Right Wing Nut House

“What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god!”
Hamlet Act II Scene 2

“There’s many a man alive of no more value than a dead dog.”
Sgt. Buster Kilrain from the movie Gettysburg

Saddam Hussein is not the most prolific mass murderer in history. Mao’s rampages make the Butcher of Baghdad appear meek and mild by comparison. Nor is Saddam one of the more inventive killers in history. Vlad the Impaler had a particularly unique and exquisitely painful method of dealing with his enemies. And Genghis Khan took great pleasure in coming up with new and exciting ways to end human life.

In fact, in the grand sweep of history, Saddam will be remembered as pretty much of a run-of-the-mill 20th century tyrant, a second tier mass murderer who will be mentioned in the same breath as Idi Amin and Slobodan Milosevic.

Regardless of how history remembers him, the Iraqi people will never forget his brutal, sadistic rule. And now the tyrant and his reign, ended by force of American arms, has been judged:

An Iraqi court on Sunday sentenced Saddam Hussein to the gallows for crimes against humanity, convicting the former dictator and six subordinates for one nearly quarter-century-old case of violent suppression in this land of long memories, deep grudges and sectarian slaughter.

Shiites and Kurds, who had been tormented and killed in the tens of thousands under Saddam’s iron rule, erupted in celebration — but looked ahead fearfully for a potential backlash from the Sunni insurgency that some believe could be a final shove into all-out civil war.

Saddam trembled and shouted “God is great” when the hawk-faced chief judge, Raouf Abdul-Rahman, declared the former leader guilty and sentenced him to hang.

What is it that makes a man like Saddam? Certainly an essential part of humanity is missing from his soul - the ability to feel empathy, pity, or any of the other “angelic” attributes that Hamlet praised in his soliloquy. But in context, Hamlet was also torn between this majestic view of humanity - made in the image and likeness of God - and the view given voice by the rough hewn Kilrain whose dismissal of any elevating characteristics in most men rings as true as Hamlet’s paean to man’s perfectibility.

We are all of us monsters and saints. The potential for both is present in each of us. Saddam’s brutality cannot be laid at the feet of any cultural or religious peculiarities. Psychiatrists might point to his childhood where he was constantly beaten and abused by his uncle or some other aspect of his development where the finer instincts that adhere to most people either died or were never implanted in his soul. But in the end, Saddam’s evil was the result of his own deliberate choices.

Whether Saddam had been tried under the auspices of the World Court or some other supra-national judicial forum doesn’t matter. The atmospherics may have been different than a trial in Iraq. The lawyers would have been able to maneuver, delay, obfuscate, and preen for the cameras with more freedom than they had in the Iraqi courtroom. But the facts of the case - overwhelming physical and documentary evidence - would have sealed his fate regardless.

The calls are already coming fast and furious to spare his life. I am ambivalent about his execution. There are political, military, and even strategic arguments against hanging the tyrant. But what does civilization do with someone who is directly responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings? In cases like Saddam’s, “punishment” has no meaning in a legal sense. There is simply no sentence that could have been handed down to fit the crimes committed by this bloodthirsty sadist. Death is as good as any. And if justice were indeed blind, hanging would be seen as merciful indeed.

In the midst of the bloodletting that is his legacy (and, to some extent, ours), the Iraqis who suffered so long under the heel of the dictator’s jackboot are celebrating. I just wish they could unite in their recognition that Saddam’s judgement has offered them a new start, a new way to live that doesn’t include killing their neighbor because of what occurred in the past.

With Democrats and their allies in the media in full throated howl, agitating for a withdrawal from Iraq while gravely informing the American people that the war is already “lost,” George Bush had the temerity to stand up at a press conference yesterday and tell us not only the war can still be won but that we are, in fact, winning:

President Bush declared yesterday that the United States is winning the war in Iraq despite the deadliest month for U.S. troops in a year, but he added that he is not satisfied with the situation and vowed to press Iraqi leaders to do more to stabilize their country on their own.

Trying to walk a careful line between optimism and pessimism less than two weeks before midterm elections, Bush lamented the “unspeakable violence” raging in Iraq while trying to reassure American voters that he is adapting his approach to address it. He vowed to “carefully consider any proposal that will help us achieve victory” as long as it does not involve withdrawing troops prematurely.

“Absolutely, we’re winning,” Bush said when pressed at an East Room news conference. At the same time, he said, “I know many Americans are not satisfied with the situation in Iraq. I’m not satisfied either. And that is why we’re taking new steps to help secure Baghdad and constantly adjusting our tactics across the country to meet the changing threat.” He said that he is pushing Iraqi leaders “to take bold measures to save their country” and emphasized that his patience “is not unlimited.”

An exercise in empty rhetoric? A man out of touch with reality? Wishful thinking being substituted for cold, hard facts?

This was the instant judgement of the President’s political opponents, as dismissive of the President’s pronouncements yesterday as they have been for at least 2 years. Because of that, their credibility as war critics is about as high as the Administration’s credibility on what progress has been made in winning the war. Describing the ebb and flow of events on the ground in Iraq does not lend itself to the kind of reflexive, hate filled, wildly skewed analysis coming from the left or the Pollyanish statements of progress by the Administration (”Last throes,” anyone?).

And for those of us who are examining both the military’s efforts on the ground and the rhetoric of the Administration for signs that someone, somewhere in Washington has a clue of what constitutes “victory” in Iraq, the announcement that “benchmarks” have been agreed to between Washington and Baghdad for the withdrawal of American troops could be seen as either more window dressing hyped by an Administration in political trouble or a real sign that the government has hit upon a formula to declare victory and bring the troops home.

These “benchmarks” are really nothing new. The Pentagon itself tried its hand at developing its own set of indicators for withdrawal as far back as March, 2005. Those fell by the wayside as the situation on the ground in Iraq began to worsen early this year following the bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra. At that point, the sectarian violence radically escalated and any hope for an early troop withdrawal went out the window.

Instead of clear cut goals that would have given the Iraqi and American people a definition for “victory,” the Administration settled for sloganeering. “As the Iraqi army stands up, we will stand down” sounds wonderful as a sound bite but means precious little when placed in the context of training an army from absolute scratch with no infrastructure, no modern weapons, untested officers, and sectarian divisions. And political progress, while impressive in some respects, still depended largely on the American army enforcing the will of a government that appeared at times to be paralyzed by its own political divisions.

Speaking with conservative columnists in the Oval Office, the President had this to say about benchmarks:

The latest plan to retake the offensive on defining victory is the so-called benchmark. “The idea is to develop with the Iraqi government a series of benchmarks — oil, federalism, constitutional reform, there’s like 20 different things — and have that developed in a way that they’re comfortable with and we’re comfortable with,” Bush said. Progress toward those goals would give the administration new ways to point toward overall progress in Iraq.

Beyond that, the president seemed to be considering a plan to refine the country’s governmental structure in a way that would accommodate the Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd populations without dividing the country. “We’ve had a lot of people out there saying, split up the country,” Bush said. “That’s not going to work. But there are ways to achieve a more balanced federalism from what some people think is going to happen to them. There could be more — like Texas, we always want less federal, more state. And that’s the way — this balance can be achieved through negotiations. That’s what they’re trying to do.”

Are these indicators specific enough to allow the government to celebrate a “victory” in Iraq at some point in the next few years?

The answer is no. The fact of the matter is that the President is absolutely correct when he said in the Oval Office briefing yesterday that “victory” is being defined by our enemies:

“This is the significant disadvantage we have in this war because the enemy gets to define victory by killing people,” Bush answered. In World War II, Bush said, progress, while hard to gain, was easier to describe. One could point to ships sunk, and battles won. “We don’t get to say that — a thousand of the enemy killed, or whatever the number was,” Bush said. “It’s happening. You just don’t know it.”

So if the U.S. chooses not to reveal how many of the enemy it has killed — and if, in any event, that death toll is not stopping the sectarian violence — then how does one assess what is going on? “I’ve thought long and hard about this, because it is precisely what is frustrating most people,” Bush said. “A lot of people are just saying, ‘You’re not doing enough to win. We’re not winning, you’re not doing enough to win, and I’m frustrated, I want it over with, with victory.’ And I’m trying to figure out a matrix that says things are getting better. I think that one way to measure is less violence than before, I guess…”

What the President didn’t say is that our “defeat” in Iraq has already been defined by the press and his political opponents. William Arkin is convinced:

America will be humbled when we leave Iraq. Let’s recognize this is the bitter pill we must swallow now. It ironically will improve our standing in much of the world as we admit that we need the world’s help. It will force us to make a reality of our empty pledge to pursue non-military solutions to the challenge of terrorism.

And what of the enemy? Muslim extremists and terrorists will celebrate our defeat, emboldened even more into believing that they can “win” their war, just as they once defeated the Soviet empire in Afghanistan. It is our punishment and the conundrum: They will celebrate, and they may even be momentarily strengthened. But by stepping off the treadmill, we will also remove so much of the inspiration and certainty that fuels our enemies.

When we exit Iraq, it will not be a peaceful, democratic island in the troubled seas of a despotic Middle East. It may not even have an elected government if things continue the way they have in recent months as the insurgents and terrorists have ratcheted up the violence to unbearable levels in order to give the Democrats ammunition in the upcoming November elections. Nor will it necessarily be a willing partner in our war against Islamism.

But it will not be a threat. It will not have WMD’s. And it will not have Saddam Hussein running the country. This is why, despite all the gleeful rhetoric emanating from the left and from the media about an Iraq “defeat,” there are already benchmarks in place that we can point to that constitute a “victory” for the United States in Iraq. The fact that our enemies, the Democratic party, the western press, and even some conservatives will lament our “defeat” in Iraq doesn’t mean that they are correct or that the judgement of history will bear out their analysis.

One need only look at World War I for a comparison. Did we lose The Great War? Despite vanquishing the German Army and throwing them out of France, they came back 20 years later with a vengeance to conquer most of the continent. In this respect - and using some of the yardsticks Iraq defeatists use - World War I was a disastrous defeat of epic proportions. With 80 million dead in World War II (not to mention the occupation by the Soviets of Eastern Europe) our military efforts in World War I should be seen as a gigantic failure. It solved nothing and left Europe worse off than before the war.

Clearly, different “benchmarks” are in play for different wars. But my own feeling is that Iraq will desperately be played up as a defeat no matter what condition it is in when we leave. And for that, the “Iraq defeat” crowd should be ashamed of themselves.

Lynne Stewart probably believes she has put another one over on the American government after receiving a mere 28 months for facilitating the activities of terrorists. But the fact is, her career as a “civil rights” attorney has, if anything, proven Ms. Stewart to be far more than an attorney for bombers, killers, and terrorists. Lynne Stewart is a con artist of epic proportions, hurling bunkum at her leftist colleagues and the American public like a carny barker all the while laughing up her sleeve at the stupidity and gullibility of ordinary people.

Her attitude toward the public can best be described in this revealing piece in the Middle East Quarterly:

The defense maintained that the charges against Stewart and her codefendants were an assault on free speech and argued that Stewart enjoyed a lawyer-client privilege. They further argued that the George W. Bush administration hyped evidence against the defendants. Stewart and her defense knew what would play on campuses and in leftist forums across the country. Her website billed the trial as a manifestation of an Orwellian fear that, in the wake of 9-11 and armed with provisions of the Patriot Act, the U.S. Department of Justice was going to criminalize political dissent.

And yet, here’s a quote from Stewart that would seem to make her a liar about her love of free speech:

She described her position in an interview as “a strange amalgam of old-line things and new-line things. I don’t have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people’s revolution. The CIA pays a thousand people and cuts them loose, and they will undermine any revolution in the name of freedom of speech.”

For the record, Mao murdered between 20 and 60 million of his own countrymen whose only crime was dissenting from his ruthless dictatorship. And the fact that Castro routinely locks up dissenters doesn’t seem to bother her although her perspective might change a bit after she spends a year or so in the slammer.

Some of the evidence against her reveals a breathtaking contempt for her own word, freely given, not to pass messages from the blind Sheik to his followers:

Stewart and her coconspirators flouted their agreement with the Justice Department and helped the sheikh circumvent the communications ban. According to government recordings of their prison visits, Yousry, who also served as an adjunct lecturer in Middle East studies at York College of the City University of New York, conveyed messages to and from the sheikh while Stewart created what the prosecution called “covering noises.” On some surveillance videos, Stewart could be seen shaking a water jar or tapping on the table while Yousry and the sheikh exchanged communications that were then later disseminated to the sheikh’s followers via the former paralegal. The prosecutor argued, citing a letter written by the U.S. attorney’s office to Stewart after she delivered the message to Reuters, that it was not in the sheikh’s legal rights “to pass messages which, simply put, can get people killed and buildings blown up.” They argued that the case was equivalent to a “jail break,” in which the defendants extracted Abdel Rahman from prison, “not literally, of course, [but] figuratively, in order to make him available to other terrorists.”

One of the most incendiary communications was a message Stewart herself gave to the Reuters news service in June 2000 in which the sheikh announced his withdrawal of support for a cease-fire between the Egyptian Islamic Group and the Egyptian government. The truce had been in place since 1997, just after his followers in Egypt had opened fire on tourists at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, killing 58 foreigners and 4 Egyptians. Subsequently, high-casualty Islamist terrorism resumed in Egypt on October 7, 2004, with a series of bombings that killed 34 in and around the Egyptian Sinai resort of Taba. On July 23, 2005, three bombs exploded in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing at least 64.

The sentencing judge who handed down the 28 months sentence pointed out, in obvious ignorance of the facts, that there was no evidence anyone had been harmed by her actions. This is after the same judge said basically that she’s no better than a terrorist:

But Judge Koeltl said there had been “an irreducible core of extraordinarily severe criminal conduct” in her actions on behalf of the client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind fundamentalist Islamic cleric who is serving a life sentence for plotting to bomb New York City landmarks. Ms. Stewart was convicted on Feb. 10, 2005, of conspiring to provide material aid to terrorism by smuggling the sheik’s messages encouraging violence by his militant followers in Egypt.

So why the light sentence?

While agreeing that Ms. Stewart had flouted the law and deceived the government by breaking prison rules to publicize the sheik’s messages, Judge Koeltl broadly rejected the prosecutors’ portrayal of her as a serial liar and terrorist conspirator who would be a danger to society if she remained free.

Instead, he focused on her past service as a lawyer. “She has represented the poor, the disadvantaged and the unpopular,” Judge Koeltl said, adding that Ms. Stewart had demonstrated “enormous skill and dedication” in her legal work and earned little money from it.

Oh really? The poor bomber? The disadvantaged murderer? The unpopular terrorist?

Here are just a few of Stewart’s cases:

* The 1981 robbery of a Brinks truck that killed two policemen and a guard carried out by radical leftists. The killer’s defense? Stewart and her colleagues described the prosecution as “an effort by the government to prosecute political activists who rob from the rich in order to give to the poor.” To this day, several of the defendants refuse to say they did anything wrong or apologize for the murders. One of the perpetrators, Susan Rosenberg, had her sentence commuted by Bill Clinton as he was leaving office.

* Defended Luc Levasseur of the United Freedom Front, a domestic terrorist group that bombed the US Capitol in 1983 as well as several other targets.

* Defended Sunni Ali, a member of the Black Liberation Army, a violent offshoot of the Black Panthers, who was accused of several bombings. The Fraternal Order of Police says the BLA is responsible for the murder of 13 police officers. Also participated in the Brinks robbery.

* Defended two recent cop killers.

Do we see a pattern? It seems that Stewart has a soft spot in her heart for cop killers. Now even cop killers deserve the best defense our system can give them. But her defense of these men always centers on the fact that they were acting in self defense given the known “brutality” of the police. And she asks the jury to dismiss her client’s actions on the grounds that they are fomenting revolution and are therefore exempt from “unjust laws.”

What is her attitude toward jihadists like the Shiek? The government caught Stewart’s true feelings on tape:

In May of 2000, according to the prosecution, tapes indicate that Yousry told the sheikh and Stewart that the Abu Sayyaf group had kidnapped tourists in the Philippines and was threatening to kill them if the sheikh and Ramzi Yousef were not released. Stewart commented, “Good for them,” although she said that while she believed that Abu Sayyaf would not succeed in winning Abdel Rahman’s release, its efforts were nonetheless “very, very crucial,” since the demand would raise his profile among jihadists. Even bin Laden, a self-professed admirer of the sheikh, had considered hijacking airplanes to free the sheikh and Yousef. In September 2000, the Al-Qaeda leader reiterated his threat to wage jihad on the sheikh’s behalf.

Stewart also endorsed the sheikh’s ghostwritten fatwa, calling for the murder of Jews and Americans. When Sattar told Stewart that Ramsey Clark had concerns about the fatwa, she responded, “Does he really think that the American government can completely put this man in an iron box and cut him off from the whole world?”

When asked about 9-11, Stewart told The New York Times that she thought the attacks were a predictable response to U.S. aggression. “I’m pretty inured to the notion that in a war or in an armed struggle, people die,” she said. “They’re in the wrong place; they’re in a nightclub in Israel; they’re at a stock market in London; they’re in the Algerian outback—whatever it is, people die.” Citing the U.S. use of a nuclear weapon against Hiroshima and the World War II firebombing of Dresden, she added, “So I have a lot of trouble figuring out why that is wrong, especially when people are sort of placed in a position of having no other way.”

Then, after thumbing her nose at the government for so long, when it comes time for her to face the consequences of her conscious and deliberate actions, she chickens out and throws herself on the mercy of the court like any common cowardly criminal:

In a brief statement to the judge before the sentence, Ms. Stewart, shaking and barely suppressing tears, refrained from political comment or discussion of her case, but noted that she would never be permitted to practice law again.

“The end of my career is truly like a sword in my side,” she said. “I don’t want to be in prison,” she pleaded. “Permit me to live in the world and live out my life, productively, lovingly, righteously.”

Ms. Stewart’s lawyers, citing her recent bout of breast cancer, had asked the judge not to give her any prison time.

The fact that she didn’t use her statement to further her goal of revolution only shows her to be the craven opportunist she has always been. This is a hero of the left? This God forsaken, broken down old side show barker elicits encomiums of praise and poetic tributes from radicals?

Almost as cowardly as Stewart was the judge who praised Stewart for her past work while releasing her on bail pending appeal because he believes that there is a chance that the verdict will actually be reversed.

Let’s hope the appeals court has a lot more gumption than this Clinton appointed judge. Otherwise, Stewart may yet walk out of court a free woman.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor, center, sent this photo home from Iraq days before he died.

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

(”To An Athlete Dying Young” by A.E. Housman)

Garden Grove, California is a “stiller town” today. The city of 166,000 lost one of its favorite sons on September 29 when Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor, a Navy SEAL, performed one of those acts of selfless courage that defines the term heroism.

His SEAL team was in support of a joint US-Iraqi operation in Ramadi when a grenade was thrown through the door of their sniper hideout. It bounced off Monsoor’s chest and fell to the floor mere feet from 4 of his comrades. With every natural instinct for self preservation in his body and mind screaming for him to flee, Michael Monsoor made a conscious, rational choice; he deliberately fell on the grenade sacrificing his life so that his comrades would live.

In the grand scheme of things, Monsoor’s death should be considered no more nor less a tragedy than those of any other American or innocent Iraqi in this war. Each life lost violently cut short. Each death a blow endured by family, friends, and neighbors. Every man, woman, and child taken leaving behind only scattered memories of what they were like when they trod the earth, whole and human, smiling and laughing, loving and caring.

But in Garden Grove today - and for those of us who read and marvel at Michael Monsoor’s last heroic act - there are the questions with no good answers. Questions we ask of ourselves. Perhaps questions we’d like to ask of Michael. We put ourselves in Michael’s position in that sniper’s nest with the grenade lying on the ground and the chasm open, gaping beneath our feet. We rightly ask ourselves what we would have done? Why, Michael? How?

Was it something in his training as a Navy SEAL that gave him this otherworldly courage to commend his life and spirit to his friends? Or was it something even deeper. Something he carried around as part of himself all his life; a product of upbringing, of faith, and yes, of love.

Surely love must be considered as an answer to some of those questions. And we can find clues that Michael’s last thoughts were about love as he made the choice to die in the words of his comrades and friends:

(Patrick) Barnes said his friend was an adventurer who enjoyed traveling in Europe while he was deployed in Italy and loved snowboarding, fast cars and motorcycles.

He was also “honest, straightforward and a great friend.”

“He was selective about the friends he made,” Barnes said, fighting back tears. “But when you became his friend, you became his brother.”

And from his brothers in arms, a description of a purposeful man:

“He was just a fun-loving guy,” said a 26-year-old petty officer 2nd class who went through the grueling 29-week SEAL training with Monsoor. “Always got something funny to say, always got a little mischievous look on his face.”

Other SEALS described the Garden Grove, Calif., native as a modest and humble man who drew strength from his family and his faith. His father and brother are former Marines, said a 31-year-old petty officer 2nd class.

Prior to his death, Monsoor had already demonstrated courage under fire. He has been posthumously awarded the Silver Star for his actions May 9 in Ramadi, when he and another SEAL pulled a team member shot in the leg to safety while bullets pinged off the ground around them.

Incredibly, Michael failed to qualify for the SEALs the first time out. The brutal qualifications course that is designed to test both the physical stamina and mental toughness of the individual sailor proved too much for him - as it does for 75% of all candidates.

But what’s incredible is that Michael didn’t give up. He tried again and succeeded in his dream to be part of the best of the best. And he accepted the credo of the Special Forces warrior:

“One of the things that is not obvious at first glance is what makes a special operator and that is an absolute internal mandate to go into the most difficult combat situations you can, to face death, and to win. That’s what it takes to get through training. That’s what most of the guys want when they start training and then training reinforces that premise. To go into very risky, very personally risky situations, where it is one on one, and go duke it out with the bad guys.That’s what SOF guys want.”

What manner of man places himself in harms way with such enthusiasm and abandon? I tried answering that question on the occasion of the single worst day in the history of the Navy SEALs when 11 men lost their lives in an operation in Afghanistan:

We may have known these kind of men when they were children and young boys. They always seemed to have a group of admirers trailing them around, trying to keep up with their adventurous and audacious spirit. They would have had an easy way with grownups who also liked and admired them. They were good at sports but rarely bragged about their accomplishments. They were fiercely loyal to their friends and were always there if they needed defending.

Later in life, you would probably see a quiet confidence in the young man that was striking in that it made him seem older than his years. He would have a small circle of friends who were fiercely loyal to him. A natural leader, you would have found it easy to take orders from him and delighted when he gave out praise and crestfallen when he would criticize.

At bottom, the young man would have a calling, a desire to serve. It would manifest itself most noticeably by the serious way in which he would approach planning his life. Goal oriented to a fault, you would be hard pressed to remember a goal that he set for himself that he didn’t achieve.

The SEALs then takes this raw material and in the crucible of a torturous training program that tests both the physical stamina and mental toughness of the volunteer, they forge a warrior who lives to fight, fights to win, and never quits.

We will never know what went through Michael Monsoor’s mind as he leapt upon that grenade. My own belief (and hope) is that Michael’s final moments seemed to him to last a lifetime, the seconds slowing to a crawl to give him the chance to reflect on how lucky he had been to have so many to speak so highly of him after he was gone, to mourn for those who would feel the pain of his loss. And I have no doubt he would have had a colorful curse or two for the enemy that had defeated him in life but that he was cheating with his own heroic death.

Michael Monsoor was scheduled to leave Iraq in less than two weeks. His friends were planning a welcome home Halloween bash - his favorite holiday. Perhaps it was a fatalism that affects most warriors but Michael’s last email to his friend Danny Wright seemed eerily prescient regarding his fate:

Wright said Monsoor had sent him an e-mail two days before he died.

“He’d said he was proud of me,” he recalled. “And he told me to continue pursuing my dreams. It was as if he was saying goodbye and wishing me luck with my life.”

Monsoor is survived by his parents, two brothers, a sister, nieces and nephews…”

Michael is also survived by us: A grateful nation who will recall his sacrifice and the sacrifices of all the others with awe and a sense of obligation for a debt that we can never repay, only vow never to forget.

Regardless of whether the Democrats take over the House and Senate in November, it seems clear that our foreign policy elites have decided that the War in Iraq is a lost cause and the only viable strategy should be to get our troops out as fast as possible.

There is no other way to view the recommendations that will be forthcoming from the Iraq Study Group headed up by Bush family friend and foreign policy blue blood James Baker:

A commission formed to assess the Iraq war and recommend a new course has ruled out the prospect of victory for America, according to draft policy options shared with The New York Sun by commission officials.

Currently, the 10-member commission — headed by a secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush, James Baker — is considering two option papers, “Stability First” and “Redeploy and Contain,” both of which rule out any prospect of making Iraq a stable democracy in the near term.

More telling, however, is the ruling out of two options last month. One advocated minor fixes to the current war plan but kept intact the long-term vision of democracy in Iraq with regular elections. The second proposed that coalition forces focus their attacks only on Al Qaeda and not the wider insurgency.

Instead, the commission is headed toward presenting President Bush with two clear policy choices that contradict his rhetoric of establishing democracy in Iraq. The more palatable of the two choices for the White House, “Stability First,” argues that the military should focus on stabilizing Baghdad while the American Embassy should work toward political accommodation with insurgents. The goal of nurturing a democracy in Iraq is dropped.

As I wrote about here, this is hardly a “Study Group” at all. Their job? It isn’t what their legislative mandate says it is:

“The Iraq Study Group will conduct a forward-looking, independent assessment of the current and prospective situation on the ground in Iraq, its impact on the surrounding region, and consequences for U.S. interests.

Instead, the Baker Commission, as it is coming to be called, was set up for the sole and exclusive purpose of giving both Republican and Democratic politicians cover for our retreat from Iraq. The Washington Post sniffed this out almost immediately:

The group has attracted little attention beyond foreign policy elites since its formation this year. But it is widely viewed within that small world as perhaps the last hope for a midcourse correction in a venture they generally agree has been a disaster.

The reason, by and large, is the involvement of Baker, 76, the legendary troubleshooter who remains close to the first President Bush and cordial with the second. Many policy experts think that if anyone can forge bipartisan consensus on a plan for extricating the United States from Iraq —and then successfully pitch that plan to a president who has so far seemed impervious to outside pressure—it is the man who put together the first Gulf War coalition, which evicted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991.

Our worst fears regarding the Commission seems to have been confirmed by leaks to the New York Sun about the two plans under consideration. Both plans explicitly reject the idea of winning through to what the President has defined as “victory:” A stable, democratic Iraq capable of defending itself from the murderous terrorists who are seeking to bring down the current government with the help of outside powers.

In short, the “Baker Solution” is a recipe for defeat and retreat. No amount of spin will change the fact that once we leave Iraq, the entire world will see that our enemies in Iran and Syria as well as al-Qaeda were successful in inflicting enough pain on the American people to cause our precipitous withdrawal.

The first plan especially, is maddening. It grants what appears to be about 75% of what under any circumstances would be considered “victory” and then yanks the troops from Iraq before they can finish the job:

The president also said he was not averse to changing tactics. But he repeated that the strategic goal in Iraq is to build “a country which can defend itself, sustain itself, and govern itself.” He added, “The strategic goal is to help this young democracy succeed in a world in which extremists are trying to intimidate rational people in order to topple moderate governments and to extend the caliphate.”

But the president’s strategic goal is at odds with the opinion of Mr. Baker’s expert working groups, which dismiss the notion of victory in Iraq. The “Stability First” paper says, “The United States should aim for stability particularly in Baghdad and political accommodation in Iraq rather than victory.”

Stabilizing Baghdad, and bringing the bulk of insurgent groups into the political process is by any definition, “staying the course.” Prime Minister al-Maliki has already successfully negotiated with more than a dozen insurgent groups, including tribal militias who are now battling al-Qaeda terrorists instead of American soldiers. And American casualties have skyrocketed the last three months because we have transferred the bulk of our combat forces to Baghdad in order to try and bring a modicum of peace to the bloody chaos in that tragic city.

Leaving the rest undone - training the Iraqi army and assisting the new government with some of its thornier problems having to do with militias and death squads - is almost incomprehensible. The problem, as the elites see it, is that Iraq has stressed the army, complicated our relations with our friends in the Middle East, roiled domestic consensus at home to fight the War on Terror, and been a general distraction from what they believe should be our goal - getting to the “root causes” of terrorism and solving problems like the Israeli-Palestinian question as well as the insularity and poverty of Muslim states.

But why bother with the rest if you’re not planning on finishing the job? It has been my contention for many months - spelled out most recently here - that if we are not going to attempt victory then it is immoral to ask our men and women to place themselves in harm’s way for some face saving solution. That’s the Kissinger Viet Nam formulation. I thought it stupid, wasteful and immoral at the time and still feel that way today. The only business government has in asking young men to die is in the cause of victory. Anything less is state sponsored murder. In a free society and even with an all volunteer army, national leaders should not use the lives of its young men to make geopolitical statements or “save face,” or prove how much suffering we can endure (as the Nixon-Kissinger logic went after they decided we couldn’t win).

Once it is determined that we cannot win (or in this case, do not have the national will to win), we should admit defeat and withdraw the troops immediately. Whatever failed state Iraq becomes we will just have to deal with it in the context of the rest of the Global War on Terror. Yes it will complicate our efforts enormously. But we should have thought about that before wasting the selfless courage and spirit of our military in a war that we were not willing to see through to a victorious conclusion.

Will Bush go along with anything the Baker Commission recommends? The ISG will release its report in December, after the November elections. I have no doubt that the President will find himself under enormous pressure to accept withdrawal from Iraq based on the Commission’s criteria. Although Bush has proven himself to be one of the most stubborn Presidents in recent history I doubt that he, Rumsfeld, and Cheney can hold out against the entire foreign policy and defense establishments as well as majorities in both Houses of Congress. He will have to reluctantly agree to some kind of withdrawal plan short of victory.

And that’s when it will become very tricky indeed. The Administration will be forced to sit down with both Syria and Iran in order to get those two states to stop funding and supplying the insurgents - a task made extremely difficult by the fact that neither country wants to do us any favors. So withdrawal will go foreword leaving a weak Iraqi government that will, as some analysts believe, morph into a military dictatorship or worse that will have a mandate to bring order out of the spiralling violence. And the dream of Iraqi democracy will die an ignoble death.

In fact, the Baker Commission sees this as probably the best near term solution:

If we are able to promote representative, representative government, not necessarily democracy, in a number of nations in the Middle East and bring more freedom to the people of that part of the world, it will have been a success,” he said.

That distinction is crucial, according to one member of the expert working groups. “Baker wants to believe that Sunni dictators in Sunni majority states are representative,” the group member, who requested anonymity, said.

It has become clear in the last few months that our democracy experiment in Iraq was in more trouble from defeatists and political opponents at home than it was from either al-Qaeda or the insurgency. Even the British, seeing the ascendancy of the anti-war Democrats in November and suffering from their own disillusionment, appear ready to leave. All that appears to be left to do is determine how fast we get our troops out of danger and what kind of spin will be given to this massive failure of American will which will attempt to salve our consciences and soothe our feelings about losing a war that should have been won.

The apparently successful North Korean nuclear test - long expected but still a shock to the world’s nervous system - signals a change on the strategic threat board at the Pentagon the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Soviet Union acquired the bomb in 1949.

It isn’t just that North Korea is unpredictable, bellicose, and led by what some observers believe to be a mentally unstable leader in Kim Jong Il. If the problem was confined to North Korean nuclear capabilities, the situation would be troublesome but not dire. What has most of the world’s leaders worried this morning is that the North Korean nuclear demonstration will initiate a chain of events in other countries that could lead to a nuclear arms race involving Japan and South Korea as well.

The only other option is for the United States to extend its nuclear umbrella to cover both countries by clearly annunciating a policy of nuclear retaliation for any attack by North Korea on their neighbors. There is a possibility that the Japanese would reluctantly accept such a guarantee and forgo building the bomb. Pacifism is still deeply rooted in Japanese politics and the constitutional changes necessary for Tokyo to build up its defensive force into a nuclear power would be difficult to enact. Nevertheless, Japan’s new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has already indicated a willingness to alter the nature of the armed forces, making them more robust and able to respond and participate in international military efforts. It is also thought that Japan has the ability to construct a nuclear weapon in approximately 6 months using its homegrown uranium enrichment industry.

South Korea would probably politely refuse such protection from the United States, demonstrating in the past a preference for not angering the North Koreans by getting too close to Washington. Seoul’s own nuclear efforts came to light in 2004 when they were “outed” by the IAEA who discovered that the South’s nuclear efforts stretched back all the way to 1982. However, given the minuscule amount of resources dedicated to South Korea’s program to date, most experts believe that they would be at least 3 years away from being able to build their own nuclear device.

Japan also has to consider the reaction of China to any attempt to construct a nuclear arsenal. The Chinese have very long memories about World War II and the brutal occupation of much of the country by the Japanese military. Beijing is extraordinarily sensitive about any signs that militarism is resurgent in Japan, going so far as to protest the visit by Abe to a shrine that honors Japanese war dead, including war criminals. You can bet if Tokyo decides to build nuclear weapons that the Chinese will feel that they have little choice but to cool relations with Japan and build up their own nuclear arsenal as fast as they can.

In fact, the nuclear test by the North Koreans has been a bitter blow to Chinese prestige. Both China and Russia have demonstrated extreme reluctance in the past to initiate sanctions against the North Koreans, preferring enticements in trade and aid to some of the more draconian measures advocated by the United States. In that respect, the Chinese have given the North Koreans billions in direct aid over the last few years, supplying them with almost all of their refined oil products as well as giving them massive amounts of food aid to keep millions of rural North Koreans from starving to death.

The nuclear test by the North Koreans has been an embarrassment to China and has now caused the so-called “Six Party Talks” to collapse. This may have been part of Kim’s plan in conducting the test because the North Koreans have stressed repeatedly that they would prefer to deal with the United States directly in bi-lateral talks. The reasons are quite simple; they feel they can get more diplomatic goodies from the US in direct negotiations than they could in talks involving the South, Japan, Russian and China.

For our part, the Bush Administration believed that only China and to some extent Russia had the necessary clout to make the North Koreans cease their nuclear efforts. We also felt freezing South Korea out of any bi-lateral arrangements with the North would be detrimental to our relationship with Seoul.

All of this is moot now as the world community is forced to deal with another nuclear power - the most problematic in history. You can bet that the mullahs in Iran are watching how the world handles this crisis very closely. They have gambled that the UN will bicker and argue a bit and then impose some kind of sanctions on North Korea that are either so watered down as to be useless or easily circumvented by those wishing to do business with the North anyway.

Another interested party in watching world reaction to the news of North Korea’s nuclear test are the Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan. A little more than a year from now, they could very well be in power in Islamabad - if elections are held as scheduled next December. How will the world community react to a government openly sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qaeda and one which possesses up to 60 nuclear weapons of their own?

There are some nightmares best left unspoken and unimagined. The consequences would be too terrible to contemplate.

UPDATE

All I can say about the coverage at Michelle Malkin’s blog is “Wow.” Very comprehensive for such a short period of time elapsing.

In a rather plaintive post, Glenn Reynolds bemoans the loss of “momentum” in the Iraq War , wishing to “take the war to our enemies.” rather than “sitting on our bayonets.” He believes that the way to recapture the advantage is by going after the foreign support given the insurgency and that perhaps it is time to “revive the pre-emptive war” strategy and take the war to Iran and Syria.

I had to blink and shake my head after reading what Mr. Reynolds wrote. Was he perhaps stuck in some kind of time warp, believing that it is 2004? The idea that any kind of momentum is possible to recapture - or that we ever had it in the first place - is an illusion. And how we can win in Iraq by widening the war to include the two strongest regional powers arrayed against us is, well, mind boggling.

I have become disenchanted of late with Greg Djerjian and his spiteful, hateful, personal attacks on Mr. Reynolds, Hugh Hewitt, Richard Fernandez, and others bloggers and commenters (Mark Steyn being a particular foil for Mr. Djerjian’s over-the-top barbs and rifled bric-a-brats). His disdain for the President and his advisors - unbalanced in my opinion - makes him a bore to read at times.

However Djerjian also offers clarity on many issues relating to Iraq and the War on Terror. And if there is one thing that he has been harping on for many months that rings true above all others is the crazy idea that taking the war to Iran and Syria is going to help the situation in Iraq.

The fallout from an attack on Iran would be especially suicidal. The Iranian backed militias in Iraq would almost certainly take up arms and challenge the Americans, complicating an already desperate situation enormously. And it would be expected that the Iranians would retaliate against our troops with rocket attacks from their stockpiles of long range missiles. And what of the delicate political dance al-Maliki is currently undertaking in his efforts to reform the police and army whose inaction allows Shia death squads to operate with impunity?

As for Syria, while Bashar Assad imperfectly implements our demands that he close off the border to foreign fighters entering Iraq, an attack will actually make the situation worse as he would be under no obligation to continue even the limited cooperation he has shown up to now.

Perhaps most importantly, we might want to ask what form our momentum establishing attacks would take? Would we initiate ground operations against the Iranian army? The Syrians? What would be the goals of such attacks? To punish? To interdict?

Punishment may make us all feel better but would hardly affect the efforts of either two countries to supply the insurgency in Iraq. As for interdiction of men and supplies, only more troops and vigilance on the borders can have an effect on the steady dribble of arms and terrorists that end up aiding the insurgents. A truck here and a bus there moving through a poorly guarded border crossing or making their way through the vast deserts of Iraq make poor targets for any kind of large scale military action.

As we know now (blessed with 20/20 hindsight), the egregious mistakes and numerous blunders by both civilian and military authorities that have led us to our current perilous position in Iraq were made in the context of false assumptions, wishful thinking, and a lack of understanding of the nature of the enemy. It just seems to me to be the height of stupidity to believe that we can improve what’s happening on the ground in Iraq by attacking Iran and Syria.

NRO’s Jonah Goldberg is usually a level headed sort of fellow, not given to wild flights of illogic or unreasonable argumentation. But Mr. Goldberg’s piece justifying some kinds of torture in yesterday’s online edition left me cold.

Sounding very much like a man trying to convince himself of something he believes to be wrong but thinks that if he talks about it long enough and with plenty of conviction he can turn the moral tables on the issue and justify it to his own satisfaction, Goldberg makes some rather startling arguments in favor of torture.

It should be noted that Goldberg is one of the only writers - conservative or liberal - who has made an effort to actually come to grips with this issue on a practical basis rather than a purely moral plane. This is a dubious distinction however because once started down that road, one inevitably makes a hash of both the moral arguments and the practical realities of the issue.

Almost by default, if one tries to define torture, the slope tilts precipitously and the surface is greased - albeit with good intentions. This is because the justification/rationalization for torture can never be based on firm and unbending principle but rather on a foundation of moral quicksand that constantly shifts position according to time and circumstance. Goldberg sees this and recognizes the pitfalls but fails to draw the one necessary conclusion; torture, however you define it, is wrong and trying to construct a framework that allows for it is something akin to herding cats. You can never quite close the corral because it’s a virtual certainty you’ve missed something somewhere.

Where Goldberg nails it is in his characterization of the hysterical denunciations by the American left and international human rights organizations of our detainee policies:

When confronted with the assertion that the Soviet Union and the United States were moral equivalents, William F. Buckley responded that if one man pushes an old lady into an oncoming bus and another man pushes an old lady out of the way of a bus, we should not denounce them both as men who push old ladies around.

In other words, context matters.

Not according to some. Led by Time magazine’s Andrew Sullivan, opponents of the CIA’s harsh treatment of high-value terrorists have grown comfortable comparing Bush’s America to, among other evils, Stalin’s Russia.

The tactic hasn’t worked, partly because many decent Americans understand that abuse intended to foil a murder plot is not the same as torturing political dissidents, religious minorities, and other prisoners of conscience. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was not asked to renounce his faith or sign a false confession when he was reportedly waterboarded. His suffering wasn’t intended as a form of punishment. The sole aim was to stop an ongoing murder conspiracy, which is what al Qaeda is. If accounts from such unbiased sources as ABC News’ Brian Ross are to be believed, his suffering saved American lives.

Comparing CIA facilities to Stalin’s gulag may sound righteous, but it is a species of the same moral relativism that denounces all pushers of old ladies equally.

On this, all serious people should be able to agree. However, it should be pointed out that we don’t know exactly what “enhanced techniques” were used on KSM to elicit the information that led to foiling several plots against Americans. While waterboarding may be a necessary violation of the Geneva Convention under the rubric of the “ticking bomb” scenario, what else would be justified? Electrodes on genitalia? Pulling out fingernails? If, as one must assume, torture “works” in these instances, why stop at waterboarding?

In fact, Goldberg makes no distinction between waterboarding and nail pulling in his time sensitive scenario:

But there is no equivalent word for murder when it comes to torture. It’s always evil. Yet that’s not our universal reaction. In movies and on TV, good men force evil men to give up information via methods no nicer than what the CIA is allegedly employing. If torture is a categorical evil, shouldn’t we boo Jack Bauer on Fox’s 24? There’s a reason we keep hearing about the ticking time bomb scenario in the torture debate: Is abuse justified in getting a prisoner to reveal the location of a bomb that would kill many when detonated? We understand that in such a situation, Americans would expect to be protected. That’s why human-rights activists have tried to declare this scenario a red herring.

Sullivan complains that calling torture “aggressive interrogation techniques” doesn’t make torture any better. Fair enough. But calling aggressive interrogation techniques “torture” when they’re not doesn’t make such techniques any worse.

Still, there is a danger that over time we may not be able to tell the difference.

While recognizing that the slope is getting slippery and that repeated violations of the Geneva strictures could inure us to the consequences, Goldberg’s arguments go off the rails when he raises the specter of the fictionalized torture portrayed by TV heroes. It is not a question of booing them for causing physical discomfort to a suspect who can lead them to the ticking bomb. It’s a question of what constitutes a “ticking bomb” in the first place.

Do we practice these “enhanced techniques” on terrorists to discover whether there is an imminent threat? Or do we only do it when we’re sure that there’s a plot nearing fruition?

Jack Bauer knows that a terrorist strike is imminent which justifies his brutal treatment of prisoners in most people’s minds. But in the real world, that kind of certainty is almost definitely lacking. And even though the capture of a “high value” terrorist operative would almost by definition be an intelligence bonanza regarding future attacks, the idea that any of them would be imminent and a direct threat to American citizens would almost certainly be unknown. Therefore, torture would be carried out in these cases not to necessarily uncover any plots but rather to see if there are any plots worth responding to in the first place.

How slippery is that slope now?

Goldberg’s reasoning becomes most muddled when he can’t seem to make up his mind about the “taboo” of torture versus its utility in stopping the ticking bomb:

Taboos are the glue of civilization because they define what is beyond the pale in ways mere reason cannot. A nation that frets about violating the rights of murder-plotters when the bomb is ticking is unlikely to violate the rights of decent citizens when the bomb is defused.

I suspect this is what motivates so many human-rights activists to exaggerate the abuses and minimize their effectiveness. Slippery-slope arguments aren’t as powerful as moral bullying. Still, their fears aren’t unfounded. Once taboos have been broken, a chaotic search ensues for where to draw the new line, and that line, burdened with precedent and manufactured by politics, rarely holds as firmly as the last. But that is where history has brought us.

In the recent debate over torture, everybody decided to kick the can down the road on what torture is and isn’t. This argument will be forced on us again, no matter how much we try to avoid it. We’ll be sorry we didn’t take the debate more seriously when we had the chance.

First of all, the argument that a nation that frets about torturing terrorists won’t torture criminals or dissenters has no basis in fact whatsoever and indeed, common sense would dictate the opposite. Once the taboo is broken for one reason, it becomes easier to do so for another - something that Goldberg recognizes but for some reason fails to draw the necessary conclusion. We can agonize about the issue but the fact remains, it is the government that sets the policy. And with this Administration (and probably future ones as well) who rightly see America at war, it is hard to imagine the challenges we’ll face tomorrow and what measures they might see as necessary to protect the homeland.

This is why strictures against torture must remain in place - even strictures against waterboarding and other techniques that only cause a prisoner psychic discomfort or physical inconvenience. Without the “taboo” of violating the Geneva Convention, there is no hard surface beneath our feet where we can anchor ourselves against the ravages of our own rationalizations and self justifications. Ends and means can blur together into unresolvable amorphous shapes making it hard to differentiate between what is necessary and what is merely convenient or easy. In this respect, Goldberg’s arguments fail the tests of specificity and consistency.

I applaud Mr. Goldberg’s effort to tackle the issue. And although he reaches what I believe to be are incorrect conclusions, the issue is by no means resolved and there is plenty of room for further debate and reflection.

Robert Kagan asks, “How do you count the number of terrorists?”

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?

As a poor substitute for actual figures, The Post notes that, according to the NIE, members of terrorist cells post messages on their Web sites depicting the Iraq war as “a Western attempt to conquer Islam.” No doubt they do. But to move from that observation to the conclusion that the Iraq war has increased the terrorist threat requires answering a few additional questions: How many new terrorists are there? How many of the new terrorists became terrorists because they read the messages on the Web sites? And of those, how many were motivated by the Iraq war as opposed to, say, the war in Afghanistan, or the Danish cartoons, or the Israel-Palestine conflict, or their dislike for the Saudi royal family or Hosni Mubarak, or, more recently, the comments of the pope?

Interesting, isn’t it? This is what the National Intelligence Estimate has to say about increased numbers of jihadists:

* Although we cannot measure the extent of the spread with precision, a large body of all-source reporting indicates that activists identifying themselves as jihadists, although a small percentage of Muslims, are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion.

* If this trend continues, threats to US interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide.

In other words, we don’t know how many jihadists there are, but we know that their number is increasing. Okay, I’ll accept that. We can’t possibly know the sources and methods used to calculate those facts so we just have to believe that our analysts know what they are talking about.

How do we know that the reason there are more jihadists is because of our blundering around in Iraq? Let’s go to the NIE:

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.

* Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq “jihad;” (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims - all of which jihadists exploit.

In other words, there are several reasons why jihadists become radicalized and the Iraq War - while being a “cause celebre” for international jihadism - is only one of them. Better yet, is there any way to measure the effect of the Iraq War on the recruitment of jihadis specifically?

All very good questions that the press and the Democrats are ignoring this morning in their haste to use the NIE for their own political purposes. And as I said yesterday, the narrative on what this report contains is just about set and no amount of research or analysis will be able to counter the political effects of its release.

This is not to say we shouldn’t accept some of the report’s basic conclusions; that the number of terrorists is growing, that they are less centralized and therefore harder to kill, and that our confronting the jihadis in Iraq has thrown up new leaders in the movement and they are being shaped by the conflict there.

These are the headlines we’re reading this morning. But also contained in the NIE are some interesting tidbits that have been deliberately buried - especially by Democrats - because highlighting them would undercut their critique of the war.

For instance, the NIE points out that staying in Iraq and somehow achieving the goal of a forming a Democratic Iraq would mean fewer terrorists would be created:

Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.

The flip side of that argument is that leaving Iraq will create more terrorists than staying. The report points out that “perceived jihadist success there (Iraq) would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.”

In fact, the report would seem to validate the Administration’s main anti-terrorism aim of democratization:

If democratic reform efforts in Muslim majority nations progress over the next five years, political participation probably would drive a wedge between intransigent extremists and groups willing to use the political process to achieve their local objectives. Nonetheless, attendant reforms and potentially destabilizing transitions will create new opportunities for jihadists to exploit.

The wild spin on this report coming from Democrats completely ignores the consequences of an Iraq pullout as far as creating even more terrorists and the potential war-winning strategy of democratization - something they have been telling us for years is doomed to failure.

In other words, it is not the President’s policy of invasion, occupation, and democratization in Iraq that has been wrong, it is the Democrat’s counter strategy of leaving Iraq too soon and abandoning or downgrading democratization efforts that runs counter to the report’s analysis, conclusions, and recommendations.

The Editors at NRO:

In explaining that only selective parts of the NIE were leaked, director of national intelligence John Negroponte noted: “The estimate highlights the importance of the outcome in Iraq on the future of global jihadism, judging that should the Iraqi people prevail in establishing a stable political and security environment, the jihadists will be perceived to have failed, and fewer jihadists will leave Iraq determined to carry on the fight elsewhere.”

Winning, however, is something Democrats rarely talk about. The NIE leak was an occasion for even more defeatism from the party that, insofar as it offers any distinct policy prescriptions for Iraq, advocates a premature withdrawal that would only ensure defeat. That would be the ultimate jihadi recruiting tool. Terrorists would be emboldened by their victory — since they are always more aggressive when we appear to be the “weak horse,” in bin Laden’s phrase — and would perhaps control some or most of Iraq as a base of operations.

Properly understood, the NIE leak confirms President Bush’s argument that Iraq is an important front in the War on Terror, and that achieving victory there is essential.

The President’s policy is correct; it is the implementation of that policy that has been badly botched.

This would seem to leave a political opening of gargantuan proportions for the Democrats. All they have to do is tell us how they would win the war in Iraq, right?

Instead, we hear nothing about attempting to win the war but rather how to lose it in as painless a way as possible. Withdrawing our forces based on an arbitrary timetable that bears no relationship whatsoever to how the Iraqi government is doing in bringing stability and democracy to that country is a strategy that runs 180 degrees counter to what the NIE report recommends. And yet, according to the Washington Post, Democratic members of Congress have had this report since April and still insist on promoting a policy of withdrawal:

Copies of the NIE were sent to the House and Senate intelligence, armed services and foreign affairs committees at the time, through normal electronic information channels available to all members, intelligence and congressional sources said. It arrived at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on April 26.

In the House, “there was a bit of a snafu with this particular document,” said a spokesman for Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the intelligence committee chairman. “We had a massive computer failure on our classified side.” The first that the committee knew of its existence was late last week, when “it was requested specifically by a member. That was when it was found and scanned into our system.”

Whether the document was ignored or disappeared into cyberspace, however, it seemed to have made little impact on Capitol Hill at the time. No one in either chamber, on either side of the aisle, requested a briefing or any further information on its conclusions until now, the sources said.

The fact that the report has been available to Democrats on the Hill since April begs the question; who leaked it and why now? After all, there apparently is nothing much new in the document:

The intelligence community has had its own problems with the attention the document is now receiving. Several active and retired intelligence officials stressed that the judgments were nothing new and followed a series of similar assessments made since early 2003 about the impact of the Iraq war on global terrorism.

“This is very much mainstream stuff,” said Paul R. Pillar, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005. “There are no surprises.”

The only possible conclusion one can draw is the one that President Bush mentioned yesterday; that the leaking of this document was a political hit job designed to give Democrats ammunition for the November elections.

The leak comes at a time when Republicans have built some momentum and are trying to scratch and claw their way back into the race for control of the House of Representatives. Through this leak and the creation of the “instant narrative” that Iraq was a “mistake” (the report doesn’t say that anywhere) and that because of Iraq the United States is “less safe” (again, the report is silent on that issue), the Democrats are attempting to blunt the “terrorism card” that the GOP has used to trump the Democrats in the last two elections.

Will it work? The narrative has had a head start of 4 days. It will be very difficult to overcome the spin being put out by Democrats and argue about the report on the merits of what it actually says.

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey and I are on the same wavelength this morning:

This is why we have to endure the Iraqi “jihad” until we succeed. The insurgency will collapse when Iraqis grow strong enough to defend themselves and rebuild their infrastructure in peace. In fact, no other strategy could possibly address factors one and three. Even if we packed up and walked out of Iraq, those factors would still exist — as they have for decades — and the fourth factor would remain from our economic engagement with the oppressive regimes that control the region. We have an opportunity to address all four factors by prevailing in Iraq.

What do the Democrats offer? Withdrawal from the one theater in which we face our terrorist enemy and the one place that has to replace a missing tyrant. If we continue our resolve, we can firm up a democracy as Saddam’s replacement and begin to address the factors that drive jihadism. As the NIE concludes, a victory in Iraq would seriously damage the radical Islamist movement, perhaps even mortally. We have no chance to strike a blow against them by retreating. Democrats have badly misrepresented this report and offer the one solution guaranteed to result in making the problem worse — as the NIE also concludes.

I can see why the President wanted the National Intelligence Estimate on Terrorism declassified: it gives a little context to the sensational conclusions that our anti-terror policy has created more terrorists and placed the United States in greater danger.

For instance; news reports never mentioned that the 16 agencies involved in compiling the NIE basically agree that democratization is the correct policy:

* Greater pluralism and more responsive political systems in Muslim majority nations would alleviate some of the grievances jihadists exploit. Over time, such progress, together with sustained, multifaceted programs targeting the vulnerabilities of the jihadist movement and continued pressure on al-Qa’ida, could erode support for the jihadists.

Funny how that never made it into the Times. (AP either)

And then there’s this:

* If democratic reform efforts in Muslim majority nations progress over the next five years, political participation probably would drive a wedge between intransigent extremists and groups willing to use the political process to achieve their local objectives. Nonetheless, attendant reforms and potentially destabilizing transitions will create new opportunities for jihadists to exploit.

Also, the report makes clear that part of the problem has been a result of some of our success; that the reason the jihadists have become so diffuse is because we’ve taken away their main sanctuaries - although we may want to revisit that question in a year or so and see how Pakistan and Afghanistan are turning out.

I also found this interesting:

Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement:

1. Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness;

2. Iraq Jihad

3. The slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and

4. A pervasive Anti-US sentiment among most Muslims all of which jihadists exploit.

In other words, Iraq is only part of the reason for the growth of jihad. A large part to be sure. And a place where our intelligence people believe the next generation of terrorists are getting training and experience right now. But it kind of knocks the chocks from underneath the position that pulling out of Iraq (or not going into Iraq in the first place) would have made much difference.

One question not addressed by this or any other analysis I’ve ever seen is this; how many terrorist recruits were there after 9/11? After Madrid? After London or Bali or Egypt or any other successful attack?

Does a terrorist success breed more jihadists?

As long as we’re using common sense here, my answer to that; there are a lot of people who want to play with the winning team.

An interesting analysis would be if you could find out the number of recruits who signed up following the spectacular success of 9/11 and compare it to when we bombed the snot out of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and kicked Osama and Omar out. Would there be a significant difference? Would more oppressed, anti-US jihadists sign up after a Muslim defeat? Or would more recruits flock to al-Qaeda’s banner after a surge in Muslim pride following a 9/11 type attack?

No answers, of course. I’m just throwing the questions out there for discussion.

BTW - I don’t think the declassification of this report is going to stop the Democrats or the press from drawing whatever conclusions they wish. The narrative is pretty well set now and it will be very difficult to counter with what the report actually said. As we know, the report categorically did not say that going into Iraq was a mistake - which is something I’ve seen on more than one lefty website in the last couple of days. In fact, reading the entire report, it doesn’t even hint that. If anything, it makes that case that invasion and democratization of Iraq is a wash.

But the troubling aspect of the report to me is the continuing diffusion of jihadists and their spread in numbers and locations around the world. This does not bode well for tracking and capturing the bad guys unless we really start to get stronger international cooperation from other intelligence and police services.

Much to ponder in the reports contents. I’ll be interested to hear what some of our more thoughtful commenters (Andy!) have to say.

UPDATE: WAS THE LEAK POLITICALLY MOTIVATED?

You’re kidding, right?

The NIE was circulated last April. It takes a while to make it through the bureaucracy what with all the people that shouldn’t be seeing it getting a good look at it. Information is power in Washington and people who are continually judging their status in the bureaucratic hierarchy by who is in the know on some things and who isn’t make sure they see the conclusions of the NIE at the very least.

That said, I think it very likely that the partisans who first leaked the existence of the NIE were hoping to hold off until the middle of October before dumping it on the public. As it is, someone may have wanted to blunt any possible momentum the Republicans may have been generating since early this month and thought that now was as good a time as any.

President Bush is convinced:

Bush charged at the news conference that political opponents leaked select parts of the National Intelligence Estimate to media organizations last weekend “to create confusion in the minds of the American people” in the weeks before the Nov. 7 mid-term elections.

“Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes,” Bush said. “I think it’s a bad habit for our government to declassify every time there is a leak.”

Timing is everything in politics. We’ll see how the timing of the leak in this case plays itself out.

UPDATE II

Michelle Malkin wonders will our intel agencies ever get it when it comes to the historical hatred of the west by radical Muslims:

Putting aside how the outdated portions still refers to Zarqawi in the present tense, the big thing that strikes me about the key judgements is that they reflect a dhimmi, historically ignorant view of jihad more suited for the moonbat Left than our premier intelligence agencies.

[snip]

Not a word about the 1,400-year-plus history of Islamic hostility to the West or Islamic imperialism from time immemorial or the Koran-inspired war on infidels–long, long before there was a United States and “pervasive anti-US sentiment.”

Remember what I said yesterday?

If our intelligence agencies are laboring under the moonbat illusion that Muslim hatred of the infidel West didn’t really start bubbling until the year 2003, we are really in deep, deep doo-doo.

Now I know we have some very smart and learned people working in our intelligence agencies. And I suspect that somewhere in that NIE - still classified for some reason - would be an analysis of historical/political roots of conflict between the Muslim world and the west. But Malkin has a point. Dumping this thing piecemeal on the public as first the leak from last weekend did and now the Administration scrambling to give a little more context doesn’t enlighten anyone. How do our agencies “count” jihadists in order to come up with the idea that their numbers are increasing as a result of the Iraq War? Why not Afghanistan as I asked above? Or because of their successes in the last few years?

Lots of questions and no good answers…