Right Wing Nut House

I pity David Bell. And, in a way, I envy him. To be so oblivious to the threat posed by organizations like al-Qaeda and the ever burgeoning list of imitators and wannabes involved in international terrorism takes a special sort of myopia, a blissful blindness that lays a blanket of serenity over those who are arrogant enough or delusional enough to indulge in such fantasies.

Bell’s column in today’s Los Angeles Times raises an interesting point: Is the threat of terrorism an existential one? But answering in the negative, Bell proves himself shortsighted, shallow, and in the end, dead wrong.

The provocative headline of his piece - “Was 9/11 Really that Bad?” - is not very original. Several eminent historians have already tackled the subject and with far more depth and intelligence than Bell devoted to this regurgitation of leftist cant about the War on Terror.

First, let’s set up a great big strawman, shall we?

IMAGINE THAT on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during the war against terrorism.

It also raises several questions. Has the American reaction to the attacks in fact been a massive overreaction? Is the widespread belief that 9/11 plunged us into one of the deadliest struggles of our time simply wrong? If we did overreact, why did we do so? Does history provide any insight?

Certainly, if we look at nothing but our enemies’ objectives, it is hard to see any indication of an overreaction. The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen the old “20 million dead Soviets can’t be wrong” meme coming from the left. I actually sort of missed it. When last we left those 20 million dead Soviets, they were being used to assure us that the Russians would never attack America or Western Europe or anybody for that matter because no country suffered more as a result of war. This was about the time that Andropov was trying to convince himself that a nuclear first strike on America was necessary because Reagan was a nut. And we heard the meme repeated ad naseum all during the Soviet’s campaign to split the Europeans from the United States by threatening all sorts of nasty consequences if NATO deployed Pershing II missiles.

The Soviet Union lost 20 million people in World War II because they chose to help Adolf Hitler start the war in the first place. Stalin made a conscious decision (and an immoral secret protocol with Germany that partitioned Poland and divided Europe into “spheres of influence”) to abandon their treaty obligations to France and allow Hitler a free hand in western Europe.

Now we have 20 million dead Soviets being used to tell us that we haven’t suffered enough in the War on Terror to justify our reaction, that indeed, we don’t know what real suffering is. Bell is trying to tell us that the 20 million lost in Stalin’s war of choice should be, if not a benchmark, then certainly a guide to how we should be approaching terrorism. Evidently, the measly 3,000 Americans lost on 9/11 just doesn’t cut it among the “proportional response” crowd.

I could be flippant and ask the Professor to wait a few years until the nightmare of terrorists armed with nuclear and biological weapons becomes a reality but that’s the point of our “overreaction” isn’t it? I guarantee it will be easy for the Bell’s of the world to say, after the first nuke destroys an American city, that the terrorists are not an existential threat, that in the grand scheme of things, what’s one little city when compared to getting the rest of the world upset with us and going into places like Iraq to bust up governments who aid and abet people who want to kill as many of us as possible - something the professor readily acknowledges?

Certainly, if we look at nothing but our enemies’ objectives, it is hard to see any indication of an overreaction. The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States.

Yet a great many Americans, particularly on the right, have failed to make this distinction. For them, the “Islamo-fascist” enemy has inherited not just Adolf Hitler’s implacable hatreds but his capacity to destroy. The conservative author Norman Podhoretz has gone so far as to say that we are fighting World War IV (No. III being the Cold War).

But it is no disrespect to the victims of 9/11, or to the men and women of our armed forces, to say that, by the standards of past wars, the war against terrorism has so far inflicted a very small human cost on the United States. As an instance of mass murder, the attacks were unspeakable, but they still pale in comparison with any number of military assaults on civilian targets of the recent past, from Hiroshima on down.

The “standards of past wars” is an idiotic yardstick to use. What possible “standard” can we point to from any war in our past that would bear any resemblance whatsoever to our situation today? We are fighting extra-state actors who flit from continent to continent, aided and abetted by nations who themselves have sworn to destroy us. What in our past has prepared us to deal with this scenario?

And to say that the terrorists don’t have the capacity to destroy us may be correct - today. But any number of proliferation experts, academics, military and intelligence officials have informed us that it is not a question of if we are going to be hit by a nuclear attack but when. And the time frame most often given is sometime in the next decade.

Would we be “overreacting” if we took the action we are taking now - including the invasion of Iraq - after a couple of our cities are destroyed? This is the essence of our strategy - pre-emption. What good does it do to take the aggressive posture we have now after a couple of hundred thousand American are incinerated? Or perhaps Bell doesn’t believe that the effort we are putting forth to combat terrorism is worth it under any circumstances?

I suspect the latter. And this is because his idea of what an “existential” threat might be is so narrow as to be useless. If 10 nuclear bombs detonated on American soil, there would still be a landmass between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and mapmakers would still probably refer to it as “America.”

But what exactly would “America” look like? Nothing you or I would recognize I assure you. In that sense, al-Qaeda and their ilk are existential threats to the very idea of America - something more precious than any territory and more valuable than any building or artifact.

Besides, says Bell, we’re fighting people who live in caves and are ignorant savages. Well, not exactly. But what’s the point of informing us that the terrorist’s current arsenal includes “guns, knives, and conventional explosives?”

Of course, the 9/11 attacks also conjured up the possibility of far deadlier attacks to come. But then, we were hardly ignorant of these threats before, as a glance at just about any thriller from the 1990s will testify. And despite the even more nightmarish fantasies of the post-9/11 era (e.g. the TV show “24’s” nuclear attack on Los Angeles), Islamist terrorists have not come close to deploying weapons other than knives, guns and conventional explosives. A war it may be, but does it really deserve comparison to World War II and its 50 million dead? Not every adversary is an apocalyptic threat.

I am very happy that Bell is so sure that al-Qaeda hasn’t “come close” to deploying nuclear or biological weapons. A definition of “close” might be appreciated because all signs point to the terrorists getting their hands on these weapons in the very near future - if they haven’t already.. And of course, after they’ve deployed them, the professor will have the satisfaction of knowing that there will be precious few people who will know or care very much that he was so spectacularly wrong.

Is it “overreacting” to try and prevent terrorists from deploying these weapons in the first place? Is it “overreacting” to attempt to break up their networks, smash their infrastructure, deny them funds, and, when necessary, go after the nations that fund them, assist them, support them, and wish them well?

If ever there was an example of the chasm that has opened up between those like Bell who, for all intents and purposes wish to wait for the hammer to fall before we react and those who would do whatever is necessary to prevent it in the first place, this article is it. Bell’s arguments couldn’t be clearer. We are big enough to absorb blows like 9/11 without “overreacting.” Just because al-Qaeda hasn’t launched a WMD attack. they don’t pose an “existential threat” to the United States.

Bell and his ilk will deny that they wish to “wait until we are attacked” before responding. But their solution - treat the terrorists as vicious criminals - has been tried already. All during the 1990’s we captured precious few terrorists, broke up even fewer networks, and al-Qaeda grew into the threat that they are today. Repeating a failed policy for the sake of not “overreacting” is idiocy. You either believe there is a threat or you don’t. And if you do, then you bend every effort to destroy that threat. Bell and his ilk want to manage the threat. If given the opportunity, the professor and his ilk will manage us into disaster:

During the hopeful early years of the 20th century, journalist Norman Angell’s huge bestseller, “The Great Illusion,” argued that wars had become too expensive to fight. Then came the unspeakable horrors of World War I. And the end of the Cold War, which seemed to promise the worldwide triumph of peace and democracy in a more stable unipolar world, has been followed by the wars in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf War and the present global upheaval. In each of these conflicts, the United States has justified the use of force by labeling its foe a new Hitler, not only in evil intentions but in potential capacity.

Yet as the comparison with the Soviet experience should remind us, the war against terrorism has not yet been much of a war at all, let alone a war to end all wars. It is a messy, difficult, long-term struggle against exceptionally dangerous criminals who actually like nothing better than being put on the same level of historical importance as Hitler — can you imagine a better recruiting tool? To fight them effectively, we need coolness, resolve and stamina. But we also need to overcome long habit and remind ourselves that not every enemy is in fact a threat to our existence.

Angell’s thesis was that war was futile because both victor and vanquished would be much worse off economically than if hostilities had not broken out. Essentially, the cost benefit rationale for war had disappeared in the fire and smoke of the industrial revolution. Ironically, what made modern war possible also basically made it obsolete. Of course, that didn’t stop the European powers from savagely killing each other twice during the first half of the century. Whether Angell was right or wrong hardly mattered in the sense that his analysis was fatally flawed because he believed that his kind of logic actually mattered in the long run.

Bell’s fatally flawed analysis begins with the premise that 9/11 wasn’t that bad and that our reaction to it ‘ “overreaction” as Bell calls it - is the result of our failure to apply Angell-like cost benefit analyses to what our policy should be. One wonders how many dead it would take before Bell thought that we were “under reacting.”

When I first read about the attack on our men in Karbala, the details seemed rather incredible. The enemy, speaking English and dressed in American uniforms, attacked a group of soldiers holding a meeting with local leaders on reconstruction issues.

Further deepening the mystery was the fact that initial reports by the military had 5 of our men killed on site with another three wounded. But somehow, the AP ferreted out the real story. The military has now confirmed that the 5 Americans were led away in handcuffs and executed a short distance away.

Bill Roggio has some information that, if true, alters the way we should be looking at the war and raises troubling questions about its possible widening:

The American Forces Information Service provides the details of the attack in Karbala. Based on the sophisticated nature of the raid, as well as the response, or cryptic non-responses, from multiple military and intelligence sources, this raid appears to have been directed and executed by the Qods Force branch of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps. My sources agreed this is far to sophisticated an operation for the Mahdi Army or Badr Corps, while al-Qaeda in Iraq would have a difficult time mounting such an operation in the Shia south. “The Karbala Government Center raid the other day was a little too professional for JAM [Jaish al-Mahdi, or the Mahdi Army],” according to a military source.

This raid required specific intelligence, in depth training for the agents to pass as American troops, resources to provide for weapons, vehicles, uniforms, identification, radios and other items needed to successfully carry out the mission. Hezbollah’s Imad Mugniyah executed a similar attack against Israeli forces on the Lebanese border, which initiated the Hezbollah-Israeli war during the summer of 2006.

The Qods Force is the foreign action arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. These are the most fanatical of the fanatical believers in the Iranian revolution and are highly motivated and trained. They’ve carried out assassinations in Europe and the Middle East of Iranian dissidents living abroad as well as assisting Hizbullah in Lebanon for many years.

Here’s the AFIS report Bill was referring to:

At about 5 p.m. that day, a convoy consisting of at least five sport utility vehicles entered the Karbala compound and about 12 armed militants attacked the American troops with rifle fire and hand grenades, officials said.

One soldier was killed and three others wounded by a hand grenade thrown into the center’s main office. Other explosions within the compound destroyed three Humvees.

The attackers withdrew with four captured U.S. soldiers and drove out of the Karbala province into the neighboring Babil province. Iraqi police began trailing the assailants after they drew suspicion at a checkpoint.

Three soldiers were found dead and one fatally wounded, along with five abandoned vehicles, near the town of Mahawil. Two were found handcuffed together in the back of one of the vehicles. The other two were found nearby on the ground. One soldier was found alive but died en route to a nearby hospital. All suffered from gunshot wounds.

Also recovered at the site were U.S. Army-type combat uniforms, boots, radios and a non-U.S. made rifle, officials said.

Bill believes the attackers were making a bee line for the Iranian border, hoping to hold our men as hostages to be exchanged for the Qods Force members we’re holding after our raid at Ibril. If so, the execution style murders were carried out because the Iranians feared capture (not that it makes any difference in the end).

With all the trouble that Ahmadinejad appears to be in with the elites in Iran, this botched operation probably doesn’t help him. If the Iranian President has in fact committed the Qods Force to action against Americans in any substantial way, this would represent a escalation - one that the President has matched with his order to kill or capture Iranian agents in Iraq.

Michelle Malkin’s intel source confirms that “it has all the signs of Iranian Special Forces.” Malkin also reports that 4 suspects have been arrested in the attack. No word on their nationality.

This situation bears watching.

I was too young for the May Day protest against the Viet Nam War held in Washington, D.C. in 1971. My friends and I talked about going for weeks prior to the event, seeing ourselves as something as a cross between Che Guevara and Abbie Hoffman. We even talked seriously about ditching school, running away for a few days (our parents were dead set against any of us going), and joining the massive demonstration.

Alas, it was a pipe dream. We were just stupid kids, scared to death about being drafted and believing the anti-war propaganda about the military, the government, and the United States. We opposed the war for very personal reasons; we didn’t want to die in what we were being told was a war of conquest being fought by evil capitalists against the heroic Vietnamese agricultural reformers.

Those not alive at the time cannot fathom the depth of feeling engendered by the anti-war movement. It was magical, powerful, uplifting, and joyous. We thought we were changing the world. We thought we were ushering in a new era of democracy.

What we didn’t know was that the gimlet eyed radicals who were really in charge of the anti-war movement could have cared less about us, about the United States, or about the war for that matter. They wanted to use the anti-war movement to sweep the old guard from power and install like minded socialists in government.

The May Day protest in Washington, D.C. sought to shut down the government. Some 50,000 hard core demonstrators would block the streets and intersections while putting up human barricades in front of federal offices. How exactly this would stop the war was kind of fuzzy. No matter. Nixon was ready with the army and National Guard and in the largest mass arrest in US history, clogged the jails of Washington with 10,000 kids.

Where are the clogged jails today? As I watch the demonstration on the mall today (much smaller than those in the past) I am thinking of the massive gulf between the self absorbed hodge podge of anti-globalist, pro-feminist, anti-capitalist, pro-abortion anti-war fruitcakes cheering on speakers lobbying for Palestinians, Katrina aid, and other causes not related to the war and the committed, determined bunch of kids who put their hides on the line, filling up the jails of dozens of cities, risking the billy clubs and tear gas of the police to stop what they saw as an unjust war.

The netnuts are fond of calling those of us who support the mission in Iraq chickenhawks. What do you call someone who sits on their ass in front of a keyboard, railing against the President, claiming that the United States is falling into a dictatorship, and writing about how awful this war is and yet refuses to practice the kinds of civil disobedience that their fathers and mothers used to actually bring the Viet Nam war to an end?

I call them what they are; rank cowards. There should be a million people on the mall today. Instead, there might be 50,000. Today’s antiwar left talks big but cowers in the corner. I have often written about how unserious the left is about what they believe. The reason is on the mall today. If they really thought that the United States was on the verge of becoming a dictatorship are you seriously trying to tell me that any patriotic American wouldn’t do everything in their power to prevent it rather than mouth idiotic platitudes and self serving bromides?

I know what I would do if I actually believed the United States was in danger of slipping into some kind of authoritarian, anti-Constitutional nightmare. And it wouldn’t be sitting at this keyboard trying to come up with cleverest way to skewer my political opponent. And I know I wouldn’t be alone either. The fact is, the left is not blessed with any special insights into what evil George is trying to do to the Constitution. They are a small, pitiful minority of paranoid, self aggrandizing mountebanks who are courageous when it comes to calling people names but abject cowards when it comes to actually standing up for their beliefs and putting iron behind their words of change.

Where are all the people chaining themselves to the gates of military bases? Where are the thousands of people blocking military convoys? A couple of kids throw rocks at a military recruiting office but where are all the protestors? For God’s sake, there are more people who protest in front of abortion clinics every day than protest in front of military recruiting offices.

The fact is, the anti-war movement is a mile long and an inch deep. If there really was a massive movement to stop the war in Iraq, it would manifest itself in people carrying out some of the actions I’ve outlined above. But there is no anti-war groundswell. The American people are tired of the war, tired of the incompetence and failure and wish to see an end to the partisan wrangling over it. But war weariness does not translate into the kind of action that would stop the war dead in its tracks and bring the troops home.

To the anti-war crowd I say get off your asses and stand up for your convictions. If you seriously believe American democracy is in danger, don’t just sit like a bump on a log and pontificate about it; get up on you hind legs and fight. As it stands now, you’re all just a bunch of intellectual exhibitionists with as much commitment to ending the war and saving democracy as my pet cat Aramas.

And at least Aramas has the redeeming characteristic of being pleasant to be around.

My brother Terry (who just started a new blog) has an interesting post up today about Mitt Romney and religion. Much has been written about Romney’s Mormonism and I suppose much more will be written before all is said and done. Terry takes a little different approach to the subject:

Nevertheless, voters choose candidates for all kinds of reasons, some legitimate, some not. And sometimes, faith matters. For instance, if a candidate openly declared, “I am an atheist; God is a fairy tale invented to comfort children frightened of the dark”–I don’t think he or she would get elected in America. Ever. I think we’ll have a fat, gay Muslim president before we have an atheist one.

That’s because at some level we learn about people through their religion–or lack of it. A candidate’s faith is contextual–it fills out a public profile with the outlines of the most private of our commitments. And it is here–in the quest to understand what kind of man Mitt Romney, presidential candidate, is–that his Mormonism seems to matter to some.

Indeed, not only does Romney’s religion seem to draw criticism - even from some Christians - but some of the arguments used to question the former Massachusetts governor about his fidelity to the Constitution are eerily reminiscent of those used when Representative Keith Ellison was set to take his oath using the Koran.

Jacob Weisberg:

One may object that all religious beliefs are irrational—what’s the difference between Smith’s “seer stone” and the virgin birth or the parting of the Red Sea? But Mormonism is different because it is based on such a transparent and recent fraud. It’s Scientology plus 125 years. Perhaps Christianity and Judaism are merely more venerable and poetic versions of the same. But a few eons makes a big difference. The world’s greater religions have had time to splinter, moderate, and turn their myths into metaphor. The Church of Latter-day Saints is expanding rapidly and liberalizing in various ways, but it remains fundamentally an orthodox creed with no visible reform wing.

Beliefs that are “different” or hard to understand engender fear. I have frankly been amazed at the number of “Islamic scholars” who have emerged in the blogosphere over the last few years who, at the drop of a hat (and with a breathtaking casualness that bespeaks a shallowness of thought or just plain ignorance), will be more than happy to tell you that Islam is a religion of liars; that because of one line or another of text they’ve taken out of context from the Koran, there is proof that we can never trust Muslims, that Allah instructs them to lie to infidels in order to achieve worldwide conquest by Islam.

I have no doubt that the fanatics, the fundamentalists, the “Let’s Bring Back The Caliphate” crowd can justify anything by taking lines of revealed truth from the Koran and applying it to their jihad. A cursory glance at our own history reveals some dark truths about the way the Bible was used in similar fashion. Excerpts from the Bible have been used to justify slavery, war, capitol punishment (and anti-death penalty tracts), colonialism, forced conversions, and a host of other evils that any rational and loving God would never have intended.

The belief that Romney would be any less true to the Constitution as President because of his faith is a legitimate question. But how about questioning specific beliefs that may seem to some as outrageous or dangerous?

But there is a deeper argument about Mormonism and the presidency, and it deals with the contemporary authority of prophecy and revelation. As I understand it, Mormons believe we live in an age of prophecy–articulated in the pronouncements of the leaders of their church–and that these authentic revelations of God’s will are aimed at reforming Christianity and the world in preparation for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (which will be in Missouri–a tenet that makes a lot of people giggle. But if you’d told the Romans God was about to manifest himself on earth in Bethlehem, they’d have giggled, too.)

The issue for some (Damon Linker laid it out in The New Republic) is that if a person truly believes the utterances of church leaders are revelations carrying the force of prophecy–then they are binding, and binding on every aspect of life. Would a President Romney be bound by prophetic Mormon teaching on issues from abortion and stem-cell research to the Middle East? Is the question any different for a Mormon like Romney than it is for a Methodist like George W. Bush or a Catholic like John F. Kennedy?

The answer to Terry’s question can be found in history. In the most famous modern speech on religion and politics, candidate John F. Kennedy spoke before the ultra conservative Ministerial Association of Greater Houston in order to lay to rest once and for all the idea that a Roman Catholic couldn’t be President.

It was a brilliant speech. Kennedy challenged people to vote for him in order to prove that they were not bigots, a brilliant political ploy. And, he defined the role that religion should play in public life:

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish—where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source—where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials—and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

Kennedy is referring, of course, to the notion still prevalent at that time that a Catholic President would be in the pocket of the pope - a fear directed toward Catholics that had been with the nation since the earliest of colonial times. In one afternoon, Kennedy swept away 300 years of history and replaced it with challenge for tolerance.

Will Romney be forced into a similar declaration as a result of Mormon tradition and beliefs? Given the ink already devoted to this subject, my guess is that he will have to do so sooner rather than later. One thing is certain, he can’t keep ducking the issue. People would believe he has something to hide if he continues to refer to his beliefs as “private.”

What does it say about the United States that here, in the 21st century, we are still grappling with issues of religion and politics? Freedom has a price. And sometimes the price exacted isn’t fair or equitable but simply necessary. Romney will realize this and eventually address the issue. How he does so will determine the way people judge him as a man and a candidate.

Students take cover behind a makeshift concrete barrier in Beirut yesterday during clashes at Beirut University.

Neither side planned it. Neither side wanted it. But in their darkest nightmares, both sides must have realized that the potential for the violence to get out of hand and acquire a life of its own must have been there all along.

Yesterday in Beirut, the brinkmanship that Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been practicing for almost two months bore unexpected fruit. Priding himself on making only carefully planned and tightly controlled moves in his dangerous chess match against Prime Minister Siniora’s government, his followers took matters into their own hands yesterday and in a burst of violence not seen in many years, battled pro government forces around the Beirut University campus. The significance of Thursday’s clashes is that it marks the first time that a confrontation occurred between the factions that didn’t have the overt blessing of the Hizbullah leader.

In the past two months, Nasrallah has staged two massive demonstrations, tried to shut down government offices using the time honored tactic of sit ins, and finally resorted on Tuesday to a general strike - shutting down roads and bringing the country to a virtual standstill. Violence associated with these carefully planned moves was both accidental and unwanted. Even Tuesday’s butcher’s bill of 3 dead and 130 injured came as shock to the opposition forces and may have caused them to back off in order to let things cool down.

But things didn’t cool down. Yesterday’s mayhem that has left 4 dead and 169 wounded was not planned. And it erupted between Sunni and Shia youths; the same people who would be facing off in any potential civil war:

Thursday’s clashes in Beirut showed just how quickly any spark can turn into a wildfire.

Students said it began with a scuffle in the cafeteria of Beirut Arab University between Sunni Muslims and supporters of the Shiite Hezbollah. As Sunnis in the surrounding Tarik el-Jadideh district moved in, Hezbollah activists called in reinforcements.

Hezbollah activists with walkie-talkies were seen coordinating as a ragtag convoy of hundreds of vigilantes raced to the campus. Gangs - many wearing blue and red construction hard hats and wielding clubs made from sticks and even chair legs - poured into the area and battled Sunni students and riot police and soldiers.

Hezbollah backers claimed Sunni gunmen fired from apartment balconies near the school, wounding several people. The claim could not be independently confirmed.

Thick black smoke rose over the campus and the neighborhood on the southern edge of Beirut as rioters set fire to vehicles, tires and trash. Bands of youths clashed with stones and clubs in running street battles as the army tried to close off streets with tanks and armored vehicles. Troops fired tear gas and warning shots into the air.

“We are afraid about the future of the country. We are afraid about civil war,” said Mohammed Abdul-Sater, a 21-year-old Shiite student.

The “Sunni gunmen” were arrested later. They were identified by security forces as a Syrian and a Lebanese.

It is not likely that Syrian President Bashir Assad planned the violence. But most analysts have little doubt that he is ready to take advantage of any clashes that erupt and attempt to widen the conflict into a full blown civil war. Would a civil war lead to a re-introduction of Syrian troops into Lebanon? Assad would dearly love it although the US, the French, and most of the Arab world might have something to say about it.

Note also the highly organized response by Hizbullah. Do they have some kind of “rapid reaction force” available for just such eventualities? It would seem so. Of course, the Sunnis don’t have anything comparable which would put them at a huge disadvantage if things begin to escalate. Also, the Sunnis who poured in from the nearby Tarik el-Jadideh district brought sticks and stones to a gunfight - not a good sign. Next time, the firepower will probably be more equal.

One hopeful sign was the performance of the army. During Tuesday’s violence, they appeared to stay on the periphery, even assisting the opposition in their efforts to shut down the country. But yesterday’s clashes took a heavy toll on the security forces as they suffered 17 wounded.

There are conflicting reports of a Saudi-Iranian initiative to end the crisis by changing the make up of the cabinet and giving the opposition a voice in discussions regarding the International Tribunal that will try the murderers of ex-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. In fact, according to MEMRI, this appeared to be a done deal a week ago:

The March 14 Forces agreed to the draft agreement, as did Iran, as mentioned. However, Nasrallah delayed answering. Finally, on January 18, during an interview on Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV channel, Nasrallah rejected the draft because it did not include General Michel Aoun’s demand for early parliamentary elections.

The next day, Saudi Arabia called Iran to find out what the holdup was over the agreement. The answer it received was that senior Iranian officials still viewed the draft agreement positively, and they intended to send Larijani to Syria on the coming Monday, January 21, in order to obtain Syria’s agreement. The Saudis were also told that Larijani was in touch with Hizbullah as well.

On January 22, 2007, Larijani went to Syria and met with Syrian officials and then with a Hizbullah delegation there. Sources following the contacts said that Larijani was heavily criticized during the talks in Damascus for accepting the inclusion of the international court in the Saudi draft agreement. The talks ended with Syria’s rejection of the draft agreement.

The scuttling of the agreement by Assad is to be expected. Simply put, once the International Tribunal sits and begins to present evidence of high level Syrian complicity - perhaps the highest - in the assassinations and bombings that have shaken Lebanon over the past two years, the Assad regime will become an international pariah and perhaps even fall to an internal coup. And as I mentioned before, Assad feels it is in his interest to foment civil war in Lebanon so that he can re-occupy and once again, milk what he considers the Syrian province for everything he can.

Would Nasrallah go ahead and take a deal without the backing of Syria? Iran is pushing the agreement because the last thing they want is for Nasrallah to be seen as the cause of Shia on Sunni bloodletting. It flies in the face of their larger strategic goal of uniting the Muslim world against the US and the west. In this instance, Syria and Iran have competing interests in Lebanon and Nasrallah is caught in the middle.

And Nasrallah has his own agenda as well. He has a fractious coalition to tend including the necessity of keeping the extremely troublesome Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun happy - something that is becoming more difficult as time passes. Aoun wants early parliamentary elections because he thinks it will give him a stronger base when he runs for President next year. He may be dreaming. The Christian community is badly split over his desertion to the opposition and his list will get precious few votes from Sunnis and Shias.

Talks between the Saudis and Iranians were renewed on Wednesday and picked up steam yesterday as a result of the violence. There are once again conflicting reports about whether a deal has been ironed out between the two regional powers:

The secretary general of the Saudi National Security Council, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, held talks with Iranian counterpart Ali Larijani in Tehran on “the critical situation in Lebanon,” the television said.

The two men, whose talks came a day after three people were killed in Lebanon in clashes between government and opposition supporters, “emphasized the necessity of finding a solution agreed to by all Lebanese groups.”

But the Saudi foreign minister said Thursday Saudi Arabia is not negotiating with Iran to try to broker an end to the political crisis in Lebanon, but the two countries have exchanged messages about Muslim cooperation.

Asked about the reports, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said: “There is no initiative really.”

And Nasrallah has made it clear that he considers any initiative from outside Lebanon to be unwelcome:

In a speech yesterday, January 24, 2007, Hizbullah leader Nasrallah said, referring to the Iran-Saudi contacts: “Allah will bless all those who help Lebanon, but every agreement between two countries or two governments does not bind the Lebanese, because the Lebanese must seek their own interests and not the interests of Saudi Arabia and Iran.”

It seems to me that Nasrallah basically has two options at this point. He can embrace the horror and continue down the path he has chosen - a path that he must realize by now can only end in sectarian conflict. Or he can sit down with Siniora and hammer out a compromise that he can live with.

As for the latter, he is getting plenty of cover from his own allies. Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri of the Amal party, Hizbullah’s major partner in the anti-government coalition has called for all parties to negotiate. And Siniora has constantly issued pleas for Nasrallah to come to the table and find a way to untie the knot of civil war that seems to be tightening every day that Hizbullah is in the streets.

But after making grandiose claims about bringing down the government, can Nasrallah afford to back down? The answer to that question will determine if Lebanon sinks into the nightmare of civil war.

His options narrowing, his people perhaps getting beyond his control, resistance stiffening among the opposition parties, and his main benefactors in Iran and Syria split over what is the best course for the future, Nasrallah is in a bind of his own making. If he plays the statesmen, Lebanon will probably settle back into an uneasy peace. But if he decides to play the fiery revolutionary leader, it is very likely that in the not too distant future, the streets of Beirut and Tyre and Tripoli will once again run red with the blood of innocents and combatants alike and Lebanon will sink to its knees in agony.

UPDATE

Jim Hoft has some good photos and some troubling information:

Blacksmiths of Lebanon has news (Via Naharnet) that police… “defused a rocket that was directed at the Moustaqbal newspaper in Beirut, shortly before it was set to launch. “Luckily they discovered it. It would have resulted in a massacre. The newspaper is packed by journalists at this time of the evening,” Editor Nassir al-Assad told Naharnet by telephone.”

This sounds like meddling by Syria. I can’t believe that Nasrallah would be dumb enough to target the press. In fact, Syria has been behind a series of assassinations of Lebanese journalists over the last two years including the death of An Nahar’s Gebran Tueni, grandson of the founding publisher and an anti-Syrian member of Parliament.

UPDATE II

Robert Mayer also points out that Nasrallah is in a bind. He also believes that Nasrallah is retreating as a result of Tuesday’s violence.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category was “MLK Day — A Singular Holiday” by Rhymes with Right. Finishing second was Andrew Olmsted for “The Beauty of “Fairness”.”

Coming in first in the non Council category was “A Framework for Thinking About Iraq Strategy” by Small Wars Journal.

We say farewell to Andrew Olmsted who has been called up to serve our country. Good luck to Andrew and thanks for your service. An excellent writer and thinker who I’m sure we’ll be hearing more of in the future.

If you’d like to participate in the weekly Watchers Council vote, go here and follow instructions.

The following is one of those stories that at first blush, you check the calendar to make sure that it isn’t April 1st. The next thing you do is pinch yourself to make sure you’re awake. Finally, desperate not to believe what you have just read, you swear off dropping acid, smoking pot, and taking other mind altering substances in hopes that the hallucination that has appeared in front of you will disappear - the result of some drug addled stupor you’ve fallen into.

Alas, you then read the story again and realize that it is not April 1st, you are, in fact, awake, and that you haven’t dropped acid for 30 years anyway so what’s the point?

A 22-year-old woman is suing a Chicago Spanish-language radio station over allegations that they refuse to give her the car she won in a contest because she’s undocumented.

Maribel Nava Alvarez won the Corvette on July 4, 2005, in a raffle sponsored by 107.9 FM La Ley.

In a lawsuit naming both the radio station and its parent company, Spanish Broadcasting System, Alvarez says La Ley withheld the car when officials found out she’s undocumented.

She is suing for breach of contract and emotional distress.

In a written statement, La Ley said that it is legally required to get a valid Social Security number or tax identification number from anyone who wins prizes worth more than $500.

The station tried to give Alvarez the car even though her tax information couldn’t be verified, the statement said.

Alvarez said she was never told she needed to be a U.S. citizen or legal resident to win the car.

I’ll give you a moment to pick your jaw off the floor…

What’s wrong with this picture? We can start by taking the Tribune to task for referring to the woman as “undocumented.” She is, of course, an illegal alien who is breaking the law by residing in the United States without a visa or green card. But hey! Whose counting?

And I don’t know what’s more shocking; the fact that the station tried to give her the car anyway without collecting the necessary tax information or the unmitigated gall of the woman to sue for “emotional distress.” Living here illegally is emotionally distressing in and of itself. But to try and soak a radio station for trying to follow the law and deny her the benefit of her ill gotten gains is beyond the pale, beyond avarice, and beyond belief.

The Spanish Broadcast System attorney played a little hardball with the woman:

Alvarez’s suit also names SBS lawyer James Cueva, who sent her attorney a letter on Dec. 19, 2005, threatening to contact immigration officials if she pursued a lawsuit.

“I will caution you that if you insist on filing suit against SBS, I will in turn be forced to refer this matter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as I believe your client is in this country illegally,” the letter said.

Cueva’s remarks “have sometimes been presented without proper context,” the station’s statement said.

Alvarez said she has left the Chicago area out of fear that she would be deported.

Why should the station apologize for a lawyer doing his duty as a citizen and reporting an illegal alien? The context is perfect; an illegal alien was trying to claim an expensive prize without having to pay taxes on it and was threatening to sue in order to get even more loot from the station. Whatever context you want to view that in is fine with me.

The woman is a fool. She should have waited a few months when the amnesty bill that will almost surely be passed gives her everything her little mercenary heart desires.

Until then, I sure hope she finds a way to deal with her “emotional distress.”

For all of my new found friends on the left (and old friends on the right) who have been cheering me on as I have skewered the Administration over their prosecution of the war, this post may come as a bit of a disappointment.

While I believe the increase in troop strength won’t by itself lead to a satisfactory conclusion to the war, I feel compelled to support the President and General Petraeus who have both indicated that the troop increase is necessary to get a handle on the security situation in Baghdad and Anbar province.

Yes, a less than enthusiastic endorsement but a realistic one, I think. I have said many times that we are well beyond the point where military action alone can save Iraq. Only the Iraqi government can carry out the political moves necessary to take the heat out of the insurgency, the militias, and the sectarian violence that is killing more than 150 people a day and creating a growing refugee problem as Sunnis flee the mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad to avoid the slaughter.

Having said that, the surge appears to be well thought out and, if implemented with the kind of vigor our troops have shown so far in running al-Sadr’s militia to ground, it is more than possible that there can be a large decrease in the violence - breathing room for al-Maliki to make the overtures necessary to broaden the support of his government among Sunnis while restraining the Shias from taking their revenge for Saddam’s atrocities.

But whether you think the surge will work or not (and yes, I want it to work very badly), you should ask yourself a question: Is it up to the Senate to micromanage the war by second guessing both the Commander in Chief and the Commanding general in theater?

The Biden resolution states “It is not in the national interest” for the President to send more troops to Iraq. Further, as Chuck Shumer helpfully points out, this is only the beginning:

Sen. Charles Schumer D-N.Y., said Thursday that the resolution the committee approved is not the last that will be heard from Congress.

“A resolution that that says we’re against this escalation, that’s easy. The next step will be how do you put further pressure on the administration against the escalation, but still supporting the troops who are there,” he said on NBC’s “Today” program.

“That’s what we’re figuring out right now,” Schumer added. “But this will not be the end. There will be other resolutions with more teeth in it afterwards and my bet — they’ll get a majority of support and significant Republican support.”

Indeed, this is the dilemma for Democrats and those Republicans who wish to undercut the Commander in Chief during a time of war: how do you hide the fact from the voters that you are voting to cut our troops under fire off at the knees?

A very delicate political problem that the Democrats will find some way to solve. In the meantime, the larger question remains of whether the Senate should be setting war policy at all.

Yes they can cut off funding if they wish, although they cannot propose such a measure. All money bills must originate in the House (there are ways around that constitutional requirement but by tradition, the Senate usually allows the House to lead). And they can hold hearings and jawbone to their hearts content. But can they micro-manage issues like troop levels? Why not war doctrine? Why not tactics and strategy?

The answer is that these Senators are not interested in supporting the troops, or helping the Iraqis, or tamping down the violence, or anything except looking out for their own political hides:

If they were serious and had the courage of their convictions, they’d attempt to cut off funds for the Iraq effort. But that would mean they would have to take responsibility for what happens next. By passing “non-binding resolutions,” they can assail Mr. Bush and put all of the burden of success or failure on his shoulders.

This is not to say that the resolution won’t have harmful consequences, at home and abroad. At home, it further undermines public support for the Iraq effort. Virginia Republican John Warner even cites a lack of public support to justify his separate non-binding resolution of criticism for Mr. Bush’s troop “surge.” But public pessimism is in part a response to the rhetoric of failure from political leaders like Mr. Warner. The same Senators then wrap their own retreat in the defeatism they helped to promote.

I’m not so sure about that last part. The American people are smart enough to know that things are not going at all well in Iraq. They don’t have to hear it from Senators or Congressmen or even political pundits. The one dimensional reporting we are getting from Iraq about body counts and the latest massacre is sufficient enough to sour them on the war effort. And while media coverage of the war is horribly incomplete, I doubt whether it would make any difference if the “good news” that happens in that bloody land were reported as well. Vice President Cheney’s rantings aside, it is not defeatism in the media or the Congress or in the blogosphere that is hurting our efforts in Iraq. It was and continues to be Administration policies that have proven themselves a failure.

Acknowledging that fact is the first step to fixing the situation. The second step is to lower our sights in what we can accomplish in Iraq militarily. And the final step will be in assisting the Iraqi government in coming to terms with the Sunnis and the Kurds and facilitating a truly national, non sectarian government where all Iraqis can live together in peace.

None of this will be accomplished by the Senate. And this is why I’m joining with Hugh Hewitt and other bloggers in signing a petition pledging not to support Republican Senators who vote with the Democrats on the Biden resolution. I would add that I will not support any Senator who votes for any resolution that undercuts the Commander in Chief or the Commanding General in theater in their plans to improve the security situation in Iraq. This includes a bunch of alternative resolutions eagerly being drawn up by Republican Senators who don’t want to be left behind when the “Stick it to the President” train leaves the station.

Hugh is also urging people to call Senator McConnell’s office ((202-224-2541) and urge him to organize a filibuster of the resolution.

Judging by the favorable reaction to his State of the Union speech, the American people, although highly skeptical, appear to be inclined to give the President one more chance to succeed in Iraq. The least we can do as Americans is to give our support to the Commander in Chief.

Two election workers in Ohio’s most populous county were convicted of tampering with votes prior to a recount of the ballots after the 2004 election:

Two election workers in the state’s most populous county were convicted Wednesday of illegally rigging the 2004 presidential election recount so they could avoid a more thorough review of the votes.

A third employee who had been charged was acquitted on all counts.

Jacqueline Maiden, the elections’ coordinator who was the board’s third-highest ranking employee when she was indicted last March, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer each were convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct of an elections employee.

Maiden and Dreamer also were convicted of one misdemeanor count each of failure of elections employees to perform their duty. Both were acquitted of five other charges.

Rosie Grier, assistant manager of the Cuyahoga County Elections Board’s ballot department, was acquitted of all seven counts of various election misconduct or interference charges.

Here is proof positive that the forces of darkness were attempting to subvert the democratic process and hand the election to evil George Bush, right?

Well…not exactly.

You see, Cuyahoga County is about 70% Democratic. And the poll workers were hired by by the county elections board. Although the board is made up of two Democrats and two Republicans, I would hazard a guess (the article doesn’t, of course) that these convicted poll manipulators were Democrats. In fact, given the way patronage jobs work in most parts of the country - Democratic and Republican - it would be safe to say that these were Democratic party activists, rewarded with a nice plum of a job for past service.

What exactly were they trying to accomplish? Kerry got 67% of the county vote in 2004 and a few votes tossed his way wouldn’t have made any difference in the long run.

It appears that the workers were caught in something of a bind; some dufus laid out procedures for handling the recount without examining what the law said about it:

Grier, the worker who was acquitted, was the only defendant who commented following the verdicts.

“It has all been very stressful,” said Grier, 54. “Yes, I’m very relieved. But, none of us should have been in this courtroom today. These charges should not have been brought against any of us.”

Defense lawyer Roger Synenberg said in his closing argument that the 2004 presidential election was the most publicly observed ever in Cuyahoga County and the workers were simply following procedures as they understood them.

The county was already under fire for what happened on election day in Cleveland. Extraordinarily long lines were found in black precincts due to a lack of foresight by county officials in ordering enough voting machines. Also, some precincts failed to open on time because the county failed to staff them with the appropriate personnel. There were also a number of problems with the machines that did show up and there were long delays in either replacing or repairing them.

In short, Cuyahoga County’s managing of their own election was one gigantic cluserf**k. But don’t tell the conspiracy theorists that. Their heads might explode. You see, the conspiracy mongers have laid all of these problems at the doorstep of former Secretary of State (and co-Chair of the Bush campaign in Ohio) Kenneth Blackwell.

Blackwell’s administration of the election was marked by incompetence and, at times, a suspiciously partisan bent. However, many of the problems the conspiracy theorists try and tar him with are actually problems created by local election officials. The fact is that elections in this country are a disgrace; amateur hour for political hacks of both parties. It is too easy to fiddle with the results, too difficult for voters to register or understand procedures, and the government is too lazy to address the problem.

To try and single out one party or another for disapprobation for the way they handle elections locally or state wide is ridiculous. This is a national problem that cuts across party lines and regions.

This case highlights that fact. My purpose in bringing it to your attention is not to savage the Dems but to show that problems in Ohio - a flashpoint for the left in their conspiracy-addled brains - had as much to do with incompetence and ignorance as it did with some hidden agenda by Diebold or the machinations of the evil Republicans.

The question isn’t whether there is a problem with the way Republicans run elections or the way that Democrats run elections but in the way that elections are run in general. The sooner we come to agreement on that singular conclusion, the quicker we can address the problems associated with the most precious freedom we have; the right to choose our leaders.

UPDATE AND CLARIFICATION

I have changed the headline of this article from “Dem Election Workers…” to simply “Election Workers…” because I cannot find concrete evidence that any of the indicted workers were in fact members of the Democratic party. Given that the county is 70% Democratic, it would stand to reason that a plum job at the Board of Elections would probably go to a Democrat.

Any way you look at it, this appears to be either a case of the staff following stupid procedures that didn’t take into account what the law said about handling recounts or, just as likely, pure bureaucratic laziness. If discrepancies had been found, it would have been tons of more work for the staff - reason enough to fudge the results of a hand recount by picking out precincts where there was an exact match with the tally.

UPDATE II

Reader David Singh tracked down the political affiliations of the BOE workers:

David Singh wrote:
I looked up the voter registration records for the three election workers in
Cleveland who were on trial. I expected to see three registered democrats as
you surmised. Luckily, all three had names unique in the Ohio voter reg.
database @ publicdata.com.

Maiden — Democrat
Dreamer — Republican
Grier — unaffiliated

HISTORIC BIRTHDAYS

Virginia Woolf
1/25/1882 - 3/28/1941
British author

71 Giovanni Morone
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Italian cardinal and diplomat

64 Robert Boyle
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Anglo-Irish chemist

77 Joseph-Louis Lagrange
1/25/1736 - 4/10/1813
Italian-French mathematician

37 Robert Burns
1/25/1759 - 7/21/1796
Scottish national poet

60 Benjamin Robert Haydon
1/25/1786 - 6/22/1846
English historical painter/writer

77 Dan Rice
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American clown

50 George Edward Pickett
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American Confederate Army officer

76 Charles Curtis
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American 31st vice president

85 Rufus Matthew Jones
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American Quaker and author

91 W. Somerset Maugham
1/25/1874 - 12/16/1965
English novelist/playwright

76 William C. Bullitt
1/25/1891 - 2/15/1967
U.S. diplomat

73 Paul-Henri Spaak
1/25/1899 - 7/31/1972
Post-World War II statesmen from Belgium

54 Viljo Revell
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53 RICK MORAN
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