Right Wing Nut House

No, I’m not trying to rain on the parade here unnecessarily. It is fantastic news that the walking, talking, living, breathing poster boy for abortion has gone to be judged and hopefully, have to face those who preceded him into eternity at his bloody hands.

He was killed along with seven aides, officials said. They said his identity has been verified by fingerprints and other methods.

“Today Zarqawi was defeated,” said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, appearing at a midday news conference with top U.S. General George W. Casey and American Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. “This is a message to all those who use violence killing and devastation to disrupt life in Iraq to rethink within themselves before it is too late,” he added.

Zarqawi was killed in a rural house in the village of Hib Hib, 5 miles north of Baqubah, Maliki said.

The statement was met by applause among Iraqi reporters assembled in a briefing room. The announcement, which was confirmed by a Website linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq, was also met by celebratory gunfire in the streets of Baghdad.

But we’ve been talking a lot recently about “facing the reality of war.” If so, the basic reality we have to face is that killing Zarqawi, while a necessary step on the road to victory, is also just a milepost on that road and that the likelihood that this will slow down al Qaeda in Iraq is very small. That outfit is so diverse and nebulous with cells spread out all over the country that the death of its high profile leader means little to the overall effectiveness (or ineffectiveness as has been proven lately) of its operations. The amount of latitude given these cells to mount their own missions also means that outside a blow to their morale, there will be little decrease in AQI’s operations, a stated goal of which is fomenting a sectarian civil war.

And Zarqawi’s death doesn’t affect the thousands of Sunni insurgents who show little sign that their attacks will abate. The Sunni’s share AQI’s wish that the sectarian violence currently roiling the streets of Iraq escalate into a full scale civil war.

With dozens of dead everyday as a result of Shia on Sunni violence, the Iraqi people’s confidence in the government to protect them has been sorely tried. However, an even brighter spot than the death of the al Qaeda mastermind is the news that finally, the government is complete as the remaining ministerial posts in the national security establishment have been filled:

Minutes after the Zarqawi’s death was announced the long-debated interior, defense and national security posts were filled in a giddy session of parliament. Abdul Qadir Muhammed Jassim, a Sunni Arab and former Iraqi army commander, was named defense minister, Jawad al-Bolani, a Shiite, was put in charge of the interior ministry, and Sherwan Alwaeli, a Kurd, was named the country’s top official for national security.

“I call on Iraq’s various communities to take responsibility for bringing sectarian violence to an end, and for all Iraqis to unite behind Prime Minister Maliki,” Khalilzad said.

Still a Shiite in charge of Interior, but hopefully one without ties to the Iranians like the man he is replacing, Bayan Jabr. Jabr famously said when news that torture was being carried out at Ministry detention centers came out “[N]o one was killed or beheaded.” Hopefully, al-Bolani will have a little more humane concept of detention than his predecessor.

Defense Minister Jassim is a former Saddam-era General but apparently emerged as a candidate after having been sufficiently vetted by the Iraqis (and Americans, no doubt). And the fact that a Kurd, Sherwan Alwaeli, will be Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s chief national security advisor and head up a National Security Council made up of all factions in the government is good news indeed. It will be this Council that will have to make the tough recommendations on disarming the militias, reining in the roving gangs of thugs, and generally restoring order to a country without clamping down too heavily on civil liberties.

The good news about Zarqawi couldn’t have come at a better time. As the government dithered about filling the national security posts, the violence was escalating and the militias had begun to assert themselves by taking over “security.” At times, their idea of security was to kill anyone they found not of their sect. This has caused more than 100,000 Iraqis to flee their homes and either leave the country or move to more hospitable climes where they would be among their co-religionists.

But now that the government is complete, we’ll see about the leadership skills of al Maliki as well as the willingness of the Sunnis to start to participate fully in the national life of the country and marginalize their militias and gunmen who make up the bulk of the insurgency.

Still unable to come to grips with differences over who should run the security establishment, the Iraqi government has failed again to reach an agreement on ministers for interior, security and defense thus prolonging a government crisis that has gone on too long and only serves to add to the chaos in the streets:

Although a new Iraqi cabinet under the secular Shia Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki took office last month after months of negotiation and deal making, three critical ministries have not yet been filled, Interior, Security, and Defense. On June 1st, al-Maliki announced that he would name candidates for the three posts this coming Sunday, June 4th. Naturally, that didn’t happen, and rumors have been flying for some time as to who will get what, as well as the religious and ethnic profiles of the possible candidates.
For minister of defense, currently held ad interim by Salam al-Zouba’i, the rumor mills have focused on several possible candidates:

@ Maj. Gen. Nabil Khalil al-Said, a native of Mosul, who currently runs a bureau in the Ministry of Defense.

@ Nuri al-Dulemi, a former general currently living in the UAE

@ Baraa Najeeb al-Rubaie, a former brigadier general who had been a critic of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and suffered the consequences of being right. In 1991 he fled Iraq and joined Iyad Allawi’s anti-Saddam organization.

@ General Abdul Qader, currently commander of Iraq’s ground forces..

@ Thamer Sultan al-Tikriti, a retired general who was imprisoned under the old regime and whose brother was executed by Saddam Hussein.

All of the candidates have apparently had interviews with President Jalal Talabani, the Prime Minister, and other senior officials, including, apparently, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. Most of their military careers were spent serving in Saddam Hussein’s army, but all appear to have been sufficiently professional and apolitical enough to satisfy the demands of deBaathification. In keeping with the need to provide religious and ethnic balance, all of them are secular Sunni Moslems, and al-Tikriti has the added advantage of coming from Saddam Hussein’s home province.

For Minister of the Interior, the rumors have been focused on Nasser Daham Fahad Al Amri, a retired Shi’ite Army officer, apparently regarded in American circles as the best bet, as well as Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who had been national security adviser, and Tawfeeq al-Yassir, a former brigadier general during the Saddam Hussein era who served in the transitional government’s security.

It is apparent that the basic concept of democratic give and take is requiring a learning curve that the Iraqi government can’t afford at this point. By failing to agree on these vital ministry appointments, militias continue to work outside the police and army while rag-tag gangs of thugs carry out atrocities on a daily basis:

GUNMEN have dragged 24 people, mostly teenage students, from their vehicles and shot them dead in the latest wave of violence in Iraq.

As Iraqi leaders appeared deadlocked overnight on naming new interior and defence ministers seen as critical to restoring stability, the relentless killings continued.
Police said gunmen manning a makeshift checkpoint near Udhaim, 120km north of Baghdad, stopped cars approaching the small town and killed the passengers.

The victims included youths of around 15 and 16 years old, who were on their way to the bigger regional town of Baquba for end of term exams, and also elderly men, they said.

“(The attackers) dragged them one by one from their cars and executed them,” said a police official

No one wants us to succeed in Iraq more than I do. But for some of us to continue saying “All is Well” while atrocities like this take place all over the Sunni triangle, while Kurds in the north are being pressed by Shias to give up control of oil rich areas, and while Shia’s in the south are carving out their own areas of influence independent of Baghdad, it’s time to start applying the screws to the Iraqi government regardless of any backlash that might arise as a result of our meddling and start knocking some heads together.

We have 130,000 troops in Iraq. If the government of Iraq is not serious about resolving its problems - and taking their time naming vital ministers is a pretty good indication that they are not serious enough - then we should make it clear to Prime Minister al Maliki that one of our options is to wave goodbye and not let the door hit us in the behind when we leave. Despite their overheated rhetoric, neither the Shias or the Sunnis can afford to have the United States leave at this point. They know it. We know it. And al Maliki knows his chances of surviving a month after the Americans leave are pretty close to zero.

The result would be the “Lebanonization” of Iraq:

Iraqis, appalled at the continuing violence by Sunni Arabs, often invoke the memory of Lebanon, which fell into civil war in 1975, and did not emerge from that conflict until 1990. The parallels are striking, and depressing. Like Iraq, Lebanon was cobbled together by a colonial power, in this case France, after the Ottoman Turk empire fell in 1918. France wanted to establish an Arab nation where Arab Christians would be a majority. That was not possible, but Lebanon was about half Christian (the rest being Sunni, Shia, Druze and a few smaller Islamic sects). Alas, the Christians also came in many sects (some Orthodox, some recognized the power of the pope in Rome), some of whom did get along with other Christians. There was also antagonism between the Sunnis, Shia and Druze. However, the Lebanese were a very entrepreneurial and commercial community, and there were many new opportunities with the Turks gone. It all sort of worked, until the appearance of a Palestinian refugee community in the 1950s and 60s. This became a major source of trouble after 1971, when Jordan expelled its radical Palestinians, and drove most of them into Lebanon. Now some Moslem Lebanese insisted that they were the majority (which they probably were) and that the traditional power sharing agreement with Christians should be revised. The Palestinians, who, according to all Lebanese, were a bunch of foreign refugees, wanted to use Lebanon as a base for launching attacks on Israel, took sides, several actually, during the ensuring civil war.

The catalyst for violence are the numerous militias. Some of these militias are clan based. Others owe their loyalty to one religious figure or another like Muqtada al Sadr’s Mehdi Army. Some Sunni militias are little better than criminal gangs, kidnapping middle class Iraqis and holding them for modest ransoms in order to fund their activities. These activities include the wanton slaughter of innocent Shias. And along with similar gangs of Shia thugs, the two sides have been murdering up to 70 civilians a day and caused more than 100,000 people to flee their traditional homes in mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhoods and either leave the country or move to “safe” areas where their co-religionists are in the majority.

This is what the people of Iraq are fearing - a militia dominated society where the government is helpless in the face of so many guns in the hands of irresponsible elements. It would be Lebanon without Syrian and Israeli interference which could make things even bloodier. If the US could play upon this fear by threatening to leave them all to their own devices, the situation could be turned around, especially if the new government could reign in the activities of the major militias like al Sadr’s group and the larger, more aggressive Badr Brigades in the south.

As for the gangs with guns, this is mainly a law enforcement problem and, with some help from the US and the Iraqi Army, the criminal element could be neutralized fairly quickly.

The violence is killing hope in Iraq. And until people feel safe enough to live fairly normal lives, they are not going to plan for the future nor will they have much confidence in the democratic process. It all starts with the Iraqi government. Until they can organize their own house, they are not going to be able to control the country as a whole.

Whew! That was a close one.

For a moment there, one could have gotten the impression that those poor, misguided youths snatched up in the Canadian terrorist dragnet might have been mistaken for bloodthirsty jihadists. Instead, like a flock of wayward Canadian geese, we can rest easy because we learn from much of the Canadian press that they represent a “broad strata” of Canadian society.

The accused, dressed casually in jeans or jogging pants and t-shirts, sported traditional Muslim male beards. Most were Canadian citizens or residents.

Police described them as coming from a broad “strata” of society. Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed. The adults range in age from 19 to 43.

You know which “broad strata” they’re talking about, right? It’s the “strata” that features people representing the full panoply of human flotsam and jetsam; drunk with religion, murderous in intent, oblivious to the moral consequences of their planned acts of barbarism, and carrying a deeply flawed and simplistic worldview that justifies all.

Other than that, they’re just plain folks, someone who you might want to invite over for a barbecue if they lived next door.

If we are fortunate enough to survive listening to some of the better angels of our nature that demand obeisance to an ideology of moral relativism, it will be because there will always be enough of us who refuse to play the diversity games so beloved of that segment of our population that sees strength in dividing us. The game has one simple rule; all societies, and by extension, all religions, creeds, races, ethnicities, and cultures are, at bottom, equal. It would be one thing to believe all were equally bad. That, at least, would represent the cynics view of mankind and hence, a realistic appraisal of the capability for evil in our fellow man.

But no. This multi-cultural madness posits the notion that we are all equally good (well, except white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian males), and that evil is a social construct manufactured by the ruling class to keep the black, brown, and yellow man in their place. If allowed to succeed, the people who are teaching this view to our children in schools and creating mass cultural touchstones in film and television that push this concept will create the perfectly diverse society - the multi-cultural Nirvana found in the grave where everyone will be finally and completely equal.

I’m not quite sure what it will take for our intellectual and media elites to be convinced of the folly of their wrongheaded and dangerously myopic view of who and what we are fighting. If 9/11 couldn’t convince them, I hardly think another attack of that size would cause them to alter their perception that denies there are two sides to this conflict - and the ones they should be opposing do not only “[sport] traditional Muslim male beards.” They are radical, Islamic fundamentalists, born into societies where they are taught from birth to hate us, educated in schools and mosques where they are urged to kill us. And nurtured in groups and cells where the means and opportunity to carry out their lifelong quest for revenge and bloodlust are made possible.

Is it asking too much that regardless of our domestic political differences that we at least recognize and agree on who the enemy is?

After reading some of the coverage of the terrorist arrests in Canada, I would have to reluctantly conclude the answer is yes.

UPDATE

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for giving us the “Euphemism of the Day.”

The Marines who took part in what the military itself is calling the “unjustified killing” of civilians at Haditha last November may as well plead guilty and throw themselves on the mercy of the court.

Better yet, why bother with a trial at all? John Murtha has them tried and convicted already and has announced that a cover-up took place and that the incident is “worse than Abu Ghraib.” And the netnuts, whose skepticism about everything the military says about Iraq seems to have magically disappeared overnight, are trying to compare the 24 civilians who may have been executed by as few as 4 Marines with the more than 240 civilians who were massacred by an entire company in Viet Nam at My Lai. We can forgive them their wild exaggeration because, after all, their hearts are in the right place, even if the facts regarding Haditha are still hidden from everyone. Those facts include the other side of the story, which, if you’re a liberal, isn’t as important as using the incident to reveal some “larger truth” about America and the war. Not exactly clear what that truth is quite yet but give them time, they’re still working on it.

It may very well turn out that the Marines are guilty of unspeakable war crimes and deserving of the harshest punishment imaginable - death by firing squad. Then again, it may turn out that all is not as it appears on the surface and that other mitigating factors will be revealed that could alter our perception of the event. The point is we just don’t know. And this makes all the handwringing on the right and gloating on the left a little hard to understand - especially when one considers the fact that in the past, Iraqis in insurgent strongholds like Haditha have been notoriously inaccurate about relating events surrounding military actions.

Are we getting the whole story from the “eyewitnesses” in Haditha? In fact, if you read media stories of the events that tragic day, one is left with the distinct impression that much of the information comes to us via hearsay - someone is telling a story of what happened based on a story told to them by an eyewitness (we think). Remember that the military, for whatever reason, didn’t begin this investigation until 4 months after the events took place. Is it possible that at least some of the lurid details that have leaked out are incorrect?

Holding one’s condemnation until more facts are revealed is not denying that the incident took place. We used to call this “common sense” - that is, before such silly notions were dispensed with by bloggers who have acquired psychic abilities that enable them to see into other men’s souls not to mention glean details that are unavailable to the rest of us. US military investigators experience with Iraqi eyewitnesses has been extraordinarily uneven, to put the best possible face on it. Remember Guiliana Sgrena, the kidnapped Italian “journalist who claimed tanks fired on her car killing the Italian agent who helped free her? The Iraqi driver swore he was only going 20 MPH when approaching the checkpoint. An investigation revealed he was going 50 MPH. Was the driver lying or was he simply wrong?

The incident I described in my post yesterday at Ishaqi where Iraqis claimed that 11 Iraqis were murdered by US soldiers contains bloodcurdling “eyewitness” accounts of the soldiers executing the Iraqis in cold blood. There are even photographs of the dead at the Tikrit morgue as well as statements from Iraqis that all of the dead, including children, died of gunshot wounds to the head.

The later investigation revealed that insurgents used some civilians as human shields as the Americans moved in and that some civilians died when the house caught fire. It is believed that a few of the insurgents escaped, executing other civilians as they fled.

The fact is, Ishaqi is an insurgent hotbed and some of those statements may have been the direct result of an al Qaeda in Iraq disinformation campaign carried out by sympathizers. And here we have a similar situation in Haditha, a town that has been in the grip of insurgents since the war began. Who do we believe? Who do we trust? Do we automatically take what is told to us by locals whose brothers, fathers, or relatives may be part of the insurgency?

Clearly something happened in Haditha that military investigators believe constitutes a war crime. But until we start to get leaks from the other side of this story, or until we hear what the Marines believed was going on in open court, I prefer to withhold my guilty verdict and instead, pronounce myself troubled about both what the Marines did to civilians and what higher ups may have done to the truth.

UPDATE

Time Magazine is reporting that some of the Marines who took part in the massacre are rolling over on their fellow Marines:

A military source in Iraq says the men of Kilo Company stuck by their story throughout the initial inquiry, but what they told the first military investigator raised suspicions. One of the most glaring discrepancies involved the shooting of the four students and the taxi driver. “They had no weapons, they didn’t show hostile intent, so why shoot them?” the military source says. Khaled Raseef, a spokesman for the victims’ relatives, says U.S. military investigators visited the alleged massacre sites 15 times and “asked detailed questions, examined each bullet hole and burn mark and took all sorts of measurements. In the end, they brought all the survivors to the homes and did a mock-up of the Marines’ movements.” As the detectives found contradictions in the Marines’ account, “the official story fell apart and people started rolling on each other,” says the military source. (HT: Michelle Malkin)

Needless to say, it appears the investigation has progressed past the point of local eyewitness accounts and is now focusing on actual discrepancies in statements made by the Marines involved.

Just as importantly, it appears that a cover-up occurred that goes up the chain of command to at least the battallion level. It is my understanding (and someone correct me if I’m wrong) that battallion commanders have at their disposal funds that they can disburse for reconstruction but that in this case, appear to have been used to compensate victims’ families of the massacre. If true then the nature of the attack on civilians that day was probably falsified at almost the highest levels of command.

Is the war effort going to be further undermined because of the actions of 13 out of the hundreds of thousands of honorable men and women who have sacrificed so much, given so much, endured so much in this cause? Can the lickspittles who couldn’t give a good goddamn about the Iraqi people or our military and who only want to hang George Bush and see this incident as another way to attack their political enemies be allowed to make Haditha a code word for failure?

Not if I have anything to say about it.

UPDATE II

Many thanks to all those who pointed out the double negative in my last paragraph above. I have changed the wording from “be prevented from making ” to “be allowed to make.”

Now it makes a little more sense - but I hope my intent was clear nonetheless.

I must confess to having a secret admiration for those protesters who willingly get themselves arrested in order to make a statement of defiance against the war as well as standing up in a very public way for what they believe in.

Some may call them traitors and perhaps, in the strictest interpretation of the law, they may be considered as such. I know that in another time, a less tolerant era, they would face considerable jail time. Even today, those who have dedicated their lives to protesting our stockpile of nuclear weapons have faced jail terms up to 18 years for some serious infractions at top secret missile sites. We don’t have to agree with these people to admire their sense of purpose and steadfast adherence to their own set of principles. In fact, we can and should vigorously condemn their myopia and stupidity. But that shouldn’t lessen our respect for their sincerity.

Others may object to my romanticizing the activities of these people but in truth, they follow in the footsteps of a long line of principled Americans who believed so strongly that their government had lost its way that they were willing to disobey the law and, just as importantly, accept the consequences of their disobedience by going to jail. Civil disobedience like this takes true courage. Perhaps not the same kind of courage exhibited on the battlefield but nevertheless a kind of courage that recognizes the fact that doing what is right will entail a personal cost. For the soldier, it may mean his life. For the anti-war protester, or the civil rights advocate, or the anti-apartheid demonstrator, it may mean the loss of liberty and the shame of prison.

The motivations of those who get themselves arrested these days is certainly a mixed bag. This group, for instance, seems to be made up of some of our scruffier peace-loving, anarchist brethren whose reasons for getting thrown in the slammer may revolve more around the fact that one is able to procure “3 hots and a cot” rather than any grand, anti-globalization crusade. At the same time, there appear to be many citizens who are dead serious about their beliefs and are willing to risk injury and jail time to bring public attention to them.

Selfish or sublime, the motivations of this subset of anti-war activists stands in stark contrast to the lazy, loud, insufferably arrogant rantings of the netnuts who talk a good game but refuse to put their hides on the line when other, more courageous souls run all the risks. These are the same goofs who continue to insist on calling their opponents “chickenhawks” while ironically exhibiting true cowardice by sitting safe and secure behind their little keyboards, ranting and raving about evil George and the Neocon wars of conquest, with the full knowledge that their execrable, rambling screeds are protected by both American tradition and the Constitution of the United States. In short, they have as much chance of going to jail for what they write as I do of winning the Miss America title.

Instead of thousands or tens of thousands of these “activists” (a misnomer if ever there was one unless one were to include watching Keith Olberman as anti-war activism rather than the cruel and inhuman torture it should be defined as), peacefully protesting on a daily basis, getting themselves arrested for blocking traffic in and out of military bases or chaining themselves to the White House fence or gathering in front of the Pentagon, all we get out of them is talk, talk, talk, and more talk.

Hint to netnuts: Activists are supposed to, you know, engage in “activities” not sit at a computer spitting out incoherent rants that few people outside of the digital asylum inhabited by your ideological compatriots ever read. Why not get up off your overly ample posteriors and do something about ending the war rather than simply whining like the spoiled brat, upper middle class sloth brains you appear to be?

Being smug, self-righteous, and cowardly will not end the war in Iraq in your favor (i.e. America losing). Yes, a large majority of Americans hate the way Bush is handling the conflict. And a majority of Americans believe that the war was a mistake. But you’ll never get American troops to come home until you start clogging the jails of this country with protesters who willingly break the law and are equally willing to take the consequences of prison time in order to achieve their goal. About the only inconvenience you’ve suffered in your “activism” is in missing episodes of MTV’s Pimp My Ride. Let me tell you, that just won’t get it done.

This is why you are held in such contempt by most of us. It would be one thing if you backed up your bluster with concrete citizen’s action. But your simpering, sniveling, hateful missives only serve to make you a target of derision and disapprobation - the fate of those who posit empty headed platitudes instead of directly acting on your beliefs.

Last year, I jokingly referred to the community of faux activists who were backing Cindy Sheehan’s camp out in Crawford without actually joining her as “chickendoves:”

You’d think with all the ink spilled and pixels filled with Cindymania that there would be thousands of lefties down there, screaming their rage and anger at Bush for not doing what they want – which is basically roll over and die.

What’s the matter? Don’t have the courage of your convictions? Don’t want to camp out under the broiling west Texas sun and suffer for the cause? Is the issue of war and peace so unimportant to you that you’re not willing to leave your families, you jobs, all the comforts of home and endure the danger of tripping over a camera cable or getting hit by a speeding satellite truck? Are you afraid you’re going to get poked in the eye by a wayward reporter’s pencil? Does the prospect of being in such close proximity to a bunch of tobacco chewing, bible reading, shotgun toting, red state goobers give you the cold sweats?

The answer was apparently yes. Sheehan never had more than a couple of hundred activists join her at the Bush ranch. All the more reason to start asking serious questions about the commitment of people to “peace” when they fail to show the courage of their convictions by standing up and being counted when the roll is called and the tocsin sounds for the kind of action that would mark them as true “warriors for peace.”

Somehow, I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon.

UPDATE

As if on cue, Darksyde at Daily Kos has a “Memorial Day” post up that criticizes those conservatives and Republicans who never served in the armed forces.

This from a guy whose closest brush with standing up for his convictions that risked anything except contracting Carpel Tunnel Syndrome from sitting on his ass, typing away at his keyboard was watching an episode of Judge Judy.

How much courage does it take to call people names while a war that you purport to hate more than anything (except maybe George Bush) rages on with Americans and Iraqis dying and being maimed without you lifting a finger to oppose it?

Calling political opponents chickenhawks may be emotionally satisfying - if you happen to have the maturity of a 6 year old. But when it comes right down to it, you are all fakes, phonies, and hypocritical cowards who would let George Bush take the United States into dictatorship and who don’t have the courage of their convictions to protest this war en masse in order to put the kind of pressure necessary on the Administration to bring this war to a close.

What kind of a patriot sits behind a keyboard and writes about the country slipping into a dictatorship without getting up off your fat behind and doing something about it - even picking up a gun if necessary? Your words are meaningless. If you are really serious about this dictatorship business, what the hell are you people doing sitting at home?

I guess it’s true. Liberals really don’t love their country as much as conservatives do. Because I don’t care how old I was, if I thought for one second that a President, regardless of party, was trying to establish a dictatorship, I would be carrying out some kind of direct action - even if I was alone. And that’s the difference between liberals and conservatives; the left are intellectual cowards who don’t have the guts to do what is necessary to act on their beliefs.

For a little less emotional response (and one more devastating), please see Mark Coffey’s excellent post quoting Hitchens on the chickenhawk criticism.

On March 16th, the Daily Star of Lebanon had a front page story about a massacre that was similar in some respects to the Haditha incident.

Eleven members of an Iraqi family, including five children, were killed in a U.S. raid on Wednesday, police and witnesses said. The U.S. military said two women and a child died during the bid to seize an Al-Qaeda militant from a house. A senior Iraqi police officer said autopsies on the bodies showed each had been shot in the head.

[...]

Associated Press photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures arriving at Tikrit General Hospital accompanied by grief-stricken relatives.

The U.S. military said in a statement its troops had attacked a house in Ishaqi, the town 100 kilometers north of Baghdad, to capture a “foreign fighter facilitator for the Al-Qaeda in Iraq network.”

“There was one enemy killed. Two women and one child were also killed in the firefight. The building … [was] destroyed,” the military said, adding the Al-Qaeda suspect had been captured and was being questioned.

Major Ali Ahmad of the Iraqi police said U.S. forces had landed on the roof of the house in the early hours and shot the 11 occupants, including the five children. “After they left the house they blew it up,” he said.

The problem with the thrust of the story - that US troops massacred innocent Iraqis - was that it was debunked in a matter of days:

Quite a few internal contradictions had popped up – the old lady’s age was 75 in one story, 90 in another. The child four months old, or, then again, six months old. One version had the victims tied up, another handcuffed – with neither cuffs nor rope apparent in any of the photos presented as evidence.

The climax came when the still-mystified Coalition staff were hit with an accusation that they had skipped a meeting with local officials to discuss the incident.

“There was no meeting scheduled with any Coalition investigators today,” said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson. “There appears to be a distinct pattern of misinformation surrounding this entire incident.”

And while the Haditha incident seems to be different in that the preliminary investigation has uncovered evidence that Marines did indeed undertake to massacre innocent civilians in a systematic and brutal way, the fact is we don’t know at this point what exactly those Marines were facing nor do we know how much of the story is true, if any of it is exaggerated, if the witnesses can be trusted, or a dozen other “ifs” that could mitigate the circumstances or even clear the Marines entirely, as our Rangers were completely cleared in the Ishaqi “massacre.”

I have written in the past about the attempts of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Sunni insurgent’s attempts to spread disinformation about American forces and their operations. This effort is not only sophisticated by any standards, but also meets with some success due to the way that major media in Iraq is forced to cover the war.

I will not criticize the correspondents who are forced by the nature of the conflict and their nationality to remain in the Green Zone, having to rely on local “stringers” and other Iraqis for stories. But the danger in spreading al Qaeda propaganda in their almost total reliance on this system is so obvious that one can legitimately question their methods of confirmation. Here’s the Washington Post story this morning that was written by, among others “A Washington Post staff member in Iraq.”

Aws Fahmi, a Haditha resident who said he watched and listened from his home as Marines went from house to house killing members of three families, recalled hearing his neighbor across the street, Younis Salim Khafif, plead in English for his life and the lives of his family members. “I heard Younis speaking to the Americans, saying: ‘I am a friend. I am good,’ ” Fahmi said. “But they killed him, and his wife and daughters.”

Who is Aws Fhami? He is identified only as “a Haditha resident.” In an area that has proven to be a hotbed of insurgent activity, wouldn’t it have been prudent to tell us a little more about Mr. Fhami?

This is not to say that Mr. Fhami is lying. It is pointing out the obvious. Given the nature of the charges against the Marines, one would think that the absolute most stringent sourcing requirements would be in play.

Indeed, 8 paragraphs later in the story, we get the Post disclaimer:

The descriptions of events provided to The Post by witnesses in Haditha could not be independently verified, although their accounts of the number of casualties and their identities were corroborated by death certificates.

In other words, all the Washington Post knows for sure is that 15 civilians died and what their names were. And we’re going to go into national convulsions over this incident without a little more proof?

Clearly, the military is taking this incident very seriously. But I am left with an appreciation of the dilemma faced by military investigators; how do you get to the bottom of something like this when the witnesses for the prosecution may, in fact, be spreading disinformation of the enemy either wittingly or unwittingly?

The reports suggest there is video from the morgue. Here is a picture of the morgue in Tikrit where victims of the Ishaqi “massacre” were taken:

As if to highlight the possible discrepancies in this incident, the terrorists are using the video shot at the morgue in Haditha as a recruiting tool:

The insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq said it sent copies of the journalism student’s videotape to mosques in Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, using the killings of the women and children to recruit fighters.

Reading through the description of what happened from Mr. Fhami, one gets the impression that he was indeed an eyewitness - or someone well coached. It is not a denial of the incident to raise questions like this, not when the stakes are so high. If, as the story points out, the Marines found only one gun among the casualties, one wonders why highly trained, disciplined troops would enter a house with guns blazing and throwing hand grenades. There are missing elements to this story that the media is leaving out at this point; the situation as it appeared to the Marines who are under investigation.

I am struck by the way this story has been embraced so uncritically, especially by those who question everything else about the war including the rationale for it. Time will tell if indeed, we have another “My Lai” or whether it turns into another “Ishqari.”

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin rightly questions the timing of all the leaks associated with this case and rounds up reaction.

For more than 60 years, the United States Armed Forces have made freedom in the western world possible. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard have patrolled, monitored, guarded, and fought and died so that the interests of the United States and the freedoms enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people in Europe and elsewhere are protected.

Anyone who believes any differently has the blessed luxury of never being vouchsafed the opportunity to be proved wrong.

I actually wish sometimes that people like this insufferable lout would have had such an opportunity. For contained in this piece by the Times Online’s Martin Samuel is all the snide, superior, self-important, simpering, self-indulgent CRAP that we’ve been hearing from the European left almost since the sound of Nazi jackboots stopped echoing down the cobblestone streets of Mitteleuropa.

Never recognizing an enemy in the Soviet Union, the European left and their American cousins (who were more than eager to copy their more fashionable relations in denouncing their own country) always had the safest perch on the planet from which to pontificate and lecture America regarding her wayward course. Shielded by both American arms and the tolerance of their own governments for dissent, the titanic irony inherent in the left’s critiques of American foreign policy completely escapes them. They are so full of themselves and their utter, self-congratulatory goodness not to mention being blinded by the light of personal moral truth, that the very thought of even needing protection from anything never enters their minds.

And so, we must shine the light of day on writings from Mr. Samuel and other leftist scum so that their hubris and willful self-delusions can be seen for what they are; birdcage lining.

Writing about the inspiring story of a new warship being built using the steel salvaged from the wreckage of the twin towers, Samuel reminds us why it is sometimes amusing to fantasize about a world with no America where people like this useless git of a man would be exposed to the cruelty and capriciousness of the various nation states who have sought to enslave him and his fellows for almost 100 years:

On August 28, 2002, Mr Pataki’s wish was granted with the result that 24 tons of steel from the stricken buildings was taken to New Orleans and put to use by Northrop Grumman Systems in the construction of an amphibious assault ship that should be ready next year. In this way, the 2,800 souls that perished as an indirect result of an interventionist foreign policy that achieved the exact opposite of its stated aims can be honoured by a vessel built to ensure that this flawed cycle of violence continues. The USS New York will carry 360 soldiers and 700 combat-ready Marines. It puts to sea with the motto: “Never forget.” Except they do. They always do.

No sooner had work begun on the New York when the Secretary of the Navy announced that sister ships were to be built called the USS Arlington, after the Pentagon site that was hit by terrorists, and the USS Somerset, the Pennsylvania county in which Flight 93 came down. The ships would commemorate the attacks, if that is the right word, which it is plainly not. Exactly what is being commemorated anyway? Not the memory of the victims, as nothing is known of how they want to be remembered, and certainly not whether they would wish a warship to be dedicated in their name. Who knows in which direction their anger would be channelled? It could be that some of the dead might have thought over-reliance on warships was their downfall in the first place.

First, as to the “memory of the victims” and what they would think of a ship constructed of pieces from the twin towers, let’s ask a few of the families:

For Patrick Cartier Sr., the ship is an honorable way to remember his son, James Marcel Cartier, who was killed when the South Tower collapsed.

“You’ve got the very soul of the event in that mangled steel, and all of that steel which housed all the people fell along with them and they were all consumed in that terrible fireball and that collapse,” the New York City man said.

Using the steel for the new ship would capture the spiritual essence of those who died in the World Trade Center, Cartier said.

“If you would you use that steel, it would almost be a resurrection,” he said.

New York City firefighter Bill Butler also praised turning the steel from the World Trade Center into a fighting vessel.

“It’s a great testament to the strong will of the people who died that day,” said Butler, who was in the North Tower when it collapsed.

A “resurrection” indeed. One would think that many of the survivors of that horrible day would wish that the remains of their loved ones, which due to the heat and pressure of the collapse have been fused and made one with that very same steel, would deeply appreciate the significance of constructing a ship made to fight a war to make sure that such an event doesn’t happen again.

Not surprisingly, this sentiment escapes the clueless Mr. Samuel and instead, we’re treated to a laughable recitation of leftist canards about American foreign policy:

The respected columnist Roger Cohen, writing in The New York Times, identified just 14 years since 1945 when America had not been at war, in some form or other, either metaphorical (the Cold War, the War on Terror) or literal (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq). Some might think the two states do not compare. Then again, some of us have never tried to form a left-wing government in Chile, appeared before the Senate Permanent Investigations Sub-Committee led by Senator Joe McCarthy or been instructed to form a naked pyramid by a gap-toothed cracker with a semi-automatic weapon and a weird girlfriend.

Some aspects of metaphorical wars turn out very real for certain people. They have a habit of becoming tangible for the rest of us, too. The Cold War became a very hot one in Asia. The War on Terror unleashed the invasion of Iraq. And while USS New York may currently be serving metaphorically as a symbol of American indefatigability and courage, it will one day be engaged in a genuine sense in the propagation of a foreign policy that continues to contribute to recycled violence, from continent to continent, with New York office workers the occasional collateral damage. To turn the rubble they left behind into the machinery for the next big mistake shows an ignorance of cause and effect that explains why some still believe George Bush and Tony Blair were right about the war, but wrong about the peace; as if the two can be separated. Our mistake was that we didn’t have an exit strategy, they say. Makes the entrance a pretty dumb-ass move, then, doesn’t it, Sparky?

Everyone who “still believe[s] George Bush and Tony Blair were right about the war, but wrong about the peace” please raise your hands. Anyone? Buehler? Buehler? And of course, the next canard being “Our mistake was that we didn’t have an exit strategy, they say,” evokes more cricket chirping if one were to ask for a vote on who in their right mind ever said or even contemplated saying such a thing.

That’s not even a strawman that anyone can knock down, it’s an invisible man. And the confidence shown by Samuel that that the “next big mistake” will happen as a result of these other mistakes that were never made because they exist only in his fevered imagination makes for some real cramping of the Cerebral Cortex when trying to ascertain just what the heck he’s trying to say. I guess it gave him a chance to use the phrase “dumb-ass” (hyphented, of course) in the staid and august Times, perhaps even a first.

As for the rest of Samuel’s morally relativistic rant, it is the exact same foofooraw Americans have been listening to from our intellectual superiors in Europe for more than 50 years. There’s a recording somewhere, I’m sure, that these lickspittles listen to several times a week that sings the same tune about America and the “cycle of violence” and Allende (a thug who admired that other leading light of illiberality Fidel Castro), and Joe McCarthy’s mean spirited yet frighteningly spot on anti-Communist crusade that was sung by their older brothers, fathers, and grandfathers. I see that Samuel has added something new to the old song by throwing Abu Ghraib up in our faces. Good thing we don’t delve too deeply into the colonial history of his country. They had some torture parties in India and Africa that made Abu Ghraib look like fraternity hazing.

Samuel belittles the way workers at the shipyard handled the steel from the towers while positing the outlandish notion that a vessel built to replace other, more obsolete vessels, somehow is an indication that our force posture is, by definition, aggressive and hostile:

Since the September 11 attacks, the familiar argument is that the West did not start this war, but is determined to finish it. Yet the USS New York with its 700 combat-ready Marines was already on the drawing board before the World Trade Centre was hit, in all but name. Had the towers not fallen, there would still be a deadly billion-dollar vessel under construction in Louisiana. It would just be called the Saucy Sue and might not be built from the habitats of dead people and imbued with such heavy symbolism that workers in the shipyard are said to have treated its components with religious reverence.

This is why the left in America voted against every major weapons system during the 1980’s. Their reasoning was “We already have a tank. What do we need another one for?” and “Who cares if our bombers were built in the 1950’s?” fails to take into account the obsolescence of systems and hardware. The USS New York is a new kind of ship that is being built to replace an older class of assault craft that will be retired by 2015. The USS New York will be part of a Navy that has seen its surface ships reduced from 489 to 267 since 1991. The Army has been reduced by almost a third. Only the Air Force has maintained its strength, being reduced less than 10% during the same period.

But don’t tell Samuel any of this. It will explode his thesis of American “aggression.”

And what of the yard workers who “imbued” that steel from the twin towers with such significance?

Steel from the World Trade Center was melted down in a foundry in Amite, La., to cast the ship’s bow section. When it was poured into the molds on Sept. 9, 2003, “those big rough steelworkers treated it with total reverence,” recalled Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing, who was there. “It was a spiritual moment for everybody there.”

Junior Chavers, foundry operations manager, said that when the trade center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand and the “hair on my neck stood up.”

“It had a big meaning to it for all of us,” he said. “They knocked us down. They can’t keep us down. We’re going to be back.”

Yes, we silly, stupid Americans, getting all choked up about the fruits of our aggression. Kind of makes one wonder how Samuel would enjoy a ride in the New York with those 700 Marines. Who knows, they might even go to somewhere that he would approve; say, Darfur? Of course, Mr. Samuel doesn’t mention that anytime, anywhere in the world such missions are needed, there is only one nation that can undertake the rescue of the threatened. And it ain’t France.

The idea of turning the twisted, melted steel from the twin towers into a ship of war was one of the most scathingly brilliant ideas our military has had since 9/11. And the tired, familiar complaints from lefties like Samuel notwithstanding, I have no doubt the vast majority of Americans agree.

UPDATE

In Training weighs in with some pithy comments directed toward Mr. Samuel:

Mr. Samuel, go jump in a lake. I know, I know, I shouldn’t be upset over this, he’s just another one of those peace-loving-everybody-hug-and-the-bad-will-all-go-away guys. I know this. Really I do.

And then this - an interesting trade, no?

OK, Martin, let’s make a deal. We won’t use steel from the WTC to construct warships. We’ll use them for cages at secret prisons.

Hee!

And Perry de Havilland makes several excellent points in his brilliantly understated way:

I love it when ’sophisticated’ and ‘nuanced’ Brits and Europeans lecture Americans about history, given the millions and millions of corpses littered across Europe within living memory. Attacks by people from abroad are caused by interventionist foreign policies, clever Mr. Samuel tells us, with his wise Old World perspectives, which of course explains how places like Poland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Greece, Czechoslovakia etc. managed to sit out World War II in peace by minding their own business.

Moreover whilst nothing is guaranteed in this life, as close to certainty as you may ever come is when someone says “While not excusing wicked acts committed by terrorists…” they are about to do exactly that.

It’s hard to know exactly what to make of this diary entry at Daily Kos by “NewDirection” that makes a revealing declaration: “9/11: So Over It.” It’s actually a repost by the diarist from a military forum and, while there may be some who dismiss the author’s thesis out of hand, a careful examination of what he is trying to say tells us something about the state of the American psyche and how that will affect the vote in both 2006 and 2008.

First of all, let me say that I share some of the author’s frustration with the politicization of that day by both parties and for basically the same purpose; to skewer the opposition. In some ways, the author misses the mark when claiming that America was not fundamentally altered as a nation as a result of the tragedy and what he sees as the misuse of 9/11 as metaphor for the War on Terror. But his take on other ancillary issues that put 9/11 in context may be a valuable starting point for a discussion that will place our memories of that date in the proper perspective which, for all intents and purposes, will allow us to “get over” the heavy emotional burden we carry from that day.

Are there any “lessons” to be learned from 9/11? If so, are we taking away the correct ones? Can what happened that day be used as fodder for political attacks without degrading the memory of fallen heroes and tragic loss?

Good questions, those. And the diarist struggles to ask them in the right way:

Yes I want to stop any future attacks, and yes I honor the victims, and all of that. But seriously? “Never forget?” Look, as abominable and shocking as it was, “never forget” is a bit much. I mean it carries the implicit suggestion that if it weren’t taken to heart and repeated, people would forget.

The Marine Barracks Bombing was a pretty big deal at the time. So was the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Granted it’s different getting attacked on your home turf. (And as it happens, not far from where I sit right now.) And perhaps had the right people kept the lessons of Iran and Lebanon, not to mention the first WTC bombing, and OK City, etcetera, foremost in their minds, we’d have had none of this proverbial “clear blue sky” talk… And no need for it.

But as for regular folks? Well, let’s see. Terror. Terror is a set of tactics, but they are defined by their goal: To create the emotion of terror. The assumption that America has accepted is that the goal of the terror is to apply leverage, to cause the target to cower. Cowering is one possible reaction to terror: So is striking out. People seem to assume that we were attacked to influence us, either to withdraw from the Middle East or to get tricked into an escalating conflict in the Middle East. But that’s giving the enemy too much credit, I think. I think they attacked us simply to hurt us.

The author’s near dismissal out of hand that 9/11 was different because it happened here and not overseas is shocking. It brings to mind the “undeclared war” between the United States Navy and German U-Boats in the spring and summer of 1941 prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. The US Navy convoyed supplies to Great Britain under the watchful eye of German U-Boats who would occasionally take pot shots at our ships. The USS Rueben James took two torpedoes amidships and sank in March of 1941 while the USS Kearny was heavily damaged later that spring. In addition, the Germans regularly targeted American merchant ships headed for Britain, sinking several with a large loss of life.

For our part, the US Navy gave better than it got, aggressively defending convoys by dropping depth charges on German U-Boats. The loss of life on both sides was significant during this period. But what Roosevelt was looking for - a clear and unmistakable causus belli in order to rally the American people and kindle their “righteous might” - never happened. Not until Pearl Harbor.

What the diarist is saying is that the fact that the 9/11 attack occurred on American soil is significant but perhaps we are making too much of that fact. As a matter of formulating a policy to deal with terror, this may be a useful construct in that most of us who believe we are at war see the attacks mentioned by the diarist as the opening salvos of the conflict. But policies do not exist in a vacuum. Using 9/11 as a touchstone the same way the American people used Pearl Harbor in World War II is useful in giving people a rallying point, an emotional home base where they can return to reflect and rejuvenate the spirit.

Currently, we are not vouchsafed such a luxury by our media in that for the vast majority of the MSM, 9/11 as a topic is avoided like the plague. Images especially from that day are verboten, as if by locking the videotapes in the archives, people will simply forget the horror of what happened. Some would say the media does this because any reminders of that day help President Bush. I think the explanation is a lot simpler than that; the media, collectively speaking, are just plain dumb. They believe that the American people don’t want to see images and be reminded of that day because it’s too painful.

They will be proved wrong a week from today as United 93 opens across the country. From all indications, the movie will be an emotionally shattering experience - so much so that some may be forced to flee the theater so powerful will be the evocation of memory. But many, many, more will remember and will perhaps be once again steeled in their determination to defeat the enemy.

But is there really an “enemy?”

Remember, please, that this was an act of a bunch of punks. Punks that got lucky. Not the larger Islamo-Fascist monolith that some have conjured; that may exist as a useful concept but all evidence points to punks. And frankly it’s a lot easier to credit the well-grounded “punk theory,” because punks behave unpredictably and slip through cracks. The US would have swatted anything larger on the worst of days.

Sure, 9/11 changed the way we protect our country. But should it change our country? I think not. That’s why I’m officially over it. I invite you to realize that you are too. It’s a necessary step in defeating terror.

Being charitable, that’s one way to look at it. I think most readers of this site would wholeheartedly agree that it is the wrong way to look at it.

In fact, as we know now, the jihadists do have a strategy. Published in Der Speigel, al Qaeda’s military commander (now in custody we believe in Iran) Saif al-Adel gave the outlines of a worldwide blueprint for Global Jihad against the United States and the West. This multi-phased operational plan was extraordinarily sophisticated in that it took into account not only the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Islamists vis a vis the west, but it also incorporated favorable demographic changes in Europe as well as the gradual radicalization of even moderate Muslim countries like Indonesia. To posit the notion that the 9/11 perpetrators were nothing more than a bunch of punks fatally underestimates their organizational abilities and their will. The author is just plain wrong.

But the author makes a very good point when he asks even if 9/11 changed the way we protect our country, should it change our country? The diarist doesn’t think so and this is the great trap we find ourselves in today. By changing the relationship between the government and the people in order to protect ourselves, are we changing America forever?

Yes there were victims on September 11th, 2001, and we were all among them. But should their continue to be victims today? Who but victims remembers a wrong done to them as a defining part of their character? True, true, you could say that response to monarchist oppression is what made us a freedom-loving land in the first place. But that’s where our early society came from; to reject monarchy and increase freedom was an evolution of ourselves. On the other hand, being defined by terrorism would be different.

Of all the 9/11 platitudes, I liked “If they change our way of life, they have won” the best. You don’t hear that one much anymore, do you? Well it’s time to revive it. Sure, I do remember 9/11… But not as some sort of guiding principle. I don’t want that to be the “Remember the Alamo” for the next millenia simply because I’d prefer we defined ourselves by something prouder. 9/11 was no Alamo. Call it an act of war all you want but that smacks of an agenda… It was murder, perverse serial murder.

The author’s point about 9/11 victimhood is spot on. And this is how I think placing the tragedy in a different emotional context will help in turning those feelings of helplessness into a determination to see this conflict through to the final victory. This is where the President has failed utterly. There is some truth in the charge that both the Administration and the Democrats have used 9/11 as a political weapon, bashing each other for myopia on the one hand and incompetence on the other. In the meantime, the significance of 9/11 as a rallying point for American resolve has been almost completely subsumed by a cynicism on the part of the people that speaks to a weariness with conflict and a desire to “return to normalcy.”

The draining political battles over the Iraq War are almost over as we will almost certainly begin drawing down our troops (barring a full blown civil war breaking out in the meantime) this summer with the bulk of them being home by early 2008. By that time, the American people may well be ready to listen to a political message that sounds like retrenchment but would actually be retreat. Unless some clever, right-leaning politician can evoke the memory of 9/11 and place it in the context not of making the US a “victim” of an attack but a determined respondent that will continue to confront state sponsored terror in Iran, Syria, and other places, we may be in for a period of “hunkering down” in a kind of neo-isolationist dream world where we can delude ourselves into thinking that by going back in time before 9/11, we can actually make ourselves safer.

I mention a center-right politician because it is very clear at this point that the center-left of the Democratic party is fully prepared to make that leap back in time in a delusional effort to recapture an America that exists only in their imaginations. Contrast the reasonableness of the diarist with these comments left by Daily Kos readers:

The evidence for the Official Story is so poor, and the motives for the proponents of the Official Story — that is, the AmeriKills subsidiary of BushCo and the neo-cons, the people who have benefited from 9-11 — to lie are so great, that I cannot believe it to be true.

I am utterly convinced that the Official Story is a transparent hoax, and that it is virtually certain that, at least, BushCo LIHOP and indeed far more likely that, perhaps with the aid of Pakistani and/or Saudi secret services, an element of the government (including Cheney and Rumsfeld, among others) actually sponsored and planned the attacks.

[...]

OF COURSE it has not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Cheney and the boys did 9-11. But the Official Story is fragrant horses**t (really, if you believe that one please send me your check for the Brooklyn Bridge) and, that being so, it’s only natural to see as the prime suspects those who (1) have controlled the crime scene; (2) thwarted any investigation other than the risible Kean-Zelikow “Oil Investor, CIA, CFR and Coverup Maven Whitewash;” (3) stated in writing that the nation’s future pretty much required a “catalyzing and catastrophic event — a New Pearl Harbor;” (4) had the motive, means and the oppportunity to carry out the attacks; and (5) have been the primary beneficiaries, politically but also in cold cash.

[...]

Bush and the neocon horde have stolen 911 from those who know truth. The sheeple who vote in this country will continue to be duped by Karl Rove’s lies. Islamic fanatics are nothing to be feared. Fascist power and the Dubbya police state are the true enemies.

Can you see a Democratic party candidate for President emerging with this group’s support who thinks that 9/11 should be treated as anything except a simple tragedy that we’ve all got to get over and move on with our lives? This is the kind of attitude that will repeal the Patriot Act, roll back other steps we’ve taken to prevent an attack, and reign in domestic surveillance of potential terrorists.

And the hell of it is, by 2008 the American people may be ready for just such a candidate.

Readers of this site know that lately I’ve become something of a gloomy gus about our prospects of succeeding in Iraq. By way of a short explanation, let me just say that this does not reflect any loss of confidence in the performance of our troops nor does it mean that I thought the invasion a mistake - yet. I do think that the political situation absolutely must be resolved as soon as possible so that the government can start addressing the numerous issues that confront the nation and contribute to it’s instability.

I was a little amused this morning to see that Prime Minister Jaafari is whistling past the graveyard when he says that Secretary Rice and Minister Straw’s visits this past week “backfired.” One thing about a backfire is that you better not be kissin’ the tail pipe when it happens and unfortunately for the soon to be ex-Prime Minister, he’s got his lips firmly wrapped around the exhaust hole. Now that 3 of the 5 major Shia parties that make up the dominant coalition have called for his resignation, his position is rapidly becoming untenable, although I see in this New York Times article that the reporter was able to scrounge up one - just one - member of the opposition who agreed that the foreigners should have kept out of the business.

Jaafari may be on the ropes but he’s hanging on in hopes that his patrone Muqtada al-Sadr will come to his rescue. Al-Sadr himself may be losing some influence due to the fact that his militia has been participating in the cycle of revenge killings and other sectarian violence that most Iraqis are now seeing as the main threat to peace and stability. Still, the self-styled religious leader has 100,000 men with guns and should not be taken lightly. How that power translates into political influence is probably being worked out as I write this. Expect the Prime Minister to be given a prominent cabinet post in the new government.

Despite the political deadlock, despite the continuing (but reduced) sectarian violence, and despite the continuing vitality of the insurgency, there is one small ray of hope - and it may surprise you:

81, 76, 50, 49, 43, 25

What are these numbers? This week’s Powerball winners? … No, they’re the number of troops that have died in hostile actions in Iraq for each of the past six months. That last number represents the lowest level of troop deaths in a year, and second-lowest in two years.

But it must be that the insurgency is turning their assault on Iraqi military and police, who are increasingly taking up the slack, right? 215, 176, 193, 189, 158, 193 (and the three months before that were 304, 282, 233)

Okay, okay, so insurgents aren’t engaging us; they’re turning increasingly to car bombs then, right? 70, 70, 70, 68, 30, 30

Civilians then. They’re just garroting poor civilians. 527, 826, 532, 732, 950, 446 (upper bound, two months before that were 2489 and 1129).

The sharp drop in American casualties is great news and is due to several factors, not the least of which is our constant improvement refining our ground tactics in fighting the insurgency. There is also the fact that we have deliberately reduced the number of combat missions (on orders from the Pentagon who presumably got them from the President) in order to reduce our killed and wounded. I want to say that this was not done for political reasons but the evidence is to the contrary. That said, by re-deploying our forces to the countryside and out of urban areas, we are forcing the Iraqi army and police to start doing the job (with American advisers always close by). The results there have been mixed so far. The Iraqi army seems to be making steady and even encouraging progress. The problems with the police - poor training, infiltration by militias and insurgents, and just not enough of them - have been well documented here and elsewhere.

But in looking at those numbers and seeing a slow, steady reduction in casualties as well as the attacks that cause them, one can barely discern a silver lining in the clouds. But none of it will matter if the politicians can’t get past their differences and forge a truly broad-based coalition government that will give the Sunnis some confidence that they will not be steamrolled by the Shia majority. The Shia’s are balking because in order to instill that confidence, they have to give up a heck of a lot more than they are willing to do at this point. It’s understandable. Like any political party that comes out on top in an election, they want the rewards that go with that victory. And having to give the Sunnis - their deadly enemies for so many years - cabinet posts and other assurances sticks in their craw. Right now, they are unwilling to go the extra mile. Whether that will change anytime soon may depend on how much pressure American Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is willing to put on all the parties involved.

It’s a delicate job for Khalilzad who so far has proved himself fairly adept at keeping the process going despite the anti-Sunni violence and rhetoric from some of the radicals. He may have to insinuate himself into the process more forcefully to get the politicians off dead center which carries risks of offending the Shias - especially Ayatollah al-Sistani who is apparently sick of American interference, having refused to even open a letter from President Bush last week. At this point, there might not be a choice.

Reduced casualties is good news. Whether this is a lull before another round of increased insurgent attacks or whether it represents a slow petering out of the rebellion only time will tell. Either way, it won’t matter a fig unless we have a government sooner rather than later.

UPDATE

The Associated Press is reporting that the Prime Minister and other Shia members of the coalition have agreed to toss the question of Jaafari’s fate into the lap of Ayatollah al-Sistani:

Al-Attiyah said the deadlock had become “very complicated” and al-Jaafari’s supporters within the alliance want to ask the advice of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most respected Shiite cleric, before deciding their next move.

Al-Attiyah said other Shiite politicians who are not affiliated with the major Shiite parties also have agreed to seek al-Sistani’s opinion.

Turning to al-Sistani shows the inability of the Shiite alliance to resolve the standoff, with many Shiite politicians fearing that a move to force out al-Jaafari would splinter their alliance.

A little speculation with your coffee…

I think this could be very good news. Prime Minister Jaafari needs some cover in order to step down gracefully (and safely) and al-Sistani may just provide it. By suggesting the PM step aside, the Ayatollah defuses a potentially dangerous situation regarding al-Sadr who would be very resentful if his Shia partners forced his hand-picked man out of office. Jaafari himself might be relieved in that his life expecancy probably would be reduced if he agreed to leave without the young cleric’s blessing. With Sistani taking the lead, al-Sadr can hardly complain about whatever decision the Ayatollah comes to.

Will al-Sistani rise to the occassion? Or will he toss the ball back to the negotiators and wash his hands of the situation? Keep in mind that al-Sistani has shown impatience with young al-Sadr in the past and he may see this as a perfect opportunity to put the upstart in his place. Watch this development closely, especially al-Sistani’s statement. It could be the break the negotiators need to get the process moving again.

UPDATE AND CLARIFICATION

The Commissar points out in the comments that the civilian casualty number for March is almost certainly too low. He read the Brookings numbers and believes that they reflect only a partial total for that month.

Given the level of violence and deaths during March I agree with that assessment. In fact, the last figures I saw on the sectarian violence alone since the bombing of the shrine in Samarra on February 22 was over 1300. That does not include those killed by car bombs, IED’s, and insurgent attacks.

While that diminishes the impact of the report slightly, I think the thrust of the report is still valid.

MORE: - In fact, the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (ICC) site lists 193 Iraqi police and 901 civilians died in March for a total of 1094. Curiously, that number, while much higher than previous months, is lower than 6 months ago.

Don’t quite know what that means except we can only hope it’s a trend.

Almost a year and a half ago, I did a post advocating the awarding of Medals of Honor to the passengers of Flight #93.

Now that the movie United 93 is set to be released April 28, I think it is time once again to propose that those brave men and women who became our very first warriors in the War on Terror be given the highest decoration that can be given to an American citizen.

The criteria for awarding the Medal of Honor can be found here. The eligibility requirements are pretty straightforward. One of three conditions must be met:

a.) while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States;
b.) while engaged in military operations involving an opposing foreign force; or,
c.) while serving with friendly forces engaged in armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party.

The passengers of Flight #93 meet one of those criteria. Al Qaeda is certainly “an enemy of the United States” and by storming the cockpit, our people certainly “engaged in an action” against that enemy.

What always struck me about the story was that these people charged that cockpit knowing full well that with the pilots dead, there was no one else on board who knew anything about flying a jet. Even if they had succeeded in breaking into the cockpit and overcoming the hijackers, the chances were next to zero that they would survive. This is the kind of selflessness and willingness to sacrifice one’s life that you see on a battlefield when someone falls on a grenade to save their comrades or charges a machine gun nest to give his unit a chance to retreat.

I understand the problem with giving the Medal of Honor to civilians. And giving it to all the passengers even though some did not participate in the action would also be problematic. Then there is the real issue of fairness; if you are going to give a Medal of Honor to the passengers of Flight #93, why not the passengers of the other ill-fated jets not to mention honoring the otherworldly courage shown by deceased firemen and policemen who died in the Towers.

All of this is true. But in the end, the passengers of Flight #93 made a profound statement to the world and especially to our enemies; Americans will not go quietly, that there is a cost to attacking us. They were the American counterpart to that brave Italian Fabrizio Quattrocchi who shouted at his al Qaeda executioners before he died “Now I’ll show you how an Italian dies…”

It is not my intention to cheapen this award by advocating that we give it to so many. Nor is it my intent to offend current Medal of Honor winners who may have a much different opinion than mine regarding the efficacy of giving this award to civilians. And I understand that the Congressional Gold Medal was created specifically as a civilian counterpart to the military’s Medal of Honor.

Despite all, I think it is long past time that some significant acknowledgement of the sacrifice of the passengers on Flight #93 be made. History demands it. And the more than 3,000 people who perished that day would, I believe, demand it as well.

UPDATE

MacRanger has a superior post about the movie and why it’s important to remember Flight #93 and 9/11. Must read.

Also, here’s my American Thinker piece today on the film United 93 and how Hollywood is uniquely suited to put 9/11 into a cultural context.

Judith Weiss:

I have a feeling this movie will quietly “separate the men from the boys,” as it were. It will make the moonbats more moonbatty, and it will strengthen the resolve of those inclined that way. It will draw a line in the sand. It will do medium boxoffice and medium DVD sales but become kind of a “cult classic” in that it will be a cultural identifier for the group of people who want to win this war and feel surrounded by those who are hostile or indifferent. So it will be a quiet steady propaganda/morale booster for our side.

That’s my prediction - we’ll see if it comes true.

I think momentum for this film is building very quickly. On his show today, Rush Limbaugh mentioned that he had talked to someone who had seen it and said it was extremely well done. I believe there is a real hunger out there for some certitude in this war and seeing a film about 9/11 just might be the cultural touchstone that supplies it. In this respect, I believe that Judith is mistaken in her belief that the film will be a modest success. I think it has a chance to be a real sleeper, a blockbuster not just in red states but blue ones as well.

Ordinary Americans are so far removed from the academic, journalistic, and cultural elites who continue to try and tell them what they should think, how they should feel, and most importantly, what they should watch in films and TV. These Americans - the people who do the working, the playing, the caring, the laughing, the living, and the dying in this country are ready to make a statement. They might not be particularly fond of George Bush. They might be heartily sick and tired of what’s going on in Washington. They could even be losing faith in our ability to win through to absolute victory in Iraq. But they will not abide seeing the country run down by a bunch of cultural thugs who never miss a chance to tell them how stupid they are to be patriotic, God fearing, flag waving, morons.

That gets old after a while.

UPDATE II

Reader Richard Riley makes two salient points in the comments.

The first is that the passengers were, in effect, combatants in a war as much as the farmers were who answered the call to march to the Lexington green and stand up against the British. Further, I believe a “militia” was defined in most states as all adult males over the age of 18. In this respect, the passengers were in fact warriors fighting for America.

The second point Mr. Riley makes is that a civilian has been awarded the CHOH in the past. So while it may be against current rules to give the medal to civilians and allow for a unit type citation, cannot exceptions be made? Will these exceptions cheapen the award?

I am not the one to answer those questions. Perhaps we should ask living MOH winners what they think.