FDD

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.

A life well lived (RWC)

Now here is mention of a life well led. It was a life that ended last week, and there will be no media orgy but he is a man who will be remembered.   

I am speaking of Major Andrew Olmsted, US Army, in Iraq.   

He was a brave, intelligent, patriotic man.   

He was killed in Iraq in Diyala Province by a sniper.   

He was 38 years old and a blogger who had developed quite a following.   

The Life of Benazir Bhutto (RWC)

Speaking of corruption, as you know, the recently dead Benazir Bhutto, in effect, willed Pakistan to her 19 year old son, or at least she designated him as the leader of her political party, The Pakistan People’s Party. The boy’s name is Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.  A corrupt Pakistani businessman, Asif Ali Zardari, is his father.  I’m surprised he hasn’t yet dropped the Zardari name in favor of Bhutto.  Give the boy time. 

Bilawal held a news conference in London last week. He is a college student there. He defended his mother’s handing her political party to a teenager who hasn’t been in Pakistan since he was a little boy.   

He said, in a moment of deep candor “I admit my experience to date is limited!” Well, Jeez, who would have known?   

The death of Benzir Bhutto brought back a strong memory for me.  I was in Pakistan a few weeks after the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11.  The U.S. retaliatory ground war against the Taliban - the search for Osama Laden and his running dogs, and then the bombings of the Taliban from the air, began on October 10, 2001. One night I had dinner at the home of a wealthy Pakistani couple, both of whom had held very high posts in their government, in his case one of the very highest,  in the foreign ministry.  I had known them both for years.  The wife was a smart and likeable woman who was a close friend of Benazir Bhutto and had played an important official role in Benazir's Pakistani administration. We talked that night about, among other things, the subjugated role of women in Muslim countries like Pakistan, where religious extremism and politics are intertwined and Muslim fanaticism runs very deep. Our hostess was an outspoken feminist like her friend Benazir Bhutto.   

In that context, I said, I had heard a reliable report that Benazir's husband Asif frequently beat Benazir, punching and kicking her. Do you know about this, I asked, is it true?  And if it is true how can Benazir, an icon to US liberals and feminists, reconcile her husbands behavior and her acceptance of it with her public postures. The diplomat's wife looked pained.   

African National Congress endorses Zuma (RWC)

The African National Congress has endorsed its new leader, Jacob Zuma, who will be the ANC nominee for South African president next year, a virtual shoe-in to the office. 

Zuma is a Zulu tribe leader who has a popular campaign song called “Bring Me My Machine Gun,” which his supporters chant and sing at rallies.  He is an old ANC hard-line leftist, beholden to the socialist trade unions and to the SA Communist Party.   

Zuma is a particularly greedy and aggressive kleptocrat.  He was recently indicted for massive bribery and theft.   

Not long ago, a jury acquitted him of the forcible rape of a young woman, a friend of his children. He claimed the sex was consensual, though the woman had HIV, which Zuma knew.  She testified that he forced her.   

Zuma is accused of taking $200 million in bribes for the purchase by South Africa of naval frigates, fighter jets, attack helicopters and submarines. Submarines?    

South Africa has no enemies who could mount a military challenge to their country worthy of those armaments or the expenditure of the billions of dollars they cost.   

Not all the money is believed to have gone to Zuma, some of it supposedly went to the ANC itself, and some of it may have landed in President Thabo Mbeki’s pocket.   

Many whites, a small but important economic base, have said they will leave the country if Zuma takes over.   

We’ll be hearing a lot more about Jacob Zuma in the months to come.

2007: A Global Assessment of the Confrontation (WP)

From the World Defense Review

The conflict we call the War on Terror still continues at the end of 2007, and all indications are that its battlefields are expected to spread further, and escalate, in the upcoming year.

The following is a global assessment of the confrontation that has taken place since 2001, though the systematic war waged by Jihadi forces against democracies and the free world began at least a decade before 9/11. This evaluation isn’t comprehensive or definitive, but a collection of observations related to major benchmarks, directions and projections.

Global cohesion lacking

The main powers and allies involved in the War on Terror still lack global cohesion.  While the US, in the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, integrates those efforts with its efforts globally to defeat al Qaeda and contain nuclear proliferation of rogue regimes like Iran, other powers and blocs of countries have different outlooks and plans. While Britain and other U.S partners in Europe espouse common views on a global scale, France, Germany, Spain and Italy agree on the Afghan theater but still are uninvolved in the Iraqi theater. All Atlantic partners, however, pursue al Qaeda and consider it – along with other Salafi networks - as the principal threat. Also, most Western partners perceive the Iranian threat as serious, although differ in the ways in which to respond.

Contradictions

Mohamed Eljahmi writes:

It is ironic and heartbreaking that the Bush administration says it cares for freedom, yet the State Department quietly suggests that courageous reformers should stage apologies to dictators. With Washington offering wholesale concessions to Tripoli, Gaddafi has little incentive to improve human rights. Absent pressure, Gaddafi understands that he has a free pass to rule Libya as a private fiefdom.

More here.

Listen Up

Instapundit’s Glen Reynolds has an interview with Robert Zubrin, author of Energy Victory: Winning The War on Terror By Breaking Free of Oil. You can listen directly – no downloads necessary by going here.

Zubrin proposes that we make all cars sold in the U.S. Flex-Fuel Vehicles that can run not just on gasoline but also on ethanol, methanol — or any combination of the three.

The idea is to break the transportation fuel monopoly by weaning ourselves off our dependence on a single commodity controlled by those waging war against us. Winning the global conflict between free nations and militant Islamists will be much more difficult — and maybe impossible — if we continue indefinitely funding both sides, as we are now. There also could be benefits for the environment, for the American economy, and for poor people in tropical third world nations. And all this can happen very quickly.

I’ve written two columns based on Bob's book, here and here, and we’ve just made him an FDD Fellow on energy and security.