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"Mithal al-Alusi is not only a brave freedom fighter, but one of the few Iraqi leaders who has consistently sang the praises of the United States. He advocates an Iraqi polity modeled on our own, and he has visited America to study our practices." So why is the U.S. government giving him the shaft?
Michael Ledeen looks at the situation here.
Fred Kagan testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Wednesday. He noted:
It is now beyond question that the Bush Administration pursued a flawed approach to the war in Iraq from 2003 to 2007. That approach relied on keeping the American troop presence in Iraq as small as possible, pushing unprepared Iraqi Security Forces into the lead too rapidly, and using political progress as the principal means of bringing the violence under control. In other words, it is an approach similar to the one proposed by the ISG [Iraq Study Group] and by some who are now pushing for political benchmarks and the rapid drawdown of American forces as the keys to success in the war. It is no more likely to work now than it was then. Political progress is something that follows the establishment of security, not something that causes it. The sorts of political compromises that Iraq’s parties must make are extraordinarily difficult—one might even say impossible—in the context of uncontrolled terrorism and sectarian violence. And the Iraqi Security Forces, although significantly better than they were this time last year, are still too small and insufficiently capable to establish security on their own or even to maintain it in difficult and contested areas without significant continuing coalition support. …
The U.S. has not undertaken a multi-phased operation on such a large scale since 2003, and it is not surprising therefore that many commentators have become confused about how to evaluate what is going on and how to report it. Sectarian deaths in Baghdad dropped significantly as soon as the new strategy was announced in January, and remain at less than half their former levels. Spectacular attacks rose as al Qaeda conducted a counter-surge of its own, but have recently begun falling again. Violence is down tremendously in Anbar province, where the Sunni tribes have turned against al Qaeda and are actively cooperating with U.S. forces for the first time. This process has spread from Anbar into Babil, Salah-ad-Din, and even Diyala provinces, and echoes of it have even spread into one of the worst neighborhoods in Baghdad — Ameriyah, formerly an al Qaeda stronghold. Violence has risen naturally in areas that the enemy had long controlled but in which U.S. forces are now actively fighting for the first time in many years …
All of these trends are positive. The growing skill and determination of the Iraqi Army units fighting alongside Americans is also positive. Some Iraqi Police units have also fought well. Others have displayed sectarian tendencies and participated in sectarian actions. Political progress has been very slow — something that has clearly disappointed many who hoped for an immediate turnaround, but that is not surprising for those who always believed that it would follow, not precede or accompany, the establishment of security at least in Baghdad. And negative sectarian actors within the Iraqi Government continue to resist making necessary compromises with former foes. Overall, the basic trends are rather better than could have been expected of the operation so far, primarily because of the unanticipated stunning success in Anbar and its spread. But it remains far too early to offer any meaningful evaluation of the progress of an operation whose decisive phases are only just beginning.
To say that the current plan has failed is simply incorrect. It might fail, of course, as any military/political plan might fail. Indications on the military side strongly suggest that success—in the form of dramatically reduced violence by the end of this year—is quite likely. Indications on the political side are more mixed, but are also less meaningful at this early stage before security has been established. …
It would be a great error to attempt to decide now upon the strategy to pursue when the current plan has actually been implemented, because we cannot now predict what the situation will be then with any confidence or accuracy. And it would be a very grave error indeed to rush now to abandon the first strategy that offers some real prospect for success in favor of a return to an approach that has already failed repeatedly.
His full testimony is here.
Also, an editorial in National Review Online today notes that Senator Richard Lugar
says we have four strategic goals in the Middle East: preventing an al Qaeda safe haven in Iraq; keeping sectarian strife from destabilizing the region; checking Iranian ambitions in the region; and preserving our credibility. A draw-down of the sort advocated by Lugar would set back all of these goals.
Al Qaeda’s strategy in Iraq depends on stoking sectarian strife that radicalizes Iraqi politics, and thus drives the Sunnis into its arms and undermines the legitimacy and effectiveness of the central government. To the extent this happens, it has a better operating environment in Iraq. This is why an anti-al Qaeda strategy depends on tamping down the strife and securing the population. So, as we move into more and more of Baghdad, providing an evenhanded security force for all the population, al Qaeda undertakes spectacular bombings against Shia targets intended to bring the civil war again to a high boil. Sen. Lugar wants essentially to hand al Qaeda its objective.
The full editorial is here.
The Florida university professor convicted on a terrorism charge continues to refuse to testify about whether Islamic charities in Northern Virginia were aiding terrorists.
Sami al-Arian is serving federal prison time for contempt of court and has had his sentence extended to at least October by a federal judge in Alexandria Virginia.
In 2005, a jury in Tampa deadlocked on nine terrorism charges and al-Arian plead guilty to one.
He has been waiting for deportation after being released from prison.
Recently, he again refused to appear before a grand jury continuing to probe into whether group of Islamic charities in Herndon was funneling money to terrorist organizations.
Al-Arian went on a hunger strike for sixty days and was the darling of some Muslim organizations for it. He lost 55 pounds but none of his hubris.
His trial drew liberal political supporters and university faculty members (they seem generally to be one in the same) -but they dropped off after powerful evidence of a connection to terrorism was introduced in his trial.
The case originally swept up a prominent, politically active Muslim, Abdurahman Alamoudi, who later confessed to taking money from Libya to assist in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ruler.
Mrs. al-Arian told the Washington Post that her husband will never testify before any Grand Jury. She said as a Palestinian it would be "shameful" and he would be considered an "informant".
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, would be my view . Maybe that’s yours.
Walid Phares checks in:
This report quoting Palestinian authorities accusing Iranian and Syrian intelligence of fomenting the "coup" in Gaza corroborates our analysis of last week putting the Hamas takeover in the framework of the Iranian offensive on the eastern Mediterranean. The PA [Palestinian Authority] intelligence branch is now exposing the emerging hand of Tehran and Damascus we were expecting to see.
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In previous analysis for "The Tank," in interviews, and in forthcoming articles, I have argued that Hamas was literally ordered by the Tehran-Damascus axis to seize Gaza fully in a move corresponding with an offensive along the eastern Mediterranean north and south of Israel in Lebanon and in Gaza. The analysis I developed wasn't only about the actual Iranian support of Hamas — we knew about that — but it was primarily about the strategic command and control the Iranian regime has over Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This development, in addition to crumbling the academic fallacy that Hamas is just an "independent liberation movement" reveals a regional terror dimension this group has with all of its geopolitical consequences.
Frank Gaffney writes that
the only way a truly rapid disengagement and redeployment from Iraq can be accomplished would be via a kind of Dunkirk in the desert: a pell-mell rush for the beachhead points of embarkation the object of which would be to extricate as many personnel as possible, probably without regard for their equipment and surely at the expense of their safety.
A report last week on, of all places, National Public Radio made clear why the alternative — an orderly, careful and proper redeployment of most, let alone all U.S. forces in Iraq simply cannot be done any time soon. Friday’s broadcast of NPR’s Morning Edition program featured a story by Pentagon correspondent, Tim Bowman, entitled, “Logistics Mean an Iraq Exit Can’t Happen Quickly.” Citing several unnamed current Defense Department officials and a retired officer who managed the last withdrawal from Iraq and Kuwait in 2001 after Operation Desert Storm, Bowman reported that it will take at least ten to fourteen months for the United States fully to withdraw from Iraq.
That, it turns out, is the best case. …
[U]nder the approach to withdrawal advocated by virtually all Democratic leaders and several prominent Republicans, Americans will surely be retreating under fire. As Tom Bowman put it, Americans “would likely have to fight insurgents overland, all the way to Kuwait.” This endeavor, according to one officer quoted by NPR, would require “attack helicopters [and] recon helicopters in the air, possibly tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and, of course, armored Humvees [on the ground]” providing protection for the disengaging forces. …
If the prospect of leaving behind chaos and genocide on an unimaginable scale in Iraq is not enough to dissuade our leaders from cutting and running from the fight there, perhaps that of a calamitous and bloody retreat under fire for U.S. forces will do the trick. After all, it will be utterly untenable for any to profess that they “support the troops” if the predictable consequence of their actions will be to subject those troops to a devastating — and strategically catastrophic — Dunkirk in the desert.
More here.
Bret Stephens writes:
No matter how much diplomatic, military and financial oxygen is pumped into Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, it's oxygen flowing to a corpse. Palestine has always been a notional place, a field of dreams belonging only to those who know how to keep it. Israelis have held on to their state because they were able to develop the political, military and economic institutions that a state requires to survive, beginning with its monopoly on the use of legitimate force. In its nearly 14 years as an autonomous entity, the PA has succeeded in none of that, despite being on the receiving end of unprecedented international goodwill and largesse. The message is ready to be sent with the following file or link attachments:
More here.
Before December 2006, when the gloves apparently came off at least a little for the Bush administration, they appear to have decided not to retaliate overtly against the Iranians for the support we knew they were lending to anti-coalition operations in Iraq. So the administration used the "might be rogue elements operating outside Tehran's control" subterfuge to throw the press off the scent of what it knew perfectly well was Tehran's complicity, passive or active, in the attacks against American soldiers in Iraq. Since December, the U.S. has been a lot more aggressive towards Iran, cruising huge naval armadas just a few dozen miles from Iranian naval bases without prior notice; detaining hundreds of Iranians and Iranian proxies in Iraq; hammering Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, etc., etc.
In a sense, we may have been storing Iran's transgressions in the bank until the day we could cash them in to justify overt action against Iran. This only makes sense from a strategic point of view. I am all for deterrence, but deterrence presumes two conditions that do not obtain in the case of Iran: (1) that the adversary wants to avoid conflict, and (2) that the adversary is under unified control. Then there is the question of containment theory. If you retaliate automatically for every transgression at the moment the transgression is committed, you let the enemy control the timing of conflict, and you thereby concede to him the initiative. This is the criticism that John Lewis Gaddis levels against several postwar administrations — most of all Kennedy's — in his classic Strategies of Containment. Much better to wait until the moment of our own choosing to take the action most appropriate to achieve our lasting strategic aims.
Moreover, just because we haven't retaliated overtly doesn't mean we haven't retaliated covertly. We may well be fighting fire with fire — and in fact, Iran openly accuses the U.S. of doing precisely that. And let's not forget that the administration is not looking at Iran's terrorist activities in Iraq in isolation from the other things going on — including Iran's shifting political strategy in Iraq, and the diplomacy of the nuclear issue.
This is a complex web, much of which lies in the shadows of classified information and covert operations. U.S. policy is likely to make more sense in hindsight than it does now.
Charles Krauthammer writes that Gaza is now
run not by a conventional political party, but by a movement that is revolutionary, Islamist, and terrorist. Worse, Hamas is a client of Iran. Gaza now constitutes the farthest reach of the archipelago of Iranian proxies: Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Mahdi army (among others) in Iraq, and the Alawite regime of Syria.
This Islamist mini-replica of the Comintern is at war not just with Israel, but with the moderate Arab states, who finally woke up to this threat last summer when they denounced Hezbollah for provoking the Lebanon war with Israel. …
There is nothing to do with the self-proclaimed radical Islamist entity that is Gaza but to isolate it. No recognition, no aid (except humanitarian necessities through the U.N.), no diplomatic commerce.
Israel now has the opportunity to establish deterrence against unremitting rocket attacks from Gaza into Israeli villages. Israel failed to do that after it evacuated Gaza in 2005, permitting the development of an unprecedented parasitism by willingly supplying food, water, electricity, and gasoline to a territory that was actively waging hostilities against it.
With Hamas now clearly in charge, Israel should declare that it will tolerate no more rocket fire — that the next Qassam will be answered with a cutoff of gasoline shipments. This should bring road traffic in Gaza to a halt within days and make it increasingly difficult to ferry around missiles and launchers.
If that fails to concentrate the mind, the next step should be to cut off electricity. When the world wails, Israel should ask, what other country on earth is expected to supply the very means for a declared enemy to attack it?
More here.
Here's more indication, from the Times of London, of how well the new diplomatic engagement approach is going:
A group funded, trained and armed by Iran was responsible for kidnapping five British civilians in Baghdad last month, according to the commander of US forces in Iraq.
General David Petraeus told The Times yesterday that he believed that the men, four security guards and a consultant, were alive and added that there had been repeated attempts to free them. No demands have been made for their release.
Commandos searching for the hostages have staged a series of raids on suspected terrorist hide-outs. “There have been several operations to try to rescue them, we just have not had the right intelligence,” General Petraeus said. “There is a very intensive effort ongoing to try to locate and rescue them.”
The remarks are the first official acknowledgement of secret hostage rescue efforts that the British authorities refuse to comment on. They are also likely to inflame relations with Iran further. The general said that the terrorist cell responsible had very close ties to the Iranian authorities, but he fell short of accusing Tehran of complicity. ...
Christopher Hitchens writes:
If Scooter Libby goes to jail, it will be because he made a telephone call to Tim Russert and because Tim Russert has a different recollection of the conversation. Can this really be the case? And why is such a nugatory issue a legal matter in the first place? …
Given the unsoundness of the verdict, the extraordinary number of other witnesses who admitted to confusion over dates and times, and the essential triviality of the original matter (an apparently purposeless coverup of a nonleak, in private and legal conversations, involving common knowledge of information that was not known to be classified), it is unlikely that the verdict at present can stand scrutiny, let alone the sentence. But why go through all this irrelevant and secondhand hearsay again? Those who want to "get" someone for "lying us into war" have picked the wrong man and failed to identify a crime. Let them try to impeach the president, who should in the meantime step in to avoid any more waste of public money and time and pardon Libby without further ado.
More here.
From USA TODAY:
BAGHDAD — More than 10 Iraqi tribes in the Baghdad area have reached agreements with U.S. and Iraqi forces for the first time to oppose al-Qaeda, raising the U.S. military's hopes that a trend started in western Iraq is spreading here.
Some of the groups, which have members who fought alongside al-Qaeda in the past, have been providing useful intelligence to U.S. forces about their former allies, according to the U.S. military.
"They know where they live and who they are," said Lt. Col. Rick Welch, a staff officer who works with tribes in the capital area. "They know how they operate." Some tribes are also taking up arms against al-Qaeda allies.
About 100 tribes live in greater Baghdad. Many of these clans are groups of relatives who share the same name and have thousands of members.
U.S. commanders have reached similar deals in Sunni-dominated Anbar province in western Iraq. Attacks there have dropped by 60% in the last year, according to the U.S. military. Tribes in Diyala province north of Baghdad are also negotiating with U.S. forces, which have launched a major offensive in the region.
More here.
Youssef Ibrahim writes that the “Jihadistan” includes not just Gaza but also “several cities in Iraq, the tribal regions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, much of Somalia, and the Hezbollah-controlled areas of southern Lebanon” -- all places where safe for “terrorist-masters to meet, organize, plan, and operate.” He adds:
What is needed is a plan to stop the addition of Gaza to Jihadistan, to contain it, and to bleed it. … The dizzying descent of Gaza has alarmed pundits and decision-makers in surrounding countries to the point that they are openly saying: Forget the Palestinian Arab cause, save us:
• "The emergence of an Islamist ‘Emirate of Gaza' is far more critical than that the emergence of the Taliban," the editor in chief of a Saudi newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat, Tarik Al-Homeid, wrote on Saturday.
• In Cairo this weekend, the secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, rejected calls for recognizing a Hamas government in Gaza, saying he could not sanctify splitting the region in the name of Islam. …
The most immediate urgency is to cut off funds and weapons in the places that Hamas's flames are heading next: the Palestinian Arab refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. With Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the scene is set for a serious Islamic fundamentalist insurrection across the Arab world. …
There are many poor and dispossessed Palestinian Arabs, most of whom are cared for with funds from the United Nations and Western charities. This humanitarian aid, unfortunately, has relieved Palestinian Arab terror groups, such as Hamas and Fatah, from the obligation of feeding their own and allows them to use all their money for war. Thus, a related issue for do-gooders confronting the problem is how to stop this seepage of funds. …
The day may come for an independent Palestinian Arab state. But right now, the humane and decent thing to do is save the Palestinian Arabs from their rogue Islamists and would-be nationalistic heroes.
More here.
National Review editorializes:
Our politics is at an extraordinary pass when a senator who suggests we should be prepared to take military action to protect American troops from hostilities undertaken by a sworn enemy of the United States is roundly denounced. No Republicans have spoken out in Lieberman’s defense. Nearly everyone wants to take a “see no evil” posture toward Iran’s involvement in Iraq, even though Gen. Petraeus has spoken forthrightly about its murderous handiwork. Lieberman’s offense was merely to speak the truth.
More here.
With the assassination of Lebanese MP Jebran Tueni in December 2006, months after the murder of political leaders George Hawi and Samir Qassir during the summer, the Syro-Iranian terror war room had opened a bloody hunt against the democratically elected Lebanese Parliament. After the withdrawal of regular Syrian forces from Lebanon in April 2005, Bashar Assad and his allies in Tehran designed a counter offensive (which we described then and later) aiming at crumbling the Cedars Revolution. One of the main components of this strategy was (and remain) to use all intelligence and security assets of Syria and Iran in Lebanon in order to “reduce” the number of deputies who form the anti-Syrian majority in the Parliament. As simple as that: assassinate as many members as needed to flip the quantitative majority in the Legislative Assembly. And when that is done, the Seniora Government collapses and a Hezbollah-led cabinet forms. In addition, if the Terror war kills about 8 legislators, the remnant of the Parliament can elect a new President of the Republic who will move the country under the tutelage of the Assad regime.
Continue reading "Syro-Iranian Massacre of Politicians in Lebanon (WP)" »
A letter written by 2007-2008 FDD Undergraduate Fellow Richard Fairbanks was recently featured on "The Tank," a blog hosted by National Review Online that concentrates on security policy, strategic debates, and military hardware.
Sen. Joe Lieberman reports on his recent visit to Iraq:
The officials I met in Baghdad said that 90% of suicide bombings in Iraq today are the work of non-Iraqi, al Qaeda terrorists. In fact, al Qaeda's leaders have repeatedly said that Iraq is the central front of their global war against us. That is why it is nonsensical for anyone to claim that the war in Iraq can be separated from the war against al Qaeda -- and why a U.S. pullout, under fire, would represent an epic victory for al Qaeda, as significant as their attacks on 9/11.
Some of my colleagues in Washington claim we can fight al Qaeda in Iraq while disengaging from the sectarian violence there. Not so, say our commanders in Baghdad, who point out that the crux of al Qaeda's strategy is to spark Iraqi civil war.
Al Qaeda is launching spectacular terrorist bombings in Iraq, such as the despicable attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra this week, to try to provoke sectarian violence. Its obvious aim is to use Sunni-Shia bloodshed to collapse the Iraqi government and create a failed state in the heart of the Middle East, radicalizing the region and providing a base from which to launch terrorist attacks against the West.
Facts on the ground also compel us to recognize that Iran is doing everything in its power to drive us out of Iraq, including providing substantive support, training and sophisticated explosive devices to insurgents who are murdering American soldiers. Iran has initiated a deadly military confrontation with us, from bases in Iran, which we ignore at our peril, and at the peril of our allies throughout the Middle East.
The precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces would not only throw open large parts of Iraq to domination by the radical regime in Tehran, it would also send an unmistakable message to the entire Middle East--from Lebanon to Gaza to the Persian Gulf where Iranian agents are threatening our allies--that Iran is ascendant there, and America is in retreat. One Arab leader told me during my trip that he is extremely concerned about Tehran's nuclear ambitions, but that he doubted America's staying power in the region and our political will to protect his country from Iranian retaliation over the long term. Abandoning Iraq now would substantiate precisely these gathering fears across the Middle East that the U.S. is becoming an unreliable ally. …
Some argue that the new strategy is failing because, despite gains in Baghdad and Anbar, violence has increased elsewhere in the country, such as Diyala province. This gets things backwards: Our troops have succeeded in improving security conditions in precisely those parts of Iraq where the "surge" has focused. Al Qaeda has shifted its operations to places like Diyala in large measure because we have made progress in pushing them out of Anbar and Baghdad. The question now is, do we consolidate and build on the successes that the new strategy has achieved, keeping al Qaeda on the run, or do we abandon them? …
While benchmarks are critically important, American soldiers are not fighting in Iraq today only so that Iraqis can pass a law to share oil revenues. They are fighting because a failed state in the heart of the Middle East, overrun by al Qaeda and Iran, would be a catastrophe for American national security and our safety here at home. They are fighting al Qaeda and agents of Iran in order to create the stability in Iraq that will allow its government to take over, to achieve the national reconciliation that will enable them to pass the oil law and other benchmark legislation. …
I returned from Iraq grateful for the progress I saw and painfully aware of the difficult problems that remain ahead. But I also returned with a renewed understanding of how important it is that we not abandon Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran, so long as victory there is still possible.
Read the rest here.
According to the latest reports, large chunks of the $25 million frozen in North Korea – related accounts at Macau’s Banco Delta Asia (“BDA”) have finally started to moving out of the country. According to The New York Times:
a Macao government official, who requested anonymity, said that the money was sent today to the United States to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. From New York, the funds were to be transferred to the Russian central bank and then to an account controlled by the North Korean government in a Russian commercial bank.
That sounds bad, but before you hit the roof, consider what the leading Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun said recently: "It is still unclear whether North Korea, which demands it return to the international financial system, would start taking action toward abandoning its nuclear programme just because the money transaction is complete.”
The point is this: The transaction will not itself give North Korea what it really needs, which is access to the international financial system. As I argue in the new issue of National Review, the second- and third-order effects of the Treasury’s BDA ruling are entirely out of the Treasury’s control. All around the world, banks are putting in place due-diligence “know your customer” measures in order to avoid winding up in BDA’s shoes. Many have stopped taking new North Korean business, or closed suspect accounts altogether.
The Treasury ruling has been a disaster for North Korea, and the disaster can’t be undone, except by North Korea. I certainly agree with Ambassador John Bolton and others who argue that we should not be negotiating with the North Koreans. But it strikes me that these are not real negotiations. If the North Koreans are only pretending to negotiate, in order to get something for nothing, it seems as if we are also pretending to negotiate — in order to give them a taste of their own medicine. The $25 million is coffee money compared to the problem North Korea has now.
Conservative commentators and former administration officials have publicly and privately criticized Condi Rice and assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill for being “desperate to make a deal” with North Korea, and willing to make foolish unilateral concessions in order to get it. I don’t think historians will see it that way; the story is more complicated than that. Without making a single concession of strategic significance, Christopher Hill is driving the North Koreans crazy — and making an example of them. Not a bad result for otherwise pointless negotiations.
An attack in Beirut today killed Walid Eido, a member of the anti-Syria block in the parliament. Eido — the seventh opponent of Damascus to be killed in two years — was a vocal opponent of Syrian influence in Lebanon. According to FDD Research Fellow Tony Badran, Eido’s death threatens the future of Lebanon’s democracy movement:
This is a continuing pattern by the terrorist Assad of targeting the majority's MPs.
There were warnings about the resumption of assassinations by the terrorist Syrian regime. They were apparently right.
For more on how Syria is targeting the pro-democracy parliamentarians and Syrian President Assad’s ruthless math, please click here.
FDD Adjunct Fellow Peter Pham this week launched a biweekly column on National Interest Online, the web edition of the foreign affairs journal The National Interest. In his first article — available here — Dr. Pham discusses increased cooperation between the United States and Vietnam.
I just debated an official from Human Rights Watch on the NPR program To the Point. I was astounded to hear her argue that the Justice Department has successfully prosecuted "hundreds of terrorist suspects" since 9/11.
Usually, the Left's position is that the terrorism problem is grossly overstated. The Justice Department, it is claimed, has vastly inflated its terrorism prosecution numbers both to heighten our sense of fear and to appear to be doing something meaningful to protect us.
The Justice Department, of course, does not claim to have prosecuted "hundreds" of people for terrorism offenses; it has investigated hundreds (hopefully, thousands) of people based on rationally grounded fears of terrorist activity or sympathy; but few people are actually charged with terrorism crimes. Many, instead, are deported or prosecuted for less serious offenses uncovered in the course of the investigations. This allows the government to neutralize them without having to compromise intelligence that it may not be able to use in court — because using it would reveal vital sources and methods of intelligence gathering, or would induce foreign intelligence services to stop telling us things, which would make us significantly less safe.
So why now, all of a sudden, is one of the leading "progressive" organizations, HRW, suggesting that Justice has actually racked up "hundreds" of successful prosecutions? Because of yesterday's Fourth Circuit decision in the al-Marri enemy-combatant case (which I write about, here). By a 2-1 ruling, the court held that an alien terrorist who is lawfully in the United States may not be held without trial as an enemy combatant. He must, the court said, be handed over to the civilian courts for trial, deported or released — which, of course, means either giving jihadists lavish discovery of our intelligence while the war is going on, or letting them go to rejoin the jihad.
You see? Yesterday, the Left wanted to argue that terrorism prosecutions almost never happen, so DOJ's numbers were inflated and there is no real threat to national security. Today, to defend the al-Marri decision, they want to argue that terrorism trials in the civilian courts happen all the time with no harm to national security, so DOJ's doing a bang-up job and its numbers are just outstanding.
You gotta hand it to these guys. There's always an answer for everything when every day is a new day that wipes the slate clean.
Fred Kagan writes:
The Iraqi security forces are not yet strong enough to protect their leaders and followers from the terrorists. U.S. troops are vital in this task, something the tribal leaders constantly make clear, and they continue to be essential to suppressing Shiite death squad activity, which remains below 50% what it was before the surge began. A reduction of U.S. forces in the coming months would expose these Iraqis to horrific deaths and would turn what might be one of the most important victories we could win against Al Qaeda into an unnecessary defeat.
More here.
Senior Fellow Daveed Gartenstein-Ross discusses the JFK terror plot in his most recent Weekly Standard article.
While the State Department engages in direct negotiations and joins the EU in pleading with the mullahs to stop enriching uranium, all of which the chuckling Iranian regime takes as a sign of weakness because it is, of course, a sign of weakness, Iran not only indicts Americans for death penalty offenses but now arms the Taliban against NATO, just as it has been arming Iraqi terrorists against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq (that is, when not engaging in direct strikes against U.S. forces). See Bill Roggio here.
Tiger Hawk has the run-down here. As he says: "Make no mistake about it, Iran is waging war against the United States and its allies."
As I've mentioned before (see, e.g. here and here), throughout the 1990s, we pretended that we were not at war while a determined, implacable enemy was clearly at war with us. We saw the results. Iran was part of that enemy then, and it has never stopped. If killing Americans is not enough, just what exactly do they have to do before we do something meaningful in response?
Research Fellow Tony Badran ran a piece today in The Daily Star on talks with Syria.
