"President Bush's strategy on Iraq is un-American."

"President Bush's strategy on Iraq is un-American."

So reads the odd pre-registration byline of this Francis Fukuyama editorial from the New York Times [Online registration required].

Setting aside this odd choice of words, Mr. Fukuyama makes some observations that I consider cogent, but combines them with some pure doozies. A frat boy fisking an internationally renowned intellectual, well, might as well be someone expendable like me.

"As we mark four years since Sept. 11, 2001, one way to organize a review of what has happened in American foreign policy since that terrible day is with a question: To what extent has that policy flowed from the wellspring of American politics and culture, and to what extent has it flowed from the particularities of this president and this administration?"

It is tempting to see continuity with the American character and foreign policy tradition in the Bush administration's response to 9/11, and many have done so. We have tended toward the forcefully unilateral when we have felt ourselves under duress; and we have spoken in highly idealistic cadences in such times, as well. Nevertheless, neither American political culture nor any underlying domestic pressures or constraints have determined the key decisions in American foreign policy since Sept. 11.

It is tempting to see continuity with the American character and foreign policy tradition in the Bush administration's response to 9/11, and many have done so. We have tended toward the forcefully unilateral when we have felt ourselves under duress; and we have spoken in highly idealistic cadences in such times, as well. Nevertheless, neither American political culture nor any underlying domestic pressures or constraints have determined the key decisions in American foreign policy since Sept. 11.

To begin with, the implication from the byline is that if it had not drawn upon American traditions, it is somehow alien and therefore suspect of being incorrect. This is juvenile - the world does not conform itself to American habits and traditions. There was no precedent for the widespread international commitments that American took up to contain the Soviet Union - an isolationist power turned into the guardian of the democratic West through necessity not out of habit or history.

Political culture and domestic pressures? The Bush administration inherited a collossal problem out of thin air, one that Republicans, Democrats, most think tanks and the China obsessed military, had not seriously considered in depth - the 1990s had been a decade-long air walk so long as the problem of Islamic extremism was concerned, some feet have yet to hit the ground. There was no political culture or domestic pressures for any particular way to deal with radical Islam because few people had ever talked about it and those who did were ignored. Even more ominously, there was no discussion of America's place in the post-Cold War world, although a certain intellectual suggested we didn't even need to discuss it. After all, "history had ended," liberal democracy had won, and the big questions needed no longer to be answered. Uh huh, well apparently, it wasn't so, and we're now dealing with reality. But alas, I'll try not to be so snarky with my distinguished elders.

"In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Americans would have allowed President Bush to lead them in any of several directions, and the nation was prepared to accept substantial risks and sacrifices. The Bush administration asked for no sacrifices from the average American, but after the quick fall of the Taliban it rolled the dice in a big way by moving to solve a longstanding problem only tangentially related to the threat from Al Qaeda - Iraq. In the process, it squandered the overwhelming public mandate it had received after Sept. 11. At the same time, it alienated most of its close allies, many of whom have since engaged in "soft balancing" against American influence, and stirred up anti-Americanism in the Middle East."

In the first place, for the most part, the United States did not alienate its "allies". They alienated themselves, for cynical political reasons and a moralistic self-righteous and fundamentally unserious European political climate. The Europeans were not on board for any serious long-term effort, many were barely tolerating us as soon as they discovered innocent people were actually dying during the War in Afghanistan. Civilian casualties in a war? Gee, who would have thought? "Allies" are not countries whom you change your goals to placate, but countries that help you achieve your own goals, mostly because they themselves support your aims. Much of the political class and the public opinion making organs within "Europe" do not support America's general well-being. For the time being we must recognize and deal with this. Anti-Americanism in the Middle East needed little stirring, it goes together about as well as peanut butter and jelly.

Iraq, as tangentially related to the threat from Al Qaeda - OK, I might buy that. Iraq was not a war of choice, the war was brought to us on 9-11, but it most certainly was a theatre of choice within that war, much as North Africa or Burma were during World War II. But where exactly would Mr. Fukuyama or the administration's many critics suggest that we have headed next after Afghanistan? Once Afghanistan was liberated there was no where else the USA could go but Iraq. There were no grounds, nor political consensus, to deal with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or Iran [with Saddam unconstrained on our flank, nonetheless]. And considering our military difficulties, I consider it a miracle we did not have that consensus. We have learned many things from Iraq, and possibly the most important is this - to deal with the root of this problem directly, "we're gonna need a bigger boat [military]."

There were no strategies painstakingly developed to deal with the situation presented to the Bush administration, make no mistake we are at war with a branch of one of the world's greatest religions. Not the entire religion, but one well funded and increasingly influential branch, mostly originating in Saudi Arabia, the guardian of Mecca and Medina. We recognize that now, but back then many of us did not even realize this most basic pillar of our situation. The administration started from scratch, looking for a strategy, and the neo-Conservatives provided one where few others could - turn the place upside down. Al Qaeda wants to be revolutionary? Okay, we're the most revolutionary country in world history - the original shot heard round the world.

Will it work? Maybe. Is there a feasible fallback grand strategy visible on either the left or right? Not that I've yet seen, besides a horrific and confused total war against an enemy we can't accurately place and is surrounded by non-combatants.

The Bush administration could instead have chosen to create a true alliance of democracies to fight the illiberal currents coming out of the Middle East. It could also have tightened economic sanctions and secured the return of arms inspectors to Iraq without going to war. It could have made a go at a new international regime to battle proliferation. All of these paths would have been in keeping with American foreign policy traditions. But Mr. Bush and his administration freely chose to do otherwise.

In a perfect world, all of Mr. Fukuyama's suggestions seem so clear. The problem is the state of the world, with its so many opposing interests. An alliance of democracies? Oh how simple, one must think Mr. Fukuyama has been sleeping through the past few years of Europe's utter obstructionism and self-righteous condemnations. They don't understand our war, and they don't want to understand our war. On the most basic level, they resent us and what we stand for, and they lack the self confidence to ever accept such a mission. It is common knowledge that by the late 1990s, economic sanctions on Iraq were held down by the rear-guard action of two countries - the UK and the US. For this, we received the ire of the world, blamed for 1 million deaths cynically allowed by a wily dictator. Suddenly we would receive this consensus? The French and Russians were suddenly just going to give up on their oil contracts? Sell it elsewhere. We didn't want Hussein contained, at the expense of our image and our effort - we wanted him gone and that is entirely in line with American foreign policy traditions.

Fukuyama, does however, make a very accurate [to my mind] observation:

"The administration's policy choices have not been restrained by domestic political concerns any more than by American foreign policy culture. Much has been made of the emergence of "red state" America, which supposedly constitutes the political base for President Bush's unilateralist foreign policy, and of the increased number of conservative Christians who supposedly shape the president's international agenda. But the extent and significance of these phenomena have been much exaggerated.

So much attention has been paid to these false determinants of administration policy that a different political dynamic has been underappreciated. Within the Republican Party, the Bush administration got support for the Iraq war from the neoconservatives (who lack a political base of their own but who provide considerable intellectual firepower) and from what Walter Russell Mead calls "Jacksonian America" - American nationalists whose instincts lead them toward a pugnacious isolationism.

Happenstance then magnified this unlikely alliance. Failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the inability to prove relevant connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda left the president, by the time of his second inaugural address, justifying the war exclusively in neoconservative terms: that is, as part of an idealistic policy of political transformation of the broader Middle East. The president's Jacksonian base, which provides the bulk of the troops serving and dying in Iraq, has no natural affinity for such a policy but would not abandon the commander in chief in the middle of a war, particularly if there is clear hope of success."

Jacksonians traditionally support muscular foreign policy, but only because it is in our best interests. The problem is that the President never initially made the neo-Conservative case for this war, explaining why exactly a democratic Iraq was in this nation's long term interests. He didn't need to, opting instead to use WMD as a reason that would more easily attract domestic American support and make an international case, one that we believed was airtight even when we realized we'd be forced to deal with European obstructions. In the end, they'd end up with that much egg on your face as we paraded chemical weapons past the Security Council.

In retrospect, we suffered the most crippling intelligence failure in this nation's history. Decades of political correct bullshit, the elimination of our human intelligence capabilities, and institutional group think delivered one of the biggest surprises of this country's political history. There's plenty of blame to go around for that one, and I don't plan on dealing with it any more here. The point is, in my opinion, neo-Conservatism wasn't sold.

The exportation of democracy was of course a major goal for the invasion of Iraq from the very beginning. It was not the only goal: a short description also includes the need to set an example and prove we could act, to get rid of Saddam Hussein and his weapons, there's a number of them and they've been outlined much better by people much more intelligent than I. Neo-conservatism, Iraqi democracy, was, however, the big tomale - it links Iraq to the War on Terror, our bigger problem. When the easy to grasp rationale of WMD fell through, the administration was left using vague statements supporting the spread of freedom, but we'd never set the context for this apparently [especially to an willfully stupid political opposition] sudden shift.

The problem that Fukuyama correctly observes is that since the neo-Conservative argument - why this was in America's best interests - had never been set, too many Jacksonians, the key to America's war-making potential, may see it as spreading freedom for its own sake, rather than as a necessary step for American security.

"This war coalition is fragile, however, and vulnerable to mishap. If Jacksonians begin to perceive the war as unwinnable or a failure, there will be little future support for an expansive foreign policy that focuses on promoting democracy. That in turn could drive the 2008 Republican presidential primaries in ways likely to affect the future of American foreign policy as a whole."

I agree with Fukuyama, Jacksonians will not buy an apparently losing effort merely for the "noble Iraqi people". Selling this war as a humanitarian venture is a losing proposition for them. Furthermore, if we fail in Iraq, and possibly even if we succeed, I don't think the Bush doctrine will survive. We may generally support liberalization and democratization as we always have, but it will not nearly be as active and direct an effort. There will not be an Operation Iranian/Pakistani/Saudi Freedom. If anything, the lesson the military and political establishment has learned from Iraq is that this sure as hell isn't anything we want to do again lightly.

I myself am a Jacksonian, but one who has adopted neo-conservatism as a tactic - but importantly, not an identity. It is a tool in the toolbox, not an all encompassing mindset. The question for me isn't whether the neo-conservative effort in Iraq is theoretically in line with America's interests. I think it is. The problem is the state of the world, with its so many opposing interests, the sheer retrograde state of much of the Islamic world and the so many factors working to keep it there, including Europe's utter obstructionism. With this imperfect world, it may not be a viable tactic. Iraq's a test case, due to many reasons it presented the only offered place to start. So if neo-conservatism fails, where would we go next? If it fails, we're back to step 1, except in an even worse position than where we started, and with our primary strategy needing replacement.

A Democratic foreign policy is much harder to predict, because it is unclear whether the loons of the Dean wing will retain their control or the more realistic Clinton moderates will retake back the Party. I’m not too optimistic of the latter occurring at the moment. However, a Republican fall back position is more easy to grasp. I would expect the temporary evolution of some sort of self-interested muscular foreign policy, with a touch of isolationism. This would be accompanied by the end of politically correct and obsolete diplomacy, pretending that traditional "friends" will always be so and finding some new friends, ones with similar interests to ours. I'd also expect the mothballing of the "you build it, you break it" line of warfare. Where possible it should be done, but I suspect in most cases it will be merely self-defeating and draining. We'll never against suspect that we can redo thousands of year of indigenous culture so easily. In the absence of this carrot, stick-driven gun boat diplomacy will be a likely substitute.

We'll find ourselves still acting in the worst places, but it'll be for much shorter term goals and shorter-lasting efforts. It also won't be a total isolationism, although it most certainly will include a general reduction of American military commitments in non-essential areas. It will be a much more selfish foreign policy. We'll keep ties with helpful allies such as Japan, India, Australia, Eastern Europe, and possibly the UK [depending on if they go EUnuch]. Most importantly, however, we will work with countries that are willing and able to actually contribute to our efforts, and who are not just are looking to be taken seriously and courted for their stamp of approval. Does it mean we'll abandon the field to the enemy? No, but absent emergency contigency scenarios, our commitments will be low-scale, often not well publicized, and in places most Americans have never heard of.

Plenty of controversial things for readers to comment on, and I gladly welcome them to. It’s obviously a work in process, a necessary evil with a world we’re only beginning to reengage after a decade of sleepwalking.

Thanks to Outside the Beltway.

Survivor

Today I made another visit to the clinic because my condition seemed to be getting worse, to the point where I began researching deathbed quotations [My favorite: "I feel nothing, apart from a certain difficulty in continuing to exist."].

The clinic discovered that my strep strand somehow developed a resistance to penicillin. Apparently, even my bacteria are overachievers. This led to a "peritonsillar abscess" in the back of my throat and a voice resembling the stereotypical Italian mob boss. It isn't too serious, but it means I'll be out of action a little longer while putting down liquids, watching T.V, and trying to make sense of my drug induced hallucinations [the French aren't worthless!]. The good news is that they massively increased my dosage, so I should be feeling better relatively soon. Thanks for the kind comments and emails, but if you can spare the time, this mother could use some as well.

Update

Strep it is, with a crushing earache. Haven't slept the past two nights so blogging will be light until I feel better.

Sorry about the relatively light blogging. I haven't been feeling too great the past few days - think it might be strep throat. Will be back ASAP.

Al Qaeda and Fourth Generation Warfare

Pentagon plans for 'long war' on terror.

"The obstinacy of the Iraqi insurgency and the sudden surge in violence in Afghanistan may make it appear that the US military in the region is spending all of its time fighting a war on two fronts.

But senior officers within US Central Command, the Pentagon body responsible for the Middle East and surrounding regions, have already begun planning for what one top commander terms “the long war”: the battle that will come once Iraq and Afghanistan are finally pacified.

According to Major General Douglas Lute, who as director of operations for Centcom is responsible for near-term planning, the long war amounts to an offensive from the Horn of Africa to the borders of Afghanistan to ensure that al-Qaeda and its affiliated terror organisations do not find a safe haven once they are forced out of their current bases."

...

“We're concerned in our area of operations about what happens to Zarqawi when Iraq is stabilised, which we believe it eventually will be, and the path of least resistance takes Zarqawi somewhere else,” Maj Gen Lute said. “It is clear that even a network as I've described, which is not fundamentally state-based or state-sponsored, still requires some sort of physical sanctuary where they can organise themselves, train themselves, marshal forces, marshal assets, and then proceed from there.”

For Centcom planners, those safe havens are both physical and virtual. On the physical side, the main concerns lie in the Horn of Africa, where vast ungovernable spaces would provide ideal homes for Mr Zarqawi and his associates.

From Yemen across the Arabian Sea into Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, local forces have already seen stepped-up US efforts to train and strengthen elite counter-terrorist units to combat any al-Qaeda affiliate that might emerge. Their efforts also include work with border control and immigration agencies to modernise their approaches to tracking those moving across their borders.

But perhaps more interestingly, Maj Gen Lute noted that Centcom was increasingly looking to fight its campaign on the internet, where Islamic radicals have found ways to recruit, train, and raise funds for their cause. He said terror networks had become so sophisticated that they had begun to use otherwise prosaic commercial applications such as PayPal, the internet payment system, to collect donations to their cause.

“These guys are sophisticated in their use of what we call the virtual safe haven, the virtual sanctuary,” he said.

“One of the things that we are hot on right now is how to contest that virtually safe haven.”

Interestingly, no mention of Waziristan, which already serves as a Taliban and Al Qaeda safe haven on the eastern border of Afghanistan. Perhaps made lazy by their former Afghani sanctuary, Al Qaeda literature emphasizes attaining a "core state," where the organization can act freely and train openly. Prior to 9-11, they literally owned Afghanistan, where the Taliban relied on Al Qaeda shock troops to retain control.

From Wikipedia, the simplest definition [of fourth generation warfare] includes any war in which one of the major participants is not a state but rather a violent ideological network. Fourth Generation wars are characterized by a blurring of the lines between war and politics, soldier and civilian, peace and conflict, battlefield and safety." Prior to 9-11, Al Qaeda was effectively a fourth generation animal wedded to a state. The Taliban acted as a front group, giving Al Qaeda plausible deniability to avoid responses to its acts of wars against the United States.

More worrisome to me than Al Qaeda's attempt to replace Afghanistan would be a full commitment to fourth generation warfare. This would mean ditching its doctrine and avoiding any attempt to concentrate and coopt a physical sanctuary, instead relying on methods similar the internet communications and dispatches noted in the article. A transition to fourth generation warfare would mean an end to Al Qaeda's operational control, because there are inherent limits to cellular structure, beyond which the leadership can no longer maintain cohesion and purpose. The result could be a militant anarchism as unwelcome to Al Qaeda's traditional leadership as it is to us.

Al Qaeda's commitment to reacquiring a sanctuary is partially motivated by its plan of action and pie in the sky goals. If Al Qaeda's goal was merely to destroy the United States, it could much easily move to a more fluid and de-centralized organization. However, because Al Qaeda sees itself as the core of a soon to come Islamic reformation and restored Caliphate, it must not only destroy, but prepare to build. This requires a higher and more cohesive profile, and for the reins of power to remain firmly in the leadership's hands.

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Comments would be great, I'm just theorizing here and would enjoy any contributions.

Thanks to Outside the Beltway.

Why Iran's a major problem

The following post will be controversial in friendly circles. It is merely an honest attempt at analysis. Perhaps it will advance the debate in some way, or at least demonstrate the sheer scale of the problems facing us. Wishing for a silver bullet may be emotionally satisfying, but not necessarily helpful. The decisions will only get harder as the 21st century continues and nuclear proliferation continues to fall apart. Iran and North Korea will not be the last.

I’ve already said that I think Iran will get nuclear weapons. Absent a major attack or another wild card event which leads to our dismissal of nation building (i.e. total warfare), I believe our only option for the foreseeable future is waiting them out and maintaining our nuclear deterrence. We do not have a credible military option and either sanctions or military attacks risk the future coup that we seem ultimately guaranteed.

The Iranian youth do not hate us. Approaching half the country was born after the 1979 revolution. They have very little reason to hate America and do not like Muslim fundamentalism; the Great Satan rhetoric is alien to them.

Give it 10 to 20 years and it'll be a much different Iran, and I agree with Ralph Peters, a possible American ally. The trick is of course surviving 10 to 20 years with the Mullahs, but MAD is the only answer absent total war or nuclear preemption, and the forfeiture of the pro-American sympathies of Iranian youth.

Not a popular answer, but we’ve run into the limit of our capabilities in subduing a country 1/3rd the size of Iran, aided by a Kurdish population with strong American ties and allies such as Great Britain. So long as we are committed to rebuilding these countries better than they were before, we cannot due it with our current Army.

My personal opinion is we'll covertly help the internal Iranian political dissidents, but will try to avoid doing anything to give the Mullahs an excuse to crack down and use us as a scapegoat. Iranians like us, but they will rally against outside interference, and the nuclear bomb is a popular acquisition. It is one of the few areas in which the Mullahs have majoritarian domestic support - the natural consequence of a country surrounded by enemies and with a historical fear of outside interference. Even a democratic Iran would likely be a nuclear Iran.

It is an old program, one in which we originally acquiesced. America trained thousands of Iranian nuclear engineers when the Shah planned to have 22 reactors installed by the late 1980s. These plans were of course interrupted by Khomeini. Some of these nuclear workers emigrated moved to the West and the rest await the Iranian industry. It is a popular national program in Iran which not only promises Iran a deterrent against outside interference, but is also strongly connected to Iranian economic plans, which are to sell natural gas and oil but use nuclear power for domestic consumption. The Mullahs will have a field day blaming America for killing Iranian economic ambitions.

Some suggest that the Israelis will take the problem out of our hands, indeed that perhaps we should act before they do so. This strikes me as a grasp at straws, and I fear its predictors will be as shocked as those who couldn’t believe the efficient Germans did not have a contingency plan at Munich.

Some of my own hypotheses:

A. Considering the state of our HUMINT, I am not convinced we have enough intelligence to directly attack the program from the air, and even this option is merely a delay, not a solution. 10 years after Osirak the Iraqi nuclear program was on the verge (a year) of constructing a weapon, only to be derailed by the Gulf War.

B. Some will say that the Mossad and IAF can do so, but the Mossad isn't the wonder weapon it once was either. Its initial edge was given to it not only by its ruthlessness and skill, but also the wide variety of refugees that Israel accepted from all over the world. It was an intelligence officer’s paradise, and the primary reason that when we wanted a copy of Khrushchev’s speech condemning Stalin, we asked the Israelis get it for us. To do so they used a rat line of Jewish agents reaching behind the Iron Curtain. Israel had contacts. Those contacts were destined to run out as time passes, and if you remember, Sharon made some declarations on Libya's nuclear program last year that turned out to be far from the mark. It makes me wonder if the Mossad is becoming as puffed up as the once dreaded and mythical CIA.

C. The Iranians are not fools, they've had 20 years to digest the lessons of the Osirak bombings. I find it impossible to believe, and I've heard many people more informative on the Iranian nuclear program than me state this, that the Iranian nuclear program is organized so that air strikes can take it out so easily. It is likely decentralized throughout the country. With regard to the Israelis, Iran is a much more difficult flight than Osirak, which was itself a complete strategic surprise. The Iranians have had 20 years to plan for this eventuality.

The combination of these factors makes me think that the only really good Israeli military option is to preemptively nuke Iran first, conventional arms won't do it. But this sets them, in my opinion, down the road to full international sanctions and the exploitation of this event to the extent that even Americans no longer support the nuker of millions. Whether this is fair or not, considering the circumstances, will most likely be irrelevant.

I don't know what they are going to do, but I don't see an attack in the cards. Their whole series of options all around the board, from Gaza and the West Bank, to Iran - all of them are horrible.

So Iran gets nuclear weapons, what are the implications?

I'm not sanguine about the current Iranian leadership's intentions. They are an enemy. However, we Western analysts often downgrade to our detriment the Sunni-Shiite Muslim divide. Iran works with Al Qaeda, yes. They’ve provided sanctuary and even logistical support. You'll never see me spouting off the BS about Hussein's secularism or Iran's Shiite population meaning they'd never work with Al Qaeda. They do hate us more than each other.

In spite of this, Iran and Al Qaeda are the champions of two different branches of fundamentalism, often at odds with each other. The Iranian branch is limited by factors outside its control - the majority of the Muslim world is Sunni. This is ultimately why Khomeini's movement petered out, save in a few odd places such as Lebanon. His own fundamentalism prompted calls for religious renewals in other countries, but Sunni renewals. The Iran-Iraq war became a proxy war between most of the Sunni Powers against newly resurgent Iran. Ideologically, Iran is much less of a threat to us than Sunni Saudi Arabia or Pakistan – its reach is limited by the Sunni-Shiite structure of the Muslim world.

Militarily, it is a mid-sized state actor which we can threaten with full retaliation. It isn't a shadowy ideological movement spread within 1 billion people. If we win in Iraq it'll probably be gone within the decade. If we lose in Iraq it'll probably still be gone within a generation. Sunni Islam is our biggest problem, not the decrepit and even domestically unpopular heirs of Khomeini.

So what about the Israelis?

Honestly, I am glad I don't live in the Israelis' shoes. I read a very prescient report by an Israeli think tank last year that dealt with the emergency of Iranian nuclear power. The think tank came to the conclusions I did regarding the limits of a conventional attack. It said that considering these limits, the Israelis had no choice but to use nuclear weapons first on Iran; they couldn't afford allowing this existential threat to materialize.

I don't know what I'd do in their situation. As an American I feel we could afford to wait the Iranians out, and rely on deterrence, given our present options. If I was an Israeli I'm presented with some awful options, ones that could ultimately kill me in the end anyway. In the worst case scenario I predict that they will rely on their own nuclear deterrent.

Pakistan, India, North Korea, and Iran mean the end of the limited nuclear club. We delayed the inevitable and kept nukes out of the authoritarian third world for as long as we could. In retrospect it was not long considering how short the nuclear age has been, but nukes are a useful tool and valuable deterrent. Expect Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states to investigate expanding their own nuclear programs, looking to Pakistan in particular for technical aid. It means a more dangerous world, but given the current circumstances, I don't see any way to stop it.

Would this all be different had we not attacked Iraq? Setting aside the notion of finding invasion points absent the Iraqi border, be grateful we did not deal with a country 3 times the size of Iraq while still under the notion it would be easy to rebuild these societies, and before we realized the extent of our HUMINT and general intelligence problems. No, Iraq has been far from perfect and is far from a guarenteed success. Even if the Neo-Conservatives are ultimately vindicated, I do not believe it will prevent nuclear proliferation. It will, however, make it safer, putting the weapons in the hands of democratic leadership rather than unchecked authoritarians.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

American Muslims

Dean Esmay links to a Wall Street Journal piece profiling the average American Muslim.

"Whatever the real figure, what's reasonably clear is that Muslim Americans, like Arab-Americans, have fared well in the U.S. The Zogby survey found that 59% of American Muslims have at least an undergraduate education, making them the most highly educated group in America. Muslim Americans are also the richest Muslim community in the world, with four in five earning more than $25,000 a year and one in three more than $75,000. They tend to be employed in professional fields, and most own stock, either personally or through 401(k) or pension plans. In terms of civic participation, 82% are registered to vote, half of them as Democrats. Interestingly, however, the survey found that 65% of Muslim Americans favor lowering the income tax."

American Muslims actually have a higher mean income than the rest of the country. Even with the attacks on the melting pot, we've done a fantastic job integrating our new citizens compared to Europe and some other countries. It is my own hypothesis that we might have at least one potential weakspot, however. The less affluent indigenous black Muslim population, with its origins in the more politically radical Nation of Islam. Here's hoping I'm wrong, but if I was Al Qaeda, that's who I'd specifically go after.

Another Roundup

More good stuff:

Winds of Change remembers when American propaganda was good, before the dirty Cold War and decades of leftist propaganda dulled both America's innate self-righteousness and its international reputation. Will we ever get it back?

Damian compares Australia to Canada and concludes:

"Aside from our having fewer weird animals with crazy names, the biggest differences between Canada and Australia are Canada's large French population, and our country's closeness to the United States. In many ways, French-Canadians see the world very differently from their English countrymen (never mind our differences over the Iraq war, look up the 1942 conscription referendum results), and history shows that you simply cannot form a majority government in this country without electing a significant number of MPs from that province. And Canadians have reacted to the colossus next door by defining themselves almost exclusively in opposition to the uncouth, warmongering Yanks.

Below the Beltway asks, have we become a bunch of wimps?

Say what you want for the nuance and intellectual sophistication of modern patriotism, but I agree with De Gaulle. During wartime I'd take 1 jingoist and martial Jacksonian over 5 reasoned patriots.

The Wunder Kraut writes about a Belgian soccer team that lost 50-1 because its goalkeeper was at a film festival.

He also talks about his plans to adopt a foreign orphan, something I've myself thought about for the future.

Swaziland women celebrate the end of a national ban on sex for women under 18.

"As part of the end of ban, the girls in private burned the tasseled scarves that symbolized their chastity. About 30,000 girls then later joined the king in a two-hour ceremony in Swaziland's national stadium."

Humor aside, this statistic is staggering:

"Experts said the rite did little to slow AIDS in Swaziland, a country of about 1 million where 42.6 percent of pregnant women and up to 40 percent of adults are infected with the virus — the highest rate in the world."

Public's Confidence in Military News Wanes

To take a deeper look at Confidence in Military News Wanes:

On a recent Belmont Club thread, a commentator [Trish 11:27AM] laid out the difficulties our leadership faces in promoting its efforts in the wider War on Terror:

The difficulty of assessing the wider war - er, struggle - outside Iraq and Afghanistan is that there is much unseen, much unknown. Hell, this is true inside of OIF and OEF.

What's being done about Syria? What's being done about Iran?

We ourselves may never know.

I think this is a genuine problem when a vocal minority demands some kind of show - some reassurance, some concrete evidence, that you are indeed doing something - and you cannot give it to them.

...

It's a classified, compartmentalized war - made worse, public perception-wise, by unreliable or absent, reporting of that which can be known.

And any civilian leader is going to have a hell of a time compensating for these in his effort to keep support and confidence high.

Indeed, we elect representatives to make decisions based on information that we do not know and sometimes cannot know. We try to find the most capable and informed, and appoint them to act in our stead. It is anti-democratic, but we are not a democracy.

Our lack of access to the shadow war is juxtaposed with an overflow of highly politicized information provided by the 24/7 news cycle. The increased capability of news media to give us bits and pieces means that voters are now judging events so relatively inconsequential as individual IED attacks and small-unit actions. We of course do this without the background information and context to which our leadership has access, but we're starved for any information, so these events stand in for and replace the efforts we do not and cannot know about. We're given a puzzle, and find that we not only lack the means to put it together, but are also missing most of the necessary pieces.

Commentator Annoy Mouse expounds:

"We the people own the ball team and we have hired the general manager. The general manager has hired the coaches and helped select members of the team. Now its fourth and inches and we demand from the high stadium seats: “What is the play?” Better yet, give us the damn playbook so we can nod our collective heads as the game unfolds.

But instead, we are left to look at the score on the board, the body counts, what 20lb explosive got flung into the sea, by whom, and ponder from these meager resources, the meaning of life from the shadows on the wall.

Where is Walter Cronkite to give us a daily dose paltry pablum? The sedating effects of the media has withered into obscurity with the innocence of that era, embodied in the nostalgia of simpler times, when people power was the answer and the press was our mentor. Now we the people demand answers and we must seek it ourselves because those we trusted to inform us are now corporate conglomerates that know their business is to entertain us. Bring us up and set us gently down again like a predictable weekly series that begins and ends with all things back in their place, only a shallow moral to carry us through the commercial break for Paxel."

Traditional news sources cannot fill in the blanks for us. They themselves do not know the answers and have their own institutional and ideological limitations. We're now dealing with the complexities of the world unfiltered. In an age where people do not trust their politicians, they must take a back seat, all the way back in the upper decks.

Thanks to Outside the Beltway and the Mudville Gazette.

Roundup

There's lots interesting stuff out there today:

Confidence in Military News Wanes:

"According to a McCormick Tribune Foundation/Gallup poll scheduled for release today, Americans are more interested in national security than they were in the past. But only 54 percent of Americans say they feel the military keeps them well informed, down from 77 percent in 1999 -- before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.


Similarly, the public grew increasingly skeptical of the news media's efforts, with 61 percent of Americans saying that the media keep them well informed on military and national security issues, down from 79 percent in 1999. More than three-quarters of Americans also believe that the military occasionally provides false or inaccurate information to the media, according to the poll, which surveyed 1,016 adults during the first two weeks of June."

The New Trojan War:

"Today the Pentagon faces a similar situation. Adversaries have been attacking Defense Department computer networks in attempts to bypass the United States' formidable defenses and attack from the inside out.

Defense and industry officials describe DOD networks as the Achilles' heel of the powerful U.S. military. Securing military networks is even more critical in an increasingly transformed military in which information is as much a weapon as tanks and assault rifles...

Top U.S. military cyberwarriors recently said that adversaries probe DOD computers within minutes of the systems' coming online. The cyberwarriors described DOD's computer network defense strategy as a battle of attrition in which neither side has an advantage. Retired Army officers and industry officials say Chinese hackers are the primary culprits."

Victor Davis Hanson and Arianna Huffington to Debate US Foreign Policy:

"New York Tribune Media Services columnists Victor Davis Hanson and Arianna Huffington will square off in a debate about whether the U.S. is "internationalist or imperial."

The debate is scheduled for Sept. 14 at the Gerald R. Ford Museum Auditorium, Grand Rapids, Mich. It's the first in a series of events (also taking place Oct. 6-7 and Nov. 17) on "War and Empire" hosted by the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University.

Huffington and Hanson are also authors, and Huffington is the namesake behind the high-profile Huffington Post group blog/news site.

-Talk about a mismatch.

Brain Droppings and Viking Pundit eagerly await Kos' attempt to "radiate" the moderate Democrats of the DLC.

Brain Droppings also includes this accurate description of left-wing patriotism:

"The problem with the liberal concept of 'patriotism' is that they are patriotic only to their personal conception of what the country should be. This renders the idea of patriotism meaningless - it is trivial to say that one has a loyalty to one's own world views. Their unbridled criticism results, then, from the failure of the country to satisfy their individual tenets about what it should be.

This of course, renders the whole conception of patriotism moot, because these tenets can be applied to any nation. It is a loyalty to ideas and concepts, not a nation state. That is not to say that I think this is necessarily wrong or evil, but I'll call a spade a spade - Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore aren't patriots in the traditional sense. And although it is a unavoidable aspect of democratic discourse, dissent is not inherently patriotic. The guy standing outside Borders with a sign blaming America for every ill imaginable is not the Grand Poobah of patriotism.

Vietpundit asks if America's racist, and answers:

"Sure some Americans are racist. But you know what? I’ll let you in on a little secret, ok? Some Vietnamese are racist, too. Yup, that’s shocking, ain’t it?

The truth is that there’s less racism in America than anywhere else on earth. Just from the little corner of Asia where I came from: the Vietnamese hate the Chinese, who can’t stand the Japanese, who despise the Koreans, who of course loath the Japanese, and you can complete the circle yourself. Even amongst Vietnamese, Southerners hate Northerners, and vice versa. Even in my tiny hometown of Da Nang, people from District One consider those in District Three (on the other side of the Han River) backward and stupid.

Am I making too broad a generalization here? Of course I am. And that’s the point. There’s prejudice everywhere you go. There are good people everywhere you go, too, and there are plenty of them in America. Just go to any American embassy abroad and look at the long lines of people waiting to apply for a Visa, and tell them that America is a racist country."

Journalism

Dean Esmay defends journalist Jay Rosen, who closed down his comments section after an avalanche of negative feedback during a discussion with Austin Bay.

I can see his sympathy for Jay Rosen, who at least was making an attempt at discussion. I can also see why Rosen took the attacks on his profession poorly. However, in general is hard for me to have much sympathy for the media business. They've been raking everyone over the coals for decades to the detriment of our political system. If it wasn't for the relentlessly critical press organs I find it unlikely our politicians, CIA, and military would have been so timid in dealing with so many of our current problems. Fear of exposes and self-righteous condemnation was most certainly on their minds. Considering the state their product [journalism] they could use a couple hundred good tongue lashings.

Worthwhile post on Chinese-Russian wargames, and their proximity to North Korea, from the always entertaining Frank Martin.

Iraqi Constitution

Instapundit with an interesting collection of Iraqi Constitution links.

As for my views, I'm waiting this thing out to see where it goes. The vast majority is unprecedented. Whereas Attaturk forcibly separated Islam from Turkish democracy, the Iraqis are now debating its compatibility. This will be a hell of a process, filled with public relations pitfalls and minefields, as our media leaps at the inevitable laws that bruise our sensibilities. Knowing how generally messed up the region is, I'm cautious, but nevertheless this is a historic process that does provide at least some hope. At the very worst, granted a great opportunity, the Arabs will have noone else to blame for their failure but themselves.

As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher's Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around... per the Watcher's instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.

Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.

I thought this had to be a parody, but apparently it isn't - from a letter in the British Times:

"Sir, I turned teetotal having seen, as a barrister, many lives destroyed by alcohol: those of both otherwise law-abiding citizens, who committed acts of violence when drunk, and their victims.

Like Judge Charles Harris, QC, and the Council of Her Majesty’s Circuit Judges (report, August 10), my many Muslim friends also see large-scale loutish alcoholism, and the society which permits it, as decadent.

Allowing pubs to open round the clock will increase Muslim disaffection and support for those fighting such decadence. Extended drinking hours may cause more terrorism.

ANDREW M. ROSEMARINE
Salford, Manchester"

I'm still trying to figure out whether this guy is trying to be ironic.

HT: Harry's Place.

Nefarious Jews 1 - Saudis 0

Israeli Paper Cups Spark Outrage.

"Paper cups made in Israel have caused a storm of protest in a Saudi hospital, the Saudi newspaper Arab News reports. Officials at the King Khaled National Guard Hospital says they are investigating after the catering subcontractors for the coffee shops in the hospital ran out and began using Israeli paper cups with Hebrew writing on them, sparking outrage among the customers."

What will the Jewish pigs do next? Is nothing sacred?!

HT: Fjordman.

Iraq TV's 'Cops' Breaks New Ground.

"Shattered glass, body parts, a blood-splattered blue sedan: the grainy video pans over the scene as Iraqi officers comb the site of a drive-by assassination.

It's "Cops" Iraqi-style, minus the "Bad Boys" soundtrack but otherwise roughly modeled after the American TV show.

Created to make government more transparent, "The Cops Show" featuring Kirkuk officers in action is the first of its kind in the country and is breaking new ground in Iraqi television. A live call-in portion gives the public the chance to praise the security forces or gripe about them.

Screened weekly on Kirkuk Television, which broadcasts in this northern city of nearly 1 million people, "The Cops Show" has opened the floodgates in a community long suppressed.

"During Saddam Hussein's time, it was very different," station manager Nasser Hassan Mohammed said. "You were unable to ask questions. You couldn't say anything bad about police.

"Now people can call in directly. Anyone has the right to do this. This is the difference now. This is freedom."

The call-in portion, initially a novelty, has become a staple of the show, and panelists field up to 30 calls per segment, Mohammed said. And because Kirkuk is ethnically mixed, the show switches among the languages spoken by Kurds, Arabs, Turkomen or Assyrians..."

"Baath Boys Baath Boys - What ya gonna do..."

Steven Vincent's wife goes after Juan Cole.

Her letter includes an explanation for the honor killing rumors:

"And yes, he was planning to to convert to Islam and marry Nour, but only to take her out of the country to England, where she had a standing job offer, set her up with the friends she had over there, divorce her, and come back to New York. He had gotten her family's permission to do so (thereby debunking the "honor killing" theory), but more importantly, he had gotten mine. He called one night to say that it had been intimated to him that Nour's life was essentially going to be worthless after he left; since he was an honorable man (a breed you might want to familiarize yourself with), he then asked what I thought he might do to help her. I told him to get her out of the country and bring her here to New York. However, the only way she could have left Iraq was with a family member or husband. Since her family had no intention of going anywhere, Steven was her only recourse, and it would have been perfectly legal for him to convert, marry her, then take her out of Iraq to give her a chance at a real life. (Now that that avenue is closed to her, I have made inquiries to the State Department about the possibility of my sponsoring her in America. Do you perhaps labor under the misapprehension I am such a spineless cuckold that I would put myself out thusly for the woman you believe my husband was traducing me with? If so, I'm guessing you don't know much about the Sicilian female temperament.)"

Less Than Good News From Down Under

Australian schools blamed for US bashing.

"New Zealand topped the list with a 90 per cent positive rating, followed by the United Kingdom with 75 per cent; but the US scored a miserable 19 per cent.

Mr Costello said the resentment against the US was based partly on its economic and military dominance and its actions in places such as Iraq, but also on Left-wing bias.

"It's clear in my mind that for a long time in the universities there was a general Left-wing bias," Mr Costello said.

"I think many of our teachers who were trained in universities at a time when Left-wing bias was at its height in the '60s and '70s carry a lot of ideological baggage with them."

The most distressing aspect of the Cold War is that while the US won it economically and militarily, it lost the propaganda war throughout most of the world, even within its own academia. For decades it was the flagship and prime defender of the West, target of abuse and one-sided commentary from both its enemies and friends. We are now, and will be dealing with the consequences for decades, if not forever.

-
I took a walk around the world to ease my troubled mind
I left my body laying somewhere in the sands of time
I watched the world float to the dark side of the moon
I feel there is nothing I can do

I watched the world float to the dark side of the moon
After all I knew it had to be something to do with you
I really don’t mind what happens now and then
As long as you’ll be my friend at the end

If I go crazy then will you still call me superman
If I’m alive and well, will you be there holding my hand
I’ll keep you by my side with my superhuman might
Kryptonite

You called me strong, you called me weak, but still your secrets I will keep
You took for granted all the times I never let you down
You stumbled in and bumped your head, if not for me then you would be dead
I picked you up and put you back on solid ground

If I go crazy then will you still call me superman
If I’m alive and well, will you be there holding my hand
I’ll keep you by my side with my superhuman might
Kryptonite

In Memory

Worth reading: Email From A Team Member of the SEALS Lost June 28th.

For more on James Suh, see this prior post.

More heroes here.

Thank God we're able to find such men.

Then and Now

If the press aired these types of things support for the war would jump 10 points. They would have done it during World War II, but of course, back then the press was on board the war effort.

"An Iraqi medic (center-right), an American chaplain (left), and an American medic (far right) console Spc. Bryan Walczer at FOB Summerall's aid station following an IED attack which injured Iraqi soldiers on a vehicle Walczer was driving. Walczer is from Allentown, Pa., and belongs to Company A, 1st Battalion, 111th Infantry. The chaplain is Capt. Michael Hart, and the medic is Sgt. Robert Hildreth, both from 313th Field Artillery."

HT: Blackfive.

Scaling Back American Military Commitments

From the CATO Institute, "The Pentagon's Surprisingly Sober Look at China":

"After numerous delays reflecting disagreements within the Bush administration, the Pentagon has finally released its Annual Report to Congress on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China. Previous reports conveyed a very hawkish, worst-case portrait of the PRC's capabilities and intent. The 2005 version, however, presents a reasonably even-handed assessment of the PRC military, and of China-U.S. relations generally.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the latest report is its tone. It lauds a "cooperative and constructive" relationship that has emerged between the United States and China since the 2001 EP-3 spy plane incident. At the same time, it seems to acknowledge the seriousness of China's warnings about Taiwan. It recognizes China's recent anti-secession law as "a rhetorical counter to the U.S. Taiwan Relations Act," and cites a Chinese general who worries about Taiwan for strategic reasons. In the general's view, reunifying with Taiwan is of "far reaching significance to breaking international forces' blockade against China's maritime security"

America's interest is in managing China's inevitable rise to great power status without needlessly embroiling Americans in a war. Doing so requires a dispassionate assessment of China's views on Taiwan. The DOD report is a good step in that direction. The report acknowledges that controlling Taiwan is a "core interest" for China, and for good reason: aside from the motive of national pride regarding reunification, roughly 80 percent of China's energy imports pass through the waters adjacent to Taiwan."

Even accounting for CATO's predisposition to play down potential problems with China to play up business potentials, I agree with the authors. We're beginning to realize the very real limits to our influence and power, compared with our commitments. As the Belmont Club has noted, our defense spending has not increased as much as many hoped it would. Furthermore, large portions of the increases went to make up for spending shortfalls and the decline of equipment requisition during the Clinton years and have also been cut into by emergency spending to fund the Iraq War.

At the same time, we're looking at overly large commitments that seem without end. I don't think we can manage the Middle East, potentially deal with China and North Korea in Asia, and do our normal traffic stops in Africa and elsewhere. Other things we have to look at include Venezuela and Columbia, with Russia as a wild card. To be sure you cannot draw exact parallels from Iraq to all of these potential conflicts, but the difficulties our military is having holding down merely one moderate sized country makes our contingency planning look very perulous. We can expect some aid from Japan and Australia, but I wouldn't expect much out of South Korea or Europe. They're more likely to be a net-loss, doing economic and arms deals with our enemies while we're in the line of fire. Something is going to have to give.

The Pentagon realizes this, and is beginning to suggest looking to disengage from places where our "allies" will not share the burden. Our reduced commitments to South Korea and Germany are just the beginning:

"From a strategic standpoint, the most significant new component of the report is an effort to put the problems China's military modernization poses in a regional context. Previously, the report has been framed in the context of a United States struggle with China over Taiwan; by contrast, the 2005 report notes that the decisions China makes "will have significant implications -- not just for the United States, but for China, the Asia-Pacific region, and the world." In particular, China's military modernization could "accelerate a shift in the regional balance of power, affecting the security of many countries."

This reframing is long overdue, and could be useful in shaking other countries in East Asia from their security slumber. Until now, such regional powers as Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia have been able to shrug off China's growing power because of the assumption that the United States would do whatever it took to balance against China. With a costly and distracting war continuing in Iraq, the Defense Department may have come to the recognition that its resources are not infinite, and that China's neighbors must share the concern over its growing power and prepare their own responses. The new DOD report, coupled with the recent joint U.S.-Japan security declaration adopted in February, may signal a growing recognition that regional powers must step up to help shape China's rise.

On the issue of regional military capabilities, Taiwan gets a well deserved drubbing for its complacent approach to its own security. "Taiwan defense spending has steadily declined in real terms over the past decade, even as Chinese air, naval, and missile force modernization has increased the need for countermeasures that would enable Taiwan to avoid being quickly overwhelmed." DOD officials have been increasingly frustrated over Taiwan's recalcitrance, and the sharp words in the report should be taken as a sign that the United States is not infinitely patient with wealthy allies who seek to free ride on an increasingly overstretched United States. If Taiwan's opposition parties continue to succeed in blocking adequate defense measures, China could be emboldened, thus making a U.S.-PRC military confrontation more likely."

The sheer amount of our commitments means we're looking at either a substantial increase in US defense spending, or an attempt to patch up some of our more spotty relationships. I believe we shoul do both, and combine this with massive pressure for some of our deadbeat allies to either substantially increase their own efforts, or sink or swim according to their own capabilities. We can't do everything.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

Priceless.

HT: Area417.

Inside the Asylum (UN)

Interesting read that gives some idea on the freedom of debate and information flows within the UN. It is reportedly a transcript from the "UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion & Protection of Human Rights: 57th session, plenum (26 July 2005, 5:43-6:03 pm). Four interventions were made on "points of order" by three of the 26 members: Mr. Abdul Sattar (Pakistan), twice by Ms. Halima Embarek Warzazi (Morocco); and Mr. Miguel Alfonso Martinez (Cuba). Mr. Vladimir Kartashkin (Russia) was in the chair."

Some highlights:

After Mr. Littman begins speaking on the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism and the jihadists it spawns, Mr. Sattar interrupts him, declaring:

Mr. Sattar: "I just want to recall the ‘ruling’ that was given by the Chairman last year that members of the NGOs will not engage in casting aspersions on other religions. We start with the statement this afternoon: “radical Ideology of Jihad.” Now this statement is totally unacceptable. First of all, Jihad is a concept, it’s not an ideology, and then calling it “radical” already condemns the concept of another religion and, therefore, I’m just reminding you of the decision that was made last year, and I hope that you will urge the members of the NGOs to observe the principle that was enunciated by the Chair last year."

Mr. Littman responds by saying that with "the right of freedom of expression of all NGOs" he will continue and hopes he won't be interrupted again.

Before he finishes a sentence, the Moroccan delegate intervenes:

"Ms. Warzazi: Mr. Chairman, I regret that the NGOs have joined in this sort of defamation…defamatory declarations. Freedom of expression has limits and in all the international instruments there are limits to freedom, when the freedom constitutes what is condemned by the United Nations; that is to say, an Islamophobic act – then no one can continue to speak!..."

When Littman is finally able to continue, he begins by referring to the Hamas charter.

This is too much for the Cuban representative:

"Mr. Martinez: There are already two charges that we cannot tolerate by the speaker. First, citing something that none of us has the possibility of confirming if it is an accurate text [i.e. Hamas Charter, art. 8 quote], or if it is one more invention by Mr. Littman – it would not be the first time. [The Hamas Charter may be found on various web sites via Google; in 20 years no State or other delegate has ever been able to show that Mr. Littman has provided inaccurate data.] Mr. Littman is a person who has been coming to the Commission and pretending to speak for “all the Jews in the world” – but I can assure you that at least in the name of my Jewish wife he doesn’t speak for her!"

Well, in that case... Read the rest, the objections and interventions took so much time from the speaker that he was given a paltry two minutes to complete his speech, forcing him to omit entire paragraphs.

HT: The Big Picture.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

Good News From Down Under

From the Toronto Post comes, "Australia, America's "Deputy Sheriff," Punches Above Its Weight And Criticizes Canada For Not" Doing The Same.

10 points for a title longer than the average Atrios post. The story isn't bad either.

"Solomon Islands -- Federal agent Simone Kleehammer dons a helmet and flak jacket before linking up with an army escort for her nightly police patrols. This is where her police colleagues were shot late last year -- one killed, one injured -- after local gunmen targeted Australian police on this anarchic South Pacific island nation 3,000 kilometres northeast of Sydney.

The shootings "felt like all of us getting kicked in the stomach," admits Kleehammer, 31, as she drives past the shooting scene. "But we were all here to do a job and we knew this could happen."

The deadly ambushes sent a chill through this dusty tropical town, demoralizing Australian police deployed here on a precedent-setting mission: to rebuild a failed state by reviving its faltering police force.

Australia reacted to the shootings by airlifting combat troops and arming its cops on the beat. Now, nighttime patrols are still tense, but by daybreak Kleehammer dumps her body armour, ditches her military escort and leaves the safety of a police outpost blanketed in barbed wire.

Relying on a smile and a nine-millimetre Glock handgun, she patrols with her local partners -- fresh recruits from the discredited Royal Solomon Islands Police. Hunched in a rickety cruiser, they begin a bone-jarring sweep through "Borderland," the deadliest district in this ramshackle capital.

Despite the threats, most residents of this dirt-poor island chain look upon the strapping Australian men and women in blue as saviours.

Two years ago, these outsiders rescued the islanders from themselves -- from the chaos of a failed state riven by ethnic cleansing and gang violence culminating in the government's collapse. In fact, Kleehammer is one of 300 foot soldiers in an Australian experiment that has redefined her government's approach to global trouble spots. The police deployment is the centrepiece of a massive, decade-long intervention launched in mid-2003 with an amphibious landing by 1,700 combat troops.

As they restored order, the $1 billion operation was bolstered by squads of elite civil servants reviving the moribund machinery of government, ranging from treasury economists to customs agents patrolling the airport. It is a virtual takeover of a sovereign country -- albeit by invitation. The Solomon Islands rescue mission has served as the inspiration for an equally ambitious police deployment in Papua, New Guinea -- another crime-infested, corruption-ridden troublespot off Australia's northern coast."

This is all part of a much broader trend:

"Saving the day is becoming a habit for Australians. The federal police have set up an "international deployment division" as part of its "core business," says Will Jamieson, who ran the division before relocating here to run the Solomon Islands police mission. Australia's biggest and boldest intervention came in late 1999, when its military deployed decisively into nearby East Timor as it was struggling for independence from adjacent Indonesia in mid-1999. While Western countries stood by paralyzed, the global spotlight was shining on 5,700 Australian troops as they stared down Indonesian-backed militiamen.

Today, Australia projects its power from Iraq and Afghanistan in the West, to the Solomon Islands and other South Pacific nations in the East. Beyond the sheer sweep of territory, Australia's increasingly muscular and activist strategy suggests a country that is

punching far above its weight. Bruised by the 2002 Bali bombing that claimed 88 Australian lives and left the country reeling, it emerged more determined to ally itself with Washington's war on terror.

An early clue to Australia's inclinations came when Prime Minister John Howard famously agreed with an interviewer that he was America's "deputy sheriff" in the region; he created an even bigger stir by threatening pre-emptive strikes against terrorists plotting against Australians from neighbouring countries. But Australia's influence is about more than muscle and sabre-rattling. Australians beat the rest of the world to the punch by donating a remarkable $1 billion within hours of last December's tsunami, and sending in the first waves of military rescue teams.

Compared to Canada -- with a similarly modest population and compact military -- Australia is emerging as a global player and diplomatic powerhouse. It is often said that there no two countries more similar than Canada and Australia in terms of size and British parliamentary traditions, but on defence and foreign policy the two countries are following distinctly different paths.

While Canada concentrates on peacekeeping and emphasizes multilateralism, Australia opts for rapid responses to shore up failing states -- even without United Nations approval. Canada proudly wears its multilateral memberships on its sleeve and heralds the United Nations as the foundation of its foreign policy, while Australia's government is openly dismissive of Security Council consultations that go nowhere."

The reporter mentions Canada's now mythical reputation on peacekeeping, although it now ranks 38th in the world for UN participation. Australia is of course doing much of the same thing, absent huge amounts of self-congratulation and at higher cost to itself.

"The political will comes from a commitment to try to make a contribution to dealing with some of the world's problems," Downer says. "Sometimes we can do it alone -- at least lead the operation, as we did in East Timor," he continues. "We did the heavy lifting. Same in the Solomon Islands. With Papua New Guinea we do it alone with the PNG government.

Australians are unabashed about flexing their muscle. "We're all very proud to be punching above our weight," says Susan Windybank, head of foreign policy research at Sydney's Centre for Independent Studies. "We don't want our backyard to become a junkyard."

Canadians used to be the same way, at one point owning the third largest navy in the world at the end of World War II. Their transformation is irritating and regretable.

Echo Chambers

John at Brain Droppings responds to Dean's statement that women were better off under Saddam Hussein by saying:

"Whenever they [the Democrats] try to say something meaningful, its negative and/or demonstrative of the fact that they are living in an alternative reality."

He also asks rhetorically:

"Is it good politics to contend that Iraq was better off under Saddam than even a flawed Islamic republic? Does it make sense politically to tell Americans that more than 1,800 troops have died to make life worse for half of Iraq's population?"

To most Americans, the answers to these two questions are obvious. As usual, the leaders of the Democratic Party get them wrong.

The Democrats have known for some time that their strategy is hurting them more than the Republicans. Yet they persist. Why?"

To an extent, I believe it is a result of their long dominance of the major media. Their inability to control themselves is linked to the degeneration of leftist political thought on college campuses. When you're not used to being called on your outrageous statements, you start to play loose with the facts and overreach.

Why "the Left" Supports Appeasement

Wretchard with a typically well written post compares the mindset of many within "the West" to that which inflicted Britain and France prior to World War II.

What is appeasement? Appeasement is placating an enemy for the sake of peace, stability, or some other prize. Seperated from its negative historical connotation, it is not necessarily evil; it can be simply another tool in the diplomatic arsenal. There are enemies who can be appeased, whose demands are legitimate and finite. The chief error of British and French policy in the 1930s was that they assumed, in spite of Mein Kampf and other signs, that Hitler could be placated. Churchill’s genius was recognizing the enemy for what he was, one with insatiable desires, and ultimately one with which the Western democracies could not co-exist.

With this in mind, Churchill's quote that "appeasement is feeding a crocodile so that he'll eat you last" is misleading. From their point of view the appeasers don't think they'll actually be eaten; they aren't suicidal - they're just selfish.

The appeasers then made the same mistake that appeasers do now. They assumed that the opposition was somewhat reasonable, had a limit to his demands, and would become responsible when those demands were at least partially met. In reality, Hitler had and militant Islam has ultimate goals that are unreasonable and cannot ever be made right. We fundamentally cannot coexist with either of them, therefore they must be destroyed.

You can look at European relations towards the Islamic world and the US and Israel in the same light as 1930s appeasers. Modern day Europe doesn't actually think they'll ultimately be eaten; they think once we're gone or de-fanged, the Islamists will be happy and will merely terrorize Muslims. From this point of view, it is reasonable, although really idiotic and ignorant. The fact that they get rid of the arrogant, materialistic, and too powerful Americans in the deal is just a gift.

A poster in the comments section states:

"The left doesn't want to concede that terrorism is murder -the deliberate anihilation of innocents. They prefer to shower the terrorists with an unearned credibility by crying out root causes."

Who is "the Left"?

I hesitate to use the term "the Left," because it is really a lazy abstraction, ablbeit sometimes a necessary one. Furthermore, many people, especially centrist American Democrats, consider themselves part of "the Left," but are well to the right of Leftist parties throughout the world. This explains why many anti-American foreigners insist on labeling Democrats and Republicans two peas of the same pod. History cannot be rewritten, anti-Americanism flourished throughout the 1990s and the Clinton presidencies. I trust the now empowered radicals in the Democratic Party (Howard Dean and Daily Kos) much less than I trust the moderates (Bill Clinton and the DLCC) but I still believe it can be distinguished from many of our international ideological foes.

For the most part, when I use the term "the Left" I mean the International Left with its origins in the many historical and modern socialist movements of Europe, some of which were or are a part of the various Socialist Internationals, and some of which were not, but adapted many of their ideas and prejudices.

The problem with the International Left isn't their quest for root causes. I have as large an interest in the root causes – I want to understand my enemy. I want to know that militant Islamism is in large part a result of the failure of secular Arab nationalism. I want to know exactly how it came to be significant. I want to know their grievances and desires – it tells me their goals. The problem with the people in question isn’t their obsession with root causes - it is their agreement and sympathies with the root causes. And ultimately, if you believe that American enforced sanctions caused the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children, and that Israel is truly committing genocide against the Palestinians, then on some level, 3000 Americans is a mere footnote, even a justified one.

I can identify with Al Qaeda as incensed at our Israel policy, Kashmir, Chechnya, every where else they see, in their paranoid minds, Muslims being oppressed by a worldwide conspiracy. I even partially agree with Muslim views towards 1 or 2 of these conflicts. I can understand Bin Laden feeling slighted by the Saudi monarchs when they didn't let him become Saladin and throw back Hussein in 1990. I can understand why Bin Laden, bigot and retrograde he is, is angry that our dirty infidel feet are on Saudi land and protecting Muslim holy sites, holy sites they can't even muster the arms to protect themselves. I can see why this is infuriating. I can also see why delusions and even some realities infuriated other bigots and madmen throughout history.

But I see all this, and I ask myself, "are their non-negotiable demands reasonable? Can we deal with these people?" Are we ever going to statisfy Al Jazeera? Can we get the Russians out of Chechnya, the Indians out of Kashmir, and the Israelis out of Palestine? Is there likely to be a Muslim state in the Phillipines? Would they be satisfied without Muslims in the United States living under Sha'riah? Would they simply ignore the inevitable interference with their plans of Western materialism and ideas? The answer is "HELL NO", so kill them, marginalize them - whatever the cost.

Says another commentator, Ash:

"We acknowledge there is legitimacy to their desire yet we will attack them for trying to fulfill it?... so we go off on an arms race, but does that justify our denying others what we claim for ourselves? No, and fighting for such a dubious moral cause would be folly."

Ash is a perfect example of what I am talking about. I can acknowledge the desires of our enemies and the reasons they do what they do. I can understand why North Korea wants nuclear weapons. Our ultimate policy goal is [justly!] ending them as a despotic and Stalinist nation. I still don't want them getting nukes! To believe that North Korea should morally be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons is to ignore the realities of the regime itself and its past behavior, or to at least forgive it.

The ideological leadership of the Left looks at our enemies demands and says they are negotiable, if not already reasonable. The most ominous development of the War on Terror has been the fusion of these people with the more innocent minded and honest members of our political opposition, worldwide and domestically. This latter group is the type who ignores militant Islam's true nature, instead transmuting their own guilt on our enemy. This is how I can have a young European co-worker imply that Bin Laden is in part motivated by our refusal to sign the Kyoto Treaty, since "global warming affects the third world most". It is what Ralph Peters labeled, 'Whitey's guilt,' which can be traced at least as far as the proletarian and noble savage third world nations of Marx's Communist Manifesto.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

On Krugman and Map Reading

I recognize that this guy is seen by some as a brilliant economist. We even read a number of his articles in one of my econ courses. They were predictably located in a textbook oriented as the socialist response to our more conventional textbook. However, in the wider focused world of punditry, he couldn't find his ass with both hands and a map.

Japan and India: American Allies for the 21st Century?

This good post from Westhawk talks about the importance of Japan to America's future national security arrangments.

I agree with his description of Japan as a major pillar in American security arrangements in Asia. However, I believe he neglects to take into account that Japan itself will be suffering a population decline similar to or worse than the one that Europe is already experiencing. Japanese xenophobia makes immigration an unlikely option to close this gap. As a result, absent an unforseen baby boom, Japan will be an American ally, but it will also be a much weaker Japan relative to China and the United States.

I also thought it bizarre that he described America's interests in Asia without even once mentioning India. It is too early to proclaim a match made in heaven, but to quote former Ambassador to India, Robert D. Blackwill, "no bilateral relationship in George W. Bush's first term improved as much as that between the United States and India."

Democratic and at war with Muslim fundamentalism, the million-man Indian army actually fights, unlike the whithering and post-modern militaries of many of our European allies. Reflecting this, we've made signs that we're ready to substantially increase American arm sales to India, following in the footsteps of the Israelis to replace the Soviets as India's main arms dealer.

Besides fighting Muslim fundamentalism our interests also show signs of converging elsewhere. Indian nuclear weapons are a done deal. On the negative side, it is just one more arrow in the corpse of nuclear non-proliferation. On the other hand, India will not be at the mercy of a nuclear armed China and shares our desire to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, especially to terrorist groups, as Kashmir has obviously become one of fundamentalist Islam's war grievances.

India's relationship with China is well covered in Mr. Blackwill's recent article, "The India Imperative," featured in The National Interest's latest publication:

"Like some in Washington, India is enormously attentive to the rise of Chinese power. Let me make clear, however, that this will not leave to joint U.S.-Indian containment of the PRC. Worrying that this could be self-fulfilling, no Indian politican of any conseqence supports such a policy. But it does mean this: Behind the elevated rhetoric that emits from New Delhi regarding relations between India and China, the Indians understand better than most that Asia is being fundamentally changed by the weight of PRC economic power and diplomatic skill.

In the short term, the Indian military is not alarmed with China's military buildup because it is primarily focused on the Taiwan Strait. However, the Indians have noticed that China is also constructing airfields in Tibet, which is not especially near the Taiwan Strait. China is also assisting in the construction of a major port in Pakistan and is deeply involved in Myanmar...

...the Indian military thinks strategically, its contingency planning concentrates on China. It is partially in this context (as well as energy security) that India plans a blue-water navy with as many as four aircraft carriers."

There are of course still problems for Indian-American cooperation. These include suspicions left over from our historical antagonism and bureacratic intertia. On the American side, this is fueled by nuclear proliferation fears and officials unable to view India outside a Pakistan-India perspective. Ironically, considering our role as the premiere anti-colonial power, Indian colonial history makes it extra sensitive to outside influence, and so does remnants of the non-alignment movement. We also have conflicting interests, something perfectly understandable considering a 50 year divergence of our respective foreign policies. Among the worst problems is Indian support for Iran and our need to placate an increasingly radical and dangerous Pakistan.

In spite of all these problems, I think both India and the United States see each other as too big a price to rule out a much warmer relationship in the future. 50 years of self-defeating and unnecessarily cold relations have made the alternative that much more attractive.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Wizbang.

A Compilation of Sheehan Quotes

Once again I'm going to wade into the sewer for a moment. Just in case anyone was interested, I thought I'd make a compilation of Cindy Sheehan statements:

From here

"I do this for all of our brave souls (American or Iraqi) who have been murdered by the Bush crime family.
I told my Congressman that he needs to speak out against the lies and murder, because I am going to...when George Bush killed my son, they finally killed the wrong person.
If anything I do can shorten the war by one minute or save one life, or bring discredit to the evil bastards in the administration, my life will have been worthwhile..and Casey's sacrifice meaningful..."

From here.

"You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism."

"My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny...you give my son back and I'll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we'll put this war on trial."

"And now I'm going to use another 'I' word - impeachment - because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail."

More from here:

"MATTHEWS: Can I ask you a tough question? A very tough question.

SHEEHAN: Yes.

MATTHEWS: All right. If your son had been killed in Afghanistan, would you have a different feeling?

SHEEHAN: I don`t think so, Chris, because I believe that Afghanistan is almost the same thing. We`re fighting terrorism. Or terrorists, we`re saying. But they`re not contained in a country. This is an ideology and not an enemy. And we know that Iraq, Iraq had no terrorism. They were no threat to the United States of America.

MATTHEWS: But Afghanistan was harboring, the Taliban was harboring al Qaeda which is the group that attacked us on 9/11.

SHEEHAN: Well then we should have gone after al Qaeda and maybe not after the country of Afghanistan."

From her previous letter to Bush:

"George, it has been seven months today since your reckless and wanton foreign policies killed my son, my big boy, my hero, my best-friend: Casey. It has been seven months since your ignorant and arrogant lack of planning for the peace murdered my oldest child. It has been two days since your dishonest campaign stole another election…but you all were way more subtle this time than in 2000, weren’t you? You hardly had to get the Supreme Court of the United States involved at all this week.

You feel so proud of yourself for betraying the country again, don’t you? You think you are very clever because you pulled the wool over the eyes of some of the people again. You think that you have some mandate from God…that you can “spend your political capital” any way that you want. George you don’t care or even realize that 56,000,000 plus citizens of this country voted against you and your agenda. Still, you are going to continue your ruthless work of being a divider and not a uniter. George, in 2000 when you stole that election and the Democrats gave up, I gave up too. I had the most ironic thought of my life then: "Oh well, how much damage can he do in four years?" Well, now I know how much you have damaged my family, this country, and this world. If you think I am going to allow you another four years to do even more damage, then you truly are mistaken. I will fight for a true vote count and if that fails, your impeachment. Also, the impeachment of your Vice President. The only thing is, I'm not politically savvy, and I don't have a Karl Rove to plan my strategy, but I do have a big mouth and a righteous cause, which still mean something in this country, I hope."

Some more:

"That lying bastard, George Bush, is taking a five-week vacation in time of war. You get that maniac out here to talk with me in person.

The other thing I want him to tell me is 'just what was the noble cause Casey died for?' Was it freedom and democracy? Bull***t! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East.

It’s okay for Israel to occupy Palestine, but it’s – yeah – and it’s okay for Iraq to occupy – I mean, for the United States to occupy Iraq, but it’s not okay for Syria to be in Lebanon. They’re a bunch of f***ing hypocrites!

I was raised in a country by a public school system that taught us that America was good, that America was just. America has been killing people, like my sister over here says, since we first stepped on this continent, we have been responsible for death and destruction. I passed on that bull***t to my son and my son enlisted. I’m going all over the country telling moms: This country is not worth dying for.

9/11 was their Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through and, if I would have known that before my son was killed, I would have taken him to Canada. I would never have let him go and try and defend this morally repugnant system we have."

From here:

"Why Are We In Iraq?

Monied coroporate interests, tired of the years of freedom, justice, and blowjobs of the Clinton Presidency, gathered together with the PNAC neo-con zionist cabal, stole the election in 2000 in order to install their candidate. They were engaged in only minor perfidy at first, looting the treasury, trying to end social security, women’s rights, and so on, until they hit the mother lode on 9/11, an attack they ignored and probably, in all truthfulness, knew about ahead of time and did nothing.

After 9/11, rather than heading to Afghanistan and deposing the Taliban and attacking Al Qaeda, they immediately launched an offensive to attack Saddam Hussein, a man they had armed to the teeth over previous decades. The point of this attack was to secure oil fields, enrich Halliburton with public treasure, and to fight a war for Israel."

I thought about highlighting her suggestion that Bush let 9-11 happen to further his agenda, but then I realized that after all, it's not as if that's too radical, Howard Dean raised the same question, and the Democrats made him their party head.

The anti-war movement picked the wrong person as their champion. She's a treasure trove of amazing quotes and ridiculous assertions. Once again the hard left anti-war movement shoots itself in the foot with its own radicalism - they simply can't control themselves.

And thank God we now have the Internet to find the context that the media elites won't provide, whether out of ideological sympathies, or a search for ratings.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

Illegal Immigration News

Juxtapose this:

"Four out of every 10 Mexican adults would migrate to the United States if they had the means and opportunity to do so, according to a poll released Tuesday.

And two in 10 Mexican adults say they'd be willing to live and work illegally in the United States, the Pew Hispanic Center reported in what is believed to be the first snapshot by U.S. pollsters of Mexicans' views on migration.

With about one in every eight Mexican adults already living in the United States - and 40 percent of the nation's nearly 70 million adults willing to migrate if the opportunity presents itself - the findings could hold implications for U.S. policymakers."

...With this:

"Arizona ignored pleas for greater cooperation from Mexican President Vicente Fox to become the second US state to declare a state of emergency on its border due to rising illegal immigration, violence and smuggling.

Four days after New Mexico declared a 90 day state of emergency for border areas, Arizona did the same for its four counties on the Mexican frontier, citing uncontrolled illegal immigration."

Also interesting:

"A majority of Latinos born in the United States don't think illegal Hispanic immigrants should be given drivers' licenses, according to a new poll.

Most foreign-born Latinos disagree, according to the polling for the Pew Hispanic Center.

Six in 10 Latinos born in this country approve of measures to prohibit illegal immigrants from getting drivers' licenses, while two-thirds born in another country disapprove of such measures.

The difference between foreign-born Latinos and native-born Latinos on the driver's license issue highlights the disparity between the two groups on several issues."

VDH on Sheehan

Via Brain Droppings.

For the most part I've been staying out of the Sheehan circus, but this piece from Victor Davis Hanson touches upon much more noteworthy issues in American society:

"No one should trivialize Ms. Sheehan's grief, nor fail to understand why she is angry and wants to hold someone accountable. Yet the media's eagerness to publicize and exploit a grieving mother's anger and sorrow can be criticized, for it points to a larger pathology in our culture — the privileging of the suffering victim as someone who possesses superior insight and so must be heeded and catered to.

This elevation of the victim into a combination sage and secular martyr reflects conditions peculiar to the modern world. Most important is the simple fact that compared to the vast majority of humans who've ever lived, we in the West today have been freed from the everyday suffering and misery that earlier generations accepted as part of human existence.

...

As much as we respect and sympathize with Ms. Sheehan's grief, then, we are under no obligation to respect her opinion about the necessity or justice of this war, or give it any more of a hearing than anybody else's.

Those reasons should be debated and discussed through the political process, and they should reflect as much as possible fact and rational argument. Presenting those facts and arguments is the job of a responsible media. Unfortunately, exploiting suffering and indulging their political prejudices are often more important to the media than providing their fellow citizens with the resources needed to make the best decision."

Worth reading in full.

VDH of course goes right to the crux of the matter. Even if Sheehan was not a political moonbat, we still could not run our foreign policy based on raw emotion. Cold, but necessary. We elect politicians to make decisions. Many are based on information we do not even have access to, and many also concern issues that are much larger than individuals.

WC

Please excuse this interruption from our regularly scheduled broadcasting...
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As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher's Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around... per the Watcher's instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.

Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.

Some Military Doctrine Revisited

Over at the comments section of the Belmont Club, someone tipped me off to this blog by military member Bobby Bran. From what I can see, he's seriously interested in military history, and his commentary reflects it - definitely going to visit again in the future.

His latest post interestingly and skillfully draws comparisons between the pre-war debate over the Peloponnesian War and our war in Iraq, something I've not seen before. At times, the similarities are somewhat eerie.

Mr. Bran uses the second part of the debate, in which critics tried to use the magnitude of the task ahead to discredit it, to talk about American military doctrine:

"The parallel I wish to focus in on is the second part of Nicias's speech-- his intention to dissuade the Athenians from taking on what was clearly a risky expedition by inflating its costs and requirements (this also had the secondary effect of maximizing the security of the forces if they were deployed, something that was in the interests of Nicias, the mission's co-commander). It is there, I think, that we can find a suitable comparison to the present.

The US Army, after escaping Vietnam with its pride in hand, stood at a crossroads. It could have engaged in some serious soul-searching, examining what it had done wrong, and set out to ensure that in the future it would be appropriately configured-- conceptually, doctrinally, organizationally, and technologically-- to win those kinds of wars. Or it could instead choose to re-interpret Vietnam as an example of tactical brilliance, but strategic failure-- a campaign the Army lost not because it was fighting its battles the wrong way, but because it was unable to fight the way it really should fight: with overwhelming force, superior firepower, advanced technology, and shock effect. If only we had more firepower, this school argued, we could have been successful. I'll let you decide which path you think the Army more closely approximated (the Marines are something of a different case interestingly enough).

Out of these ashes eventually rose the cautious phoenix of the Weinberger Doctrine and (later) the Powell Corrollary which shaped post-Vietnam American foreign policy more than any other strategic formulation. The six points of the Weinberger Doctrine simply state:

1. The United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interests of the United States or its allies are involved.
2. U.S. troops should only be committed wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning. Otherwise, troops should not be committed.
3. U.S. combat troops should be committed only with clearly defined political and military objectives and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives.
4. The relationship between the objectives and the size and composition of the forces committed should be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary.
5. U.S. troops should not be committed to battle without a "reasonable assurance" of the support of U.S. public opinion and Congress.
6. The commitment of U.S. troops should be considered only as a last resort.

While the Powell Corrollary added:

1. Force should be used only as a last resort.
2. Military force should be used only when there is a clear-cut military objective.
3. Military force should be used only when we can measure that the military objective has been achieved.
4. Military force should be used only in an overwhelming fashion.

If you know me, you know that I have mixed feelings about the Weinberger Doctrine and Powell Corrollary. There are aspects of it that make a lot of sense, and I empathize with why they were implemented. But I wouldn't be the first to point out that they "become more problematic upon closer examination," not to mention they overstate the conditions needed to accomplish some missions by applying them to all missions (in other words, they needlessly narrow the dimensions of "the box" that I so despise). And at the same time, both were deliberate efforts to re-craft strategic policy in a manner not to prevent the Army from ever losing another Vietnam, but to keep us from even fighting in the first place. That is, like Nicias demanding the world in order to prevent the Sicilian campaign from ever happening, SECDEF Weinberger and General Powell designed their doctrinal templates to prevent the US Army from ever being committed to another Vietnam in the first place.

The problem, as Top Gun's Commander Mike Metcalf (aka Viper) might say, is that "we (military) don't make policy, gentlemen; elected officials-- civilians-- do." And by telling the Army, "don't worry about Vietnam, because we won't do that again," we made two mistakes. First, we gave ourselves a blank check to forget the lessons learned in that conflict (because, contrary to what we decided in our official literature, there were many things the Army did wrong not just at the strategic and operational levels, but at the tactical level as well); much like the Israelis did after emerging-- victoriously-- from the Yom Kippur War of 1973, we took away the lessons we wanted to learn. So instead of learning from our past, we consigned counter-insurgency, unconventional warfare, and low-intensity doctrine to the back of the library to be checked out, only occasionally, by a John Nagl or a Wayne Downing. Secondly, and worse still, the blank check we wrote didn't have any funds in the account: as we would later see in Somalia and now Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Army doesn't get to pick and choose where we will be employed. Our policy-makers make those decisions and we execute, and by ignoring the theoretical and practical lessons of "small wars" in favor of "maneuver wars" and the enemy we want to face, we have hampered our ability to fight the enemy we do face.

Even before its uncertain conclusion, the military lessons from Operation Iraqi Freedom are already being written in the minds of Soldiers and officers who are going through the crucible (interestingly, their experience and conclusions are far different from those who have had more success in Operation Enduring Freedom). My sense is that if things don't work out, the official history will state that we lost because of strategic and political mistakes-- that we lost despite doing everything right at the tactical level (thereby exonerating our own performance). This, in turn, will lead to a newer Weinberger/Powell Doctrine explaining why we should never have committed forces to the Paktias and Fallujahs, and saved them only for the Fulda Gaps and Central Corridors. Like the US occupation of the Philippines or the British experience in the Mayalan Emergency, Afghanistan will be underreported and forgotten in order to "prove" the point-- that the Army can't (and therefore, shouldn't) do "small wars."

That isn't just intellectual dishonesty (although it is that)-- it's emasculating the Army's capability to do what maybe-- just maybe-- it will need to be able to do in the next few generations in order to defeat the threat coming over the horizon: fight and win "small wars."

And all that just because it doesn't fit into the dogma of an American military culture that is addicted to overwhelming force (mass), superior firepower, advanced technology, and kinetic "solutions"... That doesn't sound like much of a "solution" to me."

I apologize for such a long quotation, but I think it is that good. I agree fullheartedly with his assessment. Furthermore, in their determination to avoid repeating the Vietnam fiasco, the force structure was changed to limit the options of politicians. Politicians of course ignored this, and ran policy according to what they thought correct, rather than conform to the limitations the Army attempted to impose on their decision making. I talked about this in a prior Yankee Station post:

"... After the disastrous moral problems of the Vietnam War, Adams and Colin Powell nobly tried to structure the force so that any serious effort would require a total commitment from the nation. In theory, American presidents would be more careful about acquiring national backing and approval for war efforts if ever modest commitment required calling up the reserves.

This suggests a strangely optimistic view of politicians, but I digress…

It was also thought that this would ensure complete efforts with limited, attainable goals. The military couldn’t be sent in without the full support of the American people, since using it meant calling up reservists. I originally accepted the wisdom of this without serious thought. After all, it makes sense, right?

I gradually came to realize that in doing so however, Adams and Powell took options out of the hands of the civilian policy makers. As the article states, the army does not choose what wars the country must fight, its politicians decide, and even more often, fate decides. It is understandable that the army had been burned by the civilian leadership (and indeed its own) in Vietnam. It was almost criminal. But the reformers still erred by preparing an army for the wars that the army would like to fight, not the wars that it might have to fight. Throughout the 1990s, it was tasked to fight low scale protracted efforts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, etc. One would think that the reserves would have been on vacation through the 1990s, but in reality they were rotating in and out of odd places throughout the world, taking part in what were really, minor efforts.

As a result, they were not fully rested even going into Iraq, and the effort there has damaged morale even more so. A military that requires the use of reserves for even the smallest option is not a military for today’s world, with low-scale international commitments and conflicts, even setting aside Iraq. These low-scale commitments and conflicts are sometimes necessary and continuously calling up reserves only blunts their edge, making them less useful when unexpected conflicts arise (which may also be controversial, but just as vital)."

The Powell and Weinberg doctrine strikes me more as a wishlist than a serious diplomatic and military doctrine that can be applied to the world. They assumed that the United States was no longer built for serious counter-insurgency, rather than accept that the Army took too long in Vietnam to figure it out, and then tried to prevent the army from ever fighting in again. Of course, this did nothing but push the decision making theoretically out of the hands of the politicians and into the army, thereby avoiding the serious work of studying counter-insurgency in favor of declaring that we'd never fight it again. Obviously, the real world is not like that, you must prepare for how you will fight, not how you want to fight, and with the obvious preponderance of American conventional power, we'll be fighting more non-conventional wars than conventional.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

Kissinger Speaks

Worth reading.

One of my biggest fears is that withdrawal will become an end itself, rather than one dependent on our chance of victory.

Homework

Essential reading at Bill Roggio's place on Al Qaeda's intermediate and long term goals.

"Al Qaeda's purported strategy can be broken down into seven "phases" which span from 2000 until 2020, at which time they believe the global Islamist Caliphate will be established and they will acheive "definitive victory." Here are the phases, which are followed by commentary when appropriate.

The First Phase Known as "the awakening" -- this has already been carried out and was supposed to have lasted from 2000 to 2003, or more precisely from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington to the fall of Baghdad in 2003. The aim of the attacks of 9/11 was to provoke the US into declaring war on the Islamic world and thereby "awakening" Muslims. "The first phase was judged by the strategists and masterminds behind al-Qaida as very successful," writes Hussein. "The battle field was opened up and the Americans and their allies became a closer and easier target." The terrorist network is also reported as being satisfied that its message can now be heard "everywhere."...

Read the rest and make no mistake, we are fighting an enemy with a real political agenda, they are not killing for the sake of killing. Understand your enemy, not to crawl into a fetal position - but to kill and marginalize them more effectively.

I'm going to try to have a post up on this later in the week.

Who is the Enemy?

Mr. Esmay talks about those who would prefer to label Islam itself the impediment to peace and democracy.

Part of this desire is rooted in a need to finally fight back and let loose, instead of being hobbled by our enemy's shadowy nature, a spreading and violent ideology permeating throughout 1.2 billion people. American can be more easily motivated against visible existential enemies and they historically know how to destroy them. Our misguided, but understandable declaration of war against the tactic rather than the idea itself, Wahabbism and violent fundamentalist Islam, has worsened our situation. The extreme difficulties in fighting ideas and furtive groups rather than a traditional nation state are very real - the War on Terror is essentially counter-insurgency on a global level.

With this in mind, you've got two traditional options available. You can either attack the carrier to get at the disease, or separate and isolate the enemy from its hosts via both military and political warfare. Regarding the former option, nuclear terrorism could change this, but we are not there and do not want to be there. The "victory" would likely be Pyhrric, poisoning the American psyche and alienating much of the American populace from its government - not to mention killing many innocent people.

This means the route that President Bush has taken, doing our best to separate Al Qaeda from the wider Muslim world. We've since found out that Al Qaeda is not the fringe of the fringe, the Muslim world [Arab in particular] is much more reactionary than we imagined, its homelands mired in corruption, victimology, and foreign scapegoating. We've run into a host of other problems from incendiary Arab satellite TV to hometown newspapers running enemy propaganda for months at a time. Still, we persist on strategy number 2, at least so long as we can physically afford it.

I am not a dhimmi. Better dead than red? Hell yes! I also love the New Hampshire state motto and I applauded the Navy bringing back the Gasden Flag. Likewise, I am also not squeamish. If it ultimately takes dropping a nuke on Riyadh to end this thing, then to quote Gene Hackman - drop that fucker, twice. Losing is simply not an option against this enemy. At the same time I’m pragmatic – and Americans are a pragmatic people. We’re the only people in the history of warfare that rebuilds the houses and armies of its enemies. Why? Because it is ultimately what will make us safe. We can go from the rage of battle to the patronization of occupation in the blink of an eye.

I’m also not willfully blind. I’m not deluded by PC double speak, and I haven’t been covering my eyes to news throughout the world. Islam is not in the best of shape. I don’t care about its Golden Age, as a civilization it is as close to failed as it can get.

Is Islam predominately a religion of peace? Is it compatible with Democracy? I can’t answer the first. I hardly consider myself enough of an expert to come down either way, nor could I describe Christianity or Judaism as such. It just isn’t my forte. What I can tell you, is that it is irrelevant – religions are the sum of their followers. Islam may be a religion of peace, but many Muslims, aren’t. Muslims are at war with Hindus in India, Buddhists in Thailand, Orthodox in Chechnya, Catholics in Philippines, and Protestants throughout the West. Islam has bloody borders - Samuel Huntington noticed this as far back as 1993. So much for Bush being the root of all evils.

But is it compatible with Democracy? Says Dean:

"In the Islamic world, Senegal has gone in barely ten years to one of the least-free nations on Earth to one of the most-free. It is 94% Muslim. Mali has come even farther in the last few decades, and is even freer than Senegal. You haven't heard of these countries? Too damned bad. They are a part of the Islamic world, and they show what is possible."

To which I’ll add these guys. They’re part of the Muslim world, and understandably most of us warbloggers love them – they’re the future of Iraq we’d like to build. In 10 years, while absorbing the refugees of Hussein's Arabization, under constant threat of attack, and complete absent from the Oil for Food debacle - they built a workable democracy, and they are now our allies. They’re even Sunni Muslim, the branch from which we face most of our problems worldwide.

Islam is part of the problem. There are even sects within it, notably Wahhabism, which I consider incompatible with democracy. The spread of a retrograde Saudi version of Islam and its derivatives is the biggest source of our problems. At the same time, to declare war on Islam itself, is counterproductive. Yes, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda receive the admiration and support, active or passive, of a larger portion of the Muslim world than we often acknowledge. But no, not the entire Muslim world is against us.



















This man, recently buried at Arlington after dying beside US troops, is not our enemy.





This American soldier, fighting for his country even while his wife gives birth at home, is not our enemy.














These brave souls, frequently slaughtered at recruiting centers, only to be replaced by others, are not our enemy. They are the Minutemen, even if fools such as Michael Moore cannot see it.

You divide and conquer your opposition, whenever possible - you do not go out of your way to unify it. To avoid a clash of epic proportions, may we find more such men, and avoid needlessly alienating them.

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*Update* Edited at 8 PM to make more clear the consequences of total war.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

Dymphna at Gates of Vienna has a humorous and worthwhile post on Wahhabist swimwear.

Unfortunately, I was distracted by a memory, seared, seared into my mind.

Reason for Celebration

Stop by and congratulate Abu Yusef. He's an American soldier in Iraq whose wife has just given birth to a baby boy back home.

An American Hero

The USA Today remembers an American hero who's not American, but Iraqi:

"An Iraqi air force pilot will be buried Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery. It will be the first interment there of an Iraqi citizen. The late Capt. Ali Abass is the first Iraqi to be honored with burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

The remains of Capt. Ali Abass will be buried with some of the remains of four members of a U.S. Air Force team who died beside him when their plane crashed near the Iranian border. Abass will be one of about 60 foreign nationals buried at the national cemetery across the Potomac River from Washington. More than 260,000 Americans have been laid to rest there since the Civil War.

The event, with a 21-gun salute and a flyover by Air Force jets, will be witnessed by senior U.S. and Iraqi military officials, symbolizing the cooperation between the military services of the two nations.

"Things like this tend to draw us closer together," says Lt. Gen. Michael Wooley, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command. Even after the United States withdraws from Iraq, "there will be long-term personal relationships" between the pilots and air crews of the two nations, he says.

Abass was popular with the Americans. He bonded with them because of an earlier incident, according to an Air Force statement. After he and a U.S. officer were forced to make an emergency landing on an Iraqi road, some vehicles approached and Abass had the American hide behind a nearby sand berm. He then convinced the visitors that he worked for the Iraqi agriculture department."

RIP Mr. Abass. You are a hero to both your own nation and ours.

An Old Enemy

At the Belmont Club, Wretchard mixes history with personal recollection:

"In February 1945, a woman now dying of lung cancer grabbed two of her children and jumped out the window to escape Imperial Japanese Marines crashing through the door intent on bayoneting everyone in the burning house. Finding no one, they went on to the next house to continue their massacre on a street not far from the Rizal Memorial ballpark, where Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth both played in sunnier days before the forgotten Battle of Manila. The 100,000 civilians who died in the largest urban battle of the Pacific War -- more than at Hiroshima -- are not remembered in beautiful candles floating down darkened rivers or in flights of doves soaring into the blue sky; there is no anti-American significance to their deaths. But they still live in the fading memory of that woman, who hid for two days in the smoldering ruins of the neighborhood until the first American patrols came into view.

I saw my aunt last as she stood in a window of a Sydney hotel and waved goodbye. I hope to see her again."

In many ways, the Imperial Japanese were the most similar enemy to Al Qaeda that we've fought before this latest war. Suicidally inclined, they fought to the death. In many cases they almost consciously chased their opportunity to die for the Emperor in fruitless and self defeating banzai charges that only served to get them killed off faster in the face of overwhelming American firepower. Prior to undertaking these charges, they'd often use alcohol to dull the senses, just as today's mujahadeen fry their brains with hashish and other mind altering substances before going into combat.

The Japanese also considered their enemies largely subhuman, and treated them accordingly - from fellow Asians to Westerners. Ironically they largely treated fellow Asians even worse than they did Westerners, proving the baselessness of their co-prosperity sphere rhetoric, meant as it was to seduce anti-colonialist asians. Truthfully, the Japanese loved Filipinos and Chinese about as much as Zarqawi loves Shi'ite Muslims. As a result, much as the Germans forfeited anti-Boshevik feelings in Russia, Japanese brutality forced even anti-colonial asians to fight back against their new masters.

Bill Roggio relates the story of an Iraqi village's expulsion of Zarqawi's forces. "Sunnis have taken up arms against al Qaeda to protect their Shiite neighbors." So too, we hope that what happened in Asia long ago will happen in Iraq and throughout the Muslim world. We hope that actual Saudi Wahhabist and Al Qaeda's direct rule and methods will prove as much an anathema and curse to Muslims as Japanese rule was to their victims. The Iranian youth have learned, will the rest of the Ummah follow, and if so, how long will it take?

Open posted at the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

A Dutch-born American?

Dutch blog Zacht Ei tells the story of a Dutch newscaster whose pro-American sympathies were likely part of the reason behind the Dutch PBS's decision to reject him as a potential news anchor:

"Mr. Groenhuijsen has been at odds with the NOS Journaal for some time because he has said such fascist controversial things as:

'If all America had wanted were Iraq's oil reserves, Bush would have chosen the Chirac method, and invited Saddam over at his ranch to discuss business.'

'When I see whole American families signing up for the military to defend the freedom of others, some Dutch say: Americans are fanatics. I say: I salute you.'

and my personal favorite:

'Many Dutch are what they claim Americans to be: they are suffering from Torremolinos superficiality, BMW rudeness and Vinkeveen egotism.'

So of course I ordered his book ('Amerikanen zijn niet gek', or 'Americans aren't crazy') immediately."

Never forget. Even in countries and institutions with which we are at odds, we have friends.

Canada - America's Most Surprising Political Enemy

While on vacation I stumbled across this post by Dean Esmay, concerning Canadian-American relations.

Said Esmay:

Reader Robert Bell recently sent me a column written by Ted Byfield of the Calgary Sun laying out how a growing number of the American intelligence, diplomatic, and defense communities view Canada as a hostile nation--not an avowed enemy, of course, but a nation which goes out of its way to thwart or harm American interests whenever possible. When I read Byfield's column I started wincing, because he quotes some of the more inflammatory-sounding sentences from a recent paper written by Professor Harvey M. Sapolsky of the Security Studies Program at MIT.

I had assumed that the paper by Sapolsky was a cringeworthy rant about Canada and Canadians, but then I went and searched for it--apparently, the Calgary Sun hasn't figured out how to use hyperlinks yet--and I believe I found the paper: Canada: A Nuisance Neighbor (And sometimes a malicious one, too).

I sat down to read the paper and, despite its inflammatory title, found it to be a rather calm, rational exploration of all the ways in which Canada has chosen to base its national identity on hostility toward America and to actively work to thwart U.S. foreign policy and at times even to put our troops at risk.

I then went and re-read Ted Byfield's column on Sapolsky's piece, and realized that it was more thoughtful and serious than I'd thought. Sapolsky's brutally honest, to the point of rude, but his analysis is hard to refute.

I'm going to have to spend some time thinking about this. Americans get a sometimes well-deserved reputation for being rude among Canadians, but I have to admit I'd never seriously considered some of the points that Sapolsky raises.

I've been beating the same drum as Sapolsky for a while, to the point where acquaintances have labeled me a Canada-phobe. In a prior post on Canadian-American relations, I said the following:

In the past we have been among the two closest countries in the world, with Roosevelt guarenteeing the protection of Canadian sovereignty in the dark days of 1940. This has changed, and contrary to the reporter's statement, it is getting worse. The missle defense debacle was irresponsible and simply dangerous, and the US cannot allow Canada to jeopordize America's security by placating the Canadian leadership's moral self-righteousness and anti-Americanism. Canadian's have always been afflicted with an excessive inferiority complex concerning the US; they define themselves as "not being American." In the past, this was simply a discomfort, but it has become a serious problem. In the post 9-11 world we cannot count on Canadian loyalty. They think we are the problem: we provoke the Russians with ABM defense, Middle Eastern terrorism through our foreign policy, and European antagonism through general unilateral Cowboyism. And until they acquire leaders with more political courage than a boy scout troop - no offense to boy scouts, that is not going to change.

Canada is one of the few nations in the world where indigenous nationalism originates in a self-identified and exaggerated distinction from another country, specifically us. In actuality, Canadians are of course closer to Americans than any other people in the world. If you were to say that to a typical postmodern Canadian nationalist, however, they'd likely set aside their professed pacifism and beat you up.

They get away with this because Americans barely pay attention to them, and when they do, Canadian narcissism is seen as the relatively harmless result of a state overshadowed by its domineering neighbor and in serious need of a self-identity. As Sapolsky correctly said, however, this self-professed status as North America's moral superpower is now working against American interests:

The more reprehensible Canadian behavior has been that which has potential for harmfully constraining our military actions and putting our soldiers permanently at risk. One example is the Ottawa Treaty Banning Landmines, which the Canadian Foreign Minister at the time, Lloyd Axworthy, orchestrated in 1997. The Treaty, whose formulation involved unusually extensive participation by non-governmental organizations including various humanitarian relief and anti-war groups, bans the manufacture, possession, transfer, and use of anti-personnel devices that explode on contact or in proximity with a person so as to incapacitate, injure or kill.

Banned also are so-called anti-handling devices often used with anti-vehicle mines. The argument was that the dangers of mines persist long after wars, with these weapons lying in wait most often in unmarked or forgotten locations to kill and maim the innocent who pass by or try to work the land.

The United States has refused to sign the treaty in part because it maintains marked and fenced mine fields along the inter-Korean border to hinder possible North Korean attacks, but also because it has developed and equipped its forces with replacement mines that are scattered rather than emplaced, and that are set with timers to self-destruct after a battle, thus posing no risk to returning civilians. These devices were not exempt in formulating the ban because, as one organizer put it, "we didn't want to give the United States any advantage." At Canada's urging, most of our allies, including nearly all of our NATO partners, have signed the Treaty, which means essentially that we can not ever deploy mines if we seek coalition partners because it is unlawful for signatory nations to join in warfare with landmine users.

Because American forces do nearly all of the fighting these days done by Western militaries, it will be American soldiers who will be most often unprotected by defensive minefields. American soldiers, of course, will still face the dangers of landmines. The treaty has little effect on fighting in the poorer regions of the world, because few local participants pay attention to the ban and because unsophisticated mines are cheap to make and easy to plant.

Another example of Canada working against American security interests and potentially placing American soldiers in jeopardy is Canada's promotion of the International Criminal Court. A Canadian diplomat presided over the negotiations that produced the treaty creating the court, which Canada championed as the rightful legacy of the Nuremberg trials and the forum where the perpetrators of evils like that which occurred in Rwanda and Bosnia will be brought to justice. President Bush renounced the accepting signature that President Clinton gave the International Criminal Court treaty in his last days in office but never forwarded to the Senate, saying that the treaty would give license to politically driven prosecutors to indict Americans serving in overseas stability and peacekeeping operations.

With America taking the initiative to bring order to so many different parts of the world, it needed to protect its soldiers from the easy retaliation that an International Criminal Court trial would offer those who sympathize with our enemies. Canada has strongly opposed U.S. attempts to gain an extended exemption for U.S. forces from the court's jurisdiction. It seems likely that one day soon an American soldier will be heading to the Hague for judgment, with all the political consequences that will involve.

Canada's role in drafting these treaties is not the result of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien's obvious and, at times, crudely expressed dislike for President George W. Bush and his administration. The treaties were initiated well before President Bush took office, when Chretien's good friend Bill Clinton was the president. Because they intentionally undermine America's military equities, the treaties seem to represent a deeper and more dangerous decision by Canada's foreign policy establishment to lead the international effort to hobble the American military. Canada appears not to be just searching for a virtuous image or opportunistically expressing a mild brand of anti-Americanism. It seems to be on a Lilliputian quest to bind our power.

Sapolsky did not even touch the short-sighted moves by Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to go against his previous support and publically backstab the construction of American Ballistic Missile Defense. Why? Placating domestic anti-Americanism within his base:

But federal officials, who wished to remain anonymous, told the CBC's Radio-Canada that domestic considerations may have outweighed pressure from Washington.

Martin's government lost its majority last spring and the Bloc Québécois and the New Democrats oppose the plan, while the Conservatives support it but want a full debate on Canada's role.

As well, Martin faces stiff resistance in his own caucus. The Liberals also want to improve their fortunes in Quebec, where there seems to be little support for missile defence.

Martin then said he expected any American President to consult him prior to our interception of any incoming missiles over Canada. Yes, he actually suggested that with a nuclear missile heading towards the United States, an American President should consult him prior to intercepting it. It demonstrates the fundamental unseriousness of national security politics north of the border. Call me a Canada-phobe, but I'd snicker seeing a missile knocked off course to land somewhere in Quebec, one that could have been knocked down much father North had Paul Martin grown a backbone. The good news is that as Sapolsky says, American politicians are beginning to recognize that Canadian anti-Americanism is no longer a harmless dementia, but one damaging American interests. We will act accordingly against North America's self-proclaimed moral superpower.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway for their open posts.

Back

After a much longer than anticipated trip, I am now rebased in Southern Florida, for a little bit of pre-school R&R. Posting should pick up again, especially if cloud cover remains as is.

Trip

Summer job is done, so I'm heading up to New York City tomorrow morning. Due to the traveling posting will be light to nonexistant for a few days.

-Chao

British Developments

Reflecting the sudden but significant shift in British attitudes, Blair announces new anti-terrorism measures.

The proposals, which also target extremist Web sites and bookshops, are aimed primarily at excluding radical Islamic clerics accused of whipping up hatred and violence among vulnerable, disenfranchised Muslim men.

"We are angry. We are angry about extremism and about what they are doing to our country, angry about their abuse of our good nature," Blair said. "We welcome people here who share our values and our way of life. But don't meddle in extremism because if you meddle in it ... you are going back out again."

Still, however, European sensibilities get in the way:

Some British officials feel human rights legislation has hampered Britain's ability to deport foreigners. As a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights (search), Britain is not allowed to deport people to a country where they may face torture or death.

Blair is hoping that by winning pledges from countries that deportees would not be subjected to inhumane treatment, Britain can take a tougher line. An agreement has already been reached with Jordan, and London is talking to Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt.

I'm personally in favor of jailing these people whenever possible, because it makes little sense to effectively evacuate your enemy. Nevertheless, one of the main reasons that deporting extremist clerics might be a good idea is precisely because they face much tougher treatment at home from governments that may or may not like them - there is a reason they are in Britain. You must make them face the consequences for their words - it is a deterrence.

The story continues:

"The proposals, however, could affect their ideological leaders, as well as people such as jailed Egyptian-born cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who allegedly encouraged the killings of Jews and other non-Muslims and is wanted in the United States, and Omar Mahmoud abu Omar, a Palestinian Islamic extremist better known as Abu Qatada.

Sheikh Omar Bakri, who has frequently shrugged off allegations that he preaches extremism, criticized Blair's proposals, particularly suggestions that he could be targeted for remarks made years ago.

"If they believed what I said was illegal, why didn't they arrest me at the time, they know my work well," he told The Associated Press. "However, I feel I've done a great service for Muslims. I've addressed the anger and frustration so many youth feel." He said if asked to go, he would return to Lebanon rather than challenge the decision.

According to a 2001 MEMRI report, Sheik Omar bin Bakri Muhammad is the founder of the London branch of Hizb Al-Tahir. Hizb Al-Tahir recently became known in the blogosphere due to the discovered affiliation of a Guardian trainee with the organization, which promotes the reestablishment of an Islamic Caliphate.

The report also says that Sheik Bakri "presents himself as the spokesman of Osama Bin Laden's International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders. This organization, by Bakri's own admission, participates in fundraising for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and is "in touch" with Hizbullah. Bakri has further claimed to have recruited volunteers for training in paramilitary camps located in the US and Lebanon." He also claimed to have recruited fighters destined for Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Kashmir.

His views haven't changed since the report, he supported the attacks in Beslan, saying, "If an Iraqi Muslim carried out an attack like that in Britain, it would be justified because Britain has carried out acts of terrorism in Iraq."

Bottom line: This man should be either jailed or disappeared, not deported - and certainly not protected from the effects of his deportation. We must go after the financial backers and recruiters just as harshly as we go after the jihadis themselves.

Also quoted in the article is a Iqbal Sacranie, who heads the Muslim Council of Britain and "said the group would be seeking more details from Blair, but his early response was concern. "Our democratic values need to be upheld, not undermined," he said."

In December of 2004, Mr. Sacranie did not have any problems supporting the recently passed British law against religious hatred. At the time he thought, "stirring up hatred against people simply because of their religious beliefs or lack of them ought to be regarded as a social evil. The BNP's ongoing Islamophobia can and has led to criminal acts, abuse, discrimination, fear and disorder."

Apparently the urgency to combat religious hatred was shortlived, after people started dying, of course.

*Sissy Williams also is on this topic, here.
*Pierre Legrand is less optimistic that Blair's finally serious.

-Oops, sorry to both of you about the initially incorrect trackback.

Iranian Conundrum - Why Iran Will Get Nukes

Strategy Page tells the disturbing truth, Iranian nukes are inevitable.

I completely agree. Considering our difficulties in Iraq, there is zero possibility we will be making war on a country 3 times its size. In particular, one that has a history of fanatical resistance to outside invasion. In 1980, Iran was much more divided than it is now, yet rallied behind Khomeini to send its children over minefields after the Iraq Army.

Our current long term strategy is internal revolution, and its attractiveness is buoyed by the fact that an estimated 2/3rds of current Iranian citizens were born after the Khomeini revolution. Most do not identify with fundamentalism or abhor America. This has led to many commentators to call it the most pro-American country in the region, save Israel. Indeed, I agree with Ralph Peters that post-Mullah Iran has the potential to become a critical American ally in the region.

Unfortunately, the seemingly inevitable turnover is unlikely to end their Iranian support of the Iraqi resistance acccording to our time table. The Iranian domestic opposition is still unarmed and outgunned by regime supporters in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and other regime pillars. Unarmed prophets fail when the leadership has the will to respond with violence, will the Mullahs show no signs of lacking. Internal revolution is a long term hope, not something we can depend in the near future. And because we no longer have the military option to seriously threaten them, their interference in Iraqi affairs is not going to end. This is their chance to throw us off the beaches, conveniently increasing their own influence in Iraqi concurrently.

So, can we delay their development of nuclear weapons until the regime falls? In the long run, it doesn't matter. For a regime as unpopular as the Mullahs, their pursuit of nuclear weapons enjoys popular domestic support. It is the natural desire of a people surrounded by enemies who are sick of a long history of foreign influence and domination. Thus, even a democratic Iran would likely be a nuclear power, albeit a probable American ally.

Open posted at both the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway.

Not Gonna Take It

London based Iraqi Expat has had enough with Ba'athist apologists:

I am getting tired of this. Especially, from sick people who don't seem to have any self-respect or any sense of righteousness, people who praise and or defend animals like Saddam, and people who praise and or defend animals like the Baathists and Islamists who are fighting in Iraq and terrorising Iraqis to bring their fascist murderous regime back. Needless to say, that I am sick of the shameless lowlife Baathists and Islamists.

I am getting tired of all this; hence, I don't care anymore whether or not justice is served, I don't care anymore whether or not Saddam gets a fair trial and hanged; all I care about is that he dies, and with him dies all the shameless lowlife animals ("freedom fighters").

In my dictionary, there are no human rights for animals, there are only animal rights and these are for real animals; therefore, Saddam, his loyalist Baathists and terrorists, in Iraq and elsewhere, are entitled to one right only, the right to apologise and cry for forgiveness before being hanged. Apology will not be accepted and forgiveness will not be granted, of course."

It was the latest screed from George Galloway, Oswald Mosely reborn, that set him off.

Brookings Report

Looking over the latest Brookings report poll data and hope to have a post up tomorrow.

Ho Chi Mihn Trail Redux

Bill Roggio summarizes our major operations in the Western Anbar province of Iraq. It seems pretty clear we're trying to uproot the supply lines and reinforcement routes from Syria. The question is of course whether we have the capability to fill the vacuum left by each operation, or whether the insurgents will quickly refill the voids.

But...You Promised!

According to Canadian immigration officials, official statistics show the number of Americans actually applying to live permanently in Canada fell in the six months after the election.

"I guess I'm happy Republicans and Democrats have found a way to live together in peace and in harmony," said Immigration Minister Joe Volpehe.

Toby Condliffe, who heads the Canadian chapter of Democrats Abroad, also had an explanation:

"I can only assume the Americans who checked out the Web site subsequently checked out our winter temperatures and further took note that the National Hockey League was being locked out and had second thoughts," he told Reuters.

How are the Democrats ever going to win back American voters if they renege on their commitments?

Iranian Interference

"Shipment of high explosives intercepted in Iraq - most sophisticated of roadside bombs reportedly coming from Iran".

"U.S. military and intelligence officials tell NBC News that American soldiers intercepted a large shipment of high explosives, smuggled into northeastern Iraq from Iran only last week.

The officials say the shipment contained dozens of "shaped charges" manufactured recently."

Related discussion in the comments section here.

Media Military Cluelessness

In a post titled "Stupidest. News. Story. Ever.", Paul at Wizbang tears into a military-challenged reporter:

So let me see if I understand about this new "weakness" that has been "exposed."

An Amphibious vehicle does not have the same armor as a tank. -- I'll type that again in case the shock of this sudden revelation might be too much to comprehend.... An Amphibious vehicle does not have the same armor as a tank.

[It pains me that I have to type this next part...] Could that be because if it has as much armor as a tank it would SINK!?!?!

Wait, you're telling me that many reporters (and their editors) don't know jack about the military? What next are you going to try to tell me, the sky is blue?

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*Apologies for the incorrectly titled trackback.*

Is the Tide Turning in Europe?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about an International Pew Poll that was receiving much coverage because of the perception that support for suicide bombing had dropped in the polled countries. I suggested that the poll's results weren't nearly as clear cut as the optimists suggested. I also noted some findings that most people were not commenting on:


















Note the high unfavorable ratings for Muslims among Europeans. Their opposition to Iraq is less a result of their love of Muslims than it is for their displeasure for us. They dislike both of us, they just dislike us more.

This increased European agitation was noted by Norwegian blogger Bjorn Staerk:

I posted a Norwegian version of Fighting European Islamism in the political group blog of Dagbladet, a national newspaper. They had a front page link to the post up for a week, generating about 450 comments. Dagbladet is a left-leaning tabloid, and I've made fun of them often enough. So what kind of response would you expect from its readers to a post about Islamic terrorism?

I've done a quick survey, looking at what people posted in the first two days of the debate. The view most commonly expressed was not far from mine: Islamist terrorists are evil fanatics and a real threat, but a friendly Islam is possible and should be encouraged. No "but we have to look at why they hate us", just plain revulsion and recognition that we have a problem. On second place, the idea that Islam itself is evil, and Europe's Muslim population a danger to us. Some of these views were racist, most were not. Third, that Bush and Blair were behind the attacks, not al-Qaeda, (referring to conspiracy websites), and fourth that the West is the real problem, and Bush and Blair the real criminals.

The opposite, then, of what you'd guess based on the stereotype of the leftist European. Dagbladet is more tabloid than leftist, and no online debate is representative, but still. I had no idea. What surprised me most was how popular the idea that Islam Is Evil has become. Not a watered down version of it, but the lazily generalizing, scripture-misquoting kind best described as Islamophobia.

I don't know how this happened. Or where all those anti-American terror apologists went, the ones I targetted so often in this blog's early days. Did they ever exist outside closed circles in media and academia? Were all those bestselling Michael Moore books as quickly forgotten as they were read? Have people been secretly passing around Oriana Fallaci instead?

I noted in my analysis of the Pew Poll that "except for the conspicuous position of Britons [one wonders whether that's changed in the past week?], Americans gave a lower unfavorable rating to Muslims than any other Western people."

Signs are suggesting that British opinions are indeed changing.

From BBC online:

I am half Indian, half English. Apart from a little racism at school, I've had no problems in my life in this country. This is because I am open-minded and do not dictate to others how they behave. I accept different cultures, am eager to learn about their ways of life, and I respect others. Whenever I hear comments like 'Britain doesn't make me feel good' I am angry because it's just nonsense. Britain bends over backwards for ethnic cultures and all those communities do is whinge and attack the hand that feeds it. If ever anyone says they feel alienated, they only have to look in the mirror to find the cause of that alienation. Nobody can make you feel inferior but yourself.
JC, London, UK

It is vital that the cultures and beliefs of everyone are respected - but not at the cost of Britain's traditional culture and values. More integration would lead to an increased acceptance of each other and a greater send of national identity.
FG, Cambridge

I have seen Muslim friends blend seamlessly into British society while still holding onto their religious values. Multiculturalism does not work, it only promotes division. Embracing your adoptive country's way of life is the way to remove racism and promote religious awareness.
Pauline, Suffolk

There are certainly dissenting responses, but the majority of respondents answered similarly. This is BBC online, hardly a bastion of Conservative thought.

I've seen this transformation personally, in a young woman who works alongside me at my summer job. She holds British citizenship, but resides in Luxembourg. Politically, she's a typical European leftist, in love with Kyoto and horrified at American foreign policy.

A few days after the London bombings, a number of interns were discussing the attacks during lunch. We gradually moved into the topic of immigration and multiculturalism and were pretty shocked when this person sharply said, "if they don't want to respect our rules and culture, they should leave. If they don't like us, they should go."

The other Americans at the table were pretty taken aback by this blunt outburst. It was a conversation stopper, and prompted a hurried switch to a new topic.

It interested me, so I later asked this intern more about her feelings. First I asked her whether the question of immigration and multiculturalism had ever been prominent in the British press before the attacks. She said that was a very interesting question and not surprisingly said no, she'd only seen articles on xenophobia.

Eventually, I decided to email her this collumn by Mark Steyn.

After she read it, the exchange went as follows:

Her: "So what's the big deal? Some people are idiots?"
Me: "The point is that people have been warning about multiculturalism for years, yet been labeled either xenophobes or racists."
Her: "You know, you're absolutely correct. I used to be pro-immigration, thinking it was our responsibility to help these people, but..."

Word for word. You can tell where it went from there.

It is but a small anecdote. Nevertheless, the strong statement by Tory chief David Davis declaring multiculturalism a failure indicates that he believes, like me, that this shift is happening on a larger scale. Whether politically correct forces in Britain are able to halt it is yet to be seen, but right now they're fighting an uphill battle.

*Thanks to the Mudville Gazette and Outside the Beltway for open posts.

US Translator's Blog

Interesting blog by an Arabic speaking US soldier:

Thieves that is who is doing everything in Iraq… thieves. The Insurgents now involve themselves in criminal activities such as car theft and kidnapping to keep themselves funded… The criminals use the cover of the insurgency do the same, and are able to attack the Iraqi police with impunity, keeping them weak and scared so that they can run their criminal enterprises… Maybe some people think that all the assassinations are from the insurgency? No… that is simply not reasonable. I am sure a great many are… But it is not just insurgents who stand to benefit from such deaths… as they try to destabilize the “corroborating government”. The Iraqi criminal underground benefit too. The corruption minister of Mosul gets murdered. By insurgents? Maybe, but more likely by local strong men who were getting looked at too closely. No one will ever know. The insurgents won’t turn them in after all. Turn them in to who? The government they are trying to eliminate? The insurgents won’t attack them… they use the say supply chains to get arms. You don’t think the insurgents don’t buy arms from someone simply because they are a common criminal do you? They get weapons anywhere they can, the same way they get the funds to buy the weapons. Their fight is more important in their mind than doing the right thing. So here we have criminal elements running rampant and committing assassinations… and how much would you bet that certain Iraqi politicians without scruples are involved in taking out their political rivals and then sit back and relax as the insurgency is blamed?

Let’s not joke about that one either. The corrupt politicians who have political rival killed (if it is happening, I think it is). We must ask who do they use? If they use the police then there will be more inquiry. Most likely they use the criminals too. So what do we have here? We have insurgents working with the nations criminal elements so they can keep attacking American forces, and the new government, and we have corrupt politicians using the same criminals to satisfy their political rivalries. What does that mean? That some of the more corrupt politicians are linked to the insurgency who is trying to kill them… and that the insurgency has links to the corrupt politicians who are their examples for why they hate and want to take out the new government. Top it off… many of these corrupt politicians or probably contractors.

When I came me and two of my translator friends sat and talked. We talked of how we hoped that finally this third world corruption and bribery could be minimized. Sure it will always be there to a degree we agreed, but maybe Iraq could be a new land with less corruption and nepotism than its neighbors. Seven months in country has dashed that hope out the window

I was not unfamiliar with the corruption in the Middle East. I was well aware of its extent thanks to my wife. She has told me plenty of dirty little secrets about the corruption in her country. . I am not saying there is no corruption in America. There certainly is… but anything we have pales in comparison to the stuff over here."

Doesn't seem to be getting a lot of traffic, but looks like it deserves it. Abu's words ring true with much of what Strategy Page has been reporting, the unbelievable amounts of corruption in Iraq. This is a cultural thing that is undoubtedly going to take years to overcome, reminds us of the little things we take for granted in this country.

New UK Novel Features Suicide Bombing Main Character

Here.

"A new novel for teenagers about a mixed-race girl who trains to become a terrorist suicide bomber has become a bestseller in mainstream bookshops since its publication a month ago.

Checkmate, by the award-winning children's writer Malorie Blackman, features a heroine who is groomed by militant members of an oppressed ethnic group in an unspecified country - but there are many clues to it being Britain - to wear a vest bomb to kill a senior politician in a suicide mission on her 16th birthday.

...

Despite the fan club in Britain, the first book in the trilogy has only just been published in America. Blackman, who says she abhors violence but that terrorism can breed in unequal social conditions, blamed the September 11 terrorist attack for making American publishers too timid to take the book on. Annie Eaton, Blackman's editor at her British publisher, Random House, said yesterday that it was "a complete coincidence" that the author had included suicide bombing in Checkmate. "We had the manuscript months before the London bombings."

She denied that Blackman's subject matter was too tough for teenagers: "They see far worse things on television and I think people realise that what she is doing is very important, making this age group think and be led by their own judgments."

What epiphany should they come to?

"Amelia Farmer, 11, of Cambridge, said watching coverage of the London suicide bombers after reading Checkmate "made me wonder whether they were nice people when they were children and whether they might have been bullied at school like Callum is in the book or whether life might have been unfair to them".

Henry Page, 13, of Winchester, said: "Checkmate is a fantastic book. It showed how difficult it must be to be a different colour from other people. It opened my eyes and it was quite sad."

Right, root causes. Less understanding, more condemnation, please?

Penny For Your Thoughts?

A man paid for a $120 speeding ticket in pennies in Minnesota.

In response, the judge forced him to wait in court room while she had the contents of the small trash can counted.

The Ummah

Disturbing, but prescient article from the Pakistani Daily Times:

"Many Muslims, and not just the ulema, seem to have mastered the art of doublespeak. They speak from both sides of the mouth, as it were, depending on the occasion and the audience.

The most glaring examples of doublespeak are the issues of peaceful coexistence and freedom of religion. The same people who constantly breathe fire on “heretics” and “infidels” and preach jihad against them also keep telling us that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Similarly, they cite the Quranic injunction that there is “no compulsion in religion” at the same time as prescribing death for apostates.

This art of doublespeak, which was first tested after 9/11 in the heat of battle, so to speak, has matured into triplespeak after the London bombings. If we exclude the small group of fanatics who openly proclaim the suicide bombers as martyrs for Islam, most Muslims will argue along the following lines:

First line of defence: there is no proof that the Muslims accused of the London bombings actually carried them out. However, if they did it, they deserve to be condemned. They are not “good Muslims”.

Second line of defence: these youngsters are only reacting to the “mass killings” of fellow Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan by American and British troops.

Third line of defence: the suicide bombings were the result of discrimination against Muslims in Great Britain and the failure of British society to integrate them.

The first contention is not even worthy of rebuttal, but the other two do need reflection. We will start with the last. To blame Muslim “alienation” on British acts of omission and commission is like rubbing salt on Britain’s wound. Muslims are well-known for their refusal to assimilate in any society. Everywhere, they stand apart from the rest, and take pride in their separateness. What better example of that than Pakistan itself, the product of Muslim separatism in India.

Big talk and tall claims notwithstanding, the pathetic ground reality has compelled millions of Muslims from South Asia, Turkey, East Africa and North Africa to migrate to the West in search of a better future, but their reluctance to integrate within the host nations has left them backward. While the governments of these countries spend significant resources on encouraging and assisting Muslims to integrate, they themselves actively work to frustrate those efforts.

Organisations such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir and the Tableeghi Jamaat are at the vanguard of the Muslim determination to resist integration, but they succeed only because the very thought of integration into western society is anathema to ordinary Muslims. They openly admire the West’s material offerings, such as jobs, good salaries, social welfare benefits, education, medical care, etc, while rejecting its values.

In fact, the vast majority of Muslim immigrants in the West have nothing but contempt for the concepts that underpin western society, such as secularism, sovereignty of the people, equality of women, children’s rights, etc. Minority rights, freedom of speech and religion and civil liberties are welcome only insofar as they apply to societies where Muslims are a minority, as in India and the West.

We live in an imperfect world where conflicts and wars have been the norm rather than the exception. No country can ever allow a minority to dictate or wield a veto over its foreign policy. Can the Muslims of India, for instance, expect to force their government to adopt a certain policy towards Pakistan or Bangladesh? Conversely, will Pakistan tolerate it if its Hindu minority demanded that Pakistan change policy on Kashmir?

...

The government of the United Kingdom, headed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, adopted a certain policy towards Iraq that led to invasion and occupation. It allowed the open expression of opposition to this policy by its citizens, white, black and brown, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, agnostic and atheist. An election was recently held, and Blair retained power, albeit with a reduced majority. Would the British government now countenance a bunch of disgruntled British citizens, of foreign origin to boot, holding society hostage in order to force a change in foreign policy?

Whatever Muslims might think, the world is divided into states and people are recognised by their national, not religious, identities. On the list of factors which, in the modern world, bring nations closer or drive them towards hostility, religion undoubtedly comes last, after military, economic, trade and other core interests. Therefore, for example, Pakistan and Afghanistan, or Algeria and Morocco, or Iran and Iraq, despite being contiguous Muslim countries, are separate states more often hostile than friendly to each other.

Iraq stands out as the Arab country least friendly to Pakistan since 1958, when it repudiated the Baghdad Pact, of which Pakistan was a founding member. The government of Saddam Hussein was particularly unsympathetic to Pakistan. And yet, in apparent sympathy with Iraq, Pakistanis are filled with rage against the US and UK, both of which have done much over the years to assist Pakistan.

Trans-nationalism or supra-nationalism, now confined to Muslims in the concept of the ummah, can be a dangerous double-edged sword that cuts both ways. Mercifully, the rest of the world does not divide itself according to religious denomination, not yet at any rate.

God forbid, if Christians, Hindus and Buddhists, too, begin to identify and organise themselves along religious lines, all hell will break loose. We might have Thai suicide bombers blowing themselves up in, say, a Kuala Lumpur bus to avenge the destruction of the famed Buddha statues of Bamyan in Afghanistan. Or a bunch of Philippino Christians might have gone on a killing spree in Dubai, for example, to protest the Indonesian military’s massacre of East Timorese Christians in Dili in 1991."

The still strong Muslim conception of the "Ummah", or worldwide Muslim community, does much to complicate relations internationally and within the West. The author used the example of Pakistani-US relationships to show the self-defeating nature of these attitudes, but he could have just accurately used Pakistani and Iranian relations with Israel, for example. There is little reason that an Iranian or Pakistani should be so transfixed by the plight of the Palestinians. Neither are Arab, contiguous to Israel, or have national interests at stake. Yet both are in a state of war with the Jewish state.

Mosely Returns

From the Belmont Club comes the words of British politician George Galloway on Al Jazeera:

Galloway (on Syrian TV, July 31, 2005): Mr. Blair is using this crime and all these dead people as a justification for this absurd idea of a war on terrorism. "Terror" is a word... Terror is a tactic, it's not a strategy. The idea that Muslims have some kind of sickness in their bodies, which must be cured, which is the idea behind Bush, behind Mr. Blair, and behind Mr. Berlusconi's government in Italy - It must be resisted. It's not the Muslims who are sick. It's Bush and Blair and Berlusconi who are sick. It's not the Muslims who need to be cured. It's the imperialist countries that need to be cured.

The real question is, after the evidence of Sykes-Picot 1, are you ready to accept Sykes-Picot 2? What does Sykes-Picot mean to the Arab world? Nothing except division, disunity, weakness, and failure. Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners - Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will. The daughters are crying for help, and the Arab world is silent. And some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters. Why? Because they are too weak and too corrupt to do anything about it. So this is what Sykes-Picot will do to the Arabs. Are you ready to have another hundred years like the hundred years you just had?

No, Mr. Galloway, the "real question" is whether or not either the United States or Great Britain still have the strength and self confidence to call a spade a spade, and try citizens such as yourself for treason. Not a watered down charge, no plea bargains, but old fashioned treason.

Protein Wisdom muses:

One wonders why Tony Blair couldn’t sneak some truly useful provision into the new British anti-terrorism statutes that would’ve allowed for the official expatriation of Galloway to someplace where he could eat dates, drink green tea, and preach of Western evils.

In between the public stonings of rape victims, or the stadium-held executions of homosexuals, I mean.

Bring on the Walrus

Leftists wish this one was satire.

From Human Events' the "Best of Bolton":

“Let us be realistic about the U.N. It has served our purposes from time to time; and it is worth keeping alive for future service. But it is not worth the sacrifice of American troops, American freedom of action, or American national interests.”
-- From the 1997 Cato Institute Tract Delusions of Grandeur.

“I don't think the United States or any other nation can put its vital national interests under the veto of the Security Council or any other organization.”
-- In an Interview with the BBC, January 24, 2003.

“A sounder U.S. policy would start by making it clear to the North that we are indifferent to whether we ever have ‘normal’ diplomatic relations with it, and that achieving that goal is entirely in their interests, not ours. We should also make clear that diplomatic normalization with the U.S. is only going to come when North Korea becomes a normal country…Otherwise, we surely will see the continuing and unjustifiable propping up of the North Korean rogue regime.”
-- Op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, September 22, 1999.

“[T]he United States and its Constitution would have to change fundamentally and irrevocably before binding international law becomes possible. This constitutional issue is not merely a narrow, technical point of law, certainly not for the United States.”
-- In Foreign Affairs Magazine, January/February 1999 issue.

-There's much more.

Believe it or Not Part II

John Bolton Named Ambassador, France Withdraws from UN.

This one is satire - I think.

In the "Believe it or Not" Catagory

Indignant imams flatten teapot deity's commune.

Worshipping a giant teapot and claiming to be god in the unforgiving heartland of fundamentalist Islam is like waving a red banner at a bull. For nearly 25 years, Ariffin Mohammed, 65, a Muslim Malay better known as Ayah Pin or Father Pin, has been harassed, arrested and even jailed to force him to recant his `Sky Kingdom' faith and return to the true path of Sunni Islam.

He refused and finally, on Sunday, matters came to a head. Islamic clerics and police marched into the commune in Batu 13 village, in peninsular Malaysia's eastern Terengganu state, accompanied by bulldozers, arrested followers and tore down buildings, bringing down the curtain on a sometimes laughable but still unique interfaith commune.

"He had to be stopped," said Abdul Hamid Othman, head of Islamic affairs in Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi's office. "He violated the sanctity of Islam and his teachings were a threat to national security." But human rights activists condemned the action as a serious violation of fundamental liberty.

-No, that is not satire.

The Latest Editorial Masquerading as News

From the Asia times comes this front page news bulletin by Jim Lobe.

Some highlights:

"As US President George W Bush announced the unprecedented recess appointment of ultra-nationalist John Bolton as his next ambassador to the United Nations, a group of diplomatic heavyweights was preparing to launch a bipartisan coalition to promote a return to a more moderate and multilateral foreign policy.

While the group, which calls itself the Partnership for a Secure America, was not explicitly set up to act to oppose the more radical initiatives of the Bush administration, the chief organizers - both Republicans and Democrats - have sometimes been harshly critical of specific Bush policies, especially the decision to go to war in Iraq and innovative policy initiatives such as the promotion of preemptive war against "rogue states"."

...

On its website, for example, the new group, which will be run day-to-day by former congressional staffers from both parties, cites a series of public opinion polls that show strong support by both Republicans and Democrats for policies that have been anathema to the administration, including strengthening the UN and other multilateral organizations, a nuclear test-ban treaty, the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse emissions, a more even-handed approach in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and even engaging Iran.

Moreover, in addition to their individually voiced concerns about the administration's unilateralism, global ambitions and its alienation of traditional US allies, many charter PSA members have expressed - albeit privately in the case of some of the Republicans - great unease about Bolton's appointment as UN ambassador.

Bolton's reputation for exaggerating foreign threats, scorn for multilateralism, intimidation of his subordinates, contempt for regional and local expertise, and personal rudeness has made him a symbol of the most extreme tendencies of the administration's hardliners led by Vice President Dick Cheney."

-Let's pretend the Bush administration had made such claims: "Conservative Republicans have charged that Bolton's "reputation" for "exaggerating" foreign "threats", "scorn" for "multilateralism", "intimidation" of his subordinates, "contempt" for regional and local "expertise", and "rudeness" has made him a symbol of the most progressive tendencies of the administration's advocates..."

By resorting to a procedural loophole that gives presidents the power to make "recess appointments" whenever Congress is on holiday to get Bolton to New York, Bush is seen by many not only as circumventing normal constitutional requirements that give the Senate the power to advise and consent to ambassadorial posts, but also as delivering a gratuitous slap at the spirit of bipartisanship that has long been seen as essential to the successful conduct of US foreign policy."

-You mean by using constitutional granted powers to appoint Bolton over an obstructionist minority party that is undermining the "bipartisan" war effort? Hey, maybe we should give Mr. Lobe credit, he actually delivered this one in a third-person voice ("seen by some").

These include George H W Bush's former secretary of state James Baker and national security adviser Brent Scowcroft - the deans of Republican realism - who may feel that joining such a potentially high-profile group risks the loss of whatever moderating influence they retain in the administration, particularly with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick.

-Apparently our dear reporter is not only MoveOn's ventriloquist dummy, but also a mind reader.

Another question, most recently raised by the editor of the Nixon Center's "National Interest" journal, Nikolas Gvosdev, is whether the "moderates" in both parties who have agreed to form the PSA are really prepared to challenge their more ideological party comrades at the risk of opening serious internal splits.

"I don't see in either party, as of yet", he wrote last week, "a willingness to 'do battle' with members of their own side of the aisle for the sake of a new bipartisan consensus."

-Well gee, up until now I thought it had just been those devious Bushies who were responsible for the grinding down of non-partisanism. You mean the other half of the two party system might have something to do with it?

"Nonetheless, the fact of the group's creation marks a new stage in what so far has been a largely disjointed and ineffectual effort by independent elites, including foreign policy scholars and analysts, former diplomats and high-ranking military officers, to rally opposition to the more aggressive impulses of the current administration."

-"...including foreign policy scholars and analysts, former diplomats, high-ranking military officers, and Jim Lobe, to rally opposition..."

There, much better.

They should clone Bolton and put him to work in the Asia Times newsroom. With hands on hips, of course.

Open posted at Outside the Beltway's Traffic Jam.

America the Beautiful

The WunderKraut reflects on America in a fantastic post that should be read in full.

WunderWife and I had to go to Atlanta this past weekend to get fingerprinted by Immigration/Homeland Security. This was necessary to complete our I-600A – Petition To Classify Orphan As an Immediate Relative. We are currently well along in our quest to adopt our daughter from China. (see post here and journal here). We stood in line on Saturday with people from all across the world. There was an Indian couple in front of us. There was the Hispanic family behind us. There was an aging Asian couple at the table being waited on. There was a family from Africa just entering the facility. And on and on and on. It was an amazing thing to see. Seeing all this made me think about a few things.

If America is as bad and evil as the Left says it is, then why do thousands upon thousands of people risk everything to come here? Some of the people in line just wanted a Green Card. Others were in the process of becoming naturalized citizens. But they all shared one common thread; they had all left home, family and friends to come to my country … Here you can live in peace with Jews, Christians, Muslims, Blacks, Whites, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Greeks, Italians, Germans, English…the list is endless…”

My own family reflects this. My mother's a Pole whose grandfather was executed by the NKVD at Katyn, while my father's Russian. Were their relatives to meet in Europe, sparks would almost undoubtedly fly, reflecting centuries of bad blood. Yet we collectively leave our grievances there - here it is entirely a new world.

It is strongly suggested that you read the entire thing. I especially agree with his opinions on legal immigration and assimilation. I’m going to try to have a relevant post up in the next few days concerning illegal immigration and multiculturalism.

Bolton Gone Wild

A worthwhile satire at The Nose On Your Face, excerpt:

One day removed from his recess appointment as the United State's ambassador to the U.N., John "Make Those UN Sissy's Start" Bolton continues to stir up controversy. With his new promoter Don King by his side, Bolton held a press conference early this morning.

"Oh, it's on now," stated Bolton. "Say it slow everybody... pres-i-den-tial backing. That's right baby. The kid gloves are off. Kofi? Dead man. New York Times editors? Dead. Kennedy? Ho ho. Bolton Dead. Blutosky? Actually, I kind of like that guy. I'm gonna' hire him on..."

Just wait till he puts his hands on his hips.

Angels on Earth

A touching post at Blackfive about the German and American women of the organization Soldiers' Angels who tend to and take care of our wounded at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.

There's a link to send some moral support to the woman who runs it, apparently some of the tolerant people out there love to send her hatemail.

Friends in Low Places

Iraq veteran Mihn-Duc remembers his relationships with Iraqis:

"I do not claim to know the will of the Iraqis people since I do not know all of them. But I and other soldiers who deployed came to know many Iraqis – interpreters, soldiers, policemen, or workers on base. And natural as any other human-to-human setting, friendship developed – genuine and affectionate bond of brotherhood. And in many circumstances, language barrier is insufficient a barrier to people who want to make friends. Unlike anti-war activists, the term “Iraqis” is not an abstract term for men and women in uniforms. It has faces, names, and memories. Some we remember fondly."

Also a Vietnamese American, he relates the present with the past:

"I have seen both sides of the coins. I often wonder that how many of the Vietnam War protesters actually know any of us Vietnamese. And I am certain (despite having no imperial evidence) that they would reverse their position if they personally knew any of us. Today those former war protesters that changed their mind about their position during the war, almost every person came in contact with Vietnamese refugees living in America. Through the narrative of their friends, they came to regret their position they took during that conflict. I met a few of those. This is particularly true of school teachers who met young Vietnamese students – fresh out of the refugee camps and full of bitter memory. It is a role reversal, the students taught the teachers."

Know Thy Enemy

An insightful interview with an extraordinarily candid British jihadi.

Some highlights:

Taseer: Has it always been this way for you?

Butt: Always? No. I grew up in a very open-minded family; there are only four of us. My parents never made us pray, never sent us to the mosque, which was very different from your average Pakistani family who would make sure that the child learned something. I learned absolutely nothing.

I had an interesting exchange with an acquaintance a few weeks ago. This person told me that he was depressed, because he was now more convinced than ever that this would be a very long war, one we were not nearly prepared to deal with. "Why?" I asked him. "Because they showed those pictures of two of the London bombers the day before the attacks. The ones of of them rafting. I saw that these were not unhappy, isolated people. These were normal men, men who enjoyed life. And yet the next day they gave it up for dogma - they saw Western life, and chose death for a phantom. We cannot deal with this type of people. If you saw this person on the street, you might not even notice him. He could be anybody."

Taseer: Do many Muslims in Britain feel like you do?

Butt: I would say the majority of Muslims in this country care about neither moderate nor radical Islam; they care about living their day-to-day life. They're happy with that. But of those people who are practising, the majority of them hold my views. The difference is that some people come out publicly and others keep quiet.

Taseer: What would you say the size of this latter group is?

Butt: Official figures say there are 3m Muslims here. [There are in fact 1.6m.] Out of that, I would say there are 750,000 who have an interest in Islam and about 80 per cent of those were over the moon about 9/11.

...

"Butt: Because Allah is the way of love. Racism has infiltrated Christianity and Judaism. It is inbred in the people. Christians never see themselves as one brotherhood, but rather many dominions, whereas Muslims, no matter what colour they are, no matter what race they are, no matter what nationality they are, see themselves as one brotherhood. Ultimately this is what Islam teaches; that black, white, brown, red, green—if there were aliens in Mars—these people are brothers. Poor or rich, it has no effect on how we should treat one another. It doesn't mean that we should divide. And that is why when Muslims are being attacked, the majority of Muslims kick up a fuss, because these are their brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, there are Muslims today whose only reason to pick up a cause is for political support or their personal ambitions. Ultimately, if your brothers and sisters were being killed in any part of the world, you would make your utmost effort to try to help them."

The still strong Muslim concept of the "Ummah" is much more prevalent than Christian or Jewish universalism. The result is dual loyalties between creed and country. Distant, convoluted conflicts in Palestine, Chechnya, Xingjang, Kashmir are used by Islamic extremists to reinforce this "us" and "them" siege mentality.

Butt: I don't agree with you. Ten to 15 years ago the Muslims had just experienced their first victory of the 20th century, against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The belief that this was due to American support is ridiculous. Muslims, especially from the middle east, financed the jihad just as much, if not more. This is well documented. With that victory under their belt, the Muslims began to realise that they could control their own political destiny, whether by revolution or other violent means.

A common reaction to the statement of Al Qaeda's goals, i.e. a restored Caliphate and war against the non-Muslim world, is one of disbelief. "Surely these guys cannot be serious?" But, indeed, they are. Their goals are as "unlikely and unbelievable as Trotsky's world revolution," yet reinforced by their perceived prior victory. In their lore, their victory over of the USSR was a miracle, handed to them by God - and therefore victory over even the Americans is possible. They believe the Americans are weak and squeamish compared to the Russians, even if our hedonistic lifestyle is more of a threat to them.

Taseer: Given that the Koran is incontestable to the letter, and that it is unique because there is no another religion in which there is a text so pure, handed down from God to man, can there be a moderate Muslim?

Butt: No. You've hit the nail on the head. If someone believes that it's the incontestable word of Allah, how can he take a moderate view? We must fight if it is the will of Allah. I don’t want to say that Muslims don’t believe in Allah, but what I will say is that their faith in Allah is weak. They fear man the same way that the Jews feared the pharaoh, who they feared more than Allah and that's why they were afraid to do anything against him, until Moses came and liberated them. The lack of leadership in the Muslim community is simply because they are too afraid to stand up against this so-called undefeatable giant of the United States.

This is an idea I've seen brought up before, that because the Quran is supposedly the word of God, handed to mankind directly from God it is therefore inviolable and not open to interpretation. The jury is obviously still out, but existence of tolerate and loyal Muslims within the West makes this argument incredible to me. Religion and democracy can most certainly work - most Catholics do not resort to terrorism over abortion. The problem is of course that Western religion is often a watered down version of Christianity, where Islam has yet to undergo a serious reformation or liberalization. Indeed, the influx of Wahhabi money has caused the exact opposite within the Muslim world.

And that's just my highlights from the first page! Altogether, heavily recommended reading.

Open posted at the Bellway Traffic Jam and Mudville Gazette.

Council of the Watchers

Please excuse our regularly scheduled broadcasting...

As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher's Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around... per the Watcher's instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.

Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.

On the Eunuchs

Good collumn by Mathias Doepfner in the Australian:

"Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as allies Britain and France negotiated and hesitated too long before they realised that Adolf Hitler needed to be fought and defeated, because he could not be bound by toothless agreements.

Later, appeasement legitimised and stabilised communism in the Soviet Union, then in East Germany, then throughout the rest of Eastern Europe, where for several decades inhuman, repressive and murderous governments were glorified.

Appeasement similarly crippled Europe when genocide ran rampant in Bosnia and Kosovo. Indeed, even though we had absolute proof of continuing mass murder there, we Europeans debated and debated, and then debated still more. We were still debating when finally the Americans had to come from halfway around the world, into Europe yet again, to do our work for us.

Europe still hasn't learned. Rather than protecting democracy in the Middle East, European appeasement, camouflaged behind the fuzzy word equidistance, often seems to countenance suicide bombings in Israel by fundamentalist Palestinians...

Read the rest.

Most of western Europe hasn't learned a thing from its history. For all the talk of sophistication and worldliness, they are showing the same near-sighted foolishness as always. We and the Israelis are in the position the Czechs would have been, had they neglected to give in to British and French pressure during the Munich Crisis.

Instead of identifying the true origin of the violence, the Europeans prefer to blame us for dragging them into a fight they stupidly believe they'd otherwise be absent from. Only in this case, Europeans cannot delude themselves that we are nothing but a "far-away country" with "people of whom they know nothing".

You know Americans and you know Jews. Yet you prefer caricatures filled with projection and loathing, designed to flaunt your superiority.

You are unable or unwilling to see that our enemies hate us all. Israel is merely the West's canary, and we its flagship. Draped in your self-serving rhetoric, it is much easier and gratifying to scorn our efforts, than to recognize the evil we fight will never be appeased and will attack you mercilessly if we fail.

If the time eventually came, we would not abandon you to the consequences of your appeasement. Not because you've earned yet more American blood shed on your shores, but because it is in our interests. Like Canada, you are a naive and ingrateful little brother, who must be protected form his own impulsive and self-defeating desires.

But we will never forget.

I apologize to any friendly Europeans who read this; I dearly appreciate your stalwart support in the midst of the insanity. Your misguided countrymen disgrace the once great alliance I celebrated so strongly.

-

More here from Chrenkoff.

One-liner of the Week

"Ex-President Carter is living proof that our government does not have people assassinated."

Well said.

Second Guessing Truman

Austin Bay and Plunge Pontificates remember the anniversary of the Hiroshima A-bomb drop by recounting the circumstances of the time.

Honestly, I don't really have much time for people who insist on second guessing Truman. Setting aside the probable alternate histories of blockade/starvation and invasion is the harsh reality that winning sides aren't required to placate the losers. It is simplistic, but all the Japanese had to do was to tap the mat at any time, even in the days between the bombings. Instead, the military high command hoped to bleed the Americans dry, and die nobly – so they did. We all make bad decisions.

The real importance of Hiroshima/Nagasaki to most of the political left is that they are uniquely American "crimes" that can be wielded rhetorically only against us. Other countries incinerated cities (the British at Dresden, Germans at Rotterdamn and Warsaw), but only the Americans had the gall to do it with one bomb, twice. That's why there's no comparable controversy over the firebombing of Tokyo, where even more Japanese died a much more impleasant death of asphyxiation and burning alive.

The quest for a bloodless war is an ironic side-product of our military superiority. Only we can possibly handicap ourselves so severely and still win the majority of the time. Most of these self-imposed limitations would go out the window if we faced a more imposing enemy (one not so shadowy and ideological as Al Qaeda) such as North Korea or China. Decades later we'd probably have to endure documentaries and monuments explaining why we should be ashamed, but in the moment, it wouldn't matter.

The current media seems to think it is their solemn duty to prevent American anger. We should care that they demonstrate in the street, guns blasting and effigies burning. God forbid, however, that Americans anger. They go to great pains to avoid symbols of 9-11, and do everything to humanize the enemy. The latter is hard to argue against, but I'm left to wonder: How can you effectively fight a war without even the natural human emotion of anger?!

It is hard for me (youngster I am) to imagine a world where the US military even contemplated launching a raid that would cause thousands of civilian casualties. An improvement in a way, I suppose, but also a mark of our unseriousness towards our enemy.

Thanks to the Mudville Gazette for the open post.

Developments in Gaza

Egyptian forces will be taking over the Gaza-Egyptian border. It will be interesting to see if weapons smuggling increases significantly, most likely it will. The question is to who they'll go, the PA or Hamas.

What is also significant is the seeming lack of any coordination with the Palestinians themselves. The Israelis have correctly decided that dealing with the Palestinians themselves will be unproductive, at least so long as the PA is battling Hamas for control of the Gaza strip.

That is a battle the PA is likely to lose, for the PA has been totally discredited by the corruption and ineffectiveness of Arafat’s rule. The unfortunate part is that with the death of Arafat himself, the PA could possibly have eventually emerged as a real negotiating partner – it certainly couldn’t have become a worse one. Hamas rule means continued conflict indefinitely.

Sharon’s strategy of total disengagement continues apace. For the moment they’ll allow the Palestinians to stew in their own juices, but reserve the right to intervene and bang them over the head if needed. The wall remains the key.