FDD

Is the Bush Doctrine Dead? (CM)

Not according to Norman Podhoretz, it isn't.

He writes:

So far as the implementation of this new strategy goes, it is still early days--roughly comparable to 1952 in the history of the Truman Doctrine. As with the Truman Doctrine then, the Bush Doctrine has thus far acted only in the first few scenes of the first act of a five-act play. Like the Truman Doctrine, too, its performance has received very bad reviews. Yet we now know that the Truman Doctrine, despite being attacked by its Republican opponents as the "College of Cowardly Containment," was adopted by them when they took power behind Dwight D. Eisenhower. We also know now that, after many ups and downs and following a period of retreat in the 1970s, the policy of containment was updated and reinvigorated in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan (albeit without admitting that this was what he was doing). And we now know as well that it was by thus building on the sound foundation laid by the Truman Doctrine that Reagan delivered on its original promise.

It is my contention that the Bush Doctrine is no more dead today than the Truman Doctrine was cowardly in its own early career. Bolstered by that analogy, I feel safe in predicting that, like the Truman Doctrine in 1952, the Bush Doctrine will prove irreversible by the time its author leaves the White House in 2008. And encouraged by the precedent of Ronald Reagan, I feel almost as confident in predicting that, three or four decades into the future, and after the inevitable missteps and reversals, there will come a president who, like Reagan in relation to Truman in World War III, will bring World War IV to a victorious end by building on the noble doctrine that George W. Bush promulgated when that war first began.

His Commentary essay is here.

For more notes & comments see this week's e-newsletter.

What Do Most Lebanese Think? (CM)

Michael Béhé writes in The New Republic:

The Security Council's Resolution 1559--that demanded that our government deploy our army on our sovereign territory, along our international border with Israel and that it disarm all the militia on our land--was voted on September 2, 2004.We had two years to implement this resolution and thus guarantee a peaceful future to our children, but we did absolutely nothing. Our greatest crime--which was not the only one!--was not that we did not succeed, but that we did not attempt or undertake anything. And that was the fault of none else than the pathetic Lebanese politicians. …

All those who assume public and communicational responsibilities in this country are responsible for this catastrophe. Except those of my colleagues, journalists, and editors, who are dead, assassinated by the Syrian thugs, because they were clearly less cowardly than those who survived. …

And when I speak of a catastrophe, I do not mean the action accomplished by Israel in response to the aggression against its civilians and its army, which was produced from our soil and that we did strictly nothing to avoid, and for which we are consequently responsible. Any avoiding of this responsibility--some people here do not have the minimal notions of international law necessary to understand!--means that Lebanon, as a state, does not exist. …

Each Irano-Syrian fort that Jerusalem destroys, each Islamic fighter they eliminate, and Lebanon proportionally starts to live again! Once again, the soldiers of Israel are doing our work. Once again, like in 1982, we are watching--cowardly, lying low, despicable, and insulting them to boot--their heroic sacrifice that allows us to keep hoping. To not be swallowed up in the bowels of the earth. …

Like the overwhelming majority of Lebanese, I pray that no one puts an end to the Israeli attack before it finishes shattering the terrorists. I pray that the Hebrew soldiers will penetrate all the hidden recesses of southern Lebanon and will hunt out, in our stead, the vermin that has taken root there. Like the overwhelming majority of Lebanese, I have put the champagne ready in the refrigerator to celebrate the Israeli victory …

[The Israelis] are also fighting for our liberty …And in the name of my people, I wish to express my infinite gratitude to the relatives of the Israeli victims--civilian and military--whose loved ones have fallen so that I can live standing upright in my identity. They should know that I weep with them.”

More here.

More notes & comments are available in this week's e-newsletter.

Youssef Ibrahim on Lebanon (CM)

We should view the events now unfolding not as a local battle for Lebanon but as a larger fight for the future of the entire Arab nation. For two decades, this nation of 350 million has been hijacked by a bizarre collection of Neanderthals, pseudo-revolutionaries, illiterate imams, and "Mad Max"-style Palestinian Arab terrorists of every hue, all united only in their desire to pillage in the name of a religion they expropriated.

Their manifest failure, which we hope will be delivered in resounding military terms, should come as a hard knock on the head of any Arab drifters. Cynics and cowards are already shouting "Enough!" but we know it will only be enough when the madman of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, and all the other turbaned, bearded bats of the night are found, nailed down, and killed, and the whole Hezbollah movement in Lebanon — as well as Hamas and the other freelance Palestinian Arab factions — is convincingly discredited.

More here.

More notes & comments are in this week's e-newsletter.

Media Roundup

Claudia Rosett discusses the U.N.'s reaction to the crisis in the Middle East.

Andy McCarthy argues that Israel's war is part of America's 'war on terror.'

Krauss & Pham argue that the current U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon,Tte U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNFIL), has turned into a very convenient and high-profile human shield for terrorists.

Cliff's weekly notes & comments are in this week's e-newsletter.

Where Does This Conflict Leave Prospects for a Palestinian State? (CM)

The Hudson Institute’s Mey Wurmser writes:

We are witnessing the collapse not only of the Road Map and the Disengagement and Convergence concepts but of a paradigm which emerged in 1994 during the Oslo process. That paradigm was grounded in the idea that the best solution to the Palestinian problem was the creation of a third state along with Israel and Jordan within the League of Nations mandatory borders of interwar Palestine. Until Oslo, Jordan, Israel and the United States all publicly repeated that an independent Palestinian state was dangerous to their national interests.

From September 1970 until September 1993, it was universally understood in Jordan, in Israel and in the West that the local Palestinian issue was best subsumed under a Jordanian-Israeli condominium to isolate the issue from being exploited by broader regional forces that sought to trigger Arab-Israeli wars that were convenient diversions or vehicles for imperial ambition.

Since 1994, rather than focus on creating out of the territories a system of increasing personal freedoms and stability, Israel sought to wash its hands of the Palestinian problem by creating an independent Palestinian status. That emerging entity has again become the vehicle for regional despots and extremists. ..

[T]he goal of a Palestinian independent state should be either put on hold or even surrendered until the region's politics enter a calmer phase. The goal should now be the construction of Palestinian political structures. These should not be independent but instead operate under a Jordanian-Israeli condominium and be anchored to personal freedom and liberal values. This was implicit in the President's June 24 speech, where he conditioned his offer to the Palestinians to support their enterprise only if it exorcised the demons of terror and corruption. The sooner the illusion of independence at this stage is abandoned, the faster will the Palestinian issue cease being a constant source of regional violence.

More here.

For more notes & comments see this week's e-newsletter.

Media Roundup

Claudia Rosett continues to cover Tongsun Park's trial for NRO.  Park is "charged by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York with having acted as an unregistered agent of the government of Iraq under Saddam Hussein."

Andy McCarthy argues that the Hamdan decision "sounds the death knell for the National Security Agency’s Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP)," in today's NRO.

Michael Kraus and J. Peter Pham question if Israel's disengagement from Gaza is a mistake in today's NRO.

Cliff's Notes & Comments are available in this week's e-newsletter.

Muslim Perspectives (CM)

Daniel Pipes, analyzes a new Pew poll and concludes that Muslim alienation is strongest "in those countries where Muslims are either the most or the least accommodated, suggesting that a middle path is best - where Muslims do not win special privileges, as in the UK, nor are they in an advanced state of hostility, as in Nigeria."

His column is here.

For more notes & comments, see this week's e-newsletter.

The Difference (CM)

Kevin Ferris of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The allegations about Marines killing civilians in Haditha last year are bad enough. But what's worse is that one possible incident of abuse so easily overshadows the efforts of U.S. forces who struggle daily to prove we are not the Great Satan.

Certainly innocents are being killed in this war, and unlawful behavior should be punished, but recognize the difference:

Our highly disciplined troops are fighting under rules of engagement designed to protect and defend innocents, to minimize the loss of life. They regularly save lives.

The enemy has no rules. They kill as many innocents as possible, as horrifically as possible, every day. They murder outright, or attempt to spark revenge killings among rival factions, or launch attacks while among civilians, hoping that any return fire by U.S. or Iraqi forces will cause casualties.

More here.

For more notes & comments see this week's e-newsletter.

Cliff's Comments

ZARQAWI'S END: He liked to cut off the heads of his screaming victims while the video tape rolled. He sent suicide bombers out to murder Iraqi students applying for jobs and women shopping for their families' dinners.

He attempted to spark a civil war between Iraqi Muslims. He arranged for the murder of an American diplomat in Jordan -- before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when he was living in Iraq, under an arrangement with Saddam Hussein.

He was a foreigner in Iraq. Nevertheless, in much of the mainstream media he was respectfully described as "Iraq's most prominent insurgent leader."

For more notes & comments see this week's e-newsletter.

Self-criticism (CM)

From this insightful editorial in the London Times:

Smugness is one of Europe’s great contemporary exports. We may all think that we know America, its music, its culture, its self-confident exceptionalism. We tend to forget that Americans fight only with extreme reluctance. We overlook their penchant for agonised self-criticism; everything bad we know about the US, we know because Americans inexhaustibly rehearse their society’s shortcomings. There has never been greater transparency, whether than on the battlefield or the boondocks, and there has never been more open debate about the country’s virtues and vices — the internet has transformed the quantity and, at times, the quality of the conversation.

Better than most, Muslims understand why Islamist terrorism is war at its unholiest, an existential threat to societies. Iraqis may resent occupation, but they fear a weakening of US resolve. Their fears should be ours. Were it to become politically impossible for a president to keep America’s forces engaged from its shores, then the backbone of international security would be broken. America-bashing may be a popular sport, but its adherents prefer not to contemplate its consequences.

For more notes & comments please see this week's e-newsletter.