Reliably in my mailbox this afternoon was my copy of National Review Dead Tree Edition. . . . And within the latest edition can be found an excellent piece by Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan titled "Iraq As It Is... (...and not as individuals might have it be.)" It is important, particularly for its timeliness as we begin to head into summer months that will be filled with bloody fighting with al-Qaeda terrorists at close quarters, street to street and house to house in their entrenched positions in Diyala province.
The entire article should be read for its proper contextualization and debunking of various erroneous positions and their respective defenses. However, in a section headed "THE US ROLE," one paragraph leapt out at me as I read the authors properly articulating a point I have struggled to make in recent months with any economy of words. And that is the false notion that Iraq is embroiled in a "civil war." . . .
Hit the link for details of the argument.
They go on to explain, yet again, that American troops are not between two warring sides in a civil war, but rather they are between violent, murderous extremists and terrorists on one side and the innocents of Iraq's civilian population on the other. (Emphasis added.)
And the crescendo of the battle against the warring terrorist elements is getting underway now in Diyala. Al-Qaeda and Iran have big plans. And we can either hang out in Baghdad where they largely aren't or we can hunt them down where they are entrenched in force. . . .
Iran and al-Qaeda have big plans for mayhem this summer, knowing full well how American domestic politicos will employ a rising casualty rate to try and force a US withdrawal when General Petraeus delivers his anticipated (by enemy and ally alike) September progress report. We all know it's coming, from whom, from where, and how it will be characterized.
And those of us who embrace the task of putting Iraq and the larger conflict into context had better sharpen our pencils and explain what is about to happen in Diyala and why before the "Invasion of the Body Counters" seizes the narrative.
And when doing so, ask yourself, "Would my neighbor and mother in-law understand what I have written (or said)?" Speak to them. Don't speak to the 'faithful' and don't speak to the 'Anti-War/Bush/Iraq' angry critics. There is little point in either in this phase and stage.
But imagine if just one third of the Americans who understand no greater context than the latest media reporting of al-Qaeda 'bomb and body count' (the vast majority) suddenly paused. Not jumped, not changed . . . just paused . . . long enough to consider . . .
Engage.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/30/2007 12:06 ||
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American troops are not between two warring sides in a civil war, but rather they are between violent, murderous extremists and terrorists on one side and the innocents of Iraq's civilian population on the other.
Please explain this to some of our surrendercrats in Congress.
. . .given the text of her bitter and self-pitying missive, I dont think shes interested, yet, in consuming massive doses of reality. Her first dose has almost done her in:
The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.
The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a tool of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message
However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the left started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used
The missive is rife with personal references and some ideas that hint of a failed messiah-complex, and there is some crazy stuff in there about the government controlling what we think (not yet, Cindy, that would be your good pal Hugo Chavez come back after 08 for the rest) but one line of hers is worth exploring:
The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing.
Madam, your gracious and courageous son - whose death is tragic and for whom your mourning is nothing less than appropriate - will only have died for nothing if his mission is left dangling and unfinished by the very people - and their minions - who exploited you, and who help to make the job of every soldier in Iraq more difficult. Your son died fighting - like the very noblest and most formidable of heroes - to free a people and a nation from tyranny, and to rid them of the nests of violent and murderous men who keep their nation - and a whole region - under the boot, under the veil and out of the marketplace of ideas and invention, progress and parity. So long as those people are so subjected, the world peace you rant for will never take hold, and terrorism - the killing and maiming of utter innocents - will continue, throughout the world, to be the preferred means of movement.
The truth is, Mrs. Sheehan, President Bush is not the one trying to cheapen your sons sacrifice. I certainly am not, either. Your sons honorable death is being cheapened by the people who would say, I support the troops, so I want them to be pulled out of the place where they can make a difference, and have them stop acting like the warriors they are, so we can all sing Kumbaya and pretend to be friends with the whole world until they attack another US City, in which case we should all beg their pardon and ask them why they hate us and how we can change to be more what theyd like. Those are the people who want to waste Casey Sheehans young life. Those are the people who gave you absolute moral authority to do their bidding, until you dared ask them to let their actions be consistent with their rhetoric.
Do go home, Maam. Do go home and be silent for a little while, because silence is so much more instructive than noise. Go home and figure out who is trying to kill you and who is actually trying to save your grieving ass. Your son had already figured it out. He knew that liberty comes through the overthrowing of tyrants.
I tend to feel as this Freeper spokesperson does:
Kristinn Taylor, spokesman for FreeRepublic.com, which has held pro-troop rallies and counter-protests of anti-war demonstrations, said dwindling crowds at Sheehans Crawford protests since her initial vigil may have led to her decision. But he also said he hopes she will now be able to heal.
Her politics have hurt a lot of people, including the troops and their families, but most of us who support the war on terror understand she is hurt very deeply, Taylor said today. Those she got involved with in the anti-war movement realize it was to their benefit to keep her in that stage of anger.
Note: Youll not be surprised to note that newspaper reports are carefully editing Sheehans goodbye letter to omit her criticisims of the left and the Democrats. The press is ever-vigilant to insure that no dross touches their favored ones.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/30/2007 06:29 ||
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Mods, please clean up my formatting.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/30/2007 6:45 Comments ||
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I just love a story that ends "after all I did for you..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/30/2007 8:03 Comments ||
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But I din't know til this very day that it was...Pelosi all along.
The subjection of women in Muslim societies--especially in Arab nations and in Iran--is today very much in the public eye. Accounts of lashings, stonings, and honor killings are regularly in the news, and searing memoirs by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi have become major best-sellers. One might expect that by now American feminist groups would be organizing protests against such glaring injustices, joining forces with the valiant Muslim women who are working to change their societies. This is not happening.
If you go to the websites of major women's groups, such as the National Organization for Women, the Ms. Foundation for Women, and the National Council for Research on Women, or to women's centers at our major colleges and universities, you'll find them caught up with entirely other issues, seldom mentioning women in Islam. During the 1980s, there were massive demonstrations on American campuses against racial apartheid in South Africa. There is no remotely comparable movement on today's campuses against the gender apartheid prevalent in large parts of the world.
It is not that American feminists are indifferent to the predicament of Muslim women. Nor do they completely ignore it. For a brief period before September 11, 2001, many women's groups protested the brutalities of the Taliban. But they have never organized a full-scale mobilization against gender oppression in the Muslim world. The condition of Muslim women may be the most pressing women's issue of our age, but for many contemporary American feminists it is not a high priority. Why not?
The reasons are rooted in the worldview of the women who shape the concerns and activities of contemporary American feminism. That worldview is--by tendency and sometimes emphatically--antagonistic toward the United States, agnostic about marriage and family, hostile to traditional religion, and wary of femininity. The contrast with Islamic feminism could hardly be greater.
Writing in the New Republic in 1999, philosopher Martha Nussbaum noted with disapproval that "feminist theory pays relatively little attention to the struggles of women outside the United States." Too many fashionable gender theorists, she said, have lost their dedication to the public good. Their "hip quietism . . . collaborates with evil."
This was a frontal assault, and prominent academic feminists chastised Nussbaum in the letters column. Joan Scott of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton pointed out the dangers of Nussbaum's "good versus evil scheme." Wrote Scott, "When Robespierre or the Ayatollahs or Ken Starr seek to impose their vision of the 'good' on the rest of society, reigns of terror follow and democratic politics are undermined." Gayatri Spivak, a professor of comparative literature at Columbia, accused Nussbaum of "flag waving" and of being on a "civilizing mission." None of the letter writers addressed her core complaint: Too few feminist theorists are showing concern for the millions of women trapped in blatantly misogynist cultures outside the United States.
One reason is that many feminists are tied up in knots by multiculturalism and find it very hard to pass judgment on non-Western cultures. They are far more comfortable finding fault with American society for minor inequities (the exclusion of women from the Augusta National Golf Club, the "underrepresentation" of women on faculties of engineering) than criticizing heinous practices beyond our shores. The occasional feminist scholar who takes the women's movement to task for neglecting the plight of foreigners is ignored or ruled out of order.
There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. In the long run, the sword is always beaten by the mind.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
According to a news account supposedly based on a leak from inside the government, President Bush recently signed off on a classified intelligence finding, authorizing the CIA to undertake nonlethal covert action to destabilize Irans nearly out-of-control government. If true, its about time.
Diplomatic pleading hasnt deterred the maniacal mullahs in their aspirations to make Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei into an atomic ayatollah.
The covert action is also supposed to stem Irans support for Iraqi insurgents. Tehrans likely assistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan should be added to the list.
But a covert bid to pressure or topple Irans regime faces at least two problems.
First, its not a secret anymore. So long as the leaker remains nameless, we cant know the motive for sure - though the goal was likely to kill the project altogether.
Second, its probably too little, too late. Such a program likely lacks the means needed to get Iran to throttle back on nukes or its support of insurgents. Thats more likely going to require economic sanctions that truly hurt, or a military strike.
Sanctions are tough to get. Some reports indicate Europe has actually increased investment in Iran since the nuclear crisis.
The mullahs should know the military option is still active. Last weeks unannounced exercises of two aircraft carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf should send a clear signal.
But an armed attack risks strengthening the regime. Many, perhaps most, Iranians are deeply alienated from their rulers now, but a surge of patriotism could ease those rifts.
Unfortunately, a blown covert action runs that risk, too. Indeed, the CIA played a key role in putting the shah into power in 1953. Any sign that its meddling again could be poisonous.
But even the loss of secrecy doesnt mean the program cant go ahead. A well-executed operation could upset things for the mullahs, increasing social pressure from below and shaking the senior clerics into backing off on their nefarious games.
The regime is increasingly paranoid. The mullahs are now holding at least four Americans on trumped-up charges of every clerics worst nightmare: counter-revolution.
The leak claims the covert-action program would include propaganda, disinformation and economic attacks - efforts to weaken Irans currency and manipulate financial transactions.
Its not hard to envision at least some tactics:
We might look at getting Irans key oil suppliers, like the United Arab Emirates and India, to cut back.
Buy up and flood the international market with rials, devaluing the currency and worsening Irans economy.
The nuclear program could be slowed by devising ways to sell defective parts to the Iranian front companies buying off the black market.
The regimes fundamentalist legitimacy is also vulnerable. Why not use the foreign media to expose corruption (moral or financial) among the ruling elite?
Iran is only slightly more than half Persian. Could ethnic minorities like the Azeris (24 percent) and Kurds (7 percent), already unhappy with their second-class status, be empowered to do something about it?
A bolder, riskier approach would be to start aiding armed anti-government elements to operate in Iran. Unfortunately, its a double-edged sword: An ugly backlash might await perceived sympathizers - complicit or not. If U.S. interference is exposed, the blowback could be another anti-U.S. regime. Plus none of the anti-regime groups are ones youd want to see running Iran.
A covert program is unlikely to bring the Iranian regime to its knees. But it could throw Tehran off balance just enough to distract it from nukes and foreign adventurism, making such an operation well worth the good ol company - er, college - try.
Peter Brookes, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow, served in military and national intelligence. Talk back at peterbrookes@heritage.org. This column first ran in the New York Post.
#1
Iranians alienated? I won't believe that until they start lynching a mullah or two weekly after the Friday sermons. Napoleon didn't mention that in the long run we are all dead. What most of us are pursuing during our short lives is some kind of a short run.
What can the West offer the Islamic Republic of Iran in return for giving up its nuclear ambitions and kenneling its puppies of war? The problem calls to mind the question regarding what to give a man who has everything: cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's, diabetes, kidney failure, and so forth.
Iran's economy is so damaged that it is impossible to tell how bad things are. Except perhaps for the oilfields of southern Iraq, and perhaps also northern Saudi Arabia, there is nothing the West can give Iran to forestall an internal breakdown. Iranian dissidents put overall unemployment at 30% and youth unemployment at 50%. Government subsidies sustain a very large portion of the population; 42% of the non-agricultural population is employed by the Iranian state, compared with 17% in Pakistan. Within fewer than 10 years, Iran will become a net importer, at which point the government no longer will be able to provide subsidies. Iran's economic implosion is a source of imminent strategic risk.
In a May 19 statement reported by the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), President Mahmud Ahmadinejad denied a report that Iran's imports now exceed $60 billion, against an official estimate of $45 billion. A small current-account deficit would be of little concern for a nation with normal access to world capital markets, but Iran is unable to borrow. That is the background to Ahmadinejad's decree last week reducing private and state bank lending rates to 12% from 14%, that is, 5-10 percentage points below the rate of inflation. If Ahmadinejad were in the pay of a hostile intelligence service, he could not have found a more effective way to sabotage Iran's economy. Ahmadinejad took this foolhardy step against the explicit advice of Iran's economic authorities, which suggests that the economic suffering of his political base commanded his undivided attention. After increasing gasoline prices earlier in the month, he evidently found it necessary to throw his constituents a bone.
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My guess is that US Intelligence agencies are hoping to rely on Iranian opponents of the Ayatollahs. Opposition is centered in the seminary city of Qom; Teheran wouldn't be a target. In the case of Iranian exiles in America, there are reports that at least half have abandoned Islam, and they are in close contacts with family members back home. A poll of Iranian youth, taken before Ahmadinejad's rigged election, revealed almost universal desire to emigrate from the terror entity. If US does bomb Ayatollah power centers, as a signal to dissidents - especially professional military, who are fed up with the clerics - could it result in another Bay of Pigs fiasco that entrenches enemy power? I don't think so, because Iran isn't a tough nut to crack.
#2
Iran will fracture along ethnic lines. The Iranian Kurds are very quiet at the moment, but give the Iraqi Kurds a couple of years to consolidate their hold on Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces and it will be game on.
#4
I am hoping the Iranian economy & power structure will collapse before that of the USA, which has several systemic risks of its own at the moment: dependence on imported oil, a truly huge economic bubble in real estate/construction, an extremely vulnerable middle class, a huge current account deficit, and a ruling class scarcely in touch with reality.
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