FDD

COIN vs CT (CM)

Fred Kagan has an important piece in today’s WSJ on the distinction – not well understood by politicians or the public – between counterinsurgency strategy (COIN) and counter-terrorism strategy (CT).

Although CT failed in Iraq and COIN is succeeding, many influential people continue to press for the U.S. to abandon a strategy that is working and return to one that can only lead to America’s defeat.

Fred writes:

The most important point made by Gen. David Petraeus in his recent congressional testimony: The defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq requires a combination of conventional forces, special forces and local forces. This realization has profound implications not only for American strategy in Iraq, but also for the future of the war on terror. …

As Gen. Petraeus made clear, the adoption of a true counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq in January 2007 has led to unprecedented progress in the struggle against al Qaeda in Iraq, by protecting Sunni Arabs who reject the terrorists among them from the vicious retribution of those terrorists. In his address to the United Nations General Assembly Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also touted the effectiveness of this strategy while at the same time warning of al Qaeda in Iraq's continued threat to his government and indeed the entire region. …

Yet despite the undeniable successes the new strategy has achieved against al Qaeda in Iraq, many in Congress are still pushing to change the mission of U.S. forces back to a counterterrorism role relying on special forces and precision munitions to conduct targeted attacks on terrorist leaders. This change would bring us back to the traditional, consensus strategy for dealing with cellular terrorist groups like al Qaeda--a strategy that has consistently failed in Iraq.

More here.

Challenging Ahmadinejad & Associates (CM)

The Wall Street Journal editorializes today:

The Bush Presidency is running out of time to act if it wants to stop Iran from gaining a bomb. With GIs fighting and dying in Iraq, Mr. Bush also owes it to them not to allow enemy sanctuaries or weapons pipelines from Iran. If the President believes half of what he and his Administration have said about Iran's behavior, he has an obligation to do whatever it takes to stop it.

More here.

Expand NATO (CM)

National Review editorializes:

[T]here is good reason to welcome the proposal from Rudy Giuliani, in his Margaret Thatcher lecture to the Atlantic Bridge conference in London, that NATO be expanded to include India, Israel, Japan, Australia, and Singapore. New Western institutions are needed — and existing ones should be updated — to meet the new and more diverse security challenges of the post–Cold War world. U.S. national security will rest in large part on getting reliable cooperation from alliances old and new.

Me: To give credit where it is due, such NATO expansion was first proposed more than a year ago by Jose Maria Aznar, former prime minister of Spain and International Co-Chairman of the Committee for the Present Danger.

Toward Energy Independence (CM)

Jim Woolsey and Anne Korin write:

By moving toward utilizing the batteries that have been developed for modern electronics we can rather soon have “plug-in hybrids” that travel 20-40 miles on an inexpensive charge of night-time off-peak electricity at a small fraction of gasoline’s cost. (After driving that distance plug-ins keep going as ordinary hybrids.) Dozens of ordinary hybrids converted to plug-ins now on the road are getting in the range of 100 mpg of gasoline. And millions of flexible-fuel vehicles are also now in the fleet. Producing them adds costs well under $100 and they can use up to 85-percent ethanol (before long to be made from biomass rather than corn) — methanol, butanol, and other alternative fuels produced from grasses and even waste.

More here.

‘North Korea is a global threat’ (CM)

Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton writes:.

Even if we "only" have evidence of continued North Korean ballistic missile cooperation with Syria, that alone should keep the North on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Syria -- and its senior partner, Iran -- are both long-time denizens of that same list of state sponsors of terrorism. Can we really delist North Korea when it partners with other terrorist states in the most destructive technologies?

Moreover, where are Syria's ballistic missiles -- and its weapons of mass destruction -- aimed? With American forces at risk in Iraq, no increase in the threats they face is acceptable, especially given Syria's record on Iraq to date. Syria remains at war with Israel and with Lebanon's Cedar Revolution. No one concerned about Israel's security or Lebanon's democracy should countenance giving North Korea a pass on the terrorism issue.

More here.

Hitler at Columbia? (CM)

Bret Stephens writes:

John Coatsworth, acting dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, made the remark that "if Hitler were in the United States and . . . if he were willing to engage in a debate and a discussion to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty, we would certainly invite him." This was by way of defending the university's decision to host a speech yesterday by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad….

[I]n hosting and perhaps debating Hitler, Columbia's faculty and students would not have been "confronting" him, much as they might have gulled themselves into believing they were. Hitler at Columbia would merely have been a man at a podium, offering his "ideas" on this or that, and not the master of a huge terror apparatus bearing down on you. To suggest that such an event amounts to a confrontation, or offers a perspective on reality, is a bit like suggesting that one "confronts" a wild animal by staring at it through its cage at a zoo.

There is also the question of just what ideas would be presented by Hitler at Mr. Coatsworth's hypothetical conference, and whether they would be an accurate reflection of his beliefs and intentions. In his 1933 speech, [German] Ambassador [Hans] Luther made the case for Hitler's "peaceful intentions" in Europe, according to historian Rafael Medoff. Millions of Europeans believed this right up to September 1939, just as millions of Americans did right up to December 1941.

Let's assume, however, that Hitler had used the occasion of his speech not just to dissimulate but to really air his mind, to give vent not just to Germany's historical grievances but to his own apocalyptic ambitions. In "Terror and Liberalism" (2003), Columbia alumnus Paul Berman observes the way in which prewar French socialists--keenly aware and totally opposed to Hitler's platform--nonetheless took the view that Germany had to be accommodated and that the real threat to peace came from their own "warmongers and arms manufacturers." This notion, Mr. Berman writes, rested in turn on a philosophical belief that "even the enemies of reason cannot be the enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in some fashion, reasonable."

So there is Adolf Hitler on our imagined stage, ranting about the soon-to-be-fulfilled destiny of the Aryan race. And his audience of outstanding Columbia men are mostly appalled, as they should be. But they are also engrossed, and curious, and if it occurs to some of them that the man should be arrested on the spot they don't say it. Nor do they ask, "How will we come to terms with his world?" Instead, they wonder how to make him see "reason," as reasonable people do.

In just a few years, some of these men will be rushing a beach at Normandy or caught in a firefight in the Ardennes. And the fact that their ideas were finer and better than Hitler's will have done nothing to keep them and millions of their countrymen from harm, and nothing to get them out of its way.

More here.

Hiding WMD? (CM)

Charles Krauthammer speculates on what Israel’s target in Syria may have been. He writes:

Circumstantial evidence points to this being an attack on some nuclear facility provided by North Korea….Pyongyang might be selling its stuff to other rogue states, or perhaps just temporarily hiding it abroad while permitting ostentatious inspections back home.

Second, there are ominous implications for the Middle East. Syria has long had chemical weapons — on Monday, Jane’s Defence Weekly reported on an accident that killed dozens of Syrians and Iranians loading a nerve-gas warhead onto a Syrian missile — but Israel will not tolerate a nuclear Syria.

He notes too:

The Third Lebanon War, now inevitable, awaits only Tehran’s order. …Iran’s assets in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq are poised and ready. Ahmadinejad’s message is this: If anyone dares attack our nuclear facilities, we will fully activate our proxies, unleashing unrestrained destruction on Israel, moderate Arabs, Iraq, and U.S. interests — in addition to the usual, such as mining the Strait of Hormuz and causing an acute oil crisis and worldwide recession.

This is an extremely high-stakes game. The time window is narrow. In probably less than two years, Ahmadinejad will have the bomb. …

The world is not quite ready to acquiesce. The new president of France has declared a nuclear Iran “unacceptable.” The French foreign minister warned that “it is necessary to prepare for the worst” — and “the worst, it’s war, sir.”

Which makes it all the more urgent that powerful sanctions be slapped on the Iranian regime. Sanctions will not stop Ahmadinejad. But there are others in the Iranian elite who might stop both him and the nuclear program before the volcano explodes. These rival elites may be radical but they are not suicidal. And they believe, with reason, that whatever damage Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic folly may inflict upon the region and the world, on Crusader and Jew, on infidel and believer, the one certain result of such an eruption is Iran’s Islamic republic buried under the ash.

More here.

In the Crosshairs (CM)

John Podhoretz writes

President Bush's nominee to be his next attorney general will be the first senior official in the U.S. government with the experience of living with an Islamofascist target on his forehead.

[Michael] Mukasey presided over the two-year trial of the "Blind Sheik," Omar Abdel-Rahman, and his collaborators accused of plotting the 1993 strike on the World Trade Center. For his labors, which were extraordinarily complex, Mukasey was considered a possible target for violent reprisal by Rahman's followers.

More here.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq Threatens Sweden (CM)

Abu Omar al Baghdadi has offered a reward of $100,000 for the assassination of Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks for drawing a picture of a dog with Mohammed’s head on it.  He also has offered $50,000 for the assassination of the editor of the newspaper that published the cartoon.

Can we now, finally, dismiss the notion that al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has nothing to do with the global al-Qaeda movement and would not be a problem is American troops would just “redeploy” out of Iraq? Also can we recall that AQI was responsible for the hotel bombings in Jordan in November 2005 and, according to British intelligence, was behind the recent failed attacks against London and Glasgow?

And it would be nice if anyone in the MSM could bother to note that the most recent National Intelligence Estimate calls AQI the “most visible and capable [al-Qaeda] affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the [U.S] Homeland.”

Fred Kagan at AEI informs me that Abu Omar al Baghdadi is just a nom de guerre, or perhaps even a fictitious personage created by AQI to conceal the foreignness of their leadership. In reality, the head of AQI is Abu Ayyub al Masri, an Egyptian.

One more thing: Do you recall the Osama bin Laden tape in October 2004, the one in which he rebutted Bush’s claim that AQ hates freedom by saying: “Let him tell us why we did not strike Sweden, for example?”

Perhaps this suggests that al-Qaeda in Iraq is actually more belligerent than al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

ABC coverage is here.

Bin Laden’s Organization? In Iraq? (CM)

From Eli Lake’s piece in the New York Sun about the assignation of Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, a pro-American Sunni sheik:

A military officer monitoring the situation closely said the early forensic reports on yesterday's attack suggest the work of Osama bin Laden's organization because of the sophisticated nature of the bomb, which evaded electronic countermeasures and bomb-sniffing dogs. "The working theory is that a senior, highly trained Al Qaeda operative disguised himself as a beggar and managed to slip the bomb under the sheik's car," the officer, who requested anonymity, said.

More here.

Vomiting Out al-Qaeda (CM)

Charles Krauthammer on Petraeus’ testimony:

For all the attempts by the antiwar movement to discredit Petraeus, he won the congressional confrontation hands down. He demonstrated enough military progress from his new counterinsurgency strategy to conclude: “I believe we have a realistic chance of achieving our objectives in Iraq.” …

The American people are not antiwar. They are anti-losing. Which means they are also anti-drift. Adrift is where we were during most of 2006 — the annus horribilis initiated by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s bringing down the Golden Mosque in Samarra — until the new counterinsurgency strategy of 2007 (the “surge”) reversed the trajectory of the war. …

His testimony, steady, and forthright, bought him the time to achieve his “realistic chance” of success. Not the unified democratic Iraq we had hoped for the day Saddam’s statue came down, but a radically decentralized Iraq with enough regional autonomy and self-sufficiency to produce a tolerable stalemated coexistence between contending forces.

That’s for the longer term and still quite problematic. In the shorter term, however, there is a realistic chance of achieving a separate success that, within the context of Iraq, is of a second order but in the global context is of the highest order — the defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Having poisoned one country and been expelled from it (Afghanistan), al Qaeda seized upon post-Saddam instability to establish itself in the very heart of the Arab Middle East — Sunni Iraq. Yet now, in front of all the world, Iraq’s Sunnis are, to use the biblical phrase, vomiting out al Qaeda so violently that it allies itself in battle with the infidel, the foreigner, the occupier.

Just carrying this battle to its successful conclusion — independent of its larger effect of helping stabilize Iraq — is justification enough for the surge. The turning of Sunni Iraq against al Qaeda is a signal event in the war on terror. Petraeus’s plan is to be allowed to see it through.

More here.

Administration Officials: Tehran's Influence in Iraq Is Called Surprisingly Deep (AM)

The Washington Post reports: "The Bush administration has begun mobilizing support for a third U.N. resolution that would impose tougher sanctions against Iran, as the top U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Baghdad said yesterday that one of the biggest and still unfolding surprises in Iraq has been the depth of Iran's intervention."  (Emphasis added.)

Other big, unfolding surprises include that night may follow day, Ahmadinejad may not be looking to play the "stabilizing ... neighborly" role Secretary Rice was hoping for, and this Peyton Manning guy may turn out to be pretty good after all.

Oh, and remember how the State Department explained last year that multi-lateral negotiations with the mullahs were the way to go because we had now gotten Russia, China and the Europeans on board for a list of specific punitive measures if Iran did not desist on its nuclear weapons program?  (Some among us were skeptical — see, e.g., here, here and here.) The Post today also reports that 

the United States has met resistance from China, Russia and Germany to sweeping new measures against Iran, said diplomats familiar with the debate. A meeting in Berlin of Iran experts from the six governments last week was described by Western envoys as "chilly" and "a disaster" because Germany balked. As a result, they now expect any new U.N. resolution to be only slightly tougher than the ones passed in December and March.

We sure seem to get surprised a lot on Iran.

Remember Sept. 11th (CM)

Gary Bauer says it well:

Seeing that date – Tuesday, September 11th – certainly makes one stop for a moment. It brings back a rush of memories: about where you were when you first learned of the attacks; first saw the images on TV; of flags flying; of full churches and synagogues; and of members of Congress singing “G-d Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol. It is important that we remember September 11th. But how and why we remember is also important. That is the subject of an op-ed by Debra Burlingame -- the sister of Chic Burlingame, who was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon. I want to share part of her op-ed with you, because it is a powerful message that every citizen and every policymaker must understand and, more importantly, never forget.

“None of us wants this to happen again, but as time goes by, why can’t we all agree, as we did then, about what took place that day? There is a disturbing phenomenon creeping into the public debate about all things 9/11. Increasingly, Sept. 11 is compared to hurricanes, bridge collapses and other mechanical disasters or criminal acts…

“Misremembering is as dangerous as forgetting. If we must know one thing, it is that the Sept. 11 attacks were neither a natural disaster, nor the unfortunate result of human error. 9/11 wasn’t the catastrophic equivalent of a 3,000-car pileup. The attacks were not a random act of violence or insanity. They were a deliberate and brutal act of war committed by religious fanatics engaged in Islamic jihad against the United States, all non-Muslim people and any Muslim who wishes to live in a secular society.

“Worse, the people who perpetrated the attacks have explicitly told us that they are not done. Sept. 11 is a date that comes and goes once a year, but ‘9/11’ is with us every day. The body count keeps rising - Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, Madrid, Beslan, London, Amman. We now clearly know that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was part of the holy war against America. When we previously dismissed this as a random attack by crazy men and declared ourselves lucky that ‘only six lives were lost,’ we effectively disarmed ourselves. Eight years later, six became 3,000. …

“Our fellow human beings were not ‘lost’ in 1993 or on 9/11. They were torn to pieces. We must not give the enemy any quarter. We must confront the reality of their acts. We must refuse to be fooled by their propaganda, which is meant to appeal to our own moral vanity -- the belief that we can appease them by responding to their outrageous demands for accommodation, their open threats and their hateful rhetoric with even more forbearance.

“…We should celebrate life rather than wallow in grief. But we should vigilantly guard against self-delusion and denial as a means of coping with the terrible reality that we all lived through six years ago. There was a reason that we felt unified then. The horror of what we experienced, individually and together, stripped away all the things that divide us today. We clung to each other, forgave each other, and were kind to each other, knowing that, in the end, we would only persevere together. …”

Burlingame’s point, that while we are a nation at war we will only succeed as a united people, is echoed today in a statement by Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who reminds us:

“…all freedom-loving people throughout the world are engaged in a struggle against the barbarism of Islamist extremism. This is not a battle between civilizations, but rather a battle for civilization. The cause which we are fighting for is not a Republican cause or a Democratic cause. Our cause is the cause of defending liberty and freedom against a totalitarian movement that is the evil heir to the twin totalitarian threats of the 20th century. Islamist extremism, like fascism and communism, seeks to eliminate all of the ideals that free peoples cherish.

“Just as during the World War II and the Cold War, our challenge today, is not to relent in this fight for liberty. And the central front in this war today is Iraq. You cannot be serious and strong in defeating those who attacked us on 9/11 if you counsel retreat in Iraq. To pull the plug on progress in Iraq would hand our two most dangerous enemies in the world -- al Qaeda and Iran -- an extraordinary military and strategic victory. These are fateful days and critical decisions we are making about Iraq. We must make them with our eye on the safety of America’s next generation. …

“Will this be the moment in history when America gives up -- when al Qaeda breaks our will, when our enemies surge forward, when we turn our backs on our friends and begin a long retreat from our principles and promise as a nation? Or will this be the moment when America steps forward, when we pull together, when we hold fast to the courage of our convictions, when we begin to turn the tide toward victory in this long and difficult war? History tells us that appeasement of evil leads to disaster. Our cause is freedom’s cause. Together, we must prevail.”

* * * * *

Questioning Petraeus’ Patriotism (CM)

The Wall Street Journal editorializes:

Important as was yesterday's appearance before Congress by General David Petraeus, the events leading up to his testimony may have been more significant. Members of the Democratic leadership and their supporters have now normalized the practice of accusing their opponents of lying. If other members of the Democratic Party don't move quickly to repudiate this turn, the ability of the U.S. political system to function will be impaired in a way no one would wish for.

Well, with one exception. MoveOn.org1, the Democratic activist group, bought space in the New York Times yesterday to accuse General Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House." The ad transmutes the general's name into "General Betray Us."

"Betrayal," as every military officer knows, is a word that through the history of their profession bears the stain of acts that are both dishonorable and unforgivable. That is to say, MoveOn.org didn't stumble upon this word; it was chosen with specific intent, to convey the most serious accusation possible against General Petraeus, that his word is false, that he is a liar and that he is willing to betray his country. The next and obvious word to which this equation with betrayal leads is treason. That it is merely insinuated makes it worse. …

Can this really be the new standard of political rhetoric across the Democratic Party? There was a time when the party's institutional elites, such as the Times, would have pulled it back from reducing politics to all or nothing. They would have blown the whistle on such accusations. Now they are leading the charge.

Under these new terms, public policy is no longer subject to debate, discussion and disagreement over competing views and interpretations. Instead, the opposition is reduced to the status of liar. Now the opposition is not merely wrong, but lacks legitimacy and political standing. The goal here is not to debate, but to destroy.

More here.

The Defeatists Won't Like This (CM)

Kim Kagan has a very strong piece in this morning's Wall Street Journal on the really astonishing progress being made by Gen. Petraeus and his troops. Among the points she makes:

American forces are in the midst of a large, complex campaign to defeat al Qaeda, dismantle Iranian-backed Shiite criminal militias, support a growing grass-roots movement in the Sunni population, and create space for political progress at the national level. Al Qaeda is not defunct by any means. It continues to fight and is trying to re-establish itself. It will certainly try to conduct a large-scale terror campaign to coincide with Gen. Petraeus's report to Americans later this month on the progress of the surge. ...

Significant challenges remain in establishing security, building up Iraqi forces capable of maintaining it and helping the Iraqi government achieve reconciliation and unity. But few expected the progress made so far. The tide in Iraq is clearly turning as the Iraqi people are voting with their lives to fight with us against terrorists and militias. Now is not the time to give up the fight.

Worth reading the whole piece.