Iraq and Terrorism

There’s not much more to add to this stunning interview captured by memri.org. The interview of al Nasseri, commander of the Army of Muhammed, was aired by an Iraqi TV channel that operates from the UAE, Al-Fayhaa TV. It again shows that the so-called insurgents are enemies of freedom and democracy, and that they are aided and abetted by the governments of Syria and Iran. Some excerpts from al Nasseri:

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Flashing back to the massive anti-war protest marches I participated in (one in Madrid and one in New York), I recall thinking at the time that some of the arguments I heard against the invasion struck me as perhaps a bit hyperbolic. More and more, however, it turns out that many of the scariest outcomes some had predicted this misadventure would bring are being surpassed by reality. One was just confirmed yesterday. A report (pdf file) released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director’s think tank, argues that Iraq is now a breeding ground for new terrorists:

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From the New York Times:

“On the afternoon of Dec. 31, 2003, Khaled el-Masri was traveling on a tourist bus headed for the Macedonian capital, Skopje, where he was hoping to escape the “holiday pressures” of home life during a weeklong vacation.

When the bus reached the Serbia-Macedonia border, Mr. Masri said, he was asked the usual questions: Where are you going? How long will you be staying? Mr. Masri, a German citizen, did not think much of it, until he realized that the border guards had confiscated his passport.

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Mass transportation is one of modern culture’s great equalizers. Buses and subway trains have no 1st class sections, and there are no private lounges for the club members to relax in as they wait on the platform or bus stop. No matter how well dressed you are, no matter how many people report to you, no matter what your income—on the bus or subway, you are simply one more fellow traveler. A homeless person is as entitled to the sole remaining seat as an heiress (and I’ve seen both dive for it—equals in battle). So people let their guard down…poses of pretense or airs just look silly when dozens of people are pushing their way past you. With everyone exposed as just another body, there’s nowhere like the subway or bus to get a truly human snapshot of who we really are at any given point in time.

At least it used to be that way.

Just in time to coincide with the New York Subway system’s 100th Anniversary, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has proposed a ban on all photography and video recording on subways and buses without authorization. That’s right, those of you who haven’t visited New York yet and were hoping for a snapshot of you and your friends on the legendary A Train had better hurry.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Tom Kelly, said the new photography rules were devised after extensive talks with the Police Department, which is responsible for patrolling subways and buses.

"Nobody is looking to violate anybody’s civil rights or deny anybody’s constitutional rights," Mr. Kelly said. "But when you check with law enforcement agencies, they have uncovered photographs of subway and rail systems from various terrorist organizations. And I don’t believe they were going into somebody’s scrapbook."

Meanwhile:

• Yale University Press recently reissued Walker Evans’s 1966 book of subway photographs, "Many Are Called."
• Several of Evan’s subway portraits are displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in an exhibition called, "Few Are Chosen: Street Photography and the Book, 1936-1966."
• The Museum of the City of New York has an exhibition of subway-related work by three photographers.

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Via a diary on Tacitus by Mac, via Drudge: al-Zarqawi may have been arrested…let’s hope so.

NEWS FLASH, PART II: With potentially encouraging news come potentially discouraging news:

IAEA Finds Egypt Secret Nuclear Program

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You wouldn’t think that a guy with a name like Stephen Schwartz would be a Sufi Muslim, but he is, having converted to the faith during his time in Bosnia. In his latest piece at techcentralstation, Schwartz examined the anticipated spread of a harsher brand of Islam in Athens, all centering around the "proposed construction of the first state-recognized mosque in the vicinity of Athens in modern times."

The Islamic Center in the Athenian suburb of Peania, more than 15 miles northeast of Athens near the new international airport, will be financed directly by the King Fahd Foundation of Saudi Arabia. According to the Arab News, an English-language Saudi daily, some 8.5 acres were donated by the Greek government for the structure. Foreign assistance for the radicalization of Islam in Greece will inevitably be a central element of the activities at the mosque, which will be very large, intended, it is said, to accommodate all of the estimated 120,000 Muslim faithful in the capital city. The total number of Muslims in Greece is estimated at more than 500,000.

This new mosque will introduce Wahhabism to Greek society, the very ideology that western civilization is at war with. The name "King Fahd" rang a bell with me because he also funds madrassas in Britain, Germany and untold other places, offering dis-assimilation and the oppression of females in its coursework. Are we really at war with Wahhabism? I believe we are, and that we should be outspoken in saying that this form of Islam is heretical. As I wrote here, the sect is too closely entwined with the House of Saud, and its precepts are disturbingly similar to those preached by al Qaeda. There is also quite a bit of overlap with Qutbism, which is highly influential in the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda. The butchers of Beslan were also Wahhabi influenced.

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Read biographies of the world’s "warrior-kings" who live into old age and you’ll notice a weariness set in for many of them. A desire to give up the fight and spend the rest of their days appreciating the finer things in life. Often they turn to the arts or focus on spending time with their family. Often they discover that what seemed like "truth" to them earlier in life was an illusion. That war, for example, is a horror worth working to prevent when possible. One of my favorite examples of this is this quote by Eisenhower:

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

Another warrior-king of sorts has stirred up controversy by offering his version of the late-life awakening. USA Today founder Al Neuharth, offered the following in his 12/22/04 column:

Despite unhappy holidays, nearly all of us who served in WWII were proud, determined and properly armed and equipped to help defeat would-be world conquerors Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Hirohito in Japan.

At age 80, I’d gladly volunteer for such highly moral duty again. But if I were eligible for service in Iraq, I would do all I could to avoid it. I would have done the same during the Vietnam War, as many of the politically connected did.

"Support Our Troops" is a wonderful patriotic slogan. But the best way to support troops thrust by unwise commanders in chief into ill-advised adventures like Vietnam and Iraq is to bring them home. Sooner rather than later. That should be our New Year’s resolution.

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Not sure if they coordinated, but NYTimes columnists Maureen Dowd and William Safire offered competing versions of "what if we hadn’t invaded Iraq" in their most recent columns. Dowd, playing off "It’s a Wonderful Life" (as experienced by Rumsfeld seeing the world as it would have been if he never existed) offered these conclusions:

Sam Nunn. He’s the defense secretary. Sam consults with Congress. Never acts arrogant or misleads them. He didn’t banish the generals who challenged him – he promoted ’em. And, of course, he caught Osama back in ’01. He threw 100,000 troops into Afghanistan on 9/11 and sealed the borders. Our Special Forces trapped the evildoer and his top lieutenants at Tora Bora. You [addressed to Rumsfeld] weren’t at that cabinet meeting the day after 9/11, so nobody suggested going after Saddam. No American troops died or were maimed in Iraq. No American soldiers tortured Iraqis in Abu Ghraib. No Iraqi explosives fell into the hands of terrorists. There’s no office of disinformation to twist perception abroad. We’re not on the cusp of an Iraq run by Muslim clerics tied to Iran.

[…] With the help of our allies around the world, we have won the war on terror. And Saddam has been overthrown. Once Hans Blix exposed the fact that Saddam had no weapons, the tyrant was a goner. No Arab dictator can afford to be humiliated by a Swedish disarmament lawyer.

Safire, taking his license in the form of a parody/sequel to Philip Roth’s book The Plot Against America, sees it differently:

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Ever have a goal in mind that requires two steps, where the success of step two relies on the solid execution of step one? Say, like painting the porch. There’s a real satisfaction in laying down that shiny new coat of paint on the planks, stepping back and seeing it sparkle, knowing how great it’s gonna look when it dries…you don’t really mind all the bending over, the fumes, the mess, the careful attention to the edges, all the details.

But that’s step two. Step one in the process is stripping or sanding down the old coat of paint. Now, step one requires equally careful execution if the final goal is to be successful, but knowing that it is simply a means to an end, there’s not as much personal satisfaction in the task. Really, for most people, despite how important it is, step one seems a horrific drag, and it’s hard to get as excited about the details. Still the details are incredibly important…a poorly sanded porch will not result in a beautiful new painted porch. There’ll be uneven patches, build-up, those awful tell-tale relief lines…in short, a mess that will likely embarass you for years to come.

I suspect to a large degree this explains the FUBAR situation in Iraq, the seeming incompetence, the lack of attention to detail. And I suspect it’s because Iraq was always just step one. Iran is step two, and always has been.

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OK so this is a few days old already, but I’ve been busy eating.

The Defense Strategic Board report "Stratetic Communication" (pdf file) is now on their website. It was discussed a few days ago in the NYTimes, where the focus was on how the US is "failing in its efforts to explain the nation’s diplomatic and military actions to the Muslim world," but it also drew distinct differences between the current conflict against radical Islamist ideology and the Cold War:

"In stark contrast to the cold war, the United States today is not seeking to contain a threatening state empire, but rather seeking to convert a broad movement within Islamic civilization to accept the value structure of Western Modernity – an agenda hidden within the official rubric of a ‘War on Terrorism,’ " the report states.

"Today we reflexively compare Muslim ‘masses’ to those oppressed under Soviet rule," the report adds. "This is a strategic mistake. There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell among Muslim societies – except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends."

The report says that "Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather they hate our policies," adding that "when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy." (emphasis mine)

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Press and Valentino (two Dartmouth professors of government) argue in the NYTimes today that our twin goals of planting democracy in Iraq and (in order to do so) defeating the Iraqi insurgency are, most likely, mutually exclusive. In a nutshell, they argue that historically, "occupying" forces have almost never beaten insurgencies without resorting to unrestrained brutality. The one recent "success" in doing so (the British defeat of the Malaya insurgency) represented a non-native (i.e., unsupported by the locals) and relatively small insurgent force.

This is why the history of counterinsurgency warfare is a tale of failure. Since World War II, powerful armies have fought seven major counterinsurgency wars: France in Indochina from 1945 to 1954, the British in Malaya from 1948 to 1960, the French in Algeria in the 1950’s, the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Israel in the occupied territories and Russia in Chechnya. Of these seven, four were outright failures, two grind on with little hope of success, and only one – the British effort in Malaya – was a clear success.

Many counterinsurgency theorists have tried to model operations on the British effort in Malaya, particularly the emphasis on winning hearts and minds of the local population through public improvements. They have not succeeded. Victory in Malaysia, it appears in retrospect, had less to do with British tactical innovations than with the weaknesses and isolation of the insurgents. The guerrillas were not ethnic Malays; they were recruited almost exclusively from an isolated group of Chinese refugees. The guerrillas never gained the support of a sizable share of the Malaysians. Nevertheless, it took the British 12 years to defeat them, and London ended up granting independence to the colony in the midst of the rebellion.

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I had read several accounts of the fatal shooting of an unarmed, wounded Iraqi in the Fallujah mosque before I had seen the video. I understood that the US Marine in question had been wounded in his face the day before and that another man in his unit had been killed by the booby-trapped body of an insurgent.

Based on this information I identified with the US Marine and told myself, in his shoes I would have very likely done the same thing; not taken any chances that this Iraqi was also booby-trapped.

His words reveal his mind at the time:

"He’s (expletive) faking he’s dead!"

"Yeah, he’s breathing," another marine is heard saying.

"He’s faking he’s (expletive) dead!" the first marine says.

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Via a diary on Kos

All the while I’ve been fretting about what type of democracy we’d leave in Iraq, behind the scenes it appears much bigger social engineering has been going on.

Under the umbrella of "Recognizing the demonstrated interest of the Iraqi Governing Council for Iraq to become a full member in the international trading system, known as the World Trade Organization, and the desirability of adopting modern intellectual property standards" (pdf file), back in April 2004 Bremer inserted into Iraqi law language that some are claiming "prevents [Iraqi] farmers from saving their seeds and effectively hands over the seed market to transnational corporations."

According to a report by GRAIN* and Focus on the Global South:

The new law is presented as being necessary to ensure the supply of good quality seeds in Iraq and to facilitate Iraq’s accession to the WTO. What it will actually do is facilitate the penetration of Iraqi agriculture by the likes of Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow Chemical – the corporate giants that control seed trade across the globe. Eliminating competition from farmers is a prerequisite for these companies to open up operations in Iraq, which the new law has achieved. Taking over the first step in the food chain is their next move.

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Via a thought-provoking diary by Spin Doctor on Tacitus
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Freedom may be on the march in Iraq, but it’s very likely about to hit a serious pothole. Regardless of who wins the White House this week, what’s waiting for him to deal with in Iraq is no Inaugural Ball. From Newsweek:

And so the bloody battles of the Iraq war—which never quite ended—are about to start up again in full force. Much depends on the new offensive. If it succeeds, it could mark a turning point toward Iraqi security and stability. If it fails, then the American president will find himself in a deepening quagmire on Inauguration Day. The Fallujah offensive “is going to be extremely significant,” says one U.S. official involved in the planning. “It’s an attempt to tighten the circle around the most problematic areas and isolate these insurgents.” But it will also be “the first major test” of the new Iraqi security forces since the debacle in April, says Michael Eisenstadt, an Iraq expert at the Washington Institute. Their performance, he says, will “provide a key early indicator of the long-term prospects for U.S. success in Iraq.”

For months the American people have heard, from one side, promises to “stay the course” in Iraq (George W. Bush); and from the other side, equally vague plans for gradual withdrawal (John Kerry). Both plans depend heavily on building significant Iraqi forces to take over security. But the truth is, neither party is fully reckoning with the reality of Iraq—which is that the insurgents, by most accounts, are winning. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former general who stays in touch with the Joint Chiefs, has acknowledged this privately to friends in recent weeks, NEWSWEEK has learned. The insurgents have effectively created a reign of terror throughout the country, killing thousands, driving Iraqi elites and technocrats into exile and scaring foreigners out. “Things are getting really bad,” a senior Iraqi official in interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s government told NEWSWEEK last week. “The initiative is in [the insurgents’] hands right now. This approach of being lenient and accommodating has really backfired. They see this as weakness.” (emphasis mine)

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