Right Wing Nut House

I’ll confess to not being an expert about much of anything. And being a “generalist” has many, many drawbacks when trying to write coherently about the War in Iraq. I’ve never served in the military so I can’t speak to what our soldiers are enduring on the ground as they try to stamp out what appears to be a never ending insurgency that continues to take its toll in American lives and treasure. I was never much of a “policy wonk” so it’s difficult for me to write about how the White House and Pentagon are formulating and carrying out our policy there.

All I can do is read. So for 10-12 hours a day I sit in front of my computer as the world tries to squeeze itself through my little 17″ monitor and enlighten me. I try to cram as much information and opinion as I can on a wide variety of issues that interest me. But what takes up most of my day is reading about the war.

I don’t write about Iraq as much as I used to because frankly, I’ve been pretty confused. I’ve contented myself with writing about the fight here at home between right and left believing that it’s vitally necessary to counter what Michelle Malkin so aptly describes as “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” seeing in that disease a real danger to both our continuing effort in Iraq and the poisoning of political discourse that makes governing here at home so much the harder.

I think what I am good at is detecting and recognizing trends. It’s quite simple, really. Flood your mind with enough information and the most fantastic computer ever built - the human brain - does the rest. As long as you arm yourself with a good enough bias detector (and B.S. detector) there really is nothing to it. And the trend I’ve been most concerned with lately has a dual track; the progress the anti-war left is making in playing to the war weariness of the American people and the situation on the ground in Iraq that is not improving and, in some ways, is worsening.

I’ve taken the President to task before on this site for not putting the war front and center on his agenda. In fact, the problem the President now has is if he tries to refocus the American people’s attention on Iraq and why we are there, he can rightfully be accused of playing politics with the issue. His approval rating on Iraq is going down because he has abandoned the issue to his political and ideological opponents. You can have administration spokesmen giving speeches all over the country and Congressional Republicans talking about the war until they”re blue in the face. But no one can grab the attention of the American people like a President speaking about war. The people are anxious and not a little confused. With the left wing in full cry against the war and the President personally along with continuing and in some respects escalating violence in Iraq, the people need to hear their President constantly, patiently, and doggedly explain why we are there, what losing the war would mean, and defining the rough parameters of victory.

It’s not that the American people don’t know these things already. It’s that they need to hear it again and again to buttress their faith against the faithless and steel their resolve against those whose major domestic concern is a humiliation of the President personally and the United States in general.

The left’s effectiveness in instilling war weariness in the public is the result of a constant drumbeat day after day of saying exactly the same thing; the President lied about WMD in Iraq. From this, all other critiques of the war resonate because, according to polls, people are now convinced this is so. Amplified as it is by a sympathetic media, the left’s message is falling on fertile ground because of the President’s unwillingness to take his critics head on, unashamed and without apology.

Once the President’s honesty about the reasons for going to war is successfully questioned, it’s simply a matter of people picking and choosing what other criticisms of the war they wish to believe. Is this a war for oil? For Haliburton? For Israel? To “finish the work” of his father? Take your pick. Once the President’s credibility is destroyed, anything is possible.

Mark Noonan points out the consequences of the President losing his credibility:

For the longest time I didn’t care much about the conspiracy theorists - putting them down as harmless nuts. This was a mistake on my part: a lie is a lie, and all lies are bad. We’ve become used to lies here in the United States - indeed, in a lot of cases a lie is much more easily believed than the truth. As it relates to our War on Terrorism, there is a built-in ability to believe a story about the President lying to get us into Iraq. We should have resolutely fought against the conspiracy theory lies right from the beginning, rather than allow them to become woven into the fabric of our society.

The price we are paying for allowing lies to gain currency is being paid in blood - the blood of our soldiers, as well as the blood of innocent non-combatants. You see, the people who believe conspiracy theories about the war might seem like laughable lunatics to most of us, but to our enemies they seem rational beings who, because of MSM puff-pieces on them, represent the average American - and in representing the average American, they play up to enemy propaganda about us. Unlike our domestic leftists, our Islamist enemies are not at all shy about stating their conspiracy theories in public - the theory that Mossad carried out 9/11 is underground in the United States, but it is front page news in the Arab world…to have paranoid theories “confirmed” by the statements of Americans protesting against President Bush and the war is like water in the desert to terrorists in Anbar province…and their masters in Damascus and Tehran.

This is why the Cindy Sheehan campaign is starting to pay dividends for the left. Contained in her “plea” for the President to “explain” why her son died is the accusation that he lied in order to start a war. In fact, the Sheehan drama is a two ring circus; one ring is the grieving mother seeking answers to her questions about why her son had to die. The other ring is the fiery, anti-war activist that accuses the President of doing the bidding of Israel and the oil companies. The first ring speaks to the fairness and compassion of the American people. The second ring feeds their doubts about the President’s motives.

I still think Mrs. Sheehan will self-destruct - especially now that apparently every loon who wants to get his face on TV is descending on Crawford. This will turn the “Cindy Sheehan show” into something similar to what happened to the right during the Terri Schiavo tragedy. The extremists will take center stage and the American people will turn away in droves.

This won’t solve the President’s political problem of re-invigorating the war effort here at home. For that, he could use some help with good news about Iraq both from a military and political standpoint. At the moment, neither seems likely.

For the last several months, the analysis I’ve read from people whose opinion is generally respected by both the left and the right has slowly been changing from cautious optimism to growing alarm over several trends in Iraq. They include:

1. An insurgency that is getting more sophisticated in their tactics and more deadly in their ability to inflict casualties. This sophistication includes being able to mount attacks aimed at causing political damage to the new government as well as escalating sectarian tensions.

2. A growing dismay at the lack of concrete progress in the training of the Iraqi army.

3. A deepening worry over sectarian militias that call to mind Lebanon’s fractious past.

4. The real possibility that despite the best efforts of government and religious leaders, civil war is growing more likely.

5. The political struggle over the form and content of the Iraqi Constitution that now appears will result in a delay in approving the document.

6. The battle at home over troop withdrawal which will test both the unity of the Administration as well as the President’s ability to resist the impulse to leave too soon.

Greg Djerjian on many of these trends I outlined above:

But to win this thing we need to be decimating the enemy–not disrupting him–with overwhelming force. And we simply don’t have that amount of force in theater. So we are doing the best we can with the resources at hand (do we really need all those troops in Germany, by the way?), scraping by really, and hoping against hope that the political process will improve and help us turn some corner in the not too distant future.

But hope isn’t a strategy, and to all those (and there are more and more) ready to give up (or fakely declare victory in that we weren’t strictly ‘defeated’ on the battlefield) and say to hell if Iraq degenerates into civil war, we gave it our best shot–let me be clear. An Iraq mired in large-scale sectarian conflict, let alone full-blown civil war, would be a cluster-f*&k of epic proportions. Why? Because it would mean a failed or failing state smack in the center of the Middle East. We would have created an embittered Sunni para-state, a terror haven really, roiling and destabilizing the region (such an unstable state of affairs would help foster radicalization of Shi’a behavior also, of course, in ways not helpful to the U.S. national interest).

Iran, Turkey, Syria and even Saudi Arabia and Jordan would have direct interests implicated too, of course. Need I sketch this out more? (Hint: Borders wouldn’t be treated with any sanctity by the neighbors, friends). The point is, leaving Iraq to fend for itself without a viable, stable polity in place would be a disaster–for the thousands and thousands (coalition and Iraqi alike) who will have died in vain, for the region, for our national prestige, for the war on terror generally.

Does the President have the political courage not to mention the political skills necessary to dramatically increase troop strength in Iraq? What kind of resistance would he get from the military? Would an increase in troop strength only serve to heighten sectarian tensions, feed the insurgency, depress the Iraqi armed forces, and embitter the average Iraqi citizen? Or has the military situation made all those concerns ancillary to the need to establish some semblance of order so that an elected Iraqi government can function?

This is why I think we’re in the biggest crisis of the war. We’re at a crossroads. And the decisions taken over the next few months by the President will determine whether the war is a success or failure. What makes me a little bitter is that this is taking place as the President seeks to put the war to the side as he pursues domestic concerns. The war may be a political downer for the White House. But we’ve got 138,000 men and women in Iraq who don’t give a fig about politics. They only want to get the job done and come home. And if getting the job done means increasing troop strength in the sort term then so be it.

The long and short of it is we need the President to do his job. I find it hard to imagine that FDR or Lincoln could have endured as political leaders if they had sought to sweep the war they were waging under the rug. If the President’s hope is that the American people will forget about the war, someone should dash that hope for him immediately. His opponents and the press won’t let that happen. If that ’s the case then the President has a choice; he can either treat the war with the seriousness and focus that it deserves or he can continue on as he is now.

It’s no longer a question of whether or not he should be more active in dealing with the war. It’s a question only of whether he will attempt to take control of events and guide the country to a far distant shore where Iraq is a peaceful, democratic state or whether events will instead control him. If it’s the latter, we will have no chance of succeeding. The former, we wing big.

There really is no other choice.

God, how I hate this war.

Even though I still believe that it was right decision to liberate Iraq. Even though I still support the reconstruction efforts going on in that tragic, bloody, terrorist infested, miserable strip of land where the killing goes on and on. And even though I still support the President and his announced policy of bringing democracy to Iraq in the belief that the autocratic and dictatorial regimes elsewhere in the Middle East will come crashing down as ordinary people realize that ultimate power rests in their hands.

After saying all of that, I now believe it’s time to bring to account those who through their brutish and beastial treatment of prisoners, have besmirched the name and reputation of the United States and brought shame and ignominy to their comrades in arms and their fellow citizens.

This piece in the Washington Post, based on eyewitness accounts, classified documents, and interviews with investigators, paints a picture so at odds with what America should stand for - even in a brutal war for survival - that it should give all of us who still support this war and its objectives pause to reflect on a fundamental question: Is this really what we want our soldiers doing in our names to protect us?

Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.

It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.

What this article makes crystal clear is that these methods of interrogation are not the product of the sick imaginings of a few sadistic soldiers. They did not spring into being in a vacuum. What the reports make unambiguously clear is that the soldiers believed the interrogation techniques were approved - approved at the highest levels in their chain of command.

The implications of this are too horrible to contemplate. It means that these are not the “isolated incidents” that I and most others who have been defending our detention policies over these many months have been excusing. It also means that there have been deliberate and systematic violations of both US law and the Geneva Conventions in the interrogations of prisoners.

And it means that those responsible for these policies must be brought to justice. Not just the perpetrators of the torture, but those who formulated and approved whatever guidelines the soldiers were using to justify these barbarous and unholy acts.

No matter where it leads. No matter who is involved. Justice must be done in order to restore some honor to the good name of the United States and its military. To do less dishonors the memory of those who have already died in this war as well as all those who we ask to put their lives on the line in order to protect us.

My own role as an enabler of this behavior has been unconscionable. By turning a blind eye to previous intimations of this organized and approved assault on simple human decency, I have, in a small but significant way, empowered those who have cynically used my support for the war and the President’s policies to literally get away with murder.

No longer. I am not going to give the benefit of doubt to an out of control interrogation process that treats human beings - even terrorists - as beasts to be beaten and murdered and pass it off as national policy. I didn’t sign on for that. I’m sure you didn’t either.

It’s one thing to be hard in war. It’s one thing to be pitiless in the prosecution of it. But its quite another thing to violate all tenets of civilized behavior in acheiving your objectives. Even in war, the ends cannot justify the means. If you believe that it does, then ask yourself what kind of country you will have at the end of it? Will it be the kind of country you can live in with pride? Or will history itself remember us with scorn and derision for abandoning the very principals we were fighting to protect.

There may be extreme circumstances where torture is justified. This incident wasn’t one of them. And if, as I now believe, these violations occur routinely and as part of a sanctioned interrogation process, then it is past time for a thorough, impartial, and independent investigation of the facilities where we house the prisoners, the soldiers and intelligence agents who carry out the questioning of detainees, and the interrogation policies and procedures formulated by the military and civilian elements in our government.

If the only way to make such an investigative body truly independent would be to allow international representation then reluctantly, I would have to agree with that stipulation. What’s at stake here is the very soul of America and in a larger sense, the values for which we in the west are fighting to preserve. And while I doubt such a body could remain above the political fray given the explosive nature of the subject matter and the division in our national polity, it must nevertheless go forward. Let the American people and indeed, the rest of the world decide who is playing politics and who is seeking the truth.

John Cole, who has been out front on this issue since reports of the torture and mistreatment of prisoners first began to surface, sums up the problems:

I really want to believe that this is just a few rogue soldiers in all of these cases, but the evidence keeps pointing back to approved interrogation techniques (and in fairness, much of this went well beyond approved methods), a sense of ‘anything goes’ because of the muddled legal status of the detainees, a general disregard in the chain of command, a chain of evidence linking policies to different detainment centers, willing participation by clandestine services working in concert** with military intelligence officers and being given free reign with prisoners and junior level enlisted men, and it stinks. It smells like institutional rot, and at the very least a pattern of negligence and callous disregard, something even the military appears willing to admit.

I’m forced to agree with Mr. Cole that what we’re looking at is nothing less than an institutional problem in the military. I cannot believe that all of these soldiers and CIA agents are members of some sadistic cult. They simply must be enabled by a culture that either approves of these methods or turns a blind eye during the practice of them. Either way, it’s high time we tear the whole rotten system down and put something else in its place. Anything - even turning the detainees over to civilian control - would be preferrable to this canker on the body politic that, if it continues to fester, will prevent us from winning this war and at the same time, inure us as a people to the brutality practiced by our sons and daughters in our name.

UPDATE

Attention trolls: I have an extremely thin skin on this issue. Any personal attacks, any off topic comments, any gloating, anything that I don’t much care for will be deleted and the commenter banned. You can disagree with what I’ve written. If you can’t do it in a civil manner, don’t bother to comment.

It’s my blog. If you disagree with this policy. Get your own damn site.

When Adolph Hitler was getting ready to invade Poland in August of 1939, he faced something of a dilemma. While he realized that both France and England would probably be forced to declare war on Germany for the violation of Poland’s sovereignty he was planning, his real concern was the reaction of the Soviet Union who had also given some security guarantees to the Polish state.

Hitler did not want to repeat what he saw as the Kaiser’s biggest mistake - Germany having to fight a two front war. And while he was fully prepared to invade Poland at any cost, he thought he saw an opening in late August to peel the Soviets away from the Anglo-French alliance. He sent his Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop to Moscow for what has to be considered the most cynical diplomatic move of the 20th century. Within a few days, Ribbentrop had negotiated a trade agreement on the most favorable terms to Germany along with a Non-Agression pact between the two tyrants. In addition, there was a secret protocol to the treaty that gave Hitler carte blanche to attack in the west and allowed Stalin a free hand in the Baltic. Hitler even threw in a large slice of Poland to sweeten the pot for Stalin.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed on August 29 in Moscow. Less than 72 hours later, Hitler invaded Poland.

The non-agression treaty didn’t save Stalin, of course, as Hitler planned to break the pact just as soon as the military situation in the west was settled. After occupying most of Europe by defeating the French and bringing Great Britain to its knees, he ended up invading the Soviet Union in June of 1941.

Hitler used the non-agression pact with Stalin as a ruse to improve his military prospects in the west and allow him time for the strategic situation to ripen in the east.

And now both Iran and North Korea, the remaining members of the “Axis of Evil”, are saying they’ll give the United States what we want from them - no nukes - in exchange for security guarantees.

Does anyone else get the feeling that history may be repeating itself?

Both countries would be tough nuts to crack in a military sense. Both have large modern armies that would make invasion extremely costly. Only a coalition of Europeans and friendly Arab states would be able to take down Iran. And some similar coalition would be needed to overrun North Korea.

And yet the danger of either one of those nations getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction is so great that there is a sense of urgency in preventing them from achieving their goal. In the case of Iran, we’ve allowed the so-called EU3 composed of Great Britain, France, and Germany to negotiate with the radiocative Mullahs in Iran to stop their uranium enrichment program. Iran has continously refused to do this despite attractive trade concessions offered by the EU. Now apparently, the Iranians may be willing to forgo their enrichment program in exchange for certain “guarantees:”

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator said his European counterparts have proposed a guarantee that Iran will not be invaded if Tehran agrees to permanently halt uranium enrichment, the state-run news agency said Sunday.

Hasan Rowhani said the proposal is being discussed by Europeans and includes several important points such as “guarantees about Iran’s integrity, independence, national sovereignty” and “nonaggression toward Iran,” the Islamic Republic News Agency said Sunday.

“If Europe enjoys a serious political will about Iran’s nuclear fuel cycle, there will be the possibility of understanding,” the agency quoted Rowhani as saying in a letter to outgoing Iranian president Mohammad Khatami.

Does this mean that Iran would halt their drive to produce weapons grade atomic material? Not exactly:

Meanwhile, Iran’s top officials were to meet Sunday evening for a final decision on when to resume work at a reprocessing center in Isfahan, said Ali Agha Mohammadi, spokesman for Iran’s powerful Supreme National Security Council.

“Europe has only a few hours, up to when the council meets, for the proposal. If it does not arrive by that time, the council will discuss breaking the ice” on Iran’s stalled nuclear program, Agha Mohammadi told state-run radio.

Of course, the Iranians will be guided by the principals of non proliferation - for a while anyway:

“Today or tomorrow we will send a letter to the IAEA about resumption of activity in the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. “We would like to unseal the equipment and carry on the activity under the IAEA.”

Asefi said IAEA inspectors already were in Tehran, which means a short flight to the central Iranian city of Isfahan.

“Since our nuclear policy is transparent and legal, we will start activity upon delivering the letter to the IAEA, with the inspectors in attendance,” Asefi said.

Later Sunday, Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the Vienna, Austria-based IAEA, told the AP the agency had not received any official notification from Iran about resumption of activity at the Isfahan facility.

Given the cluelessness of the International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA) in the past regarding Kim Jung Il’s “now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t” nuclear weapons program, is it any wonder we don’t have much faith in the Iranian statements regarding how benign their enrichment program is?

And speaking of the North Koreans, while the 6 party talks have resumed, Kim has already made it clear that the way to a nuclear free Korean penninsula is a guarantee by the United States not to invade:

Striking a peace treaty to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-1953 Korean War would resolve the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula, a spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

The comments, carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency, came before a meeting of regional powers in Beijing on Tuesday for talks aimed at dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programmes in exchange for security guarantees and economic assistance.

“Replacing the ceasefire mechanism by a peace mechanism on the Korean peninsula would lead to putting an end to the U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK, which spawned the nuclear issue and the former’s nuclear threat,” a foreign ministry spokesman said in the report carried by KCNA.

According to this very interesting analysis via the Army War College, the North Korean regime is building nukes to ensure its survival but also to prove itself a serious, grown up country that deserves more respect than it’s getting. As soon as they stop saying that Kim wasn’t born but that he “fell from heaven” then I’ll start taking them seriously.

That said, it’s obvious that North Korea too wishes that the United States military not invade. In exchange, they’re willing to forgo building nuclear weapons, sign a peace treaty, and generally act like good little members of the international community.

Or, they plan on lulling the United States and the rest of the world to sleep while they continue to evade the weak efforts of the IAEA to keep the lid on their nuclear program, something they have a lot of experience in doing.

The point here is that both Iran and North Korea have no incentive whatsoever to stop building nukes as long as the rest of the world goes along with their “non-agression” plans. Once the world community turns their backs on Kim and the mad Mullahs, I have no doubt that they plan to resume their weapons programs. In the meantime, the rest of the world gives itself a stiff neck by trying hard to pat itself on the back for it’s work in stopping the “Axis of Evil” from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as the ruling Guardian Council by all reports have just fixed a Presidential election so that a handpicked hard line terrorist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could be elected. Recent statements from the President-elect include a promise to carry the Islamic revolution to “every mountaintop” as well as his almost unnoticed campaign to militarize and radicalize the country by placing hard line allies in key positions.

Iran is preparing for a war and wants a treaty of “non-agression?”

The news that Iran will continue with its enrichment program will not sit well with the Israelis who have made it very clear that a nation that has consistently called for its destruction will not be allowed to build an atomic weapon. Nor can we in the United States afford the luxury of allowing a state that openly supports terrorist groups like Hamas and Hizbollah not to mention their demonstrated affection for al Qaeda to build a nuclear weapon that could end up in the hands of terrorists who wouldn’t hesitate using it against us.

The actions taken by Iran in the last few months would seem to indicate that any “non agression” treaty with them would ring as hollow as Hitler’s non agression pact with Russia. The same hold’s true with North Korea. The fact is, neither can be trusted. This is especially true if we’re forced to rely on international organizations like the IAEA to make sure those two nations are keeping their end of any bargain.

Will we delude ourselves about Iran and North Korea the same way that Stalin deluded himself about Hitler’s Germany?

Ever since the attacks of September 11, 2001 Americans across the political spectrum have been seeking to “understand” terrorism. We’re very good at this sort of thing. It’s a part of our national character commented on by such diverse intellects as de Tocqueville and Winston Churchill. We are a nation of problem solvers, tinkerers, do-it-yourselfers; we’re good at taking things apart to get at the nub of a problem be it a faulty condenser or where to build a railroad.

What we’re not so good at is “understanding” the motivations underlying human behavior for which most of the evils of this world both past and present can be ascribed. In truth, understanding the nature of evil has not been one of our strong suits. We have either hugely simplified it using “the devil made him do it” explanation or more recently, refused to acknowledge that evil even exists. That doesn’t stop us from trying to catalog, chart, ponder, pontificate on, and generally make an intellectual mess of trying to explain and understand the historical and philosophical forces that are responsible for the connection between modern Islam and terrorism.

The problem is that Islam itself resists such scrutiny. Caught up in a world where the basic tenets of their religion clash with the reality of life confronting its nearly 1 billion adherents, Islam is in need of some serious introspection. The old verities are no longer adequate comfort for young Muslims who see the rapid pace of change in non-Muslim countries and ache to participate in some meaningful way in the adventures available to their 21st century counterparts. This is especially true in Europe where segregated immigrant societies seethe with discontent over being left off the train pulling the engine of progress both in their adopted homeland and back home where their extended families - extremely important in Arab culture - waste away in poverty and bitterness.

For us, it becomes too easy to overgeneralize when looking at Islam as it’s dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It is this resistance that forms the basis of terrorism.

When talk show host and NRO contributor Michael Graham took a stab at trying to describe this resistance by Islam to modernity by claiming that the religion itself was a terrorist organization, he was fired for his trouble. Mr. Graham had just returned from an emotional first hand look at the War on Terror in Iraq and I wish his detractors would have cut the man some slack for that reason. He was, after all, not saying anything that can’t be found in many comment threads and discussion forums on the net. The fact that he’s a radio talk show host with many thousands of listeners should not have made much of a difference. After all, the great advantage of living in a free society is that when one hears something they disagree strongly enough with on the radio or television, they can switch the infernal machine off or change the channel to something more agreeable.

I do it all the time. Whenever I hear the Reverend Al Sharpeton start talking, I generally either switch off or switch over. Sharpeton’s hate-filled rants appeal to both a certain segment of the African American population as well as the mainstream press. He does not appeal to me. Hence, the Reverend’s rants are cause enough for me to tune him out.

If enough people do that, Mr. Graham then gets fired for poor performance, not for saying what he thinks, even if many believe what he said was wrong. However, in Mr. Graham’s case, his employers - who initially stood by him - eventually caved in to pressure from the professional victimhood society of CAIR. The Council on American Islamic Relations - several members of which have been indicted and convicted for aiding and abetting terrorists - has proven its power with the media many times in the past. The Fox TV show “24″ was actually forced to change a story line so that Muslims wouldn’t be portrayed in a purely negative light. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in some of these meetings between CAIR and network execs just to see how the terrorist apologists frightened a major network so much that halfway through filming their number one hit series, they changed the plot to accommodate them.

In Mr. Graham’s case, there was an organized attempt to boycott advertisers for the station. This tactic is as American as apple pie and proves that when it comes to apologizing for terrorists, CAIR will even invoke the tactics used by its putative enemy.

What CAIR or any other so-called “moderate” Islamic group cannot do is to refute Mr. Graham’s thesis point by point. To recognize that there is even a discussion about whether Islam itself is the problem would open the door to introspection. And at the present time, this is something that Islamic culture simply is incapable of doing.

It was much the same with the United States regarding the issue of slavery. For four score and seven years, the issue colored politics in the US the same way that terrorism now colors any discussion of Islam. And like our ancestors - both North and South - we couldn’t deal with the fundamental issue that was both the reason and moral justification for slavery; that our Constitution codified it, made it legal, indeed burned it into the soul of the democratic process by assigning a value of 3/5 of a human being to those held in servitude for purposes of Congressional representation. The way that power itself was exercised depended on slavery.

So like a beetle enmeshed in a spider’s web, there simply was no way out. The threads that bound slavery to our political process also precluded any discussion of getting rid of the spider. To do so would open doors to changing too many things. The South had developed both an economy and a culture that wound the spider’s threads so tightly around it that only the radical surgery of civil war could break them. That surgery took almost 100 years to recover from and to this day still colors some of our politics.

So it is with Islam. The spider has woven a web that has enmeshed its adherents in bloody resistance to change both for the religion itself and for the societies where believers live. The justification for the blood can be found in their “Basic Law” of the Koran. Unlike our Constitution which has a process for amendment, the Koran being the word of Allah does not have the same luxury. Hence, there is no way to approach the problem from a purely religious point of view. In fact, any re-interpretation of the Koran will only exacerbate the problem as the resulting schism will serve to further radicalize those who refuse to accept the change.

This is why our current policy of trying to reform the political societies where terrorism is nurtured has a chance of succeeding. By modernizing politics in those benighted countries, there’s a chance that eventually people will stop looking for justification to kill from their Holy Book and instead look for reasons to live. The medieval Christan church found plenty of justification in the Bible for burning witches, killing Jews, and torturing heretics. It wasn’t until the rise of nation states in Europe with the subsequent loss of power by the Church that people stopped looking for justifications to punish and instead looked to the Bible for a way to live in a modern world that these practices mostly died out.

We can only hope for something similar to happen with Islam. When I hear people say that what Islam needs is a Martin Luther King, Jr. I have to disagree. They don’t need a King: They need a Martin Luther to nail 95 reasons to live to the door of a mosque.

UPDATE

Try Basil’s Brunch. The layout looks sumptuous.

Just when you think the rhetoric of those seeking to pollute the 9/11 Memorial with anti-American propaganda can’t sink any lower, up steps the New York Times to call those of us who come down on the side of a site that’s totally devoted to the events and heroes of that tragic day “un-American.”

It is a campaign about political purity - about how people remember 9/11 and about how we choose to read its aftermath, including the Iraq war. On their Web site, www.takebackthememorial.org, critics of the cultural plan at ground zero offer a resolution called Campaign America. It says that ground zero must contain no facilities “that house controversial debate, dialog, artistic impressions, or exhibits referring to extraneous historical events.” This, to us, sounds un-American.

The Times defends the size of the Memorial by saying it “is larger than the public spaces in the Whitney Museum.” A Memorial honoring the victims of the largest, the most destructive, and the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United States should not be compared in any way, shape or form to an art museum (I will forgo commentary about the anti-American nature of much of the politically motivated art at the Whitney). By drawing an analogy with the Whitney, the Times unconsciously reveals how it views the events of 9/11 and its aftermath.

It’s a theme I’ve dealt with many times here; there is a sizable segment of the left that cannot grasp or refuses to see that the world changed following 9/11. They see terrorism as a “nuisance” and as a problem for international law enforcement. The interconnectedness of al Qaeda with rogue states is not something to concern ourselves with. The war in Iraq is unnecessary because Saddam Hussein wasn’t an “immediate” threat.

This is a mindset that can compare the interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo with the behavior of the worst tyrants in history because at bottom, they do not believe we are at war. They concentrate on everything but the ongoing struggle because to do so would explode cherished myths both about the War on Terror and the United States in general.

The hearkening back to Viet Nam, the constant comparisons with Hitler, the belief in conspiracies, all seek to obscure the harsh reality that there are thousands and thousands of terrorists out there supported by millions of others who wish to wipe us off the face of this earth! For whatever reason, this hasn’t penetrated the minds of the editorial page writers at the New York Times. They see this battle over the Memorial and truly can’t understand why anyone would object to the casual anti American bias that’s become so commonplace to the left that no one gives it a second thought anymore. They are playing by rules that became obsolete the second that first plane plowed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. And sadly, this editorial reveals their lack of understanding of how truly hallowed a place the Memorial is to not just the families of the fallen, but to those who understand the nature of the life and death struggle we’re in and see any besmirching of America through the selective use of history to be sacrilege.

Karen Lee who lost her husband on that horrible day sums it up perfectly: “What happened that day was not about left and right. It was about right and wrong.”

Given the moral relativism of the Times and the rest of the lickspittle left, it’s hardly surprising that they just don’t get it.

To contribute or get involved in the fight to Take Back the Memorial, go here.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin:

All I’ll add is that a newspaper dumb enough to publish editorials like this one in a post-9/11 world has some nerve lecturing anyone else about a “sense of proportion”–let alone about what’s “un-American.”

‘Nuff said.

Watching the beginning of Fox’s Over There last night, I was struck by how much TV had changed since I was growing up.

We were allowed a limited number of hours to watch TV during the week - 10 hours in 5 days as I recall - and every Sunday night as we ate our graham crackers in milk, we would have to decide among the 5 of us what shows we would be watching for the entire week (day and night). Note: The strictures applied during the summer months as well with the exception that Cubs and White Sox games were not counted against the total.

Because of this, it wasn’t until years later that I saw The Andy Griffith Show, Green Acres, Gunsmoke, and a host of others. But there was one show that all of us in the family couldn’t wait to watch; a show whose gritty realism (we thought) made our wargames that much more compelling to play. Combat, starring Vince Morrow was always on the list.

Looking at the re runs today, I see how jaded we’ve become. Unless there are the sickening sounds of heads exploding like a ripe melons or torrential blood flows gushing from gaping wounds along with huge explosions that send people flying through the air, it just ain’t war. Nevertheless, Combat managed to hold our attention through what passed for action sequences as well as some characters that everyone who has seen a John Wayne war movie can relate to.

There was the tough, no nonsense Sarge who cared about his men more than himself. The soldiers were usually a colorful lot drawn from all corners of the country. There’s usually the street smart city guy, the farm boy, the quiet intellectual, and the one who always sasses the higher ups. Combat had all of this plus war on a much more personal level than John Wayne movies which were usually about grand themes like courage and patriotism. The men in Combat were always tired, always hungry, never took showers, and nervous about the enemy. To us, it was as real as it got.

I wonder if the kids today will take away a similar impression of Stephen Bochco’s Over There? Hell, do kids today still play “war?” The drama seems to have many stock elements of a war drama - the big change being a welcome addition of different skin colors and gender. And there’s actual foul language and lots of blood (a round from a grenade launcher hits a terrorist in the chest and blows the top half of his body to smithereens while his legs take a few extra steps). But at bottom, all I could think of while watching it was Combat for the 21st century.

I have no clue as to how realistic it was so I decided to gather some reaction for our best and bravest in the Shadow Media - the Milbloggers as well as some thoughts from a few non military types.

Blackfive checked out the website and found the characters “cartoonish” so he didn’t watch. But he opened the linked post to comments on the show, many of which are very interesting.

Charmaine Yost actually liveblogged the darn thing and has some comments both perceptive and snarky.

The Air Force Pundit saw it and had this to say: “Oh, did I mention this show sucks from a military perspective? I know in the USAF we don’t do alot of close in battle drill, but it would take a 4 year old to figure out we don’t all hide within 15 feet of each other, and then walk SLOWLY toward the enemy in a STRAIGHT LINE. Uh, didn’t we pretty much give that up about 1864?”

The Word Unheard couldn’t bring himself to watch for this reason: “Now, there are two things that the ‘Hollywood / television’ industry is incapable of doing with very few exceptions, and those are 1.) removing politics from any subject and 2.) accurately portraying any aspect of military life, the military experience or understanding anything accurately ‘through the eyes’ of military personnel.”

A Healthy Alternative to Work has some thoughts about past war dramas and this one:

In the movie M*A*S*H, and basically any other movie about wars set in Vietnam or before, one of the boons given to writers was the fact that the draft was in place. You could include a definitively non-military character like Donald Sutherland’s Capt. Hawkeye Pierce and explain his presence away by saying, “Oh, he was drafted.”

This forces the writers to answer an important question for each character - Why is this person in the military?

Alarming News has something positive to say:

I highly recommend the show. I was pleasantly surprised to find that politics are kept to a minimum. The show focuses on the personal and daily lives of the soldiers, and the realizations they come to while fighting on the front lines. The battle scenes are done very well, and the small things that we don’t think about very often are brought to light in several aspects. Like what the heck you do when you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the desert.

Argghhh has a great roundup both pro and con from milbloggers and adds this:

As for going down in flames… if the combat scenes and characters can suck you in, I suspect people will watch it. It plays to the low expectations people set for stuff like that. The more interesting part will be… does this set the Zeitgeist for the war… as M*A*S*H kind of did for Korea (and Vietnam, too)? The characters of M*A*S*H were generally likable, and we military types all knew Burn’s and Houlihan’s… but did the show represent Korea? Not really. Does it in the communal mind… arguably.

Interesting question - and I suspect this audience isn’t going to be diverse enough in outlook and opinion (no slam guys, but on things military and the war, we’re pretty much a cluster, it’s on things social where we have our spread) to answer this question well… but how many people’s perceptions of Vietnam are shaped by Platoon… or by We Were Soldiers?

Finally, Ace didn’t like it AT ALL:

Steven Bochco can suck my c**k.

Well, no I wouldn’t. But I’d promote it.

Generally then, it would appear that our military for the most part doesn’t take to the show and righty bloggers ditto.

Me? I’m going to withhold judgment for a few more weeks before I declare the show a lost cause. I found the combat scenes compelling (if not realistic) and I’m curious to see if they’ll continue portraying the enemy as fanatics.

When advancing toward our heroes who have taken cover behind a berm, you can hear the enemy saying “Allahu Akbar!” Nice touch and one of the only times I’ve seen terrorists portrayed as religious fanatics. So for the time being, I’ll continue watching.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

“Success has a thousand fathers while failure is an orphan” applies to just about every human endeavor with the exception of war. War usually has one father while making orphans galore.

In our current situation, the father of this war is international Islamism and its adherents who seek to reestablish a Muslim Caliphate from the Middle East to Indonesia. They wish to bring the world’s one billion Muslims under one roof and impose Islamic law (Shai’ria) on everyone - Jewish, Christan and Muslim alike.

Only the willfully self-deluded deny this. To them, the War on Terror is a gigantic conspiracy of George Bush who seeks dictatorial powers on behalf of his friends - multi-national corporations and shadowy Christian fundamentalists.

What these fools will do when George Bush gives up his “dictatorial powers” and leaves office in 2008 is open to question. Will they admit they’re wrong? Or simply transfer their unreasoning hatred to the next occupant of the oval office whoever he or she may be?

I can guarantee that it won’t matter one wit to the jihadists. They’re in this war for the long haul and any temporary setbacks in Afghanistan and Iraq matter little to them. The west is the enemy tangentially because of who we are and what we stand for but they really seek to destroy us for a far more simple and basic reason.

We’re in the way.

We are an impediment to their goals. They know we will not sit idly by while several billion people (half of whom would be women) come under the harsh dictums of Shai’ria law with its unyielding strictures against human liberty, its treatment of women as chattel, and its nightmarish transformation of Jews, Christians, and people of other faiths into slaves under the governing system of dhimmitude. We in the west must then be eliminated or neutralized.

Terror, as has been said often but needs to be repeated, is a tactic used by our enemies in this war. This tactic has been most effective not in a military sense but in getting us to question the underlying belief in our civilization. For in order to counter the murderous intentions of our enemies, western countries have had to resort to undemocratic and, in some cases, dictatorial methods in order to avoid the worst that our enemies can do. And that worst is what keeps our leaders awake at nights; the use of a weapon of mass destruction that would quite literally bring western civilization to its knees.

This is not hyperbole. This is a statement of fact. Anyone who has contemplated what would happen with the detonation of a nuclear device in a large American city realizes that the fragile threads that bind our economy, our citizenry, and our government would snap the moment the mushroom cloud blossomed. And the interconnectedness of the world’s economy would spell doom for most of the rest of the planet after the certain collapse of the American economy following such a disaster.

To keep this from happening, western governments have been forced to curtail some liberties and use methods and enact procedures that in peacetime would be grounds for revolution. Unfortunately as is wont to happen in war, innocents get caught in the middle, hemmed in between our necessary desire for security and the free exercise of our liberties.

Recently, we’ve had a horrible example of this “collateral damage” with the tragic death of 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes whose inexplicable flight from authorities resulted in an incident that will cause Great Britain to question some basic assumptions regarding civil liberties in an age of terror.

Mr. Menezes, a Brazilian immigrant, was shot dead by police when, after repeated orders to stop, he jumped the turnstile at an underground station and ran into a crowded subway car. Since he was dressed in a fleece jacket in 80 degree weather, police suspected he was a suicide bomber and felt they had no choice but to “shoot to kill.”

Were the officers justified? The fact is that if Mr. Menezes was a suicide bomber, dozens perhaps hundreds of lives were saved. But since he wasn’t, Mr. Menezes ends up a victim of terrorism as much as anyone who died in the London bombs of 7/7. When police have only seconds to make that determination, mistakes are going to be made. And the fact that they will probably be more careful next time may mean that a suicide bomber will succeed in his murderous intent. When that happens, do you think all of the critics who have been so vociferous in their protests over the last 24 hours will praise the police for their restraint? Or, for that matter, if Mr. Menezes had been a suicide bomber, what would their response have been?

I feel for the Muslim community in Great Britain who perhaps for the first time, realize the deadly serious nature of the threat they face. Will they draw the correct conclusions? Or will they continue to condemn terrorist incidents in general terms while playing politics with their supposed victimization? It’s time for them to put up or shut up. If, as a recent poll suggests, 25% of British Muslims sympathize with what the 7/7 bombers were trying to accomplish, then additional tragedies will occur including the very real possibility that they will find themselves even more ostracized and isolated than ever. And in extreme circumstances, their status as citizens could be at risk. How tolerant will the majority of Britains be if a wave of suicide attacks send casualty figures skyrocketing? Anything is possible when fear takes hold in democratic societies - just ask Japanese Americans.

The bottom line is that this tragedy would not have occurred but for the War on Terror. When police shoot first and ask questions later it is right that we ask ourselves how far we’re willing to go in giving up our liberty in order to be safe. The banal quotation from Benjamin Franklin “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security” is totally inappropriate for any argument in the War on Terror. For it’s not a question of “security” we’re talking about but rather a question of “survival” - something Old Ben never had to face and couldn’t possibly understand.

There will be an investigation and debate in Great Britain over this tragedy. This is what democratic societies do and should be viewed in that light. It is one of our strengths that we can discuss these matters and refine and redefine if necessary the basis on which our societies operate. The important thing is that trust be maintained between the governed and the governors. This trust or “consent” is vitally necessary if government is going to be able to take the steps necessary to both protect us from the terrorists and yet allow the exercise of the very freedoms the terrorists seek to take away.

There will never be a definitive answer to the questions posed by the needless death of Mr. Menezes. Rather, like freedom itself, the answers will continue to evolve in response to specific situations as the free peoples of this earth seek to fend off the murderous advances of an enemy that seeks to take our lives, our freedoms, and our way of life. They can’t defeat us on any battlefield. They can only win if we allow their threats to cow our resolve to maintain both security and liberty. For if we give in to the temptation to favor one at the expense of the other, something vital will have been lost that we may find impossible to retrieve; the trust that exists between us all which allows our freedoms to flourish.

This article in yesterday’s New York Times mirrors what I’ve been saying for more than two years; the biggest failure of George Bush’s presidency has been his failure to lead the American people as if there’s a war on.

Here’s what I wrote on 5/27/05:

My criticism, however, went back to early 2003 when it became clear that war with Iraq was a necessary adjunct to the war on terror.

The President’s failure to rally the people and instead, depend on the 50% of us who couldn’t stomach the idea of Kerry’s wishy-washy internationalist approach to the conflict was the biggest mistake of his Presidency. He could have done better.

As this article points out, at least some in the military feel exactly the same way:

From bases in Iraq and across the United States to the Pentagon and the military’s war colleges, officers and enlisted personnel quietly raise a question for political leaders: if America is truly on a war footing, why is so little sacrifice asked of the nation at large?

There is no serious talk of a draft to share the burden of fighting across the broad citizenry, and neither Republicans nor Democrats are pressing for a tax increase to force Americans to cover the $5 billion a month in costs from Iraq, Afghanistan and new counterterrorism missions.

There are not even concerted efforts like the savings-bond drives or gasoline rationing that helped to unite the country behind its fighting forces in wars past.

“Nobody in America is asked to sacrifice, except us,” said one officer just back from a yearlong tour in Iraq, voicing a frustration now drawing the attention of academic specialists in military sociology.

The question is why this should be so?

Surely one of the reason’s is the very nature of the war we’re fighting. If we were to overturn our lives too much, the terrorists could claim a victory of sorts. This was a fine rationale as far as it went.

But I submit that things have changed to the point that only a Presidential call to arms can now reverse a situation that many whose opinion we should respect are saying includes problems such as military recruitment, our occupation isn’t succeeding fast enough in turning over security responsibilities to the Iraqis, and our enemies are gathering strength to not only hit us again but also take the fight successfully to our allies.

MILITARY PROBLEMS

The fact that army recruiting goals have been met for the last two months cannot hide some alarming trends that, if not fixed, could inhibit our ability to project our power in the near future to places where our national security is threatened.

While recruitment is actually up for the Marine Corps, and the Navy and Air Force are easily meeting their goals, army recruitment is down significantly and worse, enlistment in National Guard units has also fallen off precipitously. And while it’s encouraging that re-enlistment rates among troops serving in Iraq is very high, this doesn’t help if a crisis develops in either Iran or North Korea. The fact is, more than 45% of our combat troops are engaged in Iraq. What would this mean for both the near future and long term?

In order to maintain the current high level of overseas activity many of the previous guidelines and “rules of thumb” for limiting overseas deployments have been set aside. Thus, combat assignments for Army troops have been extended from six months to a year or more, and average time between deployments has been cut. Guard and reserve tours have been extended, too.

Generally speaking, service leaders have sought in the past to routinely deploy one-third or less of warfighting forces overseas at any one time, while permitting relatively brief and infrequent surges to higher levels, such as during Operation Desert Storm. (One-third of the fighting force equals about 20 percent of active personnel overall). This pacing was meant to sustain morale and ensure that training, repair, and modernization cycles could be completed. The point of such guidelines was to strike a balance between current and future requirements.

Recent practice raises the prospect of two types of problems: first, a near-term decline in force cohesion and combat effectiveness while the military is still engaged in current operations; and, second, a long period of force recovery after current operations conclude. During this strategic “reset period” the capacity for large-scale military operations would be lower - perhaps significantly lower - than it was during the pre-war period. According to the Chief of the British Defence Staff, Sir Michael Walker, Great Britain already faces the second of these problems. In March 2004 he reported to the House of Commons Defence Committee that “[w]e are unlikely to be able to get to large-scale [operations] much before the end of the decade, somewhere around 08 or 09.”

With the election in Iran of a hard line ideologue who has already indicated that he wants to go forward with unranium enrichment regardless of what deal he strikes with the EU Three of Great Britain, France, and Germany, and with Israel poised to take military action in the event the enrichment programs are resumed, the middle east is a powder keg ready to explode. And as it stands now, we just do not have the forces available if the region becomes unstable to both police Iraq and protect our vital interests.

Currently (as much as I hate to admit it), the only realistic plan I’ve seen has been proposed by Hillary Clinton to increase the size of the army by 80,000. In order to fill that kind of order, the President is going to have to come before the nation and issue a call for volunteers. And while some would see Hillary’s sponsorship of this measure as her trying to move toward the middle as she prepares to make a presidential run in 2008, it’s still a good idea.

More troops wouldn’t solve all of our problems, but it could be a stop gap measure as we move into the fall and early winter which is when some experts believe the crisis with Iran could come.

THE PACE OF IMPROVEMENT IN IRAQ

As far as Iraqi politics, things are going remarkably well, better than anyone had a right to expect from a country that had never had representative government. However, several recent trends reveal some weaknesses in our strategy that are being exploited by our enemies.

First and foremost is the problem with the number of “boots on the ground.” As it stands now, we’ve painted ourselves into a corner by refusing to up the number of combat personnel in country. It’s clear that the pace of training for the Iraqi military and police is not proceeding as planned. And while the numbers of recruits are encouraging, the fact is that unit cohesion, developing competent officers, and deploying battle ready units is lagging.

This puts us in an almost impossible position. If we increase our troop strength to more effectively fight the insurgency, we undermine the training of the Iraqis. But we can’t draw down our strength because the Iraqis are not coming along fast enough. And since the insurgency is now changing and adapting to new realities, we’re hindered from doing the same. In short, the terrorists are trying their best to keep one step ahead of us.

The biggest change by the terrorists has been the increase in targeting Iraqi civilians on a sectarian basis hoping to ignite a civil war. So far, Shia moderates such as Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have done a remarkable job of restraining the Shia’s but things are starting to deteriorate. Just a few days ago, we heard this from a close associate of al-Sistani:

“What is truly happening, and what shall happen, is clear: a war against the Shias,” Sheikh Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a prominent Shia cleric and MP, told the Iraqi parliament.

Sheikh al-Saghir is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme Shia spiritual leader and moderate who has so far managed to restrain powerful Shia militias from undertaking any outright attack on Sunni insurgents. His warning suggests that the Shia leadership may be losing its grip over Shias who in private often call for an armed backlash against their Sunni assailants.

A civil war between the Sunnis and Shias would be a nightmare for our forces. One encouraging development has been the inclusion of the Sunnis in drafting the new constitution. It’s devoutly hoped that if the Sunnis feel they have a political stake in the future of a democratic Iraq, that part of the insurgency could subside.

The problem with Zarqawi and al Qaeda is totally separate but once agian reveal a big weakness. Those foreign fighters are still infliltrating through Syria and Iran and we just don’t have enough forces for effective border control. And al Qaeda is playing our national media like a violin, making sure their attacks are spectacular in the numbers of innocent civilians killed which guarantee coverage in our press.

From August.2004 through May, 2005 Iraqi civilian casualties have been estimated at 800 a month. These include several thousand police and army recruits who are routinely attacked as they line up outside recruiting stations. This has had a deterimental effect on Iraqi civilian morale as the people lose faith in the new government to protect them.

AL QAEDA REORGANIZING

While some are saying that the London attacks prove al Qaeda’s reduced operational capabilities, they may also point to a reorganization of the terror network that relies more on small cells for execution while using a top level al Qaeda “overseer” to help plan the attack and be in charge of logistics.

The problems associated with ferreting out these small cells in a free and open democratic society have been demonstrated both here and in Great Britain. But the nightmare scenario is one of these small cells getting a hold of either dangerous chemicals or even a small amount of deadly biologicial material. This is what keeps policy makers awake nights.

But what of the organization’s strategic goals?

Al Qaeda sees the United States not as the primary focus of its long-term goals, but as a challenger to its ultimate goal: the establishment of a pan-Islamic state stretching across the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Al Qaeda’s aims are political, and it sees the United States not only in military or ideological terms, but also as a tool to be manipulated to help achieve a desired end.

To build a pan-Islamic state and re-establish the caliphate, al Qaeda requires a social/revolutionary movement stretching across several Muslim states. Stirring such a revolution is not easy, given the fractious nature of the Islamic world and the strength of many of the key Muslim regimes. To bring about a general uprising, al Qaeda needs to produce two initial elements — a common enemy against which to rally the people and a prospect for success. To some degree, the United States serves as the vehicle for both.

By striking at the United States, the security guarantor of many of the Muslim states, al Qaeda can show that Islamist militants are anything but impotent, even when facing down the world’s sole superpower. This, in turn, shows that the United States is vulnerable — and by extension, that the Muslim regimes backed by Washington are equally vulnerable, if not more so.

Using this rationale, al Qaeda wouldn’t have to carry out another 9/11 style attack. But can you imagine a series of bombings in various cities throughout the country on a scale of the London bombings of 7/7? If it’s a strategic goal of the organization to make the United States look impotent, such a demonstration could in fact embolden others to carry out attacks against American interests and our allies in the middle east.
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I realize much of this article has been of the “glass is half empty” variety but I did it for a purpose. Too often those of us who support the President automatically reject any bad news coming out of Iraq or the War on Terror as being biased baloney from a bunch of Bush hating reporters and columnists. While this is true some of the time - and goodness knows I’ve debunked enough articles and columns over the last year - the problem as I see it is approaching crisis proportions. Not today. Not next week or month. But certainly within the year as threats materialize elsewhere and perhaps our luck runs out as far as avoiding a terrorist strike here.

Our military is doing a heroic job under extremely trying circumstances in Iraq. And they’re wondering what we here are doing besides giving lip service to their effort.

It’s long past time for the President to put this country on a war footing regardless of what the terrorists, his political opponents, the press, or anyone else may think. There are several things he could do to help our military and I’ve highlighted some of them in this article.

1. He could increase troop strength which would ease both our recruitment woes and shore up our strategic needs for the longer term.

2. He could increase pay and benefits so that the hardships suffered by soldiers families at home would be lessened.

3. He could make a constant effort to remind Americans of the suffering and sacrifices of our military and their families. He could ask Americans to help the families in the hundreds of ways to be found on the americasupportsyou.mil website.

4. He could get more outfront on the war. The President’s speech of June 28 was the culmination of a 10 day media blitz on Iraq. We don’t need media blitzes. We don’t need token references to the war scattered throughout speeches. We need leadership.

5. Raise taxes across the board to pay for the war. No one - not you, not Rumsfeld, not your OMB director - not anyone believed that 2 1/2 years after the cessation of major combat operations that we would still be paying $5.8 billion per month to fund the war. There is no shame in admitting you miscalculated. And such a proposal would wake this country up and let them know there’s a war on.

6. Scale back your reform plans for taxes, social security, and other domestic concerns. Cut entitlement programs while at the same time encouraging young people to enroll in Americorp and other volunteer organizations. Increase funding for your faith based initiative program. Get out front and lead!

These are just a few things the President can do to wake this country out of the slumber we’re in and help us all recognize there’s a war on - a war that will probably get worse before it starts getting better.

Our men and women in uniform deserve no less. And the President is the only one who can lead us in this effort.

There was a moment following the 7/7 attacks on London’s subway system where I actually thought that the left’s eyes had been opened to the danger we faced. There were encouraging condemnations of the act from sources such as London Mayor “Red” Ken Livingstone whose notorious coddling of Islamic extremists pegged him as the #2 terrorist apologist right behind the unrepentant and even more noxious George Galloway. There were even liberals in this country who unequivacably condemned the acts as barbaric and unwarranted.

Sadly, the moment passed. Reverting to form, the western left has indulged in an orgy of Bush hating to the exclusion of any kind of rational response to the threat from Islamic extremists. This was made crystal clear yesterday when, following the failed bombing in London, a British reporter asked an accusatory question of Australia’s hard nosed Prime Minister John Howard who was visiting Tony Blair at the time of the attack. The reporter practically blamed Howard and Blair for the attack because of their support for the United States in Iraq. Here is part of Howard’s brilliant response:

Can I just say very directly, Paul, on the issue of the policies of my government and indeed the policies of the British and American governments on Iraq, that the first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it’s given the game away, to use the vernacular. And no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self-respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.

Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq.

And I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq.

Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia’s involvement in liberating the people of East Timor. Are people by implication suggesting we shouldn’t have done that?

When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn’t be in Afghanistan?

(HT: The New Editor. The inspiring video available at Jackson’s Junction)

I’m afraid the courageous Aussie should have saved his breath. The problem isn’t that the British reporter and western left have forgotten any of the litany of Islamist attacks over the past few years. The problem is, they remember but have failed to draw the necessary lessons both from the current scourge of Islamist thuggery and from history.

For I have come to the conclusion that most of the opposition to the Anglosphere policies of pre-emptive war, democractization of the middle east, and securing the home front comes not as a result of any treasonous tendencies on the part of liberals but rather the failed intellecual fallacies of a bygone era; the appeasement initiatives of England and France of the 1930’s.

It may be well to recall that at that time, appeasement was looked on as the only rational response to aggression. It was the perfect marraige of high minded ideals with hard headed reality (or so it was thought). The idea was that the aggressive confrontation with Hitler proceeded from real grievances - in this case the Versailles Treaty - and that in order to avoid war it was necessary to settle those grievances by giving Hitler what he wanted.

Looking at it from our perspective, it seems like folly. But from the perspective of the overwhelming majority of voters and the leadership class in France and England, anything was preferable to reliving the slaughter in the trenches that occurred during WW I.

This rationale seems to have taken control of the left as they desperately thrash about looking for a way - any way - to avoid confrontation with the terrorists. And like their ideological ancestors from the 1930’s, they are seeking to dismiss this agression in favor of what they see as a reasonable justification for it. Ted Lapkin’s article in NRO is instructive in that he shows how this logic has consumed the liberals:

The far Left has similarly proved unable to liberate itself from the web of rose-tinted delusions that it has spun about the nature of Islamic extremism. After each al Qaeda outrage, leftist ideologues are quick to castigate their own countrymen for a catalogue of sins, both real and imagined. With a perverse combination of self-loathing and adoration of the enemy, the radical Leftist mantra preaches that if only we were nicer, the jihadists could not fail to love us. It’s our own fault if Osama bin Laden doesn’t realize what good people we are.

And all the while, these “progressive” academics, pundits, and politicians engage in ridiculous intellectual contortions designed to mitigate the guilt of the terrorist perpetrators. When push comes to shove, some intellectuals believe that Islamism is simply an understandable reaction to what they describe as “Western imperialism.”

Self loathing aside, there are other powerful emotions at work here. The question “Why do they hate us” resonates much more with them than it does with the right or with realists. Writing in the New York Times, Oliver Roy reminds us of the answer to that question; we’re in the way:

Another motivating factor, we are told, was the presence of “infidel” troops in Islam’s holy lands. Yes, Osama Bin Laden was reported to be upset when the Saudi royal family allowed Western troops into the kingdom before the Persian Gulf war. But Mr. bin Laden was by that time a veteran fighter committed to global jihad.

He and the other members of the first generation of Al Qaeda left the Middle East to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. Except for the smallish Egyptian faction led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, now Mr. bin Laden’s chief deputy, these militants were not involved in Middle Eastern politics. Abdullah Azzam, Mr. bin Laden’s mentor, gave up supporting the Palestinian Liberation Organization long before his death in 1989 because he felt that to fight for a localized political cause was to forsake the real jihad, which he felt should be international and religious in character.

From the beginning, Al Qaeda’s fighters were global jihadists, and their favored battlegrounds have been outside the Middle East: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir. For them, every conflict is simply a part of the Western encroachment on the Muslim ummah, the worldwide community of believers.

For the left however, the reason they want to kill us does not include the re-establishment of an Islamic Caliphate as a result of global jihad. In fact, the goals of our enemies can be safely ignored because they seem so unreal. So rather than deal with the universiality of Islamic terrorism, the left takes a much narrower view. As each new outrage occurs, they seek to “understand” the announced motivations of the terrorists rather than deal with the overarching objectives of our enemies.

A diariest on Daily Kos recently put up a poll on how to “solve” terrorism. Here are the revealing responses:

How should we solve terrorism?

Try to get Israel to act like a better neighbor in middle east. 8 votes - 11 %
Try to get moderate Muslims to discourage terrorism strongly 8 votes - 11 %
We need to work for economic justice for disenfranchised Muslims 23 votes - 34 %
We need a worldwide dialogue on Islam’s association w/ world 11 votes - 16 %
War, war, kill, kill, bomb, bomb, destroy, destroy 1 vote - 1 %
None of the above–you idiot! 16 votes - 23 %

(HT: Museum of Left Wing Lunacy)

Fully 61% of the respondents believe in some kind of dialogue or “economic justice” as if either were in our power to achieve. But it illustrates a way of thinking that seeks to placate our enemies rather than defeat them.

Ace has some serious thoughts about this appeasement impulse on the left:

Note to the left: Osama bin Ladin, Al Zarqawi, and the rest of the Islamofascist killers aren’t even offering you an armistice. Quite the opposite. They have said, multiple times, that they intend to kill you or subjugate you and you cannot buy their peace simply by giving into their demands.

But that makes those on the left worse than Chamberlain

When Chamberlain came back from Munich waving the agreement in which England and Germany agreed to always resolve their differences in “The Spirit of Munich,” little did the deluded British Prime Minister realize the irony in his betrayal of the Czechs. For within two years, the Nazis would overrun most of Europe and his tiny island nation would be left on its own to face the German onslaught.

It remains to be seen if the western left will have the scales fall from their eyes in time to help to save our common civilization from the ravages and hatred of our enemies.

UPDATE

Jeff Goldstein links to the Oliver Roy piece in the Times I highlighted above and then goes deeper by quoting extensively from an extraordinary article by Reuel Marc Gerecht in The Weekly Standard (which I intend to use as a basis for an article that will appear in The American Thinker next week).

Gerecht’s learned thesis is a blueprint for both tactical and strategic moves we should be making in the WoT. Goldstien sums up nicely:

Fortunately, many of us have already reached the conclusion that the spread of democracy in the mideast is the single greatest threat to radicalized Islam—if only as a way, in the Roy / Gerecht paradigm of a radicalized Western Islamism leading the charge of holy war, to disabuse Westernized jihadists of a number of ready made excuses for their fight—something the American people made clear when they reelected President Bush in November.

Now if we can only convince the rest of the world of the need to sign on.

Easier said than done but something we have to keep plugging away at. A good chance may come in September as it appears that Gehard Schoeder will lose bigtime in elections to Angela Merkel’s Christain Democrats. And while Merkel appears to be no Iron Lady in that she has already promised not to help us out very much in Iraq, she may prove easier to work with on combating Muslim extremism than the insufferably anti-American Schroeder.

It’s been said elsewhere; I don’t think it’s an accident that the three strongest proponents of confronting the Islamists - Bush, Blair, and Howard - all won resounding victories in the last year while the political fortunes of their tormentors - Chirac and Schoeder - are in the toilet.

Ah! Sweet irony!

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

We interrupt this scandal to ask a question that, due to it’s “explosive” nature was never asked when the story broke almost exactly a year ago…

What were 500 tons of yellow cake uranium still doing at the nuclear research center of Al-Tuwaitha in Iraq when American tanks rolled into Bagdhad?

The fact that the material was under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for more than a decade opens an entirely different line of questioning: Is the entire group of United Nations bureaucrats running the IAEA legally insane?

These issues are somewhat separate from the Plame-Wilson-Rove dust up that’s been roiling Washington recently but nevertheless shed light on why Joe Wilson went to Niger in February of 2002 and why the bureaucratic tussle over those 16 words about the Iraqi-Niger yellow cake connection was so fierce.

The story begins at the end of the first Gulf War when inspectors found a 500 ton cache of refined yellow cake uranium at Iraq’s primary nuclear research facility in Al-Tuwaitha outside of Bagdhad. The cache was part of a huge inventory of nuclear materials discovered by UN inspectors that included low-level radioactive material of the type used for industrial and medical purposes as well as a quantity of highly enriched uranium suitable for bomb production. This HE uranium was shipped to Russia where it was made relatively harmless by a process known as “isotopic dilution” - but only after the Iraqis dragged their heels for more than 6 months following the cease fire by playing a cat and mouse game with the IAEA’s inspectors. The history of those early IAEA inspections can be found here and is an eye opening look at both the gullibility of the IAEA and the lengths to which Saddam sought to keep as much of his nuclear bomb making capability as he could.

The IAEA placed a seal on the nuclear materials in November of 1992. From then until the fall of Saddam, the agency attempted to make sure that Iraq did not use the yellow cake to reconstitute its nuclear program, something the IAEA acknowledged could be done if the Iraqi’s were able to rebuild its centrifuges and gain access to additional fissile material. Keeping track of the material was made extraordinarily difficult by the Iraqis who regularly impeded IAEA officials from carrying out even the most routine inspections.

Flash forward to 1999 when British intelligence found out through multiple sources that representatives of the Iraqi government had met with officials from the Niger government. This fact is not in dispute. The mystery is in what they talked about. A memo obtained by the British - later proven to be a forgery - purported to show the Iraqis were interested in purchasing 500 tons of yellow cake uranium from Niger’s mines. Forgery or not, since Niger’s exports are extremely limited, consisting largely of uranium ore, livestock, cowpeas, and onions, one doesn’t have to be an intelligence analyst to figure out which one of those items the Iraqis might be interested in.

Both the Butler Review and the Senate Select Committee on Pre War Iraq Intelligence (SSCI) point to other efforts by Saddam to purchase uranium, most notably from the Democratic Republic of the Congo . The Butler Review states in 2002 the CIA “agreed that there was evidence that [uranium from Africa] had been sought.” In the run-up to war in Iraq, the British Intelligence Services apparently believed that Iraq had been trying to obtain uranium from Africa; however, no evidence has been passed on to the IAEA apart from the forged documents.

This then was the context in which Ambassador Joe Wilson went to Niger in February of 2002. Based on multiple sources and the best judgement of the CIA, Saddam Hussein was trying purchase uranium. Since there were no working commercial nuclear reactors in all of Iraq, his interest could only be based on his desire to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. There was no “fixing” of intelligence or “shaping” intelligence to fit some preconceived agenda. Despite UN resolutions and sanctions, Saddam was looking to build the bomb.

What about that 500 tons of yellow cake under seal at Al-Tuwaitha? As long as the sanctions were in place, the inspectors would be able to confirm, albeit with great difficulty, that Saddam would not be able to use the material for his bomb building program. But that fact doesn’t answer the question of why would any organization charged with keeping a lid on nuclear proliferation allow that much fissile material to be kept by a bloodthirsty tyrant who had already demonstrated a desire to construct a nuclear weapon?

In an article that appeared in The American Thinker on July 20, 2004, Douglas Hanson draws some rather unflattering conclusions about the IAEA and their mission:

The actions, or more appropriately, the inactions of the IAEA regarding Iraq since the end of Gulf War I, betray the agency’s true agenda. Rather than inspect, report, and implement restrictions in accordance with the provisions in the treaty, the agency has in effect become an enabler of rogue nations who are attempting, or who have already succeeded in developing or acquiring special nuclear material and equipment. In other words, the IAEA is simply a reflection of its parent organization, which routinely delays and obfuscates the efforts of the US and the UK in controlling banned substances and delivery systems.

Time after time, the agency has either intentionally or naively bought into the lies and deceptions contrived by nations of the Axis of Evil during IAEA visits and inspections. In most cases, the IAEA avoids confrontation like the plague in order to maintain access to the facilities. If they are booted out, as was the case with North Korea, their impotence is on display for all to see. In other cases, the agency joins in the deception, thereby allowing these rogue states to level the nuclear playing field with the West and Russia.

Clearly then, the IAEA was totally dependent on the sanctions to even carry out the limited inspections it was performing in the 1990’s. But how long would the sanctions be in place?

It is an article of faith with critics of the war that “Saddam was in a box” and there was no need for an invasion to remove him. It’s a pity that many of those critics have such a short memory because a review of what many of them were saying about the sanctions prior to September 11, 2001 would show that they were eager to lift the very same sanctions that they now claim was keeping Saddam in check. Thanks to a remarkable propoganda program that included funeral processions of Iraqi babies whose dead bodies were used over and over again in macabre effort to make it appear that the death toll of infants was higher than it was, the world community was, by 2001, agitating for the lifting of sanctions on the Iraq economy. And while the lifting of economic sanctions would not have meant a lifting of the arms embargo, given the limited resources available to both The United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the IAEA as well as Iraq’s demonstrated ability to impede, obstruct, and deceive inspectors, it stands to reason that the continuation of the arms embargo would have been a sham. Even with the embargo, the Dulfer Report showed that Saddam’s ability to evade the sanctions and purchase illicit weapons was extremely troubling.
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