit Sahur-based private Al-Mahd (Nativity) TV station lamented, "I believe that 15 years from now there will be no Christians left in Bethlehem. Then you will need a torch to find a Christian here."

The pseudonymous Spengler, writing in the Asia Times, argues that Palestine is partly the Frankenstein creation of Western guilt and international fantasy. They are people forced into a time trap, in a kind of ghastly ethnographic museum, except that their native dress consists of explosive wrapped round their waist, and their colorful dances celebratory gunfire fired up to rain down on their heads, because we want to remember them that way. Viewed from that perspective, the misery described by Caroline Glick is not a bug; it is a feature.

the Palestinian Arabs became wards of the United Nations after the 1947-48 War of Independence. Their numbers surged because of better medical care and nutrition than they previously enjoyed as well as child subsidies. That is why the 700,000 Arabs who fled or were driven from Israel grew into the 4 million "refugees" registered with the UN in 2002. I place the term "refugees" in quotation marks because in no other case has the third generation following a population transfer retained official refugee status.

Despite the best intentions of Shimon Peres and the Israeli socialists, it seems delusional to imagine that any combination of light industry and tourism will provide a livelihood for a Palestine with 5 million inhabitants (including the non-refugee West Bank population). The Palestinian entity cannot exist without subsidies, and it cannot extract subsidies from the West or from the Muslim world without constituting a military threat. The existential choices for Palestinians come down to dispersal or perpetual war.

The collateral damage inflicted upon the people of the Third World by the Left in pursuit of their fantasies will someday rank with the Slave Trade and the Holocaust in the annals of historical outrage. It is the last form of imperialism. And the worst.

Update

I've added this video by following the link provided by Buddy Larsen. While I don't think all mines are good and all environmentalism is bad, I think most institutionalized environmentalism is actually run by rich people from the first world. Poor people in the Third World couldn't even begin to participate in setting the Green Agenda. In my own experience, international environmental jobs are the most sought after, high-paying and jet-setting jobs open to locals in the Third World.

Life in the Left

Nothing so low as a Fallen Angel. When the Guardian reprinted excerpts of Nick Cohen's book about the Left it faced a storm of commentary from its readers. I have an extract, provided courtesy of a reader, which suggests why the Leftist readers would find Cohen's book infuriating. All I can say is that Cohen barely fails to scratch the surface; in terms of absurdity and tragedy, of the Leftist Deep. Here's how the Guardian describes Cohen's book, and you can guess why its readers should find it so maddening.

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Nick Cohen attacks many enemies in this book, and he believes they are very bad indeed. They include: Amnesty International, Harold Pinter, Noam Chomsky, the Comment pages of the Guardian, the London Review of Books, Robert Fisk, George Galloway, the Socialist Workers Party, Edward Said, the anti-war coalition and (for reasons I could not fathom) Virginia Woolf.

With the exception of Virginia Woolf, the above are accused of a grand, historic betrayal of the values of the left. Cohen insists they have surrendered to fascism. He holds that this betrayal is more profound and historically significant than the one committed by the left-wing intellectuals (among them Eric Hobsbawn and Raymond Williams) who apologised for the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939.

But the real power of Cohen's book lies in its portrayal of life in the Left itself. Karen Armstrong called Marxism the last great missionary impulse of Europe. It is possibly Europe's only indigenous world religion. Here is how its devotees lived.

In the early Seventies, my mother searched the supermarkets for politically reputable citrus fruit. She couldn't buy Seville oranges without indirectly subsidising General Francisco Franco, Spain's fascist dictator. Algarve oranges were no good either, because the slightly less gruesome but equally right-wing dictatorship of Antonio Salazar ruled Portugal. She boycotted the piles of Outspan from South Africa as a protest against apartheid, and although neither America nor Israel was a dictatorship, she wouldn't have Florida or Jaffa oranges in the house because she had no time for then President Richard Nixon or the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. ...

Thirty years later, I picked up my mother from my sister Natalie's house. Her children were watching a Disney film; The Jungle Book, I think. 'It's funny, Mum,' I said as we drove home, 'but I don't remember seeing any Disney when I was their age.' 'You've only just noticed? We didn't let you watch rubbish from Hollywood corporations.' ...

I come from a land where you can sell out by buying a comic. I come from the left. ...

I still remember the sense of dislocation I felt at 13 when my English teacher told me he voted Conservative. As his announcement coincided with the shock of puberty, I was unlikely to forget it. I must have understood at some level that real Conservatives lived in Britain - there was a Conservative government at the time, so logic dictated that there had to be Conservative voters. But it was incredible to learn that my teacher was one of them, when he gave every appearance of being a thoughtful and kind man.

It is really impossible to understand the rise of fascism in the world without taking a close look at the single most destructive ideology in modern history. I still remember a close German friend telling me that it was a mistake to imagine that his country's worst export was Hitler. Far from it, he said. That honor was reserved for Karl Marx.

Will the Real America Stand Up?

You can't lose for the winning. Nope. Let's see. You can't win for the losing. Oh, heck. Let's just go directly to the Guardian article. Only the US hawks can save the Iranian president now, which argues -- you guessed it -- that Iran will collapse if only America does nothing to resist the Ayatollahs and leaves UN sanctions to work.

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The honeymoon is over. Iran's controversial president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has finally come unstuck. His popularity with the Iranian electorate - the subject of much incredulous analysis in 2005 - seems to be falling back at last, and the country's latest exercise in populism seems to be reaping the rewards of unfulfilled promises bestowed with little attention to economic realities.

Those realities have sharpened with the onset of UN sanctions. Ahmadinejad's casual dismissal of the sanctions has apparently earned him an unprecedented rebuke from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei - reflecting growing concerns among the political elite, including many conservatives, who are increasingly anxious at Iran's worsening international situation.

Articles like this call to mind the concept of duality. In plain words, "duality" how the same thing may seem different from various vantage points. To the Left, the same hated object America manifests itself in many equivalent forms. It is omnipotent. Everything in the world is due to its actions. It is impotent. It can't clear a street in Haifa, Baghdad, according to the New York Times. It is terribly vulnerable if it does anything, such as attempt to counter the Ayatollahs. But it is invincible if it does nothing but leave things to the UN, as the Guardian article eloquently argues. It continues:

There can be little doubt that US hawks will interpret recent events as proof that pressure works, and that any more pressure will encourage the hawks further. Yet the reality is that while Ahmadinejad has been his own worst enemy, the US hawks are his best friends. Ahmadinejad's demise, if it comes, will have less to do with the international environment and more with his own political incompetence. There is little doubt that it will take more than a cosmetic change to get Washington to listen to Iran. But the real question mark, as the Baker-Hamilton commission found to its cost, is whether Washington is inclined to listen at all.

They would be better off listening to a Zen master expound on the contradictions of the universe than attempt to understand articles in the Guardian.

What were you really thinking?

"May you rot in hell". Writes Michelle Malkin to an antiwar protester who spat on an 82nd Airborne amputee being treated at Walter Reed. Malkin's comment is short and to the point, though I can't help thinking that the protester's main problem was that he let his mask slip and let his inner self come through the teeth of his talking points. Not just the antiwar side, though. The bully side.

Fauxtography Again

Michael Totten, writing at Winds of Change, notices that the Internet has made the Lebanese as quick to spot fauxtography as anyone else. Notice this Christian militiaman (hey, he's got a Cross, a symbol of hate, on his shoulder) about to engage in mayhem. But where have we seen this man before?

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Nakhba

Oxblog reviews the evidence for and against the Palestinian claim that Israel engaged in the mass expulsion of Arabs at the very birth of the state. In the end David Adesnik comes to no definite conclusion. Historical guilt is hard to ascribe, especially when every injustice stands upon the shoulders of an earlier and reciprocal grievance. Here's a summary of how Adesnik's inquiry started, though it is by no means finished.

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Recently, my colleague has raised the question of the 700,000 or so Palestinian refugees who fled their homes during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949. Arabs refer to this flight as the nakhba, or catastrophe. For many advocates of the Palestinian cause, the nakhba was a historic injustice that fatally compromised the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

But what, precisely, was the nakhba? My limited knowledge of the subject derives from Benny Morris' 1999 survey of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, entitled Righteous Victims. However, I read the book in 2001, so my recollections of its content were vague at best until I stopped by the library today to refresh my memory. ...

According to Morris, the refugee crisis developed in four stages during the war, which I will describe below.

But first, Morris points out that Zionist leaders such as David Ben-Gurion considered the forcible transfer of Palestinians to be necessary and just. As the future Prime Minister said in 1938, "I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral." Other influential Israelis agreed, although both they and Ben Gurion felt that it would be best not to make their opinions known.

This position, however, does not seem to have resulted in any clear plan to force out the Palestinians. Rather, the refugee crisis developed in a series of unplanned stages ...

Commentary

In the course of trying to help upland tribesmen obtain titles to their ancestral lands in the Philippines, I became acutely aware that ethnic expulsions did not begin, nor did they end, with the arrival of the White Man. But even the tribesmen had the good sense to realize that there was no point in aspiring to return the clock to some arbitrary point in the past. They were content to have aspire to peace and prosperity in the present. Judith Weiss describes the perils of invoking the sacred past in arguing for an unattainable future with respect to Christian Zionists who claim that since God gave Israel to the Jews, then so it must be. Churchill was alleged to have said (I cannot find the quote) that the problem with the Past is that it made the Future impossible. Today, with unprecedented population movements taking place under the impetus of globalization, to what past could we conceivably return? But Churchill, almost anticipating the Internet, definitely did say was that "the empires of the future will be empires of the mind". And in that future, which is our present, it is the location of your mind rather than your body that matters most. In that respect, where is Israel? And where are the Palestinians?

A Suicide Bombing in Eilat

The interesting thing about the recent suicide bombing in Eilat, Israel -- which killed three persons at a bakery -- was that it wasn't aimed at Israel at all, except incidentally. The bombing was actually aimed at other Palestinian factions. The attack on Israel was an attempt to redirect days of continuous internal fighting to where it properly belonged. If properly is the word. Back to killing Jews. The Washington Post reports:

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Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed joint responsibility. Both militant groups said they hoped to encourage warring Palestinian factions to end weeks of clashes. "The operation has a clear message to the Palestinian rivals. It is necessary to end the infighting and point the guns toward the occupation that has hurt the Palestinian people," a posting on the Islamic Jihad Web site said.

Despite the statements, fighting between the rival Fatah and Hamas movements continued throughout Gaza. Five people were killed, officials said, raising the death toll to more than 60 since infighting erupted in December.

But Palestinian Jihad raised a valid point when it declared that the real problem was to "point the guns toward the occupation". The only part it has gotten wrong is in the identity of the occupiers. It is the army of thugs who have been coddled, funded and appeased by a timid and politically correct West who are the real occupiers of Muslim lands today. The West spends most of its time breeding snakes and then wonders why people get bitten. Just now, the White House Press Office has sent round an email expressing condolences for the victims at Eilat and squarely blaming the Palestinian Authority for the attack on Israel. True insofar as it goes. But never true enough to keep the funding for the "Palestinian Authority" from being restarted once it runs itself to the ground.

The United State s strongly condemns the terrorist bombing in Eilat today, which resulted in the death of at least three civilians. Our condolences go out to the victims, their families, and the people of Israel. We also condemn those Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas, that condone these barbaric actions.

The burden of responsibility for preventing terrorist attacks rests with the Palestinian Authority government. Failure to act against terror will inevitably effect relations between that government and the international community and undermine the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a state of their own.

Heaven's Army

The Small Wars Journal has an interesting discussion thread on the engagement in Najaf where 250 insurgents were killed. The identity of the enemy has been variously described as Sunni insurgents or a Shi'ite cult known as the "Soldiers of Heaven". Conflicting reports suggest they had heavy arms but had women and children with them. One Iraqi blogger, Healing Iraq, thinks the US was duped into annihilating a rag-tag faction in another internecine conflict. Others reports say some of the attackers had "Afghan robes". The LA Times reported cell phone video which showed Iraqi troops taking cover from pretty intense fire.

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Ali Nomas, an Iraqi security official in Najaf, said the fighters belonged to a group calling itself Heaven's Army, one of several messianic cults that have appeared among Shiites who believe in the imminent return of Imam Mahdi, the last in the line of Shiite saints who disappeared more than 1,000 years ago. Nomas said the information came from interviews with at least 10 detained fighters.

"Everyday someone claims he's the Mahdi," he said.

Nomas said the leader of the hitherto unknown Heaven's Army had told followers that he was a missing son of the Imam Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad. Ali's remains are entombed in Najaf.

"They believe that the Mahdi has called them to fight in Najaf," Nomas said, adding that fighters had converged on the Najaf area from other predominantly Shiite cities in Iraq.

He lamented that Iraq's death and destruction had convinced some Shiites that the end of days was coming.

"There's nothing bizarre left in Iraq anymore," Nomas said in a telephone interview. "We've seen the most incredible things."

Najaf Gov. Asad Abu Gulal said some of the fighters were members of Hussein's Baath Party.

Commentary

Whatever organization these individuals belong to, they had serious firepower, as evidenced by the cell phone video and their ability to down a US helicopter. Their religious identity remains mysterious, what with the Afghan robes and reports that it was headed by the "Madhi". But bizarre events do happen in the Third World. It is not wholly impossible for a cult leader to assemble a group of people to engage in improbable behavior, whether it involves the Branch Davidian or the now-forgotten Lapiang Malaya. This article from Time Magazine in1967 describes that strange incident.

In the grubby streets of Pasay City, a suburb of Manila, a most unusual group of men gathered last week. They were members of an obscure political sect called Lapiang Malaya (Freedom Movement), and they were armed with long bolo knives and dressed in peculiar blue uniforms with red and yellow capes. At the command of their leader, an old (eightyish) fanatic named Valentin de los Santos, they had come up from their homes in the paddy fields of southern Luzon. Their mission: to march on the presidential palace in Manila and overthrow the government.

As they lined up for the march, troopers of the Philippine Constabulary blocked their path. The 380 or so warriors were unafraid. They believed that the pebbles that they held in their mouths rendered them immune to death.

Waving their bolos, they charged straight into the stuttering M-16s of the Constabulary. Within minutes, 33 of them lay dead, 47 wounded. The rest were arrested for sedition and put in prison.

In later years I had the opportunity to visit the religious roots of the Lapiang Malaya sect, which a casual observer would describe as "Christian", because to external appearances they decorated their amulets with nonsense Latin concatenations from old Catholic Missals. "In nomine domine mintuam dei gloria". In truth, the Lapiang Malaya was descended from a long line of cults like the Pulahans, which like the Madhi, seemed to disappear and then reappear in the stream of history. Readers of the Belmont Club may recall how I met a cultlike militia in Mindanao headed by another mystic named Toothpick, who promised his men immunity from bullets if they had a bottle of merthiolate hung from their neckss and advanced to the martial strains of Tony Orlando's Knock Three Times of the Ceiling if You Want Me. I don't know whether Heaven's Army is cut from the same cloth. But it will be an interesting issue to follow.

What Has Changed?

Meanwhile, events in Iraq continue to escalate at a rate far greater than one would expect from the prospect of the arrival of 21,000 troops. If this report from Iraq the Model is accurate, there has been a change of psychological atmosphere which is rippling through the capital. Iraq the Model quotes the Arabic online newspaper Azzaman as saying major operations will start February 5 against militant leaders as part of an even wider operation.

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We talked earlier about insurgents and terrorists fleeing Baghdad to Diyala, and today there's another report about a similar migration, from al-Sabah:

Eyewitnesses in some volatile areas said that large numbers of militants have fled to Syria to avoid being trapped in the incoming security operations. According to those witnesses, residents and shopkeepers are no longer concerned about militants whose existence in public used to bring on clashes that put the lives of civilians in danger. A shopkeeper in al-Karkh [western Baghdad] said that many of them [militants] packed their stuff and headed to Syria to wait and see what the operations are going to be like. While experts consider this a failure in protecting the plan's secrecy which might lead to the loss of the surprise factor, they also say it indicates the seriousness and resolve in this plan that is already scaring away the militants. PM Maliki pointed out that seeing them run away is a good thing but he returned and said the security forces would chase them down everywhere after Baghdad is clear.

As we said in the last update, Maliki won unanimous support for his plan in the parliament and despite some opposition from the radical factions the major blocs are expressing their support and approval of the plan.

Meanwhile, President Bush warned that the US would "respond firmly" if Iran escalates its military action in Iraq. Whether that means Iran is home free if it keeps its interference at the current level remains to be seen. ABC Australia reported:

The United States has accused Iran of supporting terrorism in Iraq and supplying weapons - including roadside bombs - to kill American troops. Now Mr Bush has issued a stern warning to Iran's leaders. "If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly," he said. The US recently confirmed it has authorized its troops to kill or capture Iranian agents who are operating in Iraq.

Commentary

Apparently America is being taken seriously again, despite the fact that significant reinforcement has not arrived. What changed if the level of forces remained relatively static?  Possibly the perception of America's will to win, which has taken a self-beating all these past months, is back. But, as President Bush's recent mild statement against Iranian interference illustrates, this psychological ascendance will probably last for only as long as it takes for those determined to dilute it to succeed. There will be a time for conciliation and diplomacy. But it should come only after the enemy, including Iran, is decisively beaten. This does not necessarily have to happen on a kinetic battlefield or involve large scale fighting, but it must nevertheless occur. Only a meaningful victory can provide the diplomatic ground for peace. Defeat by definition is barren. Recent events suggest it is a race to see whether victory can be achieved before we once again assert our determination to lose.

Where in the Game Are We?

How did the crisis get started? We're talking about politicized intelligence respecting weapons of mass destruction. We're talking about what James Webb described as the failure of American leaders to competently protect their people from threats. But we're not talking about President Bush and Iraq; rather about President Clinton and Iran. Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren, writing in the New Republic (subscription only) go back to the genesis of the Iranian nuclear crisis.

The first reports from military intelligence about an Iranian nuclear program reached the desk of Yitzhak Rabin shortly after he became prime minister in May 1992. Rabin's conclusion was unequivocal: Only a nuclear Iran, he told aides, could pose an existential threat to which Israel would have no credible response. But, when he tried to warn the Clinton administration, he met with incredulity. The CIA's assessment--which wouldn't change until 1998--was that Iran's nuclear program was civilian, not military. Israeli security officials felt that the CIA's judgment was influenced by internal U.S. politics and privately referred to the agency as the "CPIA"--"P" for "politicized."

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None of this is to argue that only the Democrats slant intelligence but merely to point out that politics and intelligence have been related for a long time. And not in the least within Israel itself.

A nuclear Iran will have devastating consequences for Sunni Arab states, too. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and, most recently, Jordan have declared their interest in acquiring nuclear power; Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has stated explicitly that Egypt may feel the need to protect itself against Iran's nuclear threat. Other Sunni nations could follow--including Libya, whose enmity toward the Saudis may draw it back into the nuclear race if Riyadh tries to acquire a bomb. A nuclear free-for-all, then, is likely to seize the Middle East. In this crisis-ridden region, any flashpoint will become a potential nuclear flashpoint. ...

That scenario leads some in the security establishment to call for renewed peace talks with Syria, aimed at removing it from the pro-Iranian front. The growing debate over Syria positions the Mossad--which says it's no longer possible to separate Damascus from Tehran--against military intelligence, which believes that President Bashar Assad wants negotiations with Israel, if only to divert the threat of sanctions against Damascus for its alleged role in murdering Lebanese leaders.

There is no debate among Israelis, however, about the wisdom of negotiations between the West and Iran. That, defense officials agree, would be the worst of all options. Negotiations that took place now would be happening at a time when Iran feels ascendant: The time to have negotiated with Iran, some say, was immediately after the initial U.S. triumph in Iraq, not now, when the United States is losing the war.

Not everyone agrees, however, that America is "losing the war". The Strategy Page asks, how so? Except in perception? Myth Number 10 in its "Ten Myths About Iraq" is the conventional wisdom that America is whipped.

10- The War in Iraq is Lost. By what measure? Saddam and his Baath party are out of power. There is a democratically elected government. Part of the Sunni Arab minority continues to support terror attacks, in an attempt to restore the Sunni Arab dictatorship. In response, extremist Shia Arabs formed vigilante death squads to expel all Sunni Arabs. Given the history of democracy in the Middle East, Iraq is working through its problems. Otherwise, one is to believe that the Arabs are incapable of democracy and only a tyrant like Saddam can make Iraqi "work." If democracy were easy, the Arab states would all have it. There are problems, and solutions have to be found and implemented. That takes time, but Americans have, since the 18th century, grown weary of wars after three years. If the war goes on longer, the politicians have to scramble to survive the bad press and opinion polls. Opposition politicians take advantage of the situation, but this has nothing to do with Iraq, and everything to do with local politics in the United States.

Maybe the fairest assessment is that the jury is still out. And upon how that jury comes back depends some -- if not all -- of the circumstances within which the world will deal with Iran.

Love Means You Never Have to Say You're Sorry

This is one of the reasons why its always better to sit on the politically correct side of history. You never have to say you're sorry. A reporter for the Economist describes sitting in a Davos hotel so overheated the windows must be opened into the snowy landscape outside to cool it down, as world leaders discuss climate change. All around him the ironies go unobserved. One of the little noticed things about the environmental movement is how it likes to recruit the "beautiful people" as spokesmen for the Earth. Hardly ever the gritty farmer with bad teeth, calluses and pit stains under his arm. One of the prestige jobs for socialites in the Third World is getting involved with international environmentalism. I asked about about this was and received a two reply: "leisure activism".Here's a proposal. Make sure all environmental movements are headquartered in equatorial Africa and mandate see how many "spokesmen" apply.

Australian-Philippine Military Cooperation Mooted

Australia wants to send military observers to Central Mindanao under an agreement pending before the Philippine Senate. (Australian )

Australia has already promised 30 river boats to aid local forces in their search for armed rebel groups linked to JI and the allied local kidnap-for-ransom group, Abu Sayyaf. While The Philippines and Australian military would like to conduct large-scale military exercises, the number of troops allowed will depend on the political support in the Senate. Up to five JI members are believed to be operating terrorist cells in the area, in league with dozens of renegade MILF commanders, who are violating the group's 2005 disavowal of links with terrorists. Cotabato City and the surrounding areas in Mindanao are seen as a "doormat for terrorism", in the words of the former US ambassador to the Philippines Richard Done, or the "next Afghanistan".

The situations vis a vis the Islamic insurgency in the Philippines remains serious. And the article above indicates that the battle is far from over. Don't let the victory lap by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in Davos fool you. Her achievements have largely consisted of taking credit for the hard work Filipino, American and Australian personnel have been embarked upon while Manila engages in its carnival politics. The Philippine government still refuses to crack down on the corruption and inefficiency which saps its military; the local Left continues to obstruct any efforts by allies to help the soldiers in the field; terror cells from abroad are still infiltrating in, sometimes using the overseas worker flow as a cover; the Communist guerillas have embarked on a de facto alliance with the Islamists. And many of the rebel supporters and their leftist allies are politically untouchable.

The Philippines is one the fringes of the War on Terror. Yet it should be recalled that the September 11 tactics were developed there. The good news in that archipelago is that there are a lot of good guys willing to take on the enemy. The bad news is that there are a substantial number of corrupt officials who are willing to do anything for convenience and greed and who will stint at nothing -- including selling their country down the river -- to line their pockets.

No Exit

At a conference I recently attended in Israel, one American recently arrived from Lebanon remarked that the "untold big story" in the Middle East was the confrontation between the Sunni and the Shi'a and the attempts by minority groups -- not just the Jews -- to survive in it. Maybe those minorities include not simply Allawites and Christians but democrats (small "d") as well. However that may be, the assertion that local conflicts are really regional conflicts is implicit in two recent news stories. The first is from the Jerusalem Post:

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Palestinian Authority officials here on Sunday accused Iran and Syria of pushing the Palestinians toward civil war, pointing out that Hamas was acting on orders from Damascus and Teheran. The allegation came as the number of Palestinians killed in internecine fighting rose to 27. Seven more Palestinians were killed on Sunday in armed clashes between Hamas and Fatah gunmen in various locations in the Gaza Strip.

The second article is from the Washington Post, describing a pitched battle between the Iraqi Army, supported by US helicopters, and a large and presumably Sunni group preparing to attack Shi'ite pilgrims attending the Ashura.

Jan. 28 -- Iraqi soldiers supported by U.S. helicopters on Sunday clashed with a gathering of insurgents hiding out amid date palm orchards near the southern holy city of Najaf, according to Iraqi officials. For the past several weeks, Sunni insurgents, including Arab fighters from outside Iraq, have stockpiled weapons and dug trenches amid the orchards in apparent preparations to attack the thousands of Shiite Muslim travelers observing the religious holiday of Ashura, Iraqi officials said. ...

The 8th Iraqi Army division along with U.S. helicopters assisted in the operation, said Ahmed Duaibel, spokesman for the Najaf provincial government. In a news conference, Najaf Gov. Asa'ad Abu Gulal said that an American helicopter crashed during the operation and that at least three members of the Iraqi security forces have been killed. There were no initial reports on a death toll of the insurgents.

Following on recent events in Lebanon, these reports are indications that the problems in the region are wider than events confined to Iraq. This means that even if the US withdraws from Iraq, as has been suggested by critics of the administration, armed conflict is likely to continue. For any long-term settlement to take place, America must find ways of effectively opposing the tactics of infiltration and subversion that are being practiced not only by Iran and Syria, but probably by elements within Saudi Arabia as well. And since the US must remain in the Middle East for the foreseeable future, not only because of oil but because of its commitments to key allies like Israel, the question of how to effectively fight a networked insurgency really transcends the issue of what the appropriate troop levels should be in Iraq.

So far the US, like Israel, has been doing pretty well on the "kinetic" battlefield but is performing poorly in the areas of information and political warfare. America has yet to find a way to harness all the sources of its national power and adjust its rules of engagement to delivered a well-rounded result. The need to achieve that goal is an issue which has yet to achieve national center stage. None of the candidates vying for the Presidency in 2008 is talking about it. If the conflict between the Sunni and the Shi'a is the untold big story of the Middle East, the lack of serious debate over how to effectively face the upheaval in the Islamic world -- as opposed to withdrawing or "staying the course" in Iraq -- is the even bigger untold story of American politics.

"Now boys, let's not overreact"

Was an Iranian Military Unit Responsible for Killing 5 Americans in Karbala?, Bill Roggio asks at The Fourth Rail. Rusty Shackleford at the Jawa Reports quotes an AP report claiming that the Kerbalah raid on US troops was led by a team led by a blonde, and presumably English-speaking person.

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Four American soldiers were abducted during a sophisticated sneak attack last week in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and their bodies were found up to 25 miles away, according to new information obtained by The Associated Press.

The brazen assault, 50 miles south of Baghdad on Jan. 20, was conducted by nine to 12 militants posing as an American security team. They traveled in black GMC Suburban vehicles _ the type used by U.S. government convoys _ had American weapons, wore new U.S. military combat fatigues, and spoke English.

In a written statement, the U.S. command reported at the time that five soldiers were killed while "repelling the attack." Now, two senior U.S. military officials as well as Iraqi officials say four of the five were captured and taken from the governor's compound alive. Three of them were found dead and one mortally wounded later that evening in locations as far as 25 miles east of the governor's office....

Iraqi officials said the approaching convoy of black GMC Suburbans was waved through an Iraqi checkpoint at the edge of Karbala. The Iraqi soldiers believed it to be American because of the type of vehicles, the distinctive camouflage American uniforms and the fact that they spoke English. One Iraqi official said the leader of the assault team was blond, but no other official confirmed that.

Bill Roggio says that all the evidence available to him so far suggests the Iranian Qods special forces unit were responsible for the attack.

The American Forces Information Service provides the details of the attack in Karbala. Based on the sophisticated nature of the raid, as well as the response, or cryptic non-responses, from multiple military and intelligence sources, this raid appears to have been directed and executed by the Qods Force branch of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps. My sources agreed this is far to sophisticated an operation for the Mahdi Army or Badr Corps, while al-Qaeda in Iraq would have a difficult time mounting such an operation in the Shia south.

Recently the Washington Post ran a story saying that finally the Troops Are Authorized to Kill Iranian Operatives in Iraq, after a year of "catch and release". Kinda sad ain't it?

The Silver Screen

Consider a world where you can lose your pants as long as you don't lose face. Then look around you. The War on Terror "largely does not exist" for Hollywood, argues Andrew Klavan, because the idea of good American guys hunting down foreign bad guys is just not cool -- it sounds bigoted. In the LA Times Klavan writes:

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In order to honestly dramatize the simple truth about this existential struggle, you have to depict right-minded Americans — some of whom may be white and male and Christian — hunting down and killing dark-skinned villains of a false and wicked creed. That's what's happening, on a good day anyway, so that's what you'd have to show.

Moviemakers are reluctant to do that because, even though it's the truth, on screen it might appear bigoted and jingoistic. You can call that political correctness or multiculturalism gone mad — and sure, there's a lot of that going around. But despite what you might have heard, there are sensible, patriotic people in the movie business too. And even they, I suspect, falter before the prospect of presenting such a scenario. ...

Which is a shame. It's a shame for so powerful an art form to become irrelevant because we can't find a way to dramatize the central event of our time. It's a shame that we live under the tireless protection of lawmen and warriors and don't pay tribute to them. And purely in artistic terms, it's a shame that so many great stories are just waiting to be told and we're not telling them.

But thanks, anyway, to the men and women of the FBI, for the seminar and, oh yeah, for trying to keep me alive and free. You truly have my gratitude. Just don't expect to see it at the movies.

Klavan's article is brilliant, but he fails in his choice of words in one singular respect. It's not a "shame" for "for so powerful an art form to become irrelevant because we can't find a way to dramatize the central event of our time". It's a scandal. Some individuals may find it convenient to blame President Bush for all the reversals that have taken place since he started fighting the War on Terror. And doubtless many reversals are the result of the President's mistakes and his alone. But to a certain extent whatever failures have befallen are partly ours too. The desire for safety without paying the price; the hope that evil men will back down simply because we believe they will. All will have its price. And it would be well to remember, for those who rejoice in watching George Bush pay the penalty for his errors, that the Wheel may round on us too. That one day we may awake to world grown weary of our childhood. Alone in the movies. And the lawmen gone away.

Rolling Thunder

Imagine if news emerged that for more than a year, Iran had been capturing and releasing American saboteurs who had been killing Iranians in territory in which they had a legal right to be. What would be the outcry in all the capitals of Europe? Greater than it would be today, after the Washington Post reported that US troops are now authorized to use lethal force against Iranian agents operating in Iran, after applying a policy of "catch and release" program for a year against Iranian agents sent to kill Americans; a policy it followed because it wanted to send a conciliatory signal to Iran.

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For more than a year, U.S. forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens of suspected Iranian agents, holding them for three to four days at a time. The "catch and release" policy was designed to avoid escalating tensions with Iran and yet intimidate its emissaries. U.S. forces collected DNA samples from some of the Iranians without their knowledge, subjected others to retina scans, and fingerprinted and photographed all of them before letting them go. ...

But, for three years, the Iranians have operated an embedding program there, offering operational training, intelligence and weaponry to several Shiite militias connected to the Iraqi government, to the insurgency and to the violence against Sunni factions. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the CIA, told the Senate recently that the amount of Iranian-supplied materiel used against U.S. troops in Iraq "has been quite striking." ...

Those who continue to believe that "engaging" Iran is the road to bringing stability to Iraq should note that if the WaPo's article is accurate, the US was in fact sending a continuous invitation to talk to the Mullahs by pointedly refusing to escalate the confrontation. An invitation which not only went unheeded but produced the contrary result. Instead of impressing the Mullahs with American moral superiority and seriousness; instead of convincing them that the "adults were back in charge" it encouraged even more aggression. "There were no costs for the Iranians," said one senior administration official. "They are hurting our mission in Iraq, and we were bending over backwards not to fight back." This may not impress the advocates of engagement, who may calculate that the US was not bending backward far enough. A little more "flexibility", a few more "confidence building" measures and there would be light at the end of the tunnel. And now, horrors! the incompetent administration is now thinking about "widening the war" (shades of Cambodia) by shooting back. Well, sort of shooting back.

The White House has authorized a widening of what is known inside the intelligence community as the "Blue Game Matrix" -- a list of approved operations that can be carried out against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. And U.S. officials are preparing international sanctions against Tehran for holding several dozen al-Qaeda fighters who fled across the Afghan border in late 2001. They plan more aggressive moves to disrupt Tehran's funding of the radical Palestinian group Hamas and to undermine Iranian interests among Shiites in western Afghanistan.

In Iraq, U.S. troops now have the authority to target any member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, as well as officers of its intelligence services believed to be working with Iraqi militias. The policy does not extend to Iranian civilians or diplomats. Though U.S. forces are not known to have used lethal force against any Iranian to date, Bush administration officials have been urging top military commanders to exercise the authority.

Already, steps are in train to control the response, to ensure that Iranians remain aware of America's pacific intentions. Otherwise they might get the idea that the US might respond tit for tat. "The wide-ranging plan has several influential skeptics in the intelligence community, at the State Department and at the Defense Department who said that they worry it could push the growing conflict between Tehran and Washington into the center of a chaotic Iraq war." To prevent that the administration is going to gradually escalate its response. As President Bush put it, "they can't bomb an outhouse without my permission". Oops. That was Lyndon Johnson. Or was it Condoleeza Rice? Those who insisted on comparing Iraq to Vietnam can now call these measured responses "Rolling Thunder", for old time's sake.

Senior administration officials said the policy is based on the theory that Tehran will back down from its nuclear ambitions if the United States hits it hard in Iraq and elsewhere, creating a sense of vulnerability among Iranian leaders. But if Iran responds with escalation, it has the means to put U.S. citizens and national interests at greater risk in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. ...

In meetings with Bush's other senior advisers, officials said, Rice insisted that the defense secretary appoint a senior official to personally oversee the program to prevent it from expanding into a full-scale conflict. Rice got the oversight guarantees she sought ... Officials said U.S. and British special forces in Iraq, which will work together in some operations, are developing the program's rules of engagement to define the exact circumstances for using force.

But in war timing is nearly everything. The difference between a brilliant attack and fiasco might be a few hours and here the counterstroke has been delayed for a year. The real danger to this tentative aggressiveness is that may be too little -- and too late. Just as the Sunni insurgency may have been fueled by the decision to abort the First Battle of Fallujah, Iranian aggression has been allowed to grow to the point where meeting it now risks a serious confrontation. As in the case of a man who has let a scratch become a gangrenous infection, the choices are now between bad and worse. But because the Mullahs have been allowed to run rampant for so long the force required to halt them will be high. An administration which spent its political capital mollifying its critics may now find it has none left to stop the nation's enemies. The patient may refuse the amputation as unnecessary, even as he refused the antibioltics as unnecessary earlier. The sands run out both comically and tragically.

If this cautionary tale is about anything, it should be about the dangers of showing weakness in the face of the enemy. What "catch and release" has been to Iran and the insurgents is exactly what "cut and run" will be to civilization's terrorist enemies. Not a path to peace but a route to catastrophe. The realization will come, but it will come too late.

Karen Hughes in the Stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf

Karen Hughes Visits Abu Sayyaf Lair -- The key aide to President Bush visited the island of Jolo and hailed efforts there as a model of for how operations should be conducted elsewhere in the world. ( Reuters)

U.S. special forces are providing intelligence and training to Philippine troops combating the Abu Sayyaf, the country's deadliest Islamic militant group. They are also helping build roads and schools on Jolo, a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf.  ... There was strong security but no sign of the fighting when Hughes was mobbed by hundreds of Muslim schoolchildren waving Philippine and U.S. paper flags after she stepped out of a military helicopter in the port town of Maimbung.  "Well, it's very heart-warming to see the warm smiles," she said, when asked whether her reception differed from that in other Muslim societies. U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenny inaugurated a three-room school building that was built by U.S. soldiers where students learn how to surf the Internet using 10 computers provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

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Commentary

The substantial accomplishments made in the field are the result of the dedicated efforts of many individual Filipinos and Americans but it would be a travesty to assign the credit for the recent successes against the Islamic insurgency to any particular competence by the Arroyo government. The Reuters article goes out of its way to emphasizes the socio-economic aspects of the counterinsurgency, but the key to development isn't more money. The amount of money that has been allotted to the Autonomous Region For Muslim Mindanao surpasses anything that the non-Muslim regions have received. Development was never stifled by a lack of money but by a lack of supervision. The warlords of the area have never missed an opportunity to pocket the funds for their own private benefit. What the American presence provided was a greater degree of watchfulness on the way funds were spent. If the 3-room schoolbuilding were left to the usual corrupt construction practices instead of being directly built by US soldiers it's a fair bet that not a single nail would have been driven to this day.

All the same it's good to see that Ms. Huges and Ambassador Kenny are out there. God bless them.

Paved With Good Intentions

US Money Paves "Saddam Hussein Street": -- in time for mourners in Palestine to pray for the eternal repose of the soul of the former dictator of Iraq. USAID funded the street after providing money for facilities named after persons who killed US citzens according to Arutz Sheva. (Hat tip: Allen)

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Inside Israel

US Money Paves Saddam Hussein Street in PA Village 21:51 Jan 25, '07 / 6 Shevat 5767 by Ezra HaLevi

Saddam Hussein road, in the Palestinian Authority, has been ceremoniously repaved using money from the American USAID agency.

The PA-assigned town of Yaabid named both its school and its main street after the former Iraqi dictator.

"In the Yaabid Municipality… thousands of citizens held a requiem for the soul of Saddam in the mosque," Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported on January 4th. "Following that, a march began in the streets of the municipality, that ended at the offices of the Yaabid Municipality, where a mourners' tent was opened in his memory. Public figures and the [terrorist] factions in Yaabid decided to name one of the schools in the municipality and its most important street after Saddam to immortalize his memory and to emphasize the values of Arabness and Jihad, which he represented."

Following a US grant to the municipality of Jenin, earmarked for roadwork in the town, a block in the city center named for the first Iraqi suicide-bomber was refurbished. The terrorist, who killed four American soldiers in Fallujah, was praised by the city's mayor at the block's dedication. According to Al-Hayat Al-Jadida of April 4, 2004, speakers at the dedication praised the "resistance of the residents of Fallujah."

In May, 2004, USAID funded the building of the Salaf Khalef Sports Center. Khalef, known also as Abi Iyad, was the head of the Black September terror group, which stood behind the murder of two US diplomats in Sudan, as well as the Munich massacre of eleven Israeli Olympic athletes.

In December, 2004, USAID funded the renovation of the Dalal Mughrabi School – named after Mughrabi and her terror group, who killed American photographer Gail Rubin and 36 Israelis.

I would venture to say these tragic-comic incidents  are not the way to win Hearts and Minds, if ever that was the intention. Unless it was intended to convince the opposition that we are simply too stupid to be worth fightin. But my guess is this sort of thing just falls through the cracks. A perfect example of the Left hand doing what the Right hand does not know. You know you're in bad shape when you hope you are simply dumb and not perverse.

And Don't Forget the Neck Protector

The Left wants to apologize for everything, even in Australia. Tim Blair notes:

An email currently puking its way around a Sydney university:

Hi there.

You may have heard that Google intends to take high resolution photos of Sydney on Australia Day as part of its Google Earth project.

We think it's a great opportunity for a bit of activism.

We'll be chalking up the word "Sorry" in a bunch of places that are clearly visible from Google's plane. Given our record on Aboriginal human rights, Iraq, Kyoto, East Timor's Oil, &c. we have plenty to apologise for.

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Commentary

Dear activist:

Hi there,

Please tell me where I can purchase one substantial coil of hangman's noose, of execution quality, which I can use to string myself up. Having shamed and degraded myself in every way possible and nearly starved myself by exclusive reliance on the comestibles for sale at the Cooperative, I find my residual guilt essentially unchanged. I've converted to Islam and engaged in every sort of unconventional sex, including that proscribed by Islam (which I somehow feel they will understand); even taken to wearing my socks and underwear three weeks in a row without change, the better to reduce my impact on the Planet, all without relief from my feeling of malaise.

At one point I was even tempted to apply for a job but stopped short of going to work after I realised that it meant having to use products manufactured by Americans and Australians. Now I realise that death is preferable. I would have been a suicide bomber but lack of funds means I will be stretched (pardon the pun) to simply get the rope.

I'll be tying a sign with the word "Sorry" to my shoes in a way that will be clearly visible to my parents when they find my corpse. Given my record in life, I have plenty to apologise for.

Half Full, Half Empty

Aviation Week and Space Technology is worried that the "30-ton rocket could also be a wolf in sheep's clothing for testing longer-range missile strike technologies" as Iran readies a space launch.

Iran has converted its most powerful ballistic missile into a satellite launch vehicle. The 30-ton rocket could also be a wolf in sheep's clothing for testing longer-range missile strike technologies, Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine reports in its Jan. 29 issue. ...

U.S. agencies believe the launcher to be a derivation of the 800-1,000-mi. range Shahab 3 missile. A Shahab 3 fired from central Iran could strike anywhere in Israel, Saudi Arabia, the entire Persian Gulf region and as far west as southern Turkey.

There are concerns in the West that space launch upgrades, however, could eventually create an Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a range of nearly 2,500 mi., giving Tehran the ability to strike as far as central Europe, well into Russia and even China and India.

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Since an Iranian ballistic launcher which can reach into central Europe may not be far away,  then from a certain point of view this is yet another reason why America should hasten to engage Iran and get into its good graces. If you disagree with this argument then why? Is something wrong with the facts or something infirm with the logic?

Fighting the Borg

Richard Landes at the Augean Stables describes the psychological death spiral of those who have been convinced that Resistance is Futile. It works like this. Since fighting only makes things worse one submits. And the more one submits the more Resistance is Futile.

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"We don't dare start a war with the media," said one MFA official, "we can only lose." "Don't expect the Israelis to fight back," warned a prominent diaspora lawyer, "They won't. They just won't." Nor is this merely a problem of Israeli official hasbarah. The Jewish leaders in the diaspora, playing by the positive-sum rules of the late 20th century, responded painfully slowly to the sudden zero-sum turn of direction at the end of 2000. Indeed, like the Israeli government, they discouraged those – leaders or rank and file – who started to fight back.

I understand the arguments, the concerns, the kinds of damage that can come if the media turns on us. But that's beginning to sound more and more like the joke about the two Jews in line for the showers at Auschwitz. One sneezes and the other whispers sharply, "Hush, Yankl, you'll make it worse for us."

It's possible to sympathize with this attitude even outside of Israel. Bill Roggio describes how the same deadly logic seems to have worked on America's policies in Iraq. The more one submits to MSM the worse things become. The worse things become the more on submits to the MSM. Resistance is Futile.

"We are fighting a Politically Correct war,"said Major Owens. "Specifically, Abu Ghraib has taken exponential importance " in how we approach fighting the insurgency, and has led to an excess in caution in dealing with arrest and detainee issues. The interrogation process has been neutered due to past errors. "PC has filled us with false fear," said Major West. "We treat detainees better than I treated my college roommates."

"We tiptoe around cultural issues so greatly that the Iraqi Army laughs at us," said Major West. He explained the difficulties in arresting women involved with the insurgency. In one case, it was well known a woman that was sheltering and aiding foreign fighters, and the evidence of her guilt was solid. In order to arrest her, the MTT needed permission from a general's staff. The Iraqi troops stood in wonderment at this absurd decision making process.

Detainees and Cognitive Dissonance Major West believes the U.S. is suffering from what he refers to as "COIN [counterinsurgency] false hope" in Anbar province, and this is impacting our effectiveness in fighting the insurgency. "In Anbar, the average male is our enemy, and you won't win his heart. But you can win his mind, and make him make rational decisions" to not attack US forces and Iraqi institutions and security forces. "We should detain large amounts of [military age] males, not re-releasing them." The catch and release program, where known insurgents are released only to fight another day, only serves to encourage and reinforce insurgent activity.

Major West went on to explain how the Americans need to enforce strict punishment for small crimes, using the "broken windows" theory of law enforcement to deter insurgent activities. Laws must be put on the books to make activities such as running weapons, providing shelter for terrorists, and digging holes to plant bombs major crimes. "The way the Iraqis see it, Americans suffer from cognitive dissonance on the legal and detention issues."

The lever is there, for anyone who dares to pull it. So what is the way out? Fearless leadership; the steady compass of one who is not afraid to lose seats in Congress and reviled on every occasion; the rock-firm hand of a man who is not afraid to lose an election to do the right thing. But if it requires that kind of sacrifice then ... Resistance is Futile.

Check the Link. It's True.

Global warming could drive its victims to terrorism, according to security experts, says a report from Reuters.

John Mitchell, chief scientist at Britain's Met Office, noted al Qaeda had already listed environmental damage among its litany of grievances against the United States.

"You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries," al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden wrote in a 2002 "letter to the American people."

I hope it's not irrelevant to point out that Bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia.

Try to Remember

Francis Fukuyama concludes in the February 2007 edition of Prospect Magazine that Europe no longer remembers what it is, but that "immigrants" do. And that by and by the "immigrants" will tell Europe just exactly what to remember. But he stops at that point, as if trying to recall what comes next.

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Multiculturalism, as it was originally conceived in Canada, the US and Europe, was in some sense a "game at the end of history." That is, cultural diversity was seen as a kind of ornament to liberal pluralism that would provide ethnic food, colourful dress and traces of distinctive historical traditions to societies often seen as numbingly conformist and homogeneous. Cultural diversity was something to be practiced largely in the private sphere, where it would not lead to any serious violations of individual rights or otherwise challenge the essentially liberal social order. Where it did intrude into the public sphere, as in the case of language policy in Quebec, the deviation from liberal principle was seen by the dominant community more as an irritant than as a fundamental threat to liberal democracy itself.

By contrast, some contemporary Muslim communities are making demands for group rights that simply cannot be squared with liberal principles of individual equality. These demands include special exemptions from the family law that applies to everyone else in the society, the right to exclude non-Muslims from certain types of public events, or the right to challenge free speech in the name of religious offence (as with the Danish cartoons incident). In some more extreme cases, Muslim communities have even expressed ambitions to challenge the secular character of the political order as a whole. These types of group rights clearly intrude on the rights of other individuals in the society and push cultural autonomy well beyond the private sphere. ...

Modern liberal societies have weak collective identities. Postmodern elites, especially in Europe, feel that they have evolved beyond identities defined by religion and nation. But if our societies cannot assert positive liberal values, they may be challenged by migrants who are more sure of who they are. ...

Immigration forces upon us in a particularly acute way discussion of the question "Who are we?", posed by Samuel Huntington. If postmodern societies are to move towards a more serious discussion of identity, they will need to uncover those positive virtues that define what it means to be a member of the wider society. If they do not, they may be overwhelmed by people who are more sure about who they are.

Fukuyama's article is full of wonderful phrases which one can't help thinking he may have read, at one time or the other, in some of Mark Steyn's writing. But the phrases "game at the end of history" and "postmodern elites, especially in Europe, feel that they have evolved beyond identities" are particularly striking ways of repackaging that old saw "my s**t don't stink". That Westerners have somehow levitated above the primordial need to perform the bodily functions -- and to survive is one of the grand understated premises of the age. And its biggest lie. There is a striking scene, in the 1998 fictional thriller Rainbow Six, where radical environmentalists who had planned to exterminating humanity to allow the earth to revert to some huge game park are punished by stripping away their clothes and told they will be home free if they can make their way some hundred miles across the Amazon jungle to the civilization they had hoped to destroy. Unfortunately for the environmentalists, they had not evolved to the point where they could levitate across the forest and consequently died, probably in excruciating agony.

The larger question implied by Fukuyama's article is how much of the current world crisis is actually due to Western vanity? And one of the fundamental measures of vanity is to what trivial solutions the clueless will resort to solve the most intractable problems. To the problem of hunger, Marie Antoinette was reputed to have said, "let them eat cake". By that standard the vanity of the West is nearly at par with Antoinette's. To the problem of the Muslim challenge challenge to Western Identity we have, well, "citizenship classes". Fukuyama notes, "Britain has recently been borrowing from both American and French traditions as it seeks to raise the visibility of national citizenship. The Labour government has introduced citizenship ceremonies for new citizens as well as compulsory citizenship and language tests." Let them eat cake.

Ralph Peters recently raised a ruckus by declaring that on the day Europe rediscovers itself, it will rediscover the Concentration Camp. There surely must exist alternatives between the ineffectual and the unthinkable; between the tea and crumpets of the citizenship class and the bread and water of the Death Camp. To think otherwise is to remained paralyzed. Unfortunately all the effective responses entail recalling the most unthinkable of all memories: the realization that Leftist thought, or a large part of it, has led the West to this pit of horrors. Until we remember that we can forget everything else.

Not Always Our Fault

Michael Young, in a subscription-only article at the Wall Street Journal, argues that the region, not simply Iraq, has been transformed not only by events around the Tigris -- but in Lebanon and in Palestine as well. The "genie" of Sunni-Shi'ite confrontation, fueled by Iran's new assertiveness, is stalking the region. And unfortunately only solution to this threat is the very one recent events appear to have discredited: the spread of democracy and accountable government in the region.

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A primarily sectarian Arab counter-reaction to expanding Iranian power would be a disaster. It might halt Iran and its comrades in the short term, but Arab regimes could soon become sorcerers' apprentices, swallowed by the forces they unleash. Iran, wrongly believing that popular anti-Israeli and anti-American sentiment would overcome Sunni suspicions of their true intentions, should realize what a Sunni backlash would mean for their security. Once opened, the floodgates of Sunni-Shiite antagonism could become a Leviathan, sweeping away the fragile reality on the ground: Even in societies where Sunnis and Shiites now peacefully coexist, sectarian discord would become the norm.

Then there is the United States. Whatever one thinks of the war in Iraq, it will soon become obvious that it was easier for the Americans to enter the country than to leave it. If a departure leads to metastasizing sectarian hostility throughout the Middle East, then the U.S. will have to seriously rethink its strategy. Whatever else happens, the one assured winner of such a fracas would be the Islamists. Only democracy could prepare Arab states to withstand Iran without recourse to sectarianism. But the Bush administration seems to have abandoned that inventive undertaking for the region.

A chain of sectarian wars is not inevitable. But the only way to avoid it is for all sides to understand the existential red lines of the other sides. Iran's overconfidence is no easier for the region to stomach than was America's. For the first time in decades, the nationalism, tribalism or regime-sponsored Islamism of the Sunni Arab states seem incapable of steeling them against a resurgent Iran, but also its allies, striving to fill the vacuum of fading Arab power. Only these regimes' Sunni identity, an offended Sunni identity at that, might do so. The problem is that what shields them will likely lead the Middle East into further disarray.

There is the unfortunate tendency to regard America as responsible for everything in the world. Michael Young performs the invaluable service of pointing out that the actions and decisions of others matter too. Iran's assertive behavior, beginning with the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and its pursuit of nuclear weapons, not to mention its meddling in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Iraq have poured as much gasoline into the campfire as anything else. Michael Young argues that the illegitimacy and fragility of many Sunni states drives aggressive and paranoid behavior to compensate for weakness at home. And the mixture is lethal.

The less sophisticated version of the West's own paranoia -- the idea that whatever bad thing happens it has somehow deserved -- of which the "we caused 9/11" is a prime example, has the sad effect of sometimes misdirecting analysis. Perhaps not everything is "our fault". The sad truth is that terrorism and the networked insurgency probably would have emerged from the Middle Eastern pressure cooker whatever America did. The concoction of backward, illegitimate regimes, fantasy ideology, abundant oil money, a conflict with Israel, sectarian rivalry. Who would not have imagined such a stew to be incapable of producing terrorism? No one, possibly, except those wedded to the idea that the US is the sole actor in the world. Maybe the basic problem with the idea of "bringing democracy to the Middle East" is that it puts the onus on someone else. It sets up the problem such that America cannot guarantee the outcome. It creates a process whose ultimate product no American President can honestly promise to deliver. Not everything is America's fault; and not everything is in America's power to answer.

The previous post, Play It As It Lays, argues that however much the Democrats may wish it, there is no going back to the status quo ante in the Middle East. Whether American, Iranian or Sunni actions have caused it, the region is a changed place. And because maybe the institutions the US has built over the last four years may be part of the solution as much as contributors to the problem, pure unadulterated obstructionism is probably a recipe for disaster. 

Play It As It Lays

It's an article of faith among many that "Iraq is lost"; that since the chance of establishing a moderate, stable country has effectively been lost, none of the Administration's efforts should be supported. Robert Novak says that the Democrats have effectively bet the farm -- and much else -- on that premise.

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The self-confident Democratic leadership is uninterested in being cut into potentially disastrous outcomes in Iraq. It wants to function as a coordinate branch of government, not as friendly colleagues in the spirit of bipartisanship. Pelosi and several Democratic committee chairmen are leaving for Iraq on Friday. ... The Democratic leadership is beyond consultation on Iraq, as demonstrated by the selection of Sen. Jim Webb to deliver the party's response to the president Tuesday night. Webb, whose unexpected election in Virginia last year gave Democrats a Senate majority, is a hard-edged critic of the war not interested in bipartisanship. Discarding staff-written talking points, professional writer Webb declared: "The president took us into this war recklessly."

But whatever one may think of Iraq today, it is undeniable that the events of the last four years have fundamentally altered the landscape in Iraq. New groups have been empowered in addition to the new enmities created. There is no way back to the antebellum state. This snippet from the Canadian Press for example, contains references to current issues between political groups, none of which existed during the Saddam era.

The mayor of Baghdad's Sadr City says he has reached an agreement with political and religious groups to keep weapons off the streets of the heavily populated Shiite militia stronghold and has presented the deal to U.S. and Iraqi government officials in an apparent attempt to avoid a military crackdown on the area. ... Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has promised the operation will focus on militia violence as well as Sunni insurgents amid criticism that his reluctance to confront his political backer al-Sadr contributed to the failure of previous attempts. Asked if the Mahdi Army militia was among the groups that promised not to carry arms, al-Darraji said, "all the groups with no exception."

Those immense and irrevocable changes must compel even critics of President Bush to consider what an adjustment in strategy should constitute. And the problem is that any reasonable vision of a stable Iraq will contain many of the elements the current Administration has been trying to build: a working mechanism for reconciling the concerns of the ascendant Shi'ites, the battered Sunnis and the Kurds; some way of apportioning oil revenues; a working security apparatus responsible to all three major ethno-cultural groups in Iraq. In a summary, practically any conceivable solution requires a working Iraqi Government and Army. It requires disarming militias and neutralizing terrorist groups. How much of what has been built should be thrown away? How much of what the current administration is trying to achieve can be "safely" undermined?

Many of the administration's critics naturally long for a Way Back Machine. Some method of waking up in 2002 and persuading a nation then considering the invasion of Iraq to change its mind. But unfortunately that is impossible. Saddam is dead. His party and his supporters are scattered and their traditional enemies have been empowered. Nearly every air traveler is familiar with the concept of the Point of No Return, that calculated position in an airplane's path where it requires more fuel to turn back than to continue onward. Even those who have decided to give up on the President as a bad job and who think bipartisanship is dead must ask themselves which parts of the airplane, whose design they obviously hate, can be safely sawed off and jettisoned in flight. Because they will perforce have to rely on much of this airplane -- the past administration's infrastructure, the institutions it has built, the programs it has started -- when it assumes the control it aspires to.

And parenthetically I received an email from someone whose opinion I deeply respect which asserts that despite all that we hear, many of the people on the ground in Iraq (where he writes from) don't believe that "we are losing". That the despair is not only overblown; it is misplaced. And despite the tendency to regard such opinions as the naive enthusiasm of junior observers, there is always the possibility these men on the spot might be right. All the more reason to be careful about what America intends to jettison and what promises it plans to break.

In the Sulu Sea

The article based on my trip to Zamboanga and Basilan is up at Pajamas Media .

Our Precious Bodily Packets

Chinese Party chief Hu Jintao has promised to "purify" the Internet without imposing censorship by raising the level of online guidance. ( Reuters) This gives the slogan "Server the People" a whole new meaning. But seriously, Hu has got to get ahead of the curve.

In 2006, China's Internet users grew by 26 million, or 23.4 percent, year on year, to reach 10.5 percent of the total population, the China Internet Network Information Center said on Tuesday. The vast majority of those users have no access to overseas Chinese Web sites offering uncensored opinion and news critical of the ruling party. But even in heavily monitored China, news of official misdeeds and dissident opinion has been able to travel through online bulletin boards and blogs.

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Recently a blogger in China made the International news by opposing Starbucks, which is a place bloggers normally love because it provides wi-fi access. Blogherald describes how one Chinese blogger has campaigned against the chain opening an outlet in the Forbidden City in China. The International Herald Tribune reports that he had written that:

The outlet is "a symbol of low-end U.S. food culture" and "an insult to Chinese civilization," Rui Chenggang, an anchor at state broadcaster China Central Television, wrote on his personal Web log. The blog has attracted over 540,000 hits and thousands of responses in Internet chat rooms since last Friday.

You can see how the Chinese Communist Party could lap that anti-globalization message (please open your trade doors, America) up. But things may be different if Chinese bloggers start talking about corruption in high places. Hu's decision to "purify" the Internet is the real life inversion of the classic scene in Dr. Strangelove.

General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No, I don't think I do, sir, no.
General Jack D. Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Polonium 210 and Litvinenko revisited

AJ Strata argues new evidence shows that Alexander Litvinenko could not have been the victim of an assassination and therefore must have been poisoned by Polonium 210 he was handling accidentally. If true, this raises disturbing questions about what the Polonium was for and for whom it was intended. Because of its short half-life, if anything bad were intended of it, we ought to be hearing about it fairly soon -- unless of course whatever it was has been aborted.

Photos you may want to see.

I found this photograph at photojournalist Jim MacMillan's excellent site which gives a sense of what riding shotgun can mean when it involves leaning out of doors in helicopters flying over Baghdad. The photographs on his site are definitely worth a look.

Operations in Baghdad

There's a special report from Omar at Pajamas Media regarding ongoing operations in Bahgdad.

The lock and key

Robert Mayer at Publius Pundit responds to the message in President Bush's State of the Union Address with his heart, but can he respond, with equal enthusiasm with his intellect? Bush struck a chord near and dear to Mayer and to anyone who has been as involved with the Third World. Bush reaffirmed, rhetorically at least, his commitment to freedom. And freedom, which Americans notice no more than they do the air, is not taken for granted in most parts of the world.

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Tonight, President Bush wears a passive light blue tie. The fact is that among many foreign policy gurus, realpolitik is back on the dinner table because democracy has failed in the Middle East. Third Worldists contend that the Islamic and Arab world in particular simply is not ready for democracy. There are now more skeptics than believers, and even the administration itself has not been so noisy about the subject in the past year. The fact that President Bush tells us tonight that he still believes, however, is heartening. ... President Bush has ideologically always been right on target. Advancing and preserving democracy is and always will be in the best interests of the people of the world as well as of the United States.

"... always will be in the best interests of the people of the world as well as of the United States." Find words, but there is the little matter of implementation. To set against Mayer's intuitive attraction to freedom, there is this warning speech from James Webb as quoted at the Belgravia Dispatch. He argues that good intentions are worthless without competence; a Children's Crusade; the betrayal of ideals.

On the political issues ­ those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death ­ we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm's way. We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us­ sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defending it.

By Webb's standard not just President Bush, but a several generations of American leaders stands condemned. Not just Johnson or Carter. Nor even the first Bush, who planted the seeds for a long-drawn out confrontation in the Middle East whose bitter crop is now fully springing to life; but the whole sorry era of the 1990s as America sleepwalked into a war against it of which it was not even aware. Of all the places where Webb's words ought be inscribed without the slightest irony, there is none better than the base of what was once the World Trade Center.

Yet the fault does not lie -- at least fundamentally -- with individual politicians. The world is in the middle of an epochal transition, a transition with various names. It has been known as a Clash of Civilizations; a shift from the Nation State to the Market State; the showdown between McWorld and the New Caliphate or the end times in advance of the Hidden Imam. But whatever the nomenclature, this epoch constitutes a challenge for which no Western leader as yet has clear answers. Not to the question of what to do with Europe's burgeoning Muslim communities; nor to the deadly rivalry between Sunni and Shi'a across the Middle East; nor to the challenge of radical Islam the world over. Webb is right to expect "sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare" and guarantees of safety from President Bush. But what better satisfaction can he obtain from Pelosi, Obama, Murtha or Hillary Clinton, who may not only not know the answer, they may not even understand the question. Is there no balm in Gilead? None. But that doesn't mean we can't start to invent some. Both Iraq and 9/11 are examples of challenges posed by the new epoch that won't go away. And they will not go away until freedom, at least as expressed as the absence the mental tyranny embodied by the toxic ideology embodied by radical theocracies, is widespread over the earth. Robert Mayer is right. And so is James Webb. Strategy and operational competence are meaningless without each other. A thumbs up for freedom. And two thumbs up for attaining freedom through learned competence.