Cascajun

In an open letter to Senator Obama, Iranian human rights activists Manda Zand-Ervin & Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi outline why they find a policy of “unconditional dialogue” hard to fathom.

Senator, since 1979 the Mullahs of Iran have killed upwards of one million Iranians, not to mention the nearly one million sacrificed to the 8-year-long Iran/Iraq war. And what the Iranian people have withstood in terms of outrageous human rights violations is shocking; public hangings, stoning, flogging, cutting off limbs, tongues and plucking out eyeballs are an everyday occurrence across Iran. All are meant to strike fear of the ruling Mullahs into people’s hearts.

[…]

Senator, Europeans, through Jack Straw of the U.K., Dominique de Villepin of France and Joschka Fischer of Germany, tried negotiations for five years with the so-called moderate reformist, Mullah President Khatami. That effort ended in disaster, with the European Union admitting its failure. President Reagan tried also. He sent a cake and a Qur’an to Khomeini, but Khomeini fed the cake to dogs and willfully ignored president Reagan’s proposal of friendship. President Clinton worked diligently on negotiations for eight years. Two secretaries of State, Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, both failed — during the regime of the same Mullah President, Khatami. In fact, it was Warren Christopher who called the regime of Iran evil after over three years of unsuccessful negotiations. Mrs. Albright even publicly apologized to the Mullahs of Iran for America’s sins. She eliminated trade sanctions on three items as a goodwill gesture and offered incentives on Iranian frozen assets, but at every point the Mullahs ungraciously found excuses not to hail the repeated gestures of good will, and refused to take one step forward.

The most important fact to remember is that while the negotiations were going on between the Clinton Administration and the Mullahs of Iran, they were continuing the development of their hidden nuclear program. Do you really think you can trust these people?

Indeed. How can one negotiate when the other party is absolutely unworthy of trust?

Wretchard points out, once again, what so many seem to miss. The solution to our current engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan contains a large military component.

The core problems in both Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan are both political: the incapacity of the local state to establish a working civil society; a fact that has allowed all kinds of mischief to be based within their borders. But as events have shown, the solution to the political problem contains a large military component. Unless security is provided for the local good guys, the bad guys can always use terror to coerce the population into line. The dove flies under a parasol of swords. If there is no such thing as a “purely military” solution, neither is there such a thing as a purely political one.

“The dove flies under a parasol of swords.”

Richard Fernandez writes about a realistic expectation of an American victory in Iraq:

“Totten describes the psychological terrain of a counterinsurgency. He reminds us that dysfunctional Middle Eastern polities are infected to their core. In Karmah, for example, insurgents often kidnapped, tortured and killed their own close relatives.”

[..]

“It is this dysfunctional culture which is the ultimate redoubt of terrorism. And it is impervious to the passing influences of UN development projects, a few diplomatic conferences, a handful of ceremonial occasions or a few seminars. It is impervious even to a ten year American occupation. The only thing which has any hope of transforming it into a semblance of a functioning civil society is the creation of a long-lived democratic society. Then, after the Saddam generation is replaced by a newer one, can there be a new society.”

“Once this is understood then a realistic expectation of an American victory in Iraq isn’t the establishment of a perfect society. A realistic goal is the establishment of a stable, democratic and relatively sane society which can go on to heal its wounds. The sheer magnitude of the task explains why efforts to create a Palestinian State have been so unsuccessful. Until the dysfunction which lurks in the substratum can be healed, the infection repeatedly breaks through each crust of apparent civility that is overlaid. And since that healing can only be accomplished by the people themselves, real counterinsurgencies are really efforts to plant a survivable crop in the devil’s own vineyard.”

“Ultimately the job is too big for any single nation to accomplish unless the idea ‘catches on’. And we should be thankful to people like Michael Totten for a glimpse into how, hopefully, it is done.”

So what is a realistic expectation of an American victory in Iraq and what is the best approach to achieve it?

To paraphrase some comments made to the Belmont Club post quoted above:

The Iraq War didn’t take place in a vacuum, but in the context of the total uselessness of the traditional UN/Development Aid/Diplomacy methods of dealing with chaos in the Third World. Most of the criticisms leveled against Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) & Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) are that things were better managed by the traditional methods. However, nobody wants to remember that the traditional methods brought us 9/11.

Even if one were to grant that OEF and OIF are the wrong approaches, it does not follow that a return to the traditional UN/Development Aid/Diplomacy methods would be a panacea. On the contrary, many decades of experience suggests that those methods are not effective.

A self described liberal Democrat who happens to be a professor at a research university has been conducting analysis of casualties in Iraq. He observes how the tabulations of casualties from different sources correlate and speculates about what this means for the surge.

Back in 2004 and 2005, there was an insurgency in Iraq driven by former Baathists who wanted to restore themselves to power. In 2006 and 2007, most people (and all Democrats) thought they witnessed a civil war break out in Iraq as casualties increased dramatically. What they actually witnessed was a declaration of war by al Qaeda and a response by Muqtada al Sadr’s Shiite militia. What you are watching now is al Qaeda starting to lose the war they started. I obviously don’t know what the future holds, but I can say that the recent trends are very favorable.

Hat tip: SouthCom.

What if MoveOn.org exisited 65-years ago?

The pendulum continues to swing in Russia. Its back to the old ways with Putin at the helm.

Putin has threatened to withdraw from the arms control treaty that dismantled the Cold War in response to US plans to install missile defense systems in Eastern Europe.

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This amounts to an objective alliance between Moscow and Teheran. A new Cold War has started with a new lineup. Perhaps it had already begun earlier had the West but the wit to sense it. With the mood in Congress being what it is, it is entirely possible that the Democrats will urge the President to abandon the plans for the missile defense of Europe, effectively giving Iran the power of blackmail over an already terrified and cowed Continent.

[…]

Russia was always a player in Southwest Asia, and until recently the dominant patron of the Arab states. Moscow historically used the Arab states as stooges to advance their interests. Russia is not proscribed from creating its own missile defense and besides, Iran probably knows that any use of nuclear weapons against Russia would mean an Iranian holocaust. The Eastern Europeans have neither a nuclear strike capability nor a defense. The reason they joined NATO was to snuggle under its defense shield. If Putin succeeds in entering into a secret arrangement with Iran he would have a powerful weapon with which to intimidate Eastern Europe. If he forces America to leave them in the lurch he would discredit America even more. Not only would the Iraqis realize that the US guarantee was worthless, but so would the Poles.

The new cold war is fueling a very hot war.

Now, with a seemingly successful tactical combination in hand to compel a long war in any given place, radical Islamism’s prospects of a strategic victory have never been brighter. Everything that has happened in Iraq can be replicated in Afghanistan — the sanctuaries, the campaign of terror, the cunning public relations offensive in the Western press — and in any other battlefield which radical Islam wishes to contest.

Video from a recent Portland, Oregon peace rally where participants demonstrated their support for “peace” by burning a U.S. soldier in effigy and singing “Bye, bye, GI, In Iraq you’re gonna die!”

Why do people question their patriotism?