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June 29, 2007
Quote of the Century
Michael Ledeen says this is the quote of the century, and it's hard to disagree with him other than to ask why we should limit it to one century
It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the cause by writing editorials - after the fact.Robert E. Lee, 1863
Posted by Tom at 8:25 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 27, 2007
"Understanding General Petraeus's Strategy"
Continuing in my series of trying to understand what's going on with regard to current operations in Iraq, today I bring you Frederick Kagan's testimony earlier today before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (h/t NRO)
Frederick Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Instutute. Along with retired General Jack Keane is co-author of the draft of the current plan of operations in Iraq, commonly called the "surge". Keane's last position before retirement in 2003 was Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. You can find their plan on the AEI website.
Here are some of the more important parts of Kagan's testimony:
American military forces in Iraq are now entering the second phase of their kinetic operations even as political efforts continue on a separate but linked track. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus are in the midst of a multi-faceted program that will not proceed in a linear way and will not generate clear and consistent metrics in all of its phases. ...It is now beyond question that the Bush Administration pursued a flawed approach to the war in Iraq from 2003 to 2007. That approach relied on keeping the American troop presence in Iraq as small as possible, pushing unprepared Iraqi Security Forces into the lead too rapidly, and using political progress as the principal means of bringing the violence under control. In other words, it is an approach similar to the one proposed by the ISG and by some who are now pushing for political benchmarks and the rapid drawdown of American forces as the keys to success in the war. It is no more likely to work now than it was then. Political progress is something that follows the establishment of security, not something that causes it.
So much for the notion that the report put out by Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton's Iraq Study Group is a good plan.
The first phase began on January 10th with the announcement of the new strategy and the beginning of the movement of the 5 additional Army brigades and Marine elements into the theater. That deployment process was only completed at the beginning of this month--in fact, critical enablers for those combat forces are still arriving in theater. As the new units entered Iraq, the U.S. military commanders began pushing those that were already in the theater forward from their operating bases into Joint Security Stations and Combat Outposts in key neighborhoods in Baghdad and elsewhere. The purpose of these movements was not to clear-and-hold--the units present in theater were not sufficient in numbers to conduct such operations. The purpose was instead to establish positions within those key areas and to develop both intelligence about the enemy and trust relationships with the local communities that would make possible decisive clear-and-hold operations subsequently. During this phase of the operation, additional Iraqi Security Forces deployed to Baghdad in accord with a plan developed jointly by the U.S. and Iraqi military commands. All of the requested units appeared in the first Iraqi Army rotation, and the Iraqi military has just completed its second rotation of units into Baghdad--again, all designated units arrived, and their fill levels were generally higher than in the first rotation.Generals Petraeus and Odierno did not allocate the majority of the new combat power they received to Baghdad. Only 2 of the additional Army brigades went into the city. The other 3 Army brigades and the equivalent of a Marine regiment were deployed into the areas around Baghdad that our generals call the "Baghdad belts," including Baqubah in Diyala province. The purpose of this deployment was not to clear-and-hold those areas, but to make possible the second phase of the operation that began on June 15. The purpose of this operation--Phantom Thunder--is to disrupt terrorist and militia networks and bases outside of Baghdad that have been feeding the violence within the city. Most of the car bomb and suicide bomb networks that have been supporting the al Qaeda surge since January are based in these belt areas, and American commanders have rightly recognized that they cannot establish stable security in the capital without disrupting these networks and their bases.
But even this operation--the largest coordinated combat operation the U.S. has undertaken since the invasion in 2003--is not the decisive phase of the current strategy. It is an operation designed to set the preconditions for a successful clear-and-hold operation that will probably begin in late July or early August within Baghdad itself. That is the operation that is designed to bring security to Iraq's capital in a lasting way that will create the space for political progress that we all desire.
There's a lot more, of course, but this is the part I wanted to post because it goes to understanding what is going on. Many people, myself included mistakenly thought that when the "surge" plan was announced earlier this year, new operations would commence immediately. While to some extent that was true, the serious stuff did not start until Operation Phantom Thunder started on June 16.
Posted by Tom at 8:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 26, 2007
"Understanding Current Operations in Iraq"
This is one of the best summaries of what's going on now in Iraq that I've seen recently (h/t NRO).
The following is an excerpt from a post on Small Wars Journal by David Kilcullen called "Understanding Current Operations in Iraq". Kilcullen, one of the contributors to SMJ, is identified on the site as a "Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser, Multi-National Force—Iraq." and that the it represents "his personal views only."
I’ve spent much of the last six weeks out on the ground, working with Iraqi and U.S. combat units, civilian reconstruction teams, Iraqi administrators and tribal and community leaders. I’ve been away from e-mail a lot, so unable to post here at SWJ: but I’d like to make up for that now by providing colleagues with a basic understanding of what’s happening, right now, in Iraq.This post is not about whether current ops are “working” — for us, here on the ground, time will tell, though some observers elsewhere seem to have already made up their minds (on the basis of what evidence, I’m not really sure). But for professional counterinsurgency operators such as our SWJ community, the thing to understand at this point is the intention and concept behind current ops in Iraq: if you grasp this, you can tell for yourself how the operations are going, without relying on armchair pundits.
... These operations are qualitatively different from what we have done before. Our concept is to knock over several insurgent safe havens simultaneously, in order to prevent terrorists relocating their infrastructure from one to another, and to create an operational synergy between what we're doing in Baghdad and what's happening outside. Unlike on previous occasions, we don't plan to leave these areas once they're secured. These ops will run over months, and the key activity is to stand up viable local security forces in partnership with Iraqi Army and Police, as well as political and economic programs, to permanently secure them. The really decisive activity will be police work, registration of the population and counterintelligence in these areas, to comb out the insurgent sleeper cells and political cells that have "gone quiet" as we moved in, but which will try to survive through the op and emerge later. This will take operational patience, and it will be intelligence-led, and Iraqi government-led. It will probably not make the news (the really important stuff rarely does) but it will be the truly decisive action.When we speak of "clearing" an enemy safe haven, we are not talking about destroying the enemy in it; we are talking about rescuing the population in it from enemy intimidation. If we don't get every enemy cell in the initial operation, that's OK. The point of the operations is to lift the pall of fear from population groups that have been intimidated and exploited by terrorists to date, then win them over and work with them in partnership to clean out the cells that remain - as has happened in Al Anbar Province and can happen elsewhere in Iraq as well.
The "terrain" we are clearing is human terrain, not physical terrain. It is about marginalizing al Qa'ida, Shi'a extremist militias, and the other terrorist groups from the population they prey on. This is why claims that "80% of AQ leadership have fled" don't overly disturb us: the aim is not to kill every last AQ leader, but rather to drive them off the population and keep them off, so that we can work with the community to prevent their return.
...The enemy is fluid, but the population is fixed. (The enemy is fluid because he has no permanent installations he needs to defend, and can always run away to fight another day. But the population is fixed, because people are tied to their homes, businesses, farms, tribal areas, relatives etc). Therefore-and this is the major change in our strategy this year-protecting and controlling the population is do-able, but destroying the enemy is not. We can drive him off from the population, then introduce local security forces, population control, and economic and political development, and thereby "hard-wire" the enemy out of the environment, preventing his return. But chasing enemy cells around the countryside is not only a waste of time, it is precisely the sort of action he wants to provoke us into. That's why AQ cells leaving an area are not the main game-they are a distraction. We played the enemy's game for too long: not any more. Now it is time for him to play our game.
We're seeing a pattern to the reporting; American forces are performing admirably, parts of the Iraqi Army are competent, but the Iraqi Police are lagging.
Michael Yon's most recent post bolster's this view. He is currently with one of the Stryker Brigades taking part in Operation Arrowhead Ripper.
For security reasons, the Iraqi Army (IA) was not included in the initial planning of Arrowhead Ripper, yet with each succeeding day the IA has taken a larger role in the unfolding attack. The Fifth Iraqi Army Division is considered an increasingly competent group of fighters, and from the limited scope of 5th IA that I personally witnessed, that judgment seems correct. The 5th is committed to battle. Whereas the Iraqi Army is coming into the fight, and playing increasingly critical roles, the local police force is less impressive.On the night of the 23 June, for instance, a police checkpoint called in to say they were under heavy small-arms attack. The same checkpoint then called frantically saying they were under RPG attack. The next even more frantic call was about a mortar attack. Yet when a Shadow UAV and Apache helicopters were dispatched, they saw no activity in the immediate area. Colonel Steve Townsend, commander of 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team, brought this up to a senior Iraqi officer at a meeting on Sunday the 24th, and the Iraqi officer answered with some disgust that those particular police panic at the sound of two shots, and that each member of that police detail needs two Humvees protecting them in order to feel safe.
Read the whole thing, but you get the point.
Here is a factsheet on Operation Phantom Thunder by Kimberly Kagan.
And if you want the original plan (or the unclassified version, anyway) that the "surge" is based on you can find it here.
Posted by Tom at 8:57 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 25, 2007
Our New Friends at Fatah
The other day I wrote about the Bush Administration's plans to send Fatah $60 million in aid money in a post I titled "The Dead Bush Doctrine". Fatah, I wrote, is basically a terrorist organization that has no intention of accepting the existance of Israel. I provided some information about them which I thought bolstered my case.
In case you doubt me here's a tidbit from the Jerusalem Post (h/t NRO)
A Fatah faction and the Islamic Jihad both claimed responsibility for Sunday morning's Kassam rocket attack on Sderot, which damaged a home and left three people lightly wounded.
Love that "faction" bit.
These clowns aren't even a coherent organization. They're more an armed mob. The "faction" business only serves to give Abu Mazen Mahmoud Abbas an excuse to say he had nothing to do with it.
Andy McCarthy also reminds us of another faction, er, wing, within Fatah; Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (love that name).
Let's connect the dots here:The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are Fatah's terrorist wing. They have been a specially designated Foreign Terrorist Organization under U.S. law since 2002, and, as I noted here, have now taken to directly threatening the United States. (“We won't remain idle in the face of the siege imposed on the Palestinian people by Israel, the U.S. and other countries[.]…We will strike at the economic and civilian interests of these countries, here and abroad.”)
Fatah's Abbas, our "moderate" "peace partner," maintains close ties to the Brigades — even if he didn't want to (which I doubt) he has no choice as they are very popular among Palestinians.
Even as the administration announced its strong support for Fatah in the wake of Fatah's ouster from Gaza by Hamas, Fatah's al Aqsa Brigades have continued to carry out attacks against Israel, in coordination with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another designated terrorist organization with a long history of working with Fatah.
As predicted here last week, Abbas will not try to disband the al Aqsa Brigades. Instead, he will be incorporating them into the Palestinian Authority Security Forces.
The administration, meanwhile, is pushing for a renewal of millions of foreign aid dollars for the PA, including for its security forces to buck them up against Hamas. Thus, our tax dollars will be directly underwriting and arming the al Aqsa Brigades (instead of indirectly underwriting and arming them, as they have been doing up until now).
BONUS ROUND: We were arming Abbas even before the latest outbreak of fighting between Hamas and Fatah. As a result, when Fatah got run out of Gaza, Hamas took control of caches of American assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, rocket launchers and ammunition.
So our new policy both arms terrorist factions designated as such under U.S. law and throws U.S. support behind an organization, Fatah, with a long history of terrorism, a constitution that dedicates the organization to the annihilation of Israel, an academic and media program that relentlessly inculcates hatred of Jews and the illegitimacy of Israel, and which doesn't even have the good grace, ability or will to stop its terrorist wing from launching attacks on Israel while the U.S. and Europe are publicly pressing for a renewal of financial and political support.
Super.
Hamas is in full bragging mode about the U.S. weapons they seized. Here's Mahmoud Zahar, a co-founder of the organization, as interviewed by the German magazine Spiegel (h/t LGF)
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What will improve for people in Gaza now that Hamas is in control?Zahar: The good thing is that we can now collect information about our enemies and informants from foreign powers. We will look for Israel’s spies.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Last week there were street battles in the West Bank between Fatah and Hamas militias. Fatah maintained the upper hand. How will Hamas loyalists defend themselves in the event of any new fighting?
Zahar: Let me ask you: How have we defended ourselves so far against the Israeli occupation?
SPIEGEL ONLINE: With bombs and attacks?
Zahar: Exactly. But you said that, not me. ...
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The militant wings of Fatah and Hamas have been fully armed over the last few months. Are these weapons still in circulation?
Zahar: There are naturally very many weapons around now. Two years ago, one bullet in Gaza cost around €3.50 — now it would cost 35 cents. The American aid money has been translated into weapons. Thank you, America!
(emphasis added)
What are they going to do with their new weapons? "We Will Try to Form an Islamic Society" says Zahar.
But of course.
I suppose, though, I shouldn't be too hard on our president. After all, Israeli President Ehud Olmert said he would release "hundreds of millions" of dollars tied up in frozen accounts to Fatah, " a gesture to bolster the moderate Palestinian leader in his standoff against the Islamic militant group Hamas."
All through the 90s we propped up Arafat for just the same reason and look where it's gotten us. We never learn.
As a final bit of depressing news, Michael Rubin reminds us that the Bush Administration was once committed to democracy for the Palestinians. How times have changed.
Posted by Tom at 9:18 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 24, 2007
Fake Arguments against Democracy
The latest argument coming from the left is that by not supporting Hamas, the Bush Administration, and conservatives in general, do not respect Democracy.
Here's Jimmy Carter (h/t NRO)
The United States, Israel and the European Union must end their policy of favoring Fatah over Hamas, or they will doom the Palestinian people to deepening conflict between the rival movements, former US President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday.Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was addressing a conference of Irish human rights officials, said the Bush administration's refusal to accept the 2006 election victory of Hamas was "criminal."
Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government, had proven itself to be far more organized in its political and military showdowns with the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Next up is a writer on the Daily Kos (h/t LGF)
The extreme contempt both Israel and the U.S. have for democracy means that, despite recent events in Gaza, the isolation and strangulation of Hamas and the Palestinians of Gaza will likely continue. The probable Israeli response to Hamas’ assumption of power in Gaza will be to ease restrictions in the West Bank and engage in meaningless “peace talks” with Abbas, with the cynical aim of increasing his popularity relative to Hamas’. In the long-term, however, if Hamas remains resilient and does not submit to external pressures to relinquish power, we could very possibly witness a full-blown “‘Bay of Pigs’ type invasion of Gaza”, with Dahlan at its head.If what we want to see is a relatively stable Palestinian democracy with the capacity to engage in meaningful peace negotiations with Israel (and again I emphasise that these are not the objectives of the Israeli government), the policies we should follow are obvious, as they have been for months. The Hamas government should be recognised as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and should be engaged with in the form of meaningful final status negotiations.
Sorry, but I'm not buying this.
The whole issue raises interesting, and I don't think completely easy to answer, questions about the nature of democracy, and it's twin, liberty.
The short version of my answer is that there is a lot more to democracy than just the mechanics of voting. Carter I'm not so sure about, but I have to think that most liberals and even leftists know this full well. So when the folks at Kos berate conservatives for not accepting Hamas because they were elected, I have to think they're not being entirely serious in their criticism, because it's eithe that or they're outright apologists for terrorism. I have to think that most who spout this line are just blinded by their hatred of President Bush. In short, they've got Bush Derangement Syndrome.
After all, if the Ku Klux Klan started winning elections in the U.S., I can't imagine the left would accept their right to rule regardless of the fairness of the vote.
Likewise, the Nazi party won a plurality of the vote in the 1933 elections, coming in first with 43.9%, more than twice that of their nearest opponent. The election itself was relatively free and fair, but who today would say that it really represented "democracy"?
All of this brings to the forefront the central question of elections and their relationship to what we think of as "democracy": Is it just or acceptable for a non-democratic party to come to power through elections?
What is Democracy?
The US Department of State helpfully provides a longish definition. Here are some of the highlights
Freedom and democracy are often used interchangeably, but the two are not synonymous. Democracy is indeed a set of ideas and principles about freedom, but it also consists of a set of practices and procedures that have been molded through a long, often tortuous history. In short, democracy is the institutionalization of freedom.
Several "Pillars of Democracy" are listed
# Sovereignty of the people. # Government based upon consent of the governed. # Majority rule. # Minority rights. # Guarantee of basic human rights. # Free and fair elections. # Equality before the law. # Due process of law. # Constitutional limits on government. # Social, economic, and political pluralism. # Values of tolerance, pragmatism, cooperation, and compromise.
Wikipedia says that
Liberal democracy is a representative democracy along with the protection of minorities, the rule of law, a separation of powers, and protection of liberties (thus the name liberal) of speech, assembly, religion, and property.
I think that most Westerners can agree that all of the above are pretty good definitions of democracy.
Back to the Palestinian Authority
Clearly, then, Hamas does not qualify as an institution committed to democracy. Neither, for that matter, does Fatah. Therefore, when the Kos author talks about "extreme contempt both Israel and the U.S. have for democracy" we can conclude that he either has no understanding of democracy, is just off on a political rant and is thus guilty of lazy thinking, or is just an apologist for terrorism. Or, as I mentioned above, he's got BDS.
As for ex-President Carter, I think he's just a bitter old man. He never reconciled himself to this 1980 defeat, and for a Christian seems not to have learned how to forgive. He's thrown in with the worst dictators, has become a virtual anti-Semite, and I believe will be judged harshly by history.
The Algerian Example
What if a situation develops whereby a political party promises to dismantle the institutions of democracy if it is elected? What if it actually wins a majority of the popular vote?
Such a situation has actually occured, not once but several times in the post-WWII era.
In 1991, the Islamic Salvation Front won the first round of Algeria's first multi-party elections. The ISF had promised to turn the country into an Islamic state and institute sharia law. After the voting, the military stepped in and annuled the elections. Western governments either applauded or remained silent. This led to a civil war, and some 160,000 people were killed over the next ten years. However, in the end the insurgents were defeated and a true democracy (republic, actually) is emerging.
What it Means
We in the West are good at the mechanics of voting. Through international agencies we can set up relatively free and fair votes most of the time.
But our record at installing actual democratic values has been rather hit-or-miss. We got it right in Germany and Japan. India has also turned out to be a stable democracy. We got it wrong in Zimbabwe and most other African states. El Salvadore seems to be doing well, but Nicaragua not so much.
Iraq somewhat parallels the Palestinian Authority. It was easy enough for us to set up voting, not so easy to convince people to respect each other's liberty.
In the end, then, we need to recognise that democracy is about more than voting. We need to think harder about what it takes to instill concepts of liberty in troubled regions, and not fixate on voting. This is a tough subject, and will require much thinking and trial and error in order to get it right in a place like Iraq. The first step, though, is to have moral clarity on the subject, and to recognize the true nature of democracy.
Posted by Tom at 10:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 23, 2007
The "Surge" is Working
For now, anyway.
Here's a quick survey of some of the better articles that I've seen recently. First up is Michael Yon, who's on the spot reporting pulls no punches. He reports the good, the bad, and the ugly. This past Wednesday he filed a report about Operation Arrowhead Ripper:
The first day of operation Arrowhead Ripper was intense. The Army is giving full access to the battlefield, and while on base full access to the TOC (HQ) which means I see the raw truth on the ground, and as it feeds through the TOC. They are hiding nothing. Or if they are, it’s in plain view. (Special operations notwithstanding.) A reporter can see as much as he or she can stand. ...The heat is intense for the enemy and for us. Soldiers, during any chance, would lay-down during the heat of day, and in complete body armor and helmets, fall asleep in the dirt. I took photos of course. Our guys are tough. The enemy in Baqubah is as good as any in Iraq, and better than most. That’s saying a lot. But our guys have been systematically trapping them, and have foiled some big traps set for our guys. I don’t want to say much more about that, but our guys are seriously outsmarting them. Big fights are ahead and we will take serious losses probably, but al Qaeda, unless they find a way to escape, are about to be slaughtered. Nobody is dropping leaflets asking them to surrender. Our guys want to kill them, and that’s the plan.
A positive indicator on the 19th and the 20th is that most local people apparently are happy that al Qaeda is being trapped and killed. Civilians are pointing out IEDs and enemy fighters, so that’s not working so well for al Qaeda. Clearly, I cannot do a census, but that says something about the locals.
So much for any leftist allegation our military "hiding the truth", our soldiers don't want to fight anymore, and that average Iraqis just want us out.
Friday's report was titled "Arrowhead Ripper: Surrender or Die". Money quote
I am with 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team. I’ve run a few missions with them in Baghdad, and they have fought all over Iraq. This Brigade has much recent combat experience, and is expertly commanded. A person does not need to even meet the commanders (though I do each day) to know they are running a tight ship. The professionalism of 3-2 is particularly high, and they are very competent fighters who are maximizing their assets, including the incredible Stryker vehicles. ...Our guys are winning. Al Qaeda is about to be strangled and pummeled to death in this town (Baqubah), but the local Iraqi leadership is severely wanting. This was most obviously noted in one area in particular, where there were some slight indicators of a possible humanitarian need. “Crisis” certainly is not the correct word, but there are displaced persons numbering at least in the hundreds. LTC Fred Johnson actually took me out there. (The access even to “bad” news is amazing with this Brigade.)
Next we go go Ralph Peters, who's editorial in the New York Post last Thursday builds on what Michael Yon saw in Baqabah.
HALLELUJAH! For the first time since Baghdad fell, our military in Iraq has a comprehensive, integrated plan to defeat our enemies.Until now, our efforts have always been piecemeal, stop-start affairs. Even our success in the Second Battle of Fallujah in 2004 went unexploited.
The 10,000-man operation reported in the Baquba area is only one part of a broader effort. In the words of a well-placed officer in Baghdad, "Operations like that are going on around Fallujah, Salman Pak, in Eastern Anbar, the belts around Baghdad, in Arab Jabour, outside of Taji and throughout the Diyala River Valley."
This widespread offensive against al Qaeda in Iraq and other terrorists is part of a carefully developed, phased plan. The first step as the troop surge proceeded was to establish livable conditions in key neighborhoods of the capital.
That step was vital, but insufficient in itself. Terrorists fled, but they didn't disappear. They just sought refuge elsewhere. And while neighborhood pacification involved aggressive tactical actions, it ultimately put our forces in a defensive posture.
And you can't win solely by playing defense, either in the NFL or in war.
Gen. David Petraeus understood that. He's done things methodically, operating from a coherent design - not just reacting as was our practice in the past, but imposing our will on the enemy. After regaining lost ground in Baghdad and exploiting Sunni Arab disillusionment with al Qaeda in Anbar Province, our military took the offensive. We pushed the enemy off "our" turf. Now we're going after "their" turf.
This balance between defensive and offensive operations, integrated across central Iraq, is the first time we've seen a classic approach to military operations in post-Saddam Iraq. Amazing, but true.
Things have changed. And terrorists, not just Iraqi civilians, are dying.
The best thing President Bush did was replace Generals Abazaid and Casey with Admiral Fallon and General Petraeus. He should have done this much earlier, but hindsight is always 20/20.
Bill Roggio is in Iraq and attended a briefing by Lt Gen Ray Odierno on the status of Operation Phanton Thunder, the name of the master operation. Arrowhead Ripper is a sub-operation, part of Phanton Thunder. The other two are Operations Marne Torch and Commando Eagle.
Friday's report is Roggio's latest, and he warns us that
The U.S. military commanders continue to state the operations will be ongoing through the end of the summer. The escape of Al Qaeda leaders and operatives from Baqubah and the southern belts will no doubt be touted as a failure in the plan, but this view demonstrates a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of warfare and the purpose of the operation.First, no cordon is perfect, and the enemy has the ability to read the signs and act accordingly. It has been clear for months Baqubah would become a target of Coalition forces, and al Qaeda has its own sophisticated intelligence network that no doubt detected Coalition and Iraqi movements.
Second, the purpose of the Baghdad Security Plan and Operation Phantom Thunder is to deny al Qaeda Baghdad and the Belts, and to kill as many operatives and leaders as possible in the process. When al Qaeda attempts to regroup, it will be in the hinterlands, and in some cases, in regions less hospitable to its actions.
In September Petraeus comes to Washington to brief the President and Congress. He's fully aware of the stakes, and is making sure that we're giving it our all.
If you need a source from a traditional media outlet I can think of none better than the New York Times. An article on Monday compared past efforts to the game of "whack a mole"
Taking the fight to insurgents from Al Qaeda did not so much destroy them in Anbar Province as dislodge them, prompting the fighters to build up their strength elsewhere, including Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province.So the planners of this latest operation are attempting to plug the holes that have allowed the insurgents to escape in the past. The goal is not merely to reclaim western Baquba from insurgent control, but to capture or kill the estimated 300 fighters to 500 fighters who are believed to be based in that part of the city.
Accurate, I think.
While our forces are doing their, job, another question lingering in the background is whether the Iraqis will do theirs. We can win but can't stay forever, or even much longer. Difficult as it is to form a government from scratch, let alone one in the middle of the war, that's just what the Iraqis are going to have to do.
Unfortunately, Amir Taheri reports that it isn't going so well.
Six months ago, the U.S.- led Coalition force in Iraq appeared to be largely in self-defense mode, allowing terrorists and insurgents much latitude in parts of Baghdad and the troubled provinces of Anbar and Diyala. At the same time, the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appeared to be engaged in a broad political offensive.Today we have what looks like a reversal of the two situations - with dynamism in the military field but lethargy in the political.
Oddly, the Iraqi military is making gains, he says. It is bigger, better armed, and better trained than ever. They're doing their job, sort of, anyway. The problems are at the top
...the political situation has deteriorated. The Ma liki government may well be on life support. At least eight Cabinet posts are effectively vacant while two key partners in the pro-government bloc, the Fadila (Virtue) Party and Muqtada al-Sadr's group, have walked out. Another key group within the coalition, led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, has effectively switched to the opposition and is emerging as Maliki's most outspoken critic.hus, the Maliki government now lacks an effective majority in the National Assembly (parliament) and theoretically could be brought down with a no-confidence motion any day.
Worse still, the Shiite alliance, which provided the core element of political stability, has ceased to exist. Even Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the primus inter pares of Shiite clerics, no longer enjoys the unifying clout he did a year or so ago.
That's not good.
So there's the good news and bad news. As with all wars, it's as much about politics as bombs and bullets. Abraham Lincoln would understand.
Posted by Tom at 8:11 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
The Dead Bush Doctrine
This past February Secretary Rice announced that the United States was going to "talk" with Iran and Syria over the future of Iraq. Although she quiclkly "clarified" that the talks would't be direct, it didn't really matter. After 9-11 President Bush announced that "you're either with us or against us in the fight against terror." Because both Iran and Syria are state sponsors of terror, at the time I announced that the Bush Doctrine was dead.
Now the Bush Administration has pledged it's support for Fatah in the wake of Hamas' takover of Gaza. We're even going to send them $60 million to "upgrade Mahmoud Abbas's presidential guard and for other security expenses". No doubt in the months to come we'll see more announcements of programs designed to prop up Fatah, as our "partner in peace".
We allowed al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent terrorist groups refuge in Iran and Syria. We refused to attack their bases or supply depots there. We have done nothing about Hezbollah in Lebanon, other than force a "peace" settlement on Israel that does nothinb but give the terrorist group time to rearm.
For a few years Bush insisted on the "six party talks" format with North Korea, but has now seeminly abandoned that and has rewarded the DPRK with direct talks.
At the beginning of his term he refused to buy into the global warming hype, but at the recent G8 summit appeared to acquiese to at least part of the environmental agenda. While this isn't directly related to the "Bush Doctrine", I think it does show how far the administration has fallen in holding onto it's original beliefs.
All this is making the left chortle with glee. But then they've always wanted us to abandon Iraq to it's fate, make nice with every Palestinian terrorist group and Arab dictator (witness Speaker Pelosi's trip to Damascus).
Regarding the Bush Administration's new policy, I think that Andrew McCarthy has it right when he describes it as "Our Terrorists Are Better Than Your Terrorists"
The Palestinians are a backward people, indoctrinated toward brutality. They don’t rate a sovereign state or anyone’s help until they civilize themselves. Sovereignty is a privilege that implies acceptance of civilized norms — that is why we speak of states like Iran and North Korea as “rogues.” Regardless of whether there really are scattered Palestinian moderates, it is a dangerous fantasy to assume the Palestinian people, as a whole, are ready to be anyone’s peace partner.We are enabling their hatred when we provide support without insisting that the Palestinian people — not just Abbas and Fatah, but the people — convincingly foreswear revolution, terrorism, violence, ethnic-cleansing, and the goal of eliminating Israel. We are a generation or more, at least, from any hope of such developments. In the meantime, as long as we subsidize the hatred, we shall be buying more of it, while giving the Palestinians no incentive to reform.
Tough words about the Palestinians, but it's hard to see things otherwise. If by some magic every Israeli settlement disppeared and the Palestinians got an internationally recognized state tomorrow with at least part of Jerusalem as it's capital, all they'd do is use it as a base from which to attack Israel. And murder each other.
There isn't going to be any "two state solution", as long as either Fatah or Hamas are in charge. Neither wants to live side by side with Israel. We're only fooling ourselves by trying to play one off of the other.
What Fatah Stands For
Fatah is basically a terrorist organization. Its very name means "conquest", that which is supposed to happen during or after a jihad; the holy war leads to conquest. They don't choose these names by accident or without considering their meaning. Fatah was created by the late terror master himself, Yasser Arafat. It was operatives from Fatah which formed Black September, the group which carried out the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich.
Today the organization is led by Mahmoud Abbas (or "Abu Mazen", or whatever name he goes by these days). If Arafat was a street punk grown up to be the local crime boss,
...suggested that the figure of six million Jews murdered by the Nazis was a false one, "peddled" by the Jews. To bolster that thesis, he quotes known Holocaust revisionists as authoritative sources. Seeking conspiracy theories that would serve Arab interests, Abu Mazen also wrote that the Zionist movement "led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule... to expand the mass extermination." Zionists, he contends, collaborated with the Nazis to murder Jews, in order to gain sympathy for the creation of the State of Israel.
And this is the guy we're trying to make nice with. This is insane.
Look at Fatah's Constitution. Under "Goals", we have
Article (12) Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.Article (13) Establishing an independent democratic state with complete sovereignty on all Palestinian lands, and Jerusalem is its capital city, and protecting the citizens' legal and equal rights without any racial or religious discrimination.
"Complete liberation" does not mean the West Bank and Gaza. It means that and the whole of Israel too.
Here's the Fatah logo, which you get get straight off of their website at Fateh.net
According to Wikipedia
The Fatah official emblem shows two fists holding rifles and a hand grenade superimposed on a map of historic Palestine (i.e. British Mandate borders, including present-day Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip)
In other words, they want the whole thing.
Elsewhere, on their website, Fatah insists on the "right of return".
The Right of Return is one in which the Palestinians insist that the refugees, and their descendants, allegedly displaced during the 1948 war of independence, have the right to return to Israel proper and claim the land that they say they owned. Depending on which website you believe, this would mean anywhere from 3.5 to 6 million Arabs moving into Israel, a country of 6 million Jews and 1 million Arabs. The clear purpose of the "right of return" is to destroy Israel.
See now why peace with Fatah is impossible?
Until they change their ways we are wasting our time with them. President Clinton was probably smart when he invited Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to Camp David in 2000 to try and hammer out an agreement based on the 1993 Oslo Accords (the ones which established the "roadmap for peace". Arafat refused all reasonable offers, and the situation has deteriorated every since. Anything we do for them needs to be conditioned on improving their record on human rights, corruption, and terrorism, as Eric Cantor suggests. To do otherwise is to lend aid to our enemies. You know, the ones the President Bush at one time said we were against.
Posted by Tom at 11:10 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 21, 2007
About What I Think Too
A view of Islam from the UK (hat tip NRO)
"Londonistan", indeed.
Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 20, 2007
"Journey Into Islam"
Tony Blankley today hits on an important aspect of our current War on Jihadism and the current state of Islam:
Writing in the Washington Times, Blankley describes his debate with his friend, Professor Akbar Ahmed. Dr Ahmed is "former Pakistani High Commissioner to Britain and member of the faculties of Harvard, Princeton and Cambridge, current chair of Islamic Studies at American University." He is further described by Blankley as a moderate, and coming from Tony such a description has a lot of credibility.
Blankley is, after all, no starry-eyed liberal. His most recent book, The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations? would warm the heart of any one who thinks that we are threatened by jihadists.
Dr Ahmed's new book is Journey into Islam: The crisis of globalization. It is the result of a 6-month investigation of attitudes in the Muslim world that he conducted, assisted by 3 of his students.
His conclusion: Due to both misjudgments by the United States and regrettable developments in Muslim attitudes "[t]he poisons are spreading so rapidly that without immediate remedial action, no antidote may ever be found." And Dr. Ahmed has always been an optimist.He divides Muslim attitudes into three categories named after Indian Muslim cities that have historically championed them: Ajmer, Aligarh and Deoband. Ajmers represent peaceful, Sufi mysticism. Aligarh represents the instinct to modernize without corrupting Islam. Deoband represents non-fatalistic, practical action oriented orthodox Islam. It traces to Ibn Taymiyya, a 14th-century thinker who lived when Islam was reeling from the Mongol invasions.
The name "Ibn Taymiyya" will be familiar to readers of this blog who followed my 6 part review of Walid Phares' Future Jihad. Taymiya (spellings vary) (1263-1328) developed the doctrine of takfir, essentially the Muslim equivalent of the inquisition. This would later develop into the Salafi movement which would in turn spawn Wahabism and the Muslim Brotherhood, two branches of the worldwide jihad (the third being the Khomeinists).
Dr. Ahmed himself is an Aligarh. As described by Blankley, the Aligarth's "hoped to build a modern democracy, overcome tribalism and the more obscurantist aspects of Islam while still being "good Muslims."" Works for me.
The Deobands are the ones to worry about. Osama bin Laden and similar groups are part of this group.
The bottom line is that according to Dr. Ahmed, the bad guys are winning.
Meeting with people from presidents to cab drivers, from elite professors to students from modest schools (Dr. Ahmed holds a respected place in the Muslim firmament around the globe), he reports that 50 percent want Shariah law, support the Bali terrorist bombing, oppose women in politics, support stoning adulterers too death. Indonesia's secular legal system and tolerant pluralist society is being "infiltrated by Deoband thinking... Dwindling moderates and growing extremists are a dangerous challenging development." Although I dissent from several of Dr. Ahmed's characterizations of the Bush administration, Washington policy-makers and journalists should read this book because it delivers a terrible message of warning both to those who say things aren't as bad as Mr. Bush says, and we can rely on the moderate voices of Islam with a little assist from the West — winning; and for those who argue for aggressive American action to show our strength to the Muslims (because, in bin Laden's words, they follow the strong horse).
Unfortunately our president seems to have lost his way, and the left is to mired in Bush-hatred to get much out of analysis of this sort. The president now seems to want to make nicey-nice with those who hate him, making noises about joining the global warming crusaders, and now virtually allied with Ted Kennedy on immigration. The left argues that "they all hate us now because of Iraq", and that "there is no jihadist threat, it's all an invention of the neo-cons". They believe that if only we'd pressure Israel more and "work with our allies and the UN" everything will be fine. The president at one time wanted us to be the "strong horse", the left abhors the thought.
We need to be that strong horse. Part of being the strong horse is military power, not quitting in Iraq, and redoubling our efforts in Afghanistan. Part of it is also using "soft power", something we haven't done very well. Either way, the first step towards solving a problem is recognizing that it exists.
Posted by Tom at 8:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 18, 2007
General Jack Keane on Iraq and the "Surge"
I just found this over at Hot Air, who found it on Danger Room. They're clips from a PBS Frontline that's to be broadcast tomorrow night. I won't be home to watch it but it looks like it will be pretty good.
By way of background, Keane is former U.S. Army Vice Chief of Staff, who, along with Frederick Kagan, is co-author of the plan that is popularly known as the "surge".
Keane's assessment comes across to me as pretty honest. He tells it like it is, and doesn't pull any punches.
Previous
Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq - Phase II Report
The New Plan for Iraq - AEI Update I
New Plan for Iraq VI
New Play for Iraq V
New Plan for Iraq IV
New Plan for Iraq III
New Plan for Iraq II
Here's the New Plan for Iraq
Posted by Tom at 10:40 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Book Review: Six Minutes to Freedom
Time for a break from the war, Islam, and current events.
I'd forgotten just how rotten Manuel Noriega was. I remember the months leading up to Operation Just Cause, about all of the reports of harassment of US military personnel by Noriegas PDF (Panamanian Defense Forces) troops. It seemed to me then, as it does now, that President Bush gave Noriega a very long leash, with which the latter proceeded to hang himself. Besides using the PDF to hassle Americans at every opportunity, Noriega foolishly declared war on the United States. At any rate, there certainly was no "rush to war". When OJC was finally launched in December of 1989, it was violent but short.
This is not the place to rehash the history of United States involvement in Panama. the authors of Six Minutes to Freedom briefly discuss Noriega's rise to power, and how he was initially an ally of the U.S., how the CIA worked with him in an attempt to map drug trafficking routes, and finally our disillusionment with him and his eventual inditement by a Miami grand jury.
What I, nor anyone else outside of a select few knew, was that one of the first acts of OJC was the daring rescue of an American civilian by Delta Force from Modelo Prison ("Carcel Modelo").
This book, Six Minutes to Freedom: How a Band of Heros Defied a Dictator and Helped Free a Nation, is about that rescue operation and the events leading up to it.
The subject of the book is the saga of Kurt Muse, who is one of the authors.
Muse grew up in Panama, working as a small businessman. His wife was a schoolteacher for the DOD, a fact which would be of great importance after his arrest.
Muse came to hate Manual Noriega and his regime. Taking matters into his own hands, he and another man discovered a way to "break in" on Panamanian national radio, seize control of the transmissions, and briefly broadcast their message to the entire nation. They learned to do this after accidentally discovering the the frequencies of the much-weaker "repeater" signal sent from the broadcasting station to the main transmitter. After that, it was simply a matter of setting up small transmitters that could temporarily overpower the repeater. At certain times, for example in the middle of one of Noriega's speaches, they would interrupt the broadcast and broadcast their own anti-Noriega message.
Although they initially started out as lone operators, at some point the CIA became aware of their opportunities, and after one false start, sent an agent that they were able to trust. This agent, who only identified himself as "Father Frank", provided cash, which Muse insists was only spent on operations.
Their eventual plan was to seize control of the airwaves during a national vote scheduled for May of 1989. They hoped to urge enough anti-Noriega voters to the polls so that he would be defeated by a margin so large that cheating could not hide. However, by this time Noriega had become infuriated by the pirate broadcasts and was pulling out all the stops to identify the perpetrators.
Before the elections, however, Muse was arrested at Panama City Airport after a trip back from Miami. It is still unclear as to why he was arrested, for those who arrested him appeared for several days to have no idea what it was all about, as the interrogations rambled through several subjects with no clear direction. After searching his residence and cars, however, the interrogators eventually found evidence that led them to the transmitters. Once they realized who they had a forced confession was inevitable.
Transfered to the notorious Modelo Prison, Muse was put in solitary confinement, with a soldier outside his cell who's sole task was shoot him if a rescue was attempted. Conditions were abyssmal.
Fortunately for Muse, his wife's status as a DOD employee meant that he had some legal protection under the Panama Canal Treaty. The US military, for example, insisted on and got permission for brief visits every other day. Among other things, they brought him food so that he wouldn't have to survive on prison fare, books and used the visits to assessed his medical condition. More importantly, however, his visitors gathered vital intelligence for Delta Force, which at the direction of President Bush was planning a rescue operation.
No less important than the rescue of Kurt Muse was the securing of his family. Because of his actions, everyone related to Muse was in danger of being arrested and tortured by Noriega's thugs. Once it because known that Muse was arrested, the CIA and US Military went to herculean efforts to gather them up and bring them to safety in the US.
The rest of the book details the rescue operation. I'm going to recommend that you purchase the book or pick it up at your local libarary, so I won't spoil it for you by providing details of the mission. It's an amazing story, one that no Hollywood fiction can touch. Suffice it to say that these things never go smoothly, as Mr Murphy always seems to come along for the ride.
In the end, you can look at Kurt Muse as someone who risked his life attempting to get rid of a noxious dictator, or as a man who had no business risking his family and friends on a foolish venture. Muse himself was racked by doubts about what he was doing. Although I can certainly sympathise those who would criticize him, I have to put him in the hero category. Anyone gutsy enough to risk his life to rid the world of evil gets my vote.
Posted by Tom at 9:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 12, 2007
Reducing Our Dependence on Foreign Oil
Commenter jason raised some interesting issues regarding oil consumption in a comment this past April. For whatever technical reason he wasn't able to post it in it's entirety, but I was intrigued by his analysis so I promised that I'd address the issues he raised in a post. My apologies to him that it has taken me so long to get around to it.
Below I have excerpted his email.
The essential problem we face is not simply dependence on foreign oil, but that much of it comes from Saudi Arabia, which was described by Walid Phares as the "mother ship of the jihad". Commenter jason and I both agree with Phares that the Wahabbists of Saudi Arabia are using oil money to subvert the West. But you don't have to have detailed knowledge of the jihadist threat to know that it is not good when we are economically dependent on exports from the Middle East; a notoriously unstable part of the world.
To be clear, it's not just Saudi Arabia, but dependence on oil from a multitude of countries, from Nigeria to Venezuela to the various gulf states. It might surprise some readers to learn that our biggest supplier of foreign oil is Canada (DOE source). Mexico is number two, and Saudi Arabia comes in third.
Some quick facts and figures (DOE source)
60.3% of the oil we consume is imported
44% comes from OPEC
18% comes from the Persian Gulf region
16% comes from Canada
11% comes from Mexico
3% comes from the UK
3% comes from Russia
40% of our total energy consumption is met by petroleum
2% of our electical needs are met by petroleum(wikipedia)
(I am not able to find what percentage of petroleum is turned into gasoline, if you know please leave it and your source in the comments)
The question, then, is how to reduce gasoline consumption? Here is jason's idea
The math (in a very aggregated sense) is fairly simple from public data:1. The National Household Travel Survey states in 2001 the average
American
household drove 21,000 miles per year (most recent data I could quickly
find).2. The 2006 Census estimate has a total US pop. of approximately 300
million
(299,398,484). The 2006 average household size was 2.6, so we can
extrapolate approximately 115 million households in the US:21,000 miles per year/household x 115 million households = 2.4 trillion
vehicle miles travelled per year.2006 Hummer (H3): 16/20 mpg, city/hwy = 150/120 billion gallons per
year2006 Base Cooper: 28/36 mpg = 86/66 billion gallons per year
2006 Prius Hybrid: 60/51 mpg = 40/47 billion gallons per year
Hybrids would use 25 to 29% of the fuel used by Hummers, and Coopers
would use 57 to 55 % of the fuel used by Hummers. Basically, if everyone
drove a Mini Cooper, we would hypothetically use almost ½ less fuel per year for
household annual travel. Hybrids would result in even greater savings.
Note that the Prius gets worse gas mileage on the hwy, so if all City
drivers used Hybrids, urban people (who don’t need to drive Hummers)
would use 1/4 to 1/3 of the fuel required by a city full of blockhead Hummer
drivers. Would you rather give the Saudis $25 or $100 to fund
madrassas? Decry the left for urging greater fuel economy, but paste
that American flag on your Hummer, knowing full well that you help fund oil
rich despots and their pet causes (including jihad) at a rate 4 times
greater than hybrid drivers.Sources:
Good points all. While jason goes after the Hummer vehicle, he may as well have said "SUV", or any vehicle that get's less than, say, 20 miles per gallon.
And while at the other end of the spectrum he uses the Mini Cooper and Prius as examples of fuel efficient vehicles, he may as well have mentioned any vehicle that gets, say, more than 25 miles to the gallon. The simple fact is that the majority of people in this country have vehicles larger than they can justify by family or work needs.
Getting people to drive more fuel-efficient vehicles would reduce our consumption of oil from Persian Gulf countries and OPEC members such as Nigeria Venezuela. How to do this?
There are three ways we can achiueve this goal. One way is to increase CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. CAFE standards are basically a series of federal laws that mandate the average fuel economy per car per manufacturer. If the government increases the standards, auto manufacturers must make more fuel efficient cars and trucks.
The second method is through tax incentives. Right now we're going the wrong way, with tax breaks effectively given to drivers of SUVs (source from jason). This could be reversed by simple legislation, so that anyone who buys a car that gets, say over 25 mpg gets a tax break, with the amount of the break going up with the fuel economy of the vehicle.
The last method is simple persuasion through various educational campaigns. While I'm not terribly optimistic about this approach, it has reduced smoking.
Ideas by James Woolsey
jason also sent three articles by or about the ideas of James Woolsey, who is perhaps best known as a former director of the CIA.
The first is an interview of Woolsey by Grist, in which he discusses his ideas on energy independence and work with the Energy Future Coalition. As with all three articles, read the whole thing, but here is a sample of what he has to say
We want substantially better fuel efficiency from vehicles and alternative fuels that can be used in the current infrastructure. As for cars, we are advocating modern diesels, flexible-fuel vehicles, hybrids, and a plug-in adaptation for hybrids. We're also pushing for the development of cellulosic ethanol and biofuels. Almost all of these are here and now, compatible with the existing infrastructure, and can be worked on by your average mechanic. It's not like trying to put hydrogen reformers into every filling station in the country.High-grade diesel technologies have just now caught up with our emissions standards. Flexible-fuel vehicles can use any mixture of gasoline and ethanol -- up to 85 percent ethanol. The cars most of us drive now use a maximum of 10 percent ethanol. It's a simple conversion -- just a slightly different kind of plastic in the fuel line and a differently programmed computer chip.
Plug-in hybrids would be a simple adaptation of existing hybrid technology by adding a battery that can recharge from the grid. You'd charge your hybrid at night and drive about 10 to 30 miles on the overnight power before you start using liquid gas, which means your 50-mpg Prius now becomes a 100- to 150-mpg Prius. Based on current electricity prices, you would get the functional equivalent of 50-cent-a-gallon gasoline.
...'m not deeply involved in the policy side -- I focus on technology. I tend to think tax credits are the simplest, but whether it's production tax benefits or credits to purchasers or CAFE [corporate average fuel economy] standards or all three, I don't really care that much. I just believe strongly in the technologies and want them in play using whatever method works.
A fairly pragmatic fellow, then, not wedded to any one policy. An ideologue he's not.
The second is his testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on November 16, 2005. This one is the longest of the three, and he touches on everything from the vulnerability of our petroleum infrastructure to terrorism, to the amount of money the Wahabbis are spending to subvert our societies, to policy prescriptions. Since we presented his views on the latter above, we'll quote is statement on how oil money funds terrorism
Estimates of the amount spent by the Saudis in the last 30 years spreading Wahhabi beliefs throughout the world vary from $70 billion to $100 billion. Furthermore, some oil-rich families of the Greater Middle East fund terrorist groups directly. The spread of Wahhabi doctrine � fanatically hostile to Shi�ite and Suffi Muslims, Jews, Christians, women, modernity, and much else � plays a major role with respect to Islamist terrorist groups: a role similar to that played by angry German nationalism with respect to Nazism in the decades after World War I. Not all angry German nationalists became Nazis and not all those schooled in Wahhabi beliefs become terrorists, but in each case the broader doctrine of hatred has provided the soil in which the particular totalitarian movement has grown. Whether in lectures in the madrassas of Pakistan, in textbooks printed by Wahhabis for Indonesian schoolchildren, or on bookshelves of mosques in the US, the hatred spread by Wahhabis and funded by oil is evident and influential.On all points except allegiance to the Saudi state Wahhabi and al Qaeda beliefs are essentially the same.
"Saudi state Wahhabi and al Qaeda beliefs are essentially the same." Just what Walid Phares said in Future Jihad.
The final piece is an editorial Woolsey wrote for the Wall Street Journal which appeared on January 1, 2007. As with the interview cited at top, he reiterates his belief that we should avoid putting all of our eggs in one basket. After reviewing several technologies and policies, he concludes that
Subsidizing expensive substitutes for petroleum, ignoring the massive infrastructure costs needed to fuel family cars with hydrogen, searching for a single elegant solution--none of this has worked, nor will it. Instead we should encourage a portfolio of inexpensive fuels, including electricity, that requires very little infrastructure change and let its components work together: A 50 mpg hybrid, once it becomes a plug-in, will likely get solidly over 100 mpg of gasoline (call it "mpgg"); if it is also a flexible fuel vehicle using 85% ethanol, E-85, its mpgg rises to around 500.
Much as I hate giving our money to the Saudis or any of the OPEC countries, my libertarian side is wary of government mandates. Who are they to say what size car I can buy, or for that matter what size house I can live in (something the more radical environmentalists would regulate). On the other hand I look around me on the way to work and see SUV after SUV with one person in them. To be sure many of these vehicles are used to transport the kids evenings and weekends. But surely we can cut back on size.
We do have to cut back on petroleum consumption. It is a strategic imperative, even a military one, that we do so. Too much money goes to countries who sponsor or tolerate Islamist ideologies. Too much of our time and energy - and perhaps blood - goes into securing a supply of this natural resource from unstable and hostile parts of the world.
Perhaps like Woolsey, though, I'm not committed to any one method, and am open to ideas. I'm keeping an open mind on this one.
Update - Market Economics
Silly me, I'd thought of this before I did the post and then completely forgot to include it. Fortunately, Henry Payne at Planet Gore jogged my memory.
Payne wrote that Sen Reid was complaining that Detroit wasn't making cars that were fuel efficient enough, and as such wanted to increast CAFE standards by forty percent, to 35 mpg by 2020 and then 52 mpg by 2030. Payne points out that
...auto industry sales of SUVs (including gas-guzzling Japanese models) have skyrocketed because gas is cheap and Americans demand them. If Reid and his colleagues really wanted to effect fuel consumption, they would tax gas to $7 a gallon as European nations have done. But Democrats are spineless, and prefer to enact backdoor mandates on industry to deflect their political pain.
Two points. One, whether Payne is right concerning the price of gasoline depends on your timeline. If you adjust for inflation, and ignore sharp peaks, the price of gasoline has not really increased since 1919, and in fact has gone down somewhat. Take a look at this chart
This May 2005 article in USA Today makes the same point by comparing the price of gasoline to disposable income.
We can compare gas prices over time by calculating the cost of 1,000 gallons of gas purchased at the average price in a given year, as a percentage of per-capita disposable income in that year. For example, in 1935, when gas prices were 17 cents per gallon and annual disposable income was $466, the cost of 1,000 gallons of gas was 36% of average disposable income. Today, it takes less than 7% of our disposable income to buy 1,000 gallons of gas at the current $2.10 a gallon. The "cheap" gas of the '60s and '70s cost about 12% as a share of income.
That said, prices have risen sharply this past year, and are now at record highs, as is discussed in this May 2007 CNN article
Gasoline prices have soared to levels never seen before as even the inflation-adjusted price for a gallon of unleaded topped the 1981 record spike in price that had stood for 26 years.
But this said, is Payne right that the best way to effect fuel economy is to raise taxes on gasoline to the point where it costs $6 or $7 per gallon?
I think so.
Yes I know I've just ended any chance I've got of running for political office by saying that. But it's true. If you really want to get people out of their SUVs and Hummers and into economy cars use market economics.
Now, it's easy to say that but another thing to put it into practice. Any politician who does such a thing kills their chance for reelection. But Payne is right that politicians should not at once complain that we're using too much gasoline and that the price is too high. If Reid did have courage, he would support high gas prices, not high CAFE standards. And I'd support him.
Posted by Tom at 9:30 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 11, 2007
The Democrats Get Religion
Last week Democrat candidates John Edwards, Barak Obama, and Hillary Clinton participated in discussion on an Presidential Forum on Faith, Values and Poverty. The event was hosted by the Sojourners, and was broadcast on CNN (transcript here).
First, about the Soujourners. Their mission statement on their website reads
Founded in 1971, our mission is to articulate the biblical call to social justice, inspiring hope and building a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world.
Their founder and leader is Jim Wallis. He is the author of numerous books and articles, many of which are on the Sojourners website. As you may suspect from the call to "social justice" in their mission statement, he adopts many or most of the standard positions of the religious left.
The Sojourners are members of United for Peace and Justice. Guess who else are members of UPJ? Code Pink, the Communist Party USA, and the Young Communist League. If you don't believe me go to the UPJ website and take a look for yourself. No I am not calling the Sojourners communists, but they obviously have no problem associating with them.
On To The Forum
Enough about the Sojourners. The forum was about faith, and the candidates were not shy; all of them took Christ as their savior.
Let's get a few things out of the way up front; far be it from me to question anyone's personal relationship with the almighty. If you say you take Christ as your saviour, that's good enough for me.
Second, I am happy that the Democrat candidates are discussion religion and their faith. I want to live in a country where members of both parties can openly discuss these matters. I don't want us to become like Europe, where most candidates distance themselves from any discussion about their personal beliefs. I also don't want us to become like Iran, but that's hardly something to worry about.
CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien let the forum, though other panelists asked questions also. Here are some of the more interesting exchanges, I thought. You'll want to read the whole thing.
John Edwards
O'BRIEN: Do you think homosexuals have the right to be married?EDWARDS: No. Not personally. Now you're asking about me personally. But I think there's a difference between my belief system and what the responsibilities of the president of the United States are. It is the reason we have separation of church and state. And there are very good people, including some people that I'm very close to me, my daughter who is sitting in the front row here tonight, feels very differently about this issue. And I have huge respect for those who have a different view about this.
So I think we have to be very careful about ensuring that the president of the United States is not using his belief system and imposing that belief system on the rest of the country. So what that... O'BRIEN: But if it's...
EDWARDS: So what that -- I'm sorry. All I was going to say is I think what that means in this case is the substantive rights that go with partnerships, civil unions, for example, and all the subsequent rights that go with that, should be recognized in this country, at least in my judgment, should be recognized. And I think it is not the role of the federal government to tell either faith-based institutions, churches, synagogues, what they should or should not recognize. Nor should the federal government be telling states what they should recognize.
O'BRIEN: If you think something is morally wrong, though, you morally disagree with it, as president of the United States, don't you have a duty to go with your moral belief?
EDWARDS: No, I think that, first of all, my faith, my belief in Christ plays an enormous role in the way I view the world. But I think I also understand the distinction between my job as president of the United States, my responsibility to be respectful of and to embrace all faith beliefs in this country because we have many faith beliefs in America. And for that matter we have many faith beliefs in the world. And I think one of the problems that we've gotten into is some identification of the president of the United States with a particular faith belief as opposed to showing great respect for all faith beliefs.
The entire issue of faith and governance is complicated, and I'm not going to attempt a full discussion here. On the one hand there is no doubt that one does not and should not desire to put all concepts of morality into law. And no Christian that I know of wants to import Leviticus or Deuteronomy into the U.S. Code. That said, it does seem rather disturbing that Edwards would so quickly and definitively answer "no" to O'Brien's questions.
It's not that I'm advocating "imposing" all concepts of morality from the Bible into law, but isn't there some point at which we say "the Bible teaches that x and such is immoral to the point where it ought to be illegal"?
Now contrast what Edwards says above to this interview he gave to Beliefnet just this past March
BELIEFNET: What parts of American life do you think would most outrage Jesus?EDWARDS; Our selfishness. Our resort to war when it's not necessary. I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs. I think he would be appalled, actually.
...BELIEFNET; Does your concern for the poor come mostly from your own background, or does it come from your faith?
EDWARDS; Both. It comes from both.
My own personal experience has been that I came from a very poor background when I was young. But, by the time I was in middle school/high school, we were solidly in the middle class. And now I've had everything you could ever have financially in this country. And so, I feel some responsibility myself to help and give back, to give that opportunity to lots of people who I don't think have it today. That's part of it. And it also comes from my faith. If you took every reference to taking care of the least of these out of the Bible, there would be a pretty skinny Bible. And I think I as a Christian, and we as a nation, have a moral responsibility to do something about this.
So in the case of gay marriage "there's a difference between my belief system and what the responsibilities of the president of the United States are" but his concern for the poor comes - partly - from his faith.
Maybe it's just me but I see a contradiction here. He uses religion to advocate some policy prescriptions but on others we have to keep our personal beliefes separate from governance.
Bty I'm well aware that some Republicans probably contradict themselves also. It just seems more obvious with Edwards.
Barak Obama
O'BRIEN: We'll start by tackling a big topic, God.(LAUGHTER)
Do you think that God takes sides in a war? For example, in the war on terror, is God on the side of U.S. troops, would you say?
OBAMA: Well, you know, I always remember Abraham Lincoln, when, during the Civil War, he said, "We shouldn't be asking whose side God is on, but whether we're on his side." And I think that's the question that all of us have to ask ourselves during any battle that's taking place, whether it's political or military, is, are we following his dictates? Are we advancing the causes of justice and freedom? Are we our brother's keeper, our sister's keeper? And that's how I measure whether what we're doing is right.
O'BRIEN: The president talks a lot, as you know, about sort of good versus evil in war. Do you agree with that?
OBAMA:Well, I do think there's evil in the world. I think that, when planes crash into buildings and kill innocents, there's evil there. I think violence and cruelty, wherever it's perpetrated, expresses evil in the world. And I think that all of us have an obligation to speak to that and act against that forcefully.
I pretty good answer, I think. About what I would have said, in fact. Here's something else he said that I liked
OBAMA: And I have to -- I have to say that I'm very proud of the fact that we've seen some of my Republican colleagues informed by the evangelical movement embrace this notion of providing second chances. And they're to be applauded. This is an area where I think we can get past the left and right divide.
Hmmm. We shall see, but reading the rest of what he said during this forum he might not be an empty suit after all. He's a liberal and unashamed of it, and to be sure I disagree with him on a host of policy issues. But his answers in this forum made sense to me. And unlike Edwards or Clinton, he is a likeable fellow.
Hillary Clinton
O'BRIEN: You don't talk a lot about your faith, truly. I -- I know because I have Googled everything you have ever said, actually.(LAUGHTER)
O'BRIEN: But I'm going to ask you a delicate question. Infidelity in your marriage was very public. And I have to imagine it was incredibly difficult to deal with. And I would like to know how your faith helped you get through it.
CLINTON: Well, I'm not sure I would have gotten through it without my faith.
And, you know, I take my faith very seriously and very personally. And I come from a tradition that is perhaps a little too suspicious of people who wear their faith on their sleeves, so, that a lot of the...
(APPLAUSE)
CLINTON: ... a lot of the talk about and advertising about faith doesn't come naturally to me. It is something that -- you know, I keep thinking of the Pharisees and all of Sunday school lessons and readings that I had as a child.
But I think your -- your faith guides you every day. Certainly, mine does. But, at those moments in time when you're tested, it -- it is absolutely essential that you be grounded in your faith.
For some people, being tested leads them to faith. For some people, being tested in cruel and tragic ways leads them away from faith. For me, because I have been tested in ways that are both publicly known and those that are not so well known or not known at all, my faith and the support of my extended faith family, people whom I knew who were literally praying for me in prayer chains, who were prayer warriors for me, and people whom I didn't know, who I would meet or get a letter from, sustained me through a very difficult time.
But I -- I am very grateful that I had a grounding in faith that gave me the courage and the strength to do what I thought was right, regardless of what the world thought. And that's all one can expect or hope for.
On a personal level she seemed the most open of the three. I can certainly imagine that life with Bill must have been taxing, and if faith got her through it then God bless her.
All in all, the forum revealed that Edwards is a dope (no surprise there). Obama gave substantive answers and made a lot of sense at times. Hillary revealed a personal side we haven't seen before.
Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 10, 2007
Edwards Peace Corps Military Strategy
Hillary, I'm sure, will blow the terrorists to kingdom come if they attack our homeland again. She may do it to them even if they don't. I'm not sure about Obama, but at least he's not pandering to the loony left, at least not yet.
John Edwards, on the other hand, is quickly becomming an embarassment. He is clearly pandering to the most extreme of the anti-war left.
The latest is his Peace Corps-type terrorist strategy. From last week's New York Sun
Senator Edwards is outlining a new national security strategy that includes the creation of a 10,000-person civilian peace corps to stem the tide of terrorism in weak and unstable countries. ...The plan Mr. Edwards presented yesterday — which he dubbed "A Strategy to Shut Down Terrorists and Stop Terrorism Before It Starts" — calls for a 10,000-person "Marshall Corps" to deal with issues ranging from worldwide poverty and economic development to clean drinking water and micro-lending. He said investing in those areas would shore up weak nations and help ensure that terrorism does not take root there. That, he said, would allow the country to stop potential terrorists before they even join the ranks.
There are "thousands committed to violence" today, he said, and America needs to use all of its tools to go after them. But he said millions more people are "sitting on the fence" about whether to join those ranks. "We have to offer them a hand to our side instead of a shove to the other side of that fence," he said.Mr. Edwards proposed creating a Cabinet-level position to oversee the initiative, which he said would require international allies.
Now, I agree with Frank Gaffney that President Bush has done a terrible job at projecting the immense "soft power" that our country posesses.
But as Cliff May observes, ""Humanitarian aid ... doesn't really have much to do with the causes of terrorism" (as quoted in the Sun article).
Edwards' full plan is posted on his website. Much is sensible, but it's all 101 level stuff:
Ensure our intelligence strategy adheres to proven and effective methods and avoids actions that will give terrorists or even other nations an excuse to abandon international law.
Hold regular meetings with top military leadership. Edwards will also reinstate a basic doctrine of national security management—military professionals will have primary responsibility in matters of tactics and operations, while civilian leadership will have authority in all matters of broad strategy and political decisions.
I'm certainly relieved to hear he'll be meeting with the military leadership. Was I supposed to be worried that he wouldn't be?
Unfortunately, the fact sheet that accompanies the plan isn't any better.
John Edwards has a long way to go before he convinces me he's serious about national security.
Previous
John Edwards - Inappropriate Actions for Memorial Day
Edwards Shows His Colors
Posted by Tom at 8:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 8, 2007
Lessons of the JFK Bomb Plot
While some on the left attempt to make light of the arrest by police of three men who were allegedly plotting to blow up fuel storage tanks at JFK International Airport in NYC, Walid Phares thinks otherwise. In an editorial a few days ago he wrote that there are eight lessons that we should learn from the plot.
1) This is an operation (successful or not) that implicated at least three countries in three subcontinents: The United States (North America), Trinidad and Tobago (Caribbean) and Guyana (South America). It means that the terrorists (jihadi ideologically) have staged their activities out of three different countries (including the United States) to launch an attack against America. Hence, the first lesson to draw is that indeed the war with jihadism is a global war on terror, and thus this is an invitation to the U.S. congressional panel and the European Commission, which asked to drop the concept of "global war" with terrorism, to review their statement on the matter....
Phares is being polite here. As he said in Future Jihad, the President and Congress ought to declare that jihadism is out enemy. Until we understand that we are not just fighting al Qaeda we cannot even begin to win this thing.
2) The second lesson is that the Caribbean and South America have indeed became staging grounds for jihadi groups (al Qaeda, other Salafists and Iranian-led groups) to organize, recruit and act. Which necessitates a specific focus by Washington and other Latin American and Caribbean allies on jihadi activities in the southern part of the Western Hemisphere. The fact that members of the JFK International Airport plot were from and used Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana as areas of activities signals, along with the known activities in the region, Venezuela, the tri-border zone and other spots, the surge of a continental threat.
While at first glance it would seem too risky for Hugo Chavez to provide aid to al Qaeda or any terrorist who might strike at the U.S. he does seem quite the megalomanic, and as such may miscalculate. He might see Bush's current political weakness as a sign that he can get away with a lot more than is prudent. One would think that the Caribbean and South America would be one area where we could use our "soft power".
3) More specifically, attention must be placed on understanding the jihadi roots across the three states known as the Guyanas. Back in the 1980s, the Gadhafi regime of Libya has invested in networks in the area, particularly in Suriname with influences across the borders. In addition, the Wahhabi powers from Arabia have been funding institutions and groups also since the end of the 1980s. The growth of Salafism and linked radical groups is the direct result of oil-producing regimes' ideological thrust in these areas.The root causes of potential terror acts in New York or Toronto in this decade have been triggered by a war of ideological indoctrination waged decades ago through this hemisphere....
At the risk of sounding condescending, it is just this ideological battle that most Americans are completely unaware of. During the Cold War everyone had at least a basic understanding of Soviet Communism. During World War II everyone knew about Nazism. Salafism, however, is a term that I daresay very few Americans are familiar with. The fault for this must lie squarely with the Bush Administration. While it is distressing that many Democrats have no understanding of who we are up against, the least the President could have done is to try and educate the public.
As Phares said in Future Jihad, the 9-11 Commission got it wrong. It was not a failure of imagination that allowed the terrorists to catch us by surprise, it was a failure of education.
If you're not familiar with these terms yourself, I summarized them in a review of Phares book.
4) A fourth lesson is to realize that while this operation was thankfully thwarted by U.S. authorities, the projection is that other similar operations are theoretically either contemplated or underway by the jihadists. For a jihadi war against democracies (the United States in this case) should not be perceived as one separate act after the other, but dispersed acts connected by one ideology, hence the war-like dimension of the conflict.
Knowledge of history is paramount in understanding our enemy. To make a long story very short, some time after Muhammed died in 632 AD the new Muslim world consolidated itself politically. An absolute ruler emerged called the Caliph, essentially a combination king and pope. Family dynasties emerged, each of which ruled from a particular city for a few hundred years before being supplanted by the next. The Umayyads, for example, ruled out of Damascus from 661 - 750 AD. The Abbasids ruled from Baghdad from 750 until 1258. The whole thing ended with the Ottomans ruling from Istanbul from 1299 - 1923. The last Caliph was overthrown by Musafa Kemal in that year and a secular Turkey emerged.
Once the Ottoman caliphate fell, and the ability to call for a jihad went private, al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood were inevitable. Jihadists see the present as the continuation of this narrative. What we in the West consider ancient history may as well happened last Thursday to them.
The goal of those who believe in a "fundamentalist" version of Islam is that the faith must be spread thoughout the world, by violence and forced conversion if necessary. The Sunni Salafists want a worldwide Caliphate, and the Shiite Khumeinists a regional Imamate.
5) A fifth lesson has to do with the layers of penetration of the systems in the United States and overseas. The various types of jihadi cells, individuals and other self declared groups on all levels of civil society and government is an indicator of the thrust. It also tells us that the counter-terrorism strategies, while spending time and energy on protecting the area under attack (buildings, trains, airports) must dedicate significant time and efforts on tracking the roots of indoctrination. We should not follow the terrorist threat but actually precede it.
Protecting "things" is fine. But we would be remiss if we didn't also attack the indoctrination process as well.
6) The so-called link to al Qaeda should not be the measurement of counter-terrorism strategies. Al Qaeda is in the center of the jihadi war against the Free World but doesn't encompass the entire jihadi web. Hence, linked or not to Osama bin laden, the Salafi networks are on the offensive before and most likely after the transformation of al Qaeda. We have seen enough evidence of the growth and development of what some call "homegrown" terror entities. Their travel into the grapevine to reach al Qaeda or not isn't the essence of the campaign; it is the travel by the jihadi ideologues and monies to these elements that needs countering.
Whether or not the JFK or the Fort Dix plotters had ties to al Qaeda is irrelevant. A May 2006 Washington Post story describes the career of one Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, who in January of 2005 posted a treatise called "The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance" under the pen name Abu Musab al-Suri on the Internet (I can't find an exact link for the work). In the treatise, Nasar essentially calls for Muslims to take matters into their own hands, either as individuals or in small cells, without waiting to be contacted by organizations such as al Qaeda.
7) In this age of cyberspeed and globalization, the dominant assumption in tracking the link, is that efforts to communicate have already been spent between the "homegrown" and the "mothership." For if jihadists from all over the world meet in chat rooms and travel to each other's battlefields, the standing presumption is that an effort was made to establish the link, either from the top toward the bottom, or otherwise. But even if the link was not formalized, the action flows in the same direction. The JFK airport plot at least shows that direction.8) The Trinidad member of parliament, Abdel Kadir, who is also involved in this operation, is an example of infiltration by the jihadists of governments abroad, and ultimately of governmental institutions at home. It shows the fact that terrorists aren't exclusively outsiders but could also be insiders to governments and their agencies. It further shows one of the jihadists' main goals that is to "place" their cadres inside the layers of government, legislative, executive and potentially judicial.
More about Islamist infiltration tactics here.
While fighting al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan is certainly part of what should be called the War on Jihadism, it is not all of it. Surveilance (yes, of the domestic as well as foreign) and covert operations must play a large part also. We need to do a lot better at "soft power" of the sort mentioned above (follow the link for details).
The bottom line though is that it would be a mistake to dismiss the JFK Airport plot because the jihadists were still in the planning stages. Even the 9-11 terrorists had a planning stage. I tend to think that we would have dismissed their plans as fanciful had we caught them early on. Let's not make that mistake here.
Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 6, 2007
No Reason to Stay In the UN
Nat Hentoff (bio here) asked recently why we were still in the United Nations, and I have no good answer for him.
Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe has gone from being the breadbasket of Africa to an economic basket case. Other African nations used to buy food from Zimbabwe, now they export food to it so that it's people won't starve. There's no drought or global warming to blame here, for the fault is entirely that of Robert Mugabe. President of the country since 1980, in recent years he has become an ever more brutal dictator.
So how does the United Nations reward such behavior? Henhoff explains
The United Nations is increasingly becoming a parody of itself while American taxpayers last year provided $439 million to the regular U.N. budget — plus a headquarters in New York that the U.N. management wants to expand. Not only has this dysfunctional and occasionally corrupt organization failed to stop the genocide in Darfur, but on May 11, the insatiably brutal Robert Mugabe's government of Zimbabwe was elevated by the United Nations to chair its Commission on Sustainable Development — dealing with land, rural and economic development, and the environment.Astonished, The Economist magazine (May 19) noted that Zimbabwe, once known as "the breadbasket of Africa," has had its agriculture "largely destroyed by its government's catastrophic policies."
This year, it was Africa's turn to lead the Commission on Sustainable Development, and the U.N.'s African members shamefully and inexcusably support Mugabe's government for that post.
And just who was responsible for electing Zimbabwe to this position? Other African nations, that's who. The chair of this commission is rotated among continents, and this year it was Africa's turn. How bad is the situation in Zimbabwe?
Zimbabwe is a disaster area. The country's own Social Welfare Commission, as reported by The New York Times on Dec. 19, found that 63 percent of the rural population and 53 percent of the urban population cannot meet basic food requirements.Under Mugabe's rule, Zimbabwe's inflation is the highest on the planet — more than 2,200 percent.
The African nations voting to bestow "legitimacy" on Mugabe's terrorism against his own people closed their eyes and consciences to the fact — as reported by The Economist — that "every day desperate Zimbabweans cross the Limpopo river, braving crocodiles and occasionally drowning, to try their luck in neighboring South Africa. Trapped into illegality there, many are exploited and abused."
Meanwhile, the liberator of Zimbabwe from white rule into its present wasteland is planning a 2008 campaign for an additional six-year term and a $4 million museum (a "shrine") of his lifetime achievements (Washington Times, May 2). Mugabe will surely win — if not by acclamation then certainly through long-practiced intimidation. In May, for example, he forbade Zimbabwe journalists — those who still risk beatings and prison for reporting the truth — from marching in commemoration of World Press Freedom Day (New York Times, May 7).
If African nations wish to ignore the horrors Mugabe is visiting on his country, I suppose that is their business. We shouldn't be a part of it, however, and as members of the UN we are.
Hentoff slaps down the notion that this situation with Zimbabwe is somehow unique
To cap the current (and chronic) disgrace of the United Nations, guess who the new officers of the U.N. Disarmament Commission are? The chair is Syria, home of abundantly armed warring factions — and the vice chair, believe it or not, is Iran, the leading prospect to blow up its region of the world. Having this proud stoker of nuclear destruction become second-in-command of the U.N. Disarmament Commission is like springing Jack Abramoff from prison to fill the new vacancy at the World Bank.
The United Nations is structurally incapable of reform. It is fatally flawed and beyond repair. Hentoff's solution mirrors my own
It makes much more sense for us to walk away from the United Nations itself, period. There are other organizations that — with more help from us and other concerned nations — can feed the hungry and provide medical aid for those in need around the world. But Eleanor