Right Wing Nut House

It appears that the hostage crisis in Iran is over. President Ahmadinejad has “pardoned” the British sailors and has given them back to Britain as a “gift:”

During his press conference taking place right now, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has just announced that he has “pardoned” the British marines and sailors and that they will be released as a “gift” to Britain. (Sky News live broadcast, no link)

The presser is still going on as I speak, although I wouldn’t necessarily call it a press conference since, as is his wont, the talkative Ahmadiinejad is apparently asking and answering his own questions. And being a long winded sort of fellow, the hostages may be in for a long wait for freedom:

Iran is to free the 15 UK sailors and marines taken captive in the Shatt al Arab waterway as a “gift” to Britain.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the group would be released promptly and handed over to the British embassy in Tehran.

He said he had pardoned the sailors as a gift to the British people and to mark the birthday of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed and Easter.

He made the pledge after awarding medals to the “brave” border guards who arrested the Britons.

“I would like to thank the Iranian coast guard for courgeously defending our Iranian territorial waters,” he said.

He then pinned medals on the chests of three Coast Guard officers. The ceremony was performed during a broadcast broadcast around the world.

While the release of the hostages is welcome news (and I doubt that Blair would turn them away no matter what Ahmadinejad had made them out to be), the Iranian president’s “pardon” of the sailors is hugely significant. It presupposes that the sailors had done something wrong in the first place - an idea directly at odds with what the British government has been saying since the crisis began. In the end, Ahmadinejad found a way to humiliate the Brits while coming out smelling like a rose himself thanks to his “Easter gift” to the British people.

I realize that this is news and must be covered. I also realize that reporters sitting in Tehran are not about to get up and call out the Iranians on this shameless, nauseating piece of propaganda.

But the commentary I’m hearing on the voice over from Skye News is unbelievable. No mention that this is so obvious a propaganda dog and pony show. No comment about what a “pardon” for people who have done nothing wrong might mean. And certainly nothing about how this has placed Ahmadinejad on the top of the heap once again in Iran.

For the last 3 or 4 days, some of the less fanatical leaders in Iran (I will not refer to them as “moderates” or “pragmatists” which makes a mockery of the English language in so doing) shoved Ahmadinejad and his radical brethren to the sidelines in this dispute, working the phones and trying to get the British to agree to some kind of language where the Brits would admit to violating Iranian territorial waters without actually saying so. And they seemed to be making some progress.

And then, out of the clear blue, Ahmadinejad grabs the bull by the horns and “pardons” them all and then pins medals on the border guards who kidnapped the sailors illegally in the first place. Hard to beat that kind of chutzpah. In one fell swoop, he has scored an incredible propaganda victory for the regime, making them look like reasonable human beings instead of the drooling fanatics they are portrayed as being. And he has humiliated one of the great powers of Europe, making them accept his definition of what happened and acquiescing in his “pardon” of the innocent sailors. Ahmadinejad even managed to go over the heads of the British government by offering the sailors as a “gift” to the British people - no doubt many of whom will be eternally grateful that the thug didn’t torture and behead them while they were in his custody.

The effect of these gestures was to cut the less fanatical mullahs off at the knees, leaving them looking like idiots for trying to get the Brits to agree to language that would have been problematic in the extreme when all Ahmadinejad had to do to get exactly the same result was unilaterally declare the Brits in the wrong by pardoning the sailors.

Pretty brilliant stuff.

I have no doubt this has emboldened Ahmadinejad and his radical brethren although they’d be daft to try something like this on the United States. More likely, Iran will continue to probe the periphery of the west, searching for weakness and exploiting it when they can. Clearly, they are now big-time players in the Middle East - something they have been pointing to since long before our invasion of Iraq - and will either cause our allies to buckle and try and make the best accommodations possible with Tehran or they will look to the US for assistance.

Given the ever more strident calls for our leaving Iraq to the tender mercies of those allied with Tehran in the first place, I doubt whether our allies in the region are feeling encouraged today.

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey, celebrating the return home of his beloved First Mate following kidney transplant surgery, takes a slightly less optimistic view of the Iranian victory:

Ahmadinejad makes the most out of the reversal. Facing the threat of a blockade if Iran pressed this any further, he gets to look magnanimous while still maintaining the notion that he could have tried the sailors for espionage, even while dressed in uniform. It’s a net win, allowing the Iranians to feel as though they won a tactical victory while avoiding having to back up their rhetoric with action.

Whether this is a win for Tony Blair remains to be seen. He stuck with negotiations and got the 15 back, and he didn’t have to apologize for a violation that never occurred. On the surface, it looks great — an end to the crisis without a shot being fired. It’s what happened below the surface and behind the scenes that will determine how Blair fared against Ahmadinejad. What did the British have to give up in order to get their personnel back?

First, it would have taken a helluva lot of provocation for the Brits to have instituted (or asked our help in instituting) a blockade. I don’t think that was ever a serious option as long as the Iranians didn’t put the sailors on trial.

Secondly, few questions will be asked of Blair about the resolution of this crisis. As Ed says, he got them home and nobody died. No doubt the left in Britain will trumpet this “victory” and compare it unfavorably to something the US may have done. But because they have the introspective capabilities of a three toed sloth, the British left will fail to realize that Ahmadinejad has forced the Brits to tacitly admit that everything the Iranians said about the sailors was true; that they were spying, they were in Iranian waters deliberately, and that the British government is a bunch of liars for trying to say differently.

But hey! Nobody died!

And Allah sees the pardon as a sign of weakness on Ahmadinejad’s part:

The fact that they let/made Ahmadinejad make the announcement smacks of a face-saving gesture. According to the Times, Ahmadinejad’s hardliners were split with the pragmatists about how far to pursue confrontation here. You may remember the Times of London claimed a few days ago that the hardliners themselves were split, with the head of the Revolutionary Guard advocating that the sailors be freed. Sounds like “Mahdi” and his crew lost the debate but Khamenei threw him a bone by letting him look powerful and magnanimous by framing the release as a presidential pardon. The fact that it’s a pardon also assumes that a crime was committed, of course, which is another face-saving gesture.

The question now, given the de facto prisoner exchange yesterday involving that Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Iraq, is how much Britain — or we — gave up to make this happen.

Allah points to a report out of Iran that apparently we are going to allow an Iranian diplomat to look in on the Rev guards we captured at Irbil a few weeks ago.

“Quid pro quo, Clarice…”?

It’s been nearly 35 years since the United States negotiated an end to the Viet Nam War. There have been several excellent chronicles of those negotiations most notably, Henry Kissinger’s massive The White House Years gives an obviously self-serving but nevertheless fascinating account of the personalities and twists and turns that led to peace.

For my money, Larry Berman’s No Peace, No Honor is a much livelier read, very critical of Kissinger, and surprisingly harsh on the North Vietnamese.

Both Kissinger and Berman make one thing clear: Following the signing of that agreement, the Soviets, the Chinese, and the North broke both the spirit and letter of the treaty almost immediately. The Soviets and Chinese sent massive amounts of aid to North Viet Nam in direct violation of the accords. And immediately after releasing our prisoners, the North began a buildup in the South, transferring units and supplies to positions in South Vietnamese territory, contravening the stipulation in the agreement that they not reinforce their forces on territory they occupied in the South.

It didn’t matter anyway. South Viet Nam was doomed the day that the US agreed to allow the North’s troops to maintain their positions in the country, something Berman points out and adds that Kissinger knew full well the fate of the South was sealed once the US left.

And now, 30 years later, the United States has once again made an agreement with the Vietnamese Communists. This time, we have sacrificed a nascent democratic reform movement in exchange for some short term political capital at home.

In exchange for our helping Viet Nam achieve membership in the World Trade Organization, the Communists promised to open their society ever so slightly by not cracking down on dissidents and releasing some of those already detained.

Will we ever learn?

It is being characterized by international rights groups as Vietnam’s biggest crackdown on political dissent in more than 20 years. And the intensifying harassment and growing number of detentions are fast sapping the life out of the country’s nascent but bold democratic-reform movement that the US tacitly supports.

Last month, Vietnamese police arrested Catholic priest and democracy activist Nguyen Van Ly on charges that he attempted to undermine the government through the establishment of an independent political organization. Ly is a founding member of Bloc 8406, a budding pro-democracy movement launched publicly last April that has called for more democracy and rights. He and two other Bloc 8406 members have been permitted only state-appointed legal counsel and face trial on Friday.

On March 6, police arrested and jailed human-rights lawyers Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan on criminal charges that they had propagandized against the state. The authorities early last month detained Dang Thang Tien, spokesman for the Vietnam Progression Party, one of a handful of small opposition parties that have been established over the past year. On February 3, engineer and democracy activist Bach Ngoc Duong was arrested, beaten and even strangled during interrogations, according to dissident groups. They all face jail sentences of up to 20 years if convicted on anti-state charges.

As this analysis from the Asia Times makes clear, Viet Nam is spitting in our face as they round up advocates for democracy who have bravely stood up to Hanoi’s oppression:

The hard-knuckled crackdown coincides with Vietnam’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), of which it became an official member on January 11. It’s now brutally apparent that the new, younger generation of communist leaders who took power last year from their war-hardened revolutionary predecessors have no intention of coupling their impressive economic-reform drive with complementing political reforms.

Moreover, the mounting crackdown represents a deliberate diplomatic slight to the United States, which was instrumental in brokering Hanoi’s highly coveted WTO membership. Washington’s support for Hanoi’s WTO bid was predicated on the Communist Party substantially improving its human-rights record, which includes the detention in abysmal prison conditions of hundreds of political and religious activists.

During last year’s negotiations, the Vietnamese government agreed to release a handful of high-profile political prisoners identified by Washington, but simultaneously detained dozens of other democracy activists, journalists, cyber-dissidents and Christian activists. Nonetheless, US President George W Bush’s commercially oriented administration agreed to remove Vietnam from its watch list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC), above the protests of religious-freedom organizations and exiled Vietnamese democracy groups, and successfully lobbied Congress to grant Vietnam Permanent Normal Trade Relations status last December.

Prior to Bush’s trip last November, the Republicans stalled the Viet Nam trade bill in Congress, somewhat of an embarrassment for the President who hoped to hold the trade agreement up at the Asian Economic Summit he was attending as a sign of progress in the region.

The Administration argued unsuccessfully that “normal” trade status was the best way of getting Viet Nam to abide by international trade rules, including bans on copyright piracy - a particular concern given the cheap knockoffs produced in Viet Nam of American movies, CD’s, and other intellectual property. This is a huge business for Viet Nam, as they sell the knockoffs all over Asia raking in billions and costing the American entertainment and software industries hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties. The trade bill eventually passed in December.

But Vietnamese perfidy with regards to their human rights crackdown has hardly raised an eyebrow in Washington. Despite protests and entreaties by Vietnamese exile groups, the issue of Viet Nam’s backsliding hasn’t gotten much support in Congress:

Republican Congressman Chris Smith, who in the past has met with Ly, Dai and scores of other Vietnamese dissidents, recently introduced a resolution in Congress that condemns the attacks and calls for the unconditional release of jailed dissidents and warns that ongoing harassment, detentions and arrests will harm the broadening ties with the US. The resolution also aims to put Vietnam back on the US State Department’s rights-related CPC list.

In a press conference, Smith referred to the jailed dissidents as the future “Vaclav Havels of Vietnam”, a reference to the Czech dissident playwright who became a democratic symbol across former communist-controlled Eastern Europe. Yet so far Smith’s remains a lonely voice in the diplomatic wilderness. President Bush has remained conspicuously mum on the crackdown, presumably because it represents such a clear-cut failure of his administration’s engagement policy toward Vietnam, which from the start prioritized commercial and security concerns over democracy promotion.

So much for those grand words uttered in his second inaugural address about there being “no justice without freedom.” I guess Bush should have added “unless there are markets to be opened for American businesses.”

Viet Nam’s Communists have proved once again that they cannot be trusted to keep an agreement. It remains to be seen whether anyone in Washington will hear the cries of the oppressed and stop handling these brutes with kid gloves.

The British hostage “crisis” is proving to be a real eye opener both for London’s allies and any potential adversary. In fact, in some ways the British response to this outrageous and provocative act of war by Iran has been truly frightening - a sense that for a variety of reasons, the British people and their government are sleepwalking through history, living a dream that reality cannot intrude upon.

Reading the British papers, an American is struck by the fact that there is very little outrage among most of the population - at least as it is reported. Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips has noticed the same thing:

Yet in its response to these events, Britain seems to be in some kind of dreamworld. There is no sense of urgency or crisis, no outpouring of anger. There seems to be virtually no grasp of what is at stake.

Some commentators have languidly observed that in another age this would have been regarded as an act of war. What on earth are they talking about? It is an act of war. There can hardly be a more blatant act of aggression than the kidnapping of another country’s military personnel.

What clearly does belong to another age is this country’s ability to understand the proper way to respond to an act of war. When his Marines were seized by the Iranians, the commander of HMS Cornwall, Commodore Nick Lambert, did nothing to stop them and later said it was probably all a misunderstanding. If Nelson had been such a diplomat in such circumstances, Trafalgar would surely have been lost.

The reaction brings to mind the London bombings on 7/7/05. I wrote something similar at that time:

From much of the reaction I’ve seen, with the exception of most politicians (who will probably wait until after the funerals to begin their Bush-Blair bashing) the reaction of the average Brit has underwhelmed me and left me with a sense that the Great Britain of today is a far cry from the Great Britain of my father’s day.

Would the British population of today stood up to Hitler? Would they have stuck with Churchill? Or would they have accepted Hitler’s “peace” offer that the Nazi dictator gave prior to the start of the Battle of Britain which guaranteed British sovereignty?

The Brits back then didn’t even bother to respond. In fact, the BBC gave an eloquent response rejecting Hitler’s offer without even consulting the government. Now that was a spirit of resistance.

It’s clear to me that something has gone out of Great Britain in the last decade or so. I am not accusing them of cowardice. Rather it appears to be a disease infecting most of the western world; a curious, debilitating loss of faith in the beliefs and values that animated the west for nearly 4 centuries. Some of those beliefs were pernicious to be sure; a feeling of superiority over the benighted savages in Africa and Asia, a nauseating self righteousness that allowed all sorts of despicable practices like slavery and colonialism to become commonplace, and a moral blindness regarding the effect of many of our policies on the developing world.

But dwelling on the sins of the west ignores the truly remarkable achievements that have accrued to all of humanity as a result of western dominance of the planet. People are living longer and healthier lives despite widespread poverty. Many diseases that scourged the world for centuries - smallpox, malaria, polio, to name a few - have been wiped out or dramatically decreased. Literacy is commonplace. Agriculture has been revolutionized. Communications, travel, education - all have been transformed in third world societies as a direct result of contact with western nations.

But the deadening effect of the guilt ridden western left that so dominates the media and culture in Europe and America have so cowed the leadership, the opinion makers, and ordinary citizens that even when attacked, people sit and wonder if they are at fault for “provoking” such an act.

Ms. Phillips sees an even more immediate and specific cause of Britain’s lack of outrage:

Twenty-five years ago, we re-took the Falklands after the Argentines invaded. Faced with an act of war against our dependency, Mrs Thatcher had no hesitation. Aggression had to be fought and our people defended. It was the right thing to do.

Can anyone imagine Mrs T wringing her hands in this way over Iran’s seizure of our Marines?

True, we are now living in very different times. Personally, I supported the Iraq war, and still do. But the undoubted mistakes and disasters made by the coalition since the fall of Saddam have caused this country to throw up its hands over the whole issue of aggression by the Arab and Muslim world.

As a result, many in Britain are failing to see the big picture. Iraq is merely one theatre in a global war which threatens us and in which Iran is a major player.

And Arthur Herman is even more blunt:

Britain has been an exception. In places like Bosnia and the Persian Gulf, and in operations like Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom, its help has been solid and genuine, as well as important in a symbolic sense. America always looks better when a couple of frigates flying the Royal Navy’s White Ensignare side by side with those flying the Stars and Stripes. U.S. sailors also know that in a real fight, the men of the Royal Navy, which our navy men still call the “Senior Service,” will never let them down.

That contribution has never been vital to America - yet it was a badge of honor for Britain. It had echoes of past glory as an empire, of course, but also of Britain’s historic role as protector of a civilized and stable world order, and specifically the role of the Royal Navy. The British navy had wiped out the slave trade; it had single-handedly defied tyrants from Louis XIV and Napoleon to Hitler; and it served as midwife to the ideas of free trade and the balance of power.

Now those days are gone for good. Yet, if today’s Britons thought that by shedding that historic responsibility they could buy themselves some peace of mind, the current hostage crisis has just proved them wrong

What will it take for Britain and the rest of the western world to wake up? A better question might be is there anything that will accomplish that goal? Have Britain and Europe fallen into a permanent stupor, a languid state of denial and equivocation that will spell the end of the great alliance between America and Europe, allowing the enemies of democracy to simply grow themselves into a majority?

A change of course is desperately needed. Who will lead it and will the people follow are two questions that, at present, cannot be answered with any confidence much less certainty.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

The traditional folk dance of Lebanon is called the Dabke, or literally “stomping of the feet” - a descriptive that refers to the communal nature of the dance and the fact that it is most often performed at joyous occasions like weddings. As in other traditional folk dances like the Jewish Hora, it’s purpose is to unite the celebrants with feelings of nationhood while drawing on the emotional power of the community and family.

For the Lebanese people, who have endured 3 months of being on the edge of civil war, teetering over the abyss while the politicians have exchanged bitter and personal denunciations of each other, recent events have given them hope that soon, the political impasse that has led to strife and bloodshed will be broken and they can dance the dabke with abandon.

Yesterday, Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri of the opposition Amal Party sat down with Said Hariri, leader of the majority March 14th coalition for talks aimed at resolving the crisis. What made the meeting so significant was that it was the first time in months that the two sides sat in the same room, face to face, to discuss a way to cut the Gordian knot of sectarian differences that threatens to plunge the country into the unimaginable tragedy of civil conflict.

In a nutshell, Hezb’allah has been in the streets since December 1 calling on the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to resign or to give the Shia parties enough ministries in the cabinet so that they would have veto power over measures they dislike. And the measure they most definitely want to see vetoed is the establishment of an international tribunal, authorized by the United Nations and approved by the Security Council, to try the assassins of the former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.

Quite simply, Siniora refuses these demands on the very practical grounds that his coalition received roughly 2/3 of the vote in the last Parliamentary elections and giving the opposition veto power over the decisions of the majority would be tantamount to nullifying the election. Hezb’allah’s real game is to act as a cat’s paw for Syria, who desperately wants to stop the tribunal from sitting since it is clear from the 2 year investigation by UN special prosecutors that responsibility for Hariri’s death extends to the highest levels of the Syrian government.

The very highest levels.

The prospect of a tribunal has President Bashar Assad of Syria so spooked that during a phone conversation with his friend and partner President Ahmadinejad, he lost his temper when the Iranian came out in favor of seating the international body. The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyassah reported on Wednesday that “Assad became enraged and launched into an angry tirade, cursing the Iranians at the end of the conversation.”

Why would Ahmadinejad break with his ally over an issue that Assad feels so strongly about? The fact is, the Iranian president has his own agenda with Hezb’allah and Lebanon. Right now, it will be in Iran’s best interests to help get the best deal possible for Hezb’allah and end the crisis that is threatening the Lebanese economy as well as political stability in the country. Neither Ahmadinejad nor Hezb’allah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah desires a civil war. And if they can get a much larger presence in the cabinet without having to bother with messy democratic details like elections, it is time to pick up their winnings and leave the table a winner.

Hence, the meeting between Berri and Hariri and the start of the endgame for the two sides. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has been extremely active in trying to work out a compromise solution that will get Hezb’allah off the streets of Beirut - where they’ve been since December 1, strangling the economy and causing jitters among foreign investors who are waiting to pour more than $7 billion into rebuilding the country so devastated by the war with Israel last summer. Abdullah’s close relationship with Siniora as well as being Lebanon’s number one financier gives him a unique position that enables him to work with both sides while acting as a go between for Siniora to President Assad.

Up to this point, Assad has absolutely refused any compromise that includes the sitting of the tribunal. But he is alone now, having been abandoned in that position by his erstwhile ally Ahmadinejad whose recent visit to Saudi Arabia underscores Assad’s growing isolation. It is not known whether Ahmadinejad gave the go ahead for the tribunal at that meeting but his subsequent phone conversation with Assad would seem to indicate he has at least dropped his objections to it. This could mean a relatively quick end to the crisis if some face saving deal on the tribunal can be worked out that would satisfy Nasrallah. In the past, some ideas for such a deal included a substantial representation of Lebanese judges on the tribunal or limiting the scope of its mandate.

In the meantime, the diplomatic dance continues behind the scenes with King Abdullah and the Arab League in the lead. It should be noted that Abdullah is acting with the full blessing and support of the United States who have quietly urged the Saudis to take a more active and forceful role in combating the influence of Iran in the region. The Saudi King hasn’t shied away from this task, becoming more active in brokering peace in the Palestinian conflict between Hamas and Fatah while also taking a more pro-active role in Iraq with the Sunnis. You can say what you wish about Saudi support for ultra-conservative Wahabbists in the region but the fact is, the King is performing very well in this expanded role.

And Washington has not been idle either. When George Bush took office, aid to Lebanon amounted to around $35 million. This year, in keeping with our pledges made at the recently concluded Paris Roundtable on aid to Lebanon, the President is asking Congress for $770 million which would make Lebanon the third largest recipient of US aid per capita. This is an amount that Iran can’t come close to matching. Clearly, Lebanon has become one of the most important Middle Eastern countries to American interests.

As if to underscore that point, the canny old Druze warlord Walid Jumblatt paid a visit to Washington a few weeks ago and sat down with President Bush for an extraordinary 35 minute, face to face meeting. In contrast, the President met with Prime Minister Ohlmert for 45 minutes on his recent trip to Washington. There is little doubt the passionate Jumblatt impressed on Mr. Bush the continued support of the United States for the government of Prime Minister Siniora was vital to maintaining Lebanon’s independence.

But the United States is severely limited in exactly what kind of diplomatic help we can give Beirut given Siniora’s sensitivity to the opposition charges of being in the pocket of France and the US. Thus, our quiet and effective support of King Abdullah, backing up his efforts to resolve the crisis while working behind the scenes with other regional actors to bolster support for Siniora’s government.

While the meeting between Berri and Hariri didn’t solve anything, there is no doubt that there has been positive movement. There appears to be agreement that the March 14th forces will be granted 19 ministers in an expanded 30 member cabinet with the Hezb’allah led opposition allowed 10 posts. The sticking point involves the issue of who will name the “11th” minister? That minister is supposed to be “neutral” - a near impossibility in a country so divided. Hezb’allah says that they will name the “neutral” minister. But just recently, Abdullah got Ahmadinejad to sign off on a plan that would have the Saudi King naming that minister. This sits well with his good friend Prime Minister Siniora but didn’t go down well with the opposition.

The important thing, as Hariri points out, is that both sides recognize the fact that they need each other to rule. “”We can only accept the no victor, no vanquished formula,” the son of the martyred ex-Prime Minister said yesterday. Can Nasrallah find the statesmanship to agree? He has gone out on a very long limb by proclaiming early in the crisis that his people would be in the streets until the government fell. He is finding it very hard to find his way back from that position. It appears, however, that his partner Mr. Berri is willing to act as a bridge between the opposition and the majority. Given the determination of the two men to come to an agreement, this bodes well for the near future.

Coaxing Hezb’allah back into the government will not solve Lebanon’s problems. A new electoral law must be drafted and Presidential elections held. There’s the issue of the small spit of land called Shebaa Farms currently occupied by Israel but claimed by Lebanon. And the issues raised by the sitting of the Hariri tribunal will almost certainly affect the effort to normalize relations with its powerful and intrusive neighbor Syria. There is war reconstruction to think of, economic reforms promised to the Paris Roundtable to enact, and the stickiest problem of all - how to get the guns away from Hezb’allah without starting a civil war.

Daunting tasks all. But first things first. And before the people can celebrate, the forces that threaten to tear the country apart must be harnessed and turned towards building a future where all Lebanese regardless of sect can enjoy independence and freedom.

French President Jacques Chirac shrugs off Iranian nukes in response to a question at a press conference held yesterday.

The last time I did a post on French President Jacques Chirac readers walked away with the impression that I hate the French people and treat them unfairly when I make fun of some of their national peculiarities.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Like P.J. O’Rourke, I have a soft spot in my heart for the French:

The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don’t know.
O’Rourke, P.J. (1989), Holidays in hell. London (Picador), 199

Perhaps if the French drank more whiskey and tried harder not to undermine the United States on Iran, we would quit calling them “cheese eating surrender monkeys” and simply refer to them as weasels:

President Jacques Chirac said this week that if Iran had one or two nuclear weapons, it would not pose a big danger, and that if Iran were to launch a nuclear weapon against a country like Israel, it would lead to the immediate destruction of Tehran.

On Tuesday, Mr. Chirac summoned the same journalists back to Élysée Palace to retract many of his remarks.

Mr. Chirac said repeatedly during the second interview that he had spoken casually and quickly the day before because he believed he had been talking about Iran off the record.

“I should rather have paid attention to what I was saying and understood that perhaps I was on the record,” he said.

I shouldn’t have insulted weasels so.

To say that the French are being unhelpful with regards to Iran wouldn’t be true. They have been of enormous help to the Iranians. The only possible way to convince the Iranian government to cease enriching uranium or, at the very least, allow for intrusive, on site inspections of the enrichment process is for the Big Three in Europe - Great Britain, France, and Germany - to stand shoulder to shoulder and speak with one voice along with the United States on the question of Iranian nukes.

The United States worked extremely hard last summer and early fall trying to reach a consensus with our European partners on Iran. We worked even harder to bring the Russians and Chinese on board for even the limited, watered down sanctions that were eventually passed by the Security Council. All the major players in the game seemed to agree on at least one thing; no nuclear weapons for Iran under any circumstances at any time.

This united stance actually seemed to be having a limited effect in Iran as prices for basics went through the roof because speculators were worried that even harsher sanctions would be in the offing thanks to the unity of the major powers. Ahmadinejad lost some prestige and perhaps even some support as a result of the sanctions regime being passed by a united Europe and America.

And now Mr. Chirac has detonated a bomb right in the middle of this coalition. It doesn’t matter that he tried to take it back. What matters is that the Iranians know that when push comes to shove at the United Nations, the chances are good that France will abandon consensus and once again pursue its own agenda. Not out of any over riding national interest but because they feel it their duty to oppose the Americans while pretending that France still has influence in the world beyond their former colonies and certain segments of what we used to call the “Non-Aligned Nations.” By giving a wink and a nod to Tehran on their nuclear program, Chirac has almost single handedly guaranteed that someone - either the Israelis or us - will have to go in and take out the Iranian nuke program before it can build a bomb.

Granted the chances of the Iranians giving in to the Security Council demands were remote even before Chirac’s casually stupid remarks. But Chirac’s comments guarantee that those chances now sink to near zero.

Chirac will be gone in a couple of months. It will be interesting to see if his successor continues the game of “now you see our support and now you don’t” that Chirac has played for years on a variety of issues. Just about anything would be an improvement over this insufferably arrogant man.

It appears that Israeli Prime Minister Olmert may be in some legal hot water. The Jerusalem Post is reporting that the State Attorney will announce that a criminal investigation will proceed when the PM returns from a far east trip:

The state has decided to open a criminal investigation against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on his alleged role intervention in the government tender for the sale of the controlling interest in Bank Leumi stock, Channel 10 reported Tuesday evening.

Due to a conflict of interest, Attorney General Menahem Mazuz, who would ordinarily be the official to declare a criminal investigation involving a head of state, has removed himself from the Olmert affair. According to Channel 10, Mazuz’s sister may have had a role in the Bank Leumi affair.

Instead, State Attorney Eran Shendar will announce the criminal investigation after Olmert returns from his visit to China.

According to Channel 10, the extent of the investigation has not yet been announced. While police will likely concentrate on the alleged Bank Leumi improprieties, it is possible that other scandals in which Olmert is suspected of taking a role will also be addressed, such as a number of real estate deals that may have been conducted illegally, including the purchase of Olmert’s home on Rehov Cremieux in Jerusalem.

Olmert is alleged to have intervened in the government tender for the sale of the controlling interest in Bank Leumi stock. And the real estate deals that are under investigation were sweet:

A Jewish-American businessman who has donated money to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bought a home owned by the Olmert family for 30 percent more than its market value in the mid-1990s, the Haaretz daily reported Wednesday.

The reported deal marked the latest sign of trouble for the Israeli leader, who is already facing criticism for his handling of the war in Lebanon and is being investigated for other another questionable real estate deal.

According to the report, Uri Harkham bought the home in Jerusalem’s Nahlaot neighborhood in 1995 for the inflated price of about $660,000. He sold the house several years later for $430,000 a significant loss, the report said.

Harkham, a California real-estate owner and clothing maker, contributed $25,000 to Olmert’s 1993 campaign for mayor of Jerusalem, according to the paper.

And that’s just one of Olmert’s problems. He may also be in trouble for trying to stack the Income Tax Authority with cronies:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is a suspect in the case that exploded into the headlines today, in which “connected” businessmen are suspected of influencing top officials at the Income Tax Authority, some allegedly through the prime minister’s bureau chief Shula Zaken, to get tax breaks, reports journalist Yoav Yitzhak.

He claims the police have preliminary information but it isn’t clear if and when Olmert will be questioned.

Through his website News First Class, Yitzhak claims that Olmert enabled Zaken and her brothers to influence appointments at the Income Tax Authority, though he knew of her contacts and the businesses of her brothers.

The apex was the appointment of Jacky Matza as tax commissioner, whom the police suspect Olmert appointed at Zaken’s urging.

But Olmert had an interest in the matter, according to the suspicion, because Zaken and her brother Yoram Karashi had been involved in obtaining tax breaks for the prime minister’s personal friends and supporters.

For a guy who showed a curious lethargy in prosecuting a war against Israel’s deadliest enemy, Olmert sure exhibits a lot of energy when it comes to the finer points of political corruption and influence peddling.

In the meantime, the military man most responsible for the Lebanon debacle, IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, has refused to resign and Olmert refuses to fire him. This has caused a crisis in the upper echelons of the IDF:

A senior Israel Defense Forces officer told Haaretz on Monday that many of the army’s senior officers believe the confidence crisis among the top brass is still strong, and that the coming months will test Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz’s ability to lead the army in reforms.

“A large segment of conference participants doubt the ability of the current leadership to lead,” a major general on the General Staff told Haaretz, during the first day of a two-day conference for senior IDF commanding officers.

The conference, located at the Hatzor air force base in southern Israel, was held to discuss the findings of the in-house investigations into the army’s wartime performance.

And given some of the criticisms emanating from this conference, Olmert may have to bite the bullet and fire Halutz due to the performance of the general staff during the war:

The following were mentioned among the lessons of the war: over-reliance on the Israel Air Force as a counter to Hezbollah; late call-up of reservist divisions; inability to solve the threat posed by short-range rockets; poor training and equipping of ground forces, particularly of reservist units; and failures in how decision making was made at the General Staff level.

Sources at the conference told Haaretz that in taking lessons from the war, Halutz is focusing on ways to prepare the IDF for future confrontations. They also stressed that the gathering was not presented as a setting for disagreements, and therefore many of those in attendance chose not to challenge the investigators’ findings and the relatively minor measures taken against individual officers.

It sounds like what’s wrong with the IDF won’t be fixed over night, especially the training of reserves that in recent years has suffered from budgetary concerns and perhaps a false sense that with Egypt and Jordan at peace with the Jewish state, the regular IDF forces would be able to handle most conflict scenarios that would come up. This kind of wake up call was a painful lesson and will almost certainly be addressed by Halutz or whoever is appointed to replace him.

And Olmert? He has chosen a foreign venue to admit his policy of unilateral concessions to Hamas and Hizbullah has been a failure:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently expressed his disappointment with the results of Israel’s two unilateral withdrawals, saying that the violence that broke out in both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip in recent months convinced him that there is no point in any future unilateral moves of this kind.

In an interview with the Chinese news agency Xinhua prior to his departure Monday for a three-day visit to China, the prime minister said that he believes in the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. In order to achieve this, he added, Israel will have to withdraw from a large part of the territories that it controls today, and “we are ready to do this.”

“A year ago, I believed that we would be able to do this unilaterally,” the prime minister said, referring to a withdrawal from the West Bank. “However, it should be said that our experience in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip is not encouraging. We pulled out of Lebanon unilaterally, and see what happened. We pulled out of the Gaza Strip completely, to the international border, and every day they are firing Qassam rockets at Israelis.”

My reaction to that can be summed up in one utterance:

DUH!

Here’s a man who has a knack of “trivializing the momentous and complicating the obvious.” (HT: Gettysburg)

It will be interesting to see how long Olmert can survive these scandals and investigations. And it will also be interesting to see if there will be new elections in the next 6 months in Israel that may bring big changes both to the office of the Prime Minister as well as the Knesset.

US AC-130 gunships attacked some fleeing al-Qaeda members along the Somalia-Kenya border wreaking havoc, sowing confusion, and evidently killing several terrorists - including a possible al-Qaeda financier who may have assisted the bombers who destroyed our African embassies in 1998:

A U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship attacked suspected al-Qaeda members in southern Somalia on Sunday, and U.S. sources said the operation may have hit a senior terrorist figure.

The strike took place near the Kenyan border, according to a senior officer at the Pentagon. Other sources said it was launched at night from the U.S. military facility in neighboring Djibouti. It was based on joint military-CIA intelligence and on information provided by Ethiopian and Kenyan military forces operating in the border area.

Sources said last night that initial reports indicated the attack had been successful, although information was still scanty.

“You had some figures on the move in a relatively unpopulated part of the country,” said one source confirming the attack, who, like several others, would discuss the operation only on the condition of anonymity. “It was a confluence of information and circumstances,” he said. The attack was first reported by CBS News.

This is more like it. First, we had cooperative intelligence sharing from both Ethiopia and Kenya - the two major players in that part of the world and both of whom want nothing to do with al-Qaeda and radical Islam. Secondly, the operation appeared to be well planned and expertly carried out. Third, the bonus to the operation may be the timely deaths of two higher ups in al-Qaeda who have been responsible for aiding the perpetrators of attacks on American interests:

One target of the strike, sources said, was Abu Talha al-Sudani, a Sudanese who is married to a Somali woman and has lived in Somalia since 1993 — the year of the attack against U.S. troops that was chronicled in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.” In a 2001 U.S. court case against Osama bin Laden, Sudani was described by a leading witness as an explosives expert who was close to the al-Qaeda leader.

More recently, Sudani was identified by U.S. intelligence as a close associate of Gouled Hassan Dourad, head of a Mogadishu-based network that operated in support of al-Qaeda in Somalia. Dourad is one of 14 “high-value” prisoners transferred last September from CIA “black sites” to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence then disclosed that Dourad “worked for the East African al-Qaeda cell led by . . . al-Sudani” and carried out at least one mission for him, related to a plan to bomb the U.S. military base in Djibouti.

And that’s not all. US intelligence has fingered Sudani as the financier for the terrorist attack on our embassies in 1998. And the terrorist who was the beneficiary of that financing may have been killed in the raid as well:

Others have identified Sudani as the financier for Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, believed responsible for the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. All are among the senior al-Qaeda operatives the Bush administration has charged were sheltered by Somalian Islamic fundamentalists controlling Mogadishu, the country’s capital. They are believed to have fled late last month when Ethiopian troops drove the fundamentalists out of the capital and toward the Kenyan border.

[In an interview early Tuesday, Abdirizak Hassan, chief of staff for Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, confirmed the strike. Hassan said he heard from American officials that Fazul Abdullah Mohammed had been killed, although U.S. officials said he had not been in their immediate sights. "Among the targets was Fazul," he said, "and we understand that Fazul is no more."

Hassan also said Somali officials authorized the strike. "We gave permission for actions that are more than airstrikes," Hassan said. "Whatever it means to rout these people out, we have given them permission."]

So to sum up; a multi national effort to destroy fleeing al-Qaeda terrorists, carried out with precision and our military’s usual deadly efficiency, with the permission of the UN approved and backed Somali government, may have sent two major al-Qaeda figures along with several others to hell.

One would think that such an operation could be supported by all Americans who wish to fight terrorism. In fact, I would say that this is a no brainer - even for the left.

But what do I know?

These men are believed responsible for acts of terrorism, and the people who were attacked were believed to be the men in question. Evidently that forms a sound basis for administering (or, at least, attempting to administer) the death penalty, at least by U.S. standards.

While this person represents the loopy left, even “mainstream” liberals are clucking their tongues and wagging their fingers in disapproval:

See, here’s the thing. The US, again, refused to talk directly to the ICU. The ICU, like Hezbollah, wanted, needed, recognition (even more than Hezbollah). A deal could have been made. But it wasn’t. Instead what the US has done is back a foreign invasion in support of a puppet government with no popular support…

If the ICU had taken over Somalia they could have been dealt with as you deal with nations - pressure, sanctions, maybe even bombing runs - plus the carrot of aid and trade relations. As a guerilla movement there is nothing the US can do to them that it has not already done.

The ICU will win in the long run. A lot of people will die in the meantime. Al-Qa’eda will have another haven, and the US will be reviled for putting a bunch of bloodthirsty raping monsters back into power.

All in a day’s work in the Bush administration.

I don’t know whether to fisk this idiocy or simply sit back and laugh at the breathtaking naivete and appalling ignorance.

First of all, we spent the last 6 months urging the Transitional Government to talk with more moderate elements in the Islamic Courts Union:

Frazer, the top U.S. diplomat for Africa, had said late Sunday in Nairobi that Yusuf’s government, which was formed by an international conference in 2004 and has never controlled Mogadishu, needed to bring moderate Islamists into the regime.

“I support reaching out to the … Islamic Courts,” Frazer said. “We see a role in the future of Somalia for all who renounce violence and extremism.”

The message signaled a more conciliatory U.S. stance on the Islamic Courts Movement, which had seized Mogadishu in June from U.S.-backed warlords. Initially U.S. officials based in Kenya had some contact with moderates within the movement, including Sheik Sherif Ahmed, a geography teacher who emerged as their leader.

But Ahmed soon was edged out by hard-liners, led by suspected al-Qaida operative Hassan Dahir Aweys, who laid claims to territory in neighboring countries and called for jihad against Ethiopia. Frazer made a series of statements starting in November claiming that al-Qaida terrorists had overrun the courts movement.

U.S. officials think that the militants are sheltering three terrorists who masterminded the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Bush administration is widely thought to have given neighboring, Christian-led Ethiopia the green light to expel the Islamists.

Funny how the Agonist writer failed to mention that tiny detail of a declaration of jihad against largely Christian Ethiopia by the radicals in ICU long before the invasion. But then, that just doesn’t fit the narrative of the US as bloodthirsty warmongers so it could be safely jettisoned in favor of a comparison of the those gentle souls in the ICU with democratic reformers from Hizbullah.

The stupidity of such a comparison boggles the mind. Hizbullah was enormously unpopular in Lebanon even before they declared their intention to overthrow the legitimately elected government of Prime Minister Siniora. The overwhelming majority of Lebanese place the blame for starting the destructive war against Israel right where it belongs; in Hassan Nasrallah’s lap. To say that Hizbullah has any “popular support” at all beyond the Shia minority (and a sizable segment of secular Shias oppose them as well) is laughable and demonstrates a towering ignorance of what Hizbullah is doing in Lebanon - mainly the bidding of their masters in Syria and Tehran.

And the “popular support” for the ICU in Somalia?

Jubilant Somalis cheered as troops of the U.N.-backed interim government rolled into Mogadishu unopposed Thursday, putting an end to six months of domination of the capital by a radical Islamic movement.

Ethiopian soldiers stopped on the outskirts of town, after providing much of the military might in the offensive that shattered what had seemed an unbeatable Islamic militia. Islamic fighters fled south vowing to continue the battle.

“We are in Mogadishu,” Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Gedi declared after meeting with local clan leaders to discuss the peaceful hand-over of the city.

The ICU had been taken over by radical foreign Islamists in the previous months. Whatever “law and order” they brought to the country came at the expense of the security of their neighbors in Ethiopia and Kenya as the direct threat of jihad against Ethiopia proves conclusively. Not only that, it became apparent that the ICU was setting up a safe haven for terrorists who could strike US and western interests (and friends) in the region:

“We had seen intelligence evidence these three al Qaeda operatives were very much influencing the leadership of the council of the ICU — for example providing logistics, fuel and arms to the militias,” said Jendayi Frazer, the U.S. State Department’s Assistant Secretary for African Affairs.

U.S. officials in East Africa said earlier this week that al Qaeda operatives were developing the ability to attack U.S. targets just as they did when the embassy bombings killed hundreds.

Intelligence shows al Qaeda stepped up its operations in Somalia in June after an Islamic militia took power.

Their camps taught radical Islam to young men, weapons flowed in from eastern European arms dealers and money arrived from the Middle East, U.S. officials said.

“What we were really concerned about was there seemed to be much more recruiting, much more training going on. They were positioning themselves to expand their area of influence beyond Somali borders,” said Rear Adm. Richard Hunt of Task Force Horn of Africa.

Before I condemn the entire left for the stupidity exhibited above, let’s wait and see if any liberals cheer this victory against al-Qaeda. I am hoping that there is some sanity both in Congress and among the netroots who recognize that as flawed as the Transitional Government might be, they are a damn sight better than an Islamist-backed, radical fundamentalist outfit like the ICU running things.

And if we can convince the legitimate government to talk with more moderate elements in the ICU and perhaps bring them into the government in some sort of power sharing arrangement, even the left might celebrate.

Analysts who had been critical of U.S. policy in Somalia said the Bush administration might be focusing on achieving political stability there after years of being preoccupied with preventing al-Qaida cells from taking root.

“If the U.S. is indeed doing more than making a few public statements in support of dialogue with moderates, then it does represent a shift in the public face of its policy,” said John Prendergast, senior adviser to the International Crisis Group, a research center on global conflict.

The Islamists’ ouster left a power vacuum in Mogadishu, where the transitional government has little support. The city’s powerful Hawiye clan accuses Yusuf, who’s of a rival clan, of being a puppet of Ethiopia.

“If southern Somalia is to stabilize, it is essential that the transitional government hold substantial power-sharing talks with the Hawiye clan elders and Islamic Courts officials,” Prendergast said.

Trying to sweeten the deal, the U.S. has pledged $40 million in new aid to Somalia, including $14 million to support a proposed African peacekeeping mission. Frazer said the money wasn’t conditional on the transitional government negotiating with the Islamists.

We appear to be undertaking a substantial, determined effort to make the right moves in Somalia now - both militarily and diplomatically. As to the latter, patience may be a virtue that I would urge on my lefty friends. Somalia has resisted efforts to coalesce into a nation for the past 15 years and it will take time for our policies to bear fruit; that is, if we can sustain them.

But if the above excerpts from lefty blogs is the kind of mindless, knee jerk reaction to our efforts and the efforts of a sizable portion of Africa to defeat the ICU and establish a viable government in Somalia, then we can do well to ask our lefty friends a very pointed and pertinent question:

Just what will it take for you to support military action to kill our enemies?

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey:

The Ethiopians did us a big favor by dislodging the Islamists from Mogadishu. Once on the run, the US could bring all of its technological assets on line to track them, and the Air Force waited long enough for all of them to run into the trap. The Navy positioned the USS Eisenhower in the waters nearby Somalia just in case it finds even more targets to strike.

It may have taken us a long time, but we do not forget. Let’s hope that our attack took out these high-value targets and plenty of their followers to boot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FRENCH PRESIDENT JACQUES CHIRAC EXPRESSES SURPRISE AT A REPORTER’S QUESTION ABOUT IRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM

I am running out of English language adjectives to describe what a dirty rotten, low-down, double-crossing, two-timing, floor four-flushing, loutish galoot French President Jacques Chirac is. And since there really are no nasty sounding adjectives that I could use in French (a beautiful language, music to the ear), I’m going to try some in German:

Chirac ist ein Schurke.

(Chirac is a scoundrel.)

Der französische Präsident hat das Gesicht eines Kojoten.

(The French President has the face of a coyote.)

Ich habe Schildkröten als altes Jacques besser schauen gesehen.

(Ive seen better looking turtles than old Jacques.)

Thank God for the Anglo Saxons. There’s something marvelously guttural about the German language, alternately spitting and swallowing words. It’s the perfect language to express the absolute and utter disdain I feel for the French President at this moment.

What has our wussy friend done now? Oh, nothing much. Just undermined the position of the United Nations Security Council, the United States, the European Union, and anyone else trying to get Iran to stop enriching uranium. In what only can be described as a towering conceit born of a false sense of French superiority in diplomatic affairs, the weasel has offered to allow Iran to continue enriching uranium until “formal” negotiations begin:

In an effort to jump-start formal negotiations between six world powers and Iran over its nuclear program, President Jacques Chirac of France suggested Monday that Iran would not have to freeze major nuclear activities until the talks began.

Over the years, Mr. Chirac has consistently taken an extremely hard line against Iran both in public and private. But his remarks in a radio interview could be interpreted as a concession to Iran, whose officials have said they will not suspend their production of enriched uranium as demanded by the United Nations Security Council.

“Iran and the six countries together, we must first find an agenda for negotiations, then start a negotiation,” Mr. Chirac told Europe 1 radio. “During this negotiation I propose that on the one hand, the six refrain from referring the issue to the Security Council, and that Iran refrain from uranium enrichment during the duration of the negotiation.”

Anyone want to guess how long it will take to find that elusive “agenda” that Chirac says is necessary to come up with before formal negotiations begin? As long as the Iranians will be able to continue to work toward building a bomb, it may take years to come to an agreement.

Is that the extent of Chirac’s perfidy? Hardly:

Ahead of what is now certain to be a contentious meeting with President Bush today, President Chirac of France reneged on his previous support for a united international approach to halting Iran’s nuclear program.

In two interviews on the eve of his trip to Turtle Bay to attend the U.N. General Assembly, Mr. Chirac threatened to restart negotiations with Iran. His comments called into question the united position of the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany, whose foreign ministers had said that unless Iran suspended enrichment by the end of August, the council would consider punitive measures.

“I don’t believe in a solution without dialogue,” Mr. Chirac told Europe 1 radio. “We must, on the one hand, together, Iran and the six countries, meet and set an agenda, then start negotiations.”

The French president added, “I suggest that the six renounce referring” Iran to “the U.N. Security Council and that Iran renounce uranium enrichment during negotiations,” according to an Associated Press translation.

(HT: Malkin)

Not even the insufferable DeGaulle would have pulled something like this. Chirac’s contempt for his European partners and his intense dislike of America could end up burying us all unless someone takes him down a peg or two. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with the lickspittle for at least another 7 months. Elections are scheduled for next year at which time it is possible Anglo-French relations could take a turn for the better.

One of the candidates on the right is Nicolas Sarkozy. He has expressed a strong desire to improve relations with the United States, even going so far as to say nice things about America both in France and here during a recent visit. Of course, that won’t erase the virulent strain of anti-Americanism among ordinary Frenchmen - especially those on the left. And the far right, with their hyper-patriotic notions of the French nation as a world power (not to mention being ferocious guardians of French culture and language that they feel is under constant attack by us yanks) looks at America with suspicion.

Where France does exercise world class clout is among the so-called non-aligned nations. And with the French wavering on sanctions against the Iranians, members from that bloc may be getting cold feet:

But though the steering group appeared to be diverging yesterday, with some nations calling for more dialogue and others urging a more muscular stance, there were also indications it could expand.

[snip]

With Mr. Chirac’s remarks, France joins China and Russia, whose officials have expressed strong reservations about imposing sanctions, making a Security Council decision on punishing Iran unlikely. “We, too, don’t like sanctions,” Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters at Turtle Bay yesterday.

Bush administration officials, as well as British diplomats, indicated Mr. Chirac’s change of tack was not part of a coordinated new strategy for the international group. The American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, told reporters that the Iranian nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, did not even bother to explain his country’s decisions to council members.

“The discussions with Iran appear to have come to a stop, in the sense that Mr. Larijani, whom we expected in New York, is not here,” Mr. Bolton said. “We are now 18 days, by my calculation, after the August 31 deadline. Our position remains unchanged: Unless there is a full and verifiable suspension of uranium enrichment activities, we will seek sanctions in the Security Council.”

Leave it to Bolton to remind the UN of its responsibility. The idea that the Democrats refuse to confirm this guy is just incomprehensible to me. He has been a breath of fresh air not only representing America’s interests very well but also in his advocacy for making the United Nations Security Council into a serious body that serves the cause of peace rather than the laughingstock of thugs and dictators that it currently is.

Iran is still on the agenda at the Security Council. I hope that Bolton can hold them together long enough so that at least a formal vote can be taken on sanctions in order to reveal who is standing in the way of putting pressure on the Iranians to halt their drive to acquire nuclear weapons.

And at the head of the pack of betrayers and renegers; Jacques Chirac. Perhaps we can impose on Ahmadinejad to have his picture taken kissing the French President on the cheek. Thanks to the weasel Chirac, he’s already gotten his 30 pieces of silver.

UPDATE

Commenter John points out that the correct adjective is “four-flusher” not “floor-flusher” that I had originally. Must brush up on my poker nomenclature.

Also, I couldn’t resist. Two commenters have mentioned the perfect epithet to call Chirac: Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey. Here it is in German (courtesy Alta-Vista):

Käse, der Auslieferungaffen ißt

I must admit it brought me up a little short this morning after reading Ed Morrissey’s take on the agreement made between the Pakistani government and tribal leaders in North Waziristan that essentially gives the Taliban a free hand in the province. Ed was quoting from this piece in the London Times that appeared to view the agreement as a way to trap the Taliban between NATO forces in Afghanistan and the Pakistani border:

Kabul and Islamabad have been blaming each other for allowing Islamic militants to cross the 1,500-mile (2,400km) frontier and attack security forces. Yesterday Pakistan took a big step towards ending the fighting in the lawless Waziristan region when it signed a peace deal with tribal leaders. The agreement commits local militants to halt attacks on both sides of the border.

In return Pakistan will reduce its military presence and compensate tribesmen whose relatives have been killed or whose properties have been damaged.

A key provision of the deal is that tribesmen will expel foreign fighters from the area. The region is believed to be a haven for al-Qaeda fighters and members of the former Taleban regime in Afghanistan. Without a base in Pakistan their operations could be seriously disrupted.

The problem with this rosy scenario is that it is belied by other news reports as well as the analysis of none other than Bill Roggio.

First, here’s the take on the agreement by the New York Times:

The central government and tribal elders signed a peace agreement on Tuesday that will allow militants to operate freely in one of Pakistan’s most restive border areas in return for a pledge to halt attacks and infiltration into Afghanistan.

The deal is widely viewed as a face-saving retreat for the Pakistani Army, which has taken a heavy battering at the hands of the mountain tribesmen and militants, who are allied with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But the government may have in effect ceded the militants a sanctuary in the area, called North Waziristan.

In one of the most obvious capitulations since it began its campaign to rout foreign fighters from the area, the government said foreigners would be allowed to stay if they respected the law and the peace agreement. Osama bin Laden and other leaders of Al Qaeda are believed to be among the foreigners who have taken refuge in the area.

The spin here is decidedly negative. And the problems with the agreement are readily apparent when you look at the fine print:

In the agreement, signed by seven representatives of the Taliban council in North Waziristan, the militants pledged, “There will be no cross-border movement for militant activity in neighboring Afghanistan.” They also vowed to stop attacks on government and security forces.

[snip]

The government also agreed to release all detainees and the militants pledged not to attack government forces or property or set up a parallel administration. Both parties agreed to return weapons and other equipment seized during the fighting.

The agreement appeared similar to an earlier one signed in South Waziristan, which essentially allowed the militants to remain armed and at large in return for not attacking the Pakistani military.

A spokesman for the militants, Abdullah Farhad, denied in a telephone call from an undisclosed location that there were any foreign militants in North Waziristan, and said the government should provide evidence of their presence.

“Why should we bother if they are not here,” he said, speaking of foreign fighters.

“Pay no attention to those Arabs behind the curtain!”

There are several points to be made here:

1. Can we trust these “tribal leaders” to keep their end of the bargain? Who are they? The “Taliban council in North Waziristan” would indicate they are in fact the enemies of the Afghanistan government. And we expect them to abide by an agreement that prevents them from giving aid and shelter to their fighters engaging NATO forces across the border? If the Pakistani government can’t “prove” that there are foreign fighters in Pakistan how are they going to be able to enforce an agreement where it will be equally difficult to “prove” that the Taliban has violated the agreement?

“Face saving” indeed!

2. Pakistan has agreed to release “detainees.” One assumes there are both Taliban fighters and possibly Pakistani members of al-Qaeda who would be set free. Arabs may or may not be involved in this release but isn’t just a bit worrying that people who were perfectly willing to kill Pakistani soldiers are now free as long as they only target Afghans and NATO soldiers?

3. Pakistan is forced to return weapons and equipment seized from the Taliban. This means they will have to buy that many fewer weapons although the doubling of the value of the opium crop has been a godsend to their efforts in that regard.

4. The “militants” have vowed not to set up a “parallel administration.” Why bother? They’ve been governed by their tribal councils forever. Ignoring what the Pakistani government tells them to do is now that much easier with no troops to interfere in their effort to set up Sharia law throughout the area.

Bill Roggio says it’s a surrender:

The news of the Pakistani government signing a truce agreement with the Taliban in North Waziristan is far worse than being reported. We raised the alarm early morning on September 4, and newly uncovered information on the terms of the agreement indicate Pakistan has been roundly defeated by the Taliban in North Waziristan. The “truce” is in fact a surrender. According to an anonymous intelligence source, the terms of the truce includes:

- The Pakistani Army is abandoning its garrisons in North and South Waziristan.
- The Pakistani Military will not operate in North Waziristan, nor will it monitor actions the region.
- Pakistan will turn over weapons and other equipment seized during Pakistani Army operations.
- The Taliban and al-Qaeda have set up a Mujahideen Shura (or council) to administer the agency.
- The truce refers to the region as “The Islamic Emirate of Waziristan.”
- An unknown quantity of money was transferred from Pakistani government coffers to the Taliban. The Pakistani government has essentially paid a tribute or ransom to end the fighting.
- “Foreigners” (a euphemism for al-Qaeda and other foreign jihadis) are allowed to remain in the region.
- Over 130 mid-level al-Qaeda commanders and foot soldiers were released from Pakistani custody.
- The Taliban is required to refrain from violence in Pakistan only; the agreement does not stipulate refraining from violence in Afghanistan.

There are some on the right who are hopeful that the abandonment of this area by the Pakistani army means that our military can engage at will:

Is this bad news for the US or is it a strategic softball being thrown to us by Pakistan? It has been my understanding that the hands of the US forces have been metaphorically tied by the refusal of Pakistan to allow our troops unfettered access to this region. If Pakistan cedes its claim to this area does this allow the US to go into the region at its own will? Pakistan is out and is no longer providing the protection of a “sovereign state”. No protection from the UN, since it is not a member. No diplomatic ties with any other nations. The Islamic Emirate of Waziristan is now a rogue state. To me it sounds like a new front in the war on terror has opened.

(HT: STACLU)

If 80,000 Pakistani troops couldn’t deal with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the province then there is little that NATO could do unless there was a massive increase in the alliance’s commitment to the fight.

No, I’m sorry. I see nothing but disaster in this agreement. And lest anyone doubt who is in charge in the “Islamic Emirate of Waziristan” (the new name of the Province), here’s Roggio:

The truce meeting was essentially an event designed to humiliate the Pakistani government and military. Government negotiators were searched for weapons by Taliban fighters prior to entering the meeting. Heavily armed Taliban were posted as guards around the ceremony. The al Rayah – al-Qaeda’s black flag – was hung over the scoreboard at the soccer stadium where the ceremony was held. After the Pakistani delegation left, al-Qaeda’s black flag was run up the flagpole of military checkpoints and the Taliban began looting the leftover small arms. The Taliban also held a ‘parade’ in the streets of Miranshah. They openly view the ‘truce’ as a victory, and the facts support this view.

[snip]

The Pakistani government has ceded a region the size of New Jersey, with a population of about 800,000 to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan is not the end of the Taliban’s expansion, however. An intelligence source indicates similar negotiations between the Taliban and the Pakistani government are being held in the agencies of Khyber, Tank, Dera Ishmal Khan and Bajaur. The jihadi dreams of al-Qaeda’s safe havens in western Pakistan have become a reality. And the gains made by the Coalition in Afghanistan have now officially been wiped away with the peace agreement in the newly established Islamic Emirate of Waziristan.

I await with interest the inevitable spin on this agreement that will come from our State Department as well as the Presidential palace in Kabul as both our government and Karzai try to put the best face on this huge setback in our efforts in the War on Terror.

UPDATE: MUSHARRAF NIXES NATO “HOT PURSUIT” INTO PAKISTAN

Via Allah, we get this from AP:

Visiting President Gen. Pervez Musharraf also said Pakistan would never allow U.S.-led coalition forces currently hunting al-Qaida and Taliban fighters on the Afghan side of the border into tribal areas on its side.

“On our side of the border there will be a total uprising if a foreigner enters that area,” he said. “It’s not possible at all, we will never allow any foreigners into that area. It’s against the culture of the people there.”

So much for the idea that we could engage Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in the province now that the Pakistani military has been forced into a humiliating retreat.

By the way, the AP link has a picture of Musharraf and Karzai standing together at the start of the Pakistani President’s visit to Kabul. Neither look too comfortable and poor Karzai looks like he swallowed something that didn’t agree with him.

And Musharraf had the gall to say that Pakistan and Afghanistan should join together to fight the “common enemy” of terrorism and extremism being fanned by al-Qaida and Taliban militants.

Who’s he kidding?