Discussing Iraq

I have been involved in a discussion on Facebook with a friend of mine over the War in Iraq. However, since my response is rather complex and formatting things on Facebook is a nightmare, I have decided to post it here.
The whole thing started with Charlie (my friend) pointing to this video of Dick Cheney defending the decision of the Bush père administration (in which he served as Defense Secretary) not to topple Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War:

Charlie asks: "What changed in ten years?"
Echoing a previous comment, I wrote:

Indeed, September 11th. That's not to say that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11 (although he did foster indisputable connections to various terrorist networks including Al Qaeda), but that 9/11 alerted us to a threat gathering on the horizon, and the War in Iraq is one of the responses to that threat.
Also, I would contend that it is premature to claim that Iraq is a hopeless quagmire, as I suspect the Democrats will find to their embarassment over the coming months.

In response to this comment Charlie posted his point of view, which I would like reply to.
Charlie writes:

None of what happened on 11th September 2001 changed the fundamental problems with an Iraqi invasion that Dick Cheney so eloquently points out above.

Dick Cheney is generally considered a Realist in terms of international relations. As Realist and Neoconservative thought (which is where my sympathies lie) have very strong disagreements on a host of IR issues, I do not aim to defend his every position. I was certainly in favour of pushing for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein well before September 11th. However I can speculate that the event which convinced some Realists, including Dick Cheney, that the risks and costs of an invasion of Iraq were outweighed by the potential benefits, were in fact the September 11th attacks, which alerted many people to a threat which had until then been underestimated. At any rate, my position on foreign policy is much closer to Christopher Hitchens' (unlike on some other subjects) and Norman Podhoretz's.
Charlie continues:

I have never heard of a convincing link between Saddam Hussein and Al Queda - there are many other Middle Eastern countries which have far more connection with the current terrorism and even back then it would seem Iran was more of a threat on the WMD front. I'm still not convinced we're fighting an advanced network vis a vis Al Queda at any rate - its a viral idea we're fighting against, an idea that has motivated disparate groups to make relatively low tech explosive devices and cause indiscriminate mass carnage on several occasions.

I certainly cannot claim to be an expert on the subject, but it seems to me that while Al Qaeda may be loosely organised and highly flexible it is far from being only a "viral idea." As far as I can tell, although Al Qaeda lacks a clear hierarchy and bureaucracy, it is still a sufficiently organised network to warrant viewing it as a single entity and fighting it on such terms (somewhat like the Mafia). I agree that there are other countries that are very much involved in encouraging terrorism and doing other unsavoury things, and I think our (the West's) policies towards them should be much more robust. On the WMD front, I don't know what "back then" is referring to but it seems to me that Iran was not a focal point of WMD/Nuclear development until more recent years. Not only did Saddam Hussein develop and in fact use chemical weapons against his own citizens decades ago, but he was only prevented from developing nuclear capabilities by a "rogue" Israeli raid.
This brings me back to why, since the mid-1990s, when I started following current events as a teenager, I have been in favour of increasing international pressure on Iraq and if ultimately necessary intervening militarily. The reason is not tied just to one specific justification, each of which taken separately may be too weak to impel the West to breach another country's sovereignty (a concept which I think is important, but should not be absolute). However, by the end of the last century Iraq's situation was such that the threat of a military intervention seemed to me the best course to address several festering problems.
Even ignoring Saddam's connections to Al Qaeda (and there is proof that some connection did exist), his regime supported terrorism through other channels, such as his harbouring Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal (and then purportedly assassinating him) and his sponsoring of suicide bomber families in the West Bank (just to mention a few). In addition, as I noted above, Saddam had developed and used chemical weapons on his own people in the 1980s and almost succeeded in developing nuclear capabilities at the same time (not to mention more recent suspect activity). He invaded Kuwait and demonstrated a repeated disregard for human rights and principles of common decency. Over a period of decades the brutality of the regime, the repeated invasions of Iraq's neighbours, the continued and longstanding flouting of Security Council resolutions regarding the Gulf War, Saddam's ability to completely corrupt the UN and its already ineffective and unpopular Oil-for-Food program, his use of chemical weapons on his Kurdish subjects without scruple and his close brush with success on the nuclear front, all indicated that Saddam needed to be removed for both humanitarian and security reasons. At the time there was, in my opinion, no other regime on earth which had posed such varied, sustained and worrying challenges to the international community, and it is precisely the mushy response of the international community which forced the Anglosphere's hand: if the entire West had presented a united front, my bet is that Saddam would have folded and outright war would have been avoided. Incidentally, the case in favour of the Bush Doctrine is presented with clarity and elegance by Norman Podhoretz in a series of articles for Commentary Magazine (and in his new book World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism).
Charlie goes on to write:

Right now Iraq is a hellhole, let alone a Quagmire - just as Cheney predicted - a Kurdish-Turk war now looks inevitable. Iran arms insurgents in the east and gradually increases its influence over those oil rich regions. As yet, the Western Iraqi problems - in Anbar Province - seem to have marginally subsided with the troop surge and the loss of civilian support for the Jihadists trying to stir up more trouble.

Although Iraq is certainly going through a difficult time, I think it is hardly a hellhole and certainly not the most violent spot on the planet. In fact, there seems to be an increasing consensus that - for the moment at least (and as I expected) - things are looking much better than they have for years. That is why the Democrats are starting to fret over what to do if, God forbid, the surge actually continues to do well.
At the same time I think it is quite clear that while Iran is rattling sabers, it is actually having quite a few problems of its own both economically and politically. Therefore it is only by obtaining nuclear weapons that Iran will pose a truly daunting threat, which is why a stop should be put to Ahmadinejad's plans.
Charlie concludes:

I hope Iraq can come out of its current troubles and I hope the limited success of the surge in some areas spread to others and a peaceful solution to the Kurdish-Turk problem can be found. I am skeptical though. Cheney still knew in 2003 what he knew in 1994 so I am guessing he was either over-ruled or there is some larger imperative in which the problems he describes are deemed an acceptable cost. Whatever that is, I very much doubt it's the destruction of 'Al Queda'.

I'm glad to hear that Charlie hopes Iraq can overcome its troubles, and I am much more confident than him that indeed it will. It seems to me that some people who oppose the War, do not in fact share Charlie's hopes, which I find both a pity and objectionable. As I note above, the Iraq War was not fought on the narrow justification of an Al Qaeda connection, and there certainly were larger imperatives at stake. I don't think changing one's mind (as Cheney seems to have done) is necessarily a bad thing, not least when he has moved from a deeply cynical, short-termist, balance-of-power view of the world - to a neconservative (more idealistic but robust) vision.

There he goes again

Although I have read my fair share of illustrations of Jimmy Carter's looniness, time and again I am surprised by his ability to surpass himself. The Associated Press reports:

Former President Jimmy Carter accused the U.S., Israel and the European Union on Tuesday of seeking to divide the Palestinian people by reopening aid to President Mahmoud Abbas' new government in the West Bank while denying the same to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
[...]
Carter said the consensus of the U.S., Israel and the EU to start funneling aid to Abbas' new government in the West Bank but continue blocking Hamas in the Gaza Strip represented an "effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples."
"All efforts of the international community should be to reconcile the two, but there's no effort from the outside to bring the two together," he said.
[...]
During his speech to Ireland's annual Forum on Human Rights, the 83-year-old former president said monitors from his Carter Center observed the 2006 election that Hamas won. He said the vote was "orderly and fair" and Hamas triumphed, in part, because it was "shrewd in selecting candidates," whereas a divided, corrupt Fatah ran multiple candidates for single seats.
Far from encouraging Hamas' move into parliamentary politics, Carter said the U.S. and Israel, with European Union acquiescence, sought to subvert the outcome by shunning Hamas and helping Abbas to keep the reins of political and military power.
"That action was criminal," he said in a news conference after his speech.

I am all in favour of democracy (and in this regard one may note that Abbas was also elected), but I fail to see how what Hamas has been doing these past few weeks could conceivably be considered democratic and worthy of international aid. Only someone with Carter's warped mind could think something so absurd. The Investor's Business Daily makes the argument cogently:

As the Gaza Strip flamed into Hamas gang warfare and the West Bank slid into another civil war, Carter — cozy in distant Ireland accepting another "human rights" award — found cause Tuesday to blame America first for all the violence.
Amid wine, cheese and good feeling, America's worst ex-president drew a bead on the West. The refusal by the U.S., Israel and the EU to support Hamas, an armed terror group that just launched a coup d'etat and civil war in full view of the world, was nothing but a "criminal" act at the root of the trouble there, Carter asserted.
"The United States and Israel decided to punish all the people in Palestine and did everything they could to deter a compromise between Hamas and Fatah," he said.
The statement was so malevolent and illogical as to border on insane. Carter wasn't honest enough to say he was rooting for terrorists who started a terrifying new war in the region and trashed what little democratic rule the Palestinians had. Instead, he tut-tutted the West for being insufficiently sensitive to the fact that Hamas thugs were democratically elected in 2006 in an "orderly and fair" vote.
When one party has started a civil war, democracy isn't exactly the issue anymore. Just being elected does not justify making warfare on your fellow citizens. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeatedly points out that those who are elected democratically have an obligation to govern democratically or they aren't democrats. Hamas has blown its right to democracy.
Carter also misstated and distorted technical aspects of democratic rule in the Palestinian Authority itself, further calling into question his intentions. Hamas' 42% plurality in the last parliamentary election gave the terror group a right to participate in government, but not absolute power.
Carter neglected to notice that President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestine's head of state, not only had a full democratic right to appoint Hamas members to his Cabinet, but he also had the right to dismiss them as he did Thursday. Carter's selective respect for the power-sharing aspect of Palestine's democracy stands out as significantly skewed toward Hamas.
Crazier still, Carter insisted Hamas was entitled to American aid because Fatah had been getting it. But he left out some details: Hamas is a terrorist organization that had broken six previous cease-fires, and its campaign platform vowed to destroy Israel. Hamas would gladly take Western cash to make good on that campaign promise to voters.
No one in the West is obligated to support an international terrorist organization just because it "won" an election. The proper response is to cut it off until it renounces violence.
For refusing to fund Hamas but propping up the slightly less unworthy Fatah, Carter charged the U.S. with trying to "divide the Palestinians into two peoples."
With such words, Carter can hardly be called a peacemaker. In fact, he should have been profoundly ashamed at his acceptance of his Nobel Prize. Ironically, his partner in peace, Yasser Arafat, got his stolen and desecrated by the very Hamas Carter defends. That ought to give him pause as he defends terrorists as democrats.

Meanwhile, in reaction to Carter's scandalous statements, this morning the Drudge Report linked to an editorial which appeared in the Jerusalem Post. Here is a juicy tidbit:

Carter pressured the Shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship. Khomeini could never have succeeded without Carter. The Islamic Revolution would have been stillborn.
Gen. Robert Huyser, Carter's military liaison to Iran, once told me in tears: "The president could have publicly condemned Khomeini and even kidnapped him and then bartered for an exchange with the [American Embassy] hostages, but the president was indignant. 'One cannot do that to a holy man,' he said."

Ironically, I agree that the Shah could not be permitted to run an authoritarian regime indefinitely, but, as should be self-evident, Carter's blundering made the situation infinitely worse. Unfortunately his latest comments demonstrate yet again that, for Carter, old age has not brought wisdom.

Sarkozy

It will not come as a surprise to those who know me that I supported Nicolas Sarkozy in the French presidential race: in addition to the appeal of several of his campaign themes (encouragement of hard work, toughness on crime, pro-Americanism, etc.), his rival, Mlle Royal's proposals on the economy were truly appalling, and she didn't strike confidence in foreign policy either). Nonetheless I have no great expectations of his presidency, as truly thorough and positive reforms will likely enrage and outrage a vast majority of French people (although I must say that it would be fun to see the French labour unions – the "enemy within" as Maggie would say – being cut down to size).
Having said that I have been impressed with Sarkozy's swift and impressive moves since he was inaugurated on May 16th. His cabinet appointments were mostly a welcome breath of fresh air, as well as being politically shrewd.
And now he also seems to be starting to show his mettle in international affairs. The Jerusalem Post reports:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Wednesday for sanctions on Iran to be tightened if the country does not adhere to the West's demands to cease its nuclear agenda.
If Iran attains nuclear weapons, Sarkozy warned, a road to an arms race will be paved that could endanger Israel and southeast Europe, he said during an interview with a German magazine.
Sarkozy announced that France will join the official US-led struggle against head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei, who recommended that Iran be allowed to enrich uranium in some of its nuclear plants.
On Tuesday, American officials urged allies to back a formal protest against ElBaradei, saying his comments could hurt UN Security Council efforts to pressure Teheran over its enrichment program.
"We were indeed surprised by several comments from Mr. ElBaradei over the weekend," said French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei. "We share the gist of concerns expressed by our American partners - along with several other partners, for that matter."

As I said, my expectations are quite low, but the initial signs are certainly encouraging. It's early days yet, but you never know!

Lieberman is a hero

I was very glad to read that Joe Lieberman is willing to bring his clout to bear to keep the Democrats in line on Iraq (via Instapundit):

Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, says his disagreement with the Democrats over the Iraq war won't prevent him from working with his former party. For now.
"I hope the moment doesn't come that I feel so separated from the caucus" that he decides to shift allegiance to the Republicans, he said in an interview. Asked what Democratic actions might cause such a break, he invoked Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous 1964 definition of pornography: "I'll know it when I see it."
The 65-year-old lawmaker is the margin of difference in the Democrats' 51-49 control of the Senate. A switch to the Republicans, which he won't rule out, would create a 50-50 tie that would allow Vice President Dick Cheney to cast a deciding vote for Republican control. Lieberman has "gone from being dispensable to essential for the Democrats," said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
[...]
The senator, the Democrats' 2000 vice presidential nominee, was defeated in last year's primary after three terms by anti- war candidate Ned Lamont. Lieberman created a new line on the ballot, "Connecticut for Lieberman," and won a five-way general election with 50 percent of the vote.
[...]
Lieberman, meanwhile, said it may take a lot more to change his mind on the war, which he says is vital to U.S. national security. "I believe very strongly that we can still succeed in Iraq," he said. "Unless Petraeus comes back and says it's hopeless, I'm going to stick with the program."

I couldn't agree more. And I can't help but thinking that it is this kind of "gentle prodding" that has at least contributed to this positive, albeit belated, result:

Democrats gave up their demand for troop-withdrawal deadlines in an Iraq war spending package yesterday, abandoning their top goal of bringing U.S. troops home and handing President Bush a victory in a debate that has roiled Congress for months.

Keep them on their toes, Joe!

Barking up the wrong tree

Although the Economist is quite reliable on a host of issues, it has a characteristically blinkered editorial on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in this week's issue. The piece's concluding paragraphs highlight what is wrong with its recommendations:

In the 1980s Israelis did not let their divisions over the occupied lands tear their nation apart. Why should they, so long as the Palestinians gave no hint of ever accepting Israel? It all began to change when by accepting the Jewish state's permanence Arafat made the dream of peace look real to Israelis.
The trick now is to make statehood look real enough to Palestinians for the majority to abandon Hamas's bleak vision of war to the end. Israelis say that they tried this at Camp David in 2000 and got nowhere. Well then, they—and the Americans—need to try again. When Palestinians come to believe that a generous two-state deal is really available, many may reconsider their support of Hamas. It is time to soften the economic pressure and negotiate a detailed promise of statehood that Mr Abbas can take to his people. It will be hard, but this is a better way to win the argument against Hamas than the past year's vain efforts to make the Palestinians jump through verbal hoops they have come to consider humiliating.

Verbal hoops? It seems to me that the people jumping through verbal hoops are the editors at the Economist. The premise for this editorial is that the great majority of Palestinians want peace, and would accept Israel if only they were certain that Israel would allow them to form a state. Unfortunately, this is simply untrue, as has been established repeatedly and incontrovertibly over several decades. It is clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that Israel would be willing – nay, eager – to relinquish its control over the West Bank, if it could do so without imperilling its security. This willigness has been expressed through opinion polls, elections and by much of the political establishment on numerous occasions, clearly and repeatedly. Therefore the availability of a generous two-state solution is manifestly not the goal that many Palestinians – not least their leaders from both Fatah and Hamas – are working for, otherwise they would have removed the main impediments to reaching such a resolution: their continuing violence against Israeli civilians, and the indoctrination of their children to believe that Israelis and Jews are the scum of the earth and that ultimately Israel will be violently removed and its residents pushed into the sea.
I'm not saying that there are no extremist Israelis who hate the Palestinians, and would not want to relinquish any land under any circumstances. What I am saying is that a crushing majority of Israelis do not want to fight the Palestinians, and would be happy to give up the virtual totality of the West Bank (making up the retention of a few of the largest settlements with territorial concessions elsewhere) so that the Palestinians could establish their own state. Therefore, what needs to be done now is not encourage the Palestinians to think – as the Economist wants Israel to do – that there is a possibility of them achieving their original, preferred goal: destroying the State of Israel and expelling its Jewish residents. What needs to be done, as Daniel Pipes has ably explained, is to convince the Palestinians that the best deal they are going to get is the one being offered to them by Israel, which by dint of being a stable democracy is able to impose the will of its population's crushing majority on a recalcitrant, mostly non-violent, meager minority – as was so starkly proven when Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip. This deal being offered to the Palestinians by Israel is very similar to the end result the Economist seems to advocate. It is therefore ironic, that it should support precisely the policies that will ensure that this outcome fails to materialise.

Why they oppose the "surge"

Tigerhawk spells out what should be obvious to all but the most blinkered leftists, namely that many (but not all) Democrats clearly want the "surge" and the war in Iraq in general to fail. And he explains why:

New York Senator Chuck Schumer seemed to give away the game -- at least implicitly -- on "Meet the Press." He quite obviously does not want the next election cycle to be "about" Iraq. One gets the sense that this sentiment is even more pronounced among the Democrats who will be vying for their party's presidential nomination. It is easy to see why: the problem of Iraq will be nothing but trouble for leading Democrats. The party activists who hold sway during the primary season will demand that candidates embrace the so-called "anti-war" agenda without reservation, but if Democrats do that too enthusiastically they will remind voters that their party has been all about defeat since 1972. Since none of them want to be caught in that Liebermanesque trap, leading Democrats are desperate for Iraq to be off the table by next fall. [UPDATE: Hillary's new and bizarre demand that all American troops be out of Iraq by January 2009 is the new, best evidence in support of my suspicions. This was a mistake on her part, for it reinforces the impression that in opposing the surge the Democrats are motivated by electoral considerations rather than an honest appraisal of the national interest.]

Do read the whole thing. Some people argued that the Democrats' coming to power would be a good thing, because it would force them to share responsibility for the war on terror. Increasingly, these hopes seem to have been vain. I am quite open-minded about the 2008 presidential election, but if this is the attitude going forward, it is increasingly unlikely that I will view the election of a Democrat with anything other than horror.


Post Scriptum:

Robert Kagan dedicated his latest Washington Post column to the political maneuvering over Iraq. It is absolutely obligatory reading:

Back in Washington, however, Democratic and Republican members of Congress are looking for a different kind of political solution: the solution to their problems in presidential primaries and elections almost two years off. Resolutions disapproving the troop increase have proliferated on both sides of the aisle. Many of their proponents frankly, even proudly, admit they are responding to the current public mood, as if that is what they were put in office to do. Those who think they were elected sometimes to lead rather than follow seem to be in a minority.
[...]
Those who call for an "end to the war" don't want to talk about the fact that the war in Iraq and in the region will not end but will only grow more dangerous. Do they recommend that we then do nothing, regardless of the consequences? Or are they willing to say publicly, right now, that they would favor sending U.S. troops back into Iraq to confront those new dangers? Answering those questions really would be honest and brave.
Of course, most of the discussion of Iraq isn't about Iraq at all. The war has become a political abstraction, a means of positioning oneself at home.
[...]
I would think that anyone wanting to be president in January 2009 would be hoping and praying that the troop increase works. The United States will be dealing with Iraq one way or another in 2009, no matter what anyone says or does today. The only question is whether it is an Iraq that is salvageable or an Iraq sinking further into chaos and destruction and dragging America along with it.
A big part of the answer will come soon in the battle for Baghdad. Politicians in both parties should realize that success in this mission is in their interest, as well as the nation's. Here's a wild idea: Forget the political posturing, be responsible, and provide the moral and material support our forces need and expect.

I'm hoping President Bush's tenacity will yield just such a result, but the breathtaking mendacity and short-sightedness of so many politicians and commentators is simply revolting.
Also see this MSM video, where similar sentiments are expressed by the troops themselves (via Instapundit):

Politicians should at least be honest: if they don't support the troops, their mission and what they believe in, they should at least say so.

Following the money trail

Wretchard from The Belmont Club has some comments on Jimmy Carter (via Instapundit), and links to a hair-raising article by Alan Dershowitz, Ex-President for Sale, which goes some way to explaining Carter's peculiar world-view:

It now turns out that Jimmy Carter--who is accusing the Jews of buying the silence of the media and politicians regarding criticism of Israel--has been bought and paid for by Arab money. In his recent book tour to promote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Carter has been peddling a particularly nasty bit of bigotry. The canard is that Jews own and control the media, and prevent newspapers and the broadcast media from presenting an objective assessment of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that Jews have bought and paid for every single member of Congress so as to prevent any of them from espousing a balanced position. How else can anyone understand Carter's claims that it is impossible for the media and politicians to speak freely about Israel and the Middle East? The only explanation – and one that Carter tap dances around, but won't come out and say directly – is that Jews control the media and buy politicians. Carter then presents himself as the sole heroic figure in American public life who is free of financial constraints to discuss Palestinian suffering at the hands of the Israelis.
[...]
Each of these claims is demonstrably false, as I have shown in detail elsewhere. The plight of the Palestinians has been covered more extensively, per capita, than the plight of any other group in the world, certainly more than the Tibetans and the victims of genocides in Darfur and Rwanda. Moreover, Carter totally ignores the impact of Arab oil money and the influence of the Saudi lobby. In numerous instances where the Arab lobbies have been pitted against the Israeli lobby, the former has prevailed.
[...]
It now turns out that the shoe is precisely on the other foot. Recent disclosures prove that it is Carter who has been bought and paid for by anti-Israel Arab and Islamic money.
Journalist Jacob Laksin has documented the tens of millions of dollars that the Carter Center has accepted from Saudi Arabian royalty and assorted other Middle Eastern sultans, who, in return, Carter dutifully praised as peaceful and tolerant (no matter how despotic the regime). And these are only the confirmed, public donations.
Carter has also accepted half a million dollars and an award from Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, saying in 2001: "This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan." This is the same Zayed, the long-time ruler of the United Arab Emirates, whose $2.5 million gift to the Harvard Divinity School was returned in 2004 due to Zayed's rampant Jew-hatred. Zayed's personal foundation, the Zayed Center, claims that it was Zionists, rather than Nazis, who "were the people who killed the Jews in Europe" during the Holocaust. It has held lectures on the blood libel and conspiracy theories about Jews and America perpetrating Sept. 11.
Another journalist, Rachel Ehrenfeld, in a thorough and devastating article on "Carter’s Arab Financiers," meticulously catalogues Carter's ties to Arab moneymen, from a Saudi bailout of his peanut farm in 1976, to funding for Carter's presidential library, to continued support for all manner of Carter’s post-presidential activities. For instance, it was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), founded in Pakistan and fronted by a Saudi billionaire, Gaith Pharaon, that helped Carter start up his beloved Carter Center. According to Ehrenfeld: "BCCI's origins were primarily ideological. [Agha Hasan] Abedi wanted the bank to reflect the supra-national Muslim credo and 'the best bridge to help the world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists.' As Ehrenfeld concluded:

"[I]t seems that AIPAC's real fault was its failure to outdo the Saudi's purchases of the former president's loyalty. There has not been any nation in the world that has been more cooperative than Saudi Arabia," The New York Times quoted Mr. Carter June 1977, thus making the Saudis a major factor in U.S. foreign policy.
"Evidently, the millions in Arab petrodollars feeding Mr. Carter's global endeavors, often in conflict with U.S. government policies, also ensure his loyalty."

It is particularly disturbing that a former president who has accepted dirty blood-money from dictators, anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and supporters of terrorism should try to deflect attention from his own conflicts of interest by raising the oldest canard in the sordid history of anti-Semitism: namely, that Jews have dual loyalty and use their money improperly to influence the country they live in, in favor of the country to which they owe their real allegiance.

Do read the whole thing. I find these disclosures to be particularly amazing considering that the Bush clan gets constantly harangued by the left for its supposed ties to the Saudis. It's always interesting to discover that what seemed to be a potentially legitimate criticism, is in reality only voiced if it applies to political opponents.
Incidentally, Commentary magazine has posted an essay by Joshua Muravchik that is to appear in the February 2007 issue: Our Worst Ex-President. No prizes for guessing who that refers to.

An admission? Maybe not

As I have noted before, the major human rights organisations are a disgrace. The New York Sun had an excellent editorial last week, which underlines just how low Human Rights Watch has stooped:

Shortly before Christmas, the group released a 24-page report that attempts to rescue its earlier accusation that "On July 23, at 11:15 p.m., Israeli warplanes struck two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances in the village of Qana."
Based on photographic evidence of the ambulances that was inconsistent with the allegation, third parties, such as Australia's foreign minister, labeled the alleged incident a clear "hoax." That the group, which styles itself as an objective investigative human rights organization, accepted the claim without question is troubling.
Attempting to salvage its credibility following extensive criticism of its summer report, Human Rights Watch dispatched researchers to Lebanon to collect evidence on the alleged event. The new report summarizes their findings.
"Human Rights Watch originally reported that the ambulances had been struck by missiles fired from an Israeli airplane, but that conclusion was incorrect," the report states. The Lebanese ambulances could not have been struck by missiles fired by an Israeli warplane "as such missiles would have caused much more massive destruction and have left a huge crater." Additionally, "the limited damage caused, and the non-existence of heavy shrapnel, also rule out an artillery-fired round." Moreover, "none of the witnesses reported hearing helicopters in the air before or during the attack." And the researchers found no "diagnostic shrapnel or missile parts in the street." The report contains no evidence whatsoever of any other Israeli presence in the area that could have attacked the ambulances.
Yet, Human Rights Watch buries these critical admissions in the middle of the document and instead headlines the report with a claim that the group did no wrong. "On the basis of this investigation," the report says, "we conclude that the attack on the ambulances was not a hoax: Israeli forces attacked two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances that night in Qana, almost certainly with missiles fired from an Israeli drone flying overhead."
What is the evidence for the new allegation of an Israeli drone attack using missiles? The report makes clear that there is none. This time, Human Rights Watch is not being duped by a fabrication — it is the fabricator.

Do read the whole sickening exposé.

The situation in Iraq

There is no question that the current situation in Iraq is dramatic, and that a lot of work will be needed to stop the country from going over the precipice. However, this is no time to loose our heads, as they say.
Don Surber notes that despite all the talk of civil war etc., Iraq is still better off now than it was under the regime of Saddam Hussein, even when you look just at the number of average civilian casualties:

AP played the numbers game this week with reports about how many people have died in Iraq. I always have a problem reducing people to numbers but AP said that 16,273 violent deaths in Iraq in 2006 -- 14,298 of them civilians. Most of the dead are civilians, which the enemy targets. Prairie Pundit pointed out that is a war crime. Our side prosecutes its soldiers who flout this convention.
[...]
With 16,273 deaths in 2006, is Iraq still at war? AP called fighting in the Sudan "the world's worst humanitarian crisis" after the U.N. estimated 200,000 people died violently since 2003 -- or twice the carnage of Iraq in the same time period. Sudan's population is estimated at 6.5 million; Iraq's is four times that.
By the way, the 16,273 violent deaths in 2006 compares favorably to the 600,000 documented deaths under Saddam Hussein. Many more are likely. Hussein's carnage averaged 70 to 125 civilian deaths every day for the 8,000 days he reigned. His 20,000 civilian deaths a year (on average) were considered "peace" while last year, under war, there were 14,298 civilians deaths.

Meanwhile, despite all the problems, the Iraqi economy seems to be doing remarkably well. According to a report by Global Insight, an economics consultancy, the Iraqi economy grew by 17 percent in 2005 and is projected to have grown 13 percent in 2006. Newsweek reports:

Civil war or not, Iraq has an economy, and—mother of all surprises—it's doing remarkably well. Real estate is booming. Construction, retail and wholesale trade sectors are healthy, too, according to a report by Global Insight in London. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports 34,000 registered companies in Iraq, up from 8,000 three years ago. Sales of secondhand cars, televisions and mobile phones have all risen sharply. Estimates vary, but one from Global Insight puts GDP growth at 17 percent last year and projects 13 percent for 2006. The World Bank has it lower: at 4 percent this year. But, given all the attention paid to deteriorating security, the startling fact is that Iraq is growing at all.
How? Iraq is a crippled nation growing on the financial equivalent of steroids, with money pouring in from abroad. National oil revenues and foreign grants look set to total $41 billion this year, according to the IMF. With security improving in one key spot—the southern oilfields—that figure could go up.
[...]
However it's spent, whether on security or something else, money circulates. Nor are ordinary Iraqis themselves short on cash. After so many years of living under sanctions, with little to consume, many built up considerable nest eggs—which they are now spending. That's boosted economic activity, particularly in retail. Imported goods have grown increasingly affordable, thanks to the elimination of tariffs and trade barriers. Salaries have gone up more than 100 percent since the fall of Saddam, and income-tax cuts (from 45 percent to just 15 percent) have put more cash in Iraqi pockets. "The U.S. wanted to create the conditions in which small-scale private enterprise could blossom," says Jan Randolph, head of sovereign risk at Global Insight. "In a sense, they've succeeded."
[...]
Iraqna isn't the only success story. There is also Nipal, a money-transfer service that is the backbone of Iraq's cash economy, as well as a slew of successful construction firms in Kurdistan. Such companies are not waiting for Iraq's political crisis to resolve itself. Yet imagine how they would prosper if it did, and how quickly they would be joined by others.
[...]
But again, that's the remarkable thing. In a business climate that is inhospitable, to say the least, companies like Iraqna are thriving. The withdrawal of a certain great power could drastically reduce the foreign money flow, and knock the crippled economy flat.

Do read the whole thing. Meanwhile Amir Taheri comments in the New York Post:

Wherever some measure of security is assured - that is to say in more than 80 percent of Iraq - towns and villages long left to die a slow death are creeping back to life. Nowhere is this slow but steady return to life more startling than in Um Qasr, in the southeast extremity of Iraq on the Persian Gulf. Four years ago, this was a jumble of rusting quays, abandoned houses and gutted buildings. By the spring of 2003, its population had dwindled to a few dozen, along with hundreds of stray dogs. There was even talk of abandoning it altogether.
Today, however, Um Qasr is back in business as a port with commercial and military functions. Hundreds of families that had left after the first Gulf War in 1991 have returned - joining many more who have come from all over Iraq. The boom in Um Qasr is part of a broader picture that also includes Basra (the sprawling metropolis of southern Iraq), the Shi'ite "holy" cities of Najaf and Karbala, Mandali on the Iranian border and much of Baghdad.
[...]
But what about continued terrorist attacks? Most foreign investors coming to make money in Iraq shrug their shoulders. "Doing business in any Arab country is always risky," says a Turkish investor who has set up a trucking company and a taxi service. "In some Arab countries, you risk nationalization or straight confiscation by the ruler. In other Arab countries, you must give a cut to one of the emirs. Here, you face possible terrorist attacks. But such attacks are transitory."
The relatively low cost of labor is another attraction to investors. Wages in Iraq, where unemployment is over 30 percent, are less than a quarter of the going rates in Kuwait. Nevertheless, the Iraqi boom appears to be attracting some Iranian laborers from areas close to the border - people who come in for a few days to make some money before returning home.
[...]
But, judging by the talk in teahouses and the debate in Iraq's new and pluralist media, most people welcome the switch to capitalism and regard it as an exciting adventure.
As trucks are loaded with a variety of imports destined for Baghdad, I ask the drivers what they think would happen if the multi-national force, led by the United States, left Iraq soon. Most shrug their shoulders. "Why leave?" one driver asks. "Do I abandon the goods that have come from such a long way before they reach their destination?" This amounts to a plea to "stay the course." The man in Um Qasr does not know that in the United States the phrase "staying the course" drives so many up the wall.

I have the feeling that much of the ground work in putting the country on the right track has already been laid, and it is for this reason that I think that the Keane-Kagan plan (see Winds of Change for more comment), which seems to be the most likely strategy the Bush Administration will adopt (we'll see what the Democrats will do, though their power to influence war decisions is somewhat limited) - taken together with Nouri al-Maliki's recent reversal of policy towards militias - may have a good chance of succeeding.

Bluffing one's way to influence

As in years past, I spent the holidays skiing in Lech am Arlberg, in the Austrian Alps. There was a bit less snow than usual, but plenty for skiing, and I had a lot of fun. I hope everyone else had a nice time during their holidays.
While I was there, I didn't have regular access to the internet, but I bought the Wall Street Journal Europe, which ran an interesting editorial (subs. required; free version here) about Russia's gas reserves:

At first sight the prospect of a significant supply shortage appears improbable. After all, Russia has 47 trillion cubic meters of proven gas reserves. On closer examination, including research by former Russian Deputy Energy Minister Vladimir Milov and the International Energy Agency (IEA), it is clear that Russian gas production is marked by two salient features. First, reliance on three old, declining, Soviet-era supergiant gas fields in the Nadym Pur Taz (NPT) region and the Zapolyarnoye field, a Soviet legacy project. Second, the lack of investment in opening up new major gas fields.
When challenged on this issue, Gazprom responds that it spends $11 billion annually on infrastructure, just as the IEA recommends. The trouble is that it's making the wrong sort of investments. Gazprom is not investing in new gas wells, pipelines and compressor stations, but in export infrastructure such as the North European Pipeline to Germany and the acquisition of foreign downstream energy assets. Taken together, the declining old fields and the lack of investment in new ones create a potentially major supply problem.
Mr. Milov, who now heads the Institute for Energy Policy in Moscow, estimates that by 2010 the deficit between Gazprom's supply and expected demand could be 126 billion cubic meters (bcm). To give that figure some context, the European Union imported approximately 155 bcm from Russia in 2005. Worse still, there are strong grounds for believing that the 126 bcm gap could grow. Mr. Milov assumes that the Central Asian states will be able to deliver 105 bcm annually. Unfortunately, there are doubts as to whether the Central Asian fields, which have seen even less investment than the Russian fields, can produce that amount of gas. And even if they could produce 105 bcm, according to the IEA they could only transport 50 bcm to Russia thanks to decayed pipelines. There are also concerns over the rate at which homes and factories in Russia are being hooked up to the main gas network, further increasing demand, and concerns that as the NPT fields begin to dry up their depletion rate, just as with the U.K. continental shelf fields, will accelerate.
Given the number of variables it is difficult to put a definitive number on the size of the deficit. But it looks as if the gap could be somewhere between 125 bcm and 200 bcm. Even at the lower end, such a deficit would severely strain EU gas supplies. Ironically Russia's greatest Western ally, Germany, stands to suffer most since it is at the end of the Russian supply system and it takes more Russian gas than any other country in Western Europe. The North European Pipeline will not be finished by 2010 -- and even if it were, there is the question of whether there would be enough gas for it.

Do read the whole thing, in which the author also proposes a way in which Europe can minimise the problem.
In a similar vein, there seems to be a growing number of voices arguing that the West should not adapt its foreign policy based on the fear that unsavoury regimes will use their energy supplies to blackmail us, particularly in the case of Iran. In a recent peer-reviewed paper entitled "The Iranian petroleum crisis and United States national security" which is to appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Roger J. Stern, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University sets out a convincing argument that the so-called "oil-weapon" is in reality toothless (see the press release). The Telegraph summarises (via Instapundit; emphasis mine):

Iran's oil exports are plummeting at 10pc a year on lack of investment and could be exhausted within a decade, depriving the world economy of its second-biggest source of crude supplies. A report by the US National Academy of Sciences said rickety infrastructure dating back to the era of the Shah had crippled output, while local fuel use was rising at 6pc a year.
"Their domestic demand is growing at the highest rate of any country in the world," said Prof Roger Stern, an Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. "They need to invest $2.5bn (£1.28bn) a year just to stand still and they're not doing it because it's politically easier to spend the money on social welfare and the army than to wait four to six years for a return on investment," he said. "They've been running down the industry like this for 20 years."
Prof Stern said Teheran faces impending disaster since it relies on oil revenues for 70pc of its budget. "They cannot afford to carry out their threats to shut off oil supplies," he said. "There is no oil weapon, it's just a bluff."

Meanwhile, M. Simon of Power and Control, who is guest blogging at Classical Values notes (via Instapundit), that the situation is so bad that Iran seems to be having difficulties maintaining supply (in this case of natural gas) even now, as UPI reports:

Iran has stopped exports of natural gas to Turkey due to a tight domestic market caused by cold weather, but vows to restart shipments soon. Iran supplies Turkey from the Tabriz to Ankara pipeline as part of a 1996 contract. This year Turkey was to receive a total of 10 billion cubic meters of Iranian gas, the state-run IRNA news agency reports. "Currently our export to Turkey is zero," Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh said. He said he called the Turkish energy minister and apologized "and promised to address these problems as soon as possible."

Also see this interesting Power and Control post, about Iran's current internal problems more in general. All this underlines the fact that, as I noted here and here, the West should stop telling itself that nothing can be done to resolve crises in these countries because they will ruin our economies by stopping fuel exports.
This is even more true in light of an interesting prediction made a few days ago by R. James Woolsey in the Wall Street Journal (free link; via Instapundit). After discussing various alternative fuels, he says:

All this is likely to change decisively, because electricity is about to become a major partner with alternative liquid fuels in replacing oil.
The change is being driven by innovations in the batteries that now power modern electronics. If hybrid gasoline-electric cars are provided with advanced batteries (GM's announcement said its choice would be lithium-ion) having improved energy and power density--variants of the ones in our computers and cell phones--dozens of vehicle prototypes are now demonstrating that these "plug-in hybrids" can more than double hybrids' overall (gasoline) mileage. With a plug-in, charging your car overnight from an ordinary 110-volt socket in your garage lets you drive 20 miles or more on the electricity stored in the topped-up battery before the car lapses into its normal hybrid mode. If you forget to charge or exceed 20 miles, no problem, you then just have a regular hybrid with the insurance of liquid fuel in the tank. And during those 20 all-electric miles you will be driving at a cost of between a penny and three cents a mile instead of the current 10-cent-a-mile cost of gasoline.
Utilities are rapidly becoming quite interested in plug-ins because of the substantial benefit to them of being able to sell off-peak power at night. Because off-peak nighttime charging uses unutilized capacity, DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory estimates that adopting plug-ins will not create a need for new base load electricity generation plants until plug-ins constitute over 84% of the country's 220 million passenger vehicles.
[...]
Environmentalists should join this march with enthusiasm. Replacing hydrocarbons with fuels derived from biomass and waste reduces vehicles' carbon emissions very substantially. And replacing gasoline with electricity further brightens the environmental picture. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute has shown that, with today's electricity grid, there would be a national average reduction in carbon emissions by about 60% per vehicle when a plug-in hybrid with 20-mile all-electric range replaces a conventional car.
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.

Do read the whole thing.

The fence works

Surprise! The Israeli security fence actually works - preventing suicide attacks, according to the leader of one of the foremost Palestinian terrorist organisations (via Melanie Phillips):

On November 11, Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Abdallah Ramadan Shalah granted a long interview to Al-Manar TV, Hezbollah's television channel. During the interview, for the first time he admitted that Israel's security fence was an important obstacle to the terrorist organizations (the "resistance").
He noted that the suicide bombing attacks (istishhad) were the Palestinian people's "strategic choice," and were meant to "create a balance of force and deterrence" in the campaign against a superior enemy. Ramadan Shalah noted that the terrorist organizations had every intention of continuing suicide bombing attacks, but that their timing and the possibility of implementing them from the West Bank depended on other factors. "For example," he said, "there is the separation fence, which is an obstacle to the resistance, and if it were not there the situation would be entirely different."

Who knew?

Iran's bargaining chip

BusinessWeek has an interesting report on Iran, which lends credence to what I mentioned recently about the way forward on that front:

Yet Iran has a surprising weakness: Its oil and gas industry, the lifeblood of its economy, is showing serious signs of distress. As domestic energy consumption skyrockets, Iran is struggling to produce enough oil and gas for export. Unless Tehran overhauls its policies, its primary source of revenue and the basis of its geopolitical muscle could start to wane. Within a decade, says Saad Rahim, an analyst at Washington consultancy PFC Energy, "Iran's net crude exports could fall to zero."
That's not to say Iran doesn't have abundant resources. The country's 137 billion barrels of oil reserves are second only to Saudi Arabia's, and its supply of gas trails only Russia's, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Getting it all out of the ground, though, is another matter. Iran has been producing just 3.9 million barrels of oil a day this year, 5% below its OPEC quota, because of delays in new projects and a shortage of technical skills. By contrast, in 1974, five years before the Islamic Revolution, Iran pumped 6.1 million barrels daily.
The situation could get even tougher for the National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC), which is responsible for all of Iran's output. Without substantial upgrades in facilities, production at Iran's core fields, several of which date from the 1920s, could go into a precipitous decline. In September, Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh suggested that with no new investment, output from Iran's fields would fall by about 13% a year, roughly twice the rate that outside oil experts had expected. "NIOC is likely to find that even maintaining the status quo is a mounting challenge," says PFC Energy's Rahim.

As I said, this story only underlines the fact that bringing the Mullahcracy to its knees should be a cinch (well, almost). That is not to say that they should be brought to their knees immediately, but if it was made much clearer - both to us and to them - that it is possible (which much of the West does not seem to realize), and that we are willing to do so if necessary, I imagine we would get a much more compliant attitude from the world's peanut gallery. It would certainly beat this approach.

Post Scriptum:
One more reason to start making clear that bad behaviour has consequences:

U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006. This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market. "There is no way this could be done without (Iranian) government approval," says a senior official.

How hard is it for the West to realise that there is only one language these autocrats understand?

Dealing with Iran

Jules Crittenden has an interesting take on what should be done about Iran:

An erroneous assumption has been made by the Iranians and by many in the west that because our ground forces are hyper-extended in Iraq, and Iranian nuke facilities are buried deep, there is nothing the United States can do about an Iranian nuclear program. This is not true. There is no need to invade or occupy Iran. We do not want to do that. We would prefer to see the Iranian people's desire for free elections honored, but that doesn't appear likely any time soon.
What we have to do to influence Iran is explain that if Iran does not begin to cooperate with the international community, we will substantially isolate Iran and destroy its means of supporting terrorism and pursuing nuclear weapons. This can be done incrementally, to give the Iranians an opportunity to reconsider their policy. Our Navy, not hyper-extended in Iraq, can blockade their ports. Our Air Force, also not hyper-extended in Iraq, can begin reducing their terrorist-support infrastructure. Things like oil fields, refineries and roads leading toward Syria and suspected nuclear sites. This can continue ... pretty much as long as the Iranians want it too.

Do read the whole thing. Interestingly it mirrors a more detailed - and very interesting - analysis in this month's Commentary by Arthur Herman, entitled Getting Serious About Iran: A Military Option (will require subs. after the end of the month; a free version can be found here).
Another aspect of the Iran "question" which I think generally goes unnoticed in the West, is the regime's increasing fragility. This is underlined in another essay in Commentary's November issue by Amir Taheri, Getting Serious About Iran: For Regime Change (will also require subs. after the end of the month; a free version can be found here or here):

There remains another option: regime change. The very mention of this term drives some people up the wall, inspiring images of an American invasion, a native insurgency, suicide bombers, and worse. But military intervention and pre-emptive war are not the only means of achieving regime change.
What matters is to be intellectually clear about the issue at hand. The U.S. will not be safe as long as Iran, a key country in a region of vital importance to the world economy and to international stability, remains the embodiment of the Khomeinist cause. Nor can the U.S. allow the Khomeinist movement, itself a version of global Islamism, to achieve further political or diplomatic gains at the expense of the Western democracies.
For consider the consequences if that were to happen. The most immediate would be to strengthen the mullahs and demoralize all those inside Iran who have a different vision of their country’s future and an active desire to bring it about. In 1937 and 1938, many professional army officers in Germany, realizing that Hitler was leading their nation to disaster, had begun to discuss possible ways of getting rid of him. But the Munich “peace” accords negotiated by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain handed Hitler a diplomatic triumph and, with it, a degree of international legitimacy that, from then on, any would-be putschists could hardly ignore.
In the Middle East, this story has been repeated many times. The West helped Gamal Abdel Nasser transform the Suez fiasco into a political triumph, thereby encouraging an even bigger and, for Egypt, more disastrous, war in 1967. The 1991 ceasefire that allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power in Baghdad, interpreted by him as a signal of American weakness, emboldened him quickly to eliminate his domestic opponents and to begin preparations for a bigger war against the “infidel.” After the first al-Qaeda attack on New York’s World Trade Center in 1993, President Clinton dispatched a string of envoys to Afghanistan to strike a bargain with Mullah Muhammad Omar and the Taliban. Not only, to quote the Taliban foreign minister, was this seen as "a sign of weakness by the Crusader-Zionists," and one that immensely enhanced the prestige of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but it discouraged the anti-Taliban forces, many of whom concluded there was no point in fighting a foe backed by the world’s only superpower.
[...]
But—some might object—even granting the virtue of the idea, how realistic is regime change in Iran? Can it happen?
The short answer is yes. Without underestimating the power still held by the mullahs over the Iranian people, let alone their ability to wreak devastating havoc in places near and far, a number of factors suggest that, like other revolutionary regimes before them, their condition is more fragile than may at first appear.
One sign is the loss of regime legitimacy. The Islamic Republic owed its initial legitimacy to the revolution of 1979. Since then, successive Khomei-nist administrations have systematically dismantled the vast, multiform coalition that made the revolution possible. The Khomeinists have massacred their former leftist allies, driven their nationalist partners into exile, and purged even many Islamists from positions of power, leaving their own base fractured and attenuated.
The regime's early legitimacy also derived from referendums and elections held regularly since 1979. In the past two decades, however, each new election has been more "arranged" than the last, while the authoritarian habit of approving candidates in advance has become a routine part of the exercise. Many Iranians saw last year's presidential election, in which Ahmadinejad was declared a surprise winner, as the last straw: credited with just 12 percent of the electorate’s vote in the first round, he ended up being named the winner in the second round with an incredible 60 percent of the vote.
Still another source of the regime's legitimacy was its message of "social justice" and its promise to improve the life of the poor. This, too, has been subverted by reality. Today, more than 40 percent of Iran's 70 million people live below the poverty line, compared with 27 percent before the Khomeinists seized power. In 1977, Iran’s GDP per head per annum was the same as Spain's. Today, Spain's GDP is four times higher than Iran's in real dollar terms. As the gap between rich and poor has widened to an unprecedented degree, the corruption of the ruling mullahs, and their ostentatious way of life, have made a mockery of slogans like "Islamic solidarity."
A second sign is the presence of a major split within the ruling establishment itself. The list of former Khomeinists who have distanced themselves from today’s regime reads like a who's who of the original revolutionary elite. It includes former "student" leaders who raided the U.S. embassy in 1979, former commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and dozens of former cabinet ministers and members of the Islamic Majlis (parliament). Most have adopted a passive stance vis-à-vis the regime, but a surprising number have clearly switched sides, becoming active dissidents and thereby risking imprisonment, exile, or even death. Any decline in the regime’s international stature could deepen this split within the establishment, helping to isolate the most hardline Khomeinists.
A third harbinger is that the regime's coercive forces have become increasingly reluctant to defend it against the people. Since 2002, the regular army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the professional police have refused to crush workers’ strikes, student demonstrations, and other manifestations of anti-regime protest. In many instances, the mullahs have been forced to deploy other, often unofficial, means, including the so-called Ansar Hizballah ("Supporters of the Party of God") and the Baseej Mustadafeen ("Mobilization of the Dispossessed").
A fourth sign is the emergence of alternative sources of moral authority in Iranian society. Even in religious matters, more and more Iranians look for guidance to non-official or even anti-official mullahs, including the clergy in Iraq. (Admittedly, this is partly due to the fact that the present "Supreme Guide," Ali Khamenei, is a mid-ranking mullah who would never be accepted by senior Shiite clergy as a first among equals.)
As for non-religious matters, there was a time when the regime enjoyed the support of the overwhelming majority of Iran's "creators of culture." Today, not a single prominent Iranian poet, writer, filmmaker, composer, or artist endorses the Khomei- nists; most have become dissidents whose work is either censored or banned. Opposition intellectuals, clerics, trade-union leaders, feminists, and students are emerging as new sources of moral authority.
Finally, there are at least the outlines, although no more than the outlines, of a political alternative. Like nature, society abhors a vacuum. In the case of Iran, that vacuum cannot be filled by the dozen or so groups in exile, although each could have a role in shaping a broad national alternative. What is still needed is an internal political opposition that can act as the nucleus of a future government.

Do read the whole thing.

A second Lebanon War in 2006?

A few days ago John Keegan wrote an interesting article in the Daily Telegraph (where he is defense correspondent) in which he argues as follows:

There will soon be another war in the Middle East, this time a renewal of the conflict between the Israel Defence Force (IDF) and Hizbollah. The conflict is inevitable and unavoidable. It will come about because Israel cannot tolerate the rebuilding of Hizbollah's fortified zone in south Lebanon, from which last year it launched its missile bombardment of northern Israel.
Hizbollah has now reconstructed the fortified zone and is replenishing its stocks of missiles there. Hamas is also creating a fortified zone in the Gaza Strip and building up its stocks of missiles. Israel, therefore, faces missile attack on two fronts. When the Israel general staff decides the threat has become intolerable, it will strike.

Do read the whole thing, which seems quite reasonable to me. What struck me as most surprising in his analysis, however, was this (emphasis mine):

What is certain is that – probably before the year is out – Israel will have struck at Hizbollah in south Lebanon. And the strike will come even sooner if Hizbollah reopens its missile bombardment of northern Israel from its underground systems.

If the time frame of this prediction turns out to be correct we are looking at a reopening of the hostilities in the next few weeks (the year ends in less than two months). Remarkable.

Now we'll use force

Is it any wonder that many Israelis - and those who sympathise with them - consider the UN anti-Israel? After repeatedly and shrilly insisting that the UNIFIL forces would never dare disarm Hezbollah, we've finally found a case in which they would be willing to use force: against Israel!
Ha'aretz reports (via lgf):

Commanders of the French contingent of the United Nations force in Lebanon have warned that they might have to open fire if Israel Air Force warplanes continue their overflights in Lebanon, Defense Minister Amir Peretz told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday.
Peretz said that nevertheless, Israel would continue to patrol the skies over Lebanon as long as United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 remained unfulfilled, adding that such operations were critical for the country's security, especially as the abducted IDF soldiers remain in Hezbollah custody and the transfer of arms continue.
Over the past few days, Peretz said, Israel had gathered clear evidence that Syria was transferring arms and ammunition to Lebanon, meaning that the embargo imposed by UN Resolution 1701 was not being completely enforced.

Quelle surprise!
Meanwhile, I am sorry to have to admit that my previously cautiously optimistic view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seems to be showing some cracks. If the Second Intifada dashed any hope of reviving the Oslo Accords, this summer's war with Hezbollah makes it much harder to argue in favour of Israel's unilateral withdrawal from any further territory. I was a firm supporter of the withdrawal from Gaza and the policy objectives that came with it, and although I still think it was a good idea, I think the argument that such moves put Israeli security in jeopardy has been strongly boosted by the discovery of Hezbollah's covert activities in the Lebanese territory Israel returned to Lebanon in 2000.
This month's Commentary magazine has some interesting reflections on these points, by Hillel Halkin, in Israel's New Reality (requires subs. after the end of the month; see here for free version).

And this you call Intelligence?

Following the furore over parts of the latest National Intelligence Estimate which were leaked to the MSM, a summary of the whole estimate has been made public (via Instapundit). The main part that regards the Iraq war reads:

We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.
The Iraq conflict has become the "cause celebre" for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.

This assessment has been sprung upon by the opponents of the war, to claim that the war is failing, and by implication, that the Allies should pull out of Iraq. I find it hard to conceive that one could come up with a more peculiar idea.
Robert Kagan notes in the Washington Post:

For instance, what specifically does it mean to say that the Iraq war has worsened the "terrorism threat"? Presumably, the NIE's authors would admit that this is speculation rather than a statement of fact, since the facts suggest otherwise. Before the Iraq war, the United States suffered a series of terrorist attacks: the bombing and destruction of two American embassies in East Africa in 1998, the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000, and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Since the Iraq war started, there have not been any successful terrorist attacks against the United States. That doesn't mean the threat has diminished because of the Iraq war, but it does place the burden of proof on those who argue that it has increased.
Probably what the NIE's authors mean is not that the Iraq war has increased the actual threat. According to the Times, the report is agnostic on whether another terrorist attack is more or less likely. Rather, its authors claim that the war has increased the number of potential terrorists. Unfortunately, neither The Post nor the Times provides any figures to support this. Does the NIE? Or are its authors simply assuming that because Muslims have been angered by the war, some percentage of them must be joining the ranks of terrorists?
[...]
In fact, the question of what actions make us safer cannot be answered simply by counting the number of new terrorist recruits those actions may inspire, even if we could make such a count with any confidence. I would worry about an American foreign policy driven only by fear of how our actions might inspire anger, radicalism and violence in others. As in the past, that should be only one calculation in our judgment of what does and does not make us, and the world, safer.

Do read the whole thing. Also see what Condoleezza Rice has to say:

Asked about recently leaked internal U.S. intelligence estimates that claimed the Iraq war was fueling terrorist recruiting, Rice said: "Now that we're fighting back, of course they are fighting back, too."
"I find it just extraordinary that the argument is, all right, so they're using the fact they're being challenged in the Middle East and challenged in Iraq to recruit, therefore you've made the war on terrorism worse.
"It's as if we were in a good place on Sept. 11. Clearly, we weren't," she added.
"These are people who want to fight against us, and they're going to find a reason. And yes, they will recruit, but it doesn't mean you stop pursuing strategies that are ultimately going to stop them," Rice said.

The summary NIE also underscores that the US has a problem with its intelligence, as Glenn notes:

While we should fire the leakers on general principles, we should probably also fire whoever wrote this -- for producing a meaningless document full of empty bureaucratic twaddle. If the jihadists win, they'll have more prestige! And they will probably use the internet! Do tell. Jesus Christ, if this is the quality of intelligence we're getting, no wonder we haven't won yet.

A thorough critique of the CIA and its problems, by Gabriel Schoenfeld, appeared in the March 2006 issue of Commentary magazine (requires subs.; see here for free version). For further comments see here.

Chirac is a dangerous idiot

In case you weren't aware of this, Chirac is an idiot:

French President Jacques Chirac has said referring Iran to the UN Security Council is not the best way to resolve a crisis over its nuclear programme.
"I don't believe in a solution without dialogue," Mr Chirac told Europe-1 radio, urging countries to remove the threat of sanctions against Iran. The US is leading calls for sanctions to be imposed on Iran if it refuses to suspend uranium enrichment.

Independently of what one thinks would be the best strategy to convince Iran to abandon its nuclear programme, Chirac's statement seems to be aimed specifically at ensuring the failure of any diplomatic effort. In fact, I think this policy has two effects: on the one hand it weakens the incentives that Western diplomacies have at their disposal, making it easier for Iran to flout international pressure and obtain nuclear weapons. On the other hand, assuming there are still Western countries determined to impede Iran's nuclear armament, it will make future armed intervention or conflict with Iran much more likely. This is the same pattern that emerged with Iraq: had France, Germany and others presented a united front with the US, a war could easily have been avoided.
What is "I don't believe in a solution without dialogue" supposed to mean anyway? What is this, the Afternoon Tea theory of international relations?! Is there anyone, at any point, with whom Chirac would have refused to have an unconditional dialougue? Hitler? Stalin? And why does he think we always have to have a dialogue with our hands tied behind our backs, while our opponents operate under no restriction whatsoever? For crying out loud, this nutcase is opposing referral to the UNSC, for possible discussions of potential economic sanctions! What would he have proposed be done in the face of Nazi armament and aggression in the 1930's? Dialogue without any consequences? Surrender without a fight? Oh, wait a minute... that's precisely what France did do. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

The Guardian's dishonesty

It is truly a pity to see how appallingly dishonest and shoddy the Guardian, considered by some Britain's foremost daily, has become in its reporting. William Sjostrom at AtlanticBlog illustrates a recent despicable example. The article begins:

George Bush last night admitted that Saddam Hussein had no hand in the 9/11 terror attacks, but he asked Americans to support a war in Iraq that he said was the defining struggle of our age.
[...]
The president conceded some crucial ideological ground, formally disavowing the neo-conservative accusation that Saddam had played a role in the attacks on September 11 2001. But he was unapologetic about the decision to invade Iraq.

AtlanticBlog notes:

Is the Guardian really this incompetent, that neither its reporter nor its editors pay attention to their own stories, or is something else going on? In 2003, the Guardian says Bush "admits", then three years later does the same thing, in neither case saying when Bush made the claim. Any suspicions that the Guardian is a newspaper rather than a tiresome propoganda rag are once again eliminated.

Do read the whole thing. Harry's Place also mentions this and notes:

The Guardian story in a nutshell: Bush has once again 'admitted' that something he and his administration never said, wasn't the case.

Also see Melanie Phillips' comments, where she expands on the Al Qaeda-Iraq question. Elsewhere, in regards to the Lebanese Red Cross ambulance story, Tim Blair makes a good point:

Mayes, reasonably enough, allows for "inconsistencies and anomalies" in reporting from war zones. Perhaps, then, the Guardian's initial report should have indicated some fog-of-war doubt over the claims made to their correspondent instead of stating as fact: "Israel's rocket strike on two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances on Sunday night set a deadly new milestone [...] Two ambulances were entirely destroyed, their roofs pierced by missiles."
[...]
Great work, Clouseau.

Do read the whole thing. And then journalists wonder why the MSM is not trusted...

Lighting candles of truth

There seems to be a tendency among people who are, for whatever reason, opposed to George W. Bush, to minimize any scourge he turns his attention to, be it the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Iranian nuclear armament, terrorism or fundamentalist Islam. Martin Amis has a long essay in the Observer (the Sunday edition of the Guardian; via Instapundit) in which he explores what should be self-evident:

I will spell this out, because it has not been broadly assimilated. The most extreme Islamists want to kill everyone on earth except the most extreme Islamists; but every jihadi sees the need for eliminating all non-Muslims, either by conversion or by execution. And we now know what happens when Islamism gets its hands on an army (Algeria) or on something resembling a nation state (Sudan). In the first case, the result was fratricide, with 100,000 dead; in the second, following the Islamist coup in 1989, the result has been a kind of rolling genocide, and the figure is perhaps two million.

Do read the whole thing. Glenn also cites Amit Varma, who says:

I don't fully agree with either Amis's pessimistic appraisal of Islam in general today, or his optimistic prognosis of the future. Unlike him -- and perhaps because I am in India -- I see plenty of "moderate Islam," as he terms it, around me, though more and more Muslims are certainly getting radicalised, for a variety of complex reasons. Equally, I am not convinced that Islamism is "the death agony of imperial Islam ... the last wave - the last convulsion." I think Amis writes those lines more in hope than in rational conviction, giving in to the twin human instincts of believing that all problems have solutions, and that progress is inevitable.

In many respects the West really does not seem to have internalized this message. One of the many small signs of this is the MSM's insistence in calling Mohammad Khatami a moderate. Pajamas Media has an interesting video with Richard Miniter about him, entitled Murder at the Cathedral. Clearly fundamentalist Islam (which I generally call Islamism) must be combatted urgently (particularly in Europe). There has been a general debate about how to go about this, most starkly regarding the decision whether Islamist terrorism should be seen as an act of war or as a law enforcement matter. It does not exactly fall into either category and I think the best attitude is illustrated by Richard Posner's position, whose Glenn & Helen Show podcast I listened to recently, and whose new book has been garnering positive reviews (via Instapundit): in the Washington Post and in the Weekly Standard. As (the non-neocon) Dahlia Lithwick says:

The real power of Posner's effort is that he stands back and measures whether Guantanamo Bay and wiretapping are really worth it. It's proof that the best cure for partisan shrieking is a good old-fashioned game of cost-benefit analysis.

Do read both reviews.
While we fine tune in what way to best fight Islamist fundamentalism, there is another extremism which all rational and moderate people should be worried about: Western extremism. Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at New York University the other day and made a few points I emphatically agree with (though I don't always agree with him). PJM correspondent and Atlas Shrugs blogger, Pamela, has videos and commentary:



Netanyahu exhorts us to:

"...repel the lies. I will not go back to those gas chambers. Not those physical ones, not those of the poisoned wells and slanders.The only way that a free society can defend itself aside from taking up arms is also to light those candles for truth.
What I ask of you tonight is for each of you to light the candle of truth. You know how you do it ...flip on the internet and light many many candles of truth."

Do watch the whole thing.
If there was any doubt that this ("lighting candles of truth") was badly needed (after the countless scandals and biases, which seem to always go one way), this story (via Instapundit) should clinch the deal:

Saddam Hussein had a very trusted source inside AP, according to the translation of another of the thousands of documents captured by U.S. forces that are only slowing being made public. In this particular document, the source inside AP tells Hussein about the formation of UNMOVIC, the UN weapons inspection team.

As Ed Driscoll says:

After Eason Jordan's "The News We Kept To Ourselves" admission, and Reuters' cozy relationship with assorted freedom fighters terrorists, I'm not at all surprised.
Amongst numerous media other scandals, add to the list CBS's Ra^therGate, ABC's eagerness to be censored, Newsweek's Koran in the Can fabrication, and of course, all of the New York Times' woes, and you've got an Elite Media whose credibility across the board is crumbling.

And this is the "respectable" US media we are talking about... (which Europeans always say are pawns of Bushitler). I cringe to think about the rest. That's why there is a need to fight and "light candles of truth."