FDD

Security in Afghanistan (RWC)

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, as you know, recently came close to being wiped out in Kabul.  As Fred Burton and Scott Stewart pointed out in an excellent Strategic Forecasting, Inc. report (“Stratfor”) the fact that the assault happened during a live TV broadcast of the event, and the crowd included the US ambassador William Wood, the UK envoy and the NATO commander, heightened the coverage.

It turns out that Afghanistan Intelligence had some advance warning about the plot to assassinate the president and successfully thwarted two groups of al-Qaeda connected murderers that day, car bombers and a squad of men with a mortar. Later, the Taliban claimed credit for the attack efforts.

One group was able to evade the net. They were the ones who did all the shooting.

Three Islamic extremists successfully hid in a 3rd floor in a dilapidated building overlooking the parade ground a couple of hundred yards away.

They had rented it almost two months in advance.  They were able to bring in grenade-firing assault rifles and a heavy machine gun, apparently by hauling them up it up at night by ropes.  Police had searched the building two days before the attack.  The men locked themselves in the room sometime after that and were not noticed. 

President Karzai had been warned of a planned attack to take place during Sunday military parade by his intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh. A security perimeter of armed troops was tight and thick but the three men had already gotten through earlier.

The trio, who knew there would be no escape for them, began firing wildly as Karzai drove slowly by in an open-topped vehicle.  Their opening volley coincided with a planned 21-gun salute, for a moment effectively disguising the fact of the attack.  (Later, intelligence chief Saleh said that text messages found on the men’s mobile phones clearly spelled out their suicidal intent. It is possible that only one was killed by security police.  The other two appeared to have shot themselves.)

The heavy and inaccurate arms used by the men seemed like a pretty stupid choice, particularly since they roughly knew the distance to where the president would be.  Sniper rifles with scopes would have been more likely effective.

A Taliban spokesman later offered the moronic statement that the three assailants weren’t trying to kill the president –although they did kill three other people in the crowd and wounded eleven  –they were just trying to show the world they could do it.

The Taliban point was totally phony.

There was considerable breast-beating within the Afghan government, particularly in the Ministry of the Interior, about the security failures that allowed the three men to evade detection.

One official told the Washington Post, in a story reported by Carlotta Gall, that “What happened was really shameful.  Clearly it was a blow to our national and international prestige.” Well, maybe.  But they are being awfully tough on themselves.  Consider that this poor country has had over 4,000 separate terrorist attacks in just the last 12 months.

Crisis in Burma (RWC)

The disastrous cyclone Nargis, and the destruction in Burma, or if you prefer, Myanmar, which I don’t prefer, is setting in motion a crisis reaching far beyond the tens of thousands of people who have died or are missing and the tens of thousands more who are homeless or threatened by disease.

Food shortages and the rising prices of food suggest chaos and hunger around the world.

Burma was supposed to begin exporting its rice harvest this year, counted on by neighboring countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which now face an increased shortage.  The price of rice is expected to sky rocket.  It has just about tripled since the beginning of 2008, smashing the budgets of food-aid programs.

World Vision, the large U.S.-based disaster relief agency, told the Wall Street Journal they may be forced to cut back by a million and a half people who would benefit from their programs, out of 6-million usual beneficiaries.

Remember the environmentalists telling us that corn-based ethanol will cut back on greenhouse gas?  That was totally untrue.
Just the opposite is true. The Wall St Journal reports that corn-based ethanol will nearly double greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years.

The fact is that turning crops into fuel drives up the price of food and increases atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Time magazine, on the other side for so long, in their recent cover story, “The Clean Energy Myth” said just that.  Gee, said the Wall St. Journal, if Time feels that way can that other superficial and irresponsible rag Vanity Fair  -so good at celebrity-sex and rich people scandal and so poor on social and political issues, be far behind? The adjectives are mine, not the WSJ’s.

Food vs. fuel a global myth

Writing in the Chicago Tribune, FDD Senior Fellow Dr. Robert Zubrin and Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, address the myths and facts surrounding the issue of biofuels.

In recent weeks, a flood of reports and statements has claimed that the world's biofuel programs—in particular the U.S. corn ethanol effort—is starving poor people around the globe. Even the UN's special rapporteur for the Right to Food decried biofuel production as "a crime against humanity."

It seems so obvious: With so much corn being turned into fuel, food shortages must inevitably result, and biofuel programs must be the cause. However, that's completely untrue.

Here are the facts. In the last five years, despite the nearly threefold growth of the corn ethanol industry (or actually because of it), the U.S. corn crop grew by 35 percent, the production of distillers grain (a high-value animal feed made from the protein saved from the corn used for ethanol) quadrupled and the net corn food and feed product of the U.S. increased 26 percent.

Contrary to claims that farmers have cut other crops to grow more corn, U.S. soybean plantings this year are expected to be up 18 percent and wheat plantings up 6 percent. U.S. farm exports are up 23 percent.

America is clearly doing its share in feeding the world.

 

Notes and Comments (CM)

WAS THERE A MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE? Here's a question about the nuclear facility that North Korea had hoped to build for Syria: Who was picking up the check? Syria is not a wealthy country. North Korea is not ruled by a generous dictator. Iran, however, does have oil money gushing and Syria is, of course, Iran's client. I'd wager that Iran paid North Korea to build the facility for Syria.

More on the Syrian nuclear controversy here, here, here, here and here.

CONFUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH: The AP reports:

 

'Jihadist' booted from government lexicon

Washington - Don't call them jihadists any more.

And don't call al-Qaida a movement.

The Bush administration has launched a new front in the war on terrorism, this time targeting language.

Federal agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counter Terrorism Center, are telling their people not to describe Islamic extremists as "jihadists" or "mujahedeen," according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. Lingo like "Islamo-fascism" is out, too.

The reason: Such words may actually boost support for radicals among Arab and Muslim audiences by giving them a veneer of religious credibility or by causing offense to moderates.

Libel Tourism Conference

On April 10, 2008, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Center for Law and Counterterrorism and the New Criterion co-hosted a conference in New York on Free Speech in an Age of Jihad. The aim of the conference was to provide an anatomy of efforts to suppress free speech, to examine the way such actions aid and abet the spread of radical Islam, and to consider some possible responses, legal as well as journalistic, to the threats they pose.

Portions of the conference can be viewed here.

Goodbye Mugabe (RWC)

Crazy Bob Mugabe went down to defeat in the elections in Zimbabwe but the man still hasn’t left and his opponents are being beaten and terrorized, as always.

The leader of the opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the popular vote and has been trying to apply international pressure to Crazy Bob to step down.

Invasions of white-owned farms began again right after the election with the invaders brandishing machetes, banging pots and pans and chanting ruling party songs.

Cuba under the other Castro brother (RWC)

On a geo-politically related subject: 

The Castro brothers are lightening up in Cuba, in a miniscule, mundane way, though it is the small things that count, isn't it? 

Raul has decreed that Cuban citizens can now buy a cell phone, and they can now stay in a Cuban hotel, too. 

Before, for almost 50 years, they were barred from even entering a hotel, except to wait on tables or vacuum hallways.

A good hotel room in Cuba cost about $100 a night. A great hotel room, at a four-star joint, is about $175 a night, more than ten times the average Cuban’s monthly salary.  There won’t be too many Cuban citizens leaping in on Raul’s offer.

The average wage in Cuba is 375 Cuban Pesos.  The peso there is worth 25 to one US dollar.  That is exactly $15.  A month.  One bar of soap in Cuba cost about 80 cents US, 5% of a monthly wage. Not too many Cubans will be buying cell phones or staying in plush rented digs..

Castro apologists, and there are many in America, like to say “But, they have free universal health care!”  They won’t tell you how cruddy it is, the very reason that Fidel Castro’s doctors always fly in from Spain where they live and practice.

This is a country where the government controls almost all of the economy and worked to destroy it for four decades.

Recently, the AP reported that shelves in Cuban stores were as bare as always.

One shop in Havana had six motorcycle helmets, one thin blanket and one pair of boy’s underpants for sale.

Like the Castro’s model, the former Soviet Union, the great egalitarian movement in Cuba is a myth.

The elites, meaning high government officials, get to shop in special stores using a kind of convertible peso, called, appropriately a CUC (a “kook”).  And they can buy steaks and French perfume.

It will be a good day for the poor folks of Cuba when that the Castro brothers and their running-dogs are dead and buried.                

Coumbia and the FARC (RWC)

The terrorists and leftwing kidnappers in Columbia are called the FARC.  You will be pleased to know they are experiencing tough times.  Maybe they are falling apart. This is a good thing.

The FARC has been unraveling since the recent death of their number two man, Raul Reyes (whose real name was Luis Devia.)  He was killed in the air and ground attack against a FARC jungle camp over the Columbian border in Ecuador last month.

The Columbians finally raided this “safe haven,” given them by the mushy-headed Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, and sent Reyes, who was a member of the seven person FARC ruling directorate, and 16 other revolutionaries, off  to meet their Maker.

About 1500 FARC members were killed in combat last year and another 2,480 deserted and went home.

Such a mass of deserters has an enormous impact on troop morale and popular support for the FARC has been seriously dwindling in Columbia.

One deserter was a soldier named Pedro Pablo Montoya.

Iran’s Top Terrorist Emerges From the Shadows (WP)

CQ HOMELAND SECURITY

April 11, 2008 – 9:11 p.m.

Iran’s Top Terrorist Emerges From the Shadows

By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

When Iran’s Brigadier Gen. Qassem Suleimani was leaving on a foreign mission a few years ago, his daughters begged him to bring back designer jeans.

It must have been a dispiriting request for Iran’s terrorist chief, head of the Quds Force, or The Jerusalem Brigade, Iran’s supersecret overseas intelligence and sabotage unit.

As an elite of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Suleimani’s daughters would be expected to be role models for Iran’s brand of militant Shiite Islam, right down to their Calvins.

Under the mullahs’ puritanical dress code, jeans are verboten, though commonly worn under the head-to-toe black cloaks women have to wear until they’re safely indoors.

“It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?” says a longtime close observer of Iran, chuckling. “It shows he has the ordinary pressures of a normal dad.”

But otherwise, the general is anything but normal.

If Washington ever attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, it will fall to Suleimani to coordinate terrorist retaliation against U.S. targets abroad, from Beirut to Buenos Aires.

The Quds Force is the tip of the spear.

Suleimani reports directly to Iran’s supreme leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, analysts say.

IraqStatusReport.com (CM)

Friends:

I encourage you to check out the Iraq Status Report web site. Located on the Internet at IraqStatusReport.com, this new site is a collaborative effort by Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Institute for the Study of War, and The Long War Journal providing the only “one-stop-shop” on the Internet for news, commentary and analysis related to the U.S. Mission in Iraq.

Included are my recent articles on Iraq, as well as research and analysis by leading experts including Daveed Gartenstein-Ross (Vice President of Research, Foundation for Defense of Democracies), Kim Kagan (President, Institute for the Study of War) and Bill Roggio (Editor, Long War Journal).

We hope this will prove to be a valuable resource for the media, researchers and the general public.

Neo-Isolationism? (CM)

The New Republic’s James Kirchik writes:

By warning against future American involvement in Iraq, Democrats are consciously tapping into neo-isolationist sentiment. Their current talking points are merely the latest incantation of John F. Kerry¹s disgraceful complaint, registered in his nomination acceptance speech four years ago, that the United States was “opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them in the United States of America.”

This “America First” rhetoric signifies a decisive break with the Democratic Party¹s foreign policy traditions. It was a Democratic president, Harry Truman, who oversaw the initial postwar occupation of Japan. In 1950, Truman deployed American troops to Korea to stave off a communist takeover of the peninsula sponsored by China and the Soviet Union.

When the war ended three years later, the United States did not withdraw but committed tens of thousands of American troops who continue to protect South Korean democracy from a hostile North Korea. Neither did Truman abandon West Berlin to the Soviets, instead conducting a massive, months-long airlift to keep the free part of the city alive, nor did he ignore a communist insurgency in Greece.

Similarly, it was another Democratic president, John F. Kennedy, who increased economic and military aid to Latin American countries via the Alliance for Progress, a regional anti-Communist coalition. Kennedy famously said that the United States would ³pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.²Today, when it comes to the price and burdens of sustaining liberty abroad, the Democrats have buyer¹s remorse and have allowed Republicans to lay claim to the internationalist traditions of their party. In his major foreign policy address last week, McCain cited only two former presidents: Truman and Kennedy.

The purpose of the latest Democratic attack is to scare American voters away from the international responsibilities that the United States has borne since the end of World War II. It is the sort of isolationist harangue that one would expect from Pat Buchanan, not the party of Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.

More here.

Stupid Intelligence (CM)

Gabriel Schoenfeld writes:

Exactly how vulnerable are we right now to a significant terrorist attack? No one can answer that question with any certainty. What we can say with assurance is that even as George W. Bush has overseen the single most far-reaching reorganization of the U.S. intelligence community (IC) since the CIA was created in 1947, his single greatest failure as a president might well be that American intelligence remains mired in bureaucratic mediocrity.

More here.

Walid Phares: “The West needs to isolate Jihadism by defining it”

At the Launch of his new book The Confrontation at the European Parliament

Brussels, European Parliament, EFD-FDD, March 12, 2008

At the invitation of European MP Jana Hybaskova, a launching event was organized at the European Parliament for Dr Walid Phares’s new book, The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad. The breakfast lecture was attended by a number of legislators, including MEP Paulo Casaca, experts at the European institutions, US and Arab diplomats, NGOs representatives and the staff of the European Foundation for Democracy (EFD). Phares, is the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington and a visiting scholar with EFD. 

Wealth Transfer (CM)

Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen write:

Of the world's 86 million barrels in daily crude oil output, the Middle East produces only 25.6 percent. With escalating prices, crude oil now runs $111 per barrel, putting $2.4 billion daily in Middle East pockets.  …

Legendary investor and Vanguard Group founder John Bogle blasted the “orgy of speculation” that granted foreign investors excessive influence over the U.S. economy. “We should have never let ourselves get into this position where so many dollars are . . . held by foreign countries and bought by foreign countries that are enemies,” he stated also on March 14. “Friend or enemy, they have a lot of control over what happens here,'' he said.

Indeed, major Middle East oil producers have a different understanding than Americans of economics and ownership. The October 2006 Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) “Mecca Declaration” is but one, albeit pointed example of this fundamental difference. Islam views all property owned by Muslims as held “in trust for Allah.” The Qur'an decrees, “The land belongs to Allah, He gives it as a heritage to those of His devotees whom He pleases” (15:128). Therefore, Muslim property “shall be subject to the terms and conditions established by their owners.” While OPEC and the Saudis blame the Bush administration for high oil prices, by “mismanaging” the U.S. economy, in fact OPEC policies cause the escalation.

In a significant indication of brazen Saudi determination to undermine the U.S. and Western economies with petrodollars, King Abdullah rebuffed President Bush's recent appeal to boost production and lower prices.  …

Despite protracted violence against the United States, West and Israel since 1979, only the September 11 attacks forced America to recognize the Islamic holy war (jihad) waged by al Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

What will it take for the United States to recognize the far more dangerous and important part of that jihadeconomic warfare (financial jihad, or al-jihad bi-al-mal)-which the Saudis and Gulf States now aggressively also pursue? Shari'a mandates that Muslims fund jihad: Qur'an 61:10-11, “strive for the cause of Allah with your wealth and your lives. . . .” And Qur'an 49:15, “(true) believers are only those who…strive with their wealth and their lives for the cause of Allah.” “Financial Jihad [is] … more important … than self-sacrificing,” says Saudi Islamic cleric and Muslim Brother Hamud bin Uqla al-Shuaibi.

More here.

"The long term aim of Terrorists is to numb European resistance"

Brussels, March 6, 2008

Addressing a Breakfast at the invitation of the European Ideas Network at the European Parliament, FDD's Senior Fellow Walid Phares underlined the necessity for legislators, intellectuals and researchers on both sides of the Atlantic to develop a common strategy on confronting the threat of Jihadi terrorism, which "is growing global, lethal and showing all signs of a long term planning." Dr Phares, the director of FDD's Future Terrorism Project and a visiting scholar at the European Foundation for Democracy was the guest speaker of EIN for its monthly breakfast event. The meeting, which took place at the European Parliament, was attended by a number of experts and members in addition to MEPs Mihael Brejc, James Elles, Maria Martenes, Angelika Niebler, Jan Olbrycht, John Purvis and Peter Stastny.

EIN European Meeting

Phares, who was introduced by EIN diretor Guillermo Martinez Casan, referred to his  latest two books Future Jihad and The War of Ideas and announced his forthcoming newest book The Confrontation. "The long term Jihadist strategies aim at numbing Western reaction to the surging of the combat and urban Jihadists," said Phares. "The immense sums of money inserted in the West in general, in the United States and European institutions in particular by Oil backed regimes and circles penetrated the educational systems and created a defense line for the rise of Salafism and Khomeinism. The reason for why Westerners are not able to unify their positions and clarify their statements regarding the ideology and tactics of the Terror forces is fundamentally grounded in the penetration by these long term Jihadi influences inside the educational and academic systems."    

Phares told the EIN forum that during his several briefings and meetings with European officials he felt that "intense intellectual and academic lobbying has been in effect on the continent for a long time now. The arguments used by many officials are not so different in nature from those advanced by Islamist spokespersons on al Jazeera and other similar media." Phares said Europe has "entered the fray of its most difficult war of ideas, that is to see clearer as most of its classical expertise has been impacted by years of impact."  In conclusion, the FDD expert admitted that "despite the historical decline in European intellectual resistance to the rise of Salafism and Khomeinism as ideologies, one can see the counter rise of a younger and vivid generation of researchers who have captured the real meaning of Jihadism and developed a better understanding of the strategies used in the War of ideas."   

Phares briefings in Europe -until mid March- are part of the European Foundation for Democracy to educate public officials on the threats of Terrorism and its ideologies.  He is the author of the newly released The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad

Tough Times (CM)

Frank Gaffney writes:

Totalitarians have an uncanny appreciation for the subversive effect of foreign propagandists. The Nazis had Lord Haw-Haw, Imperial Japan its Tokyo Rose, the Soviets the World Council of Churches (among many others) and the North Vietnamese Jane Fonda. Now, our time’s totalitarian ideologues – the Islamofascists – have the New York Times.

This may not seem to be exactly a news flash. After all, the Times has been rendering invaluable service to the enemy’s information operations and military campaigns for years. To cite but a few examples: In December 2005, the paper disclosed a highly classified program for monitoring suspected terrorists’ communications on this war’s global battlefield. In June 2006, it revealed another enormously sensitive surveillance effort concerning movement of funds around the world. And practically every day, what passes for its news pages and editorials run down the Nation’s leadership, military and progress in defeating our foes.

The New York Times marked a deplorable new milestone this weekend, however – a true nadir in collaborating with the enemy in the War of Ideas. Its Sunday magazine featured an article by Harvard law professor Noah Feldman entitled “Why Shariah? Millions of Muslims think Shariah means the rule of law. Could they be right?” According to the Times’ Mr. Feldman, the answer is a resounding “Yes.”  …

It is the cruelest of delusions to contend that such Shariah law will produce “just and legitimate governments” anywhere. Feldman struggles to explain why it isn’t so in two of the four places ruled by Shariah today – Iran and Saudi Arabia; he doesn’t even try to do so with respect to Sudan or Gaza, let alone the nightmare that formerly was Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

More here.

Notes and Comments (CM)

ORWELL WOULD UNDERSTAND: In Israel last week, a "militant" went to a religious school and shot everyone in sight. Hamas sang the praises of this "martyr" and in Gaza there was dancing in the streets. On NPR a "reporter" explained that those attending the religious school are religious, as are many of the "settlers" in the West Bank which the Palestinians claim and that "explains" slaughtering these students as they sat studying their Bibles.

I would like to continue but I'm running out of quotation marks.

A question: If Muslims were mowed down in a mosque by an Israeli would NPR offer the same explanation - that they are in a mosque so they are religious and members of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas also are religious, so surely one can understand?

Other commentators on this and related issues below.

Israel’s Dilemma (CM)

Bret Stephens writes

Hamas was elected democratically and by overwhelming margins in Gaza. It has never once honored a cease-fire with Israel. Following Israel's withdrawal of its soldiers and settlements from the Strip in 2005 there was a six-fold increase in the number of Kassam strikes on Israel.

Hamas has also made no effort to rewrite its 1988 charter, which calls for Israel's destruction. The charter is explicitly anti-Semitic: "The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!" (Article Seven) "In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad." (Article 15) And so on.

It would seem perverse for Israeli taxpayers, including residents of Sderot, to feed the mouth that bites them. It would seem equally perverse for Israel merely to bide its time for an especially unlucky day -- a Kassam hitting a busload of schoolchildren, for instance -- before striking hard at Gaza. But unless Israel is willing to accept the military, political and diplomatic burdens of occupying all or parts of Gaza indefinitely, the effects of a major military incursion could be relatively short-lived. Israel suffered many more casualties before it withdrew from the Strip than it has since. …

[N]o self-respecting nation can allow the situation in Sderot to continue much longer, a point it is in every civilized country's interest to understand.

More here.

Can Brad Be Far Behind? (CM)

Angelina Jolie writes:

As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.

It seems to me that now is the moment to address the humanitarian side of this situation. Without the right support, we could miss an opportunity to do some of the good we always stated we intended to do.

More here. 

This Is Not Even a Close Call (CM)

Sen. Mitch McConnell writes:

[O]n Feb. 16, the nation's terrorist surveillance law expired. At that moment, intelligence officials who spend their days listening in on phone calls between terrorists overseas were legally barred from following new leads without first following outdated and cumbersome warrant procedures — even if neither caller is calling from within the U.S.

The consequences of inaction are real. Today, if someone in a previously unknown terror cell calls an eager new recruit in London, our agents will have to hang up the phone, apply for a warrant and hope for the best.

If a Marine in Iraq captures a terrorist from a previously unidentified terror group, our agents will not be free to call the phone numbers in his laptop right away.

If calls placed to these numbers are routed through U.S. phone lines, our agents will have to apply for a warrant, even though the people on the other end are overseas and the terrorist with the laptop is not an American.

Me: Most Democrats know this is wrong and would cast their votes correctly. The problem is Nancy Pelosi and, one presumes, other House Democratic leaders. Democrats need to put pressure on them – rather than attacking those who are calling attention to this problem.

McConnell’s piece is here.

Dug In For Retreat (CM)

Charles Krauthammer on progress in Iraq, those who deny it and seek to undermine it – and why.

He writes:

Despite all the progress, military and political, the Democrats remain unwavering in their commitment to withdrawal on an artificial timetable that inherently jeopardizes our "very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state."

Why? Imagine the transformative effects in the region, and indeed in the entire Muslim world, of achieving a secure and stable Iraq, friendly to the United States and victorious over al-Qaeda. Are the Democrats so intent on denying George Bush retroactive vindication for a war they insist is his that they would deny their own country a now-achievable victory?

Much more here.

A Reaganite’s Support for Incentivizing Fuel Compeition (CM)

Robert McFarlane, who served as President Reagan’s national security advisor supports the case that Robert Zubrin, Anne Korin, James Woolsey, I and others have been making:

We spend $500 billion each year on our military forces. One of their most vital missions is to protect the flow of Persian Gulf oil which fuels the global economy. The disruption of those oil flows -- such as by terrorists disabling a major Saudi processing terminal -- would bring down economies throughout the industrialized world.

Here again, one can conceive a strategy for neutralizing this threat. It involves moving urgently to introduce a profoundly different national energy policy designed to do the following:

• Provide market-based incentives to justify the essential re-tooling of our  automobile industry to enable it to produce flexible-fuel, plug-in hybrid electric cars and trucks, using carbon composite materials (as Boeing is doing in the new 787 airliner);
• Accelerate the commercial production of cellulosic ethanol, butanol and other bio-fuels; and
• License new nuclear power plants.

He makes many other solid points in this WSJ op-ed.

Mission Accomplished? (CM)

Eli Lake reports that top spy Michael McConnell has had second thoughts about the National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. If the goal of the NIE was to tie Bush’s hands, it succeeded marvelously. Eli writes:

The director of national intelligence is backing away from his agency's assessment late last year that Iran had halted its nuclear program, saying he wishes he had written the unclassified version of the document in a different manner. …

The release of the December 2007 estimate at best delayed American diplomatic efforts to pass a third U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning Iran's uranium enrichment, an activity the mullahs have continued for two years despite warnings from all five permanent members of the security council. The estimate also drew rare rebukes from American allies, including Israel, France, and the United Kingdom who said their intelligence agencies did not concur with the American assessment that Iran had frozen its plan to produce an A-bomb.

More here.

Understanding Iraq (CM)

Tom Donnelly writes:

One can only hope that the success of the surge over the last year has, in addition to improving the security situation in Iraq, pried open that little bit of the American brain that can accommodate facts a little wider. The facts are somewhat more convenient: the war is winnable, but it's not yet won. If it is won it would be a genuine demonstration of American virtue, but of the sort that reflects the often-ugly business of irregular war. The facts of losing--and the war is losable as it is winnable--remain extremely inconvenient and would almost surely increase the number of crimes against humanity.

Ultimately, fictions about war are only briefly self-serving: until we can see this war clearly, we cannot really know how to fight it. "The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make"--yes, there is a Clausewitz quote for any occasion--"is to establish . . . the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature."

More here.

Egyptian Gaza? (CM)

Daniel Pipes writes:

Washington and other capitals should declare the experiment in Gazan self-rule a failure and press President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to help, perhaps providing Gaza with additional land or even annexing it as a province. This would revert to the situation of 1948-67, except this time Cairo would not keep Gaza at arm's length but take responsibility for it.

Culturally, this connection is a natural: Gazans speak a colloquial Arabic identical to the Egyptians of Sinai, have more family ties to Egypt than to the West Bank, and are economically more tied to Egypt (recall the many smugglers' tunnels). Further, Hamas derives from an Egyptian organization, the Muslim Brethren. As David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen notes, calling Gazans "Palestinians" is less accurate than politically correct.

Why not formalize the Egyptian connection? Among other benefits, this would (1) end the rocket fire against Israel, (2) expose the superficiality of Palestinian nationalism, an ideology under a century old, and perhaps (3) break the Arab-Israeli logjam.

More here. 

Out of Africa (CM)

Ralph Peters writes:

Kenya's sudden nightmare is also the fault of pompous Western theorists and impossibly arrogant diplomats. (Our embassy in Nairobi's botched response to the stolen election alienated both sides in turn.)

The horrific violence in Kenya has its roots in three things: the corruption we overlook, the forms of democracy we demand - and, above all, the tribes that left-wing academics insist are only wicked European inventions.  …

Kenya was long one of the continent's few stable states - yet people there kept on voting along tribal lines. As they do in Iraq. And Afghanistan. And Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria . . . just throw a dart at the map. Impose Western forms of democracy, and majority or plurality tribes win - then view their victories as license to loot. It doesn't even occur to them to share.

The process has played out hundreds of times, in dozens of countries, but we still insist that democracy means "one citizen, one vote" for a central government with Western-style ministries. The model we've enforced around the world assumes that enlightened citizens won't be bound by tribal or religious loyalties.  …

Our type of democracy works in homogeneous countries, such as Sweden or the Netherlands, where campaigns are strictly about issues - or in countries, like our own, that are so diverse no "alpha tribe" can lord it over everybody else.

But democracy as we know it doesn't work in countries where competition for resources persists along tribal or religious lines. …

[O]ur attempts to ride roughshod over fundamental identities to which human beings cling for dear life only resulted in the sort of failures we've witnessed in the post-colonial years - and the problems we faced in Iraq as we brushed aside sheiks in favor of corrupt bureaucrats.

To make democracy work in the developing world, you must adapt it to the pre-existing social structures and traditional loyalties, rather than assuming they'll wither away at the first election. Even Stalin couldn't finish off the Chechens. Afghanistan's Pathans won't vote for Tadjiks, or Sunni Arabs for Sunni Kurds.

The utterly wrong-headed and ultimately deadly insistence that everybody is just like us has led us to prescribe poison: In tribal societies, Western-style presidential or parliamentary systems produce, at best, authoritarian regimes. (As I argued years ago, our question in 2003 shouldn't have been "How do we bring our democracy to Iraq?" but "What would an Iraqi democracy look like?")  …

We vote our individual consciences. In much of the world, that's unthinkable: You vote for your own kind.

Until we see the world as it is, rather than as we wish it to be, elections will tear tribal societies apart - as in Kenya today. The problem isn't democracy. It's "one size fits all" democracy.

More here. 

The Trouble with Maliki (CM)

Bing West and Max Boot write:

The strategy of "surging" 30,000 American soldiers into Iraq and stationing most of them outside of giant U.S. bases has made a crucial difference. … Now, victory is within our grasp -- if only the Iraqi government could effectively reach out to Sunnis and Shiites alike who are fed up with violence and sectarian divisions.

Yet the perverse political system stymies such an outcome. In 2004, U.S. and U.N. officials pushed through an electoral process that resulted in votes for parties rather than individual candidates. This left party bosses in Baghdad free to appoint hacks who do not answer to any local constituency and face no penalty for failing to provide essential services. Water, electricity, garbage collection and job creation are in terrible shape, especially in Sunni areas, because the government is run by Shiites. …

Believing that the White House cannot effectively pressure him without undermining domestic support for its Iraq policy, Maliki has slighted governance while consolidating sectarian control via a vulpine clique. In a flight from reality, his aides balked over sending a letter to the U.N. requesting that coalition forces remain in Iraq, even though Maliki wouldn't last a day without coalition support.

There are good reasons for the administration to be reluctant to ditch the prime minister when no consensus candidate has emerged to replace him. … But Bush should not repeat in Iraq the mistake he has already made in Russia and Pakistan: overly personalizing relations with another country. The U.S. should support democracy in Iraq, not Maliki per se.

A few weeks ago, the Kurds threatened a "no confidence" vote if the prime minister did not share power. Chastened, Maliki seemed to agree. The tests will be whether he permits Sunnis to join the police force in representative numbers, disburses funds to the provinces and permits legislation for provincial elections certain to weaken his authoritarian efforts to control Iraq. If he doesn't come through, the American president may have no choice but to cast his vote -- probably a decisive one -- against the Iraqi prime minister.

Read the whole article here.

Power Play (CM)

Bret Stephens writes:

Hamas is the Palestinian branch of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, and Egypt -- not Israel -- is the country that has most to fear from a statelet that is at once the toehold, sanctuary and springboard of an Islamist revolution. …

As Middle Eastern power plays go, Hamas's decision to dismantle the Gaza-Sinai border was a masterstroke. Gaza's economic woes are almost wholly self-inflicted, but they are real. Dynamiting and bulldozing the border of a neighboring country is legally an act of war, but it was made to seem like a humanitarian necessity and a bid for freedom. Flooding that neighbor with hundreds of thousands of desperate people is a massive economic burden on Egypt, but one that it shirks at its political peril.

Above all, Hamas exploited the myth of pan-Arab solidarity with the Palestinians in order to explode it. Having whipped itself into its usual frenzy over Israel's "siege" of Gaza, it was a delicate matter for the state-run Egyptian press to make the government's case for deploying truncheon-wielding police to turn back the Palestinian human tide. It's an equally delicate matter for the Egyptian government to arrest Brotherhood protesters peacefully demonstrating "for Palestine," even if the Brotherhood's real target is Hosni Mubarak's regime and the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty that it supports.

More here.

Out of Iraq? (CM)

Kim Kagan argues we have to go slowly and carefully if we’re to maintain the remarkable progress made over the last year. She writes:

The "surge" was never intended to secure all of Iraq -- only to stabilize Baghdad and Anbar. Its unexpected success has also placed unanticipated strains on U.S. forces. We won more than we had hoped, and now we may need to defend it more than we had planned. …

Gen. Petraeus has attributed the downturn in violence to three factors: the offensives against al Qaeda and militias, the Iraqi population's rejection of extremists, and the slowly increasing capabilities of the Iraqi security forces. …

By the best estimates now available, 15 brigades is the absolute minimum force required to accomplish the mission that has brought us success in 2007. Any further reductions -- even by a single brigade -- may make that mission impossible.

Me: If we can separate long-term military and national security interests from short-term political calculations, we may be able to win this key battle against al-Qaeda and Iran. But that’s a big “if,” especially in an election year.

Kim’s op-ed is here.

The Problem With FISA (CM)

Jed Babbin writes:

Put yourself in the boots of a SEAL platoon leader trying to determine if you’re walking into an al-Qaeda ambush.  You probably need -- right now, not ten hours from now -- intelligence about a bunch of guys sitting two kilometers over some hill in Afghanistan.  If any of them may be in contact with anyone in the United States, you have to get a warrant from the FISA court to listen in on his cell phone.

More here.

The Vietnam Syndrome (CM)

Bret Stephens writes:

This is another Vietnam legacy. Beyond the purely pragmatic argument that the war in Southeast Asia was unwinnable, there was also a sense among opponents of the war that defeat would, in some deep way, be balm for America's soul. "For all the anguish felt over the loss of American lives, can we acknowledge there is something proper in the way that hubristic American power has been thwarted?" asked antiwar writer James Carroll in 2006, explicitly making the connection between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

Read more.

The Making of a Militant (CM)

Tawfik Hamid writes:

Salafi indoctrination operates through written words and careful coaching. It is enormously seductive. It rapidly changed me into a jihadi. Salafi sacred texts exert a powerful influence on millions of Muslim followers throughout the world, and terrorism is only one symptom of the Salafi disease. Salafi doctrine, which is at the root of the West's confrontation with Islamism, poses an existential threat to us all - including Muslims.

Indeed, Salafism robs young Muslims of their soul, it turns Western communities against them, and it can end in civil war as Muslims attempt to     implement shari'a in their host countries. A peaceful interpretation of Islam is possible, but the Salafi establishment is currently blocking moderate theological reform. The civilized world ought to recognize the immense danger that Salafi Islam poses; it must become informed, courageous and united if it is to protect both a generation of young Muslims and the rest of humanity from the disastrous consequences of this militant ideology.

More here.

Fighting for Human Rights – Against the Human Rights Commissars (CM)

Ezra Levant told the so-called "Human Rights Commission" of Alberta:

When the Western Standard magazine printed the Danish cartoons of Mohammed two years ago, I was the publisher. It was the proudest moment of my public life. I would do it again today. In fact, I did do it again today. …

I am here at this government interrogation under protest. It is my position that the government has no legal or moral authority to interrogate me or anyone else for publishing these words and pictures. That is a violation of my ancient and inalienable freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and in this case, religious freedom and the separation of mosque and state. It is especially perverted that a bureaucracy calling itself the Alberta human rights commission would be the government agency violating my human rights. …

I believe that this commission has no proper authority over me. The commission was meant as a low-level, quasi-judicial body to arbitrate squabbles about housing, employment and other matters, where a complainant felt that their race or sex was the reason they were discriminated against. The commission was meant to deal with deeds, not words or ideas. Now the commission, which is funded by a secular government, from the pockets of taxpayers of all backgrounds, is taking it upon itself to be an enforcer of the views of radical Islam. So much for the separation of mosque and state.

More here.

Things Fall Apart (CM)

Bret Stephens writes:

Mankind is not comprised solely of profit- and pleasure-seekers; the quest for prestige and dominance and an instinct for nihilism are also inscribed in human nature, nowhere more so than in the Middle East. Libertarianism makes no accounting for this. It assumes the relatively tame aspirations of modern American life are a baseline for human nature, not an achievement of civilization.

There is a not-incidental connection here between libertarianism and pacifism. George Orwell once observed that pacifism is a doctrine that can only be preached behind the protective cover of the Royal Navy. Similarly, libertarianism can only be seriously espoused under the protective cover of Leviathan.

That's something worth considering as Americans spend the coming year debating the course of things to come in the Middle East. It is beguiling, and parochially American, to believe that things go better when left alone. In truth, as Yeats once wrote, things fall apart.

More here.

Learning Process (CM)

Erik Swabb, a former Marine officer in Iraq, writes:

After a costly learning process, the military increasingly "gets it" when it comes to irregular warfare …

Commanders, from the small-unit level to the general ranks, increasingly understand that population security, political reconciliation and economic development create legitimate government, which saps insurgents' strength. As a result, conventional forces are now performing counterinsurgency missions at a level that many experts thought impossible. …

The Sunni tribal uprising that's driven al Qaeda from Anbar Province and Baghdad wouldn't have occurred without U.S. forces grasping the complexities of irregular warfare. Iraqi Sunnis rejected the oppressive version of Islam that al Qaeda imposed -- but feared the consequences of resisting. By showing a willingness to help, U.S. troops presented a more trustworthy and less-threatening partner than al Qaeda, a remarkable achievement considering the vast religious and cultural differences between Americans and Iraqis.

U.S. commanders reached agreements with tribal leaders to accept their members into local security forces and establish combat outposts among the populace. Knowing that their families were safe from reprisals, the tribes gained the confidence to go after al Qaeda. Now U.S. officials are considering whether to adopt a similar model for Pakistan's Northwest Frontier.

It remains to be seen whether the new counterinsurgency strategy will lead to a peaceful, democratic Iraq. Success ultimately depends on the ability of Sunnis and Shiites to overcome decades of mistrust and antagonism. But the current approach has created an opportunity for political reconciliation, as Sunnis have demonstrated that they reject al Qaeda's campaign of terror against Shiites. The new strategy is also helping to prevent the establishment of an al-Qaeda safe haven in Iraq -- and in this sense, it has already proven its worth.

The strains on the military are real. However, overemphasis on the "eroding" capabilities of the armed forces belies the incredible emergence of an irregular warfare capacity in the world's greatest conventional military.

This hard-fought transformation faces resistance from advocates of the status quo in the military, and thus is easily reversible without political support. Such support is something Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree on.

More here.