Right Wing Nut House

I used to wonder why Venezuelean President Hugo Chavez was able to stay in office following the recall vote held in that country in 2004. After all, the Venezuela economy is in the pits, corruption is rampant within his administration, he has callouses on his knees from genuflecting so often before Fidel Castro, and he has a crick in his neck from reaching back and patting himself on the back so much.

But Hugo Chavez has a secret weapon. He’s a comedian.

Witness this latest string of one liners from the government of la cabra que ríe (loosely translated: The Laughing Goat):

This public call to assassinate a head of state, considered a crime by all modern legislation, is prosecutable by its very nature. That is what the civilized world is expecting of U.S. authorities,”

“It’s a huge hypocrisy [for the United States] to maintain this discourse against terrorism and at the same time, in the heart of that country, there are entirely terrorist statements like those,”

In Washington, Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez Herrera also described Mr. Robertson’s remarks as “a call to terrorism.” He demanded that the United States take steps to ensure Mr. Chavez’s safety when he visits New York for a U.N. General Assembly meeting next month.

(Cue Laugh Track)

All this in response to idiotarian Pat Robertson’s fantasia about someone “taking out” Mr. Goat Face. Robertson sort of apologized today, saying at first he was “misinterpreted” but then later saying “Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement. I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the U.S. is out to kill him.”

Takes a fantasist to know a fantasist, I guess.

Hugo Chavez is a thug in the classic tradition of Manuel Noriega and his idol Fidel Castro. In Chavez Venezuela, there are disappearances, death squads, shockingly routine police brutality, executions without trial, and a host of human rights violations that would make one pine for Allende’s Chile.

Then there’s the little matter of his support for narco terrorists in Columbia. FARC is a group of communist guerillas who’ve been fighting the Columbian government for decades. They now make no bones about financing their war by growing and selling drugs. Chavez has allowed them to open training camps in his country and has looked favorably on their terrorist activities. The laughing goat has opened a western hemisphere franchise outlet that may as well be called “al Qaeda West:”

Cuban “advisors” currently are in positions throughout the Chavez government with some even masquerading as sports coaches. Before he was imprisoned in 1994, fellow Venezuelan Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a.k.a. “Carlos the Jackal”, whose long and sordid history of KGB/Cuban trained terrorism included acting as a specialist in terror for Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Lebanon, may be the original connection between Chavez and Islamic terrorists finding haven in Venezuela. Chavez has capitalized on his position as president of one of the five original founding members of OPEC to not only wage economic warfare against the US but to use his position to deal covertly with the anti-US Islamic members.

According to Chavez’s former personal pilot, Venezuelan Air Force Major Juan Diaz Castillo, Chavez told him, “…to organize, coordinate, and execute a covert operation consisting of delivering financial resources, specifically $1 million, to [Afghanistan's] Taliban government, in order for them to assist the al-Qaeda terrorist organization…making it appear as if humanitarian aid were being extended to the Afghan people.”

Furious that defectors have exposed his schemes, Chavez is demanding that the US refute news stories showing his links with and funding to terrorists. Chavez is especially bitter about a US News and World Report article “Terror close to home”. Chavez angrily said, “I challenge the staff of US News and World Report or its owners to come here and look for one single shred of evidence, to show the world one single shred of proof. The US government should respond to this call. (The magazine) supposedly cites information provided by US government officials. If a Venezuelan daily ran something as filthy as this, citing presidential officials here, my government would respond. It is a lie, but all the same, the idea has been planted. It is a strategy, to launch an offensive by concocting anything — an assassination, a coup, an invasion.”

Chavez has also proved himself a real laughing cowboy when it comes to making common cause with some of the filthiest terrorist enablers in the world. He’s made well publicized visits to Iran, North Korea, and Libya to proclaim solidarity and laugh it up with fellow comedians Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran, Kim Jung Il of North Korea, and Muammar Al-Qaddafi.

His own military tried to overthrow him in 2002 which is probably why he relies more and more on Cuban “advisers” salted throughout his government and security services. If Castro propped this guy up any more, they’d have to nail him to a couple of two by fours and stand him up in front of a microphone so that he can deliver one of his infamous 4 hour nationally televised speeches.

All this would rank him as one of the top ten funnymen of Latin America. But what really sets this goon apart from the run of the mill stand-up comics are his regional ambitions. The guy wants to unite Andean South America under his rule. To that end, he recently started a satellite TV network known as “El Jazeera:”

Chávez himself is well-known for his vehement opposition to the United States and his belief that capitalism is the root of all poverty in Latin America. He also believes in uniting every Andean country under a single socialist government, throwing all of his support behind a so-called “Bolivarian Revolution.” At the end of April he met with Castro and hundreds of regional communists in Havana before flying to Brazil for the first ever Arab-Latin America summit, where he met with the Qatari delegation to work on a deal to exchange footage and material with Al Jazeera, with whom Tariq Ali is connected. The deal is finally getting attention, earning Telesur the name “El Jazeera,” for good reason. Does it sound like anyone on this editorial board would seriously refuse anything the regime asks of them?

Clearly, this is a man begging for a CIA-backed coup. The question I would have before we get serious about ending this clown’s pompous dreams of glory is who or what is going to take his place?

Clearly, Castro has a stranglehold of sorts of Chavez’s government. When foreign thugs are the only thing standing between you and a military coup, it stands to reason that the person directing those foreigners will have tremendous sway over policy. Castro tried something similar in Grenada back in 1979, backing the bloodless coup carried out by Maurice Bishop, worming his way into the government there, and then staging a second coup in 1983 putting his stooge Bernard Coard in power. What Fidel didn’t count on was a United States President who wouldn’t meekly accept his brazen interference in the internal affairs of a Carribean country - after all, we reserve that right exclusively unto ourselves. So President Reagan sent thousands of troops into the tiny country, killed or captured a bunch of Cuban “construction workers” (who were armed to the teeth), and brought the wonders of freedom and democracy to the island.

The problem with trying a Grenada rerun is that the script would be different this time. Castro’s tentacles are so pervasive that it’s doubtful such a coup would succeed much less bring to power anyone we could work with in the United States. So for the moment, Chavez is relatively safe. I daresay the CIA will be working like crazy to unite the opposition to Chavez so that next year’s elections will bring to power someone who doesn’t look upon bloodthirsty jihadists as natural allies.

As for Pat Robertson’s diarrhea of the mouth, Jeff Goldstein had some prescient thoughts yesterday:

Though Robertson clearly overstated the case—at least insofar as he spoke publicly, which will allow Chavez to play up his already legendary paranoia and anti-Americanism by tying Robertson’s statement to the official government line—it is nevertheless imperative that we don’t lose sight of who the real villian is here. Unfortunately, I suspect our own press will do just that, aiding Chavez by playing up the connection between the social conservative base—understood to be Bush’s staunchest supporters (though that itself is debatable)—and Roberstson’s brand of religiosity. Which, while predictable, would be a shame, nevertheless.

After all, it’s quite possible Robertson read the WS piece and was simply heeding Halverssen’s advice (however rhetorically boneheaded his execution) that “persistent public exposure of Chávez’s increasing militarism, assaults on democracy, human rights abuses, and free speech violations, as well as his involvement with terrorist groups in South America and terror sponsors in the Middle East” is an important component in combatting his influence in South America and the Middle East.

Goldstein’s prescience about the media connecting Robertson and Bush was eery given he wrote this yesterday. At the same time, he’s spot on with his call for combatting this clown’s influence in the region. One thing we don’t need is a bunch of mini-Chavez’s strutting across the Latin American stage at this point. No sense in worrying about our rear (Central and South America) when we’ve got plenty on our plate sitting right in front of us in Iraq and the middle east.

UPDATE 8/26

Jay Tea is rethinking his criticism of Robertson in light of the discussion generated about President Goat Face.

And Raven at And Rightly So has a great post on the controversy asking “Who is Worse: Robertson or Chavez?”

Good question although I don’t think we could consider Robertson an enemy of the US - which is one of the points Raven makes. Read the whole thing.

And Stephen Green sums up nicely making a couple of points similar to ones I made here:

Not that there’d be much wrong with killing Hugo Chávez. If there’s one thing Ayn Rand got right, it’s this: No dictatorship has any right to exist; any free nation wishing to topple a dictatorship has the moral right (but not the moral obligation) to do so.

But Robertson is still an idiot. Do you know how tough it is to kill a country’s ruler? Do you know the kind of backlash that thing can lead to, especially when said leader has been using petrodollars to buy popularity? And doubly so when that leader has also been using Cuban know-how to keep dissenters from dissenting? Do you know of our nation’s awful history regarding South America?

Tom Bowler has an interesting link to a Mother Jones article from 1997 that references the recently unearthed whacko comments by George Stephanopouloos as well as other journalists who advocated the same thing!

It was a story waiting to be told for more than 3 years. And for some reason, the major networks - ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX - all gave it a pass.

That’s not to say that each of those networks hasn’t done their own “Special” on the 9/11 attack. CNN in particular, had a retrospective of that day that’s quite powerful. And CBS’s show “9/11″ which tells the incredible story of two brothers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet, who were doing a documentary on a New York Fire Department rookie’s probation period when they turned their camera skyward to catch American Airlines Flight 11 crashing into the World Trade Center North Tower is some of the most powerful TV you’ll ever see.

Similar shows have been on the other networks. But “Inside 9/11″ is different. I’ve had some bones to pick in the past with National Geographic magazine’s coverage of some issues, most notably their uncritical look at global warming and their wholesale adoption of Kyoto talking points. But the job done by everyone involved with the National Geographic’s searing and honest production of “Inside 9/11″ was, in this reviewer’s opinion, without parallel in television history.

The story of how we ended up at war with fanatical jihadists is extraordinarily convoluted. The barriers to making a documentary of the Islamist’s war on America beginning with the first World Trade Center bombing through the present day are staggering. You have a dizzying array of characters who leapt from place to place over that period so that under ordinary circumstances - reading the Final Report of the 9/11 Commission for example - it’s easy to get lost in the minutiae of trying to follow a coherent story line.

Using an absolutely brilliant set of conventions, the documentary told the story using three basic rules; reorient, repeat, and review:

1. Every single scene would orient the viewer as to where one was geographically by flashing an attractive high altitude photo which would zero in on where the action would take place and then move in for a closeup of that spot on the photo. Absolutely brilliant device in that it made it easy to keep track of where one was at any given point in the story.

2. The names of the Islamists along with a short phrase that described him when we were first introduced were repeated every time they appeared in a new scene. Mohamed Atta was “the engineering student.” He was identified as such, along with his name of course, every time he came back into the story. It made it so much easier to follow the course of events when one could recall the character and what he had been doing previously.

3. Every once in a while, the documentary would review a segment by summing up what was known to that point. This was especially effective the closer we got to 9/11 and the number of hijackers and “muscle hijackers” increased substantially. After repeating, the documentary would lay another layer of the conspiracy on top of what had already been shown. Far from getting repetitive or boring, it made it easier to watch.

This was the key to why the documentary was so powerful. By basically freeing the viewer from having to keep track of the timeline, the locations, even the names of the characters, the story itself hit home in a series of sledgehammer blows that left the viewer alternately shaking one’s head and shaking with rage at the incompetent fools who failed to protect us.

The “might have beens” with regard to 9/11 are also extremely well presented and done so in as apolitical fashion as possible. It helped that the people they had presenting expert commentary had no ax to grind - usually. 9/11 Commission staffer Deitrich Snell was really the only “expert” who could have been accused of that and his face time was limited. And the al Jazeera reporter was insufferably smug. Aside from that, the producer let the story take center stage and kept the expert’s commentary to a minimum.

The documentary would have been a triumph if all it had set out to do was tell the story of the hijackers and how they planned the attack as well as showing what radical Islam was and how it grew. But the producer didn’t stop there. The hijacker story made for fascinating television. But when the documentary began to tell the story of the victims and the heroes of that horrible day, the show entered a whole new realm, a place that television rarely goes; the sublime world of first person history.

Simply put, the producer puts you in the airplanes, in the towers, in the Pentagon and lets you watch as events unfold. It makes for some of the most searing, poignant, and startling television imaginable. In fact, I can’t imagine how it could have been done better.

There was less voice over narration and more first person accounts in this segment of the show. Stories told by survivors, by victim’s relatives, by eyewitness reporters who both reported on and became part of history that awful day all contributed to a viewing experience unlike anything shown on TV before. The stories of heroism were told matter of factly and with little embellishment thus allowing the deeds themselves to make one stand back and be in awe of the unselfishness and bravery of ordinary people.

The one discordant note I might sound - and I haven’t seen any reviews or other commentary yet - was what I considered the short shrift given to the firefighters and policemen whose acts of courage were brought out much better in CBS’s “9/11.” Of course, that documentary was about the firefighters actions that day. But it just seemed a little incomplete to have so few stories told of the 300 plus firemen who trudged up those stairs carrying nearly 100 pounds of equipment past thousands of people and never made it back down.

There will be other documentaries of 9/11 made. It’s hard to imagine anybody doing a better job. Perhaps a Hollywood film will be able to put more emotional context into the story. But I doubt it will give us such a broad overview of what the world was like and what we were like in the lead up to that terrible day. Nor will any Hollywood film be able to capture the immediacy and realism that “Inside 9/11″ was able to show us.

This is a documentary that will age well. It will have something to say to our children, to their children, and to children 100 years from now who wish to know how and where the war on terror started. Let’s hope that at that point, they will be looking at the conflict in the rear view mirror of history rather than living it every day like those of us who are survivors of that fateful day.

The 2 hour conclusion to the National Geographic Channel’s gripping documentary “Inside 9/11 will be shown tonight at 8:00 PM central time. If you missed the first 2 hour installment, you can see it starting at 6:00 PM central.

The first part of this extraordinary documentary left me saddened beyond words. The show makes absolutely clear that culpability for 9/11 lies with both Democrats and Republicans. And trying to parse which party is more to blame is an exercise in sophistry. You are beyond redemption if you watch this program and come to any other conclusion except that our policy makers for the last 15 years were all smug, arrogant, self-deluding fools. For a variety of reasons - political correctness and overconfidence stand out - everyone missed clear and unmistakable signs of the attack.

I found it interesting that the documentary included a brief 30 second snippet on Able Danger, alluding to the operation being run at Special Forces Command in Tampa as having a chart that unearthed 2 of the hijackers names and correctly tying them to al Qaeda in July of 2000. One wonders if this information was a late edition to the program or whether they had independent verification of Able Danger months ago.

This really is a don’t miss moment in television history. The program is eminently watchable with unbelievable graphics, photos, and footage with a storytelling style that emphasizes repeating the relationships between the hijackers, the radical mosques that they were recruited at, the major al Qaeda players, and other aspects of the attacks several times so that the viewer can easily follow the convoluted and confusing movements of the principals.

Commentary from experts is also fascinating although the reporter for al Jazeera is way too smug. At one point he asks “How do you impress a German? By being perfect,” in talking about Mohamed Atta’s student career in Germany.

I daresay the reporter didn’t impress too many Germans with that remark.

Don’t miss this show. And as soon as it’s available on DVD, I’m buying it.

UPDATE

I’m not the only one who noticed the reference to what could have been Able Danger in last night’s show. Rich Lowrey received this email at the Corner:

The National Geographic channel is running a two part miniseries on events leading up to and including 9/11. The first part was on this evening and did a wonderful job of tracing the rise of OBL and what is know about those involved in 9/11. It was a truly fascinating 2 hour show and was very informative.

You may want to contact the producers of the show and ask what info they have on this chart. They must have something because they included it in the program. Having followed the Able Danger story over the past few weeks I was taken aback by the casual and brief mention of the “chart” given to the special ops group.

Mr. Lowrey is looking for anyone else who might have noticed that bit or who might have additional information that would shed some light on this.

I think there’s a pretty good chance that they added the info in the last week or so once Able Danger came to light. However, there’s a chance that one of the commentators - several of which have written books about the intel leading up to 9/11 - may have gotten wind of the operation and put the information in their book, not knowing it was Able Danger.

The Able Danger story just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser…

The summer seems to have turned into a season of discontent for conservatives. As the President’s popularity plummets and support for the War in Iraq wavers, Administration policies that perhaps should have been questioned long ago but for the intervention of politics and the November election have come under attack. It’s hard to recall at this point the absolute necessity in supporting the President when the choice was between Bush and the conspiracists, fantasist’s, and simpering internationalists who wished to subsume American interests to the execrable anti-Americans at the United Nations

Far from being the monolithic entity we are accused of by our critics on the left, the center-right Shadow Media has been roiled in recent months by several high energy, high profile issues, revealing cracks and splits between religious conservatives, secular conservatives, neo-conservatives, and libertarians. The Terri Schiavo imbroglio was instructive in this regard in that it exacerbated tensions that already existed between the religious conservatives and libertarians while revealing the true fault lines in the conservative movement that exist between rationalists and theists.

But where these fault lines seemed to knit together and ultimately unite conservatives was at the water’s edge. Schiavo, intelligent design, the courts - all the issues that divided us were put aside once the debate turned to the War on Terror. The overarching need to support the President as Commander in Chief and our troops in the field against the hard left whose policy prescriptions would eventually lead, I believe, to an unthinkable terrorist attack on the homeland outweighed any quibbles we may have had with the Administration’s tactical and strategic thinking.

Sadly, this has now changed.

This was, perhaps inevitable. The rumbling on the right regarding the President’s less than conservative governance is nothing new and have recently exploded into full throated howls of protest about the President’s budgetary policies and social activism. And now, several high profile, influential conservatives have begun to desert the President on Iraq.

Greg Djerejian has recently written several scathing critiques of war policy both from a military and political standpoint. He’s called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and additional troops on the ground in Iraq in order to give the nascent Iraqi government a chance to succeed in a more secure environment.

John Cole and others (myself included) have broken with the Administration on their detention policies, believing them to be inhumane and political disastrous. And now one of the right’s more thoughtful and respected bloggers has pretty much come out and said the Iraq war is a failure and we need an exit strategy.

Professor Stephen Bainbridge doesn’t pull any punches in this critique of both the President’s policies and his leadership. The first shot across the bow is a doozy:

It’s time for us conservatives to face facts. George W. Bush has pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent. We control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and (more-or-less) the judiciary for one of the few times in my nearly 5 decades, but what have we really accomplished? Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected? Have we really set the stage for a durable conservative majority?

Meanwhile, Bush continues to insult our intelligence…

The good professor then lists the left’s talking points on Iraq and apparently adopts them whole hog:

After all, if Iraq’s alleged WMD programs were the casus belli, why aren’t we at war with Iran and North Korea? Not to mention Pakistan, which remains the odds-on favorite to supply the Islamofascists with a working nuke. If Saddam’s cruelty to his own people was the casus belli, why aren’t we taking out Kim Jong Il or any number of other nasty dictators? Indeed, what happened to the W of 2000, who correctly proclaimed nation building a failed cause and an inappropriate use of American military might? And why are we apparently going to allow the Islamists to write a more significant role for Islamic law into the new Iraqi constitution? If throwing a scare into the Saudis was the policy, so as to get them to rethink their deals with the jihadists, which has always struck me as the best rationale for the war, have things really improved on that front?

The trouble with Bush’s justification for the war is that it uses American troops as fly paper. Send US troops over to Iraq, where they’ll attract all the terrorists, who otherwise would have come here, and whom we’ll then kill. This theory has proven fallacious. The first problem is that the American people are unwilling to let their soldiers be used as fly paper.

First, as for WMD in Iran and North Korea, the professor’s question as to why we’re not at war with them will be answered soon enough. The mad mullahs in Tehran seem hell bent for leather on enriching enough uranium to build nuclear weapons. The fact that the Iranian theocracy has based it’s entire existence on the destruction of Israel has not gone unnoticed in Tel Aviv. I daresay it will become more and more difficult to restrain the IDF the closer Iran gets to realizing its nuclear ambitions. It should go without saying that any military action taken by Israel will by necessity embroil the United States in whatever crisis ensues. I would think that we’ll have more than enough war for anyone’s taste if that occurs.

As for Kim, he has impoverished his country to build a weapon that he can’t possibly use. North Korea’s improving trade relations with China as well as their dependence on Bejing’s food shipments may give enough leverage to the six party talks to pry those weapons from his hands. It’s still possible Kim will lash out at his neighbor to the south. But that eventuality is fading as both Russia and China - Kim’s major trading partners - follow the lead of the United States as we seek to make the Korean peninsula a nuclear free zone.

As for the justifications for war, Bainbridge uses the same narrow interpretation - the WMD argument - to take the Administration to task for changing the rationale for war as the left. In fact, UN Security Council Resolution 1441 lists a hosts of justifications for the invasion. The fact that some of our erstwhile allies whose assistance would have been appreciated and was much needed at the time were apparently bought off by Saddam’s oil for food bribery is not mentioned by the professor. Nor his well documented ties to terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden. Nor does the professor once mention 9/11 whose shadow will color American policy for the forseeable future.

On the subject of OBL, the professor channels John Kerry:

While we remain bogged down in Iraq, of course, Osama bin Laden remains at large somewhere. Multi-tasking is all the rage these days, but whatever happened to finishing a job you started? It strikes me that catching Osama would have done a lot more to discourage the jihadists than anything we’ve done in Iraq.

C’mon professor! We just lost 19 brave men in the mountains of Afghanistan who by most reports, were following up on a solid lead as to Bin Laden’s whereabouts. What would you want us to do? Send a couple of divisions into the mountains to tramp about aimlessly in some of the most forbidding terrain on the planet? Wherever Osama is hiding, he’s hardly inspiring anyone at this point. Consequently, his capture would not “discourage” the jihadists. And his death may in fact make him a martyr. Besides, he may very well be in an area where sending large bodies of troops would be politically impractical. General Musharaf of Pakistan has enough problems with restless provinces without allowing several thousand Americans to upset the delicate control he’s trying to maintain.

I will say that the professor’s take on the so-called “flypaper strategy” is spot on:

The second problem is that the fly paper strategy seems to be radicalizing our foes even more. For every fly that gets caught, it seems as though 10 more spring up. This should hardly come as a surprise to anybody who has watched Israel pursue military solutions to its terrorist problems, after all. Does anybody really think Israel’s military actions have left Hezbollah or Hamas with fewer foot soldiers? To the contrary, the London bombing suggests to me that it is only a matter of time before the jihadists strike in the US again, even though our troops remain hung out as fly paper in the Augean Stables of Iraq.

I agree that the fly-paper motif, while politically useful, has become a silly rationale for the reconstruction of Iraq. But this critique makes no sense:

Conversely, the latest news about that rocket attack on a US Navy ship in Jordan seems to confirm my concerns: “The Abdullah Azzam Brigades — an al-Qaida-linked group that claimed responsibility for the bombings which killed at least 64 people at Sharm el-Sheik in July and 34 people at two other Egyptian resorts last October — said in an Internet statement that its fighters had fired the Katyushas, bolstering concerns that Islamic extremists had opened a new front in the region.” Indeed, the NYT reports that: “The possible involvement of Iraqis and the military-style attack have raised fears that militants linked to Iraq’s insurgency may be operating on Jordanian soil.”

The very nature of our decision to take out Iraq presupposed an expansion of the war with jihadists. This was a given from the very start. We had a choice; we could have sat home and hoped against hope that radical Islamists would leave us alone or we could take the war to them and flush them out. Not flies to flypaper, professor but smoke to cockroaches. The expansion you speak of is the inevitable by-product of our success, however limited so far, in Iraq. Besides, the Islamist’s goal of destabilizing Arab regimes predates our involvement in Iraq. They hardly needed to be radicalized in that regard.

Finally, Bainbridge posits a bleak future for Republicans:

What really annoys me, however, are the domestic implications of all this. The conservative agenda has advanced hardly at all since the Iraq War began. Worse yet, the growing unpopularity of the war threatens to undo all the electoral gains we conservatives have achieved in this decade. Stalwarts like me are not going to vote for Birkenstock wearers no matter how bad things get in Iraq, but what about the proverbial soccer moms? Gerrymandering probably will save the House for us at least through the 2010 redistricting, but what about the Senate and the White House?

In sum, I am not a happy camper. I’m very afraid that 100 years from now historians will look back at W’s term and ask “what might have been?”

I’m happy to hear that the professor will refrain from totally abandoning the Republican party for the sandal wearers and incense burners of the left. That said, his analysis does not take into account that 2006 is still a long way off and 2008 may as well be in another quadrant of the universe. Unless something untoward happens to radicalize those soccer moms, demographics alone are trending so much the Republican’s way that it would take a seismic shift in the electorate for the kind of disaster predicted by the professor.

There is good sense to be found in the professor’s words. I’ve been writing for months that the President has taken a back seat on the war and it’s time for him to get out in front and lead again. The sporadic way in which Bush has gone about defending his policies has been his single greatest failing. And as many of us - including Professor Bainbridge - have been saying for months, it’s time to inject a dash of realism into the Administration’s war talk and start telling the American people exactly what the stakes are if we fail. The cost of defeat in Iraq is too horrible to contemplate. And while the professor’s critique does make some good points about the increasing sectarian nature of the Iraqi government, I believe we’re soon going to discover if some kind of liberal democratic system is compatible with Islamic law.

If as I suspect, it is, then the blood and treasure expended by the United States in Iraq will not be seen 100 years from now as a might have been but rather as the cheapest and most efficacious way to win the War on Terror.

With renewed scrutiny of the 9/11 Commission’s investigation due to the Able Danger revelations, several additional questions have been raised about why the Commission failed to include items in their timeline that seem relevant to the investigation as well as additional witnesses whose testimony was, for some reason, not taken.

Ed Morrisey has done a bang up job highlighting the arrest of Iraqi intelligence agents in Germany which occurred at the time that Mohammed Atta and other members of his Hamburg cell were planning the 9/11 attack in Germany. And two seperate memos - one from the State Department and one from the Department of Justice talk about the problems associated with the so-called “wall” set up between the Department of Justice and the FBI, something that many observers believe the Commission should have looked into by calling as a witness one of thier own members, Jamie Gorelick.

Now comes word that the Commission also failed to interview someone who could have told them much about Mohammed Atta. Rudi Dekkers owned the flight school where Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi trained. Dekkers also notes another, more peculiar aspect of the Commission’s investigation; he says they got the dates wrong of Atta’s training:

Atta and al-Shehhi first came to Huffman Aviation on July 3, 2000, Dekkers said.

They trained there until Jan. 2, 2001. Each man logged 200 hours of flying time, including lessons in flying commercial airliners.

Dekkers said he is upset that the 9/11 Commission omitted Able Danger’s findings from its report.

Dekkers said he has suspected the 9/11 Commission, appointed by President Bush to investigate the attacks, did not get all the information and that some things reported were wrong.

“The funny thing about it is, if somebody does an investigation like this 9/11 panel, aren’t they supposed to talk to everybody?” Dekkers said. “They never talked to me. Never.”

Dekkers also said that the 9/11 report incorrectly states the dates that Atta spent in Venice.

“If my involvement in the 9/11 report is not accurate, I believe that there is more stuff written that is not accurate,” Dekkers said.

Dekkers has been at the center of conspiracy theorists claims about 9/11 since the first hours following the attacks. In truth, reading about him on the web, he comes off as one of the strangest characters in the 9/11 narrative.

Revelations regarding a loose connection of Huffman Airlines to a CIA proprietary airline (a maintenance company for the CIA asset had a hanger at the same airport and Dekkers had a shadowy relationship with said maintenance company) as well as speculation regarding drug running by clients of Huffman (including an actual bust involving 43 lbs. of heroin found on a Huffman Lear Jet) have set the tin foil hat crowd all atwitter. And as this writer points out, there are several very strange coincidences involving Dekkers that could - maybe - lead one to believe that the CIA in fact was engaged in a covert operation to penetrate al Qaeda by sponsoring flight training for Muslim students. It’s a stretch, but the evidence “fits.” All that means, of course, that if you have a pre-concived idea, you can pick and choose your evidence to prove just about anything.

This brings us back to the 9/11 Commission and why they won’t talk to Dekkers. From reading about this fellow, it becomes apparent that he’s a pretty shady character. He was arrested and charged with fraud in 2003. And there’s been considerable speculation about where Dekkers got the money to buy Huffman in the first place. Rather than sounding like a CIA operative, he appears to be someone who could have been duped (or bribed) into aiding American intelligence.

As John Patten points out in his article, there certainly are some questions that need answering regarding Rudi Dekkers. However, none of those questions relate to any additional role Huffman Airlines played in the 9/11 narrative beyond the two hijackers taking flight training with the company. And this testimony by Dekkers before the House Judiciary Committee pretty much sums up whatever information he could have given to the Commission.

Should the Commission have interviewed Dekkers? If they were trying to do a thorough job the answer would have to be yes. But as we look closer at the Commission’s work in the wake of revelations about Able Danger, it’s becoming more apparent that the Commission in fact did a sloppy and slipshod job in tying up loose ends.

For that reason alone, Senate hearings may be necessary.

NOTE: One other fascinating aspect of Huffman Airlines has to do with the FBI being on their doorstep about 4 hours after the buildings came down on 9/11. I looked for the “FBI Investigative Timeline” mentioned in the 9/11 report to see if that document could have shed light on this rather curious bit of information. However, it was not in the report itself nor could I find an independent rendering of it. Perhaps it’s classified. If not and if you know a link to it, I’d appreciate it if you dropped me a note in the comments or email me.

Someone may want to explain how the FBI was able to trace Atta to the flight school so quickly. What piques my interest is that this would be the kind of information that Able Danger would have had at its fingertips. Did someone slip the FBI Able Danger findings immediately after 9/11?

As I said…curious.

Starting Sunday night at 8:00 PM central time and concluding on Monday evening in the same time period, The National Geographic Channel will air what promises to be an extraordinary fourt part mini-series entitled “Inside 9/11.”

Relying on video clips, audio, documents, and expert commentary, the show promises to be the most in-depth look at the attack to date. From what I’ve seen, the report pulls no punches about culpability. It skewers the FBI, CIA, DoD, FAA, both the Clinton and Bush Administrations, and makes clear that because very little has changed in the way we go about protecting ourselves, the probability is we’re going to be hit again.

The link above has a preview of the documentary.

From the looks of things, the government of the United States - you know, the one that is currently fighting a very public and very noisy War on Terror - is playing legal games with the immigration case of one Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA asset, admitted terrorist, and slimeball of the first order.

Mr. Posada Carriles, 77, entered this country illegally in April of this year and has requested asylum from the government. Both Cuba and Venuezala have different plans for the old spook. They both want to extradite Posada and try him for crimes in their countries. Given the reputation of both Castro and Chavez, my guess is those plans include plenty of truth serum and a long, painful session on the rack. And this represents a huge problem for the US government. Posada knows a lot of the dirty little secrets that the US would rather not have appear on 60 Minutes, or Dateline NBC, or even Entertainment Tonight. Posada knows where a lot of bodies are buried - literally.

He was convicted of blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976 killing all 73 people aboard. This was at a time when he was still a working CIA asset and FBI informant as declassified files make clear. In the 1980’s, he played a role in the US government’s war against communism in Central America. He was tangentially involved in training El Salvadoran death squads. He helped run guns to the contras in Nicaragua. He assisted with putting down leftists in Guatamala and Honduras. There is also some evidence - circumstantial at best - that he has profited in running drugs. In all of these endeavors, Mr. Posada was of great assistance to the United States government. Although not a paid CIA asset at this time, he worked closely with the agency in all of these countries.

The problem of course, is that there was very little effort made to differentiate between communists and run of the mill moonbat socialists or leftist radicals. In civil war, if you’re not supporting the government, the unfortunate result is that you’re seen as being on the other side. Many innocent people went to their deaths during that bloody period - people who had no ties to communist guerillas but who opposed the repressive methods of their governments. For this, Posada has much to answer for.

Posada’s real interest lay in getting rid of Fidel Castro. A Cuban by birth, he’s made numerous attempts to kill the dictator as well as being involved in several assassination plots. He was convicted in Panama of plotting to kill the Cuban dictator in 2000 and was later pardoned. That’s when he decided to retire and snuck into the United States, hired a lawyer, and evidently now believes he should be rewarded for his service to the government by being granted political asylum.

At a bond hearing in July, the Judge pretty much threw the book at the aging terrorist:

An immigration judge on Monday rejected a request by Luis Posada Carriles to be released on bond, ruling the Cuban exile must remain in detention until his case is resolved.

Judge William L. Abbott cited allegations that Posada is a terror suspect and concerns he would flee if granted bond.

Listing a series of terror allegations against Posada over the years, Abbott said even Posada’s participation in operations against Cuba in the early 1960s could be considered terror under today’s standards.

Abbott’s statement seemed to catch by surprise Posada’s lawyer, Matthew Archambeault, who interpreted it to mean the judge would include the Bay of Pigs invasion — sponsored by the U.S. government — as an act of terror under today’s definition of terrorism.

The judge came down hard on Posada. He said he would likely consider Posada’s conviction in Panama on charges of possessing explosives as a valid prior criminal record barring him from admission to the United States — despite a Panamanian presidential pardon last year that enabled Posada and three other exiles to walk free after being arrested in connection with an alleged plot to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Under immigration law, a foreign pardon does not protect a foreign national from being denied admission into the country.

The Department of Homeland Security has apparently just recently handed Posada’s attorney a victory of sorts by dropping some subpeonas against the New York Times for notes relating to an interview with the old terrorist in which he admitted setting off a series of bombs at Havanna hotels in 1997 that resulted in the death of 1 Italian tourist and injuring serveral others:

The Department of Homeland Security has dropped subpoenas against The New York Times and one of its writers that sought tapes of an interview with Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles in which Posada admitted masterminding the bombings of tourist sites in Cuba.

Withdrawal of the subpoenas amounted to a victory for the newspaper and for Ann Louise Bardach, who had refused to produce tapes, notes or transcripts related to the 1998 interview. George Freeman, the Times’ attorney, told The Herald Tuesday that Homeland Security ”just withdrew the subpoenas” and that no deal was struck between the newspaper and the government.

”It’s a huge relief,” Bardach said in a telephone interview.

A U.S. Attorney’s Office letter, dated Monday, did not rule out issuing new subpoenas “at a future point in time.

While DHS has filed copies of the articles in court and they’re technically admissable as hearsay evidence, many observers believe that Posada’s attorneys will challenge their legality anyway.

More delays, more foot dragging.

In the meantime, Posada is reportedly suffering from skin cancer and a bad heart. It would appear that the government may be dragging the case out in hopes that the old terrorist will succumb before they have to face what could only be described as a Hobbesian choice; do we extradite him to Venezuala or hand him over to Castro?

Back in May, Castro organized a “spontaneous” demonstration demanding the US hand Posada over to the tender mercies of the Cuban secret police. And President Chavez in Venezuala must be licking his chops at the prospect of getting his hands on Posada. The pure propaganda value of a show trial in which both the United States government and Posada could be put on trial has every leftist in Latin America swooning in anticipation.

In the meantime, our credibility on the terrorism issue is taking a huge hit. Not with the strutting peacock in Caracas or the murderous thug in Havanna, but with governments and citizens in the rest of Latin America. As I said back in May when Posada was first arrested, perception is reality:

There’s no doubt this is a lose-lose situation for the American government. There quite simply can be no good outcome to their dilemma. If we hand the old terrorist over to Chavez, his secret police will go to work on him and probably extract some extraordinarily damaging information about his unholy deeds done on behalf of the American government during the last 40 years. The resulting firestorm would ignite protests from Mexico City to Havana and severely damage our already tarnished image in Latin America.

In this case, I think the Bush Administration is going to have to bite the bullet and hand Posada over to Chavez. Better the strutting peacock than the thug in Havana. Before honoring any extradition treaty with regards to Posada however, the Administration should get an assurance from Chavez that the Venezuelans will not hand him over to Castro. That would truly be a disastrous turn of events and must be prevented.

The people of Latin America are watching this case very closely. And unless we start moving the legal process of Posada’s deportation along, we will leave ourselves wide open to charges of being hypocrites in the War on Terror.

At this point, that’s something we just can’t afford.

Is anybody keeping track of the number of revelations coming out in recent days on what the 9/11 Commission failed to include when giving us what was supposed to be the “definitive narrative” of the events leading up to that tragic day?

Bill Clinton’s team ignored dire warnings that its approach to terrorism was “very dangerous” and could have “deadly results,” according to a blistering memo just obtained by The Post.
Then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White wrote the memo as she pleaded in vain with Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick to tear down the wall between intelligence and prosecutors, a wall that went beyond legal requirements.

Looking back after 9/11, the memo makes for eerie reading — because White’s team foresaw, years in advance, that the Clinton-era wall would make it tougher to stop mass murder.

“This is not an area where it is safe or prudent to build unnecessary walls or to compartmentalize our knowledge of any possible players, plans or activities,” wrote White, herself a Clinton appointee.

Mary Jo White you may recall is the same former US Attorney whose memo to Janet Reno about the danger represented by the “wall” set up by the Department of Justice between intelligence and law enforcement went unheeded:

White knew that prevention should take place over prosecution if the US intended on keeping its citizens safe. She wrote her first memo objecting to the political decision to create an almost-insurmountable barrier that far exceeded the requirements of FISA as interpreted by earlier administrations. When that got her nowhere, she wrote a second memo, giving specific and prescient warnings about what would happen as a result:

That memo surfaced during the 9/11 hearings. But The Post has learned that White was so upset that she bitterly protested with another memo — a scathing one — after Reno and Gorelick refused to tear down the wall.
With eerie foresight, White warned that the Reno-Gorelick wall hindered law enforcement and could cost lives, according to sources familiar with the memo — which is still secret.

The 9/11 Commission got that White memo, The Post was told — but omitted any mention of it from its much-publicized report. Nor does the report include the transcript of its staff interview with White.

And here the Commission engages in its second covert act of omission in order to protect those who made it impossible for the intelligence community to act on its findings. What happened to the second White memo? Mary Jo White gets three mentions in their final report, all of them in the footnotes, and none of them refers to her warnings to Gorelick or Janet Reno. Nowhere does the Commission reveal her objections to the wall or her efforts to reverse the Gorelick decision.

What makes the discovery of this second memo so damaging to the 9/11 Commission is that the warnings contained in it were so spot on, so prescient of exactly what was going to happen if the Department of Justice continued with this idiocy that it’s an outrage both documents were not included in the 9/11 Commission Final Report.

Captain Ed:

Mary Jo White had a good understanding of the consequences of the 1995 policy change. She predicted this outcome five years before it happened. Second, if the policy was indeed misunderstood, who had responsibility for implementing it correctly and ensuring that the FBI understood it properly? The Department of Justice, of which the FBI is a part, and its leadership — Janet Reno and Jamie S. Gorelick.

Mohamed Atta and the other hijackers were able to fly under our intelligence radar precisely because the FBI was prevented from sharing information with the CIA and vice versa about the terrorist’s movements. And the evidence that a Clinton appointee realized the consequences of the wall only serves to open the floodgates to more questions about the author of the policy, 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, and why the Commission went out of its way to avoid criticizing both the wall and its enabler.

The question now has to be what’s the next step?

Clearly some kind of Congressional hearings are in order with the Commission itself on trial. Should all revelations about the Commission’s inadequacies be included in the hearing process? What about Able Danger? Or even more explosively, should the entire question about Iraq-al Qaeda connections be re-opened?

Captain Ed has coined the term “Omission Commission” to describe the current state of the 9/11 Commission’s credibility. I sincerely hope that these omissions are explainable due to sloppiness or shallow thinking and not some kind of cover-up or worse, an effort to discard information that did not fit into pre-conceived conclusions.

If the latter were the case, the Commission’s entire effort would have been a waste. This would necessitate the formation of a completely new panel to try and get at all the facts relevant to the attack and draw new conclusions and recommendations accordingly.

UPDATE

Austin Bay weighs in:

I’ll defer to my wife — who is a lawyer– on this point. [objections raised by DoD lawyers] She says attorneys are trained to say no and raise objections. They’ll hesistate because they anticipate an ACLU law suit and a DC political firestorm. A senior military commander will focus on the potential for attack — he knows the American people are “the final client” and will weigh the data with that in mind. So far there is no evidence that says any discussion between attorneys and senior commanders took place.

It’s time for the President to make a statement about Able Danger, even something as simple as “the lieutenant-colonel’s statements require further investigation.” Then, let’s investigate, with presidential authority.

Also, check out AJ’s fantastic AM roundup of the latest on Able Danger at The Strata-Sphere.. I have a feeling he’s going to be adding to it as the day goes on.

GOP Bloggers:

Remember, this was a Clinton appointee! And to whom did this memo go? Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, Clinton’s #2 at Justice and, incredibly, a member of the September 11 commission - a very conflicted member.

The Clinton administration clearly had a preference for inhibiting government intrusiveness, even in national security cases. As this story develops, its impact on Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions will be interesting to watch.

This brings up a general question of how much will Hillary’s chances be affected by Bill’s shennanigans? I tend to discount much impact for the simple reason most people have made up their minds already about the Clintons which, ironically, could be the biggest obstacle to Hillary even getting the Democractic nomination much less win the Presidency.

Anyone who has the stomach to sit down and actually read all of Adolph Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf is a better man than I, Gunga Din. I picked up a copy of “My Struggle” about 20 years ago in a used paperback book store and thought, why not? If I could make it through Communist Manifesto and it’s convoluted structure and fevered prose, I figured that Hitler’s screed would be a breeze. I had read extended excerpts in William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich as well as John Toland’s thoughtful biography of the monster Adolph Hitler so it’s not like I was totally unfamiliar with what I was in for as far as what Shirer aptly termed “turgid prose.”

After the first hour, I realized that Shirer was being kind . “Turgid” is an understatement. “Incomprehensible” would be more accurate. Hitler was laughable as a writer. There’s no organization, no grand concept, no structure to sentences, paragraphs or chapters. In short, it was a mess.

Hitler would have fit right in if he had been blogging (at least on this site).

I got through the first 100 pages and lost interest. But I bring up the book if only as an object lesson in what Hitler’s contemporaries thought of it; they had exactly the same reaction. And because they dismissed it outright, they paid for their shortsightedness with 40 million of their dead.

For contained in its 664 rambling, confused pages was Hitler’s plan to conquer Europe, subjugate the Slavs, destroy Russia, and annihilate the Jews. It was all there in black and white and the snobby intellectuals who looked down their noses at him ended up paying for their incredulity with the most destructive war in European history.

Even Hitler’s rise to power was outlined in the book. The alliance with big business and the army, the use of propaganda, the mysticism, the hearkening back to Germany’s pagan roots - it was all there. Never before in history has a leader offered such an exact blueprint of his rise to power or plans for conquest.

The book was written in 1925-26 when Hitler was serving time in prison for trying to overthrow the Weimer Republic. Ten years later, he began to methodically carry out plans laid out in the book almost as if he was going down a list and checking off items as he went along. Starting with the re-occupation and re-militarization of the Rhineland, through the Anschluss with Austria, the claims made on the Sudentenland, the elimination of a rump Czechoslovakian state, Poland and the Danzig Corridor, and finally the war that he planned to fight with first France, then England, and lastly the Soviet Union.

I point all this out about Mein Kampf because I’ve been struck when reading some liberal commentators who denigrate the very idea of a War on Terror by saying that we shouldn’t really take the Islamists dreams of establishing a Muslim Caliphate seriously nor should we worry about al Qaeda’s desire to start a global revolution that would sweep away the decadent west and put in its place an Islamic political hegemony that would dominate the world.

Is that too far fetched? Only if you’re not paying attention to what your enemy is saying:

With the fourth anniversary of the hot war between al Qaeda and the West approaching, it is interesting to see how al Qaeda’s strategy and objectives have evolved since the United States committed to engaging in open warfare.

The Word Unheard points us to an article in Spiegel Online by a Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein, who is believed to be a reliable source of information on al Qaeda. His main source for this article on al Qaeda strategy is none other than Saif al-Adel, al Qaeda’s military commander who is currently operating from Iran.

al Qaeda’s purported strategy can be broken down into seven “phases” which span from 2000 until 2020, at which time they believe the global Islamist Caliphate will be established and they will achieve “definitive victory.”

(HT: The Fourth Rail)

What’s remarkable about these phases is that so far, they have eerily followed what has happened in the Global War on Terror. For instance, the first phase known as “The Awakening” that was to last from 2000-2003 or more generally, from 9/11 to the fall of Baghdad, Islam was to have provoked the United States into fighting thereby “awakening” Muslims:

“The first phase was judged by the strategists and masterminds behind al-Qaida as very successful,” writes Hussein. “The battle field was opened up and the Americans and their allies became a closer and easier target.” The terrorist network is also reported as being satisfied that its message can now be heard “everywhere.”

I realize that many critics of the War on Terror point to this “why wake a sleeping bear” theme as good reasons not to have fought in either Iraq or Afghanistan. By way of an answer, I think it’s pretty clear that the Islamists would have kept attacking us and given a continued safe haven in Afghanistan, would have been virtually untouchable.

The second phase called “Opening eyes” is the period we’re in now and is scheduled to last until 2006:

Hussein believes this is a phase in which al-Qaida wants an organization to develop into a movement. The network is banking on recruiting young men during this period. Iraq should become the center for all global operations, with an “army” set up there and bases established in other Arabic states.

I have no doubt that our invasion and reconstruction in Iraq is causing Islamist recruits to pour into that country. The question is, what good is it doing?

So far, the Second Phase has been a failure. The Arab and greater Islamic Street has been essentially silent in its support of al Qaeda. The perception that al Qaeda’s cause is popular as hundreds of Islamists enter Iraq monthly is overshadowed by the tens of thousands of Islamic fighters who enter Afghanistan during the war with the Soviet Union. al Qaeda has generated new recruits, but not nearly enough to replace the experienced operators and managers that have been lost under the American onslaught in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Would that situation change if we were to leave Iraq in chaos? Not only would we destabilize the entire middle east, but we’d risk the scattered cells and small cadres of terrorists coalescing into an army if Iraq became a terrorist haven.

The third phase or “Arising and Standing Up” and last from 2007-2010. Emphasis would be placed on Syria:

The fighting cadres are supposedly already prepared and some are in Iraq. Attacks on Turkey and — even more explosive — in Israel are predicted. Al-Qaida’s masterminds hope that attacks on Israel will help the terrorist group become a recognized organization. The author also believes that countries neighboring Iraq, such as Jordan, are also in danger.

This, I believe, is where the folly of the left’s critique of the war lies. What we’re dealing with is clearly a trans-national, sophisticated, determined group of fanatics who have a plan and, unless things change drastically in the next few years, will have the funding to carry out those plans. Whatever damage we’ve inflicted on al Qaeda’s infrastructure, their plans are far enough along that elements are already in place to carry on.

The fourth phase will take place between 2010 and 2013 and will target Arab governments:

The estimate is that “the creeping loss of the regimes’ power will lead to a steady growth in strength within al-Qaida.” At the same time attacks will be carried out against oil suppliers and the US economy will be targeted using cyber terrorism.

Bill Roggio points out that phase three and four can essentially be condensed although the hope that democratic reform will blossom in most if not all of those countries could mitigate against al Qaeda’s plan to overthrow Arab regimes. This part of the plan has never been a secret but it should give impetus to both governments and reform movements in the Arab world to quicken the pace of change.

The final three phases of this plan reveal the Islamists ultimate goals:

The Fifth Phase This will be the point at which an Islamic state, or caliphate, can be declared. The plan is that by this time, between 2013 and 2016, Western influence in the Islamic world will be so reduced and Israel weakened so much, that resistance will not be feared. Al-Qaida hopes that by then the Islamic state will be able to bring about a new world order.

The Sixth Phase Hussein believes that from 2016 onwards there will a period of “total confrontation.” As soon as the caliphate has been declared the “Islamic army” it will instigate the “fight between the believers and the non-believers” which has so often been predicted by Osama bin Laden.

The Seventh Phase This final stage is described as “definitive victory.” Hussein writes that in the terrorists’ eyes, because the rest of the world will be so beaten down by the “one-and-a-half million Muslims,” the caliphate will undoubtedly succeed. This phase should be completed by 2020, although the war shouldn’t last longer than two years.

Whether or not you believe that this plan can be carried through to fruition is beside the point. The Islamists believe it. And that’s what makes them so extraordinarily dangerous. While Mr. Roggio points out correctly that the majority of Muslims have so far rejected the idea of a Pan-Islamic movement, I wonder if that attitude wouldn’t change if the United States were to be severely crippled by either one or more nuclear blasts or a biological attack that would destroy our economy. Would such a huge victory for al Qaeda galvanize the Islamic world and unite its factions under the Islamists banner?

I for one don’t want to find out.

A few days ago, I wrote that I believed we were at a critical point of the War in Iraq. I discussed several disturbing trends that pointed to a worsening situation on the battlefield as well as a steady erosion of the President’s support here at home. I thought that part of the problem was that the President seems disengaged from the war at this point, allowing surrogates to make his case for staying the course in Iraq for him. I pointed out that only the President can really grab the attention of the American people and hold it long enough to explain what the benefits are if we succeed and the catastrophic consequences of failure.

In short, it appears to me that things have been allowed to slide, to limp along with us pinning our hopes on the idea that an improvement in the political situation will alter the combat situation for the better. This is unacceptable. As is the notion being floated in Washington that political progress will be used as a cover to draw down our troops in what could only be termed a riverboat gamble that the country would then not slide into sectarian conflict, or worse.

Over the next week or so, I am going to expand on the themes I brought up a few days ago. It’s time for those of us who support victory in Iraq - call us “the bitter enders” - to step forward and demand that both the vital interests of the United States and the memory of those who have sacrificed so much in our name be honored in fighting this war to the bitter end and winning through to a clear victory.

THE POLITICAL CRISIS

There are two things the President can do almost immediately to improve the domestic political situation as it relates to the war:

1. Re-engage on the issue by getting in the face of the American people and not letting up.

During the campaign last fall, Bush drove his political opponents to distraction by making the war the central news story of the day every day. While the campaign for office is over, the campaign to convince the American people that what we’re doing in Iraq is vital to national security never ends. In this respect, the American people need to be told the hard truth about Iraq instead of the rose colored glasses version we seem to get when ever Rumsfeld or Cheney opens their mouths about the war. Yes, we like to hear about all the schools being built and hospitals re-opened but we also need to hear about the growing movement for Shia autonomy in the south, the failure of our recent offensives in the Sunni triangle to make a dent - a real dent in the potency of the insurgency, the sectarian militias springing up all over the country that’s so reminiscent of Lebanon of the 1970’s, and the increasing deadliness and sophistication of our enemy’s attacks.

I personally would like to see a little more than stiff, diplomatic notes delivered to Syria and Iran for their meddling in both the politics of the country and their support for the murderous jihadists who are responsible for killing most of the civilians in Iraq. It’s past time that some kind of warning - short of an ultimatum but stronger than the demarches that we dole out on a regular basis - be given to both Iran and Syria. And for good measure, call in the new Saudi Ambassador and remind him that while we value Saudi friendship (and a wide open oil spigot) political reform has a nasty habit of being contagious and that a more intense effort to close their border with Iraq to terrorists would be appreciated.

Being brutally honest is only a start. The President must draw a picture of what a failed state brimming with fanatical jihadists smack dab in the center of the middle east would do both to our regional security interests and security for our homeland. These are the consequences of failure. At the moment, the cut and run crowd is in the ascendancy because there’s no counter to their argument that at least once we’re out, Americans will stop dying.

Henry Kissinger sums up the consequences succinctly:

Because of the long reach of the Islamist challenge, the outcome in Iraq will have an even deeper significance than that in Vietnam. If a Taliban-type government or a fundamentalist radical state were to emerge in Baghdad or any part of Iraq, shock waves would ripple through the Islamic world. Radical forces in Islamic countries or Islamic minorities in non-Islamic states would be emboldened in their attacks on existing governments. The safety and internal stability of all societies within reach of militant Islam would be imperiled.

In other words, failure in Iraq would be a massive blow to our efforts in fighting the Global War on Terror.

2. De-fang the political opposition here at home.

The critique of the Administration’s war effort by the political opposition has now reached a point where their only idea is to get out immediately, regardless of the situation on the ground. If they could be made to look like the fools that they are, there’s a chance that the President can regain some lost ground in approval for his handling of the war.

This is a political problem. As such, it requires a political solution. Past war presidents FDR and Lincoln were never above playing politics when the aim was to help the war effort. In fact, one could say that the President’s political position is much more analogous of Lincoln’s dilemma in 1863 than any period in FDR’s presidency. Support for the war in the spring of 1863 was at a low point following the bloody defeat of federal forces at Chancellorsville. The clamor from Copperhead Democrats to end the conflict and “negotiate” with the South was at its height. Instead of trying to appease the Copperheads, he had their leader Clement Vallandingame arrested and appealed to his most radical Republicans in Congress for support. The crisis passed with Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg later that summer.

Lincoln showed that he was willing to do anything to prosecute the war successfully. He ruthlessly stamped out opposition and appealed to bitter end Republicans out of political necessity. Surprisingly, these strong actions translated into political victory in statehouse elections in Ohio and Indiana later in the fall.

Some kind of bold stroke is similarly necessary now. And the President can start by firing his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

As readers of this site know, I’ve been agitating for getting rid of Rumsfeld for almost as long as this blog has been in existence. If what we heard was true, that Rumsfeld offered to resign following the Abu Ghraib revelations and the President refused to accept it, then this constitutes the biggest blunder of the War to date. Sacking Rumsfeld for Abu Ghraib, not to mention the breakdown in discipline that led to torture at other detention sites that seems to indicate an endemic problem and not a series of isolated instances, would have gone some ways in defusing the torture issue that despite the President’s nonchalant disregard, seethes below the surface of the political debate.

Greg Djerejian sums up the case against Rumsfeld nicely:

Mr. President, this hubris-ridden, incompetent Secretary is increasingly becoming a major liability to you. Think beyond Andoveran codes of loyalty and such. This isn’t the Andover cheerleading squad or Skull & Bones. It’s really, really important–the ramifications of failure in Iraq are immense–and so the effort must be seen through with steely resolve. If a key member of your team doesn’t understand that an Iraq characterized by civil war or dueling militias is a strategic and moral failure, he must be taken off your team. National interest must trump any residual loyalty. Again, how can we be talking about troop pull-outs when, in the capital city itself, the mayor is sacked in some putsch, one cannot drive safely from the airport to downtown, and dozens of Shi’a police recruits are massacred by Sunni insurgents? Again, this is in the capital itself. Not to mention there is a roiling insurgency throughout the strategically critical Sunni heartland (as well as recent, and very alarming, moves towards Shi’a autonomy in the south of which more later)? Was this meant as some tactical signal to the Sunnis that they need to start playing ball or we will leave them to the bloodthirsty revenge-minded Shi’a? Absurd. Again, an Iraq characterized by large scale sectarian killings will be a strategic defeat for America, as well as a massive moral failure. Thinking conservatives cannot allow this to happen. We supported Bush because we thought he was likelier to provide serious war leadership with the rock-gut conviction to see it through even past ‘08 (hopefully handing off to his successor a project moving in positive direction). If his Defense Secretary is not on this page anymore, his Defense Secretary must go.

Is there a chance that the entire dynamic of the political debate will change as a result of this one move? Hardly. However, a Clintonian stroke of putting someone from the opposition party - someone in the defense establishment whose bona fides are so strong that at the very least, some of the acidity of the debate would dissipate, could split the political opposition into the cut and run camp and the war winning camp. The critique of the war would remain the same, but the dynamic would change as the debate would shift to war winning strategies rather than pure political naysaying.

And if that doesn’t happen? Then at least the President would have gotten rid of someone who should have been canned long ago.

There are other things the President can do to alter the political situation in the country so that the tough, slogging work in Iraq will have the political backing of the American people. But these two things will give the President a head start and can be done immediately.

NEXT: The Military Crisis